Dragon Age’s former lead writer has many, mostly positive thoughts on Veilguard’s romance options, story and environments

Former Dragon Age lead writer and Summerfall Games co-founder David Gaider has strung together some opinions on Xitter – the original spawning ground for all opinions – about the full reveal video for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, expressing broad enthusiasm for the new RPG’s narrative tone, combat system and environments, while offering a more ambivalent analysis of BioWare’s decision to let players seduce every last member of their party.

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Cities: Skylines 2 achieves ultimate catharsis by deleting landlords to fix spiralling rent prices in its next patch

Cities: Skylines 2 has found a delightfully straightforward solution to the very real-world problem of greedy landlords demanding excessive rent payments. The city-builder sequel will simply delete all its virtual leeches in its next patch, helping to bring down the cost of living in your digital metropolis.

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Souls devs FromSoftware also want Bloodborne on PC, even if the game’s own director can’t admit it

Look, everyone wants to play Bloodborne on PC. It’s one of those universally accepted truths, like gravity or pizza being delicious. And, yes, nobody really knows why Bloodborne isn’t on PC yet, almost a decade after it released on PlayStation 4 – despite Sony’s apparent delight in bringing every other PlayStation exclusive to PC, just to mock us. It’s one of those universally accepted unknowns, like how gravity works or the actual best pizza topping. (It’s glue, if you believe AI.)

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Reviewing the unsolicited pictures of artificial houseplants that arrived in the RPS inbox without context

The RPS inbox is a wondrous treasure-trove of distraction doubloons, some delightful, some shite-ful, and not even Outlook’s lichen-like interface can dull the luster of its offerings. In amongst the press releases, indie nuggets, and the occasional pitch for sponsored AI content (no, never), something truly exquisite peeks through the chest lid. This week, it was a completely context-free message containing several photos of what appear to be artificial houseplants from a man named ‘Harold’. We take criticism seriously here, so I can only assume the sender intended the contents of these imposter pots to be judged as such. Well, I’m nothing if not obliging. Apologies for the quality of the images. I screen-grabbed then resized them up because I was too scared to download them in case they contained explosives or something.

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Disco Elysium studio bosses humiliated the cancelled expansion’s lead writer for speaking to journalists, claims report

Back in February, Graham wrote about potential redundancies at Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM following the cancellation of a standalone expansion to that game, codenamed X7. Now, PC Gamer’s Ted Litchfield has spoken to 12 current and former employees about the circumstances surrounding the cancellation, notably the details of the layoffs, the expansion, and the “humiliation campaign” suffered by writer Argo Tuulik as apparent retaliation for his participation in last year’s extensive People Make Games documentary. You can, and should, read PC Gamer’s report here.

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The developers of 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault are making a 1920s school detective mystery

UK national treasures Inkle – they who looped the globe in 80 days, vaulted the heavens and sang of the highlands – are making a brand new investigation-ma-jig called Miss Mulligatawney’s School For Promising Girls, though the presskit notes that this might not be the final title. It’s set in a 1920s boarding school, where you can expect “tuition in Latin, Geometry and a wide range of team sports, all within the beautiful setting of our isolated country estate”. Also some murders, possibly.

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Everywhere’s no-code game creation tools get a closed beta next week

Everywhere is a creative suite that aims to let players build their own 3D games – such as shooters, racing games, and platformers – without code. Instead, players can use a developer- and user-created asset library to build and “remix” game worlds, then publish them for other folks to play.

Those creative tools will be available to some people next week, when the closed Builders Beta launches on June 18th.

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Minecraft’s Tricky Trials update is out, adding new challenge chambers, mobs and an auto-crafter

When I play Minecraft, I mostly just want to build things, or maybe go exploring across its landscapes, which still have the power to surprise and delight me. My son, meanwhile, mostly wants to murder me – and in the game.

The Tricky Trials update, out now, might help redirect his bloodlust. It adds trial chambers full of traps and treasure, including waves of hostile mobs to battle against.

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Comically vast Helldivers 2 patch adds to the game’s Galactic strategy map while making stealth easier and armoured enemies fewer

The latest Helldivers 2 patch is memorably titled 01.000.400, but for my money, it’s hovering on the brink of being one of your gold-varnished “X.0” updates of note. It adds a fair few mechanics and makes various substantial adjustments to Arrowhead and Sony’s liberty-humping, cheerily xenocidal squad shooter.

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