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Starfield will have over 1,000 planets to explore but only four souls to romance. Harvey noted this amusing discrepancy last week, following Todd Howard’s announcement that only the four main Constellation companions—basically the optional sidekicks in Starfield who will presumably fight alongside you but, more importantly, carry your excess loot—will be romanceable. 

This, alongside Baldur’s Gate 3’s extremely long runtime, has triggered another round of discourse about “quality versus quantity”. One qualified voice to join that discussion is David Gaider, a former BioWare narrative designer who has worked on the Dragon Age and Baldur’s Gate series, as well as Knights of the Old Republic. He’s especially reputable, given how romance-heavy Dragon Age is, for example, and how fondly the series’ bonds are remembered.

“I’d say this is a good thing,” Gaider tweeted, referring to the four romance options, “and hopefully speaks of a ‘quali…

Fans of giant shoulder pads and yelling rejoice: Games Workshop’s Skulls event is back for another year on May 23, with the promise of plenty of new reveals for Warhammer videogames. A showing for the upcoming Space Marine 2 and something new for Boltgun seem to be the focus, but we’re also promised news on Rogue Trader, Total War: Warhammer, Blood Bowl 3, Tacticus, Battlesector, Warpforge, and Darktide. I’m sure there’ll be at least one or two surprises we’ve not been let in on yet too. 

Actor Rahul Kohli (known for TV shows Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Bly Manor) will be hosting the announcements. He did the same last year, as well as voice acting for the game Boltgun—all part of his endearing ongoing campaign to replace Henry Cavill as the internet’s favourite handsome celebrity nerd. You certainly can’t knock his credentials, my man’s out here priming his Orks on Instagram between shoots.  

We’ve not tended to see huge news out of these shows in …

Right on the heels of other announcements this week, The Sims 4 has also revealed its next expansion: Growing Together. Compared with recent expansions like High School Years and Cottage Living, this sounds like a much more conceptual collection of features in which you’ll “strengthen family bonds, make friends or enemies, and discover your Sims’ truest selves.” It will launch on March 16, just two days after the free base game infants update.

In the reveal video above you can spot new activities for kids of all ages like bikes, losing teeth, and full family activities like working on a treehouse. It’s a bit tough to grasp the specifics of the features list from the trailer, but Maxis has it all laid out in its store page.

“Unlock and change personality traits throughout your Sims’ lives as they cope with midlife crises, respond to family requests to move in, and more,” it says, which sounds like a list of existential threats to me. 

“Your Sim will now h…

In another Behind the Sims livestream, which also announced the much-awaited babies update, Maxis got to talking about The Sims 5 (codenamed “Project Rene”). Maxis is still very clear that Project Rene is years away, but did want to set the record straight on multiplayer. The Sims 5 will have multiplayer, as it’s teased already, but it’s definitely not an MMO. Sorry, Sims Online hopefuls.

It’s not an unwarranted clarification, given that we’d been told the next Sims game would include some kind of multiplayer but no details beyond that. Whether you considered the possibility of a Sims Online revival a threat or a wish, you can put it to bed. Maxis brought out game director Grant Rodiek to talk a bit about the next game, including the scope of multiplayer.

“One thing to keep in mind is that Project Rene is not an MMO,” Rodiek says. “It is not this public, shared space where everything you do is always with other people.”

Rodiek explains that Project Rene is t…

Developer Alexandre Spindler and Studio Drama recently revealed Unrecord, a first-person shooter with a striking bodycam perspective which frequently sells the illusion of being real camera footage.

It’s so convincing that some questioned whether they were looking at a pre-rendered, on-rails game, or perhaps actual video footage. A few hours after the announcement, Spindler responded: “It’s not a rail shooter or an FMV, it is indeed an FPS and these images are from real-time gameplay, not pre-rendered.”

Today, Spindler went further, uploading a new video of the game (embedded above and in the tweet below) which includes the Unreal Engine user interface. Near the end of the video, he frees up the camera, no-clipping through the level to prove that it’s genuinely an FPS with free movement. “For those who thought Unrecord was fake or a video, sorry,” Spindler wrote.

A lot contributes to the believability of Unrecord’s “bodycam footage,” and it isn’t all raw graphical …

Twitch streamers will be able to block banned users from not just chatting on their streams, but watching their streams entirely, using a new optional setting coming in September. That’s a big change from now, where a banned user can still watch streams without chat.

It’s not the last thing Twitch is considering—the possibility of IP bans for blocked users will, in the future, avoid people getting around their bans by signing out or creating a new account.

As reported by Eurogamer, the upcoming change was pointed out by Twitch streamer Lowco in a post on X, née Twitter. It’s currently unavailable to everyone, but will become widely available in September.

The function will be optional, but when turned on it will mean that banned users instantly lose access to live streams from the banning channel—that means they’ll instantly lose both chat and stream. It won’t stop the banned users from watching on-demand videos or clips, though Lowco intimates t…

As the games industry becomes ever-larger, and players become more connected, the problem of toxic behaviour has moved from a background concern to a major issue for developers, publishers and, in extreme cases, the authorities. Now, in a move that will be welcomed by many, publisher Ubisoft has announced it’s signed an agreement with the UK police (thanks, BBC) that will see the worst cases of online harassment and threats fast-tracked to the force.

It’s the first such arrangement of its kind and based around Ubisoft’s Newcastle-based customer relationship centre, one of five that the publisher operates globally. These places engage with the positive side of gaming communities, handle customer issues like refunds, and also deal with the toxic stuff. 

The agreement is with Northumbria Police Force and will see specialist officers training Ubisoft staff about negative online behaviour, as well as Ubisoft having the fast track option for extreme cases where it’…

Valheim developers Iron Gate have been “getting a lot of questions regarding mods” lately, so the team has issued a statement clarifying its stance on Valheim mods in general and more specific aspects of the game’s relationship with unofficial addons.

“First of all, while we don’t have any official mod support, we are definitely happy to see that people are engaging with our game and creating their own mods for it,” Iron Gate opens in a Steam news update. They go on to describe having a creative community around Valheim as “flattering” before getting to a more serious disclaimer about Iron Gate’s liability regarding mods, pointing out that “any creating and using of mods is done at your own risks,” and that “we can’t guarantee mods will be compatible with newer versions of the game.”

Iron Gate then moves on to what is apparently the most popular question surrounding Valheim mods, namely paid mods. The developer is blunt on this point. “Iron Gate does not condone locking …

The best high-performance gaming is no longer a dream for the future. The hardware necessary to pump out 4K resolution gameplay at high frame rates is here. AMD’s latest CPUs and GPUs can work together to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of games. For those gamers looking to push their performance levels to the limit, AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX brings the graphical might, while the new Ryzen 7 7800X3D provides potent CPU performance to keep frame rates high.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is AMD’s flagship graphics processor. It’s remarkably capable in a wide range of gaming scenarios. In competitive shooters, its ability to spit out high frame rates at any resolution isn’t likely to leave you craving more performance. Even in demanding AAA games with more extreme graphics, it can keep up. Ray tracing isn’t off the table, either, with the card able to provide smooth gameplay at 4K in Far Cry 6 even with Ultra settings and ray tra…