I spent a few days playing Section 9 Interactive's creepy metroidvania and writing my End of Abyss review, and ultimately concluded it was a fun but inconsistent experience hindered by a few particular issues. Now, just a day after it launched on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via the Epic Games Store, the studio has already cleared up most of those issues with a newly released patch. If you missed the review, my main concern was how the in-game map would sometimes share incorrect information, like telling me a door was locked when I had unlocked it, or failing to signify when I'd found the key to a particular door. In a metroidvania, this means a whole lot. End of Abyss is a game about exploration, including lots of backtracking via roundabout paths, so when I'd plan long treks across the world based on a faulty map, it was really frustrating to find out too late that I'd essentially been lied to. But a patch has fixed that, among other problems, and it presents an uncommon issue for me. My review only went out two days ago. The game only launched yesterday. Now much of my review is already outdated. In this era of live-service games and post-launch updates, it's common for games to change shape over time, but for End of Abyss's patch to fix many of its lesser parts essentially right after the deadline isn't normally how it goes. Usually big, important changes happen in one of two ways: In one common scenario, a game that critics are playing for review may be patched during that pre-release review period. It's often the case that critics are made aware of bugs we might see, and we're usually told when they've been patched out, or that those fixes are in the "day one" patch that comes with the game's public launch, leaving us to confirm as much once the patch drops. This even applies to End of Abyss. I bumped into a few bugs during my time with the game, and the very worst of them--in which a boss failed to drop a quest item--was patched just a few hours before I had to write my review, allowing me to beat the game on time. This made the issue irrelevant to my review, and thus I didn't even specifically call it out.  If the public wasn't going to experience it, then I take it as my job to basically erase it from my memory of the experience--or at least, if I do mention it, I should explain how it's no longer a concern for players jumping in at launch. In another common scenario, a game changes shape much later in its lifespan, and probably over the course of several updates. Games like Sea of Thieves, Overwatch, and Fallout 76 are great examples. These kinds of games often become the subject of re-reviews years later. But it's not just multiplayer games that do this. Games such as Starfield, Mass Effect 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 have been affected by such major changes that they merited follow-ups, too.  But End of Abyss is a much rarer case. The game just came out. My review could only speak to my experience, and so it does, but I'd planned to revisit it once my biggest problems with it were addressed and write something like what I've written here--something that says, "Hey, it's better now!" when I could recommend it with more confidence. I just didn't expect that would be a mere 48 hours after I published my thoughts on the game. Section 9's debut landed in a weird gray area, where some important fixes came neither early enough for my review to consider them, nor late enough for my review to feel like it accurately reflected the experience of playing the game for a reasonable period of time. As it stands, only the players who jumped in yesterday--likely a relative few compared to the many more who will play the game over the next several years--bumped into the map issue I had during my time with it. No one else will ever have to deal with it.  That's good for players, and good for the studio, even if it leaves reviews like mine feeling more swiftly outdated than anything I can remember writing.

A new screenshot from Grand Theft Auto 6 has arrived, and fans immediately noticed that it appears to be referencing the iconic opening scene from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 crime movie Pulp Fiction. The image was shared by Love magazine on Instagram. The GTA 6 Countdown social media account put it next to the diner scene from Pulp Fiction, and the similarities are there, especially in the framing. In Pulp Fiction, Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer's characters, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, go on to rob the diner, and given that Lucia and Jason are criminals as well, it's not a stretch to think that could happen in GTA 6. Maybe they're just enjoying breakfast, but that seems unlikely given the image clearly shows both gripping their pistols, with Lucia seemingly ready to fill the empty duffel bag next to her with cash and other valuables. https://twitter.com/GTAVI_Countdown/status/2106042257443049741 GTA 6 tells a Bonnie and Clyde-style story of two lovers who are also criminals. Things did not end well for them, and many are speculating as to how GTA 6's story could wrap up for both Lucia and Jason. It also wouldn't be surprising to see GTA 6 reference Pulp Fiction given how GTA games in the past have featured very overt references to movies, like how Vice City had Scarface references and GTA 5 had nods to Heat. "We wanted both protagonists to be vulnerable, tough, flawed, right sometimes, wrong sometimes, able to learn from each other,”GTA 6 writer Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern told Love magazine. “That’s what we felt made them authentic, and a great team.” Jason and Lucia in GTA 6. Another GTA 6 game writer, Alexa D’Agostino, told the magazine, “When you are focusing on writing a fully realized person with their own wants, you’re going to get something perfectly imperfect--with clichés, but also undeniably real.” GTA 6 launches on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. On November 18, the Miami Heat will wear GTA 6-inspired jerseys and play on a court that references Vice City, the game's setting, and a stand-in for Miami. GTA 6 will take players outside of Miami to other places in Florida, just don't expect to go to Rockstar's version of Walt Disney World.

Rockstar's GTA 6 is priced at $80 for its standard edition. Another voice has come forward to say they hope other teams follow suit and charge more for new games to help the industry at a time when developers are closing up shop, cancelling games, and laying off developers on a regular basis. Martin Klima, the co-founder of Kingdom Come developer Warhorse, told PC Gamer that raising unit prices would "help a lot," but "everybody's scared to death" to do it. "Now, hopefully, GTA will blaze the trail, and it will allow us to increase the cost," he said, adding that Rockstar and Take-Two are among the only companies who can "afford, or who can dare" to raise prices in this way. He added that price increases for new games are "long overdue and also necessary for this business to survive." GTA 6 should kick off a trend of games costing more, Warhorse co-founder says. Take-Two was among the first big publishers to drive prices up from $60 to $70, kicking this off with NBA 2K21 in 2020. Numerous other publishers followed suit, and now $70 is the norm. Defending the price increase, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick said production costs increased by 300%. Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden said in 2025 that the price of new games should have gone up with every new console generation for the past 20 years. That largely did not happen, and now the industry is worse off for it, he said. “I think it’s because everyone’s afraid,” he told GI.biz. “No one wants to be the first one to raise the price, because you’re afraid to lose traffic. So what you do is you just end up eating into your operating income, your profit margin.” “There were more sports cars in the parking lot in the PS1 era than there were in the PS4 era, because if you’re selling 20 million units at $60 for something that only cost you $10 million to make, that’s different than selling 20 million units at $60 for something that cost you $160 million to make.” To help make up the difference, developers have hawked things like microtransactions, DLC, and battle passes. If more games go up in price, those trends will likely continue, too. Before GTA 6's price was revealed, a Bank of America stock analyst said Take-Two should charge $80 to help spur other publishers to follow suit. We already have $80 games, as Nintendo charges $80 for Mario Kart World, saying the game's ambition justifies the price tag. Every game is priced differently, even within the same publisher, as Take-Two launched Mafia: The Old Country for $50–to great success. For its part, Nintendo's newly released Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave costs $80 for its physical edition or $70 for its digital counterpart. GTA 6, which releases on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, also has a $100 Ultimate Edition and a $400 collector's edition that does not include the game. Zelnick said earlier this year that Rockstar could have leveraged the monumental demand for GTA 6 to charge a higher price to consumers, but chose not to. In addition to the mountains of money Rockstar and Take-Two are due to make off GTA 6 game sales, the game is likely to eventually have some kind of new version of GTA Online, and that's no doubt going to print money.