#fantasy-life

#fantasy-life

This collection of essays honors Shaun F.D. Hughes by sharing scholarship that engages deeply with Middle English, Old English, Icelandic, and Old Norse traditions, while also breaking new ground.

Character.AI's new 'Books' mode allows users to engage with over 20 classic public domain titles, offering a structured roleplaying experience that aims to broaden perceptions of AI interactions.

Last year changed the way many of us thought about software. It certainly changed the way I did. I spent much of 2025 building, probing, and questioning how to build software, and in many more ways what I want to do.

Dimension 20 has primarily used Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition across its campaigns, with occasional side quests using other systems. The main cast has only deviated from D&D for the sixth campaign, A Starstruck Odyssey, which utilized an unofficial Star Wars system.

The study, published in the Current Psychology journal, was conducted by researchers from SWPS University and the Stefan Batory Academy of Applied Sciences, who set out to measure the 'sense of emptiness that arises after completing a deeply immersive game.' Post-Game Depression, or P-DGS, was measured across two separate studies, with a total of 373 participants.

Crystal Dynamics is developing a new The Lord of the Rings game, which would be its third game now in development, joining Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst.

Square Enix is partnering with Google to integrate its AI large language model Gemini into Dragon Quest X, creating a Slime character that players can chat with. This character will respond with AI-generated text, offering tips, tricks, and advice as players navigate the game.

I wish this was a one-off blip in my regimented friendship schedule, but all through 2025 I played the world's slowest game of message tennis. I'd invite a pal for dinner, only for the world to turn, the seasons pass, grey hairs gather at my temples, before a date was finally locked in. This sentiment seems to be common among my circle.

Interplanetary exploration is what Free Lanes is all about. The idea is to add more reasons for players to travel through space instead of just fast-traveling. Bethesda is even adding a cruise control-like mode that will let players step away from the helm while their ship flies to a specific location. During these crises, you can be interrupted by random events.

To answer that question, our resident RPG-enthusiast Ram Iyer put together a set of five general questions about Baldur's Gate, which we ran against xAI and the three major models in a kind of quasi-benchmark that I've decided to call BaldurBench. In the interest of journalistic transparency, I've made all the chat transcripts public, so you can see them here: Grok, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Square has decided to muddy things up further by giving us Dragon Quest VII Reimagined before the expected Dragon Quest IV HD-2D Remake. What's more, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined utilizes bright, cartoony 3D character models instead of the HD-2D pixel art style of the earlier remakes. Thankfully, the models animate well, and they look particularly cool in battle. Ooooh, let me say that again: Dragon Quest fans are "spoiled for choice these days." Shiver Reimagine Dragons