For Dungeon Masters and adventurers around the world looking for a new Dungeons & Dragons story to play, there is a new D&D adventure book headed your way this September. Titled Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, the latest story brings players back to the frozen world of Icewind Dale, adds some new mechanics, and focuses on horror.
During a press event, the latest book was revealed by Chris Perkins, game designer and editor of Dungeons & Dragons for Wizards of the Coast. “It is a horror story, set in Icewind Dale,” Perkins explained. “This story focuses more on modern horror. It’s an adventure best served cold.”
In the world of D&D, the Frostmaiden is a powerful entity, which many would call a god, and she’s long been associated with Icewind Dale. In Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, a larger story unfolds–which can be broken down into smaller parts for players who don’t want to play the whole campaign–and in addition to the main adventure, there is a new mechanic to help define your character: secrets.
Main cover
Perkins explained that secrecy is one of the themes for the new adventure, and the goal for the players is to uncover Icewind Dale’s greatest secret. Additionally, during character creation, players will get their own secrets to help drive their personal stories. This is something they can choose to share with the group or keep to themselves–creating paranoia within the party. Some secrets are simple while others are terrifying.
The campaign starts players at Level 1 and it is scaled to Level 12. The story is set 100 years after the last Icewind Dale campaign. As mentioned, there is a lot of horror in this story, and Perkins mentioned that The Thing, The Shining, In the Mouth of Madness, and Alien are all the inspirations for the book. That’s a lot of horror movies revolving around paranoia.
Principal rules designer Jeremy Crawford explained that the new book is filled with new monsters. It may be the most monsters introduced in a new book so far. Also, survival will come more into play considering the landscape.
There are new rules for avalanches and blizzards, and there are new minigames as well. One that was mentioned was The Goliath Sport, which sees the gigantic mountain folk competing in a variety of games. And speaking of Goliaths, they are–once again–playable in the campaign, but there are a few tweaks. Goliaths will now have resistance to cold damage, which makes perfect sense.
Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden will release on September 15 with two different covers–one of which is only available in game stores, featuring the art of Hydro74. There is also a dice set coming out which features a map of Icewind Dale, so you know where your party is located in this vast world.
West of Dead, a western twin-stick shooter, is out today on Game Pass for Xbox One and PC. The game follows a stranger as they attempt to free Purgatory from mysterious forces so the dead may pass on. With a stylish isometric view, the run based game combines twin-stick controls with cover-based shooting mechanics.
The game is an amalgamation of every idea developer Upstream Arcade wanted to pursue. In a post on Xbox Wire Adam Langridge, co-founder and developer of Upstream Arcade said that the game was a pursuit of fitting as many ideas in as he and co-founder Imkan Kayati could.
Langridge said he wanted to make a new kind of cover shooter, but also loved twin-stick shooters and permadeath games and procedural generation. Kayati said he loved westerns and horror games. Both said they wanted to make a game with a comic book art style and explore themes of fear and light.
“A smart person would maybe have decided to focus on a few of those things and abandon the rest. We’re not that smart,” Langridge said. “We decided that this hodgepodge of ideas felt like something different and interesting and something we really really wanted to do.”
The end result of that lengthy list of ideas was West of Dead, a game that combines all of those ideas together under the guise of fighting through purgatory as a cowboy with a flaming skull, narrated by Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy).
The main gameplay revolves around cover-based twin-stick shooting, channeling old fashioned western shootouts. You move from cover to cover, planning out tactics and reloads around enemies closing in on you from all directions.
“To bridge these two flavors of action, you are kitted out with a lot of tools to use, whether diving to avoid bullets, sliding into cover, or vaulting from one side of cover to another, there is always a route to safety,” Langridge said.
The art style of West of Dead combines comic book art style with a gothic tone to create a creepy graphic novel aesthetic. West of Dead is available now on Xbox One Game Pass and Game Pass for PC and is coming to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in August.
Speaking to GameSpot as part of Play For All, Vincke said he didn’t have an exact number to share, but that players can expect to “be busy” when it launches. “That’s early access–the actual complete game is going to be much bigger than that,” Vincke continued. You can watch the full interview below.
Vincke also explained that the first act will have a lot of what Larian Studios hopes to have locked for the game’s eventual release, but that some content that you’ll be able to play could still be cut as development continues. You’ll be restricted to a certain level cap during early access, but Vincke says the exact number is still being decided on.
After early access, Vincke says he and his team are ready to react to player feedback, making changes that make sense while introducing more mechanics and features. We’ll release more classes, we’ll release probably extra origin stories, separate regions,” Vincke continued. “You’ll see more and more features come online, more mechanics, the user-interface will be going through changes. Pretty much everything you expect from early access will be happening with this game.”
Baldur’s Gate III is hopefully launching in early access on PC in August, and is currently also scheduled to launch on Google Stadia. Console versions are not currently in development, according to Larian Studios.
GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.
More Electronic Arts titles have popped up on Steam today, joining a bunch of games the publisher has recently released on Valve’s digital storefront. The Sims 4 and all its expansion content, Dead Space 3, A Way Out, and Titanfall 2 are new to the PC platform, following a host of games that have popped up on Steam recently.
The releases come just ahead of EA Play 2020, the virtual version of the publisher’s yearly E3 fan event that takes place later today. Not all of the publisher’s games are available on Steam just yet, as Apex Legends, for instance, remains Origin-only on PC.
To mark the release of the new games, they’re all on sale, as is their DLC (of which there is a ton for Sims 4). These range from 30% to 75% off.
Dead Space 3 — $10 (normally $20)
The Sims 4 — $20 (normally $40)
Titanfall 2 — $9.89 (normally $30)
A Way Out — $15 (normally $30)
Previously, almost all of EA’s games on PC were only available on its Origin digital distribution platform. That’s changed recently, though, with a number of big, notable releases hitting Steam as well. Just this month, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, Battlefield 5, Need For Speed: Heat, and Mass Effect 3 have made the transition from Origin to Steam. They follow EA’s big hit from last year, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which hit Steam when it was released in November.
In addition to Steam and Switch, it also seems EA starting to increase its support for virtual reality platforms. The newly announced Star Wars: Squadrons will be playable in VR from front to back, joining the previously announced Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.
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Bungie shared a few looks at what’s coming to Destiny 2 in the Beyond Light expansion on a charity livestream, confirming that the Destiny 1 Exotic hand cannon Hawkmoon will return to the game this fall. Hawkmoon was a fan favorite weapon, and it’ll get some slight tweaks when it makes its way to Destiny 2.
Director Luke Smith announced the return of Hawkmoon on Bungie’s charity Twitch stream to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. As of this writing, the stream has garnered more than $600,000 in donations. Bungie offered several “stretch goals” to encourage fans to donate, with Smith making the Hawkmoon announcement at the $500,000 mark.
In Destiny 1, Hawkmoon carried a perk called “Luck in the Chamber,” which caused one random bullet in the gun’s magazine to do significantly more damage than all the others. Some other guns had the Luck in the Chamber perk to get one bullet with bonus damage, but the thing that set Hawkmoon apart was that it carried three, which could make it extremely powerful if you got a lucky few shots in a row.
Smith said Hawkmoon would maintain that measure of luck, since it’s pretty essential to the gun’s identity. But it’ll be tweaked some in Destiny 2, it sounds like, to be better balanced for PvP activities.
Hawkmoon is making its return to Destiny 2 in the Beyond Light expansion, due this fall.
Bungie also showed off two other pieces of concept art from Beyond Light. The first gives a look at “Stasis,” a new material that’ll appear in Beyond Light that relates to the new Darkness powers that players will utilize in the expansion. The other shows a Legendary weapon that you’ll discover on the new location of Europa.
Guardians will wield the Darkness in the form of “Stasis” in the Beyond Light expansion. Here’s what Stasis will look like when it occurs naturally n Europa.This Legendary weapon will also pop up in Beyond Light, with a Europa-inspired color scheme.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga releases this October on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC, and Lego has announced a neat new way to merge physical Lego with the video game worlds created by TT Games. Select new Skywalker Saga Lego sets will include codes to unlock additional figures in the upcoming game. You can check out the coolest upcoming Lego Star Wars kits below, each of which releases September 1.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will overhaul the familiar Lego series in many ways by having an open-world filled with more than 500 characters, deeper mechanics, and a more refined look. It releases October 20, and if you’re interested in snagging a copy, make sure to take a peek at our Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga pre-order guide.
6478725 – Lego Star Wars Skywalker – New Lego Sets
This new Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar comes with 12 mini-builds, six mini-figures, and a foldout playmat. The 311-piece set includes Christmas-themed outfit such as Darth Vader in a sweater and D-O wearing a holiday hat. You can also build small vehicles such as Anakin’s Podracer and a Republic Cruiser. It comes with a code to unlock content in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
A build centered around Palpatine’s throne room in the Death Star, this 775-piece set includes five mini-figures, including Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, the Emperor, and two Royal Guards. The dynamic room has collapsing stairs and a rotating throne. You’ll get a code to unlock a character in the game, too.
Hailing from the new Disney park Stars: Galaxy’s Edge, the Resistance I-TS Transport is a large-scale build at 932 pieces. Once completed, the shuttle hatch opens to store mini-figures, and it has eight shooters total. You’ll get four mini-figures: Lieutenant Bek, Vi Moradi, Astromech Droid, and GNK Power Droid. The box contains a code that can be used to unlock content in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
This 248-piece build lets you make Anakin’s Jedi Interceptor. The ship’s cockpit opens to fit a mini-figure, and it’s fitted with spring-loaded shooters and foldable wings. The set comes with both Anakin and R2-D2 mini-figures.
The Razor Crest is part of The Mandalorian, not the Skywalker Saga. But interestingly, you’ll get a code to unlock content in the game with your purchase. A 1,023-piece build, the Razor Crest is Mando’s ship. Naturally, you get a Mando mini figure as well as a very tiny Baby Yoda figure. Additionally, the Razor Crest build comes with Greef Karga, IG-11, and Scout Trooper figures. The ship itself has a cargo hold with access ramps, spring-loaded shooters, and even an escape pod.
After a short Baldur’s Gate 3 demo we sat down with Larian’s founder Swen Vincke to talk about the early access plans as well as the huge scope of the game.
Currently the first act of the game that is realising with the early access version is bigger than the entirety of Divinity: Original Sin 2, with more to be added to the locations, classes, spells and races as development on BG3 continues.
While multiplayer will be in the game when Baldur’s Gate 3 (maybe) releases in early access in August 2020, there is not currently a Dungeon Master mode in development.
Outer Wilds was a surprise hit when it launched last year, earning a “superb” 9/10 in our review and earning its spot among our top 10 games of 2019. The debut game from a small studio that started out as a student project, Outer Wilds finally released on Xbox One and PC after almost seven years in development and has since been released on PlayStation 4; it’s also out on Steam today. If you’ve been looking to play on PS4, Limited Run Games is publishing a region-free physical PS4 copy of the game, and there’s also a fantastic bundle featuring both the physical version and a 2xLP vinyl from iam8bit for $75. The vinyl is also available separately for $40.
If you’ve played Outer Wilds, you know its soundtrack (created by Andrew Prahlow) is phenomenal, perfectly capturing the loneliness and beauty of exploring empty planets, reading transcripts from an abandoned civilization, and experiencing a world-ending supernova over and over. Music plays a huge role in Outer Wilds, as your fellow explorers each have a unique instrument that you can always hear off in the distance, and those melodies come together in a meaningful way by the end of the game. The “Black Hole” vinyl cover looks stunning, featuring album art by Outer Wilds concept artist Ian Jacobson. The inside of the vinyl looks like it includes hand-scrawled notes and doodles as if it’s an explorer’s notebook.
The vinyl appears to have some kind of exclusive bonus as well, but iam8bit’s listing is fittingly vague. “Even more secrets await within its grooves, but we’d be remiss in revealing those here and spoiling a delightful surprise,” the vinyl’s description reads. It’s expected to ship in Q3 2020.
If you just want the physical PS4 copy but not the vinyl, you can pre-order it for $35 directly from Limited Run; however, pre-orders will close on Sunday, July 19, so you have about a month to snag your copy. There’s also a stunning Explorer’s edition available for $60 that includes five postcards, four enamel pins, and a physical CD soundtrack with new arrangements. The physical game is expected to ship two to four months after the pre-order window closes.
GameSpot’s Outer Wilds review praised the game’s captivating story, mysterious world, and hand-crafted planets. “Outer Wilds’ deeply captivating narrative and plentiful mysteries push you further into exploring its richly varied and stunning solar system,” wrote Alessandro Barbosa. “By letting you chart your own course and piece together its mystery at your own pace, Outer Wilds makes each of its expeditions feel incredibly personal and absolutely unmissable.”
Editor’s note: You may have seen our spoiler-free The Last of Us Part II review, originally published on June 12, 2020. Due to a strict embargo, we were limited in what aspects of the game we could touch on in that review. While I critiqued the game in full for that embargo, there may be some parts of the review that could use more explanation. Now that the embargo has lifted, I’ve expanded on my thoughts here; this review has the same arguments and score as the first one and is simply more detailed in my analysis. Note that this review contains spoilers, including one major character death.
The Last of Us Part II begins with serious tonal whiplash. One moment, Ellie and her close friend Dina are becoming more than friends in a basement filled with weed plants and Naughty Dog porn puns; the next, Joel is being savagely beaten to death with a golf club. It’s the first of many, many gruesome deaths. Some happen whether you want them to or not, in intimate cutscenes that are hard to watch, while others happen just because an NPC got in between you and your objective and killing them was the easiest thing to do. Either way, that brief glimpse of happiness at the beginning is left very much in the dust.
But while the scale and severity of death and loss in this game is incredibly high, The Last of Us Part II is more a character study than a musing on the nature of violence. On that front, the story of Ellie, her playable foil Abby, and their quests for revenge and redemption is a gripping and harrowing one, and I found myself deeply emotionally entangled with each woman and her strengths and flaws. The bloodshed is very much a part of that story, but it’s far from the most effective one, and it’s where the game stumbles a bit.
Throughout the game, I often wanted to stop Ellie from making the choices she was making. Joel’s death sends her on a relentless quest for revenge, and I had a hard time buying into it. Ellie’s life in the settlement of Jackson is a good one–she has a new girlfriend, and it’s about as nice a place to live as you could expect from a post-apocalyptic community. It was hard for me at first to understand why she’d want to risk all that for a dangerous revenge quest when she could process her grief among friends and loved ones in relative safety.
But Ellie decides to get revenge, so you go. As Ellie, you play three days in Seattle as you hunt down any and all the people present when Abby killed Joel. They’re all members of the Washington Liberation Front, or WLF for short, and much of your time is spent killing random “Wolves” from one combat scenario to the next. You collect resources and weapons, upgrade those weapons, unlock new skill paths, and generally get very used to killing people (and infected) as the scrappy, agile Ellie.
Like I said in my spoiler-free review, the combat is intense and exhilarating. Ellie’s movements are smooth enough that they almost look scripted; you can duck and dodge in a fight and deliver a return blow with a series of button presses that translate into a strangely graceful dance. You can accidentally alert an enemy to your presence only to slip through a tight space in the wall, vault through a window, and outrun your pursuer through a building to reestablish your cover and gain the upper hand. You can also easily get surrounded and die horribly, whether you’re fighting people or infected.
Ellie with her bow and arrow, a favorite weapon for stealth.
Navigating any given combat scenario is a puzzle in which you have to figure out exactly how to get from point A to point B with the resources you have. I’m partial to stealth when possible, and it’s especially rewarding to decide how you’re going to silently kill each enemy with only a flimsy silencer, two arrows, and your default knife. Should you kill the blind clickers first because they’re strong and deadly, or should you kill the infected runners first because they can see you? Can you retrieve an arrow from a corpse to be reused on their friend? Most importantly, where’s the exit?
And, of course, it is brutal. Enemies use each other’s names and cry out when you kill their friends. Killing someone’s dog is a priority, as they can track your scent and maul you to death, and you have to hear them mourn the dog in real-time. But frankly, the fact that your enemies have names doesn’t make them any less in your way. You have to do what you have to do to get to the next location, and you want to do that to see where the story goes next. They might as well be anonymous at that point.
The fact that your enemies have names doesn’t make them any less in your way.
Overall, Ellie leaves an unbelievable amount of destruction in her wake in just three days. Day 3 itself ends in chaos, but before it can be resolved, the game cuts. The next thing you know, it’s Seattle Day 1 again, and you’re controlling Abby. This is where The Last of Us II contextualizes Ellie’s rampage, and it’s the entire reason the story works at all.
It can certainly be jarring to suddenly switch characters. In many ways, you have to start from scratch; you have a whole new set of weapons and skills to unlock, and Abby feels different in a fight. But you also know much of what happens to Abby’s friends, and on Day 1, you see a lot of ghosts. There’s a pang of sadness and overwhelming inevitability in every interaction you have with them; you wish you could change the outcome, but you can’t.
Abby in combat.
Like Ellie, Abby was driven by revenge–and she got it. Through flashbacks, you learn exactly what happened and where she’s come from, and it doesn’t take long to side with her over Ellie despite any lingering feelings you might have for Joel. Done with a years-long search for vengeance, hers is a story of redemption. Unlike with Ellie, it’s easy to get invested in Abby’s goals, which include saving her friend and then saving some kids. Her motivations are complicated, sure, but it’s not at all a struggle to get on board with what you’re doing.
Abby is clearly a foil to Ellie, just further along in her journey. Through Abby, you get to see what redemption for Ellie might look like, even after all that she’s done. It’s a testament to Abby’s characterization that I ended up more attached to her than I was to Ellie, and when the game ripped me back to Ellie’s perspective for the final stretch, I was more concerned about Abby’s safety than Ellie’s pain.
It’s a testament to Abby’s characterization that I ended up more attached to her than I was to Ellie.
Like Ellie, though, Abby still kills a lot of people. Abby’s main enemy is a religious group called the Seraphites, and they, too, are composed of mostly anonymous soldier types. They do get some humanization through Abby’s companion, an exiled Seraphite boy named Lev, but it’s about the same as that of the Wolves: just enough for the story, and not enough to make you change how you fight. In Abby’s case, the onslaught of combat against human enemies feels more at odds with her character development, especially by Day 3, and a lot of that violence goes unexamined. Neither Abby nor Ellie faces real consequences for most of those deaths.
For both characters, this disconnect between the gameplay and the grander narrative is compounded by looting and collectible-hunting. Looting during a fight is exciting, especially when you find the one extra bullet you need or a bit of health that can keep you going. But more often than not, I’d loot and look for collectibles only after I’d killed every enemy in the vicinity. It’s far easier and safer, for one, and I didn’t want to miss any of the interesting sub-plots found in scattered notes and photographs just because I wanted to kill fewer people.
Both Ellie and Abby tend to leave destruction in their wake.
Most of the time, there aren’t any collectibles to find in combat-heavy areas. But there are occasionally notes and things to find when enemies are around, and as a result, I ended up scouring every corner of every area in the hopes of finding something cool. Because most combat arenas give you multiple avenues of attack and escape, though, I ended up backtracking through most of them to try to find things, and that can severely disrupt the pacing. The nooks and crannies that work well in combat just become one more place to look for a note or trading card, and the fact that you’re looking for trading cards at all often feels too game-y for the otherwise sobering tone.
I ended up enabling an accessibility option called high-contrast mode to help with my collectible hunt, not because it was difficult, but because I was getting annoyed. When toggled on, it mutes the background, removes textures, and highlights interactable objects and enemies. I used it after clearing an area of enemies to speed up the looting part, and while it wasn’t the most elegant solution, it did help the pacing. It’s one of a litany of accessibility options, too, which allow you to fine-tune the gameplay, sound, and visuals to your needs. It’s a commendable suite that’s incredibly inclusive, though I enabled an option just to circumvent a gameplay annoyance rather than to fit a need.
Abby is a fantastic character in her own right, and the way the game pits her against Ellie is what makes the story powerful.
Despite those annoyances, finding collectibles and piecing together the stories held within them is rewarding and paints a picture of the outbreak as it developed through the years. A bank robbery gone wrong sticks out as a favorite, and there are quite a few other stories worth finding. A lot of the time, seeking out these collectibles will force you to get creative–things like breaking windows to bypass a locked door or swinging on a cable to get to an area that’s just out of reach. There’s nothing so difficult that you feel like a genius for figuring it out, but it does make you feel appropriately resourceful.
It’s a bleak, pessimistic world, and exploration issues aside, I didn’t exactly want to leave it. The ending is devastating, and I almost wanted more time in-game to reflect on it. I instead put the game down for a full week after I was done so I could fully process what had happened.
In the original Last of Us, I wanted to make Joel’s bad decisions right along with him; I knew it was “wrong,” in a sense, but I wanted to save Ellie anyway. In Part II, I wanted nothing to do with Ellie’s bad decisions. There’s no “oh god, I’m the monster” moment; just profound sadness about all the pain she’s caused. Without Abby, none of that works. Abby is a fantastic character in her own right, and the way the game pits her against Ellie is what makes the story powerful. It’s a tragic, heartbreaking exploration of the consequences of the first game, even if not all your actions here have real consequences.
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Like its predecessor, The Last of Us Part 2 is a brutal game in which you’ll have to fight for survival. There are a whole bunch of people who want to kill you in Naughty Dog’s post-apocalyptic world, and only some of them are the fungally infected monsters who will rip out your throat and eat you alive. To make it through, you’re going to need a lot of skills, both for staying hidden to avoid danger and for killing things and people before they have a chance to kill you.
Check out the video above, where we’ve put together seven essential tips that will help you get used to the post-apocalypse, make the most of your game, and help Ellie survive to exact her revenge.
If you’re a fan of The Last of Us, you might think you have a pretty good handle on how to stay alive as you patrol the area around Jackson or venture into the Seattle QZ. But protagonist Ellie has a bunch of new abilities for you to master this time out, which can have a big impact on the way you play. There are new enemies and challenges to face, as well, and they’re out for your blood.
What’s more, Naughty Dog has included a bunch of new features for accessibility, allowing you to tune much of The Last of Us Part 2 to be exactly the experience you want, and to offer your ideal challenge. Watch the video above for more on what you’ll need to know about The Last of Us Part 2, and stay tuned to GameSpot.com for more The Last of Us Part 2 guides, Easter eggs, and coverage.
