Blizzard has revealed the next chapter in its live-service ARPG, Diablo 4, and it revolves around a really handy mechanical spider.
Dubbed the Season of the Construct, the upcoming update will send players into the perilous and trap-riddled vaults of the legendary Zoltun Kulle in search of treasure, battling demonically possessed mechanical constructs in the process.
The main power grind will center on your new robotic companion, a spider-like friend called the Seneschal who comes with its own management UI and can be customized with magical stones of different rarities and power levels to alter its behaviors and abilities to your liking. With nearly 40 different stones to collect, there will be a wide variety of options for how your multi-legged buddy can complement your playstyle.
“You can make a build on the utility side that’s there to suppot and healing you. You can also build out one that does a little more defense and get a combination of stones that intercept any incoming projectiles and further modify that to pull all enemies in for a big hit,” lead designer on Diablo 4 season 3 Dan Tanguay told IGN. “We’ve tried to bake in a lot of possibilities there for players to discover.”
“[The Seneschal] is the seasonal power chase.”
Season 3 also brings some hotly anticipated quality of life changes, the most noticable of which is WASD key control support for more direct control over your heroes on PC — seemingly a necessity in a season that will feature so many deadly traps that you would really be best off avoiding.
There will also be a plethora of competitive leaderboards driven by ladder-based trials called The Gauntlet, where players compete for a high score, the mightest of which will be greanted “a permanent home in the Hall of the Ancients,” and medals to show off on their profiles.
Other notable additions include an extra stash tab to store your ever-increasing pile of loot, and a reworking of Helltide events so that you don’t have to wait for short windows to engage in one of the Diablo 4 endgame’s most profitable events.
Diablo 4: Season of the Construct will launch on January 23rd.
Developer MGP Studios and publisher Red Deer.Games have announced that Project Downfall, their upcoming retro-themed cyberpunk first-person shooter, will be released on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on February 2. Watch the release date trailer above, and check out screenshots in the gallery below.
MGP describes Project Downfall as such: “Project Downfall is an action-filled, pixelated shooter set in a cyberpunk world, where the present is drastically different from ours. The players will be thrown into the life of Johnny Wick’s lookalike and smashed with gunfights left and right, where both reflexes and tactical thinking will be of the essence.”
The developers also promise a “non-linear plot that reacts with the players choices and moral decisions.” It’s already available on PC if you’d like to check it out there.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
Microsoft has snapped up 11 bit studios’ promising city-builder sequel Frostpunk 2 as a day-one PC Game Pass title.
Frostpunk 2, which for some time now has been one of the most wishlisted games on Steam alongside the likes of Hades 2, Manor Lords, and Hollow Knight: Silksong, launches on PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG, in the first half of 2024.
Then, Frostpunk 2 launches later on console, with the game hitting Xbox Game Pass as soon as the Xbox Series X and S version comes out. A PlayStation 5 release is also in the works. We were told “further Game Pass additions from 11 bit studios portfolio are set to be unveiled at a later date”.
“As a Steward in Frostpunk 2, you will oversee an ever-growing metropolis and be required to carefully weigh the needs and demands of its society,” reads the official blurb. “Your people are concerned with the fate of their children and crimes on the streets. They complain about unhealthy squalor, escalated by industrial growth, but need places to work. And what if you cannot afford to reward their toil with food and shelter or take care of their health? You can’t please everyone and when radical factions start rising, it only takes a tiny spark for the boiling tension to blow up.
“30 years after the Great Storm, the tyranny has ended. The delegates can vote, with or without certain persuasions, to pass laws to fulfill people’s will and steer the entire City into one of many futures.
“All this with a mantra echoing in everyone’s minds: The City must not fall. But will you be the one to persist and witness its triumph?”
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.
The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered has arrived, and with it a brand-new look into how the game was made. The Lost Levels are three short sections of the story that were cut during development. Excluded mainly for pacing reasons, they remain incomplete but are now playable. These glimpses into what could have been – which are thoughtfully explained thanks to developer commentary – include some interesting details, which despite not being game-changers, are fascinating nonetheless. Here are seven things we learned from The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered’s Lost Levels.
1 – Ellie’s Shaking Hand
The first Lost Level features a party in Jackson that would’ve taken place directly after the first fight between Abby and Ellie at the Seattle theater, and just before the dance scene with Dina. It’s a low-key affair that is full of moments that echo darker steps on Ellie’s journey, such as opening the scene with a shaking, bloodied hand that reflects a very similar shot shown earlier in the game after Ellie brutally kills Nora. Starting the level like this was a very deliberate choice but one that Naughty Dog’s Banun Idris recalls not being an easy one to make:
“The opening for this was a little tricky. We needed it to match at least a little what you might expect emotionally coming from prior beats, because we were already purposely disorienting you in time and space. Remember you just came from this huge fight; to jump straight into it would’ve been a little too jarring. After some back and forth, we rooted it in Ellie’s nerves, calling back to her hands shaking in the theater, but this time for a much more innocuous reason which we’ll find out later. She’s nervous because she has a crush on Dina.”
2 – How a Game of Clicker Tag Became a Snowball Fight
Before she can reach Dina however, Ellie partakes in a few festival activities which share gameplay mechanics usually saved for more violent endeavors in The Last of Us. The most noticeable of these is a group of children playing a tag-like playground game where one of them plays the role of Clicker. Eliie joins in and you must use the listening mode to find one of the kids to capture. This sequence would eventually evolve into the snowball fight in Jackson at the start of the game, as Idris explains here:
“The thought was that these kids are in relative safety, but they still grow up with the dangers of Clickers and Runners and all those lessons would embed themselves in the games that they play. When the festival got cut, they tried to preserve this moment and move it to the front of the game where the snowball fight is, as a tutorial. However, being in the headspace of a Clicker doesn’t really teach you how to deal with them. Eventually, it evolved and they instead made the snowball fight which I think was way more effective.”
3 – Ollie the Elephant
Other activities at the party include mixing a drink using the same interface you navigate to customise weapons with at a workbench, and a milk bottle throwing game that utilises the same controls used to launch a brick or bottle at an enemy. The prize for winning that game is a soft toy, Ollie the Elephant, who would later appear in Ellie’s story anyway, despite this whole level being cut. Idris explains how:
“A fun aspect of this is that if you did well, you could win a toy here and Ellie would place it in her pocket. If you had done this you’d find the toy with JJ (the baby) later back at the farm. When we cut this the toy made it through anyway because it was so cute. It’s the same one you see on the tractor at the farm, Ollie the Elephant.”
4 – Water Puzzles Were Cut
The second Lost Level takes us to the Seattle sewers, and was intended to have taken place just before Ellie’s showdown with Nora in the hospital. In these subterranean tunnels, we learn more about how Naughty Dog approached The Last of Us Part 2’s level design and environmental puzzles. Originally, this section was going to feature a series of water puzzles where Ellie has to battle a ferocious current. They were ultimately cut, but the water tech developed for them was revived in a later chapter. Designer Peter Ellis tells us all about it:
“This was one of the few areas of the game that used water flow as part of a traversal puzzle. The player has to go upstream to use the current to get to the platform and reach the other side. We mostly cut this mechanic game-wide, however, it remained in essence in the section swimming to the aquarium as Ellie where you’re avoiding the waves.”
5 – Dead End Design
In the sewers, we also learn about some simple-but-effective tricks that Naughty Dog’s level designers use to point us in the right direction. What initially appear to be meaningless dead ends are all there for a reason, whether it be to point you towards valuable materials or simply redirect you towards the critical path. This is expanded upon by Ellis in a section where a door leading to an empty room is used to turn the player around and toward a large pipe they need to crawl through.
“When players reach the doorway and enter the room, they’re faced with a dead end. The real reason for this dead-end room is that on the reversal when exiting back out of the doorway, players are faced with the route onwards – a pipe that they’d not been able to see when they were swept past it on the way in and something that was hidden from view when on the side platforms. The intention here being that the only option here is to go off the standard path in order to search for a way out.”
6 – The Hunt
Another type of signposting is demonstrated in a later cut level, which uses blood stains on floors and walls to ensure Ellie never loses track of her prey. That prey takes the shape of a wild boar, with which Ellie has a showdown in the third of the Lost Levels, titled The Hunt. Although the level is not present in the final game, the boar itself does make an appearance, as a reference to the event is drawn into Ellie’s journal.
This sequence was, again, intended to disorientate the player and mirror the deer hunting sequence from the first game when we first took control of Ellie in winter. Idris details the meaning of the level and why it was ultimately cut.
“The boar hunt was one of the hardest levels for me to work on. It was a huge challenge with the systems that we had, and we kept trying but it never felt quite right.
Originally, the level happened after the Jackson festival – which also got cut – but before the farm. Once the festival got cut it became the prologue to the farm. The intended experience is that we jump forward in time after the fight with Abby in the theater. We don’t know where Dina is, we likely assume she’s dead because she was just bleeding out. Ellie is alone, and her hair is short, so maybe this is the future or the present? And she’s hunting. Hunting who? Abby still.”
7 – Reinforcing Ellie’s PTSD
Upon completing the hunt, Ellie would finish the boar off in an unflinching scene that would remind her of Joel’s death. Director Neil Druckmann details what this level aimed to bring to the story: “This was another opportunity to show how the violence that Ellie has experienced, the violence that she witnessed being afflicted onto Joel is still sticking with her. She’s still experiencing these PTSD moments.”
Banun Idris adds further context to the end scene in particular: “The boar kill was supposed to be anything but glorious, with the boar whimpering at the back of the gas station after Ellie’s relentless hunt. After this, hearing the drone that we kind of come to associate with Ellie’s trauma, we would hard cut to the stream where she’s washing her hands and holding rabbits that she hunted, about to return to Dina. There would be no mention of the boar.”
The PTSD that follows Ellie around is one of the overarching themes of The Last of Us Part 2, and this instance with the boar is not the only reference to her trauma in The Lost Levels. Her memories of Joel’s murder are once again shown during the aforementioned sewers level, in a jump-scare moment involving a Clicker corpse. Peter Ellis describes how it was designed to be as effective as possible:
“It was great to see people who user-tested this area become increasingly worried as we forced the player to squeeze past the fungus and inches away from the Clicker’s face. All the time not being sure whether the Clicker might be alive or attack them. Although we aren’t as cruel as to force a Clicker attack in such close proximity, we do have a payoff for this moment. This Clicker momentarily turns into Joel to show Ellie’s PTSD from what happened to Joel at the start of the game.
Ultimately, we decided to save this moment for the farm level as it was more impactful there because it could become the centre-piece of that experience. Whereas in the sewers we weren’t able to make much of a narrative point and give it the breathing room and reaction time that it deserves given the tight space.”
These are both haunting images that Ellie will carry with her all the way to the game’s violent conclusion, and ultimately influence her final decision. Although both are effective scenes, it’s fair to say that the game’s themes of trauma and the circle of violence hit home without them. Mainly cut for pacing reasons, you can see why the ultimate decision was made, but still, including these lost levels in The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered makes for a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what goes into crafting such a well-told story-driven game.
Simon Cardy thinks that Ellie just needs to catch a break. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon.
Last week I danced on top of a giant rubber duck DJ. No, I’m not back on the mushrooms – I was playing Foamstars, which is a similarly colourful and fun trip. Square Enix’s bubble-packed team-based shooter is bursting with character and style, while frequently managing to maintain a tense competitive edge. While not all of its launch modes hit home for me, I found myself pleasantly surprised at just how much fun I was having after four hours of hands-on time.
Foamstars will launch with multiple modes available, of which most are centred on multiplayer. The one exception is Foamstars’ PvE offering, which is playable in both solo and co-op and consists of fighting against waves of randomised enemies to achieve the highest score. While I only played one of these missions once, I can’t see it being where many will sink their time into; instead, the meat of this shooter is found in its three PvP modes.
Smash the Star is presented as Foamstars’ signature mode where two teams of four battle it out deathmatch-style until they reach seven eliminations, at which point an opponent’s “Star Player” is crowned. This player is buffed with increased health and damage output, making them formidable on the bubble-field, but once a Star Player is taken down the match is over. It’s a genuinely fun time and when teams are balanced can get really tense, as fights go down to the wire and the risk/reward nature of attacking your opponent and defending your Star Player comes to the fore.
First impressions may be to dismiss Foamstars as a Splatoon clone, but after playing it I found its hero-shooter DNA became much more apparent. Yes, painting the floor with your team’s foam colour aids movement, enabling you to surf along the perpetually changing floor with ease, but points are not awarded for how much territory you occupy.
First impressions may be to dismiss Foamstars as a Splatoon clone, but after playing it I found its hero-shooter DNA became much more apparent.
While I had fun with Smash the Star, my favourite mode without a doubt is Rubber Duck Party. Teams of four battle it out to capture a wildly oversized rubber duck and escort it as far as they can toward the other team’s spawn point. It’s essentially Overwatch 2’s push mode and its objective-based focus spoke to those Overwatch sensibilities within me. That isn’t all though – the duck is also a DJ and if you climb on top of his shiny yellow head and manage to dance for a few seconds without being foamed up, it shoots forward at speed, pushing you further toward your team’s destination. It’s a nice little touch that once again encourages team play and smart team compositions as you look to defend the giant duck and his tiny dancer.
These two modes were easily the highlight of my time with Foamstars and came in stark contrast to the third multiplayer mode, Happy Bath Survival, which fails to offer the same level of tension or teamplay. Half of each team is stripped of their hero abilities and must assist the other two players with basic weaponry alone by painting the floor for them, in what is a relatively dull arena shootout. It’s disappointing because it sidelines the characters for stretches of time, as their usually tide-turning abilities can be combined to devastating effect in both Smash the Star and Rubber Duck Party.
Each of the eight heroes is equipped with their own weapon type, abilities, and super star skills. My favourite is the speedy Agito, who allowed me to dive under the foam, sneak around the back, and then erupt above the enemy in a shower of bubbles, before finishing up with a shotgun full of foam. They’re a great flanking option with a powerful super star skill that unleashes a homing shark that explodes on impact. Others I had fun with included Mel T who, despite sounding like a long-lost member of the Spice Girls, is in fact an ice cream-loving young lady who deals big damage thanks to explosive skills and a rocket-propelled foam cannon. In truth, I had a good time with all eight of the characters and can see where each will hold their value in different game modes, especially when teamed up with other heroes that offer synergistic opportunities.
There’s a level of charm to each too, which carries over into the maps themselves. Each showcases a different part of “Bath Vegas” and is visually distinct from one another and, crucially, is constructed with gameplay first in mind. They offer interesting architecture and varying levels of verticality, as well as obstacles such as the giant roaming roulette ball found circling Fomeopatra’s Crazy Wheel. In a time when so many shooters are militarised in their presentation and seemingly afraid to embrace colour, it’s welcoming to be barraged by it at every turn in Foamstars, which successfully marries Nintendo’s charm with the panache of Persona. The same can be said for the soundtrack, which delivers track after track of catchy tunes that wouldn’t sound out of place in an Atlus RPG.
I enjoyed my time with Foamstars then, and hope you will too, but I just can’t help but fear for its long-term appeal due to the recent fate many live-service games have met. Both free and premium season battle passes will be available throughout the first year of Foamstars’ life with new cosmetics, characters, maps, and modes promised, but all of which are a mystery at this point. It’s free at launch on PlayStation Plus, which will definitely give it an initial boost with millions of PlayStation players being able to download it for free. It’s a strategy the likes of Rocket League and Fall Guys enjoyed great success with, but it didn’t have the same effect on Destruction AllStars – a game I reviewed and thought was a fun enough time, but sadly one that didn’t take off. I just hope that Foamstars doesn’t suffer a similar fate and finds its audience, as it’s shaping up to be a genuinely fun and family-friendly hero shooter.
Simon Cardy couldn’t stop dancing on the duck. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon.
I had only just played Persona 3 Portable in the last few years, so that hundred-hour saga felt relatively fresh in my mind going into my demo of Persona 3 Reload. I was excited to hang out with all my old pals, but a bit skeptical that it would be different enough to warrant the time investment all over again. In my playthrough that ran more than an hour, though, I didn’t feel at all like Reload was covering the same ground, even if it basically is. The added gameplay elements, updated graphics, tweaked areas and social links compel me to sink another handful of months into getting to the bottom of Apathy Syndrome with the S.E.E.S. crew.
The biggest vibe shift was wandering the tower of Tartarus, which is now the creepiest of all the Persona dungeons. The aura is truly unsettling in the chunk of floors that I played, with the intent to closely emulate the themes of death in the game, producer Ryota Niitsuma and director Takuya Yamaguchi told me after the demo. Reworking Tartarus was a high priority for the team and it shows. The pacing feels leagues more natural with other shiny distractions to hold attention, including crystalized Shadow energy stalagmites to smash and grab items from and chests that, to open, need expendable bits called Twilight Fragments, which are scattered throughout Tartarus and the real world. Even these seemingly simple additions drastically improve the tempo of moving through the many floors of Tartarus.
The battle mechanics are exactly what one should expect from Persona games, although actions like switching Personas and analyzing skills feel more modern and seamless than they once were. All-out attacks have also been upgraded with brand-new finishing screens (which are cool) and catchphrases (which are also good). And now, the S.E.E.S. armband is a functional piece of clothing, acting as a gauge to facilitate a new special attack feature called Theurgy. Though it’s based on Persona 5’s Showtime, Theurgy attacks require heightened emotional states and have special conditions personalized to each character to activate, so it takes more strategy to pull off. I didn’t spend enough time grinding in Tartarus to get to everyone’s moves, but from what I did see, the results are devastating for the enemy.
It finally feels like I’m truly exploring, experiencing, and learning the geography of Tatsumi Port Island instead of merely hovering above it.
Plenty is different back in the outside world, too. First and foremost, I can physically run around 3D city streets and classroom hallways, as opposed to moving a cursor to callout bubbles in a relatively static environment like in past Persona 3 iterations. In general, the camera maintains a tighter shot, making bouncing around locations feel more intimate and nearly first-person. It finally feels like I’m truly exploring, experiencing, and learning the geography of Tatsumi Port Island instead of merely hovering above it. I didn’t feel the limitations of a small town in the same way I did prior, where moving from place to place felt more like data entry than a game as the hours wore on. And: I can get a part-time job at the movie theater!
For me, the most potentially exciting changes to life outside of hunting Shadows were made inside the dorm that make it feel like the main character actually co-exists there with a half-dozen classmates. The rooftop, the kitchen, Fuuka’s DVD player, and the bookshelf are all now available to use in one’s free time for gardening, cooking, or watching movies, or reading with a friend or reading to improve your three character traits. Plus, the desktop computer that sits in the lobby is also usable to juice personality stats. Yamaguchi and Niitsuma acknowledged that the dorm was always a special environment for these games, and the effort they put into creating a home-y, social space gives the S.E.E.S. HQ a welcome warmth against the game’s largely bleak main narrative.
All in all, my doubts about diving back into Persona 3 territory were shattered from this demo. Persona 3 Reload isn’t a remake with a few alterations here and there; it’s a sincerely thought-through updated game that can seemingly stand on its own two legs in the competitive Persona lineup.
Commenting on the two million sales milestone, Capcom said Street Fighter 6 was “generally progressing in line with our expectations”, adding it hoped positive word of mouth would fuel follow-up success.
“Compared to the internal plan for the title, sales are generally progressing in line with our expectations,” Capcom said at the time. “We believe that its positive critical reception will work as a tailwind in expanding future sales of the game as a catalogue title.”
Capcom had said it aimed for Street Fighter 6 to outsell Street Fighter 5, targeting over 10 million copies sold over the course of its lifetime.
“While we do not communicate specific figures for internal budgets, we look to outperform the title’s predecessor, Street Fighter 5, and are aiming for more than 10 million units over the life of the title,” Capcom said.
Speaking this week, Capcom said it had “steadily” grown sales by pushing Street Fighter 6 DLC and esports. The game has seen DLC characters and costly new outfits come out, as well as various collaborations with other brands. Looking to the future, Ed is Street Fighter 6’s next DLC character, then fan-favourite Akuma comes out at some point in the spring.
Total Street Fighter franchise sales are now up to 52 million. Street Fighter 5 remains the best-selling game in the series, with 7.4 million sold as of September 30, 2023. 1992’s Street Fighter 2, for reference, sold 6.30 million.
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.
Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian has released yet another hotfix for its phenomenally successful Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, this time taking on everyone’s favourite magic item-gobbling wizard, Gale.
Spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3 follow.
Baldur’s Gate 3 players will know that in the early game, Gale is in desperate need of magic items in order to prevent him from suffering a grizzly fate. He’s so desperate, in fact, that if you don’t give him a magic item to consume pretty much every time he asks for one, he’ll get so fed up he’ll leave your party. What a grump!
Hotfix 17, out now, makes Gale chill out a bit when it comes to his magic item addiction. Here’s Larian describing the change in a post on Steam:
“Poor Gale – we know your pain, sometimes it’s easy to read something into a situation that wasn’t there. We’ve sat him down and explained that if someone doesn’t offer him a shoe to eat every time, that doesn’t mean they never will. You’ll find him more likely to stick around now.”
And here’s the relevant line from the patch notes:
Gale will no longer permanently leave the party if you don’t offer him any magic items while talking to him – unless you’re abundantly clear that you don’t plan on ever doing so.
Elsewhere, Hotfix 17 makes some promising-sounding improvements to how Baldur’s Gate 3 handles savegames.
Increased the compression of savegames, which should fix several issues caused by large savegame files (such as Error 544)
Reduced the size of save files by removing summons that don’t exist in the game anymore.
Larian issued a warning about Baldur’s Gate 3 mods, which may stop working when new patches and hotfixes are released. “If you experience any issues after installing the latest update, please check if the issue persists with all mods uninstalled,” Larian suggested. “If it persists, please reach out to our support team with your report.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 Hotfix 17 Patch Notes
PERFORMANCE AND CODE
Fixed black and colourful visual artefacts sometimes appearing for 1 frame on PS5 when switching scenes or opening and closing UI windows.
Increased the compression of savegames, which should fix several issues caused by large savegame files (such as Error 544)
Reduced the size of save files by removing summons that don’t exist in the game anymore.
Guarded against crashes caused when certain character resources (Actions, Bonus Actions, Superiority Dice, etc.) were added and later removed by a mod or cheat engine.
GAMEPLAY AND COMBAT
In Honour Mode, the aura of Cazador’s Potent Mist Form now properly dissipates after he’s no longer in Mist Form. Sorry!
Fixed the camera sometimes zooming in while jumping or casting projectile spells.
Fixed the ability to walk through open doors when you click beyond them from far away.
Fixed Thieves’ Tools in the camp chest or inventory of a companion who is waiting at camp not being accessible when lockpicking.
UI
Safeguard Shield’s Saving Throw modifier is now correctly reflected on the Character Sheet.
FLOW AND SCRIPTING
Gale will no longer permanently leave the party if you don’t offer him any magic items while talking to him – unless you’re abundantly clear that you don’t plan on ever doing so.
Fixed characters getting stuck ‘in a story event’, preventing you from controlling them, after getting killed in the fight with Grym.
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.
Square Enix has dropped a ton of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth details alongside artwork, screenshots, and even a trailer showing off Cait Sith, Nibelheim, Junon, and lots of other additions and changes coming in the highly anticipated sequel.
A huge blog post from Square Enix akin to one from November revealed lots of new information ahead of Rebirth’s launch on February 29. It outlines how new party members like Cait Sith and Yuffie fight, Elena’s new look in the remake, the different editions of the game available to preorder, and more.
Combat
It’s unclear who’ll be unlocked first out of Cait Sith and Yuffie, though as fans got to play the latter in Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Integrade on PS5, let’s start there. Yuffie is focused on speed (with a fast charging active time battle meter) and inflicting raw damage with her large throwing star.
Magic can be applied to her weapon through ninjutsu, made even more effective by chaining attacks together. Her Doppelgänger ability also allows Yuffie to attack from two places at once and seek out enemies’ weakness.
Cait Sith, the little cat who fights atop a chunky moogle mount, also darts around the battlefield quickly or calling upon the moogle for some slower but higher damage attacks. These attacks will also fill the Moogle Meter, which once charged can apply buffs to allies.
Keeping to Cait Sith’s focus on luck from the original Final Fantasy 7, different abilities can seemingly apply random buffs or damage to enemies and allies alike. The Let’s Ride ability, however, combines Cait Sith with his moogle to attack in tandem, enhancing both his regular attacks and unique abilities. Cait Sith can also drop kick his enemies while riding his moogle friend.
Yuffie and Cait Sith also have their own Synergy Ability, which are essentially combo attacks, called Moogle Pinwheel. Square Enix didn’t share too much of what it does, but promised the pair will attack together “with a secret ninja technique”.
Characters and Locations
Fans of the original Final Fantasy 7 were surprised to see Elena left out of Remake, but the young Turks member will make her revamped debut in Rebirth.
“Though she may be a rookie, she’s as skilled with her fists and a gun as anyone else in the Turks unit of Shinra’s General Affairs Division,” reads her official description. Her involvement appears directly related to the Remake Trilogy’s multiverse shenanigans, however, as her and Rude are tasked with pursuing the black-robed figures this time around.
One brand new character is Captain Titov, who also headlines a big change from the original Final Fantasy 7. Rebirth doesn’t feature the cargo ship Cloud and friends use to sneak across to Costa del Sol from Junon, but instead a cruise ship called the Shinra-8.
“He’s earned a sterling reputation among his crew, thanks to his unerring devotion to his duties.” Square Enix said. “This is most evident during the various festivities held aboard his vessel, which he personally — and passionately — emcees.”
Speaking of Junon, the trailer and screenshots show off its Shinra parade which Cloud must infiltrate, plus other iconic locations like The Gold Saucer and even brand new ones like the aforementioned Shinra-8 ship. It’s “a Shinra cruise ship that ferries travelers between the planet’s eastern and western continents,” Square Enix said. “After departing the port of Junon, it heads for the resort town of Costa del Sol. As part of the on-board entertainment, the ship plays host to a Queen’s Blood tournament.”
Editions
Rebirth will be available in several different editions, headling by the $349.99 / £349.99 Collector’s Edition, which includes a Sephiroth statue, steelbook case, mini soundtrack CD, physical artbook, and a physical version of the full game (which Square Enix loves to point out is across two discs). It also includes a Moogle Trio Summoning Materia, Magic Pot Summoning Materia, Reclaimant Choker, and Orchid Bracelet as in-game items.
The $99.99 / £99.99 Deluxe Edition includes the game, steelbook case, mini soundtrack CD, and physical artbook with no digital add ons. The Standard Edition naturally only comes with the game and is priced at $69.99 / £69.99. Preordering either of these also grants access to the Midgar Bangle in-game item.
As for full digital offerings, the Digital Deluxe Edition comes with the game, digital mini soundtrack, digital artbook, plus the Magic Pot Summoning Materia, Reclaimant Choker, and Orchid Bracelet as in-game items. Preordering this also grants access to the Moogle Trio Summoning Materia.
Finally, a Twin Pack includes both games digitally but no other add ons. Preordering will grant access to the Moogle Trio Summoning Materia, however.
Elden Ring fans have grown ravenous for a Shadow of the Erdtree expansion announcement after developer FromSoftware made a change to the game’s backend on Steam.
X/Twitter user and Elden Ring YouTuber Ziostorm noticed the change on SteamDB’s page for Elden Ring, sharing an image of a new application added to the Downloadable Content section of Elden Ring’s Steam page for the first time since launch.
“I’m not saying it’s 100% Shadow of the Erdtree but there’s a pretty good chance it is,” they said, and fans are similarly hopeful elsewhere online. “Announcement must be imminent,” JoRads said on Reddit. “Definitely. It’s a matter of days now, or even less,” Hector_Savage_ replied.
A new Elden Ring DLC package has just been added to Elden Ring within the files for the first time since launch. – I’m not saying it’s 100% Shadow of the Erdtree but… There’s a pretty good chance it is. pic.twitter.com/1j6HCVfGQo
This update also adds fuel to the fire of a previous rumour, as a leaked collaboration between Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco and accessory creator Thrustmaster also suggested a February release of Shadow of the Erdtree.
Shadow of the Erdtree was initially announced in March 2023 as a major expansion coming to Elden Ring. A single piece of concept art was released alongside the announcement but didn’t give much away, just showing a character atop a spectral steed looking towards the horizon that featured a dying Erdtree.
