Author: Game Infliction

An Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim streamer created a mod which let his Twitch chat control what the game’s NPCs said in real time, with expectedly hilarious and horrifying results.

As reported by Kotaku, Twitch streamer Blurbs shared a clip from the stream on X/Twitter, below, which shared a compilation of some of the most ridiculous results. Beyond the Twitch chat’s comments merely appearing on screen, the mod converts them to speech in the style of the Skyrim characters and moves their lips to match.

“I have never made a game mod before. Chat can live voice NPCs. It’s gonna go horribly,” Blurbs said to open the stream.

I created a Skyrim mod that allows my Twitch chat to voice in-game characters (with mouth movements/subtitles/etc) *live* in real-time. It went as horribly as you’d expect.

Also, if you die in the game: YOU DIE IN REAL LIFE pic.twitter.com/yTKUVnuMd8

— Blurbs (@Blurbstv) April 29, 2024

One NPC he approached was a woman in Riverwood, who in her usual voice, declared: “It’s said that the lord of all dragons, Alduin, was born in 1998 when the Undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted 16 feet through the announcers table.” A Whiterun Guard said: “Hello there. I’m brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends.” There are plenty of other examples too, many of which are quite explicit.

With The Elder Scrolls 6 still five years away at least, fans have had to find their own ways, like this, to keep the ageing Skyrim entertaining. Another player recently accrued a 267,000 gold bounty murdering 5,000 NPCs in a quest to kill “everything that was killable”, for example, while one fan recreated the game in Age of Empires 2.

Looking to take immersion to the max, another player added two haptic feedback suits to their already $15,000 virtual reality setup to simulate actual pain when they’re hurt in-game. And a speedrunner has now reached Level 80 and killed the infamous Ebony Warrior in under 12 minutes.

Waves of sentimental fans recently booted up their old Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s to “retire” their original characters too, showing how much Skyrim has remained in player consciousness over its 12 years of being available.

In our 9/10 review of the beloved role playing game, IGN said: “Skyrim is a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

With all things Fallout now enjoying a significant boost following the breakout success of the Fallout TV show, Fallout 76 is enjoying a significant rise in player numbers. Last week, Bethesda announced that Fallout 76, its most recent mainline Fallout game, saw over one million people play in a single day.

That focused attention on Fallout 76 has brought its lack of cross-play under the microscope, especially at a time when most multiplayer-focused games do have cross-play. In an interview with Kinda Funny Games, Bethesda development chief Todd Howard explained why Fallout 76 does not yet have cross-play, pointing out that when the game was developed it was not done so with cross-play in mind.

“We keep looking into it. It [Fallout 76] wasn’t designed that way from the beginning,” Howard said. “So obviously we get into server and database silos.”

Fallout 76 launched in November 2018 across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and was savaged by critics and players at release. However, over the last five years, Bethesda has worked to improve the game, turning around sentiment to such an extent that Fallout 76 now enjoys a ‘mostly positive’ user review rating on Steam. Howard said Fallout 76 has been “sneaky popular” for the last three or four years.

Not only does Fallout 76 not have cross-play, it also doesn’t have cross-progression, another pretty standard feature for multiplayer games in 2024. In the interview, Howard went on to say cross-progression is more important to Bethesda than cross-play when it comes to Fallout 76, but again, technical issues with the way Fallout 76 was built are a stumbling block.

“Here’s what I would say, which is for us the more the important thing is cross-progression than cross-play — and we do separate them — we’d love to have it all.” Howard said. “It’s something we are looking at, but I will say it’s quite — the way that [Fallout 76] was architected from the beginning — a technical lift. Not saying we are or aren’t doing anything, we are looking at it and seeing where that’s going to impact people.”

While cross-play and cross-progression sound unlikely for Fallout 76, it sounds like both are very much on the table for Bethesda’s future games. Indeed the recently released Starfield, a single-player adventure, does have cross-progression between PC and Xbox.

Howard added: “Going forward in the world we want to be in, I think it’s very important and something that you know in our future games that we’re going to be really, really mindful about to make sure — in particular the progression — that where you pick up a game you’re able no matter what screen you’re on you’re able to just keep going with your character and what you were doing.”

Howard’s interview with Kinda Funny Games also revealed a fall release window for Starfield expansion Shattered Space, and potentially two new Fallout projects.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Whenever Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead releases a big balance update for the PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter, the community debates the various nerfs and buffs as it gets to grips with the evolving meta. After this week’s release of patch 01.000.300, which tweaked a long list of weapons, stratagems, and enemies, the debate was especially vociferous.

A change to the beloved Quasar Cannon is but one that has led to claims that Arrowhead has nerfed fun out of Helldivers 2. The game’s Discord and subreddit are especially spicy as Arrowhead community managers address concern about nerfs even as they point out that in reality, the patch made significant buffs to a number of key weapons. The Adjudicator, for example, has enjoyed a meaningful buff, as has the Punisher Plasma, and the Counter Sniper. The regular Guard Dog and the Railgun also got some love. Other weapons were rebalanced with a combination of buffs and nerfs.

As the row over Helldivers 2’s apparent nerfs continues, Arrowhead has addressed another aspect of the patch that has drawn controversy: patrols for solo players.

In the patch notes released this week, Arrowhead said patrol spawning was increased when there are fewer than four players. The fewer the players the bigger the change. For four-player missions there is no change compared to before. But “the biggest noticeable change will be for solo players at higher difficulties.”

Essentially, Helldivers 2 is now tougher for teams of three players and less, and much tougher for solo players. Helldivers 2 is designed to be played co-op, ideally in squads of four, but of course sometimes that’s not possible, and indeed there are plenty of players who prefer to play solo, challenging themselves to complete missions on their own and on the toughest difficulties even though Helldivers 2 can be incredibly difficult played this way.

Following the release of the patch, Arrowhead released a statement attributed to design director Niklas Broström, who explained that this change was about righting a prior mistake.

“We unintendedly had non-linear scaling of the patrol spawns so they didn’t spawn as often as they should have when less than four players,” Broström said. “The intention is that one player has 1/4th of the patrols compared to four players, but it used to be that they had 1/6th.

“Scaling of patrol spawns was exponential before, and that felt good on four player lobbies but a bit too empty when playing with fewer players, especially when playing solo. So now we made the scaling of patrols to be linear, which means if you play solo you will get 25% of the patrols compared to a four-player lobby instead of having about 17% of the patrols. There is still a cap of patrols that can spawn at the same time so during situations when we spawn a lot of patrols, such as extractions, even solo players won’t notice the difference. The change is made to make the world feel less empty for one and two-player lobbies, especially on high difficulty missions which was also slightly too easy for solo players compared to our intentions.

“Hope this clarifies the change for everyone – we’re not making the game arbitrarily harder!”

So, it turns out, Helldivers 2 was unintentionally too easy for solo players, and now it’s at the difficulty Arrowhead always intended.

The patch reaction doesn’t end there. There’s also a debate about a significant change to ricochet: “Shots that ricochet from heavy armored enemies will now properly hit the Helldiver who fired them. Trigger discipline is highly recommended.”

After the patch:
The New Ricochet System Sucks

🔗Eys-Beowulf | #Helldivers2 pic.twitter.com/RPO0hJcN8t

— Helldivers 2 Media (@Helldiversmedia) April 30, 2024

Players are now reporting getting killed more often by shots that ricochet, but there is confusion about just how much of an issue this is. Clips are doing the rounds on social media that appear to show players suffering embarrassing deaths at the hands of their own ricocheting projectiles, but some have suggested there isn’t a big change here. The prevailing theory is that the patch has made it so the player now takes damage from their own bullets and shrapnel when ricochet occurs, compared to the pre-patch situation where they were immune.

If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.

Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Square Enix has revised its approach to PC and console game development, and absorbed ¥22.1 billion (approx $140.9 million) in what it calls “content abandonment losses.”

In a warning to the investment community, the Japanese company said it would recognise the extraordinary loss for the fiscal year ended March 2024.

This is the result of a change in approach to Square Enix’s development of what it calls HD video games (PC and console). In its note, the company said it wants to be “more selective and focused in the allocation of development resources”, and as a result of the “close examination” of its development pipeline with this in mind, is taking the multi-million dollar loss. Square Enix did not name the canceled in-development titles.

Here’s the statement in full:

At the meeting convened on March 27, 2024, the Board of Directors of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. (the “Company”) voted, in light of the myriad changes underway in the environment surrounding its Group, to revise the Group’s approach to the development of high-definition (HD) games with the intention of being more selective and focused in the allocation of development resources. As a result of a close examination of the Group’s development pipeline undertaken in keeping with this revised approach, the Company expects

to recognize approximately ¥22.1 billion in content abandonment losses on its books for the fiscal year ended March 2024.

In February, Square Enix had forecast full year sales of ¥360 billion (approx $2.3 billion), up 16.8% over the previous financial year. But it predicted profit would be flat at ¥55 billion (approx $350 million). Square Enix said it was “carefully reviewing” its forecasts to assess any impact from the writedown.

Square Enix released a major title, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, in February, but it has yet to announce a sales figure. Some analysts have suggested it has struggled, a topic IGN recently investigated. Other games released in the current financial year include Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, and the Splatoon-style multiplayer game Foamstars. Dawntrail, the expansion for ongoing MMO Final Fantasy 14, launches in the next financial year, in late June. Square Enix also has Kingdom Hearts 4, the third game in the Final Fantasy remake trilogy, and Dragon Quest 12 in the works.

In February, Square Enix director and president Takashi Kiryu reportedly told analysts about plans to create a new company structure following falling sales in its digital entertainment business, despite the release of Final Fantasy 16 in June. Square Enix said the PlayStation 5 exclusive sold three million copies during launch week. A PC port is in the works. In January, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida said it might be time for a younger generation to lead the franchise and helm Final Fantasy 17.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.