No videogame fantasy setting will ever disquiet me as much as an empty business park at night under blue and yellow floodlights. A business park, or the access road down the side of a corrugated steel warehouse, where the alcoves cast by the LEDs look like a procession of hooded figures beneath the fixed, unblinking blackness of the sky.
I can’t actually be present in that scene, mind. I don’t belong there. No being does, not even the people who come by day to fill the striped lines with cars or raise the shutters on the loading bays. Instead, I have to be travelling past very fast. Preferably, I will be looking out the window of a train that shows the place for only a few seconds. I will feel as though I’ve glimpsed another planet’s scrolling surface in a mirror. Except this isn’t right. I will never find the words for it. Nothing written above is adequate. Balls.
Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima has announced plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary of establishing his own studio, Kojima Productions, with an event in Tokyo later this month.
Hosted by Kojima himself, the “celebratory event,” entitled Beyond The Strand, will include guest appearances “as well as offer a glimpse into future projects.” It’ll take place at TOHO Cinemas Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Japan, on September 23, 2025.
Fans in the vicinity can enter a lottery to be in with a chance of securing a ¥7700 — the equivalent of around $50 — when tickets go on sale tomorrow, September 2. Or, alternatively, you can watch the action online.
Right now, it seems unlikely we’ll see much of Kojima’s mysterious upcoming PlayStation game Physint — as the developer recently told us the game remains “at the conceptual stage”. More likely, perhaps, we’ll get to know a little more about Kojima’s horror project OD, which is still in development in collaboration with Microsoft, despite Xbox’s recent cancellations of a number of projects, both internal and external.
Kojima first announced his OD collaboration with Xbox in November of 2022, then officially revealed OD along with several of its star cast members at The Game Awards 2023. We learned at the time that Kojima was working with filmmaker Jordan Peele to create a horror experience “no one has seen before.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Remember when, back in the day, you made the trek through the ashlands to Red Mountain? Within, you encountered an unforgettable foe. “Come, Nerevar. Friend or traitor, come. Come and look upon the Heart, and Akulakhan. And bring Wraithguard… I have need of it”, they said. “Heed my words. I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella. And I have never known defeat.”
Okay, so maybe not, but it’s a nice image with which to open the news that a modder’s managed to port the entirety of Morrowind‘s landmass into Elden Ring. It’s still very much a work-in-progress, as you might expect given its version of Vvardenfell’s populated by copies of the same random woman and goats, but it certainly makes for a surreal watch.
Labor Day deals have arrived to offer shoppers a little taste of savings before the big sale events kick off in the coming months. If you’ve been looking to stock up on video games, you’re in luck: quite a few are on sale right now, including some that are back at their lowest prices yet.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is one of these deals, with the Limited Edition (and Amazon Exclusive) version for PS5 marked down to $49.99 (see here at Amazon). This discount offers you $20 of savings from its list price of $69.99 and marks a return to its best price so far, according to price tracker camelcamelcamel.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Down to Just $49.99
A deal like that is worth taking advantage of while it’s still live, so if it’s been on your shopping list, now is an excellent time to pick it up. The Limited Edition (Amazon Exclusive) version also comes with the “Sekiryu Character Pack”, which includes a gear and weapon set for Naoe, Sekiryu Beast mount, and a Dragon Tooth trinket.
In case you’re in need of some convincing before hitting the “buy” button, it’s worth noting that we found a lot to love in Assassin’s Creed Shadows in our review. Writer Jarrett Green said of the game, “By sharpening the edges of its existing systems, Assassin’s Creed Shadows creates one of the best versions of the open-world style it’s been honing for the last decade.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn’t the only PS5 game to receive a sweet Labor Day discount, though. We broke down even more PS5 game deals that are worth checking out right now during the sale event, including Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and the absolutely delightful Split Fiction. If you’re curious what Amazon’s offering overall during Labor Day sales, check out our full mega-post of Amazon’s Labor Day Sale.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
Games and gear for when you’re not playing Silksong.
Switch 2 is nearly three months old now, and we’re on the cusp of the mad Q3/4 rush as publishers gear up to extract your pennies over the holiday season, which is just a few months away.
Switch 2 is slowly, steadily building a library, and there’s still more Switch 1 games coming than we know what to do with. And with the launch Silksong — finally! — there’s loads to be playing even if you haven’t yet picked up Nintendo’s latest system.
Prepare for a deep dive on 007 First Light! During this special State of Play, the development team at IO Interactive declassifies new gameplay on James Bond’s upcoming espionage action-adventure thrill ride.
Catch the show live on PlayStation’s Twitch and YouTube channels on September 3 at 11am PT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST.
In this upcoming State of Play, tune in for over 30 minutes of gameplay featuring a playthrough of Bond’s first mission as an MI6 recruit. The action includes everything from high-speed car chases to on-foot stealth sequences and shootouts. Stay tuned after the playthrough for insights from IO Interactive on the intense espionage gameplay.
We can’t wait to show you what the team has been cooking up on September 3.
Escape from Tarkov is finally emerging from an early access period that will have lasted nearly a decade, when its full release on November 15th rolls around, and you’ll soon be able to grab it on Steam.
Yep, it’s taken yeaaaaarrrssss. Tarkov’s initial alpha release came on August 4th, 2016, just a few days before No Man’s Sky arrived for the first time, and just after a little game called Stardew Valley dropped. Think about what you were doing back then. I was a teenager, still far from the job-having husk I’ve since morphed into.
A nine-minute slice of Battlefield 6‘s battle royale mode has leaked online.
Despite presumably signing NDAs, participants in Battlefield’s closed beta environment, Battlefield Labs, are continuing to share snippets of their experiences. This particular video from Misako_Mikato_01 on bilibili not only gives a good look at what to expect from the mode, but also reveals a couple of gameplay mechanics we didn’t previously know about, too.
As highlighted on the Gaming Leaks and Rumours subreddit, Misako_Mikato’s video confirms players can swim, go underwater, and shoot from within the water, reveals the ladder gadget apparently has two modes — one as a ramp, another as a ladder — and there’s a “massive map.”
The video kicks off from when the player picks their loadout and departs the jumpship, landing in a built-up area on the shore. We see them swimming and later pulling out a sledgehammer to knock down what appears to be a public bathroom in real-time. Apparently the ruckus gets unwanted attention, though, although they seemingly sacrifice themselves to go back into the sky, this time moving in-land and visiting a fancy, if ransacked, villa. Cue the sledgehammer again.
Commenters seem quite impressed by the video.
“I know many Warzone players that will be happy to finally have a serious [battle royale] alternative,” said one viewer. “This could, potentially, pull in a large amount of players. If they stay depends on how good it will be.” Another added: “If this Battle Royale retains the destruction from the base game, it has the chance to be the most dynamic [battle royale] of all time. That destruction will make every game feel different.”
We’re having a great time with what we’ve played so far, writing in our Battlefield 6 review-in-progress: “Right now, even in beta form, Battlefield 6 might be the most fun shooter I’ve played this year.”
Don’t forget that from now until October 7 — Battlefield 6’s launch day — EA has a “wave of content” planned for Battlefield 2042, including a free new pass “celebrating the legacy of Battlefield,” new hardware, and a reimagining of the fan favorite Iwo Jima map. As you progress through the ‘Road to Battlefield 6’ pass, you can expect 50 exclusive cross-rewards, including 20 for Battlefield 6 that will be ready for you on launch day, on which you can also expect big changes to player movement, maps, modes, and player counts.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Stardew Valley will get at least one more significant game update, says Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, mere months after stating that he doesn’t “want to just be the Stardew Valley guy.” It’ll be called update 1.7, and the trimness of the numbering implies that it’ll be a large one. For context, Stardew Valley update 1.6 brought eight player PC co-op, new crops, a lot more NPC dialogue, a mastery system, new pets, and the ability to give those pets hats (which caused a few problems).
Team Cherry have confirmed release times and price points for Hollow Knight: Silksong. It’ll cost $19.99, €19.99 and ¥2300 at launch on Thursday 4th September, with pricing for other regions such as the UK to follow. As an indication, the above pricepoints equate to around £17, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they charged £19.99 for it, purely for the sake of symmetry.
It’s traditional among games journalists to illustrate pricepoints in terms of high street chain cups of coffee. But this is Silksong, a game anticipated as fervently as the ancient Mayans once anticipated the coming of an eclipse, so I will resort to more ornate means of comparison: Silksong will cost you 4200000th as much as a B-52 Stratofortress. It will cost you three-sixteenths of your soul on a rainy Friday, or two-sixteenths if the sun is out. It will cost you considerably less than they could probably charge for it. I’m not saying we should be grateful, mind, but we can breathe a sigh of a relief that this isn’t being published by EA, Take-Two or Microsoft.
