Resident Evil Upgrades Cannot Be Reversed On PC, Irritating Some Players

Upgrades for numerous Resident Evil games went live after Capcom’s Showcase this week, but players are quickly finding out that it comes with the concession of not being able to choose lower quality settings anymore.

Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil 7 all received big visual upgrades this week on consoles and PC, with Resident Evil Village getting its own later this year. On consoles this means you can download native Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions of each game now, with older versions persisting on older consoles (and, in the case of the PlayStation 5, on newer ones too). This isn’t the case, however, on PC, where your only option is the newer versions.

Usually this wouldn’t be an issue, but there are a couple of reasons why this has caused problems. Firstly, the minimum requirements for each game have now increased, which means you might not be able to play them at all if you were previously just scraping by. The games are also now exclusively using DirectX 12, which is required for features like ray tracing, but means that older Windows support and compatibility with many mods (including popular VR ones) is gone.

The only way to avoid these new versions is to have automatic updates for each game turned off, and the hope that you’ll never have to reinstall them again in the future. It’s a pity that Capcom hasn’t provided the option to at least download the original versions or give users an option for which DirectX version to use as so many other games do.

Resident Evil Village is getting a similar update in October, which also includes the game’s first story expansion and new features for its Mercenaries mode, including the ability to play as Lady Dimitrescu.

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Phil Spencer’s No-BS Attitude Helped Convince Obsidian To Join Xbox

One of the major acquisitions that Microsoft made when it began bolstering its number of first-party studios several years ago was Obsidian Entertainment. The studio behind Neverwinter Nights 2 and Pillars of Eternity joined the Xbox games division in 2018, in a deal that was initiated by Microsoft.

Microsoft wanted games; Obsidian wanted creative freedom to develop the types of games that it was passionate about. Four years later, that deal has seen the company produce the well-received RPG The Outer Worlds, survival video game Grounded, and start work on Avowed, a new fantasy RPG that will be exclusive to Xbox Series X|S and PC.

According to Obsidian studio head Feargus Urquhart, Xbox’s acquisition philosophy and a promise to allow the studio to retain its creative freedom and culture were key selling points for the deal back in 2018. A meeting with Microsoft Studios head Matt Booty and then-Xbox senior director of business development Noah Musler helped convince him to join the Xbox team, but it was Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer who helped seal the deal.

“I didn’t know Phil Spencer well at that time, I probably only talked to him once or twice up to that point,” Urquhart said to IGN. “But what’s so interesting with Phil is he is this–I don’t know–I don’t want to say ‘persona’ in the end, because he is Phil Spencer and because he runs all Microsoft games. But now knowing him, and even what I knew about him back then, his reputation was just someone who was authentic and someone who doesn’t BS and loves games. And that was the trust in that.”

From there, Obsidian was brought into the fold and joined Ninja Theory, Playground Games, and several other studios that year to help form a “new Microsoft” for developers. In last week’s Xbox and Bethesda Showcase, Obsidian showed off more of its work, which includes bringing Grounded out of early access and Pentiment, which is being helmed by longtime director Josh Sawyer.

Described as a murder mystery set in the 16th century, Pentiment has a unique look inspired by feudal manuscripts of the time and is scheduled to release on Xbox consoles and PC later this year.

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The Tale Of Bistun Launches On July 13 For PC And Xbox

Publisher IMGN.PRO and developer Black Cube Games announced that The Tale of Bistun will launch on July 13 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.

The game is inspired by the 12th-century tragic romance poem called “Khosrow and Shirin” and follows an amnesiac stone carver as he awakens to a blight that’s devouring Mount Bistun. He’ll traverse between the real world and the Revelations Realm, a mysterious place filled with forgotten memories, in order to look for answers.

“As a studio composed of Iranian game developers, we are eager to share a piece of our history and culture with gamers through The Tale of Bistun,” says Black Cube Games lead animator Amin Shahidi. “Many of us grew up with this classic story and the desire to adapt it into a video game comes straight from our hearts.”

Mount Bistun is based on ancient Persian mythology and is filled with beautiful biomes with scenic slopes. The blight has caused monsters to appear, and the carver has plenty of melee attacks and special abilities to fight against them.

Voice actor Marc Thompson (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars: Visions, Pokemon) plays the omniscient narrator as he guides the stone carver throughout the journey, detailing his every step and inner thought.

The Tale of Bistun was part of ID@Xbox Game Fest back in December last year.

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The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero Motherboard Review: A Solid Option For Alder Lake

Over the last six months since Intel launched its 12th Gen Core series of processors, we’ve looked at several Alder Lake desktop CPUs and seen how competitive they are from top to bottom – not just in performance but price too. To harness the power of Alder Lake, however, there are many options in terms of Z690 motherboards, and today we’re taking a look at one of ASUS’s more premium models, the ROG Maximus Z690 Hero.

They say hard times don’t create heroes, but ASUS has done for many years with good results. Equipped with plenty of top-tier features such as Thunderbolt 4, Intel’s Wi-Fi 6E CNVi, and support for up to DDR5-6400 memory, it has enough to make it a solid choice for gamers and enthusiasts. It’s time to see if the Z690 Hero option stacks up against the competition and if it can sparkle in a very competitive LGA1700 market.

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The 2 Million Dollar Puzzle Is A Unique Jigsaw Puzzle With Big Money Up For Grabs

At this point, almost everyone with a smartphone is aware of QR codes, and you’ve probably even scanned some with your phone’s camera. But it’s not very likely that you have ever “created” your own QR code. Well, with The 2 Million Dollar Puzzle,

While it’s unlikely that many people will want to frame this puzzle after fitting all 500 pieces together–unless you win a million bucks, of course–it offers a fun way to spend an afternoon. Plus, jigsaw puzzles are good for keeping your mind sharp.

Of course, the chances of winning big are exceedingly low, as the vast majority of jigsaw puzzle fans will only get a fraction of the cost of the puzzle itself back. Keep in mind that you have to be over 18 to redeem your prize.

Editor’s Note: Article updated on June 14, 2022

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Sonic Frontiers Is “The Future Of Sonic,” Says Creative Officer

Sonic Frontiers puts Sega’s beloved blue hedgehog into an open world–one that looks a whole lot like the Hyrule we explore in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The new setting transforms the traditional gameplay loop for a Sonic game, creating what the Sonic Team views as the future of the franchise.

“In Sonic’s history, we’ve had the 2D side-scrolling gameplay [and] the 3D, more linear format where you have Sonic starting someplace and going to a goal on a track,” Sonic Team creative officer Takashi Iizuka told me at Summer Game Fest Play Days. “This is going to be the next iteration, this is like the future of Sonic–we wanted to make something that really embraced freedom and the freedom to run around wherever you want.”

I got to play a bit of Frontiers at Play Days and the game is unlike any Sonic game I’ve played before. The open 3D environment creates a playground for Sonic’s speed, allowing for platforming challenges that really force you to stop and think about how to approach and solve them. As Sonic isn’t just traveling from the left side of the screen to the right on a 2D plane, or running straight ahead on a 3D one, you suddenly have choices for how to approach specific platforming challenges as opposed to being on-railed to the solution.

“That’s what [we] did with this huge, 3D environment–taking that Sonic platform action into this new 3D environment,” Iizuka said. “The iteration that went into it, the passion that went into it–this is the open zone format that [we’ve] created.”

As a fun little aside, Iizuka told me that the Sonic Team encountered a unique issue when crafting Frontier’s world–Sonic is too fast for your average-sized open world. Unlike the main characters in Breath of the Wild, Horizon Forbidden West, or Elden Ring, Sonic moves at an especially quick pace–faster than most characters in other games do on their mounts. As such, the Sonic Team found that playtesters were too quickly getting from one side of Frontier’s map to the other. The world therefore had to be made a lot bigger, with side activities noticeably spread further and further apart so players wouldn’t accidentally speed right past them.

“When [we] started making this game–everyone was running from start to finish [to test] how quickly you could clear the island from one side to the other,” Iizuka said. “[We] were constantly testing it because Sonic is such a fast character [that] if you’re going through it too quick–that doesn’t work for the open zone format. So [we’d] make the island, [we’d] run across is, [and then we’d] say, ‘This is no good–you got to throw it out! Make it bigger! We got to make it bigger! Even bigger!’ And [we’re] constantly testing the size of the island and constantly questioning [ourselves] because [we] have such a fast character, and [we] need to make the open zone format a fun playground to play in.”

We’ll see just how big Sonic Frontiers’ map is soon enough. The game is set to launch for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch, and PC sometime this year.

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Fallout 5 Is Coming After The Elder Scrolls VI, Confirms Todd Howard

Bethesda’s Todd Howard has confirmed that the studio plans to work on Fallout 5 following the completion of The Elder Scrolls VI, according to an interview with IGN.

Speaking about what the studio has planned after Starfield, Howard touched on the progress of The Elder Scrolls VI by stating that the project was still in pre-production, suggesting that it is still a while away from launch. In the same breath, Howard confirmed that Fallout 5 is planned as the next game after that.

“Yes, Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that, so our slate’s pretty full going forward for a while,” Howard told IGN. “We have some other projects that we look at from time to time as well.”

The Elder Scrolls VI was announced in 2018, just three years after the launch of Fallout 4. In 2015, Bethesda decided to announce Fallout 4 only six months before its eventual release, with the studio moving onto Starfield in some capacity in late 2015, according to Howard. That means Starfield will have been in development for over seven years if it sticks to its 2023 release date, suggesting that The Elder Scrolls VI is a number of years away, too.

Bethesda did start these projects under its former publisher, Zenimax Media, however, with Microsoft now acting and its new parent company. There’s no indication yet if this could change how the studio operates on new projects going forward, or whether multiple games could be developed in parallel thanks to any additional resources.

Starfield is scheduled to launch in 2023 after it was delayed from its original November 2022 release date just a few weeks ago. Fallout continues to be supported through Fallout 76, with the games latest expansion, The Pitt, launching soon.

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New Destiny 2 Patch Re-Enables Flawless Pools In Trials Of Osiris

We’re a month into Destiny 2‘s latest season, the Season of the Haunted, which means that most of the dust from launch has probably settled. Appropriately, hotfix 4.1.0.3 is a small update with very few patch notes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t packing a punch.

Bungie is once again enabling the Flawless Pool and Flawless Pool loot after encountering an issue ahead of this past weekend’s Trials of Osiris. They were disabled because Bungie found a problem where players were not being matchmade based on win count, meaning it could literally not pair up flawless teams. A lot of folks seem to prefer playing Trials this way and enjoyed this past Trials weekend, voicing that they’re upset at Bungie issuing a fix and hoping it will reverse course.

Bungie recently rolled out a rotator system for dungeons and raids that would help keep the live game a bit more…well, lively. To that end, Pinnacle gear, the highest tier of legendary weapons and armor that help players rise through the ranks, is only supposed to drop on whatever dungeon and raid was featured that week. However, in all its greed, the Grasp of Avarice dungeon was not playing by those rules until this week. Now, Grasp of Avarice will only drop Pinnacle gear on weeks where it is the featured dungeon, including this week!

Elsewhere, players were being trapped in Sever missions after they completed the boss fights and I cannot imagine a worse place to be stuck after all the emotional highs and lows of those missions. Don’t worry, though, Bungie fixed it so that players could at least go cry in the tower rather than the Leviathan’s underbelly. Everyone thank Bungie.

For the full patch notes, read down below:

Raids and Dungeons:

Moving forward, Grasp of Avarice dungeon will only drop a Pinnacle reward upon completion when it is the featured dungeon of the week. Encounter completions during non-featured weeks have a chance to drop a Powerful reward.You can learn more about the new rotator system in the previous TWAB here.Vault of Glass: Fixed an issue where a Titan’s Solar Throwing Hammer could interrupt boss attacks from the Templar.Fixed an issue where Sunspots could break immune shields in Vault of Glass, Garden of Salvation, and Vow of the Disciple.

Derelict Leviathan:

Sever: Fixed an issue where players could not teleport all out of Shame and Reconciliation Sever activities after the boss is defeated. Look. Sever is supposed to be emotional but that doesn’t mean we meant to trap you there, OK? We’ll call it bonding.Nightmare Containment: Fixed an issue where The Machinist refused to rocket and stomp players when he was supposed to, so we gave him a stern talking-to and now he’s back to usual shenanigans. The Machinist will now periodically shoot a blaze of rockets at players and stomp when they get too close.

Trials of Osiris:

Fixed an issue where players were not appropriately matched based on win count in Trials of Osiris. With this issue fixed, the Flawless pool and Flawless pool loot will once again be enabled on Sundays at 10 AM Pacific.

Gameplay and Investment

Weapons:

Well Rounded perk will no longer trigger when a player cancels a charged grenade.

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Xbox Showcase Expresses Ukraine Solidarity, Highlighting Stalker 2 Studio

Microsoft devoted a segment of its Xbox Games Showcase Extended to address the war in Ukraine by highlighting one of the studios directly impacted by it. The dev diary showed developers at GSC Game World, the studio behind Stalker 2, talking about how their lives and work have been impacted since the war began.

The segment is powerful, and includes a content warning for disturbing images. It shows the office culture at GSC before the shelling of Kyiv began, followed by the destructive aftermath. It details developers who have had to abandon their homes or take refuge in hallways to continue working, and others who have lost their pets. The GSC office building itself, located in Kyiv, is abandoned.

The most striking part of the segment may be developers talking directly to the camera about their lives. Animator Oleksandr Levchenko describes the horrible feeling of losing contact with his parents. Others are shown bearing weapons, having taken up arms to defend the country. The video ends by saying there are more stories at the studio but some cannot be shared due to safety concerns.

“My name is Max, I am a narrative designer on Stalker 2,” says Maksim Hnatkov, dressed in fatigues and bearing a rifle. “After our victory, I’ll return to the game.”

The video ends by promoting United 24, a Ukranian support initiative begun by Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Many game developers have expressed statements of solidarity and support with Ukraine. If you are able, please consider donating to one of many charitable organizations helping in Ukraine.

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Overwatch 2 Beta Begins June 28, Will Feature Junker Queen And A New Map

If you missed your chance to play Overwatch 2 during the game’s first beta test, your next shot at giving the game a whirl before it hits shelves this fall is here. The second beta test for Overwatch 2 begins June 28, and will feature the game’s newest character, Junker Queen, as well as a new map. Even better, the servers will be open not only for PC players, but those playing on console as well.

Blizzard announced the big news on the official Overwatch Twitter account, revealing the date for the beta, the new features players will get to test out, and the signup date: June 16. The developer also shared more details about the beta will be announced on June 16, meaning even more exciting reveals could be on the horizon.

While which new map will be playable has yet to be announced–there are quite a few to choose from–Blizzard recently shed a bit more light on Junker Queen at the Xbox-Bethesda Games Showcase. Overwatch’s 34th character to enter the fray will be a tank-hero, equipped with a stocky shotgun and a large, two-handed axe for melee attacks.

The announcement comes in the midst of a tumultuous time at Blizzard. Over the last year, both Blizzard and its parent company, Activision, have faced numerous allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. In addition, the company is currently in the process of being purchased by Microsoft. As talks of unionization begin with the company, Microsoft has come forward saying it will formally recognize an Activision Blizzard union.

Overwatch 2 is scheduled to release on all consoles and PC October 4, 2022. The multiplayer will be free-to-play, and comes with at least two new characters: Sojourn and Junker Queen. The game’s paid campaign will come at a later date.

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