Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Part of the fun of Dragon Age’s fantasy is that it’s inconsistent – or at least, inconsistent by the standards of fantasy RPGs, which often break down into a million neatly organised and interlocking codex entries. It all rides on who you speak to. The humans believe one thing about the origins and workings of Thedas, the elves another, the qunari something else entirely. These differences are the basis for many factional disagreements and thus, many core series plot developments. According to former lead writer David Gaider, however, there’s an “uber-plot” behind it all that may one day be resolved and bring the series to a close, assuming BioWare continue to refer to his original (and closely guarded) narrative documents.

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Inflexion Games are closing their UK office, laying off staff and restructuring their main Canadian studio after failing to find commercial success with their Victorian fantasy survival game Nightingale. Reportedly, at least 22 people have been let go.

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Stationeers and Icarus developers RocketWerkz are making a spiritual successor to beloved space sim Kerbal Space Program, which is currently titled “Kitten Space Agency” in a flagrant display of adherence to wholesome internet trends. It’s based on an actual Kerbal Space Program 2 pitch the studio threw at Take-Two subsidiary Private Division back in the day. RocketWerkz CEO and original DayZ creator Dean Hall has hired several former KSP and KSP2 developers to work on the game, and is describing it on social media as a “KSP killer”.

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From developers Cannibal Interactive, the creators of Purgatory Dungeoneer, springs forth a new labyrinth game. This one is called Labyrinth of Wild Abyss: LayeRedux and it has labyrinths. Except the labyrinths don’t just have single paths to their centres, but tube monsters covered in eyes who’ll stalk you slowly and methodically as you meander. Personally, it’s not the vibe I’m after when I sit down in the evening and I think, “I would like to play a video game that makes me feel somewhat pleasant”. But hey, it might be for you.

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Almost ten years after Inquistion offered up a thrilling herb-harvesting adventure, today sees the release of Dragon Age: Veilguard. I’ve popped the release times below. The internet’s Aged Dragons are naturally quite excited, and there’s been some lovely interactions over on Le Epic Musk Zone, where veteran Bioheads are celebrating the RPG studio’s history of animation quirks, specifically the ‘Bioware Turn’. Here’s a clip:

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One of my favourite satires is the Screwtape Letters, an epistolary novel by Narnia scribe C.S. Lewis. It consists of messages from an oily elder demon to his nephew about how to correctly groom the soul of an unsuspecting human being. It’s a claustrophobic send-up of managerial politics and nepotism, with World War 1 unfolding in the background. A real pick-me-up. Sintopia is the Two Point incarnation of that premise – in other words, brighter and breezier and definitely more slapstick than Christian. It puts you in charge of a world divided between Earth and hell, and challenges you to ensure a steady movement of optimally sinful souls between one and the other. Say your prayers and watch the trailer.

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I never completed the original Red Dead Redemption, but not for the usual reasons of being terrible at the game, or thinking that open worlds are too big and boring these days and I just want to lie down forever and watch anime. I never finished it because my Xbox 360 version was not, in practice, an open world game, but a lonely farm at the bottom of a vortex of butchered spacetime. In the prologue, reformed outlaw John Marston confronts an old bandit acquaintance and gets himself roundly shot to bits. He’s rescued by local rancher Bonnie MacFarlane, who nurses him back to health and gives him a few odd jobs to warm him up for the next plot point.

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Classic god sims like Populous and Black & White teach that deities love to reach their horrible holy hands into our world and mess with us directly. They teach us to see 1-1 divine intervention in every random house fire and every lightning bolt that miraculously strikes our enemies. By contrast, the forthcoming Zero Orders Tactics teaches that god prefers to operate via covert means, because after all, personally lobbing some electricity at somebody would be inelegant. It’s far more graceful to trap them behind a mountain, instead.

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Hark! Comments have been temporarily turned off on Rock Paper Shotgun. We and all of our sibling websites are moving to a new commenting platform and the existing comments need to be ported across. This process will take some time – days, perhaps – and we’ll update this post once it’s complete and commenting functionality has been restored.

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“Worthless,’ they’d declared. Most NFTs were ‘worthless.’ The greatest artistic movement since The Big BSoD, the greatest proof of the power of the blockchain, the very future of the whole funging Infobahn, and the hedgie soybean-counters say it’s all ‘worthless’,” once wrote the greatest living prophet of our era.

Now, in an entirely predictable case of “I am once again asking our tech overlords to watch the whole movie”, those plucky chancers at Ubisoft have lifted AliceO’s ideas wholesale, ignored her timely and cogent commentary, and released a roiling puke reservoir of NFT upchuck masquerading as a game. Thank you Ian Games for the spot. You are the Neal Stephenson to AliceO’s William Gibson, but for worthless crap. (The IGN piece has some very good context and is worth reading).

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