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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.
Today it has been confirmed by the firm of Bandia Namco that founder of Namco, Masaya Nakamura, has died at the age of 91.
Often known as the “father” of Pac-Man, a game Namco released which went on to have massive commercial success in many countries, he started Namco as Nakamura Manufacturing which went on to become Nakamura Amusement Machine Manufacturing Company (Namco) in 1956. The first job completed was the installation of two electric horses on the roof of a department store in Japan as amusement rides.
Pac-Man came much later in 1980, developed by Toru Iwatani, and eventually became shipped to arcades across the world. Pac-Man named in 2016 as the highest-grossing arcade game of all time by website US Gamer.
Nakamura was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, a Japanese government honour in 2007, inducted into the International Video Games Hall of Fame in 2010 and was an honorary advisor at Bandai Namco up until his death on the 22nd of Janaury.
Welcome to your weekly glance into some of the cool stuff going on down in the gaming campaigns section of Kickstarters’ website right now.
We start as always with a little update on important news from previously covered campaigns. There’s no bad news really, some campaigns aren’t doing too well but still have plenty of time to go to make up for it.
In the good news area this week UnDungeon reached and passed its goal with another 13 days still to go, so congrats to that team! LEGRAND LEGACY has made up a load of ground and is close to reaching it’s target as well, as is Pixel Princess Blitz, although the latter has only 8 more days to reach their target. Hopefully both will become crowdfunded success stories in the future.
With people working on this game coming from previous projects like Fallout New Vegas, Wasteland 2 and a whole heap of RPGs, that’s already a good start for this game. It will be a first-person survival and horror game with some strong RPG influences. Player decisions will affect the narrative and progression of the game. Your mission to to assassinate a man accused of forming his own personal army, but how you get there to carry out this task is up to you.
Apocalypse Now has a target goal of $900,000 and has made $114,780 so far. It has 24 days to go.
Next up we have a game that combines elements of tower defence and adventure games into one.
Pillow Zombies charges you with using turrets, traps and other things in a bid to keep yourself safe from waves of advancing plush zombie monsters, yet at the same time as you progress you will discover just how these beasts came to be and just what happened to make them this way. There will also be a card buff system to allow you to power up your turrets and traps as you progress through the game.
Pillow Zombies TD has 29 more days to run, and has made CA $300 of its CA $28,000 goal so far.
Next, we have the conclusion to Stoic’s viking epic.
Banner Saga 3 is a strategy driven game, and the last in Stoic’s trilogy of games. If you’ve not played the first two games, the campaign will also allow you to get hold of these games by adding $20 to your pledge tier – so you can catch up if need be. With around 40 unique characters each with their own styles of combat, you can pick and choose your party to help you make it through the game as you see fit. But each action has its consequences and they can be far reaching…
Banner Saga has a target of $200,000 and bypassed it just as this article was being written. Well done Stoic!
Ending this week with the board game/physical card, and as you might be able to guess – it’s pirate themed.
The game is for 4-9 players, and involves you playing as a crew of pirates who all want to take the gold from a Spanish galleon and are all secretly planning to take the gold for yourself. All ‘greedy pirates’ will be marooned on the isle of Tortuga. There are 9 different pirates you can play as, each based off a real-life pirate that existed in the year of 1667. Can you one-up your crew and make off with the gold, or will you be marooned on Tortuga?
Tortuga 1667 has a $10,000 goal, and at $180,000+ has far exceeded that goal.
One of the big game being released for the upcoming Nintendo Switch is the latest and much-awaited Zelda game – Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The game will be releasing on the same day as the Switch, in early March but there’s still an entire month before then. What to do instead?
Well, if you haven’t tried out a few of the past Zelda games, Nintendo are currently holding a sale on all digital copies of the exisiting Legend of Zelda games that ends February 9th – so that could tide you over until the new game comes out.
Titles are for the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS and are available in the eShops of both consoles at a 30% discount right now. This includes titles such as Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HS, Skyward Sword, Majora’s Mask or Ocarina of Time.
So yes, we have just over a month to go until Breath of the Wild is released for us all to play – but no one said we can’t make that time go a little faster by playing some of the games that led up to it.
