| Flame #2 · Fri Oct 30 2026 |
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| The Lanternwatch |
| 88 stories, 27 shorts and 15 guides this week. Here is what mattered. |
 | From the Lanternwatch |
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| The Emperor can finally rest |
| From the watch, the night before Halloween. |
| Two doors in the Drift moved this week, and both open onto Tamriel. On Wednesday Sir Patrick Stewart died at 86. Most of the world knew him as Captain Picard. We knew him as the first voice in the dark: Emperor Uriel Septim VII, who walks into your prison cell at the start of Oblivion, says he has seen you in his dreams, and leads you through the sewers until his death sets the whole game in motion. |
| Cairn still has the map he scratched of those sewers, which is how we know he was lost in them for an hour. Vex, who judges everyone, gave the Emperor the one verdict she never gives: no improvements necessary. Flicker learned her trade from him, because the only news that ever mattered in Cyrodiil arrived in a cell with the torches going out. And Lag, a beat behind as always, is the only one of us who heard the line twice. "Men are but flesh and blood. They know their doom, but not the hour." When Oblivion Remastered arrived last year, Bethesda left that recording exactly as it was. He reached millions of new players in the final year of his life. |
| The other door is still sealed, with a new name reportedly carved above it. The Elder Scrolls VI is said to be called Sentinel, set in Hammerfell along the coastline from the 2018 teaser, with the name possibly spoken out loud around November 11, fifteen years to the day after Skyrim. Bethesda has confirmed none of it. We have stood at that door for eight years. Cairn has drawn the teaser's coastline from memory so many times that the satchel is mostly Hammerfell now. |
| Here is the thing about the Drift. A world does not go cold when its emperor dies. It goes cold when people stop caring, and Cyrodiil is as bright tonight as it was in 2006, because a few million of you are loading an old save to hear that speech again. So are we. Then we will walk back to the sealed door and wait for the hour. |
| The Lanternwatch |
| The 30-second version Patrick Stewart, voice of Oblivion's Emperor, dies at 86 14K views |
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| The real story: Patrick Stewart, Star Trek's Captain Picard and the voice of Oblivion's Emperor Uriel Septim, has died at 86 |
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| This week in 30 seconds |
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| The Lanternwatch has a voice now. Output Lag shorts went live on YouTube and Instagram last week, with TikTok warming up behind them, and in just over a week the Helldivers 2 free rifle short passed a quarter of a million views. Thirty seconds, real footage, the story and nothing else. These are the three most watched so far. |
Helldivers 2 gave every active player a free rifle 255K views | Pokémon Unite shuts down on March 23, 2027 35K views | Dead by Daylight's Art the Clown swings a nail bat 17K views |
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| New shorts most days on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. |
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| The big stories |
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| The Elder Scrolls VI is reportedly called Sentinel, set in Hammerfell, with a reveal tied to Skyrim's 15th birthday The Verge's Tom Warren reports the name, a Hammerfell setting and a reveal timed to November 11. Bethesda has said nothing, and Warren expects only a name. |
| Gears of War: E-Day has sold more than 400,000 copies on a reported $500 million budget, a new report says One source, cited by The Verge, puts sales at 400,000 across Xbox and Steam three weeks in. Microsoft has published no number, and Game Pass is the unknown. |
| Probably Stolen sold 200,000 copies in a day, a week after topping our Next Fest chart Last week's question answered itself. The demo that led our Next Fest chart passed 100,000 players at once on launch day. |
| Pokémon Unite shuts down on March 23, 2027, after six years, with one final "library" update Gem sales stopped on October 27, the servers close March 23, 2027, and a November 12 update leaves players a library they keep. |
| Microsoft gives Arkane Lyon until December 13 and is now looking for a partner to finish Blade The deadline we covered last week moved a month, and Microsoft now says it wants a partner to finish Marvel's Blade, not only a buyer. |
| Destiny 2's vaulted campaigns are coming back for free, but Bungie's timeline puts them in 2028 Red War, Curse of Osiris, Warmind and Forsaken return to every player. Bungie says about 12 months of porting after pre-production ends early next year. |
| All the news |
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| Guides worth your time |
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| Crimson Desert: How to Start Charting the Unknown Crimson Desert's first expansion landed Thursday with ships, castles, diving and marriage. Start here: what you can do right away and what needs the main story's ending first. Five guides so far, and more on the way. |
| Crimson Desert: How to Get a Ship in Charting the Unknown Prices from 2,000 to 6 million camp funds, which crew roles matter, and the fastest ways to earn the money. |
| GTA 6: Release Date, Release Time and Pre-Load Date 20 days to go. Pre-loading opens November 12, a week before launch. |
| Valor Mortis: How to Beat Kudigra, the Boss That Broke Moist Shield transmutation first, fire second, then punish the recovery windows in both phases. |
| All guides |
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| Explosive start with videos |
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255,738 views on our Helldivers 2 free rifle short on YouTube as of Friday morning, five days after we posted it. It is our most watched short by a mile, and the whole channel passed 400,000 views in its first nine days. If you want to be notified in real time as gaming news breaks, check us out. |
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| Question of the week |
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| Does Sentinel sound like the Elder Scrolls VI you waited eight years for, or do you need gameplay before you care? |
| Hit reply and tell us. The best answer gets featured next week. |
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| The Lanternwatch: one email, Fridays. You signed up at outputlag.com. |
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