Kategorie: News

  • Avowed: Learn About the Story and a New Companion

    Avowed: Learn About the Story and a New Companion

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Summary

    • The Xbox Games Showcase provided a fresh look at Avowed with its first story trailer.
    • Meet Giatta, one of the four companions you’ll encounter during your adventures.
    • Discover the Dreamscourge and its devastating impact on the region.
    • Take a peek at the factions at play and the choices you’ll face as you forge your destiny.

    The last few months at Obsidian Entertainment have been fast-paced and exciting. Since we saw you at the Xbox Developer_Direct this past January, we’ve been busy with Avowed, getting it ready for release in 2024. Today, we’re thrilled to have revealed our first-ever story trailer at Xbox Games Showcase 2024, and to talk with you more about what we’ve shared.

    In Avowed, as the envoy sent directly by the Aedyran emperor, your adventure kicks off in Paradis, the bustling port city at the heart of the Living Lands. This vibrant hub has been shaped and reshaped by generations of pioneers, each leaving their mark, often in blood, on the Living Lands. It’s also the epicenter of tension between Aedyran forces and the locals, who are suspicious of Aedyr’s growing presence.

    Rumors and hysteria have also begun to bubble up in Paradis surrounding the Dreamscourge – a mysterious plague of the soul – as it afflicts people, animals, and even the land itself. No one knows how it spreads, but many have come to recognize and dread the symptoms: first, victims experience confusion, disorientation, and hallucinations. As it worsens, they become unpredictable and erratic in their behavior, as if trapped in a waking nightmare. In the final stage, they turn into violent “Dreamthralls,” their bodies twisted with fungal growths and their minds and souls overtaken by the plague.

    Watching our newest trailer, you’ll hear three distinct voices speaking to you. First is your emperor, who believes the Dreamscourge could develop, if unchecked, into a dire threat to Aedyr. He sends you into this wild frontier to uncover the source of the plague and put an end to it. Inquisitor Lödwyn, the leader of the Steel Garrote – an extremist paladin order from Aedyr – believes there’s something more sinister at play and calls on you not only to eradicate the Dreamscourge, but also to bring the island’s unruly factions to heel. Meanwhile, your companion Giatta perceives a larger and more mysterious force at work in the land and urges you to embrace it in all of its awe and chaos. As a stranger to these shores, you’ll need to navigate your relationship with all three of these factions, work to uncover the source of the Dreamscourge and prevent it from plunging the Living Lands into madness.

    Supporting you on your journey are four companions, including Giatta. A brilliant and outspoken animancer who studies soul energy, she has endured suspicion and ire for her work. But like you, she desperately seeks a solution to the Dreamscourge. She’s a vital ally who will help you understand the unique metaphysical ecosystem of the Living Lands.

    But remember, the Dreamscourge is not the only thing you are up against. Tensions simmer between the locals and Aedyr, and the island itself seems to be rebelling against itself.

    Every choice you make could tip the balance of fate toward one faction or the other. Who will you align with? Who will you destroy? And who will ultimately control the Living Lands?  

    Avowed will be released in 2024 for Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Steam and cloud, or play it day one with Xbox Game Pass.

    Website: LINK

  • South of Midnight: Was der erste Gameplay-Trailer über die kommende Magie verrät

    South of Midnight: Was der erste Gameplay-Trailer über die kommende Magie verrät

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Each new region will come with its own biome, a reflection of the South’s wildly varied landscapes. All of those biomes are inspired by real-world locations – Sears won’t go into detail about the later game yet, but tells me that the section we see here is set as you’re about to exit the flood and enter Mississippi Delta-like countryside. However, the magical realist approach allows Compulsion to play with expectation as you travel through its world.

    Locations will feel deeply rooted in what we know of the real world – in fact, to help create this section of the game, the developers took a trip to a real Mississippi ghost town, itself infested with alligators (only one of them braved the trek across amphibian territory to get into an abandoned church and take reference shots). But as we travel, we’ll see how these areas have become overtaken by the game’s mythical creatures, bringing twisted change with them.

    ‘The world Hazel comes from is inspired by the contemporary Deep South” says Clayton, “but as you dive deeper into the world, things become more mystical and surreal. We wanted the feeling that you’re being pulled into a folktale, rather than, say, crossing a barrier like in Alice in Wonderland.”

    The Song of Tom

    Of course, most folktales need antagonists and in the trailer we meet one of them. Two-Toed Tom is based on real-life campfire tales of ancient, giant, seemingly unkillable alligators, and he will – as Clayton puts it – “haunt” this chapter in Hazel’s tale. What we’ve seen are the very edges of his hunting grounds, but Tom will repeatedly reappear as you explore his region, eventually leading us to a showdown. It allows not just for a “boss fight” that effectively spans a whole section of the game, but also allows the team to turn each creature into a full-blown character, rather than a simple mechanism for conflict.

    “Tom is the only mythical creature in the game who was not a human being before transforming,” explains Sears. “People transformed Tom – he was an alligator born with the will to live, and the will to eat, and those things seemed to work really well. Because, like a lot of reptiles, he will continue growing as long as he can eat. And because he has a traumatic backstory and has become a creature of folklore and urban legend, he’s going to persist and continue getting bigger and bigger.”

    The idea, like everything else here, doesn’t seem to be that Hazel will kill the creatures standing in her way, more that she’ll be curing them, removing the hurt that turned them into monsters in the first place. And in perhaps the most starkly unexpected part of the trailer, we even hear the game’s music reflecting the story that made Tom what he is.

    Website: LINK

  • Die Brutalität hinter dem Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Trailer

    Die Brutalität hinter dem Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Trailer

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    Hello, Xbox community! It’s so nice to be here – very green! Everyone at Blizzard Entertainment is so excited to be a part of Xbox Showcase 2024, and we are thrilled to announce that Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred will be bringing us all to the lush jungles of Nahantu on October 8, with pre-purchase is available now!  

    You can choose from our Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate editions, with each version rewarding you with Alkor the Snow Leopard – a pet who will accompany you as you slay your way through Sanctuary! For more information about what’s available in each edition, as well as what’s new for Diablo IV in Vessel of Hatred,  check out our blog on the official Diablo website.  

    During the Showcase, we premiered our cinematic trailer for Vessel of Hatred. Our cinematics both in-game and out are a particular point of pride for us at Blizzard, created by our Story and Franchise Development (SFD) team. Think of this department as an in-house linear-media studio: SFD looks after our animations, shorts, in-game capture, books, and more, bringing writers, artists, directors, and animators together to help bring our universes to life in partnership with our game development teams. 

    Neyrelle and her mother Vhenard. Here we see the progression from storyboard, to previsualization, to the final shot in our cinematic.

    The cinematic we premiered at Showcase picks up where Diablo IV’s campaign left off, and has no shortage of Diablo’s dark, brutal themes. But as the cinematic director Doug Gregory explains, brutality needs context.  

    “The brutality is there, but if you don’t believe in the relationship between Neyrelle and her mother, the other stuff is fluff,” he says. “The real pain is the torment of believing your mother is alive for a second, having that ripped away from you, and knowing the person riding shotgun with you – Mephisto – can easily play with your state of mind.” 

    A previsualization shot, where Neyrelle lets her guard down and Vhenard takes advantage. 

    When the physical is framed by the emotional, this is where we hope we are making real connections with our audiences. “This demon is playing with the fact you feel guilty about your mother’s death – Neyrelle is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders,” says Doug. “She’s young, she’s watched a lot of her friends die – she blames herself for it – then her mother dies. She carries that weight, and now she’s carrying this Soulstone. The two people in her life she was looking up to for leadership couldn’t handle it, so this young lady is carrying the weight of the world by carrying Mephisto.” 

    A rough, in-progress look at our surfacing treatment on Vhenard. 

    So, when it comes to conveying these complexities in a cinematic that is used to open the campaign of a brand-new expansion, where does our SFD team begin? “As storytellers, we look for contrasts we can give the audience, and the goal remains that we really want to affect people emotionally,” Doug explains. “So, we need to catch up with Neyrelle – what has she been going through since the last time we saw her? What is the Soulstone doing?” Doug says the team thought about the stone and its effect on everything and everyone around it as something like plutonium. “She’s carrying something destroying everything around her, while it’s slowly eating away at her inside. You are literally watching everything you love be taken away as you. Still, you carry it. And that’s where we start – she’s in a fever, sweating, desperately trying to say this prayer to keep the demon locked away.” 

    A piece of concept art showing where our look for Vhenard covered in ichor started from. 

    As Neyrelle tries to hold on, she slips. “She falls asleep at the wheel a little bit and catches herself. At that moment, the boatman is trying to help, but he’s distracting her from doing her job, and that frustration builds up: that’s an opening for Mephisto. He sees a crack in the door and takes advantage of the fact that you don’t have control over your emotions. That’s useful to him, he feeds on that. So, you start on a high – she is with her mother again. Let her settle, and she lets down her guard. When he rips that out from underneath her, that is a big emotional swing – hopefully for the audience as well!” 

    Some work-in-progress concept work showing the start of our Mephisto chamber environment. 

    Doug explains that one of the most striking images in the cinematic is the final shot of Mephisto’s colossal form with Neyrelle acting as his heart. The despair she feels becomes the black blood that fills his veins, reawakening his lungs. He says that this image was the inspiration for the whole cinematic, and that he and his team worked hard to make it meaningful and impactful. 

    “The idea is Neyrelle is the heart of him, the fuel station of his body. That’s a neat idea, like a billboard. So the writer and I had to figure out, okay, that’s one image – how do you earn that image and make it emotionally resonant for the viewer?” explains Doug. “If you can make the journey to that image be about a relationship she has with someone she loved, and how this giant thing she is fueling is using her love and her insecurities to rebuild itself–now we’re tying emotion to the image, maybe we earn that image. We love going on an emotional adventure, not just a visual adventure. If this piece resonates with people, we are excited by it!” 

    Some early concept work showcasing what would become of Neyrelle. 

    For Doug, his greatest joy in releasing this cinematic is seeing the culmination of working alongside talented teammates in amplifying each other’s creativity. “Honestly, I’ve been at it for 14 years here at Blizzard. I started as an illustrator, working in comics and card games, and I did that all on my own, in my own little room by myself. At Blizzard, the journey is about understanding how to bring people along with you on that journey,” says Doug. “With directing, it’s all about taking a boy who used to work by himself in a corner and letting people into that space. Taking the journey, and taking it with people that I love, respect, and enjoy getting the chance to work with–that is the real reward. We all got here together, and I couldn’t have done it alone in a room without them. That’s what’s most important to me, and what I see directing as. The fun part is you don’t have to go it alone – you build with people, and you build something bigger than you could’ve ever built by yourself.” 

    As Doug says, “we are a massive society of creators,” and the story of Diablo IV is only the beginning of what’s on offer in Vessel of Hatred. Play as the new Spiritborn class, recruit Mercenaries to fight by your side, explore the jungle region of Nahantu, and join forces with your friends in a new cooperative PvE feature. Today we also announced and released pets into the game for free, so log in and meet your new friend! 

    Check out the blog on the official Diablo website for more information about today’s announcement and stay tuned in the lead-up to October 8. We’ll see you in Sanctuary! 

    Website: LINK

  • Perfect Dark: Antworten auf die großen Fragen aus dem ersten Gameplay-Trailer

    Perfect Dark: Antworten auf die großen Fragen aus dem ersten Gameplay-Trailer

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Today, at Xbox Games Showcase, we got our first look at gameplay from Perfect Dark, a reboot of the classic secret agent series. The fascinating new trailer gave us hints to secret agent Joanna Dark’s mission, showed us her descent into the game’s near-future Cairo setting, and then gave us a tantalising glimpse of the all-new secret agent-inspired gameplay.

    Of course, when you’re given a look at such a highly anticipated game, you’re always going to want to ask more questions – and thankfully I was able to go straight to the source to get more details from members of the development team. The Initiative is co-developing Perfect Dark with Crystal Dynamics and other partners that make up Team Perfect Dark. Let’s take a deeper look and answer some of those burning questions.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUi9DR9sc4?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    What Kind of Game Is This?

    Perfect Dark is a first-person secret agent thriller in a near-future world. With the blessing of the original Perfect Dark studio, Rare (not to mention some of the leads from the original titles), Team Perfect Dark has pulled inspiration from elements of the first two games, but crafted an entirely new story and universe around them for this reboot.

    For previous fans and new players alike, the new game offers a fresh take on the secret agent experience, and is a great opportunity to jump into the world and character. Though fans will have moments that resonate with the history and memories of the original games, no prior knowledge is needed in this new experience.

    At the widest level, Perfect Dark will be a single-player experience, with a set of missions – but with choices offered in how you complete those missions. Looking at the trailer, it’s clear that traversal and gadgets are a huge part of this – we see new parkour abilities used throughout, both for movement and combat. The developers tell me that the focus was on creating an intuitive movement system, which will let players find interesting ways to tackle their objectives. Add to that a combat system that allows for both melee and gunplay, stealth mechanics, and liberal use of gadgets, and Perfect Dark is a game that will present players with an objective, but let them figure out how they want to achieve it.

    Team Perfect Dark doesn’t want this to feel like any one genre – it takes in elements of first-person shooters, immersive sims, and stealth-action, but blends them into a seamless whole. The goal is to offer a true secret agent fantasy – and letting players use their various tools and abilities in the way they want is key to this.

    Who is Joanna Dark?

    In this reboot, Joanna (voiced by Alix Regan with Elissa Bibaud lending visual likeness) is an agent for dataDyne, with a deep personal connection to what’s happening to her world. In this case, the title Perfect Dark is more aspirational – this Joanna won’t be perfect, but she’s striving to be. She’ll make mistakes in this journey, and learn from those experiences. Learning who this Joanna is proves to be just as compelling as the story itself.

    Where Is the Game Set?

    Perfect Dark’s near-future world has been impacted by what’s known as “The Cascade,” in which the planet has suffered from a series of environmental disasters, rendering entire regions inhospitable to human life. In the wake of the disaster, a hypercorporation known as Core Mantis steps in to create a solution known as The GEN Network, and deploys it in Cairo – restoring ecological balance and creating a freshly walled city, insulated from the hostile environment outside to become a center for technological innovation.

    In its wake, other hypercorporations step in to continue that regeneration – but, as you might expect, not all is as it seems, and their motives may be less altruistic than they appear. It is key that the setting communicates a hopeful future, seeing a world with both destruction and restoration, the bleakness of the past countered with a sense of promise.

    It’s into Cairo that Joanna enters. The setting was chosen to offer a counterpoint to other secret agent stories, and media at large – ancient Egypt and modern Egypt have been seen by many, but a near-future take on the country is truly something new. Cairo itself allows for a balance of deeply old and startlingly new that suits the speculative fiction at the heart of Perfect Dark.

    What’s Joanna’s Mission in the Trailer?

    Joanna is being sent into Cairo to find and apprehend Daniel Carrington, and we see her enter a district called Garden City (and an area of Cairo in real life, too). In Perfect Dark, this is a more affluent and cosmopolitan area of the city, and Core Mantis has selected it to be revitalized by its new eco-technological processes.

    We see Joanna find a hideout used by Carrington, who infiltrates Joanna’s AR system and begins to expose more information, and even more questions around the bigger mysteries in Cairo. Joanna will need to learn who can be trusted, and who might be working against her own goals, and Carrington’s role will be a major part of that.

    What Can We Use Gadgets For?

    Gadgets are a pillar of the secret agent genre. In the trailer, we get a tease of Joanna using a gadget to analyse NPC voices and create vocal “deepfakes” to trick security systems or impersonate other characters, as well as create distractions.

    Gadgets can be used for misdirection and manipulation, but we also see that Joanna can use a tool to scan an NPC and learn details about them – it wouldn’t be a secret agent story without some fieldwork, and the developers tell me that parsing the world, around you will be a key part of understanding how to tackle your objectives.

    How Does Combat Work?

    With this first look at combat, it’s clear this is another aspect of player choice. In the trailer we see lethal and non-lethal weaponry, close-quarters combat, abilities that allow you to take down multiple enemies at once, and more. We can also go loud or go quiet, offering a risk-reward for both methods. Team Perfect Dark wants to create a “symphony” of mechanics, merging traversal, close-quarters-combat, gunplay, unlockable abilities, environmental elements, and gadgets into a unified experience for players.

    Find out more about Perfect Dark here.

    Website: LINK

  • Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Triff Deine Begleiter*innen

    Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Triff Deine Begleiter*innen

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Wow what an exciting day! Today, BioWare and Electronic Arts revealed a brand new trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard at the Xbox Games Showcase. In this trailer we get a glimpse of Thedas, and we meet your team of seven companions, each with their own rich story to discover and shape – and together you will become The Veilguard.

    You’ll unite and lead this team of unforgettable heroes as you take on a terrifying new threat unleashed on the world of Thedas.

    Dragon Age Image

    Naturally, the Dread Wolf still has an important part in this tale –we haven’t forgotten him by any means – but you and your companions  are the true heart and soul of this new game. We are so excited for you to experience just how strongly we feel about our new heroes and their stories, and how you’ll need to bring them together to save all of Thedas – that we changed the game name to Dragon Age: The Veilguard to better reflect the exciting path that is ahead of you. 

    Dragon Age: The Veilguard expands upon the Dragon Age stories, worlds and characters from previous games, where players will enter a vibrant land of rugged wilderness, treacherous labyrinths, and glittering cities – steeped in conflict and secret magics. As a new hero – a character you create – along with your companions, you will challenge and take a stand against a pair of corrupt ancient gods who have broken free from centuries of darkness and are hellbent on destroying the world.

    Dragon Age Image

    Meet the Companions! As you play, you will be rallying a team of seven companions, each with their own rich lives and deep backstories – and each bringing their own expertise and unique abilities to the fight. Your companions are characters to befriend, lead, grow and even fall in love with. You are never alone. You get to choose who to take into battle with you –  and together you will face down demons, dragons and those corrupt gods on the battlefield.

    Amongst these new companions that join the fray, we will recruit allies such as the Veil Jumper Bellara, the intriguing necromancer Emmrich, and the private detective Neve –  all coming from iconic factions in Dragon Age lore, and each possessing individual skill trees and specialized gear for advanced team progression. Dragon Age fans will spot some familiar faces, too, such as the archer Lace Harding who returns to the series as a full time companion.

    Dragon Age Image

    In our brand new trailer you will meet the crew – Your team is full of individuals with grim and wondrous histories, their own personal struggles and motivations, and rare skills that’ll help you survive. You’ll take in combat and fight alongside:

    • Harding: The Scout
    • Neve: The Detective
    • Emmrich: The Necromancer
    • Taash: The Dragon Hunter
    • Davrin: The Warden
    • Bellara: The Veil Jumper
    • Lucanis: The Mage Killer
    Dragon Age Image

    We are looking forward to revealing more and more about the Companions in the coming months. Stay tuned!

    But there’s more – get ready to see the game in action very soon – by tuning in on June 11 for the exciting Official Gameplay Reveal!

    Website: LINK

  • Der neue Trailer zu State of Decay 3 und die Entwicklung der Spiele von Undead Labs

    Der neue Trailer zu State of Decay 3 und die Entwicklung der Spiele von Undead Labs

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    “We are putting tons of work into making sure what we put on the screen looks like it’s ours (ownable) and belongs in our world. Everything tells a story from the scratches and bite marks on the wooden stock of a gun to the way your beloved vehicle has been assembled,” explains Laybourn. “We think carefully about the mood and tone of any given time of day right down to the tape used to hold your shoe together. The quality of games (in general) is so high, it’s really about what you’re saying and how. State Of Decay has always struck a tone that people love. It’s got heart and soul, a great blend of horror and beauty, levity, and depth… these ingredients need to come through regardless of the fidelity of the assets.”“

    Speaking of ingredients, you can also expect to see survivors that have become quite adept at… well… not getting eaten, by surviving several years into the apocalypse. This, in turn, has evolved into a resourceful era where clothing, supplies, and weapons have been modified to accommodate their needs — expect weapons to have mismatched barrels with heavily modified magazines, or clothing reinforced with armor plates. They’ve “leveled up” in this maker culture to be more eclectic because the world of State of Decay 3 has been “picked over” by now, and finding components to modify their existing weapons will be much more likely than looting a wholly formed one that’s ready to go.

    This also means that players will be able to customize their play experience to a greater depth than they have in the past. Undead Labs believes that investing time to craft “your” crossbow vs finding a few generic crossbow types is going to be a lot more fun and will help reinforce State of Decay 3’s unique setting.

    This type of feature feeds back into the principles of the studio: ingenuity, adaptability, and collectivism that were all on display in the newest trailer. “We chose to present something that felt very cinematic in its presentation to tell a bit of a story, to be a tone and a mood and signal an intention about where we’re taking the franchise. And I think the trailer succeeds on that,” says Holt.

    For now, the team is hard at work on the game, and will have more to share at a later date around co-op, customization, and other fun features that they can’t quite get into detail just yet (but they sound very cool). As it stands, State of Decay 3is primed to be the tip of Undead Labs’ creative spear, serving as the vehicle for their continued evolution — and we can’t wait to see more.

    Website: LINK

  • The Brutality Behind the Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Cinematic

    The Brutality Behind the Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Cinematic

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    Hello, Xbox community! It’s so nice to be here – very green! Everyone at Blizzard Entertainment is so excited to be a part of Xbox Showcase 2024, and we are thrilled to announce that Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred will be bringing us all to the lush jungles of Nahantu on October 8, with pre-purchase is available now!  

    You can choose from our Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate editions, with each version rewarding you with Alkor the Snow Leopard – a pet who will accompany you as you slay your way through Sanctuary! For more information about what’s available in each edition, as well as what’s new for Diablo IV in Vessel of Hatred,  check out our blog on the official Diablo website.  

    During the Showcase, we premiered our cinematic trailer for Vessel of Hatred. Our cinematics both in-game and out are a particular point of pride for us at Blizzard, created by our Story and Franchise Development (SFD) team. Think of this department as an in-house linear-media studio: SFD looks after our animations, shorts, in-game capture, books, and more, bringing writers, artists, directors, and animators together to help bring our universes to life in partnership with our game development teams. 

    Neyrelle and her mother Vhenard. Here we see the progression from storyboard, to previsualization, to the final shot in our cinematic.

    The cinematic we premiered at Showcase picks up where Diablo IV’s campaign left off, and has no shortage of Diablo’s dark, brutal themes. But as the cinematic director Doug Gregory explains, brutality needs context.  

    “The brutality is there, but if you don’t believe in the relationship between Neyrelle and her mother, the other stuff is fluff,” he says. “The real pain is the torment of believing your mother is alive for a second, having that ripped away from you, and knowing the person riding shotgun with you – Mephisto – can easily play with your state of mind.” 

    A previsualization shot, where Neyrelle lets her guard down and Vhenard takes advantage. 

    When the physical is framed by the emotional, this is where we hope we are making real connections with our audiences. “This demon is playing with the fact you feel guilty about your mother’s death – Neyrelle is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders,” says Doug. “She’s young, she’s watched a lot of her friends die – she blames herself for it – then her mother dies. She carries that weight, and now she’s carrying this Soulstone. The two people in her life she was looking up to for leadership couldn’t handle it, so this young lady is carrying the weight of the world by carrying Mephisto.” 

    A rough, in-progress look at our surfacing treatment on Vhenard. 

    So, when it comes to conveying these complexities in a cinematic that is used to open the campaign of a brand-new expansion, where does our SFD team begin? “As storytellers, we look for contrasts we can give the audience, and the goal remains that we really want to affect people emotionally,” Doug explains. “So, we need to catch up with Neyrelle – what has she been going through since the last time we saw her? What is the Soulstone doing?” Doug says the team thought about the stone and its effect on everything and everyone around it as something like plutonium. “She’s carrying something destroying everything around her, while it’s slowly eating away at her inside. You are literally watching everything you love be taken away as you. Still, you carry it. And that’s where we start – she’s in a fever, sweating, desperately trying to say this prayer to keep the demon locked away.” 

    A piece of concept art showing where our look for Vhenard covered in ichor started from. 

    As Neyrelle tries to hold on, she slips. “She falls asleep at the wheel a little bit and catches herself. At that moment, the boatman is trying to help, but he’s distracting her from doing her job, and that frustration builds up: that’s an opening for Mephisto. He sees a crack in the door and takes advantage of the fact that you don’t have control over your emotions. That’s useful to him, he feeds on that. So, you start on a high – she is with her mother again. Let her settle, and she lets down her guard. When he rips that out from underneath her, that is a big emotional swing – hopefully for the audience as well!” 

    Some work-in-progress concept work showing the start of our Mephisto chamber environment. 

    Doug explains that one of the most striking images in the cinematic is the final shot of Mephisto’s colossal form with Neyrelle acting as his heart. The despair she feels becomes the black blood that fills his veins, reawakening his lungs. He says that this image was the inspiration for the whole cinematic, and that he and his team worked hard to make it meaningful and impactful. 

    “The idea is Neyrelle is the heart of him, the fuel station of his body. That’s a neat idea, like a billboard. So the writer and I had to figure out, okay, that’s one image – how do you earn that image and make it emotionally resonant for the viewer?” explains Doug. “If you can make the journey to that image be about a relationship she has with someone she loved, and how this giant thing she is fueling is using her love and her insecurities to rebuild itself–now we’re tying emotion to the image, maybe we earn that image. We love going on an emotional adventure, not just a visual adventure. If this piece resonates with people, we are excited by it!” 

    Some early concept work showcasing what would become of Neyrelle. 

    For Doug, his greatest joy in releasing this cinematic is seeing the culmination of working alongside talented teammates in amplifying each other’s creativity. “Honestly, I’ve been at it for 14 years here at Blizzard. I started as an illustrator, working in comics and card games, and I did that all on my own, in my own little room by myself. At Blizzard, the journey is about understanding how to bring people along with you on that journey,” says Doug. “With directing, it’s all about taking a boy who used to work by himself in a corner and letting people into that space. Taking the journey, and taking it with people that I love, respect, and enjoy getting the chance to work with–that is the real reward. We all got here together, and I couldn’t have done it alone in a room without them. That’s what’s most important to me, and what I see directing as. The fun part is you don’t have to go it alone – you build with people, and you build something bigger than you could’ve ever built by yourself.” 

    As Doug says, “we are a massive society of creators,” and the story of Diablo IV is only the beginning of what’s on offer in Vessel of Hatred. Play as the new Spiritborn class, recruit Mercenaries to fight by your side, explore the jungle region of Nahantu, and join forces with your friends in a new cooperative PvE feature. Today we also announced and released pets into the game for free, so log in and meet your new friend! 

    Check out the blog on the official Diablo website for more information about today’s announcement and stay tuned in the lead-up to October 8. We’ll see you in Sanctuary! 

    Website: LINK

  • Perfect Dark: Answering the Big Questions from its Incredible First Gameplay Trailer

    Perfect Dark: Answering the Big Questions from its Incredible First Gameplay Trailer

    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    Today, at Xbox Games Showcase, we got our first look at gameplay from Perfect Dark, a reboot of the classic secret agent series. The fascinating new trailer gave us hints to secret agent Joanna Dark’s mission, showed us her descent into the game’s near-future Cairo setting, and then gave us a tantalising glimpse of the all-new secret agent-inspired gameplay.

    Of course, when you’re given a look at such a highly anticipated game, you’re always going to want to ask more questions – and thankfully I was able to go straight to the source to get more details from members of the development team. The Initiative is co-developing Perfect Dark with Crystal Dynamics and other partners that make up Team Perfect Dark. Let’s take a deeper look and answer some of those burning questions.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUi9DR9sc4?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    What Kind of Game Is This?

    Perfect Dark is a first-person secret agent thriller in a near-future world. With the blessing of the original Perfect Dark studio, Rare (not to mention some of the leads from the original titles), Team Perfect Dark has pulled inspiration from elements of the first two games, but crafted an entirely new story and universe around them for this reboot.

    For previous fans and new players alike, the new game offers a fresh take on the secret agent experience, and is a great opportunity to jump into the world and character. Though fans will have moments that resonate with the history and memories of the original games, no prior knowledge is needed in this new experience.

    At the widest level, Perfect Dark will be a single-player experience, with a set of missions – but with choices offered in how you complete those missions. Looking at the trailer, it’s clear that traversal and gadgets are a huge part of this – we see new parkour abilities used throughout, both for movement and combat. The developers tell me that the focus was on creating an intuitive movement system, which will let players find interesting ways to tackle their objectives. Add to that a combat system that allows for both melee and gunplay, stealth mechanics, and liberal use of gadgets, and Perfect Dark is a game that will present players with an objective, but let them figure out how they want to achieve it.

    Team Perfect Dark doesn’t want this to feel like any one genre – it takes in elements of first-person shooters, immersive sims, and stealth-action, but blends them into a seamless whole. The goal is to offer a true secret agent fantasy – and letting players use their various tools and abilities in the way they want is key to this.

    Who is Joanna Dark?

    In this reboot, Joanna (voiced by Alix Regan with Elissa Bibaud lending visual likeness) is an agent for dataDyne, with a deep personal connection to what’s happening to her world. In this case, the title Perfect Dark is more aspirational – this Joanna won’t be perfect, but she’s striving to be. She’ll make mistakes in this journey, and learn from those experiences. Learning who this Joanna is proves to be just as compelling as the story itself.

    Where Is the Game Set?

    Perfect Dark’s near-future world has been impacted by what’s known as “The Cascade,” in which the planet has suffered from a series of environmental disasters, rendering entire regions inhospitable to human life. In the wake of the disaster, a hypercorporation known as Core Mantis steps in to create a solution known as The GEN Network, and deploys it in Cairo – restoring ecological balance and creating a freshly walled city, insulated from the hostile environment outside to become a center for technological innovation.

    In its wake, other hypercorporations step in to continue that regeneration – but, as you might expect, not all is as it seems, and their motives may be less altruistic than they appear. It is key that the setting communicates a hopeful future, seeing a world with both destruction and restoration, the bleakness of the past countered with a sense of promise.

    It’s into Cairo that Joanna enters. The setting was chosen to offer a counterpoint to other secret agent stories, and media at large – ancient Egypt and modern Egypt have been seen by many, but a near-future take on the country is truly something new. Cairo itself allows for a balance of deeply old and startlingly new that suits the speculative fiction at the heart of Perfect Dark.

    What’s Joanna’s Mission in the Trailer?

    Joanna is being sent into Cairo to find and apprehend Daniel Carrington, and we see her enter a district called Garden City (and an area of Cairo in real life, too). In Perfect Dark, this is a more affluent and cosmopolitan area of the city, and Core Mantis has selected it to be revitalized by its new eco-technological processes.

    We see Joanna find a hideout used by Carrington, who infiltrates Joanna’s AR system and begins to expose more information, and even more questions around the bigger mysteries in Cairo. Joanna will need to learn who can be trusted, and who might be working against her own goals, and Carrington’s role will be a major part of that.

    What Can We Use Gadgets For?

    Gadgets are a pillar of the secret agent genre. In the trailer, we get a tease of Joanna using a gadget to analyse NPC voices and create vocal “deepfakes” to trick security systems or impersonate other characters, as well as create distractions.

    Gadgets can be used for misdirection and manipulation, but we also see that Joanna can use a tool to scan an NPC and learn details about them – it wouldn’t be a secret agent story without some fieldwork, and the developers tell me that parsing the world, around you will be a key part of understanding how to tackle your objectives.

    How Does Combat Work?

    With this first look at combat, it’s clear this is another aspect of player choice. In the trailer we see lethal and non-lethal weaponry, close-quarters combat, abilities that allow you to take down multiple enemies at once, and more. We can also go loud or go quiet, offering a risk-reward for both methods. Team Perfect Dark wants to create a “symphony” of mechanics, merging traversal, close-quarters-combat, gunplay, unlockable abilities, environmental elements, and gadgets into a unified experience for players.

    Find out more about Perfect Dark here.

    Website: LINK

  • South of Midnight: How the First Gameplay Trailer Hints at the Magic to Come

    South of Midnight: How the First Gameplay Trailer Hints at the Magic to Come

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Each new region will come with its own biome, a reflection of the South’s wildly varied landscapes. All of those biomes are inspired by real-world locations – Sears won’t go into detail about the later game yet, but tells me that the section we see here is set as you’re about to exit the flood and enter Mississippi Delta-like countryside. However, the magical realist approach allows Compulsion to play with expectation as you travel through its world.

    Locations will feel deeply rooted in what we know of the real world – in fact, to help create this section of the game, the developers took a trip to a real Mississippi ghost town, itself infested with alligators (only one of them braved the trek across amphibian territory to get into an abandoned church and take reference shots). But as we travel, we’ll see how these areas have become overtaken by the game’s mythical creatures, bringing twisted change with them.

    ‘The world Hazel comes from is inspired by the contemporary Deep South” says Clayton, “but as you dive deeper into the world, things become more mystical and surreal. We wanted the feeling that you’re being pulled into a folktale, rather than, say, crossing a barrier like in Alice in Wonderland.”

    The Song of Tom

    Of course, most folktales need antagonists and in the trailer we meet one of them. Two-Toed Tom is based on real-life campfire tales of ancient, giant, seemingly unkillable alligators, and he will – as Clayton puts it – “haunt” this chapter in Hazel’s tale. What we’ve seen are the very edges of his hunting grounds, but Tom will repeatedly reappear as you explore his region, eventually leading us to a showdown. It allows not just for a “boss fight” that effectively spans a whole section of the game, but also allows the team to turn each creature into a full-blown character, rather than a simple mechanism for conflict.

    “Tom is the only mythical creature in the game who was not a human being before transforming,” explains Sears. “People transformed Tom – he was an alligator born with the will to live, and the will to eat, and those things seemed to work really well. Because, like a lot of reptiles, he will continue growing as long as he can eat. And because he has a traumatic backstory and has become a creature of folklore and urban legend, he’s going to persist and continue getting bigger and bigger.”

    The idea, like everything else here, doesn’t seem to be that Hazel will kill the creatures standing in her way, more that she’ll be curing them, removing the hurt that turned them into monsters in the first place. And in perhaps the most starkly unexpected part of the trailer, we even hear the game’s music reflecting the story that made Tom what he is.

    Website: LINK

  • Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Meet Your Companions

    Dragon Age: The Veilguard – Meet Your Companions

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Wow what an exciting day! Today, BioWare and Electronic Arts revealed a brand new trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard at the Xbox Games Showcase. In this trailer we get a glimpse of Thedas, and we meet your team of seven companions, each with their own rich story to discover and shape – and together you will become The Veilguard.

    You’ll unite and lead this team of unforgettable heroes as you take on a terrifying new threat unleashed on the world of Thedas.

    Dragon Age Image

    Naturally, the Dread Wolf still has an important part in this tale –we haven’t forgotten him by any means – but you and your companions  are the true heart and soul of this new game. We are so excited for you to experience just how strongly we feel about our new heroes and their stories, and how you’ll need to bring them together to save all of Thedas – that we changed the game name to Dragon Age: The Veilguard to better reflect the exciting path that is ahead of you. 

    Dragon Age: The Veilguard expands upon the Dragon Age stories, worlds and characters from previous games, where players will enter a vibrant land of rugged wilderness, treacherous labyrinths, and glittering cities – steeped in conflict and secret magics. As a new hero – a character you create – along with your companions, you will challenge and take a stand against a pair of corrupt ancient gods who have broken free from centuries of darkness and are hellbent on destroying the world.

    Dragon Age Image

    Meet the Companions! As you play, you will be rallying a team of seven companions, each with their own rich lives and deep backstories – and each bringing their own expertise and unique abilities to the fight. Your companions are characters to befriend, lead, grow and even fall in love with. You are never alone. You get to choose who to take into battle with you –  and together you will face down demons, dragons and those corrupt gods on the battlefield.

    Amongst these new companions that join the fray, we will recruit allies such as the Veil Jumper Bellara, the intriguing necromancer Emmrich, and the private detective Neve –  all coming from iconic factions in Dragon Age lore, and each possessing individual skill trees and specialized gear for advanced team progression. Dragon Age fans will spot some familiar faces, too, such as the archer Lace Harding who returns to the series as a full time companion.

    Dragon Age Image

    In our brand new trailer you will meet the crew – Your team is full of individuals with grim and wondrous histories, their own personal struggles and motivations, and rare skills that’ll help you survive. You’ll take in combat and fight alongside:

    • Harding: The Scout
    • Neve: The Detective
    • Emmrich: The Necromancer
    • Taash: The Dragon Hunter
    • Davrin: The Warden
    • Bellara: The Veil Jumper
    • Lucanis: The Mage Killer
    Dragon Age Image

    We are looking forward to revealing more and more about the Companions in the coming months. Stay tuned!

    But there’s more – get ready to see the game in action very soon – by tuning in on June 11 for the exciting Official Gameplay Reveal!

    Website: LINK

  • How State of Decay 3’s Newest Trailer Feeds into Undead Labs’ Game Development Evolution

    How State of Decay 3’s Newest Trailer Feeds into Undead Labs’ Game Development Evolution

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    “We are putting tons of work into making sure what we put on the screen looks like it’s ours (ownable) and belongs in our world. Everything tells a story from the scratches and bite marks on the wooden stock of a gun to the way your beloved vehicle has been assembled,” explains Laybourn. “We think carefully about the mood and tone of any given time of day right down to the tape used to hold your shoe together. The quality of games (in general) is so high, it’s really about what you’re saying and how. State Of Decay has always struck a tone that people love. It’s got heart and soul, a great blend of horror and beauty, levity, and depth… these ingredients need to come through regardless of the fidelity of the assets.”“

    Speaking of ingredients, you can also expect to see survivors that have become quite adept at… well… not getting eaten, by surviving several years into the apocalypse. This, in turn, has evolved into a resourceful era where clothing, supplies, and weapons have been modified to accommodate their needs — expect weapons to have mismatched barrels with heavily modified magazines, or clothing reinforced with armor plates. They’ve “leveled up” in this maker culture to be more eclectic because the world of State of Decay 3 has been “picked over” by now, and finding components to modify their existing weapons will be much more likely than looting a wholly formed one that’s ready to go.

    This also means that players will be able to customize their play experience to a greater depth than they have in the past. Undead Labs believes that investing time to craft “your” crossbow vs finding a few generic crossbow types is going to be a lot more fun and will help reinforce State of Decay 3’s unique setting.

    This type of feature feeds back into the principles of the studio: ingenuity, adaptability, and collectivism that were all on display in the newest trailer. “We chose to present something that felt very cinematic in its presentation to tell a bit of a story, to be a tone and a mood and signal an intention about where we’re taking the franchise. And I think the trailer succeeds on that,” says Holt.

    For now, the team is hard at work on the game, and will have more to share at a later date around co-op, customization, and other fun features that they can’t quite get into detail just yet (but they sound very cool). As it stands, State of Decay 3is primed to be the tip of Undead Labs’ creative spear, serving as the vehicle for their continued evolution — and we can’t wait to see more.

    Website: LINK

  • Valorant für Xbox: Limited Beta startet am 14. Juni − mit Boni für Game Pass-Mitglieder

    Valorant für Xbox: Limited Beta startet am 14. Juni − mit Boni für Game Pass-Mitglieder

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Summary

    • Während des Summer Games Fest hat Riot Games bekannt gegeben, dass Valorant für die Xbox Series X|S erscheinen wird.
    • Hier bekommst Du einen Überblick über das Gameplay von Valorant, die Angebote und vieles mehr.
    • Für Xbox Game Pass-Mitglieder werden alle Agent*innen von Valorant automatisch freigeschaltet.
    • Valorant Konsole Limited Beta startet am 14. Juni, melde Dich noch heute unter beta.playvalorant.com an.

    Valorant ist ein 5v5-Charakter-basierter, taktischer Ego-Shooter, der präzises Waffenspiel mit den einzigartigen Fähigkeiten der Agent*innen kombiniert. Dies bietet den perfekten Raum für Deine Fähigkeiten und Deine Kreativität, um Deine eigenen aufregenden Momente zu erschaffen. Jedes Mal, wenn Du Valorant spielst, gibt es diesen besonderen Moment, in dem es einfach Klick macht. Dein*e Teamkamerad*in wirft Dir einen Skye Blitz zu, Du rennst als Jett zum Ort des Geschehens, setzt knackige One-Taps, benutzt Deinen Dash und hast noch nicht genug. Oder Du bist in einer 1 vs. 5 Situation, aber Dein Aim fühlt sich einfach gut an heute. Also gibst Du alles für Dein Team, während es Dich anfeuert.

    Wir nennen das gerne den Valorant-Moment, wenn Kreativität auf die Fähigkeit trifft, im entscheidenden Augenblick die richtige Entscheidung zu treffen. Und das war das Hauptziel unseres Entwicklungsteams bei der Umsetzung von Valorant auf der Konsole. Wir wollten dieses Gefühl erst dann auf die Konsole bringen, wenn Du es auch mit einem Controller in der Hand spüren kannst.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahU8p6cQ14A?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    Unsere weltweite Community ist in den letzten vier Jahren schneller gewachsen, als wir es uns je hätten vorstellen können. Wir lieben ihre Clips, Cosplays, Fan-Art, Montagen und vieles mehr. Und um ehrlich zu sein, hat uns das am meisten an unserer Limited Beta für die Konsole begeistert. Wir können es kaum erwarten, Valorant für noch mehr Spieler*innen zugänglich zu machen und sind gespannt, welche Inhalte sie kreieren werden. Du wirst unser Spiel mit ganz neuen Augen sehen. Und wir wissen, dass Du neue kreative Spielweisen entwickeln, neue Wege finden, Fähigkeiten zu kombinieren und viele Runden gewinnen wirst.

    Valorant ist ein Live-Service-Spiel. Alle zwei Wochen gibt es Updates, mit denen wir das Spiel ausbalancieren und neue Inhalte hinzufügen. Du bekommst die gleichen Patches gleichzeitig auf der Konsole und PC. Mit dem nächsten Update kommst Du also wie alle anderen auch in den Genuss der neuen Balancing-Updates für das Bundle und mehr!

    Wenn Du gerne zwischen PC und Konsole wechselst oder Valorant auf dem PC gespielt hast, aber lieber auf der Konsole spielst, dann mach Dir keine Sorgen – wir übernehmen das für Dich. Deine Freundesliste, Deine Sammlung (Skins, Spieler*innenkarten, Gun Buddies usw.), Deine Fortschritte im Battle Pass und die Freischaltung von Agent*innen werden übernommen. Valorant wird kein Crossplay zwischen Konsole und PC unterstützen, aber wenn Du Freund*innen hast, die auf anderen Konsolen spielen, könnt ihr Euch beide in die Warteschlange einreihen und gemeinsam den Ranglistenkampf bestreiten.

    Die Limited Beta startet am 14. Juni in den folgenden Regionen: Europa, Japan, Kanada und USA. Im Laufe der Limited und Open Beta werden weitere Regionen hinzukommen. Wir werden die Verfügbarkeit während des Starts ständig aktualisieren. Wenn Du das Spiel ausprobieren möchtest, kannst Du Dich jetzt unter beta.playvalorant.com für die Limited Beta anmelden.

    Wenn Du in der Limited Beta zum ersten Mal Valorant spielst oder ein Konto erstellst, werden beim Einloggen fünf Agent*innen für Dich freigeschaltet. Dies ist die Standardeinstellung für alle neuen Konten. Wenn Du Spiele abschließt, kannst Du noch mehr Agent*innen ergattern.  

    Bist Du Mitglied im Xbox Game Pass, werden alle Agent*innen direkt für Dich verfügbar sein. Außerdem werden von uns neu veröffentlichte Agent*innen automatisch direkt freigeschaltet und Du kannst sofort mit ihnen spielen. 

    In jeder Episode aktualisieren wir unseren Kartenpool, damit die Spieler*innen auf neuen Karten spielen können. Außerdem passen wir die Karten, die wir austauschen, bei Bedarf an. Wir möchten, dass alle Spieler*innen auf dem neuesten Stand sind und über denselben Kartenpool verfügen, wie die jetzigen Spieler*innen. Aber wir wissen, dass so viel Inhalt auch zu viel sein kann. Deshalb werden wir unseren Kartenpool im Laufe der Beta erweitern, um Dir nach und nach die Karten vorzustellen und Dir Zeit zu geben, zu lernen, wie man sie spielt:

    Unrated, Swiftplay, Deathmatch:

    • 14. Juni: Ascent, Blind, Haven, Abyss
    • 25. Juni: Sunset
    • 9. Juli: Lotus
    • 23. Juli: Icebox

    TDM

    • Alle TDM-Karten

    Customs

    • Alle Karten auf PC verfügbar

    Wir werden mit der Zeit mehr Inhalte über die Konsole veröffentlichen und die Spieler*innen würdigen, wenn sie in der Limited Beta Meilensteine erreichen. Folge uns dafür gerne auf X (ehemals Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, YouTube und TikTok. Wenn Du Dich über Valorant austauschen willst oder Freund*innen suchst, mit denen Du Dich zusammenschließen kannst, melde Dich in unserem Discord an. Wir können es kaum erwarten, Dich am 14. Juni im Spiel und Deine Clips zu sehen!

    Website: LINK

  • Breaking Down the New Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Trailer – Arriving July 19, Pre-Orders Open Now

    Breaking Down the New Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Trailer – Arriving July 19, Pre-Orders Open Now

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    Summary

    • The release date for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess has been set for July 19, 2024, and pre-orders are available today.
    • In addition to Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows PC, the game will also be available on Xbox One.
    • The newly released trailer further explains the game’s unique fusion of action and strategy.

    Kunitsu-gami: Path of the Goddess is a single player game that combines action and strategy in a unique Japanese-inspired setting. The latest trailer for the game was revealed today during Summer Game Fest, and the release date has been set for Friday, July 19, 2024!

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuSCelICm1A?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    In addition to the previously announced support for Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC, additional support for Xbox One has also been announced. Pre-orders for all platforms are available today, and Xbox Game Pass members will be able to play the game on day one on July 19, 2024.

    A Dramatic Action Strategy with Dancing Swords and Strategic Commands

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a completely new title that combines the exhilarating action of “sword dance” with strategy. Set on a mountain that has been covered by defilement, the game repeats the cycle of preparing for battle during the day and protecting the Maiden Yoshiro from the evil spirits called the Seethe during the night. We hope players look forward to the action-strategy gameplay that allows each player to enjoy the freedom of strategizing in a unique Japanese aesthetic.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    This screenshot shows an action scene featuring the protagonist Soh, a guardian who wields a sword and commands the villagers. In this game, players can enjoy exhilarating “sword dance” action, which combines sword slashes with dancing techniques based on real-life traditional Kagura ceremonies to purge the Seethe.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Before we get into the new information about what occurs during the night, let’s take a moment to review what happens during the day:

    During the day, players will explore the mountain, prepare for battle, and lead the Maiden to the sealed Torii Gates. The mountain is covered in defilement, so you will have to purify the Torii Gates as you progress through, but there will also be villagers who can be rescued. The rescued villagers will be able to aid you during the battle at night by assigning them roles.

    One thing that cannot be forgotten during the day is to position the villagers for the battle at nightfall. Players must carefully consider the characteristics of each role and position them accordingly.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    During the night, you will have to fight against the horde of Seethe that emerge from the Torii Gates, coming for Yoshiro, the Maiden. The positioned villagers will be able to fight alongside Soh, and their roles and position can be changed during the battle in real-time, so make sure to keep an eye out on the battleground and strategize wisely to protect Yoshiro until sunrise.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Your key goal each night is to protect the Maiden Yoshiro – and it’s game over if you don’t – but even if Soh runs out of health, you can return to the frontline after being held in a “spirit state” for a set period of time. This is a tense moment in which the player must keep an eye on the ever-changing battlefield and make the most effective calls to survive the difficult situations you’re placed in.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    In the trailer, you can also catch a glimpse of a battle against the more powerful Festering Seethe. The Festering Seethe alone are formidable, but they also call forth a swarm of other Seethe to aid them. How will you lead the villagers to protect the Maiden and purge the Festering Seethe? Players will be able to experience a unique combination of action and strategy to take them down

    The Seethe and the Festering Seethe Strike

    When the sun sets, the Seethe appear from the gate to another world. The creators’ detailed designs have been incorporated into each Seethe, who hunt down Soh and Yoshiro with a wide variety of attacks. Let us introduce some of the Seethe and Festering Seethe that symbolize the unique Japanese setting of this title.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Seethe: Rosokuro

    The Rosokuro is an old man who was spirited away in the other world. His cursed flame can empower the surrounding Seethe. 

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Seethe: Gotaimen

    The Gotaimen have the appearance of upturned human faces. They drag themselves across the ground as they vomit defilement from a gaping maw.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Seethe: Shokera

    The Shokera assaults humans from higher ground. Their sharp claws can easily slice through even the strongest armor. 

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Seethe: Gakinyudo

    The ravenous Gakinyudo are born from the corpses of lecherous monks who fell to defilement from their debauchery while alive. They prefer to dig up their meals from graveyards.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Seethe: Tsurube-otoshi

    The Tsurube-otoshi aims to relentlessly crush humans from above. Some say it looks like a tadpole, while others say it is a human mouth.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Festering Seethe: Batsu

    This Festering Seethe holds the power of a curse powerful enough to dry up a mountain. They appear in front of Soh and Yoshiro and hinder the purification ritual.

    In addition to the Seethe introduced here, there are many other unique Seethe and Festering Seethe awaiting you in the game, so please look forward to its release!

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Arrives on July 19 – Pre-orders Begin Today

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess will be available only in digital format, and those who pre-order will receive the Mazo Talisman “Walking Basket” and “Astral Projection,” equipment for Soh. You’ll also receive a digital art book “Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess – Artbook of Kunitsu-Gami” which contains concept art for the title.

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Screenshot

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess will be available on July 19 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be able to play the game from day one. In addition, this title is compatible with Xbox Play Anywhere, allowing cross-play and transfer of saved data between Xbox and Windows 10/11.

    The release date for Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is finally set and is just around the corner. We will continue to release more information about this title, so please be sure to check our official X account (@Kunitsu_Gami).

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
    Xbox Live

    Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

    CAPCOM CO., LTD.

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    $49.99

    Pre-order Bonus
    – Mazo Talisman: Walking Basket (Equipment for the main character, Soh)
    – Mazo Talisman: Astral Projection (Equipment for the main character, Soh)
    – Artbook of Kunitsu-Gami *The pre-order bonus may be available separately at a later date. A new tale of the Kami awaits… Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a unique Japanese-inspired, single player Kagura Action Strategy game. The game takes place on a mountain covered by defilement.
    During the day, purify the villages and prepare yourself for sundown. During the night, protect the Maiden against the hordes of the Seethe. Repeat the day and night cycle until you cleanse the mountain of defilement and return peace to the land. ©CAPCOM
    KUNITSU-GAMI: PATH OF THE GODDESS is a trademark and/or registered trademark of CAPCOM CO., LTD. and/or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries.

    Website: LINK

  • Valorant Is Coming to Xbox, Limited Beta Starts June 14 – With Bonuses for Game Pass Players

    Valorant Is Coming to Xbox, Limited Beta Starts June 14 – With Bonuses for Game Pass Players

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Summary

    • During Summer Games Fest Riot Games revealed Valorant is coming to Xbox Series X|S.
    • Get a run-down of Valorant’s gameplay, offerings, and more.
    • Xbox Game Pass members will automatically unlock all of Valorant’s Agents.
    • Valorant Console Limited Beta starts June 14, sign up today at beta.playvalorant.com

    Riot Games attended Summer Game Fest today, and announced that Valorant is coming to Xbox Series X|S this year, and our Limited Beta will be starting June 14!

    Valorant is a 5v5 character-based tactical FPS where precise gunplay meets unique Agent abilities, creating the perfect sandbox for you to blend skill and creativity and create your own clutch moments. Whenever you play Valorant, there’s this special moment where everything will just click. Your teammate will throw out a Skye flash for you, you’ll dash into site as Jett, get crisp one taps, reset your dash and look for more. Or maybe you’re left in a 1v5 situation, but you’ve got your utility and your aim is feeling clean on the day, and you clutch up for your team, everyone getting hyped in comms for you.

    We like to call that the Valorant moment, where creativity meets clutch. And it was our dev team’s main goal when we were bringing Valorant to console. We wanted to bring it over only if you could feel that same rush with a controller in your hand.

    Our global community has grown over the past four years, more than we ever could have imagined. We love seeing their clips, cosplays, fan art, montages, and more. And that’s honestly what excited us most about our Limited Beta launch for console. We can’t wait to get Valorant in more players’ hands, and can’t wait to see what content you’ll create. You will be a fresh set of eyes on our game, and we know you’ll come up with new creative ways to play, think of new ways to combine abilities, and clutch rounds.

    Valorant is a live service game. We have updates every two weeks, where we balance the game, and launch new content. You’ll be getting the same patches at the same time on console as PC. So with the next update, you’ll get to enjoy the new bundle balance updates, and more with everyone else!

    If you are someone who likes to swap between playing on PC and console, or you’ve been a Valorant player on PC but prefer to play on console, no worries – we’ve got your back. Your Friends List, Collection (Skins, Player Cards, Gun Buddies, etc), Battle Pass progress, and Agent unlocks, will all carry over. While Valorant will not be crossplay between console and PC, if you have friends who play on other consoles, you both can queue up and hit the ranked grind together.

    Valorant Image

    Our Limited Beta begins on June 14 in the following regions: USA, Canada, Europe, and Japan. Throughout our Limited and Open Beta more regions will be made available and we’ll continue to update availability throughout our roll out. If you want to hop into game, you can sign up to join the Limited Beta now at beta.playvalorant.com. If your region isn’t listed, and you’re interested in the Limited Beta coming to your region, we encourage you to still sign up. This will ensure you’re registered if your region opens up during the Limited Beta, and will help us gather interests from all countries.

    If the Limited Beta is your first time playing Valorant or making a Valorant account, when you load in you’ll have five Agents unlocked for you, which is our standard for all new accounts. You’ll be able to unlock more as you play games, but if you have Xbox Game Pass, all Agents will be unlocked for you. If you have Game Pass it will also automatically unlock new Agents for you on day one as well, so whenever we launch our next Agent you’ll be able to play them the minute they go live.

    Every Episode, we update our Map pool so that players can play on new Maps, and we can make adjustments to the ones we swap out, if they’re needed. We want to get you all caught up to speed and have the same Map pool our current players have, but we know that that much content could be too overwhelming. So, over the course of the Limited Beta, we’ll be rolling out our Map pool so that we can introduce you to them, and give you time to learn how to play them out:

    Unrated, Swiftplay, Deathmatch:

    • June 14: Ascent, Bind, Haven, Abyss
    • June 25: Sunset
    • July 9: Lotus
    • July 23: Icebox

    TDM

    • All TDM Maps

    Customs

    • All Maps available on PC

    That’s all we have to share for now, but we’ll be releasing more content about console, and celebrating players as they hit milestones throughout our Limited Beta. So please follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. If you also want to talk more about Valorant or look for some friends to squad up with join our Discord. If you have any other questions about Valorant Console or the Limited Beta, please check out our FAQ. We can’t wait to see you in-game and your clutch clips on June 14!

    Website: LINK

  • Five Ways to Make Your Mark in Democracy 4: Console Edition

    Five Ways to Make Your Mark in Democracy 4: Console Edition

    Reading Time: 6 minutes
    D4 screenshot

    Democracy 4: Console Edition is a political simulation game where you take control of a country and run it as you see fit. While in a position of power, you will be able to implement new laws, and take actions which will appease a group of voters, while angering another. The ultimate goal is to gain more votes than your opposition in an election and continue running the country in your vision.

    Picking a Country to Lead

    When starting out in Democracy 4: Console Edition, the first decision you must make is which country to lead. You are able to become the President/Prime Minister of USA, UK, Japan, France, Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Italy, and South Korea. Each country has a difficulty rating out of 5, and it would help on earlier playthroughs if you were to stick to countries such as Canada, USA, South Korea, Australia, or Germany, who are all rated 2 stars and below. This will help you learn the game and be able to effectively lead 5-star difficulty countries such as the UK and Japan.

    Surrounding Yourself with Cabinet Ministers who Share Your Intentions

    As you begin leading a country, you will inherit the cabinet ministers who were there from the previous regime. These individuals will have their own thoughts and biases towards the direction of the government. It will be up to you to bring in new cabinet ministers which align with your values, should you choose, or you could try implementing policy changes with the existing cabinet and see how things go.

    There are seven cabinet ministers in office and their departments are law & order, public services, tax, economy, welfare, foreign policy, and transport. How you deal with your cabinet ministers and policy directions can define your time in office.

    D4 screenshot

    Introducing New Policies and Changing Existing Ones

    Much like inheriting cabinet ministers from your country’s previous leader, the country you are leading will have existing laws and policies you can tweak and new ones you can introduce, depending on the direction you wish to take your leadership in. You can spend Political Capital, which you gain via your cabinet ministers. How much your ministers get behind your decisions has a big impact on how many changes you can make at any given time.

    Should you decide to make a lot of changes from the start and your cabinet members not be fully behind them, then you may not be able to make the necessary changes as you may have intended to. Having your cabinet be behind your decisions is only part of the way of making your reign as leader a success, however. The key part of staying in power is to get people to vote for you and you need to keep them on your side.

    D4 screensghot

    Keeping Most of your Constituents Satisfied

    While you may not have been voted in when your term first started, public opinion is the biggest barometer for success in Democracy 4: Console Edition. Each decision you make will positively impact one type of constituent, while negatively affecting another. It’s impossible to keep everyone happy all the time, but some opinions may be more impactful than others.

    To ensure your campaign and time in office are a success, there will be financial backers who will try to influence your decisions by endorsing you further if your leadership is to their liking or threatening to remove their backing if they aren’t behind you. Those won’t be the only threats you’ll have to deal with, however.

    As your direction for the country takes shape, there may be people inside or outside the nation you’re governing who wish to have you removed permanently. This could mean threats of disruption or even against your life. Between these and random events cropping up, such as headline news topics and discussions, there’s no shortage of ways for the public to support or oppose you.

    D4 screenshot

    Being Re-elected and the Future of Your Country

    If you make it to the end of your first term, it will then be time for elections. Your public perception up until this point will be pivotal in getting re-elected. The public aren’t only interested in what you’ve done so far, however.

    As the election approaches on the horizon, you will be asked to confirm your manifesto. How you meet these targets can be the difference between winning or losing the election. Promise too little and it could make no difference but promise too much and not reach it could spell disaster in the polls.

    Democracy 4: Console Edition will let you play out your ideas for a perfect government. Play in any way you wish. But will you be able to see your campaign through to the end and beyond? The polls are now open for Democracy 4: Console Edition on Xbox consoles. We wish you great success in your political future! 

    Democracy 4: Console Edition
    Xbox Live

    Democracy 4: Console Edition

    Auroch Digital

    ☆☆☆☆☆ 10

    ★★★★★

    $26.99

    Democracy 4: Console Edition lets you take the role of President or Prime Minister in one of ten countries. You will then govern the country as you see fit, while trying to retain enough popularity to get re-elected. • Choose to lead one of the following countries: USA, UK, Japan, France, Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Italy, or South Korea
    • Select cabinet ministers that align with your vision for the future of the country
    • Introduce new laws or tweak existing ones to carry out your plans for change
    • How you deal with random events can either increase or decrease your favourability with the public
    • As election time approaches, lay out your manifesto and aim to deliver a campaign that will take you to victory! Democracy 4: Console Edition is the ultimate sandbox for testing out your political ideas. We all think that we could do a better job ourselves in running a country compared to politicians, but is that really true? With one eye on the budget, the other on the polls, and somehow finding time to watch out for terrorist attacks at the same time, you will find that staying in power while changing society for the better is a tougher job than you ever imagined. This is a strategy game, where the outcome of your policies and laws reflects on your success. If you want to abolish all public spending and all taxes, you can do that. It might work, it might not, depending on how you handle it. On the other hand, if you want to nationalise the railways, energy and water companies, cap CEO pay, ban second-home ownership, and put universal income in place, you can do that too. Democracy 4: Console Edition models the likely effects, short and long-term, of any action you take so you can see what kind of country you can run. Built on a custom-built neural network designed to model the opinions, beliefs, thoughts and biases of thousands of virtual citizens, Democracy 4: Console Edition is the state-of-the-art in political simulation games. Ultimately, Democracy 4: Console Edition is not a game about simply winning an election, but about running the country. Losing an election is just the endgame (unless you get assassinated). The real challenge is whether you can create a country you are proud of.

    Website: LINK

  • Meet the Google TV networkMeet the Google TV networkGroup Product Manager, YouTube Ads

    Meet the Google TV networkMeet the Google TV networkGroup Product Manager, YouTube Ads

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Connected TV continues to see a rise in popularity, and advertisers are already taking advantage of YouTube’s reach of over 150 million monthly viewers in the living room. With the recent launch of the Google TV network, we’re now giving advertisers a way to reach additional viewers on the big screen. Google TV provides targeted, in-stream video inventory across more than 20 million monthly active Google TV and other Android TV OS devices.

    Google TV powers TVs and streaming devices from top brands like Sony, Hisense, TCL, and Chromecast. Google TV makes it easy to watch movies, shows and live TV from across 10,000 apps and includes popular features like Google Assistant, smart home control, built-in channels, and personalized entertainment recommendations for viewers.

    Website: LINK

  • Antstream Comes to Xbox in Brazil

    Antstream Comes to Xbox in Brazil

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Antstream, the world’s leading retro game streaming service, is proud to announce its highly-anticipated arrival on Xbox consoles in Brazil, marking a significant milestone for Brazilian gamers, offering a vast library of retro titles on the Xbox platform for the first time.

    Antstream Brazil flag

    Brazil has a unique history with video games. Due to import embargoes lasting into the 1990s, obtaining official consoles and games was nearly impossible. Even after these embargoes were lifted, high taxes on imported items, classified as luxury products, made hardware and software prohibitively expensive for gaming enthusiasts. This led to a culture of smuggling hardware and software from other countries, pirating software, and cloning hardware.

    When consoles eventually became more accessible in Brazil, prices remained high. As a result, some consoles, such as the Sega Mega Drive and PlayStation 2, remained popular much longer than in other countries. Consequently, Brazilian gamers spent more time with the same generations of consoles, fostering a greater appreciation for a “retro” style of gaming compared to, for instance, UK gamers.

    Antstream screenshot

    In recent years, Brazil has experienced significant changes in the video game industry. Although video games remain more expensive in Brazil than in many other parts of the world, the country has frequently ranked among the top ten video game markets by revenue. In fact, a 2022 study revealed that gaming has reached 74% of the Brazilian population, with smartphones being the most popular gaming platform, followed closely by PCs and consoles.

    Antstream screenshot

    The Brazilian gaming industry is also expanding rapidly. Since the Covid pandemic, the number of game development studios in Brazil has more than doubled, now exceeding 1,000. Focusing primarily on indie games, the Brazilian gaming community comes together annually for the BIG (Big Independent Games) Festival in São Paulo, celebrating creativity and innovation in the industry.

    Additionally, Brazil has a vibrant and unique gaming culture. Retro gaming events, cosplay conventions, and eSports tournaments are incredibly popular, reflecting a deep and passionate engagement with gaming. The country has produced several top-tier eSports teams and players, particularly in games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends, further cementing its position in the global gaming landscape.

    Antstream hard times

    These developments reflect a dynamic and evolving video game industry in Brazil, balancing between a rich history of improvisation and a future full of innovation and growth.

    Brazilian gamers will now have access to Antstream’s extensive catalogue of over 1,300 retro games directly on their Xbox consoles. This includes beloved classics from the arcade era, iconic console titles, and hidden gems that defined gaming history. With Antstream’s innovative platform, Xbox gamers in Brazil can relive the nostalgia of iconic titles from the past decades, all without the need for downloads or emulators.

    Antstream arcade games

    Antstream Arcade is the world’s largest official library of retro games to stream, with more than 1300 titles available to play on multiple devices, including PC, mobile and now Xbox in Brazil. The extensive and impressive catalogue includes titles from the early systems like the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64, to Arcade classics and games from SNES, Megadrive, and PlayStation One, and even features newly developed arcade games. With local co-op, weekly tournaments, hundreds of challenges and a global leaderboard to climb, there are plenty of new ways to play classic games, and Antstream’s cloud system instantly saves game progress so players can put down and pick up games at any time.

    Antstream Arcade is available on Xbox consoles for £39.99, giving the player unrestricted access to all over 1300 games and all tournaments, challenges and more for an entire year. For a limited time, players can also purchase the lifetime subscription for a one-off payment of £99.99.

    Website: LINK

  • Hands On: Replaced is a Stylish Cyberpunk Platformer with an ’80s Cinematic Edge

    Hands On: Replaced is a Stylish Cyberpunk Platformer with an ’80s Cinematic Edge

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    This initiates a high-octane chase scene, with R.E.A.C.H having to leap over obstacles and calculate pauses to the nanosecond, lest you be captured or coldly gunned down. This sequence set a tense, unforgiving tone for Replaced – the inputs are simple, but there’s a distinct rhythm to it, and your timing is paramount. However, what really makes this section feel exciting is its gorgeous cinematic transitions; the game flows seamlessly from playable segments to animated cutscenes that feel like an explosive ’80s action movie. Light particles cascade down through trees and seep through large, imposing steel fences as I sprint from my doom – I actually died a few times getting distracted by the scenery. The apex of this chase segment sees me leap from a ledge and into another epic cinematic moment, drenched in cold, Blade Runner-esque colors. True care has gone into making this resonate like a classic action movie, but with an extremely cool pixel art twist.

    The meatiest part of the demo sees R.E.A.C.H. arrive at his new home in Phoenix-City, an abandoned train station that’ll also serve as a hub for the game. Here, I met a diverse cast of characters with their own mysterious goings-on, and this is where Replaced’s story begins to shine. Just like the home they share, everyone that R.E.A.C.H meets seems to come with moral complexities and each is doing what they must endure to survive – which is not always obvious to R.E.A.C.H. As an A.I., their comprehension for how characters behave doesn’t always align with their surroundings, which makes for interesting conversations as the story begins to unfold.

    Website: LINK

  • Next Week on Xbox: Neue Spiele vom 10. bis zum 14. Juni

    Next Week on Xbox: Neue Spiele vom 10. bis zum 14. Juni

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    Willkommen bei Next Week on Xbox! Wie immer stellen wir Dir alle neuen Spiele vor, die bald für Xbox Series X|S und Xbox One, Windows und im Game Pass erhältlich sind. Klick Dich einfach durch die Spiel-Details, um mehr zu möglichen Vorbestellungen zu erfahren (Änderungen vorbehalten).

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Eine spannende Variante des klassischen Deck-Building-Roguelikes. Es geht nicht nur darum, was Du trägst, sondern wie Du die Gegenstände in Deinem Rucksack organisierst! Finde den richtigen Platz in Deinem Rucksack, um ihre Kraft zu erhöhen, triff farbenfrohe Freund*innen und kämpfe gegen tödliche Gegner*innen. Erkunde uralte Verliese, Höhlen, Sümpfe und vieles mehr!

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S

    Erkunde die Straßen Münchens mit verschiedenen Autos, meistere diverse Missionen und Herausforderungen, genieße gemütlichen oder sportlichen Fahrspaß und trainiere Dein Fahrverhalten im Verkehr mit anderen Verkehrsteilnehmer*innen − alles mit authentischer Fahrzeugphysik.

    Xbox Play Anywhere

    Beim Sunrise GP fahren Autos, die von europäischen Klassikern inspiriert sind, durch fantastische Orte − zwischen Stränden, Höhlen, Bergen und Seen. Alles ist darauf ausgelegt, dass Du Dich entspannst und die lockere Atmosphäre aufsaugst. Der anregende Soundtrack trägt ebenfalls zu diesem einzigartigen Erlebnis bei.

    Windows PC

    Spiele die komplett überarbeiteten Klassiker Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater & Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 in einer epischen Sammlung für Windows PC, die von Grund auf in HD-Qualität erstellt wurde. Schlüpfe in die Rolle des legendäre Tony Hawk oder in die der originalen und neuen Profis. Höre Songs aus dem epischen Soundtrack, während Du wahnsinnige Trickkombinationen mit dem ikonischen Handling der Serie ausführst.

    Vor ein paar Tagen hat ein geheimnisvolles Wesen im Schutz der Nacht ein Dorf angegriffen. Jetzt liegt es an Dir die gefangenen Dorfbewohner*innen zu retten und die unbekannte Kreatur zu vernichten. Dragonic Resurgence ist ein Metroidvania, in dem Du verschiedene Orte erkunden, Upgrades sammeln und verschiedene Bosse bekämpfen musst.

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Miau miau miau, meine Freund*innen! Katzen, Kätzchen, Miezen und andere Fellknäuel sind überall in der Pariser Landschaft versteckt und warten darauf, gefunden zu werden! Mach einen entspannten Spaziergang durch Paris, bei dem jede Katze, die Du entdeckst, einen einzigartigen Farbtupfer in die Landschaft bringt. Wenn Du sie alle findest, wird die Stadt voller Leben sein!

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Als wir eines Tages unter einem Baum schliefen, kam ein Vogel und erzählte uns, dass unsere Mutter entführt wurde. Gehe diesem Rätsel im zweiten Spiel der Lost Chiko-Reihe auf den Grund –  dieses Mal mit einem anderen Abenteuer, einer anderen Geschichte und einem anderen Gameplay!

    Ein junger weißhaariger Vampir wandert durch die Dunkelheit des Waldes und sieht ein großes Schloss auf dem Berggipfel. Er beschließt, hineinzugehen und die Umgebung zu erkunden. Aber er entdeckt, dass die Magie im Schloss ihn in eine Falle lockt. Hilf dem jungen Vampir, Fallen und Herausforderungen zu überwinden und den Weg nach draußen zu finden.

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Brich den bösen Fluch der Hexe und meistere ihre zahlreichen Herausforderungen an einer Vielzahl von Flippertischen, von Arenen mit Parks und Straßen bis hin zu Casinos und mehr! Schalte Kosmetika frei, um Deinen Charakter individuell zu gestalten, und beweise ein für alle Mal, dass Du der wahre Flipper-Champion bist!

    Bist Du bereit, Dich der Angst zu stellen … erneut? Dein Raumschiff stürzt auf dem Saturnmond Titan ab. Deine einzige Rettung ist die verlassene Raumstation TAU-9. Erkunde dunkle Korridore, finde neue Waffen, um gefährliche Monster zu bekämpfen, löse Rätsel, um neue Wege auf der Suche nach Überlebenden in der Station zu finden. All das und noch viel mehr in der Fortsetzung des atmosphärischen Horror-Plattformers.

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Ein Spiel zum Ermitteln und Lösen von Verbrechen, mit einer originellen und erwachsenen Geschichte. Besuche den Tatort, suche nach allen Beweisen und finde heraus, was passiert ist.

    Schlüpfe in die Paladin Power-Rüstung, schnapp Dir die Nahkampfwaffen der dämonischen Eindringlinge und gib ihnen eine Kostprobe ihrer eigenen Medizin! Der Anblick riesiger Schwerter, die durch den nächtlichen Himmel sausen, mag Dich erschrecken, aber lass Dich nicht unterkriegen! Der finstere Ravenous und seine Legionen brutaler Dämon*innen sind bereit für den Kampf.

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Ein 2,5D-Beat ‚em up-Spiel, das auf dem gleichnamigen Kultfilm basiert: Eine Gruppe von Animatronics erwacht zum Leben und metzelt alle Menschen nieder, die es wagen, Willy’s Wonderland zu betreten. Übernimm die Kontrolle über den Hausmeister oder Liv und stelle Dich den Horden des Bösen, die von den Animatronics angeführt werden − Tito Turtle, Siren Sara, Arty Alligator, Cammy Chameleon, Willy Weasel und mehr!

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Begib Dich auf eine spannende Reise mit magischen Mädchen in die magische Welt der Astrune Academy! Entdecke die Geschichte der angehenden Zauberinnen in dieser hochherrschaftlichen Akademie in der Region Sternship. Nimm am Alltag der magischen Akademie teil, erfülle Aufgaben und strebe danach, eine gute Zauberin zu werden.

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Ein niedlicher Miniatur-Puzzle-Plattformer mit dem namensgebenden Frosch Froggy in der Hauptrolle. Als Froggy’s Kumpel Buzzy durch ein mysteriöses Portal verschwindet, liegt es an unserem Amphibienhelden, seinen Freund zu retten. Mach Dich bereit für 60 Level voller Sprünge und Sprints, begleitet von einer angenehmen Ästhetik mit bunter Pixelkunst und entspannender Musik.

    Optimiert für Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Das legendäre japanische Arcade-Spiel ist zurück! Wähle Deinen Lieblingscharakter und spiele in einem der vielen Modi. Löse teuflische Rätsel oder besiege starke Gegner*innen in Versus-Matches. Erlebe ein spannendes Abenteuer voller Wendungen im Story-Modus oder im Path of Destiny-Modus. Fordere Deine Freund*innen und die besten Spieler*innen online heraus.

    Begib Dich in die ultimative Version des von Kritiker*innen gefeierten Shin Megami Tensei V. Es wurde massiv erweitert mit einer brandneuen Handlung, neuen Schauplätzen, Dämonen und Entscheidungen, die das Schicksal der gesamten Existenz bestimmen. Bei einer Vorbestellung erhältst Du zwei Sets mit heiligen Schätzen, die Dir auf Deiner Reise durch Da’at helfen werden.

    Website: LINK

  • Next Week on Xbox: New Games for June 10 to 14

    Next Week on Xbox: New Games for June 10 to 14

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! This weekly feature highlights all the games arriving soon on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, and Game Pass. Discover more about these upcoming titles below and explore their profiles for additional information (note that release dates are subject to change). Let’s dive in!

    Backpack Hero
    Xbox Live

    Backpack Hero

    Different Tales

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Backpack Hero – June 11
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    A twist on your standard deck-building roguelike. It isn’t just about what you carry, but how you organize the items within your bag! Find them the right spot in your backpack to increase their power, meet colorful friends and fight deadly foes, explore ancient dungeons, caves, swamps, and more!

    CityDriver
    Xbox Live

    CityDriver

    Aerosoft GmbH

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    CityDriver – June 11
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S

    Explore the streets of Munich with various cars, master diverse missions and challenges, enjoy the fun of comfortable or sporty driving, and train your driving behavior in traffic with other road users – all with authentic vehicle physics.

    Sunrise GP
    Xbox Live
    Xbox Play Anywhere

    Sunrise GP

    Gamedust SA

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    $14.99

    Sunrise GP – June 11
    Xbox Play Anywhere

    Sunrise GP features cars inspired by European classics and races through fantastic locations – among beaches, caves, mountains and lakes. Everything is designed to help you relax and soak up the laid-back atmosphere. The amazing soundtrack also enhances the unique experience.

    Tony Hawk's™ Pro Skater™ 1 + 2
    Xbox Live

    Tony Hawk’s™ Pro Skater™ 1 + 2

    Activision Publishing Inc.

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1&2 – June 11
    Windows PC

    Play the fully remastered Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater & Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 games in one epic collection on Windows PC, rebuilt from the ground up in incredible HD. Skate as the legendary Tony Hawk and the original pro roster, plus new pros, listen to songs from the era-defining soundtrack along, and hit insane trick combos with the iconic handling of the series.

    Draconic Resurgence (Xbox Series)
    Xbox Live

    Draconic Resurgence (Xbox Series)

    Phoenix Reborn Games

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Draconic Resurgence – June 12

    A few days ago, under the veil of night, a mysterious being attacked a village. Now it’s up to you, a noble warrior, to rescue the captured villagers and eradicate the unknown creature. Dragonic Resurgence is a metroidvania where you must explore different locations, collect upgrades, and fight different bosses.

    Hidden Cats in Paris
    Xbox Live

    Hidden Cats in Paris

    Silesia Games Sp. z o.o.

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Hidden Cats in Paris – June 12

    Meow meow meow mes amis! Cats, kittens, kitties and other fuzzballs are hidden all around the Parisian landscape, each waiting to be found! Take a relaxing stroll around Paris where every cat you spot brings its unique splash of color into the scenery and finding them all will fill the city with life!

    Lost Chiko 2
    Xbox Live

    Lost Chiko 2

    Weakfish Studio Publishing

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Lost Chiko 2 – June 12
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    The 2nd game in the Lost Chiko series, this time with a different adventure, a different story and a different gameplay! One day while we were sleeping under a tree, a bird comes and tells us that our mother has been kidnapped.

    Prison of Illusion
    Xbox Live

    Prison of Illusion

    DERIK D.F

    ☆☆☆☆☆ 5

    ★★★★★

    $4.99

    Prison of Illusion – June 12

    A young white-haired vampire was walking through the darkness of the forest and saw a large castle on top of the mountain. He then decides to go inside and explore the environment. But he discovers that the magic present in the castle makes him trapped. Help the young vampire overcome traps, challenges and find the way out.

    Roxy Raccoon's Pinball Panic
    Xbox Live

    Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic

    Eastasiasoft Limited

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Roxy Raccoon’s Pinball Panic – June 12
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Break the witch’s wicked curse and conquer her many challenges across a wide variety of pinball tables, from arenas themed around parks and urban streets to casinos and more! Unlock cosmetics for character customization to express your winning style and prove once and for all that you are the true pinball champion!

    Dead Station 2
    Xbox Live

    Dead Station 2

    ChiliDog Interactive

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    $4.99

    Dead Station 2 – June 13

    Are you ready to conquer the fear… again? Your ship crashes on Titan, a moon of Saturn. Your only way out is to find salvation in the abandoned space station TAU-9. Explore dark corridors, find new weapons to fight dangerous monsters, solve puzzles to open new paths in search of surviving humans on the station. All this and even more in a sequel of the atmospheric horror platformer.

    Detective - Minerva Case
    Xbox Live

    Detective – Minerva Case

    JanduSoft

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    $10.49 $8.39

    Detective – Minerva Case – June 13
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    A crime deduction and solving game, with an adult and original story. Visit the crime scene, look for all the evidence and understand what happened.

    Panzer Paladin
    Xbox Live

    Panzer Paladin

    Tribute Games

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Panzer Paladin – June 13

    Hop in the Paladin power armor, seize melee weapons from the demonic invaders, and give them a taste of their own medicine! The sight of giant swords blazing through the night sky might be hair-raising but stand your ground! The sinister Ravenous and his legions of brutal demons are poised for battle.

    Willy's Wonderland - The Game
    Xbox Live

    Willy’s Wonderland – The Game

    QUByte Interactive

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Willy’s Wonderland – The Game – June 13
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    A 2.5D beat ‘em up game based on the cult film of the same name, in which a group of Animatronics come to life and slaughter people who dare visit Willy’s Wonderland. Take control of either The Janitor or Liv as they face the hordes of evil commanded by the nefarious Animatronics – Tito Turtle, Siren Sara, Arty Alligator, Cammy Chameleon, Willy Weasel and more!

    Astrune Academy
    Xbox Live

    Astrune Academy

    KEMCO

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    $14.99

    Astrune Academy – June 14
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    Embark on a thrilling journey with magical girls in the enchanting world of Astrune Academy! Discover the tale of aspiring sorcerers at this towering academy in the Sternship region. Engage in the daily life of the magic academy, complete assignments, and strive to become a skilled sorcerer.

    Froggy Bouncing Adventures
    Xbox Live

    Froggy Bouncing Adventures

    Ratalaika Games S.L.

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Froggy Bouncing Adventures – June 14
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    A cute, miniature puzzle platformer starring the eponymous Froggy the Frog. When Froggy’s buddy, Buzzy, disappears through a mysterious portal, it’s up to our amphibian hero to come to his friend’s rescue. Get ready for 60 levels of jumping and dashing, accompanied by a cozy aesthetic with colorful pixel art and relaxing music.

    Magical Drop VI
    Xbox Live

    Magical Drop VI

    Forever Entertainment S.A. / TA Publishing

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    Magical Drop VI – June 14
    Optimized for Xbox Series X|S / Smart Delivery

    The legendary Japanese Arcade game is back! Choose your favorite character and play in one of the numerous game modes available. Solve diabolical puzzles or beat strong opponents in versus matches. Play through an exciting adventure full of twists and turns, in Story or Path of Destiny modes. Challenge your friends and the best players online.

    Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance
    Xbox Live

    Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance

    SEGA

    ☆☆☆☆☆

    ★★★★★

    $59.99

    Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance – June 14

    Embark on this definitive version of the critically acclaimed Shin Megami Tensei V, massively expanded with a brand-new storyline featuring new locations, demons, and choices to make that will dictate the fate of all existence. Pre-order to receive two Sacred Treasure sets that will aid you during your journey through Da’at.

    Website: LINK

  • Imagining students’ progression in the era of generative AI

    Imagining students’ progression in the era of generative AI

    Reading Time: 6 minutes

    Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools are becoming more easily accessible to learners and educators, and increasingly better at generating code solutions to programming tasks, code explanations, computing lesson plans, and other learning resources. This raises many questions for educators in terms of what and how we teach students about computing and AI, and AI’s impact on assessment, plagiarism, and learning objectives.

    Brett Becker.

    We were honoured to have Professor Brett Becker (University College Dublin) join us as part of our ‘Teaching programming (with or without AI)’ seminar series. He is uniquely placed to comment on teaching computing using AI tools, having been involved in many initiatives relevant to computing education at different levels, in Ireland and beyond.

    In a computing classroom, two girls concentrate on their programming task.

    Brett’s talk focused on what educators and education systems need to do to prepare all students — not just those studying Computing — so that they are equipped with sufficient knowledge about AI to make their way from primary school to secondary and beyond, whether it be university, technical qualifications, or work.

    How do AI tools currently perform?

    Brett began his talk by illustrating the increase in performance of large language models (LLMs) in solving first-year undergraduate programming exercises: he compared the findings from two recent studies he was involved in as part of an ITiCSE Working Group. In the first study — from 2021 — the results generated by GPT-3 were similar to those of students in the top quartile. By the second study in 2023, GPT-4’s performance matched that of a top student (Figure 1).

    A graph comparing exam scores.

    Figure 1: Student scores on Exam 1 and Exam 2, represented by circles. GPT-3’s 2021 score is represented by the blue ‘x’, and GPT-4’s 2023 score on the same questions is represented by the red ‘x’.

    Brett also explained that the study found some models were capable of solving current undergraduate programming assessments almost error-free, and could solve the Irish Leaving Certificate and UK A level Computer Science exams.

    What are challenges and opportunities for education?

    This level of performance raises many questions for computing educators about what is taught and how to assess students’ learning. To address this, Brett referred to his 2023 paper, which included findings from a literature review and a survey on students’ and instructors’ attitudes towards using LLMs in computing education. This analysis has helped him identify several opportunities as well as the ethical challenges education systems face regarding generative AI. 

    The opportunities include: 

    • The generation of unique content, lesson plans, programming tasks, or feedback to help educators with workload and productivity
    • More accessible content and tools generated by AI apps to make Computing more broadly accessible to more students
    • More engaging and meaningful student learning experiences, including using generative AI to enable creativity and using conversational agents to augment students’ learning
    • The impact on assessment practices, both in terms of automating the marking of current assessments as well as reconsidering what is assessed and how

    Some of the challenges include:

    • The lack of reliability and accuracy of outputs from generative AI tools
    • The need to educate everyone about AI to create a baseline level of understanding
    • The legal and ethical implications of using AI in computing education and beyond
    • How to deal with questionable or even intentionally harmful uses of AI and mitigating the consequences of such uses

    Programming as a basic skill for all subjects

    Next, Brett talked about concrete actions that he thinks we need to take in response to these opportunities and challenges. 

    He emphasised our responsibility to keep students safe. One way to do this is to empower all students with a baseline level of knowledge about AI, at an age-appropriate level, to enable them to keep themselves safe. 

    Secondary school age learners in a computing classroom.

    He also discussed the increased relevance of programming to all subjects, not only Computing, in a similar way to how reading and mathematics transcend the boundaries of their subjects, and the need he sees to adapt subjects and curricula to that effect. 

    As an example of how rapidly curricula may need to change with increasing AI use by students, Brett looked at the Irish Computer science specification for “senior cycle” (final two years of second-level, ages 16–18). This curriculum was developed in 2018 and remains a strong computing curriculum in Brett’s opinion. However, he pointed out that it only contains a single learning outcome on AI. 

    To help educators bridge this gap, in the book Brett wrote alongside Keith Quille to accompany the curriculum, they included two chapters dedicated to AI, machine learning, and ethics and computing. Brett believes these types of additional resources may be instrumental for teaching and learning about AI as resources are more adaptable and easier to update than curricula. 

    Generative AI in computing education

    Taking the opportunity to use generative AI to reimagine new types of programming problems, Brett and colleagues have developed Promptly, a tool that allows students to practise prompting AI code generators. This tool provides a combined approach to learning about generative AI while learning programming with an AI tool. 

    Promptly is intended to help students learn how to write effective prompts. It encourages students to specify and decompose the programming problem they want to solve, read the code generated, compare it with test cases to discern why it is failing (if it is), and then update their prompt accordingly (Figure 2). 

    An example of the Promptly interface.

    Figure 2: Example of a student’s use of Promptly.

    Early undergraduate student feedback points to Promptly being a useful way to teach programming concepts and encourage metacognitive programming skills. The tool is further described in a paper, and whilst the initial evaluation was aimed at undergraduate students, Brett positioned it as a secondary school–level tool as well. 

    Brett hopes that by using generative AI tools like this, it will be possible to better equip a larger and more diverse pool of students to engage with computing.

    Re-examining the concept of programming

    Brett concluded his seminar by broadening the relevance of programming to all learners, while challenging us to expand our perspectives of what programming is. If we define programming as a way of prompting a machine to get an output, LLMs allow all of us to do so without the need for learning the syntax of traditional programming languages. Taking that view, Brett left us with a question to consider: “How do we prepare for this from an educational perspective?”

    You can watch Brett’s presentation here:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0BZq8uRutQ?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    Join our next seminar

    The focus of our ongoing seminar series is on teaching programming with or without AI. 

    For our next seminar on Tuesday 11 June at 17:00 to 18:30 GMT, we’re joined by Veronica Cucuiat (Raspberry Pi Foundation), who will talk about whether LLMs could be employed to help understand programming error messages, which can present a significant obstacle to anyone new to coding, especially young people.  

    To take part in the seminar, click the button below to sign up, and we will send you information about how to join. We hope to see you there.

    The schedule of our upcoming seminars is online. You can catch up on past seminars on our blog and on the previous seminars and recordings page.

    Website: LINK

  • RIoT Secure joins Arduino’s SIPP as Gold Partner

    RIoT Secure joins Arduino’s SIPP as Gold Partner

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    We are excited to announce that RIoT Secure has joined Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership Program at the Gold level. Founded in 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden, RIoT Secure is at the forefront of IoT security, especially in regards to resource-constrained microcontrollers, providing sophisticated lifecycle management solutions that enhance device functionality and security across various industries.

    RIoT Secure’s platform has been meticulously designed and developed around the Arduino MKR platform, renowned for its modular approach to connectivity. This has allowed the company to harness the flexible and powerful capabilities of the Arduino MKR series, which were integral to the successful deployment of solutions for clients as demanding as SAS ground service handling at the Stockholm Arlanda Airport – as highlighted in our case study here.

    Additionally, RIoT Secure continuously explores the full spectrum of Arduino hardware possibilities, incorporating the recently launched Arduino UNO R4 WiFi into their comprehensive device management platform – underscoring their commitment to utilizing cutting-edge technology to enhance IoT device management and security.

    As a Gold-level partner, RIoT Secure is set to expand its influence and capabilities within the IoT sector, driving innovation through advanced integration of Arduino’s robust technology suite. The collaboration not only brings enhanced scalability and efficiency to their operations but also aligns with the mission to deliver top-tier IoT solutions that are secure, reliable, and easy to manage.

    “The inclusion in Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership Program marks a significant step forward for RIoT Secure,” said co-founder Aaron Ardiri. “This partnership enables us to tap into Arduino’s vast resources, development community and support services, propelling our development of revolutionary IoT solutions.”

    Arduino’s Strategic Partnerships Advisor, Paul Kaeley, was proud to add, “RIoT Secure’s innovative use of our MKR series and dedication to advancing IoT security make them a valuable addition to our program. We look forward to the great advancements this partnership will bring to the IoT landscape.”

    Through this partnership, RIoT Secure aims to continue advancing the field of IoT, providing clients with reliable and innovative solutions that are ready to meet the technological challenges of today and tomorrow. With Arduino, they are set to redefine the possibilities of IoT integration and management, making it more accessible, secure, and efficient for everyone involved.

    The System Integrators Partnership Program by Arduino Pro is an exclusive initiative designed for professionals seeking to implement Arduino technologies in their projects. This program opens up a world of opportunities based on the robust Arduino ecosystem, allowing partners to unlock their full potential in collaboration with us.

    The post RIoT Secure joins Arduino’s SIPP as Gold Partner appeared first on Arduino Blog.

    Website: LINK