Raphaël Colantonio became a PC gamer for a very specific reason—he was a huge Ultima fan and wanted to play Ultima 7. "Number six did not come out on Apple. It was so painful to me, the idea I could not play Ultima, that I bought a PC," says the co-founder of Arkane Studios. "It ended up being exactly what I wanted, because it [had] way more possibilities than any of the Ultimas until then."

After working at companies like EA and Infogrames, in 1999 Colantonio co-founded Arkane Studios. The studio's debut game was Arx Fatalis, a first-person RPG inspired by Looking Glass' genre-redefining Ultima Underworld. Over the next two decades, Arkane established itself as the modern successor to Looking Glass, developing some of the PC's best games, such as 2012's Dishonored and 2017's Prey.

Following Prey's release, Colantonio left Arkane to establish WolfEye studios, which published its first game—Weird West—in 2022. WolfEye is currently working on an unnamed first-person RPG—though it may actually have a name now, at least internally. "I think we have it," Colantonio says.

Colantonio took a break from WolfEye's next project for a rooftop reconnaissance of his Steam library. We discussed tactical cats, dystopian decision-making, and ripping off the tech behind the world's greatest stealth game.

What game are you currently playing?

The one that I'm playing right now is Mewgenics.

I played Mewgenics because I was a big fan of The Binding of Isaac, and I just bought it with eyes closed, not knowing what I was getting into, and initially I was disappointed because it felt like a very different game than what I was expecting. I thought it would be action, and instead it was more like a turn-based combat game.

They have this metagame that I don't think works super well. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing with my cats, like, how can I actually benefit from their legacies to create better cats? To me, so far, this part is very blurry. I'm just waiting day-by-day [for] the new cats [to] come in and then some of them die.

But then it kind of grew on me over time, and I think some of it was, [it] kept me in by the rage in some ways, and by the fun in some other ways, because it had to be fun enough that I wanted to see more, and [it has] some really cool combo[s] because it is a little bit in the style of The Binding of Isaac … it's almost like it relies on not being tuned. So you can have an absolutely shitty run, or you can have this incredibly OP run, which feels super satisfying until you die or make a mistake.

I was thinking, what other [tactics] games did I play that I put a lot of hours in? Into the Breach was one of them, which is definitely on the tactics side. I would say XCOM also was a big one for me. Those are not games that I would be good at designing, but I enjoy playing them.

What was the previous game you played, and is it still installed?

I played Cyberpunk for the first time. And I finished it.

I probably sound like an asshole all the time when I speak about games, because I sound very extreme. There are things that I absolutely love, that is the best thing in the world, and then I can be picky and complain about the things people don't notice.

I wouldn't say Cyberpunk grabbed me. I saw the strings. There were so many strings to me in the game that bothered me. But it grabbed me for its production … it's a pretty smooth ride. It's good direction, looks incredible, very good cinematics. Story was interesting. But my choices—it took me a while to realise that actually there were choices. After maybe four or five hours, I was convinced that this game only had fake choices and no consequences whatsoever, because they do so much of the thing where 'Are you going to this or are you going to do that?' And no matter what you do, it's more to give you a little bit of attention rather than anything that happens after that.

At the same time, what they do, they do so well. Like the size of the city, the driving, the feeling of a living city. It's a big game, and then there are choices that open [up] at some point. Some of the powers and some of the synergy between the[m]—you can definitely see some of the Deus Ex love that is behind it. But I think it's such a big game that they had to sacrifice some of what made Deus Ex so cool.

No doubt, it's a great experience. It's just that because I'm such an old gamer and so picky, that it's very hard for me to like everything about a game. I would say the last time I liked everything about a game was probably Baldur's Gate 3. There's just nothing I can say here. Like, just nothing.

What is the oldest game (by release date) currently installed on your PC?

I played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. The question is why did I play it? Could have been for research purposes. No, I think I played it because, first of all, I'm a fan of Lovecraft. But the game I don't think was super well received.

I remember Todd Vaugn, a guy at Bethesda, had worked on it … he told me I should play it, because there's some things I would probably like about it. And it's true, there was something about the atmosphere that they managed to do very well. And then the game was probably too brutal at times, so it eventually became frustrating.

Making a game is so hard, because some games have fantastic qualities, but then still fail to connect at the end, which is unfair of course because it's brutal. People ship the game and either it works or it doesn't. But the amount of work is the same. I think that's one of those that could have been really cool.

What is the highest number of hours you have in any given game, according to Steam?

According to Steam, it would be Wasteland 2. It says 649 hours, which is funny because it's more than I spent apparently on Weird West.

But anyway, yeah, it grabbed me. It was a really cool game. For good reasons, it's very Fallout-ish. And also … I think I was [playing Wasteland 2] during Prey at the time. I was working on Prey, so it was probably somewhere around, yeah, that's right, it says 2015. So I was developing Prey back then.

What game will you never, ever uninstall?

It depends what the question is. If it's like 'What is a game that will always stay in my heart?' There are a few of those. Never uninstalled? I think Steam gives me the comfort and confidence that I can uninstall something and then reinstall it later. So in that sense I could uninstall anything.

I definitely love Thief, Fallout, Deus Ex. When Thief came out, I was a developer already. I hadn't [started] Arx Fatalis yet. I was a big fan of Underworld. Underworld was Looking Glass, and I knew there was this new game coming out from the Looking Glass guys.

So I was extremely excited about it, and it came out and everybody else was playing Metal Gear Solid, and I was playing [Thief] instead. This one was super analogue in the way the stealth worked, and the feedback was more immersive. They were very different things, and [Thief] was not very pretty, but incredibly atmospheric, and it grabbed me because you could feel some of the design philosophy from that Looking Glass thing that I could not yet really well analyse. I could sense there was something there that was feeling like home.

The first time I saw the rope arrow was 'Oh wow, I can dynamically create vertical paths anywhere.' And even though I did not necessarily have those words or this analysis in my head as I was playing it, I realised there was something analogue about it as opposed to, say, Zelda, where they would say "Here is the hook, and you have a grappling hook, now you can grapple the grappling hook." Whereas here it was like "Anywhere there was wood."

There were moments in the game where I was playing with the four-speaker system. I can't remember the name of their audio protocol back then, I think it was EAX or whatever. And wow, the quality of the sound made up for [the graphics] and the spatialisation and the fact that the sounds were travelling through portals.

So Dishonored was very much our own expression of a Thief game, right? … We entirely ripped off their portals and propagation system for Dishonored. They had made a paper about it, and so they were begging to be ripped off, frankly, and we shamelessly took it and used it, which worked really well, and it's a very brilliant idea. The idea being, you place portals, and the sound travels through those portals, so that really helps you locate where sound comes from.

What's a piece of non-gaming software installed on your PC that you simply couldn't live without?

I am using DaVinci Resolve whenever I want to do mockups of something either for the game, or for my band. So I do a little bit of video editing. And there is one [other] thing I have to tell you. It is called DiskState. It's something that shows you in a visual form where your hard drive [space] is. It's funny because this one, it's been with me since maybe the '90s, and every time I have a new PC, the first thing I do is I install DiskState.

How tidy is your desktop screen?

It's not bad. Frankly, I'm pretty proud. I'm trying to recall now because I'm not in front of my PC, but it's pretty clean. I've seen some super messy desktops. I've seen some with nothing [on them], which I don't understand either. But maybe I have four or five folders, and then five, six icons, and that's it.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a game with a title that feels like it ought to have a colon or an em dash somewhere in there, is finally here and it's selling like whatever the nautical equivalent of hotcakes is. Hardtack, I guess. Not only did it sell 2 million copies in a single day, a recent financial report includes Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot saying "Two weeks in, the title has already exceeded the annual expectations we had."

"The strong launch of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced in early July by Vantage Studios is an encouraging proof point," he said. "The game is the highest-rated Assassin's Creed title since the original Black Flag, and we are very pleased with the praise it received from players … I would like to warmly thank the teams whose talent and dedication brought it to life."

Guillemot's thanks come at an interesting time, given that nearly a third of Ubisoft Barcelona was laid off just weeks ago, triggering a labor strike. This was part of a larger wave of layoffs which affected hundreds of workers. As it has done with a variety of Ubisoft games, Ubisoft Barcelona supported the development of Black Flag Resynced and "did all the underwater levels" as tech and gameplay animator Manel Cota posted on X back then.

Regardless, the ludicrous sales Black Flag Resynced is enjoying seem like a signal that the original game's reputation is strong enough to carry this remake through potential turnoffs for prospective players, such as the day one DLC, simplified swordfights, and in-game shop. In his review, PC Gamer's Morgan Park called the game "a well-made, but inessential remake that loses more than it gains."

If you've been hitting the high seas yourself, check out our guide on how to see all the new stuff—if not, the original is there and as good as ever.

Capcom has been churning through remakes of its best Resident Evil games over the last few years, with Resident Evil: Code Veronica up next, but dusting off the horror tomes serves more than one purpose for the publisher. Capcom producer Masachika Kawata says remakes help the company release back-to-back games in the series and help invest more money back into all-new games.

Speaking to Game Informer magazine in its latest issue, Kawata explains that one of the reasons why the publisher creates so many remakes is that "producing a new entry in the Resident Evil series every year would be quite an undertaking and a difficult task" otherwise. Resident Evil isn't properly an annual franchise yet, but the only big gaps in its recent history have been in 2024 and 2025.

"Being able to revisit older games and remake them helps Capcom meet that goal of releasing a Resident Evil title each year, but it also allows the team to continually challenge themselves and hone their craft," Kawata adds. "That's not to say the remakes are any less important. In fact, they're just as important as the mainline titles." (Good spot, NintendoEverything!)

The proof is arguably in the pudding with Resident Evil Requeim, a game that managed to marry the tight and sweat-inducing first-person horror of RE7 and RE8 with the bloody, third-person horror-action of Capcom's recently remade games.

"Capcom is lucky enough to have found this cycle that can continue to provide us with the financial resources to create things like new entries in the Resident Evil series and completely new IP like Pragmata," he continues. "So there is that relationship there."

Of course, the well of old Resident Evil games will eventually run dry. Capcom could re-remake the first game and then try to redeem Resident Evils 5 and 6, sure, but at some point, it'll need to start making multiple original Resident Evil games simultaneously should the company want to keep up the cadence it's on now.

Resident Evil 4 made Capcom another $560 million and became the best-selling remake of the generation, analyst says, more than tripling sales of Oblivion Remastered and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Ryan Gosling came to Marvel with a vision for Ghost Rider, according to studio boss Kevin Feige. It was announced during Marvel's SDCC 2026 panel that the Blade Runner 2049 actor would be joining the MCU as the comic book character in a new movie directed by Shawn Levy.

"I am going to let Ryan reveal what he wants to reveal, when he wants to reveal it, and what he wanted to reveal today is: he's playing Ghost Rider," Feige told Comicbook.com. "He is a huge fan of the comics; he did come to us particularly with a specific vision, based on some particular comics, but I'll let him unveil that as he wants to."

At the moment we don't know much more about the Ghost Rider movie other than its logo and that it will be released in 2028. This means we don't know which version of the character will debut in film, Johnny Blaze or Danny Ketch.

Ghost Rider has had mixed success on screen before, having been played by Nicolas Cage in two live-action films and by Gabriel Luna in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

First up for Levy and Reynolds is Star Wars: Starfighter, which will be released in 2027. Feige has seen the movie, and told audiences at SDCC that he thinks it's "awesome".

Elsewhere, at the Marvel panel, some new footage from Avengers: Doomsday debuted, highlighting the history between Reed Richards and Victor Von Doom. It was also confirmed that David Jonsson is joining the MCU as T'Challa's son in the upcoming Black Panther 3. We also got an exclusive look at Spider-Man: Brand New Day ahead of its release in theaters next week.

For more, check out our guide to everything announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 and our breakdown of the SDCC 2026 schedule. We've also rounded up all of the upcoming Marvel movies and shows on the way in 2026 and beyond.

If you feel like you don't read enough books—which is entirely possible with the many other distractions clamouring for our collective attention—there are various ways to boost your literary consumption. Pick a book that really excites you, rather than something you feel you should read. Choose something short that you're less likely to get bogged down in. Get a job working as a writer on the Silent Hill series.

That last one is, admittedly, harder to achieve than the others. But it'll certainly get you reading more, at least according to the words of Silent Hill producer Motoi Okamoto. In a lecture held by Konami titled "The Art of Producing Silent Hill" (via Automaton Media) Okamoto and other Team Silent members discussed the game's production, and significance reading played in its development.

Okamoto explained that, as a producer, it was vital for him to read extensively given the importance of narrative in a game like Silent Hill f. Moreover, it is especially important to read the works of a writer thoroughly when considering hiring them to work on a game—rather than relying on their reputation.

Okamoto said this was a matter of "basic respect", when hiring a writer. But it is also important for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the writer, as well as the nuances of their style. For example, Konami hired Japanese horror writer Ryukishi07 to work on Silent Hill f specifically because his work on the likes of Hirugashi When They Cry suggested a familiarity with the Silent Hill series.

Further to this, Okamoto also encouraged other members of the studio to read as much as they possibly could. "Within the team, we put pressure on each other, especially among other scenario writers, to read at least 100 to 200 books a year."

You might think much of this obvious, but in an age when reading is dramatically on the downslope, when AI summaries are taking a hammer to the skull of critical thinking, it is not beyond the realms of possibility for companies to coast on a passing familiarity with an artist or a body of work rather than engaging with and comprehending it properly, so it's refreshing to hear a videogame producer evangelise the importance of reading.

It also clearly paid off in the case of Silent Hill f, as its story and approach to storytelling were one of the main sources of praise for Konami's first new Silent Hill game in over a decade. It'll be interesting to see what writers and books shape upcoming Silent Hill projects, given Okamoto has said the team wants to "keep experimenting" with the series.