Former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan’s favorite hero is Reinhardt, and reveals his charge was inspired by Left 4 Dead 2: ‘It’s what separates a great Rein from a sh*tty one’

Even though he’s not on the cover art, Overwatch’s tank hero Reinhardt is as synonymous with the hero shooter as Tracer. He was one of the original heroes to launch with the game and has remained incredibly popular as time has gone on. “Reinhardt was actually my main,” former game director Jeff Kaplan told Lex…

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Dave the Diver DLC adds a little Stardew Valley time management and relationship building to the formula when In the Jungle releases in June

Dave the Diver will tread further into unfamiliar waters soon as the explorer and his friends set a date for the fishing RPG’s next expansion. During today’s Future Games Show Spring Showcase, Mintrocket announced that the In the Jungle DLC will release on June 18. As Dave moves his operations to Utara—a jungle village nestled…

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Company that makes generative AI-powered NPCs reports that 95% of players enjoy their generative AI-powered NPCs

Hands up if you’ve ever thought the following: “Sure, Elden Ring is pretty great, but what it really needs is the mournful, silent creature I’m fighting to say something FromSoft didn’t write like ‘come at me, ye tarnished dickhead’” during a tense encounter. If you do have your hand raised, I imagine you likely already…

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Indie deckbuilder All Will Rise’s dev joins No Games For Genocide boycott and plans to hand back funding it received from Microsoft

Indie deckbuilder All Will Rise is, as Andy Chalk wrote last year, “clearly a game with something to say”. The deckbuilding RPG is particularly interested in the rich and powerful, and getting revenge on the billionaires destroying the world. It’s deeply anti-capitalist and political, but developer Speculative Agency received funding from Microsoft, which puts it…

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WoW’s questing system was inspired by a playtest that didn’t work out as planned, because the testers didn’t play MMOs and had no idea what they were supposed to do: ‘I ran out of quests right away!’

The idea that World of Warcraft was ever light on quests sounds like blasphemy at this point. Why would you ever make a game about killing seven wolves not because an NPC asked you to but just for the fun of it? But that’s how MMOs like Everquest worked back then, and it’s how the…

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Playing World of Warcraft with a controller might become my preferred playstyle thanks to this excellent gamepad-friendly addon that’s letting me enjoy Azeroth from my couch

After a few years of lapsed subscription, Midnight’s launch has lured me back into World of Warcraft. But as someone who works from home, the thing I want most at the end of the day is an escape from my desk, keyboard, and mouse—an impulse that can cut down on my prime dwarf shaman hours….

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