Former Dragon Age creative director says 'I just desperately don't want to overhype anything' in his new studio's first game

 Former Dragon Age creative director says 'I just desperately don't want to overhype anything' in his new studio's first game

(Image credit: Yellow Brick Games)

After over a decade in leadership on the Dragon Age series at BioWare and a brief stint at Ubisoft, Mike Laidlaw co-founded Yellow Brick Games in 2020, and has been quietly working on his first project for four years. Yellow Brick finally revealed Eternal Strands yesterday, but just a couple weeks ago during an interview at the Game Developers Conference, Laidlaw told me that he really does not want to overhype anything—not due to a lack of confidence in the studio's first game, but in anticipation of what it will create next.

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Helldivers 2 dev nerfed everyone's favorite shotgun because it was 'hands down the best sniper rifle' in the game

 Helldivers 2 dev nerfed everyone's favorite shotgun because it was 'hands down the best sniper rifle' in the game

(Image credit: Arrowhead Studios / PlayStation)

Nestled on page eight of Helldivers 2's free warbond is an unassuming gun—the SG-85 Slugger. I didn't pay much mind to the Slugger for a long time, or even bother unlocking it, because it's a variant of the Punisher, a shotgun I don't like. That changed when my friend informed me that the Slugger isn't really a shotgun—it's a shotgun-shaped rifle that fires slugs that can unalive anything in seconds. It's so good at killing that I feel like I'm cheating when I use it.

So I wasn't surprised when the Slugger got the biggest nerfs in yesterday's Helldivers 2 patch that also buffed sniper rifles, flame damage, and heavy armor. Arrowhead hit the popular gun where it hurts:

• Reduced stagger.
• Reduced damage from 280 to 250.
• Reduced demolition force.

Responding to feedback on the Helldivers Discord server, senior game designer Alexus Kravchenko said the Slugger changes came down to the fact that it was a shotgun that didn't behave like a shotgun.

"The truth is, [the] Slugger was just hands down the best sniper rifle out there, which is not fitting for, you know, a shotgun," Kravchenko wrote.

It's true: The Slugger can't equip a scope, but it

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The launch of AMD's Zen 5 processors is close, as motherboard manufacturers begin rolling out BIOSes supporting the next-gen chips

 The launch of AMD's Zen 5 processors is close, as motherboard manufacturers begin rolling out BIOSes supporting the next-gen chips

(Image credit: AMD)

The launch of AMD's Zen 5 based Granite Ridge family of processors is clearly drawing near. Asus has begun the process of rolling out support for the next-gen chips to its latest enthusiast tier X670E motherboards. The public release of supporting BIOSes indicates the chips could be released at basically any time.

The eagle-eyed hardware leaker HXL spotted the release of the BIOS series over at the Asus ROG forums. There have been seven BIOSes released so far—all for Asus ROG boards. All of them include the latest AGESA update, which is named FireRangePi.

With this news, just how close are we to Zen 5's release? Publicly, AMD has only said it's aiming for a launch in the second half of 2024. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su's Computex keynote on June 3 would be a logical forum to reveal the range. AMD used a similar keynote to unveil Zen 2 at Computex in 2019, so there is a historical precedent.

If AMD does show off Zen 5 at Computex, we can expect all the motherboard vendors to have next generation motherboards on display too.

Should Zen 5 arrive sooner rather than later, it will present a problem for Intel. Its own next-gen Arrow Lake chips are looking like a late 2024 or CES 2025 proposition at best, so if Zen 5 manages to convincingly beat out Intel's 14th Gen desktop offerings, it could be a tough six months for the blue team.

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