ONCE AGAIN, SPOILERS. PLEASE DO NOT READ BECAUSE THERE ARE SPOILERS PRESENT. SPOILERS. HEY LOOK SPOILERS.

I'm playing Edders Sheeran in Baldur's Gate 3, a bard with a Dark Urge to lash out and murder largely anything and everything. He doesn't know what causes it, and he doesn't know when the urge might strike. For a first playthrough, it's been a learning experience. Namely, I have learned that friends aren't safe, lest I puncture their guts with my bare fists in the middle of the night.

I thought the urge would only bring downsides (what you'd normally get as a murderer), but I've also learned that it actually has benefits? You get capes in exchange for pulping people! I love capes! Here's to more of them.

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"Everything is floating islands and airships and we're not going to explain how or why" is a setting I nearly always respect, but fighting a campaign against> pirates leaves me feeling distinctly uncool. This is the dilemma Black Skylands leaves me with.

You're a very young officer of... something, battlefield promoted to captaincy of the Fathership, essentially a giant floating base from which you set out on your airship in an open world kinda way to trade broadsides with baddies and land at occupied islands to do the twin stick shooter thing on foot. I… don’t like it as much as I want to.

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The characters in what we might term the Aperture Cinematic Universe are a memorable bunch (as I have said before). Though GLaDOS rightfully tops the list another, introduced in 2011's sequel spectacular Portal 2, became an instant favourite. Voiced by J.K. Simmons, doing a turn adjacent to his J. J. Jameson from Spider-Man, Cave Johnson is the founder of Aperture Science (which used to primarily make shower curtains before it evolved into being a death trap puzzle company), and he made an instant impression. And though Aperture Desk Job is nominally a tech demo for the Steam Deck, it also expands the Cave Johnson lore in a very satisfying way. Spoilers beyond for Aperture Desk Job, and Portal 2 if you haven't played it.

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As Edders Sheeran the bard in Baldur's Gate 3, I've come to realise I'm a jack of all trades. I do a bit of bow, a bit of sword, a bit of plucking the lute and buffing my pals with a nice song. My greatest strength, though, lies outside of combat in the arena known as "conversation". Seriously, I've played for around 30 hours now and haven't lost a single chat skillcheck. At first I loved being a master of chats, but ever since I played some co-op with my pals using a less charismatic dude, I've found Edders Sheeran's unbeatable gob a bit… deflating?

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In a move that I already know I'll live to regret making, this week the Electronic Wireless Show podcast takes a look at the discourse that flared up in and around the release of Baldur's Gate 3. Larian's epic RPG had people asking: why aren't all games like this? But in an angry tone of voice that we feel left some things out of the conversation. Also, Nate challenges a Times columnist to single MMA combat, and we talk about the games we've been playing this week (spoilers: none of them are Baldur's Gate 3!).

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The rest of the RPS Treehouse might be fully engrossed in Baldur's Gate 3 at the moment, but the main thing that's been on my mind for the last couple of weeks is stealthy strategy games. Primarily, the exceedingly excellent Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, but also Harebrained Scheme's upcoming turn-based tactics 'em up, The Lamplighters League, a game I've been quietly looking forward to ever since it was announced earlier this year.

Specifically, I've been playing through a handful of missions from the middle of The Lamplighters League's campaign, getting to grips with its full roster of agents and their unique set of skills. It continues to be just as stylish as the opening mission I played in May, but I'm not gonna lie. I've had quite a bit of whiplash coming straight from Shadow Gambit into this, but even if I'd arrived fresh and green, I don't think even all my years of tactics playing and XCOM-liker-liking would have been enough to prepare me for just how gosh darn difficult it is.

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The Alienware AW3423DWF is an outstanding 34-inch OLED ultra-wide that outperforms basically everything else in its category, except for other OLED models. I took a look at it for Digital Foundry last year, and it remains one of my top choices in 2023. Now, with three years of burn-in warranty as standard and a modest price reduction from $1079 to $899, it's well worth writing up in a US deals post for Rock Paper Shotgun!

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Lexar's Play 1TB Micro SD card is a popular option for anyone that wants to slam a full terabyte of space into their Steam Deck, Switch or other Computing Device on the cheap. Its performance isn't quite up there with the fastest options from Samsung or SanDisk, but this memory card still works great on Steam Deck. This Micro SD card normally hovers below the £90 mark, but today it's down to a new historic low of just £67, a great value for a Micro SD card of this size!

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Last time, you decided that Dark Souls bonewheels are better than in-game memorials to players. Reader dear, I now know how you wish to be remembered. I'm going to ask the lads in corporate if we can launch an official RPS funeral plan whereby you can pre-pay to have your skeleton lashed to a wheel and turned loose round the foot of the RPS treehouse. "It's what she always wanted," your assembled family will say, dabbing at a tear gathered in the creases of a bittersweet smile. This week, I ask you to choose between deadly openings and safe closings. What's better: mimics, or tactically sealing doors?

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The first game in the Opus series of visual novels (not to be confused with alchemy-themed puzzle machine game Opus Magnum), The Day We Found Earth, begins 14,000 years in the future, on a starship far from our familiar home planet. The humans in this far-flung future don’t even remember their ancestral home - it’s just a rumour, a fantasy. Yet that rumour is driving scientist Lisa, as it may be all that humanity has left. Players control a robot, Emeth, trained by the humans Lisa and Makoto to ‘find’ Earth, in the hope that reconnecting with the past will solve the issues facing humanity in the present.

Opus may lean into the sci-fi aspects with its visuals and setting, but The Day We Found Earth and its sequels, 2018's Rocket Of Whispers and 2021's Echo Of Starsong (which Katharine absolutely loved), are ultimately story-driven games with a human core far warmer than the coldness of space. Sigono announced a new entry, Opus: Prism Peak, earlier this year. "They’re narrative adventure titles that have heartfelt stories that always touch on themes of love and self-fulfilment," is what studio co-founder Scott Chen emphasises to me, as we start our conversation on the hectic floor of Bitsummit, Japan’s largest indie games event.

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