NOTE: There are spoilers ahead for one of The Witcher 3s endings.The Witcher 4is going to kick off a new trilogy for CD Projekt REDs fantasy action RPG series, but though its clearly marking a new beginning, its also obviously not a completely fresh start. Its calledThe Witcher 4,after all, and not only stars a familiar character as its new protagonist in Ciri, but is also bringing back former protagonist Geralt of Rivia in some capacity. As you may guess, then,The Witcher 4is going to maintain full continuity with events that preceded it.Of course, thats a little more complicated than it may seem, because one ofThe Witcher 3sending actually sees Ciri dying. According to Cian Maher, CDPRs franchise and lore designer forWitcher, however, that ending may not be such an open-and-shut case. Speaking in an interview with IGN, he stated that there are hints in the ending that Ciri may have been alive after all.The one complication is probably the idea that there is an ending in which Ciri can die in The Witcher 3, he said. There are hints in that ending that highlight the fact that she probably does not die.As such, as per Maher,The Witcher 4isnt going to break any canon or even offend any canon, regardless of which ofThe Witcher 3sendings you want to consider canon.Game director Sebastian Kalemba has also spoken about howThe Witcher 4will place even greater emphasis on player agency, not only with its branching storytelling, but also with its greater gameplay variety. Read more on that through here.

A new edition of the Steam Next Fest begins today, and Knights in Tight Spaces has been featured in the official trailer.Were joining the Fest with a brand new demo where youll get to discover two new character classes: The Rogue and The Cleric. And much more! More levels to explore and epic weapons to wield New enemies and card art A new boss whos not here to play nice!Were eager to hear your thoughts! Join our Discord to share your feedback and meet other Knights, and follow us on and X and Tiktok to be up to date on our upcoming events.And of course, dont forget to add the game to your wishlist!The post Knights in Tight Spaces joins Steam Next Fest with a new demo! appeared first on Raw Fury.

A hero must be wary at all times. Hear the call of the Oracle as she draws you towards your fated destiny, but do not be swayed from your quest by the siren calls of the dark light The OracleCall of Olympus is out now! Take back Mount Olympus in this major expansion for Kingdom Two Crowns set in a world inspired by ancient Greece. Embark on a quest to win the favor of the gods and defend your Kingdom versus the Greed with powerful artifacts and units.Kingdom Two Crowns: Call of Olympus features:A Quest to Free Mount Olympus An Epic New World: Call of Olympus features a reworked map with an epic conclusion at Mount Olympus, and you choose how to get there! Temple and Quest Islands: These new islands present unique challenges, hidden treasures and powerful artifact rewards prove your worth to Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus and Hermes to open the path to Mount Olympus. Mythological Mounts: Discover and unlock powerful new mounts, like the fierce three-headed Cerberus, the terrifying fire-breathing Chimera, the majestic winged Pegasus, or the trusty Donkey and many more!Fight Greed of Epic Scales Face Your Fears: Muster steadfast defences to protect your crown, the Greed threat is more challenging than ever before, with multi-phased boss battles against the sinister Serpent. Raise Your Banner: Shift the momentum and lead from the front. Bring the fight to the Greed with new siege mechanics, where the Hoplites will join you in Phalanx formation. Assemble Your Fleet: Fight on land and at sea build a fleet with devastating ship-mounted ballistae to join your battle. Once victorious, use your armada to ferry your army across the seas and combat the growing threat of Greed.Discover Godly Powers and Abilities Powerful Artifacts: Unlock four unique artifacts bestowed by the gods. Whether you choose a bow with a powerful directed attack, or a hammer that boosts your troops prowess, these items grant you new offensive and defensive abilities against the Greed. Guided by the Oracle: Never stray from the task at hand. At your request, the Oracle will provide you with wisdom and directions for the next step of your Odyssey! Set the Greed Ablaze: Wield powerful fire technology granted by the new hermit. Its as if it was gifted by Prometheus himself!Kingdom Two Crowns 2.0Kingdom Two Crowns 2.0 is a quality-of-life update that is adding a series of tweaks and updates to the Kingdom Two Crowns base game as well as updating the graphical suite for the game: New Save System with up to 10 save slots Ability to disable Tutorial Ghost Improved level generation Balancing updates across difficulty levels and unit distribution Improved VFX systems Improved Lighting Systems New updated visualsRegents & Archons Royal Wardrobe Cosmetic DLCsAlongside the updates to the base game we are also launching a new series of supporter cosmetic DLCs: Regents & Archons Royal Wardrobe. These are an optional way for you to spice up your campaign and provide an additional way to support us to work on cool new things for the Kingdom series.A heartful word from all of us here on the dev teamWe are excited for everyone to finally be able to play and explore the world of Call of Olympus. Please share your feedback! We would like to extend our gratitude to everyone in the community that has been part of this journey from play testers to viewers, and players actively participating on the forums, social media and our Discord server from all of us, thank you!As were celebrating Kingdom this week here is a little crown from us!Ooops, it looks like the Greed stole your crown! Oh well, at least now you know how it looks like when it gets your precious headpiece, if you have one of those visuals from the freshly released cosmetic DLCs on.Good luck on your adventures, Monarchs! And if you encounter bugs that are not the ever present nocturnal enemy send them to https://rawfury.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/1 this is the quickest way for the devs to have a look!/The Kingdom TeamThe post Kingdom Two Crowns: Call of Olympus, Kingdom 2.0 and Royal Wardrobe DLCs are now available! appeared first on Raw Fury.

Suffragettes protest along a London street wearing sandwich boards in 1912. Hulton-Deutsch Collection / CORBIS / Corbis via Getty ImagesJust three days after World War I ended on Armistice Day, 1918, Bonar Law, the leader of Britains Conservative Party, announced that a general election would be held on December 14.It would be no ordinary electionfor the first time in British history, women over the age of 30 who met a minimum property requirement could vote in a parliamentary election.This election came at a time of considerable confusion in British politics, wrote historian Trevor Wilson. David Lloyd George, the Liberal prime minister, had risen to power based on conservative support during the war and would have to reassemble a coalition to stay in power.His task was made even more confusing because demographics and voting rights were in profound flux in Britain. Eight hundred and eighty thousand British combatants died during the war, a whopping 6 percent of the adult male population. To compensate, the Representation of the People Act of February 6 abolished almost all property qualifications for male voters over 21.The effect of this new law was stunning. The electorate nearly tripled from 7.7 million voters to 21.4 million. With the stroke of a pen, women had become 43 percent of the electorate.The same year also saw the passage of the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, which allowed women to run as candidates for members of Parliament for the first time. Of the 17 women who stood for this historic election, 15 had backgrounds in the suffrage movement.How the women's vote will go, whether the married women voters will be swayed by their husband's political views or not, are all matters of speculation, the Evening Express wrote shortly after the general election was announced.r Punchcelebrating the women's right to vote Public domain via Wikimedia CommonsBut though popular politics were spreading across the British Isles, party leaders made crucial decisions about the election behind closed doors. As historian Matthew Johnson notes, during the war in 1916, Lloyd George and Law had executed what was effectively a political coup dtat against H.H. Asquith, the incumbent Liberal prime minister, forcing him out of office and consigning him to a political wilderness when Lloyd George took over as premier.Although he was a Liberal just like Asquith, Lloyd George cozied up to the Conservatives in a state of what Wilson called open hostility to the party of which he still claimed to be a member.Because this coalition was now more important than party designations, Lloyd George and Law officially endorsed their preferred candidates with a signed letter known as a coupon. Consequently, the 1918 general election became known as the Coupon Election.In total, the leaders gave coupons to 364 Conservative candidates, 159 Liberals, 20 members of the short-lived National Democratic and Labour Party (not to be confused with the modern-day Labour Party), and two Coalition Labour candidates. There were now, in effect, two Liberal parties. One, led by Lloyd George, supported the coalition with the Tories and had coupons to prove it. The other, led by Asquith, neither supported the coalition nor had coupons.By the time the election took place this day in 1918, the coupon coalition was so electorally strong that the result was already certain, according to the Bristol Times and Mirror. Only 63 recipients of the coupon lost a race. The coalition sailed into power with a 283-seat majority, and Lloyd George stayed on as prime minister.Constance Markievicz was the only woman elected of the 17 female candidates who ran. But as a member of Sinn Fein, an Irish nationalist party, she refused to take her seat in Westminster. (Nancy Astor, who ran for her husbands old seat in 1919, would later become the first woman to be seated in Parliament.)More shocking, however, was the revelation that a historically low 57 percent of the eligible electorate voted in the 1918 general election. Rainand to some extent apathykept polling slow and low, the Sunday Mirror reported, likely reflecting a deep malaise and trauma settling over the war-torn country.Still, the nations newest constituency was the most enthusiastic in this historic election. Eagerly arriving to exercise their new franchise at polling stations, the Sunday Mirror commented, women were obviously determined to show that they were not apathetic towards the great issues of the election. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

A representation of the evolution of the universe over 13.77 billion years. NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterAstronomers have long understood that the universe is expandingin other words, the space in between cosmic objects that arent bound by gravity is getting ever more vast. Then, in 1998, scientists discovered the universes rate of expansion is accelerating.In the years since, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope have observed that the current expansion rate, called the Hubble constant, is faster than what standard cosmology models estimate it should be. This mystery of inconsistent measurements has been dubbed the Hubble tension.Now, a team of researchers has used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to confirm Hubbles measurementsand thus, the mystery persists. Their study, published Monday in The Astrophysics Journal, suggests the discrepancy may be caused by an as-yet unknown feature in the universe, rather than an error in telescope measurement.The finding suggests that our understanding of the universe may be incomplete, Adam Riess, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study, says in a statement. Riess co-received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that the universes expansion is accelerating in 1998.With two NASA flagship telescopes now confirming each others findings, we must take this [Hubble tension] problem very seriouslyits a challenge but also an incredible opportunity to learn more about our universe, he adds in the statement.Riess and his team used JWST data to measure the distances from Earth to specific kinds of galaxies with pulsating stars called Cepheid variables, which are the gold standard for measuring cosmic distances, per the statement. With these measurements, they calculated the universes rate of expansion. The JWST results were consistent with the Hubble ones, which effectively rules out the possibility of the Hubble tension resulting from human or instrument error. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is a snapshot of about 10,000 galaxies in a tiny patch of sky, taken by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), the HUDF TeamBut the curious thing was the rate they calculated. The universes expansion rate is expressed in kilometers per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec equals 3.26 million light-years.) Widely accepted cosmology models have used light from the early universe to put the Hubble constant of universe expansion at about 67 to 68 km/s/Mpc.The now-confirmed telescope observations, however, yield an average of 73 km/s/Mpc.As Emilee Speck puts it for FOX Weather, the problem with science is that answering one question creates many more. If the measurements arent wrong, then perhaps its the standard cosmology models that are flawed.Yes, it appears there is something missing in our understanding of the universe, Riess tells Reuters Will Dunham. Our understanding of the universe contains a lot of ignorance about two elementsdark matter and dark energyand these make up 96 percent of the universe, so this is no small matter.Dark matter, hypothesized to make up 27 percent of the universe, is some unknown material that affects the rest of the cosmos with its gravity. Dark energy, on the other hand, is thought to make up some 68 percent of the universe, and scientists speculate it might be responsible for the universes expansion. And now, the new findings suggest it perhaps accounts for the unexplained acceleration of that expansion, too.The more work we do, the more it is apparent that the cause is something much more interesting than a telescope flaw, Riess tells Live Sciences Ben Turner. [The] next steps are many. More data on many fronts and new ideas are needed.One possible explanation for the Hubble tension would be if there was something missing in our understanding of the early universe, such as a new component of matterearly dark energythat gave the universe an unexpected kick after the Big Bang, Marc Kamionkowski, a cosmologist at Johns Hopkins who helped calculate the Hubble constant but was not involved in the new study, says in the statement. And there are other ideas, like funny dark matter properties, exotic particles, changing electron mass or primordial magnetic fields that may do the trick. Theorists have license to get pretty creative.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Astronomers, Astronomy, James Webb Space Telescope, Mysteries, New Research, Nobel Prizes, Outer Space, telescope, universe

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Zenimax Online Studios workers unioniseUnion of 461 workers has been recognised by Microsoft News by Marie Dealessandri Deputy Editor Published on Dec. 13, 2024 Workers at Elder Scrolls Online developer Zenimax Online Studios have unionised, Communications Workers of America has announced.The union, called ZOS United-CWA, has been recognised by parent company Microsoft and is made of 461 members, including "web developers, designers, engineers, and graphic artists," the announcement said.A majority of the unionised workers are based in Maryland, but they are also located across the US in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.This is the latest union to be created via CWA's Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA), which the organisation says has seen over 6,000 workers unionise since 2020.Senior motion graphics artist and ZOS United-CWA member Alyssa Gobelle commented: "By coming together and forming a union, we're able to take a powerful step forward in ensuring a better future for ourselves and for our families, to create protections against layoffs and workplace exploitation, and to provide additional layers of support for workers beyond what FMLA and workplace policies already provide."Principal economy designer and ZOS United-CWA member John Hartzell added: "Regardless of your studio, your title, or where you're from, unions work to benefit us all."Hundreds of staff at sister company Bethesda Game Studios also unionised earlier this year.