Recent years have seen a pretty significant shake-up of the semiconductor industry. The silicon and chip shortage combined with the global pandemic have taken a huge toll. While Taiwan still looks safe to dominate the industry for fabrications, despite all this disruption (opens in new tab), uncertainty has seen other countries push to jump in the mix.
The United States is one country desperate to get into the fold with new fabs being built powered by its CHIPs act, and even implementing sanctions against China. (opens in new tab) Another place that’s seeing a huge push towards the industry is Europe (opens in new tab), though a new state-of-the-art foundry being built in Germany (opens in new tab) is looking to be a lot pricier than originally planned.
Early in 2022 Intel announced it was building a new chipmaking fab in Magdeburg, Germany. The cutting-edge foundry was set to cost a whopping €17 billion, with around €7 billion to be covered by government funding. Now, according to Reuters (opens in new tab), government sources have said Intel wants to up that government contribution to over €10 billion to get the job done.
Neither Intel nor the German government has confirmed this number as yet, so we can’t know for sure. That being said, an Intel spokesperson has been quoted saying the company is working with the government to “close the critical cost gap”. Whether that amounts to €3 billion or so remains to be seen.
Intel is citing the rising energy costs as a big player in why the fab will need more money. It also talked about using more advanced fabrication technology, which can significantly up costs. When TSMC upped its new plant in North America from a 4nm to 3nm production (opens in new tab), the company was similarly tight-lipped about the funds required to do so.
We don’t know exactly what fab Intel’s new German foundry is being set up for, but given we’re set to see 2nm production in 2026 (opens in new tab), it could be the company is looking towards that future. However, Intel’s CEO has previously stated the chip shortage will continue until 2024. If that’s the case, it’s likely to be a fab capable of working on chips of different sizes. I’d be surprised if Intel were already setting up a pure 2nm fab, but it would be cool. If so, it’s unlikely you or I will see a device running anything out of this fab for many years to come.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676266857_Intel-reportedly-seeking-even-more-government-funding-for-new-German.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-13 05:11:172023-02-13 05:11:17Intel reportedly seeking even more government funding for new German fab
In 2018 a show called The Terror, based on Dan Simmons’ novel, told a fictionalized version of the Franklin expedition’s doomed search for the northwest passage. Two ships were lost—one of which really was called HMS Terror, surely tempting fate—and their crews never found. The Terror took this true story of a struggle for survival in awful conditions and spiced it with supernatural horror. While I didn’t mind the addition of a mystical murder bear, a lot of viewers liked the true-to-history parts so much they said they’d have preferred it without fictional horrors—just the real awfulness of cold, starvation, and lead poisoning from a bad batch of tinned rations.
Thomas Hislop (Image credit: Bellular)
Early on in development, the developers at Bellular Studios considered adding supernatural horror to their management sim about a polar expedition gone wrong. They decided against it because, as creative director Thomas Hislop explains, “The real world ice and the real world problems of the setting were often naturalistically weirder than any plucked-from-imagination game stuff we were considering maybe putting in. We kept coming back to like, ‘Nope, real history is weirder, we should just follow through on that.'”
The Pale Beyond asks you to ensure the survival of a ship full of people (and sled dogs) who are trapped in ice and eventually forced onto it. “Frostpunk on a boat” would be the glib way of putting it, but there are also elements of games like The Banner Saga, Sunless Sea, and Dead in Vinland to the way it challenges you to make hard choices and balance resources in difficult circumstances. The Pale Beyond’s memorable tagline is: “Every decision matters and the ice doesn’t care.”
Ice floe, nowhere to go
The history of polar expeditions led by the likes of Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott, and Sir John Franklin taught The Pale Beyond’s developers a lot of unusual and often grotesque things. Hislop mentions that frostbite was nasty stuff to read about, and sums up snowblindness as “sunburn on your eyeballs” while explaining that Shackleton’s expedition brought cocaine eye drops to treat it. “There’s a really great book called The Lost Men (opens in new tab),” he says, “it’s like the forgotten second half of the Shackleton expedition that was sent around to the other side of the continent to try and lay depots for it. I think it was someone on that expedition who tried to use ethanol to cure some pain and they shattered all of their teeth because of the subzero temperatures. The temperature just affects everything.”
Michael Bell (Image credit: Bellular)
“It is brutal,” adds managing director Michael Bell. “I suppose our job is to transport somebody into that very hard position. If the game mechanics do their job they will have a hard decision, and they will also understand why it’s rough. History always forgets the animals. I was reading some stuff on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and they’ll just casually mention, ‘Oh, you know, it got really cold and 30,000 horses were butchered.'”
In The Pale Beyond, sled dogs become vital to your survival once the ship’s trapped and you’re forced to send hunting and scouting parties out onto the ice. The kennel master, Cordell, acts as a voice for the dogs, telling you they’re adapted to the ice (“It cools them through their paws as they run. They’d overheat otherwise,”) while making sure you consider their lives valuable.
“Every decision has a face,” Hislop says, “so we wanted to make sure you weren’t making any decision that was affecting life or death without having to literally look the person in the eye, or have an actual person associated with the ramifications of the choice.”
(Image credit: Fellow Traveller)
Bell compares these choices to “not sending the wrong character to fix the heat vent at the end of Mass Effect 2,” suggesting not just that we’ll be sad about mistakes because they’ll cost us characters we cared about, but also the possibility we might make all the right choices and get everyone through this frozen nightmare. “I suppose you could say we were hitting Shackleton more than Franklin in terms of the player fantasy,” he says. “Not that we’re proscriptive: ‘You’re just going to be like Shackleton!’ But the fantasy of being thrust into that crazy situation.”
“If you save everyone,” Hislop adds, “that’s the achievement I put in yesterday: An Ernest Attempt.”
While knowing a little about Ernest Shackleton or the doomed saga of the ships Erebus and Terror might add to your enjoyment of The Pale Beyond, it’s a game informed by history rather than entirely true to it. The setting and time period are deliberately vague. Hislop calls it a “historically adjacent fantasy setting,” which has advantages over the real world because “it just removes all the other clutter, all the other set dressing, and then it’s all about these intrinsic, laid bare social dynamics.”
(Image credit: Fellow Traveller)
It also let them freely draw inspiration from expeditions across different time periods, like Roald Amunsden’s South Pole expedition, Peter Freuchen’s Thule expeditions, and relatively recent voyages in the 1940s and 1950s. That was freeing, Hislop says, “especially when we’re trying to create a narrative possibility space of, ‘Top-tier Shackleton run any%’ versus ‘Dying halfway through and doing a Scott’.”
Alfred Lansing’s book Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (opens in new tab) was an important resource, with Bell saying, “I remember the audiobook as if it had sound effects, and the most surprising thing listening back to it is that there weren’t any. The words were just so descriptive and profoundly immersive.”
You can’t do your normal filler of like, ‘Oh, we’ll have birds chirping and trees swaying.’
Thomas Hislop
The book has passages describing the pressure building on the Endurance’s hull as ice slowly crushed it, with comparisons as far apart as the sound of a woman faintly crying in the distance and a roaring train coming at you. Those descriptions were given to audio director James Bruce, aka Trees. “You come into the office and he’d just be banging things together and scraping things and trying to create these really strange sort of pressured ice noises,” Hislop says. “I think we’ve got all of the animal sounds for the penguins and seals, they’re real recordings from the BBC Sound Archive from expeditions that we found. Penguins sound like velociraptors, it’s terrifying.”
Audio was important because when you’re in a featureless environment there’s not a lot to look at. The regular standby sounds of game audio weren’t useful either. “Especially when you’re doing Foley, there are very little natural sounds you can fall back on,” Hislop says. “You can’t do your normal filler of like, ‘Oh, we’ll have birds chirping and trees swaying.’ It’s, ‘Uh, James, can you make wind sound interesting for 10 hours? And not repetitive?'”
Lost in the blinding whiteness of the tundra
The more they researched, the more they saw the same story repeat across these voyages, one in which people from different countries and social classes are “all going on this journey, literally to the end of the world and having this shared trauma and coming out of it the other end with more in common than with literally anyone else on the planet.”
“Each expedition would almost develop its own culture,” Bell says. In The Pale Beyond, those dynamics play out in conflict between members of the crew, some landlubbers while others are “saltborn”, which can be overcome in the name of facing adversity together.
(Image credit: Fellow Traveller)
“We try to be true to the sense that none of the cast were inherently villains or heroes,” Hislop says, “they’re all just people.” The Pale Beyond is a game about leadership and the effect it has on a group, he explains, where “people can become the villains of your playthrough or become the heroes of your playthrough, but it’s not about the path they’re initially destined to be on. It’s about the unfurling machinery of the collective group.”
It’s a different sort of heroism
Michael Bell
Those social dynamics are simulated by a resource that can prove as important as the food stockpiles that prevent starvation and scurvy or the fuel that keeps the boiler running and prevents frostbite. This third resource has the evocative name “decorum”.
“Decorum was an interesting resource,” Hislop says, “because initially, obviously, it was just like a morale resource. But researching the ice, it’s very subtle reframing, but it became a measure not of how happy people are, but how socially bonded in terms of that fake contract that’s stopping you from eating each other.”
(Image credit: Fellow Traveller)
What keeps us fascinated by stories of polar expeditions is seeing how the extreme conditions push people to do extreme things, to reveal themselves when stretched to their limits. Whether they’ll turn on each other to prolong their lives, or perform acts of self-sacrifice like Lawrence Oates—who, suffering from frostbite and gangrene, believed he was slowing down Scott’s Antarctic expedition so much he stepped out of a tent saying, “I am just going outside and may be some time,” then walked into the snow to die.
“It’s the kind of thing where you can’t really pull a fast one out of the situation that you’re in because you truly are screwed,” Hislop says. “There’s no cavalry coming. Heroics are of limited value in a way, so I think it forces just a brutal focus on characters.”
“It’s a different sort of heroism,” Bell says. “There’s not an enemy.”
(Image credit: Fellow Traveller)
Those kinds of stories have timeless appeal, and find new ways to be relevant. As Hislop points out, “The irony isn’t lost on us that a lot of these expeditions were effectively startup companies that were floated out into the ice to crash and burn spectacularly.”
Barring disaster, ice-related or otherwise, The Pale Beyond will be available from Steam (opens in new tab) on February 24.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/This-polar-survival-management-sim-is-based-on-real-historical.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-13 04:13:582023-02-13 04:13:58This polar survival management sim is based on real historical horrors
While gamers are fighting over whether or not it’s OK to play Hogwarts Legacy, a group of LGBTQ+ indie designers have pooled their efforts and put together a bundle of 69 games (nice) that you can buy to, as the tagline puts it, “Reject Hogwarts Legacy’s bigotry and support indie devs”.
The Trans Witches Are Witches bundle (opens in new tab), which costs $60, has raised more than $70,000 at the time of writing, while a smaller, sister bundle, the Apprentice Edition (opens in new tab), goes for $10 and has raised more then $9,900.
The paired bundles have been organized and curated by Kritiqal (opens in new tab), a games criticism outlet focused on politics, art, and culture. The main bundle includes videogames, tabletop games, music, assets, and zines with magical themes that would cost more than $300 if bought individually. Proceeds from these bundles are split evenly by the creators.
The videogames include a Steam key for competitive two-player bullet hell Crystal Control 2 (opens in new tab) as well as direct access via itch.io to games like You Are a Wizard (opens in new tab) (a Commodore 64-style platformer with a riddle fox who tries to make you care about riddles), Polymute (opens in new tab) (a puzzle game where you change form), Jill O Lantern: First Slice (opens in new tab) (a cross between Ace Attorney and a slasher movie), and Tomorrow for Mar (opens in new tab) (a 2.5D visual novel about trying to pass your Upcycling Potions final to graduate magic university).
On the physical games side, you’ll find academic anime-inspired RPG Cantrip (opens in new tab), postcard game Witch You Were Here (opens in new tab), “there’s a wizard school but it’s in the USA and also you’re the teachers” RPG Pigsmoke (opens in new tab), “this pumpkin spice latte is my spell focus actually” RPG Basic Witches (opens in new tab), and Muscle Wizard Gets the Job Done! (opens in new tab), which is based on one-page crime bear RPG Honey Heist only it’s about a Muscle Wizard deciding whether to solve problems with muscles or magic.
As the bundles’ FAQ points out, it isn’t just J. K. Rowling’s opinions on trans people that have made many players decide Hogwarts Legacy is worth avoiding. Senior producer Troy Leavitt was an anti-social justice YouTuber (opens in new tab), who resigned after his history of videos criticizing feminism was highlighted. Then there’s the whole thing with the house-elves who enjoy being slaves, honestly, what’s that all about?
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676255798_Trans-Witches-Are-Witches-game-bundles-raise-over-79000-in.jpg6121200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-13 01:59:322023-02-13 01:59:32‘Trans Witches Are Witches’ game bundles raise over $79,000 in protest of Hogwarts Legacy
On an average day about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that’s a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we’ve gathered the best PC games (opens in new tab) you can play right now and a running list of the 2023 games (opens in new tab) that are launching this year.
Scorchlands
Steam page (opens in new tab) Release: February 8 Developer: Ringlab Launch price: $10.79 | £9 | AU$15.97
Launched into Early Access last week, Scorchlands is a hex-based colony builder with a big focus on resource extraction and all the complex logistics associated with it. So instead of just going out there and digging up stuff, you’ll need to take care of how that stuff gets where you want it. So yes, there’s a little bit of Factorio in here, but the setting is far less grounded: you’re building on and exploiting a procedurally generated volcanic satellite, and more importantly, there’s magic. This magical technology will open up better ways to go about your colonization, but naturally there are baddies out there that you’ll occasionally run foul of. Studio Ringlab predicts an 18 month Early Access period, during which time new features will be added, as well as the usual spit and polish.
Midnight Scenes: From the Woods
Steam page (opens in new tab) Release: February 10 Developer: Octavi Navarro Launch price: $4.49 | £3.86 | AU$6.75
Best known as the artist behind Thimbleweed Park, Octavi Navarro has also issued a lot of solo-developed adventure games, usually with a strong psychological horror bent. Last week Navarro released Midnight Scenes: From the Woods, which by my count is the fourth in the Midnight Scenes series. This entry is set in the Fernwood Creek Mental Health Center, which is suffering “disturbing incidents” following the arrival of a new patient. Protagonist Elijah befriends this new patient, and… then the horror starts. This is a short adventure which can be completed in one sitting, and as usual with the Midnight Scenes series, it’s all about Twilight Zone-inspired eeriness.
Yggdra Union
Steam page (opens in new tab) Release: February 7 Developer: Sting Launch price: $20 | £16.75 | AU$29.50
Yggdra Union first released for Game Boy Advance back in 2006, and has since been ported to PSP, smartphones, the Nintendo Switch, and now PC. Originally published by Atlus but now handled entirely by its Japan-based developer Sting, it’s a fairly orthodox tactics RPG, with a bird’s-eye view overworld map used for navigation, and battles taking place from a sidelong perspective. It’s not exactly a lost classic, but if you’re fond of Japanese fantasy RPGs you’ll probably dig its vibe, if nothing else. Curiously, the PC port is an Early Access affair, but only so that any lingering bugs can be fixed. It’s a substantial port, after all, with a new PC-friendly control interface and other bonuses, like the ability to rewind and adjust battle speed.
Pentacore
Steam page (opens in new tab) Release: February 12 Developer: Jonathan Collier, Jason Martin Launch price: $10 | £8.50 | AU$14.50
If you’re craving a conventional, old school Metroidvania, Pentacore could do the trick. An unabashedly nostalgic affair, Pentacore could make even the likes of Astalon: Tears of the Earth look experimental, but its art style is very charming, with an approach to pixel art that seems to wend closer to ye olde Apogee shareware games than, say, an 8- or 16-bit console game. It ticks all the boxes: a large, interconnected world, a nice variety of permanent upgrades, and lots of gnarly baddies to repeatedly shoot to death. Looks like a lovely labor of love.
Mystic Gate
Steam page (opens in new tab) Release: February 10 Developer: Zoo Corporation Launch price: $8 | £6.80 | AU$11.60
Wow, it feels like ages (read: probably just a few weeks?) since a new twin-stick shooter roguelite hit Steam. That’s what Mystic Gate is, bearing a strong resemblance to the likes of Enter the Gungeon, Nuclear Throne and others of that ilk. The loop is what you’d expect: enter a dungeon, shoot the crap out of bullet-spewing foes, collect loot that will improve or diminish your chances of winning, and then die. There are the now-expected permanent upgrades that stay good from run-to-run, but most importantly, there’s two-player local cooperative play. If you can’t get enough of this genre, it looks like a blast.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676248488_Five-new-Steam-games-you-probably-missed-February-13-2023.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-12 23:39:082023-02-12 23:39:08Five new Steam games you probably missed (February 13, 2023)
Mass Effect has some of the best worldbuilding in any RPG, period. Seriously, even with the impending Reaper invasion it still seems like it’d be fun to live in that version of the Milky Way. One of the coolest bits of background flavor BioWare included in the series was the Cerberus Daily News (opens in new tab), a little ticker on Mass Effect 2’s home screen that provided short news bulletins about the galaxy’s happenings. Now modder Cirosan on the Legendary Edition Nexus has brought these stories forward (opens in new tab) into the Legendary Edition re-release.
The original CDN was really ambitious for how much of a minor addition it was—Mass Effect 2’s main menu was updated with a new story every day from January 26, 2010 to January 24, 2011, with short revivals later in 2011 and 2012 to promote ME2’s DLC and, eventually, Mass Effect 3. Some of these stories would foreshadow later developments in Mass Effect’s main story, while others simply added to the texture of the setting.
My favorite was a running series of updates about an AI-powered ghost ship (opens in new tab) found in deep space. In subsequent stories, CDN revealed that it was actually the home of a virtual civilization that had digitized their consciousnesses in order to escape a dying star, and this series culminated with their attempts to integrate with wider galactic society. Just a nifty little sci-fi short story you could look forward to from your favorite action-RPG’s main menu.
Until now, you could only find the CDN updates preserved on the Mass Effect Wiki, but Cirosan’s mod reincorporates them in Mass Effect 2 in the form of new in-game emails at your personal computer on the Normandy. Cirosan has attempted to space them out in a satisfactory manner, with the mod sending you a new CDN story on the completion of each mission. Cirosan notes, however, that the sheer amount of CDN updates exceeds the number of missions in the game, so they opted to include some and excise others at their own discretion instead of spamming poor Shepard’s inbox.
I had almost completely forgotten about CDN until I saw this mod, but Cirosan’s work has caused my fond memories to come flooding back. I think their deployment of Shep’s email terminal as the vehicle for these stories is particularly inspired, and this is going to be a must-download for me on my next big replay of the series (a once every two to three year occurrence)
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676244792_This-mod-creatively-revives-a-long-forgotten-Mass-Effect-2-feature.jpg6571066Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-12 23:17:232023-02-12 23:55:07This mod creatively revives a long-forgotten Mass Effect 2 feature in the Legendary Edition remaster
Traditionally if someone asks “Can you survive the end of the world?”—implying by The End of the World of course the metaphysical destruction of all things and a return to some kind of void-state—the answer is a resounding “No.”
ManaVoid Entertainment, however, is releasing Roots of Yggdrasil, a roguelike city-builder about the Vikings that survive Ragnarok, the end of the world, and just… keep on keeping on. Actually, sorry, they try to find their scattered clans and rebuild the world.
“Ragnarok left a broken and unbalanced world in its wake. Now caught in an endless loop of destruction, you must nurture the World Tree Yggdrasil back to life to break the cycle and restore the Nine Realms to their former glory,” says the official description.
Most interesting here is that each attempt at city-building is hounded by the encroachment of Ginnungagap, the primal void from which the world sprang and to which it was fated to return. Your settlements are forced to embrace a nomadic lifestyle, as each new island you explore to inevitably collapses.
It looks to have a blend of gameplay inspired by placement-driven city builders like Islanders (opens in new tab), but at the same time taking inspiration from the excellent gameplay of Against the Storm, which is very good indeed.
Meanwhile, expeditions return to The Holt, a permanent settlement protected by the magic of the world tree that houses your clan and lets you trade, store, and stockpile upgrades for future expeditions. It’s also where you’ll interact with the scions, heroes, gods, and monsters from Norse myth that can lend their powers to your settlements.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676252148_Rebuild-after-Ragnarok-in-roguelike-city-builder-Roots-of-Yggdrasil.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-12 23:12:142023-02-12 23:12:14Rebuild after Ragnarok in roguelike city-builder Roots of Yggdrasil
You’ve got a big, barren world with lots of resources to make use of, and all the tech to change it into a lush cradle of life: So get to it. That’s the concept of Plan B: Terraform, a management, automation, and simulation strategy game that has you in charge of setting up a terraformed Plan B for a humanity that’s struggling to keep Earth habitable. Its big selling point? The planet is absolutely huge, composed of “more than a million hexagons” to build on, with simulated atmosphere, temperature, vegetation, rain, and water cycle.
More than anything, Plan B wants to be a “calm and contemplative” game with a realistic-yet-educational mindset. The developer is promising an “educational approach to greenhouse effects and water cycle mechanisms” and a “a global and real-time simulation of temperature, vegetation, rain and water flowing to form dynamic rivers and oceans.”
Plan B: Terraform has a demo out as part of the Steam Next Fest. It’s a taste of the in-development game that doesn’t let you get very deep, but a promising one. While the full game intends to let you grow the planetary population “from a few inhabitants to a million and more,” the demo’s at that “few inhabitants” stage.
I think it’ll be a hit with those who enjoyed games like Per Aspera, but wanted more granular production for resources and terraforming operations. It’s like the Plan B developer is adding a dash of Factorio to the idea, then having a transport-tycoon-like twist involving moving resources over long distances to manufacturing or refining complexes.
The demo’s a bit finicky, but in the spirit of Steam Next Fest it’s a slice of an in-development game, not a polished bit of marketing. My biggest complaint is that it doesn’t quite let you get into higher-tier logistics or resource movement—so it feels very micromanagement-heavy.
Plan B: Terraform is from developer Gaddy Games, whose previous game Dig or Die (opens in new tab) was a moderate success in the world of indie survival crafting games.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676241130_Heres-a-management-game-best-described-as-terraform-and-chill.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-12 22:26:462023-02-12 23:54:58Here’s a management game best described as ‘terraform and chill’
Electronic Arts set up its indie publishing wing, EA Originals, following the success of thread-based puzzle-platformer Unravel in 2016. Indie games with EA’s backing like Fe (another platformer), A Way Out (a multiplayer prison-break drama), Sea of Solitude (a boat journey through a flooded city), and Lost in Random (an action-adventure with sentient dice) followed.
So did a couple of online multiplayer games: Rocket Arena and Knockout City, the latter of which EA handed control of back to its creators when it went free-to-play in 2022. Subsequently, developers Velan Studios announced Knockout City would be shutting down.
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz (opens in new tab), Jeff Gamon, the general manager of EA Partners who oversees EA Originals, said he is “hugely proud of that relationship we have with all of our partners, regardless of how things worked out. With [Velan Studios founders] Guha and Karthik, I am still very close to them. Every step of the way we were by their side. Completely transparent. These things are built in collaboration from day one.”
EA Originals’ next release isn’t quite such a niche concern. It’s Wild Hearts, a Monster Hunter-esque action game developed by Omega Force, the division of Koei Tecmo responsible for the Dynasty Warriors series and Persona 5 Strikers. Later this year EA Originals will publish Immortals of Aveum, a big-budget wizard shooter from Ascendant Studios, whose CEO Bret Robbins was creative director on three Call of Duty games as well as Dead Space. Neither is really in the same vein as a sad puzzle-platformer.
“We’ve discovered a desire for bigger, better and more innovative titles that complement the EA portfolio,” Gamon said. “So where we started off with smaller, indie games we are now graduating to independently created games of all shapes and sizes and scope and budget. We are moving away from niche, and towards bold and audacious.”
Gamon did emphasize that, in spite of this move away from niche, EA Originals would continue to publish lower-budget games in addition to these potential blockbusters. “We are making games of a bigger scale,” he said, “but we are also still partnering—and we have one or two in the pipeline—on smaller games as well. Those fundamental values still stand. The structure of any deal is completely bespoke.” Gammon mentioned an interest in games that “move genres on” and explained that, while the studios it worked with had access to EA’s resources, “we shield them from the bigger EA corporation, and make sure to protect their creative freedom.”
Wild Hearts is due to release this week, with Immortals of Aveum to follow at an unspecified date later in 2023. One more game under the EA Originals umbrella has been revealed and that’s RustHeart, which is being developed by Glowmade Games, a studio founded by ex-Lionhead staff.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676259534_EA-Originals-to-publish-more-big-budget-games-as-well-as.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-12 22:20:082023-02-12 22:20:08EA Originals to publish more big-budget games as well as small indies
Despite being a game full of chunky, blank-faced weirdos with awful hair that makes you swing at an enemy 20 times before you can land a single hit, Morrowind is an incredibly immersive game, sucking you into Vvardenfel and making you feel like part of its world. Modder abot over on the Morrowind Nexus has now, finally, torn down that last barrier between Morrowind and a perfect simulation of reality: with abot’s new mod (opens in new tab), the Nerevarine leaves behind footprints as they walk.
Okay, maybe a little silly, but it’s such a great idea—just one of those little details you forget about while running up your eighteenth snowdrift in Solstheim with a train of awful little max-level goblin men chasing you down. And really, obsessive detail like this absolutely fits in a game that actively drains your stamina while you slowly jog around its alien moonscapes.
I also love how abot got this mod to work. They utilize the Morrowind Script Extender to detect that whenever that distinctive clop clop clop sound effect of a Morrowind character’s footsteps plays, and spawns in the footprint texture accordingly. Abot also includes a helpful menu to adjust who leaves footprints (ranging from just the PC to all creatures), how frequently they spawn in, and how far away they remain visible.
Abot has an extensive selection of other Morrowind bug and immersion fixes on their Nexus Mods author page (opens in new tab) as well. Amazing things continue to happen in the Morrowind modding community after all these years, with recent projects adding AI-generated voice acting (opens in new tab), Oblivion crossover fights (opens in new tab), and, of course, McDonald’s (opens in new tab). That’s not to mention the colossally ambitious Tamriel Rebuilt (opens in new tab), whose team continues to chug away at effectively building another Elder Scrolls game inside Morrowind.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676270493_Finally-after-21-years-Morrowind-meets-my-exacting-standards-of.jpg5761024Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-12 22:08:582023-02-12 22:08:58Finally, after 21 years, Morrowind meets my exacting standards of realism and immersion with this mod that adds footprints
A Skyrim modder with the handle Jonx0r recently uploaded a proof-of concept mockup of Dark Souls 3’s starting area (opens in new tab) in the cutting edge Unreal Engine 5, presenting FromSoftware’s 2016 classic in a literal new light. The modder explained that they pursued this project as a way of learning the ins and outs of Epic’s new engine.
Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 middleware has some beefy graphical might backing it up, and like Unreal Engines 3 and 4 before it, looks poised to take over the games industry with developers like CD Projekt and Bioware jumping ship from in-house tech to adopt the new engine for future projects. We got a tantalizing first glimpse of its potential with the Matrix Awakens demo released alongside the 2021 Game Awards and finally brought to PC (opens in new tab) last April.
Unreal Engine 5 is also a friendly tool for hobbyists and indie developers, many of whom have taken to Unreal to create current-gen versions of classic gaming vistas like Skyrim’s starting village of Riverwood (opens in new tab). Remake projects always have a risk of running roughshod over an original game’s art style, but the stakes aren’t exactly sky high to have an independent modder reinterpret a classic scene with new tech. This isn’t the Demon’s Souls Remake muscling in as the new “default” while the original languishes on PS3 with no online support (the Demon’s Souls Remake Hater has clearly logged on).
And Jonx0r has made something quite pretty and interesting here. As far as I can tell, they imported the map, model, and animations straight from Dark Souls 3 itself, with the primary visual change being Unreal 5’s advanced lighting. Firelink really pops with the new lighting and shadows, and I especially love the way the shrine’s central bonfire cuts against its newly darkened interior. Also? Great little ripples on the puddles in the shrine and Iudex Gundyr’s arena. It’s the little things, you know?
All in all Jonx0r’s provided a neat look at an alternate, 2023 Firelink Shrine, and if you’re interested in seeing more of their work you can check out Jonx0r’s YouTube channel (opens in new tab) and Nexus Mods (opens in new tab) page.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1676237480_Dark-Souls-3-joins-the-growing-list-of-games-with.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2023-02-12 21:20:082023-02-12 23:54:51Dark Souls 3 joins the growing list of games with fun Unreal Engine 5 mockups
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