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We are once more informing you that the KOTOR remake is probably delayed for at least another year-

Knights of the Old Republic is one of Bioware’s most beloved RPGs—a game that capitalised on the promise of the Star Wars extended universe in so many inventive ways that it spawned an entire fandom dedicated to that slice of a galaxy far, far away. So when a remake was announced in—god—2021, we were all pretty excited. Then it was consigned to the inferno of development hell. 

In July of 2022 it surfaced that the remake was possibly delayed. No, wait, it was actually shifted to another studio. Then radio silence followed, so much in fact that the CEO of Embracer Group—the giant monolith that had also flubbed a $2 billion deal and would later lay off over a thousand people, kill a Deus Ex sequel, and sell off studios to keep the lights on—outright refused to talk about it. But don’t worry, it’s totally not dead—Saber Interactive is still working on it, wait, no, Embracer’s selling Saber Interactive off now. I want to get off Lars Wingefors’ wild ride.

Now you’re all caught up to speed and suitably spiritually damaged, here’s the latest news: It’s not getting canned in the sale, according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier (thanks, VGC) who confirmed on Twitter: “Yes, that’s going with Saber”. As pointed out by a commenter, however, Schreier thinks it’s likely one of the “retained joint projects … a previously announced AAA game based on a major licence” named in the sale: “It’s the only game that fits,” Schrier writes. “Not sure what kind of deal they struck there.”

In a conference call yesterday, Embracer’s CEO Lars Wingefors was asked about said “AAA game based on a major licence”, and whether it was “for the coming 12 months”, he replied: “No, I think that kind of game needs some deep love and respect, so. Without giving full colour, I think it’s some time left until that game is released.” 

So there you have it. We’re still at least a year out from what should have been a relatively straightforward shot. I wouldn’t personally hold out hope for a 2025 release either, just considering how things have panned out so far, but hey. Miracles do happen, maybe we just need to trust in the force.

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OpenAI pauses use of GPT-4o ‘Her’ voice due to similarity to Scarlett Johansson- ‘so eerily similar… my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference’-

The latest version of ChatGPT will talk to you. It sounds eerily similar to a human being, too. That’s swiftly become a problem for the company behind it, OpenAI, which has announced it will be removing one of ChatGPT’s voices for sounding too similar to Hollywood actor Scarlett Johansson.

“We are working to pause the use of Sky,” OpenAI said in a post on X. 

The company has also published a blog post on how it created the voices for the chatbot’s Voice Mode. It includes the key characteristics it was aiming for with each of the five voices used in the program, which include a sense of timelessness, being approachable, and being easy to listen to. And yet the voice assistant feature still makes for awkward watching. 

The post says that professional voice actors were used for each of the voices: Breeze, Cover, Ember, Juniper, and Sky.

Also mentioned is how OpenAI believes “AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice.”

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Over half of Helldivers 2 sales have been on PC in the US- ‘Already the 7th highest grossing Sony published game in history’-

When Helldivers 2 came out in February, Sony decided to try something different. It let developer Arrowhead Game Studios launch the PlayStation-published co-op shooter on both PS5 and PC on day one, instead of the publisher’s usual tactic of making PC ports three to four years after the PlayStation version.

Helldivers 2 enjoying three straight months (and counting) as a Steam top seller suggests Sony’s first simultaneous launch was a huge success, but until now, we didn’t know how Helldivers 2’s PC version compared to the PS5.

Turns out, in terms of money coming in, Helldivers 2 is bigger on PC in the US. That’s according to industry analyst Mat Piscatella at Circana (formerly NPD group), who shared some insights on Twitter from official sales information provided by Sony.

“PC has been a huge part of the success of Helldivers 2 in the US,” Piscatella wrote. “With PC, Helldivers II is already the 7th highest grossing Sony published game in history. Without PC it wou…

Cyberpunk 2077- Phantom Liberty adds cyberware that lets you air-dash, see through walls, and ‘change your appearance to lose the heat’-

Well, well, well. It looks like Cyberpunk 2077 is finally about to come full circle. 

When it launched in 2020 it was utterly baffling that you couldn’t alter your character’s appearance after creating them—you couldn’t even change your hair style or nail polish once you started playing. The reason, we discovered soon after launch, was that the game wasn’t finished, and it would take until the huge 1.5 update in 2022 for CD Projekt to add the feature to Cyberpunk 2077 that finally let you change your appearance.

And in September’s Cyberpunk 2077’s expansion, Phantom Liberty, you’ll be able to change your appearance on the fly, thanks to some interesting new cyberware. At the Xbox Games Showcase Extended today, Paweł Sasko, quest director, gave us a little look at the expansion’s new location, Dogtown, and mentioned some of the new cyberware you’ll be able to buy on the black market.

“Like the air-dash, or the ability to see enemies through the walls…

AMD finally unleashes new 7700 XT and 7800 XT mid-range GPUs-

They’ve been an awfully long time coming. But AMD finally has some new GPUs to take on Nvidia in the meat of the mid-range gaming graphics card market. We give you the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT and the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT. Both GPUs will be available from September 6th for $449 and $499 respectively which is both better and worse than we were expecting.

Well, we say mid-range. These days “mid-range” means an awful lot of money. But hold that thought while we deal with the speeds and feeds of these important new GPUs.

Ultimately, the 7700 XT and 7800 XT are very much in line with the expectations generated by the incessant rumour mill. So, both are based on AMD’s new Navi 32 GPU. Like the Navi 31 monster in the Radeon RX 7900 models, Navi 32 is a chiplet design with a main GCD die containing all the shaders and clever stuff which is surrounded by smaller MCDs with the memory controllers and cache.

Navi 32’s GCD is inevitably smaller than that of Navi 31. And it likewi…

Star Wars Outlaws devs say they want to nail that Han Solo ‘scoundrel fantasy’-

In a recent interview, Star Wars: Outlaws game director Mathias Karlson and narrative director Navid Khavari sat down with GameSpot to dish out some more details on the upcoming open world Star Wars game. They give the impression of new character Kay Vess as an up-and-coming, Han Solo-style character diving into the galaxy’s underworld at one of the darkest points in the movie timeline.

If Vess’ snappy space jacket, quirky nonhuman companion, and chunky junker of a starship didn’t clue you in, Outlaws is trying to be the Star Wars scoundrel game, much like how 1313 (RIP) was supposed to be the definitive bounty hunter send-up. “We got excited about this ‘scoundrel fantasy,'” Khavari told Gamespot. “And when you think of scoundrels and what era this could fit in between, well, in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, there’s this civil war consuming the galaxy.

“To enter into the underworld within that window felt like a perfect starting point for someone l…

Starfield mod turns space travel into an actual series of loading screens by getting rid of all the ship landing and take-off scenes-

For one Starfield modder, every short animation of your ship landing and departing from planets that you’re forced to watch is time you could’ve spent actually playing the game. So, they cut out every transitional space travel scene to please all the players who are tired of seeing them every time you want to travel somewhere new.

Ship Skip is a mod that makes Starfield’s space travel a little more honest. It deletes the short animations where you see your ship dock, undock, land, or takeoff and skips right to the loading screen. It effectively transforms Starfield into the “series of loading screens” experience that people jokingly described it as when they found out you can’t actually land your ship manually.

It works as intended for both the Steam and Windows Store versions of Starfield. Installation is fairly simple, but you should know going in that it has some bugs the developer is currently working on squishing. When you board enemy ships, you can get stuck in an …