Outward 2 Announced, Aims to Improve Survival RPG Gameplay in “Every Aspect”

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's new patch, out today, takes another stab at improving the graphical and frame rate aspects of the game.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 has arrived, and the game is a bit of beast on pretty much any hardware you’ll play it on. Not only is it a “dynamic” 30fps on current-gen consoles (in other words, often under 30fps) but not even a high end PCs are free from troubles – Wccftech’s reviewer Alessio Palumbo had issues despite rocking an RTX 4090 and a Ryzen 7800X3D. A lack of promised DLSS 3 at launch also means there are limited ways to smooth over the problems.

Protorelic quests are a big part of 's side content, but they're definitely not all equal in quality. These side objectives task Cloud and company with tracking down pieces of armor associated with Gilgamesh, a recurring character who started out as an villain. Completing every quest can be rewarding, but the road there is often rocky.

Steam Family Sharing has long been one of the handier features of Valve’s platform, although it’s always had a few limitations. Family Sharing lets you share your library with another Steam users, but only one person could access said library at once, regardless of what specific game you were playing. That could start to be a bit of a headache, particularly if you had a lot of people in your “family.”

The Dungeons and Dragons license enjoyed one of its biggest ever success stories in gaming last year with Baldur’s Gate 3, so it’s no surprise that the owner of the IP, Wizards of the Coast, intends to expand its presence in the medium as much as possible. And while there’s no doubt that we’ll be seeing more large-scale DnD RPGs similar to Baldur’s Gate in the future, it looks like we’re going to get other, more experimental games as well.

Following the massive success of Baldur's Gate 3, Hasbro and Wizard's of the Coast have approved Disney Dreamlight Valley developer Gameloft Montreal to work on a brand new Dungeons and Dragons survival-RPG. The 2023 Game of the Year Baldur's Gate 3 was seen by many as a return to form for Dungeons and Dragons video games, and the IP's owners are keen to keep the momentum rolling with another upcoming title based on the classic franchise.

If you’ve been interested in the BitCraft crafting survival MMORPG, you may have had a few search conflicts with Bitcraft, the crypto token. Given crypto and NFTs’ infamous history thus far with gaming, this may probably be an issue for those remotely interested in the game, but the BitCraft MMORPG devs have a very strong message: BitCraft (MMORPG) contains no well-known web3 components. 

Among its many highlights, FinalFantasy VII Rebirth makes simple sidequests a lot more engaging than I had expected. Take an early-game sidequest called When Words Won’t Do. On a surface level, it’s a simple escort mission where players must get a dog from Under Junon to Crow’s Nest unscathed. I did not initially have high hopes for this sidequest due to the poor reputation of escort missions; thankfully, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth defied that fate. To make this optional content more worthwhile, Square Enix gave it a strong narrative backbone.

Back in late 2020 new Montreal-based studio Reflector Entertainment made a bit of splash when they revealed Unknown 9: Awakening at The Game Awards. The game’s reveal cinematic was very impressive, and next-gen consoles had just launched, so there was some hope that this was perhaps what we could expect from the new generation (sadly, not quite). Reflector also had ambitious plans for a full Unknown 9 multimedia universe with novels, comics, and more announced. Annnd then we didn’t really hear anything further about Unknown 9 for years, to the point many suspected it was vaporware.

What exactly can Xbox Series X/S and PS5 owners expect from Dragon’s Dogma 2 in terms of performance? It’s been an open question, with answers being surprisingly hard to come by – at first, we heard it might be targeting 30fps, but analysis of footage seemed to indicate that wasn’t necessarily the case. Capcom stepped in to say the game would have an “uncapped” framerate, which… didn’t exactly clear things up.

Following its decision to cut six percent of its workforce last March, EA has announced another round of layoffs — this time affecting five percent of staff (around 670 employees) — as it moves away from «future licensed IP» toward its «owned IP, sports, and massive online communities».

When will it end? According to GamesIndustry.biz, Electronic Arts announced today that it will be laying off approximately 5% of its workforce which equates to around 670 people. In a note sent out to EA staff, CEO Andrew Wilson indicated the move is part of the company “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.”