This was bugging me as I wanted to play the game as it's been a while, so bought it on GOG and couldn't get it to launch.

Well, turns out it's because of my Threadripper 1950X, I guess the game didn't know what to make of the core count / threads or SMT.

To get the game to launch i had to enble "Game Mode" via Ryzen Master and disable SMT (not sure if disabling SMT was needed but makes sense)

So if you're having issues with High core count CPUs and this game, disable half your cores and try again :D

I don't know if this is AMD specific or if it effects Ryzen 8 core CPUs or the Intel side of things, Just making this post as i couldn't find anything via google or steam/gog forums.

Similar issue with some Codemasters racing games but that can be fixed with a config file edit to limit the threads the games use.

I should have tried this first but I don't like disabling my CPU cores if i can get away with it.