A Square Enix RPG sequel will finally arrive on Xbox next year after already launching on PC, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch back in February. That's right, Octopath Traveler II was confirmed for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S in early 2024.

Microsoft made the announcement during the special Xbox broadcast for Tokyo Game Show. Octopath Traveler II originally launched February 24, with a free demo available as well for the RPG sequel. Save data from the trial does, in fact, transfer to the full game, too.

GameSpot's Octopath Traveler II review by Heidi Kemps called the game "a delight from start to finish, and has left me looking forward to seeing where this series will take itself in the future." The RPG features eight different characters to play, so who to start with can be a bit tricky.

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Build A Rocket Boy, the game studio founded by former GTA and Rockstar boss Leslie Benzies, has released a new trailer for its first game, Everywhere, and announced how fans can play it early.

Everywhere is described as a "community-driven gaming, a place where you can unleash your imagination to build, play, and connect." It doesn't seem like a single game but instead a platform where players can create whatever they like, not unlike Roblox or Fortnite. The new trailer shows off some of the many different experiences that players can find in Everywhere.

This newest trailer looks far different than the first one from August 2022, but that makes sense given that Everywhere isn't one specific type of game or one that has a singular art style.

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Most of the time, Star Wars has a pretty simplistic view on things. Everything is binary--heroes and villains, light side and dark side, selflessness vs. selfishness, etc--with no room for nuance or meaningful ideological exploration. But there are exceptions to that norm, and it's really starting to look like Baylan Skoll, the late Ray Stevenson's rogue Jedi character on Disney+'s Ahsoka, is one of them.

"As you get older, look at history, you realize it's all inevitable. The fall of the Jedi, rise of the Empire. It repeated again and again and again," Baylan says to his apprentice, Shin Hati, in this week's episode as he reflects on his Jedi upbringing and the destruction of the Order.

"Isn't it our turn now? Won't our alliance with Thrawn finally bring us into power?" Shin asks.

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Today's Capcom TGS 2023 Online Program livestream kicked off with new details on Dragon's Dogma 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2012 RPG.

The segment included new details on character classes, world locations, quests, and more.

Players will start as one of four classes upon beginning their Dragon's Dogma 2 journey, each with its own combat mechanics and abilities. The four starting classes are as follows:

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Capcom has announced that Apollo Justice Ace Attorney Trilogy will launch on January 25 for PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.

The compilation will include three games: 2008's Apollo Justice, 2013's Dual Destinies, and 2016's Spirit of Justice. It'll also feature a story mode which turns the games into a visual novel, where it lets players skip the investigation, trial, and gameplay bits. All DLC are included too.

There are several other features as well. The Orchestra Hall is a music player with chibi versions of the characters playing the music. The Art Library is just as the name suggests--it has artwork that unlocks for finishing each game. Additionally, the Animation Studio lets you create your own scenes with characters and backgrounds from the games.

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The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III multiplayer beta is coming up soon, and you don't necessarily need to preorder the game to get in early. Comcast has announced that Xfinity subscribers in the US can get early access to the beta as part of their membership.

As spotted by CharlieIntel, the Rewards tab on Xfinity's website now lists the Modern Warfare III beta as a perk. The Xfinity Rewards page gives you a code to redeem on the Call of Duty website, where you can choose your platform of preference. As the beta draws closer, you will receive an email with a platform-specific code with instructions for how to download.

2022's Modern Warfare II also featured a promotion with Xfinity to give subscribers a code to join the beta for that year's Call of Duty game. Alternatively, anyone who preorders Modern Warfare III gets early access to the game's multiplayer beta.

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Roll the dice with lady luck or face off against new creatures when Atlantic City comes to Fallout 76 on December 5. The game's art director, Jonathan Rush, announced the release date for the upcoming destination at Xbox's broadcast for the Tokyo Game Show.

Rush also revealed that Steam players can check out Atlantic City early on the public test server starting October 3. "Atlantic City has stacked the deck with new content including new locations, new factions, new creatures, new missions, and new rewards," the art director said. "Plus, a flush casino where our wastelanders can test their luck."

Bethesda Softworks originally unveiled that Fallout 76 would head for the boardwalk of Atlantic City at the Xbox Showcase in June. The company also stated at the time that over 15 million people had played the game.

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The reimagining of the 1984 horror-comedy The Toxic Avenger is about to make its world premiere at Austin's Fantastic Fest this week, starring Peter Dinklage as an all-new Toxie. The film comes from writer/director Macon Blair, who was most recently seen in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. While we don't have a full reveal of Dinklage's radioactive visage, we do have our first look at Elijah Wood as the vile and bizarre, Fritz Garbinger.

Talking to Entertainment Weekly Blair explains that Wood's appearance in the film is "sort of Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Danny DeVito Penguin mixed together."

First look at the kick-ass cast of @Legendary's “The Toxic Avenger.”
Check out the film on the festival circuit at @fantasticfest, @BeyondFest, and @SitgesFestival. #ToxicAvenger #TheToxicAvenger pic.twitter.com/VN2fh4fV2F

— The Toxic Avenger Movie (@ToxicAvenger) September 20, 2023

pic.twitter.com/bPncioqqdK

— The Toxic Avenger Movie (@ToxicAvenger) September 20, 2023

pic.twitter.com/DgH1v61WOG

— The Toxic Avenger Movie (@ToxicAvenger) September 20, 2023

Blair added that the design came from discussions with Wood himself as well as the film's designers. "I wanted it to feel like a Peter Sellers type of performance where he just goes invisible. The idea is that you forget that it's the Elijah that you know from Lord of the Rings or anything else."

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George R.R. Martin and other high-profile writers have launched a lawsuit against OpenAI over claims that the AI company is guilty of "flagrant and harmful" infringements on their registered copyrights. Martin, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire that HBO adapted into Game of Thrones, is joined by prolific novelist and lawyer John Grisham and Jodi Picoult. Fourteen other authors are part of the lawsuit against OpenAI.

The lawsuit says OpenAI's ChatGPT program is a "massive commercial enterprise" that conducts "systematic theft on a mass scale."

"It is imperative that we stop this theft in its tracks or we will destroy our incredible literary culture, which feeds many other creative industries in the U.S.," Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said, as reported by the AP.

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Xbox Game Pass subscribers can look forward to some big new games in the near-future, as Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and Like a Dragon: Ishin will be added to the library of the subscription service alongside several other titles. For Like a Dragon Gaiden, this interquel will be available as a day-one release on Game Pass when it launches on November 9, Xbox announced at Tokyo Game Show.

Set after Yakuza 6: The Song of Life and during Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Like a Dragon Gaiden focuses on Kazuma Kiryu, the legendary Yakuza who faked his own death so that he could protect his family. Now operating under the codename of Joryu, Kiryu becomes caught up in a new plot that threatens to expose him and put his loved ones in danger. Billed as a shorter adventure in the Like a Dragon franchise, the game also sets the stage for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth ahead of its January 2024 release, as completing it will unlock exclusive scenes that won't otherwise be accessible in that game.

Like a Dragon: Ishin was released earlier this year, finally bringing what developer Ryu Ga Gotokou deemed to be an impossible port to Western audiences on a variety of platforms. Unlike the Yakuza and Like a Dragon games that are set in the modern era, Ishin is a samurai epic in which you take up the sword of Sakamoto Ryoma, explore feudal Japan, and uncover who really murdered his father. There's no set date for its arrival yet, but Xbox confirmed that it will be available on Game Pass later this year.

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Party Animals, a party game starring cute little critters, has finally arrived on Xbox and PC. It's made an impression as Steam's most wishlisted game in the days leading up to its release. Still, those on the fence are eager to know how easy it will actually be to play with their friends on different platforms. Thankfully, Recreate Games has a pretty straightforward answer for cross-play concerns.

Yes, Party Animals fully supports cross-play. As per the official blog, Party Animals features cross-play between all platforms. In other words, you can invite friends from PC on Xbox and vice versa without any issues. Recreate hasn't announced plans to bring the game to other platforms at this time.

"We are incredibly thankful for the support and patience from our community over the years and we can't wait to hear from more players as they experience the full game," said Zixiong, Party Animals Producer & Art Director.

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Microsoft's big new racing game, Forza Motorsport, has "gone gold" and preloading for the title is now live. Preloading might be a good idea, because the file size is enormous.

In a blog post, Microsoft revealed the file sizes, and the game weighs in at 133 GB on Xbox Series X and 100 GB on Xbox Series S. Windows 10 and 11 PC users can expect a file size of around 119 GB, while Steam users will see a download size of 108 GB and an installed file size of 118 GB.

Everyone who has preordered Forza Motorsport or is subscribed to Game Pass can now begin preloading the game. Steam preloading begins later. The game doesn't unlock, however, until October 5 for Premium Edition and Premium add-on users, and October 10 for everyone else.

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Football fans on console and PC don't have much choice in virtually playing the sport, as the Madden NFL series has had an exclusive hold on the genre for nearly two decades. But outside of the games simulating the sport to a lifelike degree, there's some wiggle room for developers to get creative.

That's where Wild Card Football comes in. In this new trailer narrated by longtime ESPN personality Chris Berman, the NBA Jam and NFL Blitz-like arcade football game shows off its several game modes, cross-play features, custom teams comprised of real current and past players, and, well, extraterrestrials. Like I said, this is arcade football, so you ought to expect some cartoonish chaos, right?

The game is played with teams of seven, and fantasy squads can be built from a roster of "hundreds" of current athletes. While Wild Card Football is developed by Saber, the same studio responsible for NBA Playgrounds and WWE 2K Battlegrounds, this latest arcade spin on a sports game seems to have upped the ante when it comes to power-ups, as the trailer highlights an alien invasion, a forcefield shielding a player, and a tornado actively spinning around the gridiron, which may test the claim that football is an all-weather sport.

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A new undead adventure is rising from the grave by surprise, as Atari and SneakyBox have announced that their zombie-apocalypse roguelite, Days Of Doom, is releasing today across consoles and PC.

Days Of Doom places players in charge of a group of survivors stuck in a zombie apocalypse, who are searching for a rumored safe haven called Sanctuary. The group must fight using a turn-based battle system through a procedurally generated world hosting a dozen different enemies from common zombies to crazed raiders and more.

Each character in the survivors' party possesses unique abilities and attributes across eight different classes. The Pyro, for example, can set enemies on fire for continuous damage, while the Hydromancer uses water-based spells that, when partnered with the Thrasher's electric attacks, can inflict massive amounts of damage at once.

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Guillermo del Toro's dark fantasy adaption of Pinocchio is getting The Criterion Collection treatment. Available for preorder now at Amazon ahead of its December 12 release, the Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson-directed adaptation of the classic Pinocchio story comes with an incredible amount of extra content and a prestige presentation.

Pinocchio: Criterion Collection edition Preorder at Amazon

Released in cinemas in 2022, del Toro and Gustafson's film features breathtakingly intricate stop-motion animation and takes place in Italy during the height of its Fascist era. Pinocchio gradually learns what it means to be human as he war, death, and sacrifice in a story that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, and Christoph Waltz all lend their voices to this haunting tale.

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In 2020, Square Enix managed to pull off what many thought impossible by remaking Final Fantasy 7 and delivering a game that reimagined the beloved role-playing classic with modern day gameplay. With gorgeous visuals and an exciting hybrid combat system, Final Fantasy 7 Remake proved to be a huge success. The remake focused on only a small part of the original 1997 release, opting to forgo an epic adventure for a more focused character-driven action-RPG. But we all knew that, inevitably, the story of Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, and Aerith would need to break out of the confines of Midgar and venture beyond, and with that Square Enix would need to address narrative moments that have become so iconic within the culture of video games that even people that haven't played Final Fantasy 7 have an understanding of their impact. Where Final Fantasy 7 Remake narrowed its focus, its follow-up--and the second in a trilogy of games, that will tell the complete Final Fantasy 7 story--Rebirth, necessitates much greater ambition.

The end of Remake indicates that the developers are choosing to both honor the original FF7 but also establish this trilogy as its own unique experience. After hours of hinting at it, in the closing moments of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Square Enix made the first move in its ambitious narrative gambit by introducing the idea of a divergent timeline and multiverses, where both what has come before can exist but also the characters can forge a new future. It was a controversial move, but one that, from a narrative perspective, means that longtime fans and the general gaming community don't have as comfortable a grip on how things are going to play out as they thought. After playing through about an hour of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, I can't say I have any clearer understanding of where things are going and, I suspect, Square Enix will endeavor to keep it that way up until release, when players can experience it firsthand.

My hands-on was split into two distinct slices, with the first being "The Fated Mt. Nibel Mission" and the second being "The Open Wilds of Junon." As the naming alludes to, and fans will know, the former of these is a pivotal moment in the story of Final Fantasy 7--you'd imagine it would be a perfect opportunity to get to grips with where Square Enix might be taking the story. But, actually, it was more of a showcase of how the gameplay has evolved. The latter, seemingly less important at first blush, offered a glimpse at some small changes that have been made to the way Final Fantasy 7's story plays out, emphasis on the small.

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CD Projekt Red dropped the release times for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, so you can now mark your calendars for the return to Night City.

You can preload the game on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 48 hours before release in each region. On the west coast of the US, you can start the expansion at 4 AM PT on September 25 for PC and 12 AM PT on September 26 for console. In the UK, you can play at the same time on both PC and console, starting 12 AM GMT on September 26. Below is a comprehensive list of unlock times.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Global Unlock TimesLos Angeles

• PC: September 25, 4 AM PDT
• Console: September 26, 12 AM PDT

Mexico City

• PC: September 25, 5 PM CST
• Console: September 26, 12 AM CST

New York

• PC: September 25, 7 PM EDT
• Console: September 12 AM EDT

Brasília

• PC: September 25, 8 PM BRT
• Console: September 26, 12 AM BRT

London

• PC: September 26, 12 AM GMT
• Console: September 26, 12 AM GMT

Paris

• PC: September 26, 1 AM CEST
• Console: September 26, 12 AM CEST

Kyiv

• PC: September 26, 2 AM EEST
• Console: September 26, 12 AM EEST

Johannesburg

• PC: September 26, 1 AM SAST
• Console: September 26, 12 AM SAST

Dubai

• PC: September 26, 3 AM GST
• Console: September 26, 12 AM GST

Beijing

• PC: September 26, 7 AM CST
• Console: September 26, 12 AM CST

Seoul

• PC: September 26, 8 KST
• Console: September 26, 12 AM KST

Tokyo

• PC: September 26, 8 AM JST
• Console: September 26, 12 JST

Sydney

• PC: September 26, 9 AM AEST
• Console: September 26, 12 AM AEST

Wellington

• PC: September 26, 12 PM NZDT
• Console: September 26, 12 PM NZDT

For Phantom Liberty, and Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 update, the game's system requirements have been updated. CD Projekt Red also put out an advisory to check out your PC's cooling system before booting up the expansion, as it can be very intensive on your CPU. Ahead of the 2.0 update on September 21, Cyberpunk 2077 got DLSS 3.5 support. The expansive update entirely revamps progression, changes police behavior, and brings extensive combat changes.

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CD Projekt Red updated Cyberpunk 2077's system requirements for both its 2.0 update and the upcoming expansion Phantom Liberty. The new update will only support SSD, so clear space or buy one if you need to switch.

The updated system requirements are significantly heftier than the previous minimum. You'll now need a baseline of 12GB RAM and 6GB VRAM to run the game on low, with an expected fps of 30. The current minimum requirements are close to the game's recommended requirements at launch. Running the game at higher resolutions than 1080p or with ray-tracing will add their own hardware specifications. The full system requirements are listed below.

Revised Specs For Cyberpunk 2077Non-ray-tracing requirements

Minimum

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Striking Distance Studios CEO and co-founder Glen Schofield is leaving the company, less than one year after the release of its debut game, The Callisto Protocol. Furthermore, the studio's chief operating and chief financial officers are leaving too.

According to Bloomberg and confirmed by Striking Distance Studios parent company Krafton, Schofield has "decided to pursue new opportunities." Kraton also mentioned that his resignation was voluntary, along with chief operating officer Stacey Hirata and chief financial officer Johnny Hsu's as well.

Chief development officer Steve Papoutsis will assume Schofield's former role as CEO. He has worked on games such as Dead Space 2 and Battlefield Hardline during his tenure at Electronic Arts. He has also worked on franchises such as Medal of Honor, Legacy of Kain, and Gex.

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Preorder South Park: Snow Day

$30

Preorder at Best Buy Preorder for Switch https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHWBZYR1?tag=gamespot-promos-20

South Park: Snow Day is arriving in 2024, and it’s bringing Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny into the third dimension. Unlike previous South Park games, Snow Day is a cooperative adventure that features a whole new 3D art style. This is a big departure from the 2D graphics of Fractured but Whole and The Stick of Truth that mimicked the animated show. Though we still don't know much about the upcoming game, big South Park fans can preorder a copy now for PS5, Nintendo Switch, or Xbox Series X for only $30.

This time around, you’ll be following the gang as they celebrate a day off from school (thanks to those snowy Colorado winters) and set out on a quest to save the world. Up to four players can jump into the cooperative action, and its first trailer shows off what appears to be fast-paced, real-time combat. Beyond that, much is left to speculation.

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