We’ve heard a lot about the survival aspect of Dune: Awakening–such as the way you’ll need to conserve water, stay out of the baking Arrakis sun, and carefully avoid ever-present sandworms. While it seems that staying alive on the least hospitable planet in the universe will take up a lot of your attention, the other part of Dune: Awakening is a slate of MMO elements, including the way you’ll tangle with other players who are also doing their best to survive.

Developer Fancom gave a hands-off demonstration of Dune: Awakening during Summer Game Fest 2024’s Play Days event, giving a quick new look at the survival MMO and particularly showing off a bit of its moment-to-moment gameplay. While we didn’t get to play the game ourselves, we did see it being played, which gave a sense of the fact that while you’re completing quests and keeping yourself alive, there will be times when you’ve got to contend with other players who might want what you have.

The demo picked up right after the player had cleared out an underground ecology lab, one of the locations that serves as Dune: Awakening’s equivalent to a dungeon. We were told that this character was in about the midgame, around 60 hours in, having gone beyond basic survival to gather and craft elements like a suspensor belt–a special bit of levitation technology that allowed them to make very high jumps and to float down from high locations unscathed–and an ornithopter, a flying vehicle for getting around. Leaving the dungeon, the player jumped right into their ornithopter, lifted it up, and transitioned out of the dungeon and out into the desert at large.

This is the Hagga Basin, which looks like it’ll be a main focus of much of Dune: Awakening, at least early on. As social and economic director Matt Woodward explained during the demo, the location supports around 40 players in an instance, and is made up of a variety of different locations. There are places like the lab, expanses of desert, and villages or outposts you can visit. The ornithopter did a pass over a few different parts of the location, including the open desert, where we landed for a quick look around.

In Frank Herbert’s novel, the desert isn’t uniform–the sand can sometimes compress to conduct sound extremely well, known as drum sand, and we also saw a bubbling area where subsurface liquid created quicksand. The player used the suspensor belt to jump free of the quicksand before sinking, but as all Dune fans know, messing around with that technology attracts the worm–which showed up a few seconds later. It was back to the ornithopter to avoid being eaten. Sandworms are a big hazard in Dune: Awakening, because while you retain your gear if you’re killed by other means, anything on you when you’re eaten by a sandworm (along with vehicles or anything else that gets consumed) is gone forever.

Next, the demo took us to a non-combat zone: a Harkonnen base. In this playthrough, the player had sided with the Harkonnen faction, making them allies to the great house but enemies with anyone loyal to the Atreides, the house of Dune’s usual protagonists. The base, Woodward said, was created using the same building system that Dune: Awakening makes available to characters, with only a few developer-specific pieces. The gist is that you’ll be able to construct your own bases and dwellings at the same level of quality as the developers, if you want.

The Harkonnen base was a spot where the player could pick up quests or talk to NPCs if they wanted to. This is also the kind of place where you can talk to trainer characters who can unlock new abilities for your character. You choose a role at the start of the game, like being a human computer called a Mentat, a swordmaster, or a Bene Gesserit who can deploy special abilities like the mind-controlling Voice. But you’re not limited to just the abilities and skill trees you get when you choose your starting conditions. In the Harkonnen base, the demo showed us the Mentat trainer, who can help you start unlocking Mentat abilities for your character so you can mix and match how you play.

Leaving the Harkonnen base by grabbing another vehicle, a land-based buggy, we headed to a new location: a crashed spaceship. The ship had smashed through the surface of Arrakis and was located deep in a gorge. It was full of valuable stuff, so the Harkonnens and the Atreides had each set up a base at one end of the gorge, hoping to protect the wreck itself from the other faction. That had resulted in something of a stalemate between the two.

The gorge was a good demonstration of the way locations are laid out in Dune: Awakening. The Harkonnen base is a non-combat area, essentially a social location. Outside of it, in the gorge, is a “Limited Warfare” area, which consists of PvE gameplay, where you’ll take down enemy soldiers and NPCs. The shipwreck itself, however, is a “War of Assassins” area, named after the larger conflict between the Atreides and the Harkonnen–a full PvP zone.

The reason for that is because the shipwreck contains valuable, one-of-a-kind schematics you can use to create new gear. Venturing into the ship, your goal is to find that schematic and leave with it. In this case, it allowed the crafting of a new, powerful rifle, but since there’s only one schematic in the shipwreck at a time, in order to liberate it for yourself, you’ll have to deal with anyone else who’s also trying to take it. The demo obviously didn’t have anyone else contending for that schematic, but in the live game, heading into locations like this will be a risk.

Woodward explained that, when you get the schematic out of the ship and can craft the item, you’ll get precisely one of them. If you want another rifle, you’ll have to repeat the process of finding the schematic and getting it home safely. That gives you some economic power, though, allowing you to sell the schematic or the rifle to other players and charging the kind of price that a tough-to-get item like that should command.

The playthrough of the demo ended after leaving the crashed ship, but Woodward gave a little more context of just how large we can expect Dune: Awakening to be. The Hagga Basin, he said, is comparable to the size of Conan: Exile’s map, about 64 square kilometers. Dune: Awakening will also have social locations like the capital city of Arrakeen, and the Harkonnen town Harko Village. Leaving the Hagga Basin by ornithopter takes you to an overworld map that lets you travel between major locales.

And then there’s the deep desert–the high-level PvP area where you’re seemingly going to put a lot of effort. Forming groups and guilds, you’ll head into the deep desert to harvest spice, search labs, and find wrecked ships, among other things. Just like in the wrecked ship, you’ll potentially fight other players as you try to claim unique schematics in the deep desert each week. Woodward said that the deep desert is the size of three of the 8-kilometer by 8-kilometer Hagga Basin map. Each week, a Coriolis Storm will reset the whole area, so not only are you going to be revisiting it over and over, but it’s going to be a huge area that will take a while to explore after each sweep.

Though the demo only lasted a few minutes, it still gave an interesting new take on Dune: Awakening, and in particular, how the game’s survival and MMO elements are going to work and meld together. There’s still a lot of the game we need to see in action, and the demo only gave quick looks at things like actually exploring and interacting with the desert, or engaging in combat–which seems like it can be pretty different from one player to the next, depending on what path you decide to take. But the ideas of questing, surviving, and fighting other players for cool, finite resources all sound like intense and fun additions to Dune: Awakening and great uses of the Dune setting. We’ll have to keep waiting to see even more, but what Funcom has shown so far looks promising.

The Legend of Zelda fans will finally get to play as Zelda herself in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. The highly anticipated new entry in the series is arriving on September 26. Fans who watched this week’s Nintendo Direct may have recognized the game’s art style. Echoes of Wisdom brings back the colorful visual aesthetic of the 2019 remake of Link’s Awakening. If you haven’t played the stellar remake yet, now’s a great time to pick it up. Walmart is selling Link’s Awakening for $40, down from $60, for a limited time.

Skyline Valley is at the center of the 17th season in Fallout 76. It features a new map region to explore, fresh cosmetics, weapons, gear, and more. However, what players will spend most of their time doing in Skyline Valley is completing the Vault 63 quest.

Vault 63 was previously locked in Fallout 76 until the Skyline Valley update came along. Now, players can complete a questline to find out the location of the vault and meet the residents inside. Below, you can see exactly how to start the Vault 63 questline in Fallout 76.

Beginning the Vault 63 Questline in Fallout 76

First and foremost, there is one primary requirement you need to meet before you’re even able to begin the questline associated with Skyline Valley. You need to be level 25 before you can receive the quest that leads to Vault 63 in Fallout 76. If you don’t meet the level threshold, then you won’t be able to accept or complete the Vault 63 questline. For those of you who are under level 25, I suggest playing through the main story, completing side quests, and participating in Public Events to gain XP rapidly.

Now, if you are level 25 or above, all you have to do is check the Data section of your Pip-Boy. Here, you should see a new quest called “An Unlikely Invitation,” which is the first mission in the Vault 63 questline. The quest automatically appears for all players above level 25 after downloading the Skyline Valley update in Fallout 76. If you view the steps for An Unlikely Invitation, you’ll see that you have to listen to the Vault-Tec Radio Broadcast to get your next task.

You can head over to the Radio tab in your Pip-Boy and select the Vault-Tec Broadcast from the list of available options. Listen to the speaker on the radio and then make sure An Unlikely Invitation is tracked from the Data tab. Once you start tracking the quest and have listened to the broadcast, you’ll get a new quest marker on your map. This officially marks the start of the Vault 63 questline in Fallout 76.

The quest takes you to locations all over the map to start but then begins to hone in on Skyline Valley. After an hour or two, you’ll reach the true entrance to Vault 63 and start to uncover the mystery behind Skyline Valley and the Lost enemies that populate the region. The questline takes roughly 15-20 hours to complete depending on how much time you take finishing all the quests. There are 12 total quests to complete, with “The Calm Before” quest taking place after you complete An Unlikely Invitation.

You can also check out everything the Skyline Valley update introduced to Fallout 76 in our previous guide.

The launch of Shadow of the Erdtree brings a new and exciting journey for From Software to its end. Elden Ring, released two years ago, was the studio’s first venture into the open-world genre, a massive undertaking full of complex challenges even for studios that have a long history of making them, let alone one taking its first crack at it.

For From Software and game director Hidetaka Miyazaki, it was an opportunity to leverage years of experience making Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and other titles to give players a game that retains the sense of adventure and challenge the studio is known for, while also offering the freedom to explore a vast landscape full of possibilities. Shadow of the Erdtree, the first and only DLC of Elden Ring, is the completion of that vision.

With Shadow of the Erdtree on the cusp of release, GameSpot spoke to Miyazaki-san about this journey and the road to making Elden Ring happen, as well as what he learned from the experience, what he envisions his next projects being, and the future of From Software as a whole.

GameSpot: How does this moment feel, given that it’s essentially the end of a big journey for Elden Ring? What does it feel like for you and the team; what’s your state of mind?

Hidetaka Miyazaki: A few things. First, Elden Ring, for us, we’ve never made a game of this caliber and scope before, so it’s an experience that I think myself and the entire team has not experienced both in terms of volume as well as the success itself. Elden Ring is, in terms of scope, just so much bigger than anything we’ve worked on in the past. I think it really helped grow and nurture a lot of our in-house talent as From Software. So the timing was right and we knew we wanted to take on a new challenge. Through developing Elden Ring, I think a lot of our talent, including directors who are not me or game designers, game planners who are not the core team that usually designs games within From Software [benefitted], it really served as a kind of foundation for us to build upon and grow into the next stage as a company.

I believe that will translate into being able to show the world the so-called new From Software, as well as the types of games that we will be developing in the future.

To add to that, I think developing this game was genuinely just fun for me and the whole team. Being able to build out a world and game of this scope, as well as collaborating with George R.R. Martin, I think is just one of those experiences you don’t get to have every day. So in terms of the unique joy in myself and the staff, I think that really helped us grow and hopefully someday we can apply all of these learnings and experiences to what we develop next, whatever that new challenge ends up becoming for the company.

And again, the enormous success that Elden Ring experienced, of course we’re very, very thankful to the fans who have supported the game. I think that it is that support that will enable us to take on whatever next challenge it is we want to as a company. So I want to give out a heartfelt thanks to everyone who’s supported the franchise so far.

Open-world games are a big challenge to make and it takes a lot out of a studio to do them. Do you now see this is the baseline for future games and open worlds being the kind of core of [From Software’s] games going forward? Or do you hope to return to something a little more linear and focused in the way that games are made?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that open world is going to become the new base or foundation or standard of the company. As I kind of hinted in earlier responses, we have a lot of game directors and designers who are growing, so we’d love to keep an open mind in terms of the types of games that we develop. So, of course, I can’t really say anything at this exact moment, but perhaps when you see future announcements from From Software you’ll look back at this point and think, “Ah, that’s what he meant.”

Do you remember how it was to make the decision to go open-world? Having made multiple Dark Souls games, Bloodborne, and Sekiro did you feel confident and capable or was there still a sense of nervousness about pulling it off?

Well, there were a couple of things that we had going for us. As you mentioned, having built up our experience and team with Dark Souls, I think that foundation gave us a certain amount of confidence. Likewise, seeing the team grow also gave us a different type of confidence that it was achievable. If you asked me if we were 100% sure we could pull it off, the answer would not have been yes at the time, but it did feel like there was a path to achieving what we set out to do. And of course, once we were on that journey, we realized how naive we were.

But of course everything leading up to Elden Ring has been built within the company brick-by-brick, if you will. And what we were setting out to achieve with Elden Ring we knew was an extension of what we’ve built up. So instead of just doing what we already know, we’ve always wanted to push the status quo and kind of extend ourselves a little bit, which was what helped create Elden Ring.

Do you remember what the mission statement or the objective was for this game? What is it that you wanted to have achieved and do you think that you have done so?

I think in the very, very early stages of Elden Ring’s proposal, a lot of the core concepts came down to giving players this adventurous feel, this very open-world freedom, if you will, and adjusting the difficulty to match that freedom that we’re giving players. That was a huge mission statement or thematic element we wanted to achieve with the game.

I think to a degree we have achieved that. But like all the games that we release at From Software, nothing is ever perfect. So there were certainly learnings from this experience. There were certainly some failures and shortcomings. But if I had the chance to redo this, I think I might do something differently but I would like the chance to revisit a lot of the themes that we set out to achieve.

You make these worlds that are vicious to you to begin with; they make you feel like you don’t belong there, and by the end of it you have conquered it. But for certain people that keep coming back it starts feeling like home–counter to the design intent. How does it make you feel knowing that there are people out there who come to this world that you designed to push them away because it makes them feel good? I often return to the games and I’m in these worlds because they make me feel capable and happy.

I think that some of that was part of the design, it was designed as intended. And I think what you’re referring to is the sort of severity of the world and how brutal it can be, which oftentimes translates to the difficulty and learning curve. But by conquering a lot of those challenges, players will be able to call that place, that world, their home like, “I’ve conquered it.” And I think there is certainly a sense of enjoyment that people can feel from it. One of the core themes of Elden Ring is this sense of achievement and perhaps what you just described is a small part of that sense of achievement, when these worlds start to feel like your home. The fact that you brought that up of course makes me really, really happy because it was working as intended.

I like to go back and fight Malenia when I need a little confidence boost, and it was the same way with Sekiro and Genichiro.

When you’re having challenges in your life or need a confidence boost, the fact that you turn to Sekiro and Elden Ring I think shows a lot of courage [laughs]. I don’t know if I would say a lot of that was an intended core part of the game design itself, but whether it’s Elden Ring, Sekiro, Dark Souls, there is certainly that sense of achievement that I mentioned earlier of overcoming a challenge, and it makes sense how that would translate to a boost in confidence.

Our world, the real world, has a lot of challenges and there are a lot of obstacles that we face every day, and some of these obstacles are not always achievable or conquerable. However, I think there is something innately comforting in knowing that within this realm of video games, it is conquerable and achievable. So if you face it head-on and interpret what’s happening on the screen and the inputs, you can again feel that sense of achievement. So I do think about that sometimes, how through this interactive medium of video games we can have that communication.

Each new release from the studio is a chance for it to evolve but usually what we hear is, “From Software is the team that makes hard games.” What is your interpretation of your identity now and how do you see From Software?

It would be hard to describe the next chapter of From Software in one word but if I had to, I think it would come down to value and how we create this value. The words that you use to describe it, fantasy, world setting, difficulty, sense of achievement, that perhaps I think is more closely tied to my own set of values than the company itself. These new directors and game designers that are up-and-coming, our in-house talent, may not share those exact same values. I don’t want to say something right now and commit to the future direction of From Software and bind what they’re able to do.

But if you look at it more broadly, I think it all comes down to creating and providing that value to gamers and being able to do that at 100%. So, making sure the environment is conducive to that type of thinking, and [creating] a path to be able to achieve that is to me what I think as the president and how I feel about the future of the company. So in reality it’s a very simple company, I would say.

For the immediate future, I think how fans have responded to our games, and I daresay the amount of trust they’ve placed in us as a brand, has provided us with this opportunity to be able to show different types of value that we can add. So I think our job at this point is to not betray that trust and expectation.

On an individual level, however, the sense of overcoming challenges, and the dark fantasy world setting is something I will always have, but I don’t necessarily think that will always be the direction of the company because others might feel differently.

It feels that diversity of games is starting to come out. I’ve never seen as many people excited about Armored Core and it’s obviously because of that trust. That must make you feel very confident in where you’re going and the team.

That there are so many Armored Core players tells me that perhaps our direction or our process wasn’t necessarily wrong, and we’re on the right track. So it’s certainly a confidence boost. But more so than that, I am very thankful for the fans who have responded and embraced that trust that we’ve built together. So I understand Armored Core was never a huge franchise adopted by many players, but seeing the current state of the franchise I think makes us know that we’re on the right path. And I think the same can be said for me as well as the company as a whole.

Last time we spoke you had moved to a leadership position and one of the things that you talked about was helping to serve that function but also staying in the thick of creating games. Having now created the biggest game you’ve made, how is that balance going?

With respect to the balance between being the president versus being a game director, I would say that hasn’t changed from our last conversation. And if I had to give it a ratio of president to game director, I would say it would be about one to nine in terms of ratio. So that hasn’t changed. What makes that possible, I would say, is on the more management or the president side of the business I have a really good team who’s able to support it.

And what it comes down to is me in a leadership position on the executive side, I want to focus on the things that only I am able to do, and I think that’s what I should be doing. And what that comes down to is keeping the vision for the company as well as passing judgment on if any one goal is being achieved and how we set those metrics. So the vision is setting the goal where the company should point where we should steer the ship and the judgment part is determining what’s needed, including the talent, the resources we’re deploying, how we evaluate and interpret talent and these resources, and how they’re being applied to our goal. To me, that’s something only I can do and the biggest contribution I can provide in the leadership role. The rest of the management really comes down to having such a great team.

What’s enabling us to do that is, I think going back to the previous response, the simplicity of how From Software is set up and how From Software paints its vision. We’re going to make good games and keep that entire mechanism and machine sustainable so we can continue to make good games. It’s that simplicity of directing everything towards value that allows me to spend, one part, doing president and, nine parts, being a game director. So if that balance and that overall vision start to point in a different direction, perhaps I’m not best suited for that role anymore.

Going from memory here, but I believe this is the longest period you have had between releasing a core game and then a DLC. What was it like spending this much time on a DLC and what challenges did you find that were new compared to your previous games?

You are correct in that this is the longest period between a base game and its DLC, however, that was not the intent per se and more of a byproduct as we embarked on this journey of developing it. If you ask why, it simply comes down to the sheer volume of content that is in the DLC, which doesn’t compare with others, but of course it translates into more time and more resources being applied to it. And if you ask why Elden Ring’s DLC has so much more volume, for me it comes down to the gameplay of Elden Ring and how the game itself is structured.

At its core, Elden Ring is about adventure, exploration of the unknown. and the sense of freedom that players get when playing Elden Ring. To make sure the DLC lives up to those core themes or core concepts, it necessitated creating a massive volume and the scale, so that we’re not losing sight and the players aren’t disappointed in those elements. So I think it was a necessity given the game design and gameplay of Elden Ring that the DLC took two years.

How difficult is it to stay the course in your ideas when in that period, you see the people who love these games, the fans talking so much about what the game is, what they hope the next part of it is going to be? Are you tempted to react?

I would say it’s the hybrid, but first and foremost, as a foundation, there is the original vision of what we set out to achieve with this DLC. And there is a strong idea of the type of experience we want players to have. And that being said, with the base game out in the wild, there are a lot of comments and feedback that users have. We tap into that as more of a means to adjust the game or tweak the balance or brush up the experience. But I would say there is certainly a foundation of what we are trying to do before user reactions or comments come into play.

And that’s something that is not just limited to this DLC. That same philosophy applies to everything that we do at From Software. There is always a vision or a concept of what we want to do and that comes from within the creators. We always have one eye on what the users and audiences are saying, so we can feed that back into the design or the experience and making sure we’re not completely ignoring reactions. That’s also combined with the experience the studio has built over the years as well, which is a very strong asset.

A big part of how people experience the game is how they interpret it, but for you, what was the theme you wanted to pursue in the DLC?

Of course, there are certainly themes that I have and themes that I hope audiences will experience. That can be said for Shadow of Erdtree as well as past games I’ve made, or even the base Elden Ring game. That being said, I don’t think it would be fair for me to explain that to players or tell that to players. The video game is supposed to be experienced, and I think that personal experience and interpretation is what’s most important. So whether it’s before or after the game is accessible to wider audiences, myself coming in and saying, “Well, actually this was the theme” would really take away or distract from the experience and that interpretation each individual player has built around their own adventure. On a more personal level, I think me trying to take these ideas and themes that I have and put them into words and say them out loud is, on a very simple level, embarrassing.

How do you construct a story by saying less and has it become easier over the years?

I don’t know if I would necessarily say it’s difficult to construct it in this way and perhaps this is, I don’t know if it’s myself or From Software as a brand, but by having these denser and lighter moments, we try to keep everything rather simple. In the case of Elden Ring, the so-called gaps that you mentioned come from the gameplay of us wanting to encourage people to explore and have their own adventure. And you yourself said, once you understand this and can feel this, you make the world your own in some way and it feels closer. Enabling players to feel that informed a lot of our storytelling style.

And this act of players trying to understand and trying to go deeper into this world is a huge, fun point, or value-add that Elden Ring provides. And it’s also something that I myself really enjoy, this idea of understanding and unboxing this world is a very attractive way to immerse oneself. So perhaps it is unique compared to a lot of other more setting-heavy games, but I find that enjoyable so it translates into the games as well.

Do you watch other people or the fans theorize or the videos they make or are you content with letting that happen outside of your vision?

I watch them. Of course, I can’t watch all of them, but I do like to watch them and I actually enjoy that process. I think it’s quite fun to see how people piece together their own theories or working theories based on a lot of fragmented information that the game provides. Some can be derived from hints in the game, others are completely theorized. But regardless, for me, I find it quite enjoyable to see the different interpretations that the fans and audiences have.

I think it’s a very desirable mechanic and the game was designed that way for people to be able to fill in those gaps. So, regardless of whether they’re correct or maybe not, it doesn’t change the way I watch these videos. I like to see it on a very objective level and say, “Oh, that’s an interesting way to piece together all these fragments.” So that’s how I interact with that type of user-generated content.

Taking that ethos and applying it to ending your DLC, how do you make it feel like a conclusion instead of an end to the world. Do you even want to leave it open to say, “We’ve got more to do in the future”?

Concerning Shadow of Erdtree, that’s something where I very strongly wanted to make sure audiences feel Miquella’s ending. And there of course might be room for interpretation in there, but the overall feel is a definitive closure to his arc. So if Shadow of Erdtree is Miquella’s story, he has his conclusive endpoint.

One of the things I really like is that your games always treat the player character as insignificant. You are a Tarnished and everyone’s constantly telling you that you are worthless. Traditionally people want their characters to feel special, a chosen one, or a savior. Where does that come from?

The game world is a quite severe and vicious place, including the very strong enemies. And I think that disdain that a lot of the game world and NPCs show towards the player is perhaps an extension of that harshness that you experience. And I think the same can be said about our own surroundings and world, where it’s quite cold and harsh at times. That link between reality or that harshness drives us in our world to find the beauty within it. And perhaps I think that’s the value that we provide and the value we experience at the core of this game. Whenever there’s a game and from the onset everyone’s like, “Oh my God, you’re the hero. Thank you so much,” to me it doesn’t feel real.

So if you hear just that part, it might make me seem like a sick or crazy person. But I think that’s where a lot of the reality comes from. Take love or any type of emotion that you may feel, if there’s too much of it, I think it lowers its value. So it’s that scarcity that I think really makes people feel and appreciate whatever it is they’re experiencing.

I love reading superhero comics like Superman and they are partly about how he’s special and amazing and savior of the world. But these days I’m drawn more to the stories of struggle, much like your games are or manga like Berserk is, and I see that a lot with others too. Do you think it’s a bit of a cultural shift that these darker stories are more in demand?

To make sure there’s no confusion, I want to be clear that, as a consumer, I love both. I love Superman and I love Berserk. I think they both have their own flavor and their own touch, but they’re both super enjoyable. When I said reality feels harsh and the games I make are in a way a reflection of that, that’s more me personally, how I have a worldview and how I translate that into the game design. The fact that happened to be a cultural match in terms of the times and the era that we live in, of course, there’s a sense of relief and happiness there as well. But again, that’s just how I create games. But as a consumer, I love all flavors.

Following on from that, how many of the games you make are a reflection of how you’re feeling? It’s a joke among fans that there must be something going on in there to be able to conjure the kind of imagery From Software does. Are you guys okay? Is everything alright over there?

[Laughs] A lot of the creature and monster design comes from my direction, and looking only at myself I mean, I feel okay. I think I’m pretty healthy and I’m enjoying life. So all joking aside, yeah, I think that it kind of is what it is.

That’s good. We’re just checking.

[Laughs]

One of the big parts of Elden Ring has been the collaboration with George R. R. Martin. How do you reflect on that experience now that the process has come to an end and is it something that you want to do again? I know a lot of people are talking about Brandon Sanderson as someone they’d love to see a collaboration with, and he’s a fan of games.

One of the huge value-adds of Elden Ring is, of course, George R. R. Martin’s contribution in terms of the lore and the mythology, and it is one of the very unique points that other From Software games don’t have. When the team was able to start unpacking his lore and his mythology, it turned into a huge stimulation for us, and it was something that on the development side, we don’t get to experience that often. So there was a lot of fun in terms of the world-building and world-setting and trying to decipher and depict and then translate that to what players see on screen.

So if we have the chance to work with another major creator, I think we would definitely be open to exploring that because of how unique the experience was, both on the development side as well as what players experienced. And with regards to George R. R. Martin himself as a person, aside from the stimulation the team received from all of his amazing mythology and lore, George had a very good understanding of game design and video games in general. I think he has a certain respect for it as well, so that made the collaboration and the entire process very, very seamless and easy for us.

Do other mediums interest you, especially for the games that you have made? There are no doubt plenty of opportunities to use the success of Elden Ring or Dark Souls to make a movie, a TV show, or something else outside of games. Do you foresee a future where you want to adapt things or try different mediums?

I don’t know if I should say we or perhaps me in this instance, but I have no intention of saying, “Oh, there’s never going to be a movie” or denying all possibilities of other adaptations. It’s just how I think and how I best communicate with audiences is through the interactive medium. So that’s where my focus has gone. And when I think about how I can best communicate, it is through that interactivity. There are many others who can make a much better linear format content than we can. For myself and From Software, I think the biggest value-add that we can provide is by making games. So again, not saying no to any possibilities, but perhaps there are others who are better suited to adapting Elden Ring and other From Software franchises into different medium formats.

You’ve been successful in realizing the sense of adventure and challenge that you wanted to achieve with Elden Ring. Do you think those two elements will continue to be the focus going forward or do you have new ideas or themes you want to tackle?

On the one hand, I often direct multiple games or oversee multiple games at once, so that difficulty curve and sense of achievement are always going to be a core of my game direction and game design. But with another game, perhaps–and this is going to happen sometime in the future that I’ll be able to talk about it in more detail–there might be different themes or core elements.

I guess another way to ask the question is, what excites you in games now and make you excited to play and create?

There are many elements that excite me when it comes to both video games and tabletop board games, and I think that there are many joys to be extracted from that. But for me, personally, what brings the most excitement comes while I’m making a game. Whenever I have a good idea and I can create a hypothesis and then test that theory against, “Hey, is this fun? Is this a good idea or not?” Those moments to me bring the most excitement. So perhaps through my work, I am constantly chasing that feeling and that excitement as I’m making games.

One other thing that really excites me right now is watching my daughter grow. And this might be a very short-term thing, but it’s fascinating and very interesting to see a small human being discover or see the world; see how a human is constructed or built in a way, how the personality is formed, how they start to identify and build their own identity. And this might just be being a father, but I think that there’s certainly something there that excites me.

Do you think that the experience of doing that, watching your daughter grow will eventually make its way into the game? Do you think about how that more naive and idealistic perspective kids have could change how you see the world and thus the worlds you depict in games?

I don’t think about that too much and I am not against the idea of change. In a lot of ways, I think having a daughter can expand the possibilities, and that expansion is a necessary element of continuing to make great games–a stimulant of [creativity] if you will. And I don’t mean to talk about my daughter as an object or anything, but in the process of making games, I think it is a necessary and important stimulant because it helps you see the world through a different lens in a lot of ways. And if that is causing worry for my fans or the gamers, I don’t think there’s much to worry about.

For me, it’s again, finding and discovering that fleeting moment of beauty in a lot of these dark, cold, harsh, grotesque worlds that I think allows it to shine even more. That philosophy applies to how I design and direct video games. So if I find a newer, even higher or more stimulating beauty, that will just help make the worlds even darker, more grotesque, and harsher so that it can shine even brighter. In terms of a fantasy world, the brighter something shines, the darker the shadow it casts, right?

There are a lot of games out there taking inspiration from and riffing on the formula that From Software popularized with its Souls games, but Enotria: The Last Song is the first one I’ve encountered that is explicitly angled at opening it up to more people.

I played Enotria at Summer Game Fest’s Play Days event, where developer Jyamma Games had a demo that featured a boss rush of three fights from the game, ramping up in difficulty. The first featured a battle with a miniboss, a jester-like guy with a spear; the second was a wispy magic-user; and the third, a giant puppet monster. All three were tough, but I took them all down well within the hour appointment time I had.

I have a lot of Souls-like experience, but part of my success in such a limited window of time was due to the coaching from Jyamma producer Eduoardo Basile on how Enotria’s signature systems work. While Enotria felt immediately familiar as a Souls-like–Jyamma says it falls somewhere between Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in terms of a focus on aggressive fighting and parrying–it’s also attempting to ease up on some of the harder-to-understand elements of From Software’s games. That’s, namely, the idea of being committed to a certain type of character or a certain type of build, which can put you at an advantage in some situations and a disadvantage in others.

In Enotria, you can hot-swap between three different loadouts at any given time, allowing you to change your approach to an enemy while you’re fighting it. Enotria is predicated on a system of masks–the whole game takes place in a supernatural stage play from which no one can escape, and defeating enemies earns you their masks to wear. Masks can provide you with benefits for a certain style of play, like enhancing your defense in melee fights or offering increased elemental damage, and you can pair them with specific weapons in your loadouts. You’ll still level up your base stats in a way that’s similar to a Souls game, but the masks and loadouts allow you to change how you’re fighting or what you’re focusing on in response to the enemy you’re facing.

In practice during the boss rush, it was a pretty effective approach. The jester miniboss was fast and agile, so a quick longsword was handy in that battle. I spent much of it avoiding strikes with quickstep dodges and parrying blows, Sekiro-style. Against the magic user, I swapped for more magic defense and to a large, heavy greatsword, which not only dealt huge damage, but also was enough to knock back and stagger my wispy opponent. That meant that regular attacks could interrupt the boss before it could pull off its annoying spells, and matched with a consumable item that restored my health whenever I did damage to my opponent, I was able to tank my way through much of the fight.

It’s a system that seems like it’ll make for a lot of gameplay versatility in Enotria. During the demo, I was told the idea here was that, while Enotria is still going to be hard–it’s still a Souls-like–the system can help players find better options for a specific battle. Approaching a boss with a loadout that takes advantage of their weaknesses, like whacking that magic-user with a heavy sword and sending him stumbling, can give you a marked advantage and, maybe, bring the difficulty of a fight down. In practice, it seems like understanding your enemy and thinking through your strategy offers a different kind of challenge than just straight input skill needed to beat bosses. Eliminating the idea of being locked into a certain type of character, or a certain type of gameplay, for all of Enotria’s 40-plus hours is the approachability the developers were hoping to bring to the subgenre.

But this is still a fast, aggressive, dodgy Souls-like. Avoiding attacks with i-frames, like in Bloodborne, is the main gist of every fight, but you can also equip special shield gems that let you parry attacks with the right timing, just like Sekiro. Enemies also have a poise meter that fills as you land attacks and successfully parry blows, and when it’s full, you’ll stagger your opponent to open them up for a big, powerful riposte attack. This is another place where swappable weapons and loadouts are key, because while you might want a fast weapon during most of a fight, switching to a big, heavy sword for a riposte increases the devastating attack’s damage significantly.

Each of the three battles had a different feel that seemed to give a decent cross-section of what Enotria’s combat and bosses will be like. As a big fan of both Bloodborne and Sekiro, I felt right at home with the systems almost instantly. For the most part, Enotria is an aggressive game where you’re rewarded for pressing the attack and parrying through your opponent’s moves. That was true even against the giant, gross puppet monster that made up the third and final fight.

That battle had a pretty classic Bloodborne-esque feel; the monster was a huge, lumpy creature, and from its giant mouth sprang a smaller version of the actor controlling it, wielding a long staff weapon. The puppet did a lot of jumping around, landing hard and sending shockwaves rippling across the battlefield that could flatten me if I missed dodging through them. The puppet monster also inflicted a specific kind of elemental damage that, like in a From Software game, would build up a detrimental status effect. That effect was vis, one of Enotria’s four elemental effects, which is a dizziness effect that Basile likened to being drunk. Frantically dodging around and trying to get hits in simultaneously, I couldn’t tell exactly how vis messed with my character’s ability to fight, but it definitely seemed to make staying alive tougher generally.

Apart from its combat elements, Enotria’s setting, art style, and approach to its story are also enticing. The game is inspired by Italian folklore, and Jyamma describes the game as “Summer Souls” to highlight the brighter, sunnier art direction that informs its particular look. It also draws from the specific aesthetic of Italian architecture to create a world that feels a bit different from other entries into the genre, even with just a short look at the game.

Basile said Enotria is digging into the ideas that Italy is more than a series of cliche touchstones, like pizza and the Coliseum. But the story being told in Enotria, of a play that never ends and that traps people in their particular roles, is also a metaphor for cultural stagnation in the country. The game is also about the idea that for Italians, being immersed in that culture means finding it normal, and eventually, taking historic works of art and beauty for granted.

To impart those big ideas and themes, Enotria’s story will be told through the usual Souls-like means–flavor text on items and discoverable lore, as well as clues from the environment–but Basile said the team at Jyamma is also trying to make that aspect a little more approachable, as well. It sounds like the story will be delivered in a slightly more straightforward way than fans of From Software’s games might expect, more in the vein of Sekiro than Dark Souls.

Though I only played a few minutes of Enotria, everything I saw and heard about it left me wanting to play more. Jyamma’s approach to making a game inspired by the Souls games, while also giving it a spin specific to the developer’s culture and potentially making it more approachable, sounds like an interesting and smart way to expand on the usual Souls-like formula.

Enotria currently has an eight-hour demo available as part of Steam Next Fest. You should also check out the rest of GameSpot’s Summer Game Fest coverage.

Fear The Spotlight starts like many good horror stories. A couple of friends–nerdy goody-goody Vivian and her goth pal Amy–sneak into school after-hours to perform a séance. The school has a creepy history, after all, thanks to a fire a few years earlier that claimed the lives of several students. It’s a bit morbid and disrespectful to try to contact the spirits of a bunch of kids in the school library, but hey, teenagers are morbid and disrespectful.

I played a short demo of Fear The Spotlight at Summer Game Fest 2024’s Play Days event, and at first, that was the thing that stuck with me most–at least, at first. Sneaking through the halls of the school and listening to conversations between protagonist Vivian and Amy, the whole thing felt pretty natural and realistic. Goth kid befriends nerd and the pair get into trouble together–I’m sure a lot of people have that exact backstory in their lives somewhere.

Fear The Spotlight matches a 1990s teen horror story with a 1990s survival-horror aesthetic. The game calls up the look of early 3D games on the original PlayStation, most notably Silent Hill. The blocky, low-resolution visuals work well with the dark high school setting, giving the whole game a strange unreality that’s perfect for a ghost story.

The game, the product of the two-person, husband-and-wife team Cozy Game Pals, released in a previous form back in 2023. It has since been picked up for publishing by Blumhouse Games, the video game arm of movie production studio Blumhouse, and is re-releasing in Fall 2024 with additional story content. But despite having been around for nine or so months, Fear The Spotlight isn’t a game I had clocked before Summer Game Fest, and after trying it for a few minutes, I was disappointed I hadn’t heard of it before.

The demo started with Vivian and Amy making their way through the halls and heading toward the library. Along the way was a quick stealth segment, in which the girls ducked under a table to avoid the scanning eye of a surveillance camera. That would be the spotlight from the title, with staying in the shadows to avoid being seen being a major gameplay element.

When we get to the library, we see the other major gameplay element: first-person puzzle-solving. Vivian sets off to retrieve a spirit board (otherwise known as a Ouija board), which is kept in a glass display case in the library. To get it open, Vivian needs a key from the library’s office; to get into the office, she needs a keycard. Each time she interacts with one of those elements, the game cuts from a third-person perspective to first-person. You guide a cursor around a static version of the glass case to find the parts you can move or interact with. Touching the display’s lock, for example, brings up Vivian’s inventory to choose an item to use with it, like a key.

These interactive moments also give you opportunities to learn more about the world around you. Like in Resident Evil or Silent Hill, hitting the activation button on any of the other objects in the case brings up a little bit of text about them, giving some of Vivian’s internal monologue about whatever she’s seeing or reading. Some of these moments are pretty insightful, giving a better sense of Vivian and Amy’s relationship. Fear The Spotlight seems to sport a high degree of attention to detail in providing little tidbits that enhance your understanding of the story. For instance, when Vivian retrieves the keycard from the information desk, we discover just how big a nerd Vivian really is–it’s her own keycard, because she’s one of the library’s top student volunteers.

Vivian brings the spirit board to a table where Amy is waiting, where there’s another bit of first-person interactivity. When Amy passes you a book of matches, you pull a couple from your inventory and light the candles to start the séance. Placing your cursor over the planchette and holding a button down simulates the way you’d interact with the spirit board in real life, but as Amy starts to ask questions, it starts to move around the board erratically. A dark figure appears behind Amy and the candles go out, plunging the room into pitch darkness.

From here, Fear The Spotlight takes a drastic turn, even for such a short demo. I relight the candles slowly and painfully, dragging each one from the match box individually. When the light is finally restored, it reveals that Amy is gone. Vivian grabs a candle to light the way, and you can start to walk through the library in search of your lost friend.

Even in the darkness, it soon becomes clear that the library has changed. First, it’s the path back the way you came, with bookshelves turned over to block the way. Then, it starts to seem like the library itself has shifted to become larger and more winding. The space itself feels too big. This is another point when the old-school PlayStation graphics amplify the weirdness of Fear the Spotlight. Checking down one pathway or another, you often see–or think you see–a figure in the darkness. Other times, you’re definitely chasing Amy through the stacks, but she somehow disappears in the unnatural space. Although there are a lot of creepy things going on, according to the press materials shared for the game, the spooks you’ll get from Fear The Spotlight are atmospheric–no jump scares to worry about here, if those aren’t your thing.

As Vivian calls to Amy and continues the search, a distant area of red light appears and a silhouette within it, but as we get close it vanishes, and suddenly, fire spreads through the library.

At this point, Fear The Spotlight is off the rails. We hurry through the library fleeing the fire, but the room has fully twisted, bookshelves and tables giving way to different walls. Red curtains hang ahead, recalling the extradimensional Red Room of the TV show Twin Peaks. As Vivian flees, the wall ahead cracks open, tearing through the memorial plaque for the students killed in the fire, creating a pathway. Vivian flees into the crack and the camera hangs back, focusing on the students’ photos–the faces have shifted from smiling students to screaming demons.

It’s there that Fear The Spotlight’s demo ends, giving just enough of a sense of Fear The Spotlight to be really enticing. While it’s not sporting the kind of intensity the survival-horror games it’s channeling were known for, the uncanny feeling created by the game’s graphical style and art direction pair perfectly with the spooky story the characters find themselves in. The demo wasn’t quite enough to get a full handle on everything Fear The Spotlight has to offer, but it did leave me wanting to see more.

Fear The Spotlight is set for its re-release with an additional one to two hours of new content, according to its Steam page, in 2024. It’s coming to PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox 360.

Don’t miss the rest of GameSpot’s Summer Game Fest coverage.

The classic board game Talisman: The Magical Quest Game is making a long-overdue comeback in a few short months. The 5th edition of the fantasy dungeon crawler is manufactured by Avalon Hill, a Hasbro-owned board game developer responsible for hits such as Betrayal at House on the Hill and HeroQuest. The most recent edition of Talisman is no longer in print, and finding a complete set for retail price hasn’t been easy. That changes on July 4, and you can secure your preorder of Talisman’s 5th edition for $60 at Amazon. You can also preorder the first expansion, a cooperative experience dubbed Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons.

If you’ve never played Talisman before, it’s an adventure board game with light RPG mechanics where up to six players compete to obtain the Crown of Command, slay the Elder Dragon and become the new ruler of the land. Each player chooses from one of 12 characters to play as, including the Thief, Elf, Wizard, and Prophetess. The original game launched back in 1983 and since then has seen multiple revisions, the last being the 4th edition in 2008. The game is typically quite pricey on the reseller market. This new 5th edition printing will make picking up a copy of the game much easier–but considering it’s an Avalon Hill game of a classic that many newer board game enthusiasts haven’t had a chance to try, we wouldn’t be surprised if the first wave of preorders sold out.

Talisman Alliances: Fate Beckons is an exciting expansion, because for the first time in the board game’s 40-year history, Talisman will offer a cooperative mode for two to six players. The $34 expansion set includes new characters, adventure cards, and spells. Teams will try to conquer five trials, which Avalon Hill describes as offering “endless replayability” due to the sheer number of variables in the mix. If you’re a Talisman veteran, you’ll get to experience a new way to play the strategy game, and co-op mode tend to be nice onboarding experiences for brand-new players.

While you wait for your order to arrive, you could check out the officially licensed video game adaptation of Talisman. The digital board game released back in 2014 and has a bunch of add-on content that’s available to purchase separately. You can save some cash on a bunch of Talisman digital content for PC at GameSpot’s sister site Fanatical. Talisman’s digital edition is also available on the Nintendo Switch eShop.

Fallout 76’s first-ever map expansion, Skyline Valley, has arrived, bringing a hefty 40GB patch stuffed with new content and bug fixes. The update brings a new area to explore, accompanied by a brand-new questline, as well as unique new enemies and a major boss.

Skyline Valley is Fallout 76’s first new region since the game released over five years ago, based on the real-world Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. In Fallout 76, the region is covered by an ever-present storm, which players are tasked with finding the origin of.

The new quest will involve finding a new vault, Vault 63, and uncovering its story. The questline will introduce a new type of electrically charged ghoul, who are collectively known as the Lost, as well as a massive, powerful boss that Wastelanders will have to come together to defeat.

A new Public Event will also be taking place in the new area, where players will be tasked with protecting storm-chasers as they try to snap the best photo of Skyline Valley’s dramatic storms.

As well as the new content, Update 1.7.12.10 will include a number of bug fixes and improvements on existing Fallout 76 content. You can check out the full patch notes below.

The Fallout games have seen a surge in popularity in recent months after the release of Prime Video’s Fallout TV show. Fallout 76 recently hit a new all-time concurrent player record on Steam, while Bethesda revealed that the game had over one million players on at once across all platforms after the TV show released.

While Bethesda has confirmed that new Fallout games are on the horizon, it still appears to have plenty planned for Fallout 76, recently revealing that an update that will let players become a ghoul will arrive in 2025.

Update Version 1.7.12.10

Check the download sizes below for today’s update on your platform of choice:

• PC (Steam): 27.6 GB
• PC (Microsoft Store): 40.3 GB
• Xbox: 40.2 GB
• PlayStation: 40.03 GB

Skyline Valley

Welcome to Skyline Valley! Our first map expansion of the Appalachian region. A mysterious location that is covered by a storm unlike any that have been seen before. There are new locations to discover, characters to meet, secrets to unveil, as well as more locations to build your C.A.M.P.S!

An Unlikely Invitation

After finding the true location of Vault 63 you’ll work with its leaders to unravel the mystery behind the Storm and The Lost. Throughout this questline you’ll discover the mystery behind the Lost, meet new characters, and make gut-wrenching choices about the fate the residents of Vault 63.

Dangerous Pastimes

This wicked storm raging above Skyline Valley isn’t going to keep these thrill-seekers away in the new Public Event! Help a group of settlers/tourists capture the best pictures of the Storm by protecting them from nearby Lost and electrically charged creatures. They’re joy stealers, make sure they don’t crash the party.

Neurological Warfare

While exploring Skyline Valley, you may get the inclination to nuke the region. These actions are not necessarily encouraged, but they’re not discouraged either. Guess you’ll just have to find out what happens.

Combat Rebalance Work

We are beginning a series of combat updates that are aimed to improve your experience. We’re starting this process with today’s update by making some changes to Creatures and Weapons. Our goal is for these changes to have positive effects on combat throughout the entire game.

To help set expectations, we expect these changes to take effect in a variety of different places (Weapons, Creatures, etc.) across multiple patches. Giving you all a lot of time to provide feedback on the adjustments being made to ensure we’re moving in a positive direction.

Season 17 – Pioneer Scouts

The sun is out and it’s time to head on over to Summer Camp. There’s much to learn and do at the Pioneer Scouts sleepaway camp!

Fixes & Improvements

Art

• Muni Operator Outfit Now Looks the Same When Previewed & When Worn

C.A.M.P.

• Workshop: Enlightened Mothman Lantern should no longer display the premium icon and can be repaired individually when destroyed
• Workshop: Fluttering Moth no longer takes up CAMP Light budget
• The Sacred Mothman Tome camp item now has candle flames
• Nuka world radio will now correctly sync across clients

Gameplay

• Power Armor: Fixing a state players could get in where they could no longer craft Union Power Armor when they should have been able to
• Power Armor: Union Power Armor will no longer drop as loot from enemies but can be rolled from The Purveyor if the recipe or entitlement is known by the player

Dev Note: With this fix Union Power Armor is now craftable for players who have bought and learned the recipe from Giuseppe or by players who earned the Union Power Armor entitlements in Season 10.

If you do not have the plan for Union Power Armor, it can be purchased from Giuseppe who is upstairs with Bubbles at the Refuge. Once learned, they will no longer be able to be obtained.

Additionally, Union Power Armor pieces will not drop as loot even if you can craft the Power Armor pieces, but they can be found via the random Power Amor Purchases from Murmrgh at The Rusty Pick. Players should only see Union Power Armor Pieces that they know how to craft drop from Purveyor’s Mystery Picks. Pieces that they have yet to learn will not drop

Union Power Armor pieces will still have the Atomic Symbol on them and cannot be traded or dropped by players once they have been obtained.

• Workshop: Player who had learned to build the Atlantic City Poker and Blackjack tables but lost access to them should now be able to build them again
• Test Your Metal: Robot Beer Stein Display Case will now properly drop from the Test Your Metal Event
• Moonshine Jamboree Improved an issue which could block enemy pathing during the event
• Fasnacht: Masks of all tiers will correctly drop upon event completion
• Fasnacht: Improved spawn rates of Honeybeasts
• Fasnacht: Added a Donation Basket near the event! Share your repeat masks with other players
• Fasnacht: Marchers now start walking to the parade start immediately when their task is completed, without needing to wait for their dialogue line to be finished
• Fasnacht: Increased the walk speed of the Marchers
• Fasnacht: Will now randomly pick between 5 possible end boss encounters
• Yao Guai Pastry: Now counts as a cooked meal for the “Eat a Cooked Meal” challenge
• Applying the Reflex Sight to the Enclave Pistol with a Flamer Barrel attachment now shows the Decrease in AP Consumption in the STATS Menu
• Hot Rod On Blocks & Overgrown Vehicle no longer spawn damaging nuke explosions when destroyed
• Fixed an issue which could cause players to get stuck while turning the spit in Meat Week
• Fixed an issue with the Damage Reduction effect on the Endangerol Barrel that allowed it to stack multiple times on a target
• Nuka Shank now requires glass & cloth to be crafted rather than oil
• Updated mods for the Gauss shotgun, Gauss minigun and Gauss pistol to correctly require Science based perks to be applied
• Updated the default barrel mod for the gauss rifle
• Fixed an issue which could cause Fusion cores to appear empty when place in Power Armor
• Players can now trade the Herdsman’s Bell and Herdsman’s Bell Rack to other players
• Paddle Ball now displays the correct ammo type when inspected

Weapons

• Increased the base damage of the Alien Blaster and Cryolator
• Fixed an issue with how damage was calculated for the following weapons/mods: Auto Axe, Chainsaw, Minigun Shredder mod
• Increased base damage for the Auto Axe
• Adjustments to Electric/Electrified, Burning, and Poisoned mods for the following weapons: Auto Axe, Mr Handy Buzz Blade, Chinese Officer Sword, Shepherds Crook, Sheepsquatch Staff, Sheepsquatch Club, Hatchet, Assaultron Blade, Revolutionary Sword, Baton, and Vault 63 Shock Baton.

Dev Note: These weapon mods now evenly split their damage between Physical and Energy/Fire/Poison, and damage has been adjusted to account for damage being split between multiple damage types.

The Cattle Prod has also received a similar change – its damage has been adjusted and is evenly split between Physical and Energy damage. These adjustments generally represent an increase in damage dealt.

We have also improved how we calculate the falloff for weapon damage at range. We expect this to smooth out the falloff damage for weapons that historically lost most of their damage right away. All ranged weapons benefit from this, but it should be most visible with Shotguns and Pipe Guns, as well as when fighting larger creatures such as Deathclaws.

Localization

• Fixed Various Typos
• Fixed Some Dialogue

Quests

• Honor Bound Fixed an issue where Vin could become hostile to the player
• One Violent Night: Fixed an issue where the Nightstalker’s VFX would be applied to players multiple times, creating an extremely intense effect
• “Bots on Parade” and “A Real Blast” Fixed an issue that caused the objective to complete before the correct number of hostiles were defeated.
• “Distant Thunder” Increased the objective radius to more accurately reflect the area in which Scorched can appear
• Hell’s Eagles Fixed an issue that would allow players to start the quest again after completion. We also removed the second broken quest from players in this situation
• Regent of the Dead: Jordy no longer continuously starts dialogue with the player if the player exits dialogue with her before resolving the confrontation.
• The quest Miner Miracles now starts correctly when interacting with the Garrahan Excavator Poster

UI

• Items now display how much they will weigh when being placed in a character’s stash
• Score notification will no longer remain visible on ultra-wide monitors
• Fixed an issue which would cause “You have joined a team” to remain visible on some super wide monitors
• Added Height indicators for quest targets and NPCs to the Power Armor UI

World

• Raider NPCs from the Coop will no longer spawn as legendary
• The following creatures have received balance changes: Angler, Cave Cricket, Floaters, Gulper, Mutant Hound, Protectron

Miscellaneous

• Fixed some dialog inconsistencies
• Broken ProSnap Deluxe cameras will no longer appear in vendor inventories.
• Fixed some directional prompts for Tax Evasion
• Fixed an issue which could cause audio to cut out on some expeditions.
• Green Thumb, Backwoodsman 4 and Verdant Season should now work on a broader selection of plants
• Fixed an issue which would cause players to crash if they logged out during character generation
• Fixed some cases where turret-mounted laser weapons weren’t triggering the Electric Absorption perk
• Updated “Complete Any Expedition” and “Complete Any Atlantic City Expedition” challenges to include the new Atlantic City mission from the America’s Playground update