In a month, the top Dota 2 teams will descend upon Kiev, Ukraine, for the next in Valve’s series of official tournaments, the Majors. Modeled after the system introduced to CS:GO in 2013, these events began after The International 5 in 2015, each providing a $3 million prize pool and a $1 million grand prize. The event also introduced roster locks, preventing teams from changing rosters mid-season if they wanted to be given an invite to an event or its qualifiers.But the Majors also came with its own set of controversies and legitimate concerns. Namely, there are questions about how these Valve tournaments, regarded by the community as extremely important, have interfered with third-party events. 

For one, the roster lock was presumably intended to prevent organizations from abusing their positions and to protect players. Namely, roster locks reinforce the perception that “Valve invites players,” meaning that a banner doesn’t matter as much as the people who make up the squad. Stronger teams are more likely to stay together, giving players more stability. It was also a solution to the last-second shuffling of teams before The International or other large events, with the knowledge that banners were more likely to be invited to TI anyway. (For instance, Evil Geniuses, TI5 winners, were not directly invited to TI6 due to their frequent team changes; in previous years, the winner would be invited regardless of changes.)

A major side effect was how this weakened the post-event tournament circuit after each Major or International. These events were expected to be affected if they were too close to The International, but now they need to think about whether they want to risk being the first event after the Major. Massive tournaments now have to make the call about whether or not a squad should be allowed to play if a team locks in a different roster than its original. Plus, many players focus on Majors, and some may come to these other events exhausted or not at their 100% for other reasons.

Speaking of weakened tournament circuits, Valve’s lack of communication about large events has put many third-party tournaments on thin ice, particularly this year. The Boston Major was announced with just two month’s notice, notably affecting DreamLeague and almost affecting The Summit, a fan-favorite tournament. They did announce Kiev Major dates at Boston itself, but then they chose to change them, likely due to a mixture of factors: the stadium was being used for other sporting-related events, and the Dota Asian Championships were too close. DAC is hosted by Perfect World, which publishes Dota 2 in China, and it’s unlikely Valve would want to weaken relations.

Do the Majors affect tournament numbers? Two years in, it’s hard to tell quantitatively. Up until the “seasons” were implemented, there were more and more tournaments every year. In the 2014-2015 season, excluding Valve events there were 24 ‘premier’ and 38 ‘professional’ events, per Valve’s ticketing system, for a total of 62. The year before, 2013-2014, there were 20 and 48 respectively, for 68 total.

At a glance something has certainly happened, as in 2015-2016 there were 17 ‘premier’ and 22 ‘professional’ events for a total of 39. This year the scene is on track to reach similar numbers, though the elimination of a Major seems to have helped a bit. At this time last year, 11 premier and 14 professional tournaments had taken place since The International. The year before saw 11 and 14, and 2014-2015 saw 14 and 27 respectively. Still, as the Major system continues to settle in, we’ll see how it affects tournament production timeline-wise. There’s also the chance that outside investors don’t want to commit to Dota, given the increasing pool of esports that tournaments organizers can choose from.

Another tier down, meanwhile, smaller tournaments are affected by Valve’s lack of attention to unofficial events. While Dota 2 was originally acclaimed for hosting and being supportive of in-game tournaments of all levels, including during its beta years, in the past year or two several complaints had arisen from tournament organizers. The Reddit Dota 2 League, which has hosted many pros, including CompLexity’s Moo (and even professional actor Asa Butterfield) claimed that Valve had been ignoring its routine requests for in-game tournament hosting. Around the same time, other organizers reported similar issues, including UK’s BGL and a small university cup, and there have been other such complaints throughout the past few years.

The issue likely began over two years ago, when the Dota 2 Canada Cup was informed by Valve that there were several changes to how tournaments were permitted to run. Namely, while tournaments ticketed as ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ were given similar permissions, Valve chose to restrict in-game item distribution to premier tournaments only. The Canada Cup wished to distribute a courier named Bearzky, stating “we felt this was the proper way to attract viewers, get sponsors, pay teams a fair prize pool in the North American scene and pay designers and casters, put the profits towards larger prize pools.” In this original PSA, some players did comment that they didn’t necessarily want to pay larger amounts to get the cosmetic, which was a trend among these tournaments.

In hindsight, meanwhile, there’s the chance that Valve also had an extra motive for slowing the distribution of in-game items: the Compendium system. Valve supposedly allows Compendiums for Premier tournaments that can boost the tournament’s prize pool, including DAC 2015, but the DAC 2017 Compendium has been the first since the DotaCinema Captain’s Draft in January 2016. (In 2014, when the system was introduced, there were five third-party tournament compendiums, and in 2015, when the seasonal Compendium by Valve was introduced, there were three.) Either Valve has been reprioritizing which tournaments should receive one, or tournaments aren’t focusing on the Compendium as a prize incentive.

If it’s a change on Valve’s side, one could speculate that they’re trying to avoid too much money being drained from their own tournaments’ profitability. And, if that’s the case, it likely affects the prize pool of these premier tournaments, as Compendiums alone raised hundreds of thousands of dollars—sometimes into the millions—for these events.

Of course, the Majors circuit can’t entirely be just about Valve putting out cash cows. Otherwise, Dota 2’s infamously vocal pros and fans alike would be more critical (though they certainly were after teams were given only three weeks for the first roster lock). Valve clearly wanted to make a tournament system that added longevity to the core professional scene, and it has largely accomplished that task.

The roster lock system, especially with this year’s new “drop/add dates,” has been increasingly praised for protecting its players. For its all its flaws, as mentioned, it succeeds in making orgs and players less casual about shuffling and dropping its players mid-season. 

The presence of multiple Majors distributes the pressure of professional play more evenly throughout the year. Teams would arguably prepare for The International alone (for instance, Newbee streamed RPGs for several months after their TI4 win), but now they’re given motivation to work year-round towards each Valve event. 

Similarly, fans may be more likely to understand what’s going on throughout the year when they’re given a consolidated, official series of events to follow, allowing for greater scene loyalty. This is likely enhanced by Valve’s in-game advertising and the Compendium’s promotion of the Majors, including the True Sight documentary. (And speaking of Compendium, workshop artists’ creations are pooled into the Treasures within the Compendiums.) 

All in all, for players and Valve itself, the Majors system is a mostly win-win situation: players are given a reliable tournament circuit with good cash and more predictable stability, while Valve is profiting off the Compendiums and tournaments. Of course, there’s no denying that the system must affect other parties, but it has yet to be seen how the dust will settle. After all, a system that spans a year may take several years to show its true impact on everybody involved.

If Matthew Gilman's recent journey to The Elder Scrolls Online's reimagining of Morrowind had you excited, then you'll likely want to check out Bethesda and Zenimax Online's latest trailer exploring its Battleground PvP. 

In bouts of triple-threat 4v4v4, the latest footage offers a glimpse at the new mode as taken from the PAX East conference show floor earlier this month. Within, players can be seen executing new ice spells and lobbing one another into pits of lava at Red Mountain; while War Bears and the new Warden class can be seen duking it out with foes elsewhere. Observe: 

Not the most comprehensive of trailers by a long shot, however it's nice to see the modern makeover of a world now 15-years old coming along. 

Of the new Warden class, Matthew said: 

"The Warden fills out a slot much sought-after in ESO’s preexisting range of classes, offering a druidic array of skill sets. You can opt to plough points into three new skill paths as you progress. Choose Green Balance skills and you’ll earn a bunch of healing abilities, from actively aimed frontal cone bursts of heal-over-time buffs to a full area-of-effect ultimate skill that causes ethereal blue flora to burst from the ground around you and your allies. 

"Over in the Winter’s Embrace skill tree are the class’s tankier moves, letting you summon icy armour and control the battlefield with snares that whip enemies around. The showstopper is the Animal Companion skill set. Here you’ll find abilities that summon an array of spirit-form pets to deal out DPS. Most, like the infamous Cliff Racers, themed around Morrowind itself. 

"Your ultimate ability on this path summons a permanent bear to tank damage for you. In the development build I was shown there were no pet control commands, but I’m told these are being worked on for the final game."

The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind will launch globally for PC on June 6, 2017.

Against last year's catalogue of wonderful games, Mafia 3 was a disappointment. As Andy detailed in his review, a promising start was quickly marred by repetitive missions—which was a shame given its Civil Rights Movement narrative was interesting, its soundtrack was stellar, and its faux-New Orleans setting was at times gorgeous. If you were put off splashing out by any of this at launch, then you might be pleased to hear Mafia 3 now has a free demo which boasts its entire opening act. 

Again, it's worth noting that Mafia 3's opening act—a thrilling bank heist sequence—is easily one of its highlights, so bear this in mind if you do feel like opening your wallet once it's done. If you do, though, all saves are transferable into the full article. To mark the occasion, 2K and Hangar 13 have launched a new trailer: 

In other Mafia 3-related news, its latest premium DLC—Faster, Baby!—is out now. "Whether you’ve already taken down the Marcano crime family, or you’re still new to town, the streets of Mafia III have more stories to tell," explains the add-on's Steam page blurb. "The Faster, Baby! DLC is ready to roll—and with it come a number of game enhancements, gear, new vehicles to add to your fleet. And, of course, there’s the story of small town corruption choking Sinclair Parish. It’s up to Lincoln Clay and Roxy Laveau to do something about it."

With that, Faster, Baby! introduces a new part of town in Sinclair Parish—a rural township with its "fill of Hollywood-caliber car chases". Players can now activate slow motion, adding an extra layer of movie-like veneer to driving and vehicular combat, and a new story segment that runs parallel to the main game explores the murder of a civil rights leader. To top this off, new combat mechanics and proximity mines are "perfectly suited for causing destruction on-the-go," so says 2K. 

Here's some of that in moving picture form: 

Head this way for Mafia 3's free demo, and over here to learn more about its Faster, Baby! DLC—the latter of which costs £11.99/$14.99 on Steam. 

Since its launch almost two years ago, Rocket League has adding a huge amount of updates and DLC packs to its base game, it's firmly planted its flag in the esports scene, and even won our Multiplayer of the Year Award in 2015. Matt Elliott described it then as "fast, fun and relentlessly enjoyable"—a view seemingly shared by many players, given the fact the number of its active monthly players has jumped 40 percent over 2016 in the first few months of 2017 alone.  

But this uptake in interest has resulted in server performance issues and matchmaking delays—forcing CEO Dave Hagewood to now address the issues, and he and his team's community, head on. 

"While our player population continues to grow at a healthy pace, we need to do a better job at scaling up our systems and internal processes to handle this kind of growth," Hagewood explains via a Steam community post. "We are growing so fast, both as a company and as a game, that we are racing to fill new positions on our Online Services team. 

"We are effectively becoming an Online Service company, as Rocket League is primarily an online game, and we continue to grow in size and scope. Growing this team is one of our top priorities as we approach Rocket League’s two-year anniversary in July."

Hagewood identifies issues with the Google Cloud infrastructure which powers Psyonix's PsyNet backend. The worst outages occurred last month, he says, thus the developer has assigned dedicated staff to oversee database reliability and stability, and work to improve "high-traffic features like Player Trading and 'Scraper API access'." 

Similar specialised positions have been created to work on dedicated server performance problems - such as in-game lag spikes—while matchmaking delays in light of Rocket League's recent Dropshot update are being closely examined. "As this is a new problem, we are still investigating the root cause," says Hagewood. "We have made changes in the interim to reduce the likelihood of it recurring, but more substantial improvements will be made throughout 2017."

Hagewood signs off by stressing Psyonix will continue to work through these "growing pains", and that an imminent hotfix should tackle the most pressing issues.

Second update: The patch has been delayed one day, and is now scheduled for Friday, March 31.

Update: Here's a peek at the new menu, via Jeremy Stieglitz on Twitter (you can enlarge the image by clicking the top right corner for a better look):

Original story: I've chosen a picture of one of Ark: Survival Evolved's giant snails for this particular news story. That's because Ark's next patch, v256, will among other things apparently provide a long, long, long overdue 'total inventory menu redesign' according to recently added notes to the Steam discussion post and this tweet from Studio Wildcard's Jeremy Stieglitz:

Seriously, Ark's menus and UI are kind of the pits, and while I understand Early Access provides games in an unfinished state and while I'm sure there were bigger coelacanth to fry during the development process, a redesign of the menu is quite welcome, late as it may be. Hence, the snail. Snails are slow.

For the record, here's a list of what else planned for the update, which is (now) estimated to reach us on Friday, March 31:

• Total Inventory Menu redesign
• Total Inventory Menu redesign
• Total Inventory Menu redesign
• Total Inventory Menu redesign
• Total Inventory Menu redesign
• Total Inventory Menu redesign
• Total Inventory Menu redesign

Ho ho. 

Just kidding. Here's the real list:

• New Mechanic: Aquatic & Amphibious Creature Breeding
• New Dino: Equus!
• New Dino: Leedsichthys!
• New Dino: Ichthyornis!
• New Dino: Iguanodon!
• New Structures & Mechanic: Tek Underwater Bases
• New Structure: TEK Teleporter
• New Structure: TEK Mosa Saddle
• New Structure: Tek Power Generator
• Total Inventory Menu redesign (other UI's coming soon!)
• Flyer Nerf

Please note: those aren't my exclamation points.

I've been having a go at a mod called Sim Settlements, created by kinggath, (which I previously wrote about here). It's a mod that gives you a completely new way to create and manage settlements, and: 1) it does a much better and more interesting job with settlements than the base game does, and 2) it still lets you build them the old-fashioned way, if you like. It's one of the most creative and well-thought out mods I've seen yet. I think Bethesda should hire kinggaff or buy the mod or something to make it part of Fallout 4 officially, because it's great and everyone should use it.

The idea behind Sim Settlements, if the title wasn't enough of a clue, is that rather than building every last house and placing last piece of furniture yourself, you can zone your settlement for development instead (like a city-building sim). You place plots for residential, commercial, agricultural, and industrial areas, and then watch (or leave and come back) as your settlers build their own houses, plant their own crops, and erect and work at their own stores. There's still things for you to do: place generators, water pumps, defenses, and so on, but your settlers won't just stand around waiting for you to micromanage them: they'll pitch in and build things too.

It's a great idea for a mod, and this is important so I'm going to mention it again: even with the mod installed, you can still build your own custom structures and stores and everything else as you normally do. NPCs will only build on the zoned plots you place, so it doesn't have to be an entirely hands-off experience. You can zone some settlements, custom build others, or do a bit of both on the same settlement. The mod doesn't replace the original settlement system in any way whatsoever, it just gives you an entirely new option for how to plan and create your communities.

The buildings your settlers construct aren't cookie-cutter affairs: they're all a bit different, right down to the clutter that eventually appears inside them. This means just about every house and store your NPCs build will look unique. I was oddly pleased to see my companion Curie build herself a home out of a trailer rather than a wood or tin shack like everyone else had done:

The trailer was pretty barebones inside, with just a small table, a chair (actually a toilet covered with a plank of wood), and mattress on the floor. But with Sim Settlements, NPCs gradually improve their homes. Curie later upgraded her trailer by hangings lights, moving furniture around, putting up shelves, and decorating a bit, including giving herself a place to relax outside (she even brought the toilet-chair outside and used it as a place to store a beverage):

I think that's my favorite thing about the mod—seeing what the settlers build for themselves, and how it changes over time. Sort of like, y'know, a real settlement would. This is why the mod should become an official part of the game: it makes your settlements feel alive, far more than the original game does. Your settlers feel more like real people and less like nameless, corn-shucking automations.

Plots for homes, stores, and industrial buildings come with an electrical pole attached, so you just hook up one power line to each, connected to a generator, and you're set as far as electricity goes. Settlers will start with a rudimentary shack, dark and dingy, but eventually (if your settlement is safe and has enough power, water, food, and defenses) add their own lights to the interior. No more farting around with interior powerlines! They'll do it for you.

Once you set up a settlement with zones, you're free to wander off. I was away attending to other business (killing things), and I'd get a notification that someone had improved their house, store, or farm, and I'd rush back to see what they'd done. Below is one settler's home that had essentially just been a mattress on a floor and a few random items on a table. When I returned, it was looking a lot cozier (despite the mattress still being on the floor) and even had some working lamps.

Same goes for shops. Stores won't be built right away: they're dependent on population count or number of homes in your settlement. Once my population began to grow, I was very pleased to see Nick Valentine (I pretty much dragged all my followers with me to live in this one town) open a bar on one of the commercial plots. Soon, he'd added a chemistry table inside and would chill out in there most of the day. Another NPC opened a tailor's shop, and even hung a painting inside. My industrial zone, staffed by a nameless settler, eventually turned from simple mound of junk she would gather scrap from into a proper garage, complete with a busted-up car inside. Cool. Even farming plots get upgraded, as those working on them will add scarecrows (mannequins). 

All these little details are wonderful, and the items placed on shelves and left on tables and counters in the buildings' interiors make the homes and shops feel lived in, and real. Far more real than if you personally dictate what each settler has on their nightstand or dinner table. It's nice to return to a settlement not just because I want to craft something or defend it from raiders, but because I'm genuinely curious what my settlers have been up to while I've been away.

There's a lot of customization options, too. By default, your settlers pay you a small tax in exchange for living in your town, though you can raise, lower, or turn off the taxes completely. If you're looking to be a bit more hands-on, you can manually assign settlers to zones rather than letting them become auto-assigned. These, and many more options, are available to tweak through the holotape you use to get started with the mod: see this video on where to find the tape.

Even more good news: it's super easy to install since there's just a few files that need to be plopped into your Fallout 4 data folder. You can—and definitely should—grab Sim Settlements from Nexus Mods and give it a try. 

Rain World looks to be set in a fairly commonplace videogame post-apocalypse at first. Wild vegetation grows from mysterious structures, the skeletons of skyscrapers scratch a leaden grey sky, and living is neither convenient nor fun. Except in Rain World you’re a slugcat (a cat that is also a slug), and the apocalypse it must endure is among the bleakest and most punishing I’ve ever experienced. You’re not punching trees to build abodes, you’re not meeting warring survivor factions and buddying up, you’re not grinding for a nice pair of trousers. You’re just surviving, by a thread. And it’s hard to do that.It’s a platformer and a survival game, but neither of those categories are a neat fit for Rain World’s peculiar brand of misery. There are traces of other games’ DNA, such as the original Dark Souls’ bonfire system and the roaming, improvisational foes of Alien: Isolation, but Rain World stands apart as one of the most alienating and difficult games in recent memory, previously mentioned company included.There’s little exposition: you’re the aforementioned slugcat, wrestled away from its family and plunged into a decayed urban dreamscape plagued with erratic, free-roaming monstrosities that want to eat you. As a slugcat you’re close to the bottom of the food chain, but not rock bottom: you’ll need to eat bats to survive, or more accurately, eat in order to hibernate. Hibernating can only be done in hibernation chambers, and one must have at least four units of food in order to use them. These chambers are infrequent, with each rest cycling to a different season in-world. Seasons work like a ladder: hibernate without dying, and you’ll move up. Die, and you’ll move down. This process is agonising, but I won’t spoil why.

Oh, and the reason you can only hibernate in chambers is because they’re waterproof. As the name implies, there’s rain in this game, and like virtually every other damn thing in Rain World, it kills you. Each life, or hibernation cycle, is timed: if you don’t get anywhere meaningful in the allotted time, such as another hibernation chamber (for which you’ll need to be well fed for), then you’re buggered.

There’s a whole lot more to learn about how Rain World works, but I’ve already said too much. The game only explains how to eat and how to hibernate, otherwise you only have the guiding hand of a cryptic yellow ghost, which you’ll probably try to kill and eat early on, as the game refrains from telling you that it's there to help.On that note, the early hours of Rain World will annoy anyone without steely patience: slugcat’s traversal feels cumbersome and it's terrible at jumping, but once you get a feel for what this game is trying to do (make you feel utterly disempowered) it will feel less like bad design and more thematically appropriate. You’re a slugcat. You’re nothing. You should already be dead. And yet, there are small problems with traversal that are hard to ignore, such as slugcat’s propensity for crawling into a crevice below or above the actual crevice you want to be in—particularly grating when you have three glowing numbskulls pursuing you for nourishment.

Yes, it’s cute that you’re a cat that is also a slug, but that’s where Rain World’s whimsy ends. The world is a bitterly depressing, 16-bit inspired wasteland, and while the beautiful, dilapidated grandeur is enveloping, there’s nothing in it that will make you feel good. It’s possible to feel like there’s no way you’ll survive in this world. I restarted twice towards the beginning of the game, feeling like I’d dashed any chance of progression.And yet, despite utterly loathing Rain World for the first five or so hours, once I learned the basic pattern of survival, and once the true consequences of death became apparent, I started to begrudgingly love it. This is a huge game, requiring a supernatural reserve of patience from its player, but the intrigue of the world will keep the converted on course.Still, it’s a hard game to learn. Slugcat has a small number of moves that aren’t necessarily gated, but you won’t realise they're there unless through circumstantial trial and error. Meanwhile, the free-roaming enemies can gang up on you in ways that can mean either certain death or a long time waiting for them to disperse, and the latter is often more grating when you’ve got torrential, deadly rain to worry about. Sometimes in Rain World, you just have to die. I’m sure other players will learn how to avoid certain death, but for most of us, the emergent nature of the game will at times feel unfair.

And that’s because, often, it is unfair. That is the core of what Rain World is about: failure often makes things more difficult, and if you’re looking for a redemptive “it’ll all work out anyway through the strength of will” theme to drag you through the muck, then… I hope you have a surplus of will at the ready.Rain World requires improvisation and smarts, and there’s no way to trick it into being easier. The early hours are taxing, and in all honesty, it continues to be taxing. It’s not relaxing. It’s not a game to wash away your daily worries with. But the variety of the world’s barren landscapes will keep the determined pushing on, and the seemingly insurmountable challenges are, well, surmountable, but not thanks to 'tricks' per se. You just have to be smart about it. You have to learn—and then very vaguely know—how to survive. You have to accept that sometimes you’ll be unlucky. Is that too demanding? For the vast majority of players, I expect it is. For those with the time and patience, Rain World will prove unforgettable.

The patch notes for the upcoming Civilization 6 Spring Update break down a wide range of changes coming to the game, which 2K games said will include "balance changes, AI adjustments, multiplayer changes, and bug fixes." Highlights include a Harbor buff that "will bring the strength of the various districts in line with each other," and a reduction in warmonger penalties, "so they only hit with their full strength if you are truly wresting valuable cities from your opponents." 

The changed warmonger penalties will impact both your Diplomatic status and City Populations. With a few very specific exceptions, the hit to your Diplomatic status will be reduced by 20 percent if you declare war on, or capture a city from, a player you have previously denounced, or 40 percent if you take the city from someone you're already at war with. Captured cities will also suffer a reduced population loss if the city's population after it's been taken is lower than the average population of all the cities in the game.   

The AI is also being tuned to improve to improve its performance on various fronts, and a handful of bugs (and a terribly awkward reference to Australian Prime Minister John Curtin as "President") have been fixed. A multiplayer issue that caused the online games list to fail to properly show all available games has been taken care of, and the list will also now show results from additional regions. 

There's no hard date on the Civ 6 Spring Update yet, but 2K said it will hit the PC sometime this week, and don't forget that a couple of Great guys—Cyrus and Alexander—are on the way in an upcoming Civilization and Scenario pack, too. Full patch notes are available on Steam. 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds launched on Steam Early Access this past Thursday, and according to its developer, Bluehole, it has already raked in over $11 million in sales. The multiplayer battle royale shooter also drew a sizable crowd of combatants with a peak of 67,000 concurrent players, says Bluehole's press release. People didn't just play, but also watched: Bluehole reports over 150,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch.

If you're looking to get started with Battlegrounds yourself, make sure you check out our guide on how to get started and stay alive. We also wrote up our impressions of the last-man-standing shooter during its closed beta period.

In November 2004, an independent studio named Junction Point was formed by Warren Spector and ex-Valve employee Art Min. The following year, it was announced the new outfit was working alongside Valve to create a Half-Life 2 episode which aimed to "fill in one of the gaps in the Half-Life universe" by fleshing out a specific part of its story. This project was ultimately cancelled, however new images offer a glimpse at how it might've looked. 

As posted on Valvetime.net, the images from Junction Point's interpretation of Half-Life depict the second main series instalment's eerie zombie town Ravenholm—this time covered in snow. 

According to Valvetime, the leaked map files suggest this Ravenholm would have included "small puzzles, scripted sequences, and fights". Valvetime also notes Junction Point's Ravenholm episode should not be confused with Arkane's also cancelled Return to Ravenholm.

"It is implied that the player crashes into a warehouse in a gondola," says Valvetime of this episode's narrative. "He wakes up in a room with two unique characters named Duncan and Scooter. There is a train station and buildings nearby. A group of rebels and Combine Soldiers fight on the streets. Duncan (ravenholm_npc_mueller) and Scooter (ravenholm_npc_scooter) are unique entities. Duncan uses a generic Citizen model, while Scooter's model is unknown.

"Some entities use JPS as their prefix in their names, which obviously stands for the studio's name. In addition to this, some objects have fields called magnet and magnetization, which are related to the Magnet Gun mentioned by Warren Spector in the interviews."

The magnet gun mentioned there was supposedly "entirely different" from the existing gravity gun, so said Spector in this Reddit AMA, however "the two would have been super complimentary."

Alas, it wasn't to be but a snow-themed Ravenholm would've been cool all the same. If not Ravenholm, which other areas of the Half-Life universe would you liked to have seen redone? Let us know in the comments south of here.