During a special IGN Live edition of Up at Noon today, McFarlane Toys’ Brian Walters (Director, Brand Creative) stopped by to chat with Max Scoville and Brian Altano about what the company has in the pipeline, including their new Elite Edition series that’s kicking off with Doom Slayer from Doom: The Dark Ages, followed by Lilith from Diablo IV.
Walters said the idea behind the Elite Edition was “to create highly decorated, super detailed, iconic version of characters from games.” One way these figures stand out is by their inclusion of soft goods, such as the fur cloak on Doom Slayer, and Walters noted they were “Introducing new materials we haven’t used.”
Walters pointed out the many accessories Doom Slayer came with, including the Pulveriser, flail, combat shotgun, and shield saw, saying he felt it was ”a really great first item for [Elite Edition].” Though pre-orders for Doom Slayer were currently sold out, Walters said the figure would be available at retailers like Walmart and Gamestop upon release. And yes, it was implied some monsters are in the works for the Doom Slayer to battle.
Lilith in the meantime just went up for pre-order today, tied to IGN Live. Her accessories include multiple palace fates for a variety of expressions, and Williams said the idea was they were “holding nothing back with this figure,” including articulated wings and “a soft PVC tail so you can pose it however you want.”
Williams said the challenge with a figure like Lilith was “the balance of executing the design but still making a functional toy. You have to make tough decisions.” He added that probably the hardest thing was pulling off “the engineering without compromising the look of the character.”
As for what else McFarlane Toys had in the pipeline, there’s the Power Armor from Fallout, which is based on the game, not the series. The previous figures they made for the TV version were from the Movie Maniacs line, so the Power Armor will be the first articulated Fallout figure. Williams teased there was “more to come here. We’ve got some good surprises coming.”
Last but not least, Williams showed off two of the figures from the upcoming Mortal Kombat Classics line – including a boxed Sub-Zero, featuring very fun retro arcade packaging that includes joystick controls on the box art and the original character select image of Sub-Zero, along with his bio, on the back.
Having already out pre-orders of many packs and bundles already, the Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy cards officially will be released June 13 and Principal Designer Gavin Verhey and Executive Producer Zakeel Gordon were on hand at IGN Live today to discuss the much-anticipated collaboration.
Verhey and Gordon said that there have been other IP crossovers with Magic before, Final Fantasy was particularly exciting because, as Verhey put it, “It’s Final Fantasy! That really helps! We’ve been working on this set for about five years.”
The duo noted everyone at Wizards of the Coast were big fans of Final Fantasy, noting most had been playing the games longer than they’d played Magic and means so much to them.
Verhery said their approach was to incorporate something from all 15 games – which upped to 16 as they were working on the cards – which began with making spreadsheets of all the characters, items and story modes. They then split up the possible inclusions into three tiers – what Verhey described as the “gotta have: primary elements and most popular characters, followed by the second tier, which is where “cool side characters” came into play, while the third tier were the deep cuts, “like Guy speaking beaver. We wanted to get it all in there. Every game is represented from most iconic characters to deep cuts you can’t believe they put on a Magic card.”
There are four Commander decks, based on Final Fantasy X, XIV, VI and VII and Verhery promised “Everything besides the lands is themed to the game” and that playing the FF7 deck “ is like seeing the whole game play out before you eyes.” Added Gordon, “We chose those decks to represent different eras. We tried to really get the breadth of the entire franchise in our product.”
Gordon said inevitably they still couldn’t include every single character or game aspect they would have liked, given they didn’t have unlimited cards, noting, “The big challenge is we were going for the entire mainline series. We limited it to core games which left out a few great characters, but by design.”
Gordon explained that the Through the Ages cards, which include classic Final Fantasy artwork was an idea that came up halfway through the development process, simply because they were looking at the art – from the likes of Yoshitaka Amano and Tetsuya Nomura – so much already and, as Gordon put it “The art was so amazing they wanted to put it on cards.”
A couple of lucky fans at IGN Live were given decks of cards before release and when showing them off, their decks included the likes of Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth and Final Fantasy IV’s Rosa. Verhey said he felt that was an appeal of the Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy cards – taking two characters “you’d never see in [the same] game but here they are together.”
Marcus Morgan, Obsidian’s VP of Operations, came by IGN Live to discuss The Outer Worlds 2 in the lead up to its much-anticipated October 29 release date, including its Flaws system, a new ice planet that has become one of his favorites, a goo pistol, and more.
Morgan began by sharing that the sequel is digging deeper into the RPG aspects, remarking, “Obsidian is rooted in RPGs. We wanted to evolve with Outer Worlds.” He’s not even comfortable calling The Outer Worlds 2 part RPG, part FPS. Instead, he stressed he would “only ever call it an RPG.”
However, the team heard a lot of feedback that fans wanted gunplay and combat to evolve, so there will be plenty of new weapons to look forward to, including some that are science-based. Morgan also described “a melee weapon that, if you hit it to the beat, it amplifies the damage.” These new additions are meant to add to the experience while retaining the RPG core.
“One of my favorite weapons is the goo pistol,” Morgan added while joking he doesn’t condone littering in real life. “You take this biomass canister and you dump the goo into the gun and you chuck the canister away.”
Morgan also wants to let those who have never played the first Outer Worlds to know that they won’t get lost in this sequel, noting, “We’re moving to a brand new colony, Arcadia. with a brand new set of characters.” He described the Earth Directorate, the organization you are part of, as “sort of the space rangers of the universe. You’re there to protect against the tyrannies of capitalism, authoritarianism and various aspects of extreme religions with certain group.”
Morgan was also particularly excited by Outer Worlds 2’s Flaws system, saying it was a way to take the usual idea of leveling up and putting a humorous spin on it. For example, one of these flaws is “The Sungazer Flaw – if you stare at the sun for too long you can regain health but the world is blurred out.” Another is for those who never run out of ammo as you’ll do more damage. If you do let it run down, however, you’ll be penalized with a debuff for a bit.” He described the Flaws as “A fun way to integrate progression with levity.”
As for the Psychopath Perk, Morgan remarked, “One great thing in Outer Worlds 1 is you could kill every single person, and we brought it back in Outer Worlds 2. And you’ll get a perk if you do that. Also, you can finish a quest even if you kill the quest giver.” On the other hand, “You can be a pacifist if you choose. You can talk your way through the entire game [without killing anyone]. You’ve got the entire spectrum.”
When it came to bugs, Morgan noted “We’re already in our bug fixing mode. This is probably the earliest we’ve been in that mode.”
Among the new planets in The Outer Worlds 2, Morgan revealed, “One of my favorites is a planet called Cloister. It’s a giant ice planet you go to because there’s a super computer trying to solve a big calculation.” He elaborated by saying the computer is connected to one of the game’s groups of religious fanatics who believe they can predict the future using math. In this case, the super computer and the immense energy (and resulting heat) it takes to power it are on Cloister to keep it cool, and Morgan said “I loved the nuance of why we created the ice world.”
Lastly, Morgan mentioned the first game’s Dumb mode and how they are leaning into those sorts of options again for Outer Worlds 2. They’ve also integrated their dialogue system into the title screen, and Morgan explained that as you load up the game “You might hear prompts like ‘Hey, you seem to be dying a lot. Should you lower your difficulty?’”
We’ve finally gotten our first look at IO Interactive’s new James Bond game: 007: First Light. It’s an origin story of the infamous spy, showing how he “earned the number” of 007.
So far, everything we’ve seen has been cinematic and story-focused, so there are still plenty of questions lingering about how First Light will play, and who exactly this new Bond will be. Fortunately, I was able to sit down with IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak at an IO Interactive event this weekend and grill him on everything Bond. While he wouldn’t tell me who they had cast as the new Bond (the internet thinks it’s Patrick Gibson, but Abrak says they’re “waiting a bit” to reveal the cast), he did confirm that 007: First Light isn’t part of the film canon; it’s a “standalone, reimagined interpretation.”
“I think from the get-go that was extremely important for us that we will be able to put our fingerprints on this,” Abrak said. “This is the first game we are making that is not our IP. IO is a creative house that’s created five original IPs and we are doing the sixth IP on the Fantasy Project [literally codenamed Project Fantasy] we’re working on as well. So we have to pour something of ourselves into what we do.
“…It was such a huge opportunity to take such a beloved franchise and then a privilege to be able to pour our originality into that. And our take was, well, we wanted to reimagine his becoming story. We wanted to reimagine a coming-of-age, this young man with all his quirkiness and optimism, his wits and his personality. Getting introduced to these intrigues and espionage, this harsh world of dog-eats-dog and how he fares and how he manages that with his inner values.”
But even if the story itself is creating its own canon independent from the movies, that doesn’t mean IO Interactive isn’t taking cues from the film Bond. For one, Abrak said he got “some insight” into how film Bonds are typically cast and what the film directors usually look for. But ultimately, IO Interactive was left to its own devices as to how it wanted to proceed on selecting a new Bond. And it did end up picking a real actor.
“It was a blank slate, which is a huge privilege, that we can cast these people or try to 3D-model something,” he said. “Is it going to be an actor, or not, and what do we do? So that was really, really daunting. I tell you this, it took a long time, and we’ve been through a few models to figure out what we wanted. But I think the process was chaotic, to be honest. I mean the process was feeling it, trying some things out, feeling the emotional… And it’s not necessarily huge A/B tests out there with a lot of agencies and whatnot. It was very important for us to feel his warmth or charm, his quirkiness and all these things. But then we found someone and we’re really, really happy about it today.”
We’ll be publishing our full interview with Abrak later this week, including discussion of not just 007: First Light, but also the future of the Hitman franchise and upcoming IO Interactive-published game MindsEye. We’ll keep waiting to hear more about 007: First Light, including gameplay, sometime soon. It launches in 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch 2.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Microsoft has confirmed The Outer Worlds 2 costs $79.99 in the U.S. — it’s the first Xbox Game Studios game to make the jump.
The Steam page for Obsidian’s role-playing sequel revealed the $80 figure for the standard edition. Microsoft had confirmed it would follow Nintendo’s lead and make the jump with its games in time for the holiday season. It seems The Outer Worlds 2 will kick off this new Xbox video game pricing structure when it comes out on October 29, 2025.
Explaining the price-hike decision in May, Microsoft told IGN: “We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development. Looking ahead, we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen and ensuring value for Xbox players.”
Last month, Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford sparked a backlash in responding to a fan who had expressed concern about the prospect of paying $80 for Borderlands 4, saying: “if you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
During a recent PAX East panel, Pitchford offered his thoughts on video game pricing. “On one level, we’ve got a competitive marketplace where the people that make those choices want to sell as many units as possible and they want to be careful about people that are price-sensitive,” he said. “There are some folks who don’t want to see prices go up, even the ones deciding what the prices are.
“There’s other folks accepting the reality that game budgets are increasing, and there’s tariffs for the retail packaging. It’s getting gnarly out there, you guys. Borderlands 4 has more than twice the development budget than Borderlands 3. More than twice. So the truth is, I don’t know what the price is going to be.”
Given The Outer Worlds 2 costs $80, we can assume the just-announced Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will too, although it doesn’t have a release date yet. 2026’s Gears of War: E-Day, the new Fable, and the next Forza will surely also cost $80.
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.
After a two-year wait, the sixteenth main Final Fantasy finally drops on Xbox Series X/S right now, having first launched for PlayStation 5 in June 2023, and on PC in September 2024.
Final Fantasy 7 first launched in 2020 for PlayStation 4, before its Intergrade upgrade arrived a year later on PC and PS5.
All of which is to say that Xbox fans have been waiting a long time for these games, but their arrival this year suggests Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will follow in the somewhat not-too-distant future.
“Its excellent story, characters, and world building are right up there with the best the series has to offer, and the innovative Active Time Lore feature should set a new standard for how lengthy, story-heavy games keep players invested in its world,” IGN wrote in our Final Fantasy 16 review.
“[It]s dull filler and convoluted additions can cause it to stumble, but it still breathes exciting new life into a classic while standing as a great RPG all its own,” IGN wrote in our Final Fantasy 7 Remake review.
Indiana Jones and The Great Circle’s first expansion, The Order of the Giants, now has a release date — and it’s only a few months’ away.
The Order of the Giants will arrive on September 4, 2025, a brief teaser shown during today’s Xbox Games Showcase 2025 revealed. That’s for all platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S, and yes, the newer PlayStation 5 version of the game too.
Indiana Jones and The Great Circle was one of the best games of 2024, and more of it is a very good thing. It looks like we’ll be seeing more of the game’s mysterious race of forerunner giants in this expansion — though whether that means more of the late Tony Todd remains to be seen.
IGN Live 2025 has officially begun, and the first day of our celebration of video games and entertainment was filled with exclusive reveals, trailers, interviews, clips, stars, and so much more.
To help ensure you don’t miss a thing, we will be gathering the biggest moments from IGN Live right here, so be sure to keep checking back to see what surprises we have in store!
Squid Game’s Battle of Beliefs: Stars and Director on Gi-Hun and In-ho Squaring Off in Season 3
The third and final season of Squid Game is almost here, and we were not only given a sneak peek at the first episode, but we also chatted with creator/director/writer Hwang Dong-hyuk and actors Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hun, Park Sung-hoon, and Kang Ae-sim to find out what we can expect from the last episodes of the series.
Still reeling after the murder of his best friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) and the seeming squashing of his rebellion movement, Gi-hun is despondent and alone in the barracks. Alone without resources, it begs the question, what do the orchestrators of the game want with Gi-hun as the series heads into its end game?
Ironheart: Exclusive First Clip from the New Marvel TV Series
MCU fans can check out the very first clip from Ironheart that we debuted today at IGN Live. The footage shows young genius Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) meeting with the enigmatic Parker Robbins aka “The Hood” (Anthony Ramos), who offers Riri a Faustian bargain in her quest to create an “iconic” iron suit.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Exclusive Trailer
“In season three, when we reconnect with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, still under the command of Captain Pike, they face the conclusion of season two’s harrowing encounter with the Gorn,” according to the official synopsis.
“But new life and civilizations await, including a villain that will test our characters’ grit and resolve. An exciting twist on classic Star Trek, season three takes characters both new and beloved to new heights, and dives into thrilling adventures of faith, duty, romance, comedy and mystery, with varying genres never before seen on any other Star Trek.”
Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights 2025 to Feature the First-Ever Fallout Haunted House
IGN can exclusively reveal that Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights in both Orlando and Hollywood will be getting a new haunted house based on Prime Video’s Fallout series and that HHN’s Five Night’s at Freddy’s experience will be based on the movie, the latter of which will be brought to life with the help of the legendary Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, who also did the animatronics for the film.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Cast Premieres the First 10 Minutes of the Game’s Documentary
Critical Role Celebrates 10 Years and Tease Future Animation and Games Projects
Critical Role is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and Travis Willingham, Marisha Ray, Taliesin Jaffe, Liam O’Brien, Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer gathered together to look back at the path that got them to today and teasing what the future may hold.
Ewan McGregor on How the Long Way Docuseries Has Literally Changed His Life
McGregor described the entire Long Way series as “a very, very important part of my life. The four trips we’ve done, we couldn’t have imagined when we started doing Long Way Round that it would lead to all of the places we’ve seen and all the people we’ve met and all of the experiences we’ve gone through together. I don’t think we could have imagined it, but now it’s a large part of my life. The Long Way trips have become something really special to me.”
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’ Takashi Iizuka on Crossover Racers Like Minecraft’s Steve and How Travel Rings Change Everything
We chatted about the exciting guest racers coming to Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds like Hatsune Miku, Like a Dragon’s Ichiban Kasuga, Persona 5’s Joker, and Minecraft’s Steve, Alex, and Creeper, how they fit into the game’s three lap structure that’s filled with the world-jumping Travel Rings, and more.
MindsEye Director on the Importance of Allowing User-Generated Content in the Game
MindsEye is set to be released on June 10, and the game’s director, Leslie Benzies, sat down and discussed the new third-person action-adventure game with us. We discussed how MindsEye isn’t a traditional open world game, how easy it is to add user-generated content to the game, how the story is part of a much larger tale in the making, and more.
Criminal Minds: Evolution Cast on the Show’s Enduring Popularity and Season 18’s Storylines
To celebrate its 20th year and its 18th season, Criminal Minds: Evolution’s showrunner Erica Messer and castmembers Joe Mantegna, Aisha Tyler, and Zach Gilford stopped by IGN Live to discuss what’s to come this season on the rechristened Criminal Minds: Evolution and the enduring popularity of the series.
Nyaight of the Living Cat Anime Exclusive Clip and Dead by Daylight In-Game Collaboration Revealed
As part of IGN Live, we can exclusively reveal the initial two terrifying yet adorable minutes of the first episode of Crunchyroll’s Nyaight of the Living Cat anime and announce that the show will be getting its very own Dead by Daylight in-game collection collaboration.
Revival’s First Five Minutes Feature the Dead Coming Back to Life in a Surprising Way, People on Fire, and More
Alongside debuting new gameplay, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka joined us at IGN Live to share more about Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and why this is one big crossover kart racer you need to play.
We are just one day removed from Sonic Racing: CrossWorld’s big reveal at Summer Game Fest that Hatsune Miku, Like a Dragon’s Ichiban Kasuga, Persona 5’s Joker, and Minecraft’s Steve, Alex, and Creeper will all be guest characters, and Iizuka reflected on what the process was like in choosing who gets to join in on all the fun.
“We wanted to make sure the second lap around was going to be full of surprises as you’re going to a different world that you didn’t even think was possible,” Iizuka said. “So, when brainstorming what we could do to make that really fun and exciting, we knew it would be great to go to some of the Sega IP worlds, but we also wanted to go to other IP worlds and really surprise people with that second lap. As we got to thinking about what worlds be fun to explore, we really thought Minecraft and its characters could be very fun.”
For those unfamiliar, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has a very interesting three-lap formula thats starts with a pretty standard first lap. However, the racer in first place will then get to pick a new world everyone will race through via Travel Rings.
“The three Lap formula is really good for racers,” Iizuka said. “It’s really easy to understand, and we wanted to make things new and fresh so you’re not just racing around the same place over and over again. And that was where the idea of the Travel Ring formed, which is to bring you somewhere new and unknown in that second lap. That’s not all, as we wanted to keep the surprise and the racing really fresh and fun, so we added in some surprises for the third lap too.”
We then shifted our conversation to items, and Iizuka shared that he loved that Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is paying homage to Sonic Racing games with the addition of the Rocket Punch item and Team Sonic Racing with Wisp items, but he did admit that his favorite item in this new game is the Monster Truck power-up that “lets you turn your vehicle into a monster truck and just run over everyone in front of you.”
There’s a lot more to look forward to in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds when it is released on September 25, 2025, including the return of Sonic Riders’ hoverboards, the ability for any character to ride in any vehicle, racing up to 12 players online, and even the most-welcome of features in cross-play.
Speaking of different platforms, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will be released on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. And yes, even though it may arrive a bit after, Switch 2 players will also soon be able to hit the road with the over 23 racers featured in this game.
With the release of MindsEye just days away, the game’s director, Leslie Benzies, paid a visit to IGN Live today to discuss the new third-person action-adventure game.
MindsEye is not an open world game and Benzies said he felt, “It’s often hard in an open world to keep the story clean,” before joking that “It might be strange to go and bowl for two days when you need to save the world.” However, he added, the game does include “an open world system through the Build MindsEye system.”
Benzies elaborated that a crucial component of the game for he and his collaborators was the ability it includes to add user-generated content, explaining “As you’re playing any mission, if you like a spot on the map, you can immediately start to create anything you want [right there].”
He said they’d purposely made it an uncomplicated system. “We want to keep this as simple as possible… So you can have something half-decent within a minute and a half. It’s putting the power of building into the hands of players.” He said that a general thought for the approach to MindsEye included “pushing it towards people who want to make games.”
Asked how they will curate these builds for other players to best find them, he explained “At launch, we will curate and pick the cream of the crop on a featured menu.” However, he added, “Eventually, we want players to choose what they want. We don’t want to dictate eventually how you earn money in the game or how you decide to play the game.”
The building tool that will be used by players was also used by those making the game, with Benzies saying “A lot of what you see now was built within the tool. A lot of the ambience… Anything we could build using the tool we would.” He also noted, “Our next game, we’ll use it more.” At the same time, he promised “Every tool we use to build the game we’ll give to players so they can use.”
Benzies indicated they had grand plans for MindsEye follow ups, stating “The MindsEye story, it’s a small part of a very big story that we intend to tell over however many years it takes.” He compared the larger world they were formulating to something like Star Wars, in that “We have many stories that take place over different time periods in the same universe.”
The game director also noted that “multiplayer will come at the end of this year and then we have a huge multiplayer world add on that will come next year.”
Circling back to the user generated content, Benzies said he was excited to see what becomes of it because he thinks when you give the tools to the public, they’ll often find “More interesting ways to use the tools and almost hack the tools.”
