Well, here's one way to push your customizable keyboard to the limit. Upholding the time-honored tradition of "if it has a display, we should play Doom on it", Redditor AyrA_ch posted the footage above to /r/videos. In it, they run Doom 2 on one of the tiny 48x48 pixel displays found in each key of the Optimus Maximus keyboard, which can be programmed to display pretty much anything you want. 

Interestingly, AyrA_ch explained that the keyboard isn't actually displaying the game itself. Instead, they set it up so the main display the game is running on will constantly take screenshots. Those screenshots are quickly converted to the right format and size, and then played in order as a video on the key. The effect is basically the same, though I imagine there's a noticeable amount of lag. Nonetheless, it's a pretty brilliant workaround to solve a very silly problem. 

If you are starting to get keyboard envy, I've got some bad news. Not many of these keyboards were made, and production has since been stopped. But even when they were available, they were extremely expensive at $1500. Incredibly cool, but not the most practical thing in the world—which makes sense given the company that made them is primarily an art and design studio, not a gaming peripheral manufacturer. Still, you can find the Optimus Maximus keyboard's official site here if you want more info. 

You can also see a gif below that AyrA_ch posted to /r/gifs to show off what the customizable keys are usually supposed to be used for (memes, obviously) as well as getting a little context for just how tiny that Doom 2 screen is. 

We’ve been playing stealth games for decades now, infiltrating military bases undetected, choking henchmen from behind and packing ventilation shafts with their naked unconscious bodies. But making sneaking fun isn’t easy. Full spatial awareness, how to communicate your visibility, and reliability of tools and AI behaviors are a hard thing to pin down. Luckily, these games pull it off without disturbing a single dust mote. They’re the best stealth games you can play on the PC right now, and what we recommend for players looking to get their super quiet feet wet. 

Deus Ex

Deus Ex' sandbox structure made it a landmark study in open-ended design. The large environments and varied upgrade tree are designed to give you ways to solve tasks expressively, using imagination and forethought instead of a big gun. Nearly every stealth game on this list borrows something from Deus Ex, and it’s easy to see why.

Deus Ex pulled off experimental, player-driven stealth design in huge, tiered environments. It was the cyberpunk espionage dream, and for many modern developers, it still is. The last two entries in the series, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, play with similar, more streamlined design, and while we recommend them as well, they still can’t brush with the complexity and novelty of the original. If you’re not big on playing old games, install some mods like Deus Ex Revision, and give it a shot.

Hitman

After Hitman: Absolution, it seemed that Blood Money would stay the golden standard for silly stealth sandbox shenanigans indefinitely, but IO Interactive surprised us all with Hitman’s new episodic format. For the better part of 2016, we were treated with a new level every month, each featuring a different setting, layout, and pocket universe of NPCs going about their clockwork lives. Agent 47 is the screwdriver you get to jam in wherever you choose. Watching the mechanism break around you (and reacting to it when things go wrong) is central to Hitman’s charm.I like the way Phil put it in his season review: “Strip away the theme and fantasy, and you're left with a diorama of moving parts—a seemingly perfect system of loops, each intersecting to create a complex scene. It's left to you to decide how you want to break it—whether it's by surgically removing key actors, or by violently smashing it all up with guns, bombs and a stuffed moose.”

Supported with a steady stream of updates, including temporary Elusive Targets and remixed levels, it’s still possible to play the entirety of season one in new ways (and season two is already in development). We might be getting a steady stream of Hitman forever, and videogames are better for it.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

In the years since Chaos Theory, Splinter Cell and the majority of stealth games have veered from a focus on purely covert scenarios, and it’s easy to see why. Chaos Theory is a complex, punishing stealth game whose gratification is severely delayed (for the better). Getting through an area without a soul knowing takes pounds of patience and observation, and getting caught is not easy to recover from. It was a slow, arduous crawl, but a crawl unlike any other in the genre, with a level of realism we haven’t seen since. 

Accompanied by a Sam Fisher at peak Jerk Cowboy, as difficult as it was, we laughed through the pain. The multiplayer was also a bold experiment in asymmetry at the time, pitting Sam-Fishery spies against first-person shooting soldiers in a tense game of hide and seek.

Thief 2

Alongside Deus Ex, the Thief series introduced new variables to stealth games that have since been adopted as a standard nearly across the board. Using light and shadow as central to your visibility, Thief made stealth much more than the visible-or-not dichotomy of implied vision cones. 

The Thief series is still unparalleled in the subtlety of its narrative and environmental design. Jody Macgregor sums it up in a piece on the very subject: “Thief II ramps up the number of secrets within each level, but even with as many as a dozen hidden rooms and stashes to discover their placement is always just as subtle. A shooting range conceals a lever among the arrows embedded in the wall behind the targets, a bookshelf is slightly out of alignment, a glint of light pokes through the edge of a stone in a wall. Compare that to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which sometimes hides one of the many ducts you can climb into behind a crate but more often plonks them into the corner of rooms beside a neon sculpture.”

The first two Thief games are interchangeable as the ‘best’ for most players, so be sure to play them both, but the second takes the cake as a best-of recommendation for working out some UI and AI kinks from the original. But with both games, install a few mods and it’s fairly simple to make them easier on the eyes and our modern design sensibilities. 

Mark of the Ninja

The biggest challenge facing stealth games has always been how to communicate whether or not you’re visible to enemies. While we’re still working out the kinks in 3D games, Mark of the Ninja solved just about every problem with two dimensions. 

Through clear UI cues, it’s easy to tell how much noise you’re making, whether or not a guard can hear it, and what spaces in the environment are completely safe to hide. There’s almost no room for error, at least in how you interpret the environment and your stealthy (or not) status within it. Accompanied by swift, springy platforming control and a robust ninja ability upgrade tree, by the end of Mark of the Ninja the challenge reaches high, but so too does your skill.

Dishonored 2

What surprised me most about Dishonored 2 is the density of its level design. Like other stealthy immersive sims, it features huge levels with any number of potential routes for getting through, but Dishonored 2 is the first to make me want to see every inconsequential alleyway. Nearly every space is as detailed as a room in Gone Home, decorated with natural props and people that tell a specific story. 

There are more systems and choices than ever, and while you explore, how you dispose of or sneak by guards is a playful exercise in self-expression and experimentation. Emily and Corvo have their own unique abilities, and a single playthrough won’t get you all their powers. Summon eldritch tentacle arms to fling psychically chained enemies into the sea, or freeze time and possess a corpse during for a particularly, uh, daring escape. Just make sure not to miss Sokolov’s adventure journals, they’re a treat.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

I think The Phantom Pain’s appeal is best summarized by how everything going wrong typically means everything is actually going well. Samuel’s anecdote from his review is a perfect example: “I forfeited a perfect kill-free stealth run of one mission because I couldn’t get a good enough sniper angle on my target before he took off in a chopper. Sprinting up flights of stairs to the helipad, my victim spotted me just in time for me to throw every grenade in my inventory under the chopper, destroying it, vanquishing him and knocking me over, before I made a ludicrously frantic escape on horseback. It was amazing, and I’m not sure it would’ve been vastly improved had I silently shot the guy and snuck out.” Wish I could’ve seen it, Sam.

For a series to go from weighed down by cutscenes, spouting nonsense about nuclear war and secret Cold War contracts with a few simple stealth sequences to a full blown open world stealth sandbox masterpiece (and on the PC too) was quite the surprise. As a silent Big Boss, there are hundreds of hours of wide open stealth scenarios to tackle in MGS5, despite its thinner second chapter. Systemically, this is one of the most surprising stealth games ever made, and as bittersweet a swan song as Kojima could leave us with before departing Konami for good.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

It took me six months to finish Amnesia. It doesn’t allow you to play stealth games the way you’re used to, and by removing old habits, so goes your sense of security. The sanity mechanic intentionally denies you your habits by distorting your view and slowing down your character while looking at a patrolling enemy monster. Lovely, beautiful, safe, warm light also plays a part. The darker an environment, the sooner you’ll lose sanity, but if you whip out a lantern, guess who’s going to spot it? That gross bag of skin patrolling the halls. The enemy AI isn’t particularly smart or surprising, but in an atmosphere as rich as Amnesia’s you’ll think they were put on this earth to hunt you down, specifically. If you can stomach the scares, it’s a must.

Alien: Isolation

More than an incredible homage to ‘70s futuretech and the world of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece in horror, Alien: Isolation’s chief antagonist is a major step forward in first-person stealth horror design. The alien is a constant, erratic threat. It actively hunts you, listening for every small noise and clue of your presence, hiding in wait above for a sneak attack or—what’s that sprouting from your chest? Nice try. But besides the accomplished alien AI, Isolation makes good on its 25-hour playtime by constantly switching things up. 

As Andy Kelly wrote in his review, “In one level you might lose the use of your motion tracker. In another, the alien won't be around so you can merrily shotgun androids like it's Doom 3. Then your weapons will be taken away, forcing you to make smart use of your gadgets. It does this all the way through, forcing you to adapt and readapt to different circumstances, using all the tools at your disposal.” Alien: Isolation is both a striking, authentic homage to the films, and a consistently creative stealth gauntlet. If you don’t mind getting spooked, don’t miss it.

Invisible, Inc

Invisible, Inc nails the slow tension and tactical consideration of XCOM, but places an emphasis on subversion of enemies and security placements rather than direct confrontation. You’re not an overwhelming offensive force, and getting spotted almost always spells your doom. 

Chris puts it well in our Best Design award from 2015: “To the stealth sim, it introduces completely transparent rules. You always know what your options are, what the likely results of your actions will be, and your choices are always mitigated by resources that you have complete control over. There’s no chance failure, and very little trial and error. You either learn to make all of these totally-fair systems dance, or you fail.”

The turned based format means you get unlimited time to make a decision that would take a split second in a real time stealth game, but because of the extra space for consideration, Invisible Inc. piles on the systems, making every infiltration a true challenge, but one comprised of fair, transparent rule sets. Dishonored may test your sneaking reflexes, but do you have the deep smarts to be a spy? Invisible, Inc will let you know one way or the other.

Frictional Games' first-person horror hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and The Chinese Room's more meditative follow-up A Machine For Pigs, are getting a little long in the tooth. But Frictional has put new betas for both games on Steam that might be enough to convince determined cheevo-chasers to have another go at them.

It's a minor thing, and I'm not sure I'm up for another trip through the bowels of either Amnesia game, to be honest: Not just for the obvious reasons, but also because I worry a bit that they may not hold up quite as well as I remember, and it would be a shame to diminish those experiences with a replay I'm not all that terribly interested in to begin with. Then again, I do like achievements. Quite a quandary.

There are 17 Dark Descent achievements, ranging from from the mundane (Read all the notes) to the vague ("NOPE: Left when things were getting interesting.") A Machine For Pigs has just seven achievements, which seem to be dependent solely on progress through the game.

Frictional said the Steam achievements will be rolled out to all players in a few days, as long as no serious technical issues come up. For now, you can access the beta build by right-clicking either game in your Steam library, then selecting Properties, the Betas tab, and then "Achievement Beta" from the drop-down menu.

Io Interactive announced last week that Hitman would have its very own Christmas mission, called "Holiday Hoarders," in which Agent 47 would set off to deliver the gift of an untimely demise to a pair of thieves running loose in Paris. That mission went live today, and it turns out the thieves in question are actually a very familiar duo by the name of Harry and Marv. 

The mission is "a bit of an odd one," according to the briefing, an image of which was tweeted by @countzio. "Your targets are Harry 'Smokey' Bagnato and Marv 'Slick' Gonif, a pair of professional thieves currently breaking into the Palais De Walewska. Bagnato and Gonif are both American nationals now living in Paris after a series of botched break-ins and related violent crimes forced them to leave their home country." 

The last names are different, but the first names—not to mention their images and rap sheet—are clearly references to Harry and Marv of Home Alone, the bungling crooks who suffered so greatly at the hands of a young Macaulay Culkin. It's cute and clever, and should be a fairly straightforward job: You can kill them in any way you like, wearing any costume you like. (Although if you don't do while dressed up as Santa, you're clearly not trying hard enough.) 

The December update includes a new "Secret Santa" challenge pack, the "Santa 47" suit, three holiday-themed items, and "a holiday-appropriate way to exit the 'Holiday Hoarders' mission." It also fixes a few bugs, improves the supersampling filter, and disables the broken "pull an enemy" function.  The update is free for all players, but Io Interactive is asking that players make a donation to the World Cancer Research Fund in return. 

“Cancer is something that affects everyone in one way or another at some point in their lives," studio head Hannes Seifert said. "We’re giving away some fun, free holiday content to all Hitman players and we ask in return that if you want to donate to a great cause, please give whatever you can.”   

The original concept of Doom 4 is well known to FPS fans as "Call of Doom" for the way it took the series in a more scripted and cinematic direction, similar to Activision's Call of Duty series. At least, it would have, had Bethesda not pulled the plug on it years ago. The reasons for its cancellation have never been made entirely clear, but in the first part of a new documentary on the history of the game, called Doom Resurrection, some id Software veterans (and one relative newcomer) reveal a little bit more about what went wrong. 

Doom 4 was "a lot more cinematic," and had "a lot more story to it, a lot more characters around you that you were with throughout the course of the gameplay," id Software's Marty Stratton says in the video. "It was definitely a twist on Doom that took it into a much more cinematic, much more scripted type of experience." 

It was "awesome," in the words of Hugo Martin, formerly of Naughty Dog, who served the creative director on the 2016 release of Doom, but it didn't fit the mold. "As a concept I can see why they went there, because I would probably want to explore that too—if it wasn't a Doom game," he says. "To tell a bigger story, it sacrificed the Doom Slayer. And Doom is about one guy involved in big things, and Doom 4 Classic was more about the big things." 

The second part of the documentary, released today, digs into the process of designing the game's opening level. As a reboot of one of the most famous FPS franchises of all time, it had to be done right, but getting there was harder (and also a lot funnier) than you might think: The studio struggled for a long time with setting the tone and establishing the player's motivations, before finally deciding to acknowledge the obvious truth.

"We were like, let's just—everybody knows. We know, they know, everybody knows," Martin says. "You're expecting the game to be like, 'Maybe it's an occult, and it's a secret, and no one knows.' How about as soon as you walk in, it's playing on a fucking megaphone? 'We need volunteers for the Revenant Program. We're gonna turn people into demons!"   

That's good stuff. Part one is above, part two is below.   

Last month, a misleading timeline appeared on the Metro 2035 novel website which suggested "the next Metro video game" was expected at some stage in 2017. The game series' publisher Deep Silver intervened shortly thereafter to suggest while it has "ambitious plans" for Metro moving forward, releasing the next game next year was not among them.

During a recent Reddit AMA, Metro author Dmitry Glukhovsky—whose books have directly inspired the videogame series—admitted that while he has no intention of extending the novels beyond the most recent Metro 2035, the series may continue in another form.  

"Metro 2035 terminates the book part of the Metro saga. I am not planning to write any other Metro story as a novel," says Glukhovsky. "I think, the main questions are answered in Metro 2035. And even if there won’t be any other Metro BOOKS, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Artyom’s story can’t continue in other media... All the 'next game' questions have to be asked [to] Deep Silver—the publisher of the first two Metro games."

Glukhovsky's AMA is worth reading in its entirety, as it offers insights into his influences and thought processes—which is particularly interesting given he collaborated with 4A Games with the writing of Metro: Last Light. That said, Glukhovsky later admits he has never expected the games to directly mirror his work, lending credence to the idea he'd be okay with the games extending beyond his writing.   

"I didn’t expect Metro games to be a sentence-by-sentence repetition of the novels," he says. "I wanted [the 4A] guys to create an independent masterpiece based on my stories. And they did. That’s a rule of life: work with talented individuals and grant them creative freedom—instead of working with idiots and controlling every step they make."

The government is spying on its citizens. Don't worry, I'm not about to launch into a rant about the Investigatory Powers Act. Rather, this is the set up to Orwell, a five-part episodic adventure about the tension between privacy and national security. Set in The Nation, Orwell is a visual novel in which you voyeuristically watch over a group of activists—trying to determine who is responsible for a series of bombings.

The titular Orwell is a program for surveilling The Nation's citizens. You play as an investigator, and your job is to analyse the digital footprint of any citizens that The Party has marked as a potential threat. At first you're scouring public and state records—newspapers, websites and police databases. But soon, the intrusion goes deeper. You read emails and chat logs, listen to phone calls, and, in extreme cases, dig through your target's computer.

As you read through the information, the Orwell system will highlight relevant passages of text as data chunks. The system itself is incredibly literal, and unable to distinguishes nuances of language. It can't, for instance, tell that, by listing their current location as 'The Internet', your target is making a funny joke. In fact, if Orwell was analysing that last sentence, it would offer a data chunk saying I thought putting 'The Internet' as your location is a funny joke. It doesn't do sarcasm.

That's why you're there. An investigator's role is to separate fact from fiction. You're literally the brains of the operation, and a big part of the challenge is knowing what to upload. Sometimes that's easy—plenty of data chunks are either quirks of language, or obviously tangential. Others are clearly important. The tricky part is when you have conflicting information. There can only be one truth, but which one is it?

And therein lies the drama. Is your target a naive activist or dangerous terrorist? Were they once unfairly arrested for a crime they didn't commit, or did their corporate parents pay to have the charges dropped? That's up to you. Orwell's subversive twist is that draconian surveillance is often seen as dispassionate and unthinking. But here, I find myself earnestly trying to discern the truth. I wanted to do a good job. It's not that the invasion of privacy is portrayed as benign, but it's flawed in a different way to how you might expect.

A quirk of the system is the relationship between investigator and analyst. At first Symes, your analyst, acts as a tutorial – guiding you through how to use the program. But soon, he's reliant on you. It's an asymmetrical relationship. Symes doesn't have access to the information you're reading. And while he can talk to you, you can only respond via the data you upload. His job is to act on that data.

The obvious limitation is that you can't make recommendations. Your ability to control and shape the situation comes from the data you do or, often more crucially, don't upload. Orwell teaches this lesson early on, when a target jokes about stealing her boyfriend's credit card. Upload that data chunk and Symes, who can't see the playful dynamic of the relationship, has the card cancelled. In later episodes, the stakes are more dramatic. There are some major decisions that can have a profound effect on the story—albeit, as is often the case with episodic storytelling, the story follows the same major beats no matter your choices. But doing what seems like the noble thing doesn't always lead to the best outcome. It's complicated and messy, which feels right.

At times, it feels a bit limited. Often, the drama hangs on you deciding between two conflicting pieces of information—a gut instinct guess, with no way to further your understanding of the situation. That's part of the game's message—a commentary on online surveillance in a world where public personas are so carefully curated. But it's not always satisfying. You're an investigator, but you don't do much actual investigation. Mostly, you're unlocking and cataloguing a procession of story beats.

It's also confusingly inconsistent. Occasionally, Symes will comment on things Orwell's own rules dictate he has no way of seeing—enough that I started to wonder if it was a plot point leading to some future reveal. But it's never mentioned, and so I'm inclined to think it's simply a mistake.

Despite these problems, Orwell is a success. It lets you watch over a spiralling conspiratorial thriller, and throws in enough twists and surprises to keep things interesting. It's an enjoyable way to interact with a world—the voyeurism creating a distinct, enjoyable power dynamic that I refuse to self-reflect on any further. It's not at all subtle—it's called Orwell, after all—but it's a well told mystery framed by a captivating storytelling device.

The idea of 'Dota 3' is a running joke in the Dota community, used whenever something changes so significantly that the game we knew might as well be dead. And because this is the Dota community, updates thought significant enough to qualify can be anything from shuffling Roshan slightly to the right to changing the size of the gold bounty granted by a kill when the level difference between the killer and victim is greater than the radius of the branch of a tree in the backyard of Icefrog's neighbour's physiotherapist yadda yadda yadda Dota Dota Dota.

This weekend's update, now live on the test server, is different. This might as well be Dota 3. And because Valve aren't allowed to use the number three, they're calling it Dota 2 7.00.

That '7' is significant in and of itself. If you caught the news in passing over the weekend you might have wondered why Dota players were losing their minds over a digit, but it's a big deal: DotA has been in version six-dot-something for more than 10 years.

After the original Warcraft 3 mod's emergence in 2004, it went through a period of rapid versioning under multiple stewards for a year or so. The shift from 5.84b to 6.00 in early 2005 marked the end of the Guinsoo era, with Icefrog stepping in starting with 6.02.

From then on, DotA crept forwards in small increments—reaching 6.69c in late 2010, the last patch prior to Valve's involvement. Development of the mod and Dota 2 continued in parallel from 6.70 onwards. I started playing in mid 2012, on version 6.74. Over the last four and a half years the game gradually reached a remarkable state of balance with 6.88. Everyone was excited (and trepidatious) about the changes to come with the 6.89 patch.

Which is why the announcement of version 7.00 is such a big deal. This is an epochal shift not only in Dota 2's history, but the history of arguably the most influential mod in the history of PC gaming. It's a sweeping modernisation of the game, from the interface to the map to the vital systems that power the most complicated competitive sandbox around.

Leveling stats is gone, replaced with a per-hero talent system that offers passive bonuses at levels 10, 15, 20 and 25. Where previously power spikes centered on key levels and the acquisition of items, now heroes have the opportunity to leap ahead of their opponents at more regular intervals.

While the system seems similar to Heroes of the Storm on the surface, it's a very different creature when translated to Dota 2. This is a game that often boils down to successfully reading the relative power of two sets of characters and making strategic decisions on that basis. The addition of talents gives you something else to track, and allows for surprising late-game twists that weren't possible before.

I'll give you an example: I played Chaos Knight in my last game, facing a well-farmed enemy Juggernaut. It ran long but stayed relatively close, and after a long series of teamfights it was clear that Juggernaut was comfortable using Blade Fury to disengage from fights. He didn't account for one of CK's level 25 talents, however, which allows Reality Rift to pierce spell immunity—and this in turn allowed me to control Juggernaut in a vital late teamfight and shift momentum to my team.

Existing players have a lot to relearn when it comes to matchups, as the talent system has the potential to create a range of new counter-picks. I'd argue that this is good for new players too, as talents (unlike stats and the formulae they drive) are relatively easy to understand by reading them. And the fact that experienced players are having to relearn so much of the game helps to narrow the skill gap, at least for a short time.

Case in point: I got lost in a game of Dota 2 last night while navigating a map that I've spent several thousand hours fighting over. 7.00 overhauls the battlefield to an astonishing degree, relocating Roshan to the top of the river, moving every single neutral camp, adding some new ones, adding four (!) bounty rune spawns throughout both jungles, and changing every juke path. Thousands upon thousands of hours of accumulated map knowledge have been lost and must be reacquired, and every single guide to jungling, warding and roaming will need to be rewritten.

I've also felt lost within the new UI, which is the one area of this update that I suspect will see some changes in the next couple of weeks. Overall it's a positive change: cleaner and clearer in key areas, with more flexibility for future updates.

There's plenty that doesn't seem quite right, however, like the shop window concealing the kill feed on the right and the placement of the new 'enemy details' panel, which again fights against years upon years of deeply-ingrained player habit. We'll get used to it, though. After all, 'select enemy heroes to see their stuff because the RTS engine this is based on let you do that' is weird too.

I'm impressed by the changes to the pregame. After hitting 'accept' you're now taken to the match lobby near-instantly, which is a tragedy for anybody who was making a living from Dota 2 loading screens but great for everybody else. More tools to communicate strategic intent during the draft are very welcome, as is the ability to pre-buy starting items to get you out of the fountain faster. It's a welcome process of modernisation that doesn't make the game any less competitive. I also like the mad anime-style intro to each match, because it is silly.

It's funny that the most notable thing about this patch when it was announced—Monkey King, the first Dota 2-exclusive hero—has been so completely overshadowed by the massive changes elsewhere. Particularly because he is nuts. They've added a character that can climb trees, summon an army of monkeys, and run around pretending to be a banana, and this is the least interesting thing about the update. I don't know what to tell you; he's a new hero. Most players know how to deal with that. What they don't know how to do is deal with getting lost looking for Roshan.

I will say this, however. If you're worried that this new era of Dota 2 signals the end of the game's vital strangeness—a shift towards smooth focus-tested marketability—then Monkey King is a reminder that, at its heart, Dota 2 is still a game about really weird shit happening because of a decade of accreted rules and systems. To wit: earlier today I, a horseman of the apocalypse, helped my team find, isolate and kill a tricky monkey by eating a tree with some magic beans.

It's still Dota, everybody.

Duelyst's second expansion, Rise of the Bloodborn, has snuck up on all of us. It was expected sometime this month, but it's actually just days away, going live this Thursday, December 15. A smaller set, Rise of the Bloodborn will add 39 new cards to the game, along with a new keyword: Blood Surge.

A minion with the Blood Surge ability will activate a unique effect any time you use your general's Bloodborn Spell—basically the same as Inspire keyword with Hearthstone's hero power, but Bloodborn Spells are cheaper and can't be used every turn.  As you might have guessed, the set generally revolves around using and empowering Bloodborn Spells, which Counterplay Games's Emil Anticevic told me is an attempt to make using those spells more strategic, rather than just activating them whenever they are available. 

While you'll still get Rise of the Bloodborn cards by purchasing orbs (card packs) unique to the set, these orbs function a little differently than the ones for the classic and Shim'zar sets. Instead of paying 100 gold for five random cards, a Bloodborn orb will cost 300 gold and contain three copies of three different cards, so nine cards total. None of the cards from this set are craftable or disenchantable, and once you've acquired a certain card, you won't ever see it in an orb again. 

That means, with 39 different cards and three per pack, you only need to open 13 packs to guarantee you'll have unlocked three copies of the whole set. Alternatively, you can buy the orbs for $3 each, or $20 for all 13. If you buy a few orbs individually before deciding to spend cold hard cash, the $20 option will also come with a refund on any gold you already spent on Bloodborn orbs. Anticevic told me they think this method of distributing a set is better for players when releasing a smaller set like this, but it won't necessarily become the way they always release new sets from now on. 

Now then, onto the card reveals. Counterplay has given us a sneak peak at six new cards to share with you from Rise of the Bloodborn, four of which have the new Blood Surge keyword. We'll be showing off one from each class, and you can flip through them all in the gallery below, along with my impressions. You can also find the full resolution PNGs and animated gifs of each card here. 

Duelyst is free-to-play and available through Steam.  

For our recent special edition magazine, PC Gamer: The Ultimate RPG Handbook, we asked game developers about the future of role-playing—how they'd like to see the genre evolve, and what advancements we can expect in the years to come. Here, as a supplement to that feature, you can read Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart's thoughts on the future of RPGs. PC Gamer: The Ultimate RPG Handbook is out now in UK newsagents, and through My Favourite Magazines.

PC Gamer: How exactly would you define “role-playing game”, right now?

Feargus Urquhart: For me, role-playing is what it has always been. It’s about choice. It’s about letting players do what they want to do, and having the game react to their particular way of playing the game. In the early days of CRPGs it was mostly about party choice. Players could choose to have certain classes in their party, but there were always more classes than party slots. So, players made choices, and then had to fight their way through the game with that party. In modern RPGs those choices have become much more about what type of role the player wants to play – are they good, evil, male, female, straight, gay, violent, charismatic, stealthy, etc… We talk a lot in the industry about AR and VR, but often look at the best RPGs as the best way to escape from reality, and immerse yourself in another world.

PCG: What do you think have been the most important role-playing games of the past few years? Which games have inspired you?

FU: It’s probably been more than a few years, but I was always impressed with the Mass Effects. You have to play a more specific role, but they really fulfill the feeling of being James T. Kirk in many ways. More recently, the Witcher 3 did an incredible job of creating a very living world, and it’s cool to play an RPG with a bit more of an action slant. When it comes to Fallout 4, no one does it better than Bethesda in creating a visually dense environment helping to really put you in the post nuclear world of Fallout. I’d also like to point out Spider, another RPG developer, who is still learning the craft, but has made some interesting games with Mars: War Logs and Technomancer. I’m interested to see where they go in the next few years.

PCG: Broadly speaking, what would you say are the topics, types of subject matter or story themes that you think RPGs will explore (or explore more) in the next few years? Are there any kinds of story you personally wish that RPGs would look into more - or less?

FU: Funnily enough, this is something we talk about a lot. We ask ourselves questions like, if Fallout came out now, would it resonate the same way as it did in 1997. Fallout was made by a bunch of Gen Xers – the cold war kids. Now-a-days, I think we should look at how invasive technology has gotten into our lives, where AI is going, what is it to be human or machine (Tears in Rain by Bruna Husky is a cool book about that), hacking biological viruses, could anything we want be printed in twenty years and what would that mean, and what is the natural progression of mega-corporations like Apple and Amazon and their ecosystems? I’m not trying to get all paranoid here, but it’s interesting to take a lot of these things to a logical end, particularly when I think those things are concerning to a lot people.

PCG: Where do you see the most room for growth in terms of game mechanics and systems? And again, is there anything you wish RPG developers would look into more?

FU: I want our games to feel just more real with even more choice for players. I don’t mean real from the standpoint of how they look, but that you just feel a part of the world. It’s not a world that starts and stops as the player enters and then exits an area. It’s a world that feels like it is always moving. A denseness of experience. I read an article about Blade Runner years ago, where one of the guys working on the set sat down in Deckard’s apartment, looked around, and then realized that it truly felt like someone lived there. That’s what I want us to hit not just with how an area looks and feels, but with the choices that players have as well.

PCG: Are there any technologies or platforms you think will strongly affect the evolution of role-playing games at this stage (e.g. VR or distributed processing)?

FU: I like to say that RPGs are probably the most adaptable of the game genres. We’ve been playing them since monitors only had one color, and I think we’ll be playing them into the generation of VR and AR. Ultimately, I always go back to how RPGs are about the experience of choice, which is not about the technology, but about what we let them do.

PCG: How do you think your own projects have contributed to the genre's evolution? If you could do anything differently, what would it be?

FU: I wouldn’t screw up the entire balance of Fallout 1 by inventing the Turbo Plasma Rifle. That was really dumb on my part. Now that’s me personally, and not the fault of anyone else at the time back in Black Isle Studios. What I think we have contributed is constantly pushing player agency, multi-faceted deep companions, and that RPGs can both be non-linear and have compelling stories. I think we can all do more there as well, but I am incredibly proud of what the teams at Black Isle Studios and Obsidian have been able to do when creating what is our own unique flavor of the RPG genre.