October 2023

Assassin's Creed Mirage – an Assassin's Creed that looks to the original game for primary inspiration – is nearly upon us. Join me as I play not quite the beginning of the game, but one of the game's earlier hours. You get to see some tutorials, a little bit of exploration, and finally, a stealthy attack on a well-guarded dock.

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.

A new 1/7th scale figure of Frieren and Fern from the ongoing Fall 2023 anime series Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End appeared on Design Coco’s social media account. The figure is being produced in collaboration with the animation studio Madhouse. Pre-orders will begin on October 13, 2023. Only a Japanese release is confirmed for now. A retail price has not yet been revealed.

The figure is based on a new illustration that was drawn by Frieren and Fern character designer Reiko Nagasawa. She illustrated it to commemorate the release of the anime adaptation.

Check out the prototype photo of the fully painted Frieren and Fern scale figure, as well as the artwork it was based on, in the gallery below:

[gallery link="file" columns="2" size="full" ids="989921,989922"]

Design Coco is well known for its anime figures. For example, the company released ones of Jujutsu Kaisen characters Yuji, Megumi, Suguru, and Panda. It also created a Genjyo Sanzo figure from Saiyuki Reload Zeroin.  

The Frieren and Fern from the ongoing anime series Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is in development. There's no release window for it yet. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End will continue airing through the Fall 2023 anime season and is available to stream on Crunchyroll. Viz Media handles the manga outside Japan.

The Love Live official social media account announced the previously delayed Auto Emotion Convert Rina-chan Board toy from Premium Bandai will be available to pre-order in Japan on October 17, 2023. It will be available on the Premium Bandai online store. It is unknown if the US storefront will also eventually carry it. More information about the price will be released when orders open.

The Auto Emotion Convert Rina-chan Board toy is a replica of the mask Rina Tennoji wears during her performances in the idol seriesLove Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club. The toy was originally planned to be released in Summer 2023, but ended up delayed until now. The LED board of the toy lights up and displays various emotions like the one Rina Tennojis. The toy also plays voiced dialogue and songs from Chiemi Tanaka, the voice actress for the character.

Get a closer look at the Auto Emotion Convert Rina-chan Board toy in the gallery below:

[gallery link="file" columns="1" size="full" ids="989937"]

My Little Universe, a smash mobile hit with over 30 million players worldwide, is now available for Nintendo Switch™ and PC, and to celebrate the launch, we are offering a custom-skinned My Little Universe Nintendo Switch™ OLED Console, complete with a copy of My Little Universe, to one lucky winner.

When Horizon Forbidden West: Complete Edition is released, it will be the first two disc PlayStation 5 game.

A social media post showing the back of the Complete Edition's box reveals that the physical copy of the game will be shipped on two blu-ray discs. Users will need to ensure they have plenty of free space before cracking on with Aloy's latest outings, as a minimum of 121GB is required for installation.

While Aloy's escapades across America will be the first game to release across two discs on PlayStation 5, it won't be the only title to do so. Earlier this year, Square Enix revealed that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will also be on two discs. This game is set to release next year.

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The team of bug-fixing quality assurance (QA) staff who unionised while working on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf have all been laid off.

That's according to a Polygon report which states that the 13 staff are no longer working on BioWare's long-awaited RPG project.

These staff were formally employed by QA outsourcing giant Keywords, which was contracted to assist BioWare on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. The group faced something of a fight to form a union, after quibbles around the ability to work remotely.

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UPDATE 1.48pm: Blizzard has sorted its Battle.net issues from earlier today. The company thanked its community for their patience as it found a fix.

"Not the start of the day we would have hoped for, but we got there," the support team replied to one user on X (formerly Twitter).

The original story continues below.

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Diablo 4 is coming to Steam on 17th October, following a period of Battle.net PC exclusivity.

"We want to break down barriers to make it easier for wanderers everywhere to defend Sanctuary," Blizzard proclaimed in a new post detailing Diablo 4's move to an additional PC platform.

Those looking to play Blizzard's latest Diablo release on Steam will still need to connect to a Battle.net account, something that is also the case across other platforms. Blizzard explained this will enable players to get access to features like cross-platform play and "more".

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The first of Konami's comeback titles for the Silent Hill series, Silent Hill: Ascension, will begin at the end of this month according to app store listings.

Silent Hill: Ascension is an interactive streaming game where players will be able to affect the outcome of the story by voting on what happens next.

Although Konami and Genvid have kept details on Ascension hush until now, pre-registrations on the Google Play Store for the game are live and suggest it'll begin on 31st October.

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Kitfox and Bay12 have struck the earth, manufactured a thousand stone blocks, and laid out a roadmap for the Dwarf Fortress Steam edition's Adventure Mode, together with some forthcoming updates for the existing fortress management mode. Adventure Mode, in case you've been living under a rock (which I guess you probably have, if you've been playing Dwarf Fortress), is the open world roguelike RPG element of the game, which lets you roam the enormous realm you've generated and even tour/loot/disturb the unquiet spirits of your own, abandoned fortress. Alas, there's no word on a release date for the Steam edition's Adventure Mode beyond "not this year".

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Earlier this year, Atari announced that it acquired Berzerk, its sequel Frenzy, and 10 more classic arcade properties. Now, as part of Atari's Recharged lineup, it has revealed Berzerk: Recharged, and its coming to consoles and PC later this year. 

The original Berzerk is an arcade game released in 1980. In it, players controlled a top-down avatar while shooting through hordes of armed robots in an electrified maze. The big bad was Evil Otto, who bounced around the maze as a giant smiley face, hunting players down. Atari says Otto is back in Berzerk: Recharged, "bringing with him updated graphics, deft twin-stick controls, and a new soundtrack by the acclaimed Megan McDuffee." 

Check out Berzerk: Recharged for yourself in the announcement trailer below: 

"Though he sports an ominous grin, Otto is a deadly, invincible, ever-present threat presenting only one real survival solution: run," a press release reads. "Paired with Megan McDuffee's original soundtrack of sci-fi synths, Berzerk: Recharged captures the ambiance of a harrowing space station shootout – and a very groovy 80s arcade." 

Nintendo has teased a collaboration between its Animal Crossing series and Lego. It did so today with a short teaser trailer showing Lego-fied versions of fan-favorite Animal Crossing characters like Isabelle and Tom Nook. However, the teaser doesn't reveal exactly what to expect in terms of Lego sets or when we might see this collaboration hit store shelves.

The tweet accompanying the teaser says, "Welcome to...LEGO Animal Crossing!" The video itself shows Isabelle and Tom Nook looking up at the Lego Animal Crossing sky before pulling out to show even more Animal Crossing characters. All of them are watching a gift rise into the sky by way of a balloon, in classic Animal Crossing fashion; somebody get them a slingshot or two. 

Check out the Animal Crossing Lego teaser trailer for yourself below: 

Rockstar Games revealed that it was bringing Red Dead Redemption and its Undead Nightmare DLC to PlayStation 4 and Switch back in August. It did so, and while the game looked great on both consoles, it was only playable at 30 FPS. PlayStation 5 owners were left wondering if Rockstar wasn't tapping into the power of the current-gen console to bring 60 FPS to the 13-year-old game. 

Now, weeks later, Rockstar has updated the PS4 port of Red Dead Redemption and the included Undead Nightmare DLC to include 60 FPS support on PS5 via backward compatibility. It did so randomly, with a quick tweet announcing the news. 

Red Dead Redemption, including Undead Nightmare, now supports up to 60 FPS on PlayStation 5 via backward compatibility. pic.twitter.com/XMLIe6gYo4

— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) October 4, 2023

Elsewhere in the same update, Rockstar added an option to enable subtitles upon first booting the game. The update also includes general bug fixes and improvements, although Rockstar didn't list which. 

The rumoured Animal Crossing and Lego collaboration has been confirmed by Nintendo, which released a short teaser video for the sets.

Images of five different Lego Animal Crossing sets leaked in August, with a release date of March 2024 floating around.

This is the first official confirmation of the sets, which will include models of villagers, trees, and flowers.

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I'm jumping to a new planet in Starfield and my space cowboy companion Sam Coe needs to have a serious conversation. He launches into a long story about his estranged partner but he's facing the wrong way. Stuck on a ladder in the middle of my ship, he tells his sad tale to a blank wall.

Restarting the conversation helps a little. Sam is looking at me now, but his mouth and eyebrows are operating on different wavelengths. Occasionally his face settles on a recognisable expression, but the in-between moments - as he reorganises his wayward features - are deeply strange. All the while he stands stock-still and completely upright, like a toy soldier stuck in his plastic packaging.

Like all of Starfield's characters, he does not touch anything, or anyone. He does not eat. He does not use the bathroom. Sam Coe rotates on the spot and delivers his lines until the next stage of his personal side quest unlocks. Sam Coe is a horrible, distorted facsimile of a human being.

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The UK competition regulator will launch a fresh investigation into cloud services, with Microsoft once again in its sights.

The Competition and Markets Authority is still wrapping up its original extended investigation into Microsoft over its proposed $68.7bn Activision Blizzard acquisition, with concerns over the deal's impact on cloud gaming proving a key issue.

Now, Ofcom has referred the public cloud infrastructure services market to the CMA for investigation over competition concerns.

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Mobile developer Hutch Games has corrected store listings for two of its free-to-play games following complaints filed with the UK Advertising Standards Authority, and described its omission of explicit disclosure of loot boxes a "mistake".

The complaints were made by researcher Leon Y. Xiao, who has conducted studies on the effectiveness of Belgium's loot box ban and the consistency of loot box warnings on games.

Xiao filed complaints regarding Hutch Games for Rebel Racing on the Google Play Store and F1 Clash - Car Racing Manager on the Apple App Store, and said that both games failed to mention the presence of loot boxes. Current ASA guidance states advertising must make it clear if loot boxes exist in a game, with a notification on store pages at a minimum.

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CD Projekt have released the full patch notes for Cyberpunk 2077's 2.01 update, which as you might recall, stops people tumbling through certain elevator floors when the frame-rate drops. Out now on PC, the update spans many other technical fixes and improvements, some of them specific to the recently released Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC.

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Very much like an assassin sliding a poison needle into your wrist while shaking your hand, Ubisoft have added Denuvo's anti-piracy/anti-cheating DRM software to Assassin's Creed: Mirage in the game's day-one update, aka patch 1.0.2. We've known for a while that the game would use Denuvo, together with the VMProtect software, but what's baking the noodles of many players is that the Denuvo functionality has been snuck in after the Assassin's Creed: Mirage review embargo, denying critics the chance to assess its impact on the game.

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Megahouse will release a 1/8 scale Gundam Girls Generation figure of Suletta Mercury from Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. It will open pre-orders in select Japanese stores including AmiAmi, which will support international shipping. It will appear in late June 2024. [Thanks, Hobby Watch!]

The 215mm (8.46 inches) tall figure will be completely static with no movable parts, including the 'windblown' hair and tie. Megahouse will instead focus on adding details to the character's attire. A part of the Gundam Aerial's chest will appear as the figure's base.

Pre-orders for the figure will be exclusively available on Premium Bandai, AmiAmi, Volks, and Yellow Submarine on October 6, 2023, at 1 PM JST (12 AM ET). The figure will have a price tag of ¥24,200 (~$162).

The Google Play listing for Silent Hill: Ascension is live and suggests a Halloween release date. The description for the Genvid experience says it will launch on October 31, 2023. As this is an interactive experience, the page also clarified that it will premiere at 6pm PT/9pm ET that day. However, Gematsu’s Sal Romano said developer Genvid only said to wait for additional updates. [Thanks, Gematsu!] 

We first learned about Silent Hill: Ascension back in 2023. It was described as an interactive series at the time. It has a 2023 release window at the time. Genvid also mentioned the goal would be for people to watch and interact to determine the course of the story to determine the “canon” path during the experience. An update in 2023 noted there would be multiple characters showcased from around the world and the audience watching would determine their fates.

Sunrise published the third trailer for Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom. The new trailer focuses on showing combat scenes between the manned robots known as Mobile Suits. It also reveals that Kira Yamato's new unit, the Rising Freedom Gundam, will have the ability to transform into an airplane-like Mobile Armor mode.

The new trailer is available to watch worldwide on the GundamInfo YouTube channel with closed captions in English, Chinese, and Korean.

At the same time, Bandai also released a separate trailer showcasing the upcoming Gunpla model kits from the title. The company will release 1/144 scale HG (High Grade) kits of the Rising Freedom Gundam, Immortal Justice Gundam, Gelgoog Menace, and the Black Knight Squad's Shi-ve.A and Rud-ro.A. It will also produce a 1/144 scale RG (Real Grade) kit of the Force Impulse Gundam Spec II and a chibi-proportioned SD Gundam EX-Standard kit of the Rising Freedom Gundam.

Nintendo released a new video teasing a line of LEGO Animal Crossing toys. The teaser video involves minifigs of multiple characters, which includes NPCs and some villagers. There’s also a classic floating present from the series. However, it only notes it is on the way, and there’s no release date or details about sets.

First, here’s the initial teaser trailer. It features, from left to right, Rosie, Bunnie, Marshal, Kapp’n, Fauna, Julian, Isabelle, and Tom Nook. All of them are animated figures suggesting how the actual minifigures could look.

As a reminder, back in 2020 we saw some LEGO Animal Crossing sets appear on LEGO Ideas. It first debuted in May 2020 and involved Nook’s Cranny shop being brought to life. Later, an official interview about the set mentioned it used over 1,000 pieces. It is unclear if this could be related to the announcement.

One of the first things you need to do when Silent Hope begins is pick your who your starting hero will be s. There are a lot, honestly. It doesn’t help that at the Character Selection screen in that very moment, it only offers a brief three or four sentences describing them and not really highlighting their abilities. Yes, when you encounter the rainbow, tear-shaped crystals on floors you can use that to swap characters or retreat to the surface, and you’ll get that opportunity to do so shortly during the tutorial run. It still can feel like a big commitment. I chose the Fighter, then regretted it almost right away. So if you are picking from the seven characters to determine your starting one in Silent Hope, I say go with the Caster or Farmer.

Nintendo confirmed a rumored Animal Crossing and Lego collaboration in an October 5 teaser trailer, and later announced the collab’s March 2024 release date in a trailer with more details on what it will entail.

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A Pokémon live-action series is coming to Japan, but it’s not of the Detective Pikachu variety. No, the next Pokémon live-action project will be a drama about a woman trying to find adventure in her life through playing Pokémon, rather than it being set in the Pokémon universe.

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CD Projekt Red said it plans to move on from Cyberpunk 2077 now that its big Phantom Liberty DLC and 2.0 systems overhaul are out, but it still has a few things left to patch. A new 2.01 update that went live on October 5 fixed corrupted save issues on PlayStation 5 and a bunch of other issues, including a wrecked cop…

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