In a PlayStation State of Play video today, Phantom Blade Zero developer S-Game has finally shown off glimpses of a game world it's largely kept secret up to this point, with eight individual maps that "seamlessly connect into a single world."

In my demos of the game over the last year and a half, S-Game has stressed that the areas I got to play and the bosses I fought were all optional diversions from the main story—impressive, considering their scope. This State of Play has finally pulled back the curtain on some of the game's primary characters and locations and shown in more concrete terms what distinguishes Phantom Blade Zero from linear action games and open world ones.

"Your journey takes you to intricate but surreal landscapes," explains S-Game founder Soulframe Liang. "Villages, valleys, lakes, and shadowed territories, including a valley overrun by ruthless bandits, an abandoned warehouse filled with hanging puppets where a dark ritual seems to be taking place, a steam-powered iron tower built for some kind of dark experiment, and a vast lake, which Soul must navigate aboard a peculiar high-speed vessel."

We don't get to see more than a few seconds of each of those areas, but the narration still offers a sense of some of the big chunks the game's world will be divided into. More interesting to me, though, is how Phantom Blade Zero is handling maps: I love that it's not giving you all the details like so many open world games, while still offering a bit more aid than a mapless soulslike:

"Your journey is guided by eight authentic, hand-painted Chinese ink wash maps. In complex regions they offer only a rough sense of direction, leaving you to explore and uncover hidden secrets. These maps seamlessly connect into a single world, where bells enable fast travel between discovered locations."

Soulframe says Phantom Blade Zero "is not an open world game, nor is it a linear adventure from beginning to end."

In the State of Play there are a few quick examples of weapons being used to smash through obstacles, meaning there's at least a light bit of metroidvania-style progress gating that will encourage returning to areas to open new paths or find secrets. We'll see how extensive that exploration proves to be, but I hope Phantom Blade Zero manages to be one of the few action RPGs to get within spitting distance of Dark Souls' still-unbeaten world.

And just in case you missed it last week: Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen has been involved in Phantom Blade Zero's development since 2023.

Bethesda Game Studios is warning owners of Fallout 4 to either log into a save or manually save their mod load order, because a new patch "focusing on general Creations improvements" is incoming.

Bethesda's got a bit of interesting history when it comes to Fallout 4 patches. 2024's "next gen" update didn't really improve anything but did manage to break quite a lot, and the best solution to come out of that whole thing was simply to roll it all back with a "Downgrader Tool." A year after that, Bethesda did it again, although on a somewhat smaller scale, except that ended up causing a surprise new round of headaches, resulting in much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and of course another update.

All of which is to say that if you're a Fallout 4 fan, you should probably pay heed to Bethesda's latest heads-up.

"As a precaution, prior to these updates we encourage players to log into your game save if you haven't done so in a while or manually save your load order," the studio wrote (via Polygon). "Once your load order is saved, you'll be able to re-download your entire Creations list at once when the update is live."

The response to the post is an interesting mix of gratitude that an 11-year-old game is still being actively supported, concern about the damage that ongoing support might cause, and bemusement/outrage that Bethesda is dicking around with Fallout 4 instead of working on Elder Scrolls 6. My guess is that the studio is capable of doing both, but sometimes you just have to get this stuff off your chest.

In any event, this will hopefully not cause any major headaches, but it's still good advice. And speaking of The Elder Scrolls, Bethesda also said that it's working on a new Skyrim update, details of which will be revealed later. You might as well take that as a warning to back up your Skyrim saves too: Bethesda's recording on breaking mods in its fantasy RPG series is pretty much in line with its post-nuclear one.

In a recent video on his YouTube channel, legendary developer Tim Cain weighed in on one of the great RPG debates: Turn-based, or real time? But Cain doesn't see it as a zero sum game, instead staking out a sensible, radical moderate position on a topic that can prompt forum knife fights.

One unique aspect to Cain's perspective: He zoomed out to "real time" period, not just the OG Baldur's Gate-codified "real time with pause" (RTWP) where you can queue up commands to multiple characters while the game is stopped. The specific contrast of turn-based and RTWP is more often the center of debate, given that they have both been ways of digitizing tactical, often tabletop-adapted combat.

But Cain doesn't see one style as being inherently superior to another, pause or no pause. He thinks each has pros and cons, and reflects on them more as tools available to devs rather than ends in and of themselves. Regarding real time, Cain argued:

• It's naturally superior for first person games (excepting very specific edge cases).
• Combat moves faster, and allows for more characters on-screen without dragging things out.
• But it's more difficult to control multiple characters, and the "pause" in RTWP can feel like a bandaid: "It doesn't solve all the problems," according to Cain.

Cain sees the slow pace of turn-based games as a major drawback, a sentiment you might connect with if you've ever reached the modern era in a game of Civ or gotten an entire town hostile in a 2D Fallout. Conversely, he doesn't seem to be much of a fan of adapting turn-based tabletop rules to a real time game, even if you add in a pause.

He proffered the example from Baldur's Gate of enemies moving out of range from your area of effect spells while you're still casting them as one big disconnect. As an aside, Cain was project lead on the defiantly turn-based, post-Baldur's Gate D&D adaptation, The Temple of Elemental Evil.

More of a neutral observation from Cain: He sees real time games as allowing for (and sometimes requiring) a greater degree of raw player skill and reaction time. On the one hand, this can allow for a greater degree of player expression⁠—I thought of "The Ultimate" challenge in Pillars of Eternity, and how high it raises that game's skill ceiling by prohibiting both the turn-based mode and pausing.

But Cain's also a bit of a purist when it comes to RPG gameplay, seeming to prefer that buildcrafting and strategy take center stage over reaction speed and precision, unless you're making a dedicated action-RPG hybrid.

"They both have their loud, vocal advocates," Cain cautioned fellow developers, but he sees a place for both styles. Cain has, indeed, made games in both styles. However, he firmly does not recommend trying to design for both and allowing players to switch between them as in Arcanum, Pillars, or Owlcat's Pathfinder games, because you'd be "setting yourself up for a lot of work."

I can appreciate Cain's agnosticism on the topic, even though I generally prefer turn-based (at least over RTWP). For other developers' perspectives: Cain's Obsidian colleague, Josh Sawyer, thinks turn-based initially fell behind due to a lack of "tactical variation." James Brawley, a lead designer on upcoming turn-based tactics game Star Wars Zero Company, still believes that RTWP has a place, and that its star will rise again.