Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, the sequel to Hideo Kojima’s 2019 hit Death Stranding, was well-received at launch. It’s “incredibly exciting and original,” and “bold work that deserves to be encouraged,” at least, according to our review. As a result, fans might be hoping for an eventual third game in the series. But for right now, Kojima isn’t planning to make Death Stranding 3…even though he already has a concept written.
Kojima said this in an interview in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, as a part of the Death Stranding 2 World Strand Tour. When asked by the interviewer about Death Stranding 3, he replied with the following:
“I’m not planning to do that at the moment, because the ending of Death Stranding 2 was my finale of 1 and 2. But I already wrote the concept of DS3, so I have that in data. I hope that someone would create it for me.”
This isn’t the first time Kojima has suggested that someone else might pick up the mantle of his games after him. Back in May, he said that he’d been thinking more and more about his own death lately, prompting him to create a USB stick “kind of like a will” that lays out the future of his studio, Kojima Productions, if he dies.
“I gave a USB stick with all my ideas on it to my personal assistant, kind of like a will,” he said. “Perhaps they could continue to make things after I’m gone at Kojima Productions… This is a fear for me: what happens to Kojima Productions after I’m gone? I don’t want them to just manage our existing IP.”
While we won’t be getting a Death Stranding 3 anytime soon it sounds like, there’s plenty coming from Kojima’s mind in the near future. Death Stranding is getting a live-action film adaptation in partnership with A24, and Kojima is busy working on two different games: horror project OD, in collaboration with Xbox, and Metal Gear successor Physint.
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.
After a high-profile failure in Concord and a high-profile success in Astro Bot last year, PlayStation is looking to adjust its strategy to incorporate fewer live service games, more big franchises, and stricter oversight of its owned studios.
In an interview with Financial Times, PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst says the company is hoping to mitigate future big, expensive risks with future games. “I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply.”
The differences between the two games are myriad, certainly, and their development stories are quite different as well. But what Hulst has taken away from this is that there needs to be more supervision of Sony’s owned studios to ensure that games veering in the direction of Concord are spotted before they become expensive failures, so they can be canceled or corrected in time.
“We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways,” Hulst said. “The advantage of every failure . . . is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”
Financial Times spoke to multiple Sony studio heads, who said that this oversight means more focus on group testing, more communication between internal Sony studios, and closer relationships between the studios’ top executives. “If we’re heading towards a giant landmine, like there’s another studio making exactly the same game, that’s good information,” said Jason Connell, art director at Ghost of Yōtei studio Sucker Punch.
That comment rings especially poignant in light of Concord’s failure, which analysts say occurred for a number of reasons, including an oversaturation of multiplayer, live service shooters. Hulst suggests in the interview that PlayStation isn’t as intent on churning out live service games as it used to be. That said, PlayStation does have Bungie’s Marathon coming up before March 2026, a game that has a number of Bungie fans concerned amid delays, staff layoffs, and a general lack of information as to what the game entails.
But there’s another strategy Hulst also wants to pursue: he wants more, massive Sony IP. Astro Bot’s success has come about over the course of multiple games, with the little robot icon growing in popularity each time. According to Financial Times, Hulst wants studios to be thinking about how their IP can be turned into bigger and bigger franchises over time, following in the footsteps of The Last of Us and Uncharted. “We take a very intentional approach to IP creation . . . understanding how a new concept can turn into an iconic franchise for PlayStation, that can then again become a franchise for people beyond gaming,” he said.
Currently on the docket, PlayStation has Ghost of Yōtei and Lost Soul Aside coming this year, with Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls and Housemarque’s Saros for 2026. Other games such as Fairgames, Marvel’s Wolverine, Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Marathon, and more remain in the works.
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.
The Magic: The Gathering product release schedule continues, with anticipation building for the arrival of Spider-Man next month, but there are plenty of price changes to come before then. From classic cards seeing new life and staggering value changes, to big drops for some of Edge of Eternities’ most popular cards, there’s plenty to keep up with. Here are the big shifts this week for August 28, and why they’re happening.
This Week’s Climbers
Need for Speed debuted in 2001 (the card, not the video game series) and it lets you sack lands to give creatures haste, but folks have noticed that Toph, the First Metalbender from the upcoming Avatar set can take advantage of its effects.
Toph means all nontoken artifacts are counted as lands, while also taking cards, making them creatures, and bringing them back when they die or are exiled. This means a buffet of lands to get rid of and haste to pass around. It’s up to $7 from around a dollar as a result.
Toph’s also seen Ugin’s Nexus get some attention, but as the folks at Wargamer pointed out, a potential Toph/Ugin’s Nexus combo doesn’t work. The card has been climbing in value to around $5 because players think that Ugin’s Nexus will give them a bunch of extra turns, but the card actually says ‘If a player would begin an extra turn, that player skips that turn instead.’ It’s still a cool card, but be mindful before you buy.
Terra Eternal is our final Toph synergy this week, and it’s seen a price spike up to $7 from $1 thanks to its ability to make lands indestructible. With Toph’s ability to make artifacts into lands, that means they’re indestructible, too.
Scrapheap has been around since 1999 (the good ol’ days) and gives you life for sacrificing your artifacts or enchantments. It’s simple, but it pairs nicely with Ragost, Deft Gastronaut (remember him?) because he’s chomping through artifacts all day long. Scrapheap is up to almost $8 from around ninety cents.
Repurposing Bay can work nicely with it, too, with this Aetherdrift card powersliding up to a dollar or two in the last few days, having been around 50 cents just a short time ago. It’s seeing some use in Standard right now, hence the popularity.
This Week’s Crashers
Once one of the most sought-after cards of Edge of Eternities, Breeding Pool (Borderless) is a looker, and it’s seeing a drop. Not long ago, it was well above $100, but has dropped to around $35 now and could drop further.
Ouroboroid has also seen a drop, and it’s now around $20 having been upwards of $25 in recent weeks, while Tannuk, Steadfast Second has trailed off to around $7 from double that not long ago.
If you’ve been looking for The Endstone, this card draw engine is now close to hitting $5, while Terrasymbiosis is a dollar or so less, with both cards commanding around double those fees recently.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
Considering it was revealed to the world with a trailer that featured four zombie-blasting soldiers singing along to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name”, I expected John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando to be much funnier than it is. Inspired in equal measure by the supernatural horror and buddy action movies of the 1980s, it is big and dumb and goofy… yet never as batshit bananas as you’d expect for a game that’s quite literally about fighting an entity called the Sludge God. But while it may not be that funny, it is fun. You may have already forgotten about that 2023 reveal trailer, but after playing three hours of its co-op missions, I don’t think Toxic Commando is going to fade into the background thanks to its surprisingly solid Left 4 Dead-alike antics.
While it is presented akin to a story campaign shooter with cutscenes, plot points, and a lore-dropping man-in-the-chair vaguely modelled after John Carpenter himself, Toxic Commando is clearly designed to be a regular destination for a team of four friends who can run through its missions on repeat. Each expedition takes place on a reasonably-sized open map, dotted with a handful of optional objectives and loot caches alongside the quest’s main goals. With no ticking timer or shrinking circle, you can take your time to collect everything, scour every point-of-interest, and generally mess around with your pals before pushing onwards to the mission’s finale. It’s surprisingly leisurely… at least until the horde applies the pressure.
Developed by Saber Interactive, Toxic Commando is built on the studio’s now-signature horde technology that renders hundreds of sprinting zombies simultaneously, allowing for enemies to clamber up walls like a reverse waterfall of rotting flesh. In many ways, Toxic Commando feels like a successor to the game where this tech originated, World War Z, and even features near-identical mechanics – during frequent hold-the-line defence objectives, you mow down incoming enemies with the same array of emplaced machineguns, mortars, and electrified grids. It’s just that this time it’s all rendered with a gloriously gross horror aesthetic. Who wants zombies to look like humans when they can look like lamp-eyed freaks from the death dimension?
Those freaks burst and break when they’re introduced to the hot lead dispensed by a very healthy arsenal. They’re all based on real-world guns (aside from the wildly powerful rail gun, which scatters foes like bowling pins) and divided up into your regular groups of shotguns, SMGs, sniper rifles, and other formats not beginning with “S”. Saving them from feeling utterly ordinary is how they fire with the exaggerated bravado of an ultra-violent b-movie – all sputtering muzzles, wide bullet spread, and explosive impacts. Legs are severed, ribcages torn open, and brains pinwheel out of busted skulls. It’s all as squelchy and sinewey as you’d hope from a game associated with the director of The Thing.
Your choice of loadout defines the combat experience much more than the four character classes, which feel like minor augmentations to standard FPS action rather than crucial battlefield roles. Each is defined by a single special ability – the Operator uses a drone that automatically bombards enemies for a few seconds, the Strike can unleash a barrage of energy blasts, the Medic has an area-of-effect heal, and the Defender can put up a damage-absorbing barrier. At least during my hours of play, these abilities came in handy during a pinch but did little to direct how I played. Perhaps filling out the skill tree will give each class stronger definition, but right now it seems like the regular shooting is the main event.
There’s admittedly very little new or experimental in Toxic Commando, but what’s here is genuinely good fun.
Mowing down a lot (a lot) of zombies is the crux of Toxic Commando’s objectives. Sometimes that’ll involve the genre-trademark special infected that largely work exactly as Left 4 Dead dictated (sticky ones that grab you, tanky ones that charge at you, gross ones that spit at you.) Elsewhere you’ll need to unload a belts-worth of ammunition into a tangled mess of tentacles, or use demolition charges to blow some kind of growth to smithereens. It’s mostly by-the-numbers co-op shooter fare, but across the few missions I’ve played there’s the odd one that shines brighter. One quest sees the map covered by a Fortnite-ish, life-sapping storm, and the only way to navigate between the shielded pockets of safety is to drive an ambulance that can trickle heal those sitting inside it. It’s a really coherent meshing of environment, situation, and equipment design.
Regardless of if the mission requires one or not, vehicles are as significant to Toxic Commando as its zombies and guns. The spaced-out objectives and open nature of the maps mean you’ll need some wheels to effectively cover ground, especially as that ground is so often practically carpeted by the undead. Cars like the armoured Maverick are good for both protection and doubling as a battering ram – you’ll just need to occasionally deal with the zombies who clamber aboard like particularly diseased monkeys at the safari.
All vehicles have a special ability, such as the ambulance’s healing aura or the Thunder pick-up’s flamethrower, but it’s the winch attached to all but the family sedans that really makes a difference. Essentially a grapple hook that can be fired into a variety of anchor points, it can be used to rip gates off their hinges, bust open treasure containers, and pull your vehicle up slippy inclines. See, the Sludge God, in his infinite sticky wisdom, has covered each map in great big stretches of gloop, and so without a MudRunner-lite approach you’ll be spinning tires and going nowhere.
There’s admittedly very little new or experimental in Toxic Commando, but what’s here is genuinely good fun. It’s a more open take on Left 4 Dead’s horde-filled adventures, fuelled by the same “arcane evil” feel that’s made Call of Duty’s zombie mode feel so aesthetically solid. There are some issues that threaten that fun, though. Every mission I played felt like it had had the wind kicked out of it by the final stretch thanks to dwindling resources. Health kits are in short supply, ammunition can get a little tricky, and spare parts – a currency that unlocks special weapons and defensive structures – can only be found in a limited number of loot caches. By the end of a mission it can feel like the odds are really against you, and while I appreciate the need to ratchet tension and create a challenge spike in the final objective, in a game where zombies arrive by the truckful, restocking ammo only to find you’ve been given a single magazine does feel a bit unbalanced. I was having a lot more fun during the earlier minutes, when bullets were plentiful and the blood spilled like wine, so I’m not sure if the flow and tone really mesh with the current resource levels.
The more concerning thing, though, is progression. All weapons have individual XP bars, and must be levelled up to particular milestones to unlock different modifications. When you unlock a mod, you then need to spend a currency to actually fit it to the weapon, and each one costs several thousand. I can’t help but look at the entire armoury and envision the hundreds and hundreds of hours I’d need to sink into Toxic Commando to achieve a decently functioning, varied loadout. It’s the sort of system that funnels you into picking a single favourite, rather than encouraging you to constantly switch between missions. This, combined with a trio of different currencies and palette-swap character skins, has me a little suspicious that the sludge of live-service has tainted something I’ve otherwise had a pretty good blast with. But these grindy woes can also be found in Saber’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and they didn’t stop it from being one of my favourite games of 2024.
That’s not to say I’m expecting John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando to have anywhere near the same impact Space Marine had. But, provided the full game has a solid range of missions that genuinely prove replayable, I do think the strong shooting and entertaining enemies have a decent enough chance to secure it a home among friendship groups who’d happily re-watch gloopy ‘80s horror over and over until the VHS wears out. Whether they’ll ever unlock the attachments they want for their favourite weapons… well, we’ll have to wait to find out.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Executive Editor of Features.
If you’re sick of looking at the insane pricing of Pokémon TCG at big box retailers, I’m here to help. I’ve gone through the Amazon’s latest stock updates, and I’ve found some deals that are either in-line with their current value on the collectors market, or below if you’re quick enough. ETBs, Booster Bundles, Big box ex collections, single boosters and more, I’ve got you covered in today’s daily deals.
TCGPlayer is showing up Amazon’s predatory pricing practices with Pokémon TCG, with up to 10% on some of the latest sets, including Black Bolt, White Flare, Destined Rivals and more. Still above MSRP, but its by far the best deal players and collectors are going to get on sealed ETB’s right now.
Pokémon TCG Booster Bundle Deals
Booster Bundles are even cheaper, and again from the most popular Scarlet and Violet sets. Prismatic Evolutions is 21% cheaper, Black Bolt is 22% down, White Flare is 18% and Destined Rivals is a moddest 8% down. Don’t pay more when you don’t have too.
Pokémon TCG Big Box Collection Deals
Binder boxes, special collections and more are the big box Pokémon TCG products that make great gifts that usually come with a few exclusive pormo cards and other cool swag that can only be found in these boxes. Infact, if you’re just after the bits and bats inside, you can usually find seperate listings on TCGPlayer for just that to save a few dollars.
Pokémon TCG Tins and Booster Packs
With up to 44% off booster tins, blisters and single packs, it’s an absolute no-brainer hopping over to TCGPlayer over Amazon. It’s actually amazing that some of these products are nearly double the price of the secondary market, but I’m here to save you some money after all!
Most Expensive Pokémon Cards from Japan’s Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia
Japan’s Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia Pokémon TCG sets have quickly gained popularity with collectors and competitive players alike, thanks to their focus on iconic Mega Evolutions, powerful Supporter cards, and premium artwork. High-value chase cards like Mega Gardevoir ex 092/063 and Mega Lucario ex 092/063 are priced at $664 and $444 respectively, while many others remain above the $100 mark.
These sets combine strong gameplay mechanics such as Psychic energy acceleration and hard-hitting Fighting-type attacks with visually stunning Special and Ultra Rare treatments that elevate their appeal. Booster boxes and Premium Trainer Boxes are available on TCGPlayer and include guaranteed rare pulls due to Japanese packaging rules. While the most expensive cards draw attention, more affordable options like Lillie’s Determination 086/063, Mega Kangaskhan ex SAR, and Mega Absol ex SAR offer great value with solid gameplay and collector-friendly art, making these sets a standout release for fans looking for both playability and display-worthy cards.
This Weeks Crashers and Climbers
Stellar Crown’s Illustration Rares like Squirtle, Bulbasaur, and Terapagos ex are dropping fast, with nostalgia-driven hype fading as supply grows and competitive players move on. Squirtle is down about 32% since February and Bulbasaur is down 31%, both sliding because their gameplay value is minimal. Earthen Vessel and the Special Illustration Rare Fezandipiti ex are also slipping, while Terapagos ex has been hit hardest, losing over half its value.
On the other hand, Shrouded Fable cards with practical utility are steadily climbing. Hyper Rare Basic Darkness Energy has gained around 17% as Dark-focused decks get more popular, and Dusclops is creeping up thanks to its creative ability. Even the Double Rare Fezandipiti ex is bucking the trend, nearly doubling in value as competitive players embrace it. Smaller gains from Powerglass and Okidogi ex reinforce the idea that functional, playable cards are holding their ground while flashy artwork is losing steam.
METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER
Fanatical is offering Steam pre-purchases of METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER, the stunning Unreal Engine 5 remake of the legendary 2004 stealth-action game. The Standard Edition is available for $52.38, while the Digital Deluxe Edition is marked down to $59.87 (normally $79.99 — 25% off). The Deluxe upgrade comes with exclusive pre-order bonuses, 48-hour early access, and the Sneaking DLC Pack, which includes multiple alternate uniforms, masks, and cosmetic extras. With rebuilt visuals, immersive 3D audio, and modernized controls, this Cold War-era tale of betrayal, survival, and espionage is more gripping than ever.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Mirror Edition – PlayStation 5
Amazon has the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Mirror Edition (PlayStation 5, Amazon Exclusive) up for pre-order at $59.99. This edition includes the full game on disc, a collectible tuckbox, an exclusive steelbook featuring Verso and Alicia, plus three of ten limited-edition character cards you won’t find elsewhere. We gave it a 9/10, so it’s worth a playthrough if you haven’t already!
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Mirror Edition – Xbox Series X
Elden Ring Nightreign Amazon Exclusive Deluxe Edition
Elden Ring: Nightreign Deluxe Edition (Amazon Exclusive) is down to $39.99 (regularly $54.99 — 27% off) on Woot. This standalone adventure in the Elden Ring universe reimagines the series’ core design with a fresh cooperative twist. The Deluxe Edition packs in extra value with additional playable characters and bosses, a digital artbook, a mini soundtrack, and an exclusive 11×17 key art poster. Designed around three-player co-op, Nightreign has you and your allies pushing back against a world consumed by the creeping night, where shifting environments, formidable threats, and massive bosses make every session feel unique. We gave it 7/10, so it’s worth a go for $39.99
Apple AirPods 4 Wireless Earbuds
Amazon has Apple AirPods 4 (USB-C Charging Case, no Active Noise Cancellation) on sale for $89.99 (regularly $129 — 30% off). Redesigned for improved comfort and stability, AirPods 4 feature Apple’s H2 chip for upgraded sound quality, clearer calls with voice isolation, and seamless pairing with iPhone. They also support Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking for a more immersive listening experience.
LEGO The Legend of Zelda Great Deku Tree 2in1
This 2,500-piece collector’s kit lets fans choose between building the Ocarina of Time or Breath of the Wild version of the iconic Great Deku Tree, complete with detailed features like posable facial expressions and side panels. The set also includes four minifigures, Princess Zelda and three variations of Link, along with iconic items such as the Master Sword, Hylian Shield, and Ocarina of Time. Plus it’s over one foot tall once built!
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
Here’s some good news for RPG fans. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the surprise blockbuster from earlier this year, is getting a new physical edition for PS5 and Xbox Series X. It’s called the Mirror Edition, and it comes with some new physical goodies. It’s only available at Amazon (see it here), with a price tag of $59.99 and a release date that’s yet to be announced. Read on for a rundown of everything you get with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Mirror Edition.
This is the only version of the new Mirror Edition. Alternatively, you can buy a physical version of the standard edition (see it at Amazon). That edition is available now and has an MSRP of $49.99.
In addition to the game on disc, the Mirror Edition also includes the following items:
Collectible Cards – includes 3 of 10 possible cards
Exclusive steelbook – featuring Verso and Alicia
Tuckbox
Regarding the collectible cards, there are 10 available, but you get three random cards included with your copy. The only three cards shown on Amazon’s listing page feature Gustave, Maelle, and Lune.
Other Preorder Guides
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
Pokémon Go is introducing a new, higher level cap and rebalancing the XP requirements for existing levels — though no player will see their current level reduced.
The game’s current level 50 cap, introduced back in 2020, will rise to level 80, giving players a significant new milestone to aim towards.
But the game’s levelling curve should be smoother, developers told IGN in a pre-announcement briefing, meaning XP levels overall should be hit more frequently. This will be achieved by a rebalance of all XP levels to date, and the removal of additional, time-consuming levelling tasks between levels 41 to 50.
Indeed, players who have already earned the necessary XP will be boosted up to the new level system’s requirements when they go live on October 18 — though the exact XP amounts required post-rebalance are yet to be confirmed.
Don’t expect hitting the new level 80 cap to be easy, however. Alongside the necessary XP requirements, a fresh set of levelling tasks will be added for the final climb from level 71 to 80, ensuring only the toughest Trainers hit the game’s new top level (and there’s still plenty to grind for).
New rewards for levelling up will include fresh avatar items, plus increased storage capacity for Pokémon, items and gifts — upgrades you would otherwise pay for. (And if you’re already at the game’s maximum limit for one of these, developers confirmed you’ll still be boosted above that.)
There’s even a new boost for friends at level 70 and above, who will have an increaed chance of becoming Lucky Friends with other players.
For those keen to preserve their legacy of levelling up prior to the October 15 update, existing avatar items will be retired and made exclusive to those who already earned them (for example, the Level 50 Jacket item). A pair of new profile medals will also be available, if you reached up to Level 49 prior to the new cap being introduced, and another if you made Level 50.
To help players on their way to the new milestone, XP will be boosted in-game from today until October 14 with double XP for catching, and an additional 3,000 XP for winning raids and Max Battles. Timed Research will offer further rewards, with a tasty 7 million XP on the table.
It’s a busy time for Pokémon Go, which is also now teasing its next in-game season. A video released yesterday included confirmation that Meta Metagross would debut in the coming months, alongside the long-awaited return of Keldeo — a Mythical creature only made available once via a premium purchase for a brief time back in 2022.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
2025 is turning out to be a stellar year for fans of 2D ninja platformers. The 16-bit blood sprites have barely dried on Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound’s katana, and now Sega’s iconic Shinobi series has emerged from a 14-year stay in the shadows to fling a fistful of kunai straight into your adrenal glands. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance brings back the series’ slash ‘n’ dash with plenty of modern day flash. It empowers returning hero Joe Musashi with an enjoyably expansive suite of hypercharged ninja skills and presents it all in a gorgeous hand drawn art style, making for an adventure that’s occasionally hard on the reflexes but always easy on the eye. While the Shinobi series may have been in exile for an agonising amount of time, its triumphant return has been well worth the wait.
Art of Vengeance’s setup seems to have spilled straight off the circuit board of an ‘80s arcade machine. Led by the maniacal Lord Ruse, the nefarious paramilitary organization ENE Corp has achieved world domination by force, and the responsibility of toppling them falls squarely on the crisp linen-covered shoulders of Joe Musashi. Musashi had resigned himself to the simple life, mentoring young ninja students in obscurity like some sort of Obi Wan Shinobi, but when the ENE brings violence to his village he’s forced to seek vengeance on every soldier, spectre, and samurai that stands in his path over the course of a 10-hour cross-continental killing spree. It’s simple stuff for sure, but it’s really all the motivation I needed to turn the ENE forces into a series of slash test dummies, and I was perfectly happy for Musashi to let his blade do the talking. Quite literally in fact, as he only ever grunts during conversation cutscenes, which brings some welcome bursts of comic relief in between each sprawling showdown.
Its plot may be true to the uncomplicated action movie era the series was born out of, but its looks are strikingly modern. Much like developer Lizardcube’s Streets of Rage 4 before it, Art of Vengeance’s characters and environments have that painstakingly-drawn-by-hand style to them that produces consistently phenomenal results. From hulking container ships that loom in the backdrop of the fish market stage right down to the reflections in puddles that whip past Musashi’s unceasingly determined sprint, it turns out that vengeance isn’t the only art that this latest Shinobi has set out to nail. There are clear contrasts between each setting too that make them uniquely captivating to explore, from the lush bamboo forest of the opening level through to the disgustingly gloopy explorable innards of a Kaiju that seem like something straight out of a Rick and Morty episode.
No two of Art of Vengeance’s 14 levels are structured the same.
No two of Art of Vengeance’s 14 levels are structured the same, either. One stage hustles the chaos across the carriage rooftops of a speeding train, another has you stalking across the skyline of Neo City in all directions in an effort to find and rescue hostages, while another still takes you deep into a labyrinth of dark corridors in a secret ENE base where Metroid-like mutants suddenly lunge at you through the shattered glass of their stasis tanks to keep you on your toes. There’s also plenty of variety within each level, like the mountain stage that shifts from a lava-lined steelworks area to a breathless rockslide descending into a chasm. While the occasional switch puzzle or chase sequence is repeated here and there, there are enough fresh objectives to complete and unique environments to explore that the journey remains as sharp as a shuriken from start to finish. There’s even a bonus stage that reimagines the surfing level from Shinobi III, which is a welcome throwback to that brief period in the early ‘90s when there was no cooler conceivable combination to kids than a ninja on a surfboard.
Art of the Steel
Of course, all of this would be for nothing if the combat didn’t pull its weight, but fortunately Art of Vengeance’s fighting is frenetic, fluid, and consistently fantastic. Unlike Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound’s enemies which can mostly be dispatched with single hits, the bulk of the bad guys in Art of Vengeance have health bars that need to be whittled away with snappy combo attacks, making it feel more like a platform-based brawler in comparison to Ragebound’s more demanding, precision-based striking. Musashi can pull off a growing number of combos over the course of the campaign built upon light and heavy sword attacks and kunai dagger throws – but as I unlocked new attack chains from the in-game merchant, I was soon juggling enemy ninjas in the air with sword slashes, divebombing them with flaming jump kicks, and shredding their defenses with spin attacks like a Catherine Wheel of katana blades as my combo tally ticked towards triple figures. It all feels incredibly intuitive, and there’s reward for sequencing your attacks just right – time an execution move when an enemy is on their last legs and they disappear in a spectacular spray of blood, but also valuable coins and health boosts that are funneled straight into your back pocket.
Art of Vengeance’s fighting is frenetic, fluid, and consistently fantastic.
Each successful attack you land also fills up your Ninpo gauge, which allows you to trigger a powerful special move from four customisable slots. I tended to favour the Yoga Flame-style dragon breath to quickly wipe out the additional green health bar found on more heavily armoured foes like the riot shield-toting tank types, as well as the bomb that can be lobbed midair to stagger an enemy before you start your combo. Combined with the two amulet slots that can be equipped with a healthy variety of active and passive buffs, like a booster that increases your damage output the longer your combo lasts or a vampire ability that steadily replenishes your health bar with each enemy you dispatch, and Art of Vengeance provides a satisfying amount of flexibility in terms of being able to slay your own way.
Deepening your combat options even further is the Ninjutsu gauge, which fills as Musashi takes damage or collects rage orbs from fallen foes. This turbocharged update on the original games’ ninja magic is pretty slow to replenish, and as a result I tended to keep it up my sleeve until I reached each end-of-level boss, since it can greatly turn the tide of battle – either offensively, like dealing health bar-halving damage with flaming dragon blasts, or defensively, such as bringing a flatlining Musashi back from the brink with a revitalising wave of water.
Perhaps as a result of my strategic deployment of these super special moves, I didn’t really face too much resistance from any of Art of Vengeance’s bosses on the hardest Shinobi difficulty setting, but that’s not to say they weren’t still plenty of fun to encounter. Although the returning Mandara from the original arcade game is a bit clunky and probably should have remained trapped inside a dusty Master System cartridge, elsewhere there are some hugely entertaining battles with big bads to be found. My favourites are the twin mutants in the ENE laboratory that combine into one towering freak like a pair of kids trying to sneak into an adult movie, and the monster-conjuring beastmaster in the desert level that surprises you with minotaurs and griffins to force you to deftly maneuver from the land into the air and back again. The majority of these boss battles bring each stage to a climactic close, and typically reward you with another ability-enhancing trinket to further tweak Musashi’s skill set with.
Running Hack and Forth
To be clear, Art of Vengeance’s 14 main levels are not interconnected, so it’s not structured like a classic Metroidvania. However, while there isn’t any compulsory backtracking required to complete the story, there are still plenty of compelling reasons to return to earlier levels as you unlock new abilities for Musashi over the course of the journey, which in turn open up sizeable new areas to explore that were otherwise blocked off the first time through. A charged up punch for shattering Yokai barriers, ninja claws to scale walls and overheads, a glider to take advantage of updrafts, and even a grappling hook aren’t just crucial for reaching the story’s conclusion, but also for sniffing out all the secrets in each stage. Even though I’ve rolled credits on the campaign, I’m still steadily working my way towards 100% completion of each level and having an absolute blast doing it.
Some of these secrets are as simple as tokens to unlock more goods at the merchant or new costume colours for Musashi – I’m pretty partial to slaughtering ENE goons draped in cherry blossom pink myself – but there are also up to three Elite encounters to find in each level which drop you into an intense arena fight against hardened hordes like some sort of sword-swinging Super Smash Bros. battle. Clearing every Elite encounter in a level will grant you a new amulet to equip, further enhancing Musashi’s attack power or his ability to heal, which become invaluable buffs against the late game bosses.
My favourite optional extra, however, are the rift challenges. These typically punishing platforming tasks demand pinpoint chaining of Musashi’s double-jump, air-dash, and wall-running abilities in order to clear formidable Super Meat Boy-style obstacle courses of spinning sawblades and swirling jets of fire suspended over bottomless pits. They’re deathtrap-lined levels that are often fiendish but yet to become too frustrating thanks to the instant restarts and level design that’s fierce but ultimately fair.
Retracing my steps through Art of Vengeance’s stages to search for secrets has also highlighted some of its minor shortcomings, however. I don’t love the way that enemies seem to respawn instantly once their patrol points have disappeared off camera, drawing me into unnecessary additional fights as I doubleback in search of a specific spot. But what’s really annoying is the way the pause menu map doesn’t seem to indicate whether falling down a gap between platforms will mean you land safely on the ground below or instantly lose a chunk of health and respawn back on the platform above. It brings an unwanted element of trial and error to the otherwise obsessive hunt for secrets.
That said, I ultimately really admire how Lizardcube has structured Art of Vengeance, in the sense that it’s made its most challenging combat and platforming sections entirely optional for the most part. If you just want to focus on the story, you’ll find a 2D ninja platforming experience that’s challenging enough but a touch more approachable on its default difficulty setting than the comparatively trickier Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. But if you do want to put your skills to the test, there are those optional Elite battles and rift challenges to dive into, along with Boss Rush and timer-based Arcade modes to unlock for the more serious speedrunners. (Conversely, there are a number of accessibility settings to make life even easier should you still find yourself struggling.)
Fans have always felt that Dragon Age: Origins’ mage class was more complete, perhaps even more dominant, than the game’s other two classes, the rogue and the warrior. But why was that? Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah has said it’s mostly about second edition Dungeons & Dragons.
In a recently published video, Darrah explained why the mage in BioWare’s much-loved 2009 role-playing game ended up feeling so much better to play.
“It’s actually I would say more because the design space that Dragon Age: Origins was being built into was heavily influenced by second edition D&D,” Darrah, who worked at BioWare from 1997 to early 2021, said.
“So in that case, the reality is mages and rogues were less… they were thinner classes, they were simpler classes. And the mage was the stronger, more fully implemented, more fully considered class. Much more complicated, much more in terms of spells and such.”
Dragon Age: Origins was not designed to be played with Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition rules, but rather it was built on a custom system that was heavily influenced by the design principles of the 2nd edition era of D&D.
Darrah also said Origins’ more grounded tone affected the abilities of the warrior and the rogue, which in turn had more grounded abilities than in subsequent games in the fantasy franchise.
“Also, of all the Dragon Ages, Dragon Age: Origins is the most grounded. It’s the one that’s worrying the most about everything making perfect sense within the overall lore of the game. So, warriors and rogues in Origins basically don’t have talents, or they don’t have talents or skills that violate physics.
“Whereas, as we move into Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition and Veilgard, you get a lot more things that are not really possible for someone to physically do.”
There’s plenty of agreement with Darrah’s assessment from fans, particularly on his point about Origins’ more grounded setting and tone, but also on how important mages were to the game’s story. Morrigan, a mage party member, ended up one of the most popular in Origins. That was in part because she was powerful, but there were also… other considerations.
Of course, this unbalance was rectified for subsequent Dragon Age games, as Darrah points out. But following the failure of Veilguard and the layoffs that followed, fans often point to Origins as the kind of Dragon Age they would love to see BioWare return to one day.
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.
With Borderlands 3 and its divisive story in the rearview mirror, developer Gearbox Software is driving full speed ahead to Borderlands 4 and the totalitarian planet of Kairos.
The long road to the launch of a fourth mainline Borderlands game had a bumpy start. While plenty fell in love with Borderlands 3 and its improvements to the looter-shooter series’ gunplay, others still struggle with its joke-fueled story and reliance on toilet humor. It will have been almost exactly six years since its launch when Borderlands 4’s September 12, 2025 release date arrives. Now, fans are on the edge of their seats, waiting to see how Gearbox spent its time.
We caught up with Gearbox narrative director Sam Winkler, lead writer Taylor Clark, and managing director of narrative properties Lin Joyce to learn more about why the team decided to create a more grounded story for Borderlands 4. Along the way, we found out how the elusive Timekeeper can stand toe-to-toe with Handsome Jack, how controversial characters like Ava could still have a future in the series, and we even learned how the upcoming DLC will fit in with Borderlands 4’s main campaign.
IGN: Gearbox has been very clear that Borderlands 4 will feature a more grounded story and tone. How did the conversations to shift the tone begin, and is this the direction the team has followed from the beginning of development?
Sam Winkler: Those conversations started as early as the conversations of, ‘Hey, what the hell does Borderlands 4 look like?’ Even before Borderlands 3 was shipped and out the door. Something I like to remind people is that the devs are often the first fans of a game and also the first critics. I think that we had some own internal critiques about the tone and the level of humor present in Borderlands 3.
[It’s] something that we already were starting to address in the DLCs for Borderlands 3, but we wanted to really make that a central point of Borderlands 4. So, as we had these very large conversations of, in world context, ‘Where is this? What does it mean? Why are we doing this next big, monolithic game with a 4 in its title?’ [we said], ‘How are we also going to evolve the storytelling, the humor, and the characters, and what we want to do with them?’
Taylor Clark: I came aboard a lot later than Sam. I’ve been on the game for a couple of years, and it was definitely something from the moment that I came on board, when I was talking to Sam, the grounded tone was a priority. Grounding the humor in the world, he made it very clear that if I tried to put a meme in the game, he would come to my house with a baseball bat [laughs]. So, it was definitely in the brief from the beginning to make the tone fit the world.
Winkler: I don’t want to swing the needle too hard on that front. I am not anti-meme. In fact, hey, exclusive: There’s a specific meme in this game, and I feel justified putting it in because I accidentally created it. Yes, I didn’t mean for it to become a meme, but it became a meme, and it’s in the video game. That is all I’m going to say.
IGN: We can’t know what meme it is?
Winkler: Look, I have a couple of Know Your Meme pages that credit me, and I will let you do any journalistic dirty work that you need to.
Clark: It does not involve a Skibidi Toilet.
Winkler: It does not. Yeah, there are toilets in our game. I’ll say that.
Clark: Where else would you get ammunition?
Winkler: Exactly. In Borderlands, only toilets and washing machines.
IGN: No Skibidi Toilets, though.
Clark: No. No.
Winkler: None.
IGN: I think some people are going to be really happy to hear that. I’m wondering if you can compare the tone in Borderlands 4 to some of the previous games. It seems like the team definitely wanted to have a more grounded tone than 3, for sure. So, how would you compare the tone or joke frequency to something like 1, 2, or even spinoffs like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands?
Clark: The way that I’ve always talked about it, personally, was that, in Borderlands 1, 2, and 3, we were on Pandora, right? Pandora was a wild west. It was a place where corporations were stabbing each other in the back for supremacy. So, there was a lot of antic energy in that place, and with those villains that we were dealing with, it made a lot of sense to have more zany, like, gun-slinging jokes, you know? Hip-firing jokes tone.
Kairos is a different place. Kairos is a totalitarian planet ruled over by this dictatorial figure known as the Timekeeper, who sits far above it all. In this context of global oppression, the Whac-A-Mole joke style didn’t make as much sense. So, a lot of it had to do with making sure that the tone fit the stakes of the world, and that the humor was rising organically out of situations, out of character moments, rather than the wild west feel of the first games.
Lin Joyce: I will let Sam talk to the contrast, too, in the mandate between 3 and 4, but I will double tap too, that what we were looking for is that the humor in Borderlands 4 works at the level of Kairos and the characters. We weren’t making jokes that would only land for the player.
It was a gut check, ‘Is this as funny to the characters and their lived experience as it is to the player? Can we do both?’ That situational comedy and context helped us also keep the tone grounded, and the comedy then has purpose. But Sam can talk about the frequency between Borderlands 3 and 4.
Winkler: I mean… I went back and played every single Borderlands game. 1, 2, Pre-Sequel, [Tales from the Borderlands], everything like that. Just to observe, not just the tone of humor, but also the vectors of humor, right? I think people talk a lot about our humor from the perspective of people chatting in your ear. But I was really struck by, for example, in Borderlands 1, most of the NPCs didn’t have a ton of actual audio to say.
It was pretty sparse on that front, and a lot of the humor came out of situations. Comedic, usually darkly comedic, circumstances, but also the way things were named, the text in the mission accept, that sort of thing. I think that contributed a lot to players’ perception of Borderlands 1 as having a more dark, grounded tone, is it is a quieter game, and a lot of the humor stems situationally and organically.
So, that was something that we tried to work with the design team, the mission design team, and everything like that, to say, ‘Hey, we can have heavy moments. We can have grounded moments, but we can also have wacky circumstances that arise out of the players’ actions and the NPCs that come at them.’ We wanted to make sure that humor wasn’t just some sticker that we’re slapping on something, you know what I mean? The other thing is that, with design shifts, our mentality to humor had to shift as well. With Borderlands 4 going into this seamless, explore-to-your-own-tastes gameplay experience, we could not control where the player was going to go next.
We couldn’t always script people’s open-world exploration, [and] that allowed that space to just be naturally filled. Whether it’s through combat dialog or player characters, or just silence and soundtrack and ambience and mood. It just inherently changed our approach to it.
IGN: One of my other questions is, ‘Why should players who have been with the series for 16 years not be worried about this shift?’ But I think that kind of answers it. It still feels and sounds like it’s very Borderlands.
Clark: For sure. It is unmistakably Borderlands, but we’re constantly tweaking the dials of certain factors to make the tone match the game that we want to create, and to respond to our internal and external feedback.
Joyce: At no point did we say, ‘Let’s stop being funny in Borderlands. Let’s not do that anymore.’ It is still a Borderlands game made by a Borderlands team, many who have been here since 1.
Clark: We’re not making an arthouse Borderlands game [laughs].
Winkler: But, also, it’s a big game, right? It is not a monolith. There are areas of our game that are more serious. There are areas of our game that are more humor-filled. There are characters that don’t take things as seriously, in a diegetic way. For the players who have been long-time franchise fans, I think they’re going to find flavors that they’re looking for all across Kairos. If they play one side mission or interact with one character that doesn’t quite vibe with them, there’s probably another one not too far off that they will vibe with.
IGN: For the sake of comparison, are there any other stories from across movies, books, TV, or games that the team feels are similar to the tone that you guys are going for? Are there any particular inspirations that you can point to?
Joyce: There have to be so many. We’re constantly throwing around, ‘Have you seen…? It’s a little like that.’ But now that you’re asking it directly, I’m like, ‘Which one…’
Winkler: I don’t want to use it as a straight comp, but a show that I’ve been really inspired by has been Star Trek: Lower Decks, which is very, very much a comedic show. It has wacky energy to it, but it works, and it works really well — it just won a Hugo Award — because it takes its characters seriously. It takes its circumstances seriously, and if something is wacky, there’s usually someone there to point out, like, ‘This is wacky and super unsafe, and it shouldn’t work that way.’
It is a project that is clearly made out of love for Star Trek and the characters in the story, rather than some sort of parody of it. I think that on Borderlands 3, in our worst hours, it sometimes felt like parody, and that is where we edged into a red line, I think, for a lot of fans and for myself, personally. So, we wanted to look towards other media that could balance that. [That] could balance both humor, levity, and authentic character storytelling that takes itself seriously.
IGN: One character I did want to ask about from Borderlands 3 that I didn’t particularly mind at all but others had a problem with is Ava. She’s a character that a lot of fans associate their dissatisfaction with Borderlands 3’s story with. With so many other memorable faces back for Borderlands 4, can fans expect to see her show up, too? If not, is there any room for her to return in the future?
Winkler: I don’t think we’re going to answer any questions about characters that we haven’t shown off yet. I think the only thing that I will say is, I am not a huge fan of removing or killing off characters off-screen unless it absolutely has to happen. We don’t forget about characters, and we want to make sure that storylines are completed. That’s it.
I hear all the complaints about Ava. I had some issues with how we were able to portray her. We were unable to show some of, I think, her more heartfelt moments in the base game of BL3. We used the Director’s Cut to show off what Maya’s funeral could have been and what the relationship between Ava and Lilith could have been. We didn’t have that opportunity in Borderlands 3, but it’s the kind of thing that I still believe in and that I would love to address again some other time.
IGN: In typical Borderlands fashion, Gearbox has free and paid post-launch DLC in the works. A lot of it, by the sounds of it. We don’t have to get too into specifics; I know a lot of that stuff is still very much in development. But will that same grounded tone carry over to the DLC? Will the team take the opportunity to show us some of the less grounded corners of Kairos?
Clark: Just like the last question, I think we are limited in what we can say about the post-launch content that we’re working on. I think it’s safe to say that the plan is for the tone to be consistent between the products.
Winkler: I’ll say this: the best thing about Borderlands extra content, like full campaign DLCs, or some of the live events that we’ve done — we did the holidays and stuff like that in previous games — is it allows us to explore different tones and different corners of the Borderlands world and do different genres and everything like that. So, I would expect that same level of creativity and exploration from where we go in the future.
Joyce: I would extend it to be… I would look at the DLC content and call it complementary, right? It complements the base game. It is going to be different, but complementary. Or, if you prefer a different metaphor, the pieces of attire will be coordinated to make a nice outfit, really. You pick which metaphor you like better there.
Clark: It’s tough to talk about in vague terms. We’d love to talk about it more.
Winkler: Especially because some of it we don’t know yet. It is in active development. Borderlands 4 is getting stamped onto DVDs somewhere and… actually [laughs] I think it’s Blu-rays. But in the meantime, we are cooking on that next group of content, and we know a whole bunch of it. We’re actively working on it, but some of it is still in development.
IGN: How long do you think it will take to complete Borderlands 4’s main campaign, and then how long will it take to complete the main campaign plus all of the side content?
Clark: This came up some in prior interviews. The answer that I and Chris Brock, our lead producer, gave on this was to point out that, while we can’t say a specific number, we can say that, when we got together to do a playthrough together — Sam, me, Lin, a bunch of others, our creative director, Graeme [Timmins], Randy Pitchford — when we were doing work, doing play throughs of this stuff, and to evaluate how it was going, playing through the entire main campaign took us days and days. It took a long time. It is a meaty piece of content.
Winkler: And that was a straight line. That was doing basically no side content.
Clark: That was scaling damage to 10,000% and just mowing through stuff.
Joyce: The other anecdote I could probably give there, safely, is, I meet every week with Andrew Reiner, our global creative executive officer. Last week he said, ‘I’ve started, I’m going to say, the million-teenth run of the game.’ He’s like, ‘This time, the goal is 100% it.’ I was like, ‘How long have you been playing?’ All week. ‘How far have you gotten?’ Still in the first zone [laughs].
Winkler: That’s a very good factor, and going back to what I said, the seamless world allows players to have a little bit more choice about the order in which they take on the story. We have seen play testers want to go through the mainline, so they’re bouncing around between the different zones and seeing all sorts of the game.
We’ve also seen testers who are just like, ‘I’m going to go into this zone. I’m going to see everything I can possibly see. I’m going to scrape the barrel, and then I’m going over to the next zone.’ One player’s first 15, 20 hours could look very, very different from another player’s.
IGN: It’s a big Borderlands game.
Winkler: It do be big.
IGN: For so many people, Borderlands villains are the reason a lot of folks show up for this series. Obviously, Handsome Jack is one of the all-time great video game villains. I’m wondering, because there are so many theories about the Timekeeper, specifically, and I don’t want to know what it is, but does this character have any identity past that Timekeeper name? Is there some mystery, some intrigue you want to build up with him?
Joyce: You ask great questions [laughs]. To what degree can we answer them is a tough one.
Winkler: The Timekeeper is like an onion. He has layers… No one’s used that before, right?
Clark: I think the answer is yes. Is there a mystery to him? Yes [laughs].
Joyce: We could talk about, certainly, how we approached crafting him and writing him. That’s another angle into answering your question. The timekeeper, one of the things that makes him different and keeps an air of intentional mystery around him, is that he is not in your face at all times. He sits in his high tower with a view of the entire planet, and his prerogative is to keep the entire planet under order.
So, when we first show up, the Vault Hunter is mildly of interest, but he’s got many other things to do. So, we also have to, as players, over time, gain his attention more and more. That was a very different way to approach writing a villain into a Borderlands game than we had done before. And I’ll let Sam and Taylor run from there.
Clark: I think we, as creative people, are always challenging ourselves to not repeat ourselves, to have characters who are appreciably different, who have different kinds of stories and have different kinds of things to say in each entry. The Timekeeper is appreciably different from the prior villains in the Borderlands series. He is a new frontier, I think, as a character.
IGN: One of the things I see pop up so often is comparisons to Handsome Jack. It always goes back to him. The theories go back to him. It’s a bit mind-boggling, almost, at this point, to be more than a decade removed from that character, and still it’s brought up. What kind of pressure does the team feel, if any, to continue creating villains as impactful as him, specifically? Did that pressure ever influence the direction you’ve taken for the Timekeeper?
Winkler: Oh, I mean, how could it not, right? Imagine working on Star Wars, and you have to come up with something as scary as Darth Vader. Handsome Jack is a gaming icon, and I was a fan of Borderlands 2 before I set foot in Gearbox, so I had that thought in my head as well.
Something I really, really liked about Borderlands 2 was, as you’re going across Pandora, pretty much everyone you meet has been screwed over by Handsome Jack in some way. Their life is measurably worse, or they’re under threat, or they know someone who died because of Handsome Jack. That was really inspiring for the Timekeeper, for us to be able to show a villain, not just through phone calls where he says, ‘Hey, you’re a dick,’ while you’re while you’re going through trying to collect guns, but also how everyone you meet has, in some way, been affected by him and is living under his totalitarian rule.
Their circumstances are different and vibrant and their reactions to the Timekeeper… like they might be so scared of him that they don’t want to rise up in resistance against him, or they might be so pissed off at him that they do, or they have a complicated relationship with the Timekeeper when they once kind of looked up to him, but now they are in danger because of him. With the goal of making this character feel a little bit more omnipresent, a little bit always watching, we wanted that to shine through in all of our NPCs. So, as we meet new friends — and each of these zones has this big over boss that we have to, ultimately, deal with, each of those villains has a different relationship with the Timekeeper. As we’re learning about them, we’re also learning about him.
IGN: The Timekeeper will fall into place with that more grounded narrative. He’s a lot more straightforward. He’s not calling you while you’re collecting guns and telling you, ‘You’re a dick.’
Clark: Not those specific words, no [laughs].
IGN: So, what is it about this character specifically that makes him the next great Borderlands villain? What makes him stand apart?
Clark: I think that he has a gravity and an ominousness. Jack’s animosity towards us is so hot and personal, and the Timekeeper, by contrast, feels so all-powerful and inescapable. Jack just feels like one kind of gnat who’s really influential but could be swatted away. The Timekeeper feels chronic and insurmountable, like a mountain. This whole planet basically casts in his image, and I think that’s a cool mountain to climb.
IGN: We’re just a few weeks out from launch. Did the decision to switch up the tone for Borderlands 4 pay off? Is Gearbox sitting here saying, ‘This was worth it. We dialed everything correctly. We’re proud of where this is.’ Also, what were some of the challenges that the team faced when adapting to this change?
Clark: I’m personally proud of the work that we’ve done, and I think it’s paid off. I think we struck a fun, resonant balance between light-hearted moments and serious, resonant moments. We get, for the first time, I think, we get real character depth with Claptrap, of all people, for example. One of my favorite missions in the game is an emotional moment with Claptrap that, I think, really hits hard, so I’m personally very happy with where we landed.
Joyce: I agree. I think that we have succeeded with what we set out to do, and it’s even more than just about tone. This was about creating the next, right? You can come to Borderlands 4 as a new player, and this can be your first experience into an incredibly expansive world, and in that way, it needed to be fresh and have something new to offer and change perspective on our series while still maintaining that connectivity. So, if you’re a returning fan, we built Kairos for you. If you’re a new fan, we built Kairos for you. This was the goal. It took a really big world and a big game to do it. I think we succeeded there.
Winkler: I think it is going to be, ultimately, up to the fans to the fans, of course, to tell us if we nailed it or not, and I think that the best possible scenario is that we put this game out, they say, ‘This is what we wanted. Let’s go even further. We want more. We want more.’ I hope we get that opportunity. To echo what Taylor and Lin said, I’m very proud of the work that we did, and I think that we accomplished our goals, and the mark of success if being able to continue. Hopefully, we can continue, we can build back some of the trust, and yeah. Have a good one. Have a good video game.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
