Daily Briefing: Monday 14th June 2021

Starfield is "Nasa meets Indiana Jones" releasing next year

Bethesda's ambitious space RPG was shown off for the first time since it was announced way back in 2018 and apparently the best way Todd Howard could think to describe it was "like NASA meets Indiana Jones meets the League of Extraordinary Gentleman." Hard to know exactly what any of that is supposed to mean, but it was good to officially see the game after so many months of leaks.

• Even better was to finally get some answers to a few longstanding questions. Starfield is aiming to release in November 2022, and it will indeed be exclusive to Xbox Series X|S and PC. Release date and platform have been two massive question marks hanging over the game, but we'll have to wait a little longer to get any more concrete details on things like plot.

Babylon's Fall is a live-service game

Platinum Games finally revealed some details on Babylon's Fall over the weekend and one of the most interesting details is that it's being developed as a live-service title. The reveal comes courtesy of a developer interview with Square Enix's Junichi Ehara, who confirmed that the plan is to "regularly provide new content" after release.

• Some of this post-launch content will include entirely new game modes available for free, which is curious. Elsewhere, sign-ups are now open for a closed beta on PS4, PS5, and Steam - which will be split into different testing phases with new goals and platforms being added with each new iteration. No word yet on when the beta will launch.

Square Enix's Guardians of the Galaxy is single-player and story-driven

That Eidos Montreal were working on a Guardians of the Galaxy title was first leaked back in 2017 but we got some official confirmation over the weekend - it's a narrative-focused, third-person action title set to release across both generations of console and PC on October 26th 2021.

• It'll be interesting to see how well this one goes over after Square Enix's Avengers game has proven itself maligned at best. That said, Avengers' actual story was once of its greatest strengths and Guardians of the Galaxy as a property has the kind of creative freedom to get away with much crazier stuff. Watch this space.

Final Fantasy Origin's demo had a pretty broken launch

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin was officially confirmed over the weekend following a series of rumours that Team Ninja were working on a spin-off. It was announced during Square Enix's E3 livestream with a surprise demo set to launch on PS5 shortly afterwards - the problem is that it turned out to be a bit broken.

• Players were able to download the demo but once they tried to actually launch it they were met with a recurring error message that the data was corrupted, along with advice to delete and redownload the software. Square Enix quickly confirmed that they were "aware" of the issue and were working on a fix. Still no sign of that, though.