Friend, are you weary of talk of blockbuster space-faring RPGs and blockbuster D&D adaptations and blockbusters in general? Do you yearn for the older, simpler days before the great Unrealification and the invention of sex scenes, when people called a spike pit a spike pit, and you could count all the different colours in a screenshot on your fingers? Do you, in fact, reject this framing of retro-styled 2D pixelart games as “older” and “simpler”, regarding it as condescending and false? Look, shut up already. I’m trying to tell you about Isles of Sea and Sky from developers Jason Newman, Dan Collver and Craig Collver.
Baldur’s Gate 3 released with plenty of bugs, but to their credit Larian have been releasing plenty of patches in the weeks since its launch. The most recent, hotfix #5, is live now – and it resolves several game-breaking bugs, a particular romance blocker, improves performance in multiplayer, and much more.
Ring the bell, everybody, it’s time for another round of game developers telling players that they don’t really understand what a “game engine” is. The spark this time is little-known science fiction adventure Starfield, which I believe we’ve reported on before. The game has a few obvious foibles – in my experience as a space pirate, NPCs sometimes struggle to navigate their surroundings, and then there are those stark disconnects between planetary surfaces and orbital space. Hiccups such as these have led a few players to wonder whether the game might work better using different technology, and in particular, Epic’s much-trumpeted Unreal Engine 5. Isn’t Bethesda’s proprietary Creation Engine, which the company have been updating since 2011, getting a little long in the tooth?
You’ll find a lot of the discussion below this post from Digital Foundry boffin John Linneman on Twxter, which has attracted both gloating PlayStation fans (remember, Starfield is Xbox-only in console land) and a number of thoughtful replies from some fairly senior game developers. This conversation goes back a fair way, of course – people have been ragging on Bethesda for using “the same engine” for years. And there’s a definite air of world-weariness to some of the developer responses.
The name Nextorage might not mean much to you, but this storage company was founded by Sony Japan employees in 2019 and acquired by NVMe SSD controller manufacturer Phison in 2022 – making them well-placed to deliver some high-quality SSDs. Today, their flagship NEM-PA2TB 2TB SSD is down to $109.99 at Newegg, where you can even pick up a $10 gift card with the purchase – neat.
Former chairman of PlayStation Studios Shawn Layden has Thoughts and somewhat dire warnings about the videogame industry’s future, though what exactly he means by “the videogame industry” is a little open to guesswork.
Among the feats a new player of FromSoftware’s Souls or Souls-adjacent fantasy games must perform is conquering your fear of giants. From the Stray Demons of Dark Souls through Bloodborne’s Cleric Beast to the dragons of Elden Ring, you must learn not to be awed by creatures who look they could kill you with a sneeze. You must learn to run towards that titanic knight with the enormous shield, rolling between its colossal ankles, using its stature against it. You must learn to see past the visual overkill of a swing that would surely fell a skyscraper, registering only the effects on your poise and health bar. It’s a learning curve, for sure, and that makes the modding of mechs from Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon into Elden Ring a little more than the usual act of mischievous fanservice.
You may have seen that Alice Bee has started a “land on every planet” run of Bethesda’s Starfield. By total coincidence – I promise you it’s accidental, I was so pleased – I’ve been working on a “land on no planets” run of Starfield. The reasoning for this is as follows: people say that outer space is the worst part of the game, because it’s just an irritating interval between the maps where the majority of quests, loot, intrigues, etc are found. It’s a fast travel loading screen you can fly about in. But what if you double-down on the space stuff?
What if you never descend from orbit, not even to repair, modify or upgrade your ship and offload inventory? What if, rather than buying new ships or building them, you progress exclusively by boarding other captains and making off with ship and cargo? How well does Starfield scrub up as a thoroughbred space sim that leans towards bloodthirsty piracy? Here to answer these questions is Mary Read, my custom character and budding astral freebooter. She’s named for her distant ancestor, the legendary 18th century English buccaneer Mary Read. She’s had a crack at life on shore, setting foot most recently on Earth’s Moon, but from this point on, her fate and fortune lies amid the stars. Arrr!
Bethesda has rallied behind their decision to deliberately include vast planets full of nothing in Starfield, insisting that it’s all by design. The effect is to make the player appreciate the vastness of the galaxy they’re in and experience the loneliness of space, apparently – and it’s not boring, honest.
CD Projekt Red has detailed exactly which of Cyberpunk 2077’s upcoming changes will be offered to all players as part of the game’s major 2.0 update, and which additions will be included in the game’s massive Phantom Liberty expansion.
