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Summerfall Studios co-founder and former Dragon Age writer David Gaider has been reflecting, not for the first time, on his career at BioWare under EA. In a brisk recap of a decade-and-change of sequels, changes of direction, and mid-project reboots, he sums up EA’s difficulty with Dragon Age as basically one of having no real faith in the wide appeal of role-playing games.
Stop Killing Games are a self-described consumer movement who are aggrieved about all the games with online requirements that become partly or completely unplayable, once publishers end official server support. They’re trying to persuade larger advocacy organisations like The European Consumer Organisation to propose new laws that put a stop to such shenanigans.
To support their campaign, they’ve carried out a survey of games with online requirements to work out how many are “dead”, dying or enduring thanks to developer or fan-implemented “end of life” plans, such as patched-in offline functionality. The resulting Google spreadsheet has 738 entries, of which a whopping 70% are apparently no longer playable or destined to become that way.
An Elden Ring live action film is in the works from Ex Machina director Alex Garland, film production company A24 and game publisher Bandai Namco. It’s not clear whether developers From Software are involved, but Game Of Thrones novelist George R. R. Martin – who worked on Elden Ring’s story and characters alongside From boss Hidetaka Miyazaki – is contributing as a producer. All of this comes via Deadline.
If you are in the mood to play Skyrim or the recent Oblivion remaster, but you don’t want to play a Microsoft-backed game for, oh, any number of reasons, the word on the grapevine is that open world RPG Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is pretty decent. We don’t have a review as yet, but Khee Hoon Chan called Questline’s previous Tainted Grail: Conquest one of the best games you missed in 2021, and The Fall Of Avalon is currently humming along with an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam user consensus as it prepares to leave early access today. The Steam page also harbours a demo, plus the below, moderately thunderous trailer’s worth of first-person spellcraft, shattered cosmic castles and fishing mechanics.
Alkahest looks very good. Emphasis on ‘looks’ because both trailers released so far have been very scripted. Also, emphasis on ‘good’ because you get to bully goblins with your feet. It’s an open world RPG boasting a combat sandbox full of the sort of reactive flourishes you might find in an immersive sim. Crucially for fans of Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic (I’ve seen the words “spiritual successor” floating about, although not from the devs themselves) one of those touches is a boot. Here’s the boot in action:
The Six One Indie Showcase is a bit of a new kid on the block when it comes to video game presentations, but it’s certainly working hard to justify itself. Early today the latest showcase was held showing off a huge range of indies, 48 in total, some of them being brand new reveals, others smaller showcases.
As much as I’m up for trying a new one whenever one arrives, I’m not particularly good at shooters. It just gets too sweaty for me, I prefer a good single-player shooter above all else because I can actually take down my opponents without the fear of embarrassing myself somehow. And yet here we are again, with the open beta for Splitgate 2, which started earlier today, leaving me thinking “well, I could give it a go I suppose.”
Lugging a gaming PC around isn’t exactly practical, and handhelds like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally are fun, but not exactly built for heavy lifting. If you want something that’s actually powerful and still portable, a gaming laptop’s where you’ll probably end up.
The Warhammer Skulls Showcase was full to the brim with, unsurprisingly, lots of Warhammer 40,000 game news, including a sequel to Boltgun and a definitive edition of Dawn of War. CRPG heads were also treated to a reveal of Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy, a new party-based title from Owlcat Games, the devs behind another Warhammer game Rogue Trader. The reveal came in the form of a nicely partially 2D-animated trailer alongside some brief looks at gameplay, all of which is looking quite good.
Relic Entertainment have announced Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition – an upgraded, 64-bit version of your 29th favourite strategy game of all time, which includes all of the original DLC and will be compatible with “over 20 years of lovingly crafted community mods”.
