An in-depth look at 18* unannounced PlayStation 5 exclusives | Including a new FROM SOFTWARE collab
Arrowhead Game Studios (Magicka, Gauntlet, Helldivers)
Testament In 2016, Arrowhead started to work on their first ever AAA game - a project that would require not only the attention of the entire team, but also to grow the studio way beyond the 35 employees that worked on Arrowhead around that time. That's why in 2017 they moved into a bigger office where they could accommodate all of their staff - both old and new. Then in 2018, Arrowhead's co-founder stated in an interview that they were making a third-person game this time around and, due to the change in perspective, moving the focus from local co-op to making it purely online co-op. Friendly fire is confirmed to be making a return. In early 2019, some Arrowhead developers were spotted at GDC wearing jackets with a "Testament Dev Team" written in the back. While recapping 2019, it was stated on the Arrowhead website that they had made a "butt-ton of progress" on the game and that by the end of the year the studio had already grown to roughly 60 people.
Bend Studio (Siphon Filter, Days Gone)
Days Gone Days Gone ends on a cliffhanger, but so did The Order 1886 and, well, we all know how that ended up - so let's delve a bit deeper into why Days Gone 2 will be a thing. In 2019, a couple of weeks before the game's launch, a Sony PR guy said that Days Gone was seen as a "franchise" in Sony's eyes, stating that "the goal is always to make a game that people love and want more of". One month later, the game came out and delivered some surprisingly solid numbers not only at launch but also throughout the year, thanks to the good word-of-mouth it had amongst the community. According to snort_cannon, the success of the game came as a surprise even to Sony, who was expecting Days Gone to be the disappointment and Death Stranding being the one doing crazy numbers. Later that year, Bend Studio managing director Chris Reese kind of teased that a sequel was in the works when asked about it during an interview: "This is a world that we want to keep breathing more life into, and explore many, many different avenues. So who knows, we'll see!"
Bluepoint Games (Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, Demon's Souls)
Bloodborne Remastered In May 2020, NeoGAF user Celine.D.Sykes - who previously discussed this project in February 2019 on the ResetEra forums - talked about the Bloodborne remaster in greater detail: "During my time on ResetEra, I only knew that From Software wanted Bloodborne to release on PC. Unfortunately, a PC port would need a lot of work […] and reworking Bloodborne's engine would take a great amount of work. The game logic is tied to framerate, among many other baffling decisions. The last time From Software tried to change the inner logic of an engine; it resulted in the infamous PC port of the first Dark Souls." "Making a long story short, Sony said they were interested in a potential Bloodborne remaster for PS5, with a lot more work done, like some QoL added and some cut-content being introduced. Both From Software and Sony agreed to not just up the resolution and the framerate, but to make something great. FromSoftware has been authorized to release the game on PC, but only some months after the remaster hits PS5." "Last time I heard about it, Bloodborne remaster would be part of PS5 line-up, but I don't quite believe it since I think the spotlight will be stolen by another similar title [Demon's Souls] that should be announced in June. I think they might save the Bloodborne remaster for some months after PS5 release, but I could be wrong about that particular point." According to another report by a different source, the game is being developed by both QLOC - the studio behind 2018's Dark Souls: Remastered - and Bluepoint Games. Now that Demon's Souls is out and considering how far along Bloodborne Remastered has been reported to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it is currently planned to be revealed at The Game Awards. Unannounced On November 20th 2020, in response to a user who claimed that the rumored Bluepoint acquisition by Sony would be very boring as far as hype goes, KatharsisT said: "If you knew what Bluepoint is on at the moment, you wouldn't say that (Yeah, it's a hype post [and] you'll have to wait to know what it is)". Shortly after that, a mod stepped in to say that "KatharsisT has shown sufficient evidence to support this claim." A couple of posts later, MarsipanRumpan - the guy behind the Bluepoint acquisition rumor - also backed the statements made by KatharsisT "I’m totally on your side. Talked with my source, I think we have the same info regarding their next remake. People who aren’t hyped for Bluepoint don’t know what their next project is as you said. Because that shit is [mindblowing]." Regarding the rumors of a Metal Gear Solid remake, all I'm gonna say is: don't listen to what Moore's Law is Dead and other youtubers are saying, it is all bullshit; but at the same time don't lose faith, as chances of Bluepoint's next remake being MGS are high, considering how it seems they're working on a bigger and more prestigious title than Demon's Souls and also the good relationship Sony currently has with Konami.
From Software (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Deráciné)
Unannounced A couple of weeks ago, MarsipanRumpan - the guy who recently reported about Bluepoint's acquisition on ResetEra - said that he has heard that Sony is in talks with From Software regarding the making of a new PS5 exclusive directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. This would be the third game From has currently in their pipeline, with Elden Ring and a new Armored Core being the other two. MarsipanRumpan also clarified that it will be a while before we see this new game in motion anyway.
Guerrilla Games (Killzone, Horizon)
Unannounced In February 2018, Simon Larouche - former multiplayer designer on Killzone 2, R6 Patriots and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, as well as game director on R6 Siege - joins Guerrilla as game director, starting to work on an unannounced project completely unrelated to the Horizon sequel (now known as Forbidden West), which was also in development at the time. Then in July, Hermen Hulst announced plans for Guerrilla to move into a new, bigger office where they could expand their staff count from 250 to 400 people, allowing them to make games faster and release a new title every two to three years. In October 2018, Chris Lee - former multiplayer designer on several SOCOM titles at Slant Six Games and on Ubisoft's R6 Siege - joins Guerrilla as principal game designer on Larouche's project. Apart from the fact that Lee's hiring makes it pretty clear that Guerrilla's second team is working on a shooter game of some sorts, it's worth pointing out that Lee lists "cooperative and competitive multiplayer, open world systemic gameplay and online social experiences" as his current interests on his LinkedIn profile - with the open world bit being especially interesting as it was also mentioned in certain job listings for the project in 2019. In August 2020, Guerrilla finally moved to their new office, which means the studio is now ready to begin large-scale recruiting on its second project once they see it fit - although I don't expect to hear about this project until after the release of Forbidden West in the second half of 2021.
Insomniac Games (Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, Marvel's Spider-Man)
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 The recently released Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales entered development in May 2018 under the direction of Brian Horton, while Bryan Intihar was finishing up his work on the original Marvel's Spider-Man, which came out in September of that year. So right after wrapping up the first game and with Miles Morales in the hands of a separate team, Intihar started preparing the next main entry in the series as teased in January 2019 when he posted on Twitter "Few things are more nerve-wracking than sharing your first story draft to others."
Japan Studio (Gravity Rush, The Last Guardian, Astro)
RaySpace Sometime in spring 2014, a couple of weeks before E3, Reddit user Ruin4r leaked a number of titles in development exclusively for PS4, including a new God of War, The Last Guardian, a The Last Of Us sequel, Dead Don't Ride (later confirmed to be Days Gone's codename) and an "unnamed space game" - which by the way wasn't Santa Monica Studio's cancelled new IP for PS4, as that project was axed earlier that year. A year later, Shuhei Yoshida stated in an interview at E3 2015 that "Japan Studio is now producing a really great project that I'm really excited about" - which also wasn't Gravity Rush 2, as that title was referenced as a different project later in the interview. In April 2016, Ruin4r said that all the games previously teased by him were still in development and clarified that many of them - God of War, TLOU2, Days Gone and the "unnamed space game" - were in early stages when he first talked about them. Then on June 6th 2016, during a livestream in celebration of Famitsu's 30th Anniversary, SIE's Yasuhiro Kitao teased a a new title to Famitsu's editor-in-chief Katsuhio Hayashi by letting him read some text from his tablet, as Kitao didn't have any images to show. Hayashi was blown away by whatever thing he read and stated that "this will definitely be worth waiting for." In December 2017, SIE trademarked "RaySpace" in Canada - which most probably was the final title for the "unnamed space game" mentioned by Ruin4r. That same month, Japan Studio's award-winning creative director Tsutomu Kouno stated in an interview "I have not been able to announce a new title in a long time, but in 2018, I would like to announce what I am preparing". Japan Studio producer Teruyuki Toriyama - who has been teasing this project since 2015, describing it in multiple occasions as an "ambitious title" - also promised an announcement in 2018. Sometime in 2018, an interview to a Japan Studio employee was posted on the SIE website; in it there was an image that contained shots of two upcoming games in the background: the Demon's Souls remake (top right corner) and some sort of sci-fi first-person game. But 2018 went by without any sort of reveal regarding this project and in December, Toriyama once again teased an announcement for the coming year "In 2019, we are preparing for the debut of unannounced title(s) currently in production". It is worth noting that Japan Studio didn't reveal any new games in 2019. I doubt that RaySpace was cancelled, as you don't pull the plug on a project that has been in the works for four or five years and was so close to being revealed. So what I believe is that they decided to move it to PlayStation 5 - just like they did with other projects such as Sackboy: A Big Adventure or Horizon: Forbidden West - and maybe even bring it back to the drawing table a little - which would explain why we haven't seen it this year during the PS5 reveal events. Silent Hill In 2018, Konami reached out to various developers to pitch ideas for two Silent Hill games: one a soft-reboot of the franchise; the other an episodic Telltale/Until Dawn-style game to go alongside the reboot. In fact, one of the studios contacted by Konami was Supermassive Games, creators of Until Dawn, although they ultimately didn't get the job. Japan Studio's creative director Keiichiro Toyama, who had been wanting to work on a new horror game for quite some time, was developing a new entry in the Siren franchise at the time. Sony, who weren't fully keen on the idea of investing on a niche series such as Siren, decided to pull the plug on the project as they started negotiating a deal with Konami for getting Japan Studio to work on the Silent Hill soft-reboot - a prestige project for the PS5 lineup based on a globally renowned IP, something that would allow Toyama to have a bigger budget and more resources at his disposal. Eventually the deal would get finalized, putting Sony Interactive Entertainment in charge of developing, funding and publishing the title in exchange for keeping the exclusive and most of the revenue, with Konami being indirectly involved by outsourcing the IP against an 8% of the revenue. And that way, the game entered development in early 2019, salvaging as much from the technological work done for the Siren game as possible. At some point in 2019, an interview to a Japan Studio employee posted on the SIE website showed a developer working on a handgun model - something that, if we consider the other projects Japan Studio has in the pipeline, would only align with Silent Hill. On January 21st 2020, Rely on Horror reported that they've heard from a source of their own that a new Silent Hill game was in development. A day later, movie industry insider Emre Kaya posted on Twitter that he has learned that Sony is working on a new horror game for PS5. On March 12th 2020, Rely on Horror stated that Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka and creature designer Masahiro Ito are returning alongside the series creator Keiichiro Toyama to helm a soft-reboot of the franchise developed by Japan Studio, just called Silent Hill. Both of their sources mentioned Sony as the driving force behind bringing the series back. That same day, Emre Kaya said on Twitter that this was the Sony horror game that he talked about back in January. In April 2020, ResetEra user KatharsisT backed Rely on Horror's information regarding the Silent Hill soft-reboot and confirmed a third-person perspective and that the game was playable already. She also said that it is planned to be announced before PS5's launch, with a release in spring 2021 - although these reveal and release windows were from before COVID started to fuck up their schedule. Shortly after, a mod stepped into the discussion to state that they've verified her information on the subject. In May 2020, Reddit user snort_cannon, who had already discussed the game months ago, said that "the game was planned on being shown off this summer. Unless something bad happens, it should happen. The plan at first was just to do a CG trailer to announce that the game exists, but I personally think at this point [they] might delay the reveal and add some gameplay footage as well". When asked about his sources, he answered "Same source that told me about the Sony deal, albeit last update came in early February and COVID didn’t rampage as hard as it’s going now." On August 3rd 2020, ResetEra user Navtra, who leaked a list of games that went on to be present on both PS5 events days in advance to June's The Future of Gaming, commented on the Silent Hill rumors "I can only confirm one thing: it was never on the table for June's event. FFXVI and Marvel's Avengers Spider-Man character announcement were among other things that were supposed to be there and were moved last minute. Silent Hill never was". If we look at both KatharsisT and snort_cannon's comments in regards to the reveal window for the game after having learned this, it becomes clear that the reveal was initially planned for the second PS5 event, that being September's PS5 Showcase - an event that the game missed because of delays in production related to the COVID pandemic. On October 31st 2020, KatharsisT stated that something had just made her expect a reveal at The Game Awards. A couple of days later, Rely on Horror reported that recent rumors of a Silent Hill announcement at The Game Awards line up with some information they received a while back but choose not to report on. On November 21st 2020, KatharsisT once again teased a Silent Hill reveal at The Game Awards "You'll celebrate it before the end of the year if everything goes as planned" while also stating that she thinks the game is still planned for 2021.
London Studio (The Getaway, PlayStation VR Worlds, Blood & Truth)
Horizon VR On October 2019, VR consultant Callum Hurley posted on Twitter that he had learned about an "exciting new PlayStation VR game coming out of London Studio" through someone who had just playtested the title. He also vaguely implied it was a Horizon VR game and, when news outlets started to report on his tweets, he apologized to the development team as he didn't expect such coverage. Same as the unannounced VR titles from Supermassive Games, I do expect this Horizon VR game to be a cross-gen release sometime next year.
In July 2018, we've learned thanks to a job listing that MediaVision was working on a new PlayStation 4 RPG. It is worth noting that a year earlier Sony stated that, even though their investments have been mainly focused on titles aimed to a global audience do to the soaring in development costs, the success of recent titles such as Persona 5 or Nier Automata amongst overseas audiences has made them consider a return to first-party JRPG development. Then in June 2019, DasVergeben posted on Reddit "Something I have heard for a while now is that a new Wild Arms game is in development but it has been over a year long journey getting that verified. I still struggle to get definite enough confirmation but I think it might have been because I heard about it too early". In a separate post, Vergeben added "I don't know much other than that it apparently is in development by Media Vision for PS4. I haven't been told anything specific yet at least. I do wonder if Sony might try and shift over to push it as a PS5 launch game or something if they don't reveal it this year [...] but that's simply speculation on my behalf." At this point I expect the game to be a cross-gen release, as it wouldn't make sense to leave the PS4 users behind with a title that surely won't be a technological showcase unlike native PS5 games such as Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last Of Us)
The Last Of Us: Factions On September 26th 2019, Naughty Dog posted a statement on Twitter in which they basically announced that the multiplayer mode they had planned for The Last Of Us: Part II had grown beyond an additional mode that could be included alongside the game's enormous singleplayer campaign, so they decided to turn it into a standalone game in order to not compromise on the ambitions of the studio's multiplayer team. Then in April 2020, a short gameplay clip from a March 2018 build of the multiplayer leaked online as part of a bigger leak that revealed tons of story spoilers and cutscenes from The Last Of Us: Part II. Assuming that this TLOU multiplayer game is planned for a release on both PS4 and PS5 sometime next year, we would be in front of a title with over four years of overall dev time - meaning that the project might be greater in scope than what most of us are expecting it to be. Unannounced On October 10th 2018, movie industry insider Daniel Ritchman reported that Naughty Dog was in the process of casting an actor to play the lead role on an upcoming game. According to the casting description, the studio was looking for a "Black/African American male, 40s to 60s, short to medium length hair, with a body type similar to those in the images below, strong but not chiseled". But since this doesn't tell us much about the game, apart from hinting at it being a new IP, let's go a little back in time in search of more potential details. During the The Last Of Us: Part II panel at PSX 2017, Neil Druckmann stated that Naughty Dog will "forever continue to make singleplayer, linear, narrative-based games". He also mentioned during an interview from February 2018 that the studio was totally open to make a first-person game in the future - and, since they seem to be making a new IP, this new project might be the perfect time for them to try a different camera angle in their games.
New San Diego Studio Unannounced
In April 2018, David Hall - former Double Helix/Amazon Game Studios - joins an unnamed SIE studio in San Diego as game director on an unannounced title. Since then, rumors about a new Sony first-party studio have been circulating due to a job listing - also from April - in which it was stated that "PlayStation is building a new game development team in partnership with the Visual Arts Service Group" to work on a "high visibility project" described as a third-person action/adventure game "developed in collaboration with a major Sony studio." A month later, Quentin Cobb - former singleplayemultiplayer designer at Naughty Dog on the Uncharted series and The Last Of Us - also joins this new studio in San Diego and in December a new job listing mentions that the team was looking for a lead character artist to work on "the next chapter of cinematic storytelling." In January 2019, James Martinchek - former cutscene/gameplay animator on The Last Of Us, Uncharted 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 - joins the studio as a lead gameplay animator. Also in January, Cobb was asked on Twitter why he couldn't even reveal what studio he was working for, to what he replied that "it is difficult to explain why" - further reinforcing the theory that Sony has assembled a secret studio in the San Diego area. Then in November 2019, Sony announced their plans to set up a support studio in Malaysia and, just a couple of weeks ago, a job listing from SIE Malaysia unveils that they're currently working on "one of PlayStation's [most] well-known and well-loved franchises" for which they are looking for "talented, highly-motivated and creative animators to breathe life into the next chapter of cinematic storytelling." In November 2020, both Quentin Cobb and John Bautista left the studio and the internet started to speculate that Sony had shut down the studio and cancelled the project, something that Bautista denied by stating that "the studio is still there and the project is still ongoing."
Santa Monica Studio (God of War)
Unannounced On April 12th 2018, Cory Barlog spoke during an interview about his desire to work on a new IP "I really would love to create something of my own next. Something that really, really is truly 100% coming from my original vision. That would be awesome, but we have to see if I can convince Sony on that one". Over half a year later, in November, film director Duncan Jones - who had just met with Cory looking for his opinion regarding a certain script - said on Twitter that "If you think that God of War is [Cory’s] magnum opus, just you wait!" Since then, little we've learned about the development of this project, other than the recent news that Alanah Pearce has joined Santa Monica Studio as a junior writer on, apparently, Cory's game. And I say that mainly because, while members of the team behind the next God of War were able to publicly announce their involvement in the making of said title on social media, Alanah is not allowed to reveal what she is working on over at SMS - that being due to the fact that, unlike the upcoming GOW game, Cory Barlog's new project hasn't been revealed yet.
Sucker Punch Productions (inFAMOUS, Ghost of Tsushima)
¿Ghost 2? Look, I haven't played Ghost of Tsushima yet, so I don't know how it ends or if it sets up a sequel or not - but a few weeks ago a job listing from Sucker Punch mentioned that the studio "is looking for a narrative writer for our upcoming projects" and that the ideal candidate would "have previous success as a game writer, outstanding dialogue skills and an excellent understanding of how to tell impactful, character-driven stories within a AAA open-world game" and also "knowledge of feudal Japanese history". That last bit kind of screams some sort of GOT sequel to me.
Supermassive Games (Until Dawn, Hidden Agenda, The Inpatient)
Unannounced Titles In November 2018, Supermassive Games managing director Pete Samuels confirmed that the studio was "working on several unannounced PlayStation exclusives" and stated that their relationship with Sony "is still excellent", even though they choose another publisher for The Dark Pictures Anthology as they wanted to reach the widest possible audience. What that might mean is that they wanna go the multiplatform route with their biggest titles - that being The Dark Pictures Anthology, their response to the requests of an Until Dawn sequel - while keeping the most experimental and smaller stuff exclusive to Google or Sony - meaning that these unannounced titles would probably be cross-gen PSVR games, as Jim Ryan stated that they will not be releasing VR titles exclusively for PS5 until the new headset comes out in a couple of years.
Wild Sheep Studio
WiLD During Sony's GamesCom conference in 2014, Michel Ancel took the stage to introduce WiLD, a new PS4 exclusive developed by his recently formed indie studio. It was described as a title with an open-world "potentially as big as Europe", day and night cycles, dynamic weather and seasons, as well as a seamless online system, in which you could play not only as a human but also as any living creature. Ancel also stated that for the past year, the studio had been working very hard on the proprietary technology and tools they would be using in order to create this very specific type of game that was WiLD. A year later, this time at Sony's Paris Games Week conference, Ancel showed a super early gameplay demo of WiLD. This was the last time we saw WiLD in action, as the information drops regarding this title started to slow down over the years - with most updates consisting of Sony denying cancellation rumors, trademark renewals or off-screen pictures of the game posted on Michel Ancel's Instagram. The most notable piece of news from this period however, was an interview with WiLD producer Mitsuo Hirakawa from November 2017. During said interview, he stated "We are not going to rush [Michel Ancel] to make something that he doesn't want to compromise on." and then he followed "Even experienced developers make mistakes. We have to make mistakes to find the right choices for the design of the game and we want to provide [Wild Sheep Studio] with all the support necessary, so that's why things sometimes do take a lot longer than we expect but we feel that WiLD deserves the extra time and quality before it comes to public." A creative that doesn't want to compromise on his vision? Mistakes that lead into things taking longer than expected? Call me crazy, but I think those statements are pointing directly to some heavy project mismanagement on Ancel's part, as we've seen reports of similar things happening during the development of Beyond: Good & Evil 2. According to snort_cannon "[BG&E2] has been a mess behind the scenes for a pretty long time. To give you a rough idea of how bad it's going, the game was supposedly gonna come out next year [in 2021], but it's not even 50% done. I wouldn't be shocked, if we get an investigation article on its development troubles, soon". Which did in fact happened, as, a couple of months ago, national newspaper Libération published an article on BG&E2's troubled development "Ganesha City, which [he] asked us to do with a completely stupid level of detail, we only just finished it three years later, and we've had to redo it four or five times. Knowing that we have to do several planets, you can imagine the absurdity of this kind of reasoning.""When [Ancel] was spoking to the press, we were taking notes because [...] it could concern points on which we would have been stuck on for months, waiting for directions." Moving onto something else, in July 2018, both Michel Ancel and Wild Sheep's CEO and art director Celine Tellier visited Guerrilla Games. This is interesting, because considering that WiLD went through some serious development hell difficulties, it is not farfetched to think that one of the solutions proposed by Sony to one of the several the problems the game was facing at the time was to drop the in-house engine that Wild Sheep was using up to that point and move the game over to DECIMA - the Guerrilla Games engine that has powered PS4 titles such as Killzone: Shadow Fall and Horizon: Zero Dawn but also Until Dawn and Death Stranding. Such a change could come in handy, especially when we take into account that, just like Horizon and Death Stranding, WiLD is an open-world title that takes place in natural environments. On September 18th 2020, Michel Ancel announced his departure from the games industry and regarding Beyond: Good & Evil 2 and WiLD he stated that "since many months now the teams are autonomous and the projects are going super well. Beautiful things to be seen soon". Hopefully we get to see something next year.
https://www.ioi.dk/hitman-3-pre-launch-guide/ --- Welcome to the HITMAN 3 Pre-launch guide. This blog post will be our place to share in-depth details about HITMAN 3, including how to carryover your progression, our new Access Pass system, what to expect on launch day and more. We are excited to see all of our players embark on Agent 47’s next journey and experience the dramatic conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy. Before you start reading, this is how the game begins.
Release Details
HITMAN 3 will be available on 20 January 2021 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Stadia, Nintendo Switch and PC. We’re happy to confirm that the Nintendo Switch version of HITMAN 3 will also launch on 20 January. The Switch version of HITMAN 3 is playable via cloud streaming technology. A stable and permanent internet connection is required to play. Release Time HITMAN 3 will release simultaneously on all platforms at 13:00 UTC on 20 January 2021. To see the exact release time in your timezone, follow this link. This release time will ensure that the IOI teams in Copenhagen and Malmö are best-placed to ensure a smooth launch. At that time, digital copies will be available to play and the games servers will be online. 📷 Pre-load It will be possible to pre-load HITMAN 3 on PlayStation and Xbox platforms. Make sure that you’ve configured your console to do that and the downloads will begin when they have been prepared and certified. On PC, there won’t be a pre-load option for HITMAN 3 and downloads will begin at the above release time. (For PS4 and PS5 owners in Asia, please note that HITMAN 3 will not be available for pre-order or pre-load. This is due to recent changes in the age ratings systems in those regions. HITMAN 3 will be available for purchase at the above time.) Day One Patch HITMAN 3 will require a day one patch for all disc users. The day one patch will be automatically applied to digital players. This patch will include access to the VR mode for PlayStation users and will include the remaining locations that are not included on the disc. Game Size HITMAN 3 will take up approximately 60-70 GB of storage space on all platforms, with the obvious exceptions of Stadia and Switch. The data that you download will also include all the content required to access HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 2 – but you are still required to own/purchase access to those games. To underline that; purchasing HITMAN 3 does not grant access to the previous two games by default. Using this method allows us to reduce the file size for all players to 60-70 GB and has the benefit of making the process of redeeming or purchase access to HITMAN 1 and HITMAN 2 as simple as possible. (We talk about that more later). Also, we want to clarify that reducing the file size doesn’t mean that we’ve made any compromises on the visual/audio quality of the game. If you’re curious about the technical aspects that made this possible, we recently talked to PC Gamer about it.
HITMAN 3 - Editions
There are two editions of HITMAN 3; The Standard Edition and the Deluxe Edition. – The Standard Edition includes the HITMAN 3 base game. Nice and simple. – The Deluxe Edition includes the HITMAN 3 base game and the Deluxe Pack. Again, nice and simple. The only difference between the two editions is the Deluxe Pack, which includes 6 Deluxe Escalations, in-game suits, items and weapons, a digital soundtrack for each game in the World of Assassination trilogy, an introduction to each HITMAN 3 campaign mission by the Game Director and a digital artbook that highlights the characters, targets and missions included in the trilogy. A free IOI Account is required to download the digital soundtracks and World of HITMAN Art Book. Here’s a visual look at everything that’s packed into the HITMAN 3 Deluxe Edition: 📷 Next-gen Upgrade Console players who pre-order or purchase a physical or digital copy of HITMAN 3 (either Standard or Deluxe) on the current generation of consoles (PS4/Xbox One), will receive a free upgrade to the next-gen version of the game for no additional cost. Note that you won’t be able to receive the next-gen upgrade if you purchase HITMAN 3 on disc and you own a disc-free next gen console. When making a digital purchase, you will automatically be entitled to download the next-gen version when you access the game on that console. When making a physical disc purchase, you’ll need to insert the current gen disc into your next gen console and you’ll be able to download the next-gen version for no additional cost. Simply keep the disc in your machine whenever you want to play and you’ll be good to go. Pre-order Bonus The HITMAN 3 pre-order bonus celebrates all three games in the World of Assassination trilogy. Introducing the Trinity Pack. You’ll get it just by pre-ordering the game, no matter what platform or edition. The Trinity Pack includes a total of 9 items, with 3 distinct sets that represent a different game from the trilogy. Each set includes a suit, briefcase and weapon. From the White of HITMAN 1, the Red of HITMAN 2 or the Black of HITMAN 3, you’ll have all 9 items in your inventory to mix and match as you like. The classic Hitman insignia is etched onto the items in gold to add an elegant flourish. Note: The Trinity Pack will not be included with either the Standard Edition or Deluxe Edition after January 20. 📷 At selected retailers, pre-ordering a physical edition of HITMAN 3 will also include an exclusive physical passport. This unique item is filled with details and references from Agent 47’s career and commemorates 20 years of Hitman. See the list of retailers in our previous pre-order blog post.
Progression Carryover
All current HITMAN 2 players will be able to carryover their hard-earned progression into HITMAN 3. After completing the carryover process, HITMAN 2 players will be able to start HITMAN 3 with their existing player profile, XP rank, location mastery levels, location mastery unlocks, challenge progress, challenge unlocks and Elusive Target suits/unlocks. All of those things are what we call ‘progression’. It’s not possible to pick and choose elements to carryover. It’s all or nothing. The carryover process requires an IOI Account and can only be done through a web browser, it’s not possible to do it in-game. We will have the website ready to go before launch, but it is not live yet. Once it is ready, we will share the news via ioi.dk and update this post. 📷 Here’s more about how it will work: – Progression can only be carried over from HITMAN 2, including progression you have from the Legacy Pack (HITMAN 1 locations within HITMAN 2). – Progression can only be carried over from within the same platform. There are only three options: HITMAN 2 (PlayStation) → HITMAN 3 (PlayStation) HITMAN 2 (Xbox) → HITMAN 3 (Xbox) HITMAN 2 (PC/Steam) → HITMAN 3 (PC/Epic) Note: “PlayStation” = PS4, PS4 Pro and PS5. “Xbox” = Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X. Essentially, it doesn’t matter what specific console you have earned progression on. It only matters that progression can only move forward and within the same console ‘family’. – Progression carryover is a one-time process, meaning once you have performed a carryover for a particular platform, you will not be able to do so again at a later time. – If you have played HITMAN 2 on multiple platforms, you CAN perform a carryover for EACH of those profiles, but only within the same platform, as listed above. For example, if you play H2 on Xbox and PlayStation, you can carryover your H2 Xbox progression into H3 Xbox and independently carryover your H2 PlayStation progress into H3 PlayStation. – When you complete the carryover process, your existing HITMAN 2 progress will remain as it is (i.e it will not be removed/deleted). However, your progression in H2 and H3 will NOT be synchronised. – If you have already started playing HITMAN 3 and THEN choose to perform the progression carryover process, you will lose all progression earned within HITMAN 3 up to that point. We recommend you carryover progress before starting HITMAN 3. 📷 What exactly will be carried over? When you start the process, you will need to select an account that you have linked to your IOI Account. You will then be able to review the HITMAN 2 progress earned on that account and confirm that you want to perform the carryover process into HITMAN 3. The following progression will be included in the carryover process: player profile, XP rank, location mastery levels, location mastery unlocks, challenge progress, challenge unlocks and Elusive Target suits/unlocks. Savegame files are not carried over. Note that there are a small amount of items/unlocks that are not carried over through this process, such as the rewards unlocked through the HITMAN 1 GOTY Escalations, becuase they are linked to a purchase. Those items will be available in HITMAN 3 when you redeem access to the associated content. In addition, the ICA Electrocution Phone has been retired and will not be available in HITMAN 3. HITMAN 3 on Stadia On Stadia, all progression that players have earned in Hitman: World of Assassination (from both H1 and H2) will automatically ‘carryover’ to HITMAN 3. For additional clarity, Stadia and PC are two different platforms and progress cannot be shared or carried over between them. HITMAN 3 on Nintendo Switch Progression carryover is not possible on Nintendo Switch because HITMAN 2 is not available on that platform as a standalone game.
Access Pass FAQ
HITMAN 3 allows players to access locations from the previous games in the trilogy (H1 and H2) and play them all under one roof. Essentially, we have setup H1 and H2 as DLC for HITMAN 3. You can buy or redeem/download an Access Pass and get access to its content within H3. For example, if you buy the HITMAN 2 Standard Access Pass DLC for HITMAN 3, you’ll get access to the locations and missions included in the HITMAN 2 Standard Edition within HITMAN 3. 📷 In addition to the option of purchasing an Access Pass, it is also possible to redeem/download an Access Pass for no additional cost, if you have already purchased that content from the same store that you have pre-ordered or purchased HITMAN 3. To make this happen, we detect what you already have installed for HITMAN 2 and can make the corresponding Access Pass available for no additional cost on the same store. Note: If you only own HITMAN 1, you will need to import that content into HITMAN 2 first, via the instructions in our Legacy Pack FAQ. This process will work between console generations. For example, if you own HITMAN 2 on PS4, you’ll be able to download the HITMAN 2 Access Pass DLC in HITMAN 3 for both PS4 and PS5. The same applies for the Xbox family of consoles as well. We know that’s a lot of information, but once you’ve seen all of the Access Pass options, and there are five in total, it will make more sense. 📷 HITMAN 1 GOTY Access PassIncludes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 1 GOTY Edition: ICA Facility, Paris, Sapienza, Marrakesh, Bangkok, Colorado, Hokkaido, 3x GOTY Escalations and rewards and 4x Patient Zero campaign missions How to get it– Consoles: If you have previously downloaded the HITMAN 1 Legacy Pack, HITMAN 1 GOTY Legacy Pack or HITMAN 1 GOTY Upgrade for HITMAN 2, you will be able to download it for no additional cost. (Yes, that’s a free upgrade to the GOTY Edition if you only own the Standard Edition of H1!). The price for this Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. – Disc: If you own a version of H1 on disc, you must follow the process in the Legacy Pack FAQ to access that content in HITMAN 2 – and then redeem this Access Pass. – PC (Epic): If you pre-purchase or purchase HITMAN 3 on EGS within the first 10 days of launch, you will be granted the HITMAN 1 GOTY Access Pass for no additional charge. In addition, if you own or redeemed a free copy of HITMAN – The Complete First Season on EGS when it was available for free, you will be able to download this Access Pass at any time after purchasing HITMAN 3. 📷 HITMAN 2 Standard Access PassIncludes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 2 Standard Edition: Hawke’s Bay, Miami, Santa Fortuna, Mumbai, Whittleton Creek, Isle of Sgail, plus 1x Sniper Assassin map: Himmelstein How to get it– Consoles: If you own a digital copy of HITMAN 2 Standard Edition or HITMAN 2 SilveGold, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost. The price for this Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. – Disc: [See below] – PC (Epic): As HITMAN 2 is not available on EGS, we have set up an 80% discount for this Access Pass for the first 14 days after HITMAN 3’s launch. HITMAN 2 Standard Access Pass [DISC]Includes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 2 Standard Edition: Hawke’s Bay, Miami, Santa Fortuna, Mumbai, Whittleton Creek, Isle of Sgail, plus 1x Sniper Assassin map: Himmelstein How to get it– Consoles: If you own a physical disc copy of HITMAN 2 Standard Edition, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost through the HITMAN 2 in-game store. (You will see the full listing price if you look for the Access Pass in the PS/Xbox store as a disc owner.) On Xbox, you also need to own a digital copy of either HITMAN 3 or the HITMAN 2 Free Starter Pack before navigating to the in-game store. 📷 HITMAN 2 Gold Access PassIncludes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 2 Gold Edition: Hawke’s Bay, Miami, Santa Fortuna, Mumbai, Whittleton Creek, Isle of Sgail, New York, Haven Island, plus 3x Sniper Assassin maps: Himmelstein, Hantu Port, Siberia and 4x Special Assignments. How to get it– Consoles: If you own a digital copy of HITMAN 2 Gold Edition, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost. The price for this Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. – Disc: If you bought HITMAN 2 Gold Edition on Disc, it will have included a download code for the HITMAN 2 Expansion Pass; you need to use that to get access to the content from the Gold Edition. See below. – PC (Epic): As HITMAN 2 is not available on EGS, we have set up an 80% discount for this Access Pass for the first 14 days after HITMAN 3’s launch. It will also grant access to the HITMAN 2 Expansion Access Pass. 📷 HITMAN 2 Expansion Access PassIncludes: Locations and missions currently available in the HITMAN 2 Expansion Pass: New York, Haven Island, plus 3x Sniper Assassin maps: Himmelstein, Hantu Port, Siberia and 4x Special Assignments. How to get it– Consoles: If you own a digital copy of HITMAN 2 Gold Edition, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost. The price for the Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. – Disc: If you own a physical copy of HITMAN 2 Gold Edition, you will be able to download this Access Pass for no additional cost because a download code for the HITMAN 2 Expansion Pass was included in the box. If you have redeemed that code, the price for this Access Pass will be listed as ‘free’ when you look for it in the store. HITMAN 3 Access Pass on PC We’ve done everything possible to make this process smooth and player-friendly. However, due to various circumstances out of our control, we want to acknowledge that the process is different to our initial plans for PC players. We also want to share some of the initiatives we’ve set-up to make sure that PC players the chance to keep enjoying the benefits of the World of Assassination.
The HITMAN 1 GOTY Access Pass will be available to claim in the first 10 days after launch for anyone who purchases (or has pre-ordered) any edition of HITMAN 3 on Epic Games Store.
Owners of HITMAN 1 on EGS (including all players who claimed it when it was available for free in August) will get a free upgrade to the HITMAN 1 GOTY Access Pass at any time after purchasing HITMAN 3.
The HITMAN 2 Standard Access Pass and HITMAN 2 Gold Access Pass will be 80% off for 14 days after the launch of HITMAN 3 on Epic Games Store and will continue to be discounted regularly.
Our hope is that these initiatives help to ensure all HITMAN 3 PC players can able to enjoy the new game with full access to HITMAN 1 and their progression carried over as a minimum. HITMAN 3 Access Pass on Stadia Due to the convenient set-up of HITMAN 1-3 on Stadia, the Access Pass system is not required. Players will continue to have access to the locations they already own through Hitman: World of Assassination, or can purchase the games that they don’t own through the Stadia Store. HITMAN 3 Access Pass on Switch HITMAN 3 is the first game in the trilogy to be available on Switch. As such, each relevant Access Pass is available for purchase through the HITMAN 3 in-game store.
HITMAN VR
At launch, HITMAN 3 will support PS VR and all locations in the World of Assassination trilogy can be experienced in a new first-person perspective. Yes, that means you can traverse the outside of the tallest building in the (Hitman) world in PS VR! If you own the previous games from the trilogy on PS4, you can also access locations from them within HITMAN 3. That’s more than 20 Hitman locations from the World of Assassination trilogy to enjoy in PS VR. 📷 You can either play HITMAN 3 in PS VR natively on your PS4 or via backward compatibility on PS5. To make sure all PS VR owners can experience the game in VR, we’re including a free digital copy of the PS4 version of HITMAN 3 with all PS5 copies, whether you choose to buy it via disc or digital. If you are playing on PS5, your progress between the PS4 (VR) and PS5 (non-VR) versions is shared between the two versions. You’ll be able to play the non-VR version of HITMAN 3 on PS5 with the next-gen improvements that we support (including Dual Sense support!) and then switch to the PS4 version for VR and all of your items and unlocks will be right there waiting for you. You will need to have both versions of the game installed on your PS5 to make that happen. 📷 Whether you play on PS4 or PS5, a DUALSHOCK®4 wireless controller is required to play HITMAN 3 in VR. Playing HITMAN 3 in VR on PS5 also requires a PlayStation Camera adaptor. For full details on the requirements for playing PS VR on your PS5, including how to order a free PlayStation Camera adaptor, see the official PlayStation PS VR site.
More to come
📷 We have got our sights firmly set on January 20 and our entire team is doing everything in our power to make the launch of HITMAN 3 as successful as possible. It’s an incredibly exciting time for us to be so close to releasing our next game, as well as deliver the dramatic conclusion to the World of Assassination trilogy. Please keep the conversation going on Twitter, Discord, Reddit and in HitmanForum and be excellent to each other. The World of Assassination awaits…
Just Hit GM on Support on PS4 for the First Time Playing Mostly Ana, Zen, Bap, and Lucio Solo Queueing and without being in Team Chat. Here to Give Some General Support Advice. (Part 1)
Background
If you don't care about all this and want to go straight to the advice you can skip to section 2. Hi guys, just wanted to share some insight on my road to grinding support to GM and to give some free advice for players wanting to improve. Here's the Proof that I hit GM if anybody was curious. Just wanted to start by saying that I started off in low gold on my main account back in season 9. I didn't hit Masters until season 16 where I was stuck around the 3.4k-3.6k range until I hit GM on tank in season 23. After that, I wanted to practice support and made a new account so I could start from the ground up and so I wouldn't ruin other people's games because my support was probably not at a high masters/low GM level yet. Overwatch is also the first FPS competitive game I took seriously. To help supplement my practice I watched coaching VOD reviews of Ana, Zen, and Bap and some unranked to GM VODs of people like ML7 and epicenzo. Then I would write down a couple of things that I needed to work on for each hero. I am by no means an amazing player, but through focused practice and time, I was able to hit GM on support. Hoping this post helps aspiring support players who feel stuck in their rank. I also chose to not be in team chat for most of games because I really just wanted to focus on my mechanics and decision making without having to listen to other people complain. My experience in ranked is that I don't hear actual useful callouts until mid to high masters, but even at that rank I still didn't join voice. If you're hardcore, "you must be in voice chat, it's a team game!" kind of person then...I'm sorry?
1 - Controls and Settings for Console
If you are a PC player you can skip this section. Make sure to have all allied health bars on! This will show the HP of teammates at all times and is a very useful piece of information for all support players. It will help dictate healing priorities and who needs healing certain situtations. I'm sure some of you are curious about the specific console settings I use because it can be confusing. Here is a video explaining the differences between all the settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG1P2RsgBbM Dual Zone Horizontal Sens: 70 Vertical sens: 65 Aim Assist Strength: 100 Aim Assist Window Size: 50 Aim Assist Ease In: 70 Aim Smoothing: 98 Aim Ease In: 30 Ana: I had Relative Aim Sensitivity While Zoomed at 60 and Friendly Aim Assist Strength 75. Ultimate was bound to L3 so I wouldn't have to let go of the right stick. Baptiste: Crouch is bound to L3, which is how Baptiste charges his exo boots. This allowed me to have it charged, while keep my aim with the right stick. Lucio: Jump is on L2 and secondary fire is on L3. Backwards wallriding is enabled Zenyatta: Reload is bound to L3 and sensitivity of harmony and discord orb on 70. At the end of the day, work with the sens and controls that work best for you. This is what works for me after hours of experimentation and trial and error and these settings may not necessarily work for you.
2 - Ranked Advice
If you want to go straight into support advice you can skip this section Need a Tough Mental: From when I first placed in plat on the new account to finally hitting GM, I would receive toxic messaged at every rank. Messages like "you're trash" "garbage healer" or my favorite, "I can't believe you're (insert rank here) you're dogshit." I even had a couple of instances playing Zen where my allied tank was shooting me, bodyblocking me, and overall just being a dick so I couldn't see the team fight. Here's the hard truth. There's not a lot you can do about toxic people. I know that scares a lot of you and I can see why. I'll tell you a little secret, people are toxic because that's a coping mechanism for them playing poorly so they deflect blame on someone else on the team. Don't let some random person in a video game diminish who you are as a player and as person. You aren't a shitty person so don't let dickheads on the internet try to put you down. Mute. Report. Go next. Prove the haters wrong! You'll most likely never meet them again anyways. Be Self-Critical and Open to Change: This will be the best advice I can give you that will improve your gameplay in the long-term. On my road to GM, I was constantly reevaluating my mistakes, so I could adjust them for future team fights and games. It's easy to fall into the trap of blaming teammates and attributing losses to them. While that may be the case, there's always something you can do to improve. For me, there are currently two things I am working on that I know I am weak at. Landing reliable sleep darts to defend myself and being more disciplined with my positioning. What are mistakes are you currently trying to work on? Now, don't be that type of person who is overthinking everything about every little mistake they made. That's a quick way to ruin your mental. On the other hand, don't be the type of person who thinks they are doing everything perfectly. There's a nice balance between being confident and being honest about your mistakes. If you find yourself unable to mentally remember your mistakes, write down those mistakes with solutions, then actively apply them in game. Ask for a friend or outside help to give you another perspective if you're having a hard time self-analyzing. Teammates are Going to do Dumbshit: ...and that's okay. I get it. As a support you get front row seats to the circus of ranked. From Reinhardts pinning into spawn, teammates wasting ultimates, Genji's spamming I need healing halfway across the map, I get it. There's a prayer that goes, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." If that doesn't explain how I feel about ranked I don't know what does. You cannot force your teammates to make the right play 100% of the time no matter how loud you scream into your mic, you cannot control all of their actions, and so the best thing you can is to control your own actions. If you are consistently the best player in your lobby you will eventually climb. You don't have to be a god gamer but just slightly better than the players in the lobby. Stick to the fundamentals and abuse the mistakes on the enemy, because trust me, they make a lot of mistakes. Adjusting to the Speed of Play at Different SR: Once I got into the 3.8K range I would be thrown into varying SR lobbies. One game I will be in a 3.4K lobby with plats and the next I would be thrown into an almost full GM lobby. In lower ranked lobbies I could get away with weird flanks and poor positioning, which would not be punished as much. Then once I got into GM lobbies, those bad habits and poor positioning I built would be punished. You don't realize how bad your positioning is until you are being consistently smacked by an enemy Widow, Tracer, McCree, or Doomfist. I had to be disciplined with my positioning, even at the lower ranked games so that when the GM game came I would already be in that mindset. The fundamentals of the game don't change, but the time window to kill someone does. Play for the rank you want to be, not the rank you are in. Short Warm-up Routine: It's good to have a short 5-10 minute warm up routine before you start getting into a ranked session. For me, I use some workshop codes that are shown down below in the Outside Resources section and some deathmatch. This is a great way so that you're not throwing the first few games by missing easy shots. Even after the initial warm-up, it still takes a couple of games for your brain to warm-up to the decision making in game. It wasn't uncommon for me to lose the first few matches even after a good warm-up. Don't let a couple of losses discourage you from continuing your ranked session. Would also like to add that you shouldn't be spending hours on aim trainers and warming up. Aim is great, and is an important skill of Overwatch, but it isn't the only skill. Positioning, movement, cool down management, decision making, awareness, etc are all important aspects that aim trainers won't tech you. This is why a lot of advice for new players is to, "play more" because they just need to experience the complexities of the game. Don't be afraid to make mistakes in ranked as those are good learning opportunities for the next game.
3 - General Support Advice
Understand Your Role and Healing Priorities: The first step that everyone should do is look at their team comp and figure our what your primary job is. For example, if I'm playing Ana with a Rein, Zarya, Mercy, McCree, & Hanzo, I know that my Mercy will default to supporting the DPS, while I default to supporting the tanks. Of course, when situations arise where I need to help out the DPS or Mercy I will, but I already have an idea of what my priorities are going into a team fight. It's easier to adjust to bad situations when you already have an idea of what your default role is. If I feel that my Mercy is mismanaging her resources mid-game then I can always adjust to landing a couple more shots on my DPS when they need it. Ask yourself these 3 questions when it comes to understanding your priorities:
What is my job in this team comp?
What should I use my abilities and ultimate for?
Where should I position in terms of this team comp?
Don't overthink this and make it super simple. It can be as simple as I need to keep my frontline alive or peel for my other support. If you have any specific situations about healing priority, comment down below and I would be happy to answer them. Understand Who on the Enemy Team can Kill You: After 15 seconds into a match you will be able to see the enemy team comp. Get into the habit of checking the scoreboard in between team fights. Take your time to gather all in the information on the enemy. Before doing anything crazy. Most of time, the biggest threats will be the DPS and/or dive tanks. If you're consistently dying to tanks like Rein or Zarya then there is something extremely wrong with your positioning. Adjust you positioning and cool downs accordingly depending on the enemy DPS. I'll get more into depth in Part 2. Awareness. Awareness. Awareness.: This skill is the foundation of game sense and decision making in game. If you have poor awareness you will find yourself struggling executing the points I will be making throughout this post. These are the things you want to look out for to improve awareness:
Where your teammates are positioned: As a support, it's important to get the full view of the battlefield. Constantly remind yourself to be able to see all 5 of your teammates. If you can't see them on your screen then take a second to figure out where they are.
Where the enemy team is positioned: This is to reinforce my previous point of figuring out who on the enemy team might kill you. It's important to know where they might come from. Overwatch maps are designed with a middle land, a left lane, and a right lane. Sometimes the lanes have high ground, go through a tunnel, through a building or combination of those things. There can only be so many ways and enemy can approach you. Take the time to see if you can account for all 6 enemies. If one enemy is missing then they are doing something sneaky on a flank or right behind you.
Kill feed: I am constantly checking the kill feed almost every second. It's an important tool to check the status of the team fight. If my team loses 1 or 2 players very early on then I know to wait for the regroup if I'm on attack. If I'm on the defending side I know I need to make a big play to offset the player advantage from the enemy team. Then if my team loses 4 or more players then 99% of the time I know it's a lost team fight. Simple. Check the kill feed.
Abilities used: Being aware of cool downs helps tremendously. For example, knowing when Zarya uses her bubbles or when Dva's defense matrix is down is a great way to land anti nades as Ana. If you have a hard time visualizing and listening to abilities being used then I suggest watching your own replay code and just listen to the sound queues. You will be shocked on how much you miss.
Ultimates: Ult tracking is considered an advanced technique, but is still an important skill to learn. This is especially important for heroes like Zenyatta or Lucio who have ultimates that can mitigate big enemy ult combos. Start by ult tracking one player on the enemy team. Then eventually you'll be able to do 2, then the whole team, then you'll narrow it down to the ultimates that will play the biggest impact in the upcoming team fight. Bonus tip, if a player hasn't used an ultimate in over 2 team fights then they probably have it.
Value Your Life!: Don't make the mistake of following your teammate into the pits of hell. As a support, your team's success is tied to how long you can survive. The longer you survive the more resources your team will have. Don't go into a bad position or run in the open just to heal a person is missing 5 HP in the middle of a team fight. Supports should almost never be dying at the start of team fights. If you are consistently dying first as a support then you are positioning poorly or mismanaging your abilities. Prioritize your life! Protect Your Fellow Support: Supports. Please. Protect each other! As I mentioned before, the longevity of a support is tied with the success of the team. I know what you're thinking, "if the supports are healing each other then who is healing the frontline?" Let me put it this way, if the enemy team is pumping resources into trying to kill the backline then that means there is less damage going into the rest of your team. Multitasking: You might need to defend yourself for a few seconds, heal your teammate the next, quick scope a low HP enemy the next, all while rotating into a different position at the same time. As a support, you need to be proficient thinking ahead. This is why understanding your role is important before every match. Multitasking requires a mixture of awareness, good decision making, and mechanics. Without each of those components you will find yourself struggling to do multiple actions. Team fights are never static, they constantly evolve, which provide different situations for you to answer. So it's important to change priorities when needed. Remember, critical HP signs show when your teammate has half of their HP or less. So Genji who is at critical vs a Winston who is at critical may need to be healed first as they have a higher chance of dying. It's a case by case basis, but you need to be able to read situations before they happen to be able to get better at multitasking. Be a Threat and Playmaker: Once you've built a strong foundation of dying less, you then need to start becoming a playmaker and damage threat. Supports aren't pushovers and can pack a punch. I mean, Zen can 2 shot headshot and enemy squishy with discord. The reason why this is important is because if you become a threat then the enemy DPS have to respect you. They can't just walk over the backline. If you also become a damage threat then you open up advantages for the rest of your team. For example, as Zen I am putting pressure on the enemy Tracer, which forces her recall. This then allows my Tracer to win the Tracer battle because my Tracer has a distinct advantage. That then leads to an opening kill for the rest of my team to push. Forcing cool downs for free isn't something that will be shown in the stats, but it's an important aspect that will win team fights. Higher Healing Numbers are Overrated: What's the difference in the amount of healing a Mercy can output in GM vs Gold? Answer, 0. A Mercy will always pump out 55HPS no matter what rank. What makes a good support player is how they prioritize their healing in the right situations combined with how their kit impacts a team fight. Anybody can just dump heals on their friendly Reinhardt and get gold healing. News flash, that doesn't win you games. If a ton of healing leads to wins then you would see Moira in every top 500 lobby.
4 - Thought Process on Support Picks
Ana: Ana is a great versatile support pick as she can fit in a lot of team comps. Her long range healing enables high resource intensive tanks like Rein/Zarya but can also support dive tanks like Winston/Dva. These tanks are are also great nano boost targets under the right circumstances. Ana is decent at healing DPS, although it's not her primary focus. Her nano boost is a great pairing for ultimate combos with DPS like Genji, Pharah, and other high mobility heroes like Tracer and Genji. She is also decent at defending herself (if you're capable) with her sleep dart and biotic grenade. Pick Ana with tanks that require high resources, in situations where you need to defend yourself, combo nano boost, and to make high impact plays with anti nade. She is weakest in bunker comps as she doesn't have the "spam damage" compared to Zen and Baptiste. Baptiste: Baptiste is another great versatile support hero as a hybrid between Ana, Zen, and Moira, but with vertical mobility. He absolutely shines in deathball or bunker comps where he can get the most out of his AOE healing. When played in these situations he can build his ultimate after almost every team fight. He can also dish out a ton of damage and can be used to defend himself against flankers or as a 3rd DPS. His biggest weakness is playing in dive as he'll have a hard time healing his teammates. You'll end up using your abilities on yourself, and if you're not getting full advantage of immortality field then may not be worth it to play Baptiste. Pick Baptiste in static bunker or rush comps. Avoid playing him with dive as there are better options like Zen, Mercy, or Ana. Lucio: Lucio is a relatively weak pick at the moment as his biggest strengths, speed boost and dueling are outclassed by ranged poke damage. He can be played in really strong boop maps like Lijiang Tower or Ilios but be careful on tunnel visioning on boops. He is still decent at peeling for your fellow support but Brig is the number one option at dealing with flankers. Dueling potential as a 3rd DPS, while getting teammates into position with speed is the only way I have found success with Lucio. He pairs well with heroes like Rein, Reaper, Mei, etc who require to be in close range to be effective. Lucio is an average pick in the moment as the strength of range damage is more valuable than speed boost. However, he can work with rush comps, but engagement timings have to be decisive. If you end up being a healbot Lucio then consider playing Moira or Baptiste instead as they output more AOE healing than Lucio. Zenyatta: Zen is a glass cannon, but what he lacks in survivability, he makes up for in a shit ton of damage. I personally try to play Zen as much as possible, but he doesn't work well it tanks who require a lot of resources. If that happens then I would pick Ana, Moira, or Baptiste. If I do find that my tanks are feeding or playing too passively that it doesn't matter how much healing I pump into them then I will switch to Zen. His harmony orb works well with flankers like Genji, Tracer, and Echo who can utilize that 30HPS for being more aggressive. Zen works great in dive comps and bunker comps. He's still playable against 1 or 2 flankers (if you can land your shots) but if the enemy team is 3+ man diving you and you aren't getting any peel then I would consider switching off.
Summary
If I were to boil everything down to key points to improve on how I was able to climb as support it would be this
Know your role and priorities in a team comp.
Always think in the back of your head who on the enemy team might kill you.
Position yourself with cover and to see the entire picture of a team fight.
Don't waste abilities.
Finally, don't waste ultimates if a team fight is decisively won or lost.
Follow those 5 steps then apply that to any support hero and you should be able to climb with practice and actively learning. Hope this helps you guys. Remember, it takes time to actually apply knowledge in game. Sometimes you need to take one step back to move two steps forward. A lot of you guys are making constant mistakes so it's important to slow that down, build good habits slowly, so that over time you can make good decisions quickly. Comment down below if you have any specific questions about Overwatch or how I was able to climb and I would be happy to answer them. Here is the link the Part 2 where I go over specific support heroes.
PATCHED AS OF DECEMBER 22nd, 2020. Yes, this glitch is back and it pretty much works the exact same way as it did before. I did this on PS4. Video Guide.
Requirements:
Arena Workshop
Benny’s Mechanic for Arena Workshop
RC Bandito
Free Elegy stored inside the Arena Workshop
Someone playing in a different targeting mode
Make sure your Spawn Location is NOT “Arena Workshop” or “Last Location”
Steps:
Start inside your Arena Workshop and walk over to your RC Bandito
Press Right Dpad to modify, wait about 3 seconds, then disconnect your console from the Internet (or open Spotify / YouTube)
Reconnect to the Internet then load into an invite only session.
Go back to your Arena Workshop but don’t use a personal vehicle. You can use SecuroServ, Pegasus, a civilian vehicle - just avoid using a personal one.
Enter your Elegy and press Right Dpad to modify.
You should have the customization options but it shouldn’t bring your vehicle into the mod shop. You should still be in the parking spot.
Change anything on the vehicle (doesn’t matter what) then sell the vehicle.
You should be stuck on a black screen.
Join someone who’s playing in a different targeting mode. Accept the first message. Decline the second message.
Exit the elegy and then get right back in. Press Right Dpad to modify, this time it should actually bring you into the modshop.
Press the option that says “Upgrade: Benny’s Original Motorworks” but DO NOT actually upgrade the car.
Hover over the option that says “Elegy Retro Custom $904,000” but again, DON’T BUY IT. Wait for about 5 seconds and then go back two times.
Select the option that says “Exit the Workshop”
Your free Elegy should have sold for $904,000. As always, the selling Guidelines:
No more than 2 vehicles within a 2-hr time period
No more than 7 vehicles within a 30-hr time period
————————- EDIT
Having trouble ?
TIPS: - Try spawning at your CEO office and then taking a Pegasus vehicle from the front desk (that’s what I did) - Try setting your spawn location to “Random” and then Job Teleporting to the Arena Workshop - I know I said not but try “last location” too. Some people said it worked for them but this literally doesn’t work for me. - Make sure you don’t have an active personal vehicle when you start this. If you do then return it to storage and equip an outfit to make the game save. - You might be disconnecting too fast, wait about 3 seconds after pressing Right Dpad PATCHED AS OF DECEMBER 22nd, 2020.
An in-depth look at 18* unannounced PlayStation 5 exclusives | Including a new FROM SOFTWARE collab
After posting this in PS5, some people suggested that I should post it here too. So here it is. Arrowhead Game Studios (Magicka, Gauntlet, Helldivers)
Testament In 2016, Arrowhead started to work on their first ever AAA game - a project that would require not only the attention of the entire team, but also to grow the studio way beyond the 35 employees that worked on Arrowhead around that time. That's why in 2017 they moved into a bigger office where they could accommodate all of their staff - both old and new. Then in 2018, Arrowhead's co-founder stated in an interview that they were making a third-person game this time around and, due to the change in perspective, moving the focus from local co-op to making it purely online co-op. Friendly fire is confirmed to be making a return. In early 2019, some Arrowhead developers were spotted at GDC wearing jackets with a "Testament Dev Team" written in the back. While recapping 2019, it was stated on the Arrowhead website that they had made a "butt-ton of progress" on the game and that by the end of the year the studio had already grown to roughly 60 people.
Bend Studio (Siphon Filter, Days Gone)
Days Gone Days Gone ends on a cliffhanger, but so did The Order 1886 and, well, we all know how that ended up - so let's delve a bit deeper into why Days Gone 2 will be a thing. In 2019, a couple of weeks before the game's launch, a Sony PR guy said that Days Gone was seen as a "franchise" in Sony's eyes, stating that "the goal is always to make a game that people love and want more of". One month later, the game came out and delivered some surprisingly solid numbers not only at launch but also throughout the year, thanks to the good word-of-mouth it had amongst the community. According to snort_cannon, the success of the game came as a surprise even to Sony, who was expecting Days Gone to be the disappointment and Death Stranding being the one doing crazy numbers. Later that year, Bend Studio managing director Chris Reese kind of teased that a sequel was in the works when asked about it during an interview: "This is a world that we want to keep breathing more life into, and explore many, many different avenues. So who knows, we'll see!"
Bluepoint Games (Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, Demon's Souls)
Bloodborne Remastered In May 2020, NeoGAF user Celine.D.Sykes - who previously discussed this project in February 2019 on the ResetEra forums - talked about the Bloodborne remaster in greater detail: "During my time on ResetEra, I only knew that From Software wanted Bloodborne to release on PC. Unfortunately, a PC port would need a lot of work […] and reworking Bloodborne's engine would take a great amount of work. The game logic is tied to framerate, among many other baffling decisions. The last time From Software tried to change the inner logic of an engine; it resulted in the infamous PC port of the first Dark Souls." "Making a long story short, Sony said they were interested in a potential Bloodborne remaster for PS5, with a lot more work done, like some QoL added and some cut-content being introduced. Both From Software and Sony agreed to not just up the resolution and the framerate, but to make something great. FromSoftware has been authorized to release the game on PC, but only some months after the remaster hits PS5." "Last time I heard about it, Bloodborne remaster would be part of PS5 line-up, but I don't quite believe it since I think the spotlight will be stolen by another similar title [Demon's Souls] that should be announced in June. I think they might save the Bloodborne remaster for some months after PS5 release, but I could be wrong about that particular point." According to another report by a different source, the game is being developed by both QLOC - the studio behind 2018's Dark Souls: Remastered - and Bluepoint Games. Now that Demon's Souls is out and considering how far along Bloodborne Remastered has been reported to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it is currently planned to be revealed at The Game Awards. Unannounced On November 20th 2020, in response to a user who claimed that the rumored Bluepoint acquisition by Sony would be very boring as far as hype goes, KatharsisT said: "If you knew what Bluepoint is on at the moment, you wouldn't say that (Yeah, it's a hype post [and] you'll have to wait to know what it is)". Shortly after that, a mod stepped in to say that "KatharsisT has shown sufficient evidence to support this claim." A couple of posts later, MarsipanRumpan - the guy behind the Bluepoint acquisition rumor - also backed the statements made by KatharsisT "I’m totally on your side. Talked with my source, I think we have the same info regarding their next remake. People who aren’t hyped for Bluepoint don’t know what their next project is as you said. Because that shit is [mindblowing]." Regarding the rumors of a Metal Gear Solid remake, all I'm gonna say is: don't listen to what Moore's Law is Dead and other youtubers are saying, it is all bullshit; but at the same time don't lose faith, as chances of Bluepoint's next remake being MGS are high, considering how it seems they're working on a bigger and more prestigious title than Demon's Souls and also the good relationship Sony currently has with Konami.
From Software (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Deráciné)
Unannounced A couple of weeks ago, MarsipanRumpan - the guy who recently reported about Bluepoint's acquisition on ResetEra - said that he has heard that Sony is in talks with From Software regarding the making of a new PS5 exclusive directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. This would be the third game From has currently in their pipeline, with Elden Ring and a new Armored Core being the other two. MarsipanRumpan also clarified that it will be a while before we see this new game in motion anyway.
Guerrilla Games (Killzone, Horizon)
Unannounced In February 2018, Simon Larouche - former multiplayer designer on Killzone 2, R6 Patriots and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, as well as game director on R6 Siege - joins Guerrilla as game director, starting to work on an unannounced project completely unrelated to the Horizon sequel (now known as Forbidden West), which was also in development at the time. Then in July, Hermen Hulst announced plans for Guerrilla to move into a new, bigger office where they could expand their staff count from 250 to 400 people, allowing them to make games faster and release a new title every two to three years. In October 2018, Chris Lee - former multiplayer designer on several SOCOM titles at Slant Six Games and on Ubisoft's R6 Siege - joins Guerrilla as principal game designer on Larouche's project. Apart from the fact that Lee's hiring makes it pretty clear that Guerrilla's second team is working on a shooter game of some sorts, it's worth pointing out that Lee lists "cooperative and competitive multiplayer, open world systemic gameplay and online social experiences" as his current interests on his LinkedIn profile - with the open world bit being especially interesting as it was also mentioned in certain job listings for the project in 2019. In August 2020, Guerrilla finally moved to their new office, which means the studio is now ready to begin large-scale recruiting on its second project once they see it fit - although I don't expect to hear about this project until after the release of Forbidden West in the second half of 2021.
Insomniac Games (Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, Marvel's Spider-Man)
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 The recently released Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales entered development in May 2018 under the direction of Brian Horton, while Bryan Intihar was finishing up his work on the original Marvel's Spider-Man, which came out in September of that year. So right after wrapping up the first game and with Miles Morales in the hands of a separate team, Intihar started preparing the next main entry in the series as teased in January 2019 when he posted on Twitter "Few things are more nerve-wracking than sharing your first story draft to others."
Japan Studio (Gravity Rush, The Last Guardian, Astro)
RaySpace Sometime in spring 2014, a couple of weeks before E3, Reddit user Ruin4r leaked a number of titles in development exclusively for PS4, including a new God of War, The Last Guardian, a The Last Of Us sequel, Dead Don't Ride (later confirmed to be Days Gone's codename) and an "unnamed space game" - which by the way wasn't Santa Monica Studio's cancelled new IP for PS4, as that project was axed earlier that year. A year later, Shuhei Yoshida stated in an interview at E3 2015 that "Japan Studio is now producing a really great project that I'm really excited about" - which also wasn't Gravity Rush 2, as that title was referenced as a different project later in the interview. In April 2016, Ruin4r said that all the games previously teased by him were still in development and clarified that many of them - God of War, TLOU2, Days Gone and the "unnamed space game" - were in early stages when he first talked about them. Then on June 6th 2016, during a livestream in celebration of Famitsu's 30th Anniversary, SIE's Yasuhiro Kitao teased a a new title to Famitsu's editor-in-chief Katsuhio Hayashi by letting him read some text from his tablet, as Kitao didn't have any images to show. Hayashi was blown away by whatever thing he read and stated that "this will definitely be worth waiting for." In December 2017, SIE trademarked "RaySpace" in Canada - which most probably was the final title for the "unnamed space game" mentioned by Ruin4r. That same month, Japan Studio's award-winning creative director Tsutomu Kouno stated in an interview "I have not been able to announce a new title in a long time, but in 2018, I would like to announce what I am preparing". Japan Studio producer Teruyuki Toriyama - who has been teasing this project since 2015, describing it in multiple occasions as an "ambitious title" - also promised an announcement in 2018. Sometime in 2018, an interview to a Japan Studio employee was posted on the SIE website; in it there was an image that contained shots of two upcoming games in the background: the Demon's Souls remake (top right corner) and some sort of sci-fi first-person game. But 2018 went by without any sort of reveal regarding this project and in December, Toriyama once again teased an announcement for the coming year "In 2019, we are preparing for the debut of unannounced title(s) currently in production". It is worth noting that Japan Studio didn't reveal any new games in 2019. I doubt that RaySpace was cancelled, as you don't pull the plug on a project that has been in the works for four or five years and was so close to being revealed. So what I believe is that they decided to move it to PlayStation 5 - just like they did with other projects such as Sackboy: A Big Adventure or Horizon: Forbidden West - and maybe even bring it back to the drawing table a little - which would explain why we haven't seen it this year during the PS5 reveal events. Silent Hill In 2018, Konami reached out to various developers to pitch ideas for two Silent Hill games: one a soft-reboot of the franchise; the other an episodic Telltale/Until Dawn-style game to go alongside the reboot. In fact, one of the studios contacted by Konami was Supermassive Games, creators of Until Dawn, although they ultimately didn't get the job. Japan Studio's creative director Keiichiro Toyama, who had been wanting to work on a new horror game for quite some time, was developing a new entry in the Siren franchise at the time. Sony, who weren't fully keen on the idea of investing on a niche series such as Siren, decided to pull the plug on the project as they started negotiating a deal with Konami for getting Japan Studio to work on the Silent Hill soft-reboot - a prestige project for the PS5 lineup based on a globally renowned IP, something that would allow Toyama to have a bigger budget and more resources at his disposal. Eventually the deal would get finalized, putting Sony Interactive Entertainment in charge of developing, funding and publishing the title in exchange for keeping the exclusive and most of the revenue, with Konami being indirectly involved by outsourcing the IP against an 8% of the revenue. And that way, the game entered development in early 2019, salvaging as much from the technological work done for the Siren game as possible. At some point in 2019, an interview to a Japan Studio employee posted on the SIE website showed a developer working on a handgun model - something that, if we consider the other projects Japan Studio has in the pipeline, would only align with Silent Hill. On January 21st 2020, Rely on Horror reported that they've heard from a source of their own that a new Silent Hill game was in development. A day later, movie industry insider Emre Kaya posted on Twitter that he has learned that Sony is working on a new horror game for PS5. On March 12th 2020, Rely on Horror stated that Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka and creature designer Masahiro Ito are returning alongside the series creator Keiichiro Toyama to helm a soft-reboot of the franchise developed by Japan Studio, just called Silent Hill. Both of their sources mentioned Sony as the driving force behind bringing the series back. That same day, Emre Kaya said on Twitter that this was the Sony horror game that he talked about back in January. In April 2020, ResetEra user KatharsisT backed Rely on Horror's information regarding the Silent Hill soft-reboot and confirmed a third-person perspective and that the game was playable already. She also said that it is planned to be announced before PS5's launch, with a release in spring 2021 - although these reveal and release windows were from before COVID started to fuck up their schedule. Shortly after, a mod stepped into the discussion to state that they've verified her information on the subject. In May 2020, Reddit user snort_cannon, who had already discussed the game months ago, said that "the game was planned on being shown off this summer. Unless something bad happens, it should happen. The plan at first was just to do a CG trailer to announce that the game exists, but I personally think at this point [they] might delay the reveal and add some gameplay footage as well". When asked about his sources, he answered "Same source that told me about the Sony deal, albeit last update came in early February and COVID didn’t rampage as hard as it’s going now." On August 3rd 2020, ResetEra user Navtra, who leaked a list of games that went on to be present on both PS5 events days in advance to June's The Future of Gaming, commented on the Silent Hill rumors "I can only confirm one thing: it was never on the table for June's event. FFXVI and Marvel's Avengers Spider-Man character announcement were among other things that were supposed to be there and were moved last minute. Silent Hill never was". If we look at both KatharsisT and snort_cannon's comments in regards to the reveal window for the game after having learned this, it becomes clear that the reveal was initially planned for the second PS5 event, that being September's PS5 Showcase - an event that the game missed because of delays in production related to the COVID pandemic. On October 31st 2020, KatharsisT stated that something had just made her expect a reveal at The Game Awards. A couple of days later, Rely on Horror reported that recent rumors of a Silent Hill announcement at The Game Awards line up with some information they received a while back but choose not to report on. On November 21st 2020, KatharsisT once again teased a Silent Hill reveal at The Game Awards "You'll celebrate it before the end of the year if everything goes as planned" while also stating that she thinks the game is still planned for 2021.
London Studio (The Getaway, PlayStation VR Worlds, Blood & Truth)
Horizon VR On October 2019, VR consultant Callum Hurley posted on Twitter that he had learned about an "exciting new PlayStation VR game coming out of London Studio" through someone who had just playtested the title. He also vaguely implied it was a Horizon VR game and, when news outlets started to report on his tweets, he apologized to the development team as he didn't expect such coverage. Same as the unannounced VR titles from Supermassive Games, I do expect this Horizon VR game to be a cross-gen release sometime next year.
In July 2018, we've learned thanks to a job listing that MediaVision was working on a new PlayStation 4 RPG. It is worth noting that a year earlier Sony stated that, even though their investments have been mainly focused on titles aimed to a global audience do to the soaring in development costs, the success of recent titles such as Persona 5 or Nier Automata amongst overseas audiences has made them consider a return to first-party JRPG development. Then in June 2019, DasVergeben posted on Reddit "Something I have heard for a while now is that a new Wild Arms game is in development but it has been over a year long journey getting that verified. I still struggle to get definite enough confirmation but I think it might have been because I heard about it too early". In a separate post, Vergeben added "I don't know much other than that it apparently is in development by Media Vision for PS4. I haven't been told anything specific yet at least. I do wonder if Sony might try and shift over to push it as a PS5 launch game or something if they don't reveal it this year [...] but that's simply speculation on my behalf." At this point I expect the game to be a cross-gen release, as it wouldn't make sense to leave the PS4 users behind with a title that surely won't be a technological showcase unlike native PS5 games such as Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last Of Us)
The Last Of Us: Factions On September 26th 2019, Naughty Dog posted a statement on Twitter in which they basically announced that the multiplayer mode they had planned for The Last Of Us: Part II had grown beyond an additional mode that could be included alongside the game's enormous singleplayer campaign, so they decided to turn it into a standalone game in order to not compromise on the ambitions of the studio's multiplayer team. Then in April 2020, a short gameplay clip from a March 2018 build of the multiplayer leaked online as part of a bigger leak that revealed tons of story spoilers and cutscenes from The Last Of Us: Part II. Assuming that this TLOU multiplayer game is planned for a release on both PS4 and PS5 sometime next year, we would be in front of a title with over four years of overall dev time - meaning that the project might be greater in scope than what most of us are expecting it to be. Unannounced On October 10th 2018, movie industry insider Daniel Ritchman reported that Naughty Dog was in the process of casting an actor to play the lead role on an upcoming game. According to the casting description, the studio was looking for a "Black/African American male, 40s to 60s, short to medium length hair, with a body type similar to those in the images below, strong but not chiseled". But since this doesn't tell us much about the game, apart from hinting at it being a new IP, let's go a little back in time in search of more potential details. During the The Last Of Us: Part II panel at PSX 2017, Neil Druckmann stated that Naughty Dog will "forever continue to make singleplayer, linear, narrative-based games". He also mentioned during an interview from February 2018 that the studio was totally open to make a first-person game in the future - and, since they seem to be making a new IP, this new project might be the perfect time for them to try a different camera angle in their games.
New San Diego Studio Unannounced
In April 2018, David Hall - former Double Helix/Amazon Game Studios - joins an unnamed SIE studio in San Diego as game director on an unannounced title. Since then, rumors about a new Sony first-party studio have been circulating due to a job listing - also from April - in which it was stated that "PlayStation is building a new game development team in partnership with the Visual Arts Service Group" to work on a "high visibility project" described as a third-person action/adventure game "developed in collaboration with a major Sony studio." A month later, Quentin Cobb - former singleplayemultiplayer designer at Naughty Dog on the Uncharted series and The Last Of Us - also joins this new studio in San Diego and in December a new job listing mentions that the team was looking for a lead character artist to work on "the next chapter of cinematic storytelling." In January 2019, James Martinchek - former cutscene/gameplay animator on The Last Of Us, Uncharted 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 - joins the studio as a lead gameplay animator. Also in January, Cobb was asked on Twitter why he couldn't even reveal what studio he was working for, to what he replied that "it is difficult to explain why" - further reinforcing the theory that Sony has assembled a secret studio in the San Diego area. Then in November 2019, Sony announced their plans to set up a support studio in Malaysia and, just a couple of weeks ago, a job listing from SIE Malaysia unveils that they're currently working on "one of PlayStation's [most] well-known and well-loved franchises" for which they are looking for "talented, highly-motivated and creative animators to breathe life into the next chapter of cinematic storytelling." In November 2020, both Quentin Cobb and John Bautista left the studio and the internet started to speculate that Sony had shut down the studio and cancelled the project, something that Bautista denied by stating that "the studio is still there and the project is still ongoing."
Santa Monica Studio (God of War)
Unannounced On April 12th 2018, Cory Barlog spoke during an interview about his desire to work on a new IP "I really would love to create something of my own next. Something that really, really is truly 100% coming from my original vision. That would be awesome, but we have to see if I can convince Sony on that one". Over half a year later, in November, film director Duncan Jones - who had just met with Cory looking for his opinion regarding a certain script - said on Twitter that "If you think that God of War is [Cory’s] magnum opus, just you wait!" Since then, little we've learned about the development of this project, other than the recent news that Alanah Pearce has joined Santa Monica Studio as a junior writer on, apparently, Cory's game. And I say that mainly because, while members of the team behind the next God of War were able to publicly announce their involvement in the making of said title on social media, Alanah is not allowed to reveal what she is working on over at SMS - that being due to the fact that, unlike the upcoming GOW game, Cory Barlog's new project hasn't been revealed yet.
Sucker Punch Productions (inFAMOUS, Ghost of Tsushima)
¿Ghost 2? Look, I haven't played Ghost of Tsushima yet, so I don't know how it ends or if it sets up a sequel or not - but a few weeks ago a job listing from Sucker Punch mentioned that the studio "is looking for a narrative writer for our upcoming projects" and that the ideal candidate would "have previous success as a game writer, outstanding dialogue skills and an excellent understanding of how to tell impactful, character-driven stories within a AAA open-world game" and also "knowledge of feudal Japanese history". That last bit kind of screams some sort of GOT sequel to me.
Supermassive Games (Until Dawn, Hidden Agenda, The Inpatient)
Unannounced Titles In November 2018, Supermassive Games managing director Pete Samuels confirmed that the studio was "working on several unannounced PlayStation exclusives" and stated that their relationship with Sony "is still excellent", even though they choose another publisher for The Dark Pictures Anthology as they wanted to reach the widest possible audience. What that might mean is that they wanna go the multiplatform route with their biggest titles - that being The Dark Pictures Anthology, their response to the requests of an Until Dawn sequel - while keeping the most experimental and smaller stuff exclusive to Google or Sony - meaning that these unannounced titles would probably be cross-gen PSVR games, as Jim Ryan stated that they will not be releasing VR titles exclusively for PS5 until the new headset comes out in a couple of years.
Wild Sheep Studio
WiLD During Sony's GamesCom conference in 2014, Michel Ancel took the stage to introduce WiLD, a new PS4 exclusive developed by his recently formed indie studio. It was described as a title with an open-world "potentially as big as Europe", day and night cycles, dynamic weather and seasons, as well as a seamless online system, in which you could play not only as a human but also as any living creature. Ancel also stated that for the past year, the studio had been working very hard on the proprietary technology and tools they would be using in order to create this very specific type of game that was WiLD. A year later, this time at Sony's Paris Games Week conference, Ancel showed a super early gameplay demo of WiLD. This was the last time we saw WiLD in action, as the information drops regarding this title started to slow down over the years - with most updates consisting of Sony denying cancellation rumors, trademark renewals or off-screen pictures of the game posted on Michel Ancel's Instagram. The most notable piece of news from this period however, was an interview with WiLD producer Mitsuo Hirakawa from November 2017. During said interview, he stated "We are not going to rush [Michel Ancel] to make something that he doesn't want to compromise on." and then he followed "Even experienced developers make mistakes. We have to make mistakes to find the right choices for the design of the game and we want to provide [Wild Sheep Studio] with all the support necessary, so that's why things sometimes do take a lot longer than we expect but we feel that WiLD deserves the extra time and quality before it comes to public." A creative that doesn't want to compromise on his vision? Mistakes that lead into things taking longer than expected? Call me crazy, but I think those statements are pointing directly to some heavy project mismanagement on Ancel's part, as we've seen reports of similar things happening during the development of Beyond: Good & Evil 2. According to snort_cannon "[BG&E2] has been a mess behind the scenes for a pretty long time. To give you a rough idea of how bad it's going, the game was supposedly gonna come out next year [in 2021], but it's not even 50% done. I wouldn't be shocked, if we get an investigation article on its development troubles, soon". Which did in fact happened, as, a couple of months ago, national newspaper Libération published an article on BG&E2's troubled development "Ganesha City, which [he] asked us to do with a completely stupid level of detail, we only just finished it three years later, and we've had to redo it four or five times. Knowing that we have to do several planets, you can imagine the absurdity of this kind of reasoning.""When [Ancel] was spoking to the press, we were taking notes because [...] it could concern points on which we would have been stuck on for months, waiting for directions." Moving onto something else, in July 2018, both Michel Ancel and Wild Sheep's CEO and art director Celine Tellier visited Guerrilla Games. This is interesting, because considering that WiLD went through some serious development hell difficulties, it is not farfetched to think that one of the solutions proposed by Sony to one of the several the problems the game was facing at the time was to drop the in-house engine that Wild Sheep was using up to that point and move the game over to DECIMA - the Guerrilla Games engine that has powered PS4 titles such as Killzone: Shadow Fall and Horizon: Zero Dawn but also Until Dawn and Death Stranding. Such a change could come in handy, especially when we take into account that, just like Horizon and Death Stranding, WiLD is an open-world title that takes place in natural environments. On September 18th 2020, Michel Ancel announced his departure from the games industry and regarding Beyond: Good & Evil 2 and WiLD he stated that "since many months now the teams are autonomous and the projects are going super well. Beautiful things to be seen soon". Hopefully we get to see something next year.
All good things must come to an end and how they end will either be with a whimper or a bang. In Arkham Knights case it kind of ends with both and I did not think that could be. To me for every good thing I liked about Arkham Knight there was something I disliked that prevented it from becoming my personal favorite Arkham game. Let me start off with the pros: First these graphics are incredible and still hold up five years later. Which is even more impressive considering this was still in the early years of the PS4/XBOX ONE generation. Gotham City feels like it was taken straight from the comics and aesthetic wise its a weird, but cool combination of old and new. One section of the city is filled with classic architecture while another looks like it was plucked straight out of Time Square with its neon build boards and lighting. But that doesn’t mean there is time for leisure because with the city evacuated all that is left are thugs and the militia run by the new villain called Arkham Knight. I praise how easy it is to access side missions, just a spin of the wheel and you can select who to bring to justice next. You will have to reach a certain percentage of the story as a requirement and that was the right call. It allows you to take a break from the heavy story moments and believe me this is a heavy story. Every Arkham game IMO outdoes itself narrative wise. Last warning, spoilers incoming because there is no way to talk about this game without talking about it. It turns out Batman along with four other civilians have been infected with Jokers blood, it turns out it messes with a persons psyche and will eventually become the Joker without a cure. Add a dose of fear gas in Batman’s system and now he is hallucinating the Joker, voiced again by Mark Hamill. Some have noticed that Bruce never addresses or talks to Joker and that is because Joker’s dialogue is Bruce’s inner doubts and insecurities. Seriously go on YouTube and really listen to what he is saying you’ll notice it too. Sometimes he will just flat out say Bruce’s methods are just wrong. When you arrest Chief Underhill Joker explains how he will become another criminal. When you (finally) lock up the Riddler he says my favorite line: “Beat him up, lock him up. That’s the best medicine” be honest you know he’s right. There is also Barbra’s “suicide” which had me in shock and then there’s the mystery of who the Arkham Knight is, and it is pretty obvious. Kind of disappointing really. Wouldn’t it have been cooler if we never find out who the Knight is? Alfred tries so hard to uncover his identity only to end up short and not knowing is something Bruce can’t handle. As a long time reader as Batman comics trust me when I say that “not knowing” is one of the many things that he hates. When you need a break from the story there are side missions to seek out like stopping Two-Face from robbing the banks, stopping Hush from bankrupting Wayne Enterprises, liberate Gotham from Militia forces and several DLC missions that wrap up some loose ends with Ra’s Al Ghul and Mr. Freeze. My personal favorites were chasing Firefly and Man-Bat. Man-Bat came out of left field and while he doesn’t have a real boss fight, the thrill is in the chase. Firefly also doesn’t have a boss fight, you just have to keep up with him which does make sense. If I was facing Batman and had a jetpack I too would get the hell out of there. And since there is no avoiding it lets talk about the bosses. It’s pretty clear Origins had the best bosses in the franchises as in Arkham Knight they are underwhelming. I mean c’mon you don’t even fight Deathstroke hand to hand! Could you imagine the possibilities if Rocksteady went all out on a Deathstroke vs Batman rematch. I did enjoy Killer Croc because you’re teaming up with Nightwing and Scott Porter nails the charismatic/over confidant personality of Dick Grayson. Crispin Freeman is back as Lynns and he is an absolute delight. I don’t know what direction he was given, but I’m assuming he was told to chew up as much of the scenery as possible. I cannot share the same praise for some of the new casting choices. John Noble and Johnathan Banks are a fine Scarecrow and Jim Gordon respectively, but aren’t very memorable. Curiously Kimberly Brooks was replaced as Oracle. A tad disappointing because she would have nailed the material. And for my last complaint is Troy Baker as Arkham Knight/Red Hood. Normally I would be so down for it, but Troy was already Joker, Two-Face, and Robin. Did he really need to be a fourth character? In fact Robin is in the game and is voiced by Matthew Mercer? Why didn’t Troy repriseTim? Mercer would have made an excellent Red Hood. Anyway back to the positives: Combat has peaked with the inclusion of environmental takedowns, team takedowns, and multi fear takedowns. At this point you do feel just as overpowered as the Batman himself. The skins are great and are easier to access compared to Arkham City (still didn’t get that Red Sun skin though). We have even more playable characters than ever and all of them have their own skins… except for Batgirl who was done dirty. I mean no classic suit? Not even the Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown costumes. Everyone also has their style and at least one or two different gadgets. Except for Batgirl who does play pretty similar to Batman, but makes up for it with her ability to hack into certain hazards to provide stealth takedowns. And let me just say playing as Red Hood is essentially playing another game as one of his stealth takedowns is a neck snap and he straight up murders henchmen with his pistols… it’s a change of pace for sure. Each of the DLC characters have their own side story (excluding Azrael which is weird because it seems like they were setting him up for one) and Batgirls is easily the best as it has a more fleshed out campaign, collectibles to destroy, and a respectable map size. Everyone else’s is very disappointing as they are are about 15 minutes. Even faster if you are a season veteran of these games. To add in some extra difficulty you can’t upgrade any armor (and let me tell you these kids are made out of paper without it). At least you can still play them in the combat challenges. Ok I’ve avoided the elephant in the room for long enough. Let’s talk about the Batmobile. I know a lot of people have opinions on it and mine are rather mixed. The combat is simple and that’s ok, you aim for the drones weapons and press X to dodge. Remember this is the first time the Batmobile can be operated so combat was never going to be as polished so I had no problem with how simplified it is. The driving controls can be over sensitive at first, in my experience one slight movement of the joystick will send me into a U-Turn, but you will get use to steering and the boost functions. What I have a problem with are the stealth segments. Imagine you have the ultimate tank ready to tear down any foes that stand in your way head on. What if instead of doing that you have to slowly move around the map, sneak up behind another drone, wait till you have a lock on, then fire. These segments stops the pacing of the game dead on its tracks and you will wish that they will just end. Don’t even get me started on that fucking excavator boss fight. Is the Batmobile really as bad as the internet says it is? No I don’t think so, it’s fun in the beginning, it doesn’t feel like a drag until the third act of the game and it makes you forget about the fun you were having. The developers had good ideas on paper, but playing them out they weren’t fun, like I said this is the first time the Batmobile has been featured so prominently, maybe if there was another Arkham game we would have seen some improvements. Well there is only one thing to talk about and that’s the ending. Personally I liked how it ended, but what I don’t like are the requirements, well more like one specific requirement. You see in order to initiate the Knightfall protocol you have to complete every side mission and lock up every single criminal. Shut down Penguins gun smuggling operations? Got it. Rescue all of the Firefighters? Done and done. Takedown all of the watchtowers/drones/bombs deployed by the militia? Someone has to do it. What I hate is that in order to arrest Riddler you will have to solve every riddle and collect every trophy. It is even more tedious considering the fact that you had to pass nine trials to free Catwoman. Shouldn’t have that been enough to unlock the boss fight? If it had ended after said trials that would have been fine, but getting every trophy and riddle and disarming the bombs? What if you had to that for Arkham Asylum and Arkham City? Or even Origins? Would you have enjoyed them as much? So in the end was Arkham Knight my favorite game in the franchise? No, City will always be my personal favorite. Is it a bad game like the internet says it is. I certainly don’t think so. It’s a solid 8 out of 10, there are just a few problems I had that prevented it from being a 9 to me personally. Its story, combat, and playable characters makes it worth playing. It is a bittersweet feeling marathoning all of these games. I miss them. Their stories, the easter eggs, the gameplay, everything. Rocksteady crafted not just one, but three love letters to Batman and his mythos. These weren’t just developers, they were fans just like us. Whatever the future holds with Suicide Squad I know Rocksteady will deliver a memorable experience. Side note: I loved Arkham Origins when I played back when I was 15 and I would have reviewed it if it had a remastered.
Yes. CDPR is vehemently against DRM, and the DRM-free nature of Cyberpunk has been confirmed by journalists. Whether it's Steam, GoG, or Epic Game Store, you will be able to run the game without any of them open, and YES, you can technically just copy and paste the game onto 20 computers if you wanted. That's just what DRM-free means, but PLEASE support the developers. Again, this obviously doesn't include stuff like consoles or Stadia which are inherently locked by nature.
--Difference between Steam and GoG?--
Ultimately, no differences. Both are DRM free, both have achievements, both will update at the same time. CDPR, the makers of Cyberpunk 2077, own GOG, so if you buy it from there the devs get 100% of your money. Every platform will get its own comic and on Steam you get an exclusive short story; they'll all probably be all over the internet in 5 seconds though, if you really care.
CDPR has been inconsistent with official support for their games. Their official word for Cyberpunk 2077 specifically is "not at the moment" because they want to focus on the core game, which I guess isn't a no. Witcher 2 actually had RedKit for official modding support, and Cyberpunk 2077 uses an upgraded version of the same engine, so it's possible a new RedKit will be released someday. However, even without modding support at the start, Witcher 3 still had a ton of modding. Most notably, the infamous nudity mods that gave gamers the world over the joy of seeing Geralt's buttery buttocks all the time instead of just in a few scenes, because no one cared about anyone else's buttocks, obviously. With the popularity of the game, though, CDPR would be bonkers to not officially add modding support, and honestly, the modding community probably won't care even if they don't. So that's kind of where we're at: A solid WE SHALL SEE.
--Next-gen Patch? How does it run on consoles?--
Note that CDPR hasn't said a single thing about FPS/resolution targets on any of the consoles either, sorry. IMO this is really something they should revealed already, but meh. Next-gen patch is planned for next year; CDPR has not given a date. The game runs a bit better on next-gen consoles, but will not have any next-gen features or graphical enhancements until this patch. Here is the official X Box One X and Series X gameplay. Here is the official PS5 and PS4 Pro gameplay. Note that outside of these videos, all gameplay has been on high end PCs, so please don't let your expectations get out of hand due to the trailers. No gameplay has been shown on the base models. CDPR says it runs fine, but, again, I'd seriously taper my expectations. Cyberpunk 2077 will offer a fee next-gen copy of the game for those who buy an old-gen version, so you don't have to buy the game twice. The game also features cross-saves between consoles of the same brand, detailed here for Sony and here for Microsoft.
--GoG Account Link Freebies?--
CDPR hasn't actually spoken about this, but they have mentioned there will be shirts and swords and other goodies if you own their prior games, and that it doesn't matter where you own them. Expect information this week, likely.
--Multiplayer--
This will be free for anyone who already owns the base game (so half the world, I guess). There's no release date, but it was expected in 2022 and may now release in 2023 instead. We don't have many details other than it's being headed by some MMO veterans and is a separate AAA project according to CDPR. For people asking, it's actually old news that it'll be free (sorry couldn't find the original interview), but I guess they could change their minds over the next 2 years, and the way they worded it makes it sound like you will also be able to buy it as a standalone, but we don't know for sure. Plenty of journalists have confirmed this. (random example).
--Reviews?--
Still no info. Many places expected to get review copies still haven't gotten them, including those that got to sample the preview (like ACG), however it's assumed the major places like IGN and Gamespot do have keys. No word on when, but probably next week.
--Rapidfire Answers for the Questions You Keep Asking--
Download size is ~70 gigs
There will be a day 1 patch; details unknown, but stop freaking expecting another 70gigs in total file size, yeesh. The final, patched game probably won't go above 80 gigs total at launch.
PS5 confirming preload on the 8th, the rest very likely to follow.
Level cap has been most consistently described as being 50, but nothing has been officially confirmed. We surprisingly don't know much about attribute/perk gains.
The game is almost entirely in first person, with third person only available in a very few cutscenes and while driving. This was done to be more immersive; the focus of the game is storytelling, not action.
Ciri is not in the game; devs has said it a billion times and one of the leads is very against it, so if she is, they're lying lilies.
This is supposed to be a dark game. You can turn off nudity, most explicit sexually suggestive stuff, and copyrighted music, but the game has earned its rating for a reason, so the toggles aren't going to lesson the excessive sexual and violence-based themes weaved deep into the narrative. These toggles are mostly intended for streamers and their fickle masters Twitch and YouTube.
There are multiple endings; it is not known if you can get them all using one playthrough as a base (Like Deus Ex's hilariously infuriating "pick an ending" buttons).
The 3 Lifepaths all ultimately meet at the same narrative point: V becomes a novice mercenary with nothing to their name and Johnny Silverhand eventually in their heads, though Lifepaths will continue to serve as a "history" that influences your character. They WILL NOT create 3 distinct play-throughs on their own outside of the prologue, but CDPR has said some quests and quest variations/options will be locked to a particular lifepath.
There are 4 (might have changed) difficulties: Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard. The old, brief PS4 leaked footage shows Story, Easy, Normal, Hard now and so do some previews, though a dev has mentioned very hard before. There's supposed to be a hardcore mode but CDPR hasn't talked about it recently.
CDPR will talk about the season passe and DLC after launch.
This game IS NOT like GTA, however the COMPARISON IS WORTHWHILE as they DO share many similarities on the surface. Beyond that, however, Cyberpunk 2077 is a complete RPG closer to Fallout than GTA. You have stats to manage, weapons have damage values, your health is measured in numbers and so is all the damage you deal, enemies have levels and zones have levels ranges too. So unlike a shooter, where all combat is often based on skill, this is more like a typical RPG, where a much higher level enemy will almost always destroy you unless you're cheesing.
The map is filled with tons to do; too much at once, some previewers felt. Both bigger, sprawling mini-story chains and small quick one-off stuff, and some side quests were described as being just as good as main quests.
CDPR hasn't given a time for completion, but one of their QA guys was at ~150 hours on a nomad run, highest difficulty, and said he wasn't close to completing it, but remember QA guys play differently than most people.
You can't join factions, gangs, or corporations; only fight against them or work with them.
Every lifepath is deeply tied to the city and has roleplay options for any kind of character. Yes, even nomads. The nomad clans are one of the most powerful factions in Night City and have tons of people in the city, so they're not really outsiders. They also have stuff like an entire clan of netrunners, so yes you can safely play anything on any lifepath "correctly" according to lore.
Nonlethal gameplay is confirmed. You can mod weapons to be nonlethal and spare bosses, as shown in the trailer while fighting Sasquatch. There's also a variety of damage types and bleeding/poison, possibly EMP-style afflictions too.
The trunk of your car is linked to your apartment storage, so rejoice all you junk rats. Info came from one of the randamo tweets they do sometimes.
Barbers haven't been confirmed in the game yet, but I honestly don't see why they won't be present when even Witcher 3 had them
Police will react to you going on a rampage "realistically" using a notoriety system that's a bit more extensive and not quite as sharply dramatic as GTA's star system, but that should still give you a good idea of what to expect. Eventually, you'll be declared a cyberpsycho and Max-Tac, a legendary pseudo riot squad made up of borderline cyberpsychos, will hunt you down.
Most NPCs are killable (and I guess sparable by extension); children can't be harmed and seemingly despawn when you're in a car. This is unfortunate.
CDPR has said that nearly every component of the HUD can be toggled on and off individually, like the damage numbers above people's heads when you hit them. It's unknown if we can customize things further (like have different eye-optics that change HUD color).
CDPR wants to include a New Game Plus, but haven't talked much about it other than saying they want to do it but don't know how. They've been saying the same thing since 2018, honestly. It might not make it in for release and be later free DLC.
Not sure if I forgot anything but feel free to ask and I'm sure me or someone else will answer, and I'll add it if it's worthwhile. Hopefully this will cut down a bit on repeat questions as we ramp up toward release and more and more newer folk join us.
I have read dozens of these threads for dozens of games over the years but never bothered to write one myself. Nothing especially exciting is coming up on Google for Cyberpunk yet, so I figured I might as well give back to the community, so to speak. So, here are a list of tips and tricks for new players. Many of these may not stay true as CDPR patches the game but they're up to date as of 1.06. If you have stuff I missed, throw it in the comments and I'll try to edit it in. And if I'm wrong, correct me! I'm not an expert, just a fan. Some of this stuff is a matter of opinion, playing "optimally" is a bias of mine that not everyone may share. You may want to beat the whole game hacking everything in sight with 5 intelligence (good luck lol). This is just as valid a playstyle as being a min-maxing degenerate like me, the point is to have fun :) Attributes: - The game files tell you that you get an attribute point every three levels. This is a damn lie. You get one every level. By level 50, which you can attain well before beating the game, you can raise three stats to 20 with 4 points left over. - You can have an attribute up to 20 by level 15. Game's level cap is 50. -Body and Technical Ability both let you open doors. DIFFERENT doors. It's rare that they'll both work on the same door. If you wanna open every door, you should max 'em both out. That said, this is mostly just for bonus loot, so it's not mandatory. - Every attribute has perks enough for a viable build, though technical ability can be rough going. You should consider leveling one skill to 20 before you start leveling another because the high level perks in many of these trees are bonkers. The two exceptions to this are "Breach Protocol" under intelligence and "Crafting" under technical ability. Good, but not necessarily your best first priority. For example, at the end of the blades tree is a perk that makes you do double damage to enemies with full health (at rank 3) and another perk that increases the damage you do by 3% per 1% health the enemy is missing. So assuming it works as described (big if, lol) if you take 50% of an enemy's health off with your opening strike, you'll do 150% bonus damage. Throw in the bleeding effects and you'll be ginsu knifing your way to victory in no time. - Attribute pairings: Some attributes have a bunch of synergies. For example, Cool synergizes well with Reflex for blades, sniper or silent pistol builds. Cool also synergizes relatively well with Quickhacking. Technical Ability pairs well with Reflex because the engineering tree buffs smart weapons and tech weapons - though there are some tech shotguns, which pair with Body, most guns are buffed by the Reflex trees. Comparatively, Technical Ability has less to offer a melee build - stealth melee should be Reflex and Cool, while 'charge TF in' melee benefits from Body and Reflex. - If you want to craft, you need to raise technical ability to 18 for best effect. If you want to use tech weapons, take it to 20. Quickhacks are crafted in their own tree, and are not a part of normal crafting. - Not much advice here overall because it's mostly a matter of playstyle. You wanna have a dude with 13 in every attribute? They'll be a great all-rounder. Wanna specialize? You'll get some outrageous power perks. Skills + Perks: - Skills level as you use them although Athletics is currently really hard to level apart from some buggy stuff. The other slightly counter-intuitive skill to level is engineering which levels when you deactivate cameras manually, need to be standing very close to them. You can also level it by firing tech weapons through walls and by using grenades. - Perks level as you put points into them. You get one perk point whenever you level up. You get perk points as you level skills (7 per skill tree, if you get it high enough). edit: Crafting, Breach & Quickhacking have 6 for some reason. There are also a number of 'perk shards' that give you free perks. - To buy a perk, you need to have a high enough level in the associated attribute. All skill trees have at least one perk that requires 20 in the associated attribute (Body, Reflex, etc). Sometimes that perk is just ok, but sometimes it's bonkers powerful. Take the time to read the trees. Basically all builds are viable right now so I don't have any "best" build tips, just level one attribute to 20 and then figure out which one you wanna do next. - Skills cannot level past their associated attribute. For example, Blades is in the Reflex tree. If you have Reflex 4, it doesn't matter if you vivisect every enemy in the game, you will level to blades 4 and stop there until you raise Reflex to 5. This is one of the reasons it makes sense to level an attribute to 20 ASAP. Keep an eye on the skills you wanna use all game - if they stop gaining experience, you need to bump the attribute. -Leveling skills will reward you with bonuses. Sometimes the bonus makes you better at the skill (for example, reducing recoil on a kind of gun). But each skill tree has (afaik) 7 "bonus" perks in it. This means that there are more total perks available to characters who level Body and Reflex (which each have three associated skills) as opposed to other attributes (which only have 2). - Every tree has some ridiculous skills that are must-have, and some that are useless. One or two are even actively harmful, like the one that automatically disassembles junk. Some junk sells for 750 ED, so scrapping it automatically robs you. Avoid that perk (it's in Crafting). edit: Matter of opinion. There's a lot of junk in this game and if you're speccing into crafting, you can easily make money, so taking the 'scrap all junk' perk can save some time. Ultimately the only junk you need to scrap is the cans you buy from vending machines, which (with the current UI) is the fastest way apart from using the perk. Your mileage may vary. -If you read through the skills it's pretty obvious which ones are awesome; usually it's a huge buff to damage or crit chance. They give out crit chance like candy in this game. - It's worth making sure that your primary combat skill (pistols, blades, etc) is always capped - so if you have 10 reflex, you should have 10 in blades. This way you'll get the most from the perk system, but also have 'best' fighting style at your disposal. The game gives you all these great playstyles but in my experience, if you don't level them, they become progressively less useful. - You can respec perks for 100,000 ED. This will not reset your attributes. 100,000 ED will always be a stupid amount of money. You're better off just farming up some more perk points and spending them. - There is always an ultimate perk unlocked when you reach 20 in the skill (need 20 in the attribute first). These are enigmatic and poorly worded. To be clear, they give you an up front buff of varying quality. Then you can keep putting points in them generally for a 1% buff. I haven't doubled checked all of them, but after that first rank, it's highly unlikely you'd ever want to put another point into them. - Cold blood makes you good at everything, a little bit. It's in Cool, so it's most efficient to pair it with pistol sneak or blade sneak, but really you can go hog wild. It has some preposterous bonuses. - You will never need to swim underwater AFAIK so ignore that perk. Weapons - All builds are viable and so are all weapons. Still, I think they put shotguns and lmgs in the same tree because the range on shotguns isn't optimal and they are not sneaky weapons. I'd carry one of both, and I also carried a pistol, a sniper rifle and an assault rifle on my Reflex build, though this spread me a little thin. - Weapons come in a tiered system: common (grey) uncommon (green), rare (blue), epic (purple) and legendary (orange.) Wonder if they'll pay Blizzard royalties. If anyone will, really. - There are also iconic weapons. They can usually be upgraded to legendary, but not always (RIP Lizzie pistol). This costs a lot of mats. But not as much as upgrading a level 40 gun to a level 41 gun. - Using crafting to upgrade weapons is so expensive / tedious that you should just craft new weapons instead. You should also keep your Iconic weapons at the rarity you find them, and upgrade them to level 50 at the lowest possible rarity, to save on mats. - You can have three weapons (plus unarmed / gorilla arms) equipped at once. - Power weapons can ricochet and are most common. Tech weapons can charge and shoot through walls. They discharge automatically at full charge until you get an engineering perk to fix that. This makes them WAY more useful. - Smart weapons paint dots on a target and then they'll hit the target. The dots (little and red) need to appear before you start firing. If they do, the bullets may even hit around corners or cover. If you don't, the bullets are wasted. - You can craft ammo. The carry limit is high, 400 pistol, 700 rifle, 100 snipeshotgun on PS4 according to u/Eggtastic_Taco, I thought I'd had 500 pistol ammo on PC before but IDK. - Weapons can be modded. Replacing a mod destroys it. Scrapping a weapon destroys the mod unless you have a perk (from crafting.) The perk is worth it. Modding weapons is generally worth it. I wouldn't bother putting a silencer on a pistol. edit: As withoutapaddle points out, silencers are awesome if you are speccing into them, generally with a Reflex / Cool build focused around pistols. You can easily overcome the damage debuff, especially with the rare silencer, where the debuff is only 15%. Armor - There's no transmog so you're gonna look ridiculous until endgame, and maybe then too. - Armor seemed to me like it made little difference til I passed 4000 armor, at which point I became an unkillable tank. Main appeal of crafting, IMO. - But mods can make a big difference by buffing critical damage, critical chance, etc. Also plenty of useless mods (breathe underwater longer). - You can pick up resistance to damage types, and even immunity, from item mods - but also from certain perks and cyberware. - Armor can be iconic too, though far less often. Same advice from iconic weapons applies. Hacking - Not much to say here - use breach protocol to debuff enemies and make quickhacks cheaper. Many quickhacks are non lethal. - Quickhacking costs RAM. It recharges out of combat, and in combat with the right perk. - The game teaches you this in an optional tutorial but it is VERY important: you can quickhack people while seeing them through cameras. And when you do, they can't do a damn thing about it. They can't detect you unless they see you IRL. So hack a camera from across the street, cycle through their camera network killin' em all. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Crafting - When you craft an item, it randomly has mods (or maybe none) and randomly has mod slots. Far as I can tell, 4 is the maximum number of mod slots. Mods are fairly easy to come by, and some of them are ludicrously OP (Can find 6 15% crit chance mods and have 100% effective crit, I think). - But they're random! So you may need to craft and recraft those legendary pants until you get one with 4 mod slots. edit: max 4 for torso slots, max 3 for everything else - Crafting in general is broken in good ways and bad. The main tip is that you can scrap drinks, but not food, for some reason. So go to every drink machine you see and buy them out of drinks (10 ED a drink). Then scrap all the drinks for common and uncommon components. Craft a bunch of uncommon sniper rifles, sell them to a merchant, repeat til you're at 20 crafting. Good way to make money too. - As mentioned above, upgrading things is expensive as hell, though at higher levels it also gives you huge chunks of crafting XP all at once. edit: When you upgrade an iconic item, it seems to reset the cost of components to upgrade it again, and as a bonus, raises it to one level below yours. So if you don't want to farm mats forever, consider waiting til you're level 50 before raising your Iconic gear to Legendary status. Then you'll only need to upgrade it once. - Items can only be crafted one at a time but you can edit a config file to make that happen instantly. This'll get patched, I hope. - There are crafting specs scattered through the world. The best ones are usually free from drops but you might buy one for a niche build. Here's a mod table, h/t to u/theherrhuml
Work and Stack
Armadillo, Backpacker, Osmosis, Plume
Work but Don't Stack
Fortuna, Bully
Work
Coolit, Antivenom, Superinsulator - not for EMP, Panacea
Don't Work
Deadeye, Predator, Resist, Zero Drag
Cyberware - It'll make you a beast. It's the main use for 'street cred', too, a system that barely needs explaining. Kill dudes, get street cred, unlock new Cyberware. Other stuff too but mostly pretty pointless by comparison. The best cyberware requires 49 street cred; the cap is 50. - The wrist mounted missile launcher is sick but it also seems to disable the use of grenades (mapped to the same hotkey on my controller anyway). The missiles, however, are bottomless. edit: Probably my biggest error here. I thought my grenade option had disappeared, but you can switch grenades into the slot if you want. If I'm understanding u/theherrhuml correctly, this means you can't use both at once? IDK. - Slowing time is very handy. The synaptic accelerator does it when you are spotted by an enemy. A must for sneak builds. Sandevistan slows time when activated. Mostly useful for combat but you can also rush right past enemies (but be aware that slow time means doors open slow too). There's also Kereznikov, which slows time when you dodge, slide or do some other stuff idk man, I forget. Obvious combat applications. - Your initial cyberware lets you hack. The cyberware in the OS slot, to be specific. If you replace it with a Sandevistan model, or a Berserk, you will lose the ability to hack. The game does a very poor job of warning you of this. It SUCKS to suddenly not be able to turn off cameras by hacking them. - Cyberware has mod slots. Maybe this explain this at one point but it's easy to forget. You'll find lots of cyberware mods in any case. - If you're using quickhacking, most quickhacks have to be equipped in your deck, which goes in the OS slot. They have their own parallel crafting system which is under Intelligence. They'll make you a cybergod among men. - Overall cyberware is meant to compliment your build. Wanna do blades? Mantis blades go in the arm slot. Wanna hack? Buy the best OS. Don't care about hacking? Stick a Sandevistan or Berserk in there and shoot / chop your enemies to bits. The monowire, counter-intuitively, is a 'blunt' weapon and benefits from the associated perks, as well as being buffed by cool. - Double jump, or charge jump, are mandatory. Why wouldn't you want the high ground, as Ben Kenobi taught us? - Like I said, it compliments your playstyle, so it also gates the best cyberware behind attribute requirements. 20 body nets you an implant that gives +60% health, which is huge. You'll never be able to equip all the "best" cyberware, but you'll have what's best for your build. - Every ripperdoc has a specialty, but they don't always have their legendary quality item. This is kinda annoying because it's one of a number of easter egg hunts they implement for buying stuff, real MMO tier game design. I have the money, gimme the damn thing. Anyway, check the internet for guides on where to buy legendary cyberware. Questing + Side Content - Personally I'd recommend finishing all the side content in Watson (the first area, in which you are trapped) before proceeding to Konpecki (you'll know when you know.) This gives you a lot of tools in your toolbox for a pretty challenging series of missions, and give you lots of practice playing the game .- Alternatively, there's little punishment for burning through all the story content up to the final mission, and in fact, no real punishment for beating the final mission as soon as it's available. The game just drops you right back before the final mission, so that you can unlock the other endings. Up to you. edit: A certain Hollywood actor shows up to make commentary on your quests once you finish Act 1, including quests in Watson. So depending on how thirsty for Keanu you are, consider holding off on doing sidequests in Watson until after Act 1. - Like the Witcher, the story quests are worth way more experience, so if you're in a hurry to level then get after it. - If you bought this game because of the political dimensions of Cyberpunk then READ THE SHARDS. All of them. Great stuff in there. If you bought it for pew pew lasers, then only read the shards with smutty titles, they're funny. - The level design's pretty good. Often I'll finish a dungeon only to notice that there was a sneaky back way in that I never even noticed because I didn't bother looking. Of course, with double jump, you can usually make your OWN way in. - Overall, the level design combined with the shards made even clearing reported crimes fun for me all the way through to endgame. I highly recommend doing most of the sidequests ( hear racing sucks which checks out because driving sucks ). Also clear all the organized crime bosses because they drop awesome loot. Cars - You can get a free Caliburn, one of the game's fastest cars, in the Badlands, hard to explain so just google the video.- Fixers will text you about cars they have for sale. This sucks. The cars then show up as quest markers. This also sucks. You do not need to buy all the cars (could be fun to do so), any one car will suffice. - Motorcycles are great. They can ride in the gutters or down the center line of roads, totally ignoring traffic. - If you park your car in the road it creates a traffic jam. - Look both ways before you cross the street. - You can steal cars but there's not much reason to since you can call your own car to your location. Misc - Some missions require you not kill anyone. You can easily get an implant mod that makes all your weapon damage non-lethal. This allows you to never worry about this again. You very rarely get in trouble for bringing someone in alive; apart from some flavor commentary IDK if it's ever happened to me. Alternatively, you can use blunt weapons or certain quickhacks. - Pay Vic back. Partially to upgrade your eyeballs but mostly because it's the right thing to do for a friend. - In general, dialogue checks relating to your attributes are there for flavor so you can use them with impunity, but without material reward. - Street cred: literally just kill criminals and do quests and it'll level faster than your character level. I hit 50 SC around level 30, as I recall. That unlocks the best cyberware and the highest level gigs, then there's no reason to think about it ever again. - If you possibly can, wait 2 years for the finished version of this game with all the DLCs. I love it, but I think it'd be more fun to experience the finished product fresh. I only played Witcher 3 last year and it was amazing. - There are free legendary mantis blades and a free legendary monowire kicking around in the game world. - Don't let Cyberpsychos or other bosses hit you in melee, obvs. - Those little icons over people's heads at the beginning of the game are telling you that you can fight them but also how difficult they are. I spent an hour trying to figure this out when I bought the game, lol. - Cops will aggro if you get too close for too long. Gangs will aggro if you get too close usually. That's it for now! Let me know what I missed. Thanks for updates from: u/theherrhuml, Eggtastic_Taco, withoutapaddle
11 Best Games That Don’t Need Wifi or Internet Connection. 1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4; 2. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive; 3. Fallout 4; 4. Need for Speed Payback; 5. Assassin’s Creed: Origins; 6. The rise of the Tomb Raider; 7. Dark Souls III; 8. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3; 9. Bioshock Infinite; 10. Grand Theft Auto 5; 11. Deux Ex: Mankind Divided. Conclusion Looking for the best free to play PS4 games that don’t require PS+ to play? Check out this list of completely free to play PlayStation 4 games. There’s no upfront price and no subscription fees, though some games do feature microtransactions. I'm buying a PS4 with 2 games. 1 of those games will definitely be Resident Evil 2 Remake. Need ideas for the other game? I like fighting, racing, open world, and platformer games. @extreme weeb, I already have a switch, I like it too don't get me wrong, especially games like Splatoon 2 and Smash Ultimate. But I'm looking for a second console. A lot of games don't require constant internet... basically none of them do, the only things that even do is like... an mmo or anything else you are playing online or even if you play FC4 online so people can join you but even that has an offline option. Destiny, ESO, GTAO and other mp centric games are the only ones. list of ps4 games that don 't require internet connection. by Posted on 05/02/2021 ... It should work without Internet. PS4 games don’t normally require Internet connection just to play them; just turn on the PS4, push in a disc, and you’re good to go. However, many games nowadays have a pretty heavy focus on online play, so you pro... What are the best PS4 games that don’t need internet? Some of the best PS4 games that don’t need internet. God of War; Spider-Man; Persona 5; Bloodborne; Life is Strange 15 Best PS4 Games That Don't Require An Internet Connection. There are some incredible multiplayer games on the PS4, but some single-player campaigns are just as fun and don't require an internet ... No PS4 games require internet. You obviously need it to play multiplayer in things like Killzone: Shadow Fall, but the single player of that game can be played without an internet connection. Sony has said that the PS4 can be played without ever having an internet connection. Here we look at 5 single-player games for the PS4 that do not need an internet connection to play. Top 5 PS4 games that do not require the Internet. 5) Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
