Month: June 2023

Enlarge / Hopefully that ship is supposed to do that... (credit: Bethesda Softworks)

At this point it's more than fair to say that Bethesda has a reputation for massive, ambitious RPGs that can be absolutely riddled with bugs, at least at launch. Bethesda has even leaned into this reputation a bit, warning players of "all new spectacular issues none of us have encountered" ahead of 2018's Fallout 76 launch.

But Bethesda parent company Microsoft is promising a different launch-day experience ahead of this fall's release of galactic-scale space RPG Starfield. In an interview with Giant Bomb Monday evening, Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty said that he has visibility into the developer's internal bug counts and that "just by the numbers, if it shipped today, this would have the fewest bugs in any game from Bethesda [that] has ever shipped, and we've got more time to go."

Of course, measuring a simple count of bugs doesn't account for their potential severity—the kind of odd visual glitches we saw during Cyberpunk 2077's launch are less significant than the kinds of bugs that can make a game literally unplayable. We'd also note that promising the fewest bugs of any Bethesda game is like promising the fewest rats in a New York sewer tunnel—quite a low bar to clear.

Enlarge / Guybrush Threepwood's enthusiasm to meet some character archetypes from Sea of Thieves does not seemingly match that of his creator. (credit: Rare/LucasFilm Games)

If Microsoft's Rare studio and Disney's Lucasfilm Games (formerly LucasArts) want to make a Monkey Island crossover DLC for Sea of Thieves, they do not, in fact, have to ask the original game's creator, Ron Gilbert.

In a Mastodon thread responding to a fan's question on Sunday, Gilbert wrote that, "nope," he wasn't involved with Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island, an expansion to Rare Limited's multiplayer open-world pirate game themed around the iconic Monkey Island point-and-click adventure series. "Wasn't even told about it. Happened behind my back."

Terrible Toybox, the firm with which Gilbert has recently worked to release games like Thimbleweed Park and Return to Monkey Island, attempted to clarify Gilbert's statement on Monday, telling Eurogamer that Disney "did give [Gilbert] a heads-up on the project as a courtesy, but the game was well into development at that point, and he wasn't given the opportunity to be meaningfully involved."

Enlarge / A portrait of The Beatles in 1966, as imagined by AI image synthesis. (credit: Stable Diffusion)

On Tuesday, BBC Radio 4's Today program aired an interview with Paul McCartney in which he announced that thanks to AI technology, a "final Beatles record" has been finished and will be released later this year. He said that AI techniques have isolated John Lennon's vocals from an old cassette tape demo, enabling him to complete the song.

Though McCartney did not provide the song's title, speculation points towards it being "Now And Then," a 1978 Lennon composition, which McCartney has mentioned wanting to finish in the past. In 1995, the three living Beatles considered including the song in their Anthology series (similar to "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love") but abandoned it due to quality issues and George Harrison's refusal to work on it. Harrison died in 2001.

The BBC notes that the original demo for "Now and Then" was among several songs on a cassette that Lennon had made for McCartney shortly before his death in 1980. The cassette, labeled "For Paul," was given to McCartney by Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. The songs, recorded in Lennon's New York apartment, were in a primitive state and featured a lot of noise.

Enlarge / A portrait of The Beatles in 1966, as imagined by AI image synthesis. (credit: Stable Diffusion)

On Tuesday, BBC Radio 4's Today program aired an interview with Paul McCartney in which he announced that thanks to AI technology, a "final Beatles record" has been finished and will be released later this year. He said that AI techniques have isolated John Lennon's vocals from an old cassette tape demo, enabling him to complete the song.

Though McCartney did not provide the song's title, speculation points towards it being "Now And Then," a 1978 Lennon composition, which McCartney has mentioned wanting to finish in the past. In 1995, the three living Beatles considered including the song in their Anthology series (similar to "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love") but abandoned it due to quality issues and George Harrison's refusal to work on it. Harrison died in 2001.

The BBC notes that the original demo for "Now and Then" was among several songs on a cassette that Lennon had made for McCartney shortly before his death in 1980. The cassette, labeled "For Paul," was given to McCartney by Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. The songs, recorded in Lennon's New York apartment, were in a primitive state and featured a lot of noise.