Saturdays are for putting your hand in a bucket of ice, swallowing a mouthful of honey and lemon, and breathing a sigh of relief. All that practice you put into your welcome handshake and 'Here comes trouble!' paid off. Almost every member of the treehouse has been successfully greeted home.

All bar one. But I'll get him. I'll get him good.

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With Baldur's Gate 3 and its gang of rowdy adventuring mates in the rear view mirror, Larian are hoping to improve a couple of aspects of how they handle companions going forwards - a process that'll likely kick off in Divinity. In particular, the development of deeper relationships between party members and a more subtle build to the moment when the player's relationship veers into deeply horny territory are on their list of learnings.

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Larian CEO Swen Vincke has provided an update as to how the studio are planning to go about handling the use of generative AI in the making of Divinity. In an effort to alleviate concerns, the newly decided plan is to avoid using it in any capacity as part of the concept art development process. In general, Larian are aiming to ensure any in-game generated assets in their games come from models "trained" on data Larian already own, rather than risking the charge of creative theft or actual copyright breach.

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Manor Lords and Terra Invicta publishers Hooded Horse are imposing a strict ban on generative AI assets in their games, with company co-founder Tim Bender describing it as an “ethics issue” and “a very frustrating thing to have to worry about”.

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The regular modpocalypses which tend to erupt when a fresh update for a game comes down the pipeline - an especially terrifying prospect if it's an older game and the tweaks/additions aren't something you're happy to temporarily switch back to vanilladom in order to enjoy - may now be less of a ballache. Well, at least when it comes to the Steam Workshop, which has just had new version control pipes welded to its pulsating metal frame.

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What did you do while recovering from your big medical thing, Sin? Well. Loath as I am to talk about myself ("lol. lmao." - Combative New Ed>>), >I... don't know? There was some Ultima Underworld, some workers, some resources, some Pagonians pioneered. But in the dimensionless vortex of first-time-off-since-2020, I think I did... nothing. The lists barely moved.

Except, finally, for a game I struggled with last year. A strange game, easily punished, as all turn-based games must be for dolt reasons, for not being bloody XCOM. USC Colon Counterforce is more like old> >XCOM, aka UFO. But it's not a recreation of that, nor of Aliens, its other obvious inspiration. It diverges as much as it reminds, and makes some mistakes in a way that we all must, when pursuing our own identity instead of an impression of someone else's.

I wish I'd given it a second chance sooner. I wish I could shake everyone and say "This! This is the way! There is more than one path, if you just look for it! Yes, the one before you stumbled. But look at it it. See the admittedly weakly-named USC, and its bruises. It is beautiful. It is itself".

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The self-explanatory Don’t Stare is both a gamejam creation I enjoy for itself and also, an idea I’d love to be incorporated into any number of first-person RPGs. Here is how the latter possibility might work: you are bandying insults with the Demon King ahead of the final battle. You’ve got some solid bantz going, but there’s a note of awkwardness, for the Demon King has very large, protruding ears, and you can’t stop looking at them.

Such biteable tubercles! Such luscious lobes! The more you stare, the more agitated the Demon King becomes, till at last, he flees in tears before you’ve exchanged a single blow. And that, young Chosen One, is how we first defeated evil many decades ago. I understand the Demon King has had some plastic surgery since.

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CES 2026 doesn’t technically end until tomorrow, but then if it were a football match, it’d be the kind where the home side gets battered 4-0 and the cameras keep cutting to a stream of season ticket holders slumping towards the doors with 20 minutes left. An all-timer in the history of Consumer Electronics Show, it has not been.

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