Guild Wars publisher NCSoft’s long-rumoured Horizon: Zero Dawn spin-off is a full-blown MMORPG codenamed Project Skyline, will run on Unreal Engine 5, and is coming to PC and mobile with a PS5 release still TBC, according to a brace of job listings and CVs fished from the post-apocalyptic robo-wilds of yonder internet. Also according to the said listings, it won’t be out for a while.
Tim Cain wrote what is perhaps gaming’s most famous and influential monologue: the introduction to Fallout. “War never changes,” he says. “People loved it. I’m like, ‘I must be a writer.’” Yet much more recently, when Cain sat down to write his memoirs, nobody really liked what came out on the page. “I was really, really bad at it,” he says. “I had half a dozen people read it, and they all pretty much said that the stories were good, but my writing wasn’t.”
Cain’s writing strengths, as fellow Fallout originator Leonard Boyarsky has suggested, lie in shortform. Which was bad news for anyone who wanted to read the definitive account of his four decades at the heart of Interplay, Troika and Obsidian, three of the most important RPG studios of all time. Thankfully, though, it turns out Cain is a natural raconteur. The same anecdotes that appeared flat and toneless in his memoirs go down a storm on YouTube. There, for the past seven months, Cain has been delivering his stories straight to camera, as if at a dinner party with 73,500 other people. “When I started the channel, I would effectively just look at something in the book and be like, ‘I’ll tell that story today,’” he says. “Now I spend as much time answering questions and doing videos based on things people ask about.”
Star Wars Outlaws, the highly anticipated open world game from Ubisoft, will be released in late 2024.
Though Ubisoft and Star Wars owner Disney had previously remained tight lipped about the release date, a Disney Parks blog post quietly announced the release window, which was previously only confirmed to be sometime in 2024.
“Star Wars Outlaws, the open world Star Wars game, is set to release late this year,” the post said. “The game lets you explore distinct planets across the galaxy, both iconic and new. You can risk it all as Kay Vess, an emerging scoundrel seeking freedom and the means to start a new life, along with her companion Nix. If you’re willing to take the risk, the galaxy is full of opportunity.”
This year marks the 30th anniversary of EarthBound (known in Japan as Mother 2) and, according to the official X (formerly Twitter) page, plans are in place to celebrate the hefty milestone (thanks, My Nintendo News).
What these plans are, exactly, is up in the air at the moment, but we’re not expecting anything earth-shattering. After all, Earthbound itself is already playable on Switch via the Nintendo Switch Online service, and we’re way beyond anticipating any official Western release of its sequel, Mother 3.
Happy new year, PlayStation Stars members! We’ve got a fresh array of challenges, campaigns, and collectibles to kickstart your 2024 gaming journey. Let’s dive straight into what’s new this month.
PlayStation & You: Access controller Available January 2
Available only to active Access controller owners. Create new ways to play with this highly customizable controller kit for PS5 consoles, designed to help those with disabilities play games more comfortably, for longer. To unlock your Access Controller Digital Collectible, play any game on your PS4 or PS5 console.
Campaign Name: Your PlayStation Monthly Games Await | Reward: 50 PlayStation Stars Points Available January 2
New month, new PlayStation Plus monthly games. Try any one of this month’s games for 50 points.
Campaign Name: Vintage Lineage | Digital Collectible: Retro Lunch Box, First Edition Available December January 4
Take it back to the days of pixel art gaming. Play any of one of the games listed below to unlock a retro lunch box Digital Collectible.
The Messenger [PS4]
Sea of Stars [PS5/PS4]
Enter the Gungeon [PS4]
Celeste [PS4]
Undertale [PS4]
Shovel Knight Treasure Trove [PS4]
Campaign Name: Wind Down with PlayStation | Digital Collectible: New Year, New Nest Available January 17
Relax and unwind with some cozy game time. Start any of the games listed below to snag your snow globe Digital Collectible.
Mail Time [PS5]
Roki [PS5/PS4]
OMNO [PS4]
Lake[PS5/PS4]
Campaign Name: Brain Games | Digital Collectible: Synaptic Feedback Available December January 18
Sharpen your mind with these beautiful puzzle games. Each one offers a unique blend of brain-bending puzzles and eye-catching artwork to put your problem-solving skills to the test.
Play any one of these titles to unlock the Synaptic Feedback Digital Collectible.
Viewfinder [PS5]
Superliminal [PS5/PS4]
The Witness [PS4]
The Talos Principle 2 [PS5]
Puzzling Places [PS5/PS4]
Stay tuned to PlayStation App for all the latest updates throughout the month. Not a PlayStation Stars member yet? Learn more about PlayStation Stars and join for free here.
Listen, I know we’ve spent the better part of the holidays harping on about all our favourite games of 2023 (and many more besides as part of our bonus Selection Boxes), but here’s another one for you that I mainlined in a single day over Christmas and absolutely loved. It’s Makoto Wakaido’s Case Files Trilogy Deluxe – a collection of not three, but four detective stories in which you go about solving grizzly murders across different towns and villages in Japan. In short: if you like the investigation bits of Ace Attorney and need something to whet your appetite before the Apollo Justice Trilogy comes out on January 25th, this will be 100% up your street. It’s currently just over a fiver in the Steam Winter Sale, and there’s a free demo you can try as well for good measure.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every week, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, let’s return kick off the new year with a jumbo-sized edition with even more games from across our Christmas holiday. Expect unexpectedly laid-back stressful horror, slow-motion stunting gunfights, a watercolour world, spaceships, mecha, and far too many legs. Check out these attractive and interesting indie games!
Square Enix’s President Takashi Kiryu has revealed that the company will be “aggressive in applying” AI in its content development and publishing divisions in the future after he praised the technology in a New Year’s Letter (thanks, VGC).
Happy new year all. What’s the weather like where you are? We’ve got Amber and Yellow warnings in London – I do not understand what these terms mean, but I’m going to add a Sapphire warning for escalating Maw activity. The creature was pretty lively over the Xmas weekend, but Graham managed to soothe it with posts about gaming-related new year resolutions and, of all things, the Spike Video Game Awards. We can expect the Maw’s petulance to mount during January, a lean month for announcements and revelations, but there are a few tasty morsels in the offing – a new Prince of Persia and Tekken 8, for instance. Fingers crossed we can build up some kind of momentum.
Some new game releases we are pointing our telescopes at this week: Skeleton Rebellion (4th Jan), a scrappy offbeat RPG with claymation elements in which you are a skeleton trying to overthrow some mages, and The Night Is Grey (5th Jan), a point-and-click adventure about a beardy bloke and a little girl stuck in the woods with some weirdo wolves. If you like, you can also play a free drinking game I’ve just invented in which you do a shot for every time I accidentally write 2023 instead of 2024.
The Koei Tecmo-published action role-playing game Fate/Samurai Remnant will be getting “DLC Vol. 1” next month in February 2024.
It’s officially titled ‘Records Fragment: Keian Command Championship‘ and will be followed by two more DLC episodes later on in 2024. You can check out a teaser trailer of the first DLC above.