Françoise Cadol, the long-time French voice actor for Lara Croft, has reportedly launched legal action against Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered publishers Aspyr over alleged use of generative AI to replicate her voice for lines in the game. Cadol claims Aspyr didn’t contact her to ask for permission, and it appears the voice of Croft in at least one other dub of the remasters may have been put in a similar position.
Skyrim modders have yet again managed to pull off something remarkable. You know how creating patches to ensure two mods work together smoothly’s long been something that requires firing up the likes of the creation kit or xEdit? Well, thanks to a new mod dubbed the in-game patcher, it’s possible to resolve issues like that simply by wandering up to the location as the Dragonborn and editing the very make-up of the world.
See a rock clipping through a house because you’ve downloaded a couple of works that give the same bit of Whiterun a makeover? Just mosey over, grab the misbehaving mineral, and either move it elsewhere or delete it. You’ll have make sure you’ve not messed up anything else in the process before you save your changes, but assuming all the NPCs still have their own heads, you’ve got your own patch.
You’re gonna have to wait a bit longer to murder the steeple for a second time, with Slay The Spire II‘s early access release having just been delayed until March next year. Developers Mega Crit have at least cushioned the blow by revealing the day of the week it’ll arrive. A Thursday. Which Thursday? The cheeky folks won’t say.
The future of the Far Cry series will see multiplayer bits pushed “more predominantly”, according to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. The exec said this thing on stage at a conference in Saudi Arabia last month (thanks, Game File), around the same time he announced the Assassin’s Creed Mirage DLC the company have partnered with the Saudi government on.
Where do you go after making Dorfromantik, the 14th best puzzle game on PC? Unto infinity, chick. Unto infinity, and all the uranium-packed celestial masses it contains. Berlin-based Toukana Interactive are back with Star Birds – another “soft strategy” sim and laidback resource management game, in which you take charge of an avian asteroid-mining operation.
Borderlands 4 is out now. Our Borderlands 4 review is not, because we have only just been sent a review code. I fear I was unduly forgiving of Team Cherry last week for not supplying Silksong code before release – they’re a cute, tiny indie, after all, albeit a cute, tiny indie with the power to break Steam – so let’s take a firmer stance this time: bad! Wrong! Don’t you know you’re suffocating games journalism, Gearbox and 2K Games, you swaggering chancers? Whither accountability and transparency in a time of choosy PR departments?
I should teach you all a lesson by diverting your brand power and googlejuice towards some other game instead. I think I will, actually. What else is on sale today. Ah yes, Try To Drive.
CD Projekt have rolled out a fresh Cyberpunk 2077 patch with fixes and tweaks for some of update 2.3’s additions. The most noteworthy is what sounds like a pretty hefty revamp of how the autodrive function goes about conveying your ride from A to B.
If you missed it arriving back in July, update 2.3 was the final set of new stuff CD Projekt plan to add to the first Cyberpunk, a game they’ve been physically unable to stop themselves from delving back into over the past couple of years, despite Cyberpunk 2 having been in the works for a little while now. To be fair, most of its contents were vehicle and photo mode-related, with the autodrive function and similar Delamain taxi system heaflining alongside some new rides.
One of my favourite pieces of internet television last year was Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, a Netflix anime series that pretends to be just another adaption of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels before, rather brilliantly, pirouetting into a warm and sincere (but not overly self-flagellating) study of the original story’s tropeyness. One of the beneficiaries is Pilgrim himself, who’s forced to confront his own immaturity and entitlement: a reckoning that, one suspects, mirrors that of O’Malley himself, not to mention lapsed fans (hello) whose ability to parse these faults needed time to develop.
It’s a growing-up that continues in Scott Pilgrim EX, the 2026-bound sidescrolling action brawler from Tribute Games (a studio packed with devs who worked on Ubisoft’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game). While not a direct continuation of Takes Off, it’s apparently set not that long afterwards, and sees the new, more likable Scott teaming up with friends and foes to biff around demons and fitness bros on the streets of Toronto. I played about thirty minutes at Gamescom, and compared to Ubi’s 2010 beat ‘em up, EX appears to have done some maturing of its own.
Hollow Knight: Silksong contains what could be a cheeky reference to this year’s prior headline success story from a smaller developer, Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Are you playing Team Cherry’s new metroidvania? Here’s how to find that Easter egg. Beware mild area and equipment spoilers from this point on.