Category: IGN

New details about the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows are circulating online after an artbook purportedly leaked on, among other places, a hub for hentai.

Spotted over on r/GamingLeaksAndRumours, an artbook entitled “The Art of Assassin’s Creed Shadows” has been spreading like wildfire around the internet. It contains several hundred pages of concept art, quotations, and development info surrounding the next Assassin’s Creed.

The leak itself is notable, but the post on Reddit also alleged it originated from a site known for hosting hentai. Bizarre, to say the least. IGN has asked Ubisoft for comment.

The gallery had already been removed from the site in question, but has since been archived in other file-sharing sites and galleries.

Several interesting details are shown throughout, including concepts for famous historical characters, major cities, and a variety of weapons. The art also, presumably, leaks some potential spoilers for the plot of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. We can’t confirm as much until the game is actually out, but the images we have seen seem real enough.

The leak arrives just ahead of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ launch on March 20, 2025, after a previous delay pushed it out of 2024 into February.

At a recent preview event for Shadows, IGN spoke with Assassin’s Creed Shadows game director Charles Benoit, who confirmed that the month delay was “mostly about polishing” and did not change any big systems. The team did update “a couple of things in progression to make it more engaging, also balancing a bit more,” Benoit added, but the main feature that needed extra tweaking was the parkour system, which was running up against an obstacle unique to Feudal Japan.

“The Japanese architecture, the roofs [are] super complex,” he said. “Probably the most complex thing that I ever worked with if we compared to Odyssey and Syndicate. We needed specific codes and specific animations to support something super fluid, changing the transition of the parkour to make it even more fluid. So that’s one of the specific feedback that we heard that we wanted to address, and it really improved since the last few months.”

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.

Arrowhead has released Helldivers 2‘s first big update of 2025, making a number of important changes to the game.

Patch 01.002.101, out now, increases the duration of the gas status effect from spray weapons, returns the ability to emote while flying or ragdolling, and makes a number of other balance changes and fixes.

Helldivers 2 is nearing its first anniversary, and with the arrival of the Illuminate enemy faction breathing new life into the game, players are wondering what’s next in the ongoing meta narrative that is the Galactic War. Fans also suspect this update sneakily adds new content as well as the balance changes and fixes, given it weighs in at over 5GB.

And it’s worth highlighting this particular change, just because it’s so… troubling!

• Fixed a small visual bug with the Stalker’s tongue (you don’t want to know what it took to fix it)

Helldivers 2 update 01.002.101 patch notes:

Balancing

General Changes

• The duration of the gas status effect from spray weapons has been increased from 6 to 10 sec
• Implemented a timer for the Illuminate dropship wreckages to despawn to prevent them from obstructing paths in the colonies

Helldiver

• The Ministry of Humanity has added a clause to its Principles of Correct Posture for Safe Lifting, now allowing Helldivers to jog while carrying two-handed items such as barrels and SEAF Artillery Rounds

FRV

• Helldivers have now also been authorized to deploy grenades and stratagems while leaning out from the FRV
• Tuned FRV handling for a better driving experience when cornering

Sidearms

• Starting magazines increased from 2 to 3
• Spare magazines increased from 4 to 5

Stratagem Support Weapons

TX-41 Sterilizer

• Removed the crosshair drift recoil
• Decreased the camera climb recoil
• The duration of the gas status effect from spray weapons has been increased from 6 to 10 sec

Armor Passives

• After hearing player feedback, we have decided not to fix a bug with the Siege Ready Armor Passive which gives more ammo to all magazine-based weapons, instead of just primary weapons as described. We will eventually update the Armory description to reflect this but for now we’re evaluating if it’s causing any other additional unforeseen bugs

Backpacks

AX/TX-13 “Guard Dog” Dog Breath

Has been reworked to increase its effectiveness and to ensure it remains distinct, focusing on its unique gas-based mechanics.

• It will now preserve ammo by only prioritizing enemies unaffected by the gas status effect. Once an enemy is affected by gas the drone will move on and target another unaffected enemy
• The targeting logic has been reworked to prevent the drone from roaming too far. The origin of the targeting will be from the Helldivers position rather than the drone itself
• The targeting range has been increased from 10 to 20m
• The duration of the gas status effect from spray weapons has been increased from 6 to 10 sec

Stratagems

MD-6 Anti-Personnel Minefield

• Cooldown decreased from 180 to 120 sec
• Damage increased from 350 to 700
• The deployment spread of mines has been increased by 20% to minimize the risk of chain explosions

MD-I4 Incendiary Mines

• Cooldown decreased from 180 to 120 sec
• Damage increased from 210 to 300
• The deployment spread of mines has been increased by 20% to minimize the risk of chain explosions

MD-17 Anti-Tank Mines

• Cooldown decreased from 180 to 120 sec

SH-20 Ballistic Shield Backpack

• Now blocks melee attacks until it breaks from taking enough damage

Fixes

Resolved Top Priority issues:

• You can once again emote while falling or ragdolling! It should no longer reduce fall damage, but you’ll be able to freely express yourself as you fall to your imminent death or severe injuries – Nothing a stim can’t fix!
• Fixed Illuminate spawner ship shields not taking impact grenade damage
• Fixed an issue with collision gaps inside the Illuminate spawner ship, preventing grenades thrown in close proximity to the door from destroying the ships
• Health packs now fully restore all of the Helldiver’s stims
• High damage weapons will now detonate spawned Hellbombs on the map

Crash Fixes, Hangs and Soft-locks:

• Fixed a crash that occurred when aborting missions with the Democracy Space Station effects active on them
• Fixed a crash that could occur when hot-joining a mission on a planet with the Democracy Space Station present
• Fixed a crash caused by quickly switching between different emotes before another client interacted with the emoting player
• Reduced the chance for crashes caused by fires
• Fixed a rare crash that occurred at the end of the drop-in sequence when hot-joining a game in session
• Fixed a crash that occurred when the player returned to the ship while reloading their primary weapon
• Fixed a soft-lock during drop-in when the host left or disconnected the session right after loadout
• Fixed a crash that occurred when repeatedly changing armor pieces in the armory
• Fixed a crash that occurred after finishing the tutorial and after naming your Destroyer
• Fixed a crash that occurred during extraction
• Fixed a crash that occurred when returning to the ship during heavy projectile fire
• Fixed a crash for clients when the host was holding a carryable objective and quit the game
• Fixed a crash that could occur when a player left the game when an encounter started
• Fixed a crash that could occur when changing text language
• Fixed a crash that could occur when reloading the SG-20 Halt

Social Issues & Matchmaking

• Improved the matchmaking logic to better match players with players from nearby regions
• You’ll now be more likely to get matched with the same difficulty lobbies as the one you have currently selected
• Fixed an issue where the chat history was cleared when going to a mission and returning from it

Weapons and Stratagems

• Opening and closing the text chat while in an emplacement now allows the player to remain in the emplacement instead of switching to their weapon
• Fixed Arc weapons not reliably hitting the Impaler’s tentacles if aimed at the lower parts of the tentacle
• The E/AT-12 Anti-Tank Emplacement now has the correct armor penetration tag in the ship menu
• Stratagem turrets will no longer target Illuminate Tesla Towers
• Fixed a visual bug where heat weapons would show numbers over the progress bar in the weapon wheel menu
• Melee weapons should no longer send civilian cars and other objects in the world flying long distances
• B-1 Supply Pack will now once again provide stims to other players. Remember Helldiver, sharing is caring!
• Fixed a bug where players could get stuck in the E/AT-12 Anti-Tank Emplacement after depleting all of its ammunition

FRV

• Following an investigation into the effects of severe survivorship bias during FRV Impact Testing, all FRVs have been reinforced. Minor parking mishaps will no longer result in catastrophic FRV explosions
• General improvements to the FRV camera to make it look cooler and prevent it from getting stuck underground when driving downhill. Absolute cinema!
• Reduced the chance FRVs get dropped on rooftops when being called in
• The FRV movement key bindings should now accept non-QWERTY keyboard inputs
• Fixed a bug where some enemies such as the Brood Commander was launched away further than intended when hit by the FRV

Helldiver

• Fixed an issue where player ragdolling into the FRV would cause the vehicle to be yeeted into space
• Fixed an issue preventing Helldivers from climbing and vaulting over civilian cars
• Helldivers should no longer slide around on the ground after ragdolling from a blast (despite it being the year of the snake)
• Fixed an issue where ragdolling into shallow water caused a stuck prone gliding animation
• Fixed an issue where the Helldiver was not playing the sample pick up animations

Enemies

• Fixed a small visual bug with the Stalker’s tongue (you don’t want to know what it took to fix it)
• Fixed an issue where enemies wouldn’t react to missed shots from projectiles or melee attacks near them

Miscellaneous Fixes

• Fixed an issue where clients would trigger the wrong audio when waiting for the host to join the loadout
• Fixed an issue of Helldivers exiting the hellpod right after readying up and before transitioning to the loading screen
• Fixed an issue of civilians being blocked from finding the shuttle door during Emergency Evacuation missions
• Purple question marks should be encountered less frequently during Illuminate missions on Sandy and Arctic planets
• Fixed the floating head syndrome affecting Helldivers donning the AC-2 Obedient armor while using certain helmets
• Fixed a bug that was introduced in December where weapons with lower armor penetration than the target’s armor incorrectly dealt one (1) damage rather than zero (0), resulting in misleading visual feedback and negligible extra damage to enemies and Helldivers alike
• Enemies will now start sinking into the ground when killed near terminals or the extraction point, preventing players from being physically blocked

Known Issues

Top Priority:

• Black box mission terminal may be unusable if it spawns clipped into the ground
• Stratagem balls bounce unpredictably off cliffs and some spots
• Balancing and functionality adjustments for DSS
• Pathfinding issues in Evacuate Colonists Illuminate missions
• Dolby Atmos does not work on PS5

Medium Priority:

• Players can get stuck on Pelican-1’s ramp during extraction
• Explosives can cause Helldivers hidden behind terrain to ragdoll
• Currently equipped capes don’t display properly and show a blank grey cape in Armory tab
• Players who use the “This is Democracy” emote on their ship might unintentionally send their fellow Helldivers on unauthorized unscheduled spacewalks
• AX/TX-13 “Guard Dog” Dog Breath does not show when it is out of ammo
• The Barrager Tanks turret has armor 0 and no weak spots
• Higher zoom functions do not zoom the camera in through the scope on the LAS-5 Scythe
• Weapons with a Charge-up mechanic can exhibit unintended behavior when firing faster than the RPM (Rounds Per Minute) limit

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.

ID@Xbox is kicking off IGN Fan Fest this year with an exciting new showcase on February 24. Get ready to see trailers, gameplay, and reveals from indie studios including Raw Fury, Team 17, Akapura, 11 Bit, and many others. Highlights include the next big collaboration for Balatro, and much, much more.

The ID@Xbox Showcase will stream on Monday, February 24, 2025 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST across IGN platforms. Along with all the new reveals, IGN’s Podcast Unlocked will be breaking down the biggest moments from the showcase in a special IGN post-show, which will immediately follow the main show.

Check out the some of the studios who will be a part of the ID@Xbox showcase, below:

• 11 Bit
• BigFan
• Critical Reflex
• Daedalic
• Game Source Entertainment
• No More Robots
• Panic
• Playstack
• Raw Fury
• Thunderlotus
• Cult Games
• Team17
• Curve
• Akapura
• Don’t Nod

While we wait for all things Xbox, make sure to check out the biggest reveals from 2024’s ID@Xbox partnership with IGN, where it shared exclusives from games including Dungeons of Hinterberg, 33 Immortals, Astor: Blade of the Monolith, Vampire Survivors, and many more.

And throughout February, stay tuned to IGN for more information about the exclusive reveals, interviews, gameplay, and trailers that will be showcased during IGN Fan Fest the week of February 24 – 28. From games like Monster Hunter Wilds, WWE 2K25, and Alien Rogue Incursion, to shows including Daredevil: Born Again, Mythic Quest, and it’s new spin off Side Quest, to comics such as TMNT, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Godzilla, IGN Fan Fest will be a week full of exciting reveals you won’t want to miss!

One Punch Man has arrived in Anime Royale as part of update 5, and he’s brought new units, cosmetics, quality-of-life changes, and codes with him.

The anime-themed Roblox tower defense experience’s latest update takes players into Saitama’s superhero world with a fresh batch of additions to enjoy. Patch notes reveal everything players can look forward to when they log in, including a selection of units inspired by characters from the One Punch Man anime, such as Tatsumaki, Sonic, Metal Bat, Boros, and, of course, Saitama himself. It breaks down to two Secret units, seven Mythical units, two Legendary units, and one Epic unit, but Anime Royale update 5’s changes don’t stop there.

IGN Fan Fest is back and bigger than ever with an expanded lineup of games, movies, series, comics, collectibles, and more.

Tune in February 24 – 28, 2025 for a live showcase every day highlighting huge reveals, tons of trailers, gameplay, never-before-seen clips, and exclusive conversations with your favorite movie and TV stars.

For IGN Fan Fest’s epic 5th anniversary, the fun kicks off with a brand-new ID@Xbox showcase on Monday February 24 and continues throughout the week with special streams dedicated to games, anime, horror, superheroes and more!

EA has confirmed the end of support for Need for Speed Unbound just over two years after the game came out as its developer goes all in on the next Battlefield.

UK studio Criterion Games, best-known for the much-loved Burnout series, developed Need for Speed Unbound for launch in December 2022 and recently rounded out its second year of updates. IGN has confirmed with EA that this marks the end of new content for Need for Speed Unbound, and the Need for Speed team within Criterion is now, alongside the rest of the studio, working on Battlefield. The game will remain on-sale so players can continue to play the base game and all nine content drops.

“The Need for Speed team at Criterion are joining their colleagues working on Battlefield,” a statement from Vince Zampella, Head of Respawn & Group GM for EA Studios Organization, sent to IGN reads.

“As a company, it was important to us to take the last year to listen to our Need for Speed community and use their feedback to create content for Unbound. With an increased understanding of what our players want in a Need for Speed experience, we plan to bring the franchise back in new and interesting ways.”

That’s a rather vague hint that Need for Speed will return at some point, but it’s unclear when and in what form.

It’s a different situation for Dead Space remake and Star Wars: Squadrons developer Motive, which EA told IGN is still working on both the future of Battlefield as well as an Iron Man game. DICE and Ripple Effect, the other two studios that form part of what EA calls Battlefield Studios, are only working on Battlefield.

The Need for Speed news comes as EA starts to reveal more about the new Battlefield, including a first official look at pre-alpha gameplay and the establishment of Battlefield Labs, where players can test the game ahead of launch. There’s no word yet on when the game will be released.

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.

There’s one historical movie scene that comes to mind for me when I think about Sid Meier’s Civilization 7, and it’s not a flashy arena fight in Gladiator or mission control cheering as we safely bring Apollo 13 back home. It’s Leo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, running his hand along an airplane fuselage and insisting that he doesn’t want to see any rivets. There’s some method to the madness of smoothing out the texture in its design, and at times I can see why Firaxis went in this direction. But while its takes some good swings with combat and diplomacy and it is still overall a good time to build a civilization from the ground up, I find that this obsessive streamlining is more often than not to the long-awaited 4X successor’s detriment.

Let me just restate for emphasis right from the jump that I don’t hate playing Civ 7. It retains a lot of the series’ signature charm and polish. There’s an almost indefinable quality of craftsmanship to it that none in the barrage of recent Civ competitors has been able to replicate. It’s more that it’s like this iteration was designed by Apple, trying to be “user-friendly” by taking away the ability to dig into the guts of its systems or fine-tune your experience. And I’m an Android person.

The biggest culprit here is the interface, which simply doesn’t provide enough of the information I would hope to find in a strategy game of this complexity. Learning to play Civ 7 is downright frustrating, and while I eventually figured out how to live with its woefully inadequate tooltips and barren Civilopedia entries, I never liked it. I constantly found myself hovering over things and left-clicking, right-clicking, holding down Shift, Alt, Ctrl, screw it, ScrollLock – anything in the hope that I could bring up more information. But it’s just not there.

In one of my first campaigns, I saw a little guy called a Kahuna wandering around my territory. Now, I could open up the Civilopedia and type in “Kahuna” and find out that he’s a unique missionary available to the Hawaiian civ. But bar that, I don’t have any information available here on the map about what he is. Is he a military unit? Is he dangerous? What is he doing here? Can I eat him? Likewise, clicking on a city center will bring up a basic info view, and you can click a button to show more information. But not a lot more information. Rarely enough.

It’s cool that every building is represented on the map, but hovering over them doesn’t remind me what they do. Again, I have to go into the Civilopedia and type out the name. There’s not even a shortcut to click on a unit or building to bring up the Civilopedia entry that I could find. I can’t even see where my specialists are placed unless I’m prompted to place a new specialist. That’s kind of bewildering.

I know Civ 7 is the first one to launch simultaneously on consoles, but information-dense games like Stellaris and Caves of Qud have done absolutely admirably at making all of their vital details available at the touch of a controller. The absolute worst solution to the problem is just to go, “Eh, you don’t really need detailed tooltips, do you?” That’s exactly what Civ 7 has done, and while not catastrophic, it gets on my nerves constantly.

This minimalist philosophy even extends to the set-up screen, which has a paltry number of options compared to any previous Civ game in the past couple of decades. There are three world sizes and six different map types, but if you want to know what the difference between “Continents” and “Continents Plus” is, again, you’re out of luck, buddy. Go Google it maybe. There’s no explanation of the different difficulty levels, either. And while “Standard” does feel fairly large, even on “Archipelago” it generated maps where more than half of the world is land, so I was really missing Civ 6 options like world age, rainfall, sea level, or any of the neat tweaks I’ve come to expect.

And even if there were more map types, I don’t know if it’d make a difference with the way things are balanced right now. A farm on flat desert is just as productive as one on flat grassland, so trying to switch things up by making a desert world would be a mostly visual change. It really feels like Firaxis wanted to give us a very specific, narrow experience with almost no room for customization.

But as I said, that narrow experience is not by any means a terrible one. There is something to be said for a lean, mean, streamlined Civilization game a la Civ Revolution. And once I settled into its awkward, one-size-fits-all throne, I was having a pretty good time for most of it.

The music and sound design deserve a prominent mention. Christopher Tin only puts out bangers, and “Live Gloriously,” which features lyrics in Ancient Greek taken straight from The Iliad, is no exception. I also enjoyed Gwendoline Christie’s narration, and the sound effects for everything from plopping a new district to opening fire with a rifle company are punchy and satisfying.

Also, in a first for this series, well-written narrative events pop up to bring a touch of human character to the broad sweep of history, and I particularly liked that there are some impactful ones for specific Civs. Playing as the Shawnee, upon unlocking factories, I got the option to keep true to our people’s old ways, which reduced the production output of my industries but gave me a bonus to culture. For Persia, I got a miniature quest chain that rewarded me for sending one of my Immortals on his own little hero’s journey. And the crises that happen at the Age transitions – which can be anything from barbarians at the gates to a super plague that wrecks tiles – are varied and exciting. I’m pretty sure I haven’t even seen all of them yet.

The re-imagining of smaller eras as three larger, more distinct Ages with their own mechanics and victory conditions feels a bit too broad, though – particularly the middle one, Exploration. This period stretches from basically the end of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and it feels like it’s trying to cover too much to have a coherent identity.

And, peculiarly, Civ 7 only really covers history up to about 1950. You get planes and tanks, but there are no home computers or helicopters in this tech tree at launch. The final science victory condition is launching the first manned spaceflight – quite a step back from setting up an exoplanet colony. Again, it feels like the conceptual space Civilization exists in has been sliced down to the bone for the sake of simplicity. And it leaves us with some awkward edge cases, like the Mughal Empire, which was politically irrelevant by the mid-1700s and completely dead by 1857, being a Modern Age pick. Even just having four ages instead of three, I think, would have made this much less awkward.

Overall, though, I like the idea of changing which historical culture your civ adopts with each age, an idea that Amplitude introduced in Humankind a few years ago and Firaxis has improved upon by putting semi-realistic restrictions on who you can pick next. I never liked the idea of American tribesmen founding Washington D.C. in the Stone Age, and civ switching shakes up the gameplay and allows you to pivot from military to culture to science without ruining your whole run. But it has its drawbacks, too. Given that Civ 7’s otherwise slick-looking animated leaders don’t change at all visually through the Ages, you end up with some confusing situations like having Ben Franklin declare war on you and then having to look up what civ he’s actually controlling right now. Persia? Ooookay.

As is tradition, warfare is the most fun way to play, and I love the clever solution of army commanders letting several units ride on their backs to move around the map, then deploying to actually fight. That’s a good compromise between stacks of doom and one unit per tile, and having the commanders be the only ones to earn XP cuts down on micromanaging per-unit upgrades. The AI still can’t present much of a challenge to an experienced player who knows how to exploit the terrain and focus fire on priority targets unless they outnumber you three- or four-to-one, but hey, it’s Civ. What else is new?

Well, for one thing, when you end your turn all enemy units move at once, and your view will never be taken to the site of a battle when your units are being attacked. So if you’re fighting on multiple fronts, or you just happen to be looking somewhere else, the start of each turn becomes a crime scene investigation to figure out what happened. You’ll get notifications if a unit dies, but not if it’s reduced to its last few hitpoints. If the idea here was to make the end turn time faster, the cure is definitely worse than the disease.

Back in the plus column, the centering of Influence as a base game currency is probably my favorite change from Civ 6 to Civ 7. The highlight is that it can be spent to engage in a tug-of-war for War Support, which penalizes your opponent’s happiness and combat ability when you swing it in your favor. It feels way less annoying to get declared on by surprise when the systems recognize that there are diplomatic and tactical consequences for such naked aggression, and I can press a button to make them worse by denouncing that jerk Isabella. It also effectively forces would-be conquerors to supplement their bloodlust with a good PR team that swings public opinion to your side even when you’re clearly the aggressor, which makes the military path more interesting.

If conquest isn’t your ambition there is still another “instant” victory condition for winning the space race, but otherwise, the overall winner is determined by these “Legacy Paths” for Military, Economic, Scientific, and Cultural achievements, which have different objectives each Age and don’t penalize you for changing up your strategy in each one. I found that they do, however, encourage generalization over specialization, since being declared the winner by total legacy score at the end often comes down to simply completing as many objectives in as many different categories as possible. Conquering a couple cities as a science player or making a few treasure fleets as a culture player is typically the tie-breaker in a close match. And I wasn’t crazy about having to dabble in everything to avoid falling behind.

Some paths are better designed than others – I’m looking at you, Culture. Flatly, it’s bad. There’s no tourism anymore, so it’s mostly just about collecting artifacts by racing for a very limited number of dig sites with your explorers or vomiting out so many wonders that your starting cities end up looking ridiculous and the wonders themselves don’t feel so singular or special. Then, the religion-flavored Exploration Age culture objectives suck even more. I hope you like missionary spam and endless whack-a-mole conversions that you can’t guard against. There’s a little bit of strategy to it, like the fact that each settlement can now have a rural and an urban faith that need to be converted separately, but otherwise it’s just spending production to churn out as many Bible-thumpers as you can. I know we all like to make fun of Civ 6’s “theological combat,” but at least it was something, right? It was gameplay. This is a chore.

Sure, this whole one step forward, two steps back thing is par for the course when it comes to comparing a brand-new Civ to previous ones with years of patches and DLC to refine them. It’s not lost on me that people said the same things about the launch of Civ 5, my all-time favorite of the series. So I have an optimistic outlook on Civ 7, despite all my kvetching – and believe me, there’s a lot more minor grievances I could list. I do think a lot of what bugs me about it could be fixed without redesigning the entire thing. They could add better tooltips and game set-up options in a patch. Civ 6 didn’t let you rename cities at launch either, but that was soon added. And naturally, history teaches us a lot of lacking systems can and probably will be fleshed out in expansions. It’s not a great game right now, but I believe it could be with time.

At least it comes out of the gate looking slick. One of the only hills – er, mountains – I will die on is that I really don’t like the way mountains look. They kind of remind me of a big pile of rocks, or like a kid’s papier mache volcano project they made for science class. They don’t have the appearance of a nice, realistic range of snow capped peaks like the ones I can see out my window here in Colorado. I’m also really not a fan of the new board-gamey look for undiscovered territory, even though the reveal effect is nice. Give me clouds or an old-timey map over this shiny nonsense any day.

But the units and cities look incredible, if sometimes a bit cluttered. City-states got a big glow-up, both visually and mechanically. They all have unique 3D dioramas with culturally-specific clothing and props for dozens of miniature “civs” that didn’t make the cut, which is kind of incredible considering how many there are, and each can grant you a unique tile improvement. The way you compete for them, though, has again been streamlined. It’s just a race to fill up the suzerain bar first, and you can no longer “steal” them away from another leader once they’re committed. Not that it mattered that much in single-player, since it seemed like the AI was simply not interested in competing for them the vast majority of the time.

There’s also some meta progression where you can unlock equippable items for specific leaders or cosmetics like new profile backgrounds for playing the same leader multiple times and completing specific challenges. It’s… whatever. I’m not annoyed by its existence, but it could completely disappear and I probably wouldn’t notice or care.

But before we wrap up here, where the heck is Gandhi? How are you going to release a Civilization game without Gandhi? To be fair, the quirky leader choices are neat. I like that we’re branching out from exclusively executive-level political figures. But come on. That’s like Halo without Master Chief, or Mario without… well, Mario. The lack of recognizable faves just comes across to me as, “We’re going to sell them to you individually later,” even if the intention was simply to vary things up. If that’s the case, why are there two different Napoleons?

Despite being the shortest month, February’s place in the bleak and dismal ass-crack of winter for half the planet often makes it drag. In 2025 though, there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the month to fit all the massive games that are coming out. But it’s not so much the quantity of new releases as it is the density of a select few, because some of the year’s longest games are dropping in the shortest month.

If any of your friends are major history buffs, you should probably check and make sure they’re okay over the next couple of weeks. If they’re unresponsive it’s likely they’re completely immersed in – or frozen with decision paralysis – over the two huge games that come out in February: Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 and Kingdom Come Deliverance II.

These are two very different games with a couple major things in common. One, they’re jam-packed with tons of extensive deep-cut lore from that hit, long-running immensely controversial franchise known as human existence (in other words, actual real-world history), and two, they’re infamous timesinks. The upcoming sequels are bound to keep even the most casual players busy for at least a couple 40-hour workweeks, but if the previous installments are any indication, they’ll keep serious players occupied waaaaay longer than that.

Civilization 7

Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 needs little introduction and whether you realize it or not, multiple people you know – or possibly, you yourself – will sink hundreds, possibly thousands of hours into the next entry of the prolific turn-based 4X strategy series. I don’t just mean your gamer pals, either; this is one of those series with crossover appeal that attracts players who typically don’t play many games otherwise, and hardcore Civ players are hiding in plain sight all around us. Whether it’s your teachers, your co-workers, your dentist, that one aunt who doesn’t talk much at family gatherings, the person at the deli counter, or that guy at your gym who grunts too much when he’s working out, Sid Meier’s incredibly addictive sim has created a cabal of sleeper agents and it’s not hard to see why.

Despite a dauntingly robust number of systems and a vertigo-inducing amount of depth, the board game aesthetic, turn-based nature, and familiar subject matter make Civ approachable to players who might otherwise be scared off by many other games. You know, the ones set in fictional universes mired in convoluted lore that require players to learn complex control schemes, and then have the dexterity and reflexes to use them under pressure. Civ 6 has one hell of a learning curve but getting the hang of it is more like learning Excel than gittin gud at Elden Ring, and there’ll be even less of a barrier to entry if Civ 7 comes to iOS down the road, which seems likely, if not inevitable.

According to howlongtobeat.com, you can finish the main story of Civilization 6 in around 23 hours, and according to Lay’s Classic Potato Chips, the serving size is just 15 chips. Realistically, most people who open a bag of chips are gonna eat way more than that, and realistically, most people who get hooked on Civ will spend days, maybe weeks in its thrall.

Howlongtobeat also says completing the main campaign plus sidequests – or, optional objectives – will take around 97 hours, and if you’re a completionist, you’re looking at approximately 382 hours, which seems more accurate. It’s unclear if this accounts for the copious amount of DLC that Civ 6 has gotten over the years, and it doesn’t clock multiplayer , but the point is, Civ is immensely time consuming, infinitely replayable, and prominently featured on plenty of desert island game lists, and there’s absolutely no reason to think Civ 7 won’t be more of the same, and then some.

The jury’s out on exactly how long Civilization 7 is, but let’s say it’s on par with Civ 6 – if you average the 23 hours it takes to mainline and the 382 hours it takes to 100%, you’re looking at approximately 200 hours.

The average adult gamer spends 8-12 hours a week gaming. I don’t know who you are, but if you’re watching an IGN video, I’m gonna assume you’re doing way more than that, so for the sake of this article, let’s say you play video games three hours every day. Okay, fine, you’ve been good, so you can stay up a little late, let’s call it four.

If you play video games for four hours a day, every day of the week, clocking 200 hours in Civ 7 will take you 1.7 Februaries. Is that a stupid metric for the size of a game? Absolutely, but it just goes to show you that just because something involves numbers doesn’t mean it should be treated like an exact science. See also, IGN review scores. How much your time is worth, how much money you spend on games, and how much enjoyment you get out of said games is entirely subjective, but one thing that is not up for debate is that Civilization 7 isn’t the sort of game you burn through in a weekend.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

So that’s ONE huge game dropping in February. The other is Kingdom Come: Deliverance II This may not have as much of a reputation as Civ and it might not be quite as infinitely replayable due to its narrower historical focus and lack of multiplayer, but it’s nonetheless a doozie. The original Kingdom Come Deliverance has garnered a devoted following for not just its authentic simulation of medieval life, but how much player choices actually affect the world around them over the dozens of hours it takes to complete, which has the tendency to encourage multiple replays to see different outcomes.

How Long To Beat says you can mainline the original Kingdom Come Deliverance in 41 ½ hours, but again, that’s sort of like buying tickets to a renaissance faire and running full speed toward the exit as soon as you’re past the front gate, which is a waste of money AND a safety hazard. The point of either experience is getting immersed in the day-to-day life of another era – in Kingdom Come’s case, as the son of a blacksmith in 15th-century Bohemia. Howlongtobeat says 100%ing Kingdom Come will take around 131 hours, but poking around the KCD subreddit, you’ll find plenty of folks who’ve clocked twice that, and several who’ve put in over a thousand hours because it’s that kind of game. There are probably people in the Bubsy3D subreddit who’ve sunk 1,000 hours into Bubsy3D, so take that with a grain of salt.

Nobody complained that the first game was too small or light on content, but Warhorse studios has repeatedly touted that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will be twice the size, so a conservative estimate suggests a single playthrough will easily make 100 hours disappear. Well, maybe not EASILY, given the realistically brutal combat, but you get the idea.

If we take the 41.5 hours it takes to mainline KCD1 and the 131 it takes to supposedly complete it, we have 86.5, which seems fair. Now, if KCD2 is in fact twice the size of the first game, that means it’ll take you just over 1.5 Februaries to play it once! if you double that, it’ll take you almost twice as long! When you consider the average price of ren faire tickets is 40 bucks, not counting the cost of mead, turkey legs, or period attire, 60 bucks for a month in medieval bohemia is a steal!

Avowed

On February 18th, Obsidian’s next big fantasy RPG drops. Avowed is set in the same universe as the studio’s Pillars of Eternity games, which may set unrealistic expectations. Both of those games exhibit some pretty flagrant false advertising: none of the titular pillars are, in fact, eternal. But, in Obsidian’s defense these isometric CRPGs do offer pretty hefty campaigns – you can mainline them both in roughly 40 hours, but 100% completion will take more like a hundred. Then again, these are actual role-playing games, not just games where there are experience points and numbers fly off enemies when they take damage. These are meant to be replayed, and the playtimes you’ll see people on the Pillars subreddit boasting are three, four, maybe even 30 times that of what’s on HowLongToBeat. As always, your mileage may vary.

Meanwhile, Obsidian’s most recent full-scale RPG, The Outer Worlds, is egregiously or refreshingly short, depending who you ask. This one’s practically an anomaly in the RPG scene because you can roll credits in under 14 hours, and 100% it in less than 40. An RPG that can be beaten in a single work-week? Unheard of! Though, for some individuals whose work-week cuts into their gaming time, the idea of being able to finish a video game in under a fiscal quarter was one of The Outer Worlds’ main selling-points.

Anyone expecting Avowed to be on the same scale as the Pillars games will be sorely disappointed, as Obsidian has said it’s more in line with The Outer Worlds. The Outer Worlds got a bit of a pass for being short, since it was published by Private Division, whose whole business model was incubating indie and smaller scale projects. Avowed will be the first Obsidian game released since the studio was acquired by Microsoft that actually looks like an Obsidian game. This studio is best known for big, crunchy RPGs like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Fallout New Vegas, and while Grounded and Pentiment are both excellent in their own right, they’re kind of like when Andre 3000 from Outkast put out that flute album. It’s a good flute album, but it’s not an Outkast album.

Anyway, even if Avowed is shorter than a lot of Obsidian RPGs, that’ll likely encourage people to play it more than once. The Outer Worlds was short but like a good role-playing game, there were multiple outcomes. There were three main endings, but plenty of variables would see situations play out a multitude of different ways.

So, let’s say Microsoft’s deeper pockets means Avowed is a little bigger than The Outer Worlds, like 20 hours, but assume it’s about as replayable. If you want to see three endings, that’s still 60 hours, which is 1.8 Februaries, assuming you’re following our completely arbitrary made-up rules and only playing four hours a day. And even if you only play it once, that’ll still likely take you a whole weekend during which you do literally nothing else.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

On February 21st, there’s Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which is really more of an honorable mention with an asterisk than a proper entry on this list. The series has some absolute behemoths, with the longer installments like Yakuza 0, Yakuza 5 and Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth easily racking up 60 hours for a normal playthrough. Of course, it’s not uncommon for people to spend twice that long after getting hooked on any of the infamously addictive side activities, like mahjong! Or managing a cabaret club! Or growing a senbei rice cracker company into a fortune 500 company that owns an amusement park run by a crawfish, a vacuum cleaner, and a 10 year old!

Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is going to be a smaller entry and the developers gave the oddly specific estimate that it’ll be about 1.3 to 1.5 times the size of last year’s Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. Despite having the longest title in series history, that’s the shortest game to date, apparently starting out as DLC before becoming its own standalone thing. Gaiden can be completed in around 12 hours, so expect Pirate Yakuza to be roughly 16 to 18… with a big capital BUT: it’s very possible there’s some absurdly time-consuming diversion. The kart-racing and delivery minigames from Infinite Wealth return, but there’s also something called Masaru’s Love Journey: My Dream Minato Girl… so make of that what you will (just close the blinds first.)

Like a Dragon Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii might only weigh in at two thirds of a February if you’re microdosing it, but don’t underestimate how easy it is to lose track of time in one of these games.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Now we should probably address the 800 pound Gorillaphant in the room. Actually, I think that’s a Congalala, which is neither gorilla nor elephant and probably weighs way more than 800 pounds but I disgress: the biggest game of the month is Monster Hunter Wilds, which releases on the dawn of the final day, February 28th. When I say this game is big, I mean not just in terms of its geographical scale, the grandiosity of its gameplay, the amount of anticipation millions of players have for it worldwide, or the amount of time they’ll sink into it, but really, all the above.

Anybody who knows anything about Monster Hunter knows that the people who get into Monster Hunter get into Monster Hunter. The last few entries, Rise and World, plus their respective expansions and/or expanded editions Sunbreak and Iceborne, can be mainlined in 30 to 50 hours, but like every other game on this list, aside from Speedrunners, who does that? That’s like going to an all-you-can-eat brazilian steakhouse and filling up on rolls before a guy with a sword covered in meat even comes by your table. And like a Brazilian steakhouse, the meat and swords are also big selling points for Monster Hunter. Realistically, getting your fill of an average Monster Hunter game’s campaign and sidequests, plus all the requisite grinding, will at least triple the playtime of the main campaign.

I sent a message to the entire IGN team asking folks how much time they put into Monster Hunter games and literally no one who responded had less than 100 hours clocked. Admittedly, I work at a video game website. If you work at, like, Applebee’s, or a hospice, or the Arvin Edison Water Storage District, you probably won’t get the same response from your co-workers, though you might get called into HR for being annoying and using company time to talk about video games. Regardless, it’s probably worth adding that my esteemed colleagues don’t play a lot of video games just because they work at IGN, they work at IGN because they play a lot of video games. A lot, as in 956 hours across Monster Hunter World and Iceborne. Another colleague had 632 hours logged, but shrugged it off saying some of it was hanging out in lobbies chatting with friends. Yes, friends with whom you spent hundreds of hours playing Monster Hunter!

I’m not saying this to boast about the people I work with at a video game website actually doing their job, but rather to underline that it’s not out of the ordinary for fans of this series to make this kind of time commitment, and I’m sure quite a few of you have done even more Monster Hunting than these casual scrubs I work with.

Monster Hunter has been a big deal in Japan since the jump. There were news stories about a CEO giving his employees the day off when Monster Hunter Rise came out because he knew half of them were just going to call in sick anyway. In fact, the previous game on this list, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s Crazy Verbose Vacation Adventure, actually had its release date moved up a week to get the hell out of Monster Hunter’s way. The studio head put out a video stating the reason was so fans could “play the game that comes out after with peace of mind” and “enjoy hunting at [their] own pace.”

Monster Hunter World was appropriately titled, because it proved to be a massive global success, and part of the reason Wilds has been in the works for so long is because of that popularity. How do you make something that is accessible and appealing to newcomers, but which also poses a fresh challenge to the millions of players who’ve sunk hundreds of millions of hours into the previous games? That’s quite a quandary, and whatever they don’t stick the landing on day one will likely get addressed in future patches or expansions.

In any case, anticipation is through the roof and Wilds is already smashing records: The open beta held in late October attracted almost half a million concurrent players on Steam alone, a new record high for the franchise, with 150,000 more people online than Monster Hunter World’s all-time peak player count.

So, breaking news: Monster Hunter Wilds is going to be a big game that a lot of people are going to be playing, and based on my incredibly precise calculations, it’ll likely take upwards of three and a half Februaries to get the full experience, but realistically, this is one of those games that a lot of folks will keep simmering on the backburner year round.

So, which of these massive games are you gonna spend your hard earned money on, and how much of your ever-so-fleeting spare time do you see yourself sinking into it? Let me know in the comments below, but try to keep it short and sweet… I don’t have all day.

BioWare is reportedly now down to fewer than 100 employees after a round of layoffs and staff exits following the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and a restructure to focus on the next Mass Effect game.

Bloomberg reported that BioWare was more than 200 people two years ago, when Dragon Age: The Veilguard was in the thick of its production.

Last week, EA restructured BioWare to focus on Mass Effect 5 only, meaning some who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard were moved to projects at other EA studios. Game Developer reported that John Epler, Veilguard’s creative director, was sent to work on Full Circle’s upcoming skateboarding game Skate. Dragon Age: The Veilguard senior writer Sheryl Chee, meanwhile, was moved from BioWare to work on Iron Man at Motive.

The decision followed EA’s announcement that Dragon Age: The Veilguard had underperformed on its expectations for the long-awaited action RPG. EA said Dragon Age “engaged” 1.5 million players during its recent financial quarter, which was down nearly 50% from the company’s projections.

According to Bloomberg, these staff “loans” to other studios are now permanent relocations, and the staff working elsewhere at EA are no longer BioWare employees who were temporarily on assignment.

Others, however, revealed they were laid off and were now seeking work. Following the announcement, a number of BioWare developers took to social media to say they had been laid off. Editor Karin West-Weekes, narrative designer and lead writer on Dragon Age: The Veilguard Trick Weekes, and editor Ryan Cormier all said they were looking for work, with producer Jen Cheverie and senior systems designer Michelle Flamm also confirming their exit.

BioWare already suffered a round of layoffs in 2023, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard director Corinne Busche announced her departure from the studio last month.

IGN asked EA for specifics on how many individuals at BioWare were being impacted by this latest change, how many face potential layoffs, and how many remain at the studio, but EA’s response was vague:

“The studio’s priority was Dragon Age. During this time there were people continuing to build the vision for the next Mass Effect. Now that The Veilguard has shipped, the studio’s full focus is Mass Effect.

“While we’re not sharing numbers, the studio has the right number of people in the right roles to work on Mass Effect at this stage of development.”

Bloomberg said the layoffs affected around two dozen people at BioWare. According to Jason Schreier, the author of the report at Bloomberg, BioWare staff believe it was a miracle Dragon Age: The Veilguard released a complete game “after EA forced live-service into it, then reversed course.” IGN has chronicled some of Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s development challenges already, including layoffs and the departure of several project leads at different stages.

With Dragon Age fans now fearing the worst for their beloved series, one former BioWare writer said: “Dragon Age isn’t dead because it’s yours now.”

As for Mass Effect, EA said a “core team” at BioWare is developing the next Mass Effect game under the leadership of veterans from the original trilogy, including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, Parrish Ley, and others.

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.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has won the Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media.

Accepting the award, composer Winifred Phillips thanked developer Digital Eclipse and the audience for “believing in music for games and recognising it and for breathing life and enthusiasm and energy into what we do. It means so much.”

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is the 3D remake of the first game in the Wizardry series. 1981’s medieval fantasy Wizardy is considered the first party-based video game RPG ever released, and is credited as inspiring the likes of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is built directly on top of the original game’s code. You can even view the original Apple 2 interface as you play.