The new steampunk adventure game from the makers of Myst recommends 32GB RAM and this is why

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Firmament, the new game from Myst developer Cyan, will be out on May 18, and it will probably not surprise you to hear that, going by the new trailer, it will be a lot like Myst.

It sounds like Myst, too. Firmament is a "puzzle-adventure game" that takes place in three unique and seemingly abandoned worlds, each one filled with bizarre, incredible machines that serve no apparent purpose. Your reason for being there is unknown, but figuring out how the world works will ultimately uncover your role in it.

And unlike previous Cyan games, you won't undertake your quest alone in this one. You'll be accompanied on your adventure by a silent "clockwork companion" called the Adjunct, who will help you solve puzzles through a vocabulary of hand gestures that will grow over the course of the game, as well as "a mysterious apparition with a story of her own."

It's obviously very Myst-like but really, I wouldn't have it any other way. Myst is divisive, and as we said in our review of the 2021 remake, it's also very old. But Cyan is uniquely good at making these sorts of sprawling, deeply strange and lonely worlds, and I'm eager to see what it comes up with next. Maybe it'll be another straight-up Myst-alike, but the studio promises it will deliver "deep storytelling and rich world-building," which some people would probably argue hasn't been a hallmark of Cyan's games for the past 20 years or so. (I still haven't made up my mind about Uru.)

I take comfort knowing that I'm not the only one who wants to see more of this kind of thing from Cyan: Its development was enabled by a successful $1.4 million Kickstarter campaign that ran in 2019. (The expected July 2020 release was a major miss, but as I said when the campaign was announced, that's how it usually goes with Kickstarters anyway.)

The one thing about Firmament that baffles me are the minimum system requirements, particularly the recommended spec. Here they are:

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor (16 CPUs), ~3.7GHz; Intel i5 7000 series
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700XT; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 20 GB available space
• Sound Card: N/A
• VR Support: SteamVR - Rift, Rift S, Quest 2 via Link, HTC Vive, Vive Pro, Index

Recommended:

• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor (16 CPUs), ~3.9GHz; Intel i5 11000 series
• Memory: 32 GB RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800XT; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 12GB
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 20 GB available space
• Sound Card: N/A
• VR Support: SteamVR - Rift, Rift S, Quest 2 via Link, HTC Vive, Vive Pro, Index

A Ryzen 7 3800X or Core i5 11000 CPU is stiff, but 32GB of RAM is the real eyebrow-raiser here. That seems like an awful lot for a Myst-style adventure game, even one developed for VR. The Myst remake recommends 16GB, which is pretty wild for a game that required 4MB in its original incarnation, so clearly there's more going on in these newer releases than just prettier pictures. But a Cyan game recommending 32GB is just weird.

Or at least, it seemed weird when I first posted this story. Shortly afterward, Cyan reached out to explain that "Firmament is a visually demanding game," particularly in VR mode, and it wanted to "make sure that folks know going in what specs we recommend to enable them to play the game at higher settings by default (and at a high framerate) at higher resolutions or in VR." 

"In reality, the game is going to perform and look just fine on a machine with 16GB (in fact, we support playing Firmament even on M1 Macbook Airs with 8GB RAM)," Cyan said in a statement sent to PC Gamer. "But knowing how our fans usually have high expectations for what their machines are capable of, we wanted to set the mark for a guaranteed visually good and fast-loading experience on Windows, especially considering the number of configuration options out there for the platform and our need to support folks who want to play in VR as well."

Firmament was originally announced as a VR title, by the way, but will be available as a standard PC release as well. It's available for wishlisting now on Steam and GOG.