Category: IGN

As someone who has loved dragons for longer than I can remember, including rocking dragon button-up shirts in high school as my “style” and theming my son’s bedroom around the scaled creatures, I was happy as a wyrm and his hoard when Wizards revealed they were releasing Dragon Delves: Adventure Anthology for Dungeons & Dragons. This collection puts front and center one of the namesakes of the TTRPG, featuring 10 adventures, while also highlighting the legacy of the creatures in this long-running franchise. After peeling back the pages and seeing what it has to offer, I find this book to be a fine addition to my shelf, but I wish it went further to really give these mythical creatures the celebration they deserve.

The Nintendo Switch 2 and Pokémon Legends Z-A bundle is still live at Best Buy for $499.99, and it’s a smart pickup if you’re planning to get both anyway. You save $20 off the digital copy of the game, and with Switch 2 stock being all over the place, locking one in now isn’t a bad move.

On the Pokemon TCG side, both the Black Bolt and White Flare Elite Trainer Boxes have dipped below Amazon pricing on TCGPlayer, now sitting at $91.50 and $90.98, respectively. That’s some of the best pricing we’ve seen outside of limited restocks, and probably your best shot at avoiding inflated third-party listings (although it’s still way over MSRP).

TL;DR: Deals For Today

Elsewhere in today’s deals, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is $799.99 at Best Buy, which is $500 off its usual price and a great buy for an unlocked flagship. ROG Ally is also down to $499.99 with the Z1 Extreme chip and 512GB storage, which makes it one of the better portable gaming options if you want full Windows access. Soundcore P20i earbuds are just $19.98, the Anker 332 Power Strip is $15.99, and the upgraded 100W Anker Nano Charging Station is $35.99. All three are practical, everyday gear at their lowest prices in weeks.

Switch 2 + Pokémon Legends: Z-A Bundle

Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Switch 2)

Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Switch 1)

Black Bolt Elite Trainer Box

Pokemon TCG White Flare Elite Trainer Box

The Most Expensive Black Bolt White Flare Cards

We’re seeing some of the highest valued cards in the Scarlet and Violet era in Black Bolt White Flare. The major chase cards here are the Victini, Reshiram and Zekrom ex color rares, and there’s two variants for Victini ex. Madness.

Destined Rivals Elite Trainer Box

Prismatic Evolutions Booster Bundle

Pokemon TCG: Scarlet & Violet—Journey Together Booster Build & Battle Box

Pokémon TCG Stock Update

Amazon is finally getting into the groove with Pokémon TCG Elite Trainer Box stock and pricing, and some are the closest to MSRP the big box retailer has been for weeks. Not only is the Black Bolt ETB vastly undercutting the secondary market, Paradox Rift ETB is even cheaper (and an overlooked set in my opinion, stock up now).

There’s other great deals on ex boxes too, which are also near MSRP and around the same or just under listings on TCG Player. The sealed market is becoming more competitive, so it’s more important than ever to give eBay a quick check before hitting buy.

Nintendo Switch 2 Stock Updates

Samsung – Galaxy S24 Ultra 256GB

ROG Ally AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme 512GB

Soundcore Wireless Earbuds

Anker 332 USB C Power Strip Surge Protector

Anker Nano Charging Station

Portable Neck Fan With LED Display

Fourth Wing (Wing and Claw Collection) (The Empyrean, 1)

Iron Flame (Standard Edition) (The Empyrean, 2)

Anker Laptop Power Bank, 25,000mAh

The Dark Knight Trilogy – Amazon Exclusive

Funko Pop! Plus: The Lord of The Rings – Frodo Baggins

BOOKOO Jump Starter 2000A

TAMASHII NATIONS – X-Men – Cyclops (GAMERVERSE)

Small Soldiers 4K UHD Steelbook + Digital

Serenity (2005) – 20th Anniversary Limited Edition Steelbook 4K

Compressed Air Duster: 100000RPM

The Legend of Zelda Hardcover Book Sale

Nearly every The Legend of Zelda hardcover book you need for your collection is available in this sale with some cracking discounts. It includes my favorite one, Hyrule Historia, that fills in more than a few gaps in the LoZ lore, although the timeline has already been slightly retconned. It also includes full and expanded official guides for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

KRK Kreate Powered Studio Monitors

I can personally guarantee a set of powered studio monitors will sound better than almost any sound system with or without a subwoofer. The new line of KRK Kreate studio monitors aren’t just for recording music (Although they’d do an amazing job), they’re a versatile sound option for content creation, editing, gaming, watching TV and movies and more. Buyers can even teather to them via Bluetooth for no fuss connections.

I’ve been using the 8-inch speaker models for a couple of weeks now, and they destroy my soundbar and subwoofer combo that costs nearly double the price. There’s precision adjustments knobs on the back, which I keep mostly in neutral with volume up by half for a crisp flat sound with the right amount of bass. Although that can be cranked up when needed.

I use an audio splitter so my Krate 8s can handle my Nano QuadCortex guitar amp moddler, my TV audio and gaming PC audio for the best experience. For me, going from a 3-inch to 8-inch speaker option is night and day. The clarity difference and range is top-tier, not to mention the jack, XLR and aux outputs available on each monitor that fits in perfectly in everyone’s setup. You’re getting top-of-the-range brand quality without the “gaming” brand tax, it’s a win-win.

Apple AirPods Pro 2

INIU Portable Charger 10000mAh 45W

Donkey Kong Bananza

WWE 2K25 only released on Nintendo Switch 2 yesterday, July 23, but fans have already noticed that community creations — and the image uploader to import them — are missing from its Switch 2 version.

“If you are playing on the Switch 2 you won’t be able to upload or view custom images from other platforms,” 2K explains in the game’s FAQ. Later on, addressing a different question, the publisher added: “Nintendo Switch 2 players will not see Image Uploader-based Community Creations from any platform or be able to upload their own.”

This means the community’s popular user-created content, like custom arenas and CAWs (Create-A-Wrestler), will not be available on Switch 2, but are still accessible on PC, PS5, Xbox Series, and even last-gen systems PS4 and Xbox One.

While it’s easy to chalk this up to tighter rules on Nintendo’s family-friendly platform, as some fans on the WWE Games subreddit point out, WWE 2K18 for Nintendo Switch offered community creations just fine.

“Ended up going to Nintendo support to get a refund,” said one player. “Have the game on PS5, only double dipped for a portable universe mode with custom creations.” The same player later confirmed Nintendo did issue a refund, adding: “didn’t take too long.”

“Wait.. so custom images are forbidden by Nintendo?” asked another astonished player. “I really wish Nintendo would tell us their target audience. Why does Nintendo have to be like YouTube? You have parental controls for a reason, stop hindering grown adults’ fun by protecting kids. Yall ain’t their parents. The parents are.”

“A couple of microtransaction-fueled missteps aside,” we thought WWE 2K25 was ‘Great’, awarding it 8/10. In IGN’s WWE 2K25 review, we said the game “looks fantastic, still feels good to play, and is full of welcome updates both big and small.”

Nintendo recently made subtle changes to its guidelines for developers publishing on its Switch 2 eShop, seemingly in an effort to slow an oft-criticized flood of low-effort “slop” content that’s been crowding out other games and frustrating users.

I keep coming back to the same question with Killing Floor 3: where’s the rest of it? I comfortably spent the last week teaming up against waves of mutant clone zombies, and mindlessly hacking and slashing through these Zeds was a lot of fun. But more than once, my teammates and I – many of whom enjoyed Killing Floor 2, myself included – found ourselves asking one another, “Is this the final release, or is it just Early Access?” Whether you like to play online or if you just prefer to go it alone, Killing Floor 3’s singular Survival mode is generally a good time, but it’s also a much simpler, more tightly-woven shoot-em-up compared to its predecessors. The weapons and classes it does include are at least a blast to use, and its enemies are perfectly balanced; they’re dangerous when you let them swarm you, but boy do they die good. But all this fast-paced action loses its luster once you’ve seen everything it has to offer, which doesn’t take long.

Killing Floor 3’s moment-to-moment action follows the same formula as the first two games, just streamlined for a snappier, more live service-oriented delivery. That includes quicker movement that feels great immediately, letting you dash from side-to-side, mantle up surfaces, and powerslide from sprint to crouch. You’ll still be slashing and blasting your way through waves of enemies, setting up defenses and earning currency to spend on upgraded weapons, armor, ammo, grenades, self-heal refills, and so on between each assault. There’s no linear campaign to break up that chaos, and a relatively limited selection of options at launch: just six playable classes called Perks, 30 weapons (plus the knife), 13 enemy varieties, eight maps, and three total bosses. That does make this a good entry point for anyone just trying to get into the series compared to the infamously bloated Killing Floor 2, but a tougher sell to series veterans who have come to expect a higher level of complexity and tactical depth.

Thankfully, its lone Survival mode stays fun thanks to the off-the-wall combat system. The mode itself is pretty self-explanatory: the only goal is to survive five increasingly deadly waves of Zed and then fight one of the bosses at the end, like the Zerg-like Queen Crawler or the rhinoceros-horned Impaler. According to one of my teammates, who managed to get into a full group with over five players (we only managed to play together in smaller groups of three due to time constraints), these bosses will spawn in clusters as the team fills up – this is meant to keep everything balanced, in theory. You can get pretty creative with how you take them out as Killing Floor 3 hands you an arsenal full of deadly armaments, even down to the basic starting weapons for each class. That could be the Engineer’s versatile Krait submachine gun, the Ninja’s Kiba and Shuriken combo, or even just the knife that every class gets, which is delightfully overpowered.

There are always a few other tactical considerations at play too, adding layers of variety to the carnage. For example, timing your special ability – like the Ninja’s shocking Hebi-Ken, or the Medic’s area-denying and team-healing Sanctum – so that you use it on more powerful opponents like the Scrake or the Siren, or landing enough headshots at the right moment to activate Zed Time, aka sparkling slow-mo, to make wave after wave of these satisfying-to-kill enemies pass by pretty quickly. Class interplay in multiplayer, while still pretty simplistic on paper, can also get interesting when it works well. For instance, the Sharpshooter can turn a group of foes into ice sculptures with her Cryo Grenade, so the Ninja can quickly get in and shatter them with his sword.

Killing Floor 3’s 13 monster types are way more believable-looking and just plain fun to fight, leaving behind puddles of gore and lasting destruction to the environment, and also responding to your attacks in ways that look and feel more realistic thanks to the new and improved physics system. They die quickly enough to make you feel powerful, but the real challenge is in making sure you manage your resources – ammo, health, grenades, trade tools, and your class’s special ability – while providing enough of a fight to keep them from overwhelming you in numbers. Acid-spewing Bloats and sonic boom-launching Sirens show up way more often in Killing Floor 3 than I recall them showing up in Killing Floor 2, as do most of the other sub-boss type enemies – including the series-classic Scrakes, which now don cybernetic augmentations, heavy armor, and a fearsome combination of chainsaws and grappling hooks. Just be prepared for a lot of realistic-looking blood effects. More Zed blood flows across your screen in any given frame than water in a typical Final Fantasy X cutscene.

The eight maps you’ll fight them on are also decently unique in layout and aesthetic design, but there’s nothing particularly different about each to set them apart. The main differences are in tactical advantages, like Convoy’s generous placement of turrets or the height brought by R&D Lab’s different floors, where you can use zip lines to quickly get away from enemies in the main atrium but mantling over the guardrails will drop you to your death. Radar Station is my personal favorite, since I like its spooky central Washington backdrop, complete with mist-cloaked forests under a full moon.

Aside from Normal difficulty, there are two harder difficulty variants to further test your reflexes across each map, as well as your tactical understanding of class, weapon, and monster mechanics. Plus, there’s a pretty cool Weekly Mutation option in the world map menu that throws you into a match with randomized modifiers that work in favor of the Zed swarm. My party and I haven’t managed to beat one of these tougher matches yet, so it’s safe to say they provide a good challenge. I don’t doubt that putting more time into Killing Floor 3, leveling up my characters a bit more, and getting even better with the mechanics will feel rewarding when I’m finally able to beat a boss on the Hell On Earth difficulty.

The six classes are distinct enough that playing each one feels like a meaningfully different experience. You’ve got the versatile small arms-wielding Commando, pyrotechnics-obsessed Firebug, crowd-controlling Sharpshooter, close-quarters combat-focused Ninja, utility and heavy-weapons-savvy Engineer, and a Medic who wields SMGs that shoot healing darts. These classes are pretty standard fare on the surface, and it’s nice that you can mix and match weapons between them, but they all feel unique thanks to meaningful skill progression, as well as their special abilities and unique grenades. Each one also starts with a different trade tools; for instance, the Engineer has the Multi-Tool, which can conveniently activate points of interest around the map, like automated turret installations, armor lockers, and zip line routes. Meanwhile, the Medic starts with a Syringe Bag, which allows players to load up on an extra self-heal syringe mid-battle instead of waiting to buy them at the end of a wave.

Developer Tripwire Interactive took the between-match skill-based progression from previous entries and made it way more accessible by having it come into play earlier on – it now starts when you hit level two with a class instead of level five, a la Killing Floor 2, and then rapidly increases in complexity by unlocking new options every two levels instead of every five, up to what appears to be a level cap of 30. Since leveling up is so quick between sessions, it can feel overwhelming (in a good way) to head back to the hub area after a long series of back-to-back attempts to select a ton of new skills for a given character class.

But that’s all fine, because skills provide modest bumps in tactical performance in various areas, each one pushing your character in the direction of a specific playstyle but never doing so much as to completely redefine a class’s appearance or role. For example, the Ninja is a clear predecessor to Killing Floor 2’s Berserker, wielding melee weapons like the Kiba, Shurikens, and the dual-Katanas while exploiting enemy movements with shock traps. I’ve decked out my Ninja to heal himself by landing parries while increasing the damage of his heavy attacks, which incentivises me to stick to his starting Kiba longer, rather than invest in his Bow or Tanto weapons at the Trader between waves.

My Sharpshooter is the exact opposite, with skill progression that positions her as a stationary combatant by, for instance, giving her boosts to damage while crouching in place or freezing foes with her Cryo Grenade. This makes her tactically advantageous no matter which weapon she’s using, just as long as I keep her far away from the action. This is a great amount of meaningful choice, letting me decide how I want to engage with the carnage ahead of time, without getting lost in the skill menu. My only issue here is a weird bug that caused my UI to completely lock up whenever I hovered above a skill choice for too long, forcing me to completely reboot my game.

Class customization feels deeper than before, but it comes at the expense of Killing Floor 3’s weapon progression system. My main gripe is that the tier system feels completely backwards. First off, there is both persistent progression and mid-match progression to consider. Persistent progression takes place in the hub area, where you use the Armory system to set up custom loadouts for each main weapon and sidearm for each class, which exist in addition to fully decked-out default weapon loadouts that are immediately accessible mid-match – assuming you earn enough currency in a given match to afford those upgrades.

Those predetermined weapons scale from grey to purple, but the tier system only seems to make sense when you consider default loadouts. The basic weapons you start with can be permanently upgraded in the Armory to extremely powerful levels, and it only takes a match or two to earn enough crafting resources to do so. The higher-tier weapons do offer a boost against the default loadouts for lower-tier weapons, but my teammates and I kept finding that our upgraded starter weapons consistently outperformed the expensive purple-tier gear we had to save up for. It creates this weird economy where you’re better off ignoring half the weapon selection entirely – since, with enough (easily obtainable) crafting materials you can craft every mod for every weapon from the very start – giving you the option to create an OP and relatively inexpensive grey weapon for any class, grab it near the beginning of any session, and stick to just that. This can make each match’s mid-game progression feel dull, since the expensive stuff you’re meant to be working toward feels like a downgrade at that point.

At least the weapons across each of the four tiers all feel good to use, regardless of raw damage output, adding to each class’s style and strategy when wielded with the right skill boosts and player tactics. That could be the Engineer’s deadly Ifrit plasma cannon or the Firebug’s explosive Dragonbreath shotgun, which is a total blast against bigger foes like the jetpack-wearing Husk or the aforementioned Impaler boss.

I love that the well-designed Stronghold hub area gives you a place to relax between matches and during Killing Floor 3’s brief but helpful tutorial. This is the central spot to mess around with class and weapon modifications, try different weapons in the shooting range, play with cosmetics, dig into the Season Pass, and pick your next mission. Standing at the mission terminal and plotting a course from the world map genuinely feels like you’re part of Killing Floor 3’s world.

Similar to Killing Floor 2’s Objective Mode, which is absent in the third outing, there are some basic side missions to complete for extra story flavor bits that are built directly into the Survival mode. Those missions have objectives like “scan all the cargo crates at a location on X map,” or “kill 10 of X enemy type,” or “run 2,000 feet,” – you probably get the gist by this point. These reward crafting supplies, Battle Pass points, and experience points that later become useful when unlocking crafted weapon mods, Battle Pass rewards, and class skills in the hub. It’s worth noting that you can also get more crafting supplies by taking out random pieces of equipment, like surveillance cameras and vending machines, which is a small but fun touch.

The missions are all easy to complete in large batches during routine gameplay, but they don’t do much more than add lore flavor and loot. In fact, Killing Floor 3’s story is entirely forgettable. If not for its rather hefty Codex explaining all the important details about these characters, weapons, enemy types, background stories, and so forth, I probably wouldn’t even consciously realize there’s any semblance of a narrative at all. But I already knew what I was getting myself into, and sometimes, as in the case with a series that’s this irreverent, action-packed, and unapologetically gory, less is more.

The hub is also where you’ll encounter the usual live-service stuff that comes with modern multiplayer shooters. Here, you can set up cross-platform multiplayer, which is a welcome inclusion that works well. And then there’s the microtransactions store. It seems to have a small revolving selection of cosmetics for now, kinda like what Diablo 4’s cosmetic store looked like during that game’s launch. I only looked at it once or twice before moving on, so it’s safe to call it an afterthought and not essential to gameplay.

Speaking of live-service checklists, I barely touched the Season Pass or messed with the limited cosmetic customization of my characters – you can only change headgear and armor skins, nothing else. Just expect to spend the equivalent of $4.99 for 500 in-game store points for aesthetics that don’t really matter or differentiate your character too much. Are these microtransactions burdensome? Probably not. Marginally annoying? Definitely.

2025 has not been the best year for Xbox. Microsoft’s recent massive company-wide layoff impacted up to 9,000 employees, nearly half of whom worked at Xbox. Multiple games were cancelled, “AAAA” studio The Initiative was shut down, and countless talented staff lost.

It’s a strange and uneasy contrast, then, to see that Xbox has actually had a pretty good year when it comes to games. Its biggest first-party releases so far this year have been Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed, Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight, Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and id Software’s Doom: The Dark Ages. The company has also pushed forward its multiplatform plans with a few ports for the PlayStation 5, including the previously Xbox and PC exclusives Forza Horizon 5 and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2.

That good chain of games looks set to continue as many developers and studios at Xbox continue their hard work. There are numerous video games in development at Xbox across multiple divisions today, from Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and Xbox Game Studios. To help keep track of them all, we’ve collected everything we know about every Xbox studio and their current projects below.

Arkane Studios

Arkane Studios, the developer behind the Dishonored series, was previously spread across two locations: one studio in Austin, Texas, which developed Prey, and another in Lyon, France, which most recently released Deathloop.

On May 7, 2024, Xbox closed Arkane’s Austin branch following the tepid release of its horror co-op shooter, Redfall. However, Arkane Lyon remains open and continues work on the studio’s next game, Marvel’s Blade.

Announced at the 2023 Game Awards, Marvel’s Blade is an upcoming action-adventure game starring the iconic vampire hunter who’s on a mission to protect Paris from an oncoming vampire invasion. And in a big departure from the first-person games Arkane is typically known for, Blade will be playable in the third-person perspective. Deathloop director and studio head Dinga Bakaba will co-direct Blade alongside Arkane’s long-serving art director, Sebastien Mitton, and Bakaba has said he’s excited to bring Arkane’s unique take on Blade to life.

According to Arkane’s financial statements for 2024, Blade entered full production at the end of last year.

Bethesda Game Studios

Officially, Bethesda Game Studios has one big game on the horizon: The Elder Scrolls 6. The next mainline game in the beloved fantasy RPG series was announced way back in 2018 at a long-forgotten event called E3. Crucially, the announcement came simultaneously with the reveal of Starfield, and Bethesda was hard at work creating the space-faring RPG. The developers reiterated to the public many times that The Elder Scrolls 6 would not enter full production until after Starfield was released.

Now, following the launch of Starfield in 2023 and the expansion DLC Shattered Space in 2024, Bethesda is finally all-in on The Elder Scrolls 6. As part of The Elder Scrolls’ 30th anniversary on March 25, 2024, Bethesda announced that the next Elder Scrolls was fully in development, and that there are even early builds of the game up and running.

While The Elder Scrolls 6 is officially Bethesda’s only project, Windows Central’s Jez Corden reports that the next Fallout game has also been greenlit. If that’s true, it comes with many questions, including if the new Fallout is being developed by Bethesda Game Studios or handled by another developer, much like how Obsidian Entertainment developed Fallout: New Vegas.

Blizzard Entertainment

Blizzard Entertainment remains focused on three core franchises: Diablo 4, Overwatch 2, and World of Warcraft. Following the cancellation of an unannounced fantasy survival game codenamed Odyssey back in 2024, Blizzard has narrowed its focus to concentrate on improving its most popular games.

Overwatch 2 is still receiving regular updates. After Blizzard cancelled the planned PvE story mode back in 2023, much of the focus has been on improving the PvP competitive modes. Since the launch of Overwatch 2, Blizzard has released an average of three new playable heroes per year. The next hero coming to Overwatch 2 is a new support character named Wuyang, who is scheduled to be released as part of Season 18. And earlier this year, Blizzard released a new competitive multiplayer format called Stadium, where teams of five fight in a best-of-seven series, and in each new round players can purchase new upgrades for their heroes, similar to Riot’s Valorant.

Diablo 4 operates on a seasonal update schedule, with larger DLC expansions that add more significant upgrades and story content. The first expansion, titled Vessel of Hatred, released on October 7, 2024, added a massive new jungle region called Nahantu as well as a new Spiritborn character class that controls the ancient powers of the jungle to wield both long-range and melee abilities. The latest season, Sins of the Horadrim, launched just last month and adds Nightmare Dungeon upgrades and Horadric Spells, among numerous other new additions.

As for World of Warcraft, Blizzard did something unprecedented at BlizzCon 2023 and announced not one, but three expansions for the popular MMORPG. Starting with The War Within, released on August 26, 2024, Blizzard kicked off the Worldsoul Saga, an overarching story that will unite the three expansions. The next expansions in the Saga are titled Midnight and The Last Titan, but so far, we don’t know when these entries will launch.

Furthermore, Blizzard has committed to supporting World of Warcraft Classic, which recreates World of Warcraft at earlier release states. WoW Classic is currently on Cataclysm Classic, the fourth expansion ever released for WoW.

Compulsion Games

Following We Happy Few in 2018, Canadian-based Compulsion Games released its newest game, South of Midnight, on April 8, 2025.

South of Midnight is an action-adventure game set in a fantastical version of the Deep South. The game follows a young mystic named Hazel Flood on her journey to become a Weaver, a magical mender of broken spirits. Along the way, Hazel encounters numerous mythical creatures and enemies based on Southern Gothic folklore. IGN gave South of Midnight an 8 in our review, calling it “a straightforward but well-executed action-adventure game on the surface, with a simple but satisfying mix of combat and platforming.”

There’s been no word yet on what Compulsion Games is working on next.

The Coalition

Xbox’s dedicated Gears of War studio has quite the busy schedule ahead of it. Canada-based The Coalition is gearing up for the release of Gears of War: Reloaded, a 4K remaster of the original Gears of War game. Reloaded is set to release on Xbox Series X and S, PC, and – for the first time ever – PS5 on August 26, 2025.

But this is just an appetizer for Gears of War: E-Day, the next mainline Gears of War game set 14 years before the events of the original. Marcus Fenix (John DiMaggio) and Dom Santiago (Carlos Ferro) will return in a prequel that finally tells the full story of Emergence Day, when monstrous creatures known as the Locust emerged from underground and destroyed the planet Sera.

Gears of War: E-Day is currently scheduled to release sometime in 2026.

Double Fine Productions

Double Fine had been keeping quiet following the release of Psychonauts 2 in 2021, but all that changed when the studio announced its next game, Keeper.

Keeper was first revealed at this year’s Xbox Summer Game Showcase and will be released on October 17, 2025. Described as a “story told without words,” Keeper is a puzzle adventure game starring a sentient lighthouse and a spirited seabird as they make their way through a magical realm. If you saw the trailer for Keeper and thought it was breathtaking, you should know that Double Fine’s Lee Petty, the art director on Brutal Legend and Broken Age, is the creative lead on Keeper.

Halo Studios

Halo Studios, formerly known as 343 Industries, is currently working on multiple new Halo projects, including an unannounced game made in Unreal Engine 5.

Despite working on perhaps the most significant Xbox series of all, Endgadget reported that Halo Studios was impacted by the company-wide layoffs at Microsoft and that, behind the scenes, there are tensions over the direction of the studio.

Provided things all remain steady, the current plan is for Halo Studios to reveal its new game at the Halo World Championships in October 2025.

Id Software

Texas-based id Software has already released one of IGN’s favorite games of 2025, Doom: The Dark Ages.

Released on May 15, Doom: The Dark Ages is a heavy metal, dark fantasy prequel to 2016’s Doom. Id Software intentionally went for a slower, tankier approach to combat with The Dark Ages, taking away some of the Doom Slayer’s speed and agility. In exchange, he has access to heavier weapons like a flail and shield he can throw at enemies, a la Captain America. There’s also our new favorite weapon, the skull-crushing Pulverizer, which uses enemy bones as ammo.

IGN gave the newest Doom game a 9, calling it “a new flavor of the legendary shooter series that’s heavier and more grounded, but no less energetic and exhilarating.” If you haven’t played Doom: The Dark Ages yet, it’s worth checking out for sure. Naturally, considering The Dark Ages was only released this year, there’s no word yet on the studio’s next game.

Infinity Ward

Activision maintains a continuous development cycle to uphold an annual Call of Duty release cadence. That means the franchise’s key studios – Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Raven Software, and Sledgehammer Games – each trade off lead development duties on the newest Call of Duty game. The studios not working on this year’s installment will be working on either next year’s game or the year after.

The last Call of Duty title Infinity Ward led development on was 2022’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The studio then assisted Sledgehammer Games on 2023’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Treyarch with last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. This year’s entry, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, is co-developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, meaning the studios will have been lead developers two years in a row. It’s unknown whether Infinity Ward is assisting on Black Ops 7 or working on another Call of Duty project.

Inxile Entertainment

After being acquired by Xbox in 2018, the RPG specialists at InXile Entertainment are finally getting ready to release their first game under the Xbox Game Studios banner, Clockwork Revolution.

The first-person RPG is set in a vibrant, steampunk version of the 19th century where crime and violence thrive. Amid an escalating turf war between local gangs, criminal kingpins, and the local government, you gain the ability to manipulate time, which will surely come in handy during the ensuing conflict.

Clockwork Revolution was first announced in 2023, and InXile says it’s the studio’s biggest game to date in terms of scope and budget. Based on the most recent gameplay trailer from Xbox’s Summer Games Showcase, it certainly appears to be a deep RPG with multiple dialogue options that affect the outcome of certain situations, a deeply customizable character creator, and numerous weapon modifications. However, Clockwork Revolution still doesn’t have a firm release window.

King

Sweden-based mobile game developer King remains in charge of one of the most successful mobile games of all time, Candy Crush. While King has taken brief detours away from the series, working on mobile games like 2021’s Crash Bandicoot: On the Run and 2020’s Knighthood, King continues to release new Candy Crush games, most recently Candy Crush Solitaire in 2025.

Despite its flagship series’ continued success, King was affected by the Microsoft layoffs, with 10% of its total workforce cut.

MachineGames

Swedish developer MachineGames blew everyone away with its stellar reboot of Wolfenstein back in 2014, and most recently surprised everyone with the announcement that it was making a new Indiana Jones video game – a totally different style of experience, aside from all the Nazis, of course.

Starring the famous archaeologist in a new, globe-trotting adventure, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was critically acclaimed thanks to its fantastic mix of first- and third-person gameplay, an uncanny performance by Troy Baker that sounds almost exactly like Harisson Ford circa-1980, and ultimately its ability to capture the exact tone of the better Indiana Jones movies in video game form.

MachineGames is following up its hit release with the first story DLC, The Order of Giants, which was announced at this year’s Xbox Summer Games Showcase and will be released on September 4, 2025.

Mojang Studios

The Sweden-based studio behind Minecraft continues to release regular updates for its massively popular crafting game.

The most recent update for Minecraft, titled “Chase the Skies,” was released on June 17, 2025, and adds 60+ biomes, new buildable structures, and the ability to explore the overworld from the skies with a new mount called Happy Ghast.

In addition, Mojang produced a live-action Minecraft film, which was released earlier this year. Starring Jack Black and Jason Mamoa, A Minecraft Movie is currently the third-highest-grossing film of 2025 and the second-highest-grossing video game film of all time after 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Ninja Theory

UK-based Ninja Theory released Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 on May 21, 2024, the long-awaited sequel to 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. With Senua’s story wrapped up, Ninja Theory could be shifting focus to Project: Mara, a horror game the studio first teased back in January 2020.

While Ninja Theory hasn’t shared too much information about the upcoming horror game, the studio explained in a video diary that Project: Mara will be a “real-world and grounded representation of mental terror.” This is an area that’s of great interest to Ninja Theory, as both Hellblade and Senua’s Saga also examined mental health in great detail by combining binaural audio effects for the psychosis-inflicted voices in Senua’s head with actress Melina Juergens’ powerful performance.

Additionally, Windows Central reports that Xbox has greenlit another game from Ninja Theory alongside Project: Mara, but nothing else is known about that game.

Obsidian Entertainment

Obsidian Entertainment is having itself a very busy 2025. Earlier this year, the studio released Avowed, a fantasy RPG set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. In IGN’s review, we gave Avowed a 7, calling it a reminder of why we fell in love with Obsidian’s RPG but ultimately a game that plays it “quite safe” overall.

Up next is Grounded 2, a sequel to the 2022 online co-op game about a group of kids who are shrunk down to miniature size by a science experiment gone wrong and must survive the dangers of their suburban backyard. Grounded 2 will hit Early Access on July 29, 2025.

Finally, the biggest game on Obsidian’s calendar is The Outer Worlds 2. The first Outer Worlds game was a sci-fi RPG co-directed by Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain, the creators of the original Fallout series, and shares much of Fallout’s morbid humor and world-building sensibilities. The Outer Worlds depicts a retro-futuristic version of outer space that’s been poisoned by unchecked capitalism. All that may sound a little too much like VaultTech, but it’s certainly got its own distinct flavour.

The first Outer Worlds became a sleeper hit, selling over four million units and receiving numerous Game of the Year award nominations, and the sequel looks to expand on that success. Based on our IGN First previews, The Outer Worlds 2 maintains the irreverent tone of the original game, while greatly expanding upon the game’s combat and exploration. It’s set to release on October 29, 2025.

Playground Games

The UK-based Playground Games is best known for its work on Forza Horizon, an open-world arcade racer spinoff of Xbox’s more serious racing-sim, Forza Motorsport.

However, in 2020, Playground Games was officially announced as the developer behind the upcoming Fable reboot. In the years since, we’ve sadly learned very little about it, despite a handful of trailers showcasing the comedic tone, semi-realistic art style, pre-alpha gameplay, and celebrity cameos from famous UK comedians like Matt King and Richard Ayoade. Originally planned to launch this year, Fable was recently delayed into a 2026 release window. We hope to see much more of the game in the coming months.

Rare

Rare was deeply impacted by the recent company-wide layoffs at Microsoft. The famed developer behind games like Goldeneye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie has spent the better part of the past decade releasing regular updates for its popular online pirate game, Sea of Thieves. However, Rare was also working on Everwild, a third-person fantasy adventure game that was first announced in 2019.

At some point in 2021, it was reported that Everwild was experiencing development difficulties and underwent a complete reboot. However, following the layoffs at Microsoft, Xbox announced internally that Everwild would be canceled. In addition, longtime Rare director Gregg Mayles, who had reportedly been lead on Everwild following its reboot, resigned from the studio he first joined in 1989.

While work on Sea of Thieves will likely continue, it’s unclear what the next steps are for the venerable British studio.

Raven Software

Raven Software is part of Activision’s stable of dedicated Call of Duty developers and is the co-developer of the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, which it is working on alongside Treyarch.

The two studios previously led development on 2024’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, with Raven developing the single-player campaign. In our review, IGN gave Black Ops 6 a 9, calling it “the best Call of Duty campaign in many, many years.” Will Raven and Treyarch be able to follow up on their prior game’s success when Black Ops 7 is released later in 2025? We’re excited to find out.

Sledgehammer Games

California-based Sledgehammer Games is another Call of Duty studio working under the Activision umbrella. It previously led development on 2023’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and before it, Call of Duty: Vanguard.

While Sledgehammer was listed as an assist studio on 2024’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, it was also reported that the studio lost 30% of its staff in a round of layoffs back in 2024, and it’s unknown whether Sledgehammer will be able to lead development on a new Call of Duty game going forward.

Treyarch

Alongside Raven Software, Treyarch is the co-developer of the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

As one of the longest-running developers at Activision, Treyarch has worked on Call of Duty games since as early as 2005’s Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. Treyarch is responsible for founding the very popular Black Ops sub-series, and is also responsible for developing Call of Duty’s Zombies – most recently for 2021’s Vanguard, 2023’s Modern Warfare 3, and last year’s Black Ops 6.

Turn 10 Studios

Washington-based Turn 10 Studios was once the home of Xbox’s racing sim Forza Motorsport, but all that appears to have changed following the recent layoffs at Microsoft. According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier, Turn10 reportedly lost nearly 50% of its staff in this year’s layoffs, and the studio is effectively “shuttered.”

Further reports suggest that the Forza Motorsport series will no longer be supported, and remaining Turn 10 staff will serve as an assist team on the spinoff series, Forza Horizon.

Undead Labs

Seattle-based studio Undead Labs has been working on State of Decay 3 for the past several years. The third game in the popular zombie survival sim series, it was officially announced in 2020. However, there have been multiple reports of behind-the-scenes trouble at the studio leading to its slow development.

First, studio founder Jeff Strain left Undead Labs in 2021 to start up a new studio, Possibility Space (which faced its own internal struggles). This was followed by a 2022 investigation by Kotaku into a toxic work environment at the studio, which resulted in an internal Microsoft investigation and the departure of studio HR boss, Anne Schlosser. These issues have reportedly contributed to the delay of State of Decay 3, which still doesn’t have a release window.

World’s Edge

World’s Edge was established by Xbox Game Studios in 2019 to be the stewards of the Age of Empires real-time strategy series. Since its inception, World’s Edge has released a number of remasters, starting with Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition in 2019, and the most recent being Age of Mythology: Retold. A remaster of the original Age of Mythology, it focuses on ancient civilizations and the gods they worshipped. It was released on September 4, 2024.

World’s Edge isn’t solely dedicated to remasters, though; it also released a new entry into the series, Age of Empires 4, back in 2021 to positive reviews. It’s unclear if its next step will be to continue working on its remasters (AoE2: Definitive Edition continues to receive expansion packs) or develop an entirely new project.

ZeniMax Online Studios

The Maryland-based ZeniMax Online Studios has been releasing continuous updates to The Elder Scrolls Online since the game’s launch in 2014. The MMORPG spinoff of Bethesda’s popular Elder Scrolls RPG series has quietly grown to become one of the biggest MMOs in the world, alongside games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14.

Behind the scenes, it was reported that ZeniMax Online Studios was also impacted by the recent Microsoft layoffs. Not only has veteran studio boss Matt Firor stepped down from the company, but an unannounced game known only as Project Blackbird was also canceled.

While Bloomberg reported that Xbox executives were “blown away” by Project Blackbird, Xbox still announced internally that it was cancelling the game. Reports have since come out with more details about Project Blackbird. The game was set to be a new sci-fi MMO where players would navigate the politics of warring gangster factions on an alien planet where one side of the planet is engulfed in fire and the other covered in ice.

ZeniMax Online Studios was reportedly staffing up to begin full production on Project Blackbird before it was canceled. And while work will continue on The Elder Scrolls Online, developers have shared online how devastating the news of Project Blackbird’s cancellation has been.

The fallout of the Microsoft layoffs is still being felt throughout the industry and will likely shape Xbox as it heads into the next generation. Not only have games been canceled, but entire studios, like The Initiative, have been shut down, and games like the Perfect Dark reboot have gone with them. While there are still Xbox games to look forward to on the horizon, the future of Xbox remains an open question.

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has launched to 114,000+ concurrent players on Steam, making it one of the biggest launches for a non-FromSoftware Soulslike game yet.

It’s currently the eighth biggest game on Steam by concurrent player count, smashing through the 100,000 concurrent player barrier and clocking up 114,132 players in the last 24 hours. By comparison, and according to data supplied by SteamDB, Lies of P‘s highest concurrent peak is a little over 30,000 players, Lords of the Fallen is 43,075 players, and The First Berserker: Khazan is just shy of 33,000.

Concurrent players isn’t the only metric we should use when measuring how successful a game is, of course, but it’s a good starting point, even though it doesn’t account for players on other platforms.

Despite the launch-day success, however, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers originally released to ‘overwhelming negative’ user reviews on Steam but has since upgraded to ‘mostly negative’ as players report issues with “extremely awful performance,” a “completely lifeless” main character, and “clunky” combat and gameplay. At the time of writing, just 21% of the 6,500+ reviews left on Steam are positive.

“Wanted to give this game a good chance. I was excited for this. I had seen the mostly negative rating and checked the concerns and I can say now that as of this moment, they are correct,” wrote one reviewer. “The game has some massive performance issues. I tried just playing because sometimes gameplay can more than make up for lacking in other areas. I was unfortunately not able to see much of the combat. I did fight the opening tutorial boss, I did fight through a few camps of enemies, and, at one point, during the boss fight, I was enjoying it and having fun. I was unable to experience more of that due to the overshadowing performance issues.”

“UE5 games is [sic] a hit or miss when it comes to performance, and in this case it’s a miss unfortunately (at least for my system),” added another. “This game needs a free demo for this exact reason.”

It’s not all bad, though. “I’m one of the lucky ones: the game runs fine on my machine. No crashes, no stutters, no slideshow combat,” said a happier reviewer. “And that makes one thing crystal clear — Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is being unfairly crucified by players with garbage PCs and zero optimization knowledge.”

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a Soulslike action-RPG set in the land of Shu during the dark and tumultuous late Ming Dynasty. You play as a mysterious warrior afflicted by a horrific feather disease, who uncovers hidden secrets and battles supernatural enemies in an ancient empire teetering on the edge of collapse.

“Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is yet another great Soulslike to add to the ever-increasing pile, featuring excellent combat, wonderful level design, an incredible skill tree, and fearsome bosses,” IGN wrote in our Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review, which returned an 8/10 score. “Just watch out for some steep difficulty dips and spikes, and a reliance on cheap-feeling ‘gotcha!’ ambushes.”

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers released earlier today, July 24, 2025, for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store. Microsoft has also brought it to Game Pass day one for those subscribed to the Ultimate tier.

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.

Sony has acquired a 2.5% stake in Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco.

Sony said the 16 million-share acquisition forms part of a broader “strategic partnership” with Bandai Namco and “will focus on expanding the fan community for IP such as anime and manga around the world and strengthening engagement.”

Sony said it has “historically collaborated on various projects in the fields such as games, anime, and music” with Bandai Namco, and plans to extend this collaboration “to a broader range of areas.”

While not explicitly addressed in the announcement, gaming forms a substantial part of both companies, and it’s hard to imagine a world where FromSoftware’s gargantuan Elden Ring — which Namco Bandai publishes — isn’t expanded further. After all, Sony is already the largest shareholder in FromSoft’s parent company, Kadokawa, and an Elden Ring movie is already in development.

“The two companies intend to implement initiatives including the expansion of works as well as products and services based on IP developed by Bandai Namco, leveraging Sony’s strengths in areas such as the production and distribution of anime and other video content, as well as merchandising,” Sony said in a press release.

“Through this partnership, we aim to co-create an array of content and experiences that exceed expectations and deliver Kando (emotion) to even more fans, alongside Bandai Namco Group, with its outstanding capacity for multidirectional expansion of diverse IP and deep connections with fans at real touchpoints, both domestically and internationally,” said Sony’s chief strategy officer, Toshimoto Mitomo.

While we’re talking about Elden Ring: In case it wasn’t clear, yes, Elden Ring movie director Alex Garland cares about FromSoft’s game as much as you do. He’s currently on his seventh playthrough of the epic fantasy RPG, and recently revealed the boss he found the toughest to take down.

“It’s Malenia who’s the tough one”, Garland told IGN last month. “I’m now on my seventh playthrough of that game. I’ve leveled up, I’ve got lots of juice, and a cool sword, and stuff like that, and I just throw myself at them again, and again, and again, and again.”

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.

Battlefield 6 is looking at an October release date and an $80 price tag.

That’s according to a noted leaker, Dealabs’ Billbil-kun, who claims rumors of an October 10, 2025, release are correct, and that Battlefield 6 will release on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S with both a standard edition ($79.99) and a special Phantom edition ($109.99). The PC release, however, will reportedly be $10 cheaper.

With pre-orders expected to go live in a week’s time on July 31, we’ll reportedly learn later today that there’ll be no early access, no matter what edition you buy — which deviates somewhat from usual industry practice these days — and standard edition owners can upgrade to the Phantom version at any time for $29.99.

An open beta is finally on the way, too — something confirmed directly by the Battlefield team itself. In a post on social media, the official Battlefield account asked if players preferred open weapons or closed weapons, and then suggested: “why not both?”

“Starting at Open Beta, players can choose official playlists with Signature Weapons locked to class, or not. More to come.”

EA is finally ready to fully reveal its next Battlefield game in just a few hours. Its official title is Battlefield 6, and we’re getting a first trailer later today, July 24, at 8am PT.

Ahead of EA’s full Battlefield 6 reveal, a brief teaser for the game’s campaign was posted online yesterday, revealing a major conflict. Set in the near future, Battlefield 6’s campaign will see NATO under attack. Its base in Georgia is hit, the British territory of Gibraltar is invaded, and NATO’s secretary general is assassinated inside the organisation’s Brussels headquarters by an organisation named Pax Armata.

It’s been a long wait for Battlefield 6. It was first announced way, way back in 2021, sort of, mostly just as EA confirming it was still working on more Battlefield games after Battlefield 2042. Since then, we’ve seen an early piece of concept art and had it confirmed that the game would take place in a modern setting. Since then, however, everything we’ve seen has come from leaky NDAs and excited fans participating in closed Battlefield Labs testing.

The Battlefield playtest has proven to be leaky indeed, and developer DICE has “loads of feedback from the very active testers selected.” Unlike Battlefield 2042’s lukewarm reception, fans seem pretty pleased with what they’ve seen so far, and for some time EA wasn’t even trying to take them down. So far, we’ve seen evidence of a new drag mechanic and the ability to cling on to vehicles, as well as improved in-game movement, 3D maps, improved destruction, quality of life improvements, and the start of a battle royale match.

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.

Hot on the heels of Ghost of Yotei’s very own State of Play showcase, we sat down for a chat with creative directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell to talk about what we saw of Sucker Punch’s upcoming PlayStation 5 exclusive — and what we were left wondering about. Read on for answers!

IGN: The backdrop of Ghost of Tsushima was a real-life invasion by Mongol forces on the island of Tsushima. With Ghost of Yotei, what’s the historical setting of what’s going on in Japan at this time and how will that play into Atsu’s journey?

Nate Fox: The game takes place in the year 1603. Peace has just broken out in Japan after decades and decades of civil war and there are a lot of sellswords that suddenly are out of work. So they travel north to the edge of the Japanese empire, an island called Ezo, modern day Hokkaido. And this place becomes a powder keg. It’s very, very dangerous with all these sellswords walking around trying to make a buck. This moment in history combined with the beauty of Ezo, these lush mountainscapes and forests and rivers, creates a dynamite combination for an open world game, and it’s where we wanted to set Atsu’s quest for vengeance.

IGN: During your presentation at the State of Play, you mentioned that Ghost of Yotei focuses on more freedom than any game Sucker Punch has ever made. That’s a large claim considering the amount of freedom that was already offered in Ghost of Tsushima, I can definitely attest to that. Can you elaborate on some of the ways in which you’ve enhanced the feeling of freedom compared to what the player could already do in Ghost of Tsushima?

Jason Connell: When we started to think about what the next game would be for us at Sucker Punch, we really had to take stock of what we loved and what our fans really loved, and how we saw people play Ghost of Tsushima. And one of the aspects of Tsushima that we wanted to carry forward was the sense of exploration. We saw people play very wide in their experience. We saw some people drop 80, 90 hours and just exploring and using modes like photo mode just to soak in the nature and the beauty of the world.

That really resonated with us. We’re big wide players as well, so when we set out to make Yotei, especially once we decided that it was going to take place in Hokkaido — back then it was called Ezo, this vast, vast landscape that just frankly had a nice overlap with us having a desire to have a more open game design because it’s such a vast place — led us to a whole host of features, ranging from simple utility features like spyglass, being able to pull your spyglass up really quickly and look around the environment really is the way that I think Nate and I both really love to play, just see something on the horizon and go to it, to traversal features. We have flower streams that are just woven into the environment and help you get across vast landscapes. If you follow those flowers you’ll get a little bit of a speed boost because they’re joyful for Atsu to ride in, but they also might lead you to something. Or developing features like our clue system, or camping features, which just really celebrate the wilds of Ezo.

IGN: One of the coolest moments at the State of Play was the seamless switch from present day to Atsu’s past when she was looking around the remnants of her childhood home, and then you actually saw her reliving those memories in the past with just the press of a button. I wondered where this idea came from, and is it the kind of thing where it’ll be tied to specific spots throughout the game world, so there’ll be an area where it’s clearly time to switch back to the past? Or is it up to the player to discover those for themselves?

Nate Fox: In Ghost of Yotei there are a number of places in the world that Atsu visits in which she has a lot of memories from her youth. And at the touch of a button, you can go back into the past and you control Atsu as a child, you get to play as her interacting with her brother and her parents and other people in Ezo.

We wanted you to be able to really control her as a kid so that you would feel like you knew what her life was like, you could experience that, and of course because this shows you what she lost. It’s a feature we really love because the player is in command, they can hit the button to go back and see what it used to be like and then hit it again and see what it’s like now, comparing and contrasting for instance, what her own homestead looked like in her youth to what it looks like now after it’s been run down by weather and lack of use, it’s become a ruin. So you get to see the before and after of her experience in the landscape.

IGN: So was it from day-one work on the sequel? Did you know that you were starting fresh with a brand new character, or were there ever some initial ideas for maybe continuing Jin’s story on after the events of Ghost of Tsushima?

Jason Connell: For us at Sucker Punch, one of the things that, especially if you look back on our catalog of games, we have a deep love for making origin stories. It’s something we have a lot of passion for. We like coming up with those stories, those arcs, the characterizations, how they might come through in the game experience, what type of features it might sort of spark as we create this new character. And so really from the beginning we knew that we were going to be charting on new territory here.

And then once we pretty quickly started looking at Hokkaido and this region and this time period and just how vast and stunning and big and filled with wilderness, and you combine that with this idea of doing a tale of vengeance where Atsu is hunting someone inside of that landscape, it was just such a great match.

It’s not hunting for somebody in a safe environment. This is a massive landscape that she’ll be going under quite an undertaking hunting them here. We felt like that was an exciting connection. I’ll say also the story of the folk legend of the onryō, this Japanese folk legend of tale of vengeance, often women who’ve been wronged in life and now they’ve come back to seek vengeance, we got really excited about that folk legend and decided that we were going to inject that pretty heavily into our version of a Ghost story.

IGN: One of the other new features involving campfires you mentioned was a system that allowed members of your wolf pack to visit you at night. You sort of hinted that you don’t have to leave where you’re exploring, the game comes to you. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Jason Connell: First and foremost any feature that makes it into the game has to be tonally celebrating the land of Ezo. And as I mentioned earlier, this vast landscape, there’s nothing better than celebrating the camping aspects of it. That is something we felt was really important.

Now secondly, I must say we’re always looking for ways to make the game feel approachable. And I mentioned it a little bit in the State of Play, is that, open world in big games, managing resources is kind of challenging. In our game you can fast travel. In our last game, you could fast travel anywhere. If you want to go upgrade your bow, you could fast travel over here and upgrade your bow, that’s fine and you can do that again in this game.

But after you meet people and your wolf pack grows, we show this screen briefly, you can go into those wolf pack screens and see what people have to offer for you. Say you like that bow here, if they have an upgrade available to you, you might be able to pull them into your campsite. So if you’re exploring a region of the game, it sometimes can be really discordant to just like stop there, go warp to another area, upgrade, and then come back to where you’re exploring. This is what we mean. You can actually just stay here, set up camp, briefly engage with this person, this bow, your person comes over, you get your upgrade and then you go back on your way all while celebrating the wilds of Ezo. And that’s where camping has been an iteration and evolution of the Ghost game.

IGN: Ghost of Tsushima Legends was objectively awesome. How happy were you with that mode as a team and is there a possibility to see something like it again for Ghost of Yotei, either at launch or maybe in the far off distant future?

Nate Fox: We were extremely happy with Ghost of Tsushima Legends and allowing players to connect with friends and use their skills fighting with the katana against a variety of enemies. We loved it. Right now we are very focused on completing Ghost of Yotei to the highest quality possible and putting it in players’ hands very soon on October 2. That is our absolute focus right now.

IGN: Masterfully answered! What has it been like developing combat based around a whole arsenal of weapons this time as opposed to just a katana and the variety of different stances?

Nate Fox: In Tsushima, we really loved our stance system where the player could choose one of four ways to hold the weapon to combat a particular type of enemy. In Ghost of Yotei we took that system and we expanded it. Instead of four stances, there are now five. Instead of stances with one weapon, we took that same system and we said, okay, instead of stances it’s new melee weapons. Functionally it’s the same as stances but it’s more. For instance, if you use a spear, you can use that weapon to knock enemies backwards in space. So if you’re standing near a cliff fighting them, you can knock them off the cliff into the abyss. Works just like stances, but there are extra abilities attached to each of these weapons to give the player more options.

IGN: So should the player be expecting to juggle weapons and learn which is going to work against which type of enemy, perhaps what weapon they’re using? Or is it more a case of unlocking the right skills for the right weapons?

Nate Fox: The game definitely would like players best to learn how to switch weapons when it is appropriate. It is the most efficient way to play. Let’s face it, people sometimes want to play in the way that makes them feel the coolest and the game will not hurt you if you do that. If you want to play with just two swords in each hand because it looks cool, you can play through the whole game that way. It’s A-okay.

IGN: Can you mention any of your favorite skills that you’re able to unlock or moves you’re able to do with any of the weapons?

Nate Fox: I love the kusarigama because while it’s really good for taking down people with shields, it also allows you to do an area of effect attack by spinning that chain above your head. If you’re surrounded by enemies, you can hit them all. This is something we never had in Tsushima, but in Yotei it’s absolutely there for you. It is a moment where you’re kind of improvising, and these weapons allow you to do a broader selection of abilities that give you more choice and more freedom in how you deal tactically with the enemies around you.

IGN: Jason, do you have one as well?

Jason Connell: I think my favorite when it comes to combat is the dual wielding. It really rewards the feeling of being really fast, and when she hits with those two swords you can kind of get into a flurry and get into a groove where it just keeps going. You’re like, this is going to stop, but it just keeps going. There’s speed there, it feels really lethal. It doesn’t feel like you’re swinging a lot and doing little damage. It feels like you’re actually really hurting them. I like dual wielding… that’s my fantasy melee weapon set up for me. That might be different for other people, but that’s why there’s five of ’em. Everybody’s going to try something new and different.

IGN: So Jason, in a New York Times interview, you mentioned that you were left in awe by the sight of Mount Yotei reflected across Lake Tōya during a research trip. Was that the site that inspired the setting of Ghost of Yotei, or were there ever any other locations or historical settings that could have perhaps been the home for Atsu?

Jason Connell: By the time we had gone on the research trip, we definitely knew that we were making a game up there. We had seen enough images. We had embraced the idea that this is where our game was going to take place, and it was about just getting immersed in the culture up there because it’s quite different than Honshu mainland Japan. A number of us, it was our first time.

So really opening the door to all of the unknowns that we could take home and be inspired by and develop new relationships for new advisors. That’s the real reason to go. But that Lake Tōya moment where — and I bet Nate had a very similar experience — certainly was some of the birthplaces of thinking about what the actual name of the game would be, because it was just such a majestic moment where the mountain is sort of towering over you. It was a nice middle point of the trip for us, and really symbolized a lot of what we learned and felt while we were there.

And then there were a bunch of natural decisions and some implicit decisions that were made over the course of the game that suddenly, our home is at the foot of Mount Yōtei, this massive mountain that’s casting this shadow over and we were naming things based off of it. It really felt like it was the geographical heart of the experience, and the story was spiraling out from there. It felt like just a great moment for us as we were getting towards the early parts of making the game, and it ended up transforming into the actual name.

IGN: And I know this is going to be hard, but Nate, starting with you, I’d love to know one thing you’re super excited for players to be able to see and play with when the game comes out in October?

Nate Fox: Oh, I’m very excited for players to get out into the wilds, the dangerous lawless wilds of Ezo and hopefully they’re really entranced by Atu’s quest. The wind’s blowing them towards a mission start, but what’s that over there? They see something on the horizon that stokes their curiosity and they say, you know what? I’m going to go check it out. And they ride to that thing and they’re going to find something worth discovering, whether it’s a story or some piece of valuable treasure, you name it. We wanted to make sure in this game that we honored players’ curiosity, that we would reward exploration. And to me that’s the magic of Yotei. It’s those spaces in between missions when players just find themselves propelled by the smallest little puff of curiosity and it takes them on an adventure they hadn’t anticipated doing.

IGN: What I’m hearing from that is I’m going to be having a lot of late nights, way later than intended. Jason?

Jason Connell: I actually want to say something we haven’t talked about much, which is Atsu’s shamisen, which is the instrument that she carries, which is her mother’s shamisen. Just like in Ghost of Tsushima, we had features in that game, I think it was called the Traveler’s Attire in the last game… it would help you find content nearby, you could use it almost like a completion tool or a navigation tool in order to get through the world.

I love that the shamisen exists and there’s actually songs that you can learn inside of the open world, and those songs can then guide you to certain types of things. So you want to collect some of these songs because they’ll guide you. The Song of Vanity might guide you to cosmetics, and we know how people love dressing up in the game and putting on cool outfits. So I’m really excited about showing more of that and for players to get an opportunity to use that.

Interview conducted by Rachel Weber.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.