Before you watch the video below, please note this footage represents a game that is in beta and not final, and there are audio syncing issues due to the game crashing repeatedly. We have done our best to align the audio of the conversations between Digmbot and Movian, but this has resulted in some game sounds being out of place. The purpose of this video is to demonstrate gameplay, not serve as a first impression. Large portions of the raw footage were unusable, and this video represents a small slice of a multi-hour play session with the game.

In a livestream a short while ago, Bethesda streamed out the announcement of the ‘next chapter’ of The Elder Scrolls Online – The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind.

Set in the same area of Morrowind as the game of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (the Isle of Vvardenfell) and recreated in the modern era using the original game’s height map, this new content will see players questing through locations they remember from the old game – only 700 years before any of The Elder Scrolls III ever happened. This new area will be one of the largest added to the game so far, and will include areas such as the docks of Seyda Neen, to the volcanic Ashlands, to dense, mushroom-filled forests, and through the glory of Vivec City which is still under construction in this time period.

The new update to the game will also bring with it a new class for players to choose – the Warden. As noted in the stream the Warden is a class that is more tied to natural magics and can specialise in one of three different ways; the ice magic/defensive path, the nature magic/healing patch, or the one that was featured heavily in the trailer – the animal companion path. The war bear was called the ‘ultimate’ of that last line, with talk around morphing abilities to give the bear a boost in power or automatically resummon it when it falls in combat. The animal companion will also persist until death, even across zones and can be healed or buffed.

The main questline of the Morrowind addition involves the legendary warrior-poet and Guardian of Vvardenfell Vivec, who has begun to lose power thanks to a mysterious illness and needs your help to solve the source of the illness, restore him to full strength and fight off threats against the world. There will also be a new trial for end-game players, as well as a new PvP mode called Battlegrounds that will be focused on team play. On launch there will be 3 maps and 3 gamemodes to choose from, and all will be 4 v 4 v 4 types, for small, fast-paced team battles and events.

As you might expect, there will be a few different versions of this being released. The Standard Edition will retail at £39.99 and will include the base game of The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, as well as the new Morrowind content. If you already own the base game, there will be an Upgrade Edition for £29.99 to upgrade existing players. A Digital Collector’s Edition will also be released for £64.99, containing the base game, new content as well as a bunch of digital in-game rewards that include a special grey War Bear for Warden players to use, a Dwarven Spider Pet, an Armoured War Horse and a converter for Morag Tong-themed gear. These digital rewards can also be acquired through the Digital Collector’s Upgrade at £49.99. Finally there will be a physical Collector’s Edition of the game sold at £89.99, which will include a bunch of physical items such as Naryu’s Journal – an artbook with lore added, a 12′ tall Dwarven Colossus Statue and an exclusive game case.

There is also a pre-order ‘Discovery Pack’ which will contain experience scrolls to allow for greater in-game experience gain for around two hours at a time, an exclusive Warden appearance, Treasure Maps of where the best secrets are hidden, a Dwarven War Dog Pet and a Dwarven Crown Crate which comes with a chance to contain Dwarven-themed mounts, pets, costumes, and more.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind will be releasing globally for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One on June 6th, 2017.

Recent patches to Overwatch have seen balancing changes to Roadhog’s hook among other things, making the hook a bit easier to escape and a bit harder to aim. Yet it seems that even with all the balancing, the hook still manages to cause players problems.

Right now as of patch 1.7, Roadhog needs to have players in his line of sight to hook them, and once said player breaks line of sight the hook should come detached. At least that’s the idea and for the most part it works out well. Yet it’s been discovered (and documented in gfycats by Reddit user tehGraboiDs) that if a hero with a dash or command jump move is hooked and then uses afore-mentioned move to move out of line of sight the hook stays connected and the captured hero is still pulled up in front of Roadhog.

Research into this by players seems to suggest that it only occurs if the captured hero dashes or jumps across open space though, as the hook will still break off if the hero gets behind an obstacle. This suggests that it’s a glitch where the hook’s code is still reading the captured hero as being ‘in line of sight’ as they’re in open space and thus it’s keeping the hook active. At least, this is what seems to be happening right now and is a pretty good guess.

Expect the next patch to bring more alterations to Roadhog’s hook then. At least for once this is a glitch that you probably won’t get banned for, but still – don’t be silly and abuse it okay? Don’t want to see anyone getting in trouble.

Gears of War 4 already had some cross-playing capabilities between Xbox One and PC players, allowing them to team up for the co-operative modes in game. However, you know gamers and especially gamers who consider themselves good friends relish the opportunity to completely ‘own’ their friends in competitive multiplayer. Well, if you love doing that and you and your friends own Gears of War 4, I have good news for you.

Social Quickplay is now going to see cross-playing extended towards competitive gameplay. So finally you can shoot your friend’s head from your camping spot and watch them expire in a pool of blood, before they respawn and repay the favour of course. Microsoft recently held a beta for the feature, with over 115,000 participants taking part in over 750,000 matches to test matchmaking and other capabilities of this gamemode. Both platforms apparently had similar K/D ratio results, score and kills. Match quality was also perfect for most players, so the feature is being rolled out soon.

I’d say that if you’re going to give it a go though, don’t expect perfect results first time. 115,000 people is a lot, but more might possibly stress something to breaking point before Microsoft get everything running shipshape. Not saying it’s going to happen, just be ready for minor issues.

Core multiplayer will be separate from Competitive, so if you’d rather limit your pool of random players to people on the same platform as you, you’re still able to do that as well.