Gaming: Sekiro launch trailer; new Fallout board game; more

No game studio may have as much goodwill to run wild with an all-new idea as the one behind Bloodborne and the Souls series. And we’re only days away from our proper introduction to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the parkour-heavy action-adventure that aims to distill FromSoftware’s magic blend of action, world building, and get-up-off-the-mat difficulty in a whole new way.

Sekiro’s launch trailer has just arrived, and it’s a fiery, icy, and above all, bloody welcome to a lavishly mystical version of feudal Japan that’s thankfully not short on pulse-racing gameplay. From’s seemingly bottomless well of ideas is on full display, with one fiendishly ingenious boss after another parading across your shinobi warrior’s third-person perspective. Check it out below:

Set in 16th century Japan, Sekiro tasks your prosthetic-armed ninja with exacting revenge on the samurai who butchered you and left you for dead. But the path to get back at your nemesis is anything but straight, and along the way you’ll swing onto rooftops, wade through swamps, and more or less literally fight through hell to take out the massive, diabolically designed creatures that stand in your way.

From teases that prosthetics will play a huge role in rounding out your aggressive arsenal, but you’ll also have to sneak, climb, defend, and respawn — a lot — before that final boss battle comes in sight. 

Thankfully, though, the wait’s almost over before we finally get our hands on the game itself. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice slices its way onto PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC beginning March 22.

It’s hard to believe a franchise as rife with opportunities for real-world 3D totems and baubles as Fallout hasn’t gotten a full-fledged, mainline board game before now, but that’s about to change with the coming arrival of a still-untitled pen-and-paper RPG that’s reportedly based on the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare tabletop game.

Board game maker Modiphius says the expanded Fallout RPG will pack in all the signature goodies that define Bethesda’s radioactive series on consoles. “Delve into abandoned Vaults, ruined cities, strange facilities, and antiquated military bases. Encounter Super Mutants, Raiders, Survivors, Vault Dwellers, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Institute and the Enclave, and many more,” the team teases. 

Role playing, naturally, will be a major part of the appeal, with faction based Archetype cards providing the springboard for players to craft and develop their own unique characters.

There’s no hard release date yet, but we won’t have to wait long. Made for one game master and up to 6 players, look for Fallout’s tabletop wasteland to get a lot bigger starting sometime this summer. 

Finally, one of the PlayStation’s most recognizable and, of late, critically adored game franchises carries the God of War name proudly — but according to its original director, we all came close to knowing it by something less catchy. 

Picking up on a Twitter joke about the game’s name from director Cory Barlog, who directed last year’s award-winning God of War for PlayStation 4, David Jaffe, director of the original GoW for PlayStation 2 back in 2005, said the original team left the decision of what to name the first game completely to chance — as in, they drew the winning submission out of a hat.

Thank Zeus indeed. At the Hands of the Gods doesn’t fall from the lips quite so easily, does it?  Fortunately, the fates smiled on God of War, and the game in turn has been making players and critics happy pretty much ever since. 
If you haven’t yet gone adventuring with Kratos and Atreus in last year's God of War — widely regarded as one of the console’s very best games — it’s as easy as nabbing a copy and firing up the PlayStation 4.