🎮 Riot leans into Arcane, Paragon System in Mass Effect 5 and New Adaptations from Sony...

Riot leans into Arcane, Paragon System in Mass Effect 5, New Adaptations from Sony, Online Transformers game is cancelled and more!

Hello friends,

Today is January 16th 2025 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌

In today’s news:

• 🎮 Riot leans into Arcane

• 🎮 Paragon System in Mass Effect 5

• 🎬 New Adaptations from Sony

• 🎮 Online Transformers game is cancelled

• ⚡ Lightning Round!

• 🫡 True Tribute!

• 😄 Personal Update

All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️

Let’s dig in!

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🎮 Riot leans into Arcane

2025 is already here and as usual, Riot Games is introducing a new season in League of Legends. This time they’ve decided to lean into Arcane and continue telling the story of its characters through the game.

As you can see from the trailer above, it’s done with the same Arcane style and fans around the world are speculating that it’s a way for Riot Games to segway into a new story arc and a new series. However, the company currently denying it, but you never know, right?

Personally, I tend to believe them. They are probably going to wait for a bit and let the game cover at least some of the costs for the series. Not surprisingly, because of that Riot essentially eliminated every place from where you could get cosmetics, leaving only the money option and the battlepass.

I get it, but also I don’t get it. As a person who played this game for years, I feel that this whole season feels like a cash grab, along with all the changes that go along with it. All the free cosmetics are basically a reskin of the regular model with white masks, all the shops are reworked in a way that if you don’t pay colossal sums of money, you are not getting anything worthwhile and all the systems that were giving you stuff are now done and gone. I guess it’s a world we live in now, eh? The company overspent and now the players have to pay for it…

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🎮 Paragon System in Mass Effect 5

Screenshot: Bioware / EA Games

After the Veilguard, Bioware confirmed that all the resources are going to be pooled into the next Mass Effect and we are finally getting some news regarding it. Specifically, a Paragon/Renegade system that was a signature touch for the first 3 games and then Andromeda decided to go in a different direction.

Now Mike Gamble, the Director of Mass Effect 5 and Executive Producer at BioWare shared some of his thoughts on X about the system and how it was back in the days of the trilogy:

Regarding renegade and paragon-

Yes, it’s true that more people played paragon. But, it would have been meaningless if renegade had not existed. The ability to choose is stronger than the number of people playing any option, IMO.

Some people (myself included) figured that it’s a potential sign of this system being back in the plans for the next game. Of course, his response was:

I was talking about the trilogy. You’ll just have to wait and see…

This is fair, considering that the game is only at the beginning of development and it’s too early to talk about anything. My only hope is that the traction from this post will make them realize how great this feature was and the miracles it did to the roleplaying aspect of it. But it will take some time till we know for certain. At least a couple of years…

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🎬 New Adaptations from Sony

Image: Arrowhead Game Studios / Sony

So, adaptations are really booming right now and a lot of the game development companies have opted for them to promote their games. And Sony’s games seem to be at the centre of it all recently. At the time of writing, we have at least 3 big announcements!

First is the adaptation of a democracy-bringer Helldivers 2 that was announced during Sony's CES 2025 press conference. The movie is a collaboration between Sony Productions and Sony Pictures. No other details were offered 😢

Second, is the anime adaptation of Ghost of Tsushima. It’s produced in collaboration with Aniplex, the studio behind the likes of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Sword Art Online, and is directed by Takanobu Mizuno, with Gen Urobuchi on story composition and animation by Kamikaze Douga. Sony Music will serve as the “strategic music and soundtrack partner” for the series.

And the third one is the confirmation of Horizon Zero Dawn (another announcement during Sony's CES 2025 press conference).

That’s definitely a lot and what a great start of the year, don’t you think?

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🎮 Online Transformers game is cancelled

Image: Splash Damage

But we also have some sad news as well, some of the projects weren’t that fortunate and among them is Transformers: Reactivate, a one to four player online action game coming to consoles and PC that comes at a close 2 years after it was announced.

The news comes to us via X where the studio made the official announcement:

Today we have some difficult news to share, the decision has been made to end development of Transformers: Reactivate.

This decision did not come lightly, and it is a difficult time for the studio and our people. We want to take a moment to thank the team who worked on Transformers for their dedication and passion.

Along with this, the studio also announced a round of layoffs and “reprioritization”:

This means that we will be scaling down to refocus our efforts on other projects. Unfortunately, despite every effort, a number of roles across the studio are now potentially at risk of redundancy.

While not being able to see the game through to release is painful, having to say goodbye to friends and colleagues hurts even more. We're now focused on doing everything we can to support them through this tough period, just as we are committed to caring for those who stay with us as we build a stronger Splash Damage for the future.

And we are only a few weeks in 2025… I hope that we will see less projects being cancelled going forward 😢

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⚡ Lightning Round!

1…2…3…Go!

🎮 Game of Thrones: Kingsroad gets a new trailer

This game was originally announced during The Game Awards 2024 and now it has a shiny new gameplay trailer.

If you don’t know what it is, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad is the upcoming action-adventure RPG for iOS, Android, and Windows PC (via Windows Launcher). And personally, I think it looks very promising for a mobile project. Definitely an improvement from all those match 3 Candy Crashes 😅

🎮 PUBG wants to introduce AI Teammates

Image: Krafton

According to IGN, PUBG is working on AI companions described as Co-Playable Characters.

They are working together with Nvidia to create something entirely unique:

Unlike traditional NPCs, CPCs are equipped with the ability to interact and cooperate with users, as they understand and respond to game situations in a human-like manner.

Players can converse and strategize with their AI-powered CPC companion just like they would a human teammate, greatly enhancing gameplay.

Oh my, that sounds a bit problematic and very costly when it comes to QA. But if they succeed, that would be a major breakthrough in the world of online gaming!

🎬 Shadow of the Colossus movie gets a long-awaited update

Image: Team Ico / Sony

And another news from the world of video game adaptations. The movie director Andy Muschietti has provided a long overdue update on the status of the Shadow of the Colossus.

During Radio TU’s La Baulera del Coso program, Muschietti discussed the Shadow of the Colossus adaptation and confirmed that the film was not abandoned.

There are factors that have nothing to do with your hobby and desire to make it, but with how popular an intellectual property like this is.

Well, at least they are still saying that it’s still in development, right?

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🫡 True Tribute!

Today I wanted to salute

oyito

and

oyito’s game hub

with a great review of Rusty Lake Untold!

Co-op Days: Rusty Lake Untold - The Lab

The review sounds very interesting, even though I have very little experience with games like this, now I’m getting curious. Besides that,

oyito

always has a bunch of interesting review on video games, so you should definitely check it out for some interesting perspectives!

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😄 Personal Update

Phew, last week was kind of exhausting and this one is not a walk in the park either. A lot of work is happening right now and I’m involved in most of the stuff.

On the bright side, I talked with my lead and it looks like I have a lot of interesting plans ahead of me, but first we must release this game.

And talking about games, I’ve been enjoying yet another season of League of Legends and I finally achieved my personal milestone of purchasing every hero in the game 😅 If you ever played this game, you know how silly it is, considering that I play about 20 different heroes tops (out of about 150 or more). But at least it’s something out of these countless hours I’m pouring into this game.

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This is all the news I have for you folks today.

Thanks for making it this far! 🙌

If you feel like supporting me and my work, consider Powering-Up GameDev Relay 🎮

Have a great week!

Alex from Gamedev Relay.