Cinder City: The Memory Monster Lurking Behind Seoul’s Fallen Future
In the world of blockbuster PC gaming, the quest for cutting-edge graphics has always come with escalating hardware demands. But with the upcoming release of Cinder City, developed by one of NC Corporation’s studios (Big Fire Games), the expectations have soared—and so have the whispers about the system requirements.
Described as an open-world cinematic third-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic near-future Seoul, the game promises breathtaking detail: the ability to tour the city and explore NCSoft’s zombie-ridden offices full of name-tagged workers. Naturally, fans anticipate graphics that are all-singing and all-dancing, hinting at immense visual ambition.
Yet, as we dig into the Steam listing for Cinder City, the hardware demands quickly pivot from merely demanding to downright perplexing. While the minimum specifications—a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU and a GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card—sit comfortably within current gaming standards, they are overshadowed by a staggering memory requirement.
The true eye-catcher, however, is the recommendation. The developers have suggested that players should aim for 64 GB of DRAM to truly experience the game at high-level quality settings. This figure is where things get truly strange. Requiring 64 GB of memory places a substantial financial hurdle on potential players—easily costing hundreds of dollars just for the necessary DDR5 RAM.
This massive memory recommendation raises some serious questions about optimization and engineering. When you consider the minimum requirements versus the recommended performance, the picture becomes a bit muddled. For instance, the setup suggests a modern CPU like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D paired with an RTX 4060 is recommended, yet that combination seems to clash oddly with the sheer volume of RAM needed.
The resulting system specification feels less like a perfectly tuned gaming experience and more like a puzzle waiting to be solved. It suggests either a significant oversight in the published specifications or a deep dive into non-optimization that will test the limits of what modern PC hardware can handle in a highly detailed, open-world environment.
Despite the hardware conundrum, there is plenty of time for Big Fire Games and NC Corporation to fine-tune these requirements. Whether they adjust the specs or introduce clever optimization techniques to manage memory consumption, Cinder City is poised to become a very much talked-about title, ensuring that the community keeps its collective gaze on those ambitious digital streets.
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Credit: PC Gamer
