Hard drive space for all! Helldivers 2’s slimmer install size is rolling out to everyone later this month

There is no greater source of tepid rage than when I see a game, I buy it, I proceed to download it, and it tells me it needs to take up one billion gigabytes of my hard drive space (NB: one billion is an exaggeration). It fills every corner of my being with a potent darkness, and I would like it to stop. This is a feeling many had with Helldivers and its ludicrously large 154GB install size, leading to a test build of the game to be released by Arrowhead last year knocking it way down to only 23GB in size. And now, after some testing, this build will be available to everyone!

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Two genres and seven years on, Remedy attempt to define what a Control game even is in the lead-up to Resonant

What is a Control game? It’s a fairly reasonable question to ask, as the only follow-up there’s been to the original 2019 game in the intervening years (apart from some DLC) was FBC: Firebreak, a live service FPS spin-off that… well, you know. And then last year Remedy revealed what was long dubbed to be Control 2 is actually Control Resonant, and that we won’t be playing as Jesse this time around, oh and also, it’s a Devil May Cry-esque action game. So with all these shifts, in a new interview some of the leads behind the sequel have shared their perspective on what a Control game actually is.

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With Marathon’s release imminent, Bungie say it’s got “no pay for power” microtransactions and confirm seasonal rewards will stick around

I hope you’ve got some decent trainers and plenty of bottled water on hand. The time to run a Marathon is nigh, with Bungie’s shooter set to burst out of the blocks today, March 5th. Ahead of the starting gun going off the Destiny 2 developers have shared a bit more info on how Marathon‘s in-game currency and seasonal pass rewards work.

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“In a sense, we’re kind of victims of ourselves” says Crimson Desert’s chief marketer, who reckons it plunged over the announcement Kliff too early

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a really shonky Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? Is it a dork ass enormity of an open world action-RPG? Is it a sort of janky Assassin’s Creedlike where you explode stuff a lot? Is it something with slippery combat that’ll break your heart? Is it a game where you’ve got to press 15 million buttons just to pick up a thing?

All of these are the sorts of questions folks have asked as they’ve grappled to understand exactly what Crimson is ahead of its release this month. According to developers Pearl Abyss’ main marketing man, that’s a consequence of the shonky enormity of exploding slippage being announced way too early.

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In Total War: Medieval 3, you can change the laws of your kingdom to ensure your feckless heir doesn’t inherit the throne

While Creative Assembly will readily tell you that Total War: Medieval 3 is still years away from release, with the project currently only in pre-production, the team are being quite open with their plan for the long, long, long-awaited strategy game. A recent message from the game’s creative director, for instance, goes into how you can mess around with inheritance planning for the whole kingdom of France.

As someone who is currently going through the process of creating a will and signing life insurance paperwork, I am delighted to turn this boring bureaucracy into a transferable skill to ensure my friends and family can keep sticking it to the British throughout my 12th century campaign.

More importantly, potentially even than that, is how these systems are an example of the replayability Creative Assembly is hoping to build into Total War: Medieval 3 and what they’ve learned from Crusader Kings 3.

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Oblivion Remastered multiplayer mod announced by company aiming to give a bunch of single player games their GTA 5 moment

From Skyrim Together to the more recently released Witcher Online, modders bringing multiplayer to big single player games isn’t new. Folks spend hundreds of hours mucking about in Tamriel or on The Continent alone, so the idea of being able to do so with a gang of mates has obvious appeal, as much as it can be fiddly to pull off.

A newly announced mod will add multiplayer to Bethesda’s Oblivion Remastered later this year. But this one’s not from your typical group of hobbyists.

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Ubisoft talk up “unique, darker” Assassin’s Creed Hexe, also promise their Invictus multiplayer game is making progress

Ubisoft have released a broad update on the future of Assassin’s Creed, with thoughts from new head of content Jean Guesdon. It doesn’t tell us much, but it doesn’t tell us nothing. At the very least, it’s not another layoff announcement.

Firstly, don’t believe the scuttlebutt about their Assassin’s Creed multiplayer project, Codename Invictus, which is “progressing steadily” in the hands of some For Honor veterans. It’s not some kind of Fall Guy house party malarkey, whatever the rumour-mongers might tell you. It’s… well, it sounds like they’re still deciding what it is. Announced in 2022, the project is proceeding on a “test and learn” basis.

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Corpses in the censored Japanese version of Resident Evil Requiem are full of terrible darkness

People on social media are upset about censorship in Resident Evil Requiem. Wait, come back! This isn’t one of those situations where Twitter dudes with usernames like BasedMaxxing97 rant about the bikini armor being altered to cover up the ‘vagina bones’. It seems the Japanese version of Capcom’s new horror game doesn’t feature any blood and guts in certain scenes, in a bid to appease the country’s regulators.

Instead it has… anomalous pools of shadow. Hideous darkness spilling from the cleaved torsos of ostensible cadavers. The same darkness lurks within you and I. What fools we were, to ever think ourselves meat. We are but the place where the light isn’t. Umbral puppets. Gabbling event horizons. Arigatou gozaimasu, Capcom! I feel much better now.

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“Gary will no longer attack the player from beyond the veil” says The Outer Worlds 2’s latest patch, which also makes a death pit work as intended

It’s been a little bit since The Outer Worlds 2 got that November patch aiming to take care of mysterious eyebrow disappearances. I wonder what the latest one, which is fairly beefy, does. Oh, it adds a number of handy features like the option to advance time by waiting, toggle walking via key press, and extra stealth kill animations.

Nice and boring. Oh, wait. “Gary will no longer attack the player from beyond the veil”. “Fixed cases where some NPCs could see the player while they were wearing the bucket hat”. “The pit outside of the entrance to Algid Menagerie will now always kill the player as intended”. “NPCs should no longer moonwalk, despite being in space”.

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