Embracer Group’s undoing of their catastrophic multiple-year acquisition spree continues with the sale of Cryptic Studios and Arc Games, respectively the developers and publishers of Star Trek Online and Neverwinter.
The creator of the original Thomas the Tank Engine mod for Skyrim has now put Thomas in Morrowind, apparently in defiance of legal pressure from Mattel.
Really Useful Cliffracers, a recently released mod for Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, replaces cliff racers (flying creatures found in Vvardenfell) with Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s the work of modding superstar Trainwiz, who created the infamous 2013 Thomas the Tank Engine mod for Skyrim that spawned a meme that endures to this day.
Recent comments from Trainwiz both on Nexus Mods and social media suggest that Thomas the Tank Engine owner Mattel has applied legal pressure, but Trainwiz has modded Thomas into Morrowind anyway.
“I made a mod that replaces cliffracers with Thomas the Tank Engine,” Trainwiz wrote on the Nexus Mods page for Really Useful Cliffracers. “I am incapable of learning lessons whenever it involves corporations, because I fundamentally do not view toy company CEOs or media CEOs as people.”
Trainwiz continued:
“In between working on my game and dying of various accidental injuries, I sometimes feel like I need to milk a particular joke until its inevitable demise. I will do this no matter how many legal threats, actual threats, black vans with the Mattel logo on them, or severed Barbie heads are mailed to me.
“This is because I have issues with authority, particularly authority derived from intimidation. I kicked a lot of bullies in the nuts when I was a kid.”
Trainwiz’s BlueSky bio also contains a message on this issue:
Modder, game developer. Made that horrible, horrible mod that replaces dragons with Thomas the Tank Engine. Personally wielded the javelin that killed god. Mattel is constantly out to kill me.
But why release Really Useful Cliffracers now? Also from its Nexus Mods page, Trainwiz explained: “I actually made this years ago but never released it, but then I realized that I don’t particularly care anymore.”
Reading between the lines, Trainwiz is saying Mattel’s lawyers have taken issue with his Thomas the Tank Engine mods over the years, although we don’t know how recently and in what form. What is clear is that Bethesda has given Trainwiz its seal of approval. It even published an interview with him back in 2016, shining a light on the locomotion-related mods he had created for the developer’s games.
Trainwiz was later interviewed by The Face, in 2019. “To be honest, the whole thing was spontaneous,” he said of the creation of his original Skyrim mod. “A friend of mine gave me some Thomas models he had ripped from a crappy iPhone game and asked me what I could do with them, so I spent half an hour replacing dragons. I read the books as a kid, but hadn’t really even thought about the whole thing in years. It was just ’what would be the funniest thing at the time?’.”
In that interview, he also touched on potential legal action as a result of his work. “I got in so much trouble,” he revealed. “Mattel pretty much want me dead at this point — it’s the reason why the Fallout 4 mod can’t be found on any normal website.”
In the same interview, The Face said Mattel had “unleashed its lawyers” following circulation of Trainwiz’s Skyrim mod on YouTube. “It was some intermediary law firm based out of Macedonia, saying how I diminished the brand of Thomas by showing him blowing up (nothing about him violently murdering people),” Trainwiz said. “They issued takedown notices on the videos for it. The first time it got taken down. The second time YouTube told them it was covered under parody law, with no prompting from me. So that was nice.”
For now, Trainwiz’s Thomas the Tank Engine mod for Skyrim and now Morrowind remain online, and the scourge of one of gaming’s most famous memes continues.
If you’re hunting for the best offers this week, we’re actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Warframe devs Digital Extremes have launched a Founders program for their faded dark fantasy action-RPG Soulframe. This means that you can now pay to get access to the work-in-progress game, rather than signing up for a chance of a free code. What’s more, you can now wishlist it on Steam ahead of the eventual final release, inasmuch as a steadily updated gameworld like this ever reaches completion. There are always more layers to the setting, and more rad shoulderpads to unearth from the depths.
A PC version of Death Stranding 2 looks set for an announcement soon, after a listing for the game was spotted on the Entertainment Software Rating Board website.
Gematsu reported that the publisher listed on the PC rating for Death Stranding 2 is Sony Interactive Entertainment. The PC version of the first Death Stranding game, which arrived eight months after the PlayStation 4 release, was 505 Games.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach launched exclusively on PlayStation 5 in June this year, so we could be set for a similar timeframe for the expected PC version, or perhaps a little sooner this time. Perhaps the port will be announced at next month’s The Game Awards.
Death Stranding launched on PS4 in November 2019, then hit PC in July 2020. The Director’s Cut came out on PS5 in September 2021, with a PC version following in March 2022. Mobile versions followed, as did a version for Xbox Series X and S in November 2024.
IGN’s Death Stranding 2 review returned a 9/10. We said: “Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a triumphant sequel that emphatically delivers on the promise of its original.”
It’s a busy time for developer Hideo Kojima and the world of Death Stranding. Earlier this month, an all-new original animated series based on Death Stranding was announced for Disney+. Death Stranding Isolations’ story will be told through “a traditional, hand-drawn 2D animation style,” with some of Japan’s top “animation talent at E&H production […] working to bring the series to life.”
Elsewhere, there’s a Death Stranding live-action movie in the works, which Kojima and director Michael Sarnoski have confirmed will tell a new story instead of retelling the events of the games. In other words, those hoping to see some of Death Stranding’s real-life movie stars reprise their roles for the live-action film may be out of luck. There’s also a separate Death Stranding animated film called Death Stranding: Mosquito.
And away from Death Stranding, Kojima is busy working on a number of new projects, including horror game OD for Xbox Game Studios. He revealed the first trailer for it last month, sparking speculation that it is connected to P.T. in some way. The mysterious game will star Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Sophia Lillis and Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer, with the trailer showcasing Lillis’ character in a spooky house, lighting candles before meeting a malevolent figure.
And then there’s Physint, the upcoming PlayStation action-espionage video game often described as a spiritual successor to the Metal Gear series.
If you’re hunting for the best offers this week, we’re actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach has been listed for PC, bringing closer the moment in which you and I can learn why exactly Troy Baker is a glam rocker, why Mad Max director George Miller (it’s not actually him) has a cat demon, and why Turkish-German screenwriter Fatih Akin has become a living doll. Sony have yet to announce the PC version of Hideo Kojima’s open world courier fantasy or give it a release date, but the Entertainment Software Rating Board have a page up now. Go on, Sony – call them liar liar, pants on fire.
Growing the garden.
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted didn’t get off to the best start when it launched on the Switch and Switch 2 in October, but the development team at PopCap Studios has been working around the clock to squash all of the bugs and improve the title with all sorts of updates.
If you’re having trouble keeping up with the successive updates, the studio has now put out a handy blog post of the title’s first month in the garden. This basically sums up the major updates and “what’s bloomed” since the game’s launch – detailing what the team has been able to fix, polish and improve. Here’s the full rundown:
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
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I’m relatively new to the Mount and Blade series and its medieval warlord roleplaying in a siege-heavy sandbox. That said, it’s not taken me long to find its rhythm. The world is a constantly bubbling cauldron of small skirmishes and big battles. The nations that dot the continent of Calradia throw untold numbers of bodies at their neighbours with the goal of expanding their land. It’s an orgy of violence that’s often charming in the ways it can be slightly wooden or how you can feel the combat simulation creak under the weight of swordsmen you’re trying to sic on a settlement or castle wall.
Follow these steps to see it.
Alongside the return of multiple retro games today, Nintendo has rolled out a new update for the Game Boy app on the Switch and Switch 2, bumping it up to Version 3.0.0.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
A handful of fun Lord of the Rings board games are on sale at Amazon as part of its Black Friday sale. Most of these are Amazon Lightning Deals, meaning they’re only available while supplies last. You can save between 15% and 30%, depending on the game you pick, and they vary in play style from hours-long campaign style games to shorter sessions for a quick game night.
Risk: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Edition is a classic with an iconic skin. This version of the popular board game comes with maps of Middle-Earth locations like Gondor, Mordor, and more, making you feel like you’re actually doing battle with hordes of orcs. There’s also The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth card game and the Spreading War Expansion, two very in-depth campaign games that’ll definitely make you lose a few hours.
For a little quicker and lighter, the Duel For Middle-Earth strategy game has players choose between the Fellowship or Sauron in an epic battle that only takes about 30 minutes to complete. In our hands-on review of the game, we said “Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth deserves to be lauded for presenting such an exciting and varied game off the back of such an accessible setup.”
I’d also recommend the Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking game we reviewed earlier this year. This roughly 20-minute experience takes you through the story of the first book, using cards to either progress or avoid peril. In our hands-on review we mentioned “Its simple rules and working together gameplay make it great for families, but its twists on the trick-taking formula and storytelling beats make it deserve a much wider audience.”
Whichever game you decide to try out, it will offer plenty of replayability for dozens of hours of board gaming.
If you’re not that into board games, we also have a detailed Lord of the Rings gift guide to look through, perfect for holiday shopping for that special Middle-Earth fan in your life. We cover everything from LEGO sets and Magic: The Gathering cards, to jigsaw puzzles and the massive Deluxe Illustrated Editions of all the books. Or if you’re looking for something a little different, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy Soundtrack on vinyl is part of the Amazon’s popular buy 2, get 1 free deal on vinyl and CD’s, books, movies, and more.
Myles Obenza is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Bluesky @mylesobenza.bsky.social.
Battletoads, Kid Icarus and more!
If you’ve been wondering what’s next for the Switch Online’s ‘Nintendo Classics’ service, the November update is now available.
This latest update includes NES and Game Boy titles, with a total of four more games added to the service today. On the NES, there’s Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos and Battletoads, and on the Game Boy, retro enthusiasts can look forward to Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters and Bionic Commando.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
