Phantom Blade Zero finally shows off its interconnected game world, w…

In a PlayStation State of Play video today, Phantom Blade Zero developer S-Game has finally shown off glimpses of a game world it's largely kept secret up to this point, with eight individual maps that "seamlessly connect into a single world." orlando-books.blog

In my demos of the game over the last year and a half, S-Game has stressed that the areas I got to play and the bosses I fought were all optional diversions from the main story—impressive, considering their scope. This State of Play has finally pulled back the curtain on some of the game's primary characters and locations and shown in more concrete terms what distinguishes Phantom Blade Zero from linear action games and open world ones.

"Your journey takes you to intricate but surreal landscapes," explains S-Game founder Soulframe Liang. "Villages, valleys, lakes, and shadowed territories, including a valley overrun by ruthless bandits, an abandoned warehouse filled with hanging puppets where a dark ritual seems to be taking place, a steam-powered iron tower built for some kind of dark experiment, and a vast lake, which Soul must navigate aboard a peculiar high-speed vessel."

We don't get to see more than a few seconds of each of those areas, but the narration still offers a sense of some of the big chunks the game's world will be divided into. More interesting to me, though, is how Phantom Blade Zero is handling maps: I love that it's not giving you all the details like so many open world games, while still offering a bit more aid than a mapless soulslike:

"Your journey is guided by eight authentic, hand-painted Chinese ink wash maps. In complex regions they offer only a rough sense of direction, leaving you to explore and uncover hidden secrets. These maps seamlessly connect into a single world, where bells enable fast travel between discovered locations."

Soulframe says Phantom Blade Zero "is not an open world game, nor is it a linear adventure from beginning to end."

In the State of Play there are a few quick examples of weapons being used to smash through obstacles, meaning there's at least a light bit of metroidvania-style progress gating that will encourage returning to areas to open new paths or find secrets. We'll see how extensive that exploration proves to be, but I hope Phantom Blade Zero manages to be one of the few action RPGs to get within spitting distance of Dark Souls' still-unbeaten world.

And just in case you missed it last week: Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen has been involved in Phantom Blade Zero's development since 2023.

10 billion hours in RobloxToy company Mattel is getting into the videogame business with the launch of Mattel Game Studios, which it says "will develop, publish, and operate original interactive experiences inspired by Mattel’s portfolio of iconic brands." But the approach it's taking to that task is rather different from what we've seen in the past.

The launch of the new division actually arises from a previous enterprise, Mattel163, a joint venture with NetEase that Mattel took full control of earlier this year. Founded in 2019, Mattel163 published a handful of digital card games for mobile devices including Phase 10: World Tour, Skip-Bo, and of course, Uno.

Mattel's acquisition of the company "advances Mattel’s vision to extend physical play to the virtual world by creating digital games and experiences that drive sustained engagement for fans of all ages," a line from the press blast (via Game Developer) I include just because I think we should all have the opportunity to enjoy it.

Anyway, you can expect games of that sort to continue. Another Uno-based game, Uno Wild, is now in soft launch for mobile devices, and Mattel Game Studios is also working on a new game based on Hot Wheels. But Mattel Game Studios is moving beyond mobile development, and this is the part I find interesting: The company says it also plans to release "original experiences on creator platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite."

That's a reflection of the state of mainstream gaming, and where at least some of it is headed. We've seen heavyweights like Amazon and Hasbro try to elbow their way onto the mainstream gaming scene to mixed results; at the same time, Roblox players spent more than 10 billion hours in Roblox every month in 2025—more than player hours spent on Steam, PlayStation, and Fortnite combined—while Fortnite, underpinned by the Unreal Engine, is attracting crossover deals with some of the most massive media companies on the planet, and actively pursuing an entirely new development ecosystem built on its technology.

So maybe you're not interested in a Poochie Pals extraction shooter (or whatever) but the odds are good you're also probably not interested in Brainrot. Lots of other people (mostly kids) are, though, and guess where they're getting it? In a way, Mattel's approach echoes that of Amazon and Hasbro, but without the millions of dollars sunk into chasing conventional markets.

And Brainrot may be where it starts, but not necessarily where it ends. Writing about the Ready or Not-inspired shooter TTK on Roblox, PC Gamer's Morgan Park said it's a reminder "that Roblox games don't have to be terrible." Not that TTK is an especially outstanding experience, but as Morgan wrote, "it's fine, it's free, but it's also about as good as a number of Steam shooters that release regularly." I have no doubt that for a lot of companies whose primary concern is leveraging new markets, that'll be plenty good enough.

If it works—and I have no reason to doubt—then I wouldn't be surprised to see other companies opting to pursue gamers not on Steam or game consoles, but on platforms like Roblox. And not just companies who aren't traditionally into videogames: Less than a year after announcing an all-in effort to salvage Payday 3, after all, Starbreeze seems to be focused primarily on bringing the property to—you guessed it—Roblox and Fortnite.

Rockstar has long been able to pull off some incredible feats when it comes to bringing massive, technically demanding games to lower-powered consoles like Xbox Series S and Nintendo Switch, and while it's more fun to chalk it up to witchcraft, a lot of it likely has to do with the unparalleled resources available to a company funded by some of the most profitable intellectual properties of all time. Most people wouldn't take issue with that, but if you're the founder of a much smaller studio facing performance demands from people using games like GTA 6 for comparison, I could see that becoming tiresome.

That's exactly the predicament Thomas Mahler, founder of Ori and No Rest for the Wicked developer Moon Studios, is lamenting in a sharply worded tweet sent out today. In it, Mahler says he's sick of people who don't know an Xbox from an ex-box (a thing which was formerly a box) demanding 60 FPS on Xbox Series S just because the console will be able to run GTA 6.

"I just love comments like: 'How dare your game isn't running at 60fps on Xbox Series S yet when GTA VI will run on it?!?!'" says Mahler.

"1) We don't know yet how well that thing will run.
2) Well, gee, I don't know, MAYBE it's because Rockstar literally just spent over a billion dollars and had THOUSANDS of people working on it for over a decade now?"

As Rockstar's next game has yet to come out, there's no telling how it'll run on Xbox Series S, but again, there's little reason to doubt the studio's capabilities with regards to performance. Red Dead Redemption runs mostly great on the OG Switch and Red Dead Redemption 2 manages a rock-solid 30 FPS running at native 4K on the last-gen Xbox One X.

Continuing his rant about lofty performance expectations, Mahler says "it's always the people that have absolutely no technical understanding that are always the loudest," and that their hysterics amount to "pure fanboyism.

"But sure, the 6 year old machine that cost $299 at launch and literally has half the RAM that even a Steam Deck has ought to run all the newest games at perfect performance, makes sense. It's not like other devs haven't been struggling with this thing for a long time now."

It's true that the Xbox Series S has been a thorn in the side of developers trying to achieve performance parity across consoles for years. Although Mahler isn't the only prominent developer who's spoken publicly about the issue, he's probably the most outspoken about it, having previously compared the Series S's specs to those of mobile hardware.

"It's incredibly difficult to support these potato machines and none of your fanboyism will make that statement any less true," says Mahler.

The Series S seemed like a great, consumer-friendly entry point to the current generation of consoles in theory, but it's clearly a pain point for a lot of developers who want to release their games on Xbox without performance compromises. That's a real shame, because in a world where $1,000 games consoles are becoming more and more accepted, a cheaper alternative has never made more sense from a player's point of view.

GTA 6 isn't too expensive for superfans, as 90% opt for the pricier $100 copy according to analysts: "It lives in a league of its own."