• Krafton announced PUBG: Dednet at Gamescom this year
• The '90s-inspired shooter features some bonkers abilities
• "We're kind of finding our own way here," explains game director Dave Curd

Players slithering along the ground like snakes, swords for hands, a tiny doll wielding a power drill driving in a toy car — some of these wild sights seen in the debut trailer for PUBG: Dednet seem completely at odds with the realistic and reserved approach the defining battle royale series is known for. When I bring this up to the game's creative director, Dave Curd, he tells me that is entirely the point.

"If you want to excite and delight people, you have to give them something fresh," he says me in an interview at Gamescom. "If you want a cool, stoic, mil-sim, take your pick; they're everywhere. But what everyone else can't do, and maybe they don't want to, is my take on this world, this lore, these characters, these abilities."

Curd explains that the tone of PUBG: Dednet is like "my version of the 90s filtered through a meatgrinder," and you can certainly see that from the debut trailer. It's zany, over-the-top, and drenched in color, with gunfights taking place in arcades, car chases through rural towns lit up by neon signs, and a grungy, punk vibe throughout. Safe to say, it stands out.

"The audience will forgive almost anything but being bored," suggests Curd. "So, I think this trailer will get a lot of love and hate.

"As long as they're feeling something passionately, I think we've done a good job," he continues. "But if people look past that and their eyes glaze over, then that would be worrying."

While Dednet is still effectively a battle royale, pitting multiple teams of three against each other in a contest to be the last ones standing, it continues to mix things up not just in the tone and character abilities, but also in how your game progresses over time with several roguelite elements.

It starts with the concept of runs, where you might nominate how many wins or placements you can achieve before you hit a certain number of losses. Win or lose, at the end of a match, you're presented with choices that can alter or upgrade your chosen character's abilities and play style.

Perhaps you'll lean into more of a support role to assist your teammates with heals or protection with a riot shield made out of a car door? Or maybe you'll take that aforementioned doll, who can ride on your back into battle or stealthily sit on your opponent's shoulder and be a nuisance.

"I'm pretty confident this isn't going to be in this year's Battlefield update," jokes Curd, when explaining how they came up with abilities like this for the multiplayer shooter. "I think our internal test is: does it make us laugh? Does it sound like an interesting challenge? And do we think about it the next day? We're kind of finding our own way here."

That neatly summarises how Dave Curd and the team are experimenting for PUBG: Dednet to create something unique and interesting in the space. It definitely caught my eye during this year's Gamescom, and if it got your attention too, you can pre-register for the closed beta now.

• Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons has a smaller spell set, each with multiple uses, for controller accessibility
• Invoke studio head Dominic Guay says this also means the combat won't slow down if there were a spell wheel
• He says there's also a bit of "resource management" to spells, and players will need to blend melee and magic combat

Invoke Studios has confirmed that Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons has a smaller spell set, with each spell offering multiple uses, rather than a large variety, mainly for controller accessibility.

That's according to studio head Dominic Guay, who told TechRadar Gaming in an interview at Gamescom that a smaller spell set opened up new playable opportunities, making combat more approachable on a controller while also keeping the action fast-paced.

This meant abandoning a classic spell wheel and narrowing its spell options, so they're all accessible on the gamepad.

"The breakthrough for us, it started with making direct access to these spells on the controller," Guay said. "A lot of games in the past where you had powers or spells, you had a lot of stuff to select from, and that's cool, and that was even our first reflex. But when you do that, you slow things down, and there's a limit to going through a wheel and choosing powers. There's a limit to that."

He added, "By making everything accessible on a controller, we started playing with our spells a lot more."

During the same interview, Guay explained why the team chose a warlock protagonist, saying "creative magic" was central to the story and gameplay.

The studio head also said it was a challenge to manage the game's magic system because, when you consider Dungeons & Dragons, "it can do everything," and Invoke needed to pick its spells wisely.

"Instead of adding like 100 spells, we thought, let's have less, which makes sense for a warlock also," he continued, "and let's make them more multiple-use cases, connect them, one to another. Connect them with some enemies. The way these enemies behave in a challenge."

Spells, which are anchored to magic objects, tomes, monsters, and more, also have their own upgradeable skill trees and can be used alongside melee combat. This creates a "rhythm," with Guay explaining that players can't just stick to long-range spells and will need to go into close quarters with enemies, which works well for protagonist Kaatri, a warrior-turned warlock.

Players can use spells to set up enemies, giving them an "advantage" for critical hits, and there are various ways to do this with different types of enemies.

"There's a bit of resource management too. You can't just do spells forever," Guay said. "There's a point where you're going to be low on ability to cast spells, so you're going to have to get in there at some point."

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons launches in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• StarCraft is making a shift from the real-time strategy genre to the open-world shooter genre
• The development team realised during early discussions that "we weren't talking about a game from above"
• According to StarCraft general manager Dan Hay, "it was boots on the ground every time" when the team was talking about the game

The process of StarCraft shifting from real-time strategy to open-world shooter emerged naturally from repeated team discussions about "the story we wanted to tell," as well as in-game moments, armor, exploration, discovery, and the desire to experience the world from ground level, according to the game's general manager, Dan Hay.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at BlizzCon 2026 in Anaheim, Hay went on to describe the process that will see the series' perspective change entirely in the next StarCraft game: "Every time we drew a picture or every time we talked about it, it was boots on the ground every time."

These conversations then snowballed, gathering up other game features and elements, it seems, which kept the direction of travel going towards taking StarCraft into being a shooter. "We started to talk about perspective and how that's going to work; we started to talk about the armor, and we started to talk about what could attack that armor and how it could rip it apart if it needed to.

"We would talk about things with the characters [too], and we started to very quickly realize we weren't talking about a game from above; we were talking about a game down on the ground where you felt every inch of the game," described Hay.

He added, giving a nod to the narrative in store for players when StarCraft releases, that it was obvious that the game would be "down on the ground, and that just made sense for the story."

But as well as changing the player's perspective from looking down to looking out and around, the team looked at this change for the series to embrace the open-world exploration and discovery aspects of the upcoming game.

"[We wanted to] make sure that there is an opportunity to explore. Make sure that there's an opportunity to discover. See a thing off in the distance and go — 'is that something that I saw from the first game? Is it?' And then head off to it."

StarCraft was teased with a cinematic trailer at BlizzCon 2026 and is slated to release in 2030.

• ArenaNet studio head Colin Johanson has offered a deep dive into Guild Wars 3's momentum system
• The feature offers "fluid" transitions between movement and combat, which Johanson says is a "first" for the MMORPG genre
• Players can build momentum as they move around the world and in combat to deliver powerful attacks

ArenaNet has revealed more about Guild Wars 3's newly introduced momentum system, a mechanic that blends all actions and combat abilities to ensure constant "fluid" movement.

During an exclusive presentation TechRadar Gaming attended at Gamescom, ArenaNet studio head Colin Johanson showcased the studio's action-adventure MMORPG and offered a deep dive into the game's story and open world, the combat system, multiplayer design, and more.

Johanson also touched on the game's new momentum system, saying Guild Wars 3 will be the first MMORPG to offer smooth transitions between movement and combat.

"If you can picture with me for a second, movement in an MMO, you're riding through the world on your mount, and you get off your mount, and your character immediately stops moving," he explained. "And then you start moving again, and you go to glide, and you stop gliding, and your character immediately stops moving. Then you go into combat, and you use an ability, and then you move, and you'll stop moving again."

He continued: "There are no fluid transitions between movement and combat in MMOs, and Guild Wars 3's momentum system introduces the first MMO that has truly fluid movement across the entire world."

With this system, Guild Wars 3 players will be able to jump off a mountain, deploy a glider, dive, fly, or wall-run, all while carrying momentum, "creating a seamless sense of movement you'd expect to see in an action game, rather than an MMORPG."

Momentum is also part of combat; we previewed a warrior class that has a unique ability that uses their momentum and modifies their attacks when they come down from the sky. This increases damage output and the radius of attacks "based on his velocity or how much downward momentum" the warrior carries. The class can also run up walls and slam back down on enemies, delivering huge amounts of damage.

"Momentum also impacts battlefield control," Johanson said, adding that the faster the player is moving, the more momentum they have.

The environment, Johanson said, is also "part of the experience," and enemies can be knocked into walls to be stunned and damaged by building up momentum in combat, explaining that players will need to use their environment, whether it's the battlefield or terrain, to their advantage.

"This is another first for the MMORPG genre," he said.

Guild Wars 3 doesn't have a release date, but a beta is scheduled for Fall 2027. The game is coming to PC and PlayStation 5.

• Diablo 5 devs confirmed a new class for the game at BlizzCon 2026
• The Plague Knight will spread and then consume disease across the battlefield to their advantage
• Two returning classes are already confirmed as well

Three Diablo 5 classes have already been confirmed, and the developers behind the game have even shed light on a brand-new one coming to the game during the Diablo 5 — Forging the Next Era panel, which we watched at BlizzCon 2026 in Anaheim.

"The Plague Knight is the first new class that will be joining Diablo 5," said Joe Shely, game director. "This is a heavily armored class; it's a walking death."

Adding more detail, Shely said, "You're going to be roaming the battlefield, spreading disease and consuming it for power." This sounds incredibly deadly, poison-y, and downright unclean.

As well as confirming that the Demon Hunter and Monk classes will be returning for Diablo 5, Shely also added that "Diablo 5 is going to launch with more classes than ever before, and I don't just mean more classes than another Diablo game at ship. I mean more classes total."

The returning classes are likely to be very well received by the community

Finishing the description of the classes, Shely reinforced the key characteristics of Diablo classes, saying that "they're approachable. You can jump in; you can immediately have an exciting time playing them. But there's also deep ARPG mastery there, and a multitude of builds to explore."

I expect more classes and more class info to drop in the coming months as we hear more about the game in the long run-up to its release in Spring 2029.

• Devs say that they're "really doubling down on darkness" with Diablo 5's setting
• This will build on Diablo 4's bleakness and darkness
• And continue to contrast the relative vibrancy of Diablo 3

After the somewhat vibrancy of Diablo 3 that some fans raised an eyebrow at, the bleak darkness and misery of Diablo 4 was a welcome change of vibes and atmosphere for many players — and it sounds like the developers are going to continue this into Diablo 5.

During the Diablo 5 — Forging the Next Era panel, which we watched at BlizzCon 2026 in Anaheim, some of the game's devs spoke openly about the dark and bleak setting that Diablo 5 will have.

"I think that's really the tone, the atmosphere," said John Mueller, senior art director. "We're really doubling down on darkness, and what this means for the art team is we really get to explore all of what we learned from Diablo 4 and expand on it further. You know, that desolation that we're going to see in the world is really the setting for the survivors of this story [in Diablo 5]."

This is something that I'm absolutely here for; Diablo games thrive and are at their bleakest best when they embrace a dark and miserable tone and atmosphere, and help to cement the sense of place Sanctuary has, as well as the overarching richness of the story and narrative.

This doubling down, to the extent of embracing a setting of defeat and one where Sanctuary has fallen, already makes for a compelling starting point that I can't wait for.

However, narrative director Jennifer Hepler went on to add that in the process of "making Sanctuary so, so dark, [and] trying to double down on this darkness of Diablo winning in this apocalyptic setting; we still need to make Sanctuary a place that's worth defending."

So there's a balancing act in play here, then, with the darkness and hopelessness of the setting being somewhat offset by the devs still wanting to make Sanctuary a "place that you want to save."

This narrative conflict and tension is something I'm really looking forward to properly and fully when the game releases in Spring 2029.

• Total War: Warhammer 40,000 battle product owner Dave Petry says it was important to implement player customization in the game
• He says it was a "big deal" to bring those customization options from the hobby forward to the game
• Petry adds that it was "awesome" to bring in the "core" features from the hobby

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 offers plenty of player customization options, which Creative Assembly has now revealed was an essential feature it wanted in the game from the start.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, battle product owner Dave Petry, alongside lead designer Joy Dey, said player customization in all aspects was always a "must-have," as the studio wanted to simulate the same experience for fans of the tabletop Warhammer game and beloved hobby.

"The second we picked this up, we knew we had to make a big deal of being able to tell your own story within this universe to bring in your own identity and get to be part of all of it," Petry said.

The developer also told TechRadar Gaming that it worked closely with Games Workshop to ensure the player experience was as "authentic" to the tabletop game as possible. This included simulating the tabletop's combat the way that fans are familiar with.

"We're trying to create an authentic sense of the lore and the kind of combat that's there, but the love for the tabletop absolutely is present," Petry said.

As for customization, Petry told us that it was "awesome" to bring in the "core" features from the hobby, and teased aesthetic unit personalization, loadout customization, and late-game progression.

Petry also confirmed that the game will feature the actual real-life paint colors used by Games Workshop too, so fans will be able to use the same ones they know and love and recreate their real-life armies or favorites in the game.

"In terms of what you can do, not just the aesthetic customization, colors, etc, etc," he went on, "but being able to specialize your units throughout a campaign and, over that campaign, take your intercessors, specialize them towards using, say, like bolt rifle, auto bolt rifles, or stalkers, leveling them up, kitting them out in different ways, and you know potentially ultimately getting them to be like stern guards.

"All of that sort of stuff is absolutely part of that core hobby that you experience this way."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 launches in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Diablo 5's player character is the Heir of Westmarch, a fugitive from the forces of hell
• Not much is know about them apart them having a "unique bond with Diablo"
• This bond will apparently give us an "insight" into the big bad Diablo

During the Diablo 5 — Forging the Next Era panel, which we watched at the conference, Diablo 5 devs revealed a couple of key details about the player character.

Instead of stepping into the shoes of another Wanderer or similar protagonist archetype, we now know you'll play as a character known as the Heir of Westmarch.

Not much is known about the Heir, aside from them being a fugitive on the run from the forces of hell, but what is particularly interesting and exciting is that the Heir will have a "unique bond with Diablo that you find out over the course of the game, why and how it came to be", according to Jennifer Hepler, narrative director.

This will allow the Heir of Westmarch to have some form of "insight into him [Diablo], but also a unique vulnerability to what he can do to you," which will apparently give us the chance to "spend the game defining yourself in opposition to the Lord of Terror." Does this imply there's some sort of mental connection between Diablo and our hero? Or some kind of means of direct communication or even control?

To make it even more intriguing, and provide possible insight into the closeness of this connection, Hepler added, "Can you resist his influence? Can you turn his powers against him? That's what the story and the gameplay are going to let you answer." Color me curious.

Also, according to Hepler, "the story really begins when you find out that you can enter the terror realm and survive."

This paints the portrait for a really interesting starting point for the player character, and I can't wait to find out more in the run-up to the game's release window of Spring 2029.

• Diablo 5 developers confirm that Sanctuary is overrun by hell in the upcoming game and has become an "outpost of hell"
• Humanity has fallen and "some humans have been corrupted or raised to become dread commanders"
• Diablo 5 was revealed at BlizzCon 2026 with a Spring 2029 release window

After the reveal of Diablo 5 in the BlizzCon 2026 opening presentation, developers of the upcoming action role-playing game took to the stage to discuss several aspects of the game. The picture of Sanctuary that the devs painted in this Diablo 5 — Forging the Next Era panel that we watched live at BlizzCon 2026 was not cheery at all.

"All of it [Sanctuary] has been overrun. It's become an outpost of hell," said Joe Shely, game director. "There are hardly any humans who haven't bowed or become cultists." But wait, it gets worse, as "some powerful humans have been corrupted and raised to become dread commanders. They have the power of the Dukes of Hell, and anyone who has resisted gets put into a soul cage or pulled into the terror realm."

Make no mistake, the narrative and setting for Diablo 5 isn't one that's built around the risk of the forces of evil entering Sanctuary, or the danger of the spread of evil: Sanctuary has fallen, and everything is on fire.

The official Blizzard blog post describes the world further by saying, "This is not Sanctuary waiting for the apocalypse. It is already living through one. In Diablo V, humanity has fallen into ruin," and that it's a "haunting, desolate land shaped by despair, resilience, and the few survivors fighting to endure another day."

This full embrace of defeat, darkness, loss, and misery as the starting point for Diablo 5 is really interesting, and extends the aforementioned doubling down on the darkness of Diablo 4, and makes for a deeply compelling setting, and one I can't wait to explore when it releases in Spring 2029.

In quite a big surprise at BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard has confirmed Diablo 5 is in development and is on for a Spring 2029 release.

And not content with simply maintaining the previous game's darkness, threat, and edge-of-apocalypse vibes and setting, Diablo 5 looks to go fully bleak, fully miserable, and fully void of hope.

We're on the ground at BlizzCon 2026 in Anaheim and watched the teaser trailer live, which was full of fire, death, and bleakness, as you can see below, and has already set the tone for the next game.

Diablo has always had a specific brand and type of darkness, and almost always soaks its world and settings in a tangible sense of misery, darkness, dread, and hopelessness. And that's one reason why I love the games.

I'm not just being gloomy. That edge-of-apocalypse threat and sense of darkness give the Diablo games an excellent atmosphere and complement the universe's rich lore, as the place of Sanctuary in the battle of good vs. evil.

Diablo 3 received a little pushback when it came out due to it being a bit colorful and vibrant (literally), and while Diablo 4 brought a strong sense of bleakness, death, and darkness to Sanctuary, this early look at Diablo 5 seems like it's doubling down on that original darkness and bleakness to return the series to its roots — as well as welcoming back the series' big bad bossman.

This seems true in both the setting and story. The trailer shows a world on fire, heroes being murdered and their bodies being gruesomely displayed, and, as Blizzard describes the game, instead of continually being on the edge, this is the first time that "players will enter a Sanctuary where Diablo has triumphed, and its heroes have been defeated."

The description goes on to say, "At the heart of Diablo V lies a defining question: what must you become when the world has already fallen?"

It sounds, frankly, awful, full of sorrow, sadness, and relentless bleakness. I can't wait.

Switch 2 players finally get to go to hell

Alongside the Diablo V confirmation and teaser, Blizzard also confirmed the long-running rumor that Diablo 4 is indeed coming to Nintendo Switch 2 — and will do so on September 15, just a few days from now.

In one of gaming's worst-kept secrets in recent times, Blizzard confirmed that the game will come to the handheld in the form of a new edition: Diablo IV: Age of Hatred Collection, that bundle in the base game along with the Vessel of Hatred and Lord of Hatred expansions.

It's a natural fit, with the Diablo 3: Eternal Collection arriving on the original Nintendo Switch and proving a great success and a fantastic way to play the game.

The article contains spoilers for Returnal.

I’ve always been a fan of roguelike games. One of my first PlayStation Plus downloads was an indie known as Tower of Guns, where you blast your way through the titular tower, only to start again each time you die. It hooked me immediately — I spent pretty much an entire summer holiday shooting through the tower’s many floors, only to get kicked back down to the start with each defeat.

That type of cyclical gameplay loop just scratches a deep itch in my brain. I’m the kind of player who plays carefully and hoards items for moments that may never appear. However, the high stakes of roguelike games have always given you focus, while the temporary nature of your loadout, abilities, and progress encourages experimentation.

In most story-driven games, player deaths have few consequences – dying in God of War or Control might set you back a few minutes, but you’ll typically carry on as if nothing happened. In contrast, the roguelike genre is defined by hard resets with each death. The issue is that it’s hard to tell an engaging story when you’re constantly sending the player back to square one.

But what if dying was part of the story? That’s the question at the centre of Returnal, the 2021 roguelike third-person shooter from Finnish developer Housemarque that launched as a PS5 exclusive before making its way to Windows. Crucially, Returnal makes its cycle of death and reawakening the central theme of its dense, mysterious narrative.

This summer, about a decade after downloading Tower of Guns, PS Plus delivered me another unforgettable roguelike experience with Returnal – and while I had heard some high praise for its gameplay, I wasn’t prepared for just how much its story would affect me. Keep reading for my take on why Returnal is worth returning to.

Life on loop

Returnal follows space-farer Selene Vassos, an astronaut and explorer who crash-lands on the uncharted world of Atropos. After emerging from the wreckage of her ship, Helios, players guide Selene through the jungles and ruins of Atropos, fighting through rooms of alien animals and humanoids to track the ‘White Shadow’ distress beacon she hopes to use to escape.

In theory, you can do this all in one life – but Returnal quickly makes it clear that everything on Atropos wants to kill you. And unless you’ve got the reaction times of an Olympic gymnast, something on Atropos is going to kill you. When you do eventually fall to one of the planet’s many hostile creatures, the game flashes through a series of visions before Selene wakes up at the crash site, which becomes the starting point for each subsequent run. In fact, the screen displays the message ‘Helios Abandoned’ each time you leave camp, to really set the mood.

On these follow-up attempts, you’ll come across corpses – your own corpses. Versions of Selene that didn’t make it to the White Shadow are dotted around Atropos, sometimes accompanied by voice recorders that begin to explain the planet’s war-torn history.

The core gameplay of Returnal is that of a competent third-person shooter with light movement mechanics. It’s Dark Souls meets Titanfall meets Resogun after three cups of coffee – you move quickly, shoot quickly, and dodge dozens of on-screen projectiles. The controls are tight; the game feels incredibly responsive, fast but never floaty.

Various gameplay aspects come together to make Returnal feel addictive and alive. The game offers ten satisfying weapons, each with a few dozen modifiers, and carefully designed combat rooms that are rearranged with a dash of random number generation (RNG) on each new run. About a third of the way through the game, you unlock the best grappling hook in gaming since Just Cause 3, which is naturally a huge plus.

And while Returnal can be punishingly hard – looking at the PlayStation trophies reveals just under a third of players have beaten the first boss – it’s always incredibly fun to play. Even after beating the main game, I spent a few weeks scaling the Tower of Sisyphus, the endless mode added with a free DLC in 2022.

Our Returnal review has a more detailed breakdown of the game’s mechanics, but it’s the game’s story that, in my opinion, makes it a must-play.

I was quickly hooked by Returnal’s enigmatic premise. It takes a relatively small idea – making the gameplay loop an essential part of the story – and runs with it, filling every spare moment with symbolism and intrigue.

An impossible Apollo-era astronaut stalks Selene around Atropos; Selene’s house appears in the overgrowth, seemingly plucked from its place on Earth and becoming a doorway to surreal cutscenes, and all the while Selene’s visions become infected with robotic beings and eldritch tentacles.

Mystery and mythology

Being a fan of games like Outer Wilds and Firewatch, Returnal’s approach to scavenging lore and building your own interpretation of the narrative really clicked with me. The game has a Nolan-esque way of revealing its story (only with much better female characters). Its twists and turns work their way through the player’s expectations like the tentacles that plague Selene’s post-mortem hallucinations, and many of the big twists are hinted at from the beginning.

The first comes halfway, when Selene finds the White Shadow escape signal, is rescued and returned to Earth, lives a normal life, passes away, and wakes up… back on Atropos. The second comes at the end of the game, when it’s revealed that, back on Earth, Selene crashed into a lake after seeing the Astronaut that follows her around Atropos on a bridge, her own ‘white shadow’. In the back seat, a young boy is trapped – Helios, abandoned.

YouTube essayists and Reddit commenters have spent the last five years analysing this game to Atropos and back – some theories suggest that the planet is a manifestation of Selene’s guilt over the crash, while others point to the ghostly astronaut as an avatar of her emotionally distant mother, Theia.

Others point to Returnal’s layered Greek mythology references – Selene and Theia are named for the goddesses of the Moon and sky, with Atropos being the goddess of destiny. If you’re a lore-obsessive like me, now’s a great time to explore.

To me, Returnal is a fundamentally abstract piece of art that allows its themes to resonate with one another beyond the confines of a rigid narrative structure – at times, it feels like a sort of conceptual web, tying up ideas of motherhood, trauma, ambition, and release with no prescribed interpretation. Not bad for a shoot-em-up.

In fact, I found Returnal genuinely moving. In the second half of the game, as you fight through frozen wastelands and infinite ocean depths, Selene goes totally mad, talking only in prayer and prophecy. Actor Jane Perry does a phenomenal job of making her character seem both tragically lost and genuinely enlightened. Late-game cutscenes and lore drops put the focus on how much Selene gave up to become an astronaut, again tying this story to roguelike gameplay as Housemarque links sacrifice to pushing forward.

Housemarque released its latest game, Saros, earlier this year. Like Returnal, Saros offers Housemarque’s iconic third-person bullet hell gameplay and cryptic environmental storytelling – the difference is I won’t be waiting 5 years to play it.

• Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis has three difficulty-scaling options
• Players can switch between hardcore, medium, and easy across combat, puzzles, and traversal
• Flying Wild Hog creative director Michał Kuk says players can individually tweak each setting for a personalized experience

Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog have confirmed Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis will feature difficulty-scaling levels, offering players a personalized experience.

During a Q&A attended by TechRadar Gaming, following an exclusive presentation at Gamescom, experience director Jeff Adams and Flying Wild Hog creative director Michał Kuk discussed how the game was built from the ground up using Unreal Engine 5 and the game's modern features the developers were able to implement.

Legacy of Atlantis won't be a simple remake or remaster of the classic 1996 game, but a "reimagining" for current-gen platforms, which means all-new upgrades and features that weren't available in the original.

Among these are three difficulty levels across three core aspects of the game: combat, puzzles, and traversal; players will be able to individually scale each setting to their preference, giving them more control over their experience.

"With difficulty levels, we have prepared it in a way that I'm pretty sure everyone can set it for their own pleasure," Kuk said.

He explained that players can, for example, set the puzzle difficulty to hardcore if they want something more familiar to the 1996 game, or switch combat to easy or medium, and traversal, personally, to medium.

"You can adjust the game basically however you want," he added.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is set to release on February 27, 2027, for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

• Alien Deathstorm head of design Ben Fisher says the game's engineer protagonist "felt like a natural fit" in the game's environment and narrative
• He says Rebellion wanted to match an interesting character with "interesting mechanics" and landed on an engineer
• Producer Martin Willingham says "the motive was making the player feel immersed in the experience and exposed"

Rebellion has revealed the influences behind Alien Deathstorm and explained why it chose an engineer protagonist for its first-person survival horror game.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, producer Martin Willingham and head of design Ben Fisher shared that the team was, of course, inspired by the iconic Alien movies, but also looked at the broader influence of "90s cassette futurism" to create "that gritty, grounded sci-fi atmosphere."

"A lot of the tone came from our own 2008 comic series as well," Fisher said. "That kind of broad, pulpy, accessible sci-fi storytelling."

When discussing the intention behind having Deathstorm's protagonist be a protagonist instead of a typical soldier, Willingham explained that the studio wanted to find an interesting character that matched "interesting mechanics," and an engineer "felt like a natural fit."

The perspective also enabled Rebellion to "explore the elements of the sandbox gameplay," and an engineer working to diagnose the problems within a dangerous environment surrounded by monsters worked well.

"So part of the motive was making the player feel immersed in the experience and exposed," Fisher said, "because if you're an engineer trying to survive in that situation, you're less trained than a space marine or something like that [or] some kind of future soldier.

"You're going to feel more at threat. So it amplifies that feeling of being isolated, doing the best in a difficult situation."

While that's one aspect, the developer also said that the other is the added "moments of anticipation" that come with the engineer role, like the build-up you get in a horror experience while trying to complete your objective.

"You've got to slow down and observe the space, so you're not just rushing to the next objective," he added. "You're actually getting immersed in the experience, and that means that when you start hearing the roar of a distant alien, that split of attention builds up a whole load of anticipation and a load of fear."

Alien Deathstorm launches in Spring 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• CD Projekt Red and Fool's Theory say there were narrative challenges when developing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past
• The expansion is about Dandelion, but they didn't want him to "steal the show" from Geralt
• There was also "pressure" to live up to the "legacy" of The Witcher 3's previous expansions, but "pressure is what makes us better"

CD Projekt Red and Fool's Theory have said that developing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's third expansion, Songs of the Past, came with some narrative challenges and pressure to deliver.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, where Jakub Rokosz, CEO of Fool's Theory and game director on Songs of the Past, and senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki offered new details about the upcoming expansion, the pair revealed the process of developing a new story about Dandelion without stealing the spotlight from Geralt.

Songs of the Past will be The Witcher 3's final expansion and centers on Dandelion, Geralt's best friend, as the monster slayer unravels a new mystery within the bard's homeland of Letten.

Rokosz and Anetaki discussed how the expansion will "complete" The Wild Hunt's story by giving Dandelion the spotlight he deserves, a chapter that CDPR felt was missing from the base game; however, it came with some challenges in how best to center the bard without losing the focus on Geralt as the protagonist.

"The narrative challenge of Songs of the Past was the biggest challenge; we knew we wanted to do an expansion about Dandelion, but he cannot steal the show, right? Because it's a game about Geralt," Rokosz said.

"So, all of us, straight away, we discarded certain ideas because they were too overwhelming. But then, at the same time, if it's a game about Geralt, there is a very fine line between when it's about Geralt and Dandelion and when it's about you just running around Dandelion's home, right?"

The former Witcher 3 senior quest designer also said that the narrative approach was something his team at Fool's Theory spent "absolute days and weeks discussing."

He added, "So there was a very big effort put into this fine balancing of the narrative, where you are there for your friend, but it's still your adventure. But it is about him and his family's matters, you know. And your relationship with Dandelion as well."

Anetaki said another big narrative challenge was "living up to the legacy" of The Witcher 3 and its critically acclaimed expansions, Hearts of Stone and, "especially," Blood and Wine.

"It's difficult to make something that is just as good or, if not better, right?" the developer said. "So it was really important for us, if we were to make an expansion, to make sure it's a compelling story, right?"

While Anetaki acknowledged that this came with a lot of pressure, "pressure is what makes us better."

"It's motivating," Rokosz continued, "we always try to outdo ourselves, both Fool's Theory and CDPR. When you're working on a AAA game, there's always something that you want to improve, right? Even if you release a very good AAA game like The Witcher 3, you know there's something we'll improve 11 years later in it, right?

"So we always try to outdo ourselves," he added, before referencing Songs of the Past's demo, which premiered at Gamescom and showcased the many visual and technical improvements.

"Everyone always tries to improve their own discipline, right?" Anetaki said. "Cinematics. A lot of them [developers] have a background in movies, and they try to hone their craft as the years go by, make it better. Same for quest design. We never rest on our laurels. We try to always improve our craft, make stories more nonlinear, more compelling, more memorable for our players.

"Writers have a background. A lot of them have published books, so they're excellent at what they do. They always try to tell amazing stories together with the quest designers and the cinematic designers. Art always tries to push the boundaries, tries to make everything fit the narrative and look as beautiful as possible.

"There are technical challenges that we always try to overcome, so it's always a journey upwards, right? We always try to push the quality."

Songs of the Past is scheduled to launch in 2027.

• Former Rockstar Games developer Mike York says Grand Theft Auto 6's Jason "seems quite deadpan and monotone"
• York hopes Jason will show more personality, like Grand Theft Auto 4's Niko Bellic
• He also suggests co-protagonist Lucia will contrast Jason's more subdued personality

Former Rockstar Games developer Mike York has shared his thoughts on Grand Theft Auto 6's big gameplay reveal, including his initial impressions of co-protagonists Jason and Lucia.

In an exclusive interview with TechRadar Gaming, York, who previously worked on GTA 5 and GTA Online, said Jason appeared to move around "very slow and methodical," almost like a "robot" or "a Terminator," and showed very little emotion.

The developer compared the character to other GTA protagonists, such as GTA 4's Niko Bellic, a "great character" and one of his favorites in the series, who was "witty and had some great lines", and hopes GTA 6 will show Jason in a similar light.

"I hope we see more of that because right now, Jason seems quite deadpan and monotone," York said. "Rockstar usually gives us a bunch of neat characters who are funny and have their own flair. I don't know if we're going to see that with Jason, but I hope we do."

Jason will serve as co-protagonist to Lucia, his partner in crime and girlfriend — if you choose to romance her properly, that is. From the extended gameplay footage, it's clear that Lucia is much livelier than Jason, sometimes taking the lead in certain situations; York agreed that as switchable characters, Lucia could serve as the Yin to Jason’s Yang.

"I think that's what they're going to do," he said, and addressed the cutscene where the duo arrives at the Effluvia rooftop bar in the trailer.

"There's that moment in the trailer where they get in an elevator, and he says: ‘Sometimes I'm just more comfortable when I have to use a gun’. She replies: ‘Just be charming!’ Lucia's got this attitude where you can tell she's trying to break him out of his shell. She's the one that probably goes into missions gung-ho, all guns blazing.”

GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Series S. Rockstar has confirmed that it will run at 30fps on consoles at launch.

• Alien Deathstorm producer Martin Willingham says the game is "not another corridor shooter"
• Head of design Ben Fisher says it's a "dynamically generated" survival horror game
• The Rebellion developers say it's a 360-degree sandbox experience

Rebellion Developments has said players can't expect its upcoming first-person survival horror game, Alien Deathstorm, to be another linear corridor shooter, calling it a "rare beast."

Alien Deathstorm was revealed earlier this year by the developers behind the Sniper Elite series and Atomfall and is described as a "visceral first-person action horror experience, where second-to-second survival hinges on responding to a monstrous, constantly shifting threat on a storm-blasted off-world colony."

TechRadar Gaming recently went hands-on with the game at Gamescom and then later caught up with some Rebellion developers, who talked more about it at length, including the concept and design influences, replayability, and player freedom.

While Alien Deathstorm may look like your run-of-the-mill survival shooter with typical survival horror features, the team considers it a "dynamic" experience with sandbox elements where the player's actions can affect unscripted enemy encounters.

Producer Martin Willingham said this means, "the horror, the tension, can happen at any time in different ways between playthroughs and between difficulty camps as well.

"For me, that's one of the most exciting parts of the game because in horror games the experience is typically kind of very, very choreographed because it has to be to build up that anticipation set of those jump scares. But it means you can only play it once."

He continued, saying the team values replayability and sandbox freedom, which means "we had to do something dynamic," and "building the encounters around the player and the player's activities means it's a different experience."

Ben Fisher, head of design, called the game "dynamically generated," where levels are played sequentially, and each has its own sandbox, adding that "It's a rare beast."

"It's not another corridor shooter," Willingham added later. "You're in that sandbox. It's 360 degrees. The action could be coming from anywhere, rather than just at the end of that corridor."

Alien Deathstorm doesn't have a release date yet, but you'll be able to play it in Spring 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

Not long into Marvel's Wolverine, protagonist James "Logan" Howlett is joined by fellow mutant and Team X member Mystique. The blue-skinned shapeshifter is eager to share a shocking discovery with him: a sinister secret hidden behind a closed door. But I ignore her request, instead continuing down the hall to soak in the game's stunning visuals.

It's the natural-looking rain streaming down a window that initially catches my attention. But beyond the pelting precipitation, I also spy equally impressive smoke, flames, and burning embers spewing from a fiery explosion – the apparent fallout of Wolverine's enemy-eviscerating entrance.

The destruction below is contrasted by beautiful moonlight above, which is occasionally punctuated by eye-pleasing flashes of lightning.

Production values as sharp as Wolverine's claws

Of course, if you've played any recent first-party PlayStation game, these realism-rivaling effects probably won't come as a huge surprise. As expected, Insomniac Games' latest superhero romp is obscenely pretty, polished, and packing the sort of production values that've come to define Sony's single-player, story-driven output.

This level of quality extends to Wolverine's characters and storytelling as well. Supported by incredibly layered, emotional performances (Liam McIntyre and Troy Baker especially stand out as Logan and Nathaniel Essex, respectively), the former features unmatched facial details and visual fidelity.

And while the game's narrative doesn't quite achieve the extreme highs of its technical and artistic excellence, it works surprisingly well, spinning an engaging tale that'll please Marvel enthusiasts while also welcoming complete newcomers into this potentially complex universe.

There are a ton of familiar characters, both friends and foes, that fans will love spending time with. But the game's pre-X-Men tale also does a great job introducing these favorites without boring the established audience or relying on exposition dumps.

In Wolverine's universe, for example, Logan and Jean Grey meet for the first time, challenging its writers to not only introduce these well-known characters to each other, but also to a potential new audience. The task is handled elegantly, however, in an early mission at Team X's HQ that sees the pair naturally sharing personal details while searching for drawings a mischievous mutant child has hidden for them.

Slice and dice with cinematic style to spare

This is a single instance, but the lengthy story often leverages these quieter, absorbing – and interactive – scenes to flesh out its nuanced characters and connect the larger story to the obscenely over-the-top bloodbaths that fill the rest of the campaign. While storytelling and characterizations certainly have their place in Wolverine, the game is, first and foremost, a visceral, action-packed power fantasy focused on showing fans what it feels like to get behind the titular mutant's adamantium death-dealers.

Of course, considering Logan is virtually indestructible and his signature retractable claws are capable of turning even a tank to ribbons, the developers also faced the daunting task of balancing the combat difficulty. How exactly do you ensure encounters are challenging and consequential when you're playing as someone who can return from the brink of death and cut through steel like it's warm butter?

Using a variety of creative systems and mechanics, Insomniac has mostly found a nice balance between allowing the beast-like protagonist to be the absolute badass you'd expect, without being ridiculously overpowered. At its core, the combat is an absolute button-mashing blast. Complemented by intuitive, snappy inputs, immersion-ratcheting DualSense effects, and environments filled with destructible items, simply shredding through hordes of enemies feels fantastic.

Reducing goons to piles of lopped limbs and red plasma is also as easy on the eyes as it is on the thumbs. Slick animations, cinematic finishing moves, and more blood and gore than you'll find on the floor of a slaughterhouse ensure every kill is as fun to watch as it is to execute.

The visual abuse Logan suffers is also a surprising highlight, as he too becomes soaked in viscera. But it goes deeper than that, literally, as his clothes become increasingly tattered, exposing ugly wounds and the highest fidelity sweat and body hair I've ever seen – enter photo mode at your own risk.

Whether you're taking on Bolivar Trask's cybernetic soldiers, chipping away at a towering Sentinel, or sinking your claws into any number of baddies and bosses we won't spoil here, slicing and dicing from behind Wolverine's shiny skewers is endlessly entertaining. But the game's attempts to deepen the combat beyond the animalistic amnesiac's rage-fueled hacking-and-slashing are a bit hit or miss.

As Logan levels up, you can invest points to unlock new moves and special abilities, dubbed "Techniques." The former are primarily flashy skills and combos that build on the character's base attacks, parries, kicks, staggers, jumps, dodges, and other core skills. Adding these to your already considerable arsenal definitely has benefits, from delivering more damage and disarming enemies to recovering some health and even flinging foes into each other.

Most of all, these moves – which require specific button inputs to pull off – inject a ton of cinematic style into your kill sprees. But more often than not, that's exactly why I used them, as their offensive and defensive benefits alone didn't feel impactful enough, especially when I could achieve similar results by spamming basic "barrage" attacks, dodging from danger, and unleashing specials as they cued up.

Those latter attacks, however, do make a huge difference. Working off cooldown timers, these devastating moves put you a button-press away from barreling through targets like a human drill, spinning through hordes with the force of a tornado, and performing other table-turning abilities.

These special attacks can be upgraded and also include a nice healing option when you're at death's door. Speaking of Logan's regenerative superpower, he also has access to "Rage," a resource he builds during combat that supports a second wind-like mechanic and – as advertised – allows him to go full-on feral, ventilating targets even more viciously than usual.

When combined with the specials – and some other late-game enhancements I won't spoil here – both the basic and rage-fueled skills make for unquestionably thrilling encounters, albeit battles that aren't as deep as their designers intended.

Snikt!-fueled style over substance

Similar sentiments can be applied to Wolverine's non-combat content as well. You'll spend most of your time in this globetrotting adventure painting cities and towns – across Canada, Japan, Madripoor, and more – plasma-red, but when not shish kebab-ing baddies, you'll retract your claws for some less violent activities.

In addition to the excellent story interludes, Logan does some investigating, chases fleeing enemies – on foot and while straddling a motorcycle – and a surprising amount of platforming.

None of these tasks are optional, and while they don't offer anything particularly special, they do deliver the occasional fun distraction. The bike chases, for example, are practically on rails, but it still never gets old slashing a pursuing vehicle's tires with your claws.

The platforming sections, meanwhile, generally get the job done, but sometimes kill the immersion when the mutant – who can often scurry up trees like a cat – suddenly can't scale a fence, crate, or wall.

Wolverine makes no apologies for being a linear, scripted action-adventure, a quality that often works to its benefit. But it can also be a detriment, like during those fickle platforming moments. This heavily directed approach does afford players some freedom, encouraging them to sniff out collectible bottles of whiskey and timed challenges accessed in Logan's creepy "Nightmare Cabin." These mini-games, unfolding in his haunted memories, also shed a bit of light on his dark, foggy past.

Whether hunting for booze or conquering these timed tasks, you'll collect DNA strand-altering "Adaptation" points, a currency that feeds another character progression path. But these passive perks don't feel all that meaningful among Logan's already considerable arsenal. Toss in the fact that these cabin-diving diversions have you partaking in the same gameplay you're already doing on the critical path – only against a clock – and they feel like an undercooked attempt at optional content.

Suit crafting feels similarly half-baked. The game contains 30-plus costumes and accompanying claws, a fantastic, fan-pleasing inclusion. But the suits are purely cosmetic, and accessed by investing the same "materials" hidden around the world.

Donning Logan with a cowboy hat or dropping him in this hyper-realistic world as his anime-inspired Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls persona is awesome, as is the permanent health bump you receive as you buy more suits. But with just the same single resource used and no gameplay effects added, calling it "crafting" is a stretch.

As a linear, single-player action-adventure, Wolverine works brilliantly, delivering a visually striking, cinematic blockbuster supported by engaging characters and emotional storytelling. It's also brimming with stylish, blood-soaked combat that kept a smile stretched across my face until the credits rolled.

When it strays from its heavily scripted path, however, attempting to layer strategic depth into its arcade-y encounters – as well as engaging, optional activities into its carefully crafted world – it does reveal some undeniable cracks in its adamantium armor.

Should you play Marvel's Wolverine?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

Marvel's Wolverine includes an impressive suite of accessibility assists, beginning with plenty of options to tailor the blood, gore, violence, and profanity to any player's comfort level.

Beyond that, there are various difficulty settings, as well as ample gameplay assists to further tweak and tailor the challenge within those defaults. In addition to the expected inclusions for customizing subtitles, UI, and HUD elements, a huge selection of audio and visual assists are also available.

While a variety of high-contrast modes and color customizations are included, dedicated protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia selections seem to be absent.

How I reviewed Marvel's Wolverine

I spent just over 25 hours with Wolverine, completing its campaign before replaying many missions to seek out collectibles and attempt optional time trial challenges.

I played the game on my PS5 Pro using my budget TCL 4K 65" TV, with HDR enabled. For audio, I tested with both the display's onboard stereo speakers and Sony's PlayStation Pulse Elite headset.

First reviewed September 2026

• PlayStation cuts ties with Kojima Productions for upcoming Physint game
• Hideo Kojima states PlayStation tried to cancel Physint, so he decided to look for a new partnership
• Xbox and Kojima Productions now have a partnership for Physint and future projects, including OD

Sony dented its reputation in the gaming industry with its announcement that it would be ending the production of physical game discs — and the trend of controversial decisions is still going strong.

PlayStation has cut ties with Kojima Productions for its upcoming game, Physint, and Xbox has swooped in as a replacement in a new partnership with Hideo Kojima's video game and film production studio.

In a statement on X, PlayStation says: "After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to step away from collaborating with Kojima Productions on its project, Physint. We continue to have great admiration for Hideo Kojima's vision for the game."

From that statement alone, it's not exactly clear why the split has occurred. However, Hideo Kojima took to X to weigh in on the matter himself, stating: "We unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the Physint project," which is PlayStation in form, at least based on its cancellations of multiple projects from its first-party studios.

"Physint is an important project both to me personally and to Kojima Productions. Determined to keep the project alive, we have spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner. We found Xbox, a partner with whom we share a common vision for the future, and we have decided to team up with them once again."

Unsurprisingly, Xbox is more than happy to partner with the critically acclaimed developer, as its CEO, Asha Sharma, says: "We're honored that Kojima-san has chosen Xbox to work with Kojima Productions on Physint. His ambition to challenge conventions reflects the kind of creativity we want to support at Xbox."

Sony's Physint cancellation attempt hints at bigger concerns

Fortunately, Physint is in fine condition, with development still underway, as Kojima confirmed, calling it Kojima Productions' "genre-defining action-espionage title", which many have lauded as the next Metal Gear-style franchise since Kojima left Konami in 2015.

However, the bigger question remains: is the split between the companies solely due to the PlayStation's Physint cancellation attempt? Considering Kojima's stance against a digital-only future, which Sony has greenlit for games, it's hard to imagine that this didn't play a role in the partnership's collapse.

Kojima highlighted his sadness about Sony's decision to end the production of physical PlayStation game discs, considering the loss of ownership, which he described as a company suddenly stating, "You can turn on the tap for a certain amount of money each month."

That points towards fears of subscription services and how media will only be accessible by using them, and easy access to favorite movies and games will cease to exist.

It's not hard to imagine Kojima getting cold feet about launching Physint on PlayStation as an exclusive, without any physical game discs, as it directly highlights his fears of an all-digital future. It may not have been the direct factor behind the separation, but the timing (a few months after Sony's disc-axing announcement) certainly doesn't appear to be coincidental either.

Whether the blowback from this new decision will push Sony to reverse course is to be seen, but if Kojima's pushback on an all-digital future has anything to do with the disbanding, it wouldn't be a huge surprise to see other developers eventually do the same.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve played the original Final Fantasy 7, and the thought of soaring through the skies aboard the airship Highwind with Midgar, Junon, the Gold Saucer, and Wutai scrolling past below in this level of detail always felt like an impossible dream. Now I’m watching it unfold in front of me in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation — and it’s glorious.

I cruise around for far longer than is even necessary, just soaking it all in. It’s a moment that finally fully realises what we expected when Square Enix first announced that it would be remaking the iconic 1997 RPG.

This journey has been a long one: from the restricted but well-focused part one of Remake, through the expansive and a little more erratic part two in Rebirth, and now this monumental finale to cap off the trilogy.

After a quick introduction to the cast for this demo section that takes place at the start of Chapter 4, I’m given the controls of the Highwind. I’m told the next destination for Yuffie, Barret, Red XIII, as well as playable newcomers Cid and Vincent, is Wutai. But I don’t need to go there right now. And I choose not to.

I zoom over to see what’s changed at the Costa Del Sol: this world’s happening holiday resort and lively town. How do I make my final approach? Not by landing the airship, but by parachuting off the edge, watching the terrain and the town grow larger as I approach the ground. It’s an impressive feat that this is possible, with such huge freedom given to how and where I land.

When I reach the Costa Del Sol, it is, effectively, exactly as it was in the previous entry. Folks are soaking up the sunshine in swimwear, popping to the bar to pick up a drink, and enjoying all sorts of entertainment by the seaside. The detail and density still impress and define the approach that Square Enix has taken with the trilogy as a whole. It’s bigger, bolder, flashier, expanded, and extended. There’s just more to everything.

I step out into the outskirts of the party playground, and I’m immediately hit by how Square Enix has taken this approach in other areas of the game. Sometimes, I feel, for the worse.

The demo was not afraid to impress upon me the sheer number of side activities that are going to be available in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. Photo hunts, monster hunts, the Queen’s Blood card game, environment investigations — all of these and more popped up as soon as I landed in a new location or were added as I explored. With an AI assistant, MAI, also trying to explain them all, it almost overwhelmed me.

I get why we played this section of the game, but hot-dropping into a location while completely fresh to the game and getting barraged by all of these notifications instilled in me equal levels of excitement and dread. Yeah, there’s going to be a heck of a lot to do in Revelation if you want it, but I don’t know how much of it is going to be compelling.

What does still shine, though, is the combat. Zipping over to Wutai for a change of scenery, I ran into several monsters on the path to the village, and my muscle memory from the dozens of hours I sunk into Remake and Rebirth started to come back.

Cid and Vincent both seem like excellent new additions to the roster. I gravitated more toward the vampiric ex-Turk after a couple of battles, enjoying the rhythm of how he’s played. Effectively, you build up attacks over time, before eventually being able to unleash his ferocious Galian Beast mode to deal more devastating damage. Even against unthreatening monsters, he was very satisfying to play.

What I didn’t get to explore too much was the new FITS mechanic, which gives your characters more focus by taking on a specific class. I could see how these roles help you refine your party and add another layer to the already strong combat system. For example, Barrett could be set as a Knight in some impressive, shiny, and slightly absurd mech armor, elevating his job as a defender and protector.

Intrigued by both the new characters and mechanics, I found myself seeking more combat, so my journey through Wutai was full of distractions, including accidentally wandering into a boss monster that was about 40 levels above me and destroyed me in a matter of seconds. One of the many, many, many side activities in the region that I’ll no doubt have to return to in the full game, if I don’t get burnt out by them again.

And then, even with those doubts in my mind, I did find myself in awe of Revelation again just as quickly after seeing the scale and glow-up given to Wutai village. The pagodas and the familiar Turtle's Paradise bar have gone from half-memories of pixelated and blocky buildings to stunning and expressive environments that I could never have imagined.

Overall, there was just so much that it felt impossible to wrap my head around even half of it in just the short 60 minutes I had to play Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. I’ve barely had a chance to mention all the new pieces of equipment you have to navigate the world and interact with it.

What I want to make clear, though, is that all of these features haven’t put me off the game at all. It might not have settled some of the worries I had after tiring of the deluge of mostly throwaway content in Rebirth, but I left wanting more time with Revelation.

More time cruising through the clouds of the Highwind, more time testing how easy it is to jump out from pretty much anywhere on the overworld map, and more time digging into the combat system with new characters and how the FITS system mixes it up. And that’s before we see what direction Square Enix takes the story after the controversial ending to the previous entry.

Whatever happens, I have the feeling that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is going to be a huge game when it launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC on April 8, 2027.

• Fable associate game director Will Kennedy says the game's combat system will be "faithful" to the classic RPG series
• However, Playground Games wanted to make the game "approachable" for modern audiences
• Kennedy says the game's "Style-weaving combat" offers more "breadth and depth" to achieve that

Fable's "style-weaving" combat system is designed for a modern audience, while remaining faithful to the classic role-playing game (RPG) series, according to Playground Games.

That's according to associate game director Will Kennedy during a Q&A session at Gamescom 2026, where he discussed the game's humor and how that has also been woven into the battle system by allowing players to turn enemies into chickens.

Speaking more about the design intention behind what Playground Games calls "style-weaving combat," which lets players mix and match different weapons and spells, Kennedy said the team wanted to balance what long-time fans of the series are familiar with, while making combat approachable for new players.

"When we're talking about being faithful to the classic franchise, we thought about how there was an approachability to combat there, and we knew that we wanted to be able to capture some of that for our game as well," Kennedy said. "But at the same time, we're making a game for gaming today."

He added, "We wanted there to be breadth and depth to it, so we landed on wanting to have style-weaving combat. We wanted to be able to move from move to move really smoothly and easily, and that combined with the level expression that you've got."

Kennedy explained that players can customize every element of their loadout, including ranged and melee weapons, and the four spell slots, which can be upgraded, and "by the time you play the game for even a little bit of time, you have a really broad, deep, rich suite of options to choose from."

"But being able to move so freely between the moves, and it feeling so responsive and so satisfying, is something we're really proud of," Kennedy continued, "because I think we've landed somewhere that is still approachable but has that depth that we want and so therefore is faithful but works in gaming today as well for players, which is sometimes to be proud of."

Fable is set to launch on February 23, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

Kennedy also confirmed that Fable's main storyline will take up to 20 hours to beat, but the game's life systems are "limitless."

• Fable's main story takes between 15 and 20 hours to complete
• Associate game director Will Kennedy confirms additional side content can also take between 15 and 20 hours
• However, the game's life systems are "limitless"

Playground Games has confirmed that Fable's main story will take up to 20 hours to beat, but promises the game's life systems offer "limitless" replayability.

Speaking during a Q&A session at Gamescom 2026, associate game director Will Kennedy discussed the scale of the upcoming role-playing game (RPG), saying, "So the main story obviously depends on how you play, but the main storyline is around 15 to 20 hours."

He added, "But then we've got around probably about 15 to 20 hours again of open world and side content to engage with."

While not a massive amount of hours compared to other open-world RPGs, that at least gives fans an idea of what to expect when the game releases next year.

However, it's what Kennedy said later that confirmed that, while Fable will have a good-sized story with plenty of side content, the game's life systems, like interacting with the over 1,000 unique non-player characters (NPCs), buying real estate, committing crimes, and more, will offer up even more playtime.

"Honestly, with the life systems which we [shared an] in-depth look at and showcased earlier on in the year, that's limitless, and you can engage with it as much as you want," he said.

Fable has been in development for a very long time, but will officially launch on February 23, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Sony has seemingly been caught testing dynamic pricing again
• PS5 users are seeing different discounts for Star Wars games based on unknown account factors
• Some regions seem unaffected by the experiment

Dynamic pricing is back in the gaming news, as PS5 players are yet again seeing the wild disparity between discount amounts for the same game — and its all-digital future feels ever more like a nightmare.

When looking at buying Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order while logged into their PlayStation account Reddit user Bluemonkey88 was told it would cost them CA$19.24, or a roughly 65% discount from its RRP. Meanwhile the sequel Jedi: Survivor would set them back CA$23.39 (a 74% saving). As soon as they logged out Fallen Order dropped to CA$10.99, an 80% drop from full price, and Survivor fell to CA$13.49, or an 85% discount.

In the replies, we can see folks being offered the games for CA$13.99 and CA$18.19, though further muddying the waters a couple of US users — one with PS Plus and another without — both see the games at $7.99 and $10.49, suggesting not every region or user is subject to the same price testing.

What is dynamic pricing?

If you haven’t heard before, dynamic pricing is where a product’s cost fluctuates based on who is buying the product, or when they’re buying it.

It goes by other names you might have seen like surge pricing on Uber — when everyone is trying to book a cab, say just as a concert ends or if the weather turns bad, you’ll see costs rise because demand is up.

In Sony’s case here the pricing seems more algorithmic. There’s an unending supply of digital games, so instead the discount amount folks are seeing looks to be based on how likely it is you’ll buy the product, and adjusting the sale until it just tips you over the edge.

For example someone who maybe plays a couple of games a year or isn’t a mega Star Wars or action adventure game fan might see a steep discount as they’ll need more convincing. Whereas a mega fan of Star Wars, or a gamer who digests a new title every other week might be willing to pay more.

It’s like how airlines and hotels are accused of upping costs for folks who have filled their search history with holiday plans to a dream destination — if they’re desperate to go to, say, Paris, then they’ll be willing to maybe pay that little bit extra compared with a more agnostic traveller.

No thank you

This isn’t the first time Sony has been caught testing dynamic pricing. In fact, some kind of experiment has been going on from as far back as November last year.

And it’s as scummy a practice then as it is now, and it will continue to be as awfully anti-consumer as some of Sony’s other recent moves (i.e. killing physical games media).

Though if you’re thinking of jumping ship to Xbox it too has been caught with its hand in the dynamic pricing cookie jar. In its case it appears Microsoft is offering deeper Game Pass discounts to some accounts than others, with current subscribers unable to see the deal at all.

A digital-only gaming future already has so many downsides when it comes to ownership, game archiving, offline access and more, that we simply don’t need to add dynamic pricing to the mix.

Maybe Sony will reverse course, though its efforts for the past year suggest that dynamic pricing is here to stay. The best thing we can do is point it out every time it’s spotted, and making sure we don’t get suckered in with higher prices.

• CD Projekt Red says The Witcher 3 Remastered and its many upgrades helped realize Songs of the Past
• Game director on Songs of the Past, Jakub Rokosz, says the team had a "certain vision" for the expansion, but there were technological challenges
• He says the remaster "helped with applying optimization" to the expansion

According to CD Projekt Red, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past, may not exist without The Witcher 3 Remastered and its many upgrades.

If you missed the bombshell news the Polish studio dropped during Opening Night Live, The Witcher 3 Remastered is a massive free update arriving on September 29. It offers many improvements to the base game and the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions, such as upgraded visuals, a refined combat system, new Witcher Signs, transmogrification, and more.

The remaster will essentially rework the game in its entirety, giving fans of the 11-year-old role-playing game (RPG) an excuse for another playthrough, ahead of the upcoming expansion Songs of the Past.

Now, in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Jakub Rokosz, CEO of Fool's Theory and game director on Songs of the Past, and senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki shared that without these technological improvements, their vision for the expansion may not have been fully realized.

"The stars had to align, so to say, because a few things had to happen," said Rokosz, who was also one of the original senior quest designers for The Witcher 3. "The Songs of the Past expansion and Letten itself, the area that it takes place, it had a certain vision. We had a certain vision for it, and it posed us certain specific technological challenges that was impossible to realize without the remaster changes.

"So the conditions had to grow for the remaster to appear on the horizon for us to be able to realize this, so this is actually two things meshing together to make it a reality."

The developer explained that Letten's lush vegetation, small bushes, and dense forests caused issues during development, but were resolved with the remaster's advancements.

"One of the challenges when we started prototyping the area was [that] it was impossible to ride with a horse through it, basically," he continued. "So we had to do some improvements on the horse handling side, right? So it feels more organic or more natural."

Letten also features a big lake in the middle of its map that allows players a view of the horizon, and as Rokosz explained, having this huge amount of open space where you can see fishermen fishing "posed a challenge in terms of how the engine was handling this. So the remaster helped with applying optimization."

Songs of the Past is due to launch in 2027.

• The final season of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been revealed
• It includes a Doom crossover and lots of Halloween content
• Only one new multiplayer map is being added, however

Activision has lifted the curtain on the content coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 in its final season ahead of the Modern Warfare 4 launch.

With a new game on the way, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that this update is going to be a smaller one. Still, it includes plenty of spooky Halloween content as part of the series' annual The Haunting event.

This includes a bombastic Doom crossover, allowing players to unlock loads of Doom-themed rewards in a new limited-time event pass. As usual, this pass will be divided into two tracks: a free one and a premium option.

The free track contains new operator skins for Wei Lin and Falkner, plus an adorable Mini Slayer weapon charm and a range of other rewards. Completing the entire track will grant you the Roc 20mm special weapon — a massive, almost cannon-like rifle that fires devastating 20mm rounds.

The premium track, on the other hand, unlocks the Doom Slayer himself as a playable operator in the JSOC faction. By default, he's wearing his Doom: The Dark Ages attire, but the premium track's final reward is an alternate classic 1993-style skin.

Other weapons introduced in the upcoming season include the TR41 Para Assault Rifle, which will be available at launch, and the Arcblade melee weapon added later on. There are also some new weapon attachments on the way for the VS Recon Sniper Rifle, Dravec 45 SMG, and Sokol 545 LMG.

Unfortunately, the offering is pretty sparse on the map front, with only one new one being introduced. It's called Quantum, and it looks like an appropriately ruined laboratory. There is at least also a new version of the existing Homestead map, called Bloodstead, for you to explore as well.

The cool Hordepoint mode will be returning from previous games in season too, challenging players to face off against a rival team and spawning waves of zombies.

All of this comes alongside a fresh battle pass full of new skins and unlocks, not to mention additional content for the Zombies and Endgame modes, plus the free-to-play Warzone battle royale.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is available now for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, and Xbox One.

• Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons' imp companion Skev provides narrative and gameplay assistance
• Skev will provide lore to the player as they explore Darkon, but can't be controlled in combat
• Guay says the imp is "his own character" with his own personal motivations

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons' imp companion Skev serves multiple purposes for the player, but was designed to be "his own character."

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay offered more insight into Skev and his relationship with the warlock protagonist Kaatri, revealing that the imp will assist the player as they navigate the open world of Darkon both narratively and with his utilities.

However, while Skev will act as a companion to Kaatri, Guay stressed that he still has his own motivations, including seeking out his lost master, just like how Kaatri is searching for someone too.

"We iterated a lot on him. So he actually is his own character," Guay said. "That was important to us. He wasn't born to be a sidekick. That was the mentality. He used to be the advisor to the ruler of Darkon, so in a way, he had a really important role in that land before his master vanished, and his quest is to find his lost master, and Kaatri's quest is to find someone too.

"So, he tags along, and Kaatri's kind of like, 'Oh well, he knows this place, and that's useful.' So he gives you a lot of insights as you travel around. You find new places."

The studio head said Skev will offer lore about new locations as players explore, adding that he thinks of the imp as "your unreliable guide to Darkon."

Skev won't be controlled by the player either, Guay confirmed, so he won't die in combat or get in the way, but will sometimes help in certain instances, like by picking locks.

"You can actually decide how you want to upgrade his abilities throughout the adventure," he added, "So [there's] some practical application."

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons arrives in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past spotlights Dandelion and will tell a "complete" story
• Jakub Rokosz, Fool's Theory CEO and Songs of the Past game director, says CD Projekt Red wants to "give justice to Dandelion"
• Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki adds that "it felt like a chapter was missing"

CD Projekt Red has said The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's third and final expansion, Songs of the Past, will "complete" the game's story by giving Dandelion the bard the spotlight he deserves.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Jakub Rokosz, Fool's Theory CEO and Songs of the Past game director and former Witcher 3 senior quest designer, explained that rather than the expansion serving as a bridge to The Witcher 4, as some fans might have expected, it actually completes Wild Hunt's story by delivering a new chapter that the team felt was missing.

However, the developer declined to comment on whether the expansion will have any direct connection to The Witcher 4, so we'll have to wait and see.

"We always wanted to give Dandelion the proper spotlight he deserved," Rokosz said, acknowledging that it's odd for an 11-year-old game to receive a new expansion. "So we knew that there was no space in the base game to give him justice. That's what I wanted to say: Give justice to Dandelion."

Songs of the Past will center Dandelion in Geralt's final journey in The Witcher 3, where players will explore Letten, the bard's homeland, and be wrapped up in another supernatural mystery.

"We knew that at some point we wanted to address this thing, because Dandelion is a very important character in Geralt's life," Rokosz continued. "There's a misconception of him being this comedic relief, and this is his only role in the Witcher series, whereas that's not true. He's a very deep and intelligent character. He used to be a professor at Oxenfurt [Academy], and he writes beautiful poetry, so we want to show the players what's behind that mask of a joker, where he came from, what his family is about, what's the world [like] where he grew up."

Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki added that it doesn't matter that the expansion arrives 11 years later, only that the whole story has been told.

"What's really important to us is not so much like should we release an expansion 11 years later; it could be, I don't know, 20, 100 years later," Anetaki said. "What matters is that the story we tell is complete. This is part of The Wild Hunt, and it felt like a chapter was missing, like something was not there. One more thing we wanted to tell, right? And Dandelion's story was one of those, right?"

The developer revealed that the team went back to the original Witcher novels and used the source material to make something that could "excite fans" and "something that could excite us most of all, because it was a difficult question when this idea was first pitched to the team."

Anetaki explained that the team had to figure out what would pull Geralt out of his retirement, and it had to be important enough to warrant a full-length expansion. That reason was Geralt's best friend, Dandelion.

"Once we identified that important thing," the developer added, "it all clicked together, and it became very clear that yes, we need to make this expansion because it makes us as fans of The Witcher really excited about it, and I hope that the players will also feel that."

Songs of the Past doesn't have a release date yet, but it's slated to launch in 2027. In the meantime, fans can look forward to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, which arrives this month on September 29.

• Creative Assembly has explained how it designed a faithful Warhammer player experience for Total War: Warhammer 40,000
• Battle product owner Dave Petry says the team didn't directly recreate the tabletop systems, but tried to "authentically simulate" them
• Creative Assembly continued its "trusting" relationship with Games Workshop, which shared its "infinite knowledge"

Creative Assembly worked closely with Games Workshop to ensure the Total War: Warhammer 40,000 player experience was as "authentic" to the tabletop game as possible.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, lead designer Joy Dey and battle product owner Dave Petry discussed the upcoming strategy game's combat system and shared how it was able to faithfully translate the feeling of Warhammer's tabletop systems.

Rather than a complete one-to-one recreation, Petry explained that the goal was to "authentically simulate" the feel of the tabletop's combat.

"We really, really care about trying to authentically simulate the feeling of the type of combat, whatever period or kind of warfare that it is, right?" Petry said. "So in a historical, obviously, war on Earth, and generally we have the sorts of weapons that you have on Earth. When it's fantasy, it's magic and mages and all that sort of stuff, and obviously, with the science fantasy and 40k, the biggest reference point you have to that is the tabletop.

"But it's not necessarily like the be-all and end-all of it," he continued. "We're not transposing the tabletop, right? We're trying to create an authentic sense of the lore and the kind of combat that's there, but the love for the tabletop absolutely is present."

Petry said that, like so many fans, he's been playing and collecting Warhammer 40k since he was young and confirmed that references and nods to the universe, like names, abilities, and lore, are in the upcoming strategy game. However, he said some elements of the tabletop game "just don't fit" with the game's real-time simulation

Creative Assembly also focused on making the game feel "familiar" to the Total War franchise; combat has also been scaled up, and he explained that macro positioning, where the player's forces are, flanking, and enemy morale are all things that come into play.

Petry said positioning in particular is being treated as "an interpretation of the lore and the universe, with the tabletop being one of the most important references."

The developer also added that Creative Assembly continued its long-standing collaboration with Games Workshop to ensure authenticity, saying their "special relationship" has helped the studio combat issues it was dealing with.

"[If] we can't find the thing that quite works for [the game], or this piece of lore sounds similar, but doesn't quite work," Prety added, "And for them to be able to come back with their infinite knowledge of all of this stuff and go, 'Well, you're right. This doesn't quite fit, but over here we have something that actually might be able to do the job.'

"And that close or trusting collaboration has, I think, enabled us to create something that captures that authentic feeling."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 launches in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay confirms Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons will have a toggleable HUD and minimal waypoint guidance
• Guay says this is to encourage exploration and reduce the "hand-holding" experience
• With these options, he says the game will be "immersive"

Invoke Studios has said Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons will encourage players to explore Darkon's open world by offering a toggleable HUD and minimal waypoint guidance.

That's according to Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay, who told TechRadar Gaming in an interview at Gamescom that the upcoming D&D action-adventure game will ease up on the "hand-holding" you often find in other open-world role-playing games (RPGs).

"It helps that we're trying to go easy on the hand-holding, so that allows us to pull back a little bit," Guay replied when asked why the hands-on demo had such a minimal HUD. "In this case, I'll be honest, though, we turned off some elements of HUD so that it wasn't overwhelming for people watching the demo."

The studio head confirmed the team will add "some" elements to the HUD to help players, but it can also be turned on and off in the settings, adding that there was a time when it "felt the need to put a lot of things in the middle of a screen."

"We realized that players, because they're being eased in with the number of spells they have, the number of things they can do, we don't need to overwhelm them," Guay continued. "And then we will give you some guidance. So the example I always give is, if the quest was to find me, you know, at Gamescom, and you open up the map, then you'd see it.

"We'd put a highlight around [the area], and we say, 'Well, he's somewhere in there, right?' So then you have a compass; you can get there, but we don't want to overwhelm you with too much information. [We want to] keep it immersive."

During the same interview, Guay explained why Invoke chose a warlock protagonist for the game, explaining that the concept of "creative magic" was central to gameplay and story.

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons launches in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Total War: Warhammer 40,000 will be accessible to hardcore fans and new players
• Lead designer Joy Dey says the tutorial will cover everything from story and lore to gameplay mechanics
• Battle product owner Dave Petry adds that the game is "a good entry point" for new players, and Creative Assembly wants to reach as many people as possible

Creative Assembly has confirmed that its upcoming strategy game, Total War: Warhammer 40,000, will be accessible to experienced fans and first-time Total War players.

That's according to lead designer Joy Dey and battle product owner Dave Petry, who discussed the game's onboarding process in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom.

The pair shared that they want to reach as many players as possible, so the team made sure the game's tutorials eased newcomers into the experience, while also offering an "appetizer" for hardcore fans.

"We are expecting there will be players who've never played Total War before, and there will be players who don't know the lore," said Dey. "So we have a story within the tutorial that has named characters from the universe, and it's going to ease you in. Like, what is a Space Marine? What is their motivation?"

The tutorial will focus on the Space Marines, the developer added, and players will learn the mechanics "on a step-by-step basis," adding, "It should be a gateway into 'What is 40K?'"

Dey acknowledged that the battles can be "quite complex" but said that every gameplay system, from the pause and play function, how to take cover, analysing the battlefield, and how to use height as a tactical advantage, will be introduced and taught to the player during the tutorials.

Petry added that many new and "reformed battle features" either needed reintroduction or tweaking for the new game, but reiterated how the tutorials will benefit both newcomers and long-time fans.

"So all of those concepts need a gentle reintroduction," he said. "Personally, I view the tutorial for an experienced player as kind of like an appetizer, where, if you know both of these things, you can go in there and be like, 'Yeah, teach me some of the new stuff and get me warmed up with a bit of juicy lore stuff.'

"And if you know nothing, it's just such a good entry point for both of these things, right? And we really want to make sure that we can bring as many people to Total War and to 40,000 as possible. Obviously, 40,000 is absolutely gargantuan, and it's a really wonderful time to be part of that fandom, right? So I think it's also a wonderful opportunity to show people how cool and great Total War is."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 launches in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• RPCS3 has been updated to play PS3 discs on almost any PC
• Windows was supported previously, but macOS, Linux and FreeBSD are now too
• You'll just need a compatible disc drive and some confidence

Just as Sony begins the somber funeral procession for physical games media, some modders aren’t taking it lying down. This includes the team behind the RPCS3 PlayStation 3 emulator, who just made it possible to play PS3 discs on a much wider range of computing hardware — provided you hit a few technical requirements.

This feature was previously available to Windows RPCS3 gamers, but thanks to the work of developers digant73 and Megamouse, the emulator can now support physical games media on macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD.

What’s more, this change unlocks the option to play discs on modded consoles, with replies to the announcement discussing the options to boot up PS3 discs on Linux-powered PS4 and PS5 hardware.

The change was announced on social media with the team celebrating that games launched as far back as 2006 should now be playable with the hardware in your home. Though the 'plug and play' promise isn’t quite as simple in reality.

A few steps

Of course you’ll need a decent PC for this to work, though you could get away with a pretty ancient model if you need to. The minimum settings require an Nvidia GTX 400 series or newer GPU (released all the way back in 2010), so any modern desktop or laptop released in the last 15 years should be fine.

You’ll also need a disc drive. For advice I’d suggest checking out the RPCS3 Quickstart guide for the models the team recommend and know work.

Lastly there’s some software stuff you’ll need to organize like getting the emulator installed, downloading PS3 system software to your PC, and a decryption key to be able to read the disc on the fly rather than needing to dump it onto your PC first. For that last one, you’ll need to use a community-made database.

The process is fairly simple with the RPCS3 guide. If you do hit any snags, there are forums and Reddit threads full of people who have likely had your issue before and found a solution already.

At a time when companies like Sony are doubling down on anti-physical gaming measures, while clarifying that digital games aren’t owned — merely licensed — efforts like this are a reminder that access to games still matters, and can be maintained if you’re dedicated enough.

This will make it much easier for people to play the classic PS3 collection they still hold dear, and make it easier for this era of gaming history to be catalogued, preserved and played for years to come.

Gamescom 2026 was chock-full of the latest and greatest in video games and gaming hardware, and we saw an awful lot of it while on the ground in Cologne, Germany.

We went hands-on with games, played with some yet-to-be-released gaming devices, and carried out a boatload of interviews. We’ll be publishing a host of content based on all of that in due course, but we also saw lots that we want to shout about now. Our Best of Gamescom 2026 awards give us the chance to celebrate some of the best of the show.

There aren’t any categories; instead, each of the winners deserved general recognition for being what made up the Best of Gamescom 2026 in our opinion. Find all our picks below, in no particular order, and keep your eyes peeled on this page in the future, as there are even some things we can't quite talk about yet…

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Asus ROG Ally X20

The new version of the official Xbox-x-Asus gaming handheld is something I was really surprised to like so much at this year’s Gamescom. Many will argue over the actual efficacy and importance of the upgrades it offers over its predecessor — the Ally X — but as a piece of new gaming hardware, I found it to be excellent.

The OLED screen is punchy and vibrant, and the new larger-than-before size of it works very nicely in the hands too. The ergonomic design is comfortable, while the buttons are satisfying and responsive in their actuation, and it’s overall not too heavy in the hands despite the bigger screen. I messed around with the likes of Forza Horizon 6 for a while with the X20 and was successfully and totally immersed in the action to the point I didn’t want to put the handheld down.

Its translucent design and gold accents make for an incredibly cool aesthetic too, and as a quality handheld gaming PC for your Xbox games as well as your PC library, this is a very slick, attractive, and quality bit of kit that impressed me.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Razer Prio

A suspiciously simple mobile controller solution, but one that still features some Razer-isms and design flair, the Prio mobile controller was one of the most innovative and different things I saw at Gamescom.

With the ability to fold up to the size of something akin to a card wallet or earbud pillbox, the Prio is a foldable mobile gaming controller that will offer gamers a convenient and easy way to quickly jump into a game while on the go.

Despite its diminutive size and foldable form, it still features all you need to game, like dual shoulder buttons, satisfying face buttons, and thumbsticks featuring the latest in capacitive tech. It’ll work with Android and Apple phones, works with cases easily, and there’s also no need to charge it.

It’s a fascinating new addition to the mobile gaming controller market and could make quite the splash.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Beyerdynamic MMX 130 wireless gaming headset

The MMX 130 is an open-back gaming headset that channels all the excellence of the audio brand’s pedigree while embracing the benefits of an open-back design. And the results are fantastic, with a gaming headset that sounds full-bodied, clear and detailed, round and spacious, and overall brilliant — even in the short time I had with it at Gamescom.

Despite the design’s popularity in the headphone and audio-fi space, there aren’t that many open-back gaming headsets on the market, so Beyerdynamic is pushing the envelope a bit and challenging what we expect of gaming headsets a little too.

The open-back design enables the MMX 130 to offer a rounder, more spacious soundscape, and one that players of single-player, immersive, maybe open-world games will be incredibly well served by, who are looking for awesome, detailed audio and not something geared toward online or competitive play like dozens of other headsets.

I’m really looking forward to testing and adding this gaming headset to my ranks when it launches later this year in October.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Rainbow Six Tactics

I am not normally one for XCOM-like strategy or turn-based games, but Rainbow Six Tactics well and truly got its hooks into me at Gamescom, and has me yearning to see more and, frankly, play it as soon as I can.

The game perfectly captures the vibes and ambience of Rainbow Six, with the settings of missions, aesthetics, operatives, and action making a pretty seamless jump over to the turn-based strategy genre; breaching through walls, the chatter among operatives, and the use of tools such as the drone are some of the most notable and obvious successes of this in my time with the game, for example.

Likewise, the idiosyncrasies of the turn-based genre manifest excellently in the Rainbow Six aesthetic, with slow-mo actions and operators carrying out gunfire or actions particularly pleasing, as well as carefully plotting multiple, sequential actions to ensure you have a chance for victory — or seeing it all fall apart in front of your eyes.

There looks to be great depth to Tactics too, which I can’t wait to get into. Matching up a favorite roster of operators, upgrading said operators to my preferences and for particular scenarios, hoovering up intel from incapacitated enemies in order to get bonuses for future missions, and plotting out all the stages of the game’s Breach mode to ensure an impactful and full-blooded commencement of attacks all play their own part. The whole tactical strategic loop feels like the perfect blend of genre and series.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

MOZA × MotoGP Sim Racing Handlebar

One of the most original, cool, and exciting hardware products I saw at Gamescom was easily Moza’s new Sim Racing Handlebar, officially licensed by MotoGP.

While surprising and eyebrow-raising on one hand, after investigating it further, it really did suddenly dawn on me: why shouldn’t MotoGP video game players have access to the same kind of specific controllers that players of racing games, truck games, and even farming games have?

And now they do, with the terrific MOZA × MotoGP Sim Racing Handlebar, which should comprehensively serve that market when it releases fully (launch is still to be confirmed, however). And it’s a seriously awesome bit of kit that features all you need to fully immerse yourself in the latest game.

The handlebar controller will attach to MOZA’s own wheelbases, feature controls inspired by real MotoGP handlebars, and offer enough customisation options in terms of adjustment and button mapping to give it incredible flexibility. It’s niche, perhaps, but we can’t wait to test the excellently cool bit of gaming hardware out.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Fable

Playground Games' upcoming release in the long-standing fantasy series continues to massively impress us. While our first look at the game at Summer Game Fest 2026 showed us a glimpse of the reputation system, our time with the Gamescom preview gave us a proper hands-on look at combat, and it’s utterly fantastic.

Playing a sliver of the game with two builds revealed the elegance with which the game blends melee and ranged combat with magic and spellcasting. The hand-to-hand combat is weighty and feels excellent to carry out, offensively or defensively, with a perfectly timed parry.

The ranged weaponry is very effective, and one rapid-fire crossbow weapon had me grinning from ear to ear. However, the magic is a real stand-out for me, offering loads of options for not only effective combat but also comedic theatre. The amount of gleeful satisfaction I got out of raising up some silly undead enemies, only to then slam them down and turn them into chickens was glorious.

Combine all this with the brilliance in writing and acting that our demo had, as well as a hugely impressive graphical presentation of the world, and I really think we’re in for a treat when Fable releases, and it was easily one of the best games on show at Gamescom.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons

2027 looks set to bless us with not only one brilliant fantasy adventure game in Fable, but two, with Warlock really catching my eye at Gamescom in a fascinating and intriguing preview.

As well as a captivating land to explore and a story and narrative which seem deeply compelling already, the role of deep and raw magic and the creative ways in which the game’s protagonist, Kaatri, can use it caught my eye particularly. For example, each spell or cast doesn’t seem to be a one-and-done trick, or you can use subsequent spells and casts one after another to solve puzzles, take down enemies, and explore the world in satisfying and creative ways.

What’s more, it’s all put together very slickly and sharply too, with combat looking fluid and responsive, the array of spells at your disposal vast and varied, the world and its secrets yearning to be discovered, mysteries to solve, Kaatri’s sort-of-helpful companion adding some good banter, and a style that will please those familiar with D&D, and those not.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

SteelSeries Aeon Pro Controller

It’s been a while since SteelSeries gave a proper go in the controller market, and some of the brand’s mobile offerings have raised an eyebrow, but as soon as I saw the Aeon Pro controller, I knew the brand was on to something.

Built around the traditional Xbox controller design — akin to the Elite Series 2 controller in many ways — the Aeon Pro is a premium pad with a few exciting features up its sleeve. Chief among these is the OLED mini screen on the front-top part of the pad, which is tidily done; it’s not intrusive or gimmicky and feels like it will be genuinely useful for players looking to have easy access to profiles and some controller information while the pad is in play.

It also has an excellent infinite power and battery supply system built into its dock that’s heavily inspired by the Nova Pro headset series and can charge a spare battery while you use another.

Targeting those on PC or Xbox — and those with both, particularly — the Aeon Pro will also offer an excellent grippy texture on its wings, remappable buttons, and interchangeable thumbsticks to provide multiple options for players looking for a one-and-done premium controller solution.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Turtle Beach Command Series MC7 Mouse

While this mouse from Turtle Beach massively raised eyebrows when first announced, having now seen it in the flesh and understood how it can be used, the Command Series MC7 Mouse is both a quality addition to the market and a worthy winner of one of our awards.

The 2.25” touchscreen on the side of the mouse is the star of the show, of course, and its ability to house touchscreen controls and clearly visible features seems like it could well add a layer of functionality to a gaming mouse not really seen before. You can load an extensive range of controls onto the screen too, from OBS to apps, PC information, and loads more — it may even provide a worthy service to streamers alongside the likes of a Stream Deck.

And the inclusion of the screen doesn’t compromise quality elsewhere either: you’re still getting the two buttons on the side for your thumb, and there’s true 8K wireless ultra-low latency, Turtle Beach’s Owl-Eye 30K sensor, and an excellent external dock that houses the USB dongle, as well as a second battery for the mouse that charges while you’re using the mouse, ensuring you’ll never be out of juice.

It might not be for everyone, sure, but props to Turtle Beach for having the guts to try something totally different with a mouse and give it a proper go.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past

One thing I vividly remember noticing during my long preview of The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past was that everyone in the session — a few dozen members of the press, at least — was absolutely, totally, deathly silent and utterly gripped by the quest we were being shown on screen. The allure, pull, and attention that this game still demands, all these years later, even with brand new content, is as strong as it’s ever been.

Seeing Geralt and Roach ride across the lands of The Continent once more, in that familiar older-looking engine brushed up anew, was a true highlight of Gamescom for Witcher fans, but with Songs of the Past, it already feels like we’re in for one more absolutely thrilling and deep expansion from CD Projekt Red that will finally round out the game’s narrative and complete the story.

Focusing on Dandelion and the new area of Letten, Songs of the Past already looks to have the makings of a Blood and Wine-esque expansion, filled with brilliantly written quests, a fascinating main storyline, and a host of different places to discover and see.

It also makes The Witcher 3 look better than ever (thanks in part to enhancements offered by the Remastered upgrade coming later this year), with luscious vegetation covering the land, sun-soaked vistas across lakes and forests, as far as the eye can see, and expect more of the brilliantly acted and realised NPCs going about their daily lives.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Total War: Warhammer 40,000

The epic strategy game series finally comes to the epic and grimdark fantasy universe, and the results are absolutely belting. Offering up perhaps what was my favorite game preview of the entire Gamescom, Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is the perfect combination of the PC game and the grimdark galaxy.

Playing a bit of an onboarding intro, as well as some of the interplanetary campaign and a climactic, testing, and epic battle as the Space Marines, I devoured and soaked up every tiny detail of Creative Assembly’s creation at Gamescom.

The epic battle at the end, utilising a wide variety of unit types, terrain factors, reinforcements, and abilities, was a true highlight of the show for me, and gave me that excellent mix of confidence when plans were going well, panic when it looked like the tide was turning, and relief crossed with triumph when I clawed my way to victory.

Playing it all in the studio’s new Warcore engine was an absolute blast too, with projectiles filling the skies, blood covering the ground, and environmental effects like dust and so on adding to the brilliant visuals on offer.

I’m deeply intrigued by how the diplomacy, trade, and other non-battle-focused elements of Total War games will manifest in this 40K version, but if what I’ve played is anything to go by, fans need not be worried; only incredibly excited and hyped.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Thrustmaster SimTask Truck-40 Add-On Kit

Another niche but excellent hardware offering at Gamescom 2026 was Thrustmaster’s SimTask Truck-40 Add-On Kit, a large steering wheel designed specifically for truck and heavy-vehicle simulation.

It’s a simple affair in its design, but it has that Thrustmaster quality running through its veins, with a robust design, a pleasing aesthetic, and a strong feature set.

There are 22 action buttons, four different heights, and a 30-degree tilt angle achieved with its bespoke mount, and it looks set to be a welcome addition to the market for both PC and console users, working with all of the brand’s wheelbases too.

What’s more promising is that it might well offer the only wheel specifically designed for games like Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator that console users will have access to, earning it a huge thumbs-up from us for serving a dedicated community of players.

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming

Nvidia RTX Spark

Among a few things that the hardware giant had to show, what stood out to me most was the new and upcoming RTX Spark. In case you missed it, this is Nvidia’s new ARM-based chip, specifically designed for slim and lightweight Windows laptops, with Nvidia AI and RTX graphics ready to be utilized.

The latter means laptops using the superchip are fully capable of playing numerous triple-A games at high frame rates, and that’s exactly what I both witnessed and played. The likes of 007 First Light, Borderlands 4, and Arc Raiders perform nearly flawlessly on the RTX Spark laptops on show.

Team Green has essentially opened up the possibilities for manufacturers to design slim desktop or laptop PCs, or even handheld gaming PCs — and Nvidia noted that it's more than happy for brands to reach out to use the superchip for handhelds. As a fan of gaming on the go on lightweight systems, I’m more than happy to give Nvidia credit where it’s due with this one.

Isaiah Williams, Staff Writer, Computing

JBL Quantum Engine advancements

JBL continued its push into the world of gaming headsets at this year's Gamescom with the announcement of three new headsets, which build upon the stellar work already shown off in last year's range. And while these light, comfortable, powerful, and sustainable headsets should be lauded, it's the development of its Quantum Engine software that caught my attention at this year's trade show.

The JBL Quantum Engine starts simple enough, with an array of customisable features and EQs that you might expect from a piece of audio software. These settings adapt to the specific genre or game that you're playing, with the intention of emphasising the important sounds such as footsteps or making your experience more immersive, taking full advantage of the 50mm carbon dynamic drivers found in the Quantum headset range. It can also cleverly block out background noise from especially clacky keyboards.

And there are now more features to come in Q4 2026. Most notable of all is the increased interconnectivity between the app and the games you play. One feature shown off to me will be of particular interest to racing game fans. The app can receive information from the game to transform into your speedometer and heads-up display, giving you features and details you might expect from a premium racing wheel, but beamed to the app on your phone or tablet. It's a cool idea that builds on the manufacturer's audio nous to create an all-in-one solution for gaming.

James Pickard, Senior Deals Editor

And one more thing we can't talk about yet...

Sometimes we're shown games or products at Gamescom that we can't talk about for even weeks after the event has finished, and one of our award winners is exactly one of those things.

Check back here in a few weeks time when we can reveal our last Best of Gamescom 2026 winner!

The Wolf Among Us 2 has been in development hell for years, to say the least, since its 2017 announcement. After a studio closure, a sudden revival, engine changes, and further creative conflicts between Telltale Games (its main developer) and co-developer AdHoc Studio, the long-awaited sequel is finally arriving in 2027.

I had a chance to see what Telltale Games has been cooking behind closed doors, with a short preview of The Wolf Among Us 2 at Gamescom 2026, and I walked away intrigued and hyped for its launch. The Bigby fans loved in the first entry is back, and just as entertaining as ever.

This sequel takes place six months after the events of the first game; we follow Bigby Wolf, who has been temporarily removed from his duties as Fabletown's sheriff. Bigby's job is to uncover a mysterious string of murders happening, working behind the curtain to save a city "consumed by corruption, vengeance, and fear".

Right off the bat, I noticed Telltale Games leading The Wolf Among Us 2 in a different direction in terms of gameplay. Instead of the fixed camera angles present in the first game, and frankly, most of Telltale Games' entries (notably The Walking Dead), players will now be able to control Bigby in a third-person over-the-shoulder camera perspective.

The dialogue between characters is still as strong as ever, and decisions within those sequences matter in both shaping the story and the relationships Bigby has with others. In classic Telltale fashion, one sequence left me with a choice to lie to a new character, Faye, who Bigby meets early on, about whether the ongoing case involved magic or not, as she suspects a Fable (characters that include Snow White, Bigby Wolf, Mr Toad, etc.) is the murder suspect.

I quickly learned that your choice may come back to bite you or aid you later on, via the 'X will remember that' notification — but sometimes, silence is the best answer.

Sitting down with The Wolf Among Us 2's design director, Jessica Hara Campbell, and principal scene coordinator, Leslie Harwood, I raved about the camera perspective change, as it offers a more immersive experience than I've ever seen in any Telltale entry before — and it very much reminded me of Capcom's switch to third-person action in its Resident Evil series, via Resident Evil 4.

Unsurprisingly, both Campbell and Harwood highlighted that the switch was made to push "further immersion", as players control Bigby going on a long run of investigations. It's possibly the best choice the team has made with the sequel, and perhaps a camera switch all future Telltale and other episodic narrative-driven games should make.

It's also worth noting that The Wolf Among Us 2 features a new dynamic style of examining areas or objects during investigations. Players are no longer expected to examine every single item or area, nor will there be constant hints during puzzles if players don't want them.

If the player is already a step ahead in an investigation, you won't be pulled back to step one, as the game is designed to respect players' detective work, as Campbell stressed.

While The Wolf Among Us 2 has some new design choices, Campbell emphasized that Telltale has its eye on maintaining what fans know and love about the series.

"What we are looking at in a lot of our gameplay systems is keeping the core of what was built," Campbell says. "For our fan base, there's a very specific feeling of nostalgia, but the core of that is the noir detective piece that we don't want to reinvent the wheel on.

"It's about making sure the game still feels like Wolf [first entry], and with returning players, they feel like they're kind of coming along."

The Wolf Among Us 2 is expected to launch in 2027, but there is currently no specific timeline for which quarter it'll arrive in. My only hope is that the launch is successful without any further delays, as I'm quite excited to see what the team at Telltale has been working hard to deliver.

• Creative Assembly says Total War: Warhammer 40,000's new Warcore engine improves almost every aspect of the game
• From rendering and animation to "the sheer volume of projectiles" that can be handled on screen at once
• The studio says the scale has been upgraded, creating "a bigger play area for all the planets, all the solar systems, the whole galaxy"

Creative Assembly has shared just how much its new Warcore engine has enabled it to improve almost every aspect of Total War: Warhammer 40,000.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom 2026, lead designer Joy Dey and battle product owner Dave Petry discussed the upcoming strategy game and offered insight into how the updated Warcore engine delivers a bigger and better scale than previous Total War games.

"One thing the engine has allowed us to do is take the Total War into space, because we now need a bigger play area for all the planets, all the solar systems, the whole galaxy, really," Dey said. "And I think that's the biggest, biggest thing for the campaign."

Petry added that the engine has also let the studio easily manipulate assets in the game's 3D space and improve other features like rendering and animations, explaining that it was a "required engineering" for the team's vision.

"The rendering of things, being able to improve how we render things and the quality that we are rendering things at, the animation system, our ability to sort of build modular animations in a more modern way, and the retooling of all of that, so that we can build faster and better," Petry said.

"Just frankly, almost everything, and just in how we build and how we tool to be able to make our games a higher quality and at a better rate, right?"

The battle system also sounds amazing, with Petry mentioning the game's Havoc system and saying the engine manages to deal with physical explosions "much better" when it comes to destroying the environment, as well as the number of projectiles on screen.

"So you know, being able to bring in these these tools to be able to solve these new problems that get brought up by these really awesome games is something that we felt we absolutely had to do," he continued, "and it extends to model changes, like being able to just handle the sheer volume of projectiles that we are now spitting out of seemingly absolutely every orifice when it comes to this game.

Petry added, "It was just absolutely necessary to build that new foundation to work from."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 launches sometime in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons has "deep-cut" inspirations from the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG)
• He adds that the game will still have a mystery for new and experienced Dungeons & Dragons players
• Guay says, "We wanted players coming fresh, with no knowledge of D&D, to kind of figure things out as they play"

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons draws much inspiration from the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), but Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says the game will still offer mystery for even experienced D&D players.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Guay discussed the many "deep-cut" D&D elements Invoke applied to Warlock, such as monsters, items, and spells; he also touched on the game's setting, Darkon, a realm within Ravenloft's Domains of Dread.

Players can explore Darkon's open world and uncover its secrets in the classic D&D way, which will take "tens of hours," confirming Warlock isn't a 100-hour campaign.

"There have been books written about it. Some of it is deep cuts, but it's still really good material we tapped into," Guay said, but explained that it didn't want to create a D&D game whose world experienced fans are already familiar with.

"We don't want to create a game where if you know D&D, you're like, 'Oh, I know everything,'" he said. "We want players to live that mystery of figuring out, what's that place, what are the rules of that place? So a lot of players are familiar with Ravenloft, which is another Domain of Dread, and that'll give them some insight into some of the things happening.

"But we wanted players coming fresh, with no knowledge of D&D, to kind of figure things out as they play."

Guay also confirmed Warlock has many D&D tropes, whether that's finding a secret door or dodging a trap, suggesting the game will be authentic to the TTRPG.

"We're doing these things in a way that's trying to replicate the feeling, but in real time without rolling down dice or doing these kinds of things," he said.

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons is slated to launch in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Free-to-play open-world adventure Ananta will feature two massive maps
• The second, Chongxiao, was revealed in a trailer at Gamescom 2026
• It's inspired by the real-world cities Shanghai and Hangzhou, home of the game's developers

Upcoming free-to-play Grand Theft Auto 6 competitor Ananta got a new trailer at Gamescom 2026, revealing a second massive open-world map.

Players will be able to venture from the coastal Nova City to the sprawling futuristic metropolis of Chongxiao, with producer Ash Qi promising "dozens of hours of story content and a huge range of urban gameplay" in a new interview with TechRadar Gaming.

"Our goal is to create the biggest open-world game in the free-to-play space," added Qi.

"Nova City was the first map we created," they continued. "Chongxiao is something we knew we had to make about a year into developing Nova City. In terms of scale, Chongxiao is quite a bit bigger than Nova City, but each map has its own identity, with different stories and a distinct atmosphere.

"Nova City leans more into a modern, entertainment-driven vibe, with a livelier, occasionally chaotic energy. Chongxiao, on the other hand, has more advanced technology, richer cultural content, and large-scale tourist attractions for players to experience and explore."

As well as conveying distinct atmospheres, both cities are also dramatically different from an aesthetic perspective. Nova City looks almost like a blend of Tokyo and Los Angeles, while Chongxiao is decidedly more Chinese in its influences.

"Right now we’re building Lingyun, a city within Chongxiao. The inspiration behind Lingyun actually comes from Shanghai and Hangzhou, where our team lives and works. Both cities have very striking everyday scenery and iconic modern landmarks," explained Qi. "Our goal was to have the real cities as a foundation and layer Ananta's setting on top of it."

Plenty of real-world features from both those places were on show in the latest trailer, including a skyscraper that's almost identical to Shanghai's iconic Oriental Pearl Tower. Chongxiao is also built around a huge ancient body of water known as the Weilan Lake, modelled closely on the famous West Lake in Hangzhou — a UNESCO World Heritage Site featured on the back of China's one-yuan banknote.

"Of course, we’re not just recreating these places one-to-one," added Qi. "We’re giving them new settings and memorable adventures shaped by our IP and story needs."

Ananta has already made headlines with its dizzying range of mechanics, with trailers showing off driving, melee combat, third-person shooting, flying wingsuits, and even Spider-Man-like web-slinging. But the cities themselves will also offer a broad selection of unique activities.

"Anything you’d want to do in a modern city: shopping, grabbing a bite at a restaurant, catching a live music show, or dancing the night away, it’s all there," said Qi. "You can even invite your favorite character to do these things with you. Each city also offers its own distinct activities based on what makes it unique. In Chongxiao, for example, you can go boating to experience Weilan Lake."

It sounds like players will have no shortage of things to do when Ananta launches for PC, PlayStation 5, and mobile on January 15, 2027.

• Creative Assembly developed Total War: Warhammer 40,000's controller support alongside the game's battle system
• Battle product owner Dave Petry says the team "landed something that really does work"
• Petry adds that he doesn't believe the "myth" that controllers can't work with real-time strategy (RTS) games

Creative Assembly developed Total War: Warhammer 40,000's battle system and controller support simultaneously, with battle product owner Dave Petry believing real-time strategy (RTS) games can work with a gamepad.

"So, we have a very clear mindset on, or a distinction between platform and controller, right?" said battle product owner Dave Petry in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom 2026.

"Because yes, obviously, controllers are your primary method for using consoles, but it's just an input method. It's an accessibility tool, right? It's how you want to play or how you would like to play, and so we've always wanted to be able to bring that experience to people who want to use a gamepad."

He continued, explaining that from the start, Creative Assembly developed the controller support alongside the game's battle system and campaign "to try and get it to the right spot" and believes the team has "landed something that really does work."

Petry referenced the internal experience developing Halo Wars 2, which he said was a "really strong implementation of controller and RTS," and that the industry is creating more and more strategy games that get controller support, and that these studios are doing "a brilliant job of it."

There's also a "myth" surrounding controller support and RTS and strategy games that don't work together, Petry added, but doesn't believe it.

"I think we are learning that we can do this right, and yeah, it's definitely something that we're all keen to keep evolving as we ship and work on it [Total War: Warhammer 40,000]," he said. "I think we've landed in a really solid spot. I think we're quite proud of where we are when it comes to the technical side of things as well."

Petry acknowledged the challenges that come with this technical aspect, but it's something Creative Assembly is "fully committed to doing" to "get us to a point where we are performing in the state we need to for console."

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 arrives in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay says the team knew it wanted a magic user as theWarlock: Dungeons & Dragons protagonist
• He says "creative magic use was at the core of what we wanted to do in gameplay"
• Guay adds that "the scope of managing what would be in our magic system is a real challenge"

Invoke Studios head Dominic Guay has shared why the team chose a warlock protagonist for Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons, explaining that "creative magic" was central to gameplay and story.

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, Guay said the team took time to consider which D&D class to spotlight in the upcoming single-player action-adventure game, but knew from a character and story perspective, a warlock would work best.

"We knew we wanted to write a character, write a story, [and] kind of force [us to pick a] class and kind of explore that," Guay said. "We started from the angle of wanting to have a magic user because creative magic use was at the core of what we wanted to do in gameplay, and we landed on warlocks."

"Honestly, from a storytelling perspective, it's a very interesting class," the studio head added, explaining that the main character, Kaatri, is a patron of a higher being, an ancient witch named Tasha.

"You're talking about someone who's going to step up to a super powerful being and say, 'Hey, give me some power,' and convince them to do it. So we thought, 'Hmm, what kind of character manages to do that?' And that got us to the warlock."

If you're familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, you'll know that the fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) has many classes players can explore, as well as a great number of spells.

From the gameplay trailer, it's clear that Warlock will have a ton of flashy spells, but according to Guay, it was a challenge to manage the game's magic system.

"Magic, especially if you think of Dungeons and Dragons, it can do everything," he said. "So we had to pick our spells, and we had to pick our battles. We wanted the player to be creative, but at the same time, we can't do everything, right? So the scope of managing what would be in our magic system is a real challenge.

"But at the same time, you know, it's kind of fun. It's fun for us. I've been doing open-world games for a long time, and to play with this idea of a character and use spells in [different kinds of ways]."

In terms of other potential games that could explore other D&D classes, Guay said, "Since we've been working on this game, people have been telling us, 'Would we do another class?'" Laughing, he added, "We'll start with this one, and we'll see. We'll see down the road what other opportunities there are. But for us, this was a cool class."

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons launches in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition (henceforth known as WITN) is a new version of the old action role-playing game (RPG) with a few quality-of-life fixes, tweaks, and improvements.

It ends up being diverting fun and well-priced for what it is, and gamers who loved the original (or perhaps loved games like it, such as Dragon Age: Origins) will enjoy the return to this sort of simple-but-satisfying gameplay loop of hitting orcs, looting gear, and upgrading your characters so they can hit orcs harder, faster, and for longer without falling over.

But while much of the game is fine, if not spectacular, it's a shame there are a few technical problems and deeper issues. Swapping between characters on-the-fly is novel, and there has been an effort to incorporate this into all aspects of gameplay. However, hot-swapping is obviously not quite what the original game intended, so there is some awkwardness here, while glitches and bugs sometimes mar the game at key points.

What about second Fellowship?

If you never played the old version, the basis of the game is this: as the Fellowship of the Ring embarks on their quest for Mount Doom, you play an adjacent, original party consisting of Eradan, a Dunedain ranger with all the skills of Aragorn; Farin, a dwarf warrior from the Lonely Mountain who looks an awful lot like Gimli with the serial numbers filed off; and Andriel, a Loremaster elf from Rivendell who can create magical blasts and forcefields.

Together, the 'other' Fellowship party chats with old friends like Aragorn, Arwen and Gandalf, visits familiar and new locations (book-readers will get a kick out of delving into the Barrow-Downs and fighting the famous Wights), and slices through hordes of orcs led by an evil man called Agandaûr, a fallen Numenorean like the Mouth of Sauron. Agandaûr is one of Sauron's trusted servants, one we've never heard of before or since.

So yes, it's all a bit fan-fictionesque, and it plays a lot like other action RPGs set in fantasy worlds, only this one takes the basic fantasy character set and plops them straight into Middle-Earth rather than a parallel-but-similar setting of elves, dwarves and dragons. It's even funnier when you get hold of special character weapon options, and you're controlling a random dwarf running around with legendary gear like Anduril or Sting. Dedicated Tolkien enthusiasts might find it a bit egregious, but it's all in the name of good fun and enabling the sort of repetitive hack-and-slash gameplay the genre is best at.

If you've played any other Lord Of The Rings games, whether the PlayStation 2's Return of the King or a more recent title like Middle-earth: Shadow of War, you'll be used to LOTR games taking these sorts of creative liberties. As a result, it works for what it is, and even as a die-hard hobbit-enjoyer I had fun scything through the dark lord's evil hordes and meeting characters never adapted like Elladan and Elrohir, Elrond's twin ranger sons.

Old game, new tactics

If you've played any action RPG, you'll know what to expect: you and your party are taking on wave after wave of mooks, weapons swinging with basic attacks, but you'll also trigger powerful maneuvers and spells that require cooldowns and replenishing a power meter, so tactical implementation of these moves is vital. Playing as Eradan, I would be skirting low on health and could use my disappearing skill, so I could make a break for it unharmed to Andriel's side, who can create a protective healing field. I'd quickly swap to Farin to unleash War Cry to up my party's health and durability.

It's this sort of synergy that creates tactical play beyond mashing light and heavy attacks until you see the 'Finish Him!' yellow triangle that pops up over an enemy's head. The ability to swap characters allows the quick-of-thumb to set up these combos without the use of the AI characters, who are otherwise competent enough to look after themselves and augment the main player. But you do need to be nimble, as the controls to do this are awkward on Switch: even ten hours in, I was accidentally drinking potions when I was trying to swap from elf to dwarf. Co-operative gameplay is available on most platforms (both online, in which you drop into someone else's game, and couch), but not on the original Switch.

There's a surprisingly steep learning curve once you learn the ropes: enemies come from all sides thick and fast, in numerous varieties, forcing you to switch from attack to defence, and then to ranged as explosive enemies approach, and implement your powers carefully.

You level up quickly too, and loot is plentiful, so there are plenty of regular rewards encouraging you to persevere through the samey waves of orcs and goblins, as PCs, enemies and environments begin to blend into various overlapping shades of brown and grey. I began the game thinking carefully about upgrading stats at each level, but after a while, I just pumped Stamina to keep myself alive while concentrating on that character's main attack stat, and that strategy seemed to work just fine too. I'm honestly not sure how much difference these RPG elements made.

Feeling thin, sort of stretched...

While a simple-but-satisfying gameplay loop, it's still very much of its time, and parts haven't aged well. The target lock-on can get tricky, and you'll occasionally find your character engaged in a long, sluggish animation, swinging their weapon at empty air while you cringe as you watch orcs running at you from behind.

Despite the hot-swapping feature and inclusion of each character's unique secret-finding ability (the dwarf, for example, can detect treasure hidden behind stone walls), the game is clearly still geared for a single-character experience. Ammo drops are still linked to the character you're playing at the time, so you might find you swap to a character without any ranged capacity. You'll also need to visit shops with each character in turn to do a proper gear comparison before buying new equipment, which is tedious.

Your health and power replenish slowly on their own, but once you've cleared an encounter, you're under no pressure to carry on. Occasionally, I found myself putting the controller down unpaused, heading off to make a cup of tea, and returning with my beverage to a rested, unmolested party at full health.

There's no sheathing weapons, so you'll occasionally be wandering around Bree or Rivendell, incongruously with swords drawn ready for action. There's also no jumping, which is fine on its own, but the frustration of encountering a chest-high wall and having to find a set of stairs is a sensation I've almost forgotten about, a relic of level design marred by the technology of the time.

Worst of all are the bugs, Aspyr's revamp of the game delivering fresh technical glitches alongside the improvements. These are quite common complaints on threads about WITN, and my experience was no different: from flashing inventory tiles to small areas of the map that caused my entire screen to flip to solid green. At one stage I was fighting blind, looking at chequered green flashes, while I could still hear Eradan's shouts of 'You face a Dunedan now!'

Others report platform-specific glitches, such as an 0KB save file problem on PlayStation 5.

The North Remembers

I think you already know if you want this game: you're either a Tolkien fiend who likes the idea of exploring and interacting with lesser-known locations and characters in an original story, a fantasy action RPG junkie, or you played the original and remember loving it. At the reduced price it's selling for, it's worth getting if you fit two out of three of the above criteria.

Personally, even though I'm as Tolkien-mad as they come and I've got no shortage of love for the RPG genre, I think The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition is... fine. Serviceable. Enjoyable at times, but without much to set it apart from all the other games in the space, even back when it was first released, other than its LOTR wrapper and nostalgia goggles.

I liked my experience with the game, but I can't see myself going back to it once done. It's a poor man's bite of lembas compared to the previous generation's excellent Return of the King hack 'em up.

Should you play The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition?

Play it if...

Don't play it if...

Accessibility

WITN has limited accessibility features. Available languages are English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, and Polish. Four difficulty levels are available: Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary.

How I reviewed Lord of the Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition

I played Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition on my Nintendo Switch (generation 1) for 15 hours, trying each character's various combinations and progressing through the story mode. I used the Switch both in handheld mode and on my LG OLED TV. When I encountered glitches, I examined community pages and threads for similar reports.

First reviewed August 2026

Silent Hill: Townfall feels like the culmination of two recent trends: the renaissance of Konami's survival horror series, dormant for the past decade, and the rise of more culturally authentic Scottish games.

As a standalone spin-off, it delivers the first full-length first-person Silent Hill experience that was the initial promise of the cancelled Silent Hills meant to be directed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro (though its playable teaser 'P.T.' ultimately became a horror classic in its own right).

Its setting in the fictional Scottish town of St. Amelia couldn't be more perfect, given that the series is iconic for its fog, which actually occurs on the Scottish east coast when warm air passes over the cold North Sea during the summer and can make its way inland.

And who better to realise this vision than Screen Burn Interactive, the Glasgow-based developer whose acclaimed games Stories Untold and Observation (released back when the studio was known as No Code) were also experienced in the first-person perspective?

Yet despite the authenticity of its setting, the Scottish studio has opted not to feature Scottish-sounding characters in its main cast, unlike the BAFTA-winning Still Wakes The Deep. Protagonist Simon Ordell, played by British-American actor Jovan Adepo, is something of an outsider who has been instructed by a mysterious voice to come to St. Amelia to "make it right" — whatever “it” may be.

Make it right

For the Gamescom demo, things certainly start off not quite right. Simon arrives at the town's harbor not by boat, but simply emerging from the water. Judging by the red wristband with his personal details on one hand and tubes connected to the other (like he’s escaped from a hospital), something's clearly up with him too.

St. Amelia, meanwhile, is a ghost town, as evident by the sight of abandoned shops as well as one street lined with 'house for sale' signs. If you get a creeping fear that this might be one of those indie games from over a decade ago when you just walked around in a photorealistic area in the aftermath of the actual story, it’s instantly resolved by the ringing coming from a nearby public phone box just past the town square.

It goes dead when I pick it up. I survey possible numbers to ring and go with “100,” which tells you to "save yourself" (and is literally how you save progress in this game).

Back in the town square, I spot an upright man being fed some kind of fluid coming from a tube seemingly attached to the sky above. As Simon instinctively goes to free him, his voice is familiar — it's the voice from the beginning calling out to Simon to "make it right". When I next return to the square, things have changed again, with protest banners and placards alluding to a crime that had occurred that may be linked to a company with the acronym 'CEG'.

As eerie, enigmatic, and atmospheric as this beginning is, it also feels a bit aimless. There were several occasions during my session when I was still slowly plodding around St. Amelia's streets, only to discover doors that were locked, and the option to sprint had not yet been unlocked.

It turns out this is because I had overlooked a few key numbers I could have called on the phone. Whereas some games can be overzealous in marking the critical with yellow paint, Screen Burn seems quite content with letting you get literally lost in its world, even if that might make for an even slower burn than intended…

Tactile horrors

If there was one consistent thing about Silent Hill: Townfall, it's that you really do have to pay attention to every detail. That is, fortunately, the benefit of the first-person perspective: you can really scrutinize all the flyers displayed on a community noticeboard without having to bring up a larger text box.

There's also a real physicality to the clues and equipment you have access to, such as a double-sided map you have to hold and flip over manually rather than just bringing up a map UI. The most tactile of these is the CRTV, a portable television that you can tune using the analogue triggers.

So you're not completely lost, a couple of markers do appear at the bottom to hint at the signal you should be tuning towards. Once you get a video clip, it's about carefully scrutinising the image, often waiting for it to loop back, as a hint of what you need to find next or where to go.

Not that these hints will spell it out for you. In one case, I was supposed to look for a white house, which is not the most obvious clue when most of the houses in St. Amelia's streets have white walls.

The CRTV also has another function, as it can be tuned to detect enemies nearby. Even if they're obscured by walls, their outlines can still be made out through noise and static. Alternatively, you can also hold another button along with the left stick to peek around corners.

Even though I only encountered a couple of enemies during my hands-on, which stay true to Silent Hill convention as nightmarish deformed figures with uncanny movements, combat remains a clunky aspect of the game, made no better or worse in first-person. This made it more important for me to prioritise evasion as a tactic.

But from what I managed to play at Gamescom, it's the unsettling vibes that resonate strongest over hostile threats, such as the dread of what could be in a locked box that's meant for carrying human organs, or an extremely Scottish puzzle that involves having to top up an electric meter with a prepaid card from a newsagent.

Having moved to Glasgow under two years ago into a newly renovated tenement building that nonetheless still had one of these relics in the cupboard, it was a moment when Silent Hill: Townfall's mundane horror became a little too real. That's also sure to make this unlike any other Silent Hill game I have played.

Silent Hill: Townfall releases for PlayStation 5 and PC on September 24, 2026.

In the packed halls of Gamescom with so many games to see, it's easy to get tetchy if a session goes on for too long when there's another appointment you have to rush off to see. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve was a rare exception where I wished I had more to go on than I was given.

On one hand, the Ace Combat series' appeal is a straightforward one. It captures the thrill of flying a fighter jet locked in aerial dogfights without the intimidating knowledge of actually operating an aircraft like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but with more control than a rail shooter like Star Fox.

A new instalment coming just a few years after a new Top Gun movie is even more tantalising for anyone eager to take to the skies like Tom Cruise.

Back to Strangereal

That the series also takes place in an alternate world called Strangereal, which nonetheless looks like our own, means you can enjoy the immersive realism without being drawn into the awkward politics of any real-world conflicts.

For the mission I got to play, titled 'The Fall of the Numbered Fleets', there's already a sense of a meaty narrative to get into, as my squadron, Joker Flight of the Federation of Central Usea (FCU), is tasked with launching an offensive to strike fleets belonging to the invading forces from the Republic of Sotoa.

An added wrinkle is that you also have to contend with a once-friendly squadron nicknamed the Sharks, who have recently defected.

This drama plays out during the mission; banter zips between your fellow wingmen Baxter and Tasha over the radio as you approach the targets on Newfield Island before being interrupted by enemy Sotoan chatter when you manage to deal damage to their fleet and supplies. And of course, it's only a matter of time before the Sharks turn up as sparks fly between factions that wouldn't be out of place in an anime if it wasn't for the game's realistic aesthetic.

Although you have targets to destroy, there are also different approaches you can take to tackle an objective, such as customising your loadout at the beginning. While there's a lot of information on the UI that can feel intimidating, it felt readable when a missile is definitely locked onto a target, while an outline below makes it clear where your bomb will drop when trying to sink ships.

There's a simple satisfaction to see the green display change from 'Hit' to 'Destroyed,' but if you really want to showboat, you can even switch to the camera looking back to enjoy the explosion in your wake.

Cloud control

If 2019's Ace Combat 7: Unknown Skies had already set a new bar for the series' realistic visuals and combat aircraft, then Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve raises it again, not just with Unreal Engine 5 but also with Bandai Namco Aces' own upgraded Cloudly tech.

That said, I spent most of my time a little too close to the ground (a prompt repeatedly telling me to pull up) when trying to aim for targets on land and sea to properly experience getting into the clouds. Yet that showcased another visual leap too, as all the objects you see are rendered at a 1:1 scale. So instead of flying over flat textures or miniatures, you really do feel immersed in the world. That also allows for setpieces such as a moment when you can fly your aircraft through a tunnel to reach an airbase stationed on the other side.

But for anyone who enjoyed the sheer action spectacle of Top Gun: Maverick, it wasn't the action alone that made it a great watch; it was all the other human drama unfolding in between the training, so that you become invested in the characters you want to succeed. Even though I'm not sure any of the characters in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve are likely to have the same star power and charisma as Tom Cruise, that is something I still wish I could have seen more of in this relatively brief Gamescom demo.

As the first entry to have its story play out through a first-person perspective, it's surely meant to provide a more immersive way to spend time in the company of your wingmen, not just during mission briefings but also when catching up in the canteen or other bouts of R&R.

Having the in-mission banter is nonetheless also a key element, as are the small narrative choices you can make, such as in the demo where Baxter wants one of the Sharks pilots captured alive and asks that you only shoot around his cockpit, to which you can agree, or not.

But with the game's launch not far away, and arriving in time for the series' 30th anniversary, it's looking like Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is going to soar to a whole new plane.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve releases on October 2, 2026, for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S. Advance access is available from September 28 for those who pre-order the deluxe edition.

The pantheon of US crime dramas is peppered with ruthless, hyperreal villains who have risked it all for a shot at the American Dream. Michael Corleone, Tony Montana, Keyser Söze, Tony Soprano, and Marsellus Wallace are but five of the fictional strongmen now synonymous with getting things done by hook or by crook.

In the 30 years since the inception of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Rockstar Games has evolved cinematic storytelling in video games to the point that you could, quite feasibly, add Tommy Vercetti, Toni Cipriani, Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson, Niko Bellic, and Michael De Santa to that list.

In the slipstream of Grand Theft Auto 6’s Extended Look, multiple questions emerge about what has become the most-anticipated video game of the 21st century. Most notably, will we soon be able to add Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos to this scurrilous list of ill-gotten individuals intoxicated by life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

As a former developer at Rockstar Games and seasoned industry pro, Mike York is well positioned to explain what the condensed 26-minute slice of gameplay reveals about the lead characters and the title itself.

Miami twice

“I see a heavier tone and a slower pace,” York says of the follow-up to 2013’s GTA 5, which was set in San Andreas, a fictionalised version of California. This time, Rockstar has returned to Vice City, their neon-hued take on the sun-blasted, Floridian playground of Leonida, to bring the couple to life in a Bonnie-and-Clyde-style misadventure befitting the studio’s wild and vivid creative vision.

“Jason moves around very slow and methodical. That's the first thing I noticed. He seemed like a robot — a Terminator —walking through every scene and mowing people down with no emotion,” suggests York of the US military veteran, mirroring some of the observations – and criticisms – that have accompanied the exclusive Netflix promo since it launched last week.

Will the male lead stand up against the aforementioned icons, who have helped cement Rockstar’s brand as pixelated pioneers in these imagined, open-world environments?

York continues: “I want to see that. Niko Belic, for example, is a great character. He was witty and had some great lines, which is why GTA 4 became one of my favourites in the series. I hope we see more of that because right now, Jason seems quite deadpan and monotone.

“Rockstar usually gives us a bunch of neat characters who are funny and have their own flair. I don't know if we're going to see that with Jason, but I hope we do,” he comments. Certainly, if you rewatch the Extended Look, Jason’s demeanour – he warns Lucia to stay cool in the opening seconds as they become embroiled in a meth lab shootout and then scolds her for being late when the pair drive to meet aged accomplice Brian Heder – is of a more self-contained, uptight and introspective personality than his vivacious, chameleonic, and combustible counterpart.

Perhaps that’s the point. As switchable characters, will Lucia provide the Yin to Jason’s Yang? “I think that's what they're going to do,” continues York, pinpointing the passage where the duo emerges at the Effluvia rooftop bar.

“There's that moment in the trailer where they get in an elevator, and he says: ‘Sometimes I'm just more comfortable when I have to use a gun’. She replies: ‘Just be charming!’ Lucia's got this attitude where you can tell she's trying to break him out of his shell. She's the one that probably goes into missions gung-ho, all guns blazing.”

Wired for sound

Indeed, there are further clues about the duo’s depiction in the fluorescent, 80s-colored Extended Look soundtrack. When the focus is on Jason, People Are People by Depeche Mode (featuring the line “I can't understand. What makes a man hate another man? Help me understand”) is used for context. Meanwhile, Lucia’s section of the clip, which sees her marching into Zeke’s Gadgets store to shoot up the place and flipping the bird at a swarm of cops when they make their escape from a second robbery, aptly uses global chart-smashing Devil Woman as the musical backdrop.

“With evil on her mind… She’s gonna get you!” warns the enduringly improbable British pop star Cliff Richard, in a phase that could be seen as Rockstar’s opportunity to showcase a central theme of female empowerment and mutual respect between sexes that has been almost entirely absent from the GTA series. In the toxic shadow of an era defined and divided by the manosphere, could this be an attempt to reset this predominant tone against countless accusations of misogyny that have stalked each title?

“A lot of their games have been viewed in that light. It'd be cool for them to shake that up and flip it on its head,” confirms York. Currently working on Six Days in Fallujah for Highwire Games in Seattle, Washington, he joined Rockstar New England – a studio based in Andover, Massachusetts – in 2012, leaving three years later after playing an active role in the development of GTA 5 and its online incarnation.

Red Dead detention

York’s induction into the much-mythologised studio’s work culture would prove to be prophetic. On his first day, he was instructed to play Red Dead Redemption in full – for the first time, in fact – to prepare for what was coming down the track: extensive animations on its Western-themed successor, where he was charged with designing multiple animal models intended to maraud across the North American frontier at the turn of the 20th century.

Elsewhere, his portfolio – including trailers for Dead Island: Riptide, Fortnite, The Walking Dead, Borderlands 3 and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines – suggests York could illuminate the top-secret processes that underpin the massively hyped Extended Look, which is only the third official piece of formal storytelling to accompany GTA 6 and pulled in more than 30m views on Netflix in four days.

“We weren’t told anything about trailers, and then, all of a sudden, my animations would end up in one. It’d be like: ‘There's one of my shots!’ I only found out once they were completely released, and we were all watching it.” He says this level of secrecy is baked into the studio’s DNA. “They try to instill in all their employees that you don't say anything anywhere. If you look up most of the people at Rockstar, they don't have any social media presence because they're scared to. I was. When I worked there, I didn't say anything ever.”

Across the industry, how does the decision-making play out for this type of media content? “You don't want to spoil it or give too much away. You want to hint and leave things to the imagination, get people to want to find out what the story is. But things are changing. More and more studios and companies are releasing big deep dives, reveals, and whole chunks of gameplay. We're getting to see a lot of stuff that we never used to back in the day.”

Face off

York was impressed by many components of Rockstar’s mega preview, in particular the visual clarity, use of lighting, and the lifelike physics deployed in specific graphical elements, such as the movement of individual characters’ hair.

However, he also admits being disappointed by some of the “rough” facial animations. He explains: “It doesn't seem like they're using MetaHuman capture technology. It looks like they're still doing it the old-school way, like in GTA 5. It's very similar to that. That might be because of the limitations and what's important.

“I’ve worked with Unreal Engine 5. The high-fidelity facial animation has hundreds of bones in the face. When you add those to the character, it slows everything down. This is the type of stuff you put in cutscenes for The Last of Us Part 2, for example. You want it to look super realistic. On GTA 6, they're not doing that. Everything they show is in-game footage. It's the cinematic version of the character, which still needs to be low-resolution enough so it can do all these things without bogging down the rest of the game.”

York pinpoints other features – citing the weapon wheel and mini map – that also look “a bit outdated and weird”. “The whole UI doesn't really match the style of game and what we're used to,” he comments. “Rockstar has a big and very talented team. If they wanted, they could go in and change those elements before a final release. Will they do that? That's another question because there’s probably a lot of other stuff they're sweating about.”

That said, he praises the overarching LOD (Level of Detail), suggesting that – to date – only the CD Projekt Red team behind the once maligned but now widely celebrated Cyberpunk 2077 has been able to match it. “There are levels to this shit,” he states. “Rockstar are the kings of that.”

Despite any minor quibbles, the Extended Look has reassured York – who runs York Street Gaming on YouTube – that GTA 6 will set a new high bar stretching years into the future. “People will still say it's one of the best games of all time,” he says. “It will perform really well and become something we'll be able to play for a decade later like GTA 5. Online will come out and probably be an ever-evolving metaverse which will carry the franchise forever.”

Grand Theft Auto 6 will be released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S on November 19, 2026.

Persona 4 was my belated introduction to Atlus's Japanese high school RPG series, so it still has a special place in my heart.

The PlayStation 2 original was, however, also usurped by the greatly expanded and far superior Persona 4 Golden, which is where I racked up my New Game+ playthroughs. Even as I have become more time-poor over the years, I would still dip into its subsequent post-Vita ports.

That does, however, present a problem for Persona 4 Revival. When a perfect expanded version of the game already exists and is available on all current platforms, is a $70 modern remake really needed?

The elephant in the room is that this is also a way for Sega to plug the gap for the long-anticipated Persona 6, though given that it was only given the briefest announcement this year, fans will likely have a much longer wait ahead.

But after about an hour of hands-on time with Persona 4 Revival at Gamescom 2026, I can appreciate the different touches that have gone into making this JRPG classic more palatable to modern audiences, while still preserving key elements of the original.

One more remake

Persona 4 Revival's hands-on demo was split into three parts: the first focused on story, the second on its dungeon-based battles, and the last let me choose how to spend several calendar days as a transfer high school student in the rural town of Inaba.

As a remake, it follows a similar approach to Persona 3 Reload. Character models aren't just a huge visual upgrade over their original lower-poly PS2 counterparts; they're even better than Persona 5's and look virtually on par with the character portraits that typically accompany dialogue boxes. Turn-based battles, meanwhile, have been updated to mirror Persona 5's control scheme, where commands are mapped to different buttons rather than scrolling up and down a menu.

Just like Persona 3 Reload, Persona 4 Revival has also updated its audio with a completely new voice cast and a re-recorded soundtrack, including at least one or two brand-new songs. I don't mind so much the decision to recast the roles, especially as several of the original voice actors have become much higher profile (including Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, and Yuri Lowenthal).

Still, the voice of Teddy takes time to get used to because while some may have found his original voice a tad annoying, now he just sounds a bit too much like another teenager rather than a mysterious being inside a mascot suit.

From what I played, the story seems to unfold virtually beat-for-beat in line with the original. I think that's fine, and given how long the game already was, the script really doesn't need fleshing out in the same way as the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series, for example. But there are still some interesting changes within that.

The most notable is the more interesting camerawork going on, including close-ups, that make extensive cutscenes more engaging to sit through instead of just lengthy dialogue you might be inclined to skip if you can read faster than the characters speak.

The script itself has also undergone some subtle adjustments in the localization process. It might seem very minor, but I picked up on how Yosuke now addresses the other female students like Chie and Yukiko more formally by their family names, which is closer to how real-life Japanese classmates who aren't close friends behave.

I'm still intrigued by how and to what extent Yosuke's character is updated in Persona 4 Revival, as in the original, he behaves like a creep and is pretty insensitive at times. Given there's a moment in the story demo where he gets annoyed with Teddy and pushes him over, my guess is P Studio is still retaining at least some of the more abrasive side of his personality.

Holding on to the past

Persona 4 Revival's visual upgrades apply to the environments too. With a completely free-looking 3D camera, you can appreciate more of the details in the Dojima household, while in the Twisted Shopping District, you can look up and see the strange red and black vortex instead of a sky that indicates you're in the Midnight Channel's parallel dimension.

Nonetheless, the places you go to are still very much as I remember them. Rooms are still separated by loading screens; Inaba's main commercial district has the same businesses, including the item shop that turns into a bar at night. That's also fine for me, as I don't think it would necessarily benefit the game to suddenly expand the real estate.

While seemingly still randomly generated rather than having the bespoke design of Persona 5's palaces, the dungeons you explore have nonetheless been adjusted to be a little less tedious, from having objects you can break to gather resources to a subtle wayfinder if you just want to get to the next floor ASAP. Ironically, I took this as a cue to go the other direction to explore more of the map.

When encountering enemy shadows on the map, the game even clearly indicates whether you've got the drop on them to get a pre-emptive attack. Failing that, Persona 4 Revival also adds the ability to guard against a shadow's attack so that you're less likely to start a turn-based battle at a disadvantage.

During battle, the Baton Pass mechanic has also been passed down from Persona 5 and Persona 3 Reload, which allows you to attack again if you've hit an enemy with their weakness, but pass that turn onto another party member who may have the right attack to exploit a different enemy's weakness.

But whereas Persona 3 Reload was criticized for not being a truly definitive remake, given the lack of an option for a female protagonist like in Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Revival at least is confirmed specifically as a remake of Persona 4 Golden. That means it will include that expanded version's additional story content, such as Marie, the mysterious and temperamental guest in the Velvet Room.

Despite those smart updates, I'm still curious why some other elements have been left untouched. For instance, character portraits were used prominently in JRPGs as they were more expressive than in-game models. But when Persona 4 Revival's character models are better animated and expressive, having these portraits seems arbitrary.

Similarly, when you knock down all enemies and trigger an all-out attack, Persona 4 would originally cover the enemies in a cartoon cloud for comical effect, yet the remake opts to keep this visual despite also having party members running in to perform a lot of flashier animations alongside it.

There might be some nostalgic charm to retaining these conventions, but it also feels unnecessary in the context of a modern remake. Similarly, once my hands-on time was up, I came away impressed with what I had played, yet still not convinced why I would drop $70 on it when Persona 4 Golden is right there for a fraction of the price.

Persona 4 Revival releases on February 18, 2027, on Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

Does every existing IP need a movie adaptation? The answer is no, of course, but I'm quietly confident in the upcoming live-action version of hit Hideo Kojima franchise, Death Stranding.

Why? Well, let's start with the concept. In the game, courier Sam must reconnect a broken America after an apocalyptic event merged the worlds of the living and the dead. Add in distributor A24 and the man who directed Pig and The Death of Robin Hood — which is now in UK cinemas after its June US release — and you've surely got gold.

However, there's one immediate snag. While we don't know much, we do know that the new movie won't follow the same premise as the existing Death Stranding games.

In fact, according to director Michael Sarnoski, not only is it a standalone movie, but will be made with a lot of creative freedom — and something about the way he explains this makes me nervous.

'I need the space to find authorship and find the things that I really believe in'

"I actually like to make things difficult for myself," Sarnoski tells me. "I like to do projects where the initial instinct is 'Oof, that could be a really bad idea.' Another Robin Hood movie? A prequel to a horror franchise? I like things where it could be easy to miss the mark."

This in itself is a concerning statement. I prefer it when my movie directors don't go into an adaptation thinking that things could potentially go horribly wrong. Whatever happened to positive mental attitude?

"I like the challenge," he continues. "I like finding the humanity in things that otherwise could not work. On Death Stranding, they're giving me a lot of freedom to tell the story that I want to tell separate from the core video game stories. It's its own standalone thing. I need the space to find authorship and find the things that I really believe in... I'm really excited about it."

Playing devil's advocate here, creative freedom could be a good thing. If fans expect a movie to replicate its original source material exactly, nobody ends up winning. But with so few details to go on, we've got to keep our fingers crossed that good decisions are made in the meantime.

But is Sarnoski concerned about appealing to existing fanbases, or is he happy to stick to his guns? "A little bit of both," he responds. "I feel the pressure, but I have to set that aside and focus on what creatively excites me. I can't make stuff as a reaction to what I think someone else wants — it has to come from a place of love and fascination."

Make of that what you will, folks... and watch this space.

• Two DualSense wireless controllers inspired by Grand Theft Auto 6 have been revealed
• Both editions are said to "capture the essence of Vice City"
• Pre-orders open on September 10

Sony has announced that it will release two limited-edition DualSense wireless controllers inspired by Grand Theft Auto 6 when the game launches.

Revealed during today's State of Play broadcast, the controllers come in black or white with purple chrome, feature the GTA 6 logo on the touchpad, with distinct palm tree designs and glowing buttons inspired by Vice City.

"The black and white limited-edition DualSense wireless controllers each capture the essence of Vice City, from bright days along the coast to vibrant city nights," Sony describes in the PlayStation Blog.

"Both editions feature a shimmering, color-shifting finish that brings together the hues of a Vice City sunset and the glow of neon lights. They both also feature custom palm tree details molded directly into the controller, adding a unique tactile element alongside official Grand Theft Auto 6 branding."

The white edition "embodies Vice City at daybreak, from its white sands and pastel skies to all its laid-back glamour," while the black version "captures the energy of Vice City’s iconic nightlife."

The DualSense Wireless Controller – Grand Theft Auto 6 Black Limited Edition and DualSense Wireless Controller – Grand Theft Auto 6 White Limited Edition will be available for pre-order on September 10 and launch alongside the game on November 19.

Both controllers will cost $84.99 / £74.99 through PlayStation Direct in limited quantities.

Ahead of the game's launch, Rockstar Games treated fans to the Grand Theft Auto 6: An Extended Look, which offered a deep dive into the game running on the base PS5. A new report also confirmed that the game will run at 30fps on consoles.

The spirit forms of The Warrior of Light, Terra, Zidane, and Cloud bob up and down behind each character in my party as I get into battle in an early dungeon in Final Fantasy Resonance.

When the trio of monsters is briefly staggered in front of me, I’m given a choice of which iconic character’s power to unleash to end the battle, and I promptly pick the spiky-haired and Buster Sword-wielding hero of Final Fantasy 7. My reward is a flashy CG cutscene of Cloud obliterating everything on screen in a visual display that seems strangely at odds with the rest of the game's HD-2D style.

But this clash is perhaps to be expected when you learn that Final Fantasy Resonance adapts parts of an old 2015 mobile game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, to create a brand-new entry in the traditional turn-based style of Final Fantasy’s NES/SNES golden era.

For players like me whose formative gaming years were spent playing those classics and who long for more old-school turn-based RPGs, it’s the kind of pairing that should shoot Resonance right to the top of the must-play list. And even in just the brief hour I spent with the game, I could feel myself getting sucked into its combat and presentation style almost immediately.

I can’t speak much on the story that frames this fan-service-heavy premise, given I got to experience so little of it, but it feels very much in the vein of a Final Fantasy of old. There are warring factions, a party of adventurers, and crystals to protect in temples dotted around the world.

However, it didn’t matter that I had very little exposition to set up my time with Resonance, given that I immediately saw so much to dig into with the characters and combat.

Alongside the four that were already assigned to my party, there are signs that many more familiar faces from across the full history of the series will make an appearance as Visions that you can equip to your characters.

These provide a vast number of active and passive abilities that can be brought together to create particular builds or strengths that you want characters to focus on.

For example, The Warrior of Light has several physical attacks and defensive magic that work together to make the equipped character a strong frontline warrior or damage-mitigating tank. You can further build upon that with abilities learned and masteries gained from other Visions to perhaps buff your health or offer other worthwhile passives.

I enjoyed tinkering with the makeup of my party to create the classic areas of expertise across all four members — the tank, the physical damage dealer, the mage, and the healer — and I’m sure you’ll be able to create more interesting hybrids as more Visions and their classes become available.

And like the best turn-based RPGs, it was even more fulfilling to see those builds succeed in combat. It led to a satisfying rhythm where you exploit the elemental or physical weaknesses of an enemy to stagger them, earn bonus turns for your characters to create an even bigger advantage in battle, and then unleash a Vision’s special attack once all opponents are in a staggered state.

It’s nothing hugely revolutionary in the world of turn-based combat, but it does add some flair to a familiar formula.

Throw in summons, limit breaks, and more abilities that are exclusive to each Vision, and you have the makings of an exciting and dynamic battle system that still retains some old-school charm.

And that sums up how it felt to play Resonance. Anyone with a hankering for some classic Final Fantasy will find a lot to love here — even beyond the fan service with its large cast of well-known characters from across the series. If that sounds like you, a demo is available to try right now.

Final Fantasy Resonance launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, and PC on October 22.

• CD Projekt Red's joint CEO Michal Nowakowski has confidence in game consoles coping with the RAM crisis
• Nowakowski is convinced consoles will 'weather the storm', as analysts expect shortages to continue through 2027
• Sony isn't just facing the RAM crisis, but also a major backlash over its decision to end physical game discs

The RAM crisis is continuing to cause havoc with the hardware market, affecting component prices, PC makers, and potentially delaying next-gen console launches. However, it's not so bleak as you might think, at least in the eyes of CD Projekt Red's boss.

As reported by IGN, CD Projekt Red's (CDPR) joint CEO Michal Nowakowski was interviewed by The Game Business and voiced his confidence that next-gen consoles will survive the RAM crisis despite the prospect of high pricing.

This comes amid concerns and projections from industry insiders and analysts that RAM shortages are going to get worse in 2027 and beyond. The big three memory chip makers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are expected to increase combined capital spending to nearly 340% from 2024 to 2027.

It doesn't look like RAM shortages and high hardware prices will die down anytime soon, but this doesn't faze Nowakowski, at least when it comes to ensuring CDPR delivers the best possible content.

"Consoles are still necessary to broaden the audience on the casual or semi-casual level. It's important to have easy to plug in and enjoy gaming," Nowakowski says.

"I'm a big believer that they're [consoles] going to weather the storm. Pricing is the objective challenge. And the rumors... we hear them about the next-gen being delayed. I don't know if they're true."

RAM isn't the only worry for Sony

Besides the RAM crisis pushing up prices and causing potential console launch delays, Sony in particular may have an uphill battle ahead. Its recent decision to end production of physical game discs for PlayStation consoles, starting in January 2028, already has gamers in the ecosystem protesting and planning alternatives to escape the impending doom of discs.

An all-digital future means any form of game ownership will cease to exist, as digital content can theoretically be taken away from gamers at any time, and that has led to a loud (and justified, I think) reaction from the console community.

The Game Business didn't question Nowakowski directly about physical game ownership, but did probe further on the effect that delayed next-gen consoles might have, with Nowakowski making CDPR's stance very clear.

"If the next-gen gets delayed, it could be the case that some ideas [for games] are put on a shelf for the future. We'd have to adjust. We're not worried on the commercial side. Consoles are here to stay."

It's fair to say that Nowakowski's last statement is a realistic assessment. Even given Sony's dismissal of physical game discs, this isn't going to lead to a complete collapse in the popularity of consoles.

However, Sony may not make life easy for itself and publishers such as CDPR, as from 2028, when the discs are dumped with the PlayStation ecosystem, a hit to games sales is far from impossible — especially if the ongoing backlash from gamers is anything to go by.

• Free-to-play live service game Let it Die shut down earlier this week
• It's not the end, though, as players will still be able to play the game in a new offline state
• The new offline version costs just $19.99 / £16.99 / AU$28.50 and has all microtransactions removed

It feels like a live service game is shutting down every few weeks, and I'm no stranger to the crushing disappointment of learning that one of your favorite games is going offline.

Normally, the news means you lose access to the game for good — with all your progress, achievements, and in-game items vanishing along with it. Just look at Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, Anthem, or Hawked: three offline titles that died in the last few weeks alone and are now completely inaccessible by official means.

Although the reasons for such shutdowns are often understandable, it still seems like a massive waste of resources, development time, and sometimes some genuinely good game mechanics or ideas.

With Let it Die, however, developer Grasshopper Manufacture is defiantly bucking that trend. The free-to-play game shut down earlier this week after nine whole years on the market, but that doesn't mean it's now unplayable.

The company put in the work to create an offline version, which you can buy on PC or PlayStation 4 for $19.99 / £16.99 / AU$28.50. You lose some of the original's offline features, but all microtransactions are removed so you can experience the full game without having to open your wallet more than once.

You can even bring over your progress from the online game if you played it before.

A positive example

If you're not familiar with Let it Die, it's a roguelike hack-and-slash with a challenging, almost soulslike combat loop that has you battling your way through a massive enemy-filled tower.

Players loved its wacky writing (with iconic characters like its skateboarding rendition of the Grim Reaper) when it first released back in 2016, but microtransactions were pretty pervasive. In short, it was designed to make you part with real money to keep reviving your characters when you died, which, given the high level of difficulty, was pretty often for most.

With these mechanics now removed, I'm already seeing long-time fans call this new release the definitive version.

"Great to see this game won't ever die due to its servers being shut down now," wrote one Steam reviewer. "Plus all the crappy monetization which held the game back a ton is gone."

Others praise the decision to keep the game alive in some form: "Shutdown the servers but made sure the game was still playable afterwards. That's how you actually end a live service."

Of course, the irony of a game called Let it Die carrying on forever is not lost. "Can't say the devs don't have a sense of humor," quipped one player.

It goes to show that the end of a live-service title doesn't have to screw over gamers, and I hope other developers take note of the positive reception.

When I previewed The Blood of Dawnwalker, its prologue was an impressive snapshot of what Rebel Wolves was hoping to achieve with its vampiric open-world role-playing game (RPG). It was a tight and tense introduction to a game that encourages you to spend your time wisely, live with the consequences of your actions, and balance Coen’s newly acquired Vrakhir abilities with the hope of maintaining his humanity.

Now, after sinking dozens more hours into the full release, this team that includes several ex-Witcher 3 developers hasn’t quite made that formative game’s spiritual successor. However, I can’t fault the ambition found in the studio’s debut release — even if not every idea is fully realised and a few elements lack polish.

Ever since playing through that exciting opening, which sees Coen’s village razed and his family held captive to be used as sacrifices in an upcoming coronation for the valley’s vampire overlord, Brencis, I've been desperate to get back in and see what awaited in the rest of the game.

So, it’s strange that when you first hit the open world, the game starts to feel a little aimless. Your main goal may be to kill Brencis and save your family, but the direct approach is almost certainly going to lead to your death. Instead, it’s smarter to take the time to destabilise Brencis’ reign by going after his generals and increasing your power for the upcoming showdown.

No rest for the wicked

Unfortunately, that means engaging with a lot of dull and fairly repetitive tasks dotted around the map, mostly clearing camps of soldiers and smashing up boxes of supplies. The set dressing changes a little depending on which vampire lieutenant you’re going after (it may be blood supplies for Ambrus or slivovitz distilleries with Bakir), but you’re ultimately going through the same motions.

And I was surprised at how little some of the vampire leaders actually feature in the story while you’re being such a thorn in their side. Most development happens off-screen, while notes are found on soldiers bemoaning Coen’s actions and edicts are issued as you become more notorious.

There isn’t as much time given to interacting with these villains before an inevitable confrontation. And that’s a shame, because when you do come face-to-face with these flamboyant, furious, and fascinating characters, they end up being killed off just as they’re starting to get interesting.

I did find that The Blood of Dawnwalker found its feet when you dig into one of its many lengthier multi-part quests. Given the developer’s history and pedigree, and what was shown off in the prologue, this is more of what I expected. You get to spend time with some entertaining and well-written characters, explore interesting environments and dungeons, tackle challenging combat encounters, and often emerge with some nice new loot.

Choices and consequences come front and center in many of these quests, and I felt the game gives a surprising amount of room, as your investigations can open up different approaches or outcomes. And quite cleverly, not all effects are felt immediately, with some outcomes or repercussions only felt much later down the line. It shows Rebel Wolves really thought about the interconnectivity of its world and wanted to show the impact you have on it. A huge plus for the RPG lovers who thrive on that level of world-building.

The final countdown

Tying it all together is the 30-day time limit that’s central to The Blood of Dawnwalker. Much has been said about this mechanic, but the countdown to Brencis’ coronation and your family’s execution wasn’t a constant threat looming overhead. I considered it a lot at the start, but eventually, instead of making me question whether every single action was worth doing or made worthwhile progress, losing chunks of time eventually became something I just accepted as the price of doing business.

Where it was always a frustration, though, was during levelling up, where almost all skills and perks require you to spend time learning them, meaning you could lose half a day (or night) simply to make Coen stronger. I would understand this if it were reserved for learning more advanced skills, but when the same price must be paid to get 25 per cent more health or some passive stamina regeneration, it doesn’t feel worth the cost.

The transition from day to night didn’t substantially change the game, either. Yes, it enables Coen’s vampiric powers, with neat tricks such as shadowstepping across chasms or walking up walls, but these don’t have the impact I feel they could have.

For starters, there’s so much blood available in consumables or animals to hunt out in the wild that I never felt this moral dilemma the game wants to push about Coen needing to feed. There is a neat idea that only happens if you’re low on health in vampire form and chatting with a non-player character (NPC), where you risk Coen giving in to the hunger and sucking the blood from his conversation partner, but it didn’t happen to me once in my playthrough.

Tonight I'm going to suck...your blood

When it comes to a clash of steel and fangs, the vampire powers don’t elevate what is a perfectly serviceable, if mostly underwhelming, combat system. The foundation is based on directional inputs to attack, block, or dodge, and picking the correct direction will set up your opponent for a devastating riposte from your sword or claws.

You can weave in a few abilities that range from the mundane, such as using pocket sand to temporarily blind an enemy, to several witchcraft or vampiric skills that burn your opponent's blood or set them up for a gruesome and bloody explosion. And while it all works fine, it never flows as smoothly as you would like or feels as impactful as you wish it did. Combat ultimately became something that I got through impassively rather than finding myself excited for the next encounter.

And that’s ultimately what makes me struggle to wholeheartedly recommend The Blood of Dawnwalker. Too many elements are dull, repetitive, or underused to keep me fully engaged over its lengthy playtime. There are captivating moments, though, that I feel some may be able to appreciate more if you’re able to overlook some of its flaws. Perhaps with some updates or a sequel, the ambitions of Rebel Wolves can be fully met.

Should you play The Blood of Dawnwalker?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

The Blood of Dawnwalker has limited accessibility features. Subtitles are available in 14 languages, but you cannot customise the size, color, or position on the screen. Two control options are available, with the ability to invert both axes if required.

There are more choices when it comes to refining the difficulty of the game, though. As well as general preset options ranging from Story to Duelist, you can also specifically tweak enemy health, enemy aggressiveness, how easy it is to perform perfect blocks, and whether blocking is automatic if you want an easier combat experience.

How I reviewed The Blood of Dawnwalker

I’ve put around 25 hours into The Blood of Dawnwalker over the past week and a half, and while I haven’t completed it yet, I feel I’ve seen more than enough of the game’s main story and side quests to offer a comprehensive verdict.

I spent all my time playing on a PlayStation 5 Pro on a Samsung S90C OLED TV and Samsung HW-Q930C soundbar while using a DualSense Wireless Controller.

I played on Balanced mode, which aims to run the game at 40 frames per second (fps) in dynamic 4K. A 30fps Quality mode is also available, but I preferred the option with a more stable fps that didn’t impact the visuals significantly. A Performance mode targeting 60fps will also be made available at launch.

First reviewed September 2026.

• Asobo Studio says it's interested in making a new A Plague Tale game set in the modern day
• The studio says it would be like The Last of Us, since Naughty Dog's game was a "big inspiration"
• Actor Anna Demetriou says a modern-day spin-off would work well since the Macula is "fantastical"

Asobo Studio has said it "would love" to make a new A Plague Tale game set in the modern day, since Naughty Dog's The Last of Us influenced the series.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom ahead of the launch of the studio's latest game, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, Valérian Robert (lead level designer), Carol Ann Bañuls (lead writer), and actor Anna Demetriou, who played the part of Resonance protagonist Sophia were asked about its next project and confirmed that a modern-day spin-off is something they're asked about frequently.

"Absolutely," Bañuls replied when asked if the setting would be a good pick for Asobo. "Definitely. Personally, I think so. I think it would be great."

Demetriou said, "It's one of the things a lot of people ask me about," with Bañuls adding, "It would be really Last of Us kind of."

Bañuls went on to say that, "Yeah, definitely, because it was a big inspiration. So yeah, if it's in modern days, it would be great."

In the A Plague Tale universe, the Prima Macula is an ancient curse that poisons the blood of certain families and is something that appears in every major A Plague Tale game, including Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. Demetriou thinks the Macula would work very well in a modern-day setting, because the plague is "fantastical."

"It would be amazing," Demetriou continued, "I would love that to fit into a modern-day setting. Yeah, it would be interesting to see what that would look like. I would love that."

Asobo Studio hasn't announced its next project just yet, but A Plague Tale game set in a time gamers are familiar with sounds awesome. Now, fans can pick up Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, which is available today on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.