BASGIATH — Jesinia Neilwart, Curator of the Scribe Quadrant at Basgiath War College, confirmed that she kept all of the sex stuff intact while translating Violet Sorrengail’s journals from Navarrian into the modern language.

“As a scribe, my job is to ensure that historical texts are preserved accurately,” said Neilwart, filing away numerous pencil sketches that cannot be reproduced here. “That’s why I made sure to keep all of the graphic sexual details from Cadet Sorrengail’s journals intact when translating them into the modern language. So yes, while that means the final text will contain pages upon pages of lurid details about Violet Sorrengail’s clitoris, or the durability of Xaden Riorson’s penile shaft, it ultimately must be done. It would be irresponsible of me to sanitize or omit those accounts, lest the reader lose important political context for the events at large.”

At press time, Neilwart was still trying to discover more information about the mysterious “seven inches of Onyx” repeatedly mentioned throughout the journals.

Spoilers follow for the entirety of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

My initial thought after finishing Clair Obscur was that I wished I’d never played it. A strong reaction for sure, but I felt it captured the depth of my disappointment with the game’s ending. At the time, to have hours of genuinely great character writing and world-building end on a variation of “it was all a dream” felt like a massive waste of time.

That was six months ago, and in that six months the praise for the game has been nothing short of nonstop. While a lot of that could be from players who haven’t finished the game, it’s still unanimous enough for that little voice in the back of my mind to go, ”Shit, am I missing something?”

So here’s an attempt to answer that question. With the game recently taking home the big prize at The Game Awards, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to interrogate my initial reaction and see if it truly stands up to scrutiny. Does Clair Obscur’s ending truly miss the landing hard enough to retroactively make the narrative worse? Or am I just unable to let go of a knee-jerk reaction?

Let’s start with the good.

What the Endings Do Well

That final decision to side with either Maelle or Verso is an insanely cinematic moment, and it’s a credit to the game’s writing that it’s a genuinely hard choice. I agonized for quite a while over who to choose, eventually opting for Maelle’s ending because of how much I cared for all of the painted characters. Saving Maelle’s mental health didn’t seem a convincing enough reason to wipe out an entire world and everyone in it (more on this later).

I did of course go back and pick Verso’s ending afterwards (and not only because Maelle’s ending left me a little cold). And as pure storytelling, Verso’s ending is very effective at putting us into Maelle’s shoes. While the complete eradication of the Canvas and all of its inhabitants threatens to make the entire journey feel pointless, there’s at least a consistency between the player’s experience and Maelle’s. We feel the despair that she feels. That same consistency is also what makes Acts 1 and 2 of the game work so well. The writing is great at getting us to feel what the characters feel.

And ultimately, I think that serves what the game is trying to do: get the player attached enough to this world and its painted characters that their loss is devastating. The result works as a comment on not just the power of the artist to make something transcendent, but the power of that art to stand on its own, independent of the artist’s will. This is especially true after the revelation that a piece of the real-life Verso’s soul is still in the Canvas. When painted Verso, a creation in that same Canvas, effectively destroys it, it makes literal the idea of an artist putting their soul into a work that then takes on a life of its own.

Maelle’s ending offers a different take on this idea, one where the audience manages to impose their will on the work. This is where Clair Obscur being a video game fits into the metaphor. Games are made by artists who impose rules on the player, but ultimately the player plays the game their way. This is especially true in JRPGs where a boss fight may be designed to force the player to use specific strategies, only for the player to surmount it through grinding and brute force instead. Certain games, like Final Fantasy XIII, curb this by putting temporary level caps on the player, but Clair Obscur’s mechanics revolve entirely around “breaking” the game. The various Pictos and skills you unlock tweak one mechanic or another to give you the feeling that you’re bending the game designers’ rules. This all goes hand-in-hand with Maelle’s ending where she rewrites the fabric of reality within the Canvas to create her ideal life, bringing back the people she’s lost.

What Doesn’t Work

You might have gathered this already, but a lot of what I found good about Clair Obscur’s ending works on a purely intellectual level, to the (in my opinion) detriment of the emotional function of the narrative. But this doesn’t start during the ending. Really, it’s the twist at the end of Act 2 that does it.

In general, I’m a big fan of twists that audibly make you go, “What the fuck?” And the ending of Act 2 has that in spades, as it’s slowly revealed that everything has been taking place inside a magical painting. On its own, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that twist. Like anything in writing, it’s all in how you handle it. But the danger with this kind of twist is that you take a story with very real stakes and essentially boil it down to “it was all a dream.”

To an extent, I think the game’s ending(s) fall into this trap. Especially Verso’s ending, which has the entire Canvas destroyed and Maelle forced back to her life in the real world, with the painted characters and Lumiere wiped out of existence. On a thematic level, we get an illustration of the power of art. But that’s something we already knew because, well, we were really into this game and affected by it. Emotionally, we’re left cold.

What really happens at the end of Act 2 is a reframing of what the story asks us to care about. Up until then we’re hammered with one million reasons why the Paintress must be stopped to save generations of Lumierians. It’s a life or death struggle for a people on the verge of extinction. After the twist, the focus shifts entirely away from the Lumierians to the Dessendre family, and specifically to Renoir’s struggle to free Maelle from the Canvas to force her to face her grief over the real-life Verso’s death.

It really can’t be overstated how much the Lumierians take a complete back seat to Maelle and Verso once the twist is revealed. Lune, Sciel, Monoco, Esquie, all the characters we’ve spent dozens of hours growing attached to no longer have a say in much of anything the party decides to do. And though I haven’t counted, it wouldn’t surprise me if they actually have drastically fewer lines of dialogue.

This is a problem because not only is the fate of the Dessendres a much less pressing set of stakes than the extinction of the Lumierians, the Dessendres themselves are much less sympathetic as characters than any of the Lumierians we’ve come to know by that point. The Lumierians sacrifice everything to save future generations. And the game offers Persona-esque Social Links to shed light on their pasts and the courage with which they face their respective traumas. The Dessendres on the other hand wipe out (seemingly) sentient life on a whim due to an inability to compromise or deal with their emotions in a healthy way. There really is no comparison in terms of who has the moral high ground.

For this reason, I suspect a lot of players initially chose Maelle’s ending when faced with the decision in the end. Because, truly, why care about whether the Dessendres deal with their grief properly?

And that’s where the narrative falters, because Maelle’s ending is very clearly signposted as a Bad Ending: the black-and-white filter, the eerie artificial veneer of happiness, the horror-movie-esque jump-scare shot of Maelle (complete with musical sting). Contrast this with Verso’s quietly bittersweet, slightly hopeful ending and it’s clear which outcome the game portrays as the better one.

Better for the Dessendres, that is. For every other character, the outcome is complete eradication.

But they’re just painted creations who aren’t real, so it’s fine, right?

Well, maybe? But likely probably not. And the key to proving that is actually Verso.

On Verso

I think Verso can help to answer a lot of questions. Because for as much as the story does not engage at all with the philosophical implications of its twist (specifically whether the painted people are sentient beings), the mere fact that painted Verso is able to force a human (Maelle) out of the Canvas is, in my opinion, proof that the painted characters have some degree of sentience or personhood, and aren’t just illusions following elaborate magical programming. They’re able to enact a will counter to that of their creators. Verso uses that will to destroy the Canvas and every painted character in it. In light of this, I’m left questioning why the game frames Verso and the Dessendres with the degree of sympathy that it does.

Sidenote: I’ve read a lot of takes claiming that the Dessendres aren’t meant to be portrayed sympathetically, merely realistically. I don’t think what’s in the game supports this idea. In Maelle’s ending, for example, you’re treated to an extended shot of Verso blubbering for death. It’s clear the cinematic intention here is to evoke some form of pity (i.e. sympathy). This is just one of many instances of this type of framing.

The sympathy feels unearned because the Dessendres commit some of the most evil acts imaginable. Renoir and Verso are responsible for the murder of entire generations, and Verso in particular can engage in some of the most insane behavior I’ve seen from a character in a game. For example, if you do Sciel’s Social Link (Persona has broken my brain and I have to call it a Social Link), you hear the devastating story of her suicide attempt and miscarriage, an attempt at connection that Verso reciprocates by sharing his own pain. Verso also has the option to make things romantic by sleeping with her. For all intents and purposes, they seem to form a deep bond.

However, if you do this and then pick Verso’s ending (which, remember, is framed as the better of the two endings), you apparently toss all of this aside and wipe her out along with every other inhabitant of the Canvas. It’s a sequence of events so baffling that it feels like an actual oversight. It honestly makes Verso seem like a genuine sociopath. And yet the game seems to prioritize the perspectives of him and the rest of the Dessendres, ostensibly because they’re “real” and the painted characters aren’t.

By not engaging with any of the philosophical implications of its twist, the ending the game leaves us with is, frankly, bafflingly tone deaf in its portrayal of the Dessendres and their grief. As soon as the twist is revealed, the painted characters are relegated to the background and effectively treated as disposable. Verso’s ending is portrayed as something sad, but ultimately necessary, as if saying:

“Sure, it’s sad that every single inhabitant of the Canvas was wiped out, but Maelle had to face her problems in real life, and the piece of Verso’s soul that maintained the Canvas deserved to rest in peace. After all, who amongst us hasn’t committed mass murder because a family member got too into one of their escapist fantasies?”

Game of the Year?

Clair Obscur does deserve praise. The writing, gameplay, art direction, music, every aspect of the game is firing on all cylinders. So I can understand why so many have this as their 2025 Game of the Year. But as good as all of those aspects are individually, they ultimately exist in service of the game’s emotional impact, and unfortunately the game doesn’t stick the landing in that regard. It doesn’t stick the landing to such an absurd degree that my immediate reaction was that I would rather have not played it. In hindsight, I’m glad I did. But that nagging feeling that the ending makes pointless an otherwise impeccable experience is hard to shake.

I think of the game’s opening: the quiet grief and poignancy of Gustave letting go of Sophie, the courage they faced their fates with, and compare it to the ending’s focus on the bottomless well of selfishness and stubbornness that is the Dessendres. Add that cynicism to a logical pretzel of a third-act twist and—even in a game otherwise as generationally good as this one—the ending can’t help but feel like a betrayal of everything that came before.

Popular author Haruki Murakami’s latest novel broke new ground by not including a single mention of breasts or female anatomy within the entirety of its text.

“I wanted to challenge myself and try something new,” Murakami said. “After all, I’ve written several novels where I describe breasts in uncomfortable—and often anatomically impossible—detail. Sometimes these descriptions even border on illegal, such as my incessant descriptions of the teenage girl’s breasts in Killing Commendatore. So I thought, why not try my hand at not mentioning them at all? It was a long, tiresome struggle, and many days I wasn’t sure if I could finish. But in the end, I was able to reach completion. It just goes to show that you can do anything you set your mind to.”

At press time, Murakami reportedly collapsed from weakness and was rushed to the hospital. He quickly recovered after starting a new novel that mentions breasts on every page.

I booted up Potions: A Curious Tale and was intrigued by the amount of Muslim shit right out of the gate.

Protagonist Luna fights off a Kraken attacking Sinbad the sailor’s ship. He likens her to the Caliph’s armada while a vaguely Middle Eastern tune plays in the background. Referencing a Muslim spiritual leader is a fun way to get me, specifically, into the game.

I didn’t expect the game to continue living up to that very specific-to-me feeling, but I did expect it to be more engaging than it ended up being.

Potions: A Curious Tale came across my radar the way it probably did for many others: a Tweet from its creator describing how Electronic Arts (EA, as it’s known to Gamers) quietly re-released several of their old games around the time of Potions’ release, causing it to plummet on the Steam charts. As a staunch anti-corporation guy (just, like, in general), and especially an anti-EA guy, I figured I might as well check this game out. Especially since I had an email sitting in my inbox offering me a key for the game (thanks to the game’s developer Stumbling Cat for providing this).

And a curious tale this game definitely is. From living piles of ash to a hut on chicken legs, whimsy is the game’s core tone. One could call this a vibes-based game, and I assume many will (it even has an invulnerability mode for players who don’t want to worry about seeing a Game Over screen). But my problem with that phrase is that it always feels like an excuse for a lack of real substance. It’s essentially telling people to ignore the issues that jump out at them in favor of focusing on the overall aesthetic.

But aesthetic can only hold your attention for so long before the novelty wears off. And substance, unfortunately, this game lacks.

The potion crafting should be the highlight of this game, and not only because it’s in the title. It’s the core focus of everything you do. But more than anything it feels like a shallow, checklist-y experience, as opposed to one with mechanical depth that you can experiment and play around with. You walk around different areas, hitting A (in the Xbox controller configuration) next to crafting ingredients to harvest them. These ingredients are not marked in any way until you approach them and press A, meaning the way to maximize ingredient collection is to walk around and mash A in front of anything and everything. Things that didn’t seem like they’d be collectible ended up being so, and vice versa. Once you collect these ingredients, you return to your grandma’s house and craft potions using the cauldron.

And this crafting is pretty straightforward: pull up the recipe, see what types of ingredients you need (ingredients are split up into different color “mana” classes), and hit A to craft. And because you have to craft specific types of potions to get past various obstacles, the gameplay loop becomes a bit of a drag. Need a Minor Explosion Potion? Go walk around hitting A next to everything until you get ingredients with the right color mana, then go back to your grandma’s house to craft the potions, then go take care of the obstacle. An ingredient’s mana color usually corresponds to the color of the ingredient itself, but in the case of something like Feathers, which are physically white but considered yellow mana, it’s not always obvious. And the puzzles aren’t that difficult either. So you have an unlucky combo of a loop that doesn’t feel all that challenging, and your momentum constantly interrupted by the process of scavenging for ingredients and making potions.

But there are other things to hold onto, right? I mentioned that people might call this a vibes-based game. So how are the vibes? How are the characters or the narrative? The world itself?

Well, the world is fun. And the characters are all endearing and interesting enough. You have a Pokémon-esque rival named Emily who casts doubt on your ability to brew potions (which genuinely got under my skin in a way I did not expect). You have your grandma who is sweet and encouraging and always giving you helpful advice on how to brew potions. You have Mary Muffet, a girl Luna’s age who is also very nice. You have a cat named Helios that talks and follows you around (very good thing) and an old lady who is named after John Wick. But the way you engage with these characters is, essentially, by performing fetch quests for them. It’s a series of “go collect these for me and come back” objectives. There’s care and playfulness put into the world here. I just wish the game itself was more engaging to motivate more exploration of it.

Ultimately, I have conflicted feelings with this game. I’m glad games like this exist and really wanted to like it. Developer Renee Gittins worked ten years to bring this to fruition. It’s a testament to never giving up on your passion. I wish that the actual act of playing it inspired me as much as Gittins’ story does.

But, I reiterate: it is very cool that this game starts with some Muslim shit. More games should do that.

Director Sam Mendes (Skyfall, 1917) recently announced that the film focused on Ringo Starr from his upcoming Beatles tetralogy would have the lowest budget of the four films.

“There’s no particular reason for this,” Mendes said, staring at an outline for the Ringo movie with nothing on it. “But it’s important to realize that you have to allocate resources carefully during production. For example, for John Lennon’s movie we’ll need an armorer and weapons training for the actor who plays Mark David Chapman. And for Paul McCartney’s movie, I’m pretty sure that bass is super expensive. On the other hand, I know a guy who has a drum set, so we can just borrow that for Ringo’s movie. You direct resources where they’re needed most. It’s a big balancing act.”

At press time, Mendes updated his statement to say that the Ringo movie would halt production indefinitely.

Hi, all. Tetsuya Nomura here, creator of the Kingdom Hearts series and the best Final Fantasy game: Final Fantasy Versus XIII. I was asked to write a piece talking about the development of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and since we all have multiple versions of ourselves existing simultaneously at any given moment, one of them said yes (the other versions of me quit Square Enix decades ago).

It’s been a long journey to remake the second-third of the seventh Final Fantasy game. The staff and I have put an immense amount of work into this bloated multiverse version of the middle-third of a beloved classic, something players have been wanting for over twenty years. I’ve been working closely with director Naoki Hamaguchi-san and producer Yoshinori Kitase-san to bring our shared vision to life. I say “shared” vision, but the truth is we’ve butted heads quite a bit over what this remake project should be.

For example, Kitase-san directed the original Final Fantasy VII, so he was in favor of a more straightforward remake. “I strongly believe that players will want to experience the game as they remember it,” he said. “We may still have to split it into multiple parts for the sake of budget and development timelines, tacitly admitting that none of our newer games will be able to capture the scope of the older ones. But beyond that, all we would have to do is make new assets. Keep the script the same. No new weird characters, like a guy with a mullet who fights with a motorcycle or something. Nothing crazy like that. We can keep things the same and win people over with nostalgia.”

I had to beat him to within an inch of his life to change his thinking. Except the part about the mullet motorcycle guy. I liked that idea. But he ended up agreeing that we could do more with this remake. Be more ambitious. Kingdom Hearts was famously born when I ran into a Disney executive in an elevator and beat the shit out of him until he agreed to make the game. And now, the same tactic had given birth to the Final Fantasy VII Remake we all know and love. It was meant to be.

With our design philosophy in mind, it was time for a title, and this was where I butted heads with Hamaguchi-san. When we called the first part Remake, we didn’t realize that we couldn’t just call the second part Remake again, even though it was still the Remake that the first game was, just a continuation of it. Though we eventually compromised and called this second part Rebirth, it did not start out that way.

“If only we’d added Part 1 to the first game’s title,” Hamaguchi said during a brainstorming meeting with Kitase and I. “Would’ve saved us a lot of headache.”

“Yeah, and if Ifrit had wings he’d be Bahamut,” I said. “It’s too late for that now.”

“What about just calling it Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2?” Hamaguchi asked. “A simple, clear title is often the best approach.” He held a tiny smirk as he said this, which rubbed me the wrong way. But I contained myself.

“Well, that just sounds unwieldy to me, Hamaguchi-san,” I said.

“You would know about unwieldy titles, wouldn’t you?” he said, smirk growing.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just trying to keep things light. You should know all about light. And darkness.”

He burst out laughing. I crossed my arms.

“Do you have an issue with my creative process?” I asked. “Now’s the time to speak up.”

Hamaguchi turned to Kitase-san. “Do we really want this guy deciding what the title of the game should be? Remember 358/2 Days? That was him!”

“You’re treading on thin ice right now, Hamaguchi,” I said, stern.

“Yes, Hamaguchi-san, please,” Kitase-san said. “Do not push him. Trust me.”

Hamaguchi turned to me again. “What’s your top idea for the name right now? Come on, tell us.”

I stared at him. “I’m not humoring you,” I said. “I’m in charge here.”

“Look at that. He doesn’t want to say,” he said. “That means I’m right. It’s something crazy.”

“I believe in my titles,” I said. “They are thematically relevant and contain a lot of emotion.”

“Say the name, Tetsuya,” he said. “Say it.”

I looked at Kitase for backup, but he just looked scared. Whatever. I had nothing to lose.

“Final Fantasy VII: UnRe-Mako,” I said confidently.

The laugh that followed scared everyone on our floor of the building. A few hours later, I was looking for a new game director.

“This candidate has no game development experience,” the recruiter said. “He’s worked in IT, so he has decent computer knowledge.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Believe it or not, Naoki Hamaguchi. Same as the old director.”

“Hire him,” I said.

And that’s how you replace your game director without anyone noticing. Nice little bit of trivia for you mega-fans out there.

But despite those ups and downs, here we are at the finish line. I hope this was an informative look into the process behind the game. I’m very excited for everyone to finally get their hands on it and see how much we’ve improved all the iconic scenes from the original. I believe they will inspire even stronger emotion than the original versions did. Nomura out.

TOKYO — Following Hideo Kojima’s announcement of a new espionage action game in the vein of Metal Gear Solid, Konami immediately and unexpectedly announced they would be making a strand-type game.

“People are free to make whatever type of game they want, provided they don’t use any Konami-owned intellectual property,” said Konami Digital Entertainment President Hideki Hayakawa, struggling to play a familiar package-delivery game. “By the same token, we are also free to make games in any genre. That’s why we’re announcing a new game in the fast-growing strand-type genre. Development will commence as soon as we find out what the hell ‘strand-type’ actually means.”

Though taken aback by baby cries blaring out of his controller, Hayakawa continued.

“No one person owns the stealth genre, and no one person owns the strand-type genre either, whatever it means. I mean, could we go after someone who makes a game similar to our popular Metal Gear Solid series, especially after we gave that person everything including the funding and resources to do it in the first place, and who knows good and well that they’re invoking that series by announcing a similar game? Yes, we could. But instead, we could just take the high road and make the games we want to make. And at this time, that happens to be a strand-type game. We plan to start making it as soon as we figure out what the fuck that actually means.”

Asked about the timing of the game’s announcement with the announcement of Kojima’s spiritual MGS successor, Hayakawa insisted it was a coincidence.

“I know we have an infamous recent history with the person you mentioned,” Hayakawa said, “but the timing of these announcements is pure chance. If anything, I would venture he announced his not-Metal Gear game because we announced a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3. So, really, who is responding to who? I’ll tell you one thing: our strand-type game is going to be way better than whatever he comes up with. I mean, we can put Snake in our game and he can’t. So I’m not worried. Not one bit.”

At press time, Konami was exploring the possibility of repurposing the strand-type game for their new line of pachinko machines.

Critically-acclaimed third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line was recently removed from Steam and other digital storefronts, with publisher 2K Games confirming this was due to expired licenses. While 2K has not specified which licenses have expired, the game was conspicuously re-listed after ads for the soundtrack’s rights holders were added to every scene in the game.

“We cannot comment on which licenses caused the product to be pulled,” said Mark Winters, public relations liaison for 2K Games. “But rest assured, the license holders were more than happy to let us use their music in exchange for a small mention of them in every scene of the game. They were very excited about how often players would be forced to think about their company, and thus considered it adequate compensation.”

The re-listed version of the game features giant logos of various record labels plastered across every scene, including one in which white phosphorus munitions sear the flesh off of a group of civilians to illustrate the horrors of war. While 2K considers these ads a positive, fans appear to be less enthusiastic.

“I can’t put my finger on why, but something about it takes away from the impact of the game,” said gamer Walker North, struggling to hit an enemy obscured by one of the logos. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m used to ads. I play Ubisoft games. Ads in the game are just a part of life. But this feels different somehow. I don’t know, it’s probably nothing. I guess I should just be thankful the game is available to buy again.”

At press time, Spec Ops: The Line was once again de-listed after weapons manufacturers demanded higher licensing fees for the game’s inclusion of white phosphorus.

Rocksteady reported today that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League achieved an unprecedented 100% of players completing its story, a feat never before seen in gaming history.

“It just goes to show you should try the game for yourself instead of listening to complainers online,” a Rocksteady rep said. “So many of these ‘critically-acclaimed’ games barely get to thirty or forty percent of players finishing them. But ours had one hundred percent of players hit end credits. No studio has ever done this before. Rocksteady has always been about quality, and this shows that we will continue to be.”

Rocksteady hit another milestone shortly afterwards as Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League became the first game to achieve a 100% refund rate.

TOKYO — Palworld director Takuro Mizobe recently opened up about his inspiration for the hit game, describing how the idea came to him immediately upon purchasing a firearm.

“Shigeru Miyamoto has talked about how getting into gardening gave him the idea for Pikmin,” Mizobe said, fiddling with the safety on a SIG P365. “And I’ve always been heavily, heavily inspired by him and Nintendo. So when I bought a gun after someone broke into my house, I had a real light bulb moment: I could make a game about this gun. And thus, Palworld was born.”

Twirling the gun on his finger like a revolver, Mizobe continued.

“It was so obvious: Miyamoto-san makes games based on his life, and my life at the time was this gun. I was going to the firing range every day, learning the ins and outs, every nook and cranny of it. There’s an old Duke Nukem ad which says, ‘This gun’s not going to **** itself.’ Of course, they censored the word ‘fire’ so as not to promote violence. But I took that to heart. As Nukem-san says, the gun, in fact, will not fire itself. So I take it upon myself to. And this has fed into my creative process with Palworld. It’s been truly fulfilling, the ultimate form of self-expression.”

When asked how the weapon inspired the monster-collecting aspect of Palworld, Mizobe laughed.

“That was because of the bullets,” Mizobe said. “I’ve heard all the claims of us ‘ripping off’ Pokémon. But truth be told, when I saw the bullets laying on my kitchen counter, I thought about how each one is really just a little guy that you take under your wing and command to take a life. All I did was make the design of each bullet a little more playful, so that players would find them more appealing. And thus, Pals were born.”

Mizobe ended by offering advice to aspiring game developers: “Palworld’s success is a huge validation for Miyamoto-san’s method of game development. If you find yourself stuck in coming up with an idea, buy a gun or two to help your creative process. I promise it’ll be the best decision you ever make.”

At press time, Mizobe was rushed to the emergency room for undisclosed reasons.

Local gamer Cameron Foy finally got a win in his battle royale game of choice, a notorious critical and commercial flop, by being the only person left playing.

“The game just released a few weeks ago, but the reviews and word of mouth have been pretty bad, so not a lot of people have been playing,” said Foy, booting into a match and immediately winning as the game failed to find anyone else. “I struggled to get a win because I suck at battle royales. I always get my ass kicked in Fortnite and Warzone, so I thought I’d have a better shot at this. But it wasn’t until everyone else quit playing that I finally got a win.”

Foy was in a state of pure joy as he racked up one win after another in the span of a minute.

“It’s made me enjoy playing video games again. I can’t go back to other battle royales. This is my game now.”

Shortly after becoming the last one left playing, a popular streamer picked up the game to make fun of its nonexistent player base. Foy has yet to win a match since.

Spoilers follow for Yakuza 3.

Yakuza 3 opens with a fairly engaging story hook: protagonist Kazuma Kiryu’s adoptive father, who died years prior, shoots a Yakuza chairman. It’s a pretty interesting start to a story that—

<marquee>Latest Updates: New Pal Designs Leaked by Uncle’s Twin Brother Who Works at Palworld |</marquee>

Oh, wait, hold on. Haruka’s calling me. Probably something about making dinner tonight for the kids at the orphanage. I need to take this.

Okay, she’s good. Anyway, as I was saying: the plot starts out pretty strong. How could this man who died years ago have shot the chairman? It’s an intriguing question for the player but also an interesting character conflict for Kiryu, who tried to leave the Yakuza life behind only to find himself back in a web of intricate machinations and schemes that he must untangle in order to—

Wait, shit. I think one of the kids just hurt himself playing on the beach. I need to check on him. I’ll be back.

Alright. Thankfully, he’s okay. But the bad news is he probably won’t be able to wrestle anymore. The doctor’s saying it’s probably asthma and that intense physical activity makes it worse. Fuck, I wish there was some kind of inhaler-like technology that could magically prevent conditions like exercise-induced bronchospasm. But because there isn’t, he’ll simply have to give up on his dream.

Anyway, sorry for the distraction. Back to what I was saying: so Kiryu’s dead dad is going around killing people. Believe it or not, this actually ends up being the estranged twin brother of Kiryu’s adoptive father, who works for the CIA (and really loves it, like disturbingly so). He’s investigating a land acquisition battle that goes all the way to the highest levels of government, involving everyone from the Japanese Defense Minister to a shady criminal group called Black Monday. Kiryu meets with the Defense Minister, who tells him that the CIA is planning to kill his secretary (and best bud), Toma. He asks Kiryu to protect Toma from the CIA, and Kiryu agrees. So Kiryu returns to Okinawa to stop this guy from being killed by the CIA, only to find—

Wait, hold on, I just got an awesome idea. Hear me out:

So the kid can’t wrestle anymore, right? What if we just hold our own wrestling match for him? You know, to cheer him up? I wouldn’t mind throwing on a lucha mask, and I got a buddy who’d love that shit, too. The kids will definitely love it. We can set up a little ring on the beach with ropes and everything.

Oh man, this sounds better the more I think about it. Okay, I’ll be back. I need to set this up ASAP.

Okay, I’m back. Great little time we had there. Got to let my inner Rey Mysterio loose! And not only that: we also got a call from the doctor that the kid doesn’t have asthma after all! Apparently, he might just have a buckwheat allergy and he had a bunch of soba the other day, so that’s probably what triggered his breathing issues. But as long as he avoids buckwheat he’ll be fine! A simple food allergy. Who would’ve thought? This is great news. This means he’ll be able to follow his dream of—

Wait, one sec. One of the kids just ran out crying. I need to see what’s up. Hang tight.

Alright, that was super fucked up. Apparently, Ayako lent Izumi her last 500 yen to buy a toy for the dog they rescued, but the toy was sold out and so Izumi ended up buying candy with that money instead. What the fuck? That’s so damn rude. I had a sit down with all of the kids and talked to each of them one by one to explain how much Ayako has done for each of them. It took several hours, but I think they understand now that they have to be more considerate towards her and to others in general.

Phew, that was a lot. I’m pretty exhausted after all of that, not gonna lie. I think I might go take a nap or—

Oh shit, wait. The plot. I was talking about the plot. Let’s see: there’s the CIA, Black Monday, a guy named Andre Richardson who looks suspiciously like Albert Wesker...

That’s right, I remember now: so the guy behind everything ends up being one of the Yakuza captains. It’s a pretty crazy reveal! And it all wraps up with him being so ashamed of his deeds that he takes his own life. A tragic ending for the guy, but at least Kiryu has eliminated the threat. But just when you think everything’s well and good, another disgruntled Yakuza captain approaches on the street Kiryu and stabs him, leaving him to die—

Fuck, I just found out Haruka’s helping a gang sell illegal credit cards. I need to nip this in the bud. I’ll be right back.

I was quite enjoying my time with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order until I became irretrievably lost.

I had just finished a series of puzzles in a temple on the planet Zeffo. The Game told me to return to my ship in order to leave Zeffo, so I attempted to leave Zeffo. I wandered around for several minutes through the caves and surfaces of Zeffo before I realized:

I had no idea how to leave Zeffo.

I must be missing something, I thought. I opened my map and poked around a bit. I identified what seemed like a route back to the ship. I used it. It was not the route. I came to a bent bridge that I could use my shiny new Force Push ability to push down, but I was on the wrong side of it, across a canyon that was too large to clear with my standard jump.

I had to find another way.

So I wandered back through the caves a little more. Still, I couldn’t find my way back to my ship. I went spelunking for several minutes before I caved myself and looked up how to get out.

All of the written advice said to return to the ice caves. I opened my map of Zeffo and scanned for an area that looked like ice caves. The different sections of Zeffo weren’t labeled, so I wasn’t sure exactly where the ice caves were.

I had another thought: a video. That would save me.

I looked up a video, but all of them started from the end of the last cutscene, just after finishing the temple. But at this point I had already wandered to some godforsaken area way the fuck away from that location.

I popped open my map again. Maybe I could get back to that location and then follow the video from there. I spun the map around, zoomed in and out, looking for a way back to where I was before. The features on the map began to blur together.

My head began to hurt. I found myself growing thirsty. Water. That was what I needed. Some water would surely help me reorient myself. Some time away from the screen as well to rest my eyes. Both of those together would give me the key.

I poured myself a glass of water in the kitchen and stared at the wall, actively dissociating from my body. I was floating above myself while I thought about Zeffo. I was enjoying The Game’s combat and gameplay loop quite a bit. Soulslike, but with some nice polish and quality of life improvements. But Zeffo was actively diminishing my quality of life. I did not want it to do this. I did not want this to be the thing that kept me from continuing with The Game.

I finished my water, returned to my body, and went back to my PC. I picked up the controller and opened the map of Zeffo again.

All urge to continue had left my body. I looked at the clock. I had been trying to find my way off of Zeffo for an hour.

My backlog stalked my axons one at a time, flitting down behind my eyelids but still over my eyes as I stared at the map of Zeffo.

I closed out of The Game. Cal Kestis would be forever stranded on Zeffo. Because of me. I tried to forget him and called it a night, but he was in my dreams, running in circles across Zeffo.

I had failed him, and the entire Star Wars franchise.

But Zeffo had defeated me. There was no going back.

The Game was fun while it lasted, though.

Taylor Swift’s new film The Eras Tour opened to widespread praise and a huge box office that all but guarantees a sequel. But the film’s labyrinthine plotting and non-linear narrative are likely to have left many viewers confused. We’ll explain exactly what happened in the film’s ending, as well as what it means for the all-but-guaranteed Phase 2 of the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe.

The film’s narrative jumps back and forth in time to different parts of Taylor’s life, covering nine different “eras”, as the title implies. While this may leave viewers a bit disoriented, the ending grounds things by bringing the story into the present day, ending with Taylor’s most recent era: Midnights. So viewers can orient themselves with the knowledge that the ending takes place in the present day, and the rest of the film was told in flashback.

With this in mind, we can look at the film’s hints about what’s to come in Phase 2 of the TSCU.

For one, there’s a timeline that’s notably missing: Taylor’s first era. The audience isn’t told Taylor Swift’s origin story or how she got her powers in the first place, so a prequel film set in her Debut era is likely in Phase 2.

Taylor also introduces the possibility of a multiverse during the Reputation timeline. One line of dialogue states that the old Taylor is “dead”, meaning there’s a good chance the multiple Taylors we see could actually be alternate universe versions. Taylor is no stranger to the concept of a multiverse. The re-records of her previously released albums, each one dubbed “Taylor’s Version”, are themselves alternate universe versions of each record, so a multiverse would be a natural next step for the TSCU.

But there is another, darker explanation for this multiverse tease as well. At one point the film makes a clear reference to the film The Prestige, when Taylor jumps below the stage and is shown swimming through a tank of water. In The Prestige, Hugh Jackman’s magician character drops himself below the stage into a tank of water each night, killing himself as a machine makes a new clone of him. Putting this together with the line about the old Taylor being “dead”, it may be likely that each Taylor we see is literally a new version of her and not an alternate universe version. There’s clearly more going on than meets the eye, and Phase 2 will likely shed more light on this.

Taylor also has a rich rogues gallery of supervillains that will likely feature in Phase 2: Kanye West, Karlie Kloss, and the person she has the most bad blood with, the one holding her original songs hostage: Scooter Braun. It will be exciting to see who plays these iconic characters, and there have already been casting shakeups behind the scenes, with Travis Kelce taking up the mantle of Taylor Swift’s boyfriend after Joe Alwyn stepped down. While it’s unclear why Alwyn left the role, Kelce is looking to be a promising casting choice.

Fans know all too well that Taylor is a mastermind and does not do things accidentally. You can’t just see an obvious tease and shake it off. I knew the film would be trouble when I walked in, that everything would mean something. And while Phase 2 may be a blank space right now, in just a few cruel summers we will have our answers. 1989.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — After a slate of environmental initiatives such as no longer including wall chargers with new iPhone purchases, Apple recently announced they would be taking their initiatives one step further: removing the carbon footprint of the iPhone entirely by no longer including it in the box when customers purchase one.

“We started our campaign to save the environment by removing the wall charger,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook, loading a stack of solid gold bars into a safe in his office. “That greatly reduced our cost. To the environment, that is. Now, we’re going even bigger: making an entirely carbon neutral iPhone by not including an iPhone in the box when customers purchase an iPhone.”

Struggling to close the safe door, Cook continued: “Manufacturing iPhones uses an immense amount of material. Mining these materials and transporting them is an extremely costly endeavor. To the environment, that is. That’s why we’re reducing this cost–this environmental cost–by removing the iPhone from the box completely.”

Asked about how consumers would react to the proposed move, Cook was optimistic.

“It shouldn’t be much of an adjustment for people,” Cook said, throwing his entire body weight against the safe door. “Many people already have an iPhone at home, so they won’t need us to include another one in the box. In fact, you could say it would be wasteful to do so. In the end, we have faith that consumers will understand and agree with our vision.”

Samir Alam, a long time Apple user, was initially confused by Apple’s decision to no longer include an iPhone in the box, but ultimately agreed with the move.

“I won’t lie, I was a little disappointed at first. I was looking forward to having an iPhone in the box when I bought an iPhone. But the more I think about it, the more I realize what a bold move it is. And Apple has always been about bold moves, like removing the headphone jack, removing Touch ID, removing 3D touch, and now, removing the iPhone itself. Is it a bit disappointing that I’m going to pay $1,000 for a box with a USB-C cable in it? Maybe. But that’s the price of innovation. At least that sticker’s still in there.”

At press time, leaked documents revealed further plans to reduce the iPhone’s waste by removing the USB-C cable from the box.

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Early on, Final Fantasy XVI gives you a mission: go to a nearby town called Stillwind and clear out the goblins that have infested it. Okay, sounds like a fun little typical JRPG quest. It’ll be neat to leave the starting area and explore the world a bit, do a bit of battling along the way.

But then it goes to a level select screen and asks you to fast travel to the town. Oh. Never mind. I guess it’ll just teleport me there?

The demo for Final Fantasy XVI pulled me in on the strength of its story alone, but this moment is where it almost lost me entirely.

The Magic of the Final Fantasy Games

It might seem minor, but exploration and sense of place have historically been a big part of the magic of Final Fantasy to me. The “fast travel only” approach in FFXVI seems poised to lose that.

For all of its shortcomings, I thought the world in Final Fantasy XII and the way you could explore it was phenomenal. All of these varied, interconnected zones that you could explore in almost any order, combined with the art design and lore, made Ivalice an absolutely stunning world. The next entry, Final Fantasy XIII (which I enjoyed solely for its battle system), opted instead for a series of levels that only let you explore in two directions: forward and backward. The open area on Pulse captured that feeling again, and did work thematically to contrast the freedom of the supposed “evil” world with the oppressiveness of Cocoon, but it was one cohesive area in an otherwise fragmented world.

That’s the key for me. For all of the series’ focus on story and battle systems, the experience of playing a Final Fantasy game is always secretly held together by its world. The traversable world maps from Final Fantasy I through IX gave the player a sense of place as they explored and moved through the story. Final Fantasy X, XII, and XV managed that sense of place as well despite lacking world maps. Final Fantasy XIV also has that sense of place, and that game’s director, Naoki Yoshida, is one of the leads on FFXVI. So who knows, maybe it’ll all feel better in the full game. Supposedly, the game will have larger zones to explore, so we’ll see how it all pans out. But if they’re only connected by this fast travel system, giving everything a level-based feel, that’s not exciting on its face.

Trailers and Expectations

I purposely did not watch any trailers for Final Fantasy XVI because I knew I’d play it. I’ve been an FF fan since I was a kid, and I’ll probably play every mainline game that comes out in my lifetime. So I figured, hey, why not go in blind so that everything’s fresh?

I probably should have looked at pre-release stuff. It would’ve helped to know what the exploration was going to be like. It speaks to the nature of expectations. I thought ignorance would be bliss, but ignorance ended up being a blank check for my mind to run wild. I ended up having expectations despite trying not to have any. Besides FFXIII, every mainline Final Fantasy game has had these worlds that give a sense of place and exploration. That subconsciously built up in my head, to where the more action game/level-based structure wasn’t even a thought. So I couldn’t help but be let down.

And in the end, of course Square made FFXVI’s world with more of a level-based structure. It’s the “making towns in HD is hard'' thing that’s plagued these games since FFXIII. They literally do not have the resources to render these worlds in their entirety anymore. Even FFXV, for all of the exploration it offered, still only let you explore one continent and seemed like it had a plethora of areas left on the cutting room floor. And more recently, Final Fantasy VII Remake only remade the Midgar section of the original game. So fully designing and rendering Final Fantasy XVI’s world, as vast as it seems, would simply not be possible.

In this landscape, I think I’m going back to keeping up with pre-release info. It seems like the only way to not be continually disappointed. Find out what a game is and isn’t and you can meet it on its own terms.

Luckily, FFXVI’s story has me hooked, so I imagine I’ll quite enjoy the game if that quality of writing keeps up. We’ll see once the game is finally out.

The directors of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 responded to complaints of reusing the previous game’s map by taking inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, adding a huge, creepy underground area to New York City.

“I think it’s brilliant,” said Henry Mills, a diehard Spider-Man fan. “I thought it was bullshit that NYC would just be the same city again. I mean, come on, I know it’s a real city but they could’ve changed the layout, at least. But hearing that there’ll be a whole new underground area to explore has me excited. It fits right in with NYC, for some reason.”

The directors of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Bryan Intihar and Ryan Smith, assured players that the addition of the all-new underground area would give players something they’ve never seen before.

“I’m glad we could come up with a way to change up the map,” Intihar said. “Honestly, we got super depressed after seeing all the backlash and drowned our sorrows by playing a shit-ton of Tears of the Kingdom. We added some of Brooklyn and Queens for this game, but those places suck. That’s when we got the idea: why couldn’t NYC have a giant underground area? I can definitely picture it.”

“It’s going to be really creepy and dark,” said Smith. “We got to stretch our creative muscles and come up with completely new kinds of enemies, like giant rats. There’ll be security forces down there, but they’ll just be on their phones and won’t protect you, so you’re on your own. We’ll have hubs called ‘stations’ that act like Lightroots to allow you to fast travel. And players can get down there through chasms just like Tears of the Kingdom, but we made them stairs instead for a little quality of life improvement.”

“Also, and this doesn’t really affect gameplay at all, but it’s true for the characters you’re playing as,” he added, “the whole place smells like piss.”

However, not all fans are excited about the new underground area. Another Spider-Man fan who lives in New York City didn’t see the big deal.

“I don’t get it. Isn’t it just the subway?” The fan said. “I take that every day, so I’m not really too excited. I already feel like I’ve explored the whole thing. But I think people are overreacting anyway. I mean, it’s set in NYC. How are they supposed to change it? It’s more important what content they fill it with.”

At press time, when asked if they considered expanding the map into The Bronx, the developers responded with confusion: “What’s that?”