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Tag: RPG

  • Starfield Chat: Our First Few Hours With Bethesda’s Space Epic

    Starfield Chat: Our First Few Hours With Bethesda’s Space Epic

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    Starfield is officially out in Early Access for those who got one of several special editions of Bethesda’s long-awaited sci-fi RPG. Though everyone else will have to wait until September 6, several Kotaku staffers decided to shell out for the Early Access editions and spent the first night of launch zipping around space, hoarding junk in their ships, and blowing up pirates. Here’s what we had to say about our first few hours with Starfield.

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    Pre-order Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    Ethan Gach: Starfield has to be the weirdest big new game experience I’ve had this year. I played five hours straight. I would have kept going but a space cowboy’s gotta sleep. At the same time there were so many things that underwhelmed or confused me. How far did everyone get and what was your most memorable moment?

    Alyssa Mercante: I am currently trying to track down the VC guy with Sarah. I’m still a bumbling idiot in menus, still struggle to quickly determine how much ammo I have in my weapon, which ammo is for what, how to see the map of an interior space (can you?), and other stuff that’s almost all a mix of weird UI and my impatience.

    It’s got the exact kind of grippiness in terms of gameplay loop that I’d expect from Bethesda—I don’t really care about any of this shit yet but I’m sort of lazily plodding on, and mostly enjoying it most of the time.

    Levi Winslow: I’m maybe four hours in? I got to New Atlantis, met Sarah and the Constellation gang, then dipped off to Mars and Venus to hunt for Moara. I’m finding some of the systems quite cumbersome and unintuitive. Like, why do I have to bring up the weapon menu to select a different gun or whatever? It’s weird that in other Bethesda games, you can quick-swap between weapons on the fly, but you can’t in Starfield? Unless I missed something, which is totally possible. The game gives you so many tutorials for its menus and systems that a quick-swap could’ve been buried. Still, though, I’m having a blast living life as a space cowgirl. Currently, I’m on the hunt for some legendary ship.

    Carolyn Petit: I admit, I only got as far as the door of Constellation’s base before calling it a night, and perhaps it’ll grow on me, but it just felt very dated to me, very much like Bethesda holding on to Bethesda design concepts that, in my opinion, it really doesn’t need to hold onto anymore. For instance, when I arrived in New Atlantis, I immediately walk past this group of people who are just dispensing exposition at each other in the clumsiest way. One character says something really disparaging and messed-up about a certain group of people, and someone else calmly replies, “That’s unfair,” before proceeding to rattle off an entire story about a positive experience he had with them, all while everyone else in the group just looks on. People just don’t talk or interact this way in my opinion, and I felt less like I was in a bustling new city and more like I was in line for a ride at Disneyland where animatronic figures are stiffly filling me in on the ride’s lore.

    EG: Yea I didn’t immediately find a way to hot-swap weapons either. Between that and constantly being overloaded with enemy loot and no easy place to go to sell it all, I spent probably a third of my entire session last night just scrolling back and forth over a bunch of weapons (including to see which ones I actually still had ammo for).

    My most memorable moment was talking down the initial pirates you run into outside of that first moon and then blowing them up with the literal red barrel behind them. 2010 is soooo back. I do agree Carolyn it feels very stagey in a dated sort of way. The game is constantly reminding you it’s a game, in a way I didn’t get from say, Cyberpunk 2077. It reminds me so much of The Outer Worlds in many ways, which was a much more satirical take on the whole genre.

    LW: Just adding to your point about blowing up the first space pirates…

    Levi shares a Reddit post showing how one person blew up the barrel behind the pirates before the cutscene could even begin.

    CP: I also didn’t love that the game forces you to go do this combat mission so early on, before you even meet Constellation and really get introduced to the game’s core concept. To me, it felt a bit like Bethesda lacking faith in its own concept of this wide-open spacefaring game, as if it felt the need to reassure gamers: Don’t worry, this is still a video game-ass video game in which you get to gun down lots of dudes.

    LW: I agree. I barely even listened to those dudes. Knowing what I was getting into, I skipped their dialogue and shot them up. Really, I just wanted some quick loot to sell for even quicker cash, which leads me to one of my biggest gripes with this game: There’s so much shit to collect. I know that’s very Bethesda but wow, the sheer amount of stuff to pick up and pore over in this game is staggering.

    CP: That’s one Bethesda-ism I have no problem with. I find it comical and enjoyable. In that research base where you fight the pirates, I saw a little zen garden on someone’s desktop and immediately grabbed it for my own. It’ll be one of the millions of stolen items eventually decorating my ship or my space-house or whatever.

    EG: Has anyone tried to do persuasion?

    LW: Yeah I tried it on the dude at the bar when looking for Moara. (Jack, I think his name was. Maybe John?) I failed it, but then got Sarah to convince him to lower the price of his info, which worked.

    CP: I tried to get out of killing the initial pirate boss with persuasion. I failed, and didn’t fully grasp how it worked. There was a pop-up that said something like “you can’t fail if your previous choice succeeded.” Huh? Anyway, I’m sure I’ll make sense of it in time but it was a little befuddling at first.

    AM: I used one of my first skill points for speech, and tried persuasion with the bar guy as well. It worked, but I also did not fully comprehend what I was doing

    EG: Yea, there’s a later mission where you are trying to convince a dad alienated from his son to hand over a map and at first it’s like, okay how are we gonna navigate 30 years of emotional baggage and then instead I said something like, you know giving him the map is what so-and-so would have wanted, and bingo. It was so goofy.

    Claire Jackson and Zack Zwiezen enter the chat.

    Zack Zwiezen: I’ve used persuasion a few times and it’s been helpful. Skipped the pirate boss fight, for example. I’m still learning how it works, but its nice to see Bethesda bringing back some RPG-ish systems like that. Reminds me of the weird Oblivion persuasion minigame! With the weird circle and sliding stuff around. I don’t think I ever got good at that one. This Starfield one seems a bit simpler and I think I mostly get it.

    Claire Jackson: Good to know you can skip the pirate boss fight…my attempt at resolving that ended up with me bashing an ax into his face. And I was genuinely trying not to kill anyone. Period!

    Maybe it’s just the nature of the game’s opening needing to hold your hand to learn all its complex systems and set you up for the quest, but I was also dismayed that I couldn’t choose to stay on the mining planet. I mean, I touched a weird thing, saw a weird thing, and now some rando is like, “Here take my ship and go talk to this space secret society or whatever, though they won’t have answers for you. Sorry. By the way, you’re a captain now!”

    ZZ: It moves pretty fast and I wonder if that was a reaction to how slow Fallout 4‘s intro was and how people didn’t seem to like that.

    EG: I was so relieved. No messing around.

    ZZ: Agreed. It was nice to just get going. I was worried I’d have to spend four hours in the mine finding a sweet roll for someone.

    CJ: I wanted to mess around lol. I wanted to just hang out and mine some stuff. The game wants me to be a hero so badly, and enough games do that for me that I kinda wanted this to unravel itself a bit more slowly.

    ZZ: I will say, once you get through with that first big quest and intro stuff, the game truly goes, “Okay, do whatever you want.” At that point you can go be a space miner and never worry about the main story again.

    CJ: That’s a relief. So maybe my space gal can be someone who just had one traumatic encounter with space pirates, dropped off some weird who-the-hell-knows-what to these brainiacs, and then just went about her life where she’ll unpack that PTSD-inducing episode after years and years of therapy. That’s all I want. Space therapy.

    AM: Within moments of picking up my rock cutter laser I tried to kill someone in the mines, so the intrusive thoughts are already beating my ass.

    ZZ: Hot tip: That laser cutter is a very good weapon early on and uses no ammo! It stunlocks people and can even blow up their packs, killing others. Handy! And fun.

    EG: Starfield is definitely a resource-extraction fantasy. Mine stuff! Loot stuff! Steal stuff! Use it to do cool things. So far navigating relationships and political factions has really taken a backseat.

    ZZ: It was nice to end my time with the first companion, Sarah, and not feel like she wanted to jump my bones. A break from Baldur’s Gate 3, haha. But yeah, it’s clear that certain parts of Starfield got more attention and resources than others.

    EG: I found a mysterious map to a pirate hideout or something earlier this morning so that’s cool. The thing keeping me excited to come back at the moment is the fact that it still feels like there are a ton of possibilities lurking out there. Whether that’s actually the case or not, the early game is really good at making you at least feel like you’re barely scratching the surface.

    LW: I agree. I’m sure the novelty of Bethesda’s systems will wear thin after a few dozen hours, but the early game has me hooked. Running up to my ship, hopping into the cockpit to blast off into the cosmos, getting into a couple of dogfights with space pirates then looting their ships, landing on a planet to sell my goods before embarking on a bounty—it’s all giving Cowboy Bebop, a fantasy I’ve longed for in video games. It’s not totally there. Some mechanics are still quite unwieldy, but Starfield is letting me live out that bounty hunter lifestyle, and I simply can’t get enough of that right now.

    AM: I did get a similar feeling to one I saw Ethan mention on Twitter (X, whatever) before—I woke up excited to play this. For all the jank, for all the confusing menus, there’s enough good stuff here that I am willing to spend more time exploring, lurking, looting, and what have you. How long will this last me? I’m not sure yet. But for now, I’m not all that angry that I’m going into this long weekend with a cold—now I can just sit inside and play Starfield.

    Pre-order Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

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    Alyssa Mercante, Ethan Gach, Levi Winslow, Carolyn Petit, Claire Jackson, and Zack Zwiezen

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  • Pre-Order Starfield Now or Play Day One on Game Pass | Xbox

    Pre-Order Starfield Now or Play Day One on Game Pass | Xbox

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    Summary

    Related:
    Starfield Starters: An Explorer’s Guide to Planet Hopping 
    Starfield and Series S 1TB Kick Off an Incredible September
    Next Week on Xbox: New Games for September 4 to 8

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  • Bethesda Exec Writes Fake Doctor’s Note To Excuse Starfield Players From Work

    Bethesda Exec Writes Fake Doctor’s Note To Excuse Starfield Players From Work

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    Bethesda’s head of publishing Pete Hines posted a boilerplate excuse note on Twitter for any Starfield fan who, ahead of the game’s official release on September 6, is rapidly starting to feel a little bit…feverish.

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    Your stomach is twisting into tight knots. Your hands are slick and shaking, your whole body shivers with the exciting prospect of handing a multibillion-dollar company your $70. It’s okay. You’re safe now with Hines, whose name on Twitter currently specifies that he is “(not a doctor).”

    “To Whom It May Concern: Please excuse ____ from work/school/chores for the foreseeable future,” begins his magnanimous excuse note. “They are currently undergoing treatment for an infection from [a dinosaur-like Starfield creature] Ashta bite after a recent expedition to [planet] Tau Ceti II.”

    Hines’ note isn’t the first time a developer has tried to help you get out of responsibilities in order to play their new game. Ahead of Baldur’s Gate 3’s August 3 release, developer Larian Studios posted a “request for special dispensation” form, and encouraged players to hand it to their boss so they could spend hours upon hours in an expansive RPG world. Starfield, which similarly promises a thousand explorable planets and side quests, seems like another game that might suck up all your free time.

    It’s also not the first time Hines has offered gamers a sick note to play his company’s latest game. He shared a much shorter, simpler sick note two days before Fallout 4’s November 10, 2015 release date. “I figure some of you might need a note from your doctor for your upcoming ‘sick day(s)’ this week,” he wrote then. As far as running gags go, it could be worse.

    Will this Starfield sick note work? It’s unlikely, but your boss, professor, or mom can judge for themselves if Pete Hines, described on the note as an “MD, LAN, PhD, ARS” and “Head Physician, Constellation,” wants what’s best for you.

    Read More: Here’s When You Can Actually Start Playing Starfield
    Pre-order Starfield: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    “Whether you need time off to play Starfield starting tomorrow in early access,” Hines said on Twitter, “or next week at launch, Uncle Pete has you covered.”

    “Already asked my boss earlier this week (and was approved),” said one commenter. “But, man, you should’ve sent this earlier.”

    “Literal people are going to use this,” another Twitter respondent said. “Genius.”

    Starfield launches in Early Access at 8 p.m. Eastern on August 31.

     

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    Ashley Bardhan

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  • Starfield Pushes Baldur’s Gate 3 Off Steam Top Spot, And It’s Not Even Out Yet

    Starfield Pushes Baldur’s Gate 3 Off Steam Top Spot, And It’s Not Even Out Yet

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    Though you still can’t play it, Bethesda’s massive spacefarer role-playing game Starfield recently beat out one of 2023’s biggest games, D&D RPG Baldur’s Gate 3, as a Steam top seller, GamesRadar first noticed.

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    Starfield, out in Early Access on August 31 and globally on September 6, has successfully dragged its 1,000 explorable planets and eager players’ mounting expectations to the number-one spot on the U.S. Top Sellers chart. It’s also the number one seller for a huge number of additional countries, including Australia, Switzerland, Norway, and Germany.

    Most other counties, though, are concerned with neither Bethesda’s big space game nor Larian Studios’ big Dungeons & Dragons game. China, Denmark, Spain, Poland, and many others are still downloading free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter Counter Strike: Global Offensive, which was initially released in 2012, more than anything else, making it the current worldwide top seller. CS:GO has been assuming different rankings on the Top Sellers chart for 577 weeks, or the full 11 years of its existence. How is there still anyone left who hasn’t picked it up already?

    We’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out if Starfield has that kind of longevity, too. Director Todd Howard certainly hopes so, telling GQ in a recent interview, “[Starfield] takes [Bethesda’s oeuvre] all to a level that we weren’t sure even that we could do. This type of game is still unique. When it clicked, and we could play it, we realized we had missed it. No one still does this.”

    “We don’t get many of these in our careers—we don’t get many shots,” he said.

    For Bethesda, the developer behind Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Starfield presents another opportunity to catch lightning in a bottle. So far, we know that it is stocked with plenty of sidequest content, a silent, customizable protagonist to augment it, and, apparently, answers about God. Whether or not they are satisfactory, only spacetime will tell.

     

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    Ashley Bardhan

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  • Starfield’s Main Character Is Silent So The World Can Be Huge

    Starfield’s Main Character Is Silent So The World Can Be Huge

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    Starfield is a big game with hundreds of planets to explore and many sandwiches to collect. But while all the NPCs you’ll meet in Starfield have voices, the game’s main character doesn’t. Bethesda already confirmed this was the case last year, but has now shared more details about why it made this choice, revealing that originally Starfield had a talking protag and that ultimately cutting the main character’s voice helped the game grow in size.

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    Starfield was officially revealed back at E3 2018. Half a decade later, the game is finally close to coming out. (Depending on where you live, it might be out in August, technically.) Hype is off the charts for this open-world RPG set in a vast galaxy as it is Bethesda’s first big single-player game since 2015’s Fallout 4 and the first new IP from the studio in over two decades. And as I already mentioned, it’s a very big game. Bethesda’s own Pete Hines says it might take you over 50 hours to get through the main quest. According to Bethesda, the reason it was able to make such a big game is because it ultimately decided against having a voiced protagonist, a change from Fallout 4’s talkative main hero.

    In an August 28 interview with Polygon, Starfield lead designer Emil Pagliarulo explained that early in the space RPG’s development, the studio actually had planned on your main character having a voice. Pagliarulo said that Bethesda even hired an actor and had them start recording dialogue before the team realized it wasn’t working, adding that the voice sounded “too specific.”

    “So then what are the options? Do we have—like some RPGs do—four voices? Do we have one voice, but hire someone else who’s more convenient?” asked Pagliarulo. “But [in Starfield] you can make every different type of person. We realized that the only way to really do it and let the player be the person they want to be was to have an unvoiced protagonist.”

    Interestingly, when asked if fan reaction to Fallout 4’s informed Bethesda’s decision to go the opposite direction in Starfield, Pagliarulo admitted that it partially did, suggesting that negative reactions to Fallout 4’s talking main hero didn’t “directly” lead to Starfield’s silent main character, but that it “certainly played into it.”

    Starfield got bigger once it cut the main character’s voice

    According to Pagliarulo, there was a time in AAA game development when every main character had to be voiced.

    But he says that Bethesda has realized, over the last few years, that maybe that isn’t accurate. He suggested that fans might enjoy the game more if the protagonist doesn’t have a voice actor. The designer further added that there’s a “big argument” in RPGs about having voiced lines that mimic the text or if the text should just summarize the line.

    “So then we just arrived at, ‘What if we just go text?’ and it was just really freeing,” said Pagliarulo, explaining that this choice helped the game actually grow even bigger.

    “We have over 200,000 lines of spoken dialogue in Starfield with no voiced protagonists. And it was not having a voiced protagonist that allowed us to create such a big world.”

    .

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • This Baldur’s Gate 3 Spell Can Help You Find Secrets In The RPG’s World

    This Baldur’s Gate 3 Spell Can Help You Find Secrets In The RPG’s World

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    Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    Baldur’s Gate 3 has plenty of nooks and crannies to explore to find hidden areas and loot, and sometimes you’ll need to have certain spells or characters on hand to access those tucked-away places. One example of this is Feather Fall, which, on the surface, allows your team to jump long distances without having to worry about taking fall damage. However, if you know where to use it, you can find some hidden secrets within Baldur’s Gate 3’s world.

    11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator

    Who can learn Feather Fall?

    As a spell, Feather Fall is mostly restricted to the magic users in your party, but certain Rogue and Fighter subclasses can also learn the spell through leveling up. Bard, Sorcerer, and Wizard can learn it normally, or you can teach it to the Rogue subclass Arcane Trickster, or Fighter subclass Eldritch Knight.

    Shep and Karlach are shown standing next to a well.

    Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    If you don’t have anyone who knows the spell on-hand, you can also cast it by using the Scroll of Feather Fall, which is an item you can buy from Arron, the merchant at the Emerald Grove in Act 1. It’s good this item is accessible early, because one of the best uses of Feather Fall is found in the game’s early hours.

    What secrets can I access with Feather Fall?

    An early place to use Feather Fall is in the Blighted Village in Act 1. While passing through this area, you’ll find a well across from the fast travel point that you can descend down to find an underground cave system. Here you can fight some powerful enemies, though do be aware if you have arachnophobia that they are mostly giant spiders that can teleport. However, you’ll also find a seemingly endless chasm that, if you simply jump down, you’ll fall to your death. But if you cast Feather Fall, you can gracefully reach the bottom and end up in the Underdark.

    Shep, Gale, Shadowheart, and Karlach are shown next to a deep chasm.

    Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    You can reach this area normally by progressing the main plot, but unless you go out of your way to find this particular spot, you’ll miss it on your way to your next destination. This section of the Underdark features some high-level enemies like powerful minotaurs and the Bulette boss fight, but also has a camp area where you can find some good loot. It’ll be tough getting there, but it’s one example of how using spells outside of a combat context can open up new paths within Baldur’s Gate 3.

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    Kenneth Shepard

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  • The Pokémon Company Finally Gives Us What We Want: Penny’s Eevee Backpack

    The Pokémon Company Finally Gives Us What We Want: Penny’s Eevee Backpack

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    Screenshot: The Pokémon Company / Kotaku

    Ever since Pokémon Scarlet and Violet launched last year, a subset of fans have been asking for one particular piece of merchandise: Penny’s Eevee backpack. The satchel Penny wears throughout the game is made to look like the normal-type fox Pokémon, and given that Eevee is one of the franchise’s mascots, I’m surprised it took The Pokémon Company this long to capitalize on its popularity. But it finally has, and Penny’s Eevee backpack is up for sale…albeit only in Japan, for now.

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    The Eevee backpack is part of a “Paldea Pokémon Trainers” merch line made up of products based on characters in Scarlet and Violet. This includes replica items, such as the electric-type gym leader Iono’s hair bow and Elite Four member Rika’s gloves. These accessories will launch in Japan on September 16, and the Eevee bag will run ￥6,930 (roughly $47 USD). But as of this writing, there doesn’t seem to be any word on a western launch. You can try keeping an eye on the Pokémon Center website, but it seems like this is a Japan-only promotion for the moment. If you’d rather not risk missing out on it, you can likely import it through third-party sellers. For the rest of us, we can simply bask in its glory.

    A product image shows Penny's Eevee bag, and it rules.

    Image: The Pokémon Company

    Personally, I’m bummed this line isn’t highlighting Professor Turo, the best character in the game. Just give me a little Turo plush, Pokémon Company. Or just anything that acknowledges the existence of the hot professor. I’m offering you money, but the only merchandise that exists of him is in the trading cards. For shame.

    The Pokémon Company will have a handful of new characters to add to Scarlet and Violet’s merchandise lines when the RPGs’ two-part DLC launches, starting next month with The Teal Mask on September 13. The second part, The Indigo Disk, is slated to come out sometime later in 2023.

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    Kenneth Shepard

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  • Amazon’s First Official Fallout TV Show Artwork Is An AI-Looking Eyesore

    Amazon’s First Official Fallout TV Show Artwork Is An AI-Looking Eyesore

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    Amazon recently revealed that its Fallout TV show will begin streaming in 2024 by tweeting a 1950s-looking postcard from Los Angeles, California with Vault Boy giving the thumbs up. Upon closer inspection, fans have noticed a lot of weird anomalies that have some thinking it might actually be AI-generated.

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    At first I paid the image no mind. It was tweeted out on August 23 while a teaser for the show debuted for attendees at Gamescom 2023. Then I saw this tweet by a developer who goes by “Kenney” and makes free game assets. “Amazon ($514 billion dollar in revenue) is incapable of hiring an actual artist,” they wrote. The tweet’s replies were filled with observations of strange wrinkles in the art that make it seem an awful lot like AI may have had a hand in making it, or at least someone who’s very sloppy with Photoshop.

    First, there’s the palm tree in front of the yellow building that’s clearly disjointed.

    Image: Bethesda / Amazon / Kotaku

    Then there’s the woman’s legs on the left. She has three of them and one disappears into some white flowers.

    A woman has three legs.

    Image: Bethesda / Amazon / Kotaku

    The red taxi near the front is all backwards. The headlights and hood are in the rear, while the driving wheel is in the front.

    A red car faces backwards.

    Image: Bethesda / Amazon

    The central boulevard with the pedestrians is also confusing. The sidewalk is as wide as the street, and then there are cars on the other side of it that are going in the same direction.

    People walk in the middle of the street.

    Image: Bethesda / Amazon / Kotaku

    Plus, as you go further into the background, the cars get messier and messier, and appear to just be alternating patterns of blue and red like they were stacked on top of one another and then stretched into the horizon.

    Cars repeat similar patterns.

    Image: Bethesda / Amazon

    It’s not hard to find other suspicious deficiencies, too.

    “I’ve been staring at this picture for quite a while and still people find new weird stuff,” Kenney tweeted. “Also there’s still people saying it’s not AI…” Even if it’s not AI it’s still not great. To Kenney’s original point, it reeks of a company cheaping out instead of paying talented people to do what they’re good at.

    “It’s a shame that Amazon took the cheapest route by generating the artwork without even taking the time to do any sort of quality control,” Kenney commented to Kotaku. “I’m sure a lot of artists would’ve absolutely loved the opportunity to do the art for this. There’s a long history of film and TV adaptations that didn’t pay enough respect to their source material, but I think generating art using AI is the most disrespectful thing that could be done. It’s the lowest of effort, it’s literally not doing any effort.”

    Amazon and Bethesda did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Read More: AI Creating ‘Art’ Is An Ethical And Copyright Nightmare

    The Fallout TV show is being led by Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan, and wrapped up filming earlier this year. While the promotional art references Los Angeles and Vault 33, little else is known about the series, which was previously confirmed to be separate from the main storyline of the hit post-apocalyptic open-world RPG series. After watching the recent closed-doors teaser, IGN wrote, “While we only had a very small look at the show, it’s clear that the production values are high, with the visual effects looking impressive.”

    Even more bizarre, then, that the first official art delivers the opposite impression. The timing also couldn’t be worse. Hollywood writers and actors are both on strike right now over streaming royalties and concerns about the use of AI in filmmaking, including by Amazon. The Writers Guild of America blasted the company along with the other streaming giants in a recent report, accusing them of anti-competitive mergers and vertical integrations. These historic strikes passed the 100-day mark earlier this month.

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    Ethan Gach

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  • Microsoft Doubles Down On More Affordable But Weaker Xbox Series S

    Microsoft Doubles Down On More Affordable But Weaker Xbox Series S

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    Ever since Baldur’s Gate 3 exploded in popularity after its August 3 release date, the fact that it’s not coming to Xbox Series X/S the same time as PS5 has reignited the controversy around Microsoft’s console strategy and its commitment to a policy that seems like it will become increasingly unworkable in the years ahead.

    Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger

    Baldur’s Gate 3 supports local co-op splitscreen, and developer Larian Studios has been very public about its struggle to get that feature working on the less powerful Series S. Microsoft requires games to launch with the same modes on both Series X and S, and despite Baldur’s Gate 3’s popularity, no exceptions were made for the critically acclaimed Dungeons & Dragons RPG until now.

    Larian director Swen Vincke said the studio had arrived at a solution after meeting with Phil Spencer, Microsoft Gaming’s CEO, at Gamescom this week. “Series S will not feature split-screen coop, but will also include cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series,” he tweeted, with the games now confirmed to arrive before the end of 2023.

    Spencer was asked about the apparent Series S conflict in a Eurogamer interview earlier this week. “I don’t see a world where we drop S,” he said. “In terms of parity, I don’t think you’ve heard from us or Larian, that this was about parity. I think that’s more that the community is talking about it. There are features that ship on X today that do not ship on S, even from our own games, like ray-tracing that works on X, it’s not on S in certain games.”

    It’s unclear if Spencer means that split-screen gameplay in Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t a requirement on Series S. Kotaku reached out to both Microsoft and Larian Studios to clarify the situation. What is clear is that the company doesn’t plan to abandon Series S support for games in the near future. “We’re going to learn from this experience as well because we don’t love that [Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t on Xbox yet],” Spencer told IGN in a separate interview. “But I don’t think it’s something that’s a fatal flaw in the system. It’s partners prioritizing their time, us listening and being a good partner to them.”

    Image: Larian Studios

    The Series S has been raising questions from the very start. As Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier pointed out on August 24, even prior to its 2019 release there were concerns from game developers that the difference in performance could make realizing their full “next-gen” ambitions more difficult on Xbox. Anecdotal reports from Gamescom are that developers there have been privately sharing frustrations about the challenges presented by the Series S as well.

    Spencer noted to IGN that games like Diablo IV work fine across both platforms, and reiterated that Microsoft wants to open up gaming to more people, and sees the Series S’s low price as a cornerstone of that strategy. At $300, the less powerful console is the same price as the Nintendo Switch and $100 cheaper than the disc-less PlayStation 5. Over the recent holiday period, it was briefly marked down even further to $250. And the option to subscribe to Game Pass means Series S owners can access a huge library of games, including new blockbusters like Starfield, without shelling out hundreds more.

    The popularity of the Series S for players might also be what makes it that much harder for Microsoft to leave it behind. “I also wouldn’t expect and don’t think it makes sense for Microsoft to drop Xbox Series S support or have some titles only ship on Xbox Series X,” tweeted Niko analyst Daniel Ahmad. “The primary reason being that Series S makes up a significant part of the Xbox Series X|S install base and people did indeed buy it to play ‘next gen’ games.”

    Don’t expect big price drops

    As laudable as the goal of an affordable next-gen console is, we’re already nearing the three-year anniversary of the Series X/S, traditionally the halfway-point in a console’s lifecycle. If there are already rumblings of some games struggling to support certain features on Series S, it seems likely to get worse by 2024, especially for timed exclusives getting ported directly from the PS5. That would be the same year in the Xbox One’s lifecycle that Microsoft released the Xbox One X mid-generation refresh that aimed to offer 4K resolution and higher framerates. A similar new console has already been ruled out this time around, however.

    Spencer told Bloomberg in June that he doesn’t feel an “imperative” to release a more powerful version of the Series X, and reiterated that at Gamescom. We’re focused right now on the increased storage Xbox Series S,” he told IGN. “But no, like I said, we’re kind of at the end of the beginning in my mind. So I think we need to let devs settle on this hardware and get the most out of it.”

    Art shows off the new all-black Xbox Series S with expanded storage.

    Image: Microsoft

    Sony, meanwhile, appears set to launch a PS5 Slim within the next year. While it’s not clear if that console will have meaningfully different specs than the existing ones, it would still be a significant iteration on the hardware, especially if reports of a standalone attachable disc drive for the PS5 are also accurate. Microsoft hinted at the new console in a Federal Trade Commission court hearing in June, and footage of what’s believed to be the case at a manufacturing plant in China recently leaked as well.

    Whatever new console or hardware refreshes arrive in the years ahead, Spencer warned players not to expect prices to significantly drop like they have in previous generations. “You’re not going to be able to start with a console that’s $500 thinking it’s gonna get to 200 bucks. That won’t happen,” he told Eurogamer. “It’s not the way it used to be where you could take a spec and then ride it out over 10 years and ride the price points down. It’s why you see console pricing relatively flat.”

    In fact, prices have been going in the opposite direction. Microsoft raised the price of the Xbox Series X/S abroad, following in Sony’s footsteps from a year prior. Even the Nintendo Switch, released over six years ago, remains the same $300 today that it was then. The Mario maker has now sold over 125 million units. So far at least, Microsoft doesn’t seem on track to hit even half of that. It’s currently at 21 million according to a presentation slide that leaked earlier this summer, with hardware sales slowing down instead of speeding up.

    Starfield could change that when it arrives on September 1. Director Todd Howard says he plays it almost exclusively on his Series S and it works just great on the cheaper console.

    Update 8/24/2023 11:59 a.m. ET: Added new information about Series S version of Baldur’s Gate 3.

       

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    Ethan Gach

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  • Canceled Ubisoft Sequel Was Inspired By Wind Waker, Elden Ring

    Canceled Ubisoft Sequel Was Inspired By Wind Waker, Elden Ring

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    The sequel to Immortals: Fenyx Rising (2020’s open-world, Greek-inspired adventure game) was cancelled in July 2023, and we’re just now learning exactly what that game was meant to entail—and how much of a break from tradition it was planned to be for Ubisoft.

    The Yakuza Devs Should Cast These Celebs In Their Next Hostess Club Minigame

    According to Axios’ Stephen Totilo, who broke the news on August 21, the sequel (codenamed Oxygen) was an ambitious one that would combine features of two distinct, beloved games: FromSoftware’s action RPG Elden Ring and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Anonymous sources familiar with the game’s development spoke to Totilo, painting a detailed picture of a “vast game set across a fictionalized version of the Polynesian archipelago, made primarily by Ubisoft’s Quebec studio but developed alongside Polynesian consultants.”

    Read More: Assassin’s Creed Publisher Axes Sequel To BotW-Like That Was Pretty Good

     “The goal was also to make a game very different from the rest of the Ubisoft portfolio,” a source told Axios. Instead of the typical Ubisoft map overwhelmingly dotted with icons, Immortals 2 would have far less map markers, and require players “to search harder to figure out where to go, by tracking animals, following the wind, or navigating via the position of stars in the in-game sky,” alleged a source. The core inspiration for this change? Elden Ring.

    The sequel would reportedly also be very different from the original Immortals, with more realistic graphics, the abandonment of the first game’s narrator, fewer puzzles, and a “more malleable story in which player choice is significant.” According to Axios’ sources, the player’s character would try and “curry favor with various Polynesian gods” that would give them special elemental powers and the ability to shape-shift. They’d gain new tattoos on their body based on the narrative choices they’d make in game, all of which is rooted deeply in Polynesian cultural traditions and the notion of mana, or the belief that there’s a supernatural force flowing through humans, animals, plants, and more. A player’s decisions would affect the various islands on which Immortals 2 would have been set.

    According to Axios, part of the reason Immortals 2 was canned was so that Ubisoft could focus on established IP like Assassin’s Creed Red. The first Immortals game was reportedly developed in just over a year, but the sequel was taking longer because of its ambitious scope and its comparatively small dev team. Apparently, however, “several playable hours were available in an internal demo” by spring 2023, and Ubisoft was “at a juncture about whether to fund full development or nix the project.”

    We know Ubisoft ultimately decided to can it, but as Kotaku’s Ethan Gach pointed out in July 2023, Immortals: Fenyx Rising was “pretty good,” and the idea of a more expansive sequel that abandoned some of the tired markers of a Ubisoft game sounds exciting. Oh well, guess we’ll just get more Assassin’s Creed games instead. 

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    Alyssa Mercante

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  • Baldur’s Gate 3 Co-Op Is The Game’s Chaotic Potential Realized

    Baldur’s Gate 3 Co-Op Is The Game’s Chaotic Potential Realized

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    I’m annoying as hell when it comes to choice-based RPGs because I am so particular about role-playing and writing a character in my head that I couldn’t even stand the thought of playing Baldur’s Gate 3 cooperatively with even my close friends. I said in my review that I don’t think it’s the optimal way to play through Larian Studios’ expansive Dungeons & Dragons RPG your first time through, and after playing with friends and watching the chaos unfold, that was definitely true. But it did give me a foothold to think about Baldur’s Gate 3 differently, so while I’m not sure that I’ll play through an entire campaign with my chaotic real-life crew, I’m at least happy I gave it a chance.

    11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator

    What kind of character do you make in a Baldur’s Gate 3 co-op campaign?

    When I played Baldur’s Gate 3 alone, I made a self-insert character. He was a Warlock who looked about as close to me as I could make him (it’s not terribly difficult to make a bald, bearded white guy) and my decisions weren’t governed by any D&D alignment or some deep, lore-based backstory. I essentially Isekai’d myself into the Forgotten Realms and just made decisions that spoke to me. But because I knew all my friends, including Destructoid’s Eric Van Allen, Prima Games’ Jesse Vitelli, and Digital Extremes’ Tatum, weren’t going to be using the characters they made in their solo playthroughs, I probably shouldn’t, right?

    Instead, I looked at a different created character I made. The Guardian, who Baldur’s Gate 3 asks you to create after you’ve settled on your protagonist, plays a central role in the main plot, but you never inhabit them the way you do your hero. My Guardian was a buff daddy of a Tiefling who, perhaps influenced by the character’s original “Dream Lover” background in Early Access, was basically just a Dungeons & Dragons approximation of my type. Even if I didn’t play as him, I was still pretty attached to the Tiefling by the end of my Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough, so I decided I would recreate him for multiplayer.

    But then the game asked me to make a Guardian for him, and it just kind of seemed natural that if he was the Guardian for my player character, my self-insert hero would be the Guardian for him. Initially, I did this because it was easy and I’m stupid, but as I played through the cooperative campaign with my friends, this began to take on new meaning. But not before I endured the absolute nonsense that is trying to play a super serious RPG alongside the goofiest clowns I know and love.

    Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    Baldur’s Gate 3‘s co-op can immediately devolve into chaos

    Each of our characters entered the world and we introduced ourselves. My scruffy Tiefling Bard named Arendelle (yes, like the kingdom in Frozen, I couldn’t think of anything that sounded fantasy-like and saw the movie on my shelf) exited his Mind Flayer pod and met three other heroes who might as well have been pulled out of different worlds and given names that made Arendelle look like the weird one. This included Bootyquake the Dragonborn, a Dwarf Monk named The Green Hulk who looks exactly like the Marvel hero he’s named after, and Italian Stallion, another Dwarf Monk who also slayed in his underwear. Just, ya know, without the superhero backstory.

    The chaos didn’t stop at our gaggle of weirdos’ introduction. Each of us was playing a different class than we played in the main game, and that meant fumbling our way through our abilities on top of figuring out how to coordinate our strategies and find some semblance of synergy in the characters we slapped together for a stream. I soon realized my Bard could do psychic damage by clowning on enemies, which we called “Diss Tracks,” but the best part was realizing he could randomly play music on his violin that would usurp the score at any given moment. I missed my Warlock’s Eldritch Blast, but I was committed to the bit, so I changed the music up during each fight.

    After we got through the initial intro on the Mind Flayer ship, we headed down the surface and recruited all the party members, just to send them back to camp so we could keep playing together. When you’re suddenly skipping over pivotal story moments to get back to being the most nonsensical ball of chaos the Forgotten Realms has ever seen, it starts rewiring how your brain engages with a game like Baldur’s Gate 3. This is the kind of RPG I usually pour myself into as I roleplay and agonize over my decisions, but now, the world was our playground, and I figured I might as well vibe.

    Once the weight of story investment was off our shoulders, we started fighting each other just because we could, whether it was mindlessly attacking our fellow party members or wasting valuable resources like spell slots to annihilate each other. Then we had to drop money and items to revive each other so we could keep playing. The best parts of Baldur’s Gate 3 are found when it’s reacting to your presence, and even when we only had low-level spells or hadn’t quite reached the more elaborate scenarios found later in the game, I realized that the possibilities only increased tenfold when multiple human players are occupying the world without restriction. Sure, we were just merking each other then, but what if we were actually trying to play the game properly?

    Eventually, we started making progress again and managed to pull ourselves together long enough to recruit Withers for our camp. Then, we took a Long Rest and were greeted by our respective Guardians. Arendelle met my character in a dream world and what started out as me being lazy and stupid, suddenly set a lightbulb off in my head. If I’d had a character sheet to write on, I’d have started scribbling down notes. What if, instead of this co-op campaign being just a meaningless romp with my friends, it was an extension of my Baldur’s Gate 3 story?

    Arendelle is shown standing next to The Guardian.

    Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    Making a Baldur’s Gate 3 co-op campaign an extension of your solo story

    I come from a pretty extensive fanfiction background from my middle and high school days, having written some truly terrible shit as a teenager and read much better work in the years that followed. It’s part of why role-playing games are so appealing to me. I love filling in the gaps between what a creator tells me, and it informs decisions I make in titles like Baldur’s Gate 3. Some folks like to play multiple characters and explore every possible outcome, but I like creating a set character with specific decisions. That’s my story in Baldur’s Gate 3, and as I saw my own character show up and seek council with Arendelle the Tiefling Bard, my mind started racing wondering how this could factor into that. What if they were star-crossed lovers communicating with each other across the multiverse? Could it be possible my Warlock had forgotten the Tiefling as part of a deal with his patron? I could just go full sicko mode and write that backstory in a Google Doc somewhere.

    Part of the appeal of tabletop roleplaying games is creating backstories for your characters and envisioning how they would react to situations based on their history and lived experience. Even if you don’t put a lot of thought into it, the heroes and villains we create are meant to be a rich tapestry beyond just stats and abilities. Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with friends expanded my vision of what the game could be, both in how it could be played and in why my character is who he is.

    Every time I boot Baldur’s Gate 3 up, I find new wrinkles in what Larian Studios has created, and even after finishing my first “canonical” run, I’m becoming more open to new ways of experiencing it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read up on multiverse concepts in Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve got notes to take and character sheets to make.

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    Kenneth Shepard

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  • Baldur’s Gate 3 Will Soon Let You Re-Customize Your Character

    Baldur’s Gate 3 Will Soon Let You Re-Customize Your Character

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    Image: Larian Studios

    Baldur’s Gate 3 may soon let you change your in-game appearance after starting the game, offering an upgrade to the already-praised character creator.

    11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator

    Based on Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy RPG from Larian Studios not only lets you select your class and race but also allows you to customize your “attachments” (like jewelry and scars), hair, tattoos, and even genitals. If your imagination conjures it, chances are you can bring it to fruition. But once your character is set, that’s it. Unlike other RPGs such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Diablo IV that let players change their hair, makeup, and other features on the fly, you can’t swap or tweak any part of your character around in Baldur’s Gate 3 once you start the game’s story. However, Larian Studios’ director of publishing Michael Douse revealed in a response on X, formerly Twitter, to a player who begged to change their in-game look that the team is currently working on it.

    “Sir please let me change how I look in the game,” X user TheTrustedTitan said. “I’m begging!!!!”

    “Things are being cooked,” Douse said.

    Read More: Baldur’s Gate 3 Lets You Customize Your Character’s Genitals

    Kotaku reached out to Larian Studios for comment.

    Douse didn’t clarify what he meant here, and there’s no publicly announced timeline for when this mid-game character customization option will come to Baldur’s Gate 3. But it’s great knowing the look you chose to start the game won’t be the one you’ll have to stick to forever. It’s also worth mentioning that only the PC version is out now. Baldur’s Gate 3 will come to PlayStation 5 on September 6, and the team is still trying to make multiplayer work on Xbox Series S before it comes to that console and the beefed-up Xbox Series X.

    Read More: Baldur’s Gate 3: The Kotaku Review

    Here’s hoping it comes out soon, but even without it, the game is still super popular among critics and fans alike. This is just a nice-to-have, you know?

     

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    Levi Winslow

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  • Surprise: Next Assassin’s Creed Game Launching A Week Early

    Surprise: Next Assassin’s Creed Game Launching A Week Early

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    In recent years, Ubisoft has struggled to release games on schedule, with some titles like Skull & Bones being delayed over and over. But now, the company has announced something different. Instead of being delayed, it turns out Assassin’s Creed: Mirage will launch a week earlier than previously planned.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is the next entry in the long-running open-world stealth franchise. This time around players will take on the role of Basim Ibn Ishaq, an assassin first seen in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. In Mirage, players will get a chance to see how a younger Basim evolves from a street thief to a fully-fledged assassin. Ubisoft is promising that, unlike recent AC games, Mirage will be a smaller, more stealth-focused action game and less of a super large open-world RPG. That sounds great to me, someone who misses those sleeker, sneakier entries. And what also sounds good to me is that we won’t have to wait as long to get our hands on this Assassin’s Creed prequel.

    Pre-order Assassin’s Creed: Mirage: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

    On August 14, Ubisoft announced that Assassin’s Creed: Mirage will launch across PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC on October 5. The game was initially planned—after a delay in 2022—to be released on October 12. Ubisoft says that the game has now gone gold and will be ready for players a full week earlier than expected.

    In an era where big, complicated video games are taking longer and longer to make and delays are becoming more and more common, this is a nice bit of news. Not just for Assassin’s Creed fans, who now get to play the upcoming game a week earlier than planned, but for anyone looking for a sign that perhaps not every big game that is completed and successfully ships has to do so on fire.

    Of course that’s assuming Mirage launches in a respectable state and not filled with bizarre glitches, like the originally released version of Assassin’s Creed: Unity back in 2014. Either way, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is now set to launch on October 5 across Xbox, PlayStation and PC. Perhaps one day Skull & Bones will release, too.

    Pre-order Assassin’s Creed: Mirage: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Lords Of The Fallen Reboot Is Sounding Like A Solid Soulslike

    Lords Of The Fallen Reboot Is Sounding Like A Solid Soulslike

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    Lords of the Fallen was already a game, one that came out nearly 10 years ago by developer Deck13 (Atlas Fallen) and publisher CI Games. It was fine, but felt too much like a lackluster facsimile of FromSoftware’s Dark Souls formula to have much of an identity of its own. CI Games is back, though, with newly founded studio Hexworks to take another stab at Lords of the Fallen. And this time around, at least based on the previews, it sounds like a stellar Soulslike might be in the offing.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    Out on October 13 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, Lords of the Fallen is a third-person action-RPG with an interesting conceit: With the help of the Umbral lantern, you can reveal secrets hidden in the land of the dead while still traversing the world of the living. But should you die and end up in Umbral—which will happen since this is a Soulslike—you’ll still be able to fight for your life for the chance to return to Axiom. Die here, though, and you’ll start back in the land of the living having lost your XP. Typically Soulslike stuff, but that two-realm implementation offers a new perspective for the genre, something the previews call attention to.

    So, considering the game comes out in two months, here’s a roundup of what early players are saying about Lords of the Fallen and how, as many of them purport, it’s sounding like an exciting Soulslike worth paying attention to.

    After playing the opening hours of 2023’s Lords of the Fallen, our journey through this nightmarish world was eerily familiar, yet filled with a current-gen polish that games like the Dark Souls trilogy and Bloodborne could only dream of. Our initial impressions were that the game felt a lot like the PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls, which is not a bad thing, but from an aesthetic point of view, Lords of the Fallen leans even more heavily into the grimdark setting.

    Image: Hexworks

    I’ve played a couple of hours of new Lords of the Fallen and crucially, I can tell you it’s: good. If you’ve played a Soulslike before—or as Hexworks wisely describes the genre, which extends to Nioh, The Surge, and the rest, tactical action-RPGs—it’ll be immediately familiar. You can create a character from one of several preset classes, ranging from glass cannon mages to sword-and-shield warriors, with some more lore-y archetypes in between with a little clan-based backstory behind them: a raven-like archer, a brawler with a twist of wolves.

    The moment-to-moment in my Lords of the Fallen demo ticked most of the Souls boxes I have when it comes to combat, but this game distinguishes itself in its concept of dual worlds. Axiom, the land of the living, is more or less the “normal” dimension, but it exists in parallel with the Umbral realm, the land of the dead. The two realms run simultaneously as you play, which takes advantage of tech on latest-gen platforms. It’s similar to The Medium or Titanfall 2‘s Effect and Cause mission, but spread across an entire sprawling dark fantasy world.

    What surprises me most, however, is Umbral. This is the realm of the dead and exists parallel to Axiom. It can be accessed at almost any time, in real-time. But, once you’re there, you must fight through its more challenging enemies to reach an access point that brings you back to Axiom. While you can select to explore Umbral on your own, Lords of the Fallen will bring you there almost every time you die. Dying gives you a second chance in Umbral, where, if you survive, you can reach the realm of Axiom once more. This eases the usual challenge of the genre—mind you, Lords of the Fallen is still extremely tough—but also opens up a unique playground for puzzles I welcome.

    By tapping into two distinct worlds at once, Hexworks completely revamps how we view death in a Soulslike. Lords of the Fallen turns the most infamously iconic, eternally frustrating thing about a FromSoftware game into more than a second chance: It’s a second world, one that functions entirely differently from the place we start out in. The result is a varied combat experience in a truly untamed universe, one that pulses with unknown wonders and its fair share of chills—no matter your familiarity with the genre.

    A Lords of the Fallen character uses magic against a sword-wielding enemy.

    Image: Hexworks

    There’s a great fluidity to Lords of the Fallen’s combat too. You can seamlessly flow from light attacks to heavy attacks, and can even change weapon stance in the middle of a combo as well. I could start with two light attacks, press the stance switch button, and do another light attack, I’d get a unique attack in which my character seamlessly goes from a dual-wielded slash, into a two-handed thrust. This is even better when you add magic to the equation, as you’re able to easily swap between melee and magic attacks even mid-combo. It opens the door for a lot of freedom of expression through combat, which is something you don’t see all too often in the Soulslike genre.

    While in the Umbral world, enemies slowly become more aggressive and powerful, but the XP multiplier increases as well, amping up the risks as well as the rewards in an enticing way. Being able to respawn allowed me to progress much faster and alleviated some of the frustrations that come with the genre. The Umbral world also offers access to shortcuts and gives you wild abilities that mirror Jedi powers. Lords of the Fallen is at its strongest when it leans into the mechanics of the Umbral world.

    Umbral also softens the difficulty level of its chosen genre—up to a point. If you die in Axiom, you are resurrected in Umbral, then given another chance to defeat your enemy before you give up the ghost completely and need to corpse-run from the last Vestige to reclaim your Vigor (Lords of the Fallen’s souls). This doesn’t refresh your healing items, though, and the longer you spend in Umbral, the more Dread builds up, and the trickier things get. Enemies get tougher, and increasing numbers of zombielike creatures materialize in your path—they’re easy to kill, but their presence complicates the battlefield considerably.

    Outside of exploration, you can use the lantern to rend a baddy’s soul from its body, then batter it for extreme damage. You can’t do this all the time, as you’ll need to power the lantern up to do it. This can be done by bursting pustules in the Umbral realm and sucking up the resultant juice, but if you can’t find a pustule, you might encounter an enemy with a blue glow—which means they’re invulnerable unless you reveal their parasitic Umbral companion floating alongside them. Hoover this critter up and not only can it power your soul attack, it will also remove their pal’s aura of invincibility.

    A Lords of the Fallen enemy roars, exposing it's multiple rows of teeth.

    Image: Hexworks

    The game is not as obscure as its FromSoft progenitors, and that works in its favor, because when you’re being pulled in two directions and interrogating the tension between worlds, you want a sense of what’s going on, and where to go. Lords of the Fallen is all about playing as a heathen, shunned by the world for embracing a dark lantern that allows them to traverse the realms of light and dark. It’s all about being sacrilegious, defying the common knowledge and tasting the forbidden fruit. If you wanted to do away with subtext, you could say it’s what Hexworks is doing in discarding the commonly held beliefs around how death should work in this genre. How traditionally hard it must be. But the studio eschews that. And the result, at least at this early stage, is unique and compelling.

    My time with the 2014 version of the game was quite frustrating. While the review is no longer live—the site I wrote it for is now defunct—I essentially said that, although the game had a compelling narrative, its cumbersome gameplay and unintuitive systems made for an ultimately forgettable experience.

    The previews of the new Lords of the Fallen reboot are based on just two hours of gameplay, so a lot of questions will remain unanswered until the game drops in October. But based on everything I’ve read so far, Lords of the Fallen is sounding like it’ll be a pretty solid take on the Soulslike style of game.

    Lords of the Fallen launches on October 13 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

     

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    Levi Winslow

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  • Diablo 4’s Inventory Situation Is Pretty Crummy

    Diablo 4’s Inventory Situation Is Pretty Crummy

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    It’s been two months since Diablo IV came out and players are airing their frustrations with the game, particularly now that season one is underway. One of the most contentious aspects of the loot-hunting action-RPG right now is inventory management, which has become a hot topic in the community.

    Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build

    Read More: Here’s The Big Overhaul Diablo IV’s Getting After That Hated Patch

    Diablo IV, like previous entries in Blizzard’s storied franchise, features a massive amount of loot; expect a constant deluge of gear drops from bosses and chests and dungeons as you travel the world of Sanctuary. With a total of 110 inventory slots, your bag will inevitably run out of space. And that’s fine, until you need to make room for that awesome armor or weapon you just snatched. There are some options for clearing your inventory, but the process is so cumbersome and tedious that players are feeling burnt out from over-micromanaging their wares, a feeling I’ve experienced during my own playtime.

    The problem with managing Diablo IV gear

    The Diablo IV subreddit is inundated with folks decrying inventory management. With post titles like “Comparing items and clearing inventory is overwhelming” and “Inventory management is burning me out from this game,” it’s clear folks have grown weary of frequently rummaging through the in-game bag. Part of the problem is you can’t dismantle or salvage items anywhere in the world. Maybe it’s to make the game feel more lifelike, but to break gear down into other resources, you must travel to a blacksmith at any of Sanctuary’s many towns. This not only interrupts the loot-kill-loot loop by forcing you back to a borough to tend to equipment, it also wastes time as you head back to a town by either backtracking on foot/horseback or sitting through a long loading screen when teleporting. Either way, with a full inventory, looting becomes impossible until you clear more space in your inventory.

    Diablo IV’s Strongholds Are A Great Way To Level Up This Season

    Diablo IV’s Strongholds Are A Great Way To Level Up This Season

    Aside from salvaging, you could drop useless things to make space for better loot. However, while doing so is easy with a few button presses, it’s ultimately a self-defeating endeavor as every piece of gear can be sold or broken down, which is far better for your longer-term bottom line. Maybe you can’t use that level 75 dagger with your Sorcerer, but the iron or cash you can turn it into are necessary and vital for character growth, particularly for upgrading your current equipment. And this process of inspecting every item to determine whether to break it down, drop, or sell has been at the forefront of players’ minds.

    Diablo IV players are tired of rummaging their bags

    In a popular August 8 Reddit post, user FullStackNoCode joked that fiddling with inventory in Diablo IV is “like having to pee every five minutes.” They went on to explain that they’re “tired of running to town” just to manage the bag, saying a solution could be to allow players to sell or scrap items immediately.

    “That’s all just busywork anyway, and highly annoying,” FullStackNoCode wrote. “Then, our bag space could be reserved for things that we want to be looking at/thinking about.”

    Image: Blizzard

    Another popular post from July 21, a day after Diablo IV’s Season of the Malignant started, saw user jlarue2010 say this new content update should be called “season of inventory management.” This is in reference to malignant hearts, season-exclusive items offering statistical buffs for your characters such as strength or defense that also happen to take up inventory space.

    “Seasonal items need seasonal stash tabs IMHO,” Green_Cloud replied.

    Players are also bumping up against the limits of their item stash, a separate area which lets you easily transfer items between your characters. A popular July 26 post from user Protocide559 explained how they won’t start a second character due to their stash already feeling tight just from saving gear for their current Druid. Diablo IV’s seasons require you to start new characters to participate, but because of the limited storage space, Protocide559 said they’re sticking with their pre-Season One Druid and refusing to play multiple characters like they did in previous Diablos.

    “[Blizzard will give you a chance to buy more storage space. Don’t worry,” user vague_diss joked in reply.

    Diablo IV’s inventory will get better, just at a later time

    For its part, Blizzard has addressed some parts of bag management. Gems, items that can be slapped onto gear to provide buffs such as health on kill or additional gold collecting, will take up less inventory space in a future update. The company also said storage upgrades are coming, but again, at a later time. It’s great that inventory management will become less frustrating as time goes on, particularly considering how tedious it was in previous Diablo games. In the first Diablo, for example, your inventory was divided into a grid. A gem would take up one slot while an axe might take up three, thus filling up quicker. The series has moved beyond grid-based inventories, but Diablo IV’s inventory limitations are still finding ways to annoy players and interrupt game flow.

    Read More: Diablo IV Players Are Getting Banned For Transferring Characters Between Realms

    This happens to my partner and I all the time. We’ll grind dungeons for minutes on end, only to stop right in the middle of it to scour our inventories to make space for the new thing that just dropped because we ran out of space. We do this for what feels like every 10 or so minutes as our bags fill up nonstop, repeating the process of inspecting and culling. It becomes draining after a while, especially when Diablo IV can’t stop spilling loot all over the place.

     

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    Levi Winslow

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  • Baldur’s Gate 3 May Not Get DLC Due To D&D’s OP Leveling

    Baldur’s Gate 3 May Not Get DLC Due To D&D’s OP Leveling

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    The recently released Baldur’s Gate 3 is a massive RPG with high replay value due to all the choices you can make, so it might seem weird to be talking about the game getting an expansion. But the question has been asked, and the response from the people behind the hit RPG is basically, probably not, because high-level Dungeons and Dragons characters are too powerful.

    The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Baldur’s Gate 3

    If you’ve been on the internet lately, it probably seems like the world is obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3, which fully launched last week to rave reviews after an extended period in Steam Early Access. The turn-based Dungeons and Dragons RPG is truly blowing up on Steam, with hundreds of thousands of players logging in all at the same time to play (and also to have sex…a lot of sex). And while the game is huge—taking dozens and dozens of hours to fully complete, with multiple endings—some are already wondering about future expansions. But, that’s probably not going to happen. And if it does happen, it’s going to take a long time.

    In an interview with PC Gamer on August 7, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke said that the team hadn’t even started on an expansion. And sure, the game caps out at level 12, but DnD supports level 20 characters. Naturally, that seems to leave room for a big follow-up expansion. However, Vincke explained that he thinks it would be “very hard” to continue the adventure with the high-level characters players have at the end of the game. That’s because, in DnD, when players start reaching level 13 and beyond they become nearly godlike. Spells that high-level players gain access to include the ability to see the future, or just instantly kill anything with less than 100HP.

    Larian Studios

    “[High-level DnD] adventures require a different way of doing things, in terms of antagonists you’re going to have to deal with, which require a lot of development to do them properly,” Vincke said, “Which would make this much more than an expansion in terms of development effort.”

    Vincke explained that this is why a lot of DnD campaigns are designed for level 12 or lower characters. So while it might seem like a perfect opportunity for an expansion, to just let players hit level 20, it’s “not as easy as one would imagine.”

    Promising an expansion too early could cause problems

    Another issue that Larian Studios faces when trying to make a big follow-up expansion to Baldur’s Gate 3? All the choices you can make and the endings you can get. Vincke tells PC Gamer that if the studio was to build DLC for the RPG it would be hard, and players would have to wait for “a long time.”

    There’d be one other complicating factor to making a Baldur’s Gate 3 expansion that picks up at level 13: all the possible permutations of a finished Baldur’s Gate 3 campaign feeding into that starting point. If Larian were to build something like that, “you’d have to wait for a long time,” Vincke said.

    He further added that if the studio announced expansion plans too early and then, partway through development, realized the expansion was boring or not very fun, it’d have to keep working on it and try to get people to buy something it doesn’t fully believe in.

    “That would not be cool. So we have to have the freedom to experiment and do our stuff. And then when we’re ready to announce it, we will.”

    So for now, there is no plan to make a Baldur’s Gate 3 expansion, but there’s a small chance it could still happen. One day. Maybe.

     

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • Baldur’s Gate 3’s Combat Is Tough, Here Are 12 Tips To Help You Fight

    Baldur’s Gate 3’s Combat Is Tough, Here Are 12 Tips To Help You Fight

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    Baldur’s Gate 3 is dense, but really rewarding once you’ve gotten the hang of all its systems which include tk. For some, the RPG’s combat has been particularly challenging, because it’s so embroiled in the game’s deep systems.

    The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Baldur’s Gate 3

    I’m about 40 hours in, and I’m still learning all the little nuances that can make a huge difference in a combat arena. If you’re struggling with fighting goblins, ghouls, and other beasties in Faerûn, here are a few general tips for getting out of a fight alive.

    Distribute your healing items

    When you’re looting or buying items in Baldur’s Gate 3, you’re probably not swapping through each character to do it. I know I don’t, at least. Most of the time, I let my main avatar character hoard everything until he becomes encumbered under the weight of it all. But inventory management is a huge part of successful combat encounters. You can’t just buy a bunch of healing potions and head out into danger. You need to manually give each of your party members some of your recovery items so they can be self-sustaining.

    This applies to both health potions and Scrolls of Revivify, items necessary to revive your party members should they die in battle. No, I don’t mean fall in battle, I mean die in battle. This happens when a party member has been downed by an enemy attack and has either laid on the ground for too many turns without using the Help command to get them back into the fight, or is struck before you can get to them. Sometimes, your main character might be the one dead (though you can loot Scrolls off their corpses), or they might not be able to get to a fallen ally. So having a wide spread of your healing items is just good practice.

    Shove your enemies off high places

    As we said in our general tips guide, shoving enemies off high ground is one of the best ways to cut a fight short. Why waste time and turns whittling down an enemy’s health when you can simply push them off the side of a cliff? If you can position characters near high-ground enemies like archers or spell-casters, you can use Shove as a bonus action to send them tumbling down into a chasm. But depending on a character’s class, you can also learn abilities that help you do this. After leveling up my Warlock character, my Eldritch Blast ability now has a force effect that pushes enemies a great distance when I fire it at them. This has helped me take out enemies at a distance who were bold enough to perch themselves on high ground, unaware that I would send them falling to their deaths. Characters with high-strength builds like Lae’zel and Karlach are optimal, but spellcasters at least have some chance to pull off a good Shove. Always look for opportunities to knock someone down a peg. Or a ledge.

    Image: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    You might as well Jump

    Movement is a key part of Baldur’s Gate 3’s combat. Each character has a specific distance they can move each turn, but there are several ways to expand or alter how they move. Jumping is one of the best ways to get some added value out of your movement , and it doesn’t take any of your actions, as it’s technically just an extension of walking. This helps you not only move over obstacles, hazards like fire or other traps, but can also give you some high ground if your character can reach them with a Jump alone.

    Area-of-effect abilities are invaluable

    No matter how big or small a combat arena is, the best teams can create and control space. Area-of-effect spells and skills are crucial in gaining and maintaining the upper hand in a fight. There are a few notable ways to make large areas dangerous to your enemies. Some of this can be through one-off abilities like the spell Cloud of Daggers, which creates a concentrated whirlwind of sharp objects for anyone to walk through and take significant damage. Placing this at a choke point can ensure your opponents inevitably walk through them and lose a chunk of health. I’ve taught both my character and Gale this spell and we’ve been able to control large parts of a field with it. Sometimes I’ll even push an enemy back into it with a well-placed Shove or Eldritch Blast, and then they have to walk through it again to reach us. Usually that’s more than enough to take them out.

    If you want to control space without it being in a static area of effect on the field, abilities like Spirit Guardians will encircle its caster in a damaging aura that follows them as they move around the field. Close-combat enemies will inevitably have to get in close and take damage just to reach you. I had a fight against an army of rats in a small space, and casting Spirit Guardians meant that as they funneled toward my party they all immediately died as their 1 HP was lost.

    Pay attention to how elements interact

    Baldur’s Gate 3 has a lot of abilities that work in tandem with the elements. Some crowd control abilities like Grease and Web can trap or slow down enemies in a wide radius, then you can follow up with a fire-based attack or spell that will ignite the entire area, burning all the enemies within it. There are a ton of interactions like this that can help you use a foe’s attack to your advantage. If your whole team’s been covered in Grease, move everyone out of the affected area but position yourself where your enemies will have to walk through to get to you, you can ignite it and turn what was once an obstacle into an asset.

    Astarion is seen standing in a wooded area.

    Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    Sneak in if you have to

    Not every character is built to run into a fight head-on. But luckily, Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you tools to sneak in should you feel so inclined. This can be both helpful to get a better position and ambush your foes, or, in some cases, it can help you avoid combat entirely.

    Every character has the Hide ability that, if you pass stealth checks, can help you navigate around a group of enemies. But also, using abilities like Invisible, Misty Step, or Dimension Door can help you get around enemies without detection.

    Ungroup party members for better setups

    Some of those maneuvers are easier to pull off if you split your party up. Ungrouping your team will let you move individual characters without the rest of the party following. For example, say you ungroup your spellcaster who knows Invisible, so they’re able to freely move around a battlefield unseen, reach high ground, and cast an AOE spell on the enemy team before any of them are the wiser.

    This also works to ensure your team isn’t all clustered together when your opponents start to swarm you. Depending on the fight, you can use this to file in characters on different sides of a battle, letting you spread out, cover more ground, and keep your team from getting wiped out in one well-placed explosion.

    It’s fine to run away sometimes

    Say you’re surrounded by an enemy team and things are looking real rough. You know if you move even an inch you’ll be struck by an Attack of Opportunity that activates by walking away from an enemy in close proximity. Slap that Disengage action and you can retreat without worry. Enemies will still come after you, but this will let you move for at least a little bit without worrying about getting whacked in the back of the head with an enemy mace.

    Destroy the environment (in an eco-friendly way)

    The longer Baldur’s Gate 3 is out, the more we’re learning about how much abilities can interact with the environment. There are a lot of destructible objects, such as bridges, that you can use to your advantage. See a bunch of enemies on a bridge headed your way? Check if it has an HP bar you can cast a ranged attack on that will blow it up and send your foes falling down into the hole below. Or preemptively destroy it before your enemies can even get on it to reach you.

    Hirelings let you craft your party

    Sometimes you just don’t have the tools and abilities you need to pull off a strategic play. Perhaps you spec’d Gale with too many support abilities and now he’s not built to do as much damage as you like, or maybe you made Shadowheart too damage-heavy to help you create a good crowd-control setup. Respecing your characters is an option, but you can also just get a Hireling. These are essentially additional, preset party members who occupy certain classes/races, but are customizable beyond that. This can both replace lost or missed party members or just give you a greater sense of control over the character builds you’re working with. They cost 100 gold to hire and you’ll have to wait until you unlock Withers, who joins your camp after you explore the Dank Crypt in the Ravaged Beach at the beginning of the game, to hire them.

    Tav is shown holding a shining stone with Gale in the background.

    Screenshot: Larian Studios

    Don’t be too precious about resources

    Baldur’s Gate 3 is a pretty resource-intense game. On top of the items you’ll need to replenish, you also have Spell Slots that give you a limited amount of spell uses before you have to do a Long Rest. You can run out of these resources in just one fight, which means you need to be really deliberate with their use. However, being strategic doesn’t mean you have to hoard things. Generally, you’ll come across enough supplies to do Long Rests to heal up and get your Spell Slots back naturally through looting. If you haven’t, buying food from merchants is a quick, often cheap way to get those supply numbers up. But also, you bought healing potions for a reason. You have Spell Slots so you can use them. It may take some time for you to get comfortable using a consumable resource, but I’m telling you now, the game is a lot more generous with these things than it might appear at first.

    Throw your junk items at enemies

    Part of looting is eventually realizing that you have a lot of junk in your inventory. While there might be some temptation to drop stuff you don’t actually need, keep in mind that you can use Throw in fights to just fling the garbage you’ve picked up at an enemy to do damage. High-strength characters like Lae’zel and Karlach will get the most value out of this, as they can throw heavier things farther, so if you’re looking for someone to hold onto all the trash you’ve found on your journey, prioritize them. But spread it around, too. You wouldn’t want anyone to become encumbered and lose movement speed.

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    Kenneth Shepard

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  • Critical Role’s Matt Mercer Solves Baldur’s Gate 3 Problems In The Most D&D Way

    Critical Role’s Matt Mercer Solves Baldur’s Gate 3 Problems In The Most D&D Way

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    Gif: Larian Studios / Kotaku

    Finding nonsensical solutions to a problem is a core part of the Dungeons & Dragons experience, and not many people know that better than actor and Critical Role DM Matt Mercer. With Baldur’s Gate 3 out this week, it seems only natural that a D&D superstar would make his way to Larian Studios’ RPG set in that universe and also come up with a ridiculous play like stacking a few dozen boxes on top of each other to get over a defensive wall and into a castle.

    11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator

    Mercer, who appeared on a stream playing the game alongside Larian founder Swen Vincke, accomplished this feat by stacking 45 boxes to make a staircase. Using the jump command, Mercer scaled the makeshift stairs until he was high enough to fire an Arrow of Transposition, which teleports the user to wherever the projectile lands. Honestly, the whole thing kind of broke my brain.

    I’m around 25 hours into Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m still wrapping my head around how much chaos it allows for. More often than not, when we think of RPGs and systemic chaos we think of open-world games where there are all these clockwork systems that we disrupt as the player and watch disorder unfold. But I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is more impressive in that it gives you so many tools to navigate the world and find creative solutions that can support something like making a giant staircase of boxes and then teleporting via arrow. It rules.

    As more players get their hands on Baldur’s Gate 3, we’ll no doubt see more people pulling off impressive nonsense, but shoutout to Mercer for ringing in release day with this terrific display.

    While we might not have outlined anything this wild, we can give you some early-game tips to help you get started in Baldur’s Gate 3.

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    Kenneth Shepard

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  • Kotaku’s Weekend Guide: 6 Cool Games To Check Out

    Kotaku’s Weekend Guide: 6 Cool Games To Check Out

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    Dugongue / Nintendo

    Play it on: Nintendo DS (but there are similar games on many platforms)
    Current goal: See if it can stump me

    In the final days of the Neo Geo Pocket Color’s brief, beautiful life I imported several of the final English-translated games from the UK, and among them was an unassuming cart called Picture Puzzle. Little did I know it would be my gateway into the world of nonograms, a type of logic puzzle in which you deduce the layouts of dots on a grid based on numerical clues, eventually forming a picture. It was love at first furrow.

    Though I got my fill of these games over the next few years, I still enjoy the way they scratch my brain, and there’s a near-limitless number of them available for Nintendo handhelds. So it was that I loaded Nintendo’s Picross DS onto my DSi XL this week and once again started deciphering the dots.

    I don’t even remember if I’ve played this one before, but as long as the UI is good, and it is in the Nintendo ones, most any nonogram game will do. (Picross DS has some nice music, but stick with the basic blue-on-white color scheme, as many of the alt ones are eye-rending.) One thing I wonder, and I usually drift away before finding out, is if a given nonogram game, in its later stages, will depart from purely logic-based puzzles and start to require—I shudder just typing this—guessing.

    I remember feeling some of the late-game Picture Puzzle grids did, but I was young and inexperienced. Even now it’s possible there exist some advanced, logic-based solving techniques that yet elude me. Perhaps this time I’ll stick with Picross DS, which I understand maxes out at monstrous 25×20 grids, long enough to see just how difficult it can really get. — Alexandra Hall

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    Alexandra Hall

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  • When Is Baldur’s Gate III Coming To Xbox? It’s Complicated

    When Is Baldur’s Gate III Coming To Xbox? It’s Complicated

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    Baldur’s Gate III arrives on PC on August 3 and is right around the corner on PlayStation 5. But what about Xbox Series X/S? The sprawling role-playing game still doesn’t have a release date on Microsoft’s console, and developer Larian Studios still isn’t sure if that version of the game will be ready before the end of 2023.

    Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger

    It’s a massive bummer for Xbox fans. The Dungeons & Dragons-based game has been in Early Access for several years, with fans patiently waiting to dip their toes into the deep end of its massive world full of hidden secrets and branching storylines. A console version of the game will arrive on PS5 on September 6, just in time to take advantage of Starfield’s absence from Sony’s “next-gen” platform. Larian says it needs more time to finish the Xbox version of the game, but hasn’t yet been able to commit to a firm launch date, only promising to update fans on the timeline later in the year.

    Is Baldur’s Gate III a PS5 exclusive?

    The short answer is: no. While the RPG is coming to PS5 first, Larian has been clear that there’s no timed-exclusivity deal in place or favoritism going on. It’s simply that the PS5 version is ready now and the Xbox one isn’t yet.

    “There’s no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing BG3 on Xbox day and date, should that be a technical possibility,” the studio wrote at the time. “If and when we do announce further platforms, we want to make sure each version lives up to our standards and expectations.”

    Originally set to come out on August 31, Larian actually pushed the PS5 release date back a week so it would have more time to fine-tune its performance on that platform (the game is targeting 60fps).

    Why isn’t there an Xbox Series X/S version yet?

    The real culprit is the Xbox Series S. Larian mentioned back in February that it was still having issues with Baldur’s Gate III’s splitscreen coop on the less powerful hardware. Since Microsoft requires feature parity between the Xbox Series S and X, Larian seemingly didn’t have an option to change or cut things from the one version to get it out the door quicker.

    “We’ve had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate III in development for some time now,” Larian wrote in February. “We’ve run into some technical issues in developing the Xbox port that have stopped us feeling 100% confident in announcing it until we’re certain we’ve found the right solutions.”

    Studio head Swen Vincke elaborated on the nature of some of the issues again in July, pointing to the challenge of optimizing a game for consoles that kept growing throughout development like Baldur’s Gate III. Players are free to explore its central hub city, and the game tracks tons of decisions made in order to create a more immersive playthrough as if you were part of a real-life D&D session.

    “On Xbox, it’s a different platform, it has, as you know, there’s two platforms really,” Vincke told Kotaku. “And so we have to see where we ended up. And the team is committed to working on it, it has for a long time already. So they’re going bit by bit, you know, like, you tear down one performance barrier and go to the next one.” He added that Microsoft’s engineers have been helping Larian, but also pointed to the reality that it’s an independent studio with finite resources.

    “Everybody wants this out on Xbox. It’s not that we don’t want it out on Xbox,” Vincke told IGN. “It’s just that, our problem — and this is us, Larian — is that we just made a very big game. And it’s a very complicated game.”

    Baldur’s Gate III might not come to Xbox before 2024

    So where does that leave the Xbox Series X/S version? The studio has said in the past that it’s hoping to get Baldur’s Gate III on Xbox by the end of 2023, but can’t commit to a hard date yet, especially as it prepares to juggle post-launch updates as the full game goes out into the wild. That hasn’t stopped the studio from getting hammered by angry Xbox owners, however.

    “We have quite a few engineers working very hard to do what no other RPG of this scale has achieved: seamless drop-in, drop-out co-op on Series S,” Larian’s director of publishing, Michael Douse, tweeted on July 30 in response to the backlash. “We hope to have an update by the end of the year.” Hopefully, the studio continues to make progress on getting the Series S version up to snuff. It would be a nice holiday surprise to take Xbox owners into the post-Starfield winter.

                  

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    Ethan Gach

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