Nintendo premiered its Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Direct and revealed that it will receive an expansion pass. It costs $30 and it’ll give players some helpful in-game items and outfit color variants at launch.
At the end of the year, the game will add a Challenge Battle as well as a new hero character, quests, and outfits. More extras will come on April 30, 2023, while an entirely new story scenario will be added by the end of 2023. Interestingly, the artwork on the expansion pass shows three swords, one of which is from Rex, the protagonist of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. This indicates that he could be one of the Challenge Battles or have a place in the new story scenario.
The game will also have amiibo functionality. The Super Smash Bros. series Shulk amiibo will change Noah’s sword into the Monado, Shulk’s own weapon in the first Xenoblade Chronicles game. There are other amiibo that will be compatible with the game, but those details weren’t revealed.
It doesn’t seem like the expansion pass will be included with Switch Online memberships. Nintendo has recently bundled its add-ons into its Expansion Pack tier of the service, but Xenoblade won’t be following that trend for now.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3‘s story follows the nations of Keves and Agnus as they fight continuously in a never-ending war. The soldiers of Agnus all have a 10-year lifespan and seeing it through completion and receiving a homecoming ceremony from the queen is seen as the highest honor. However, most don’t manage to make it as they perish during battle. It seems like the main cast is looking for some way to break the cycle.
The playable cast consists of three people from Keves and three from Agnus. After fighting with each other, they must set aside their differences to band together against a new enemy that pledges to constantly hunt them down.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 launches on July 29 for Nintendo Switch.
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.