The Witcher 2 almost didn’t happen g21

When most of us think of the Witcher series, we see an intelligent, original story that throws your moral beliefs into question. There's still good and evil in The Witcher's world, but they're not painted in the traditional black and white we've seen before. Games would be worse off if The Witcher hadn't grown to be the staple of video game storytelling that it has. The scary thing is, The Witcher almost died from the start.

Eurogamer ran a profile on the Witcher dev, where they visited CD Projekt's offices in Warsaw, Poland and soon learned that The Witcher could have been the first and only game in the series. According to CD Projekt CEO and co-founder Marcin Iwiński, the company had poured most of its money into a console version of the original Witcher called The Witcher: White Wolf. which never came to fruition.

CD Projekt put a French studio called Widescreen Games in charge of porting the White Wolf to consoles, but kept running into frustrating roadblocks throughout development. According to Iwiński, Widescreen kept asking for more money, developers, and time to the point where CD Projekt was paying the developer more than CD Projekt itself. Eventually, the team at CD Projekt concluded this model wasn't sustainable, and told Atari (which published The Witcher), that The Witcher: White Wolf had to be scrapped and CD Projekt had a gaping hole in place of their profits.

Many other things happened during that time, but after all was said and done, CD Projekt focused all of its efforts on getting The Witcher 2 — a game that lacked a complete engine at that point — out the door. Despite the setbacks, CD Projekt managed to pull through and create a one of the most compelling RPGs we have seen in a long time.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

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Mass Effect 4 development images have mostly been obscured by Mass Effect 4 developers g21

As a jerk, I'm tempted to shout "HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT THIS IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT THE NEXT MASS EFFECT." If you want that, though, you're going to need to leave this website, get into a time machine, and travel a year or so into the future. What we have here is good ol', entirely inconsequential teasers. A series of pictures were tweeted over November 7th (or "N7 Day" as BioWare so desperately want people to rechristen it), showing Mass Effect developers working on a Mass Effect game. If you really, really squint, you might even see a tiny bit of some new Mass Effect.

In order of tweeting, then.

"The next chapter of Mass Effect is upon us!!" Upon them? Yes. Upon us? Not so much.

"…with new characters to fall in love with…" the tweet-fest continues, showing us concept art of a new character who is growing an artist out the left side of his body.

"…new enemies to encounter…" is a pretty mean way to refer to one of your staff members, guys.

…and new worlds to explore!"

And that is all the Mass Effect news we're likely to get for a while.

Thanks, IGN.

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Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior release date announced, cemented with two minutes of screaming g21

Games are great at solving ridiculous arguments. Who would win in a fight between Batman and Spider-Man? Or between pirates and Spartans? Or between motorbicyclist Valentino Rossi and former Guns 'n Roses guitarist Slash? You could spend hours in the pub imagining and solving these vital conundrums, or you could just turn to games. Sure, the answers would be no more definitive, but at least there's a time limit on bouts.

And precisely one of those examples is the subject of Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior, the alt-history battle royale expansion for Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. The DLC pack is due out on the 14th of November, and a new trailer has been released, giving you an idea of what to expect.

That trailer comes in two flavours: an original and extended cut. I'm posting the latter, because if you've not got the time to watch a two minute video, what are you even doing browsing a PC gaming website? If you really are pressed for time – or just don't want to listen to grown men screaming at each other for that long – here's the regular version.

The game will give you the chance to side with the Samurais, Spartans, Vikings, Knights, Ninjas and Pirates, in a variety of maps each themed around one side's home turf. It also features a new game mode, called "Multi-Team", pitting all six warrior types against each other at once.

Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior will cost £12/$15.

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Humble Bundle now lets you gift extra Steam keys to friends and family g21

The Humble Bundle has added a new feature to its already-popular package of game sales and charity outreach: the ability to gift games to family or friends. Humble is calling the new option "experimental," according to an announcement on its blog, but it's likely going to be a hit due to the enormous variety of games we often see in Humble's various digital download offers.

We still see the familiar "Steam will not provide extra giftable copies of games you already own" warning when deciding to take part in the current Humble WB Bundle or the new Daedalic Weekly Sale, but now the site's interface includes a separate button to launch any extra copies off to a different destination. The instructions for making the new gifting process work appear refreshingly straightforward and are available here.

"We and the developers we work with trust that our awesome customers will keep spreading the Humble way by sharing extra games with those who will appreciate it," reports the Humble Bundle about the change. "With your kindness, we hope to be able to continue this feature in the future."

Active players often find they already own one or more of the games that come included in these benevolent bundles. Now (for the time being at least), they can be put to good use elsewhere, perhaps in the collection of a friend who just got into PC gaming. It looks like a win-win, for charity, as well as empty game collections everywhere.

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This Battlefield 4 disco mode is a bug, not a feature g21

Some bugs wear you down, acting as an obstacle to your enjoyment of the game. Others? Well, let's put it this way, if this Battlefield 4 glitch was introduced as an optional club mode, I'd happily spend some time in its psychedelic, strobing company. Only, I'd probably have to limit it to 15-minute bursts before needing a lie down and an extra strong Paracetamol. So again, just like a real club.

As far as I can work out, the glitch – uploaded by YouTube user 'Fruchtpudding', and posted to the excellent subreddit r/GamePhysics – was the result of a Nvidia rendering glitch. Moreover, it seems anecdotally that the issue doesn't occur on updated drivers, thus consigning disco mode to the annals of amusing bug history.

Meanwhile, in DICE's continued quest to sweep out the more serious bugs of Battlefield 4′s launch, they've released a "zero-downtime" Battlelog patch, updating the website's server browser and profile viewer. You can see its full fixes and features here.

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