Stepping onto the docks of Dawnshore I was instantly met with scorn and disgust by its citizens, with an alien world awaiting me just outside its palisades. Welcome back, Morrowind.

Playing roughly four hours of Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed, I couldn’t shake the way the game continuously reminded me of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind — a downright bizarre world to explore, filled with fascinating sights, weirdo characters, and yes a little bit of jank. Between Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, fantasy RPGs feel like they're in the middle of a renaissance, and I’m pretty sure Avowed is the next step of that.

Avowed is a spinoff of Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity franchise, a pair of computer-RPGs in the spirit of the Baldur’s Gate games. Pillars of Eternity, and its sequel Deadfire, are absolutely rich in lore and storytelling — with complex worlds made up of various nations, peoples, religions, etc. No prior knowledge of Pillars of Eternity is needed for Avowed, but as someone who’s sunk hundreds of hours into those games, I can already tell you that if you go in with that prior experience, you’ll be handsomely rewarded.

The most unexpected sci-fi success of the year has easily been the acclaim and box office slam-dunk of Alien: Romulus.

Saddled with a strange subtitle, and a lot of continuity baggage stemming from eight previous installments in the franchise, Romulus could have been doomed for irrelevancy, and seen as yet another example of studios milking existing IPs for pseudo-nostalgic moneyshots. But, strangely, despite some of its flaws and reliance on some well-trodden tropes, Romulusis actually a solid sci-fi thriller and a strangely approachable entry into the Alien franchise. This no-frills, back-to-basics approach from director Fede Álvarez worked better than it maybe deserved to, and the result was one of the slickest horror movies of 2024.

And now that Romulus has just hit Hulu, here’s why you should stream it ASAP, in case you missed screaming in the theater this past August.

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