May 2024 - Page 5 of 8 - Gaming Army United

How to complete Strongarm Tactics in WoW Remix

The Strongarm Tactics quest is one you’ll encounter pretty quickly when you dive into World of Warcraft‘s new limited-time mode, WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria. If you’ve done any questing in Jade Forest in the past, you’ll likely recognise this quest, but things get a bit tricky once you get partway through.

The quest tasks you with locating and taking out four named NPCs. The first two are easy to find as they are both marked on the map but, after you kill the second, you might have a hard job pinpointing the final targets. This is likely a bug and may well be hotfixed at some point but, until then, here’s where to find Master Engineer Cogswing and Gyro-Mechanic Lavenderp.

WoW Strongarm Tactics: Where to find Cogswing and Lavenderp

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You pick up the Strongarm Tactics quest once you’ve killed Krom inside the cave, to the southeast of Honeydew Village. General Nazgrim will show up shortly after and take up a position at the entrance, and this is who gives you the quest.

The four NPCs you need to kill are:

Morgus Grimhatchet
Corporal Jackson
Master Engineer Cogswing
Gyro-Mechanic Lavenderp

You’ll spot the marker for Grimhatchet as soon as you open your map. Once he’s been dispatched, another marker will show up with Jackson‘s location, inside the tower at the Strongarm Airstrip.

As mentioned above, no map marker is present for Cogswing and Lavenderp, but handily, they hang out together, just up the hill from the cave where you picked up the quest. The yellow dot will show up on the minimap once you get close so you can pinpoint their exact location easily enough. The screenshots above will help if you’re having trouble.

Once you’ve taken both of them out, return to General Nazgrim to receive your reward of XP, gold, and a Cache of Infinite Treasure.

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As GTA 6 draws closer, GTA 5 is still making bank

More than a decade after its debut on antiquated consoles, Grand Theft Auto 5 is still a cash cow for Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two. Speaking today during Take-Two’s Q4 quarterly earnings call with investors, CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed that the game has now sold “approximately” 200 million copies, up from the “over 185 million” copies it had sold as of August last year.

Meanwhile, the audience for both GTA 5 and GTA Online grew by 35% and 23% respectively during the last fiscal year. That period has seen GTA 5 appear on subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, which hosted GTA 5 for six months in 2023, and Sony’s PS Plus service. Leaving that aside, to sell around 15 million units of an 11-year-old game is still significant. Just for the fun of it, compare those 15 million units with the best selling game of 2023, Hogwarts Legacy, which sold 22 million as of January 2024 (it released in February 2023).

That obviously bodes well for GTA 6, which now has a release window of “fall 2025“, though that’s for consoles: a PC release will come later, as is Rockstar’s wont.

Zelnick even acknowledged GTA Online’s thriving roleplaying community, which is a big reason why the game still ranks highly on Twitch. “Grand Theft Auto V also reclaimed its top spot as the most watched video game across all platforms according to Streamhatchet, thanks largely to the tremendous viewership from the series’ thriving role play community,” Zelnick said.

Take-Two isn’t relying on GTA 5 to put food on the table. NBA 2K24 was a big success, despite generally mediocre reviews from critics and players alike. Complaints generally point to the game’s distracting microtransactions, but they’re clearly doing their job: the game “surpassed our expectations, as players responded to our promotions, in-game content strategy, and updates within Seasons.” It’s sold 9 million copies to date.

Finally, Red Dead Redemption 2 has now sold 64 million copies since its release in October 2018. Not bad, for a game that has only shipped on one console generation (GTA 5 has shipped on three). Presumably those are the kinds of numbers you need to avoid abrupt (and ambiguous) studio closures in this year of our lord 2024.

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A week after Microsoft closed 4 game studios, Microsoft-owned Activision announces a new game studio

Just over a week after Microsoft abruptly shuttered four studios—Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, and Roundhouse Games—Microsoft-owned Activision has announced the launch of a new internal studio called Elsewhere Entertainment, “exclusively focused on creating a new narrative-based and genre-defining AAA franchise.”

The new studio is based in Warsaw, Poland, and is made up of “storytelling experts” who have previously worked on games including The Last of Us, Uncharted, The Witcher, Cyberpunk, Destiny, Tom Clancy’s The Division, and Far Cry.

“The new studio has full access to Activision’s resources and tools as it continues to increase production and development,” Activision said. “Elsewhere is opening its search for best-in-class talent from across the industry and around the world to help create a state-of-the-art and next generation gaming experience.”

Elsewhere Entertainment is working on something entirely new—it’s not Call of Duty, which is a nice change of pace. And, as an Activision project, it’s unrelated to last week’s studio closures. Aside from the fact that Microsoft owns Activision, of course, which you have to imagine gives it some say in what Activision does when it comes to things like launching new studios or laying off employees.

Work on the new game has been underway for some time now, though—this is merely the first public mention of the new studio and whatever it’s got cooking—so in all fairness, it’s not a case of killing four studios and then immediately setting up another one amongst their rubble.

Elsewhere Entertainment announcement image - a stylized definition of the word

(Image credit: Activision)

If anything, it looks mainly to be a simple matter of crappy timing, which I would say reflects a rather ugly indifference to the human cost borne by a year and a half of brutal cuts and closures in pursuit of a marginally better bottom line. I’ve never cared too much about optics but even I have to say that, hey, the optics here ain’t great.

There’s no word on when Elsewhere’s debut project will be revealed, but the studio is ramping up hiring to get things going in earnest.

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Intel’s Thunderbolt Share is the easiest way yet to link and share data between two PCs

Intel has unveiled its Thunderbolt Share technology, which utilizes the bandwidth on offer from Thunderbolt 4 and 5 ports to share and sync data, and control two PCs with one keyboard and mouse.

Thunderbolt Share configuration examples — (Image credit: Intel)

It’s not the first way to link two PCs. I’ve used crossover cables in years past, and I recall using a USB link device about a decade back, but this method looks like it will be the easiest way yet to link two PCs together. It’s not quite a plug and play solution though, as it will need a software app to work.

At its most basic, Thunderbolt Share is a great way to share data between two computers that would eliminate the need to use flash drives or external hard drives to transfer data. It supports drag and drop functionality, and automatic folder sync. I really like the idea of using this to transfer Steam backups between benchmarking systems!

Beyond data sharing, Thunderbolt Share supports remote access, so you can control a second PC using one monitor, keyboard and mouse. It supports screen sharing at up to 1080p at 60fps. Support for 1440p or 4K would be nice, but that’s something that could come in the future.

Thunderbolt Share can be licensed with Thunderbolt accessories. Docks would be the most logical example, while things like monitors with multiple Thunderbolt ports could use it too. As it’s an Intel technology, and separate from USB4, AMD owners appear to be out of luck, at least for now.

Intel emphasizes the security aspects of Thunderbolt Share. It supports VT-d and Windows User Access Control. And, sharing data over a cable is inherently more secure than using WiFi, a wide area network or the cloud.

Apart from a couple of tests with external GPUs in years past, I have never used a Thunderbolt device on any of my home systems. I quite like how this sounds, and this might be the first time I consider using Thunderbolt on a day-to-day basis. We’ll have to wait and see just how the app performs in practice before giving it the thumbs up though.

Intel says Thunderbolt Share will be offered on select PCs and accessories starting in the second half of 2024. Lenovo, Acer, MSI, Razer, Kensington, Belkin, Promise, Plugable, OWC and others are on board, with more announcements to come.

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Ubisoft cancels The Division: Heartland so it can focus on ‘bigger opportunities’ like XDefiant

Three years after announcing it as “an all-new perspective” on its long-running Division series, Ubisoft has quietly pulled the plug on The Division: Heartland, saying it has decided to focus its efforts on other games instead.

Details were scant when The Division: Heartland was first announced beyond that it would be a free-to-play “standalone game that doesn’t require previous experience with the series.” We got a closer look in 2023, when it was showcased as an extraction shooter with survival elements, set in a small town in middle America. Ubisoft said at the time that developer Red Storm was “taking a test-and-learn approach to building this game,” with player feedback from ongoing closed beta tests guiding development.

We never got a chance to try The Division: Heartland ourselves, and now we never will: Amidst all the hullabaloo of today’s big Assassin’s Creed Shadows reveal, Ubisoft also revealed in a much more low-key fashion—which is to say, by way of a note in its FY2023-24 earnings report—that it has cancelled the game as part of its ongoing effort to “streamline its operations and adapt to evolving market trends.”

“In line with the increased selectivity of its investments, Ubisoft has decided to stop development on The Division Heartland and has redeployed resources to bigger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six,” the company said.

Rainbow Six Siege is an ongoing winner for Ubisoft, but it’s interesting to see it put that kind of weight on XDefiant’s shoulders. Despite a rough introduction in 2021, XDefiant looks like it might be pretty good, but whether that will translate into a sustainable long-term audience is a very big open question. On the other hand, XDefiant does have one big advantage over Heartland: It’s ready to go, with a pre-season launch set for May 21.

It’s also fair to say that the development of Heartland does not appear to have gone especially smoothly—it was originally supposed to be out sometime in 2021-22—and things on The Division front have changed as that target has slipped further and further behind. The Division 2 is still chugging along, The Division Resurgence mobile game is expected to arrive later this year, and a full-scale Division 3 is in the works now, too. Maybe that’s just enough Division for now.

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ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi review

The Mini-ITX form factor has a dedicated fan following, and you can count me among them. Most manufacturers offer a range of Mini-ITX boards and in fact, Mini-ITX has mostly displaced MicroATX from the premium segment, and not just for motherboards, but cases too. There are some stunning little Mini-ITX cases on the market these days.

There’s life in the old LGA 1700 dog yet.

Even though anticipation is slowly building towards next generation LGA 1851 motherboards and Arrow Lake processors, there’s life in the old LGA 1700 dog yet. 12th, 13th, and 14th Generation processors will be available in one form or another for years to come, and a late LGA 1700 era board will remain desirable, especially if it includes updated controllers, a capable VRM, and optimizations for high speed DDR5 memory.

The ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi is a third generation LGA 1700 board. It’s been given some tweaks and an upgraded power delivery subsystem that’s better able to handle the even steeper demands of 14th Generation Intel CPUs.

At $279, the Z790I Lightning WiFi is quite fairly priced. At the time of writing, UK and AU pricing are not yet available. Even though they are not exactly apples-to-apples, that price is very competitive indeed when compared to the likes of the Gigabyte Z790I Aorus Ultra and MSI Z790I Edge.

It’s also worth noting that ASRock has released a B760I Lightning WiFi alongside the Z790I version I am reviewing here. The B760I version costs $185 and is very similar in terms of spec.

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi overview and specs

Despite its diminutive size, there’s a lot to cover spec wise. In my opinion, the highlight is the support for DDR5-8600+ memory. That might not mean a lot to gamers right now, but with JEDEC recently extending the DDR5 spec to 8800MT/s, faster memory is coming in the years ahead, so that ability will come in handy. Most ITX motherboards get a memory speed bump from having just two memory slots, a feature that’s common to high-end overclocking boards. Two slots will limit you to 96GB of memory, but that’ll be more than enough for gaming for years to come.

The biggest weakness of all ITX boards is a lack of PCB real estate, which means the board only supports two M.2 SSDs. One slot is located above the x16 slot, while the other is located on the rear of the board. Both support PCIe Gen 4 drives. The front slot has its own heatsink, while the one on the back does not. It’s possible to install a drive at the rear with an integrated heatsink, but that will likely break compatibility with most cases. Given that, I’d advise the use of a low power drive in this slot, perhaps a Gen 3 drive or one used for storage only, so it doesn’t overheat. It won’t get much airflow back there after all.

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi specs

Asrock Z790I Lightning WiFi M.2 heatsink — (Image credit: Future)

Socket: Intel LGA 1700
CPU compatibility: Intel 12th, 13th & 14th Gen desktop processors
Form factor: Mini-ITX
Memory support: DDR5-8600+(OC), up to 96GB
Storage: 2x M.2, 3x SATA
USB: Up to 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 7x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 2x USB 2.0
Display: 1x DP 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.1
Networking: Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5G LAN, WiFi 6E
Audio: Realtek ALC897
Price: $279 / £TBD / AU$TBD

These slots are joined by three SATA ports. It would have been nice if the board’s primary slot supported a Gen 5 SSD, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot right now in terms of tangible performance gains and the stubbornly high price premium of Gen 5 drives.

The VRM of the Z790I Lightning WiFi is the most powerful I’ve seen on any ITX motherboard I’ve covered to date. It’s a 14+1+1 phase solution with 105a stages. That will provide more than enough power to a heavily overclocked Core i9 14900K or KS. I would suggest that the single 8-pin EPS connector would eventually become limiting, but that didn’t stop overclockers from belting out multiple i9 14900KS world records with this board.

A VRM of this spec and the demands of 14th Gen i9 processors means the board requires some beefy cooling, which the Z790I Lightning WiFi absolutely has. The two main sections are connected via a heatpipe, and there’s a dreaded embedded fan. Luckily it was hardly noticeable during my testing, though who knows what might happen after a few years of dust accumulation.

There’s a chunky heatsink with thermal padding on the rear of the motherboard too. ASRock knows that i9 chips are demanding and it’s done all that’s realistically possible on a ITX board in terms of power delivery and cooling. Well done, ASRock.

Asrock Z790I Lightning WiFi Rear I/O

(Image credit: Future)

The Z790I Lightning WiFi is a bit lacking in the rear I/O. That tends to be a common theme among modern ITX motherboards. It’s good to see DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports for use with integrated Xe graphics silicon, but the USB complement is made up of just six ports, with four Gen 1 (5GB/s) ports and two Gen 2 (10GB/s). There are additional headers for up to two USB 2.0 and three 5GB/s ports, but there’s no sign of a 20GB/s Gen 2×2 port.

2.5G LAN duties are provided by a Realtek RTL8125BG controller, while an Intel AX210 M.2 E-Key card gives WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. WiFi 7 is far from ubiquitous in this price range. Audio is provided by an aging ALC897 controller and, honestly, I’m finding it harder to understand why manufacturers are opting for this chip over an ALC1220 one aside from the fact that it’s cheap.

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi performance

System Performance

Gaming Performance

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi analysis

Asrock Z790I Lightning WiFi memory slots and case I/O

(Image credit: Future)

The ASRock Z790I Lightning allowed me to run a set of Teamgroup DDR5-8200 memory out of the box with just XMP enabled. I have not been able to achieve that on any other motherboard to date.

Honestly, there’s little to separate LGA 1700 boards from one another these days. The underlying microcode of LGA 1700 processors and motherboards is mature at this point in the platform’s lifecycle. What differences there are mostly fall within a margin of error.

For my testing, I have used a Core i9 14900K with default out-of-the-box settings, which up until now has meant the board tells the Core i9 14900K to do whatever the hell it likes with few, if any constraints. That means these results end up with the processor running at its highest turbo bins for unlimited periods.

I did a quick test with the new Intel baseline setting and saw performance in Cinebench R23 drop from just over the 40,000 mark to just over 35,000. That’s a big drop to be sure. I’ll re-evaluate my methodology when the next generation platforms launch. For now, assume that motherboards with baseline settings applied would result in similarly small differentiating margins, assuming all the manufacturers follow Intel’s default parameters to the letter.

One thing I did note was that the Z790I Lightning WiFi performed well in the 3DMark storage test. Is this a result of the board having fewer M.2 slots? Probably not, as the secondary slots of ATX boards are connected to the chipset. Still, it’s better to lead the pack than trail it. Notably, ASRock’s excellent Z790 Riptide WiFi was strong in this test too. Perhaps some ASRock special storage sauce?

Test rig

CPU: Intel Core i9 14900K
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition
RAM: 2x 16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5-6000 C36
Storage: 2TB Seagate FireCuda 530
Cooling: Cooler Master PL360 Flux 360mm AIO
PSU: Corsair AX1000

I don’t bother with CPU overclocking a lot these days, as the results are mostly cooling limited and not motherboard limited. You are free to overclock if you want, as this is a Z790 board. However, I feel the idea of heavily overclocking a 13th or 14th Gen i9 defeats the purpose of having a small form factor system in the first place, as you’ll need a large 360mm cooler to tame it. In fact, I’d recommend not running an i9 K-series chip in a Mini-ITX system at all. A 65W processor with a relatively compact air cooler makes a lot more sense to me.

But there’s CPU overclocking and then there’s memory overclocking. A good electrical layout, dual slots and a mature BIOS are prerequisites for a really good memory overclock. I’m pleased to say the ASRock Z790I Lightning allowed me to run a set of Teamgroup DDR5-8200 out of the box with just XMP enabled. I have not been able to achieve that on any other motherboard to date. I was able to get to DDR5-8400, but without stability. I believe I’m at the limits of my 14900K’s memory controller as even steep voltage increases and the loosest of loose timings made no difference.

A final shoutout to ASRock for its BIOS layout. I’ve always liked the simplicity and easy to navigate design of ASRock’s BIOS. The sub-menus are intuitively named, and the important settings easy to find. It’s got an easy learning curve for those unfamiliar with ASRock boards.

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi verdict

Asrock Z790I Lightning WiFi motherboard

(Image credit: Future)

Buy if…

You want a Mini-ITX board that can handle any CPU: The VRM of this board can handle even a Core i9 14900K. Such a pairing is counterintuitive though, as a 360mm AIO is not exactly SFF friendly.

You want a board that supports very fast memory: Put simply, there are very few boards that handle fast memory better than this one.

Don’t buy if…

You’re looking for a board that’s chock full of features: While Mini-ITX boards are compromised by their diminutive nature, the Z790I Lightning WiFi isn’t as feature rich as some of its admittedly pricier Mini-ITX competitors.

At $279, the ASRock Z790I Lightning is among the more affordable Z790 ITX options. However, I have seen it for as low as $259, which makes it very well priced indeed.

ASRock appears to have aggressively aimed for affordability with the Z790I Lightning. It prioritized performance, with an excellent VRM and support for high speed memory. You can run any LGA 1700 processor you care to name, up to and including a Core i9 14900KS. In that area, ASRock succeeded.

But in order to hit its price target, some sacrifices had to be made. Its USB support is quite average, both in terms of the overall number of ports and the lack of 20GB/s support. The audio is nothing to rave about, and there’s no WiFi 7 or Gen 5 SSD support. None of these are deal breakers given the strengths of the board, but if you want a more comprehensive feature set, you’ll either have to pay more, or fall back to an ATX option. The ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi is an example of a board that’s cheaper, with a lot more to offer. But it’s not an ITX board, so in the context of this review, it’s a non-starter.

It doesn’t have the frills, but it’s got it where it counts.

It stacks up well against the more expensive Z790I Aorus Ultra and to a lesser extent, the MSI Z790I Edge. But the problem for the Z790I Lightning isn’t the Z790I competitors, it’s the B760I ones. At $185, the B760I Lightning WiFi is pretty much the same board apart from bifurcation support for its primary PCIe Gen 5 x16 slot and the lack of CPU overclocking support. It still supports fast memory, and from what I can see, all the other features are identical.

If you can live without the feature list you’d expect from an ATX board, the little ASRock Z790I Lightning is a board that power users will appreciate. It’ll handle any LGA 1700 CPU and the fastest memory you can get right now. It doesn’t have the frills, but it’s got it where it counts. Don’t overlook the value on offer from the B760I Lightning WiFi, though.

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Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert’s next game is ‘classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park’

Ron Gilbert, famed for his work on classic adventures including Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and more recently Thimbleweed Park, is getting up to something new and that looks to be quite different from his past work. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s described on Gilbert’s Terrible Toybox website as “classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park.”

Gilbert’s been posting about his new game on Mastodon (via Time Extension) since early 2024, but it’s gone largely unnoticed until just recently. In February, he shared an image of a whiteboard rough-out of the opening area and quests, and a little bit of stats work; from there, he’s posted a few more in-progress images, along with some brief thoughts about his process.

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In-progress image of Ron Gilbert's next game: classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park — (Image credit: Ron Gilbert (Mastodon))

“I have been working on it for a year or so,” Gilbert told PC Gamer. “Like a lot of early prototypes, the game has slowly morphed into what it is now. I recently hired an artist and that really got things moving. I suck at art. It’s the game I always wanted to play and I got tired of waiting so I decided to build it.”

He also announced last week that Elissa Black, co-founder of Objects in Space studio Flat Earth Games, has joined the project as a quest designer. “This ups the chance by 37% that I’ll finish the game before becoming bored and disillusioned,” Gilbert wrote.

In-progress image of Ron Gilbert's next game: classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park

(Image credit: Ron Gilbert (Mastodon))

Despite that pessimistic note, Gilbert’s new game appears to be coming along well, although there’s no sign of a release date at this point: The Terrible Toybox website says the new game will be out in late 2024, “or maybe early 2025, this is gamedev after all.”

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This chocolate factory-building game asks the question ‘What if Willy Wonka had a gun?’

‘What if you could build Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory?’ is a question I’m surprised video games haven’t answered yet. It’s a natural next step for the factory-building genre, taking the fundamentals of a game like Satisfactory and theming it around the one fictional factory everyone knows about.

Chocolate Factory, developed by Tbjbu2 (who I presume was named by the developer’s cat walking across the keyboard), does exactly this. But it also asks a far less obvious, some might say unnecessary question, namely ‘What if Willy Wonka had a massive gun?’.

Watching the announcement trailer (which isn’t on YouTube for some reason, but it’s viewable on the game’s Steam page) Chocolate Factory is clearly heavily derived from Satisfactory. It has a similar visual style, building system, and blend of construction and survival to Coffee Stain’s massively successful game. The main difference is that it’s set in a fantastical candyland, with numerous biomes themed around different treats. There are chocolate mountains, candy-canes and swirly lollipops that grow like trees, and of course, hostile gingerbread men that you must shoot to death.

Wait, what was that last one?

The sickly-sweet violence occurs about 50 seconds into the trailer. What makes it especially amusing is that our nameless protagonist doesn’t just pop his biscuity foe with a pistol or some other small firearm. No, the gingerbread man gets blasted with a massive blue boomstick that appears to fire cannonball-sized jawbreakers. Later, the player-character brutally beats another gingerbread man to death with a stick of rock. It’s quite the change in tone, somewhat reminiscent of Palworld earlier this year, though Chocolate Factory’s trailer is less knowing about it.

Beyond its confectionary combat, Chocolate Factory looks like a sufficiently robust factory-builder. The full game is out in June, but there’s a free “Prologue” demo arriving in just over a week, which you can find here. It should also be noted that this isn’t the only Chocolate Factory game currently in development. Let me also introduce you to Chocolate Factory Simulator. Slated launch in December, this game has a more steampunk vibe, a friendly robot companion called Nougat, and as far as I can tell, no gingerbread murder whatsoever.

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Red Dead Redemption may actually be coming to PC after 14 years

If you’d told me back in 2010 that Red Dead Redemption would take 14 years to release on PC, I would have been happy: the world still has at least 14 years left in the tank! But then I probably would have grown annoyed: 14 years to play a PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 game on PC? It’s simply unfair.

New evidence suggests a Red Dead Redemption PC port is imminent. Famed GTA dataminer Tez2 posted new code from the Rockstar launcher site today, and it doesn’t leave much room for interpretation. Among the code is the following quote: “Journey across the sprawling expanses of the American West and Mexico in Red Dead Redemption, and its zombie-horror companion, Undead Nightmare, now playable on PC.”

It looks like Rockstar is gearing up to release #RDR1 on PC. pic.twitter.com/2xMmpFIdCkMay 13, 2024

If true, it’s a canny move on Rockstar’s part: releasing a classic game on the second largest gaming platform in the world (after mobile) shows tremendous business acumen.

Red Dead Redemption received PS4 and Nintendo Switch ports last year, which were very welcome, though some were disappointed by the lack of graphical enhancements. Even the PS4 version remained locked at 30fps, for example, though a 60fps option was later made available for players on PS5. Others were annoyed by the $50 price tag, which the CEO of Rockstar’s parent company, Straus Zelnick, called a “commercially accurate price“.

Rockstar has long been shy of PC. PC versions of both Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 released a year after its console equivalents, and arguably the most anticipated videogame of all time, Grand Theft Auto 6, will also skip PC when it launches on consoles next year. Why? The topic has never been directly addressed by Rockstar.

We reached out to Rockstar, who declined to comment.

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The Legend of Vox Machina, Critical Role’s first D&D campaign-turned animated series, quietly reveals a third season is coming later this year

It really has been wild to watch Critical Role rise to its current fame. Not to get all hipster about it, but I hopped on back when Campaign 1 was barely out of its Geek & Sundry origins—and now it’s a whole franchise. It’s even making its own home-baked TTRPG—no, scratch, that, two of them.

One such sign of how dramatically things have changed came with The Legend of Vox Machina, an animated series that tapped into what I can only describe as a piranha-swarm hunger from the show’s fans. The series’ fundraiser gathered $1 million dollars in its first hour, and over $11 million of funding in total.

I’ve quite enjoyed both seasons out of its current run, which have covered both the Whitestone arc and the first half of the Chroma Conclave arc from the livestream quite faithfully—though they’ve been understandably scrubbed of most D&D-isms so as to keep things legally hunky-dory.

Quiet confirmation of a third season has emerged, tucked away in a Washington Post interview, as spotted by Dicebreaker—who I just so happened to write about the show for before I got this current PC Gamer gig. Funny how things line up, sometimes.

“The show’s third season, which follows the arc of the 115-episode campaign, will be released in the fall,” reads the Washington Post interview, though no specific date has been shared yet. “A separate animated series, based on the show’s second campaign about a band of misfits known as the Mighty Nein, is currently in production.”

CEO of Critical Role Travis Willingham also confirmed the impromptu announcement on Twitter, promising: “Ya’ll, it’s so good.”

The series will continue the adventures of Vox Machina in their quest to defeat the Chroma Conclave—though how much ground this season will cover remains to be seen. Spoilers as I start getting into hypotheticals about future plot points—for Campaign 1 in general, not just from the animated series.

Season 2 saw Vox Machina snag a few of the Vestiges of Divergence they need to slay the Chroma Conclave—a bunch of dragons which tore through the capital city of Emon—and slay Umbrasyl, the first of the four BBEGs introduced at the top of the season. That leaves Vorugal, Thordak, and Raishan as foes on the players’ plates.

If I were a betting man, I’d say Thordak’ll be the mid-to-late season climax, with Raishan acting as a final confrontation lasting a couple of episodes. While I’d love for Raishan to get her own season, that’d require a lot of moving stuff around, as the original campaign saw just a few episodes between Thordak’s fall and Raishan’s end.

Which does leave Vorugal as a lingering question mark. In the original campaign, Vox Machina used a scroll of Gate to summon a legendary Goristro to soften the great white dragon up before going for the kill. Part of me wonders if that’ll see him offed as a cold-open (heh) gag.

Alternatively, Raishan could be saved as a mid-season baddie for season 4, since there’s plenty more ground to cross after her defeat. Anything’s possible. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing the blunder-prone party that put Critical Role on the map return for another bout of dragon-slaying.

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How to complete Strongarm Tactics in WoW Remix

WoW Strongarm Tactics: Where to find Cogswing and Lavenderp

As GTA 6 draws closer, GTA 5 is still making bank

A week after Microsoft closed 4 game studios, Microsoft-owned Activision announces a new game studio

Intel’s Thunderbolt Share is the easiest way yet to link and share data between two PCs

Ubisoft cancels The Division: Heartland so it can focus on ‘bigger opportunities’ like XDefiant

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi review

Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert’s next game is ‘classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park’

This chocolate factory-building game asks the question ‘What if Willy Wonka had a gun?’

Red Dead Redemption may actually be coming to PC after 14 years

The Legend of Vox Machina, Critical Role’s first D&D campaign-turned animated series, quietly reveals a third season is coming later this year

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