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Hunt

The new game from the makers of Delta Force looks like Hunt: Showdown moved to Silent Hill

by admin August 19, 2025

Project Spectrum | Official Announcement Trailer – YouTube

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Project Spectrum is an upcoming “tactical thriller shooter” revealed tonight at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live that sets players off into Ember Zones, where “unspeakable horrors await.”

I’ll cut right to the chase: There’s not a whole lot to go on here. Project Spectrum is a “physiological horror PvEvP game, where you battle against monsters, other players, and your own sanity, as widespread anomalies twist around the world,” ONL host Geoff Keighley said, and you can see that in the trailer: A special ops team descends into a haunted house of some sort, and after things go rather badly a lone survivor is asked, “What if you are the beast?”

An interesting proposition indeed, which takes us back to the house and a spooky transformation into some kind of interdimensional spider, which then seemingly gives the business to another spec ops guy. Why? It’s hard to tell.

In a subsequent press release, developer Team Jade—the studio behind the Delta Force reboot—revealed a little bit more about the game, which takes place in a world devastated by a “radiant, reality-warping force” called the Ember.

“Everything it touches—cities, landscapes, even life itself—is transformed in unknowable ways, leaving behind dangerous regions called Ember Zones,” the studio said. “Players take the role of an Operator, leading high-risk missions into Ember Zones—recruiting and managing a customizable squad of elite Agents, who they ultimately play as to obtain intelligence, neutralize threats, and uncover the secrets of the Ember.

“Every moment in the game is highly dynamic as players face monstrosities created by the Ember, other hostile Agents, and the psychological tolls imposed by the twisted environment. Players must fight back through building and customizing their Agents, utilizing coordinated team synergy, environmental awareness, and creative, improvised item crafting — all while remaining mindful of their Sanity, a crucial resource that depletes easily, and of Executioners roaming the world: powerful beings with unmatched agility and strength controlled by other players.”

Project Spectrum isn’t currently on Steam but there is a website up at spectrum-project, which unfortunately doesn’t have much to see either. But I think Team Jade’s participation makes it worth paying attention to. Delta Force has a “mixed” user rating on Steam, but it’s also routinely pulling in well over 100,000 concurrent players every day, so it sure seems like the developers are doing something right. If they can bring that same magic to Project Spectrum, who knows? It could prove to be a surprise banger.

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August 19, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

How Could Frodo Be in ‘The Hunt for Gollum’?

by admin August 19, 2025

This weekend, Ian McKellen had a bit of Hobbiton-disturber-of-the-peace energy about himself when he revealed at a fantasy convention in London that Frodo Baggins would appear in Andy Serkis’ upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel movie, The Hunt for Gollum. Frodo is far from the only familiar face who has been teased as making a potential appearance in the film (due out in 2027), but he is a particularly interesting one considering the chronology of events we already know from Tolkien’s books.

When Is The Hunt for Gollum Set?

Speaking to Empire Magazine late last year, producer Phillipa Boyens said that The Hunt for Gollum “falls after the birthday party of Bilbo and before the Mines of Moria” during the events of The Fellowship of the Ring. We’ve already seen parts of that journey in both the theatrical release and extended editions of the film. Galadriel’s prologue covers Bilbo’s finding of the ring (before, again, we see that covered even further during The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), and we see moments of Gollum’s torture at the hands of Sauron’s forces pointing the Ringwraiths to the Shore. Several scenes added in the extended cut see members of the Fellowship acknowledge that they are being tracked by Gollum by the time they have arrived in Moria.

In the chronology of Tolkien’s own writing, events play out similarly, but we learn that, in contrast to the perception of the movie, those events take place over a much, much longer period of time.

Wait, How Many Years Passed Between Bilbo’s Party and the Formation of the Fellowship?

One of the things most poorly conveyed from the books in the film adaptation of Fellowship is that almost two decades pass between Gandalf leaving Frodo in the Shire after Bilbo departs for Rivendell and the meeting of the council of Elrond that puts into motion the quest to destroy the One Ring once and for all.

In Tolkien’s writing, Bilbo’s 111th birthday celebration takes place in the year 3001 of the Third Age, and in that same year, Gandalf recruits Aragorn to track and find Gollum’s whereabouts, after the two first crossed paths almost half a century earlier. Gollum had left his cave dwellings in the Misty Mountains in 2944 to search for the halfling who took the ring from him and was captured in 3009 by Aragorn. After being brought to the realms of Mirkwood for interrogation, Gollum flees the elven realms while they are attacked by the forces of Mordor almost a decade later in 3018—a year after Gandalf, as seen in Fellowship of the Ring, rides to Gondor’s capital, Minas Tirith, and uncovers information leading him to believe that Bilbo’s magic ring is indeed the One Ring of power. The Council of Elrond, where Gandalf details his history tracking Gollum in the books, takes place in October of that year.

That means Gollum’s capture by the forces of Sauron and the torture that eventually leads to him sharing his knowledge of the ring’s location occur at some point in the almost 70 years between leaving his mountain home and his capture by Aragorn. And that which is conveyed as weeks or months at best in the film adaptation of Fellowship of the Ring is actually seventeen years. The only real acknowledgement that a significant passage of time has occurred is Bilbo’s own aging, although that can be in part credited to his vitality no longer being sustained by the One Ring.

What Was Frodo Doing in the Years Between?

The answer is that we simply don’t know, beyond the fact that he continued to stay at Bag End after Bilbo’s departure from the Shire and that he kept the ring hidden as per Gandalf’s request. We know that, at Gandalf’s request when he went to Aragorn to discuss finding Gollum, Dúnedain rangers kept watch over the Shire, which probably means that Frodo wasn’t exactly running around Middle-earth for fun during that time, so he presumably stayed living the same life he had since coming under Bilbo’s guardianship.

So, How Could Frodo Be in The Hunt for Gollum?

Well, the easy answer is that Frodo doesn’t have to be a hugely involved character in however the film portrays its version of the passage of time from Tolkien’s books and writings. Peter Jackson’s film trilogy already played loose in communicating, for the most part, the years that pass between the events of Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return of the King, and we don’t know enough yet about what kind of time frame Hunt for Gollum will spread its own interpretation over.

But regardless of that, Frodo is at least present in three largely vague points: the opening, set with Gandalf departing the Shire and recruiting Aragorn after Bilbo’s party; the ending, which presumably climaxes with Gandalf’s return to the Shire to confirm his belief that the One Ring has been found; and then literally anywhere between those two points, waiting out for word from Gandalf and living his best halfling life. Any role Frodo would have in Hunt for Gollum could be incredibly slight.

The film could also take the approach The Hobbit trilogy did with its own Frodo appearance. There, Frodo appears in the framing device that opens An Unexpected Journey alongside the late Ian Holm, once again portraying the older Bilbo, as the two hobbits discuss Bilbo writing the story of his adventures. Hunt for Gollum could very easily, say, flash back from Frodo writing his own adventures down in Return of the King‘s epilogue to him wondering what Gandalf did after he left the Shire again.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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August 19, 2025 0 comments

Esports

How the Aces saved their season, got back in WNBA playoff hunt

by admin August 18, 2025

The Las Vegas Aces walked onto their home court with something to prove.

Just 24 hours earlier, they suffered a historic 53-point loss to the Minnesota Lynx at home. The Aces were mad and embarrassed. And now, the closest team to a dynasty the WNBA has seen in the past 10 years was fighting for its pride against the expansion Golden State Valkyries.

“We funneled every inch of our energy into that,” Aces point guard Chelsea Gray told ESPN.

The Aces tied a franchise record with 18 3-pointers and beat the Valkyries by 24 points, the largest turnaround in back-to-back games in WNBA history, according to ESPN Research.

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“When things aren’t going well, it can make you question some things that maybe you thought you were super strong in,” Las Vegas coach Becky Hammon told ESPN. “When things aren’t going well, it has to go back to the foundations. What is the base problem here?”

For the first two months of the season, the Aces were in and out of the playoff picture, suffered a three-game losing streak and were .500 at the All-Star break. The only team to win consecutive titles in the past 20 years, the Aces performed far below preseason expectations.

But Las Vegas turned it around after its Aug. 2 loss to Minnesota. The Aces have won seven consecutive games and pulled even with the Phoenix Mercury for fourth place in the WNBA standings. A’ja Wilson added to her dominance. The league’s reigning MVP is averaging 26.1 points and 13.3 rebounds during the win streak and has scored at least 30 points in three of the past four games.

The Aces look like they can contend. They might host a first-round playoff series. But the challenge is sustaining the momentum.

“You get excited because you see the potential. You see what they are capable of,” Hammon said. “Now, it’s that consistency. In basketball, anyone can be good for a night. But the great ones, they are good every night.”

A’ja Wilson is averaging 26.1 points and 13.3 rebounds and shooting 48.8% in the Aces’ current seven-game win streak, scoring over 30 points in three of the past four games. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

AS THE ACES tried to recover from their embarrassing loss to the Lynx — Minnesota set a WNBA record for largest road win — Hammon had a new assignment for the team: The players had to create their own scouting reports.

Before the start of each practice session, the Aces, led by Wilson, shared their preferred matchups, schemes and flow of the game. Hammon poked holes in the presentations and encouraged the Aces to challenge her prep, too.

Hammon hoped the collaboration would ignite a new level of engagement and attention to detail. It led to immediate success.

“This has helped us jell together to where we can all hold each other accountable,” Wilson said.

In the loss to the Lynx, Hammon called the Las Vegas defense “atrocious.” Since that defeat, the Aces have had a top-five defense and been the league’s second-best rebounding team. And it helped unlock the Las Vegas offense, which has led the league in offensive rating for the past two weeks.

Hammon’s new assignment has also helped create familiarity and chemistry, something the Aces needed to evolve after Kelsey Plum left for Los Angeles in free agency and Natalie Nakase and Tyler Marsh — the Aces’ top two assistant coaches — took head coaching jobs at Golden State and Chicago, respectively. That trio had helped Las Vegas win WNBA titles in 2022 and 2023.

“It’s absolutely a block party. [A’ja Wilson] isn’t new to this, she’s true to this.”

–@chiney Ogwumike on A’ja Wilson’s dominance on the court 🔥

📺 Wings-Aces on ABC/ESPN+ pic.twitter.com/9ClfyZKRr3

— ESPN (@espn) August 17, 2025

With six-time All-Star Jewell Loyd and four other new players added to the roster, this year’s team looked and operated differently. But the Aces didn’t anticipate how long it would take to come together.

“Our offense and defense are so fluid that we had to take time to learn and understand new habits,” Gray said. “It’s only when you learn those habits, you can start to form as a team.”

Loyd set a single-season mark for scoring two seasons ago with Seattle, but struggled to find a rhythm with the Aces. She was limited to single digits in six of 11 games in July while shooting 33.6%. Hammon tinkered with different combinations in the starting lineup, but nothing helped. Loyd suggested she come off the bench, but Hammon was reluctant to make the switch.

After Loyd went scoreless in a loss July 25, the guard was adamant that she be removed from the starting unit.

“I didn’t want her to feel like I was giving up on her or losing confidence in her because that was not the case,” Hammon said. “I made that very clear with her. …. As a coach, when a player says they need change, you’ve got to find a change.”

Although Loyd is playing five fewer minutes, she’s scoring five more points per game coming off the bench, averaging 14.6 points in 25 minutes during her 10 games as a reserve.

“We know how to weather storms right now. In the beginning, we couldn’t get that. We didn’t understand that we have a whole new group, top to bottom,” Wilson said. “That takes time and it takes giving each other a lot of grace and a lot of communication.”

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A’ja Wilson continues her tear with 34 points in Aces’ win

A’ja Wilson leads the Aces to their seventh straight win with 34 points.

WILSON SENT A group text to her teammates after the Aug. 2 loss to Minnesota. The message was simple: flush this game and move on, but don’t forget the way it made everyone feel.

It wasn’t her first pep talk of the season. The Aces’ early-season struggles led to Wilson becoming a more vocal leader, which has been one of the most important developments of Las Vegas’ season.

“It’s easy to lead when you are winning. Winning disguises a lot of different things” Wilson told ESPN. “But when you are in the trenches and things aren’t going well — when it feels like everyone has something to say about this Aces team — how do you lead that? How do you get all of these minds in one accord to stay poised through the noise?”

For most of her career, she built her leadership style on her playing abilities. The three-time WNBA MVP can take over games. Last week, she became the first player in WNBA history to record a 30-point, 20-rebound game. She’s averaging 22.3 points, 10.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 2.1 blocks and 1.6 steals this season, and has scored at least 27 points in five of the past six games. But Wilson is making a point not to force the action.

“I told myself out of All-Star break to just let the game come to me,” Wilson said after a win over Phoenix on Friday. “It’s going to be what it’s going to be. If I try to harp on it or force it because I want this win so bad for my team, it’s like forcing a fart. All you get is s—.”

According to Hammon, Wilson’s growth in her game and leadership has kept the Aces’ locker room intact.

“A lot of times it can fall apart when there is hard time after hard time or you are so close and you lost another one. It’s easy to lose the locker room, not only with myself but them with each other,” Hammon said. “They haven’t done that. They have dug in. My leaders have led when it’s hard and difficult.”

Maintaining trust allowed the Aces to stay confident as they worked out their issues. With nine games left in the regular season, they’re riding the longest active winning streak in the league and vying to secure home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs, which begin Sept. 14.

“This is what it takes to win championships. You have to do it right nine out of 10 times, 10 out of 10 times,” Hammon said. “Just keep demanding that greatness.”

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August 18, 2025 0 comments

JD.com’s global stablecoin push aims to shave days off cross-border payments

GameFi Guides

Solana, Aptos tie for top spot in Wyoming’s hunt for WYST stablecoin partner

by admin June 21, 2025

Wyoming’s Stable Token Commission has placed Aptos and Solana at the forefront of its stablecoin initiative. One blockchain failed to meet requirements, sharpening focus on the two finalists.

After narrowing down an initial list of 11 candidates in April, Wyoming’s Stable Token Commission has now identified Solana (SOL) and Aptos (APT) as the top two blockchain networks under consideration for its WYST stablecoin.

The selection process, which included stringent checks on vendor support and technical robustness, saw one network disqualified due to undisclosed compliance concerns. The Commission’s latest update, confirmed by an Aptos post on X on June 20, signals a tightening race between two of crypto’s fastest-growing ecosystems.

The Wyoming Stable Token Commission has placed Aptos as the highest-scoring blockchain candidate for WYST—the first fiat-backed stablecoin issued by a U.S State—tying for 1st place with Solana.

WYST will be deployed using @LayerZero_Core. pic.twitter.com/CMUyRbs4Gq

— Aptos (@Aptos) June 20, 2025

Why Aptos and Solana emerged as frontrunners

Wyoming’s focus on Aptos and Solana for its WYST stablecoin isn’t arbitrary. Both networks deliver on three core requirements the Commission prioritized: high throughput, fast finality, and mature vendor support.

Aptos, born from Meta’s shuttered Diem project, has a unique advantage. The network claims its Block-STM parallel execution engine can handle transactions at high speed while maintaining sub-second finality. This architecture allows the network to scale to hundreds of thousands of transactions per second without compromising security.

Additionally, Aptos leverages Move, a programming language purpose-built for financial applications, which reduces risks such as reentrancy attacks.

Solana, meanwhile, has spent years testing its high-performance architecture in production. Its single, globally shared state enables lightning-fast transactions while keeping fees minimal.

For Wyoming, which needs a stablecoin capable of handling everything from instant tax payments to treasury operations, Solana’s proven throughput and growing institutional adoption made it a natural contender.

Solana already supports WYST test coins on its testnet and has undergone quarterly reviews by the Commission since late 2024, demonstrating its operational readiness. Its deep liquidity and composability across DeFi apps also position it well for seamless integration with existing financial tools.

Aptos, though newer, brings enterprise-friendly features such as on-chain upgradability, allowing for rapid protocol changes without disruptive hard forks. Backed by industry giants like Google Cloud and Microsoft, Aptos has positioned itself as a regulatory-compliant chain, an essential trait for a state-minted digital dollar.

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June 21, 2025 0 comments

Hunt: Showdown 1896 Judgment of the Fool header image

Product Reviews

Hunt: Showdown 1896 goes offline for a day after its latest update caused so many problems Crytek had to remove it completely

by admin June 18, 2025

It’s been a rough day for Crytek, which after struggling for a day to get the new Hunt: Showdown 1896 2.4 update working properly has given up, rolled the whole thing back, and says it will try again later.

Trouble with the update became apparent almost as soon as the Judgment of the Fool update went live, as a raft of complaints about server problems and the inability to purchase Blood Bonds came flooding in. A couple hours after the update went up, Crytek said it was aware of the problem and took all game servers offline so it could fix the issue, with a promise to “update you as soon as the servers are back online.”

More than eight hours later, the servers finally came back—to Steam, anyway—but the 2.4 update did not.

“After exhausting all possible solutions, we have decided to revert the game back to Update 2.3 to restore stability and will be monitoring stability,” Crytek wrote on X. “At this time, the return to Update 2.3 is now available for Steam players. Console players can expect an update soon as we work on restoring availability to PlayStation and Xbox.”

A return date for the 2.4 update was not provided, but Crytek said it will bring it back “as soon as possible.” It also promised that players who encountered problems with purchases during the 2.4 update’s brief life will receive the items they bought as well as other unspecified compensation, and that “as a token of our appreciation for your patience,” all players will have until June 27 to redeem a code (XIE25T57R247N190) granting them 10,000 Hunt dollars.

(Image credit: Crytek (Twitter))

This has not mollified much of the Hunt: Showdown community. Some fans (particularly those with less-than-great internet) are annoyed at having to download 26GB of data for the 2.4 update, only to have to download another 26GB of data to get rid of it, while others are irritated by the fact that they’ve been unable to play the game for an entire day.

The lack of regular updates from Crytek during the downtime is also a big sore point, and the offer of 10,000 Hunt dollars has also not made much of an impression: It’s a decent amount but not the premium currency, so it can’t be used for things like Legendary skins or battle passes.

Naturally, there’s also been a spate of negative user reviews on Steam, where the “recent reviews” rating now sits at “mixed.” 146 negative reviews have been posted so far today, many of them by players with literally hundreds or even thousands of hours in the game.

(Image credit: Steam)

For now, that’s where things stand: Hunt: Showdown is playable on Steam, apparently not yet playable on consoles, and the 2.4 update is coming but it’s not clear when. We’ll keep our eyes open and let you know when it does.

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June 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt nearly had a very different name

by admin May 30, 2025

There was a time when The Witcher 3 wasn’t called Wild Hunt and CD Projekt Red was trying out various names for its new game – and we’ve just unearthed a couple we’d never heard before.

“I liked Northern Lights,” Michal Platkow-Gilewski, vice president of communication and PR, told Eurogamer. “For a moment there was The Witcher 3: Northern Lights. It never made it into even a logo design but on the whiteboard, for a while, it was there.”

There was also, he revealed, A Time of Axe and Sword, and he said that for a while, this name was going to be ‘the one’. However, it’s a bit of a mouthful to say.

“Yes!” Platkow-Gilewski said, speaking as part of an interview for a larger article looking back on 10 years of The Witcher 3, which we’ll publish tomorrow. “That’s why it died pretty fast. But I remember I created a doc with the final name and that was the final name, and with some colleagues we were betting how long it would last.

“It didn’t last long,” he added. “So we were toying with the name but the moment we found Wild Hunt…”

It’s the lore. Of The Witcher.Watch on YouTube

The moment the studio tried “Wild Hunt”, the name fit. It not only directly referenced the titular threat of the Wild Hunt in the game – the phantasmal group of riders which relentlessly pursues Ciri – but it, regardless of whether you knew the lore or not, left a strong impression of what the game might be about.

That was a big concern for CD Projekt Red at the time: bringing new players in. Remember back in 2013, far fewer people knew about The Witcher games, the studio making them, or the The Witcher lore – those books written by Andrzej Sapkowski. The two released Witcher games only had a cumulative 5 million sales at that point, which is an order of magnitude less than the 60 million copies The Witcher 3 has now sold. There was no Netflix Witcher TV show, either.

That number 3 in the game’s title was a potentially off-putting thing for a prospective audience, then. Would people who hadn’t played the other two games feel like they needed to in order to enjoy this? It’s for precisely this reason the game’s logo changed mid-campaign, switching from displaying an actual number 3 to displaying three claw-like slash marks instead. “We decided, in the middle of the campaign, with all the questions of like, ‘Should I play? Do I have to play?’ that we should turn the three into these marks from Eredin’s helmet in the centre of the logo,” Platkow-Gilewski said.

Today, 10 years later, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the name in our heads. The question is, would a different name have had any effect on the legacy it left?

We also now look forward to a new Witcher game, The Witcher 4, which is in full development although not likely to be released until after 2026. The new game will star Ciri as its protagonist, moving her into a central role after being the co-protagonist, of sorts, in The Witcher 3. It’s a decision that’s met some resistance but one the game’s makers, and people such as Geralt’s English language voice actor Doug Cockle, have openly and vocally stood behind.

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May 30, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is getting special 10th anniversary Xbox controllers

by admin May 22, 2025

CD Projekt has teamed up with Microsoft to create some fancy new Witcher 3-themed Xbox controllers to celebrate the game’s 10th anniversary – which I really can’t quite believe because I personally haven’t aged a day.

The controllers – officially known as the ‘Xbox Wireless Controller – The Witcher 3 10th Anniversary Special Edition’ and the ‘Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 – Core The Witcher 3 10th Anniversary Special Edition’ – are described as being “tempered and battle-ready”, and promise “intricately crafted details”.

They feature The Witcher 3’s wolf medallion iconography, as well as Glagolitic script. I personally don’t know what the script says, but apparently it can be translated and those symbols “are not random”. If you work out what it means, please let me know.

Introducing The Witcher 3 10th Anniversary Special Edition Controllers. Watch on YouTube

Away from the cosmetic sides of things, these chaps also boast all the features you’d expect from an Xbox controller. So, rubberised back grips, remappable controller inputs, Bluetooth support and so on. You can check how they look in the video above.

They’ve been created by CD Projekt’s own designers, with Gabriela Pešková from CD Projekt and Mekias Bekalu from Xbox calling this “such a special moment for both” teams.

“We explored a lot of directions when creating this controller, but from the beginning we knew we wanted to tell a story,” added CD Projekt design lead Joshua Flowers. “We wanted it to feel like something that has been with you on the path, something worn and personal. As we developed concepts, we began crafting the story of this controller – and how it might exist in The Witcher 3’s world. This narrative is what we fell in love with. It had to feel like it belonged in The Witcher 3 universe – like it had lived through battles and carried stories of its own.”

The Xbox Wireless Controller variant is available now for £74.99 while the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller costs £149.99. Both are exclusive to the Microsoft Store.

As for the future of the series, The Witcher 4 won’t be out until after 2026, but we got a first trailer at the end of last year. Earlier this week, Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle called out so-called fans as “stupid” for describing The Witcher 4 as “woke” for having Ciri as the protagonist.

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May 22, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Why we’re still playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 10 years later

by admin May 19, 2025

Ten years! How many times in the last decade have we fetched that frying pan, whistled for Roach to give us a lift, sliced drowners in half, and used our Witcher senses to track a blood trail to a monster’s lair, only to find a tragic story at the end of what seemed like a simple hunt?

The Witcher 3 was a shoo-in for the canon of all-time PC RPGs as soon as it released in May 2015. A decade flew by in an instant, and not just because the passage of time is a haunting reminder of mortality for those of us without witcher mutagens keeping us spry for centuries.

It’s hard to believe The Witcher 3 is 10 years old becuase it feels like few games have bested it since. The writing, voice acting, and world still rival games being released in 2025.