Category: IGN

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has officially been named Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025, alongside multiple other wins. If that winning sweep has you jumping in for the first time (or returning for another playthrough), IGN has you covered with guides, explainers, and wikis to help you get started for your journey across The Continent.

What Is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? Should You Play It?

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG (it’s kind of like Final Fantasy VII… kind of) set in the world of The Continent. It follows a group called Expedition 33 on a mission to destroy The Paintress, a mysterious figure who wipes out anyone over a certain age in a yearly ceremony called the “Gommage.”

Alongside extremely unique turn-based combat, which emphasizes various skills and parries to deal damage to bosses with “tells” and plenty of secret weak points, you and your party explore various different areas, encountering enemies, finding treasure, and discovering what happened to other Expeditions that ventured out to beat the Paintress – and failed – before. You also can also build your team to deal ridiculous combo-based damage, something that hardcore players have come to love about Expedition 33.

If you’re an RPG fan but don’t have time to sink 100+ hours into them, Expedition 33 may be perfect for you. If you solely focus on the main story, you can expect to roll credits in around 28 hours. With side quests, this increases to 45 hours. If you’re set on completing everything, it’ll take roughly 65 hours. And if you want to beat a bunch of optional bosses with crazy builds, you can do that, too. Oh and we gave Expedition 33 a great score in our review if you want a more in-depth take!

How Combat Works in Expedition 33

As mentioned previously, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 features turn-based combat, which means that everyone in battle, including enemies, attacks one at a time, rather than everyone at once – think classic Final Fantasy, Persona, or Baldur’s Gate 3.

You don’t just wait for enemy attacks to hit you, though. Here, one of the main selling points is the ability to parry, dodge, and jump to avoid and counter attacks. When an opponent uses a move, you’re able to press a button that, when timed right, either dodges, jumps, or parries to avoid damage completely or deal damage back to them.

When it comes to your own skills, these are powered by Pictos and Luminas. Pictos are special pieces of equipment that you equip to characters to grant special benefits and increase stats. Luminas, working hand-in-hand with Pictos, are special skills that unlock after you’ve won a battle with a Picto four times, and can be carried over and used with every member of your party.

Builds are a crucial part of combat in Expedition 33, and you’ll need to pay mind to not only your Pictos and Luminas, but weapons and attributes. No matter the character, we’ve got Build Guides to help you plan, so you’re always suited up in the best gear and stats.

If all this sounds confusing or overwhelming to you, head to our Combat Guide that explains everything you need to know about Expedition 33’s battle system in more detail, including the more intricate mechanics we haven’t covered here. For more combat and party-adjacent Game Help, check out:

• Lumina Points Explained
• How to Parry
• Attributes
• Weaknesses Chart
• Status Effects List
• All Pictos List and Effects
• Best Pictos
• All Weapons
• Best Weapons

Exploration and World Design Explained

After you set off on your journey to defeat the Paintress, you’ll arrive at The Continent, which is essentially a giant overworld. Not only is this how you travel to new areas during the main story, but there are also enemies that roam around, waiting to be defeated (or avoided).

In addition, The Continent is home to various collectibles to find, Optional Bosses to take down, and Side Quests to complete. If you’re a completionist, you can spend hours just on The Continent overworld alone, tracking down every item, Secret, and Easter Egg possible.

Our Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 interactive map is the perfect companion tool to aid you in exploring The Continent. Not only does it lay the entire area out to help you plan your next move, but it also tracks essential locations, such as new areas, side quests, collectibles, and bosses, so you always know where to go to meet your objective.

If you, like me, still have visions of last night’s grotesque trailer for a new Divinity game from Larian Studios burned into your head, then you’ll be delighted to know there’s already a whirl of fan theories as to what it all meant. Specifically, some fans think they’ve worked out who the man burned alive inside the wicker man is, or at least, who he’s supposed to represent.

I’m going to get into some spoilers for basically all the other Divinity games here, so if you intend to play through some of those in advance, read on at your own risk.

So, there are a few possibilities being floated for who that guy in the fire is. The first, and most probably, is Lucian, the human player character of Divine Divinity and a recurring figure throughout the Divinity games. There’s a ton of history behind Lucian, but what you probably need to know is that he was at one point worshipped as the “Divine”, chosen by the Seven gods of Rivellon. He stands in opposition to a force known as Chaos, the source of Rivellon’s demons which seeks to invade and consume Rivellon, but he also at one point adopted a baby named Damian who was known to serve as a vessel for the Lord of Chaos, which goes about as well as you can imagine.

Lucian is also the founder of The Divine Order. If you’ve played Original Sin 2, you’ll remember those guys as the folks rounding up Source users, but also will recall that at the time of the game, Lucian had already passed away…or so everyone thought. The end of the game has you discover him hiding in his tomb, having faked his death and is quietly working to purge the Source from Rivellon entirely. Depending on your actions when you meet him, Lucian might end up dead, or alive and still Divine. Sort of.

Which leads to the theories that the guy in the fire is Lucian. In the ending of Original Sin 2 where you allow all the world’s Source to be purged, Lucian is reinstalled as Divine ruler. However, unbeknownst to most, he doesn’t possess Divine powers anymore. He’s just a dude. One theory being floated is that somehow the people of Rivellon have figured out that Lucian is powerless and the gods are dead (you actually kill all seven of the world’s gods in Original Sin 2) or otherwise gone. Lucian’s committed a lot of pretty atrocious crimes over the years against a lot of people in the name of the greater good, so it’s not shocking that folks would be pissed and turn on him as soon as it was clear he had no real power. But even just beyond the lore, look: the guy looks like Lucian!

The Game Awards gave us a new trailer for The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin with a look at exploration and co-op gameplay, as well as a possible hint at the return of a fan-favorite character.

For those who aren’t already aware, The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin is an open-world action RPG that takes place in Britannia from the world of The Seven Deadly Sins manga and anime. It stars Tristan, prince of Liones, in a multiverse narrative that tells its own original story. Tristan finds a pendant called the Book of Stars that has the power to connect timelines but also awakens a new darkness that must be defeated.

It being a new story involving alternate timelines means it can feature just about any character or enemy from the manga and anime series. And we got a taste of that in this trailer, which included a brief tease of Escanor, the beloved member of the titular Seven Deadly Sins. Fans of the series know all about him and what happens to him, but the latest trailer includes a brief glimpse of his distinctive Lion Sin of Pride tattoo, possibly hinting that he’s back to show off his daylight-powered strength.

While Escanor is the most notable character in the trailer, he’s far from the only familiar face. We see several well-known characters — including Meliodas, Elizabeth, and Diane (more on her in a minute) — fighting alongside a player-controlled party against three massive bosses, giving us our most detailed look yet at the size and scope of multiplayer battles.

We’ve known for a while that you can have up to four characters on your team at a time and can switch between them on the fly with one button press. But in the trailer’s battle against the Ancient Dragon, you can tell from the UI that that’s still the case even while the player is joined by friends in co-op.

So even when fighting multiplayer battles, you’ll still be able to swap between your full team. And speaking of the UI, you can also see that each character has an elemental-aspected ultimate ability that lights up when it’s available to use, even if that character isn’t currently on the field, helping you plan your strategy and when to switch characters.

We also get a look at a multiplayer battle against a boss named Warden Orgot. And in the cases of both the warden and dragon, you can get a sense of the power and range of some of their abilities. Red zones show where an AoE attack will land, and some of those zones take up a massive amount of space, so you’re clearly going to have to stay on your toes during these chaotic battles.

The final boss battle featured in the trailer was only shown briefly, but it’s still notable because of who it is: a giant version of Diane. And that fight is accompanied by quest text that says “Episode 8: Diane on a Rampage.” So … what exactly is going on there? I guess we’ll just have to wait to find out. The Ancient Dragon, Warden Orgot, and Giant Diane are all new bosses that weren’t featured in the game’s recent closed beta test, so even people who got to play the game already have something to get excited about.

The rest of the trailer showed that fighting giant bosses isn’t the only thing you can do with your friends. We got a glimpse of co-op exploration, both in a dungeon and in the open world, which included seeing everyone in the party riding flying mounts through the air together. So the implication is you’ll have the freedom to travel with your friends throughout the world.

The new trailer is just the latest to be featured at some of gaming’s biggest events this year. There have been trailers or playable builds at Summer Game Fest in June, gamescom in August, Tokyo Game Show in September, G-STAR 2025 in November, and now The Game Awards.

It’s all been building up momentum toward the worldwide January 28, 2026 release date on PC, PlayStation 5, iOS, and Android. The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin is free-to-play with cross-play across all platforms, and you can pre-register right now on mobile or by using your email.

The heroes in your party will be recruited using gacha mechanics, but if you pre-register through Google Play or the App Store you’ll be guaranteed recruitment of Tioreh, who is new to the series. You’ll also get draw tickets, hero upgrade materials, and healing dishes, which will help give you a head start at the beginning of the game. If you use your e-mail to pre-register on the official website, you’ll get the Skyborne Gale Duel Swords weapon, weapon upgrade materials, and gold.

Console and PC players can also wishlist the game on PS5 or Steam now. To keep up with the latest news and updates, you can follow the game on its official Discord, Twitter, and YouTube channels.

Tomb Raider has a chartered history, with Lara Croft delving into ruins and tombs all over the world. Overcoming any and all obstacles set in her path, Lara has elevated herself into an exclusive and lauded pantheon of iconic video game protagonists.

Now that we know that not one but two Tomb Raider games are on the way, we’ve created a chronological list of every game released so far. There’s never a bad time to start (or restart) your spelunking adventures from the very beginning.

Jump to:

• How to play in chronological order
• How to play in release order

How Many Tomb Raider Games Are There?

There are a total of 20 Tomb Raider games that have been released as of 2025. These games are split over 3 different timelines, each distinct from one another, offering different plotlines and a slightly different spin on Lara and her supporting cast.

14 of these games have been released for home consoles, 6 also supported handheld portable consoles, and 6 were supported on mobile devices. Tomb Raider: The Prophecy, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, Lara Croft Go, Lara Croft: Relic Run, and Tomb Raider Reloaded are all stand-alone titles, and therefore will not be included on these lists.

Which Tomb Raider Should You Play First?

If you’re coming to the franchise for the first time in 2025, we recommend starting with the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot. The first entry in the “Survivor” trilogy sets the stage for Lara Croft’s most recent series of expeditions that runs through the latest mainline game, 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

165 workers at id Software, the studio behind the Doom and Quake franchises, have elected to unionize with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in yet another wall-to-wall developer union within Microsoft.

The new union encompasses developers, artists, programmers, and other disciplines, and has been formally recognized by Microsoft in accordance with its pledge to remain “neutral” with regard to unions within its ranks and voluntarily recognize any that emerge. Union members suggest issues of concern for the group include the instability of the games industry writ large, as well as the necessity of remote work.

“I’m very proud to be a part of this effort to organize our studio, to have a voice in decisions that directly affect myself and my coworkers,” said senior VFX artist and organizing committee member Caroline Pierrot. “In an industry that has proven to be very unstable over the last few years, more unions means more power to the workers and a real shot at shaping the future of the industry for the better.”

Microsoft has seen a cascade of new unions formed at its game studios in recent years, a large number of which have been under its most recent acquisition, Activision Blizzard. Diablo developers unionized this past August, as did Blizzard’s story and franchise development team, the entire World of Warcraft team unionized last year, and the Overwatch developers followed in May of this year. Meanwhile, Raven Software workers won their first contract earlier this year, Zenimax QA workers won a contract in May, and Bethesda’s union is still in active negotiations.

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

Clearly, all is not well in the world of Call of Duty. Black Ops 7 appears to have struggled for players and sales relatively speaking amid tough competition from the likes of EA’s Battlefield 6 and Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders, and coming out just a year after Black Ops 6. Microsoft is yet to announce a player count or a sales figure for Black Ops 7, nor has it detailed any boost to Game Pass subscriber numbers as a result of its launch. Clearly, it hasn’t met its expectations.

Last month, sales data suggested Black Ops 7 was struggling not just against rival shooter Battlefield 6, but also last year’s Black Ops 6. The Game Business reported that Black Ops 7’s European launch saw opening week sales down 63% versus Battlefield 6 during the equivalent launch periods for each shooter, and Black Ops 7 also down by more than 50% versus Black Ops 6. All in all, Black Ops 7 had a “terrible” launch, The Game Business’ chief Chris Dring said in a post on social media.

Then, in a shock development, Activision promised never to release Black Ops or Modern Warfare games back to back again. In a statement attributed to “the Call of Duty team” (Treyarch, Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward, Raven Software and co.), Activision admitted “that for some of you, the franchise has not met your expectations fully. To be very clear, we know what you expect and rest assured we will deliver, and overdeliver, on those expectations as we move forward.”

Activision continued: “We will no longer do back-to-back releases of Modern Warfare or Black Ops games. The reasons are many, but the main one is to ensure we provide an absolutely unique experience each and every year. We will drive innovation that is meaningful, not incremental. While we aren’t sharing those plans today, we look forward to doing so when the time is right.”

Fast forward to this week, and Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty has painted a slightly rosier picture. When asked about Black Ops 7’s performance by Variety, Booty responded to confirm that it’s one of the most-played games on Xbox right now, and that he was proud of what the development team was able to achieve. He then said Call of Duty is “its own unique category” because of Activision’s ability to release content via a seasonal model, so the launch isn’t the end of Black Ops 7’s story.

Here’s the quote in full:

“Right now, it is one of the most-played games on Xbox. And I’m really proud of what the team did, in terms of feature innovation, moving the franchise forward. Shipping a major franchise like clockwork every year is a really difficult task, and I’m really proud of what the team did to move the franchise forward in that way.

“And the interesting thing about Call of Duty is, I think that as an IP, it is really well positioned to continue to deliver content for players going forward; the system of seasons. And it’s not just about the launch, but it’s kind of in its own unique category and ability in terms of how the team keeps delivering content throughout the year. So we’re real happy with where we’ve landed with that.”

Amid the doom and gloom, Microsoft has said Call of Duty (overall) ended 2025 as the number one franchise on Game Pass for total players and hours all year, which perhaps doesn’t come as much of a surprise given this is Call of Duty we’re talking about. But it does show that even when Call of Duty has a bad year relative to previous games in the series, it’s still massively popular relative to other games.

Call of Duty is now at something of a crossroads. 2026’s Call of Duty game is almost certainly a continuation of Modern Warfare from Infinity Ward, but what will 2027 bring? Black Ops 8? Activision’s failure to establish a third Call of Duty sub-brand means that it has become overly reliant on Modern Warfare and Black Ops to keep the franchise going at the player numbers executives demand. Could Microsoft take the drastic step of giving Call of Duty a year off to recover from its recent struggles? Given Microsoft paid $69 billion for Activision Blizzard, it seems unlikely.

As for Black Ops 7 in the here and now, Activision has promised “unprecedented season support,” saying it “won’t rest until Black Ops 7 earns its place as one of the best Black Ops games we’ve ever made.”

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.

As revealed at The Game Awards 2025, Capcom is bringing the Blue Bomber back with a new video game called Mega Man: Dual Override.

The first trailer for what will be the first new Mega Man game since 2018’s Mega Man 11 reveals a return to that classic 2D style that made the iconic hero famous. It’s unclear what other elements will return for Mega Man: Dual Override, with the footage mostly promising vibrant visuals and a promise to warp onto PC, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox consoles in 2027.

Little else is known about Mega Man Dual Override at the moment. While we wait for update, be sure to check out everything announced at The Game Awards 2025. You can also read the full list of all of the night’s winners.
Developing…

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Marvel Rivals is halfway through Season 5, but that isn’t stopping NetEase Games from revealing Deadpool as the first playable hero for Season 6 at The Game Awards 2025.

The Marvel Rivals Deadpool reveal trailer doesn’t come with any gameplay, but it did come with the promise that the Merc with a Mouth will launch for the popular hero shooter alongside Season 6: Night at the Museum January 16, 2026. It’s the earliest NetEase has been ready to show off one of its new heroes, with its trailer highlighting Deadpool’s new voice and design, as well as some of the other elements players can expect next month.

Marvel Rivals Season 6: Night at the Museum arrives January 16th, 2026 UTC.
And yes – Deadpool is coming. Soon.

But first, the countdown continues: S5.5 launches on December 12th UTC.

🔥 The Merc and the Monster Hunter. Will the Museum survive?

After Gambit’s attempt to steal… pic.twitter.com/yjFX9woiuP

— Marvel Rivals (@MarvelRivals) December 12, 2025

Marvel Rivals Season 5.5 is currently underway. The latest season introduced Gambit as its first playable hero, with Rogue joining the fight on PC and consoles tomorrow, December 12.

For all of tonight’s biggest highlights, you can check out everything announced at The Game Awards 2025. You can also keep up with our running list of all of the winners.

Developing…

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

After months of speculation and a revealing leak earlier this week, Capcom has finally, officially confirmed what we all knew: Leon S. Kennedy is in Resident Evil Requiem, and he’s here to kick butt.

Tonight, at The Game Awards 2025, a fresh trailer for Resident Evil Requiem saw Leon fully revealed, swinging into action as the now-grizzled veteran zombie fighter we all know and love.

We learned what many of us had expected, that Leon will feature as one of two playable characters, alongside the previously announced Grace Ashcroft. While Grace’s campaign focuses on survival horror, Leon’s separate antics will focus on action.

Earlier this week, the reveal of new Resident Evil: Requiem cover art featuring Leon finally put to bed one of this year’s biggest gaming mysteries — something developer Capcom has itself refused to address — just days ahead of Requiem’s appearance tonight.

Rumors have persisted for months over Leon’s involvement in Resident Evil: Requiem, with Capcom specifically declining to answer IGN’s questions over the character back at Gamescom in August. The game’s developers have even suggested that Leon would be a poor fit as a protagonist for the game’s quieter sections as he is now too grizzled to be scared. But through all of this, Capcom left itself with just enough wiggle room for Leon to still be lurking somewhere — presumably during Requiem’s more action-packed sequences.

Despite Leon’s involvement now being confirmed, Requiem may still have secrets left in store. There was no mention tonight of a potential third playable character — something raised earlier this week by a GameStop listing that referenced Rosemary Winters.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social