I don't typically have much love for billion-dollar corporations dropping the 'meet our legal department' hammer on no-budget modders who are just trying to exercise their creative muscles, but in this one instance I'm willing to let it slide: Bethesda has issued a cease-and-desist order to an "AI creator" who made a Fallout game set in New York City that runs in browsers.

That's actually overstating it: As Chris First explained in his X feed (via RPS), he "directed Claude and a studio of AI agents" to make the game for him. Nor was there any new creative thought injected into the process, First continued, saying he asked for a game that was "not inspired by" Fallout, but that was "exactly like Fallout."

This is the result.

I know that being playable in a browser is a limiting factor, but this is really just something I'd rather not play at all. It stands in such sharp contrast to mods like Fallout: London or Skyblivion, efforts that reflect genuine passion, commitment, and creativity—and yes, those mods are massive undertakings that require years of effort from hundreds of volunteers, but they also don't suck and I feel like maybe there's a lesson to be learned there.

Anyway, whether I want to play it or not is now a moot point, because yesterday First said he received a message from ZeniMax Media telling him to knock it off—specifically, that the domain name he registered for the project, fallout.nyc, infringes on the studio's IP rights.

I don't know if First was expecting sympathy for his plight, but he doesn't seem to be getting much of it. Some responses criticize him for calling the project "Fallout," which is just about daring Bethesda to do something, but there's also plenty of heat over the use of AI to make the thing. A few optimists suggest First would be fine if he just changed the name, but he doesn't seem inclined to pursue that course.

That's probably for the best: Maybe I'm being overly harsh here (although I don't think so) but the one clear drawback to that plan is that changing the name doesn't change the fact that it looks like garbola. Playing a low-poly Fallout in a browser isn't an especially impressive technical feat—you can do the same with Morrowind, and it actually looks like Morrowind—and if you just want some really cheap Fallout, Fallout 3 is $2.49 in the Steam Autumn Sale, or you can snag New Vegas for a fiver.

I do sympathize with First's urge for a proper new Fallout game: I'm a little tired of the formula, but it's been 11 years since Fallout 4 and that's too damn long. But this ain't it, as the kids say, and while I'm never going to sign up for the corporate cheerleading squad, I can't say I'm sorry to see this one consigned to the dustbin, where it belongs.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi must be one of the least guarded interviewees working for a major publisher. Before I speak to him, I find tons of details about the final game in the Remake trilogy spread across a dozen different sources—everything from granular titbits about why Vincent Valentine has a unique skydiving animation to defending the sheer volume of minigames that make the cut. This is someone whose team has built a hell of a lot of game over the past decade, and he clearly enjoys discussing the sweeping vision of it all.

In Revelation, which launches April 8, series villain Sephiroth has summoned the destructive cosmic spell Meteor towards the planet, intending to destroy it. Cloud, Barret, Tifa and company stand in his way—and the planet itself begins fighting back in the form of Weapons, kajiu-sized creatures that emerge from an enormous crater and then unleash mayhem across the land and sea. The events in Revelation cover the last third or so of the original game.

This is the third in a series of remakes that have been defined, in some ways, by their extraordinary production values. I ask Hamaguchi whether he thinks the FF7 Remake trilogy could offer a more sustainable model for building blockbuster games in future.

"So I can't say whether in the future anyone else will decide that they're going to take a famous old game and remake it as a multi-part series, but regardless, I do think that this has left quite a lot of interesting knowledge as a case study," Hamaguchi says via a translator, explaining that his team has now been working together for 10-12 years.

"I think that this project has contributed hugely to Square Enix, not only in terms of the business as a successful game, but also in building this team that I can trust. But whether this becomes a model case or a template is, I think, a bit of a difficult question, because it becomes a question of whether or not other teams can recreate that."

Keeping the same person at the top, too, is vital to how the end product turns out.

"For example, I have been able to stay on for the whole project as the series director because I'm extremely motivated. I've been more than happy to pour all of my energy into this project, but there might be some people out there who are like, 'Well, I've done the first installment in this, and I'm done, I'd like to do something different.' And so if then the top person were to change, that can really change the trajectory of a project, the style of a project, even some of the themes that it's dealing with might be impacted by that."

It's true that the three FF7 Remake games feel like the result of a steady leadership team that knows what it wants to create. Even if someone else could convince a publisher to greenlight three games at once, that consistency is harder to replicate.

"Requiring a stable development environment for 10+ years is incredibly difficult," Hamaguchi says. "I really do mean this: even though I've obviously been in the leadership position, I've had my own skills to lean on and to lead this, it's because the same team has stuck with me that whole time that we've been able to achieve what we have."

Third time's the charm

It's undeniable that FF7 Revelation achieves the scope it does because it's Square Enix's third go-around: the increased size of the world map with both new and existing locations; the growing roster of characters who each have a rich suite of combat moves; more minigames; the FITS job system which confers additional abilities upon existing characters.

It's gloriously ostentatious as a project—or overstuffed, if you ask the more negative recent reviewers of Rebirth on Steam. I fall somewhere in the middle. I admire how unashamedly massive and generous these games are, even if the flab tested my patience in both Remake and Rebirth.

That may be because they've caught me in my time-starved late 30s. If these games existed at the peak of my Final Fantasy fandom when I was 17, I would've absolutely devoured them. I ask Hamaguchi how he thinks about pacing, and how Rebirth compares to Revelation on that front.

"Obviously, Rebirth has this world map with so much content, so much to explore, but if you just do the story, then what you'll find is that the pacing is extremely similar and the structure is extremely similar to the tight, story-driven experience of Remake," Hamaguchi says. "And we've essentially kept the approach the same for Revelation in terms of pacing."

More of the same, then. One thing that has changed since the events of Rebirth, of course, is that there's a big meteor heading towards the planet—which may change up the urgency of exploring its open world for players.

Hamaguchi and his team, however, have thought ahead of concerned fans on this topic. "So, you've got Meteor up there in the sky, and in the main story, obviously, you're going to have that time pressure, that sense that you really need to be getting on with things because there's this looming, impending threat," he says. "I've seen people concerned that all the side content may detract from that sense of urgency.

"But we have been really careful about how that's approached, and obviously that's something that [Kazuhige] Nojima has really been keeping in mind when writing the scenario. Obviously Cloud and all of the main characters are heading towards this final confrontation and they're very aware of that, but that means that they're also trying to find and discover their own motivations to make sure that they are certain of what [they're] doing, to find a reason to move forward.

"So it's not that you're just rushing into this final battle. They're saying, 'Well, if this is the end, then let's do what we want to do, let's do what feels right for us along the way.'"

So Queen's Blood, dog football and all the other minigames are still on the menu, even when the world seems like it's coming to an end.

Weapons-grade

The biggest surprise for me is how much Square Enix has decided to reveal about the game in its marketing campaign, including some things I considered sacred secrets of the original.

I wasn't surprised to see them spoil the playable Highwind airship and how that moves around the open world—that looks rad as shit—but the Weapon bosses were almost playground myths to me while I played the original. I ask if Hamaguchi had any qualms about spoiling them all during Gamescom, including how dauntingly huge they appear in the open world.

"First of all, I am glad to hear that it was a surprise that we would showcase the Weapons," Hamaguchi says, pointing out that the previous two instalments focused their marketing around the characters, and this time they wanted to dial in on gameplay. "I suppose that was what we were going for."

Hamaguchi is determined to match the spectacle of the Weapons in Revelation with players remember them in the original.

"In terms of how strong and how difficult the Weapons are going to be, as with the original, some of the Weapons are going to be part of the main story, and some of them are side content," he says. "And whether they're ones in the main story or side content, they have a lot of unique mechanics and interactive elements; some of them even have minigames in, and are quite strategic in that same way as well.

"In terms of the difficulty, obviously those that are part of the main story need to be defeatable by most players, so I would say the difficulty there is somewhat lower. For those that are part of side content, I would say those are hard, and you're probably going to need to be a higher level than you would have been to complete the game to take those on."

I use the rest of my time with Hamaguchi to ask about details of the original FF7 that still stick in my memory, decades after I first completed it, and how they'll be interpreted in Revelation.

FF7 Rebirth gave players a little sample of Highwind captain Cid, but in the original game he was quite a complicated and self-loathing character, stuck on the ground because his dream of going into space went kaput. The order of when that story occurs has changed, which fans already knew, but Revelation will be faithful to the specifics.

"Revelation does pay tribute to the original with everything that's going on in Rocket Town, [including] that mission from Shinra to launch the rocket, exploring the relationship between Cid and [Shera], and that experience of going to space and space travel," Hamaguchi says. "We really think that it'll allow players to explore Cid's internal world a little bit more."

As fans may have already seen, too, Rocket Town is a more expansive setting in Revelation, which requires its own form of transportation. "There was a buggy in Rebirth, of course, but this [time you] will be driving around in Cid's car. And you can put some background music on in the car if you like, and who knows, maybe if you do some more side content you might unlock some more tracks for his car and things like that, so there's plenty to explore."

I ask which characters get expanded upon the most versus the original game, since we've now spent tens more hours with some of these heroes than we did in the 1997 version. "In terms of extra depth and exploration, I think particularly with Revelation, the characters that we've really been able to explore in more detail, in more depth, are Yuffie and Vincent. Because in the original, Yuffie and Vincent were both optional characters, they weren't able to be so intricately tied into the main story."

Elsewhere, Hamaguchi has expressed his enthusiasm for folding in elements from the wider net of FF7 side projects. I've always been curious about the remake games' obsession with Zack Fair, a flashback character in FF7 who was spun off into the popular PSP prequel Crisis Core (which has since been remade and released on PC). Hamaguchi says this creative choice is driven by fans' enthusiasm for the character as depicted in the game.

"In Revelation, there are more playable sections with Zack, and they are more extensive than those in Rebirth," Hamaguchi says. "He'll actually be playable in battle with his own combat system that's unique to him, and there will be room for growth in a skill tree kind of way. It's very closely tied into the story experience, so it's on a much larger scale than what you've seen before, which I think will hopefully make Zack fans happy, and his sections, let's just say they are full of surprises."

Speaking of surprises: it took FF7 Remake only a few hours to break the seal on series antagonist Sephiroth, which perhaps robbed the character of his elusive potency in the original game. By the time Revelation comes along, it'll be the third time players have faced him—I'm curious how Hamaguchi and team will top the spectacle of Rebirth's prolonged Sephiroth encounter, which reached double digit phases.

"First let me just say that we haven't said whether there will be a dramatic showdown with Sephiroth in this third of the series," laughs Hamaguchi. "However, if there wasn't a dramatic showdown with Sephiroth, I do think the fans would be angry, so there will be one!"

He's keen not to spoil the surprise, but also can't help but drop a few hints—including a nod to Cloud's final Limit Break attack, a legendary moment of the original game's finale. "What I can say is that it's going to be a very extravagant, all-out battle that will far and above surpass what was in Remake and Rebirth in what I believe will be a very satisfying encounter. I know there are a lot of people out there who are looking forward to seeing the ultimate limit break [Omnislash] at the end of the battle with Sephiroth.

"Obviously we are putting in plenty of homages to the original, including to things like [that limit break]. We have crammed it full of everything that we can," Hamaguchi says, clearly excited to show fans another eye-wateringly high-end boss battle that will no doubt consume an entire evening.

While I think less could've been more with the FF7 Remake trilogy, I do enjoy Hamaguchi's absolute confidence in his vision of what he believes fans want. It's impossible to look at the Highwind cruising over the 1:1 scale world map in Revelation and argue that was a poor way to burn three games' worth of budget.

Indie RPG team Lovely Hellplace is undeniably retro-focused: 2024's Dread Delusion and the early access Entropy are crunchy and polygonal as hell. But that also extends to design. Dread Delusion was like a stripped-down Morrowind, while Entropy is a classico JRPG with some PC gaming DNA spliced in.

When I spoke to lead developer James Wragg earlier this year, he told me that he thinks part of the appeal of older games is their willingness to be succinct.

Elsewhere in our conversation, Wragg revealed that he's never beaten Breath of the Wild, and whenever he plays, he just wants to revisit 2002's Wind Waker instead. I find this issue much more acute on replays, in my own experience: I've never beaten BotW a second time after that initial playthrough where I got all the shrines (I was unemployed). More recently, I've found myself turning away from my beloved Elden Ring to the far more snackable Bloodborne and Sekiro.

Fallout is such a good shout here: I had a fairly completionist replay a few years ago, and I wrapped it in about 12 hours. Even the fact that Wragg's previous game, Dread Delusion, was open world isn't as much of a gotcha as you might think: It's a pretty dense map and boasts a roughly 15-20 hour runtime.

I find myself much more likely to stop playing a game without hitting the credits these days than to finish something and wish there had been more of it⁠—and even then, the latter is a preferable feeling in my book. There will always be a place for long runners and sprawling open worlds in my heart, but not everybody gets to be Cyberpunk 2077 or Fallout: New Vegas, and that's what makes them special.

Entropy, meanwhile, feels like it has a massive world, at least from the slice of map I've seen. But being able to evoke scale without overstaying the game's welcome is something Lovely Hellplace already managed in Dread Delusion. If you're intrigued by Entropy and Wragg's approach to design, you can check out its free demo or $12 early access on Steam.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is about a lad named Henry and his small role in kicking Sigismund of Luxembourg out of Bohemia in the name of the imprisoned King Wenceslas I. Henry and his newfound pals conspire, heist, assassinate, and sabotage to loosen the usurper's grip on the economic stronghold of Kuttenberg, but what they never try is barging straight in the front door.

Just take the damn city! It can't be that hard. I say around 20, 40 men tops could do the job. In fact, if the story quests won't do it, I will.

Step 1: Raise an army

Surprisingly, this is the easy part. KCD2, for all its freedoms, does not natively allow Henry to roam Bohemia with a warband, so the mod "Companion Squad" from Steam user Triget will be the engine powering this righteous campaign.

With just two keystrokes, my army began to take shape in front of me: 10, 20, 30 mercenaries with unique names and faces stood at attention, ready to attack at my command. The gates of Kuttenberg stood before us—doors wide open—its treasonous protectors oblivious to our plans.

Step 2: Call in favors

A "Heroes" section of the spawn menu caught my eye. With a few more clicks, I'd called up all of Henry's friends (and enemies) for a quick favor, including Hans Capon, the entire Jan Zizka crew, Godwin, Erik, Istvan Toth, and even Radzig and Hanush made the trip from Rattay.

With a strained framerate, my army was 43 strong. Time to take back Kuttenberg—for King Wenceslas!

Step 3: I have no pants

As I entered photo mode to witness the might of my army, I realized I've been pantless the whole time. This is the first time I've loaded this particular save on my newer PC, and somehow Henry's padded hose did not make the transition. They are not in my inventory and no longer seem to exist. At least I still have my mens' respect.

Step 4: Charge!

The guard who searches everyone entering the city didn't take kindly to my unsheathed sword. We exchanged a few blows before my warband formed into a bloodthirsty mob that I will henceforth call the "murder clump" and killed the guy in about two seconds. Another guard started a 1v1 with me and the murder clump ate him too.

It turned out the army was set to "defend" me, so they only raised arms when I was in an active fight. This isn't what I had in mind for a grand coup, so I pressed F6 to switch their attack pattern to something more offensive.

Step 5: Overwhelm

Finally, the murder clump branched out and started attacking guards without my direct input. Kuttenberg's finest simply did not stand a chance. With no time to prepare a proper defense and word traveling slowly throughout the town, the small squads of guards responding to the commotion were immediately overwhelmed by a blob of plate armor and sharpened steel. Once the eastern entrance was clear of law enforcement, I joined the clump and charged down the streets in the direction of city hall.

Then we passed by an inn, and I watched in horror as half of the murder clump broke off to ransack the peaceful business. This is when I realized that the army was set to "Bandit mode."

Step 6: Accidentally become the bad guys

The murder clump attacked everything that moved. Nobles, innkeepers, silver miners, musicians, and yes, all the guards too. Other than their tendency to get stuck in doorways, they worked with ruthless efficiency, turning a military coup into the sort of scorched-earth ransacking that upended Henry's life in the first KCD. I tried to switch between "attack" and "defend" mode to spare lives where possible, but the army had spread out into smaller murder clumps, and they didn't always listen to my commands.

This isn't how I wanted to take Kuttenberg, but it did speed the whole thing up a great deal. It took less than 20 minutes for the city to basically run out of guards, other than the ones who fled.

Step 7: Apologize to God, or something

By nightfall, the streets were bloody and quiet. I'd lost seven soldiers of my own, Hans and Zizka were super dead, and I had a foot in the grave, too, thanks to guards targeting my bare legs. We stormed city hall and found a series of empty rooms. Sigismund had presumably turned tail when he saw our numbers—the coward!

I entered a room with a little shrine and let Henry say a prayer. A quick apology for all of the senseless murder should do the trick.

Step 8: Take office

In the next room was an important-looking office with a big desk. I took my seat in a fancy chair and crowned myself king, mayor, or whatever, of Kuttenberg.

Job done, but I can't say I recommend this strategy: I have completely messed up my save by killing countless quest givers, and every town in the region wants me to hang for my crimes. But hey, it was a lot faster than finishing the main story.

In the mere two days since The Witcher 3: Remastered released on PC, its Nexus Mods page has been a hive of activity, featuring updates for all sorts of customization packages for the game—including ones you'll only install if you're a coward.

By my count, more than 450 Witcher 3 mods are either newly released or updated since September 29, an overwhelming number if you thought you'd just poke your head in and see what's been going on. One thing that's going on is that a lot of mods are now using AI image generation to create thumbnails that immediately give me the ick. Why create a fake, AI-glazed screenshot for your HUD mod when we all know what The Witcher 3 actually looks like? Baffling!

Another thing that's going on, thankfully, is that some modders with names like GrimReaper2121 are still putting in good work with creations such as De-mastered Geralt. And loads of mods that date back to the 2010s, making them mainstays of The Witcher 3's mod scene, have been updated to play nice with the latest patch.

Here's a quick list of some notable ones:

• The Witcher 3 Mod Manager
• Fast Travel From Anywhere
• Boat Races
• No time for Gwent
• Complete Animations Redux
• Sort Everything
• AutoLoot Advanced Settings
• HUD Scaling Fix (All Aspect Ratios)
• Enhanced Camera
• The Stable - Roach-Horse Customization Mod
• Increased Creature Loot
• More Money For Traders
• Hoods
• New Clouds
• Jump in Shallow Water
• Disable storybook intro warnings videos

That last mod comes bundled with a perfect example of the kind of pure modder artistry you get when you use good ol' MS Paint for a thumbnail instead of some weird, cursed AI image generator.

This is the kind of thing we need more of in the world:

We also should all spend more time jumping in shallow water, preferably with our besties. That's the good stuff.

Entropy is a very cool, very funky RPG you can play in early access right now. It's a turn-based ode to the likes of Final Fantasy 10 or Lost Odyssey, but it's also got some PC flair—lead developer James Wragg cites Fallout 1 and Games Workshop's tabletop Mordheim as major inspirations as well. I asked Wragg about the game's mercenary hiring and ambitious permadeath system in a conversation this past summer.

In addition to the injury system, Wragg was clear that you can get through Entropy with zero casualties via skilled play. But even then, the possibility of permadeath is still there, adding an edge to the proceedings.

I felt that acutely in this year's Star Wars Zero Company, which has a similar mix of authored snowflake squadmates and procgen mercenaries. I managed to get through that game without losing anyone, but the fact that they could have died lent the story and my achievement more weight.

I've loved what I've seen of Entropy so far, but haven't gotten super far into its latest, early access build. I'm curious to see how much more story meat its authored companions will have versus the mercenaries. If Wragg and the rest of Lovely Hellplace's stance on side quests (like em, love em, gotta have em) is any indication, there's probably a lot to chew on there. You can check out Entropy's demo for free, and the full early access experience for $12 on Steam.

What happened

• The Witcher 3's good (and available early) Griffin armour set is notorious for giving Geralt a 'dadbod' with the silhouette of a jaunty paunch.
• Some people, weak of heart and deficient of spirit, find that objectionable.
• The dadbod armour remains in The Witcher 3's recent remaster.
• Rejoice! A mod to fix it is already remaster-compatible.
• But you will be judged for using it. By me.

Is it morally wrong to slim down Geralt?

That last mainline entry in the Fallout series, Fallout 4, was released in 2015. Fallout 5? That's most likely still half a decade away, if not more: Bethesda first needs to finish and release The Elder Scrolls 6, which is itself mostly likely still a few years away.

Sure, in the meantime we've had Fallout 76, and Microsoft has cracked the whip over the backs over what's left of Obsidian Entertainment to produce a Fallout something, but what's the earliest we'll be able to conceivably play Fallout 5? 2032? 2035? Could it really be 20 years between games in the main Fallout series?

Well, just because the best way to play some new Fallout is by watching the Amazon TV series while listlessly pressing controller buttons doesn't mean we should stop talking about Fallout. We here at PC Gamer impatiently rolled back that big Vault door to air out a few more thoughts about the RPG series.

If you're gonna remaster any Fallout games, it should be the first two

Hardcore mode is the best way to play New Vegas

Fallout 4 is more interesting than Fallout 3

The Fallout show should feel more free to stomp on established lore

Fallout doesn't have to be about a Vault Dweller

Fallout doesn't have to be about Fallout

Fallout Shelter is great and we need more spinoffs

Fallout 2 is over-rated

Like many people, I was initially disappointed by Cyberpunk 2077. Also like many people, I think CD Projekt did a superb job fixing it. Post-Phantom Liberty Cyberpunk is one of my favourite games, to the point where I might just love it even more than The Witcher 3.

That said, even in its superior modern form, Cyberpunk isn't quite the game that I wish it was—namely an open world Deus Ex. CD Projekt's early trailers and gameplay demos implied a more immersive sim-like experience, and there are many elements in the final game that are immersive sim-like. The range of abilities it offers, the mixture of stealth and combat, the playful, mischievous hacking skills, the side-missions that often let you infiltrate or attack a compound from multiple angles of approach. It's all the kind of stuff you'd expect to see in a Deus Ex game with the scope blown out.

Ultimately, though, Cyberpunk 2077 isn't that game. Your progress and prowess is far too tightly bound to your character level to make it a functioning immersive sim. Plugging points into skill trees will transform mechanics like stealth from next to useless to being massively overpowered. And those open-ended missions are very much a side dish. Whenever the central storyline rears its head, Cyberpunk becomes as linear and prescribed as a Call of Duty campaign.

To be clear, I'm not complaining—I've come to love Cyberpunk just the way it is. But I would still love to play the Cyberpunk that exists in my head, even if it's just to see whether it would actually work. And that's why I'm so intrigued by No Law, because it looks a whole lot like the Cyberpunk that I erroneously imagined.

No Law is the new game from Neon Giant, creators of the gleefully grimy cyberpunk twin-stick shooter The Ascent. No Law maintains the cyberpunk theme but is otherwise a completely different style of game. Taking place in a city called Port Desire, No Law sees you play as Grey Harker, an archetypal military veteran who is dragged reluctantly away from a newfound life of peace after (and Neon Giant has kept this bit vague) trouble comes knocking at his door.

Neon Giant describes No Law as a "first-person open world shooter RPG". That's often what developers say when they're planning to make an immersive sim, but don't want to use the phrase because nobody under 35 knows what an immersive sim is. However, that's also how CD Projekt described Cyberpunk prior to release, and that turned out not to be an immersive sim, so it's by no means guaranteed.

That said, I've got a good feeling that No Law might be what Cyberpunk wasn't, at least going by Neon Giant have shown of (and said about) the game thus far. No Law's most recent trailer, which debuted at Gamescom's Opening Night Live, went to considerable length to emphasise the variety of approaches that Harker can take during missions.

Inevitably, shooting enemies in the face is one possible approach. But you also see Harker sneaking through vents, stealth-killing guards and using some weird sci-fi abilities. One of these makes enemies' heads explode, while another makes their entire bodies burst like balloons. I'm also impressed by Harker's mighty kick, which he uses to boot doors off hinges and enemies off their mortal coils. It brings back fond memories of punting enemies off ledges and down staircases in Deathloop and Dark Messiah: Might and Magic.

By far my favourite moment in the trailer, however, is when Harker attaches a grenade to a laptop-shaped Roomba, assumes control of it, and then pilots it into a garage filled with guards where it detonates. That's the kind of kooky, indirect solution to a problem any Deus Ex game would be proud to feature.

The broader decision landscape of No Law is also something I'm intrigued by. While Port Desire is openly explorable, Neon Giant has repeatedly emphasised the density of the city—rather than its breadth—in interviews. Sure, a part of that is probably to get ahead of any unfavourable comparisons to Cyberpunk, but by the sounds of things, it's also very much a deliberate design choice. In a recent chat with VGC, Neon Giant said that every apartment in the game has been handcrafted rather than procedurally generated. A whole city of Adam Jensen-style apartments sounds pretty exciting to me.

Such an approach also sounds more appropriate for an immersive sim. One of the great joys of the genre is learning its 3D space intimately, slowly unpicking all its shortcuts and secrets. You can't really do that with Night City. It's just too darned big. But that very much seems to be Neon Giant's intent with No Law. Indeed, the game will apparently ship with a mode, where you can disable UI-based navigational hints, instead using the city's own signage and building numbers to find your way around. Oh, and the name of this mode? "Immersive".

Finally, there's how Neon Giant says your approach to missions will affect No Law's story. Each of the game's missions will have numerous ways to approach it, from using stealth and subterfuge to going in all guns blazing. Last December, Neon Giant explained that your approach will influence how characters in the story react to you—rather than the narrative being affected by branching dialogue choices.

That's something both Deus Ex and Dishonored toyed with (though the former also had dialogue choices), though it sounds like No Law aims to take the concept even further. Also worth noting is that Neon Giant says if you kill a character in the world, they'll remain dead, and if they had a service to offer you, you won't be able to access it.

I do have a couple of reservations. Alongside these more freeform ways to play, No Law will also feature XP and skill trees, so your stats and build will define what you can do.

"You have experience points and skill trees, and you opt into how you want to play the game," Neon Giant's Arcade Berg told us last year. "Do you want to be more into lockpicking, or do you want to be a hacker, or do you want to be a specialist with certain types of weapons … We never tell you which route to take, we say that the player can never play the game wrong."

My other concern is: can Neon Giant actually pull this off? The studio comprises just 24 people, which is a mere fraction of Cyberpunk's team, and fewer people than the original Deus Ex team. While I'd prefer a game that leans closer to Deus Ex than Cyberpunk, what I definitely don't want is a rerun of Cyberpunk's disastrous launch. But if Neon Giant can pull off its ambitions with the team it has, I think No Law could prove to be one of the surprise hits of 2027.

This is it. I'm finally going to do it. I'm finally going to start a new Baldur's Gate 3 save as the Dark Urge and see it through to the end. I'm supposed to be updating our BG3 mods list (which I swear I'll get to), but I've tacked on the additional sidequest of 'find mods I want to use in my Durge run.'

Until then, who do you think I should romance in my next playthrough? I love smooching Karlach, but I've romanced her twice already and figure I should switch things up as Durge. Go on and pick any option. I'm extremely open-minded—not averse to change at all.

Also feel free to shout at me about who you romanced in the comments. I love love.

The Witcher 3 Remastered is out today, a seriously beefy update to one of the greatest RPGs of all time, and if you've noticed that there sure seems to be a lot of negative reviews flooding in on Steam, consider that a reminder that it's time to update your drivers.

This applies most specifically to owners of AMD GPUs: After hundreds of users dropped negative reviews for the remaster due to technical and performance issues (many of which praised the game effusively otherwise, such is the way with user reviews), CD Projekt said on X that new AMD GPU drivers have been rolled out and urged users to update before starting the game.

Response to the suggestion has been mixed: Updating the drivers appears to have fixed the problem for some, while issues persist for others, and some players just don't care for the onslaught of eye candy. (Frankly, that's how I feel about the whole "wetter Geralt" situation.) Ultimately, while there's no such thing as a silver bullet in PC gaming, it is good advice: Having problems? Update your drivers.

This is a frog named Touch Me from Final Fantasy 7. You can now look at Touch Me from all angles via this 3D model viewer. You can make Touch Me dance and break it down. Look at him go.

Look at this beautiful frog, my sweet, sweet boy. My treasure. My one and only. This adorable little creature is now viewable via the Pardall Games library, which has pretty much every 3D model from Final Fantasy 7 (the 1997 one) available for your viewing pleasure.

I cannot overstate how cool this thing is—the viewer allows you to hop into basically any model from the game, including summon animations, and easily rotate it in a 3D environment. You can also do this with some of the game's map screens to see the difference between how the game presents it and the actual meshes on display. Behold: I have shredded 7th Heaven.

As for why I'm excited about the frog, this little guy has been subject to memes for a while. Not just because of his gorgeous, polygonal form—not just because of his sensual little hip-wiggle, but because in the original version of the game he was named "Touch Me."

Curious as to why this frog was named Touch Me, I dug around a bit to find out why. I have trapped you in this article, you will now find out why this frog was called Touch Me. A dastardly ploy for which I make no apologies.

So in FF7, these little creatures are called Tacchi Mī (タッチミー). This is what's known as a gairaigo, or a loan term—a word that's snapped up from another language and survives mostly unchanged. Sort of how you might still call something a coup d'état in English. Other Japanese words like this include aisu-kyandī (アイスキャンディー), which means an ice lollipop (ice candy), or charenji (チャレンジ), which means challenge.

Anyway, when the Tacchi Mī was translated into English, it was given the most literal translation possible: And thus, Touch Me was born. But because Square Enix are cowards, these critters were called Amphidex (Amphidexes? Amphidexi?) in the Rebirth remake. And now you can rotate Touch Me to your heart's content. Or even turn Touch Me into a little gif. Look at this guy go.

With the addition of armor and weapon transmog in The Witcher 3 Remastered, you can now wear one set for fashion and another for stats, but that begs the question: which of the Witcher School sets is the best?

There are four in the base game.

• 🦅 Griffin: A medium set for signs
• 🐈‍⬛ Feline: A light set for glass cannons
• 🐻 Ursine: A heavy set for high defence
• 🐺 Wolven: A medium all-rounder set

There's also the Forgotten Wolven set (Henry Cavil's TV show armor), plus two DLC sets, the Viper School gear in Hearts of Stone, and the Manticore School gear in Blood and Wine.

My personal favorite for stats and fashion is the Bear School, but I do have a soft spot for the Grandmaster Feline set's sneaky hood, too, even if our very own Josh Wolens thinks we should "ban that sick filth".

The Ursine armor is a fan favorite set in The Witcher 3, mainly due to its incredibly high damage resistance as the only heavy set of witcher gear available. It consists of four armor pieces, two swords, and a crossbow.

The diagrams to forge the basic Ursine witcher armor are located in northeast Skellige in the ruined castle on Urialla Isle, near the top of the Yngvar's Fang trail. I show the route in the video about, but otherwise, head to the Urialla Harbor fast travel and then:

1. Take the northeast path out of the village and go right at the fork until you hit the Trail to Yngvar's Fang fast travel.

2. Kill the rabid rock troll just ahead.

3. Follow the path along the cliffs and kill the sirens.

4. When you reach the collapsed section of the trail, slide down onto the broken stone walkway and jump across the gap to enter the fort via a wooden door.

5. Take a left down the spiral staircase, go to the end of the corridor, turn right, and pull the lever—this will open the cell doors and spawn some wraiths.

6. Drop down through the first cell to your left when facing back down the corridor.

7. Follow the path past where the next wraith spawns and climb through the broken hole in the wall into the throne room.

The chest containing the diagrams is just right of the throne, though be warned that taking these and pulling the lever to let yourself out will spawn three wraiths to fight.

Read the Chronicles of Clan Tuirseach, which is also in the diagram chest, to unlock the Ursine Crossbow and Ursine Silver Sword locations:

Finally, read Knight Chalmir's Letter, from the corpse carrying the Ursine Silver Sword diagram, to get the location for the Ursine Steel Sword:

Once you've crafted the basic armor, you can upgrade it to enhanced, superior, and mastercrafted by finding the relevant diagrams. You can get all of these locations if you buy Ibrahim Savi's first, second, third, and fourth map from the Kaer Trolde Armorer and follow the quest markers to acquire each upgrade diagram.

For the grandmaster upgrades, when you head to Toussaint in the Blood and Wine DLC, speak to Lazare Lafargue in his armor shop in south Beauclair to start the 'Master Master Master Master!' quest to find the diagrams.

The Wolven armor is a medium set of witcher gear that functions as a bit of an all-rounder, buffing sign intensity attack power, and adrenaline point gain. It also has a passive that increases sword damage against bleeding enemies. It has four armor pieces, two swords, and no crossbow, similar to the Griffin set.

You can get the Wolven armor diagrams at the old signal tower just south of Kaer Mohern keep itself. There's a little puzzle involved in finding these, which I show in the video above, but otherwise:

1. Head inside, climb the ladder, and loot the chest to read Hieronymous's note.

2. Climb back down and use Aard to activate the teleportation crystal on the right side of the opening in the far wall.

3. Go back to the entrance and climb through the broken wall to the right, jump on the scaffolding on the north side of the tower, and walk along it to find the second teleportation crystal on a ledge to your right.

4. Go back inside and place the teleportation crystal in the housing on the left side of the opening in the far wall—use Aard to activate it.

5. Jump through the now-stable portal to land in a cave with a corpse. Defeat the wraith that appears and then loot the armor diagrams from the body.

Read the notes written in a shaky hand, which are also on the body in the cave, to unlock the locations of the Wolven Silver Sword and the Wolven Steel Sword diagrams, also in the Kaer Mohern area:

Once you've crafted the basic armor, you can upgrade it to enhanced, superior, and mastercrafted by finding the relevant diagrams.

• Enhanced: Buy the well-preserved notes (boots, armour, silver sword) from Éibhear Hattori once you complete the Of Swords and Dumplings quest. You can find his home northwest of Novigrad's Glory Gate. Then buy the slightly torn notes (gloves, trousers, steel sword) from Lindenvale's armorer to the east of Crow's Perch in Velen.
• Superior: Buy the damp, moldy notes (armour, silver sword, steel sword) from Kaer Trolde's armorer in Skellige. Then buy the heavily faded notes (boots, gauntlets, trousers) from Hierarch Square's armorer in Novigrad.
• Mastercrafted: Buy the worn out and faded notes (armour, silver sword, steel sword) from Éibhear Hattori and the notes on parchment (boots, gauntlets, trousers) from Kaer Trolde's blacksmith.

For grandmaster, when you head to Toussaint in the Blood and Wine DLC, speak to Lazare Lafargue in his armor shop in south Beauclair to start the 'Master Master Master Master!' quest to find the diagrams.

The Griffin armor is a medium witcher gear set mainly focused around buffing the power of your signs, but also turning your Yrden into an AoE that reduces the damage you take, and further increases sign intensity when you're in it. There are four armor pieces, two swords, but no crossbow.

The diagrams to forge the basic Griffin witcher armor are located in Dragonslayer's Grotto in east Velen, to the northwest of Downwarren. The video above shows the route through this ruin, but otherwise:

1. Head inside, fight the wraiths, take a left at the end of the corridor and use Aard to blow open the cracked wall on its left side.

2. The next section is filled with poisonous, flammable gas and wraiths. I suggest just ignoring them and running straight through to the far end, where you'll find a rock barrier you can blast open with Aard, and a room with an ekimmara to slay on the other side.

3. After killing the vampire, grab the armor diagrams from the chest up the stairs on the platform above.

Read Witcher George's Journal, also in the chest, to get the location of the Griffin Silver Sword and the Griffin Steel Sword, both of which are also in the Velen region. Remember, there is no crossbow in this set.

Once you've crafted the basic armor, you can upgrade it to enhanced, superior, and mastercrafted by finding the relevant diagrams.

• Enhanced: Buy Edwin Greloff's first and second map from Midcopse's armorer in west Velen, southwest of Crow's Perch.
• Superior: Buy Edwin Greloff's third map from Hierarch Square's armorer in the center of Novigrad.
• Mastercrafted: Buy Edwin Greloff's fourth map from Éibhear Hattori once you complete Of Swords and Dumplings. His home is northwest of Novigrad's Glory Gate.

For grandmaster, when you head to Toussaint in the Blood and Wine DLC, speak to Lazare Lafargue in his armor shop in south Beauclair to start the 'Master Master Master Master!' quest to find the diagrams.

One of the big changes in The Witcher 3 Remastered is that you can now transmog armor and swords, swapping their skins at will.

You can't transmog at every blacksmith, only the two master smiths in the game, Yoana at Crow's Perch, and Éibhear Hattori in Novigrad, who will let you reskin armor and swords, respectively.

First, though, you have to complete their quests:

Once you've unlocked Yoana and Hattori, simply choose the "reforge" tab on the top right when purchasing or crafting with them.

A couple more quick things about transmog:

• Transmog armor dyes the same colour as the base armor.
• You unlock new sword and armor skins when you place them in Geralt's inventory.

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be retrospective, so for endgame saves, unless you've kept every armour piece, you'll have to acquire them again, or at least take them out of your stash and place them in your inventory to unlock them—not the best system I'll admit, hopefully this will be patched.

Despite being a smith who forges grandmaster witcher gear, for some reason Lazare Lafargue in the Blood and Wine DLC can't transmog armor either. Again, fingers crossed this gets patched in.

The Feline armor is a light set of witcher gear that turns you into a bit of glass cannon. It has less damage resistance, but it buffs attack power, and provides a passive where strong attacks buff fast attack damage, and you can "backstab" enemies, with rear attacks hitting harder and stunning opponents. The set has four armor pieces, two swords, and a crossbow.

You can get the Feline armor in a cave on the north side of Temple Isle (the northernmost island) in Novigrad. You'll also need Keira Metz's Eye of Nehaleni from her questline to dispel the illusory rock blocking the entrance. I show the route in the video above, but otherwise:

1. On the map, head to the northwesternmost house on Temple Isle and follow the path you can see snaking around it, down the trail into the cave.

2. Fight the golem inside now or later and then take a left through the tunnel to the room with the statues in a circle.

3. Pull the lever beside each as many times as necessary to make them all face inwards—this will open a pool in the centre with drowners.

4. The key you need is on a corpse at the bottom of the pool. I recommend saving first, and then diving as fast as you can to grab it, sticking close to the wall to limit the drowners hitting you.

5. Head back to the main room and use the key to unlock the door behind the golem.

6. Defeat Mad Kiyan, the crazed witcher in the room, and loot the armor diagrams from his corpse.

Read the laboratory log, also on Kiyan's body, and you'll get a marker for the location of the Feline Crossbow, which is in the Novigrad region as well.

Read Professor Sigismund Glogger's notes, also in the chest with the crossbow diagram to get the locations of the Feline Steel Sword and the Feline Silver Sword, again, both in the Novigrad region.

Once you've crafted the basic armor, you can upgrade it to enhanced, superior, and mastercrafted by finding the relevant diagrams.

• Enhanced: Buy the Adalbert Kermith's first and second map from Blackbough's merchant to the west of Crow's Perch.
• Superior: Buy Adalbert Kermith's third map from the Crow's Perch quartermaster.
• Mastercrafted: Buy Adalbert Kermith's fourth map from Lindenvale's armorer, east of Crow's Nest.

For grandmaster, when you head to Toussaint in the Blood and Wine DLC, speak to Lazare Lafargue in his armor shop in south Beauclair to start the 'Master Master Master Master!' quest to find the diagrams.

"Final Fantasy 7 PC" is not an immediately intuitive combination of numbers and letters. Am I talking about the old trapezoid box version released in 1998? Or the "remaster" re-released in 2013? Or the first in the trilogy of remakes released nearly a decade later? Calling the 1998 version the "original" just makes things more confusing, since it isn't exactly the same as the PlayStation game released the year before.

When Square Enix updated Final Fantasy 7 to modern platforms in 2013 it had the chance to create something like the definitive version of the game, but instead it took some shortcuts, "improving" a few things from the original—like some of the notoriously rushed translation's grammatical mistakes—but more or less leaving the rest untouched. It's a worst of both worlds combination, where funny lines like "this guy are sick" get corrected to "this guy is sick" but the script as a whole remains confusing and frequently misrepresented in English.

Two years ago, fans released a monumental mod called the Shinra Archaeology Cut aimed at doing the script justice with a complete, top-to-bottom retranslation. It's one of a heap of FF7 mods available in the fan launcher 7th Heaven, alongside graphics overhauls, rebalances, a fan dub, and on and on. What I just learned today, though (courtesy of this ResetEra thread) is that there's a meticulously maintained spreadsheet comparing every line of dialogue from the official PC release, the Japanese original, and fan translator TurquoiseHammer's new text.

Side-by-side, it's easy to see where the original English translation cut corners, misunderstood what was happening in the original text, or went too far in adding attitude that wasn't originally there. Sometimes that can be a smart choice when it comes to localization—"accuracy" isn't the be all, end all—but as you can see in a couple of the examples below, the official English script seemingly went edgy for edgy's sake.

While I think much of FF7's charm is tied to its messy translation, it's amazing to see a version of its script that isn't bafflingly vague and convoluted in key scenes related to Sephiroth and Cloud's identity. And instead of the official release's worst of both worlds pairing of fixed grammar but untouched everything else, the Shinra Archaeology Cut offers the opposite—an improved retranslation, but with an optional "Cultural Heritage Mode" that "restores a few memorably strange lines and infamous typos from the original English script." This guy are sick, now and forever.

Take a look at some of the changes that stood out to me as I perused the script.

Final Fantasy 7: Retranslated

Speaking on the FRVR Podcast last week, former Bethesda writer and designer Kurt Kuhlmann was asked about the concept of "Dragon Breaks"—time getting all weird on account of magic and stuff⁠—in Elder Scrolls lore. The biggest Dragon Break as far as Elder Scrolls fans are concerned: "The Warp in the West," the series' post-facto determination that every ending of The Elder Scrolls Chapter 2: Daggerfall happened at the same time. On account of magic and stuff, you see.

I love this story: Simple serendipity, a workplace oopsie, accidentally setting in motion the continuity and story beats of a billion-dollar franchise. Kirkbride is memetically famous among Elder Scrolls fans as a boundary-pushing loremaster who added a lot of weird flavor to Morrowind, so his affinity for the timey-wimey, fucky-wucky potential of the Dragon Break absolutely scans.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't seem like the series timeline Kuhlmann mentioned was ever publicly available⁠—this must have been an internal lore bible sort of thing. While TES Arena and Daggerfall designer Ted Peterson would write the in-game book, "The Warp in the West," for Oblivion, Kirkbride and Kuhlmann appear to have introduced the concept in Morrowind with the books "Where Were You When the Dragon Broke" and "Dragon Break Re-Examined" respectively.

Kuhlmann noted in the podcast that he attempted to introduce more grounded, historiographic ambiguity with his treatment: What if the confusion was a matter of bias, transcription, and record-keeping, rather than metaphysical forces? Of course, Dragon Break Re-Examined also deliberately references events in Morrowind's future as the past, implying the skeptical book itself is yet another example of timey-wimey shenanigans⁠. An all-timer bit, for my money.

Elder Scrolls aside, the problem of preserving and representing RPG choice across multiple games in a series is something no studio has managed to fully "solve," if such a thing is even possible. I've always appreciated Bethesda's "fuck it, we ball" approach to the continuity with stuff like The Warp in the West. See also how Larian's Divinity: Original Sin 2 almost completely contradicts the story of Divinity 2: Ego Draconis (sans Original Sin) from eight years prior. I love RPGs so much, man.

The Witcher 3 was the game that made me realize my college laptop was not going to cut it anymore. It was such a good game, I didn't terribly mind playing it at 1920x1200, 20-30 fps, but I knew I wanted to do it justice with more horsepower. The summer after my first playthrough, I built a GTX 1080-powered desktop, and I've refused to live a life without a gaming desktop in it ever since.

It's a real testament to the game's tech and art that it still looks so good, and has taken multiple graphical retrofits so well. I am once again, however, quietly mourning CD Projekt's decision to trade its proprietary RED engine for Unreal.

The Witcher 3 Remastered is coming out on September 29, which is tomorrow. That doesn't leave you a lot of time to make up your mind about whether you want to jump back in. So I, with a certain amount of assistance from CD Projekt Red, am here to help.

To begin, we must answer a question:

HAVE YOU PLAYED THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT?

If you answered no, and you have any appreciation for RPGs at all, then your situation just got a whole lot easier because, resoundingly, yes. Yes, you do want to jump in. With that out of the way, I will refer you to our guide to Witcher 3 Remastered release times around the world, so you can get on it.

If you answered yes, on the other hand, it gets a bit more complicated. We've already covered the lighting that had us like, 'Damn,' and wetter Tub Geralt, surely a compelling argument in favor. But if it's details you're after, here's the lowdown on what CD Projekt says are "the most important changes" coming to the new game.

Actually, before we get to that, we've also now got full and detailed system specs for a range of systems—CD Projekt revealed the new minimum spec earlier this year, but this new listing goes all the way up to the very high end. Note one change from the previously announced minimum: 60GB of SSD drive space is required instead of the previously indicated 70GB, but you'll need 95GB if you get The Witcher 3 Remastered on the Epic Games Store. (I don't know why, sorry.)

As far as the rest of the rundown on "important changes," there's a lot going on here and it's not just a visual glow-up. A handful o' highlights:

Of particular note are the new Accessibility options, including the new "Bard's Ballad" preset that aims to "reduce cognitive load for players who experience mental fatigue or have difficulty concentrating" by streamlining or disabling certain mechanics and features "for a smoother, more focused adventure."

I think this is a great idea: I generally like The Witcher's fussy systems (don't forget to brew your potions before a big fight!) but I can also easily understand why some people would want to just get to the good stuff without having to futz around.

Also note, for veteran Witcher-players who are still on the fence, that all of this is free for existing owners—consider yourselves nudged in the direction of do it.

Anyway, finally, here it is: Every change in The Witcher 3 Remastered that CD Projekt felt was important enough to write down.

Visual and Rendering

• Implemented an improved shading model.
• Updated multiple textures and models based on assets from The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project.
• Improved lighting and shading for grass and foliage.
• Updated the visual effects of Signs, including their upgrade versions.
• Added new visual effects for skills.
• The game now features native DirectX 12 rendering with multithreading for better performance and visuals.
• Updated tone mapping for improved colors, lighting, contrast and detail.
• Added GTAO (Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion) as a new Screen Space Ambient Occlusion option.
• Added Ray-Traced Local Shadows.
• Updated Screen Space Reflections.
• Updated Screen Space Shadows.
• Updated the HDR calibration panel by adding new options and other improvements.
• Improved Motion Blur with a higher-quality, more cinematic look.
• Updated Subsurface Scattering for more natural skin rendering.
• Improved terrain and material rendering for more natural lighting, shadows, reflections, and highlights.
• Implemented new Image-Based Lighting (IBL) for improved ambient lighting and reflections across different environments.
• Reworked Bloom for more improved lighting effects across different environments.

Gameplay

• Improved the skill system. Skills are now organized into a skill tree and each skill has three ranks. Unlocking new skills now requires having the necessary prerequisite skills rather than spending a set number of skill points. IMPORTANT: As a result of these changes, your skill points have been reset.
• Rebalanced the skill tree by refining skill bonus values, effects and synergies.
• Renamed some skills to better reflect their effects.
• You can now Reforge your equipment to change its appearance without affecting its stats. Only master craftsmen (Yoana and Hattori) offer this service. Unlock appearances by adding new equipment and crafting diagrams to your inventory. Dyes from Blood and Wine applied to equipment will carry over to the reforged item.
• Polished the combat behavior of many non-boss monsters, including their attack patterns, counterattacks, movement, reactions, flight and the application of effects.
• Added a new "Horse control input sensitivity" slider in Settings → Controls.
• Improved Roach's and Geralt's movement, player control and animations:
• Refined Geralt's jumping animation so that it feels more natural and polished. Note: This doesn't affect jump distance and height.
• Added new finisher animations for Geralt.
• Added new idle animations for Geralt.
• Improved Geralt's ledge climbing, ladder climbing and vaulting animations as well as his speed for more responsive, fluid movement.
• Improved Geralt's gap closing animations in combat for smoother gameplay.
• Added a new exploration camera with increased FOV.
• Added a new dynamic combat camera to increase visibility when fighting enemies.
• Improved target-lock switching when moving the camera in combat.
• Updated collision avoidance when riding Roach.
• Polished animations for mounting and dismounting Roach, as well as cantering and galloping.

UI/UX

• Meditation now features a timelapse instead of a UI screen for a more immersive feel.
• The skill screen is now reorganized into a more intuitive skill tree layout.
• Updated the map screen to make switching between tracked quests easier. Untracked quests now have a distinct marker and can be tracked by selecting it.
• Increased the number of maximum markers on the map.
• Added new map markers.
• You can now hide herbs, boats and corpses on the minimap in Settings → Video → Interface for a cleaner, less distracting view.
• Improved quest notifications by combining quest updates into a single HUD notification.
• Nearby loot can now be grouped into a single window, so you no longer need to browse through multiple loot windows. You can enable this feature in Settings → Gameplay.
• Added a loot feed that displays recently collected items on the left side of the screen. You can disable it in Settings → Gameplay.
• Added item tooltips to the loot window, allowing you to preview an item's details before picking it up.
• Renamed the "HUD Configuration" section in Settings to "Interface".
• Updated the CD PROJEKT RED Account connection, My Rewards and telemetry consent menus.

Photo Mode

• Updated the Photo Mode UI and vastly expanded its features and options:
• You can now choose from multiple different characters to place in your shot.
• Added a selection of poses and expressions for Geralt and placeable characters.
• Added a confirmation prompt before exiting Photo Mode to help prevent accidental exits.
• You can now lock the camera position in Photo Mode to make sure you capture the perfect shot.
• Added the option to apply different environment presets to your scene.
• Added the option to save camera presets, allowing you to save and reuse camera positions and angles.
• You can now change the aspect ratio of your screenshot.
• Added the option to toggle a first-person camera mode so you can see the world through Geralt's eyes.
• You can now enable or disable camera collisions with objects and walls.
• Set the perfect scene by changing the weather and time of day.
• Adjust the intensity of weather effects like rain or storms.
• Added an option to toggle Rule of Thirds lines in various aspect ratios, with optional cinematic black bars.
• Camera coordinates will now be visible in the UI.
• Added an option to hide surrounding NPCs.
• Added placeable props, giving you even more ways to create the perfect scene. Just don't ask where they all came from.
• The cursor is now visible in Photo Mode on PC when using a mouse.

Accessibility

• Added a new Accessibility section to the Settings menu. Moved existing accessibility-related options there.
• Added the Bard's Ballad preset. You can enable it when starting a new game on the Just the Story difficulty or during the game in the Accessibility section. It is designed to reduce cognitive load for players who experience mental fatigue or have difficulty concentrating. It streamlines gameplay by simplifying certain mechanics and disabling select features for a smoother, more focused adventure. You can enable the preset in the Accessibility tab and customize it by enabling or disabling the following options:
• Vitality Regeneration Boost - Gives the possibility to adjust its activation threshold ("Activates below (%) Vitality") and the rate at which Vitality increases ("Regeneration Intensity").
• Infinite Breath - Geralt can't run out of oxygen while swimming and diving.
• Unlimited Item Durability - Your gear will never wear down, so there's no need to visit craftsmen for repairs.
• Unlimited Boat Durability - Boats are indestructible, making jagged rocks and sirens no longer a concern.
• Ignore Item Weight - Travel the Path carrying as much as you want.
• Faster Boats - Sail faster across the seas. The seas around Skellige just got a little bit smaller.
• Toggle Witcher Sense - Toggle on and off without having to hold the button.

Quality of Life

• Streamlined tutorials to keep them concise and focused on teaching core game mechanics. We think Vesemir would approve.
• Added an option to quickly disengage from combat. Hold the dodge button (Alt/〇/B) to unlock from your target, then press the sprint button (L Shift/X/A) to run away.
• You can now collect loot without dismounting Roach.

Modding

• Added Cross Platform Mod Support, an in-game tool powered by mod.io that allows you to easily browse and install player-created mods to customize your game. You can find it in the game's main menu in Mods. Log in with your CD PROJEKT RED Account, connect it to mod.io and start browsing. You can find more information about the Mod Manager here.
• Various engine, UI and other improvements for REDkit, making it easier for modders to create, manage and customize their content.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where it wasn't possible to change Right Stick Sensitivity if the settings were accessed directly from the main menu.
• It's now possible to set Stick Sensitivity to the value of 0.69.
• Fixed an issue where HDR settings would sometimes not appear on consoles.
• In the Eternal Fire's Shadow - Fixed an issue where the Forgotten Wolf School Gear Diagrams weren't displayed in the UI after being received as a reward.
• Wine is Sacred – Fixed an issue where fast traveling out of Toussaint during the "Search the wine cellar with Anna Henrietta" objective could block quest progression. This fix is not retroactive, so players who encountered this issue will need to load a save from before it occurred.

Other

• Added Ukrainian text localization.
• Added support for Xbox Play Anywhere.

PC-specific

• IMPORTANT: Make sure you have the latest graphics drivers installed. Grab them here: NVIDIA, AMD, Intel.
  • Added support for Path Tracing.
  • Added support for NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, together with Ray Reconstruction.
  • Added support for AMD FSR 4, including Frame Generation and Anti-Lag 2. FSR 4 is supported on AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series and newer graphics cards. On unsupported GPUs, the game will use FSR 2 instead.
  • Added support for Intel XeSS 2.0, together with Frame Generation and Low Latency.
  • Added Ray-Traced HairWorks for improved lighting and shading on hair.
  • Added support for DualSense controller haptic feedback.

That the quest 'Family Matters' stands out as the best quest in The Witcher 3—a game filled with great storytelling and characters—is a true testament to the skill of its creators. That's why it's so exciting that one of the main forces behind it, writer Karolina Stachyra, has returned to CD Projekt after a decade away.

Stachyra's LinkedIn profile indicates that she's been working with the studio as a freelance consultant since February, and returned as a full-time writer in August. The quiet comeback went unnoticed until the weekend, though, when b0ysbrokenheart posted about it on X.

And here's the good stuff:

CD Projekt confirmed that Stachyra is indeed back in the fold, but declined to comment on what she's currently working on.

WHY ARE PEOPLE EXCITED?

We laid it out in 2015: What appears to be a simple missing persons job for Geralt slowly, painfully unwinds into "The Witcher 3’s most emotional and disturbing quest," driven by the conflicted, compelling, and deeply tragic character of the Bloody Baron. As we put it back when all this was new:

"It takes very real, important subjects—alcoholism and domestic abuse—and deals with them in a brutal, heartbreaking, and honest way. But, thanks to the blood-curdling botchling, it still feels like part of The Witcher’s dark fantasy world. It’s superbly written, brilliantly acted, and the branching paths make it well worth replaying. It’s The Witcher 3 and developer CD Projekt RED at their absolute best, and was the highlight of the game for many players."

As the writer of the dialog and cutscenes in Family Matters, not to mention her work elsewhere in the game and on the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions, Stachyra's return to CD Projekt—following turns as narrative director at Techland and GSC Game World—is great news for RPG fans, regardless of what game she's working on.

And since we're left to speculate on that, consider this: Ciri, the lead of the upcoming The Witcher 4, was a central character in the Family Matters quest and key to demonstrating the depth and nuance of the Bloody Baron, who treated her like a surrogate daughter. Might an adoptive family reunion be in the works? It's not the worst idea I've ever heard.

Original

Remastered

Let's cut to the chase: you come to this site for one reason and so do I—to examine photos of Geralt of Rivia in the bath. The Witcher 3's remaster launches tomorrow, so here is the most important before and after you will see on a videogames website.

You know? I do think he looks better now. Shinier, anyway. Isn't that the point of a good soak, to shine yourself up?

The Witcher 3 Remastered releases this week, bringing updated visuals, a tonne of quality of life tweaks, and even some new features like armor transmog, to the 10-year-old RPG.

The update arrives on September 29 everywhere, with a rolling release time throughout the day that's the same for both PC and console. Here's exactly when you can play:

• West Coast US: 3 am PDT
• East Coast US: 6 am EDT
• UK: 11 am BST
• Europe: 12 pm CEST
• Australia: 8 pm AEST
• New Zealand: 11 pm NZDT

You can see the other times in the image above. Since this is an update to a pre-existing version of the game, there is no preload, except apparently from Battlenet, since it's coming to that platform for the first time. The update is around 45GB.

What does The Witcher 3 Remastered add?

• Improved visuals
• Reimagined skill system
• Expanded photo mode
• Improved combat
• Transmog
• Other upgrades and QoL tweaks

Over on Tiktok, Mark Darrah was asked, "If you could go back in time what would you remove from each of the Dragon Age games and what would you add?"

Like everyone who ever installed the Skip the Fade mod for Dragon Age: Origins, Darrah thinks the Lost in Dreams quest needs a snip. "I would be tempted to cut or dramatically reduce the dream sequence part from the Mage Tower," he said. "It's not very good content. It's kind of filler. It was definitely done pretty fast in the end."

As for what he'd add to the original, Darrah suggested the planned human origin where you'd get to play one of the avvar in the Korcari Wilds. "I would like to have another human origin," he said, "but wow, what an expensive add."

For Dragon Age 2, Darrah would remove one of the things I found frustrating about it—no matter whether you side with the templars or the mages, you're forced to fight both at the end. Even if you side with Orsino and the Circle of Magi he wigs out from blood magic, proving Meredith and the templars right in believing the mages are "barely tethered nuclear bombs" who do deserve "to be treated as non-humans."

Darrah's first suggestion for something to add to Dragon Age 2 is "probably just a couple of more levels to use," and yeah, a little more variety in locations would certainly help. He'd also like to have less gold available in the main questline during act two, as the idea was to encourage sidequesting to raise money for the expedition. As it stands, "If you just do the crit path, the crith path gives you enough gold to go on the expedition so it kind of doesn't work. I don't know where I'd make this cut, but I'd be tempted to cut one of those crit-path missions just to get that back."

When I replayed Dragon Age: Inquisition in advance of The Veilguard, the open-world bloat hit me as a much bigger issue than it did on my first playthrough. Darrah suggests snipping parts of it, saying, "I'd probably cut Hissing Wastes maybe or one of the big levels because it's too big. And the other thing I would change would be to dramatically reduce the amount of Power that you need to go on the crit-path missions. That's there for not-super-great reasons, and I think you could cut it by 40 to 60% and the game would just be paced better."

Finally, "Veilguard, the thing that I would add is the Keep. I told them to. It wouldn't take 'that much'. I mean, it would." As for what he'd remove from Veilguard, he says, "I don't have a good answer to that one." I'm sure the internet has plenty of suggestions, but as someone who came around on Veilguard by the time I reached its excellent suicide mission ending, I think it's fine the way it is.

I've always been content to admire the Dark Souls games from afar, rather than get particularly into them myself, and part of that is probably a crumb of leftover resentment from trying to wrangle the multiplayer features in those early games. Love it or hate it, it's esoteric at the best of times and not terribly consistent. If you've a mind to mod those annoyances out of Dark Souls 2, now's your chance.

That's thanks to Yui, a soulslike modder who made similar mods for Elden Ring and Dark Souls. Her latest creation, Dark Souls 2: Seamless Co-op, just released into alpha last week and promises a straightforward co-op experience with up to five other players. "With this, it's theoretically possible to play the game from the tutorial up to the final boss completely in one co-op session," the release blog on Patreon notes. I'm sure one of you will be doing just that with a DDR mat or something.

While you could try to do a full playthrough with a buddy in the original Dark Souls 2, it'd involve a lot of stopping, starting, summoning, and fog walls. With this mod, there are no fog walls, progression is synced up, and the session won't end when someone dies—instead, they respawn at their last bonfire.

If you're worried this will take all the sexy mystery out of Dark Souls' purposefully friction-heavy online play, you may be glad to know the mod's features are accessed via a bunch of unique items with titles like "Pharros' Heliograph" and "Petrified Fingers." It's a very different—and as Yui's release blog notes, a much easier—way to play DS2, but a welcome way to enjoy it with your friends, especially if you've been exploring its every corner since its release.

Yui has been aggressively supporting the mod since release, already patching out a major performance glitch that affected players with Intel processors (including PCG associate editor Ted Litchfield, if you want to get specific). If you run into problems while playing, be sure to check back on the Nexus page or Yui's Patreon—she may have already fixed it.

Armed Fantasia— which was a spiritual successor to the popular JRPG series Wild Arms and not a first-person shooter starring Mickey Mouse—has been cancelled four years after its Kickstarter campaign raised almost $3 million.

As reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, Armed Fantasia is one of several titles for which Digital Bros—the parent company of 505 Games—has decided to "discontinue development of" as revealed in its most recent financial statement.

The project was headed by Akifumi Kaneko, who was the lead designer on the original Wild Arms and served in the same role through to Wild Arms 4. It was formally revealed alongside its Kickstater campaign back in 2022.

Unlike most video game Kickstarters, where the money raised is used to fund the game directly, this Kickstarter aimed to fund two JRPG prototypes. One was for Armed Fantasia, and the other was for a proof-of-concept of Penny Blood. Both prototypes, it was hoped, would lead to signing a publishing deal that would provide full funding for each game.

This double Kickstarter went on to raise ¥379,328,385, which converts to just shy of $3 million in 2022 money. Things initially went to plan for both games, with Armed Fantasia being signed by 505 Games, while Penny Blood was picked up by Japanese publisher Dangen Entertainment.

But Penny Blood has seemingly suffered a rocky development, culminating in developer Studio Wildrose suing Dangen Entertainment in 2024 for withholding those Kickstarter funds (which, according to Wildrose, Dangen and its CEO assisted in managing). At present. It isn't clear what state the Penny Blood JRPG is now in, though in a Kickstarter update from March this year, project lead Matzuo Machida stated that they have since released a book and are "holding discussions to begin production on new Penny Blood content".

Armed Fantasia, meanwhile, missed its originally planned launch date of March 2025. One year later, Kaneko explained in the aforementioned Kickstarter update that the team had "completed what is known as a Vertical Slice build, which includes the main scenario for Armed Fantasia along with the core gameplay systems", and that this build was "submitted to the publisher"—which presumably refers to 505 Games, though Kaneko does not specify this.

Despite completion of this build, the post exhibits signs of a strained developer/publisher relationship. Kaneko opened the post by apologising for "not providing updates according to the schedule we originally set" and stated that "discussing matters like this goes somewhat beyond the authority I've been given."

Kaneko also said that his ability to disclose information about the project is "heavily influenced by the publisher's strategy", but he reassured backers that the development team is "not facing these challenges alone." Clearly, Digital Bros had a change of heart at some point in the last six months.

It was Pathfinder: Kingmaker's eighth birthday yesterady, so I'd like to shout out one of my all-time favorite bits of fantasy character art. This Orc assassin portrait basically captured my go-to, home base character for every fantasy RPG: I like being sneaky, I like doing DPS with a short sword or two, and I like orcs.

I even chopped and screwed a version of this image to work as a custom portrait in the OG Baldur's Gates to represent my Half-Orc Fighter/Thief. It's just such a cool interpretation of a rogue-type character.

It was drawn by former Owlcat artist Akim Kaliberda, who incidentally has a great post on his personal ArtStation page documenting the process from sketch to finished work. While Kaliberda is no longer part of the company, Owlcat still has some of the best RPG character portraits in the biz—Rogue Trader's are incredible, and Dark Heresy looks like it'll continue the tradition.

I want to establish my old school RPG sicko bona fides really quick: My favorite Fallout games are 1 and New Vegas. My least favorite is 3 (4 is better than it gets credit for in critical circles). I really did not like Starfield and did not make it past the first planet. Obsidian is one of my favorites to ever do it. Troika Games forever.

With that out of the way, it is deranged how a lot of fans talk online about Bethesda as a studio, and Todd Howard as a guy. I have no doubt as to the accuracy of Kuhlmann's assessment of his former boss.

And I don't blame Howard one bit for being protective of the series in this way⁠. It's pretty relatable, and I'm sure it wasn't the only consideration around avoiding mainline-style spinoffs, as Kuhlmann's thoughts on ESO indicate.

Reading this in bad faith, you could parse it as an admission of weakness or insecurity, but I don't see it that way. I've spoken to senior Bethesda devs myself and watched them in other interviews: They're proud of their own work, speak positively of New Vegas, and seem to respect their peers at Obsidian. I think it's YouTubers impugning their character or calling for their coworkers to be fired over a perceived mishandling of the series that gets on their nerves.

Fallout memers seem to have gotten what they wanted, but in a monkey's paw kind of way. Obsidian is making a new Fallout game now, but with a gun to its head. Given all the layoffs and studio closures Xbox has under its belt, with more no doubt on the way, it doesn't feel like anybody's winning.

Opinion: Skyrim's main quest is better than most of its sidequests. There was an intense contrast between how fun Oblivion's Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Daedric Prince sidequests were and how boring its main questline was. Even the Fighter's Guild had some twists. I think that experience must have traumatized a generation of players, because I can't think of any other reason why people say the same thing about Skyrim.

In Skyrim, the Thieves Guild are a pack of losers and to get anywhere with their story you have to level them up by doing procedurally generated filler jobs. The Dark Brotherhood quests have little of the Hitman flair of Oblivion's, and mostly just end with you killing targets the same way you'd murder a bandit. Rare highlights like A Night to Remember aside, Skyrim's sidequests are nothing special.

But its main quest has you fighting dragons, climbing mountains, and travelling to the land of the dead. It's full of spectacle and also Paarthurnax, one of the few memorable NPCs in the entire game. Best of all, it doesn't demand you run a single Oblivion Gate.

Read the full article for more of our Elder Scrolls opinions!

CRPGs like Disco Elysium, Baldur's Gate 3 and Esoteric Ebb love to get weird, but no videogame can truly compare to the oddities that a good tabletop session can spit out. Throw a bunch of flesh and blood humans around a table and there's a good chance chaos will ensue.

I started tabletop roleplaying pretty late in life, but over the last 15 or so years my brain has become full of silly anecdotes. In one adventure, my companion puked all over himself and blamed it on the "Vomit Bandit", and I spent one evening carrying a massive table because I thought it looked nice (it also served as an excellent battering ram).

So, my fellow TTRPGers, I want to know about the times things got weird around your table. And if you just play TTRPGs remotely, I want your strange stories too! To get the ball rolling, here are a few of my favourite moments from my own misadventures:

I have others that I would love to share but they are not for public consumption. Anyway! What about you lot? Give me your weird anecdotes, your silly arguments and your stories of terrible GMs.

One of the most striking early sequences in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is its Chimera Tank boss fight, in which V and President Myers battle an enormous, Ghost in the Shell-inspired spider-tank in the bowels of a Barghest facility. The battle forms the explosive culmination of Phantom Liberty's opening act, and CD Projekt recently revealed just what it took to get the sequence where they wanted it.

Speaking on CD Projekt's official AnsweRED podcast (via Eurogamer), Phantom Liberty's game director Gabe Amatangelo, and creative director Igor Sarzyński discussed various production challenges the studio faced during Cyberpunk 2077's creation, bringing up the Chimera Tank as an example. "Sometimes we're making content that's a nexus point of different disciplines, the Chimera is a great example of that," Amatangelo said. "It was gameplay, narrative, art, worldbuilding."

Amatangelo explained that CD Projekt wanted the Chimera Tank to "terrify" players with its weapons, and that there were "so many moving parts" to balance appropriately for the sequence to work. "Sometimes it was too gameplay [focussed], sometimes it was too narrative, sometimes too art direction. It was about striking a balance and I think the three of us got into it and went: 'Okay, beat-by-beat, let's do this.'"

According to Paweł Mielniczuk, Phantom Liberty's art director and the podcast's co-host, creating the boss fight was a years-long process. "I think when we were iterating, it was two years to make this boss fight work," he explained. Later in the chat, Mielniczuk stated the tank went through "four" different iterations that involved "changing equipment [and] the weapons", while Sarzyński claimed that the Chimera's construction represents "one of the most expensive art assets I think ever."

It's interesting to hear CD Projekt discuss the encounter's development, especially since, when I played it around Phantom Liberty's launch, I thought it would have benefited from slightly more balancing. Slowly blasting it to bits was one of the more gruelling parts of Phantom Liberty, and reminded me a lot of the unexpectedly punishing battle with The Toad Prince in The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone.

Nonetheless, fighting the Chimera Tank is certainly memorable, while Phantom Liberty more broadly is one of the best things I've played this decade. I'm keen to see how CDP takes all the lessons it's learned making Cyberpunk into the sequel, though we've got several years, a Witcher 3 expansion, and The Witcher 4 to come before we see it.

I wasn't expecting to see a Starfield sequel any time soon, given it took Bethesda eight years to make its sci-fi RPG and the studio is currently focussed on The Elder Scrolls 6. But if the words of Starfield's former systems designer are anything to go by, we may not see a sequel to Bethesda's first new IP in 25 years at all.

In an interview with FRVR (via VGC), Bethesda veteran Kurt Kuhlmann explained why he doubts the studio will ever return to Starfield: "I would be very surprised", said Kuhlmann, who left Bethesda after Starfield was released. "I don't think Starfield was anywhere near successful enough to do a Starfield 2."

While specific sales figures for Starfield haven't been released, Bethesda's sci-fi RPG is estimated to have generated $300 million in revenue as of April this year. This would make Starfield profitable based on its reported budget of $200 million, but it still has a long way to go before it reaches Skyrim levels of success. Since Xbox has reportedly expressed a desire to focus on its major franchises, it seems likely that Bethesda will prioritise The Elder Scrolls and Fallout over Starfield.

Nonetheless, Kuhlmann thinks this may represent a missed opportunity for Bethesda to build on the lessons learned creating Starfield and create something truly special: "It's in a way, too bad, because I think with the lessons learned on Starfield, a Starfield 2 could have been much closer to the game that Todd had [in mind]."

One issue Kuhlmann thinks a sequel could address is Starfield's outpost building mechanic, which Kuhlmann believes was added to Starfield somewhat arbitrarily and wasn't sufficiently baked into the core experience. "You can build a base anywhere you want on a planet. For what it is, as a standalone system, it's cool, but it's not nearly as integrated with the rest of the game," he said.

In addition, Kuhlmann pointed out that Bethesda faced a similar problem with Fallout 4, and failed to learn the lesson. "It caused problems for it to be integrated with the story and the missions and stuff in Fallout 4, so it was kind of put to the side. Which begs the question of, well, why is it still in the game?" But apparently the decision to keep the system in Starfield was "above" him. "You might say 'Well, we shouldn't have it then if we're not going to integrate it with the story, then it's just this system sitting over there with a massive amount of work involved."

Personally, I think Starfield's problems were less to do with a superfluous outpost building mechanic, and more to do with narrative and systems design that was outclassed by games like Baldur's Gate 3 and even felt dated compared to older RPGs like The Witcher 3. Yet while a full sequel for Starfield may be unlikely, Bethesda has demonstrated long-term commitment to the original game thus far. It has continued to support the base game with both free updates and DLC, while in July, the studio stated that Starfield remains "an important part of our future".

I'll make this quick: Whatever you had planned for the weekend, you've got to carve four-and-a-half hours out for a last-minute swerve into the late '90s. Six months in the making, YouTube essayist Majuular is back with the (I believe) penultimate video in his multi-year Ultima series. "This one was a doozy," he wrote in the comments. It's Ultima Online.

"From its unlikely formation at the behest of Richard Garriott and Starr Long, to its tempering at the hands of Raph Koster and his team of Multi-User Dungeon enthusiasts, to its changing identity in the face of competition, to its incalculable influence, this is the story of Ultima Online," the description reads. If you get the Ultima Online bug after watching the documentary, good news: it's still very much playable on both official servers and fan ones. Majuular highlighted the server he played on, In Mani Ylem, which aims to recapture the late '90s experience.

You can find the entire video series in a playlist here, and I can't recommend watching them highly enough. In late 2025 we published a feature story about Majuular's quest to chronicle the making of Richard Garriott's genre-defining series, and how that mission unexpectedly catapulted him to YouTube success with more than 200,000 followers. It's a good read—and won't take you quite as long as watching all the videos.

FlyKnight is a $6, first-person RPG in the King's Field/Lunacid mold that whips ass, looks like Old School Runescape, and feels like it could have asked for twice as much money and still been a bargain.

That alone makes it one of my easiest recommendations on Steam, but it also just got a free update of the GOTY/Enhanced/Definitive Edition variety, from its solo dev, while still only asking new players for $6 upfront⁠—$4 at the time of writing, thanks to a sale running through September 30. Here are the big Enhanced Edition additions:

• Multiple difficulties, with a Miyazaki's Choice™ poison swamp exclusive to Hard
• Item and enemy randomization, with savable procedural generation seeds
• Four new weapon types, and an unspecified number of additions to previous weapon categories
• Performance improvements "especially noticeable on Steam Deck"—which is great, because that's definitely where I most recommend playing
• Graphics, UI, and balance tweaks, plus bugfixes

The update's pound-for-pound beefiness is appropriately proportional to FlyKnight's own: I loved the seven hours I spent with this game on Steam Deck last year, and always meant to revisit it⁠—now I have the perfect excuse.

FlyKnight has the vibes and the charm down, but so do a lot of entries in this growing subgenre of indie King's Field-alikes. What set it apart for me was its excellent combat. FlyKnight has this very unique, satisfying system of locational limb damage, letting you priority target weak spots or weapon-holding appendages. It also only just clicked with me how appropriate that is in a game about anthropomorphic bugs, which notably take severed limbs like champs.

It's very slow-paced, but high-skill, like a classico survival horror game. Think less dodging and i-frames, more controlling distance, taking advantage of stagger opportunities, and perfect blocking. I can't recommend FlyKnight enough at the price of "a pretty good cup of coffee," let alone "a slightly worse cup of coffee" on sale. Check it out on Steam.

I don't think current-day Bethesda has another good Dark Brotherhood questline in 'em. The Dark Brotherhood questline from Oblivion is generally regarded as one of the best—and for good reason. Not only is the story pretty stellar, but "Whodunnit?" is a stand-out in that it's a genuinely impressive spiderweb of potential outcomes. The Summitmist Manor is almost like a miniature immersive sim. Obviously not as complex, sure, but a delicious bite-sized playground in which to murder its guests.

But after Starfield? Man, I don't know. No questline I played in that deeply beige game had any of that same Dark Brotherhood juice. And given what we've heard out of the studio—namely, tighter and tighter constraints on what its developers can do—I'm not sure that the magic's there for a good Brotherhood questline anymore.

I'd like to be wrong, but in my mind? A Dark Brotherhood questline requires more weirdness, creativity, and gallows humour than modern-day Bethesda seems capable of.

Read the full article for more of our Elder Scrolls opinions!

We've become the Nerevarine and defeated Dagoth Ur. We've foiled Mehrunes Dagon and closed the Oblivion gates. We've destroyed Alduin and absorbed his soul. We've bought horse armor, stolen an Elder Scroll, and even once pickpocked a note from the butt of a fully-dressed assassin without him noticing.

In other words, we've done it all, and with a combined 2,500+ hours across the series, five PC Gamer editors have come together to say few things about the past and future of The Elder Scrolls series.

Below, we've shouted some of our strongest opinions about TES—and don't worry, Dragonborn, we've left some room for you to Fus-Ro-Dah yourself. After each opinion, you can click a button to tell us if you agree or disagree with our scalding hot takes.

The Elder Scrolls should be an RPG again

What gets Todd Howard out of bed every morning is the possibility of removing yet more numbers from Tamriel. Stats? Delete them. Skill points? Crush them. You want to play a distinct class, you sick freak? Absolutely not. Please hand yourself into the authorities.

But what this has done is turned the general experience of playing a Bethesda game into a uniform mush. Not in the sense that we're all stealth archers now (though that is a problem), but in the sense that, play any of these games for long enough and you simply become a master of everything. A lack of limitations, a willingness to tell a player they can't do something, that this or that skill is simply outside their remit, has made Bethesda's games more accessible but also more boring. It's time to go back to the old ways.

Skyrim's main quest is better than most of its sidequests

There was an intense contrast between how fun Oblivion's Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Daedric Prince sidequests were and how boring its main questline was. Even the Fighter's Guild had some twists. I think that experience must have traumatized a generation of players, because I can't think of any other reason why people say the same thing about Skyrim.

In Skyrim, the Thieves Guild are a pack of losers and to get anywhere with their story you have to level them up by doing procedurally generated filler jobs. The Dark Brotherhood quests have little of the Hitman flair of Oblivion's, and mostly just end with you killing targets the same way you'd murder a bandit. Rare highlights like A Night to Remember aside, Skyrim's sidequests are nothing special.

But its main quest has you fighting dragons, climbing mountains, and travelling to the land of the dead. It's full of spectacle and also Paarthurnax, one of the few memorable NPCs in the entire game. Best of all, it doesn't demand you run a single Oblivion Gate.

Oblivion's spellmaking should've never gone away

Look, I know that Oblivion's spellmaking feature—wherein you could create your own custom spells—completely broke the game. It was possible to make absolutely absurd combinations of abilities that'd render a sufficiently-talented mage effectively immortal. As such, I'm not entirely surprised such a feature wasn't in Skyrim.

However: As Josh correctly identified above, TES has been less of an RPG with every installment anyway. And more to the point, I don't think it's ever been a particularly engaging RPG in recent years. This isn't Diablo, it's not Baldur's Gate—the amount of min-maxing you can do usually involves picking what type of armor you'd like to wear and a weapon, and that's pretty much it.

There's no real grist or art to making a strong Elder Scrolls character anyway, so why not let us have fun breaking the game over our knee? More to the point, the idea of a wizard starting out as a little weenie, then achieving godlike power? That's pure oldschool D&D, baby, and Oblivion's spellmaking was delightfully flavourful for that exact reason.

Morrowind is great, but they didn't know how to do side quests yet

When you're a Serious Critic who loves RPGs, you're required by law to say that Morrowind is the best Elder Scrolls game⁠—I might even agree still, grousing aside⁠—but I feel like Oblivion and Skyrim do not get their proper due for the leaps they made in side quest design.

Morrowind's final Thieves Guild mission is a straightforward assassination of some Nord guy. Oblivion's is the stone cold classic, first round hall of famer, The Ultimate Heist, a multipart infiltration where you steal an Elder Scroll from the Imperial Palace. There are twists and funny moments in Morrowind's side content, but nothing as shocking as A Night to Remember in Skyrim.

Morrowind's atmosphere, worldbuilding, and main quest are still some of Bethesda's finest, and I'm pretty reliably the person who prefers a crusty old RPG to the new hotness. But it always bugs me that people (mostly RPG Codex guys and YouTubers) are always in such a rush to not be seen liking the popular thing that they miss the nuances of what they're criticizing.

I don't think current-day Bethesda has another good Dark Brotherhood questline in 'em

The Dark Brotherhood questline from Oblivion is generally regarded as one of the best—and for good reason. Not only is the story pretty stellar, but "Whodunnit?" is a stand-out in that it's a genuinely impressive spiderweb of potential outcomes. The Summitmist Manor is almost like a miniature immersive sim. Obviously not as complex, sure, but a delicious bite-sized playground in which to murder its guests.

But after Starfield? Man, I don't know. No questline I played in that deeply beige game had any of that same Dark Brotherhood juice. And given what we've heard out of the studio—namely, tighter and tighter constraints on what its developers can do—I'm not sure that the magic's there for a good Brotherhood questline anymore.

I'd like to be wrong, but in my mind? A Dark Brotherhood questline requires more weirdness, creativity, and gallows humour than modern-day Bethesda seems capable of.

Bethesda should ditch handwritten stories and turn TES into first-person Dwarf Fortress

Bethesda's writing took a dip in Oblivion and has been generally anodyne since Skyrim (the studio tried for something more interesting with Fallout 4—and I genuinely admire it for doing so—but it didn't work out), with Starfield's bland, sexless galaxy providing the absolute nadir of its narrative efforts so far. You might say the answer is to change how it approaches writing its games. I say no.

Bethesda has flirted with emergent, systems-driven gameplay since Oblivion, but it's never truly committed. NPC schedules and relationship values are garnish on a stubbornly hand-crafted meal. It doesn't have to be that way, though. Go all in, guys. Do what you're best at, which is creating rich, wide worlds to explore, then fill it with mechanics and systems that drive the action rather than your half-baked plots. You know, like Mount & Blade. You guys should just make Mount & Blade.

I don't care if I have to pass through a loading screen for interiors as long as I can still pick up garbage and wave it around

Cyberpunk 2077 may be one of my favorite RPGs ever, but do you remember its inventory screen? It feels so videogamey, so disconnected from the world you're exploring. What about clutter in that world, its interactivity? All those drinks and snacks you can pick up are fairly static objects, no fun physics interactions, no soul.

The fact that you can just wander into somebody's house in The Elder Scrolls and read the books on their shelves, drag their dinner off the table, rearrange their cutlery, it has such a profound pound-for-pound effect on the games' immersion. Other games have managed a similar magic⁠—Baldur's Gate 3, Deus Ex, Prey⁠—but nobody does it in an open world simulation like Bethesda can. These granular, interactive environments are truly something special.

So I say let TES6 get diced up into a billion discrete loading zones. That's not the problem I had with Starfield, and if it's somehow required for the interactive environments I've loved from this studio, it's a price I'll gladly pay.

It's ridiculous there's not an Elder Scrolls TV show on right now

I don't get Bethesda sometimes. They have a massively popular Fallout TV series yet they don't fast-track a new Fallout game (until they're forced to by Microsoft), and they have a massively popular Elder Scrolls game series and don't get a TES television show into production (as far as we know). All the ingredients to cross-polinate are there. Just, like… do it?

With so much source material, an Elder Scrolls TV show could go absolutely hog wild without ever treading on the lore or events of the game. The world is massive, the history spans thousands of years, there's all sorts of avenues a TV series (animated, I assume) could explore.

I know there are pitfalls. I'm sure every TV executive would stare blankly at nerdy writers pitching a show about the devastating death toll and political consequences of the Thrassian Plague before saying "But we still have a guy in a horned helmet shouting at dragons, right?" The show would definitely feature a white, male, musclebound John Skyrim in the lead role instead of the dozen or so far more interesting options.

But, c'mon, Bethesda. You announced The Elder Scrolls 6: Subtitle Pending 35 years ago (it feels like), at least give us some TES to watch while we wait for more TES to play.

Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader's three-year run of expansions is drawing to a close this December with Processional of the Damned. Like the previous DLCs, Processional will introduce a new storyline and companion, both integrated into the existing story rather than coming after the end of the campaign. And your new buddy, well, she sounds pretty extra. A bit risky, maybe?

Here are some red flags:

• Cries tears of blood
• Unstable powers
• Might be heretical
• "She will never truly be free from peril and madness"
• A living weapon

But I guess when you're already travelling with a psychotic alien who tried to kill you, another unsanctioned psyker who's been known to lose control of her powers, a blood-obsessed assassin and Judge Dredd, Stella might actually fit in perfectly.

Along with Stella, Processional will introduce the new Zealot archetype, letting you forge a character who loves to bludgeon enemies to death. Owlcat has also teased a new feature, "madness", which will affect all your companions—probably not in a good way—as well as new enemies and gear.

After a rough start, Rogue Trader has grown into the best of Owlcat's dense CRPGs, and another one is on the way. Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy doesn't have a release date yet, but it's "coming soon". Beyond CRPGs, we've also got The Expanse: Osiris Reborn to look forward to—it's very different from Owlcat's previous RPGs, but it might have the juice.