Hello, friends!
It’s a very news-heavy edition of Pastimes this week, so I’m going to keep the preamble brief and get right to it. Here’s a rundown of the biggest gaming news of the last few days. There’s a lot of it. E3 doesn’t even officially get started until later today.
*collapses into a pool of exhaustion*
Elden Ring exclamation mark
A lot of people are very, very excited for Elden Ring. That’s totally understandable, given the stellar track record of FromSoftware and director Hidetaka Miyazaki over the last decade or so and the fact George R.R. Martin took time out of his busy schedule of not finishing The Winds of Winter* to collaborate on the game. Two years after announcing Elden Ring and not saying much else about it in the interim, From finally showed off gameplay in the first proper trailer.
It’s Dark Souls with a horse! Dressage Souls. Demon’s Steeds. I’m working too hard to make a joke out of this, so just enjoy the trailer:
There were plenty of hints that Elden Ring would show up at Summer Game Fest, but a January release date was a surprise. Here’s hoping From can stick to that for the sake of the person behind the Elden Ring daily news channel on YouTube. Their reaction to the trailer premiere is just wonderful and pure, and so were messages from the chat on their stream.
* I jest. I know he’s busy with other things. Just not The Winds of Winter, perhaps.
Xbox everywhere
Three days before its big E3 showcase, Xbox dropped some major news. The big takeaway is that Xbox Game Pass and cloud gaming are going to be everywhere: browsers, phones, tablets, the Xbox PC app, smart TVs, streaming sticks, pretty much every modern device with a screen this side of a PlayStation or Switch (at least for now).
That said, more Xbox hardware is in development, so Microsoft isn’t giving up on traditional consoles yet. It just doesn’t see them as completely necessary anymore.
Elsewhere, Microsoft is upgrading its cloud gaming servers to run on top-end Xbox Series X tech, more studio acquisitions might be in the pipeline, and there are plans to release at least one big first-party game every quarter.
Although Sony might be getting the lion’s share of attention from gamers right now with the PS5 still like gold dust, Microsoft is in this for the long haul.
Oh, and Stadia is coming to more devices as well. That’s great! The more devices that services are on, the more accessible they are. Now, if we could ensure everyone has access to affordable, fast, and reliable internet connections, Xbox and Stadia would really be in business.
Palworld looks like Pokémon for late-stage capitalists
When you think about it, Pokémon is an incredibly dark series, given that it’s largely about capturing and training creatures to fight each other. A clone called Palworld brings the dark subtext of Pokémon to the forefront. Without giving much more away, please watch the trailer:
Weeping sheep used as a shield? Creatures (aka Pals) on an automatic rifle assembly line?
There’s a lot going on in this game, which will arrive in 2022. This part of the Steam description about the Factory and Automation element caught many people’s attention:
It is essential for automation to let Pals do the manual work. Build a factory and place Pals in it. They will work forever as long as they're fed until the end of their lifetime.
Yikes. I hope that’s just supposed to be a cutting, self-aware commentary on late-stage capitalism. Maybe don’t let any kids in your life get sucked in by the rip-off Pokémon art style.
Reset
The developers of Tetris Effect revealed a cheat code that unlocks a secret level. That’s super fun!
What’s the deal with Hideo Kojima and boxes? Anyway, Death Stranding: Directors Cut is coming.
Battlefield 2042, which features climate refugees, is another big game that is apparently not political. Sigh.
Overwatch is getting cross-play, at long last. I wrote a guide on how it works. Your Overwatch enthusiast correspondent is excited.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is real good by most accounts. And several members of the dev team say they didn’t have to crunch (or work ridiculous hours) to make that happen. As things should be.
Jackbox Games wants to help you learn how to interact with people IRL again post-pandemic with practice friends. No, I don’t know, either.
Hackers stole FIFA 21 and Frostbite engine source code from EA. The CD Projekt Red leak seems more extensive than first thought and could contain employee and contractor data. Uh oh.
I’m very, very into a Dead By Daylight-style Evil Dead game:
This week’s free Epic Games Store is Control and it’s absolutely worth trying.
Indie games looking real nice.
Lucas Pope, the guy behind Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, is making a game for the utterly adorable Playdate.
Facebook bought Crayta, a platform similar to Roblox and Dreams that makes it easy to create games, as well as another VR studio.
I don’t know who decided that Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo needed a video game adaptation, but I sure am glad they did. The vibe of this trailer is spot on.
Endgame
After checking it out for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I went back and listened to most of the Triple Click episodes. It’s a video game podcast from a trio of former Kotaku folks, Jason Schreier (now a reowned Bloomberg reporter), Maddy Myers (an editor at Polygon) and musician and podcaster Kirk Hamilton. It’s a fantastic video game podcast that’s both in depth and accessible. Without fail, the episodes are breezy, enjoyable listens. It’s worth a shot.
There’s a new Poppy EP out. Of course I love it. Eat is a worthy follow up to her pop-metal masterpiece from last year, I Disagree, but without as much of the “pop” part.
One last thing, and this has nothing to do with video games, but I had to write about a wearable beer cooler this week. I had fun with it, and I think you’ll enjoy the post too.
That’s all from me this time around. I hope you enjoyed this or at least learned something. If you did and you’d like to do me a solid, share it with a friend! Subscribe if you haven’t!
If you have tips, feedback or ideas, smash the reply button, send them to kris@krisholt.net or shoot me a tweet or DM @krisholt.
Thanks, and enjoy E3!