Latest news with #Avowed
Engadget
06-05-2025
- Business
- Engadget
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5060 GPU arrives on May 19
NVIDIA's RTX 5060 finally has a release date. When the company announced the budget 50-series graphics cards last month, it gave the higher-end Ti model a firm April 19 launch but limited the base 5060 model to a vague "May" window. On Tuesday, we learned that the card with a $299 MSRP arrives on May 19. The RTX 5060 has 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, 19 TFLOPS Blackwell shader cores, 5th-gen tensor cores with 614 AI TOPS performance and 4th-gen RT (ray tracing) cores that can reach 58 TFLOPS. It also has 3,840 CUDA Cores. According to NVIDIA's benchmarks, the RTX 5060 reaches 234 fps in Hogwarts Legacy , 148 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 , 220 fps in Avowed and 330 fps in Marvel Rivals . Those numbers are all set for 1080p with maxed-out graphics and 4x frame generation. Based on today's prices, those are impressive numbers for a $299 card. But if you can snag one at all, you'll likely be hard-pressed to find one at that price. For that, you can thank Donald Trump. The Verge notes that retailers jacked up graphics card prices even before his tariffs kicked in. In addition, the US president recently killed the de minimis exemption, which spared goods under $800 from extra taxes. (Remember when he said he would make America affordable again?) So, consider yourself one of the lucky few if you find one on launch day for anything close to $299. The GeForce RTX 5060 will go on sale on May 19 at noon ET from NVIDIA's retail partners. In addition to the standalone desktop card, the laptops with the mobile version of the RTX 5060 will launch at the same time, starting at $1,099.
New York Times
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Lackluster Assassins Can't Outshine the Beauty of Feudal Japan
Open-world games tend to structure themselves around a central, driving plot. You've got to save the planet from catastrophe in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. In Avowed, you're seeking the cure for a spreading contagion. The rest of the side-quests — their mini-games and their hidden zones — are mostly extraneous. They're rest stops along the shoulder of the five-lane highway of plot. Assassin's Creed Shadows reverses this formula. Its story line feels diminished and sits in the background of a more vibrant world. Like past Assassin's Creed games, Shadows serves up a clear premise: saving Japan from malevolent actors, this time through two controllable characters, Yasuke and Naoe, an African-born samurai and a young shinobi, who are each on tours of vengeance. They're on the hunt for the Shinbakufu, a group of masked figures set on taking over 16th-century Japan. By the time the credits roll, Yasuke and Naoe will have stabbed, bludgeoned and gutted the lot. But this rote activity of checking bad guys off a list is hardly where the meat of the game is found. The more remarkable moments to be found in Shadows are in its world, in the gaps between missions, which find you traversing feudal Japan on galloping horseback, driving through its misty gullies and over its forested, windswept peaks. The wilds around you are alive with deer, scampering foxes and rooting tanuki. Elsewhere there are magnificent temples whose realistic depictions are as accurate as you'll find without airfare, and where your character can solemnly pray before a shrine while the sad twangs of a biwa, a small wooden lute, resound in the background. It's a stunningly realized depiction of a country that one would assume gamers are already deeply familiar with. As saturated as the zeitgeist is with ancient Japan, where recent gaming hits like Ghost of Tsushima, Nioh and Sekiro are set, Shadows offers more, digging deeper to deliver a fascinating, grounded picture beyond the wild, natural world. It also captures the many layers of Japan's feudal society: the bamboo huts of its villages, the quiet shrines and temples, the towering castles and forts of its cities. It's when you come face to face with the game's characters that a deep sense of underwhelm takes over. Wooden performances and murky motivations make navigating the game's ungainly plot a chore. While the originating premise is clear, assassinating your way to the top rarely delivers any narrative satisfaction. More often than not, your missions require interceding in the conflicts between feuding lords, and it isn't easy to tell whether the new lord you're replacing will be much of an improvement over the old one. Nor does the game ever really stop to ask. It's a shame, and even a little surprising, how little the game's plot makes of the potential thematic richness of its setting and its characters. After all, Shadows is set in a Japan begrudgingly opening itself up to foreign influence for the first time. We see warlords who commit massacres in the name of security and peace, and most interesting of all, Yasuke, an African man who was once a slave and has now risen to the rank of samurai. It's hard not to feel curious about how he finds his way as a stranger in this strange land. Yet over the bloated length of Shadows, which takes at least 40 hours to complete, very few of these themes are deeply explored. Foreign interference in the country is neatly categorized under the series-canonical boogeyman of the Templar order. The game's various warlords and daimyos who line up for their slaughter are a confusing mess of nobles and courtiers and their vast extended families; they appear to be your targets only for the tautological reason of being associated with the game's de facto villains. Yasuke himself is a conundrum. Standing head and shoulders above everyone else, he's the opposite of the stealthy interloper you'd expect an Assassin's Creed character to be. He stands out like a sore thumb, and that's the point. Everywhere Yasuke goes, people gasp and step back in shock. When he charges into enemy castles he can knock down soldiers and smash through barred wooden gates. Yet his demeanor is calm, placid, always putting on a smile and looking to defuse situations. He only lets out his anger at select moments later in the game, before sealing it back in. It's difficult, as a result, to fully grasp Yasuke's character, to form an understanding of what he thinks about his surroundings, and how he feels about allies like Naoe. The two maintain a friendly, mechanical camaraderie, acting more like co-workers than intimate friends. Naoe is far less complex. Driven from her idyllic childhood village by war and violence she follows the classic hero's journey so closely she might as well have a copy of Joseph Campbell tucked in her ninja's satchel. There's even a MacGuffin, a red box holding a secret treasure that she must get her hands on for ambiguous reasons. In Yasuke and Naoe's journey to win back this box, ostensibly just a plot device, we glimpse more interesting things. There is a charming espionage-themed mission that demands that Naoe must properly complete a tea ceremony to convince her target of her highborn status. There are missions with poetry readings and ones complicated by star-crossed love affairs. These moments point to the game this could have been, one in which the attention the designers give to human interaction matched the level of care they take with its mountains and forests. Instead, we have a game without a focus. It's still an Assassin's Creed title. We must still spend it stabbing villains with hidden blades, must still go to war against a seemingly infinite well of Templar enemies. It even maintains the series' layer of goofy science fiction world-building, painting the whole experience as a game within a game, though this aspect is mercifully kept to an easily ignorable sub-menu. This is all series tradition. But that tradition doesn't quite work in Shadows. There's more life in its small moments, like praying at a shrine high in the mountains or romancing the sister of a murdered daimyo, than there is in climbing another tower to assassinate another lord. The plot, with its unorthodox protagonists taking on an evil elite, encourages us to leave tradition behind and embrace a new vision of Japan. It's a lesson Ubisoft should have taken more to heart when designing the game.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I don't care about being able to kill everybody and steal the Mayor's pants in an RPG like Avowed, and I'm tired of pretending it's mandatory
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. There comes a time, dear reader, when us writers at PC Gamer are at odds—and I find myself on the other side of a fence shouting: 'Nonsense! Balderdash! Tomfoolery!' at my unfortunate colleagues Joshua Wolens and Robert Zak, who have got it into their heads that Avowed is somehow lesser for its lack of reactivity or, most crucially, the inability to rob shopkeepers after you've paid them. In fact, Avowed is a game that has come under constant scrutiny for this simple fact—and to be fair to its detractors, they are correct by technicality. Avowed is not a very reactive game. There's no real stealth system, there's no theft system, there's no bounty system, you can't kill everyone you come across, NPCs don't have daily routines. It's a world trapped in amber that you are invited to wander through, but not live in. If you were expecting those things, you'll be disappointed. Despite the fact I've been denied these RPG staples, as apparently necessary as bread and water, I've somehow managed to enjoy myself. And that's because Avowed is an extremely focused game—its narrow scope hones in on a few things: Combat, exploration, environments, and story. And you know what? It does all of those things well—its story is maybe the weakest of those points, but even then, as a fan of textured, sleepy worldbuilding and nuanced fantasy politics, I've been having a grand time. But Harvey, says a person I just made up, Skyrim had all of those things. You could kill a guy and steal his pants in Skyrim. You could murder a chicken farm in Skyrim. You could relentlessly follow some guy and find out what pre-ordained tasks he's programmed to do in Skyrim, and then also kill him and steal his pants and murder his chickens. Why didn't Obsidian do a Skyrim, are they stupid? Sure, games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Skyrim are more immersive, but they also take a long goddamn time to make." No. Look, the issue with this train of thought is that it assumes that modern videogames are dreams spun together with psychic brain magic, and not painful tangles of code that barely function even after hundreds of people work very hard on them for far too many hours. Yes, from a consumer viewpoint, Avowed is a full-priced game—so if your argument is that you wanted more bang for your buck? I can disagree with you, but not dismiss you entirely. Only you decide what your money's worth. But the implication that anyone who worked on this thing simply thought 'nah, we won't put a theft system in there' is boneheaded—resources went elsewhere, and Obsidian as a studio tends to have several irons in the fire at once. It's why we're getting both Avowed and a new Outer Worlds this year. Sure, games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Skyrim are more immersive, but they also take a long goddamn time to make. There's also this underlying idea I find equally maddening that if you make an RPG, it has to let you engage in NPC-stalking pants-stealing chicken murder. If it doesn't permit you to live your most Groundhog Day of butcher-fantasies, it's somehow a bad RPG. Something to be cast out of the canon. And I'm here to stand up and say: Since bloody when? Yes, RPGs with huge amounts of freedom are arguably the landmarks of the genre. They're the hardest to make, sure, but they're also the most enduring. Still, they're also not the only RPGs that exist, nor should they be. You couldn't go on murderhobo sprees in Knights of the Old Republic, or Mass Effect, or The Witcher 3. No-one's saying that Final Fantasy 7 is a lesser RPG because Cloud Strife couldn't pull out the buster sword and do a little purging for Shinra. And you know what? I don't think I care all that much in the first place. In games where murder-sprees are possible, I've found actually sticking to them to be eminently unsatisfying—sure, there are other perks that the immersive, reactive template grants, but are they required for me to have a good time? Not one bit. And that's all a matter of personal taste, but that's exactly what I'm saying. RPGs, like any other genre, should get to run the gamut of reactivity—from entirely systems-driven sims like Kenshi to the most JRPG of JRPGs like Metaphor: ReFantazio. Both. Both is good. It's ostensibly absolutely fine for a game to go 'this is what I'm good at, and I'm going to stick to it'—and I think putting Avowed under this kind of scrutiny is a little unfair. It feels like the masses saw a first-person RPG and let their pattern recognition do the thinking for them, rather than ask themselves what kind of game Avowed is interested in being, and judging it based on those merits. No, Avowed isn't a Skyrim. You know what it is? A solid action RPG, and historically speaking, we like those. We like them a lot. Best MMOs: Most massiveBest strategy games: Number crunchingBest open world games: Unlimited explorationBest survival games: Live craft loveBest horror games: Fight or flight
The Independent
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The biggest game releases in 2025: From GTA 6 to Assassin's Creed: Shadows
If 2024 felt like a year without a major gaming release, then fear not, 2025 has undoubtedly the biggest game on its calendar – Grand Theft Auto 6. And sure, while everyone's excited about Rockstar 's long-awaited sequel, there are also other big games to look forward to, including a new Assassin's Creed game, Dune Awakening and a Fable reboot. Here are some of 2025's gaming highlights to look forward to across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, with some rumours thrown in for good measure. 'Avowed' Release date: 18 February 2025 Available platforms: Xbox Series X/S, PC An Xbox console exclusive, Avowed has been described as a 'thoroughly old-fashioned' RP and has been delayed from 2024 to 18 February 2025. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment – the studio behind Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and The Outer Worlds – Avowed is set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity and can be played in both first-person and third-person perspective. It will feature a combination of melee and magic combat against men and beasts, so yes, think Skyrim. 'Monster Hunter Wilds' 2018's Monster Hunter World was a major breakthrough for Capcom's RPG series and introduced the title to a whole host of new players. Wilds looks set to continue the trend as the forthcoming release collected a whole heap of trophies at the Gamescom awards including Best Trailer, Most Epic and Most Entertaining. Monster Hunter Wilds arrives on 28 February 2025 for Xbox, PS5 and Steam. 'Assassin's Creed: Shadows' Release date: 20 March 2025 Available platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC It's been over four years since the last huge mainline Assassin's Creed game - Valhalla was released in November 2020 just as the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles launched. In late 2023 Assassin's Creed: Mirage arrived as its own standalone game after it was scrapped as a Valhalla DLC but the title was overlooked by many. Assassin's Creed: Shadows was originally set to be released in November of 2024 but has since been pushed back to 20 March 2025. Set in 16th century feudal Japan, the game will have two protagonists – Naoe, a female shinobi and Yasuke, a samurai who will play more like a tank character. 'Doom: The Dark Ages' Release date: 2025 Available platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal are two of the best shooters of the past 10 years, so there's no reason to doubt why Doom: The Dark Ages shouldn't be just as brilliant, and absurd, and gory and horrific. The most striking detail about The Dark Ages is that it will serve as a prequel in which you experience the Doom Slayer's (Doomguy) origin story as he becomes the last hope of a kingdom fighting against the forces of Hell in a techno-medieval alternate universe. The game will be released on PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox on May 15, 2025. Release date: 2025 Available platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC The Borderlands movie hit cinemas in the summer of 2024 to drum up excitement for the fourth mainline instalment in the FPS series, except the movie flopped and everybody hated it. Fortunately, it was so forgettable that you likely forgot the film ever happened. The definitive looter shooter is set to be released on September 23, 2025. The date was confirmed at Sony's Sate of Play event in February. it will arrive in 2025 on Xbox, PS5 and PC. 'Call Of Duty' Black Ops 6 was seen by many as a return to form for the series which has had diminishing returns since the fantastic Modern Warfare reboot in pre-pendemic 2019. Although Warzone was a phenomenon during the pandemic, the extremely negative response to the MW3 campaign left Activision with some love to rekindle and Black Ops 6 did that. Even better, many Xbox owners got the game on day one for free via Game Pass. This year's entry is rumoured to be a Black Ops 2 sequel (very confusing) and will likely once again land on PS5 and for free on Game Pass in Q4 2025. 'Death Stranding 2: On the Beach' Release date: 2025 Available platforms: PS5 If you thought Death Stranding was weird then Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is likely to be even weirder. The sci-fi baby-shipping simulator from Hideo Kojima was originally a PlayStation exclusive in 2019 but was released on Xbox Series X/S in November 2024, so those who missed out the first time can now experience the fever dream adventure starring Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen. DS2:OTB is set to drop at some point in 2025 for the PS5, a good guess is that it will probably be Q4, mirroring when Death Stranding originally released. 'Dune: Awakening' Release date: Early 2025 Available platforms: PC With two critically acclaimed Denis Villeneuve-directed Dune films in the can and a third presumingly on the way, there is clearly an appetite for Frank Herbert's Arrakis epic. Hopefully Funcom's Dune: Awakening can deliver that spice to those who crave it. Running on Unreal Engine 5, Dune Awakening is an open world survival MMO set on the most dangerous planet in the universe. Do you want to simply survive or do you want to conquer the entirety of Arrakis? That is up to you. The game is coming to PC in early 2025, but as of yet, there are no further details on the Xbox or PlayStation release window. 'Fable' Release date: 2026 Available platforms: Xbox Series X/S, PC Return to Albion for the first time in nearly 15 years as Xbox's beloved RPG makes a comeback. First mentioned back in 2017 by Head of Xbox Phil Spencer, this reboot is being handled by Playground Games - the studio behind the Forza Horizon series. Fable will be released in 2026 for Xbox and Microsoft Windows after it was taken off the calendar for this year on February 25 . 'Ghost of Yotei' Release date: 2025 Available platforms: PS5 The much-anticipated sequel to the much-loved PS4 exclusive Ghost of Tsushima from 2020. Set during the first Mongol invasion of Japan, you played as Jin as you fought to protect Tsushima Island. Ghost of Yotei will take place more than 300 years after the first game, and the main protagonist will be Atsu, a female warrior who takes on the role of the titular 'Ghost'. Sucker Punch Productions has said Ghost of Yotei will give players more choice over narrative and the direction the story will go in based on the decisions you make. The release date of Ghost of Yotei is yet to be announced, but it's set to land on PlayStation at some point in 2025. 'GTA 6' The big one: yes it's been delayed, yes it's been well over 10 years since GTA V, yes, we've only had one trailer and yes, it may even get delayed again, but it's still Grand Theft Auto. As it stands, Rockstar's next entry in this behemoth of a series is set for sometime in the second half of 2025 on Xbox and PlayStation. All we really know is that it's set in a fictional version of Florida (back to Vice City) and there will be dual protagonists - Lucia and Jason.
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How To Snag Avowed's Best Weapons, 5 Great Mods To Make Monster Hunter Wilds Even Better, And More Hot Tips
If, like us, you're currently spending a lot of your spare time in the Living Lands of Avowed, you may want to check out our pointers on where to find some of the game's best weapons, as well as some of its rarest upgrade materials. We'll also point you to a handful of mods that can make your time with Monster Hunter Wilds better, guide you to Ares in Hades 2, and more. Avowed's fiery Last Light of Day isn't just the best one-handed sword in the game, it's arguably the best weapon you can find period, thanks to its high damage, fire accumulation, and fantastic enchantment that restores your health upon killing enemies. The fact that it can be obtained so early in the game makes it even more incredible. - Billy Givens Read More Monster Hunter Wilds has already sold over 8 million copies, making it the fastest-selling in the action-RPG franchise's history. Many of those players are on PC, which means their eligible to take advantage of dozens of player-made mods to alter and even improve the game's overall experience, including bypassing Capcom's annoying character and Palico edit vouchers which cost $2.33 each. Here are some of the most popular mods Monster Hunter Wilds players are downloading. - Ethan Gach Read More When you're not testing different weapon combos in Avowed, you're probably searching for the many collectibles and resources within The Living Lands. Out of everything there is to find, the finite resource Adra is one of the most important. You'll need these when it comes time to upgrade your weapons and armor to higher quality tiers. Knowing how to get Adra is your biggest obstacle, but we can help with that. - Samuel Moreno Read More There are a whole bunch of Great Axes that are worth hauling around in Avowed, and it's hard to go wrong with any of them. There's a specific Great Axe obtainable at the very end of the game that would likely take the top spot overall, but given that you have less than an hour of playtime left when you reach that point, it's a rather disappointing find. As such, your best bet is to grab the mighty Seven Strivings Great Axe early in the game, and keep it upgraded throughout your adventure instead. Here's what to know and where to find it. - Billy Givens Read More Split Fiction is equal parts heartwarming tale and heart-pounding adventure, expertly blending sci-fi and fantasy into a creative cooperative journey unlike anything you've seen. Before you dive in with a friend or loved one, though, here are four things you should know about the game. - Billy Givens Read More Daggers are the tried-and-true weapon of a rogue, but they can be mixed and matched into any playstyle in Avowed, thanks to the game's focus on class freedom. Whether you're a dagger user slinging spells with your other hand, or wielding a shield for some extra protection, you'd do well to grab the powerful Sheathed in Summer dagger during the opening hours of the game. Here's what to know about this fiery dagger and how to get it. - Billy Givens Read More Picture this: You've just capsized and crashlanded on a remote island with a fort looming overhead. You're defenseless, and a strange blue being is sifting through your ship's remnants. You need a weapon, and in the moment, anything will suffice, like the dagger or wand on the ground before you. That's all good, but a bit of wood and steel won't suffice for long. You need to upgrade your weapons and armor in Avowed if you wish to go toe-to-toe with some of Eora's fearsome beasts. Here's how I survived untold encounters with a better weapon and a bit of fire magic. - Brandon Morgan Read More Whether you followed an intricate online build guide, or decided to wing the entire experience and choose fabulous skills and passives, Path of Exile 2 offers a metric ton of variety regarding how you grow in power. But one of the most essential aspects isn't your class or abilities; it's the gear you wield. If you're rocking standard-tier gear, you're in for a bad time. You need to up your game by farming uniques in Path of Exile 2 to stand toe-to-toe with end-game bosses and other players. - Brandon Morgan Read More Looking to get some help from Ares in Hades II? In the second major patch since the game launched in early access, the Warsong Update, Supergiant has added this new Olympian, and you can get him on your side. However, you'll have to impress him before you can earn any of his boons—here's what you need to do to unlock Ares in Hades II. - Parker Johnson Read More Hazelight Studios has once again brought a whole heap of co-op joy with its newest game, Split Fiction, which sends two players on a high-stakes quest across high fantasy and sci-fi settings. There are plenty of funny and heartfelt moments for you and a friend to experience in this adventure. But if you're wondering how many hours of cooperative fun there is to be had, we've got the answer for you. Here's how long it takes to beat Split Fiction. - Billy Givens Read More For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
