The developers of upcoming Skyrim total conversion Enderal: The Shards of Order have released a new trailer, showing off a location dubbed the Undercity.

I’m curious: just how does one acquire a Shard of Order? First you’d need to shatter an intangible concept, which seems like a lot of hard work, even for a fantasy big boss. Ordering a Shard seems a lot easier: you can just have one custom-made by any number of Skyrim merchants. Enderal, whoever you are – you have my number. Call me.

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Alec wrote about some of his favourite gaming moments last week and I was inspired to put together something similar. Ever the structuralist, I decided that I’d string my favourite moments across a fictional interpretation of an actual day. Here is one of many days in my life, from a breakfast of champions to the blurred bottles at the heart of Saturday night.>

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Though there have been murmurings (and indeed alleged leaked emails) that much-anticipated but much-troubled open world shooter Prey 2 had been snatched away from original dev Human Head and entrusted to the tattooed hands of Dishonored dev Arkane, Bethesda have now stated that the game is as dead as Zhora after three bullets in the back.

But what’s in a name? … [visit site to read more]

I have The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter installed on my PC and ready to go. But there’s something that’s been playing on my mind regarding that game before I’ve even booted it up. It’s been nagging at me ever since I watched a video from Andy Kelly’s Other Places series the one which focuses on Ethan Carter’s Red Creek Valley and it finally crystallised a problem I’ve been experiencing for years without being able to put it into words.

Just after a shot of a dam there’s a lingering shot of a churchyard. In the foreground a handless statue of Jesus marks the grave of a woman named Thusnelda. In the background the autumn trees sway in the breeze and the weed-infested grass well, I want to say that it sways but it’s a sway which comes via a clump-by-clump waggle. That grass is why I’m proposing there exists a foliage version of the uncanny valley.

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There are lots of survival games, but there are also lots of games which >could be survival games with the right mods installed. Over the course of Survival Week we’ll highlight a few of those games and i)write a diary of our experience playing with it ii) explain how to do it yourself.>

I found Meeko sitting by the side of the road. He is one of Skyrim s shaggy, grey wolfhounds that look as old as they do stupid. He saw me, turned around and ran into the thicket. I followed him through the trees, where he led me to a run-down shack. I looked inside and there, lying still and grey on the shed s single rickety bed, was Meeko s owner. He was dead. The mongrel looked to me, blinked in the cold and seemed to whine. All right then, I thought, you can follow me. It was a decision I never came to regret. Later on, Meeko killed a lot of people for me.

But more importantly, Meeko kept me warm in Skyrim s deadly mountain passes. One of the mods I have installed is Frostfall, which gives the player a few extra things to worry about. Exposure can leave you freezing to death, while being wet means you succumb to the cold even faster. You have to keep yourself warm at fires and fill up on hot soups to keep your exposure meter from dropping too low. Once, I tried to swim across a small, icy river and before I could get a fire going on the opposite shore I passed out from hypothermia. I woke up in a familiar inn, penniless, frostbitten and with this note in my pocket.

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There are lots of survival games, but there are also lots of games which >could be survival games with the right mods installed. Over the course of Survival Week we’ll highlight a few of those games and i) write a diary of our experience playing with it ii) explain how to do it yourself.>

You may have already read my Skyrim survival diary and if not, why not? It sees me struggling to ward off frostbite with wine and adopting the game s most lovable dog just to keep my feet warm. If you want to plod through the winter wastelands of Tamriel with the same survival mode in mind yourself, these are the mods you ll want to add. Most of them come from a single source, the Nexus modding community. Before you grab them, it is best to have their Nexus Mod Manager installed, as well as something called SKSE. (You will also have to register to join the Nexus community to download these files). Getting all this architecture in place is a minor frustration compared to the improvements you ll see in the end. It will be worth it when you find yourself freezing to death under a rocky outcrop with no wood to start a fire.

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When I last wrote about Skywind, it was to cover the game’s ‘Slough’ trailer, which showed Morrowind’s Bitter Coast brought to life within the Skyrim engine. In the comments, what followed was an interesting conversation about the etymological root of the word “Slough”, and its geographical uses in the UK and in America.

Anyway, the latest Skywind trailer shows off the West Gash region.

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Skywind‘s latest trailer is titled ‘Slough’, but it does not, as every British reader just hoped, mark the inclusion of Berkshire’s much maligned city in the game. Instead it’s the first look at the remake of Morrowind‘s Bitter Coast inside the Skyrim engine, and it’s as pretty as every other chunk we’ve seen of the ambitious mod project so far.

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You could finish Dishonored for free this weekend. It’s free to play on Steam until 9 o’clock on Sunday evening, which certainly gives enough time to zip through and stab everyone in the neck. You would, of course, be a monster–not just for the reckless murder, but for missing some of the finest first-person sneaking of recent years. No, unless you have nowt going on, the trial will give sneaky players just enough time to crave closure. Handily, the game’s on sale cheap too, as are its ace DLC chapters.

Killfreaks can alternatively play Titanfall and Borderlands 2 free this weekend, mind.

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While QuakeCon rages away in Texas, gibsters stuck at home might feel a little left out. Chin up, little buddy: Quake’s coming to you. After missing its plan to launch during QCon 2013, Quake IV single-player mod False Dawn has launched alongside this year’s fragging festivities. It brings a new story with 90-120 minutes of non-linear Strogg-shooting and a few tweaks to good old Q4.

Its single-player side was pretty good fun, from what I remember, so sure, maybe I will revisit that so very brown and frightful planet of meaty cyborgs this weekend.

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