Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

After unforeseeable problems with Elon Musk’s public image, my publishers delayed my debut young adult novel about teenagers saving the future using NFTs. I rolled with the punches, fighting back against Musk’s cult of personality with a bold new direction for the future of the ‘chain in the second novel of my Non-Fungible Future series. Well. I had expected both books to be in your hands already (and on the bestseller list), but now my publishers are concerned by that report declaring “the vast majority of NFTs are worthless”. Well then! As we say on the Infobahn: when Turing closes a crypto exchange, he opens an ICO. So in the wake of Cyber Monday, I now present to you a sneak peek at my third Non-Fungible Future novel, a mint read I call ‘Worthless’.

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Last time, you decided that seeing your outfit in cutscenes is better than telefragging. I understand the yearning for fashion, absolutely I do, but I’m not convinced you fully thought it through. I will point you to a comment by reader ‘moderately sized grundus’, who asked, “What could be more cosmetic than wearing the literal skin of your very recently slain enemies?” A strong question. But we move on. This week, I ask you to pick between explosive reaction and emotive composition. What’s better: chain explosions or Diablo’s Tristram theme?

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Last week I wrote up an irreverent cyberpunk ninja game called Ninja Issen. The just announced Quantic River, which Graham tossed into the Maw last night, is that game played straight. In Fluidfury Interactive’s new dystopian slasher, you are a resurrected cyborg who, for reasons not currently given, must katana the limbs off a bunch of other dudes in a lean and nasty 2.5D metropolis.

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I hope you’ve had your fill of cyberpunk, because we’re heading back to Rivia, baby. Almost half of CD Projekt’s development staff – around 330 people – are now working on the next Witcher game, the mysterious project Polaris.

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Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s release date seemed to leak via European ratings board PEGI a little over a week ago, and sure enough, it’s now confirmed. Capcom’s fantasy sequel will launch on March 22nd, 2024, and there’s a new trailer.

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Cyberpunk 2077 has several endings and the recent Phantom Liberty expansion added more. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that none of these endings are uncomplicated.

“I know that some players were disappointed that we didn’t add a ‘good’ ending when Phantom Liberty was released,” says CD Projekt Red senior writer Magda Zych in a new interview. But Cyberpunk 2077 is “no place for happy endings.”

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The Embracer mass layoffs train has come for Fishlabs, the studio behind space shooter Chorus. Embracer have laid off more than half the Fishlabs team – “around 50 people” – as part of a restructuring operation that has already seen the conglomerate cut over 900 jobs across its operations over the summer.

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In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only… compromise, calculation and license to misbehave. In Owlcat’s forthcoming RPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, you play the free-wheeling head of an interstellar merchant’s dynasty. Operating on the fringes of uncharted space, you’re the owner of a Warrant of Trade that essentially lets you run your own miniature empire within the Imperium, deciding the fates of planets, amassing vast wealth and recruiting a motley crew of xenos, heretics and assorted weirdos. It’s the kind of behaviour that’d get you vaporised if you were some run-of-the-mill Space Marine Chaplain, but out here on the frontier, you’re allowed to act with impunity, providing you fulfil your overall mandate of adding to the God Emperor’s glory and kicking the odd Eldar’s head in.

Rogue Traders are arguably the only characters in Games Workshop’s brutal and decrepit table-top setting that lend themselves to the role of CRPG protagonist, because they are the only characters in Warhammer 40K’s Imperium who enjoy anything like the plot agency of a Commander Shepard. And with that, I think, comes an interesting transformation of the character alignment systems the game shares with other CRPGs such as Baldur’s Gate 3.

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Bethesda’s heaping plateful of space-spaghetti Starfield presently rejoices in the status of a Mixed Steam user review rating, with over 80,000 such reviews posted to date. Bethesda High Command are clearly displeased with this, and several unnamed but platform-verified developers have begun replying to and rebutting individual Steam reviewers, giving apparent priority to complaints about the game’s loading breaks during fast travel and when moving between maps.

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Baldur’s Gate 3‘s next update, Patch 5, will address various performance issues caused by the bountiful fantasy RPG‘s previous patch. The source of the lag? No, it’s got nothing to do with teeth. According to Larian, the slowdowns are actually connected to the game’s understanding of crime and morality: Patch 4 left it unable to “forget” player thefts and acts of vandalism that haven’t been detected by NPCs, meaning that BG3 players who break the rules often and get away with it have been saddling their simulations with unfinished tasks. That’s right, the game’s latest technical crisis is in fact a crisis of conscience. Oh the humanity!

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