You ever accidentally find out that you’re the sovereign of an entire nation as dictated by a prophecy even though you’re technically just random nobody, and so you wind-up being the one to have to make all the decisions about how your nation is run? No? Well, that’s fine, but if you’d like that to be you, I’ll introduce you to Sovereign Tower, a management RPG where you send off your knights of the round table to deal with all manner of quests.
Elden Ring: Nightreign’s DLC, The Forsaken Hollows, has been out for a month and a half now, which means players have had plenty of time to get used to its two new Nightfarers, two new end bosses, and numerous new night bosses. But one element of the new content that everyone is still really struggling with, even after weeks of practice: the new DLC map. It’s really difficult, really confusing, and seemingly no one likes it that much, leading to a rash of negative Steam reviews and a lot of failed runs.
The new map is technically not even a new map, though it may as well be. It’s a Shifting Earth event, meaning it may or may not be active at any given time when you’re playing a DLC boss, with other options being the default map or one of four other Shifting Earths available. However, unlike the other Shifting Earth events, which only transform one part of the map significantly, the Great Hollow shifting earth essentially is a totally different area. Nothing is the same. There’s no castle at the center, no ravine running down the middle, no lake in the south or cliffs up north.
Instead, the Great Hollow is centered around a giant crystal in the middle which seems to have crashlanded, splitting the land around it into broken up cliffs separated into multiple levels. Built into and scattered around the cliffs and canyons are various ruins full of enemies, alongside the more familiar structures such as churches, forts, and mines. The actual in-game map of the Great Hollow has multiple levels with different points of interest on each level, and it’s necessary to use the game’s spirit springs carefully to fall down to lower levels and shoot back up to higher ones so you can actually get around effectively.
Additionally, the Great Hollow’s center crystal contains a major buff for the party that can be seriously clutch for a round’s final boss fights. But in order to obtain it, you need to find and break several smaller, colored crystals scattered around the map, whose locations change on each attempt.
So why is this causing everyone so much pain? Well, for one, because of the multi-level map, it’s far more difficult to tell at a glance what route you should take on a given run. Normally, as you’re flying into a new game, you’ll pop the map open and give it a brief scan, mentally planning out a route that will ideally give your team a few extra flasks, a mine for a smithing stone, and a gradually more challenging line of boss encounters so you can collect runes and weapons and level up. In the Great Hollow, there are so many different vertical levels to account for, plus multiple map levels to swap between, that it’s even more difficult to route a run and make a plan that will actually see your team effectively get stronger over the course of two nights. And that’s only exacerbated by the need to account for breaking crystals as you go, without knowing where they’re going to end up until the second day.
But by far the worst thing about Great Hollow is the giant, gaping chasm running through the middle of it.
Unlike Elden Ring, Nightreign doesn’t have fall damage. This was a big point of difference in gameplay style when it first launched, as Nightreign encourages players to sprint across maps, leap off ledges, and even climb up the sides of cliffs. Elden Ring, by contrast, favors a somewhat slower, more cautious playstyle. So over the last year, a lot of Elden Ring players have slowly adjusted to Nightreign’s rhythm of running and jumping without a lot of hesitancy, and by and large, that’s worked out well for them, because there really aren’t many places where falling in Nightreign is dangerous. You can technically fall off the outside edge of the map, and the Crater Shifting Earth does have a big lava pit that’s not great to fall into, but both of those are fairly simple to avoid.
Great Hollow, by contrast, has a death pit running down parts of the middle of the map, and it’s annoyingly hard to see. Because of how the ledges are positioned, it’s easy to look over a ledge, think you’re good to jump down, and end up falling to your death. What’s worse, for some reason Nightreign doesn’t treat death falls the same way it treats deaths to enemies. If an enemy kills you, you just spawn back at the last Grace you tapped, and your leftover Runes are either dropped near where you died or picked up by a nearby enemy. But when you fall, Nightreign will seemingly randomly drop you somewhere along a ledge near your death point, which could be above, below, or across from where you jumped off. But then it leaves your Runes back on the ledge where you started. Which means it’s possible (and even likely) that you’ll spawn on a far ledge, with your Runes somewhere behind you across a death pit, and no easy route back.
Whew! All this is to say that the Great Hollow, while aesthetically beautiful and thematically cool, is kind of a pain in the neck, and Steam reviewers are trying to let FromSoftware know. While Elden Ring: Nightreign itself has mostly positive reviews, Forsaken Hollows is currently sitting at Mostly Negative reviews for the last 30 days, with only 30% of 1,347 reviews this past month being positive.
“The new map is poorly designed, overly difficult and boring,” reads one review from today. “Takes forever to traverse, interesting points of interest are often too deep into the edge of the map to get through completely, boss battle tower is a damage-sponge time-wasting chore. New dlc pois in new and old map are full of enemy encounters designed to cheese you like it’s darksouls. Spend hours learning and memorizing crystal locations from youtube videos just so you can try to not lose in a bad map. Underground ruins filled with a dozen rot kindred that homing one shot you.”
Another reads: “The characters and bosses are great but the new “map” is absolutely horrible and is ruining the experience of the game as a whole.”
And a third: “Love the bosses and new classes but the new map is just trash. There was Zero NEED to add gaps in the map to kill YOU. You might as well add fall damage to the game.
“That map is NOT FUN!!! It’s a freaking chore. I avoided it completely until I am forced to play it to compete certain story lines.
“I am now forced to spend hours memorising the bloody thing because you will literally end up locations you cannot get out because the only bridge is light years away.
“An otherwise great DLC ruined by this nonsense map. EITHER GET RID OF THE MAP, MAKE IT OPTIONAL OR COVER THE GIANT HOLES.”
I also spotted a recent positive review that simply read, “the new map is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible but everything’s so good.”
Not everyone hates the map, and some FromSoftware fans are pointing out that this may be a bit of a skill issue. A recent Reddit thread about the Steam reviews states, “The more I play, the more I feel like it was fantastically designed.” And the replies themselves seem divided between acknowledging its flaws and celebrating what they love about it.
As someone who spent last night falling into chasms on this map, I can see both points here. Great Hollow really is beautiful and unique, requiring a very different gameplay flow and better team coordination so you don’t all end up separated and confused. But it’s pretty challenging to learn, and the only way to learn really is to fail at it a lot. After already putting over 100 hours into Nightreign, I’m not having the best time simultaneously trying to learn all the new bosses, two new characters, and the new map simultaneously – though, I guess you could argue, that’s just the FromSoftware experience.
Probably a fix for where the game places you after you fall, and maybe a little bit more clarity on the minimap would solve some of this. We’ll keep an eye out for a Nightreign patch to address it. But in the meantime, just keep practicing.
This isn’t the first time Nightreign players have used Steam reviews to express their displeasure. Last November, a wave of review bombs complained about the lack of DLC content, just weeks before Forsaken Hollows was announced and released. A more recent patch last week has given some of the Nightfarers who were struggling much-needed buffs. You can check out what we thought of the Elden Ring: Nightreign base game right here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
This is probably the umpteenth time I’ve said I’m not someone who plays many shooters, but here I am saying it again, because an FPS has rocked up that has clocked my interest. It’s called Firestarters, an arena shooter that’s a bit like Quake, a bit like Rollerdome, and looks like good, bloody fun.
War. War never changes. What does change, however, are board games. Those suckers change all the time, with thousands of new ones coming out every year, sometimes in big boxes, others in little ones, and occasionally ones based on a popular property. That’s the case with Fallout: Power Play, a small-area control card game designed by Resurrectionist Games and published by Modiphius Games, currently up for pre-order. It’s a small game with some good bones to it, but its compact design is more of a hindrance than a benefit.
Fallout: Power Play puts two to four players in command of four possible factions, each with their own unique decks and special ability. These are the Brotherhood of Steel (good at completing missions to earn influence and hunkering down in a location), Super Mutants (lots of big and powerful unit cards to deploy at locations), the Enclave (excellent at disrupting other players’ turns), and Raiders (thieves, every last one of them).
On their turn, players deploy agents to locations, complete quests to earn rewards, and use their faction-specific ability, all in a bid to earn the most influence in the different places, netting you victory points. Whichever player has their agent holding a location at the end of the turn gains influence over the spot, with the top play considered to be “dominating” and earning a victory point. The first player to reach 10 points triggers the end game and scoring, with whoever has the most points winning at the end of that round.
Things get shaken up a bit thanks to the random Wasteland Encounter cards you draw at the start of each round, and unique Power Play cards that each player has in their deck. These events can range from spawning ghouls that attack everyone’s agents to even detonating an Atom Bomb Baby and destroying everything at the location(s) where players have the most influence. That one is a particularly fun card to see safely from the sidelines, as all of your friends’ units are blasted out of existence all at once in the region they were fighting so fiercely over.
If the encounter cards are the right hand of chaos in Power Play, then the titular Power Play cards in your deck are the left hand of chaos. These cards have the potential to be played not only on your turn, but also in response to other players’ actions. Think an Instant spell in Magic: The Gathering. This resulted in some tense back-and-forth, play-and-counterplay moments with my friends, and I often found myself holding my breath whenever I would put down one of my more powerful cards in hopes they wouldn’t get countered or worse.
While at first glace, Power Play may appear to be more of a simple “bigger number better” war game, the more I played, the more nuance and strategy I found in it. Each location only has spots for four agents, and in games with fewer players, this allows for you to allocate multiple agent resources to a location. But regardless of how much you are overpowering the other players in a spot, you will still only gain a single victory point at the end of the round. On the flip side, every round where you don’t have an agent at a location will result in your losing an influence at that location (to a minimum of 1), so it pays to spread out your forces.
This management almost makes Power Play into more of a worker placement game, and I often found myself opting to have one stronghold as my main “VP generator” and then spreading out and setting up at the other locations to pull off big influence gain turns by completing quest cards that would net me a boost in influence for a spot. Whenever I managed to pull off these well-laid plans, it tickled that good spot in my brain and never got old.
Resurrectionist Games, Power Play’s designer, has put together a card game with solid bones, and its focus on capturing and holding locations reminds me of the hot new TCG Riftbound. That said, issues surrounding the delivery and presentation of the game blemish and knock Power Play down some notches. The most disappointing of which is that the whole product feels less like a Fallout card game and more like something with the beloved property slapped on the side of it.
Despite the four factions and other nods to the Fallout universe, I never felt as though Power Play did much with the property. Instead of decks featuring notable characters from the games that fans would recognize, the designers opted for bland and generic fill-ins instead. Taking the Brotherhood of Steel deck, for instance, a group whose Power Armor is arguably just as synonymous with the series as the signature blue-and-yellow vault suits, your forces are composed of no-name cards like “Knight” or “Elder.” Instead of a generic Elder, why not have the lead agent be a character like Arthur Maxson or Sarah Lyons?
The home base locations of each of the factions feel rather soulless and are identical to one another from a gameplay standpoint. While “activate a location” is an option you can take on your turn, there are only two locations that have something to activate, with the others being the starting strongholds of each faction. They are “War Camp” or “Raider Fortress” instead of something memorable from the series, like Nuka-World or even a Vault. I would have appreciated these spots to be two-sided, with a generic, ability-less side and the other having an action associated with it and pulled from somewhere players would recognize if you were in the mood for a more advanced game mode. Alas, no such luck.
This more uninspired approach extends into the art and even the card descriptions. Keeping on the Brotherhood train, the Initiate and Field Scribe agent cards feature nearly identical character faces, and cards like their “Knight” read as “Each time Knight kills an Enemy…” which feels generic. Do these things impact how the game plays? No. But if you’re going to adapt a well-known property, you want it to feel meaningful, and considering the attention to detail I’ve come to expect from Modiphius, especially with Fallout, thanks to the Fallout TTRPG they also publish, Power Play just doesn’t get there.
My other main gripe with Power Play has to do with some of the quality control and decisions involved with how the game is packaged. Now, I’m all for a game being nice and compact; heck, one of the most prestigious awards I can give (in my mind anyway) is the Glovebox Award, given to games that are small and fun enough that I always want them with me wherever I go (Flip 7 is an example). It’s rare that I’ve found a game that feels too small – but Power Play does. Inside its box are spots for two decks of cards, with a small gap in between. Now, these two spots aren’t quite deep enough to contain all of the standard-sized cards included, causing some annoying shifting, and unfortunately, you can just forget sleeving your cards.
Fallout: Power Play also uses tokens to mark each faction’s influence in the regions and other little reminders. Unfortunately, these tokens are incredibly tiny. And while the faction tokens are at least color-coded, some of the reminder tokens, all of which are about 3/4 the size of a dime and contain text, are barely legible from anything more than maybe six inches from your face, let alone from across a table. Power Play may also be the first board game I have that uses tokens but doesn’t come with a small bag to keep them in. And to make matters more annoying, they easily slip into the small gap between the two decks. Thankfully, my cardboard hobby has granted me extra baggies that I was able to put them in, but beforehand, more than a couple of times, I spent more time than I care to admit trying to get some of these damn cardboard pieces out of the box.
Fallout: Power Play is a great example of how a bunch of little missed opportunities and annoyances can add up, and it’s a shame. This is one of those products that I can see potential and promise if Resurrectionist Games takes a bit more care into any future properties they adapt. The underlying game is fun, and I can imagine a day down the road where Power Play becomes the system, and you can buy additional sets, akin to, say, Smash Up!, and you can have the Brotherhood of Steel facing off against the forces of the Borg from Star Trek, or the demons of Hell from Doom pushing back Super Mutants. That’s a game I would love to play, and if they put a bit more care into those sets, you can count me in day one. It may even make it into the glovebox.
I am going to level with you. My awareness of Lort up until this point has been non-existent. Never heard of it before today, it’s early access release day! But when you see a game called Lort, well, you at least need to take a little look. And as astronomically silly as the name is, it looks like a pretty neat, silly time, so, my predilection towards the inane has clearly worked out in my favour this time.
Disney Lorcana has seemingly gone from strength to strength since its debut, with Winterspell marking its eleventh set when it arrives in February.
Ravensburger has been pulling from just about everywhere in the Disney pantheon of heroes and villains, and this one will give us some Christmas-themed cards… a little too late for the event itself (but still cute, nonetheless).
While Ravensburger has confirmed some new products coming this year, the second half of 2026 still remains something of a mystery. Here’s all we know coming to Disney Lorcana in the coming months, and we’ll update this as we hear more.
Winterspell, as we mentioned, has the unenviable task of offering cards related to Christmas almost two months late (or ten months early, if you’re an optimist). The set launches on February 20, with a prerelease on February 13, and will introduce snowy variants of characters.
Alongside the sweet snowy designs on the covers, if you’re curious what comes with each of these items, here’s the breakdown: the booster pack sets you up with 12 cards, including six Common cards, three Uncommon cards, two cards of either Rare, Super Rare, or Legendary rarity, and one random foil card. Preorders are now live, with Amazon being the best place to buy right now.
If you’re hoping to have a bit more than just the booster pack on hand, the booster pack display comes with 24 packs. And for a little bit of everything, the Illumineer’s Trove comes with a card storage box, six card dividers, eight booster packs, six damage-counter dice, and a lore counter.
Expect Mickey Mouse, Snowboard Ace, to bump shoulders with Jiminy Cricket, Willie the Giant, and Lonely Resting Place pulling double duty as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Get ready for more card reveals in the coming weeks ahead of launch. TCGPlayer also has listings for individual cards, booster packs and boxes, and the new Illumineer’s Trove.
While not tied to a fresh set, there are two new releases on March 13 which Collectors will want to be aware of. The first is the Scrooge McDuck Gift Box. It’s not up for preorder right now, but will include an exclusive Scrooge McDuck, S.H.U.S.H. Agent in Glimmer Foil, and five random booster packs.
The curious thing to note is that those packs are from prior sets, so you could get five from Winterspell, or you could end up with some classics. Up next, the Collection Starter Set has a portfolio adorned with Stitch, Rock Star, a Glimmer Foil variant of Stitch, Carefree Snowboarder, and four booster packs.
With all due respect to Winterspell, this is the set that’s likely to take up a lot of the oxygen in Disney Lorcana’s 2026 release schedule. It’ll lean into cowboy fantasies, and who better to lead that charge than Woody himself, alongside Buzz Lightyear. Wild Unkowns marks a significant change for Lorcana releases, as the TCG leans more into Disney’s Pixar characters, starting with The Incredibles and Toy Story.
This will also add new Prelease Kits to the Lorcana product pool, each including a promo card, dice, six booster packs from the latest set, and a deck box. Honestly, Ravensburger, you had me at Toy Story, but I’m excited to see the game grow.
I’ve also long lauded Gateway as a great starter product for new Lorcana players, but in May we’ll get also new 2-Player Starter Set with preconstructed decks, lore trackers, tokens, and some playmats, also as part of Wilds Unknown. This one launches on May 15, as recently confirmed, with prerelease from May 8.
Looking further ahead, we don’t know a great deal about what’s coming later, but a few details have already been confirmed by the Lorcana team. Attack of the Vine, featuring characters from Monsters Inc and Turning Red, will launch sometime in Q3 2026.
Then, towards then end of the year, Coco is set to make its first Lorcana appearance, but we know little more than that. Disney’s possibilities are seemingly endless, though, and while Star Wars and Marvel each have cardboard appearances in Unlimited and Magic: The Gathering to prepare for, don’t be surprised to see the House of Mouse and Ravensburger pull out some even more deep cuts in 2026, and beyond.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
Given its lengthy, troubled development period, it will probably not come as any surprise to you that Ubisoft have announced today that their Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake has been cancelled. This comes as part of a broader restructure at the company, which will apparently focus on what they call five “specialised creative houses” to “reclaim creative leadership and restore sustainable growth.”
My new horizon.
Remember when Nintendo called Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ 2.0 update the final major free update to the game? It turns out, a lot can change in four years. And here I am again, back on my tropical island paradise, playing through another big free addition – and a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of one of my favourite Switch games.
But wait, what does this mean for Animal Crossing’s future? We’re almost six years into New Horizons’ life with no sign of a new game in the series to come. The announcement back in October 2025 filled me with a mix of excitement and worry, just like Jim, because, yay, more Animal Crossing to lose my life to! But also, oh no, when is the next Animal Crossing coming?
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
As you’re set to bolster the Imperium’s ranks next week, Space Marines, we wanted to reward your ultimate commitment with exclusive details about our upcoming new playable class, the Techmarine.
Set to release with our Patch 12 “Techmarine Update” in just a few weeks, it’ll join its Tactical, Assault, Sniper, Vanguard, Bulwark and Heavy Battle-Brothers as the game’s seventh playable class. Of course, it’ll come with its own unique brand of Xenos and Heretic purging, and that’s what we’re here to discover!
Before we do, let’s go over some basics if you are looking to jump into the grim darkness of the far future for the first time next week: The new Techmarine class will be available for Space Marine 2’s PvE and PvP modes (i.e., Operations, Stratagems, Siege and Eternal War), where you get to customize and play as your very own Space Marines. Even better, it’s free for everyone! No DLC or in-game purchases required.
Operations, Stratagems and Siege modes will have you team up with up to 2 players to fight as loyalist Space Marines and defeat the enemies of the Imperium. Eternal War however, also allows you to play as a Chaos Space Marine as it pits you against other players in ferocious 6v6 PvP matches where the Imperium faces off against its Chaos archenemy.
The new Techmarine class will be available across all of these modes, with the only exception being the Narrative Campaign, as it centers around the story of Ultramarines Lieutenant Demetrian Titus himself.
Now, let us tease how the Techmarine actually PLAYS!
At their core, Techmarines in Space Marine 2 are specialists in crowd control and area defense. They’ll shine with their combat prowess as much as they do with the technology they bring to the fight.
In melee, they’re able to take on large groups of enemies with wide swipes of their Omnissian Axe — an upcoming Patch 12 weapon available to them only — while their arsenal and armor augmentations grant them solid efficiency in ranged combat, especially at short and medium distances.
Like all classes, the Techmarine comes with a unique Combat Skill (an “ult,” so to speak) and his own perk tree with 25 levels to unlock. But more than anything, what makes him special are the mechanical arms and automatic turret bolted directly onto his Power Pack.
While you’re busy swinging and smashing opponents around with your mechanical arm, your Combat Skill will put your turret to good use: Activate it with the Y button to unleash the Techmarine’s mounted Servo-Gun and rain divine retribution onto your enemies with a barrage of heavy fire. No need to aim: just watch as Tyranids and Thousand Sons get vaporized before your very eyes.
Another feature of the automatic Servo-Gun is that it frees you up by executing Gun Strikes for you! When other classes must do it themselves following Perfect Dodges or Parries, Techmarine players will be free to continue aiming at other targets while their turrets stagger or kill their most pressing assailants.
And that’s not even everything! With Techmarines being master engineers and technicians within their Chapter ranks comes a unique ability to locate and service Tarantula Sentry turrets during missions. Though they can’t be carried or placed freely, these can provide much welcome support to your Combat Squad by attacking your enemies automatically until they either run out of ammunition or get destroyed.
Will you be running it?
You know, the Techmarine and his Omnissian Axe are far from being the only gameplay additions to come with Patch 12! We’re working on adding a 12th mission to Operations and Stratagems modes, a new mission pick-up type, 3 new Hero weapon variants and new customization options for Space Marine helmetless heads! We’ll reveal more as we get closer to release, so stay tuned to our channels if you don’t want to miss it.
If you own the Season Pass 2 of course, you’re also set to receive a brand-new Assault Champion skin celebrating the Raven Guard and a unique Cosmetic Pack for the Carcharodons, a first for this Chapter! But that may be a story for another day…
Looking forward to seeing all of you on the battlefield, Techmarines. The Emperor protects.
Heed the call of war on January 29, 2026 when Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 releases on Xbox Game Pass, with Xbox Play Anywhere support.
The post Techmarine: Dive Into Space Marine 2’s Upcoming New Class appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Remastering Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water and Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse was just the beginning. When Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja began crafting a full remake of the survival horror classic Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, the mission was clear: keep what made the PlayStation 2 original so popular, while elevating it for a modern audience.
Directors Hidehiko Nakajima (action gameplay) and Makoto Shibata (story) took us through their journey of reconstructing Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly’s haunting atmosphere, its new features, and some of the challenges they faced ahead of the game’s March 12 launch on PlayStation 5.
What elements of the original game do you feel made it such a fan favorite?
Shibata: I think it was because it evolved what was introduced in the first Fatal Frame game while placing greater emphasis on the story. By creating an experience that was frightening yet compelling enough to make players want to see what comes next, I felt that many players were able to enjoy its beautiful yet terrifying world through to the end.
In what ways did the power of the PS2 contribute toward the original Fatal Frame 2 design and visuals?
Shibata: We took advantage of the hardware’s specs and rendering capabilities to help depict spirits as semi-transparent and distorted. In addition, being able to apply screen-wide filters — adjusting noise, contrast, and color tones — at a low processing cost was extremely useful for creating visuals reminiscent of old film stock.
What were the essentials of the original that you needed to retain in this remake?
Shibata: Our main focus was the protagonist’s actions and Camera Obscura combat. Since the world and story are maintained, we focused on how players interact with that world.
From a visual standpoint, atmosphere is key. By carefully adjusting lighting, shadows, fog, and effects, we create a humid, unsettling environment where it feels as though spirits could appear at any moment. Exploring within that atmosphere is central to the series. And of course, the background music, filled with sounds that are barely audible or ambiguous, is also a crucial element.
Nakajima: At its core, this is an experience of fighting and exploring by photographing with the Camera Obscura. While we’ve added new features and adjusted rules in combat, the fundamental idea of facing fear directly and defeating it by photographing it, remains unchanged. The simple controls of photographing what you see remains, but players are no longer limited to waiting for enemy attacks; they can now fight more proactively and utilize advanced photography techniques. The same applies to exploration, we’ve designed it so players naturally want to look around and take photographs.
Can you share any new examples of how its gameplay systems are being modernized?
Nakajima: We’ve implemented various improvements to make the game more intuitive and comfortable to play. In the original version, players controlled the character from a fixed camera perspective. In this remake, the camera is positioned closer to the player character, allowing you to freely look around and move throughout Minakami Village. This closer perspective significantly enhances the immersive feel of the game. Of course, we didn’t simply change the camera and controls—we also restructured the gameplay itself to suit these updates.
Shibata: The series has previously received feedback that the controls weren’t so good, so since this title is developed by Team Ninja, we decided from the outset to make major improvements. One particularly time-consuming element was motion matching. It was a trial-and-error process where we refined responsiveness while giving character movement greater variety and believability.
Can you tell us more details about the added Camera Obscura features?
Nakajima: To make the Camera Obscura feel more like you’re using an actual “camera” or gadget, we introduced new mechanics such as focus, zoom, and filters. Focus and zoom function much like they do on a normal camera, while filters change the Camera Obscura’s offensive properties when switched.
For example, during combat, the Paraceptual Filter offers a longer attack range and allows players to obscure the enemy’s vision, while the Exposure Filter enables faster shots and can slow enemy movement. During exploration, the Camera Obscura can also be used to follow the shadows of missing people or restore things that have disappeared.
How does the new Willpower system work?
Shibata: Willpower decreases when the player runs during combat, or comes into contact or is attacked by spirits. When Willpower runs out, the protagonist collapses, and spirits swarm over her, creating a critical situation. So you can recover it by holding hands with Mayu or by using items.
What are some ways characters can now interact with the environment?
Nakajima: We’ve introduced physical behaviors and environmental interaction, so as the player moves through the environment, background objects may be touched, shaken, or even collapse, creating a more realistic and immersive experience. Spirits may also interact with and move objects.
How has the team used PS5 features to enhance the game’s atmosphere?
Shibata: In horror games it’s crucial that the feeling of tension is not interrupted. Fast data loading enabled by the SSD helps maintain the element of fear. In addition, in the Fatal Frame series each spirit emits unique sounds based on its position. The 7.1.4-channel 3D audio allows players to perceive spirit locations clearly while also conveying the unsettling atmosphere of Minakami Village through sounds such as rustling trees and the faint whisper of wind.
What other new information or clarifications do you want to make sure fans are aware of?
Nakajima: This remake doesn’t simply recreate the original—it expands upon it and goes even deeper with additional side stories and new areas. And as well as the original ending, a special new ending has been added which features a newly written song, “Utsushie,” composed by Tsukiko Amano.
New players will find the game approachable, while long-time fans can appreciate a fresh experience. We hope players enjoy discovering the new ending alongside everything else this remake has to offer.
You’ll be able to see the haunted Minakami Village through this new PS5 lens soon enough when Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly launches on March 12.
