Gizmoworld

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the big, world-changing isometric party-based RPG that everyone’s still talking about, but I’ve always felt that Pillars of Eternity is the game that really first started turning that engine over. The OG Infinity Engine vibes were strong, but it stood well on its own merits too: We called it “a deep, rich, and wonderfully written RPG that lives up to the towering legacy of the games that inspired it” in our 92% review. 

That was in 2015, mind, nearly a full decade ago, which is why it comes as a little bit of a surprise that developer Obsidian has released a brand new patch for the game that’s now available in the Pillars of Eternity beta branch on Steam.

The patch doesn’t add any new content but it does fix a large number of bugs and gameplay issues.…

Vanguard, Remedy’s mysterious multiplayer game, is being rebooted. Just a couple weeks after saying that it hoped to have the game’s “proof-of-concept” finished by the end of the year, the studio announced today that it’s decided to take the project in a whole new direction, with a whole new codename.

We never really learned anything about what Remedy originally had in mind for Vanguard, except that it was meant to be a “multiplayer live game” developed in Unreal Engine 4. The now-removed Vanguard website (via the Wayback Machine) says only that “the Vanguard team’s mission will be to challenge conventions and create a new breed of social, multiplayer Remedy experiences,” which isn’t a whole lot to go on.

But it doesn’t matter now, because that plan is off. Remedy said…

If you’d told me back in 2010 that Red Dead Redemption would take 14 years to release on PC, I would have been happy: the world still has at least 14 years left in the tank! But then I probably would have grown annoyed: 14 years to play a PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 game on PC? It’s simply unfair.

New evidence suggests a Red Dead Redemption PC port is imminent. Famed GTA dataminer Tez2 posted new code from the Rockstar launcher site today, and it doesn’t leave much room for interpretation. Among the code is the following quote: “Journey across the sprawling expanses of the American West and Mexico in Red Dead Redemption, and its zombie-horror companion, Undead Nightmare, now playable on PC.”

If true, it’s a canny move on Rockstar’s part: releasing a classic game on the second l…

The South China Morning Post reports that Chinese police have arrested a man who allegedly used ChatGPT to create a fake news story and spread it online. This may well be the first instance of a person being detained for their use of AI, though it certainly won’t be the last.

The man was detained in the northwestern province of Gansu and was identified by the police using only his surname, Hong. In a statement the force said he’d been held for “using artificial intelligence technology to concoct false and untrue information.”

The article in question appeared on April 25 and falsely claims that there had been a local train crash in which nine people had been killed. Cybersecurity officers found that the article had been simultaneously posted across more than 20 account…

Watch On

If a lifetime consuming too much science fiction has taught me anything, it’s that the endpoint of any proper galactic civilization consists mostly of meddling with forces that it absolutely shouldn’t be meddling with. To that end, the next Stellaris mechanical expansion, Cosmic Storms, is adding eight new types of galaxy-scale storms for your interstellar empire to try to bend to its will. I can’t foresee any issues.

Replacing Stellaris’s current Space Storms, the expansion adds eight new varieties of Cosmic Storms that can spawn randomly on the galactic map and roam across space: Electric, particle, gravity, magnetic, radiant, stardust, shroud, and nexus. Electric, particle, and stardust storms I can imagine pretty easily. “Radiant storms” and “gravity storms,” however,…

As spotted by Kotaku, a recent earnings call by Funko Inc. revealed that the vinyl tchotchke manufacturer simply has too much inventory sitting in warehouses, and that it will be “writing off” $30-$36 million worth of it⁠—which is to say, pitching it in the trash. After some bountiful years, including an early-pandemic bump, Funko seems to be feeling the burn of a saturated market and reduced demand.

funk_pops_found_at_landfill_to_be_destroyed from r/funkopop

This dangerous burial should be accompanied by some kind of warning. When the inhabitants of Earth in the distant future stumble across this vinyl trove, they have to understand what they’re getting into. “We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is n…

Give your daily Wordle an easy boost with our help. The answer to the May 17 (1063) game’s only a click away if you need it, and there’s a brand new clue written especially for today’s game if you don’t. However you want to play, we’ve got your back.

I had to laugh at myself today, staring as I was at one green letter, four yellows, and somehow still having a puzzled moment where I couldn’t quite work out the answer. Still, at least I quickly sorted that out. Just don’t tell anyone, OK?

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Friday, May 17

Today’s answer refers to a sort of teacher, typically a person who would teach an individual or small group. Think of private music lessons or after-school help with maths or English.  

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We’re barely two weeks into 2024 but the latest rumours surrounding the next generation of GPUs are already in full swing. And the claim this time is that Intel’s next graphics architecture, Battlemage, won’t be competing against the likes of the RX 7900-series or RTX 4080, but may instead focus on mainstream sales. As that’s where the bulk of GPU sales are anyway, it would hardly be totally surprising if true, but it’ll be disappointing if we have to wait another two years before there’s a real third contender for the GPU halo crown.

That is what’s been claimed by YouTube channel RedGamingTech, at least. An earlier video of theirs suggests the biggest Battlemage chip would have 56 Xe cores, up to 3GHz for the boost clock, and as much as 116MB of L2 cache connected to a 256-bit me…

Earlier this year PCG reported on a crypto rug-pull with a new twist: The CEO of the firm involved didn’t appear to exist. The news came in the wake of a Guardian Australia investigation into Hyperverse, a crypto scheme that collapsed with an estimated $1.3 billion in losses, and during its time was fronted by a chief executive by the name of Steven Reece Lewis. Reece Lewis had one hell of a C.V., but when the wheels came off he appeared to have vanished into thin air. Now the man behind the crypto baron has been found and, in another twist truly emblematic of crypto, it’s an actor who was paid a relative pittance.

The HyperVerse scheme was launched in late 2021 with a video featuring Reece Lewis alongside video messages of support from such luminaries as Apple co-fo…