Deus Ex writer on cancelled Ninja Gold
"Did branching narrative right," says Pacotii.
Ninja Gold, the cancelled Junction Point-developed movie-tie, could have moved the art of the branching narrative in games forward by a decade, according to its writer.
Sheldon J. Pacotti, who was the principle writer on the first two Deus Ex games, told Eurogamer as part of an interview looking back on the Deus Ex series that Ninja Gold aimed to make the entire game structure change based on player decisions.
"Like any action title there was a lot of unknowns in terms of how the team was going to be able to ramp up to really build it, all the art and the interactions," he said.
"But in terms of storytelling, it's one of just a couple of times in my career where I think we've had a story that really did the branching narrative right."
Ninja Gold, announced in 2007, was to be developed by Epic Mickey creator Warren Spector alongside the Hollywood movie of the same name with director John Woo's help.
Woo came up with the idea of a group of ninjas that was part of a centuries-old legacy and bloodline now forced to confront the reality of covert warfare in the modern world.
The concept was based on the premise that the Yakuza and the Russian mob were involved in gold being stolen in South Africa.
But Ninja Gold was cancelled when publisher Vivendi killed all its unannounced projects in one fell swoop ahead of its merger with Call of Duty publisher Activision.
Pacotti, who left Junction Point just over three years ago to develop an indie game, Cell: emergence, said Ninja Gold had an "interesting" way of doing branching narrative.
"Branching narrative gets the short end of the stick when people talk about story in game," he explained, "but I don't think there's ever been a game that really does a thorough, solid branch. Even the two designs I've liked that I've worked on have had just one branch.
"You play half the game or two thirds of the game, and all your small choices you make build you into a character and based on this aggregate of decisions you go one way or the other.
"It ends up affecting your personal life, it affects the history of the world, and countries rise or fall. And it affects your game mechanics, your game tools. The whole experience has this really deep fork in it.
"We had something like that in Ninja Gold that was pretty interesting. I'm sorry that didn't come to fruition because I feel like almost a half a decade or a decade has been lost in terms of taking the linear, branched narrative and doing something really deep with it."
Pacotti pointed to Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream and Mass Effect creator BioWare as examples of studios that do storytelling in games well.
"But I don't know if anyone's taken a branch and just made the whole structure of the game change because of it. That's what we were shooting for [with Ninja Gold]."
So, why did it fail?
"There was expense involved. In fact, every time I've had ideas like that there has been a reasonable push back from the team. No one wants to build two versions of a map, right? One that's on fire, one under water. That's what you need to do to make the branch have that weight.
"But it'll happen someday. When I have my millions then we'll do it."
Xbox 360, PC
Nvidia responds to widespread criticism of DLSS 5 by telling us we're all "completely wrong"
"It's generative control at the geometry level."
Nvidia has responded to the widespread criticism of its new tech known as DLSS 5, which it says will "[bridge] the divide between rendering and reality", but from what we have seen so far mostly appears to layer a gaudy AI filter over a game's original work.
The newly-announced AI-powered tech includes an upscaling filter, with Nvidia stating it will allow developers to "deliver a new level of photoreal computer graphics previously only achieved in Hollywood visual effects". In the case of Resident Evil Requiem's Grace Ashcroft, the DLSS 5 filter appeared to alter her original appearance by enlarging her lips and giving her more makeup. Needless to say, this was all met with more than a handful of raised eyebrows, with terms like "AI slop" being bandied about.
However, when asked for a comment on the criticism surrounding DLSS 5 from both professionals and fans, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said: "Well, first of all, they're completely wrong." Instead, the exec stressed that control over how DLSS 5 is implemented in a game lies with its developers.
"The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS 5 fuses controllability of the of geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI," Huang furthered during a Q&A at GTC 2026, which was attended by Tom's Hardware.
The CEO added those using the tech will be able to "fine-tune the generative AI" to make it match a game's visual style, claiming that DLSS 5 adds generative capability to existing game geometry, but "doesn't change the artistic control" developers have.
"It's not post-processing, it's not post-processing at the frame level, it's generative control at the geometry level," Huang said, before closing:
"All of that is in the control - direct control - of the game developer… This is very different [from] generative AI; it's content-control generative AI. That's why we call it neural rendering."
This is something that Bethesda has already sought to assure its community about. Yesterday, after the reveal of DLSS 5 and the subsequent backlash, the studio said it would be "further adjusting the lighting and final effect" of the tech's visuals on Starfield and beyond. "This will all be under our artists' control, and totally optional for players," Bethesda said of DLSS 5.
As for when we will be able to fully judge for ourselves, DLSS 5 is coming "later this year", Nvidia has said.
"We've really done a good job... with Starfield, we struggled" - Bethesda boss Todd Howard offers brief The Elder Scrolls 6 update, hints at more efficient development this time
Try not to scream too loudly.
Sound the alarms, Bethesda boss Todd Howard has spoken a bit about The Elder Scrolls 6 in a recent interview. While he's keeping a lot close to his chest, a few details about the game's lengthy development were revealed that should soothe the eager RPG fan out there.
Speaking to IGN, Howard was first asked about what he wants and needs from the next generation of console hardware, given the fact Bethesda is developing its big new RPG The Elder Scrolls 6 for it.
To this, Howard responded: "We've been fortunate that we see that stuff really, really early and it's tricky for, let's say console manufacturers - whoever they are - they have to take a very long view of development when you sort of tape out on a chip, how you make that call with timing and cost, and then what does it look like five or 10 years after that? So it's a really, really tricky kind of thing to maneuver both technically and business-wise when anyone is making a system like that where you're going to lock it down."
"Our approach has always been - and because fortunately we've had such a PC audience… to cast a wide net technically, to both take advantage of the very high end, but allow the game to scale down and handle [low-spec]," Howard expanded. "You look at handhelds now, you look at how popular those are becoming, and I think you're going to see more lower-powered devices where, say, you're traveling and you want to underclock that thing in a certain way; we want our games to be able to handle that."
Howard also spoke about his newfound consciousness around the timing of game reveals, to which IGN appropriately asked about the 2018 Elder Scrolls 6 reveal. To this Howard remarked: "Just pretend we didn't announce it. Doesn't exist".
When prompted to elaborate on the matter, Howard mused on the ongoing challenge of keeping fans of multiple projects informed: "If you look back at the Fallout 76/Starfield/Elder Scrolls 6 announcements [from Bethesda's E3 2018 showcase], that was really about informing our audience, because when you're going to do something new, everyone's going to ask, 'What about Elder Scrolls 6? What about a single-player game?' And we did it that way, but it's not my preference," Howard said.
"And I will say, we struggle with the balance because our fans want to know. They're amazing, and are asking like, 'Well, what are you doing?' And, well, we're working on a lot of stuff. I think if you look at the scale of our studio, we could have 10 times the amount of people to do all this. We're doing so much and it's just finding the right times to tell everybody about it. Look at Starfield today; I feel like the Starfield audience has been like, 'What about us?' And we had sort of a balance with, like, 'Hey, the end of the Fall was for Fallout the TV show,' with everything we were doing. And we knew that we were just going to save the Starfield stuff to give it its spotlight during this time. But yeah, it's a balance.
Howard was also asked about the progress on Elder Scrolls 6's development, to which he joked "nothing" and "never heard of it". As a follow up, the Bethesda director was prompted on what lessons learned from Starfield's development have been brought over to The Elder Scrolls 6.
This, it turns out, Howard was keen to answer. "I want to be careful with what I say about The Elder Scrolls 6, too, because I think everybody wants to know and we want to find a time that we'll obviously talk about that in depth. But the one thing I'd say is really in the tech as we're going to Creation Engine 3, again, the team has done a really incredible job at not just pushing what it is, but how it's integrated into our development cycle." He added that the studio is "in a fortunate position where the builds of the game are really consistently working every day," before catching himself. "Well, not every day, but we've had more days than we've ever had where the build is good, there's new stuff in it, and we can play it.
"And when you're making those kinds of technical changes as we talked about, often you're pulling the rug out from under the team who's making content. [You don't want] to be like, 'Okay, that doesn't work for this period of time, you're going to have to wait until we get that working again.' And we've done a really good job of managing that on this game. And with Starfield, we struggled there for a number of years in terms of when we went through the engine change."
The Elder Scrolls 6 may still be a long ways off, and is almost certainly not coming out in 2026. But still, one hopes this little bit of insight will keep the carnivorous hordes of Bethesda fans sated for a while. One can hope!
Video Game
The new trailer for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice's anime series is loaded with boss fights and old-fashioned visuals
Sharp edges.
Though it was revealed last summer, the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice anime adaptation, titled Sekiro: No Defeat, has been flying under most folks' radars. It's coming later this year, and its newly released second trailer is a stunner.
As previously announced, the Sekiro anime is airing exclusively on Crunchyroll and has been directed by Kenichi Kutsuna (Puella Magi Madoka Magica), with character designs by Takahiro Kishida (Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle). Takuya Satou (Otherside Picnic) handled the writing, with Shuta Hasunuma (A New Dawn) working on the original music. Check out the latest trailer below:
"In adapting the overwhelmingly beautiful Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice into an anime, I have poured every ounce of my 'beauty' into creating this work," Kutsuna said in a statement released alongside the trailer. "Whether you're a longtime fan of the game or experiencing the world of Sekiro for the first time through this anime, we're confident this work will leave you with something to take home. Please look forward to it."
Fans of FromSoftware's game will already find plenty to chew on in the anime adaptation's latest trailer, with bosses like Gyoubu Oniwa and Genichiro Ashina giving Wolf plenty of trouble. Overall, the show seems to be giving Sekiro more of a clear plot, yet it looks and feels extremely faithful to the original adventure and its lyrical tone, so colour me impressed.
Even more impressive is the 2D animation on display, which has a distinct look that takes me back to the 1990s. Shortly after the release of the first trailer, there were claims Sekiro: No Defeat could be using AI in its production pipeline, but the company behind the project quickly shot down those comments and assured fans only hand-drawn animation was being used.
It remains to be seen how the full series fares, but it's encouraging to see one of FromSoftware's more unique works being adapted in a way that feels both fresh and familiar. Dark Souls next, please? (Because Elden Ring is going live-action, in case you forgot.)
PS4, Xbox One, PC
