1666: Amsterdam is a witchy body-hopper made by Assassin's Creed's cr…

My fellow magical practitioners are hounded by Witch Hunters in 1666 Amsterdam, the target of brutal, puritanical raids. But forget about that, I'm Noa – a witch, hunter. With a calendar year to track down my own demonic targets – the Originals – using magic powers only active during a full moon, it's up to me to cleanse the supernatural forces they introduce to the world like I'm pruning a rose bush. Pruning it by unleashing broomstick combos, that is.

But, before I can go Henry Hoover on the corrupted humans who have signed immortal pacts with these evil spirits, I have to track them down. Given only a name and a rough area in which they inhabit – conveniently the same few blocks of Amsterdam streets and canals that make up the first two main missions available in Early Access – I have no idea where the, say, Inquisitive Crane actually is. With almost every building – home, shop, university, or prison – accessible to explore, though, those few blocks can be deliciously daunting to master. This might come from Assassin's Creed's creator, but 1666 Amsterdam's density is closer to classic Hitman, shrugging off handholding and letting me loose to find clues or be jailed trying. mwafrika.life

Witching hour

While I can tap a button to cloak myself in red robes, the witchy look will only arouse suspicion and draw guards, meaning I spend much of my time in a less conspicuous black dress and white bonnet. The most daring I get is holding down a button to have her do a slightly faster walk. Only when chased by guards do I whip out the broom to coast down the canals and lose my pursuers.

If I'm caught where I'm not supposed to be or act unusual in front of crowds, a suspicion meter will quickly rise. In search of leads towards my quarry, a note I've found suggesting they take up residence in a block of houses next to the university, I saunter into a back alley, quickly opening a window to peek inside and backing off as that meter begins to climb.

What doesn't arouse suspicion at an open window? A cat enjoying a sunny day. Noa's familiar, Aaron – a cat named Aaron who is inhabited by the spirit of a befuddled historian from 1999 for reasons I won't explain – can be directly controlled with the press of another button, able to observe surroundings, nab a single item at a time and, crucially, leap great heights and slip through small gaps. Stray and Murdered: Soul Suspect have both put me in control of cats before, but here the freedom to go feline mode to be as sneaky and nosy as I desire across a neighborhood is a snooping dream come true.

Aaron can manoeuvre around to unlock latched doors from the inside, allowing Noa deeper access to a building so long as she's not spotted long enough for it to become besieged by guards. Instead of risking it, I prowl around inside until I come across a servant unnerved by Aaron's presence. These targets, afraid of cats rather than willing to pursue my mewling (which can be a solid distraction on its own), can be attacked and scratched by Aaron, the rending of their flesh allowing his spirit to seep inside them as he curls up on their shoulder, fully possessing them to succumb to Noa's will.

In the case of this servant, that means I can wander around as a platform for Aaron to continue to unlock interior doors, before eventually I use their own key to open up the front door, approach Noa, and – arm in arm – escort her inside, protecting her from falling under suspicion from any guards patrolling the house.

Tactically, I body-hop my way into sequestered rooms to rifle through the house's bookshelves and tables for anything I can use. It instantly reminds me of the spirit-jumping in Omikron: The Nomad Soul, but with the freedom to do so at almost any time. It turns out I have the wrong house, but this diversion allows me to stock up on materials used to craft potions and even complete a recipe for one that will allow me to move undisturbed through restricted areas for vital seconds – handy when I can't find a body to possess and escort me through some zones.

Deeper in, I even uncover a hidden coffer planted by my witch coven to assist me with an upgrade, rewarding me with a much appreciated health increase. Using a roguelike-style pick-three system, there's both flexibility and randomness to how Noa's build progresses (and, if you don't lock them in, can be re-rolled on death).

One allows me to hide in bushes, another to suck guards into confined space and trap them. Another, I think, will allow me to take to the sky to enter houses from on high, at least given the tantalizingly human-sized windows on some buildings, but I'm yet to see it. Before I learn more magic words as Clio – the present day scholar interpreting text left by her ancestors Noa and Aaron (yes this narrative is delightfully odd and layered) – the exact skills these coffers offer (say that a few times fast) aren't always clear until you try them out.

Nomad soul

But, I don't need a lot of witchy upgrades to be happy. It's possession that has me hooked, and all the possibilities it brings. From using a cat to break in and pilot bodies out, to finding, say, a scholar on the streets who can then bring me into the university's laboratories, or even a scoundrel character with lockpicks who I can command to break into buildings on my behalf. Even some guards can be ordered to use their big truncheon to knock out their co-workers.

Reading notices on billboards or listening to gossip at inns will only get you so far – the details you need to acquire to reveal your target and the demon within them will always require you to access restricted areas, and Noa is fragile enough where going in spells blazing isn't an option. I love it when a game gives me the tools to be sneaky in unusual ways. Until Agent 47 learns magic so he can go Omikron mode himself, 1666 Amsterdam is the best I'll get.

Having put about ten hours into 1666 Amsterdam, exploring its first map across two main missions which encompass three targets (with some more linear 1999-set missions between), I've only explored a fraction of the streets surrounding Noa's safe haven. A chunk of that revolved around possessing a baker from the shop on the corner just to get Noa unchecked access to their horde of ingredients in their storeroom.

Sure, 1666 Amsterdam is rough around the edges for its early access launch, and light on tutorializing a bunch of the skills Noa can use to infiltrate forbidden areas. And I definitely chafe against the use of AI in the game's production, which has been walked back to a degree (as much as you can walk something like that back).

But, it's all a testament to how delightfully weird and creative 1666 Amsterdam feels as I possess my way through this dense world in the hopes of finding my own leads. It's like one of those random PC games someone would recommend to you on a forum years ago and you'd become engrossed for hours despite never hearing anyone else talk about it or really understanding how it works. That's a special kind of magic.

We might not have 1666 recommendations for what to play next, but we do have a best stealth games ranking as well as games like Assassin's Creed guide that should help out!

Resident Evil is one of those series which rewards nosey players. There's always notes, recordings, and pictures hidden in the cracks and crevices, all of which give players more info. Whether that be the structural integrity, of Mr. X's trench coat or the fact that Grace Ashcroft has absolutely zero social life.

But it's not just all about notes—there's also a great deal of information given in Resident Evil games via their seemingly throwaway voice lines. So, with that in mind, one leaker has just found the motherlode.

Notable community modder Keff0 has posted two videos to YouTube over the last week. One goes through over 600 cut voice lines from the Resident Evil 4 remake, and the other explores nearly 400 cut voice lines from Resident Evil Requiem.

The Resident Evil 4 remake deep dive into the scrapped voice lines is certainly interesting, as we hear more from Leon, Ashley, Luis, and the Merchant. Hearing more from Leon is always a win, but the prize for 'most notable cut voice' line has to go to the Merchant, as he sneaks in a reference to Resident Evil Village.

BlogDie Evolution des Cricket: Eine Reise durch die JahrhunderteUrsprünge und frühe Entwicklung Cricket ist mehr als ein Spiel, es ist ein Spiegel der gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen, die über Jahrhunderte hinweg stattgefunden haben.Öffnen →

"Ah, I see you're no stranger to villages," the Merchant says in a cut line from the RE4 remake. "The Duke? Lad shows promise." This is likely referring to The Duke from Resident Evil Village, who acts as the resident merchant and something of a guide to Ethan Winters.

Funny thing is, The Duke has also mentioned RE4's Merchant before, saying "What're ya buyin?" to Ethan before joking that it was "just something an old friend of mine used to say."

Both characters are also similar in that they seem omnipresent, omniscient, and unkillable, popping up at random across the map unscathed and knowing far more about what's going on than they perhaps should. Although the Merchant may not be as immortal as he once seemed, as Keff0 also uncovered unused animations for their death scene, suggesting that at one point during development players were able to kill him.

The cut voice lines for Requiem may not hold any connections to different Resident Evil games, but they do have masses of information about its characters and, crucially, the infected.

We already knew that the strain of the T-virus in Requiem was slightly different, in that it allowed infected to retain some memories of their past life and repeat some familiar actions like scrubbing the floors, eating, or singing. If you listened closely as well you could also hear the infected crying and asking for forgiveness.

But thanks to the cut voice lines found by Keff0, we now know that it could've been so much worse. Burning zombies would beg for water while screaming about how much the flames hurt. The huge Chunk would plead that he didn't want to die and cry about how stressed he was. Some infected would even thank you once you put them out of their misery.

The lines we did get were certainly enough to hammer home just how tragic it all was. But I can't help but feel a little sad that we missed out on some of these. I think I would've actually felt sorry for Chunk had I heard him whining about how stressed he was—it's certainly relatable.

Then there's Leon's cut lines. Most of them are just his usual grunts and groans along with some spider-themed quips—there's so many spider quips. But the most interesting line comes towards the end of the game, when he's really starting to suffer the effects of his infection and multiple monstrous fights: "I promise I'll make it home."

It may not seem like a lot. But given how sombre Leon's been ever since Resident Evil 2, it's actually quite significant that Leon came back to Raccoon City not as some hail mary mission to save Sherry and redeem his previous shortcomings, but with the intention of moving on and living his life away from its shadow.

Sadly, we were never going to be able to have all of these lines in Requiem or the Resident Evil 4 remake—there simply isn't the space to fit them all in. But at least we got to see what could have been.

The decision to delay The Elder Scrolls 6 to make room for Starfield and, somewhat distantly, Fallout 76 came as a surprise to many at Bethesda, according to former Skyrim co-lead Kurt Kuhlmann.

Chatting with FRVR, Kuhlmann recalls the comfortable rhythm that Bethesda had established in its production: Fallout, then Elder Scrolls, then back to Fallout. Switching series and genres like this gave the team a welcome change of pace, Kulhmann says, so after the release of Fallout 4, "we all expected" The Elder Scrolls 6 would be next.

Instead, Fallout 76, which was not "supposed to involve our whole studio," became a much bigger project that extended the latest Fallout phase of the cycle. But more impactfully, Starfield happened.

"What we were supposed to be working on next – it wasn't ever that we were about to suddenly work on TES 6, even though that's what I think most people wanted," Kulhmanns says. "And then Todd [Howard] was like: 'No, we're doing Starfield. I got that approved. It's going to be a new IP. It's going to be this ambitious [game]. It's going to be the greatest space RPG ever made.'"

Kuhlmann reckons Fallout 4's success gave Howard the leeway to successfully pitch an offbeat game like Starfield to the higher ups at Bethesda and Zenimax (just don't ask how Fallout 76, another experiment, launched). "I would've much rather have been making TES 6 instead of 76 and Starfield, personally," he reiterates, "and I think that would probably be true for the majority of the studio."

But Starfield did indeed happen, and it took many years to come together. In 2023, Howard said "I thought we would find the answers faster" after it took seven years just for Starfield to reach a state that it could be called fun to play.

"It wasn't like Starfield was this big internal like, 'Hey, we all want to make this space game, Todd,'" Kuhlmann says. "It was very much, 'Guess what, team? We're making this space game.'"

Today, eight years since its announcement, The Elder Scrolls 6 still doesn't have a release date or window. New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is reportedly pushing Bethesda for faster releases, and said just last month that a "live playthrough" of The Elder Scrolls 6 showed "incredible" scale.

As part of its big Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6 information drop, Bethesda said Starfield has reached 17 million players. Those players can also look forward to Year 3 of post-launch support, with Bethesda eying more Starborn content, gameplay improvements, and additional story quests.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel could be the title of Bethesda's next RPG according to a solid fan theory that dates back to a Starfield teaser.