A re-release version of Sanctuary, an artbook to celebrate 40 years’ worth of artwork from Inomata Mutsumi, will come out on August 21, 2024. The book will be available via Amazon and will cost 4070 JPY ($27.80). [Thanks, Famitsu!]

The book contains 256 pages and over 2000 pieces of work from various genres that Inomata worked on in her lifetime. This includes anime, games, novels, and magazines. It serves as a chronicle that looks back on her career, which heavily focuses on designs for sci-fi and fantasy characters.

Inomata Mutsumi died on March 10, 2024, though the news broke on March 18, 2024. Her career started in 1979 and lasted until she died. She was known for her work on the Tales series, including Destiny, Graces, Hearts, Innocence, Xillia, Berseria, and Zestiria. She also worked on the animation for Urusei Yatsura and City Hunter, as well as designed for the My-HiME and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED franchise. Her art style included the usage of watercolors, and her characters tended to have large eyes and slender figures, making them look like they came from a shojo manga.

Sanctuary, which collects artwork from Inomata Mutsumi over the past 40 years in a single artbook, will come out on August 21, 2024.

The post Inomata Mutsumi Artbook Sanctuary Will Be Re-Released appeared first on Siliconera.

Ever since The Sims 4 came out in 2014 (oh my goodness...), I’ve been adamant that The Sims 2 and 3 remain the superior titles in the series, especially once you start using core mods to improve performance or quality of life. For those who want to get their life simulation fix but The Sims 4 is broken or too boring, I highly suggest playing The Sims 3 instead!

Those who know anything about The Sims 3 may know that Electronic Arts and Maxis did not optimize this game very well. There are a lot of reasons for this. One reason is that it’s an open-world 32-bit game. This can lead to your files bloating up and causing the game to crash to desktop. The Sims 3 is also notorious in that the game does not naturally cap your FPS, which can overheat your graphics card if you’re not careful. Some of these mods are not mere recommendations. They’re straight up essential for the overall health of your computer.

Though not a mod, I recommend using MATY’s FPS Limiter and 3Booter. This will help to keep your frame rate at the game’s default 30. If you’re like me and you’re using a NVIDIA graphics card, you can also go into your control panel and cap The Sims 3’s frame rate at 30 through there.

Here are some of the best mods for The Sims 3 in 2024

• NRaas Master Controller
  NRaas’s entire library of mods is fantastic, but I have a few that I recommend for even people who aren’t too keen on installing mods. Master Controller is exactly as it says on the tin. With this mod, you can control virtually everything in your town, from relationships to careers to ages. It’s a handy tool for little accidents (oops, my Sim is wearing a raincoat at her garden wedding) to more heavy-duty tasks (I need to reset every single object and sim in my neighborhood).
• NRaas Story Progression
  As mentioned earlier, The Sims 3 has an open world for its neighborhood, which means that things can happen in inactive households completely out of your control. You can turn this off if you want, but for those who don’t mind letting Sims live out their own little virtual lives, I recommend Story Progression from NRaas. This replaces EA’s slow and stagnant Story Progression, preventing your neighborhood from devolving into a ghost town over time.
• NRaas Overwatch
  ESSENTIAL MOD; YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD DOWNLOAD THIS FOR YOUR COMPUTER. Overwatch goes through your neighborhood at an interval you set to clean up things like deserted cars. In general, you can think of Overwatch as a garbage truck that throws away junk files which can cause bloating down the line.
• NRaas Error Trap
  ESSENTIAL MOD; YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD DOWNLOAD THIS FOR YOUR COMPUTER. Error Trap is, like Overwatch, a mod that’s for keeping your save file as clean as possible. It catches and corrects data corruption errors that can prevent you from loading up a save. Think of it as insurance. Under ideal circumstances, you won’t need it. But when you need it, man, you’ll be glad to have this thing in your folders.

• Simpishly's More Traits for All Ages
  If you raise a Sim in-game, you’re forced to only pick from limited pools of traits in the earlier life stages, which can get boring after a while. Enabling traits for all ages can lead to some wacky Sims like a toddler who’s Flirty and has Commitment Issues. But if you don’t mind that, this is a great mod for more varied Sims.
• LazyDuchess Smooth Patch
  As a note, the LazyDuchess Smooth Patch does not work with some NRaas mods if you’re using 2.x versions. I recommend using a 1.x build if you want to use it with, say, Master Controller. Smooth Patch alters some of the script in the game to make the game run faster. For example, it’ll load hairs and outfits in CAS as you scroll through rather than making you wait for the game to pull everything out.
• LazyDuchess Lot population
  This is a personal pet peeve, but I don’t like going to a community lot to scope out a joint, only for everyone to be elsewhere in town. In The Sims 2, the game will populate lots after you arrive. However, the open world concept works against that since, again, Sims have their own lives. The Lot Population mod pushes Sims to lots your active Sim is at so you won’t be partying alone. It can also add walkbys like in The Sims 2, making your neighborhood feel more alive.
• Retuned Attraction
  The attraction system in The Sims 3 is ridiculous and can cause more trouble than it’s worth. With this mod, the attraction system is more sane and logical, as well as less indiscriminate. It will also prevent Sims from continuously harassing you for dates or sending you random stuff in the mail.

• OMSP, S3DT
  For people who like to build and decorate fancy houses, OMSP and S3DT are both absolutely essential. OMSP allows you to create more space on surfaces for clutter. This can include beds and sofas (so you can put blankets and cushions), or mini-fridges (if you want to put a radio or something on top). S3DT gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to moving things around a lot, as well as lets you change the height and angle of objects. If you only care about gameplay, these aren't necessary.
• Ghost Reaction Remover
  This is fantastic for people who play legacy style like I do, as you’ll naturally end up with a lot of ghosts in your house. If you’re annoyed by Sims constantly stopping what they’re doing to go “Ew, you’re getting ectoplasm all over the floor, Great-Great-Grandpa,” then this mod can curb that behavior. Other reaction removers from this maker include mods to curb relation loss from the Emperor of Evil and stop sims from freaking out over Bonehilda.
• Children Can mods
  The Children Can series of mods is fantastic for people who want to give their Sim kids more freedom and independence, as well as get them started in life. With this mod, Sim kids will be able to do laundry, make sculptures, call services, and more. It’s really handy for people who are doing challenges like, again, the legacy challenge or the 100 Baby Challenge, since it’ll make playing with kids more fun.
• NeuroBlazer Random Genetics
  I highly recommend the Random Genetics mod for people who want more varied faces around town or in your Sims. However, NeuroBlazer seems to have removed this mod and they’re not hosting it anymore. Fortunately, there is a backup (this link will directly download the file to your computer).

• Brntwaffles environment mods
  Pretty much all of Tumblr user brntwaffles’s default replacement mods (whether environment or genetics) are really good! They make the game really pretty and it looks even better if you install Reshade. My personal recommendations from brntwaffles for eyes are the MS93 and Sarhra default replacements. I also really like their Perfect Day and Dream Dimension lighting mods.
• Twinsimming mods
  Twinswimming’s mods are great for adding flavor to your game. I recommend basically all of them. Some of them can make your game more difficult, such as Pest Control and Utilities adding new things you have to watch out for. Their best mods are Growing Pains and the Level Up! mods, in my opinion.
• Velocitygrass No Automatic Memories
  ESSENTIAL MOD; YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD DOWNLOAD THIS FOR YOUR COMPUTER. As mentioned in the beginning, memories can really bloat your save file, causing the eventual corruption of your neighborhood and mess with your computer. Even if you turn off notifications, the game still accumulates memories, including from inactive families. This mod completely removes the feature.
• Icarusallsorts's User-Directed Scolding
  If you don’t have kids in your game, this might be a non-issue. But Generations added a mechanic that lets parents scold and ground their kids when they do something bad. On paper, that sounds really neat. In practice, it’s freakishly annoying. This mod gives you more control over how your sim punishes their kid without turning it into unnecessary drama.

• Ultimate Careers
  The Ultimate Careers mod is a very intensive mod that overhauls how careers work in this game. This makes them a lot more similar to how professions work rather than just pushing your Sims to go to a rabbit hole where you can’t peek in on them. Fortunately, you don’t have to micromanage as much as you do with a profession, so it’s friendly for players with large families too.
• TheSweetSimmer mods
  TheSweetSimmer makes a lot of mods that focus on pregnancy interactions and toddlers, making them more fun to play with. It also frees up your teen or adult Sims, since children and toddlers will be able to perform acts that would usually require an older Sim's help. This is mostly useful for people who play families, but it might incentivize YA and Adult sim players to have a kid or two.
• Moar Interactions
  This is one of those mods that add things you’d figure would have been in the base game. It’s great for group meetings and parties, as you can do so much more with other sims around town.
• PhoebeJaySims Social Clubs Mod
  PhoebeJaySims, like TheSweetSimmer and Twinsimming, has a lot of really cool mods. My favorite of them is the Social Clubs mod. This lets you create a club, but without the objectives that are in The Sims 4 clubs. Clubs with this mod are more chill and are a great way for you to set up regular meetings and playdates, or add a layer of storytelling to your neighborhood.

The Sims 3 is readily available on the Windows PC.

The post Best Mods For The Sims 3 in 2024 appeared first on Siliconera.

During GamesCom 2024, HoYoVerse released a new trailer for Honkai: Star Rail, teasing new character Feixiao and the upcoming Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works collaboration. More details on both will appear closer to the release date.

You can watch the Honkai: Star Rail GamesCom trailer here:

It’s also available in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

The trailer starts with Guinaifen describing Feixiao’s exploits on the battlefield, though she can’t really remember everything. Feixiao actually appears to defeat a borisin about to attack, but she’s just asking for directions. Then, the trailer temporarily shifts to an anime style to show Pom-Pom, Caelus, March, and Dan Heng on the Astral Express. They hear a kind of explosion noise and though you can’t see who appeared on the train, it’s most likely to be EMIYA between his voice and the line he says.

The Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works collaboration event will come out some time in Summer 2025. At this point in time, we don’t know if the crossover will only be skins, or if we will actually get a playable character like how Aloy appeared in Genshin Impact. As for Feixiao, she will be a 5-star Wind Hunt character. Before her debut though, we have her subordinate Jiaoqiu coming out in the second phase of Version 2.4. He’ll be a 5-star Fire Nihility who specializes in a unique DoT.

Honkai: Star Rail is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. Feixiao will appear as a playable character in Honkai: Star Rail Versioin 2.5.

The post Honkai: Star Rail GamesCom Trailer Teases Feixiao and UBW appeared first on Siliconera.

Ever since The Sims 4 came out in 2014 (oh my goodness...), I’ve been adamant that The Sims 2 and 3 remain the superior titles in the series, especially once you start using core mods to improve performance or quality of life. For those who want to get their life simulation fix but The Sims 4 is broken or too boring, I highly suggest playing The Sims 3 instead!

Those who know anything about The Sims 3 may know that Electronic Arts and Maxis did not optimize this game very well. There are a lot of reasons for this. One reason is that it’s an open-world 32-bit game. This can lead to your files bloating up and causing the game to crash to desktop. The Sims 3 is also notorious in that the game does not naturally cap your FPS, which can overheat your graphics card if you’re not careful. Some of these mods are not mere recommendations. They’re straight up essential for the overall health of your computer.

Though not a mod, I recommend using MATY’s FPS Limiter and 3Booter. This will help to keep your frame rate at the game’s default 30. If you’re like me and you’re using a NVIDIA graphics card, you can also go into your control panel and cap The Sims 3’s frame rate at 30 through there.

Here are some of the best mods for The Sims 3 in 2024

• NRaas Master Controller
  NRaas’s entire library of mods is fantastic, but I have a few that I recommend for even people who aren’t too keen on installing mods. Master Controller is exactly as it says on the tin. With this mod, you can control virtually everything in your town, from relationships to careers to ages. It’s a handy tool for little accidents (oops, my Sim is wearing a raincoat at her garden wedding) to more heavy-duty tasks (I need to reset every single object and sim in my neighborhood).
• NRaas Story Progression
  As mentioned earlier, The Sims 3 has an open world for its neighborhood, which means that things can happen in inactive households completely out of your control. You can turn this off if you want, but for those who don’t mind letting Sims live out their own little virtual lives, I recommend Story Progression from NRaas. This replaces EA’s slow and stagnant Story Progression, preventing your neighborhood from devolving into a ghost town over time.
• NRaas Overwatch
  ESSENTIAL MOD; YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD DOWNLOAD THIS FOR YOUR COMPUTER. Overwatch goes through your neighborhood at an interval you set to clean up things like deserted cars. In general, you can think of Overwatch as a garbage truck that throws away junk files which can cause bloating down the line.
• NRaas Error Trap
  ESSENTIAL MOD; YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD DOWNLOAD THIS FOR YOUR COMPUTER. Error Trap is, like Overwatch, a mod that’s for keeping your save file as clean as possible. It catches and corrects data corruption errors that can prevent you from loading up a save. Think of it as insurance. Under ideal circumstances, you won’t need it. But when you need it, man, you’ll be glad to have this thing in your folders.

• Simpishly's More Traits for All Ages
  If you raise a Sim in-game, you’re forced to only pick from limited pools of traits in the earlier life stages, which can get boring after a while. Enabling traits for all ages can lead to some wacky Sims like a toddler who’s Flirty and has Commitment Issues. But if you don’t mind that, this is a great mod for more varied Sims.
• LazyDuchess Smooth Patch
  As a note, the LazyDuchess Smooth Patch does not work with some NRaas mods if you’re using 2.x versions. I recommend using a 1.x build if you want to use it with, say, Master Controller. Smooth Patch alters some of the script in the game to make the game run faster. For example, it’ll load hairs and outfits in CAS as you scroll through rather than making you wait for the game to pull everything out.
• LazyDuchess Lot population
  This is a personal pet peeve, but I don’t like going to a community lot to scope out a joint, only for everyone to be elsewhere in town. In The Sims 2, the game will populate lots after you arrive. However, the open world concept works against that since, again, Sims have their own lives. The Lot Population mod pushes Sims to lots your active Sim is at so you won’t be partying alone. It can also add walkbys like in The Sims 2, making your neighborhood feel more alive.
• Retuned Attraction
  The attraction system in The Sims 3 is ridiculous and can cause more trouble than it’s worth. With this mod, the attraction system is more sane and logical, as well as less indiscriminate. It will also prevent Sims from continuously harassing you for dates or sending you random stuff in the mail.

• OMSP, S3DT
  For people who like to build and decorate fancy houses, OMSP and S3DT are both absolutely essential. OMSP allows you to create more space on surfaces for clutter. This can include beds and sofas (so you can put blankets and cushions), or mini-fridges (if you want to put a radio or something on top). S3DT gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to moving things around a lot, as well as lets you change the height and angle of objects. If you only care about gameplay, these aren't necessary.
• Ghost Reaction Remover
  This is fantastic for people who play legacy style like I do, as you’ll naturally end up with a lot of ghosts in your house. If you’re annoyed by Sims constantly stopping what they’re doing to go “Ew, you’re getting ectoplasm all over the floor, Great-Great-Grandpa,” then this mod can curb that behavior. Other reaction removers from this maker include mods to curb relation loss from the Emperor of Evil and stop sims from freaking out over Bonehilda.
• Children Can mods
  The Children Can series of mods is fantastic for people who want to give their Sim kids more freedom and independence, as well as get them started in life. With this mod, Sim kids will be able to do laundry, make sculptures, call services, and more. It’s really handy for people who are doing challenges like, again, the legacy challenge or the 100 Baby Challenge, since it’ll make playing with kids more fun.
• NeuroBlazer Random Genetics
  I highly recommend the Random Genetics mod for people who want more varied faces around town or in your Sims. However, NeuroBlazer seems to have removed this mod and they’re not hosting it anymore. Fortunately, there is a backup (this link will directly download the file to your computer).

• Brntwaffles environment mods
  Pretty much all of Tumblr user brntwaffles’s default replacement mods (whether environment or genetics) are really good! They make the game really pretty and it looks even better if you install Reshade. My personal recommendations from brntwaffles for eyes are the MS93 and Sarhra default replacements. I also really like their Perfect Day and Dream Dimension lighting mods.
• Twinsimming mods
  Twinswimming’s mods are great for adding flavor to your game. I recommend basically all of them. Some of them can make your game more difficult, such as Pest Control and Utilities adding new things you have to watch out for. Their best mods are Growing Pains and the Level Up! mods, in my opinion.
• Velocitygrass No Automatic Memories
  ESSENTIAL MOD; YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD DOWNLOAD THIS FOR YOUR COMPUTER. As mentioned in the beginning, memories can really bloat your save file, causing the eventual corruption of your neighborhood and mess with your computer. Even if you turn off notifications, the game still accumulates memories, including from inactive families. This mod completely removes the feature.
• Icarusallsorts's User-Directed Scolding
  If you don’t have kids in your game, this might be a non-issue. But Generations added a mechanic that lets parents scold and ground their kids when they do something bad. On paper, that sounds really neat. In practice, it’s freakishly annoying. This mod gives you more control over how your sim punishes their kid without turning it into unnecessary drama.

• Ultimate Careers
  The Ultimate Careers mod is a very intensive mod that overhauls how careers work in this game. This makes them a lot more similar to how professions work rather than just pushing your Sims to go to a rabbit hole where you can’t peek in on them. Fortunately, you don’t have to micromanage as much as you do with a profession, so it’s friendly for players with large families too.
• TheSweetSimmer mods
  TheSweetSimmer makes a lot of mods that focus on pregnancy interactions and toddlers, making them more fun to play with. It also frees up your teen or adult Sims, since children and toddlers will be able to perform acts that would usually require an older Sim's help. This is mostly useful for people who play families, but it might incentivize YA and Adult sim players to have a kid or two.
• Moar Interactions
  This is one of those mods that add things you’d figure would have been in the base game. It’s great for group meetings and parties, as you can do so much more with other sims around town.
• PhoebeJaySims Social Clubs Mod
  PhoebeJaySims, like TheSweetSimmer and Twinsimming, has a lot of really cool mods. My favorite of them is the Social Clubs mod. This lets you create a club, but without the objectives that are in The Sims 4 clubs. Clubs with this mod are more chill and are a great way for you to set up regular meetings and playdates, or add a layer of storytelling to your neighborhood.

The Sims 3 is readily available on the Windows PC.

The post Best Mods For The Sims 3 in 2024 appeared first on Siliconera.

During GamesCom 2024, HoYoVerse released a new trailer for Honkai: Star Rail, teasing new character Feixiao and the upcoming Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works collaboration. More details on both will appear closer to the release date.

You can watch the Honkai: Star Rail GamesCom trailer here:

It’s also available in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

The trailer starts with Guinaifen describing Feixiao’s exploits on the battlefield, though she can’t really remember everything. Feixiao actually appears to defeat a borisin about to attack, but she’s just asking for directions. Then, the trailer temporarily shifts to an anime style to show Pom-Pom, Caelus, March, and Dan Heng on the Astral Express. They hear a kind of explosion noise and though you can’t see who appeared on the train, it’s most likely to be EMIYA between his voice and the line he says.

The Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works collaboration event will come out some time in Summer 2025. At this point in time, we don’t know if the crossover will only be skins, or if we will actually get a playable character like how Aloy appeared in Genshin Impact. As for Feixiao, she will be a 5-star Wind Hunt character. Before her debut though, we have her subordinate Jiaoqiu coming out in the second phase of Version 2.4. He’ll be a 5-star Fire Nihility who specializes in a unique DoT.

Honkai: Star Rail is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. Feixiao will appear as a playable character in Honkai: Star Rail Versioin 2.5.

The post Honkai: Star Rail GamesCom Trailer Teases Feixiao and UBW appeared first on Siliconera.

During the GamesCom opening night livestream on August 20, 2024, a trailer for Masters of Albion appeared to show what the gameplay is like. You’ll have complete control over a civilization in an open world setting.

Here is the trailer for Masters of Albion, which includes a short interview with Peter Molyneux afterwards:

In it, you can see how you can micromanage the town of Oakridge. Everything from the food people eat, to their economic bracket, to their weapon of choice is something you can choose. At night, the horrors of Albion will attack, meaning that you have to fight them off. You’re able to take direct control of villagers as well. When the going gets tough, you can always possess a stronger creature.

Though this is not a new Black & White, it has some similarities with that game. Peter Molyneux, who worked on Masters of Albion, also designed that game during his time at Lionhead Studios. As for the Albion setting for the game, it’s the same world that Fable took place in. Fable was also a game that Peter Molyneux worked on, though that was an action RPG rather than a sandbox.

Masters of Albion will come out on the Windows PC and you can now wishlist it on Steam.

The post Masters of Albion Feels Like a Black & White Revival appeared first on Siliconera.

At Opening Night Live at gamescom 2024, the Marvel Rivals release date and Captain America and Winter Soldier gameplay appeared. The game will launch on the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC on December 6, 2024.

Here is the new Marvel Rivals release date, Captain America, and Winter Soldier gamescom 2024 trailer. It begins with Wakanda being mentioned and Black Panther shown. From there, we get to see more of Captain America and Winter Soldier. First, Bucky gameplay comes up. After that, Steve takes the stage. The video closes with the confirmed release date for the title.

The trailer also included a number of promises and commitments at the end of it. Netease noted that the game will launch with every playable character unlocked. People won’t need to pay to unlock them or earn them via playing. It will also be free-to-play. The publisher noted this will apply past launch as well.

Seeing Captain America and Winter Soldier in Marvel Rivals marks two additional series staples. Others showed up as of late in the past few weeks and months. For example, a more obscure character named Jeff the Land Shark will be a part of it.

Marvel Rivals release date falls on December 6, 2024, and people will find it on the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Epic Games Store and Steam.

The post Marvel Rivals Release Date Set, Captain America and Winter Soldier Shown appeared first on Siliconera.

During gamescom 2024 Opening Night Live, HoYoVerse announced a Genshin Impact Xbox Series X release date. The game will come to the console on November 10, 2024, following the 5.0 launch on August 28, 2024.

The Xbox Series X version of Genshin Impact came up in the gamescom 2024 trailer for the title. For the most part, the video focused on the 5.0 update. We got to see the three new characters joining in August 2024 in action. These are the five-stars Mualani and Kinich and four-star Kachina.

This is the second Genshin Impact trailer to appear recently. On August 19, 2024, there was a Natlan-focused one. It highlighted certain areas we’ll visit and creatures we’ll encounter in the new region.

This announcement means Genshin Impact is only missing on one major console. The Switch version of the title was announced not long after launch. However, it’s since been absent over the years with no updates. It is unknown if this means it might not appear on a Nintendo platform until a Switch successor appears.

Genshin Impact is available on the PS4, PS5, PC, and mobile devices, and the Xbox Series X release date is November 10, 2024. 

The post Genshin Impact Xbox Series X Release Date Set at Gamescom appeared first on Siliconera.

Gamescom is continuing on its mission to build a global brand of international events, with its Asian show due to take place in Singapore this October.

Between a very successful inaugural Gamescom Latam earlier this year, the original trade show returning to Cologne in just a few weeks, and Gamescom Asia from October 17 to 20, 2024 will mark the first year with all three events taking place in full force.

While Gamescom parent Koelnmesse only acts as co-organiser for the Latam edition, it is fully behind Gamescom Asia, with project director Daria La Valle telling us that the event wants to be a platform for Southeast Asia "to come together." The German Games Industry Association is also behind the wheel, as the owner of the Gamescom brand globally.

Read more

A 1/7 scale figure of Anby Demarra from Zenless Zone Zero is open for pre-orders in Japan. It will come out in July 2025.

The Zenless Zone Zero Anby Demarra figure is from Apex, which had worked on multiple figures for HoYoVerse games in the past. It costs 22,400 JPY, which is approximately $153.90.  AmiAmi has warned that the shipping costs may be on the pricier side for this figure, as it’s quite big and heavy.

Anby is looking like she’s ready for battle in this figure. She’s got a hand on her sword and her other one outstretched. Her expression is her usual neutral one. Apex seems to have put a lot of care into the sculpting, between all the details of her outfit and the way her skirt billows around her thighs. The stand for the figure looks like a film reel, with the welcome slogan for New Eridu on it.

Anby is the poster girl for Zenless Zone Zero (in that her face is on the icon like Paimon in Genshin Impact and March 7th for Honkai: Star Rail). When you start the game, you can get a copy of her for free. She’s a member of the Cunning Hares along with Billy Kid and Nicole. Though she’s usually very stoic and quiet, she has a bit of a silly side. For example, she sometimes conflates movies with reality.

Zenless Zone Zero is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. The Zenless Zone Zero Anby figure will come out in July 2025.

The post Zenless Zone Zero Anby Figure Will Come Out in July 2025 appeared first on Siliconera.

Massive Monster and Devolver Digital announced The Pilgrim Pack, which is a new piece of DLC for Cult of the Lamb with additional Follower forms and unique quests. It’ll come out on August 12, 2024 alongside the new update.

The Pilgrim Pack will be a bit different from what people expect from Cult of the Lamb. It’ll be an interactive digital comic, through which you can access new secret quests, Follower forms, outfits, and accessories.

You can check out the Cult of the Lamb new DLC trailer below:

Instead of playing as a cult leader like you do in the main game, it seems like the Pilgrim story will focus on Followers instead. You’ll be helping Jalala and Rinor journeying in search of a new home, only for dangerous cultists to stalk them in hopes of sacrificing them to their gods. As The Pilgrim Pack will include two unique Follower quests, it’s likely that you’ll be able to further explore Jalala and Rinor’s stories outside of the comic as well.

As a reminder, The Pilgrim Pack will be paid DLC. It will come out on the same date as the Unholy Alliance free update, but if you want to experience it, you’ll need to pay some money. The Pilgrim Pack will cost $6.99 on PC and $8.99 on consoles.

Cult of the Lamb is readily available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC. The Pilgrim Pack will appear in Cult of the Lamb on August 12, 2024, and it will not be part of the free Unholy Alliance update.

The post Cult of the Lamb Pilgrim Pack DLC Adds Follower Forms and Quests appeared first on Siliconera.

Kadokawa announced that the official NieR Reincarnation art book will come out on November 28, 2024, instead of its expected launch date. The Ebten DX pack, as well as the bonus version of the art book exclusive to Ebten, will also be delayed until November 28, 2024.

When the book comes out later this year, there will be over sixty more pages than the original estimate. In total, the NieR Reincarnation art book will contain 528 pages, as opposed to 464. The price will remain the same at 4,950 JPY ($34.35). Kadokawa apologized for the delay, but promised to aim for more satisfying content in the final product.

The Ebten DX pack will cost 9,350 JPY ($64.90) and contains multiple pieces of merchandise along with the art boo. You’ll be able to get an F3 canvas board, a set of calendar postcards, an acrylic keyholder, and an A6 illustration card. This illustration card is also the exclusive bonus that comes with the art book if you purchase it from Ebten.

The NieR Reincarnation art book was supposed to come out on August 28, 2024 to commemorate the end of the game’s service. Inside of the book, there will be stills and images from the game, as well as behind-the-scenes notes on the design process. NieR Re[in]carnation ended service on April 29, 2024 after around three years.

NieR Reincarnation was available on mobile devices, but you can no longer download it. The art book for NieR Reincarnation will come out in Japan on November 28, 2024.

The post NieR Reincarnation Art Book Delayed to November 2024 appeared first on Siliconera.

A new timed event for Zenless Zone Zero focused on unique coffee bonuses called Coffee Sorcery: Tuning is about to begin. HoYoVerse noted it will involve bonuses for drinking special event coffee in-game between August 7-12, 2024.

Two new coffee varieties will be available from Coff Cafe during the Zenless Zone Zero event, each of which will offer special bonuses. Ginseng Americano will allow players to obtain double Drive Disc rewards during Routine Cleanup missions. Meanwhile, Mint Espresso will award double Plating Agent drops in Combat Simulation missions. Due to the rewards on offer, the event will only be open for players who have unlocked the Routine Cleanup missions. As with all coffees in the game, only one coffee can be purchased a day, and its effects will last the whole day.

The "Coffee Sorcery: Tuning" event will run almost up until the release of the first major update for Zenless Zone Zero. The 1.1 Update will release on August 14, 2024 and feature new Agents Jane Doe, Qingyi and Seth Lowell. These Agents will feature heavily in a new storyline featuring the Criminal Investigation Special Response Team.

Zenless Zone Zero is out now for PC, PS5 and mobile devices. The "Coffee Sorcery: Tuning" event will run from August 7-12, 2024.

The post Coffee Sorcery: Tuning Event in Zenless Zone Zero Offers Special Limited Bonuses appeared first on Siliconera.

A new event focused on trashcan photography will appear in Honkai: Star Rail, and it is called The Self-Accomplishment of a Trashcan Photographer. It will run August 7-19, 2024, and HoYoVerse revealed the unlock requirements.

The event will take place across multiple stages in Honkai: Star Rail, and players must use their photography skills to capture trashcan pictures. The trashcans are special ones added for the event, with three varieties making appearances within the crowds. Bronze trashcans will award someone 100 Capture Points, silver 150, and gold 200, with the gold offering a bonus for capturing its special poses. These Capture Points can then be used to obtain rewards, including up to 500 Stellar Jades and leveling items.

To take part in the trashcan photography event, Honkai: Star Rail players need to be at least Trailblaze Level 21 and are recommended to have completed the mission "Penacony – Tales from the Golden Age”. The mission will be offered by a trainee doctor from Penacony hanging out in Starskiff Haven on the Xianzhou Luofu.

This is the latest timed event added as part of the Honkai: Star Rail 2.4 update. It will run alongside another timed event, Saga of Primaveral Blade: Swordsage Saga, which stars March 7th. This event is currently ongoing until August 9, 2024.

Honkai: Star Rail is out now for PC, PS5 and mobile devices. The "Self-Accomplishment of a Trashcan Photographer" event will run from August 7-19, 2024.

The post Honkai: Star Rail Trashcan Photography Event Begins Soon appeared first on Siliconera.

A 1/7 scale figure of Anby Demarra from Zenless Zone Zero is open for pre-orders in Japan. It will come out in July 2025.

The Zenless Zone Zero Anby Demarra figure is from Apex, which had worked on multiple figures for HoYoVerse games in the past. It costs 22,400 JPY, which is approximately $153.90.  AmiAmi has warned that the shipping costs may be on the pricier side for this figure, as it’s quite big and heavy.

Anby is looking like she’s ready for battle in this figure. She’s got a hand on her sword and her other one outstretched. Her expression is her usual neutral one. Apex seems to have put a lot of care into the sculpting, between all the details of her outfit and the way her skirt billows around her thighs. The stand for the figure looks like a film reel, with the welcome slogan for New Eridu on it.

Anby is the poster girl for Zenless Zone Zero (in that her face is on the icon like Paimon in Genshin Impact and March 7th for Honkai: Star Rail). When you start the game, you can get a copy of her for free. She’s a member of the Cunning Hares along with Billy Kid and Nicole. Though she’s usually very stoic and quiet, she has a bit of a silly side. For example, she sometimes conflates movies with reality.

Zenless Zone Zero is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. The Zenless Zone Zero Anby figure will come out in July 2025.

The post Zenless Zone Zero Anby Figure Will Come Out in July 2025 appeared first on Siliconera.

Massive Monster and Devolver Digital announced The Pilgrim Pack, which is a new piece of DLC for Cult of the Lamb with additional Follower forms and unique quests. It’ll come out on August 12, 2024 alongside the new update.

The Pilgrim Pack will be a bit different from what people expect from Cult of the Lamb. It’ll be an interactive digital comic, through which you can access new secret quests, Follower forms, outfits, and accessories.

You can check out the Cult of the Lamb new DLC trailer below:

Instead of playing as a cult leader like you do in the main game, it seems like the Pilgrim story will focus on Followers instead. You’ll be helping Jalala and Rinor journeying in search of a new home, only for dangerous cultists to stalk them in hopes of sacrificing them to their gods. As The Pilgrim Pack will include two unique Follower quests, it’s likely that you’ll be able to further explore Jalala and Rinor’s stories outside of the comic as well.

As a reminder, The Pilgrim Pack will be paid DLC. It will come out on the same date as the Unholy Alliance free update, but if you want to experience it, you’ll need to pay some money. The Pilgrim Pack will cost $6.99 on PC and $8.99 on consoles.

Cult of the Lamb is readily available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC. The Pilgrim Pack will appear in Cult of the Lamb on August 12, 2024, and it will not be part of the free Unholy Alliance update.

The post Cult of the Lamb Pilgrim Pack DLC Adds Follower Forms and Quests appeared first on Siliconera.

A new timed event for Zenless Zone Zero focused on unique coffee bonuses called Coffee Sorcery: Tuning is about to begin. HoYoVerse noted it will involve bonuses for drinking special event coffee in-game between August 7-12, 2024.

Two new coffee varieties will be available from Coff Cafe during the Zenless Zone Zero event, each of which will offer special bonuses. Ginseng Americano will allow players to obtain double Drive Disc rewards during Routine Cleanup missions. Meanwhile, Mint Espresso will award double Plating Agent drops in Combat Simulation missions. Due to the rewards on offer, the event will only be open for players who have unlocked the Routine Cleanup missions. As with all coffees in the game, only one coffee can be purchased a day, and its effects will last the whole day.

The "Coffee Sorcery: Tuning" event will run almost up until the release of the first major update for Zenless Zone Zero. The 1.1 Update will release on August 14, 2024 and feature new Agents Jane Doe, Qingyi and Seth Lowell. These Agents will feature heavily in a new storyline featuring the Criminal Investigation Special Response Team.

Zenless Zone Zero is out now for PC, PS5 and mobile devices. The "Coffee Sorcery: Tuning" event will run from August 7-12, 2024.

The post Coffee Sorcery: Tuning Event in Zenless Zone Zero Offers Special Limited Bonuses appeared first on Siliconera.

A new event focused on trashcan photography will appear in Honkai: Star Rail, and it is called The Self-Accomplishment of a Trashcan Photographer. It will run August 7-19, 2024, and HoYoVerse revealed the unlock requirements.

The event will take place across multiple stages in Honkai: Star Rail, and players must use their photography skills to capture trashcan pictures. The trashcans are special ones added for the event, with three varieties making appearances within the crowds. Bronze trashcans will award someone 100 Capture Points, silver 150, and gold 200, with the gold offering a bonus for capturing its special poses. These Capture Points can then be used to obtain rewards, including up to 500 Stellar Jades and leveling items.

To take part in the trashcan photography event, Honkai: Star Rail players need to be at least Trailblaze Level 21 and are recommended to have completed the mission "Penacony – Tales from the Golden Age”. The mission will be offered by a trainee doctor from Penacony hanging out in Starskiff Haven on the Xianzhou Luofu.

This is the latest timed event added as part of the Honkai: Star Rail 2.4 update. It will run alongside another timed event, Saga of Primaveral Blade: Swordsage Saga, which stars March 7th. This event is currently ongoing until August 9, 2024.

Honkai: Star Rail is out now for PC, PS5 and mobile devices. The "Self-Accomplishment of a Trashcan Photographer" event will run from August 7-19, 2024.

The post Honkai: Star Rail Trashcan Photography Event Begins Soon appeared first on Siliconera.

Kodansha announced that it has established the Fairy Tail Indie Game Guild project. It will use this guild to help independent game creators release games themed after Hiro Mashima's manga series of the same title.

The company also revealed the first two games that will be part of the project. It will release both titles on PC via Steam worldwide in seven languages: Japanese, English, French, Korean, Thai, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.

Fairy Tail: Dungeons will be the first game in this project. It will feature a rogue-lite gameplay system where the player will collect magic cards based on attacks from the series' characters and construct a deck with them for the chosen character to fight monsters inside the dungeon. This game will be available on August 27, 2024 in Japan, South Korea, Eastern Australia, and New Zealand, or August 26, 2024 for the rest of the world.

The second game in the project will be Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havoc. As the title suggests, this game will feature casual beach volleyball matches between Fairy Tail characters with additional special magic effects. Kodansha will release this game simultaneously worldwide on September 16 or 17, 2024, depending on the time zone.

The Fairy Tail series already has an official RPG for PC and consoles developed by Koei Tecmo's Gust, and the same studio is working on its sequel that will appear in Winter 2024. The new indie titles will further complement the lineup of games based on the franchise. In the Japanese press release, Kadokawa added that it will release Fairy Tail: Birth of Magic, a versus game with original magic creation system, as the third indie title.

Fairy Tail: Dungeons will appear first on August 26 or 27, 2024, and Fairy Tail: Beach Volleyball Havoc will follow on September 16 or 17, 2024. Both Fairy Tail indie games will be available worldwide digitally on PC via Steam.

The post Fairy Tail Indie Game Guild Will Bring New Games to PC appeared first on Siliconera.

A new trailer for Fate/Extra Record appeared at the FGO Fes 2024 event showcasing the story and gameplay elements in the remake. Additionally, the trailer reveals the release window for Fate/Extra Record as 2025, and the game will appear on Switch, PS4, PS5, and Windows PC.

The trailer offers a look at the dungeon exploration and turn-based card combat system, as well as a look at an early game boss fight against an enemy Rider servant and a mysterious Archer-type enemy. Characters like Rin Tohsaka, Shinji Matou, and servant Archer are also featured. Gameplay shows the three available servants Saber, Archer, and Caster chaining combos.

In addition, a room customization mechanic will seemingly be available as seen in the trailer. A new and revamped UI compared to the old one that appeared in footage shown in 2020 is also featured in the combat sections of the trailer.

You can check out the new Fate/Extra Record trailer here:

Type-Moon Studio BB previously confirmed that new information about the game would appear on the FGO Fes 2024 event with a teaser trailer.

Fate/Extra Record is currently in development for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, and PC via Steam and it is scheduled to release in 2025 in Japan. There are no news of an overseas release yet.

The post Fate/Extra Record Releases in 2025 for Switch, PS4, PS5, PC appeared first on Siliconera.

I recently found out I have aphantasia, or more accurately, I found out that most people don't have aphantasia.

Close your eyes and picture a red apple. Can you describe it? In how much detail? How about on a scale of 1 to 5?  — Read the rest

The post I have aphantasia: my mind's eye is permanently closed appeared first on Boing Boing.

HoYoVerse announced the 1.1 Zenless Zone Zero release date and confirmed the characters that will appear in the version update. The patch will show up on August 14, 2024, and the new Agents being introduced are the S-rank Jane Doe, S-rank Qingyi, and A-rank Seth Lowell. 

The first banner in the update will feature Qingyi as the focus Electric Stun Agent affiliated with the Criminal Investigation Special Response Team. The A-Rank Billy and Corin units will appear more often as well. Qingyi’s signature Ice-Jade Teapot S-rank W-Engine will also be the focus for the weapon banner. 

In the second part of the update, Jane will be the focus unit. She’s a Physical Anomaly character. The two A-rank units featured on her banner are Anby and newcomer Seth. The W-Engine banner in that phase will introduce Sharpened Stinger, which is designed with Jane in mind. 

Some of the highlighted events were noted too. There will be login events that guarantee you 10 Encrypted Master Tapes and 10 Boopons. Some of the activities coming in this update include the Obsidian: Strategic Partner commission, Inferno Reap, Shiyu Defense - Special Operation, Camellia Golden Week, a First-Class Customer Service Random Play event, and Daily Life of a PubSec Officer.

Here is the teaser trailer for 1.1, which focuses heavily on the Zenless Zone Zero characters Qingyi, Seth, and Jane Doe and upcoming Criminal Investigation Special Response Team storyline.

You can watch the full August 2024 Zenless Zone Zero Special Program below. An English translation is available for us, but closed captions must be turned on first.

Finally, there is only one code from the Zenless Zone Zero Special Program. Entering UNDERCOVERRNB nets you 2 Senior Investigator Logs, 3 W-Engine Energy Modules, 300 Polychromes, and 30,000 Dennies. 

Zenless Zone Zero is available for the PS5, PC, and mobile devices, and the release date for 1.1 is August 14, 2024.

The post 1.1 Zenless Zone Zero Release Date and Characters Shared appeared first on Siliconera.

As of August 2, 2024, China's National Press and Publication Administration approved 15 new video games for import and publication. The report by Niko Partners, shared by Daniel “ZhugeEX” Ahmad, showed the list included Rainbow Six, Dynasty Warriors, Marvel Rivals, and a mobile game co-developed by Tencent and Square Enix based on Final Fantasy XIV. [Thanks, Niko Partners!]

This is the first official announcement of any kind that a mobile game or title based on Final Fantasy XIV was being developed. The eXputer forum user Kurakasis shared a rumor in July 2024 stating a project is in the works. This is the first official confirmation that the game is both in development and co-developed by Tencent and Square Enix, following a 2018 agreement that the two companies would be working together in the future. When Ahmad shared the news on social media, the tweet specifically mentioned by Lightspeed Studios. The report does not list if the game is a spin-off or a full mobile version of the MMORPG that is playable on phones or tablets.

The other games being brought over, including the upcoming team-based multiplayer hero shooter Marvel Rivals and Paper Mario: The Origami King, are imports of products that are either out or are leaving open beta testing and entering full release. The Rainbow Six title, Dynasty Warriors 8 mobile adaptation, and the mobile Final Fantasy XIV game are the two entirely new titles.

Final Fantasy XIV and its newest expansion Dawntrail are available now on PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. The FFXIV mobile game is apparently in development and headed to China.

The post FFXIV Mobile Game on List of Games Approved for China appeared first on Siliconera.

HoYoVerse shared a new Genshin Impact trailer for the Natlan region that seems to show a baby Geovishap referred to as “Lil’ Buddy” accompanying the Traveler. After it steps away from Aether and Paimon, it walks around the new region and gives the viewer a chance to see notable places that will debut in 5.0. 

The Genshin Impact “Natlan Preview Teaser - Lil’ Buddy” begins with the new character standing behind Aether and Paimon as they sit on a platform overlooking some cliffs and a valley. It’s distinguished from other, enemy monsters by the red and yellow bow on their tail. After being distracted by a bird, it follows it and goes on a brief journey through a cavern with ruins and crystals, a place alongside a river, and a small settlement in a valley and beside a lake. 

After burrowing underground for a bit in the same way a Geovishap Hatchling does in Genshin Impact, Lil’ Buddy encounters one of the Natlan enemies. It looks like some sort of Elemental Lifeform, with a green color that suggested it could be a Dendro element one. After Lil’ Buddy roars at it, the opponent turns around. This causes Lil Buddy to turn around and run away. 

Here’s the full teaser trailer:

We should learn more about Lil’ Buddy and other elements soon. HoYoVerse will hold the 5.0 Special Program for the game on August 15, 2024. 

Genshin Impact is available for the PS4, PS5, PC, and mobile devices, and the 5.0 update is expected to arrive at the end of August 2024. 

The post Genshin Impact Natlan Trailer Introduces Lil’ Buddy appeared first on Siliconera.

The Bokeh Game Studio developers revealed they drew inspiration from seinen manga like Tokyo Ghoul when working on Slitterhead. This information comes from an interview with Game Watch. [Thanks, Game Watch!]

The three Bokeh Game Studio members who participated in the interview are Keiichiro Toyama (CEO and founder), Akira Yamaoka (composer, sound director, and game designer), and Tatsuya Yoshikawa (character designer). During the interview, they reveal that they used seinen manga to try and bridge the gap between horror fans and players who avoid a game because of its horror elements. Some seinen manga series show the characters facing off against a powerful foe, which has the same entertainment value as an action series. However, seinen manga also tend not to shy away from killing off its characters, which raises the tensions and stakes.

Toyama noted that shonen manga is more popular in foreign countries, so a seinen-inspired work may feel novel. Like our coverage of the SGF 2024 trailer, the Game Watch interviewer noted that the character designs feel like they’re from Parasyte. Toyama acknowledges that Parasyte was an inspiration, but Slitterhead actually takes more cues from Tokyo Ghoul. To be more specific, he drew reference from the uncertainty of when characters would die—calling it a “thrilling” survival horror experience—and the charm of battles in which the characters use superpowers.

Slitterhead will come out on November 8, 2024 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC.

The post Slitterhead Inspired by Seinen Manga appeared first on Siliconera.

A new series of Final Fantasy XIV commercials starring Hikakin will start playing on TV in Japan until July 7, 2024. It’ll feature real footage of Hikakin and his friend Hajime Syacho playing the MMORPG. [Thanks, PR Times!]

For reference, Hikakin is one of the top YouTubers in Japan. Hikakin is also a businessman, releasing products such as the Misokin instant ramen, which was a collaboration product with Nissin. He has multiple channels and his main channel HikakinTV has over 18.8 million subscribers. As for Hajime Syacho, he is also a very popular YouTuber. Like Hikakin, he has multiple YouTube channels, and his main one has over 14.2 million subscribers. Both of them are part of the UUUM network.

You can check out the Hikakin Final Fantasy XIV commercials here:

As a note, the Japanese version of Warrior of Light is "Hikari no Senshi," or "Hikasen" for short. It sounds quite similar to Hikakin. So the title of this series is "Hikakin Becomes a Hikasen," aka "Hikakin Becomes a WoL."

Hikakin commented that he and Hajime Syacho had so much time playing for the commercials that recorded ended really quickly. He’s also amazed and emotional about how he’s able to do something for Final Fantasy as part of his job as a YouTuber, since he’s been a fan of the series since he was a student. As for Hajime Syacho, he said that he felt like a parent and cried when his cute avatar appeared in the commercials. This is the avatar he actually uses in game, which he started playing this year. He adds that he wants people to play Final Fantasy XIV, which he likes so much that he prioritizes it over sleep.

Final Fantasy XIV is readily available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC. Dawntrail, the newest expansion for the game, will come out on July 2, 2024.

The post Hikakin Stars in New Final Fantasy XIV Commercials appeared first on Siliconera.

On June 21, 2024, X (Twitter) user nightshademagia released a Hardcore Mode mod for Stardew Valley that’ll delete your save file if you open up the Wiki for the game. This was based off a joke article from Hard Drive.

You can find the source code via Github here. There’s also a clip showing how it works. In the clip, they load up their file as per usual. Then, in another window, they open up the Stardew Valley Wiki. As soon as they do so, the game forces them back to the title screen and when they try to load up a game, their save file is gone.

The original article was from satire website Hard Drive, stating that the new default Hardcore Mode erases your save file if you open the official wiki. The article includes false quotes from players expressing their outrage, including a fake quote from ConcernedApe, the creator of Stardew Valley. Some players tend to use the Wiki to help them optimize their farm or game. For example, you can look up what gifts certain characters prefer or how to catch certain fish.

Stardew Valley is readily available for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows PC, macOS, and mobile devices. It is one of the best-selling games of all time, selling over 30 million copies by February 2024.

The post Stardew Valley Hardcore Mode Mod Is Real appeared first on Siliconera.

The official Sonic the Hedgehog X (Twitter) account has revealed the Shadow the Hedgehog collaboration outfit for Korone. There will be merchandise of her, including an A4 clear folder of her posing with Shadow.

Like Korone’s past Sonic outfit where she’s wearing a hoodie that resembles the blue hedgehog, the Shadow the Hedgehog outfit puts Korone in a black hooded jacket and red sneakers. Her hair is black as well, and she has red eyes. She’s wearing asymmetrical socks in the Shadow outfit, but that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Shadow and is more a fashion choice from her designer.

If you pre-order Sonic X Shadow Generations from certain vendors, you’ll be able to get exclusive goods of Korone in her Shadow the Hedgehog outfit. Amazon will offer an acrylic keyholder. Hanekoto, who was the main artist for Minato Aqua’s game Aquarium, drew this Korone. Meanwhile, if you purchase from Geo, you’ll be able to get a clear folder of her posing with Shadow. The Sonic Team from Sega drew this one.

Inugami Korone is one of the top Hololive VTubers, debuting in 2019 as part of GAMERS. As of the time of writing, she has over 2.1 million subscribers on her YouTube channel. As an official Sonic the Hedgehog ambassador, she has often appeared in events or collaborations with Sega to celebrate or market the blue hedgehog.

Sonic X Shadow Generations will come out on October 25, 2024 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC via Steam.

The post VTuber Inugami Korone Sports New Shadow the Hedgehog Look appeared first on Siliconera.

A new trailer for Zenless Zone Zero is out, focusing on Rina. As a reminder, Rina, or Alexandrina Sebastiane, is a member of Victoria Housekeeping.

You can watch the Rina Zenless Zone Zero trailer:

It’s also available in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

The trailer stats with a scared-looking Bangboo wandering around a facility before Rina informs it of how it’s in a forbidden area. As she lists off the rules about the area, she scares it so much that it passes out. Then, it shows off how Rina fights by puppeteering two little robots. It then ends with her acting like a normal maid to the Bangboo. However, despite her profession, she’s a horrible cook.

Like other members of the Victoria Housekeeping faction, Rina is based on a combination between a normal housekeeper and a Western horror trope. In Rina’s case, she appears to be a combination of ghosts and the idea of haunted puppets. Other members of Victoria Housekeeping include Corin, Ellen, and Von Lycaon. Of the housekeepers within this faction, it seems that Ellen is the only one who’s willing to give Rina’s cooking a try.

Zenless Zone Zero will come out on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices from July 4, 2024.

The post Zenless Zone Zero Rina Trailer Shows Her Scaring a Bangboo appeared first on Siliconera.

The Ruan Mei re-run banner appeared in the first phase of Honkai: Star Rail Version 2.3. While I’m sure lots of people want to pull for the game-designated girlfriend Firefly, I highly suggest that players who don’t have Ruan Mei pull for her instead. She is one of the best characters in the game (in terms of her kit) and can make all the difference in the world when it comes to your ability to clear difficult content.

Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room first. Ruan Mei is, objectively, kind of an awful person. One could go as far as to call her a monster. In our first meeting with her, she drugs us against our will and we see all of her adorable little creations crying for her to give them even a scrap of acknowledgement. Though she’s not completely emotionless, her inability to comprehend love and her pursuit of knowledge have her abandoning the creations on Herta Space Station. My friend jokingly calls her a cat abuser and refuses to get her for this exact reason. As a character, she is very interesting! But I can also understand people feeling uncomfortable with her due to her neglect of the Creations and her almost sociopathic behavior.

Some people may only want to pull for and use characters they like. That’s fair! It’s not fun playing gacha if you don’t like the characters, after all. But for players who care about the meta and who want to have an easier time clearing endgame content such as the higher difficulties of Simulated Universe, Ruan Mei is almost a must-pull. Your quality of life post-Ruan Mei will never compare to what it was like pre-Ruan Mei. If I have to name one thing that is bad about Ruan Mei, it’s that for all of her genius, she wasn’t able to clone a second Ruan Mei to use in Forgotten Hall. Robin exists though, so at least you can use her.

In order to understand why Ruan Mei is such a must-pull, we need to look at her kit and how she compares to similar characters. Her passive Talent increases the party’s SPD and her Skill increases the party’s DMG and Weakness Break Efficiency. This Weakness Break Efficiency buff is one of the best parts of Ruan Mei’s kit, as no other character is capable of this as of Version 2.2. Her Ultimate also increases the party’s All-Type RES PEN and delays their action after a Weakness Break. Ruan Mei’s buffs are so universal she can run on all teams, including DoT teams. She can also fit on either a hyper-carry or a double attacker team. While other limited 5-star Harmony characters like Sparkle and Robin are fantastic, they’re far more Crit DMG focused, which can limit their usage.

That’s not to say that they’re bad. In fact, part of Ruan Mei’s initial appeal is that you can run her with another Harmony or support character. Back when she debuted, one of the best Harmony units was Bronya. But Bronya has a glaring issue with SP. Aside from her and your attacker, your team has to be SP positive or neutral. You can run her with Asta, who only needs her Ultimate. But Tingyun and Yukong are out of the question because you need to conserve your SP for Bronya and your attacker. Of course, depending on the battle, you might want to leave some for your sustain as well. Ruan Mei’s buffs last for three of her turns and they affect the whole party, meaning that she can run with more SP-hungry Harmony or Nihility characters without affecting the way they play.

Since the beginning of the game, I’ve been adamant that you can skip attackers, but you can’t skip support characters. While some must-pulls like Luocha and Silver Wolf have fallen behind in the ever-shifting meta (Huohuo and Aventurine made Luocha obsolete if you have them, and Silver Wolf’s niche is no longer as necessary due to most people having more character variety). Ruan Mei’s universal buffs make her a staple on any team. She came out during the Destruction era but remained relevant even during the DoT renaissance (Black Swan), the follow-up attack era (IP3, Robin), and the current Break Effect (Firefly, Boothill) era. And she’s sure to remain a top-tier support no matter what meta changes the future brings.

Honkai: Star Rail is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. You can only pull for Ruan Mei in Honkai: Star Rail when the “Floral Triptych” banner is up.

The post Ruan Mei Is a Must Pull for Any Honkai: Star Rail Player appeared first on Siliconera.

Version 1.1 of Wuthering Waves will go live on June 28, 2024 and the official Twitter (X) account has teased what to expect from the upcoming patch. New 5-star characters will be Jinhsi and Changli.

Aside from new characters, there will be new weapons and areas to explore as well. Wuthering Waves Version 1.1 will introduce Mt. Firmament to explore. Meanwhile, the first character on banner will be Jinhsi, followed by Changli. Jinhsi will be a Spectro Broadblade Resonator and Changli will be Fusion Sword. Jinhsi’s signature weapon will be the Ages of Harvest and Changli’s will be Blazing Brilliance.

As well, the main story will continue with Main Quest Chapter 1 Act 7. We already know from Kuro Games’s previous communications that Jue will appear as a boss fight in the upcoming chapter. Like Scar, you’ll be able to challenge Jue again multiple times. Jue will also be available as an Echo to collect and use. Other new Echoes include Clang Bang, Dwarf Cassowary, and Lightcurhser. There will also be a new Companion Quest focusing on Changli. Finally, there will be several events both permanent and limited-time.

Wuthering Waves is readily available on the Windows PC and mobile devices. Version 1.1 of Wuthering Waves will go live on June 28, 2024.

The post Wuthering Waves Version 1.1 Detailed appeared first on Siliconera.

In a now deleted tweet, GameStop potentially revealed the release date for Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater, which could be on November 17, 2024. As the tweet, which included a trailer, is now gone, this seems to have been an accidental reveal on the part of the GameStop Twitter account’s administrator. [Thanks, Wario64!]

The tweet also included a link to pre-order it. Unless there are any hiccups in the development process, which could lead to a delay, it seems that Konami will release the game later this year. You can watch the announcement trailer for Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater here:

Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater will be a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. It follows Naked Snake, a FOX operative, whose mission is to sabotage a Soviet nuclear superweapon during the Cold War. Most of the main gameplay mechanics from the original game remain, but there will be some new additions from the latter entries. For example, you’ll be able to walk while crouching. A new mechanic also focuses on recording the player’s individual journey in the game. Physical injuries Snake sustains will remain on him as scars for the rest of the playthrough.

Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater will come out on the PS5, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC. If the GameStop Tweet was accurate, then the release date for Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater will be November 17, 2024.

The post Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Release Date May Fall in November appeared first on Siliconera.

Now, when I talk about “the future” of the Gears of War series, I don’t necessarily mean the newly announced Gears of War: E-Day game. Going back in time to seeing the world of Sera in peace and witnessing young Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago become friends through the crucible of a new war against an incomprehensible enemy sounds fascinating, and I totally understand why The Coalition took this opportunity. However, I worry about about the future of the series when we eventually get to continue the plot threads left hanging in Gears 5.

In a recent interview with The Coalition, the developers reassured fans of the series that they are "not retreating” from the storylines that started in the series games Gears of War 4 and continued in Gears 5. While this can sound comforting, I can’t help but think that it will be a really long time until we see or even hear about a hypothetical Gears of War 6. When you consider how long video games take to develop and how expensive they are nowadays, I fear we might not see a resolution to the events and cliffhangers left in Gears 5, at least not in the way fans expect. The latest game in the Gears franchise shipped in September 2019, almost 5 years ago. With no announced date for Gears of War: E-Day, it could take a while for this new title to appear.

If things go swimmingly for The Coalition, a direct continuation of Gears 5 could take another four to five years to get greenlit and released. Unless the team is magically working on two titles at the same time (something which could be catastrophic when taking in account the massive financial risk), we could be talking about a direct sequel appearing sometime around 2030. That would be well over a decade after Gears 5. Of course, this is all hypothetical. But no matter the result, by the time we get to experience a direct sequel, it will have been way too long for audiences to keep the same level of interest than they had when the game originally came out.

Don’t get me wrong, I am actually very excited to experience Gears of War: E-Day. I completely understand the allure of going back to the very origin of the series. Showing the overwhelming and terrifying threat of the Locust Horde in its heyday, when humanity had no tools to fight back against a never-before-seen enemy, is promising. I can’t help but imagine how different it would be to play this game, compared to the action-focused romps of the original trilogy. The idea of combat encounters being more threatening than ever before for the series, a lower number of Locust drones feeling overpowering, compared to the hordes of enemies Marcus and the COG mowed down in the original trilogy could truly breathe new life into the franchise.

Of course, I’m not expecting the game to completely change genres into survival horror, although I wouldn’t really mind it, but I keep wondering what new ideas this new scenario could bring. Seeing Marcus and Dom fight a single enemy in the reveal trailer and barely survive the encounter really fascinates me. From a narrative standpoint, seeing their relationship flourish in real time after both experienced unspeakable loss sounds right up my alley. Even seeing the creation of the iconic Lancer or Hammer of Dawn, among other memorable tools in the franchise, to successfully face the Locust excites me. But there’s only so much The Coalition can do before they run out of material to cover for this prequel.

Once all it’s said and done, I just can’t imagine the future of the Gears of War franchise after E-Day. Once it’s time to go back to the present, there will be a whole new generation of players to bring into the fold. Maybe revisiting the past with E-Day, and with the release of the rumored remaster of the original Gears of War trilogy, could bring a renewed interest into the franchise for old and new audiences alike. But that’s hedging on too many bets at that point. And even if we end up seeing a continuation of the story of Gears 5, by that point it will be a completely different story from the one that started all the way back in 2016 with Gears of War 4.

The long development cycles, hyperinflated budgets, expectations for triple-A games, and constant layoffs are keeping the industry stagnant. Taking any type of risk is untenable for big name developers. That’s why remakes, remasters, and looking at the past of once-popular series is safer and easier. There’s no window for risk or experimentation in the triple-A market. And I worry that, with how long it takes to ship a game nowadays, the Gears of War franchise might not have much of a future after this detour to its past with E-Day.

Gears of War: E-Day is currently in development for the Xbox Series X and PC via Steam. There is no announced release date for the game yet.

The post I Worry About the Future of Gears of War Series After E-Day appeared first on Siliconera.

Square Enix announced four new NieR: Automata FORM-ISM figures of protagonists 9S and A2. The figures cost 4,950 yen (or about $31.53) each, and they are now available for pre-order from the AmiAmi online store.

Note: This story contains minor spoilers for some character designs in NieR: Automata.

There are two figures for each character, with the 9S figures available in his usual design and one where he’s not wearing his blindfold combat visor. The first model shows 9S in a dynamic pose holding his signature Cruel Arrogance spear, and about to use his hacking skills. The second 9S figure shows him standing wielding his spear again, with a determined look on his face. The 9S figures are expected to release in September 2024.

You can take a better look at the new NieR: Automata 9S FORM-ISM figures here:

As for the A2 figures, the first one shows A2 standing while resting on her large sword Type-4O Blade. Meanwhile, the second A2 figure depicts the character wearing short hair and in her Berserk mode, as she charges while wielding the Type-4O small sword. The A2 figures will appear on October 2024. You can check out both A2 figures here:

The new 9S and A2 NieR: Automata FORM-ISM figures are now available for pre-order, and are expected to release in September and October 2024, respectively. NieR: Automata is readily available for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC.

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Square Enix revealed a possible corn cob creature or monster design that will appear in the upcoming FFXIV Dawntrail expansion. The post shared on social media reads “many encounters with the unknown await you on Dawntrail.”

The body of the FFXIV creature is divided between the corn cob itself, which sports a short ponytail, and a separate leafy stalk monster body from which short legs and arms sprout. The creature is carrying a cloth sack across its body, and the animation showcased in the social media post has the creature jump in surprise, with the corn cob jumping out of the main stalk body and returning to it swiftly. It is unclear if the new creature will be an enemy or minion.

You can check out the new corn cob creature that will appear in the FFXIV Dawntrail expansion here:

Square Enix previously showed off another new creature that will debut with the FFXIV Dawntrail expansion, and seems to be inspired by the species of prickly pear cactus native to the Mesoamerican region, as well as by the many Cactuar monsters found in the Final Fantasy series.

As a reminder, the new Shadow European Data Center and its four Worlds will arrive to FFXIV on June 11, 2024, as well as the new Dynamis North American Data Center.

Final Fantasy XIV is readily available for the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC, and the Dawntrail expansion will arrive on July 2, 2024.

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After the reveal of a new gameplay trailer during the Xbox Game Showcase 2024, Konami offered new details about the Battle Damage system as well as the new camera modes available in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.

The new information appeared in the official website for the game, and it goes over how the Battle Damage system will now affect Naked Snake’s clothes with wear and tear as players advance in the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater. Similarly, any injuries Snake receives will leave different permanent scars and marks on his body once healed.

Regarding the camera system, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will allow players to use a new third-person view. This camera system is similar to the one introduced in the Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D version of the game that appeared on the Nintendo 3DS. Additionally, an overhead view legacy style will be available as well. At the time of writing, it is unclear if you can swap between both camera systems on the go.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is currently in development for the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC. The original version of the game is available as part of the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1, which is readily available on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

The post Metal Gear Solid Delta Battle Damage and Camera System Detailed appeared first on Siliconera.

A retail listing for Resident Evil 9 has popped up on Play Asia, along with PS5 versions of Code Veronica, Resident Evil 0, and Resident Evil 5.

Whilst the remakes have long been rumoured to be in development, the former includes a hitherto unknown subtitle, "Revenant Shadows", "preliminary" cover art, and a description of the game.

"Resident Evil 9: Revenant Shadows is the latest instalment in the iconic survival horror series by Capcom," the store description says, without actually telling us anything meaningful about the game, suggesting it's just placeholder text.

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Hololive VTuber Inugami Korone has shared on her X (Twitter) account the boss character she designed for Lords of Exile. Many of her fans have expressed happiness that they guessed right due to the monster having many design aesthetics Korone likes.

Korone revealed the monster in a QRT of her original Tweet from February 2024, when she announced that Lords of Exile is available to purchase. She revealed that she'd secretly backed this game's Kickstarter and that she also designed one of the bosses in it. Korone then ended the Tweet, inviting players to guess which one she had made. On May 31, 2024, she acknowledged that she was late with the reveal and then showed the correct answer.

Lords of Exile is a retro-looking game that uses an 8-bit aesthetic and a linear-level design. It’s an action and platforming game in which you play as a cursed knight who seeks revenge. There are eight levels in total, with various items and skills you can obtain in order to make your journey easier. Korone tends to play retro games on stream, so her backing of Lords of Exile on its Kickstarter may not have been a surprise.

Lords of Exile is available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC via Steam.

The post Inugami Korone Revealed Boss She Designed For Lords of Exile appeared first on Siliconera.

HoYoVerse shared a June 2024 calendar wallpaper for Honkai: Star Rail, and for this month the calendar stars Himeko and Pom-Pom. It is designed to work with mobile devices.

Here's the latest Himeko and Pom-Pom calendar for Honkai: Star Rail for June 2024.

You can download the Honkai: Star Rail June 2024 calenadr from the Pom-Pom Twitter (X) account. Its size makes it easy to use on devices like your phone. In the picture, we can see Himeko and Pom-Pom admiring some hydrangeas. Pom-Pom even has a magnifying glass that they’re using to observe the flowers. There’s also a rainbow in the background, looking like it just finished raining. Like how people tend to admire sakura blossoms during hanami season (usually April), June is the time of hydrangeas. There are quite a few tourist sites that focus on introducing the best locations and gardens to check out these colorful flowers.

When HoYoVerse releases calendars for Genshin Impact, they usually choose who the featured character is based on who has a birthday in that month. For example, Wanderer and Thoma appeared on the January calendar, and they both have birthdays in January. Zhongli and Ganyu, who have December birthdays, starred in the December one. However, the Honkai: Star Rail characters do not have birthdays and the calendar doesn’t seem to use their debut date either. Himeko was in the game since launch, which was in late April 2023.

Honkai: Star Rail is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices.

The post Honkai: Star Rail June 2024 Calendar Shows Himeko With Hydrangeas appeared first on Siliconera.

NetEase announced that Knives Out will feature another Nijisanji collaboration that will start on May 31, 2024, then end on June 13, 2024. You’ll be able to get collaboration items based on Kuzuha, Sasaki Saku, and Tsukino Mito.

This is the third collaboration between Knives Out and Nijisanji. During this event, the gacha for the first two collaborations will re-run. Aside from collaboration items, you’ll be able to get different skins, weapons, parachutes, objects, and cars based on the three VTubers. The designs for the cars take motifs and aesthetics from the different livers. Kuzuha’s is red and black to reflect his vampiric heritage, while Sasaki’s is pink and cute with lots of pandas. Mito’s is bright and flamboyant.

During the collaboration event, you can join the fan club of your favorite VTuber from the three. By completing certain missions, you can win limited items for your fan club. Depending on your rank in the fan club, you can also receive prizes like collaboration items and in-game currency.

All three of the VTubers in this collaboration are quite well-known and popular. Kuzuha is the second most subscribed male VTuber in the world with over 1.70 million subscribers on YouTube. Tsukino Mito is part of the first generation of Nijisanji and one of the VTubers who propelled Anycolor into the juggernaut it is today. She currently has 1.21 million subscribers on YouTube. Finally, Sasaki Saku debuted as part of Nijisanji Gamers before retiring. Then, she returned two months later in 2019 and has remained at Anycolor ever since. She has over 854k subscribers on YouTube.

Knives Out is readily available on the Windows PC and mobile devices.

The post Third Knives Out and Nijisanji Collaboration Event Announced appeared first on Siliconera.

Shortly after revealing Dynasty Warriors: Origins at the May 2024 State of Play, Koei Tecmo confirmed that the game will also be available on the Xbox Series X and PC via Steam in addition to the PlayStation 5. However, it turns out that the series' longtime producer Akihiro Suzuki is not leading the game's development. The company revealed that Tomohiko Sho, who is also the current head of the Omega Force brand studio, is the producer of Dynasty Warriors: Origins.

Tomohiko Sho had been involved in the Dynasty Warriors franchise since the original fighting game came out on PlayStation in 1997. He was also involved in Dynasty Warriors 2 through 5, mostly as a planner.

The highest position Sho managed to achieve in the series before Origins was as the director in Dynasty Warriors 6 and the PS Vita entry NEXT. In more recent years, he worked as the producer for Warriors Orochi 4 Ultimate in 2019, Touken Ranbu Warriors in 2022, and Fate/Samurai Remnant in 2023.

The new producer appointment, along with a new logo change for Omega-Force, show a drastic change in the brand studio's organizational structure in the development of Dynasty Warriors: Origins. Akihiro Suzuki has been regularly assuming the producer spot for the mainline numbered entries, including Dynasty Warriors 9 and its Empires spin-off. However, in recent months, the producer has been shifting his focus towards the mobile game that has been running in Japan since 2021.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam in 2025.

The post Dynasty Warriors Origins Heads To Xbox & PC With New Producer appeared first on Siliconera.

Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis will offer new crossover avatar parts based on characters from Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2. Players can now check out how the characters will look like after Sega revealed the upcoming in-game content at the May 2024 NGS Headline program. Existing players of PSO2: New Genesis will be able to get the parts from the Code Geass Style scratch ticket that launches on June 19, 2024.

As announced previously in late April 2024, the crossover scratch ticket will primarily feature avatar parts based on Lelouch, C.C., Kallen, and Suzaku. Other than outfits and facial parts, the lineup will include voice sets for each character, with their original Japanese voice actors returning to provide the lines. Players who pull an adequate amount of tries in this scratch can also get the Code Geass track "Previous Notice" as an in-game music disc.

Sega stops short of producing the Knightmare Frames as CAST parts for mechanical avatars, but it will still release some parts based on the units. The list will include weapons like Super VARIS, movement motions inspired by Suzaku's Lancelot, and miniaturized Mag Forms based on Shinkiro, Guren SEITEN, and Lancelot Albion.

In addition to the above, Sega will also give away acrylic stands of Lelouch, C.C., Kallen, and Suzaku to all players who log into the game regularly daily during the collaboration period.

Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis is available worldwide on PC and PlayStation 4. The online game also appears on Nintendo Switch in Japan and Xbox One elsewhere globally. The Code Geass Style scratch ticket will be available for a limited time starting from June 19, 2024.

The post See the Code Geass Characters in PSO2: New Genesis appeared first on Siliconera.

Bliss Brain has released some new pictures of Princess Maker 2 Regeneration, including comparing old screenshots to new ones. However, there will also be a few changes to the contents of the game (to match with modern sensibilities), as well as a delay for the PS4 and PS5 versions. [Thanks, PR Times!]

Here are some of the screenshots, along with their comparisons to the previous games. Some of the screenshots don’t have a comparison. This is due to "certain reasons," which likely have to do with suggestive content.

Takami Akai, who drew for the original Princess Maker 2 Refine, also redrew these pictures to make them closer to the original PC-98 version’s style. They’re also much more HD to reflect the current gaming devices people use. Aside from improving the overall quality (as in resolution and whatnot), some of the expressions are different. This can impart a different atmosphere or mood.

Finally, the PS4 and PS5 version will remove items or endings, which is why they will come out later than the PC and Switch versions. You will no longer be able to buy items to make your daughter’s breasts bigger. The marriage endings where the daughter marries the father or the butler are also gone. These changes are due to ethical reasons. As a reminder, the items and endings are still present in the PC and Switch releases.

Princess Maker 2 Regeneration will come out on the Nintendo Switch and Windows PC on July 11, 2024. The PS4 and PS5 versions will come out on August 8, 2024.

The post Princess Maker 2 Regeneration PS4, PS5 Versions Delayed; New Art Shared appeared first on Siliconera.

“This will destroy China forever,” a young Taiwanese cadet thought as he sat in rapt attention. The renowned historian Arnold J. Toynbee was on stage, delivering a lecture at Washington and Lee University on “A Changing World in Light of History.” The talk plowed the professor’s favorite field of inquiry: the genesis, growth, death, and disintegration of human civilizations, immortalized in his magnum opus A Study of History. Tonight’s talk threw the spotlight on China.

China was Toynbee’s outlier: Ancient as Egypt, it was a civilization that had survived the ravages of time. The secret to China’s continuity, he argued, was character-based Chinese script. Character-based script served as a unifying medium, placing guardrails against centrifugal forces that might otherwise have ripped this grand and diverse civilization apart. This millennial integrity was now under threat. Indeed, as Toynbee spoke, the government in Beijing was busily deploying Hanyu pinyin, a Latin alphabet–based Romanization system.

The Taiwanese cadet listening to Toynbee was Chan-hui Yeh, a student of electrical engineering at the nearby Virginia Military Institute (VMI). That evening with Arnold Toynbee forever altered the trajectory of his life. It changed the trajectory of Chinese computing as well, triggering a cascade of events that later led to the formation of arguably the first successful Chinese IT company in history: Ideographix, founded by Yeh 14 years after Toynbee stepped offstage.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Chinese computing underwent multiple sea changes. No longer limited to small-scale laboratories and solo inventors, the challenge of Chinese computing was taken up by engineers, linguists, and entrepreneurs across Asia, the United States, and Europe—including Yeh’s adoptive home of Silicon Valley.

Chan-hui Yeh’s IPX keyboard featured 160 main keys, with 15 characters each. A peripheral keyboard of 15 keys was used to select the character on each key. Separate “shift” keys were used to change all of the character assignments of the 160 keys. Computer History Museum

The design of Chinese computers also changed dramatically. None of the competing designs that emerged in this era employed a QWERTY-style keyboard. Instead, one of the most successful and celebrated systems—the IPX, designed by Yeh—featured an interface with 120 levels of “shift,” packing nearly 20,000 Chinese characters and other symbols into a space only slightly larger than a QWERTY interface. Other systems featured keyboards with anywhere from 256 to 2,000 keys. Still others dispensed with keyboards altogether, employing a stylus and touch-sensitive tablet, or a grid of Chinese characters wrapped around a rotating cylindrical interface. It’s as if every kind of interface imaginable was being explored except QWERTY-style keyboards.

IPX: Yeh’s 120-dimensional hypershift Chinese keyboard

Yeh graduated from VMI in 1960 with a B.S. in electrical engineering. He went on to Cornell University, receiving his M.S. in nuclear engineering in 1963 and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1965. Yeh then joined IBM, not to develop Chinese text technologies but to draw upon his background in automatic control to help develop computational simulations for large-scale manufacturing plants, like paper mills, petrochemical refineries, steel mills, and sugar mills. He was stationed in IBM’s relatively new offices in San Jose, Calif.

Toynbee’s lecture stuck with Yeh, though. While working at IBM, he spent his spare time exploring the electronic processing of Chinese characters. He felt convinced that the digitization of Chinese must be possible, that Chinese writing could be brought into the computational age. Doing so, he felt, would safeguard Chinese script against those like Chairman Mao Zedong, who seemed to equate Chinese modernization with the Romanization of Chinese script. The belief was so powerful that Yeh eventually quit his good-paying job at IBM to try and save Chinese through the power of computing.

Yeh started with the most complex parts of the Chinese lexicon and worked back from there. He fixated on one character in particular: ying 鷹 (“eagle”), an elaborate graph that requires 24 brushstrokes to compose. If he could determine an appropriate data structure for such a complex character, he reasoned, he would be well on his way. Through careful analysis, he determined that a bitmap comprising 24 vertical dots and 20 horizontal dots would do the trick, taking up 60 bytes of memory, excluding metadata. By 1968, Yeh felt confident enough to take the next big step—to patent his project, nicknamed “Iron Eagle.” The Iron Eagle project quickly garnered the interest of the Taiwanese military. Four years later, with the promise of Taiwanese government funding, Yeh founded Ideographix, in Sunnyvale, Calif.

A single key of the IPX keyboard contained 15 characters. This key contains the character zhong (中 “central”), which is necessary to spell “China.” MIT Press

The flagship product of Ideographix was the IPX, a computational typesetting and transmission system for Chinese built upon the complex orchestration of multiple subsystems.

The marvel of the IPX system was the keyboard subsystem, which enabled operators to enter a theoretical maximum of 19,200 Chinese characters despite its modest size: 59 centimeters wide, 37 cm deep, and 11 cm tall. To achieve this remarkable feat, Yeh and his colleagues decided to treat the keyboard not merely as an electronic peripheral but as a full-fledged computer unto itself: a microprocessor-controlled “intelligent terminal” completely unlike conventional QWERTY-style devices.

Seated in front of the IPX interface, the operator looked down on 160 keys arranged in a 16-by-10 grid. Each key contained not a single Chinese character but a cluster of 15 characters arranged in a miniature 3-by-5 array. Those 160 keys with 15 characters on each key yielded 2,400 Chinese characters.

The process of typing on the IPX keyboard involved using a booklet of characters used to depress one of 160 keys, selecting one of 15 numbers to pick a character within the key, and using separate “shift” keys to indicate when a page of the booklet was flipped. MIT Press

Chinese characters were not printed on the keys, the way that letters and numbers are emblazoned on the keys of QWERTY devices. The 160 keys themselves were blank. Instead, the 2,400 Chinese characters were printed on laminated paper, bound together in a spiral-bound booklet that the operator laid down flat atop the IPX interface.The IPX keys weren’t buttons, as on a QWERTY device, but pressure-sensitive pads. An operator would push down on the spiral-bound booklet to depress whichever key pad was directly underneath.

To reach characters 2,401 through 19,200, the operator simply turned the spiral-bound booklet to whichever page contained the desired character. The booklets contained up to eight pages—and each page contained 2,400 characters—so the total number of potential symbols came to just shy of 20,000.

For the first seven years of its existence, the use of IPX was limited to the Taiwanese military. As years passed, the exclusivity relaxed, and Yeh began to seek out customers in both the private and public sectors. Yeh’s first major nonmilitary clients included Taiwan’s telecommunication administration and the National Taxation Bureau of Taipei. For the former, the IPX helped process and transmit millions of phone bills. For the latter, it enabled the production of tax return documents at unprecedented speed and scale. But the IPX wasn’t the only game in town.

Loh Shiu-chang, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, developed what he called “Loh’s keyboard” (Le shi jianpan 樂氏鍵盤), featuring 256 keys. Loh Shiu-chang

Mainland China’s “medium-sized” keyboards

By the mid-1970s, the People’s Republic of China was far more advanced in the arena of mainframe computing than most outsiders realized. In July 1972, just months after the famed tour by U.S. president Richard Nixon, a veritable blue-ribbon committee of prominent American computer scientists visited the PRC. The delegation visited China’s main centers of computer science at the time, and upon learning what their counterparts had been up to during the many years of Sino-American estrangement, the delegation was stunned.

But there was one key arena of computing that the delegation did not bear witness to: the computational processing of Chinese characters. It was not until October 1974 that mainland Chinese engineers began to dive seriously into this problem. Soon after, in 1975, the newly formed Chinese Character Information Processing Technology Research Office at Peking University set out upon the goal of creating a “Chinese Character Information Processing and Input System” and a “Chinese Character Keyboard.”

The group evaluated more than 10 proposals for Chinese keyboard designs. The designs fell into three general categories: a large-keyboard approach, with one key for every commonly used character; a small-keyboard approach, like the QWERTY-style keyboard; and a medium-size keyboard approach, which attempted to tread a path between these two poles.

Peking University’s medium-sized keyboard design included a combination of Chinese characters and character components, as shown in this explanatory diagram. Public Domain

The team leveled two major criticisms against QWERTY-style small keyboards. First, there were just too few keys, which meant that many Chinese characters were assigned identical input sequences. What’s more, QWERTY keyboards did a poor job of using keys to their full potential. For the most part, each key on a QWERTY keyboard was assigned only two symbols, one of which required the operator to depress and hold the shift key to access. A better approach, they argued, was the technique of “one key, many uses”— yijian duoyong—assigning each key a larger number of symbols to make the most use of interface real estate.

The team also examined the large-keyboard approach, in which 2,000 or more commonly used Chinese characters were assigned to a tabletop-size interface. Several teams across China worked on various versions of these large keyboards. The Peking team, however, regarded the large-keyboard approach as excessive and unwieldy. Their goal was to exploit each key to its maximum potential, while keeping the number of keys to a minimum.

After years of work, the team in Beijing settled upon a keyboard with 256 keys, 29 of which would be dedicated to various functions, such as carriage return and spacing, and the remaining 227 used to input text. Each keystroke generated an 8-bit code, stored on punched paper tape (hence the choice of 256, or 28, keys). These 8-bit codes were then translated into a 14-bit internal code, which the computer used to retrieve the desired character.

In their assignment of multiple characters to individual keys, the team’s design was reminiscent of Ideographix’s IPX machine. But there was a twist. Instead of assigning only full-bodied, stand-alone Chinese characters to each key, the team assigned a mixture of both Chinese characters and character components. Specifically, each key was associated with up to four symbols, divided among three varieties:

• full-body Chinese characters (limited to no more than two per key)
• partial Chinese character components (no more than three per key)
• the uppercase symbol, reserved for switching to other languages (limited to one per key)

In all, the keyboard contained 423 full-body Chinese characters and 264 character components. When arranging these 264 character components on the keyboard, the team hit upon an elegant and ingenious way to help operators remember the location of each: They treated the keyboard as if it were a Chinese character itself. The team placed each of the 264 character components in the regions of the keyboard that corresponded to the areas where they usually appeared in Chinese characters.

In its final design, the Peking University keyboard was capable of inputting a total of 7,282 Chinese characters, which in the team’s estimation would account for more than 90 percent of all characters encountered on an average day. Within this character set, the 423 most common characters could be produced via one keystroke; 2,930 characters could be produced using two keystrokes; and a further 3,106 characters could be produced using three keystrokes. The remaining 823 characters required four or five keystrokes.

The Peking University keyboard was just one of many medium-size designs of the era. IBM created its own 256-key keyboard for Chinese and Japanese. In a design reminiscent of the IPX system, this 1970s-era keyboard included a 12-digit keypad with which the operator could “shift” between the 12 full-body Chinese characters outfitted on each key (for a total of 3,072 characters in all). In 1980, Chinese University of Hong Kong professor Loh Shiu-chang developed what he called “Loh’s keyboard” (Le shi jianpan 樂氏鍵盤), which also featured 256 keys.

But perhaps the strangest Chinese keyboard of the era was designed in England.

The cylindrical Chinese keyboard

On a winter day in 1976, a young boy in Cambridge, England, searched for his beloved Meccano set. A predecessor of the American Erector set, the popular British toy offered aspiring engineers hours of modular possibility. Andrew had played with the gears, axles, and metal plates recently, but today they were nowhere to be found.

Wandering into the kitchen, he caught the thief red-handed: his father, the Cambridge University researcher Robert Sloss. For three straight days and nights, Sloss had commandeered his son’s toy, engrossed in the creation of a peculiar gadget that was cylindrical and rotating. It riveted the young boy’s attention—and then the attention of the Telegraph-Herald, which dispatched a journalist to see it firsthand. Ultimately, it attracted the attention and financial backing of the U.K. telecommunications giant Cable & Wireless.

Robert Sloss was building a Chinese computer.

The elder Sloss was born in 1927 in Scotland. He joined the British navy, and was subjected to a series of intelligence tests that revealed a proclivity for foreign languages. In 1946 and 1947, he was stationed in Hong Kong. Sloss went on to join the civil service as a teacher and later, in the British air force, became a noncommissioned officer. Owing to his pedagogical experience, his knack for language, and his background in Asia, he was invited to teach Chinese at Cambridge and appointed to a lectureship in 1972.

At Cambridge, Sloss met Peter Nancarrow. Twelve years Sloss’s junior, Nancarrow trained as a physicist but later found work as a patent agent. The bearded 38-year-old then taught himself Norwegian and Russian as a “hobby” before joining forces with Sloss in a quest to build an automatic Chinese-English translation machine.

In 1976, Robert Sloss and Peter Nancarrow designed the Ideo-Matic Encoder, a Chinese input keyboard with a grid of 4,356 keys wrapped around a cylinder. PK Porthcurno

They quickly found that the choke point in their translator design was character input— namely, how to get handwritten Chinese characters, definitions, and syntax data into a computer.

Over the following two years, Sloss and Nancarrow dedicated their energy to designing a Chinese computer interface. It was this effort that led Sloss to steal and tinker with his son’s Meccano set. Sloss’s tinkering soon bore fruit: a working prototype that the duo called the “Binary Signal Generator for Encoding Chinese Characters into Machine-compatible form”—also known as the Ideo-Matic Encoder and the Ideo-Matic 66 (named after the machine’s 66-by-66 grid of characters).

Each cell in the machine’s grid was assigned a binary code corresponding to the X-column and the Y-row values. In terms of total space, each cell was 7 millimeters squared, with 3,500 of the 4,356 cells dedicated to Chinese characters. The rest were assigned to Japanese syllables or left blank.

The distinguishing feature of Sloss and Nancarrow’s interface was not the grid, however. Rather than arranging their 4,356 cells across a rectangular interface, the pair decided to wrap the grid around a rotating, tubular structure. The typist used one hand to rotate the cylindrical grid and the other hand to move a cursor left and right to indicate one of the 4,356 cells. The depression of a button produced a binary signal that corresponded to the selected Chinese character or other symbol.

The Ideo-Matic Encoder was completed and delivered to Cable & Wireless in the closing years of the 1970s. Weighing in at 7 kilograms and measuring 68 cm wide, 57 cm deep, and 23 cm tall, the machine garnered industry and media attention. Cable & Wireless purchased rights to the machine in hopes of mass-manufacturing it for the East Asian market.

QWERTY’s comeback

The IPX, the Ideo-Matic 66, Peking University’s medium-size keyboards, and indeed all of the other custom-built devices discussed here would soon meet exactly the same fate—oblivion. There were changes afoot. The era of custom-designed Chinese text-processing systems was coming to an end. A new era was taking shape, one that major corporations, entrepreneurs, and inventors were largely unprepared for. This new age has come to be known by many names: the software revolution, the personal-computing revolution, and less rosily, the death of hardware.

From the late 1970s onward, custom-built Chinese interfaces steadily disappeared from marketplaces and laboratories alike, displaced by wave upon wave of Western-built personal computers crashing on the shores of the PRC. With those computers came the resurgence of QWERTY for Chinese input, along the same lines as the systems used by Sinophone computer users today—ones mediated by a software layer to transform the Latin alphabet into Chinese characters. This switch to typing mediated by an input method editor, or IME, did not lead to the downfall of Chinese civilization, as the historian Arnold Toynbee may have predicted. However, it did fundamentally change the way Chinese speakers interact with the digital world and their own language.

This article appears in the June 2024 print issue.

Visual Arts and Prototype announced that they will release the classic PC visual novel Kanon on Steam. The Japanese companies have also published a Steam page for the title.

The visual novel will be available with Japanese voiceovers and subtitles in Japanese, English, and Simplified Chinese. The Steam version will feature HD-remastered visuals with an almost complete voiceover. Most of the title's original voice actresses, such as Yui Horie (as Ayu Tsukimiya) and Yukari Tamura (as Mai Kawasumi), will reprise their roles. Meanwhile, Tomokazu Sugita will provide partial voiceovers for the player-controlled protagonist Yuichi Aizawa.

The Steam release does not mean it's the first time Kanon appears on PC. In fact, PC was the very first platform the visual novel appeared on, since the times when physical disc drives were still commonplace. Visual Arts first released Kanon as an R-18 title in June 1999. It then released the all-ages version for PC in January 2020, which also serves as a basis for all ports to other platforms.

Outside of PC, the visual novel was also released for the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable. It has also since been made available for Android and iOS mobile devices in Japan. In April 2023, Prototype released the Nintendo Switch port of Kanon.

The visual novel Kanon is readily available on Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS as ongoing platforms, and it will also be available on the PC via Steam in the near future.

The post Classic Visual Novel Kanon Will Appear on Steam appeared first on Siliconera.

Bucket and Shovel have opened up pre-orders for a resin statue of Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae from Honkai: Star Rail. The figure costs $60 to pre-order and will ship out in Q4 2024, and there is a limited (188) supply.

The statue is a 1/6 figure, and it’ll come with a base as well. It depicts him in his Imbibitor Lunae form while holding Cloud-Piercer. The stand is a lotus and he has the Long-like dragon he creates surrounding him. The $60 is the pre-order price and the statue itself is much more expensive. It costs $499.86 for the standard version, which is what you see below. There is also a "nude" variant for $171.43. There is no prototype yet but we can see from the art that it shows what Dan Heng might have looked like during his time in the Shackling Prison.

There are instructions on the website as to how to pre-order and purchase the statue. Bucket and Shovel does not offer refunds. However, there is a replacement service should you received a damaged statue. 

Though not from YY Studio, Bucket and Shovel has other Honkai: Star Rail figures for sale as well. There is an Acheron resin statue from Jigenworld and a Robin resin statue from LoveHolic Studio. As a reminder, these are not official pieces of merchandise from HoYoVerse.

Honkai: Star Rail is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices.

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Cygames has revealed more details about Beatrix, who will appear as a new DLC character in Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising in May 2024. Aya Hirano will reprise her voice role in the Japanese version, while Jennifer Losi will provide her English voiceovers.

The Beatrix DLC set will be available at $7.99. It will come with an avatar, badge, and studio figure of the same character. The set will also include a cutout of Beatrix's weapon, the Embrasque Sword. An SSR-grade character weapon drawing ticket for the original Granblue Fantasy mobile game will also be available to players who purchase the DLC on the PlayStation versions.

The new Beatrix trailer is available to watch via the game's official YouTube channel:

Beatrix will be the fourth DLC character to appear in the second Granblue Fantasy fighting game release. The first three characters were Lucilius, Vane, and NieR: Automata's 2B. According to a roadmap published in late December 2023, Cygames is also planning to add two more DLC characters in August 2024 and October 2024. All six characters released in 2024 are also available for purchase simultaneously via the first Character Pass.

Beatrix will appear as a DLC playable character for Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising on May 23, 2024. The fighting game has been available worldwide on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam.

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Picking up Lorelei and the Laser Eyes feels like taking a step into a cryptic past, when rumors of Polybius were flitting among arcade goers and a night of entertainment meant a crossword puzzle or two. Unique and addicting, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes provides a fun and rewarding experience for either a single person or group of gamers.

Like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes itself, the story does not immediately reveal itself to you. It takes a bit of time and sleuthing before the yarn starts to unravel. When the game starts, you know very little about your character, a smartly-dressed woman who looks like she’d fit right in a noir spy film. As you piece together clues from dialogue and readable items, you learn that an eccentric man invited you to a secluded hotel, which houses strange puzzles, art exhibits, magic shows, and plenty of mysteries. And a dog too, which you can pet.

The puzzles range between pleasantly easy and surprisingly difficult, but none of them feel like cop-outs. You truly have almost everything you need at your fingertips, or they’re a few steps away. Some of them are incredibly easy, such as one requiring basic knowledge of Roman numerals or our English alphabet. But then you’d encounter one that makes you stare at it, feeling like you’re rubbing every single brain cell you have and getting nothing in return.

I vividly remember realizing the solution to a puzzle as I was falling asleep and then shooting up, wide awake, just to turn on Lorelei and the Laser Eyes and rush to the location to input my answer. I was right, and that rush of serotonin was so strong that I continued to play until the sun was in the sky.

Part of the appeal lies in its more old school way of doing things. It brought me back to when I was a child, sitting in the waiting room of my piano teacher’s house and hunched over a book of riddles and whodunnits with a pen and notebook in hand. The Discord server I have for myself was full of pictures, notes, equations, and scribbles. I called on my roommate for help, as well as provided the puzzles without any context to my friends when I was stuck. Some of the puzzles prompted pretty lively discussion and I found it fascinating that this game, which can feel so isolating as you wander around the dreary hotel on your own, could bring so many people together without even being in my friends’ hands.

“Beautiful” might not be the first word that pops to mind when you see Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Indeed, according to Simogo’s development blog, that wasn’t the goal. But there’s something gripping about the retro aesthetic. I loved how clean and crisp the black-and-white color scheme is, with everything easily visible despite the grainy filter and odd textures. When colors appear, they pop, and they’re so eerie against the dark backdrop that they really stick in your mind. For a game that seems to do so little with its appearance, its blend of its many inspirations make for a singularly unique experience.

This is one of those games that I’ll think about even after I finish it. As of the time of writing, I still have quite a few mysteries to uncover, as there are some puzzles that just well and truly stumped me. The world it presents is a cryptic one, reminding me of old conspiracy theories from before my time, but it keeps you coming back for more, hankering to pull back the curtains and unlock the doors to discover the secrets behind them.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes will come out on the Nintendo Switch and Windows PC via Steam on May 16, 2024. Nintendo Switch version reviewed.

The post Review: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes Makes You Feel Like the Smartest and Dumbest Person Alive appeared first on Siliconera.

HoYoVerse has uploaded a new EP for Honkai: Star Rail, with the song this time being “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers” featuring vocals by Chevy. As a note, both this article and the video itself contain major spoilers for the Version 2.2 Trailblaze Mission.

You can watch the “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers” Honkai: Star Rail EP here:

The video shows scenes from the latter half of the Honkai: Star Rail Version 2.2 Trailblaze Mission. This includes the Watchmaker’s death, the showdown against Sunday, and the final shot of Robin giving Sunday a hug. In-game, “Hope Is the Thing With Feathers” plays in the third phase of the fight against Sunday. You can hear it from Echo of War: Salutations of Ashen Dreams as well.

Chevy is the singing voice for Robin in all four languages of the game. Earlier this week, HoYoVerse released an EP for “If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking,” which was one of the first Chevy songs we heard in Honkai: Star Rail. You can also now stream “Inside,” which is the ninth soundtrack album featuring the three Chevy songs for Honkai: Star Rail.

Honkai: Star Rail is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices.

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