Category: IGN

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

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.

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.

Log into Fortnite right now and you’ll find that the game’s most-played mode is, very unusually, not its main Battle Royale option. Instead the new Blitz Royale is currently ruling the roost — but what is it? And why is this fresh offering from Epic Games so popular?

Blitz Royale launched this week in Fortnite’s latest update, alongside Expeditions, a new story-infused PVE Lego experience, and a Bruno Mars-starring new season of Guitar Hero-like Fortnite Festival.

But, as has continually been the case, it is the mode closest to Fortnite’s classic Battle Royale that has broken out — and, for now, Blitz Royale feels like it has found a fresh niche for players keen to try something faster-paced and more quickfire.

As its name suggests, Blitz Royale matches are meant to take less time overall and power-up players much faster than in a classic Battle Royale offering. The mode’s map, currently based on Fortnite’s classic OG Island, is a fraction of its size, building is disabled, and there’s an in-match levelling system to grant weapons and power-ups, meaning there’s no need to spend time scrounging for loot.

That said, other Battle Royale staples remain: a fast moving storm circle, limited inventory and need to be the last player standing. Over the next four weeks (Epic Games is yet to specifically state that Blitz Royale will be a permanent addition), various loot pools will be offered — including items and power-granting medallions from various classic Fortnite eras.

Blitz Royale is playable within Fortnite on every platform, but is the first mode designed with a specific piece of hardware in mind: your phone.

Timed to hit shortly after Fortnite’s triumphant return to the iPhone App Store in the US, following years of legal wrangling with Apple, Blitz Royale is meant to appeal to those wanting a bite-size battle royale, perfect for a quick bus journey or coffee break. Even the Battle Bus flies in faster at the start of games.

A suitably quick trailer for Blitz Royale claims you can secure victory within five minutes — around a quarter of the time usually necessary to secure a Victory Royale in Fortnite’s regular Battle Royale and Zero Build modes.

Right now, Fortnite stats show around 240,000 players in Blitz Royale, making it the game’s biggest mode by some margin, aftr hitting 443,000 players during peak hours last night. Battle Royale currently has half this count — 119,000 players at the time of writing.

“Blitz Royale is the s**t,” wrote one fan on reddit. “Seriously, Epic – love the mode, y’all cooked. I am seriously blown away and having so much fun.”

“The mode is surprising myself,” wrote another. “I’m playing far more aggressively than I would in normal mode and honestly it’s pretty cool.”

Epic Games will likely be watching Blitz Royale and other new additions carefully to see how well they perform over the coming days, and whether any of them are actually drawing in new players to Fortnite, as well as offering existing users new ways to play.

Fortnite’s average player numbers have generally fallen this year, according to publicly-available numbers from Fortnite.gg. Following growth and significant player spikes last year, particularly around September 2024’s Doctor Doom global boss battle, and November live events including a concert held in Times Square and an in-game extravaganza featuring Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Ice Spice and Juice Wrld.

2025 has seen Fortnite run a limited-time Star Wars mini-season that removed all regular ammo from the game, replacing the usual guns in Battle Royale mode with sci-fi energy weapons. The game’s recent season, which features a return to the game’s semi-regular focus on superheroes has seen numbers begin to bounce back. Next step, beating current Roblox hit Grow a Garden? One thing at a time, perhaps.

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

Ever since developer Heart Machine burst onto the scene with its hyper-stylized 2D action game Hyper Light Drifter, every effort from the studio comes with the promise of visual splendor and tight gameplay, and Possessor(s) is no different.

If Hyper Light Drifter is Zelda-like, then Possessor(s) is the team’s take on the Metroidvania. Although their dev team will probably get mad at me for calling it that, as they prefer the original genre term of “search-action.” Regardless of which label you prefer, you’ll find the genre’s familiar hallmarks here. Possessor(s) drops you in a big open map full of powerful demon enemies and branching paths that aren’t all open to you just yet.

Unlike Heart Machine’s past games with stylized, but masked or hooded, heroes, Possessor(s) is led by a cast of beautifully hand-drawn characters whose stories I’m curious to learn more of. Set in a fictional, Japan-inspired, city, the player controls Luca, who survives a devastating, apocalyptic event. But only just barely. She awakens to find herself without her legs, which were damaged during the attack. Luckily (or not), she makes contact with a demon named Rehm, who offers her the classic devil’s bargain. She can get her legs back, but only if she helps him get revenge on some unnamed but powerful demonic forces.

Similarly, Possessor(s) feels heavily inspired by urban fantasy anime. Shows like Jujutsu Kaisen come quickly to mind as Luca and Rehm explore a ruined metropolitan city and fight off demon-possessed everyday objects like haunted searchlights and demon fridges. This extends to Luca as well. While she’s now powered by demon-magic legs, her weapons are also everyday objects. Things like kitchen knives or even a computer mouse she can wield like a whip.

All of this combines into a fast-paced action-adventure. Combat feels rapid-fast, which is great because there are a lot of enemies to cut through. And running through the devastated city, or jumping and grappling over obstacles, also feels fast and great, which is a plus because I get the sense this is a pretty big game. The portion of the map I played already felt quite large and I only played a 20-minute demo.

Mechanically, I wouldn’t say Possessor(s) upends the search-action genre, or at the very least not in the early portion of the game I saw. But both narratively and in the design there’s tons more that I’m interested in learning more of. Possessor(s) has moments where the camera pans out into the ruined city, highlighting a cinematic sense of scale that Heart Machine has explored before in games like Solar Ash. And even in my short hands-on time there was a lot of dialogue and exposition between Luca and Rehm.

There’s also likely more to the RPG element that I haven’t discovered yet. Luca’s character menu seemed to show empty slots for a variety of weapons and upgrades – way more than the couple I found during my demo. And having only been given a glimpse of the map, which was primarily a lot of abandoned and destroyed office buildings, there’s clearly a lot more under the hood in Possessor(s) than what I saw. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

Lies of P‘s DLC has been patched to reduce monster difficulty in repeat playthroughs and “adjusted stats” for some of the field monsters you encounter in your first playthrough of Overture.

Director Jiwon Choi previously said the team didn’t think Soulslike games like Lies of P should have difficulty options, and it shipped without any, but has since had a change of heart, saying: “We wanted to make sure a wider audience of players could play the game.”

Similarly, players have complained about the DLC’s “intended” difficulty, Legendary Stalker. There have been so many comments — both for and against the DLC’s difficulty spike — that the Lies of P subreddit has had to merge them all into a “megathread” to stop the community from being overwhelmed by complaints. It prompted developer Neowiz to acknowledge that some areas “did not turn out quite as intended.”

Now, as well as addressing some bugs such as the progression issue after you give a bottle of beer to the Old Fisherman, or another that causes visual bugs when wearing certain items, Neowiz has applied “combat balance adjustments” with patch 1.9.0.0, which went live earlier today, June 20. You can also now unlock the DLC from Chapter 5 instead of Chapter 9 from your second playthrough onwards.

Here’s the full patch notes, as taken from the Steam page.

Lies of P Update Notes Version 1.9.0.0

Important Notice

• Using software or data not officially distributed by the developer may cause the game to crash.
• Failing to do so may result in crashes, save data errors, or even irreversible data loss.If you are starting the game after installing from a disc, be sure to update to the latest version before playing.
• Please be sure to check your Storage for the item.

Major Changes

• Please read any on-screen prompts carefully.
• Combat Balance Adjustments
  • Reduced monster difficulty in repeat playthroughs.
  • Adjusted stats for certain field monsters in the first playthrough of Lies of P: Overture.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where benefit items were not delivered properly.
  • If you experienced issues with benefit items such as the “Azure Dragon Crescent Glaive” or “Winter Festival Peaked Hat” not being received, please update the game to the latest version and check if the issue has been resolved.
  • If your Bag was full, these items may have been sent to the Storage. Please check your Storage as well.
• If you encountered this bug, update the game to the latest version and try speaking with Salao again.
• Fixed a bug that allowed movement to unintended areas outside the normal route.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the character to be launched into the air when using the Blade Fable Arts of “Monad’s Rose Sword.”
• Fixed a bug where using the Blade Fable Arts of “Monad’s Rose Sword” in Hotel Krat while listening to a record would skip the current record.
• Fixed a bug where the triggered effect of the “Solutionist’s Amulet” would persist even after the item was unequipped.
• Fixed a visual bug affecting the Legion Arm “Flamberge” when wearing the “Blazing Death’s Hunting Apparel.”
• Fixed various minor issues, including icon display errors, localization and text errors, monster-related bugs, and other miscellaneous bugs.

Developer Neowiz also confirmed today that Lies of P has topped 3 million copies sold.

Lies of P developer Neowiz shadow-dropped DLC Overture during Summer Game Fest, introducing new locations, new enemies and bosses, new characters, weapons, and the very controversial decision to add in two easier difficulty options.

We had a good time with Lies of P, awarding it 8/10, and Overture itself also secured a 8/10. “Even if it’s clearly dancing on the same old strings, Lies of P: Overture is an excellent expansion that adds a whole lot more to a game that was already great,” we wrote.

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.

Critical Role’s Robbie Daymond will join the cast of Assassin’s Creed Shadows next week, as a new character you can recruit as an ally for Yasuke and Naoe.

Daymond will play Rufino, a character he originally created for an Assassin’s Creed Shadows promotional one-shot. A quick glimpse at the character shows Rufino wearing a Portuguese-style doublet and sporting a lavish moustache.

Rufino will arrive as a recruitable ally in Shadows’ next game update, due next Wednesday, June 25. This will be the latest free drop of additional story content made available post-launch, following an earlier mission that served as a crossover with Dead by Daylight.

So far, Shadows’ extra story add-ons have been brief, with little more than 20 minutes gameplay each time. But as a recruitable ally — one of only half a dozen in the game — there’s scope here for Rufino to make more of an impact.

Still, it’s unclear exactly how large Rufino’s role will be. Will you be able to call upon him in battle, as your other allies can be? Will you be able to romance Rufino, even — something other allies are open to exploring. Or will Rufino simply just be another face that hangs around your hideout? Next week, we’ll find out.

Okay so imagine: feudal Japan, hidden blades… and Critical Role? Robbie’s in. Luc’s in. You should probably be in too.#ACShadows #CriticalRole #ACxCR pic.twitter.com/guT6cagwE7

— Assassin’s Creed (@assassinscreed) June 19, 2025

Ubisoft previously stated that its June content update for Assassin’s Creed Shadows would also include new difficulty settings, gameplay immersion options, and an open-world alarm system to keep players on their toes. A much requested option to keep headgear on or off during cutscenes will also be added.

Further down the line, Ubisoft is working on a New Game Plus option and additionally story drops, including more crossovers. And before 2025 is out, Shadows will receive its first major expansion — Claws of Awaji — that is set to pick up from the game’s ending and add a new region of Japan to explore.

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

In its first Q&A since Dune: Awakening launched on June 10, developer Funcom responded to questions on what’s next for its survival MMO, and in particular changes due to come to its endgame.

Funcom said it’s “currently formulating a plan” to improve PvP in the Deep Desert, which players have previously branded as “toxic” due to griefing. Funcom has already patched out the ability for players to squish other people with their Ornithopter, but senior game director Viljar Sommerbakk also revealed the team was considering tweaking Ornis further, such as equipping them with rockets that “reduces overall maneuverability and max speed”.

The team is also considering making Scout Orni rockets cost slightly more heat to fire, something Sommerbakk said would limit its combat usefulness relative to the Assault Ornithopter “while still allowing it to be an aerial threat.”

“We have a lot of plans to address [players’] points about respawn times and revives,” creative director Joel Bylos added. “Full loot is a decree that can be obtained via the Landsraad (so compete there if you want to make it a reality), there are control points in the deep desert already, we have no plans to reduce the DD size. As we work on the game, we will continue to work on making PvP more rewarding (I am sure you will note I am not being very concrete but that is because we are planning and watching how people are playing and finding the right points to address).”

Lead producer Ole Andreas Hayley said: “The Deep Desert will always stay a PvP free-for-all area, but we might consider adding other locations that offer factional warfare.”

“We want players to make meaningful decisions about what they bring with them and how they outfit their vehicles,” Sommerbakk continued. “Once players have engaged in PvP, we want the experience to be reliable, responsive, and clearly understood. This determines how PvP as a whole feels and how players make their moment-to-moment decisions in a fight. To ensure a more reliable experience in ground combat, we are continuing to address issues with movement desyncs and rubber banding, as well as ability activation reliability.”

There’s also some quality of life tweaks on the way, too, including named storage containers and vehicles, to help you differentiate, as well as “deposit/extract all” buttons for water storages and the like. We should also expect boss encounters as part of future dungeons as the team continues to evolve PvE content.

Interestingly, Hayley also teased that we could receive additional maps in the future, also.

“The Dune universe has a lot of interesting locations and worlds to explore, and we’re looking forward to continuing to build on top of the foundation we have,” he said.

Right now, there are no plans to make it easier to distinguish between NPCs and other players — “this is in line with the vision of the game” — and when asked if it would be possible to skip all dialogue and animations, Bylos said: “Absolutely not.”

We gave Dune: Awakening a Great 8/10 in our review, writing: “Dune: Awakening is an excellent survival MMO that captures Frank Herbet’s sci-fi world incredibly well, mostly to its advantage and occasionally to its detriment. The survival climb from dehydrated peasant to powerful warlord of Arrakis is a joy almost every step of the way, and the story and worldbuilding filled this nerd with absolute joy.

“There’s still plenty for Awakening to work on though, as its combat never really hits its stride, the endgame is a bit of a chaotic mess not worth the effort, and there’s quite a few technical bugs yet to be squashed, but even these rough patches felt like tiny desert mice next to the leviathan shai-huluds that are this survival game’s wonderful successes.”

Dune: Awakening has enjoyed a superb launch, with a ‘very positive’ user review rating on Steam. Within hours of going live on June 10, Funcom’s survival MMO had clocked up over 142,000 concurrent players on Valve’s platform, and hit a new high over the weekend of 189,333 players.

If all that’s got you interested, make sure to check out all the Dune: Awakening classes you can choose from, and keep an eye on our in-progress Dune: Awakening walkthrough for a step-by-step guide to the story. To help you survive on Arrakis, we’ve got Dune: Awakening resource guides that’ll help you find iron, steel, aluminium, and more.

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.

A giant advert for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond at London’s Oxford Circus tube station states that the game is now available, sparking confusion from Nintendo fans on their morning commute.

First off, if you’ve seen the advert yourself, no — the current London heatwave hasn’t melted your senses. The advert, now spotted by multiple fans, really does say the game is “out now”.

Officially, Nintendo has not announced a Metroid Prime 4: Beyond release date other than a vague promise it will launch this year. But even if the game isn’t out now, its appearance on an advert in such a prominent location is giving Nintendo fans hope its launch is right around the corner.

“Any idea why the MP4 Beyond ad in the London Underground says ‘out now’?” Nintendo fan orchestar wrote on reddit. “I’m genuinely confused. Do they mean the Switch 2 is out? I wish the game was truly out though haha.”

Fans have speculated that the advert is perhaps outdated — maybe Nintendo did initially plan to launch Metroid Prime 4 now, and the wording wasn’t updated? Alternatively, we could be seeing a version of the advert not due until later, alongside the game’s actual release date.

For other Nintendo fans, keen to play the game soon after many years of waiting, the advert has sparked hope of a surprise release. This does seem unlikely, however, with Donkey Kong Bananza firmly positioned as Nintendo’s next big Switch 2 title.

IGN has contacted Nintendo for comment.

In a new entry on Sony’s official PlayStation blog, Sucker Punch Productions’ co-creative director Nate Fox shared more insight into the research trips the Ghost of Yotei team took to Japan. Following on from his previous PlayStation blog contribution (more on that here), Fox yet again emphasized the team’s commitment to portraying feudal Japan in a respectful way, this time focusing on the efforts they made to represent the culture of the Ainu.

The Ainu are an indigenous people from north Japan, especially Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, which provides Ghost of Yotei’s setting. Their language, culture, beliefs, and traditions are distinctly different from the Yamato (also known as Wajin), the main ethnic group that makes up the overwhelming majority of Japan’s population today.

Ghost of Yotei is set at a pivotal point in the history — 1603 was the year the Tokugawa Shogunate was formed by Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of Japan’s great unifiers, putting an end to decades of civil war. Edo (now Tokyo) became Japan’s center of power, ushering in the peaceful Edo period in which Japan’s culture and society blossomed. However, at this time, Hokkaido was still a wild, sparsely populated island home to the Ainu, its formidable winter snow and rugged landscape making it a tough place to live.

“When setting a game in Hokkaido we knew a crucial element was doing our best to represent Ainu culture in a respectful way,” Nate Fox explained. “Thankfully we’d connected with an Ainu cultural adviser before setting out on our reference gathering trip.” Not only that, but they were invited by the adviser to meet her family, which led to the Ghost of Yotei team getting to forage for vegetables in the mountains. “It was a lovely way to make new friends and start our journey in learning about Ainu culture. That night we resolved to put foraging into our new game, we wanted players to be able to share (our) experience.”

According to Fox, the Ghost of Yotei team spent part of their research gathering trip in Oshima Peninsula, the southern part of Hokkaido that is closest to Japan’s main island of Honshu. In the 1600s, this was the domain of Matsumae clan, who would be given exclusive rights by the Tokugawa government to trade with the Ainu living further north. Fox observed that there are signs even today of how the mainland Japanese people of this time rarely lived any further north of Oshima. There is a “proliferation of cherry trees on the peninsula, brought there from Honshu, yet uncommon in the rest of the island. That really told the story of how sparsely settled Hokkaido was in 1603 by the Wajin people,” he noted.

“We’ve tried to mimic that quality in the game, leaning into areas of wilderness between homesteads.” This rugged wilderness will provide a backdrop for protagonist Atsu’s quest to take revenge on those who killed her family.

Fox and the team also went to the Nibutani Ainu Museum with their Ainu cultural adviser. Traditional Ainu houses (called cise) differ from traditional Japanese houses. The museum trip “really helped us get a sense for sorts of objects we’d see in the game and how they were used.”

We can get a glimpse of the inside of an Ainu house, with its large central hearth, in Ghost of Yotei’s official release date trailer (around the 2-minute mark). The woman protagonist Atsu is talking to in this scene seems to be Ainu, as she has a lip tattoo. This symbol of beauty for the Ainu would later be cracked down on by the Japanese government in the late 1800s, after it had fully annexed Hokkaido (source: Embassy of Japan in the UK). By then, measures to force Ainu to abandon their language and culture and integrate into Japanese society were in full swing.

(As a side note, J.K Goodrich’s 1888 account of Ainu houses paints a first-hand picture of the contrast, and complicated relations between the Ainu and Japanese at this time.)

Fox also touched on the time that the Ghost of Yotei team spent learning about Edo period Japan, which took them to Nikko Toshogu, one of the shrines in Japan dedicated to the unifying shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, who kickstarted the Edo period. “While there we obtained a blessing for the game from the enshrined deity, Tokugawa Ieyasu,” Fox explained, adding that they proudly display the ema (wooden plaque) and omamori (protective charm) that they obtained from Nikko Toshogu at the studio as reminders of their trip.

Reflecting on the research trip, Fox explained that “while our version of Hokkaido is fictional, the feeling of authenticity we strive to create has roots in those real world experiences.” It will be interesting to see how Ghost of Yotei portrays the contrast between the Wajin/Edo culture, and that of the Ainu.

Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.