Accompanying The Mountain Royals expansion will be an update including a massive rework of the Persian civilization! This update will be available to everyone who owns the base game of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, whether you have purchased the upcoming The Mountain Royals expansion or not. Prepare to embark on a legendary journey in "The Mountain Royals" DLC for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. Unlock the rich history and untold stories of two remarkable civilizations, the Armenians and Georgians, and immerse yourself in three captivating new campaigns: Tamar, Thoros the Great, and Ismail.

The Persian Civilization Identity
As more civilizations were released through additional expansions, we found the Persian civilization was slowly becoming less unique and their primary identity as a Knight civilization had become less meaningful. We strived for the way the Persians are represented in-game to incorporate additional design, while representing their rich history, creating more unique tools for the Persian civilization's toolbox. We wanted to provide you with more interesting strategic choices, and ways for you to engage your opponents, all while representing them from the early Middle Ages to late empire.

Hello everyone - my name is Kei Komaki, I am the producer and together with Yuichiro Kitao, Development Producer and Director we want to give fans and newcomers a deep dive into the development process of Star Ocean The Second Story R! This brand-new remake of the classic PlayStation-era RPG launches for PS5 & PS4, Nintendo Switch and PC (Windows) on November 2, and expands the original adventure with revamped mechanics, a rearranged soundtrack with new music, and a bold new 2.5D art style. The whole team has put their heart and soul into this epic adventure, so as the game launches, I thought I'd take you behind the scenes and explain how we approached the challenge of remaking such a beloved game.

The remaster takes off
The first thing you may be wondering is: why remake Star Ocean The Second Story at all? The simple answer is that the fans continually requested it. Even as we continued to develop new instalments in the series, such as 2022's Star Ocean The Divine Force, fans kept asking for the return of Star Ocean The Second Story. This year is the 25th anniversary of the game's original release, so naturally we started thinking about what we could do to mark the occasion. At the time, I was lucky enough to meet Yuichiro Kitao from Gemdrops, Inc., who would go on to work on the development. We discussed the project, and he quickly got on board with the idea of a remake.

Last year, we posted an article on decommissioning online services for some older games. Today we have an update for you, as some additional online services will be decommissioned across several platforms on January 25, 2024. Decommissioning such services for older games is not something we take lightly, but is a necessity as the technology that drove those services has grown obsolete.

Below, you can find a list of the games and platforms affected. For a detailed breakdown of the effects of this decommissioning, please refer to our updated self-help article. Rest assured that the decommissioning of online services will only affect certain online functionalities; if you purchased these games, you will still be able to play them.

The wait is almost over. We are days away from the launch of EA Sports WRC, the biggest rally game Codemasters has made to date. EA Sports WRC is out November 3, let's go through everything you need to know before the big day. Jump straight into the action as soon as the game launches. Pre-load on the dates below.

November 3, the worldwide launch of EA SPORTS WRC at 04:00am UTC across all platforms. Get into the game earlier by, pre-ordering the digital version for up to 3 days early access starting on October 31 at 07:00 UTC across all platforms and EA Play Pro.

If you're looking to build a city, build a team, or build a to-play-next list of games, we have updates for you. Some games you'll remember from seeing at gamescom or at our Xbox Games Showcase, and we have a few new announcements - excited to get to the game play!

Available Today:
Like A Dragon: Ishin! (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Take up the sword as Sakamoto Ryoma and venture to Kyoto to find your father's killer, clear yourself of a framed murder, and restore your honor. In doing so, you will bring an end to the samurai era and forever change the future of Japan. Draw your blade and join the revolution in this heated historical adventure.

Paradox Interactive (Paradox) and Harebrained Schemes (HBS)—developers of the Shadowrun trilogy, BATTLETECH and The Lamplighters League—have decided to part ways on 1 January 2024. The separation is the result of a mutual agreement, stemming from each party's strategic and creative priorities. Paradox will retain ownership of The Lamplighters League and other games developed by the studio. HBS will seek new publishing, partnership, and investment opportunities.

"Paradox has refocused its strategy towards its core niches within strategy and management games with endless qualities," said Charlotta Nilsson, COO of Paradox. "We and HBS' leadership have been discussing what would happen after the release of The Lamplighters League, but a new project or sequel in the same genre was not in line with our portfolio plans. Hence, we believe that a separation would be the best way forward. We're very happy that this talented, gifted studio has the chance to continue and can't wait to see what they will make next."

We are excited to introduce the The Mountain Royals DLC for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition! Unlock the rich history and untold stories of two remarkable civilizations, available now to pre-order with a 15% discount! Our teams have been working on The Mountain Royals for some time, expanding the storytelling of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. As we announce this DLC publicly and make it available for pre-order, we're aware of the events currently affecting modern day Armenians. The Mountain Royals has not been designed as a comment or reference to modern day events.

The Georgians
Carve out a sturdy kingdom in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains and use the rugged terrain to your advantage as you repulse countless foreign invasions. The Georgian unique unit is the Monaspa, a brawny cavalry unit whose strength increases in numbers. During the early medieval period, the regions south of the Caucasus Mountains were divided among numerous petty kingdoms that eluded foreign dominance largely through geographical isolation. Although the Byzantine Empire occasionally attempted to extend its influence into these polities, no significant lasting gains were made. However, the constant threat of foreign invasion catalyzed a gradual shift towards unity. In the early 11th century, Bagrat III finally succeeded in gathering these formerly squabbling states into the Kingdom of Georgia.

Adventure through the mystical Northstar Islands in this all-new take on classic 2D Sonic high-speed action platforming. Play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy and harness all-new Emerald powers to move and attack in dynamic new ways. Navigate gorgeous, never-before-seen environments solo or with up to 3 other players and stop Dr. Eggman, Fang, and a mysterious new adversary from converting the islands' giant animals into Badniks before it's too late!

A new Spin on a Classic
The 2D Sonic high-speed sidescrolling action platforming you know and love, reimagined with fully 3D graphics, new powers and abilities, an all-new setting, and new ways to play! You've never played classic Sonic like this before!

Today is an exciting day for the entire studio, and especially our ENDLESS Dungeon team that has worked super hard these past years to make this game a reality. We've put a lot of passion and dedication into this project, and we're extremely proud of releasing our game today! We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it.

Endless Dungeon is out, at least the advanced access (aka early unlock) for those of you who bought the "Last Wish Edition". For those who own the Standard Edition you will be able to play starting Thursday (16:00 CEST / 15:00 BST / 7:00 PST).

Tune up your boltgun and prepare for the hoard, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is swarming onto Xbox Series X|S today. A spiritual successor to Warhammer: Vermintide, Darktide takes developer Fatshark's ferocious, co-op-focused combat and drops you right into the blistered heart of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

Alongside its Game Pass launch, Darktide is also set to drop its biggest and most game-changing update yet. Patch 13 will introduce new class systems for each playable archetype and a ton of other game-play refining updates. This is the ultimate version of Darktide, so ahead of its console release, we had the opportunity to chat with three developers from Fatshark about why now is the perfect time to get stuck in.

Greetings, Pilots! With EVERSPACE 2 now successfully available on PC and current-gen platforms, it's time for our first free update! Our Armed & Dangerous Update is available now on all platforms. This free update is gear-focused and brings a few community-requested features, as well as a slew of tweaks and bug fixes. At its heart, EVERSPACE 2 is a looter-shooter and what every good looter-shooter needs is MORE ITEMS. With the latest update, we bring 10 new item sets, 2 new companion perks, 4 new ship perks for each class, 4 new catalysts for crafting, 15 new Tier 4 wing modules, and more to EVERSPACE 2.

We've also added more than 40 new item attributes to the loot pool, giving you all a greater variety of potential combinations to fit together. We can't wait to see the amazing builds you'll create! Now, we've already anticipated that many players will be seeking that one perfect piece of gear to complete a build and to aid you, we've added a new gear modifier action feature that allows re-rolling of bonus attributes.

Assassin's Creed Mirage launches on October 5, when players will be able to dive into the adventure of Basim Ibn Is'haq, a young street thief who grows into a Master Assassin, and explore the vibrant city of Baghdad circa the ninth century. Assassin's Creed Mirage is intended to evoke the feel of early games in the series, with an emphasis on stealth and the return of many familiar gameplay and thematic elements - but it's firmly modern in its approach to accessibility, with a number of features to ensure that as many people can play as possible.

"Our philosophy was to create a game that goes back to its roots while retaining the modern accessibility options and feedback elements found in later Assassin's Creed titles, like Valhalla," says Antony Marques, UX designer at Ubisoft Bordeaux. "To achieve this, we collaborated with teams in Montreal, Kyiv, Odesa, and Bordeaux. For the new core gameplay, the focus was to design with accessibility in mind, seamlessly incorporating it into the gameplay itself rather than relying solely on options."

The world of Horizon Forbidden West brims with life across its spectacular landscapes, fierce roaming machines, and thriving cultures that populate a renewed land once ravaged by the biomass-consuming machines of the Faro Plague. And though the wilds are breathtaking, and the machines are massive, Horizon's third essential element is its authentic tribal inhabitants. On her mission, Aloy meets a varied and colorful array of compelling characters, each with their own hopes, journeys, and motivations.

Weaving real personalities and genuine humanity into these characters was a feat accomplished together by many teams at Guerrilla. This article explores those processes, from the narrative foundations of character development to capturing the perfect performance and ultimately implementing them through cinematics and conversation design. Each stage is crucial to ensure the characters of Horizon are as realistic and full of depth as the world around them.

Included in the Forza Motorsport Premium Edition and Premium Add-Ons Bundle, you can play the full game and begin your racing career up to 5 days early on Xbox Series X|S, Windows and Steam. On Xbox and Windows, Forza Motorsport Early Access rollout is region dependent. At 12:01am local time in your country, the game will be available to play. On Steam, this unlock happens globally at 12:01am EDT on October 5.

Upgrade to the Premium Add-Ons Bundle with Xbox Game Pass and enjoy a 10% discount with up to 5 days early access to Forza Motorsport and all the additional content included with the Premium Edition. Forza Motorsport Early Access has started to unlock around the world! Here is the time you can play the game in your country:

Welcome to the launch of The Lamplighters League! It goes without saying, maybe, but this is a special day for us, and we are so excited to be sharing this game with you. Games like this take a long time to bring to life from the first pitches to the final product you can finally play today. At each stage there are unique challenges—especially when bringing to life a brand new game world and working out new twists for an established and complex genre like turn-based tactics. It can be grueling, especially when the build isn't feeling fun, or a production deadline is looming. Or, worse, when those two things are happening at once.

It can also be incredibly rewarding. There was a moment during development where we were, in fact, facing down the fact that infiltration just wasn't fun and there was a big deadline coming up fast. We needed to rethink things, and we needed to do it quickly. Under that pressure the team prototyped and implemented the real time takedowns in just a few weeks. I jumped up in the air the first time I saw the shock from a mine travel through the water on the ground to take out an unaware enemy. It was a big victory right when we needed it as a team.

Launching on October 5, Assassin's Creed Mirage takes place in ninth-century Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate, a golden age not only for Islam, but for art, science, culture, poetry, architecture, and so much more. To help the development team at Ubisoft Bordeaux make Mirage as culturally, religiously, and historically authentic as possible, three Ubisoft employees brought their local and global expertise: Mohammed Alemam, localization and social media manager at Ubisoft MENA (Middle East and North Africa); Malek Teffaha, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Senior Manager of Project Management; and Maya Loréal, Senior Manager, Inclusive Games and Content.

The three joined forces with Ubisoft's Humanities & Inspiration taskforce, led by Thierry Noël, in-house historians Dr. Raphaël Weyland and Maxime Durand, and Strategic Alliances director Amy Jenkins. Loréal managed relationships, and Alemam and Teffaha served as cultural, religious, and linguistic consultants. The three were integral to helping build the game from the ground up.

If you're looking for some spooky games, some fast ways to drive away from anything spooky, or just some great games to load up and dive into the story… have I got some recommendations for you! We've got some games available today for you to check out, some more coming soon, and even a reminder on some you might have missed that we snuck in last month. Let's get to the games!

Available Today:
Gotham Knights (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)—Batman is dead. A new expansive, criminal underworld has swept the streets of Gotham City. It is now up to the Batman Family - Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin - to protect Gotham, bring hope to its citizens, discipline to its cops, and fear to its criminals.

The Lamplighter's League (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S)—Available on day one with Game Pass: Sneak, steal, and shoot your way through a world of pulp adventure in The Lamplighters League! Globetrot across a variety of exciting locales around the world and outwit your enemies in strategic turn-based combat and, if you play your cards right, you might just save the world.

Dear Citizens, see the screenshots below and have a first look at the city in Frostpunk 2! It is the sequel to the highly acclaimed, BAFTA-nominated society survival game. The age of steam has passed and now, oil leads the way as humanity's newest salvation. However, with new threats on the horizon, the future of the city looks even grimmer than before.

THE FROST NEVER ENDS
The game takes place 30 years after the apocalyptic blizzard that has taken place in Frostpunk. Earth is still overwhelmed by the never-ending frost and harsh, icy climate. You play as the leader of a resource-hungry metropolis where expansion and internal conflicts are an unavoidable reality. It's up to you to make decisions about your City's future and face their consequences.

Following up from the first EA SPORTS WRC deep dive that shared details on gameplay features, we're excited to share more information on what players can experience when the game releases on November 3 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via EA App, Epic Store, and Steam. Our second deep dive goes into detail on Career, Moments, Multiplayer, and more in EA SPORTS WRC. Breaking it down is Molly Pettit, broadcaster and journalist for WRC.

Career
Career is a core WRC experience, where players will aim to lead their team to victory against the world's best rally drivers, cars, and teams. The first choice will be in deciding where on the WRC ladder to start their first season from. Want to build up a legacy across multiple classes? Then begin a journey with Junior WRC, as the Rally3 cars are a great entry point for new players. Alternatively, players can start in WRC 2, or even jump straight in at the deep-end with the Rally1 cars in the top class of competition. Following the initial class selection, players will then begin the process of creating their very own rally team. This starts with the team branding, including name and colours, before meeting the Chief Engineer and Benefactor.

The scheduled maintenance carried out last week has fixed the initial matchmaking issues that occurred during Payday 3's first few days after launch. Matchmaking has been stable and has had good performance after the completed maintenance. In the past five days, PAYDAY 3 had a peak concurrent players (CCU) of 124,254. In September 2023, the game had 3,167,938 unique players (MAU). Starbreeze Nebula has a total of 4,538,702 registered users across all titles.

Starbreeze will now intensify the commercial activities around Payday 3, after partially pausing these during the previous week. In early October, the first update to Payday 3 will launch, focusing on improving the game experience. The coming months include planned updates for PAYDAY 3 that address both content, Quality of Life-improvements, bug fixes and new functionality.

Since the first Forza Motorsport launched in 2005, the Forza franchise has been about falling in love with cars and building community. As a co-founder at Turn 10 Studios, I had the honor of working on the very first Forza Motorsport and have been with the studio for 20 years. In that time, we've grown considerably but, through it all, a constant has been our love for cars, pushing the limits of gaming technology, and creating a racing community for everyone. With less than two weeks to go before we release the brand-new Forza Motorsport globally on October 10, we wanted to share more of our vision for the game, explain how Forza Horizon titles have informed our racing sim, and share our approach for both new players and our core community.

To start, we've been asked why we didn't call this "Forza Motorsport 8," and it's a fair question. From the beginning, we've designed the latest Forza Motorsport to be an evolving racing platform, with new content that adds to the experience of automotive entertainment through skill and competition. Last week we shared a little more about what players can expect with our evolving racing platform on forza.net. It's due to this shift that we didn't need a number in the title; we created a platform.

Greetings Lampbearers. We're a little over two weeks away from the launch of Lords of the Fallen. Soon, the great adventure across the brutal realm of Axiom and its nightmarish counterpart Umbral will be upon us all. We know anticipation continues to rise, so as we await the impending return of Adyr, here's an epic and in-depth overview of what you can expect on 13th October (see below). In it, we cover the game's unique dual realms mechanic, its extensive character customization, seamless co-op multiplayer, and a whole lot more. We can't wait to see you in Mournstead in a couple of weeks.

Hexworks, a CI Games studio, invites players to embark on an epic journey across a vast and treacherous world when the highly anticipated, dark-fantasy action-RPG, Lords of the Fallen, releases worldwide on Friday 13th October, 2023. A spiritual successor to the original 2014 title, the upcoming game acts as a full reboot for the franchise, and is available to pre-order on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Years in the making, Cocoon is now available! For the next two weeks, you can get it for 20% off. The team at Geometric Interactive has put a ton of work into it and we hope you'll love the experience as much as we do. From Jeppe Carlsen, the lead gameplay designer of Limbo and Inside—Cocoon takes you on an adventure across worlds within worlds. Master world-leaping mechanics to unravel a cosmic mystery.

WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS
Cocoon is a unique take on the puzzle adventure genre, where each world exists within an orb that you can carry on your back. Wrap your head around the core mechanic of leaping between worlds—and combine, manipulate, and rearrange them to solve intricate puzzles.

Hi everyone. Croteam is very happy today to announce The Talos Principle 2 is launching on November 2. This is a very special project for us. For one, it allowed us to continue the story of The Talos Principle, a game that shaped us just as much as Serious Sam did. But also, The Talos Principle 2 started a new chapter for us, as we transitioned from developing our own technology to Unreal Engine, which allowed us to put 100% of our focus on creating the best gaming experience we can.

We cannot wait for everyone to hop in The Talos Principle 2 on November 2nd, and experience this new adventure with us. You can pre-purchase The Talos Principle 2 now at 10% off, and if you own the original you can secure an additional discount. Thanks for all your support! The new game is a thought-provoking first-person puzzle experience that greatly expands on the first game's philosophical themes and stunning environments with increasingly mind-bending challenges.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is available now on PC through Steam, GOG, the Epic Games Store, and GeForce Now. On Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 the expansion is being rolled out and will become available at midnight in each time zone. Return as cyber-enhanced mercenary V and embark on a high-stakes mission of espionage and intrigue to save the NUSA President with the help of NUSA secret agent Solomon Reed. Phantom Liberty will bring you to Dogtown—the most dangerous district of Night City ruled by arms dealer and warlord, Kurt Hansen.

FREEDOM ALWAYS COMES AT A PRICE
Phantom Liberty is a new spy-thriller adventure for Cyberpunk 2077. Enter the shadowy world of spycraft and become a government secret agent. Infiltrate high-security buildings, take out enemies and go toe-to-toe against seasoned professionals. Espionage is a high-risk game, and failure isn't an option. Choose your allies with care as you unravel the secrets at the heart of this expansion.