Daily Briefing: Thursday 25th November

DICE's head of design leaves this week

Fawzi Mesmar recently confirmed that he will be leaving EA's DICE studio at the end of this week. Mesmar has served as DICE's head of design since 2019 when he joined from King, overseeing both the Battlefield and the Star Wars: Battlefront franchises. He announced his departure in an email to staff in which he confirmed that he had been planning to leave for quite some time, but wanted to wait until Battlefield 2042 had released.

• In his email, Mesmar wrote that it was "an absolute pleasure to serve on the best design teams in the galaxy," before outlining I have been made an offer I couldn’t refuse at another company that has been kind enough to wait for me until we have shipped [Battlefield 2042]. It was super important to me to be here with the team as we achieve this historical milestone." EA have already confirmed that Mesmar's departure was in the works for some time and, as such, will not affect any of Battlefield 2042's post-launch plans.

Dark Souls wins Ultimate Game of All Time award

The Ultimate Game of All Time award marked the climax of this year's Golden Joystick Awards, with FromSoftware's legendary opus taking home the title at the expense of some of gaming's biggest and most historic franchises. The shortlist featured the likes of Doom (1993), Half-Life 2, Minecraft, Tetris, Halo, and Space Invaders. It's probably not the most meaningful award in the world (2021 seems an arbitrary time to draw a line under all of gaming history) but it does at least mean a lot to someone.

• Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki says he is "deeply moved" by the award as it shows just how far FromSoftware have come as a studio in the past ten years. Miyazaki said "at that time, the staff who joined From Software as a newcomer and started [their] career as game creators from Dark Souls are now growing and becoming the core of the latest work, Elden Ring." Dark Souls is a phenomenal game and the impact and influence it has had on the industry is incredibly rare, so it's nice to see it getting a little bit of extra recognition from the voting public.

Is a Mass Effect television series on the way?

That's according to a new report from Deadline, which reported this week that Amazon Studios are "nearing a deal" to develop a television series based on Mass Effect. This report follows on from Amazon's recent successful forays into the fantasy and sci-fi genres with Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time. In a new interview, Amazon Studios boss Jennifer Salke noted that the deal is not yet set in stone, so there are no details beyond the fact that a deal is merely in the works.

• It makes sense that the details are taking a while to hammer out. BioWare have gone on record as saying that they have rebuffed the advances of several Hollywood studios vying to create a Mass Effect movie over the years. Their rationale has typically been that a movie simply wouldn't offer an authentic Mass Effect experience, but they did say earlier this year that a TV series format may be a better fit. As for who our Commander Shepard might be, Henry Cavill looks set to expand video game acting portfolio. Cavill, who plays Geralt of Rivia in Netflix's The Witcher, recently posted an Instagram picture teasing a new secret project. When the picture is unblurred, Cavill appears to be holding a printout of the Wikipedia entry for Mass Effect 3.