Sydney Sweeney is calling out some people in the Hollywood industry who tear another woman down privately while publicly proclaiming they are empowering women. In a new interview, the Immaculate star cited the industry’s attitude of “women empowering other women” as untrue. “It’s very disheartening to see women tear other women down,” Sweeney said in […]
At 98, Dick Van Dyke has at least one positive takeaway from knowing his time is limited. The 6x Emmy winner had a blunt reaction when asked how he feels about Donald Trump returning to office for another four-year term after winning the presidential election against Kamala Harris this month. “Fortunately, I won’t be around […]
BioWare RPGS have earned a reputation for expansive world-building, complex characters, and difficult choices. And that’s not to mention the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises’ knack for building on science fiction and fantasy tropes and remixing them into full-fledged advancements of those genres. But it should not be forgotten that BioWare is also lauded for having great characters to smooch!
Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the latest installment in the Dragon Age franchise, is no different in this regard than its predecessors, but I can’t help noticing that it has evolved from previous BioWare games in at least one way: It lets me flirt like a normal fucking person.
[Ed. note: This piece contains some mild spoilers for the first act of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.]
This might be a bold statement from someone who has admitted, in this very publication, that they don’t know how to flirt, but hear me out. All of the early game flirt options I’ve seen in Veilguard are nice, chill things to say to someone you like but don’t know very well. That might seem like faint praise, but let’s take a little tour of some of the most outrageous flirt options in BioWare games.
Dragon Age and Mass Effect didn’t always have flirt options that were labeled in the UI as flirtatious — instead, you’d have to simply keep your companion approval high and infer what counted as signaling your intentions. That was not always easy.
During a conversation in the first Mass Effect game, for instance, your colleague Kaidan confesses his struggles with debilitating migraines (a side effect of his telekinetic abilities). If a female Shepard player character made the dialogue choice to express gentle sympathy, the game counted that as flirting. Even if you made no overt signs of intimate affection, Kaidan would eventually get pissed at you for leading him on, which, suffice to say, did not endear me. A person should be able to tell a guy, “Hey man, that really sounds like it sucks,” without it being taken as a relationship commitment.
Dragon Age 2 was the first Dragon Age game to use the now-standard BioWare conversation wheel, which explicitly indicates tone, clarification questions, and, of course, whether a line mechanically counts toward the game’s romance plotlines. Dragon Age 2 is also the game where — after Anders tells you that since inviting a spirit of Justice to inhabit him, he has no idea where his personality ends and its begins — a smart-mouthed player character can flippantly quip, Well, at least the demon’s got a hot bod. The game’s animation did not support suggestive eyebrow wiggling, but one presumes it is implied.
And while DA2’s Merrill, a sweet mage who’s just moved into a human city for the first time after her elven clan disowned her, is one of my favorite characters in the whole game, I’ve never romanced her. That’s because I’ve never been able to get over how your first opportunity to flirt with her happens immediately after she tells you you’re the only person she knows. Dragon Age 2! Right now, Merrill needs more friends! She doesn’t need me trying to smash!
When I brought up Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s comparatively normal flirt options, my co-worker Petrana laughed and immediately remembered a conversation with Cullen, your military advisor in Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s not the first moment you have to signal your affection for him, but this early flirt involves looking him in the eyes and asking him if he’s celibate. I can confidently call that an HR violation.
This is all why I was ready for Rook, the player character of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, to step forward into the arena of love with, well, a certain forwardness. Instead, I was wowed by Rook’s earnest cool.
Bellara, the scatterbrained but dedicated researcher, apologizes for rambling, and a flirtatious Rook can tell her that they like seeing her enthusiasm. They can tell Taash they enjoy traveling together. There were a couple times I chose a flirt option just because it seemed like the nice thing to say. Since the days of Ol’ Friend Zone Kaidan, BioWare has updated the dialogue wheel to give explicit indications of when romantic dialogue options open up and lock in romance plotlines. And thank goodness! I’m not trying to smooch Lucanis on this run, but I do want to check in with him about whether he’s OK being alone with the demon in his head. He’s been through a lot!
Options did get tastefully hornier later, like when my Rook told a companion, “I think your fingers are perfect,” and, “Wow, in my daydreams, this is where you lean over me and slap the wall.” As they should — my Rook knows these characters better now, so she’s established trust and, maybe more importantly, a vibe.
I hit a lot of flirt buttons for a lot of different characters in the early hours of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and I was ready to hear a real doozy of a line fall out of Rook’s mouth. I was looking forward to having a healthy laugh about it, taking a screenshot for my friends, and moving on. Instead, I found my Rook saying a ton of nice, supportive things to her new, hot acquaintances.
Veilguard hits a best-of-both-worlds middle ground between the more overt romantic excesses of previous games, and doesn’t get me in social hot water for just being vulnerable and nice to my companions. Is this what flirting is like in real life? As previously stated, I’m not in a particularly good position to know. What I can say for certain is that it’s exactly the kind of incremental evolution of romance storytelling that I like to see in a new BioWare RPG. New developments in world-building, new developments in gameplay, and, yes, new developments in smooching.
Nobody with sense is out here arguing that it's easy to make games, but sometimes the challenges and intricacies of game development aren't super visible or understandable. To put things into perspective, No Man's Sky engine programmer Martin Griffiths shared a version of the 20 "platform combinatorics" that Hello Games' open-world space sandbox currently supports, with a few caveats that ratchet it up further.
First, here's the full list of formats, straight from a recent tweet from Griffiths:
PS5 (Base)
PS5 (Base, PSVR2)
PS5 Pro
PS5 Pro (8K)
PS5 Pro (PSVR2)
PS4 (Base)
PS4 (Pro, x 2 - 1080p/4k modes)
PS4 (Base PSVR)
PS4 Pro (PSVR)
PS4 (PSVR, enhanced when running on PS5)
Xbox One, Xbox One S
Xbox One X (x4 - Quality/Perf modes, 1080p/4k modes)
Xbox Series S (x4 - Quality/Perf modes, 1080p/4k modes)
Xbox Series X
Switch (Handheld)
Switch (TV mode)
PC (around 140 combinations of graphics options - AA, Super Resolution, Quality modes etc)
Mac (a similar amount of options, with dev support from The-Forge)
PC (Steam Deck, Rog Ally, Intel, Laptop/Integrated graphics)
PCVR (a dozen or so supported headsets, and most of the same options as flat mode)
I'm assuming the Xbox One S and standard Xbox One are listed together because the hardware differences between them are so incredibly minor that there's no practical difference in optimization. As Griffiths notes, we're glossing over the notoriously branching settings and setups of PC gamers with a passing, 'yeah, it's on PC.' And that's still the simple version.
"This is a simplified, graphics engine/platform-centric breakdown, not counting major systems like networking, input and audio…" Griffiths adds. "There are also many other integrated paths like HDR and dynamic res scaling (DRS) on console, GPU vendor specific optimizations on PC and foveated rendering for PSVR2. All of these, created and maintained in a single unified code base, by the systems and engine team at Hello Games."
Hugh Grant stars as a strange and dangerous villain in Heretic, A24's new horror flick that debuted with $11 million last weekend. And at one point in the film he does an impression of Star Wars character Jar-Jar Binks and folks, it’s the worst impression of the hated alien I’ve ever heard.
With Monster Hunter Wilds just three months away, it's worth studying up on the confirmed monsters that we'll be hunting across the Forbidden Lands. Preparation is, after all, half of the hunter's job—even if that preparation only involves deciding which armor piece would most improve your outfit.
No matter what monsters Capcom adds, every hunter's greatest prize is fashion.
Capcom has been slowly doling out reveals for new and returning monsters in Monster Hunter Wilds, from series classics like Rathalos and Yian Kut-Ku to all-new beasties like the lightning-launching Rey Dau. Whether you're swinging a hammer, shelling with a gunlance, or sobbing over losing the ability to stay airborne with your insect glaive, here's the list of confirmed monsters you'll be facing in February.
We'll be updating this list with additional monster reveals as we approach the Monster Hunter Wilds release.
Ajarakan is a hyper-aggressive, hulking primate in a similar vein as long-time monster favorite Rajang. But where Rajang is a lightning-charged, Super Saiyan ape, Ajarakan is more of a metal-plated mandrill. Monster Hunter isn't a series that's content to settle with a steel-encased baboon, however. When Ajarakan's enraged, it'll rake its own shell with its claws until the metal plating is molten-hot, presumably adding fire damage to its rampage.
Arkveld
(Image credit: Capcom)
Monster Class: Unknown | Habitat: Unknown
Called "The White Wraith" by the inhabitants of the Forbidden Lands, Arkveld is the mascot monster for Wilds, and seems like it'll factor heavily into the story, having apparently destroyed the home village of one of the game's main characters. Capcom hasn't released much information about Arkveld, but it had apparently been considered an "extinct species" by the hunters' research commission before being encountered in the game.
Extending from Arkveld's forelimbs are two whip-like appendages. During its reveal in the fourth Monster Hunter Wilds trailer, it can be seen with its whips glowing as they're coiled around another monster.
I can only speculate, but considering that it's a massive, horned, white wyvern with a majestic beard, I feel like we can safely assume that its armor sets will look pretty rad, at least.
Leviathan monsters tend to be aquatic, but Balahara instead occupies the sands of the Windward Plains as an ambush predator. Its coiled, spiraling scales let it burrow beneath the sand to create quicksand traps to swallow hunters and other monsters.
The Black Flame
The people of Azuz speak of the haunting visage cast by the Black Flame. Be wary of the unknown and mysterious, hunters. #MHWilds pic.twitter.com/vGx0MLXdhpOctober 25, 2024
Monster Class: Unknown | Habitat: Oilwell Basin
We don't yet know the actual name of the monster that the inhabitants of the Oilwell Basin call "The Black Flame." From the brief glimpse of the creature Capcom gave at the end of the Oilwell Basin trailer, it seems to be a huge, spined cephalopod that's constantly exuding oil, which it can ignite at will to produce gouts of fire.
It bears a passing resemblance to the elder dragon Nakarkos, a giant squid-like monster first introduced in Monster Hunter Generations that encases its tentacles in the skeletons of other monsters. Those could just be coincidental or taxonomic similarities, but it's possible that The Black Flame is some form of Nakarkos variant or subspecies.
One of the introductory hunt targets in Wilds, Chatacabra is a frog-like amphibian monster. While it can use its long tongue to attack, its primary utility is coating the Chatacabra's forearms with a thick, adhesive saliva which lets the monster attach environmental materials to strengthen its attacks. It's, you know, gross. Still, points for ingenuity.
Somewhere between a bear, a lion, and a mole-rat, the Doshaguma is a burly, shaggy powerhouse, capable of tearing up huge chunks of earth when it's enraged. The biggest, most aggressive specimens are the Alpha Doshaguma—red-pelted variants that are accompanied by packs of its fellow monsters.
Players of the Monster Hunter Wilds beta likely battled an Alpha Doshaguma in the Windward Plains, but trailers have also shown them in the Scarlet Forest region.
Lala Barina is like if a dracula was a giant wooly spider made out of knives and spears. Nesting in webs of crimson silk in the Scarlet Forest region, it can extend sets of scything claws from its forelimbs, while its abdomen boasts a retractable, impaling stinger.
When enraged, the Lala Barina can unfold its abdomen, appearing to bloom like a giant rose. When it does so, it can scatter bundled florets of its silk, which will paralyze hunters on contact.
The Quematrice is one of the tyrannosaurish brute wyverns, but this one is crested and draped in sheets of sagging hide to give it an appearance resembling the mythological cockatrice. Given that the Spanish "quemar" means "to burn," I'll give you a few seconds to guess what its special talent is before I continue.
If your answer was "create horrible fire," you're right! The Quematrice can spread a flammable powder, which it can ignite with sweeps of its tail.
Rathalos
(Image credit: Capcom)
Monster Class: Flying Wyvern | Habitat: Unknown
Rathalos, the flying wyvern mascot for the Monster Hunter series as a whole, hasn't been seen battling any hunters in Wilds footage released so far, but it's briefly seen flying over the landscape at the end of the Wilds reveal trailer. Considering Rathalos has been huntable in every Monster Hunter game to date, it's safe to assume that appearance wasn't just for show.
Having hunted Rathalos for years now, I think of it more as an old friend than a storied foe. At least, until I remember all the times it's refused to land while raking me with poisonous talons and strafing the area with fireballs. Ah, memories.
The Rey Dau is the imposing apex predator of the Windward Plains, where it most often appears during the lightning storms that sweep across the region during the Sandtide. Able to harness the lightning strikes for its own ends, it can charge its bladed wings and tail with electricity, carving superheated streaks into the landscape as it attacks.
For its heaviest attack, Rey Dau can snap its horns forward to turn its head into an organic railgun, which lets it channel a blast of lightning capable of one-hitting an unwary hunter. Successfully dodging the blast gives, however, gives you an opportunity to land a focus strike on the Rey Dau's head as it cools down from the attack.
If simply beholding a Rompopolo doesn't convince you that it's beyond any human capacity for mercy, all its nightmarish, bulbous sacs are filled with a poisonous gas, which it can inject into the oil-soaked silt of its home terrain to cause a violent explosion. Awful.
Uth Duna is a large, bulky leviathan that acts as the apex predator of the Scarlet Forest region. According to Capcom, it's seen most often during the Downpour, when the Scarlet Forest floods with torrential rainwater. Capable of manipulating moisture, Uth Duna can use the Downpour's waters to veil itself in a protective barrier.
Revealed in the Monster Hunter Wilds release date trailer, Uth Duna looks—and seems to fight—like a cross between a Royal Ludroth and the elder dragon Namielle, slamming with its bulk, striking with its claws and fangs, and launching itself into water to send flood surges sweeping across the battlefield.
Yian Kut-Ku
The big beaked bird wyvern, Yian Kut-Ku, returns with a vengeance in Monster Hunter Wilds!How and when will you encounter them? That's for you to find out! #MHWilds pic.twitter.com/anw15tiFXKSeptember 26, 2024
Like Rathalos, Yian Kut-Ku has been around since the very first Monster Hunter game, although it's been absent from the last few mainline releases. Returning in Wilds, it'll apparently be one of the monster species that can be encountered in packs. Given its penchant for loud squawks, I'm sure that'll be a lovely acoustic experience for everyone involved.
The Yian Kut-Ku can launch fireballs from its beak, and it's recognizable for its characteristic frills that flare open when it's on alert. With Yian Kut-Ku confirmed for Wilds, it's worth wondering whether we'll also see Yian Garuga: a related species that possesses a poisonous, barbed tail.
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