This article contains some spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3.
So, HBO is turning Baldur’s Gate into a TV show. On its own, that’s quite an exciting proposition: a big-budget, live-action series set in Dungeons & Dragons’ most iconic city? Yes please. But the project’s announcement, which came courtesy of Deadline, contains a line that immediately had me burying my head in my hands.
“The Baldur’s Gate TV series will be a continuation to the games,” says the report, “telling a story that takes place immediately after the events of Baldur’s Gate 3, as the characters — old and new — are dealing with the ramifications of the events in the third game.”
The ramifications of what events, exactly? The defeat of the Netherbrain? Or perhaps the enslavement of it in the name of the Absolute? Or Gale’s choice to turn into a magical nuclear bomb, sacrificing himself to save the city? These are just three of the many ways Baldur’s Gate 3 can end, and that’s before we consider the dozens and dozens of choices that you make on the way to that conclusion. There are approximately 17,000 variations of the game’s final cutscene. How could a TV show possibly “deal with the ramifications of the events of the third game” when every single player has their own version of events?
The answer, of course, is that showrunner Craig Mazin must decide what choices are “canon.” One half of the duo behind The Last of Us’ HBO adaptation must now set certain events in stone in order to create a baseline to build his story upon. But to decide upon a canon series of events for Baldur’s Gate 3 is not the same as, for instance, determining which of Mass Effect 3’s trio of concluding options would be the starting point for what comes next. It’s not a simple case of how the story ends, but everything that happened on the 100-hour journey up until that point, too.
The entire picture of Baldur’s Gate 3, the story any one player lived, is the result of hundreds of decisions, ranging from the tactical to the emotional to the completely unaware. For some, Minsc and his miniature space hamster, Boo, are vital parts of the story. Yet many won’t even know who he is, having passed by and never recruited him to their party. There are those for whom Shadowheart’s escape from the Church of Shar is a defining moment, yet others will have found an equally defining pathway in encouraging her to embrace the dark goddess. And for those players of a more chaotic leaning, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the tale of an unstoppable serial killer that greedily succumbs to their own Dark Urge, tearing limbs off wizards and letting goblins slaughter refugees. The game is less a single story with a handful of different outcomes, and more like hundreds of character threads that are entwined like rope. A rope that grows thicker and longer with every romance (steady now), argument, betrayal, and surprise you experience. To unravel all that and find a single golden thread for television seems at best foolhardy, at worst impossible.
Anyone who wants a sequel to Baldur’s Gate 3 wants a follow-up to their own experience, not Craig Mazin’s.
None of this is to say that the show is guaranteed to be bad, or of poor quality. Considering Mazin’s prior work – in particular, Chernobyl – and HBO’s track record with fantasy programming, there’s every chance that Baldur’s Gate will be a fantastic show, at least when viewed in isolation. But it’s difficult to create that isolation when the project is explicitly a continuation of the journey so many of us undertook for hundreds, sometimes even thousands of hours. And because of Baldur’s Gate 3’s unrivalled branching RPG design, we have all become deeply attached to our own versions of this world and its characters.
It should be said that details of how the show will be structured are still incredibly thin. It will feature a group of new protagonists, so we don’t know to what extent the now-famous party of heroes and antiheroes that make up Baldur’s Gate 3 cast will feature. By being a “continuation to the games”, could it merely exist in a world where the Netherbrain once existed, and tales of heroes’ journeys to defeat it are muttered in the city’s streets like mythical tales? Or will meetings with the likes of Wyll, Astarion, Lae’zel be little more than fleeting encounters, kept somewhat shapeless in an effort to remain relevant to most players’ memories of them? It creates a dilemma: purposefully keep things vague and potentially undercook the history of this world, or pick a defined canon that could alienate large portions of your viewership?
Television adaptations are, of course, designed with more than one eye on wider markets. HBO wants people who have never played Baldur’s Gate 3 to become invested in its world. But that begs the question: why a direct sequel? Why take place immediately after a story that a portion of your audience has no investment in? If half your audience has no attachment to those events, and the other half will almost certainly have experienced a different version of the events you’re building upon, who is winning here? Anyone who does want a sequel wants a follow-up to their own experience, not Craig Mazin’s.
Baldur’s Gate won’t be the first show to tackle this problem. Just this year, the second season of Fallout told a story set after the events of Fallout: New Vegas, an RPG that also concludes with a number of very different, world-defining options. But Fallout has made a number of smart choices. Firstly, it’s not a sequel to the game; it’s just set in the same universe, and thus isn’t trying to continue the plot of New Vegas. Secondly, it’s set over a decade later, and purposefully leaves the events during that time a complete mystery. And so the show’s depiction of the game’s characters and factions doesn’t have to join the dots. Did you hand the Vegas Strip to the Legion in your playthrough? Well, in the 15 years since, they’ve succumbed to infighting and have fallen from their mighty position. You don’t need to know how it happened, it just did.
Using this method, Fallout (sort of) successfully ensures no one New Vegas ending is cemented as canon. Every outcome could have happened, but the result of your choices may not have endured for the 15 years between the game and the show. Larian Studios, the developer of Baldur’s Gate 3, understood the benefit of this kind of time gap; its gargantuan RPG is set more than a century after the events of its predecessor, ensuring it’s not restricted by the conclusion of Baldur’s Gate 2 and has space to create its own story. By starting immediately after the events of BG3, the show won’t have this luxury. It has to make a choice. It has to invalidate thousands of playthroughs. It can’t be the sequel to your experience of Baldur’s Gate 3.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The real lesson to learn from Fallout is that video game adaptations thrive best when they are decoupled from existing stories. So the big question is, why is this not just a Dungeons & Dragons show? You can set a D&D show in Baldur’s Gate. You can call a D&D show “Baldur’s Gate”. You can even include characters and reference (certain) events from Baldur’s Gate 3. But to purposefully shackle yourself to continuing the story of that game, rather than freely exploring its world, feels like purposefully rolling a critical fail on the first round of combat.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.
It turns out the “Mal Reynolds” who issued Steam game Void War with a DMCA takedown was not a troll who also happened to be a huge fan of Firefly. It was actually Warhammer 40,000 owner Games Workshop, which took issue with an image of a shoulder pad.
Last month, IGN reported on Void War, a strategy game dubbed ‘FTL in a Warhammer 40,000 skin,’ after it was pulled from Steam. At the time, its developer, Tundra Interactive, suggested it may have been on the receiving end of a nuisance DMCA takedown from a troll claiming to be Games Workshop.
Void War is often compared to both indie darling FTL and Warhammer 40,000, Games Workshop’s tabletop wargame set in the grim darkness of the far future — and it’s easy to see why. The gameplay looks incredibly similar to Subset Games’ hugely popular 2012 ‘spaceship simulation roguelike-like,’ and the aesthetic is very Warhammer 40,000. The voidships look like Imperial Navy Vessels. Some of the characters look like Space Marines. There’s an actual Psyker that’s called a Psyker. There are “Imperial Shrineworlds.” There’s even a mention of “Imperial astrogation authorities.”
Following the takedown, IGN asked Tundra Interactive for comment, and it responded with something quite unusual. It said that it had received a takedown notice from Valve stating that Games Workshop itself had claimed copyright infringement. But here’s what made this one odd: the claiming information came from Games Workshop’s public-facing infringements inbox and the name “Mal Reynolds.”
Mal Reynolds is a name that will be instantly familiar to Firefly / Serenity fans, because that’s the name of the main character, played by Nathan Fillion, in the beloved but short-lived sci-fi show. At the time, it was thought that it was unlikely that Games Workshop would have someone on its books named Mal Reynolds. But, well, it turns out Games Workshop really was behind the takedown, according to Tundra Interactive.
Tundra Interactive told IGN that Games Workshop eventually replied to the developer to confirm it was their notice, and that the concern was limited to a specific shot from one of the trailers on the Steam store page that it said could give the impression that Void War was associated with Games Workshop. The company specified that the element in question was “the oversized convex shoulder pads with a metallic rim.” And, well, yeah, that Void War trailer did indeed have an image of a character who looked a lot like a Space Marine, complete with “oversized convex shoulder pads with a metallic rim.”
Tundra Interactive told IGN that it disagreed with Games Workshop’s assessment here, but in order to get Void War back on Steam and to avoid a drawn out DMCA fight, it pulled the trailer. It may re-upload it in the future after making an adjustment, but its priority is getting back to work on Void War, the developer insisted. And, to that end, Void War is now back on Steam.
Here’s Tundra Interactive’s statement in full to IGN:
To recap, the initial takedown was triggered by a DMCA notice attributed to Games Workshop. At the time, we could not independently verify the submitter beyond the name and contact email Valve included. The contact email was GW’s public infringements inbox, and the name listed was “Mal Reynolds,” which is also a fictional character from the sci-fi TV show Firefly.
After over a week of no response, Games Workshop eventually replied to our email and confirmed the notice was theirs. They said their concern was limited to a specific shot from one of the trailers on the store page, arguing that certain elements could create the mistaken impression that Void War is associated with Games Workshop, specifically what they described as “the oversized convex shoulder pads with a metallic rim.”
All of the artwork in the trailer is original work created by our artists. While we disagree with their assessment, the simplest way to get the game back up and avoid getting bogged down in DMCA process was to remove that trailer and move on. We may re-upload an updated version later after we find time to adjust that shot, but for now our priority is shipping content and finishing multi-language font support so we can finally deliver proper translations.
Thanks for your patience, and thank you for the overwhelming support. o7 commanders.
All’s well that ends well? Perhaps. Certainly this case shows that Games Workshop and “Mal Reynolds,” who I’d love to meet one day, are keeping a close eye on video game characters and their shoulder pads. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise, given Games Workshop’s history of stringent IP protection. Be warned! The Inquisition is always watching.
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.
Resident Evil: Requiem is just a couple of weeks away, and while the first few trailers definitely made it look like a beautiful game, the Switch 2 trailer that debuted earlier this week, well, didn’t. But, the way I see it, that’s excellent news, especially for anyone on a budget gaming PC.
Ever since the RE Engine came to prominence starting with Resident Evil: Biohazard, Capcom has been impressing me with just how good it can make games look, without making them too demanding. Now, obviously, I haven’t had the chance to test Resident Evil: Requiem performance yet myself, but just looking at both the system requirements and the Switch 2 trailer, it seems like Capcom is continuing this trend.
Capcom hasn’t revealed what resolution and settings either of these spec sheets are targeting, but even if that recommended build is just for 1080p Ultra at 60 fps, the Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and Radeon RX 6600 are very attainable graphics cards. That’s not to mention only requiring a Core i7-8700 or Ryzen 5 5500 and 16GB of RAM, which is a very low bar to clear.
What Kind of Performance Can I Expect?
Again, because Capcom hasn’t revealed any specific settings that the system requirements are targeting, I can’t say for sure, but from my time testing Resident Evil Village for TechRadar when it came out, I was able to get nearly 60 fps at 4K with an RTX 3060 – and the 3060 is very much not a 4K graphics card.
However, it’s important to note that the requirements for Requiem are a bit heavier than they were for Village. The biggest difference is that instead of asking for a Radeon RX 5700 or a GTX 1070 for Village, Requiem is asking for an RTX 2060 Super or a Radeon RX 6600. And while the performance gap between these graphics cards isn’t huge on its own, the key difference is that Requiem is recommending a ray tracing-capable GPU – Village didn’t.
That makes a lot of sense, given the visual quality of some of the trailers that have come out for the game, but it may leave some folks with older GPUs out in the cold. It’s very likely that with an older non-RT GPU, the game will look a lot like the Nintendo Switch 2 footage. The bright side here, though, is that the GTX 1660 and Radeon RX 5500 XT sneak in the minimum specs, so you’ll still be able to play the game, it just might not look too great.
The Nintendo Switch 2 Equivalent
It’s important to highlight that the Nintendo Switch 2 is able to run Resident Evil: Requiem, even if it wouldn’t quite meet the system requirements if it were a PC. The Tegra T239 SoC in the handheld is roughly the equivalent of a mobile RTX 3050 – which is weaker than the desktop-class GTX 1660 Capcom is requiring. I wouldn’t get too caught up in this detail, though.
Primarily, that’s because the Nintendo Switch 2 is a console and every single unit will be running the exact same hardware. That means when Capcom was porting Resident Evil: Requiem over to the Switch 2, it was able to fine-tune the build to the exact hardware, likely finding optimizations that wouldn’t be there for the PC version.
Still, just going by the Switch 2 trailer earlier this week, it does seem like Capcom just barely managed to squeeze the game onto the handheld. But even if it is rough, I’m looking forward to seeing just how well it runs on the Nintendo console.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
The director of Yakuza 3 Kiwami + Dark Ties has broken his silence on Ryo Ga Gotoku Studio’s controversial hiring of Teruyuki Kagawa to play Goh Hamazaki, saying they needed someone who would make audiences think, “This guy’s a creep.”
This comes from an interview with Horii conducted by Japanese outlet GAME Watch, and independently translated by IGN. In the interview, Horii is asked directly about the decision to recast certain characters in Kiwami from their original Japanese actors. His general response as to why he recast both Hamazaki and Rikiya Shimabukuro is that while it would “certainly be safer not to recast them and avoid online criticism,” the studio “felt there was no use being afraid.”
Horii goes on to say that they based their decision on who they most wanted to see perform. When asked directly about Kagawa playing Hamazaki, this is what Horii had to say:
Hamazaki is a sleazy, persistent, and militant yakuza, right? Since he isn’t an explosive character like Kanda, when we tried to think of someone who makes you go, “This guy’s a creep,” naturally it was Kagawa – that was the main factor. Kagawa’s acting is fun to watch. Even when he’s chopping a pig’s feet off with a chef’s knife, it has a slimy feel. That feeling permeates his performance, so it brings a freshness to the scene and made it feel really fun.
Following the announcement of Kagawa’s casting, Yakuza fans reacted in anger on social media, getting #REMOVEKAGAWA trending on multiple networks and creating a Change.org petition that at the time of this writing has nearly 10,000 signatures. Fans have accused RGG Studio of suppressing the #REMOVEKAGAWA hashtag and deleting comments referencing the issue on its official Instagram page. And a number of them have pointed out that Sega has recast actors for offenses in the past – Pierre Taki was recast in Judgment back in 2019 after he was arrested for cocaine possesssion.
Up to this point, neither RGG Studio nor Sega has offered official comment on Kagawa’s casting, nor the accusations – Horii’s answer is the first statement that’s been offered on the subject. However, Sega did publish a trailer on its official YouTube after the wave of criticism, which introduced the Japanese voice cast and opened on a longer clip of Hamazaki. IGN reached out to Sega for additional comment ahead of this story, but did not hear back in time for publication.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Mobile games have existed for decades, but the market has grown immensely in recent years. So we decided it’s time to figure out which mobile game you think is the best of all time with a March Madness–style bracket, presented by our friends at McDonald’s and their limited-time Hot Honey sauce, which will make your faves more perfect.
The bracket is made up of 32 entries divided into two categories. On one side are classics like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Doodle Jump, and Candy Crush. On the other are modern hits like Genshin Impact, Balatro, Fortnite, and Roblox. But which game deserves to be crowned as the GOAT? Only you can tell us that.
The bracket will pit games against each other 1v1, with the winner of each matchup moving on to the next round. All the matchups in each round will be done at the same time, with voting conducted through polls on the bottom of the page you’re currently on as well as IGN’s Instagram stories. If you come back to this page on the dates listed below, the polls will be updated to the latest round and you can vote again.
The development team behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have been given the status of Knight under the French Order of Arts and Letters, in recognition of their significant contribution to the country’s art and culture.
French studio Sandfall Interactive revealed the news this week via a post on LinkedIn, which included photos of the proud team wearing medals bestowed upon them by the French Ministry of Culture.
While somewhat similar to a British knighthood, the French Order of Arts and Letters does not allow holders to add a “Sir” to their names. Still, it is prestigious form of recognition awarded to just 200 people worldwide each year, for their work creating something of outstanding cultural significance.
“From Expeditioners to Knights!” the team wrote in celebration of their latest prize. “We were received yesterday at the Ministry of Culture to celebrate our game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. As such, the members of Sandfall Interactive were awarded the Order of Arts and Letters.
“This distinction honors us, and our deepest thanks go especially to our team who shaped this world and to the millions of players who have brought it to life. We hope that our journey will inspire all those who wish to take the plunge and create their own work.”
Recognition by the French Ministry of Culture for work in the field of video games is rare, and for an entire studio of people to be recognized is completely unique.
The honor of Knight status was first bestowed upon a game creator back in 2006, when Rayman, Rabbids and Beyond Good & Evil designer Michel Ancel received the honor alongside Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto and Alone in the Dark creator Frederick Raynal. Nintendo’s veteran Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma was similarly honored in 2023, meanwhile.
“Wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 paints itself into the pantheon of great RPGs with a brilliant combat system and a gripping, harrowing story,” IGN wrote in our Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review, dubbing it a “modern RPG classic.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Insomniac Games, the developer behind PlayStation’s beloved Spider-Man games and the upcoming Wolverine, just dropped a teasing hint at another Marvel hero who fans now think is likely to appear.
In a post on Twitter/X, Insomniac Games shared an image of Wolverine extending his claws and turning to face… someone, alongside the caption: “‘Claws?’ What’s that, some kind of fancy lawyer lingo?”
The line is a fun pun on Wolverine’s blades, and the kind of clause a lawyer might include in a legal contract — but which lawyer? Well, Marvel fans will know there’s only one legal representative who’d likely seek out Wolverine when he’s in another one of his moods.
Of course, fans have immediately taken the tease to be a nod at the appearance of Daredevil, otherwise known as Matt Murdock, as played by Charlie Cox in the Daredevil TV series and a swathe of other projects in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Fans have long been expecting Daredevil to make an appearance in one of Insomniac’s Marvel games, too, after numerous references to the character in the developer’s Spider-Man titles.
A sign outside Nelson & Murdock’s office appeared in Spider-Man 1, and was noted by fans as having been removed in Spider-Man 2 and replaced by an eviction notice. A post-launch Spider-Man 2 patch then re-added the Nelson & Murdock sign, hinting at some kind of story for the character being in the offing — something the game’s director Bryan Intihar even commented on in late 2023, teasing: “Stay tuned.”
Further references to the character have teased Murdock and Jennifer Walters apparently starting a legal firm together, and included other Daredevil-themed locations such as Josie’s Bar and Fogwell’s Gym. Clearly, the character has been on Insomniac’s mind for some time — perhaps Wolverine is where we’ll finally see him?
As you would expect, replies to Insomniac’s latest post have immediately picked up on the studio’s apparent Daredevil hint, and responded with numerous gifs of Charlie Cox in his iconic red suit. Well, why not.
The Disney Afternoon Collection is getting its own physical version for Nintendo Switch 1 and 2 later this year. For eager fans who can’t wait to jump into it for a good nostalgia hit, preorders are now live for the collection on original Switch for $29.99 and on Switch 2 for $39.99. While there’s still a few months to go until its physical version is released – May 29 is when you’ll have to mark you calendars for – it looks like it’s well worth the wait.
This is quite the packed collection, and a welcome addition to the list of existing Disney games on Switch consoles. It comes with all six games from the original set that was released back in 2017 – DuckTales, DuckTales 2, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Darkwing Duck, and TaleSpin – alongside two bonus games: Bonkers and Goof Troop. That’s not all, though. It also comes with a nice variety of collectibles when you buy a physical copy of the game, which you can check out below.
Disney Afternoon Collection Bonus Items
Buying the physical version of Disney Afternoon Collection on Nintendo Switch also nets you two sticker sheets, three collectible cards, and eight retro milk caps. For fans, it looks like quite a delightful assortment to have alongside the game.
Games Included
Here’s a list of all the games included in this Switch and Switch 2 version of the collection:
DuckTales
DuckTales 2
Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2
Darkwing Duck
TaleSpin
Bonkers
Goof Troop
What Is The Disney Afternoon Collection?
The Disney Afternoon Collection originally released back in 2017 and included DuckTales, DuckTales 2, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2, Darkwing Duck, and TaleSpin. At the time, our review from IGN’s Samuel Claiborn said it “resurrects a few NES classics (and some not-so-classics) with a great rewind button.” This new release of the collection for both Nintendo Switch consoles adds in two bonus games alongside the original lineup: Bonkers and Goof Troop.
For the original games, it also includes some quality-of-life updates, and there are additional features included, such as a rewind feature. It also includes access to soundtracks, a behind-the-scenes gallery, along with boss rush and time attack modes.
Other Preorder Guides
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
There aren’t a ton of games that I’ve happily put more than 100 hours into as quickly as I have with Mewgenics. This feline-flavored, turn-based, roguelike tactical RPG takes place on a 10×10 grid, with mostly traditional classes like Fighter, Mage, Hunter, Tank, and Necromancer, among others. What sets it apart, aside from the cutesy macabre art style that slathers its creative zones with blood and poop, is that so many of the skills and attributes that your team will end up with are randomized and for the most part out of your control. That all but ensures no two runs will play out the same way, forcing you to improvise and play the hand you’re dealt. Combined with the absolute mountain of content here – so much that I’m still seeing entirely new enemies, skills, mutations, and loot pop up after more than 150 hours – it’s been able to draw me back in time and time again by dangling the possibility of an absolutely wild team coming together and bulldozing through the boss who turned my last party into kibble. I still haven’t seen the final ending after all that time (this game has several) but I can’t imagine I’ll be tired of it before I do.
Mewgenics is a game about cats, but it’s not necessarily going to appeal to people who passionately love them because it’s a dark comedy that treats them as meat to be put through a grinder. The name itself is a play on eugenics, a morally appalling practice of selective breeding that has historically led to things like forced sterilization to remove undesirable traits from the gene pool, so you know going in that it’s going to be a little spicy. If you’ve played any of Edmund McMillen’s previous work (here he’s collaborating once again with Tyler Glaiel), such as the infamously difficult Super Meat Boy or the infinitely replayable Binding of Isaac, you’ll have a sense of the type of humor to expect. It’s delightfully gross and endlessly weird at every turn.
It’s delightfully gross and endlessly weird at every turn.
Even knowing that, as a long-time cat owner myself, I was perhaps a bit too conservative with just how unsympathetic and detached you’re expected to be. I probably took longer than I should’ve to unlock crucial upgrades for my house because doing so requires shipping dozens of cats off to live with a set of goofy weirdo NPCs, never to be seen again. One of the most important and flamboyant, Tink, will only take newborn kittens, and in exchange he’ll give you tools that provide more information on how to breed more kittens – and he needs a lot, so you have to get accustomed to parting with them right away. Other characters want older cats, mutated cats, injured cats, or cats who’ve been on runs to specific places in order to improve stores or add new rooms to your house, among other things. Traditionally an RPG like this is about nurturing your characters and developing them until they become more powerful, but Mewgenics requires a different way of thinking: cats with low or unremarkable stats are lost causes who will weigh your squad down, so you’re best off spending them like currency and keeping only the picks of various litters.
Selectively breeding your cats takes place in the fairly simple house screen, a 2D side view where your cats chaotically mill around while you arrange furniture pieces that you find as loot or buy from a shop, inventory Tetris-style. The goal here is to improve stats like Stimulation and Comfort in order to get your cats in the mood to produce high-quality offspring and improve the chances they’ll come out with favorable mutations. Those can be things like a messed-up tail that makes their basic attacks inflict burning, or fur that gives them more health regen when they’re wet, or leech eyes, among tons and tons of others that are all represented visually on your increasingly weird-looking cats.
(You also have to clean up cat poop daily to keep your Health stat up by simply clicking on piles of various shapes and sizes. It’s a bit of a chore after a while, especially when it gets crowded and you have to move cats out of the way to get to it – somehow, of all the furniture items I’ve gathered, I’ve never seen a single litter box.)
When everything’s arranged to your liking, you hit the End Day button and your cats will choose their own mates based on who’s in a room with them, as well as their own genders, orientations (yup, there are gay and bisexual cats), and libedos. Then, out come the kittens after some bizarre cat humping and gooey birth animations that take obvious pleasure in being unsettling. (You can tone that down if you need it to be safe for work.) Optimizing this to produce the most powerful cats possible while also avoiding too much inbreeding (which, as Tink will tell you, isn’t cool even though it has the word “breeding” in it because it causes birth defects) is tricky – but you can’t really fail at this part because, even if you lose all your cats, you can just start again from scratch using the randomized strays who show up every day.
The real challenge is in finding the traits you want and ensuring they’re passed down to new generations without too many side effects, and that definitely takes some planning. Mewgenics doesn’t make it super easy, since there’s no way to view all your cats in a list or spreadsheet – you just have to tediously cycle through them one at a time. You do unlock some tools to label them (and view their gnarly family trees), but when you have 40 cats roaming around it can be a pain to find one with the stats and abilities you’re looking for when you go to put together a four-cat party (or fewer, if you want to live dangerously and level them up faster) for an adventure.
Building your team is another area where Mewgenics is unconventional and unpredictable because when you’re picking cats and assigning their classes you can’t see what all of their starting abilities will be. You’ll get their base stats, mutations, and basic attacks, and sometimes they’ll come with a spell or passive ability from one of their parents’ classes, but it’s not until you lock in their class that you’ll learn what you’re really working with and if they’ll synergize well. Considering that each of the 12 classes has 75 abilities that might pop up (even after all this time I’m still seeing new ones), I get the same thrill from this reveal that I do from picking up my hand in poker or seeing the modifiers on a daily run in Slay the Spire or Monster Train 2: sometimes it’s good news and I’m excited to see where it takes me, sometimes it’s not and I brace myself for a thrashing and hope for a surprise turnaround if I can survive long enough to level them up and unlock some better skills.
What’s inconvenient at this stage is that while you can see what items you have available in your house inventory before you set out on an adventure, and after you lock in your classes you’re taken to the equipping screen to deck your cats out with up to five pieces of potentially build-defining gear apiece, you cannot see those items when you’re actually picking your classes and your starting abilities are first revealed. That might be fine if you have a fantastic memory, but for the rest of us it’s frustrating to not be able to check if I have a good piece of gear to boost the stats of my summoned familiars at the exact moment I’m deciding if I should go with an animal-friend Druid or a robot-building Tinkerer, or if I should go with a Fighter or a Tank instead.
It’s tricky to keep track of what you have on hand because gear in Mewgenics doesn’t last forever. You can expect to get three, maybe four runs out of something before it breaks, and that’s assuming you don’t wipe and lose everything you took with you and picked up along the way (except for your choice of one item from several that a helpful weirdo saves for you after a failed attempt). If weapons breaking in recent Zeldas rubbed you the wrong way, you probably won’t enjoy that aspect of Mewgenics, but I actually do like the way it prevents me from relying too heavily on any one strategy. You can get something incredibly powerful and play with it more than once, without letting that item define every run you’ll do from that point on.
Taking gear on only two or three runs may not sound like much, but that’s more than the actual cats get. Another reason you can’t count on the tricks you used in the previous run working just as well on the next, even if you use the same classes and gear, is that each cat only gets one adventure in which to level up and develop their skills. (You’ll be able to use them in combat one or even two more times during special battles where major monsters attack your house.) That was tough to get my head around at first, because I’m accustomed to my RPG party members sticking around, at least until I get them killed.
Maybe this is why you’re not allowed to name your own cats, and instead they come pre-named from a pool of (I estimate) a billion different silly possibilities: Mewgenics doesn’t want us to get too attached. After a while I stopped paying much attention to their names except to chuckle at them, preferring to think of my squad members as their classes rather than individuals. Only the ones I ended up using as my primary breeding stock really stuck with me. (Man, talking about this game makes you say some weird stuff.)
When you head out to one of the three acts’ adventure maps, which are all drawn in a jerkily animated, charmingly childlike style, you start with a single path that then branches off into two, each of which has two completely different stages packed with their own unique sets of enemies – so many you definitely won’t see them all even after several runs. You’ll definitely want to mouse over them and read their descriptions before diving into battle, because some of them have some extremely nasty tricks up their sleeves – including a few that can instantly and permanently kill a cat or infect it with a parasite that takes up a gear slot. The stakes are already pretty high given your cats are permanently injured every time they get downed, and can be outright killed if their body is destroyed by attacks or eaten by zombies, so you don’t want to get surprised if you can help it.
Each zone is also stocked with multiple bosses that range from powered-up versions of your own classes to huge, nasty monsters with their own creative game-changing mechanics, and one that’s basically just an evil Kirby. Yes, a few of them are annoying (I avoid going to Act 1’s Boneyard unless a quest demands it because that boss is a total jerk), but on balance they’re excellent battles that often make me think differently about how to manage my team’s turn order and abilities.
One thing that stands out to me about the structure of Mewgenics’ runs – aside from how they can take as long as two hours once you’ve unlocked all the zones (and some secret ones) – is that unlike most roguelikes, you rarely get to make decisions about the path you take between battles. You mainly get to choose between the default path and a harder one with better loot and one more battle to level up a cat in, and then very occasionally between two types of rewards (usually an equipable item or a piece of furniture for your house). That makes the between-battle encounters feel a little less interesting than in a lot of similar games, especially when the random encounters turn out to be basically a coin flip where you’re picking between a red pill or a blue pill, or pushing a button vs pulling a lever without any indication of which will give you a bonus and which will give you a debuff.
There are, of course, some more in-depth, multi-stage encounters where you’re picking between a set of options in a choose-your-own-adventure story where your chances of success for each one are determined by a cat’s stats. However, since the cat whose stats you’re working with is chosen randomly, there are two layers of luck involved before you get a shot at a good outcome. It often feels completely random, but that’s alright because so much of Mewgenics is doing the best you can with circumstances beyond your control.
During combat, there are so many different things in play that the interactions between cat mutations, passives, spells, gear, environmental modifiers, and enemies can get crazy complex, and figuring out exactly what happened – or predicting what will happen – can be like investigating a crime scene (often with just as much blood splatter). Why did that enemy pingpong between two trash bags, with each bounce doing one point of damage, until it died? How did one of my cats just straight-up eat a boss without me even telling it to move? Or, why did that giant Daddy Shark get to take another move and insta-kill my Cleric when I’d carefully placed him just outside what should’ve been his projected attack range? (That one stung.) All of those answers are in there somewhere if you know where to look and study the rules carefully. In one of those cases, it was related to – you guessed it – poop. The map does get chaotic when there are a lot of enemies and fire or plants or ice on the screen, but thankfully there’s a tactical view that usually clears things up… mostly.
Most of the time, if you think something might work, it will. Water and ice spells and spells will put out fire, water will conduct electricity and zap everything standing in it, that sort of thing. However, sometimes its rules aren’t super logical: a couple I’ve noticed is that robots are susceptible to bleeding, poison, and parasite infestations, and the Butcher class’s innate meat hook weapon can’t actually hook meat unless you luck into the right upgrade for it. But again, most of the time it works like you’d expect it to.
I do love when a powerful team dynamic emerges as you earn new skills (your choice from a random selection of three) or raise one cat’s stats after every battle. Recently I had a squad with a Monk who could toss out meat pickups that typically just heal the team, but when combined with a Butcher who can turn all of those meats into minion fly familiars and a Druid who can boost those flys’ stats and turn them into killing machines, it became a way to raise an army in a single turn. On another run I had a Cleric whose health regeneration applied to the whole team and an item that let me continually boost that regen multiple times per turn, allowing my Necromancer to run wild with a high-damage attack that also drained half of his own health. There are countless examples like this, and while you won’t win the lottery with a great combo every run, they happen more than often enough to make me excited about what might be next.
While you won’t win the lottery with a great combo every run, they happen more than often enough to make me excited about what might be next.
What’s a little frustrating when I’m planning out my moves in a tough fight where every action matters is that there’s no way to access a cat’s full character sheet while you’re in a battle, so you can’t see their list of mutations or all of their equipment’s full effects when you need that information the most. It’s almost all represented visually on your cats, at least, but you have to remember, for example, what a cat having a second head growing on its butt means. When the rules are changing so dramatically from run to run, I would love to be able to reference all of them at any time.
As if all of those variables weren’t enough, Mewgenics throws yet another curveball at you when it sends you on one of its story or side quests. Those all revolve around a unique and powerful item that changes the rules in a big way and telling you to take it to a specific zone. One of the most memorable gives you a five-second time limit for every action – and if you don’t make a move, the AI will take over and move for you. (I was glad I wasn’t playing that one on my Steam Deck because the controls there are serviceable, but not nearly as quick as with a mouse and keyboard.) Another shook things up by giving my cats random selections of abilities from every class when they leveled up, creating powerful hybrids that are usually rare. There are tons of these available, though it’s kind of a bummer that if you fail a side quest you don’t get a second attempt at that unless it randomly comes up again once you’ve paid enough cats. The story itself is pretty silly and light – don’t expect any Hades-style epics here – but good for a few yuks as you do the bidding of an incompetent mad scientist.
Another area where Mewgenics is truly exceptional is in its sound and music, which are fantastic in both big and subtle ways. It comes with a collection of original and hilarious songs that accompany each level and culminate in major boss battles that are designed to loop for as long as a battle takes, and there are multiple variations on each that include instrumental versions – your cats will even meow along to them sometimes. (My favorite is probably “Where’s That Smell Coming From?”) And those meows come from a vast selection of different randomly selected voices, including some celebrity cameos.
One of the best touches, though, is the crowd sounds. Mainly you’ll hear this after beating a battle: there’s cheering and clapping with varying enthusiasm based on how quickly you pulled off your win. That’s fine, but the best part is the shocked gasps when one of your cats is killed in action. That gets me every time – and trust me, I’ve heard it a lot.
Lastly, Mewgenics has a fun and surprising approach to the practice of “save-scumming,” where you quit out of a battle you’ve messed up and restart it with knowledge of what not to do. I won’t spoil what happens, but there are consequences if you abuse it. Thankfully, you do get some flexibility in case of a power outage or spouse demanding you stop playing that game you’ve been playing for 150 hours and do the dishes, and it’s kind of implicit that you have permission to save-scum once per run – and yes, I use it regularly.
The latest trailer for Resident Evil Requiem shows experienced agent Leon S. Kennedy whiffing every one of his shots — and fans think Nintendo is to blame.
Yesterday’s Nintendo Partner Direct featured a fresh look at the highly-anticipated survival horror title, which features newbie agent Grace Ashcroft alongside veteran zombie fighter Leon S. Kennedy. But watch yesterday’s trailer and you’d think Leon was fresh out of the academy, as he is unable to land a single bullet.
The Nintendo showcase included new footage of Leon kicking zombies to the ground, but then firing over their shoulder. At one point he picks up a rifle, then fires at a tree. Leon’s even able to miss with a chainsaw, spinning at a zombie only to graze some furniture.
Nintendo making Leon miss every shot and attack to keep the show PG is so funny pic.twitter.com/fknXycULvQ
Online, Leon’s sudden lack of fighting prowess has not gone unnoticed, with Nintendo itself believed as being to blame.
“Nintendo making Leon miss every shot and attack to keep the show PG is so funny,” wrote nin10doland in a long thread on social media. “I can feel the frustration from the guy who was recording this game footage,” replied NikTek. “How many years of service does Leon have exactly?” added HuhShalien.
The Partner Direct broadcast was rated as being for an 18+/Mature audience, though some fans have suggested the footage used here was likely the same seen in the stream’s separate Japanese version. In Japan, Resident Evil games are frequently censored, and Nintendo may feel a particular need to keep gore and violence unseen.
Others, meanwhile, noted that this was nothing new for a Nintendo Direct.
“They did the same thing with The Great Circle during the boat action shot, where they were shooting the water in front of the enemy boat instead of the actual boat,” wrote Donnyboi.
“Reminds me of the Hitman trailer when they’d cut right before he’d kill anyone,” added RileyEatsGood.
“This is also why the initial reveal for The Duskbloods from FromSoftware looked super underwhelming,” concluded VBandit47. “They couldn’t show literally ANYTHING that is core to the Soulsborne experience cause they couldn’t show any blood. Watch it back, you’ll see what I mean lmao.”
But it wasn’t just Leon’s aim that came under fire during the Nintendo Direct. The beloved character’s new amiibo figurine also took flak for its facial design — “hot uncle” it is not.
“Honestly, they look like the hot chocolate chocolates you put in a cup of hot milk to dissolve,” wrote Iv0ry_Falcon on reddit in a thread dissecting the look of both Leon and Grace’s amiibo.
“This 20$ Leon is on 20$ shrooms judging by his look,” claimed PhysicalKick3812. “Grace looks good.”
