Bless Unleashed Dev Video Addresses Overheating GPUs And Answers Players' Questions About Changes

With Bless Unleashed's PC Launch just a smidge over two months away (and a demo launching on Steam tomorrow), Round 8 Studio decided to take a bit of time this weekend and answer player questions about the results of the Final Test and what changes players can expect between now and launch.

In the video, CM Olvera sits down with Lead Content Designer Seewon. They spend a little time on the result of the test itself -- which seems to have been a marked improvement over the last test. They also note that changes are currently being made based on Final Test feedback and that they will continue to work on those changes through the game's launch, but they won't be stopping there.

From there, Olvera went on to ask several of the more common questions (and note complaints) made by players. These questions focused on a few areas: user interface and user experience, content, and combat. According to Seewon, a 'huge portion' of what players asked for following the test will be applied for launch. This includes things thing UI/UX improvements, like changes to menus and screen layout intended to make the menus easier to use and create a more fluid UI. For those who asked, they'll also be increasing the amount of quests displayed in the onscreen quest tracker. As an added bonus, players will also be able to interact with (most) NPCs while mounted -- instead of having to hop off every time they want to have a chat.

That said, not everything about the UI/UX can be changed immediately, or possibly at all, because of the fact that the system is built on one intended for consoles.

Another, insanely important, issue that was addressed during this video is the fact that the game was causing players' graphics cards to overheat. The team has figured out what was causing the issue. Once again, it was that console linage. As it turns out, the design related to last gen's consoles resulted in there being a lack of frame rate limit, which caused GPU usage to be too high. They've addressed the issue, and even added a fix that allows players to access graphics options before they enter the game to make their own adjustments.

On the combat front, the team is working on making the combat system more player friendly. This includes things like allowing players to see how a skill or blessing works before they learn them. They're also addressing cooldown times for some skills. However, not all skills will see a change in that area.

Dungeons are also getting some love in the fact that difficulty levels broken during the testing period are being fixed. Bosses are also seeing changes. Particularly, the 'Murderous Rage' mode that makes bosses nearly impossible to kill has been removed -- except in the case of Twisted Bosses. If you want to take on those, you'll just have to suffer.

For players who felt that the game's early content was too boring, they've got some changes going on there as well. To make things more interesting, they're adding more story content in the form of quests and cutscenes. The devs are also reducing the amount of levels players need to progress between accessing each dungeon. Instead of getting a new dungeon every five levels, players will be able to access them every two or three.

Finally -- and this isn't really a concern for North American players, but for those who play in regions where there are several countries with varying languages -- the team is addressing matchmaking language issues. Apparently, matchmaking has been region based and the results was that players could not communicate with each other. To fix this, they'll be making matchmaking server based, in hopes that the players on a single server will be more likely to speak the same language.

If you'd like to see the Dev Talk video in full, we did embed it below. There are a few smaller things we didn't summarize here. Just set aside about a half an hour for it.