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Death Stranding 2's instantaneous loading times truly prove the power of the PS5
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Death Stranding 2’s instantaneous loading times truly prove the power of the PS5

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Players are already impressed by the incredibly fast loading times in Death Stranding 2, which only proves the power of the PS5 console, as well as Guerrilla Games’ Decima game engine used by Kojima Productions.

Ahead of the game’s release tomorrow, players with advanced access are already sharing their thoughts.

One player posted a video to reddit, stating “Death Stranding 2 has the fastest loading time I’ve ever seen in a video game”. The video itself shows the game impressively loading from menu to gameplay in a split second.

Death Stranding 2: On The Beach – PS5/PS5 Pro – Digital Foundry Tech Review – 4K HDRWatch on YouTube

When the PS5 launched, Sony touted the fast loading of the console’s SSD as a major selling point. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart – though it released months after launch – was seen as a key example of this technology. What’s more, the Decima Engine was created by Horizon Zero Dawn studio Guerrilla Games and used for its games since PS4 release Killzone: Shadow Fall, yielding impressive results.

Yet Kojima Productions has clearly worked some magic with Death Stranding 2 – its load times really are astonishing. Take a look for yourself:

Death Stranding 2 has the fastest loading time I’ve EVER seen in a video game.
byu/NecessaryAd6735 inDeathStranding

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Digital Foundry gave its tech verdict on Death Stranding 2 earlier this week and was particularly impressed by the Decima Engine’s ability to create “truly outstanding dynamic landscapes”, as well as its lighting, weather, and other environmental effects.

“The first key improvement here stems from fine detail, with rock formations, vegetation and other natural elements holding up under closer scrutiny,” wrote John Linneman. “The game opens in a gorgeous mountain range with a level of detail reminiscent of Epic’s Nanite virtualised geometry demos, without relying on such tech.”

If you’re playing on PS5 Pro in particular, Linneman recommends opting for the 60fps performance mode as on Sony’s more powerful console, quality and performance modes are so similar in terms of image quality.

“Thankfully, both versions also feature lightning-fast loading times with virtually zero waiting,” said Linneman. “Moving from the load screen to a save game is nearly instant and you basically never actually encounter anything resembling a loading screen during the game – it’s seamless.”

There’s one particular sequence I was able to play when I previewed the game in May, which was breathtaking in its use of lighting and particles. But I won’t spoil it here.

In short, Death Stranding 2 is an exceptional technical achievement that truly shows the power of Sony’s PS5 consoles, as well as the Decima game engine.

“A busier, louder, and more emotionally resplendent take on this singular hiking sim,” reads our full Death Stranding 2 review.



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Tech That Could Prove Whether Iran’s Uranium Was Destroyed
GameFi Guides

Tech That Could Prove Whether Iran’s Uranium Was Destroyed

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In brief

  • U.S. airstrikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites, but verifying uranium destruction is difficult.
  • Uranium can’t be seen by satellites, and key site Fordow remains uninspected, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
  • Remote sensing provides clues, but full verification may require on-site access and diplomatic efforts.

While President Donald Trump has heralded the weekend strike on three Iranian nuclear sites as a success, verifying the destruction of uranium stockpiles in Iran is a challenge for U.S. and international intelligence agencies.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has not been able to inspect the damage to the U.S. military’s main target, the Fordow uranium enrichment facility, which is built deep inside a mountain in central Iran, and thus cannot independently verify Trump’s claim that the site was “obliterated.”

“At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow,” Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Reuters on Monday.

Despite a sophisticated airstrike, at this point, experts say the issue isn’t just what was targeted, but trying to determine if it was destroyed.

“It will take time, intelligence assessments, and satellite imagery to determine the extent of the damage,” Professor of the Practice of International Relations at USC, Jeffrey Fields, told Decrypt. “Once that’s clear, we can evaluate whether we significantly crippled, or destroyed, Iran’s ability to continue enriching uranium.”

While images of explosions may show damage to structures, uranium itself can’t be seen with traditional satellite imagery, and there is no single tool capable of remotely confirming whether it’s been eliminated.

Image: ABC News Australia

However, several technologies are available that can help analysts build a picture of what happened on the ground.



Radiation detection from drones and aircraft

Specialized aircraft and drones can carry radiation sensors capable of detecting gamma rays or neutrons.

However, these aircraft must fly extremely close to the ground, typically within a few thousandths of a mile, to effectively detect and map radioactive sources, making them vulnerable to attack.

Air sampling and downwind analysis

To detect radioactive releases, the U.S. Air Force operates the WC-135 “Constant Phoenix.”

These fixed-wing aircraft, based on the Boeing 707, are designed to collect atmospheric samples and analyze radioactive isotopes in the event of a nuclear explosion or accidental release, provided the winds carry the particles far enough.

According to the Air Force, the WC-135W played a significant role in tracking radioactive debris from the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986.

“During the Cold War, before we understood the environmental damage of above-ground or atmospheric nuclear tests, the U.S. did it, and so did other countries,” Field said. “Those tests released radioactive isotopes into the air, which could be detected. With underground tests, that’s much harder to pick up now.”

Adding to the trouble with detection, Fields said, is the depth of the Fordow facility, which is reportedly 80 to 90 meters, approximately 260 to 295 feet, below ground.

Image: Maxar Technologies/CNN

Neutrino detectors

Neutrino Detectors are highly sensitive instruments capable of identifying particles released from nuclear reactions.

While the technology has the potential to provide long-range monitoring, its use is currently mainly experimental.

Neutrino detectors need to be placed relatively close to the source, within about 56 miles, to be effective.

Because of this limitation, the technology is not widely used for real-time monitoring.

Hyperspectral imaging and indirect clues

Satellites and drones equipped with hyperspectral sensors cannot directly detect uranium, but they can identify indirect signs of activity, such as heat signatures, disturbed terrain, or camouflage patterns.

These clues may suggest that a facility was struck or damaged, though they can’t confirm what was inside.

When combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence, hyperspectral imagery and other remote sensing data can help detect changes to structures or vehicles that may indicate blast effects at a facility.

However, these technologies still cannot confirm the presence or destruction of uranium itself.

The limits of technology

While tools like AI and satellite imagery may aid military leaders in determining the accuracy of the hit on the target, verifying if Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been destroyed may require an on-the-ground investigation.

“We need to try to go back to the negotiating table as soon as possible. We have to allow the IAEA inspectors to return,” Grossi said in a statement. “The IAEA is ready to play its indispensable role in this process.”

“We have been talking to Iran, we have been talking to the United States,” he added. “We have to work for peace.”

Edited by Josh Quittner and Sebastian Sinclair

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A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.



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Worldcoin rallies 10% as World Foundation raises $135M
NFT Gaming

Reddit considers iris scan, so users can prove they’re human

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As pressure mounts from advancing AI, age verification laws, and bot-related abuse, Reddit is exploring a partnership with Sam Altman’s World ID to verify users while preserving anonymity. The biometric system, which scans irises without storing personal data, could help Reddit prove user uniqueness and age without compromising privacy—an increasingly urgent need as regulators and researchers scrutinize identity on social platforms.

According to Semafor, two people familiar with the matter confirmed ongoing talks between Reddit representatives and World ID’s parent company about implementing the biometric verification system.

The partnership would allow Reddit users to prove they are unique individuals without revealing personal information to the platform.

Growing pressure drives identity verification urgency

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stated last month that the service will eventually be required to verify that users are human and that they are of legal age due to AI development and age verification laws.

“We will do our best to preserve both the humanness and anonymity of Reddit,” Huffman wrote on the platform.

The urgency has intensified following incidents like University of Zurich researchers using AI to impersonate actual Reddit users in persuasion experiments. Reddit lawyers sent formal legal demands to the university in April over the unauthorized research.

Multiple U.S. states are considering or passing laws requiring internet companies to verify user ages, creating compliance pressures across the social media industry.

World ID’s sophisticated privacy architecture

World ID’s system addresses verification challenges through complex cryptographic techniques. The Orb scans users’ irises and creates encrypted representations that are fragmented and stored across secret servers globally.

To gain access to someone’s iris data, hackers would need to compromise numerous systems, rejoin fragmented data, and reverse-engineer the initial scan. Even successful attacks would not expose the person’s identity because the system contains no personal information that links biometric data to persons.

Following authentication, users acquire unique World IDs stored in locally encrypted vaults on their devices. The Orb’s age detection program refuses to scan anyone suspected of being under 18, and it includes built-in age verification features.

Reddit would reportedly offer World ID as one of several verification methods rather than the exclusive option. Users could choose from third-party providers based on their privacy preferences and security needs.

World ID — the biometric verification system using iris-scanning “Orbs” developed by Altman’s Tools for Humanity — was officially launched alongside Worldcoin (WLD) on July 24, 2023, when the project moved out of beta and began expanding operations to multiple cities worldwide.



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7 Games That Prove Indie Studios Are Outshining AAA Publishers in 2025

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Spending $300 million on a game is one way to set that game on the road to success; ultra-detailed, immersive games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows and next year’s Grand Theft Auto 6 appeal to gamers looking for a cutting edge experience.

But $300 million doesn’t promise you a good game—just a big one. We’re not even six full months into 2025, and indie developers can’t stop dropping great games on us, from genuine all-timers to zeitgeist-catching games that we all can’t resist picking up and checking out.

Making it even more impressive is how many big mainstream releases we’ve had so far this year. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Monster Hunter Wilds, Avowed, and Doom: The Dark Age would make for a great year so far on their own.

But small teams are as scrappy as ever, bringing us unique, special games—and they’re outshining and making headlines just as much as the big guys. Here are this year’s biggest, must-play indie gems so far.

Blue Prince

Puzzles within puzzles within puzzles. Blue Prince is one of the most lauded games of the year, with an impressive 92 critic rating on Metacritic, and was developed by a single person over the course of eight years—a true indie title.

In this one, you’re exploring a house ostensibly to find the hidden 46th room, but there’s a lot more going on. This game quickly caught on with fans of puzzle games, earning comparisons to the legendary Myst and games like Fez. Those of us who listen to video game podcasts couldn’t miss it—no matter where you turned, gaming people were talking about it.

It’s as divisive as any puzzle game—some of us just aren’t there to do math in video games—but it’s rare for a game to be as well received as Blue Prince.



Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Let’s get it out of the way: The title of this game makes it sound terrible and generic. But it’s not. Instead, it’s a haunting tale of a dying world, with a story told via excellent voice acting and writing.

From French indie developer Sandfall Interactive, this game punches way above its weight. It combines ideas from classic Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs) with twists from other genres to make something new, prompting fans to dub it an FRPG, or French role playing game, to demonstrate the differences and commonalities.

The team at Sandfall is relatively small, considering the visual fidelity and size of the game, though it’s important to note that Sandfall used contracted work—just like every other studio building an ambitious game these days. Even with those contractors, though, it’s still a demonstration that games developed by big studios don’t need to be so big and complex to capture an enthusiastic and receptive audience.

Schedule I

If you’re an old gamer who came up in the days of graphing calculators, you might’ve played, or seen friends play, a game called Drug Wars. Schedule I jumps off the same idea. You play a drug dealer who must grow and manufacture a variety of illegal drugs and drug variants, and then sell them to interested buyers—all without getting caught.

Despite being a single-player game that looks like a South Park knockoff, Schedule I raced to the top of the Steam charts quickly. It’s still in Early Access, which means it’ll get a bunch more content—but even in its early state, it had over 400,000 players playing at once in April and March, putting it in the top three PC games during those times (right below Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2).

R.E.P.O.

Games with cooperative gameplay and proximity chat have been growing in popularity the last few years, and R.E.P.O. is the latest to do it—and also maybe the funniest. You and your friends play as stout little robots who must extract valuable items from haunted places, avoiding monsters like “girl with sword hands” and “frog chef with a knife.” Not to mention the gnomes.

As you talk and look around, though, the top of your character’s head bobbles, and the eyes track where you’re moving the mouse, which make for very expressive characters despite the simple designs. Even just looking at your friend and quietly saying “hey” can be enough to get a laugh, but the screams suddenly cut off by a monster sighting are the best part.

Wanderstop

Davey Wreden is best known for The Stanley Parable, and his latest game, Wanderstop, is something completely different. It’s the very definition of a cozy game, with warm, cartoon-y art, telling a story about career burnout and change as an ex-warrior reluctantly learns to manage a tea shop.

It also acts as a sort of commentary on cozy games in general, as a narrative game that offers very little in the way of traditional progression. You won’t level up your tea machine or upgrade your shop here; Inverse’s review nailed it with this quote: “If cozy games are a reaction to the power fantasy of action games, Wanderstop is a reaction to the fantasy of productivity and self-sufficiency that cozy games offer.”

How the game hits for you will depend on your relationship to those kinds of games, but it’s the willingness to peel the veneer off a well-trodden genre and examine it like this is perfectly in line with Wreden’s previous work, and makes it a standout indie game.

Keep Driving

Keep Driving is a turn-based road trip RPG. Management games are so often about places, but this is a management game about an experience. You’re not trying to make a self-sustaining store or restore an entire town. You’re just trying to keep your road trip going.

You’ll pick up hitchhikers along the way, as well as upgrade and customize your car. There’s a soundtrack of Swedish indie bands and a bunch of endings to keep the game compelling, and the art feels like it would fit into a game published during the early 2000s setting of the game.

Despelote

Despelote is a short but beautiful autobiographical story from its creator, told about living in Quito, Ecuador, and the way soccer affects the citizens of the city as Ecuador comes closer and closer to qualifying for the World Cup. The story is told through the eyes of 8-year-old Julian, as you kick the ball around and listen in on adult conversations as you explore your corner of Ecuador’s capital.

The game features unique art, with backgrounds that bring Return of the Obra Dinn to mind, and simple, hand-drawn characters. This is a quiet but affecting little narrative game, telling the kind of personal story a huge AAA game simply can’t.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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A doll character in white from Elden Ring Nightreign with one arm holding the other and a castle in the background
Product Reviews

An Elden Ring Nightreign dataminer dove into the numbers to prove that reaching max level isn’t as strong as it seems

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As if Elden Ring character stats weren’t confusing enough, FromSoftware further obfuscated their purpose in Elden Ring Nightreign. Each Nightfarer has letter ratings instead of numbers to denote their relative proficiency with each stat, but the real values are hidden. You just have to trust they’re going up a meaningful amount each time you level up.

Dataminer and YouTuber Zullie the Witch went under the hood to figure out how stats actually work in Nightreign and found that, while they’re similar to Elden Ring, there are a few caveats that might make you rethink your approach to each run.

For starters, leveling up past 12 doesn’t do a whole lot. Nightreign caps out at 15, but the last three levels only raise your stats by one to two points, which means you might want to spend your runes on buff items instead.


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She also found that each stat isn’t graded on the same scale. An S in intellect equals about 50, but an S in strength is almost 70 (50 would be an A). The mind stat, which determines how big your mana bar is, grows the slowest as you level up. That might explain why the spellcasters have to hoard items to replenish their FP. And arcane simply doesn’t change no matter what level you are, making Executor the best character for applying status effects in the game.

The letters are a bit misleading – YouTube

Watch On

Zullie gives other tips in the video, like what kind of stats you should look to bring on your relics. There’s nothing in there that seems exploitable or broken, but having the actual numbers helps contextualize how each character grows in power over the course of a run.

The other day my group was given a bonus that increased our attack power based on the amount of runes we had. When we got to the final boss, we all opted to save our runes and not level up past 10. As a result, my dagger on the Duchess hit for almost 300 damage per swing, and I barely felt like I was missing five levels of bonus health. Thanks to Zullie, now I know why it wasn’t a bad choice. It also proves that there’s really no reason to stall out a run just to farm runes until you’re max level. Don’t make your fellow Nightfarers wait for you to jump into the goop for three points of vigor.



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The Quest to Prove the Existence of a New Type of Quantum Particle
Product Reviews

The Quest to Prove the Existence of a New Type of Quantum Particle

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When you swap two paraparticles, these hidden properties change in tandem. As an analogy, imagine that these properties are colors. Start with two paraparticles, one that’s internally red and another that’s internally blue. When they swap places, rather than keeping these colors, they both change in corresponding ways, as prescribed by the mathematics of the particular model. Perhaps the swap leaves them green and yellow. This quickly turns into a complex game, where paraparticles affect each other in unseen ways as they move around.

Meanwhile, Müller was also busy rethinking the DHR theorems. “It’s not always super transparent what they mean, because it’s in a very complicated mathematical framework,” he said.

His team took a new approach to the paraparticle question. The researchers considered the fact that quantum systems can exist in multiple possible states at once—what’s called a superposition. They imagined switching between the perspectives of observers who exist in these superposed states, each of whom describes their branch of reality slightly differently. If two particles are truly indistinguishable, they figured, then it won’t matter if the particles are swapped in one branch of the superposition and not in the other.

“Maybe if the particles are close by, I swap them, but if they are far away I do nothing,” Müller said. “And if they’re in a superposition of both, then I do the swapping in one branch, and nothing in the other branch.” Whether observers across branches label the two particles in the same way should make no difference.

This stricter definition of indistinguishability in the context of superpositions imposes new restrictions on the kinds of particles that can exist. When these assumptions hold, the researchers found that paraparticles are impossible. For a particle to be truly indistinguishable by measurement, as physicists expect elementary particles to be, it must be either a boson or fermion.

Although Wang and Hazzard published their paper first, it’s as though they saw Müller’s constraints coming. Their paraparticles are possible because their model rejects Müller’s starting assumption: The particles are not indistinguishable in the full sense required in the context of quantum superpositions. This comes with a consequence. While swapping two paraparticles has no effect on one person’s measurements, two observers, by sharing their data with each other, can determine whether the paraparticles have been swapped. That’s because swapping paraparticles can change how two people’s measurements relate to each other. In this sense, they could tell the two paraparticles apart.

This means there’s a potential for new states of matter. Where bosons can pack an endless number of particles into the same state, and fermions can’t share a state at all, paraparticles end up somewhere in the middle. They are able to pack just a few particles into the same state, before getting crowded and forcing others into new states. Exactly how many can be crammed together depends on the details of the paraparticle—the theoretical framework allows for endless options.

“I find their paper really fascinating, and there’s absolutely no contradiction with what we do,” Müller said.

The Road to Reality

If paraparticles exist, they’ll most likely be emergent particles, called quasiparticles, that show up as energetic vibrations in certain quantum materials.

“We might get new models of exotic phases, which were difficult to understand before, that you can now solve easily using paraparticles,” said Meng Cheng, a physicist at Yale University who was not involved in the research.

Bryce Gadway, an experimental physicist at Pennsylvania State University who sometimes collaborates with Hazzard, is optimistic that paraparticles will be realized in the lab in the next few years. These experiments would use Rydberg atoms, which are energized atoms with electrons that roam very far from their nuclei. This separation of the positive and negative charge makes Rydberg atoms especially sensitive to electric fields. You can build quantum computers out of interacting Rydberg atoms. They are also the perfect candidates for creating paraparticles.

“For a certain kind of Rydberg quantum simulator, this is kind of just what they would do naturally,” Gadway said about creating paraparticles. “You just prepare them and watch them evolve.”

But for now, the third kingdom of particles remains wholly theoretical.

“Paraparticles might become important,” said Wilczek, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist and inventor of anyons. “But at present they’re basically a theoretical curiosity.”

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.



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