187 Years Ago, a Gothic Horror Story Beat Edgar Allan Poe to the Locked-Room Mystery

A tense and hilarious couples drama, a Disney live-action remake, and more Happy weekend! Movie theaters are having a moment. Last week, You Can See Everything premiered, and it had one of the best box office debuts for a documentary ever. Street Fighter is also out, performing well at the box office but not so well when it comes to critics. This weekend brings a new batch of movies, from the DCU’s first horror movie Clayface, to Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun. If that’s not enough to get you into theaters, that’s okay. There’s plenty of stuff to watch from home, from streaming to VOD, with the live-action version of Moana finally available to stream on Disney Plus. Olivia Wilde’s The Invite is also out, delivering one of the best dramas of the year and an acting showcase from its talented cast. Other noteworthy inclusions are the British romcom Finding Emily, the stop-motion children’s horror Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom (which delightfully drew inspiration from classical horror movies like Frankenstein and Wolf Man), and much more. Happy watching.

I have spent so much time these past three days writing about the closure of BioWare that I feel like I’ve not really gotten to stop and take a moment for myself. Yeah, I vented about how avoidable this whole thing was, but that’s anger, not grief. I braced myself for years, anticipating the moment when EA would finally bring down the hammer on the Mass Effect studio, so you’d think I would have already given some serious thought to what I’d want to say when the day finally arrived. In all honesty, however, I haven’t been able to figure it out.  The night it happened, I reinstalled my copy of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, the 2021 remaster of the original trilogy. I hadn’t accessed my save file on there in years, but that playthrough had been completionist one. That last time I played through the games, I devoured them. My encyclopedic knowledge came in handy; I didn’t have to use a guide to make sure I saw everything, completed every quest, and soaked in every drop of my favorite video games on a modern console.  © BioWare / Kotaku So when I booted this save file up, I was caught off guard by the deafening silence of the Normandy SR-2’s CIC.

You’d think that an “ecosocialist utopia” game made by a prominent leftist game developer who developed it “with locally sourced talent and minimal involvement from capitalists, marketers, or profiteers” would be free of generative AI, right? … Right? Released in September, Future? No Thanks! is an adventure game developed by Paolo Pedercini, better known by the pseudonym Molleindustria. It follows an out-of-place, curmudgeonly old man who aims to complete his bucket list before undergoing assisted suicide in a future where “climate change is finally being tackled, democracy thrives, and technology serves the public good.” However, it’s now in hot water over initially undisclosed generative AI use. In a blog post this week (thanks, Rock Paper Shotgun), Pedercini confirmed that the game includes AI-generated content, including two text-to-speech voices and two music loops generated with Suno, despite later writing that “AI is a technofascist, anti-human and anti-art project.” He also mentioned that “a tiny fraction” of code was debugged with ChatGPT and Claude. On Friday, he posted another blog post to clarify that the AI content (aside from the code) has been removed from the game.

Valve has released a list of the 20 most-played Steam Next Fest demos so far, with the event running through this weekend and concluding through Monday, October 26 at 10am PT/1pm ET. The top-20 list includes quite the eclectic mix of games, from comedic co-op adventures to more mechanically-deep action and survival affairs. Check out the list below, and be sure to try the demos out for the ones you like as soon as possible before this edition of Steam Next Fest ends. In no particular order, the top 20 are:Worst Class Ever Probably Stolen - Cyberpunk Shopkeeper Sim ArcheAge Chronicles Find the Needle Fart Together Character House - Desktop Companion Frostrail Loftia just volleyball Abyssal Lapidary Mortuus Dumpster Gang HANDS OVER Haunted Paws Emberville No Body No Problem! Deadzone Rogue 2 Wyldheart Grr Grr Gnomes Never Be AloneSome of these you might be familiar with, and some you might not, and that's part of the fun of Steam Next Fest! IGN readers might have the most familiarity with the extremely promising Emberville, which we previewed last month and will be launching next week into Steam Early Access.

Legendary Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto - who led development on classic games such as Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - has argued that the rise of generative AI tools won't necessarily replace human talent. Next month, Shigeru Miyamoto will become the first ever video game developer to be awarded the Order of Culture by the Emperor of Japan, a hugely prestigious honour. But in a recent press conference dedicated to the award, he also shared some thoughts about gen-AI and its use in game production.

The new season of Chris Pratt's show, a beloved anime, and more Happy weekend! It’s a slow week for TV releases. Over the past month, shows like Carrie, Crystal Lake, and VisionQuest dropped, keeping many viewers busy. But things are picking up soon. In the coming months, we’ll have the return of the final season of Yellowjackets, the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and more. In the meantime, we have some shows to recommend. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is back with its second season, bringing viewers back to Night City, which looks just as incredible as it did the first time around. The romantic comedy Nobody Wants This continues to explore the romance between Joanne and Noah, who’ve just moved in together. There are also various offerings for genre fans. Yaga, a Canadian series starring Heated Rivalry’s overnight star Hudson Williams, is inspired by the legend of Baba Yaga (but is unrelated to John Wick). Lupin returns with its fourth season, continuing the story of a charismatic con artist. Orphan Black is streaming in full on HBO Max, making it the perfect opportunity for it to reach a wider audience.