Oftentimes in game development, you can't be sure how something will work until you ship. In the case of Skyrim, one of the leads was certain the level cap wouldn't be a problem, and then players made it clear he had the wrong idea.

Bruce Nesmith, lead designer on Skyrim and a former longtime developer at Bethesda, told the Examined Game podcast all about his logic. "When creating the system where all the different skills would go to 100, it implied, mathematically, a level limit of 81," he explains.

"I didn't think of that," he says. "Most of the games that Bethesda produces are designed to, you've played all the content roughly around level 50. That's what we shoot for."

He qualifies this with the caveat that that's a broad generalisation, because it depends on how the players approach the game. The amount of stealth or magic you use can impact things, but you'll likely still be in the ballpark of level 50 by the time you've seen the bulk of any given Bethesda release.

"So, 81, and what do I care?" Nesmith continues. "I was wrong. The players didn't want to finish playing their character at 81 and start a new one. They had a character they loved, why couldn't they keep playing?"

This seems like a by-product of creating something as wildly popular as Skyrim. Few games will ever be as widely enjoyed and played as The Elder Scrolls 5, and that means there are plenty of people who wish the whole experience was longer.

There was a course correction, as Nesmith points out, in the Dragonborn DLC, where you could reset skills by spending Dragon Souls. This was introduced in a free update with Legendary Mode afterward.

"It wasn't my favorite mechanic the way we did it," Nesmith states. "But it worked." That it did, and it didn't slow down the RPG's momentum at all. Whatever else Bethesda's planning for The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, I doubt there'll be a level cap, because it sounds like the team learned their lesson.

"We don't want that scenario": Skyrim had to change a major Oblivion problem, but will Todd Howard's "elegant solution" make it to The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel?

Rebel Wolves has confirmed that The Blood of Dawnwalker is getting New Game+ as part of its 1.2 update next week.

Despite a number of nominations and bringing out one of the best vampire games of the modern era, The Blood of Dawnwalker didn't pick up any awards at the Golden Joystick Awards this week. It did come close, with a second place finish in PC Game of the Year and Best Storytelling, and a fifth place finish in Ultimate Game of the Year. The ex-CD Projekt Red devs at Rebel Wolves were happy with their performance, and clearly haven't let the narrow losses faze them, as the game's next major patch is coming very soon.

As announced by Rebel Wolves on Reddit, The Blood of Dawnwalker 1.2 update releases next week. This update will include balance changes with enemy health pools and ability use being tweaked as well as terrain adjustments to improve movement around the world. But the headline act of this new update is New Game+ finally arriving in the game.

"If you completed the Epilogue, you can dive right back into Vale Sangora with New Game+." the post reads. As part of this mode, the level cap is being raised to 100, with enemies balanced and scaled accordingly. On top of that, items will receive New Game+ versions with updated stats, too.

The average playthrough of The Blood of Dawnwalker is around 25 hours according to HowLongToBeat, so this new addition should help you get even more out of what is considered "short" by RPG standards.

6 things I need from The Blood of Dawnwalker's sequel.

While Cyberpunk 2077 protagonist V is yours to shape, CD Projekt Red intentionally takes the wheel for narrative effect and to undermine your choices. If that feels uncomfortable, that's because it's supposed to.

Over on the ol' global town square, one fan points out that V states their preference not to smoke fairly in the game. Later on, as V's consciousness begins to merge with rocker-boy Johnny Silverhand, V smokes. It's not because they've got into the habit, but because Silverhand has done so for ages and your mind isn't entirely your own anymore.

The observation caught the attention of a very impressed quest lead, Pawel Sasko.

"Great eye my choom, that was exactly the intent — to show how slowly Johnny’s personality blends with V, through small subtle actions, and from the first confrontation when he tried to kill V transform this relationship into deep and meaningful bond, braided empathy and regret," he says.

Not everyone is on board, though. Some have replied to Sasko to say an RPG is, well, an RPG – that should mean your V is yours to shape entirely. For Sasko, though, that's even more reason to take away the sort of control you'd expect from the genre.

"But that was the point, it was meant to feel a little uncomfortable, what is happening to you," he says. "The game deals with terminal illness, it's not a voluntary state, we are using RPG game mechanics to illustrate it."

Feelings aside, it's cool that Cyberpunk 2077's small flourishes are still being uncovered and picked apart many years after launch. We've had expansions, Edgerunners-themed updates, and plenty of patches in between, but Cyberpunk 2077 has remained fairly complete narratively for a while, and as we head towards Cyberpunk 2, what better to mull over than narrative beats? I'm sure CDPR would rather people talk about that over how the game launched; that's for sure.

Cyberpunk 2077 lead wanted the 2.5 update to be "more meaningful" than what CD Projekt Red did last time for Edgerunners.

The fans have spoken – The Witcher 4 has won the Golden Joystick for Most Wanted Game. While those involved in putting the RPG together at CD Projekt are pleased with the result, they know the pressure is on to live up to the hype.

"This means the world to us," game director Sebastian Kalemba says on Twitter. "Huge love to our incredible team and everyone who's been supporting us on this journey."

Narrative director Phillip Weber adds: "We're working hard to make The Witcher 4 worthy of being your most wanted game and an unforgettable experience that's true to the core of the Witcher."

The Witcher 4 joins some fine company in winning the award. It might not surprise you, but GTA 6 has won the award before, and it seems to be going all right for them, if we do say so ourselves. The Witcher 4 also beat out some solid competition from 19 other games at The Golden Joysticks, including Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, God of War Laufey, and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

Of course, with a 2028 target window, we face a wait for The Witcher 4. Currently, it's all about The Witcher 3 – another Golden Joysticks favorite – as we just had the remaster ahead of the new expansion Songs of the Past next year. CDPR even called that out earlier this year. Regardless, there are plenty of The Witcher fans who are eagerly awaiting its arrival.

CD Projekt Red is building the Avengers of RPGs – the house of Cyberpunk 2 and The Witcher 4 adds 3 former Kingdom Come: Deliverance leads to the mix.

Playground Games is ramping up its marketing efforts for its upcoming Fable revival, and a new gameplay showcase seems to confirm the return of enemy Nymphs, which we haven't seen since the original Fable back in 2004.

The new Official Quest Gameplay trailer, released as part of Xbox's 25th anniversary shenanigans, shows a darker side to Albion than we're used to seeing, and I mean that literally. After cranking up the brightness on my monitor, I could see that the footage shows a female hero character seeking out her village's mysterious assailant with the help of a character named Arden. Tracing the attacker's path leads the duo through a heavily wooded forest with giant thorny vines and eventually, a confrontation with some familiar-looking foes outside a cave entrance.

Again, everything is dark in this trailer, but from what I can tell these fellas look a whole lot like the Wood Nymphs, which are one of two species of fairy-like creatures, the other being Water Nymphs, from OG Fable back in the day. They're referred to as "cursed monsters" in the quest log, but c'mon, those are fairies. They're little magical winged humanoids with big heads and tree bark-like skin, and they flutter around in clouds of colorful orbs and shoot ethereal projectiles your way. If that isn't a Wood Nymph, well then I don't know what a Wood Nymph is. And believe me, I know a thing or two about Wood Nymphs.

Anyway, otherwise the trailer is fairly unremarkable. Not in a bad way, just in a way that doesn't reveal anything super new or exciting to talk about, which makes sense considering we're just a few short months away from getting to play the game. Fable is out on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC on February 23.

Fable creator was "a little bit worried" about the upcoming reboot at first, but now he "can't wait" to play: "I'm going to be first in the line"

It was a bad time to be a vampire fan and enjoyer of video games until precisely September 2, 2026, when a team of CD Projekt Red veterans released The Blood of Dawnwalker, easily the best vampire game in years. Rebel Wolves didn't take home any awards at the Golden Joysticks this year, but it showed a lot of class by congratulating and paying respect to its competition, including Ultimate Game of the Year, Resident Evil Requiem. We caught up with Rebel Wolves founder and Blood of Dawnwalker game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz at the Golden Joysticks, and his mood was celebratory.

"Many people told us the vampire genre is cursed somehow," Tomaszkiewicz says. "I think that we somehow lifted this curse. We have our own place in the genre also, with the narrative sandbox and hybrid combat and the other things we have, and it's great to have something like this because we already have ideas how to expand it and how to make even more crazy ideas in the game. I'm really happy because, for us, the development was a lot of fun."

It's definitely true that there's a stigma around vampire games in particular that's been hard to shake for, oh, I don't know, ever. The Castlevania series set an impossibly high standard going back to the '80s, and on second thought, may have inadvertently cursed the genre to be plagued by clunkers like Vampire Rain, Redfall, and most disappointingly, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. There have definitely been some moderate successes over the years; I liked Vampyr alright, and most recently Castlevania: Belmont's Curse has been a triumphant revival, but by and large vampire games really put the suck in I want to suck your blood.

The Blood of Dawnwalker isn't just an extraordinarily solid vampire game, it's also one of my favorite RPGs in recent memory, with The Witcher 3-caliber writing across its entire main quest and every side quest I've encountered. I'm not sure exactly what Tomaszkiewicz means when he says Rebel Wolves has expansion ideas, but the studio has confirmed a sequel is on the way.

6 things I need from The Blood of Dawnwalker's sequel

CD Projekt Red has hired Baldur's Gate 3 writer Baudelaire Welch for an upcoming multiplayer The Witcher project.

Welch is best known for their role as senior narrative designer at Larian Studios and by extension their work on Baldur's Gate 3. Welch headed up the Dark Urge storyline you get when you select them as an Origin character at the start of the game. Dark Urge is one of the fan-favorite characters in a game full of fan-favorite characters, and while quite literally being introduced by talking about its urge to kill at all times, it makes for one of the most interesting storylines in the game should you go down its path.

On top of that, Welch also contributed to Astarion's romance scenes, as well as all of the companion questlines found throughout the game. Per Welch's website, they also contributed to Crusader Kings 3 as a game designer, and have been working with Immortality creator Sam Barlow and filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg on psychological horror titles.

Welch will be working on The Witcher multiplayer project currently titled Project Sirius as a senior writer specialist, with the writer sharing the news on their LinkedIn. "Fantasy is where my heart lies and I'm thrilled to be writing for a studio which has been one of the genre's most beloved celebrants." Welch says, adding, "It's a hugely exciting job for any young writer and the team has already been so amazing in my first several months."

I’m excited to share that I’ve joined CD PROJEKT RED as a Senior Writer Specialist to work on the Witcher - many thrilling Trials await.Can’t talk about the game yet, but pleased to be here!

— @baudelairewelch.bsky.social (@baudelairewelch.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-11-12T13:05:11.598Z

Project Sirius has been in the works for a number of years now, with a full reboot of the game being confirmed back in 2023 alongside layoffs the following week – as well as another set of layoffs earlier this year. At the moment we don't really know much about the title, but hopefully this new addition to the team is a good sign of things to come.

The Witcher 3 already had the most Golden Joysticks and it just won another, extending its lead over RPG rivals Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

AAA development cycles have increased dramatically since Mass Effect 2 launched in 2010, to the point that it's not uncommon to see 10-year gaps between mainline releases i.e. The Elder Scrolls 6, GTA 6, and Fallout 5. Contrast that with the 26 months in-between Mass Effect 1 and 2, and you start to wonder what type of coffee the folks at now-defunct BioWare were drinking back then. The truth is, the size and scope of big-budget games have ballooned alongside development cycles, but the Mass Effect 2 team benefited from a number of other factors that seem sorely lacking in today's AAA landscape, as pointed out by Mass Effect 2 lead designer Christina Norman.

In a new tweet, Norman explains "how mass effect 2 came together in 18 months successfully," and well, it reads like a list of things AAA studios aren't doing anymore. First of all, "it was the same team that shipped mass effect," says Norman, adding that, "teams often have a lot of turn over," but for ME2, "the core team stayed the same." A novel concept, I know, but maybe there is something to the idea of maintaining a long-term vision and trusting your staff through highs and lows that results in long-term success.

Norman also says the team at BioWare "knew the timeline up front" and learned from Mass Effect 1 on a couple of points. "A lot of mistakes" were made developing Mass Effect 1 in Unreal, and so the developers "came into mass effect 2 knowing how to build" in that engine. Also, the Mass Effect 2 team was "ruthless about limiting scope," says Norman. "Mass Effect 1 was a much higher scope game and we had to cut about half of it just to ship. The team hated that and it was wasteful because a lot of work didn't ship. We cut our scope to the bone early on so no work was wasted."

Finally, and this sounds pretty key, BioWare "listened to the player feedback on mass effect 1 and used that to decide what to cut, what to keep, and what to improve. Mass effect 2 was not perfect, but it benefited so much from setting realistic achievable goals given the short development timeline."

Of course, Mass Effect 2 is considered by many to be the best game in the series, although there's definitely not a clear consensus on that in the community. The fact that it was made by the same team as the first game in just 18 months is staggering, and it's a somber reminder of the glory days in the wake of EA's cancelation of Mass Effect 5 and shutdown of BioWare.

Original Mass Effect director is "optimistic" the series will return as love for BioWare's RPG pours in on N7 Day: "To all the stories left untold"

As if following up on one of the most acclaimed RPGs of all time wasn't already enough pressure, CD Projekt Red just won Most Wanted Game for The Witcher 4 at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026, and the burden of that "great responsibility" is weighing heavy on the developer.

Taking the stage just before the end of the show when Resident Evil Requiem was announced as the night's big winner, CDPR production director Małgorzata Mitręga appeared slightly stage-frightened as she accepted the award for most anticipated game, beating out Fable and Resident Evil Veronica.

"This is a huge, huge honor for us, but it's also a great responsibility. We all know it," she said. "We are working hard, giving heart and soul there, all the skills we have, passion we have, and moments like that are such a fucking boost for us, for the stamina, to [keep] it going, to deliver [for] you when the time is right."

Of course, CDPR isn't just releasing a sequel to what many consider the defining RPG of its generation, but with the new DLC Songs of the Past coming out in 2027, it's also responsible for expanding on it in a way that feels meaningful and respectful. For example, CDPR has confirmed it worked with an AI company to touch up the Polish voice of Geralt for Songs of the Past after actor Jacek Rozenek's voice changed due to a stroke he suffered in 2019 – but only once they got approval from Rozenek himself.

CD Projekt Red is building the Avengers of RPGs – the house of Cyberpunk 2 and The Witcher 4 adds 3 former Kingdom Come: Deliverance leads to the mix

Alix Wilton Regan is taking on her biggest video game role yet as Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst, but her history in the industry dates back to 2009 with a variety of minor roles in Dragon Age: Origins. Her career was intertwined with BioWare, and she took the opportunity to pay tribute to the studio at the Golden Joystick awards.

"We need to acknowledge how tough things are across our industry," Regan says. "Behind every game are talented, passionate people who have spent years bringing these worlds to life. Right now, too many of them are losing their jobs and their studios. The recent closure of BioWare is particularly personal to me. They gave me two video game roles in Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 3, and helped set me on the path that brings me here tonight."

In fact, Regan's BioWare credits go far deeper than that. She voiced numerous characters in Dragon Age: Origins and 2, and brought Samantha Traynor to life in Mass Effect 3. She also provided the British female voice for the player character in Dragon Age: Inquisition, a role she reprised in The Veilguard.

Speaking to GamesRadar+ on the red carpet ahead of the show, Regan says she's "incredibly sad" about BioWare's closure and was "genuinely very shocked" when she heard the news. "I think the word is slightly dumbfounded, that something so great and so powerful as a studio could have such a fall from grace, and it seems like such an abrupt closure, with no forewarning. My heart goes out to all of the devs that were working on Mass Effect 5."

Those devs are "real people with real families back at home, with real mortgages to pay, and they deserve employment as much as anyone else," Regan notes, saying the studio has left a substantial mark on the industry. "It's a huge loss for video games as a whole. There probably wouldn't be a Larian or a Remedy without what BioWare had established all of those years ago."

Both Larian and Remedy put down roots well before BioWare's games had gone mainstream, but there's little doubt that hits like Dragon Age and Mass Effect influenced games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Control, showing how developers could blend immersive, cinematic stories with choice-driven plotlines and deep gameplay systems. Which is to say nothing of BioWare's own Baldur's Gate games.

With Mass Effect in particular, BioWare was "doing something that hadn't been done before," Regan argues. "They broke the mold when it came to RPGs."

But BioWare is hardly the only studio affected by mass layoffs, project cancellations, and abrupt closures at big publishers, as developers continue to pay the price for short-sighted decisions from executives. In her remarks at the Golden Joysticks, Regan says: "To everyone affected by the challenges facing our industry, we see you, we stand with you, and you are not forgotten."

Id Software devs laid off by Microsoft form their own studio and don't hold back in their announcement: "It really felt like an attack"

The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, a surprise new expansion for the storied RPG, features AI-retouched recordings of original Polish Geralt voice actor Jacek Rozenek, who gave CD Projekt Red his approval to have Ukrainian company Respeecher train a model with his voice.

GameFile (partially paywalled link) spoke to CDPR and Respeecher about the process. CDPR turned to this application of AI – not for the first time, as Respeecher previously helped with a Cyberpunk 2077 character whose actor died – because Rozenek's voice changed following recovery from a stroke he suffered in 2019.

The studio wanted Rozenek back, but new lines clashed when heard alongside the original The Witcher 3 dialogue. (English Geralt actor Doug Cockle required no retouching for Songs of the Past.)

To help train a more accurate version of Rozenek's voice, "we basically delivered to Respeecher all the lines that Jacek recorded for us for The Witcher 3," says localization producer Mikołaj Szwed.

On its website, Respeecher claims "our voice cloning technology is developed and used in a manner that is ethical, respectful, and beneficial for society." In its ethics manifesto, it notes that "explicit permission is required for all voice replications, secured through a mutually signed agreement to ensure full understanding and consent."

In a promotional blurb for its "AI Voice Technology," focusing on video games specifically, Respeecher boasts of the ability to "give voice to protagonists and NPCs - at scale and without expensive re-shoots."

Respeecher synthetic speech artist Dmytry Vasylets says "the brief was simple: make Jacek’s voice sound alive, rich and young, like in the original game."

Rozenek himself also weighed in: "The point is that this voice should be as close as possible to my voice from 12 years ago. I have great trust…for the creators of this game."

GameFile, briefed on before-and-after recordings, reports that "the difference was significant," with the retouched audio sounding smoother and younger. Szwed himself says the base recordings from Rozenek were "much lower, much gruffer" than the original Polish Geralt.

CDPR does acknowledge the concerns around generative AI in game development – an ever-boiling pot of controversy stirred by breathless proponents and uncompromising opponents. GamesRadar+ has spoken to dozens of game developers who've shared moral, creative, and legal arguments against the use of gen AI.

Arc Raiders developer Embark, previously criticized for using AI voices, faced renewed scrutiny after claiming that using real actors wouldn't have made sense for the game's numerous callouts and pings because people "would just go crazy if they had to read all of that." Many AI characters have now been re-recorded with real actors.

"I can tell you, as a person working with voice actors over all the regions in the world, this is a big concern," Szwed agrees. CDPR's contracts require consent for any AI work, he says, and it was only used in this case due to Rozenek's unique health situation.

"I do think this is one of those ways where you can use AI ethically, with consent and also to do something good," the localization producer adds. He notes that "this was a special case."

The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past plays out differently if you've finished the RPG's second expansion, but devs say that doesn't mean you have to

The Witcher 3 may now be 11 years old, but it just keeps on winning – in fact, it's now even further cemented itself as the proud owner of the most Golden Joystick Awards, and it might not even be done yet.

Of course, it helps that the beloved RPG just got a remaster this year – one that was so well received it took home the award for Best Remake/Remaster at The Golden Joystick Awards 2026. It faced stiff competition from Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, Star Fox, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, Gothic 1 Remake, and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, but CD Projekt Red managed to come out on top… again.

I say 'again' because this is far from the studio's first win for the 2015 RPG. Before it even launched, The Witcher 3 managed to win The Golden Joystick Awards' Most Wanted category twice (once in 2013, then again in 2014), and then lived up to that hype when it actually released. At the 2015 show, it took home the awards for Best Storytelling, Best Visual Design, Best Gaming Moment (specifically for the Bloody Baron quest, if you were wondering), and the big one – Ultimate Game of the Year.

Its success didn't stop there, either, as it returned for a victory lap the following year with its Blood and Wine expansion. Like the base RPG, Blood and Wine won Best Storytelling and Best Visual Design, and Doug Cockle's performance as Geralt also won Best Gaming Performance.

That means that to date, The Witcher 3 has earned – count 'em – 10 wins at The Golden Joystick Awards. In fact, you can add on an extra two if you count the Studio of the Year awards given to CD Projekt Red in 2015 and 2016 – which, notably, the Guinness World Records does – bringing the total to 12.

Not that it needed it, but this latest victory puts even more distance between it and its previous competition, RPG rivals Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Including Larian's Studio of the Year award, Baldur's Gate 3 won seven awards in one night in a record for a single show back in 2023, which Clair Obscur matched last year.

Funnily enough, this may not even be The Witcher 3's final win. Its Songs of the Past expansion is set to launch next year, after all, and if that's as good as the previous offerings from CD Projekt Red, then that could well end up winning something, too.

The Witcher 3 mod swaps every single Griffin with the iconic low-poly pigeon: "He is back. And he is tired of being ridiculed."

Time marches onward, unyielding and unflinching. Somehow, Skyrim, the latest of the Elder Scrolls games, is now 15 years old. Yes, if it was a child, it'd be going through a moody phase right now, making questionable fashion choices and listening to music that seems expressly designed to annoy you.

On November 11, 2011, The Elder Scrolls 5 came out to a rabid audience of fantasy and RPG fans. Bethesda marked the fact it's somehow been a decade-and-a-half since then with some new artwork. I know, I'm surprised it's not another port too.

On social media, the studio posted a fresh image of a dragonborn facing a giant dragon. It's a bespoke piece of work to commemorate the occasion, created by Karl Fitzgerald, a well-travelled artist who's done a cavalcade of fantastical pieces, including a number around The Lord of the Rings, making him an ideal candidate.

"On this day 15 years ago The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim was released," writes the company. "Since that day the community has continued to grow into something truly special. Thank you for being a part of it."

Fitzgerald's work here is striking. I love the shading, it really makes the fire pop. Some other recent pieces of his include a concert poster for Foo Fighters and newer designers for Pan's Labyrinth and The Wicker Man. It's all gorgeous to look at, imbued with an old school sense of fantasy and adventure.

To me, this feels like it'd be a strong cover for a Skyrim novelization. Which is me basically saying I'd consider a print if they did a run. There was some chatter about a potential announcement from Bethesda to mark the enduring role-playing game being in its mid-teens, but since we just got the title of The Elder Scrolls 6 as part of the industry giant's 40th anniversary celebration, I suspect we'll be waiting before a substantial update comes around.

In the meantime, Skyrim is up to 80% off across all platforms right now. If you're already familiar, it might be time for a new file.

Skyrim lead doubted Todd Howard's constellation-based skill system, and then the RPG came out: "I was clearly wrong"

It's a special day today, because Skyrim is now 15 years old. Yes, I know - my back hurts too. This wondrous anniversary had people wondering whether Bethesda might do something to mark the occasion, such as revealing more The Elder Scrolls 6 news. Alas, that much definitely won't be happening.

Speculation was gaining momentum because, aside from the community's own hopes the company would mark a landmark birthday for Skyrim, podcast Kiwi Talkz teased a reveal of some sort. "There is an awesome announcement happening in the next two days that gamers will be happy about," Kiwi Talkz host Reece Reilly posted on Twitter on November 9.

He clarified soon afterward that this had nothing to do with The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel or Mass Effect, ruling out the big topics people were hoping for. Bethesda itself then stepped in to quell anticipation.

"We aren't going to have any big announcements tomorrow," an official account for the studio wrote on Reddit yesterday. "We're excited you’re excited but we will not be sharing anything new on Sentinel for some time."

Disappointing as this may be, I feel the need to remind people that this is the same company that took eight years to go from revealing that The Elder Scrolls 6 is in development to giving us the title and logo. And we've had a single crumb of lore around the game otherwise.

We're coming up on season three of Amazon's Fallout TV show, and there hasn't been a peep about when we might get big remasters of Fallout 3, 4, or New Vegas, never mind Fallout 5. Bethesda's notoriously quiet, and it's better to err on the side of hearing nothing than to set yourself up for disappointment.

If anything is revealed, it'll be a Skyrim remaster following Oblivion's. But even that seems unlikely. Maybe there's a surprise port literally in GTA 6 or something. At this point, I wouldn't count it out.

Skyrim's lead designer hopes The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel finally fixes the RPG series' "strange" ladder problem

The Outer Worlds 2 is finally getting its DLC. Obsidian has announced that Side Effects Guaranteed, the first of a "two-part expansion" series, will launch on December 2. The devs had been promising DLC since before launch as part of the RPG's $100 Premium Edition, but you'd be forgiven for worrying that those promises were forgotten amid the massive shakeup at the studio.

The first part of Side Effects Guaranteed will offer a new region to explore on Eden, a boosted level cap with new perks grab, four new flaws to spice up your build, new gear, and an additional radio station. The story will have you working with one of two Sub Rosa agents as you decide what to do with the hibernating crew of a derelict ship.

We spoke with Obsidian about The Outer Worlds 2 DLC shortly after the game's launch last year, and at that time they'd only begun to sketch out plans for the expansion. But at least one thing has carried over from those high-level ideas: "Maybe we'll lean a bit harder into some of the more minor factions, like Sub Rosa, and build them out a little bit," game director Brandon Adler told us in 2025, and that part of the plan seems to have borne out.

But a lot has happened at Obsidian since we had that chat. It's now under Bethesda's direct management and working on a new Fallout game as part of Xbox's big shakeup. Obsidian was not immune to the mass layoffs at the publisher, and seemingly had an Avowed sequel stripped away as Xbox pointed it to return to the more lucrative Fallout franchise.

While The Outer Worlds 2 was one of our favorite games of 2025, it never appeared to make much of a splash among the broader gaming community. Its fans feared that slow sales might lead to the DLC being canceled, and there's still some fear that the expansions have been truncated so Obsidian can move onto Fallout more quickly.

Obsidian will keep its "creative identity" under Bethesda, Fallout and Elder Scrolls boss says in leaked memo

Making games like Skyrim requires a lot of collaboration. Disagreement is inherent to such projects, and in one instance, a tenured Bethesda developer remembers not seeing Todd Howard's vision for character progression before players demonstrated it was the right course to take.

Bruce Nesmith, a designer who worked on Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim at Bethesda, explained the situation on The Examined Game podcast. "Todd had this vision for how the constellations would reflect your skills," he starts.

"He was looking at the art and wanted the art to drive some of how the skills related to one another," he continues. "I was like, 'No, you're going up you're looking at these, why can't we just put a list out, it's far more functional. People are going to get confused by these constellations, it's not going to work, I'm not seeing it.'"

Skyrim's skill trees being literally made up of stars in the night sky was a visual leap from the number sets of Oblivion. It's an eye-catching approach, and I remember it took me a second to get used to what I was seeing. But once I did, I enjoyed the added flair, and plenty of others did too, according to Nesmith, who wound up with a little egg on his face.

"I held that all the way through production, and the game gets out there, and people loved the constellations," he recalls. "They thought they were fantastic. I was clearly wrong."

He credits Howard with having both the better idea and the leadership position to take the risk on it. A foundational requirement of good collaboration is someone at the helm who can sense what the right direction is when there are split decisions, regardless of who comes up with it. This is one instance where Howard had the pleasure of being both.

We'll see what lays in store in The Elder Scrolls 6, and who'll take the blame for the problems. Howard seems like a good default candidate either way.

Skyrim lead can't wait to play The Elder Scrolls 6 Sentinel because he didn't work on it: "It's a good time for someone else to take those reins"

A former Mass Effect lead has said that Clair Obscur is a good example of what a team could do with a lower budget Mass Effect 5.

Last week BioWare co-founder Trent Oster said that saving Mass Effect 5 – after EA abruptly closed the beloved RPG studio last month – would cost over $200 million to happen due in part to fan expectations of a premium AAA experience, with him noting this would also factor into having "a bigger plan in place for the IP."

Christina Norman – who was the lead cinematics programmer on Mass Effect and lead gameplay and systems designer on Mass Effect 2 and 3 during her tenure at Bioware – reacted to this in a Tweet by sharing a report about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The article in question was about the game's budget being under $10 million, with the record-breaking RPG being able to deliver scale and visual fidelity on a budget that is way below a lot of AAA games these days.

Norman adds "This is a good example of why I think another mass effect game could be made for well under 200 million." She adds, "I mean 5x the budget of Claire Obscure[sic] Expedition 33 should be more than enough." And while you have games like Marvel's Wolverine with a rumored budget of up to $300 million which didn't necessarily land with players, Clair Obscur proves, in Norman's words: "You can always spend more but clever small teams can get it done."

Unfortunately, as anyone who is a fan of Command and Conquer, American McGee's Alice, Burnout, Dungeon Keeper, Dead Space, SSX, Wing Commander, Sim City, Syndicate, Ultima, and a number of other franchises that help me inflate my wordcount will tell you, EA likes to hang onto its IP. So unfortunately, the idea of a new Mass Effect developed independently of EA seems low, no matter the budget.

Canadian politician tears into EA and calls for federal support of BioWare: "These publishers buy developers, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for profit."

Years before The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, Todd Howard explained how Bethesda's progression philosophy had changed between Oblivion and Skyrim.

Speaking to Official PlayStation Magazine in Spring 2011, Howard explained what was changing in his hot new RPG, Skyrim, which was set to release later that year. In Oblivion, he said, they'd learned that players repeatedly got buyers' remorse when it came to picking their skill paths.

"What we found in Oblivion is that you start the game and you pick what you want to look like, and that gives you a bunch of preset extra abilities," he explained. "And then you play for a while, and later on in character gen, depending on how you play it [...] it asks you what your class is, and then you pick the skills that are important to you. But if you weren't expecting that menu, then you would have just kept playing and getting better at the things you were doing."

That system - of letting your playstyle inform your skills - is what Bethesda adopted for Skyrim, which Howard said "lets you play around but then never asks you what's important to you." The result is a "much more elegant" levelling experience that says "'just keep playing and whatever's important you will factor into your level'." That didn't happen in Oblivion, where people would play for a while, select their skills, and then potentially discover hours later that "'I chose wrong' [...] and then you start over. So you get this loop of playing the game for three hours, then realizing that was a waste of time."

"As developers, we don't want that scenario," Howard said then. At that point, months before Skyrim would release and what would eventually prove to be nearly two decades before we'd see The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, it was clear that Bethesda was still rolling with the punches, adapting quickly between RPGs which were still launching every few years. That overhaul would end up being a big part of Skyrim's appeal, and combined with its expanded radial quest system allowed Bethesda to capture a sense of true freedom across its open world.

But it's already been 15 years since Skyrim, triple the gap we had to wait between Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls 5. And since then, RPGs have changed massively, with titles like The Witcher 3 pouring depth into their quest designs, and the likes of Elden Ring and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 offering players the chance to laser-focus into specific build paths and specialisations. Starfield made moves in that direction, walling the progression of certain skills behind unlocking them first, but it seems unlikely that Bethesda will be looking to repeat much of its middling sci-fi foray in its tentpole fantasy series. The sheer amount of time since Skyrim means Sentinel will be forced to overhaul a lot of The Elder Scrolls, and it'll be fascinating to see what Bethesda comes up with this time.

Our first crumb of The Elder Scrolls 6 lore is a Hammerfell quote dated 5 years after Skyrim.

Having spent decades working on Bethesda games, including many of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout releases, Bruce Nesmith knows a thing or three about solid RPG design. Naturally, then, he became enthralled by Baldur's Gate 3 just like the rest of us, largely because of how it rejected principles of his former workplace.

In an interview with The Examined Game, Nesmith discusses what he enjoyed about Larian Studios' take on the world of Dungeons & Dragons. "Bethesda Games have always had the philosophy of, let the player play everything," he explains.

"You can play the entire thieves guild, you can play the entire fighters guild, you can play the entire mages guild, there is nothing your character can't play," he continues. "That's a very good philosophy, I support that philosophy. But I was pleasantly surprised to see how positive it felt to me to make consequential decisions that closed off gameplay in Baldur's Gate 3."

Larian's sprawling fantasy RPG is very decision-focused. Your choices, through dialog and actions, consistently dictate the narrative for you, requiring multiple playthroughs if you want to see every which way the central plot can go.

Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallouts 3 and 4 are more streamlined, even though there are some forks in the road across each. It's worth highlighting Morrowind here, because you can only join one of the three great houses in the game, introducing some consequences to your actions, but minimally compared to Larian's web of storytelling.

"That felt good, because it was done well," Nesmith goes on. "I felt like the decisions I made had more meaning in certain ways, because there were actual consequences, and if I wanted to see that other gameplay, I'd have to bring up another character and try different paths."

It's no wonder that the average Baldur's Gate 3 playtime on Steam is north of 100 hours. People complete it, then circle back to see what else they can get up to. But the big question now is: Who did Bruce romance? Anyone in the know is free to contact me.

Baldur's Gate 3 has sold over 23m copies and made around $1.2b so far, analyst claims - but only 1% of players have crossed the 500 hour mark in playtime.

As you explore Whale Island, Beyond Nen codes and their rewards are essential to be able to kit yourself out with the best Nen available. You'll challenge other players to battle in the arena as you train for your Hunter exam, but you won't be ready for the test until your build is perfect.

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If you're after some more general avatar rewards to use in all of your experiences, then we've got the current Roblox promo codes covered too.

All Beyond Nen codes

These are the Beyond Nen codes you can redeem right now:

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Keep in mind that Beyond Nen codes are case-sensitive, so you have to enter them exactly as they appear above.

How to redeem Beyond Nen codes

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Expired Beyond Nen codes

• 20KLIKES - 10x Spins
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Beyond Nen codes expire after some time, come sooner than others, so it's worth redeeming any codes you see as soon as you see them to avoid missing out.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The headwinds of the industry led to the closure of BioWare recently, and the latent Mass Effect 5 – known internally as Mass Effect Universe – went with it. We may never know exactly what the devs were putting together for the sequel, but details are dripping out, the latest being that it would've tied into the planned Amazon TV show in some way.

Michael Gamble, former project director and executive producer at BioWare, addresses a fan on Twitter asking if the Mass Effect Universe plot would be used for the show. "Both are meant to compliment each other," he responds.

That's a fascinating wrinkle. It seems like the two productions were collaborating together to some degree, if only to keep each other informed of their narrative intentions. Among the other titbits we've learned about the fifth Mass Effect is the notion that it would've involved a multiverse.

Apparently you would've been able to jump across timelines somehow. The exact mechanics for how are unknown, but on top of anything else, this means every possible outcome from the original trilogy is technically canon. Clever, because I lowkey dreaded seeing the discourse tear itself open once everyone saw which of the endings from Mass Effect 3 BioWare favored.

Details of what's going on with the TV adaptation are scant. Amazon and MGM announced the production back in 2024, and progress has been slow since. However, reports have emerged that it's still on the docket and moving forward, with showrunners Doug Jung and Daniel Casey in tow.

When we see it is anyone's guess. Thankfully, we're at a point where many video game adaptations have proven lucrative, which means the likelihood this quietly disappears is smaller. Gamble's comment is being shared around with the idea that gives hope to saving Mass Effect.

I'm not sure about that, but at least the franchise will live on in some form. It's ironic really, since one of the reasons I fell in love with the first game is that it felt like the Star Trek RPG I hadn't gotten before. Now it might just be the new Star Trek show I've been yearning for.

Canadian politician tears into EA and calls for federal support of BioWare: "These publishers buy developers, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for profit."

A popular Mass Effect 3 mod that overhauled the trilogy's final mission to protect Earth is even bigger now. To mark this year's N7 Day, the modding team have buffed out the threequel's divisive conclusion further.

The Take Earth Back mod was first uploaded onto NexusMods for 2021's N7 Day, and originally planned to "address one of the weakest sections of Mass Effect 3 - Priority: Earth." In case you need reminding, that's the section where Shepard and all of the factions that they've won over throughout the entire trilogy come together to hold off the Reapers.

"Bioware's mission was adequate, but it didn't account for the war assets you collected across the trilogy," the mod's description reads. "Take Back Earth primarily focuses on these with an overhaul of the Earth hub to feature more than 28 war assets, as well as cut content restorations, new interactive conversations, new cutscenes and more. Additionally, the Hades gun sequence and beam rum have had minor overhauls, and the mod is built from the ground up to work for vanilla players."

Now, we have Take Earth Back 2. Top of the list of changes - Hackett's speech and the Hammer Landing sequence have been expanded. Before the true battle even begins, the modders have also created a new war asset selection system, so you can properly assign your allies onto a holographic chess board of sorts. Of course, the available assets all depend on your decisions across the trilogy.

If that's not enough, whichever assets you choose will actually show up on the battlefield. So, you might see Salarian's providing covering fire from above or geth soldiers jumping in to help. There's also at least one brand new cutscene and foot soldiers change appearance depending on your choices, too.

That'll do it - time for yet another replay, I think.

The trailer (above) also draws attention to the growing Save Mass Effect movement, which includes a petition that has well over 300,000 signatures and counting. Despite BioWare's demise and Mass Effect Universe's cancelation, this N7 Day inspired lots of former Mass Effect developers to speak about their love of the series.

BioWare fans place tombstones outside EA offices as Mass Effect 5 hopefuls leave graffiti demanding revival of the now-dead RPG

Every year, N7 Day (November 7th) sees fans celebrate and reminisce on the fantastic Mass Effect series, but this year's milestone is a little different - it's the first without developer BioWare, which was recently closed at the hands of parent company EA. And as expected, love from former developers was pouring in from all sides.

Original Mass Effect game director Casey Hudson (who also led development on Star Wars: KOTOR) is pretty hopeful for the sci-fi universe's future. "Doesn't feel right to say 'happy' N7Day this year, but I'm optimistic that Mass Effect will live on! When Mass Effect makes its triumphant return, it will be thanks to the outpouring of love from players around the world," he tweets. "Thank you for sharing what it means to you."

Mass Effect 5 - or Mass Effect Universe - project lead Michael Gamble gave a big thank you to fans over on social media: "You all are truly amazing. The love and passion for this…universe…is incredible. Even in worst days, we could always count on you. To all the stories left untold. Happy N7 Day."

The original trilogy's composer Sam Hulick reveals that he had actually been chatting to BioWare about returning to write music for Mass Effect 5, via a new blog, though nothing had been set in stone. To celebrate N7 Day, Hulick's blog post also includes a re-scored version of the leaked Mass Effect Universe trailer - those bouncing dark synths at the end are just chef's kiss.

"I knew BioWare wanted to do something new with the music, and I wanted to be conscious about not just repeating the same formula used in the original trilogy," the composer says. "Fans really loved the ME1 end-credits song by Faunts, and I thought it would've been incredible to bring more songs with lyrics into the game. This would’ve been a great way to highlight more emotional moments in the narrative."

Former BioWare narrative designer Michael Tucker tweets that working on his favorite series ever was the "chance of a lifetime" and the experience was "nothing less than a dream come true."

"I'm proud of the work we did. I'm proud that as a fellow fan, every decision I got to make was aimed directly at delivering an unforgettable experience for the Mass Effect fans. What a gift it was to have that be my job for five years," he writes.

Mass Effect: Annihilation novelist and one of the writers on the cancelled Mass Effect 5, Catherynne M. Valente, published a pretty substantial blog post for N7 Day. "I've lost count of how many times I've typed the word 'devastated' over the last two weeks," she writes. "Maybe that sounds silly. You can call it 'just a video game' all you want, but it will never, ever be just a video game to me."

Ex-BioWare animator Jonathan Cooper even released a rare, "very pre-alpha internal trailer intended to highlight the cinematics" of the original trilogy games. It's embedded above and worth a watch.

Canadian politician tears into EA and calls for federal support of BioWare: "These publishers buy developers, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for profit" | GamesRadar+

Skyrim's lead designer has shared what he hopes to see in The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel - top of the list: better mounts and, erm, ladders!

Bruce Nesmith was one of the lead developers on arguably Bethesda Game Studios' most enduring hit, the high fantasy open world of Skyrim, but his hopes and dreams for Sentinel are a little more modest than you might expect. While some fans are running wild with lore theories and hopes for ambitious new mechanics like sailing, Nesmith just wants to be able to climb ladders.

Speaking to The Examined Game (below), Nesmith says the request is "a very strange one," but not being able to climb ladders "really limits the art team in terms of how you can do multi-layer [environments]." There's a very good reason why Skyrim didn't let you properly climb up and down ladders, however.

"All the ladders in Skyrim, you click on the ladder, poof, you're at the top or you have to climb a stair. But to do ladders, you have to deal with a whole host of questions which our programmers very legitimately put in front of us and said, 'You give me answers to these, I'll tell you how much programming time it's going to take to make them.' And you know, that caused problems right there," Nesmith explained.

He then points to what would happen if an NPC is halfway down a ladder as you decide to climb up, and all the development questions that pop up from that seemingly small scenario: "Does the player go through the NPC? Is he blocked by the NPC? Does the NPC stay on the ladder? Does the NPC go back up and know to wait and then come back down?[...] And I'm just scratching the surface of some of the problems they brought up. So, it seems simple. and other games have climbing ladders, but we chose to put our efforts into other things to make them better."

The Bethesda veteran says the small change could really "make the world feel a little more immersive" and affect how the team can design environments. His other small request is a "better implementation of mounts," which he acknowledges is a "common complaint" among Skyrim fans.

"I'm not alone in that. But it turns out mounts are tricky. They're really tricky. There's a lot of hard decisions to be made in those. You can ride a horse, but that's all you can do in Skyrim," he says. "I should be able to do some other things with the horse, too, like maybe fight on the horse or have it fight with me."

Bethesda wants you to "show off your excitement" for The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel by spending $35 on a T-shirt

David Gaider is one of BioWare's most notable writers. After cutting his teeth on Baldur's Gate 2, he wrote some of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic's most memorable characters, and would go on to lead the narrative for Dragon Age: Origins, setting the tone for BioWare's original fantasy franchise. Gaider notably never worked on Mass Effect, but he's getting the chance to channel its spirit as part of the writing team for The Expanse: Osiris Reborn.

"Alongside my work at Summerfall, I've also been collaborating with the Owlcat Games team on The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, focusing on certain aspects of the game's narrative," Gaider says in a Bluesky post. "The Expanse has long been one of my favourite series, and so obviously I jumped at the opportunity to be involved."

It's tough not to think about Mass Effect when looking at Osiris Reborn – after all, it too is a sci-fi RPG that controls like a third-person shooter where you build relationships with a cast of companions. The connection became even more direct last month, when developer Owlcat threw its own support behind the Save Mass Effect movement.

Gaider's involvement certainly adds to the bona fides of Osiris Reborn, and Owlcat's increasingly successful history with old-school CRPG throwbacks like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Wrath of the Righteous, and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader suggests that the sci-fi RPG could be a breakout. A beta released earlier this year was janky but promising, and the developer has been proactive about responding to feedback ahead of the game's planned release next year.

For details on that other big Mass Effect-like, check out our guide to Exodus.

Suddenly, the vibe around the #SaveMassEffect movement has shifted.

At first, it seemed like little more than a grabby hashtag allowing Mass Effect fans to have their voices heard after EA's shocking closure of BioWare and cancelation of Mass Effect 5 last month. But since then, the Change.org petition has racked up more than 300,000 signatures, and now the Canadian government is being forced to acknowledge the situation.

That's because a separate petition asking the Government of Canada for federal support for BioWare has far surpassed the amount of signatures required (3488 currently with a 500-vote threshold) to be certified and presented in the House of Commons. The rules of the Parliament say "the government must respond to every petition presented to the House within 45 calendar days of its presentation or filing with the Clerk."

The petition for federal support isn't about saving Mass Effect specifically, but securing financial support so that BioWare can go independent. It has three stated goals: "Provide BioWare with the capital necessary to secure independence of themselves and their intellectual property from Electronic Arts and resume business as an independent, Canadian company," "Protect Canadian businesses and cultural institutions from being dictated by American and foreign corporate interests," and "Champion the values of inclusivity, tolerance, democracy, justice, and civil rights at the centre of Canada's national identity by preserving BioWare's invaluable contribution to the global entertainment industry."

The fact that the Canadian government is now required to respond the petition is encouraging enough, and now the Member of Parliament representing the official request is voicing his support for BioWare, Mass Effect, and the overall movement online. In a scathing rebuke of EA's treatment of BioWare, New Democrat Parliamentary (NDP) leader Don Davies voices support for the Save Mass Effect movement explicitly and directs users to his Linktree, where the government petition is linked.

"BioWare is an Edmonton-based video game studio that created acclaimed series like #MassEffect, Baldur’s Gate, and Dragon Age," Davies writes. "Canada’s video game industry creates some of our most important cultural exports, and #BioWare was among our greatest success stories."

"BioWare’s US parent company, EA, has decided to close the studio. These publishers buy developers, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for profit. There's a pattern of US companies buying Canadian businesses and shutting them down, costing Canadians their jobs.

"The developers at BioWare know how to run their studio. They know how to make the games that fans love. They should be given the first opportunity – and the federal support – to buy it and run it themselves."

While this is all very exciting and validating for BioWare fans, it doesn't mean the studio is coming back any time soon. The NDP isn't in power in Canada currently and has lost its official party status with just five of the 343 seats in the House of Commons. And even if this petition somehow prompted coordination from the highest levels of the Canadian government, EA still owns the rights to BioWare's IP, and until it shows any willingness to sell anything off, which it's notoriously reluctant to do, fans are at its mercy.

Still, the dual petitions to save Mass Effect and get funding for BioWare are worthwhile endeavors, and the louder they become, the more likely it is that change happens, whether it impacts BioWare specifically or other game studios. And for that reason, I'm choosing to mentally file this as unequivocally good news.

Saving Mass Effect 5 would cost over $200 million, BioWare co-founder says, because fans will want "the best of 'AAA' development"

Now that Bethesda has finally given us more word on The Elder Scrolls 6 with the reveal of its official title, Sentinel, the RPG is back in the limelight and fans' minds – including former developers' own, too.

Former Skyrim lead designer and studio veteran Bruce Nesmith is one such dev, speaking in a new interview with The Examined Game over on YouTube about how he thinks his experience with the sixth Elder Scrolls entry will be – seeing as, you know, this'll be the first in years he's not worked on himself.

It's safe to say that he's excited, too… this time as a fan, much like us, rather than as a dev sitting through his own game.

"I think the day that Elder Scrolls 6 comes out, I will be right at the front of the queue downloading a copy and wanting to play it because I haven't gotten to play an Elder Scrolls game that I didn't work on," as he says.

After all, the series features "some of the greatest games ever made" – but "by the time they came out, I was already sick to death of them," Nesmith admits. "I already put in 3-400 hours into them."

That's also "not counting their early years when they were just broken, because every game starts broken." Boy, does that ring true, eh? I remember my horse flipping upside down into the ground in Skyrim outside of Whiterun – fun times.

There's no hard feelings over on Nesmith's end, either: "If I had only ever done one Bethesda game, it would probably chafe at me a little bit, but I've done a lot of Bethesda games, so I'm just excited."

He feels fulfilled already, put simply.

"I'm just happy. I worked on Oblivion. I worked on Skyrim. I worked on Fallout 3. I worked on Fallout 4. I worked on Starfield. I worked on all of these. Now I get to do one where everything feels fresh and new, and I get to see how someone else does things in a new way. No matter how much you try to keep things fresh as a human being, you're limited that way."

So, as Nesmith concludes, it's "a good time for someone else to take those reins and do things and show me the better way. I'd love to see that. I'm excited to see that." I'm no dev myself, but I get it – I'm certainly looking forward to The Elder Scrolls 6, too.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel may spotlight a major Skyrim MacGuffin or even feature sailing, theorists speculate after Bethesda's minute-long teaser.

The organizers and supporters of the growing #SaveMassEffect movement have two stated goals: Get EA to commit to funding more Mass Effect games, or sell or license the IP to another developer. There are more granular achievements already happening with the accumulation of more than 300,000 signatures on Change.org, but the main ambition is right there in the hashtag circulating like a virus online: fans want to save Mass Effect, but unfortunately anyone willing and legally able will need some seriously deep pockets, according to BioWare co-founder Trent Oster.

The cancelation of Mass Effect 5 is one of the great tragedies stemming from EA's abrupt closure of beloved RPG studio BioWare, but some people, including former Dragon Age lead Mark Darrah, have suggested EA could sell franchises and license out rights to series like Mass Effect so that they can continue under new leadership. Others have cast doubt on the idea, however, and even if EA were willing to sell, it sounds like there might not be many studios with the money to buy the IP and develop a new Mass Effect.

"The scary component of Mass Effect is the audience is going to want the best of 'AAA' development," Oster says on Twitter, seemingly in response to the #SaveMassEffect movement, which he recently threw his support behind. "Rough ballpark (based on contemporaries) is $200M+. That is a big number to commit up front. There has to be a bigger plan in place for the IP to make the math work."

As my colleague Jasmine Gould-Wilson points out, games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Fable are proof that IP can make triumphant comebacks in the right circumstances. Wizards of the Coast handed Larian the rights to the D&D IP to make Baldur's Gate 3 and Microsoft tapped Playground Games to make Fable after shutting down original developer Lionhead in 2016, but there's a big difference with Mass Effect, and it rhymes with electronic farts. EA is famous for sitting on long-dormant IP instead of selling it, and it's given little indication that it's willing to make an exception in this case.

However, if EA were to sell the rights to Mass Effect, Oster reckons it wouldn't necessarily cost $200 million to make a new game in the series, provided the IP winds up in the right hands. "That said, I think it can be done well for less than that amount with a disciplined approach and an experienced team," he says. Let the hopium begin.

BioWare might be dead, but that won't stop its official store from selling you new Mass Effect merch ahead of N7 Day

N7 day, the annual celebration of all things Mass Effect, is going to hit a little different this year. Before EA killed BioWare, we might've expected to get a teaser for Mass Effect 5, but because that game is now canceled, well, let's just say the vibes in the RPG community will probably be a little askew on November 7. That said, if you're a merchandise store with a licensing agreement from EA that hasn't expired yet, the vibes are going to be downright celebratory, as the Official BioWare Gear Store, "powered by DPI Merch," has some new and returning Mass Effect goodies it just dug out from BioWare's freshly buried grave.

Most of the merch available on the BioWare store has been around forever, as the storefront has been chugging along all the while, but the hot ticket item for this year's N7 Day is likely to be the replica of the helmet worn by Commander Shepherd in Mass Effect. The helmet was first made available in 2021, but it's available for pre-order again via the BioWare store for, brace yourselves, one hundred and seventy-five big ones, or American dollars.

"The galaxy doesn't wait for the faint of heart, and neither does the Mass Effect N7 Wearable LED Helmet," reads the product description. "This isn't just a collectible — it's a reckoning. Whether you bled Paragon blue or burned Renegade red, your path through the Reaper War is cast in detail that honors every impossible decision you made along the way."

There's a bunch of other stuff on sale for N7 Day including branded clothing and accessories, but it's becoming increasingly hard to write about this incredibly tone-deaf merchandising push while BioWare fans are still mourning the abrupt closure of the studio and former employees scramble to find work in the wake of EA's bloodbath. It's worth noting that it's unclear how much EA is actually involved in sales like this one, as it's all run by DPI Merchandising, but it's a deeply uncomfortable 'celebration' regardless. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say maybe N7 Day should've just been canceled this year.

Mass Effect can still live on – Baldur's Gate 3 and Fable are proof

PATCH NOTES 5.11.2026 – Following developer BioWare's closure under EA, a fan-made petition to "#SaveMassEffect" is gaining momentum. Its ultimate goal – encouraging EA to either resume development on now-canceled Mass Effect 5 or sell the IP to another studio – is a tough sell, especially given the publisher's track record. But the petition's popularity has opened an exciting new door for the RPG franchise: the opportunity for rebirth.

What's going on in gaming this week?

• After Mass Effect 5's cancelation, a Bioware co-founder is so touched by the #SaveMassEffect movement that he wants to reconnect with OG members of the dev team.
• CD Projekt Red keeps adding to its host of RPG experts, with ex-Kingdom Come: Deliverance devs added to its star-studded roster.

Why is this happening now?

• One of the petition's goals is to get EA to sell Mass Effect to a studio like CDPR, which continues to prove itself a home for RPG specialists.
• Hope has been rekindled for original BioWare and Mass Effect writers to band together once more, keeping a candle lit for the series' resurgence someday.
• Industry trends mean an eventual reboot cannot be discounted – even if #SaveMassEffect's demands aren't immediately met.

Meta Shift

• #SaveMassEffect's power is in what the petition represents, as long as fans can play the waiting game.

The news of BioWare's shuttering and the subsequent cancelation of Mass Effect 5 Universe was a bitter pill to swallow. So much so, many RPG fans refused.

#SaveMassEffect, a petition to rescue the canned franchise from EA's video game graveyard, has over 300,000 signatures on Change.org at the time of writing. These are promising numbers, but what hope does the petition have of actually meeting its goals?

The chances of EA selling or licensing Mass Effect to another developer or publisher are extremely slim. EA's habit of sitting on its sunsetted franchises has been widely reported over the years, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Fans are eyeballing studios like Larian and CD Projekt Red for the task all the same, though each studio is hard at work on their own RPGs.

But this might not be the end of Mass Effect, because games get rebooted all the time. Look at how Xbox is reviving Fable under Playground Games after original developer Lionheart shut down in 2016. Or how Larian Studios was chosen to develop Baldur's Gate 3, the first two games having been developed by BioWare in partnership with lapsed license-holders Interplay. EA even brought Dead Space out of a 10-year dormancy to remake the first game in the trilogy. #SaveMassEffect shows that there is still overwhelming passion and desire for a continuation of the RPG series – we just might need to be patient.

Patch Notes summary

Two weeks later, the buzz around #SaveMassEffect is still resounding. There's no telling if EA will reconsider its actions or acknowledge the petition at all, but whether or not it succeeds is beside the point. Its popularity speaks to the unified strength of players' voices in showing discontentment with corporate moves in an industry that continues to be rife with layoffs, studio shutdowns, and cancelations, as well as how important this franchise is to so many.

If it inspires even one handful of BioWare devs not to give up hope, which seems to be the case for its co-founder, it might be enough to keep Mass Effect's spirit alive long enough to see it resurrected sometime in the future. Even if, like Baldur's Gate, it might take a decade or two.

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Bethesda has finally given us the tiniest morsels of information about The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, including the title and a few teasers about the lore. What are we to do with all this new-found excitement over the upcoming RPG? Well, Bethesda has a suggestion: you should probably buy a $35 T-shirt emblazoned with the game's logo.

Yes, the official Bethesda Gear store is now selling a Sentinel tee, which features the game's sparse logo on a black shirt. "Your next journey through Tamriel will be in The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel," the store page promises. "Show off your excitement with the official tee!"

I think I'm pretty excited about Sentinel, though admittedly Microsoft's willingness to simply discard veteran Bethesda talent has tamped down my giddiness a fair bit. Still, I count Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim among my favorite games of all time, and I'm very eager to know what the studio's next RPG will look like. I just don't know if I'm "$35 T-shirt" levels of excited, you know?

But hey, T-shirts aren't the only option. You can also spend $65 on the official Sentinel hoodie! Sure, that's more expensive than the shirt, but at least it'll likely survive a few more trips through the wash. And hey, there's even a Klarna finance option that'll allow you to pay $11 a month for the the thing, if you want to enter into minor debt for your mediocre video game merch.

I am by no means immune to the allure of spending too much money on video game memorabilia – I bought that Legend of Zelda Switch 2 despite already owning the console since launch, after all – but there's something vaguely annoying about selling merch for a game that we still haven't seen a single screenshot of. Especially when the merch in question appears to simply be a cheaply made, screen printed bit of apparel.

The Elder Scrolls 6 reportedly targeting a 2029 release – 18 years since Skyrim and 11 years since its own reveal

One of the most regrettable casualties of EA's decision to shut down treasured RPG maker BioWare – well bellow the dozens of people who lost their jobs – was Mass Effect 5, the long-awaited sequel that was revealed in 2020. The project was canceled alongside EA's latest round of layoffs, but a coordinated social media effort to rescue it has attracted the attention and support of a BioWare veteran, studio co-founder Trent Oster.

According to his LinkedIn, Oster was director of technology at BioWare by the time the first Mass Effect came around in 2007, and his about page says he helped "establish the practices that scaled RPG development into billion-dollar franchises like Mass Effect and BioWare." He's best known as one of the key architects behind the early BioWare RPGs, including Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, the latter of which he directed, but he's definitely had his hands in the Mass Effect series as well. That makes this tweet from him, in which he seemingly throws his support behind the Save Mass Effect movement online, particularly noteworthy.

"I love seeing all the energy around #SaveMassEffect," says Oster. "I think there is a still a great thesis for a well-funded RPG developer who can deliver. Makes me want to get some of the original band back together."

I think I can speak for Mass Effect fans when I say the idea of rallying the original developers behind Mass Effect 5 revival efforts is incredibly exciting, but unfortunately I also am obligated to bring you all right back down to earth. EA still owns the rights to Mass Effect, and it would be out of character for it to sell the rights to another studio. That said, the organizers behind the #SaveMassEffect movement have started a petition on Change.org that's about to cross 300,000 signatures, and a separate petition from the same group seeking acknowledgment from the Canadian government just today reached a major milestone.

Whether Mass Effect 5 comes back from the dead or not, Oster isn't taking EA's shutdown of evidence that big-budget RPGs are going the way of the dodo. Quite the opposite, actually, as he seemingly agrees with a commenter arguing that there's an "RPG resurgence" happening right now. "Seeing BG3 sales numbers may have had an effect," Oster says about the current state of RPG development.

The Mass Effect series is "more valuable than Dragon Age," BioWare veteran says, and it's all thanks to its worldbuilding

After eight long years of silence, Bethesda finally lifted the veil on The Elder Scrolls 6 and its official title, Sentinel, yesterday – which, of course, means that fans are running wild online with theories about the studio's next RPG.

We know a few things about the game already (or, well, there are a few things we can assume after seeing Bethesda's new teaser). First, there's the setting: Sentinel. In other words, the oh-so long-theorized Hammerfell. Then, there's the potential time period.

The new teaser includes a quote from Yazar, Moth Priest of High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell, in 4E 206 – that's just five years after the events of Skyrim.

The quote itself? "The scroll offered only a shimmer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes. A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate."

Everything in between remains a mystery, however – a mystery that fans have taken to like flies. Over on Reddit, for example, folks have spotted Bethesda's official Spanish social media accounts alluding to "sailing," and are asking, "Did this Bethesda page just confirm sailing in the game?"

Others shoot this theory down, saying it can translate to a less literal meaning of "set sail" – as in, starting your adventure rather than literally sailing.

Over on X, fans are suggesting that we'll see NPCs from Skyrim in Sentinel since the possible times align so closely, like Erik the Slayer. After all, he mentions traveling to Hammerfell to "see what work I can get there."

Hammerfell is, evidently, where The Elder Scrolls 6 will take us.

There's more, too. While most of the teaser consists of sand and a glimpse of an Elder Scroll, the "rings" surrounding the Sentinel logo seem important – and, unsurprisingly, are reminding fans of Elden Ring in the process.

A separate post showcases as much, with its creator stating the rings have to "hold some significance," but "it's so vague it's hard to know where to start to connect the dots." One response suggests the Eye of Magnus.

Another simply leaves a screenshot of the Elden Ring logo, which, of course, features its own set of rings. The Eye of Magnus theory holds pretty well, though, if you ask me – it's even spurred a different thread comparing the artifact's pattern to the rings surrounding Sentinel… and, yeah, they look similar enough.

What could that mean? Some Psijic Order shenanigans? It's all up in the air until we get more word from Bethesda, sadly.

And, uh, that could be literally whenever. The Elder Scrolls 6 is reportedly targeting a 2029 release, apparently, which is a good 18 years after Skyrim and 11 years after Bethesda first unveiled its sixth Elder Scrolls RPG at E3 in 2018.

Sigh.

Bethesda immediately brings our Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel hopes back down to earth – "It'll be some time before we're ready"

I hope you all enjoyed yesterday's Elder Scrolls 6 news, because it sounds like it'll still be years before it actually releases.

That's according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who – after the game finally re-emerged yesterday with a new tease and official title confirmation – took to Bluesky with a warning for fans to keep their expectations about the game's launch window in check. "Sorry to say this game is still more than 2 years away!" he said at the time.

In a follow-up post, he clarifies that this isn't just his wild speculation, either. "It's not a prediction," he adds. "I know the time frame the game is targeting."

Mysterious. What's more, this sort of timeframe has also been corroborated by others. Windows Central's Jez Corden claims to have heard about a 2029 release window, while content creator JuiceHead says that "2029 is indeed the word on the block," but whatever he heard was from before Xbox got a new CEO in the form of Asha Sharma, and therefore also the company's big "reset" that commenced earlier this year, bringing mass layoffs and reorganization with it.

While Bethesda itself isn't giving official word on The Elder Scrolls 6's release plans right now, it's no surprise that the game is still a ways off. Following its latest news, the studio stated that "it'll be some time before we're ready to share more" – in other words, prepare for a longer silence.

More than eight years since that initial reveal, it's safe to say that fans have had some practice in that already. If that 2029 release window ends up being accurate, the RPG may end up launching a whopping 11 years after that first teaser, and a full 18 years since its predecessor, Skyrim. I can feel my bones turning to dust.

Our first crumb of The Elder Scrolls 6 lore is a Hammerfell quote dated 5 years after Skyrim.

Almost exactly 15 years on from Skyrim, the Bethesda dev responsible for the "infamous" Seven Thousand Steps at the Throat of the World says, "I did my darndest to find a way to fit all 7,000 steps into the storied path," but alas, it turns out that that's just rather a lot of steps.

In new dev insights shared by Bethesda in the wake of The Elder Scrolls 6's reemergence yesterday, associate art director Dan Lee discusses his impact on the 2011 RPG, noting that, "While not responsible for the rough layout of Skyrim's terrain, I was responsible for refining the shapes of High Hrothgar.

"I would look at the mountain from various viewpoints and tried to keep the shape interesting. My work on the 'Throat of the World' was not limited to sculpting the mountain, but also included cluttering and dressing the mountain with visual effects, plants, and objects," he continues. "This of course, included the infamous 7,000 steps."

Obviously, when you call a location "The Seven Thousand Steps," people are going to check your work, and fans have long since figured out that Bethesda didn't come close to making the name accurate. It's thought that there are between 700 and 800, instead. One intrepid adventurer did the math a month after the game's launch in 2011, and I feel compelled to share the workings they shared on Reddit nearly 15 years ago, which puts the count at 748 steps.

With that said, this wasn't due to a lack of trying from Lee. "I love trying to be as faithful to lore or real-life as possible and I did my darndest to find a way to fit all 7,000 steps into the storied path," the dev says. "However, my best attempt to do so included extending far past Ivarstead, wrapping around the mountain and ending near Whiterun in the frozen tundra. It turns out, 7,000 is quite a lot!"

So, at least there was an attempt. Lee also has an important clarification before anyone starts blaming him for a certain other notorious part of the path to High Hrothgar. "By the way, my work did NOT include enemy encounters, so I take no responsibility for the Frost Troll that was the woe of many players," he adds.

If Bethesda wants to add any similarly named locations to The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, I imagine it might be more likely to make sure they can actually live up to their titles. Despite getting a game title, we still know very little about it – but we do have our first crumb of lore, which will hopefully keep ravenous fans fed for a while longer.

Bethesda immediately brings our Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel hopes back down to earth – "It'll be some time before we're ready."

Larian boss Swen Vincke says the Divinity team still has "a lot of work" to do, suggesting the next game from the Baldur's Gate 3 team is probably still a while away.

Larian debuted its next title at The Game Awards 2025, with a massive blood and sex-filled trailer for Divinity that was as exciting as it was pretty disgusting overall. Naturally – even as someone who wasn't nearly as in love with Baldur's Gate 3 as everyone else seemed to be – the prospect of the next Larian game is enough to make it one of the most anticipated games on the way. But with Larian touting that it's "even larger than Baldur's Gate 3," the concern is that it may be a while away yet.

PC Gamer released its annual list of the top 100 PC games, with Baldur's Gate 3 topping the list yet again, and Larian's previous effort, Divinity: Original Sin 2, coming in at a respectable 11th place finish this year. This clearly pleases Vincke as he notes on Twitter that he is "proud to see" the two titles in high spots in the annual list.

"It's really encouraging to see our style of gameplay awarded like this," Vincke continues, saying the new Divinity "is built on the shoulders of these two by pretty much the same team together with a whole new group of very talented devs." However, this comes with a potentially heartbreaking addition: "We still have a a [sic] lot of work."

It's been three years since Baldur's Gate 3 released, so perhaps it's a bit pre-emptive to get hopeful for a release in the near-future, but Vincke is spelling that part out for us. Obviously, letting Larian cook is the right move, but that doesn't mean I can't hope.

At the very least, it's probably coming out before The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel does.

Bethesda has officially christened the next entry in its long-running fantasy RPG series The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel. This is our first meaningful bit of news on the game since the first brief teaser trailer the studio unveiled in 2018, but keep your hopes in check: even with the arrival of the series' 40th anniversary, this doesn't mean that Sentinel's release is imminent.

"Thank you for 40 years of shared memories," Bethesda says in a social media post. "We can’t wait to make even more together with The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. Development continues, and while it’ll be some time before we’re ready to share more, it feels great to finally reveal the name and location with you."

On Bluesky, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier is reiterating his previous assertion that the game is "more than 2 years away," and Bethesda's statement sure doesn't make it sound like it's any closer. We know that Sentinel is playable in some form, at least, as Xbox boss Asha Sharma recently boasted about a "live playthrough" that demonstrated "incredible" scale and an "even greater" story.

Bethesda has been one of many studios affected by Xbox's ongoing mass layoffs, and the developers who remain expect the cuts to "have a substantial and cascading effect on the game," potentially including further delays. I suppose Microsoft and Bethesda would argue that you can't actually delay a game that never had a public release date, but The Elder Scrolls 6 is already starting to be discussed in the same breath as Duke Nukem Forever and Beyond Good & Evil 2.

I hope Sentinel lives beyond those sorts of comparisons, but Bethesda has a lot to prove after Starfield disappointed so many of the studio's longtime fans. Kicking out veteran developers certainly won't make delivering on those expectations any easier.

Our first crumb of The Elder Scrolls 6 lore is a Hammerfell quote dated 5 years after Skyrim

Hark, it's a good day - we got slivers of information about The Elder Scrolls 6 from Bethesda. First, the game is actually called The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel, which is very nice to know, and we've also learned when it'll be taking place, and it's quite close to predecessor Skyrim.

Bethesda main man Todd Howard made the reveal himself in the studio's new video commemorating its 40th anniversary. Several key games across the company's lifespan were acknowledged, before Howard mentioned we'd learn the title in a short promo clip.

But then afterward came something for the aficionados - a quote from Yazar, Moth Priest of High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell. "The scroll offered only a shimmer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes," it reads. "A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate."

It comes from 4E 206. That stands out because it takes place exactly five years after Skyrim. Absent any other context, the year could be significant or just a minor detail.

If, for instance, that's when Sentinel takes place, it's the shortest gap between mainline entries. Skyrim takes place two centuries after Oblivion, which is only six years after Morrowind. The third Elder Scrolls entry is set 22 years after the previous game, and then there's another six-year jump between Daggerfall and Arena.

The fact it's from Hammerfell could be significant. We've only visited the region in Elder Scrolls Online since Daggerfall, creating a certain amount of potential for exploration.

Offhand, there really isn't enough information to say how this matters, leaving lore nerds to ruminate until Bethesda provides another clue in however many years. I'm curious about the use of a Moth Priest here as well. They're scholars of the literal Elder Scrolls, but we don't see them much. Perhaps now we'll go deeper on them and the Ancient Moth. One can only hope. But at least the series timeline just got another little bump.

After 29 years, a lost Easter egg in Bethesda's forgotten Elder Scrolls spin-off has finally been uncovered

The Elder Scrolls 6 is indeed titled Sentinel, just as rumors previously predicted – and Bethesda Game Studios has picked its big 40th anniversary celebration to reveal it.

Yes, that's right – nearly 15 years after Skyrim, we finally know what the next Elder Scrolls game is called: Sentinel.

Todd Howard unveils the title alongside a short clip of sand (likely alluding to both the "sands of time," so to speak, and perhaps the literal sands of the Alik'r Desert, considering the whole "Sentinel" and Hammerfell thing) and an Elder Scroll, dubbing Bethesda's 40th birthday the "perfect time to tell you what The Elder Scrolls 6 is actually called."

It's incredible to witness as an Elder Scrolls fan (despite how short it is, of course), as Howard himself recently told us to "just pretend we didn't didn't announce it" in regard to the sixth Elder Scrolls, stating that The Elder Scrolls 6 is still "a while" off – which, to be fair, it could very well still be, as there's no release date or window yet.

Again, we don't get too much out of the teaser in Bethesda's 40th anniversary celebration video on YouTube – but it's enough to send theories soaring here shortly, I'm sure, between the scroll, the evident setting, and the quote.

Yep, a quote – from Yazar, Moth Priest of High Queen Iradne of Hammerfell: "The scroll offered only a shimer, a veil thinly lifted to my eyes. A future lost. A victory undone. Sands of time scattered by fate."

Perhaps even more eye-catching than the quote itself is the date attached to it: 4E 206. In other words, just five years after the events of Skyrim where we played as the Dovahkiin (or, erm, continue to play if you're still hooked over a decade on like I am). it spurs a whole lot of questions about The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel and its mysterious premise.

And, although I'm a tad disappointed that we might be playing in a post-Skyrim Tamriel (look, I want to see the Dwemer and Falmer in action, okay?), I'm thrilled we've got anything at all from Bethesda aside from the reveal trailer we saw in 2018 during that one very fateful E3 showcase.

This is one of the biggest new games underway, after all – I'll take whatever I can get, Bethesda. I mean whatever, too.

After 29 years, a lost Easter egg in Bethesda's forgotten Elder Scrolls spin-off has finally been uncovered

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is one of the more polarizing releases in the beloved RPG series' history despite largely positive reviews, with the writing and story in particular being the most contentious talking point among fans. If former series boss Mark Darrah could point to a reason, and if he carried himself with literally zero humility, he'd probably say it's because he left developer BioWare in 2021 and only served as a freelance consultant on Dragon Age: The Veilguard in the final stretch of development. The fact that he wasn't one of the project leads meant the developers were within their rights to simply ignore his suggestions, and according to Darrah, they frequently did do that.

"There were lots of things that I made recommendations on that were not listened to," Darrah tells Eldorado.gg. "And in fact, in some cases, I would make a recommendation, it was ignored, and then a different group that was also helping would make the same recommendation, and then it was listened to. So it was definitely a frustrating experience for me."

Darrah previously attributed the downfall of Dragon Age to BioWare's preference for "simpler" and "more accessible" RPGs, which he said prevented it from having a major hit like Baldur's Gate 3.

Dragon Age, not to mention Mass Effect and other BioWare franchises, are back in the news following EA's abrupt closure of the studio and cancelation of Mass Effect 5. And before you put the blame on any one game, developer, or team within BioWare, it's worth noting the recently completed $55 billion leveraged buyout of EA by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partner.

Dragon Age veteran shuts down The Veilguard haters: "The majority of people on a team the size of Veilguard’s had little or no say in the things you disliked about it"

The Elder Scrolls only started to find mainstream success between the releases of Morrowind and Oblivion, but Bethesda was keen on expanding the series into a franchise well before that point. The 1997 release of An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire is rarely discussed these days, but it's been hiding a secret for over 29 years. Today, The Strong National Museum of Play has lifted the veil on a mysterious Easter egg that's been lost for decades.

If you're not familiar with Battlespire, it's essentially a linear dungeon crawler set in the world of the Elder Scrolls. It's still a first-person game that retains much of the crunchy RPG combat that defined Arena and Daggerfall, just within a much more constrained location. Battlespire's development was led by the "father of The Elder Scrolls," Julian LeFay, who died in 2025.

As documented on the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki, players have known for some time that there's an Easter egg in Battlespire involving a photo featuring a photo of some members of the development team. "It is not currently known how to get this Easter egg to display or if it actually functions in the final game," the UESP wiki laments. However, the mystery has finally been solved thanks to The Strong Museum, which has recently received a set of documents that belonged to LeFay.

On the eve of Bethesda's 40th Anniversary, a sneak peek at The Strong Museum's Julian LeFay papers looks at an Easter egg from An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire that has remained undiscovered for over 29 years.

— @borman.bsky.social (@borman.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-11-02T22:55:22.710Z

As explained in a Bluesky video from Strong director Andrew Borman, if you load into the game and hold down the number 1 on your keyboard as you type the word "spire," the dev photo will pop up on screen along with the caption "Battlespire rules!"

The degree to which Battlespire rules is somewhat questionable, since it received mediocre reviews upon release and was jointly credited – alongside Redguard – as the start of a down period for Bethesda that the studio only recovered from with the success of Morrowind. But Battlespire was the final Elder Scrolls game LeFay worked on as a Bethesda employee (though he briefly did contract work on Morrowind) and in many ways marks the final chapter of the series' early format.

The fact that Battlespire still had secrets to reveal after all these years is remarkable, and it's a testament to the lasting impact of the world LeFay ushered into existence that people still care to uncover them.

Todd Howard joins fans mourning "the driving force in the creation of The Elder Scrolls and the foundations of Bethesda as a game studio," Julian LeFay: "Without Julian, we would not be here today"

There was already considerable RPG pedigree at CD Projekt Red, but now it's gotten even stronger. Three lead devs from the company behind the Kingdom Come: Deliverance games were recently hired, making the available roster for Cyberpunk 2 and The Witcher 4 truly spectacular.

The first of the triumvirate of devs from Warhorse Studios actually made the jump over to Geralt of Rivia's domain back in November 2025, per LinkedIn. Karel Kolmann, a lead gameplay designer who worked on both Kingdom Come installments, is now at CD Projekt Red as a senior quest designer and has been for exactly one year.

Next to follow him was Zdeněk Glatz, a former lead level designer on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 who also contributed to the first game and helped sculpt the DLC. In May 2026, he stepped into the role of senior open-world designer within CD Projekt Red's machinations.

Lastly (for now), it's Zbyněk Zelinka, a lead technical designer at Warhorse who's now a senior gameplay designer for the home of Geralt and Cyberpunk 2077. He only joined properly in October, and he's got the least time at Warhorse of the three here, at seven years and ten months.

The other two are over eight years in their tenures for Henry of Skalitz. With so many years spent at one studio - a genuine rarity in the industry - I can very much imagine they were ready to try something different and expand their skillsets.

There's no telling right now what they've actually worked on, but since the remaster of The Witcher 3 has now shipped, and the Songs of the Past DLC is coming quite soon, it seems pretty likely at least one of them is working on The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2. Their expertise and talents will be an asset to whatever those teams are putting together; it's just a bummer we might be waiting a while still to see what they've all been up to.

Big RPGs like The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 have CD Projekt Red in a "dangerous place," warns BioWare veteran, with costs and sales expectations exploding

The closure of BioWare and cancellation of Mass Effect 5 that followed the EA buyout have understandably left countless longtime fans of the studio and RPG series distraught – so much so, in fact, some are expressing their disappointment physically.

You might already know about the Save Mass Effect petition, which has garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures worldwide and a plethora of strong supporters – including from fellow developers. It's safe to say that many folks are quite passionate about it, seeing as the wait between the fourth Mass Effect and Universe, as the fifth was confirmed to be called, has been nearly a decade in the making so far.

So passionate, it seems, that they're taking to EA's offices with spray paint in hand. As one person over on Reddit spotted in Madrid, Spain, "#SaveMassEffect" graffiti is visible on the stone walls and ground surrounding EA.

Commenters see fans questioning whether this is the way to go about reviving the RPG, but it's actually not the only instance of people voicing (so to speak) their thoughts directly at the publisher's offices.

As a separate post on Twitter highlights, some fans are placing physical tombstones outside of EA in memory of BioWare – and other studios – reading "RIP." Underneath, you'll spot a Mass Effect quote: "It had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."

It, admittedly, hits quite hard… and this example appears far more popular than the graffiti in Spain. As one comment reads, "Now this is good. We need more of this."

Will it catch the attention of EA, though? I suppose only time will tell. And, as it stands now, it doesn't seem too likely that another publisher or company could swoop in and buy BioWare in hopes of saving the Mass Effect team.

One former dev stated that "EA never actually sells anything" and we shouldn't expect a rekindling of Universe as "they just shut things down and sit on their licenses." I'm instantly reminded of American McGee's Alice, personally.

For the time being, I just hope that all affected devs are able to land on their feet. The fate of Mass Effect is certainly a sad one, but real people are struggling here as well amid all of the chaos – and that shouldn't be forgotten, either.

Mass Effect 5 studio reportedly toned down inclusivity with EA in mind "so as to not cause offense"

With BioWare gone after more than three decades of genre-defining hits, all eyes are now on the loveable worlds and universes the developer created. But is there any hope for an outside company to buy or invest in either Dragon Age or Mass Effect?

BioWare veteran and long-time producer Mark Darrah was asked that question shortly before his former employer's tragic shutdown, in an interview with Eldorado.gg, and he essentially explained that Dragon Age probably isn't as valuable as Mass Effect because it shares too much in common with other popular fantasy franchises.

"I would say Mass Effect as an IP, without the people attached to it, is more valuable than Dragon Age," Darrah says. "With Mass Effect, you're getting the worldbuilding. It's not that there's not a ton of worldbuilding in Dragon Age, but the worldbuilding in Dragon Age versus the worldbuilding in any Lord of the Rings game, or a Baldur’s Gate game, or a Witcher game - they are similar enough that it would be tempting to just do it again, just make another one, just make another new fantasy."

Darrah explains that a potential buyer would have to consider how much the Dragon Age IP costs to acquire, and then how many additional sales the Dragon Age name would even attract. "So let's say Larian [developer of Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity] decided they were going to buy Dragon Age and make another game. The question they have to ask is, 'If we were to do that, is it going to sell enough more copies than us just making Wyvern Era, a Dragon Age game with the serial number filed off, call it a spiritual successor to Dragon Age?'"

For most companies, the numbers don't quite add up, Darrah says. The majority of companies would likely be better off making their Dragon Age-inspired games, instead. "Because I think that the IP certainly carries a fan base, carries a legacy, and it carries an existing audience," he adds. "But unless you're like [former lead writer] David Gaider or someone with a track record with the franchise, you're not going to get those people coming along to a new Dragon Age game for free."

Dragon Age could have had its Baldur's Gate 3 moment, former lead says, but BioWare chose "simpler" RPGs that were "more accessible"

Skyblivion (the fan-made Oblivion remake that's being rebuilt inside of Skyrim) has been a long time coming, but we might need to wait a while longer for the conversion mod to see the light of day due to a new legal issue.

One of the ambitious project's lead modders, Rebelzize, today uploaded a video about the ongoing situation. "Recently, a former volunteer who contributed to Skyblivion's development departed the project. We want to be completely transparent with the community about what has happened since their departure," he explains in the description.

"After they left the project, we had several discussions regarding the continued use and maintenance of his work. The main disagreement centered on their objection to our decompilation of parts of their work — a necessary step our team took to maintain functionality and fix issues in systems already built into the project after access to the original source code repository was revoked," Rebelzize adds.

Rebelzize doesn't name the former modder in an effort to avoid creating an online "witch hunt," but they eventually sent the Skyblivion folks a series of legal threats demanding the real names and home addresses of several other volunteer team members - "something that we are simply not willing to share with somebody that we don't even know," Rebelzize says, calling the demands "disproportionate." The former modder is apparently looking to sue for damages worth upwards of €30,000.

"A 'take your ball and go home' approach like this fundamentally contradicts the collaborative, open spirit of the modding community that makes massive passion projects like this possible," Rebelzize continues. "To protect our volunteers from undue stress and ensure a clean break, in good faith we removed their code, rebuilding and improving the system from the ground up."

Despite removing their work from Skyblivion, the anonymous former volunteer has apparently "continued to intensify their threats." The Skyblivion team is now looking for help from anyone experienced in IP and GDPR law, pointing interested folks toward their official website.

Last year, it looked like a Skyblivion release date could be right around the corner. There's still no word on when we can expect the gorgeous fan-led revival, though.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel reveal reportedly coming soon, confirming a new Hammerfell setting as Bethesda shows off gameplay internally

Mark Darrah, the famously outspoken RPG veteran who steered the Dragon Age ship until his retirement a few years back, predicts Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic will feature a simpler, stripped-down story in response to what he sees as overstuffed writing in BioWare's more recent games.

Talking to Eldorado.gg, Darrah mused on the potential direction of Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic under former Mass Effect lead Casey Hudson's stewardship. Darrah wonders if Hudson could opt for a "KOTOR 3"-type spiritual successor or potentially, "something that looks a little bit more like Mass Effect with the Star Wars IP," adding that, ultimately, he doesn't know what the game will end up looking like. BioWare is obviously not involved, with development duties being handled by Hudson's Arcanaut Studios. That said, Hudson's involvement tells Darrah one thing about Fate of the Old Republic.

"One thing I can be confident of is that it's gonna be really good at cinematic storytelling, because that's something that Casey cares very deeply about," says Darrah "It's something that I am very confident that they will be spending a lot of effort on. So it will be a storytelling game, and it will do its storytelling effectively. In terms of what the structure of the game is around the storytelling, that's actually where I have almost no confidence. I have no idea. But it's like, will it tell a good story? Yeah, I'm really confident that it'll do that."

Asked if Hudson is taking any lessons he learned from his time at BioWare into Fate of the Old Republic, Darrah confirms, "Casey and I have talked," adding, "I think that he definitely is going to be looking at simplifying some of the way that storytelling is done. I think to some degree, you could argue that maybe BioWare has gotten a little self-indulgent in its storytelling. And I think that Casey maybe sees that a little bit as well. So there might be a stripping it back a little bit more towards a more simple hero's journey. I don't know. Maybe I'm putting words in his mouth."

Darrah's hesitation to presume too much aside, Dragon Age: The Veilguard has definitely taken a lot of criticism for its writing in particular, from bad faith takes on diversity in games to genuine disappointment from longtime fans. I'm not sure simplification is necessarily the most important lesson to be learned, but Fate of the Old Republic is in capable enough hands, I'd say.

One thing I'm happy about: Star Wars Fate of the Old Republic boss Casey Hudson is done with 100-hour games: "A lot of players just want to play something and finish it"

Patrick Stewart was best known for his numerous roles across film and television, including franchise-defining parts of X-Men and Star Trek, but he also appeared in several video games over the years. His most notable video game role is certainly in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where he played Emperor Uriel Septim VII, and he was apparently blown away by the detailed lore Bethesda had for his character.

In the wake of Stewart's death at the age of 86, fans have shared numerous memorable stories and anecdotes about the actor's life and career. One such story, which was spotlighted by Bluesky user shadowtodd, dates back to a documentary about the making of Oblivion, which was originally included on a bonus DVD in the game's original 2006 Collector's Edition.

In that documentary, a distressingly young-looking Todd Howard stands in front of a group of Bethesda developers and shows a photo of himself and his wife meeting Stewart. "Ken [Rolston, lead designer] had written a bunch of notes for Patrick Stewart on the character," Howard explained. "Very, very long. I thought it was embarrassingly long, actually."

It's important to remember here that, despite Stewart's stature, Uriel Septim's role in Oblivion is actually pretty small. (Spoilers, but he dies before the end of the tutorial area.) Nonetheless, extensive lore had already been built up around the character over the course of the previous three games, and despite Howard's misgivings it seems the team was keen for Stewart to see every detail.

"I had forwarded it all to Patrick," Howard said. "Patrick came in and said, 'I got the notes on the character.' I was sort of like [gestures nervously]. He's like, 'Never in my life doing any role have I gotten such detailed notes, and I loved it. I am really intrigued. This sounds really cool. You guys have given this a lot of thought. I can't wait to do it.'"

In another part of the documentary, which has been available in full on YouTube for years, we see the moment many of Bethesda's developers heard Stewart's lines for the first time. "He was selling the product like a reverend standing in front of his flock," Rolston noted, "which is exactly the tone I wanted."

Remember, ahead of Oblivion, Bethesda was only just beginning to emerge from years of making niche, fiddly PC games to develop something more mainstream. And even then, 'mainstream' was relative in those days – the documentary opens with Howard doing a bit of old-school handwringing about the perception that video games were still little more than kids' toys.

So you can understand why a room full of game developers raised on a steady diet of science fiction were so astounded hearing an actor as beloved as Patrick Stewart performing lines that they'd written. My favorite bit is when designer Mark Nelson reacts to the reading of "generals and kings have knelt at my command" from Stewart. "That's such a cheesy line that sounds good when he says it," Nelson remarked.

"There isn't another actor we could have picked who I'd be happier to write dialog for," Nelson explained. "Like, seriously, I geeked out over Star Trek for years. It was on while I was in college. Literally, all my friends [and] I would sit around and we'd watch Star Trek and drink beer and act like idiots. I don't have a picture of my wife in my wallet right now but I've got Patrick Stewart in my wallet."

To prove the point, Nelson pulled out his wallet and showed the weathered photo of Stewart he kept inside. "My wife will not be happy," he admitted.

Star Trek Online players gather to remember Patrick Stewart, with some hoping for a "permanent" tribute to Captain Picard from the MMO's devs: "You will be missed"

The Crimson Desert DLC allows you to get a pirate ship for yourself, a giant ship that you can use to explore and set up trade around the world. There are multiple types of ship that you can unlock along the way, and while most of these cost you money, Crimson Desert will set you up with a small ship as an (almost) free default – but that isn't your only option, and even then it's not easy to find that option. If you want to get the ship in the Charting the Unknown DLC, here's what you need to do.

For more about where to begin in this grand expansion, check out our guide on how to start the Crimson Desert DLC!

How do you get a ship in the Crimson Desert Charting the Unknown DLC?

To get a small ship in the Crimson Desert "Charting the Unknown" DLC expansion, as well as unlocking seafaring as a larger system, you need to take the following steps:

1. Make sure you've completed the Scattered Embers and Grounds of Sunrise quests (Hope From Ashes) associated with the Greymanes. These are part of the core game, but they appear to be mandatory to unlock the ship.
2. This should unlock a quest chain new for the DLC in Pailune city called Uncharting the Unknown (A Wider World) shown in the journal above, with the first mission being called "A Call from Beyond the Horizon".
3. Starting this quest will trigger conversation with your allies, followed by a task to go to Vellua port, marked on the Southern Coast.
4. Once you've arrived, inspect the port in the map to find a Dispatch Mission called "Small Shipbuilding."
5. This will cost your camp the following resources: 600 Stone, 600 Wood, 1,200 Food and 10,000 Silver. You'll also need to assign 5 Greymanes to it for 5 hours, and one must have the Engineering Skill.
6. Once complete, you will be given a ship, as well as a follow-up mission that teaches you how to use it called "Where the Wind Blows".

This is by no means the beginning and end of shipbuilding in Crimson Desert. From this point players will either be able to buy or construct larger ships, which will cost you increasingly large amounts of money and resources. You can either buy them from Fleet Offices, or through Dispatch Missions like the one where you bought your first ship.

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A Towerful of Mice is set during Keira Metz's storyline in Velen, and with a recommended level of six, is one of The Witcher 3's earliest ghost stories. Cobble together a haunted tower, frightened locals, and love persevering, and you're left with a traditional Gothic horror set in brackish Velen.

Our destination, Fyke Isle, is wreathed in fog. Sailing towards it, dark woods on either bank of a thin river, there are just two bright spots in the night – Geralt's bobbing white bun, and flashes of a pale drowner as it flits between the trees. I've completed A Towerful of Mice once before, but rather unhelpfully, the only part I remember is getting there via boat. Everything else is a mystery, but the basic premise is this: superstitious locals have asked sorceress-in-hiding Keira Metz to lift a curse from Fyke Isle. In turn, Keira asks Geralt for help – if only to keep the locals on-side while mage hunters scour the land.

Quest Log

Trick or treat

In the basement, ghostly peasants wonder why the room is packed with caged rats. Two flights of creaky stairs above, the nobleman's daughter pleads with her father to assist the locals. An unseen voice alerts them to the angry mob downstairs and their wispy shades disappear, but in the modern-day, a skeleton lies beneath a chair the nobleman was sitting in. By now, Fyke Isle's dread sits heavily: I'm jumping at every creaky floorboard and darting rat, and climbing up the tower feels as if I'm being drawn towards an unseen horror.

In that regard, A Towerful of Mice has more in common with classic ghost stories The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House than The Witcher. It's a testament to how rapidly CD Projekt Red can knit and swaddle us into a story. The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077's quests thrust agonizing decisions upon players, but their consequences are only so monumental because we've been made to care so quickly.

Spoilers ahead

Like many of The Witcher 3's quests, A Towerful of Mice's violence hides heartbreak. In a hidden laboratory at the top of the tower, the ghost of the nobleman's daughter, Anabelle, reveals herself. Speaking to Geralt, she recalls taking a paralyzing potion – made to look like poison – to avoid dying at the mob's hands. The mob leaves, but when Anabelle awakens much later, she's still paralyzed – and being eaten alive by rats. She died thinking her lover, Graham, abandoned her (he was part of the mob, albeit trying to stop it), and suggests the curse will be lifted if Geralt brings her remains for Graham to bury.

The story adds up, but something smells rotten. And while I don't remember how A Towerful of Mice goes, 160 hours spent in The Witcher 3 is enough for me to trust my gut. I turn down Anabelle, who then asks if Geralt will instead bring Graham to seek her forgiveness. That seems fair – assuming Graham is willing – so I row back across the river and find him in a small fishing village. Still traumatized by that night, Graham is eager to help put Anabelle to rest and returns to Fyke Isle with Geralt.

Back in the tower's laboratory, Anabelle is revealed in her true form: a jawless Plague Maiden with sunken skin and a tendrilled tongue. To lift the curse, Graham has to prove he still loves Anabelle by kissing her. And while Geralt's professionalism has been a comfort throughout the quest, it doesn't help me when the cutscene's camera moves to follow Graham – moonlight shining on his neck makes it seem exposed in the darkness, and watching him draw closer to Anabelle feels like watching fingers inch towards a bear trap.

In a final Gothic flourish, true love wins out. Sort of. For a moment, Anabelle is a young woman again – then she's gone, and Graham is dead on the floor. The curse is lifted, quest complete, yet there's no celebration. Fyke Isle is still unbearably sad. But for an hour, it was real.

Former Dragon Age lead Mark Darrah says the beloved fantasy RPG series could have ended up with a game like Baldur's Gate 3, but BioWare instead chose to be simpler in the hopes of reaching a wider audience.

So it goes, following EA's decision to shut down BioWare before it could ship Mass Effect 5, Dragon Age: The Veilguard stands as the studio's last game. While some reviewers found plenty to like about it, the RPG didn't deliver the commercial performance needed to keep BioWare going after EA was acquired by a group that includes the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund.

As such, we're left with a kind of what-if situation with the series. The likes of Baldur's Gate 3 have made enough money and won enough awards to show that a fantasy RPG can certainly achieve the level of success that Dragon Age craved. As such, why couldn't the developer behind the first two Baldur's Gate games hit the same heights with something like Dragon Age, another fantasy-themed series with a solid fanbase?

For longtime Dragon Age lead Mark Darrah, BioWare fell flat because it tried to create an RPG that meant something to everyone and, as a result, ended up creating something for no one.

Speaking to Eldorado, Darrah is asked why BioWare couldn't follow Larian's path in creating a deep fantasy RPG that achieved the sort of success that Baldur's Gate 3 managed.

"You can absolutely see that with Dragon Age," he says. "You can imagine a world where BioWare follows a line that leads from Dragon Age: Origins to something that looks a lot like Baldur’s Gate 3.

"But instead, it is pushed onto this road that is about trying to be simpler, to be more accessible, to be more appealing to a wider audience, and you end up, instead of going from Dragon Age: Origins towards Baldur's Gate 3, you end up on a track to Dragon Age 2 and to Inquisition. You see that path, with Dragon Age specifically, not BioWare, of trying to live in a world that a publisher doesn't really get."

The rest, as they say, is history. BioWare's closure means IPs like Dragon Age and Mass Effect have been tossed into EA's great vault for the time being. We might see them again with a different studio, though, as Darrah himself says, they could just as easily be left to rot. As we say, what could have been?

Why did EA close BioWare? Report says it put Mass Effect 5 and Star Wars Battlefront 3 on a scale, and guess which one looks safer when you're $18 billion in debt.