Author: Game Infliction

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 director Naoki Hamaguchi has assured fans that despite Square Enix admitting last year that Rebirth “did not meet expectations,” the second part of the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy has been “doing very well” on both PC and PS5, and the team has been able to channel that success into a “high-quality third instalment.”

“The second entry, FFVII Rebirth, has been doing very well on both PS5 and PC,” Hamaguchi told Automaton. “I know some fans have expressed concerns, but please rest assured, we’ll be able to deliver a proper, high-quality third instalment.”

The concern revolved around the suggestion that the scope of Part 3 might have been scaled back as a result of Rebirth’s disappointing profits. But Rebirth has enjoyed a comeback of sorts after debuting strongly on PC via Steam.

Hamaguchi also took the opportunity to assure the community that development on Final Fantasy 7 Part 3 is going “extremely well,” adding: “The game is shaping up nicely. A lot of the content is already playable, and the game’s direction and form are firmly set in place. Right now, the team is united around refining everything.”

RPG fans have been on the hunt for news about the next entry in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy since its last installment, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, launched in early 2024. We know development started as early as June 2022, with Square Enix saying last year that its goal was to see it launch by 2027. Excitement for the third and final chapter in the trilogy grew even more when the team revealed that it had completed its story earlier this year.

And though he was still being a little coy with the details, in a separate interview with German outlet JPGames, Hamaguchi revealed that the “key words […] that underpin the design philosophy and then the theme for each game” were “reunion” for Remake, and “bonds” for Rebirth. The third instalment also has a key term, but Hamaguchi’s keeping that to himself for now.

“In terms of development [of Part 3], we’re working on that right now,” he added. “We’ve got builds running where you can actually experience what that theme is through the gameplay. And we know where we’re going with it. It’s looking like it’s going in the right direction, and we’ll keep working on it and make it even better. So hopefully in the near future we’ll be able to reveal some of that.

“And yeah, this is going to be the climax, the finale of the series. And we’re going to make it a suitable finale, a really great send-off for the game. It will be something ideally we hope will please fans, will delight the fans of this much-loved series, and really reward everyone for sticking with us to the end. So look forward to that. More information in the not too distant future. It’s all in safe hands!”

Co-director Tetsuya Nomura similarly acknowledge he’d heard the cries for updates on Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 and Kingdom Hearts 4 earlier this month, and happily reported that development was “progressing really smoothly.” While we wait, you can read up why the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 team “will not cheat” when it comes to Final Fantasy 7’s iconic airship.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Borderlands 4 developer Gearbox has asked PC gamers to wait 15 minutes for shaders to compile in the background while playing after some said this week’s update had caused increased stuttering.

The update, released September 25 (check out the patch notes here), was meant to improve Borderlands 4’s high-profile performance issues on PC, but soon after it rolled out, some players complained about stuttering.

Borderlands 4 is still on a mixed Steam review rating, with most of the negative comments revolving around PC performance. The tech experts at Digital Foundry have said their initial analysis of Borderlands 4 on PC showed significant stutter problems, and advised against running the game on its ‘Badass’ graphics setting.

Responding to the increased stutter issues reported by PC gamers, Gearbox issued a statement on social media, below, calling on players to give the looter shooter 15 minutes of gameplay to continue to compile shaders in the background, by which time those stuttering issues should resolve. If that doesn’t work, Gearbox suggested manually clearing your shader cache via your video card manufacturer’s approved method. And, if all else fails, Gearbox pointed to its support ticket process.

We’ve received reports that some players are experiencing reduced stability after downloading today’s update.

Stuttering issues should resolve over time as the shaders continue to compile in the background while playing. If you’re still experiencing issues after 15 minutes of…

— Borderlands (@Borderlands) September 25, 2025

As anyone who’s played Borderlands 4 on PC knows, when you first boot up the game you must wait for shaders to compile before you spawn into the virtual world. But this process doesn’t appear to catch all the shader compilation that might have to be done during gameplay, causing stutter. At least, that’s the running theory.

Gearbox’s latest statement echoes previous advice it issued on Steam that to me read like an effort to prevent players from making knee-jerk reactions to the game’s performance as soon as they changed their settings: “Please note that any time you change any of your graphics settings, your shaders will need to recompile. Please keep playing for at least 15 minutes to see how your PC’s performance has changed.” This latest advice reads much the same to me.

Meanwhile, some players are recommending traveling to certain zones in the game to brute force shaders to compile before moving on to what they actually want to do in-game.

To expand on this: quit the game once after launching and relaunch it. Now travel into a zone and back out (Idolator Sol’s or a Vault will work) this should compile a BUNCH of shaders and start improving the smoothness.

Shader compiling is rough.

— Ki11er Six (@Ki11ersix) September 25, 2025

If you are delving into Borderlands 4, don’t go without an updated hourly SHiFT codes list. We’ve also got a huge interactive map ready to go and a badass Borderlands 4 planner tool courtesy of our buds at Maxroll. Plus check out our expert players’ choices for which character to choose (no one agreed).

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

CD Projekt has delayed a planned patch for The Witcher 3 that was set to add cross-platform mod support across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S later this year.

The studio had announced the patch for later in 2025 as part of the celebrations of The Witcher 3’s 10th anniversary. “For the first time, creating, sharing, and enjoying mods for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will be easier and more accessible than ever,” CD Projekt said at the time.

However, in a new update, CD Projekt said the patch had shifted to 2026, with no firm release window mentioned. “We apologize for the delay and will share more details as we get closer to the release,” CD Projekt said. “Thank you for your patience!”

CD Projekt had described the update as “one more patch” for The Witcher 3, which remains hugely popular and maintains a healthy number of players even now, a decade after launch.

The Witcher 3 is now up to an incredible 60 million copies sold, a figure that includes sales of the base game and the GOTY version, but excludes expansions sold separately. It’s close to overtaking the latest sales figure we have for Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In a June 2023 interview with IGN, Bethesda development chief Todd Howard said Skyrim had sold over 60 million copies. So, we now have a potential tie for the best-selling role-playing game of all time.

Here’s Adam Badowski, joint CEO of CD Projekt, on The Witcher 3 sales milestone:

Without a doubt, the third part of Geralt’s adventures marks a pivotal point in our history. The game earned hundreds of awards and solidified our studio’s standing, but more importantly, it brought untold hours of adventures and emotions to millions of games the world over. I am proud to announce that since its release The Witcher 3 has sold over 60 million copies, securing a place among the bestselling video games in all history, and motivating us to carry on with intensive work on the next trilogy set in this universe.

That’s a reference to The Witcher 4, which is currently in full production but won’t be out until 2027 at the earliest.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Aspyr unveiled Deus Ex Remastered at this week’s State of Play, debuting a new teaser trailer showcasing how the 25-year-old masterpice has been updated with character models with better lip-sync animations and ragdoll physics.

But while fans were delighted to see the classic game getting a facelift, including reimagined lighting, dynamic shadows, water physics, particle effects, and new textures, the refreshed visuals aren’t impressing everyone.

“Upgraded visuals from 2000 to 2005,” said one commenter on the YouTube trailer. Another added: “There are FREE mods available right now that make the original game look better than this, while being more faithful.”

“The amount I wanted this until I saw screenshots… oh my god that is rough. Loses the charm of the original but also still looks bad and dated,” suggested another person on Bluesky, while someone else said: “Just what I’ve always wanted… the original Deus Ex but weirder looking.”

Many fans are pointing out how “blocky” the visuals look, suggesting it looks “not cohesive and unfinished.” In fact, I struggled to find comments from fans pleased with the visuals at all beyond this pragmatic player: “I don’t care how it looks, I’m hyped.”

“Visually it looks really bad. The extremely simplistic, blocky level design clashes with high(er) quality textures and models like a ‘realistic’ 512×512 Minecraft texture pack,” suggested one fan. “The lighting isn’t great either. Very hard lights and shadows, lots of crushed blacks in the screenshots. Maybe some form of ambient occlusion would help, but I don’t think the levels were designed with any form of realistic lighting in mind.

“I can’t imagine this being worth the money, unless good controller support is a must. An unofficial remaster already exists in the form of Deus Ex Revision with vanilla maps and soundtrack.”

Aspyr’s recent credits include Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, Knights of the Old Republic 2, and Tomb Raider IV-VI.

And while it makes sense that Embracer, owner of the Deus Ex franchise, Eidos Montreal, and Aspyr, would pick one of its own studios to handle the remaster of a game it also owns, some had hoped Nightdive Studios, the company behind the well-received remasters of Doom 64, Quake, System Shock, and Turok, would take on Deus Ex eventually. Indeed, Nightdive staff had expressed their desire to remaster Deus Ex one day. Alas, it wasn’t to be, leading Samuel Villarreal, lead engine developer at Nightdive Studios, to tweet:

One can only imagine https://t.co/hZydrLVz5b

— Samuel Villarreal (@SVKaiser) September 24, 2025

Deus Ex Remastered is set to release on February 5, 2026, or PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series. Last year, Embracer cancelled a new Deus Ex game from Eidos Montreal, leaving the future of the series in limbo.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Payday 2 developer Starbreeze has admitted it “messed up” when it introduced a premium subscription service alongside hiking the price of its $100 DLC bundle by 50%.

The subscription — launched earlier this week — bundled “full access to more than 65 DLCs, packed with heists, weapons, and cosmetics… for a low monthly cost” of $4.99 per month, or $19.99 for six months. At the time, the company said it allowed players to “explore Payday 2’s massive content library at their own pace, mastering the art of heisting one crime at a time” and the subscription — available via Steam — can be canceled at anytime.”

Starbreeze did not, however, warn players thinking of buying the Payday 2 Infamous Collection that it had quietly increased the price from $100 to $150 at the beginning of September, just a few weeks before it launched the subscription. Fans slammed the developer for “trying to slip [the price rise] under the radar.”

Now, in a statement to GameDeveloper, head of commercial Gustav Nisser admitted the developer had “dropped the ball on coordinating internally and communicating with our community properly.”

“The negative reaction makes complete sense, and the community has made it clear how the price change and its timing looks from the outside,” Nisser said. “We agree with the community, we messed up on this one, and we have reverted the price on the bundle effective immediately.”

He continued: “In hindsight we should have realized how it would seem. Since the bundle only charges for the items you don’t own, and the bundle discount is cumulative with any other discounts (i.e. discounts on the included items), the actual full price of the bundle can vary significantly.”

“Heisters – we’ve seen the feedback on the Infamy Collection pricing change that happened earlier this month, and have investigated,” Starbreeze told players on X/Twitter. “The pricing has been reverted to where it should be, and we apologize for this error.”

Starbreeze’s Haua also explained on Reddit: “I know that no one will believe me, but it was an error. Regardless, the damage has been done, and we hope that with this adjustment back that anyone who was hoping to get any DLC can do so through the collection.

“We do appreciate everyone who flagged the issue, and kept talking about it! Keep up being you, guys, and we hope that we can earn back any trust that may have been lost with this.”

A quick check on Steam.db confirms the price for the Infamous Collection has indeed now been reverted, although it’s not clear if anyone who’s paid the additional 50% charge over the last few weeks can claim back the difference.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.