🎮 Shadow of the Erdtree story trailer, XDefiant is LIVE, Valve's new game...
A new story trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree, XDefiant release, New details Deadlock from Valve,
Hello friends,
Today is May 23rd 2024 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 Shadow of the Erdtree story trailer
🎮 XDefiant is live (with issues)
🎮 New details Deadlock (Valve’s latest project)
🎮 Kingdom Hears are coming to Steam
🎮 Hellblade II is here and it’s amazing!
🎮 Minecraft meets AI
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 Shadow of the Erdtree story trailer
With only a month left before the release, FromSoftware decided to tease us just a little more with a new story trailer telling the story of Miquella.
It is as cryptic as you’d think if you even played any of their Souls games or Elden Ring. I honestly tried to make sense of it, but even with having hours upon hours of gameplay in the base game, I couldn’t. But Kotaku did. So if you want to understand the story a bit more, here’s the link.
If you want to know more, I highly recommend playing the base game and at some point considering the expansion as the game is truly amazing. I’ve spent almost 300 hours in the Lands Between, but I probably could’ve spent even more.
Shadow of the Erdtree will be the first and the last DLC for Elden Ring and it’s going LIVE on June 21.
🎮 XDefiant is live (with issues)
After long years of marketing, branding and rebranding, beta tests and all strategy changes you can think of, Xdefiant has finally made it to PC, PS5, and Xbox X/S.
Some say it’s the next big thing, some say that it’s a COD killer and it definitely looks spicy, but matchmaking is kind of broken. Some people seem to be enjoying it nonetheless.
But it’s only “kind of” broken. It seems like the game was unable to cope with the influx of players coming in from various platforms which resulted in the inability of some players to find a match. Ubisoft already released a patch and said: “We are all focused on the matchmaking issue and are continuously investigating. We will continue to provide updates as possible.”
It seems like all the multiplayer games are facing the same issues during the launch and it’s already becoming a new “normal” at least for me. But I’m more curious about how Xdefiant is going to hold up during the test of time. Some multiplayer FPSes are failing this test even after a tremendously successful launch.
If you ask me, I think we already have more than enough fast-paced multiplayer shooters, but we’ll see how the community feels after Ubisoft fixes all the multiplayer issues.
🎮 New details Deadlock (Valve’s latest project)
It seems like Insider Gaming got their hands on the alpha build of the latest addition to Valve’s game roster - Deadlock.
This whole thing started with an X user GabeFollower started sharing screenshots and details from early builds last week. Since then, it seems like either Valve decided to pay him a visit or his conscience decided to wake up but he decided to stop sharing more.
Even with this, combined with information from Insider Gaming, we can already paint a pretty clear picture.
Deadlock is a 6v6 third-person hero-based shooter with MOBA elements. This includes killing enemies and creeps to get the in-game currency of “souls,” which allows you to buy items to make your hero stronger. Not sure about the objectives of the match, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it would be to destroy a throne or a nexus point of some sort.
So far it doesn’t look very different from a long-forgotten project called Paragon developed, published and scrapped by Epic Games. I’m sure that the info we are getting now is only the tip of the iceberg. But I stand by my previous statement, I think we have more than enough hero-based shooters, so we’ll see if it’s going to be the next Dota 2 level game or another Overlords fiasco… 😔
🎮 Kingdom Hears are coming to Steam
According to the latest X post from an official Kingdom Hears account, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue and Kingdom Hearts III + Re Mind (DLC) will launch on June 13th on Steam.
If you are not familiar with it, it’s one of the crown jewels of Square Enix, a series of action RPGs that feature a selection of various Disney properties based in an original fictional universe.
It has its own timelines, events and so many different games! Previously, Kingdom Hearts was only available on PC via the Epic Games Store, but it’s finally making its way to Steam. Among other things, players are eager for Mods, Steam Deck support and more.
While everybody is waiting for Kingdom Hearts 4, there is nothing better than to go through the old games! 👑
🎮 Hellblade II is here and it’s amazing!
The second game about Senua, a Pictish warrior who experiences psychosis and has lived through intense and tragic trauma finally landed on all platforms a few days ago. And it is as glorious as the first one!
Ninja Theory managed to surprise everyone back in 2017 when a small indie team decided to go AAA. With a small budget and 15 people, they made the first game. And now we are back at it again, but now under the Microsoft / Xbox umbrella.
The game is starting to get traction in the media and everybody praise the sound design, the graphics and the puzzles. Suppose you are interested in a detailed review. In that case, Kotaku has already posted theirs and I’m sure that a bunch of streamers, YouTubers and other game-related media are wrapping up theirs. On Steam the game started receiving Very Positive reviews, so if you are interested in diving deeper into the deeply troubled mind of Senua, now is the best time to do it.
Make sure to play it with your headphones on! It’s fantastic! 🎧
🎮 Minecraft meets AI
With AI getting more and more traction these days, it’s not surprising that Microsoft’s AI companion is coming to their biggest game.
At the company's recent Surface and AI event, it showed off its new Copilot AI and how it could be integrated into Minecraft. They even posted a short video on X, if you are interested to see a short demo of what it looks like.
So far, it’s crazy and nothing too crazy at the same time. Copilot will respond to natural language and will explain how to use the resources you have, and will even guide you to them. And Microsoft emphasized that the data used for Copilot will remain on-device, and that it won't be uploaded to the cloud or used to train language models further without the user's consent.
It’s not the first step of AI making its mark on games and surely not the last, but with this feature getting everyone excited, we probably won’t recognize our games in 10 years or so. What do you think about the possibility of talking with your pet AI while playing games? Is it kind of creepy or is it just me?
I just hope it’s not as annoying as Instagram’s latest AI addition 💢
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
Minecraft + AI:
- User: Kinda cool...
- Microsoft Copilot: Just kinda?
:D
Kingdom Hearts played on the Steam Deck... Interesting... It is as tempting as it is repulsive :D