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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök expansion unlocks the powers of the gods

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In one month, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s hefty year two expansion Dawn of Ragnarök arrives, expanding Eivor’s journey reliving their past life as the all powerful Norse god Odin. The new story unfolds following the game’s previous Asgard-focused quest, and finds Odin on a search for his kidnapped son Baldr, taking him to the dwarven realm of Svartalfheim. With new godly abilities and over 35 hours of expanded gameplay, here are some features of the expansion that caught our Odin’s Sight during a recent hands-off preview: 

Powers of the Gods

Equipped with a new mythical bracer called the Hugr-Rip, Odin is able to acquire powerful abilities from fallen foes that open new doors to gameplay and strategy. Unlike abilities unlocked through the main game through discovered Books of Knowledge, these powers are not permanent and are driven by exploration. 

Odin can acquire only two powers at a time; if a new power is discovered, the player must choose which to keep and which to toss until the next time it’s encountered in the world. Instead of using adrenaline points, these powers are active for as long as Odin’s Hugr meter stays filled. The five powers unlock new strategies, allowing players to customize their godly playstyle. 

Power of the Raven allows Odin to transform into – you guessed it – a raven. While active, Odin can fly over great stretches of land and swoop in on unsuspecting enemies for an air assassination. In a series that has often relied on a feathered companion to help the lead assassin survey the area, it’s interesting to see this refined stealth approach.

Power of Muspelheim transforms skin into magma and makes Odin appear like one of the main enemies, the deadly Muspels. While active this power allows Odin to travel across lava without being harmed (which comes in handy in the lava-heavy dwarven realm). It also allows Odin to slip by other Muspels without being detected.

Power of Winter infuses Odin’s weapon with ice to unleash devastating strikes, which can be all too useful in a realm overrun by the fire and lava-fuelled Muspels. 

Power of Jotunheim allows Odin to transport short distances when rolling and dodging. He can also shoot an arrow into World Knots (think glowing magic targets), transporting Odin across larger distances directly to them and making traversal through harrowing areas easier. 

Power of Rebirth allows Odin to resurrect enemies that he has slain while the power is active, but rising to fight on his side. While some powers lend themselves to a stealthy approach, watching Odin create a small army and barrel through a stronghold speaks more to my Viking instincts to raise Helheim wherever I go.  

Glorious Gear 

Throughout my life I’ve found it very satisfying when I get to become intimately familiar with a space, and perfectly map it out in my brain. I spent so much time in my parents’ house growing up, that I had every closet, drawer, and shelf etched into my memory. However, after living there for years, I remember one day finding a new drawer kind of tucked away under our extended kitchen countertop. It was empty, but I was very excited. I can’t imagine how I would have felt if I found something more substantial, like a full hidden room.

Animal Well tries to capture that feeling x100. In it, you explore a surreal interconnected labyrinth that is absolutely loaded with secrets. It has a map that is not nearly as big as some games, but it aims to be much denser. Returning to a familiar area is exciting because there is a chance you will discover something new amongst the familiar. You might visit it with a new ability, or new understanding that helps you uncover something. By locking the camera until you leave the frame, the game encourages you to examine each screen as a whole and think about where something could be hidden. There is always the possibility of a surprise right beneath your nose.

Creating the connected world of Moss: Book II

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Your adventure with Quill continues in Moss: Book II, the highly anticipated sequel to Moss, where we will soon be rewarded with more of everything we fell in love with in the original: fresh challenges, new game mechanics, extensive environments, epic enemy encounters, and more opportunities to bond with our favorite tiny mouse friend. Everyone has their favorite parts of the game, but the magic of Moss is rooted in the believable moments and true sense of immersion that shape our every experience and connection to the world. 

As we gear up for the release of Moss: Book II later this spring, we wanted to give you a little insight into the careful thought and work that goes into creating our physical presence and fostering those special connections we make in the world of Moss. 

We heard early on that fans were blown away by the environments within Moss. They would often comment that not only were they beautifully crafted down to the minute details, but that the sense of scale was Honey, I Shrunk the Kids-like, bringing an unfamiliar sense of scale that immediately heightened their curiosity. Familiar plants, animals, and objects felt whimsical when viewed from a low vantage point.

In Moss: Book II, we’re excited for you to feel the sense of scale once again with the addition of much larger rooms to explore. Not only are the rooms bigger, reminding you of Quill’s true size, but they allow us to create expansive multi-dimensional puzzles and platforming challenges you’ll have to work through with Quill within the context of a much larger single space. To navigate these larger-than-life rooms, we implemented seamless camera cuts using familiar transition fades with no load time. Now, you can reach new vantage points within the room, inspect previously unnoticeable details, discover secrets, and solve puzzles without worry of jarring motion or discomfort.

Moss is rich with environments to explore and puzzles to solve. Knowing you wanted even more, we doubled down in Moss: Book II. In fact, one of the things we heard from players is that they wanted the opportunity to revisit areas in the game for further exploration and for the ability to search for missed collectables—so we did just that.

You’ll quickly find that all of the rooms in Moss: Book II are connected, which not only improves spatial understanding of the world, but allows us to inject tension with surprise scenarios when revisiting a known place, triggering emotional ups and downs. Now, when you reenter a room, you may experience it from a new angle via a camera cut, find it peppered with visual differences resulting in story progression, or be able to solve past mysteries with recently discovered tools. Whatever your motivations are for re-exploration in the game, you will now see how the world evolves along with the adventure. 

Quill’s personality, expressive movements, and interactions with us make her the real st

Just revealed: 7 new indie updates and announcements

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UPDATE: That’s a wrap! We hope you enjoyed the new reveals we’ve shared over the past couple hours. Click the links below to catch up on all the news, then head to the comments and let us know which one was your favorite.


Hi everyone! We’ve lined up seven indie updates and new reveals that we’re excited to share with you this morning. Check in starting at 7am Pacific — every 15 minutes we’ll publish a new story here at PlayStation.Blog.

Once the festivities have ended, we’ll update this post with links to all seven updates. Please let us know what you think of each reveal in the comments!

We’re just minutes away from our first reveal. Spoiler alert: we’re kicking things off with a new look at one of our most anticipated upcoming PlayStation VR titles…

Accessibility features in Horizon Forbidden West

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With the launch of Horizon Forbidden West only a few days away, we are keen to share some of the accessibility features that will be available for our players. Early on in the game’s development, we established that we wanted to bring the game to as many fans as possible and create an immersive and accessible experience that can be enjoyed by everyone. Some of these return from Horizon Zero Dawn, and some are newly added as we’ve continued to learn and understand more about the needs of our players.

We hope these features help craft the gameplay experience that works best for you, and look forward to hearing your feedback so we can finetune even further!

General Accessibility Settings

There are a couple of things that are automatically enabled upon starting the game, one of them being subtitles. You also have the option to change the size and background used with subtitles for better visibility. You can select your preferred language (both spoken and subtitles) when starting the game for the first time.

In the game menu you can find the Notebook, an expansive encyclopedia containing useful information about characters, machines, and datapoints found in the world. We wanted to ensure that any help can easily be found while you are playing, should you need guidance, so we added a separate Tutorials section to study up on game mechanics or controls.

Difficulty Settings

We understand that every player wants their own type of challenge in the Forbidden West, so we have five difficulty settings that are tailored to give you the experience you prefer; from Story Mode which eases the combat experience so you can focus on exploration and story, to Very Hard which presents you with a tough, demanding combat experience and really tests your skills.

We’re also introducing the Custom Difficulty setting, which allows you to adjust damage levels that Aloy deals and receives to/from enemies, giving more flexibility in adjusting combat difficulty.

Horizon Forbidden West has a focus on hunting machines, then detaching and looting their resources to craft ammo and upgrade equipment. Many of these resources can be destroyed if not detached before the machine is killed. This can be challenging, so we have introduced an Easy Loot system. Turning the Easy Loot option on means that any resource components that are still attached when killing a machine are added to its loot inventory. This lessens the need to detach those components during combat. This system is the default for Story and Easy difficulties as well as an option in Custom mode.

Controller Settings

As Aloy is a skilled and agile hunter, it is important that the controls be as intuitive and comfortable to use, allowing Aloy to use her full range to succeed. With this in mind we have introduced a number of options to

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