Category: Video Games

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered finally has a new update with much-needed performance improvements and tweaks to the difficulty settings.

Bethesda said update 1.2 focuses on fixes for quests, gameplay, and performance, and includes new damage settings. 1.2 won’t roll out to all platforms just yet, Bethesda added, but it will be released today, July 9, on Steam Beta.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered update 1.2 patch notes:

SETTINGS CHANGES

• We’ve added additional difficulty settings to allow players to further tune their “Player Combat Damage” & “Enemy Combat Damage”. Players can now select from “Novice”, “Apprentice”, “Adept”, “Journeyman”, “Expert”, and “Master” options in the Gameplay menu. We hope the “Journeyman” setting, specifically, will act as a better bridge between “Adept” and “Expert” for players.

UI

• Fixed map markers disappearing
• Fixed missing punctuation in Simplified Chinese text
• Fixed “Toggle All” button on Map screen to work as a ‘Hold’
• Various fixes to localized text
• Fixed controller issues in Spell making menu
• Fixed menus being cropped incorrectly in 1280×1024
• Fixed the incorrect player stance in the inventory menu after fast travel
• Fixed rebinding keys for Lock Picking
• Fixed keybinds not updating in AZERTY
• Fixed soft lock with controller in Enchanting menu
• Fixed stats not updating when equipping enchanted items
• Fixed a character skin glitch when closing the inventory menu

CRASHES

• Fixed crashes that could occur while fighting Jyggalag
• Fixed crashing when killing a paralyzed NPC with an arrow
• Fixed crashing when paralyzing an already-paralyzed NPC
• Fixed crashing in Spellmaking menu when rapidly removing & implementing effects
• Fixed various GPU crashes
• Fixed crashes that could occur during auto saves

AUDIO

• Fixed underwater SFX persisting after leaving exiting water
• Fixed missing ambient SFX in Shivering Isles

QUESTS

• Fixed NPCs floating after being knocked down during Priory of the Nine quest
• Fixed crashing when entering Flooded Mine during Final Justice quest
• Fixed pathing for Shaleez in Flooded Mine during Final Justice quest
• Fixed crashing when opening Gate to The Fringe during Retaking the Fringe quest
• Fixed mages loading without clothes in Fort Ontus during The Necromancer’s Amulet quest
• Fixed NPC pathing issues in Gardens of Flesh and Bone during ‘Through the Fringe of Madness’ quest
• Fixed missing VFX during the closing of the Great Gate
• Fixed Ilav Dralgoner’s missing facial animation during ‘Saving Time Itself’ quest
• Fixed Sir Thredet’s speech during ‘Umaril the Unfeathered’ quest
• Fixed NPC pathing issues during ‘Baiting the Trap’ quest
• Fixed Obelisk Crystals spawning disconnected during ‘Baiting the Trap’ quest
• Fixed crash at end of ‘Through a Nightmare, Darkly’ quest
• Fixed wall crumbling in Malada during ‘Nothing You Can Possess’ quest
• Fixed misaligned food at the Castle Leyawiin County Hall dinner party during ‘Sanguine’ quest
• Fixed an issue with visibility of ghosts during ‘Ghosts of Vitharn’
• Fixed cutscene not playing during ‘Light the Dragonfires’
• Fixed missing textures in Cropsford Campsite after finishing ‘Goblin Trouble’

PERFORMANCE

• Fixed frame rate drop in Deepscorn Hollow
• Fixed frame rate drops in Black Rock Caverns
• Fixed frame rate drop between Skingrad and Skingrad Castle
• Fixed frame rate drop south of Bravil Castle courtyard
• Reduced the frequency of hitches in the open world.
• General improvements to frame time in many locations.
• Optimize updating of character attachments.
• Optimize rendering of water volumes in the open world.
• Optimize light/shadow updates in several lairs.
• Optimize waterfall particle FX and rendering.
• Optimize the weather system.
• Optimize character animation system.

GAMEPLAY

• Fixed player character height scaling
• Fixed armor items hiding Argonian and Khajiit tails
• Fixed slow camera movement when initiating NPC dialogue
• Fixed soft lock when a player with a high bounty goes to jail
• Fixed Orrery animations
• Fixed physics bug with floating necklaces
• Fixed vampire sleeping animations
• Fixed NPC beards not following facial animation.
• Fixed ghost NPCs being completely invisible
• Fixed missing animation when talking to Shamada in Leyawiin
• Fixed occasional very long load times when fast traveling
• Fixed missing facial animation for Snak gra-Bura
• Fixed falling unconscious in water preventing player from getting up
• Fixed NPCs losing collision when swimming
• Fixed NPCs stopping combat when player is blocking
• Fixed female Dremora teeth clipping
• Fixed soft lock after choosing player class
• Fixed Amber weapons clipping in first person view
• Fixed vines clipping into columns
• Fixed helmets clipping into player character’s head
• Fixed missing textures on Daedric statues
• Fixed duplicated pages between Oghma Infinium and Mysterium Xarxes

SYSTEM

• Fixed flickering shadows when using XeSS Upscaling
• Fixed title properly restarting after purchasing the Deluxe Upgrade on PC
• Fixed settings properly migrating between PC and XBOX
• Fixed water disappearing after fast travel
• Fixed cursor slowdown when enabling high frame rate V-Sync
• Fixed shaders not preloading due to cloud save replication
• Fixed long blackout during loading screens
• Fixed weather VFX flashing while outside
• Fixed motion blur artifacts while in the Oblivion Plane
• Fixed NPCs not obeying the Wait action from the player

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.

Stalker 2 is set to launch on PlayStation 5 late 2025 a year after it hit PC and Xbox Series X and S.

GSC Game World’s open world horror shooter launches on PS5 with full support for the DualSense controller’s features, including haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Further technical enhancements for the PS5 Pro are also in development, the Ukraine developer said.

Stalker 2 launched in November 2024 to a positive reception on Steam and 1 million sales. It’s a success story for the Ukrainian studio; a miracle, really, considering the harrowing circumstances that followed Russian’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.

But Stalker 2 launched with well-documented bugs and issues, chief among them A-Life 2.0. A-Life was a key feature of the first Stalker game that governed AI behavior across the game world. At a high level, it is a system for simulating life in the Zone that works its magic seemingly independently of the player’s actions or whereabouts. It helps to create convincing AI and the emergent gameplay Stalker is famous for.

GSC had said A-Life 2.0 would make the Zone feel alive as never before, that it would fuel emergent gameplay on a scale previously thought impossible. Indeed for some fans, A-Life 2.0 was Stalker 2’s biggest selling point. But when Stalker 2 actually came out players discovered that A-Life 2.0 didn’t work properly, with some questioning whether it was even in the game at all.

In an interview with IGN, GSC explained what went wrong with Stalker 2’s A-Life 2.0, and vowed to fix the system. They’ve been working on doing that ever since, and the expectation is that the PS5 version will include all the latest updates and fixes the developer has released for the PC and Xbox versions.

Read more on how Stalker 2 has changed everything for the studio here.

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.

The Last of Us and Intergalatic: The Heretic Prophet development chief, Neil Druckmann, is enjoying his time away from the HBO series by indulging in a LEGO set based on the latter’s spaceship.

Last month, 2Bricks — who specializes in custom (MOC) LEGO builds — released a YouTube video documenting a custom build of “a sleek Porsche-designed red ship” inspired by the next Naughty Dog game franchise, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. And apparently, it caught the eye of one very intrigued fan.

Dune: Awakening developer Funcom has apologized after “patching out” a layout change in the Deep Desert that briefly transformed PvE territory into PvP, leading to “an unfortunate amount of lost bases and equipment.”

Yesterday, Funcom released another patch for Dune: Awakening, with more tweaks to improve the endgame experience for players who’d prefer to spend time in PvE activities, including the ability to farm Tier 6 resources and a better chance of getting Unique drops in PvE loot in Deep Desert.

It follows on-going efforts from the developer to improve PvP in the Deep Desert after an AMA revealed many players branded the endgame “toxic” due to griefing even after the ability for players to squish each other with their Ornithopter was supposedly patched out. Later, griefers intentionally landed their Ornis on other players’ own thopters to prevent them from farming.

However, the change — which was “intended to only occur with the next Coriolis cycle and not impact the ongoing cycle” — resulted in an “oversight in the development process and internal communications,” resulting in heavy losses for some players.

“We’re incredibly sorry that this happened and we want to acknowledge that this should have been handled better. We’ve changed our internal processes as a result of this and will be better in the future,” the team said in a statement.

“We are working to reimburse vehicles and items (to the best of our ability) to players who were impacted by this. You can expect the reimbursed materials, items, and vehicle components to show up in the in-game ‘Claim Rewards’ tab by the end of this week.”

In the same statement, the team also revealed it was working hard to eliminate cheaters from Arrakis, writing, “our primary focus, which continues over the next weeks and months, will be to remove all identified exploits (third party cheat engines, client hacks, or in-game exploitation of game mechanics). In addition, we will be hard at work improving the game, adding quality of life features, and addressing critical gameplay issues.

“We have zero tolerance for the type of player behavior that has an impact on the experience of other players, and we will continue to focus on ensuring that players can enjoy the game as it is intended,” the statement added. “If you see someone cheating or exploiting, please report them to us using the available reporting channels.”

Funcom said that so far it has taken action on “several hundred” cheats caught using exploits, cheats, and hacks, with “more waves of bans coming as we identify further culprits.”

“We have a team dedicated exclusively to fighting hackers and fixing exploits. Over the next few patches, they will be introducing additional efforts to prevent exploits by increasing security on several client/server communication layer, performing additional penetration testing against common attack vectors, and auditing our item and inventory systems to make sure they are resistant to item duplication,” Funcom stated.

Finally, the team also apologized to players who had lost “vehicles or other resources” due to in-game bugs. Though admitting some issues are hard to replicate and resolve, Funcom said it is now working on tools to “better reimburse players for vehicle losses due to bugs.”

Dune: Awakening has enjoyed a superb launch, with a ‘very positive’ user review rating on Steam. Within hours of going live on June 10, Funcom’s survival MMO had clocked up over 142,000 concurrent players on Valve’s platform, and hit a new high earlier this month of 189,333 players. And it’s already clocked up over 1 million players, too, making it Funcom’s fastest-selling game ever, and securing a Great 8/10 in our review.

If all that’s got you interested but you’re not sure where to start, make sure to check out all the Dune: Awakening classes you can choose from, and our Dune: Awakening walkthrough for a step-by-step guide to the story. We’ve also got Dune: Awakening resource guides that’ll help you find iron, steel, aluminium, and a Dune: Awakening Trainers locations guide to help you survive on Arrakis.

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.

The four-day marathon that is this year’s Prime Day is live now, running from July 8-11. There’s hardly any product category that’s not on sale at Amazon at the moment. But each year Prime Day is one of the best times to stock up on board games, and this year is no different.

It seems like most board games are on sale right now for Prime Day 2025, and the prices are mostly excellent. Below, we’ve highlighted our picks for the best board game deals available now – but you’ll need a Prime membership to get most of them. You can sign up here.

Save Up to 50% Off Board Games for Prime Day

As an added bonus, a bunch of the games are part of another sale that’s also going on right now that saves you $10 when you spend $40 on select items. So if your game(s) are eligible and you spend more than $40, you’ll get an additional $10 off. As a deal-focused commerce editor, I love it when you can stack a deal on top of a deal. It feels like you’re working the system.

Azul

More Prime Day Deals

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.