Category: IGN

Auto Added by WPeMatico

The Internet Is Really Amused By Elephant Mario Crushing a Poor Yoshi in Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Nintendo has shared a ton of new details for Super Mario Bros. Wonder, but ignoring the actually significant gameplay reveals, the internet is instead obsessing over a poor Yoshi being crushed by Elephant Mario.

Revealed during the Super Mario Bros. Wonder Nintendo Direct, players taking on the role of Yoshi can be ridden by another player, including another Yoshi or any of the other seven playable characters. This even includes the likes of Mario or Luigi when they have the Elephant power-up.

As the Nintendo Direct showed, the chonky Elephant form character can ride a Yoshi, with the poor thing visibly strained from the heavier weight. The internet immediately had its fun with the image, with users on X (formerly Twitter) talking about how much pain Yoshi is (probably) in and whether certain body parts, such as his spine and legs, are struggling.

Some people took note of Yoshi’s strength, noting that Yoshi clearly does not skip leg day.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder was revealed during June’s Nintendo Direct as the next 2D Mario game and people instantly fell in love with the next big power-up: Elephant Mario. The game will also be the first without Charles Martinet, the long-term voice actor for Mario, as he announced his stepping back earlier in August.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder Getting Limited Edition OLED Nintendo Switch

Nintendo has announced that, like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before it, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is getting a limited edition OLED Nintendo Switch.

Announced during August’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder Nintendo Direct, the limited edition console pays homage to the next big Switch game but doesn’t actually include Super Mario Bros. Wonder in the box.

This is because the hardware launches a little ahead of the game on October 6, while Super Mario Bros. Wonder itself launches on October 20.

The hardware includes special Joy-Cons and a unique docking station, both in (almost) plain “Mario Red”. A silhouette hides on the back of the console though, alongside some coins inside.

Nintendo’s last major release, Tears of the Kingdom, also received a limited edition OLED Switch that launched before the game. Other big hitters like Splatoon 3 have also received special hardware, but this will be the first Mario-themed console since Super Mario Odyssey launched in 2017.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder was revealed iduring June’s Nintendo Direct as the next 2D Mario game and people instantly fell in love with the next big power-up: Elephant Mario. The game will also be the first without Charles Martinet, the long-term voice actor for Mario, as he announced his stepping back earlier in August.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Cyberpunk 2077 Only Getting One Expansion Was a ‘Technological Decision’, CD Projekt Red Says

CD Projekt Red choosing to make Phantom Liberty the only Cyberpunk 2077 expansion was a “technological decision”, the developer has said.

Speaking during CD Projekt’s latest earnings call, senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski said shifting from REDengine, the developer’s own game engine, to Unreal Engine 5 was a “key reason” in deciding only one expansion would be made.

“As we have announced a long time ago, we’re not going to make a second or third expansion”, Nowakowski said when asked how many copies of Phantom Liberty would need to sell for CD Projekt Red to make more DLC. “This is the only expansion of the game, and it has nothing to do with the numbers and how satisfied or not we are with sales or anything of the kind.

“It’s a technological decision to be honest. This is the last time we’re working on the REDengine, for the time being at least, and in the foreseeable future as you know we are working on the Unreal Engine from Epic. This was one of the key reasons why we decided [Phantom Liberty] was the only one.”

CD Projekt Red was forced to clarify that Phantom Liberty will be the only expansion in September 2022 after some early mixed messaging regarding Cyberpunk 2077’s DLC.

At least a multiplayer mode was scrapped from CD Projekt Red’s plans following the game’s turbulent launch, as the developer chose to spend years reworking the base game that only fully turned around in September 2022.

Phantom Liberty launches on September 26 and will see a ton of new story content added to Cyberpunk 2077 alongside several gameplay changes. Vehicular combat, a Cyberpunk: Edgerunners inspired cyberpsychosis feature, and a clever nod to The Witcher are coming too, though at the cost of upping the game’s PC requirements.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

CD Projekt: ‘Big Part’ of Cyberpunk Team Moving to The Witcher 4 After Phantom Liberty Launch

CD Projekt Red is shifting a “big part” of its Cyberpunk 2077 team to The Witcher 4 (officially known as Polaris) once the Phantom Liberty Expansion launches in September.

Speaking during CD Projekt’s latest earnings call, president and CEO Adam Kiciński said the company is shifting more and more resources to the next Witcher game with a big development boost happening when main development on Phantom Liberty is complete. There are currently “250ish” developers working on Polaris, while even more are working on the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion.

“After releasing Phantom Liberty we’ll transfer a big part of the team to Polaris,” Kiciński said. “Some remaining members will then focus on supporting other ongoing projects like Orion or Hadar but bear in mind we’ll also be supporting Phantom Liberty for some time.

“And across the company but including Phantom Liberty we’re at the same time parting ways with some team members. It’s a gradual process which will end in Q1 next year.”

Kiciński therefore made clear that not every developer working on Phantom Liberty will immediately shift over to the next Witcher game, though as CD Projekt Red’s development breakdown (above) shows, it’s likely most of the developer’s staff will be working on Polaris soon. Official numbers won’t arrive until the third quarter financial update on November 28, however.

As for the other projects mentioned, Orion is the full sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 while Hadar is a brand new IP being developed at CD Projekt Red. Both of these games are still years away, as either Polaris or Sirius (the Molasses Flood-developed Witcher game) are expected to release first, in 2025 at the earliest.

Phantom Liberty launches on September 26 and will see a ton of new story content added to Cyberpunk 2077 alongside several gameplay changes. Vehicular combat, a Cyberpunk: Edgerunners inspired cyberpsychosis feature, and a clever nod to The Witcher are coming too, though at the cost of upping the game’s PC requirements.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Player One-Shots Act 2’s Final Boss With the Power of Economics

A Baldur’s Gate 3 player has figured out how to one-shot the final boss of Act 2 using nothing more complex than a large pile of gold, a special weapon, and a bit of reverse-thievery.

Reddit’s u/GoldenThane shared their strategy on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit yesterday. Their post does contain spoilers, so first we’ll give you a spoiler-free explanation of what they did. Basically, GoldenThane used a weapon called Twist of Fortune that’s available elsewhere in Act 2.

The morning star has, among other abilities, a Weapon Action called Blood Money that deals an extra 3 piercing damage per 300 gold that the target possesses. So to one-shot the boss, they “reverse pickpocketed” them before the fight to dump 15,000 gold into their pockets, then bapped them with Blood Money and called it a day.

Warning: We go into even more detail below the video, including spoilers for the end of Act 2 of Baldur’s Gate 3. Read on at your own risk!

Specifically, GoldenThane used this ability on what appears to be the second phase of the Ketheric Thorm fight at the end of Act 2. Because the fight includes multiple phases, they had to reverse pickpocket Thorm before it started, then used the Blood Money ability on the second phase, when Thorm becomes an Apostle of Myrkul. Fifteen-thousand gold divided by 300 is 50 ticks of Blood Money, which adds up to 150 bonus damage on top of the base damage of the attack.

That alone would only get GoldenThane up to 167 of the boss’ 225 total HP, but based on comments elsewhere in the thread it looks like GoldenThane had a number of other effects proc, including a bunch of hits of an Illithid power called “Cull the Weak” and possibly other abilities.

The mace in question, Twist of Fortune, is conveniently available right before this section of the game via Gerringothe Thorm, who you can kill or pickpocket or otherwise creatively dispose of to collect this special weapon.

Notably, this strategy seems to be scalable up to even higher health pools. Elsewhere in the thread, users were debating whether this would work on the first fight against Thorm earlier in the chapter, when he’s meant to be unkillable. A stack of 50k gold does the trick to get him to 0 health in this situation, according to u/srsbsnsman, but the game doesn’t let him die – he just sits around with 0 HP and continues to act, effectively softlocking the game. So…maybe do that specific battle as intended.

GoldenThane also detailed another reverse pickpocketing strategy in another thread (warning: spoilers for Act 3 if you click through) that effectively involves dropping a cursed corpse into the inventory of a major Act 3 foe. This strategy is a bit more involved, but pretty funny if you can pull it off, and lets you cheese your way through an extremely difficult fight.

You can try either of these strategies yourself or, if you’re more interested in working through the fights normally, we have a guide to Baldur’s Gate 3’s Act 2 right here. We’ve also covered more Baldur’s Gate 3 community shenanigans here, including someone beating the game with the worst possible ending for everyone, and a speedrunner finishing the game in ten minutes.

Rebekah Valentine is a Senior Reporter at IGN.

Put Those Baldur’s Gate 3 Karlach Romance Playthroughs on Hold — She’s About to Get a Better Ending

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian has issued an official ‘Looking to the Future’ blog post that outlines a raft of changes coming to the game with the imminent Patch 2, including an update to the ending for everyone’s favourite Tiefling Barbarian.

In the blog post, Larian said Patch 2 adds “better closure” to the story’s final act in the form of a more fleshed-out ending for Karlach, something “many of you have been asking for”.

Karlach is one of the most-popular companions and romance options in Baldur’s Gate 3 (check out IGN’s Karlach Companion Guide for more). But some players expressed dissatisfaction with her ending.

Brief Baldur’s Gate 3 Karlach spoilers ahead.

Karlach is slowly dying from an infernal engine, which is housed in her chest. At the end of the game, she can either return to the hellish realm of Avernus to prevent her from burning to a crisp, turn into a Mind Flayer, or give up the ghost entirely and die. In either case, Karlach is pretty hard done by.

Patch 2 adds a new optional ending with Karlach, Larian said. “It’s fiery, poignant, and gives her the ending she deserves”.

In an interview with IGN in which Larian boss Swen Vincke discussed the restoration of access to Minthara’s content, he also teased this new Karlach epilogue, saying that if you see a cigar you’ll know that you’ve found the new content, and that it will “make a lot of people happy”.

In the same blog post, Larian promised improved performance after criticism of Act 3 in particular. “The city of Baldur’s Gate itself is ambitious,” Larian said. “Technically, narratively, and in scope. One of the biggest issues with creating games is that technology is always trying to keep up with your ambition, and here we’ve been hit pretty hard by some setbacks.

“We know that Act 3’s performance isn’t as good as the first two acts, but the good news is that Patch 2 is bringing major performance improvements to the entire game, but more specifically to Act 3 where you’ll feel it the most. We’ll also be working throughout September to improve performance in Act 3 further with new technology that’s been taking a bit longer to release than we expected.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 is set to launch on PlayStation 5 on September 6, with the Xbox Series X|S version due out later this year. You can find our list of the most rewarding romances in Baldur’s Gate 3 right here.

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.

It Takes Over Two Hours to Do the Fellowship’s Walk Through Moria in This New Lord of the Rings Game

One of the most memorable scenes from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation is the Fellowship’s brutal journey through the abandoned, once great Dwarven city of Moria.

From Gandalf’s puzzle-solve to open the West Gate to the Fellowship’s dramatic battle against a cave troll in Balin’s Tomb, from Gandalf’s dramatic last stand against the Balrog to the Fellowship’s last-ditch escape through the East Gate, Moria has cemented itself in the hearts and minds of Tolkien fans the world over as an iconic location within Middle-earth.

Upcoming crafting and survival game The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, which is set in the Fourth Age (70 years after the destruction of the ring), revolves around the dwarves themselves and their bid to reclaim their lost home following a call to arms by Gimli himself.

The game’s version of Moria is enormous, and includes all the landmarks you’d expect and where you’d expect them to be. Procedurally-generated environments fill in the spaces between the likes of the Endless Stair, the Crossroads, the Chamber of Mazarbul, and Durin’s Bridge, allowing for the sheer scale suggested by the books and films to be realised in video game form.

Speaking to IGN in an interview at gamescom 2023, Free Range Games game director Jon-Paul Dumont said internal testing had timed a Fellowship run at over two hours of real time, depending on how things go with those pesky orcs, and how well equipped the player — or players — are.

When you start Return to Moria, you can’t simply walk from the Doors of Durin (West Gate) to the Dimrill Gate (East Gate). A mysterious force blocks the dwarves’ progress. As you play through the story, you learn the nature of this force and how to counteract it, unlocking the ability to break through these progression blockers.

Once you’ve done that, Return to Moria turns into a sandbox, letting the dwarves go anywhere. It’s at this point that the player can decide to run back to the beginning of the game, which takes place at the Doors of Durin and attempt a Fellowship Moria run.

Just like in The Lord of the Rings, in Return to Moria orcs are a constant threat, and are attracted to sound. So any run may be slowed by orc attacks, forcing the player to stand and fight or flee. There’s also the nature of the procedural generation, which adds variance to each playthrough. And the crafting and survival mechanics upon which the game is based means you need to manage your progress carefully.

Dumont teased the possibility of adding a ‘Fellowship Mode’ to Return to Moria, which would challenge players to recreate the journey specifically. As it is, recreating the Fellowship’s adventure in Moria acts as a sort of historical tour. You’ll see where Gandalf was, for example. But to get out you’ll need to rebuild Durin’s Bridge, which Gandalf so spectacularly destroyed in his bid to hold off the Balrog.

Internal tests show around two hours to travel from one gate to the other, but that’s only if “you’ve beaten everything and you’re super powerful and you can just walk”, Dumont said. It will take the majority of players longer.

Return to Moria players will no doubt gather together to try the Fellowship run soon after the game comes out on October 24. Eight-player co-op is possible on PC from launch, while on PlayStation 5 it’s four-player.

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.

Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars Delayed

Konami has announced that it is delaying Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars. However, Konami didn’t specify a new release date.

In a statement on its website, Konami said, “Regarding the planned release of Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars, we have reached the conclusion that despite the very best efforts of our dedicated development staff to release the Remasters in 2023, additional time is needed to ensure the quality performance and gameplay experience our users deserve.”

Konami didn’t actually provide a new release date, just that the development team needs more time to work on the game. Konami also didn’t explicitly state that the remaster was delayed to 2024, but its phrasing heavily implies that it will most likely not be coming out this year anymore.

Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars was first announced in 2022 and set for a 2023 release. At Tokyo Game Show last year, Konami confirmed that it would fix the original’s flawed localization, as well as add modern features such as enhanced graphics and quality of life options like being able to speed up battles.

The game will launch for PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.

A spiritual successor to the Suikoden series, Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, is being developed by former Konami employees at Rabbit & Bear Studios. It was also recently announced that the game was being delayed to Q2 2024.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 2 Will Address ‘Very Stupid Bug’ That Blocked 1500 Lines of Minthara Content

Baldur’s Gate 3’s next big patch is releasing soon, and by all accounts it will be a chonky one, featuring a host of performance improvements and other fixes. Even better, Patch 2 will apparently address Minthara, who has been hobbled by what director Swen Vincke describes as a “very, very stupid bug.”

Speaking with IGN ahead of Patch 2’s release, Vincke talked about how the scope of Baldur’s Gate 3 can cause cascading reactions that can sometimes lock out content by accident. Such is the case with Baldur’s Gate 3’s drow murderess.

“The game is super reactive and there were a couple of bugs that caused some of the companions to not react as they should. And so that felt like the content was not showing up. So you weren’t seeing it specifically with Minthara,” Vincke explained. “So [lead writer Adam Smith] told me there’s about 1500 lines of Minthara that weren’t showing up as a result of a very, very stupid bug that we now isolated. So we’re solving it.”

Vincke said that the Minthara lines “worked” in previous versions, but that “something else caused them to not work anymore.” Such is the challenge of making a complicated, interlocking RPG filled with thousands of tiny interactions.

‘We’ll see if we can do something extra for her’

Talking about the team’s overall vision off for Minthara, Vincke says she went through “a few iterations.” One key distinction is that she’s not an origin character, meaning you can’t play her from the start. In essence, she’s what Vincke describes as a “sidekick.”

“She’s there to actually serve another character that you meet later on in the game, one of the antagonists,” he says. “So, she was supposed to bring a different light on that antagonist in there.”

He continues, “It doesn’t help that some of her lines are not triggering. So that doesn’t do her justice. But she never had a real actual quest — an origin quest… what you have for some of the others inside of act 3.. So people that were looking for that, it’s just not there.”

“There was a variation that they discovered of Minthara that we removed because it became too complicated. Then we didn’t have the real estate across the game anymore to tell that story. So, they found some fragments of it. But I mean, every single companion that you’ve been playing has gone through those multiple iterations. So, it’s not that it’s something like we massively cut something there. It’s just that Minthara also serves the power fantasy of going for evil.”

[W]e’ll first fix what her problem is that blocks her content, and then we’ll see how she’s going to land with the fence, and then we’ll see if we can do something extra with her

Still, Larian Studios are leaving the door open for more development in the future.

“[W]e’ll first fix what her problem is that blocks her content, and then we’ll see how she’s going to land with the fans, and then we’ll see if we can do something extra with her. I mean, the feedback to the game has been phenomenal and overwhelming for us. So, it’s definitely much more than we expected. So, we’re taking it all in, and then we’re…filtering through it. And so we’ll see where it goes,” Vincke says

“We made this game for the players, for them to enjoy it. If there’s things that don’t really land, I think you can be rest assured that we’ll probably do something about it at some point, except that we can’t do miracles. We’re still a limited team with a limited amount of people that have been working very, very hard on making this.”

In addition to restoring access to Minthara’s content, Vincke says fans can expect a new epilogue for fan-favorite Karlach (he cryptically hints that if you see a cigar you’ll know that you’ve found the new content), and that it will “make a lot of people happy.” It will also include improvements to co-op as well as a “number of other things people have been asking about.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 2 is currently in QA testing and should be out this week. While you wait, check out how one Baldur’s Gate 3 player found a way to make every character miserable, as well as our complete guide to Baldur’s Gate 3’s

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Someone Has Beaten Baldur’s Gate 3 With the Worst Possible Ending for Everyone

A Baldur’s Gate 3 player has just shared their detailed notes from a playthrough of the game in which they tried to get the absolute worst story outcomes for every single character. All except for Scratch the dog.

In a Reddit thread, u/Sparkism provided a detailed guide to ruining the day of every single Baldur’s Gate 3 character systematically through all three acts. Surprisingly, this is more complex than it seems: while it may feel like the easiest way to do this is to just murder everyone, some characters actually have a better time if certain other characters are dead, so they had to get creative to make things as abysmal for everyone as possible.

Warning: Light spoilers for act one of Baldur’s Gate 3 are detailed below. Read on at your own risk!

For instance, Sparkism’s guide recommends saving Oskar from the Zhentarim in their hideout. Him being alive plays an important role later in the game, as it makes another character miserable who would otherwise be happy if he never comes home. Similarly, while players are advised to kill Karlach and Gale early on (or, by inaction, let them die), Astarion, Wyll, and Lae’zel need to be recruited to cause further misery down the line.

Other interactions are a little more obvious, though. Sparkism recommends smashing the bard Alfira’s lute, saving the Tiefling from the Bugbear assassin only to throw her off a cliff, and camping outside the burning inn while everyone roasts to death inside. It’s a pretty grim playthrough!

We don’t want to spoil anything farther in than that for those who are still working their way through the game, but suffice to say, Sparkism’s playthrough really does leave everyone completely unhappy. Many characters are dead after suffering their worst nightmares, while those left alive are stuck cursed, miserable, and mourning various losses.

Scratch and the Owlbear cub are fine, though

Notably, the guide has players recruit both Scratch the dog and the Owlbear cub, and then mercifully spares them from any harm the rest of the run. After all, neither of them did anything wrong ever. Everyone else in the game, though, has sinned at least once and deserves retribution.

Sparkism’s run is a glorious example of the level of player freedom available in Baldur’s Gate 3, and it sounds like even more may be on the way. A major patch is planned for later this week that Larian says will fix performance issues as well as add in some previously unavailable content for certain characters’ epilogues. This is all satisfiying since players have been complaining that characters such as Minthara and Karlach have unsatisfying late-game stories.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is on its way to PS5 on September 6, with the Xbox Series X|S version coming sometime later this year. And if you’d rather have a pleasant playthrough than one where you make everyone hate you, you can check out our list of the most rewarding romances in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.