There's nothing like going for a nice long walk around the world of The Witcher 3 and meeting some of the locals there. They say the nicest things. "Sod off, you misborn clod," a guard will tell me. "Got so fucked up once, blood came out me ears," a chap at the docks will announce. Or if I'm really lucky, "Go fuck your mums tits!" What a world to live in.

The thing is, I love this about the game. Being scolded by the ruddy-faced inhabitants of The Witcher 3 has long been one of my favourite things, ever since I first played it eight years ago. Even now, it manages to make me laugh. I'll load it up and a villager will walk past, fart and giggle, and I'll giggle too. I can't help it.

Maybe it's the abrupt delivery that tickles me, maybe it's the shock factor, or maybe it's just the sheer silliness of it all. Maybe it's all of it. Whatever it is, it makes the world of The Witcher 3 stand out to me. It makes it special. I cannot think of another game that does it in the same way.

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It's happening again. As sure as Square Enix overestimating their sales projections, as sure as John Riccitiello pissing off every available customer, EVE Online developers CCP will try to make a first-person shooter set in the same universe.

This time it's called EVE Vanguard, a shooter "module" which will sit within the EVE launcher and asychronously connect to EVE Online.

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Payday 3 launched earlier this week. As reported back in July, it requires players to connect to a server even if they're playing solo or with a few friends in a private match.

You can already guess the third sentence: the servers have been a disaster at launch, with players forced to queue for long periods just to play alone, if they can manage to play at all. It currently sits "Mostly Negative" reviews on Steam - that's 31% positive after almost 19,000 reviews.

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Unity have announced that they're making changes to their "runtime fee" in response to overwhelming negative feedback. The key changes are that the fees no longer apply to developers using Unity Personal, and will only apply to developers using Unity Pro or Unity Enterprise who upgrade the next version of Unity which ships in 2024.

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Want an RX 6800 XT graphics card? And a Solidigm P41 Plus 512GB SSD? And Starfield? For $486? Thanks to a Newegg bundle, that offer is open for you right now when you use code EEGCWA827 with these two items in the checkout.

Here are the links you'll need:

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The Fractal Design North is one of the most popular recent PC case releases, combining a beautiful wood front panel, leather accents and excellent ventilation with a modern, easy-to-build mid-tower design. The North normally retails for £125 or more, but today you can pick it up for a more reasonable £110 when you buy from Box via Ebay, using code SAVINGS20 before September 28th. That's the cheapest this case has ever been in the UK!

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we look back at the best from the community. This week, we have a lot to review in terms of staff and site news, so let's jump right into it!

Calvinball just published a moderate update to the Giant Bomb QoL app. For those that do not know, this app provides an assortment of quality-of-life improvements you can read about in the thread linked above.

Mike Minotti was a guest on a MinnMax Trivia Tower wherein the winner got $1000 and it was a fun time. But, be warned. Mike was in his peak form. Click the link if you are interested in watching the archive if you missed it live.

Speaking of fun things the staff are doing elsewhere, Evil Uno announced that Mystery Wrestling 4 is LIVE on October 22nd and his guest on that date will be Dan! This is a live, in-person event at Centre Aydelu in Gatineau, Quebec. You can buy tickets over here!

The first season of the Netflix One Piece live-action adaptation is here and has been out long enough for many of you to have watched it once or maybe even multiple times. I remember when I first heard that Netflix was doing an adaptation I was... anxious. You don’t have to think back too far to remember some very bad live-action versions of great anime series. (Netflix’s Death Note is one of the more recent ones, and also one of the worst ones. We've been hurt time and time again by very poor adaptations of shows. For some, it’s come to the point where we wonder if western adaptations of anime can really understand the source material well enough to get it right. While Netflix’s One Piece isn’t flawless, it is noticeably better than any live-action remakes I can think of in recent memory. 

The eight-episode first season of the One Piece live-action version launched on August 31, 2023 on Netflix platform to much anticipation. I have to admit, in true One Piece fashion, I was a little intimidated when I saw that each episode was an hour long. I wasn’t sure if 8 hours of an anime live-action remake would be worth the time spent watching it. What can I say? Death Note and the Dragon Ball movie really hurt me. But, I’m happy to say that Netflix actually managed to pull this off but, like I mentioned before, it isn’t perfect. 

Team Cherry has quietly updated Steam assets for its highly-anticipated Hollow Knight sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong.

As spotted by Wario64 with the help of SteamDB, Hollow Knight: Silksong on Steam has had its first significant update since January 2023, with Team Cherry quietly swapping out a graphic for an updated version.

While it's in no way indicative of an upcoming release date or anything like that – sorry – the changes to the storefront graphics are at least a sign that work is still underway behind the scenes, with the team twice uploading "capsule art" – that is, the artwork you see on the game's storefront – in the last week, the most recent of which was uploaded earlier today.

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There’s new activity involving the Hollow Knight: Silksong Steam page, which adjusted the art showing Hornet. SteamDB noted updates on September 21, 2023, then later September 23, 2023. This involved a web assets change that added the updated piece of art. [Thanks, Wario64!]

There have been a number of updates to the Steam product listing for the title in 2023. Many of them involved changing the user tags for the game. On January 13, 2023, however, SteamDB noted the TBA release date change on the page. 

Here’s the image that was changed, according to SteamDB. It matches the header Team Cherry is using on social media. This does not necessarily mean an announcement is drawing near, as this could instead be normal pre-release activity surrounding an in-development game.

A Tarnished has had the honour of exploring a world other than the Lands Between – Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon's maps.

Modder Dropoff recently showed off what happened when they imported Armored Core 6's maps into From Software's celebrated adventure game, giving players a whole new perspective on FromSoft's latest game – literally.

But why read about it when you can see it for yourself? You can check out Dropoff's handiwork in the video below:

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The first playable demo for Synduality: Echo of Ada appeared at Tokyo Game Show 2023. Bandai Namco also provided gameplay footage of the demo build on its livestream. It shows how the player can use their Cradle Coffin mech to explore the world's regions while gathering items and destroying hostiles.

Players will find containers that contain lootable items. They can also use AO Search to detect nearby mineable AO Crystals. When players reach a yellow spot, they can send their companion Magus to investigate it directly.

The initial reveal for Synduality: Echo of Ada mainly teased PvPvE combat where players can engage others with conflicting objectives. The demo footage showed that players can also send friendly greetings and even ask to form a party. Rain in this world will gradually corrode the unit's resistance, so players will have to take shelter in a covered area until it subsides.

The mission's grand objective will require the player to find an escape elevator and stay there until the elevator moves to return safely. If the player's mech gets destroyed, they will lose all the items they gathered during the session.

There was something special about playing platformers on the Game Boy. We’d sometimes get these oversized, chibi versions of characters and opponents that could look more endearing than menacing. However, the appearance would often bely a genuinely enjoyable game. Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils is a game that completely gets what people liked about this formula, with Colorgrave offering an entertaining character that keeps its personality present throughout. It’s also especially fun to see a Game Boy-inspired title on the Nintendo Switch.

Curse Crackers is set in a world recovering from a disaster involving a fight between powerful factions led by children of a dragon. However, after a quick introduction, it quickly cuts to a more focused tale. A young woman named Belle who used to be an acrobat is about to go on a date with Clyde. She gets there to find Bonnie, who used to be a friend of hers, kidnapped him. Your goal is to go save him alongside your sentient bell and mascot Chime, while also exploring at times to learn more about the world and perhaps getting caught up in a greater plot.

Custom Mech Wars will have an extensive free-form robot creation system, and D3 Publisher showed how it will work at Tokyo Game Show 2023. The game's producer Yosuke Uchida was present at D3 Publisher's livestream to explain the Omega Customization system with live gameplay footage.

In Custom Mech Wars, a leg part will constitute the minimum requirement to construct a robot. While players can immediately launch with such a robot, its only attack will be a tackle with recoil damage.

Other parts will then be available to place on any available hardpoints and then repositioned or rotated. While players can resize the accessories, the key body parts will have fixed sizes. The three available sizes — S, M, and L — will determine whether the robot will have an emphasis on mobility or durability.

D3 Publisher will also release additional content based on its other IPs as optional DLC. The EDF Collab Edition will let players access missions to unlock units from the Earth Defense Force series, such as Barga, Balam, and Nix. The Ultimate Edition will further add panels of heroines from Samurai Maiden, Bullet Girls, Omega Labyrinth, and Dream Club.

When Capcom revealed Dragon's Dogma 2 would be four times the size of the original game, I was a bit hesitant. Generally when the scope of a game is increased, it often comes with a cost. Sometimes polish is lost along the way or the game is marred with technical issues. Dragon's Dogma was already an expansive game, with a decent-sized world map that featured both night and day cycles, that legitimately felt organic. It was hard to imagine something bigger than what Capcom had created in 2012. But after sitting down with Dragon's Dogma 2, I feel confident Capcom has made yet another incredible, open world, low fantasy game that will, if anything, become a cult classic.

Editor’s Note: This preview was based on a special Dragon's Dogma 2 build made for media to experience, and its contents may differ from the final version.

Dragon's Dogma was the action-RPG for people who wanted to play alone, but didn't want to feel alone. By far its most charming feature was the Pawn system, whereby you'd create an AI-controlled sidekick and hire two others, shared online by other players, to accompany you on your journey through a fantasy wilderness of tumbledown castles and goblin campfires. Pawns make dependable companions in many respects - pinning enemies for you to tag-team kill, healing or resurrecting you, opening chests you've missed, and enchanting your weapons at the outset of each skirmish. But what makes them fun to be around is that they're a bunch of massive buffoons.

Pawns talk without cease as you explore: a steady patter of idle observations about well-wrought staircases and the local fish trade, advice about the bestiary and, in the case of Pawns recruited from other players, quest tips based on time in their own worlds - all of it couched in the game's quirky faux-medieval dialect. Pawn dialogue is highly context-sensitive, and very often, nonsensical. They'll climb into fountains and complain that they're wet, and launch into pithy descriptions of monsters even as they're set on fire. It ought to be maddening, but somehow, it never is - probably because the Pawns never actually attempt to be witty like ally characters in, say, Xenoblade Chronicles. They're resolutely straight foils in a realm of lions with snakes for tails, chaotic boulder traps, unpleasantly lusty ogres, and players who push the wrong buttons and make random decisions on the fly. Well, pawns are back in Dragon's Dogma 2, which I recently played an hour of, and they're chattier than ever.

Supermassive Games' second instalment of the Dark Pictures Anthology, Little Hope, is coming to Nintendo Switch on 5th October 2023.

It follows Supermassive Games' efforts to bring the first The Dark Pictures Anthology title, Man of Medan, to Switch earlier this year, marking the second game of the horror series to come to Nintendo's console.

Little Hope sees you follow a college class after the bus they were travelling in crashed in the middle of the night. As they explore the "seemingly abandoned town", they become trapped by a "mysterious impenetrable fog" and begin to encounter visions of the townsfolk's shocking history.

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I'm generally not the kind of person to talk about my personal experience with a game to any great degree. Naturally, for reviews I'll dive into some choice encounters that create a broad picture of what shaped my opinion along the way. For example, what it felt like to overcome a particularly arduous challenge, how a narrative absolutely enamored me in presentation or prose. But Baldur's Gate 3 brought something out in me I thought was long since dead. That was an abrupt and extreme hyper fixation over a game that I felt was really "just fine." So fine, so very just OK, that I decided to teach myself how to mod Baldur's Gate 3 to make Enver Gortash a companion member in my very own party.

Editor's Note: There will be spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 and Enver Gortash below.

A CD Projekt Red developer has finally quashed the rumour that an NPC based upon Elon Musk was in the game at all, let alone recently removed.

After a tweet purporting that CD Projekt had "removed the Elon Musk cameo from the Corpo opening in Cyberpunk 2077" went viral, senior quest designer Patrick Mills stepped in to ask, "who came up with this nonsense?".

"That wasn't Elon musk, it looks nothing like him. Who came up with this nonsense?" Mills asked.

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Starbreeze insists it is "working hard" to keep servers online after Payday 3 players endured a second consecutive evening of disruption.

After a three-day early access period for some players, Payday 3 released on 21st September, but players have struggled to get online at peak times due to continuing server issues that have shutdown matchmaking, making it impossible to play the always-online heist shooter.

On launch day, Starbreeze took to its social media accounts to admit that it was "currently experiencing slow matchmaking" and was "investigating and working on a solution".

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Dark Souls fans will be able to praise the sun even more through UselessUse Laboratory new line of home decor items coming out in March 2024. The collection includes a Dark Souls 3 clock, soup mug with mini plate set, and a wooden small item storage unit.

The Dark Souls 3 clock features a golden Warrior of the Sun covenant symbol affixed to a traditional 12-hour roman numeral clock made of black steel. Solaire of Astora can be seen praising the sun in place of the roman numeral "VI". The clock can be propped up against a flat surface or mounted to a wall. The clock will cost ¥11,000 (approximately $74 USD).

[gallery columns="7" ids="987314,987318,987320,987321,987322,987323,987324" link="file"]

As if you were short on giant RPGs to play, here comes Cyberpunk 2077 with its excellent new expansion and a patch which basically sounds like a miniature relaunch. You're done with Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield, right? So what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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During the official TGS live stream presentation for Blue Protocol, Bandai Namco revealed the new Japanese release window for the game on consoles. Blue Protocol is scheduled to release for the PS5 and Xbox Series X on Winter 2023 in Japan. Additionally, the new Chapter 4 is coming to the PC version of the game in Japan on October 25, 2023.

The developers also announced that Blue Protocol will feature cross-play between all three versions of the game. Additionally, cross-save between the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC versions will be possible by using the same game account.

You can check out the reveal trailer for Chapter 4 of Blue Protocol below. The trailer is only available in Japanese.

There’s another layer to the FFXIV KFC event on the way, as a Colonel Sanders Black Mage statue appeared at TGS 2023. The life-size figure is at the Square Enix booth at the event. Square Enix Senior Manager for Social Media David Lee shared a photo of it at the event. The placard in front of it reiterates that things will “start” on October 4, 2023. [Thanks, David Lee!]

First, here’s Lee’s photo of the KFC Black Mage Colonel Sanders display at the FFXIV booth. The mascot is wearing the job’s iconic hat. A mage staff is in its left hand. The statue’s right hand is holding a Moogle. Aside from the hat and equipment, the Colonel is still wearing the mascot’s familiar white suit.

Colonel Sanders is a Black Mage in FFXIV….

That’s amazing. pic.twitter.com/1OhXMrMbKW

— David Lee ੭•̀ω•́)੭ (@Pudgyboi) September 23, 2023

During the Tokyo Game Show 2023 Level-5 livestream, Producer Keiji Inafune revealed a new “Life” (job) players can choose in the upcoming game Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time. The Artist Life will be entirely new to the Fantasy Life series. We still have no word on a release date for the game, aside from the developer assigning it a 2023 window.

A playable demo of Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is currently available to try out at Level-5’s booth at Tokyo Game Show 2023. During the stream, we saw demo gameplay of some of the jobs available to choose in the game. Prior to that, the Level-5 Vision 2023 Tsuzumi event showed off 12 of the roles people can take. You can see a full list of possible jobs on the game’s official website. No gameplay of the new Artist Life was shown just yet.

The new Artist Life in Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time was revealed during the Tokyo Game Show 2023 Level-5 livestream on September 22. The game will be released sometime in 2023 for the Nintendo Switch.

The post New Fantasy Life i “Life” (Job) is the Artist appeared first on Siliconera.

At Tokyo Game Show 2023, attendees can try their hand at dating a woman who is a giant with a demo of SAEKO: Giantess Dating Sim. It is an upcoming indie title by SAFE HAVN STUDIO. On the game’s Steam page, the supported languages list English, Japanese, and Chinese. The game is scheduled to be released on PC sometime in 2024. [Thanks, Game Watch!]

As you might be able to tell from the title, Saeko is a giant. Or, that is to say, the player is very small. Their avatar is merely the size of Saeko’s thumb.

The gameplay is separated into two parts: daytime and nighttime. During the day, the game tells the story of the little people living in Saeko’s room. When night falls, that’s when the player has a chance to interact with and have a one-on-one conversations with Saeko. If you make her mad by selecting a less-than-favorable dialogue option, she’ll squash you.

Check out the first TGS 2023 trailer for the game below, which shows the main character and what happens if you upset her.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKV4H0SKmsE[/embed]

SAEKO: Giantess Dating Sim has a playable demo at Tokyo Game Show 2023. The game will be released on PCs worldwide via Steam sometime in 2024.

Konami revealed Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1's output resolution and framerate information on the game's official website. People can expect 30fps to 60fps, depending on the game. [Thanks, Wario64!]

Metal Gear Solid will run at 30 frames per second and display at a 1920×1080 resolution on all consoles. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater will run at 60 frames per second and display at a 1920x1080 resolution on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Steam versions. With the Nintendo Switch version of both games, they will run at 30 frames per second and display at a 1920x1080 resolution when the Nintendo Switch is in TV mode.

All three games will display at 1280×720 and run at 30 frames per second on the Nintendo Switch when used in Handheld mode.

Konami noted that the listed framerate information is just the maximum framerate achievable in the Master Collection, and during gameplay or cutscenes with large amounts of effects, the framerate may drop.

The full resolution and framerate information for the Master Collection can be viewed below:

Two new trailers for Gust, Koei Tecmo, and Akatsuki Games’s upcoming mobile and PC free-to-play RPG Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy & the Liberator of Polar Night appeared official YouTube channel for the game during the 2023 Tokyo Game Show. This comes after an official livestream for the title appeared at the event.

The cinematic trailer exhibits the variety of characters players can meet in the game. The game’s theme song, "Saihate e (To the Far Reaches of the World)" by Reche, plays the background. Reche was originally a member of the Japanese band Egoist and she worked on the music for the anime series Guilty Crown in 2011. She also has worked on music for Atelier Ryza 3.

You can watch the cinematic trailer for Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy & the Liberator of Polar Night below:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CEGvLS-wnQ[/embed]

The second video is another character trailer. The YouTube channel has been periodically dropping them as of late. This time, we get a closer look at the game’s namesake and one of the protagonists, Resna.

Unity announced its updated Runtime Fee plan after receiving heavy criticism from the game development community after its initial announcement.

Unity revealed that the company has no plans to charge developers for using the Unity Personal plan and any games built on Unity Personal will not have a Runtime Fee. Games developed in Unity Personal will receive an increased revenue and funding cap to $200,000. Unity will also be removing the "Made with Unity" splash screen on games made in Unity Personal.

Unity also announced that games that make less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will not be subject to the Runtime Fee.

Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise developers will be subject to the Runtime Fee if they are using the next Life Term Support (LTS) version of Unity releasing in 2024. Any games currently developed on the 2022 LTS version of Unity or earlier will not be subject to the Runtime Fee. Unity has promised that they will not change the terms for the Unity Engine developers are currently working with for as long as they use that version. Once developers update, they will be subject to the Runtime Fee.

The ASUS Republic of Gamers line will feature Evangelion items once again, as a plethora of Asuka and Unit 02 gaming computer hardware is on the way. The new collection is slated to be released before September 2023. According to the ASUS ROG social media account, the lineup includes a large amount of premium Evangelion-themed hardware.

The first two items are the ROG Thor 1000w Power Supply and the ROG Scabbard II mouse pad, respectively. Both feature classic Evangelion designs, with the NERV logo and font on them. Next up are the ROG Keycaps for RX switch keyboards. The keys are colored with Asuka's signature black and red theme, with the character featured on the space bar. There's also the Harpe Ace Mouse Grip, which is mainly red with Asuka on the right button and a silhouette of Unit 02 next to the sticker. You could put that mouse grip on the Gladius III wireless mouse.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is out soon and looking very good, with a ton of hype surrounding the PS5 exclusive open-world superhero game. But now, even years after Sony made clear it would be giving Spidey a new look, fans keep grumbling about the loss of Peter Parker’s old face, last seen in the original PlayStation 4…

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