Final Fantasy Tactics nailed so many things so exquisitely that, despite plenty of sequels, spiritual successors, and fan homages, there’s never been anything quite like it since. Arcadian Atlas is the latest indie strategy RPG to try and channel its greatness into something familiar but new, and sadly, it mostly flounders.
This Brutal Gothic Metroidvania Is Shaping up To Be Something Special
Created by Twin Otter Studios, Arcadian Atlas came to Steam on July 27 after first getting funded on Kickstarter way back in 2016. Despite the years of waiting, it feels like a rough first draft that needs more work. Set in a kingdom thrust into civil war over a succession crisis and royal family in-fighting, it follows two romantically involved soldiers, Vashti and Desmond, onto the battlefield as their conflicting loyalties and principles threaten to unravel their lives. Every scene is rendered with beautiful sprites reminiscent of Square Enix’s classic, and each new plot point is punctuated by a turn-based fight on a chessboard-like grid between competing squads of archers, medics, magicians and knights.
Gif: Twin Otter Studios / Kotaku
I’ve played about four hours so far, and the story can be compelling when it doesn’t feel barebones or clumsy. Star-crossed lovers thrust into the chaos of a civil war is a fine crucible for interrogating what makes characters tick and how far they’re willing to go to fight for what matters most to them, even if the dialogue sometimes feels undercooked, “Listen, I’m not happy about it either, but you know how much dark magic damaged my village,” Desmond tells Vashti early on. “As much as I hate to say it, he has to be put to death.”
But the real issue with Arcadian Atlas is that it’s a chore to navigate and play, and there’s no real creativity or depth in its RPG systems to make battles exciting or make it satisfying to grow and level up your crew. Skill trees are brief and mostly revolve around earning damage upgrades. There are a dozen unique job classes, but you can’t mix and match abilities. Combat also heavily favors ranged units, which have good damage output and little risk of ever missing their target.
Screenshot: Twin Otter Studios
The battlefield also feels wonky and incomplete. Animations for unit movement and attacks don’t feel fluid, and terrain has no real impact on strategy. Fireballs and arrows can pass through obstacles and comrades unimpeded, while melee units can strike anyone next to them no matter how much higher or lower the adjacent squares are. It makes for very unbalanced encounters with little in the way of tactical trade-offs to consider or competing priorities to weigh.
In isolation, none of these shortcomings would be that big of an issue, but taken together they slowly add up to a simplistic and tedious experience that’s hard to recommend to even the genre’s biggest fans. Eventually even the mildest frustrations become hard to ignore, like having to press the accept button to progress every finished loading screen, and the fact that navigating the battlefield grid requires repeatedly flicking the thumbstick on the gamepad rather than simply holding it. The game supports mouse and keyboard as well, but I actually found the cursor controls to be even more finicky and sticky.
One of the few points of pleasure for me in each battle was the soundtrack. Instead of dramatic horns and violins, Arcadian Atlas’ jazz-infused soundtrack by composer Moritz P.G. Katz is dominated by saxophones and guitars. The standard combat music in particular is so oddly unexpected but catchy, I still found it playing inside my head days later. I wish I could say the rest of my time with the game felt as memorable.
As promised, Blizzard held a livestream today, July 28, going over what Diablo IV players ought to expect from the game’s upcoming 1.1.1 patch. During the stream, the developers laid out their overall philosophy behind the expected changes, and got into some specifics about what to expect when it lands on August 8, 2023.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
The Diablo IV community hasn’t been particularly happy with recent changes to the wildly popular action RPG. Shortly before the game’s first season, Blizzard pushed a patch that made sweeping changes to classes and quality of life features that’s been largely seen as a net negative. Players felt that the unwelcome adjustments made the game grindier, among other things. Last week, Blizzard acknowledged that the changes weren’t great and promised to never release a patch of that nature ever again. While full notes for the upcoming patch are expected to arrive next week, August 2, today’s stream gave a good sense of what to expect, with some changes to player power and a few reversals of controversial changes. You can watch the whole stream here:
Blizzard
Sorcerer’s and Barbarians, patch 1.1.1 is for you
Early on in the stream, lead class designer Adam Z. Jackson said that the Sorcerer and Barbarian will see the most changes.
“We know that Sorcerers typically have a tough time when they start getting pushed into later Nightmare Dungeon tiers, so we’re going to be looking at ways to increase [late game survivability] specifically.”
Jackson also said that the team is pinpointing what they call “kiss curse mechanics,” which is when the player gains “a really cool power or effect and then we kind of take something or nerf some other part of you, usually for balance reasons to make sure that it’s not out of control.” One example of this is an expected change to the Serpentine Aspect:
“[The Serpentine Aspect] is the one where you can spawn an additional Hydra, but it reduces the duration of your Hydras. That’s no longer going to reduce the duration. It’s actually going to increase it.”
Jackson said that the Barbarian’s early game experience will also get a boost. One concrete example of this is an improvement to Fury generation. In a slide shown during the stream, Bash, Flay, Frenzy, and Lunging Strike all see their Fury increased.
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
Jackson said the Barbarian ought to expect other improvements to the late game experience with alterations to Unique items that’ll swap existing effects for more useful ones.
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
While the other classes can expect some updates, they won’t be as comprehensive as Sorcerer and Barbarian. Still, increases to Spirit gains for the Druid ought to be welcome.
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
Blizzard aims to start expanding build options for Diablo IV in future updates
During today’s stream, Blizzard expanded a bit on how it wants to see build options change for Diabo IV. Jackson spoke to this directly:
“Vulnerable and Crit are really, really strong right now. A lot of the meta is about [making] an enemy vulnerable, and then you do bonus damage to them, and then you stack as much Crit Strike damage chance and Crit damage as you can, and then you blow them up. [Diablo IV] actually was foundationally made with other types of builds that aren’t only those in mind. We have “Damage Over Time” […] we also have “Overpower” as a mechanic in our game. [We want those damage types] to have parity with Vulnerable and Crit Damage.”
Jackson said that the long term goals with Diablo IV are to ensure that “if you’re an Overpower build, or a Crit build, or a Damage Over Time build, you’ll be relatively equal in power to all the different types of ways to play. This will be in addition to improving how skills and effects scale as players increase in level, potentially opening the door to late game builds that make use of typically discarded abilities. What might that look like? Jackson gave a couple of examples:
“We have a lot of legendary powers and effects that spawn ‘a new thing.’ An example of this is the [Barbarian’s legendary power that] spawns earthquakes or dust devils. Another one is the Necromancer [can] leave shadow trails on the ground that deal damage. These [effects] deal what we call ‘flat damage’ which is [where] we give it a damage number and then that’s how much it does. And that damage number scales with player level. But we find is that a lot of these [effects] are really good in the early and mid game […] but then when you get to the really late game, they kind of fall of really hard. And what we want to do is find ways to add scaling so that the player can opt into making a build out of these things. So if I want to be an ‘Earthquake Barbarian’ or a ‘Dust Devil Barbarian’ I can actually do that.”
Another key way the team is looking to expand build options is to mitigate how many skills require specific scenarios to function. One such is the Sorcerer’s chain lightning, which currently sees bonus damage when the lightning bounces off of you. 1.1.1 will change things so that you gain bonus damage when Enhanced Chain Lightning bounces off of anything.
Teleporting out of dungeons will take 3 seconds again and treasure goblins are getting better
In a complete reversal, the controversial change from dungeon teleportation from three to five seconds is getting reversed. Game Designer Joe Shelly said that the original intention of the change was to mitigate players teleporting themselves out of tough encounters and boss fights. Given the community’s reaction over this change, however, teleports are back to three seconds.
And while associate game director Joe Pieopiora discussed how the Treasure Goblin’s Legendary drop rate was actually 50 percent, player frustration over infrequent encounters with them led to a perception that it was far lower. Starting at level 15, Treasure Goblins are now guaranteed to drop a Legendary.
Other quality of life updates
As discussed during last week’s stream, monster density for Nightmare Dungeons and Helltides are going up. During the stream, the devs showed off a slide of what the increased monster presence will look like.
And while bosses will see their health boosted, at level 35 and up you’ll be guaranteed a Legendary item drop. Legion events will also see a guaranteed Legendary drop.
On the technical side, patch 1.1.1 is also expected to address a specific VRAM issue for PC players, so the game should be more stable.
Patch 1.1.1 is expected to arrive on August 8, with final patch notes coming on August 2.
While exploring dungeons in Diablo IV, you might encounter The Butcher, a terrifying and hard-to-kill demon boss who’s been a staple of the series since the original game in 1997. But if you get lucky, you might be able to easily kill this legendary baddie if he gets stuck behind a locked door. I’d feel bad for the guy, but he’s been getting trapped like this for nearly three decades now.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Released in June, Diablo IV is the latest entry in Blizzard’s popular and long-running demon-killin’ action-RPG franchise. The game offers mostly the same classic looting and dungeon-crawling action you’d expect from a Diablo game, with some of the same enemies and classes from past titles returning for this latest entry. Also returning is one of Diablo’s most famous bosses: The Butcher.
This big demon first appeared way back in 1997 and also showed up in Diablo III in 2012. He’s a fan of big cleavers, killing adventures and asking for fresh meat. He’s scary and has been wrecking Diablo IV players when he randomly (and rarely) shows up in a dungeon or basement. However, old-school Diablo players might already know his weakness: doors. And it appears not much has changed in 2023.
What makes this funnier is that back in the first Diablo, The Butcher was known to commonly get stuck on random bits of terrain or even, like in 2023, get trapped behind doors. And just like today, back then players would take advantage of the helpless Butcher and beat the demonic shit out of him until he died and spit out some loot.
As far as I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable way to force the ol’ Butcher to spawn behind a locked door. But if it happens to you, don’t feel bad as you murder him. You’re just taking part in an old, time-honored Diablo tradition.
The last 48 hours of Diablo IV has been a little chaotic following wildly controversial changes to player power level in the game’s first pre-season patch. Now, developer Blizzard is doing a bit of damage control, taking to a livestream on July 21 to try and explain its decision-making process, as well as what changes it’s making in response to the overwhelmingly negative feedback.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Diablo IV’s latest patch, 1.1.0, dramatically reduced player power across the board. Changes include reductions to XP earned for various activities, as well as a diminished role to status effects like Vulnerability that have played a central role in class builds. It was a tumultuous set of changes to say the least, all documented in an exhaustive list of alterations via the official patch notes. As promised, Blizzard held a livestream today to address these changes, as well as provide some updates on future changes to the game—particularly in response to the negative feedback on the previous patch. You can watch the whole stream here:
Blizzard / Diablo
Reducing player power: ’We know it is bad. We know it is not fun.’
On the stream, Blizzard’s associate director of community management, Adam Fletcher, immediately responded to the overwhelmingly negative feedback in response to the patch, acknowledging that missteps were made and that the reduction to player power has wrecked the fun of the game for some players.
While Fletcher stated that Blizzard had specific goals in mind with the most recent patch and that it wanted an opportunity to explain why it made these changes, some good news is that the team doesn’t “plan on doing a patch like this ever again.”
Blizzard plans on ‘always providing patch notes well beforehand’
While the most recent patch did dramatically reduce player power and strike at the heart of the developing meta, one of the most chaotic elements of it all was how suddenly the patch notes arrived, how lengthy they were, and how it felt like there was absolutely no heads up as to what was going to happen going into the game’s first season, which started on July 20.
As a way to get ahead of future issues like that, Blizzard has promised to provide patch notes “well beforehand,” estimating that notes will hit about a week before a new update. The game’s next patch, version 1.1.1, is expected to arrive sometime soon, and Blizzard will discuss the specific details of that patch in another livestream chat next Friday, July 28.
Changes to player power explained
Though some may find Blizzard’s explanations for the dramatic, across-the-board nerfs lacking, associate game director Joe Piepiora explained that the reductions to player attributes like cooldown rates and status effects like Vulnerability were done to try and amplify player choice. On the cooldown rates specifically, Piepiora said:
[Cooldown reduction (CDR) is the most powerful stat] in Diablo IV, and the reason for it is obvious: When you’re able to get CDR to a certain point when using certain class mechanisms, you’re able to get effectively instantaneous active skills. That can give you unlimited resources, can give you unlimited movement speed, can give you unlimited damage resistance, and it begins to dwarf the effectiveness of other options when you start trying to take these things into account.
During the stream both Piepiora and game director Joe Shely recognized that overpowered builds and mowing down tons of enemies is core to the action-RPG power fantasy. However, the team is presently concerned that player choice in builds is dying in favor of go-to metas, meaning that if you don’t emphasize cooldown reduction, or optimize builds to send foes into Vulnerable status, you’re operating at a disadvantage.
Vulnerability, which saw its damage modifier reduced significantly in patch 1.1.0, according to Piepiora, became the only way to really start dealing damage to enemies at certain levels of play. This, the team said, is not in line with their vision of the game, and in many ways they believe it’s the result of the outsized influence of high-level Nightmare Dungeons, which Piepiora said is one of the areas of endgame content that tends to demand very specific builds without much room for customization and choice.
The reality is that Nightmare Dungeons are dramatically overtuned from where they actually need to be based upon the role they fill in the game itself. So Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons are excruciatingly difficult for most classes to be able to actually get through and as a result it begins to winnow the opportunities and options that players have when they begin to engage with content at that Tier. You need to lean on very, very specific builds, very specific setups with access to things like near-instantaneous cooldowns for some skills in an effort to actually make it through those spaces. And that was never really the intent of that content.
Apparently Nightmare Dungeons will see changes on at least two fronts: The density of hordes will be increased to play into the power fantasy of destroying vast amounts of enemies and, in respect to Piepiora’s statement that the crushing level of difficulty they pose is having too much of an effect on build choice, difficulty will be reduced, bringing Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons down to about the current difficulty level of Tier 70 Nightmare Dungeons.
Patch 1.1.1 is expected to address some of the concerns
During the stream the team stressed that the goal was not, in fact, to reduce the speed of the game and slow progress, though many have felt that changes to game systems like an increase in the amount of time it takes to teleport out of dungeons seems to suggest otherwise. Commenting on that very change, Shely said the team will continue to evaluate changes like this, but stopped shy of saying why, exactly, that specific change was instituted in the first place.
The next patch, 1.1.1, is expected to address a wide variety of the issues present in the current build of the game. Blizzard revealed some such changes, like an extra tab in stash size to mitigate concerns over inventory management, and a 40 percent reduction in respec costs so players can more adequately respond to changes in the game’s meta while also having more choice over build variety as the game progresses. Other specific details, such as changes that have wildly reduced the power level and strength of certain classes more so than others, will be explored more in depth in next week’s livestream.
The team stressed that it doesn’t want to take powerful skills and items away as abruptly as it did with the most recent patch, and pledges to offer more alternatives when potentially sweeping changes come about in the future. A hotfix is scheduled to arrive later today (July 21), with patch notes expected to hit Diablo IV’s website shortly before it goes live.
It’s not uncommon for live-service games to make sudden changes like Diablo IV did here, but community frustration over poorly communicated and executed changes can easily build up over time to create burnout and resentment. Time will tell how quickly Diablo IV recovers from this latest kerfuffle.
Like many games these days, the highly anticipated Baldur’s Gate 3 comes in a few different editions at a few different price points. Obviously if you’re a D&D superfan, you might be interested in the most expensive one, but what, exactly, will shelling out that extra cash get you? And what of the other versions? Let’s break it all down.
The Witcher 3 Meets Tense Roguelike PvE Card-Battling In Rogue Mage
When is Baldur’s Gate 3 even coming out?
You wouldn’t be alone if you found Baldur’s Gate 3’s release status a little confusing. Though the game hit Early Access back in 2020, the full version of Baldur’s Gate 3 releases on August 3, 2023 for PC (Steam or DRM-free GOG). On console, the PlayStation 5 version launches on September 6. And, yes, Xbox and Mac versions are expected eventually, though certain challenges developer Larian has faced there mean we’ll have to wait.
The standard edition of Baldur’s Gate 3 will be available for $60 on PC and Mac, and $70 on PS5. But there are a few other versions you may wish to consider. There is no physical version of the game itself, as in a plastic saucer with laminated data that you insert into a slot, but the priciest edition does net you some tangible goodies. More on those in a moment.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Deluxe Edition
Good news, everyone™: if you have preordered Baldur’s Gate 3 on PC or Mac, you’ll already have the Deluxe Edition coming your way. Sick, right?
But if you’re on PS5, it’s gonna cost you an extra 10 bucks ahead of the already more-expensive version: so that’ll be $80 bucks.
However you source it, here’s what’s coming with the deluxe edition:
Divinity Bard Song Pack
Exclusive Dice Theme (themed to your platform of choice)
Treasures from Rivellon Pack (select items from Divinity: Original Sin 2)
Mask of the ShapeshifterCape of the Red PrinceLute of the Merryweather BardNeedle of the Outlaw RogueBicorne of the Sea Beast
Now for the pricey one. For a cool $270 bucks you’ll get everything in the Deluxe Edition, plus some physical stuff:
A custom sticker sheet (sticker bomb the hell out of stuff)
A Mind Flayer vs. Drow battle diorama (put it on your mantelpiece)
A 160-page hardcover art book (great for coffee tables)
A cloth map of Faerûn (great prop for TTRPGs, by the way)
Epic D&D character sheets (pro tip: If you want to use these in actual D&D game, photocopy them so you don’t ruin the originals)
A metal tadpole keyring (which you’ll have to remind everyone is a tadpole)
Magic: The Gathering booster pack
A custom metal d20 themed to Baldur’s Gate 3 (I’ll still roll 1’s all the damn time)
A certificate of authenticity (show it off to your friends, make ‘em jealous)
Exclusive in-game dice skin based on the Collector’s Edition metal d20
Sounds good, right? Well I’ve got good news and bad news. The Collector’s Edition, only available from Larian’s online store, is currently sold out. The good news? You can give Larian your email address to be notified when it’s back in stock. If $270 isn’t too many gold pieces to put you off the idea, I suggest grabbing a copy as soon as you can when it’s available once more, as this seems to be quite a hot item.
Correction 7/20/2023 7 p.m. ET: Updated to reflect that the Mac version has no set release date yet.
Baldur’s Gate 3 launches on August 3 on PC, September 6 on PS5, and at a later date on Xbox and Mac.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s character creator is incredibly expansive. Larian Studios has described it as a tool for players to build their ideal fantasy protagonist, but before it could be that, the Belgian studio needed it to serve a different purpose: filling the RPG’s world with unique, believable civilians.
11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator
In an interview with Kotaku, lead character artist Alena Dubrovina walked us through nearly every aspect of Baldur’s Gate 3’s suite of character customization options, and despite its impressive breadth, each variation of the RPG’s hero I saw still looked like a deliberately crafted individual on which every scar, piece of jewelry, or hairstyle looked tailor-made for their face, whether they were a human, a reptilian Dragonborn, or any of the game’s numerous other races. According to Dubrovina, a lot of that precision comes from Larian making these options for its team more so than for the players who will inhabit these characters when the game launches on August 3.
“We never make a character creator […] specifically for the players, even though we sort of do,” Dubrovina said in a video call. “First of all, when the production starts, we make it for us. Because we knew that the game was gonna be huge. We knew that there’s gonna be too many characters and we knew we need to customize everyone and be prepared for Dragonborns or similar creatures like that. […] So we kind of know that if a design is requested and there’s gonna be—like in a year— 100 [characters] throughout the game, it’s our job to kind of be prepared to make sure that all of those imps or at least some of those imps look unique.”
11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator
11 Minutes With Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator
Unlike other RPGs like Skyrim that use sliders to fine-tune aspects of a character’s face or body to your liking, Baldur’s Gate 3 uses preset faces that can be added upon with what Larian calls “attachments,” such as hair, jewelry, scars, tattoos, or facial hair. According to Dubrovina, this was to maintain that tailor-made look of other characters you meet in the game.
“My personal experience with most [slider-based character creators] is you kind of customize it, it takes you a lot of time and effort, and then a lot of times it kind of looks the same in the end,” she said. “So we wanted to avoid that. And if we would make sliders, we needed to make it into something that would be truly unique and wouldn’t look the same.”
According to Dubrovina, Larian isn’t married to taking this approach for all of its games, but they felt the approach worked well for Baldur’s Gate 3 and, she said, it kept custom characters from looking “mediocre.”
That crafted look for each race, hairstyle, and accessory means that there aren’t really “ugly” custom characters. This isn’t Street Fighter 6 where players are making a bunch of weirdos. And indeed, even as Dubrovina repeatedly clicked the randomize option in the character creator, each hero with different accessories, colors, and other options looked believable.
Larian has been working on Baldur’s Gate 3 for six years and the game features 11 races, with their own original appearances and traits. For now, the studio has “no plans whatsoever” to add any new races to the RPG. So if you were hoping to play as some of the other Dungeons & Dragons races like a Giff or a Bugbear, temper your expectations. But the races that are in the character creator all seem to have a lot of options, even among the presets.
“We tried to kind of stay true to the lore,” Dubrovina said. “If the [Dungeons & Dragons] book said, ‘Oh, Tieflings usually have like a red shade of skin,’ then we followed that for the most part.”
In that spirit of staying true to D&D lore, the options Baldur’s Gate 3 initially gives you to customize aspects of your character are meant to be in-line with what you’d find in the storied tabletop RPG’s sourcebooks. However, you can also opt to swap to a more expanded options list and use any color provided, so you can have a green-colored human or a blue Tiefling. There is some freedom in customization, but you’ll still find traits that are exclusive to certain races, such as horn customization for Tieflings or a Dragonborn’s ancestry affecting a pattern on your character’s scales. It also results in some restrictions, such as Elves canonically not having beards.
Gif: Larian Studios / Kotaku
While the lore itself will stick to the script, Dubrovina said Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t too beholden to Dungeons & Dragons, as it doesn’t implement concepts like moral alignment. So you won’t be forced to adhere to a specific alignment that you pick early on, which opens up opportunities for role-playing and player expression. The source material acts as an inspiration for the team, rather than a set of hard rules.
Even with its fantasy foundation, Baldur’s Gate 3’s world overlaps with our own in some ways, and the character creator is part of that. Video games’ and studios’ frequent inability (or unwillingness) to render the specific textures of Black hair has been a hot topic in recent years. In some of the biggest games like Elden Ring, Black players are often left to choose between fairly standard options like cornrows or dreadlocks, if they even get those. In creating Black hairstyles for Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios sought help from consultants and animators outside the studio to get them right, both in terms of how they look when dry, but also to account for how different hairstyles might react to the elements.
“The types of hair that humans have varies,” Dubrovina said. “[There are] different physical properties dependent on the quality of the hair itself. Like if it’s wet, if it’s dry, if it’s unkempt, [we’d say] ‘oh yeah, let’s try making this hairstyle less sleek and a little bit dirty, but we’ll need to remake it’ because, you know, the mesh needs to be placed in the whole different ways.”
Dubrovina says working on those hairstyles was a learning experience for the studio that has helped its art team “expand [its] lineup,” and will hopefully let people play as a character who looks like them. That philosophy of trying to let players create a character who looks and acts like them expands into gender identity. Baldur’s Gate 3’s approach to gender and how you identify with a body is incredibly fluid, and has even been changed up in a few ways since the RPG was in Early Access.
Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku
Most races now have four different body types no longer designated by the gender symbols, but simply numbered one through four. In these four choices are options for a shorter stature, or a taller, more broad one for both sexes. This is entirely independent of your character’s pronouns (you can choose between male, female, or non-binary ones out the gate), voice, or, as we wrote about earlier this month, their genitals.
Baldur’s Gate 3 allows you to pick your character’s genitals, and unlike Cyberpunk 2077, they actually show up in the game itself, rather than just in the menu. You can choose between a penis or a vagina, as well as pubic hair options, though given the Dragonborn’s reptilian nature, theirs will look slightly different.
According to Dubrovina, the decision to add this option didn’t stem from the inclusion of sex scenes in romance subplots (such as the one with the druid bear), but rather because the team decided to make underwear a piece of equipment you would obtain throughout the game, customize, and wear. She explained that underwear is an extension of the character customization as a form of in-universe expression, as some of the underwear you’ll find is meant to represent the race that wears it (or did before you looted or stole it), such as the leather-based “spicy” Githyanki pair. Then after putting so much work into underwear, the studio naturally thought about what would be under these meshes.
“The question arose, ‘what happens when you take it off?’” she said. “At first we were like, ‘you know, maybe nothing’s gonna happen. Maybe we’re gonna have another underwear mesh under it. Who cares? But then I started thinking about it, talking about it, and we realized that for some players, it’s just another way to represent their identity.”
Having options like this, especially ones that aren’t tied to each other like how Cyberpunk 2077 tied protagonist V’s pronouns to their voice, is key to letting people, regardless of their identity, represent themselves in a game all about player expression. That expression extends far beyond which race you play and which class you pick. Having the option to mix these different pieces of your character is how you allow a player to be their truest selves in a game. Baldur’s Gate 3 is lacking in some aspects of body diversity, what with all its body options appearing to be very fit and there not being any means to create a fat character (as fans have noticed), but there is something to be said for its commitment to different signifiers of queer identity.
Baldur’s Gate 3 – Genital Character Creator Options
Baldur’s Gate 3 – Genital Character Creator Options
Conversations around queer player expression in video games have spanned decades, and have only become more fraught thanks to the internet. One common response to requests for more representation is that development time and resources must be spent elsewhere. BioWare made a similar argument regarding the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters and not implementing gay male romance in the first two games, claiming doing so was beyond the scope of the project. Meanwhile, developers like The Game Bakers spent an entire year making the romance in its adventure RPG Haven queer-inclusive through new models, voice lines, and other assets. The recent remake of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life modernized the 20-year-old game to allow same-sex romance and diverse gender and fashion options. It feels like whether or not these requests get implemented largely comes down to the will of the studios in question, rather than them being a huge burden, as detractors might predictably argue.
Dubrovina says she’s sympathetic to how difficult it might be to implement these things retroactively, but she feels that Larian’s character creator was was designed to be more flexible, which made adding things like genital options somewhat easier.
“It really actually depends on how your characters are made and I can very much imagine the scenario where you made your character model in a certain way that it’s really hard now to change it,” Dubrovina said. “That is very much possible. in our case, we tried to be prepared for anything. Like, you want to slap a tail on an elf? Sure, we, we might get prepared for it. it’s relatively easy to do with what we established as our character systems.
“I could imagine with some other developers or with some games, it could just happen that nobody had thought about [the need to add new types of options] when working on the character model or mesh and then it just happened. Yeah, [in that case] it’s gonna like be like a few months of work and the production time just couldn’t accommodate that. So that’s possible.”
Because Larian was already prioritizing player expression, it was able to plan accordingly when it came to voice line recording, which was notably an issue in retroactively adding gay romance to the original Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 in the remaster. By planning from the jump to accommodate they/them pronouns, which did take extra work and time, the studio was able to make the implementation a smoother process. Also, because these options don’t affect gameplay, they can more easily be added without having to worry about how doing so will impact other systems. They will, however, change the nature of which romance scene you get because the mechanics will obviously be different depending on what your character is packing.
Development lift aside, Dubrovina explained that adding all these customization options that tie into your character’s identity felt in-line with Baldur’s Gate 3’s philosophy of prioritizing player expression, and so it was worth the extra effort.
“BG is very focused on your identity and the ultimate fantasy where you can be whoever, whatever you wanna be,” she said. “And we wanted to have this represented. We believe that visual [character creation options create] a positive player experience. I noticed it with myself when I playgames or when I pick which game to buy, right? I’m looking at the characters and I wanna look pretty. I wanna look fun.”
If you’re someone who doesn’t really want to engage with the genital options (among other nudity), Baldur’s Gate 3 does have the option to hide nudity and other non-stream-friendly content.
Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku
The options are vast and the custom characters are cool, but if you’re anything like me, who makes a character that looks like him and then replays a game over and over making the same choices with the same character, you might be wondering if Baldur’s Gate 3 will have an option to import an old character into a new playthrough. Unfortunately, you’ll have to remake them for your future playthroughs, as Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t have any kind of import option at launch. This includes bringing an old character from the Early Access period into the full game.
All of this comes after years of iteration working on Baldur’s Gate 3 during Early Access, and Dubrovina says feedback from the past three years of players making their way through the game’s first act has helped Larian craft the character creator it has.
“We weren’t living under a rock,” she said. “We were following what the community wanted and we were looking at what other games do. We were looking at what’s being discussed online. There are a lot of things that evolved, and I feel like, yeah, generally games are trying to move towards increasing the amount of diversity they have. We definitely wanted to represent that. So we wanted to like, kind of give everyone the opportunity to pick from a wide selection.”
The Xbox app has a section called “popular with friends” that shows you the games your buddies are playing. It can be a handy little tool for bothering your friends about their progress in Diablo IV or needling them over their refusal to stop playing Overwatch 2 (it’s me, I’m that friend).
But based on a picture shared on Reddit, it looks like at least one person has early access to Starfield: Phil Spencer. The screenshot shared shows Spencer’s Xbox profile picture, an Xbox Avatar version of him (notice he’s also wearing a t-shirt and jeans, so it’s lore-accurate) against a purple background, underneath both Starfield and Exoprimal, a dinosaur shooter from Capcom that came to Xbox Game Pass on July 14.
While Spencer playing Exoprimal checks out as the game just launched, his apparent access to Starfield is interesting. It makes sense, though—Spencer and Todd Howard have worked closely together to promote the upcoming Bethesda RPG ever since Microsoft bought Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax in 2021. At Summer Game Fest, they sat down for a press presentation alongside the head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty, and head of Xbox’s gaming ecosystem, Sarah Bond. If you’re the head of Xbox, you can have a little Starfield early access as a treat.
Based on the Reddit post, it seems like Spencer was playing Starfield on July 14, the day the news dropped that the FTC failed to pause Microsoft’s $69 million purchase of Activision. Maybe he was celebrating the lengthy battle by hopping from planet to planet in Starfield, his mind finally free from fretting over whether Microsoft would get another jewel in its gaming Infinity Gauntlet or not. In space, no one can hear you gloat.
Genshin Impact is one of the biggest, most successful video games in the world, bringing in tens of millions of dollars a month for developer/publisher miHoYo. However, according to some voice actors involved with the popular game, they don’t get paid for months, and it’s causing some to possibly fall behind on rent.
Why The Hot New Redfall Gameplay Trailer Left Us Feeling Cold
Launched in 2020, Genshin Impact is a free-to-play gacha-driven online anime-themed action-RPG featuring a large roster of characters who work together to defeat enemies using elemental magic attacks. The game has been a massive hit from the moment it first went live and has spawned a giant community of players around the world. However, despite all the money and success the game has brought developer miHoYo, two voice actors who have worked on the game have publicly shared frustration about their pay on Twitter.
On July 12, Corina Boettger and Brandon Winckler, two voice actors who have voiced characters in Genshin Impact, tweeted how frustrated they were and claimed that money owed to them had yet to be paid months later. Boettger voices popular NPC Paimon and Winckler voices various minor characters in the RPG.
Winckler explained that he has sent five emails to miHoYo asking for the company to pay him, but has yet to receive any response. He said it was “inexcusable” that he has had to wait over four months for his paycheck, while he estimates the publisher brings in over $85 million a month. Between 2020 and 2021, Genshin Impact reportedly generated a total of $3.7 billion.
“It’s really hard to justify working on something for the sake of work when you can’t afford to eat,” tweeted Winckler. “Many non-union productions have this problem, I’ve waited anywhere from four to eight months for payment, and even then, it isn’t much to ask. $1000 here, $500 there, and it adds up fast.”
Winckler added that while he loves working on video games, he won’t be working on Genshin Impact anymore, saying that the game should be a “union production” with a union contract and protections.
Fellow actor Corina Boettger also tweeted about frustrations over lack of pay, saying they had worked for “months” unpaid on a “big project.” Boettger claims they are owed thousands of dollars and is currently struggling to pay rent because of the delayed payments. While Boettger didn’t directly say Genshin Impact in the tweets, follow-up replies make it clear what project the actor is referring to in their public statements.
“This project has made BILLIONS,” said Boettger. “This project should be Union. This wouldn’t happen if the game was union. Tell them to make the game SAG.”
Boettger further added that while they’re not sure if the developers, publisher, or someone else are to blame for the payment issues, they believe that if the game was union none of this would be happening.
Kotaku contacted miHoYo, Boettger, and Winckler for comment, but didn’t hear back before publication.
I’ve finished Final Fantasy XVIand am now working on 100 percenting it, including beating the game a second time on the New Game+ “Final Fantasy” mode difficulty. For all the game’s flaws, of which there are plenty, there’s just so much it does that I just can’t get enough of. From the music and environments to the heart-stopping Eikon battles, Square Enix’s latest action-RPG is chock full of things both big and small, in your face and very subtle, that make it, for me at least, one of the most memorable Final Fantasy games in nearly two decades.
Street Fighter 6’s Modern Controls Are Great For The Game
Released on June 22 as a timed PlayStation 5 exclusive, Final Fantasy XVI tells the story of the orphaned prince Clive and his (not so merry) band of outcasts as they seek to overthrow the powers that be and install a new, more equitable world order. It trades the turn-based, menu-heavy RPG customization the franchise is known for for chunky action combat and cinematic spectacle that’s constantly cranked to 11. And it works. Mostly. Here are some of our favorite things we can’t stop thinking about from Square Enix’s latest blockbuster adventure.
Clive’s slutty little waist
If we’re talking about little things in Final Fantasy XVI worth spotlighting, I think it would be a crime to not include Clive Rosfield’s slutty little waist. Who gave that man permission to wear a blood-red corset and just show off what he’s working with at all times? Oh, you’re sad about your brother’s death? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of your loud-as-fuck fit. Criminal. Lock him away. — Kenneth Shepard
The anime flexes
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
Spectacle is at the heart of Final Fantasy XVI, and that includes using its Kaiju Eikon fights to recreate some classic anime moments. An early sequence where Ifrit punches the crap out of Phoenix is an homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Eikons can regrow entire limbs like in Attack on Titan. The development team took almost every opportunity afforded by the game’s central premise and used it to go berserk (speaking of which).
When the music hits
Final Fantasy XVI’s soundtrack was composed by Masayoshi Soken. It’s very subtle in parts compared to some earlier scores in the series, but goes very hard in others. Most satisfying of all is how elegantly it shifts mid-battle to take advantage of choreographed quick-time cinematic moments. “To Sail Forbidden Seas” is the name of the song that plays during all of the Eikon battles, and the mood ebbs and flows in perfect sync with the battle, as you go from hacking away at the stagger gauge to unleashing a flurry of cooldown abilities while the boss is vulnerable. The track builds, brings in the chorus, and then reaches another level when the cinematic clashes begin before settling back down again when it’s back to the main combat. Final Fantasy boss fights have always sought to be dynamic and exciting even when turn-based, but XVI takes it to a whole new level. Especially during the Titan fight.
Clive’s Wall of Memories
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
At a certain point in the game, you start amassing keepsakes from your adventures, little remembrances of people you’ve helped or things you’ve accomplished. I like this because you don’t get anything for them except the keepsakes themselves. They don’t provide you with any combat bonuses or stat boosts. They’re just keepsakes, a little reminder that what matters most of all in the world of Final Fantasy 16 isn’t your strength stat or how good your bracers are, but the connections Clive forms with others.—Carolyn Petit
The Torgal toss
Speaking of epic boss fight moments, holy hell Torgal is out of his mind. I pointed at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio when he grabbed Benedikta in his jaws and swung her across the battle arena after she beat the crap out of Clive. We’ve moved so far beyond “Can you pet the dog?” If your game’s canine friend can’t go Super Saiyan on a demigod, then what’s even the point? Final Fantasy VIII’s Sant’ Angelo di Roma walked so Torgal could run.
The way the Mothercrystals disintegrate
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
A lot of massive crystals get destroyed in Final Fantasy XVI, and every time it’s as satisfying as watching an ice sculpture get sent through a wood chipper. Probably not great for Valesthea’s air quality, but beautifully effervescent nonetheless.
No clipping
Sometimes a game’s graphics are so good you don’t even notice all the ways in which they’re incredible. Final Fantasy XVI’s intricate costumes and long hairstyles are particularly notable for how rarely, if ever, they clip through one another, let alone the environments. Clive in particular has a long dark mane and a long dark cape, and they never get caught on one another or stray objects across all of the environments, even when the rebel sellsword is vaulting over fences or climbing up ledges.
How gracefully Clive gets out of people’s way
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
In keeping with Final Fantasy XVI’s theme of providing the occasional ridiculous level of attention to small details, I can’t get over the automatic animation Clive goes into every time you’re about to steer him into another NPC. Getting snagged on random characters in the world has been a staple in older games in the series, but here you’d have to go out of your way to steer into one. And even still, Square Enix’s developers decided to add a bespoke animation precisely for those rare occasions, just to keep things flowing naturally and avoid the the game-y-ness of the game coming through.
The sound of the XP screen
Whether it’s the rounding up of the numbers like a slot machine or the clink, clink, clink of new gil and items getting added to your inventory, there’s something magical about Final Fantasy XVI’s minimalistic battle results menu. At first I hardly noticed it, but with every battle the tiny dopamine hit of seeing and hearing Clive rack up points wrapped its tendrils around my lizard gamer brain.
The scenery
Final Fantasy games are known for being beautiful, but I can’t get over the muted extravagance of some of Final Fantasy XVI’s environments. The hyper-realistic style almost masks how much is actually going on, whether its giant kingdoms in the background or dense forests thick with different types of foliage. Except for the deserts, which look like how my brain remembers every other Final Fantasy desert.
Summons fighting
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
Shiva, Ifrit, Odin and Bahamut have been blowing up stuff since 1990’s Final Fantasy III, with summon animations that got more and more over-the-top in each new entry. Final Fantasy XVI is the first to render those scenes as if they were just part of the underlying fabric of the game rather than rewards doled out sparingly. My favorite is when, in one scene early on, Bahamut and Odin stare each other down from across a battlefield as their two kingdoms’ armies collide. It’s presented so nonchalantly that it’s easy to forget just how incredible it is to play a Final Fantasy that never flinches from showing you everything.
Uncle Byron
Clive is great and Cid is excellent. I love Gav too. There’s no shortage of great (mostly male) characters in Final Fantasy XVI, but let’s give it up for Uncle Byron, who thinks Clive is an imposter until they recite a scene from a play they used to perform together years ago at family parties. He’s a coward but throws his vast reserves of gil into the rebellion, wants to make amends for past failures, and never misses a chance to talk a big poetic game like he just sprang out of a Sir Walter Scott novel. The developers at Square even made sure to keep him animated behind the bar guzzling down beer at the inn during an early brawl in the Dhalmekian Republic.
Diablo IV has six Uber Uniques that are the rarest and some of the most powerful items in the game. Players have spent hundreds of hours without ever coming across them—until now. A trick for easily earning them was recently discovered and Blizzard has now removed the items from the game entirely to try and stop the madness.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
Previously only farmable in Nightmare dungeons, Uber Uniques were added to the game’s Helltide event in the latest patch, an in-game event where a particular zone on the map turns blood red and fills up with extra tough enemies. Players quickly found out that there was a way to significantly increase their chances of getting the Harlequin Crest, better known as Shako, one of, if not the, most powerful item in Diablo IV. That’s because characters like Barbarians don’t have many Unique helmets, meaning Helltide chests that only give out helmets are much more likely to grant those players Shakos instead.
“Just do Helltide and open the helm chest over and over and over and these are dropping like candy,” said YouTuber Raxxanterax in a how-to video about the trick. Players rushed to try and snag their Shako before Blizzard nerfed the exploit, and the Diablo IV forums and subreddits immediately began to fill up with success stories and memes. Players who chose the night of July 6 to not log on to the game were kicking themselves, while others who got Shako called on Blizzard not to take their cheesed Uber Uniques away.
It didn’t take long for Blizzard to step in and remove Uber Uniques, including Shako, from the game entirely until a hotfix goes live. Naturally, there were debates about whether this actually constituted an exploit, versus players just seizing on a seeming oversight in the game’s design following the latest patch. Others complained about how fast Blizzard reacted to what is arguably an innocuous issue when other quality of life features are still missing from the game.
On the bright side, once the hotfix goes into effect, Uber Uniques like the two-handed sword The Grandfather and the Ring of Starless Skies will be easier to earn overall since they’ll now drop in Helltide activities, as well. While players still might not earn them even after dozens of hours of end-game farming, at least they can have a change of scenery from their standard Nightmare dungeon runs.
Diablo IV’s first season, meanwhile, goes live on July 20. Players will have to start entirely new characters but also have access to a whole new raft of season-specific abilities and builds. Hopefully the action-RPG’s most devoted players manage to earn at least one or two of their most coveted Uber Uniques by then.
Update 7/7/2023 7:38 p.m. ET: Blizzard has released the hotfix and brought Uber Uniques back online. It says only 142 accounts in total earned them while the Helltide chest exploit was live and the studio doesn’t plan to take them away from players. However, if something like this happens again in the future it might in order to keep things fair. Here are the full patch notes:
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where Uber Unique items had an unintended higher chance to drop from Helltide Chests.
Developer Note: With the above change, we have re-enabled Uber Unique drops in Diablo IV. In total we have discovered that only 142 accounts obtained an Uber Unique between the launch of 1.0.4 and when we disabled Uber Unique items from the game on the evening of July 6th. We do not plan on removing these items from the accounts. In the future, we may need to take action to maintain fairness within the game when a bug or exploit impacts the gameplay of others.
Gameplay Changes
Helltide Chests will now have the chance to drop any Unique and not be restricted to specific item slot limitations from any chest.
Developer Note: With the above change players will now be able to find Unique items from ALL Helltide Chests. Uber Unique items also have a chance to be found from all chests.
Elden Ring may be a tough open-world RPG that requires precise timing and ongoing dedication, but the enemies don’t scale in difficulty with you. So if your progress ever hits a wall, it’s technically possible to take the easy way out and simply grind your character into having better stats than whatever challenge is at hand. And one enemy above all others is excruciatingly perfect for the task of being XP fodder.
The Week In Games: Pocket Monsters And Simulated Goats
I speak, of course, of the Albinauric, those alien-like creatures that live a pitiful existence in the Lands Between. Seriously, their lore is pretty sad. Created by humans, Albinaurics were treated as disposable by their makers due to their synthetic nature and feeble physical attributes. Half the time you encounter Albinaurics, the context is terrible: You’ll see them imprisoned and tortured, sick with a dangerous illness, moaning, or going mad. Every so often, though, you’ll come across a group of Albinaurics who can gang up on you if you’re not careful.
If you visit Mohgwyn Palace, however, you’ll come across a large cliff that’s littered with Albinaurics. My read is that they’re there to be sacrificed for their blood, allowing Mohgwyn to remain powerful. What’s curious about this set of Albs, though, isn’t their potential implications for the story. Rather, you come to find out very quickly that these gray cavemen are horrifyingly useful.
I don’t have the exact number in front of me, because it’s impacted by things like your gear and what you consume, but it’s possible to roll through this area, kill them all, and rack up millions of runes with enough patience. Part of what makes it so easy is that they’re extremely slow to react, and you can reload right near the start of the cliff once you do a rotation.
I am not free of sin. I’ve spent hours on this cliff, killing Albinaurics over and over again, all while vaguely wondering if this act of barbarism made me any better than, say, noted asshole Godrick the Grafted.
And apparently I’m not alone in this. According to new stats released by FromSoftware, the most-murdered enemy in the entire game is the club-wielding Albinauric, clocking in at 9.4 billion deaths. As if that weren’t enough, the fourth most-murked enemy is the species’ curved sword variant, who’s suffered some 3.4 billion deaths. Damn. I’m feeling guilty all over again.
Graphic: FromSoftware
The stats come as a part of a larger infographic, which include cool tidbits like that players have asked Renala for a rebirth 38.6 million times. Notably, despite the billions of murders, players have apparently only asked for atonement 526,843 times as of this writing.
May Marika be gentle on our silver-stained souls.
You can see the full infographic here. Oh, and if you’re looking to be a better person after all is said and done: You really shouldn’t be wearing a Golden Scarab talisman or popping a gold pickled fowl foot when you’re in Mohgwyn Palace for that extra rune boost.
So the first game where I explored the option of romancing the same sex was Fallout 2, you can get married and explore the wasteland with your beau. She’s not all that useful, to be honest, and has never been the companion I’ve picked on replays. Yet at the time, as an impressionable teenager, it was mind-blowing, right? To be honest, though, I didn’t make a ton of it at the time. It was more, oh, this seems like some good mischief, let’s see where it takes me, let’s see how long I can keep her alive, even. It wasn’t charged.
It wasn’t until Dragon Age, which I played as an adult, that the romance choices in games started signifying something different to me. Morrigan, the mysterious witch who joins your party early on, almost feels like a fake romance choice. She’s designed to grab your attention, there’s a recent (unfortunate) quote by one of the DA writers that really lays bare how much she’s meant to be the sex appeal option. There’s one in every game, really, Mass Effect had Miranda. But the way Morrigan is written, the coyness at her center, made me feel like I was getting away with something. Playing as a man probably contributed to that feeling, because IRL what I was doing was gay as hell but in the game, it was extremely straight. I’m sure it helped that the game forces you to choose between love interests, if you’re leading them both on, something that only enhances the drama.
Mostly I appreciated that Morrigan is written in a way that makes it obvious she knows you’re looking, as it turns out, by the end you find out she was making sure of it the entire time. When the betrayal comes, it was weirdly satisfying: yes, I didn’t get what I wanted, but Morrigan having it her way was true to her character. And what’s gayer than yearning and tragedy, really? — Patricia Hernandez, editor-in-chief
Diablo IV is a big game. With multiple classes and tons of skill-tree options, a big-ass map with tons of shit to kill, and so, so much loot to equip, sell, upgrade (rinse and repeat, for eternity), there’s a lot to keep in mind, and so much more that the game kinda-sorta doesn’t tell you.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
So let’s go over some of the many features and other unique bits of knowledge the game doesn’t directly spell out for you. Some of these will save you time, others will help you optimize your build. Let’s dig in.
Elite Affixes indicate unique enemy powers
If you’ve come across an enemy and seen terms written before their names like “Vampiric,” “Terrifying,” or “Frozen,” know that those probably aren’t just nicknames given to them by their exes. They’re an indication that you’re facing an “Elite” enemy with unique attributes.
You can find a full list of the Elite Affixes from this wiki. These include terms like “Cold Enchanted,” which means the creature chills any target it touches, and “Hellbound,” which allows the creature to summon a statue that binds your character in chains. That sort of thing. Try to be prepared before you tangle with these weirdly named foes.
It’s okay (and beneficial) to upgrade some gear early on
Diablo IV is likely to hit you with that familiar RPG conundrum: “Should I sell this gear, or upgrade it?” The best answer isn’t always obvious, and the game certainly isn’t going to tell you what you should do with your own gear.
Here’s the good news: It’s not that big a deal. Upgrading early weapons and armors may not be a long-term strategic masterstroke, but it will help you learn the game and get comfortable with its systems. The first couple levels of upgrading an item at the blacksmith are relatively cheap, and in a game like Diablo IV every percentage point matters. While you’ll undoubtedly find better gear the longer you play, getting some firsthand experience with the upgrade system will help you determine what better gear to buff later on.
Not every class is great for beginners
While you can select any class from the beginning, if you are yourself a beginner, you might want to avoid certain classes. The Rogue, for example, while cool as hell, is a tough class to play as your first Diablo character (especially solo, as this game loves to swarm you with enemies).
We recommend kicking off your first Diablo IV adventure with the Necromancer or Sorcerer. Then, once you’ve a better handle on what the Diablo experience is, you’ll be better informed to grab the reins of harder classes.
You can search your skill tree via keywords
Diablo IV’s skill trees can be very, very intimidating at first. Good news: You can search abilities via keywords in the skill tree menu. Say you want to focus on a specific status effect or type of elemental damage? Selecting from the list of keywords is a great way to get a sense of how your build can make the most of such features, highlighting abilities that will relate to that keyword. This it will help you plan ahead so you don’t just stare at the tree menu with a pocket full of unspent ability points.
Don’t sleep on elixirs
Elixirs can make a serious difference when out slaying nasties on the battlefield, especially more complex and dangerous foes. You’ll need to visit an alchemist to craft them. Potions like the “Elixir of Lightning Resistance,” which lets you resist lightning attacks by 20 percent for 30 minutes (in addition to an XP boost), are excellent to pop when going up against specific enemies.
Stock up on elixirs and get ready to use them to meet specific challenges. But you can only carry 33 at a time, which means you may want to consider where you’re heading out to and which foes you’re likely to be fighting depending on how much space you have.
You should hang out with other people
Diablo IV is online only; let’s all collectively groan about that for a moment. But seeing other people, even if you’re playing solo in this dark fantasy world, isn’t a bad thing: You’ll earn an extra 10 percent experience for everything just by being around other people.
Who knew it would be beneficial to be around other people for once?
You should finish the main quest ASAP (but take breaks with side-quests)
Diablo IV really puts the spotlight on its main quest, with elaborate cutscenes, a very dominant antagonist, and plenty of “what’s gonna happen next?” intrigue. You absolutely should try and finish it as soon as you can…but it ain’t the worst thing if you don’t. In fact, it’s a good idea to move on from the main path every now and then (don’t worry, Lilith won’t really care).
Not only does the main story hit you with a couple of difficulty spikes that you’ll likely want to get yourself better equipped and specced out for, but finishing side-quests is a solid way to unlock more portions of map, with waypoints that’ll make traveling around quickly a breeze.
Also, take time to raid different Strongholds, which aren’t all created equal. The Tul Dulra or Onyx Strongholds, for example, unlock waypoints, additional vendors, more side-quests and a dungeon. But the Hope’s Light stronghold nets you a side dungeon and little else. Crusaders Monument in Hawezar just gives you 100 renown.
Some strongholds are far more rewarding of your time and the only way to really know which is best is to get out there and clear a few out—or do a Google to see what’s inside ahead of time.
Read a synopsis of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls to make sense of everything
Lilith? Sanctuary? Horadrim? What do these words mean, and what the hell is going on in this world? Diablo IV features a campaign that should mostly make the big story beats of its narrative obvious, but if you find that not everything makes sense, go on and read a good synopsis for 2014’s Diablo III expansion, Reaper of Souls.
Though Diablo IV doesn’t pick up right after that one, it does contain some critical world building that will help demystify certain aspects of the plot.
Being vulnerable is really, really bad
During my early hours, I kept seeing this cracked symbol coming and going on my health orb. And while I figured out that probably was Not Good™, it turns out this debuff is worse than its simple HUD icon might suggest. When an enemy inflicts you with vulnerable, you’re going to take an extra 20 percent damage. That, in a word, sucks. The only way to make your character less melty is to Run Away™ for about three or four seconds for your health orb to return to normal.
Enemies scale to your level
So ya got killed a few times. Time to go and level up so you numerically devastate your foes just by looking at them, right? Well, not so fast, Diablo IV’s enemies will scale to your level. And enemies in Strongholds will scale to a level above yours.
What does this mean? Well, you can’t just level your way out of poor tactics. While being more powerful is generally a good thing, you still need to take the time to understand how your character works and how your build is coming together. That’s the key to victory, not just grinding forever until your numbers get bigger.
Turn on advanced tooltips
Screenshot: Blizzard / Kotaku
Advanced tooltips made for one of the most essential parts of our guide to Diablo IV’s settings. By turning on advanced tooltip compare and information in the gameplay settings of the main menu, you’ll get a sense of how good every roll is. Each item’s stats will feature a bracketed range of possible outcomes, so you’ll know whether your found item rests on the better or worse side, making keep/sell/salvage/drop decisions that much easier.
Salvaging and extracting is an excellent use of useless loot
Whether you’ve found loot that’s uninteresting or has outgrown its utility, don’t just throw it on the ground (littering is bad!). Instead, you should take that old gear to be salvaged by a blacksmith. The resources that result will then be of use for upgrading the items you want to keep. They will be much more useful than any gold you’d get through selling the gear.
While you may benefit from selling a lot of useless loot early on to get your gold count up, stocking up on upgradables is better, as the equipment you’ll find on the battlefield will almost always be better than what you can buy from a shop. And salvaged materials will go directly toward upgrading gear that’s actually worth it.
And just as you should be salvaging lower-power gear, be sure to save unused legendary gear for extracting. By bringing these items to the Occultist, you’ll be able remove their Aspects, which you can then use to boost Rare items into Legendaries. And extracting often nets you better Aspects than what you get from dungeons, at cheaper material cost to boot.
Grab that gallowvine
Gallowvine is an essential ingredient in potions and elixirs. Become a gallowvine hoarder. You can never have enough gallowvine.
Don’t like a quest? It’s safe to abandon it
I abandon things all the time (in real life and Diablo) and it’s never a bad idea to abandon quests that are either distracting or uninteresting. You can always pick up an abandoned quest again later. Do yourself a favor though and take note of the quests you’re abandoning, so you can look up the names later to figure out where to pick them up a second time if it slips your memory.
Key story and world progress is shared across different characters
Once you finish the main story, you won’t need to do it again for future characters. Also, once you wrap the main story and start getting to work on endgame content like Grim Favors, you’ll unlock those activities for all subsequent characters you make. The same is true of major city waypoints.
This is good news if you’re not sure whether or not you’re digging your current character and are debating whether or not you should keep going. As we said in our general tips round-up, starting out with a so-so build is far from a bad thing, and it’s worth it to explore. Any time you spend working toward story completion or unlocking new waypoints is time well spent, even if you don’t fully love your current character.
Save irrelevant gear for your future characters
One time, my Rogue picked up a wand. Worried that it’d call me a slur, I got rid of it. But it turns out that by doing so, I was potentially screwing over any future Sorcerer I’d decide to build. Right after the game’s prologue, you’ll get access to your stash in Kyovashad. Anything you put in here is retrievable by other characters you’ll create later on.
So if it’s not a burden to carry around gear that’s not for the class you’re immediately playing, consider stashing it. Your future, other yous will thank you.
Diablo IV is a gargantuan experience, but these basic tips will help you wrap your head around it a little more. What other unmentioned, unexplained features have you found helpful?
If, like me, you’re making your way toward Anime Expo, the self-proclaimed “largest celebration of Japanese pop culture in North America” this coming weekend (yes, the Otaku of Kotaku will be there!), you may be feeling overwhelmed. But fear not! If you have no earthly idea what must-see events the great congregation of weebs has in store for you or how to make the most of your precious time during the expo, here’s a helpful guide to all the biggest panels at the four-day convention.
Disney’s New Post-Apocalyptic Anime Proves The Mouse Has Good Taste
Anime Expo, which takes place from July 1 to July 4 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, revealed a cavalcade of anime trailers and info on highly anticipated series like Chainsaw Man, Mob Psycho 100, and Trigun Stampede during last year’s event. This year’s convention is looking to maintain that energy with many must-see events as well. While the offerings at this year’s expo include listening to live music from DJ Diesel (that’s Shaq btw), samurai sword training, and discussing the LGBTQ+ themes in Sailor Moon, this list will only cover where and when big-name anime studios will host panels and chat with visitors.
It should also be noted that, while last year’s expo ultimately did require proof of covid vaccination or a negative test result, this year those requirements have been dropped, according to the event’s health and safety guidelines.Anime Expo, however, “strongly recommended” attendees get vaccinations and/or booster shots before attending and wear face masks while inside the Los Angeles Convention Center. Without further ado, here’s your definitive itinerary guide to the biggest panels at Anime Expo.
Image: Anime Expo /Kotaku
July 1
Welcoming Ceremony
Where: Main Events
When: 10:30-11:20 a.m.
Bungo Stray Dogs Panel
What’s Happening: Bungo Stray Dogs creator Kafka Asagiri talks about how he went about crafting the popular mystery manga series.
Where: JW-Platinum
When: 11 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead World Premiere
What’s Happening: The world premiere of the anime adaptation of Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, which premieres on Hulu and Netflix on July 9.
Where: Petree Hall
When: 12:30-1:50 p.m.
Bandai Namco Panel
What’s Happening: Bandai Namco Filmworks, known for making anime like Mobile Suit Gundam and Cowboy Bebop, reveals news on its upcoming anime shows “and more.”
Where: Panel Room 408 AB
When: 2-2:50 pm
Netflix J-Content Presentation
What’s Happening: Netflix provides new info on anime like Pluto, Pokémon Concierge, Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, and the final season of Beastars featuring producers of those respective shows during its “From Japan to the World” presentation.
Where: Main Events
When: 3:15-4:05 p.m.
Toho Panel
What’s Happening: Toho hosts a lineup of panels featuring industry professionals from anime series like Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy x Family, and My Hero Academia.
Where: Petree Hall
When: 2:30-3:50 p.m.
Screenshot: Trigger / Kotaku
Studio Trigger Panel
What’s Happening: Studio Trigger is presenting the world premiere of the first episode of its upcoming series Delicious in Dungeon and a first look at a new anime from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners director, Hiroyuki Imashi.
Where: Main Events
When: 1:45-2:35 p.m.
Mappa Panel
What’s Happening: Mappa CEO Manabu Otsuka and producer Makoto Kimura will discuss behind-the-scenes info on its upcoming anime shows.
Where: JW Marriott Ballroom
When: 3-3:50 p.m.
The Ancient Magus Bride Season 2 Panel
What’s Happening: Studio Kafka will be hosting live drawing, cosplay, and behind-the-scenes discussion events as well as the premiere of Ancient Magus Bride season 2’s first episode.
Where: Panel Room 408 AB
When: 3:30-4:50 p.m.
Spy x Family Panel
What’s Happening: Crunchyroll is hosting a panel with voice actor Takuya Eguchi, who plays Loid Forger in Spy x Family’s Japanese cast.
Where: LA Convention Center Main Events Hall
When: 5-5:50 p.m.
Mashle: Magic and Muscles Panel
What’s Happening: Voice actors Chiaki Kobayashi and Alek Le, the Japanese and English voices of protagonist Mash, respectively, discuss the first season of the anime.
What’s Happening: World premiere of NieR: Automata creator Yoko Taro’s new anime KamiErabi GOD.app by Studio Bones.
Where: 403 AB
When: 10-11:30 a.m.
Mappa x Crunchyroll Panel
What’s Happening: Mappa discusses and gives fans a behind-the-scenes look at popular anime titles like Jujutsu Kaisen.
Where: JW-Platinum
When: 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Dark Horse Manga Panel
What’s Happening: Dark Horse reveals new releases and answers questions about manga series like Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Mob Psycho 100, and Berserk.
Where: 408 AB
When: 11:30 a.m.-12:20 p.m.
Screenshot: Production I.G. / Adult Swim / Kotaku
Production I.G x Wit Panel
What’s Happening: Production I.G and Wit present information about shows like the highly anticipated anime adaptation of horror creator Junji Ito’s Uzumaki.
Where: Main Events
When: 12-12:50 p.m.
Warner Bros. Japan Anime Panel
What’s Happening: Warner Bros. hosts panels for the new seasons of Record of Ragnarok and Bastard!!!- Heavy Metal Dark Fantasy.
Where: 408 AB
When: 1-2:20 p.m.
Undead Unlock Panel
What’s Happening: TMS Entertainment gives fans a first look at the anime adaptation of Undead Unlock featuring the Japanese voice actors for Shen and Fuuko Izumo.
Where: Main Events
When: 1:30-2:20 p.m.
Studio Bones 25th Anniversary Panel
What’s Happening: Studio Bones president Masahiko Minami and Cowboy Bebop character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto reveal new info on their upcoming cyberpunk anime, Metallic Rouge, as well as discuss some of their earlier work.
Where: JW-Platinum
When: 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Yoshitaka Amano Panel
What’s Happening: A panel with legendary Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano, featuring a live drawing, a discussion of his work, and the announcement of an upcoming anime project
Where: Petree Hall
When: 2:40-3:30 p.m.
Jujutsu Kaisen Panel
What’s Happening: Crunchyroll hosts a panel discussing behind-the-scenes info on the previous and upcoming season of Jujutsu Kaisen with the team behind the show.
Where: Main Events
When: 3-3:50 p.m.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Panel
What’s Happening: Aniplex producer Yuma Takahashi and the Japanese voice actors for Demon Slayer’s Tanjiro Kamado and Muichiro Tokito discuss the anime’s latest season, the Swordsmith Village Arc.
Where: Main Events
When: 4:30-5:50 p.m.
VIZ Official Industry Panel
What’s Happening: Masakazu Morita,the Japanese voice actor for Bleach’s Ichigo Kurosaki, joins Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead artist Kotaro Takata to discuss the upcoming seasons of their shows.
Where: 408 AB
When: 4:30-5:20 p.m.
SEGA Presents: Dragons of Japan
What’s Happening: RGG Studio hosts an hour-long panel about the upcoming Like a Dragon game featuring producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto, and the English and Japanese voice actors for Kiryu Kazuma.
Where: Petree Hall
When: 5:30-6:20 p.m.
Premieres
July 3
Persona 5 Tactica Panel
What’s Happening: Atlus West and Persona 5 Tactica voice actors give fans a closer look at the upcoming turn-based spin-off.
Where: Petree Hall
When: 10-10:50 a.m.
Warner Bros. Japan x Wit Studio Panel
What’s Happening: Warner Bros. Japan and Wit Studio reveal a “mysterious brand-new anime project” that it promises will blow fans’ minds. It’s apparently an isekai show.
Where: JW-Platinum
When: 10-10:50 a.m.
Aniplex of America x A-1 Pictures Panel
What’s Happening: Aniplex of America and A-1 Pictures reveal their lineup of anime for 2023 and some behind-the-scenes production info.
Where: Petree Hall
When: 11:30 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Panel
What’s Happening: Viz Media celebrates the release of the second part of Bleach’s final season with Masakazu Morita, the Japanese voice actor for Ichigo Kurosaki.
Where: Petree Hall
When: 1:30-2:50 p.m.
Crunchyroll Industry Panel
What’s Happening: Crunchyroll announces new info about new and upcoming anime to the streamer.
Where: Petree Hall
When: 3:30-4:50 p.m.
Hi-Fi Rush Panel
What’s Happening:Hi-Fi Rush game director John Johanas and voice actors discuss developing Tango Gameworks’ rhythm action game.
Where: 403 AB
When: 3:30-4:20 p.m.
My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999 Panel
What’s Happening: Aniplex Producer Masami Niwa and Yamada voice actor Koki Uchiyama talk about the rom-com gaming anime’s first season.
Where: JW-Platinum
When: 4:30-6 p.m.
Persona 3 Reload Panel
What’s Happening: Atlus West gives players a behind-the-scenes peek at the remake of its beloved RPG series.
Where: Petree Hall
When: 7-7:50 p.m.
Shin Megami Tensei 35th Anniversary
What’s Happening: Atlus looks back on the past games and gives players a “glimpse into the future” of its RPG series.
Where: 411
When: 7-8:20 p.m.
Premieres
Screenshot: Toei Animation / DandeLion Animation Studio / Kotaku
July 4
Undead Unlock Auditions
What’s Happening: TMS Entertainment and Bang Zoom! Studios host open auditions for visitors to land a role in its upcoming anime, Undead Unlock.
Where: Main Events
When:10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Horimiya: The Missing Pieces Panel
What’s Happening: Crunchyroll hosts a panel for the rom-com spin-off of Horimiya featuring the anime’s director and Izumi Miyamura voice actor Kouki Uchiyama and a sneak peek at the first episode.
Where: 408 AB
When: 10:30 a.m.-11:20 a.m.
Closing Ceremony
Where: Main Events
When: 4-5 p.m.
Premieres
Kotaku is covering everything at Anime Expo 2023, including big announcements at panels and exclusive one-on-one interviews with the industry’s biggest creators. Whether you’re a seasoned anime fan or a newbie, you can keep up with all things Anime Expo 2023 here.
Diablo IV was dealing with a DDoS attack, a message on the game’s main menu screen confirms. As a result, players kept getting disconnected from the alway-online action-RPG during one of the highest traffic periods of the week.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
“We are investigating the login issues affecting Diablo IV and working to resolve these as soon as possible,” read a message from the Battle.net customer service account tweeted early on June 25. “Players may experience queues while we work on the issue.” Later in the day, however, the company confirmed it was still investigating the issues, and that the game was in fact dealing with a DDoS attack. DDoS refers to distributed denial of service, meaning it’s a type of cyber attack, and refers to when a system is flooded with interactions so that actual users can’t user the intended service.
“We are currently experiencing a DDoS attack, which may result in high latency and disconnections for some players,” read an in-game announcement greeting confused players. “We are actively working to mitigate this issue.” Blizzard didn’t immediately provide any additional information or timeline for when the DDoS attack might stop or online play might resume as normal. Some players have reported being unable to play for nearly 12 hours.
Social media, including the game’s popular subreddit, were predictably filled with players who would normally be logging on to play on a weekend morning posting about how they’re just continually refreshing the game’s main menu and customer service help accounts instead. Of course, depending on how you play Diablo IV, continually clicking the same button over and over might not be that different.
Forunately, if you’re reading this now, chances are very good that you can actually log into the game. According to Blizzard, after hours of downtime, the DDOS attacks it was monitoring have “ended.” However, in case some people are still having login issues, Blizzard recommends checking this out.
While that’s good news, the situation overall is an unfortunate but familiar risk for any always-online game, and underlines what a bummer it is that there’s no offline way to play Diablo IV as a completely single-player experience. Diablo III was always-online as well, and in the years between the two games it’s become a much more commonplace requirement as more games pivot to being live services. Diablo IV has really leaned into that shift, including a controversial decision to force players to start a new character from scratch each season if they want to progress their corresponding battle pass.
Then again, it wouldn’t be a Diablo launch without something for players to argue about.
Final Fantasy XVI, a more action-focused take on the RPG franchise, clearly pulls inspiration from a lot of other popular media. As Game Informer reported back in May, Square Enix was inspired by blockbuster films and hit series like Game of Thrones, Godzilla, and Neon Genesis Evangelion during the game’s development. And it’s that last source of inspo that is garnering attention after players noticed a detailed homage to the mecha anime series.
Witch From Mercury’s Suletta Joins The List of Anime Protags Who’ve Committed War Crimes
ResetEra forum user Lady Bow posted a video comparing a battle between anime protagonist Shinji Ikari and Sachiel in Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Tokyo-3 (a post-apocalyptic version of Tokyo) to a cataclysmic battle between Phoenix and Ifrit within the early hours of FFXVI.
The Ifrit fight (which is playable in the demo, btw!), takes place between two summons, which manifest in FFXVI by basically turning the player into a giant kaiju version of a deity. Early in the game, one of the outposts in the game’s fictional kingdom of Rosaria is ambushed. Phoenix does its damndest to protect it from the rampaging Ifrit. Unfortunately, the Phoenix getting torn from ass to appetite in the scene is Joshua, the younger brother of FFXVI protag, Clive. You can check out a GIF of the video below.
And just like in NGE with Shinj and Eva Unit 01, this fight showcases a point-of-view-esque depiction of the gigantic kaiju mounting its adversary and dishing out wild strikes to their face before clubbing them with a double-arm hammer fist punch.
The similarities between the fights also makes Clive begging the hulking titan to cease his onslaught all the more tragic. Clive’s desperate plea somewhat mirrors Shinji begging his father, Gendo Ikari, to stop his mecha from crushing his friend’s entry plug after his unit went AWOL. They’re like poetry because they rhyme, you see.
And there you have it: not only is Final Fantasy XVI a video game with similar grit and political subterfuge as George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series and bombastic Devil May Cry-esque action, but it’s also the latest video game to pay homage to NGE creator Hideaki Anno’s body of work. We love to see it.
If you’ve been murderin’ your way through dungeons inDiablo IV recently, you’ve likely killed a lot of monsters, found a lot of loot, and also ended up with a half dozen (or more) gems in your inventory taking up space that weapons and armor could occupy. That can be annoying, and some players have asked for a gem bag. While that’s not happening, Blizzard understands the frustration and confirmed a change is coming in the future.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
Released earlier this month, Diablo IV is the latest action-RPG in Blizzard’s long-running demon-looting franchise. While I wish the game had an extra skill slot and players have complained about some issues with XP, overall the game’s release has been much smoother than most big games in 2023, as well as Diablo 3’s historically bad launch. But even a great game can be improved, and Blizzard acknowledged today that gems are causing a bit too much “inventory tension” in the game’s current state.
“The idea is to change the way you acquire gems so that they show up in your materials or currency tab, rather than your inventory,” explained Shely. “And then the way that will work is you go to craft your gem in the same way that you do today, and you just use a certain amount of that material, similar to the amount of equivalent, actual gem inventory slots that you’re using now, but as materials.”
When is Blizzard changing how gems work in Diablo IV?
What this should mean is that your inventory won’t be filled up with unused gems after every dungeon as they will live alongside your other crafting materials. (Which is really how this should have worked in the first place…)
But don’t expect this change to happen too soon, as Shely was clear that this is something that won’t be added to the game until “around season two.” With seasons in Diablo IV lasting around three months and the first one starting sometime in July, it’s likely this gem change won’t happen until October or even early November. Still, it’s nice to hear something is being done.
During the livestream, it was also confirmed that crafting resource limits are being increased, which should help people hoard more gems when the change to how they are stored goes live in a few months. In the meantime, I’ll just keep tossing them into my stash.
Play it on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Windows (Steam Deck OK)
My current goal: Conquer every Stronghold
You read that right, on Steam Deck baby! The step-by-step process to get the just-released Diablo IV working on the Deck took me a little over 30 minutes and was relatively painless. However I do highly recommend using a Steam Deck dock and USB mouse, as there’s a decent amount of copy-pasting and the Deck’s touch-screen controls can be finicky.
Since installing, I’ve played nothing else. Partly because I accidentally unmounted my Steam Deck library so it no longer recognizes what I’ve already installed on there through the store (oops) and partially because Diablo IV on the Deck is simply that rad.
It’s impressive how well the Deck’s default controller scheme jells with Diablo IV. Blizzard’s action-RPG is perfect to play while listening to a podcast or catching up on the borderline dispiriting amount of quality spring anime series I have to watch.
How’s performance you may ask? Pretty good, actually. After tweaking some essential settings, and turning off Cross-Network Play (yes that really did make a difference) I consistently get 40-60FPS let’s say…80 percent of the time. However, entering or leaving a major hub (Kyovashad for example) or a hectic world event has my poor base model Deck wheezing and running at single digits. Using an ultimate spell in a large crowd of enemies will also have your audio popping off, and not in a fun way either. And as you can imagine D4 is a battery Greater Evil. I recommend playing with your AC charger plugged in for sessions longer than 30 minutes.
But like cmon, being able to tackle a Stronghold while laying on my couch? That’s objectively awesome and I look forward to parking my ass on aforementioned couch after I send Claire this blurb. Bye! — Eric Schulkin
In a recent interview with IGN, three Final Fantasy XVI directors revealed their top three Final Fantasy games of all time. Surprisingly, none of the directors’ picks included mainstream fan favorites titles like mega-popular Final Fantasy VII. Instead, the devs earmarked deep-cut Final Fantasy entries not often discussed online among fans as the best game in the long-running fantasy roleplaying game series.
Skyward Sword HD Revisits The Stumble That Led To Breath Of The Wild
Final Fantasy XVI creative director Kazutoyo Maehiro’s favorite FF games are (in ascending order) Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy V.
Maehiro recounted playing FFV as a student and being awestruck by its battle system and the “incredible expressiveness” Square Enix was able to pull off with the game’s pixel art back on the Super NES. But what forever sold him on FFV being his all-time favorite FF game was a scene toward the end of the game where he witnessed doves flying across the landscape when he first beat the game.
“You could even say I decided to make games because I saw that scene,” Maehiro told IGN. “It made a huge impression on me, along with the rest of the polished game. It’s a solid No. 1 for me.”
Square Enix / Stormspirit 86
Since FFV isn’t really a fave in the same way over here as it was in Japan, here’s a bit of a refresher on the game. FFV follows a vagabond named Bartz who, upon investigating the crash site of a fallen meteor, joins a party of heroes. The crew try to prevent the corruption of all-powerful elemental crystals from the game’s antagonist, Exdeath. FFV Pixel Remaster, which was released in 2021 on PC and in April on the Nintendo Switch, earned a Metacritic score of 82 and a user score of 7.7.
With this in mind, Ryota Suzuki, FFXVI combat director, said his favorite games are Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy III. When Suzuki was in grade school, he said he couldn’t wait to get home from grade school each day just so he could play more Final Fantasy.
“[FFIII] was the first game I experienced in the final fantasy series. Playing [FFIII] made me understand the appeal of RPGs as a genre,” Suzuki said. “With aspects like the ability to change jobs, Final Fantasy III is synonymous with RPGs to me.”
When asked which Final Fantasy games were his favorite, FFXVI director Hiroshi Takai replied saying his top three favorites in ascending order are Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy V.
“No. 1 is Final Fantasy V,” Takai told IGN. “This is in part because it was the first Final Fantasy I was involved in as a developer. But I love the game for its battle system. It’s a solid No. 1 for me within the FF series.”
Takai said that he loves FFX, and FFVI for their respective high levels of polish and the heights Square Enix was able to take “the final pixel art Final Fantasy” on the Super NES, respectively.
“As far as how this might be reflected in XVI, I’ve played every FF game, so I’m sure there may be some influences in there,” Takai said. “I think that XVI shares something in common with V in the way players can freely assign abilities to create their own main character.”
Final Fantasy fans’ reactions to FFV’s high ranking
IGN’s YouTube video comment section is full of responses from fans big-upping the devs for including FFV as their top-ranked game in the series.
“The fact all three included FFV in their top 3 says a lot about it. Had the game released overseas back in ‘92, it would’ve probably been a fan favourite for many,” Mizu 64 commented.
“Glad to see all the love for V. People gotta stop sleeping on V, it’s one of the best RPGs ever made,” Anthony wrote.
“Love seeing FFV getting so much love, it is so underrated, but honestly is just as great as VI imo,” PK Starstorm replied.
Final Fantasy XVI officially releases on June 22 on PlayStation 5.
Microsoft revealed some exciting new first-party games like InExile’s Clockwork Revolution and Compulsion Games South of Midnight at its June 11 Xbox Showcase. But others like Fable and Avowed were first teased years ago and still don’t have clear release dates. What’s taking so long?
Thank You, PS Plus, For Making My Backlog Even Bigger
Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty recently said in interviews with Axios and IGNthat the industry is still catching up to a new reality that major projects are simply more complex due to new hardware and rising audience expectations. 4K graphics, ray-tracing and other graphical improvements have made development harder and more expensive, while Microsoft itself had to manage a transition period beginning in 2018 when it snatched up tons of new studios, including those under the Zenimax acquisition like Bethesda, id Software, and Machine Games.
“I think that the industry and the fans were a little behind the curve on sort of a reset to understand that games aren’t two or three years anymore,” Booty told Axios. “There are higher expectations. The level of fidelity that we’re able to deliver just goes up.”
“One, gen 9 hardware is awesome—ray tracing, all the stuff we can do,” he told IGN. “But that trickles down through everything through how the assets are build. Like in Forza Motorsport, how the cars have to be built, how the lighting’s got to be done, how the track’s got to be set up, all the detail. The expectation is very high. Games are just getting more complex in terms of the interactions that are expected.”
There are plenty of examples that back up Booty’s point about games taking longer. Ghost of Tsushima took Sucker Punch six years, the longest the studio had ever spent on making a single game. Final Fantasy XVI is in a similar boat, arriving seven years after the last game in the storied fantasy-RPG franchise. Exceptions like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, a dense 35 hour action adventure and game of the year contender made in just three years, only undermine how rare that turn around time has become.
At the same time, it’s clear Microsoft in particular has struggled to iron things out in its post-acquisition production processes. Halo Infinite’s anemic post-launch support and the poor state of Redfall at release have shown that even when a big game finally arrives, it’s not without problems. Microsoft founded The Initiative back in 2018 but we’ve yet to see anything vaguely tangible out of Perfect Dark. Instead, it’s now reportedly relying on a partnership with Crystal Dynamics to push development forward on the game.
While games like State of Decay 3, Gears 6, and Everwild were all missing from the Xbox Showcase, Microsoft is hinting that they could make an appearance at other events throughout the year like Gamescom or The Game Awards. Even so, it’s not clear their re-emergence will include substantial gameplay reveals or definitive release dates versus CGI trailers. In the meantime, fans finally have Starfield and Forza Motorsport to round out the year. And if Booty’s right, a parade of hits will begin to follow shortly after.
![Diablo IV Pulls Rarest Items After Fans Find Easy Exploit [Update: They’re Back]](https://reportwire.org/wp-content/uploads/https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200/fb1c6264e86662150718bb038fc2a146.jpg)
