We are back. After a long sojourn to the centre of the self, I return—having completed a journey of discovery where I reflected on what I really wanted from modding GTA 5: my true desires, true capabilities, and where I want to take this whole thing as we walk, together, into the future. I speak to you now of the wisdom I have gained from my vagabond travels, behold:

I've put roving packs of hostile cougars in the game now.

The mod to put loads of cougars in Grand Theft Auto 5 is called Cougars, which is easy to remember, and it boasts "seven special cougar types" and four difficulties. Cougar time is initiated with a tap of the delete key, at which point you may choose either Catnap, Furmidable, Feral, or Catastrophe mode, which I am led to believe affects the volume of the cat hordes dispatched against you and the potency of their armaments.

Naturally, I opted for Catastrophe, kicking off a sort of pseudo-game-show opening where Franklin, Trevor, Michael, and Franklin's celebrity bodyguard were all fleeing angry litters of cats. Then we were off, with me—as Franklin—desperately dodging leaping cougars, some of them armed with heavy machine guns, some wearing body armour, some with traffic cones for reasons known only to God. Then I teleported, and the cougars followed me.

This process continued for a few minutes before I realised that, most likely, I was not going to reach my goal of a private jet waiting on the runway at Los Santos International. I performed a rare purposeful teleport to bring myself home, at which point about 56 quintillion cougars attempted to kill me. I solved this problem with an explosive micro-SMG.

When I boarded the plane, I was told I had won, and a man with a cougar for a head and a parade of dancing regular cougars behind him all congratulated me. I teleported away in the middle of their performance. It is good to be back.

It's been a good few months for Remedy Entertainment. In its latest financial results, the Finnish game developer announced that its third quarter revenue had more than tripled to €39.6 million ($44.3 million) from the €12.2 million ($13.7 million) it made during the same quarter last year.

That spike in income is all thanks to preorders and launch sales of Control Resonant—of which only the first seven days of sales were counted in Remedy's third quarter figures. On October 15, Resonant sold its millionth copy, making it the fastest-selling game in Remedy history.

"This is our first self-published game of this scale, built on our own Control IP," said Remedy CEO Jean-Charles Gaudechon, who was appointed to the position earlier this year. "Praised by players and critics alike, it marks a defining milestone for the company."

Gaudechon also noted that "close to 50%" of Resonant players were Control newcomers, indicating the sequel had achieved "a key goal" of expanding the audience for Remedy's brand of stylish interdimensional sicko content. Its mission for the immediate future, the CEO said, is to continue delivering Resonant to more interested players—2.4 million of whom still have yet to turn their wishlists into purchases, according to Remedy data.

"Our priority now is to get Control Resonant into the hands of more players. Excellent player reviews, penetration in all our target markets and a substantial outstanding wishlist base give a solid foundation for the game's longer-term sales potential, supported by both organic visibility as well as our targeted marketing activities," Gaudechon said. "As with the launch, we will invest with discipline, prioritizing actions with a clear return."

While Remedy's operating profit margin was still thin for the quarter—1.5% of revenue, or €0.6 million—Resonant's strong launch performance is a welcome change of pace from where the studio was at the end of last year. In November 2025, it had posted an operating loss of €16.4 million thanks to the flop of FBC Firebreak. From the sounds of it, Remedy's aiming to continue that momentum with whatever work it has planned next.

"Alongside the launch of Control Resonant, our other projects are proceeding in the pipeline," Gaudechon said. "Sales over the remainder of the year will ultimately define our financial year 2026. Control Resonant gives us a solid foundation for growth."

Konami might have finally set down the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1 to focus on releasing Metal Gear Solid 4 from its PS3 prison, but modders continue chipping away at the PS2-and-earlier era Metal Gear games. MGSHDFix, whose mission statement is to repair broken visual bugs, fix crashes, and generally give the older Metal Gears a bit of a spitshine, has got a big new update. Now is the era of MGSHDFix 5.0 (actually, 5.0.1. There was a hotfix).

"We've got performance improvements, massive vanilla loading time reductions for MGS2, loose .MP3/.WAV/.OGG/FLAC soundtrack loading for MG1/MG2, WIP raw mouse input support, and loads of new restoration and bugfixes", writes author Afevis Solmunko.

There are, to be honest, way too many fixes to properly delve into here, so I recommend either checking the patch notes out yourself or taking the mod for a spin in your preferred Metal Gear. We can call out some of the big ones, though.

For example, want to play Metal Gear 2 as Mel Gibson? No? Well that's a shame, bucko, because MGSHDFix 5.0 provides an option to restore that game's MSX2 sprites. "Yes, you can finally experience Mel Gibson fighting Sean Connery as Kojima intended," writes Solmunko.

Also in the OG MGs, there's now an option "to make doors automatically check your inventory for keycards (how MGS2 keycards work)", which frankly sounds blasphemous to me.

• We're keeping track of all the Amazon Prime Day PC gaming deals here

More practically, the latest version of the mod boasts that it dramatically cuts down loading times in MGS2. "We've greatly sped up level loading by adding a new system that prefetches a list of all the assets for all the rooms that are directly connected to the current stage you're in… Speedrunners have reported that this new prefetch system has shaved upwards to 5 minutes off of the elapsed realtime from their runs". On Linux (and thus, Steam Deck) specifically, Solmunko says this can "reduce level transitions load times by 4~6 seconds for every room you go into".

Plus, MGS2 and MGS3 now have limited support for raw mouse input in third-person, with support for first-person hopefully coming in MGSHDFix 5.1.0.

All good news, in other words, and it's nice these classics are now released in a way that lets fans do this kind of loving work for as long as they like.

When Mass Effect 3's beloved multiplayer mode was left out of the Legendary Edition, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Redemption has finally come in the form of the ME3Tweaks modding team, who have spent the last three years quietly working to not only get multiplayer working, but improve it.

"It's not just a ME3MP port but rather an extensive remaster of the experience," says modder Audemus. "This includes new features like bringing forward LE's native features like controller support/HDR, overhauled UI, rebaked level lighting, upscaled/redrawn textures, upgraded shaders, improved networking/server replication, extensive bug fixes, new gameplay modes, and a stable format for future mod support and easy installation/compatibility."

They're even adding new game modes, like one called "Unified" that combines enemies from multiple factions, and letting players either join ME3Tweaks' server, or set up their own private servers.

The ME3Tweaks team are the same modders who previously revived and revised the Pinnacle Station expansion, a lost DLC for the original Mass Effect that was also left out of the Legendary Edition. They're planning to release the multiplayer mod on N7 Day, which is also when composer Sam Hulick plans to release a re-scored version of the leaked Mass Effect Universe trailer.

Grand Theft Auto's radio stations have long stood as an integral part of the series' whole vibe—either offering time capsules of the times each game was set in (Vice City), or offering a realistic blend of classic and modernity a la Grand Theft Auto 5's excellent music curation.

I've been just a tad giddy to discover what awaits me in Grand Theft Auto 6's car stereos when the game launches on November 19, which has me surprised that Rockstar teasing six of its upcoming stations earlier this month completely flew under my radar.

Well, now I've had a gander and listened to all 12 minutes of its DJs bantering and a peppering of bangers between. And I gotta say, I'm already jazzed to speed down Leonida's highways with some of these stations at full volume.

Rockstar's licensed music curation rarely misses, and that very much seems to be the continuing trend with Grand Theft Auto 6. While we don't know just how many radio stations there are in total yet—this is the first game where we'll be able to tune in to both terrestrial music stations and podcasts, it being 2026 and all—but the six that were teased were the exact kind of flavours I've come to expect from the series.

There's Latin station Cocoteo FM, classic country Back Country Radio, African channel AfroBANK FM, all-out metal hub The Chamber 106.6, pop banger central Flash FM, and hip-hop destination Dirty South Classics. I'm already 100% here for The Chamber's setlist, being an elder emo and all, with bands like Black Sabbath, Pantera, and Slayer making their way onto Leonida's airwaves. But I'm also jazzed to see newer blood on the scene, like Bad Bunny's appearance on Cocoteo.

My biggest interest was in Flash FM, though. Non-Stop Pop has become such an iconic radio station for me, thanks to some excellent song choices and Cara Delevigne's delightfully deadpan delivery. It doesn't seem like I'm going to be disappointed, though—Alex Consani takes up the mantle as model-turned-radio-host alongside the excellent artist Robyn (of Bulletproof fame), and hearing one of my favourite songs in MGMT's Electric Feel is all the confidence I need in Rockstar's keen ear.

While the previews do show criminally little interactions between the hosts (it seems like Grand Theft Auto 6 is going for duos across all its stations, presumably for some easy back-and-forth banter), I'm sure there'll still be satire in droves to come.

Here's each radio station currently teased, along with each song present in the preview. You can check out a brief description of each station along with the audio previews over on Rockstar's website:

Back Country Radio

• The Conversation - Hank Williams, Jr. & Waylon Jennings
• Need a Little TIme off for Bad Behaviour - David Alle Coe
• Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind) - Loretta Lynn

Cocoteo FM

• EoO - Bad Bunny
• Si Es Trucho Es Trucho (Remix) - Axel Rulay ft. Farruko & El Alfa
• Canalla - Romeo Santos & El Chaval de la Bachata

AfroBANK FM

• Joha - Asake
• Gye Wani - Pat Thomas ft. Ebo Taylor
• Shay'sana - DJ Lag & Robot Boii ft. Kamo Mphela

The Chamber 106.6

• I - Black Sabbath
• I'm Broken - Pantera
• Raining Blood - Slayer

Flash FM

• Good Ones - Charli xcx
• Electric Feel - MGMT
• Midnight Sun (Girls Trip) - Zara Larsson & PinkPantheress

Dirty South Classics

• Like a Pimp - David Banner ft. Lil' Flip
• Who Dat - JT Money ft. Solé
• Born N Raised - DJ Khaled ft Trick Daddy, Rick Ross & Pitbull

Earlier this month, Big Walk developer House House explained why their co-op puzzle adventure wouldn't be available for sale on Xbox: Microsoft's gaming division is a priority target of the the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, which names the tech giant in general as a pressure target alongside Google, Amazon, and a host of other companies. House House isn't alone in taking this action.

Narrative platformer Celeste and party fighter TowerFall have delisted from Xbox recently, and Maddy Thorson of Maddy Makes Games fame took to BlueSky to explain why: "For those who’re asking, yes, we delisted Celeste and TowerFall on Xbox. We did this to support the BDS boycott."

For reference, Microsoft gets a cut whenever it makes a sale through its proprietary digital distribution storefront, similar to Steam. Console producers tend to take a loss on hardware, subsidizing it for accessibility to more consumers, so they can make up the difference by selling other stuff, a crucial slice of that other stuff being games.

So as long as sales trickle in for critically acclaimed games like Celeste and TowerFall, that's a bit of easy money for Microsoft—the choice to delist the game stops that. If you're an Xbox owner who wants to observe the boycott, you can always buy used physical versions of games where that's an option or switch to another platform for the time being.

But this is PC Gamer dot com, so you probably haven't even heard of the Xbox. You've certainly never seen one up close. You're probably playing Chessmaster 9000 on your second monitor as you read this, you beautiful freak. In any case, you can always buy TowerFall on Steam. Same goes for Celeste.

Edge magazine unleashed a whopper of a 16-page feature all about Grand Theft Auto 6 earlier this week. After poring over every paragraph multiple times, one thing really stuck out to me: It feels like Rockstar is pushing for a more realistic, grounded experience.

Those two words might sound like an absolute nightmare to some GTA aficionados. It's not like the series has never known how to be serious or gritty—see Grand Theft Auto 4—but it's always facilitated chaos with relative ease. Outlandish weapons, an easily gamed wanted system, NPCs that feel more like props to be mowed down than anything with a personality. If I wanted to hop in and wreak a little criminal havoc for a while, I wouldn't find much hardship in wriggling out of trouble as soon as I was bored.

But it sounds like creating that sort of pandaemonium in GTA 6 is no longer as free as it once was. Police will remember what you looked like, if you were working alone or alongside an accomplice, and any weapon you were carrying. It'll use that information to fight back against the anarchy you orchestrate. It's not just police presence, either. Edge describes chaos as a third participant—no longer just your own, but the way the world reacts to your behaviour: would-be vigilante NPCs stepping in, carjackings going wrong thanks to modern tracking technology.

And you know what? I'm completely here for it. Sure, we're perhaps losing a little bit of that all-out, sky-high criminal power fantasy. I'm probably not going to be able to pull a rocket launcher out of my invisible butt arsenal anymore—Edge notes that larger weaponry instead gets stored inside your car—and I wonder if the world is going to let me lob a hundred sticky bombs at a plane without consequence anymore. But when it's all in the name of a more detailed, more involved-feeling world? I honestly believe that a little bit of grounding is going to make it feel all the more satisfying.

Puzzling out how to gradually return to the shadows is that little extra bit of flavour I've been craving from the series. Even if it is something as simple as a wardrobe change, the modern-day equivalent of going and getting your car spray-painted mid-chase. But co-head Phil Hooker also describes things like jumping on a bus out of sight of any CCTV or witnesses—if police didn't see you get on the bus, there's no way of figuring out where you ended up once you're safely distanced from the scene (or scenes) of the crime.

And ultimately, I don't feel like a more detailed, realistic reaction to my crime sprees dulls their buzz. I don't think Rockstar is trying to stop people from playing the game the way they always have, but instead inviting more ways to let the chaos ripple out and a greater incentive to work strategically on reeling things back in. And while it might feel a little different initially—at least, I should hope it will with 13 years of technological advancement behind Rockstar since GTA 5—I'm confident that the level of depth these sorts of tweaks afford will have even the most hardcore pedestrian-mowers in our midst converted before long.

There are three different Phantom Blade Zero endings; one bad, one slightly less bad, and one True Ending which lets you face the final boss, granting the "Final Battle" ending and "With Heart and Blood" achievement. But to get this perfect ending, besides following the main quest, you have to complete a variety of side activities.

The cut-off for completion seems quite generous—though Inanis implies there's a point of no return just as you enter the Mirage Estate, I completed some of these steps later and I was fine. Here's what you need to do

1. Complete the Secrets at the Heart of the Lake quest

You first get this quest when you discover one of Firefly's Memory Flowers in the Village of Lu, but the main steps are:

• Defeat the four scarecrow acolytes to get their masks.
  • The first is Acolyte Yanru in the Village of Lu.
  • The second is Acolyte Lei Ting in Pangzhen—you can get to her once you acquire the Flaming Mane Phantom Edge on the west side of the town and then burn the barrier near the Pond of Fading Song bell to access her location.
  • The third is Acolyte Guhe in Meigu Lake on the east village dock island.
  • The fourth is Acolyte Hansui in the Crimson Manor—entering requires a load of other quest progress. You'll need to fix the Illusory Pipa, complete Whence the Weeping, plus the Mandate Encampment area, so this stage is definitely the longest (all the details you need are in the linked Crimson Manor guide).

• Enter the Phantom Illusionist's realm via the mirror in northwest Meigu Lake.
  • You'll need the four Acolyte masks to enter.
  • Fight through the area to defeat the final boss, which will summon a puppet statue.

• Insert the Yin and Yang eyes into the puppet and end the ritual.
  • You get both of these in the course of opening the Crimson Manor: one from the hanging puppet who gives you the tongue to unlock it, and the second from the Puppet Scavenger boss in the manor.
  • This will teleport you to the ritual. Kill all the puppet monks to end it and complete the quest.

2. Complete the five Long Pillars in the Bloodline Awakening quest

There are five Long Pillar challenges battling the Gold-Masked One that you need to complete to get the True Ending, plus these are good as the later ones give you Soul Tempering materials for some of the game's best weapons:

• The first Long Pillar is in Weeping Creek Valley. Use the Hunt's Scythes to grab the key on top of the Sha-Chi tower and unlock the area containing it.
• The second Long Pillar is in the Crimson Forest, just off the main path after Stone Fist Iron Fever's arena, near the start of the Mirrorwood.
• The third Long Pillar is in east Meigu Lake on an island.
• The fourth Long Pillar is in the Phantom Illusionist's realm which you need the Acolyte masks to enter, so I suggest doing this as you pass through completing the Secrets at the Heart of the Lake quest.
• The fifth Long Pillar is in the Mirage Estate. This is the second-to-last area in the game. You can access the pillar close to the Willow Pavillion, where you'll find a path you can grapple to with the Hunt's Scythes if you backtrack a little.

3. Complete all of Quickhand's Requests

Though I haven't seen this requirement mentioned elsewhere, I'm pretty certain you have to complete the Quickhand's Request quests for the True Ending, which involve finding treasures throughout each region and delivering them to the thief.

This is all covered in the linked guide with videos showing the locations, plus this quest gets you two otherwise inaccessible Phantom Edges, Flying Dagger and Goldblaze, so is worth completing anyway.

So what does the True Ending get you?

If you've done everything above, Inanis should tell you right before you emerge onto the peak of Mount Soulrend (after the Mirage Estate) that there's nothing more she can do to prepare you. I assume, if you haven't completed everything necessary, she gives you a point of no return warning that you still have unfinished business.

The True Ending sees you fight Leng Tu, Meng Hua (the lady), and Zuo Shang, but the other endings don't let you fight Zuo Shang's second form, so you get an extra boss fight this way. If you've done all of the above, you'll also get:

• The Hunt outfit
• The Kindred outfit
• The Blizzard outfit
• The Legacy outfit
• The Radiant Heart story item

After this, you can choose to start New Game+ by speaking to Inanis and pick to tweak difficulty as well if you want. You'll carry over your weapons and Phantom Edges, too.

According to Bloomberg's sources, EA saw a new Battlefront game as a less risky investment than Mass Effect Universe. This final factor joined a host of well-discussed reasons for BioWare's unfortunate demise: Andromeda's critical reception, Anthem's live service failure, Veilguard's sales struggle (pretty good game though), friction between the studio and EA since the very beginning, and, of course, EA's recent Saudi-Kushner-Private Equity acquisition.

One other added wrinkle: BioWare apparently lost its main ally at the top of the EA org chart. Entertainment and Central Development exec Laura Miele, who historically advocated for BioWare, was "sidelined" according to Bloomberg. EA sports execs David Tinson and Cam Weber were promoted instead. The age of nerds has ended, now begins the long night of the jock.

Overall, this new information doesn't radically reframe BioWare's overall story at EA, one of slow decline and mismanagement, or how most observers will interpret it through a culture war lens⁠. Was BioWare too woke? Not woke enough? For the love of god keep it out of our comments section. But now we know why the knife was finally driven home, for what it's worth.

And I guess we can anticipate a new Battlefront game some time at the tail end of the 2030s. Woohoo. For more on the closure of BioWare, PCG lead SEO editor Lauren Morton spoke to 16 developers who were inspired to join the industry because of the studio about what BioWare meant to them.

I may rob casinos, steal cars, and occasionally drive on the sidewalk, but I'm not a monster, and I don't want the civilians in Grand Theft Auto 6 to think I am. Well thanks to the souped-up morality system there will be a bit of space for some redemption.

Rob Nelson, Rockstar North's co-studio head and head of development went into greater detail about what GTA 6's "Criminal Profile" involves during an interview for Edge magazine and how players will have some authority about how the world will react to them.

The Criminal Profile will track your actions as Lucia and Jason on a scale from "Professional" to "Irredeemable", represented by angel and devil icons. It's not necessarily encouraging you all to be saints who disengage with any form of violence and follow road traffic laws to a tee, but you have to be mindful of how much violence you doll out.

Fights don't need to always end in death, a professional criminal may incapacitate their opponent instead of putting a bullet between their eyes or perhaps try to get information or whatever they want from them via less violent means, at least at first. You may try to intimidate or perhaps bribe your way to the best ending. Rockstar has confirmed that your Criminal Profile will affect how the story pans out and so it's certainly something to keep an eye on, if you're gunning for a specific storyline that is.

We've already learned a bit about the Criminal Profile before thanks to an IGN preview in which Nelson also explained how the decision to include such a responsive system stemmed from the fact that the devs didn't want player characters to become too powerful.

"There isn't a right or wrong way to play this game, but consistent actions may have an impact in terms of how the world reacts to you and how the narrative plays out," Nelson says. He also explained how small acts of kindness can redeem you. So, if you see some litter lying around, put it in the bin and if you have a free moment perhaps go to the local park and feed the birds.

Yes, Grand Theft Auto is a videogame series where you drive fast cars and occasionally mow down the odd pedestrian here and there. I like that. It's nice. I am looking forward to also doing that in Grand Theft Auto 6. But the thing I'm really excited to do? Hop on a bus, baby.

Out of all 16(!!) pages from Edge magazine's newest megafeature on Rockstar's upcoming meteor, a teeny-tiny paragraph about Leonida's public transportation system is the one that's got me feeling all giddy. Similarly to Red Dead Redemption 2, the game will feature a fully functioning train system, as well as a bunch of bus routes to help you get around Leonida the old-fashioned way.

And, according to head of development Phil Hooker, they're systems that he has extensively tested to ensure their reliability. "I'm obsessed with making sure they always turn up," he told Edge. "So, anywhere in the middle of playing, I'll just go: right, we're going to get the bus to where we're going. I've memorised all of the routes."

I kind of love it, I can't lie. It really feels like Rockstar is paring down the criminal power fantasy a tiny bit and offering more grounded, realistic ways to exist in its world. Which might make some hardcore pedestrian-mowers a little furrow-browed, but it seems as though the developer is trying to create various levels at which people can engage with the chaos and zaniness the series has typically offered.

As much as I'm also a member of the crime spree brigade, something like a public transportation system is one of those details that's going to make Leonida feel alive in a way we've not really seen from the series before. It feels fitting for a story like Jason and Lucia's, too—it seems like they don't quite want the all-out criminal fame of previous protagonists, and allowing them to engage with more practical methods of getting around feels like the perfect way to play into that.

It's not just a cutesy way to roleplay an everyday commuter, either. Hooker also highlights making use of the buses and trains as a way to evade the watchful gaze of the police. "If they don't see you get on, and then you get out of the 'wanted' area, why would they search the bus unless they see you get onto it?"

More than anything, Edge's feature now has me desperate to go buy a beer, a pack of smokes, and jump onto a bus to watch the world go by. Though the only place I think Hooker is wrong is that he's been rigorously ensuring everything turns up on time—I dunno how things work in Florida, but the true realistic experience would be to have no buses turn up for ages until two or three arrive bumper-to-bumper. That's the true public transportation experience, after all.

Anyone tells you that love cannot be measured. That it's a feeling deeper than any other emotion which has bound humanity together since the dawn of time and therefore cannot be quantified is lying to you. You absolutely can measure it, and I'd go as far as saying you can even rank people on it, which is exactly what Grand Theft Auto 6 is setting out to do.

The recent mega piece by Edge has revealed that GTA 6 players will be able to measure Jason and Lucia's closeness in a four-point scale which we're coining as the boyfriend-o-meter.

It's confirmed that you can switch between characters in GTA 6 so you'll likely have to show up for your other half no matter who you're playing as. Activities like taking long romantic walks on the beach, working out at the gym together, and driving around so your other half can doomscroll will all work towards boosting your score.

The relationship between Lucia and Jason certainly seems to be more involved than we first thought, but that's not to say it will take centre stage or be overly important. Your actions will have narrative consequences but only within a narrow scope of possibilities.

But that probably still won't help to calm the growing discourse of people who seem to think that playing GTA 6 is essentially cheating on your partner. I personally think that this is just a psyop propagated by people who don't like having fun, and that no real sensible person would see roleplaying a healthy relationship in a videogame as cheating on your significant other. Especially as you play as both characters; it's essentially just playing make-believe with a couple of dolls, but I digress.

Who knows, though? Weirder things have been known to happen on the internet, so maybe there is an army of people angry at the notion of their significant other getting one videogame character to kiss another one.

I will, however, be relationshipping to the max. This is a competition which I plan to win and in the process of doing so show all of Leonida just how capable and fearsome my skills are at cultivating a healthy and strong relationship.

I don't mean to be contrarian (which is rare for me), but I've been generally unfazed by the hype for Grand Theft Auto 6. It's not that I don't think it'll be good—I'm actually damn near certain it will—it's just that none of what Rockstar has focused on so far in its marketing speaks to me all that much.

Anyway, throw those equanimous sentiments out the window, because an anecdote from Edge magazine's new mondo-feature on GTA 6 has convinced me this game is actually an immersive sim, and now I'm bouncing off the walls in anticipation. Chatting about his experience actually playing the game, Rockstar head of development Phil Hooker told a story about the time he deployed a bit of unorthodox crowd control to prepare a store for a heist.

"Recently I was robbing a store that was full of people," said Hooker. "I wanted to get rid of them, because they'd be witnesses who would cause me trouble." What did he do? Well, in GTAs of yore, your options would have been pretty limited, but GTA 6's dovetailing systems gave our man an opportunity. "I basically started picking fights with them, provoking them and then immediately defusing it.

"I didn't actually get them into a fight—I'd just go: 'Ah, sorry, leave it'. Then they would leave the store, so that would clear them out and I could rob it more cleanly." It's one of the things Hooker says he, and Rockstar generally, focuses on in testing: "meeting new NPCs, for example, trying different ways in which to interact with them, trying to find ways to combine the features in ways we maybe haven't thought about."

Forgive me, but is that not the most immersive sim stuff you've ever heard? A sandbox crammed with systems that can collide—or be manipulated—in ways the developers themselves never even expected, to the delight and satisfaction of a creative player? I say it is, and it's quite honestly made me more excited for Rockstar's quadrillion-dollar baby than any glossy trailer. Put it in my hands, please, and then let me use those hands to pick up a crate that turns translucent when I do it.

Rumor has it that GTA 6 will come to PC relatively quickly after the console launch, though Rockstar typically puts at least seven months between console and PC launches.

The Mandate Encampment Outer Gate Key is one of the most important to find in Phantom Blade Zero, since it unlocks an entire region that's otherwise inaccessible.

Though you find the gate to the Mandate Encampment when you first arrive in the Village of Lu, the key is actually towards the end of the Pangzhen area (the game's 4th region), which you visit in its second chapter.

Exploring the west side of the town, you'll eventually reach Gu Wangyue, a Chinese opera singer boss. After defeating her, you can drop down the well in her arena, climb the ladder straight ahead, and you'll find the key to the Mandate Encampment on a corpse in the following room surrounded by puppet enemies.

It's on the main track through Pangzhen, so you'll definitely go through this room—just make sure to pick it up when you do so you can unseal the gate.

Upgrading medicine in Phantom Blade Zero improves the percentage of HP, damage negation, and Sha-Chi that these healing consumables replenish, which is pretty powerful, as you'd imagine.

You can upgrade your medicine when you reach the Green Serpent House in west Pangzhen (the game's 4th region after the Village of Lu). You'll arrive at this location during Pangzhen's second chapter, which sees you exploring the west side of the town, specifically, after you defeat Xie Qiudong, The Divine Healer and progress down the street, where you'll spot a big house with green banners and the Green Serpent House bell.

The Apprentice Healer here will upgrade your medicine using Apprentice Healer's Memories and Skilled Healer's Memories, some of which you likely will have already picked up during your explorations. You'll also get the Green Serpent Brew medicine, which removes status effects, when you visit for the first time.

Opening the entrance to the Order's underground tavern in Phantom Blade Zero took me longer than I'd like to admit, but it's required to continue progressing through Pangzhen during the Town of Death quest.

In the wine yard behind the tavern building, Soul will note that the pavilion's floor on the right is hollow—this is where the secret entrance is, so you'll want to head behind the pavilion and smash the big black jar, as in the video above.

This reveals a crank which will unlock the cellar and let you inside. Similar to Weeping Creek Valley's outpost or the Crimson Forest's Thieves Camp, this is an important location in Pangzhen and a hub for many of the region's sidequests.

The Illusory Pipa is a phantom edge capable of dispelling certain barriers, but also an important story item in Phantom Blade Zero, unsealing a special barrier in the north of the Meigu Lake area.

To craft it, you'll first need to arrive at the Order's underground tavern in Pangzhen, where you'll meet Myst, the third sister who's capable of repairing the instrument once you find its parts. Here's where to get each of them, though be aware they require significant progression through the game:

Illusory Pipa Head

Defeat the secret boss, Dusk, in the Village of Lu. Find Firefly's Memory Flowers as part of the Secrets at the Heart of the Lake quest to unlock the barrier at the Temple of Blue Fireflies, then drop down to fight him.

Illusory Pipa Strings

Defeat Yan Qiansui, The Zither Maiden at the sunken opera house in south Meigu Lake, accessible via north Pangzhen after you've defeated the region boss. Collect Yan'er's Memory Flowers floating around the island, with two towards Pangzhen docks, to access it and fight her.

Illusory Pipa Backplate

Defeat the final boss at the Mandate Encampment and collect it after. You'll need a key found in Pangzhen (details in linked guide) to access this region near the entrance to the Village of Lu. Once inside, fight through the region to the final boss and grab the backplate on a table just after the battle.

Once you've got all three parts, head back to Myst in Pangzhen and select the relevant dialogue option to repair the Illusory Pipa. Now you can unseal the barrier in the northeast of Meigu Lake.

The Four Fierce Axes quest is likely the second you'll acquire in Phantom Blade Zero, after Flesh Lily, when you find a "Four Axes" case file in the Broken Puppet Valley early on.

You'll have to "uncover the truth behind the Four Axes Rebellion" which involves continuing to the outpost and defeating the Peng Meng boss there. After that, you'll have to "gather evidence of the conspiracy against the Four Axes", which means finding seven more "Four Axes" case files in Weeping Creek Valley, besides the one you already have and one Peng Meng drops. Here's where they all are:

1. Near the Broken Puppet Valley bell in the house on the table.

2. Also in the Broken Puppet Valley on the corpse by the shrine.

3. After the Rustblade Pavillion bell, before the Outpost Courtyard bell, on a table in the area where the game gives you a tutorial to jump assassinate a man by a campfire.

4. Near the Axemaster's Holding Cell bell on a table in the area where The Hunt has killed everyone.

5. After you acquire The Hunter's Chain Sickle and use it to get the Sha Chi Tower Base Camp Key from the top of the Sha-Chi Tower, use it to unlock the door by the Creek Valley Plains Entrance bell, and search the lower level of the tower to find it on a table in the forge area.

6. Through the Festering Secret quest. Use the Dread Axe to smash the barrier in the outpost after you defeat Peng Meng, defeat the enemies, speak to the captain, and deliver the letter to the lieutenant at the Long Pillar Overlook bell in the area you unlocked above. He'll give you the sixth case file.

Thankfully, all of these locations are marked on your map, which makes things easier. "Hang on, that's only six out of seven, though" you may be thinking.

To get the seventh case file, you need to progress to the Village of Lu region after the Crimson Forest. You'll get the Leave None Alive quest, which directs you to head back to the outpost, and upon arriving, you'll find you're now able to get past the barrier to the location of the final case file.

Simply head into the area with the houses, up into the Lady's Cave, follow it through and outside, where you can use the Hunter's Sickles to reach the platform with the last case file.

Deliver the evidence to the Child of Insight in Pangzhen

The final step of this quest is bringing all the evidence to the Child of Insight in Pangzhen, the game's 4th region. You'll have to progress through the Village of Lu area to reach Pangzhen, then a little way into the town itself—thankfully, you'll also have a map marker for this, so it's straightforward enough.

Fight the Shadow Order guarding the marked building near the Pavillion of Knowledge Crossroads bell, then battle through three floors of masked enemies to get the key to the roof. Open the door on the top floor to find the Child of Insight standing on the roof outside and then speak to him about the Axemaster to get your reward, the Blood Oath Dagger, which Soul Tempers the Dread Axe once you unlock the ability to do so with Myst at the Orders underground tavern.

The Honor Among Thieves quest in Phantom Blade Zero is relatively short—you kill an enemy in the Crimson Forest who drops a letter, which you then deliver to his brother in the Thieves Camp a little further down the trail after Jing Ye.

The brother, however, can't read, and demands you answer some questions about its contents to prove it's genuine. The answers to his questions are:

1. Stole a landowner's belt.
2. Butterfly.
3. The letter never said. His fate is unknown.

Don't worry if you get an answer wrong, he'll just end the conversation and you'll have to talk to him again. These answers are, of course, in the letter itself. Look for the Wulin Tales section of the archive and then the 8th entry, Blood Letter from the Nimble Thief.

Answer all three correctly and you'll get the Silent Wrap accessory, which reduces noise from assassinations and movement by 40%, though you can upgrade this further once you unlock polishing in the Village of Lu.

Though you find it early on, the Crimson Manor is actually a bit of endgame area in Phantom Blade Zero that you'll be able to open later on.

You need the Puppet's Tongue item to unseal the door, which comes from completing The Herald's Illusion quest, finding three portals into a strange realm with a hanging puppet. Each portal opens an eye—once you have all three, he'll give you his tongue. Here's where to find each portal:

1. The first portal is by the Puppet Testing Grounds bell in the Village of Lu (the game's 3rd region). This is at the end of the area, after you go down the well, though it's basically impossible to miss.
2. The second portal is at the end of the Mandate Encampment area after the region boss. You'll need a key from Pangzhen to open the gate to this region near the entrance to the Village of Lu (details in the linked guide).
3. The third portal is at the end of the Mountain of Imprisonment area, again, after the region boss. To access this area, you need to repair the Illusory Pipa and unlock the barrier in the northeast of Meigu Lake.

Once you head through the third portal, speak to the hanging puppet, and he'll give you his tongue to unlock the Crimson Manor, plus his Yin eye, which is related to another quest. Now, you can get inside the manor and fight the fourth acolyte for the Secrets at the Heart of the Lake quest.

You first meet Quickhand Zhang in Phantom Blade Zero's Crimson Forest and, assuming you free him, arriving at the Thieves Camp and his first hideout, he quickly recruits you to find his counterparts and unmarked treasure in each region.

I've included videos below of where to find Zhang's hideout and the jade treasure chest locations in each region, plus corresponding text entries that explain what you'll need to do to reach each in terms of battling enemies or grabbing any keys required.

Crimson Forest treasure locations

• Reward: Flying Dagger (Phantom Edge) - Thrown knives that apply poison buildup.

1. From the Outlaw Trap bell, head into the cave directly behind you with the butcher and the dogs to grab the Crimson Forest Tunnel Crank. Use it to unlock the grate in the floor near the bell, drop down, descend the ladder, cross the wooden bridge and defeat the second butcher and dogs, then take the left path up a slope to where you'll find the chest.

2. This second chest is behind the locked Thieves Camp Dungeon gate. To get the key, progress through the Crimson Forest until you arrive at the Cliffside Lodge. Head upstairs to grab the cellar crank, unlock the cellar, then drop down to where you can spot the corpse with the glowing item (the key) below you. Unlock the gate back in the Thieves Camp to find the chest immediately on your right.

3. The third chest is in a cave near the Thieves Camp bell. Exit the camp via the path heading towards Zhang's Hideout, follow the path down around the cliffside into the cave, then fight past the dogs and their master to find the jade chest on your left.

Village of Lu treasure locations

• Reward: Fine Thread (accessory) - Increases the damage and Sha-Chi depletion of summoned objects by 50%.

1. From the Well of the Three Puppets bell, head up the stairs to the big house at the very top with the mother puppet who attacks you in the entrance. Turn left, climb the ladder, open the door, and pass through the creepy puppet room to find the chest to the left of the altar at the end.

2. Close to the Lady's Grounds bell, which unlocks after you defeat Master Bi Yuan of the Tianxuan Sect. Head right out of the courtyard, climb the wall to your left, and circle around onto the upper level of the Lady's Grounds where you'll find the chest.

3. From the Survivors' Courtyard bell, head left out of the entrance, go down the stairs, then descend the rope down the shaft to your right. The room at the bottom is filled with puppet enemies, but also the third jade chest.

Pangzhen treasure locations

• Reward: Goldblaze (Phantom Edge): Essentially a rifle.

1. You'll need the Tianxeng Pavillion Key for this first one, which you get by talking to the puppet in the Order's underground tavern to start the Star Performer quest. From the Huang Manor Crossroads, head west down the road with the hanging lanterns and turn left to find the door to Tianxeng Pavillion. Unlock it, taking care of the puppet enemies inside, then take the left staircase to the first floor, and circle around the balcony to find the jade chest in the room at the back.

2. For this one, you'll need the You Loong's Deluge Phantom Edge, which you get by defeating You Loong, Leader of the Blackwater Crew in the pond near the Banyan Tree in the far west of Pangzheng. From the Marketplace bell, use the deluge to put out the nearby flaming barrier, head inside, turn right, use the hunter sickle to get up on the rooftops and you'll find a jade chest on a platform just up ahead.

3. From the Backstreet Archway bell at the start of Pangzhen's western section, defeat Wu Xuan, The Fallen General boss, then head through the circular gate behind him and up the stairs to find the chest in a small house at the far end of the garden filled with puppet enemies.

4. From the Pond of Fading Song bell just before the well where you fight Gu Wanyue, The Wailing Wraith, backtrack along the street to just before the pool, and turn right up a set of stairs, through an archway, into a building where you'll find the final jade chest for this region.

Meigu Lake treasure locations

• Reward: Sha-Chi Blood Catalyst (medicine) - Increases Sha-Chi combo damage by 20% for 15 seconds and restores 20% HP, but ignites you.

1. From the Blackwater Crew Dock bell, on the northern island in the lake, head through the arena where you fought You Loong, The Frenzied Blackwater Crew Leader, out the right side via the ramp, then immediately through the house on your right towards a zipline you'll spot ahead of you. Ride this down, hop over the poles, and turn right onto the sand where the chest is located.

2. The second two treasures in Meigu Lake require you to unlock a special area via the Secrets at the Heart of the Lake quest. In the northwest of Meigu Lake, you'll find a snowy area with a mirror which can only be unsealed by defeating the four acolyte scarecrow bosses around Wulin, including one in the Crimson Manor, which you'll have to fix the Illusory Pipa to ultimately access. It's quite elaborate, but once you're through the mirror, continue through the area until the second bell, then make your way along the cliffside coffins to find the jade chest on a platform at the end.

3. I didn't include this final chest in the video because I didn't want to spoil the area, but it's on your main track through the secret region mentioned above, towards the end of the section where you're navigating across ships. The chest is on the final ship, just before the shrine to the lady that teleports you and is almost impossible to miss.

Mirage Estate treasure locations

• Reward: Thundermoon Lantern (accessory) - Inflicting Thunderstrike on an enemy automatically triggers lightning strikes on enemies in a certain radius.

An important note before you find these: the Mirage Estate is one of the final areas in the game, so unless you want spoilers, please don't watch the video. Another note: you have to get the second treasure chest in the Opera House on your first run through. I'm unsure if this is a bug, but the Opera House door will lock after you've activated the opera and come out the other side, so there's no way back to it.

1. From the Training Grounds bell, pass through the arena where you fought Yuding and out the other side into the courtyard and straight ahead inside the house that the herald appears on the upper floor of. Turn right just inside the entrance to find the chest in a room there.

2. From the Opera House bell, find this chest through the Opera House main gate you unlock once you have the Opera Ticket item, on the left side of the first room. It's very important that you grab this on your first time through the building, as the main gate seems to lock again after you watch the opera and come out the other side.

3. Just after you unlock the secret passage in Leng Tu's Study on the main track, by the Perfect Vessel Estate bell. The chest is just behind the big sculpture in the centre of the room.

And that's every treasure for Quickhand Zhang, completing his quest.

The Aberrant Three-Faced Puppet is the first optional boss you can encounter in Phantom Blade Zero, but it's definitely not one you're supposed to beat when you first find it.

It's definitely possible, but with no Phantom Edges and only your un-upgraded starting weapon, you don't deal anywhere near enough damage to be likely to defeat her, and won't for a while. Here are some tips that'll help you best her when you're ready:

• Return later: There's no rush to defeat this boss or complete the Triple Threat quest. Defeating her doesn't give you a weapon or anything that's useful in the early game, either, so there's really no reason to bang your head against the fight. To beat her when you first meet her, you basically have to no-hit the entire thing, so it's not really worth it. As you can see in the video above, I returned later in the game and the fight was much more manageable.

• Upgrade your weapon and polish your accessories: In particular, I recommend the Ancient Armor Fragment, Jewel's Knot, and Resonance Talisman for increased damage negation, HP, and Sha-Chi. Also upgrade your weapon—remember you can buy extra materials from vendors. Upgrading your weapon will also unlock new useful skills and ways to deal damage.

• Use the Livingwood Talisman to inflict bleed on her: Puppet bodies aren't susceptible to bleed, but if you grab the Livingwood Talisman in a chest near the Smuggler's Tunnel in the Village of Lu and polish it, you'll deal bleed at 70% effectiveness to the boss with a weapon like Jagged Steel, doing some bonus damage.

• Dodge her smoky black attacks: These drain your stamina fully if you try to block them, so dodge. Luckily, she doesn't have too many red or blue attacks to dodge counter or parry counter, respectively, which makes things easier.

• Always be attacking: Your regular attacks don't cost stamina, but they do still deal damage and deplete her Sha-Chi over time, so keep up the aggression, blocking her attacks between yours. When her Sha-Chi is broken, spend stamina on Sha-Chi combos to deal proper damage, and don't forget your LT attack when your weapon is powered up.

After you complete the fight, you'll get the Three-Headed Doll story item, though the next stage of the quest isn't until one of the final areas of the game, so I'd suggest coming back later to check this guide if you're still unsure.

Triple-Threat part two (late-game spoilers)

After you arrive in the Mirage Estate in Pangzhen (towards the end of the game), you'll eventually find a Memory Flower near to the Training Grounds bell, off to the right side of Yuding's arena. This will trigger the next stage of Triple-Threat, in which you have to find three Memory Flowers marked on your map in the estate.

You'll then be directed to return to the Crimson Forest, which has now partially frozen over due to the Frost Mask, but before you face this puppet boss again, you need the Soul Tempered version of Sanguine Reach to defeat them, which requires the Roaring Flames item:

1. The first part comes from defeating Zhu Yuan, The Searing Blade below the Pangzhen Sha-Chi Tower. You get to this by entering Meigu Lake, accessible via north Pangzhen, then continuing north along the shore, before using the exploding enemy to blow up the barrier leading to the lift, similar to how you access the Crimson Manor area.
2. The second comes from completing the third Long Pillar challenge in east Meigu Lake.

Once you have both of these, you can Soul Temper Sanguine Reach into Blazing Edge after you've met Myst at the Order's underground tavern in Pangzhen, which you already will have at this point.

Now you can return to the Crimson Forest's Mirrorwood, progress through the area a second time towards where you found the region boss originally (there are new bells, enemies, and chests), then face Yucong, No.34 Twisted Puppet. As my 13 minute video above will attest, this is the longest and trickiest optional fight I've found in the game, so I'd suggest:

• Upgrade Blazing Edge fully: This is your main method of dealing damage to them and they have a lot of health.
• Fire Meteor is really good: As you can also see in the video, fully upgraded Fire Meteor is very efficient on a spark-to-damage ratio and since it's fire, is good against puppets.
• Upgrade your medicine: I used Kuye Dew and Merciful Dew since they're so HP efficient (even if the restoration is gradual), and Kuye grants damage negation which stacks incredibly well alongside the Ancient Armor Fragment accessory.
• Use the LT charge on Blazing Edge: This is especially strong in the section of the fight where you face three separate entities, as you can deal with one of them quickly. The Chaos Mask tends to be the most aggressive, and Frost Mask the most defensive.

Beyond that, you'll just want plenty of health and Sha-Chi. My other accessories were Talisman of Despair, which increases damage when you haven't attacked for four seconds, up to 35%, so perfect for Blazing Edge's nuke attack. Then Jewel's Knot and Resonance Talisman for more HP and Sha-Chi, then Battleforged, which negates an instance of damage every six seconds you aren't hit.

Defeat the boss and you'll get their extremely fun Freezing Chaos sword, which can inflict frost or chaos fire. You'll also get the second Chaos Dagger fragment to Soul Temper Sanguine Twin. The other drops from the fourth Long Pillar challenge past the mirror in north Meigu Lake, in case you haven't located it yet.

Why is bleed always so strong? I guess the entire concept of dealing damage, but also building a status bar on an enemy that deals even more damage when it reaches full, is a bit OP as ideas go. Anyone who's played Elden Ring for any length of time has likely experienced Reduvia and Rivers of Blood, most likely when Nerijus invaded and wiped out their health bar in the starting area.

Well, Phantom Blade Zero also has an extremely strong bleed weapon early in the game: Jagged Steel, which you get from the first boss you face (who also happens to be called Jagged Steel). During this boss fight, you'll experience the joys of bleed first hand while trying to block him, but this sword is well worth it:

• Its central weapon mechanic is Blood Blade, a stackable buff that increases bleed buildup and damage.
• At Level 5, it gets a special attack against guard-broken enemies which grants a Blood Blade stack.
• At Level 10 it gets more bleed buildup.
• At Level 15, you can charge a slash to build stacks of Blood Blade before unleashing them.
• At Level 20, it gets even more bleed buildup.

And this isn't mentioning its powered-up left trigger combo which unleashes a flurry of slashes that rapidly apply bleed buildup, basically a guaranteed bleed proc every time. A significant portion of Phantom Blade Zero's bosses are humans who are all susceptible to bleed, making it very strong early in the game.

But if you're thinking: surely it's not effective against all enemies? You'd be right. There are Puppets, Golden Bodies, and Phantom Bodies which bleed doesn't work on. Or at least it doesn't until you grab the Livingwood Talisman in the Village of Lu in a chest near the Smuggler's Tunnel, an accessory that makes bleed work on all of the above at 50% effectiveness.

You can also polish this accessory to improve that to 70%, so now you have a very powerful bleed weapon that can apply it to every enemy and boss in the game at almost full effectiveness. I'm about 30 hours in as I write this and even though I've experimented with various weapons, and have some dual-swords in my second slot, I'm still using Jagged Steel. It's just really damn strong, especially in terms of its offensive skills.

So, if you're looking for a weapon to make the early game easier in Phantom Blade Zero, invest in Jagged Steel—you won't regret it.

Whence the Weeping might seem like a sidequest you're supposed to complete in Phantom Blade Zero's first Weeping Creek Valley area, but it's actually a major quest that takes a significant portion of the game to finish. If you've just started and are here wondering if you've missed something: you haven't, and you don't need this guide right now.

It's also relatively straightforward—it's just that quest tracking isn't available for it until you progress further. I'll run through its steps below, but these will contain spoilers for how to access a later game region, so you might want to steer clear:

1. As you progress through the Crimson Forest (2nd region), you'll hear the weeping again, giving you a nav marker that coincides with the region boss, which provides a few more answers.

2. When you arrive in the Village of Lu (3rd region) and speak to Jewel about the weeping, she speculates that The Chord wants to tell you something, and you're directed to the northeast of Meigu Lake.

3. You'll have to progress through Pangzhen (4th region) and defeat its main boss in the west to get the Phantom Edge that unlocks the way to Meigu Lake via the north of the town.

4. In the northeast of Meigu Lake, you'll find a barrier that only the Illusory Pipa Phantom Edge can dispel—fixing it is a whole quest in itself, so see the linked guide for details.

5. Once fixed, dispel the barrier to enter the Mountain of Imprisonment region, progress to the region boss at the top of the mountain, and defeat it to complete the quest.

As mentioned, this will require significant progression through the game, but it's relatively straightforward and follows alongside the main track for the most part.

I spent a long time in Phantom Blade Zero searching for the Backstreet Courtyard Key, convinced it would unlock the inaccessible area where Old Man Gen's house is located, as well as the third acolyte scarecrow. Turns out, that gate doesn't lead to either.

If you're searching for that key with that in mind, you instead need to acquire the Flaming Mane phantom edge from the region boss and follow the main quest to repair it with Lei Dang, then use it to burn the barrier by the Pond of Fading Song bell where you fought Gu Wanyue, The Wailing Wraith. This leads around the back and lets you access both quest locations.

Now, if you're here because you're genuinely interested in the Backstreet Courtyard Key, you won't get it until you reach the Mountain of Imprisonment area. Speak to the couple near the Shrine Outer Gate, complete the Ledger of Atonement quest by finding the ledger in the caves below, and then speak to the woman there to start the Bai Xue quest, getting you the key. The location is mainly relevant to this specific quest and doesn't hold much value beyond it.

If you're wondering how to reach the Mountain of Imprisonment, you'll need to complete the Illusory Pipa quest first.

You'll need The Banyan's Heart in Phantom Blade Zero to unlock certain skills like Fluid Form Level 2, Quick Remedy, or Opening Strike.

You can get your first Banyan Heart towards the end of the Crimson Forest area, just after you activate the Parting Mists bell, after you fight Stone Fist Iron Fever—it's basically impossible to miss:

1. Drop down from the Parting Mists bell and head across to the island with the tree directly ahead of you.
2. Interact with it to be transported into The Banyan Tree's trial realm.

You'll have to defeat three waves of enemies, culminating in Jing Ye, the bleed bandit boss from earlier in the Crimson Forest. Similar to the Long Pillars, if you die, there is a bell you can use, and as with boss phases, if you complete a stage of the trial, it's done and you'll start at the next.

I genuinely think Jing Ye is the most annoying boss I've encountered so far. I recommend equipping the Cavalrybane accessory you can get in the Crimson Forest for more damage when he's mounted, plus the Shieldbreaker talisman if you found it in the Weeping Creek Valley to break his shield quicker. Other than that:

• Draw him away from the two other enemies who spawn.
• Dodge his bleed projectiles as blocking them still builds bleed.
• Use your Dread Axe Phantom Edge to smash his shield—as soon as he falls off his horse, charge a full one.

If you're still struggling, I've included my video of the boss above, but remember you can come back later, too. Once you defeat him, you'll get the Banyan Heart.

All other Banyan Tree locations

Getting your first Banyan Heart will also start The Heart of the Banyan collectible quest to find four more:

• The second Banyan Tree is in Pangzhen during its second chapter, near the Lion Dance Hall in the northwest.
• The third Banyan Tree is close to the start of the Mandate Encampment.
• The fourth Banyan Tree is on an island in Meigu Lake.
• The final tree is in the Mountain of Imprisonment on the main path through the region, though you'll need the Illusory Pipa to get here.

You can also buy Banyan Hearts from Quickhand Zhang for 100,000 at his den in the Village of Lu onwards. He seems to get a new heart for each new den you find, though this may be linked to completing his treasure hunts (which I did).

Hua, Deadly Betrothed is one of the first optional bosses in Phantom Blade Zero, below the Sha-Chi Tower in the Weeping Creek Valley, but you'll have to defeat her if you want to find a Flesh Lily for Yu'er.

The trickiest part of this fight is avoiding Hua's spider lilies, but here are some tips to defeat her, plus a video above of my successful run employing these strategies:

• Avoid her lilies and stay mobile: There are three types of lily in this fight:
  • Those that bloom periodically and when she attacks, before exploding.
  • Those that patrol the arena and explode when they all meet in one spot.
  • White lilies she fires out that track and stun you, letting her follow up with a red grab attack. These are the most dangerous, especially as she teleports to attack you after she fires them. Make some distance and either dodge or block them when you're sure she isn't attacking.

• Learn to counter her red grabs: This is Hua's deadliest attack, when she flashes red, grabs you and deals a lot of damage with a decapitating slash. If you're struggling to react, remember, red attacks are right bumper to parry, blue attacks are left, though you can just press both if it's less confusing. Hua also seems to attempt a grab if you get clipped by the red flying lilies, so watch out.

• Use the Dread Axe to extend your damage phase: After you stun Hua, you'll be able to safely damage her for a while, but you can extend your damage phase a bit by charging the Dread Axe Phantom Edge to its first level towards the end (until it pings blue) as this will knock her over.

• Prepare yourself: I recommend upgrading a weapon to Level 5 to unlock its ability. I used Jagged Steel (though bleed doesn't work on her), so use whatever's comfortable. Remember you can buy more upgrade materials from the outpost merchant. Also, make sure to upgrade your healing art and grab the Focus Pill medicine from the chest up the hill to the left (just after The Axemaster's Holding Cell bell). You'll have to use the axe to smash open the way.

• Remember the fundamentals: You can attack with X without it costing stamina, but when you stun her, you should use Y combos instead for extra damage. When your weapon is charged, remember to use LT to perform a special combo. Also, parry her attacks as much as possible, as this will retain your stamina for attacking, dodging, and blocking.

• Dodge her stamina draining attacks: She'll occasionally perform a downwards slam where she gives off a smoky black aura—this means her next attack will drain all your stamina, so it's better to dodge, especially as it summons a bunch of lilies which explode afterwards. Dodging, in general, is very useful in this fight.

It can be a tricky fight early on, but she doesn't have all that many combos, and her blue parriable attacks are quite predictable, coming at the end of her four hit sequence. The real key to this fight is making sure you don't get hit by the lilies by making space and being mindful of the arena, while also countering her deadly red grab attacks.

Once you beat her, you'll get the Scarlet Wraithblade weapon, which can also summon exploding lilies.

Finding a Flesh Lily for Yu'er is the first sidequest you'll encounter in Phantom Blade Zero, but you can't complete it until a few areas and bosses later.

You can find the Flesh Lily below the Sha-Chi tower, an area you reach after arriving at the outpost and beating Peng Meng. Specifically, it's accessible from the Valley Sha-Chi Tower 1st Floor bell when you arrive at the base of the tower, though you'll have to fight a boss to get it. Follow the video above, or:

1. From the Valley Sha-Chi Tower 1st Floor bell, ascend the stairs and then circle around the right side of the tower.
2. Drop down the hole at the back and slide down the long wooden ramp into the cavern filled with red spider lilies.
3. Turn left and head up the slope into the lily-filled clearing above.

When you arrive in the clearing, a cutscene will play, and you'll find yourself fighting Hua, Deadly Betrothed. She's relatively tricky, but this Hua boss guide offers more tips for defeating her, which will get you her powerful Scarlet Wraithblade. You'll also find the Twinned Flesh Lillies item on the corpse by the pavillion where she was standing at the start of the fight.

After you defeat Peng Meng, Yu'er appears next to Forge at the outpost, so head there to give her the lily to complete this stage of the quest. She'll offer you the other lily as a memento. When you reach the Thieves Camp in the Crimson Forest, you'll encounter Yu'er again, after which, her questline will continue.

The Gold-Masked One inside the Long Pillar in Phantom Blade Zero is a bit of an unconventional boss fight. Each of the pillar fights in the Bloodline Awakening quest is a challenge battle against this boss which teaches you different aspects of the game's combat.

The first battle is all about parrying, hence why it gives you the tip box in the top right. This fight is tricky because of its main gimmick:

• You can't damage The Gold-Masked One apart from after a parry or perfect dodge (a blue or red attack) or unless his Sha-Chi is broken.

Usually, in Phantom Blade Zero's boss fights, it pays to attack constantly, especially as regular attacks don't even cost Sha-Chi. But in this fight, your attacks won't do anything. Instead, you should:

1. Counter his red (perfect dodge) or blue (perfect parry) attacks and then attack after that to deplete his Sha-Chi. If you're struggling with reacting and hitting the right or left bumper on controller, just press both.
2. When it's depleted, deal as much damage as you can in the duration. I recommend using Jagged Steel since he's susceptible to bleed.
3. Rinse and repeat.

The video above shows the process, but this fight can be quite tricky early on because he has a lot of health and it's a battle of attrition. Make sure your weapon is as upgraded as much as it can be for the attempt, and have the best accessories you can equipped—I was using Quick Hand Pendant, Ancient Armor Fragment, Jewel's Knot, and Resonance Talisman, for increased one-hand damage, damage negation, HP, and Sha-Chi. But I came back to this fight later after I arrived in Pangzhen.

There's really no rush to beat The Gold-Masked One. As you progress, you'll get more HP, Sha-Chi, weapon upgrades, and the ability to polish accessories, increasing their buffs, which makes things easier. If you are intent on doing it when you reach it, though, be prepared for a long battle.

Once done, the reward is the Counterstrike Bracers, which increase damage dealt by 20% for two seconds after a parry, and you can also attempt the second Long Pillar challenge in the Crimson Forest.

Grand Theft Auto 6's NPCs are so incredibly complicated, it briefly sent the studio into a bit of a "horrifying" spin, requiring an entire team of writers and producers to be assembled just to handle the workload. This has since been doubly confirmed by the studio in a recent mega-preview from our friends at Edge:

"This same philosophy governs the streets," the preview reads, "Rather than relying chiefly on procedural systems to assemble interchangeable crowds, Rockstar established an entire Los Angeles-based team of writers, directors and producers devoted to making Leonida's NPCs more individually realised."

According to the feature, that meant creating an absurd number of animations: "The studio art-directed every [NPC], creating around 600,000 animations."

What's more, "these pedestrians are assigned personality traits that help determine how they respond: temperament, aggression, where they are, what they have seen, and how the player has behaved towards them. Different districts have their own demographic and professional textures."

As for what a "professional texture" actually is, Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson goes into more detail: "Who's going to be aggressive? How many people are going to go for a weapon? How many are going to test me?" Nelson says, repeating the same self affirmations I make daily in the mirror.

The preview continues: "The old GTA pedestrian, a kind of moving prop waiting to panic when the player points a gun, has here splintered into a kaleidoscopic range of possible reactions. Back on the sidewalk, that abstraction suddenly becomes practical. The man with the dog has decided that Jason's stare constitutes a test.

"He squares up, then unclips the leash from the animal's collar. Nelson turns and runs. The dog gives chase. A flock of pigeons bursts into the air. Finally, the animal loses interest and trots back to its owner. Jason slows to a walk, selects a pack of cigarettes from his inventory, lights one, takes a drag, and continues down the street."

Really, the way the preview puts it, GTA 6 seems so thoroughly complicated you could legitimately just sit there and people-watch for a bit: "On the opposite side of the road, Nelson spots an arrest taking place. A suspect is being cuffed by two police officers, who have left their vehicles unattended. He sneaks up to one, clicks the boot open, pulls out a shotgun and slings it onto his back, before walking on, leaving a puff of cigarette smoke curling in the air. We have been watching for three minutes."

Is this sort of immersive sim, top-end simulation particularly necessary in a videogame that, in its purest form, is about wildly driving vehicles and committing crimes? If you're Rockstar, clearly it is, and I can't say I'm not impressed by the amount of craft reportedly on display here. We'll see how it all holds up when millions of people are playing.

On console, that is—we're still waiting to hear about a GTA 6 PC launch date. Rumor has it that the wait won't be too long, but we're not holding our breath.

You can read Edge's GTA 6 feature story over at GamesRadar.

It is not hyperbole to say that GTA 6 is the most anticipated videogame of all time. That'll happen when one of the most acclaimed game developers of all time takes 13 years to finally put out a new game in one of the most popular series of all time.

That's a hell of a lot of pressure for the army of developers at Rockstar. In a conversation with our friends at Edge for the magazine's big inside look at GTA 6, Rockstar North head of development Aaron Garbut spoke about meeting the series' absurd standards.

"We can't just trot out something that's what people might expect, or that was the easy thing to do," he says. "We've not compromised on the scale, the detail, the interactivity, the story, the open world."

Despite the studio's famously secretive posture, Garbut says the team is very much aware of the galactic expectations, and deployed an illustrative metaphor to communicate how he thinks they've managed to meet them.

"I feel like we've built a pyramid on Everest."

While my mind instantly goes to an eventual GTA 6 mod that'll let me ride a giant pyramid down the biggest mountain in Leonida (will fake Florida have mountains?), I have little reason to doubt Garbut's claims here. Impressions, leaks, and Rockstar's own communications suggest that GTA 6 is doubling down on the systemic details that elevated Red Dead Redemption 2 from 'GTA with horses' to a crime-forward life sim.

That game's missions were Rockstar's familiar brand of organized crime, but the things you spent time doing between them were quite new for a mainstream game: Eating, drinking, grooming yourself, camping, browsing, and making small talk with locals. These actions often had some gameplay ramifications, but it was common to perform because it felt like the human thing to do.

Grand Theft Auto has experimented with these little human exercises for a long time—eating healthy in San Andreas, going on dates in GTA 4—but Rockstar's aims for GTA 6 sound like we'll be making little choices like this constantly. Maybe they'll end up being overboard for some, but I for one can't wait to set out on a mission and realize I need to stop for gas.

There's still no announced PC release date for GTA 6. Rumor has it that it won't be a long wait, but we'll believe it when we see it. Rockstar usually puts at least seven months between console and PC versions, and it took a year-and-a-half for GTA 5 to come to PC.

I knew Grand Theft Auto 6's map was going to be big, but I hadn't expected Rockstar to proclaim that it is, in fact, almost as big as the maps from its last three games combined. An absolute whopper of a feature in the latest Edge magazine revealed a little bit about the sheer scale of Leonida, and hoo-boy, is it a big one.

Vice City and its surrounding areas are said to be almost as big as Grand Theft Auto 4, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Red Dead Redemption 2 combined. Which, considering the size of the latter two, is saying something.

But as we all know, quantity does not necessarily mean quality, and boasts about the size of a videogame world are sometimes followed by empty, unexciting expanses. Rockstar seems keen to express that GTA 6's map is not just sprawling, but also dense.

Co-studio head Aaron Garbut told Edge that Grand Theft Auto 6 contains "an order of magnitude more interiors" than the developer's previous games, for a start. That's something I'm pretty excited about personally, as someone who delights in interior design and absolutely hates running head-first into fake doors like Wile E. Coyote barrelling into painted tunnels.

It's not just interiors that have been given a lot of love, though. "Every back alley is as densely detailed and interesting as the others," Garbut says. "You can go anywhere, any random location, and so many people have thought about that location."

The tepid reception to the scarce stretches of Grand Theft Auto 5's northern areas like Senora Desert informed the creation of Leonida's outer reaches, too, which gives me hope that even Leonida's more barren biomes will have plenty to offer.

Garbut says that even after years of development, there are still areas he's yet to explore. That sense of minute detail within such a vast landmass is the thing that has me most excited to poke around this fictional Florida—from soaking in every tongue-in-cheek parodied brand plastered across billboards, to the pockets of life that'll undoubtedly populate street corners and back alleys. If Leonida is as rich as Garbut describes, then I imagine I'll be spending an awful lot of time making note of every little touch.

As for when we can do that on PC, there's still no official word—only a rumor that the wait won't be long. We're not placing any bets at this point. A seven month gap between console and PC is typical for Rockstar, and GTA 5 took a year-and-a-half to make the jump.

While Grand Theft Auto 6 doesn't have a confirmed PC release date yet, we do know it's coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X & S on November 19. Now, we also know that the game file console gamers will need to download is going to be a very big boy indeed, boasting a file size even bigger than Red Dead Redemption 2.

Reportedly, Grand Theft Auto VI will clock in at a total of 210 GB on PlayStation 5. That's according to PlayStation Game Size on X, who unearths file sizes for upcoming console releases by snooping around the PS Store's backend. I'm sparing a thought for anyone with a creaky internet connection (though at least you can pre-load the game on consoles from November 12, one week earlier).

That 210 GB figure is enough to make your head spin, even if the fully downloaded game doesn't actually end up taking quite that much space on your SSD. That said, a game spread out more than a fifth of a 1 TB drive's total capacity definitely stings during the memory supply crisis.

For comparison's sake, GTA 6's download size is markedly bigger than the 115 GB of available space Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 required at launch. You won't find me tearing through DMZ, but I'm likely still going to have to do some SSD spring cleaning in the not too distant future if those rumours about a Q1 2027 PC release for GTA VI are to be believed (Personally, I think Lauren's prediction that we'll be waiting until at least November next year is more likely).

Currently on PC, Steam says you'll need 105 GB of available space for predecessor GTA V Enhanced. That same game takes up 105.3 GB on PS5. As for Red Dead Redemption 2, Steam recommends 150 GB of space, while the PS store recommends a minimum of 89.20 GB. Obviously, file sizes can fluctuate significantly between updates and bundled-in online modes. But still, based on these two examples alone, I may have to dig deep to find space on my PC for GTA 6.

The biggest game on my rig right now is Silent Hill: Townfall at 73.55 GB, while the biggest game on my Steam Deck is Baldur's Gate 3 at 148.24 GB. Beyond that, I'm much more one for indie darlings—which is just as well because James pointed out to me that GTA 6's file size is roughly equivalent to 3500 copies of Balatro, and 6000 copies of Animal Well. I dread to think just how many times those indie projects' production budgets Rockstar spent developing GTA 6…

Phantom Blade Zero's release is almost here, and the reviews are looking pretty positive—I've been playing it the last couple of weeks and it's definitely the best action game of the year, if not the past few years.

The release date for Phantom Blade Zero is October 28 or 29 depending on where you call home, but the exact time will vary. However, it is a simultaneous release around the globe:

• West Coast US: 7 pm PDT (October 28)
• East Coast US: 10 pm EDT (October 28)
• UK: 2 am GMT (October 29)
• Europe: 3 am CEST (October 29)
• Australia: 1 pm AEST (October 29)
• New Zealand: 3 pm NZDT (October 29)

If you're unsure whether you can run it, you can see the updated system requirements on the Steam page. The preload is also currently live, though it requires a pretty hefty storage footprint to install. The game itself is 135GB, though, so you'll probably want a headstart downloading it, unless your internet is more capable than mine.

Rockstar employees will hold a vote on union recognition over a two-week span in November that will perfectly bracket the studio's launch of the console version of Grand Theft Auto 6. If the vote carries in favor of the union, the IWGB Rockstar Game Workers Union will become the biggest game industry union in the UK, giving employees a voice on matters including pay and bonuses, overtime, redundancies, flexible working arrangements, and generative AI policies.

The terms of the recognition deal have been under negotiation between the union and Rockstar management since July, but unionization efforts have been underway for much longer. The process came under intense scrutiny in October 2025 when the studio fired 31 employees in what the IWGB claimed was "the most brazen act of union busting the games industry has ever seen." Rockstar alleged that the fired employees were leaking GTA 6 information in a public Discord; the matter is now before an employment tribunal in Scotland.

"This November, we have the chance to make gaming history not once but twice. As all our hard work, skill and creativity are experienced by GTA VI players for the first time, our voices will now be heard for the first time too," Rockstar Game Workers Union committee member Shanti Easton-Steel said.

"For me, this vote comes down to ensuring employees at Rockstar get honesty and openness surrounding the decisions that affect them. When management choices are kept hidden, we can't properly address issues like the gender pay gap, the uneven and ever-changing policies on overtime pay, or the concerns many co-workers hold around job security post-release. This is our moment to secure a window onto the decisions that shape our lives, and a seat at the table to improve them. I'm immensely proud of the games Rockstar gives its fans—I want to be equally proud of the voice Rockstar gives its staff."

We're proud to share that in a few weeks' time, Rockstar staff will get to have their own say over union recognition. From pay and pensions to parental leave and overtime, this recognition agreement is a chance for workers to be involved in the decisions that shape their lives.

— @rsgworkersunion.bsky.social (@rsgworkersunion.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-10-27T22:22:57.195Z

"For anyone who cares about the games industry or the people who keep it running, this vote is just as historic as the game release. But for workers at Rockstar, it is so much more personal: it is fundamentally a choice about whether you get to have a say in how your day-to-day life is organised," IWGB Union president Alex Marshall added.

The vote to recognize the union will run November 12-26, the week leading up, and then the week after, GTA 6's November 19 launch on consoles. Rockstar hasn't commented on the looming vote, but Rockstar head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe indicated in Bloomberg's recent look at the making of GTA that the studio won't fight it: "We go where the team goes. So if they want a union, they will have a union."

More unofficial but undoubtedly very cool Mass Effect music is on the way: The day after Austin Wintory shared 20 minutes of music he wrote as part of a "serious conversation" with BioWare and Electronic Arts about scoring Mass Effect 5, composer Sam Hulick says he plans to release a "re-scored" version of the leaked Mass Effect: Universe trailer with his own music, which he hopes to have ready in time for N7 Day.

Hulick, for the record, knows Mass Effect well: He composed music for all three games in the Mass Effect trilogy, including this one, co-written with Clint Mansell, which you may be familiar with.

I'm not crying, you're crying

"Absolutely heartbroken over the end of an era," Hulick wrote on Bluesky when EA closed BioWare. "I hope all the talented and wonderful folks at BioWare land on their feet and keep working on incredible games. I loved every minute of working with you on the Mass Effect trilogy."

Hulick also expressed support for the Save Mass Effect petition, although he went further to state that the real issue isn't the game but all the people who were put out of work: "Even if EA licensed the IP, that doesn't solve anything for them. Someone with a lotta cash would have to license it AND hire the team."

One thing about #SaveMassEffect: What really sucks & cannot be undone is all the folks at BioWare who lost their jobs. Even if EA licensed the IP, that doesn't solve anything for them. 😕 Someone with a lotta cash would have to license it AND hire the team.

— @samhulick.com (@samhulick.com.bsky.social) 2026-10-27T21:12:27.713Z

So when the Mass Effect 5 trailer leaked, Hulick went to work. The music in the trailer is pretty decent in its own right, in a generic sort of 'Mass Effect hype teaser' way, but Hulick has bigger ideas. He first teased his music for the trailer on Patreon, and then revealed on Bluesky that we're all going to get to enjoy it when he's finished.

"My plan is to release the re-scored Mass Effect Universe trailer for N7 Day," Hulick wrote. "A little tight, since I'm a bit busy pitching for a new game, but I'll see what I can do! I don't wanna rush it, and I want it to properly represent my musical vision for MEU."

Three minutes of tunes does not a full soundtrack make, but I'm excited about this anyway. The Mass Effect soundtracks are among my favorites, and while I would've loved to hear Wintory's take on the series—the man won a Grammy award, back before they started handing them out specifically for games—Hulick clearly has ideas too, and given his long history with the series, I want to hear 'em.

Alright. My plan is to release the re-scored Mass Effect Universe trailer for N7 Day. A little tight, since I'm a bit busy pitching for a new game, but I'll see what I can do! I don't wanna rush it, and I want it to properly represent my musical vision for MEU.

— @samhulick.com (@samhulick.com.bsky.social) 2026-10-27T21:12:27.647Z

N7 Day, as always, is November 7, which this year is a Saturday. That means I won't be around to talk about Hulick's take on the Mass Effect: Universe trailer if he's able to release it on schedule, but if nobody else does, you better believe I'm going to be writing about it on Monday.

If you haven't already seen the leaked Mass Effect: Universe teaser, here you go:

At just about 15 hours into Phantom Blade Zero, I've changed out my primary weapons more times than I do in an entire Souls campaign. I quickly dropped my starter sword for a pair of dual blades and a jagged weapon that chunks damage off my enemies in showers of blood. But I didn't stick with either for long. Soon I was running around with a two-handed blade taller than my martial arts hero Soul, which sprouts a trail of magical, energy-sapping flowers with every swing. It shares a moveset with another two-handed giant that absorbs life with each hit. But I don't have time to use either one: I'm already smitten with my new twin blades, one of which I can send spinning in a circle around me like a protective Beyblade.

Somehow I haven't even touched the weapon that I took off a crazed monk that turns Soul into a drunken boxer. But I'm sure I'll have time: apparently I'm less than a third(!) of the way through a game that's far, far bigger than I anticipated when I played a chunk of it last year.

For the most part, Phantom Blade Zero's epic ambition is exciting—PC Gamer senior guides writer Sean Martin promises me that I've got about a hundred thrilling boss fights left to come. Its first dozen hours also illustrate the dangers of a long-in-development game ballooning in scope.

House of flying phrases

While playing Phantom Blade Zero I've been thinking a lot about this season's other big action game, which also spent more than half a decade in development: Capcom's revival of Onimusha. That game wastes little time in introducing its protagonist Miyamoto Musashi or the forces he'll be up again. He's brash and headstrong, taunting a group of samurai after whipping up on their master—then leading them on a Looney Tunes-style chase when there are too many to fight at once. The game punctures this silly tone shortly after introducing Musashi's rival, Ganryu, when both are murdered by demonic Genma.

Musashi's saved when he's given an oni gauntlet in the afterlife and sent back to the land of the living to harness souls with it; the rest of the game is about him deciding who and what he fights for. It's about that personal journey first and foremost, with the machinations of the game's villain spurring him along—and fantastic acting and facial motion capture do a ton of the work to make the story compelling.

In Phantom Blade Zero, by contrast, I've already lost track of the tangled web of characters, relationships, betrayals and motivations with dozens of hours to go. I've seen (and played) flashbacks to Soul's childhood, teenage years, and recent past; I've watched cutscenes about his enemy doing some Machiavellian scheming with another guy I can't name; I've read dozens of cryptic messages scattered throughout each zone that are meant to explain more about why I'm fighting puppets, dudes whose bodies have "transcended" into pure energy, monks who coat their bodies in hardened gold, and mean dogs. (Actually, nothing has explained the dogs yet).

I appreciate PBZ's attempt to start in media res and give Soul a sense of urgency—we flash back to him being stabbed through the heart, then shortly after flash forward to him getting a temporary fake heart that will fail on him in 66 days. But the flashbacks and bits of incidental storytelling often feel like infodumps from someone who's spent years writing a massive story bible and has lived with the whole thing in their head for so long that they don't realize how hard it is to follow when you're coming in with zero context.

Take these flowers, Phantom Blade Zero's way of doling out health upgrades. You'll find them scattered around each area, and finding all of them (usually around 3-6) will net you about 10% more health. Each plays 30 seconds or so of dialogue, and the writing's often vague references to characters and events I've never witnessed mostly makes me want to mash the skip button. We're far from the evocative audio vignettes of BioShock, here.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword has some plenty forgettable sidequests, too, but it also features a number of quests that reinterpret Japanese fables written by Lady Murasaki, the author of The Tale of Genji. These sidequests are great, embellished with unique art that inspired me to read more Japanese mythology. Like Onimusha's main story, they're simple and straightforward, but with just enough flair to make them compelling.

So far Phantom Blade Zero is a lot more convoluted than my favorite wuxia films, with small casts of characters and straightforward motivations—a love story, a "save the small town from a corrupt official" story, a ghost story. But when its epic sweep means I get to play with an absolutely luxurious variety of weapons, I'm not exactly heartbroken that the story is less than riveting.

Ways of the sword

In Onimusha: Way of the Sword, I started the game with sword, and I ended the game with sword. At no point in between did I wield anything but sword.

This is not a complaint. I'm not sure another videogame has done sword better than Onimusha frankly ever—the physicality of it, the dance between blocks, deflects and parries, the lightning strike of an issen—the animations and weighty physics in Onimusha combine to create a game rich in sensory feedback even with none of the complex combos of, say, Devil May Cry.

The old Capcom playbook in that vein of character action game is to give you a handful of weapons, each with a lengthy list of button inputs that create slightly different attacks; stringing them together is visually satisfying and keeps your combo counter ticking up and up. Modern Soulslikes offer way more weapons, but at the expense of that rich variety—each weapon type has a couple unique animations to its name, and that's it.

Phantom Blade Zero blends those two approaches, with the weapon variety of a modern action RPG but the feel and combo mad flourishes of 2000s character action games. Each of Soul's weapons has a fairly limited basic combo string, but also wholly unique mechanic that impacts how you use it in a fight. And each weapon has an upgrade path that adds one or two new actions to its repertoire.

The Outlaw Warblade, one of those massive two-handed swords I mentioned at the start, initially drains enemy health with basic attacks, and lets you convert your own health into recoverable damage to perform enhanced guard-breaking attacks. After five upgrades, it gains a new attack that lets you tank damage while you charge it up and instantly restores a chunk of HP if you land the hit. After 15 upgrades, it grants you an "emergency shield" for continuously sapping your own health, rewarding living on the edge.

Like Onimusha, Phantom Blade Zero's boss fights are definitely its highlights, with the arena designs and one-off mocapped stunts making it clear why this game took so long to make. The big difference between the two, though, is how much world PBZ has in and around those fights. So far I've found progression a bit more linear than I hoped, with levels that are Dark Souls-esque but with fewer surprising paths linking back to previous areas. Still, they're peppered with diversions that are closed off until you acquire certain weapons, and lots of overlooks and out-of-reach treasures that taunt you to double-check for routes you might have missed.

It's a way, way more engaging way to spend time between fights than what Onimusha offered in its hub world of Kyoto, and I appreciate that Phantom Blade Zero keeps its map very vague—there's no compass waypoint telling me where to go for a quest. So far the storytelling around these quests has been barebones, but at least I'm not turning my brain off and following an arrow to each and every one.

Instead of designing Phantom Blade's world around paths you'll tread and retread and enemy placements you'll learn to carve your way through, S-Game seems to have opted to craft a 50-hour game by buckling down and making so much stuff. How is it this big without a timesuck of an open world or infinite respawning fodder or roguelike gimmicks? Because it may be the most maximalist action game of its type we've ever seen, from its torrent of text notes to its luxurious animations. Even when it doesn't all work, it's hard not to be won over by a game that goes this all-out.

We are just three weeks out from the release of Grand Theft Auto 6, which you can tell because it has cleared the release calendar around it like the Chicxulub crater. Ahead of the big day, our friends at Edge magazine visited Rockstar's Edinburgh development HQ to chat with the studio's leaders and put their eyes on GTA 6 in action. That's right folks, it's officially happening. This thing is officially almost a videogame you can play.

The result? The 16-page cover story coming in Edge #430, on sale October 29. They've really been cooking over there, bringing us a bunch of exclusive new imagery, interviews with Rockstar head honchos, and a special gatefold cover with artwork of Jason and Lucia, about whom I already have very strong feelings.

If you're in the UK, you're in luck, because you can pick up the GTA 6 special edition free, plus 13 issues of Edge at 38% off the price you'd pay at the newsstand if you subscribe at this link.

Outside the UK? Don't fret, because new subs will get a free digital edition of the GTA 6 special issue if you subscribe here.

And wherever you are, the full 16-page feature will drop here for everyone to read for free on October 29, coinciding with the release of the magazine.

It's lavish, lovely, and in-depth—so all very Edge, and if you're one of the approximately 8 billion people who are desperate to know more about the most-anticipated game in Rockstar's history (or, well, just history in general, probably), you're gonna want to feast your eyes on it.

Composer Austin Wintory (Journey, Stray Gods, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate) just shared 20 minutes of music he wrote as a sort of audition/starting point for the score of Mass Effect 5, aka. Mass Effect: Universe. According to Wintory, he had been in "serious conversation" with BioWare and EA to provide the game's soundtrack.

To be clear: This was not music that was 100% slated to appear in the game, but it sounds like Wintory was on the shortest of shortlists for the job. The effective EP is presented as "My Mass Effect 5 early musical drafts" and "Mass Effect: Universe, the music that might have been."

Wintory wrote that he wanted to "surprise [EA and BioWare] with an elaborate production" in 2025, and that the music was recorded with "synths, vocals, and a large orchestra here in LA." Noting that he didn't have story details for the in-development game, Wintory came up with speculative themes and track titles based on the series' past.

And I really don't know how to process that this thing whips ass. Wintory had a killer vision with the project: "My suggestion was to treat the original game's masterful Jack Wall / Sam Hulick score as a starting point," he wrote, "And to build on it from there with deeper use of physical, analog synths and a more tightly interwoven use of the orchestra. But a love letter first and foremost."

God damn it. Mass Effect had great music throughout the series, but ME1's more synth-heavy approach has always been my favorite. Wintory still makes great use of the orchestra, but the synths are back, baby. Balance has been restored. This stuff gave me chills.

Both versions of main theme candidate "The Legacy of Shepard" are favorites for me, but I'd also like to shout out the more up-tempo, combat-ready "Hold the Line." Wintory was onto something here, and it also clearly meant a great deal to the composer. Wintory described this as a "dream project" and "white whale." I wish we could have heard the whole OST.

"We are Mass Effect," the fan group behind a currently 224,000 signature Change.org petition seeking to secure the series' future, has rented out digital billboard space in New York's Times Square to promote the effort.

The group shared a video of the billboard in the wild on X, "The Everything App." Every hour at 35 minutes past the hour, the screen at 1560 Broadway shows a 15-second motion graphic message. Over a planetary vista reminiscent of Mass Effect 1's start screen, we get a distinctive N7 red stripe and the message "Keelah si'yah, #SaveMassEffect" in the series' go-to "Korataki" font. Yes, today is when I too learned that Mass Effect used a commercially-available font called "Korataki" for its logo and in-game text. I kinda want to write all my drafts in it now.

"Keelah si'yah" is a phrase from the Quarian language in the games. Continuing today's theme of new discoveries about a series I've spent, like, 1,000 hours playing over 20 years, I learned that this language is called "Khellish." The phrase means "by the homeworld I hope to find one day," not to be confused with "keelah se'lai" or "by the homeworld I hope to see one day." I was more familiar with the latter from the games.

When we checked in on #SaveMassEffect yesterday, it was still at 180,000 signatures, so pretty impressive momentum still. The petition's demands are fairly broad: A commitment of any kind by EA to continue the series in videogame form (not just the Amazon TV series still in development), either internally or by licensing to another party.

I know my ideal solution would be spinning off BioWare, either as an independent (potentially government-supported) concern, or by selling it to a new corporate owner. The studio's leaked trailer and reported vision for the canceled Mass Effect Universe struck me as both bold (600 years in the future but still tracking choices from the original trilogy) yet intriguingly specific (a galactic spy thriller). It reminds me of Joplin, the heist and intrigue-focused original pitch for Dragon Age 4 that was canceled in favor of Anthem.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the cost of a Times Square billboard activation like this. Plug Talk Media lists its single day, 15-second share price as $1,200-$3,500 as a frame of reference. A chunk of change, to be sure, but pretty doable split multiple ways.

As reported by IGN, veteran actors Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer, who voiced the female and male Commanders Shepard in Mass Effect, respectively, directly addressed fans of the series in an October 21 Instagram Live. The two reflected on BioWare, and commiserated over its tragic fate. Here are some highlights from each I pulled from the stream:

Both actors' reactions strike me as so characteristic of their respective backgrounds: Hale is one of the voices of videogames (not to diminish Meer's own extensive resume). She jumped to BioWare's place in the industry and its current crisis. Meer, a standby of the Edmonton theater and improv scene, fixated on the closure's effects on this city he clearly loves.

Both are 100% correct about the collective joy and meaning people found in BioWare's work. That's something private equity can't take from us⁠—at least not with current technology.

As for Hale's optimism regarding the rights and potential future of the franchise, well, I Want To Believe. Not to obnoxiously needle what seemed like an offhand idea, but I don't think Kickstarter's walking through that door. Aside from Double Fine's Broken Age and the utterly baffling case of Star Citizen, many gaming crowdfunding successes⁠—like Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2⁠—still required further, traditional investment to go gold. BioWare and/or its IP would be orders of magnitude more expensive.

There's also precedent to look back on: EA has not done anything with Ultima in over 20 years. Many people don't realize this series was foundational to the development of both Japanese and Western-style RPGs, as EA's poor stewardship has allowed it to almost completely fade from our collective memory.

But I think we're all still waiting on a hero, a man on horseback, and the only riders with deep enough pockets to intervene here are billionaires, other companies on the scale of EA, or the state. With other publicly-traded companies, you'd risk replicating what BioWare went through under EA. I would love it if the Canadian government stepped in, nationalized BioWare, what have you, but it feels like a pipe dream.

The only semi-plausible happy ending I can picture looks like what happened to The Onion: A benevolent/eccentric super-rich guy steps in to save the day with little concern for profitability. Does anyone know one who enjoys RPGs (or immersive sims, for that matter)?

Last week, the other shoe dropped for legendary RPG studio BioWare: shortly after EA's acquisition by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and investment firms Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the gaming giant shut down BioWare and canceled Mass Effect 5.

Fans have spent the intervening days combing through the detritus of the next game in the series' leaked remains, and some have even signed a change.org petition to save the series. Right now, that #SaveMassEffect petition has hit over 180,000 verified signatures.

Notably it does not call for EA to walk back its decision to shut down BioWare. Instead, it's about keeping the Mass Effect series going: "We are urgently petitioning EA to take decisive action by committing to the continued development of Mass Effect," Joe Smith's plea reads. "Alternatively, EA could consider licensing the Mass Effect intellectual property to another studio that shares the passion and vision to keep it alive and allow it to flourish anew."

Of course, EA is not beholden to the demands of a digital petition—the chances that this will inspire a revolution of the heart throughout the industry's C-suites are not high. One could argue that, if the publisher held the legacy of Mass Effect or, indeed, the computer RPG itself as a priority, it would not have shut down BioWare in the first place. But this petition has proven a lightning rod of enthusiasm for fans of the series, who are sharing their memories of the games along with their signatures.

"You’re gonna have to pry Garrus from my cold dead hands," wrote Savannah. Another from Joe reads, "My wife and I absolutely love the Mass Effect series. We’ve had so many good times together sharing Commander Shepard's story over the years. It really devastated both of us when we heard that BioWare is done and, in turn, Mass Effect 5 wasn’t going to happen." Austin wrote: "The trilogy and even silly Andromeda has made a permanent impact on my life. I’ve been playing for 13 years."

While it's hard to imagine EA doing a 180 on this, it's also hard to imagine Mass Effect staying down for good (even if that might be where we're headed). Maybe Canada's New Democratic Party leader Avi Lewis has the right idea, and BioWare should be publicly funded for the collective good. Either way, the immediate, broader future for games made under the EA banner looks a mite grim.

The more information that dribbles out from BioWare's cancelled Mass Effect game, the sadder I feel about the whole sorry situation. We've already seen an in-engine trailer that introduced a new protagonist and reintroduced Liara T'Soni, and we've heard that the game was set in a 'galactic Cold War' that combined all three of Mass Effect 3's possible endings. Now, it seems the new Mass Effect would also have had a sophisticated system for dealing with the choices players made in the original trilogy.

This is according to Mass Effect's Franchise Technical Director Romain Toutain, who ran a Twitch stream during which he provided commentary on the recently leaked trailer, offering some insight into the game that trailer was supposed to reveal (via Kotaku). Although the stream was in French, a clip was posted on Bluesky by user @loustica-lucia, who added English subtitles to Toutain's commentary.

During his stream, Toutain mentions that BioWare was working on a novel way to account for the many choices players made while playing the Mass Effect trilogy, pointing out that "all of the choices made in the first Mass Effect games were taking into account."

Indeed, this is partly the reason behind the cancelled successor's name as shown in the leaked internal trailer. "One of the reasons why it was called Mass Effect Universe is that you had so many choices that you could plug your saves together to create parallel universes." Toutain quickly clarifies that his explanation is "to keep it simple," adding "It's not exactly how it worked. You had different timelines, basically. You could almost generate timelines, kinda like Zero Time Dilemma."

It sounds like a significantly more complex version of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's choice import system. Indeed, Toutain goes on to explain that "everything was stateful" in reference to Universe's tech, and BioWare had a system that let them pause the game and ask a "system that solved logical equations" about the game state and the possible consequences of choices being made by the player. "'Is this valid? And if it isn't valid, what conditions must be met for it to be valid for the game to set these conditions? And if the content doesn't exist, then we know the content doesn't exist, so we'll either have to create another branch, either that, or we know we have to create the content.'"

Toutain then cites an example: "So, if you killed a guy and you needed that guy for your mission, the game will make sure you can complete that mission. Or, if that's what the designers have decided, well, no, the mission's failed because you killed that guy. Or else, something that was bound to happen doesn't happen just so that a path remains open, so that you can get [around] the problem."

According to Toutain, the ultimate goal of the next Mass Effect was to give players "absolute autonomy". How well these ideas would have worked in practice is another matter, of course. But it certainly seems that BioWare had some ambitious plans that reached beyond the scope of the original trilogy, and it's a darn shame that we'll never know how they would have shaken out.

It seems like there's a new slightly-humorous-for-its-incongruity collab between game devs every other week at this point, and the latest in this sacred lineage is a team-up between Super Meat Boy 3D and Mouse: P.I. For Hire.

The latter game's titular mouse detective has been squished into a cube-like shape and sent to navigate a hellish labyrinth full of sawblades for the rest of his miserable existence. Oh, and the screen goes all black-and-white when you play as him, just like the FPS he comes from.

This might all seem downstream of cynical money devourers like Fortnite, but at least these games share something in both being indie(ish) cartoony pastiches with a gore-slick twist. Besides, Meat Boy is an OG when it comes to invasions of strangers' videogames.

You could play as him in the Bit.Trip games, and in turn CommanderVideo cameoed in Super Meat Boy. If you're too Gen A to understand a single word I just said about the halcyon days of 2010s indie gaming, that's okay. I'll just go lay down and die.

But if you want to jump up and die, spectacularly and repeatedly, that's what Super Meat Boy 3D is for. PC Gamer Australian Editor Shaun Prescott wasn't exactly head over heels for it in his impressions—he said it had "no vibe," lacking the skeezy-yet-tasteful tastelessness of Edmund McMillen's touch—but still felt pretty good as far its running and jumping and exploding were concerned. Seems like that's enough for some, as the game currently sits at a Very Positive rating on Steam.

Meanwhile, contributor Phil Iwaniuk said Mouse: P.I. For Hire was a "bona fide classic" in his 86% review for Mouse, adding that there's more to it than "just an eye-grabbing art style." Normally these crossovers go both ways to some extent, but I'm not sure how Super Meat Boy would fit into a noir detective story. Cause of death: giant sawblade? Seems pretty open-and-shut.

Electronic Arts shuttered BioWare earlier this week, and that sucked. A concept trailer for the Mass Effect game the studio had in development subsequently leaked, and that made everyone feel even worse because—keeping in mind that it was an early-development concept piece—it looked really good.

YouTuber Dantics has now revealed more about what BioWare was actually working on, which he claims to be aware of because he was part of the Mass Effect community council, meaning he "saw what BioWare was building, and provided feedback during development."

We haven't directly confirmed Dantics' role on the council, although others on social media have vouched for him, and BioWare community councils are definitely a real thing: The studio has referenced them in past updates, and they can also be seen in credits for games including Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Members of the ME5 council aren't known, but Mass Effect veteran Michael Gamble, the project lead on the next game, follows Dantics on X.

So, suitably caveated: Dantics said in a post on X that the next Mass Effect game was set 600 years after the Reaper War, and would put players in the role of a customizable N7 agent who would be "a cross between John Wick and James Bond." The galaxy in this future timeline was divided into three major factions: Humans, Batarians, Krogan, and others in one alliance, the "Council Races"—Asari, Salarians, and Turians—forming the second bloc, and the Geth emerging as the galaxy's third superpower. Instead of an existential crisis like the Reaper invasion, the new game would take place amidst a "galactic Cold War."

Dantics also said there would be connections between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, that there would be "brutal close-range executions"—certainly something I want from my heroic space opera RPGs—that "romance wasn't being sanitized," which in the wake of Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 I assume means the full monty, and that Liara would return as a powerful Asari matriarch.

In a separate video, Dantics said the new game was being designed to accommodate all three Mass Effect endings, rather than committing to one of them as canon: 600 years into the future, the Reapers are "outdated tech," and thus not nearly the danger they were back in Shepard's day, and advances in cybernetics, which would be in common use, fit the synthesis ending. And if your Shepard opted to just blow everything up and survived the war, well, he didn't survive the passage of 600 years, although his "legacy" would have lived on.

I'm always a little iffy on fictional settings that extend themselves centuries into the past or future, and yet don't seem to meaningfully change: It bugged me in KOTOR, and it bugs me here. 600 years is a long time, but everyone's still walking around wearing the same clothes, shooting the same guns, and flying the same ships. Six centuries of technological evolution, and what did we get? The Normandy with aftermarket ground effects.

(Forgive the resolution, the trailer is only 720p.)

Anyway, with that off my chest, Dantics' rundown of BioWare's plan for the game sounds pretty great: Similar enough to the Shepard trilogy to bring back fans put off by the poisoned well of Mass Effect: Andromeda, yet distant enough to enable BioWare to do new things. Not all that terribly new, obviously: There's big trouble in the shadowy corners of the cosmos and we're sending our best super-shooter to clean it up (with a little help from his friends), well, that's just Mass Effect. But Mass Effect is what we want, and sometimes you just have to admit that 'more' is good enough.

Alas, it's almost certain there will be no more. Unless EA is willing to offload the Mass Effect property to someone (the government of Canada, perhaps?)—and at this point it's shown no interest in doing so—then this is as close as we'll ever get to it.

One of the big topics of conversation around Onimusha: Way of the Sword when it released last month—and even before that, when Capcom first put out a demo of the game—was whether it was too easy. Viral clips of early game enemies standing around doing nothing gave the impression of a woefully easy game for action fans coming from the likes of Sekiro, Nioh or Ninja Gaiden. Once I played the full game, I found those fears mostly unfounded, but it's true that Onimusha's basic enemies pose little threat compared to its bosses, and mostly serve as fodder for you to cut through as you explore.

Way of the Sword's harder difficulty option being locked behind beating the campaign didn't necessarily endear the game to hardcore action players, either, so I'm not shocked that one of the most popular downloads on the game's Nexusmods page is one that amps up enemy aggression.

But I still mostly loved Onimusha, and didn't find myself craving the brutal difficulty of Sekiro or Nioh while I was playing it. With more than a month of hindsight to see how players have studied the blade, Capcom also seems pretty happy with the level of challenge it settled on.

"We've been looking at the data that comes back from people playing, so we can see where people are struggling and how they're progressing through the game. What we've seen in the trends in the data is that it's close to what we set out to achieve, in terms of difficulty," director Satoru Nihei said in an interview with PC Gamer.

Nihei elaborated that Capcom has observed players being able to progress through the story, but not entirely without friction.

"There are points where they do stumble, they do die, they do get defeated. But they're able to overcome that and progress. That was what we set out to achieve in terms of pitching the difficulty for the game: We wanted players to be able to progress through the story, but also have some challenge to it, so they get a sense of satisfaction from defeating enemies. It was never an intention for this game to be a particularly difficult game, like those other games you mentioned. We think it's hit the right spot in terms of the difficulty, in terms of where we wanted to place it."

My biggest criticism of Way of the Sword was its length, rather than its level of challenge. Its swordplay feels so good that I don't mind being able to run into a group of hapless enemies milling around the hub world of Kyoto and cut them down in a few seconds, but I did tire of Kyoto's generic sidequests, samey streets and how many times the game ultimately trotted out repeats of some of its boss fights.

Nihei said that Capcom has noted that feedback from other players, too. Ultimately the size of the game came from the priorities the dev team set out to meet early in development.

"We really wanted to have a game that was around the 20 hour mark. We didn't want to have a title that would be too small, but also looking at open world games that are 40 hours-plus, we didn't want to drag it out to that extent. So from the beginning there was this clear goal of … a mostly linear experience, and then we have the exploration elements for people who want to engage with them. That was what we set out to shoot for in terms of giving players enough volume to enjoy."

As for how many times you fight bosses like Byakue and Dohatsu-ten?

"We understand that some people might find fighting the same bosses to be a little draining, and it would've obviously been nice for us to be able to make a greater variety of bosses," Nihei said. "But also, at Capcom we want to make these very engaging, fun encounters that people can enjoy fighting again and again and again, so that was what we were aiming for when we created those bosses. But we've definitely heard the feedback."

The closure of BioWare is a tremendous loss, not just for gamers but for Canada: The Edmonton-based studio was named one of the country's best places to work multiple times over the years, even after the Electronic Arts acquisition that ultimately spelled its doom. It's not entirely surprising, then, that its shutdown caught the attention of one of the country's top politicians, who had some harsh words for Electronic Arts about it.

"This is private equity, this is what it does. Buy up businesses, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for short-term profit," Avi Lewis, leader of the New Democratic Party—traditionally Canada's third-largest political party, although it's run aground a bit over the past several years—wrote on social media.

"The developers at BioWare know how to run the studio. They know how to make the games we all love. They should be given the first opportunity—and the federal support—to buy it and run it themselves. And if we want to avoid the Mass Effect effect in Canada, we should be keeping private equity out, not welcoming it in."

The NDP are a center-left party, although the ol' Overton window has resulted in a more centrist style in recent years—a drift Lewis was elected specifically to correct. He's been fairly forceful on that front, speaking out in support of anti-fascist causes and calling for the nationalization of vital industries in Canada that have been swallowed up by larger international interests. Predictably, that led some of his followers to jokingly (I think) call for BioWare to be nationalized.

This is private equity, this is what it does.Buy up businesses, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for short-term profit.www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...

— @avilewis.ca (@avilewis.ca.bsky.social) 2026-10-22T21:26:28.216Z

While the "Mass Effect effect" line is a bit of a clunker, Lewis showed off his gamer cred in response to an inquiry on X: When asked who he romanced in Mass Effect 2, he replied, "If I'm honest, I'm a Mass Effect 1 on the PS3 type of guy."

Onimusha: Way of the Sword has received universal praise for its combat animations, which somehow manage to look natural and fluid no matter what angle or direction hero Miyamoto Musashi has to swing his sword to parry an incoming blow. In a post-launch interview, I asked Capcom how—beyond doing a ton of work across Onimusha's lengthy development—they managed to raise the bar for this sort of action game.

"Starting the project six years ago, we felt it was important to have that detail to sell the power and the excitement of the action, so it's something we really focused on," said director Satoru Nihei.

"Even at that starting point, we knew it was something that Capcom, as a company, have as a great strength: We have a lot of assets and tech available to us that allow us to create these varieties of actions. That's something we really felt we could leverage to make the game really stand out that a lot of other places can't really copy. On top of producing a lot of animations and motion capture, we have to give a lot of credit to the programmers for taking that data and putting it in a form that we can have them make these very smooth transitions, with these physics-based calculations, to go from one animation to another. It was a big team effort in getting the animations to look how they do."

PC Gamer actually got a behind-the-scenes look at that process when we traveled to Osaka this summer to see Onimusha: Way of the Sword wrapping up development.

The effort put into Onimusha's animations is even more impressive within the scope of the final game and its roster of intricately choreographed boss fights. Despite being the third of Capcom's three big releases this year, following Resident Evil: Requiem and Pragmata, Onimusha features some fancy samurai dismemberment tech new to the publisher's in-house game engine. Rather than factoring into the more scripted boss fights, it comes into play when Musashi chops weaker enemies into pieces with dramatic finishers like the lightning fast Issen strike.

"One particular piece of technology that was added specifically for this title that we couldn't have done before is what we call the dynamic dismemberment system," Nihei said. "If you slash enemies with certain attacks they get cut in the exact path that a sword passes through. While that's something that has been done in the past in other games, one of the challenges and things we built on that was brand new with Onimusha was having that happen along with enemies still being animated as they're dying and dropping.

"In lots of other games you'd cut them, they'd kind of freeze when you do the cut and then fall apart. We had to have the programmers add to RE Engine to be able to enable that to really sell the impact of moves like the Issen. That was something brand new added to the engine."

This isn't the first time Nihei has talked about Onimusha's dismemberment system, but I followed up by contrasting it with other action games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which go a bit more freeform with their chopping. Nihei said that the Onimusha team knew they didn't want to go that route even early in development.

"In other games where you have that ability to cut up anything—just because of the tempo and style of game we wanted to make, it wasn't something we considered for Onimusha. Choosing exactly which direction and how you want to cut, we didn't think it was a good match for this particular title. Rather, we wanted to have something that happened reactively to how you're playing, to show off the power of the abilities."

Now that Onimusha's dynamic dismemberments are bedded into RE Engine, I hope they'll show up in Capcom's future games. Surely next time Leon blows a zombie in half with a shotgun its guts will be slipping and sliding all over the place.

The day after the closure of BioWare and cancellation of the next Mass Effect game, a purported trailer for Mass Effect: Universe has surfaced on Reddit. The authenticity of the trailer is unknown at this point, but at the very least it sure looks legit.

Straight to it, here's the video:

Man, that looks like Mass Effect—and sounds like it, too. The music is right, and at least two PC Gamer employees are pretty sure that's Liara's actual voice. Shepard's out, but the new guy seems suitably Shepard-like, although I can't help but notice the absence of the N7 logo on his uniform. Maybe the new guy was meant to be a rawer, rougher kind of troubleshooter—more of a housecleaner than a world-saver—or perhaps the ascent to the rank was meant to be part of the character's progression, which would've been cool.

There are no obvious AI telltales here, at least none that I can see, and adding to the trailer's "real deal" potential, a redditor claiming to be an EA employee said yesterday that a trailer for the new game had been produced and suggested that it was not as early in the development process as was widely believed.

Not long after the trailer came to light, Jason Schreier of Bloomberg said on Bluesky that it is indeed real, and that BioWare had been working on the game until its closure.

Whatever the case—and we're still working on verifying its provenance—the trailer is also just the right blend of sexy, violent, and corny: Even if this isn't a real trailer for what BioWare was working on (and at this point it seems pretty certain that it is), it's a Mass Effect we would definitely play.