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Cadillac confirmed today that the first all-electric Escalade will arrive “later this year.” However, the automaker didn’t reveal any details about the Escalade IQ, a name first trademarked in 2021. The new model’s “IQ” branding aligns with the Celestiq luxury sedan and Lyriq mid-sized SUV.

Earlier this year, Cadillac VP Rory Harvey said the company would reveal three new EVs in 2023. If you add that to the company’s previous comments to Car and Driver, stating all three will arrive for the same model year, we can assume the Escalade IQ will be a 2024 model. It is also expected to use GM’s Ultium battery tech.

We’ll have to wait until later this year to learn more about the first Escalade EV. But as for its mid-sized counterpart, Engadget’s Roberto Baldwin found the Lyriq ($60,000 and up with over 300 miles of range) to have “the fit and finish you’d expect” from Cadillac with “a polished ride and almost eerily quiet interior.”

WhatsApp is rolling out a long-overdue feature to all users. Starting today, you'll be able to edit messages that you have already sent. You'll need to act fairly swiftly, as you'll have a 15-minute window to correct a mistake or drop in an emoji you initially forgot to include.

To modify a sent message, long press on it and choose the Edit option from the menu. Any message that you change after sending it will include the word "edited" next to the time stamp. No one else in the chat will be able to see the edit history, but they'll know that you've modified the message. WhatsApp says the feature will be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

WhatsApp is playing catchup to other messaging services here. Since the release of iOS 16, iPhone and iPad users have been able edit sent missives in iMessage. Twitter Blue subscribers can make changes to a tweet up to 30 minutes after sending it.

There are a lot of factors to consider when you’re looking for the best iPad to fit your needs. But, if you’re more interested in an entry-level model than something more powerful and pricey, the standard iPad might just fit the bill. Even better, the 2022 iPad is currently on sale for $399. That’s $50 off the regular price and it matches a record low.

This deal is for the base model with 64GB of storage. We gave this tablet a score of 85 in our review. We liked the updated design that takes a page out of the iPad Air's book, the improved performance and battery life compared with the previous generation and the switch to USB-C charging. Moving the front-facing camera to the landscape side is a welcome change too. That makes far more sense for those who use the tablet for video calls while propping it up with the kickstand or a keyboard folio. Speaking of which, the keyboard folio got an upgrade, since there are larger trackpad and function keys.

On the downside, the $250 folio is expensive; it's not far off the price of the tablet during this sale. We also felt that, while larger than previous models, the quality of the screen isn't as refined as those in higher-end iPads. For instance, it doesn't have an anti-reflective coating or support for the P3 wide color gamut. Perhaps most gallingly for those with a first-generation Apple Pencil, you'll need a USB-C cable and a Lightning to USB-C adapter to charge the peripheral from this iPad.

Still, there's more positives than negatives to be found here. This iPad has a lot of improvements over the previous generation. If you've been holding onto an older model for several years and don't want to break the bank on a replacement, this deal is certainly worth considering.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Roland’s synth lineup seems a little odd at times. It doesn’t really offer much in the midrange. Its only two pure synthesizers in the $500 to $800 space are the 13-year-old Gaia SH-01 and the eight-year-old (and objectively hideous) JD-Xi. The company has mostly been focused on its miniaturized classics in the Boutique range and building out its groovebox lineup for the last few years.

The company’s SH-4d doesn’t perfectly fill this gap in the lineup, but it’s a big step in the right direction. It’s a synth-focused desktop groovebox with lots of hands-on controls, a rich sound engine, and a more than reasonable price of $650. The question is: In an increasingly crowded field of experimental digital synths and well-established analogs, has Roland done enough with the 4d to carve out a niche for itself?

Photo by Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

The heart of the SH-4d is built around Roland’s Zen-Core engine, but it’s not actually Zen-Core compatible. Instead, the company took the building blocks and arranged them into simplified oscillators. This is great news because, at least in hardware form, Zen-Core has primarily shown up either as overly complicated and menu-divey, or as a glorified preset browser. Here there are 11 different oscillators that range from emulations of classic Roland machines like the Juno-106 and SH-101, to metallic FM tones, PCM samples and 31 different wavetables. And there are enough hands-on controls that you can actually do some serious sound design without having to dig seven layers deep in an incomprehensible menu system. This is the closest Roland has come to knob-per-function in a long time, and the company deserves credit for that.

Thankfully, Roland also blessed the SH-4d with the larger, higher-res screen we’ve seen on machines like the Jupiter-XM and MC-707, rather than the painful two-line displays on the TR series and the VerseLab, so navigating the menu is less aggravating. In general, the menu system also feels more streamlined than on a lot of other Roland devices. I’d stop just short of saying it’s intuitive, but it also didn’t send me into a rage spiral.

There’s only a handful of things that felt like they required an unnecessary amount of menu diving: the effects, the matrix and the mixer, most notably. There’s obviously a limit to how many buttons and knobs Roland could fit on the face of the already pretty crowded SH-4d, but I’ve seen mod matrix patching handled more elegantly by both Arturia and ASM. The four faders can be used in a mixer mode, which is great but you have to switch to pattern mode, then hit the sound button to access it, when it should really be a single button press away. And the effects section only exposes two parameters directly, everything else requires going into a menu.

Photo by Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

The effects in general are pretty great, at least. The delay and the chorus are excellent. The reverbs are a bit lackluster, but there’s a whole suite of other effects (95 in total) ranging from an absolutely incredible bit crusher, to lo-fi vinyl warbles, to the DJ looper from the SP-404. And the fattener is so good I kind of wish it had its own dedicated slot like the reverb, delay and chorus do.

Brief aside: Why is there so much noise in the Juno chorus emulation, Roland? It’s basically unusable until you go into the menu and turn it down (or off), at which point it’s excellent. What’s truly wild is that it’s set to 30 by default and goes all the way up to 127! At full tilt it’s just a white noise machine. Great for the synth nerd who has trouble sleeping, I guess.

That one gripe aside, the SH-4d sounds incredible. Truly. I am not always the biggest fan of the Roland sound. I think its modern synths have a tendency to be a tad cold and clinical. But the 4d mostly avoids this (unless that’s the stated goal, such as in the Wavetable or PCM oscillator). The presets do an excellent job of showing off the unique characteristics of each model and even take some of them in places you might not immediately think of. Sure, the SH-101 is great at bass and leads, we all know that. But did you know it can also shine while playing mellow pads? Well, thanks to modern technology blessing us with a polyphonic emulation of one it can.

Photo by Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

Roland includes nice touches here, like graphically representing the layout of the Juno-106 and SH-101, or showing a ring modulator diagram on the screen. In general, the oscillators themselves feel carefully polished. The two knobs directly below the screen, the four faders and the four buttons below those have immediate and obvious uses usually that are reflected in some way on the display.

The middle two buttons under the faders are how you turn on and off the saw and square wave in the Juno model, for instance. And in the Cross-FM engine you can draw an envelope using the faders. Oh, and speaking of drawing, there is a drawing oscillator. Here you can create a completely custom waveform by using the four faders, by recording as you move a knob in real time, or step by step with incredible granularity. It is loads of fun and a quick way to get something that is completely your own. Another twist of the knob and you can square off the edges to get something that sounds like it’s straight from an Atari 2600. Then feed that through a bit crusher and *chef's kiss*.

From here the signal goes through a simple high pass filter and a resonant multimode filter. The multimode filter is decent enough. It doesn’t self-oscillate, but it’s still pleasantly aggressive. I do wish the filter drive a bit stronger, though. It adds a little extra oomph, but doesn’t reach the giddy destructive highs of what Roland has in the SP-404.

Photo by Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

All of this leads us to the sequencer, which is what makes the SH-4d more of a groovebox than a true synthesizer. There are four polyphonic synth tracks and one rhythm track that you can use to create loops up to 64 steps long. The sequencer is reasonably feature packed and mostly easy to use. Each part can have its own length, playback mode (forward, reverse, forward and reverse, inverted or random), shuffle rate and more. There’s also probability and substep options, though you do have to do a little menu diving to get there. And, while the keyboard on the SH-4d is not velocity sensitive, you can connect an external controller or dial in velocity manually on a per step basis. The only major limitation is the lack of pattern chaining or a song mode.

There’s a handful of performance-friendly features as well, like a master effect channel for buildups and breakdowns. Plus, you can mute parts and even individual drum sounds on the dedicated rhythm track. One thing missing is the Step Loop function found on even its cheaper instruments, like the recent Aira Compact S-1.

I’ve got to say the rhythm section is great, too. I was initially kind of skeptical of it. I really wanted Roland to just focus on making an approachable and affordable synthesizer, rather than continue its “everything and the kitchen sink” approach. But, it really is excellent and not an afterthought at all. There are 26 instruments in each kit, which can combine two different waveforms, with their own pitch envelopes and EQ settings. Roland probably could have gotten away with just tossing some 808 and 909 samples in here and calling it a day. But the rhythm section has its own rich and powerful sound design tools.

Photo by Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

Unfortunately, Roland didn’t stop at a five track sequencer with a surprisingly rich drum machine. There are a few features here that are a bit of a head scratcher. The biggest one being D-Motion where you can assign parameters to an X and Y axis, then tilt the instrument to change them. It’s gimmicky and pretty unnatural on something that’s over 14 inches wide and weighs just shy of four pounds.

The visual arpeggiator is in a similar boat. It has a handful of modes that allow you to control playback by bouncing notes, playing pong or drawing in a sequence Etch-a-Sketch style. I wanted to like them. But the reality was they were not particularly useful, not even for idea generation, and I grew bored with them after a few minutes. I’d have rather Roland used that D-Motion button on the front for something more immediately useful like quick access to a mixer mode, or Step Loop for creating quick fills.

Photo by Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

On the whole, though, I think Roland has a winner on its hands. I’d love to see a version in the future with a proper keyboard – perhaps one with aftertouch. And I still have my struggles with the Roland workflow. But this is my favorite instrument from the company outside of the SP-404MKII, which is an entirely different beast.

The SH-4d has plenty of hands-on controls, a rich palette of synth engines and it sounds great. Add to that a solid build, the ability to be powered by a handful of AAs, and a much cleaner interface than many other Roland instruments. The top notch drum machine and multi-track polyphonic sequencer are just icing on the cake. This is easily my favorite Roland synth in a long time. And the fact that it only costs $650 only makes it that much more appealing.

If you’ve been anywhere near a gaming forum recently, you’ve probably seen something about the state of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on PC. Even in a year that has seen some abysmal PC releases – I’m looking at you, The Last of Us Part 1 — the latest from Respawn Entertainment stands out.

Performance is the big issue everyone is talking about, and it’s easy to see why. If you want to watch a deep dive into the game’s technical woes, check out some of the recent videos Digital Foundry and Daniel Owen have uploaded to their YouTube channels. However, the short version is Jedi: Survivor has all the issues that have plagued many a recent poor PC port.

Each time you launch the game, it puts you through a shader pre-compilation process that, frustratingly, doesn’t prevent stuttering. Jedi: Survivor also suffers from traversal hitching, meaning your frame rate will drop when you enter a new location. Annoyingly, these were issues that were present and never addressed in Jedi: Fallen Order. And unfortunately, there’s no amount of hardware that can fix those problems in Jedi: Survivor.

I’m playing the game on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 5600x and NVIDIA RTX 3070. My system is not bleeding edge but it’s also not a toaster. The thing is, there’s no combination of settings that leads to Jedi: Survivor producing a consistent frame rate due to how the game makes use of your system’s processor and available VRAM. Even players with RTX 4090 GPUs reported poor framerates at launch.

Adding to the performance issues is Jedi: Survivor’s status as an AMD-sponsored title. The game supports AMD’s FSR upscaling technology, but not DLSS and XESS. While it’s true you can use FSR with NVIDIA and Intel GPUs, Jedi: Survivor’s implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Even set to the “Quality” setting, the tech introduces distracting artifacts that take away from the game’s otherwise compelling presentation. FSR also does little to nothing to improve your framerate since the game is so CPU limited.

And then you have Jedi: Survivor’s settings menu. In short, the game features one of the least helpful settings menus I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s not properly coded for mouse navigation; none of the graphical options come with an explanation of what they do; and the game doesn’t even offer a hint of what kind of performance impact you can expect from tweaking specific settings. But the worst offender is Jedi: Survivor’s ray tracing options – or should I say, option, singular. Unlike nearly every other modern PC release, Jedi: Survivor bundles all of its RT features into a single toggle, meaning you can’t use less expensive ones like ray-traced ambient occlusion on their own.

What makes all these issues so frustrating is that things don’t have to be this way. In 2023, it’s not a secret what makes a great PC port, and there are plenty of examples studios can look to for inspiration. For instance, having played God of War 2018 on PlayStation 4 Pro, PS5 and PC, I think there’s an easy argument to be made that the PC version is the definitive way to play that game. In the case of Respawn, the studio doesn’t even need to look that far for an example of how to build a great PC port. In 2016, it released Titanfall 2: to this day, one of the best games you can play on PC.

EA had been somewhat dismissive of player complaints, suggesting that only a “percentage” of PC players are experiencing performance issues, and that some of those issues are due to people using high-end CPUs with Windows 10. In any case, EA said Respawn was doing its best to fix the game.

Sure enough, on the Monday after Jedi: Survivor’s Friday release, Respawn released a patch that promised performance improvements. I found the update increased my average frame rates but did nothing to address the game’s stuttering. The latest patch, released partway through last week, was supposed to address that issue, but I find the game will still slow down when I enter new areas. Respawn has promised additional updates are on the way that will supposedly further improve performance.

So how did we get here, and, who, if anyone, is to blame for the state of PC ports in 2023? Those are questions I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few days. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.

From a technical standpoint, there’s a reason PC ports were more competent during the eighth generation of consoles than at almost any other time in the past: it was easy. Or, at least, easier. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One saw the switch to x86 processors that were effectively less-powerful versions of what PC gamers had in their towers. It was also one of the longest generations in recent memory. It’s only in the last year or so that we’ve seen publishers like EA abandon cross-gen releases in favor of current-gen exclusives. On PC, that stability meant you could get away with using your components for longer. I bought an Intel Core i5 6600K in 2015 and only upgraded in 2021 after Red Dead Redemption 2 was too much for that processor’s four-thread architecture.

With the transition to PS5 and Xbox Series X, more care and attention needs to be given to PC ports. Current consoles are laser-focused on gaming, and don’t need to run Windows in the background. Then there’s the fact that, for the first time in a long while, the average gaming PC isn’t as powerful as a current-gen console. If you don’t believe me, look at Steam’s most recent hardware survey. The most popular GPU is the nearly four-year-old GTX 1650. Moreover, six- and four-core processors make up the majority of CPUs in use by Steam players, with eight-core ones represented in less than 20 percent of all systems. Put all this together and it becomes obvious that lazy ports just won’t cut it anymore.

As more current-gen games are released and those titles take advantage of everything the PS5 and Xbox Series X have to offer, I think we’re going to see more shoddy PC ports.

But a technological shift is only one part of it. Publishers are not blameless in this. Two of the worst PC ports released this year, Jedi: Survivor and The Last of Us Part 1, were pushed back to give their developers more time for polish. In the case of Jedi: Survivor, Respawn specifically called out the game’s performance as one of the reasons for the delay. EA decided against further delaying the game, knowing full well the state of the product it was about to release. In fact, EA even warned fans the game was coming in hot, tweeting two days before Jedi: Survivor’s release that a day one patch was the first of many updates it had planned. The publisher said future patches would fix bugs, improve performance and add more accessibility features.

Unfortunately, it is now business as usual for publishers to release an unfinished game and promise to fix it later. And for the most part, they’re rewarded for doing so, because there’s nothing the gaming community loves more than a good redemption story. Think of a game like No Man’s Sky or, better yet, EA’s own Star Wars: Battlefront II and Battlefield 4. All three were poorly received at release, but after months and years of hard work from the studios that created them, they’re now highly regarded.

I wish I could say things will get better soon, but in the short term, I don’t think we’ll see many improvements. It’s not impossible for a studio to release a technically competent PC port, but it takes time, resources and a publisher willing to make a game’s PC fanbase a priority. A fundamental change in how game publishers do business is needed, and that will take time.

I’m never one to buy a product and then instantly pitch it our IRL strand, because I’m always worried that I’m still in the honeymoon period. I much prefer to use something that I’ve bought for months, or years, before I feel compelled to tell the world if it’s any good. But while I’ve had my Sage Creatista Plus for, now, just over a month, I already think it’s one of the better gadget purchases I’ve made in a while.

From 2011 to 2021, I didn’t really drink caffeinated tea or coffee, opting instead for green tea as my hot drink of choice. For many reasons, I was finding it harder to function in the morning, so I decided to make myself a single, at-home latte to start my day. Since I was out of practice, I just made my latte with a shot of instant coffee added to microwaved milk. After a while, however, I started to hunger for something that tasted a bit more like the real thing.

This March, I received a nice little £300 bonus in my wage packet, and thought it was high time I got myself a little Grown Up Treat. I started looking around for affordable bean-to-cup machines, devouring James Hoffman’s YouTube channel to look for his guidance. Hoffman, however, said that buying a bean-to-cup machine was going to become a hobby in itself, not ideal when I was looking for something more, not less, efficient than my current setup.

Since all I wanted was coffee with a little more flavor and some steamed milk in the morning, my friend urged me to try Nespresso. He said the convenience of a higher-quality drink (and he is a coffee snob) is worth the price, especially if you subscribe. And you could pick up an entry-level machine for either £150 at retail, or far less if you opt for a pod delivery subscription. To be fair to him, I did explore this possibility, but decided against it for two reasons.

First, I’m not a big fan of Nestle as a company given its fairly sordid history of controversial business practices. Its Wikipedia entry has 16 subheadings under the title “Controversies and Criticisms,” including the baby milk scandal, the use of slave and child labor and the union busting. In my mind, it’s second only to Coca-Cola and Uber on a list of companies I won’t buy from unless there’s no feasible alternative.

And then there’s the issues around the creation, consumption and recycling of the aluminum pods. Making them for a single-use purpose seems massively wasteful when you look at the energy cost involved to produce, ship and recycle them. And there are plenty of reports saying that only a fraction of the pods purchased and used are even sent back to be reused.

But after a long session inside an internet rabbit-hole, I did learn that you could swerve paying Nestle almost entirely. It was news to me to learn that there’s a whole world of third-party companies that make pods compatible with Nespresso machines. And many of those are made from plant materials that are compostable, and can be recycled in your household food waste.

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

So I took a look at some machines, and knowing that James Hoffman always spoke highly of Sage / Breville’s hardware, examined those pretty closely. Its Creatista series looks less like a futuristic pod-meal machine and a bit more like a real coffee machine, which helped. And I was on the hunt for a model with its own steam wand, because while I could use a standalone milk frother, I didn’t want to buy two appliances if one could do the job.

As I said, the Creatista and its Plus-named sibling are functionally identical, but the Plus has a more professional stainless-steel alloy look. I’m not particularly obsessed with one aesthetique but, I figured, I’m 38, damnit, if I want a fancy coffee machine, nobody can judge me. (It’s also pleasingly narrow, which enabled me to slide it into an otherwise-empty space on my cramped kitchen countertop.)

But there was no way that I was going to spend north of £400 for one, and so for a few days, I decided to abandon the plan. That was until I realized that European second hand gadget marketplace BackMarket has a dedicated section for refurbished coffee machines. A British company had a refurbished, nearly-new Creatista Plus for £249.99, a much easier pill to swallow. Especially since I wasn’t so much dipping a toe into this world as the whole foot and hoping for the best.

Rather than press buy, however, I decided to see if that same company was offering its wares on other sites for less, and it turns out that it was on eBay. The same eBay that had sent me a 20-percent off voucher that I’d forgotten all about until a menu item on the listing asked if I wanted to knock some cash off the price. That took the product down to £179.99, not much more than a low-end Nespresso machine, and an offer I quite literally couldn’t refuse.

Beyond the aesthetique, there’s a lot to love about the Creatista Plus, including being able to program in your settings for the perfect latte. A small display and push-down crown lets you select your coffee shot volume, milk temperature and froth level. Now, rather than microwaving my milk, I can just put my cup under the coffee nozzle, pour milk into the steamer jug, press the button and let it do its thing. (Well, in part – you have to come back to activate the milk frother once the coffee shot has been poured.) I like the fact that it’s very easy to clean, too, and the steam wand will purge itself after every use, so that I’m not getting nervous about built-up gunk.

And the end result is far better coffee than the stuff I’d been willingly slurping down for the previous two years. It may not hold a candle to a proper Barista-made cup, but it’s more than enough for me to start my day. The fact I was able to do so cheaply, buying a nice refurbished model and avoiding giving any money to Nestle at the same time isn’t a bad thing either.

After previewing new verification features last month, LinkedIn is now rolling them out to give job-seekers confidence that they're dealing with real companies and jobs. At the same time, the work-oriented social media site has introduced warnings for messages that may look like scams. The latter feature arrives amidst a spate of fake accounts on the site, according to LinkedIn's latest transparency report. 

The first type of verification tool is related to job postings, displaying information about the posters and their companies. For instance, it can display verifications for a company page and job poster work email, and whether their government ID was verified by CLEAR, the same company that gets people to the front of security lines and airports and other venues. 

LinkedIn

"When you see verifications on job posts, that means there is information that has been verified as authentic by the job poster, LinkedIn or one of our partners," the company wrote in a blog post. Verifying with CLEAR is free but requires sharing a US phone number and government ID. You can also confirm your employer via a verification code sent to your company email address, and some users can verify both their identity and employer via Microsoft Entra, for companies enrolled in the program. 

LinkedIn pointed out that it recently launched the About This Profile feature to show when a profile was created and last updated, and whether it has a verified phone number and/or work email associated with the account. The aim is to flush out fake accounts, but LinkedIn is also rolling out new messages that warn users about high-risk content. 

LinkedIn

"We now also alert you if messages on LinkedIn include high-risk content that could impact your security. For example, we will alert you if a message asks you to take the conversation to another platform, as that can sometimes be a sign of a scam. If something doesn’t feel right, these warnings will also give you the choice to report the content without letting the sender know," the company wrote. 

The new features arrive in the wake of LinkedIn's latest transparency report, which showed a large increase in scam accounts. Between July and December 2022, the company blocked more than 58 million accounts, up from 22 million in the previous six months. LinkedIn is even seeing profiles with fake photos created by AI, something it wrote about last year. Though it said its new "deep-learning-based model proactively checks profile photo uploads to determine if the image is AI-generated," a recent study identified over 1,000 active profiles using AI-generated photos, The Financial Times reported. 

LinkedIn noted that verifications on job posting have just started rolling out, so while you may not see them yet, the tools will be more prevalent as the company expands access. In the meantime, it recommends you check out its tips on how to spot and avoid suspicious job postings. 

Square Enix wants a hit Final Fantasy game that’s just as popular as any game in the storied history. It’s taken seven years to get from the tepidly-received Final Fantasy XV to Final Fantasy XVI, and the company continues to wrestle with what a FF game is in 2023.

The company courted nostalgia with FF7 Remake (and the Pixel Remaster series). At the same time, its MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV, continues to be a huge success – but what about the prestige title? It has a plan, and it involves giant-summoned monster battles with different styles of play, a single controllable protagonist with guest-star allies, a support dog that grows up with you, horny antagonists, wicked moms and several bleak plot twists to help establish the plot and characters relatively early on. I won’t spoil the story much, but the early segment covers warring nations, vicious family dynamics, slavery and more. I spent six hours playing through the game's opening chapters, and thought: This plan might work. Although heavy in battle tutorials, the opening of the game does a good job of teasing the narrative beats and major players, which is crucial not only to JRPGs like Final Fantasy, but to modern games in general. It’s just a shame the main character is called Clive.

I played some early chapters, which focused on the childhood years of Clive, flanked by his younger, ailing brother, Joshua, who was chosen to house the power of the Phoenix (giant mythical flaming bird, usually wielding healing powers in Final Fantasy lore). This is the game’s first example of an Eikon; magical summoned beasts that seem to live through their wielder, passed on through lineage and seemingly the cause of uneasy peace between nations. Each is assigned to an elemental beat of a fantasy RPG.

During the demo, I got to see roughly six Eikons in action. Sometimes they were going toe-to-toe. Other times, their human host channeled them for upgraded moves and damage. I particularly enjoyed the opening beats of Clive’s adulthood chapter, where you’re forced to navigate a cliffside as Shiva and Titan hurled giant glaciers and boulders at each other. I caught a glimpse (or fought with) beasts representing fire, ice, earth, lightning and wind. However, as you’ve probably gleaned from the teasers and snippets up until now, Ifrit, another fire-based beast, is setting things aflame. That’s not allowed, apparently. Why? I do not know.

Blessings from these Eikons form the basis of Clive’s skills and magic. Equipped with “a blessing from Phoenix” (his brother), the protagonist starts with sword skills, including lifting, rushing, and elemental attacks. Square Enix claims this is the first fully-fledged action RPG in Final Fantasy history, and it doesn’t play like any of its predecessors.

Square Enix

There is no menu. All your items and attacks are done through button combinations and assigned shortcuts, with some degree of customization. I had my doubts from Final Fantasy XV, but Clive proves to be surprisingly agile and most battles were fluid and, honestly, exciting.

While allowing you to swap between enemies, the battle system shines brightest when you’re pitted against big solo enemies or boss fights. As soon as multiple enemies are dashing around, and the camera’s spinning, it’s a bit chaotic – a lot like Forspoken, another game from Square Enix.

Like Forspoken, there’s a smoothness and style to combat here that comes as more moves and skills are added. Clive can switch between Eikon-based movesets, not only differentiated by elemental attributes but by playstyle, too. For example, earth-based Titan attacks offer up a shield and counter system, while wind-based skills manipulate the distance between you and each enemy. If you can counter, or make a well-timed dodge in battle, you’ll be rewarded with a star. At the end of the fight, those stars will translate to battle spoils: extra accessories, items and resources.

My demo was almost exclusively controlling the heroically named Clive. However, there are support actions you can trigger from the d-pad, which directs your faithful hound, Torgal, to heal, strike or distract enemies. I also briefly fought alongside allies, but there didn’t seem to be any way to guide their behavior.

As you’ve probably seen teased in several trailers, FFXVI offers up different styles of battles when giant Eikons go head to head, razing castles, literally creating canyons and glaciers. Sometimes these played like rhythm action games, carefully timed evasions and attacks, while another was like an on-the-rails shooter. Hopefully, this variety spreads across the entire game.

Beyond the Eikon battles, all ofthe boss fights are where this system shines most. And if you’re wary of the notion of a live-action Final Fantasy, the game does feature an intelligent way to make the game more accessible through special accessories.Some of these will auto-heal you (if you have the potions for it) while others can widen the timing window for counters and parries. These offer a way to tailor the game to keep it challenging but avoid difficulty walls – and there were a few even in this early demo.

Outside the fights and the main campaign, there were hints of fetch quest horror, but the ones included in my demo were blissfully nearby, working more to show where to get your supplies and do more lore-building – which is what side quests should do. Still, there wasn’t anything reaching Witcher 3 levels of side quest hell just yet.

Square Enix

Another feature introduced in FFXVI is Active Time Lore (a play on Active Time Battle, the turn-based battle system of older FF games). Here, you can pause during the game and cutscenes and dive into who’s talking, where they’re from and even the region you’re in. It’s a fantastic way of transmitting the plot and everything without overwhelming the player – it reminds me of the X-ray feature on Amazon Prime Video.

FFXVI producer Naoki Yoshida has pointed out that he sees the latest entry as heavily inspired by the likes of God of War, mentioning both the books and TV show Game of Thrones in the same interview. There’s a lot of the latter here. Also, I think this is the first time I’ve seen Final Fantasy characters show… lust? There are some horny people here and for once it’s not tongue-in-cheek, so to speak. So far, this appears to be a different kind of game – I’m intrigued to see how the whole thing turns out. Square Enix has added that it'll be launching a demo featuring the opening beats of the game ahead of its release.

Final Fantasy XVI launches on 22nd June 2023.

Square Enix noted this was a special preview build of the game built for press. Content may differ from the final version.

Good news for parents with teens: Venmo is rolling out what it calls Venmo Teen Accounts. This lets parents create accounts for minors aged 13 to 17. It comes with a Venmo Teen Debit Card, which gives parents or guardians an insight into spending, lets them send money and allows them to manage privacy settings.

According to Venmo, over 50 percent of parents are interested in using apps to help their children learn about money. The company also claims that over 45 percent of Gen Z want to have a conversation with an adult about managing personal finances. The Venmo Teen Account should hopefully bridge that gap for many parents or guardians out there.

Venmo says that the Venmo Teen Account has no monthly fees and that the debit card will have no-fee cash withdrawals at ATMs. Of course, the account will be able to send and receive money from family and friends. Parents and guardians will be able to see friends list, transaction history, account balance, and be able to manage the debit card’s PIN, lock and unlock it and block users from interacting with the account.

And since it’s separate from the parent or guardian’s account, teens will be able to independently track their own spending and learn financial responsibility. Venmo says that teen accounts will be eligible for direct deposit, which is great for those with part-time jobs.

Signing up for a teen account is pretty straightforward. Parents or guardians will need to sign into their personal Venmo account and tap Me > (Your Name) > Create a teen account. From there, you’ll need to add a name, address, and date of birth, and choose a debit card style from a selection of a few colors.

Venmo Teen Accounts will be rolling out to select users in June of 2023 and will be available on a wider scale in the weeks following.

Meta has long been rumored to be building a platform to rival Twitter. After months of speculation, there are finally some details on how it might turn out, according to digital media marketing expert Lia Haberman, who has heard about the app through content creators approached by Meta.

Haberman says the app could launch as early as the end of June, branded as Instagram’s text-based spin-off. The decentralized app is said to work with current Instagram parameters, like usernames and passwords. So if you already have an Instagram account, you should be able to sign right up and automatically sync with your current followers. Your handle, bio and verification should all carry over from IG. Haberman says even blocked Instagram accounts and hidden words transfer to the new platform.

It appears to be very Twitter-like, with its own versions of likes, replies and reposts.

– Mat Smith

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