Samson: A Tyndalston Story--the debut title from Just Cause developer Christofer Sundberg's new studio Liquid Swords--is finally here. But the gritty crime adventure's launch has been a bit rocky, mainly due to bugs that Liquid Swords is already working to address via a patch that's set to release on Friday.
"Early impressions [of Samson] are mixed and many of you are experiencing game-breaking bugs and performance issues," Sundberg himself shared in a post announcing the upcoming update. "That's unacceptable, and we are listening to everyone's feedback and are hard at work to deliver the game we spent years of our lives developing. Launching a game is a ton of work and I'm proud of the effort our team has put into seeing Samson from its initial concept through release."
The update, which is set to go live on Friday, April 10, is mainly focused on fixing performance issues, game crashes, and bugs that prevent progression. The patch will also add the ability for players to utilize up to eight save files.
For anyone who's been following the game's development, these issues aren't exactly a shock. GameSpot's Phil Hornshaw bumped into plenty of jankiness when he previewed the game, and Sundberg himself admitted the game would likely launch with some bugs still in need of squashing.
"No AAA experience, no 100s of hours of play-time, bugs and glitches--that we are working hard on fixing--but also a hell-of-a ride as a 25-hour AA experience," Sundberg told GameSpot in a recent interview. "We decided to shelve some of the big features such as heavy-RPG systems, our version of base-building and deeper narrative," he said. "What came out of that process is the Samson we have now: a focused, fast, hard-hitting action game which is truly straight to the point. It is a fun, challenging action experience and we are not promising more than that."
The game follows the story of the titular Samson, a man who "learned violence before he learned mercy" and must complete heists to pay off mobsters who have kidnapped his sister. His debt grows with time (and failed missions), but despite all the GTA comparisons, Samson doesn't simply shoot his way through obstacles--he punches his way through them, utilizing the game's melee system to knock some sense into his adversaries.
"We are committed to the future of both Samson and Tyndalston, and this game will grow over time on all fronts; quality, gameplay and content," Sundberg said of the game's upcoming patch. "Thank you all for supporting us and sticking with us this super exciting launch day. We will continue to keep our ears to the ground and improve the game with your support."
The patch notes for Samson's first update are listed in full below:
Source
"Early impressions [of Samson] are mixed and many of you are experiencing game-breaking bugs and performance issues," Sundberg himself shared in a post announcing the upcoming update. "That's unacceptable, and we are listening to everyone's feedback and are hard at work to deliver the game we spent years of our lives developing. Launching a game is a ton of work and I'm proud of the effort our team has put into seeing Samson from its initial concept through release."
The update, which is set to go live on Friday, April 10, is mainly focused on fixing performance issues, game crashes, and bugs that prevent progression. The patch will also add the ability for players to utilize up to eight save files.
For anyone who's been following the game's development, these issues aren't exactly a shock. GameSpot's Phil Hornshaw bumped into plenty of jankiness when he previewed the game, and Sundberg himself admitted the game would likely launch with some bugs still in need of squashing.
"No AAA experience, no 100s of hours of play-time, bugs and glitches--that we are working hard on fixing--but also a hell-of-a ride as a 25-hour AA experience," Sundberg told GameSpot in a recent interview. "We decided to shelve some of the big features such as heavy-RPG systems, our version of base-building and deeper narrative," he said. "What came out of that process is the Samson we have now: a focused, fast, hard-hitting action game which is truly straight to the point. It is a fun, challenging action experience and we are not promising more than that."
The game follows the story of the titular Samson, a man who "learned violence before he learned mercy" and must complete heists to pay off mobsters who have kidnapped his sister. His debt grows with time (and failed missions), but despite all the GTA comparisons, Samson doesn't simply shoot his way through obstacles--he punches his way through them, utilizing the game's melee system to knock some sense into his adversaries.
"We are committed to the future of both Samson and Tyndalston, and this game will grow over time on all fronts; quality, gameplay and content," Sundberg said of the game's upcoming patch. "Thank you all for supporting us and sticking with us this super exciting launch day. We will continue to keep our ears to the ground and improve the game with your support."
The patch notes for Samson's first update are listed in full below:
Performance
- Several performance fixes focusing on PSO related hitches (fixes stuttering related issues)
- Fixed some misses with Slate
- Fixed landscape RayTracingDynamicGeometry misses
- bIgnoreMaskMateria & bRequireRTDynamicGeometryUpdate was not set correctly from landscape PSO precache dispatch since 5.7
- NaniteLumenCard & NaniteShading misses
- Fixed PSO misses due to FStaticMeshComponentHelper::CollectPSOPrecacheDataImpl fetching materials from LOD levels depending on MinLOD even for Nanite-enabled meshes which will render with LOD 0 materials
Crash fixes
- Several crash fixes related to audio, animation and GPU
- Crash fix for clearing UseDestructionHelp for vehicles with a timer
- Fix for potential case where attempting to update a failed dispatch when losing warp governance could clear the callback lambda as it was being executed, causing a dangling this pointer and crash
- Fixed various audio-related crashes, including one when closing the game
- Avoid race conditions caused by writes to bIsCachedRayTracingInstanceValid and bDynamicRayTracingInstanceCachedDataDirty from parallel tasks
- Force separate storage unit between ray tracing and non-ray tracing bits
- Force separate storage unit between bIsCachedRayTracingInstanceValid and bDynamicRayTracingInstanceCachedDataDirty
Mission
- Several fixes for mission and progression related issues
- Ice Fish – NPCs spawned in the Beatdown are no longer only Level 1
- Thrill of the Fight and Running on Fumes – now functional after save/continue
- Suzy Red no longer gets multiplied during "Stitches for Snitches" mission completion
- Hit 16 (No Return Fare) – passenger now gets into the cab at the pickup location
- Dave Shultz Tailing Job – Dave now spawns close to player, avoiding near-instant fails for being too far away
- Story Chapter – No Whisper Dealers – no beatdown triggers when eliminating enemies, preventing mission failure
- Hot Iron – fixed issue where the fail radius for the reach dealer objective was too small
- Day 3: Oonagh Welcome Home – call now comes after story mission Blood on Tap rather than Dirty Scripts
General Gameplay
- Several fixes for gameplay related issues
- NPC fall damage added as a failsafe for dropped NPCs
- Day 3 Pickups – raised interact range to allow easier pickup if an item is dropped under a body
- Let outsiders check if the driver can be pulled out of the vehicle
- Fixed issues where enemies were not advancing towards you in group encounters
- Fixed issues with AI running onto roads to inspect dead bodies
- Fixed issue where police siren sometimes did not work
Polish
- Several updates for general polish across various parts of the game
- Fixed smoker alignment in Double Tap and Suzy's
- Fixed vehicle voices
- Added a dedicated "remote dialogue" bucket for voice lines without a visible speaker (e.g. phone calls or police radio chatter)
- Added separate dialogue buckets for police vehicles and remote dialogue
- Fixed door kick spam
- [Audio] New day stinger now plays before dialogue
- Increased volume for NPC vehicles
- Prevented corpses from popping back up or being launched into the air after takedowns, hazards, or railing interactions
- Improved lean-on-wall alignment
- Blocked bark gestures or one-offs during ranged combat
- Fixed Vivian holding a folder in the doctor's office instead of nothing
- [Audio] Added "outside vehicle" dialogue lines to NPC non-combat efforts
- Fixed several grammatical errors
- Fixed missing translations
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