Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2024 i PC Gamer

While studying illustration at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, Kaz Adams developed two passions; Second Life, and (self-taught) 3D modelling. They put their skills to use in Second Life projects, until eventually they “fell in love” with Warframe. What started as a game they adored, soon became a career. “I discovered that the [Digital Extremes] offices were a two hour drive from my parents’ house,” they explain. “So I moved back to Michigan and started putting all my eggs in one basket and just had to get hired here, because I was a big fan at the time. It was a dream job situation.” After a few years as a player, they landed that dream job, initially through consultancy work which led to a full-time staff position. When it…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASEMay 2024 DEVELOPERArtefacts Studio PUBLISHERNacon LINK s.team/a/1658920 X .COM, but make it medieval. This could be Xth-century COM, except it’s set in the 1300s. Crown Wars takes tactical combat with a squad of distinctive characters, adds base-building in the form of an entire fortified village, and makes thoughtful additions to the formula that key in to its setting. A council meets, presumably in secret, but their security measures must be off as the castle is attacked and it’s left to a curious group of warriors, one wearing antlers, to hold back the encroaching enemy while the councillors burn documents. Luckily, it’s the tutorial, so heavily armoured lady knight Louise can make bloody one-hit kills with her warhammer while you get to grips with action points…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE2025 DEVELOPERDeep Worlds SA PUBLISHERDeep Worlds SA LINK deepworlds.studio I t’s not hard to see Beautiful Light’s influences: the extraction shooter owes a debt to horror fan film SCP: Overlord, but in play the objective-based extraction shooter plays a little like Hunt: Showdown, as several teams compete to get their hands on an artefact and hoof it to extraction before you get mauled by the numerous mutants. This always starts with your team finding one of the laptops to generate your own keycard. Players can generate a keycard at any time, but it only works for them. Hacking is done in real-time on the actual computer screen and my teammates, devs from Beautiful Light creator Deep Worlds, tell me it’s based on a real programming language.…

I n early April, Bungie released a teaser video detailing some of the new features it had planned for Destiny 2’s sixth expansion, The Final Shape. The reaction from the community was immediate: “We’re so back!” Before that teaser, the mood around Destiny 2 was decidedly different. The game’s last expansion, Lightfall, was poorly received. As the penultimate release of Destiny’s first saga, its story felt like a sidequest – rushing through poorly explained plot threads that, outside of a couple of important cutscenes, felt inconsequential to the broader narrative. More damaging, arguably, was the way the sandbox had been changed. In an effort to bring challenge back to the game, Lightfall brought sweeping nerfs to weapon damage and ability uptime – players were being asked to put in more…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A Civ-like with a new spin on nations victory conditions EXPECT TO PAY£35 DEVELOPERC Prompt Games PUBLISHERParadox Interactive REVIEWED ONIntel Core i7 9700K, 16GB RAM,Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti MULTIPLAYERYes LINK paradoxinteractive.com/games/millennia The thing about plagues is that they tend to catch everyone off guard. That was certainly the case when I triggered a plague age in Rome in the early common era. But since these undesirable ages are triggered by the accumulation of chaos and unrest in the first place, it wasn’t as though my Roman empire was in great shape before the coughing started. I’d been fighting off barbarians for so long, I inadvertently triggered a chaos event: a rebellion, spawning pikemen and cavalry beside every regional capital. Thus I had to commit…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A turn-based roguelike from the creators of Monster Train EXPECT TO PAY£25 DEVELOPERShiny Shoe PUBLISHERShiny Shoe REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon Graphics (ROG Ally) MULTIPLAYERYes LINK inkboundgame.com Turn-based Hades? Don’t recall wishing for that with my cursed monkey’s paw, but I’d trust the developers of the brilliant Monster Train with my first born. Inkbound never reaches those heights, but its best ideas have huge potential. It’s an isometric roguelike wherein battles start with enemies surrounding you and kindly telegraphing exactly how they’re going to attack. You’ve got a limited amount of movement and attack power each turn to deal as much damage as possible, build up enough shield to block incoming blows, or move out of the way so you avoid…

Sand Land NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?Toriyama’s beautiful mechanical designs trapped inside a tired marketing exercise EXPECT TO PAY£50 DEVELOPERILCA, Inc PUBLISHERBandai Namco Entertainment Inc REVIEWED ONIntel Core i9-13900HX, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 MULTIPLAYERNo LINK en.bandainamcoent.eu/sand-land/sand-land What year is it? Because this action RPG feels like a return to the bad old days of forgotten adver-games, the sort of thing that included a bit of everything. At times it’ll force a platforming section on me, complete with bottomless pits to avoid. Or I’ll have to hit buttons at the right time like QTE-ruined cutscenes never went out of fashion, or grit my teeth through multiple stealth sections. Multiple stealth sections. Which is a pity because when I’m not gaming like it’s 1999 there’s a definite charm…

FREE GAMES REVIEWS COOL TITLES FOR NO CASH by Tom Sykes NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A narrative game in which you make choices by dropping tokens onto them EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERChristophe Coyard et al PUBLISHERChristophe Coyard et al REVIEWED ON Intel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 MULTIPLAYERNo LINK bit.ly/PickPoke There’s just something about playing with tokens – chunky, circular tokens – that makes any game better, whether it’s Backgammon, Draughts or Connect 4. Pick & Poke, I’m pleased to report, is a game entirely about moving tokens around, as you drag them onto choices to make your way round a fantasy city. A singleplayer roguelite, it has the spirit of a tabletop RPG. It’s even played on an actual (OK, a virtual)…

THEY’RE BACK OLD GAMES REVISITED by Matthew Elliott NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A sea shanty simulator that comes with an Assassin’s Creed game EXPECT TO PAY£34 DEVELOPERUbisoft Montreal PUBLISHERUbisoft REVIEWED ONIntel Core i7-7700, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 MULTIPLAYERNo (it did have it, but the servers are gone) LINK s.team/a/242050 There are few things more dispiriting than reading a review in which the writer begins by proudly admitting they don’t especially like the series, or the genre. The result of this is that the writers who review big releases, such as Assassin’s Creed, are often already aware of the game’s systems, lore and setting. For the most part, it makes perfect sense. It would be insane to get someone who hates wrestling, for example,…

Capturing great vocal audio from your PC used to be a bit of a teeth-clenching experience. Esoteric cables, strange terminology, and fiddly equipment once made the process a lot more difficult than it needed to be. Luckily, there are now many easy-to-use microphone solutions on the market at a range of price points, taking the stress out of capturing top-quality sound. Whether you’re looking to break out as the next streaming sensation, finally start that podcast, or simply want to improve the audio in your daily meetings, a good microphone will take your audio to the next level. However, with a wealth of options to choose from, finding the right mic for you can still be a bit of a conundrum. Here are six microphones that might fit the bill…

KEY Budget build PC gaming is for everyone. Pick these parts if you want to build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price. Mid-range build You want to run every new game at 1080p 60fps. This recommended build will see you through. Advanced build You’re looking for the best PC on the market and superior components. But you still want to spend smart. BUDGET BUILD Enjoy 1080p gaming without breaking the bank MOTHERBOARD B660M Pro RS ASRock £112 This is as cheap as we want to go while still offering room for expansion and upgrades down the line. PROCESSOR Core i5 13400F Intel £190 Intel’s added four more cores to its entry-level Core i5 and it’s become even more fantastic value. GRAPHICS CARD Radeon RX 7600 AMD £252 You…

I t’s always fascinating when you get to watch a new game genre emerge and evolve – over my life in gaming I’ve gotten to see it with the MOBA, battle royale, tower defence and more. For the last few years, the defining example has been auto-shooters – a genre so new, in fact, that we’ve not even really settled on that name yet. What I’m talking about is Vampire Survivors-likes. The indie hit enjoyed huge success, and spawned countless imitators, thanks to the simple format, other developers have been able to put out their own spins on the genre in record time, giving it a kind of hyper-accelerated evolution. I could list great auto-shooters for days – favourites of mine include Renfield, and 20 Minutes Til Dawn – but…

MOD SPOTLIGHT Bandits. Vampires. Necromancers. Warlocks. Soldiers. In a game like Skyrim, the one thing they all have in common is that… they’re common. They’re so common they don’t even have names, unless a very cruel parent once looked down at the swaddled baby in their arms and named him Bandit Plunderer. In Skyrim, these random no-name entities are there to give the world a little filler, attack you on secluded paths, lie in wait inside crumbling towers and dank caverns, or make snide remarks as you stroll around a city. If you kill one, or a hundred, it’s not something you feel bad about. It’s not like these jerks have families, friends and elaborate stories. Right? Except now they do with a mod called Shame of Skyrim. Thanks to…

1 month CROWN WARS: THE BLACK PRINCE RELEASE May 23, 2024 | DEVELOPER Artefacts Studio Medieval tactics and strategy in which you play the lord of your domain and fight to crush the malevolent plans of the evil Order in brutal turn-based combat. DESTINY 2: THE FINAL SHAPE RELEASE June 4, 2024 | DEVELOPER Bungie The Final Shape promises to carry gamers on an epic journey to end the War of Light and Darkness. It’s already looking better than Lightfall, so one to keep an eye on. ELDEN RING: SHADOW OF THE ERDTREE RELEASE June 20, 2024 | DEVELOPER FromSoftware Inc What’s looking like the biggest release of the year, the Elden Ring expansion appears to be a must-buy for fans. New enemies, weapons, bosses and more incoming. 3 months…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASETBA DEVELOPEREvil Guinea Pig PUBLISHEREvil Guinea Pig LINK evilguineapig.com P erhaps taking titular inspiration from Robert Eggars, KVLT has been kvltivated in a kvlture of grim first-person shooters filled with Nazis and cosmic horrors. In other words, PC gaming. It’s a beautiful day in 1945, and you are a horrible occultist. Time to start shooting things like it’s Wolfenstein all over again. It begins, as so many things do, in some tunnels. You’re presented with some backstory involving crystals, and read some notes the bad guys have helpfully left laying around that refer to mysterious creatures and disappearing comrades. Then you press forward looking for something to shoot. When you eventually meet them, the Nazis are kind of hilarious. Not only are they keen on sighting down…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE2024 (Early Access) DEVELOPER Keepsake Games PUBLISHERKeepsake Games LINK jumpshipgame.com F ilip Coulianos’ first vision for Jump Ship was “the ultimate Han Solo and Chewbacca simulator”. The game has changed a lot since the first prototypes he made many years ago, but it still retains a lot of that core fantasy even in its very early current form. Let’s find out more. Jump Ship is being built by a small team of 12 people at Keepsake Games, a studio founded by five university friends who just happen to have worked across Stockholm’s biggest studios for the past ten or more years. With veterans who have made games at the likes of DICE, Mojang, Hazelight and Toca Boca this is as close to an all-star team as…

It’s been over eight years since this little retro farming game graced our PCs and stole everyone’s hearts. The nostalgia of its pixelated looks and the simple appeal of building your own farm appealed to many, and helped usher in the era of ‘cosy’ games. With over 30 million copies of the game sold, Stardew Valley has cemented itself as one of the best games of all time, but how are things looking in 2024? We got the chance to speak with the game’s creator, Eric Barone (aka ‘ConcernedApe’) to talk about what it’s been like seeing the phenomenal growth of the game and take a look at all the changes Stardew has gone through since it first launched. We asked Barone what his proudest moment making the game is:…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?Undersea action platformer with ace Soulslike combat EXPECT TO PAY£27 DEVELOPERAggro Crab PUBLISHERAggro Crab REVIEWED ONIntel Core i5 12500H, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 4060 MULTIPLAYERNo LINK aggrocrab.com/games The most fun I’ve had with a Soulslike since Elden Ring. The less self-serious take on the genre I wanted Lies of P to be. FromSoftware should just go ahead and cancel Shadow of the Erdtree… OK, now we’re moving from possible hyperbole to outright lies. But I honestly stand by the first two. Another Crab’s Treasure is a joke game that takes being a great Soulslike seriously. A charming, creative platformer with terrific combat and a good eye for both pretty scenery and silly sight gags. You’re a hermit crab called Krill who’s had his shell stolen…

FREE GAMES REVIEWS NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERSole Rift LINK bit.ly/Crawl I can think of few things worse than shuffling around in a cramped, pitch-black cave, which of course makes it the perfect setting for a horror game. Here you’re crawling, literally crawling on your belly around a dark, spooky cave with only a map, camera and wind-up torch. That last bit is not strictly true, as there are also creatures that regard you as dinner, but you can fend them off by stunning them with your old-fashioned camera. Every tool is wonderfully cumbersome: to use anything you have to twist around and pick it up off your jacket, meaning you can no longer see in front of you. It only takes a few seconds to wind up…

THEY’RE BACK NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY £14 DEVELOPERFailbetter Games PUBLISHERFailbetter Games I am a risk-averse gamer. This is not ideal for playing a game that requires you to sail into dark places and face unspeakable terrors. Even running your vessel at full power is risky: there’s a chance doing so will cause your engines to explode. Our journey across the Unterzee, then, will be a sedate one. Sunless Sea, quite deliberately, is not a game that inspires self-confidence. Even the loading screen explains that your captains will die. My collection of expired heroes is also something of a red flag, but there are benefits: I’ve inherited a comatose ferret from one of my predecessors, although the specifics are lost on me. I can’t remember who they were or…

TECH REPORT “ This is the way the world ends”, wrote TS Eliot in his 1925 poem The Hollow Men. “Not with a bang but a whimper.” It’s hard to say if Eliot was writing directly about Nvidia and AMD’s support for multi-GPU setups or speaking more allegorically. Perhaps we’ll never know. What we can all roundly agree on is that Eliot lands on a truism when it comes to technology in general: there’s never an announcement. Yesterday’s Next Big Thing is instead quietly escorted out of the building and stuffed into a bin away from prying eyes. We didn’t get any press releases confirming the formal demise of 3D TVs in the mid-2010s, we’ll get no such PR when VR dies in 2030 (fight me), and neither SLI nor…

CONTINUED ADVENTURES IN GAMING I’m nothing if not a perfectionist: I travel for days in Minecraft to find the right spot to lay down foundations for a house, and figuring out where my base will stand in Subnautica is infinitely more stressful than dealing with the Ghost Leviathan. So when I crash-landed on the peninsula in Sons of the Forest with a few of my friends, I knew agreeing on somewhere to build our settlement would be tricky. There’s a lot to think about before picking a prime real estate location in a survival game. Are you close to water? Is there enough protection from the harsh environment? Where are the boundaries between warring cannibal tribes? You know, the usual big questions for first-time buyers. After weighing up all of…

NOW PLAYING Now that all of the Endwalker patches have finished and Dawntrail is approaching, Final Fantasy XIV has entered its quiet season. With no new raids to chase or story to complete, it’s a time for catching up on things you might have missed or pausing and playing something else for a while. It may be quieter, but with that the game also feels more chill – there’s no expectations to rush through anything any more. The boom season is over and now it’s time to relax. And what better way to cure all the aches of a Warrior Of Light than to revisit your personal island and till the soil. Island Sanctuary is a casual content mode that first launched in patch 6.2 and sees you farming and…

REINSTALL NEED TO KNOW RELEASEAugust 23, 2016 PUBLISHERSquare Enix DEVELOPEREidos Montreal LINK eidosmontreal.com Chattering teeth. Laughing gas. And a homicidal clown pulling the strings in the backdrop. Batman: Arkham Asylum turns 15 this year and since its momentous release back in August 2009, the DC action-adventure has been looked upon as the de facto answer for what a modernised superhero videogame could be. And rightly so! After playing through the lacklustre Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, I felt what better time to go back to the original Arkhamverse outing to remind myself of the talent behind British developer Rocksteady. No battle pass. No currencies. No constant online connection. No live service elements in any way. Just a simple story about the Joker taking over an asylum, unleashing the…

NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT If you’ve been watching the recent Fallout TV series, then you’ll understand just how much one of the protagonists, Lucy MacLean, has had to endure. But even after all her encounters with feral ghouls and wasteland monsters, it doesn’t seem as if she has much to show for her work. In response to a question about what level people thought Lucy was at by the end of the first season of the Fallout TV show, the gaming YouTube channel Many A True Nerd posted a theory thread on Twitter that laid out the most conclusive answer we’ve seen yet. The first task was to uncover what levelling system the TV show uses. It’s safe to say that the series would use Bethesda’s rules, which is…

Special Report PCG INVESTIGATES NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT Harold Halibut has been gestating for a long time. When the project began, art director Ole Tillmann wasn’t married – indeed he wasn’t even dating his future wife – and definitely didn’t have a three-year-old daughter to bring to the office in Cologne as indie team Slow Bros put the finishing touches on their uniquely handmade game. “She recognises the models – she’ll come to the office and be like, ‘Oh, Harold’s here!’” Tillman says with a laugh. Across more than a decade of development Harold’s team has gained and lost a publisher, done side jobs to stay afloat, moulded dozens of models out of clay and wire and tiny hand-sewn clothes, constructed elaborate sets for a sprawling underwater habitat,…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASEJune 6 DEVELOPERSuper Sly Fox PUBLISHERAncient Forge LINK blockbusterincgame.com B ack in 2005 Lionhead Studios released The Movies, a game about running a movie studio that was pretty good, and received 86% from PC Gamer US. I mention it only because Blockbuster Inc (no relation to the venerable VHS rental chain) triggers a serious rush of nostalgia for Molyneux’s game. A ‘Prologue’ version of Blockbuster Inc is available on Steam, and drops you into the comfortable shoes of a movie studio head, tasked with making films, nurturing talent, winning awards and making money. It’s such a good fit for the tycoon/management game genre that it’s surprising that there have been so few imitators since 2005. The prologue starts in 1920 and ends in 1922, giving you remarkably…

Asseto Corsa Competizione With over 20 kilometres of winding tarmac in the German mountains, the Nürburgring is the most loved, and feared, track in all of motorsport. However, digitally recreating this unique track has proven difficult for countless developers. Now, KUNOS Simulazioni thinks it has nailed it with the launch of the Nordschleife in Assetto Corsa Competizione. Since launching in 2018, the most requested addition to Assetto Corsa Competizione has been the iconic Nordschleife track. With the Nürburgring GP circuit, a shorter more traditional racetrack at the same location, already being in the game, many assumed that adding in the Nordschleife (‘north loop’) would be a natural next step. However, there was one sticking point; SRO, the real-life racing championship that ACC is a simulation of, didn’t race on the…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?Bite-sized post-apocalyptic CRPG with big ideas and bigger problems EXPECT TO PAY£29.50 DEVELOPERDrop Bear Bytes PUBLISHERVersus Evil REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 2080 Super MULTIPLAYERNo LINK brokenroadsgame.com The Kalgoorlie Silvers have received a tip. Some rabble-rousers are plotting unrest in a nearby apartment, and the authorities have ordered a raid. The plan is to bust down the door and secure the suspects by force, and while they don’t want to kill everyone, they expect two or three bodies at the least. Having been temporarily assigned to the squad, I propose a radical alternative. How about – and just hear me out on this – we try talking to them first? Squad leader Irma Wakefield arches an eyebrow, “Convince me,” she says.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?Hectic platformer where you travel via pneumatic drill EXPECT TO PAY£12.80 DEVELOPERAhr Ech PUBLISHERDevolver Digital REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon Graphics (ROG Ally) STEAM DECK VERIFIEDYes MULTIPLAYERNo LINK peppergrindergame.com Poor Pepper. She’s the star of Devolver Digital’s new platformer, but she would be laughed off the stage at the Annual Platforming Protagonist Awards. Not that she’d have much luck leaving that stage unassisted. Pepper’s hobbled by a pathetic jump, a mediocre little hop that can barely get her a few feet off the ground. So it’s a stroke of good fortune that she’s rammed her arm into a drill attachment that can send her swimming through dirt, then use her momentum to burst out and fly through the air. Well, maybe…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A throwback RPG from industry legends packed with over 100 recruitable heroes EXPECT TO PAY£50 DEVELOPERRabbit and Bear Studios PUBLISHER505 Games REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G, 16G RAM, AMD Radeon Graphics MULTIPLAYERNo LINK shorturl.at/agmM4 Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has a lot weighing on its shoulders. The new turn-based RPG has to deliver to crowdfunding backers, fulfil its promise of being an ode to ’90s great Suikoden, and prove that its all-star creative team still have the stuff. That’s enough pressure for anyone, but recently it’s been further burdened by the death of its director Yoshitaka Murayama. It’s amazing, then, that I couldn’t feel an ounce of all that weight during my time playing, because Eiyuden Chronicle is as sturdy and vivacious an adventure as…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A claymation-y narrative adventure set on a stranded spaceship. EXPECT TO PAY£29.50 DEVELOPERSlow Bros PUBLISHERSlow Bros REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen 3700x, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 MULTIPLAYER No LINK slow-bros.com/harold-halibut Harold Halibut’s most enduring running gag is about a Turkish soap opera called Sonsuz Ask. Ardent fans will try to sell you on it – just wait for it to really pick up in season 22 – but the hard truth is that you’ll have to endure a lot of long, barren stretches before you get to the good stuff. Even in space, you probably have better things to do with your time. Harold Halibut has a lot in common with Sonsuz Ask. You are Harold, the unsophisticated, sincere and (literally) wide-eyed handyman aboard…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERSpineless Studios LINK bit.ly/LimbFromLimb There’s a simple, repetitive card game at the heart of Limb From Limb, but as the name suggests, with a grisly flourish that adds a layer of queasy tension. Every time you draw the wrong card, your character chops off a finger. Lose all five from your left hand and you lose the match. It’s certainly an incentive not to draw the ‘death’ card – as you and your similarly chop-happy opponent take turns to flip over five cards from your decks – but in a game of random chance there isn’t much you can do to mitigate it. Items bought from the shop allow you to X-ray unflipped cards, regrow fingers or force your rival’s choices, but you still…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY £17 DEVELOPERSupermassive Games PUBLISHERBandai Namco Europe The next big thing in entertainment? Digital scent technology. Never mind VR or haptic feedback. The thing that will provide absolute immersion is being able to smell what you can see. It would also discourage anyone from purchasing Man of Medan, a game that probably smells like a morgue and a fish counter combined. Even if you could smell it, however, this would not be the most upsetting thing about Supermassive’s branching horror game. Instead, it would be the fact that Man of Medan’s swole of hot idiots are mostly exploring a haunted ship while barefoot. Anyone who’s ever squashed a slug while running to a downstairs toilet knows that true fear, apparently, comes from stepping on something…

Collecting old hardware isn’t just a hobby now. There’s an element of archivism to it; of gathering important historical documents that might otherwise end up in landfill. Image how many Voodoo 3s are out there in landfill right now, covered in nappies and Hello Fresh leftovers and being pecked at by seagulls. Imagine. Here’s the thing, though: it’s a faff, isn’t it? All the eBay alerts. All the postage fees. All the forum-trawling, the tracking down of ol’ manuals, the hoping and praying that various disparate beige parts will sing together in harmony rather than – more likely – start a small electrical fire. There’s an alternative to retro PC gaming the analogue way: just run a virtual machine inside your modern gaming rig. The benefits to this are numerous:…

CONTINUED ADVENTURES IN GAMING Lanterns flicker in the throne room’s now dark, gloomy and shadow-filled environs. Whatever former glory this grand reception room had is now long gone, with de’Arnise banners strewn across the dirty, blood-covered floors and a pungent smell of death emanating from a pile of burning troll corpses littered around its central throne. Slumped against it is former lord of the de’Arnise Hold, his corpse cold. Hero of the hour, Volin de Taranbrace, slowly draws her two-handed weapon, the lethal and magical Sword of Chaos, from the chest of the biggest troll of all, TorGal, who had died badly. There was never any place for troll filth within these walls, though, and Volin along with trusted companions Minsc, Jaheria, Yoshimo and now rightful heir to the Hold,…