Final Fantasy 7 Revelation marks a significant first for the remake series: it'll be the only entry available across multiple platforms on launch day. Remake and Rebirth both released as PlayStation exclusives, and took years to hit PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, but Revelation will be available for all players on day one. The change in approach, director Naoki Hamaguchi says, is simply a response to the reality of today's gaming landscape.

The multiplatform release is "an inevitable outcome of the changing environment surrounding today's players," as Hamaguchi explains in Edge Magazine issue #429. Now, players "are no longer tied to a single piece of hardware," and enjoy their games on TVs, desktops, and handheld devices alike.

"I believe that what will be important in future triple-A game development is not how high-performance an environment we can use," Hamaguchi says, "but rather how widely we can deliver the core of the same experience across different environments." In other words, game devs are now incentivized to make sure their games scale across a wide range of platforms, from the highest-end PCs to the most lowly handhelds.

Square Enix announced its intention to "aggressively" pursue a "multiplatform strategy" back in 2024. The publisher had never truly been exclusive to one particular platform, though its allegiance shifts between Nintendo and Sony in the '90s are the stuff of game history legend. Nevertheless, almost all of its games have been released across all major platforms in the past few years – an unequivocal win for all but the most hardened of console warriors.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation lead says he pushed Square Enix for a physical version of the JRPG, but physical media will eventually be "essentially disc-less."

Shawn Layden joined Sony in 1987, eventually taking on leadership roles at the company's burgeoning video game development studios that led to him becoming chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, a position he retired from in 2019. He knows what it's taken to build the PlayStation brand, and his feelings about the company's decision to end physical discs hold more weight than most.

Layden understands the convenience of digital games, as he explains in an interview for The Expansion Pass podcast. But if a rough estimate suggests that 80% of people download games and 20% buy them physically, then Layden says "that's a super important 20%." These are the most "faithful of the faithful" players, who'll show up to buy multiple copies of an individual game to keep in their collection.

For that reason, Layden says, "I don't agree with that decision." He caveats all this with the acknowledgement that he has no idea what the situation looks like on PlayStation's spreadsheets, or the specific financial realities that led Sony down this path.

"But at the same time – I think this is probably the more insidious aspect to it – it changes the conversation from 'do you own a game?' Or 'do you have access to a digital asset?'" Layden says.

"If you can't sell a thing, that means you don't own a thing. And if you don't own it, then what are you buying? If you're buying access, that doesn't quite sound as sexy, to be honest. And people, as people tend to do in their mind, they'll game out the worst-case scenario. That's a whole lot of brand hit and reputation bite that, as I said, I don't have any visibility on the financials around it, but that's a significant brand hit and I hope it made sense to them."

While I'm one of those gamers who does love collecting for collecting's sake, the issue of game ownership has always been my biggest concern about PlayStation's impending all-digital stance. Market experts have noted that a substantial portion of Sony's biggest games continue to make dump trucks of money on disc, but the company is apparently more concerned about control of the market than the physical-first audience.

Layden has expressed his skepticism about PlayStation going discless in the past, noting that "the market has said they will continue to buy them," and suggesting that it could "heavily influence" Xbox and Nintendo's approach to physical games in the future. Either way, Sony's gonna have a rough time selling a PS6 for $1,000 if the next-gen can only offer modest improvements in its discless future.

PlayStation is "hearing the feedback from customers" on discs, says JRPG boss whose business is built on physical games.

GTA 6 protagonist Jason might be a former army man, but the game's narrative lead insists that doesn't mean Rockstar was trying to make "a statement" with his backstory.

Rockstar previously introduced Jason as a man who "grew up around grifters and crooks" and spent "a stint in the Army trying to shake off his troubled teens" before returning to "doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners." Then, of course, he meets fellow GTA 6 protagonist Lucia, which "could be the best or worst thing to ever happen to him" – a slightly ominous descriptor we'll have to wait and see the outcome of next month.

Concerns for Jason and Lucia's happy ending aside, during a new interview with Love magazine, Rupert Humphries, GTA 6's senior vice president of narrative, is asked about Jason's backstory. Specifically, could it be interpreted as a class story, considering his time in the army, and how consciously has Rockstar written failed social mobility as an aspect of his tale?

"We didn't want to make any kind of statement with Jason's backstory," Humphries responds. "It needs to be understood that he takes the measures he does – drug trafficking and becoming a bank robber, etc. – because of his material circumstances. But a lot of this is up to the player to decide whether he needs to do that, or if it's a choice he makes because he's wired differently from other people."

It's a surprising response, largely because it seems to imply that Jason's military background might not figure all that much in the narrative, though I suppose we'll have to watch this space to see how it plays out, and how much the devs are hiding for spoiler purposes right now.

Rockstar obviously also hasn't shied away from social commentary in the past, either. In fact, in this same interview, before being asked about Jason's backstory, Humphries discusses the concept of the American Dream being a recurring theme in the GTA series, including in GTA 4 where "we told an immigrant's story that was supposed to be a kind of hollow commentary on the illusion of America as a land of opportunity, and then we sort of doubled down on that with the cynicism of GTA 5."

GTA 6 boss says Rockstar has to "forego realism" for the sake of the players: "Realism can help greatly with immersion, but too much can feel tedious."

By building out studios and staying focused on genres, Tencent hopes to create the next Larian or FromSoftware, developers capable of releasing year-defining hits like Baldur's Gate 3 or Elden Ring respectively.

That's according to Yong-yi Zhu, Tencent Games VP and head of operations, strategy, and compliance, who spoke to The Game Business about the Chinese company's plans both globally and domestically.

Tencent, which holds substantial investments in numerous studios around the world, now including a new subsidiary of Assassin's Creed maker Ubisoft, sees those exact mega-RPGs as "North Stars" for game development, Zhu says.

Rather than looking at games through a regional lens, Zhu says, "For us, it’s more about chasing high-quality talent and people that are bringing unique visions, have a very specific vision. We love to work with developers that are trying to hone their craft. The studios we cite as our North Stars, like Larian, FromSoftware, they've been in a particular genre for a long time and iterating on that genre."

Mechanically and stylistically, Baldur's Gate 3 was much closer to Larian's Divinity series than the original Baldur's Gate RPGs from BioWare. The studio's fingerprints were all over the IP, even if it was D&D at its core – not that that's a bad thing. Elden Ring, meanwhile, was essentially Dark Souls 4, 5, and 6 in a trenchcoat – a sprawling game combining everything FromSoftware had learned and tested in the action RPGs that led up to that point.

Zhu says Tencent wants to find developers who can do the same. It's important to note that the company also owns minority but significant shares of Larian as well as FromSoftware owner Kadokawa. Last year, Tencent increased its ownership in Kadokawa further, years after it and Sony increased their ownership of FromSoftware itself.

"For us, we try to do the same thing with our internal studios," Zhu continues. "We want to work with you if you believe one day you can be the category leader in this particular genre. That could be today, two games from now, or three games from now, as long as we see that progress. That is the long-term commitment."

Zhu uses these same franchises as examples of how studio given long-term support can produce generational hits. "You look at those two partnerships specifically, it wasn't an overnight success," he says. "It was multiple Divinities into Baldur's Gate. It was Demon's Souls into Dark Souls into Bloodborne and then finally into Elden Ring, which was so big. We do have a long-game approach. That's one thing that I think is very unique to Tencent and suits us well in working with a number of different developers for a long time to come."

After Baldur's Gate 3's explosive success, Larian has split with Wizards of the Coast and returned to Divinity. FromSoftware used some its Elden Ring bucks on stranger games like Elden Ring Nightreign and The Duskbloods, but also seems to have another single-player epic in the chamber.

A key distinction with Tencent, as Zhu notes, is that "a lot of our games are evergreen live service titles." He reckons this evergreen release schedule, as opposed to the huge dips and peaks that come when you release a new premium game every few years, provide some insulation against the waves of the industry at large.

Another way to minimize risk, he says, is to scale down development teams during "the riskier part of the project," which is generally early in concepting and pre-production. Increasingly, we see pushes for smaller game development teams, with many such teams finding outsized success every year.

Tencent hasn't been able to avoid the contraction in the games industry. Game dev layoffs look particularly devastating when you isolate them to the United States, but it's also tumultuous across the world, with Tencent reportedly backing out of multiple studio deals this year and closing TiMi Montreal, a studio helmed by Assassin's Creed: Black Flag director Ashraf Ismail, before it released a game.

We won't get "the next FromSoftware" or "another Remedy or Larian" at this rate, warns veteran dev: "We have to change that."

Calling Mass Effect 3's legacy "controversial" would be an understatement. The ending, the DLC rollout, the decision to turn the Normandy's computer into a sexed-up fembot… the list goes on. But among all that, the villain Kai Leng might still be the most-hated part of both the game and the entire franchise. Even now, 14 years after launch, actor Troy Baker still seems embarrassed about helping bring Kai Leng to life.

In a recent video with YouTube channel Partychat, Baker is presented with clips of roles from throughout his career. He tells fond development stories about his roles as characters like Joel in The Last of Us and Higgs in Death Stranding, singing the praises of creators like Neil Druckmann and Hideo Kojima.

But the instant he sees Kai Leng on screen? "Don't," Baker says, turning to laugh. "Next clip. Nope, next clip." He simply grimaces as the video continues to play, and he witnesses his character get stabbed through the torso. "Yeah, I deserve that," Baker admits. "There's so many reasons why I shouldn't have played that character."

Mass Effect 3 presents Leng as if he's the biggest badass in the galaxy, but his dorky goggles, ninja antics, and samurai sword give him the vibe of those "I studied the blade" memes. The fact that Leng is presented as being of Chinese descent while playing into Japanese character tropes only makes it more embarrassing.

Every few years, you'll find yet another Mass Effect discussion thread with a title like "Is Kai Leng the worst character of the franchise," "Who is the worst character and why is it Kai Leng," or "wtf is Kai Leng? Was someone drunk when he was created." There are even popular mods that fully cover Leng's face and delete his dialog from the game. Now that's dedication to a proper hater life.

The Kai Leng hate has probably grown beyond reasonable criticism of the character at this point – as is the case with all negative online discussions – but the core of distaste for the character remains very real. Even, it seems, for Troy Baker himself.

Mass Effect 5 might just be the biggest upcoming RPG on the horizon.

The collective industry has been reckoning with expanded usage of AI for the last several years. We've seen generative AI used in various capacities across multiple blockbuster releases, and more recently, the tech in Nvidia DLSS 5 has created a whole frontier of discussion. Hideo Kojima's own Death Stranding 2 got caught up in the latter, and it put a bad taste in his mouth regarding the usefulness of these tools.

"As a creator, I have mixed feelings about this technology," he explains on the Koji10 podcast. "AI is good at bringing old photographs to life or adding color to them, right? I think we might stop doing remakes one day. People still restore old films in 4K by hand, for instance. AI could do that easily."

But where AI can certainly make those processes easier, it can't understand artistic intention, making the use cases limited, at least for anything the Metal Gear Solid mastermind is involved in. "As the person who made the original, I wouldn't want someone changing it too much," he states. "There was a reason I chose a particular lighting setup. It would be different if AI understood those intentions."

Going by the results of Nvidia DLSS 5, and any other examples I've seen of AI upscaling, we're a long way from that happening. Death Stranding 2 was caught in the whirlwind of DLSS 5, and that seems to have given Kojima pause on what this tech can actually offer Kojima Productions.

"I wouldn't like that," he says, when it's suggested AI can "make changes" of its own accord. "Unless I was controlling the AI in my own work, that may be different. I don't know, though."

He concedes, "this will probably become standard," at least to some extent. Remastering music and restoring old movies still requires engineers and production teams, who incorporate AI to help streamline the projects.

"Maybe AI will eventually do all that automatically," he says. "In a hundred years, the resolution may be even higher. But I don't much like the idea."

Me neither. But so long as we have creatives like Kojima who're maintaining perspectives like this, I believe there's hope. There's little chance of seeing any of these elements in OD and Physint, and they'll be better games for it.

OD is "progressing smoothly," Hideo Kojima says, teasing it as a "completely new kind of game that tests the thresholds of fear"

The new open-world Dungeons & Dragons video game from Wizards of the Coast isn't going to be as big as beloved RPGs like Skyrim, it seems – but there's a good reason why.

Warlock was first unveiled last year by the D&D publisher as a brand-new open-world game featuring Tasha, an archmage and demonologist well known to fans of the tabletop series.

We haven't heard too much about it since, but we did get to see a whole 10 minutes of its Dragon's Dogma-esque gameplay in August – and, now, Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay is sharing more about the exciting project.

Speaking in a new edition of Edge, Guay describes how the developers don't want to guide players around Darkon. You know, the whole dreaded yellow paint thing? They're not a fan, and that's why they're opting for an open world that's a bit smaller than most folks familiar with the genre might expect.

"Because we wanted this to be exploration-driven, we didn't want the player just to follow a waypoint around," as he says.

So, while the world is "small," it's not lacking in substance. As Guay puts it, "By having a bit more density, we can afford to pull back a little bit on the handholding." That's good to read, honestly – and there's plenty to discover as well.

"There's a lot of really cool spells. Maybe you won't find them, and that's ok, because you'll find others." You know what that sounds like to me? More reason to play through the game again.

The controls sound exciting, too, as Guay describes Warlock's system as one that simulates a "real-time expression of magic instead of something that feels a bit slower."

That should also make the world feel far more alive, if you ask me, and a bit more action-packed to boot – once more reassuring me that size might not matter after all.

It certainly didn't in Baldur's Gate 3, perhaps the best D&D experience to date… and it wasn't even open world.

Baldur's Gate 3 is "a great game," but Warlock devs say their own virtual D&D experience is "very different" from Larian's RPG

Konami has said that Castlevania: Belmont's Curse won't be the end of the series, and you probably won't have to wait 10 years for a new one to actually release.

While Castlevania has been arguably the most present Konami series since the release of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain – which ushered in the era where the publisher wasn't really making games – it's still been 12 years since the last entry, Lords of Shadow 2 (and even longer since the last traditional game). So, given there's been such a hiatus, naturally people want to know whether this is kicking off a full-blown revival like Silent Hill has received, or just a one-off with no plans for a follow-up.

Speaking to Famitsu (with translation from Nintendo Everything), Castlevania: Belmont's Curse producer Tsutomu Taniguchi was asked what the future of the series looks like as the new release coincides with the 40th anniversary of the original Castlevania. He explains, "Right now, we're pouring all our energy into the release of the game before you, Belmont’s Curse," and while getting a new game out will provide a sense of relief for him, Taniguchi notes, "if we said, 'Okay, the next game will be out in ten years', the whole thing is meaningless. Although I still don't know what shape that will take."

Taniguchi also described how Belmont's Curse came to be, saying, "The development of this game started partly from a sense of urgency." He explains, "the number of people actually playing Castlevania has gone down" while at the same time "the number of people who had heard of it, but never actually played had gone up." This is presumably thanks to the popular Netflix animated series, to which Belmont's Curse is somewhat linked, as Rose Belmont is the daughter of Castlevania 3's Trevor and Sypha, who were the focus of the original series.

Personally, I'd like to see Konami go for a new 3D entry in the series, while letting the likes of Evil Empire handle the Metroidvania-style adventures. As much as I have total Soulslike fatigue, there's no doubt the franchise fits the genre super well, but a Devil May Cry-style traditional action game wouldn't go amiss either.

The most underrated Castlevania games could be making a comeback as a Konami teaser gives fans hope for a 3D collection.

Akio Otsuka, the Japanese voice for pretty much every Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series, has said Konami should release a new game in the series, even if Hideo Kojima isn't involved.

While David Hayter is synonymous with Snake for many, Otsuka perhaps has the most prolific run as the character in the series history. Not only did he – like Hayter – play Solid and Naked Snake, but he also provided the voice for Metal Gear Solid 2's Solidus Snake (played by John Cygan) and Metal Gear Solid 5's Venom Snake (played by Kiefer Sutherland). In fact, the only time Otsuka didn't play Snake in the series was Big Boss' appearance in Metal Gear Solid 4, where he was fittingly played by Chikao Otsuka – the actor's father.

Otsuka previously said that he was not interested in returning to the series if Kojima wasn't somehow involved, but appears to have changed his mind. Speaking to Bunshun (translated via TheGamer), Otsuka admitted he made that comment due to a "sense of pride" for having worked with Kojima, but he thinks Konami should make a new Metal Gear game

"There are Metal Gear fans all over the world, and they have been waiting patiently for it. So, for their sake, let’s make one more Metal Gear," Otsuka says, noting that since Kojima is "making his own games with Death Stranding, I think, 'Why not? It’s okay to do it.' That’s how I feel."

Otsuka would continue to collaborate with Kojima, providing the Japanese-dubbed voice for Die-Hardman, but when asked if he'd spoken to the director about collaborating again, Otsuka reportedly laughed, saying, "I'll leave that to your imagination." Now that Kojima is working on Physint, his own Metal Gear spiritual successor, perhaps it could be a full-circle moment for the duo, although I don't know that the 66-year-old's voice coming out of 36-year-old Bill Skarsgård's character's mouth would be the most fitting.

Hideo Kojima's Physint isn't costing Xbox $400 million after all, with new reports suggesting the Metal Gear successor's actual budget is "significantly less"

Rockstar Games might have gained a reputation for making realistic games, but the devs behind GTA 6 sometimes have to "forego realism" for the sake of the player experience, says Rob Nelson, co-studio head of Rockstar North.

In a new interview with Love magazine, Nelson discusses GTA 6's balance between realism and immersion, noting that Rockstar's goal is the latter and that realism doesn't always help achieve it.

"Sometimes you need things to feel realistic to help with that sense of immersion, and conversely, sometimes you need to forego realism in favor of what will be most convenient for the player – realism can help greatly with immersion, but too much can feel tedious, so we try to find the right balance," he explains.

"Sometimes drawing an amusing or poignant parallel to some aspect of the real world is helpful in supporting the experience, and sometimes it's better to ignore or omit certain aspects of reality because they just don't make sense with the experience we are trying to create," he continues. "Everything we do is done to support the sense of being immersed in a world, connecting to its characters and the narrative we are weaving through it."

The irony of this statement is that GTA 6 is introducing a refueling system that's already proving controversial since – you guessed it – fans are worried it'll feel tedious. Nelson previously suggested that the refueling quick-time event is so quick that "you can't complain," but even so, he noted that "we'll see what people say."

After all, Rockstar already removed a mechanic from GTA 6 that would have seen you buying groceries and restocking Jason and Lucia's fridge, but "because this would have complicated the mechanics, we had to simplify it," Nelson explained at the time. He then reiterated: "We are always trying to find the right balance between realism and ease of play."

GTA 6 has "detailed decapitation" and cocaine can be "snorted directly" from your hand, says UK ratings board.

There are some well-worn tropes in RPGs. The protagonist is often some form of destined saviour, on a quest to defeat a cartoonishly evil villain, with a selection of side-characters along the way. Warhorse Studios actively rejects all of that when it comes to Kingdom Come: Deliverance, because in the studio's mind, they sell the genre short.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Martin Klíma, co-founder of Warhorse Studios and executive producer on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and its predecessor, provides his thoughts. "I was really and I still am bored and tired of all the RPGs when you are this chosen one, when you have this grand task of saving the universe," he says.

"The games that are these really straightforward power fantasies," he continues. "It's not that I think it's somehow wrong in principle. There is nothing bad about a good power fantasy. It's just, it's so repetitive."

You don't need to look far to see his point. Final Fantasy 7, Oblivion, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 all exude these principles; the weight of the world is on your shoulders, in an epic story of light versus dark.

Klíma notes he plays "a lot of RPGs," and as someone who does the same, I occasionally need to step away and play something else to get a break from the stereotypes. He had a penny-drop moment playing Progress Quest, a self-playing satire of EverQuest and similar fantasy MMORPGs. "It's really a distillation of what the common RPG is," he says. "So I found that there must be many, many people who are really tired of this formula and who want something new and different."

To him, a fundamental issue is in who these releases tend to target. "The games that were, and sort of are, being made are still the games for teenagers," he believes. "If you are 16, 17, you love playing these power fantasy games because it's something that you need. But the audience is much older today.

He's aware, too, that Sandfall's JRPG-inspired epic from last year will jump to many people's minds here. "Everybody's going to think that I am hating on Expedition 33 right now, but that's definitely not the case," he states.

But he namedrops some of the Ubisoft stable instead: Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs and Far Dogs. Not strictly role-playing games, but Assassin's Creed and Far Cry in particular do have cookie-cutter elements. "Once you play the same game for the 10th time, it sort of becomes stale," he muses.

Clair Obscur's success speaks for itself. I've no doubt there are many who are also a little jaded, but I'd say there are many more who just want inventive, well-made games. The historical realism of the Kingdom Come series provides a certain kind of escapism the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy isn't going for, and we're all the better for that choice.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's Hans actor has finally opened his medieval tavern-inspired bar in Prague.

The Witcher 3 Remastered dropped early last week, gracing fans of Geralt's legendary 2015 adventure with a revamped RPG – one that's proven so popular, in fact, that it's boosted CD Projekt Red's playerbase like never before on Steam.

It's been one heck of a wild weekend for The Witcher 3, seeing as it managed to hit a new all-time player count peak on Steam… 11 years or so after its initial launch. This comes thanks to the recent remaster, of course, but it's mind-boggling nonetheless.

You'll find the data over on SteamDB, which shows that the game hit its record of 137,724 players just 18 hours ago. It surpassed 120,000 concurrent players last week within hours of the remaster's launch, but clearly, even more players have jumped back into Geralt's adventure in the days since.

Prior to last week, the RPG's previous record on Steam came back in January of 2020, after The Witcher Netflix series debuted, starring the ever-charming Henry Cavill as protagonist Geralt. And that peak? Well, it was just 103,329, which now sort of feels like small potatoes – and the big jump has caught CD Projekt Red's eyes, too.

Paweł Sasko, who is currently on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel as associate game director, is thrilled, for one.

In a post over on Twitter, he writes, "There is plenty of you on the path this weekend, my dears witchers. Much love and gratitude for playing our games." Attached is a screenshot of the Steam player count peak, highlighting that very nifty new record of 137,724 white-haired Witchers playing the remaster on PC.

It's also a well-deserved figure if you ask me, all things considered. The Witcher 3 Remastered is one heck of a revamp.

The new free upgrade boasts everything from massive visual overhauls to "improved combat" and much, much more. It's also not just performing well on Steam or PC.

It's currently the top-scoring game of 2026 on Metacritic, narrowly beating out the original RPG from CD Projekt Red, too. The developers are set on tweaking it for the better, too, promising more updates to come as players report any issues they're having.

Looking for other new games to wishlist? Browse through our roundup of all of the upcoming CD Projekt Red games for some great titles to anticipate.

Rockstar co-founder and former lead writer Dan Houser thinks, in some ways, there's "no greater compliment" than being compared to his best Grand Theft Auto games. At the same time, he hopes his new projects at Absurd Ventures can hold up on their own.

After leaving the famed open-world developer in 2020, Dan Houser opened his own studio called Absurd Ventures that's now working on a number of multimedia projects, alongside a couple of games - at least one of which is another open-world romp. But the shadow of GTA still follows him.

"In terms of will I always be compared to it? I don’t know," Houser says in an interview with Variety. "I mean, hopefully, on some level there could be no greater compliment. On another level, I hope some of the stuff we make is going to be successful in its own right. It's no problem to have made good things, but of course, if you make good things, if the new stuff's not as impactful, that's going to be disappointing in some ways. But it's still a privilege to make anything, otherwise you're just always drowning in your own previous creative work."

Despite the comparisons, Houser thinks his job is to "make things I'm proud of" rather than making things that are successful, which is probably the healthier way of thinking about a post-GTA career.

Still, working on maybe the biggest video game franchise of all wasn't a stress-free experience, either. "Certainly, there was a lot of pressure making any GTA game when I was on them," he explains. But he somewhat managed that pressure by developing games with "as much integrity as I can muster" and ultimately making something he can be proud of. "And does it feel fresh, new? And if that's the case, let the results fall where they may. And certainly, even with games at Rockstar that were not successful, I was proud of them if we'd done what I thought was a good job. And so that's going to be the same here. We can't sit there going, 'If it's not the biggest thing ever, I'm a failure.' Because then you've got to process either, I'm a failure, I'm a success — but it feels just the same. So the work is the creative work, not what the market thinks of it."

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser is avoiding GTA 6 so it doesn't "distract or disrupt" his new games, including another open-world comedy

PlatinumGames boss Atsushi Inaba says the famed action studio wants to make more Bayonetta projects in the future, despite the fact that many of the series' lead developers have moved on.

Bayonetta was an iconic release in the genre during the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation, and the monster-spanking witch only solidified her place among the action greats with two direct sequels and a spin-off prequel exclusively on Nintendo consoles - not to mention her many appearances in other games, from Super Smash Bros Ultimate to Stellar Blade.

2023's Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon might not be where things end, however. Speaking to Famitsu, Inaba suggests there's still a long future for Bayonetta. (Good spot, VGC.)

Asked about further games in the series, Inaba says he "can't really answer that right now," but don't worry. "We have a strong desire to further develop the character of Bayonetta and expand her world. Please look forward to seeing what form that takes in the future."

Notably, legendary game director and series co-creator Hideki Kamiya left the company in 2023 and opened his own development studio to work on Okami 2, a sequel to the cult classic Capcom adventure. He cited disagreements with the studio's direction as the reason for his departure.

As VGC notes, Kamiya is far from the only high-profile dev to have left Platinum in recent years. Abebe Tinari (Bayonetta Origins), Yusuke Miyata (Bayonetta 3), Takahisa Taura (Astral Chain), and Kenji Saito (Metal Gear Rising) are among some of the other big names no longer at the studio.

Mass Effect star Jennifer Hale would "love to play Bayonetta again," despite being "thrown under the bus" during controversy around the third game's casting

PlayStation's former boss Shawn Layden is sceptical about people buying into expensive next-gen PS6 and Xbox Project Helix consoles if their technical improvements are too minor.

As current generation PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles keep getting more expensive, many analysts expect that the next-generation machines could potentially cost around $1,000. That's not a price tag Layden thinks will move many units, however.

"I do think that we are at a point where if all we're going to do is, I don't know, increase ray tracing and jump the teraflops, I don't know if that message resonates to the consumer to reach into their pocket and pull out $1,000," he says in an interview with The Expansion Pass podcast. "Has technology reached some kind of plateau, let's say, where just 'more faster, more colorful' is itself not a goal any longer or not a differentiator?"

The ex-Sony executive then likened the jump from the PS1 to the PS2 to the transition from VHS tapes to DVDs. "Once you saw a DVD you could never watch a VHS tape again," he says, before noting that console generations these days don't provide as noticeable a difference as they once did.

"And then the plateau begins to hit and the curve isn't as great. And if people are being asked to even kick up more money for that improved experience, if the improvement is really esoteric… you might want to rethink [purchasing]," he adds.

Layden also gave his thoughts on subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, arguing that it's much harder for developers to turn a profit when launching games into the service on day one.

Sony is considering pushing the PS6 to 2028 or 2029, "some analysts believe," according to Embracer Group

Rockstar Games co-founder and former lead writer on many a Grand Theft Auto game, Dan Houser is trying his best to avoid GTA 6 so it doesn't distract him from his own projects, including another open-world comedy in development at his new studio Absurd Ventures.

"I haven't seen it yet," Houser says of the biggest game of the year, in an interview with Variety. "I will try and avoid it because I always try and avoid stuff that's going to distract or disrupt me creatively. And given that I spend a large amount of time trying to make open-world games, and the rest of my conscious time trying to figure out innovative ways to market them, I don't need to see what other people are [doing]. I'm always trying to think about new ways of doing it, not sit there in some kind of comparison of what I would have done differently."

Houser's not singling out GTA, to be clear - he apparently doesn't play many open-world games at all these days, but I imagine seeing GTA 6 would be particularly distracting, considering how deeply he was involved in almost every single game in franchise's history.

His new company, Absurd Ventures, has multiple multi-media projects in the works. At least two of them are games. "One is an open-world comedy which is trying to really lean into comedy and character memory, and that we'll have more information on in the next few months," Houser says. The other is more of a "dystopian sci-fi about a video game development gone very wrong, and about a rogue AI that discovered sentience," he adds. "But unfortunately, it was made by two people that didn't like each other, so it doesn't like itself."

"It's a privilege to be tied to stuff that was really successful and to have worked in great teams with great people and do innovative new things," Houser goes on. "All we're trying to do now is do a version of that for this period, and try and do it in a new way and see if there's anything interesting we can say with new IP."

Earlier this year, Absurd Ventures revealed some of the cast list for its AAA "story-driven" open-world project, Absurdaverse, featuring stars from 30 Rock and Billions.

The power of GTA 6 marketing turns NBA goliath Miami Heat into the Vice City Heat for one game, involving an arena makeover, new kits, and, naturally, merch

Luke Daley took his role as everyone's favorite royal so seriously, the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 actor behind Hans Capon just opened a new medieval-inspired bar called The Nobleman. You'll need to take a trip to the Czech capital of Prague if you want to experience your video game power fantasies (playing dice and getting drunk in a tavern) in real life, however.

Months after announcing plans to open The Nobleman - a bar inspired by the types of businesses real noblemen would gather and drink in - Daley has done it! The actor's bar opened its doors to the public in Prague on October 1, and he's been sharing pictures of the calmly-lit, old-timey business over the past few days. Check some out below.

One Kingdom Come fan over on Reddit shared that The Nobleman actually attracted quite the crowd on opening day, too: "Queue is not long but [the] wait is long. I heard it was 2 hours." Developer Warhorse Studios is itself a Prague-based game maker, so it's perhaps unsurprising to hear many Kingdom Come heads also live nearby.

"Ever since I can remember, I've always wanted to run a pub, a restaurant, a cafe, something. Something that was bricks and mortar, something that felt real," Dale explained a few months ago. "Because so much of what I've done in my life has been acting, filmmaking, and more recently, streaming, and these things, however amazing they've been, there's an element of which it doesn't feel real to me, and I've always wanted a business that was mine that I could run and I could come to and I could be a part of a community and engender a great feeling in a community."

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead says Nvidia DLSS 5 backlash is "really funny," and that "most talented people I know" use AI

Naoki Hamaguchi had one "non-negotiable premise" when he began remaking Final Fantasy 7 as a three-part trilogy: each chapter had to feel like it's own complete, individual experience, despite the fact they were all essentially one third of a larger story.

The Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director said as much in an interview with Edge magazine's 429 issue. "Even as a multi-part series, providing a complete experience in each individual game was a non-negotiable premise from the very beginning," Hamaguchi explains. "The biggest thing to avoid in a multi-part series is having the creators think 'there's more to come, so it's fine to stop here for now'."

As such, each part ends during one of the original game's most climatic scenes. 2020's Final Fantasy 7 Remake finished with Cloud and his ragtag party escaping the city of Midgar, right before heading into a much larger, more colorful world. And 2024's Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth closes right after one of gaming's most famous and tragic scenes ever, leading quite dramatically into the finale.

But the developers took a few big liberties, too. In Rebirth, long-time fans might have noticed that a couple locations and towns from the original game were entirely absent, and there's a very good reason for that - Rebirth was already far too big for many players.

"When we looked at the overall plot and gameplay experience of Rebirth, we determined that depicting those elements [Rocket Town and Wutai] at the same time would have made the game too dense with information, disrupting the story's pacing and the focus of the second game," Hamaguchi says.

The Remake trilogy lead also delved a bit into Cloud's character arc in the upcoming third and final chapter. "In the footage we unveiled at SGF, people noted that the way Cloud speaks had become gentler than before. While I'd prefer not to go into detail, I can say that players will experience a side of Cloud that hasn't been seen in previous titles," he adds. "I hope players will pay attention not only to how [Cloud] confronts [the crisis in Revelations' story], but also to his relationships with his companions and the answer he ultimately arrives at as an individual."

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation lead says he pushed Square Enix for a physical version of the JRPG, but physical media will eventually be "essentially disc-less"

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, the third and final entry in Square Enix's remake trilogy, will be available on disc when it launches on April 8, but the physical version comes with a massive caveat: unlike the two-disc Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Revelation will be a single disc and will only contain the opening parts of the game. You'll have to be connected to the internet to download and play the rest of the game. Naturally, this raises questions about the nature of physical media, entitlements, and whether the disc version of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation can fundamentally be considered physical media. And yet, director Naoki Hamaguchi wants you to know he really stuck his neck out to get the game on disc at all.

Talking to Radio Times, Hamaguchi says he has fond memories of collecting physical games as a kid and will still buy discs when he's "particularly attached to a title," but he ultimately sees "a world in the not-too-distant future where physical media is essentially disc-less," adding that "You would have a copy of the code on a piece of paper inside the physical box or something like that."

That sort of thing already exists in things like Switch 2 game-key cards and some special editions, but it sounds like Hamaguchi thinks that'll be how all physical games work in the near future, which is kind of sad. Regardless, the veteran game developer says he "really like[s] and appreciate[s] physical media," and acknowledges the 'no disc, no purchase' movement that's happening on social media.

"And for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, we've been able to preserve a physical edition. You can't play the entire game on that disc, but it's got the opening – a sort of key disc – and then after that, it will ask you to download the rest."

Hamaguchi is keenly aware that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's physical version hasn't exactly been a huge hit with fans, but he says that, despite his trying, the decision is largely out of his hands.

"I've got people saying to me on social media, 'Give us a full disc version!' And so, from an overall perspective, let me first say that as the director, it's my responsibility to look after the content of the game to make sure it's fun, really exciting.

"The product line-up, the SKUs (stock keeping units), how it's going on sale; that is the responsibility of the publishing team. So, my authority there is somewhat limited," says Hamaguchi.

Of course, this whole conversation is happening with a big contextual backdrop that is PlayStation's decision to stop producing physical games in 2028. Developers and publishers are also gradually moving toward digital-only games despite fervent opposition from physical media collectors and even game preservationists, but Hamaguchi says he "did [his] best" convincing Square Enix to give Final Fantasy 7 Revelation a physical release.

"In this day and age, as we've been talking about, there's a lot of pressure for disc-less editions, digital editions, and I used my position to put forth an argument for the physical version as much as possible.

"And all of the negotiations, both internally and with first parties, have led us to where we are now, and of course, I completely understand there are those out there who may not really agree with that direction or approve of that direction."

It is, as they say, what it is.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says "it wasn't easy" not turning "a masterpiece like FF7 into something that felt like my own personal fan project"

Warlock has quickly become one of the most exciting new games on the horizon, and it's not just because we're all thirsty for more Dungeons & Dragons games after exhausting Baldur's Gate 3. The open-world action-adventure promises an extensive spell system that'll let you interact with the objects and enemies in some wild ways. Even the devs were initially worried that the game's spells were too OP, but as it turns out, that was the perfect starting point.

"There's this tendency on the dev team to go, 'That's too powerful,'" Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says in Edge Magazine issue #429. "At some point we had to say, 'No. Make it OP first, make it fun, and then we'll balance it.'"

You can, for example, use Black Tentacles to tie an ogre's weapon to the ground, leaving it helpless as you start wailing on the monster. It's a powerful option in the toolbox, yes, but there are considerations for balance. Use Black Tentacles on the ogre itself, and the creature will break free much more quickly.

You don't purely cast your spells from a list. Instead, different button combinations will bring out the spells you want. "Once you get the hang of it, you're able to chain melee attacks, spell, spell, spell, and think on the fly," Guay explains. "We always wanted that realtime expression of magic instead of something that feels a bit slower."

Described like this, the spell system reminds me a bit of Magicka, an early title from eventual Helldivers developer Arrowhead Game Studios. There, you combine all sorts of different elemental abilities into spells with various effects. We don't yet have a great sense of how Warlock's system will work, but described in these terms it seems to have a similar spirit.

"The player will learn to be a warlock at the same time as the character,” Guay says, explaining that new spells will be unlocked over the course of the game. "You'll gain more spells pretty fast on your journey, but you need that onboarding because we’re doing things differently on the controller than some other games."

Warlock escapes Baldur's Gate 3's long shadow with a very different take on D&D that I'm happy to roll my dice on.

There's a massive laundry list of changes in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, but you know what the singular best one is? They fixed those accursed trees Roach gets stuck on when you're on horseback.

The Witcher 3 has long been recognized as both a pivotal RPG and open-world game, but it's undeniable there's a host of little frustrations that have always been present in the fantasy epic. Chief among those, for me, was the way Roach would always get stuck or snagged by trees as you rode by them – and while that may seem like an innocuous change on paper, that no longer happening is a genuine major frustration taken off the board.

More largely, it's indicative of what The Witcher 3 Remastered is on a larger scale. No one really asked for this update, or even expected it, but it's hard to deny that it improves The Witcher 3 pretty much across the board. It's made me think about how quickly we move on from video games in general, and how I wish we'd have more chances to return to games of the past, not just with visual remasters or remakes – but an integral look at how the core systems and experience can be refined or improved.

An old friend

When The Witcher 3 released, I was still in college, living in a tiny house that was, somehow, even smaller than a two-bedroom apartment. I remember being locked in my closet of a bedroom for 300 hours, entranced by The Witcher 3 and the world it effortlessly weaves. As someone, at that time, without friends, overworked, and destitutely poor, there was something about Geralt's experience that deeply resonated with me. A character locked into a path he never chose, but trying to make the best of it.

While I don't want to focus too much on the original experience of The Witcher 3, I can say that returning to the game again years later has only grown my appreciation of it. The Witcher 3's writing felt like a step above in 2015, but even over a decade later, there are very few games that can match it. The complexity of its morality and choices, the way those side quests effortlessly weave into the overarching narrative, and Geralt's fascinating growth as a father all still have real emotional heft. Of course, none of that is lost with this remaster, and it also includes The Witcher 3's two expansions. Two exceptional tales that reflect Geralt in new ways, digging into regret and redemption in Hearts of Stone, and longing for a peaceful life in Blood and Wine.

The remaster doesn't make The Witcher 3 feel like a new game; it's ostensibly the same experience, shining highs, warts, and all. That's by and large a good thing, as the messy nature of The Witcher 3 is ultimately what makes it so intoxicating – a grand journey and riveting world that feels living, breathing. But so many of those warts have now been papered over and made less egregious, if not nonexistent now. It's a bit like your friend dying their hair and getting a new haircut – you never imagined them with that hairdo, but now that you see it, it's really working.

This remaster feels very much in line with the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update CD Projekt Red released for its sci-fi RPG, and I'm honestly a bit blown away by the sheer amount of changes across the board here, and how thoughtful many of them feel.

The most obvious alteration in this remaster is a complete graphical overhaul, with lighting in particular being given the most attention. For the most part, the visual upgrade makes The Witcher 3 even more stunning, with environments especially given an extra pop. The Italian Riviera-inspired fields of Tuissant shimmer in the sunlight, and you can almost feel the thick humidity of Velen's swamps. Hair physics have also been touched up, and character animations look even smoother.

While I largely think the visuals lean into The Witcher 3's distinct blend of realism and stylization even more, there is the occasional character that looks just a bit wonky in the upgraded visuals. Equally, this visual upgrade seemingly comes with a few new performance issues. Playing on PC I've occasionally run into slowdowns in some of the busier scenes or combat encounters. But it should be noted that CD Projekt Red has already committed to performance improvements.

While you likely wouldn't notice unless you were deliberately looking for it, there's a whole wealth of new animations spread across combat as well. Geralt has new visual effects for casting Signs, new combat finishers, and idle animations. These changes are subtle, obviously, but add a greater sense of variety, especially when you combine them with the sweeping changes made to gameplay systems.

The Witcher 3 Remastered's visual upgrade is nice, but where the majority of changes lie for this version of the game is in gameplay changes. Again, I must state here how utterly thankful I am to be rid of that godforsaken tree problem.

But the change I legitimately enjoy the most is the overhauled skill system, which feels much smarter, streamlined, and encourages experimentation. The original game's skill system was, in short, a mess. Even just the layout of the skill system has been entirely changed, resembling more of a proper skill tree now rather than just a slapdash grid of things to choose from. This visually makes a whole lot more sense, providing a nice new sense of progression. But under the hood, there have also been changes to refine bonus values for skills, synergies between certain skills, and more.

It's a bit hard to drill down into exactly how this changes things, but after a few dozen hours, I can say I absolutely found The Witcher 3's progression more satisfying with this system. It feels drastically easier to make "builds" now, and really fine-tune what kind of Witcher you want to play as, whether that's a sword-slinging expert or a crafty master of bombs and potions.

To complement these changes, combat has a new "Modern" camera that tracks closer to Geralt to make the action pop, while enemy behavior has also been very slightly tweaked. These changes aren't enough to make The Witcher 3's combat one of the all-time greats, but it does go a decent way to making battles feel more dynamic and challenging. I particularly like the new camera design, as it feels like even that slight shift in perspective makes battles feel more like crunchy knock-down brawls, rather than tactical RPG affairs – a shift that fits the game's tone better.

My other favorite change is an overhauled menu, which is much simpler and easier to navigate. In particular, the codex doesn't feel nearly as cumbersome, to the point that I actually enjoy reading some of those character bios and books without having to dig through a metaphorical pile.

The way you move through The Witcher 3's world and engage with it has also been nicely touched up and made less aggravating: climbing doesn't feel as cumbersome, some quest tracking is easier, Witcher senses feel clearer to use, it's easier to run away from combat, and the list goes on.

Again, a lot of these are changes that you simply wouldn't notice if you weren't looking, but as someone who's put a good 600 hours into The Witcher 3 over the last decade, the difference is palpable. This remaster simply looks and feels better to play in so many ways, not changing the overall experience, but enhancing it – a game that already got a "next-gen update" last year.

While remasters or remakes certainly aren't anything new, it's extremely rare to see a studio take a brush to a past game to truly touch it up, really dig down to the roots and say, "What can we do to make this even better – take out some of those frustrations that couldn't be erased initially?" These video games that take thousands of man-hours, years of people's lives poured into them, deserve that chance in so many ways. It's just a shame more don't get it.

But in The Witcher 3's case, the sprawling RPG has simply never been better.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered was reviewed on PC with a code provided by the publisher.

Tracking down your own gaming prey while you wait for The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past expansion and The Witcher 4? Our games like The Witcher 3 recommendations can point you on the right path, while our best open world games and best RPGs rankings have even more in store.

The Arc Raiders hype may have died down ever-so-slightly since its monumental launch almost a year ago, but it's still reaching tens of thousands of concurrent players on Steam every day, so developer Embark must be doing something right. The studio says its "biggest update since launch," titled Frozen Trail, is launching October 8, and it's celebrating that release with a new free trial running for four days between then and October 12.

On the official Arc Raiders website, Embark says the free trial will be available to all players on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox, granting "access to the full ARC Raiders game." That'll give you the chance to see what all the hullabaloo is about in the game's core PvPvE extraction mode, and you'll get to check out Frozen Trail right alongside regular players at launch.

The big highlight of the Frozen Trail update is the new Pendola Pass map, which drops raiders into a snowy, mountainous region of Italy overseen by the shadow of a fallen "Emperor" Arc Robot. The frozen Italian village features an abandoned supermarket and town square with a focus on verticality. Map conditions include a "Flash Freeze" sequence that forces players to seek shelter unexpectedly. Embark says "new players will be able to access Pendola Pass immediately if teamed up with other players who have already unlocked the new map."

The update also includes four new enemies; the Frigate, Bully, Skulker, and Hydra; as well as the new "Stiletto" battle rifle and "Bantam" revolver; the grappling hook, Tether Launcher, and Yank Grenade; and two new instruments, the banjo and harmonica.

That's not all. Frozen Trail also includes a new weapons modification system, a transmog feature for weapons, customizable player bases, skill tree additions, a new handheld camera option, new quests, new trials, and of course, a free and premium battle pass to tie everything together.

Embark promises to get stricter with Arc Raiders bans as cheaters continue to plague the extraction shooter: "No warnings, no second chances"

GTA 6 has been given a PEGI 18 rating in the UK and Europe, unsurprisingly, but the very detailed description of the game's contents suggests an even more violent, sexually explicit game than you might expect from the notoriously violent, sexually explicit series.

Rockstar's upcoming behemoth has already been rated by the ESRB and other rating systems, but the PEGI rating specifically includes some incredibly juicy new details about the game. In providing a reason for the 18+ rating, the board says GTA 6 features "features strong graphic violence, strong sexual themes and use of illegal drugs." No surprise whatsoever. Sex, drugs, and violence are GTA's whole thing, its central themes, its promise to players. But if I were playing GTA 6 and suddenly someone's head got chopped off in graphic detail, I have to say I'd be a little surprised. But apparently, that's something that can happen in the game. "Violence is bloody with a high degree of realism, with certain weapons being able to cause greater damage such as detailed decapitation and dismemberment," reads the PEGI rating's description.

"Drug use is frequent and prominent with the player being able to partake in drug use with others and to use illegal drugs directly from their inventory," it says, adding, "Most notably, cocaine can be carried around by the player and snorted directly from their hand at any time." Again, I'm not surprised at all that drugs are featured prominently in GTA 6, but I wasn't expecting the player character to huff lines right from their hands. This game sounds wild.

"There are also strong sexual themes," reads the rating. ZzzZZZzzZZZzz. Strong sexual themes? That's not the GTA I know. But wait, the game also features "scenes of intercourse and occasional scenes of sexual fetishes," and "In various night clubs the player can also pay for private dances, during which, the game allows the player to move their hands onto the dancers' breasts and buttocks."

All joking aside, GTA 6 sounds like a wildly fun time based on this age rating description. Rockstar has long positioned its next game to be a sweeping evolution of the franchise, its biggest, most extravagant release ever, and the biggest video game release of all time by a variety of metrics. At first I was shocked by the level of detail presented by the age rating, but thinking more on it, these extremely mature features feel like a natural progression for a series that's always been defined by excess. November 19 is going to be one hell of a day.

Here's everything new we learned about GTA 6 this week after Rockstar revealed new details on the animals, activities, and weather in its sprawling open-world sandbox

Star Wars: Galactic Racer's Metacritic score is one of the highest ever for a Star Wars game, beating out the Cal Kestis-led Jedi games and every Battlefront.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer reviews are in, and it turns out the critics yearn for Glup Shitto's and podracing-adjacent motorsports in the Star Wars realm. Over on Metacritic, the game has nabbed a score of 88 after 50 reviews, which places it as the fifth-best rated Star Wars game – alongside Star Wars-themed tables for Pinball FX and ZEN Pinball, which share the score.

It's behind Knights of the Old Republic, Dark Forces 2, Rogue Squadron 2, and Jedi Outcast. This score also gives it a higher rating than every Star Wars film aside from the original too, for what it's worth.

In GamesRadar+'s Star Wars: Galactic Racer review, guides editor Will Sawyer awarded the game four stars out of five, saying, "Star Wars: Galactic Racer brings the carnage-filled arcade racing of the 2000s into the modern day, with slick and exhilarating high-speed racing that mixes perfectly with a run-based format and roguelike elements."

Elsewhere the game has garnered high praise with full marks from the likes of Eurogamer, Mirror Gaming, Giant Bomb, and Radio Times all giving the game five stars, while the rest of the reviews are considered "Positive" with two 7/10 scores and a 68/100, which is still pretty good going.

If anything, in an era where Star Wars in film has been dropping the ball for a while now, and some of the TV series have been real stinkers (and the good ones have been canceled), Zero Company and now Galactic Racer have at least got your back if you want something good from the franchise. Of course, if the game had a way to romance Ben Quadinaros and featured some steamy scenes with the podracing legend, I reckon we'd have seen the highest-rated game in history.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a "sports movie" story set after Return of the Jedi because it mirrors the real-life post-WW2 motorsports boom.

The first free DLC for 007 First Light has added New Game Plus options, meaning that players can go back into James Bond's adventure with elements that they may not have unlocked the first time around. However, what they can bring with them may be a little underwhelming: don't expect to be doing the tutorial with the Missile Pen, or driving the spy car before Q's finished building it. If you're considering playing NG+ in 007 First light, here's how it works and what you'll actually get.

How to play 007 First Light NG+

To play New Game Plus in 007 First Light, simply reload any mission from the "Select Chapter" menu, after having completed the game. When the mission loads, you'll now be replaying it in the 007 First Light Outfit that you equipped from the "Customisation" option in the main menu, instead of the standard one you're normally wearing, as shown above.

Yes, that's the other thing to mention: The only thing that carries into New Game Plus is your outfit choice, not any other equipment or abilities. NG+ is simply a way to replay missions in whatever clothing you want, with no option (currently) to bring 007 First Light gadgets and weapons from other parts of the game in with you. It's possible that the functionality of NG+ in 007 First Light will be expanded on in the future, but right now it's simply giving you the power to choose your wardrobe.

It's worth mentioning that the update and DLC also provides a new higher difficulty setting option called "00", so while players don't have a huge leeway to customize their second playthrough, they are being given a greater challenge if they want it, not to mention expansions to the 007 First Light Tacsim and other features besides.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Welcome back to GTA 6 O'Clock! This week, Daniel Dawkins and James Jarvis examine the biggest Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay details. In case you somehow missed it, GTA 6 landed on the cover of Game Informer magazine – a moment Rockstar used to reveal new information surrounding the complexity of this open-world sandbox. There was also fresh detail on some of the activities you'll be able to participate in, and some of the distractions you'll be able to hunt down too.

DD and JJ also explore the value of the GTA 6 Collector's Edition boxset and consider the true scale of this long-awaited sequel. There's plenty more covered in this week's episode of GTA 6 O'Clock, so you'll want to click the play button above to jump right into the conversation. You can also head over to our YouTube channel to watch the latest episode there, or download an audio-only version via Spotify so that you can get the latest GTA 6 news while you're on the move.

And while you're here, you can also sign up to the official GTA 6 O'Clock Newsletter to get weekly insights delivered right to your inbox, and vote in our latest GTA 6 poll to make your voice heard on the game ahead of its release on November 19, 2026, for PS5 and Xbox Series X.

This week's GTA 6 quiz

Could any other video game publisher besides Rockstar get away with releasing a $400 collector's edition that doesn't even include a copy of the game? The answer to that question is, sadly, yes – probably they could in this day and age. Regardless, that's not the question we're here to ask you this week! Come one, let's hear it:

What to read next?

• Heartworm is perfect if you want a throwback to PS1 horror like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Clock Tower, but with a modern indie sensibility

Here's the 60-second pitch for why you should play Heartworm this weekend: Haunted by the past, Sam sets out to contact the dead with only a camera at her side. An abandoned house leads her on a path through surreal, liminal spaces haunted by memory, which her camera flash can dispel as she puzzles her way to the heart of a strange cathedral. Retro-style survival horror feels slick to control here with fresh twists like the camera adding to the action, while feeling a love letter to the genre.

Why play it today?

• Heartworm is now out on consoles, bringing its slick take on classic survival horror action to players outside of PC, and it's been a long time coming

Heartworm has finally jumped off the PC to come to all platforms, and publisher DreadXP mean it – coming to PS5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch 2, but also the older generation as well. A love letter to PS1-era survival horror, plenty of options allow you to decide how hardcore you want that to be, including the choice to go with tank controls or to turn them off.

With a tremendous horror atmosphere, early hours of the game are tense as you explore with just a camera at your side, able to hit the flash to temporarily light some otherwise pitch black spaces. From there, the game opens up across distinct and surreal environments, each area changing up the style of play slightly, and feeling like they nod towards different survival horror games of the past.

There's a Silent Hill 4: The Room vibe to how Sam navigates the strange, liminal realm she's ended up in to explore these vastly different spaces, from tight hallways in suburban houses to a forest full of its own creeping terrors. Rather than being completely lost in recreating classic survival horror, the moments where Heartworm does its own thing shine, with its TV-static unifying aesthetic being striking, as well as the constant use of your camera.

Time commitment:

Heartworm takes about about 4-6 hours to beat depending on how anxious you get about needing to save your game, how long puzzles stump you, and whether you grab every collectible. Each area is clearly delineated as well, meaning there's easy points to take a break.

Play Heartworm if you love:

Skip Heartworm if you want:

One thing to know:

There are a handful moments in Heartworm that can be a bit too referential, with the final act's breadth of environments sometimes nodding quite directly to survival horror classics in a way that can pull me out. Even so, they're not overbearing, and you're not missing anything if they pass you by, either.

A moment you'll remember:

Like the best horror, Heartworm has a fantastic opening as you explore an abandoned house and the tension rises for just when you'll be thrown into danger for the first time. Thanks to the camera flash mechanic allowing brief bursts of light, Heartworm can make the most of some truly dark locations. These become less prominent later, but it makes for a really memorable beginning.

The final verdict:

In my Heartworm horror spotlight when it launched on PC last year I said that "if, like me, you love retro survival horror from the '90s and '00s, you owe it to yourself to make an evening out of this one" and I stand by that. But, I'll also accept if you need to make it a few evenings rather than binge this snappy adventure in one go. In the time since launch, my fondness for this blend of modern ideas with retro concepts has only grown, and I look forward to seeing more from developer Vincent Adinolfi in the future.

So, where can you play it?

Heartworm has just launched across all major platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch 2, and Nintendo Switch, joining its original PC release. Across them all it's about $15 making this well worth picking up as a budget release.

Have your say:

Check out our best survival horror games list for more!

Nacon is launching its second officially licensed PS5 Pro controller, and it's the first ever to bring a built-in display and menu system to Sony's console ecosystem. Controllers with displays aren't exactly rare these days, as Xbox, Switch 2, and PC all have loads of gamepads with this feature, but Nacon's new Revolution 5 Unlimited is the first PS5 controller sporting a screen.

If you've been following the market for a while, you may remember the Nacon Revolution 5 Pro, Nacon's first crack at PS5 gamepad glory. That's been holding a top spot on our PS5 gamepad buyer's guide for a while now as the best for longevity thanks to its excellent build quality. Nacon has since launched a refined model of that controller for the Xbox Series X, called the Revolution X Unlimited (RXU).

The new Revolution 5 Unlimited picks up where that one left off, and I'm personally very excited because the RXU has become one of my all-time favorite gaming peripherals since it hit the shelves, so PS5 players are in for a treat.

As well as a screen and its own menu system that lets you control connections, button mapping, profiles, lighting, thumbstick sensitivity, and more, you also get a slew of pro controller features that modern rivals like the Scuf Omega and Razer Raiju V3 Pro will find it tough to trump.

The R5U sports six extra buttons (four back buttons and two extra bumpers), as well as top-drawer TMR thumbsticks which improve upon the Xbox version's Hall effect ones.

A personal favorite for me has to be the face buttons, which, despite being microswitches, have a beautifully light actuation that makes them feel super comfortable and tactile to use. The RXU has some of my favorite face buttons of any controller.

Naturally, like any officially licensed PS5 controller, it'll lack the DualSense's haptic feedback and adaptive trigger resistance - these are stipulations for controllers to secure their Sony licensing. Nacon has a clever way around this, which I'm really excited for, because in its dedicated PC mode, it will make use of its built-in vibration feedback.

For PS5 players, this might not make a massive difference, but personally, I prefer a controller with a bit more heft, and recent options without any rumble motors in their grips have left things feeling a bit too light and cheap for their price.

That's also where Nacon's excellent offering of accessories comes in. Nacon will provide a carrying case and even a charging dock - another first in the PS5 market. Again, this is now fairly standard in the Xbox and PC controller realm, but no third-party controller for PS5 has managed to break a charging stand through Sony's licensing parameters.

Also in the case, you'll find additional weights you can place in the controller's grips, different thumbstick tops, a wireless dongle, and a cleaning cloth and cable.

In an interesting turn from Nacon's previous gamepads, you can customize the R5U separately, but this time using a dedicated mobile app instead of a PC one. I asked Nacon if a PC application would be coming in the future, but the product managers didn't give me a concrete answer.

The biggest downside to the R5U is its price, which tops out at $229.99 for US shoppers but only £179.99 in the UK. That's a huge pricing disparity for both territories, making it one of the most expensive PS5 pads in the US but actually one of the more affordable ones for UK gamers. In the UK, that'll put it below the refined price of the Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded, which has held the best overall position on our buying guide for years.

I can't wait to test out what seems to be the most feature-rich PS5 controller to date.

• See all PS5 controllers at Amazon

Narrowing down your gamepad search? Here are the best TMR controllers, the best Xbox Series X controllers, and the best Switch 2 controllers.

Good news if you're a fan of the NBA or cool novelty t-shirts, because Rockstar and the Miami Heart are partnering up for the release of GTA 6. On top of lighting up the team's venue and releasing a full merch line, there'll be "special activities" on game night ahead of the blockbuster sequel's launch.

It'll all kick off on November 18, the eve of Grand Theft Auto 6 finally becoming playable worldwide. The Miami Heat, to be dubbed the Vice City Heat for this occasion, are up against the Milwaukee Bucks at home, in the Kaseya Center.

The venue itself already has Vice City branding on it, as part of an extensive marketing campaign within Miami. Now, the court will be branded in "special Vice City hardwood" for the occasion, to make sure everyone watching knows exactly what's going on.

"Special activities" will be happening inside the venue and throughout the evening, rolling into GTA 6 unlocking stateside. No details are forthcoming, but we're instructed to keep a good lookout.

This is all touted as a "never-been-done-before event," and honestly, there are few launches I can think of that would even be able to pull this off. Halo 3, and a couple of the bigger Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty games are about it.

Major sports teams and venues aren't cheap when it comes to sponsorships. This is big. If you can't get to the Kaseya Center or watch live, you can partake through the line of Vice City merchandise. You can get t-shirts, crop tops and jumpers, though I have to say, as a regular concertgoer, $55 per shirt is a bit of a rip. At least arena tours have to contend with venue cuts and all the other expenses.

Anyway, they're there if you fancy looking through them. Go Heat!

GTA 6 age rating suggests a more explicit game than GTA 5, singling out "sex scenes" in a step up from Rockstar's last installment.

Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden says Xbox's current issues have mostly been down to the publisher's inability to pick a lane and stay in it.

Whether you're an Xbox diehard or not, there's no denying that Microsoft has been pretty confusing over the last few years, with the company seemingly changing its strategy on a whim constantly – which really hasn't helped it catch up on PlayStation's massive lead. Most prominently has been the company's approach to game exclusivity since it purchased Bethesda and Activision Blizzard, where for a bit there every Xbox game was also coming to PS5, and then sometime this year it decided, 'actually, no we're doing exclusives again'… at least for some games.

Speaking to The Expansion Pass (below), Layden – the former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment America – notes, "I think Microsoft never really picked a lane. Or if they picked a lane, they didn't stay in it very long." He notes the aforementioned flip flopping between being a publisher on all platforms vs wanting to be an exclusive platform, saying, "a platform needs exclusives or the platform has no meaning," but "if you're the biggest publisher in the world, you almost have to be on every platform, because that's how the business model works. You can't be successful at both."

There's also the Xbox Game Pass issue, wherein Microsoft is inherently devaluing its big titles by offering them as part of a subscription service on day one. Layden says, "If you're going to do that, then are you expecting people are going to buy content if they can get it on a subscription service".

He notes "the math doesn't" work with trying to be everything at once with Game Pass, adding, "if you're sitting on a big bunch of Microsoft money perhaps you don't feel that tension until, you know, slowly slowly slowly and then all at once where it becomes very hard to ignore. And I think they've got themselves in a pickle, to be honest."

Layden says new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma "is doing her best to try to right the ship", adding, "I hope she does it. Though I don't know what that looks like."

PlayStation creator says games have stagnated, urges developers not to lose their "curiosity" as the industry reaches a major turning point ahead of the "next stage."

The Australian age rating for GTA 6 specifically lists "sex scenes" in its classification, suggesting it'll be more explicit than GTA 5 was.

Age ratings for GTA 6 have emerged, and naturally, it's gained the standard M for Mature in the US and a PEGI 18+ rating in the UK and Europe. And while these come with the standard expected descriptors of "blood and gore, intense violence, mature humor, nudity, strong language, strong sexual content, use of drugs and alcohol," Australia and New Zealand have used a more specific descriptor.

As users on the GTA subreddit have pointed out, the age rating for the Australian and New Zealand store pages both specify "Sex Scenes" as part of their "Restricted 18+" ratings. While sex has been a part of the series for some time – both through being able to hire sex workers in the game's open-world as well as in Trevor's introduction scene in GTA 5 featuring some GTA 4 characters – it's notable that GTA 5 only had a generic descriptor. Meanwhile, GTA: The Trilogy has "Sexual Activity Related To Incentives And Rewards" listed in Australia, while it's not even mentioned in New Zealand.

Since the story of GTA 6 revolves around a couple, it's somewhat expected that sex would be a part of the story, but with the specific descriptor, it seems like it may be a bit more explicit than we've seen from the series previously.

Given the GTA series has been subject to controversy near constantly, with the scrapped Hot Coffee minigame in GTA San Andreas being one of the most significant, we'll no doubt hear some uproar about this – with GTA 6 already a hot topic among Miami politicians. But in an era where we've commonly accepted sex scenes in TV and film, it really shouldn't be a big deal in GTA, either.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead wants GTA 6 to open the door to charging more for games.

Star Wars is full of vile scum and hideous villains worthy of punishment, but perhaps none have a face more punchable than the arch-rival of Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Kestar Bool. He's the current champion of the recently established Galactic League and is a truly detestable one at that. A whinging, arrogant rich kid with an undeniable talent for tearing up the track who really needs to be taken down a peg or two.

The moment the game's faceless protagonist, Shade, meets him was all the motivation I needed, but I didn't realise the road to challenging him would be more demanding and thrilling than I imagined. This is what I've felt has been missing from big-budget racing games of the last few years – high-octane action and real challenges to get invested in – and Star Wars: Galactic Racer delivers on both in bucketloads.

Feel, don’t think

Star Wars: Galactic Racer feels sublime to play, and that becomes apparent after just a few races in my campaign journey. Given that developer Fuse Games was founded by five former Criterion Games developers – the studio behind the likes of Burnout and several Need For Speed games – it's hardly a surprise either.

Unburdened by tyres and petrol engines, the driving model allows the three repulsorcraft types – all-rounder landspeeders, nippy speeder bikes, and fluid skim speeders – to feel extremely slick, gliding around corners in wide arcs or sharply banking in at speed with no substantial effort on the controls. Once you master advanced drifting manoeuvres, the brakes often feel optional, so Galactic Racer is more Mario Kart than Gran Turismo in that regard.

There's superb tactility to the game, particularly in its pre-race check sequence. You've got to rapidly input cheat code-like button sequences (one of the Auto-Pilot ability inputs is actually the famous Konami code) within five seconds to prime your afterburners, activate any abilities you've picked up on your current Tour, and start your engine. Each button press is accompanied by satisfying bleep-bloops and, on the PS5's DualSense controller, there's even a nice bit of resistance on the trigger, like turning a key in a car, to start your engine – and I say that as someone who usually turns off adaptive triggers at the first opportunity.

Admittedly, it's a lot to take in at first. The high-speed racing feels both awesome and terrifying as a novice racer as you go through plenty of butt-clenching moments that result in narrowly making it through a series of tight corners, unscathed if you're lucky, or going out in a dramatic fireball. Galactic Racer at least makes each crash look spectacular while you consider your errors, with engine parts and crumpled bodywork blasting across the track in slow-motion and from multiple angles.

But, the more you learn the tracks, improve your racecraft, and push the limits of your speeder, the closer you get to entering a racing flow state, feeling the Force as you fly right on the edge and use everything in your arsenal, no matter how underhanded, to beat your opponents to the finish line. Success in Galactic Racer means giving it your full focus at all times. That's not going to be to everyone's tastes for an arcade racer, but when you come out on top, or even just barely survive a race, it makes for the most satisfying and immersive racing game I've played.

Star Tours

The smooth and speedy driving model is what makes the racing exciting in moment-to-moment gameplay, but it's the roguelike-inspired risk and reward mechanics and run-based format that kept me coming back. These permeate most modes in the game, including short but intense multiplayer tours, but are most prominent in the three-act campaign.

Rather than following the usual career mode blueprint of racing through various series/cups/wristbands until you become the ultimate champion of all racing, Galactic Racer's campaign plays out across run-based tours, where you pick from branching paths to decide which race events to tackle. Every four events moves the Galactic League to another planet with its own array of circuits and hazards, and there's time for you to explore the paddock and buy upgrades.

All the while you need to avoid losing your League Token or getting Wrecked (by crashing three times) to eventually reach the tour's final race and hopefully emerge victorious, ready for the next Act checkpoint and a new tour. Otherwise, you've got to attempt the whole tour all over again. It sounds unforgiving, but it's a genre mashup that works incredibly well to the point that I'm surprised it hasn't been done in a more mainstream fashion before.

Events are all very quick, making for a brief and moreish adrenaline rush. Each type offers its own rewards with the best being locked behind the most dangerous that can easily end your tour in flames. Eliminator races offer the best rewards – high Credit payouts, two Upgrade points, and a high-quality Part that can substantially buff your speeder – but if you can't battle your way into the top three before time runs out, your League Token is lost and your tour is over instantly.

Mystery Encounters, meanwhile, avoid races altogether as Shade is approached by one or more of the many colorful characters in the Galactic League paddock. You won't know what will happen until it's too late, from being offered faulty but powerful parts by monkey-like mechanic Hibi or getting a cut of gambling profits, to getting extorted for Credits under threat of having my ride sabotaged.

My favorite of these is when top-tier 'Glup Shitto' Biddy Blas – a noisy, irritating, and childish rival racer – offers me a powerful speeder part, claiming it's part of his culture to offer such gifts. Two races later, my speeder violently explodes the moment the race starts as Blas gleefully laughs over the radio. "Biddy Blas strikes again!" Thanks, Biddy.

Potential detonations aside, these events, and the parts and upgrades they provide, mean every tour is full of interesting choices to make regarding your build and how you progress. Depending on the speeder type and Racer Style you choose at the start of your tour, you may want to spec into boosting your afterburners or ramjet or maximize your ability usage to keep your rivals in check. Galactic Racer forces you to be adaptable, but also seek out synergies as you make the most of its partially randomized rewards.

As a big fan of the ramjet, I love getting upgrades that boost its overall power and efficiency but especially love the ones that trigger effects when you push it to its redlining limit. And the blaring alarms don’t bother me when I've got the Vent and Surge abilities equipped, allowing me to instantly purge heat to keep it going almost endlessly and fly even faster. That is of course until I inevitably go too fast and end up misjudging a turn, colliding with a barrier at over 600 or 700kph.

The archives are incomplete

Star Wars: Galactic Racer's tracks are highly technical, filled with winding turns, obvious and obscure shortcuts, and dangerous hazards that must be effectively used or avoided to stay competitive. Ando Prime's freezing temperatures may keep your engines cool, but spend too long in the cold and your steering will freeze up. Risky manoeuvres are essential to success and immensely gratifying to pull off.

Much like real racetracks, each planets' various circuits are made up of sections of a wider course. While that gives the environment a singular identity, it can mean individual circuits blur together a bit. Because they share common elements, I'd struggle to tell you what makes Jakku's War Fields, Giants' Graveyard, or Debris Dunes distinct, even after playing for over 30 hours and racing on them many times. Only a handful of individual courses truly sing, such as Sentinel I's Acid Ring, a small ring-shaped track – half-banked, half-flat – around an acid lake. The simplicity essentially makes it Galactic Racer's answer to Mario Kart's Baby Park, the site of some of the most chaotic and dangerous races I've played.

Still, I know which planets I like – Jakku and Lantaana's winding circuits with plenty of elevation changes are thrilling, while Sentinel I's acid puddles and Crait's terrifyingly tight crystal tunnels can be tough to deal with. But, with only six to race on, the tours you go on don't quite live up to the Galactic League name. I'd love to have seen something closer to a Formula 1 calendar, with fewer tracks per planet but greater variety – a Monaco on Mustafar or a Silverstone on Scarif, for example.

This becomes especially noticeable in Act 3, a gauntlet that runs through all six planets in the same order every time. Not only does that mean it can get repetitive, but it also starts to go against the run-based format by elongating the otherwise snappy tours I'd been enjoying up to this point. Additionally, podracing challenges appear between each planet – which are exhilarating, but saddle the tour with a comparatively brutal level of challenge since they act as another point of failure. "This is not where the fun begins", I think as Ben Quadinaros steals my League Token.

I'm more here for the action and sense of character than the story, but, thanks to an abrupt campaign ending, I'm left wanting more from Galactic Racer's narrative. Still, even with those annoyances, I'm impressed by how the tours add genuine stakes to these blistering races.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer feels like a proud rebel when compared to the current racing game landscape. It forgoes deep simulation mechanics, vast car selections, even larger open worlds, and live-service guff in favor of frenetic racing that feels fantastic, an honest to goodness story that fits perfectly into the Star Wars canon, and some proper friction.

That all means it oozes character, expertly modernizing the arcade racing of the 2000s for 2026 and putting risk and reward at the forefront, which is what racing is all about. And as Fuse Games' debut, it's bordering on a perfect start.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer was reviewed on PS5 with a code provided by the publisher.

There's a galaxy of gaming out there. Check out our best Star Wars games or best racing games rankings if you feel force pulled towards more!

PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi reckons that games have stagnated creatively despite their graphical flourish, though that doesn't mean he's not optimistic about the state of the industry. In fact, Kutaragi reckons it's poised to advance to the "next stage."

Speaking at Japan's University of Electro-Communications, Kutaragi weighs in on the evolution of the gaming industry, where it's headed next, and why human "curiosity" remains vital.

As reported by 4Gamer – and translated by Automaton – Kutaragi doesn't consider the gaming space a mature industry, even though its value has propelled it past the likes of film, television, and music. All of that is to say, we've yet to reach our limits and there are still significant breakthroughs to be made.

Mind you, that's not to say the state of the industry is perfect. For Kutaragi, modern games have stagnated despite the growth they've undergone in scale and graphics. In fact, he believes the approach to creating content hasn't really changed from his time spearheading the original PlayStation project.

But that doesn't mean things won't get better. Kutaragi believes the industry is at a major turning point and ready to advance to the "next stage." To get there, though, we must first look back. Kutaragi says the team behind the OG PlayStation created the machine with the intent to "change the world," which tapped into the spirit of the industry at the time. One that "created the world’s most cutting-edge technology" rather than following everyone else.

It's at this point that Kutaragi urges developers and students in attendance to adopt a mindset of leading rather than following. The message especially applies to those who are younger. For Kutaragi, you set your habits in your formative years before following them into your elderly years.

"The moment you lose your curiosity and think, this is probably as good as it gets, it's all over," he says.

As someone who spends much of their working life keeping up with and reporting on gaming news, I find it evident that the Western gaming industry can't continue as it is. You don't need another reminder that companies overspent during the COVID-19 years and that AI is making everything more expensive, though what Kutaragi speaks of does link back to what we're hearing from other leading industry figures. Advancements in gaming technology aren't that interesting anymore, since people can't afford what they bring, and those who do won't notice them much anyway.

Rather, moving forward, it's making something impressive yet accessible that seems a better bet of winning out. To Kutaragi's point, some bright ideas on how to do that and fix this mess won't go amiss right now.

Fallout co-creator tells new devs terrified of layoffs they're "wrong" to expect making games to be a "stable job": "Art itself is inherently unstable."

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 executive producer and Warhorse Studios co-founder Martin Klíma says that he doesn't get why GTA is so popular, but he's hoping GTA 6's success allows developers to raise the price of games across the board.

For the longest time, the assumption around GTA 6 was that Rockstar would be able to charge whatever it wanted for it, as people would show up thanks to the long wait and massive hype. While some were predicting the game could end up at a base price of $100, Rockstar instead opted to match the $80 mark that Nintendo introduced with Mario Kart World at the launch of the Switch 2 – which is still more than the standard, but not unprecedented.

Some developers, however, such as Wardogs lead Joe Brammer, argue that Rockstar should've been a trendsetter, because "games are too cheap." Speaking to PC Gamer, Klíma hopes "GTA will blaze the trail, and it will allow us to increase the cost." He adds that Rockstar is the only developer "who can afford, or who can dare, to increase the price of games, which I think is long overdue and also necessary for this business to survive."

Despite that hope, Klíma admits that the GTA series "doesn't appeal to me at all" and that "the reason why it is so popular—it beats me. It's something which I just fail to understand." While says he won't "be playing GTA 6 unless I'm somehow forced to," he's happy to praise it, saying, "it's really good that somebody is making these games that are really technologically marvels."

Of course, that's Rockstar. It and Nintendo are two of the developers with big enough fanbases that they can likely afford to charge that extra, but it doesn't mean everyone would be suddenly willing to pay $80 for every game. Perhaps there are better ways of making the industry more sustainable, like perhaps not giving CEOs huge bonuses after laying off the devs behind the games that earned them that bonus.

Proving Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's authenticity, Warhorse's biggest fan hikes through Czechia "by foot" to make 3D maps of the RPG's historical locations.

Lisa DualSense pre-orders are now live in both the US and UK, with PS Direct listing the collaboration in both territories this morning. We're still seeing solid supplies on both sides of the pond to boot.

The $84 / £74.99 special release seems to have been modelled off the Chroma Peal model of one of the best PS5 controllers, with that iridescent sheen kept intact on a bright white base. The Blackpink member's stamp has been firmly set upon the touchpad, though, and continues all the way through the main grips. It's an understated limited edition, but one K-pop fans are going to be all over.

So far, we've seen stock emerging from a range of retailers in the UK so it looks as if this one isn't a PS Direct exclusive. I'd still head to Sony first of all, it's likely to be one of the first retailers to drop Lisa DualSense pre-orders in the US later today, but there are likely other options waiting in the wings as well.

Lisa DualSense pre-orders in the US

Lisa DualSense pre-orders in the UK

You'll still find plenty of GTA 6 DualSense pre-orders on the shelves, but we're also getting you prepped for all this year's Black Friday PS5 deals across the best PS5 accessories as well.

Final Fantasy 7 feels both like a time capsule from the late '90s and a timeless story about corporate greed and its negative impact on the environment, and the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is set to tie the knot on the remake trilogy's modern retelling.

In Edge Magazine issue 429, Hamaguchi says it hasn't been easy remaking a game as beloved as Final Fantasy 7 as three separate entries while staying true to the spirit of the original.

"We haven't altered the core of the story based on reactions at any given time. It feels as though we've built up each title one by one without wavering from the central theme we established at the very start of the Remake series," Hamaguchi says. "It wasn't easy. I felt it was absolutely essential to avoid turning a masterpiece like FF7 into something that felt like my own personal fan project."

Of course, the Final Fantasy 7 remakes aren't without their creative liberties, even introducing a meta narrative device to make major changes to the original story via the Whisper entities. Hamaguchi says the development team didn't struggle with individual alterations; rather, they struggled with the remake series' whole identity among the Final Fantasy pantheon.

"The real challenge wasn't simply incorporating elements that differed from the original or introducing new interpretations. It was constantly asking ourselves whether what we were creating could truly be called FF7R," says Hamaguchi.

With Final Fantasy 7 Revelation due out April 8, 2027, you still have plenty of time to catch up on the story as told before the sequel picks up, whether that's a replay of Remake and Rebirth or the original 1997 JRPG. Hamaguchi himself recently told GamesRadar+ that the original story "is very much enshrined within the story [and] the narrative of the Remake series as a thing in the world," but that newcomers can also jump right into the remakes and still have a great old time.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation battle lead still doesn't know the "correct" way to balance between real-time and turn-based combat, but that's why he's not "tired" of working on the trilogy

Old Diablo heads will remember the Annihilus charm from Diablo 2 as one of the iconic ARPG's most powerful and coveted items. Even in its worst-rolled form, having one in your inventory granted +1 to all skills, +10 to all attributes, +10 to all resistances, and +5 to XP gained. It's the only small charm in the game that grants bonuses to all skills and attributes, and because it's small, it only takes up a single inventory space. It's the crown jewel of Diablo 2's endgame, and now it's in Diablo 4 as a Unique Horadric Seal.

The unfortunate thing about Annihilus in both games is that it's really freakin' hard to get. The exact parameters required to initiate the encounter in Diablo 4 are still being figured out by the community, but we know from various reports on Reddit as well as an in-depth video from Diablo creator Rob2628 that one of the ways you can get your hands on the Annihilus seal is by triggering an encounter with Uber Diablo, which in every case seems to follow a battle with the World Boss Azmodan. After that fight is over, an on-screen message warns, "Diablo walks the earth." Annihilus recipients say Diablo Clone drops the item when slain, just like in Diablo 2.

Also similar to Diablo 2 are the ridiculous passive buffs you get from the item. At max roll, this gloriously, stupidly over-tuned seal grants +20% to all stats, +20% resistance to all elements, +10 to all skills, and +10% bonus XP. Best of all, you can re-roll it at the Cube until you get the stats you want, although reports indicate it becomes account-bound once you do so. If you manage to get your hands on one of these bad boys, that's a genuine game-changer for literally any build.

While I don't have anywhere near the patience to try my luck at spawning Uber Diablo, much less beating him, I'm very much enjoying seeing all of these callbacks to older Diablo games in Diablo 4. The recreation of Diablo 1's campaign as a new Waking Nightmares activity was heavily marketed from the jump, but it seems there are still plenty of more niche discoveries to be made in season 15.

A broken Diablo 4 charm is dominating Season 15, but Blizzard has "decided not to make changes to it" for now

For almost two years, I've watched various friends, family members, and co-workers adopt the PS5 Pro, and I've largely been managing my jealousy with one notable exception: PSSR. The PS5 Pro's AI-powered upscaling tech is genuinely next-gen stuff, and makes games that already look exceptional on the base PS5 appear noticeably sharper and more detailed. It's not so impressive that I want to spend $900 to upgrade to the PS5 Pro, but it's enough to make my six-year-old PS5 look even dustier than it really is, and let me tell you folks, it's pretty dusty up in there.

Anyway, my face turned an ever-so-slightly milder shade of green today when Sony announced that "AI upscaling is coming to PS5." At first, I thought, the PS5 console family already has AI upscaling, it's just limited to the PS5 Pro, but no, Sony is bringing the tech to the base, vanilla PS5. It's not PSSR though, it's "a new performance tier of AI upscaling" called QSSR, which stands for Quick Spectral Super Resolution.

"Since the launch of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) on PS5 Pro, players and developers have asked whether similar image-quality improvements could be brought to the PS5 console," says SIE principal engineer of graphics R&D, Daniel Craig in a new PlayStation Blog. "PSSR analyzes game images pixel by pixel and uses AI to upscale them with more detail and stability than conventional approaches; until now, its computational demands made bringing that experience to PS5 impossible."

Sony says QSSR is made possible by two key innovations: a "streamlined neural network architecture" and "a hand-tuned implementation that maximizes performance on PS5," which work together to provide "some notable improvements to both image detail and image stability on PS5."

If you, like me, are keen to know exactly how "notable" these improvements are to the naked eye, here's a good comparison video showing Marvel's Wolverine in Fidelity Mode with and without QSSR. Watching the video, I'm encouraged that I don't have to squint even a little bit to see a very obvious increase in detail and clarity in background environments.

Only two games are confirmed to be taking advantage of QSSR right now: Marvel's Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei, which Sony says are both getting patches today. No other titles have been confirmed for QSSR support.

"QSSR adds more pixel-level clarity and stability to our environments, bringing out extra detail amidst the busy streets of Madripoor, the dense alleyways of Shinjuku, and many other areas across Logan’s epic journey," says Mike Fitzgerald, head of technology at Insomniac Games. "It's a perfect companion to the launch of Marvel's Wolverine, and it brings a great taste of the PS5 Pro experience to our players on PS5."

Meanwhile, Sucker Punch lead rendering engineer Jasmin Patry says "QSSR excels at resolving the fine details in our characters and environments and does so with a level of temporal stability that hasn't been possible on the PS5 console until now." You can see how the tech upgrades character models and environments in Ghost of Yotei in the below video:

I'm eager to see how quickly other games and developers adopt QSSR and how widely the tech is applied to the PS5's back catalog, but for now I'm giving Sony its flowers for what seems like a genuinely meaningful upgrade to the base PS5 even as it nears its sixth birthday. It's not all too often you see a hardware manufacturer add new features to a console with a newer, pricier successor, as usually they want to encourage people to adopt the most current version, so I'm tentatively encouraged by this.

It's also worth drawing a very significant distinction between PSSR and QSSR and something like Nvidia's DLSS 5, which is rightfully drawing sharp criticism for using gen-AI to dramatically retool a game's actual assets, lighting, character designs, environments, etc. Basically, PSSR and QSSR sharpen up what's already there, while DLSS 5 can tinker with artistic intent, which is where the controversy comes from. The fact that all three of the above-listed features are AI upscalers has the unfortunate effect of tarring an otherwise innocent and impressive console feature with the muddy, stinky brush of gen-AI.

Amid PS5 Pro shortage, Sony implements a lottery system in Japan that requires 60 hours of playtime

PlayStation and Xbox are both pulling back from multiplatform releases and reemphasizing exclusive games. At the same time, Sony recently dropped Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear successor, Physint, leaving Microsoft to pick up the project. The console warriors might be drawing battle lines, but Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says the publisher's collaborations with PlayStation will continue.

Xbox still has several ongoing projects with PlayStation. Forza Horizon 6 and Fable are both set to come to PS5, and franchises like Call of Duty and Minecraft remain multiplatform affairs. As Sharma tells the New York Times: "Competition and collaboration can coexist."

According to the NYT write-up, Sharma "laughed" at the idea of apologizing to Sony for the whole kerfuffle over Physint which, hey, fair enough. The outlet additionally reports that Xbox's agreement with Kojima was "substantially below" development costs for a AAA game, and includes film and TV rights for the project.

Rumors have been floating around that Kojima was seeking something in the neighborhood of $400 million for Physint, but a new edition of The Game Business suggests that "Xbox is paying far, far less than that number," potentially less than $200 million.

For years, Xbox had been pursuing a multiplatform strategy that ultimately culminated in several major first-party games receiving ports to PS5. That strategy was one of many things that turned around when Sharma took over Xbox leadership from Phil Spencer, but there are still plenty of games under the Xbox banner which are still set to come to PS5.

For its part, PlayStation never embraced multiplatform the way Xbox (briefly) did, though a certain few games – like Bungie's Marathon – were released on the competing console. But Sony's big experiment was on PC, which is a platform it's now pulling back from. Competition and collaboration can, indeed, coexist, but it continues to feel like both concepts are a little one-sided in the modern console war.

Here are the PS5 exclusives and Xbox exclusives you need to know about.

The Elder Scrolls Online is changing as ZeniMax Online Studios moves the MMO further away from its old annual DLC formula toward new content drops that incorporate a greater variety of playstyles – a "renaissance" of sorts, if you will.

It's no secret that The Elder Scrolls Online has suffered a difficult year following Microsoft's plan to cut over 3,200 employees at Xbox, with Bethesda's union representatives reporting a loss of "dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

Its remaining developers are pushing on with work on the MMO, however, with game director Nick Giacomini having said that it's "here to stay" with extra help from Bethesda along the way.

As work carries on, the game is making a move away from its usual yearly expansion release, bringing a new season system to The Elder Scrolls Online with less combat-focused content.

I got to sit down with Giacomini and discuss this path forward myself, which he describes as a "renaissance" for the MMO "where we took a look at this game that's been going for 12 years and decided to make some changes."

It hasn't come "just for the sake of making changes, but because it was something the players were asking of us," as Giacomini says. Folks wanted the devs "to excite them" and "surprise them again" – something that was lost in the old "formula," so to speak.

That's why "breaking that formula was really important for us to excite our players." How, though? Seasons, sure, but also new types of content like the Nowhere Vault, Rumors, and High Seas of Tamriel.

"Games haven't stood still," after all. "New games have come out. Great games have come out. That's raised the bar of expectations for players." That led to ZeniMax having to "evolve and revise our own design ethos," and it's a welcome change, in my opinion.

Some more chaotic Morrowind-esque exploration, brain-scratching puzzles, and community events slot nicely into Tamriel, helping gap the bridge between expansions.

Because, you know – even though the studio is trying a new path, it's not entirely abandoning everything we've grown to love the MMO for.

Associate design director Jason Barnes tells me as much, alluding to the mysterious return to Skyrim that ZeniMax is cooking. "There's still a time and a place for some of the like kind of the bigger, more grand type of releases," as he says – "like the new Skyrim zone that we're working on."

That, Barnes describes, won't be "a return to form" entirely as "it's definitely not the same as our traditional zones" – but "it's going to be that kind of spectacle that the chapter model essentially gave us."
Honestly, I'm personally thrilled they're retaining a bit of ye olde Elder Scrolls Online goodness, while also making room for something fresh… and it's already upon us. Heck, we just got Update 51 and the High Seas of Tamriel.

I'm ready for more, and I'm equally as ready for more Skyrim – whatever form it might take.

Massive bit of Elder Scrolls lore from Morrowind is actually because of "a typo," former Skyrim designer believes: "Someone just typed a date wrong in the timeline"

After months of fans begging for a native Switch 2 version, Castlevania: Belmont's Curse has been confirmed to be running at 60fps on the console.

I don't know how everyone else feels about it, but Metroidvanias are a handheld game for me. While some of the best Metroidvania games have been exclusive to consoles, there's something about exploration on that scale that feels perfect for playing on a handheld.

So it was especially disappointing to hear that Castlevania: Belmont's Curse wouldn't be arriving on Switch 2, as the choice would be picking a hindered 30fps version on the original Switch or playing on a TV (or a Steam Deck, I guess, but still). The lack of a Switch 2 version has been a hot topic in the community since its announcement, but it looks like we might not need one.

As spotted by Nintendo Everything, despite Konami not saying so before, the Castlevania: Belmont's Curse demo released on Switch earlier today actually runs at 60fps on Nintendo Switch 2. Granted, the lack of a native version does mean the resolution is reportedly not as hot as you would want, but for an action game like Castlevania, 60fps is always a bonus.

Konami previously went back and updated Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1 on Switch with an update that let the ports of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 run better on Switch 2, so hopefully something similar could be arranged for Castlevania. That is, assuming the devs aren't planning on making a native version a year down the line like Sega did with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance.

The most underrated Castlevania games could be making a comeback as a Konami teaser gives fans hope for a 3D collection.

After three whole installments of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, battle director Teruki Endo still isn't sure what the right balance of turn-based and real-time combat is, but as he heads towards the launch of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, he reckons this is why he's still not "tired" of working on the revamped JRPGs after all these years.

Speaking in an interview in Edge magazine issue 429, Endo notes that "whenever I've worked on a sequel, I've always faced this dilemma. If the game becomes too complex, that's a problem. But if there are no entirely new elements, or if we only make minor adjustments, we risk failing to meet players' expectations and not giving them that sense of freshness when they play again."

Endo's approach is to "always make a point of considering the purpose, significance, and role of every element from the ground up, and then rebuilding them for the new game." When it comes to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy specifically, he's taken inspiration from the "festive atmosphere" he felt in the JRPG "ever since I first played" the original, noting that "I've increasingly wanted to explore how we could make even bolder, more playful additions to the game."

One way he's done this is via the FITS system – a sort-of job system that lets you change the abilities of your party members and the way you approach combat with them. "Our approach has always been to place Materia at the center of customization," he adds. "With the FITS system, one might be concerned that it could limit the freedom players had to shape each character's strengths through Materia. Instead, we've made a conscious effort to position FITS as an element that allows players to further sharpen and specialize the direction of Materia-based builds."

As we get closer to the release of the finale of the remake trilogy in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, Endo acknowledges the continual effort that's gone into the balance of turn-based and real-time combat across the three games. Remake and Rebirth both included a Classic mode that lets your party members fight automatically, allowing you to focus on selecting commands. Way back in 2019, Square Enix described this as something that would "thrill fans who prefer the original FINAL FANTASY turn-based battle systems to real-time combat."

"Across all three titles, we've repeatedly fine-tuned this balance [between turn-based and real-time] through trial and error," Endo says. "The difficult part is that I still haven't decided on a definitive 'correct answer' for myself.'"

There's a silver lining to that situation though, he adds: "I think [it] may be one of the reasons I've been able to keep working on these games across all three installments without getting tired of it."

Turn-based RPGs have been making a real resurgence lately thanks to the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Sandfall's hit game is definitively turn-based, but uses Super Mario RPG-esque real-time inputs on top of that system, allowing for parries, dodges, and powered-up moves.

It'll be interesting to see where Square Enix goes with its Final Fantasy games after Revelation, but Final Fantasy Resonance, which is releasing this month, should hopefully satisfy the cravings of anyone who's been eager for the series to get a full-fat turn-based entry again.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation lead says the original 1997 RPG "is very much enshrined within the story," but newcomers can still jump in with the Remake trilogy.

The Dead by Daylight Haunted by Daylight Halloween event is back, and I for one can't wait. There are always some changes when recurring events roll around, as well as fresh new rewards, so I'll take a look at everything coming to this year's event below.

There's loads of stuff happening in Dead by Daylight in October, including an awesome new Rift and more cool cosmetic collections coming to the Shop, but if you're most looking forward to the event, then here's when DBD Haunted by Daylight takes place, and the rest of the gory details.

DBD Haunted by Daylight launch date and time

The DBD Haunted by Daylight event takes place starting on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, at 9am PDT / 12pm EDT / 5pm BST.

The event shares a lot of the mechanics from previous years, but some things are changing, including how it looks and the removal of the Void dimension. There are also a load of cool new rewards to grab by completing quests, all of which I'll detail before.

DBD Haunted by Daylight details

The biggest thing to note this year is that there is no Void dimension, so there'll be no disappearing into portals and running around the extra location, which feedback showed left players feeling like gameplay was a little disjointed.

Instead, Void rifts still appear, but now transport players across the map quickly, which can be used to everyone's advantage - but especially chased survivors.

The most important thing to discuss though is the cool rewards that we can earn by completing event quests, so here's the lowdown. You'll be able to unlock the following free cosmetics:

• Shane outfit
• Hillbilly outfit
• Survivor shirts
• Killer masks

These rewards look super cool, and you can see the incredible Hillbilly skin at the top of the page. There will be additional outfits to purchase from the in-game store during the event, but I'm only interested in the free stuff.

If you're the same, check out the latest DBD codes for free in-game items and currency, and you should also take a look at the DBD 2026 roadmap to see what else is in store before the end of the year.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Right now, it's anyone's guess when Fallout 5 might arrive. However, we do know it's happening, somewhere in the bowels of Bethesda, and one former developer from the studio believes taking the franchise out of the US would be a welcome shot in the arm.

Chatting to GoHumanize, via Insider Gaming, Bruce Nesmith, a quest designer on Fallouts 3 and 4, lead designer on Skyrim and design director on Oblivion Remaster, believes there's enormous potential in taking the property fully international. "It can go to any city that has a really distinctive style to it. You look at the places they’ve already taken Fallout and it’s Las Vegas, Washington DC, Boston and they’re all places full of style," he says.

"It would be very tempting to go outside of the country too even though Fallout is highly rooted in Americana," he adds.

London and Paris, the capitals of England and France, respectively, are two examples that "could be amazing," he mentions. And those would definitely be easy candidates here, offering large, sprawling metropolises for the devs to turn into post-apocalyptic wastelands. But they're too easy, in my view.

Head up to the Scottish Highlands, or over to Ireland. Or maybe some part of Australia. Each would be fascinating to see in this context. His point about Fallout being firmly planted in American culture can still echo through these locales in fascinating ways.

Imagine the culture clash of a post-nuclear Glasgow, where the city's now-mayor is an Elvis obsessive. Or the locals believe themselves to be in some distant state because American culture is all they had access to for generations. In some ways that wouldn't be too far removed from modern day whenever Country 2 Country happens in the dear green place.

The possibilities are endless. Todd Howard's been clear the series is unlikely to go outside North America, but never say never. Although, really, I think we all just want the thing to happen at all, regardless of what the setting is.

Fallout's iconic Vault Boy exists because the devs were struggling to solve an old-school RPG problem

We could be waiting quite some time to see another game as impactful as GTA 6, former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida suggests, and it may even be on Rockstar itself to do it with GTA 7.

GTA 6 is quite easily one of, if not the single most hyped up game of all time, with immeasurable excitement from fans who've been waiting over 13 years since the last installment, and most devs and publishers fleeing as far from Rockstar Games' November launch as they can to avoid their games getting swallowed up and forgotten. Its impending release has seemingly influenced consoles going out of stock and being sold for ridiculous prices, and people are so excited that some have even been willing to spend $400 on a box of merch including, uh, a spoon. With all that, on top of years of fan discussion, wild theories, and speculation… it's kind of a lot.

Speaking in a new episode of The Verge's Vergecast (below), the former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment worldwide studios is asked if we're ever going to see another game like GTA 6 in the future.

"After 15 years, maybe GTA 7, we'll see," he laughs. That's not to say that he thinks Rockstar is the only studio capable, though.

"Or any of these companies from China, they might try to emulate or compete, because there will be [a] 15 year gap after GTA 6," he continues. "So no one should underestimate the power of these Chinese companies."

Honestly, the mere concept of GTA 7 and the inevitable build-up to that makes me feel dizzy when we've not yet reached GTA 6's launch – this year's launch feels mythical enough as it is. But who knows what a post GTA 6 world is going to look like? Out of its shadow, could we see similar levels of hype and impact for a Switch 2 version of Nintendogs? Perhaps not, but it'd be interesting to take the spotlight away from Rockstar for a while, at least.

GTA 6's weather is completely re-engineered from Red Dead Redemption 2, and it has hurricanes, rainbows, proper cloud formations and more.

The Witcher 3 Remastered only just released, but CD Projekt Red is already addressing some of the revamped RPG's most pressing issues – on both consoles and PC, too.

Two new patches have rolled out today for The Witcher 3 Remastered, with the first arriving on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S earlier in the morning.

CD Projekt Red unveiled it in a post over on X, explaining that it addresses everything from lighting issues to problems with DLSS in the Xbox Play Anywhere version of the game. All that, plus "various other adjustments to ensure parity with the PC version" of the RPG," apparently.

The developers clarified that they're "investigating" further issues, too, and also "preparing a hotfix for PC" – a hotfix that came mere hours after the console-specific patch.

As per the official Witcher website, it tackles everything from saves not working properly to audio volume… and, yes, the NVIDIA Hairworks problem that's tanking PC performance for many players.

Unsurprisingly, CD Projekt Red isn't finished yet, either.

Global community and social media director Marcin Momot confirms as much, first covering the PC hotfix and how "the rough size of the download is 5GB."

According to him, the devs "plan to have the fix on consoles for the volume issue," too, with "no date" set as of now – but, still. "We're working on it."

Paweł Sasko, who is currently on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel as associate game director, writes something similar in his own post. "Our work continues my dears to provide you with the best possible experience on The Witcher 3 Remastered," it reads – so, yeah.

There you have it, folks, CD Projekt Red isn't going to stop tinkering with its new remaster until every wrinkle is ironed out… and I don't think that'll be the case any time soon. If you run into any issues yourself, be sure to flag it, as it's evident the studio is paying close attention to our feedback.

Looking for more new games to wishlist? Browse through our roundup of all of the upcoming CD Projekt Red games for some to anticipate.

The Unsupervised Science Testing Facilities in Control Resonant are six different hidden laboratories, all underground and part of the same side quest. Unsupervised Science kicks off when you first encounter the location of one of these labs, and there's puzzles to solve in each one involving power distribution and soda machines, oddly enough. For more info on everything, we've got a full walkthrough on the Testing Facilities in Control Resonant and how to complete the Unsupervised Science quest.

Want to find other challenges around the game? Discover all the Control Resonant Shum Arcade machines!

All Testing Facility locations in Control Resonant

There are Six FBC Testing Facilities hidden around the map in Control Resonant: one for every region, with the exception of the Underpass, which has none. You can find them all on the map below, along with blue arrows that mark their hidden access points.

For a bigger map with more detail, click the icon in the lower left.

1. Downtown. Entered via a pipe in the ground floor of the Deserted Area construction zone. Soda Machine puzzle.
2. Central. Entered via a hole in a construction zone East of the Field Office Station. Power Distribution Puzzle.
3. West Incursion Zone. Entered via a hole in the road in the middle of the region. Soda Machine puzzle.
4. Evacuation Zone. Entered via a hole in the road North of the Survivalist's Bunker, right next to the Fast Travel Door. Soda Machine puzzle.
5. The Park. Entered via a divergent tunnel in the sewer system, marked by an electronic sign that says "Restricted Facility: No Authorized Entry". Power Distribution Puzzle.
6. Unknown. Entered via a hole in the road on the "Ground" side of Unknown, Southwest of the Twisted Rooftops Fast Travel Door. Power Distribution puzzle. Also serves as the location to access the Threshold for the final part of the quest.

Once all puzzles are solved, you'll be given a final objective to Go into the Threshold, explained further down.

How to solve the Testing Facility puzzles in Control Resonant

There are two puzzles that appear at the Testing Facilities: Power Distribution, about moving charges around, and Soda Machines, about placing these drinks machines on marked locations. Here's how they both work and how to solve them.

Power Distribution

After pulling the console lever, you'll be shown several Power Cores attached to machines with flashing lights, some of which have charges in. If the red light on a machine starts flashing, you need to quickly install a charge. If the blue light starts flashing and sparking, you need to remove the charge. The goal is to quickly move charges between machines for a minute without any machine going without a charge for an extended period of time, or having one for too long and overloading. Once completed, all lights will turn green, and you'll get a reward.

Soda Machines

Around the facility are random objects that you can pick up, but every time they cross a yellow line on the floor, they transform into other random objects. The goal is to turn them all into "Thirst Station" Soda Machines, then place those Soda Machines on the marked squares in the Facility. There is a complex pattern to the transformations (a repeating cycle that resets by one if you go back across a line you just crossed), and with the more complex layouts and spread out squares, I suggest that you find a T-intersection of yellow lines and run in circles through the three zones until the cycle is where you need it to be, then go from there. Once all squares have Soda machines in them, pull the lever on the main console to progress.

Go into the Threshold

After all six are completed, go back to the Unknown Testing Facility and into the side room East side, then pull the lever. This will open a metal door to a tunnel filled with glitching objects. Interact with Doctor Grant's body at the end to complete the quest and get the collectible: Dr Grant's Final Report. There's also a power core charge you can transfer to open a side door and get some resources.

Finally, completing the quest for good will get you the Untapped Scrunchie artifact, which increases the damage of Primary weapons by 10% when equipped.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Arc Raiders devs are cracking down even harder on cheaters with tougher punishments and improved anti-cheat to better deal with what Embark acknowledges is an ongoing situation.

In a lengthy statement posted to Twitter, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal reiterates that Embark takes cheating "incredibly seriously," spending "a lot of time and money in the ongoing fight against unfair play." While the game's anti-cheat team is "continually working" on blocking cheats and making unfair play harder to pull off, the lead acknowledges that Embark hasn't shared much about its efforts, sometimes intentionally so not to give cheaters a heads up on the changes.

"Do know that our silence is not indifference to the issue," Grøndal says. "And today, we're going to give you a better sense of where we’ve made progress and where we’re continuing to invest our efforts."

So, where are things at? Importantly, "Our cheat detection systems are getting considerably stronger month by month," Grøndal begins. "In addition to kernel-level protection from Denuvo and detections from Anybrain, we're using a growing set of in-house models built around machine learning and other data."

These don't function totally autonomously, but the systems will help identify any weird-looking behaviors to detect cheating. Embark is also doing some small-scale testing of Elytra anti-cheat in The Finals right now, which could be incorporated into Arc Raiders in the future, too.

Then, there are the consequences for cheaters who've been caught. As well as continual efforts to make it "harder for repeat offenders to simply create a new account and return to the game," Embark will now be much quicker to bring out the ban hammer. Acknowledging that many fans were critical of the studio's initial decision to give first-time cheaters a second chance, Grøndal now says: "Permanent bans are now standard for all known cheat programs and, as a matter of policy, any account caught using cheats is permanently banned. No warnings, no second chances."

This can go beyond a simple account ban, too. Embark has recently "broadened our use of license restrictions" to stop specific copies of a game being used with a new or different account if one has already been banned on it. "We've tightened our approach to linked accounts as well," Grøndal adds. "If an account has ever been associated with a banned copy of the game, it will also receive a permanent ban."

Embark is also capable of enforcing hardware bans, outright preventing Arc Raiders from running on a system if "we have enough evidence that a single machine is being used for cheating." The studio is currently attempting to "increase the number of systems that we can target with a hardware ban," too, in an effort to prevent repeat offenders using the same systems. "We hope to implement this later in the year, and it should allow us to deploy sanctions to almost all systems caught running cheat software," Grøndal says.

Otherwise, Embark has also been making an effort to prevent players from "queue teaming, where players coordinate to land in the same solo lobby and attack Raiders who queued alone." After splitting up known offenders in matchmaking, Grøndal says that within five days, "we saw 85% fewer players engaging in this behavior. Spoiled raids dropped from around 1 in 50 to 1 in 300, with no meaningful impact to queue times."

Grøndal's conclusion might not be what everyone wants to hear – there's no way that Embark can wipe out cheating completely. But, it can certainly do its best. "Video game cheating is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it will never fully go away," he admits. "What we can do is make cheating as difficult, costly, and short-lived as possible.

"We built ARC Raiders with love and dedication to the craft, and seeing it exploited by cheaters makes us as angry as it makes you. We are making progress, and we're continuing to work to identify cheating more effectively, act on it more quickly, make it harder for repeat offenders to return, and improve the experience for Raiders who are playing fairly."

This all comes ahead of the big Arc Raiders Frozen Trail update on October 8, which Grøndal previously teased feels like a 2.0 for the game.

Arc Raiders will finally let players unlock weapons and items without hunting down blueprints.