Every week, I like to choose one specific topic to discuss from the latest edition of DF Direct Weekly - and there's certainly an embarrassment of riches to choose from in another vast episode. We sat down to film our 141th show the morning after The Game Awards, and despite the usual downplaying of expectations from Geoff Keighley, the 'wurld prm'ears' came thick and fast. For this blog though, it's actually a supporter question that prompts this article. DF Supporter Julian Sniter asked us whether upscaling technologies like AMD's FSR and Epic's TSR are making it harder for us to 'count pixels' and ascertain native resolutions. The answer is yes, but the more verbose answer is that upscaling technologies have evolved at least twice since we first started image quality testing - and it's more difficult now than ever.

It's been a couple of years now since I made it a personal mission to downplay - if not eliminate completely - revealing the native rendering resolution of any given game. Back in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era, target resolution was typically 720p and upscaling from beneath that could have a significant impact on the image quality of any given game. However, moving into the PS4 Pro/Xbox One X era, the output resolution target moved to native 4K and a whole host of intriguing upscaling technologies came into play - the most popular being checkerboard rendering (as seen in the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone and many others) and temporal super-sampling/jittering (Marvel's Spider-Man and For Honor being two great examples). We often refer to that latter tech as TAAU - a combination of upscaling and temporal anti-aliasing.

Over 4.55 million video games were sold during November in the UK, a drop of 3% over the same period in 2022.

This is according to GSD data, which tracks digital and physical video game sales.

The drop is due to a weaker release slate in November this year. Last year saw major launches including God of War Ragnarök on PlayStation platforms and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet for Nintendo Switch.

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Epic Games is still keen for its rapidly-growing gaming metaverse to include characters from the world of Nintendo - but it has also acknowledged that securing characters from the Mario maker in Fortnite has proven extremely difficult.

"I don't know what the word for, like, making diamonds is," Epic Games' Saxs Persson said when asked by Axios how hard it had been.

"Nintendo has their strategy and we have our strategy, and we hope at some point" to use their characters, Persson continued. "Our players would love it."

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Chris Dring and James Batchelor discuss the biggest stories of the past week, on (potentially) our final Microcast of 2023.

Today's discussion begins with the reveal of Grand Theft Auto 6, from the changes at Rockstar since GTA 5 to the sales expectations and potential impact the game will have on 2024 and 2025, plus our own thoughts on this first look at the game.

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Hideo Kojima showed off a creepy trailer for his upcoming game, OD, at The Game Awards last week. Featuring three different actors speaking what sounds like creepy gibberish at the camera, it didn’t tell us a whole lot about what this game will even be. But since its reveal, fans have noticed a few Silent Hill…

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Listening to employee feedback and catering to each staff member's unique needs are key to supporting better mental health in the games industry.

That's according to Ustwo Games' head of people and culture, Julie Piedrabuena, who began her talk about mental health on a positive note during GamesIndustry.biz's HR summit.

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The Honkai: Star Rail Special Program 1.6 is about to air. On December 15, 2023 at 3:30am PT/6:30am ET/12:30pm CET, the showcase will air on YouTube.

As usual, the point of the Special Program is to prepare people for things to come in the next version. That means we’ll learn more about new quests, events, characters, and even sometimes real-world events. There will also be three codes people can redeem for in-game currency and other items.

Ahead of this particular Honkai: Star Rail showcase, there weren’t too many details about what we can expect. The image for the presentation shows icons for four characters: Owlbert, Herta, Ruan Mei, and Screwllum. Ruan Mei is confirmed as one of the 1.6 playable, five-star characters. She’ll be joined by the five-star Dr. Ratio and four-star Xueyi, according to early reports. (Xueyi’s sister Hanya appeared as a playable unit in 1.5.)

At the top of the month, developer Epic Games launched Chapter 5 of Fortnite's popular Battle Royale mode. But with the start of this new chapter, the team also launched three new experiences within the Fortnite launcher. The first was Lego Fortnite, a survival Minecraft-like game, and soon after, the second, Rocket Racing, a new racing mode created by Rocket League developers Psyonix, went live. The third and final new experience of Chapter 5 (so far, at least) went live over the weekend – it's called Fortnite Festival and is basically Rock Band-lite but in the universe of Fortnite. 

The original creators of Jet Set Radio are involved with the series' new games announced last week.

In Sega Sammy's most recent financial report, the company revealed plans to revive many of its legacy franchises - which were described by chief operating officer Shuji Utsumi as "a kind of Treasure Island". Publisher Sega then confirmed a flurry of projects planned for various retro series - including Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, and Streets of Rage - during The Game Awards.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Sega's chief operating officer Shuji Utsumi said the original's concept was "advanced" but audiences were more open-minded now - and that now was a "good time where people can appreciate all kinds of concepts".

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Almost ten years after the initial release of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, it’s time for Apollo Justice to make his mark on a new generation of law enthusiasts. Capcom seems to have done yet another fantastic job with Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, with the parts of each port I played looking beautiful and playing smoothly.

In a world that is full of injustice, only one man can stand above all the perversions of our legal system and shine a light on the truth. That’s right—Phoenix Wright! Wait, no, sorry. I meant Apollo Justice. When Capcom first unveiled this trilogy and marketed it as the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, reactions online among people who played these games were a little mixed. A common joke was that despite the game being the “Apollo Justice” trilogy, he’s not exactly the main character in all of them. Meanwhile, all three of the original Ace Attorney games focused entirely on Phoenix. 

In just over a month's time, the entire mainline Ace Attorney series will finally be playable on PC with the arrival of the Apollo Justice Trilogy. Launching on January 25th 2024, this collection bundles together the fourth, fifth and sixth games in Capcom's excellent lawyer 'em up - Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies and Spirit Of Justice - which originally launched on the Nintendo DS and 3DS across a ten year period between 2007 and 2016. It's been funny revisiting the earlier cases of these games after so much time has passed. Apollo's name may be the one on the box, but the series' original cover star Phoenix Wright is never far from the front lines - not only does he get tangled up on the wrong side of the law in Apollo's own debut outing, but he's back as a full-time defence attorney on the (w)right side of the legal bench in the other two.

Arc System Works revealed "Extras" by Molly Daisy Scarpine is the theme song for Elphelt Valentine in Guilty Gear Strive. The company also released the five-and-a-half minutes-long song on multiple digital music platforms, including Spotify and YouTube Music.

Elphelt Valentine made her playable debut as a post-release character in the 2014 entry Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign-. Bandai Namco, which handles Guilty Gear Strive's releases in Asia and Europe, unveiled Elphelt's addition to the roster. Players can immediately purchase access to the DLC character since December 8, 2023. She appears as the 26th character in the overall roster and the second one in Season Pass 3, which started with Johnny in August 2023.

The Starter Guide video that Arc System Works published on Elphelt's release date shows that she has a very different playing style from the Xrd sub-series, where she could snipe her opponents from afar. Although she still fights with firearms, Arc System Works brought her a new "Chain Lollipop" chain combo system that plays similarly to Noel Vermillion in the BlazBlue series.

A decade ago, I wrote a story for the USgamer calling Pikmin 3 "the greatest war game I've ever played."

While USgamer is sadly no longer with us, that particular piece was moved over to VG247, if you feel like reading the case for that.

If you'd prefer the short summary, I loved Pikmin 3 because it illustrated the morally untenable nature of military command. The game puts you in charge of hundreds of almost unfailingly obedient Pikmin that you will be responsible for, that you will order to attack and kill enemies, that you will from time-to-time unintentionally throw into instantly fatal situations, sometimes by the dozens.

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Nearly every conversation I’ve had about Baldur’s Gate 3 this year has started with a series of questions: “Can I see your character? And who are you romancing?” More often than not, I’m more interested in hearing how the characters people make and meet are helping them write their own stories than I am talking about…

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Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian has said that Xbox players should manually update their consoles to combat instances where game crashes make save files disappear.

Larian made the announcement today via a post on X, formerly Twitter, in which the studio said it had also pushed a small update live for Baldur's Gate 3 on Xbox that contained "stability fixes".

"We're aware of saves disappearing after a crash," Larian continued. "An update is available from Xbox to help with some of these issues, please manually update your Xbox through the system menu."

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Survival horror fans have been treated in recent years with the revival of classic games in the genre. Resident Evil has led the charge, with the likes of Dead Space and Silent Hill following. Now, developer Pieces Interactive and publisher THQ Nordic hope their Alone in the Dark reimagining can follow suit, and deliver a fresh-feeling experience for a modern audience while sticking closer to the survival horror genre's roots than perhaps we've seen recently.

This point was one producers Andreas Schmiedecker and Michael Paeck were keen to emphasise during an early look at the game a couple of weeks ago. As I was shown snippets of the game through a hands-off demo, two key tenets of survival horror were highlighted: non-linear exploration and puzzle solving, and linear combat sections.

Most of Alone in the Dark's puzzle solving happens within Derceto Manor, a care home which protagonists Emily Hartwood (played by Jodie Comer) and hired private investigator Edward Carnby (David Harbour) travel to in order to find Emily's uncle Jeremy. Many of the rooms in the manor are inaccessible at the beginning of the game but are eventually unlocked as you progress. Manor exploration is recorded on the map in the standard ways - rooms will turn from red to blue if everything of interest has been completed, blocked off doors will be marked with symbols to let you know what's needed.

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Toho Animation and Shueisha announced the launch window for season 7 of the My Hero Academia TV anime. It will air in Spring 2024.

After the previous season 6 covered the Paranormal Liberation War and Dark Hero arcs, the upcoming seventh season will continue the story from chapter 329 of Kohei Horikoshi's original manga. It will also mark the start of the Star and Stripe arc, which was covered in Volume 34 of the tankobon manga published in Japanese in May 2022 and in English in May 2023.

The My Hero Academia anime character designer Yoshihiko Umakoshi has also drawn a new key visual for the upcoming season 7. It shows Izuku "Deku" Midoriya, Katsuki "Dynamight" Bakugo, Ochaco "Uravity" Uraraka, and Shoto Todoroki preparing for the upcoming decisive battles against Tomura Shigaraki and All For One.

The full teaser image is also available to view right below:

Eagle-eyed fans have spotted several apparent references to the Silent Hill series in the first trailer for Hideo Kojima's Xbox project OD.

Kojima debuted OD officially at The Game Awards 2023 last week, where he revealed it will feature Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer and Udo Kier, as well as some involvement with director Jordan Peele.

Of course, Kojima was previously set to helm Silent Hills, a new Silent Hill game which would feature Norman Reedus, along with director Guillermo del Toro. Although the game was cancelled in 2015 following Konami and Kojima's split, the P.T. playable teaser gave fans an idea of what to expect.

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Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, like many weeks, my head is full of Metal Gear Rising's RULES OF NATURE. But unlike most weeks, it feels relevant. This week I saw an indie game where you slow-mo slice weapons and armour off robots in a forest and oh, that's doubly rules of nature right there. Plenty of other attractive and interesting indie games are about too, come have a look!

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This door to the RPS Advent Calendar is chrome-plated with a bright neon trim around the edges. It was all lovely and pristine looking until yesterday, when someone rudely broke out the graffiti cans and sprayed a big "Corpo 4 LIFE" tag on the front.

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UPDATE 13/12/23: Fortnite Festival looks to be getting instrumer controller support sooner than expected, based on a tease from peripheral manufacturer PDP.

The maker of officially-licensed controllers posted on social media last night stating: "Rock on this January". The message was accompanied by emojis of a tent and a moon, which fans have taken to be a reference to Fortnite (a fort - sort of - and the night).

Is this our first look at the new Fortnite Festival guitar controller, albeit in silhouette form?

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Doom turns 30 this year, and that's a cause for celebration. There are many reasons to commemorate id Software's 1993 jaunt through the demon-infested corridors of Mars, from the fact that you can play it on every device known to man to its undying modding scene that even lets you pet Cacodemons. But I have a personal connection with Doom that's a bit special. It's the first game that made me so sick I wanted to puke.

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God of War actor Christopher Judge made another memorable appearance at last week's The Game Awards, this time to present an award rather than receive one - and to make a joke at Modern Warfare 3's expense.

(Or perhaps he never really left the stage, and simply continued last year's infamously-long acceptance speech?)

This year, Judge raised eyebrows and prompted sounds of shock from the audience when he compared the length of his 2022 speech to this year's short Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 campaign. "My speech was actually longer," he joked.

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A year or two ago I interviewed an actual, practising witch, the wonderful Damien Crawford of Purgatory Dungeoneer fame, about how videogames represent magic. I badly need Crawford's thoughts on Emberstorm Entertainment's Reka, published by Fireshine Games, which has just been slapped with a Steam early access release window of Q2 2024.

In this curious, moody survival-ish adventure, you're an apprentice witch who travels about the land in a chicken-legged cottage loaned out by your mentor, the Baba Jaga. The cottage isn't just mobile - you can expand it with second-floor extensions and decorate the interior with jaunty wooden furniture. Sadly, there doesn't appear to be an option to employ gingerbread during construction, nor can you currently fly about on broomstick, but perhaps all that'll be added on the road to 1.0. Here's the latest trailer.

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Following scrutiny from developers, The Game Awards founder and host Geoff Keighley has said he agrees the allotted speech time for each winner was too short this year.

Winners had 30 seconds to make their speeches, after which the music to play them off stage was started and they were drowned out. Developers criticised the short time, especially in the context of a ceremony which should be celebrating their hard work.

Writing on X (née Twitter) the day after the show, Keighley admitted award winners should have been allowed more time for their speeches, albeit in a roundabout way.

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Donald Mustard, of Fortnite, Infinity Blade and Shadow Complex, once told me something very interesting about games that I've been turning over ever since. He was talking about the difference between designing something like Shadow Complex and designing something like Infinity Blade.

The difference, he made it sound - the main difference - was where the player sat. When they fire up Shadow Complex, they're on the sofa in front of the big TV. They've maybe cleared a chunk of time, made themselves a drink. As a designer you can trust that you'll have the player for quite a while. With Infinity Blade, though, well, where are they? On the bus? Waiting at the deli? Sitting at the dentist? You don't have them as long - you can't guarantee that you have as much of their attention and focus. And so you make the game differently. It works quicker. It rewards players in shorter loops. It dangles more threads to tempt them to stick around a little longer.

I often think about this. But last night I found myself thinking about it in a different way. I was playing Outer Wilds, which has just released on the Switch. I think maybe I was curious to see how the game held up. (And while I'm not Digital Foundry, I can say that it held up fine for me. Maybe a bit more loading, but everything else was exactly as I would want it to be.) But what I ended up exploring, I think, was how a single game can feel very different depending on the platform. It was a revelation.

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It's the second to last week before we set down our pickaxes, shoulder our packs and embark on that greatest adventure of all: holiday. The Maw tends to be at low ebb over the Xmas period, because it has a violent allergy to festive cheer. But for the moment, it still clamours for News.

Some game releases we're pondering this week: squad-based RTS Stargate: Timekeepers (12th Dec), Settlers spiritual follow-up Pioneers of Pagonia (13th Dec, early access), anime chainsaw metroidvania Cookie Cutter (14th Dec), "pixel pulp" visual novel Bahnsen Knights (14th Dec), and multiversal metroidvania Trinity Fusion (15th Dec).

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Ubisoft's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora had to settle for No.5 in its debut week, with EA Sports FC 2024 still holding the top spot.

This is according to the GfK boxed charts which, as always, does not count digital sales so the game's overall performance is likely to be better.

While EA Sports FC held the top spot, Super Mario Bros Wonder has made it to No.2 followed by Hogwarts Legacy at No.3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 at No.4.

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Treyarch's upcoming Call of Duty game, set to release in 2024, will reportedly bring the return of Warzone's original map, Verdansk.

While it admits that details remain a little hazy, Insider Gaming reckons "the current plan is to follow the traditional Warzone 'main map' release schedule and have Verdansk return as a part of Black Ops Gulf War Season 1".

By examining how Activision typically schedules its releases, that suggests Verdansk will be making a comeback to the free-to-play battle royale shooter by the end of 2024.

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There are certain shojo manga series that feel special, and Neighborhood Story by Ai Yazawa is one of them. Now, due to Viz Media picking up the series about 28 years after its original run, everyone can finally get a chance to see and appreciate that.

If someone already read or watched Paradise Kiss, some of Neighborhood Story should feel familiar. It follows Mikako, the older sister of that series’ supporting character Miwako. She’s a young woman attending Yazawa Art Academy to pursue her fashion and designer dreams alongside her childhood friend Tsutomu Yamaguchi and other friends. Like manga shojo manga, it’s a love story. However, it’s also a coming-of-age tale that could even be considered to have some slice of life elements, since we’re seeing Mikako come into her own as an individual and decide what she wants from life, while also seeing fun interactions with her and her friends. It’s the balance of all topics that already starts to make it feel a bit different. 

There's a new update for footie fans checking into eFootball 2024 this week.

Season 3 of the free-to-play football game is "Unite on the Pitch", and introduces a range of new features, including casual co-op PvP events which can be played solo or by a maximum of 3v3 players.

There's also the new My League mode which "provides an in-depth VS AI experience where you can take part in leagues from around the world with your Dream Team and aim for league titles".

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Dredge, the sinister fishing game from Black Salt Games and publisher Team 17, has teamed up with Mintrocket's Dave the Diver for a new crossover.

From 15th December, players can "explore new depths and discover exclusive content from the fantastic world of Dredge" in Dave the Diver.

You can see it in action in the trailer below:

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It isn’t uncommon to find an otome game that involves gods or supernatural elements. However, Yukar from the Abyss does something special by pulling from Ainu mythology for its story, and the result is an indie game that can feel a little educational while you’re playing.

The protagonist of Yukar of the Abyss is an identifiable one. A woman is taking a health-related break from an overbearing work simulation and staying at a family home in Hokkaido to recover. However, after a night out with a friend where she encountered and befriended a businessman, she finds herself on a train and getting off at the Kamuy Mosir station. She winds up in the land of the gods, apparently because she died, but is saved by their leader Pewrep and returned to the world of the living. However, further supernatural encounters put her life in peril again and lead to her meeting other beings like Li Huaisu and Moshirechik. 

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am happy to welcome as we look back at the best community creations and site-related news from the previous week!

This edition of the Spotlight is airing slightly late to better accommodate the site's AMAZING live GOTY performance in L.A. The tickets sold out and some of you even organized informal meet-ups to show your love for the site and this community.

For those of you worried about this live show marking the end" of Giant Bomb's GOTY coverage, RELAX! As Grubb and others have pointed out, this year will mark the return of the guest GOTY lists! In fact, you can expect to see those lists soon-ish.

For those of you asking about Community Voting or why I did not get up a thread where y'all can post your GOTY list, the site is working to get things running like in previous years, but more time is needed to figure out how the community voting will shape-up. It is coming, though, I promise.

2023 GOTY Roundup!

Staff GOTY Roundup

It was a big week for the scantily clad at Kotaku this week, with both GTA 6 and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth giving players plenty of skin. We’re also feeling very excited about the new Fallout show, but decidedly less enthusiastic about the minimal focus on the actual awards at this week’s Game Awards.

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The writers (and localizers) for Honkai: Star Rail have always shown an impressive sense of humor and knowledge of Internet memes or culture, and the “A Foxian Tale of the Haunted” flagship event in Version 1.5 is no different. With its innumerable social media posts, it presents the perfect opportunity to analyze how the localization can differ from language to language.

Call me married to the job. But even when I’m enjoying a video game, I cannot help but compare a game’s localization to the original text. This is never to nitpick. It’s almost always to see how a localizer or team chose to translate a term or phrase. This hobby is out of both professional and personal interest. Ever since the game came out, I’ve been vocal both publicly and privately about how much I enjoy Honkai: Star Rail’s localization. It’s easy and snappy to read, faithful to the original text, and strong on its own. So I took the chance when playing "A Foxian Tale of the Haunted" to compare the English localization to the Japanese one. Unfortunately, my familiarity with other languages prevented me from comparing more.

Where Star Rail's English Localization Succeeds

Doors for the door God! Calendars for the calendar throne!

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PC players planning to play Final Fantasy 16 should consider an SSD "a must".

That's according to the MMO's producer/director Naoki Yoshida, who told Famitsu that even though the team will attempt to optimise the game as much as possible "using the HDD would be a pain".

"Details will be announced in due course. However, I would like you to prepare an SSD," Yoshida said when asked what kind of specs the PC version will demand (thanks, PCGN).

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Sundays are for wondering why many of the best showcases from the Geoff Awards were in the pre-show. Let's read some of the week's best writing about games and game-related things.

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