Microsoft’s E3 2018 conference was jam-packed with scintillating trailers, but perhaps the coolest one was for Cyberpunk 2077, the next game from Witcher-developer CD Projekt Red.
The trailer was preceded by a neat command line boot sequence, similar to what Bethesda used at E3 2016. While we previously saw an extremely brief glimpse of the science fiction RPG, the trailer shown on Microsoft’s stage was our first in-depth look at the epic adventure.
Cyberpunk 2077 has a somewhat on-the-nose title. It’s certainly cyberpunk, but it’s set in a retro-futuristic 1990s inspired by the role-playing game Cyberpunk 2020. It takes place in Night City, a sprawling metropolis entrenched in technology. People have implants attached to their body, but as these things go, the implants can go rogue and attack their wearers or other people. This chilling effect is shown in the trailer, along with the task force assigned to stop the self-created threat, the Psycho Squad.
We learn in the trailer that Night City has become one of the worst places in America in terms of violence and poverty. Despite the perceived peril of the city, the narrator — we think he’s the currently unnamed protagonist — remarks that people still want to live there because it is a place of opportunity.
What the trailer does best is show off the scope of Cyberpunk 2077. If you’ve played a CD Projekt Red game, especially The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you know that the worlds created by the Polish development studio are absolutely massive and rich with detail. In the trailer, we see people fight, engage in small talk, play some pool, and square off against robots. There are also some pretty cool-looking rides that will surely help players travel across Night City in style. The cars even fly!
While the trailer looks amazing, it’s important to note that none of it was gameplay. Still, the world of Cyberpunk 2077 looks like a fascinating place that will appeal to fans of Neuromancer and Blade Runner.
We still have no idea when Cyberpunk 2077 will launch, but we imagine it’s still a ways off. It’ll be interesting to see if it arrives before this current console generation ends.
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.