Microsoft’s Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles are getting a lot of new games this year. Hundreds of them, in fact.
According to the Focus Gaming News, Starfield, Bethesda’s first new original RPG in 25 years, takes you into space to explore procedurally-generated planets. Meanwhile, Hellblade II builds on Ninja Theory’s previous indie efforts with insane visuals.
Final Fantasy XIV
Source: twitter.com
According to Focus Gaming News, Final Fantasy XIV is one of the most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing games in the world.
Its first launch in 2010 was a disaster, but developer Square Enix was determined to keep the Final Fantasy name clean and relaunched it as A Realm Reborn in 2013 after a radical overhaul that radically changed the game. It has since received countless updates and four major expansions.
This MMORPG is set in the world of Eorzea, a fictional land that was literally “reborn” from a cataclysmic event at its initial launch. It is a story of communities picking up the pieces after a terrible calamity. The relaunch was a resounding success and the game continues to thrive.
The FFXIV universe is vast, and its inhabitants are incredibly diverse. The game offers a range of unique races that players can choose from to create their avatar, as well as the traditional Holy Trinity class system with tanks, healers, and damage dealers (or DPS). The game also has a number of different dungeons, a party finder, and small 8-person raids, and larger 24-person raids for PvP play.
Players explore the environments of Eorzea and battle human and fantasy creatures in real-time combat using swords, spears, axes, firearms, magic spells, and other weaponry. Cutscenes often depict the deaths of characters in spectacular fashion, including stabs through the chest, blows to the head and torso, and splashes of purple or yellow blood.
The game features a variety of sexually explicit content, including lingering camera views of the buttocks of female characters and a significant amount of nudity.
In addition to the main story, the A Realm Reborn expansions have added a variety of new side missions, dungeons, and events. The upcoming Dawntrail expansion takes place in the tropical world of Tuliyollal, and it will raise the level cap to 100, as well as introduce two new damage-based classes.
The upcoming expansion was announced at this year’s FanFest Keynote in Las Vegas by Game Director and Executive Producer Takashi Yoshida, who appeared wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem t-shirt.
Forza Motorsport
Source: purexbox.com
For fans of simulation racing, Turn 10 Studios’ Forza series is the best there is. Since its debut in 2005, the franchise has been counted as one of Microsoft’s most reliable first-party properties. Its titles typically receive rave reviews and sell millions of copies. For the past three years, however, fans have been without a new entry in the Forza series.
During Xbox’s latest Developer Direct event, Turn 10 Studios finally revealed Forza Motorsport 2024. The eighth game in the Forza franchise will be built from the ground up for Xbox Series X and Xbox One S. It will take full advantage of the hardware’s improved hardware architecture and processing power, delivering an immersive, high-definition experience on both consoles.
The ForzaTech engine is capable of rendering a rich, detailed world with real-time ray tracing. This technology is able to accurately render reflections and shadows across a variety of surfaces, including the player’s car and its own environment. Turn 10 Studios claims that this feature is “greater than Forza Horizon 5, 6, and 7 combined.”
Additionally, Forza Motorsport 2024 will include a number of improvements in its physics simulation. The car’s paint will reflect light more realistically and the damage will appear more authentic. In order to achieve this, Forza Motorsport will be using a spectrophotometer that can capture multiple points of the light’s behavior on a surface.
In addition to these visual enhancements, Forza Motorsport 2024 is introducing a major change in its progression system. Gone are the days of buying credits and upgrading your cars — instead, you’ll progress through the game by winning races.
Each race will be divided into a number of sectors, and you can earn points for every place you finish in those segments. Those points will allow you to unlock new cars and levels for your current ones.
During the Xbox Showcase event, Turn 10 Studios also announced a redesigned career mode. This new single-player campaign will be called the Builders Cup and will see players race against AI opponents in a variety of cars and tracks. The Builders Cup will be available at launch along with a variety of other career modes.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Source: ubisoft.com
After dabbling in mythological history with Valhalla and Odyssey, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has gone back to its roots with Mirage. This upcoming title has been touted as a “back-to-basics reset” for the series that will put more emphasis on stealth and city-based gameplay.
Earlier this year, Ubisoft revealed that the game will be set in 9th-century Baghdad and follow Basim Ibn Ishaq, a street thief who becomes an Assassin as part of a plan by the Hidden Ones to bring peace and liberty to their world.
Like other modern Assassin’s Creed titles, Mirage will have a mix of social stealth, fast parkour, and agile assassinations. The difference, according to Ubisoft Bordeaux, is that the game’s narrower focus on a single city will be complemented by narrative progression and a smaller map to explore.
The team behind Assassin’s Creed Mirage has promised a more lively and immersive city experience than recent titles, with NPCs reacting to the protagonist’s every move. In addition, the developers have stated that the game will feature a new combat system that allows players to warp between marked targets, which could make for more interesting assassination missions in busy areas of the city.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is slated to release this October 12 for PC, PS4, and Xbox Series X|S. It will act as a side story to 2020’s Valhalla while offering a return to the franchise’s simpler origins with a greater emphasis on stealth and city-based gameplay. Basim Ibn Ishaq, the game’s protagonist, will struggle with nightmarish visions of demons and a tragic past as he works to fulfill his destiny by joining the Assassin Brotherhood.
Ubisoft has also confirmed that Assassin’s Creed Mirage won’t have DLC or extensive post-launch content. The developer will instead focus on the game’s launch and ensuring it has a good launch window before moving on to other projects. The company will be announcing more details on the upcoming title as they become available.
For more information, you can head over to the official website. There are a lot of trailers to check out in the meantime, including a first look at the game’s graphical style.
Starfield
Source: rockpapershotgun.com
If you’re an Xbox Series X|S owner, you’ll soon be able to enjoy Starfield, the next big console exclusive from Bethesda. The game was originally expected to launch on November 11, 2022, but after a couple of delays and an official announcement in March that pushed it back into the first half of 2024, Microsoft and Bethesda have finally given us a release date: September 6th.
Starfield is set in the 24th century and takes place in a universe with thousands of planets to explore and customizable spaceships. The game’s dev team has teased a wide variety of gameplay features, from the classic FPS-style combat seen in Fallout and The Elder Scrolls to base-building mechanics that allow players to customize and build outposts and a range of weapons.
Other RPG staples such as lockpicking and persuasion have also been featured in gameplay videos, while recent footage has shown off a new take on Bethesda’s popular conversation system that sees you choosing words to say to other characters.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a full-on Bethesda RPG without a few additional features that take advantage of the console’s hardware and capabilities.
The studio has previously revealed that the game will support 4K resolutions and an Xbox One X-enabled frame rate of 30fps. Microsoft has also released a limited-edition controller and headset that riff on the sleek “NASA-punk” design of the game.
The first trailer for the game was released at Xbox and Bethesda’s summer games showcase in June, featuring a wide range of environments and gameplay features.
The video was a mix of cinematic scenes and more traditional gameplay, with the latter showing off how to navigate the massive universe and interact with NPCs using dialogue and the typical role-playing elements that fans have come to expect from the studio’s games.
Starfield has received its ESRB rating, with the M-rating ensuring that sex, drugs, and intergalactic violence will be part of the experience. It’s worth pointing out that, despite the ESRB rating, the game has no multiplayer mode. Bethesda has been praised for this choice, with the developer saying that adding a multiplayer component would have taken away from the story the team wanted to tell.
