With the big screen adaptation of The Mortuary Assistant set to arrive in theaters next month, the first trailer is here to remind us all that sometimes works sucks, but all you can do is power through to the end of your shift and hope tomorrow is better.

The Mortuary Assistant was something of a surprise hit in 2022: A game that puts players in the shoes of a fresh-out-of-college apprentice mortician who's called into work late one night to handle some unexpected embalmings. But this, it turns out, is not a normal day at the office. Your boss had the good sense to stay home, but you are not alone: Before long you're not only preparing the deceased for their funerals, you're also conducting occult rituals to ward off demonic forces. Talk about multi-tasking!

I suppose it's inevitable at this point, three years after the release of the game, but the trailer for the film adaptation of The Mortuary Assistant doesn't land quite as well for me as the game did. The game, at least in the early going, is relatively subtle: Creepy as hell, yes, but things happen slowly at first, and the tension is elevated by the inherent unpleasantness (for me, anyway) of routine mortician work.

Luke Winkie wrote in his 2022 preview that "The Mortuary Assistant is pockmarked with whiplash-inducing scares, but I think the game shines the most with its genuinely uncompromising presentation of what morticians do on a day-to-day basis," adding that the processes of draining blood, wiring jaws, and preserving eyeballs "is wondrously, euphorically disgusting."

The trailer for the film, by comparison, seems like a much more conventional tale of demonic invasion, where the mortuary part is almost irrelevant: It provides a ready supply of stiffs to grotesquely reanimate for various jump-scare shocks, but you're not going to enjoy the pleasures of, say, hammering on someone's gumline to ensure their mouth doesn't suddenly pop open while mourners are bidding tearful farewells.

That lack of interactivity is part and parcel with movies, but the trailer lays it all out in a way the game doesn't: There's an "entity," it has to be banished back to hell, it probably not going to be a very pleasant process, and you get the gig. Lots of yelling and screaming, too.

Here's the game trailer from 2022, which I really do think strikes a different, more interesting sort of tone:

Being different, to be clear, doesn't mean I think it's going to be bad, and I hope The Mortuary Assistant: The Film is as well-received as The Mortuary Assistant: The Game. You'll have to let me know about that, though, I don't do horror movies.

The Mortuary Assistant is set to debut in theaters on February 13. If you haven't yet given the game a shot, you can pick it up from Steam or the Epic Games Store—and if you're curious but not convinced, Steam also offers a free demo.

Marathon got a release date earlier today, confirming a March 5 launch for Bungie's extraction shooter. The studio hasn't skimped where voice talent is concerned: actors from pretty much every successful game from the last decade are present, though it's yet to be confirmed what roles each will play (and how big they'll be).

Among the biggest names is Ben Starr, nowadays best known for playing Verso in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as well as prominent roles in Final Fantasy 16 and Hades 2. Starr has won two Golden Joystick awards and garnered several big nominations at the Game Awards.

The voice behind Karlach in Baldur's Gate 3, Samantha Béart, is among several actors from Larian's RPG making an appearance. Neil Newbon and Tracy Wiles, Astarion and Jaheira from Baldur's Gate 3 respectively, will also appear.

The biggest deal though? Mr "I never asked for this" himself, Elias Toufexis of Adam Jensen in Deus Ex fame, will also appear in Marathon.

Here's the full list:

• Krizia Bajos
• Samantha Béart
• Beau Bridgland
• Ry Chase
• Roger Clark
• Darin De Paul
• Jennifer English
• Dave Fennoy
• Nika Futterman
• Morla Gorrondona
• Reina Guthrie
• Donnla Hughes
• Keston John
• Sohm Kapila
• Rich Keeble
• Elliot Knight
• Erica Lindbeck
• Piotr Michael
• Brent Mukai
• Neil Newbon
• Ariana Nicole George
• Emily O'Brien
• Lee Shorten
• Jason Spisak
• Ben Starr
• JB Tadena
• Fred Tatasciore
• Craig Lee Thomas
• Elias Toufexis
• Oliver Vaquer
• Scott Whyte
• Tracy Wiles
• Erin Yvette

The release date was announced via a fancy cinematic trailer designed to set the tone for Bungie's new game, which is a slightly grimier take on sci-fi compared to their Star Wars-channeling Destiny and Halo games. Marathon is available to wishlist on Steam.

As you might have heard, Elder Scrolls Online is getting crossplay after 12 long years. The first murmurings about the feature came in Oct. 2025, when developer ZeniMax Online Studios confirmed to Forbes it was being worked on, and it came up again in a Reddit AMA last week when the studio said that while crossplay is still being developed, it "won't be a 2026 item."

In that same thread, though, executive producer Susan Kath confirmed that cross-progression is coming too: "We will be doing crossplay and cross-prog at the same time," she wrote.

It's hard to know when to expect the features, though 2027 is the earliest window players might see it. MMOs with both crossplay and cross-progression are exceedingly rare compared to their PC-exclusive or otherwise cordoned-off counterparts, and given what sort of trouble arises squeezing all those players together on a single platform, it's no surprise this sort of thing takes a lot of extra work.

The note about cross-progression is great news, though, for anyone looking to explore Tamriel on multiple platforms. It's not clear how this will all work with PC addons, whether the game or its expansions will need to be bought again to play on different platforms, or what this means for the extra-dedicated sickos who already have significant progress on both a console version of the game and the PC version. One assumes that's the stuff they need the coming year to sort out.

Here's hoping ESO can pull itself out of the mud with changes like this and the recently announced 2026 roadmap. 2025 was an arduous year for the venerable MMO, with the original director leaving the company outright after layoffs killed the studio's unannounced next game. Strife aside, it's still one of the best MMOs on PC, and it should be even better once you can rope in all your friends with an Xbox or a Playstation.