It’s a light week—not because there wasn’t game news, but because all the game news related to like, four games. Mostly Fallout with a dash of Team Fortress 2 added in for flavor, plus uh...Witcher 3 patch notes?

This is gaming news for the week of October 5 – 9.

A million voices cried out

Need something to play this weekend? Let this be your last reminder that the Battlefront beta is currently open to everyone, is free, and runs through October 12. If you want to pew-pew and “Use the force, Luke,” and “Ready, gold leader,” then the beta will give you a few solid hours of Star Wars action before the official release next month.

This is Halloween

It’s October, and games are starting to roll out their custom Halloween content for the year.

Rocket League is a surprise participant. Starting October 18, Psyonix is giving you the chance to score some limited-edition Halloween items, including a calavera antenna, a pumpkin topper, and a candy corn rocket trail. They’ll drop randomly after completing games, and you’ll have until November 2 to pick them up.

But Team Fortress 2 is going all-out for Halloween, with the new “Invasion” update.

An interesting note: This year’s Team Fortress 2 Halloween content was all community-created. Four new maps and new themed cosmetic items are on offer, though you’ll need to ante up $2 to unlock the Community Update Pass (and, as a result, the items). The money goes to the community members who helped put this all together.

Just don’t ask about Diretide.

On and on

Need some light bathroom reading? How about perusing the 500+ patch notes for CD Projekt’s latest Witcher 3 update? Highlights include:

• New romance dialogue for Yennefer and Triss.
• “Fixes issue whereby Geralt appeared solely in undergarments throughout a cut scene.”
• “Fixes issue with hanged man’s body adopting T-pose.”
• Gwent difficulty levels.

Speaking of CD Projekt, they were out talking to MCV UK about Cyberpunk 2077 this week and said it’s “far, far bigger” than The Witcher 3. So uh...make sure you set aside some time in 2025 or whatever to play it.

“I” stands for “not-an-Idiot”

The Fallout 4 marketing machine rolls ever onward, this week bringing you the thrilling adventures of the letter I, as in S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Here’s the latest video:

Bethesda also released the game’s minimum and recommended PC specs. The takeaway: You will not need a super-powerful machine to run Fallout 4. But it’ll help.

Minimum

• Intel Core i5-2300 2.8 GHz/AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz or equivalent
• 8 GB RAM
• 30 GB free HDD space
• Nvidia GTX 550 Ti 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or equivalent

Recommended

• Intel Core i7 4790 3.6 GHz/AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz or equivalent
• 8 GB RAM
• 30 GB free HDD space
• Nvidia GTX 780 3GB/AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB or equivalent

Mute

It’s perhaps appropriate that this week’s news is full of Fallout and Witcher, as big open-world RPGs are likely to be most affected by the fact that voice actors may—may—go on strike soon. Members of the Screen Actors Guild have voted to strike, meaning one could be imminent if the board members decide to go that way.

The union is looking to secure residuals on successful games up to 8 million sales, plus limits on vocally stressful recording (i.e. screams, yelling).

None of which has any effect on you most likely—yet. If a strike is authorized however, and if that strike then takes a bit to resolve, we could see wide-ranging game delays across every publisher. Think: The Writers Guild strike and its effect on TV a few years back.

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