During Sony’s State of Play presentation, Square Enix showed a brand new trailer for Final Fantasy XVI. It will launch sometime in the summer of 2023.
Producer Naoki Yoshida debuted the new trailer and it provided some narrative background, saying, “In a world ruled by tyranny and turmoil, there are those who could fight to take back control of their fate.”
The gameplay is in real-time combat with a user interface that looks like a mix of different elements from Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin with its skill icons in the corner and Final Fantasy XIII where it shows abilities being activated on the side of the screen.
Some other gameplay elements were shown as well, including a “stagger” status where enemies double over and become vulnerable to incoming attacks. It’s unclear whether there are other party members available during combat, or if it’s a just solo journey with protagonist Clive Rosefield.
The trailer also shows a ton of summons and gods commonly seen in the Final Fantasy franchise. These include Phoenix, Ramuh, Shiva, Titan, Garuda, Odin, Bahamut, and Ifrit. It also looks like these gods can fight each other, as the trailer shows a battle between Ifrit and Titan.
While story details are still light, the end of the trailer has an emperor giving a speech, saying, “There will be losses, it is true. Yet for every citizen that falls, another can be bred. For every home that burns, another can be built. the empire will live on.” Given the harsh nature of these words, it seems like the emperor is some sort of antagonistic force.
Final Fantasy XVI is a console exclusive for PlayStation. It’ll launch in summer 2023.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.