Daily Briefing: Wednesday 1st December

The physical editions of the GTA Trilogy have been delayed

Rockstar announced this week that the upcoming physical versions of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition will be slightly less upcoming than initially expected. The physical edition was supposed to launch on December 7th on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. Following the delay, however, the Xbox and PS4 versions will now arrive on December 17th, while the Nintendo Switch version has been pushed to sometime in "early 2022."

• The announcement comes following the GTA Trilogy's rocky digital launch which saw, among countless other things, the Rockstar PC Launcher being taken offline for maintenance immediately after launch, leaving paying players unable to access their games for three entire days. Earlier this week, Rockstar released a second major patch for the maligned release aimed at fixing over 100 bugs and adding things like (checks notes) clouds and less aggressive rain. The delay of the physical editions makes sense in the wider scheme of trying to right the ship.

Todd Howard teases more Starfield details

For it to have been Bethesda's number one development priority for some time now, we still know surprisingly little about Starfield. That kind of changed this week, though, with the  release of the first of a new series of behind the scenes featurettes entitled Into the Starfield: Endless Pursuit. The seven-minute video is available to watch online right now, and contains a decent amount of insight into the development process courtesy of game director Todd Howard, studio director Angela Browder, and art director Matt Carofano.

• Starfield is reportedly shaping up to be more realistic and grounded that Bethesda's more typical fantasy-oriented titles like The Elder Scrolls and, albeit to a much lesser extent, Fallout, but the team were keen to emphasise that it will still blow players away. Howard goes into a little bit of detail on this, saying “we always have that ‘step out’ moment into the world, so to say. Technology has changed, we’ve all changed, so our expectations when loading up a game are like, ‘Ok, I’m going to step out and there’s going to be this moment’. Us being able to do that and have it feel new every generation, every game, is something that is really special about what we do. I like to say that Starfield has two ‘step out’ moments. It’s cryptic.” So there you go.

Rare's Everwild has a new design director

Gary Napper announced his new role as design director on Twitter this week, saying that he's "looking forward to making some amazing things" over at Rare. Napper has quite the experience slate behind him, having worked as most recently as lead designer on the excellent Alien: Isolation following stints at Supermassive Games, Sony, and Creative Assembly. Napper will be working on Rare's mysterious upcoming title, Everwild.

• We really don't know a whole lot about Everwild despite it being revealed way back in November 2019, though the fact that it's getting an all-new design director after two years in the public eye is rather curious. We've heard previous reports that things weren't progressing too smoothly behind the scenes, and that Everwild had already undergone a significant internal reboot this year. Although Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty did come out and say that the rumours surround development were "a little more extreme" than the reality, it feels safe to say that we won't be seeing Everwild for an everwhile. What?