Indie horror game developer Ruled are onto a nice little spree with their shortform Itch.io releases – seemingly, they are skipping from phobia to phobia. First there was Automatonophobia, a game that navigated the fear of subterranean golems, then there was Chrometophobia, a game dedicated to the fear of spending money, and also to the act of finding “grimbo” gibs for a delicious pie. What’s next on the menu? Ah yes, scarecrows.
Red Dead Redemption fans believe they’ve now worked out the truth behind recent teases that suggested something was going on with Rockstar’s beloved cowboy franchise — but it’s not what many fans had been hoping for.
Last week, John Marston actor Rob Wiethoff teased that he had “exciting news” to share that was “absolutely killing” him to keep quiet, while chatting with fans during a livestream. Wiethoff suggested that, whatever the news was, fans would hear about it by the end of this week — and that he wouldn’t be the only one sharing it.
The mystery deepened when Red Dead Redemption 2’s Arthur Morgan actor Roger Clark subsequently confirmed that he was also aware of the news, but couldn’t yet say more. Immediately, fans began to speculate that the pair were involved in some kind of announcement regarding the future of the franchise, such as the reveal of an upgraded Red Dead Redemption 2 — something that has previously been reported as in development for Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
With fan hopes at fever pitch, Wiethoff released a statement earlier this week clearly designed to manage expectations. In it, John Marston’s voice actor said he “possibly misled some people” in regards to how exciting the announcement was, and said he did “not make announcements for Rockstar games.”
“I do have something I’m really excited about, I truly am, and I think you will be too,” Wiethoff said. “I really do think so, but I possibly misled some people when I announced that I have something to announce that I can’t talk about right now.
“Just please recognize – and I know that you know this, but let me remind you, I guess – I do not make announcements for Rockstar Games. We all know that, I’m just reminding you I do not make announcements for Rockstar Games. Rockstar Games makes announcements for Rockstar Games, and they don’t use me to do that.”
@cyberboiuk @Mctannen
Rob Wiethoff has clarified that his announcement has nothing to do with rockstar. pic.twitter.com/WmlWJD1GSQ— jon🚬 (@jonbranham_) June 17, 2025
So what is the big mystery announcement? Well, fans have now spotted confirmation of a Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2 cast reunion, which is set to take place at the National Gaming Expo in Tampa, Florida from August 8 to August 10.
“Was this the announcement [Wiethoff] was so excited for?” wrote one fan on reddit.
“I think so,” added replied.
“It would be great if they waited for this convention to reveal there’s going to be SOME kind of update, remastering, DLC, a next chapter etc,” said a third. “It’s definitely wishful thinking on my part.”
Red Dead Redemption 2 originally launched for PS4 and Xbox One back in October 2018, and arrived on PC a year later. Fans have long hoped for a revamped version designed to take advantage of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, but, more than five years after those consoles launched, a re-release or remaster is yet to arrive.
Of course, Rockstar has been busy during this time building Grand Theft Auto 6, which after its recent delay will now launch on May 26, 2026. Surely there’s time to pop out a Red Dead Redemption 2 patch before then?
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
While the prospect The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered turning out to be a real thing had folks wondering what that might mean for Oblivion remake mod Skyblivion‘s release, Bethesda were quick quell fears of a shutdown.
Both sides have been openly chummy since that point, with the studio behind The Elder Scrolls even having the team of modders pop by for a visit around the time their project was being shouted out on the official channels. We’ve now learned a bit more about how that social call went and what the two sides chatted about.
Ahh, memories.
I still remember the day I got my GameCube. It wasn’t the launch day, because I remember getting Super Smash Bros. Melee alongside it, which to my knowledge released a few weeks after the console itself in the UK.
Oh gosh, I was so excited though! I poured over early issues of NGC in the weeks leading up to The Big Day (somehow, there were already about six or seven issues before the console even released), perhaps most notably while on a family holiday in Cyprus, clutching the magazine while my Mum tried to get me to focus on the sights and sounds of the Limassol coastline. No Mum… I’m reading about Link’s Melee moveset for the hundredth time, thanks.
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As I drifted my large Desert Raptor MKII mech through an expansive desert canyon, crowded full of rocket-wielding hover bots and gun-toting bandits, I got the sense that Bounty Star might be onto something special here. My mech, assembled from a variety of parts looking like it was built in someone’s garage (because it was), dispatched these challenging foes with a variety of heavy melee attacks and cannon fire. It took me a few tries to come out on top, but as I neared the end of my brief hands-on time, Bounty Star left me eager to come back to its world later this year when it launches for Xbox Series X|S.
In Bounty Star you play as Clem, a talented fighter and mech pilot who is managing some personal trauma as a war veteran looking to make up for some of her past actions – and hopefully become a force of good. Her adventure takes place in an area known as the Red Expanse, reminiscent of what can best be described as a post-apocalyptic American Southwest.
“I was in Sedona, Arizona, surrounded by landscapes much like those in the game, and I couldn’t help but think how perfect they would be for an immersive action game setting,” explains Creative Director & Designer Benjamin Ruiz. “The desire to create something visually stunning and set in a beautiful desert was really the spark for Bounty Star. Everything started to fall into place from there. I began outlining the concept that very morning, inspired by those breathtaking views. That was about five years ago. It took a year or two before production officially began, but the idea was simmering for a while before we really got started.”
Ruiz explained to me that he always dreamed of creating a Western, and Bounty Star is very much rooted in that genre, but blending a lighter take on the Armored Core style of mech gameplay that his creative team loves.
“We really wanted to focus on the everyday life of a bounty hunter,” Ruiz adds. “There’s a base-building aspect where you’re preparing food, managing resources like clean water, and even raising chickens — really digging into the experience of survival in the desert. We aimed to find an exciting intersection between these elements: the fun of a Western, the detailed life of a bounty hunter, and the thrill of piloting a mech in the open desert. That’s how Bounty Star came together.”
As I explored Clem’s run-down garage that serves as her base of operations and home, with power lines strewn about, a make-shift kitchen in the corner to cook food (which can give her stat bonuses in combat), and barrels full of munitions hiding in plain sight, the world of Bounty Star is blending some of my favorite things about what it would be like to live out this life in a sci-fi Western, giving me strong “Firefly” and “Serenity” vibes where you don’t have much, but what you do have you can call home; it has potential.
Customization is one of the other key elements of Bounty Star and from what I could tell it seemed open-ended enough where I could either play with any type of mech that I wanted to assemble, provided I had the resources to put it all together. Ruiz reinforced that assumption for me.
“There are a couple of different approaches you can take,” Ruiz elaborates. “You’re always going to need both a melee weapon and a firearm, but you can lean into one or the other, depending on your preferred play style. For instance, some players might focus on heavy armor and charge straight into combat, becoming a slow but nearly unstoppable force. Others might prefer lighter builds, prioritizing speed and agility over sheer toughness.”
As Ruiz explained to me further, the customization system lets you tweak around seven core properties and choose from a variety of firearms, melee weapons, and support systems. He mentioned that even some of the QA testers were creating builds that would skip healing altogether, blasting through encounters at high speed. So, it seems you’ll have plenty of flexibility to create unique mech builds and experiment with different combat strategies when going up against a variety of enemies.
Enemies are not the only thing you’ll encounter in Bounty Star. There will also be a handful of key NPCs you’ll interact with. One of them is the Marshall, who’s not only responsible for assigning your bounties but also happens to be an old friend. There’s also a merchant who offers you some of the best gear available in the game, operating on the shadier side of things and brings a different energy compared to the Marshall according to Ruiz. He mentioned that overall, while the cast of other characters isn’t huge, the ones you meet are designed to have meaningful and memorable interactions with you in the game.
And one cannot be a bounty hunter without some bounties, and it sounds like there’s going to be a wide variety of mission designs to keep you engaged. Bounties generally work the same way throughout the game according to Ruiz. With Bounty Star running on a day-night cycle, there will be days where you’ll find story bounties on the board, alongside a couple of side bounties. Each one of these will send you to a specific part of the world, which will be distinct combat arenas of various shapes and sizes.
“Sometimes your goal is to capture a particular target because they’re a wanted criminal; other times, you’re tasked with clearing out all adversaries in the area,” Ruiz adds. “Some bounties require you to be more careful and apprehend someone, while others are straightforward combat challenges. There are also optional objectives for players who enjoy replayability, such as completing a bounty within a certain time or using a specific loadout. Ultimately, Bounty Star is very much a third-person arena experience, but we’re focused on providing a variety of ways for players to have fun and approach each mission uniquely.”
Much like Clem’s makeshift home, Bounty Star seems full of potential, and we’re looking forward to seeing how it all comes together later this year when it launches on Xbox Series X|S.
The post Bounty Star is a Cozy, Post-Apocalyptic Mech Brawler Brimming with Charm appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Last week, we you to dive in and share moments swimming from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:
Couch_Gamer2k23 shares Nathan scuba diving in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
jobolts_ shares Ellie swimming in the Savage Starlight skin in The Last of Us Part II.
call_me_xavii shares Sam floating through a stream of tar in Death Stranding.
calisarah1998 shares Naoe leaping off a tree into a lake in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
xenobitz shares a hunter wearing a Palico helmet underwater in Monster Hunter Wilds.
vg_ryno shares Aloy peeking her head above water in Horizon Forbidden West.
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: Maximalism
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on June 25, 2025
Next week, push everything to the max. Share crowded, busy, visually over-the-top moments of maximalism from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.
It’s been roughly three weeks since Elden Ring Nightreign dropped on May 30, and players have started to get their heads around all the different tools and abilities available to them in Limveld. What some are starting to do with those abilities, though, is pretty fascinating.
One of the top posts on the r/Nightreign subreddit this morning was from user u/Quantam-Law, who was playing with a Raider under the username “BRO….”. BRO had a pretty great idea: the trio of Nightfarers had the Noklateo Shifting Earth event, and rather than storm the front gate of the city, BRO popped Raider’s ultimate to provide a new platform for entry.
Noklateo, and other Shifting Earth events, are random, map-changing alterations that can appear, adding new encounters and areas to explore in the process. But while this usage of Totem Stela is good for that, it gets the gears turning on other places and ways you could use the massive brick to get up and around designed obstacles.
Raider’s not the only one with tricks, either. u/Mockz_ also had a recent skip posted up on the Elden Ring Nightreign subreddit, this time for the Crater Shifting Earth event. In this one, Mockz uses their abilities, and a little bit of good ol’ fashioned gravity to get where they need to go, at the bottom of the Crater.
Another user, u/ninjabladeJr, posted a feasible—albeit challenging and dangerous—skip of their own to the bottom of the Crater, using a spectral hawk and specific line-ups. Are these Crater skips dangerous? Absolutely. Is it awesome to see someone breeze past the many, many encounters of the dungeon and straight to the big boss, the ultimate goal and prize of the Shifting Earth event? You betcha.
Heck, there are people even finding ways to the top of the Mountaintop event by just Skyrim-jumping their way up the side of the cliffs like an ibex. Shifting Earth events are a fun, fascinating part of Nightreign’s construction and layout, and it’s amazing how players are already finding ways to navigate them faster and smarter.
The actual usability of these is absolutely up-in-the-air. I could see popping the Noklateo totem-skip in a random lobby, but I think attempting the spectral hawk Crater skip in a room with two random players who don’t know what I’m doing is a fast path to two, if not three, Nightfarers down.
But the fact players are getting so creative with their abilities and finding such interesting uses for them bodes well for the long-term health of Elden Ring Nightreign. As of this writing, the speedrun leaderboards for Elden Ring Nightreign still aren’t live, but these community-discovered skips already have me intrigued to see what speedrunners can showcase with the game.
We’ve got plenty of Nightreign tips and tricks to help you take down all the eight Nightlord Bosses, and if you’re wondering how to unlock the two locked Nightfarer Classes, check out How to Unlock the Revenant and How to Unlock the Duchess, plus How to Change Characters.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.
I am getting a real kick out of Rematch. As a football game, its closest analogue isn’t FIFA or eFootball, but a certain nitro-boosting sports ’em up that has been going for ten years. I’ve already seen it jokingly described as “Rocket League without cars.” An infuriatingly accurate description that does half my job for me. My list of irritations with it is long. But there is something so compelling about the kick-by-kick play, each match a little drama, that I will gladly scrunch that list of complaints into a ball and toepoke it into a waste paper basket on the other side of the room. GOOOAAALLL!
Remedy has posted a candid statement acknowledging “not everything has gone well” at the launch of its multiplayer Control spin-off FBC: Firebreak, and outlined how it hopes to improve the game in the coming weeks.
FBC: Firebreak launched on June 17, but already sits on a “mixed” user score on Steam. Calling the launch an “exciting and nerve-wracking time,” developer Remedy told players it had heard feedback “loudly and clearly,” and admitted “it’s clear there are features that need to improve, and they will improve.”
“We are improving some features starting now. While we can improve some features today and in the near term, some others will take longer and require more thinking from us. We will keep you informed every step of the way.
“But you’re not here for platitudes,” the statement added. “You want to know how we will improve your player experience in FBC: Firebreak, so let’s get into it.”
The team has immediately identified a problem with “the first hour experience,” saying that FBC: Firebreak’s opening gameplay was not “a great experience due to a combination of things,” including issues with onboarding, poorly explained systems and tools, and “a lack of clarity as to what to do in the Jobs and how to do the work effectively.” The developer also said: “the power fantasy isn’t great in the first hours of the game as starting weapons feel weak, and unlocking higher-tier weapons requires a bit too much grinding.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Remedy wants better onboarding and user-interface clarity, as well as making Jobs easier to access. This means you’ll no longer need to play the first two Clearance Levels of each Job, and new players start off with a “full three-zone Hot Fix Job run.” There are also plans to speed up progression and gear unlocks.
Remedy says these changes are just the beginning, and represent the most “immediate changes” coming to the game. It is also actively discussing broader improvements based on player feedback.
“Right now, despite how sparse the story can seem in moments, there’s a lot of fun to be had wrangling erratic monsters in Remedy’s spectacularly absurd bureaucratic setting,” we wrote in IGN’s FBC: Firebreak review in progress. “I’ll be playing more this week and wrap up this review as soon as I’ve tested the limits of Remedy’s chaotic cooperative job simulator.”
Remedy also recently confirmed its plans for ongoing support post-launch, including two new Jobs (missions) coming in 2025. More updates will arrive in 2026, the developer said. All playable content released post launch, such as Jobs, will be free to all players. Players have the option to buy cosmetics, but none of these items will affect gameplay, and there will be no limited-time rotations or daily log-ins, Remedy insisted.
It’s a busy time for Alan Wake developer Remedy, which has a number of projects on the go. As well as FBC: Firebreak, it’s working on Control 2 and the Max Payne and Max Payne 2 remake compilation.
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.
PC gaming hasn’t seen much 3D hardware since Nvidia shuttered its goggles-based, Alec-damaging 3D Vision prospect in 2019. Death by lack of compelling use cases, or by VR coming along and doing the whole “S’like it’s coming right at me” thing more comprehensively? Maybe a bit of both, but in any case, Samsung is having another go with its new Odyssey 3D gaming monitor. Outwardly resembling just another 4K IPS screen, its three-dimensification of select games involves collaborations with their original developers, with the final effect being delivered without the need for any glasses or headwear at all.
I recently had a go on the Odyssey 3D, and it’s certainly a few steps up from yer dusty Nintendo 3DS. A combination of eye-tracking cameras and an internal array of lenticular lenses produces the 3D effect, maintains it as long as your head stays roughly centred, and at least for me, manages to avoid inflicting agony of the eyes or brain. It’s impressive tech, though if it’s to become a serious desk-topping option, the Odyssey 3D will need a lot more games to get on board with it.
