Marcia Lucas, the Academy Award-winning editor and former wife of Star Wars creator George Lucas, has died aged 80.

According to Variety, Lucas died of cancer at her home in California on 27th May.

In a statement, her family said: "Marcia will be remembered as a brilliant storyteller, a trailblazer for women in film, a loving mother and grandmother, a generous host, and a loyal friend whose humour and sparkle filled every room she entered. Her influence on film is indelible, but those who knew her best will remember the way she made life feel more vivid, more beautiful, more fun, and more full of love.

"Her work was known for its emotional intelligence, rhythm, and humanity - a rare ability to find the truth of a scene and bring heart, momentum, and clarity to the screen."

As Variety reports, it was Marcia Lucas' idea for Obi-Wan Kenobi to die on the Death Star, and Mark Hamill said in an interview that "Marcia Lucas was responsible for convincing him to keep that little 'kiss for luck' before Carrie [Fisher] and I swing across the chasm in the first film: "her influence was such that if she wanted to keep it, it was in".

As well as editing films for her former husband George Lucas - where she was known as "the secret weapon of Star Wars" - Marcia also edited Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, and New York, New York. She publicly voiced her criticism of the later Star Wars movies, stating Kathless Kennedy and JJ Abrams "don't get it".

Lucas is survived by her daughters, grandchildren, and her "chosen family".

Diablo 4 developer Blizzard is seemingly not done making big changes to loot and itemisation in the game. As an ARPG, the chase of ever more powerful loot is a core part of the experience, and the game's next season will deliver something of a shake-up to a particular tier of attainable loot.

Season 14, which we expect to kick off on 30th June, will follow on from the currently-active Season, dubbed Season of Reckoning. As the most dedicated players have come to expect, Blizzard is once again soliciting feedback for many of the changes, and a few of the new additions coming with the upcoming update.

This, as is standard, will be done through Diablo 4's PTR (Public Test Realm), a testing environment where keen players can take an early peek, and offer feedback. This next iteration of the PTR will return on 2nd June, lasting for one week.

Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred – Official Opening Cinematic

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The focus of the session, which is only available through Blizzard's own BattleNet launcher, will be patch 3.1. This next patch is set to arrive alongside Season 14, meaning players can preview content the general public won't have access to until the season starts. In the blog post announcing details of the 3.1 PTR, one major change caught my eye. Blizzard, which has already made several key changes to loot in the months since Diablo 4's initial release, is turning its eye to a segment of loot the majority of players never even see.

Mythics are a higher tier of Uniques, which are already incredibly rare items. There's no way to guarantee getting a Mythic in Diablo 4, so most players either luck into one, or never see one drop, even after hundreds of hours. The most dedicated players go as far as farming certain bosses for hours hoping to add one to their collection, but the process is obviously tedious - not to mention very time-consuming.

But, as a way of making the ultra-rare tier more accessible to a wider range of players, Blizzard is making it so any Unique can be upgraded into a Mythic Unique. The developer is admittedly cheating a bit here, as it's changing 'Mythic' from being a Rarity tier to an item quality. This frees Mythic to be a modifiable Quality, which is what will soon allow players to turn their Unique into a Mythic. It's an iteration so significant Blizzard is calling it "Mythic Uniques 3.0."

Starting with S14, any Unique also has a chance to drop with the Mythic Quality, meaning the pool of Mythics is no longer limited to the dozen or so named items players spend hours chasing. If you don't get a Mythic drop, you can upgrade any Unique item to be Mythic instead, using the Horadric Cube.

Though more accessible, earning Mythics, or having enough materials for the upgrade will still take some doing. But in order to keep these items rare and not to 'ruin the economy', so to speak, the newly-introduced Seasonal Currency required for the upgrade has limited sources. Blizzard is also making it a focal point for the existence of a new Lair Boss, which is also debuting with the new season. Expect a lot of farming still - albeit more focused and less prone to RNG. The only limitation is that your character can equip a single crafted Mythic at a time: if you want more, the rest would need to be found normally through play, which seems sensible.

This impact of this change will mainly be felt by casual players, and those who return each season to build a new character and see it through the endgame. For many of those players, myself included, the sight of a Mythic is exceptionally rare, and the idea that we're essentially going to be "guaranteed" at least one is very welcome.

Playground Games' much-anticipated reboot of Fable has been delayed. It's now set to release in February 2027.

The news comes via a post to X from the official Xbox account late on Friday afternoon, which described the decision to delay as being made so Fable "can have the dedicated moment it deserves."

Fable - Official Gameplay Teaser Trailer | Xbox Developer_Direct 2026

"This is year is packed with incredible games for XBOX players to enjoy," the post reads, "from Halo: Campaign Evolved, Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 to Control Resonant, Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Grand Theft Auto VI.

"In order to plan our game launches through the holidays, in a way that works best for players, we're moving Fable to February 2027 so it can have the dedicated moment it deserves. We're excited to be giving players a major new look at Fable, as well as our broader lineup, at XBOX Games Showcase on June 7."

Fable was still without a release month at the time of the announcement, leading to some whispered speculation it might not hit the broad "fall 2026" window - particularly with the looming GTA 6 coming in mid November.

GTA 6 seems to at least be somewhat part of the decision here, given Xbox actively name-checks it in the announcement and the sheer volume of attention its expected to hog once it finally arrives. There were reports as recently as April that developer Playground Games was "worried" about GTA 6 having an impact, though at the time the official Fable account had pointedly emphasised it was still due this coming autumn.

Fable itself at least looks the part, with a first proper look shown in the Xbox developer direct at the start of this year. Hopefully the promised "major new look" at Xbox's big summer showcase is another encouraging one. If you're marking your calendar, you can check the timings for that and the many other showcases in our big Summer Game Fest schedule guide.

The new James Bond game, 007 First Light, seems to be enjoying a very positive response. We were charmed in our 007 First Light review, and judging by the impressive 007 First Light launch sales, many of you were too. The chances of developer IO Interactive realising that James Bond trilogy dream one day seem strong. But even so, the next game from IO probably won't be a James Bond game at all, or a Hitman game - that other series the studio built its reputation on.

As it stands, IO's next biggest development team is working on a completely new idea and series, one called Project Fantasy. I saw artwork for it on the walls of IO's Brighton studio when I visited recently - it's one of five studios IO operates around Europe. I even caught a glimpse of a creature being animated on someone's screen. The message was clear: this game is deep in active development.

Exactly how many people are working on Project Fantasy, I wasn't allowed to know, but chief development officer Véronique Lallier could tell me the team is "bigger than the Hitman one at the moment but smaller than the 007 First Light one". I was told this in the lead-up to 007 First Light's launch, mind you, so now that the game's been released, the team's size may change.

However, IO does intend to keep a healthy 007 First Light workforce around, I was told, to support it in a similar way IO has supported Hitman in the past - with a steady stream of new gameplay experiences. Partly the team is there to address any launch issues there are with the game, but also because of the plan IO has to keep you playing 007: First Light long after the credits roll.

"Something that IO is well established for is always coming with different game experiences" -Véronique Lallier

But what is Project Fantasy? Project Fantasy was announced by IO Interactive in 2023, when it was described as "an online fantasy RPG" - "A world and game built from the core to entertain players and expand for many years to come." Exactly what that means - a massively-multiplayer game or a smaller-scale shared world game - we don't know, and we haven't heard much about it since.

"It's a project that we've been starting, I think, post-Covid," Lallier told me, which tallies with the 2021 rumour that IO was making a new fantasy game. The project is led by IO co-owner and chief creative officer Christian Elverdam. The company's other co-founder, Hakan Abrak - the CEO - led 007 First Light. A project apiece, then.

"Christian is really close to Project Fantasy with regard to creative vision and approach," Lallier said. "There is a common passion [among] our studio management in general about Fantasy, but Christian is very close to this project and it's very important for us to do things differently.

"Something that IO is well established for is always coming with different game experiences, leveraging technology and everything, and Project Fantasy is a new IP and that's something we've always been very excited about at IO. We had Freedom Fighter, Mini Ninjas, all those different games, and it's always original IP. I think actually 007 First Light is the only game in an established franchise."

The two Kane & Lynch games are the obvious absentees from Lallier's list there - gritty, Xbox 360-era shooters that were "relentlessly miserable" but also "brilliant" in their own way, Alex Donaldson recently wrote.

"So yeah, Project Fantasy is really, really close to our heart, and it's a very exciting project, but we're not talking too much about it, because at the moment, really, the focus of the studio is launching 007 First Light," Lallier said.

A Project Fantasy website displays the announcement statement from 2023 alongside a single piece of artwork that depicts a trio of adventurers - elf, human and dwarf, by the looks of it (the quintessential fantasy trio) - standing at the edge of a cave, looking out at a scene of adventure: a verdant, mountainous world beyond. The words "Looking for more!" are scrawled in the bottom of the image, aping a common group-finding call in multiplayer online worlds.

A handful of short developer videos recorded at the time talk vaguely about the project, with lead sound designer Joshua Smith saying, "We're trying to create something that I think doesn't exist in the space, currently. It's a world where we're going to allow you to be things you could never be. IOI is known for Hitman and things like that and this is a completely different direction."

If you're someone like me who enjoys fantasy games, this is exciting, but there's a note of trepidation too, because online multiplayer projects are notoriously costly and complicated to make. We've seen a string of high profile online multiplayer games struggle in recent years, including Amazon's New World, BioWare's Anthem, Sony's Concord, and even Destiny 2. These are risky projects to take on.