In a hurry? Tired? Dodging green letters like a pro? Then a quick peek at today’s Wordle answer will definitely sort you out—just click your way down and enjoy your win. And if you’re not quite at that point just yet, our hint for the September 19 (1188) puzzle is just below too. However much or little Wordle help you need, you’ll find everything you need right here.
Oh heck, I was so sure I’d got this Wordle all wrapped up on my second guess, I was genuinely surprised when a few letters stubbornly stayed grey. At least I was able to fix them on the row after, and bask in the warm glow of a lightning-fast win. Don’t worry if your game doesn’t go so well—our hint (and answer) will get you back on track.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Thursday, September 19
Flowers, clothes, apples, prints… anything that needs constant and carefully measured force applied to flatten it could require today’s answer, or a machine of the same name.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
Yes, a letter is used twice in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
If you’re new to the daily Wordle puzzle or you just want a refresher after taking a break, I’ll share some quick tips to help you win. There’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day.
A mix of unique consonants and vowels makes for a solid opening word.
A tactical second guess should let you narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
There may be a repeat letter in the answer.
You’re not up against a timer, so you’ve got all the time in the world—well, until midnight—to find the winning word. If you’re stuck, there’s no shame in coming back to the puzzle later in the day and finishing it up when you’ve cleared your head.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
You might need this. The answer to the September 19 (1188) Wordle is PRESS.
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Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Keeping track of the last handful of Wordle answers can help to eliminate current possibilities. It’s also handy for inspiring opening words or subsequent guesses if you’re short on ideas for the day.
Here are the last 10 Wordle answers:
September 18: FULLY
September 17: BEAUT
September 16: HONEY
September 15: RECUR
September 14: BROAD
September 13: HARSH
September 12: BRASS
September 11: AISLE
September 10: REBEL
September 9: DEBIT
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes every day and the aim is to figure out the correct five-letter word by entering guesses and eliminating or confirming individual letters.
Getting off to a good start with a strong word like ARISE—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good tactic. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.
After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
Space Marine 2 is doing fine, but that doesn’t mean it can’t do better. Earlier this month, after the first hotfix went live, the dev team said “we’re reading all of your feedback with great attention,” and now to prove it, Focus Entertainment has posted a lengthy Q&A addressing many of the “hottest topics” submitted by players.
Top of the list is connectivity issues, which are causing lost saves and making it difficult to play with friends: Addressing that is a “top priority” for the development team, Focus said, and server capacity is being increased to better handle the demand. Bot companions, which have been criticized for being “inefficient” in solo play, will also be tweaked to be more effective in boss fights, and may be made more active regarding “specific objectives in the campaign” in a patch further down the road.
A related change will be made to the Veteran difficulty level, which some players apparently feel is too difficult because those bot companions aren’t helping to complete objectives. “[Veteran] will remain challenging but it will be slightly more fair because we will tweak AI aggressiveness on this difficulty,” Focus Entertainment said. “Other difficulties will remain untouched.”
An FOV slider may happen at some point: Focus said it really doesn’t want to add one because the Space Marine 2 camera “is very cinematic and constantly changes position and FOV based on what you are doing.” But an awful lot of people have asked for the option, “so we are considering it anyway.”
What they’re not considering is a left-right shoulder swap, which would apparently be a huge job—”everything in melee combat was made based on the fact that you hold pistol in the left hand and melee weapon in the right hand (because it looks badass)”—nor will class restrictions on cloaks and tabards be removed, because they’re “part of class identity; you get to recognize snipers because of those elements.”
There’s quite a bit more granular info to dive into, and Focus described this as the “first batch” of Space Marine 2 Q&As, implying that further batches will follow at some point. If you have any relevant questions or suggestions yourself, step one is to check the year one roadmap to ensure it’s not already in the works; if not, then step two is to drop it on the new Focus Together community hub.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/1726696638_Space-Marine-2-devs-will-adjust-Veteran-difficulty-to-make.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-09-18 22:49:512024-09-18 22:49:51Space Marine 2 devs will adjust Veteran difficulty to make it ‘slightly more fair,’ but they really don’t want to do an FOV slider—and you can just forget about shoulder swapping
Benjamin Franklin once said that three may keep a secret so long as none of them is a videogame age-rating board, and he was right. The ESRB, whose main purpose is preventing children from being exposed to too much drugs and violence and whose covert second purpose is undercutting publisher marketing campaigns, has once again leaked a release ahead of its announcement. This time it’s, uh, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Wait, what?
That’s right, folks, 2017’s prettiest robo-hunting sim is about to get even prettier, barring the unlikely possibility that someone at the ESRB is just wishing it into existence. Per the still-live listing on the board’s website, the remaster is set to launch on both PS5 and PC, although the ways in which it’s being remastered are still a mystery.
The obvious question is: Why? On PS5, the first Horizon got a whizzbang update three years ago that meant its original version could take advantage of the new console’s extra horsepower. On PC it’s been gorgeous from the start. Of the many, many games in my Steam library, HZD is unquestionably still one of the prettiest. Remastering a game that is both still intensely playable and utterly beautiful almost seems like the games industry poking fun at itself.
The ESRB rating’s timing—coming just a week after Sony announced the existence and eye-watering price of the PS5 Pro—is surely no coincidence. Perhaps a gussied-up Horizon will be one of the Pro console’s showpiece games when it launches this November
Which, if anything, just drives home how marginal the improvements offered by the PS5 Pro seem to me, a man still financially recovering from an RTX 4080 purchase early last year. Where the PS4 Pro seemed like a reasonable answer to devs’ complaints about underpowered console hardware last generation, the PS5 Pro feels like an answer to a non-existent problem. That one of its showpiece games might be a very delectable version of Horizon Zero Dawn—a game that already looks absolutely stellar—almost feels like Sony hanging a lampshade on its own product’s total un-necessity.
Fortunately for Sony and corporations the world over, I’m a moron, and I’ll probably still end up buying whatever the Horizon Remaster ends up being when it inevitably goes on sale a year or two down the line. The games industry might be slipping into self-parody, but I’ve been there for decades.
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https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/1726660559_Games-industry-hurtles-further-into-self-parody-as-ESRB-leaks-existence.jpg6831200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-09-18 12:47:392024-09-18 12:47:39Games industry hurtles further into self-parody as ESRB leaks existence of a Horizon Zero Dawn Remaster
Like so many other companies, EA is going all-in on generative AI. At an investor’s conference today, the game development giant talked at length about the ways AI is supposed to transform its business, and chief strategy officer Mihir Vaidya demoed some of the generative AI concepts the company has been working on.
One of the demos was a large language model-powered NPC based on professional footballer Jude Bellingham. Fake Bellingham described what it’s like for Real Bellingham to play at Bernabéu Stadium: “It’s like a dream come true. Stepping on to the pitch for the first time, it was a surreal feeling. I mean I grew up watching Real Madrid. I even played as them in EA games with my brother Joe, so to actually play for real in front of all those fans, it’s something you can’t explain.”
It’s not exactly insightful stuff—you can watch it here if you want to see for yourself—but I can’t deny that it sounds like something a real athlete might’ve said, since they’re famous for their non-answers. Whether generative AI NPCs who remix text from the internet are ever going to be more than a novelty, I don’t know, but EA is already planning for a world where these simulated people not only talk to us in videogames, but also escape their prisons and join us in the broader digital world.
“Even at this early stage, we can’t help but imagine the profound range of interactions that might now be possible with more believable characters like Jude,” said Vaidya. “Certainly in the context of a game, but potentially beyond games entirely. As our lives become increasingly digital, and the internet becomes increasingly spatial, it’s not hard to imagine taking our favorite characters, ones that we’ve already spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours with, to other contexts in our digital lives, like social media, news, shopping, online learning—even those FaceTime calls with your parents, where you have to show them how to fix their laptops for the hundredth time.”
Unlike Vaidya, I actually do find it hard to imagine taking an AI football player, or any AI character, into a FaceTime with my parents. I’m not saying he’s wrong here—I know not what the future holds—but I do struggle to see what’s so obvious about these AI pairings. Why would I want AI videogame characters involved with news? Election updates from Garrus Vakarian?
There’s also the question of whether it’d be good for us to fill our lives with generative AI bots. The hologram doctor from Star Trek Voyager was alright, but otherwise, I don’t remember anything good coming from characters breaking out of the Holodeck’s rules. And sure, we’re probably not in danger of doing battle with Holo-Moriarty for control of the Enterprise, but becoming emotionally attached to a chat bot can have real consequences.
Should videogame companies indulge the imaginary relationships developed with videogame characters by breaking them out of their entertainment context and integrating them fully with our digital lives?
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Whatever the case, it sounds like we’re going to find out.
“We think the opportunity to give characters, both the ones we create and the ones that our players create, life and persistence beyond the bounds of games is a profound opportunity, and few are better positioned to manifest it over the long term,” Vaidya concluded.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/1726624469_EA-says-giving-videogame-characters-life-and-persistence-outside-of.png7511200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-09-18 01:50:042024-09-18 01:50:04EA says giving videogame characters ‘life and persistence’ outside of games with AI is a ‘profound opportunity,’ which is the kind of talk that leads to dangerous Holodeck malfunctions
Titan 16 Pro really stands out from the rest of the RedMagic gaming laptop lineup because, uh… there isn’t one. RedMagic has never made a laptop before. It’s made gaming phones, gaming accessories, monitors, and mouse pads, but the Titan 16 Pro is the company’s first foray into actual laptop territory. On paper it looks pretty good, with a high-wattage GPU, high-refresh panel, and DDR5-5600 RAM, but can it match the competition?
Out of the box, it’s clear all that gaming smartphone design has influenced the Titan 16 Pro. We’re talking sheer, beautifully milled, matte black metal with hardly any greebles, just the RedMagic logo illuminated with RGB lighting on the back. It’s made from a single piece of machined metal, and although the power cable blocks the screen from going back too far and the front edge is a bit sharp, the chassis is nicely understated. Personally, I think it’s external looks rival the Razer Blade machines our Dave is so in love with, but that’s an argument for behind the scenes.
One of the specs listed on the RedMagic Titan 16 Pro site is “All black internal components”, as if that’s something people are looking for in a laptop. Will it help you game better? Probably not, but it’s totally brutal (throws horns).
Opening the laptop lid tells a far less subtle story, with a somewhat overdone keyboard design. It’s busy. Lots of graphics on the space and enter keys make it visually confusing to look at, though you do get used to it after a while. And if warning stripes are your preferred aesthetic, this one’s very urban. There are a couple of inconsistencies with the typeface on certain keys, which is upsetting, but the designers have at least managed to fit a full sized keyboard in. It’s a little squished, but that’s to be expected on a 16-incher.
Titan 16 Pro specs
(Image credit: Future)
CPU: Intel Core i9 14900H GPU: Nvidia RTX 4060 (140 W) RAM: 1x 16GB DDR5-5600 SSD: 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 Screen: 16-inch | 2560 x 1600 (16:10) Refresh rate: 240 Hz OS: Windows 11 Home Weight: 2.4 kg | 5.3 lb Ports: 1 x Thunderbolt 4, 1 x USB 3.2, 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x RJ45 Gigabit, 2 x USB 3.2, 1 x SD UHS-II, 1 x 3.5 Audio Dimensions: 36 x 26 x 2.3 cm | 14.2 x 10.2 x 0.9 in Price:£1,599 | $1,699
The Titan 16 Pro isn’t exorbitantly heavy either at 2.4 kg / 5.3 lb. It’s not as svelte as some notebooks, but it’s easy enough to carry about. It’s made even easier with the compact adapter attached to the cable, which can’t be said for most higher-powered laptops. Still there’s no use taking it around with you if it doesn’t game.
In the initial 3D Mark Time Spy Extreme synthetic benchmark it looked as if the Titan 16 Pro was going to be a pretty nippy machine, particularly when pitted against other machines with lower-wattage RTX 4060s. And as far as rendering goes, I was thoroughly impressed with the Core i9 14900H’s Blender and Cinebench scores. Generally, that bodes well for CPU-intensive games with a lot of simulation going on, like the notorious Metro Exodus, but that wasn’t exactly the case here.
With the Titan 16 Pro’s frame rates beating even some of the more expensive RTX 4070 machines of recent years, particularly those backed by the mid and lower end of Intel’s 13th and 14th generation processors, the numbers might look promising… but sadly it struggles when it comes to CPU intensive games.
I watched the Titan 16 Pro stutter something awful in the Cyberpunk 2077 and Metro Exodus benchies, even at 1080p. And although the frame rates seem not to reflect the issue—looking pretty standard for a lappy of its weight class—it was definitely having trouble keeping up, especially when I whacked it up to 1440p, or its native 2560 x 1600p. From the super-low minimum CPU scores in Hitman’s Dartmoor benchmark, it’s plain that Intel’s beastly Core i9 14900H is suffering from a low-end GPU pairing
It’s also likely having issues due to its single-channel memory. Sure, it’s speedy DDR5 RAM, but without the bandwidth you might have some trouble multitasking.
Still, as long as you’re playing compatible games, Nvidia DLSS does go a long way to sorting out the stuttering. And the Titan 16 Pro does alright in the majority of games in our ringer, performing entirely averagely for a high-wattage RTX 4060 GPU. The bigger problems lie a little deeper.
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(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
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(Image credit: Future)
Thanks to the Titan 16 Pro’s high-wattage GPU, its battery life is sapped pretty sharpish when gaming. It only lasts around an hour and fifteen minutes which sort of negates the point of having a portable machine. I’ve tested 140 W RTX 4090 gaming laptops with better battery life than that, such as the Gigabyte Aorus 17X which has a whole half an hour on the Titan 16 Pro.
Buy if…
✅ You do a lot of rendering and productivity tasks – The Titan 16 Pro’s Intel Core i9 14900H makes it well suited to rendering and other studio work, and the 16:10 aspect ratio makes it great for office work.
✅ You don’t mind dropping the graphics for competitive gaming – If you want to make the most of the speedy 240 Hz panel, you’ll either have to drop the settings down exponentially at its native resolution, or go for middling graphics at 1080p.
Don’t buy if…
❌ You can afford to spend an extra few hundred – If you can splash out, you might as well opt for a machine with a GPU pairing that better complements a 14th Generation Intel CPU.
❌ You’re on a really tight budget – for $400/£400 less you can nab the Gigabyte G6X, which performs damn admirably by comparison, especially for a cheap gaming laptop.
On top of that little nugget, the fans whirr up pretty intensely even when the Titan 16 Pro is sitting idle, making it difficult to have a conversation in its presence. You’d think that would keep it cooler, but you’re still looking at max CPU temps of 100 °C, and GPU temps topping out at 78 °C.
I have to give the machine its dues on the screen, though. It’s gorgeous, with vivid colors and a great 16:10 aspect ratio that’s well suited for productivity. And while the Titan 16 Pro might not be able to make the most of that 240 Hz panel without some graphical tweaking, it’s good to have more speed and not need it, than to need and not have it, especially when RedMagic isn’t charging an arm and a leg for the privilege.
With a price to rival the similarly specced, but slightly less powerful Asus ROG Flow X13, it looks like the Titan 16 Pro pretty much hits the mark money-wise. But compare it to something like the $400/£400 cheaper Gigabyte G6X, and it’s made clear what the Titan 16 Pro could have been with less of a gulf between the core components.
It is a bit sad that such a powerful processor is being undermined by a lower-end GPU and single-channel 16GB RAM, causing some bottlenecking in CPU intensive games. And despite being one of my favorite looking laptops to date (at least on the outside), it falls into one too many gaming laptop pitfalls to recommend entirely.
Take a look at our hint for today’s Wordle if you’d like to give your opening guesses a welcome boost. Or maybe you’re a bit further down the board and would really like someone to help you make sense of a few floating yellow letters. Hoping to find a more straightforward sort of help? You’ve got it. The answer to the September 17 (1186) Wordle is only a click away.
I could see I was definitely on the right track today—those green letters don’t lie—but it took some serious elimination to whittle the board down to something I could turn into a winning word. It was satisfying detective work though, and I loved seeing my first serious guess at today’s answer turn the entire row green.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Tuesday, September 17
You’re in for a bit of traditional Aussie slang today. This word is used in that part of the world to casually describe something as good, good-looking, or a good idea.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
There are no double letters in today’s Wordle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
Looking to extend your Wordle winning streak? Perhaps you’ve just started playing the popular daily puzzle game and are looking for some pointers. Whatever the reason you’re here, these quick tips can help push you in the right direction:
Start with a word that has a mix of common vowels and consonants.
The answer might repeat the same letter.
Try not to use guesses that include letters you’ve already eliminated.
There’s no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don’t need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
You’ve got this. The answer to the September 17 (1186) Wordle is BEAUT.
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Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Wordle solutions that have already been used can help eliminate answers for today’s Wordle or give you inspiration for guesses to help uncover more of those greens. They can also give you some inspired ideas for starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
September 16: HONEY
September 15: RECUR
September 14: BROAD
September 13: HARSH
September 12: BRASS
September 11: AISLE
September 10: REBEL
September 9: DEBIT
September 8: DRAWN
September 7: OWNER
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it’s up to you to work out which five-letter word is hiding among them to win the popular daily puzzle.
It’s usually a good plan to start with a strong word like ALERT—or any other word with a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels—and you should be off to a flying start, with a little luck anyway. You should also avoid starting words with repeating letters, so you don’t waste the chance to confirm or eliminate an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
Your second guess should compliment the first, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you might have missed on the first row—just don’t forget to leave out any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the correct word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words and don’t forget letters can repeat too (eg: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
Over the weekend, former Bungie general counsel Don McGowan gave his take on the ongoing turmoil at Bungie and the recent redirection for Destiny 2. “Much though it pains me to say this, it appears that Sony’s inflicting some discipline on my former colleagues may have forced them to fix the things that were wrong with the game,” McGowan said in a LinkedIn post published on Saturday.
“To be clear: I’m not talking about the layoffs,” McGowan continued. “I’m talking about forcing them to get their heads out of their asses and focus on things like: implementing a method of new player acquisition; not just doing fan service for the fans in the Bungie C-suite; and running the game like a business. Good. I still have friends in that environment and I’d like them to keep jobs.”
McGowan’s LinkedIn post was a response to Bungie’s reveal last week of its new plans for Destiny 2’s content structure, which will abandon its major, annual releases of linear story expansions in favor of smaller, more-frequent updates with a greater emphasis on repeatable activities. The shift in Destiny 2 strategy follows Bungie’s two rounds of major layoffs since Sony acquired the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022.
In the July 2024 announcement that Bungie was laying off 220 employees—around 17% of its staff—CEO Pete Parsons called the downsizing “a necessary decision to refocus our studio,” brought about by “rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions.” In his LinkedIn post, however, McGowan said the continuing uncertainty at Bungie is a product of the studio leadership’s mismanagement.
According to McGowan, who’d been Bungie’s general counsel from 2020 to 2023, studio executives were intent on continuing to operate as though it was an independent company, even after the Sony acquisition. “There were a lot of egos for whom it was important to pretend that ‘nothing would change,'” McGowan said. “I remember sitting there during the deal saying, ‘Do you think Sony describes this as them getting to pay $3.6 billion for the right to have no input into what Bungie does?’ That was exactly what a lot of people thought.”
McGowan continued to reiterate that opinion in replies to comments left on his post. When asked how Bungie ended up in its current state, McGowan said, “To my mind: it’s a management failure. They started to believe their own press.” Elsewhere, he said that “talent outside the C-suite” deserves the credit for Bungie’s continued survival. “I would go into meetings with Director and below people and think ‘this person is an absolute pro’ and then into exec meetings and think ‘how the fuck did these people make it this long?'” McGowan said.
In comparison, McGowan said Bungie’s new plans for Destiny 2 are “the things you do to run a franchise, not to keep making the game you and your friends have mastered, or to chase trends.”
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While I admit that there’s something refreshing about McGowan’s frank assessment of studio management’s responsibility in Bungie’s repeated crises, it’s unfortunate that the Sony discipline he describes has fallen entirely on the former employees he says don’t deserve the blame. The C-Suite at Bungie, at least for the moment, seems to be continuing unscathed.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/1726516274_Former-Bungie-lawyer-says-the-studios-management-failure-led-to.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-09-16 20:33:202024-09-16 20:33:20Former Bungie lawyer says the studio’s ‘management failure’ led to Sony ‘forcing them to get their heads out of their asses’
Reinstall invites you to join us in revisiting PC gaming days gone by. Today, Jody returns to the Forgotten Realms to figure out what exactly he’s forgotten about.
Years before Baldur’s Gate came along, the CRPGS made in the Gold Box engine, including Curse of the Azure Bonds, were my introduction to the Forgotten Realms. Which is why I’ll always associate it with women in impractical armour and names that can’t be taken seriously. In Curse that’s the priest Gharri of Gond and the villainous Fzoul Chembryl, though a few years later Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures would introduce the unforgettable Lunit Bdufe, a name that makes Drizzt Do’Urden seem downright mundane.
The Gold Box games also introduced me to factions like the Zhentarim and the Red Wizards of Thay, two of the organisations in Curse of the Azure Bonds trying to control you via the magic tattoos of the title. Nothing can ever be just “blue” in a fantasy novel when it could be azure or sapphire or cerulean, right? I think Hoodoo of the Blue Tattoo would have been an even better name myself.
Curse kicks off when you wake up with magic tattoos and a month of missing memories. When those tattoos compel you to attack a local royal, you learn they’re a medium for mind control and set out to get them removed.
The assassination attempt leads to a jail break and chase through the sewers where you encounter monsters made of garbage called otyughs. The sewer section is a highlight—not a sentence you get to write about videogames often—and one reason is that you can talk to the monsters. Some of the otyughs are jealous of their otyugh neighbours, so you can befriend them by stealing the superior piles of excrement next door. There are a handful of moments like this scattered across Curse, where you can cut a deal with a dark elf (but she’ll only talk to you if there’s a woman in your party), or avoid a fight with salamanders (but only if you choose the correct conversational tone out of a selection including haughty, nice, and meek).
The other reason this sewer chase stands out is how much story’s jammed into it. There’s a conflict between the thieves guild who helped bust you out of prison and a rival gang of criminals called the Fire Knives, both fighting over the prime thief real estate of the sewers. The Fire Knives were one of the parties involved in giving you the tattoos, and you stumble across the remains of their previous experiments as you rush through their base, following the trail of two other adventurers separately on the loose in the sewers. Gharri of Ghond is here to rescue a princess like he’s playing a different videogame, and Olive Ruskettle—a halfling from the novel this game is based on—is one step ahead of you in the tunnels as well.
This is Curse of the Azure Bonds at its peak. CRPGs at the time rarely had this much narrative going on, with exceptions like the Ultima games. You were much more likely to be playing a dungeon dice-and-slice than something with actual mystery and plot. It helps that it’s based on a book, just called Azure Bonds, which was nothing special but still more readable than 90% of the D&D novels—not that you need to read it to play the videogame. I hadn’t the first time I played Curse but still appreciated when an NPC from the book would show up because they’d suddenly have more backstory and personality than everyone around them just by dint of not having been created for a videogame.
(Image credit: SNEG)
Cherished Companion
The Steam release of the Gold Box games comes with an app called the Gold Box Companion, which can be downloaded separately for other versions. It bolts an automap onto the right side of the game window so you don’t have to bust out graph paper, and adds a status bar to the top that transforms into a menu of quality-of-life improvements when you mouse over it.
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They include the ability to read journal entries as you find them rather than having to open up a pdf, because this is a game from the days when developers would save disk space by putting half the story in a book with numbered paragraphs you’d consult as you played. If you lost the thing, or your second-hand copy didn’t have one, you’d never find out what Gorgax told you in paragraph 33.
An undersung hero of the Gold Box Companion is the ability to store your current list of memorised spells and then restore them at the press of a button instead of having to go through after each fight re-memorising every stinking cloud and fireball you cast. But the most indispensable thing about it is that it lets you ignore racial level limits.
(Image credit: SNEG)
Curse of the Azure Bonds is based on the rules of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, which are a real ball-ache for many reasons, not least that they hate non-humans. Some classes are only available to humans, like paladin and ranger, and those that aren’t are often restricted. Your cleric can be a half-elf if you like, but you’ll never be allowed to go higher than level 5—and that’s the level Curse starts at.
D&D’s co-creator Gary Gygax thought of D&D as a work of sword and sorcery like Conan or the stories of Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance, which are amoral and human-centric. Surprisingly, he wasn’t a fan of high fantasy like The Lord of the Rings, a deeply moral story about people from different backgrounds coming together to save the world, and while he put elves and dwarves in his game because players asked for them he made playing one an absolute pain in the dickhole. Fortunately later editions of D&D ditched all that nonsense and now everyone’s party is a mix of elves, tieflings, and dragonborn, but back in the day D&D wanted you to eat your vegetables and be a boring human.
(Image credit: SNEG)
While some of the rules were annoying, sticking to them meant Curse of the Azure Bonds really did feel like playing D&D. In a time when it was much harder to find a group than it is today, Curse was the methadone that would cover your need for a fix. That similarity was most obvious in the combat. My preference for turn-based tactical combat probably goes back to Curse of the Azure Bonds, where thieves would only get bonus backstab damage on enemies who had been attacked from the front earlier that round and timing was everything.
Some actions took longer than others, splitting your turn over multiple initiative counts. When an enemy priest started praying the next character in the turn order would get a chance to interrupt with something fast like an arrow or a magic missile, breaking his concentration so he’d lose that hold person spell. Enemies would do the same trick, and the number of fireballs I lost because my wizard took chip damage from a random dark elf is infuriating. Area-denial spells like stinking cloud were the order of the day, and lightning bolt would rebound off walls, potentially bouncing back to strike twice. After playing a few games with this level of tactical possibility, the messy realtime-with-pause combat of Baldur’s Gate felt like a betrayal—not how D&D was supposed to work.
(Image credit: SNEG)
The Gold Box Companion makes replaying Curse of the Azure Bonds more convenient than trying to finish it was when I was a kid. Back then, I never made it to the end. Now, armed with a walkthrough so I don’t have to suffer through quite so many random encounters as I wander the wilderness trying to figure out where the plot picks up, I finally get to see what the back half of the game is like.
Turns out, not great. There are a lot less chatty otyughs and a lot more dungeon crawling. The enemies are clearly chosen for their level-appropriateness rather than to match the theme—a Red Wizard who is obsessed with dragons has an undead one as a pet, which makes sense, but most of his horde is made up of dark elves and efreets for no reason other than providing a balanced challenge for your current experience total. The final boss, a spirit capable of possessing anyone, has taken over a storm giant for no particular reason except his stat block. His minions are margoyles, a slightly tougher version of gargoyles, again for no narrative reason. Defeat them and there’s a rushed epilogue, some pixel fireworks, and an opportunity to save your party so you can take them into the next game.
(Image credit: SNEG)
Which I did, after going back to my final save to remove each character one by one because that’s apparently how it works. Dragging the same party into the sequel, Secret of the Silver Blades, isn’t really doing it for me. Much as I loved Curse of the Azure Bonds as a 12-year-old who only owned a handful of games and didn’t have any friends who played D&D, now if I want that experience in videogame form I’ve got Baldur’s Gate 3, Solasta: Crown of the Magister, and a couple of Pathfinder games to replay. Even better, I’ve got a real D&D game on the go and the players have just hit level 5.
Maybe for old time’s sake I’ll introduce some Red Wizards and Zhentarim into my campaign. Though probably not the impractical armour and unpronounceable names.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/1726480233_Revisiting-the-DD-games-of-my-youth-really-makes-me.jpg6811200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-09-16 04:30:142024-09-16 04:30:14Revisiting the D&D games of my youth really makes me appreciate how much better things are today
As spotted by Gamepressure, the LinkedIn profile of Harrison Froeschke made for some interesting reading—at least, before he realized and hid it. As the senior product manager on Diablo 4, Froeschke had good reason to boast about the action RPG’s profits, and to be more specific than usual about how they broke down.
As Froeschke wrote, his role at Blizzard included “Leading the monetization strategy of the store cosmetics, pricing, bundle offers, personalized discounts, and roadmap planning which have driven over $150M MTX lifetime revenue” as well as executing “every step of game sales since game pre-order to the first expansion by configuring and collaborating with other teams resulting in over $1B total lifetime revenue”.
Those eye-watering numbers shouldn’t be too surprising, given that Diablo 4 is Blizzard’s fastest-selling game of all time. Still, it’s interesting to see a full-price game can make 15% of its total revenue from an in-game shop—though admittedly some players got it as part of Game Pass. It’s wins like this that continue motivating the videogame industry to try to repeat the success, despite the number of high-profile failures we’ve seen along the way.
Diablo 4’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, is due on October 8. As well as continuing the story, it’ll be adding a new class called the spiritborn who specializes in martial arts and spirit animals, a jungle region, recruitable NPC mercenaries, a co-op dungeon, more skills for each class, and a runeword system that lets you create custom skills, even borrowing them from other classes.
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https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/1726444156_Diablo-4-has-made-over-150M-from-microtransactions-achieved-over.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-09-16 00:36:012024-09-16 00:36:01Diablo 4 has made over $150M from microtransactions, achieved over $1B in lifetime revenue
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