DISPATCHES JANUARY

Dialogue Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins a 12-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership

ELDEN RING

Does FromSoftware’s magic work across a broader canvas?

Dark Souls III

How FromSoftware’s fourth Souls game triumphantly paints itself into a corner

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

A progress report on the games we just can’t quit

Unreliable Narrator

Exploring stories in games and the art of telling tales

THE MAKING OF... CHICORY: A COLORFUL TALE

From broad strokes to tiny details, how a team of five crafted an adventure-game ode to creativity

Powering up

How 1047 Games went from dorm-room Halo to 13m players and a valuation of $1.5bn

DOKEV

Pearl Abyss on the inspirations behind the unexpected hit of Gamescom

TCHIA

An open-world adventure embracing its time in the sun

Jett: The Far Shore

PC, PS4, PS5

Deathloop

PC, PS5

Sin & Punishment: Successor Of The Skies

How Treasure came out all guns blazing for its last big game

KITFOX GAMES

The Montreal indie on boyfriends, Dwarf Fortress, and avoiding overwork

THE SECOND COMING

In 1999, Sony launched what would become the best-selling game console of all time. These are the stories of the people on the ground

Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy

Can Eidos Montreal get the best out of the MCU’s misfits?

Psychonauts 2

The upside of such a large cast is having more brains to probe – and some of them have multiple segments

HALO INFINITE

After six years, is 343 ready to finish the fight?

CHARLES GAMES

The small Czech developer making videogame history

Verses mode

From Wordsworth to Grand Theft Auto V: the unexpected crossover between poetry and videogames

ALTER EGO

How tackling the Marvel universe revealed an unexpected new side of the XCOM team

Bastion

Looking back at the debut game that laid the blueprint for Hades

STAR POWER

How a Hollywood studio became the most exciting force in games

SAINTS ROW

No dildo bats, please, we’re millennials

THE MAKING OF CREAKS

How a Czech art-school project became an eight-year labour of love

The trouble with game development

The Activision Blizzard harassment and discrimination lawsuit has repercussions for the industry as a whole

Escape Zoom

The Isklander trilogy mixes detective games, video calls and immersive theatre

HEAVENLY BODIES

Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space

PHANTOM ABYSS

A game about survival where you run toward the ghosts

Ring of Steel

How a small Sheffield indie was entrusted with the future of boxing videogames

FAR CRY 6

Taking a stealthy look inside Ubisoft’s revolutionary guerrilla thriller