During the same financial call in which Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav revealed Mortal Kombat 12 is coming this year, he also mentioned The Lord of the Rings. Rights to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories to film were part of the spending spree Embracer Group went on last year, and the co-chairs and CEOs of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, struck a deal with Embracer to make “multiple Lord of the Rings movies,” Zaslav said. “Lord of the Rings is one of the most iconic storytelling franchises of all time, and we’re so excited.”

A press release from Embracer Group (opens in new tab) goes into it further without actually adding any more real detail, except to clarify that this is a “multi-year agreement to collaborate on feature films based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.”

“Twenty years ago, New Line took an unprecedented leap of faith to realize the incredible stories, characters and world of The Lord of the Rings on the big screen,” De Luca and Abdy were quoted as saying. “The result was a landmark series of films that have been embraced by generations of fans. But for all the scope and detail lovingly packed into the two trilogies, the vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by J.R.R. Tolkien remains largely unexplored on film.”

These movies and this deal are unrelated to The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an anime prequel that was announced shortly before Embracer acquired the Middle-earth film rights. That’s still due to come out in April of 2024, and is part of the same canon as the Peter Jackson movies, having one of their co-writers, Philippa Boyens, as a consultant. Mirando Otto is also reprising her role as Éowyn. She’ll be narrating the story, which is set almost 200 years before The Lord of the Rings.

Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Fran Walsh, the creative team behind New Line’s previous Lord of the Rings movies, told Variety (opens in new tab) that Warner Bros. and Embracer “have kept us in the loop every step of the way” and that “We look forward to speaking with them further to hear their vision for the franchise moving forward.”

Two decades after The Return of the King won 11 Oscar Awards, Middle-earth seems to be everywhere again. We’ve had Amazon’s Rings of Power series, though sadly Amazon’s planned MMO was canceled. Still, there are five Lord of the Rings videogames due in the next two years, including Return to Moria and Gollum. Magic: The Gathering’s Lord of the Rings crossover set is due this year too, and will be the first of Magic’s Universes Beyond sets to be brought over to its videogame version, Arena.

That’s a whole lot of Lord of the Rings, and I can only imagine that movie tie-ins and other spin-offs are due to follow. After the third Hobbit movie I thought people would be done with Middle-earth movies for a few decades, but what do I know?

Personally, one of my favorite parts of The Lord of the Rings is the Mines of Moria, in which we see how the dwarves who returned to their ancestral home were punished, like their forebears, for delving too greedily and too deep. Just a thing that came to mind.


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With death around every corner in Sons of the Forest, you’ll want to save your progress often. But you’ll need to do a quick bit of building first.

Wondering how to save your game in Sons of the Forest? It’s a question I had almost immediately when I started playing the new early access co-op survival game. Sons of the Forest drops players into a deadly environment with starvation, dehydration, illness, fall damage, and deadly cannibals around every corner, so saving your game often is as much a key to survival as crafting, cooking, and combat is.

But you can’t just go to the menu and click save. First, you need to do a quick bit of building by creating a shelter. Don’t worry, it’s easy.

How to build a shelter to save your game

You’ll need the following to build a shelter:

When you scavenge the containers at the helicopter crash site at the beginning of the game, you’ll find a reflective tarp in one of them. Pick it up and start searching for a stick on the ground: you’ll see plenty of them once you’ve left the snowy starter area and descended to a lower altitude.

When you spot a stick, pick it up. Then open your inventory by tapping the I key, and select or equip the tarp which will be stored in the upper right-hand corner of your inventory screen. With the tarp in your hand, look at the ground in front of you. You’ll see the outline of a square, which you can rotate with the Q and R keys if desired. When you’re happy with the spot, left-click and you’ll place the tarp on the ground.

Now just move close and look at one corner of the tarp until you see a white, dotted-line arrow pointing up. Left-click again. As long as one stick is in your inventory, you’ll see yourself prop up that corner of the tarp with the stick. And that’s it, you’ve just built a shelter. Here’s the whole process, which only takes a moment, in a gif:

Now when you move close to the shelter, you’ll see two prompts, one to save your game (hold E) and one to sleep (hold Z). You can also prop up the rest of the corners of the shelter by using more sticks, but it’s not required.

You can save the game any time you’re at your shelter, and it’ll also show up on your GPS map as a house icon. To move the shelter, smash the stick with your axe and the tarp will fold itself back up so you can add it to your inventory again.


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After departing to Russia for experimental detox treatments in 2020 (opens in new tab), Jordan Peterson returned a changed man⁠—he craves Tiberium now? And instead of “woke moralists” he really has it in for… The Brotherhood of Nod?

Riffing on a video from YouTuber Benzenas (opens in new tab) earlier this year, video maker Definitely Not Kane is pursuing a simple premise to its hilt: professional internet weirdos like Peterson, $1.5 billion-in-the-hole (opens in new tab) talking head Alex Jones (opens in new tab), and accused rapist and sex trafficker Andrew Tate (opens in new tab) all kinda talk like FMV cutscene supervillains, and you can just drop them into Command & Conquer communication screens without missing a beat.

“I believed there could be more to this and more quotes from Peterson and other famous people could fit into the cheesy but likeable, funny style of C&C’s world,” Definitely Not Kane tells me. “Also, I wanted to go beyond simply using the same line over and over again and try to build a narrative for every video.”

I’m particularly fond of Definitely Not Kane’s relative chart-topper, “Jordan Peterson Fires the Ion Cannon On Your Base (opens in new tab),” where the public intellectual(?) pops onscreen and remarks, “It is impossible to talk with you. You have departed from the sphere of reason and reasonable discourse.” After a couple more choice digs that sound straight out of the repertoire of Civ’s nuclear-armed Gandhi and his ilk, Peterson, here representing an AI-controlled enemy player, blasts you with that Ion Cannon mentioned in the title.

They’re short videos too, but not literal YouTube Shorts, something I appreciate in this era of 10-hour audio essays at one end and TikTok knockoffs on the other, making me feel like I’m an old man printing out webpages to read as I watch videos in portrait mode on my desktop. “Tiberium Wars But EVERYTHING Is Voiced By Alex Jones (opens in new tab)” hits you with its main conceit, then does not overstay its welcome. Short and sweet.

Definitely Not Kane is helped in his process by having a superfan’s encyclopedic knowledge of Command & Conquer’s story and gameplay scenarios. “I gathered specific scenarios that regularly happen in C&C games like using superweapons, cutscenes before a mission, briefings right at the start of a new mission, etc,” he said. It also doesn’t hurt that Peterson gave an on-stage presentation dissecting the Biblical story of Cain and Abel that gave Definitely Not Kane some convenient audio to work with (opens in new tab). Who can say whether the Canadian was railing against Cain or Kane?

Definitely Not Kane is open to making new videos as our real-life politicians and public figures continue talking like supervillains, and indicated that he thinks Joe Rogan and Biden could make good fodder, as we’ve seen some accounts using AI lately to produce parodies (and scams (opens in new tab)) of these figures. You can check out Definitely Not Kane’s full back catalogue of spoofs and goofs over on his YouTube (opens in new tab) channel.


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Here’s your big surprise for the day: During the Warner Bros. Discovery Q4 financial call today, CEO David Zaslav revealed that Mortal Kombat 12 is on the way, and might even be out this year.

The completely unexpected reveal came as Zaslav gushed over the success of Hogwarts Legacy, which Warner said sold more than 12 million copies in just two weeks, generating $850 million in revenues.

“And there’s lot more to come, including the highly anticipated Mortal Kombat 12 and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, games also set for release this year, with ambitious launch projections,” Zaslav said.

Mortal Kombat 12 was teased (opens in new tab) in January 2022, but as far as I know this is the first mention of the game in official channels. Assuming it’s being developed by Netherrealm, the statement strongly suggests that it’s coming ahead of a new Injustice game, which some fans have been patiently waiting for. In fact, the Joker appeared to be teasing Injustice 3 (opens in new tab) when he appeared in Mortal Kombat 11 three years ago, but nothing has come of it since.

There’s no mistaking the statement, though. Courtesy of GuiLeena_, here it is, word for word:

It’s possible that Warner is holding off on a new Injustice in order to avoid stepping on Suicide Squad’s toes: After all, there’s only room for so many superhero fighting games from one publisher in any given year. Regardless, it’s incredibly unusual for such a big game name to be blown like this.

I have reached out to Warner Bros. for confirmation of the Mortal Kombat 12 reveal, and will update if I receive a reply.


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We’ve been waiting patiently these last eight years for Rocksteady’s next game, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Warner Bros. has been pretty sparse with the details about Suicide Squad since its formal announcement in 2020, only really going as far as to say it has four-player co-op. 

After today’s 15-minute State of Play presentation, we now know that Suicide Squad is definitely not a Batman-type stealth action game: in fact, it’s a bombastic third-person looter shooter that seems to have more in common with Crackdown than Arkham Asylum. A few quick facts based on the State of Play showcase:

  • One “core” of Suicide Squad’s gameplay is traversal: every character has a different but similarly floaty means of getting around
  • There’s loot, gear scores, and six weapon classes: assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns, miniguns, sniper rifles, and pistols
  • There are also vehicles, but we didn’t see those in action
  • More characters, weapons, and missions are planned for DLC
  • There is a battle pass, but it’s cosmetics only

Maybe I should’ve seen it coming, but I’m surprised at just how chaotic and loud the Suicide Squad game is. It’s a major departure from Rocksteady’s methodical Arkham series and a stark contrast to WB Montreal’s recently-released Gotham Knights. 

Judging purely by the gameplay shown today, I think you spend about half of the game flying through the sky: Harley stays airborne with a grapple hook, Deadshot has a jetpack, Boomerang has a teleporting boomerang, and King Shark is very good at jumping. Mid-air combat seems like a big deal—Harley had a long window to aim and shoot at glowing purple weak spots before the floaty gravity brought her down.

Those glowing weak spots are actually what worries me most about the Suicide Squad. Dumping thousands of bullets into spongey bosses isn’t my idea of a great game (though everything is less boring with friends). It’s not all guns all the time—every character has melee moves as well (apparently King Shark specializes in melee), but most of the moves I saw looked more like a canned execution animation than an active combat system. We’ll have to wait to hear more on that.

I’m more on board with the Suicide Squad than I was immediately after watching the gameplay. My friend group is always hungry for a new co-op shooter, and it’s not every day one with a massive budget comes along. On the other hand, after 50 hours of looting identical scarves and juggling a pointless gear score in Hogwarts Legacy, I’ve had it up to here (imagine I’m holding my hand very high) with half-baked RPG systems. Finding a new gun/sword/wand with a slightly bigger number has become a shortcut for meaningful progression.

I recently restarted Batman: Arkham Knight and was reminded of how gracefully Rocksteady dials up Batman’s capabilities over one long night with new gadgets and abilities—no gear score required. Hopefully Suicide Squad can pull it off too.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is releasing May 26, 2023.


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Co-op horror survival game Sons of the Forest launched on Steam in early access today, and even though there was about an hour delay before it was unlocked, that didn’t stop it from immediately being catapulted to the top of Steam’s best-seller list (opens in new tab) within its first 90 minutes. People really, really want to play Sons of the Forest. Over 200,000 of them, all at once.

That’s a strong start! I’ve been playing it too, and if you’re planning on giving it a go I’ve got a few beginner’s tips to help you find your footing as you explore Sons of the Forest’s massive, mysterious island. You’ll have to gather supplies, build a shelter, cook meals, and fend off a collection of terrifying cannibals as you hunt for the missing billionaire you’ve been sent to find. You’ll also have to figure out how the unusual inventory works, how to save your game, and wrestle with the crafting system. I’m here to help.

You begin Sons of the Forest near the wreckage of a crashed helicopter. Here are some important tips to help you with what comes next.

Make sure you grab everything from the crash site

Around the wreck of the helicopter you’ll find several containers lying in the snow. Make sure you open all of them and collect the resources inside. That sounds obvious, but trust me, you should carefully double-check before you leave the area that you haven’t missed any. Even in the snow, the containers can be hard to spot and you don’t want to leave anything behind. I was just about to move on when I spotted two more crates some distance away.

The contents of the containers are mostly randomized, but you’ll definitely find a basic meal, a lighter, and a tarp, plus the all-important GPS, survival knife, and tactical axe. You’ll find an assortment of other items which may include a flashlight, spare ammo, duct tape, medicine, chocolate bars, and even hand grenades or C4 explosives.

The inventory screen doesn’t fit on one screen

When you tap I to open your inventory, you’ll lay everything you’re carrying out on the ground in front of you. It’s a bit weird, but it’s a nice organization system, and the inventory even has a light you can turn on so you can see your belongings at night.

Your inventory screen is a lot bigger than it first appears. To see everything, you’ll need to actually move your head (by moving your mouse to the edges of the screen). Sticks and rocks you collect, for example, will be stored to the right. Bones and limbs will be on the far, far right. There are extra containers if you move your head up and food items are stored on the lower edge. Make sure you take a good look around at just how big the inventory screen is so you don’t miss something you’re carrying.

To quickly equip items, use your backpack

(Image credit: Endnight Games)

Your inventory screen isn’t the only way to access items, which is a relief—when facing an angry cannibal, you don’t want to have to spread your entire inventory down on the ground just to get out your axe.

So there’s a shortcut, your backpack, which you can access by holding I instead of tapping I. This will pull up your backpack, and you can attach items to it, like your axe or a spear, to grab and equip them quickly. You can even store human limbs and severed heads for quick access, if that’s the kind of person you are.

To attach items to your backpack, open your inventory the usual way and select your backpack (it’s on the upper area of your inventory screen). Items that can’t be attached will automatically be grayed out, but everything else you can attach by selecting it.

Build a basic a shelter to save your game

(Image credit: Endnight Games)

At your starting area you’ll find a reflective silver tarp in one of the crates. Grab it, but don’t place it on the ground yet. As you leave the crash site and head further down the mountain, keep your eyes peeled for sticks lying on the ground. To build a basic shelter you’ll need two sticks to go with your tarp.

Once you’ve got them and feel you’re in a safe enough place, open your inventory and take your tarp (it’ll be stored in the top right of your inventory). Equip it, and look down. You’ll see a square outline on the ground, which you can rotate if needed. 

Left-click to place the tarp, then aim your mouse at one corner and left-click again, then repeat on the next corner. You’ll auto-place the two sticks under the corners, and your shelter is done. Now you can use the shelter to save your game, or to sleep so time passes. (Propping up a single corner will only let you save your game, not sleep.)

To take your shelter down, smash one of the sticks with your axe. That’ll cause the tarp to fold up on the ground so you can add it back into your inventory.

Tap E to collect food, hold E to eat

(Image credit: Endnight Games)

You’re going to find a lot of sources of food in Sons of the Forest, but not everything is safe to eat. Items like berries, mushrooms, and herbs can poison you. While you’re scrounging around you’ll see prompts for food items on bushes or logs, but be careful! Tap E if you want to collect these items. If you hold E, you’ll automatically eat it, even if you didn’t intend to.

Items like berries and mushrooms are marked with a question mark until you’ve discovered their effects. Once you’ve confirmed a food source is safe (such as blueberries) it will then be marked with a green icon, so you can go ahead and safely eat it whenever you find it.

Make a fire by breaking sticks

Crafting instructions are pretty unobtrusive in Sons of the Forest, but sometimes they’re so minimalist you might miss them completely. If you want to make yourself a little fire to keep warm or cook a quick meal, start by making sure you’ve collected two sticks and have a lighter in your inventory.

With a stick in one hand, look down at the ground. It’s easy to miss, but you’ll see two faint outlines on the ground, made with dotted lines. This is the indicator that you can break your sticks into smaller pieces. Left-click and you’ll snap your stick over your knee, and then do it again. A prompt will appear to light the fire. Once it’s burning, hold E and you can add any cookable food items to the flames.

For now, avoid the locals

(Image credit: Endnight Games)

You’ll quickly begin seeing the island’s inhabitants as you move through the forest, and for now it’s best to avoid them. Many aren’t openly hostile, just curious or scared, but that can change very quickly if you get too close to them.

And keeping your distance can be a challenge. Many of the locals will follow you, sometimes for long distances, and if you’re building a camp they may come to investigate. If it’s at all possible, sprint away from any locals who seem to be getting too close. Some may throw rocks to warn you off, others (I met one carrying a large club) will attack if you linger too long. If you do need to fight, your tactical axe is a good weapon, but you’ll want to craft a spear and a bow and arrows as soon as you can.

You can access the original building system

The building system in Sons of the Forest is more contextual than the original system in The Forest. Placing items like logs to form a shelter or building is done in a more freeform way, with minimal on-screen information other than a few dotted lines or arrows. This allows you much more freedom in how you build, letting you dictate the floorplan you want.

But if you’re not interested in puzzling through a new building system, or are happy creating default shelters, you can still use the system found in The Forest. While looking at your building guide, you can click on the image of the structure you’re building. This will let you place a see-through 3D blueprint onto the ground. With that in place, you’ll have a list of resources you need to build it on your screen, and all you’ll need to do is bring them back and add them to the blueprint, the same way it worked in The Forest.

Don’t kill Kelvin!

(Image credit: Endnight Games)

Your AI companion Kelvin is a very helpful guy. Though he can’t hear or speak, you can select words on your notepad to give him orders, like “Get logs and drop here” or “Get fish and give to me.” Tell him to follow you, and he’ll always be at your side (he does sometimes lag behind a little). Also, I don’t think he can swim. I tried building a shelter on a little island, and he wouldn’t come over and join me so I had to head back to the beach.

Most importantly, don’t kill Kelvin unless you definitely, absolutely want to go it alone. If you kill him, he’ll be gone from your game forever. Permadeath! There are other companions you can find in Sons of the Forest, but I’d definitely advise keeping Kelvin around in the meantime.


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There’s an iconic moment in the movie Apocalypse Now when Robert Duvall’s character surveys the chaos and carnage around him and ruefully says “someday, this war’s gonna end.” That’s roughly where I am on the Destiny 2: Lightfall prelease schedule, bombarded daily by massive screeds detailing new features, but also very much enjoying the info blitz. Today it’s the Lightfall launch trailer, which just dropped as part of Sony’s latest State of Play showcase. 

This is a two-minute, largely story-focused affair, set to a moody Karma Police cover, as is almost obligatory. There are no major gameplay revelations to report, but we do get to see the series’ paracausal antagonists going toe-to-orb for the first time. In the white corner we have The Traveller, the iconic flying golfball which grants the guardians their mastery of the ‘The Light’. In the dark corner we have The Witness, the sinister, smoke-headed Big Bad who’s finally turned up on Earth’s doorstep with a fleet of pyramids in tow, ready to trigger humanity’s second Collapse. And honestly if you can condense the lore into a shorter paragraph, you’re a better person than me.

Early in the trailer The Witness’ ships begins blasting The Traveller and its allies with sweeping beams of darkness energy. More surprisingly, The Traveller hits back with a wave of pure Light. The thing that most caught my attention, though, was a shot at the 1’40” mark in which a number of pyramid ships have formed a ring around The Traveller, creating a sort of star shape that (perhaps coincidentally?) looks not unlike Sagira’s ghost shell. Was all this prophesied? 

Well, as I wrote earlier this month, Destiny 2 is finally building to the climax of a story that has been 10 years in the telling. After almost a decade of teasing this exact confrontation, it’s finally here, and for daft fans like me, that’s pretty exciting. Roll on Lightfall next Tuesday. 


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At Sony’s February 23 State of Play presentation, Larian revealed (opens in new tab) the precise launch date of our most anticipated game of 2023 (opens in new tab), Baldur’s Gate 3. It also revealed the casting of veteran character actor J.K. Simmons as General Ketheric Thorn, one of its main antagonists and “a seemingly invincible necromancer leading an army of the dead toward the city of Baldur’s Gate.”

The August 31 release date is in line with the general August 2023 window we got with the reveal (opens in new tab) of fan-favorites Minsc and Jaheira. The reveal of Simmons’ involvement is particularly exciting to me. He’s an absolute master of the goofy (Burn After Reading, Spider-Man) as well as the sinister (Whiplash, Invincible), so he’s a great fit for Faerun and Larian’s by-turns whimsical and deadly-serious storytelling.

In a Steam community update (opens in new tab), Laraian also revealed that BG3 will have full Mac-PC-PS5 crossplay at launch, a feature that eventually came to Divinity Original Sin 2. Baldur’s Gate 3 will also have local split screen co-op, and Larian outlined the goodies included in its digital deluxe and physical limited editions.

Even just following Baldur’s Gate 3’s long early access from afar, I’ve gotten used to the look of its first act. It’s honestly a bit of a thrill to see locales and characters from later in the game, and weirdly enough the granular details of its pre-order bonuses are helping its impending launch feel more real. If you’re looking for more info on Larian’s upcoming epic, check out our guide to everything we know about Baldur’s Gate 3 (opens in new tab).


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It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Max Payne (opens in new tab), so it should come as no surprise that I’m intrigued by this new game from Strange Scaffold, the maker of oddities including An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs (opens in new tab), Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator (opens in new tab), and Witch Strandings (opens in new tab). It’s called El Paso, Elsewhere (opens in new tab), and it’s a “third-person horror-shooter-slash-love-story” about a man with a gun, a taste for pills, and a talent for moving at very slow speeds, even when he’s diving through the air.

The surface-level Max Payne DNA is obvious, and not just in the gunplay: The noir narration doesn’t have the broken-down beat of James McCaffrey, but the style is definitely there. And like its inspiration, El Paso, Elsewhere is a tale of love, loss, and the ruin left in its wake. But instead of snow-bound New York City streets or the slums of Sao Paolo that Max stumbled around, this game takes place in a “growing extradimensional void beneath a motel in El Paso, Texas.”

“Watch as our hero, James Savage, confronts threats both past and present,” Strange Scaffold says. “Dealing death to classic monsters from folklore and fiction, players will visit otherworldly venues ranging from burning Victorian manors to claustrophobic meat lockers. Despite an injured body and a broken heart, Savage limps towards his ‘one-way trip,’ with breathless players in tow.”

And why is Jimmy going to all this trouble, you ask? Like all the bad things in his life, it started with the undeath of a woman. His ex, you see, is Draculae, Lord of the Vampires, and she’s conducting a ritual that will bring about the end of the world. Apparently she didn’t take the breakup too well either! Anyway, now she’s 50 floors underground, cooking up the apocalypse, and you have to blast your way through hordes of monsters and “exquisitely designed flashbacks and stylish monologues” to save humanity and figure out where your relationship went wrong.

Yeah, I’m interested. I came for the guns, as the saying goes, but I’m staying for the weird-ass breakup story. El Paso, Elsewhere is currently slated to come out in the fall, and is up for wishlisting on Steam (opens in new tab). For now, you can get a taste of what it’s all about in the first-person prequel El Paso, Nightmare (opens in new tab), a game about stepping out of your motel room to get a bucket of ice and being greeted by horrors beyond human comprehension.


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For several months, Disney Dreamlight Valley players have been trying to solve an in-game mystery that revolves around a seemingly-useless golden potato. In the past week, one useless mystery potato has become two, and now the spuds are even morphing into potions with no obvious no end in sight.

The original golden potato was earned via a redeemable Dreamlight Valley code, which I had assumed was a test run for the kind of premium currency that many live service games use. It may still prove to be, but the Dreamlight community refused to let the veg lie and has relentlessly attempted to cook, craft, and otherwise attack it. 



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