Couchpotato's Random RPG News

“When we’re designing a game, it’s all about ‘What does the player want to do?’ What will they try?” says Lori Cole when speaking of the design ideas that went into Transolar Games' Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption, as well as her many years working in adventure and role-playing games.

Created by Lori and Corey Cole, designers of the Quest for Glory series, Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption casts the player as Shawn O’Connor, a man striving to be Rogue of the Year while keeping up with university classes, exploring a haunted castle, making friends and foes, dealing with monsters, and solving devious puzzles.

“We think of these things as problems, rather than puzzles," says Corey Cole. "We don’t want to say there is only one way past this and you have to guess what’s on our minds and get it. We know players are going to use every tool at their disposal to try to find ways to solve the thing, and we try to make it so that as many reasonable things as possible work.”

Click to expand...

This week I’m here to do a round up of the amazing year we have had so far. It’s been a whirlwind of working hard & travelling round the world and we still have a few months left! We’ll be sharing some of the press we have received and most importantly what people thought of Disco Elysium.

We most recently returned from Birmingham in the UK after spending 4 days at EGX showing off the game. While we were there Writer Argo Tuulik & Lead Writer & Designer Robert Kurvitz took part in a panel “What happens when you’re aiming to create the best RPG of all time?” hosted by Alex Wiltshire. If you didn’t manage to catch it at EGX, or live on Twitch you can find a Youtube video below. Let us know what you think!

We also just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to check out Disco Elysium. To everyone who writes about it, talks about it, shares all the articles about it, we couldn’t do this without your support. Keep cheering us on to the finish line!

Click to expand...

At the end of the day Immortal: Unchained tries to replicate what it is that made Dark Souls the hit that it became, however through the problems with controls, unnecessary combat limitations and basic repetition it did not grab hold of me and make me want to keep playing and keep pushing. I kept going because I had to, not because I wanted to and in a game like this it is the desire to beat the game that will keep the players engaged. The game is playable and can be beaten, but sometimes it comes down to a good dose of luck rather than skill on the players part.

Click to expand...

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is one of the most highly anticipated games of 2018. Powered by AnvilNext, this new Assassin’s Creed game aims to transport you to ancient Greece. The game releases in a couple of days so it’s time to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC platform.

For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i7 4930K (overclocked at 4.2Ghz) with 8GB RAM, AMD’s Radeon RX580 and RX Vega 64, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, Windows 10 64-bit and the latest version of the GeForce (411.70) and Catalyst drivers (18.9.3). Since the game requires a high-end GPU and does not support multi-GPUs (both SLI and Crossfire), we’ve decided not to test our GTX690.

Click to expand...

I recently replayed the trilogy and was reminded why these three games are so damn memorable- the Normandy, a cast composed of quirky characters like Jeff “Joker” Moreau, others like Garrus and Liara that you wish existed in real life and lastly epic finales like the suicide mission of Mass Effect 2 and the retaking of Earth in Mass Effect 3. However, there is more to these games than just that, emotions that can’t be conveyed by words, so I’ve put together a compilation of screenshots from the third game to best speak for themselves. I’ll further follow this up with an opinion piece very soon

Click to expand...

Bethesda's Fallout 76 multiplayer experiment is almost ready. The beloved post-apocalyptic franchise will be dipping its hind legs into the games-as-a-service pool in late November and beta tests start as soon as 23 October 2018 for some.

Even in a day and age where testing barely stable software products, also known as Bethesda games, is considered a privilege worthy of monetary compensation Fallout 76's upcoming beta still stands out.
Bethesda are of course looking to incentivise pre-orders by directly tieing their beta test phase to blind purchases, and somehow failing to provide customers with any official system specs.

Before you go around digging for speculation, we have narrowed down some worst case scenario system specs for the Fallout-but-not-really-because-multiplayer release. When the big boys fail to provide, AltChar starts doing some jury rigging.

Click to expand...

Pearl Abyss and Kakao Games have announced that Black Desert Online has recently reached 10 million registered players worldwide. To celebrate this milestone, new adventurers can earn a free copy of Black Desert Online by completing the 7-day trial challenge.

Players who start playing Black Desert Online between the 3rd of October up until the 17th of October, reach level 56 on a character and complete that character’s awakening quest before their 7-day trial expires will be rewarded with a free Starter’s Package that has a $9.99 / €9.99 / £7.99 value.

Click to expand...

At its worst, Bard’s Tale IV can feel like cosplay of the style of game it’s meant to be invoking. (Well, actually, at its worst, it’s barely functional as a piece of software—this is definitely a situation where waiting for the promised week one fix patch is probably a good idea.) Non-player characters, while well-written, lack depth, parroting back the same few lines no matter how many times you visit them. Exploration tools are little more than esoteric keys to a variety of easily identified doors. And the vast underground labyrinth of Skara Brae frequently feels like little more than a series of gussied-up corridors. But when it clicks, it clicks hard, invoking those old, long-forgotten feelings of being lost in a hostile place with nothing but your wits and your weapons to help you win the day. That’s the sort of thing that can occasionally be worth sifting through a little dross to find.

Click to expand...

If there are any stumbles present in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, it’s in the pace of play. While the combat itself is fluid and moves in real-time, the narrative moves slowly, and the emphasis on passing days or weeks can be a real drag. While it makes sense that the campaign would feature an open world and a lot of choices to be made, sometimes it comes across as more aimless than inspiring. The introduction of the game, in particular, drags - players don’t even get access to their Barony for several hours, which is puzzling since it’s one of the more innovative and welcome elements of the title. That’s a major issue, since RPGs are already time sinks and failing to make much of an impression in the first six-or-so hours of gameplay is playing with fire.

That being said, there’s plenty to dig into in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and even if the early introduction overstays its welcome, there are many more hours afterwards that make the game worth the wait. If gamers can find room for yet another long, beautifully-crafted isometric RPG in their schedules, they probably can’t do much better for recent offerings than Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Click to expand...

In reviewing this game on Linux, it was extremely frustrating having to start the entire game over every time the full party died because saved games couldn't load. That said, it's just a bug, and hopefully, it'll be fixed soon.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker set out to bring the look, feel, and gameplay experience of a classic tabletop RPG to the PC and, in that, is an absolute success. It's not without its flaws, but all of them could be corrected with additions and further content patches, which a game like this lends itself to very well.

Click to expand...

Owlcat Games is a newer studio name, but it masks a wealth of experience. Its small but mighty team has worked on a number of games together from Nival Interactive and My.com, ranging all the way back to Rage of Mages in the '90s to Skyforge as recently as 2015.

One thing they all had in common was a desire to try something very, very new.

"To be honest, we were a little bit tired with MMO production after 10 years spent on Allods Online and Skyforge, so we wanted to try something completely opposite from that - a story-driven RPG with multiple choices and meaningful consequences focused on a single-player experience," said Owlcat studio head Oleg Shpilchevsky.

Click to expand...

You probably heard them in the trailer - and their presence has remained a secret for a very long time. Lets introduce you to our voice-over actors!

We will unveil new members of the cast regularly but for now, let's introduce the ones you will "meet" in the beginning of the game.

Click to expand...

+Fixed Gary giving packs if you already have some and made it plus.
+Shortened Bat's Communion to work with Beastmistress history too.
+Added Humanity gain for saving the quick Nosferatu in the warrens.
+Updated thin bloods on beachhouse beach and added monastery beds.
+Changed surplus Tremere history and improved Andrei's atrium exit.
+Restored billboard and Chateau computer and fixed Obfuscate info.
+Fixed Ground 0 Humanity losses and wrong basic poster quest email.
+Restored Arthur's computer and improved formats, thanks Psycho-A.
+Updated tutorial guard voice and SDK, thanks voerman and Psycho-A.
+Modified Chupacabra and Insectoid histories to avoid warform bug.
+Changed zoom factor of Steyr and SWAT rifle to real world numbers.
+Made Kamikaze Zen money stay in plus and Andrei don't drop braid.
+Some superfluous items can be given to Pisha, Skelter and Strauss.
+Made Carson quest more logical by having the player phone Gimble.
+Added male blood doll to Smoke Shop and a surprise to pier ending.
+Moved Knox in Asylum to restore lines of Cal and some for Arthur.
+Corrected Auspex stats if you use "no changed disciplines" option.
+Swapped final poster quest poster and restored it to Ground Zero.
+Restored partial damage to supernaturals with several disciplines.
+Updated some entries in some computers to reflect NPC fatalities.
+Fixed four Humanity cost altering histories, thanks miracle.flame.
Made CDC guy at Fu Syndicate unbiteable like the others downtown.
Prevented player from using idle animation during a few cutscenes.
Added info to hacking popup and fixed minor map and text details.
Fixed condition for telling Damsel that you killed a werewolf too.
Changed criminal level of several weapons to get police to react.
Repaired small issues in warrens and hospital maps by recompiling.
Fixed critical bug when talking to Zhao from the shelves outside.
Unified formatting of newspaper articles and improved GUI details.
Added toilet doors to a few maps and fixed minor dialogue issues.
Fixed Presence hair and cleared Disciplines before more cutscenes.
Covered level holes in observatory, Red Dragon and Venture Tower.
Fixed vanishing details downtown, at Ocean House, and in cemetery.
Added missing monster sounds reacting to Dementation disciplines.
Made the patch copy all bin files into main folder to fix crashes.

Click to expand...

Dear Members of the Blizzard Community,

When Blizzard’s founder Allen Adham first invited me to join him in creating Silicon & Synapse (our original name), nothing could have prepared me for the amazing adventure that we would share for the next 27 years. Our original mission and values consisted of four simple words that formed our foundation: “We make great games.” We crafted that statement before we had even released our first game, but we were committed to living up to it.

After many years of working with some of the industry’s most talented people to create games and worlds for you to play in, I’ve decided it’s time for someone else to lead Blizzard Entertainment. I will now serve as an advisor to the company I so love and admire. My duties as president of Blizzard will be assumed by my friend, colleague, trusted advisor, and longtime steward of World of Warcraft, J. Allen Brack.

Click to expand...

Last week I (UV) took a trip to the studio in Sofia. Whilst there, I had the opportunity to walk around the entire studio and look at what each and every developer was working on. Below is a summary of my tour, along with descriptions of what everyone is working on.

This is by no means a complete list as everyone was very busy and I wasn’t always able to catch everyone sitting at their own desk. It does however highlight the size of the team and how all of the parts come together as a whole.

Click to expand...

When you set out on your adventures in Mount & Blade games, you are just a humble traveller with only a sword and a horse to your name. As you progress through the game and establish a foothold in Calradia, you can pledge your sword to a faction and be welcomed into the fold of the nobility. Eventually, you will have the option of branching out and establishing your own kingdom, or, as is the case with Bannerlord, if you have taken a liking to your current one, you can subvert it and seize power for yourself! In this week’s blog, we discuss how players can interact with their fellow nobles after joining or establishing their own kingdom, looking specifically at the kingdom screen, which is an entirely new addition to the Mount & Blade series.

Click to expand...

We did it! We're funded! And exhausted! But mostly funded!
This is the point where you're meant to say that you're 'humbled' by success, but I'm not going to do that because I'm a professional writer and so try to use words correctly. However, I know I speak for everyone involved in say that we're incredibly honoured by your support and your faith, both in directly pledging to make Nighthawks happen and in spreading the word until people were sick of the sight of the bloody thing.
Good job! Now go and rest our heroes!

There are enough people to thank to fill three entire Oscar speeches, but I'd like to throw some particular in-no-order shoutouts to Simon Canbäck, Jake Rodkin, the whole wonderful Failbetter team but particularly Haley Uyrus for her marketing help, Tobias Sjögren, Alexis Kennedy, Charles Cecil, Nina Roussakoff, Ivy Dupler, Ragnar Tørnquist, Danielle Woodford and the Disco Elysium team (when's that release date, folks?), everyone on our Discord channel, and of course my cat Humbug, who has been sitting patiently all day while his human stared at silly numbers without making too much fuss about his missing kitty treats.

And believe me, that's just the tip of the gratitude iceberg here. As tiring as this month has been, you simply don't get to do a $125,000 Kickstarter for an original IP in 2018 without immense backing from everyone around you, whether offering their advice, time, or helping with testing. I'm sure the second I send this, I'll be going "Oh, crap, I didn't mention…", but I promise I have not forgotten. Hopefully we'll be seeing some of you at AdventureX!

Click to expand...

In this classic GDC 2011 talk, BioWare Austin's Damion Schubert discusses the rationale for solo playstyles in MMORPGs, the need to cater to this playstyle from a business point of view, and the design intricacies of providing solo play without invalidating the 'massive' parts of your game design.

Click to expand...

In this 2018 GDC session, Raph Koster, Starr Long, Richard Garriott de Cayeux & Rich Vogel talk about the things that went wrong and right during the development and operation of Ultima Online.

Click to expand...

In this 2018 GDC session, Red Hook Studios' Tyler Sigman & Chris Bourassa share crucial lessons learned throughout the development of Darkest Dungeon, including the challenges of running a company with two presidents.

Click to expand...

An optional mode in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey makes the daunting journey of Ubisoft’s latest open-world adventure markedly more accessible for folks like me who can’t sink 15 hours into a game before it really gets good. It allows the player to quickly experience the game’s novel and inventive upgrades, while doing away with the grind that even the most enthusiastic critics have cited as an irritating blight.

Unfortunately, Odyssey’s creators have burdened the mode with a price tag — and the stigma that comes with it.

Click to expand...

Final Fantasy, Earthbound, Fire Emblem — JRPGs were, and continue to be, a big part of our lives. Here’s to remembering our favorites that stand the test of time, the ones that unexpectedly hooked us and the ones that will probably never get remastered.

Click to expand...

The latest update adds two new difficulty modes that can be selected when beginning your playthrough. Story Mode significantly drops the difficulty in combat and increases exp gained from quests, and Hard Mode limits the amount of exp received from taking lives and gives enemies a meaty buff, making combat more brutal.

Click to expand...

"Six years ago, I began working on a simple farming game as a project to improve my programming skills. Over time, the scope of the project grew and grew until it had become something bigger than I ever imagined… Though I was proud of what I had created, I never dreamed the game would become so popular and make so many people happy. Having grown up as a huge Nintendo fan, seeing my game on the Nintendo Switch feels surreal but also brings me a lot of joy."

Click to expand...

Author Brandon Sanderson has said he’s open to granting CD Projekt Red rights to his Mistborn series. Sanderson mentioned his openness in a Reddit thread on October 3. The Mistborn series began in the mid 2000s, and Sanderson has released eight books so far.

The author replied in a Reddit thread regarding CD Projekt Red’s legal trouble with Witcher series author Andrzej Sapkowski.

“In all seriousness, I’d love to do something with CDPR. They’ve made by far the best book-to-video game adaptations ever. It’s the sort of thing the rest of us salivate over — if for the simple reason that the entire genre (books, film, and games) benefit from something high-quality on the market like the Witcher games. I would seriously consider giving CD Projekt Red the rights to my books for free, because the overall cultural impact that a great story adaptation can have is enormous.”

Click to expand...

We launched the Adventure last week to the first round of backers and so far the reception has been extremely positive! Our dedicated group of Adventurers helped us track down a number of issues such as malfunctioning doors, missing key cards, holes in the geometry that lead to the infinite void of space, etc! We’ve been hard at work patching up the issues and will be pushing a new build today and will be selecting more backers to join in! If you’re part of the Cortex Reaver or Citadel Crew Member tiers look out for an email with an invite into the Alpha!

Click to expand...

The upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC will add a variety of new beasts to the world of Battle Brothers, and we want to provide a good mix of opponents that are straight-forward to fight, and opponents that offer a more complex challenge which can’t be solved with heavy armor alone. This week we’ll take a look at the second and last spellcaster of the expansion coming soon to haunt your dreams: The Alp. Let’s go!

Click to expand...

Hello again, friends!

Our work on another large update, numbered 0.8.5. has finally reached it’s end and we are ready to upload it for your enjoyment!

What has been done this time? Well, like we said in the announcement, we are continuing to liven up the locations with new characters, some of which aren’t just ready to tell you their stories, but also ask for your help in various side-quests. A huge work has been done with the crafting system - we added new recipes for not only firearms but meds as well.

Lots of hours were spent behind the stage, where we again tinkered with some of the mechanics to further balance out the game. Also, we have made clothes change possible - you can finally get rid of that sweater for something more fitting your playstyle!

Click to expand...

Beta content

As explained in the last news, the Beta transition will be handled in 2 phases of testing before we release it for everyone. The goal of these tests is to experiment the brand new content we prepared for you and ensure that the network and servers are handling it properly. Once the experience is stable and satisfying, we will release the Beta.

Phase 1 starts in a few days now, on October 11th, and we wanted to inform you regarding the content you’ll be able to test for the first week of this technical Beta.

Click to expand...

The latest look at The Elder Scrolls: Blades featured stunning environments and enemies rendered with all-new visual effects and post-processing techniques that push the limits of what’s possible on mobile.

Click to expand...

Watch Tyler and Jared reveal new details on how progression works in Torchlight Frontiers! See a demo the new Hyvid Frontier, and hear answers to viewer questions in this VoD from the 10/01/2018 livestream.

Click to expand...

Hunters of the Research Commission, it’s time to celebrate your hard work and the change of seasons once more. Join us at the Gathering Hub for the Autumn Harvest Fest!

Click to expand...

Today we welcome Viacheslav Kozikhin, Dark Crystal Games’ creative director, who joins us for a discussion about his new company, his experience with Larian, and of course his new Fallout-inspired RPG Encased, which is on Kickstarter and set to smash its funding goal any day now. Also, his name is practically unpronounceable for us English folk, so he likes to go by the name Slava, which is a cool nickname when said with pronounced with a thick pseudo-Russian accent.

Click to expand...

Reiner played about three hours of Fallout 76 multiplayer at Bethesda Game Studios in Maryland, and he's back to discuss the experience with Cork and Leo.

Click to expand...

Fallout 76 brings along the quietness of its single-player predecessors, for better and worse.

Click to expand...

76 certainly isn't like other Fallout games. After our three hours, I got the impression that Bethesda is taking a risky approach with the series in regards to its lore and its core gameplay. With its heavy focus on survival gameplay and the online experience, I suspect that this largely experimental take on Fallout will become a rather polarizing entry. Though the mechanics were somewhat overwhelming to get a handle of, I can't deny that I enjoyed exploring the large map and engaging in the mysterious, post-apocalyptic take on West Virginia. Fallout 76 looks like it can flourish in the long-term, and I'm interested in what can come about after many hours in its off-kilter and ever-changing setting.

Click to expand...

It’s about 30 minutes into my Fallout 76 session and I’m already in my pants. It’s what Bob would want.
Bob is my wastelander, fresh out the vault. With bedraggled, balding hair, mutton chops, a horribly scarred face and the body weight of a large child, Bob stands out. Even more so when he’s wearing discoloured pants, a party hat, and some cobbled-together chest armour made out of belt straps. The machete in his hand helps, too.

Meeting a surprising range of personalities has always been a part of Fallout’s charm – the quests often just a jumping off point to give players a glimpse into the lives of this cast of misfits, criminals, and survivors.

Fallout 76 – a new multiplayer take on the post-apocalyptic RPG – doesn’t have any of this, however. Instead, it wants the players to become the characters. And so, for a glorious three hours, I became Bob.

Some context: Bob is a knob.

Click to expand...

Couchpotato said:

Stardew Valley Dev Shares Thankful Message To Switch Fans

Click to expand...

Another famous West Virginia beast gets taken out by a ragtag bunch.

Click to expand...

"Well because of the kind of game it is," Hines said when asked by Fallout 76 is bypassing Steam. "Because it's an online, always-on game-as-a-service. Based on our experience based on other things that we've done, we felt like having a direct relationship with our customers was super important to us. And so doing it through Bethesda.net, exclusively, allows us to have that one-to-one relationship with customers, that quite honestly you don't always have when you go through another third-party where they might own the relationship with the customer in terms of being able to email them or to reach out directly and contact them."

Click to expand...

Pete Hines has put himself out there on Twitter trying to answer as many questions that fans have about Fallout 76 as possible. However, there is one type of question he definitely won’t answer, and that’s lore.

Click to expand...

One of the most mysterious titles on the docket for 2018, Bethesda Game Studios has been extremely tight lipped about Fallout 76. Until now. I attended the big Fallout 76 gameplay reveal event last week in West Virginia, and grilled the Bethesda team about the game relentlessly. Good news! They gave me almost all the answers I was looking for, and I had a good time with the game too.

Click to expand...

Bethesda has revealed a few more details about Fallout 76’s microtransactions currency, Atoms. Atoms is the other currency in Fallout 76, but unlike bottle caps, it’s the one you’ll be able to buy using real money. Atoms are also earned in-game by completing tasks.

Click to expand...

Coming first to the iOS App Store on October 24th!

Click to expand...

All-told, Kingmaker isn't a stellar outing, hampered by a litany of small issues, balancing, and the gargantuan knowledge base you'll need to play most effectively. But, for those with the patience, the rewards are well worth the investment.

Click to expand...

The case in favor of Pathfinder: Kingmaker comes with an overwhelming series of excuses. Epic quest lines exist, but a boring second act hampers them. The kingdom management shows unique advancement, but it houses nasty unresolvable events that result in a game over. Companions develop along fantastic storylines of their own but share mundane paths with mediating low-stakes conflict. With frequent technical issues on top of these, Pathfinder: Kingmaker remains hard to recommend at the moment.

Click to expand...

Written and performed by the multi-talented Dryante, who says: “I play everything. The composition involves instruments drawn from the most diverse cultures

Click to expand...

Noclip goes behind the scenes at Bethesda Game Studios to tell the unlikely story behind the development of the most played game they've ever released; Fallout Shelter.

Click to expand...

In the end, I feel like The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep suffers from something of an identity crisis and doesn't know exactly want it wants to be.

It manages to combine plentiful quest markers for the main quest with quite a few side quests, and some of the latter give you very little to go on and there is an expectation that you'll just figure them out eventually. It has a robust party-based combat system, but it doesn't give you a full party for a good dozen hours of play time. It hides plenty of well-hidden secrets and satisfying side areas, but its main story is as linear as it gets.

A lot of these design choices are frustrating, but despite that nagging feeling that things could have been a bit more satisfying, I had a lot of fun playing the game, exploring its areas, and solving its puzzles and riddles. We're not exactly swimming in dungeon crawlers these days, so I'd certainly recommend it to anyone interested in this particular subgenre of RPG. But do yourself a favor and wait until it's all patched up and has a few more coats of polish.

Click to expand...

Spoiler: Patch Notes

Hello everyone!

Please, be aware that there are plot spoilers in the descriptions below (in the Quest, Areas and Kingdom sections)!

Quests

• Bokken could die after his artisan's quest if players came to the "Oleg's Trading Post" area too late. Resolution: fixed, Bokken can't die any longer.
• Tristian could become immortal after completing the "Betrayer's Flight" quest. Resolution: fixed.
• Jubilost didn't appear in the tavern during the "Door to Nowhere" quest. Resolution: fixed.
• The NPC Amalia didn't appear at the Capital Square after citizen revolt in the Season of Bloom chapter (Tristian's "Kingdom of the Cleansed" quest). Resolution: fixed.
• The party couldn't leave "Oleg's Trading Post" area if players failed Nok-Nok's companion quest and the "Trouble with Goblins" quest. Resolution: fixed.

Areas

• Dialogue with Akiros didn't work properly at the "Stag Lord Fort" area after the party got over the wall if the formation layout set party members too far from each other. Resolution: fixed.
• The party couldn't leave the "Womb of Lamashtu" area if an animal companion got stuck at the separated area part. Resolution: fixed.
• The vendor didn't sell goods at "Brineheart" area after resolving all of the problems in the area. Resolution: fixed.
• The dialogue with Amiri at the end of events at "Flintlock Grasslands" area could be inconsistent if players choose chaotic dialogue option. Resolution: fixed.
• The NPC Gwart didn't appear at the end of events in the "Flintlock Grasslands" area if players visited the area first and then came back after completing Tristian's quest. Resolution: fixed.
• There were issues with navigation at "Mysterious Shrine" and "Gnawed Rocks" areas. Resolution: fixed.
• Tristian repeated romance dialogue when the party entered the Capital Square. Resolution: fixed.
• Ekundayo's dialogue didn't work properly at the "Ruined Watchtower" area if players discovered the "Troll Lair" area before talking to him. Resolution: fixed.

User Interfaces

• Critical modifiers weren't visualized in tooltips. Resolution: fixed.

Classes & Mechanics

• The Arcane Weapon - Shock enchantment would give a weapon the Brilliant Energy property instead. Resolution: Shocking Weapon Enchant gives Shock weapon property now.
• Skeletons summoned by Jaethal's camping ability dropped loot and didn't disappear after death. Resolution: fixed.
• Disintegrated units were invisible after resurrection. Resolution: fixed.

Miscellanous

• There was a mistake in the Fighter class description, leading to wrong expectations about class development. Resolution: fixed.
• Epilogue ended after the Tiger Lords message. Resolution: the rest of epilogue should play normally now.
• New pack of typos and localization fixes.

System

• Some players complained that video cards might be running out of memory. Resolution: a couple of video memory leaks are fixed.

We have noticed there were a lot of questions and misunderstanding surrounding our game’s crafting feature, the artisans, so we’ve decided to clear things up a little bit.

As a kingdom’s artisans become better at their craft, they can reach ever higher degrees of mastery, mechanically represented by different tiers. The quality of gifts they present to the player depends on their tier, with their finest work – the masterpiece – serving as the reward for reaching the artisan’s highest tier.

To increase an artisan’s tier, you need to complete their respective quests, but that is not the only requirement. You also need to improve your newborn country, so that the artisans have access to better tools and materials – that is, you need to rank up the different kingdom stats associated with the artisan.

As already mentioned, once an artisan’s mastery reaches the highest tier, they will present you with an item of great power – the masterpiece. At the moment, some players may experience an issue where an artisan tells the player they’ve started work on a masterpiece even though not all the necessary requirements have been met. This will be fixed in one of the nearest updates.

Also, we are currently working to make the process of improving an artisan’s tier more obvious and reactive.

PS.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For anyone having troubles with Linzi disappearing from the party - you can fix that by opening the party manager tool anywhere in the game, for example on the global map or when leaving your capital.

The team at Owlcat Games will host a developer stream this Friday. The stream will take place this Friday 12midday-2pm PT/3pm-5pm EDT/9pm-11pm CET/10pm-12 Midnight Moscow between Owlcat's Arseny Deriglazov and as special guest video game legend Chris Avellone, who is part of the writers team for Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Click to expand...

Warhorse Studios and Deep Silver have announced the release date of the upcoming DLC for Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Beside knights in shining armour the Middle Ages are known for minstrels and their songs, tales and stories about love. The developers at Warhorse invite all players to experience one of these stories first hand and follow the new quests coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on October 16.

Click to expand...

Bethesda has always been at the forefront of open world game design. As far back as the early 1990s, they were pioneering fantasy worlds with unparalleled scope and size, which quickly became synonymous with their brand. The Elder Scrolls was distinguished by its uniqueness; no other developer was offering an immersive 3D open world that touted player freedom to the same extent. Essentially, they had a monopoly on a game design as a result of their impressive innovation.

But times have changed. Open world game design has since been iterated on, streamlined, and polished into a blueprint that’s been rehashed dozens of times over. The bar has been set and then redefined again and again to the point where player freedom and extreme scale are no longer exclusive by any means. In fact, we’re in desperate need of developers to push the genre forward in a meaningful way.

Click to expand...

BioWare- one of the most successful studios in the video game industry with a track-record that speaks for itself. Almost 9 out of 10 games the Canadian studio developed were received well; these include the likes of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age trilogies, and from the previous generation, classics like Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic.

And yet all it took was one game, i.e. Mass Effect Andromeda to unleash the fury of the fans and give BioWare a bad name. Lets dig deeper and try to figure out what exactly was the root cause of all this discontent among gamers.

Click to expand...

Game development can be a tricky business. Sometimes an existing technology or tool just doesn’t do quite what you want it to do or it isn’t as efficient as you would hope. This leaves you with a difficult choice to make: change your design or create your own bespoke solution.

This is something we came to realise while working on the User Interface (UI) for Bannerlord. Previously, we were using a combination of Flash and Scaleform to create our UI, which is actually a pretty common method in the game industry. We would start out by creating the UI in Flash, before using Scaleform to make the UI work in the game. Technically, both Scaleform and Flash functioned perfectly and provided us with the capability to implement the UI in the way that we liked. However, it wasn’t too long before we noticed some issues with the overall process of creating and implementing the UI that we thought needed addressing.

Click to expand...

Today, we are pleased to get you the latest patch for The Bard´s Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

Patch 3 introduces additional enhancements to graphic settings, character art, localization, as well as further addressing remaining issues like ability bugs, optimization of loading times, and stability across the game.

With Patch 3 done, please allow us a few personal words: Here at inXile, we are always committed to making quality RPGs, and we are totally devoted to what we are doing. The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep is a game that we poured our hearts into, and every single one of us is very sad that the release of the game we are so proud of was overshadowed by performance issues. Of course, we wish that we had caught these things at launch and have been working overtime to correct them as quickly as we can. For those of you affected, we are truly sorry for any bad experience that you might have had.

Click to expand...

Every three months, Grinding Gear Games adds a new league to its excellent action RPG, Path of Exile. Each league adds a new spin on its core monster-slaying action for a few weeks until the next is added, and the latest is Delve, which launched at the end of August.

Delve presents you with an infinite and pitch-dark mine to dig into, a sprint into the black of the unknown that’s almost a metaphor for its production as its makers raced to find an idea and make it fun in time for release. But as they found rather too late, the real challenge was preventing Delve’s players from avoiding the fun they were meant to be having.

Click to expand...

Bethesda have said all along that they plan to add mod support to Fallout 76 after launch, but it turns out the wait may be a lot longer than you’ve expected. Recent comments from Bethesda marketing man suggest it may be one whole year before they add support for mods to their survival sandbox, which is a fair while. The game will need to have private servers before it’ll support mods, see, and (as also stated before) those won’t be in at launch either.

Click to expand...

Within the first hour of Yakuza 0, Kazuma Kiryu has to re-evaluate most of what he’s come to believe in. The crime family he’s been loyal to actually has no problem with selling him out, and Kiryu has to somehow prove his innocence in a murder plot, as well as stop a large-scale turf war.

Over the course of many conversations, Kiryu is quickly established as a man you don’t want to cross – he’s principled, highly idealistic and built like a tree. Unlike his friend Nishikiyama, he didn’t join the yakuza for the money, he just does as he’s told in order to repay what he sees as a debt to the people who took him in and gave him a home. Kiryu could well have been the stoic, hyper-masculine protagonist of so many games, but then comes the moment that shatters it all.

Kiryu and Nishikiyama have just had a sombre conversation in a bar. Tones are hushed, and ice crinkles in glasses filled with expensive highball whisky. Then they decide to break out the karaoke set.

Click to expand...

When it works, Bard's Tale IV is a satisfying glimpse of what a AAA dungeon-crawler can be. There were moments of pure joy, exploring beautiful vistas, solving interesting puzzles and finding an unique enemy behind a secret door. I'd say I had about 10 hours of good moments in total, mostly in the first half of the game, when the combat and itemization still make sense, and in a few well-made areas or puzzles later on.

But I spent almost 30 hours playing it, and the other 20 hours where extremely repetitive and dull. This is not a good ratio, and it is all due to pointless filler content, that exacerbates every single underlying flaw the game has. I had to force myself to finish it in order to write this review, because the final hours are nothing more then doing mechanical puzzles and fighting cultists over and over. The final puzzle is literally a set of four gear puzzles that must be solved to unlock a larger gear puzzle.

And that's a shame. Even if Bard's Tale IV has nothing to do with old-school dungeon crawlers, it could still be a fun new take on the genre, a kind of "Portal RPG". However, while it was certainly hurt by a rushed release and a terrible starting area, what really dooms it is this recurrent hubris some developers have of always making the longest RPG possible at the expense of anything else, of valuing marketing selling points more than the player's time. Portal 2 is the most famous and highest rated puzzle game of all time, lasting about 8 hours long. Its mechanics are undoubtedly fun, but I doubt many people would even finish the game if they added a tons of dull low-effort filler content to make it 30-40 hours long.

The Bard's Tale IV can't be saved by an enhanced edition or re-balancing patch, because the biggest problem isn't its systems. It needs an abridged version.

Click to expand...

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one of the best projects that have a special place in the hearts of Star Wars fans. Star Wars fans, who have been waiting for a Remake project for a long time, realized that this project would not come and rolled up their sleeves and started the Aperion as a FAN made remake project. But today, we have very bad news, Star Wars: Kotor's Unreal Engine 4 project has been cancelled.

Click to expand...