Image: CD Projekt Red The 2024 edition of The Game Awards started with a bang — the very first look at the next Witcher game. It’s called The Witcher 4 and was revealed via a lengthy cinematic trailer that starred Ciri in place of Geralt, who led the original trilogy. There aren’t many details yet, but CD Projekt Red says that in the new game, “Ciri takes center stage as the protagonist, embarking on her own journey to become a professional monster slayer.” It will be a single-player, open-world RPG. The studio says that “the cinematic trailer is pre-rendered in a custom build of Unreal Engine 5 on an unannounced NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU.” It doesn’t sound like the trailer will necessarily be representative of the final game, however. Here’s how CD Projekt Red explains it: In the nearly six-minute trailer, viewers were introduced to Ciri, the adopted daughter of Geralt of Rivia, as she takes on a witcher contract in a remote village that has been terrorized for generations by a fearsome monster demanding human sacrifices. Framed as a short, self-contained Witcher story, the trailer showcases Ciri’s new abilities and tools, including a chain and advanced magic powers. At the heart of the trailer is Ciri’s perspective as an outsider to the village. As the villagers say goodbye to one of their own — a young girl they are preparing for a traditional ritual sacrifice — Ciri chooses to intervene. Aiming to slay the beast and save the girl at the same time, Ciri finds herself at odds with the prejudices and superstitions of the people she tries to protect, leading her to confront a painful witcher lesson: that monsters come in all forms. We’ve known for some time that CD Projekt Red was working on a follow up to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which is meant to kick off a new saga for the fantasy franchise. In November the studio revealed that the game, previously codenamed “Polaris,” was in the “full-scale production phase” of development.” It’s being built using Unreal Engine 5, which the studio shifted to following the troubled launch of Cyberpunk 2077. No word yet on platforms or release timing.

Image: Bandai Namco FromSoftware, the studio that just this month said it was “not really considering developments such as an Elden Ring 2,” has revealed a game that looks a lot like it could be Elden Ring 2. Elden Ring Nightreign is the next entry in the Elden Ring series. The trailer, debuting during this year’s The Game Awards, didn’t share much narrative details meaning that director Hidetaka Miyazaki might not have told a fib. Nightreign could very well be a prequel, chronicling the events that lead up to all the shenanigans in the base game and the Shadows of the Erdtree DLC. While we don’t yet know where this takes place in Lands Between chronology, the trailer did show off a ton of gameplay which appears to be the same as Elden Ring but with a greater emphasis on co-op. Several moments in the trailer featured combat with more than one Tarnished working together and doing never-before-seen flippy-dippy martial arts moves. But as the trailer played, there was the theory that this would be some kind of mobile version of Elden Ring. FromSoftware has, so far, only confirmed Xbox, PlayStation, and PC platforms and, surprisingly, a release date. Elden Ring Nightreign will launch sometime next year.

Image: EA Josef Fares is back and so is his penchant for cursing. The director of Hazelight Studios has returned to The Game Awards to debut his next game: Split Fiction. Split Fiction is a game that feels very much in Hazelight’s wheelhouse. Like It Takes Two and A Way Out before it, Split Fiction is a two-person split-screen co-op game. In it, two game developers have been trapped in a world they created and must play together to escape. It’s been a quiet but massively successful handful of years for Hazelight Studios. In 2021, it took home Game of the Year for It Takes Two in which two players must work together to overcome the myriad dangers of their home (and their failing marriage) Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-style. Earlier this year, the studio announced that It Takes Two sold 20 million copies. Polygon did a deep dive into the game’s sales numbers, determining that it sold at an astonishingly consistent and enviable clip of half a million copies per month since its release in March 2021. A truly remarkable feat given the game had very little marketing outside its initial release window and at a time when most consumers’ multiplayer tastes were wrapped up in “forever games” like Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite. With bona fides like that, it’s safe to say folks will be looking at Split Fiction, launching March 6th on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, with great interest.

Image: Gearbox Software We already knew it was in the works, and now we have an idea of how it will look and play. At the Game Awards, Gearbox Software revealed the first proper trailer for Borderlands 4, which is due out in 2025. The trailer starts with a cinematic depicting a large-scale conflict of some sort, before getting into the actual gameplay — which is as colorful and violent as you’d expect from the franchise. The game is playable solo or co-op with up to three other players, and Gearbox says that there are “billions” of weapons to use. Here’s the basic set-up: Break free from the oppressive Timekeeper, a ruthless dictator who dominates the masses from on high. Now a world-altering catastrophe threatens his perfect Order, unleashing mayhem across the planet. Ignite a resistance and blast your way through mechanical monstrosities, bloodthirsty bandits, and vicious beasts. Amass an arsenal of death-dealing firepower to wreak havoc as you tear your way across Kairos. Borderlands 4 was first announced this summer, and will be the first new entry in the looter shooter series since Borderlands 3 in 2019. It also follows the franchise’s debut on the big screen, as the Borderlands movie hit theaters in August to less than critical acclaim. The game is also in development during an interesting time for Gearbox; in March the studio was sold to Take-Two by beleaguered publisher Embracer. While Borderlands 4 doesn’t have a specific release date yet, it’s coming to PS5, Xbox, and PC next year.

Democrats on Capitol Hill say they're disappointed that FBI Director Christopher Wray decided to resign instead of forcing President-elect Donald Trump to oust him when he returns to the White House next month.

ActBlue, the prominent online fundraising platform for liberal causes, recently informed Congress that it had not automatically blocked donations made with foreign-purchased gift cards until recently.

The Trump transition team is exploring ways to significantly reduce, merge, or even eliminate the top bank regulators in Washington, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.In recent interviews with potential candidates for leading these regulatory agencies, Trump...

The Kremlin reportedly is gearing up for an imminent attack on Ukraine by using its experimental intermediate-range Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile in response to Kyiv's successful use of U.S.-made long-range ballistic missiles to strike inside Russian territory.

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday voiced his support for the dockworkers union before their contract expires next month at Eastern and Gulf Coast ports, saying that any further "automation" of the ports would harm workers.

Months before police say he gunned down a healthcare executive on a New York City street, Luigi Mangione set out on a solo trip to "zen out" in Japan and Thailand to meditate, soak in hot springs and do some writing, The New York Times reported Thursday.