It’s the 30th podcast episode, but we’re celebrating our 300th magazine issue. Join Sam, Phil and Andy on a self-indulgent tour of magazine craft – going behind the scenes of the making of a landmark issue of PC Gamer. Also, we talk about the good videogame Watch Dogs 2.

You can get Episode 30: You are Graham Gooch here. You can also subscribe on iTunes or keep up with new releases using our RSS feed.  

Hey! We’ve got a new community home on the PC Gamer Discord channel. Head here to sign up, and join the uk-podcast channel to hang out with fellow listeners.

Discussed: Watch Dogs 2, Orwell, The 300th Issue Of PC Gamer

This Week: Samuel Roberts, Phil Savage, Andy Kelly

The PC Gamer UK Podcast is a weekly podcast about PC gaming. Thoughts? Feedback? Requests? Get in touch at pcgamer@futurenet.com and use the subject line “Podcast”, or tweet us via the links above. 

This week’s music is from Watch Dogs 2. 

This is PC Gamer's overall 2016 Game of the Year, chosen by the staff through voting and debate, with commentary written by its biggest proponents. We'll be posting the rest of our awards and personal picks daily as we approach the end of the year.

Chris Thursten: Arkane are creating a design legacy worthy of Looking Glass or Ion Storm—appropriate, given that they're doing more than any other studio to carry the legacy of Thief and System Shock into the modern era. Yet for all that Dishonored 2 owes to the PC's long history of superlative stealth sims, it's also a true original. Its fantastic movement systems and dynamic violence can trace their lineage back to Arkane's underrated Errol Flynn-em-up Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, while its artistic direction ignores games entirely and looks to traditional art and real history. I suspect that I'd love this game for its sense of place even if I didn't also love it for the freedom it gives me to approach encounters in my own way.

Andy Kelly: The sheer artistry on display in Dishonored 2 is astonishing. Arkane excels at making worlds that feel organic, storied with history and culture, and Karnaca is its greatest creation yet. It's both a convincing, beautifully realised setting and a detailed, intricate playground for Corvo and Emily's suite of imaginative supernatural powers. From Kirin Jindosh's magnificent Clockwork Mansion, whose opulent rooms shift and fold away at the pull of a lever, to the faded beauty of the storm-choked Dust District, it's an incredible artistic accomplishment. The game is, throughout, a perfect marriage of art and design, using its architecture to both evoke a rich sense of place and give you multiple ways to navigate and exploit its sprawling, complex levels.

Phil Savage: This is a better written game than its predecessor. Not all of the dialogue lands, but the buildings are filled with pages of text that expand your knowledge of the world and its characters. There are hundreds of these stories to be found, to the point where I've heard comparisons to Gone Home. That's not entirely accurate—Gone Home didn't have spring razor mines—but it is a way for Dishonored 2 to encourage and reward exploration.

James Davenport: I’m halfway through my second playthrough of Dishonored 2 and I’m still finding surprising ways to screw up. Emily’s Domino ability might be the best stealth ability ever, sharing the fate of one foe, however brutal, between two or three others in a supernatural chain. Imagine my surprise when I grabbed one Domino’d guard the moment before his friend took a shot at me. One died in my arms and the other slumped to the ground immediately after. If you’re a monster, summoning a doppleganger at the bottom of a big drop and drop-assassinating it is, um, a handy way to get around. As Corvo, I’m discovering the joy of Blink-kicking guards off of high places and freezing time to arrange a deadly Rube Goldberg machine of crossbow bolts and bodies that turn dangerous situations into horrific contraptions. And the depth of Dishonored 2’s simulation goes beyond guard behaviors and whalepunk stealth abilities. Even when you’re halfway across a level, it’s keeping track of the proliferation of bloodflies between corpses, and if you left a mine somewhere, you may come back to a swarm of deadly insects poking at a pile limbs signifying the former patrol. It’s simply one of the most complex, playful, gorgeous stealth simulations PC gaming has ever seen and likely will for some time. 

Phil Savage: A Crack In The Slab is one of the best levels of the year—and this is a year that gave us Titanfall 2's Effect and Cause, and Hitman's Sapienza. It also shows off Dishonored 2's dedication to providing consequences to your actions. James mentions the moment-to-moment depth of the simulation, but there's a narrative depth too. Dishonored 2 feels reactive, and that lets you enjoy the effect your actions have on the world. This is taken to the extreme in A Crack In The Slab, where the conceit of the level lets you experiment in an ecosystem of cause and effect. Whatever you try, Dishonored 2 has an answer—a way to tip the hat, and acknowledge what you've done. Never mind being the best game of the year, this is one of the cleverest of the decade.

For more Dishonored 2 coverage, check out our full Dishonored 2 review, and this collection of amusing assassinations.

As an Ark player, I'm still new and more than a bit of a disaster. The island of Ark is a dangerous place, and even simple tasks often result in a horrible death. I've been bitten by everything with teeth. I've been poisoned repeatedly. I've fallen off cliffs, drowned, starved, and drowned while starving after falling.

This isn't some heavily populated PvP server I'm on, either. A friend invited me to play on a private server, where the few players around are all extremely friendly. I joined my friend's camp on Herbivore Island, where nothing hurts you unless you hurt it first. And still: death. Death, for me, all the time. That's why it's important to have a trusty mount, and I have a few, mostly gifts from the server admin who has tamed just about every creature in the game. I have a T-Rex, and Argentavis (like a giant eagle), and I even tamed my own (low-level) Megalodon. The Rex can kill anything in its way and the eagle can cruise safely above danger. But I recently found something even better, and it's a damn frog.

The nice thing about riding a giant eagle is you can pick up smaller creatures in the eagle's talons. You can them drop them from great heights (though they don't seem to take fall damage), shred them to ribbons, or carry them somewhere, such as a taming pen like the one we built on our peaceful little island.

I'd already had several misadventures in the Gulch of Lamentation (a swamp whose name should have tipped me off), which is teeming with nasty creatures like Titanoboas (huge snakes) and Sarcos (crocodiles). However, during one of the many, many times I was dying horribly in the swamp, I noticed a multitude of Beezelbufos (big frogs) hopping around, and decided I wanted one as a pet. I returned on the eagle, picked up a pretty white toad, dropped it at our base, punched it unconscious, and stuffed it with raw meat, thus ensuring it would love me forever. I hadn't really planned on riding my frog, but saddling dinos makes them easy to move around in case they get in the way of anything, so I crafted a saddle for her and named her Electra.

Hopping around on Electra was briefly fun and silly, but just seemed like something to do in moments of boredom. She could really leap though, and since every time I venture into the water I seem to get feasted on by angry dino-fish, being able to jump across rivers seemed like it could be useful. So, anytime Electra could be leveled, I put all her points into movement speed. Before long, she was over 400% speed.

Now, her leaps give her some major hangtime. And she's fast. So fast. So fast that when I accidentally let her wander rather than stay where I parked her, I could only catch her when she ran into a boulder and got stuck.

So, when we run into trouble (which is every time we leave our base), we're a half an island away by the time most dinos have even managed to turn around. Nothing can catch us. Nothing can even come close. It's like I'm visiting a zoo. I can look at all the pretty monsters, and none of them can hurt me.

What's more, Electra can eat bugs. What's even more, is that when she eats a bug she harvests cementing paste, which is a craftable item made from stone and either chitin or keratin. Most items in Ark don't take long to craft, but cementing paste seems to take twice as long as everything else, leading to long boring minutes standing at a crafting bench, so having a shortcut is a real blessing. And with her movement speed, I can scour the jungle and swamp for bugs, eat them, and be back home with a pocket full of paste within minutes.

Beyond her usefulness, she has an odd quirk, in that sometimes when I spawn into the game she's not where I left her. I've now found her on my roof, and on top of the taming pen, which is so tall I'm not even sure how she managed to get up there. One time I found her sitting at the bottom of the lagoon. I don't know if there's a glitch with how she spawns, or if she's got a mind of her own when no one is around, but it gives her a bit of a personality.

Mainly, though, it's Electra's speed that makes her supremely useful to me. Everything in Ark scares me, but now I feel confident riding her just about anywhere. Anything comes close, we can just speed off. We've hopped through crowds of dangerous dinos. The swamp, my biggest nightmare, is now a breeze to navigate. And Electra has opened up the ocean, too.

Electra is a great swimmer. She's not as fast as she is on land, but we've yet to encounter anything underwater we can't speed away from. Best of all, swimming doesn't drain her stamina: in fact, if she's exhausted from land-travel, which requires stopping to recharge, we can just head into the water and she'll regain stamina even while swimming.

I'd been trying to locate an underwater cave for a while, by riding my shark while wearing scuba gear (another gift), but caves are guarded by Plesiosaurs that are a little too dangerous for me to tackle with my somewhat wimpy shark. On Electra, we breeze right past, and I finally managed to find the cave.

There's one small drawback: all that fast-hopping means Electra needs food. A lot of food. Noticing her belly was empty during an extended hop-about, I stuffed her full of dead gator meat and she tore through it, consuming about 1 meat per second. She fully consumed a couple bellyfuls of dead dodo before we got home. My girl can eat.

The beezelbufos aren't breedable, unfortunately, or believe me I'd be busy creating a genetic line of superfrogs. Even still, it's hard to imagine a better mount for the cautious or new Ark player. Find a frog, tame it, cram as many points into movement speed as will fit, and nothing on the map will be able to touch you.

The third Doom multiplayer DLC pack, Bloodfall, is now live on Steam, bringing three new maps to the online action, plus a Grenade Launcher, a trio of new hack modules, and a new demonic transformation: the Spectre Pinky. 

The new maps are: 

• Empyrian – Fight in an ageless colosseum held aloft by opposing energies, as the gilded embattlements slowly crumble.
• Boneyard – Battle in the outer realm of Hell, where the landscape is made entirely of demon flesh, teeth and bone.
• Outbreak – Engage in intense combat throughout a UAC facility transformed after underworldly science breaks free from containment.

As always, the new maps are accessible to all players in a multiplayer lobby as long as at least one person in the lobby owns them.

The grenade launcher, which is apparently banned by the UAC (how the BFG gets a green light but a bloop gun is verboten is beyond me), can bank grenades off of walls or lay down smoke to cover your movement, while the new Hack Modules enable either extra armor or extra health per health pickup, or Glory Sight, which "highlights enemies that can be Glory Killed from farther away."

The update also adds new Lateral Thrusters that gives players the ability to dodge fire and perform a third mid-air jump, plus four new Cultist-themed armor sets, 15 new customization patterns and colors, a few bug fixes, and a reduction to just two playlists—Team Play and Free-For-All Play—to "better aggregate players and make it faster to find a match."   

Even though this is only Wednesday, Bethesda is marking the launch of the new DLC with a double XP weekend that will run until noon ET on December 19. Doom: Bloodfall is available now on Steam and will set you back $15/£12.

A week ago I dropped my Ultimate Ranking of Mass Effect Companions into the PC Gamer Slack channel and destroyed productivity for an hour. This tends to happen whenever we talk about Mass Effect: any conversation around the best games in the series, best missions, and most definitely the best characters. It says something about Mass Effect, that we still feel so strongly about its stories nearly a decade after entering that universe for the first time. We're just as passionate about the characters we love as we are about the ones we hate.

Bioware built on the template it established with Knights of the Old Republic throughout the Mass Effect series. First they're fun diversions, filling out the world with lore. Then they become romance partners, and your interactions with them influence how they grow and change and even affect the world around them. In Mass Effect 2 those character arcs essentially become the story instead of secondary concerns, and wrapping up those trilogy-long arcs in Mass Effect 3 after five years is something we'd never really experienced before in gaming.

So these companions mean a lot to us. I knew publishing my list would be a bloodbath, so we decided on a compromise: let democracy decide (but seriously Jack is the worst, no matter what this list may say). The PC Gamer team voted on the companions, ranking them from 1-20 to create this: the truly definitive list of the best Mass Effect sidekicks to have kinky alien sex go space adventuring with.

20. Jacob Taylor

It's a heavy risk, being the boring male starter companion in a BioWare RPG. Of the three men to fulfill this role in the Mass Effect series, Jacob struggles most. James Vega is enjoyably portrayed by Freddie Prinze Jr., and has a fun role in the Citadel DLC. Kaidan Alenko has personality-enhancing migraines and you're allowed to abandon him on an alien world with a nuclear bomb. But Jacob? Jacob's destiny is to promise you a beer that he'll never buy you and his most earnest wish is to give up a life of space adventure and start a family. 

He manages to have the strangest daddy issues of any Mass Effect 2 character, and that is a competitive field, but it's not enough to raise him above the parapets of mediocrity. His defining moment is this line, delivered at the culmination of his romance arc. It is the worst moment in Mass Effect. Sorry, Jacob. You are the worst companion. The prize was not worth it. — Chris Thursten 

19. Kaidan Alenko

There's only one thing that elevates Kaidan Alenko over Jacob Tyler as a boring male starter companion: you can kill him. — Wes 

18. Zaeed Massani

I still hold a grudge against Mr. Tough Guy Combat Veteran for letting me down in Mass Effect 2's suicide mission finale. If he's so seasoned, why did he utterly fail me as a commander, getting one of my squadmembers killed? Thanks for nothing, Zaeed. And that scar doesn't make you look as cool as you think it does.

I saw through the thin veneer of Zaeed's character to what he really was: a less interesting retread of KotOR's Mandalorian Canderous Ordo. None of Zaeed's war stories could possibly compare to Ordo describing an atmospheric entry at the head of an army of invading Mandalorians. — Wes

17. Morinth

Morinth's best-case scenario, as a squad member, is that she replaces Samara in your crew—but she just masquerades as Samara, and the trade never really amounts to much. And that's the extent of her role. She's a poor replacement for the more interesting and conflicted justicar. As an antagonist, though, she's great—I remember the cat-and-mouse game of catching Morinth as one of Mass Effect 2's most exciting moments, knowing the wrong dialogue decision could lead to death or failure. — Wes

16. Javik

There's probably something good to say about Javik, the dethawed prothean who joins your crew in Mass Effect 3 if you paid $10 for the day-one From Ashes DLC. But as it turns out, most of our staff didn't have Javik in their crew, earning him the indifferent shrug of 16th place. While he may not have been essential to Mass Effect 3's plot, I think it reflects poorly on Bioware that the one character who could offer significant insight into the protheans wasn't part of the base game. In an alternate timeline, Javik could've been pivotal to the story and ranked much higher in our collective memories. — Wes

15. James Vega

When picking a member of your crew to romance, I think most of us share a general rule: humans are boring and we mainly want to bang weird aliens. Vega isn’t really an exception to the rule: he’s just a normal human dude, nothing to really get excited about. I’ve grown a bit foggy on the details of his story, but the more I talked to him, the more I wound up liking him, especially watching him awkwardly hit on me, his commanding officer. But, yeah. Ultimately, he’s just a human dude and thus not much of a draw.  — Chris Livingston

14. Kasumi Goto

Kasumi's Stolen Memory is probably my favourite DLC across the Mass Effect trilogy—it lets Shepard play at being James Bond by infiltrating a party at a mansion, and Kasumi's introduction as a slick, invisible thief (as well as something of a loner) makes her seem very different to the rest of the Normandy's crew. 

Her back story with Keiji, her former partner in crime, is explored in a powerful, heartfelt way in her Stealing Memory loyalty mission. It becomes clear to Shepard how badly she's been wounded by his death, and you get to help her exact revenge on Donovan Hock, his killer. You're rewarded with a total gut punch of an ending that perfectly completes her arc. 

In battle, Kasumi's Shadow Strike ability means she's one of the game's more visually interesting party members, too, vanishing and then popping up behind an enemy to damage them. I'm aware you can find Kasumi in Mass Effect 3 and its Citadel DLC, although sadly I didn't for some reason, even though I kept her alive in Mass Effect 2. 

She's not many people's favourite character, clearly, but I'm just relieved she beat Kaidan and James Vega in this list. — Samuel

13. Ashley Williams

Look, I'm very sorry everybody, but 13th place is a travesty. I voted Ashley for 3rd place, behind Garrus and Mordin. This isn't the most disappointed I've been by democracy in 2016, but it's in the top five. Earlier in the year I wrote a long defense of Ash Williams for Official Xbox Magazine, which appeared on our sister site GamesRadar+ in November. But I'll give you the short version: Ash is one of the most substantially well-rounded characters in the series and one of the few that doesn't need Shepard to step in and fix her life.

She's among the few characters to seriously question Shepard's decisions, particularly when it comes to Cerberus, and she's willing to challenge you—at gunpoint, if necessary—when she feels that you're in the wrong. She's more than a sidekick and you get the impression that she could have been the main character had she not been wrenched away from the Prothean beacon at the start of the first game. She deserves better than 13th place and the 'space racist' meme. If you left her on Virmire, we cannot be friends. — Chris Thursten

12. Samara

She's Judge Dredd with a serial killer daughter. However you play Samara across ME2 and ME3, Shakespearean death follows, making her one of Mass Effect's most tragic characters. On her loyalty mission, you have to make the decision between Samara dying or killing Morinth, her deadly fugitive offspring. Apart from ME2's actual suicide mission, she's one of three companions (Tali and Legion being the others) who can commit suicide in the game—in Samara's case, out of failure to fulfill her oath and execute her only living daughter, who's forbidden from leaving a monastery. Phew.

Samara's rigid, implacable adherence to the Justicar Code means that she's the only character in the series with zero moral grey area. It's a powerful premise in a game that's all about tough decisions, where you have to weigh the benefits of a brutal-but-effective party member against the occasional summary execution their capital-L Lawful alignment might inspire them to perform. Having an extremist around makes Mass Effect more interesting. —Evan Lahti

11. Grunt

Grunt has a lot going for him. For one thing, his name's Grunt. For another, he's voiced by Steve Blum, whose growls have been in approximately one billion games and anime series, but most famously as Cowboy Bebop's Spike Spiegel, a character dear to my heart. His craggy headscales look awesome. His suit kind of makes him look like Iron Man, if Iron Man skipped leg day for 40 years and bench-pressed an elephant every day.

He doesn't have much to him as a character beyond punching things and talking about fighting, but that can be a refreshing change from the philosophizing and soul-searching of the rest of the crew. — Wes 

10. EDI

Honestly I'm still grossed out that Bioware chose to give the Normandy's AI a sexy robot body, and then wrote in a plot thread about Joker wanting to have sex with her. We all know that beneath the space opera Mass Effect is really about sexing up the galaxy's sexiest aliens, but you didn't have to be so on the nose about it, Bioware. EDI might have had some fine dialogue and ruminations on what it means to be human, but let's be honest: Legion covers that territory just fine, making EDI's humanoid form feel mostly gratuitous.

Also, I'm almost positive EDI was on Earth during my Mass Effect 3 finale, and somehow popped out of the Normandy with Joker at the end, blissfully alive. Talk about ruining my immersion. — Wes

9. Jack

My Shepard was damaged goods. He had a traumatic childhood, exposed to war and poverty from day one—it’s no surprise he was a huge Korn fan in my headcanon. So when Jack came into the picture, of course I saw a lot of my imaginary space person in her. She also had a terrible childhood, orphaned at an early age and subjected to torturous experimentation under Cerberus. Jack is a character molded by forces entirely out of her control, rendered a literal psychopath by the powers that be, with little recourse beyond using her potent biotic powers to kill the jerks. They deserve it.

She gets criticized for filling out the edgy archetype, a would-be villain with a deeply vulnerable side, and it’s true. But who’s to say there’s no substance to such an archetype? Edginess is an adolescent rejection of the status quo, and having grown up knowing only pain and isolation, Jack has earned the right to be as edgy and emotional as she likes. If she survives Mass Effect 2, she goes on to channel her trauma into activism, training young biotics as the Grissom Academy. She finds a new sense of purpose, and because my Shepherd had yet to sort out his own trauma, helping Jack move past hers was cathartic for him. Subject Zero in the lore, but Subject One in our hearts. — James

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Yeah, sorry, but still nope. Jack would have been bad in a mid-'90s THQ game. — Tim

8. Miranda Lawson

Miranda was my Shepard's romantic partner in Mass Effects 2 and 3, which I guess is a fairly safe choice in a series where you have the option to romance various aliens. There's a lot going on with that character: her initial closeness to the Illusive Man and Cerberus suggests she's not to be trusted, and in the opening hours of the second game, she doubts Shepard and comes into conflict with him. Slowly, you win her round, and at a key point, you're forced to choose sides between her and Jack during an argument on the Normandy. That then relationship develops into a convincing romance where you realise you're on the same page about the mission at hand. 

Miranda's experience of genetic enhancements links back to her complicated relationship with her father, which is more closely and brutally examined in Mass Effect 3. This personal crisis makes her one of the series' more complex characters, in my opinion, offering some clear motivations for why she is the way she is. 

I suppose I should also fess up to the fact I was watching a lot of the TV series Chuck in 2010, and the option to romance a BioWare character played by that show's cast member, Yvonne Strahovski, seemed like the correct thing to do. I was 21. — Samuel

7. Legion

Despite a bunch of humdrum sci-fi cliches—robots having an uprising, a collective hive-mind, and questioning whether or not they have a soul (barf)—Legion manages to remain an interesting character. The fact that he crudely patched himself up with a piece of dead Shepard-Commander’s armor is not just cool, but the first sign that Legion is more than just a simple geth automation capable of independent thought and perhaps even sentimentality.

While Legion doesn’t really have a sense of humor, per-se, he is often funny in that way robots have of flatly presenting data, such as the likelihood of someone being punched in the face by the volatile Jack (whom Legion also suggests be deactivated and shipped as cargo). I found Legion much more appealing as a companion than a particular Quarian I won’t name, and I was sadder to see him go than just about anyone else in the series. Cool robot. — Chris Livingston 

6. Tali-Zorah nar Rayya

Mass Effect isn't the first bit of sci-fi to blend machinery and religion, but the entire concept of a migrant fleet as home and a pilgrimage as rite of passage is still a cool setup, and Tali's stories were a great bit of universe building in that first adventure. Tali may not have been quite so memorable without the mystery of her face, preserved across all three games (I'm pretending that bad Photoshop job from Mass Effect 3 never existed). Even so, she may be the only companion with a story arc that spans across the entire trilogy.

Early in Mass Effect Tali provides insight into the quarian relationship with the Geth, which plays a bigger picture in Mass Effect 2. Her personal conflict with Legion is a genuinely tense balancing act, and Tali's loyalty mission deepens your understanding of the geth/quarian conflict and the quarian customs.

The conclusion of Tali's story in Mass Effect 3 was the most heart wrenching moment of the series for me. Here was a character I'd known for years. I liked her voice and curiosity, defended the galaxy with her, and cleared her name. But thanks to Mass Effect's binary good/bad morality system, I didn't have quite the paragon or renegade points to resolve the final showdown between Tali and Legion peacefully. One of them had to die, and it would mean the eradication of a species. There's no perfectly happy ending here. And there really shouldn't be. 

Mass Effect too often gives you that satisfying videogame outcome of 'solving' a storyline to get the good ending, but that's not the case with Tali. Her final step into adulthood ends with a heartbreak that Mass Effect was building to for five years. I still feel the sting of it. — Wes 

5. Thane Krios

Thane is a coldblooded killer with a conscience that struggles against his own profession. Doomed with a disease that’s slowly killing him, he signs on with Shepard’s suicide mission against the Collectors in ME2 because he has nothing left to lose. That internal conflict is what makes Thane such a compelling sidekick—he’s basically the personification of Shepard’s own Paragon and Renegade choices, and is the literal representation of their team marching slowly toward almost certain death. Plus, who can resist that gravelly voice? — Tom Marks

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Let's be honest. He's up here because he's a hot killer insect boy. My Shepard banged him, FYI. — Phil

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Nice. — Wes

4. Liara T'Soni

Oh, Liara. My sweet blue 106 year-old summer child. The easy mistake is to think that the asari scientist in only on the Normandy to serve as some sort of proxy conscience for the player. Yes, Liara does provide counterbalancing compassion to Shepard’s necessary cynicism, but there’s more to her than simply just being “the nice one”.

In practical terms, her academic insight into the Protheans makes her, literally, the smart pick for just about any mission. She’s certainly more likely to serve up nuggets of relevant info than almost anyone on this list. And as an all-in biotic character, Liara also has one of the handiest toolkits when it comes to combat. But the thing I like most is that she gives the game heart, without it having to be constantly bleeding. 

Liara is conflicted. By her mummy issues, by her lack of romantic experience, and by her inability to lie—but those doubts are offset by the sense of wonder and hope she brings to proceedings. As such she makes a fascinating alternate lens through which to view the Mass Effect universe. Unlike much of the cast, Liara is rarely sure about her answers (check out her doubts about the Krogan cure in the third game, for instance), which makes for a consistently interesting travel companion.

She’s also got a killer story arc. If your Shepherd falls for Liara, then she gives the best grief after your “death” in Mass Effect 2, which also perfectly sets up the hardening of her character, leading to her eventually becoming the Shadow Broker at the end of what is of course the best DLC story add-on. Liara, it was always you. — Tim

3. Urdnot Wrex

I played the Mass Effect series with a single rule: no going back to an earlier save to revise decisions I made. What happened, happened, no matter the consequences. I broke this rule only once, in the first game, when an argument led to—shockingly, and I thought, unfairly—Wrex being shot dead in a cutscene. I couldn’t live with that. No way. Wrex was way too cool to die. That’s the only time I undid one of Mass Effect’s events.

Wrex is cool (and my personal pick for best companion) because not only is he a tough-as-nails, battle-hardened veteran, he’s also a deep thinker, disagreeing with most other Krogans (including his father) about going to war after the genophage. Plus, he’s big and bulky and has a really deep voice and cool scars and he’s just the best.

There was no bigger disappointment than discovering Wrex couldn’t be my companion in Mass Effect 2, having been replaced with the lesser (but still decent) Krogan, Grunt. But that’s what a true badass does: accepts new responsibilities in place of galavanting around the galaxy. — Chris Livingston 

2. Mordin Solus

I love Mordin because he shows that you don't need stubble, a gravelly voice and a thousand yard stare to be an anti-hero. Mordin's quick-fire speech at first feels like a manufactured quirk, something to help you pick him apart from your small army of companions. However, it soon becomes clear that his upbeat demeanour hides a cold, calculating mind that has spent years dealing with the most difficult decisions in the solar system—decisions that Shepard is drawn into over the course of the second and third games. That machine-gun delivery is a product of a mind overflowing with thoughts, at once demonstrating his scientific brilliance and his anxiety. It's a symptom of the battle between logic and compassion that lies at the heart of his character.

He's such a chipper fellow that it comes as quite a shock to learn that he's the gateway to Mass Effect's genocide subplot. As you bond with him, he opens, and you see him dissect the terrible problems he's faced with an analytical mindset. He has done the moral mathematics—he will kill a million to save ten million—but his genophage is a slow, painful deathblow for the Krogan. As he travels with Shepard, he is forced to watch that species sputter out. None of your companions have faced a dilemma on this scale, but somehow this genius Salarian is able to bear the burden, and still find the optimism to sing a fine bit of Gilbert and Sullivan. —Tom Senior

1. Garrus Vakarian

Garrus has an advantage when it comes to a Mass Effect popularity contest: he's awesome. Also, he has a substantial role in all three games—the only other character you can say that about is Tali. That's not exactly a fair fight. Tali's great, of course, but she struggles to rise above the quirky-little-sister companion archetype that CRPGs would do well to be rid off. Garrus is something else. He's your best pal, first and foremost, somebody whose objectives and attitude align with your own and who will always, always have your back. The journey from that first meeting between a frustrated CSEC officer and a novice Spectre during the Saren investigation to that last charge against the Reapers as a pair of war heroes is one of the best friendship stories in gaming. And if you decided to get all up in his insect-bird-man business, it's a lovely romance as well.

Yet that's not all Garrus represents. The idea that Garrus is both dependent on Shepard and overshadowed by Shepard is one of the most nuanced bits of character writing in the series. Heading out alone after Shepard's 'death', Garrus makes a mess of hero life: when Shepard finds him and relieves him of the Arkangel moniker, it's a relief. He wasn't cut out to be Batman: he was born to be Robin. But that's a sad thing to recognise, and—laudably—it's not something that Shepard is allowed to fully resolve. There's no paragon-interrupting your way out of it. It's simply a thorn in your friendship, a blemish that makes their relationship all the more believable.

The kindest thing you can do, when it comes down to it, is let Garrus win that one last shooting contest on the Citadel. Give the guy his moment. He deserves it. — Chris Thursten

Bethesda Game Studios executive producer and game director Todd Howard, the driving force behind the mega-popular Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises, has been announced as the 22nd inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. Howard "has created some of the industry's most success games by pioneering open-world gameplay," the AIAS said, adding that the games he's headed up "have been recipients of numerous DICE Awards throughout the years." 

Howard has been with Bethesda since the early '90s, beginning as a producer and designer on The Terminator: Future Shock. From there, he did design work on Daggerfall and Skynet in 1996, and then ascended to project leader on The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard in 1998, and Morrowind in 2002. Every major Bethesda RPG since then (which is to say, all of them) bears his name as either executive producer or game director.   

"Todd's impact on his studio, our company, and the gaming industry as a whole has been truly remarkable," Bethesda VP Pete Hines said. "When you look at the very best game developers of all time—the 21 members of the AIAS Hall of Fame—I think Todd deserves to have his name right alongside of them as the best of the best." 

Howard will be joining the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, John Carmack, Will Wright, Richard Garriott, Gabe Newell, Hideo Kojima, and numerous other industry luminaries as a member of the HOF. It's an impressive list of names by any measure, and a fitting end to a remarkable year: Howard also earned a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 16th annual GDC, while Fallout 4 claimed the Game of the Year award at the 19th DICE Awards, along with the nod for Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction—another accolade for Howard, who served as game director.   

"Todd is revered by legions of fans not just for his creative leadership over the years but for his humility and humor,” AIAS vice chairman Ted Price said. “Despite the fact that he’s helmed several of the most successful franchises in the history of our industry, he consistently defers praise to others and is the quintessential team player. Yet it’s Todd’s vision and strong direction that has brought Tamriel and the Commonwealth to life for millions around the world."

Howard will be presented with the Hall of Fame Award during a ceremony at the 20th DICE Awards on February 23, 2017, at the Mandalay Convention Center in Las Vegas—ironically, the setting for the one major Bethesda-era Fallout RPG that he didn't work on. 

 Whenever a new champion joins the roster of League of Legends, there’s always a varied response. Some fans celebrate and start wondering how they fit into the game’s lore and general landscape. Other fans immediately pull out the microscope, analyzing the new champion’s kit to see whether they’ll be overpowered or underpowered.

That second camp is currently talking about Camille, League of Legends’ most recent release. Camille’s kit is relatively simple on the surface, especially compared to a release like Ivern, but she’s dominating solo queue and is being considered as a mandatory pick/ban champion. It’s likely that Riot will be attending to her soon: the company has a vast amount of experience in dealing with champions that need some tuning on release. Here are some of the biggest offenders from League’s long history, and a look at how they warped the game when they came out.

Xin Zhao, the unstoppable gladiator

Xin Zhao, in his lore, was an unwilling gladiator who stood against hordes and managed to stay standing. While he’s fallen out of the meta in recent years, Xin Zhao was a powerful, must-pick champion upon his release. In fact, he was far too powerful. One fan-made guide at the time offered the suggestion that you should never fight him unless the entire team of five catches an enemy Xin by himself. There were no other suggestions, because there was no other course of action. Xin was a monster who could heal through any damage, chase down even the most mobile characters, and build tank while dealing obscene amounts of damage. It’s telling that the first patch to hit him was... extensive.

• His base attack speed being hit, along with his attack speed per level, and his attack speed gain from items and abilities.
• Audacious Charge being nerfed dramatically across the board including a radius nerf, slow percentage, and slow duration.
• Crescent Sweep getting its damage cut dramatically, both by base and percentage health damage.

That’s a comprehensive set of nerfs, and it was the only thing that could bring Xin back into line. He’s struggled to find sustainable footing in the meta since, but the shadow of his debut looms over any time he manages to show up in modern day League.

LeBlanc broke the game

LeBlanc is showing up in the meta now after her recent rework, but the truth is that she was trouble from the start. When LeBlanc launched, she immediately began to dominate all games, being a must-pick due to her insane damage and limitless mana. She was so over the top that she actually requires a hotfix shortly after her release. The hotfix:

• Nerfed Sigil of Silence’s damage and cast range, while increasing the mana cost.
• Added ten seconds to her ultimate cooldown and reduced its damage buff.
• Increased the mana cost on all of her abilities, and reduced her base mana.

LeBlanc continued to be a problematic champion throughout her first life pre-rework, constantly recurring in the meta. Eventually, Riot took away her silence, and then reworked her entirely. Requiring the developers to hotfix the game to gut a kit is a notable achievement for a champion. It’s a dubious honor, but one that the Deceiver can wear proudly.

Dead on arrival: the Yorick catastrophe

Yorick was in a rough spot. He was banned from the free rotation and essentially perma-nerfed, left in a state of unviability. The champion was broken from top to bottom, and so he was buried out of sight until Riot could rework and fix him up. While his life before finally receiving that relaunch was rough, his original birth was even rougher. Yorick’s original champion spotlight featured very few jaw dropping plays. Even a piece of what is essentially marketing material struggled to make him shine.

It quickly got worse. Not only was Yorick in a rough spot, but he was riddled with bugs. His first patch notes pre-release were extensive, but necessary. Sometimes, Yorick’s resurrection turned an ally into a nightmare carousel of constantly dying and respawning, racking up thousands of deaths in seconds. When dealing with Zilean or Heimerdinger, his kit broke further. The patch notes had to tear him apart and build him back up, buffing nearly every aspect of his kit while fixing a smorgasbord of bugs. He still lingered on the bottom of tier lists until Riot finally granted him his 2016 relaunch. RIP.

Azir, Guardian of the Bugs

Azir is an interesting case because he’s been both buffed and nerfed. His launch was less about balance, and part of that is no one could really tell how strong he was, because he was so riddled with bugs. (In fairness, he was one of the more advanced designs for that era). The first patch to come out had to address those bugs aggressively.

These ranged from his passive being able to be double-summoned and interacted with by other champions like a dashing Lee Sin, to soldiers struggling with ranges and the ability to attack multiple targets (when they weren’t being broken by a /dance command), to a retool of E’s utility, to a total rework of R that was summed up in the patch notes as “it’s complicated”.

While Azir would later become a major meta force who would dominate 2016, it took him a while to get there, and his launch is a reminder to Riot designers that even if something works on the PBE, once it goes live it’ll have millions of players immediately breaking it.

Camille’s launch may be sharper than expected, but it could be worse - she could be a LeBlanc, Xin Zhao, Azir, or Yorick. The next time you get dove by a Camille from half a lane away, count your blessings that you’re not being infinitely resurrected in a monstrous spiral of torment.

If you've ever wanted to play mix-and-match with the supernatural powers of Corvo Attano and Emily Kaldwin, the first of two planned free updates to Dishonored 2 will make you very happy indeed. It includes a New Game Plus mode that will give you access to all of the abilities of both characters, as well as all Runes and Bonecharm traits you've collected from previous sessions, which can be reassigned to different powers. 

"Dishonored players have asked for it, so now New Game Plus is here for Dishonored 2,” creative director Harvey Smith said. “If you've ever wanted to make higher-powered characters, now's your chance. If you've wanted to play Emily Kaldwin with Possession or Devouring Swarm, or Corvo Attano with Domino, now you can. We've been having fun with it here at Arkane Studios, and we hope you will too.” 

The free update is the first of two that are planned for Dishonored, and will be released today in beta ahead of a full rollout scheduled for December 19. The second update is slated for January, and will add a new Mission Select option and additional custom difficulty settings. The full list of changes made by this update is below. 

New Features:

• New Game Plus mode!
• New Quick-Access Wheel option for hiding/unhiding items

Improved Features:

• Fixed Oraculum false-kill count in Royal Conservatory
• AI detection tweaks to clarify when players are detected or not
• AI locomotion improvement for running
• Fixed various Bonecharm effects (Strong Arm, Spiritual Pool, etc)
• Fixed a problem in slow-motion where some inputs were ignored
• Blood Thirst: various enhancement and fixes
• Killing an NPC with their own bullet is now more reliable
• Tweak for mana potion refill speed, depending on difficulty
• General performance and optimization improvements
• Fixed various game logic issues
• Fixed various User Interface issues

Since Hello Games surprised us all with a major new No Man's Sky patch, players have been poking at it to see if it'll do anything strange. A tweak to the game's files has resulted in limitless vertical base-building, but the latest quirk is undeniably a bug, albeit a cool one.

YouTuber Sirian Gaming has managed to land his freighter – those gargantuan floating space vessels you can now purchase and own – on a planet. To do so you have to have good reflexes and an abundance of patience. Basically, you need to call your freighter in the very second you enter a planet's atmosphere.

The video below demonstrates how it's done, and also shows you how cool it is to have a freighter wedged into the side of your home planet. Hopefully one day, we'll be able to do this for real. I don't care if the science doesn't make sense.

With support officially ending for Evolve earlier this year (despite an effort to stake some ground in the free-to-play arena) Turtle Rock Studios is moving on. Naturally enough, the studio's new game won't be an instalment in the Evolve series (it's safe to say that's dead), nor its earlier success Left 4 Dead. No, a new IP is on the way, one with a "dark fantasy" element.

Speaking to gamesindustry.biz, a studio representative said the company is colloborating with free-to-play publisher Perfect World Entertainment, which has worked on Star Trek Online and Blacklight Retribution. 

""We are developing a new franchise set in an all new universe that leverages the style of gameplay our community loves and expects from Turtle Rock Studios," according to Phil Robb, the studio's co-founder. "We're focusing on what we do best - heart-pounding moment-to-moment online co-op FPS action, and with Perfect World as our partner, we will always make sure that our players come first by listening to them and growing the game based on how they play and interact over what we hope are many years to come."

President Steve Goldstein added that the game will have a "huge" focus on cooperative FPS play. He added that it's not a zombie game, nor is it post-apocalyptic, but that it will instead have a "strong dark fantasy element" to it.

It's a shame Evolve went the way it did: I really enjoyed it, though it's understandable that players were concerned with how its post-launch content was ladled out. The new title is not expected to release until 2018 at the earliest, though there are separate VR projects in the offing, too.