Category: IGN

Katsura Hashino knows exactly what he wants when it comes to video games. The legendary game director, who is responsible for the modern Persona games and more recently Metaphor: ReFantazio, believes that, in a world obsessed with pixel count and frame-rates, only one thing matters: the people who made it.

“I want something – even if it’s not complete, even if it’s really rough, even if it’s something really unfinished – to give me a glimpse of the humanity behind it. [I want to know] who created it and for it to give me a glimpse of the emotion that inspired it,” he explains.

It’s a philosophy that has served him well over the past 30 years and it’s one of the reasons the Persona games have such a devout following. Yes, the art direction is impeccable, as is the attention to detail, even down to the UI, but it’s the characters who populate this fantastical series that really make a difference. Chie, Junpei, Ann… They all feel like real people, with traits and emotions we can relate to, so much so they feel like old friends rather than characters from a video game. That’s entirely intentional and it’s what drives Hashino to make games – a personal approach that runs counter to some of the bigger projects out there that are required to meet the expectations of both fans and company shareholders alike.

Hashino is a longtime director at Atlus, having worked on several of the company’s Shin Megami Tensei games, the much-loved RPG series that merges the occult with more grounded settings. In a world dominated by ‘traditional’ Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, they’re a sort of goth alternative that has steadily grown in popularity over the years.

He took over the Persona series starting with Persona 3, following the departure of the previous Persona director Kouji Okada. Hashino brought over some of the darker themes from Shin Megami Tensei and mixed them with Persona’s more stylish pop vibe, resulting in a vibrant anime-influenced aesthetic, set against a high school backdrop that grappled with mythic ideas like gods and demons, as well as psychology. It’s a series that has established Hashino as one of gaming’s most respected directors. On the eve of his latest game, Metaphor: ReFantazio, IGN sat down with Hashino to look back at his past work and what drives him to make games.

Persona 3 catapulted the series into mass popularity and coincided with a renewed interest in anime in North America. However, despite its cartoon visuals there’s a lot of depth to the game and, importantly, the characters, as Hashino explains: “I think the gap between the kind of realism of the characters themselves and the anime aesthetic is a really interesting and important part of the game. You might first look and see these very anime-style characters and this anime-style world, but then might be surprised and interested to see there’s a very real [world] underpinning to them. Looking beyond the anime and seeing the realism is really a wonderful part of our games.”

This realism – the effort Hashino and his team goes to, to ensure every character feels real – is what drives every decision in the design process, from broad ideas to specific dialogue, as Hasino explains: “There’s this little girl named Nanako [in Persona 4] who’s in elementary school. When we were first writing her dialogue, we wrote [it] to be really, really cute. But then we took a step back and thought, ‘Wait a minute, all of her lines are so cute and they’re so well done that it doesn’t feel like any actual human girl would [talk like that] at that age’. It just felt like too much.”

Rather than lean into the fact Nanako is a video game character and thus might have dialogue that doesn’t sound truly authentic, Hashino and his team went back to the writers’ room. “We started cutting back on those overly cutesy dialogues and tried to root it in reality instead. So even though Persona 4 is a modern fantasy game, we wanted it to feel closer to something that could be happening next door to you.”

One thing that becomes clear when speaking with Hashino is the love he has for the well-being of the characters in his games. When discussing his favorite moment in Persona 5, he tells us it’s when the cast of characters are able to hang out in the retro-style cafe in Shibuya that the Phantom Thieves make their hideout.

“In Persona 5, a lot of the characters don’t really have a place where they feel safe,” Hashino explains. “So I wanted to find a place where they can go and just really have that sense of security. And in Shibuya [a neighborhood in Tokyo] it’s really hard to find that location. There’s lots of roads, lots of corridors, but there’s not really a place where [you think], ‘Okay, you guys can just sit here and chill out and just use it as your base’. Finding a place [where] they’d be welcome is really difficult. So for the characters in Persona 5, I was trying to give them a place where they would be welcome. That’s when I came up with the idea of what we call in Japan a junkissa, which is an old-style cafe.”

Unsurprisingly, Hashino’s love for the characters he creates is something that’s echoed by fans, and even though Metaphor: ReFantazio steps away from the familiar Persona setting – it’s set in a new, fantasy world rather than Tokyo – it has a lot in common with the games he’s made before. Similarly, the characters you’ll meet in Metaphor, despite being different from the Phantom Thieves we’re familiar with, are faced with many of the same emotional pressures such as prejudice, fear, and anxiety.

“Metaphor is a game where the characters are around teenage age, but they’re not facing [traditional] teenager problems,” Hashino says, inferring that the characters you meet will struggle with a lot more than typical teen drama like peer pressure and romance. “They’re facing anxiety and all these other big things that affect everybody, no matter who they are, where they are, or how old they are.” So while Metaphor: ReFantazio presents a new world with new characters, many of its themes can be found in Hashino’s other games.

Indeed, whether it’s Persona, Shin Megami Tensei or Metaphor, getting under the skin of each character is core to the experience. It’s something Hashino believes comes from the people who make the games, and that he prefers projects in which you can see a developer’s true self: “I feel like if you have these super highly polished games that look like they were designed by a bunch of people in a CEO boardroom, that doesn’t really excited me — it doesn’t really interest me”, he admits, bluntly. “But when I see these sorts of games [which reveal a little about the people that made them], it really fills me with the motivation to keep developing,” he says. “That these artists, these creatives, had something they really wanted to say is where I get all of my inspiration from, and the drive to continue to be creative myself.”

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Fortnitemares 2024, Fortnite’s annual Halloween event, goes live today and will feature the return of Horde Rush, a pile of fresh quests and rewards, and a host of recognisable, horror-themed outfits hitting the Shop.

Horde Rush will be available for the duration of this year’s event, and players will be able to complete Horde Rush quests and Rocket Racing Nitemares quests for XP that will grant a variety of rewards.

Fornitemares 2024 also arrives with a new chainsaw weapon dubbed the Boom Billy, which can be used to carve through enemies (or thrust into the ground and revved to drag your character forward at “frightening speeds”). In addition to this, the Wood Stake Shotgun, Pumpkin Launcher, and Witch Broom are all returning for this year’s event.

New outfits include Billy the Puppet from Saw, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Pumpkin King and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Marvel’s Mephisto, She-Venom, and Agony, plus Cruella de Vil, Maleficent, Captain Hook, Ravemello, and Edward Scissorhands. There will be an opportunity to unlock the She-Venom and Agony outfits before they arrive in the Shop for players who take part in the Symbiote Cup.

A lot has changed about both video games and the way we play them since the last mainline entry in the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series. As the first direct sequel since the PlayStation 2 generation, that means there’s something charming about Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero’s old school design and presentation compared to other fighting games on the market today. It’s tougher than Vegeta’s chest plate, and imbalanced in ways that are both annoying and lore accurate. Menus are labyrinthine, training tips are sparse and sometimes not very useful. But every battle is crafted with the sole purpose of putting the Dragon Ball fighting fantasy as it appears in the anime into our hands. The fast paced ki slinging, teleport kicking, and magical hair dying is great fun (when it’s not marred by responsiveness issues). The few areas Sparking! Zero does truly try to innovate, primarily with its branching story mode and create-your-own battles toolkit, are promising too. But playing this brawler can sometimes feel just as much like a labor of love as the effort to resurrect the series in the first place.

Arena fighters don’t have a lot in common with their traditional cousins like Tekken or Street Fighter. Instead of the fight taking place on a horizontal plane, they pair full 3D movement in largely open spaces with slimmed down movelists, trading technical complexity for spatial tactics. Tenkaichi further distanced itself from other games in its genre like Power Stone by turning up the speed, replacing throwable objects with big environmental features that can be blown up, and creating huge empty skies for wide open air combat. Other Dragon Ball games like the Xenoverse series have picked up the mantle of this particular form of arena brawling, but while both it and Tenkaichi capture the energy of Dragon Ball media – from how quickly characters can move the fight from air to ground, melee to ranged, and back again in these big beautiful spaces – the latter was always the more all-out experience without stamina bars and with tons of flair. Sparking! Zero certainly carries on that tradition.

At least in still frames, it’s undeniable how great characters and environments look. Every character, no matter what era of Dragon Ball they’re from, looks better than I remembered. In motion, things are a bit more dicey, with some cutscene animations in particular being awkwardly stiff. On the whole, the sound hits the mark as well. The raucous blasts of ki explosions and booming whooshes of Z Fighters flying at high speeds are ripped straight off of the screens of old TV episodes. Most of the iconic voices of the various series are recreated pitch perfectly by their original voice actors, too, which is an important detail to get right. (Although, in limited cases like Perfect Cell, even a returning cast member can make a change in line delivery that had me frantically googling to confirm that my memory hadn’t been punched into a cliffside by old age.)

Another win for my inner child was the truly immense roster. More than 180 fighters pulled from every nook and cranny of the series are playable, many needing to be unlocked first via the shop or story modes. There are so many folks on this roster from shows or movies I haven’t watched in ages (or in some cases, at all) that I had to wonder why the very few that didn’t make the cut got snubbed. Many of these characters are repeated in some fashion – there are 19 versions of Goku, for example – but they aren’t all simply reskins. They can have different special techniques and transformation trees, meaning base level Goku from the Saiyan invasion days has a different set of moves and much lower upside than Buu Saga or Super-era Goku, who can transform into various technicolor versions of Super Saiyan. These abilities can’t be changed, but I could modify each warrior with ability items that boost things like attack power and health, though I barely noticed any benefit at all when doing so.

The controls are universal for all characters, but some on the roster interact with the standard systems slightly differently than others, which is an appreciated layer of nuance. For example, Android characters can’t actively regain their ki in order to launch blast attacks, while gigantic characters like Janemba can’t be grabbed. Sparking! Zero makes no attempt to balance these differences, either; every time I was forced to fight a character that was canonically stronger than mine in the manga or anime, they were just as oppressive in-game as I’d expect. I didn’t always like that, but I respect the commitment.

Unfortunately, the bar to execute the varied techniques of its diverse cast is very high and extremely frustrating. Inputs are simple overall, but early on I often felt lost when combat picked up the pace. Part of that is admittedly on me – the last entry of this series I played with fervor, but that was right after Barack Obama was elected. The fast pace of Sparking! Zero compared to Tenkaichi 3 mixed with a lax tutorial system threw my 17-years-older reaction speed out of the ring with ease. But even beyond that, things like the timing on nailing teleporting defenses or the various applications of some of the directional rush combo enders had me praying to Shenron for mercy.

I’ve spent a lot of time traveling back and forth between regular fights and the training mode to check and double check my understanding of when and how to use these techniques, but it hasn’t really helped me execute them consistently in battle. Also, compared to modern day fighting games, Sparking! Zero’s training options are rudimentary at best. There’s no expectation to layout frame data and hitboxes in a less competitively-focused game like this, but targeted drills or a more nuanced customization of CPU behaviors would go a long way to help beginners and returning players fly up to the high skill floor.

The skill points system is at least a welcome tool to your combat belt. As you do damage and gain energy, a meter will charge that grants a skill point every time it fills. There’s a handful of ways to spend these points, the most common being on the unique skills each brawler has – that could be an ability that fully charges the ki meter for Vegito or Yajirobe’s health restoring Senzu Beans. But points also need to be spent carefully on transformations and the new revenge counter system, which let me satisfyingly counterpunch foes while in the middle of a combo against me. An enhanced version of the perception counter from older games, called “super perception” here, allows you to block just about every kind of attack so long as you time it well and have a skill point to spend, too. The window for execution is razor thin and can be a bear to learn, but these are life saving options – and like ki, which is also used for a variety of offensive and defensive maneuvers, the resource management decisions you have to make on a moment-to-moment basis really add a welcome bit of strategy to an otherwise frantic fighter.

There is definitely an old school approach to a lot of the progression systems and menus of Sparking! Zero. There’s a long list of achievements that can be checked off organically just by playing, which usually grant in-game currency called Zeni, items, or other light cosmetics. Just about everything can be bought with Zeni – from new characters to costumes to soundtracks and even CPU attack behaviors – and you get this cash at a healthy rate that never felt like I was being pressured to spend real money for any of it. There are microtransactions, like a $35 season pass covering three packs of characters, and two $15 music packs, but I didn’t see any option to buy them without leaving the action and going to the storefront directly, a rarity in 2024.

On the flip side, so many of the menus are a hassle to navigate, often taking you all the way back to the top layer instead of letting you go back one screen at a time. For example, you can customize characters’ abilities and costumes to be used in all modes, but those modes don’t have paths to the customization screen within them, so you have to exit one completely and go the long way to make adjustments. This was barely acceptable in 2005, and we certainly don’t have to live like this anymore.

The flagship single-player mode is called Episode Battles, which is a truncated retelling of the biggest Dragon Ball stories from various characters’ perspectives. Just about every Dragon Ball game has done this in some form or fashion, but this rather exhaustive version does a good job at keeping time between battles short, and prioritizing the important moments versus making you play every single skirmish (as Tenkaichi 3 did).

The standout feature this time around, though, is that certain events can actually be cleverly changed for sometimes dramatic new outcomes. That could involve making a choice during a cutscene, like I did when I decided to have Goku help Piccolo against Cell instead of waiting for Vegeta and Trunks to complete their training, which is the opposite of what went down in the TV show years ago. That lets you prevent the Cell Games from ever occurring, providing a cool glimpse at a “what if?” future where the androids live in peace with Goku and his allies.

This clear choice is way easier to execute than the other, more frequent method you are given for an opportunity to alter events, which usually involves winning battles in specific ways to change their outcomes. Besides the fact that, and I must reiterate, these fights can be very difficult since powerful characters can become all but immune to your normal attacks and will always have the perfect defense to match your offense, it’s unclear upfront what conditions must be met to unlock these alternative stories. You can lower the difficulty on a fight-by-fight basis in order to progress if you really need to, but these special tasks must be completed on the standard difficulty, making finding them very much an endgame activity. But I did really appreciate the effort to spice up stories that have been rehashed ad nauseam.

There are also custom battles, which exist somewhere between Mario Maker and the Universe Mode in a WWE game. Using a tool box full of special modifiers that limit what characters can and can’t do in a given scenario, as well as some triggers that help program particular outcomes after conditions are met, these battles can potentially resemble more of a puzzle than just mashing digital action figures together in dream situations. There’s a shoddy system for putting together dialogue so that some sort of narrative can be added to them, but the best it can do is loosely set up the make-believe stakes. I had no plans to write my own entire Dragon Ball arc, but I’m not sure the tool is up to the task even if I wanted to.

There are quite a few custom battles made by developer Spike Chunsoft baked in, and they don’t really stretch the imagination that much. A few of them present interesting scenarios and specific parameters for victory, like seeing Kid Goku spar with a Master Roshi who can only be beaten by the kamehameha. But I haven’t come across an “a-ha!” creation that really shows me the potential for this mode yet.

Sparking! Zero at least seems to break the Tenkaichi curse of truly abysmal online multiplayer by supplying some solid network play. When wired up, I found minimal latency and lag issues on the live servers, or at least not enough to blame it for me dropping a combo or missing a parry. There is a local split-screen option for people who want to duke it out in person, but it’s disappointingly limited to one stage: the white void of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Even still, playing Sparking! Zero with real people that you can hit with a dramatic one liner or a guttural power-up scream is still the best way to do it, by far.

Online modes are pretty straight forward, but the DP battle stands out as the most interesting way to play. It constricts your up-to-five-member teams by assigning a point value to every member of the roster, giving you 15 points maximum to split between them. Stronger characters are more expensive, so you could keep your team small and full of high-cost heavy hitters like the Kais or furry SSJ4 Saiyans, or hope a full host of cheaper characters like Krillin and Yamcha can overwhelm the opponent. I liked starting with a character’s cheaper base form, knowing that with decent play I would be able to transform them into the stronger forms over time, the early discount coming at the risk of getting beat down before I can get my power up to speed. That extra angle of strategy is something that takes good advantage of the untuned nature of a lot of these characters, and really doesn’t exist anywhere else in the genre.

Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima was released in 2020 and introduced players to the world of samurai and stealth in the 13th Century and after four long years, PlayStation has finally announced a sequel, Ghost of Yotei. Featuring a female protagonist, a new mountainous landscape to traverse, and all set in a new time period 300 years after the events of the first game.

Jump to:

• When is it coming out?
• Story details
• Setting
• Development

Ghost of Yotei will be released in 2025 on PlayStation 5

The exact release date is still unknown, but Sony has confirmed that Ghost of Yotei will arrive on PlayStation in 2025. Sony tends to favor fall release windows – see God of War, The Last of Us 2, Spider-Man: Miles Morales – and it wouldn’t be a shock for Ghost of Yotei to follow the same pattern. Expect the game to be a PlayStation 5 exclusive at first, but as with big Sony titles like God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Zero Dawn, it will almost certainly get a PC release at some point in the future too.

Ghost of Yotei has a new protagonist

The Ghost of Tsushima sequel will start a new origin story with Atsu, a young woman seeking revenge. Details on her story are few and far between, but the trailer did reveal some interesting clues about the newest warrior to take on the mask of The Ghost.

For a start, Atsu can dual-wield katana, a talent that was never available to Jin Sakai in the first game. It could suggest that Atsu might prefer the direct approach to the stealthy methods that Jin could use to avoid and assassinate enemies. For all you accuracy fans out there, this detail actually lines up with historical records that suggest dual wielding wasn’t a common practice in Japan during the time period in which Jin lived, but in Atsu’s 17th-century world, the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi created the “two heavens as one” niten’ichi technique with two blades.

While some fans reacted with surprise at the gender of Ghost of Yotei’s new samurai, female warriors called Onna-musha appeared in Japanese history as early as 1180. You can read more about on how Ghost of Yotei gets history right here.

There’s a new setting for Ghost of Yotei

The name gives away the new setting for the game, but for those of us that skipped a few geography classes Yotei refers to Mount Yotei – translated somewhat unglamorously as “sheep-hoof mountain” – a volcano located in northern Japan. Specifically on Hokkaido, the second-biggest Japanese island, which would have been called Ezo in Atsu’s time.

“When we started working on a sequel, the first question we asked ourselves is ‘What is the DNA of a Ghost game?’” Creative Director Nate Fox told The New York Times. “It is about transporting the player to the romance and beauty of feudal Japan.” The Sucker Punch team visited a number of locations in Japan for research, including Shiretoko National Park where Fax made recordings of the ambient sounds to take back to the studio.

“Inside the park, you have to watch a video telling you about the dangers of bears,” Fox said. “Being in this incredibly beautiful park with jagged cliffs and water, yet all the time being aware there were dangerous bears, was electrifying. We strive to bring that into the video game — that feeling of danger.”

Ghost of Yotei is set in 1603, according to the PlayStation Blog. That’s 300 years after the events of Ghost of Tsushima and a period when Ezo was home to the indigenous Ainu people and still outside the control of Japan. Perhaps not coincidentally, 1603 is marked the Tokugawa shogunate becoming the government of Japan after the Battle of Sekigahara.

Ghost of Yotei is Sucker Punch’s first game built completely for PS5

Ghost of Tsushima was notable for the way its incredible landscapes looked and felt as you explored the island, and it sounds as if we can expect the same from Ghost of Yotei.

“This is also Sucker Punch’s first game built from the ground up for PlayStation 5, and we’re excited to build on the visual foundation we established in Ghost of Tsushima by making the world feel even more real,” said Andrew Goldfarb, Senior Communications Manager at Sucker Punch Productions in a blog post.

“We have massive sightlines that let you look far across the environment, whole new skies featuring twinkling stars and auroras, even more believable movement from wind on grass and vegetation, and more improvements we’ll share in the future. Our new setting also gives us the opportunity to introduce new mechanics, gameplay improvements, and even new weapons.”

Rachel Weber is IGN’s Managing Editor.

Right now, Amazon is offering Amazon Prime members this Baseus Blade 20,000mAh 100W USB power bank for only $49.79 after you clip a 10% off coupon and also apply promo code “SGH4BTPY” during checkout. This TSA-approved portable battery features a generous 20,000mAH capacity and a powerful 100W charging rate with Power Delivery 3.0 and PPS. It’s the perfect backup for a Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally. Baseus hasn’t been long around enough to develop the same reputation as Anker, but its power banks have been steadily racking up favorable reviews and recommendations. They’re also a lot less expensive than a comparable Anker power bank.

Baseus Blade 20,000mAh 100W Power Bank for $49.79

Amazon Prime member exclusive

The Baseus Blade features a slim and lightweight form factor that measures only 0.7 inches thin and weighs in at 17 ounces. It has four ports: two USB Type-C ports and two USB Type-A ports. The USB Type-C ports deliver a combined total of 100W of power output (charging your devices) and 65W of power input (charging your power bank). The USB Type-A ports deliver up to 18W. The power bank can be brought onto airplaines since it is well below TSA’s 27,000mAh threshold. Despite the thin profile, the Baseus Blade is able to pack in a digital readout that displays a lot of useful real-time information like remaining battery capacity, power input, and power output from each port.

The Baseus Blade can fast charge a Steam Deck or ROG Ally

This is a great charger for gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Switch. Both the ROG Ally and Steam Deck suffer from a short battery life when gaming on the go. During our Steam Deck review, we found games like God of War or Spider-Man would tap out in under two hours. At the end of the day, you’ll never get the full potential out of your Steam Deck or ROG Ally if you’re not equipped with a decent portable charger. The Baseus Blade can fast charge all three at their maximum rate. It supports up to 100W of charging over USB-C, which is more than enough for the Steam Deck’s charging rate of 38W, the Rog Ally’s charging rate of 65W, and the Nintendo Switch’s charging rate of 18W.

The Baseus Blade can fully charge a Steam Deck or ROG Ally

The ROG Ally and Steam Deck both consume about 40Whr going from full to empty. The Baseus Blade has a 20,000mAh capacity or 74Whr battery. If you factor in 80% power efficiency, then you should expect the Baseus Blade to charge either gaming handheld about 1.5 times. That’s why it’s better to get a larger capacity like this than a 10,000mAh power bank, which cannot charge these handhelds from empty to full even once.

Looking for more deals?

This is easily one of the best Steam Deck deals and Nintendo Switch deals available right now, and absolutely worth considering if you find yourself short on power all too often. If you want to compare other options before making the plunge, check out the best power banks of 2024.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

In one of his final videos as part of the “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” YouTube series, Smash Bros. Masahiro creator offered a touching tribute to his friend and former boss Satoru Iwata, who served as Nintendo president from 2002 until his death in 2015.

“It wouldn’t be right to end this channel without touching on this topic,” Sakurai wrote on X/Twitter.

Sakurai, who opened the channel to talk about his experiences developing games, worked with Iwata at HAL Laboratory before the latter moved to Nintendo in 2000 as the head of corporate planning. Sakurai shares several touching memories over the course of the 10 minute video, including their first job interview, how Iwata helped come up with the title of Super Smash Bros., and the last time they saw one another.

https://t.co/QIfswhDk4h
[Mr. Iwata]
It wouldn’t be right to end this channel without touching on this topic.

By the way, this is the 31st and final video in the Grab Bag category! pic.twitter.com/clT4XBYm9Q

— 桜井 政博 / Masahiro Sakurai (@Sora_Sakurai) October 11, 2024

While Iwata’s management role typically kept him far away from development, he nevertheless played a key role in Smash Bros. Melee’s development by contributing his expertise as a programmer and solving numerous bugs. Sakurai also remembers how Iwata came up with the “brothers” part of Super Smash Bros., which was meant to convey that the characters weren’t actually fighting, but friends solving a little disagreement.

Sakurai goes on to recall his shock at Iwata succeeding Hiroshi Yamauchi as Nintendo president, calling it “frankly unimaginable” that a comparative outsider should take over what had been a family-owned business for generations after just two years with the company. Nevertheless, he said, Iwata proved to be a major force at Nintendo, contributing numerous ideas such as the Iwata Asks series, the concept of the Nintendo Direct, and more.

Sakurai finishes by remembering their final drive together, and how they had planned to meet again later that year before Iwata suddenly passed away in July.

Cardy, Jesse and Mat celebrate one of the best games of the year, one of the best shows of the year, and one of the most disapointing second episodes of an anime ever made in this latest podcast. We’re chatting Metaphor ReFantazio, It’s What’s Inside, Uzumaki, Industry and finding a little extra time with Nintendo’s Alarmo.

Remember to send us your thoughts about all the new games, TV shows, and films you’re enjoying or looking forward to: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast 769: They Pasteurise Mayonnaise, Don’t They?

• IGN UK Podcast 767: Where’s Tokyo Games Tho?
• IGN UK Podcast 768: Pure Misery, Both Good and Bad
• IGN UK Podcast 766: PlayStation Series That Need to Come Back
• IGN UK Podcast 765: PS5 Pros and Biscuit Pockets
• IGN UK Podcast 764: Bots, Bolters, and Blood

Three more Tomb Raider games are getting remastered courtesy of Crystal Dynamics and Aspyr, bringing fans back to the time when the hallowed series was starting to be considered a little long in the tooth.

The Tomb Raider IV-IV Remastered features updated version of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. The first two were originally released for the PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast, while the third one came out on PlayStation 2. All three are considered lesser entries by many fans, with Angel of Darkness in particular being known for being buggy and unfinished.

Here are the official descriptions of all three games.

Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (1999)

Lara Croft uncovers the lost tomb of the Egyptian God Set, unwittingly unleashing him and fulfilling an ancient prophecy—one that plunges mankind into darkness. Pursued at every turn by her arch-rival, the unscrupulous archaeologist Werner Von Croy, Lara embarks on a journeyof discovery across Egypt, where she must overcome the most ingenious puzzles and infernal traps ever devised while facing terrifying evil from beyond the grave.

Tomb Raider: Chronicles (2000)

Following the events of The Last Revelation, Lara Croft is buried in an Egyptian tomb and presumed dead. At her memorial, those closest to her reminisce about secrets from her past. Travel back and experience Lara’s untold adventures, introducing new gameplay mechanics like stealth and tightrope balancing!

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (2003)

Accused of murder, Lara becomes a fugitive on the run, uncovering a sinister conspiracy involving alchemical experiments and the search for ancient artifacts. It’s up to Lara to stop this unholy alliance from unleashing its incredible powers on the world.

Aspyr’s collection will seek to spruce all of these games up a bit with improved visuals, modern control options, trophies, achievements, and of course, a Photo Mode. They follow in the footsteps of the Tomb Raider I – III Remastered Collection released earlier this year, which were developed in part by a fan who had previously been working on remakes of the original games.

We wrote in our tech review, “The very small and largely independent team that built Tomb Raider I-III Remastered have clear passion and skills for the legacy of Lara Croft. The enhancements offered are great and much better than, for example, the recent Konami Metal Gear Solid Collection. High frame rates, dual new and old modes, all of the expansion packs, improved graphics and controls alongside fast swapping across all 3 titles and DLC from the main menu are welcome.”

Atlus’ Metaphor: ReFantazio has sold over one million copies as of its official release date, publisher Sega has announced.

That’s enough to make Metaphor: ReFantazio the fastest-selling Atlus game of all time, breaking Persona 3 Reload’s record of hitting one million in a week.

Metaphor: ReFantazio’s October 11 global release date has already seen the Persona-style game shoot up Steam’s most-played game list, with 42,992 concurrent players at the time of this article’s publication. That figure will no-doubt rise as we head into the weekend and fans in other regions get the chance to play.

The game also launched across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S, but neither Sony nor Microsoft makes player numbers publicly available. It seems likely that one million sales figure will swell to two million sooner rather than later.

Atlus made the announcement alongside the release of an illustration from character designer Shigenori Soejima, below.

アトラス完全新作ファンタジーRPG『メタファー：リファンタジオ』 全世界累計販売本数100万本を突破！

“Metaphor: ReFantazio” has surpassed 1 million copies sold worldwide!

MetacriticによるメタスコアではPlayStation®5版:93点をはじめ各プラットフォームで高得点を獲得しました。 #メタファー pic.twitter.com/ruL9vpNxOT

— セガ公式アカウント🦔 (@SEGA_OFFICIAL) October 11, 2024

Metaphor: ReFantazio, from the creators of the hugely popular Persona 3, 4, and 5, is a role-playing game set in the United Kingdom of Euchronia, a medieval fantasy realm that mirrors the real world. You play an orphaned boy who journeys across the kingdom as part of a bid for the throne.

It has enjoyed pretty much universal acclaim, with IGN’s Metaphor: ReFantazio review returning a 9/10. We said: “Refining the Atlus RPG formula of weaving tough turn-based combat into compelling social sim mechanics, Metaphor: ReFantazio doesn’t just send a powerful message across its political drama, it becomes a beautiful expression of the real impact storytelling can have on all of us.”

As part of its promotion for the game’s launch, Sega gave UK fans the chance to become a member of the royal family of the world’s smallest (but unofficially recognized) country: Sealand.

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.

On Disco Elysium’s five-year anniversary, two separate studios each made up of people who used to work at developer ZA/UM have announced they’re both making a spiritual successor of their own.

Disco Elysium is a 2019 narrative role-playing game developed and published by controversial studio ZA/UM. Gameplay revolves around navigating dialogue trees rather than combat, with each of the 24 skills representing a different aspect of the amnesiac detective protagonist’s abilities and thoughts. The player is free to support or suppress his ideologies as they work through the story. Disco Elysium is considered by some among the greatest video games ever made.

It went on to enjoy enormous success, winning numerous game of the year awards and selling millions of copies. A TV series adaptation deal followed, as did the release of an expanded version of the game featuring full voice acting and new content subtitled The Final Cut. A follow-up seemed all but guaranteed, but after high-profile staff exits and subsequent messy legal tussles brought ZA/UM to its knees, what might have turned out to be a Disco Elysium sequel was canceled.

Now, two new London-based studios have emerged from the chaos: Dark Math Games and Longdue Games. Each has drawn a line back to both Disco Elysium and ZA/UM in the announcement of not just their existence, but their upcoming games.

Let’s start with Dark Math Games. Founded in 2023, Dark Math describes itself as a “breakaway group” from the original development team of Disco Elysium. It is a group of 20 people, about half of whom “contributed” to “bringing the critically acclaimed hit Disco Elysium and Disco Elysium – The Final Cut to life.”

Dark Math’s game is called XXX NIGHTSHIFT and, like Disco Elysium, is described as a ‘true detective RPG.’ Here’s the official blurb:

Set 2086, you play a Patrol Op, Dinorah Katz, who is stranded at a luxury Ski resort in Antarctica. This original science-fiction setting lands you in a resort that shouldn’t exist with people that you shouldn’t know with the endless polar night covering a multitude of sins.

XXX NIGHTSHIFT will deliver a deep single-player role-playing experience with many tools and layers of gameplay. A unique companion dynamic adds more fun and offers different paths to solve cases. The innovative and powerful role-playing system respects your time and trusts your intelligence with seismic choices. It’s up to you to decide how your story unfolds — and how it ends.

Based on its announcement trailer and screenshots, XXX NIGHTSHIFT looks remarkably similar to Disco Elysium, even down to the isometric perspective and dialogue text that moves up the right-hand side of the screen as the player makes choices and hears voice actors bring a narrator and the protagonist’s internal monologue to life.

One of the four Dark Math founders is art director Timo Albert, who was a motion graphic designer at ZA/UM from 2018 to October 2022. Albert commented: “Additionally to innovating the traditional RPG mechanics, we’ll bring something fresh to the table. You will see. And of course, a few less words. And a few more bullets, perhaps. In total: lot more fun.”

According to filings on Companies House, Dark Math’s active directors include Heiti Kender, with his brother, Kaur Kender, listed as a resigned director. Kaur Kender was an early investor in ZA/UM and executive producer of Disco Elysium. In March 2023, a bitter legal dispute between Kender and ZA/UM over ownership of the coveted Disco Elysium IP was resolved, with a court ordering Kender to repay ZA/UM CEO Ilmar Kompus for legal fees.

Now, let’s move on to Longdue Games. It said it’s making a “new psychological RPG… set in a game world conceived by the leads of the now canceled Disco Elysium sequel.” Others working on this untitled Disco Elysium spiritual successor worked at the likes of Bungie, Rockstar, and Yes, Your Graces developer Brave At Night.

Longdue, backed by tech investor Riaz Moola, said it has a “focus on creating psychologically deep, narrative-first experiences” and wants to become “a meaningful and consistent voice in the isometric cRPG space.”

“With the fifth anniversary of Disco Elysium on the horizon, Longdue is proud to announce its formation as a new independent studio that has raised seed investment to create an RPG that will continue Disco Elysium’s award-winning legacy and represent a bold new artistic endeavor that aims to trailblaze in the narrative-first cRPG space,” Longdue said in its note to press.

Longdue didn’t name its game (all we have for now is a solitary piece of concept art, below), but it did say it features what it calls a “psychogeographic” RPG mechanic “where every decision reshapes both the world and the characters that inhabit it.” “In this experience,” Longdue explained, “the lines between the mind and the environment blur, colliding and transforming with each choice, leading players through an ever-evolving narrative landscape.”