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Right now, the Elder Scrolls virtual card game The Elder Scrolls: Legends is in a very stable state. In fact, Bethesda’s cive-president of PR and Marketing has come out and said that the game is basically already ready for release. However they’re holding off on exiting beta for a bit.
Talking about the game to PCGamer on the PAX show floor Bethesa’s Pete Hines said “We could call it launched right now, if we wanted,” about the card game, but said that they were waiting for a tablet version of the game to be greenlit before they would take the PC version of the game out of beta and into full release. However he also said that the tablet version isn’t “far off”.
It seems that Autumn is still the studio’s target for a release and that besides a few UI tweaks to menus, Legends is pretty much feature-complete and ready to be bumped up to version 1.0 whenever they get the tablet greenlight.
Nowadays eSports is growing so fast. It’s all about big tournaments, big prize money, teams and sponsorships… or at least it is for most eSports.
However, a South Korean player has made history by becoming the first player to win a major final event on his own. That is, without the backing of any team or even a sponsor. Byun Hyun Woo or ByuN competed in the Code S division of the Global Starcraft II League and beat out Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin in Friday night’s finals, taking the match 4-1. This means he won the top prize of 40,000 Won ($34,000) and a straight seeding into BlizzCon’s WCS finals in November. And remember, he’s done this without any of the helping or backing of most players or teams.
His opponent sOs is a two-time World Champion and so entered the match as the favourite, however ByuN’s clever play managed to hamper his opponent’s economy and win him the match causing quite the upset on the competitive scene around the world.
It’ll be interesting to see if ByuN will have picked up team offers and sponsorship deals by the time he appears at BlizzCon in a few months’ time.
Previous Bethesda games have seen releases of special editions that included all the DLC packs in a game alongside the base game, including Skyrim – so in a way it’s not a surprise that the game that was billed at first as “Skyrim but with friends” is also getting one.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Edition is a release for PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4 that will see the base game as well as all four of its current DLC packs put together into one package to attract new players into the world, with players venturing across all corners of Tamriel in a search for quests, loot and adventures with friends. Costing £49.99 for the console versions and £39.99 for the PC version, Gold Edition will have all of the content from Imperial City, Orsinium, Thieves Guild & Dark Brotherhood from the start, as well as including a Palomino horse mount and 500 of the game’s in-game currency, Crowns, for all new accounts.
As well, existing players of the base game will be able to acquire the four DLC packs through the in-game Crown Store. The Guilds and Glory DLC pack is new and will be available for a discounted price of 5,500 Crowns – when the Crowns price of buying them all separately is 9,500 that’s quite a discount.
Bethesda kind of made some history when they allowed for user-made mods to be used on their Xbox One version of Fallout 4 months ago. Sure, the implementation had some teething issues (mainly centred around the lack of checks that allowed for some unscrupulous people to upload other people’s PC mods as their own content), but all in all most people were pleased that the console was finally getting to use something that had been a PC mainstay for a while.
Bethesda had planned to allow for their Skyrim remaster to follow suit, saying that they intended to allow for mods on both their Xbox One version as well as the Playstation 4 version. Only now it seems like that won’t be happening; at least for the Playstation 4 version owing to the fact that Sony aren’t going to allow Bethesda to enable the modding in a way that Bethesda really needs to make it a thing.
In a post on their site entitled “PS4 Mod Update” Bethesda wrote the following:
“After months of discussion with Sony, we regret to say that while we have long been ready to offer mod support on PlayStation 4, Sony has informed us they will not approve user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition.
Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive. We consider this an important initiative and we hope to find other ways user mods can be available for our PlayStation audience. However, until Sony will allow us to offer proper mod support for PS4, that content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PlayStation 4 will not be available.
We will provide an update if and when this situation changes.”
Obviously this is going to be a huge disappointment to Bethesda fans on the Sony console. So far it seems like this is going to be the only version without mod support, something that has arguably kept the Skyrim scene alive long past the time when the 2011 released game should have faded a little.
What are your thoughts on this? Tell us in the comments.
After a little break, the Kickstarter round-up returns to the Sanitarium.FM! We’ve got some wonderful looking game campaigns to choose from, so let’s dive in shall we?
First up is a graphic novel that is the first in a series that’s come from a working team-up between Penny Arcade and Lone Shark Games.
Thornwatch is the first in the “Eyrewood Adventures” set in the Eyrewood, a magical forest. Players take the role of the ‘Thornwatch’, sworn guardians of the Eyrewood and are called to the scene of an ongoing crisis in the game. One player acts as the Judge and the other players as the Thornwatch can be playing any number of different creatures, each with their own deck of actions cards and trait cards.
Thornwatch has already been funded past its $78,000 goal, having reached $216,237 already and still having 31 days to go. Check it out for more information and if you’d like to back it.
This one is described as a “negative space puzzle-platformer” and graphically it looks amazing already.
The game sees you playing as both the Rabbit (who can move through dark areas) and the Owl (who can move through the light areas) in a world that has long ago shattered into showing only monochrome, leaving behind ruins in its wake. Using both characters, you must figure out ways to progress, using all of the areas provided – literally walking inside of platforms your partner might be stood upon above you.
The Rabbit and the Owl has made $3,213 of its $5,000 goal, with 26 days to go. Try out the demo to see if you’d be interested in this game!
This one was chosen because the idea of a multiplayer game with changing rooms sounds promising at least.
Dimension Door is on its second campaign now, having streamlined and learned from their last shot. The game is turn-based and sees you and your fellow players inside a mansion inhabited by beings who might not mean you well. Unfortunately the rooms also keep shifting around you so you need to somehow ride the chaos and escape before some terrible fate befalls you…
Dimension Door has a goal of $45,000 with 28 days to go, it has so far made $1,035. Go check it out if you too are curious what the game might hold for you.
Because I was always going to choose one with cats in, wasn’t I? Bonus is that this looks like a well-made little retro platformer to boot.
This is another game with two animal partners working side by side, with a cat (obviously) and a rabbit working together to get home, and the campaign says that you can “Run, jump, climb, bounce, claw, and shoot your way through a huge, immersive world filled with traps, ziplines, puzzles, teleporters, and deadly enemies!” with some mention of learning new abilities as well. Graphically it too looks delightfully retro.
Cat Story has a goal of $10,000 of which it has made $259 with 29 days still to go. Go check out the game’s demo, this one looks good!
