[Blizzard answers our questions on two of Dragonflight's biggest overhauls]

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is less than two months away and will see us venturing to the mysterious Dragon Isles for the first time. As with any new expansion, there are plenty of exciting new features to look forward to including Drackthyr evokers, the new class and race combo, as well as a new way to take to the skies with dragonriding. But as exciting as those new additions are, some of the biggest updates bring substantial changes to both the class talent system and the way we view the world of Azeroth with the UI overhaul and its numerous accessibility features.

With that in mind, I sat down with Brian Holinka (Lead Combat Systems Designer) and Crash Reed (Lead UX Designer) from Blizzard to discuss the big changes coming to World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion.

Class talent trees 

PC Gamer: The last time we saw class talent trees was during the Cataclysm expansion. Was there anything that prompted you to bring them back for Dragonflight? 

Brian Holinka: I think maybe a few things. One was just the length of time between when we last revisited them. Just whenever we look to a new expansion, we're looking at opportunities to excite players and do something different. We have this game that has gone on for so long and we always want to provide new things to players, particularly in the class arena. Players want new abilities, they want new forms of power. And how do we keep stacking new exciting abilities onto players without it becoming overly cumbersome? 

Since Legion, we've done these endgame systems that players have often referred to as borrowed power, where [we say] "Here's something cool and new," and "All right, the expansion is over, we're going to retire that". Trying to find a solution that works, that provides players with new opportunities, and that's why we're like, let's revisit the talent system. 

So that was one [reason], and then the other was when we added Exile's Reach in Shadowlands, a new way for players to start the game: there were a lot more people, especially on the team, who were levelling up again. And when you compare that to, say, the experience that a lot of us were starting to have in Wrath [Classic], there was something to getting a talent point every time you levelled, instead of just being explicitly handed a spell and saying this is your upgrade. And so those things made us revisit them. And I believe that's really what landed us on "let's do talent trees again."

(Image credit: Blizzard)

On the subject of things last seen in Cataclysm, any plans to bring back reforging at all?

Holinka: Currently? No. I remember back in those days of reforging, I understand why people loved turning a piece of gear into that perfect piece of gear. But if you also remember, it would be raid night, and a piece of gear would drop, and you're like, "That's awesome. I'm going to just set that aside and when I get done with my raid, I will go and reforge it, I will socket it with gems, and I will get it enchanted, and now it's a real item that I can actually wear." That wasn't a great experience so I don't think we're going to be revisiting that anytime soon.

There was a bit of a running joke about demon hunter talent trees taking so long because they only have roughly three abilities to start with. Was it a challenge to make the talent trees for the newer classes that didn't have them before?

Holinka: Yeah, absolutely. It was challenging, but it was also a good opportunity, right? The demon hunters were made in an expansion, in a period where there were very spec-specific things going on. The specs were designed to be very stand-alone. So if you're a havoc demon hunter, you had your own movement ability that was different from vengeance, you had your own builder and spender that were different from vengeance. And as such, you didn't have a lot of play between the two specs. And so one of the real challenges we had was how many of these things can we share between the specs? What is too much power? 

For what it's worth, I don't think we're sitting here saying we did it, we nailed it, and we're done.

Brian Holinka

For instance, we had added Sigil of Silence, and we put that in the class tree and thought, "Hey, this will be really cool". Havoc demon hunters, if they really commit, will be able to get Sigil of Silence but maybe they'll have to give up Chaos Nova. So one is an AoE stun and Sigil is an AoE silence. Then we did it and unfortunately, it wasn't that difficult to get both and so you're essentially giving this ability to havoc. We played it in dungeons and they just had tremendous lockdown, they just locked down an entire pack for 12 seconds with these two different categories of crowd control and that was problematic. So we had to look at it and do the tree again.

So on one hand, we wanted to give a lot of the spec-specific utility to the other specs. But on the other, you don't want to power creep the classes to a point where it destroys the game. So yes, it was a pretty big challenge. And, for what it's worth, I don't think we're sitting here saying we did it, we nailed it, and we're done. Right? We know that players are going to discover builds that are perhaps too powerful, and will have to be adjusted. Players are going to highlight that certain choices are not very interesting and we're going to want to improve them and make certain trees better. So in future content updates, players should expect us to make changes to the trees as we try to improve them.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Have there been any unexpected difficulties with designing the new talent trees, aside from the newer classes?

Holinka: Honestly, just settling on a design was a challenge, right? There are so many things we could do here. We actually had a three-day summit, where I said, "Hey, I'm gonna take the team offline for three days," and we actually had some UX designers join us as well. And for three days we were all talent system, just to kickstart the process of where we were going. 

So we took the whole team and we got aligned on the goals. What do we want this talent system to be—we want to give a talent at every level, we want it to be a system that we can use for several expansions going forward. We wanted to have the same flexibility you have now, those sorts of things. And then we started talking about what was good and bad about our current system. What were other systems we've seen in other games, including, vanilla, Classic, or many other Blizzard games? But also other games out there. 

We have a number of people who play Path of Exile, and we have people who play Borderlands and we talked about all the ways that these different talent systems interact, what was good about them, bad about them, and how they could apply to WoW. And then we had a day where we just pitched ideas to examine them and tried to apply them to World of Warcraft. And then we presented and talked about them to our game director Ion, and said, "this is the one the team likes."

Even once we had that, there were still months of like, "Let's apply this to two classes, druids and rogues, and see how it works". And figuring out the rules and coming up with the idea of the gate system that we have in there, where you can go no lower [on the talent tree] until you spend eight points, and the problems that solved for us. And what's too complex? So it was great but it took a while to settle on that design. But really, I'm happy with where we landed and it seems like players are happy too.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

I imagine having complex talent trees for every class and spec must make balancing far more of a headache than perhaps it already was?

Holinka: Certainly. An extreme example is that we could have one class with one button and a perfectly balanced game that was super boring, right? But one of the important things for us is having these awesome classes that deliver a power fantasy for players, that they can go on an adventure with their friends in Azeroth and meet certain challenges together. It is a tricky problem, I think we're up to the challenge, but it will be a lot of iteration and updates. 

And that has even happened in beta, having the players let us know what the problems are and just addressing it and reacting to feedback as we get it. But I think you always have to balance the experience that it gives the players to have this much customization and freedom, to have control over the game and how they play it, and the balancing problems that it creates for you, as a design team, and how you address it. And you know that that balance can be a problem for players too, right? Because they want to have their character feel like it's very capable and has value to their friends and in their group. So it is a big challenge. But it isn't that much different from the challenges we've had to face for years with having this many different specialisations in the game. So I'm confident we can continue to deliver a balanced experience for everyone.

Can you speak about what it involves to make a balance change, just generally? What kind of things do you have to take into consideration?

Holinka: Yeah, certainly. One we do take into account is the "is this a fun experience that they're having?" There are sometimes balance problems, let's say something is too strong, and not only is it too strong, but players just don't like it. Maybe it's that they're pressing a button, and this button has become so dominant, or this interaction has become so dominant that it leads to a kind of boring playstyle. And that's our biggest problem. And that's something we obviously want to clean up. 

You have to balance a number of factors when making a decision. How can we rein this in without necessarily destroying the fun?

Brian Holinka

I think the trickier problem is, yes, you've created a balance problem, but they're having a tonne of fun with it. And so then you have to balance. And it's tough when you're having these conversations about balance, and having to talk about how you have to balance a number of factors when making your decision. But yeah, how can we rein this in without necessarily destroying the fun? And that is tricky but it's something that you have to do. But also, what are the other options? What's contributing to this? Maybe it's not always the most obvious thing, you know? For instance, if a particular ability, let's just say, Starsurge on balance druids is doing a lot of damage. We have such a robust logging culture in World of Warcraft, where people can see parses and they say, "Oh, Starsurge is doing a lot of damage, nerf Starsurge". Well, it may not be Starsurge. It may be some other sequence of damage modifiers and they're using it on their Starsurge ability. So we have to look at all that and dig into the problem and the interactions. 

I feel like I talk about that with the team all the time: something can be good, it's just how good? It's okay for a class to be better in a situation. But, you know, maybe the tolerance level that we're at nowadays is that if somebody is 5% ahead in a given situation, it just feels like they're the obvious choice. 5% may not be too good but 10% probably is. 

There may be a situation I can recall, a fight where windwalker monks were really excelling at a fight in a recent raid. And it was like yeah, but that's their niche. That was a situation—a burst AoE situation—where they were really good. And so we just let it ride and some of our better players who play that class just really dominated on that fight. And, you know, that was a situation where you have a great player excelling in a moment where they're supposed to excel. That's not something we're gonna take action on.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

How often can we expect class balancing in Dragonflight? Is there any sort of set cadence to that?

Holinka: We have a pretty set cadence and schedule. Before the season begins, we take a look and see if there are any adjustments we have to make and then one week into the season we do another review. Then two weeks, then basically every other week after that we're doing a review of performance with all the data points that we have, whether that's logs that players are looking at, but also internal data and telemetry, across all the different forms of content we have. 

We stick to that every-other-week cadence for a while, and we may not take action if we just don't see anything that needs to be addressed. But that's the frequency we're looking at. And then as the season goes on, we like to net out from every two weeks to every three weeks. But I feel like the closer we are to having added something, the less confident we are that we nailed it. And so we are more likely to make changes, the closer we are to a release. And then the further we get from a release, the more likely we kind of turn our attention to what's next. So that's our plan and that's been our plan in the past.

UI/HUD overhaul 

So the new UI looks brilliant, and it goes beyond the surface of just what you see—there are a lot of different settings for accessibility too and some of the more obvious changes replace the need for specific addons. How much attention did you pay to addons in general, when you were looking at the UI update?

Crash Reed: When we approached the UI update, we looked at it from many, many vectors. I think the initial and most important vector was just the feedback that we were getting in general. When you look at the UI, specifically the HUD, it's the framework for how you're going to view the world. And as the world kept increasing artistically, the fidelity of the art and the UI wasn't. So we needed that frame to match this beautiful world and once we started going down that road, we realised that we could fix some of the visual fidelity: bringing certain things up and being more important, such as your spells—you'll notice they'll be brighter—and then pushing back other things like the micro buttons as you don't need those for moment-to-moment combat. We wanted certain things to pop forward. 

Our goal was never to replace addons.

Crash Reed

The other thing that was a really big driving factor was accessibility. And so when looking at the UX and the accessibility portions of it, we quickly realised that there's no one design that we could make that would fit everybody because there are so many ways to play the game. You can play PvP, you could be in a mythic dungeon, or a mythic raid—just so many ways to do it. And then a lot of us play games, we use addons, so it's kind of an amalgamation of all these vectors. Getting that information from users, getting the past research, what addons are popular, what we liked from other games, and then kind of trying to find what is the WoW version of that? What can we do? What parts of it do we like from everything? 

Our goal was never to replace addons. We think addons will always have a home and there's always going to be players that have very specific needs, you know? 

Are there any plans to make further changes to the UI that you can talk about? Aside from what we've seen already?

Reed: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So this is an ongoing project and really, this was just our phase one, what we could get in for our very first pitch. We actually initially had a smaller amount, but the feedback has been so positive and overwhelming that we've just been really wanting to get more pieces in as much as we could. But this is definitely just a phase one approach. I don't know specifically what we're going to target next, but I want to work on the spellbook and I would love to fix the achievements panel. There are additional pieces that players are requesting to have moveable in edit mode itself, which we're definitely looking into doing. So, this is really just phase one of a much larger ongoing review of the HUD and the UI in general.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

The professions are getting a pretty major overhaul in Dragonflight too. Was that something that was always planned or did that come around because of the big UI update?

Reed: The professions are obviously a much larger change than just the UI itself and we're definitely adding more to it from the UI standpoint but it's quite big. So we're adding in things like equipment, special equipment slots, and there are going to be qualities on your reagents—it's an overhaul of the system itself. The UX behind it is just there to support how much larger the system is getting and how much more you can do with it. So it's just trying to add in all those key elements and to fit in all that new stuff but then also keep it in a way that feels similar, so it still feels like your old professions in the way you'll navigate it.

One thing I love about the new UI is how clean it looks. You've got all the different things that you don't immediately notice, like the new loot windows and the cast bar but it still feels very "World of Warcraft". Did you get inspiration from anywhere in particular for that, or was it just the result of brainstorming?

Reed: It was definitely a result of brainstorming. Inspiration as well. We're all big gamers, we play tonnes and tonnes of games. But we went through a big UI powwow, like, "What should this new look be?" And at the very top of it, we had words like, "clean" and "accessible", and then one of the most important things was it still needs to be WoW. We can't lose that no matter what we do. That's number one, paramount. And so that was the big challenge. Trying to give something fresh but the moment you look at it, it still feels like home, it feels like World of Warcraft. And so some of our goals were really, like I was saying before, just trying to push certain things forward. 

Trying to give something fresh but the moment you look at it, it still feels like home, it feels like World of Warcraft.

Crash Reed

So you'll notice, like with the cast bars, is where can we really pump up that art, but then also add accessibility to it. So the cast bars are brighter, but they also have a different texture attached to them for accessibility reasons. For people who have colorblind concerns, they can now read the difference between those. So it was really just finding that balance between each of those things.

PlayStation and Xbox controller icons were recently datamined from one of the beta builds. Is that purely to help with accessibility or is that something that might potentially point towards a console release in the future? Maybe Xbox Game Pass, for example.

Reed: Right now it's all geared towards gamepad improvements for accessibility reasons. So it's for players who are going to play on their PC. We're not only doing the support for the gamepads, but we're also adding in a new targeting system called action targeting. It's not just things you're fighting but also NPCs and it has nice highlights and stuff. So it's really the idea to help players who struggle to click on small icons or click on little things.

Then we also have another thing that goes with that as well, which is the Interact key, which I'm really, really excited about. Because when you're playing in a zone, let's say you have one of those quest items that you need to use and you have to click on it—I don't like clicking on it. So I love having an interact key so I can just focus, push the button and keep moving. So all those things in conjunction are all part of that game experience.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

You both work in quite different areas within the World of Warcraft team so this is a closing question for both of you. Can you tell me what your favourite thing has been to work on so far for Dragonflight? 

Holinka: You know, I think the evoker has been really exciting for us to work on. I'm not working on it directly, but just guiding the designers that are doing the work. And so I kind of get to give feedback on an in-development class and that's been really cool. We talk about goals, we talk about the problems that they're having. And so that's been fun to coach along with some other designers and help them develop and face these problems. 

Adding new classes is a unique design challenge that we really only encounter every four to five years or so, and so we don't have a playbook for that.

Brian Holinka

Adding new classes is a unique design challenge that we really only encounter every four to five years or so, and so we don't have a playbook for that. It almost feels like we're doing it new every time right? And that's been a really awesome experience for me to go through, helping them out and just seeing what they come up with and being really proud of the work they did. And the class is fun and just, as a player, really delivers on that dragon fantasy that you're hoping for.

Reed: For me? It's going to be a two-fold answer. One of them selfishly is the edit mode. I've been playing WoW since the beginning, and I have dreamed about being able to put this in. So having the opportunity to do that, it just feels great. And seeing the response from players and how excited they are about it is just amazing.

But then the part that I'm also quite excited about is dragonriding. The idea of being able to fly around, swoop around, a new style of flight. Just gaining momentum, getting that breeze. All of that is just so super cool. And so I'm really getting to ride on a dragon, that's awesome. So you get to be a dragon, but riding on one, man. That really gets my nerd side going.

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is set for release on November 28, 2022.

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[Welcome deZeng]

Hello deZeng,

Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

deZeng joined on the 10/13/2022.

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[Signalis is shaping up to be a beautiful, fragmented sci-fi nightmare]

True horror fans know that when a story references The King In Yellow, only the luckiest will survive with a full set of marbles. Signalis practically opens by making you pick up the book, though somehow it never appears in your inventory. That's the first clue that Space Madness is right around the corner.

If I were to be terribly reductive, I’d describe Signalis as a (mostly) top-down anime Silent Hill in space. But horror is a genre carried entirely by vibes and gut feeling, and my gut tells me that Signalis is something special. It calls itself 'psychological horror' and imitates the tone of Silent Hill, but much like how Dead Space combined Resident Evil 4, System Shock and Event Horizon into an experience all its own, Signalis is a rich stew of sci-fi and horror tropes.

It’s familiar, palatable and accessible, up until the moment it becomes something else.

They look like monsters to you?

This is how Signalis gets under your skin. Despite being set in a grounded (if deeply dystopian) low-tech universe with oodles of worldbuilding text to consume, there’s a pervasive sense of unreality here. Puzzles are surreal and abstract for no clear reason, and protagonist Elster (a mass-produced ‘Replika’ android) has her own thoughts, feelings, drives and fragmented memories that you’re not privy to. Still, her mission is clear enough: Search the remote icy planet of Leng for her ship’s missing co-pilot.

There’s a gnawing sense that despite being the player, nothing here is within your control. Or anyone’s, for that matter. All of the living characters you meet seem to be as lost as you are.

Mechanically Signalis is at its most familiar: This is classic survival horror, built on puzzles, exploration and resource management. There’s finite ammo and healing, claustrophobic tunnels patrolled by former androids-turned-monsters, and save rooms with storage chests that let you lighten your limited inventory space. Combat most resembles Resident Evil 1’s remake, with simple shooting made tense by reviving monsters that can only be permanently killed with limited incendiaries, or stunned with consumable emergency items. Those who find that too stressful can also lower the difficulty, greatly reducing resource pressure. This aspect of Signalis is unremarkable.

Signalis feels remarkable in every other respect, though. On top of some stylish cutscenes scored with brooding classical pieces, its world built from impeccable pixel art backdrops with low-res 3D models overlaid in classic Resident Evil fashion, aided with a map that marks key rooms, and doors as broken, open or locked. Rather than obfuscating where to go, the camera sits motionless at a clear overhead perspective. 

And then suddenly it doesn't: Signalis sharply jumps into PlayStation-esque first-person 3D for a puzzle or exploration sequence. Between these shifts and the glitchy video effects surrounding the enemies you’ll encounter, Signalis never lets you feel secure.

Channeling Silent Hill’s sound designer Akira Yamaoka, most of Signalis’ soundscape is layered industrial droning, the thrums of distant machinery and clicking drive-heads. Right up until a monster sees you and screams—then the muted white noise is replaced with a discordant mechanical cacophony; the sound of synthetic adrenaline and your android heart pounding in your ears until you either escape or your aggressors are dead.

The audio, puzzles and overarching themes of the game intersect in the radio panel. Being a low-fi android, Elster has a built-in radio tuner that automatically decodes signals. Most frequencies just contain noise, numbers stations and distorted music, but others will provide codes to tap into locked safes, broadcast important sounds or even harm enemies. So long as you have the radio turned on, the ever-present looping signals, cryptic messages and noise add another layer of anxiety.

Shattered Memories

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Signalis’ intentional ambiguity kept me anxious all the time. Don’t expect easy exposition: Signalis is dreamlike, often skipping ahead, leaving the player to figure out how much time has passed. First-person 3D flashback sequences further jumble the timeline, impossible scenes interspersed with more plausible memories. While your mission is always simple—a downward spiral in search of a missing person—many of the finer points are left up to interpretation.

My complaints with Signalis begin and end with inventory management. Elster has a six-slot inventory. Unfortunately, one gun and a box of ammo are two items. Add healing items for three. One defensive item makes four. There’s a flashlight (for dark rooms) and a camera (for visual notes of puzzle hints) as well, and that’s before you need to carry a single puzzle key-item. Needless to say, I was backtracking to storage chests frequently. Just one extra slot (or letting me permanently equip the torch and camera) would have solved 80% of my inventory woes.

But that’s it for complaints. I’d love to talk more about the story and its world, but I don’t want to spoil any surprises. Signalis launches on October 27th, and will also be on Game Pass, and I cannot wait to talk with the Silent Hill crowd about Elster's fractured memories. Signalis feels like a game I’ll be thinking about and remembering (however hazily) for a long time.

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[Spider-Man: Miles Morales gets detailed system requirements and a November release date]

The June announcement of the then-upcoming PC release of Spider-Man Remastered included word that the spin-off Spider-Man: Miles Morales was also coming our way. Today we got the details, including a swanky new trailer showing off all the visual enhancements in the PC version of the game and—this is the important bit—a launch date of November 18.

"Following the events of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, teenager Miles Morales is adjusting to his new home while following in the footsteps of his mentor, Peter Parker, as a new Spider-Man," the Steam page says. "But when a fierce power struggle threatens to destroy his new home, the aspiring hero realizes that with great power, there must also come great responsibility. To save all of Marvel’s New York, Miles must take up the mantle of Spider-Man and own it."

Spider-Man is Spider-Man, but Miles Morales comes to the party with his own "explosive powers" that set him apart from Parker, including "unique, bio-electric venom blast attacks and covert camouflage," along with various other gadgets, skills, and "spectacular web-slinging acrobatics." 

The PC version of Spider-Man: Miles Morales will feature a range of enhancements, including support for ray tracing, ultra-wide monitors, and Nvidia's DLSS technology. "Extensive" customization options for mouse and keyboard, and controllers, are also available.

"In the graphics menu, you’ll find many customizable features, presets, and quality levels to choose from," Nixxes Software community manager Julian Huijbregts wrote in a PlayStation Blog post. "These include texture quality and filtering, level of detail, crowd and traffic density, field of view, windowed, full screen and exclusive full screen rendering modes, and many other options."

(Image credit: Sony)

The full system requirements are out now, too:

Minimum (720p, 30fps, very low preset):

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i3-4160 or AMD equivalent
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 950 or AMD equivalent
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 75 GB available space

Recommended (1080p, 60fps, medium preset):

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-4670 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 
• Memory: 16GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 580
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 75 GB available space (SSD recommended)

Very High (4K, 60fps, very high preset):

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-11400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• Memory: 16GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 75 GB available space (SSD recommended)

Amazing Ray Tracing (1440p, 60 fps, or 4K, 30 fps, high ray tracing preset):

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-11600Kor AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
• Memory: 16GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 or AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 75 GB available space (SSD recommended)

Ultimate Ray Tracing (4K, 60fps, high ray tracing preset):

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit 1909
• Processor: Intel Core i7-12700K or AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
• Memory: 32 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 75 GB available space (SSD recommended)

Spider-Man: Miles Morales is set to launch on November 18 and will be available for PC on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

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[Todd Howard says Starfield's character traits 'are something you can solve' if you get tired of them]

Bethesda's been talking quite a bit about Starfield in its recent chats with, um, itself. In a Q&A with community director Jess Finster, Bethesda Softworks executive producer Todd Howard shed some light on the game's character trait system, including the ways that players can choose to remove those traits if they get tired of them.

Starfield's traits function a lot like the ones in Fallout: New Vegas. When you're making a character, you're given three slots that you can fill from a list of traits like "Introvert," "Empath," or "Neon Street Rat," (which is the one I'd pick). Unlike Fallout's perks, traits aren't straight upgrades, but offer both a benefit and a drawback. The introvert trait, for example, gives you an endurance buff when you're alone, but penalises it when you have companions.

They're the kind of thing you might sour on after a while, especially if you decide to change up your character build midway through a game. It looks like ol' Todd wants to avoid a situation where players have to choose between sticking with traits they don't want, or starting a new character from scratch (or using console commands to get rid of them, which is what you'd actually do). Every trait in the game can be removed with a special quest that deletes the trait—both its positives and negatives.

The Q&A makes it sound like each trait will have its own corresponding removal quest: Howard says that "each of them are something that you can solve that removes the entire trait for the rest of your playthrough". It sounds like a lot of work, but this is the game that just crossed a quarter of a million lines of dialogue, so I guess crafting 16-or-so quests for each possible trait is kind of a drop in the bucket.

We'll get a chance to find out next year, delays permitting. Starfield was originally slated to come out on November 11 this year, 11 years to the day after Skyrim, but was delayed to the first half of 2023. 

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[Dual Universe review]

Need to know

What is it? A space sandbox that lets you establish your own industries and trade in a player-driven economy

Expect to pay: £10.49/$15 per month  

Release date: Out now

Developer: Novaquark

Publisher: Novaquark

Reviewed on: AMD Ryzen 5 3600, Nvidia GeForce 2080 Super, 32 GB RAM,

Multiplayer? Massively

Link: Official site 

My first attempt to reach space in Dual Universe ended in disaster. I'd purchased a space bike, which is the cheapest space-viable craft Novaquark's ludicrously ambitious space sim offers, with the intent of doing a test flight from the planet Alioth to one of its nearby moons. But through a combination of ignorance and ineptitude, I failed to escape the planet's gravitational pull, and ended up crashing 60 kilometres away from the nearest transportation.

In Dual Universe, distance is measured at a 1-to-1 scale, and without the resources to repair my bike, I was faced with the prospect of a two-hour trek back to civilisation. Having already battled with the game's byzantine systems at seemingly every turn, I was tempted to bin it off completely. 

(Image credit: Novaquark)

After sulking for a bit, I sat back down and got on with it. And while not exactly thrilling, that long journey home proved more interesting than I had anticipated. You see, Dual Universe's planets and major moons are not environmentally uniform, and as I travelled I passed through wind-sculpted deserts, lush forests, and meadowy plains. I also saw many player-built structures, ranging from starting prefab houses to elaborate industrial complexes, all with spaceships parked nearby. At one point, I spent fifteen minutes travelling across the bottom of a lake, and encountered several player installations that had been built beneath the waves.

It gave me a sense of what had been going on elsewhere in the world, and by the time I finally returned to civilisation, I was inspired to keep going. And this kind of encapsulates what playing Dual Universe is like. It's a wilfully obscure, regularly frustrating, and arguably unfinished experience. But hiding beneath the tangled mess of its many systems are moments of vision.

Sky's the limit

Broadly speaking, Dual Universe is a hybrid of EVE Online, No Man's Sky, and Factorio, with a little bit of Minecraft thrown in for good measure. It aims to be a fully simulated, player-driven sandbox, giving players the tools to build their own structures, design their own ships, and create their own interstellar enterprises that form part of a dynamic economy.

You literally drop into this universe as a lone pioneer, given a chunk of territory to claim as your own on the game's starting moon of Haven, before descending to your chosen plot via orbital dropship. You then set up your starter habitat (I picked a flash futurist villa with its own miniature runway) deploy your starting vehicle, a speeder, and get a crash course in how the game's voxel-based creative tools work.  

(Image credit: Novaquark)

From here, you're theoretically free to do whatever you like and start building your legend within the Helios system. In practice, you'll probably corkscrew yourself into the ground figuring out what you should be doing. Dual Universe's learning curve is more of a launch trajectory, with countless interlinked systems to learn at the start of the game. Building, mining, crafting, establishing industrial pipelines, two different types of flight mechanics, the labyrinthine talent system that dictates a huge amount of what you can and cannot do within different professions. Even something as ostensibly simple as buying and selling items at the market has its own tutorial that you will need to run through.

Even something as ostensibly simple as buying and selling items at the market has its own tutorial that you will need to run through.

It's an intimidating prospect, and the great irony of it is that what you should be doing at this early stage is very simple: breaking rocks. Planets are scattered with randomly generated surface ores that can be mined with your universal multitool. These ores are the baseline through which more complex materials are developed, but they can also be sold en masse for a small but easily-attainable income. Once you've got a few hundred grand under your belt, you can purchase standalone mining units that passively mine ore and can also be calibrated roughly once a day to provide a fat chunk of ore.

The problem with doing this is that eBay doesn't exist in Dual Universe. To sell anything in the game, you must take it to market like a medieval peasant. And depending on where you initially planted your flag, your starting point could be 20, 50, even a 100 kilometres from the nearest market, which is a long trip in your starting speeder. Consequently, the opening hours of Dual Universe are a pretty miserable grind, as you drive to the market, drop off a big bag of rocks, go home, mine more rocks, and then drop those off again.

(Image credit: Novaquark)

There are a couple of ways to escape from this systemic chain gang. You could buy yourself a new territory control unit and take a shuttle to the planet Alioth, where you can claim a new patch of land that has rarer and more valuable ores. But while claiming your first patch of land on a new planet is free, that land is subject to a weekly tax of 500,000 units (or two-to-four hours of surface ore mining). I don't understand why the game does this. If it's to prevent people from claiming land they don't then use, Novaquark could simply have the game deactivate their claim after, say, failing to log in for a week. Arbitrarily taxing players on imaginary land with a fictional centralised body is downright baffling.

The alternative is to use your ore in a crafting project, the results of which you can use yourself or sell on the market. But there are two issues here. First, making anything remotely useful in Dual Universe requires multiple processes, and unlike Factorio, which starts you at the beginning and methodically works you through each process, here you start with what you want to make, before working backwards to figure out how to make it, which is difficult when something as simple as a storage container has nearly a dozen nested components. Oh, and everything you craft by hand has a timer attached to it. If you want to build an assembler so you can start automating the crafting process, you're looking at about an hour's worth of crafting to go from raw materials to final product.

System shock

The other issue is that, even once you've made something, there's no guarantee you're going to be able to sell it. As I mentioned, Dual Universe's economy is driven by its players. But being a new game with a fairly small playerbase, the economy hasn't had a chance to become established yet, so it's hard to know what you should be making and where you should be selling it.

In short, every system is overwrought and difficult to grapple with. At the same time, there's a nagging sense that, despite having launched into v1.0, Dual Universe is not actually finished. The play area is currently limited to a single star-system, with the "Space" section of the game's map menu greyed-out. The planets you explore are topographically beautiful, but largely inert, with no weather systems and no fauna beyond a few pixel-shaded birds and butterflies. The handful of rudimentary delivery missions the game offers feel like a hasty attempt to compensate for the absence of any curated experiences.

(Image credit: Novaquark)

Basically, getting anything off the ground in Dual Universe is a lot of hard work and only intermittently fun. Anything, that is, except for the ships themselves. Honestly, of all the mistakes Dual Universe makes, the biggest is not immediately pointing you to your nearest ship vendor and getting you into the air as quickly as possible, because the flying in this game is splendid.

Dual Universe's flight model leans toward simulation without veering off and crashing into the control tower of realism.

Dual Universe's flight model leans toward simulation without veering off and crashing into the control tower of realism. Ships are relatively simple to control, but handling is influenced by factors like engine power, fuel-type, momentum, gravity, even the mass of the inventory you're currently carrying. Consequently, even simple hops from your home to the local market require attentive, thoughtful flying, as you need to monitor your altitude to avoid crashing into terrain, and carefully adjust your speed as you approach the landing bay, while also watching out for other player ships that may be parked or themselves landing/taking off.

Flying between planets is even better. Departing from a planet's surface is a tricky affair, as the planet's gravity tries to hold you back, while the rapidly thinning air makes it hard to maintain altitude. Get it right, though, and your speed will begin to rapidly increase from the hundreds kph into the tens of thousands. Spaceflight itself is about managing your acceleration and deceleration, as at high speeds it can take several minutes to slow down, and if you start that process too late, you'll smash into the planet like a dart.

(Image credit: Novaquark)

Aside from some LOD pop-in on planets, all of this is completely seamless. Indeed, it's one of the best examples of seamless space-to-planet flight that I've ever seen in a game. If you're flying a hybrid craft (which can do both space and planetary flight) for example, there's a wonderful moment when your blue-tinted atmospheric engines cut out, and your orange-coloured space thrusters slowly kick in, pushing you into the void.

Dual Universe has problems. It attempts to merge a wide array of systems, but does none of them as well as the games those ideas are borrowed from. Its difficulty curve is so steep that many players will slide off it long before they see the game at its best. Doing virtually anything requires you to go through seventeen different steps, one of which you will inevitably miss and then have to start the whole process again. But hidden underneath all that is a pleasingly tangible space sim with some powerful creation tools and a genuinely great flying experience. It's certainly not for everyone, but it's also not a write-off, and for a certain type of brain, juggling all its convolutions will be absolute catnip.

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[Here's what time the Darktide closed beta starts]

The Darktide closed beta is fast approaching, giving selected players a whole weekend to head into Hive Tertium and try to survive the horrors and heretics that await there. Seeing as Darktide was delayed by a month or so, it's a great chance to try out a more stripped down version of the game before grabbing it on release. That said, it is pretty great.

The closed beta test is only for players who signed up and were selected, but since the test allows players to stream, the silver lining is that even if you weren't chosen, you can still see all of the content that the beta has to offer. Here I'll explain what time the Darktide closed beta kicks off.

What time does the Darktide closed beta begin?  

If you've been selected to take part in the beta, you can download the game as soon as you get your code and email, but you won't actually be able to play it until October 14. Here's when the closed beta goes live: 

• UK: 12 pm BST
• Europe: 1 pm CEST
• US West Coast: 4 am PST
• US East Coast: 7 am EST
• Japan: 8 pm JST
• Australia: 10 pm AEDT
• New Zealand: 12 am NZDT (14 October)

There are no region restrictions for the beta, so even if yours isn't listed here, it should launch at the same time. The beta will run from October 14 - 16.

Since this isn't a complete version of Darktide, beta progress won't carry over to the final launch on November 30, but it will still include all four archetypes and classes that will be playable on release. The Veteran, the Zealot, the Ogryn, and the Psyker will all be playable, with both male and female customizable characters, except for the Ogryn, who's just male. 

There will be four missions to try out in Hive Tertium as well as a fixed selection of weapons on offer. For any more details, it's well worth checking out the Darktide beta FAQ.

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[WD Black SN850X 1TB]

The arrival of the new Ryzen 7000 CPU family means that PCIe Gen 5 is now a thing on both AMD and Intel platforms. But let’s be real. Your current PC almost certainly doesn’t have a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot. Enter, therefore, the new WD Black SN850X, something of a last hurrah for Gen 4 SSDs.

Reviewed here in its 1TB configuration, the WD_Black SN850X isn’t exactly a brand new drive, more a revision of the existing WD_Black SN850 non-X. Which is no bad thing. After all, the plain old SN850 was one of our fave M.2 SSDs. It’s fast, it’s competitively priced, and it’s backed by one of the best brands in storage. The old SN850, however, did run a little hot.

The new WD Black SN850X has a few solutions for that. First, our review configuration is clad head-to-toe in WD’s signature armour-style cooling. If that cooling solution has been optionally available on the old SN850, the new drive's revised thermal profile WD hasn’t. That’s specific to the SN850X.

Of course, if your motherboard comes with its own M.2 SSD cooling kit, you may not want to pay extra for a self-cooled SSD. Handily WD can cater for that. The new X model, like its forebear, can be had both with and without a heatsink, the latter option usefully coming in around $30/£25 cheaper. 

Indeed, in many regards, this new X model is a dead ringer for the existing SN850. We’re talking four lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity in the now ubiquitous M.2 2280 form factor. But the 1TB model reviewed here is now the entry-level option. There’s no longer a 512GB model. What’s more, WD’s in-house controller chip has been revised, though detailed specifics aren’t provided. 

WD Black SN850X 1TB Specs

Capacity: 1TB
Form factor: M.2 2280
Interface: PCIe 4.0 x4
Rated performance: 7,300MB/s read, 6,300MB/s write
Random IOPS: 1.1M read, 800K write
DRAM cache: 1GB DDR4
SLC cache: 300GB dynamic
Write endurance: 600 TBW
Warranty: 5 years
Price: $179.99 | £150.99

The drive’s TLC flash memory chips have likewise been upgraded from 96-layer TLC chips to newer 112-layer tech, though that’s still some way behind the fancy new 176-layer NAND from the likes of Micron and SK Hynix. Nevertheless, the new SN850X sports a higher claimed performance than before. So, the question is whether it now has what it takes to compete with Gen 4 speed freaks like the SK Hynix Platinum P41.

For this 1TB model, WD reckons that write speeds have been bumped from 7,000MB/s to 7,300MB/s, while reads take a bigger leap from 5,300MB/s to 6,300MB/s. That’s very much in the same ballpark as the SK Hynix drive. Moving on to IOPS, the old 1TB SN850 notched up a claimed 1M reads and 720K writes. WD says the revised X model is now good for 1.1M and 800K respectively. Not bad, though the SK Hynix cranks out 1.4M and 1.3M read and write IOPS.

As for write endurance, this 1TB drive is rated at 600TB and thus the same as both the old non-X and several other big-brand 1TB drives like the Samsung 980 Pro, albeit the SK Hynix monster inevitably has the edge with a 750TB rating. In reality, you’re getting hundreds of gigabytes of writes daily for five years plus, either way. 

(Image credit: Future)

Rather more specific to this WD drive is the latest 2.0 version of the company’s Game Mode drive management software. WD claims it improves game loading times courtesy of a so-called “read look-ahead” algorithm, which predictively caches game data. It now runs automatically, detecting when games are loaded. How much that kind of feature actually makes a difference in the real world is notoriously difficult to pin down. But it’s unlikely to be revolutionary.

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What we can say for sure is that peak sequential throughput is pretty much in line with WD’s numbers. The CrystalDiskMark results are therefore just over the claimed 7,300MB/s for reads and likewise clear of 6,300MB/s for writes, making this a very quick 1TB drive. Only 2TB models, including the aforementioned SK Hynix P41, are quicker. 

Reduced operating temps are another clear benefit of this new drive. The old SN850 hit a toasty 77°C. The new drive hits just 58°C under sustained load. That’s a very worthwhile improvement. Elsewhere, the gains are less obvious, albeit the SN850 was already a great drive. The 4K random access results are a little disappointing, showing little to no improvement. Likewise, don’t expect big gains in system-wide measures of performance like PC Mark 10.

Finally, the new SN850X’s SLC cache allocation hasn’t changed. So, with an empty drive, you get around 300GB’s worth of writes at peak performance before the underlying performance of the TLC NAND chips is exposed. That should be enough for most if not all users.

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All of which means that the new WD Black SN850X isn’t exactly a revolutionary leap forward. Indeed, in the real world, you’ll struggle to notice the difference compared to the existing SN850 drive. But then that’s because the SN850 is a very good SSD. The one exception to that is operating temperatures. Happily, this new X model runs unambiguously cooler. 

For most PC applications, that probably doesn’t matter. But for small form factor rigs and perhaps a gaming laptop, every little can certainly help. On that note, for most applications, we’d probably go for the cheaper bare drive rather than this more expensive model with its heat spreader. The revised SN850X is inherently a cooler-running thing, after all.

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[Steam's new mobile app is much more modern and sleek but something's missing]

It's been a long time coming, but Valve has finally made some major updates to the Steam app for Android, with it finally available on iOS and as a standalone APK. The changes include improvements to the UI and underlying framework, as well as some cool new features.

"We've completely revamped the Steam Mobile app," the Steam Google play 'what's new' section reads. "You’ll still be able to browse the store, get Steam Guard codes, and confirm trades—with additions like QR code scanning for PC sign in, smarter notifications, a new Library view with remote downloads, and customizable tabs."

Along with Apple phone users now finally having the ability to access their account on the go, everyone's been gifted the ability to log into multiple accounts in the mobile app. Another great improvement is the ability to manage device access from your phone, so you can make sure you're not still logged in on your ex-best friend's machine, or in case you get hacked while you're out.

You can also use the app to download Steam games to your PC remotely, so you can have them ready for you when you get home from work. You can even customise the tabs now situated at the bottom of the UI, and personalise which page you see as your homepage.

(Image credit: Valve)

I've been taking a look at the app myself this morning, and the design changes are startlingly evident. The UI looks a lot better than it did before, and has less of that "we built this in the '90s using HTML" feel. The fact you can now point your phone at your PC and use a QR code to log in, like with Discord and WhatsApp, is such a massive usability win. It's especially useful if, like me, your partner whose machine you intermittently need to log into to share your library is using some obscure keyboard layout.

Your next upgrade

(Image credit: Future)

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest

One of my main issues with the app, however—and someone please correct me if I'm doing something wrong—is, when you're scrolling through a long list of games and decide to click one, using your phone's back button will land you right back at the top of the list again, or in an entirely different section. It's a similar case with Valve's Steam Deck, in that the Steam OS will send you back to the top almost at random, and it's such a pain to scroll back down to the place you were at in the list.

Yesterday's Steam News Hub post has more details on how to make the most out of the app refresh, and for now it's nice to know that Valve's focus on making the Steam Deck more user friendly had bled across the board.

Next up, Valve says it will be working on bringing QR sign in to the Steam Deck, fiddling with new kinds of notifications, and making it possible to change device authorisation in the Steam Client, as well as the browser.

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[RTX 4090s are already hitting eBay but you still have a decent chance of getting one at MSRP]

Nvidia's RTX 4090 went on sale yesterday. It sold out 10 minutes later. Shortly thereafter, RTX 4090s ended up on eBay. Standard stuff. Though what's actually surprising is that these graphics cards on eBay aren't quite as dire in terms of pricing as you might expect them to be. Okay, they're not cheap by any means, nor a good deal, but things could absolutely be worse. In fact, they have been worse for a very long time. 

These less inflated prices are perhaps actually indicative of the supply being better for GPUs, and demand less frantic, than any other time in the past 18 months. One of a few reasons why you shouldn't take anyone up on an RTX 4090 with an inflated price tag.

Over the previous couple of years, resellers have been making bank from selling in-demand graphics cards for well in excess of their MSRP. An RTX 3080 would fetch upwards of 220% over its original MSRP of $699 in the months after its release, and an RTX 3090 around 180% or more over asking.

Though these MSRPs wouldn't mean much for most of the life of these graphics cards, anyways.

But today the RTX 4090 is listed at 'only' 30% over its MSRP, at around $2,100. That's the cheapest I've found so far on eBay. Though admittedly you will find Founders Editions going for quite a bit more—Nvidia's own shroud design is the one we're most fond of, and seems the most in demand, too.

I'm not saying rush out and buy a graphics card from a reseller on eBay—you shouldn't be paying any more for a card that's already extremely expensive or making reselling GPUs a worthwhile venture for those choosing to take advantage of the launch day rush. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Demand is sky-high for the RTX 4090 right now and that's to be expected. Even before the great GPU shortages of the previous few years, stock never lasted through launch day. This is pretty normal. What we can only hope for now are swift restocks. What we're hearing from UK retailers we've spoken to is that supply is expected to be steady for the RTX 4090 going forward. We've also heard of at least one restock on the way for a UK retailer today, October 13.

(Image credit: eBay)

However, I'm not going to pretend it's all rosy right now. A post on Reddit suggests one customer who snagged an RTX 4090 on launch day over at Box was later let down to hear their order had been cancelled due to insufficient stock. Box also claims it has no visibility on any further shipments of RTX 4090s.

We reached out to Box for confirmation on this situation and a spokesperson responded saying they are requesting clarity on the situation from product managers. They also mentioned this may have been an issue due to sales outpacing the system and excess sales being made before the automatic out of stock notification was able to go live.

A frustrating situation for those affected, nonetheless, especially as we had hoped for more robust sales systems in place following the previous 18 months of high GPU demand.

Your next upgrade

(Image credit: Future)

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest

When we asked Newegg about how the launch went, a spokesperson responded saying "The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card launch went well for Newegg. Demand for the 4090 was extremely strong. Newegg sold out of our first batch of inventory quickly."

"Our expectations were exceeded, and it’s clear that customers are excited about the 4090 and the 40-series in general."

The supply situation is not entirely clear, then—we're certainly hearing mixed messages. The important thing to remember is that actual supply for GPUs is not as constrained on a larger scale as it once was. And the biggest drain on GPU supply for cryptocurrency mining purposes, ethereum, no longer requires GPUs. We can only hope for more readily available restocks in the coming weeks and months as some retailers seem to suggest.

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[Undecember is a new hardcore hack-and-slash ARPG coming October 12]

One of the most interesting upcoming hack-and-slash RPGs you may not have heard about is Undecember, a dark fantasy game on PC that has a wide variety of options for playstyle customization, the choice of several different types of content to grind and play through, and an impressive presentation consisting of dazzling visual effects, high quality textures, and stylish animations.

Here’s a complete overview of everything Undecember has to offer, including details about its approach to buildcrafting, its progression systems, the types of activities you can jump into while playing, and more.

Play the way you want

As players begin the fight to save the fantastical world of Traum from the evil god Serpens in Undecember, something they’ll notice is that unlike many other hack-and-slash ARPGs, Undecember doesn’t have defined classes that they have to stick to once they create and customize their character. Players can swap around their stats, skills, and gear at any time without worrying about class or equipment restrictions, offering tons of buildcrafting freedom. If you want to cast magic with axes, for example, Undecember will allow you to do so.

The core of your character’s strengths and weaknesses are dictated by three main stats: Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. As players earn trait points by killing enemies, they can also unlock special constellations that allow them to tweak their character’s capabilities further. Additionally, regardless of which stats and constellations you opt to use in battle, you can also equip various Skill and Link Runes on your character to provide them with powerful skills to use in battle. Skill Runes give access to the default version of a skill, while Link Runes are used to alter the effects of those skills and customize them. Notably, it’s possible to attach Link Runes to multiple Skill Runes at once, giving all of the skills the effects of the Link Rune.

Builds can also be customized and improved using the gear you find while battling enemy forces. Once you find an item, it’s possible to improve the bonuses it offers by enchanting it. This is done by dismantling pieces of gear you’re not using, as this process provides you with the materials you need in order to successfully enchant items.

Content variety awaits

(Image credit: LINE Games)

Another thing that players can look forward to in Undecember is the variety of experiences it offers. Whether you’re looking for a fun campaign to play through or hardcore and farmable endgame activities, there's something for you.

Acts, which represent the game’s main storyline and campaign experience, serve as the introduction to the game and will also offer players a less challenging and more laidback experience. After completing all of the Acts, players will also have the option to play through Chaos Dungeons. These levels are considerably more difficult and intense than the Act campaigns, but offer significantly better rewards that you can grind for as well.

Finally, there are fearsome Boss Raids, which are the ultimate form of Undecember’s endgame content. These high-stakes missions can be run through with up to eight players and require lots of teamwork and coordination, offering those who can overcome the challenge elite high-level rewards. 

Regardless of which type of activity you choose to play through the most, you can enhance your experience with the game by joining a guild. Guilds in Undecember can have up to 50 members in them, and being in one unlocks exclusive benefits such as Guild Buffs.

Beautiful presentation

Undecember is also worth checking out if you love quality graphics. The world of Traum is dark and foreboding, yet also varied and colorful, making it stand out compared to other, exceedingly grim dark fantasy worlds. The game's textures also look excellent, and the visual effects of attacks and skills are brimming with vibrant detail. The animations are beautiful, too, as they’re incredibly smooth and snappy, which makes them a perfect fit for the game’s fast-paced, action-heavy nature. 

There’s also plenty of monster variety, which ensures that you’ll never get bored fighting the same creatures over and over again as you progress through your journey. Enemy attacks are also just as impressive and expressive as your own, making encounters with foes feel grand, tense, and exciting.

Undecember arrives October 12

(Image credit: LINE Games)

Overall, Undecember stands out as one of 2022’s most exciting hack-and-slash titles. Between its highly-customizable build options, varied types of content, and gorgeous visuals, it’s sure to please fans of the genre when it comes out on PC via Steam on October 12. The game will also be available on the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store.

If you’d like to try out the game ahead of its official release, you can do so with the free Undecember demo available on Steam now. Keep up to date with the game by checking out its official Discord server, as well as its YouTube and Facebook page. 

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[Oh no, Konami's looking for experts to build its 'WEB3 and Metaverse' projects]

Fresh from resurrecting Suikoden 1 and 2 (and earning some amount of public goodwill in the process), Konami has seen fit to remind us that, yes, it's still the company that made over $150,000 off its Castlevania NFT sale back in January. A news release on the company's website states that Konami is on the hunt for people who can help it build the systems and services it needs to "provide new experiences such as WEB3 and Metaverse".

Konami has been hard at work "conducting research and development to incorporate the latest technology into games and contents," says the release, and plans to launch a service where "players can trade their in-game NFTs (digital items) through a unique distribution platform using blockchain".

In other words, Konami wants to build its own NFT trading platform. The company says that the NFTs players will be trading (or that it hopes they will be) "can be used in-game as items," to "interact with other services and communities," and to "participate in fan communities and events". 

The first pledge is clear enough: players will be able to trade in-game gear on Konami's platform, but the next two are a little fuzzy. I'm guessing the second is  another way of saying you'll be trading with other Konami fans, not just fans of whichever game you're into, and the third could refer to an NFT-based event ticketing system? We'll have to wait, breath bated, to find out.

It's not exactly an auspicious time to get on board the NFT train: last month it was reported that NFT transactions on OpenSea—the most popular online marketplace for non-fungible gewgaws—had fallen by 90% since the start of the year. This is in addition to a wider crypto crash that occurred in the middle of this year.

But crypto is a volatile market at the best of times, and it could be that Konami simply expects it to bounce back like it's done before. Or, perhaps, the company has just built up enough inertia around its "WEB3 and Metaverse" projects that there's just no stopping them at this point. Either way, who wants to bet which we'll see first: Metal Gear remasters, or Metal Gear NFTs?

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[Scientists taught a Petri dish of brain cells to play Pong better than I can]

Scientists are once again asking if they 'could' and not if they 'should': a team of researchers at "biological computing startup" Cortical Labs has taught lab-grown brain cells to play Pong. By spreading around 800,000 neurons across a silicon chip and firing electrical signals at them, the cells were able to demonstrate "apparent learning within five minutes," according to the scientists involved. This is how Deus Ex got started, you know.

The scientists call their silicon/neuron conglomeration DishBrain. And to be clear, the process was a bit more abstract than just sitting a Petri dish down in front of a copy of Video Olympics for the Atari 2600. DishBrain wasn't responding to visual inputs like you or I would, but instead to a series of alternating electrical signals that simulated a round of Pong, which the researchers then converted into a visual representation of the game.

It worked like this: whenever DishBrain hit the ball, it received a predictable electrical response. Whenever it missed, the signal spiked randomly. The cells weren't conscious, and didn't 'know' they were playing a game. Rather, by naturally adapting in such a way that it received predictable responses more often, DishBrain adapted to—or, more poetically, learned—Pong. Most exciting for the researchers: it learned quickly, on-the-fly, and with a very low power requirement.

Also, DishBrain was apparently pretty bad at it, so the Pong esports community can rest easy. Still, its success rate was noticeably better than random chance, which makes it more skilled than me. The cells really were adapting to get better at Pong. It might seem unremarkable compared to the abilities that other AI have displayed in games like chess, checkers, and, uh, Overcooked, but those projects weren't working with actual, organic brain cells. If we want our dark cyborg future to arrive, it has to start with only being 'kind of okay' at Pong.

The team behind DishBrain say their next test will be to examine the effects of alcohol on the neurons' playing activity, which does make it sound like they're just having a laugh now. But the project's intended goal is to aid in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, and there are several such conditions—like dementia—that can be caused or exacerbated by excessive alcohol consumption, so it does make sense. Still, you can't shake the feeling that this is how a million cheap sci-fi paperback plots kick off, can you?

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[Today's Wordle 481 answer and hint: Thursday, October 13]

Whether you need some help finding the answer to the October 13 (481) Wordle or would just like to read through some helpful tips on how to make your daily game more successful, you'll find all that and more right here.

I ended up doing a lot of shuffling about in today's Wordle, yellow letters turning into solid greens more through a combination of careful observation and trial and error than anything else. It was an enjoyably methodical way of reaching the answer, a careful chipping away until there were no alternatives left. 

Wordle hint

Today's Wordle: A hint for Thursday, October 13

We've got a pretty straightforward one today: the answer is a word used to describe anything that is the exact same size, weight, quantity, or any other measure as whatever it is being compared to. You'll need to find two vowels to solve this one.  

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:

• A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. 
• A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
• The solution may contain repeat letters.

There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank.

Wordle answer

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

What is the Wordle 481 answer?

Need a little push? Sure. The answer to the October 13 (481) Wordle is EQUAL.

Previous answers

Wordle archive: Which words have been used

The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.

Here are some recent Wordle solutions:

• October 12: IONIC
• October 11: VALID
• October 10: ENJOY
• October 9: HOWDY
• October 8: VIGOR
• October 7: DANDY
• October 6: SLOTH
• October 5: MARSH
• October 4: BOUGH
• October 3: STING

Learn more about Wordle 

Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.

You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot.

You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.

After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 

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[How to have the best Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines experience today]

Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines was blatantly unfinished when it came out in 2004. Some of the staff at Troika Games scrambled to get a patch together as the studio was closing, but even after that there was still work to be done. 

It's janky, but worth playing today, especially while we wait for Bloodlines 2. (Becoming immortal will help.) Whether you're revisiting Bloodlines or playing it for the first time, here are some tips that'll help you get the best experience.

Download the Unofficial Patch

A modder named Werner Spahl, aka Wesp5, took on the work left unfinished by the developer, and his Unofficial Patch is an essential fix. Now up to version 11.2, it has a changelog longer than some novels. Downloading the Unofficial Patch is an essential first step if you want to play Bloodlines today. 

Choose a patch version

The second step is deciding between installing the Unofficial Patch's basic version or the plus patch, which restores cut content. (If you got Bloodlines from GOG it will come with the basic version, without the plus option. Download the full patch here.)

Some of the things the plus patch restores are questionable, I'll admit. It puts a cop in the tutorial you can talk your way past to learn how the dialogue skills work, and his voice acting is pretty rough. There's an entire sidequest that ends at the library which "never even made it to alpha" according to Bloodlines writer Brian Mitsoda and had to be created essentially whole cloth, with writing that doesn't match the rest of the game. The existing sidequest where a character trades collectibles for sexy posters of the game's lady NPCs—even for a game about vampires, Bloodlines can be pretty thirsty—has been expanded and made even tackier.

(Image credit: Activision)

And yet, I recommend the plus patch anyway. Some of its additions are rough around the edges, sure, but so is everything about Bloodlines. And among the changes are optional shortcuts that let you bypass some of the late-game combat dungeons that are its weakest points, and a sewer rat who is also a cab driver (though he only appears if you play a Malkavian). It's worth it.

Use the console when you need it

It's also worth knowing that Bloodlines has a console you can open by pressing ~. Useful commands are "noclip" for when you get stuck in a door (it happens), "god" for godmode (enter "god" again to turn it off), and "giftxp n" (where n replaces your current unspent xp total). You may not want or need console commands to finish Bloodlines, but there they are just in case.

As for actual full-blown mods rather than patches, there are plenty, but none are the kind of thing you want on your first playthrough. In fact, given how different Bloodlines can be depending which clan you choose, it's worth a second run with the same setup before you even think about tinkering.

Pick a good first-timer clan

Though it's not up-front about this, two of the vampire clans are designed for a second playthrough. The Nosferatu appear so blatantly undead they can't show themselves in public, and you'll spend most of the game travelling via sewer if you play one. They're your hard-mode challenge run choice. The Malkavians have a limited ability to see the future, which means they have a lot of bespoke dialogue options that spoil twists because they know them already. Also, since those insights into the future drive Malkavians mad, playing one means hearing voices and having hallucinations. They're your new-game-plus clan, highly recommended to shake up your second go around.

Any of the other clans are fine for a first-timer. The rebel punk Brujah and animalistic shapeshifting Gangrel are good combat options, the blood magic specialists of the Tremere have the strongest powers, and the artsy bohemian Toreador and power-dressing corporate Ventrue are best at talking their way out of problems. Bloodlines is the kind of game where you can solve things multiple ways, so choose a clan that reflects your preferred play style.

Play it like an immersive sim 

Bloodlines is a vent-crawler, not a full on Deus Ex-style immersive sim, but still the kind of RPG where learning how to pick locks and hack computers is worthwhile. The Bloodbuff power can make you temporarily better at lockpicking and Auspex at hacking, if you haven't got quite enough points in the relevant skills. With a high enough score in Persuasion you can often blue-text your way out of trouble, and stealth is a valid option too. 

You'll want to explore as well. Sidequests are easy to miss if, for instance, you don't stumble into the abandoned hospital in the Downtown hub, or if you don't hang out in nightclubs. There's a weapons dealer in each hub, often someone who needs to be persuaded to do business, and it's worth tracking them down. You'll be stalking the alleys to keep your blood topped up anyway, so poke around any suspicious places you find while sneaking about.

Bloodlines is not always great at being a stealth game, however. Your score in Sneaking is more important than sightlines, and a lot of places that appear well-lit have guards who act like they're in deepest shadow. Maybe those tunnels look so bright because vampires can see in the dark? Yeah, let's go with that.

Learn to fight

While stealth and charm can get you through most of the early game, eventually you'll need to kill a whole mess of people. Chat with Nines Rodriguez, who hangs out at the Last Round, and he'll put it plainly, saying "a speech ain't gonna save your 'donkey' when you're staring down the barrel of a shotgun." (He also helps improve your Brawl and later your Melee skill if you ask for some pointers.)

(Image credit: Activision)

Bloodlines hands out plenty of experience points, especially if you're tracking down all those sidequests, and you'll need to start jamming them into combat abilities eventually. Melee will deal with the first batch of fights (the fire axe is an excellent weapon at this point), but later it'll be worth going for Ranged Combat as well. The plus patch does add shortcuts that'll let you skip past the most boring combats—there's a computer you can hack to unlock a door to bypass most of the sewers, and if you make friends with NPCs Yukie and Chunk then max-out Persuasion they'll offer shortcuts too—but boss fights can't be avoided and they really are some bullpucky.

That's because with the right weapons they're trivial, and without them they're ridiculous slogs. They typically come at the end of areas which you don't have any way of backing out of to quickly duck to the shops too, so check in with weapon vendors frequently. Their stock updates after most of the main quest steps. Buy new armor, grab a flamethrower when it appears for sale and, if you haven't looted one from a hunter, get a machine gun. They'll be worth it when you fight the bosses who mutate into warforms like something out of a JRPG.

Bloodlines can be a very 2004 game in some ways, and it still crashed to desktop a couple of times on my last playthrough (F9 is quicksave and you'll need it), but it's worth playing. Its combination of a contemporary setting, so-goth-it-shits-bats atmosphere, and strong character writing make it unique. Until the sequel comes out (fingers crossed), there's nothing else like it.

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[Nvidia's latest driver delivers a healthy DX12 boost for All RTX GPUs]

Along with the brand new RTX 4090, Nvidia released a new driver as you'd expect. The 522.25 driver doesn’t just add RTX 4090 support, but also brings a range of feature and performance updates for RTX 30 series cards as well.

According to a post over at Nvidia’s website, the driver brings some significant DirectX 12 performance improvements for GeForce RTX GPUs. Though the post only talks about RTX 30 cards, presumably some of these benefits apply to RTX 20 cards as well.

Many of the gains are small, but some, like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (1080p) and Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p) deliver 24% and 20% gains respectively. That’s seriously impressive.

According to Nvidia, the improved performance is due to a combination of shader compilation optimization, reduced CPU overhead, and Resizable BAR profiles for some games including Forza Horizon 5 and F1 22.  In the case of F1 22, performance increases are up by 17% at 4K. The reduction in CPU overhead appears to deliver gains in CPU-bound scenarios, which are more likely at 1080p.

Your next upgrade

(Image credit: Future)

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest

The driver also introduces DLSS 3.0 support. Five games have DLSS 3.0 support now, including Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered and Bright Memory: Infinite, with many more to follow, including F1 22 and Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Nvidia refers to its driver releases as ‘game ready’, and they include optimizations and support for newly released games. The newest release includes support for Gotham Knights, Scorn and Uncharted: legacy of Thieves Collection. 

Of course, the new driver supports the mighty RTX 4090. It’s fast and powerful, but also expensive. Check out our RTX 4090 review.

This is the kind of driver that’s well worth downloading. Who doesn’t love free performance? Head over to the Nvidia website if you’re keen to try out this new driver.

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[How to use a PS5 DualSense controller on PC]

The PS5 DualSense is one of the Sony console's greatest strengths, so why not use the PS5 controller on PC, too? We think it's one of the best PC controllers thanks to its advanced haptic motors and 'adaptive' triggers, which make it feel like no other controller I've used before—at least when playing PS5 games that take full advantage of it. The DualSense is easy to use on PC, and some Sony game ports actually bring those advanced features to life on PC. 

And they're not alone: some other PC games, such as Deathloop, Metro Exodus and Assassin's Creed Valhalla, also tap into the DualSense's special features. Thanks to Steam, we can easily use the DualSense controller in virtually any PC game without fussy setup. It just works.

Here's a quick guide on how to use the PS5 DualSense controller on PC, via either wired USB or a wireless Bluetooth connection.

Connecting: Wired or Bluetooth

How do I use DualSense controller on PC?

Wired

This part of setup is a snap. To connect the controller to your PC via USB, you're going to need a USB Type-C to USB-A cable for your PC (or a USB Type-C to Type-C cable if you happen to have a convenient port available). While the PlayStation 5 console comes with one packed in, the DualSense sold by itself doesn't. Bummer! Get your hands on a cable, plug it in, and you're on your way.

If you need to buy a cable, here's a two-pack from Anker for $11.

Bluetooth

To use the DualSense via Bluetooth, you'll need a USB Bluetooth adapter (or a motherboard with Bluetooth built-in). To get connected, open the Bluetooth & other devices menu in Windows by pressing the Windows key and typing 'Bluetooth.' Then click 'Add Bluetooth or other device' and the first item on the next menu that says 'Bluetooth.' Your PC will start searching for available devices.

On the DualSense, hold down the PlayStation logo button and the Share button (the small one to the left of the touchpad) until the LEDs around the touchpad begin flashing rapidly. Within a few seconds, 'Wireless controller' should pop up in your Bluetooth devices list to connect to. Just click on it to finish pairing.

If you need a Bluetooth adapter, you can get a 5.0 model for less than $20.

The DualSense will now be accessible in Windows with its DirectInput driver, which some games will recognize and let you rebind controls. But many PC games today are built around Microsoft's newer XInput driver for the Xbox controllers, so the DualSense will be pretty limited without some help. 

That's where Steam comes in.

Steam setup

How do I setup the DualSense controller in Steam?

Steam added initial support for the DualSense back in November 2020, and has improved support for it since then. Using Steam is by far the easiest way to get your DualSense working on PC, even if you want to use it in non-Steam games.

To start, connect the DualSense to your PC via wire or Bluetooth as described above. Once you have it connected, open Steam and launch Big Picture Mode. You should see the DualSense is now recognized and listed as a PlayStation 5 controller. Steam will automatically configure the keybinds to mimic an Xbox controller layout; the Triangle button is Y, the Square button is X, etc.

You can choose Calibrate to tweak the joystick sensitivity, and Preferences to give the controller a name, enable/disable rumble, and configure the color and brightness of the LED strip around the touchpad.

(Image credit: Steam)

One important tip here: make sure PlayStation Configuration Support is checked if you want to customize your DualSense controller's layout or gyro controls. With this button checked, you can press the PlayStation logo button on the controller in any Steam game to pull up Steam's controller configuration screen.

Reminder: the controller configurator is only available through Steam Big Picture mode.

(Image credit: Steam)

From this screen you can swap button bindings, change how the touchpad works (it can do separate left- and right-clicks) and also configure the gyroscope, if you want to use gyro aiming. You can also configure Action Sets and Action Layers to enable totally different button bindings and then switch to them on the fly in-game. For example, if you only wanted to use gyro controls while in a plane in GTA, you could create an Action Set for that and trigger it by pressing a specific key anytime you hop in a plane.

If you just want your DualSense to work like any ol' gamepad, though, you can leave this screen alone, no tweaking required.

Non-Steam games

How do I use the DualSense controller with non-Steam games?

If you want to use the DualSense in a game that you own on, say, the Epic Games Store, there's a solution that should work for just about anything, even emulators. The easy way to do it: Bring Steam back into the picture. Steam has an 'Add to library' feature for Windows executables that allows you to add other programs to your Steam library, and then make use of the Steam overlay. 

As you can see in the image above, click the 'Games' menu in Steam, then choose the 'Add a Non-Steam game to my library...' option to pull up a list of programs on your PC. In most cases, this should allow you to add a game and use a controller with Steam acting as the intermediary.

DS4Windows is another option

If you prefer to configure the DualSense for non-Steam games without adding those games to your Steam library, wonderful community tool DS4Windows added DualSense support. (Shouldn't it be DS5Windows? Hm, that doesn't sound quite as good).

To use it, connect your controller to PC via USB or Bluetooth as explained above with DS4Windows open, and you should then be able to customize your keybinds, change the LED and monitor the controller's battery level. DS4Windows will let you use the DualSense in any PC game with Xbox controller support.

PC game support

What games use the DualSense controller's features on PC?

You won't have to use Steam to make the DualSense work in all games. In Windows the DualSense uses the generic DirectInput driver, which some games support out of the box. But most games today use Microsoft's newer XInput driver, which is where Steam Input really comes in handy. PCGamingWiki keeps a list of games that use the DualSense features, but here are some highlights that support both Adaptive Triggers and haptic feedback:

• Marvel's Spider-Man
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Deathloop
• Final Fantasy 7 Remake
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla
• Genshin Impact
• Death Stranding
• F1 22
• Ghostwire: Tokyo

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[How to use a Nintendo Switch Pro controller on PC]

Nintendo didn't build the Switch Pro controller for PC gamers, but joke's on them: we're using the Switch Pro controller on PC, anyway. Despite the Switch's portability and the versatility of its joy-cons, the Pro is our preferred way to play: it's a comfortable, nicely weighted controller with excellent battery life. The analog sticks are smooth. The face buttons are generously sized compared to the tiny ones on the joy-cons. If you already own one or are thinking about buying one to replace an old Xbox 360 PC pad, it's a good pick for your next PC controller.

There are a few ways to go about connecting the Switch Pro controller to PC, but using Steam is by far the easiest. If you mainly want a controller to play Steam games, it's nearly as plug-and-play as an Xbox pad. But if you want to play non-Steam games, you'll need the rest of this guide.

Here's how to get your Nintendo Switch Pro controller working in Steam or Windows, via wired USB or Bluetooth. To start, you'll need a Nintendo Switch Pro controller (obviously) and a USB-C cable.

Switch Pro controller: Steam setup

How to use the Switch Pro Controller in Steam

Steam's built-in controller configurator recognizes Nintendo's controller as soon as you plug it in, which makes using the controller a breeze in Steam games. Enabling it is extremely simple. Start by plugging the controller into your PC.

1. Open Steam and the settings menu. Find the Controller tab and open General Controller Settings. You should see a few configuration support options on the left. Naturally, we want to enable Switch Pro Configuration Support.  

If you like your Pro controller with flip-flopped X/Y and A/B buttons, you can also enable the Nintendo button layout so games default to it. If this option is not enabled, your Pro controller will be treated like an Xbox controller. You can also change your controls game-by-game by right-clicking that game in your library, selecting Edit Steam Controller Configuration, and remapping each button.

3. While you're here, take the time to personalize your Switch controller by selecting it under Detected Controllers. If your controller isn't registering properly, start by clicking Identify, then open the controller's preferences. You can change the name, the brightness of the home button's light ring, and whether to use the gyro motion sensor. 

From the controller settings page, you can also calibrate your controller's gyro sensor and joysticks by clicking Calibrate, but you should only calibrate your controller if you run into latency issues. If it ain't broke, don't fix it: if you calibrate before trying your controller in-game, you may actually create a latency problem. If you ever feel the need to calibrate your controller, click Calibrate, set it on a flat surface, and follow the button prompts. 

So, if everything feels right, just save your profile and voila, you're ready to go. Whenever you want to use your controller, be sure to plug it in before opening Steam or any Steam games to prevent any connection issues.  

Switch Pro controller: Non-Steam games

Setting up the Switch Pro Controller for non-Steam games

Using Steam is the really easy way to get this controller working. If you aren't playing games via Steam, using a Switch Pro controller is still an option but it requires a little extra work, particularly for a Bluetooth connection. But the good news is that it's now natively recognized in Windows, which helps speed things up.

The easiest solution for non-Steam games is to actually bring Steam back into the picture. Steam has an "Add to library" feature for Windows executables that allows you to add other programs to your Steam library, and then make use of the Steam overlay. This even works for the Nintendo GameCube/Wii emulator Dolphin!

As you can see in the image above, click the "Games" menu in Steam, then choose the "Add a Non-Steam game to my library..." option to pull up a list of programs on your PC. In most cases, this should allow you to add a game and use a controller with Steam as an intermediary. Hooray!

Switch Pro controller: Bluetooth

How to get Bluetooth working on PC

CONTROLLER SETUP GUIDES

How to use a:
PS4 controller on PC
PS3 controller on PC
Xbox One controller on PC

Here's what you need to start:

Hardware

• Nintendo Switch Pro controller 
• Bluetooth dongle (optional)
• 8Bitdo wireless Bluetooth adapter (optional)

Software 

• BetterJoy (if you don't use the 8Bitdo dongle)

(Image credit: 8Bitdo)

8Bitdo adapter: Easy Bluetooth and XInput support

The $20 8Bitdo Bluetooth adapter helps you bypass most of the finicky setup below by handling the Bluetooth connection and making Windows play nice with the controller without any extra software. It'll make Windows see the controller like it would an Xbox gamepad, and supports the button/joystick inputs and motion controls (but not vibration). As a bonus, this will work on multiple consoles and with tons of other controllers, too, including the Switch Joy Cons, PS4 controller, Wii remotes, and more.

If you don't want to spend the $20, follow the guide below.

The (slightly) harder way: Windows installation guide

You only need to follow these steps if you're not using the Switch Pro Controller through Steam.

1. Plug your Switch Pro controller into the PC with a USB cable. You should be able to use the USB-A to USB-C cable that came with the controller, or you can use a USB-C to USB-C cable, if your PC has the appropriate port. Within a few seconds, Windows 10 should pop up with a new connected device: Pro Controller.

You're most of the way there! But because this is a DirectInput controller (like most gamepads other than the Xbox's), if you aren't using Steam's built-in controller interface, some games won't recognize the controller without some extra software.

2. Download BetterJoy and install it.

BetterJoy is a piece of open source software specifically built to use the Switch Pro controller and joy-cons as generic XInput devices (and to make them easier to use with emulators). 

Unzip BetterJoy, open the folder it created when you unzipped it, and head to the drivers folder within. Install its drivers and reboot as it instructs you to. That's pretty much the install process. Now it's time to connect that controller.

The (slightly) harder way: Windows Bluetooth setup

(Image credit: BetterJoy)

You only need to follow these steps if you want to play wirelessly and chose not to buy the 8Bitdo adapter for Bluetooth connectivity.

Note that if you decide to connect via Bluetooth, without using the 8Bitdo adapter method above, you cannot charge the controller while it's connected, so make sure its battery is topped off before you start.

First, disconnect it from your Switch by holding the small circular button on the top of the controller to the left of the USB-C port. (If your Switch is in the same room as your PC, I recommend turning it off, just to keep your Bluetooth environment clear. We also don't want it to know we're two-timin' it. You can easily reconnect your Pro controller to your Switch via cable.) 

Pull up your Windows Bluetooth settings and start a search for new devices, then press the same small button on the top of your controller one more time. It should automatically pair after 30 seconds to a minute.

Using your Switch Pro controller 

BetterJoy works by reading DirectInput commands as XInput commands, which is what most modern games support. Now that it's installed, your Switch Pro controller should behave like an Xbox 360 controller in most games. But first you have to launch BetterJoy for Cemu (the name of the executable) from its install folder.

Once it's open, click the "Locate" button and it should find your Switch controller if it's paired via Bluetooth. Once connected, you can click Map buttons to change as desired.

And with that you're ready to game: your controller should show up and work in any game that an Xbox controller would.

Not a controller person? Here's a round-up of the best gaming keyboards, and best gaming mouse.

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[Crossplay tensions simmer as Overwatch 2 controller players discover aim assist is disabled against PC]

When Overwatch received crossplay last year, Blizzard made a few uncommon decisions about how PC and console players would play together. First, it's not an automatic process: unlike most other crossplay shooters, the only way for PC and console players to meet is when console players join a PC player’s group. Second: when console players do make it into a PC player lobby, aim assist on controllers is switched off.

With a new surge of Overwatch 2 players entering the mix, some console players are just now discovering the absence of aim assist when playing with PC friends (as spotted by Kotaku), and they're not happy about it.

"For some, it’s just an obstacle, but others just find less enjoyment out of the game being disadvantaged this way," wrote Reddit user KellySweetHeart. "It’s a total bummer because PC players already perform better on average, so it hits like a double whammy."

A year ago, I would've agreed that disabling aim assist for console players makes no sense. The accepted truth is that controller players are at a massive disadvantage even with aim assist on. Today, I'm convinced it's less cut-and-dry. The power of aim assist has become a point of tension in some of the most popular FPSes in the world. In Apex Legends, some PC players and influencers argue that controller players actually have the upper hand when it comes to close-range firefights. It's true that Apex and Warzone's aim assists can be tuned to produce tracking so good that it resembles Soldier: 76's actual aimbot ultimate ability.

If I saw aiming like that from a mouse player, I'd strongly consider they're cheating. It's also true that in both games, PC players have key advantages themselves—a much higher average framerate, more settings, and better camera control, to name a few. And while aggressive aim assist can be dominant at close range, mouse players have a clear advantage in long-range engagements where precision crosshair placement is crucial and controller assists are weaker.

But not every assist is created equal. Overwatch 2's aim tracking is, in my experience, less dramatic than Apex or CoD, but still consequential. Most gunfights happen from 20-30 meters away and maps generally aren't big enough for long range sniper battles. Overwatch 2 also has a roster of 30+ heroes who play completely differently from each other—some don’t need to aim at all. The benefits of aim assist depend on what hero you're playing.

Ask a dedicated Overwatch console player which settings are most important and aim assist will probably top the list. Overwatch's controller settings have six sliders and buttons dedicated to fine-tuning aim assist, including options to increase the size of the invisible "bubble" around a character in which your crosshair will stick to them. This stickiness is hard to miss if you're jumping and wallriding around as Lúcio while trying to shoot his dubstep gun accurately. Tracking sporadic enemy movements while also accounting for your own acrobatics is the basis of Lúcio's skill ceiling—PC players practice for hundreds of hours to get really good at it.

On an aim-assisted controller, it's a different experience. It's still difficult to stay accurate with Lucio, but aim assist eases the significant burden of tracking enemies through the air. Meanwhile, it's clear to me that sniper roles like Widowmaker and Ashe have it much better on mouse.

how_rotational_aim_assist_works from r/CODWarzone

Earlier this year, my PC decided to stop working. I was without a desktop for the first time in years and desperate to play games with friends, I booted up console Overwatch. I became the controller player in a sea of PC tryhards and it was surprisingly fine. I couldn't really tell aim assist wasn't there and I did about as well as I usually do on controller. That's not a high bar, but I managed to score medals on heroes I thought would be disastrous like Soldier: 76.

Obviously I don't speak for everyone—KellySweetHeart says their controller peeps have experienced a "significant dip in their aim consistency." We do agree that if Overwatch 2 flipped on aim assist in console/PC lobbies tomorrow, probably not much would change. It's important to remember that controller/mouse players meeting in the first place is already an edge case. You have to opt into it by grouping up with a PC friend. PC/console crossplay is also disabled in Competitive mode. So does it really matter if the occasional enemy Lúcio has an easier time tracking players than I would? I'd still rather be the mouse player in that scenario.

Platform fairness is a bigger problem than a single game can solve. Some studios have decided to design around the problem while others are turning into the skid. Apex and Warzone have full controller aim assist and don't seem to be budging. Overwatch thinks aim assist doesn't belong in PC lobbies and turns it off. Rainbow Six Siege has zero aim assist but, recognizing the skill disparity between console and PC, leaves PC players out of crossplay entirely.

It's fascinating to see Blizzard take a stance on platform fairness that challenges the norm. To implement crossplay is to invite some amount of imbalance—controller play will always feel different than a mouse, just as an apple will always taste different from an orange. In the official ranked mode or not, Overwatch 2 is a competitive FPS, and settings that even partially automate a core skill for some players and not others isn't strictly balanced.

We've been inching toward this problem since crossplay started showing up in every game in 2018. Players are increasingly skeptical that aim assist is the 'great equalizer' that makes it all work. It's not, but ironically, I think it does work pretty well in Overwatch 2.

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[Yu-Gi-Oh! creator died while attempting to rescue drowning swimmers, US military says]

The United States military says Yu-Gi-Oh! creator Kazuki Takahashi, whose death was reported in July, was killed while attempting to assist in the rescue of three people who were caught in a rip current in a popular diving spot near Okinawa.

A report published by the US military news outlet Stars and Stripes says the incident took place on July 4, when Major Robert Bourgeau of the 10th Support Group at Torii Station, who is also a scuba instructor, spotted a woman calling for help for her 11-year-old daughter and a US soldier. The pair had become trapped in a rip current, apparently while snorkeling about 100 meters from the shore.

Bourgeau and one of his scuba students moved through shallow water to attempt a rescue; he was able to bring out the girl and her mother, who had also been pulled into the current, while the soldier was ultimately able to reach the shore on his own.

"The conditions were really, really rough," Bourgeau said.

Somewhere during all of this, the 60-year-old Takahashi entered the water in order to assist with the rescue. Bourgeau said he didn't see the Yu-Gi-Oh! creator, but his students did, multiple times, until he disappeared under the water. The Japanese Coast Guard would not confirm the report, but Stars and Stripes said Takahashi's actions were detailed in "several sworn witness statements provided by the Army."

"He's a hero," Bourgeau said. "He died trying to save someone else."

Bourgeau has been nominated for the Soldier's Medal for his role in the rescue.

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['Strange things began to happen'—how a Ukrainian studio lost its game, saw it botted to hell, and saved it]

There are so many games on Steam it's impossible to get your head around the sheer number of them. I look at Steam nearly every day of my life, I check the charts and the new releases, sometimes I dig a little deeper on the data: but there's so much that you could keep going forever. No wonder stuff just gets lost.

Robowars feels like one of those games most players will never hear of. There isn't much exceptional about this old tower defence game (good name though) which is, shall we say, heavily inspired by Plants vs. Zombies and was first released in 2014. There is something unusual about it though: around two years ago it disappeared.

And then, a few days ago, it suddenly reappeared. What gives? Sounds like the publisher's bank balance did, and maybe more.

"It wasn't easy, but we did it," writes Robowars developer N-Game Studios, which is based in the Ukrainian town of Dnepr and has been operating since 2002. "Several years ago we lost contact with our publisher. It was quite insulting and frustrating to watch what happens with the game and not be able to somehow influence it! Also, we didn't receive any sales reports and royalties for some years."

During this time N-Game was in the dark about what was happening, and later learned the publisher was going through bankruptcy proceedings, as part of which the game was removed from Steam. Now, the studio has been able to recover the rights to Robowars and return it to Steam.

To celebrate, N-Game says,"we have prepared an updated build that fixes several critical bugs and improves game balance and localization." N-Game adds it is "grateful to the Steam team for helping us get the game back on sale." It has also slashed the game's price to a quarter of the original because "it seems to be fair", and no doubt because many of the negative Steam reviews are mostly about the price.

Robowars was published initially by a company called Lace Games, then by a company called Kiss Ltd., not to be confused with Kiss Publishing Limited (incorporated in 2017). Or is it? The old Kiss Steam page is dead but it appears the Youtube still posts the odd video, and the SteamDB entry for the publisher lists games published before and after 2017.

Darryl Still co-founded and was/is CEO of both Kiss Ltd in 2012, and Kiss Publishing Limited in 2017. The bankruptcy appears to have happened in 2017. I've contacted Mr. Still via the most recent company contact address to ask some questions about Kiss (or the Kisses, if you prefer), and will update with any response. He's had 24 hours though, so don't hold your breath.

I contacted N-Game Studios to ask about what was going on, and CEO Gleb Sokolov spoke to us.

"It's really quite a confusing story! All of this started back in the spring of 2014, when I received an email from a Lace Games producer," said Sokolov. "He suggested that we publish our game Robowars on Steam, which at that time was only released as a browser game and only in Russian.

"The publisher took over the localization and promotion [...] Conditions looked good, we signed a contract with Lace Games and started porting the game. It took about six months. Everything was done without attracting any investment or funding. Therefore, some moments looked very budgetary, but we didn't lose our enthusiasm."

This is what life at the coalface really looks like. It's important to remember what an achievement it is to get a game on Steam, and that in this case Robowars was a small studio's chance to reach more players. I used to work in the literary world and indie games publishing works on much the same business model as poetry books: a handful will sell absolute gangbusters, but most won't sell-through an initial print run of a few hundred copies. Every game is a small bet for these publishers, in other words, and lord willing some of them pay off big.

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By October that year the game was ready, and had been reviewed and approved by Valve. "The release took place on October 24, 2014," said Sokolov. "But then some oddities began. The publisher (more precisely, the publishers, since KISS ltd was added to Lace Games) interpreted the concept of game promotion in a very peculiar way. In fact, their participation was reduced to the distribution of keys to those journalists and YouTubers who themselves wrote to us and wanted to review the game."

Being lazy about PR is one thing, but things got shadier. "In addition, very significant (in thousands of copies) discrepancies in sales statistics between the official reports (which the publisher sent us in the form of Excel tables) and the popular SteamSpy site at that time were outlined almost immediately. The publisher attributed this to the inaccuracy of SteamSpy, but refused to give direct access to Steam statistics (citing technical difficulties). However, even from those sales that the publisher officially showed, we received royalties. Even if not the amounts that were expected, but, in the end, Robowars began to bring us, albeit a small, profit!"

Technical difficulties. I am currently wearing my 'doubt' face. Every so often an indie developer talks about a story like this and, take it from someone who's looked into a lot of them, often it's a bit half-and-half. The developer will say the publisher didn't do X, Y, and Z, then you get in touch with the publisher and they say the developer didn't do A, B and C to get there. But this was a case of a released game where the publisher would have had access to the on-site Steam stats yet, somehow, couldn't share them other than in the form of an Excel spreadsheet.

"Mass distribution of keys to users was organized (some of which were very reminiscent of bots). A lot of strange reviews began to appear."

Gleb Sokolov

Despite the game not being a big "success story", Sokolov says, the team was happy it had made a good product and released it on a major platform. Then shortly afterwards the publisher went completely dark. From summer 2015 onwards, the studio stopped receiving sales reports (which in the contract were supposed to be delivered every month). The publisher's staff stopped responding to emails.

"A few months later, I managed to contact the former accountant of KISS ltd, who told me about the liquidation of the company and the dismissal of its employees," said Sokolov. "We tried to take back control of Robowars, but it was decidedly not clear with whom to negotiate."

N-Game remains a going concern now, and so there was other work to be done. After not making any progress in trying to re-acquire the rights, Sokolov and his team had to move it down the priority list and focus on the future. But, of course, they kept an eye on it.

"Interestingly, strange things began to happen to the game later," said Sokolov. "The new (but is it new?) owner of the publisher's account dramatically increased marketing activity. Mass distribution of keys to users was organized (some of which were very reminiscent of bots). A lot of strange reviews began to appear. Keys also appeared on sale on third-party resources. But, since the publisher didn't have source codes, it still couldn't support and develop the game without our participation (and didn't want to, apparently)."

Sokolov says the team was "very disappointed with all this", particularly the fact it couldn't improve the game, but "life doesn't stand still [and] for several years we forgot about this story."

Then in the summer of 2020, Robowars disappeared from Steam entirely.

"This prompted us to take decisive action," said Sokolov. "I did a real investigation and found out who is the legal successor of our (now definitely former!) publisher. I found the contact of this person in the social network and contacted him. I told him the whole story and offered to solve the problem in the following way: they return the rights and control over the game to us, and we will not bring claims against them in connection with the violation of the contract terms. So, we came to an agreement and Robowars formally returned back to us, its creators."

The game was still, however, tied to the Kiss Ltd. Steam account. "Fortunately, the Steam team was sympathetic to our situation," said Sokolov. "They helped us transfer Robowars from the former publisher's account to our own account without losing player data, stats, etc. By the way, thanks to this, some more curious details surfaced: for example, we learned that the former publisher created more than 200,000 (!) activation keys for our game. We can only guess what happened to the game all this time."

I suspect Sokolov can do a lot more than guess, and it's easy to see why Robowars may have been an attractive bait for what looks like something like cheap mass ad campaigns and questionable botting support. The name alone kind of works. Robowars may not be the kind of game that jumps out at you. But imagine you'd made it, and were watching all this happen.

"After all these strange years, the game is back on Steam. And it feels like maybe we are back with it."

Gleb Sokolov

At least, for those who did make it, there's something of a happy ending. "This year we finally decided it was time for Robowars to return to Steam," said Sokolov. "It must have been some kind of inspiration. In addition, we have been thinking about developing a sequel to the game for several years. Therefore, we didn't simply return the old build "as is". We had community feedback and our own thoughts on what could be improved in the game.

"Therefore, for the return of the game, we have prepared an updated build. Then, we contacted Valve again, as they had to return the game to the sale. And it finally happened."

Robowars has returned, after a drama that most of its lifetime players will never know about, better than ever. The Steam reviews over the years for an unsupported title have been, unsurprisingly, somewhat negative: though a lot also say they enjoyed it but found it too expensive for what it was. The new version and lower price should help with that, at least, even if a 2014 tower defence game is unlikely to make a grand comeback.

"Surprisingly, despite a large amount of negative feedback on the game's page, the overall response from the community was positive to the return of Robowars," says Sokolov. "After all these strange years, the game is back on Steam. And it feels like maybe we are back with it.

"Here we have such an unusual story."

It is an unusual story, and thanks to Gleb Sokolov for telling it. Players think about the games industry in a slightly skewed manner, which is understandable because these are the stories we are told. Everything's a success or it's a disaster. In reality most of the stories are in the middle, they slip under the radar, and no-one pays much attention to a licensing dispute about a tower defence game from some eastern European studio. But perhaps the way Kiss Ltd. acted around this suggests we should: after all, how many other Robowars are out there?

Business is business and there's no suggestion that Kiss or any of its decision-makers did anything wrong in going through bankruptcy and re-starting: this kind of thing happens a lot. What does seem off is how N-Game was left in limbo by the publisher, how the deal it signed meant it had no control over what was happening with the game, and above all else those sales reports. No one is likely to see any justice here though.

When I first looked at this story, watched the Robowars launch trailer and downloaded it and started poking around, I admit I was dismissive in that way we sometimes are about something a little generic, something we've seen before.

Now I'm looking at the little Robowars icon in my Steam library with a smile, and feeling like I should meet it halfway. Every creation is someone's baby, after all. And when you hear how Sokolov and N-Game fought for it, and returned so many years later, you can't help but be more enamoured of a game that someone out there really cared for.

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[CD Projekt is helping Stadia players rescue their save files from annihilation]

The surprise dissolution of Stadia (which, to be clear, won't actually happen until January) has left users and developers alike scrambling to respond. Google is offering refunds on Stadia hardware and software purchases, which is definitely a good move, but it's not much help for people who own a game on Stadia and want to keep playing it somewhere else.

Ubisoft, IO Interactive, Bungie, and Tequila Works have all said they're looking into other options for their players on the platform, and now CD Projekt has weighed in with instructions on transferring Cyberpunk 2077 saved games from Stadia to other platforms.

The first half of the process is basically just a rundown of how to use Google Takeout, a tool that enables users to export the data in their Google accounts in order to back it up or use it with an external service. It's pretty basic stuff:

1. Open takeout.google.com.
2. In "Create a new export" section click "Deselect all" and select "Stadia". Press "Next Step" to continue.
3. Choose your preferred destination and “Export once” frequency. Choose ".zip" file type and "2 GB" size. Press "Create Export".
4. Download the export from the destination chosen in the previous step.

Once you've done that, you'll want to extract the archive and then navigate to .../Takeout/Stadia/GAMING/GAME_SAVE. The files for each saved game will be inside their own individual archives—extract those into a separate folder for each, then copy those folders and paste them to %userprofile%\Saved Games\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077. 

When you're done, it should look like this:

(Image credit: CD Projekt)

That's some classic old-time PC gaming horseplay, and really not a big deal as these things go. If you want to play on console, however, there are a couple of extra steps required: After getting the Stadia save downloaded and copied onto your PC, you'll need to start the game with the Red Launcher, enable cross-platform saves, load the Stadia save onto your PC, and then save the game. That should automatically sync the save file with the cloud, which you can then access on your console, as long as you're logged into the same GOG account.

It's not clear when CD Projekt updated the page with this new information, but it does appear that some effort was required to make the PC version of the game compatible with Stadia saves (or vice versa, as the case may be). An archived version of the page from March 2022 states that while it is possible to download your save files using Google Takeout, "Stadia saves are incompatible with other platforms. It is not possible to upload the downloaded save files into Stadia, as well as to use save files from Stadia on other platforms."

Google announced in September that Stadia is closing down for good on January 18, 2023: Stadia general manager Phil Harrison said the platform "hasn't gained the tractiion with users that we expected."

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[I didn't create a disaster in this complex spaceship colony sim: It started that way]

On my massive starship deep in outer space, I've just received a notification that someone named Estrella "Apricot" Devilla has joined my colony. Typically in a colony management game, a new arrival is great news. An addition to the group means a new set of hands to perform tasks, new skills in the labor pool, and sometimes even some compelling personality traits. Will Apricot become my new favorite colonist?

To put it bluntly: No. In the opening hours of starship colony sim Stardeus, Apricot's arrival is actually terrible news because my ship currently consists mostly of debris and shattered hull walls. Apricot didn't arrive here on a shuttle, she awoke from a malfunctioning cryosleep pod which shouldn't have opened until we'd landed on a habitable planet. The cryo chamber has no food, no heat, no oxygen, and is exposed to the void of space through several hull breaches. Habitable planet? I don't even have a habitable bedroom yet.

Apricot stands in the cryo chamber for less than a second before realizing she can't breathe, then runs through an open door into an adjoining room which also has no air. Her health plummeting, she desperately sprints into a third room just in time to fall to the floor dead.

Um. Welcome to the colony? As the starship's manager I stare in horror at Apricot's first few moments and final few moments (they're the same moments). I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that while my colony ship is a complete disaster, it's not a disaster I created: The scenario I'm playing begins that way, with the ship smashed to pieces following an unknown catastrophe.

A less comforting thought: there are almost 900 more colonists in cryosleep in the same room, and any of them could potentially wake up at any time. I really, really need to sort this place out.

Hardspace: Ship-broken

Stardeus is inspired by games like RimWorld and Factorio, a top-down colony building and management sim with some pretty deep systems to manage, everything from power to temperature to oxygen levels to pressurization as your ship drifts through the void of space. Your workforce consists of a handful of drones, and once you've repaired, rebuilt, and researched new technology on your ship, you can eventually add guidance systems and engines and visit asteroids, planets, and solar systems. Deeper into the game there are space pirates, traders, shuttle expeditions, and hazards like asteroid strikes and raiding parties.

(Image credit: Paradox Arc)

I have no idea where the giant spiders came from.

That's a long way off for me: I'm still trying to accomplish the basics like restoring power and sealing off the cryo room from the vacuum of space. I've got my drones cannibalizing part of my busted ship so they'll have the resources to repair the rest of it, literally tearing up floors for scrap metal to burn as fuel in my reactor. It feels like the desperate end of a campaign rather than the hopeful beginning of one, but I have managed to connect the cryosleep room to my main generator and computer, linking it with a long line of electrical conduits, so at least the next time someone wakes up and suffocates to death… I don't know, the lights will be on? Maybe that'll be nicer for them?

Speaking of which, before Apricot woke up and promptly died I'd noticed there was already a troubling amount of corpses of other colonists who had earlier woken up and promptly died. Even more troubling, somehow, is that among the human corpses are the corpses of giant spiders. I have no idea where the giant spiders came from—surely I don't have giant spiders in cryosleep pods, because why would that be a thing—but the silver lining is that my colony is such a complete disaster that even giant alien bugs can't survive here. 

While I'm salvaging one part of the ship to rebuild the other part of the ship, I have one of my spare drones stack the dead spiders in another room just in case their bodies prove useful somehow for research (or a food source). I don't feel quite as comfortable doing that with the human corpses, so I have the drone just dump them into space, where they unfortunately just float right alongside the ship. Remind me not to build any windows on that side, I guess. Still, I'm feeling more positive: now when a colonist wakes up and dies they won't be staring at a pile of well-lit corpses while it happens.

Sole survivor

(Image credit: Paradox Arc)

No one else wakes up while I finish repairing and replacing walls and powering electronic doors around the cryo room. My fragile human cargo also requires a breathable atmosphere, and I've been researching an oxygen pump for, frankly, days now. Researching in Stardeus takes quite a long time, which is in some ways frustrating but feels sort of realistic. I don't love the long wait for my robots to discover how to create products, but I respect it. It's a complicated piece of machinery, so it probably would take quite a while to figure it out. 

But even with walls and floors and sealed doors and oxygen flowing, the room remains unpressurized. Finally I stumble on the solution, noticing there's an "airtightness" overlay I can toggle. This lets me see any spots on the ship where oxygen leaks may be occurring, and even in this room I've been working on for ages, there are many. A tiny crack in a floor panel here, a powered but damaged air vent there, several sections of hull that aren't 100%. Cripes, humans require a lot of engineering to not die horribly.

(Image credit: Paradox Arc)

Finally, days into my mission, with about a dozen corpses floating alongside my ship, my cryosleep chamber is sealed airtight, has power and air, and can actually support human life. As if to celebrate, a colonist named Bork wakes up and doesn't immediately begin running around in a panic while he suffocates. There's no time to celebrate my success: Having a living colonist means I'll need to feed him and probably provide things like furniture, hygiene, and entertainment, but after looking through the tech tree the only nutrition-based item I've unlocked is a dog food bowl. An empty dog food bowl. I start researching biotechnology so I can generate some food, but feeling a little bad for Bork, who is going to have quite a while to wait, I go ahead and build the dog food bowl in the room. He doesn't seem impressed, but at least he isn't dead. Yet.

A few hours in I've only barely scratched the surface of Stardeus but it already feels like a pretty deep and complex colony sim, which is especially impressive coming from solo developer Kodo Linija. Stardeus is in Early Access on Steam (published by Paradox Arc) where the dev expects it to remain for the next 2-3 years. In the meantime, colony sim fans should definitely keep it at the top of their lists. Colonists, on the other hand, should approach it with extreme caution. 

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[Todd Howard reveals Starfield's persuasion system: 'It feels like it's part of the dialog']

Bethesda Softworks executive producer Todd Howard shared more about the studio's upcoming outer space epic Starfield in a recent video chat, including a look at the game's persuasion system and whether or not he considers it "hard sci-fi."

Hard science fiction, in a very broad sense, is sci-fi that commits heavily to scientific accuracy. The definition is unavoidably subjective to some extent, but Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, for instance, takes great pains to think through stuff like soil composition, astrophysics, and chemistry in ways that impact the plot; Star Wars, on the other hand, doesn't go out of its way to explain lightsabers. In the case of Starfield, Howard said that "it is more 'hard' to us" but added that it's a videogame first and foremost, and so concessions have to be made.

"We were really into fuel and how the gravity drive works," Howard says in the video. "And I'm reading papers on quantum physics and bending space in front of you—you don't actually warp, you bend the space, you bring the space toward you—and so we were playing that and it became very punitive to the player. Your ship would run out of fuel and the game would just stop."

Because of that, developers recently changed the design so ships cannot run out of fuel—instead, ships will be limited to how far they can travel in a single run.

Howard also said that Starfield has gone back to "a classic Bethesda-style dialog" system, albeit in a much larger scale than in previous games—more than 250,000 lines of dialog in total—and with a revamped persuasion system. Howard previously touched on the persuasion system back in May, saying it "feels like you're having a conversation where you're actually trying to persuade somebody of something," but this is the first time we've seen it in action.

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

"It feels like it's part of the dialog, but you're spending points to persuade [NPCs]," Howard said. "Feels natural. Not like I've entered some other mode where we're not—I'm not doing regular dialog. I'm in this mode of persuading you to get what I want."

Starfield had been set to come out on November 11 but following a delay in May is now expected out sometime in the first half of 2023.

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[CNN faces accusations of an NFT rug pull]

CNN's foray into the world of NFTs has come to an untimely end with an announcement that Vault, which promised to let users "collect NFTs of historic CNN moments and artistic representations," is closing.

"The Vault team is honored to have partnered with amazing journalists, producers, artists, photojournalists, and collectors from all over the world during our time together, but we have decided that it's time to say goodbye to Vault by CNN," Vault said in a message posted on Twitter.

"Vault was originally launched as a six-week experiment, but the support and engagement from our community let us expand this project into something much larger. Thank you to each of you for your interest and engagement in what we built together."

Vault was launched in June 2021 as a repository for "digital collectibles"—NFTs—drawn from CNN's archives. The plan was to begin with six weekly drops including "key historical moments organized around specific themes including early CNN exclusives, world history, and Presidential Elections," followed by future drops featuring a wider range of topics.

"Tokenholders will be able to showcase and display their Moments on a user page in the Vault," the Vault website states. "Some limited edition sets will include a premium video display case that will render a physical representation of the Moment on a screen."

Naturally, there was also a promise of money to be made: CNN said Vault would "experiment with a variety of selling formats including both open editions and limited editions."

This is the sort of thing CNN was offering for sale:

(Image credit: CNN)

CNN said in the announcement that while Vault will no longer be developed or maintained, "the Vault NFT collection will live on." Unsurprisingly, not all owners of CNN NFTs found that statement satisfying. Multiple responses on Twitter accused CNN of a "rug pull," a term used to describe scammers who promote an NFT but then take the money and run. 

It's a bit of a stretch to ascribe that to CNN, which clearly isn't relying on NFTs sales to cover the bills: It's on track to earn nearly $1 billion in profit in 2022—and take note, that is the network's worst performance since 2016 and apparently a cause for alarm, because the world in which we live is fundamentally broken. More to the point, everyone involved got what they paid for. Vault is going away but the NFTs will continue to exist, at least as much as NFTs can be said to exist at all.

But other complaints about CNN characterizing Vault as a six-week experiment that ran its course are harder to shrug off. In fact, the 2022 roadmap is still posted on the Vault documentation site, promising everything from a new Photography for Change series of NFTs to "exclusive CNN perks for Vault collectors" and the ability to mint NFTs based on any CNN article you want.

News of our own to share pic.twitter.com/qcxaDXNRYOOctober 10, 2022

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It's not going much better on the Vault Discord, where complaints of a rug pull and demands for refunds (and occasional threats of legal action) are common. Partial refunds apparently will be offered: Details will be announced later but Vault Discord admin Jason said in a message that they will be offered as either Flow or stablecoins valued at approximately 20% of the original mint price for each NFT owned. That hasn't gone over especially well either.

"20% is way low," one Discord user wrote. "75% or higher. I will reach out to my lawyer this week. Six week experiment was never conveyed to us."

"Literally a joke," another replied. "It's all goin' to zero once you guys shut down."

One user indirectly (and perhaps unintentionally) suggested that the relatively low refund offering is due to the fact that people aren't really losing anything. Vault NFTs will remain accessible and tradeable on Flow-compatible NFT marketplaces even after Vault itself is gone. That's good news for people who want to keep their digital collectibles (and some people in the Vault Discord said they'll continue to treasure them as such) but the worry for 'investors' is that the end of Vault will make it more difficult to turn a profit on Vault NFTs in the future. 

"As an investor I don't know if I can expect to break even in a few years," the Discord user wrote. "Is CNN able to share why they think 20% is fair b/c to me that implies they hopefully think we can break even or make profits within a few years right? if not then this seems like a rug pull. What optimism are they basing the rebate percentage on?"

I've reached out to Vault administrators for more information on the refund offering, and will update if I receive a reply.

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