Developer Bethesda Game Studios is hard at work on the upcoming DLC for Fallout 4, but the studio also has a trio of new games in the pipeline, executive producer Todd Howard revealed Thursday. Speaking at the 2016 D.I.C.E. summit in Las Vegas, Howard said the studio, which has created some of the most celebrated games in modern memory including The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Fallout 4, has three “longer-term projects” in development.
“They’re different than anything we’ve done before,” Howard said, “while also being a Bethesda-style game—kind of big and crazy—but in many ways different than things we’ve done before.”
According to VentureBeat, Howard said he would “get in trouble” if he discussed the games further. He also said more details on the projects would be coming soon. According to Gamespot, one of the three projects may be in development at the studio’s Montréal outpost, which created Fallout-themed mobile game, Fallout Shelter.
For the time being, Bethesda Game Studios’ remains focused on a series of post-release expansions for Fallout 4. The first of those DLC packs, the robotics-themed story “Automatron,” will be released in March. The studio also announced two other DLC packs; an expanded settlement-building kit called the “Wasteland Workshop,” coming in April, and “Far Harbor,” a Synth-centric detective story, coming in May. The studio has also teased that it will release a new version of the game’s “survival mode,” which will force players to regularly eat, drink, and sleep, in addition to making the game more difficult.
In the meantime, Howard mentioned during the talk that there are Fallout 4 secrets fans have not shared yet online. He mentioned that one seemingly undiscovered secret has something to do with a terminal. (If you haven’t played Fallout 4, there are old computer “terminals” scattered throughout the game’s open world.) Happy hunting, vault dwellers!
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.