The wait is finally over—Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment’s highly anticipated fantasy RPG has officially launched! Step into the breathtaking Living Lands, a wild and mysterious island located in the Pillars of Eternity world of Eora, and embark on a journey filled with danger, discovery, and adventure.
A Land in Turmoil
The Living Lands is a frontier unlike any other. This rugged and untamed island has become a haven for exiles, dreamers, and adventurers seeking a fresh start. Its vibrant regions and scattered settlements pulse with life, each hiding untold stories and ancient secrets waiting to be uncovered.
But this land of promise is fraught with peril. The Dreamscourge, a devastating soul-plague, is driving settlers to madness and turning them against one another. The very land itself resists colonization, haunted by echoes of lives long past. As an envoy chosen by a foreign emperor and blessed by a mysterious god, you are thrust into the heart of this chaos. With divine powers at your fingertips and the will to shape your own destiny, you’ll confront ancient threats, unravel mysteries, and decide the fate of the Living Lands. Will you unite its people or watch as their struggles tear them apart? The choices you make will define the future of the Living Lands—and the person you become.
Forge Your Own Path
In Avowed, the power of choice is yours. Create a character and shape your playstyle with four expansive skill trees—Fighter, Ranger, Wizard, and Godlike. Whether you’re a stealthy sniper armed with dual pistols and a longbow or a spell-slinging barbarian wielding an axe and a grimoire, the possibilities are endless. Your choices define who you are and how you’ll tackle the challenges ahead.
But you’re not alone on this journey. Your companions each bring their own skills, personalities, and deeply personal stories:
Kai, the steadfast protector, whose calm demeanor and unwavering loyalty make him a dependable shield in battle.
Giatta, a brilliant animancer scientist, whose relentless curiosity drives her to uncover the mysteries of the Dreamscourge, even at great personal risk.
Marius, a lone-wolf hunter, whose sharp wit and tracking expertise make him an invaluable ally in the wilderness.
Yatzli, a fiery Godless expert, harnessing explosive magic and a rebellious spirit. Her disdain for the gods adds complexity to her character and your choices.
Their history, relationships, and perspectives intertwine with your story, adding depth and weight to every decision you make. Will you earn their trust, challenge their beliefs, or forge something more profound? How you guide your companions—and how they influence you—shapes the adventure in unexpected ways.
Your Living Lands, Your Way
Avowed is a game built to immerse you in its world. The Living Lands is a sprawling playground for adventurers, rewarding exploration at every turn. Traverse rugged cliffs, wade through winding rivers, and uncover unique hidden treasures—from ancient elemental weapons to fragments of God Shrine Totems that come together creating powerful new abilities.
Combat is equally immersive, offering a seamless blend of magic, melee, and ranged attacks. Unleash shockwaves with Grimoire Snap, trade health for devastating power with Blood Magic, wield weapons you have upgraded and enchanted, or mix and match abilities to create a playstyle that’s entirely your own. Every encounter is an opportunity to experiment, strategize, and push the boundaries of you and your companions potentials.
At the heart of Avowed lies its dedication to player choice. Inspired by the freedom of tabletop RPGs, the game puts the power in your hands. Your decisions ripple across the Living Lands, shaping alliances, influencing factions, and determining the fate of your companions. Whether you negotiate peace, spark conflict, or carve your own path through the chaos, your actions leave a lasting impact on the world of Eora.
This seamless blend of storytelling, exploration, and creativity makes Avowed an unforgettable RPG experience, offering an experience where every choice matters and every discovery feels personal.
Start Your Adventure Today
Whether you’re a longtime fan of Obsidian Entertainment or new to Eora, Avowed invites you to dive into a world of wonder, danger, and opportunity. With its vibrant setting, unforgettable characters, and deeply immersive gameplay, this is the role-playing experience you’ve been waiting for.
The Living Lands are calling. Gather your courage, forge your path, and let the adventure begin!
Why Early Access?
“Early Access will provide an outstanding opportunity to reach a wide audience before the game is finished. The feedback of the community will be an essential resource to polish and improve the gaming experience.”
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Given the current plans, I expect the game to stay in Early Acces for about a year, but it is difficult to make an accurate prediction at the moment. I will do my best to keep you informed of any significant changes.”
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“I plan to include new chapters, from the mop-up operations in Gaul to the entire civil war against the Pompeians, with additional battles and events. The designed new content envisages the transfer of the player character to new legions, to take charge of centuries other than the one led during the first half of the game.”
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“The Early Access version contains the first ten parts of the game out of twenty planned. It starts at the beginning of Caesar's Gallic War and ends right after the battle of Alesia. It is fully playable.”
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“A small price increase at the end or close to the end of Early Access is likely.”
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“I will regularly check the Steam Discussions forum for feedback and opinions. Of course, I can't promise I will follow every suggestion, but I will give thought to everything that is discussed and proposed.”
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Last time in Dev Diary 18 (“Building Our Seattle”), we walked through the streets of our Seattle, exploring its foundations and the world you’ll navigate. Tonight, we’re diving deeper into the city, its inhabitants, and the rules that keep everything in check. These rules—the Masquerade—aren’t just a suggestion; they’re the law. Break them, and you might find yourself on the wrong end of a court assassin’s stake.
Masquerade Mechanics
In the World of Darkness, the Masquerade refers to the efforts made by Kindred to conceal their existence from humanity to ensure their survival. This secrecy is vital, as widespread knowledge of their existence would likely lead to a catastrophic response from humans, ultimately resulting in the destruction of Kindred society.
The Masquerade is enforced by the Camarilla, particularly in Seattle, under the authority of the Sheriff. Violations of the Masquerade, such as using supernatural abilities in public, are met with severe punishment, including exile or final death.
In Bloodlines 2, you must maintain the Masquerade. Failure to do so will result in a swift stake through your heart. To help monitor your actions, there is a Masquerade meter at the top of the screen, consisting of two key parts:
The Eye Symbol: If the eye is open it indicates that someone is currently watching you. It is best to perform vampiric activities out of sight of human witnesses.
The Bars Around the Eye: These bars fill up when you are caught committing acts that breach the Masquerade. The progression of the bars occurs in three stages:
Upheld (Green): Minor infractions, such as being seen jumping abnormally high or running too fast. Avoid repeated minor breaches, or the meter will advance to the next stage.
Caution (Orange): Triggered by excessive actions, such as feeding, using violent abilities, or accumulating too many minor infractions. At this point, humans become suspicious. If someone witnesses your crime, they may report it to the police. You can deal with the witness directly or avoid the police. Using an ability to make witnesses forget what they saw can be an effective strategy.
Engaged/Broken (Red): At this stage, the police are actively pursuing you. You must break their line of sight immediately. If the meter fills completely, the Camarilla will take decisive action to end your activities swiftly and mercilessly.
Maintaining the Masquerade is critical for survival in Bloodlines 2. Stay vigilant and avoid unnecessary risks to ensure you remain under the radar.
12 FEBRUARY 2025 - Terahard Studios is thrilled to announce the launch of the Dunebound Tactics Demo on Steam! Step into the unforgiving wasteland and experience a taste of this turn-based tactics roguelite.
Battle ruthless factions, scavenge dwindling resources, and make life-or-death choices to keep your sand-faring ship on the move, even if it requires sacrificing your own crewmates!
What's in the demo?
Command Your Crew - Lead a band of ragtag survivors on a perilous trek across treacherous sands. Their life rests in your capable hands.
Test Your Tactical Mastery - Make strategic choices and emerge victorious from turn-based combat with a dynamic, destructible terrain that challenges you to think on your feet.
Deep RPG Elements & Replayability : After the tutorial, no two runs will be the same. Players get a random squad with new classes and abilities to experiment with on the battefield, if you can keep everyone alive long enough to try them out...
"Developing Dunebound Tactics has been a journey fueled by our passion for pure tactical gameplay, we built our own tactics engine from scratch, blending innovative mechanics with RPG depth. The demo is our invitation for players to jump in, test these systems, and help us shape the full game with their feedback." - Aris Tsevrenis, CEO of Terahard Studios
Play the Demo Now!
Jump into the desolate deserts and start your journey to survival. Every move, every choice, and every battle will push your strategic limits.
If you are excited for Dunebound Tactics, don't forget to also check out Terahard's other game: Monster Mop Up, which is soon participating in Steam Next Fest!
It’s weirdly freeing to play a game that so plainly answers only to the dictates of fun. Might and Magic VI is a monument to excess sufficient to make a Saudi prince blanch. Whenever I think about it, I remember Gary Gygax’s stern admonition against just this sort of thing in the first-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide, that staple work of literature of my generation’s nerdy youth.
Many campaigns are little more than a joke, something that better Dungeon Masters jape at and ridicule — rightly so on the surface — because of the foolishness of player characters with astronomically high levels of experience and no real playing skill. These godlike characters boast and strut about with retinues of ultra-powerful servants and scores of mighty magic items, artifacts, [and] relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out with tinsel and ornaments. Not only are such “Monty Haul” games a crashing bore for most participants, they are a headache for their Dungeon Masters as well…
Might and Magic VI is the perfect riposte for old Gary’s po-faced pronouncements. It lets you advance your characters to level 90 and beyond, by which time they pretty much are gods, able to teleport instantly from one side of a continent to the other and to cover shorter distances by flying high above the mountaintops, raining fiery death from the heavens upon any poor earthbound creatures who happen to be visible below. And you know what? It’s not boring at all. It’s actually kind of awesome. Like Diablo, Might and Magic VI zeroes in relentlessly on the lizard-brain appeal of its genre. We all like to watch the numbers associated with our characters go up and then go up some more, like to know that we’re more formidable today than we were yesterday. (If only real life worked like that…)
The world in which this progress narrative takes place may not be terribly believable even as fantasy goes, but it’s appropriately sprawling. The lovely, throwback cloth map that came in the original box contains no fewer than fourteen discrete regions that you can visit, each of them dauntingly large, full of towns and castles and roaming creatures and hidden and not-so-hidden curiosities, among them the entrances to multiple dungeons that are sometimes shockingly huge in themselves. Although I’m sure some of our modern DLC-fueled monstrosities have far surpassed it in size by now, Might and Magic VI might just be the biggest single CRPG that yours truly has ever played from start to finish.
The game was able to hold my interest for the 100 hours or more I spent with it by giving me so darn much to do. Every town has at least a few quests to see through. Sometimes these are related to the main story line, but more often they’re standalone,. Each of the character classes can evolve into two more advanced incarnations of itself; an archer, for example, can become a “battle mage” and then a “warrior mage.” Doing so entails reaching a certain level and meeting other statistical requirements, then hunting down the necessary trainer and completing a quest for him or her. Your characters’ more granular skills, which encompass the expected schools of magic and types of weaponry alongside miscellaneous talents ranging from “Bodybuilding” to “Repair Item,” also require trainers in order to be advanced to “Expert” and then “Master” status. There’s always something to do, some goal to pursue, whether it’s provided by the game or one you made up for yourself: collect every single spell; pray at every shrine during the one month of the year when you get something out of it. Because there’s no complex plot whose own needs have to act as a check on your wanderings, it’s always you rather than the game who gets to decide what you do next. This world is truly your oyster — as long as you’re tough enough to take on the many and varied monsters that infest every corner of it that you enter, that is.
The toy-box quality of Might and Magic VI lets it get away with things that less sanguine, more self-serious peers would get dinged for. The jank in the engine — and make no mistake, there’s a lot of jank here — feels more like a feature than a bug when, say, you find just the right angle to stand in a doorway, the one that lets you whale away on a group of monsters while they for some reason can’t hit you. Fairly early in my play-through, I found myself in a sewer filled with living oozes that were impervious to weaponry and shot blobs of slime that were corrosive to armor. The sensible thing to do would have been to go away and come back later. Instead of being sensible, I found a stairway from whose top I could throw my one effective spell at the oozes while they were unable to hit me at all. I spent several evenings luring oozes from all over the sewer back to that killing floor, harvesting huge quantities of experience points from them. Sure, it was kind of tedious, but it was kind of great at the same time. Finding exploits like this — exploits that would undermine a less gonzo, more finely calibrated game — is just another part of the fun of Might and Magic VI. Everyone who’s ever played it seems to come away with her own list of favorite ways to break it.
I’m not even all that bothered that the game feels a little bit unfinished. As you play, you’ll probably find yourself exploring Enroth in an eastward to westward direction, which is all too clearly also the direction in which New World built their world. The last couple of regions you’re likely to visit, along the western edge of the map, are deserts filled with hordes of deadly dragons and not much else. It’s plain as day that New World was running out of gas by the time they got this far. But, in light of all they had already put into their world by this point, it’s hard to begrudge them the threadbare westerly regions too much. I’m well aware that I’m not usually so kind toward such failures to stick the landing; this is the place where I usually start muttering about the need for a work to be complete in an “Aristotelian sense” and all the rest. Never fear; we’ll doubtless return to such pretensions in future articles. But in the case of a joyously goofy, loosey-goosey epic like Might and Magic VI… well, how much more of it do you really want? It’s just not a game to which Aristotelian symmetries apply.
Might and Magic VI was released on April 30, 1998. This places it at almost the exact midpoint between Fallout, that first exemplar of a new breed of CRPGs in the offing, and the CRPGS that Interplay would publish near the end of 1998, which would serve to cement and consolidate Fallout’s innovations. For its part, Might and Magic VI can be seen as a bridge between the old ways and the new. In spirit, it’s defiantly old-school. Yet there are enough new features and conveniences — including not just the free-scrolling movement and optional real-time combat, but also such niceties as a quest log, a superb auto-map, and a raft of other information-management functions — to mark it out as a product of 1998 rather than 1988 or even 1993. It sold 125,000 copies in the United States alone, enough to justify Jon Van Canegham’s risky decision to take a chance on it in the midst of the driest period of the CRPG drought. And its success was well deserved. Few latter-day installments of any series have done as good a job of ratcheting up their accessibility whilst retaining the essence of what made their predecessors popular.
Barcelona, Spain / Vienna, Austria, February 7th, 2025: Today, THQ Nordic is releasing the first making-of video for the highly anticipated Gothic 1 Remake! Titled "Chapter 1: The Essence of Gothic", this behind-the-scenes featurette provides an exclusive look at how developer Alkimia Interactive is reimagining the cult classic.
Keep your eyes peeled for the Steam Next Fest (February 24 – March 3) for more Gothic glamour!
Featuring insights from key team members, including Reinhard Pollice (Head of Studio & Game Director), Kai Rosenkranz (Music Composer & Sound Designer), Daniel Candil (Studio Art Director), and many more, the video explores the studio’s vision and dedication to bringing Gothic back to life.
This first chapter dives deep into the creative process behind the remake, showcasing how the team carefully balances staying true to the original while enhancing the experience for a modern audience. It showcases iconic locations from the original game and as well as updated sequences, illustrating the evolution of the world’s atmosphere and detail. Throughout the feature, the team’s passion and craftsmanship take center stage, highlighting their unwavering commitment to refining every aspect of the game while preserving its essence.
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Journey through a fractured land where gods once waged war on their own creations. Today, new wars rage. Help those in need pick up the pieces, or take advantage of a kingdom still reeling from bitter defeat. Gather allies and enemies as your decisions move individuals and kingdoms alike. As you unravel the mystery, will you join with The Firstborn in search of ultimate power, or consign them to the judgment of the gods? Whatever you decide, your choices will echo through history.
Create a party of up to six adventurers, choosing from seven races and ten classes. Guide them from a band of unknowns to a group of heroes whose names are whispered in palaces and fortresses across the land.
Experience complex turn-based combat with a focus on tactics. Use a vast array of spells, feats and mounts to overcome a bestiary of over 120 classic monsters from the 3.5 SRD, each with its own special abilities and strategies.
Detailed Tactical Combat
Engage in exciting turn-based combat using one of the most accurate implementations of the classic 3.5 SRD. Equip and ride a war-horse, mastering mounted combat, a rarely-seen feature in overhead RPGs. Employ over 300 spells to vanquish your enemies who respond with intelligent, reactive AI.
Employ All Three Dimensions
Watch out for pit traps, filled with spikes or water that can thwart an unprepared party. Don’t forget to bring your 50-foot rope!
Fight on the ground and in the air. Use the fly spell to take the fight to enemies who thought they could stay safe above the fray.
Climb cliffs and jump across chasms to get to treasures and objectives that would otherwise be out of reach. You did remember to put points into the climb skill, right?
Explore a Large, Open Map
Wander the countryside in search of long-forgotten treasures, but beware, many of them are well-guarded. Be careful you don’t stray too far off of the beaten path too soon!
Get Into the Battle Immediately with the Endless Dungeon Roguelike Mode
Revenge of the Firstborn also includes a fully fleshed-out roguelike mode. Explore randomly-generated dungeons, fight randomly-placed monsters and find randomly-generated loot in a game mode where your sole goal is to survive to reach level twenty.
Fight your way through three distinct dungeon environments and discover a variety of “mini-quests” to keep things interesting as you descend the depths.
Brawling
When blades come out in BL2, unless you've taken extra care to isolate your prey, you're going to be outnumbered. While several discipline abilities can help you escape or swiftly resolve a fight, you'll need to do a bit of brawling when those options aren't available. Spacing is key - your basic attacks can make short work of individuals but are risky when you're getting sliced apart from all sides.
The basic attacks get used a lot, so during their development, I was keen to make time to give each clan their own set. Banu is sharp and fast, Ventrue firm and precise, Tremere has a bit more reach to let you maintain distance, and Brujah, well, punches stuff. It’s a small thing, but I found it really helped people get into the attitude and poise of their current clan.
Dashing is an ability Phyre can use regardless of clan and is critical for maintaining distance. It can even be used aggressively - dashing forwards into a strike right as it hits will break your opponent's guard and leave them open for a counterattack, though this is best suited for one-on-one situations.
Kicks are another useful tool and are great for handling groups - done by attacking straight after a dash, you can pick which type you use with your movement direction. A big swinging roundhouse can stumble a large group but won't create much space - whereas a backkick can send a single enemy soaring away. Both you and your opponents will be able to resist attacks used repeatedly, so you'll want to mix things up a bit to stay on top.
While kicks are great for getting opponents away from you, telekinesis is perfect for bringing them close. You can use it to yank a chosen target in for a follow-up or a feed, though consider that Kindred and their ghouls may be expecting this.
Telekinesis can also earn a quick kill when used to pull an unsuspecting enemy near the edge of a rooftop, causing them to fall to their death on the street below.
Breakable objects, like bottles and ashtrays, can be grabbed using telekinesis and then thrown to create a noise, distracting enemies. If you really want to create a bang, pick up and throw an explosive, such as a gas tank – a good way to hurt several enemies at once.
Telekinesis can also be used to pick up weapons from the dead, from knives to sniper rifles. A goal of Phyre’s combat design was to be fast and fluid, so we incorporated the use of Telekinesis with weapon use to maintain speed and flow – you can kill one opponent, dump their gun’s magazine into a second, and toss it at a third to open them up for your next attack.
This can be even more useful when used in tandem with discipline abilities. For example, Tremere's explosive blood curse can be triggered from a distance with a well-placed shot, and Brujah's taunt (when used with mass manipulation) can encourage a whole team of opponents to drop their weapons, allowing you to turn them on their owners.
And, of course, the bigger they come, the harder they fall- When fighting enemies equipped with explosives, telekinesis can lead to an even more devastating turnabout.
Ability Combos
Having recently started a playthrough to test out my favourite Clan Tremere, I’ve enjoyed the sense of space control a well-planned fight can give you. Starting out by placing Recall up high so that I can teleport away if it gets out of hand.
Later in the game, mixing Disciplines from different Clans can make fighting more powerful Kindred much easier. There are a lot of useful combinations that Ventrue’s Mass Manipulation can provide to manage many combatants at once. The effect of Banu Haqim’s Mute on a group can make sure the battle will go unnoticed by nearby enemies. And it’s not just your own powers but the environment that you’ll have to observe, helping you find tools that are left lying around.
Not all enemies will go down that easily, and I’m really excited for you all to learn how much trouble you’ll be in when you face off against your first Kindred foe. Their powers can quickly make well-planned fights go wrong if you’re knocked over and surrounded.
Using Cauldron of Blood to draw everyone to the screaming victim and then picking one of them to explode with Blood Curse can blast a lot of the crowd away before I even get close to the fighting. And when it does go wrong, as it always will eventually, a quick Blood Curse on the ghoul chasing you can serve as a very handy projectile if you kick them into the people behind them.
Nobody’s invulnerable to an exploding gas bottle telekinetically thrown at their head, and they’re easier to aim at when you’ve locked them in place with Mass Manipulation. If everything else fails then you can just use Possession on a ghoul and make them jump somewhere nobody will notice them…
If you want to stay in the loop on all our news and updates, we’re now shouting into the void from even more corners of the internet. You might have noticed our slumbering BlueSky account is dusted off and now active. Then our Community Team took the next most natural step and joined Tumblr - because if the gang are going to star in a thousand slow-burn romance fics, we might as well be there to see it.
In other news, some of you on PS5 might have accidentally stumbled into Patch 8 a little early - whoops! If you’re one of the few wondering what the heck is going on, don’t worry. You can roll back to Patch 7 by deleting and reinstalling the game. Full details here, click away. Think of it as a time-travel mechanic.
And with that, the Patch 8 stress test is in fact now live for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC!
If you’ve registered to take part on either PlayStation or PC, look out for an email from us with your game code and details on how to access the stress test.
If you’ve registered through the Xbox Insider Programme, the Baldur’s Gate 3 Stress Test application is now live in the Xbox Insider Hub, for you to download! For more details on this, please click here.
To learn more about how to set up a cross-play lobby and discover the bug fixes arriving in Patch 8, please read on!
Patch 8 Highlights
While some of you will get to try out Patch 8 for yourself, starting today, here’s just some of what you can expect with Patch 8 once it is ready for release!
Photo mode
12 new subclasses
Cross-play
Xbox Series S split screen
Reporting Bugs During The Stress Test
Internal playtesting has been ongoing for several weeks now, and thanks to the introduction of photo mode in Patch 8, our playtesters have discovered new means to highlight some interesting issues.
While we don’t expect you to showcase every unexpected bug you run into (please, don’t do that), we would be grateful if you could report any issues you experience in the Patch 8 stress test using the existing bug reporting form. Please make sure to state “Patch 8” in the Game Version field!
Sharing Your Experience
We want to know how you get on with Patch 8, so we have created a short form for you to share your experience with us. If you’ve been accepted into the stress test, look out for the link in your access email!
Surreal feeling, but Those Who Rule is officially available for purchase on Steam! I want to give a huge shoutout to all of you who wishlisted and followed the development of the game. It's been a passion project of mine for the last four years, and your feedback has been invaluable in shaping the game.
I hope you enjoy your time with it, and I'd love to continue hearing your feedback as I continue to push out updates to the game!
Features
A 20-30 hour single player campaign that spans 21 chapters and can be played on 3 difficulties.
Over 30 classes to choose from, with 2 tiers of 3 choice upgrades for each character.
Over 100 different abilities from personal/weapon/item/class/refinements.
Over 50 character and world building base conversations.
Roadmap
Player requested QoL/features, and bug fixes.
Controller support and Steam Deck verification.
A Brutal difficulty mode where the first person recording themselves beating it will get to design a custom in game playable character.
Mod support.
Though it's the launch, it's also just the start! Please continue to help me make Those Who Rule the best game it can be. I'll be eagerly watching the forums for feature requests and bug reports to fix ASAP. Again, I can't say it enough but I appreciate each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart.
Given how intimately linked Fallout was to GURPS in spirit and systems alike, a series of events in February of 1997 ought to have been deadly to its conception of itself. That month Interplay sent Steve Jackson, who hadn’t been following the game’s progression at all closely, a demo of the work-in-progress. It opened with a now-iconic cutscene, in which a soldier shoots a civilian prisoner in the head to the soothing tones of the Ink Spots singing “Maybe.” Jackson took immediate umbrage. At first glance, it’s hard to understand exactly why. While the scene certainly had its fair share of shock value, it’s not as if he was a noted objector to violence in games; one of his company’s signature products was Car Wars, an unabashedly brutal game of Mad Max-style vehicular combat. (“We’re selling a very popular fantasy,” said Jackson to one journalist. “Have you ever been driving down the road and somebody cuts in front of you or otherwise infuriates you to the point where the thought flashes through your mind, ‘Now, if this horn button was a machine gun…'”)
It might be helpful to recognize here that, for all that no one could doubt Jackson’s genuine love for games, he was a temperamental individual and an erratic businessman, whose company went through endless cycles of expansions and layoffs over the years. Tabletop designer and writer S. John Ross, who worked with Jackson often in the 1990s and knew him well, told me that he suspected that, on this occasion as on many others he was witness to, Jackson was attempting to paper over a failure to do his homework with bluster: “There’s a lot of reason to suppose that Steve was just trying to cover for dropping the ball on giving the game an honest try, by overstating his reaction to the five minutes he actually spent with it, thus buying himself time to soften his view on that and actually get a view on the game past the intro — a gambit that didn’t pay off.” If this is a correct reading of the case, it was a dramatic misreading by Jackson of the strength of his own negotiating hand, as S. John Ross alludes.
Be that as it may, on February 17, 1997, Steve Jackson turned up in a huff at Interplay’s Southern California offices, only to have Brian Fargo refuse to meet with him at all. Instead he wound up sitting on the other side of a desk from Tim Cain for several uncomfortable hours, reiterating his objections to the opening movie and to a number of other details. Most of his complaints seemed rather trivial if not nonsensical on the face of them; most prominent among them was a bizarre loathing for “Vault Boy,” the mascot of “VaultTec,” a personification of the whistling-past-the-graveyard spirit of the mid-century military-industrial complex. Cain, who quite liked the maligned movie and adored Vault Boy, stated repeatedly that he “wasn’t empowered” to make the changes Jackson demanded. The meeting ended with no resolutions having been reached, and a dissatisfied Jackson flew home. A few days later, Brian Fargo came to Tim Cain with a question: how hard would it be to de-GURPS Fallout?
If Steve Jackson remains something of a black box, it isn’t so hard to follow Fargo’s line of thinking. The buzz that seemed to have been building around GURPs in 1994 had largely dissipated by this point; with a personality as idiosyncratic as this one at its head, Steve Jackson Games seemed congenitally unequipped to be more than a niche publisher. Further, the Dungeons & Dragons license had finally been liberated from the unworthy clutches of SSI, had in fact come to Interplay. (I’ll have much more to say about these events later in this series of articles.) Fargo was already talking about it as “the license to print money.” Unlike Dungeons & Dragons, the GURPS name on a box seemed unlikely to become a driver of sales in and of itself. What was the point of bending over backward to placate a prickly niche figure like Steve Jackson?
Jackson tried to backpedal when he realized how the winds were blowing, but it was to no avail. He wasn’t inclined to accept Brain Fargo’s assurances that, just because Fallout wasn’t going to be a GURPS game, Interplay couldn’t do one in the future. “What would you do if you were me?” he asked plaintively of a journalist from Computer Gaming World. “I work on it with them for three years, and then they decide not to go with GURPS. Why would I want to go through that again?”
Setting aside the merits or lack thereof of Jackson’s attempt to cast himself as the victim, the really amazing thing about all of this is how quickly the Fallout team managed to move on from GURPS. This was to a large extent thanks to Tim Cain’s modular programming, which allowed the back-end plumbing of the game to be replaced relatively seamlessly without changing the foreground interface and world. In place of GURPS, he implemented a set of tabletop rules that Chris Taylor had been tinkering with in his spare time for more than a decade, jotting them down “on the backs of three-by-five cards, in notebooks, and on scraps of paper.” Once transplanted into Fallout, his system became known as SPECIAL, after the seven core attributes it assigned to each character: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.
That’s the official story. Having conveyed it to you, I must also note that there remains much in SPECIAL that is suspiciously similar to GURPS. GURPS’s idea of allowing players to select disadvantages as well as advantages for each character as an aid to better role-playing, for example, shows up in SPECIAL in the form of “traits,” character quirks — “Fast Metabolism,” “Night Person,” “Small Framed,” “Good Natured” — that are neither unmitigatedly good nor bad. I haven’t seen the contract that was signed between Steve Jackson Games and Interplay, but I do have to suspect that, had Jackson been a more conventionally businesslike chief executive with deeper pockets, he might have been able to make a lot of trouble for his erstwhile partner in the courts. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t. In rather typical Steve Jackson fashion, he let GURPS’s last, best shot at hitting the big time walk away from him without putting up a fight.
The breakup with GURPS was only the last in a series of small crises that Fallout had to weather over the course of its three-plus-year development cycle. “Nothing against Brian [Fargo] or anybody else at Interplay,” says Leonard Boyarsky, “but at the time, no one really thought much about Fallout. Brian gave us the money and let us do whatever we wanted to do. I don’t think that was [his] intent, but that’s how it ended up.” As Boyarsky hints, this benign neglect gave the game time and space to evolve at its own pace, largely isolated from what was going on around it — when, that is, it wasn’t being actively threatened with cancellation, which happened two or three times over the course of its evolution. Only in the frenzied final few months of the project, leading up to the game’s release in October of 1997, did it become a priority at Interplay. By that time, Diablo had become a sensation among gamers, leading some there to think that there might be some serious commercial potential in a heavier CRPG as well.
Such thinking was more or less borne out by the end results. Although Fallout did not become a hit on anything like the scale of Diablo, it was heralded like the return of a prodigal son by old-timers in the gaming press. “With a compelling plot, challenging and original quests, and, most importantly, a rich emphasis on character development, Fallout is the payoff for long-suffering RPG fans who have seen the genre diluted in recent times by an endless stream of half-baked, buggy, uninspired duds,” wrote Computer Gaming World. The game sold well over 100,000 copies in its first year. It was only the beginning of a trend that would give fans of high-concept CRPGs as much reason to smile as Diablo fans in the years to come.
Polish your armour and sharpen your sword: Warhorse Studios and PLAION have released details of the post-launch roadmap for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.
The game’s upcoming 4 February launch signifies the start of an epic journey, through medieval Bohemia, with a range of additional free and paid content set to arrive throughout 2025.
From Horse Racing and Hardcore Mode to mastering blacksmithing and exploring compelling new quests, there is plenty for players to look forward to as they continue their adventure with Henry.
A brand-new trailer for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is available now and gives a hint of what is to come.
Seasonal highlights include:
Spring: Enjoy a selection of updates, free for everyone, introducing a Barbers feature to customise your look, a Hardcore Mode for those seeking a greater challenge, and Horse Racing, where you can hone your mounted skills and uncover hidden surprises.
Summer: Brushes with Death – Embark on a thrilling quest as Henry aids an enigmatic artist with a shadowy past. Journey across the lands of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, facing perilous encounters and unravelling a web of dangerous schemes.
Autumn: Legacy of the Forge – Dive into Henry’s roots by exploring the legacy of Martin, his adoptive father. Work to restore a once-renowned forge and prove your skills in the art of blacksmithing as you uncover forgotten tales of the past.
Winter: Mysteria Ecclesia – Enter the Sedlec Monastery, where intrigue runs deep. Tasked with a covert mission, Henry must navigate the complex dynamics of the region, discovering hidden truths and navigating a maze of conflicting interests.
Alongside these expansions will be a number of free quality of life updates to further enhance the game experience.
Unlock the full experience with the Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Gold Edition, which includes the base game, the Gallant Huntsman Kit and the Expansion Pass, that includes Shields of Season Passing and all three paid story expansions. The Gold Edition is truly the ultimate way to enjoy everything the game has to offer.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II will release on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X on 4 February 2025.
Why Early Access?
Cyclopean is a complete game, but it is still in need of more thorough play-testing. Early Access will help me enhance and expand the game while getting important feedback from players.
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
I hope to have it finished in about six months.
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
I hope to expand the game in three ways: A. Somewhat more elaborate quests. B. More complex interactions with NPCs/creatures. C. I also would like to expand on the sanity system which limits the player in certain actions and behaviors while also opening new and unusual possibilities.
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
As mentioned there is a complete game already playable, with three different potential endings. The quests are not too long or involved, but they have a beginning, middle and end. The player has many options in how to engage with the game world, including combat, stealth and dialogue.
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
The price will not change after Early Access is complete.
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
I have just a few areas (mentioned above) that I would like to expand upon. I would really like to get feedback on some of the changes I have in mind. For example, I mentioned longer quests. I want to give the player as much agency as possible, with branching stories, and also allow the quests to be randomized in some ways. Having randomized, branching quests will require a lot of playtesting and feedback, and this is one area in which the community will be crucial to the completion of the game.
Using the Steam forum, my discord channel or just sending me emails will allow players to provide feedback that is valuable for the game's completion.
EA players are welcome to use the Steam Forum, join my developer's Discord Server, or reach out via email to provide feedback and ask any questions.
Good news, everyone! It’s January. The world has finished another lazy rotation around the Sun, and as you’re gazing into the murky horizon of 2025 like a groundhog in search of Spring, we’re hard at work to bring you your next excuse to return to Faerûn.
Patch 8 is still moving along nicely, but before we let you in on the upcoming stress test to try your hand at breaking things, we’re adding some finishing touches and working with our partners to ensure you can fully test cross-play. We hope to let you into the Patch 8 stress test towards the end of this month.
Today’s community update is here to remind you of what’s arriving in our final major patch and uses the upcoming photo mode to celebrate some of the creations you’ve shared with us during our journey together. Someone grab the tissue, it can’t really be the end, can it?
Register Now
If you’ve not yet signed up to take part in the Patch 8 stress test to help test things out, you can still register your interest by clicking on the banner with the handsome feller below!
Want to join the stress test from an Xbox? You’ll need to download the Xbox Insider Hub App to become an Xbox Insider and join the playtest from the app once the stress test begins to go live.
Arriving With Patch 8
The final major patch for Baldur’s Gate 3 is right around the corner and will deliver several hotly anticipated features, including cross-play, photo mode, and 12 new subclasses, which you can read more about in Community Update #30.
With plenty more fixes to be included! And don’t worry, this isn’t the end of our bug fixing.
New Subclasses
Soon there will be 12 new ways to experience Baldur’s Gate 3 - a new subclass is being added for each of the 12 classes in the game, complete with new VFX and animations that we teased in Community Update #31.
You’ve got to try out all of them, right?
Photo Mode
Patch 8 also introduces photo mode, so get ready to smile for the camera, or if you’re like Karlach, stare into the middle-distance as you contemplate all your past mistakes.
While you’re adventuring around the Sword Coast, you’ll be able to toggle photo mode on or off and play around with a multitude of options for the party you’ve brought along with you, including during combat encounters. Position them to your liking, change facial expressions to fit the scene, and play around with the camera, lens, and scene settings.
During dialogues and cinematic scenes, you won’t be able to alter the camera or position your party, but you will have access to a whole bunch of post-processing effects, such as colour-grading settings, frames, and stickers, that can be used whether you’re tottering around Baldur’s Gate, or kissing your beloved.
We’re looking forward to seeing the creativity you’ll bring once you get your hands on Patch 8!
Happy New Year, and welcome to a fresh and tasty Dev Diary from the team at The Chinese Room. We are starting the year by talking about the player character, Phyre, and how you can shape their legend and add to it as you play. As you’ll see below your story will start wearing rags, but will it end in riches? Seattle’s fate is in your hands.
An Elder of your choosing
As our game starts, an Elder that some call the Nomad wakes up in an abandoned building in Seattle. They don't know where they are or how they got there, but they are quick to adapt - the Nomad is old, and they have survived for a long time.
It is clear that they have experienced the deathlike sleep of torpor. The last they remember was a smile and a piercing pain in the chest, delivered in their Haven in Tunis at the start of the 20th century.
Now they are awake. What happened to them in their long slumber, and who woke them? Why does their Blood lack the strength and power they are used to? And why is their body carved with arcane sigils?
The Nomad is a legend amongst Kindred. Their name has been whispered for four hundred years - of their presence in revolutions, on battlefields, at slaughters, and at the fall of Princes. Are they escaping these situations, causing them, or taking joy in red wrath and ruin? Whatever the truth, they are a catalyst - when they appear, the world of the Kindred will be irrevocably changed.
The concept of the Nomad came when we were expanding early ideas of Phyre to make the most of an Elder's history in the world. There is a reason a vampire survives - and in the game our vampire is always on the front foot, leaving an indelible mark on Kindred society. That must have been true for the rest of Phyre's existence. So what might people in Seattle have heard?
In our story, different characters have different beliefs about the Nomad and their history. While these events may not have an immediate effect on the game world, they will affect how our protagonist is treated. We have deliberately left it up to the player to decide how Phyre treats these stories and their legend, and how much they tell other characters about their past - and indeed, which stories they tell.
How would a Prince behave if asked for a favor by the legendary and powerful Nomad, who is not yet caught up in local politics?
The themes behind the Nomad
In Bloodlines 2, the matter of history takes a front seat. Our protagonist is centuries old, and while they may change things up to survive, adapt and keep pace with the march of time, they’ve nonetheless garnered something of a reputation. If a time-immune forensic detective were to inspect and compare the various crime scenes that are human history, they would no doubt find one set of fingerprints consistent. May you live in interesting times, etcetera etcetera. Playing an Elder was a bold choice; to move forward without leaning into the unique opportunities that provides for roleplay would be a missed opportunity.
In Narrative Design, we often find ourselves pulled between two ideals: providing agency and choice for players to make the story their own vs keeping the story feeling intentional, strong and tightly wound. The solution, then, is to establish what is immutable and, within that, carve out a more flexible play space. Ultimately, a good story is driven by characters being true to their psychology and either following that thread down towards tragedy, making the same mistakes over and over, or seizing upon the chance to challenge and change themselves.
That’s what makes a happy ending triumphant: a character’s ability to sacrifice what they have desired and strained towards for so long, to defy the never-ending hunger of old, painful wounds for a chance at long-lasting healing. It’s what makes a tragic ending tug at our hearts: we see clearly what the character needs, and we see them turn away from it one too many times, too consumed by their pain to do the hard thing, give up their coping mechanisms and save themselves. What I’m getting at is that history, for us, is not merely superficial or textural. Sure, the Nomad’s been around a while, and sure we want to give you folks the chance to say what they did with that time. But as far as storytelling tools go, that doesn’t give us much and, as Narrative Designers, we need tools that will allow us to chisel out those big, emotional moments. So more important than the ‘what’ is the ‘why’. The play space.
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