Couchpotato's Random RPG News

Reiner, Tack, Kim and Leo reconvene to continue the journey they began in the previous episode, diving deep into the bizarre universe of Shadow Hearts.

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Game Informer's Suriel Vazquez and Andrew Reiner play the first two hours of Bioware's Anthem on PC.Subscribe to Game Informer's YouTube channel for new episodes of New Gameplay Today, where we show off exclusive or new gameplay for the most-anticipated games.

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Join Paul and Jared as they reveal the details of the Closed Alpha 3 test and show off some new features in Torchlight Frontiers!

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We are glad to show off the Signed Premium Collector's Edition of "Pathfinder: Kingmaker", available to all backers who supported us on Kickstarter at the appropriate level! Hope you like it as much as we do!

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First things first: we are finally reaching the end of our shipping campaign! This week we've shipped the last batch of regular boxed editions - around 200 copies. As for Collector's editions, there are about 300 of those left. Our estimate is that 99% of all physical rewards should arrive to their rightful owners in about a month, with the majority arriving in two weeks. If you suddenly realized that you had purchased a regular or Collector's boxed edition and forgot to give us your address - no worries, we'll send you your stuff! More on that later.

We are deeply sorry that it took us so long to deliver your physical rewards. Even though we knew that manufacturing and international shipping are quite complicated affairs and did our best to plan accordingly, we were unable to anticipate some of the pitfalls, and as a game developer, we didn't have a person on board who had the necessary experience to warn us in advance.

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Clearly, I wasn't a big fan of BattleTech, but I might have approached it for all the wrong reasons. I thoroughly enjoyed Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun games. They were a nice blend of turn-based combat and RPG goodness, and I thought BattleTech might be more of them same. But no. The RPG goodness completely disappeared -- the writing took a nosedive, character builds are non-existent, and you don't make any meaningful story-based decisions -- and I didn't even enjoy the combat. Your mileage may vary, of course, but in my view BattleTech is a game to skip, even if you can find it for far cheaper than its current $40 suggested retail price.

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The Outer Worlds is full of different possibilities, and depending on the choices players make, their experiences with the story and gameplay could vary greatly. That’s a foundational element of the game’s design; co-directors Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain have been iterating on how to accommodate player choice since their days working together on the original Fallout. We talked to the duo about why this concept is so important in The Outer Worlds, and the kinds of decisions players can expect during the journey.

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One of the most exciting aspects of The Outer Worlds is the opportunity to see the role-playing experts at Obsidian try their hand at a brand-new setting. While the gameplay of this new franchise draws comparisons to other first-person RPGs, the universe that players explore is entirely new. Set in a distant corner of the galaxy, The Outer Worlds is a fascinating mix of classic sci-fi pulp and an irreverent send-up of corporate culture and capitalism. The character you play is, in many ways, as much an outsider as you are as the player – a recently unfrozen colonist forced to contend with a bizarre culture and alien solar system – and that backdrop promises to be especially memorable.

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With the expansion’s release fast approaching, we have many artistic treats in store for you. As you well know, the expansion is actively in playtesting. Last week, all of the expansion’s content was put to the test as the playtesters threw themselves at the final dungeon and its boss. Initial impressions are very positive! We can’t wait to get it into your hands soon, still on track for Q1 2019.

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Deck of Ashes is an adventure game with tactical and thoughtful card combat. Lead the cast of antiheroes on a quest for redemption. Explore the dark cursed fantasy world and hunt down powerful cards. Put your survival and resource management skills to the test when upgrading your Camp of allies. Forge a unique Battle Deck, and crush your foes! Can you rid the world of the Ash Curse?

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Yakuza Kiwami is out now on PC! See what the critics are saying about the latest in the SEGA Best of Japan releases.Yakuza Kiwami is out now on PC! See what the critics are saying about the latest in the SEGA Best of Japan releases.

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Tabletop RPGs use systems-based rules to dictate many aspects of a play session, so naturally the orderly nature of computers has railroaded the general definition of computer RPGs in a very specific direction. According to the collective consensus, computer and console RPGs should be story-driven adventures built around numeric, experience-based character growth. The freewheeling, improvisational nature of a memorable Dungeons & Dragons campaign led by a game master with a flair for narrative has been replaced in video games by predetermined storylines with fixed outcomes and, at best, a few branching decision trees that give the player a small amount of agency within those rigid boundaries.

This is unlikely to change significantly until some faraway day when machine learning reaches a point that allows computers to spin a convincing yarn all on their own. But there is one video RPG subgenre that does manage to capture the anything-goes, high-stakes unpredictability of a lively tabletop session: roguelikes. While light on actual narrative, these games are designed with the understanding that dynamic interactions and complex design alone can result in their own share of memorable stories.

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The Outer Worlds has a unique visual style that merges classic sci-fi inspirations with the team’s own vision. As players pursue their space adventures, they are treated to a variety of people, places, and creatures that evoke pulpy serials, comic books, Westerns, and more. This look and feel is an integral part of the experience, and we talked to The Outer Worlds' art lead Daniel Alpert and co-director Leonard Boyarsky about the art team’s goals and process when creating the game’s stylish appearance.

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One year of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is behind us, and what a ride it’s been with you at our side! Let’s drain our tankards, mount up and spur our steeds to new adventures! Thank you for your support!

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Mount & Blade games have always primarily focused on the core gameplay mechanics over the visual appeal of the game world. And while this is something which remains true for Bannerlord, we have worked extensively on improving the overall visual quality of the game with the aim of making the experience more immersive and enjoyable for players. In this week’s blog, we would like to talk about one of the improvements we are currently working on, which will help to bring battles to life and will give players a real sense of the gritty and brutal nature of warfare.

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We’ve just passed 100 days since the launch of Fallout 76!

There’s nothing like the start of something new - for you and for us, and having millions of you join us on this new adventure is humbling for our studio. Thank you for sticking with us as we figure this online experience out together, and we do mean “together.”

Thanks to your continuous feedback, we have been able to fix many of the top issues and have made numerous improvements to the game. We also make scores of changes under the hood that aren’t as visible. These include changes to improve performance, detect new exploits, and make the experience smoother for everyone. There’s still work to do, but we’re happy to report that game and server stability has increased over 300% since launch. We’re thrilled by how much everyone is playing, with an average time of 4 hours a day.

However, we know the game had a difficult launch, and we’ve made mistakes along the way. We share in your frustrations when we do. We’ll probably make a few more, and when we do, we will work to correct them as quickly as possible. Know that we’re fully dedicated to making this game the best it can be - and even more so, a platform for endless Fallout adventures for years to come.

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Age of Wonders: Planetfall is about to take a risk. Abandoning the fantasy setting that built its fanbase, the long-running strategy series is reaching for the stars in embracing science fiction.

Fortunately – as you can read in my hands-on preview – the underlying gameplay has had a more cautious refinement. If it ain’t broke, and all that. Tactical battles embrace and evolve XCOM, while the strategic layer adds meaningful new choices to the development of your empire. But what problems are those changes seeking to solve, let alone the more radical shift in setting? How did developer Triumph Studios approach the challenge of creating a new fiction from scratch? And what about cyber dire penguins?

We spoke with designer Benny Arents, and senior designer and programmer Tom Bird, about all these topics and more. Read on for answers.Age of Wonders: Planetfall is about to take a risk. Abandoning the fantasy setting that built its fanbase, the long-running strategy series is reaching for the stars in embracing science fiction.

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Blizzard has already reported that it is not working on one, but on several games in the Diablo universe at once. Well-known journalist and insider Marcus Sellars told yesterday in his twitter that fans can expect four projects.

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Owlcat Games and Deep Silver have today revealed that Pathfinder: Kingmaker will received its second DLC called Varnhold's Lot on February 28, meaning there's mere days to wait before you can dive into even more content for the RPG.

Experience an adventure from a companion's point of view as you head into a new dungeon with Maegar Varn.

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Blizzard has already reported that it is not working on one, but on several games in the Diablo universe at once. Well-known journalist and insider Marcus Sellars told yesterday in his twitter that fans can expect four projects.

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Greetings from Zen Studios! I am excited to present to you Zen’s second developer diary where you will hear the personal stories from the talented team behind the creation of head-scratching puzzles to the thrilling combat constructed in Operencia: The Stolen Sun.

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In this exclusive Game Informer interview, Ben Hanson interviews the co-directors of Obsidian's The Outer Worlds Tim Cain and Leon Boyarsky about the challenges of writing comedy in an RPG and the delicate balance between absurd and dark that the creators of Fallout are going for with their

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We rejoin Supergiant Games as they struggle to deal with updating and patching their latest project; Hades. Filmed over the course of three months, this episode features raw insight into the planning, creative brainstorming, and pressures of working on a game in early access.

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This has been a big milestone month! The world of the game is half written. All the basics of the world and the stories have been established. We just need to finish them. We hope that the Queen’s Wish content will be done at the end of May, and then we can do the Windows port and finalize everything.

This is a really grueling phase of development. Every day, I get up and do a chunk of game. A dungeon. Three sections of outdoors. Half of a city. There’s a huge pile of things to do, and every day I chip one thing out of the pile. That’s why it’s so satisfying to get halfway. It takes a lot of doubt away. This game will be finished. My brain is pudding, and there’s a long way to go. But we’ll get there.

We’re doing a lot of internal testing to polish the thing up. We want get all of the balance right: tense without being crushing. The game system has a lot of innovative stuff (like the fort building/resource system), and we want to make sure all is clear to the player. And, of course, it’s a new engine, so we have a billion bugs to fix.

We hope to release the game to a small group of our regular beta testers very soon. Kickstarter backers who are in the closed beta will have to wait until the Windows port is done, in a couple of months.

We are also scrambling to get enough art together to announce the game official and put up the Steam page! Our goal for this is April. It’s later than it should be, but some games it takes longer to get art than others. Happily, the art is looking really good!

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In this exclusive Game Informer interview, The Outer Worlds' co-directors Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky discuss the origins of their game at Obsidian. Cain and Boyarsky started their partnership with the creation of the first Fallout at Interplay alongside Obsidian co-founders Feargus Urquhart

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In this exclusive Game Informer interview, Obsidian Entertainment's CEO Feargus Urquhart talks about why they decided to let Microsoft purchase them, the studio's "three-ish" current development teams, and what Microsoft means for the future of The Outer Worlds as a franchise

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Fearless conquerors of The Stolen Lands can now enjoy a complete self-contained side story that will test their resolve, stretch their leadership abilities and reveal truths, all from a previous companions point of view!

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There are some studios in this industry that command a level of respect and trust just on the basis of their names, their histories, and their brand. There's not a lot of them- these studios have built up a reputation for themselves by consistently delivering industry-defining experiences, and by specializing in a few particular areas to the extent of becoming absolute masters of their craft. Until not too long ago, BioWare was one such studio- and their marks of mastery? Story. Storytelling. Characters. World building. Lore.

Starting with Baldur's Gate in 1998, the studio went on a run of one masterpiece after another that lasted decades. No, it wasn't a perfect run, and there were blips here and there – some more significant than others – but by and large, during those years, when you saw the BioWare logo, you almost treated it as a guarantee of quality. In recent years, things have been very different, and the run that BioWare have been on has been a very different one- each new major game they have put out has furthered their downward trajectory.

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Couchpotato said:

What The Hell Happened To BioWare?

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To celebrate both the game’s second anniversary and the sales milestone, Guerrilla has shared nine stories pertaining to Horizon Zero Dawn’s development. You can read those over on the PS Blog.

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