Welcome to another roundup of the most important gaming news that you need to know about from the last seven days or so! As usual, the gaming calendar has been abuzz with eventful happenings this week.
Whether it’s old games getting a new lick of paint (and a new lease on life in the process) or studios making some rather questionable decisions with regards to naming, there’s plenty to pore over.
Grab yourself a drink (you know the routine by now!), pull up your most comfortable chair, and join us as we run through everything that’s worth knowing in gaming from the last week or so.
You can now turn off those pesky Wolverine scent trails completely
Per the latest Marvel’s Wolverine update, it’s now possible not just to minimise the intrusive scent trails Wolvy is plagued by throughout his adventure, but to turn them off completely.
The latest patch notes confirm that you can switch off Senses toggles for collectible scent trails and Nightmare Door roots, although it sounds like the trails will still be present for certain story scenes.
Whether or not this goes any way towards alleviating what we believe is somewhat justified fury towards the game’s patronising approach to player direction is another matter, of course.
Ubisoft’s big new AI push is called – wait for it – Motherbrain
This week, The Game File reported that it had learned Ubisoft’s internal name for the group currently working on its generative AI development tools, including AI-generated NPC dialogue and AI-controlled squadmates.
According to The Game File’s report, the group will be known as “Motherbrain”, which feels a little on the nose. We can’t help but feel like Ubisoft has never played the Metroid games before.
Whether or not Ubisoft’s efforts ever come to fruition remains to be seen, but we reckon a name change should be in the cards, because Motherbrain just feels a little too sinister for our liking.
More The Last of Us is on the way, Naughty Dog has confirmed
In a message on the official Naughty Dog website this week, creative lead Neil Druckmann confirmed that there are two further projects in the series currently in development.
Druckmann wouldn’t be drawn on exactly what those projects were; in fact, Naughty Dog doesn’t even state whether or not the projects in question are games, so we may well be seeing a Last of Us movie sometime soon.
He did, however, say that the projects will “expand the canon of The Last of Us beyond Part I and Part II”, so it doesn’t sound like the new stories will be remakes or direct adaptations, at least.
The Witcher 3 hits its highest ever Steam player count
Somehow, there’s still plenty of life in The Witcher 3, as CD Projekt Red’s phenomenally popular action RPG proved this week when it soared to its highest ever Steam player count.
The surge in popularity is likely thanks to the release of the Remastered version of the game, which introduces new visuals and gameplay tweaks and generally makes the game smoother to play than it was on launch in 2015.
Rather magnanimously, CD Projekt Red also announced that anyone who owns the base game but not its expansions will receive both Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine for free. Hurrah!
Massive Entertainment is now in charge of Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell
Massive Entertainment, the Ubisoft division (no pun intended) behind the looter-shooter franchise Tom Clancy’s The Division, is now in charge of two other Tom Clancy properties, the publisher announced this week.
You may also be familiar with Massive’s name from Star Wars: Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, although given the lacklustre sales totals of both of those games, Ubisoft would probably rather you didn’t remember them for that.
In any case, Massive will now be stewarding the aforementioned franchises, so if we ever see another Ghost Recon or Splinter Cell title (which is by no means a given at the moment), then you’ll know who’s nominally responsible.
PUBG: Black Budget is officially dead, Krafton has revealed
Less than a year after its original announcement, the spinoff extraction shooter PUBG: Black Budget is officially dead, IP owner and publisher Krafton revealed via Steam this week.
Krafton said that, following a review of Black Budget’s “development status and future direction”, it was determined that it wouldn’t be possible for the game to “deliver an experience players could enjoy over the long term”.
The publisher has pledged that its PUBG Studios development division will take the lessons of Black Budget on board and use them to inform future projects, although what those projects will look like is anybody’s guess.
The base PS5 is getting AI upscaling akin to the PS5 Pro
Sony revealed this week that the base PS5 is getting an AI upscaling feature not too dissimilar to that sported by the PS5 Pro, although you can likely expect more modest results from this version.
It’s being referred to as QSSR, or Quick Spectral Super Resolution, and it should help to make image detail and stability sharper on the console without sacrificing performance, which, if you ask us, is a much-needed boost for the ailing console.
Right now, the only two games to officially sport this feature are Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Y?tei, but it’ll be offered “broadly to all PlayStation developers”, Sony says.
There might be a Halo reboot on the way
If a report by Halo insider Rebs Gaming (via Eurogamer) is to be believed, then there’s a chance that the Halo series might be getting a reboot under new management at Activision.
Apparently, Activision’s original pitch involved separate multiplayer and single-player games, but the decision was eventually made to combine the two into a single package that would also serve as a soft reboot for the Halo franchise.
We know that’s going to make a lot of fans very angry, but honestly, if you ask us, we can’t see the downside. The Halo franchise has become hopelessly convoluted, and a reboot would help to get things back to basics, in our opinion.
