“One of the very first things we were targeting when we started The Outer Worlds 2 was to make these big, expansive areas. It's what players told us they wanted,” game director Brandon Adler told me when talking about how the team at Obsidian built the open regions for this sequel. But bigger doesn’t always mean better, and they seemed aware of that when building the more expansive zones across the different planets and moons you’ll visit in The Outer Worlds 2. There appears to be a focus on rewarding exploration, creating dense environments, and designing areas that pull you in specific directions to investigate points of interest off in the distance. So, while it’s structurally similar to the original, there’s a greater sense of scale this time around.
I was able to see some of these ideas in action with a gameplay tour of Golden Ridge, a new open region on the planet-moon Dorado that you’ll visit early on in The Outer Worlds 2. It’s an arid, desert-like region with trench lines from a war that broke out in the past, mining facilities run by a faction called The Protectorate, and a ton of hostile wildlife mutated from the polluted environment. Art director Daniel Alpert spoke about maintaining the first game’s decorative art nouveau and retrofuturistic inspirations, but going with something a bit more harsh for Golden Ridge. “We were able to pull from areas of the late old West to World War 1 and imbue the areas with little touches – you’ll notice a trench warfare line, and if they go a little further into a town, they'll still find that frontier colony vibe,” he said when working on Golden Ridge.
Adler spoke to how the art direction feeds into the stories they’re trying to tell, specifically on this planet. “Before we get into any area, we have deep conversations about the overall story, the factions and what they’re doing, what's important to them. Asking things like, why was anybody in Golden Ridge?” He gave examples of collaborating with the art team to have a sort of synergy between aesthetics and the game’s purpose, saying “We’ll say like, we want the trench lines here, maybe for gameplay reasons, but talk about why it makes sense story-wise.”
As any good RPG does, these kinds of stories are woven into the regions themselves, and Adler teased some of that, saying “I won't get into what happens at the beginning of Golden Ridge, but there's a big state change in the area when you first get there. It’s going to blow people away and make them really want to investigate what's happening.” That’s said to be indicative of the rest of the game, as he continued telling me, “You’ll see that throughout a lot of our areas as well. We try to do those types of things - let the players see big events that are happening pretty early and get them hooked into the area.”
With that foundation, the team wanted to pack the region with interesting things along the way with the main quest. “We made sure of that with big open sightlines and we spent a lot of time and effort on making really cool looking points of interest out in the distance to really draw players and really bring them off the beaten path,” Adler said. He referenced packing these areas with side quests, supporting characters, and smaller stories to unravel, similar to the first game. There seemed to be a concerted effort in rewarding players with collectibles (like a whole collection of tossball cards) and gear, even for exploring parts of the region that don’t really have a specific story or quest purpose. It’s an important piece to this style of RPG, of course, and something they were conscious of when it came to improving things from the first game, making sure all parts of the development team were involved in making that happen.
I also got to see the Zyranium Lab, which is an interior level on Golden Ridge, and it was impressive not just for its scale, but the ways in which I can see gameplay possibilities for how I approach these kinds of games. In a similar vein as the exclusive gameplay demo I saw of the N-Ray Facility, I got the impression that levels like these are more intricately designed and drawing from immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored. They’re larger and have multiple paths forward, but still maintaining a focus on pulling the player in specific directions. “When we're building these more open spaces, we have a defined path that we want the player to go through. But in true Obsidian game style, we allow players to go everywhere and kind of experience whatever they want,” Adler said with regards to designing levels within the open regions.
Golden Ridge was the only open region I was able to see, so I asked about what we can expect from the rest of the game’s worlds. Alpert told me, “We intentionally design each of our worlds to feel different from each other. It's a unique landscape every time you land on a new moon or new area. So it shouldn't be like, you go somewhere new and it's a little bit more of the same. These other areas are completely different from the last moonscape you just came from, and the next one you're going to be visiting is completely different as well.” While that may seem par for the course in a spacefaring journey like The Outer Worlds, the conscious effort to address the limitations of the first game and be more intentional about how its worlds are built makes me hopeful that the The Outer Worlds 2 can be an evolution of how Obsidian designs its games.
So, from what I’ve seen thus far, The Outer Worlds 2 looks promising on several fronts. The reworked RPG elements look like they’ve been made to be more distinct when it comes to the role-playing experience, and the small snippets of gameplay show better accommodation for specific playstyles. And in taking a look at the open zone of Golden Ridge gave not just a better sense of scale, but a natural sense of exploration with greater density and purposeful points of interest along the way. Soon, we’ll be diving deeper into combat design and the evolution of the flaws system as part of IGN First exclusive coverage of The Outer Worlds 2, which also includes a conversation with original Fallout developer and creative director Leonard Boyarsky about how the first game was about establishing a new foundation for Obsidian and this sequel being the idealized version of that initial vision.
I’m working on a digital adaptation of the legendary Blood Sword series.
Yes… that Blood Sword. The five-book epic created by Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson. A saga that merged narrative gamebooks with tactical combat, cooperative gameplay, and some of the darkest, grittiest fantasy ever written for the format. For many of us—especially in Eastern Europe—this series wasn't just a reading experience. It was a rite of passage.
Now, after years of building interactive stories, experimenting with combat systems, and shaping gamebook engines—I finally feel ready to tackle it.
What You Can Expect
My goal is to capture the essence of Blood Sword—the tactical battles, the meaningful choices, the grounded tone, and the sense that you're living through a smart, branching RPG campaign carefully crafted by a meticulous dungeon master.
Turn-based, grid combat, heavily inspired by the original battle maps
Class-based characters with unique roles and abilities: Warrior, Trickster, Sage, Enchanter
Branching narrative faithful to the books—but enhanced with dynamic systems and choices that matter
Co-op inspired design — even though the game is single-player, you’ll feel the presence and synergy of a full party
Visual atmosphere that reflects the grim, grounded world of Legend
This will be my most ambitious project to date, both in terms of scale and in how deeply personal it is to me.
Join the Journey
The game is still early in development, but the Steam page is live. I’d be honored if you check it out, follow it, and help spread the word.
This is it. Our final major game patch for Baldur’s Gate 3.
You’ve helped us make BG3 a bigger success than any of us could’ve ever hoped for, and that passion could keep us tweaking things and making changes until the end of time. But then we’d never be able to create something new.
Outside of minor bug fixing, Patch 8 will be the last game patch to introduce new content. That means we won’t be adding any new narrative content or significant changes to storylines, Origin characters, or companions. We’ve told our stories the way we needed to tell them, and tried our best to make them impactful and engaging, and we’re continuing to get better at handling our own chaos so that we can continue to create more chaos in the future.
From the start, your feedback has been incredibly important to us, and will continue to shape our future projects. As Swen said during the Baldur’s Gate 3 retrospective panel at PAX West in August of last year, it’s time for the team to go back to our cave and hang the armour on the wall while we focus on bringing you our next project.
If you’re already feeling nostalgic, you can click here to watch our last Baldur’s Gate 3 panel, where we looked back on Baldur’s Gate 3, from early access through to release, and answered some of your questions.
From patching in a way to change your appearance with the Magic Mirror, introducing Honour Mode for those of you looking for a hard time, and giving you new ways to make out with your romanced companion, to new cinematics for your most evil runs, and handing you the tools to create your own supported mods, Patch 8 now rounds off with cross-play, Photo Mode, and 12 new subclasses for you to enjoy.
To help us close the door on our last major patch, the party are back with their final animated short in collaboration with Spud Gun Studios - with a special appearance by the man in metal himself: Swen in his animated debut!
Larian: Channel From Hell
For a more detailed breakdown of each subclass and to help you settle into Patch 8, check out the videos in the below playlist. While this might be our final major patch, it’s certainly not the last time you’re going to hear from us! Tune into Twitch tomorrow to watch our first live stream hosted by Aoife Wilson, featuring a guest appearance from Senior Systems Designer, Ross Stephens, where we’ll be taking a closer look at Patch 8, including the new subclasses!
There will be more to come as we welcome you behind the scenes of Baldur’s Gate 3, sharing some secrets and introducing the developers who helped make it, with a new stream every Wednesday from 1pm UTC. Hopefully that’ll keep you occupied until we can reveal what comes next… we promise we’ll share more on that when we can.
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Barcelona, Spain / Vienna, Austria - April 15, 2025: Today, developer Alkimia Interactive has revealed new insights into the Gothic 1 Remake. The development team offered another in-depth look, as part of their making-of-series, into the creation of their ambitious project: This remake of the cult classic will not only deliver a complete visual overhaul but also introduce systemic and narrative refinements that aim to elevate the beloved original into a modern experience.
"Our job was to find out what elements should stay exactly as they are and what elements should be expanded," explains Reinhard Pollice, Alkimia Interactive's Studio Director. Throughout the production, the developers found themselves constantly navigating between honoring the original while thoughtfully enhancing it with new ideas to make the experience even more compelling. Gothic 1 Remake aims to stay true to the original’s core narrative, while addressing long-standing issues: Plot holes, contradictions, and logical inconsistencies have been carefully reviewed and rewritten.
Creating a believable, breathing open world is one of the remake’s central design goals. The team implemented a detailed living world simulation where characters follow daily routines, witness player actions, and dynamically respond to events, even when the player isn’t nearby. "We’re not just configuring NPCs’ homes or schedules.", says Javier Untoria, Lead Game Designer. "We are creating a living world with a lot of character."
Another exciting part of the remake is how the development team expands existing areas and and found inspiration in elements that were originally cut. The development team looked at areas that were empty in the original and fleshed them out. From mysterious dungeons to hidden paths and deeper interactions with orc culture, many of the game’s lore-rich aspects are being given space to truly shine.
Having finally seen The Outer Worlds 2 for myself, it’s clear that leaning into deeper RPG elements was one of the priorities for developer Obsidian. Where the first game was more approachable with streamlined systems and progression for building out your character, the sequel is about avoiding homogeneity, and even egging you on to play in unorthodox fashion. But it’s not entirely about being complex for the sake of it. The Outer Worlds 2 wants players to get creative, become more specialized with the things they spec into, and maybe embrace the oddball choices they may have to make.
“We're looking for ways to incentivize the player to experiment with different builds, either traditional or non-traditional,” design director Matt Singh told me in a conversation about how the team has revamped its RPG mechanics. When speaking to the broader approach, he said “We really wanted to lean into synergies, looking at how player Skills, Traits, and Perks can all infuse into interesting builds that play off of other systems.” You could see some of these ideas at work in our exclusive 11 minutes of The Outer Worlds 2 gameplay, where the new gunplay, stealth, gadgets, and dialogue were showcased. But for this part of our IGN First for exclusive coverage on The Outer Worlds 2, we’re focusing on the nitty gritty of how all these systems have been reworked and what you can expect from them.
Rethinking the Skill System
“We would often see characters good at everything, which by the end of the game, minimized your personal experience with your character,” lead systems designer Kyle Koenig told me when reflecting on the first game and considering changes for the sequel. Part of how Obsidian is doing that is by moving away from the Skill categories that grouped your stats together in the original and going with individual Skills that have more drastic differences between them. “We wanted to focus on making each individual level-up and investment really important. There's less confusion on when I should invest in one Skill or the other. If I want to be a player that's all about guns and using medical devices, I know which Skills I really need to care about. By having them separated and not in groupings, it lets characters be more specialized.”
Singh added, “There's more than just a traditional stealth-focused build, combat-focused build, or speech-focused build. There's a lot of blending of concepts, playing with other systems and incorporating those into a pretty broad, but unique range of different player profiles.” He alluded to having certain investments in Skills manifest in other ways such as Observation, which can highlight things in the environment that you wouldn’t be able to identify otherwise like secret doors or objects to interact with that can lead to alternate paths forward.
On the surface, that may seem expected for an RPG – if anything, The Outer Worlds was the outlier with the way it grouped Skills together. However, in the sequel, it’s about using the revised Skill system to create greater distinctions and open more possibilities in character builds, especially as it relates to the revamped Perks system.
The Perks of Getting Experimental
Obsidian seems focused on specificity and offering unique avenues for play. “We've significantly increased the number of Perks with over 90 of them – each of those requiring various Skills to unlock. As you invest in Skills, it changes how you can invest in Perks and leads you down many different paths,” Koenig explained. He gave an example with a Perk called Run and Gun for those who prefer using shotguns, SMGs, and rifles which allows you to fire while sprinting or sliding, and combined with Tactical Time Dilation (TTD), bullet-time action can very much be part of your repertoire in The Outer Worlds 2. He also teased Space Ranger, which is a Perk that gives you certain interactions in dialogue while granting you damage boosts based on your Speech stat. “The way we looked at them when designing them was to look at what are all the different modes of gameplay the player has, and what are all the actions they can take and how can we modify them,” he stated.
“We have a lot of Perks that are catered towards non-traditional play styles,” Singh mentioned, giving an example of carving out a build for players who essentially kill every NPC in sight. You can go down that route and lean into it with Perks such as Psychopath and then Serial Killer that’ll grant bonuses, like permanent health boosts, for playing this way. “Especially in an Obsidian game where we allow you to kill anybody – the game's going to respond, it's going to roll with it, and you're going to still be able to complete the game. It's actually a really fun way to play in a second or third playthrough just to see how far you can take it.”
As for more traditional playstyles, Koenig gave some insight on character builds that take advantage of the elemental aspects of combat by exploiting the different damage types. “Even if you want to mix and match them, you can be a character that's all about plasma and burning things alive while getting healing from it – or using shock damage to scramble automechs and have them fight for you temporarily while paralyzing creatures and humans – or using corrosive damage to take away all their armor and make it so all your attacks against them are critical hits that deal insane amounts of damage.”
Singh stressed that there are other avenues to get experimental, referencing opportunities to opt into detrimental effects that’ll buff another aspect of your character. He mentioned mechanics that can reward you for putting yourself in harm's way, positing the question, “How do I construct a build where I'm actually incentivized to get in there and take damage so that I can then do other things effectively? I really like those kinds of creative builds that allow you to play with that idea and convert something that might be negative into a positive aspect of your build.” That design philosophy was part of the original, but now that’s a driving force for The Outer Worlds 2, especially as it relates to Traits and Flaws.
Welcome to our latest IGN First – a month of exclusive coverage in April, and it's all about The Outer Worlds 2. This is the very first look at its gameplay in real time, and it takes us through a quest where you infiltrate the N-Ray Facility to show off several of the game’s new features and mechanics, as well as how it’s rethinking level design. And one of the biggest things that stood out to me is how much deeper it’s going to be as an RPG with developer Obsidian looking back at its past and even drawing inspiration from immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored.
While that DNA has always been a part of first-person RPGs, The Outer Worlds 2 has more sophisticated systems compared to the first game like a true stealth system and better tools to make the playstyle viable, including effective melee weapons and skills to make silent takedowns possible. Take, for example, the health bar above enemy heads – there’s a purple-colored readout that displays how damage a stealth attack will do, helping you judge whether or not you can get a one-hit kill or if it’s even worth pouncing on your target. Enemies will also detect dead bodies and alert guards, but you can quickly clean up if you have a skill to disintegrate bodies on the spot.
Later in the quest, you pick up the N-Ray Scanner, which lets you see certain objects and NPCs/enemies through walls. While this is crucial for finding important parts of more involved environmental puzzles, it’s also an important tool for a stealth and combat. There are enemies throughout the N-Ray Facility who cloak themselves; invisible to the naked eye, but not able to escape the lens of the N-Ray Scanner. If you’re not dilligent about using it, cloaked enemies can easily run up on you. That's just one example of how the addition of gadgets add a new wrinkle to gameplay.
There are several interlocking systems that factor into how you're able to play, leaning more into the RPG elements that make up specific character builds. So, stealth and those immersive sim sensibilities aren’t the only way gameplay is expanding in The Outer Worlds 2. Improving gunplay was a major focus for Obsidian, citing Destiny as a touchstone for what good gunplay should feel like. Not that this game is going to turn into an all-out shooter, but it plays closer to how a first-person game with firearms should play.
You see an example of this in the approach to the N-Ray Facility movement when we go in guns blazing. Movement has been tweaked to complement gunplay as well, letting you be more nimble and do things like sprint-slide while aiming down sights like an action hero – and with the return of Tactical Time Dilation (TTD), the bullet-time fantasy is again an effective part of your combat rotation. We were able to see throwables, which is by no means revolutionary for a game like this, but with their inclusion this time around, you have another tool that you can weave into your arsenal – and even do something sick like tossing a grenade, activating TTD, and shooting the grenade midair to have it blow up on unsuspecting enemies.
There isn’t much to share on the story front as of yet, let alone the context around the quest in the N-Ray Facility, but we do see how conversations have been tweaked slightly in the sequel. In the gameplay video above, there's a moment we confront an NPC named Exemplar Foxworth who's survived the cultist takeover of the place. She's bleeding out and you can help patch her up based on your Medical stat, or respond depending on your Guns or Melee stats. Although we couldn't dig into companions in more detail, this part also highlights the new companion named Aza, a former cultist who's a bit frantic but joins you to seemingly help undo what they've done.
Many of these elements were part of the original Outer Worlds in some form, but where that game was more about laying a new foundation for Obsidian, The Outer Worlds 2 looks to be a fully realized version of what it was trying to build with the first one. In addition to checking it out early, I had conversations with the folks at Obsidian to get insight on a ton of its new features and the vision that drove this sequel. It seems keen on wielding the RPG roots of the studio’s past while considering what a modern first-person RPG can be in the vein of a Fallout – and to be clear, they often referred to Fallout: New Vegas as a touchstone when making The Outer Worlds 2, so my hopes are certainly high.
That's just a taste of what's to come in The Outer Worlds 2 and what we're covering in this month's IGN First. I'll be breaking down character builds, the new flaws system, all the wild and wacky weapons, and how much bigger this sequel is through interviews with key people like original Fallout developer and creative director Leonard Boyarsky, game director Brandon Adler, and design director Matt Singh. Keep checking back at IGN all April long for more!
London, United Kingdom – April 2nd, 2025 – Bosoneon Studio and Thousand Generation are thrilled to unveil Deep Fringe, a turn-based tactical game set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Players will lead squads of deadly cybernetic and bio-enhanced operatives through brutal, high-stakes combat, where every decision could mean the difference between dominance and annihilation. Outsmart grotesque enemies, exploit environmental hazards, and adapt to ever-changing battlefield conditions to survive.
Get a first taste of Deep Fringe’s strategic gameplay with a free public demo on Steam, launching April 2nd, 2025, as part of London Games Festival.
In Deep Fringe, you command Ember, a faction obsessed with rebuilding colossal war machines and seizing control of the warzone. Strategically reshape terrain, push, burn, blast, or chainsaw through anything in your way as you carve a path to supremacy. Employ the built-in level editor to easily create your own chapters or explore community-crafted missions.
Watch the Official Announcement Reveal trailer here to get a first glimpse ofDeep Fringe Gameplay.
"Deep Fringe is a labor of love, born from our admiration for the golden age of strategy games, combining the tactical depth of classics with the freedom for players to forge their own path to victory,” said Li Linge, Producer at Bosoneon Studio. “We can’t wait for players to dive into this bio-post-apocalyptic world and experience the chaos for themselves.
To stay up-to-date on all future announcements for Deep Fringe, please keep a close eye on the game’s official Discord and Steam.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was possibly the Codex's most anticipated title of 2025, but then The Leak happened. What followed was a 200 page feeding frenzy that required the forum to be reorganized in order to properly contain it. Compared to that, the game's actual release nearly two months ago was almost a low key event. The game was a commercial success of course, and most of our users who actually played it don't seem to have hated the experience. But focusing on whether Kingdom Come 2 is fun enough to compensate for being "woke" obscures some important questions: Is it a well-designed title? Is it an improvement over the first game? Our reviewer, the indispensable lukaszek, seems to have approached the game with those questions in mind. His answer, in short, is "not really". While packed with all sorts of features and activities, Kingdom Come 2 is ultimately an unchallenging mass market action RPG, with a railroaded story that doesn't really work despite a massive amount of cinematics. He does seem to have had a blast trying to exploit its systems, though. Here's an excerpt:
Stats/skills/perks are all similar in their mechanics to KCD1, although the whole system has been simplified. Attributes are the same. While new skills governing polearms were added, a bunch of returning ones were merged, the overall numbers went down. Feels like there are fewer mutually exclusive perks too.
You won’t notice it at the beginning, but the curtain will fall down fairly quickly. There’s just no planning. All your stats go up quickly, and by the time you leave the Trosky region to finally witness Kuttenberg you will be 20/30 across the board. Reaching the maximum of 30/30 is not a big deal, and in fact you can quickly get to an effective 30. In every skill. In general increases up to 15 feel significant (especially combat ones) and much less so further down the road. If you switch to axes after leveling sword to 15 you will find yourself dead due to not being able to land hits/parry. Meanwhile the difference between 15 and 30 is mainly about dmg output.
Not only can you go the jack-of-all-trades route – you should. Perks in one skill often give bonuses to another. For example, the horsemanship perk Saddler gives bonuses to pickpocketing and repairing shoes. The only exception are weapon skills, so you can just pick your favorite. Spoiler alert – like in every self-respecting RPG, swords are the only choice. Although after reading this paragraph you might wonder if it can be called an RPG at all. Listing systems and cool interactions is what I like doing most, yet I can’t be bothered to even list them all here. I wonder why the devs bothered to implement a potion resetting your perk choices. If you can’t sleep because your horse spends 5% less stamina on roads compared to off-roading – there is hope for you in the final act where said drink can be acquired.
You will acquire every perk by the end of the game. To make matters worse, most of them are not very inspired. Pick whatever gives you flat bonuses. Very few give you actual new actions. The ones that do are mostly in the Houndmaster tree.
Compared to the first game, some skills were expanded - Maintenance became Craftsmanship. Henryk has learnt how to forge swords! Which brings us to another pet peeve of mine: how come your average adventurer becomes the best craftsman in the land? Through magical genetics, you have inherited your foster father’s genes and can forge the best weapons in the entire kingdom. Yes, this barely adult chap is the only entity capable of forging Tier 4 weapons, which bring quite a substantial boost, as can be seen in the screenshot below. Here is the best one-handed sword you can obtain in the game. And you can get it early in the first act, at a point when even Tier 3 items are extremely rare.
[...] My Henryk found his first duo of bandits within 15 minutes of free play by following a curious trail of booze by the road. I snapped the neck of one of them and easily dispatched the other. He was wearing full plate armor while I had nothing. This is a quick introduction to how combat difficulty was lowered and how the economy was screwed. Just like in medieval times, arms and armor is expensive and single merchants are unlikely to buy much from you. I got into the habit of carrying around expensive jewelry/swords to use them as payment instead. Thinking about it, it’s kind of like in Morrowind, where a single piece of expensive equipment can empty a merchant’s pouch. Except here there are more daedric pieces scattered around than you can carry.
If I were to name the best way of making money early on (without meta knowledge), it would be archery competitions: they make money and raise your strength, agility, warfare and archery all in one go.
Still, one should cherish those moments when you’re figuring out the world and striving for better equipment. For me, this is the best part of the series. Even if you want to, there are no shortcuts like running to Ghostgate and stealing 80% of the glass equipment set.
There are 2 sandboxy areas: the Trosky and Kuttenberg regions. All the fun to be had is in the first one when you’re still growing and can run into challenges. Once you reach Kuttenberg you’re an unstoppable powerhouse. What do you do when there’s nothing else to achieve, no room to improve?
For example, in BG3 you start Act 3 and see the glorious titular city. You are max level, fatigued from many hours spent in Acts 1 and 2, but people don’t drop the game there. Powerful equipment is waiting to be acquired, the story becomes more epic, dragons remain to be slain.
There’s no such thing in KCD2. Sure, there’s better armor to be found, but you’ll fix that within a few minutes of hitting a shop. And it’s not going to be that big of an improvement anyway. Writing is nothing to be excited about, and you’ve already had your fun with all the sandboxy activities in the Trosky region (which is huge). Kuttenberg is much larger, though. As a result, I finished nearly 100% of Trosky, while in Kuttenberg I just rushed the main storyline.
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A turn-based isometric non-linear indie CRPG inspired by the classics. Explore an alternate-history dystopian country on the brink of a civil war and leave your mark on its future.
Experience non-linear branching storylines shaped by your choices and skills
Use diplomacy to achieve your goals or let brute force do the talking
Choose a side in the conflict or escape the chaos on your own terms
Master turn-based combat where every decision shapes the outcome
Explore a captivating alternative history world with a twist
We’ve been hard at work delving deep into the code grimoire and tuning the balance of blade and spell—and today, we’re excited to share the results of that effort with a brand new patch. This update addresses a wide range of fixes and improvements across visuals, combat, quests, and more. Whether you're journeying through the Eastern Reach for the first time or returning to tie up loose threads, your path should now be a little smoother.
But that’s not all—we have something special on the horizon.
Coming later this year, Watchers will be able to help us test a brand-new feature: Turn-Based Combat. We’re excited to explore this new way to experience encounters in Pillars of Eternity, and your feedback will help shape its future. More details on how to participate will be shared in the near future, so keep an eye on our socials and in our discord.
For now, read on for the full list of changes in this update—and as always, thank you for walking the path with us.
Publisher Owlcat Games and developer Another Angle Games are proud to reveal the first Open Alpha playtest for their upcoming turn-based cRPG Shadow of the Road. Aspiring samurai can jump into the Open Alpha today, currently available on Windows PC via Steam.
Set in feudal Japan amidst a fierce rivalry between the Tokugawa Shogunate and Emperor Mutsuhito, Shadow of the Road immerses players in a world that combines tradition and modernity, Japanese mythology, and steampunk technology. Leading a diverse group of adventurers through a dynamic, enchanting realm where decisions shape destiny, players must master different characters’ various abilities to turn the tides of the war.
The Open Alpha includes four distinct playable characters, each with their own unique abilities, allowing players to experiment and find their own playstyle.
Players will engage in several intense battles throughout the alpha, with the final encounter serving as a climactic boss fight that tests their skills and strategy. Alongside the main battles, the Open Alpha also features a number of side quests, offering additional content and opportunities to delve deeper into the game’s lore and mechanics.
One of the aims of this playtest is to give a glimpse of Shadow of the Road’s character upgrade system. As battles grow increasingly challenging, players can strengthen their warriors by unlocking new abilities, emphasizing the importance of strategy and preparation as players face tougher opponents.
Key features of Shadow of the Road:
Your Story: Join a daring journey led by Tokugawa's spymaster, who recruits ronin warriors Satoru and Akira to protect a boy with immense, uncontrollable powers. As the adventure intensifies, they are joined by characters, each of whom has their own history and motivation. Together, they confront escalating challenges, striving to reclaim their honor and change the course of the war.
Your Choices: Every choice guides these characters along unique paths, shaping who they become. Your decisions will determine if you form new bonds, sever lifelong friendships, or mend family ties.
Your Team: Take on the role of a master strategist and become an elite team of characters with a variety of backgrounds and skills, each with their own motivations, desires, and fears, and set them on unique paths.
Your Fight: Experience turn-based combat with a samurai tactical vibe. Each team member brings unique abilities to the battlefield, and their personal goals and relationships influence every encounter. Master these dynamics and strategic maneuvers to lead the team to victory.
The Open Alpha of Shadow of the Road is available now on Windows PC via Steam. While you’re over there, wishlist the game to keep up with future updates.
To stay up to date on all things Shadow of the Road, follow along on X (Twitter), Facebook, and Discord.
We would like to share an update on the development and release window of Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.
As Marco explained in the video, Bloodlines 2 will not be ready for release in the first half of 2025.
Paradox Interactive and The Chinese Room are committed to delivering this game, and we believe that ensuring great technical quality is more important than sticking to a specific date.
The game is currently in a late development stage, and feedback from the community has been taken into account during this time. TCR is working hard on quality assurance to ensure it is stable and free of bugs that could disrupt the player experience.
Bloodlines 2 will launch in October 2025 when the game meets the technical quality standards that you, our fans, rightfully expect and deserve. Please stay tuned for the game’s exact launch date.
We want to ensure that the content we share with you is high-quality and showcases exciting game features. With this updated release timeline, we will pause our development diaries so that the team can concentrate on refining the game.
However, we will still be available online for questions and comments, and we welcome everyone to join the Bloodlines 2 Discord.
Back in 2021, Ossian Studios designer Luke Scullannounced that he intended to create an episodic series of Neverwinter Nights modules called The Blades of Netheril that would be a sequel to the game's original campaign starring the Hero of Neverwinter. Its development ended up taking a much longer time than expected, during which Luke also produced enhanced editions of his classic modules from the 2000s, Siege of Shadowdale and Crimson Tides of Tethyr. The decision was made to split the Blades of Netheril campaign into smaller parts, the first of which would be called Doom of Icewind Dale. It was finally released last month, as a new official DLC for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition rather than a free download as originally expected. Our resident Neverwinter Nights expert Gargaune wasted no time giving it a try. In his review, Gargaune finds Doom of Icewind Dale impressive, but not a masterwork on par with Tyrants of the Moonsea. It's clearly the first episode of a larger whole, with some curious choices made with regards to continuity with the original Neverwinter Nights campaigns. Here's an excerpt:
So you arrive in Targos a penniless refugee accompanied by your first henchman, Kinnuki, an elderly Reghed Priest of Tempos (or Tempus to people who bathe) whom you met on the Bremen docks. While not under siege at present, Targos is under lockdown for fear of the monstrous threat to the Ten Towns, giving you an opportunity to explore the place, meet some shopkeepers and companions, and catch up on what’s menacing the Icewind Dale this time. However, this is not the same sort of setup you encountered in Darkness over Daggerford, Targos has relatively little content to explore and you’ll only need to complete one token quest – an opportunity for Luke to hand you some consolation money after stealing your riches – before you’re set loose on the main plot. You depart Targos with twin objectives: tracking down a local hero on behalf of Speaker Kemp and, for yourself, pursuing rumours of a mysterious masked woman seen haunting Maer Dualdon as bodies keep washing up on its shores, ultimately leading you to face down the latest threat to the Icewind Dale and picking up the scent of the Alazander Series' underlying conspiracy by the end.
As has been typical of Scull’s prior work, DoIWD’s worldbuilding boasts an abundance of Forgotten Realms lore and a comprehensive panoply of iconic characters from various related works. The moment you hit Targos, you’ll start running into a plethora of individuals who either reference events or have themselves taken part in the NWN OC, and the module gives you every opportunity to introduce yourself as the Hero of Neverwinter. You’ll forgive me if I spoil one or two minor moments in the very beginning to touch on your party and, aside from the aforementioned hunter-gatherer, you’ll quickly have the option of recruiting Aarin Gend, demoted from Nasher’s former spymaster to your personal thief, or once more enjoy the haughty company of Sharwyn the Bard. Your last henchman you may (or may not) discover later – Blizzard, a mage and secondary character through TotM. There’s one more, but only for the final battle and we need not spoil that. However, your choice of sidekicks will be mostly mechanical, since their journal entries don't progress as quests (only one packs a twist) and they seldom interject in dialogue. Aside from the NWN material, you may additionally mingle with a bunch of characters from Black Isle’s Icewind Dale series and R.A. Salvatore’s novels set in the same region. Those looking for cliffnotes will also be relieved at the return of in-game booklets summarising the events of relevant prior modules.
This is all well and good, DoIWD draws upon source material to provide the player with a rich and familiar setting to its benefit, but then carries on to bring even more references and cameos into the fold, even going so far as to feature a certain “Neomi”... To the writer’s credit, it never gets too much, but there are a couple of moments when it teeters on the edge and meeting a particular fiend mid-game did actually make me mumble “So you’re here too, huh?” You can only include so many before the player starts questioning how seemingly everyone who is anyone has started converging on the frozen arse-end of the Realms for some thrice-damned reason.
[...] Moving on from combat, skill and ability checks feature with some regularity in dialogue interactions and can lead to different narrative and mechanical outcomes, though I’m sad to say I kept Charm memorised through the whole adventure and never got a chance to use it in dialogue like at the Bron’s tower in TotM. Most agency faces limited, immediate consequences, such as avoiding a fight or extracting additional pay, though some can access or terminate additional plot and quest opportunities – for example, stiffing the mage Jaluth on her optional task will close off a follow-up quest involving the dragons in the next area. Another interesting affordance consists of roleplaying options to murder a couple of mages, which will also provide you with spellbooks that Blizzard can use to swap her repertoire, but at the cost of losing merchants and possibly other repercussions further down the line…
Of course, just because you can talk yourself around a fight doesn't necessarily make it the most profitable solution. When tasked by the Red Wizard Marcos to "gently" evict a meddling duergar's party from his lair, I chose to try Persuasion on a lark, seeing as my skills were middling in that department. Shockingly, I succeeded, netting me a bonus 250XP and the duergar left peacefully, but Marcos complained that hadn't been our deal, awarding me another 1500XP while withholding the promised magical item. Since I hadn't actually intended on persuading the dwarf, I took the liberty to reload and began blasting – not only did I get Marcos' full reward, but I butchered more than 250XP from the enemy corpses plus turned up a small treasure trove of useful gear. So always remember that the RP in RPG stands for roleplaying, but the G stands for greed!
The module also features automatic Search checks here and there as you roam around, and passing them may reveal a tucked-away chest or a fresh corpse for you to rob. I’m chuffed to say DoIWD does this correctly, like in Swordflight or Pathfinder: Kingmaker, meaning the hidden object is only discovered on a successful check and will otherwise give no indication of its presence so as not to invite the player trying to game the system. And yes, that was a stab at Baldur’s Gate 3. Aside from that, a thorough explorer will be rewarded in knocking on every door they come across, as the odd hut or barn may turn up a valuable item on inspection, although the game shows no rolls here.
[...] What Scull's been strong at in the past – worldbuilding, dialogue, art direction – is similarly superb in DoIWD, but what didn't necessarily excel before is much the same and one or two aspects would bear course-correction. Going forward in TBoN, I’d like to see proper dungeon-crawling make a return, perhaps a slightly more modular scope to open-world exploration, and I’d advise treading lightly around the continuities of related adventures. Where we go from here is interesting – as a series of fan modules, TBoN was originally intended to comprise of seven smaller installments, though the author’s suggested a publishing deal might require consolidating DoIWD’s follow-up content into two larger chapters instead. Personally, I feel like a broader chapter scope could accommodate a more open structure if the narrative allows and I’d prefer it that way, but in any case, I hope we won’t have to wait as long to find out given where DoIWD leaves things. Whether the completed series can steal that “definitive single-player NWN experience” accolade I awarded TotM is still in the running, and with the artistry already in such good shape, I suspect the answer will hinge primarily on matching gameplay fortes.
In summary, Doom of Icewind Dale is an exciting adventure delivering strong plot-driven action with a high grade of aesthetic polish and, while just this opening chapter can’t bowl me over the way Tyrants of the Moonsea or Darkness over Daggerford did, it’s absolutely worthwhile on its own and generously indulges that certain nostalgia for a beloved piece of D&D history. As a fan-module-turned-DLC, it doesn’t meet the scope and production values of the flagship expansions, but it pulls ahead of other Premium Modules like Wyvern Crown of Cormyr or Pirates of the Sword Coast and the €8 RRP is fair value for the quality and runtime of content on offer. For my part, I came away well impressed and eager for the next installment, and if you care to follow suit, Doom of Icewind Dale is available on any storefront of your choosing, so long as it’s either GOG or Steam.
Tim Cain claims that he never gave much of a thought to any sequels to Fallout during the three and a half years he spent working on the first game. Brian Fargo, on the other hand, started to think “franchise” as soon as he woke up to Fallout’s commercial potential circa the summer of 1997. Fallout 2 was added to Interplay’s list of active projects a couple of months before the original game even shipped.
Interplay’s sorry shape as a business made the idea of a quick sequel even more appealing than it might otherwise have been. For it should be possible to do it relatively cheaply; the engine and the core rules were already built. It would just be a matter of generating a new story and design, ones that would reuse as many audiovisual assets as possible.
Yet Fargo was not pleased by the initial design proposals that reached his desk. So, just days after Fallout 1 had shipped, he asked Tim Cain to get together with his principal partners Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson and come up with a proposal of their own for the sequel. The three were dismayed by this request; exhausted as they were by months of crunch on Fallout 1, they had anticipated enjoying a relaxing holiday season, not jumping right back into the fray on Fallout 2. Their proposal reflected their mental exhaustion. It spring-boarded off of a joking aside in the original game’s manual, a satirical advertisement which Jason Anderson had drawn up in an afternoon when he was told by Interplay’s printer that there would be an unsightly blank page in the booklet as matters currently stood. The result was the “Garden of Eden Creation Kit”: “When all clear sounds on your radio, you don’t want to be caught without one!” Elaborating on this thin shred of a premise, the sequel would cast you as a descendant of the star of the first game, sent out into the dangerous wastelands to recover one of these Garden of Eden Kits in lieu of a water chip. This apple did not fall far from the tree.
But as it turned out, that suited Brian Fargo just fine. Within a month of Fallout 1′s release, Cain, Boyarsky, and Anderson had been officially assigned to the Fallout 2 project. None of them was terribly happy about it; what all three of them really wanted were a break, a bonus check, and the chance to work on something else, roughly in that order of priority. In January of 1998, feeling under-appreciated and physically incapable of withstanding the solid ten months of crunch that he knew lay before him, Cain turned in his resignation. Boyarsky and Anderson quit the same day in a show of solidarity. (The three would go on to found Troika Studios, whose games we will be meeting in future articles on this site, God willing and the creek don’t rise.)
Following their exodus, Fallout 2 fell to Feargus Urquhart and the rest of his new Black Isle CRPG division to turn into a finished product. Actually, to use the word “division” is to badly overstate Black Isle’s degree of separation from the rest of Interplay. Black Isle was more a marketing label and a polite fiction than a lived reality; the boundaries between it and the mother ship were, shall we say, rather porous. Employees tended to drift back and forth across the border without anyone much noticing.
This was certainly the case for most of those who worked on Fallout 2, a group which came to encompass about a third of the company at one time or another. Returning to the development approach that had yielded Wasteland a decade earlier, Fargo and Urquhart parceled the game out to whoever they thought might have the time to contribute a piece of it. Designer and writer Chris Avellone, who was drafted onto the Fallout 2 team for a few months while he was supposed to be working on another forthcoming CRPG called Planescape: Torment, has little positive to say about the experience: “I do feel like the heart of the team had gone. And all that was left were a bunch of developers working on different aspects of the game like a big patchwork beast. But there wasn’t a good spine or heart to the game. We were just making content as fast as we could. Fallout 2 was a slapdash product without a lot of oversight.”
Still, the programmers did fix some of what annoyed me about Fallout 1, by cleaning up some of the countless little niggles in the interface. Companions were reworked, such that they now behave more or less as you’d expect: they’re no longer so likely to shoot you in the back, are happy to trade items with you, and don’t force you to kill them just to get around them in narrow spaces. Although the game as a whole still strikes me as more clunky and cumbersome than it needs to be — the turn-based combat system is as molasses-slow as ever — the developers clearly did make an effort to unkink as many bottlenecks as they could in the time they had.
But sadly, Fallout 2 is a case of one step forward, one step back: although it’s a modestly smoother-playing game, it lacks its predecessor’s thematic clarity and unified aesthetic vision. Its world is one of disparate parts, slapped together with no rhyme, reason, or editorial oversight. It wants to be funny — always the last resort of a game that lacks the courage of its fictional convictions — but it doesn’t have any surfeit of true wit to hand. It tries to make up for the deficit the same way as many a game of this era, by transgressing boundaries of taste and throwing out lazy references to other pop culture as a substitute for making up its own jokes. This game is very nerdy male, very adolescent-to-twenty-something, and very late 1990s — so much so that anyone who didn’t live through that period as part of the same clique will have trouble figuring out what it’s on about much of the time. I do understand most of the spaghetti it throws at the walls — lucky me! — but that doesn’t keep me from finding it fairly insufferable.
Fallout 2 shipped in October of 1998, just when it was supposed to. But its reception in the gaming press was noticeably more muted than that of its predecessor. Reviewers found it hard to overlook the bugs and glitches that were everywhere, the inevitable result of its rushed and chaotic development cycle, even as the more discerning among them made note of the jarring change in tone and the lack of overall cohesion to the story and design. The game under-performed expectations commercially as well, spending only one week in the American top ten. In the aftermath, Brian Fargo’s would-be CRPG franchise looked like it had already run its course; no serious plans for a Fallout 3 would be mooted at Interplay for quite some time to come.
Yet Fallout 2 did do Interplay’s other big CRPG for that Christmas an ironic service. When BioWare told Fargo that they would like a couple of extra months to finish Baldur’s Gate up properly, the prospect of another Interplay CRPG on store shelves that October made it easier for him to grant their request. So, instead of taking full advantage of the Christmas buying season, Baldur’s Gate didn’t finally ship until a scant four days before the holiday. Never mind: the decision not to ship it before its time paid dividends that some quantity of ephemeral Christmas sales could never have matched. Plenty of gamers proved ready to hand over their holiday cash and gift cards in the days right after Christmas for the most hotly anticipated Dungeons & Dragons computer game since Pool of Radiance. Baldur’s Gate sold 175,000 units before 1998 was over. (Just to put that figure in perspective, this was more copies than Fallout 1 had sold in fifteen months.) Its sales figures would go on to top 1 million units in less than a year, making it the bestselling CRPG to date that wasn’t named Diablo. The cover provided by Fallout 2 helped to ensure that Dr. Muzyka and Dr. Zeschuk would never have to see another patient again.
March 13th, 2025 — MicroProse is thrilled to announce its publishing partnership with Adamant Studios for Knights of Frontier Valley, a challenging, old-school-inspired roguelike RPG that brings the depth, danger, and discovery of classic fantasy adventures to a living, breathing digital world.
In a major development for the RPG community, tabletop gaming legend Rob Kuntz — one of the founding pioneers of Dungeons & Dragons — joins the project to bring his unparalleled experience and creative vision to the game.
Rob’s influence on tabletop fantasy gaming is immeasurable.This extraordinary collaboration marks a rare moment where the origins of fantasy role-playing meet the cutting edge of indie game development. As a close friend and collaborator of Gary Gygax, Kuntz co-created the iconic Greyhawk setting, penned some of the earliest D&D modules, and helped lay the foundation for modern RPG storytelling.
Rob Kuntz himself shared his excitement: “Frontier Valley immediately spoke to me because it captures what I loved about the earliest days of D&D — the thrill of discovery, a world that breathes on its own, and the feeling that every decision matters. This is a world that evolves with the players,” said Kuntz. “This is a world that breathes, challenges, and reacts. Knights of Frontier Valley isn’t just a game - it’s an adventure in the truest sense.”
A Living World Shaped by a Master of the Craft
Knights of Frontier Valley offers players an immersive, procedurally generated world filled with danger, faction intrigue, and tough choices — all set within a living, breathing world where days turn to nights, seasons shift, and survival is never guaranteed.
With an original score from world-class composer Kevin Manthei (Neverwinter Nights) and the amazing Rob Kuntz contributing to the game’s lore design, worldbuilding, and quest structure, players can expect the kind of layered storytelling, organic world creation, and player-driven discovery that defined the golden age of role-playing.
Key Features:
Procedurally generated world full of unique characters, factions, dungeons, and mysteries waiting to be uncovered.
Gridless, turn-based battles where positioning and tactics matter - or auto-resolve for faster play.
Deep survival mechanics, including hunger, thirst, injuries, and weather in a game where the frontier is as dangerous as the monsters lurking within it.
Robust character customization with multiple classes, professions, and skill sets to shape your hero or villain’s journey.
A living world with working NPCs, evolving stories, and no quest markers — only clues to uncover.
Hand-drawn art, proudly created without generative AI.
Permanent Consequences - There’s no safety net here. Every choice carries weight, and every adventure is unique.
A Historic Collaboration for RPG Fans “Having Rob Kuntz lend his creative vision to Knights of Frontier Valley is nothing short of historic,” said Chris Ansell, CMO of Microprose. “This is a designer whose fingerprints are on the very foundation of tabletop role-playing. Fans of Dungeons & Dragons, classic CRPGs, and deep strategic role-playing should take notice - this is a game built for you.”
A True Indie Gem, Backed by MicroProse and Enriched by a Legend
Created by Martin Menzel, a passionate solo developer using a custom-built engine, Knights of Frontier Valley honors the spirit of classic RPGs while forging its own path into the future. With MicroProse’s support and Rob Kuntz’s creative guidance, this is more than just a game — it’s a love letter to the entire history of role-playing, from the tabletop to the digital age.
We are excited to announce that the alpha of Shadow of the Road is almost here, and with it, we present you with a brand-new trailer that reveals what awaits you: a story of honor and duty, mystical yokai and unprecedented technologies, and epic battles where every choice shapes history!
Now is the time to prepare your weapons and armor because a thrilling adventure is about to unfold. To get ready, you only need to follow a few simple steps.
Mark Your Calendars! The alpha is set to launch on March 25!
Visit the official Steam page for Shadow of the Road by clicking here or search for Shadow of the Road directly in Steam.
Scroll down and click on “join the shadow of the road playtest.”
That’s it! All that remains is to hone your patience as you await the epic journey starting next week!
Prepare yourself, sharpen your resolve, and get ready to carve your own path through an unforgettable adventure.
The fate of the Empire awaits its heroes — will you answer the call?
London, U.K. - March 17th 2025 - Longdue today launched the Kickstarter for its debut title, a ‘psychogeographic’ RPG called Hopetown. The studio is also pleased to announce that Ben Babbitt, one of the trio behind the critically acclaimed Kentucky Route Zero, and Pawel Blaszczak, music composer on the original The Witcher & The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt soundtracks, has also joined the team and composed the music for the Kickstarter video.
With the launch of the Hopetown Kickstarter, Longdue delves deep into the game’s mechanics, story and setting, as well as introducing players to the mix of industry veterans and upcoming talent working on the game. The campaign features a quantity and time limited (48 hours) pledge to allow early backers to have their name featured in an in-game memorial and design in-game objects. A further quantity-limited pledge will allow backers to get a copy of the game, or two copies, at a discounted price.
Hopetown is set in a mining town decades after a coronal mass ejection wiped out electronics and global communications. Here, they found the quicksilver, a substance that’s changed everything. Since the incident five days ago, people are dead, others are missing and mining operations have screeched to a halt.
Enter you: middle child of one of the richest men on the planet (voiced by Lenval Brown, narrator of Disco Elysium). You've drifted through life knowing only luxury and power, shielded by privilege and surrounded by sycophants. You've just stepped off an impossibly long train ride, wheeling an overpriced suitcase across the muddy cobblestone and nursing a four-star hangover. Your mission, or punishment, seems simple enough: figure out what happened, cover it up, and spin a better story. You’re a journalist, after all.
Different schools and methods of journalism will be your RPG classes: Gonzo. Investigative. Gossip. Conspiracy. Words will be your weapons, and you'll make your own truth. In Hopetown, the actions you take, the friendships you make and destroy, the change you bring — these things don't just live in your head, trapped in consciousness and fading into memory. They take shape in the physical world around you, real in every sense of the word. Just like the connection between you and your environment, which is enabled by a unique gameplay mechanic dubbed ‘psychogeography’.
The environment all around you — the town above and the mine below — will change during the game, based on the choices you make. Wasn't that postbox at the other end of the street? Wasn't this road uphill two days ago? Wasn't that gambling hall a pub when you woke up this morning? Things will change under your nose and under your heel. Make surprising new connections between characters, break longstanding friendships, and see what happens.
Hopetown is being created by a team that includes a mix of industry veterans and fresh talent, drawing expertise from the RPG-space, as well as writers with experience in games, theater and screen. Team members include ex-ZA/UM founder Martin Luiga, Narrative Director Grant Roberts, Technical Lead Piotr Sobolewski, Disco Elysium narrator Lenval Brown, Kentucky Route Zero developer Ben Babbitt, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt composer Pawel Blaszczak and Art Director Astri Lohne.
"I was in the ZA/UM cultural movement from the offset, and recruited key team members that went on to make major contributions to Disco Elysium, such as the Art Director and Writing Lead.” said Martin Luiga. “I will be helping Longdue expand the team in a similar way with local Estonian and international talent to build something more than Disco Elysium 2 - we want to push boundaries, not just meet expectations. I call upon the fans of the RPG and adventure genre to back the Kickstarter to help us make the game."
For more detail on Hopetown’s story and systems, as well as Longdue’s plan for the game, check out the Hopetown Kickstarter page.
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