September 2023

During my cover story trip to Ubisoft Bordeaux in France, my hands-on time consisted of Baghdad exploration and contracts. The former was good fun – Baghdad feels almost like a 2023 spiritual reimagining of Jerusalem in 2007’s Assassin’s Creed, with plenty of rooftops and parkour paths to hit from objective to objective. But the latter was the highlight of my experience. 

Starfield, Bethesda’s newest and biggest open-world RPG, is out now for everyone. Well, at least for everyone who owns an Xbox or a gaming PC. And according to Starfield director Todd Howard, the game’s no-show status on PlayStation is actually a good thing, as it made Starfield “a better product.”

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Imagine a game. Its soon-to-be hero, of unknown but mutable name and gender, awakens with a start, only to suddenly be thrust into a grand adventure in a larger world. The budding hero doesn’t miss a beat, quickly becoming powerful, joining various factions, and solving mysteries and completing quests across the land.…

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Leave it to Dave Filoni to pull off a Star Wars nostalgia play that has me sobbing on my living room couch after years of nods to other characters that felt more fan-service-y than impactful. With Ahsoka episode four, the unofficial heir to George Lucas’ empire manages to weave together multiple Clone Wars’ story…

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Starfield is a surprisingly demanding PC game, requiring a fairly hefty GPU and CPU to run it smoothly at anything approaching max specs even at 1080p. And, alas, it’s just a bit much for the Steam Deck to handle unless you’re happy to sacrifice visual fidelity, framerate or - in most cases - both if you plan on spending your time doing anything except browsing menus (though there’ll be plenty of that).

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Among Larian CEO Sven Vincke's greatest hopes ahead of Baldur's Gate 3's release was that it would get people interested in RPGs who had previously been turned off by them. This strikes me as a pretty tall order, given that Baldur's Gate 3 is also one of the most in-depth RPGs you'll play, but going by post-release responses, Vincke thinks Larian have managed it, thanks in large degree to more readable production values than you find in many RPGs.

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Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone - better known as ConcernedApe - has been quietly working away on the follow-up to his wildly popular and beloved farming game since at least the end of 2021. Given that secrecy and Stardew’s enormous following, it’s perhaps little surprise that a single cryptic screenshot from Haunted Chocolatier has immediately sparked fervent theories about its possible connection to Barone’s previous game.

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Space. The medium frontier. These are the voyages of me, reviewing Bethesda's big space RPG Starfield. It's the company's first new IP in almost 30 years (a claim that contains in it an inherent threat for Starfield 2), and though Bethesda has copied some of their own homework for some themes and factions, Starfield is indeed a spacefaring adventure of epic scale and sometimes surprising beauty. It's this scale that makes Starfield feel unfortunately small and empty, a place that still has those fun little Bethesda side quests that escalate into something huge and absurd, but that can also swallow them whole in its cold, star-scattered grandeur.

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Koei Tecmo and Gust released new Atelier Resleriana character spotlight videos and key art have been released from Koei Tecmo and Gust. The three people featured this time are Ryza, Lent, and Tao. They are all returning playable characters from Atelier Ryza. The character spotlight videos and key art were revealed on the Atelier Resleriana official social media account.

First, you can view the new key artwork for the characters in the posts below:

[embed]https://twitter.com/Atelier_Resleri/status/1698893715476205890[/embed]

[embed]https://twitter.com/Atelier_Resleri/status/1698984325629235678[/embed]

[embed]https://twitter.com/Atelier_Resleri/status/1699256109788180800[/embed]

Each video is about ten seconds in length and shows off the three returning characters in battle. Ryza is shown with her staff, while Lent swings his warrior’s sword. Tao is shown using magic to increase the strength of his hammer. You can view the new Atelier Resleriana character trailers for Ryza, Lent and Tao in the posts below:

[embed]https://twitter.com/Atelier_Resleri/status/1698894973888819469[/embed]

[embed]https://twitter.com/Atelier_Resleri/status/1698985570511487016[/embed]

[embed]https://twitter.com/Atelier_Resleri/status/1699257361771196607[/embed]
Two other character spotlight videos were released in September 2023 showcasing Judie and Viorate.

Artplay and 505 Games announced Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night online Chaos and VS multiplayer, and paid DLC that adds Classic Mode 2 and costumes. Chaos and VS seem to be free, while you need to pay for the other add-ons. Those two elements will be discussed on September 14, 2023. This comes as the game passed two million in sales.

Here’s the announcement video with Producer Koji “IGA” Igarashi and Director Shutaro Iida. First, IGA confirmed the update ended up delayed due to COVID and technical difficulties. After apologizing and thanking people, Iida discussed that progress had been made on the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Chaos and VS online multiplayer modes. Wayforward is involved with the online modes' development. It’s then that video footage of both appeared showing how they work.

At the 1:30 mark, IGA and Iida discussed the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night DLC. It’s then that a video clip showed the new costumes in actions and teased the Classic Mode 2 retro version of the game with Retro UI elements.

Here’s the new trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X_54wp1xiU&ab_channel=Bloodstained%3ARitualoftheNight

Yuzuki Choco, a second generation Hololive Vtuber, reached a million subscribers on her YouTube channel as of September 6, 2023. She reached the milestone during an Only Up endurance stream. She planned to continue live streaming until she reached her goal of 1,000,000 subscribers on YouTube. [Thanks, Dengeki Online!]

The endurance livestream was part of a series for Yuzuki Choco called “Only Up.” This stream was called “Only Up: Devil’s Challenge! 1,000,000 Subscriber Endurance!” She shared three other Only Up streams recently, but it was on the fourth stream that she was able to achieve her goal.

You can see her reaction to reaching her goal of gaining one million subscribers about 55 minutes into the stream. During it, she had a subscriber counter on screen so she would know when she reached her goal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noDoyGAyIYM&ab_channel=ChocoCh.%E7%99%92%E6%9C%88%E3%81%A1%E3%82%87%E3%81%93

Megahouse has announced a new set of Look Up figures of Luffy in his Gear 5 form and Yamato from the One Piece series. The set costs ¥8,965 yen (or about $60), and is expected to come out in Japan on March 2024. Pre-orders for the figures will open on September 7, 2023 from the Premium Bandai online store.

Each figure stands at approximately 11cm (or about 4.33 inches) tall. Additionally, the figures come with a replica of the Gomu Gomu no Mi fruit and the Kozuki Oden's Logbook as bonus items when purchased from the Premium Bandai and Toei Animation storefronts.

You can take a better look at the new One Piece Look Up figures of Luffy in Gear 5 and Yamato in the gallery below.

[gallery columns="4" size="medium" ids="982662,982663,982664,982665" link="file"]

Luffy’s new Gear 5 form recently made its first appearance in episode 1,071 of the One Piece anime series. Alongside the reveal of this form, a new SH Figuarts Zero Extra Battle figure of Luffy in his Gear 5 form was recently announced. Additionally, Bandai Namco revealed that One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 would receive new DLC of Gear 5 Luffy.

Baldur's Gate 3 has arrived on PlayStation 5, and you can find out how it compares to the PC version by watching this archived Twitch stream! Watch editor Marcus Stewart dive into Larian's hit RPG for the very first time, creating a new character from scratch and kicking off a new journey.

If you enjoy our livestreams but haven’t subscribed to our Twitch channel, know that doing so not only gives you notifications and access to special emotes. You’ll also be granted entry to the official Game Informer Discord channel, where our welcoming community members, moderators, and staff gather to talk games, entertainment, food, and organize hangouts! Be sure to also follow our second YouTube channel, Game Informer Shows, to watch other Replay episodes as well as Twitch archives such as Replay, GI Live, and more. 

I sometimes hide disappointment behind a meek observation that, well, “it isn’t for me,” but I’m sure that Dauntless developer Phoenix Labs’ life sim role-playing game Fae Farm, out on Switch and PC on September 8, is for me. Calm and uncomplicated “cozy gaming” is heavily associated with women, I’m one of those. Fae…

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Are you broke in Baldur’s Gate 3? Do you see a merchant selling something you want but don’t have the gold to purchase? Sure, you could send out your merry band of misfits to do some quests and earn some cash but, my dear reader, have you ever considered larceny instead? Better yet, have you considered bypassing all…

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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are in the midst of a comeback of sorts, or at least a little renaissance. Nickelodeon’s big summer animated film, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, is getting a video game tie-in set in the movie’s universe that promises to combine the film’s “bold, painterly art style” with a funny story and…

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Last time, you decided that interrupt attacks are better than a lore codex. Sanity prevailed, and I thank you. Though I realise I am now writing a lore codex entry about a great victory in the year 2023, so sorry about that. This week, I ask you to choose between upgraded movement or upgraded cardboard. What's better: Fast travel, or upgrading cards?

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All eyes might currently be on BigOl'Spacegame, but there's plenty more happening behind-the-scenes at Bethesda, one of those things obviously being MachineGames' Indiana Jones project - which, depending how you choose to interpret four words from Bethesda's Todd Howard, might just be gearing up for a proper reveal next year.

Bethesda announced it had an Indiana Jones game in the works - with Wolfenstein studio MachineGames at the helm - all the way back in January 2021, warning, "It'll be some time before we have more to reveal." And, true to its word, the project has remained shrouded in secrecy since - although we do at least now have confirmation, thanks to an FTC hearing testimony from Bethesda's Pete Hines, that it'll be releasing exclusively on Xbox and PC.

So with Bethesda's Indy announcement steadily approaching its third anniversary, a persistent question has been, "When will we see more?", and Todd Howard has now maybe teased - in an interview with Esquire - that the project will be getting a proper reveal sometime next year.

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"It was always in the planning," director of publishing Michael Douse says, "but we knew it wouldn't be for launch. It's in the roadmap, and though we have an idea of when we'd like to get it ready for, we don't want to put a date on it until we're sure."

Starfield Walkthrough: Main Missions

A note on the walkthrough: In the 19 Main Quest missions there are times when multiple main quests will become available at once. In these scenarios we’ve laid out story quests in the order that we recommend you complete them in. We've reloaded many, many saves and played through Starfield's countless options in an effort to inform you of which way to go most of the time, and leave you to read through big consequences when you want to.

An original Pokemon calendar for 2024 that you can put on your table is now available via the Pokemon Center. All of the art features Pokemon from the Paldea region. As well, even though the calendar is for 2024, the months in it range from October 2023 to December 2025. So you can use it for about two years. The calendar costs 1210 JPY, which is around $8.20.

Since this is a Japanese calendar, all of the holidays in it are based on Japan’s. While it does allow you to use it for 2023 and 2025, it looks like the calendar only uses the bare minimum pages for those years. The pages for 2023 and 2025 have three months on one page. While you can still use them to remember important dates, the boxes might be smaller than usual to fit everything.

[gallery columns="5" ids="982807,982806,982805,982804,982803" link="file"]

Pokemon that appear in the 2024 calendar include Clodsire, Bellibolt, Wiglett, Sandygast, Misdreavus, and Greavard. You can catch all of these Pokemon in the base games of Scarlet and Violet. Misdreavus and Sandygast did not debut in the latest generation, but they’re readily available to catch in Paldea.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are both available on the Nintendo Switch. The Teal Mask DLC will come out on September 13, 2203. The tabletop Pokemon calendar for 2024 is only available in Japan.

As part of the Half-Anniversary celebration, Crunchyroll announced the Street Fighter Duel Witch Juri alt. People can now try and get her through the Divination gacha. In addition, her New Fighter Trial Realm is live for people to test her out.

Witch Juri is from the Infernal faction, just like the standard version. She also shares the same Fighter Type and Class. So she’s still a Tech Assassin. However, her Fighting Style differs. She’s a Secret Arts sort of character, while her basic version is a Ansatsuken one. This outfit comes just ahead of Halloween, which is nearly just in time for the spooky season.

While she’s a witch, she’s dressed more like a devil or succubus, but is still suitably appropriate given the time of year. Here’s the official trailer introducing this new Juri variant into the game, and providing a closer look this new version.

[embed]https://twitter.com/StreetFighterDL/status/1696930783024259142[/embed]

She arrives after some other special Street Fighter Duel character alts. We saw a similarly Halloween-themed Mummy Dhalsim in July 2023. For Also, Fashion Ken showed up just before Juri did. You can watch his trailer below, which much like the Juri trailer, provides a better look at this variant.

[embed]https://twitter.com/StreetFighterDL/status/1697293175810035752[/embed]

Street Fighter Duel is available for mobile devices, and Witch Juri is available in-game now.

GKIDS released the official English movie trailer for Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film in 10 years. The film follows a young boy named Mahito who misses his dead mother. He finds himself in a world shared by the living and the dead. Once there, he gains new insight into death, life, and friendship.

This movie features hand-drawn artwork, a staple of Studio Ghibli, and is an original, semi-autobiographical project by Miyazaki. The film's musical score has been composed by Joe Hisaishi, and the theme song "Spinning Globe" is penned and performed by J-pop superstar Kenshi Yonezu. Recently, Yonezu recently wrote the theme song "Moongazing" for Final Fantasy XVI.

The official English The Boy and the Heron teaser trailer for the upcoming Studio Ghibli movie can be viewed below:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7EDFdA10pg[/embed]

GKIDS announced they would be distributing the film in North America back on July 14, 2023. It did not release any further details about the film at that time.

Crunchyroll announced the release date for the Attack on Titan Final Season The Final Chapters Part 1 English dub. It will debut on the streaming service on September 10, 2023. However, it’s one of five dubs that will appear that day. Brazilian Portuguese, German, Latin American Spanish, and Russian dubs will also debut that day. All of them will show up at 10:30pm PT on September 10, 2023, which is 1:30am ET/7:30am CET on September 11, 2023.

Editor’s Note: There will be Attack on Titan Final Season Final Chapters Part 1 spoilers below.

First, here’s English dub trailer. It features story segments with a number of different characters talking, so you can get an idea of how the voice actors sound at critical moments.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GSwoyADzSY&ab_channel=CrunchyrollDubs[/embed]

Crunchyroll also released the English dub voice actors. As you might expect, many performers reprised their roles from past seasons of the show.

Mortal Kombat 1’s roster already has a few returning names from the series’ 3D era in the forms of Ashrah and Havik, and another long-lost favorite joins the fight. Nitara is making her long-awaited return, and it’s such a big homecoming that NetherRealm has enlisted actress Megan Fox to voice her.

Nitara is a vampire that made her debut in 2002’s Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. She’s only been playable in a couple of entries, had a small cameo in Mortal Kombat 11, and appeared in the 2021 Mortal Kombat film. Despite having only a few appearances to her name, she’s endured as favorite among fans who grew up with the 2000s era, and she looks as deadly as ever in MK 1. 

Megan Fox brings Nitara to life, and you can get a sample of her performance in the trailer below. “I grew up playing Mortal Kombat and I can’t believe that I’m voicing a character in the new game," Fox says in a press release. "It’s an honor to be a part of one of the greatest video game legacies of all time.” Given that Ronda Rousey voiced Sonya Blade in MK 11, it’s not surprising to see NetherRealm rope in another celebrity to perform one of its kombatants. 

Valve's never-ending tinkering with Steam will soon see support for PlayStation's DualSense and DualShock controllers bought to the fore, their compatibility set to be clearly listed on store and library pages starting this October.

That's according to a developer-focused blog post revealing, among other things, that of the 87m Steam users who've played a game using a controller at least once, around 27 percent of those - up from 11 percent in 2018 - utilise either PS4's DualShock or PS5's DualSense.

To cater for these users, developers are now being asked to complete a questionnaire that'll automatically rate a game's DualShock/Sense compatibility based on the answers given. Players can expect the results of these questions to clearly manifest as store-page guidance.

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Square Enix revealed the Final Fantasy XVI character ages in the FFXVI Ultimania book that just debuted in Japan. Aitai Kuji owner Audrey Lamsam purchased the book and revealed some of the details. While we knew about how old Clive and Jill were, the guidebook revealed other characters’ ages as well. [Thanks, Audrey Lamsam!]

Editor’s Note: There will be spoilers for Final Fantasy XVI characters and their ages below.

The characters range in age from 28 to 70 after the time skip. Lamsam didn’t note if the FFXIV Ultimania age for Hugo was his pre-timeskip or post-timeskip one.

Here’s the full list:

The Nintendo Switch has sold an unprecedented 125 million units so far, putting it right behind the Nintendo DS (154 million) and Sony’s PlayStation 2 (over 155 million) on a list of best-selling consoles of all-time. Could the handheld hybrid surpass them and become the best-selling gaming device ever? Maybe, and…

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There's something immortal about the golden era of high school movies and TV shows - a solid block of hyper-American 90s and early 00s dramedies that shaped, for better or worse, how a generation parsed teenhood and the idea of growing up. There were the pop-infused Brat Pack movies, the early edginess of Degrassi Junior High and My So-Called Life, and the cult classic Freaks and Geeks; we have Clueless, Cruel Intentions, 10 Things I Hate About You. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, beloved by so many, remains the last line of defence for Joss Whedon apologists. These projects didn't just have exceptionally savvy audio direction, but a genuine understanding of music as a narrative transceiver in a formative period when you're figuring out how to exist in a body and a world that doesn't become you.

Pikmin 4 is far from a difficult game. There's no time limit you need to worry about, most resources can be perpetually collected, and the game is extremely forgiving about your ever-growing Pikmin death toll.

It's easy enough to see Pikmin 4's story properly to the end, with the toughest challenges being its platinum badges for Dandori side-missions. (It can be particularly tough with some of the Dandori battles against the AI, and especially tricky in that one, very long cave.

Tom is going through and collecting all of the platinum badges, to which I say godspeed, but ever since I finished Pikmin 4 I've been thinking about other ways I could challenge myself in the game. At time of writing, the speedrunning record for getting Pikmin 4's true ending is just under two and a half hours, but it doesn't take advantage of any area skips - it's an exercise in Dandori mastery because there aren't really any major glitches to take advantage of to begin with.

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Here's a thing. RPS now has a Tools section! But what does that mean for you, our readers? Well, it will depend if you're the kind of person who consults our daily Wordle answer guides, as our first tool is, in fact, a Wordle Solver. It's a new experiment we're trying that's been put together by our guides and tech teams, and the aim is to help you arrive at those sometimes tricky Wordle answers without, necessarily, just resorting to looking up the answer. We'll see how it goes! And if you want to find out more about what it is and why we're doing it, read on below.

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Bethesda's Starfield taps into our innate human instinct to advance, to manifest the future and ultimately discover the meaning of our insignificant existence in the infinite wonders of the universe. If you ask me, Bethesda has the track record of creating incredible fantasy or post-apocalyptic worlds, so the final frontier of space is the perfect next step for them. Starfield transports us to a truly different view of the space genre. The game's "NASA-punk" aesthetic builds on the real history of human space exploration, and delivers a seemingly feasible future of humanity living in the stars.

In other words, Starfield wants to allow players to live their wildest space-faring dreams - those perfect escapist dreams of spreading wings and plunging into zero-g freedom. My character, Quinlan Vos, is the greatest bounty hunter in the universe with equally brilliant combat skills when fighting down on planet surfaces or piloting his ship Vermithor through the cosmos. Quinlan never boards an enemy vessel without equipping his trusty boost pack, Grendel ballistic rifle and Equinox laser rifle. Preparation and the right tools for the job are his key to success.

I'm enjoying Starfield so far, but when we're talking about having the right tools, the biggest problem a lot of players will face comes down to the limited accessibility settings the game comes with. This was a worry for the accessibility community during the buildup to Starfield's arrival, as gameplay trailers, interviews with Bethesda's Todd Howard and the general trickle of pre-release information failed to explore accessibility. Unfortunately, our accessibility worries were rooted in reality.

In Cologne last month, Nintendo's public Gamescom showfloor booth let you play Pikmin 4 and Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But behind the scenes, the company had more up its sleeves.

Developer presentations for Switch 2 took place behind closed doors, Eurogamer understands, with partners shown tech demos of how well the system is designed to run.

One Switch 2 demo is a souped up version of Switch launch title Zelda: Breath of the Wild, designed to hit the Switch 2's beefier target specs. (To be clear, though - this is just a tech demo. There's no suggestion the game will be re-released.)

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Starfield has exceeded a million concurrent players across all platforms by the end of its first day of full release.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer shared the news on X (formerly Twitter), adding: "Thanks to all the players who helped us reach this great milestone and congrats to Bethesda Studios."

The game had already got off to an impressive start last week when it was released into early access for purchasers of the premium edition.

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Inside Eurogamer is a podcast series exclusively for supporters of Eurogamer. Supporting us costs £3/$3/€3 a month and unlocks a handful of exclusive features like this, plus gets you ad-free viewing of the website, discounts, and more.

It's episode four of Inside Eurogamer, the show where we go behind the scenes and talk about the things we do and why we do them. This month, we're talking about Starfield and Gamescom.

Gamescom appears to be back in full swing, which is encouraging for the industry, and Tom and Ed have just returned from there. What did they see there that really caught their eye - what impressed them? And, conversely, did anything disappoint?

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