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.

In 2021, we introduced the Shift Special Edition Controller series with the Aqua Shift, followed by the Lunar and Stellar Shift controllers. We have been thrilled by the Xbox community's response to each controller and are delighted to announce that the Shift series is now available through Xbox Design Lab. Alongside the Aqua, Lunar, and Stellar Shift designs making their debut on Xbox Design Lab, we are equally excited to introduce the newest member to the Shift series family - Cosmic Shift. These color-shifting top cases change color with light and motion - including the blue shimmer of Aqua Shift, silver-gold shimmer of Lunar Shift, blue-purple shimmer of Stellar Shift, and white-pink shimmer of Cosmic Shift.

At its core, the Shift series symbolizes the essence of exploring distinct realms, as each controller has a design story tied to traversing from one dimension to another. The blue shimmer of the Aqua Shift symbolizes the sea and its rhythmic tides. The silver-gold shimmer of the Lunar Shift embodies the captivating aura of the moon. The Stellar Shift transports us to the depths of space, where the deep purple and blue shimmer mimic the mysterious themes of the galaxy.

The Total War: Pharaoh Early Access Weekend is almost upon us! Here are the global times for everyone (see below). 🌐 If you've pre-ordered your copy, it'll be available in your Steam library from Sept 29th, 13:00 BST to Oct 2nd, 13:00 BST. Prepare to journey back to the late Bronze Age! 🏺 The Early Access Weekend is an exciting opportunity for you to enjoy a carefully curated presentation of the game that includes two playable factions from two different cultures, a selection of Ancient Legacies, the full campaign map as well as all battle mechanics and most campaign mechanics. The game is playable for up to 60 turns, which can be replayed as often as you like during this time period.

This is the first time we're offering a pre-order bonus like this and we're proud to give you the chance to try part of the game a little earlier! We're currently focusing all available energies on polishing and delivering a smooth and enjoyable launch, so the Early Access Weekend is not a beta test. Of course, if you should happen to encounter a serious bug or issue, please do let us know.

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.

Heya Realmwalkers, Inflexion Games here. We have a new Developer Update for you all that covers Nightingale's August playtest details & challenges, what we're working on post-playtest, Quality of Life (QoL) feature updates, what Early Access means to us and much more. Watch it below. Set out on a journey of survival and adventure, into the mysterious and dangerous Fae Realms of Nightingale! Become an intrepid Realmwalker, and venture forth alone or with friends - as you explore, craft, build and fight across a visually stunning Gaslamp Fantasy world.

Nightingale is a PVE open-world survival crafting game played solo or cooperatively with friends. Build, craft, fight and explore as you venture through mystical portals into a variety of amazing and fantastical realms. You are stranded beyond our world, cut off by the collapse of the arcane portal network. This catastrophe has left you fighting to survive in a labyrinth of beautiful and dangerous Fae realms. Your goal: become a skilled Realmwalker, and navigate the web of transdimensional portals. Only then can you discover your way to the magical city of Nightingale, the last known bastion of humanity.

Hey Hunters! We are excited to announce that Early Access is now live! New and returning players can look forward to joining Pinkyy and her crew through additional adventures, finding new Relics, gear, and weapons beyond what has previously been seen in Stress Tests and Closed Betas. To celebrate the launch, the Relic Hunters Legend is available for a SPECIAL discounted price (33% off) as part of Steam's SHMUP Fest from now until October 2.

How To Join
Players have various ways to get into Early Access such as getting the Rebel Edition, upgrading with the Heroic Content Upgrade Pack, or picking up everything at once with the Legendary Edition which includes a digital comic book, character skins, and more. Additional details about the Relic Hunters Legend Early Access Editions and Content Pack can be found below.

Join the thirstiest of adventures! Discover the story of the sunbeaten land. 50 years ago, the hubris of humankind combined with natural disasters transformed the world into a desert. A desert world, an extreme water shortage, a demon-human alliance. Whether or not you're familiar with the SAND LAND universe, we're pleased to share a short recap/introduction of the story and its characters, to prepare you for the release of our upcoming video game!

1. What is SAND LAND?
SAND LAND is originally a popular manga created by Akira Toriyama, the author of DRAGON BALL and Dr. Slump. After being serialized intensively for a short period in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2000, the one-volume comic has gained worldwide popularity since its publishing. In desert world where both demons and humans suffer from an extreme water shortage, Beelzebub, Fiend Prince, and Rao, a small-town sheriff, and demon Thief form a team and set off on an adventure in search of the Legendary Spring somewhere in the desert.

During launch-weekend, Payday 3 had a peak of concurrent players (CCU) across all platforms of 218,250, and a peak of 1,347,510 unique players (DAU). Starbreeze Nebula currently has 3,794,172 registered users. Payday 3 matchmaking infrastructure has not performed as tested and expected. Matchmaking software encountered an unforeseen error, which made it unable to handle the massive influx of players. The issue caused an unrecoverable situation for Starbreeze's third-party matchmaking partner.

A new version of the matchmaking server software was gradually deployed across all regions leading to improved performance. However, a software update made by the partner during late Sunday again introduced instability to the matchmaking infrastructure. The partner continues to work to improve and stabilize Payday 3's online systems.

Ubisoft has announced strong early momentum for The Crew Motorfest, the brand-new open world driving experience of The Crew franchise. The game is the highest rated title in the franchise and had the best first week for the franchise in terms of total unit sell through, overall consumer spend, and season pass adoption rate.

The Crew Motorfest has been received positively by critics and players alike, delivering on its promise of breathtaking Hawaiian scenery and graphic fidelity, improved vehicle handling, and an ode to car culture through the Playlist system. The Crew 2 community have already embraced the new opus and have taken advantage of the "Collection Import" feature, with more than 42 million vehicles imported from The Crew 2 to The Crew Motorfest.

Tales of the Shire—a "The Lord of the Rings" game—has been teased by Private Division. The introductory trailer does not contain any gameplay footage, but it indicates that a "cozy" Hobbit-related living habitat will serve as the main environment. A live action sequence shows a character adding yet another drawing to a sketchbook filled to the brim with illustrations of Hobbit life and key Shire locales. Take Two Interactive's indie specialist offshoot will be publishing the game, while Wētā Workshop is listed as Tales of the Shire's main development studio. The latter is best known for creating special effects and props—most notably on the Peter Jackson directed The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies.

Wētā Workshop's move into video games seems to be an odd one—but Take Two Interactive and its development partner did announce an unnamed The Lord of the Rings title last summer—Amie Wolken, head of interactive at Wētā Workshop stated (at the time): "It's a privilege to create a new game set in Middle-earth, especially one that's so different from what fans have played previously. As fans ourselves, we're excited for gamers to explore Middle-earth in a way they never have before, and introduce new fans to the magic of The Lord of the Rings." Private Division has set a very general 2024 launch window, with Tales of the Shire arriving on PC and consoles.

It's time, Helldivers. This is Katherine from Arrowhead Game Studios bringing you the biggest announcement yet: Helldivers 2 launches on 8th February 2024! Pre-purchase for both the Standard Edition and the Super Citizen Edition of Helldivers 2 are now available—enlist today to fight for the liberty of Super Earth.

Be the hero of Super Earth, defender of Freedom, herald of Managed Democracy. Team-up with your fellow Helldivers and fight more than just bugs: now the Automaton faction has emerged to threaten our liberty. Descended from the Cyborgs, an old enemy familiar to our Helldivers community, these mechanized killing machines are determined to wipe out the Super Earth way of life. The bots are an intelligent and relentless foe, you and your squad will have to gather your most powerful weapons and strategize on how best to wipe them out.

Hey Skyfarers, it's the day we have all been waiting for—grab your ships and join us in the skies! Airship: Kingdoms Adrift is officially launching on Steam, and we—Revolution Industry—couldn't be more stoked! Before we jump into commanding our ships, we want to send a massive shoutout to all you amazing skyfarers who've been with us every step of the way. We are beyond grateful for your support - you rock!

We're incredibly excited to see how you thrive in the world we have crafted. Whether you're building up a fleet, charting trade routes, or exploring the frontier at your airship's helm, we hope you love each moment as much as we loved creating this world for you to dive into! If you encounter any bugs or have suggestions, we're all ears, and would love to hear from you.

Forza Motorsport will expand with new cars, tracks, career tours and online events. Here's how we're building an evolving racing platform to give players a steady flow of new challenges and gameplay experiences. Forza Motorsport launches on October 10 with over 500 cars, 20 completely rebuilt tracks and our new career and online racing modes. It's a massive game from day one and it'll continue to grow over time.

We want to ensure you always have something new to play in Forza Motorsport. That's why we built the game to be an evolving racing platform. Once the game has been released, we expect to regularly add new content with monthly content drops that will help you fall in love with cars through skill and competition, as well as tweaks to gameplay and systems.