The first thing that jumped out to me as I began Monster Hunter Wilds’ introductory mission was how quickly I got invested in its story now that both my character and my Palico companion had voice acting of their own. The second thing, sadly, was how poorly this early preview build ran once I took control. Wilds is exceptionally exciting to me, recapturing what I love about Monster Hunter World while learning from the joy that came from Monster Hunter Rise’s enhanced mobility, finding a balance of both that felt great across the handful of missions I tried. It’s unfortunate that its rough, in-development performance put a little bit of a damper on my demo time, but if Capcom can sort those issues out by launch next year, Wilds could be exactly what I was dreaming of from the next Monster Hunter.

What’s immediately clear is that Wilds has continued to put a priority on smoothing out some of the traditionally rougher edges of this series. For instance, rideable monster mounts make a return after first being introduced as an automated option in World’s Iceborne expansion and then expanded into full control in Rise. This iteration leans more toward the latter, defaulting to follow a target but allowing you to take the reins directly anytime. Your dino-bird, called a Seikret, can scamper across special paths, glide, and give you time to use or collect items, which makes travel engaging in a way that feels less artificial than Rise’s Spiribird busywork.

But it’s not just a matter of convenience, as your mount also stores a second weapon option that you can swap to while riding. As a lifelong Insect Glaive main, this didn’t really appeal to me at first… until I realized that you can also use ranged weapons like Bowguns while mounted. That fully recontextualized this system, letting me pepper a retreating monster with bullets while my Seikret automatically chased it down, then swap back to my Glaive when it was time to hop off. I guess we’re all learning ranged weapons now, and I am very okay with that added flexibility.

I can only really speak to my experience with the Insect Glaive when it comes to how weapons have changed, but I was surprised by the adjustments I saw there – most of which seem to be in service of the new Focus Mode option that lets you more precisely aim your attacks at specific monster parts and special weak points. I found myself with a lot more options to sidestep or make micro-adjustments while attacking, with seemingly fewer combos that would end with a move that killed my momentum and more opportunities to really control how I was laying down the hurt. Again, I didn’t play enough to have the clearest sense of that shift just yet, but it feels like that Rise philosophy of speeding up some of the clunkier parts of combat is alive and well, even if you aren’t flying around on a Wirebug this time.

And if you’ll indulge some Glaive-specific gushing, there are two massive changes that radically changed the combat pattern I was used to. First, landing your aerial attack no longer bounces you back into the air for a chain of helicopter-blade slicing, which was admittedly a huge drag to discover. But the loss of that goofy fun is at least partly made up for by more convenience tweaks, as hitting a weak point with a special Focus Strike move will not only deal tons of damage, it also immediately collects all three Kinsect essences at once, massively speeding up that process in the mid-to-late part of a hunt. (Your aiming reticle now also has a helpful indicator that tells you which essence the monster part you are aiming will provide, and managing that system feels like less of a hassle all around.)

Even in my short playtime, I saw so many little examples of things like this – stuff that doesn’t undermine the challenge and deliberate pace that makes Monster Hunter what it is but does make the experience that much smoother. There’s a quick option to use whatever recovery items you have that will minimize waste, your hook can grab most items from afar (even while mounted), collecting at gathering points moves just a bit quicker, you can finally pick up bomb barrels after placing them, and firing an SOS flare will even fill your team with AI hunters if you’re offline or until real people online are able to join. It’s a laundry list of tweaks that aren’t necessarily revolutionary, but all make so much sense you wonder why it wasn’t like this before.

Of course, the big, buggy Gammoth in the room is how it all ran. I am willing to give Capcom the benefit of the doubt to a pretty substantial degree here given Wilds doesn’t even have a release date beyond “2025” yet – there is presumably a lot of time left to polish things up – but it’s still worth mentioning that this demo ran badly. Like, really distractingly badly. During busy moments, the framerate dropped to a degree that almost made it hard to play, and the group I was playing with saw multiple hard crashes. Again, this in-development build is by no means the final version of Wilds, but it is the version Capcom chose to show us, and I can’t help but be just a touch concerned that maybe that’s an indication that, at best, Wilds might drop later in 2025 than I was expecting, or at worst, that Capcom bit off a little more than it will ultimately be able to chew.

That’s partly because the ambitious scope here is truly impressive, seemingly hoping to keep hunters out in the field longer. Rather than kicking you back to town after a successful hunt, the second mission I did was structured more like Iceborne’s Guiding Lands, where you could stick around after to explore or immediately take on a new one, with world events and other dynamic things coming and going around you. Rather than starting from a single tent, there was even a surprisingly large outpost on the map I saw, complete with NPCs to talk to. I didn’t really get to see much of this side of Wilds in my demo, but it could add up to a very different feel between fights.

From what I did see, Wilds is shaping up to be pretty much what I hoped for: a Monster Hunter that embraces the parts of Rise that made it so much more inviting, but also doesn’t shy away from the larger scale and spectacle that helped make World the more enduring entry for me. It’s hard to tell exactly which way that needle will point after just a few missions (or if these structural changes will swing it somewhere else entirely), but I certainly can’t wait to play more so I can find out.

Tom Marks is IGN’s Executive Reviews Editor. He loves puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

Civilization fans will know the in-game narrator plays a huge part in the strategy series. For a start, you hear their voice a lot as they impart wisdom about humanity itself throughout the course of the game. And the Civilization games have had some high-profile actors play the role over the years. The late and great Star Trek legend Leonard Nimoy voiced Civilization 4, William Morgan Sheppard voiced Civilization 5, and Ned Stark himself, Sean Bean, voiced Civilization 6.

Now, Civilization developer Firaxis has maintained the Game of Thrones line of succession by drafting Gwendoline Christie to play the in-game narrator in Civilization 7. Fresh from a gameplay reveal at Opening Night Live, Firaxis announced Christie’s role in the game with a new trailer, below, that offers a glimpse at what to expect when Civilization 7 releases early next year.

Just revealed! Your in-game narrator for Civilization VII is… Gwendoline Christie!

Watch the full Gameplay Showcase, happening now!https://t.co/xIm1PxuUQF | #Civ7 pic.twitter.com/TXyDewBQo1

— Sid Meier’s Civilization VII (@CivGame) August 20, 2024

Christie, like Sean Bean, is a Game of Thrones alum, having exploded into the mainstream by playing Brienne of Tarth in the HBO fantasy-drama series. Here, Christie seems a little more relaxed than the overcharged Brienne, setting the scene for perfectly for Civilization 7.

IGN went hands-on with Civilization 7 ahead of its Opening Night Live reveal and came away impressed. Civilization 7 launches February 11, 2025, on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, and Mac and Linux via Steam.

Check out everything announced at Opening Night Live to catch up.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

It’s about to kick off in the centre of Kuttenberg, the sprawling medieval city at the heart of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Menhard the sword master has offered to teach protagonist Henry of Skalitz a few tricks with the blade, but the lesson has been interrupted by Kuttenberg’s official fencing guild. They won’t let Menhard teach so much as a pommel strike, despite him having a charter from King Wenceslas to do just that. Moreover, they’re going to fine the old Fechtmeister for breaching their rules.

Things are getting heated, with the chance of a real swordfight breaking out growing by the second. But Henry has an idea. “Menhard wasn’t teaching me anything,” he blurts out. “We were duelling because I insulted his honour!”

Unconvinced, the guild master asks what the duel was about, at which point I’m given an array of choices for Henry to respond with. Reacting quickly, I decide to have Henry say that he slept with Menhard’s daughter. I don’t know whether Menhard has a daughter, but it seems like the sort of thing medieval people would get into a duel over, so I roll with it.

It works. The guild master buys my bald-faced lie and waives the fine, though Menhard is still prohibited from teaching longsword in the city. With a fight avoided, I turn to Menhard expecting him to be grateful. Instead, he’s furious. It seems Menhard really does have a daughter, and the very idea of Henry sleeping with her has genuinely insulted his honour. Oops. With their relationship damaged, Henry must desperately placate the raging swordmaster before they can focus on more important matters, like plotting how to get back at Kuttenberg’s fencing guild.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is shaping up to be an even bigger RPG than the original, a 100+ hour epic featuring massive battles, sweeping Bohemian landscapes, and a fully simulated medieval metropolis. But at Warhorse Studios’ preview event hosted in the real-life city of Kutná Hora (the modern Czech name for Kuttenberg) it was this throwaway detail that stuck with me the most. Warhorse claims every choice the player makes in its RPG will feel like it matters, and this dramatic response to a decision I barely thought about was the first (but not the last) indicator that KCD2 could well deliver on this promise.

It’ll be several hours before KCD 2 opens-up to you in this way, however. Warhorse provided access to two separate chunks of the game, the first of which took place right at the beginning. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 opens in medias res, with an explosive castle siege where you defend the ramparts with crossbow and longsword. Warhorse says KCD 2 will feature substantially larger battles than the previous game, and this initial sequence was an impressive taster of playing at a larger scale, from booting down siege ladders from the castle wall, to firing crossbow bolts into a crush of enemy soldiers as they come barrelling through the gate.

Following this exciting opening, KCD 2 rewinds to connect with the end of the first game, as we rejoin Henry and his friend and liege lord Sir Hans Capon on a mission to deliver a letter to neighbouring lord Otto von Bergow. This initial hour is strictly linear and heavy on cutscenes, but it keeps you engaged through the feelgood vibes of Henry and Hans’ friendship. Like the first Kingdom Come, the sequel is written in a very humanistic style. Henry remains a deeply affable, fish-out-of-water protagonist, while his position as Sir Hans’ squire leads to an interesting blend of camaraderie and tension between the two.

Together, the pair have big “lads on tour” energy, clearly revelling in the rare freedom their position and assignment affords them in medieval society. It isn’t all fun and games, however. An encounter with a retinue of Bergow’s knights emphasises the danger that lurks around every corner, as the two have to convince the armed horsemen that they aren’t bandits. It’s the first of many elaborate dialogue sequences, with numerous player choices and a lot of exposition. Indeed, while KCD’s conversations are generally interesting, I did wonder if they might benefit from some sterner editing at times.

KCD2 is built to be played with no foreknowledge of the original. As such, the opening hours fold in several refresher tutorials, such as Henry and Hans having a friendly duel that reintroduces you to KCD’s unique swordfighting system. This has been refined for the sequel, reducing the number of directions you can swing your sword from five to four, and making actions like parrying and riposting easier to pull off. While it’s been years since I played the first game, I was nonetheless able to hold my own against Sir Hans after a few minutes of instruction, suggesting that Warhorse’s changes have indeed made the system easier to grapple with. The sequel also introduces bespoke fighting systems for certain non-sword weapons like maces, letting players who don’t fancy mastering the blade to adopt the simpler approach of cracking skulls.

The introduction culminates in Henry and Hans taking a bath in the river, followed by a goofy scene where they sneak through the reeds along the riverbank, drawn by the sound of peasant women singing nearby. The scene quickly takes a darker turn, however, as the pair’s camp is attacked by bandits, whereupon they’re forced to flee into the woods wearing nothing but their pants. It’s a sequence that shifts between dramatic and comedic multiple times, and the game handles those tonal changes well.

Through a series of unfortunate events, Henry and Hans end up in the care of a local peasant woman, where we get a chance to see the quieter side of KCD2. One of the original’s strengths was how it strived to immerse players in moment-to-moment play, and KCD2 seems just as indulgent in this regard. Simple actions like eating stew from a pot and picking herbs to make potions are depicted with intensely detailed first-person animations, while the Bohemian forests you explore are verdant and alive with birdsong. There’s a chance to experiment with the updated alchemy system, which is even more tactile and involved than the first game, with you sprinkling ingredients into a big cauldron, before adjusting its height with a lever to change the heat level. Later, when Henry has to fight and kill a couple of bandits who come looking for him, an optional objective unlocks to bury the bodies away from the peasant woman’s home, and you can go through the entire process of putting these wayward souls to rest.

Everything in this initial demo suggests KCD 2 will retain the original’s capacity for letting players steep in its medieval setting. What it didn’t show was anything wildly new. For this, the second demo was more promising. This fast-forwarded the campaign to the 50-hour mark, where Henry arrives in Kuttenberg. This medieval metropolis is the largest urban space seen in the series yet, a bustling environment where every NPC has their own daily routines and behaviours.

It’s here where Henry encounters the swordmaster Menhard and becomes embroiled in the dispute over who has the rights to teach longsword in the city. To settle the disagreement, Menhard hatches a plan, and asks Henry to steal the fencing guild’s official sword and hang it on the wall of the Rathaus (the town hall). This, Menhard explains, is the formal way of issuing a challenge of arms to the town, a challenge which Menhard could then accept to prove his martial superiority.

Of course, this means sneaking into a guildhall filled with master swordsmen, which Menhard wisely suggests you do at night (though you are free to try it in the daytime if you wish). Yet even in darkness, clandestine activities are a risky business in Kuttenberg. Anyone walking around at night is expected to carry a torch, and not doing so will get you in trouble with the guards. Having successfully evaded the city watch, I then have to climb over the wall of the guild house, pick the lock on one of several potential entrances, find the sword, and escape.

Here, the open-ended nature of KCD 2 becomes much more apparent, with the quest feeling closer in spirit to a game like Dishonored than the more directed sequences of the early game. The first time I attempt the theft, things go south quickly. I pick the lock but attract the attention of one of the nightwatchmen, who relocks the door after searching for me. I pick the lock again, and proceed three steps into the building before I’m rumbled. I try to fight my way out with fisticuffs, managing to knock out one of the nightwatchmen, but another has roused the town guard, who come barrelling in with swords drawn to quickly cut me down.

In my second attempt, I’m more careful, and succeed in lifting the sword unnoticed and hanging it on the wall of the Rathaus. This would be a natural endpoint for the quest, but it proves to be far from over. Succeeding in the theft leads to a multi-stage longsword tournament between Menhard and the swordmasters’ guild, and you can choose to be sworn in under Menhard’s stewardship and fight for his honour and right to teach longsword in the city. Moreover, the quest can alter in multiple ways depending on your actions, both in narrative choices and general play. If you steal the sword but are spotted doing so, for example, the guild will accuse you of the theft when Menhard accepts their challenge. Consequently, the swordmasters’ guild is given heavier armour during the tournament, making the fight more difficult on your end.

This elaborate structure isn’t entirely surprising; quest design was one of the first game’s strengths too. Nonetheless, it certainly feels like the sequel is operating at a higher level amid the busy streets of Kuttenberg. And if Menhard’s quest is reflective of the sequel’s 100+ hour total, then Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 could end up being something rather special indeed.

Earlier today, Bethesda announced that in the lead-up to Starfield’s upcoming Shattered Space DLC, players would be treated to the game’s first land vehicle, the Rev-8, in an update coming later tonight. Well, it’s now later tonight, and Starfield’s 1.13.61 update is now live.

The big centerpiece of this patch is, of course, the Rev-8. It’s the game’s first land vehicle, and we got our first look at it earlier today in a trailer. It’s kinda cute, bouncing around craters and things with its little hover jets and turret. Take a look:

The update isn’t just car-centric, though the Rev-8 is a pretty big deal. There are a number of new settings being added such as a frame rate target setting allowing players to pick between 30, 40, 60, or uncapped on VRR displays. Non-VRR displays will still be able to select between 30 and 60, though players are warned screen tearing may occur on non-VRR displays if 60 is selected. There’s also a new setting allowing you to prioritize between visuals and performance, and toggling Vsync on and off. And there are new Xbox Series S performance options added as well.

Gameplay-wise, the majority of the changes appear to be fixing various bugs or minor other adjustments to make gameplay a bit smoother. You can read the full patch notes here.

Today’s update comes ahead of a much larger DLC expansion entitled Shattered Space, which we learned today would be releasing on September 30. Shattered Space was first revealed back in June at the Xbox Games Showcase and is the game’s first story expansion. It takes place on the homeworld of House Va’Ruun and includes a new planet, weapons, spacesuits, gear, and more.

We gave Starfield a 7/10 in our launch review, saying that it “has a lot of forces working against it, but eventually the allure of its expansive roleplaying quests and respectable combat make its gravitational pull difficult to resist.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.