RoboCop: Rogue City is delayed to November 2, developer Teyon has announced. It was due out in September (the RoboCop: Rogue City Steam page still caries the September release window).
Confirmation comes from a tweet from Teyon:
#Gamescom is now in the rearview mirror, and it left us buzzing with excitement! 🎮🔥
Last week Robocop: Rogue City took the stage during screenings on Gamescom. Mark your calendars for November 2nd, when this thrilling experience will hit PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series S and… pic.twitter.com/JZy3xK17eZ
IGN went hands-on with RoboCop: Rogue City at gamescom 2023, and found slow first-person shooting, decision-making, and a spot of detective work is all part of this unique-feeling game. The video below has 16 minutes of exclusive gameplay, fresh from gamescom 2023.
RoboCop: Rogue City now launches on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S on November 2.
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.
Activision has unveiled a new-look Lara Croft who’s set to hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone as part of Season 5 Reloaded, and the design has certainly set tongues wagging within the Tomb Raider community.
Lara Croft arrives in Call of Duty as a store bundle operator, with the Tracer Pack: Tomb Raider bundle adding Lara’s signature Mach-5 dual pistols based on a new sidearm coming to Call of Duty. These pistols are also used in Lara’s Play for Sport finishing move.
But it’s images of Lara in Call of Duty released by Activision that some fans are calling our first look at the new “unified” Lara Croft.
While the reboot trilogy told the origin story of Lara Croft becoming the Tomb Raider, the original games “featured a seasoned and confident adventurer”, said game director Will Kerslake. The development team said it envisions “a future of Tomb Raider unfolding after these established adventures, telling stories that build upon the breadth of both Core Design and Crystal Dynamics’ games, working to unify these timelines”.
Does Call of Duty’s Lara Croft offer a first look at the Lara we’ll see in the upcoming new game? Fans are torn, with some suggesting we’re seeing an older “survivor” Lara, and a return to Lara’s iconic dual pistols, classic outfit, braid hairstyle, and backpack, with no sign of the bow and arrows seen in the latest games. Others say what we’re seeing here is simply Activision’s Lara Croft, which may have nothing to do with Crystal Dynamics’ Lara Croft.
A relatively vague description of the new game was also shared, though it essentially conforms to what players would expect from Crystal Dynamics’ next game. “The as-yet-untitled new Tomb Raider game is a single-player, narrative-driven adventure that continues Lara Croft’s story in the Tomb Raider series.
“It includes all the elements that have made Tomb Raider one of the most revered franchises in gaming, giving players control of the confident and multidimensional hero Lara Croft in an environment that rewards exploration and creative pathfinding, with mind-bending puzzles to solve, and a wide variety of enemies to face and overcome.
“Crystal Dynamics is drawing on the power and cutting-edge technology of Unreal Engine 5 to take storytelling to the next level, in the biggest, most expansive Tomb Raider game to date. The title is currently in early development, and additional details will be announced at a later date.”
Half a year later, in June 2023, Embracer announced plans to close studios, cancel games, and lay staff off just weeks after a $2 billion contract deal fell through. At the time, Crystal Dynamics insisted its Tomb Raider project and the contract development it was doing on Perfect Dark for Microsoft studio The Initiative were not impacted by the Embracer restructure.
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’s been a pretty great gamescom for Warhammer. A full showing of Space Marine 2 finally charged into the fray, Darktide got a long-awaited console release date, and Rogue Trader showed off its retinue of fantastic companion characters. But perhaps the most interesting Warhammer showing at the convention was Realms of Ruin, the strategy game set in Games Workshop’s lesser-explored Age of Sigmar fantasy universe. After an hour of hands-on time with its single-player, I’ve found myself excited by the prospect of a game that finally continues and potentially advances the legacy of the great Dawn of War cinematic campaigns.
Dawn of War was, of course, the touchpoint that we identified in our first preview of Realms of Ruin. The first of the two missions I played certainly felt like it owed a great debt to that series’ design, with my squads of tanky, hammer-swinging Stormcast Eternals marching from capture point to capture point. Once seized, I could build fortifications atop them to prevent my sneaky Orruk Kruleboyz enemies from reclaiming them and cutting off my resources. Fundamentally, this is Dawn of War’s Listening Post system in a fantasy skin – and I don’t say that as a complaint.
It was the second campaign mission I played that showed Realms of Ruin in a more interesting light. Here I was battling against the newly-revealed Nighthaunt, a faction of ghosts that fight in packs. Naturally that means there’s a certain amount of Zerg comparisons to be made, but unlike Starcraft’s horde army the Nighthaunt don’t aim to blanket an area with cheap expendable units. Realms of Ruin operates at a smaller scale, with a limited number of squads that can survive for longer durations than many RTS units. And so the gangs of Nighthaunt Chainrasps that descended on my Stormcast felt as if they were slowly suffocating me rather than completely overwhelming my forces.
It was important to escape those moments of suffocation, since this mission had a centrepiece tug-of-war mechanic that required constant attention. The Nighthaunt had bound a mysterious artefact in huge spectral chains that stretched across the land. To break the spell and claim the artefact, my Stormcast had to defend our resident wizard, Demechrios, as he cast a counter spell. To help him, I also had to capture and hold a trio of anchor points – holding them all simultaneously would deplete the chains’ power. Should the Nighthaunt reclaim an anchor, the spell would begin to build in strength again, and so maintaining control and dominance across all three of the three battlefield sectors was essential.
The real appeal is seeing the love and care developer Frontier has put into recreating the world of Age of Sigmar.
This long, attrition-like war for control highlighted the importance of each unit’s specialties. As with many RTS games, Realms of Ruin uses a rock-paper-scissors approach. Offensive units can smash defensive units with greater efficiency, but are weak against ranged units, who are weak versus defensive units. It creates a triangle that’s easy to understand and relatively simple to manage. But atop that are special abilities that allow a little more spark and personality; the angel-winged Prosecutors can soar across the battlefield and then hurl their hammers from up high, while the Stormcast’s heroic Lord-Celestant leader, Sigrun, can charge into squads and scatter them to the winds – ideal for knocking back Nighthaunt who are capturing one of the anchors.
In many ways, what I’ve described is true of so many RTS games, from Dawn of War to Ground Control to Command and Conquer. Realms of Ruin feels good from a strategic perspective, but perhaps not exactly groundbreaking. The real appeal, at least for me, is seeing the love and care developer Frontier has put into recreating the world of Age of Sigmar.
Games Workshop’s modern fantasy setting is extremely popular on the tabletop, but has largely been ignored in the video game world. It’s a genuine thrill, then, to see characters and armies that I’ve only ever seen in static plastic form come alive on screen. Each of the two sample missions were topped and tailed with extravagant cutscenes, and the visual effects of the characters’ attacks – particularly those of the spectral Nighthaunt, who glide across green mists – was a delight to watch. Maybe Realms of Ruin won’t break the mould for strategy games, but it certainly breaks the trend of Age of Sigmar being ignored on PC and console, and does so in high-budget fashion.
There is the potential for Realms of Ruin to push the genre forward in other ways, though. The roguelike-inspired Conquest mode has captured my attention. The system creates a series of randomly generated battles for you to try and overcome, with each built on challenges such as time limits and reduced vision or movement. It sounds like a fun and novel way to spice up classic skirmishes, espcially since each run will plot your high score. Conquest wasn’t available to play at gamescom, but it sounds like the kind of mode that could potentially give Realms of Ruin a much more interesting longtail for single-player focused fans with no interest in climbing the PvP ladder.
But for me, the story mode is still the biggest draw. Cinematic RTS campaigns feel something of an antiquity these days, but what I’ve played of Realms of Ruin transported me back to the good old days of lavish cutscenes, concept missions, and personality-filled battle barks. Even if it turns out to be something of a modern relic, Realms of Ruin will likely still be the Age of Sigmar game I’ve been hoping for.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.
It means those hoping to jump into Game Pass just to play Bethesda’s space role-playing game now have to pay $9.99 / ÂŁ7.99 for a month on PC, or $10.99 / ÂŁ8.99 for a month on Xbox, or $16.99 / ÂŁ12.99 for a month of Ultimate, if you sign up through Microsoft’s website. Check out IGN’s guide on how to avoid the Xbox Game Pass price hike if you’re looking to save money.
While Microsoft pulled the Game Pass trial on the quiet, it’s an unsurprising move given the high-profile and commercially crucial imminent launch of Starfield. Microsoft has a lot riding on the game, which is expected to boost Game Pass subscribers significantly. By ditching the $1 trial, Microsoft is also boosting Game Pass revenue.
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.
The biggest difference between Starfield and Fallout 4 is Bethesda’s decision go with a silent protagonist this time around. But that wasn’t always the case.
In a recent interview with Polygon, lead designer Emil Pagliarulo talked about the decision to feature a silent protagonist in Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi RPG. Asked whether Bethesda went the direction it did because of the negative fan reaction to Fallout 4, Pagliarulo said it was a factor. Fans will recall that Fallout 4 voiced protagonist drew criticism owing to the reduced number of dialogue options despite more than 13,000 lines of dialogue.
Still, there was apparently a point where Bethesda wanted to give a voice to their hero and even recorded a few lines of dialogue.
“We hired an actor, we got the voice, we listened to him and we were like, ‘You know what, this guy is too specific,'” Pagliarulo remembered.
It seems that Starfield’s designers wanted to ensure that players were offered the maximum range of expression. Bethesda apparently weighed bringing in multiple voice actors, or simply going with one voice actor who was “more convenient.” Ultimately, though, Bethesda realized it wasn’t going to work.
“We realized that the only way to really do it and let the player be the person they want to be was to have an unvoiced protagonist,” Pagliarulo said.
Starfield’s approach reflects a change across gaming
Pagliarulo went on to reflect on the role of the voiced protagonist in AAA games.
“There was a time in the industry where every protagonist was voiced. It was a AAA thing. We started realizing, ‘You know what, maybe that’s not the case, maybe fans will actually enjoy the game even more…’ I mean, we played with different things. There’s a big argument, if in Fallout 4 and other RPGs, players don’t like reading a line of dialogue, a player response, and then they click it and get [a different spoken line],” Pagliarulo said.
“But the problem is, then you read it, and then you click it, and you have to wait for them to say the same thing. So that’s not ideal either. So then we just arrived at, ‘What if we just go text?’ and it was just really freeing. And, I mean, we have over 200,000 lines of spoken dialogue in Starfield with no voiced protagonists. And it was not having a voiced protagonist that allowed us to create such a big world.”
Silent protagonists seem to be in vogue in RPGs owing to the popularity of fully customizable characters. Baldur’s Gate 3 is among the recent releases that opted to leave its customized hero unvoiced. However, other major RPGs have found plenty of success with voiced heroes, including Mass Effect.
When Baldur’s Gate 3 launched earlier this month, it earned near universal praise for its gameplay, characters, and apparently infinite choices. Since then, many have been taking it slow through the first two acts to discover everything hidden across the continent of FaerĂ»n.
However, as players reach act 3, many are discovering that it’s… a touch less polished than the first two acts.
Warning:Many of the threads linked contain heavy spoilers for act 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3. Click through at your own risk.
On the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit, a number of users have chimed in to express frustration at act 3 for being buggy, laggy, and in some cases, seemingly unfinished. For instance, u/rejian called out that they had 11 quests in their journal in act 3, six of which were impossible to complete due to bugs. u/meramipopper had a similar experience. Others, such as u/justchiller and u/IceyCoolRunnings brought up serious performance issues.
Still others, including u/CynicalSigtyr and u/paradox-paradise called out a number of quests that seem inconsequential or even unfinished once they reached Baldur’s Gate 3. While you could chalk that up to someone not liking the story, users including u/noobiestboob have noted large amounts of cut act 3 content still present in the game’s files, especially pertaining to Minthara and Karlach.
People don’t want to admit it because it’s a great game but I’ll take one for the team and tell the truth:
Baldur’s Gate III has bugs…and it gets especially buggy in Act 3
Minthara in particular has drawn attention from fans in the wake of Larian’s big patch. While many players probably killed the villainous drow in the goblin encampment without a second thought, it is possible to recruit her into your party. Some have done so in the hopes of fixing their problematic fave. But fans who have made it to act 3 have noticed that Minthara’s quests and dialogue are a little thin.
“People say she was supposed to get fixed in this patch, but she still feels buggy. If I’m being honest, I don’t think they planned her out at all, I think so much has been cut and overall she is just a missed opportunity. She is vacant in all of act 3 and act 2, just not well done in the least,” one fan wrote.
“Minthara is, quite surprisingly, an incredibly layered character for someone that dies in 90% of runs. It’s just unfortunate that her character progression doesn’t go that far, because despite her straight-shooter attitude she is extremely nuanced. What could have been…,” another fan lamented.
IGN has reached out to Larian Studios for a roadmap for potential future fixes as well as comment on updating characters such as Minthara.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s act 3 feels far from finished
While we won’t go into specifics of their story complaints here to avoid spoilers, suffice it to say the general community vibe is that the story in act 3 feels a lot less complete than it does in the previous two acts. Many speculate that it’s the result of it being the farthest bit of story from the well-tested early access content of act 1.
But wait, you may say, there’s been a recent patch that’s surely fixed all of this, right? Unfortunately, it seems like Baldur’s Gate 3’s most recent patch did not solve these problems — at least not broadly enough for users to stop being frustrated. Multiplethreads in just the last 24 hours indicate that act 3 is still a messeven with the fixes, and for most of the same reasons.
Much of the community is sympathetic to the issues. Baldur’s Gate 3 is enormous, after all, and making enough content to fill all the choice possibilities is a herculean task on its own. But many remain frustrated given how much it contrasts with the excellence of the first part of the game.
The issues with act 3 haven’t hampered everyone’s enjoyment. For instance, our reviewer specifically called out the act 3 performance issues, but felt they were trivial compared to the overall quality of the rest of the game. But others are having a much rougher time, especially on weaker PC hardware.
And for everyone else who hasn’t reached act 3 yet (guilty!), it may be a good idea to slow down your playthroughs in hopes that a future patch — or even one of the console releases — tidies up the game’s climactic finale.
Larian Studios has committed to working on improving the game’s issues, and promised a second patch “right around the corner” that “will feature significant performance improvements.” Larian has also said it will not start working on expansion content until after it’s done with major patches.
In the meantime, Baldur’s Gate 3 is slated to release on PS5 on September 6, with the Xbox Series X|S set for sometime later this year. And if Minthara isn’t working out for you, you can find our list of the most rewarding romances in Baldur’s Gate 3 right here.
Additional reporting by Kate Bailey.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Elon Musk, who has spent much of the year in the headlines for his radical transformation of the platform previously known as Twitter, didn’t have a great time at a recent Valorant tournament.
Musk dropped in on the finals of the Valorant Champions tournament over the weekend, which took place in Los Angeles. He was filmed outside the event with his young son, X Æ A-12 Musk, then later joined the crowd as Evil Geniuses took on Paper Rex.
At one point Musk appeared on the main video screen, drawing boos and chants of “Bring back Twitter” from the crowd. The moment quickly caught the attention of social media users, who responded to the boos and discussed Musk’s handling of X generally.
“Elon should have figured out who was a blue checkmark so he could have given them each a megaphone before he showed up. Pretty much how modern Twitter works,” one user joked in a highly upvoted message on the LivestreamFail subreddit.
Elon Musk getting booed at VALORANT Champs and the crowd starts chanting “bring back Twitter” lmao pic.twitter.com/lDoWse78YV
Musk’s moves have made the billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX a polarizing figure on social media and elsewhere. For his part, Musk did not respond to the reaction at the Valorant tournament, instead focusing his attention on SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station.
As for the tournament itself, team Evil Geniuses ultimately won 3-1.
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.
The Nintendo Switch’s sixth year on the console market has become a lucky one. The hybrid handheld console platform has just surpassed the Wii in total lifetime sales in the U.S.
The new data comes from Circana, formerly known as NPD (courtesy of GI.biz), showing the strong growth of the U.S. video game industry over the past year, especially in terms of hardware. According to Circana, the Switch not only exceeded the total U.S. sales of the Wii in July 2023, but it is also catching up to other popular previous-gen consoles. It’s trailing the Xbox 360 by less than a million units and the PS2 by fewer than five million.
Catching up with the Nintendo Wii is no small feat. It’s among the most successful consoles of all time, ultimately selling more than 100 million units worldwide. It was able to achieve crossover success as part of Nintendo’s “blue ocean strategy,” its motion controls appealing to players who didn’t identify as traditional gamers.
The data attributes the Switch’s strong performance this year to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which sold over 18 million units by the end of June 2023, thereby increasing console sales. Its performance can also be attributed to the fact that the supply of Nintendo’s hybrid platform and other consoles has become more readily available.
To wit, the PS5 has sold 5% more units than the PS4 did and 87% more than the PS3 in lifetime sales, while Xbox Series X|S sales are 6% ahead of the Xbox 360 but falling 10% behind the Xbox One.
Circana didn’t give an exact number of Switch hardware sold in the U.S., but Nintendo said that over 129.5 million units were sold globally, while only 49 million were sold in the Americas. Even so, it’s wild to see that the Switch sold more in its first 6 years than the Wii ever did in its first decade on the market.
Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.
Rockstar Games vice president of writing Mike Unsworth has reportedly left the Grand Theft Auto VI developer after 16 years. Unsworth’s LinkedIn profile was updated to indicate the veteran developer had left Rockstar.
“Mike is an accomplished writer who spent over 16 years working for Rockstar Games as a creative lead on some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful video game franchises of all time, most notably Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption,” his profile states.
Unsworth joined Rockstar as a senior creative writer in 2007 before stepping up as writing director in 2019. He then served 2 years as VP of writing before his apparent departure. IGN has reached out to Rockstar Games for confirmation.
His involvement with Rockstar’s upcoming projects is unclear, and with GTA 6 still rumored to appear in the near future, it’s possible that he could still get at least one more writing credit at the renowned studio.
Rockstar itself has been in the news following a high-profile hack that led to leaked footage from GTA 6 being released to the public. It was recently confirmed that the audacious attack was perpetrated, at least in part, by two British teenagers using an Amazon Fire Stick while on bail for a hack against Nvidia.
The Xbox Series S version of hit role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t have split-screen when it launches later this year, but that’s not to say it won’t receive the feature after launch.
A message on the official Xbox Twitter account (below) gave Series S players hope. “To answer some questions we’re getting, we’ll continue to work with [developer] Larian to explore the addition of split-screen on Series S post launch,” it said.
Baldur’s Gate 3 currently lacks a release date on Xbox despite having already launched on PC and its coming to PlayStation 5 on September 6. Larian wasn’t able to get split-screen working on the weaker Series S, and Microsoft’s feature parity policy prevented the studio from releasing even on the more powerful Series X.
In our 10/10 review, IGN said: “With crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the new high-water mark for CRPGs.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
