The final major update for Baldur's Gate 3, titled Patch 8, has finally arrived, and it delivers a plethora of content for fans to dive into. One of the most anticipated additions with Patch 8 is cross-play, which has been available for a select group of players since early 2025. However, now it's available for all players across every platform, meaning you can finally jump in and play Baldur's Gate 3 with any player, regardless of their system.

Below, you can see exactly how cross-play works in Baldur's Gate 3 and how you can use it to join up with your friends on different platforms.

Cross-play is a simple feature to use in Baldur's Gate 3, but it does require a little bit of setup to get it working correctly.

Over a year after its August 2023 launch date, Baldur's Gate 3 is still being updated, and its latest (and last major) patch is one of its biggest--and arguably best--updates yet. Patch 8 is live now on all platforms, and introduces several long-awaited features to the game, including cross-platform play, photo mode, and a total of 12 new subclasses to give players more room to tinker with their Tav's build.

The excitement around photo mode is pretty self-explanatory--with a game as visually stunning as Baldur's Gate 3, it seemed almost criminal to launch the game with no photo mode. But the days of awkwardly trying to snap a good shot mid-cutscene are over. Now, players can take a photo at any time, even during combat. Larian even celebrated the patch's release with an animated (and fully voiced) short featuring all of the game's companion characters, along with an animated version of Larian founder and CEO Swen Vincke.

To activate photo mode, press F9 (PC) or press L3 + R3 at the same time (console). This will pause the game and bring up the photo mode menu, where players can change which characters are visible, choose from a number of facial expressions and body poses, add filters and frames, and more.

Captain America: Brave New World is flying onto Blu-ray next month, and preorders just opened for multiple editions at Amazon and Walmart. Collectors will want to check out Brave New World's Limited Edition Steelbook version of the 4K Blu-ray release. In addition to Brave New World's handful of standalone physical editions, the Captain America film franchise is getting a new collection featuring all four MCU movies. Captain America 4-Movie Collection is available to preorder on Blu-ray for $50, giving fans a budget-friendly way to own all of the movies on disc.

The Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray editions of Captain America: Brave New World include digital copies of the new film, but it's worth noting that the film also launched on digital platforms on April 15. You can rent/buy it for $25/$35 on Prime Video and other streaming services.

Right at the beginning of The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 1, Kaitlyn Dever's character, Abby, gives a haunting monologue about tracking down and killing Joel (Pedro Pascal). She not only wants to kill Joel--to get vengeance for Joel killing her father--but she says she wants to kill Joel "slowly."

Dever told The Hollywood Reporter that this is a "chilling" moment in the episode. "She's a chilly ice queen!" she said.

"She just needs something to make it all better," Dever said. "And in that moment, the only thing she can think about is revenge. She's heartbroken, she's sad, she's lost and she's trying to pick up the pieces."

Season 2 of HBO's The Last of Us finally premiered this past Sunday with a series best of 8.2 million viewers, and introduced a host of new characters to the show. Showrunner Craig Mazin said the sophomore season would be bigger in every sense, but still wanted to recapture some of the sequel's more intimate and quiet moments. The first kiss between Ellie and Dina during the New Year's Eve dance was one of them.

During the post-episode featurette, The Last of Us creator and co-director Neil Druckmann explained how he saw Dina and how Ellie is trying to navigate this awkwardness of a potential romance.

"Dina became this interesting person that Ellie becomes infatuated with, and we see that throughout this episode that it's not only her friend, and someone she respects and admires, it's someone that she likes," he said. "She doesn't quite know how to deal with it because she's Ellie, and she's awkward, and she's a teenager."

Given the recent difficulties at Ubisoft, it was hard not to see Assassin's Creed Shadows as a make or break game for the publisher. There's still some uncertainty about Ubisoft's plan to spin-off Assassin's Creed and other top franchises into a dedicated subsidy with Tencent, but the good news is that Shadows is reportedly one of the best-selling games of the year so far.

Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said via his Bluesky account that Assassin's Creed Shadows "has been the best-selling video game in the US for each of its first 3 weeks in market." Piscatella went on to add that among games released in 2025, it is No. 2 to-date behind only Monster Hunter Wilds. Prior to that, the No. 2 seller had been Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Shadows was also the best-selling game on PlayStation Network for March.

According to Ubisoft, Shadows reached 1 million players across all platforms in a single day. The game reached 2 million shortly thereafter, but that doesn't necessarily line up to the number of copies sold. Assassin's Creed Shadows is also available to players who subscribe to Ubisoft+. However, the title's current success on the video game sales charts suggests that players are actively buying it as well.

Funcom has announced that the launch of Dune: Awakening--the upcoming open-world survival game set in the vast deserts of the Dune franchise--has been delayed three weeks, from May 20 to June 10, but a "beta weekend" has been confirmed for next month to soften the blow.

Funcom announced the short delay in a blog post on the game's official Steam page. According to the post, the delay is a result of feedback the team received from players involved in the ongoing closed beta test, which the blog calls "invaluable in making sure [they] can launch a quality game."

"Thanks to this process, we’ve concluded that with a bit more time to cook, we can act on a lot more of the feedback we know is important to our beta testers," the blog post says. "This is not a decision we take lightly, we know everyone is very excited to get playing, but these three extra weeks will give us the time needed to make improvements that will lead to a better gameplay experience from day one."

The rumored Oblivion remaster is reportedly finally releasing soon. Additionally, screenshots and information about the game have surfaced online.

According to Jeff Grubb, the Oblivion remaster will be shadow-dropped on the week of April 21. He also mentioned that there were rumors of an Xbox showcase airing on April 23, but he didn't find anything substantiating them.

Information and screenshots of the Oblivion remaster have also been leaked through developer's website. The game is labeled as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered and it's being developed by Virtuos Studios. Gameplay wise, it apparently has blocking mechanics inspired by souls-like games, as well as overhauled archery and stamina systems, along with highlighted sneak icons, added hit reactions, and a HUD change.

The Last of Us Season 2 premiere didn't waste any time introducing the new characters from The Last of Us Part II. It also debuted a terrifying new version of the infected that was only briefly seen in the game.

There are spoilers ahead for the premiere of The Last of Us Season 2.

During the episode, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) has a close encounter with a stalker--an infected that can sneak up on its victims. It's smarter than the average infected as well. Co-showrunner Craig Mazin spoke with IGN about the introduction of the stalkers and hinted that they will play a larger role in Season 2.

It's no secret that the Borderlands movie did not perform well, with audiences and critics alike ridiculing everything from the film's casting choices to its dialogue. Even some of its creators disliked the film--writer Craig Mazin was so unhappy with the final cut that he requested his name be removed from the film's credits. Now, director Eli Roth is opening up about what went wrong behind the scenes, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as a major factor in the film's poor reception.

Appearing on a recent episode of The Town podcast, Roth was asked about Borderlands, and initially seemed unwilling to give a detailed answer, saying that if he talked about what happened, "someone's going to look bad, and usually it's just the director."

Roth did detail his first time viewing the final cut of the film, which grossed only $33 million worldwide. From the way he describes it, it seems the director wasn't sure what to expect when he sat down to watch his film.

There were reportedly 5.3 million people in the US who watched the Season 2 premiere of The Last of Us. That same-day viewership tops Season 1's debut night over two years ago, which saw 4.7 million people checking out the HBO series.

According to Deadline, HBO noted that the 5.3 million same-day viewers for The Last of Us Season 2 premiere represents a 10% increase over Season 1. The debut episode of the show--which is based on Naughty Dog's video game franchise--has now been seen by 32 million people. That's apparently the most ever for an HBO and Max series premiere.

In 2023, The Last of Us saw the second-biggest debut on HBO since 2010 when Boardwalk Empire launched. Only House of the Dragon has started off stronger, with almost 10 million viewers watching the Game of Thrones spin-off's premiere on opening night in 2022.

Bungie finally lifted the lid on its extraction shooter Marathon this week, and while the game looks like a vibrant entry in the genre, it has been negatively compared to Sony's live-service flop Concord. Both games share similar elements, being live-service sci-fi shooters with a colorful art direction, but one former Concord developer wants people to not only give Bungie's project a chance when it launches later this year, but to also show some compassion for the people working on it.

"After reading the comments about Marathon being Concord 2.0 on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitch, I just wanted to share a little insight into what a 40-year-old man is feeling after dedicating a large portion of his life to making videogames," former Firewalk Studios senior VFX artist Stephan Williams wrote on the Marathon subreddit (via VG247). "Seeing the faces of the developers on the Bungie stream gave me hope and excitement for what is to come for Marathon," Williams added. "I commend them for taking a chance, trying something foreign to them, that isn't proven, nor guaranteed to succeed. It takes a lot of courage."

Williams explained that while Concord "failed to inspire players," there were lessons to be learned from that "gut-wrenching" failure. Now a senior VFX artist at Warframe studio Digital Extremes, Williams stressed that video games are meant to be fun and that people need to be kinder to the developers working on them behind the scenes.

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has shared his thoughts on the Nintendo Switch 2, saying Nintendo is "losing their identity" with the console due to its lack of new and exciting features. Appearing on the Easy Allies podcast, Yoshida said, "I have to be polite," adding, "To me it was a bit [of a] mixed message from Nintendo. In a sense I think Nintendo is losing their identity, in my opinion."

Yoshida, in his decades of experience working in the video game industry, said he observed over the years that Nintendo always stood out by creating some kind of "new experience" that no one saw coming.

"But Switch 2, as we all anticipated, is a better Switch, right? It's a larger screen, more powerful processor, higher resolution, 4K 120fps. They even had their hardware person starting the stream as other platforms do," he said. "And because it's a better Switch, the core premise of the whole Switch 2 is, 'We made things better.' And that's something other companies have been doing all the time."

Ubisoft has released its colorblind simulation tool, Chroma, to the general public after several years in development. It's available to check out over on Github.

In the announcement, Ubisoft explained that there are an estimated 300 million people across the globe who are impacted by colorblindness. Chroma's purpose is to simulate the three major colorblindness types: Protanopia, Deuteranopia, and Tritanopia.

Ubisoft also said that its quality-control team in India started developing Chroma in 2021. The team wanted to create a tool that could provide real-time feedback so developers could simultaneously control the game and simulate colorblindness.

The standard battle royale mode is still the main event in Fortnite, but among all the new modes that Epic has added to its metaverse in the past two years, the respawn-focused Reload mode is easily the most popular. And on Tuesday it's adding to its rotating roster of throwback maps with a new mini-island full of locations from Chapter 2, like Slurpy Swamp.

The new map will feature eight named locations, several of which appear to be lifted directly from the Chapter 2 battle royale island, and a few others which are inspired by it. Slurpy Swamp is at the center, which will make for a pretty big change of pace from the urban environments of Tilted Towers and Paradise Palms, the centerpieces of the other two Reload maps. Considering how expansive the swamp is on the map below, it seems as though there will literally be healing slurp just lying around all over the place.

Fortnite Reload is an OG-ish battle royale mode in which you'll automatically respawn as long as your team doesn't wipe--or, if you're playing solo, you haven't used up all your lives. Reload takes place on much smaller islands than the standard battle royale one, and has a limit of 40 players. Currently, Reload rotates between its two maps every 30 minutes. Presumably, the Slurp Rush map will join that rotation, but not until after an introductory period in which it's the only map available.

Screenings of A Minecraft movie now have a disclaimer before the movie starts. This is most likely a response due to some of the reported ruckus happening in theaters showing the movie.

A recent recording of someone at A Minecraft Movie showing displayed the new disclaimer. It goes, "Be kind, be respectful. Remember that popcorn buckets are not to be used as Ender Pearls." In Minecraft, an Ender Pearl is an item that can be thrown and it teleports the thrower to where it lands.

Cops have been called into showings of the movie in response to moviegoers throwing popcorn, so this disclaimer is presumably to dissuade this behavior.

Blizzard posted a lengthy new overview of Overwatch 2's Stadium heroes and how equipping new skills will work ahead of the mode's April 22 release date. Every playable hero has a selection of tweaks that make their kits work differently, though Stadium's initial roster is much more limited than the base game's.

Overwatch 2 Stadium launches with 17 heroes: a mix of classic Overwatch characters and those who debuted with Overwatch 2. All of them will be playable in third-person for Stadium matches.

Tanks

Mouse Work is a Nintendo Switch 2 game that Shovel Knight Dig developer Nitrome announced shortly after the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct. It's a party game specifically built around the fact that Joy-Con 2 controllers can also be used as mice. There's just one catch: Nitrome doesn't have a Switch 2 development kit yet.

Dev kits are necessary for a game studio to release their game on a platform like Switch 2. Nintendo has reportedly been quite restrictive in distributing Switch 2 development kits prior to its launch this June, which puts indie developers like Nitrome in an awkward situation. Games that get on a new system early are often closely associated with the platform for its lifespan, which can majorly benefit indie titles.

"We recognize that there is an opportunity there if you get something new out of the gate or close to launch, and [if] you use some of the features, there's going to be a decent audience there that wants to try it," studio founder Matthew Annal told me in an interview.

Former Dragon Age series lead writer David Gaider says that during his later years at BioWare, the studio's Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team did not get along--nor did the team making Anthem.

"For a long time it was basically two teams under one roof: the Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team," Gaider said on BlueSky. "Run differently, very different cultures, may as well have been two separate studios. And they didn't get along."

According to Gaider, BioWare knew of the tension between the teams, but despite the fact that various attempts had been made to fix it (including transferring developers between teams), nothing seemed to work.

When you love horror games as I do, you scour places like Steam for hidden gems. I've come to find a lot of those hidden gems come from DreadXP, the offshoot publishing label of longtime horror outlet Dread Central. But even in the brand's already-strange catalog, White Knuckle stands out. Its scares, so far anyway, don't come in the form of monsters or malicious beings like a usual horror game would feature. Instead, the scares are induced one step at a time in a massive silo where one wrong move means falling to your death.

White Knuckle is a first-person wall-climbing horror game that sees you trying to stay ahead of some kind of murky sludge slowly creeping up an enormously tall silo that was built for reasons I couldn't ascertain in my preview of the game. The context of the place is clearly meant to be part of White Knuckle's allure, and players are surely already trying to piece together that story.

I thought I would persevere through the game's challenging platforming to see more of the story for myself, especially since, early on, the controls were hard to understand, and I wondered if they'd be an obstacle. When a game is so dependent on its controls, it's often the case that the best examples feel natural and fluid right away. White Knuckle is odd in that it feels off at first but doesn't take much longer before it comes together. It's merely the difference of minutes versus seconds.