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Before there's a new Halo game, Halo Studios is revisiting the past. Xbox has announced Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the first game in the storied shooter series, Halo: Combat Evolved, developed by Halo Studios and coming to Xbox, PC and PS5 in 2026.Halo: Campaign Evolved is described as a faithful yet modernized remake" of the first game's campaign, with updated visuals and cinematics, refined controls" and three brand-new prequel missions featuring the Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson."The game will feature new weapons, vehicles and enemies, along with the all-important option for two-player splitscreen co-op on console. The game will also support cross-platform play with PS5 for the first time, and four-player online co-op between consoles and PC.Notably, Campaign Evolved is built in Unreal Engine 5. Halo Studios announced it would focus on Unreal development when it rebranded from 343 Industries in 2024. Besides the new visuals and controls, the remake will also include tweaks to memorable missions from the original game as a way to better onboard new players into Halo's world.We wanted to start where it all began, with the original campaign that defined Halo," producer Damon Conn said in the blog post announcing the game. Starting here means people that have never played the game before will be able to understand the story from the very beginning, and that can help us chart a course forward with new Halo stories."Halo: Campaign Evolved will be available in 2026 for Xbox Series X / S, PS5 and PC.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/halo-campaign-evolved-is-a-remake-of-the-original-story-coming-to-xbox-pc-and-ps5-in-2026-203913552.html?src=rss

As frustrating as it is that governments and businesses are running roughshod over our online freedoms, at least we have plenty of good VPNs to choose from to keep us protected online. There are so many fast, intelligently designed, full-featured and affordable services on the market that the biggest problem is picking one. For any use case, you can bet at least two providers will be neck-and-neck for first place.

Confession time: I've had the Sleep Awake Steam page open in a tab for about a month (hey, we all organize our thoughts in unique and beautiful ways), just so I don't forget about it. The past year has been stacked with fabulous original games across a wide range of genres, including horror, and this is one I didn't want to miss. Now, I can close the tab and put a firm release date on the calendar, as Sleep Awake is officially due to hit PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on December 2. Happy holidays, indeed.Sleep Awake is a first-person, narrative-heavy, psychedelic horror game set in the last known city on an Earth that's been ravaged by The HUSH, a mysterious force that disappears anyone who falls asleep. Katja must stay alert and survive the city as its citizens experiment on themselves in increasingly extreme ways, attempting to achieve permanent wakefulness and outmaneuver The HUSH. Needless to say, things get weird.Sleep Awake comes from Eyes Out, the studio founded by Spec Ops: The Line director Cory Davis and Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck, and it's published by Blumhouse Games. Finck is responsible for the trippy audio stylings of Sleep Awake, of course. This is the studio's debut title and something they've been working on for four years. Back in 2021, Davis and Finck told Engadget they were focused on building an ultra-immersive, audio-driven horror experience with a nightmarish bent.The type of horror that we're building has a lot to do with the horrors of the universe and the horrors that you kind of go to sleep with at night, the ones that are just around the corner and outside of our purview, but exist," Davis said. And the technology for building those types of soundscapes, the localized audio and reverb and the realism behind that, coming from VR before, I had a lot of opportunity to work with that stuff."Finck added the following: I'm really excited about the nuance and the subtlety of coming from silence, like a really impactful silence, and beginning to emerge from that silence towards an impactful embellishment of some sort, however great or greater. And that play between the diegetic soundscape of the world within the tangible, physical space inside the game, and where it blurs with the score, the music of the game, can be really challenging and inspiring."Blumhouse Games published its first horror project, Fear the Spotlight, in October 2024 and on top of Sleep Awake, it has a steady stream of additional terrors in store. The co-op gothic-horror game Eyes of Hellfire landed in August from developer Gambrinous, and titles including Grave Seasons and Crisol: Theater of Idols are due to drop soon.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/blumhouse-games-sleep-awake-creeps-onto-steam-and-consoles-december-2-214055543.html?src=rss

When you're trying to keep Leica's digital camera lineups straight, the M-System was always the one with optical rangefinder display (and high price tag). However. the company just upended that precedent with the M EV1, a 60MP mirrorless camera with a classic M design but an electronic viewfinder (EVF) in place of the rangefinder. It may upset purists, but it's a move that makes sense from a sales point of view. Leica's old-school film cameras used its M mount lens system and, in order to keep the bodies compact, didn't have reflex mirrors like SLRs. Instead, they used an optical rangefinder, which provides a weird, offset and inaccurate view of the scene. Leica kept the rangefinders when it launched its digital M cameras, even though it could have switched to an EVF. Leica In 2014, Leica launched a more modern mirrorless camera lineup with the new SL mount that did use electronic viewfinders. However, they have always lacked the cachet, compact size and gorgeous looks of the M-System, so don't appeal as much to well-heeled buyers that want the full Leica experience. Enter the M EV1, which looks exactly like you want a Leica to look but boots the rangefinder in favor of an EVF. "Designed for both devoted Leica enthusiasts and those new to the M System, it makes capturing beautiful, intentional photographs easier than ever," the company wrote. Leica probably noticed buyers who wanted a pretty camera were drawn to the M series, but then put off by the wonky rangefinders. Handmade in Germany, the M EV1 is definitely beautiful, with the classic rounded rectangular M shape and a new diamond-patterned leatherette to give it a distinctive look compared to the rangefinder models. Leica also eliminated the dedicated ISO dial (the setting is now done via another control), which helped make it 1.62 ounces lighter than the M11-P. It has a new custom function lever that lets you activate focusing aids and digital zoom options while looking through the viewfinder. Leica That viewfinder is definitely a good one, with 5.76 million dots of resolution for a sharp view. The rear screen has a sharp 2.32-million-dot display, but is fixed in place and doesn't tilt. Otherwise, the M EV1 has similar specs to the M11-P. It has a high resolution 60MP sensor with support for 14-bit RAW images processed using Leica's excellent color science and burst speeds up to 4.5 fps. You can shoot with the mechanical shutter at up to 1/4000th and 1/16,000th in silent mode (flash sync is 1/180th). Focusing is strictly manual, with magnification and focus peaking assist functions. Naturally, it uses Leica's famous and tremendously expensive compact M mount lenses. There's no support for video. Though some features are old school, the M EV1 lets you connect to Leica's Fotos app via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or a cable for quick sharing on social media and elsewhere. It also supports Leica's Content Credentials system that enables the origin and history of an image to be clearly traced to avoid copyright theft or AI spoofing. Other features include 64GB of built-in storage along with UHS-II SD card support, and a meager 237 shots on a battery charge when using the EVF. Seeing the price is always a fun experience with a new Leica camera, and the M EV1 doesn't disappoint. It's now on pre-order for $8,995 (black, body only) with shipping set for later this year. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/leicas-latest-m-camera-drops-the-rangefinder-in-favor-of-an-electronic-viewfinder-190547479.html?src=rss

Picking the best MacBook may seem like an easy decision. After all, Apple just makes two models: the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. But the available variations within those categories - screen size, chip type, capacity and more - deserve some consideration. You also may wonder what the real-world differences are between models and who they're best for. To make things even more interesting, Apple keeps announcing new chips. The latest, the M5 came out October 15, and is now found in the base model, 14-inch MacBook Pro (as well as the iPad Pro and the Vision Pro). This guide breaks down Apple's terminology, as well as all which upgrades make the most sense so you can get the best MacBook for what you want to do. Table of contents

Meta is bringing more of its generative AI-powered photo and video editing tools directly to Instagram Stories. With the changes, you can now use text prompts to remove or change objects in your photos or "restyle" the image completely.The new tools live in a new "restyle" menu at the top of the Stories composer. You can select "add," "remove" or "change" to tweak specific elements of your images. These features work a lot like either AI-based image editing tools; you can do things like remove stray objects from the backgrounds of photos or change up a person's outfit. You can also make more dramatic edits, like in the photo below, when I asked Meta AI to "change the background to make it look like the cat is in space."I asked Meta AI to "make it look like the cat is in space."Screenshot via InstagramThe prompt bar can also be used to iterate on images without the "add, change, remove" constraints. It still takes a couple seconds for Meta AI to come up with its creations, but it's an overall much faster and smoother experience than the company's first imagine" image generator from nearly two years ago.Meta has also added some preset effects that change the style of an entire image (e.g. anime, watercolor, 8-bit) without a prompt. There are also some presets specifically for "short videos," according to Meta, though I'm only seeing restyle options for photos for now.You can prompt Meta AI to edit your photos in Stories,MetaMeta is also testing some "restyle" effects for text within Stories posts. This will allow people to mix things up from the same few font styles Instagram typically has available. Like with the image edits, you can ask Meta to customize the look of your words (e.g "make it look like toy blocks").The changes will make Meta AI's image and video editing features much more prominent to Instagram users, Meta AI has had the ability to change and restyle images for some time, but those features have been confined to chats with the Meta AI assistant. By now adding text-based prompts directly to Stories, these tools are a lot more accessible. Instagram is further encouraging users to share their new AI-inspired creations with a new "add yours" sticker that lets people share prompts others can iterate on.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-stories-is-getting-new-ai-powered-editing-tools-175500693.html?src=rss

Assasin's Creed Shadows is coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 on December 2, Ubisoft announced today in its fall roadmap update. The Switch 2 drop will include all of the game's updates aside from the recent Claws of Awaji expansion, which will be added in 2026. It'll also support cross-progression through Ubisoft Connect, allowing players to continue a current game on the new platform. The Switch 2 version of Assassin's Creed Shadows will support a unique feature, too: touchscreen interactions in the menus, including the world map, store and hideout.Ubisoft's fall roadmap for Assassin's Creed Shadows has three major dates. On October 28, title update 10 will target the parkour system, adding an Advanced Parkour option and reintroducing the directional catch ledge mechanic, among other tweaks. This update will also add a new Animus themed activity called Corrupted Castles. Then, on November 25, Ubisoft will roll out a third story drop and a surprise collaboration. The new quest is called A Puzzlement" and it's sillier in tone than Shadows itself, much more akin to something like AC Odyssey," according to developers. In it, Naoe will learn a version of Yasuke's war kick ability, and Yasuke will discover how to sneak-stun enemies. On December 2, the Switch 2 release caps off the roadmap.The Claws of Awaji expansion brought more than 10 hours of new content to Assassin's Creed Shadows in September, introducing new weapons, abilities, gear, enemy factions, bosses and story beats, plus a fresh region to explore. This will all come to the Switch 2 version of the game later in 2026.Assassin's Creed Shadows debuted on PC, Mac, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on March 20, 2025, and it's a welcome bright spot in Ubisoft's library. The studio recently released Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2 and the consensus seems to be that it runs surprisingly well.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/assassins-creed-shadows-will-hit-switch-2-on-december-2-172338735.html?src=rss

People are evidently never buying quite enough stuff from Amazon to keep the company entirely happy, and it's calling on AI once again to push indecisive shoppers into locking down the purchase they've been eyeing up. The new tool, which Amazon calls Help Me Decide, gives shoppers in the US personalized recommendations of products they should buy by analyzing their browsing history, searches and preferences.It's designed to "help" customers who have been looking at a number of products in a particular category, such as wireless headphones, to decide which one best suits their needs. The Help Me Decide button will pop up on a product detail page when it detects that you've been browsing for a while without making a final choice. If you choose to tap for AI assistance, it will pull together all the information it can find on your relevant shopping history and recommend the product it deems the right choice for you. It also recommends an alternative upgrade pick and a similar product for those on a budget.Help Me Decide can also group together related searches. Amazon uses the example of the tool recommending an all-season tent for four people based on you previously looking for adult and kids' sleeping bags that keep you warm, camping accessories and children's hiking boots. The recommendation it chooses includes an explanation of why it's the best pick for you based on its features and your previous purchases, and pulls in customer reviews to back it up. This suggests that how useful the recommendations are will ultimately come down to how much you take notice of customer reviews.When searching for products to recommend to you, Help Me Decide leverages Amazon's Bedrock and SageMaker machine learning platforms, as well as its OpenSearch tool, to marry up all the different factors it takes into consideration. It follows the introduction of the Interests tool earlier this year, which uses AI to generate shopping results based on your natural language prompts. Back In May, the company also started experimenting with AI-generated hosts that can summarise products for you before you buy them, again relying heavily on customer reviews for its information.Help Me Decide is live in the US now and can be found in the Amazon app (iOS and Android) and mobile browser. If you tap Keep shopping for" it should show up, and will do the same on a product detail page after you've looked at a number of products in a related category.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/amazon-calls-on-ai-once-again-with-its-new-help-me-decide-shopping-tool-164516673.html?src=rss

Apparently, web browsers are cool again. Two days after OpenAI launched its AI browser, Microsoft has some updates for its Edge's AI mode. (Fancy that!) Copilot Mode, introduced in July, now has several features that were teased at launch.First up: Copilot Actions, which is Microsoft's branding for AI-assisted, multi-step tasks. This feature is already available in the standard version of Copilot, but it's now being previewed for Edge's Copilot Mode. Microsoft's examples of Copilot Actions in Edge include unsubscribing from email newsletters or making a restaurant reservation.Another new (but previously announced) feature is Journeys. These are saved projects you can return to anytime. "Remember that project you started a while back, but life got in the way?" Microsoft's blog post asks. "No need to bookmark all those tabs." For example, if you're researching starting a business, Copilot can recap articles you've read, suggest next steps and resurface a tutorial video you watched.Here's a video from when Microsoft teased Journeys in July.Along similar lines, another new Copilot Mode feature is the option to let the assistant access your browsing history. One example Microsoft gives is chatting with Copilot about a clothing item you checked out last week. Or, ask it for movie recommendations based on content you previously liked.Copilot requires explicit permission to access your private data for these new features. Microsoft's blog post stresses that your browser data is protected under the company's privacy statement and that Copilot "only collects what's needed to improve your experience." The company also notes that you'll see clear visual cues so you know when Copilot is active.Still, these features require loads of private information to be useful. Don't grant those permissions without first giving it some serious thought.The new Copilot features are currently free in a US-only "limited preview."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-makes-edges-copilot-mode-a-bit-smarter-160031147.html?src=rss

Maxi Boch isn't done with Baby Steps. Boch has enjoyed a productive career in game development and she knows how it feels to be creatively finished with a project. She experienced it at various points with Rock Band, Dance Central, Fantasia: Music Evolved and Ape Out, but on Baby Steps' launch day, done was not the vibe.I've been in the industry for a long time; I shipped broken strumbars for Rock Band," Boch told Engadget. I know that things change over time in this world, and it's not to say that Baby Steps is not done. It's done. But whether I'm done with Baby Steps, this is a different story."To make a long one short: Boch's collaborators, Bennett Foddy and Gabe Cuzzillo, were ready and excited to ship the game before she was, and so they did. Baby Steps hit PC and PlayStation 5 on September 23, 2025 (following one strategic delay to avoid the Hollow Knight: Silksong release window).From the player's side, Baby Steps feels like a finely honed experience. It's a walking simulator that follows Nate, a manchild in a gray onesie, as he attempts to scale a mountain and symbolically escape his parents' basement. The player controls Nate's legs individually, lifting each knee and carefully placing one foot in front of the other, learning how to walk in the very literal sense. Baby Steps succeeds because of its mechanical precision, but it excels because of its irreverent tone, magically surreal setting and AAA levels of polish. The mountain is a mix of childhood memories and adult anxieties represented by giant chess pieces, rude graffiti, and a crew of drinking, smoking, anthropomorphic donkeys who wander the cliffs with their dicks swinging free. Improvised dialogue between Nate and the NPCs turns each cutscene into a comedy sketch, but his journey also includes shocking revelations of existential numbness.In Baby Steps, falling is just as much of a mechanic as walking. You will fall - dramatically, drastically, down crevasses that took hours to climb - and Nate will bounce and slide and eventually just lay there, mumbling to himself while his onesie fills with mud. And then you'll pick him back up and start walking again. You'll settle his steps into a soothing cadence. You'll marvel at the way his sweat slowly saturates the material at the base of his spine, just above his bulbous butt. You'll try to skip a cutscene and realize that in order to do so, you need to play a minigame with the X prompt. You'll learn how to run. And somewhere along the way, you'll remember what it feels like to just enjoy play.Baby StepsDevolver DigitalAs a former marching band member, I appreciate the sense of rhythm that's built into Baby Steps, spurred by the animal sounds and natural-world musical cues that are tied to Nate's footfall in specific areas. This is Boch's area of expertise, and also the main reason she doesn't feel finished with the game. Boch and her collaborators ended up using a slapdash mosaic of audio middleware and low-level software for Baby Steps, and a series of late-stage issues infused all of the songs in the game with incorrect samples. On launch day, the music and audio cues weren't reacting as intended when Nate stepped, stumbled and fell.On September 23, the day that Baby Steps came out, Boch and I talked for an hour about its development process. Our conversation gently circled the topic of perseverance, the game's core theme, but we only directly acknowledged it at minute 59. It's not something you need to scream or repeat - tenacity is the obvious message in a game about climbing a mountain on wobbly feet - but it was fascinating to learn why Boch in particular was inspired to build a game about endurance.Making Baby StepsBoch, Foddy and Cuzzillo started working on Baby Steps right after they released Ape Out and cemented their names in the annals of frenetic, bloody and slightly silly indie history. Foddy was already known as the creator of QWOP, GIRP and Getting Over It, and Boch as the rhythmic and hardware mastermind behind the largest AAA music games of the mid-2000s. The trio worked out of Boch and Foddy's shared office at the NYU Game Center, where they were instructors and Cuzzillo was finishing up a graduate degree with Ape Out as his final project. They began prototyping Baby Steps around March 2019.At that point, I also started manifesting more symptoms of my chronic illness, and so I was in the midst of a period of an attempt at really intense reconditioning, which ultimately failed," Boch said. But when that period was over, I joined up with the crew again."Boch lives with a trifecta of chronic illnesses: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. EDS is a connective tissue disorder that affects the entire body, and it can cause hypermobility, fatigue, vision issues, fragile skin and an increased risk of vascular ruptures. People with POTS experience an abnormally large increase in heart rate when changing posture, and MCAS is a disorder that releases excessive amounts of histamine and similar chemicals in the body, causing random and potentially life-threatening allergic reactions. It's common for people with one of these diagnoses to also receive the others.It's been an incredible challenge," Boch said. I think, easily, the hardest thing I've had to deal with in my life. I think there's something very singular about each one of us, the three core members of this crew, and part of that is our ability to work fluidly across disciplines and the like. But another part of it is just a level of stick-to-it-iveness that my body has handily rejected, and so I'm in a fight with it all the time."Baby StepsDevolver DigitalBoch has an arsenal of specialized tools to help her create games, including ergonomic (and very expensive) keyboards and a pair of glasses that act as a mouse.I have found that most of what game development is about and is oriented around is kind of hostile to those of us with poor fine-motor skills, and it's an odd thing to be experiencing alongside the making of a thing that is stridently difficult," Boch said. There's odd moments in it, where I have been going through physical therapy processes to retrain my actual walking, alongside working on this thing that is deconstructing walking. A very odd subset of feelings."Boch said the hardest thing for her to contend with is the moment-to-moment unpredictability of her health. But by the fall of 2019, she was back in the office with Cuzzillo and Foddy, iterating on the ideas that would eventually become Baby Steps. Cuzzillo and Foddy were feeling slightly discouraged at this point: They were four or five ideas deep, messing around with a competitive, real-time strategy game or a SimCity type of experience, but nothing was quite right. Boch encouraged them to return to their ridiculous, mechanically-driven roots.I think it started to become a lot clearer in everyone's mind when it started to take on aspects of Bennett's work," Boch said. The first handful of years of Baby Steps' development, we were all playing various sorts of roles. The work of VO direction, recording and narrative development was something we were all working on together. Some of the foundational narrative premise things are concepts that I brought to the table as ways to try and prop up some world around this character. Lots of tools building and infrastructural work and all of the foundational stuff that makes it possible for a team that's so tiny to make a thing that's so strong."The Baby Steps crew shared a house in upstate New York during the first winter of the pandemic in 2020. They hiked together and worked on the game at one big folding table, enjoying the mountain air with their partners and each other. There were no strict roles on the game development side, with Boch, Cuzzillo and Foddy contributing to all aspects at once, including voice work.Over time, there are aspects of the narrative development that became increasingly more personal to my collaborators," Boch said. And they started to feel more comfortable in a director-less environment in terms of coaxing naturalistic performances out of themselves, and so that work became more disjointed."By the time they were recording voices and finding characters through improvisation in the sound booth, Boch happened to be in the early stages of transitioning. Vocal training and voice acting are a tricky mix, it turns out.I kind of recognized what it was going to take to be doing voiceover performance myself in the midst of my early transition, and I made the call that it was not the right activity for me," Boch said. So my characters were cut - it was like one or two - and I endeavored to strike up some novel collaborations on the audio side."For the past year and half in particular, Boch has been focused on all things audio in Baby Steps, as well as overseeing big-picture production tasks. She brought on a collaborator from the world of hardcore techno music, Jack Schlesinger, and he primarily handled system architecture details while Boch dealt with creative aspects. DJ Ashe Kilbourne and harpist Emily Hopkins rounded out the list of audio contributors. When she was able, Boch took an improvised sound kit into the wild and collected nature noises, and the team stitched together a reactive audio system using middleware and leftover bits of software from the Harmonix days.When Baby Steps' dynamic audio kicks in, and the boops, chirps and thunks start layering on top of one another as Nate waddles along, it adds a delicious sense of hypnosis to the game. Unfortunately, the audio systems fell apart in the final weeks before launch. The VO was fine, but many of the sounds and beats weren't populating in the right places at the proper times, and Boch's vision wasn't being clearly communicated day-one.The foundations of game audio tooling are terrible," Boch said. She continued, The world of game audio, from my perspective, is a bunch of people who are sitting on top of a bunch of work they've done to write drivers to talk to consoles, and a bunch of work they've done to forge relationships with console manufacturers so that their audio technology will be licensed by the two major engines. But they're both trash. I will not endorse either one, and I will not say that either one is capable of doing the kind of work that I need done."Since launch, the Baby Steps audio team has released patches addressing the sampling issues and adjusting dynamic audio cues across the game. An imminent update will introduce animals singing along with the songs, outdoor and indoor reverb simulations across all sounds, and other fixes. Boch has additional updates and surprises planned, including a Baby Steps Fi Beats livestream to showcase the game's music on YouTube. By November, the audio team will be focused on composing.Baby Steps is only going to get more immersive as the audio improvements roll out. And if you listen closely, you'll be able to hear Boch voicing a few small roles throughout the game.I play, like, a baby and a hypothetical gay partner for Nate and a bunch of other random characters," Boch said. There's some cosmic sadness on my part, that the timing worked out in exactly the ways that it did. But I don't know, it's the cards you're dealt. It's important to do the thing that's true to you."One glaring truth that shook out during the Baby Steps development process was the supremely close and infectious bond between Cuzzillo and Foddy. The game's dialogue and cutscenes are composed of off-the-cuff conversations and rambling inside jokes between Cuzzillo and Foddy, and each of these moments is delightful in a chaotic kind of way. Like a classic comedy duo, these developers share an undeniable resonance. They're even born on the same day and they have older brothers with the same birthday, two facts that Boch finds adorable.I'm not a horoscope person at all, but they have a kind of cosmic level of synchronicity that they both acknowledge, but also are a little bit like, What, this?'" Boch said. They have plenty that they disagree about and plenty that they bicker about, but there's something about their orientations toward the world that's perplexing and generative. They are immensely talented folks."Taking Baby StepsIn the end, Cuzzillo and Foddy felt finished with Baby Steps before Boch. She didn't want to hold their joy hostage, so the audio team made it work and they shipped the game on September 23, 2025, published by Devolver Digital.That kind of dream-deferred shit is emotional torture, and so I had no interest in putting them through that, they had no interest in going through that," Boch said. It makes sense to me to be landing in the place that we are."Baby StepsDevolver DigitalI caught up with Boch three weeks after Baby Steps' release date to see if she was feeling more done, now that the launch-day dust had settled. She said it was a hard question.There is so much more that I am interested in exploring, and so much more that I have set up in terms of pins to knock down," she said. I think this is a struggle that highlights the inherent tension of trying to make art at this boundary between a fine art practice and a commercial art practice. I think that for the sake of the work, and for the sake of me and my team as artists, the tech I have built deserves to continue to be refined in a different context, one wherein sound is more paramount. That's where we're headed."This is a tease of what's next for Boch, even though she's still finishing up Baby Steps. She's planning on leaving NYU, spurred by the unpredictability of her health, but she's not done making games. Her next one will be more personal.It's important to me to share what I'm doing with people," Boch said in September. I think that there is not enough in the world of games that puts audio at its very center. I think that my personal ambitions and future ambitions are definitely leaning more in that direction by the day. I had a long time of needing to get some space from interactive audio as The Thing. Where my winds are blowing is in that direction."Baby Steps exists in its current form because Boch and her teammates were able to adapt and endure. They were honest about what was working, what wasn't and what could, and they leaned into the aspects that felt the most natural to them. Boch in particular set aside her ego, listened to her body, and took things day by day. You know, baby steps.The process of transition is one that involves an enormous amount of self-reflection and a growing sense of self knowledge," Boch said. Ultimately, that process for me was kind of orthogonal to the storytelling of Baby Steps. There's a lot that comes from lived experience, and from commiserating and sharing that lived experience between Bennett and Gabe, and you can see that very clearly in the work. There's also just ways in which that process was illuminating to me in terms of inherent differences. There's an aspect of it that came alongside the necessity of slowing down, and then the subsequent necessity of staying inside that hit with my chronic illness and then Covid. There was a way in which I was more with myself at that moment than I've ever been."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/baby-steps-isnt-done-with-maxi-boch-140000613.html?src=rss