Plus former DISCO ELYSIUM devs sue ZA/UM for control of the IP and CD Project Red announces a remake to THE WITCHER
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SIFTER is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Daniel Ang & Adam Christou. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Omny Studio for their support of SIFTER.
FIONA: Hi I’m Fiona Bartholomaeus
GIANNI: and I’m Gianni Di Giovanni
FIONA: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
GIANNI: Disco Elysium devs sue their former company to get the IP back, CALL of DUTY has you aiming guns directly at civilians for a mission, and CD Project read reveals Witcher 1 remake.Let’s go
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FIONA: A few weeks ago we spoke about the firing of the team behind Disco Elysium from the development company ZA/UM. Now, one of those ousted members will be taking the company to court.
Tech News Space reported this week that Disco Elysium writer Anthony Kurvitz has filed a lawsuit, confirmed by Estonian court filings, and by Kurvitz himself when he retweeted the article captioned Law-Jaw, an in-game reference.
Kotaku spoke to ZA/UM founding and former member Martin Luiga, and asked him if the intention of the lawsuit was to regain control of the Disco Elysium IP, to which he responded “what else could it possibly be”.
The first court date is on November 28, so we’ll keep you updated as this story progresses.
GIANNI: What you might not know is that in Estonian ZA/UM is a cultural institution, most people it as a game developer but it does more than that, so it's a big blow for Estonian creatives that the core creative team were pushed out. Anything could happen with this case, we'll just have to wait and see
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GIANNI: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 released this week and it’s attracted a lot of criticism for one of the levels in the campaign mode where you have to point your gun directly at civilians to “de-escalate”
This is completely awful and not to mention extremely tone deaf, when you play as a border and drug enforcement agent breaking into people’s homes.
The United States has a big problem with policing, Australia isn’t immune either when it comes to use of violence against the people by police and it disproportionately impacts people of colour.
That’s not the only hiccup for the game, on the multiplayer side of the game players on PC and Xbox have discovered that they are forced directly into matches with each other with crossplay locked in by default.
You can go and disable all crossplay entirely on the Xbox, so that’s every game not just Call of Duty, but PC players are stuck playing with console players with no way to opt out.
PlayStation players have a built-in toggle to disable if they want, so I wonder what back end rule caused this to play out.
FIONA: We can’t not mention this, if you’re a player that loves a physical copy of your game, almost don’t bother with the disc version of Modern Warfare 2, twitter account DoesitPlay found there was just 70mb on the bluray, with a 100gb download before you could play.
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FIONA: Do you remember a couple of Walkthroughs ago we told you that CD Projekt RED had announced a stack of new games Gianni?
Well we now know that one of those secret projects, codenamed ‘Canis Majoris’ is actually a remake of the original Witcher game.
CD Projekt Red head of studio Adam Badowski announced they were partnering with Polish studio Fool’s Theory on the remake and that it will be built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5.
Fool’s Theory aren’t strangers to the Witcher games with a few of them having worked on the Witcher series already.
The original game is free at the moment on GOG.com so if you want to compare and contrast you can grab that now, and we’ll bring you more information when it comes to hand.
GIANNI: The first game came out in 2007 which is almost a lifetime ago whne it comes to video games, so it's great that this game is going to get a fresh coat of paint and be made available for a new audience
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GIANNI: All live service games eventually have an end date, but Yoko Taro’s SinoAlice the mobile rpg packed with that classic square enix gachas mechanic, is going out in a pretty cool way.
The game will be shutting down in in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau in just over a week on the 10th of November, but players will get one last mission before it all goes away.
When players complete the final verse of what the game calls chapters, their save file will be completely deleted, so it’s all or nothing.
As Kotaku reports one of the secret endings in Nier Automata prompted you delete all your save data to help another random player so this is straight from the Taro playbook.
FIONA: I hope that someone records their final run, so that its made available for people to see once the game ends on the 10th of November.
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FIONA: It’s the 25th anniversary of the Fallout series this year, and Fallout 4 will be getting one final update to bring it into the current generation.
The 2015 game which has already been updated to support 4K on the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X will get some additional performance mode features such as high frame rates and other quality features for 4K and some bug fixes.
Also during the announcement it was hinted that there would be ‘bonus Creation Club content’ but no specifics on what it would look like or include.
The upgrade will be for PlayStation 5, PC and Xbox series X, and we’ll keep you updated as we get more information.
GIANNI: I put like 300 hours into Fallout 4 when it first came out, and I've been feeling the itch to head back to post-apocalyptic Boston, so this might be just the kick I need to jump back in.
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GIANNI: That’s it for news, here are the games releasing this coming week.
FIONA: Out on the 31’st is NecroBoy: Path of Evilship by Indie devs Chillin’ Wolf. It’s a light hearted puzzle adventure game that tells the story of a young necromancer on a journey to become the lord of evil. It’s out on PC this Monday.
GIANNI: Another spooky title out on Halloween is The Unliving, a roguelite action RPG that tasks the players with fighting off hordes of enemies with an army of undead. Grab it on PC on the 31st.
FIONA: Out on November third is The Chant, a creepy third person horror set at a spiritual retreat on a remote island. Everything is set for a relaxing weekend away until a group chant opens a psychedelic dimension and everything turns to hell. Pick it up on PC, Xbox series s and x and playstation 5 this Thursday.
GIANNI: Also out Thursday is Kinghunt, the first release by Finish developers Vaki Games. It’s a slick looking third person tactical arena brawler that’s a mix of tower defense and hack and slash titles. Grab Kingshunt on PC on the third.
FIONA: And lastly we have The Entropy Centre, a mind-bending first-person adventure puzzle game. Picture the Portal series, except instead of a portal gun, the player's weapon of choice sends objects back in time. It’s out on PC, Xbox series s and x, xbox one, and playstation four and five on the third.
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FIONA: This has been Walkthrough by Sifter, my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus,
GIANNI: And my name is Gianni Di Giovanni. Thank you so much for listening.
FIONA: We know you love listening to SIFTER so if you’d like to support our work, we’ve got a Ko-Fi where you can contribute whatever our work is worth to you. Even a small amount makes a big difference to us. Head to sifter.com.au/support where even a couple of dollars helps us keep making our shows
GIANNI: SIFTER is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus (Bar-tholo-may-US), Daniel Ang, Daniel Hyndes & me Adam Christou (CHRIS-TOO). Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer.
FIONA: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune.
Thanks to both Audio Technica Australia and Omny Studio for their support of SIFTER’s three podcasts.
GIANNI: Thanks again for listening, we’ll be back with more news next Sunday.
