Cyberpunk 2077’s Life Paths And Character Creation Sound Very Deep

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While The Witcher 3 saw you play as the fixed character of Geralt of Rivia, CD Projekt Red’s upcoming action-RPG Cyberpunk 2077 will feature a substantial character creator where there are few limits on who you are and what you can become.

CD Projekt Red wrapped up its Cyberpunk 2077 livestream, where we saw new gameplay showcasing separate playstyles. In the deep dive livestream, we also got a glimpse at the game’s character creator, which first has you selecting from different backgrounds or “life paths”–Corporate, Nomad, and Street Kid. Each path impacts Cyberpunk 2077’s beginning, with you starting in different areas of Night City depending on your background.

CD Projekt Red’s lead quest designer Pawel Sasko said this choice is taken into consideration throughout the entire game. “You, as the player, can actually associate yourself with Nomads [or] Corporate people, or you can be part of the streets,” Sasko explained. “It’s really up to you what path you want to pick through the main story.” You aren’t bound to your life path, but your origin will be “[taken] from the very beginning till the very end [of the game].” As such, Sasko said you can use these origins to your advantage, allowing you to exploit and, perhaps, unlock branching dialogues and quests depending on your interactions with your chosen group.

We also saw a brief look at the character creator screen in the Cyberpunk 2077 deep dive livestream. You start by selecting a body type, then you can define your appearance, fine-tuning things like skin color and facial features. Following this, you’re taken to the attributes menu, where you slot points into traits like “Cool” and “Intelligence.” On top of attributes, you have skills that further define your character’s intricacies. One skill is called “Cold Blood,” unlocked via the “Cool” attribute, and it grants you extra damage and survivability when your health is nearly depleted. Using skills repeatedly results in you getting better with that skill and unlocking perks in that skill’s tree. For example, with special perks added to your “Athletics” skill, you can run while carrying a dead body, potentially bolstering your stealth playthrough.

Cyberpunk 2077’s “Cool” attribute pertains to your ability to handle pressure, not how stylish you are in-game. The cooler you are, the better things like accuracy will be. And the cooler you are, the better you’ll be able to handle tense dialogue situations.

There are a few other details to note out of the Cyberpunk 2077 deep dive livestream. CD Projekt Red announced that it has hired real city planners to construct and flesh out the fictional Night City. The studio established a brand-new team dedicated to sidequests after how successful they were in The Witcher 3. Finally, you won’t have to worry about cool-factor and functionality in Cyberpunk 2077, as CD Projekt Red is aiming to address the common RPG discrepancy between how something looks and how well it functions.

CD Projekt Red confirmed Cyberpunk 2077 will feature non-binary gender options in the character creator. “You know, we really want to make a video game that’s really inclusive,” senior concept artist Marthe Jonkers said. “Of course, if you tackle certain subjects then you will expect people to have an opinion about it and we respect that. And it’s good that people give us feedback.”

Cyberpunk 2077 is set to launch on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 16, 2020. The game is also scheduled to release for Google Stadia some time in 2020.

PAX West is officially underway, and there’s a lot more news to come out of the event. Be sure to check out our hub for more news on Cyberpunk 2077 and more.

The Power Of WoW Classic Is More Than Just Nostalgia

I died eight times before level 10 in World of Warcraft Classic. Compared to vanilla World of Warcraft back in 2005, that was probably a lot more efficient than the first time around. In ‘live,’ or ‘retail,’ or whatever we’re calling the current version of World of Warcraft, you really only die in the open world if you make a stupid mistake. WoW Classic is a surprising reminder that the game once seemed to be deeply comfortable with making players fall on their face.

In the two years since WoW Classic was announced at BlizzCon 2017, the mood has shifted dramatically. At first, the majority of the sentiment wondered, “Why would someone want to go back?” But a hardcore tribe of vanilla WoW fans, so serious about the old-school experience they’d been chasing black market private servers to get that OG feeling any way they could, felt very different.

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In recent months, with the Classic beta giving many players and streamers a chance to look back and let the nostalgic love flow back into their hearts, it seemed like everyone was ready for launch day.

Indeed, too many were ready for launch day.

The queues were ridiculous, over 20,000 strong and half-day wait times on some servers. Lucky for some, rotten for others, server crashes saw the queues rotate a little faster, but those who crashed out found themselves sent to the back of the queue. Blizzard launched extra servers to spread the load and help people just get in and have fun. But the reason so many stayed in those queues instead of jumping to an easy server is a big part of what exactly people were coming back to Classic to look for.

No, not the queue itself. “A true day one experience lol” was the catch cry, but the reason people stayed put was fundamental–people made plans to play with old friends and reform old guilds, and once the plans were in place you couldn’t just swap to a new server on the fly.

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Classic is all about community. Even in those early levels the game plays in ways akin to why people are falling in love with more recent games that are lauded for their difficulty. Yes, World of Warcraft isn’t really a ‘hard’ game in the same way something like Dark Souls is, but to succeed with minimal delay, you need friends to get by.

Back in 2005, WoW was seen as so ubiquitous in Silicon Valley circles it built a reputation as a kind of ‘new golf’. A place where people would meet and hang out. Run a dungeon together. Do some fishing. Discuss business while sitting in Booty Bay.

Some of that may have been all talk, but in my own experience as an early-career tech and games journalist I did make friends with future colleagues through the game. I joined a guild and spent time regularly with people I’d met in the industry, which helped solidify work contacts and networks. If I’d started World of Warcraft in more recent years, the years since automated random dungeon and raid queues, and tools that let you group with people without ever needing to type a word or know their names, I don’t feel like I’d have built such friend networks through the game so easily.

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During the first few days of WoW Classic, with everyone at low levels, sharing scant resources and mobs in the earliest areas of the game, spontaneous groups would form as people helped each other complete quests to progress a little faster and with minimal loss of life. I was invited to group while on my very first quest at level one–“Hey, we need to kill some stuff. Let’s kill stuff together.”

The global chat channel in a multiplayer game was actually full of nice and helpful comments for once, as people answered each other’s questions or requests for help. It was like a time before social media had made us all (or at least me) the jaded cynics we’ve become.

Named mobs for early quests were a particular problem. At first, people just formed circles and partied up in groups of five. If you got the first hit, lucky you and your four friends. But then rumors started to circulate that some servers were forming spontaneous queues for bottleneck kills. If I hadn’t seen the screenshots I’d have thought it was an urban myth.

On one of the servers that was launched to alleviate the overly-long queues, I jumped in to just to be in the game, running around, having some fun. One of the most common chat questions was a concern that this particular server, shiny and new, with no queue at the door, was too empty. People wanted to be playing but they wanted to be playing with as many other people around as possible. Delays while waiting for boars or quest bosses were less worrisome than the idea we might end up in Azeroth alone. Again.

Over the years, Blizzard has made World of Warcraft a game that gives everyone something to do anytime they want to do it. Dungeons. Raids. Battlegrounds. Arenas. World Quests. Mount collecting. Pet collecting. Pet battles. Fishing tournaments. Transmog outfits. Whether you have five minutes or five hours, there’s something to do. And there’s an easy way to jump in and start doing it the second you log on. But all the changes had raised one big question that seemed impossible for Blizzard to answer: “Can you let me play WoW the way it used to be?”

World of Warcraft Classic delivers it. And the reasons to play it goes beyond its graphics and mechanics.

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With all those options in the main game today, the easy systems to queue up and Get Things Done like a productivity specialist, the focus became a series of success metrics and trinket collections (and I do love my trinket collection, by the way). The world itself, Azeroth, and the friends you collected along the way, took a back seat. We were gaming in a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, but we were doing it alone.

During one moment in WoW Classic I saw someone calling for signatures for a new guild they were forming. I was on the other side of the zone, but it just seemed like the nice thing to do. I’m not here to blast out XP as fast as possible, I thought; I’m here to interact. To enjoy the journey. I let them know I’d help, finished my current quest then headed back to the inn and signed up.

The guild was called “There And Back Again”.

Them: “Thanks for the signature. Once the guild is formed feel free to leave, of course.”

Me: “Great name. I think maybe I’ll stay.”

Haunting Of Hill House Season 2 Cast Announced

Netflix’s critically acclaimed horror anthology series that kicked of with The Haunting Of Hill House last year is returning for a second season with an all-new spooky house and a healthy mix of new and returning cast. Season 2, titled The Haunting Of Bly Manor, will return at some point next year.

Details about the plot are still relatively sparse, but director Mike Flannagan has been slowly rolling out casting announcements on social media. Today, he announced that Catherine Parker, who played Poppy Hill in Season 1, will be returning. She’ll be joined by T’nia Miller (Years and Years, Free Rain), Rahul Kohli (Supergirl, iZombie), and Amelia Eve (Mens Sana, Big Boys Don’t Cry). Miles and Flora, the two children at the heart of Bly Manor’s mystery will be played by Benjamin Ainsworth, and Amelie Smith (EastEnders).

These cast members will join Hill House veterans Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas and Kate Seigel, all of whom will be playing new roles for the new season in the style of other horror anthology series like American Horror Story.

Like Hill House before it, The Haunting Of Bly Manor will be based on a horror classic. The 1898 Henry James novella, The Turn of The Screw, will provide the inspiration for this season–though, if Hill House is any indication, we can expect Flanagan and company to come up with all sorts of interesting twists and turns that will keep Bly Manor from becoming a predictable adaptation.

Man Of Medan, Blair Witch Out Today, And You Can Get Them Both On Sale

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As August comes to an end, we’re officially less than a month away from fall. To herald in the season, two of this year’s most anticipated horror games have just released, and on the same day: The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan (PS4, Xbox One, PC) and Blair Witch (Xbox One, PC). If you were planning to buy either game on Steam, you’ll want to know they’re both on sale already at Green Man Gaming. Plus, Man of Medan’s console versions are also getting price cuts.

The Dark Pictures: Man of MedanThe Dark Pictures: Man of Medan

While its MSRP is $30, The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan is already discounted to $26.09, and new customers can save an additional 15% with promo code HELLO15, dropping the price to $25.49. The PS4 and Xbox One version are discounted too at various retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Man of Medan is the latest from Supermassive Games, the team behind acclaimed survival horror adventure Until Dawn. The first in an anthology of story-driven, cinematic horror games, Man of Medan follows a group of American students on a holiday diving trip who soon find themselves trapped on a cursed ghost ship.

The game earned a 6/10 in GameSpot’s Man of Medan review, in which critic James O’Connor took issue with its weaker narrative and reliance on jump scares. He did praise its “smart and innovative” online co-op mode. “It is, without a doubt, the definitive way to experience Man of Medan, especially if you’re playing with another person who is familiar with the material,” he wrote. “Shared Story sees you both playing at the same time, taking control of different characters as their scenes play out simultaneously. You’ll both, eventually, get a turn with every character (if they live long enough), and often your paths will diverge. Once the five main characters meet after the initial prologue, Shared Story immediately offers a more engaging experience than the single-player campaign can.”

Despite less-than-stellar reviews, longtime Until Dawn fans will likely still want to dive in and get their first taste of The Dark Pictures anthology. You can grab Man of Medan for $25 at the following retailers.

See at Green Man Gaming See at Amazon

See at Target See at Walmart

Blair WitchBlair Witch

Inspired by the classic horror film franchise, Blair Witch is a first-person psychological horror game from Bloober Team, best known for creating the Layers of Fear games. Its list price is also $30, but new customers can get it for $25.49 with promo code HELLO15 at Green Man Gaming. You’ll get a Steam key with that purchase, but if you aren’t a new GMG customer, you can also buy it directly at Steam for $27. So far, it’s not on sale anywhere for Xbox One.

Blair Witch is set in 1996, when a boy goes missing in the Black Hills Forest in Maryland. You’ll play as Ellis, a police officer investigating his disappearance. We haven’t had a chance to review the game yet, but if you’re familiar with the Blair Witch franchise, you can probably guess what disturbing ways the story may unfold from there.

See at Green Man Gaming See at Steam

Green Man Gaming has some other solid deals available this weekend, including upcoming releases like Final Fantasy VIII Remastered (out Tuesday). You can check those deals out below.

*new customers only

Blasphemous Gets A Limited-Time PC Demo

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Blasphemous is a gothic pixel-art action-platformer that’s coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on September 10. Before then, however, PC players can sample the nightmarish world of Cvstodia early, courtesy of a demo that’s out on Steam right now. Be quick about it, though, because this early taste is only available until this Sunday, September 1.

In it, you play as The Pertinent One, the sole survivor of the massacre of the “Silent Sorrow.” Armed with a sword called the Mea Culpa and a pointy helmet filled with someone else’s blood, you’ll descend into a dangerous world only you can free from its twisted fate, discovering the “origin of your torment” in the process.

Developed by The Game Kitchen–whose only previous game is the psychological point-and-click horror game The Last Door–and published by Team17, Blasphemous promises “fast-paced, skilled combat” that combines with “a deep and evocative narrative core.” You’ll be able to explore a non-linear world, face off against gigantic bosses, acquire devastating new combos and special moves as part of its brutal combat, and customise your build with various combinations of Relics, Rosary Beads, Prayers, and Sword Hearts.

The demo showcases the starting areas of the game and its first boss. You can grab it now until September 1, or wishlist the game on Steam ahead of its September 10 release on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC for $24.99 // €24.99 // £19.99.

Borderlands 3 Diamond Loot Chest Super Deluxe Edition Unboxing – IGN First

Our IGN First game for August 2019 is Borderlands 3, and as the month draws to an end, we’re giving you one more look at the awesomeness of Borderlands 3 with an unboxing of its amazing Diamond Loot Chest Super Deluxe Edition.

To see all the real-life loot included inside, check out the video above.

The month of August brought us an onslaught of exciting Borderlands 3 first looks, including the first 14 minutes of Borderlands 3, a look at how Gearbox made true on its promise of Borderlands’ 1 billion guns, and plenty more.

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The Inspriation Behind Chilling New Comic ‘Something Is Killing the Children’

As the title suggests, Something Is Killing the Children is graphic and horrifying. When it was first announced, the comic seemed like it could be a Stranger Things riff, an adventure story about kids fighting a terrible monster. While it does have some of those elements, the first issue makes it abundantly clear that this story is going to take things to a much, much darker place.

“There are battles with monsters and whatnot, but this book is coming from the darkest possible emotions and those are the emotions I want to explore in the series,” writer and series creator James Tynion IV told IGN.

Tynion has been carrying the title of this series around for a long time. He originally attached it to a short story in college, but that story faded away while the title continued to rattle around in his brain. Even as Tynion moved to the big leagues, writing everything from Justice League Dark, Constantine: The Hellblazer and Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, ideas for Something Is Killing the Children would still come to him. It wasn’t until he brought these pieces to publisher Boom! Studios that he finally came up with the story that title was meant to tell.

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Time to Here Are the Best Graphics Cards From Both Team Green and Team Red

The GPU market is in a pretty interesting place right now. Nvidia introduced a 1.5 version of Turing with Super versions of its high-end RTX GPUs and some of its most affordable GTX graphics cards yet. Meanwhile, AMD introduced its Radeon VII and its first Navi graphics card are shaking things up a bit by giving gamers a 7nm GPU alternative to Nvidia’s fully-fleshed out Turing line-up.

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Stylish New Nintendo Switch Controllers Are Available for Preorder

The Nintendo Switch has loads of fantastic local multiplayer games. But the exorbitant prices Nintendo charges for first-party controllers means you basically have to take out another mortgage to stock up on extras. Thankfully, Power A offers a number of high quality options at affordable prices. Its upcoming set of Switch controllers cost $49.99 each and they sport beautiful officially licensed Nintendo-themed designs. Some of them will ship on September 15, while others are slated for September 30. Let’s check ’em out.

Satin Blue Chrome Zelda Nintendo Switch Controller

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Post-Apocalyptic Tactics Game Overland Launches Soon

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Post-apocalyptic turn-based tactics game Overland–think XCOM crossed with The Oregon Trail–launches for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on September 19, a new trailer has revealed.

Indie developer Finji’s latest game puts you in control of a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic America. You’ll travel across the country in a vehicle, stopping to scavenge for supplies, rescue fellow travellers, and fend off the game’s peculiar rock monsters. There are also dogs you can pet, and they even wear backpacks. Good doggos.

Each level and character you meet on your journey is randomly generated, making each road trip different from the last. There’s an emphasis on grabbing what you can and escaping back to your car before being overrun, and you’ll have to make some tough choices about who to save and where to travel to next as you continue the fight to survive.