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Observer [Steam, Official Site], the cyberpunk horror game from Aspyr Media and Bloober Team is now available on Linux. Strap in and become a neural detective! Also, it's 15% off on Steam!

Features:

  • Observe and Report - You are Dan Lazarski, an elite neural detective known as an Observer, and part of a corporate-funded police unit whose purpose is to hack and invade suspects’ minds. In this future, anything you think, feel, or remember can be used against you in a court of law.
  • A Dark Dystopia - The year is 2084. If you somehow survived the Nanophage, odds are you were killed in the War. Those who live have turned to drugs, VR, neural implants— anything to distract themselves from this new reality. But they can’t hide from you.
  • Interactive Insanity - As you hack into the unstable minds of criminals and victims to look for clues, you will relive their darkest fears, forcing you to question your own reality -- and your sanity.
  • A New Horror from the Creators of Layers of Fear - The largest and most frightening world yet from Bloober Team! Lose yourself -- and your sanity -- in the dark dystopia that is 2084. >observer_ is a horror experience meant for mature audiences. What you see will disturb you.

System requirements

I was hoping for the launch to have better news to report about it supporting AMD GPUs on Linux, but prepare yourself. I spoke with Aspyr Media, who confirmed to me the team has "currently no plans to support AMD at this time for Observer".

So for now, you're only supported using an Nvidia GPU and that might not change in future. It's possible it may work, but I do not have AMD hardware to report on. Here's the rest of the requirements:

  • Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04, 17.04, SteamOS 2.0
  • Processor: Intel Core i3 / AMD A8-6700
  • Processor Speed: Intel (3.4 GHz), AMD (3.1 GHz)
  • Memory: 8 GB
  • Hard Drive Space: 10 GB
  • Video Card (NVIDIA): GeForce GT 680
  • VRAM: 2 GB

I shall be livestreaming the game in less than an hour - follow us live on Twitch to get in on the fun. Someone pass me my spare pants, I'm going to need them. Note: My key was provided by Aspyr Media directly.

I've given it a very brief test before I begin the livestream and it does seem to work fine on High settings with my i7 5960x and 980ti, although it's not a solid 60FPS.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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48 comments
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vickop Oct 24, 2017
AMD not supported? No purchase


Last edited by vickop on 24 October 2017 at 7:20 pm UTC
Shmerl Oct 24, 2017
Did they describe the problem they had with AMD? Not supporting it today is pretty fishy. As usual, they should have filed Mesa bugs. I don't see any that mention Observer title.


Last edited by Shmerl on 24 October 2017 at 7:31 pm UTC
jordicoma Oct 24, 2017
I understand that it's only for nvidia opengl. Probably it would run with mesa and radeon (hopefully).


Last edited by jordicoma on 24 October 2017 at 7:31 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Oct 24, 2017
Quoting: ShmerlDid they describe the problem they had with AMD? Not supporting it today is pretty fishy. As usual, they should have filed Mesa bugs. I don't see any that mention Observer title.
Nope, the quoted bit is practically all they said. My actual question asked what was holding the support for AMD up, but that's what they gave me.

I'm happy it came to Linux and think it's great Aspyr Media still publish and bring games for us, but it is a little troubling that no reasons for the lack of AMD GPUs support has been given.
Shmerl Oct 24, 2017
Looks like the game is using Unreal Engine 4, so possibly those issues are related to problems UE4 had with older Mesa (which are resolved with recent one). I agree, this lack of details from developers is not helping at all.

It's kind of strange though, that developers needed a porting company for UE based game.


Last edited by Shmerl on 24 October 2017 at 7:50 pm UTC
Ardje Oct 24, 2017
Wait, what? No live streaming of the actual purchasing? I am so disappointed.
Beamboom Oct 24, 2017
Quoting: ShmerlIt's kind of strange though, that developers needed a porting company for UE based game.

It may not have been a large job to port, but maybe the devs simply did not know Linux whatsoever so they played it safe. And that's totally cool imo.
Xpander Oct 24, 2017
Pretty good game so far. Interesting story and really great visuals. I wish FoV was bigger though, i get motion sickness when i turn too fast in the game. Doesn't run amazingly good also. It seems it has the Unreal Engine "Smooth FPS" thingy enabled 30-63FPS or whatever it used to be. Never seen it go above 63FPS. Might need some ini file tweaks for it.


Quick gameplay video also (with as small amount spoilers as possible):

View video on youtube.com


--fix for better FoV

Open:
$HOME/.config/Epic/TheObserver/Saved/Config/LinuxNoEditor/Engine.ini

add this:
[/Script/Engine.LocalPlayer]
AspectRatioAxisConstraint=AspectRatio_MaintainYFOV



--Disable Chromatic Abberation and Disable Depth of Field:

Open:
$HOME/.config/Epic/TheObserver/Saved/Config/LinuxNoEditor/Scalability.ini

add this:
[PostProcessQuality@3]
r.SceneColorFringeQuality=0
r.SceneColorFringe.Max=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0


--Unlock fps from 63FPS cap.

Open:
$HOME/.config/Epic/TheObserver/Saved/Config/LinuxNoEditor/GameUserSettings.ini

Change the Line to:
FrameRateLimit=120.000000


Last edited by Xpander on 24 October 2017 at 8:43 pm UTC
Ehvis Oct 24, 2017
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: ShmerlIt's kind of strange though, that developers needed a porting company for UE based game.

It may not have been a large job to port, but maybe the devs simply did not know Linux whatsoever so they played it safe. And that's totally cool imo.

It may well be that Bloober Team did everything in house and Aspyr is just the publisher on this one.
jens Oct 24, 2017
  • Supporter
Bought this one, very cool!

PS: Is there actually anybody happy with this one next to me? I'm reading here and in the thread about this earlier today mostly complaints from people that apparently bought the wrong graphics card :(


Last edited by jens on 24 October 2017 at 9:14 pm UTC
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