December Updates – Witcher 3, Subnautica, PoE

Updates to a game can be even better than getting a new game, and we have some truly major updates to celebrate Christmas with this year. The Witcher 3 drops a massive engine and QoL update, Subnautica unites engines between its games, a new Path of Exile league reduces our sanity and Command: Modern Operations adds a huge quality of life update, importing features from its professional edition.

The Witcher 3 next-gen update

First up is The Witcher 3 4… that’s not confusing at all and no, it’s not anything to do with The Witcher 4. The Witcher 3 version 4.0, there, we clear? Good. Stupidity aside (for now), this is a huge update for an already amazing game, one of the best RPGs of all time which still looks and plays amazingly. If you can make use of it, ray traced global illumination and ambient occlusion will make the game look even more glorious than it already does. Content from mods or inspired by mods has been added which is always great to see, mostly focused on graphical improvements and tweaks. A number of other graphical improvements have been added that we can sum up with the new graphical preset added – Ultra+, we’ll be in for a visual feast that’s for sure. 

New cross-platform support allows you to access saves from other platforms online. New content has been added including new quests and appearances inspired by the Witcher series on Netflix… thankfully the “sack” armour is opt-in. A number of quality of life features including Quick Sign Casting and instant herb looting, and a number of bug fixes and other gameplay tweaks too. The Witcher 3 is currently 80% off on GOG, so if you aren’t wed to Steam, want to support the developers directly, and for some reason you don’t already have it, now is a good time to do so.

Subnautica living large update

Going down, way down, we have the Subnautica Living Large update (ie. 2.0). A favourite of the survival genre that added a bit of story but still kept that amazing sandbox feeling. Subnautica has eaten as many of my hours as I’ve eaten of its delicious tasty Garryfish. The update ports some features over from the Below Zero sequel and brings some unity to the games … Unity… engine. Sorry. This results in a lot of general improvements, but specifically of note are new base segments – the Large Room, Glass Dome and surface hatches. Also added are interface improvements like pinned recipes, improved performance, the ability to run and more. 

There will be a legacy branch option you can enable in the games steam settings if you wish to preserve your current game and for mod support which is always nice. 

Path of Exile: The Forbidden Sanctum

Still sane after returning from the depths of planet 4546B, exile? A return to Path of Exile should fix that, with the release of its last league for the year – The Forbidden Sanctum. As always this includes a new league mechanic and a raft of other changes to the game. The new league mechanic adds a roguelite progression system to the game where the player advances through The Forbidden Sanctum room by room trying to avoid losing resolve due to attacks and environmental effects. A new mechanic in the sanctum slows things down and makes the gameplay a little more strategic. As expected from a roguelite mechanic, there will be random boons and curses, some of which you can path towards or away from, which has to be balanced against loot, resolve loss (or gain), and your builds strengths and weaknesses. 

It isn’t a new Path of Exile league unless there are new skills, and this league we get two – Volcanic Fissure and Frozen Legion, and seven new Vaal skills for existing skills such as Reave, Cleave and everyones favourite, Flicker Strike.  A number of new items (as is tradition) along with massively buffed unique items (and massively debuffed drop chances) will mix up builds as is tradition too. After the drama last league, Archnemesis has been gutted and the mod pool replaced in a fashion that will make rare mobs effects more understandable at a glance. As usual there is much more than this so it’s worth checking through the patch notes, firing up Path of Building and listening to the sweet soothing sound of Mathil depopulating entire worlds while you plan your builds. 

Command: Modern Operations war planner update

Lastly (and for me most definitely not least), Command: Modern Operations has a huge “War Planner” update including some new features and a raft of large quality of life updates, some of which have been ported over from the professional edition.  Added from professional are directional EMP the new boogeyman Hypersonic glide vehicles which are going to be a lot of fun to play with. The QoL additions are even more important however with improved Mission Editor layout (including new clone mission option), new bathymetry layer to enhance submarine play, revised message log, area and reference points manager, quick manual weapon allocation and more. 

Recently released for CMO also is the Falklands DLC, adding the famous showdown between the UK and Argentina, the last hurrah of the mighty navy of the British Empire. Included are 13 historical scenarios and 2 bonus ahistorical scenarios including units not present. I haven’t dipped into CMO for a while, this new massive update seems like the perfect time to do so, and why not pay our friends in Argentina a visit in the process? CMO is currently 60% off at Fanatical, if you like what you see and haven’t already bought this ridiculous(ly amazing) game, it’s the perfect time to ruin every other strategy game for yourself jump right in.

#roundtablecoop