Doug Cockle says he recorded all of Geralt’s lines for the original Witcher in about eight days. The voice actor did five days in a row, six or seven hours a session, pushing the voice “very, very low” in his register. He said his voice was wrecked by the end of each day, so he went back to the hotel and sipped peppermint or lemon-ginger tea all night before doing it again. The books weren’t out in English yet, so he worked from the developers’ descriptions of the character. That short stretch of long, low-register days is what locked in the gravelly performance that stuck once the game came out.

New footage for the Tomb Raider remake shows classic Lara Croft across Peru, Greece, Egypt, and Atlantis. Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog released the look this weekend for the original game’s 30th anniversary. It includes the Atlas puzzle, Atlanteans, and the Midas statue that turns Lara gold. Game director Raul Siquera said the new Focus meter lets players “slow down time” and pull off moves from the 1996 original. The remake keeps the old locations and acrobatics but adds skill trees and crafting, so it sits between pure nostalgia and a full modern update. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis launches Feb. 12, 2027.

CD Projekt Red’s associate game director on Cyberpunk 2 says roughly half the quest team started as modders. Pawel Sasko called modding a “foot-in-the-door technique” that gets people into game development. Most of them previously made mods for The Witcher 2, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077. He said the studio treats that work as real experience, because it shows people how the systems are actually built. So the people writing quests on the sequel already spent years inside the same worlds as players.

Sony is requiring the latest PS5 firmware to play certain newer physical games, and the reaction has been sharp. The updates are part of the effort to close jailbreaks. Some recent discs will not launch unless the console is running the newest system software. This practice goes back to the PS3 era. The update can usually be installed directly from the disc or downloaded from PlayStation’s website without connecting the console online. Social media criticism has been loud, with some tying it to Sony’s plan to stop making physical discs in 2028. Console sales have not been affected so far. The requirement itself is standard. The scale of the backlash is what is new.

Makoto Yukimura has confirmed that a third season of Vinland Saga is not currently in progress. The creator told a fan on X: “Sorry my friend, I have no good news about that. The project is not currently in progress.” Season 2 ended more than three years ago. The manga wrapped in mid-2025 after two decades. MAPPA is tied up with Chainsaw Man: Assassins Arc, Jujutsu Kaisen season 4, and multiple new shows set for 2027. Season 2 still ranked as the third most-watched anime on Netflix in early 2023. The statement rules out an active season 3. With the studio’s current slate, any follow-up looks years away if it happens at all.

Riot brought back Heartsteel, True Damage, and K/DA for Worlds, and only one got the full treatment. Heartsteel returned with Live My Life, a softer track that moved away from its earlier sound. True Damage followed with Know My Name, which stayed closer to its original style, though the video focused more on T1 than the champions. K/DA’s comeback is the clear standout. The group got a full four-song EP, brought back Soyeon and Miyeon from I-dle, and had Fortiche (the Arcane studio) animate the Firestarter video. The original Pop/Stars video was also done by Fortiche. The other two got single tracks. K/DA got the EP, the returning artists, and the highest production.

Phantom Blade Zero needs 300 GB free just to preload, even though the finished install is only 145 GB. The extra space is temporary. Once the game unlocks, it drops back to roughly 145 GB. Still, players have to clear that much storage on an SSD before they can even start the download. The hardware bar is lower. Minimum is an i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600 with a GTX 1660 or RX 5500 XT. Recommended is an i5-10600K or Ryzen 5 5600X with an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT. 16 GB of RAM covers both. Preload starts October 28 by region. The game launches October 29 on PS5 and PC. A mid-range PC can run it. The storage requirement is the steeper ask.

15 years later, Batman: Arkham City is still the one every Batman game gets measured against. It took the series out of a single building and into a section of Gotham built around free-flow combat, stealth, and dense side content. That template later showed up in games like Insomniac’s Spider-Man and Shadow of Mordor. Later Batman titles never fully matched it. Origins felt like a narrower version of the same idea. Knight got closer but undercut itself with weaker antagonists and a heavy Batmobile focus. It reportedly sold over 12 million copies. Rocksteady and Warner Bros. largely moved on from single-player Batman after Knight. Until a new Rocksteady Batman game shows up, if it does, Arkham City remains the benchmark.

GTA 6 promo trash from Miami is already selling for real money on eBay. A Vice City foam finger sold for $555. Another is bidding around $300. A used Cluckin’ Bell cup has 50+ bids and is near $250. A greasy Burger Shot paper bag has 14 bids and is over $150. All of it comes from temporary stands Rockstar set up inside the Kaseya Center. Outside Miami, there’s no official way to get any of it. Scarcity is doing the rest. One-city disposable packaging is trading like limited merch because most people can’t just walk up and buy it.

After nearly 13 years, Dark Souls 2 has a Seamless Co-op mod that takes the edge off its worst areas. Modder Yui’s version syncs progress and lets you respawn at the last bonfire to rejoin instead of ending the session. Ted Litchfield ran Iron Keep and similar spots with Tyler Colp and Sean Martin. One death no longer resets the group outside bosses or invasions, so the enemy gauntlets turn into slower attrition fights. Invasions still happen and show up more often than in the base game, with some latency left. Solo is still the better first run, but the mod makes the prickliest FromSoft game actually finishable with friends.