Gaming - Page 407

343i is separating the Halo TV show from the canon storylines established with Halo books and games.

The Halo TV show will have its own separate canon, 343 Industries transmedia boss Kiki Wolfkill confirms. While the show will still be based on the core Halo universe, it will diverge from the main canon in something called the Halo Silver Timeline. The reason? 343i wants to "protect" each medium from colliding with one another and cancelling each other out--in other words, there's a lot of threads and pieces to Halo lore to keep track of and things can get very messy very quickly.

"We're referring to this as the Halo Silver Timeline as a way of differentiating it from core canon, and both protecting core canon and protecting the television story. And by that I mean being able to give ourselves the chance to evolve both and for both to be what they need to be for their mediums without colliding with each other," Wolfkill says.

Techland has released the full PC spec requirements for Dying Light 2 ahead of the game's 2022 release.

Dying Light 2's PC spec requirements are pretty hefty. The game will have raytracing options and aims at high-end graphics, but 4K 60FPS with ray tracing on is apparently so demanding in this game that the requirements aren't even listed on the spec sheet.

Starting from minimum requirements, Dying Light 2 needs at least an Intel Core i3-90110 or Ryzen 3 2300X CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or X 560 with at least 4GB of VRAM, 8GB of RAM, and 60GB of hard drive space. That's to hit 1080p 30FPS with low presets across the board.

Square Enix has officially barred new players from entering Final Fantasy XIV and de-listed the game from digital sale in an attempt to get the overwhelming player count under control.

Square Enix is taking drastic population control measures in its wildly popular MMORPG. The game servers are simply being pushed to their breaking point. There's too many players and not enough space, so the dev team has literally removed its cash crop from the digital market and is closing the door on new player registrations. These new regulations could result in a financial hit but are a guaranteed way to close FFXIV's borders until the situation is under control.

Free trial players also get restrictions and can only play during certain non-peak hours, and paid subscribers are prioritized. Square Enix is offering another 14 days of free play time to subscribers.

The newly-formed NFT gaming market is wildly fluctuating as supply far outstrips demand.

Owners of Ubisoft's new limited-edition Quartz NFTs are trying to cash out quick. There's not a lot of HODLing going on here. Owners of the Quartz NFTs, which were acquired for free,, are listing Ghost Recon Breakpoint weapon skin NFTs on auction websites for ludicrously high prices just to see what happens. Some NFTs are listed for the cost of a house, or 100,000 tezos (an eye-watering $447,000 USD) on third-party markets like Objkt.

Others listings comparatively more reasonable but still cost nearly as much as an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5; the cheapest Ghost Recon Breakpoint M4A1 Tactical | Wolves NFT is being sold for $447.

Superman and Witcher star Henry Cavill is a PC gamer, and a huge fan of gaming in general -- but in his recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he mentioned who he gets his PC building advice from.

Colbert asks Cavill: "what was that experience like, where do the instructions come from, or is it asking friends" to which Cavill replied: "YouTube videos, there's actually a guy called Bitwit Kyle, who I watch a lot of YouTube videos of and he was absolutely fantastic. He was really informative about how to do all of this stuff, and then it's just reading the manual".

So not only is Henry Cavill, the man who plays Superman and Geralt in The Witcher on Netflix (which is about to have its huge second season drop) is watching videos of Kyle to get tips on how to build and tweak his PC. I've spent many nights hanging out with Kyle overseas pre-pandemic during events and he is one of the most honest, funny, genuine guys I've met. It's awesome to know Cavill (who I'm one of the biggest Superman fans you'll meet) is watching Kyle's videos. Nice work, bro!

DayZ developer Bohemia Interactive has announced their new engine, the Enfusion Engine, which will power all of their future games.

The developer is using its Real Virtuality Engine to power both Arma III and DayZ, but the new Enfusion Engine will offer upgrades across the board and focus on scalability, performance, modability, and improved online connectivity. Bohemia's new Enfusion Engine will be multi-platform and has been designed to run smoothly on consoles.

DayZ will continue to be updated, while the Unreal Engine-powered console-exclusive looter-shooter, Vigor, is also still coming. We don't know what Bohemia is working on next, but whatever it is we should expect it to be powered by their new Enfusion Engine.

It's finally happening: Diablo 2 is getting new runewords for the first time in 16 years.

Diablo 2 Resurrected is getting new runewords and a ton of other adjustments in 2022, Blizzard has announced. D2R Patch 2.4 will introduce ladder and a ton of changes including multiple character class adjustments, a huge tweak to all set items to make them a lot better(most of the set items are simply unusable garbage), new runewords and cube recipes, and even major buffs to mercenary characters (maybe the Act 3 merc will be viable now?).

Check below for a full list of changes that are being planned for v2.4:

STALKER 2 developer GSC Game World is jumping feet-first into the latest metaverse, NFT, and blockchain craze with the world's first "metahuman NFT".

Right now game publishers are mad scientists doing crazy experiments with blockchain tech. This now includes STALKER 2, the long-awaited post-apocalyptic FPS coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2022. The devs are creating a STALKER 2 Metaverse, and plan to create the world's first "metahuman" NFT.

So how does this work? GSC will auction off digital STALKER 2 NFTs and cosmetic-only items on trade site DMarket (which sells thousands of CS:GO skins) so they can "own a piece" of the game (and of course sell it later). One of these auctions isn't just an item, but exclusive ownership of an NPC. You buy the NFT, get ownership, and GSC Game World will put your face on an in-game NPC, hence the "meta" aspect of it.

Peter Molyneux is back with a new blockchain-based game that peddles a limited quantity of digital land NFTs, literally monetizing digital real-estate which is theoretically infinite.

NFTs are storming the games industry and there's not much we can do to stop it. Ubisoft plans to use NFTs to supercharge FOMO, monetization, and engagement. Some game-makers, like Peter Molyneux and his studio 22Cans, are having a lot of success with their NFT ventures by nearly selling out of all in-game digital land plots from the get-go. Publishers are watching and taking notes.

According to the storefront page for Legacy, Peter Molyneux's new blockchain game, over $42 million of its digital NFTs have been sold to consumers. The studio actually sold the city of London for nearly $1 million. We've done the math below. But one begs to question what you're actually buying here. The answer is a tract of in-game land to use as an in-game industrial zone to build your wares and sell them to the market. Your ownership is verifiable via blockchain and you have a digital deed of sorts that can then be further sold on the marketplace.

Ubisoft has officially confirmed a new AAA Splinter Cell game is in development.

Sam Fisher is coming back with a new Splinter Cell game. The game isn't a sequel, but instead a next-gen remake of the original Xbox classic that's "rebuilt from the ground up" in the powerful Snowdrop Engine (the same engine that's powering Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Ubisoft's new Star Wars game).

The original devs of Splinter Cell Blacklist at Ubisoft Toronto are developing the remake, and promise to preserve the landmark stealth espionage elements while completely redoing visuals, shadows, and environments. Contrary to recent rumors, the remake will be 100% linear and won't be open world.

Animoca Brands, an NFT blocckchain startup that acquired a $65 million investment from Ubisoft, is making a blockchain-based video game using Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.

Yuga's Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs are so popular they're getting a video game. No exact details have been revealed on the actual gameplay mechanics, however Animoca was quick to say the product will be a play-to-earn experience that's due out in Q2 2022.

The game will also feature a ton of NFTs from the BYAC NFT line in an effort to grow the "Bored Ape Yacht Club universe."

The new System Shock remake is coming to PC and consoles in 2022, complete with physical disc-based versions thanks to a newly-inked publishing deal.

Today Nightdive Studios announced they've signed a deal to have the new Prime Matter label publish its System Shock remake. Backed by the might of its parent company Koch Media (Deep Silver), Prime Matter will handle worldwide distribution of physical console versions of the game as well as promotion and marketing of digital titles.

As a result, System Shock is officially on track to release in 2022 on PC and unspecific consoles--possibly current- and next-gen hardware. The boost from Prime Matter is welcome by the developers at Nightdive:

Comic enthusiasts and Marvel fans are in uproar as Stan Lee's estate bearers use the late pop-culture legend's 4 million-strong Twitter account to promote NFTs.

The people that run Stan Lee's estate are under the crosshair right now for helping create what's seen as an exploitative use of the comic legend's image. The estate owners have created a Stan Lee NFT collection, and the first run is centered on Chakra The Invincible. This line of NFTs is called the Chakraverse collection and actually merges widely-unpopular randomization of loot boxes with the increasingly-unpopular NFT market.

Dictionary.com went so far as to say the estate was "defiling" Stan Lee's image. Some of the NFTs actually include Stan Lee's likeness.

Subscriptions typically succeed based on two things: Value and features. Sony's new PlayStation Spartacus subscription might offer both.

Sony is readying a new subscription service to rival Xbox Game Pass. The service is codenamed Spartacus, and would merge PS Plus and PS Now together complete with legacy PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, and even PS5 games. Reports say there may be three pricing tiers:

On paper that sounds incredibly ambitious. Depending on total cost, the value proposition is there. But Sony could go way beyond our expectations with an innovative new feature that allows Spartacus subscribers to create and share their save states and custom game demos with friends.

Ubisoft is planning a big Assassin's Creed Valhalla x Odyssey crossover. This could be the beginning of its ambitious plans with its never-ending Assassin's Creed Infinity game.

Having already conquered live services, Ubisoft wants to do something different. It wants to transform its franchises from separate mainline releases into singular releases that treat new "games" as content rather than sequelized titles. I call this new model games-as-a-platform, something I originally predicted with Halo Infinite. Think of it as a kind of MMO-like subscription model where you pay for full or segregated access to specific content points. Ubisoft's first games-as-a-platform title will be the new Assassin's Creed Infinity.

The new crossover event between Valhalla and Odyssey should set the stage for Infinity's content ramp up. The never-ending Assassin's Creed Infinity would be a launcher that hosts a bunch of "games" within it, and I predict that crossover events will play a big part of the content offerings included within Infinity. The convergence of multiple timelines and games is a valuable and powerful tool for engagement, combining nostalgia, creativity, and most importantly, existing video game assets that can be re-used and re-purposed.

Dr. Disrespect is making video games alongside some of the most well-known shooter developers in the industry.

Dr. Disrespect's new game development studio is called Midnight Society, and is made up of FPS veterans like ex-Halo sandbox designer Quinn DelHoyo, who worked at 343 Industries for 9 years, and Robert Bowling, a six-year Infinity Ward veteran who helped shape the modern Call of Duty franchise. Both DelHoyo and Bowling are co-founders and will serve as creative director and studio head, respectively.

Midnight Society's first project is (you guessed it) a competitive multiplayer game, likely a shooter. The studio is hiring multiple new roles including marketing, engineering, combat designers, and artists. What's interesting is the devs say they will gather feedback from fans in order to shape the game, not unlike an early access title.

If you own a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S console, you truly owe it to yourself to download The Matrix Awakens experience, an Unreal Engine 5-powered masterpiece. A truly exciting tease at the future of gaming. Check it out:

The video above is new and is an awesome comparison between the Unreal Engine 5-powered The Matrix Awakens experience, and the 1999 film The Matrix. The folks at Epic Games collaborated with the makers of the upcoming The Matrix Resurrections, with SideFX, Evil Eye Pictures, The Coalition, WetaFX (formerly Weta Digital), and many others.

The comparison shows us just how good the work put into The Matrix Awakens is, and how truly next-gen Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 and its various technologies are. On top of that, it shows the true need of next-gen consoles -- and not just a fast CPU and GPU -- but a wicked-fast PCIe 4.0-enabled SSD.

The Walking Dead is the latest franchise to get transformed into a blockchain game, complete with NFT land ownership,

The Walking Dead: Empires is a new blockchain-based MMORPG from indie mobile game developer Ember Entertainment, and published by Gala Games, the same company that's publishing Peter Molyneux's new Legacy blockchain game and Certain Affinity's new play-to-earn shooter The Last Expedition.

The new Walking Dead Empires game is centered around the major driving forces of any live game today--collecting, crafting, survival action with co-op or PVP play in a world filled with zombies and characters from the comic series. There's just one twist: You can buy digital in-game land with cryptocurrency and place your settlement there. Land currently isn't available for purchase, but it will have different rarities including uncommon, rare, and legendary.

Sony is introducing new colorful PS5 faceplates one year after the PlayStation 5 console's launch.

It's official: Sony is releasing multi-colored PS5 faceplates to finally allow customization of the towering next-gen console. The new colorful faceplates fit both the digital and disc-based PS5s, are coming in 2020, and include the following colors:

These plates do not feature the RGB color strips like dbrand's plates, but retain the distinct PS5 casing design that's made specifically to direct airflow both in and out of the console. It's worth noting that the bulk of the colors have no set release date throughout next year.

Keanu Reeves delivered one of the most iconic performances in video game history as Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077. But Reeves hasn't actually played the game yet.

In a recent interview with The Verge, beloved megastar Keanu Reeves says he doesn't play video games--not even a game he starred in. When asked if he's played Cyberpunk 2077, Reeves said: "No, I mean I've seen demonstrations but I've never played it."

Silverhand's role in Cyberpunk 2077 is so monumental that CD Projekt RED considered him "almost a second protagonist." There's lots of spoilers dealing with Keanu's character so we'll leave it at that.