Dragon Age: The Veilguard is out tomorrow, October 31. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran of developer BioWare’s fantasy RPGs or a newcomer looking to see what all the fuss is about, it’s worth noting that The Veilguard represents a pretty drastic shift from the tactical, open-zone RPG gameplay of its predecessor, Dragon Age: Inquisition. So no matter what your previous experience, there are a few things worth noting before you dive into this long-awaited return to Thedas. I’ve put over 60 hours into the game, so here are a few things I’ve learned for you to keep in mind as you get started. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
Many of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s choices are personal and focus on your team’s relationships and life paths. However, one of the big, world-changing ones comes early on, shortly after you recruit Davrin, the Grey Warden companion. Right now, you might be staring at a choice between helping either the Tevinter city of Minrathous or Treviso, the home base of the Antivan Crows, from coordinated dragon attacks. If you’re unsure of what decision to make and want to know what the results of each option are, we’re here to lay them out for you.
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This choice has an impact on your party and your faction allies, as both the Tevinter mage Neve and the Antivan assassin Lucanis are from the affected cities. You’re essentially making a choice on which city and faction will be in a better position to help you when the time comes, and putting Neve or Lucanis on a specific path in their stories and even combat roles. Here’s the rundown of the consequences.
The person you don’t help will temporarily leave the party
When they return, they will be considered “hardened,” which locks out parts of their skill tree and makes it harder to progress their relationship without higher approval throughout the game
You will lose some choice in Neve and Lucanis’ personal storylines, and they will be forced to go down one direction because of the circumstances
The city you don’t save will be blighted, altering quest lines and dialogue, and cutting off access to the local faction’s shop
The Shadow Dragons or Antivan Crows will have a baseline loss in allied strength points, meaning it will be impossible to max them out
Screenshot: BioWare / Kotaku
Overall, it’s still a binary choice that evens itself out, but it will have pretty direct ramifications on your relationship with Neve and Lucanis above all else. It’s still possible to reach the end of their storylines (including having them become a Hero of the Veilguard, which is the equivalent to reaching maximum Loyalty in the Mass Effect series) and make up for the loss in allied power, but it will take more sidequests to make it happen, and you won’t have the shop to sell valuables to in order to juice those numbers.
What I’m unsure of as of this writing is whether or not it locks you out of Neve and Lucanis’ respective romances. I saved Minrathous in my playthrough and my relationship with Lucanis was slow to progress for a bit, so I didn’t see any further options to flirt and eventually locked in my romance with Davrin. We’ll update this guide as that becomes clear.
If you’re reading this guide, you’re probably a decent way into The Veilguard, but if you’d like a few extra tips to help you as you take down the elven gods, we’ve got those, too.
A lot of The Veilguard’s systems seem to draw heavily from Mass Effect, and that includes a spin on Andromeda’s ability loadouts. Since you can’t access all your abilities on a wheel like you used to, The Veilguard has you decide on what attacks you’ll have at your disposal on a given quest and assign them. The showcase had a warrior version of protagonist Rook kitted out with a “This Is Sparta”-style kick, a grappling spear used to draw enemies in close, and a shield-like aura to protect her from damage. They definitely seem to be going for a tanky, brawler build, and picking the abilities best for whatever approach you’re going for will be key to defining your playstyle.
Also in the loadout is an Ultimate ability called Warden’s Fire, which rains down an area-of-effect attack on enemies. It sounds like this might be exclusive to Grey Warden Rooks, one of the origins you can select for your hero in the character creator at the beginning of the game.
Image: CD Projekt Red / Bethesda / Blizzard / EA / Lucasfilm / Valve / Kotaku
Valve’s annual autumn sale. Some of the best and biggest PC games, including action-RPG Diablo IV, the fantastic Star Wars game Jedi: Survivor, and Bethesda’s latest, Starfield, are all on sale right now.
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This latest fall sale (“autumn,” if you are fancy) runs from November 21 to November 28th. Steam’s autumn sale features a huge list of discounted PC games. Some are older games and others, likeRemannt II and Dredge, are hits from 2023.
Here are some of highlights from this massive sale:
Anno 1800 – $15 (75% off)
Black Desert – $1 (90% off)
Blasphemous – $6 (75% off)
Climbey – $6 (40% off)
Cyberpunk 2077 – $30 (50% off)
Darkest Dungeon – $5 (80% off)
Dead By Daylight – $8 (60% off)
Demon Turf – $15 (50% off)
Diablo IV – $42 (40% off)
Dredge – $19 (25% off)
EA F1 23 – $28 (60% off)
El Paso, Elsewhere – $16 (20% off)
En Garde! – $12 (40% off)
Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition – $10 (75% off)
Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade – $35 (33% off)
God of War – $30 (40% off)
Hades – $12.50 (50% off)
Half-Life: Alyx – $20 (66% off)
Halo: The Master Chief Collection – $10 (75% off)
Hexcells Complete Pack – $2.69 (70% off)
Hogwarts Legacy – $36 (40% off)
Horizon Zero Dawn – Complete Edition – $12.50 (75% off)
Lies of P – $48 (20% off)
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered – $36 (40% off)
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales – $30 (40% off)
Ninja Saviors, The: Return of the Warriors – $16 (20% off)
Red Dead Redemption 2 – $20 (67% off)
Remnant II – $35 (30% off)
Rust – $27 (33% off)
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – $42 (40% off)
Starfield – $56 (20% off)
Stray – $20 (34% off)
Street Fighter VI – $40 (34% off)
System Shock – $28 (30% off)
Tales From Off-Peak City – $5 (50% off)
Tiny Tiny Wonderlands: Chaotic Great Edition – $20 (75% off)
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun – $15 (32% off)
As always with Steam’s big fall sale, the store’s limited-time blowout kicks off nomination season for the Steam Awards. Players can hop over to the official Steam autumn sale store page and then vote for their favorite games in various categories including Game of the Year, the best Steam Deck game, most innovative gameplay, and so on. Valve will announce the winners in January.
If a game you loved this year got snubbed from the Game Awards, now you can (sort of) right that wrong and nominate it for some Steam awards. These are just as good as the Game Awards, right?
From mergers to memes, the landscape of interactive entertainment is always in motion. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.
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Baldur’s Gate 3already has one special edition, in the form of its Collector’s Edition. We even unboxed it here at Kotaku, and it’s got a lot of cool knickknacks that pay tribute to its tabletop roots. Of course that was expensive, solely for PC and PlayStation 5 players, and didn’t include a physical copy of the game itself. But Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to Xbox next month, so Larian Studios is taking the opportunity to release a new, Deluxe Edition for all three platforms. And given what comes in the box, I think it’s pretty darn affordable. Read More
Like game director Ji Won Choi promised in early November, duo-developers Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio have dropped a new update for their gothic, Belle Époque-era Soulslike RPG, Lies of P. And just as expected, this update makes some significant changes to the game so that you have an actual fighting chance at surviving this bloodied retelling of the Pinocchio story. Read More
Modern Warfare III players are begging Activision to remove a “literally invisible” cosmetic first introduced in Modern Warfare II that’s plaguing multiplayer matches yet again. Read More
On November 16, Valve will let folks purchase a new Steam Deck OLED Limited Edition model, which features all the upgrades of the base OLED version of the portable PC, but with some extra cosmetic details, too. And to help folks actually get a chance to buy this thing, Valve is implementing some safeguards to slow or stop bots and resellers from buying them all up instantly. Read More
One of the best action-RPGs in a generation is finally getting a mobile version, but it’s a mixed blessing. The good news is that Hades is coming to iPhones in 2024 and will be free for Netflix subscribers. The bad news is that it will be exclusive to both, with no way to buy the game outright or play it on Android devices. Read More
Rocksteady is finally ready to start talking about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, after delaying it (again) earlier this year. The studio first announced its upcoming supervillain co-op action game way back in 2020. In a new video series going behind the scenes of the game, the devs explained how big its map will be and showed off some new cutscenes. Conveniently, they barely mentioned any of the live-service aspects fans aren’t happy about. Read More
Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards are far from the be-all and end-all of which games are good, creatively bold, and deserving of praise each year, but they’re still fun to get way too serious about. It’s the one day game developers get to dress fancy, go up on stage, and receive our collective thanks for their artistic accomplishment rather than getting canned the night before the quarterly earnings call. Read More
Chinese publisher NetEase is opening a new studio with the lead writer behind the Mass Effect series at the helm.
Worlds Untold will be based in Vancouver, and helmed by CEO Mac Walters, who’s known for his work at BioWare that spanned almost 20 years. Walters was a writer on martial arts RPG Jade Empire, then a senior writer on the first entry in the sci-fi RPG series, Mass Effect, and was eventually promoted to lead writer on Mass Effect 2 and 3. Following this, he was brought on as creative director on Mass Effect: Andromeda, worked on early narrative direction on Anthem, and project directed the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters, before ending his tenure at the studio as a production director on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. So he was at the forefront of a lot of the narrative direction of BioWare’s last two decades. How you feel about that probably varies depending on your opinions on the state of the studio, but speaking personally, the narrative wasn’t my biggest problem with most of those games. Read More
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The $600 set is currently sold out at PlayStation’s store but is still a gift to keep in mind for the Spidey-loving gamer in your life this holiday season
EA’s next soccer game is going to be a bit different than most of its countless sports releases. That’s because, unlike FIFA or Madden, its upcoming FC Tactical is a turn-based RPG-like soccer game featuring magical-seeming special moves. Weird, but intriguing!
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Announced on October 11,EA Sports’s FC Tactical is a free-to-play soccer game for mobile devices launching in 2024. But to be clear: This new game isn’t replacing FC Mobile 24 Soccer, the pre-existing EA soccer game on phones that plays like the console version. Instead, FC Tactical is something very different, described by EA in a press release as a turn-based game that will contain over 5,000 authentic players across 10 leagues, including Premier and Ligue 1.
According to EA, matches are “simulated, with turn-based opportunities” where players will choose to defend, attack, pull off “skill moves,” or take shots at scoring a goal. Screenshots reveal an interface that looks a lot like other turn-based strategy games, just instead of tanks or fantasy warriors, there are soccer players in sports arenas.
Screenshot: EA
EA says FC Tactical will feature a variety of modes including online friend matches, ranked play, leagues, and guilds. Folks will have to “train players” to “master high-skill moves” or unlock specific traits. That sounds a lot like this is some weird soccer RPG, and things only get weirder when you look at some of the screenshots featured on the game’s website and Google Play Store page.
Some of the images show soccer players pulling off what I would describe as special attacks, complete with magical-looking visual effects like flames and energy pulses. I don’t expect any of these players are going to be summoning massive monsters to help them score a goal, but who knows?
Storied RPG developer BioWare is downsizing. The studio announced on August 23 that it will cut 50 roles as it continues production on both Dragon Age: Dreadwolfand Mass Effect 4, telling fans it needed to take a more “agile and focused” approach to game development.
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“In order to meet the needs of our upcoming projects, continue to hold ourselves to the highest standard of quality, and ensure BioWare can continue to thrive in an industry that’s rapidly evolving, we must shift towards a more agile and more focused studio,” wrote BioWare general manager Gary McKay. “It will allow our developers to iterate quickly, unlock more creativity, and form a clear vision of what we’re building before development ramps up.”
Fifty developers at the studio will be laid off as a result of the restructuring, with McKay claiming the changes are necessary to “create exceptional story-driven single-player experiences” moving forward. Those include Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, which at one point was planned to have multiplayer live-service elements and has continued to face seeming delays and departures in top roles, as well as the next Mass Effect game, which despite promising teases appears to be many years away from release.
“If you’re wondering how all of this will impact development of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, let me be clear that our dedication to the game has never wavered,” McKay wrote. “Our commitment remains steadfast, and we all are working to make this game worthy of the Dragon Age name. We are confident that we’ll have the time needed to ensure Dreadwolf reaches its full potential.”
The latest round of cuts comes shortly after publisher Electronic Arts announced that BioWare’s longstanding sci-fi MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, would be outsourced and taken over by a new studio, Broadsword. VentureBeat also reports that BioWare has decided not to renew its contract with Keyword Studios, an in-house contracting company whose employees that were working on BioWare projects recently unionized and have been bargaining on their first contract.
A spokesperson for EA told VentureBeat other work orders had been renewed post-unionization and that it simply failed to arrive at a new agreement with Keyword Studios, meaning work for its onsite QA testers will expire in September.
James Russwurm, a member of the Keywords union embedded with BioWare for several years now, told Kotaku in a phone call that while he’s sad to see the contract not renewed he believes it’s just a cost cutting measure rather than something targeted at the union itself. KWS Edmonton United is still bargaining with Keywords on its first contract and Russwurm was optimistic an agreement could be reached as soon as the end of the year.
The company announced 800 layoffs back in March of this year. In August it posted a quarterly profit of $400 million, up nearly 30 percent from the same time a year prior.
Update 10/4/2023 5:39 p.m. ET: All of the unionized Keywords devs who previoulsy worked at BioWare were laid off at the end of September, Polygon reports. The company cited the lost contract and the employees are currently trying to negotiate over severance.
Something similar happened to bug testers contracted to work at Microsoft in 2016. Despite unionizing and negotiating their first contract, Microsoft eventually canceled its work with the contracting company, which subsquently laid all of the unionized testers off. A union-busting complaint was filed with the NLRB, but legal proceedings moved to slow to get the workers their jobs back.
Update 8/23/2023 2:11 p.m. ET: Added comment from a Keywords Studio contractor.
Stig Asmussen, the director behind Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and its recent sequel has left publisher Electronic Arts for unspecified reasons.
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2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was a huge hit, selling millions of copies and garnering rave reviews from critics and fans. Earlier this year, the game’s sequel, Jedi: Survivor, debuted to equally positive reviews and sales. Both games were seen by many as a huge improvement over EA’s previous Star Wars output, which included multiplayer shooters and canceled projects. And now, the man who helped lead development on the Jedi games is no longer with Respawn or the studio’s parent company EA.
When asked about the departure, EA provided Kotaku with this statement:
After careful thought and consideration, Stig Asmussen has decided to leave Respawn to pursue other adventures, and we wish him the best of luck. Veteran Respawn leaders will be stepping up to guide the team as they continue their work on Star WarsJedi: Survivor.
The specific reason for Asmussen’s departure is not yet known. His exit from Respawn, at least from the outside, does seem surprising, as the Jedi games have been considered huge successes for EA and its stewardship of Star Wars. His sudden exit seems even more surprising when you consider that, according to Asmussen, the Jedi series of games was always meant to be a trilogy, implying a third game is coming in the future.
In March, a month before the launch of Jedi: Survivor,Asmussen told IGNthat he “always wanted to see [the Jedi saga] as a trilogy.” He explained further that the team had “ideas of what we could do beyond [Jedi: Survivor].”
While it’s very likely EA and Respawn will develop a third game in the popular franchise, completing the presumably planned trilogy, it will seemingly be without the director who helped make the first two chapters memorable.
Respawn and Electronic Arts’ popular single-player Star Wars sequel, Jedi: Survivor, is making the leap from current-gen to the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles.
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Launched in April, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the follow-up to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order. In this most recent Star Wars adventure from Titanfall devs Respawn, players again take on the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi who survived the purge during the end of the Clone Wars as a young boy and who now hangs out with his ragtag found family of misfits as they try to free the galaxy from the Empire’s clutches. This very good follow-up originally skipped last-gen consoles in order to, in the words of the game’s director, offer up a “true new-gen experience.” But now, Cal Kestis is coming to a PS4 near you.
EA didn’t specify when these last-gen ports would be released and declined to offer any extra details to Kotaku.
The publisher clarified that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s current versions weren’t going to be left behind, and confirmed that “additional performance improvements” for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC still remained a “top priority” for Respawn. It also promised to share more about these improvements “as soon as the next update is ready.” This is good news, as the game still suffers from performance issues after previous updates helped, but didn’t quite fix, framerate drops and in-game stuttering.
For many, the news that EA is bringing Jedi: Survivor to PS4 and Xbox One will be surprising. While it makes sense from a financial standpoint—those older machines still have millions of dedicated players in 2023—it seems at odds with what Respawn said before the game’s launch.
Specifically, the game’s director Stig Asmussen explained the reason for skipping PS4 and Xbox One was so the team could deliver a “true new-gen experience in the Star Wars universe.” It seems Respawn is also willing to lower the resolution and framerate limits to accommodate the older hardware.
It’s also interesting that the game is coming to older, less powerful machines since Jedi: Survivor seemed to push the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S harder than most games. I’m curious how well the game will run on much older hardware, in particular the base Xbox One, which is rather long in the tooth. These consoles are almost a decade old, now.
There’s an obsession with incremental changes and bullet-point features in the sports game scene, one which challenges fan’s ability to take a step back and assess each game as its own standalone title. It’s something I try and address in my own sports reviews on this site, and it’s something I’m taking to its logical conclusion here in this Quixotic attempt to pluck one game out of hundreds and call it the “best”.
Sports games by their nature don’t turn up for each new season as entirely fresh products. The economics of the industry have determined that they re-use the same engine and models for years at a time, which means the difference between them can often be limited to current uniforms, a few new features and some adjustments to ball physics. And those changes are usually influenced as much by fan feedback as they are by the development teams working on them.
So it’s tough looking at say Madden 17 as something entirely separate, since its creation was heavily influenced by the sales and reception of Madden 16, and it will in turn play a big part in how Madden 18 is designed. How do you pick one of those games and say, ok, THIS ONE is the best, when much of what made it great may have been inspired by—or come directly from—an entirely different video game?
Then you have to take into account the way sports games have changed their entire outlook over the last 20 years. In the 90s, series like FIFA and NBA Live were perfectly happy being fast, accessible, almost arcadey. Fast forward to today and advances in technology have turned blockbuster sports games into simulations, each one trying its hardest to replicate the on-field experience as best it can (or, if it can’t, then the broadcast experience instead). This makes direct comparisons between games in long-running series pretty damn hard!
Making matters worse is that each sport is different, with its own set of fans, style of play and culture. What makes the #1 baseball game better than the #1 hockey game? Is football better than basketball?
……Image: FIFA 98
I think I’ve found one way to compare all sports games, though, and as weird as it may sound at first, it’s through the one thing they all have in common. The one thing they’re more fixated upon than anything else, and which in many ways defines sports video games as their own distinct space in video games. And that’s content.
Every sports game is stingy. It’s possibly the most defining thing about the business, and is often the first thing that non-fans will mock. The genre’s business model is built entirely around balancing the need to make gamers happy with the game they just bought, but unhappy enough that they’ll turn around 12 months later and buy an incredibly similar product.
So after lingering over a short list of truly great sports games—Madden 2002, NBA 2K11, Pro Evolution 6, NBA Jam, NFL 2K5—I’ve settled the tie by going with one that wasn’t just a very good sports game in its own right, but one which decided to just say “fuck it” and give fans everything they could have wanted or needed for years to come, all in the one box.
That game is FIFA: Road to World Cup 98, as bizarre but beloved a major sports game as I think we’re ever going to see.
At the time of its release in 1997, it was a damn fine football game. It had very flash polygonal visuals, audio commentary, all the things we’ve long associated as being hallmarks of the FIFA series. But it’s where the game went above and beyond what we expect of a sports game can include, whether at the time or today, that marks it as truly great.
INDOOR FOOTBALL – In addition to regular 11v11 football, FIFA 98 also included an entirely separate 5v5 indoor mode, with its own rules and conditions, like the fact the ball never went out of bounds. It was just as fun as the actual FIFA. Maybe more fun. And while it had actually been introduced in FIFA 97, the fact it stuck around in 98 when there was so much else in the box is one of the things that helped cement this game’s legacy.
AN ACTUAL WORLD CUP – The reason for the game’s longer title was the fact that the development team decided to include, alongside domestic leagues, the 1998 World Cup. Not just the finals in France, but the entire qualifying system as well. That meant over 170 nations and their squads made it into the game, an absolutely ridiculous number that literally represented every football-playing country on Earth at the time (modern FIFA games usually only include a few dozen). You could, if you wanted, play as one of the smallest nations on the planet, take them all the way through qualifying then win the tournament itself, a feat so monumental that after FIFA 98 it would only be seen again in standalone video games specifically made for World Cups.
Image: FIFA 98
CUSTOMISATION: Besides the 170+ national teams, there were almost 200 club sides included in the game as well. And you could customise the lot. Home kits, away kits, even a player’s appearance. I remember spending what must have been weeks tinkering with this, making sure that every major team’s kit matched its actual design, and that player haircuts had been accurately recreated. This wasn’t just useful in 1997, either; people were playing FIFA 98 for years to come because as 1998, then 1999 rolled around, you could just update the kit designs again.
Here’s the most incredible thing about all this: FIFA 98 was so big it made another of EA’s own video games completely pointless. In addition to FIFA 98 (released in 1997), EA Sports had a game in development designed to cash in on the World Cup itself, due for release in early 1998. Simply called World Cup 1998, it had official branding throughout, from the tournament mascot to branded kits (a first for the series). But with only 40 teams, what was the point of buying it it when you could just fire up FIFA 98, edit some kits and enjoy much the same experience?
To get non-FIFA fans up to speed on just how crazy this was, it’s like NBA 2K18 shipping on four blu-rays, or the next MLB game deciding to include the entire Japanese and Korean pro leagues, just for one year, just for the hell of it.
This kind of thing just isn’t supposed to happen with sports games, because it gives fans everything they need to not buy your game the next year. Yet here we have, for one beautiful year, EA sports giving away the keys to the kingdom. Amongst the blur of year-to-year releases, FIFA 98’s largesse looms large like no other sports game’s inclusions ever have.
But it’s not just the excess content that’s helped FIFA 98 endure. Quantity would be nothing without quality, and the game includes several other series favourites, from the humble free kick arrow (still somehow superior to anything EA comes up with these days) to the ability to slide tackle a goalkeeper and get instantly sent off, which despite its punishment ranks as one of the most cathartic moves in all of video games.
Then there’s the matter of the game’s soundtrack, beginning with its intro, perhaps the most iconic in sports game history:
Don’t let Blur’s cameo overshadow the game’s real musical hook, though, which is the fact much of the menu music was provided by The Crystal Method:
Sports games using popular music is nothing new today, but in 1997 it was a coup for FIFA (for reference, check out FIFA 97’s tragic attempts at hip-hop and rock). Indeed, you could trace the series’ current place on the pop culture landscape back to FIFA 98 and its soundtrack, which dared to suggest that, hey, maybe these sports video games can be cool.
In a world where sports games are and always have been seen as disposable, FIFA 98 stands apart. By including so many teams across such a breadth of competition, and allowing for such a degree of customisation, people were able to dig in and play it not just throughout 1997, but well into the next few years as well.
Even today, when the FIFA series is known as much for its licensing as it is its football and has over 20 years of experience under its belt, you’ll find fans still talking about FIFA 98 in reverent tones. Amazing what some decent music, tiny teams and the ability to let try and murder a goalkeeper will do to a fanbase…
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Rick the Door Technician might not be the most powerful or dangerous enemy in Respawn’s fantastic sequel,Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. But he is a fan favorite who, in a game filled with great boss fights, provided one of the game’s most memorable and shortest.
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Fairly late into Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s main campaign, while exploring a large Imperial base, your protagonist, Jedi warrior Cal Kestis, runs into a single stormtrooper. Right before this, Kestis had to fight off a large garrison of Imperial baddies in one of the game’s biggest, toughest fights. After surviving all that, and likely injured with no checkpoint, you encounter a new boss: Rick the Door Technician. While another boss encounter seems like an unfair challenge after such a big fight, this lone trooper is really just a joke character who Kestis can defeat with one hit. So why is he here? Well, according to Respawn, he was created to make you laugh and feel better after a tough fight. Isn’t that nice of Rick?
In an interview with IGN, Jonathan Wright, the lead encounter designer at Respawn, explained the origin behind this odd “boss fight.” After that very large fight, players were stressed out, as Respawn purposely designed that section to be even tenser by not including a checkpoint. This makes players nervous about what’s coming next, as they desperately search for a checkpoint. While this all worked to create a tense moment, Repsawn wanted to eventually provide something that would “be a release of all that built-up tension.” Its solution: making players laugh.
Fuzzy Bearbarian / Respawn
“Players have just come from an extremely hard fight. Players are more than likely very low on health at this point, and are probably very stressed with finding the next meditation point so they can rest,” said Wright. “The moment with Rick allowed us to build up another moment of tension as players think they are in for another hard fight, but then release all that built-up stress when they fully realize the moment with Rick. It’s a good emotional reset to prepare players for what is to come.”
This is all part of Respawn’s effort to balance the mostly serious narrative and events in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor with moments of humor. According to Wright, this balance is what makes the jokes “land.”
“The seriousness of the rest of the game is what makes the more humorous moments land,” said Wright. “The contrast between funny and serious elevates both kinds of moments. We knew that the moment with Rick was important because of this.”
Respawn didn’t expect people to fall in love with Rick
However, nobody at Respawn could have predicted how fans would react to Rick, quickly embracing the character and creating fan art, mods, and other content based on the lonely stormtrooper who tried to stop Cal Kestis. The character has become one of the most talked about moments in the game, and has players asking for more of Rick the Door Technician. (It would probably have to be in a prequel, considering what happens to him…)
Wright told IGN that seeing all the fan love and community support for Rick has been “indescribable” and that he “never imagined [Rick] would explode in popularity to this extent.”
“To me, there is no greater achievement than something you had a hand in creating [then inspiring] other people to be creative,” said Wright. “All the comments on videos from people describing their experience with Rick’s heroic last stand, all the jokes and the memes, the videos and stories, it’s all a spark of creativity that started with Rick and I think that is amazing.”
As for if Rick will return, as so many Star Wars Jedi: Survivor fans have asked about, Wright told IGN that it isn’t his call, but he added that he doesn’t think more Rick content is “needed.”
“Rick’s story already has a valiant ending,” said Wright. “The explosion in popularity and fan creativity shows that we already did a good enough job with Rick. Let players have fun with it and let people be creative with Rick’s backstory in their own minds.”
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That launch week would prove to be the high water mark for the game; while it would eventually be released as a free-to-play multiplayer shooter and got some live-action adaptation attention, the game itself wasn’t as interesting as its aesthetic, and in 2018 its servers were closed down.
But, man, it looked so good, and a lot of people remember and love it for that, so it’s perhaps not a huge surprise that 505 Games have decided to bring the franchise back, announcing Hawken Reborn earlier today:
Their Overstock Is Your Savings Amazon overstocked on a ton of everyday items, and they’re all up to 50% off. Whatever is on your list to grab this week, they probably have a sale.
Hawken Reborn is already up on Steam, with an Early Access release planned for May 17. “Play a part in the next chapter of mech warfare in the Hawken Universe with six opening missions to complete in this initial Arc”, the game’s description reads. “Venture out in your mech and fight alongside new characters to discover all new storylines hidden deep in Illal that will continue to evolve in the future.”
For the second time in two years, things in the Battlefield community—or at least the worst elements of it—have gotten so toxic that it has led to some pretty stern requests for people to get a grip and cut it out.
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It’s an understatement when we say that this subreddit has grown incredibly toxic. It’s near impossible to have a simple discussion without insults being flung around at each other—and it’s really starting to harm the entire Battlefield community, and each of us that are part of it. […] The mods have an obligation to follow the rules set out by Reddit, and if we are found to be in breach of not enforcing them, or doing a poor job at enforcing them, we risk the community getting banned altogether.
Now, a year later, the developers of the games themselves have taken to social media with a statement—co-signed by all four Battlefield studios—saying “we have witnessed increased harassment towards members of our development team”, and that “we will take appropriate action” against players found to not be adhering to the series’ community guidelines:
Recently we have witnessed increased harassment towards members of our development team.
Across all of our Battlefield Studios we are open to constructive feedback and criticism about our games.
But to maintain a healthy and open dialogue with our community, we will protect our teams and people from toxicity and harassment. We believe this has no place inside our game or within the Battlefield community.
We want to remind our players that through our EA User Agreement and Battlefield Community Guidelines we will take appropriate action to uphold these values.
As a community, we play the objective, together.
I get it, Battlefield fans have been through the wringer in recent years! Every time the series changes direction parts of the fanbase get upset, and I don’t think anyone would say that Battlefield 2042 launched in a fit and proper state.
That should be a good thing! But no, this is the internet, and this is the video games corner of the internet, so of course there must be people who are angry, all the time, and like always they’re getting angry at the wrong people. Battlefield 2042 was rushed out the door to hit a fiscal objective in the middle of a pandemic by the people running EA, not the level designers and artists and community managers working at DICE.
I’m glad this statement uses such supportive (of their teams) and forceful language; if someone is dumb and hateful enough to be harassing the developers of a video game, for whatever reason, then that person isn’t going to be fun to play multiplayer video games with, or against.
Respawn went on to develop Apex Legends, a game set in the Titanfall universe only—crucially—without the Titans, and which has been printing money for years. They’ve also made the new Star Wars Jedi games, which have been a successful return to form for a franchise long stuck in licensed adaptation hell.
They’ve been very busy with those, and given their success likely will be for the foreseeable future. You also need to know that, as critically successful as Titanfall 2 was, the game—released alongside a bunch of other blockbuster shooters, including EA’s own Battlefield 1—was seen by publisher Electronic Arts as an enormous commercial failure.
So the likelihood that we ever get a Titanfall 3, especially a Titanfall 3 in the same vein as Titanfall 2, are slim! Actually that’s being generous. The likelihood that Respawn, as busy as they are, will make a Titanfall 3 with backing from EA, a publisher who will throw an under-performing franchise in the trash without a second’s hesitation, is pretty much zero.
This week, we’re back in said ringer. Speaking with Barron’s(thanks, PC Gamer), mostly about their new Star Wars game, Respawn boss Vince Zampella was asked about the possibility of there ever being a Titanfall 3, to which he replied
I hate to say yes, then people latch onto that, and then skewer you when it doesn’t come.
But I would love to see it happen is the real answer.
My man, you are one of the handful of people on the planet with the power to make this happen! You don’t need to pine about it in a interview, go call some meetings!
I kid, of course, there are a multitude of planning, resource-related and financial reasons we haven’t seen a Titanfall 3, but refreshingly—and in the only piece of good news to be had here today—that’s partly down to the fact that were such a thing to ever happen, Respawn want to do right by the game, rather than just drop Titanfall Tour on iOS or something.
“It has to be the right thing”, Zampella says. “It’s such a beloved franchise for the fans and also for us. If it is not the right moment in time, the right idea, then it just doesn’t make sense.”
Maybe that time will be soon. Maybe it’ll be never! All I know is that until we reach that right moment in time”, every time I have to type “Titanfall 3″ and not follow it up with “Announced” is going to kill me.
The Sims 4’s Growing Together Expansion Pack DLC is exactly what fans have been waiting for. If you’re a discerning Sims 4 fan wading through the massive amounts of Expansion Packs, Game Packs, Stuff Packs, and now the extra bite-sized Kits, searching for only the most crucial offerings, you’ll want to add Growing Together to the list. It’s an instant must-have, up there with Seasons and Cats & Dogs.
Unsurprisingly, the pack that delivers is also the pack that has exactly what the people have been asking for. Growing Together is a spiritual successor to The Sims 3’s Generations Expansion Pack, which also built on family relationships when it was released more than 10 years ago.
The new San Sequoia world is nice but nothing new
As is common for expansion packs in The Sims 4, Growing Together offers a new world in San Sequoia, which is based on San Francisco and the Bay Area. It’s nice enough, but it’s not the only world based on California, and it’s a bit small for my liking—though the size of worlds that come with expansion packs has been a gripe of mine for quite a while. I long for the days of earlier expansion packs like Get Together’s Windenburg, City Living’s San Myshuno, and Cats & Dogs’ Brindleton Bay. Windenburg has 14 residential lots and 13 community lots, Brindleton Bay offers 11 residential spots and five community ones, and San Myshuno has an incredible 30 total lots, split between a number 21 apartment units, one full residential spot, two residential penthouses, and six community lots. The number of lots in later expansions has slowly dwindled: San Sequoia has a paltry nine residential lots and just the two community lots, and Copperdale (the world from the last expansion, High School Years) has seven residential lots and five community ones.
My favorite part of San Sequoia, however, is its starter home availability. There are empty lots where you can, of course, make the affordable starter house of your dreams. But not all of us are builders or want to spend all that time designing a house from scratch instead of jumping right in. There are two pre-built and furnished homes you can get upon starting a new game, one with two bedrooms (built by Sims content creator dzidziak86) and another four-beds-two-bath family home (built by Sims streamer lilsimsie). The latter is sparsely decorated and the rooms are small to keep it cost-effective, but the exterior design is quite nice. And it’s also easy to decorate and customize as your Sim family establishes itself.
San Sequoia also features a recreation center and library, both of which are bright, family-friendly areas. But beyond those two spots and a splash pad area that isn’t a full lot, there’s only a vacation rental and movie theater, which is the typical rabbit hole event your Sim disappears into rather than a location you can visit. It would have been nice to walk around a lobby where Sims can meet and maybe have a couple arcade games nearby.
The Sims 4 Growing Together – Five Minutes of Gameplay
Milestones are the surprise star of Growing Together
I cannot stress how much I love Milestones, which is far more praise than I thought I would give when I first learned about the new feature. Milestones are crucial to the expanded baby mechanics, as it serves as a guide to helping your new infant grow. You can see which milestones they’ve yet to unlock, which makes it easy to build upon your baby’s progression as you guide the little one in the world. While that part is great for the new infant gameplay, milestones are for all Sims.
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Across all ages, Sims will experience milestones for a number of events. Many of them are no-brainers, like getting married, having a kid, or having your first kiss. That’s nice and all, but I quickly became fascinated with all the less obvious ones, especially those that work across DLC packs. You can unlock the “Crumplebottomed!” milestone after Agnes Crumplebottom, found in the Cottage Living Expansion Pack, hits you with her purse for the first time. Sure there’s a milestone for your first WooHoo, but you never forget your first Crumplebottoming. There are milestones for getting through living in a haunted house if you have the Paranormal Stuff Pack or from being possessed via the StrangerVille Game Pack. I love when the various packs work together rather than feeling like disparate elements. It’s not the first time The Sims 4 has done this, but I love it every time. And this detail is particularly delightful.
I wish there were even more milestones to discover, but I’ve already come to enjoy the satisfaction of achieving one after a big moment for my Sims.
Family Dynamics add drama and better autonomy
My biggest gripe when playing with families, especially ones with multiple siblings, is the juggling I inevitably have to do. I’ll have mom teach a toddler in one room, but wait, the infant has crawled off and CPS is about to be called because the dad is washing dishes in the bathroom sink again. To be clear, Growing Together doesn’t fix most of that. But it does give Sims a little more guidance on how to act with each other when I’m not watching them.
There’s an ease between a father and daughter who have the “Jokester” family dynamic, allowing me to focus on my mother Sim who is desperately trying to get her baby to learn how to move on his own. The Sims also tells you how this can impact relationships. For example, “Jokesters” can become close or distant, depending on how they move beyond those funny interactions—or don’t. A child interacting with a parent who’s strict with them will be more on their toes in automated interactions, as well.
The family dynamics options include close, distant, supportive, permissive, difficult, strict, and jokesters. These are also limited by family titles. So you can’t, for instance, have siblings who have a strict dynamic as that only works with parents and their children.
Relatedly, Sims can now set preferences for personalities and conversation topics, which further adds to better autonomy, though it still isn’t perfect, even when hanging out with non-familial Sims.
Screenshot: EA
The babies are free and now we must teach them
While a base game update added the infant life stage for all The Sims 4 players, Growing Together is where the babies really come to life. In the base game, they’re static. They can crawl around and play, but you won’t get to see them build up to crawling. And they won’t build up to much else, either. At least, not until they age up into toddlers. For some players, that’s likely fine, especially since the previous infant gameplay was nonexistent. But I found it a bit lackluster. In Growing Together, infants will have to be coaxed into lifting their heads on their own for the first time, learn to reach for things, roll over onto their tummies and backs alone, and eventually get to crawling.
The infant progression system works so well because it doesn’t feel like a chore. The next milestone is viewable, and the game tells you what to do to achieve it, either through parenting or self-exploration on the child’s part. The challenge isn’t figuring out what to do, but trying to make a literal baby do what you want. Sometimes your infant Sim will be more focused on when their next meal is coming or will be too tired to do whatever baby education they need to hit the next milestone. Other times, it just takes a couple sessions for your infant Sim to get the hang of things. De-mystifying progression and making the focus on actually doing the things you need to do to achieve these milestones makes the whole experience feel fun and like a normal part of how a virtual family would grow together.
Growing Together feels like a baby shopping simulator
As with all expansion packs, Growing Together comes with new Create-a-Sim items to dress, accessorize, or customize your Sim. There are also Build/Buy Mode items that bring new furniture, decoration, and structural items for homes. These are all…fine? Much of it is made up of mission design pieces, which to The Sims’ credit makes sense as the style’s origins come from San Francisco. Yet, nothing particularly wowed me. And while I didn’t expect a ton of new home things beyond baby and family items to really play around with in Build Mode, I would have liked some more fashionable pieces in the Create-a-Sim additions. It feels focused solely on adding infant and toddler items as well as their body details: We got lots of birthmarks and freckles (like, so many freckles), but the clothing items feel like they fit in too well with the options we already have, rather than offering a cohesive refresh.
In all, Growing Together already feels like an essential pack for anyone who enjoys the story-telling side of The Sims. Its biggest flaw may lie in being too essential as it feels like it gatekeeps key gameplay elements like infant progression and milestones behind a paywall rather than offering a taste of such details to base game players, which could then be expanded upon in the paid expansion pack.
Still, that’s not enough to dissuade me from recommending the Growing Together Expansion Pack, and it certainly doesn’t take away from its merits.
The Growing Together Expansion Pack is on sale now for $40.
This is Life By You, an “upcoming, moddable life-sim” being made by Paradox Tectonic:
Life by You – Announce Trailer
That’s a Sims competitor all right! While it might look initially like it’s cutting very close to Maxis’ cloth, Paradox say the big draw here is that Life By You is going hard on creation and customisation suites (harder than The Sims goes, anyway), letting players shape not just their appearance and homes, but their careers and conversations as well.
Open up a new world of creative possibilities in Life by You. Be in total control of the humans that you create, the towns that you build, the stories that you tell. And oh yes – mods! We know life is always better with a heavy sprinkle of your imagination, so we’re empowering you with a wide variety of Creator Tools so you can design your lives the way you see fit – or break the rules of life itself. Designed to be one of the most moddable and open life-simulation games, we look forward to the humans, stories, and creations that you’ll make with Life by You.
Life By You is for the PC only, and will be entering Early Access (on both Steam and the Epic Games Store) on September 12.
It was always a little weird that The Sims has remained unchallenged for so long, considering both its age and immense popularity, but then making these kinds of games is hard work! We’re finally getting some serious competition in the space now though, between this and the promising Paralives, so it’ll be interesting to see what effect all that has on The Sims 5…whenever it releases.
The world received some very sad news earlier today when we learned that legendary English football commentator John Motson, whose career spanned decades (and included very long stints in video games), had passed away at the age of 77.
Even the most casual English-speaking football fan will know his work, regardless of whether they knew his name or not. Motson was one of the most endearing commentators in the sport, beginning his career on radio in the 1960s before moving to TV shortly after. He didn’t retire until 2018, having covered ten World Cups, ten European Championships and, incredibly, over 2500 games in total, on both TV and radio, domestically and internationally.
As familiar as Motson’s work was to anyone catching a game on TV or the radio, he’ll be almost as familiar to a whole generation of gamers. Given his prominence in the actual commentary booth, Motson was chosen to be the first (English) voice of EA Sports’ FIFA series, beginning with its first foray into the world of CD-based games in FIFA 96. Which means he was also the main commentator for FIFA 98, which as we’ve covered here previously is the greatest sports video game ever made.
John Motson Commentary | FIFA 98 | Goodbye To My Childhood
Motson’s last FIFA game as the main commentator was FIFA 06, after a decade spent working alongside some of the greats of the business, like Ally McCoist. He did, however, make a nice little return over a decade after that, as part of FIFA 19’s singleplayer story campaign, which featured a flashback moment that only Motson’s iconic commentary could bring to life:
FIFA 19 The Journey – Jim Hunter and the first 10 minutes
Motson, who passed away “peacefully in his sleep”, is survived by his wife Anne and his son Frederick.
John Motson, legendary football commentator, dies aged 77
You can hear someone tell you Tom Brady’s age (45!) and it doesn’t really hit you, because the guy still looks pretty fit and healthy. To fully grasp the length of Brady’s tenure on this Earth, then, you need to realise that the man has appeared in a video game for the PlayStation. Like, the original PlayStation.
Brady, born in 1977, was drafted by the New England Patriots in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft—as the 199th pick—and spent his first season in the league as a fourth-string QB. He was so far down the NFL pecking order, in fact, that for his first appearance in Madden—Madden 01, which not only released on the PS1 but also the Nintendo 64—he wasn’t even named, he was just listed on the Patriots depth chart as “QB #12″.
A year later, having moved up to the backup spot, he took over from the injured Drew Bledsoe, led the Patriots to a Super Bowl victory and the rest is history. Brady retires as the statistical leader in almost every category that matters for a QB, from passing yards to passing attempts to TD passes, while also leading the league in ball deflation controversies, crypto scam endorsements and weird ways to kiss your kid on the mouth.
To celebrate his career—or, for many more of you, to celebrate his retirement, announced today—I’ve put together this slideshow showing his video game career, from those early days on the PS1 through to the NFL 2K series, Madden and some other stops in between. It won’t be every game from every year, that would be boring—and for recent Madden games incredibly repetitive—but still, it’ll be a nice little walk down memory lane. Unless you remember playing any of these first few games, in which case I’m sorry for reminding you how old you are.
A substantial update for The Sims 4 dropped on PC and consoles today, and with it comes a new suite of control schemes and customization options. This involves things like hearing aids and shapewear, but one addition is expressly targeted at trans Simmers in an effort to make them feel included and visible.
Developer Maxis took to the game’s official website to break down The Sims 4‘s latest update, which includes chest binders and top surgery scars.
“Under the Body category, all players can find a Body Scars category with an option for Teen and older male Sims (masculine or feminine frame) to add a top surgery scar to their Sims,” the update reads.
“I finally get to see myself in game,” one person tweeted in all caps.
“Top surgery scars and binders?! That’s so cool,” exclaimed another tweeter. “So happy more representation is being added to the game.”
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Binders and shapewear can compress someone’s chest or give more curvature to their body. In other words, these articles of clothing act as extra ways for trans folks to feel more comfortable in themselves, especially if they can’t afford or aren’t ready for body-altering surgeries.
“Binders and top surgery scars in base game,” a tweeter asked in all caps. “[Let’s fucking go, this is a] huge dub of the transmascs.”
“Oh my god I’m literally crying,” said another tweeter with crying emojis. “Finally, binders and top surgery! My little trans heart is so happy.”
There are also medical wearables, such as glucose monitors and hearing aids, which makes The Sims 4 all more inclusive for the disability community as well. It’s good shit.
“Binders, top surgery scars, hearing aids, and glucose monitors?” asked one tweeter about this new Sims 4 patch. “This is the best update since we could have feminine clothing on masculine frames and vice versa.”
Kotaku reached out to EA for comment.
The team also added new ways to actually control and interact with the game on console specifically, making navigation easier and bringing it closer to the PC version. All beneficial quality-of-life improvements.
Again, this is all extremely good shit. Though, there appear to be some kinks that still need to be ironed out a little bit, like confusion around where things are located and top surgery scars seemingly not populating for some folks. However, that Maxis and, by extension, EA is aware of and acknowledge its trans community in such a representative way makes me feel good. Maybe other studios will follow suit, making trans-inclusive representation something worth investing in and implementing in games.
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