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505 Games has announced that Kojima Productions' Death Stranding is coming to Game Pass for PC on August 23.
In a press release, 505 Games stated that "The original version of Hideo Kojima's critically acclaimed and genre-defying epic lands on the Microsoft ecosystem for the first time, available to audiences who are subscribed to the PC version of Xbox Game Pass".
The crucial phrase in the above sentence is "The original version", implying that the Game Pass version does not include the improvements and additions made by Kojima Productions in Death Stranding Director's Cut. This includes new story missions, weapons, delivery equipment, and combat mechanics.
This could be due to existing licensing agreements between Kojima Productions and Sony. Director's Cut launched on PS4 and PS5 in September 2021, and while the upgrade was made available on Steam in March this year, it's possible that there's an existing console exclusivity deal that prevents the upgrade being released on Microsoft's platform – the kind of deal that Microsoft rather provocatively referred to as blocking fees. Alternatively, it could just be that Kojima Productions doesn't want to make absolutely everything Death Stranding available to Game Pass players.
Either way, vanilla Death Stranding isn't exactly light on things to do. Kojima Productions' epic, which sees you playing as post-apocalyptic delivery-man Sam Porter Bridges, is both vast in scope and incredibly mechanically rich, with all manner of systems and gizmos that help you build pathways and delivery networks across its stunning recreation of Icelandic landscapes (which is supposed to represent a shattered United States). PC Gamer alumnus Andy Kelly found its story a bit indulgent in his review, but was fond of the game more generally, stating "every misgiving I have about it is ultimately snuffed out by the magnificence of hiking across that sweeping, rugged wilderness."
Kojima Productions will deliver Death Stranding onto Game Pass this coming Tuesday, specifically at 5pm Pacific Time. That's 1am for us Brits. Much as I like Death Stranding, I'd wait until a more sensible time to start playing, as you probably won't even finish the introduction before the sun comes up.
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Chuhai Labs co-founder Giles Goddard thinks minimum settings are going out of fashion. A veteran of Nintendo in Japan who has worked on everything from Amiga and N64 to Wii and Oculus Quest, he's noticed a change over the years with regard to developing for different PC specifications. "It used to be that the developers would aim for the lowest spec, and they'd make it look great on that, regardless of anything," he says. "And then, if you had a faster PC or graphics board, you could put more bells and whistles on top for post-processing effects or whatever, but only to make what was already there nicer-looking.
"I think nowadays, because everybody's got a [powerful computer] the bar is so high that all the AAA makers are basically just aiming for the highest spec PCs. They're assuming that if you're going to pay that much for the game, you're also going to pay a lot for your gaming setup [so] obviously, they spend a lot of money, time, and effort making the games as great as possible on those machines. I don't think it's really in their interest any more to aim for the lower spec. It definitely used to be the priority, I think, maybe ten or twenty years ago."
(Image credit: Sega)
High life, low spec
These shifting priorities are reflected, Goddard suggests, in the way games are discussed and reported on. "It used to be quite a hot topic—if you turn on these settings on this PC with these specs you can get these kind of graphics. It used to be in all the reviews and all the magazines, how to get the most out of this game. And that's just not talked about—you just assume it's going to be max settings."
"That goes with my experience of this sort of stuff," agrees Terry Goodwin, technical director at Lab42, whose projects include the PC versions of Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami. Studios that specialise in porting tend to feel it most when clients neglect lower spec hardware. "Especially with developers that are very PC-focused, even if their goal is not to make the most amazing-looking game, they often don't think about the low end at all, which is a problem for us when they come along and say they want a Switch version, or whatever." On PC especially, he says, "Optimisation is not as considered as much as it probably should be."
One reason it's a fine time to pay more attention to lower spec gaming is that it's better for the environment. Playing with the settings turned down tends to consume less electricity, though newer components may be more energy-efficient in themselves, and supporting older hardware is obviously more sustainable. Developing for cheaper components also makes games more inclusive—an important extension of conversations about diverse representation or creating accessibility options for players with disabilities. But the simpler point is that tailoring and optimising a game for leaner PCs involves a lot of craft that tends to be disregarded amid the industry's endless arms race for the cutting edge. It's every bit as much a 'feat of technology' as capitalising on the latest rendering techniques.
Take your benchmarks
Choosing and developing for a minimum specification is a complicated battle that, ideally, begins on the very first day of production. "When you set up a production, you set up budgets, right?" says Hjalmar Vikström, co-founder and game design director at 10 Chambers, developer of horror squad shooter GTFO. "So the financial budgets, of course, but then you have performance budgets, memory, RAM, some kind of performance goal for certain hardware. And that's basically where that whole thing starts. What's the target audience, what's the low spec and the recommended spec? And what you do then is you test for that all the time.
"If [any single] team is responsible for the low spec, that would be the delivery team in our company, or what you would call QA." But adhering to those target specifications is a task for everybody. "There's always a big combination of QA, programming, technical artists, and render programmers and system programmers, a whole big team effort to make the game perform. In any production I've been on, performance is a concept you always work on, because when a game is not performing, the rest of the experience is suffering."
(Image credit: 10 Chambers)Hence, among other things, GTFO's marvellous fog, which blends and accommodates the needs of artists, narrative designers and programmers. One one level it's a homage to Alien's murky corridors; on another, a way of avoiding 'load steps' or incremental environment loading, to keep the framerate up and minimise work for artists. "So performance is a thing, and the visual inspiration comes from Alien, and we're a small team with limitations on our art pipeline—all that comes together to create a plan. Fog is not there for performance, but [...] it fits together and we leverage that as much as we can." Some players miss the point here, Vikström adds, assuming that the fog exists simply to lessen the load on the game's engine. "The fog in GTFO is so much more than just a vision limiter, it's a mood setter, right? So sometimes I get the question, can you disable the fog? And I'm like, 'No, you're basically disabling half the game.'"
For a small team like 10 Chambers, testing for things that threaten the target specifications can be practically a horror game itself. "A simple chair could be low res in polygons, but then accidentally have a super high res shadow mesh, or something like that. It's a simple problem to fix, but first, somebody needs to find that. So you need to have an analytic toolset to evaluate the complexity of the meshes. Do some kind of filtering to see if, oh, there's a shadow mesh here with tens of thousands of polygons or triangles—that doesn't make sense. Or maybe the test is automated, and then maybe somebody needs to add safeguards, but it could also be that our render programmer needs to optimise the order in which things are rendered, or an assistant programmer needs to make sure that chairs are never rendered if they're behind a door."
It might sound more sensible to focus on honing an optimum look and framerate, then dialling things back for less powerful systems down the road, but this can be catastrophic, Vikström says. "It's really hard to go down in quality after years of production. You need to plan for low spec straight away, and constantly work towards it. Because after a couple of years, if you don't do that, it just becomes too big of a hurdle. And then your low spec slowly creeps up until it's meeting your high spec."
(Image credit: Focus Entertainment)Setting expectations
While he feels that developers today disregard lower spec machines, Goddard also suggests that today's players have more ways of customising their PC games today. "You have settings for everything, like turning the rain on and off. I think it's become more a question of personal preference, rather than whether your PC can handle it, and I think people expect to have the control. Because maybe they have really specced-out their PC and they know exactly what it can do. Whereas in the old days, it was basically choosing low, medium or high, and the game would decide what to turn off and on."
This certainly encapsulates Lab42's approach to porting Yakuza. "A lot of the time, designing settings isn't a matter of making those things exist, but exposing them," Goodwin comments. "[For Yakuza] we looked at what was in the engine, and just made a slider and graphics option for literally everything that was going on." The studio repurposed the game's level-of-detail system, for example. "Where things that are far away render at reduced detail—it's quite trivial to use that system as a graphics feature, which is what we did for geometry. If it's lower then we force the lower [detail] ones, if it's higher than we turn on the higher ones all the time, or if there's particularly attractive visuals in a cutscene, I think we added a setting where you can use cutscene models for the main characters in the rest of the game."
Lab42 added a few computing-intensive options for beefier systems, such as supersampling anti-aliasing, which renders graphics at a higher resolution than your screen, then squashes them down to smooth out edges. But Lab42 was also keen to support older computers by, for instance, accommodating processors that don't support the latest SSEs or Streaming SIMD Extensions (essentially, instructions for how your PC thinks). "We went in and rewrote everything to work with the second set of instructions, implementing all of the stuff from the third set in the second set, so that it launched on all the machines—that was important to us, because we wanted to let everybody run it."
(Image credit: Sega)Minimum's the word
The intricacy of solutions like these reveals that optimising a game to work on older or cheaper PCs isn't just about selling to a larger audience. There's a playfulness to it, with different settings giving rise to different aesthetics within the game's overall direction. It's not just about making compromises, but experimenting with the look, sound and feel of the simulation.
To design for lower specifications can, moreover, be an exercise in time travel. "Talking about SSAA in Yakuza, we did enjoy that you could really crunch down the resolution, but keep the UI sharp, so it looked like a PS1 game or whatever," Goodwin says. "Stuff like that was fun to do." GTFO, similarly, resembles a totally different game when you drop the resolution and peel off the UI. "I really enjoy that you can do that—hide the UI, go down to 720p or below, and get this old-style Quake feeling," Vikström enthuses. This is, of course, especially the case for games that openly try to bridge old and new in their narrative or visual concept, such as Trigger Happy Entertainment's forthcoming Turbo Overkill (see p40), which blends a flashy cyberpunk setting with the chunky pixels of classic Doom.
The usual conflict between features and performance aside, Turbo Overkill is a tug of war between different eras of videogame graphics. "When I first started the project, I made a list of rules that I should follow," says lead developer and Doom modder Sam Prebble. "Like, you can't use any technology like shaders, or reflections, advanced lighting methods, that were invented after the year 2000. I would try to avoid putting those into the game [...] but eventually I got to a point where I just didn't like the way it looks. If I want a neon-drenched cyberpunk city where it's always raining, you have to have reflective surfaces, there's no way around it—well, there probably are ways, but everything I tried wasn't very pleasing to look at.
"So I kind of just stumbled into slowly adding more modern rendering techniques, and I just got to a point where I said, 'OK, screw it. I'll just throw it all in, but try and ground it in a retro look, or I guess it's kind of cringy, but 'retro plus', to find a nice balance of modern and old technology.'" Prebble has spent the best part of a decade picking which assets to update. "It's like, this headset doesn't look too great. I could go back and bring it up to scratch, but I don't want to polish it too much and detract from the original look of the game."
(Image credit: PlayStation)Kill switch
One ironic outcome is that Overkill currently requires quite a 'hefty' PC. But it does accommodate players who want to excise the modern flourishes and experience something like Prebble's original, heavily rule-bound retro prototype. "I have seen a lot of people run the demo on low settings, and some people look at that and say it's a retro game, it's supposed to look chunky. I kind of agree with that. Originally Turbo Overkill had a pixelation filter in it, which is something I used to play with all the time, just because I liked the look of, you know, low resolution graphics."
Prebble is considering a lo-fi version for 'potato PCs', following on from the lo-fi options he made for his Doom mod Total Chaos, which "basically downgraded all the textures and stripped out a lot of shaders and all our models had half the polygons. That's something I'd love to do for Turbo, but it would only be later in development".
Boxed off
There are parallels between low-spec gaming and demaking, the practice of remaking a game to run or look as if it's running on old hardware. They're arguably the same thing—demaking redefines developing for lower specs as an art form deserving celebration. Having spent decades wrestling various technologies into submission, Goddard is both fascinated and repelled by the thought of adapting new games to platforms such as Gameboy. "To me it just sounds like hitting my head with a hammer non-stop. That doesn't seem to be anything enjoyable there from my point of view, but because [younger developers haven't] gone through all that pain they don't see it—they find it fascinating and really intriguing."
(Image credit: Playism)Goddard argues that for larger established teams, the question of high or low spec may become irrelevant in a few years thanks to technologies that automatically adjust for different hardware capabilities. Take Unreal Engine 5's geometry system Nanite. "Basically, you throw as many polygons as you want at it, and it just figures it all out. Up until now all the games I've ever made [have been] a constant battle for framerate. You're always trying to reduce polygons. With UE5 now you don't even think about it. You don't even have to make reduced polygon versions of things any more. Everything's automatic."
Features like these could transform the industry, he says, much like the spread of intuitive middleware tools such as Unity. "It's getting to the point where it's no longer a programmer job worrying about framerate. It's basically artists buying assets from a store and throwing them in without even worrying about texturing or LOD or anything like that. Three million polygons, ten million polygons, whatever, just throw it in and it just works on any hardware. So that's the kind of end goal of all this fighting over settings—it's all just handled within this black box here."
This certainly sounds like it would remove much of the stress from projects like GTFO and Turbo Overkill. But from a player perspective, it's energising and inspiring to be given more direct control over how a game looks and runs. And as Vikström concludes, planning out a game so as to accommodate lower specs is a source of creative satisfaction. "You have expert programmers, expert artists, expert sound designers and storytellers, and they're all working together as tightly as they can. That's one of my favourite things about game development—these really varied talents that need to work together. And also, the big challenge."
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Deep Silver Volition has officially released the full system requirements for its upcoming reboot of Saints Row. The studio had previously unveiled the minimum system requirements back in June, but now you can get a much clearer picture of how well your PC will run the game.
To run the game at recommended settings (1080p at 60FPS), you'll need an Intel Core i7-6700k, or an AMD Ryzen 5 1500X. Moreover, you'll need a card with at least 8GB VRAM, with the devs specifying a GeForce GTX 1070 or an AMD Radeon RX 5700. The game also specifies 16GB RAM to run at the recommended settings, which as Andy noted in a post about the PC port of Marvel's Spider-Man, is becoming increasingly common.
If your PC can't quite stretch that far, then for minimum settings (1080p, 30FPS) you can get away with an Intel Core i3-3240, or an AMD Ryzen 3 1200, as well as a GPU with at least 4GB VRAM, such as a GTX 970 or RX 480. You also only need 8GB of RAM to run the game on minimum settings, which is a little more forgiving.
On the flipside, if you want to crank Saints Row up to the max (4k 60 FPS), that'll warrant a Core i5 12600 or a Ryzen 7 5800x. Card-wise, you're going to need 12GB of VRAM, such as a 3080ti or a RX 6800XT.
All versions of the game require Windows 10 64bit to run. So if you're still running ye olde Windows 7 or 8, you're out of luck. Deep Silver Volition also states the game will require 50GB of drive space to install, and for any setting above the minimum specs, will necessitate installation on a solid-state drive.
You can view the full breakdown of Saints Row's system requirements below:
(Image credit: Deep Silver)Deep Silver Volition hasn't specified what kind of graphics settings the PC version will have, but in a recent tech preview, Digital Foundry noted that the game "packs a huge suite of options and each setting updates on-the-fly, conveniently showing the game world on the right as the presets change." These settings include support for Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion with four different presets – low, medium, high and ultra. The game doesn't support ray-traced reflections, however, although it does offer multiple presets for screen-space reflections.
Interestingly, Digital Foundry also mentions that its own RTX 3080 and Core i7 7700K rig struggled to maintain 4K 60fps in the open-world sections of the game. That said, this would not have been a final build of the game, and Volition may have improved the game's overall performance since.
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The rules
1. Two in-game weeks to gather intel on most Soviet Outposts.
2. Try and find as many high-ranking officers as possible.
3. Only observe. The Soviet Army can never know I was there.This is a debrief report from Flaming Buffalo (I arrived late to codename assignment), from reconnaissance in the Soviet Army controlled region of Afghanistan. I was given two weeks to navigate and gather as much intel as possible on the USSR presence ahead of Big Boss' arrival. He's a busy guy, you know—it's not like he can be in two places at once. after all.
I was inserted by helicopter at 1800 hours near Spugmay Keep at the region's southernmost point, with the intent of navigating the entire outer edge. On foot I made my way to the nearest small guard post, where I planted myself up on a ridge with a view from above. I spent a whole day watching this meagre camp to glean what I could about their operation and let me tell you, these Soviet soldiers are a disciplined bunch. They barely sleep, barely chat, and certainly don't take breaks. As the one and only sandstorm of my two week excursion rolled in they barely flinched. If we find out they're all robots, I wouldn't be surprised.
(Image credit: Konami)Heading north I came to a larger settlement called Da Shago Kallai with a dozen or so soldiers, though something that I would come to learn is quite standard across their occupation is the use of decoys. I planted myself this time in an abandoned house at the edge of town, which was useful for its close proximity and great view, but also because it made it a bit easier to rest and pass the time.
From here I made a log of the trucks coming and going. Or single truck, with the same one seeming to go on rotation with a few neighbouring settlements, returning roughly every four hours. I couldn't identify any hierarchy here. There were specialist roles like radio operators, but no officers or leadership visibly apparent.
I spent over a day observing this place and noticed a few shift changes, with two guards getting sleep at a time. Eventually, at no discernible prompting, they decided to expand the perimeter of their patrols to include the outskirts, where my building was. On the afternoon of my third day a guard decided to use this as his vantage, and forced me to stealthily climb down the back of the building to find a position on a ridge nearby.
I waited until nightfall before moving on, evading trucks and searchlights to head out into the dunes for a resupply before heading on to Lamar Khaate Palace. It occurred to me how little the region resembles the mountainous Afghanistan, home to rains and snows, I'd been told about. In fact, it sure looks a lot like Jordan, a country almost 3,000 kilometres away. Perhaps the Soviets terraformed it, like how Big Boss encountered that Russian jungle years ago.
The palace is one of the few places that does resemble somewhere in Afghanistan, looking a lot like the Darul Aman Palace. It turned out to be defended by a skeleton crew bolstered by decoys and numerous mines. A truck came and went, stopping for less than an hour on each trip north or south. Do these soldiers have any orders besides defending these arbitrary spots?
(Image credit: Konami)Words and deeds
It's about day five when I start listening to cassette tapes to help pass the time while I observe, in the absence of any life in the world or any dialogue from the soldiers. The only time I've heard these soldiers speak so far was to urge some goats to clear the road, an admittedly rare sign of activity.
The most surprising, or maybe alarming, thing I came to realise was that there were no Afghan people—civilians, resistance fighters, or otherwise. It seemed absurd that there wouldn't be a single one present, especially given their resistance is one of the only things the Soviet soldiers stationed here spoke about. In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan simply so they could stand around and wait for Big Boss to show up.
After a day of observing the palace I moved on, heading north to reach the Wakh Sind Barracks. While weaving through a small canyon I stumble across a bear. Despite the threat the creature poses, it's honestly pleasing to see a living thing out in the world. I watched it for longer than is probably reasonable given my mission. Thankfully, I didn't get mauled to death.
Arriving south of the barracks, it was immediately apparent this is the most well-defended place I've encountered. Nestled on a steep slope, the place can only be entered from the front and is heavily fortified with high barricades and several emplacements where sentries scan with searchlights. There were still only a dozen guards present but the dense outpost makes those numbers count. With so little of the interior visible from outside, I decided I had to find a way inside if I was going to gather useful intelligence. Before I could get that far, though, a searchlight exposed me for a split second. Enough time for a guard to be convinced he saw something and call for someone to come check it out. I didn't hang around, and quickly reached a crack in the rock face, which I climbed to get inside the barracks.
(Image credit: Konami)Soldiers were speaking! An honest to god conversation! Something about Reagan and the futility of nuclear war. A sign of life in these automatons all the same. I crossed over the gateway to a high-up dugout that seemed disused and set up for a day of observation.
At dusk, perhaps due to me spooking them the night before, they had sentries posted above the gateway which certainly made my exfiltration trickier. I was halfway across the gateway when someone thought they saw me. Pushing on, I hugged the edge of the cliff and could do nothing but hold my breath as the soldier approached, torch in one hand, scanning the bushes. He came to stand just a few feet away.
If I had a tranq gun and no restrictions, this would be a nothing moment and he'd be unconscious already—but for my mission, this was as good as dead. I figured this was it, I'd blown the whole thing. There was no way he wouldn't spot me. I even got ready to draw my rifle. Then, impossibly, he failed to see me, and assumed he must have imagined it. Turning, he headed back to his post like an enemy spy hadn't been two steps away from him. Phew!
(Image credit: Konami)Escape from new folk
Eh... I hesitated to add this to my report, but after my escape I noticed I was being pestered by flies—a sign my odour from a week in the field had grown quite strong. Sadly, a dip in the nearest river didn't wash me well enough to get rid of them, so I was stuck listening to their buzzing. Facing certain death or torture is one thing, but these flies, boss? Nothing in my training prepared me for them and their incessant noise. They're the USSR's greatest asset, a weapon to surpass Metal Gear. Ahem, once Metal Gear is invented, I mean. What year is it?
The supply depot to the north is surprisingly light on defences and vulnerable from the back, where I posted myself on a ridge that views the whole site. I'm not sure what supplies are kept here, since trucks never seemed to stop on their way through. I watched for a day and like every place before it, nothing unexpected happens. The Soviet Army is a well-oiled machine, its soldiers following an endless, unchanging routine. It feels... inhuman.
I'd grown too comfortable and stopped being as cautious, like a fool!
I moved on under darkness to Central Base Camp, supposedly the largest presence the Soviet Army has in the region. What I found was skeletal: the bones of a massive base occupied by a handful of soldiers stretched too thin to adequately defend it. It looked formidable from the outside, but I infiltrated it quite easily. Half the hangars are ruins. There were no tanks or armoured vehicles of any kind. Again, I failed to find officers.
I saw what seemed like some kind of briefing among soldiers, but nobody seemed to be in charge. Who is running this place? There's a sense that their forces are simply locked in a futile effort, dwarfed by the vast landscape around them, in no way up to the task. They're little more than cannon fodder for Big Boss.
After a close call with a patrol, I got out of there and started the long march south, now worried I wasn't going to make the rendezvous on the 14th day. Thankfully the remaining sites I had to visit were easily observed and poorly defended. Things seemed to be going smoothly until I stumbled into a minefield. I'd grown too comfortable and stopped being as cautious, like a fool! I detonated one of the explosives by accident and injured my hand, but worst of all, put the entire area on high alert. I hope they thought it was a wild animal that set it off. None of the other outposts I passed afterwards seemed to be awaiting attack. I think I got away with it...
(Image credit: Konami)Heading south again I found a single soldier patrolling alone out in the middle of nowhere. Mostly the soldiers stuck to their designated posts, so this was well outside the norm. Why was he here? And why on his own? I stalked them for a little while, matching my footsteps to theirs just a few paces behind until I could finally make my way around them, undetected.
On the 11th day I arrived back at Spugmay Keep. I hadn't anticipated being early, and made a brief scouting hike to the town to the north, which was as poorly defended and unremarkable as the others. When the helicopter arrived at dawn, I climbed aboard without hesitation, but started to feel a little wistful as the landscape rolled away beneath me.
Not for my two weeks in this place, but for what I thought it might be when I first saw it years ago: a bustling, complex beast full of life and the unexpected. Instead it's a lifeless rock, populated by robots that pose about as much threat to the boss as shrapnel to his face. He's going to have no trouble here. Hell, I think he's going to have to make his own fun to get any kind of challenge or tension out of the place. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need that shower. Flaming Buffalo, out.
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Quake Champions, the free-to-play spin on Quake's landmark multiplayer shooting, has officially left Steam Early Access. The game, which melds the gib-splattering, rocket-jumping FPS fun of the original Quake with more modern "hero"-style characters, each of whom has their own special abilities they can deploy across the course of a match, was originally launched in 2017, co-developed by id Software and Saber interactive.
Champions has been updated fairly frequently over the last five years, with new maps and playable champions added to the existing roster, alongside a few new features such as the ability to play against bots. Considering the length of time the game has been in development, however, it's not a huge amount of new content, perhaps reflecting the fact that Champions never saw the riotous success of other character-led shooters like Apex Legends.
Nonetheless, Quake Champions is a perfectly enjoyable multiplayer romp. Alongside the official Steam release, the game has also been added to PC Game Pass. This might seem a bit pointless considering it's free-to-play anyway. But if you have a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, Quake Champions comes with the additional perk whereby all the game's sixteen champions are unlocked from the get-go. This includes characters from id Software's broader canon like the Doom Slayer and B.J. Blazkowicz, alongside more familiar QC characters like Ranger and Visor.
Champions isn't the only Quake game recently added to Game Pass. Raven Software's underratedQuake 4 was added to Microsoft's subscription service at the same time, alongside a couple of Wolfenstein titles, namely 1991's Wolfenstein 3D, and 2001's Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Microsoft has even added the worst Elder Scrolls game onto the service. These releases are all part of the ongoing QuakeCon festivities, which run through today and conclude tomorrow.
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Don't worry if you've found yourself a bit stuck with today's Wordle. I've got the answer as well as a whole host of hints and tips for the August 19 (426) online puzzle just a little further down the page.
I had an unexpected issue with today's Wordle; a furry, purring, heat-seeking one. Yep, that's right—my cat thought she had something to contribute to today's game (and to be honest, I've had days where I may as well have let her loose across my keyboard). Luckily for me, SCFGY isn't a valid word.
Wordle hint
Today's Wordle: A hint for Friday, August 19
Today's word is the physical manifestation of "Whatever", usually indicated by a rise and fall of the shoulders. It's a dismissive and disinterested action, although not necessarily rude. The same word can also be used to describe a sort of short-length jacket too.
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 426 answer?
You'll know it when you see it. The answer to the August 19 (426) Wordle is SHRUG.
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:
- August 18: TWANG
- August 17: TWICE
- August 16: GRUEL
- August 15: POKER
- August 14: KHAKI
- August 13: HUNKY
- August 12: LABEL
- August 11: GLEAN
- August 10: CLING
- August 9: PATTY
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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Hello DavidRedacted,
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.
DavidRedacted joined on the 08/19/2022.
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Despite a recent Bloomberg report that the Knights of the Old Republic remake was "delayed indefinitely," the game might still be on its way this year.
According to a financial report from Embracer Group, the IP-hungry parent company of the studios working on the game, "One of the Group's AAA projects has transitioned to another studio within the Group," and that it isn't "expecting any material delays for the title based on this transition." The company said the delay was to "ensure the quality bar is where we need it to be for the title."
That sure sounds like it could be the result of what Bloomberg called a "studio shakeup" after the project suddenly lost two directors after the higher-ups were unimpressed with a vertical slice, or an internal demo to showcase the progress of the game. As a result, developers at the studio told Bloomberg they didn't expect it to come out until 2025.
Embracer didn't say what developer the project has moved to, but it could be Saber Interactive, who we know started working on the game alongside Aspyr in May. At the time, Saber called the remake a "massive, massive product" that would "require a lot of effort and time to make good."
The Knights of the Old Republic remake only has one trailer that is more mood than anything. The scope of the remake and how much has been changed and kept from the almost 20-year-old game is still unclear. Whatever it is, it's clearly giving its developers trouble.
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In Farthest Frontier, heavy tools are an important resource for producing items for your settlement and even for building certain structures. Heavy tools are used as a resource in buildings like the sawmill, glassmaker, furniture workshop, foundry, and the blacksmith's forge, which are all necessary professions for advancing from a charming little village into a booming city.
But as you're growing your village and unlocking new tiers of progress, you'll eventually stumble across this paradox: To make heavy tools, you need iron ingots. But to make iron ingots, you need heavy tools.
In fact, to even build the foundry that produces iron ingots from ore, you need heavy tools. It's the only instance in Farthest Frontier I can think of where the product you need to produce relies on the product that produces it.
So, how can you get Farthest Frontier's heavy tools? At first, you'll have to buy them.
How to get Farthest Frontier heavy tools
(Image credit: Crate Software)With no way to produce heavy tools yourself, you'll need to purchase them from a visiting trader. That means you should build a trading post in your town as soon as you can. With the trading post built, you'll start receiving one or two visiting traders a year.
As I mention in my Farthest Frontier beginner tips guide, keep a close watch on your trading post at the beginning of each year. As soon as the snow melts and the weather warms, the traders' wagons will head to your town and park at the trading post. They only stay there for about 30-60 days, which pass very quickly in-game.
Not every trader will be selling heavy tools, and you may need to wait a while—potentially several years—for the right trader to stop by. That's why it's so important to keep an eye on the trading post and make sure you don't miss a chance to buy the heavy tools when someone has them for sale.
Once you've got a small supply of heavy tools, you'll be able to build the foundry to produce iron ingots, and then you can build the blacksmith forge where you can turn the iron ingots into heavy tools. After that, you'll be self-sufficient.
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Modders are having a grand 'ol time with the recently released Spider-Man Remastered PC port. So far, we've seen model swaps that let you swing across New York as Mary Jane, Wilson Fisk, and even the late Stan Lee, but I think we've officially crossed a line: a mod uploaded yesterday at the sinister hour of 2AM replaces Spider-Man with the gravestone of his dead Uncle Ben.
The mod Become Uncle Ben, created by Nexus Mods user Saphire, is quite literally a controllable slab of granite adorned with a loving farewell from his widow and loving nephew: "Beloved Husband and Uncle 1952-2010"
Of course, the text is hard to read while Uncle Ben's gravestone is webbing down Wall Street at 80mph. However messed up, I cannot deny how funny it is to watch a chiseled rock magically beat the crap out of a gang of Fisk goons in this clip shared by Griff Griffin on Twitter.
Uncle Ben's gravestone modded into Spider-Man Remastered pic.twitter.com/XQec7PkJqpAugust 18, 2022
See moreThis Uncle Ben model swap appears to accomplish the same thing as another mod made by YouTuber jedijosh920 back in April for Spider-Man PS4. Check out that video to see Ben's acrobatics in the opening cutscenes and stealth combat. Dead Uncle Ben really has it all: rigidity, might, and a whole lot of grit.
The Uncle Ben suit will replace Spidey's classic suit, so it shouldn't interfere with your existing duds unless you like to reject modernity and embrace tradition. Like all the other Spidey replacements popping up on Nexus Mods, make sure you have the Spider-Man PC Modding Tool before downloading.
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Detroit: Become Human is a heavy-handed metaphor for racism. Police Squad is a ridiculous TV series that bombed so badly it was cancelled after just six episodes, but then inspired a hit film trilogy. They could not be more different, in other words, and so naturally YouTuber eli_handle_b decided that the thing to do would be to mash them together in a bizarre two-minute video clip.
The results are definitely more Police Squad than David Cage: A dramatic hostage scene gets turned on its ear by Drebin's turn as an umpire from Naked Gun, followed by an opening credits sequence inspired by the same film that can only be described as magically idiotic. (For the record, that applies to both the movie and the mashup.) The close-range shootout is a direct lift from the very first episode of Police Squad.
The mix is really well done, although the humour probably lands better for Police Squad fans—which I definitely am—than it does for people who think it's all, well, stupid. But I'll tell you this: I've never played Detroit: Become Human, nor have I felt any great urge to do so, but if this was an actual game and not just a two-minute spoof, I would be all over it. I'd be playing right now if I could.
This is eli_handle_b's latest game-movie mashup, but far from his first—he did the "Austin Powers in Mass Effect" video that we enjoyed so much last year, among others. You can check out all his work on YouTube—and, because I can't help myself, you can enjoy one of my very favorite Police Squad scenes below.
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Tactics games are going absolutely medieval this year, and Inkulinati is no exception. Based on the silly manuscript doodles and marginalia of medieval monks, Inkulinati takes those critters and makes them into units in a battle of turn-based strategy.
It's now got proper store pages and a release window: Winter of this year. It'll come to Early Access on Steam and GOG, as well as Xbox Game Preview on Game Pass. Inkulinati is developed by Yaza Games and published by Daedalic Entertainment.
The frame is that you're a medieval scribe battling other Inkulinati Masters with doodled beasts made of magic ink: "Donkeys playing trumpets with their bottoms, bishop cats vanquishing heretics with prayers, heavy but deadly snails that eat units alive, and more," say the devs. So, naturally, special powers include doodling in new terrain, cut-and-pasting units to new spots, or actually just smashing the page with your fist.
You'll be able to customize the composition of your army, and the powers available to you, by choosing who your character is. A knight might have more straightforward, tough beasts. A nun might have the power of prayer to heal her troops and confuse the enemy's. Fights are multi-tiered, so though they're in a 2D arena they can take place over several lines of the page.
Rachel Watts spoke to the developers of Inkulinati in 2019, when it was announced. At the time, Yaza Games' lead designer Wojtek Janas talked about the absurd doodles made by medieval monks "in which dogs and rabbits wage war, animals playing trumpets that are stuck-up their bottoms, or a lady picking penises from a tree (yep, that's a real thing). Those crazy scenes, they are called marginalia, and when our lead artist Dorota Halicka showed them to us for the first time, we knew that we had to make a game built around them."
Image 1 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 2 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 3 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 4 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 5 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 6 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 7 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 8 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 9 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 10 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Image 11 of 11(Image credit: Yaza Games, Daedalic Entertainment)Inkulinati also incorporates other things that history lovers will appreciate—like your competitors, the other Inkulinati Masters. That'll include characters like Dante, of the divine comedy, and legendary composer-slash-doctor St. Hildegard of Bingen. (Who narrates the trailer.)
Anyway, here's hoping we get to whoop Geoffrey Chaucer's 'donkey' at magic ink battles. I'd really like to, because I owe him for getting forced to memorize the general prologue of The Canterbury Tales in high school. It turned out to be a neat party trick in the long run, but was a real pain at the time. (If you think that's a bad party trick you're attending the wrong parties.)
You can find out more about Inkulinati on the Yaza Games website and on Steam and GOG, where it'll release in Winter 2022.
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As part of the launch of QuakeCon this weekend, recently minted Microsoft subsidiaries id Software and Bethesda have brought a slew of classic games to PC Game Pass—including what is arguably the worst Elder Scrolls game, Battlespire. Battlespire and fellow '90s Elder Scrolls games Arena, Daggerfall, and Redguard were recently brought to Steam as well. The full list of games coming to Game Pass and the Microsoft store is as follows:
Coming today with PC Game Pass
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein
- Quake 4
- Wolfenstein 3D
- An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
- The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
- Unlock all Champions in Quake Champions via a Game Pass Perk
Free today on the Microsoft Store
- The Elder Scrolls: Arena
- The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall
- Quake Champions
For sale today in the Microsoft Store
- Heretic: Serpent Riders
- Hexen: Beyond Heretic
- Hexen: Deathkings
Now I don't mean to be a hater—I'm against anti-Bethesda revisionism, even if I'm not the biggest fan of Fallouts 3 and 4, but Battlespire is a game only a mother could love, if she could even stand to play it very long.
Elder Scrolls' combat has always served as more of a nice accompaniment to exploring Tamriel's rich, wide open worlds, which begs the question of why you'd then emphasize that combat in a largely-linear dungeon crawling game.
Battlespire's basic premise is pretty questionable then, taking the clunky melee combat and busted, uneven skill system of Daggerfall and building a hack n' slasher out of it. Battlespire also offers a particularly buggy, punishingly difficult experience on top of stripping away the series' signature selling points. As YouTuber and noted Elder Scrolls fan LGR put it, "This isn't Daggerfall! Manage your expectations."
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Bethesda)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Bethesda)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Bethesda)Still, even bad games deserve to be preserved for future generations, and Battlespire comes from an interesting time in Bethesda's history. There was a long period of wandering the wilderness for the company between the release of Daggerfall in 1996 and that of Morrowind in 2002 (initially planned for 1998!) Battlespire and Redguard helped keep the company moving before its first true megahit, Morrowind, and it's neat to see these games get the Game Pass and digital storefront treatment all these years later. No such luck for the surprisingly good Shadowkey for Nokia N-Gage or the more predictably mediocre Dawnstar and Oblivion Mobile for flip phones.
Quake 4, Wolfensteins 3D and Return to Castle, as well as Hexen/Heretic being made available from more sources are all slam dunks as well. The Quake Champions bundle just makes me wish that quite good arena shooter had a little more juice in it—not to go crying "dead game" or anything.
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It's Only Money is an upcoming open-world co-op "lowlife simulator" for 1-4 players that begins with an interesting premise: The new mayor of Rockhaven is looking to gentrify the city in a hurry, and to make it happen he's throwing everyone who doesn't fit his vision into a hole—a literal, giant hole.
The residents of the Undercity, as it's more formally known, decide they're not going to take this forceful subterranean eviction, and so they band together to strike back—which in this case means starting fights, stealing things, destroying stuff, and causing general chaos wherever the opportunity presents itself. But it's not just mayhem without mercy: You can also buy up houses and businesses, cars and clothes, or whatever else strikes your fancy, all with the longer-term goal of taking down the mayor's corporate lackeys.
It sounds a bit like GTA Online by way of a small indie studio, but at a much smaller scale: The Steam page describes the city of Rockhaven as having "several dense 'territories,' each with their own micro narratives and Mayor businesses to destroy." There will also be an assortment of mini-games to help keep things rolling, including snail races, street racing, and prop hunt.
The plan is to launch It's Only Money into early access with one territory to play with and take over, and then add more—with new hubs, businesses, minigames, narrative missions, and other content—as development continues.
Image 1 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 2 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 3 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 4 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 5 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 6 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 7 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 8 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 9 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 10 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)Image 11 of 11(Image credit: Usual Suspects)"I'd say in terms of raw size for launch, it's comparable to one island from GTA 4, though we plan to continually add to the world size as we go," Aaron Alexander, co-founder of developer Usual Suspects, told PC Gamer. "The Early Access launch will have the first territory that players can take over from the Mayor. This involves an arc of narrative missions, side missions, businesses and homes to buy, micro-PvP games and obviously an open world players can tinker around with. We have more of a focus on 'petty crime' and smaller scale activity. There's a focus on density as opposed to sheer breadth.
"I think generally speaking, we can't compete with the production value of Rockstar, but we're poised to pivot and make good on the features and suggestions the community puts forward in a way larger studios can't."
It's Only Money's announcement coincides with the start of the Games Made in New Zealand event on Steam, which as you might surmise features current and upcoming games made in New Zealand.
There's more of 'em than you might think:
There are more than 75 games featured in the Made-in-New Zealand event, many of them also on sale—highlights (as chosen by me) include:
The Games Made in New Zealand event on Steam runs until August 25. It's Only Money doesn't yet have a release date, but is "coming soon" to Steam.
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Threewave, the classic capture the flag mod for the original Quake, is back after 26 years. Bethesda announced today that nine levels from the original Threewave CTF mod, along with the grappling hook, special runes, and other enhancements, have been brought back to life and added for free to the Quake remaster on Steam.
It's hard to imagine now, but when Quake was originally released, it was very bare-bones. Threewave was one of the first big mods to address the game's shortcomings: Developed by Zoid Kirsch, it was pretty basic itself at first, but it offered the excitement of goal-oriented teamplay and, maybe even more importantly, a grappling hook that changed everything.
"Over the course of many updates, and eventually a QuakeWorld version, Threewave CTF would go on [to] make Capture the Flag a household name in multiplayer game modes, and even spawn websites that exclusively covered Capture the Flag modes in games," Bethesda said. "Threewave CTF would be released officially as a part of Quake 2, and the Quake 3 version of the mod would bring in new flag-based game modes and maps that would later make their way into Quake Live. Quake multiplayer and Threewave CTF have always been intertwined, and now the mod that started it all is now available for free in the enhanced Quake re-release."
This version of Threewave features an improved flag status display (which is almost disappointing—you can't capture the enemy flag unless yours is in the base, and half the fun in old-time CTF is running around trying to find out where it went so you can make the cap while enemy players chase you like a pack of pissed-off bloodhounds), team scoreboard, and interface. The maps have also been tweaked to provide better lighting and fog effects. Four new runes will spawn randomly at the start of each match, offering enhanced damage resistance, damage output, and health regeneration to whoever's lucky enough to be carrying them. Runes, like flags, will drop on death and can be picked up by other players, so even if somebody beats you to it, you can still beat them for it.
The grappling hook is where the real magic is, though. You can use it to turn yourself into a virtual turret by grappling into a wall and then switching weapons—pick a good spot and you'll make enemy players madder than hell trying to figure out who's shooting them. You can also use it to grapple onto other players, causing a constant stream of damage (and exposing you to payback damage from your target, mind) and with practice you can even use it to bunny hop around the map, moving with far greater speed and agility than normal.
Image 1 of 10MCKINLEY BASE (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 2 of 10SPILL THE BLOOD (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 3 of 10THE STRONGBOX (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 4 of 10VERTIGO (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 5 of 10GLOOM CASTLES (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 6 of 10CHTHON'S CAPTURE HOUSE (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 7 of 10CAPTUREPHOBOPOLIS (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 8 of 10MCKINLEY STATION (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 9 of 10DA ANCIENT WAR GROUNDS (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Image 10 of 10(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)Nostalgia is the big driver here, but even if you don't have history with it, Threewave stands on its own merits as a legitimately good multiplayer mod. It's simple, direct, and accessible, but surprisingly deep, too—a great way to scratch the team-based action itch without having to spend hours learning every intricacy of the maps and systems.
The Threewave CTF comeback was announced as part of QuakeCon 2022, which is live now and runs until August 20. It's included with the fourth and newest update to Quake, which is live now and should install automatically the next time you start the game. To get into the action, start an online multiplayer game, go into the match browser, and look for CTF matches. That's it—have fun!
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Need to know
What is it? An interactive series about the ups and downs of being 20-something in LA, and the making-of the virtual band OFK
Expect to pay: $20/£18
Developer: Team OFK
Publisher: Team OFK
Reviewed on: Windows 10, Intel i5-10500H, 16GB, RTX 3060 (Laptop)
Multiplayer? No
Link: ofk.coolWe Are OFK's greatest flaws emerge from its hook: The game exists to launch OFK as a music project. It's the fictional origin story of a 'real' virtual band (think of Riot's K/DA musical group). The songs have to work as standalone commercial hits, leading to compromises that wouldn't be made for a regular OST, all while the plot itself goes out of its way to criticise such compromises as inauthentic. The characters are also a product that the game is trying to sell: It badly wants me to like them, support them, and project myself onto them.
We Are OFK is focused on the band's formation in a pastel-heavy LA, and features minimal interaction. Occasional dialogue options share insight into a character's thoughts or feelings, but don't affect anything outside of the moment. There'll be two different ways to call someone a jerk, or three different ways to be hyped about boba, but you're still stuck with "jerk" and "yay boba". The story is split into five episodes that are about an hour long each, and will release weekly along with a single and music video.
The first episode wraps up with its music video for Follow/Unfollow. The song debuted at last year's Game Awards over a video of the virtual crew, but here it's set over abstract minigames that turn it into a messy breakup song—playing phone breakout while trying not to drunk text an ex, and herding cats into a return box. These sections are more toy than game, adding visual excitement but not affecting anything.
It's so apparent that We Are OFK wants me to like its characters and to feel close to them that anything that lands wrong tends to land hard.
The trap of OFK being a real band that's trying to make relatable bops for all its audience means some songs seem to fit their episode's brief better than others. Fool's Gold, an ode to the human experience of insecurity and imposter syndrome, has no trouble also mapping to a specific character. Footsteps, on the other hand, really wants to lose you in the beat and its more technically involved music video—but is all style and no substance when tacked on to the end of an episode about grief and alienation.
The band are a team of quirky, chaotic 20-somethings. There's Itsumi, the anime-loving keyboardist with a habit of getting messy drunk and sending keyboard smashes in the group chat. Luca, the lead singer and overall space case, passionate as he is distractible. Carter, on audiovisual effects, a soft-spoken tech genius whose trains of thought are a little sideways. Lastly Jey, their producer, who seems like she's got her 'frack' together but is trying to live to impossible standards.
We are OFK is focused entirely on the bandmates, their wants and needs, and the ways they mesh and conflict with each other. Most of the series is spent watching them talk to each other in-person or on their phones. They sext via coded emojis at a bar, vent text while bored at work, and check the group chat while on a date. This insight into characters' private spaces—including the way they think about what they say—should make me feel closer to them, but it has the opposite effect.
You know when someone tries to hype you up about this really funny thing that went down in their group chat, only to share a screenshot and—without the chemistry of being the people in the group, in that moment—it's just kind of embarrassing? I was talking about the goth cowboy #aesthetic in one of mine this morning, so I'm in no way immune to the asinine, but I also know that I can't explain bat-emoji-cowboy-emoji being funny to someone else. We Are OFK tries to recreate that dynamic, but more often than not it comes across as cringey.
There is something simultaneously too real and too fake about We Are OFK.
It's so apparent that We Are OFK wants me to like its characters and to feel close to them that anything that lands wrong tends to land hard. In the first episode, Luca compares a trivial choice about songs to Holocaust film Sophie's Choice—something he's only familiar with through cultural osmosis. It's meant to show off that he's hyperbolic and a little vapid, but I found it uncomfortably distasteful and hated that 'Sophie's kids thing' became a recurring in-joke between two characters over multiple episodes.
Given that We Are OFK's attempts to make me connect to its cast failed, it's not surprising that my favourite episode is one that slows things down by taking me away from the group, and features comparatively little texting. It's almost unplugged, except for some drunk-on-yoghurt texts from Itsumi, and quietly focuses on grief. The series' themes—vulnerability, conflicting needs—are best expressed in the one episode that departs most from format. It's notably the one where the music video feels the least integrated. Best episode, worst promotion of OFK.
(Image credit: Team OFK)There are cleverly composed scenes in We Are OFK. The presentation of dialogue choices is often framed as tiny visual gags, and there are funny and thoughtful callbacks across multiple episodes. When it breaks format, it does so with incredible playfulness and heart. The experience is just held back by the band.
There is something simultaneously too real and too fake about We Are OFK that always makes it feel like you're being sold something. There are details that feel there for someone else's catharsis, like when Luca and Itsumi vent about crunch and mismanagement in their games industry day jobs. Luca talks about wanting to make meaningful art that helps people, and is repeatedly reassured that he is, and it's hard to square that with the catchy but nothing-y dance pop the band are producing in-universe. It's thematically a pitch for an indie underdog among a plot that's textually about using industry connections.
The novelty here is in the hook: It's not just a game, it's a fictional biopic for a 'real' virtual band, who stream three times a week on Twitch, and hope to go on tour. If you put the novelty aside, there are more interesting stories about 20-somethings finding themselves. There's interactive fiction that uses text in more engaging ways, and games that aren't trying to sell you a relationship with their product.
(Image credit: Team OFK) -
Thermaltake announced its first-ever swappable fan blade design for its new Swafan RGB Radiator Fan, allowing the user to change the airflow direction by simply popping out the standard fan and swapping it with a reverse one. It's neat but pretty unnecessary when you think about the easier, cheaper ways to reverse a PC fan's airflow.
The Swafan RGB Radiator Fans are a trio of PWM-controlled fans with speeds up to 2000 RPM. The Swafan comes with two sets of swappable fan blades: standard and reversed. It comes in 12 cm and 14 cm sizes. Each side of the fan has an RGB ring that is managed through Thermaltake's NeonMaker software.
The point of a swappable fan blade is to reverse the airflow on the fly without having to unscrew the entire fan. According to the video above, Thermal Mike explains you need to make sure you lube the new fan, or you will hear all 2000 RPMs, which wouldn't be pleasant.
I think being able to easily pop out a fan to wipe off built-up dust and PC gunk seems convenient, just not $130 convenient. I'll admit, I can't think of a time when my fans were so funky I needed to wash them in the kitchen sink.
Reverse airflow means you're sucking in cool air into your PC while another set of fans blows out all the warm air, which isn't too wild of a concept. However, as my hardware colleagues loudly pointed out in our morning Slack, there is another way to get your fan blades to push air the other way. You flip the entire fan over when you install it. Wild, right?
As interesting as it is to be able to swap a fan anytime you want, the real question is, who is randomly opening their PC and deciding to reverse its airflow on a whim this often? Most PC builders choose ahead of time what their thermal situation will look like. And from our experience, the cooling performance on reverse airflow vs. regular airflow is nominal, at best.
The Swafan 12/14 RGB Radiator Fan (3-pack) sells for $120 and $129.99, respectively, but you can't put a price on hot swapping action, can you?
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Even after its big 15 minute reveal this summer, everyone is begging for more Starfield details. Fans spotted a mention of Starfield gameplay being shown during an on-site Gamescom fan event in Germany next week, but it turns out their hopes were a little too high.
The Starfield subreddit was briefly abuzz over a news post that claimed fans could see Redfall and Starfield gameplay at the Bethesda fan get-together on August 26. By the time our colleagues at TechRadar got to the post, it had been updated to clarify "come see a replay of the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase gameplay presentations for Redfall and Starfield."
Now, Bethesda appears to have updated the news post again to remove any mention of Starfield being at the fan meetup at all. So there goes that theory.
Starfield will be at Gamesom as part of Bethesda's booth. It mentions that there will be a life-size version of the very large companion robot VASCO for folks to stop and snap a picture with. That may also be where Bethesda ends up showing off the replay of its June gameplay reveal. We aren't expecting anything new though.
As for the rest of the festival, you can check our Gamescom 2022 schedule and see that Xbox does have a livestream planned for next Thursday, August 25. It's planning to show off different games and developers during its six hours of booth coverage, including Minecraft Legends, Microsoft Flight Sim, and Pentiment. No Starfield mentioned, sorry.
There's also the Opening Night Live showcase on Tuesday, August 23 hosted by Geoff Keighley. If Bethesda were turning up on the ONL stage, I'd have expected Keighley to tease it already like he does with a big chuck of the lineup. I won't count out the possibility of being surprised, but since we saw a pretty lengthy dive on gameplay just two months ago I imagine Bethesda just doesn't have anything fresh for our eyes until later this year.
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Hello mates0,
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.
mates0 joined on the 08/18/2022.
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Another Nvidia leak bears out: 12 seconds of footage from a Helldivers 2 trailer has leaked on Twitter ahead of an official announcement. As sequels go, Helldivers 2 shouldn't be a big surprise at this point: developer Arrowhead Game Studios (also the makers of Magicka) hasn't released a new game since Helldivers in 2015, and last October Arrowhead tweeted some cryptic binary code that seemed like a tease for an announcement that never materialized. In other words: it's about time.
The first Helldivers was published on PlayStation by Sony, and actually arrived on Steam under Sony's banner back in 2015. It was one of only three Sony-published games on Steam, all indies, until Horizon Zero Dawn kicked off the new era of PlayStation games on PC in 2020. Arrowhead kept supporting Helldivers for years, which perhaps explains why the sequel has been so long in coming.
Here’s roughly 10 seconds of footage from the #Helldivers 2 trailer, made by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by PlayStation Studios. pic.twitter.com/6fDG4aHgGIAugust 18, 2022
See moreThere's not much to take away from the Helldivers 2 trailer, which includes only a couple lines of dialogue: "The aliens are at our doorstep" and "Democracy herself hangs in the balance." A bit of disclaimer text does confirm the game is coming to PlayStation 5, and there's no mention of PC in the brief snippet that made its way to Twitter. If Sony follows its recent playbook we'll likely see Helldivers 2 on PC, but we might be waiting awhile for a port.
PC Gamer's Morgan Park was a big fan of the co-op shooting in Helldivers, especially its supply drop system that required punching in d-pad codes mid-fight to call down ammo and powerups. You could also instantly squash your teammates with airdrops if they weren't paying attention, something he hopes Helldivers 2 maintains.
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Diablo 4 will be supported by an "army of developers" working on new seasonal content for years to come, Blizzard said in today's new quarterly update, with updates and new content ranging from polish and quality-of-life features to major new features, quests, enemies, items, live events, and—of course—season passes.
Seasons in Diablo 4 will be modeled after Diablo 3's: Players will begin each new season with a brand new character (existing characters will remain accessible in the "Eternal Realm"), with no items or gold from the previous season carrying over.
"We think it is important that players see that the game is changing in meaningful ways," associate game director Joe Piepiora wrote. "Each season will be released with a fresh new gameplay feature and questline that introduces new challenges, mysteries, and possibilities into the level-up experience."
Seasonal live events could include things like a weekend-long invasion of the Drowned (with advance warning, so players will be ready for it) or the arrival of a new, presumably passing, merchant. Season Journeys from Diablo 3 will also return, offering time-limited rewards for players who can complete certain tasks. Season Journeys are separate from the season pass and free for all players, but completing Journey objectives will grant progress along the season pass.
(Image credit: Blizzard)Season passes will offer cosmetic items and premium currency along both free and paid reward tracks. Boosters that accelerate progress through the season will also be up for grabs in the pass, but because they impact gameplay they will only be on the free track—and while players can purchase season pass tiers directly, doing so will not speed up access to season boosts because they're also tied to progress milestones. "In other words, there's no way to shortcut getting season boosts by buying tiers," Diablo 4 product director Kegan Clark said. "They must be earned."
Premium currency earned in the season pass can be spent in Diablo 4's item shop, but Blizzard emphasized again that everything offered for sale is strictly cosmetic. It also promised that the best-looking items—admittedly, a subjective take—won't be exclusive to the shop, although some thematic items will be exclusive to particular season passes.
"Diablo 4 will ship with hundreds of transmogs unlockable from drops in-game, including dozens of armor sets of the highest visual quality," Clark wrote. "There are incredible pieces—Unique and Legendary quality items—for players to find without ever going to the Shop. The Shop offers more diversity of choices, not systematically better choices."
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Blizzard)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Blizzard)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Blizzard)Diablo 4 is still a good way off, but it's understandable that Blizzard would want to address concerns about monetization schemes as early as possible. Memories of Diablo 3's infamous real-money auction house still linger like the smell of old cat food at the bottom of the kitchen trash, and more recently Blizzard has faced a nasty backlash over the microtransactions in Diablo Immortal. But that game is free to play and focused primarily on mobile platforms, where aggressive monetization is more common and widely accepted (and has been a big success as a result). Diablo 4, however, will be a premium-priced release on PC and consoles, an audience that's more sensitive to (and less forgiving of) such practices.
In fact, Blizzard has previously promised that Diablo 4 won't be monetized like Diablo Immortal: When word of the in-game store first slipped out in June, Diablo boss Rod Fergusson quickly jumped onto Twitter to reassure antsy fans that the paid content it offers will be "anchored around optional cosmetic items & full story driven expansions."
"We intend to continue our dialog with players about Shop and Season Pass, and we’ll always listen and seek out the community's feedback about it," Clark wrote. "It is our sincerest belief that we can work together with the community to keep Diablo IV a living, evolving world for many years to come."
Diablo 4 is expected to arrive sometime in 2023.
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Corsair now makes laptops. After launching its impressively compact, if expensive, Corsair One range of PCs, it has now turned its attention to the world of gaming laptops. Not a bad move for a company that made a name for itself with its RAM and PSUs before expanding into the peripheral space. Oh yeah, it also happened to pick up streaming supremo, Elgato, along the way too, which is a relevant piece of info when looking at the Corsair Voyager a1600.
One of the first things you'll notice about the Corsair Voyager a1600 is the row of ten buttons at the back of the keyboard. This isn't just another row of function keys though, and they aren't in fact buttons at all, but rather it's a touch-sensitive strip that integrates with Elgato's Stream Deck software to launch apps, work as a soundstage, start streaming, start a camera call, or whatever else you need.
Between these two banks of buttons, you'll find a small display that can show battery life, the current time, or the CPU load. It's not essential, and it's limited by what else it can show, but it's a neat addition. It does however highlight the buttons themselves are not displays, with is a shame given that's what the Stream Deck itself delivers so well. The accompanying software shows icons for these buttons at the bottom of the main display, but this feels like a stepping stone, not the final destination itself.
The Corsair Voyager a1600 boasts a number of features to help it stand out in the overcrowded gaming laptop marketplace. For starters, Corsair has gone the all-AMD route for the launch of the Voyager, here packing the red team's eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 9 6900HS alongside its Radeon RX 6800M, including all the optimisations that go with such a pairing. You also get 32GB of DDR5-4800 and a speedy 2TB NVMe SSD for the $2,999 asking price. The $2,699 version comes with 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and Ryzen 7 6800HS, but has the same GPU as this and the same chassis.
You're looking at a slightly bigger machine than is normal, with the 16-inch screen boasting a native resolution of 2560 x 1600. That's a 16:10 aspect ratio, in case you're wondering, while most laptops and desktop displays stick with 16:9. In real terms you have more height to play with, which works well here given the Stream Deck interface takes up the bottom of the display—you can hide this button bar easily enough though.
Voyager a1600 specs(Image credit: Future)CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS
Memory: 32GB DDR5-4800
Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800M 12GB GDDR6
Screen: 16-inch, 2560 x 1600 @240Hz
Storage: 2TB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
OS: Windows 11 Home
Ports: USB 3.2 Type-A, USB 3.2 Type-C, SDXC card reader, 2x Thunderbolt USB4, 1x Audio
Dimensions: 14.01 x 11.28 x 0.78-inches
Weight: 5.29lbs (2.4kg)
Price: $2,999 | £2,999Given this is a machine that at least to some extent is aimed at streamers, the 1080p webcam shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, and its inclusion benefits everyone, not just streamers. There's a natty little slider to protect your privacy and a four-point microphone array to help capture your voice clearly as well. These do add to the size of the top bezel though, and the bottom of the screen isn't exactly tiny either. In a world of zero-bezel designs, this does feel like a step backwards.
Corsair has also elected to go for a mechanical keyboard for its first laptop, using the new Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile key switches with added Capellix RGB backlighting. And spoiler alert: this is easily the best typing experience I've ever had on a laptop. It feels precise, tight, and delightfully clicky without being overly noisy. There's no numpad, despite the large chassis size, but for once I'm happy to let that go, the overall typing experience is that good. The touchpad is also massive but is responsive and you can elect to only use half the space with a double-tap in the corner too.
The Corsair Voyager a1600 offer up the best typing experience I've ever had thanks to the Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile key switches. (Image credit: Future)Corsair has also integrated a Slipstream module into the machine, which means you don't need to leave your USB dongle in the single Type-A USB slot to use your wireless peripherals. It supports up to three devices, and I tried it out using the K70 Pro Mini Wireless, Sabre RGB Pro Wireless, and Virtuoso RGB Wireless XT headset and they all worked flawlessly. It's not essential, but if you already own a few wireless devices, then it's a neat solution for sure.
This is easily the best typing experience I've ever had on a laptop.
Before jumping into the benchmarks, it's worth highlighting that while you're looking at high-end pricing with Corsair's first laptop, amazingly the chip at its heart isn't AMD's top Ryzen 9 mobile chip, that award goes to the Ryzen 9 6900HX. It's essentially the same chip but with two important differences—the HX is unlocked and so can be overclocked, plus it has a higher 45W+ TDP. To get the most from that chip you'd need a chunkier chassis, but it does mean this machine isn't quite using the pinnacle of AMD's laptop range.
The touch buttons at the top of the keyboard feel like a stepping stone towards a better solution. (Image credit: Future)There's one more problem on the core spec front for Corsair, and that is that the Radeon RX 6800M isn't the top graphics chip from the red team either. We recently looked at the Alienware m17 R5 that not only comes with the aforementioned Ryzen 9 6900HX, but also ships with the slightly faster Radeon RX 6850M. It has the same 40 Compute Units as the 6800M, but has a higher operating frequency of 2,463MHz as opposed to 2,300MHz, and a faster memory interface too.
Given that machine costs $2,699, the Corsair Voyager a1600 has its work cut out before you even turn it on.
Oh, and before I go any further, there's one thing that Corsair has done with the Voyager that could be incredibly frustrating depending on your setup: it has no ethernet port. No dongle, no flip-down port, nothing. You could absolutely argue that wireless networking has come on a long way, but wired is still the connection of choice for plenty of gamers, particularly if you're working in a busy office with a heavily congested wireless network in place. Or even if you want the fastest connection to the internet.
Image 1 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 5 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 6 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 7 of 7(Image credit: Future)Corsair's decision to go with AMD would have been the obvious choice less than a year ago. Now Intel is back in the game with its Alder Lake CPUs this isn't quite the home run Corsair was probably hoping for. It's a decent performer, make no mistake, but a quick look over the more serious performance graphs shows that this isn't the best option around if you're after the highest performance around.
The Cinebench R20 score has the Intel-powered Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 a good distance ahead, and while this delta is narrower when looking at the X264 video encoding, in terms of raw number crunching it's clear which CPU you want in your high-performance laptop, and it ain't an AMD one.
It isn't a total loss for Corsair and AMD though, and this machine manages something that we haven't seen from a gaming laptop in a long time, a two-hour battery life. Note that this isn't playing back video, or doing normal work, but actually gaming. With plenty of machines dipping under an hour recently, it's refreshing to see this buck that trend. And yes, it means you can actually play whilst away from the mains.
It's a shame that this machine gets so loud in use then. To be fair, by default it uses the Extreme profile in iCue, and there are Quiet and Balanced alternatives. But given you want the most from the machine when gaming, it doesn't feel unreasonable to benchmark it using the best cooling mode. It is annoyingly loud though, and not something you'd want to endure for long periods without reaching for your headphones. It isn't much fun for anyone within earshot.
There is good news on the gaming front at least.
Image 1 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 5 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 6 of 7(Image credit: Future)Image 7 of 7(Image credit: Future)The instant takeaway from the gaming performance of the Corsair Voyager a1600 is that AMD's finest mobile GPU makes for a competitive offering in the laptop market. Exactly as the Radeon RX 6800 XT has on the desktop. Here you're looking at frame rates that are comparable to plenty of mobile RTX 3080s and some high-powered 3070 Tis as well—not a bad place for AMD to sit by any means.
Those GPUs do have DLSS and better ray tracing support to bolster their position, but FSR 2.0 is looking promising and ray tracing is still something of a niche, even midway through 2022.
For comparison reasons we run for laptops at 1080p so you can see how the underlying performance stacks up. And running this machine at 1080p is absolutely an option, potentially a necessity on some games, but you're not getting the full benefit of the display that way. You really want to run it at the native 2560 x 1600, which is a tad more than the standard 1440p resolution, well 160 pixels taller at any rate.
The Radeon RX 6800M at the heart of the Voyager a1600 is a decent performer although it struggles with ray tracing. (Image credit: Future)In games, this will affect your performance, but for the most part, there is power available. You're looking at the F1 2022 benchmark dropping from 180fps on average at 1080p to 121fps at native—still plenty fast enough. Horizon Zero Dawn is perfectly smooth at 87fps, while the demanding Metro Exodus dips just under the ideal at 57fps, finally the Dubai test from Hitman 3 averages out a 115fps.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a lot more demanding than our main slew of titles though, managing just 11fps at native using our default choice of Ray Tracing: Ultra setting. Playable frame rates are possible with this game, and it still looks good at lower settings, but without the easy boost that comes with DLSS, ray tracing is too big an ask for AMD's hardware here—even the lowest ray tracing setting tops out at 26fps.
For the most part, this machine is certainly playable at the screen's native resolution. It makes a good pairing for the Radeon RX 6800M that can be found at this machine's heart. It's just a shame the RX 6850M exists and manages to outperform Corsair's offering so succinctly. It essentially means that's the better option, all other things being equal. Yes, there are reasons why you might want the Corsair machine over the cheaper Alienware system, but it's certainly a consideration.
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Future)The Corsair Voyager isn't for everyone. The $3K price tag says that succinctly enough, but its niche status is more than simply because it's expensive. This is a machine that is too cumbersome for some (it's a 16-incher that weighs 5.3lbs), not powerful enough for others, and doesn't quite feel fully realised for what it sets out to do. That top button bar isn't essential enough to make me want to seek this out over its peers, and the fact that even Apple couldn't get much traction with its own Touch Bar makes me think it isn't just me.
All this means that while this is a solid laptop in its own right, it's really only going to appeal to Elgato diehards that don't mind paying over the odds for it. And even then, the Stream Deck just feels like a more fully realised solution than some numbered buttons you can change the color of under your main display. A high-end gaming laptop and an Elgato Stream Deck are still going to be the cheaper option.
This isn't a write-off for Corsair though, and if it wants to drop the button bar, ease back on the pricing, and open up the machines to Intel and Nvidia, then there could be something here for gamers. The build quality, choice of materials, integrated Slipstream, and awesome keyboard make this a great machine to use. Just for the love of everything put an ethernet port on it.
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Magic: The Gathering knows that sometimes you have to go back to the beginning, but Wizards of the Coast has been pretty cautious about letting Magic travel back to the plane that started it all. Only rarely playing host to new sets since 2001's Apocalypse, the plane of Dominaria hosted its first main set release back in early 2018.
But with the 30th Anniversary of the father of collectible cardboard fast approaching, the latest set is finally going home. Dominaria United will see native planeswalkers Karn, Teferi, and Jaya exploring more of the history of Dominaria, and facing down—yet again—the Phyrexians. No matter how many times those weird Hellraiser-esque fleshsculpting villains get knocked down, they always crawl back.
The focus on the history of Dominaria's many legends is set to be key, which Wizards is bringing attention to by putting 28-year-old Legends cards in Dominaria United Collector's booster packs. This massive potential bounty is courtesy of a long forgotten pile of Legends booster cases (each with six booster boxes bundled together—a total of 216 booster packs) in one of their warehouses. I can only imagine being the random intern who went in and scoped out the warehouse only to find piles of booster boxes worth $50,000 each.Your first shot at Dominaria United will be on MTG Arena on September 1, with the pre-release being the weekend of September 2—the usual week ahead of the release on September 9.
What's the story behind this visit to Dominaria?
Karn, the golem planeswalker originally created by Urza, has been researching the Sylex—a mysterious artifact weapon of some kind. What he actually uncovers is evidence that the Phyrexians have returned to threaten Dominaria once again. Karn discovers the Phyrexian Praetor Sheoldred is somewhere on Dominaria, and is converting everyday people into sleeper agents for the Phyrexians, which is a decidedly uncool thing to do to someone just trying to grow some wheat and avoid being fireballed by passing wizards.
Karn quickly allies with Jaya, Ajani, and Teferi and tries to get everyone on the same page with a peace summit, but Sheoldred activates a bunch of Benalish sleeper agents and crashes the entire thing. Karn makes a new plan to use the Sylex to lure out the Phyrexian Praetor, but before he can put his plan into action he gets a message warning that somebody inside his coalition is a traitor—setting up the circumstances for a classic heel turn by someone. My money is on Ajani, because nobody expects the goody two-shoes bipedal lion to sprout an exoskeleton and start eating his friends. Would you?
What new and returning mechanics will there be?
Image 1 of 8(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 2 of 8(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 3 of 8(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 4 of 8(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 5 of 8(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 6 of 8(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 7 of 8(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 8 of 8(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Dominaria United is bringing back several familiar mechanics—with the main ones referencing Invasion block. The return of Kicker, which lets you spend extra mana to get more effects on your spells, is a fun one, especially with the emphasis being on 'enemy' color combinations. Archangel of Wrath is a strong example, able to stabilize your board state by eliminating one or two threats with damage while also regaining some life against more aggressive decks. Trading two for one and retaining a creature afterwards is a powerful swing that could fit into a lot of deck archetypes.
Another returning mechanic, Domain was largely forgettable in the past, but cards like Herd Migration may find a home in Commander where their cost (and the time needed to scale their effect up) won't be such a burden. Probably the most noteworthy thing returning isn't a mechanic, but the reprint of powerful planeswalker Liliana of the Veil into standard along with the return of some Painlands.
With Dominaria United's new mechanics being few in number, I'm not totally sold on Enlist, which seems to largely be a clever update to Banding. But as usual with combat triggered mechanics, its power and usefulness will largely center on how good the cards are that have it, and the example card Guardian of New Benalia is no Legion Loyalist or Legion Warboss.
On the other hand, the updated Saga Enchantments with Read Ahead are intriguing. Being able to choose which chapter of the Saga you start with is a powerful effect, giving you a taste of the versatility of powerful staples like Cryptic Command. I love how this is explored with The Phasing of Zhalfir, letting you tuck away one or two of your own creatures ahead of clearing the board, or just skip ahead to the clear if you need it.
What about showcases, special frames, and alternate art?
Image 1 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 2 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 3 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 4 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 5 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 6 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 7 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 8 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 9 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 10 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 11 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 12 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 13 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 14 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 15 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 16 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 17 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 18 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 19 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 20 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 21 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 22 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 23 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 24 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 25 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 26 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 27 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 28 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 29 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 30 of 30(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Some of the usual suspects for frame treatments are back, with borderless/extended art cards returning again for certain cards. The big new showcase frame is the stained glass frame, which really pops with some vibrant color choices in particular on Zur, Eternal Schemer and Jhoira, Ageless Innovator. You'll be able to find a variety of legendary supertype cards in the showcase frame with alternate art.
Lovers of big mana symbols can also rejoice, because all five basic lands will also be showing up in a full art stained glass treatments—which will be absolutely stunning in foil.
There's also some special printings, with certain old school legends like Sol'kanar being reimagined with new cards. These new legends will be available as box toppers when you purchase a booster box. Furthermore, Jumpstart—the grab and play set where you combine two 20-card booster packs to create a playable deck—is returning for Dominaria United, and it will have a variety of rares exclusive to the Dominaria United Jumpstart, with one being guaranteed in every Jumpstart pack.
What about the rest of the cards?
Image 1 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 2 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 3 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 4 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 5 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 6 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 7 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 8 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 9 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 10 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 11 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 12 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 13 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 14 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 15 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 16 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 17 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)Image 18 of 18(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)This is all the rest of the printings and cards — my personal favorite being Resolute Reinforcements, which is a cool way to print another version of Raise the Alarm.
Oh, and one more thing:
Is Greensleeves getting a card?
I may never hit a home run over the fence like Babe Ruth, but I can at least say I called my shot on Greensleeves when I predicted her inclusion in Dominaria United. That makes my score two for two on predicting obscure characters from Magic's dusty past reappearing.
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Wizards of the Coast announced five of next year's Dungeons & Dragons releases at today's Wizards Presents event, and it seems like 2023 is going to deliver some neat stuff. There's another adventure anthology, an expanded version of a fan-favorite introductory module, and the return of Planescape, the cult classic campaign setting that gave us Planescape: Torment.
First on the schedule is Keys from the Golden Vault, an anthology of short adventures in the vein of Candlekeep Mysteries or Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, only this time each one involves a heist. It's "Ocean's 11 meets D&D" apparently, and it's due in winter.
Following that in spring is Bigby Presents Glory of the Giants. Players had already theorized we were due for a book about giants after recent additions to Unearthed Arcana, where potential new rules are made available for playtesting, including several giant-themed options. Expect a rules supplement along the lines of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, only with giants instead.
Two releases are currently scheduled for summer. First is The Book of Many Things, a collection of creatures, locations, and other stuff (some for players to use), all themed around infamous artifact The Deck of Many Things. This set of magical cards debuted in 1975's Greyhawk supplement, and since then has been the downfall of many a player-character. Its random effects might grant you d3 wishes, but you might also be forced to fight an avatar of death solo. It sounds like the book could be a bit of a miscellany, like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.
Summer's second release is called Phandelver Campaign, though presumably it'll be given a fuller name in time. It's an expanded version of The Lost Mines of Phandelver, the introductory adventure from 2014's Starter Set, which kickstarted a squillion D&D campaigns. Apparently this revised version will be "tinged with cosmic horror".
Finally, Planescape's return is scheduled for fall. Like the recent Spelljammer: Adventures in Space it'll be available as three books in a slipcase—an adventure, a setting guide, and a monster manual. The original version of Planescape came out in 1994, adding the multiversal city of Sigil and conflict based on factions with distinct ideologies whose beliefs can shape reality. Neatly summarized as "philosophers with clubs", Planescape became beloved thanks to its profound oddness, and some excellent artwork by Tony DiTerlizzi and Dana Knutson.
Wizards of the Coast didn't share much concrete stuff about any of these five releases, like page counts or exact dates, but promises more information about each will be revealed as their release dates get closer. I'll be updating my journal.
(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)
My quest to marry a Game of Thrones celebrity in this Mount & Blade: Bannerlord mod
in Gaming News
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It's been a while since I've stuck my nose into anything related to Game of Thrones. I think I just lost interest, which is what happens when you spend years invested in a bunch of books and then more years invested in a TV show, and then you get an abrupt and disappointing end to it all.
But just because something ends badly doesn't mean you can't—eventually, after a long enough grace period—dive back in and enjoy all the stuff you liked before it came grinding to an unsatisfying halt. And so when I saw a full conversion mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord called Realm of Thrones, which turns the world of Calradia into Westeros and Essos and populates it with characters and locations from Game of Thrones, I decided to give it a try and see if I could still enjoy the characters and fiction I spent so much time with years ago.
Winter is coming
The mod has been in the works for a while, and like Bannerlord itself, it's now in an Early Access state: not finished, but plenty to play with. Along with the map of Westeros and a considerable part of Essos, there are hundreds of NPCs from Game of Thrones, the major cities and families from the books and show, dozens of towns and villages, and yes, even packs of white walkers patrolling north of the Wall. That's where I start playing, at Castle Black with a new character named Skip Happyfish (the last name comes from his banner, which is a smiling fish, and his first name comes from what I do to dialogue in sprawling RPGs). And then I quickly get to work, doing what I always do in the various Game of Thrones mods I've played over the years: I look for famous people and try to marry them.
That's sort of the problem with a world full of fantasy celebrities like Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Ned Stark, Jon Snow, and plenty more besides. I put the medieval warfare and quests of Bannerlord on hold and turn the game into my own version of Pokémon. I can't catch most of the famous characters of Game of Thrones, but I do want to meet them all and invite as many as I can to join Clan Happyfish. I have no time for anyone else: no B-list characters, like the Karstarks or Freys, and definitely no randomly generated characters that aren't from the books or the show at all. I immediately begin scouring the mod for the most famous people I can find.
It doesn't take long. Right there in Castle Black I run into Sandor Clegane. He's not as huge as I expected, but I invite him to join my small clan, which is currently so small it consists only of me. I don't find anyone else of note in the castle, apart from a guy named Charles Foulbreath (unsurprisingly, he was not in the books) and Commander Jeor Mormont, who is far too important to go running around in the snow with me. But I at least take the time to introduce myself. Speaking of snow, I don't see the eternally sulking Jon Snow anywhere so I take the Hound and leave.
We are immediately attacked by looters, the weakest and yet most common enemies in Bannerlord. There's only about a dozen of them, and I figure Clegane can take on at least ten at once while I kill the other two. Wrong on both counts! Sandor goes down almost immediately despite the looters basically just having rocks as weapons. I join him a moment later face-down in the snow, and we're dragged around in chains for a while before I manage to escape.
Happy landings
I head down to Winterfell where I meet Theon Greyjoy, who is probably just hanging out there innocently and not planning to betray anyone. I hire a few lowly mercenaries to ride with me and run into a woman named Scabby Sansa, who I assume is not the Sansa we know from the fiction. More looters accost us after we leave, but this time I'm victorious, and so begins the familiar practice of winning fights, taking prisoners, and selling them and their gear to make a bit of bank. Over at the Dreadfort I meet Ramsay Snow, who hasn't been made a Bolton yet, apparently, but already seems on his way to becoming an evil scumbag.
Growing impatient in the cold north, I ride for the place everyone in Westeros really wants to go: King's Landing. It looks great in the mod, too, and in the tavern I find my first real Game of Thrones A-lister: Tyrion Lannister. I add him to my slowly growing clan. He seems like the kind of guy you could put in charge of just about anything, but for now it's nice to just have him hanging out with me. We take a few small jobs here and there, and while guarding a caravan we run into some raiders, but once again my growing little band comes out on top. Then, just because I'm on a roll, I raid a village in the north, killing and capturing a bunch of villagers and making a whole lot of people, including the Starks and the Boltons, extremely angry at me. Luckily, I'm able to outride Robb's warparty and decide it's getting a bit too hot to stick around, though I make a quick detour back to Castle Black to pick up Sandor again, who managed to escape from the looters who captured us earlier.
I flee to Essos, the less-popular continent, and there I find my memory a bit fuzzy when it comes to places like Pentos. Did stuff happen there? Important stuff? Or am I thinking of Bravos? I really can't recall—it's been years since I read the books and after the final season of the show I think I blocked out a lot of it. Joanna Swyft, Boros Blount... these names seem familiar to me but when I meet them I draw a blank on who they are and what they did.
Dragon lady
Whatever. I know why I'm really in Essos, and it's to track down Daenerys, who is way the hell over in Mereen. The scale of the Realm of Throne map really comes into focus as we ride and ride, and ride some more, for days, just to even get close to Meereen. Finally, I stroll into the throne room and meet the Mother of Dragons, though she does not seem to have her famous pets yet. I try to marry her but all my gold, animals and weapons don't add up to enough in the trade window to even make a dent in her opinion of me. I can't even join her because I'm at war with the North over that village I raided, so I settle for helping her out with a quest to deliver some horses, and put Sandor and Tyrion in charge of a caravan to make some money.
With not much else to do in Essos other than pine for Daenerys, I head back to Westeros. I sell almost everything I've collected from raids and looters and prisoner sales to give a heck of a lot of gold to the North so I can make our little war go away, then figure it's time to really get into trouble. I ride north of the Wall with my 30 or so followers, and into wildling and wight territory. The wildlings aren't particularly friendly—I can't get into Craster's camp, and everyone else will only speak to me from atop their castle walls rather than letting me in.
Wight wedding
And then we run into some actual wights patrolling the snowy woods. There are... a lot of them. They're pretty well-spoken for the undead, but rather than trying to negotiate I decide to challenge them to combat. While my clan puts up a good fight and we kill about half the wights, what's left are more than enough to wipe us out. All my progress, gone, Clan Happyfish destroyed. It's back to square one, as I'm once again dragged around the country in chains, this time by undead ghouls.
On the plus side, I did get to see a lot of both Westeros and Essos, and met just about everyone I wanted to. The mod, even in Early Access, is absolutely playable as it is now, and the map is massive. Any Game of Thrones fans should find a lot here to enjoy. Just stay south of the Wall, at least until your warband is bigger than Clan Happyfish.
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