Edge September 2022

E3 has been around for almost as long as Edge, and it’s been difficult to see such a storied industry event, the venue for so many defining moments over the past few decades, lose its way. The pandemic saw it cancelled in 2020, then it limped back in digital form last year, and now this year it disappeared entirely. It promises to return at full strength in 2023 – with rumours of the PAX conference team picking up responsibility for executing the public-facing part of the event – which is heartening, although there’s little guarantee that it will ever recapture its historic highs. It’s tempting to just let E3 go and submit fully to what emerges in its place, but when faced with the alternative, as we did throughout…

As we attempt to pin down the character of a weeklong period of game announcements and demos, there’s a tendency for the collective memory to settle on a single line. “You’re breathtaking”, or “My body is ready”, or “This is how you share your games on PS4”. It’s perhaps appropriate that the equivalent words in 2022 weren’t uttered on any conference stage but rather on a Twitter audio livestream, before the sprawl of events and showcases had even begun: “Manage your expectations”. A stark warning, especially from Geoff Keighley, a man whose name has become synonymous with hype. And when Keighley’s Summer Game Fest kickoff show airs a week later, it’s clear just how much he meant it. There’s the unmistakable impression of a show struggling to fill the two-hour…

The videogame industry’s shift to digital distribution has been swift, expedited by quickening domestic Internet speeds, and the convenience and immediacy of on-demand shopping. Still, some prefer to own a physical artefact that embodies their digital media, an object to remind them of – and maybe signal to others – their fine taste. Lavish packaging further increases the appeal of what are typically viewed as investment pieces. Westerners are served by a multitude of companies built to meet this demand; Strictly Limited, First Press Games, Limited Run and others provide physical editions for games that might otherwise have only existed as digital ephemera. Now, Limited Run is collaborating with Shibuya-based localisation company 8-4, and Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s right-hand-man, Enhance Games SVP Mark MacDonald, to release physical copies of mainly western, mainly…

Everything’s good, Dylan Cuthbert says cheerfully, as he greets us from Kyoto. Well, almost everything. He’s managed to give himself a hernia – though he’s sufficiently recovered to be able to laugh about it. “We’re a few weeks from going into QA, and I’ve just been trying to cram in as much as possible before we do,” he says. “I was just really getting into it, thinking I was 20 again.” He can smile, partly because of what those overexertions mean. On November 1, 2017, The Tomorrow Children, Q-Games’ fascinating multiplayer experiment – a hybrid of collaborative city-builder, social MMORPG and tower defence game, set in a distinctive Soviet-themed dystopia suspended in a viscous sea known as The Void – ceased operation. Five years later, it’s about to…

Sink into a good book in this hand-drawn puzzle adventure A playful, Amanita-like adventure game being developed by “two dreamers”, Bioid explores the idea of books being portals to new places. Taking place in a galactic library that sits at a crossroads between worlds, it casts you as Little Bit, who can metamorphose into other forms to solve surreal conundrums. These tomes drag them into strange new realms, all hand-drawn and brought to life through dynamic animation: from gravity shifts to telekinetic powers, each presents fresh challenges. “Stylistically, this is a confrontation between white and dark, and many shades of grey in between,” artist Pagurus tells us; in addition to Miyazaki and Moebius, they’re inspired by the work of Tomorrow Corporation’s Kyle Gabler and the creators of Adventure…

“I’ll confess, I’ll sometimes buy it because it’s a lot more fun if suddenly your character has a lot more great stuff that would take you six months or a year to build up.” With his approach to in-game purchases, Texas senator Ted Cruz just wants all the benefits others have to earn “They didn’t have Mario Kart, so I bought a Sega Genesis and they had the Senna game and I thought, ‘This is perfect’.” If you have any crusty old 16bit racers to offload, give Lewis Hamilton a shout ”We are a studio and franchise that is committed to inclusivity where everyone is welcome and supported to be their true self.” 343’s Bonnie Ross is given the clean-up job after Halo Infinite’s…