August 2024 Prime Gaming lineup in full:

• Now Available SteamWorld Heist [GOG Code] – Command a steam-driven pirate crew in a series of epic tactical shootouts.
• Now Available Deus Ex: Mankind Divided [GOG Code] – Play as Adam Jensen, an experienced covert operative armed with a new arsenal of state-of-the-art augmentations and unravel a vast worldwide conspiracy.
• Now Available Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness [GOG Code] – Lara’s experiences changed her deeply. She’s become a darker, hardened, imperious version of herself. A desperate phone call from her former mentor Von Croy leads her to Paris. But as she arrives, she discovers that the old man was brutally murdered and a plot to frame her for his death is in motion.
• Now Available Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation + Chronicles [GOG Code] – When Lara was only 16, she was tutored in archaeology by Professor Werner Von Croy, a world-famous archaeologist. Skip forward now, to find Lara in Egypt, minding her own business until a pool of quicksand pulls her underground, deep into an ancient tomb.
• August 8 Gravity Circuit [Amazon Games App] – Follow Kai, a lone operative war hero who harnesses the mysterious powers of the Gravity Circuit, on an adventure in a futuristic world inhabited by sentient robots.
• August 8 South of the Circle [GOG Code] – Experience a deep narrative story of the emerging relationship between Peter and Clara, Cambridge academics involved in a political conflict.
• August 8 Loop Hero [Epic Games Store] – Wield an expanding deck of mystical cards to place enemies, buildings, and terrain along each unique expedition loop for the brave hero.
• August 8 Trek to Yomi [Epic Games Store] – Play as the young swordsman Hiroki who is sworn to protect his town and the people he loves against all threats. Faced with tragedy and bound to duty, the lone samurai must voyage beyond life and death to confront himself and decide his path forward.
• August 8 Kraken Academy!! [Amazon Games App] – Make friends, free spirits and join forces with a magical kraken to save the world.
• August 15 Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition [Amazon Games App] – Gather your party of heroes and continue the legendary adventure in this story-rich fantasy epic where every choice matters.
• August 15 Beholder 3 [Amazon Games App] – When a high-ranking security officer saves you from prison, you end up a pawn in her schemes. Now you must eliminate anyone standing in the way of her secret plans and try to get your life back while working two jobs.
• August 15 Hard West 2 [GOG Code] – Outsmart, outcheat and outgun your enemies in this turn-based tactics game set in a Wild West world where nothing is as it seems.
• August 15 En Garde! [GOG Code] – Play as Adalia in her daring escapades full of sword-fighting, satire and shenanigans. Challenge the cruel Count-Duke and oppose tyranny with panache!
• August 15 Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical [GOG Code] – In a modern fantasy world, college dropout Grace is granted the power of a Muse – power she’ll need to find out the truth behind her predecessor’s death before time runs out. You’ll decide who Grace allies with, who she can trust, and who may betray her in this beautifully hand-illustrated roleplaying musical.
• August 22 Grime: Definitive Edition [Amazon Games App] – Explore your surreal surroundings, parry and absorb the many enemies you encounter with living weapons that mutate form and function.
• August 22 KeyWe [Epic Games Store] – KeyWe is a cute, co-operative postal puzzler starring Jeff and Debra, two small kiwi birds working in a whimsical post office. With no hands to help them, they must jump, flap, peck and butt-slam their way across an interactive landscape of levers, bells and buttons to get those messages delivered on time.
• August 22 Figment 2: Creed Valley [Amazon Games App] – Face bosses in musical showdowns, make your way through puzzles, and explore unique environments set in the human mind.
• August 22 Spells & Secrets [GOG Code] – Spells & Secrets is a deep and motivating rogue-lite experience that invites everyone to this rewarding genre with its adventure story. Free the wizard Academy of Greifenstein from magical creatures by using your spells in creative ways.
• August 22 Young Souls [Amazon Games App] – Fight hordes of belligerent goblins, level up with hundreds of weapons and accessories, explore, and journey between worlds, as rebellious twins battle their way to save their foster father.
• August 29 Arcade Paradise [GOG Code] – Manage profits, pick up gum, do the laundry and get coin to unlock arcade units and flip the family laundromat business to become an Arcade Paradise.
• August 29 INDUSTRIA [GOG Code] – On the evening of the fall of the Berlin wall, a young woman plunges headlong into a parallel dimension to find her missing work colleague who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. While the checkpoints in East Berlin are still being overrun by crowds of people, Nora escapes from this world, into unknown layers of time and into an unknown fate.
• August 29 The Collage Atlas [Amazon Games App] – Journey through an entirely hand-drawn picture-book dream-world where every little detail has been lovingly-crafted with pen & ink on paper.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

“We’ve taken places that are only vaguely touched on [in the mainline RPG series], like the Sister’s Isles, and turned them into our High Isle release from a couple years ago,” explains Bill Slavicsek, TESO’s narrative director. “All we knew about that was a couple dots on the map and a mention in a book, and we turned that into a whole chapter and DLC. Any place on the map you can think of, we wanna go there. And if it’s not on the map, we want to make it”.

It feels like The Elder Scrolls Online is well on track to fill out the complete world map. There’s more filled-in regions than empty space now, plus an assortment of interesting new extraplanar locations to dimension-hop around in. While the Morrowind expansion helped bring in nostalgic fans wanting to explore its strange volcanic environment and insect-and-fungus based ecosystem, the Elder Scrolls lore buffs were best served by the Elsweyr expansion, finally taking a deep dive into the much-mentioned but never-seen lands of the feline Khajiit.

Not only did Elsweyr give us our first real look at its lush savannas and a wider range of Khajiit body types (thanks to lunar magic, they can be born as anything from nearly human to literal talking housecats), but it was an opportunity for ZeniMax Online Studios to carve out its own corner of the lore. Despite the accepted text being that dragons had been unseen for millennia and only returned with the launch of Skyrim, TESO had them make an appearance during the Elsweyr chapter (set a thousand years before Skyrim). Such an event did, admittedly, require some narrative sleight-of-hand to explain why nobody cares to mention it all during later in-universe eras.

“We take reference from a lot of different sources, internal and external,” explains TESO’s loremaster, Michael Zenke. “A lot of the stuff we do though isn’t in the lore bible because it’s new. Every release we’re adding to the canon. We’ve got a great tradition of unreliable narrators in the Elder Scrolls franchise, so unless you or your player character saw something in-game, ‘that’s just someone’s opinion, man’. So we have a lot of freedom to do interesting stuff.”

While armed with a reliable trick to handwave events that might throw later lore into chaos, ZeniMax’s writing team has grown ever bolder over time. It has been so many years since Skyrim (and likely several more until The Elder Scrolls 6 surfaces), effectively making TESO the one and only Elder Scrolls game of this generation. That, plus Todd Howard confirming that everything in TESO is canon, has allowed the team to expand into wholly new territories, like Fargrave, introduced in the Deadlands DLC. Fargrave is a ‘princeless’ plane of Oblivion, unaffiliated with any of the Daedric gods. A neutral border-world floating in the void, and a wholly new location that let the team cut loose in terms of both writing and environment design.

If this sounds like something a new player might want to jump straight into, then there’s nothing stopping you. Each of the major ‘Chapter’ expansions are designed to function as a self-contained adventure, letting players tackle story arcs as and when they see fit. The structure is yet another element of classic Elder Scrolls design that sets the game apart from its online peers. While the game has long-since dropped its mandatory subscription, the optional ‘ESO Plus’ subscription gives players access to all the minor DLC and most of the expansions to date, making it an especially easy game to pick up play.

Another aspect that has lowered the barrier to entry and further aligned TESO with its single-player siblings is the Companions system. Six customizable NPC partners (with another two due to be released soon) can be recruited to join you on your adventures, albeit one at a time. They were introduced to the game with the Blackwood expansion in 2021, but have become a ubiquitous sight, as they allow solo players to enjoy the game’s wider content more easily. Parties can also be a mixture of players and Companions, allowing tiny groups (just two, in many cases) to tackle some of the bigger, tougher dungeons and open-world challenge bosses with relative ease. Plus, the companions’ constant combat barks and interjections on what they see around them makes the world feel a little less lonely for those wanting to treat TESO as a single-player game. If you’ve fond memories of scaling mountains with Teldryn Sero or Aela the Huntress in Skyrim, Companions echoes that experience.

Obviously these systems have their limits, though. Player housing is instanced, set apart from the overworld, and there’s no chance of breaking the game over your knee with mods or console commands, but the core Elder Scrolls experience is replicated surprisingly well, right down to many quests having multiple possible endings. Your final decisions may not have world-shakingly obvious impact, but they often result in the death or a change of state for an NPC that will remain in their quest location, a reminder of your decisions for that character. Play long enough and complete enough quest arcs and the world will start to feel like you’ve made a real impact in it, so long as you go back to revisit some old haunts.

Now months into the game’s year-long anniversary celebrations, the future’s looking bright for The Elder Scrolls Online. The team seems confident that if TESO keeps it up for another decade, it might well encompass the entire Elder Scrolls world (and yet more locations beyond) by the time the 20th anniversary begins. In the meantime, Lambert mentions that there are plans to improve the experience for new or returning players. “As a new player, or someone coming back after a year, it can be overwhelming,” he admits. “So we’re working on some systems to make that kind of experience better. Not necessarily hand-holdy, but more informational”. Beyond that, some big changes (details of which he refuses to divulge) are coming to player housing, and further refinements to the game’s balance to keep the meta in check.

I once wrote off The Elder Scrolls Online as a half-hearted cash-in. Now, it’s a game I’ve been playing on and off for around five years now, dipping back into and thoroughly enjoying when that Elder Scrolls itch needs scratching. While the incredible community keeps Skyrim alive through mods, that’s a very different experience to exploring brand new, official stories and regions of Tamriel. TESO may not be The Elder Scrolls 6, but it’s a continuing Elder Scrolls game that’s successfully shifted and changed to reflect the wants of a fanbase that grew up on acclaimed single-player RPGs. And that’s a fine place to be for a ten-year-old online game.

The product of a wasted youth, wasted prime and getting into wasted middle age, Dominic Tarason is a freelance writer, occasional indie PR guy and professional techno-hermit seen in many strange corners of the internet and seldom in reality. If you’re looking for something new and potentially very weird to play, feel free to poke him on Twitter.