The biggest PC gaming stories of the week

Our fingers are tired this week, both from clicking around drunk cop sim Disco Elysium for hours at a time, and from near ceaseless typing—there was a lot of news. Riot went and announced eight new games, things haven't gotten much better for Blizzard, and Fortnite's world got sucked into a black hole (but did not stay there). Here's your news recap for the week of October 13, 2019:

• Suspended Hearthstone Grandmaster Blitzchung responds to Blizzard's statement

After Blizzard partially walked back the punishment it assessed for Hearthstone player Blitzchung, who called for the "liberation" of Hong Kong during a post-game interview, he responded with his own statement. 

"I'm grateful for Blizzard reconsidering their position about my ban," said Blitzchung, adding that he knew he'd face consequences and that he will express political opinions on personal platforms in the future. Blizzard claimed that the punishment was solely for breaking a general rule about keeping "the focus on the game," not pressure from China.

That hasn't convinced certain US congresspeople, who wrote an open letter to Blizzard asking that it fully rescind punishment.

• Every game announced at Riot's jam-packed 10th anniversary livestream

Riot announced a huge number of games this week: a card game, a fighting game, a tactical shooter, an esports management game, and a more mysterious project that looks a bit Diablo-like. The salvo of projects prompted Steven to take a look at how Riot's public image stacks up to Blizzard's, which has taken quite a few hits since last year's Blizzcon. (This year's is scheduled to begin on November 1.)

• Fortnite Chapter 2 feels like what Fortnite was always meant to be

The world of Fortnite was sucked into a black hole over the weekend, and players literally stated at a black dot for hours—and then a full day passed. It wasn't until early morning on Tuesday that Fortnite Chapter 2 sprung to life. It's pretty wild that Epic can shut down its flagship game as a surprise and, less than a week later, no one seems all that mad about it. Fortnite, man.

• Red Dead Redemption 2's first PC trailer shows the beauty of the open country

Last week, Rockstar announced the Red Dead Redemption 2 system requirements and gave us a brief description of the PC-specific features, including arbitrary resolutions and an unlocked framerate. Now here's our first glimpse at RDR2 in 4K at 60 fps.

More news

• 343 Industries says there's 'no creative dilemma' after Halo Infinite lead producer leaves
• Divinity: Fallen Heroes has been put on hold indefinitely
• Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville is out
• Watch Modern Warfare running at ultrawide 4K in a new PC features trailer
• The Outer Worlds system requirements
• The big Fallout 76 Wastelanders update has been delayed to 2020

Around the office

The team has been pretty taken by detective RPG Disco Elysium, which Andy Kelly awarded a 92% in his review. I'm still working out an opinion on it, but one thing I appreciate is its lack of traditional combat encounters. 

RPG combat can be great—I loved toying with the malleable and somewhat breakable combat of Divinity: Original Sin 2—but I'd like to see more games take after visual novels and classic adventure games in the same way Disco Elysium has. Combat tends to end in one of two states: succeed or fail. A failed skill check, on the other hand, doesn't have to end the game. It can just take you in a new direction, as it often does in Disco Elysium. Plus, frequent brawls just don't make sense in some settings. Investigating a murder while wandering around murdering people might take me out of the story just a bit.

That said, Disco Elysium does have fail states. I kicked a mailbox and died of a heart attack. I did not kick the mailbox again after reloading.

While we've been roleplaying as drunk cops, Wes was off playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order at a preview event. It's a safe take on Star Wars, he said, and a safe take on action-adventure games: the usual jumping between walls, swinging on things, and so on. The lightsaber combat stood out as the highlight. There's not nearly enough dismembering, but Wes says it was tense and satisfyingly deadly. Read his full Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order preview here.

Finally, former PC Gamer staffer Joe Donnelly popped back into share another tale of GTA 5 roleplaying: how he tried to form a GOURANGA gang. It went perfectly!

That's all for now. Have a great weekend, and don't forget to like and subscribe. (To anything. Just keep liking and subscribing. Never stop liking and subscribing.)

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