Daily Briefing: Friday 3rd December

EA set their sights on a connected Battlefield universe

EA announced this week that they will be making widespread changes to the Battlefield franchise's development structure as the company works towards establishing a "connected Battlefield universe" by having future Battlefield titles share characters and storylines. This restructuring also involves a pretty sizeable personnel shakeup, with DICE general manager Oscar Gabrielson set to leave EA. Vince Zampella will take on a new role overseeing the entire Battlefield franchise while Marcus Lehto will be tasked with establishing a new Seattle-based studio focused on adding more narrative depth to the Battlefield franchise.

• It's a pretty dramatic shakeup to be announced so soon after Battlefield 2042's historically bad launch which saw it become simultaneously one of the worst-rated mainline Battlefield games but also one of the worst-reviewed titles on all of Steam. Speaking to Gamespot, Zampella said that these plans are not an attempt to quickly move on from Battlefield 2042, outlining that “this is an ‘And’ strategy in many ways. We will continue to evolve and grow Battlefield 2042, and we’ll explore new kinds of experiences and business models along the way that we can add to that foundation to provide an awesome array of experiences for our players." So there you have it.

Stardew Valley has been "future-proofed"

This is kind of a strange one. Stardew Valley's recent 1.5.5 patch isn't the biggest in its history but it will apparently serve to future-proof the game by migrating it to a new framework. This migration was led by modder PathosChild who was given access to Stardew Valley's source and takes Stardew Valley away from the outdated and unsupported XNA platform and onto MonoGame - an open-source implementation of XNA 4. The original XNA handled Xbox Live Indie Games over on Xbox 360 and Microsoft haven't developed it since 2013.

• PathosChild will also be responsible for the upcoming patch 1.5.6, which will introduce an expanded suite of modding tools. We don't have a huge amount of information on what exactly that will entail just yet, though PathosChild have confirmed that "some long requested holy grail changes" are on the way. Patch 1.5.5 also contains a slate of small but no less welcome quality of life changes, like the introduction of a buy-back functionality for if you accidentally sell something and the ability to transfer settings and preferences into new game saves.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is getting a surprise expansion

In one of the biggest gaming surprises in recent memory, Kingdom's of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is getting an expansion in a couple of weeks. The story of the original Kingdoms of Amalur is infamous in the games industry, as the high-profile project started off fine if a little star-obsessed and eventually devolved into pay disputes and the all-out collapse of developer 38 Studios. THQ Nordic purchased the license back in 2018 but nobody really expected them to do anything with it considering what a legal mess the IP must be, but a few years later we got the surprisingly great Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning.

• Now, one of gaming's most unlikely comeback stories is set to get a new expansion: Fatesworn. It was actually announced last year, though no details were given beyond the title, which led many fans to adopt a kind of "we'll believe it when we see it" mentality, but it really is real. Fatesworn takes place in the all-new region of Mithros and offer roughly six hours of mainline questing, an increased level cap, and a suite of new weapons, enemies, items, and dungeons. It sounds like a big addition to an already chunky game, so it'll be interesting to see how this one pans out.