Only Up!, a not-so-endless runner that recently took off on Twitch, has been inexplicably removed from Steam with no warning, but there’s reason to believe it might’ve been removed due to a copyright dispute with an artist claiming the game uses one of their assets.
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Developer SC-KR Games posted to its Twitter (thanks PC Gamer) that the game would be available for purchase again on Steam “soon” after it was taken down earlier today. For those not in the know, Only Up! basically has you running through an obstacle course and parkouring through it gradually escalates. The goal seems to be to reach space, which means you’re making a constant ascent from the ground to the endless void. So in short, you’re going…only up.
SC-KR Games
As of this writing, Only Up! has very quickly amassed a strong Twitch following, with over 90,000 viewers and 55,000 users following the game on the streaming platform. While it’s having a successful run on Twitch, a 3D artist is claiming the game uses one of their 3D models, which was listed for free use as long as it wasn’t for commercial purposes.
The model in question is listed on Sketchfab, which explicitly states its for non-commercial use. Only Up! is a $10 game, andit’s being used to make money, which goes directly against the guidelines set out. It’s unclear at this point if this is the reason Only Up! was delisted, but we’ve reached out to Valve and SC-KR Games for clarification.
As PC Gamer points out, Only Up! has dealt with some controversy prior to this because it has NFT promotion, but Steam only has rules against NFTs if you’re buying and selling them in-game, rather than simply promoting them.
I would rather not liken Master Detective Archives: Rain Code to the games its creative team is best known for, but I can’t help it when Spike Chunsoft and Too Kyo Games’ latest murder mystery sure does invite the comparison. Like Danganronpa before it, Rain Code is a murder mystery from the mind of Kazutaka Kodaka, adorned in the distinct art style of Rui Komatsuzaki, all to the backdrop of Masafumi Takada’s techno jazz score. Nearly every mechanic has a near 1:1 equivalent to Danganronpa, to the point where I play through and wonder if everyone involved would rather be making another one of those titles but can’t because of Danganronpa V3’s damning meta-commentary about running a series into the ground until it’s beyond recognition.
Whatever the motivation, Rain Code still has a lot of Danganronpa’s pink blood running through its veins, and while it takes some time to start living up to its predecessor, it had me wrapped around its finger by its final cases and hopeful that Kodaka may have found a new outlet to indulge his fascination with mysteries without returning to a story that’s long finished.
Screenshot: Spike Chunsoft / Kotaku
Rain Code follows a detective-in-training Yuma Kokohead in a world where detectives are superpowered figures respected around the world. He’s an amnesiac who’s made a deal with a death god named Shinigami who takes the form of a purple puffball ghost with a love of carnage and death, all while basking in it with lighthearted whimsy. Much like Kodaka’s previous work, the game uses the two characters’ contrasting views of the world to constantly oscillate between dire stakes and absurdist humor but uses its supernatural framing to crank the team’s usual antics up to an inevitable over-the-top conclusion. Much of Rain Code feels like Kodaka’s writing style at his most unhinged, no longer bound by the limitations of a (relatively) grounded setting and free to use magic, superpowers, and god-like entities to justify some wild imagery, for better or worse.
For the first few chapters, I was put off by Rain Code’s supernatural elements and how they framed the mystery-solving. As Yuma and Shinigami stumble into solving crimes around the city of Kanai Ward, Shinigami opens up a pocket dimension to a Mystery Labyrinth. These are pretty comparable to a Palace in Persona 5 in that they are physical manifestations of the mystery itself. Every question there is about a case is given a literal form, whether that be doors to walk through to answer a multiple-choice question or an enemy that Yuma must fight with a truth-bearing blade to literally cut through their arguments as they appear in text on the screen.
Danganronpa represented these same concepts through mini-games that were more symbolic, such as imagining yourself snowboarding down a slope and choosing paths representing answers as you made deductions. Rain Code uses the Mystery Labyrinth to give everything a diegetic place in its world. I admire the commitment to the bit, but the framing initially felt like it was the game bending over backward to bring Danganronpa mechanics into a legally distinct format in a way that justified every moment of deduction and reasoning in a tangible way, rather than a conceptual one.
It wasn’t until later chapters where Rain Code started to really reckon with the reality of using the Mystery Labyrinth that I started to buy in. Shinigami is a ghost when she and Yuma are in the real world, but once they enter the Labyrinth, she sheds her mascot character design for her true form: which is a tall, gothic woman who reaps upon the souls of the culprit at the end of each case. Once Yuma is confronted with the truth, he is also confronted with the cost of finding it. Unlike Danganronpa, this method and outcome aren’t forced on Yuma, he just continually falls on it as he’s put on his back foot. At its core, Rain Code is about the pursuit of the truth and its consequences, but while Shinigami leaves bodies in her wake, the game posits that the truth isn’t meant to be morally right or wrong. In exposing it, people can build from the truth rather than tear themselves down further.
This is why Rain Code constantly invites comparisons to Kodaka’s most prolific work. If it weren’t for all the clear mechanical and artistic parallels, that baseline belief in people is the symmetry that connects this team’s past and present work. Rain Code’s latter chapters invoke the same outburst of emotions that this team is best known for, even if it takes its time getting there. In many ways, its narrative and mysteries get messy, sometimes diluted by the supernatural framing rather than enhanced by it. But despite my initial misgivings, I was surprised at how well it came together. Given this team’s history, I probably should’ve trusted Rain Code to get me by the end.
All the framing aside, Rain Code does feel rough around the edges from a technical standpoint. Rather than using the 2D sprite-based visual novel style of Danganronpa, pretty much everything in Rain Code is rendered in 3D, and this game chugs something fierce on Switch. Whether it’s during the exploration segments through Kanai Ward or the action-oriented setpieces within the Mystery Labyrinth, the game often feels like it’s struggling to hold itself together. While third-person, 3D setup gives Rain Code its own flavor and allows the game some pretty spectacular visual moments (the neon-soaked cyberpunk aesthetic of Kanai Ward looks great when it’s not in motion), there were stretches of time where it felt like the game needed another pass for technical polish.
Screenshot: Spike Chunsoft / Kotaku
At a certain point, I think I became desensitized to the framerate drops and bought into the concept and was happy to dive into Mystery Labyrinth. Comparatively, Rain Code’s cases aren’t quite as elaborate as its predecessor’s, but they each had satisfying mysteries and an explosive human element at their core. Even when I would feel skeptical about a reveal, Rain Code would quickly point to a clue I’d long forgotten that tied things together. Some solutions might have felt farfetched, but within the world it established, these cases felt airtight and satisfying to solve, even when the conclusion was devastating to watch unfold.
Rain Code is built by a team that knows how to make these kinds of games, and as a long-time fan of the themes Kodaka tends to write around, I was pretty moved by the end even though it nearly lost me in the beginning. If you’ve never been a fan of Kodaka’s mix of camp, heavyhanded themes, and theatrics, Rain Code will likely not grab you. But despite it feeling like Danganronpa’s distant cousin, it makes it clear this team doesn’t have to lean on Monokuma’s death game as a crutch and can build something new upon its bones instead. Hopefully, this means Kodaka can continue to let old things die on their own terms and make new things instead.
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.
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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?
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.
One quest line in Diablo IV is drawing in players not just for good loot, but because it has a strong mental health message that makes it feel meaningful beyond the actual perks.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
The quest starts with A Question of Self and follows Taissa, a character who is dealing with a mental health struggle tied into Diablo’s world. We don’t need to get into spoilers here, but according to senior quest designer Harrison Pink, Taissa’s story, even down to the flavor text on the equipment you receive for seeing it through, was meant to deal with mental health and grief.
In a thread on Twitter, Pink explained that the quest line was about “overcoming grief and trauma,” and how you can’t force progress by brute forcing it.
At the end of the quest, you receive the Mark of the Conclave, which is an amulet that includes a letter from another character initially meant for Taissa, and it includes words of encouragement for her that have been comforting to Diablo IV players. There’s a whole Reddit thread of folks talking about the message and how they’re dealing with their own mental health struggles. The flavor text for the amulet reads:
Healing is a journey. A series of steps. Some days you may stumble, but so long as you continue to put one foot in front of the other, you will reach your destination.
Blizzard Entertainment / Coooley
On top of having a lovely message, the Mark of the Conclave is actually a pretty good accessory to have. As YouTuber Coooley explains, the accessory can boost your Life stat, and because it’s a Rare item, you can reroll its stat boosts with the Occultist. Doing this means you can have a huge addition to your Life. So if you haven’t done these quests yet, take the time. You’ll get a good side story and leave with a great accessory.
It’s official: Warzone Caldera, formerly known as the original Call of Duty: Warzone, is shutting down later this year so developers can focus on the battle royale’s sequel and players are angry. The announcement came in a Call of Duty blog post titled “An update on Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera” published on June 22.
“As of September 21, 2023, Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera will shut down, as our teams focus on future Call of Duty content including the current Warzone free-to-play experience,” the blog post reads. Warzone 2.0 launched in November 2022 as a completely separate experience from the original Warzone, which was tied to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and could only be played within that mainline game and launched back in March 2020.
For fans of the original battle royale reluctant to move over to Warzone 2.0 (which was tied to Modern Warfare II and offered a brand-new map, new modes, new gameplay, and major UI changes, though it had its own separate launcher), Activision offered them Caldera, where the original Warzone experienceand all its cosmetics would remain. Until now.
Conspiracy theories were swirling back in March of this year that suggested cheaters were being paid to keep people from playing Warzone 1 after streamers and other esports pros refused to make the swap over to the 2.0. And though the claims were unsubstantiated, there was a noticeable delay in players warming to the sequel. Now, however, after many changes and updates, Warzone 2.0 has a healthy player base—though there are still those who play and prefer the original.
But the announcement that Warzone Caldera will officially die this fall was met with some rather passionate responses from fans, as the responses to the tweet from the official Call of Duty account show. Several people pointed out that Blackout, a battle royale mode introduced in 2018’s Black Ops 4 and beloved by many, still has operating servers, but the original Warzone will not. Others pointed to all the cosmetics they purchased, while others were angry that the blog posts mentions work on Warzone: Mobile.
I myself haven’t gotten into Warzone 2.0 at all despite being a pretty die-hard original Warzone fan—and I haven’t really been playing Caldera either, as I miss the first battle royale map Verdansk too much. But considering I spent an ungodly amount of time and money getting some really sick skins for my Operators, I am very annoyed that all of them will go bye-bye. I had an ‘80s workout skin, a ‘90s grunge skin, a Ripley from Aliens-inspired skin, and even some footy uniforms.
Though I won’t be able to play with those skins in a battle royale ever again, the Call of Duty blog does note that “regarding purchased content in Warzone Caldera–from Modern Warfare,Black Ops Cold War, or Vanguard–that will continue to be accessible in those specific games.”
I suppose this was always bound to happen, and maybe this is a sign that I should give Warzone 2.0 a proper chance. But it’s an important reminder that live service games can appear, rise to prominence, and fade out in the blink of an eye.
Ruth Bosch is an artist who has worked for companies like League of Geeks and creative studio Volta, and who is now art director at Studio Fizbin, developers of the excellent Say No! More.
Next Fest is Steam’s triannual event where hundreds of developers upload demo builds of their games for you to try for free. And it’s one of the very few things in gaming that just feels unambiguously positive! Indie sits alongside—or often above—AAA, nothing is about gouging anyone, and it revives the lost art of the demo in a way that makes the whole industry pay attention. But the number of demos can be a little overwhelming, so let us help with getting started.
Hollow Knight: Silksong’s New Gameplay Trailer Is Living Rent-Free In Our Brains
Steam
Highlighted during the PC Gaming Show at Summer Game Fest, The Invincible promises a hardcore sci-fi story based on the work of Stanislaw Lem. Luke recently highlighted the amazing work of one of the artists involved, and everything about this narrative-led philosophical story looks so enticing. Now you can play a chunk to see if it lives up to this.
Starward Industries
This eye-ticklingly lovely-looking voxel railway sim makes building a train network look enticing, rather than daunting. Station To Station’s emphasis on minimalism and relaxation really piles on that appeal. There’s now a portion of the game to try for yourself, and it really delivers.
Prismatika
I’m so pleased Word Factori is as fun and daft as it looks. This is a game about building all the letters of the alphabet out of the letter I, using, you know, factories. As you’ll likely know, a C is just a curved I, so you need to run those through a curving factory. And a V is two Is joined together at the bottom, so you’ll need to use a merging factory for that one. I totally made a CAT out of Is! The presentation is lovely and simple, too, even if the puzzles are not, making this well worth a look.
Star Garden Games
Galvanic Games’ co-op survival game revealed at Summer Game Fest shone at the show, and now has a demo you can play. Wizard With A Gun is about exploring the unknown as a wizard, alone of with a chum, in a sandbox game with all manner of combat and action.
Devolver Digital
When I first read about A Tiny Sticker Tale, I had one desire: that it feel like those laminated background scenes you’d get as a kid, where you could place the rubbery, restickable stickers on top, to create your own stories. It is that! It’s exactly like that! Except here, when you place a sticker onto a scene, it magically becomes part of the drawing. It’s so splendid that I could happily play with it even if it weren’t a bunch of sweet little puzzles.
Ogre Pixel
Ooh, there’s a new full-length Rusty Lake game coming! And from this demo, it plays like their classic Cube Escape games, returning to the series roots, and with all the menacing air that comes with the peculiar puzzles.
Rusty Lake
I’d never heard of Thronefall before, but it’s straight on my Wishlist. It’s the most extraordinary combination of city builder, auto-battler, tower defense, and direct-control RTS, but all presented in a calm, clear and minimalist manner. The demo neatly piles on the instructions and introduces all these elements in a way that feels manageable and frequently surprising.
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
Image: Blizzard Entertainment / Clara Bastian / Kotaku
One of the recurring gags in the Diablo series is the secret cow level. This refers to a secret area that is filled with weapon-toting cows who attack the player should they be unfortunate enough to stumble upon it. It first debuted in Diablo II, then made an appearance in Diablo III. This gag is such a prominent fixture in the series that there’s even a Wikipedia page for it. However, it doesn’t sound like Diablo IV is keeping up with this long-held tradition, but that hasn’t stopped players from trying to find it.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
In an interview with Kinda Funny Games (thanks, IGN), producer Rod Fergusson said the cow level was omitted from Diablo IV in an effort to keep the world grounded.
“We wanted to make sure it felt authentic to the kind of gothic, dark themes we have. We’ve been really focused on trying to keep it as grounded as possible,” Fergusson said. “And because of that, there’s no secret level in Diablo IV that people might be looking for as per previous games. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be in the future.”
Ladranas
Fergusson says one thing, but parts of the Diablo community don’t believe him. There’s a lengthy thread on the game’s subreddit of fans coordinating searches throughout the game’s world. One user is convinced a “Mysterious Portal” could be opened to a cow level, and has been trying to figure out if an altar near Hell’s entrance might be key finding where the violent cows might be hiding, as well as checking on a fountain surrounded by four oxen pointing north, south, east, and west. Some of the reasons for doubt come from some pretty deep-reaching references to Diablo’s past. There’s a Bloody Wooden Shard item that has the letter “W” carved on the side that fans believe might be a reference to Wirt’s wooden leg, and a Musty Tome that could be a Tome of Town Portal, both of which were required to reach the original hidden level in Diablo II.
Another user has been testing cows throughout Diablo IV’s world to see if they have any connection to the hypothetical secret level, such as killing them or using certain emotes around them. But as of this writing, no one has found the secret cow level in Diablo IV. Perhaps Fergusson is telling the truth, and there is no cow level in the new game. But he could also be lying. And that uncertainty keeps curious players searching.
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.
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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.
Cinderys is a professional cosplayer from France who has been active in the scene for almost a decade now. Over the years she’s cosplayed as a bunch of Blizzard characters, from World of Warcraft to Hearthstone, but her latest Diablo work is terrifyingly good.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
Before we go any further: yes, I said professional cosplayer. As I’ve written about previously, there’s a certain level of cosplay where artists can engage in paid, sponsored work, and Cinderys has been doing this for a while. The Diablo cosplay here, for example, is the result of a collaboration between her, Blizzard France and peripheral company Steel Series, which technically makes this advertising, but also gives Cinderys the time and resources to make something that looks this incredible.
As you can see in this quick making-of video, putting a costume like this together wasn’t easy. There was sewing, of course, but also loads of 3D model work (being sponsored can help with access to that stuff), 3D printing, prosthetics and make-up. Somehow—with a little help at the end from fellow French cosplayer Xia—Cinderys not only got it all together, but built the whole thing from scratch in just a month:
Finally, here’s some footage from Diablo IV’s launch party in France, which shows that the costume not only looks incredible in photos, but was entirely (RELATIVE FOR COSPLAY) practical to walk around in for the night.
When the original Max Payne was ported to consoles in late 2001, I couldn’t get a copy fast enough. I wasn’t a PC gamer at the time, and so for a while I could only enjoy Max Payne through the internet and TechTV at the time. I was transfixed by the graphics and luscious time-slowing bullet time gameplay on display. And when I finally played it on my original Xbox, it did not disappoint. Now, having played a select portion of El Paso, Elsewhere, a modern spin on this classic, third-person shooter, I am delighted to have experienced the classic vibes of the original Max Payne once more.
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And, honestly, El Paso, Elsewhere is close to making them better than the original.
Expected to release in late 2023, El Paso, Elsewhere comes courtesy of Strange Scaffold, whose previous games have included Hypnospace Outlaw, a Strand-like (?), An Airport For Aliens Currently Run By Dogs(that’s the title, also an apt description), and most recently, Sunshine Shuffle, which got the dev in a little bit of trouble with Nintendo over jokes about child gambling (as one does). El Paso, Elsewhere also follows El Paso, Nightmare, a first-person shooter with similar retro vibes. But instead of aiming for head-mounted perspectives and center-positioned guns of yesteryear, El Paso, Elsewhere is a gritty shooter with the narrative and gameplay vibes of the first Max Payne, meaning you can slow down time to a crawl, upping your reaction time to increase your aim and take out multiple enemies at once But this time you’re going after friggin’ vampires instead of the mob. Though, six in one, really.
My preview of El Paso, Elsewhere went through the game’s first four chapters and, god damn it, I was sad when it stopped. Not only did it spark my nostalgic love of the first Max Payne, it did so with some genuinely great additions to this formula and a killer hip hop soundtrack that had me vibing the whole ride through.
In El Paso, Elsewhere, you’re taking on vampires and other hellish manifestations in a trippy, otherworldly motel. And in doing so, El Paso, Elsewhere, thus far, improves on one of the shortcomings of Max Payne and many other shooters that demand high bullet output but take place in otherwise realistic settings.
Game Design In Bullet Time
As fun as Max Payne is, one of the problems I always had was that, since your enemies are just mobsters and well-armed human beings, each gun battle is more or less the same—fun as though the loop is, there’s a lack of variety in terms of enemies. And on top of that, the amount of bullets you spit out tends to dilute the realistic premise to a certain degree.
Gif: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
That’s not a problem for El Paso, Elsewhere. Since the bad guys are evil things that go bump in the night, I’m more than happy to suspend my disbelief as to how many bullets are required to take these things down. That does come at the cost of Max Payne’s fantasy of two-way bullet exchanges rippling through the slowmosphere, but the trade off is that it makes the gun battles far more interesting as enemy types are more varied thus far.
The aesthetic shift of paranormal hostiles immediately makes a difference. Simply having more interesting-looking enemies coming at you instead of Max Payne’s endless hordes of dudes-with-guns™ breaks up the monotony. But it’s not just Max Payne set in Party City during Halloween season here.
Gif: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
By having foes with different kinds of attacks, you have to react differently, and thus make use of bullet time in more varied ways, be that dodging werewolves that leap at you, vampiric ghouls that burst out from behind crates, or from other unworldly begins that fire down large purple orbs at you, injecting a sense of verticality to the gameplay that isn’t always present in Max Payne. The pace of gameplay becomes more varied; I’m not just running from room to room trading fire with yet another nameless dude firing a gun at me.
Gif: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
Sure, Max Payne’s task of taking down the mob by the dozens, and dozens, and dozens, (or in the case of Max Payne 3, dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens….) is fun, but it’s a breath of fresh air to have something new to engage with.
Also, I never felt too overpowered. In this preview, El Paso, Elsewhere managed to strike a nice balance between giving me the player the power to slow down time and unload tons of bullets while also holding me to account for what I’d over indulge in, be that bullets, time stopping power, or, yes, painkillers.
Gif: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
I did find that I would run out of ammo and my bullet time meter if I wasn’t careful, meaning that while I had an edge over the hordes of evil creatures coming my way, I had to be strategic in how I used it. Do I use bullet time to be more accurate? Or do I use it to get a sense of my surroundings and determine just how bad the threat I’m facing is? I liked that delicate balance and it made the game feel alive beyond just the initial “oh, nostalgia! Let’s slow down time” feeling that I instantly felt. Managing my powers against ongoing threats was a rush I was eager to continue when the preview came to an end.
El Paso, Elsewhere is also very faithful to the narrative tone of Max Payne. As you use painkillers to heal yourself, the protagonist reflects on his diminishing sense of sanity as he continues to take drug after drug to keep pushing through. There is an ongoing narration from the protagonist that mirrors that of Max Payne’s own style of speaking and storytelling. And maybe because it’s about vampires, it doesn’t feel as campy as the original Max Payne somewhat feels in hindsight. And when you enter new areas, you’re hit with that delightful bass drum pulse and big title screen in bold white lettering ala Control.
Screenshot: Strange Scaffold / Kotaku
While some environments did have me running around a bit guessing as to where I supposed to go, the ride through this preview was genuine fun and I was quite bummed to hit the end of the preview.
And you know, I can talk all day about how I think the enemy variety mixes things up pleasantly, or how there seems to be a nice balance of resource management, but feeling like I don’t want to put the gamepad down? That’s a feeling I like in a game.
El Paso, Elsewhere is expected to launch later this year, 2023, on PC and Xbox.
When Foamstars, Square Enix’s Splatoon-esque party game where two teams of four face off in a giant foam-spewing battle, was announced at the PlayStation games showcase, it wasn’t clear what to expect. Was this just Splatoon in PlayStation-exclusive form? What was the gameplay like? Would it be any fun?
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Foamstars is four-vs-four splooge-fest where you shoot pink and teal foam and one another until your character is completely trapped and then bounced off the stage. In Star mode, the only one we were able to try, each team gets seven lives. Once they are used up, one player becomes the “star” based on who has the best overall performance that match. They get enhanced health and attack, as well as slightly faster cooldowns for their abilities. But once the star player is killed, the game is over and the other team wins.
FOAMSTARS | Announce Trailer
The game is being developed internally at Square Enix with a team composed of developers from Dragon Quest, Nier, and other franchises. It definitely feels like Splatoon, but with a Persona-style presentation and the balancing of Overwatch. Each “VIP,” aka hero, has two normal abilities and a special that can be deployed throughout the match in-between cooldowns. There are DPS characters and tank characters, with variations in gun speed and spread. The fundamentals aren’t bad, even if they’re mostly cribbed from other established competitive multiplayer games, but it’s not clear it has the magic to standout in a crowded field of already successful live service shooters.
When we sat down at Summer Game Fest for a hands-on demo, gratis beers in hand, we didn’t know what we were getting into.
Alyssa Mercante: First off I’d like to say that I’m very upset you were better than me at this game.
Ethan Gach: Get rekt. I like it. At least for the five matches we played. I don’t know that a successful live service game that makes, but the concept isn’t as dumb in practice as the PlayStation showcase reveal made it seem.
Alyssa: It actually is pretty fun. I do sort of feel like I was struggling to get the aiming down even after five matches, but I am also admittedly not a Splatoon player. Is the assumption that this will just sort of mimic that, content-wise? Maybe new characters and new weapons coming out every so often? They wouldn’t tell you any details right?
Ethan: “We want to focus on the foam right now” is not an exact quote but pretty close to what the Square Enix rep said when I peppered him with questions about microtransactions, unlocks, custom builds, alternative maps, and the other stuff that usually keeps players coming back.
The shooting felt no worse than third person Fortnite to me, other than the fact that you’re aiming cum bubbles instead of bullets.
Alyssa: Okay, it wasn’t as cummy as I thought it would be, it’s much more of a mousse. It’s very reminiscent of the shit I put in my hair in high school. I like that the foam can be used to change up the environment though, like build up walls and shit, which is definitely a nice differentiator from Splatoon.
Ethan: There are shades of a build mechanic, but I wish it was more directed. You can layer foam by shooting the same areas but it takes a while to really change the topography or build up anything resembling a protective barrier.
Alyssa: Yeah I wonder if different maps will be better for that kind of mechanic, as this one was pretty flat/open. Would be interesting to see it in play on a map that’s got two really distinct levels and you could use the foam as a means of cheesing certain height differences or something.
Ethan: The map itself was a pretty small and bland arena, though I appreciate the city pop metropolis backgrounds and general Persona-like stylings. What did you think of the different characters’ abilities. Who did you like playing as the best?
Alyssa: I liked Tonix, the burst-fire one. Her ultimate is a foam-shooting mech which is rad. I also, naturally, only picked the characters I thought looked really cool/want to dress like.
Ethan: The cooldown abilities and specials were neat enough, though I couldn’t quite figure out the the best way for it all to come together. A game like Overwatch has maps that funnel you into choke points that play nicely off of different heroes’ abilities. Here it felt a little more haphazard, though maybe with more time and practice those synergies would come into focus.
Alyssa: Yeah maybe you need to really get in the weeds for it to feel like who you’re choosing matters in terms of team composition, because that sort of felt like we were just picking randomly. And that shotgun guy was OP.
Ethan: While Splatoon is clearly the closest analogue mechanically and shoot-feel-wise, the overall package reminds me of Fall Guys in terms of its presentation, accessibility, and my skepticism of its longevity and what would keep me or someone else coming back in order to make it a sustainable online hangout.
Square declined to answer any questions about what the meta-progression, microtransactions, or additional modes will be like, although they did promise a ranked-mode, which seems very premature.
Alyssa: Ranked mode? I was already toxic during our hands-on, I can’t go anywhere near that. It’s definitely an interesting thing to have as a PS-exclusive, as well, so I’m veryyyy curious to see if it has legs. Can definitely see it being a fun, silly party game the same way Fall Guys was, but does anyone even play Fall Guys anymore? Is there longevity in this? More importantly, can I change the colors of the foam?
Ethan: I’m very curious about the origins of the game. Was this a mandate handed to the devs and this is what they came up with, or did they arrive at the prototype on their own and then Square saw the potential to bring it to a full release? PlayStation doesn’t do Early Access but maybe it should.
Alyssa: Also, what the hell is the single-player bit they wouldn’t give details on? Much to think about here.
Ethan: I just hope there’s a hub world where I can leave spunk messages on billboards for other players to discover.
Kotaku is covering everything Summer Game Fest, from the main show on Thursday to other events happening throughout the next week. Whether you’re into larger-than-life triple-A games or intimate, offbeat indies, you can keep up with all things SGF here.
Activision has pulled a Call of Duty skin based on the hugely-popular Nickmercs after he made an anti-LGBTQ comment on Twitter.
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Earlier this week broadcaster Chris Puckett tweeted about a local clash between “Pro-LGBT protestors” and bigots near his apartment, to which Nickmercs—referencing a popular rallying cry of the increasingly unhinged right wing media machine, which baselessly asserts that trans people and drag performers are somehow child abusers—replied “They should leave little children alone”.
Nickmercs was swiftly condemned. As this Dexerto roundup summarises, he was rightly rounded on by many notable members of the Call of Duty and wider esports community, including broadcaster Goldenboy, who said “I’m disappointed in you Nick. Teaching acceptance and tolerance for EVERYONE is a valuable life skill for all ages.”
Loopy, a coach at Vexed Gaming, had even stronger words, saying:
I will never work/watch a MFAM event again. I cannot in good conscience work for a bigot. I am a Marine and swore to uphold and protect the constitution which protects protests and demands equality for all.
“Peace and love” unless you’re gay or trans? What a loser.
Due to recent events, we have removed the “NICKMERCS Operator” bundle from the Modern Warfare II and Warzone store. We are focused on celebrating PRIDE with our employees and our community.
If you were wondering if Nickmercs ever apologised for his comment, that process went about as apologetically as you would expect:
Cyan, the studio behind Myst and Riven, has for the last few years been funding its games via Kickstarter. That’s how 2016’s Obduction was made, and it’s also how 2023’s Firmament—with more than a little help from machines this time—was developed as well.
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For a studio with such an illustrious history, the decidedly mixed reviews for Firmament should be something of a surprise. Fans are down on some of the puzzle design, but they also repeatedly mention how flat the game’s world feels, how poor the narration is and the sparsity of Firmament’s in-game lore, which really stand out when compared to Cyan’s 90s blockbusters.
This walkthrough video highlight’s the game’s monotone narration
Turns out there’s a good reason for some of that. As Gregory Avery-Weir first pointed out after sitting through the game’s credits, the longer you sit through them the more you find that some jobs—like voice acting—don’t get a mention where you’d expect them, alongside composers and artists. Indeed by the time the credits are thanking external partners like Nvidia, you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d forgotten to acknowledge their voice actors entirely.
Until you get to this, literally the last credit flashed on the screen before they start thanking streams of Kickstarter backers:
I reached out to Cyan and asked them specifically about the level of human involvement in the game’s narration and lore texts (newspapers, letters, etc). Their response:
“AI Assisted Content” listed in the credits for Firmament is, well, exactly that. It is content of which its final state you see it as in the game as was assisted, not wholly created, by services built on what many refer to as “AI” that Cyan staff made use of.
For example, all voice acting content was performed by an actual human being 100% of the time (which may have been obvious already if you have listened to it, especially considering the performance cadence and content — we can’t imagine what it would be like if wholly machine generated, to your question) but the final performance timbre, pitch, and tone was modified with one of these services, with the performer’s consent. Hopefully that clarifies things more and provides a good example of what we mean by “AI Assisted Content”.
Note that doesn’t explain why those voice actors aren’t credited (when the AI is!), why they used AI (and not regular recording/mixing tools) to modify the “timbre, pitch, and tone” of a human’s voice, and doesn’t address the numerous other instances fans have complained about, like the poems and songs.
The world of Sanctuary is huge and fast-travel alone won’t get you everywhere you need to go. Fortunately, Diablo IV gives players mounts to help them travel between dungeons and side-quests more quickly. Here’s how to get your first one.
The Week In Games: What’s Releasing Beyond Diablo IV
It’s actually really straightforward: Get to Act IV. When you arrive at the capital of the Fractured Peaks, Kyovashad, you’ll automatically get the quest “Mount: Doran’s Favor.” Simply head to the stables, talk to the stablemaster, then find Doran at the Cathedral. Boom, you’ve got a horse now! Sounds easy enough.
Unfortunately, you can’t do any of this until Acts I through III are completed. They can be done in any order, but III in particular can be a slog. If you mainline Diablo IV’s story, you can hit the beginning of Act IV in about 8-10 hours. From there you can indulge in Diablo IV’s horse armor microtransaction economy at length, or wait for sets to randomly drop from world events. What fun.
Still, it’s kind of a bummer that it takes so long to unlock mounts. The only real advantage is cutting down on backtracking—precious minutes that could be spent bashing skulls and finding more epic drops instead of running to the next quest marker. The good news is that unlocking mounts on one character will unlock them on all future characters, so when restarting with a new class you’ll have access to improved travel from the start, assuming you don’t opt to bypass the main campaign altogether on your alts.
Mounts are a first for Blizzard’s action-RPG series, as it trends toward becoming a live-service MMO. They help players quickly navigate the space in-between fast travel points. They’re finicky creatures though, and one important thing to note on PC is that your horse’s speed is directly proportional to how far away your cursor is from your character on the screen. Of course, if you’re playing as a Rogue like I am, you can effectively become your own mount. Neat!
