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Everything We Know About Fallout 5

With Amazon’s new Fallout TV show slated to hit Prime next month, longtime Fallout fans have already started wondering what the next official entry in the iconic post-apocalyptic video game series will look like.

Although it’s still years away, Bethesda Game Studios has been very upfront about the fact that Fallout 5 is in the pipeline, going as far as to say it will be the studio’s next major project after the release of The Elder Scrolls 6. With that in mind, we decided to round up all the early details we’ve heard about the next major installment in the Fallout game series so you can get caught up on everything we know so far.

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Fallout 5 Won’t Release For A Long Time

The first and most crucial thing to note is that Fallout 5 isn’t going to be released for a very long time. As series director Todd Howard told us in an interview back in 2022, “Elder Scrolls 6 is in pre-production and, you know, we’re going to be doing Fallout 5 after that.”

Bethesda has said multiple times that The Elder Scrolls 6’s development would become the studio’s main focus after it wrapped up work on Starfield, which only launched in late 2023. Considering Xbox Head Phil Spencer claimed during last year’s Microsoft vs FTC Trial that The Elder Scrolls 6 itself isn’t expected for “five plus years,” it’s safe to assume we’re not going to be hearing much about Fallout 5 or its release date for years to come.

Bethesda Has Drafted Up Early Plans For Fallout 5

Although its still early days for the sequel, Todd Howard has admitted that he’s taken some time laying out the groundwork for Fallout 5 and where he wants to take the franchise next. Speaking to us on the IGN Unfiltered Podcast in 2021, Howard revealed: “We have a one-pager on Fallout 5, what we want to do.”

In essence, it seems Howard has already spent some time figuring out the broad concept for the next major entry in the Fallout series and the ideas Bethesda hopes to tackle going forward. That being said, he did make it clear those ideas are still in the very early stages. Continuing his discussion about Fallout 5 and Bethesda Game Studios’ future projects in general, he claimed: “I’d like to find a way to accelerate what we do, but I can’t really say today or commit to anything, [like] what’s going to happen when.”

Ideas From The Fallout TV Show Were Held Back Because of Fallout 5

During recent press events for the upcoming Fallout TV show, Todd Howard and the show’s crew talked more about the adaptation’s story and crafting a live-action adventure set in such a lore-rich world. During these interviews, Jonathon Nolan claimed that making the show felt like working on “Fallout 5,” telling Total Film that the show being an original, canon story set in the game’s world makes it feel like a “non-interactive” new entry in the series rather than an adaptation.

Todd Howard later expanded on these comments while speaking with Den of Geek, revealing that he had several conversations with the team behind the show and asked them to avoid including certain story elements due to the eventual release of Fallout 5.

“There were some things where I said, ‘don’t do this because we are going to do that in Fallout 5,” Howard revealed, with showrunner Graham Wagner adding, “I think we made Fallout 6.” It appears the show and the next game will explore different aspects of Fallout’s world, although things were close enough that Howard wanted them to circle around certain topics to ensure they both covered new ground. With The Fallout show centering on a vault dweller exploring the remnants of Los Angeles, this could be our first hint that Bethesda aims to head to the West Coast for its next iteration of the series.

What Platforms Will Fallout 5 Be On?

Regarding what platforms Fallout 5 will be on, it’s safe to assume that it’ll be available on Xbox consoles and PC considering Bethesda now falls under the Microsoft banner. However, whether that’s on current or next-gen consoles remains to be seen.

Seeing as the game’s still a ways off and Phil Spencer didn’t clarify whether Elder Scrolls 6 (which is launching prior to Fallout 5) was a current or next-gen release when talking about the game during Microsoft’s FTC trial, it seems likely that Fallout 5 will release on future Xbox platforms. We’ll just have to wait and see where the game eventually falls.

What About PlayStation?

Currently, Bethesda Game Studios seems focused on releasing all of its upcoming games exclusively on Xbox platforms and PC. With Starfield releasing as a full Xbox console exclusive and leaked Microsoft documents suggesting that The Elder Scrolls 6 could be following suit, there’s a very good chance Fallout 5 will continue the trend.

That being said, Xbox has been more lenient with its library of exclusives in recent months, announcing that Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded, and Pentiment are all making their way to other consoles. Whether this new approach to first-party releases eventually results in them launching flagship titles on rival consoles remains to be seen, but there’s always a possibility Fallout could be a multi-platform release. Right now, it’s far too early to say. If it did release on PlayStation, it would likely be on the PS6.

Fallout 5 Will Use A More Advanced Engine Than Previous Fallout Games

In preparation for the release of Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, Bethesda’s teams announced they’d fully overhauled the Creation engine, which was used to develop Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. The most advanced version of the Creation Engine yet, Todd Howard called it “the largest [overhaul] we’ve probably ever had, maybe larger than Morrowind to Oblivion,” during a Develop: Brighton Digital conference in 2020.

Regardless of whether this remains the engine the team will use for Fallout 5 or they upgrade it further in time for the long-awaited sequel, Fallout will utilize a more advanced set of tools than its predecessors, benefitting from better graphics, pathing, lighting, NPC animations and more.

Callum Williams is a freelance media writer with years of experience as a game critic, news reporter, guides writer and features writer.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 PC Performance Is a Mess, But It Didn’t Have to Be

Its no secret that while Dragon’s Dogma 2 is great, performance has been an issue from the jump – particularly on PC. There’s a reason for it, Capcom has explained NPCs are individually simulated by your CPU, which makes this game incredibly dependent on your processor. Play the game for an hour or so and you’ll realize how much the game benefits from this approach, but unless you have a top-end CPU paired with the best RAM you can muster, you’re going to have a rough time with the frame rate, especially in cities.

And then even if you do have the best gaming PC money could buy, you’re still going to see frame rate drops. It’s a shame, especially because the issues easily could have been avoided, and it’s not entirely Capcom’s fault.

What’s The Actual Problem?

Capcom’s RE Engine is largely responsible for the bugbears you’ll run into when playing the game. Reiterating our performance review, the RE Engine was primarily designed for linear games, like Resident Evil, which it’s named for. Making it worse is advanced pathing for every NPC, which is why even on my Core i9-14900K, my framerate will drop to 50 fps in towns – where dozens of citizens devour my CPU bandwidth.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 being so reliant on your CPU and memory was kind of unexpected. By and large, games – particularly action role playing games – have depended more on the best graphics cards as time has gone on, as GPUs like the RTX 4080 Super have been improving faster than CPUs have. Then, out of the blue we get a game that needs a hefty CPU to run at its best, and we get stuck with poor performance.

Making things worse is Capcom’s choice of upscaling technology: DLSS 2.0 and FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0. Having both these upscalers included is better than not having one at all, or only having one, but neither of them really address the elephant in the room: high CPU usage. It’s little wonder that modders have found a way to add DLSS 3.0, which was apparently already in the game files anyway. Unfortunately, as things stand right now, DLSS 3.0 is the only upscaling tech that can mitigate the heavy CPU usage, because of the way it handles, or rather, replaces the rendering pipeline.

Upscaling Is So, So Important: An Essay

Every time I talk to AMD or Nvidia, there’s one thing they keep telling me when I grill them about graphics card prices: Moore’s Law is dead. For the unintiated, Moore’s Law was a theory that the transistors on processors would double every two years at the same price. Whether the GPU makers are using this as an excuse to charge more for GPUs or if it’s actually true, it doesn’t matter. The demand for shinier graphics is growing faster than the hardware that, well, makes the graphics happen.

That’s why upscaling is so important. DLSS launched forever ago at this point, alongside the RTX 2080, and while it didn’t seem that important back then, it’s grown to be the most important thing in PC gaming. It’s little wonder that after seeing how successful this tech was, AMD launched its FSR tech, followed by Intel with XeSS. Unfortunately FSR and XeSS both lag behind DLSS, and it all comes down to having dedicated AI acceleration boosting the Nvidia upscaling technology.

In many ways, everyone else is finally catching on to how important AI acceleration is, which is why AI was the only thing people would talk about at CES this year. AMD and Intel both added Neural Processing Units to their new lines of laptop CPUs, and Team Red even secretly added them to RDNA 3 graphics cards, like the Radeon RX 7800 XT. Unfortunately, AMD hasn’t used these AI accelerators for gaming, even though it vaguely suggested that AI upscaling would be coming sometime in 2024 – but that hasn’t happened yet. Instead, AMD’s AI accelerators are solely used for enterprise AI applications, like Stable Diffusion.

It’s a huge missed opportunity, and the sole reason FSR lags so far behind DLSS, and the gap widened even more with the release of DLSS 3.0 with its AI frame generation tech. And it’s really a travesty that Dragon’s Dogma 2 didn’t release with the technology available, given that it was in the game files all along.

Functionally, DLSS Frame Generation completely replaces the traditional render queue that has powered PC games for years. Rather than having the CPU generate frames for the GPU to render, Nvidia uses Reflex to synchronize the two components, so the processor can essentially hand the GPU the raw data, which it then uses to execute the render queue from start to finish. Basically, in a CPU-limited game like Dragon’s Dogma 2, DLSS 3.0 essentially allows the CPU to focus on simulating the world, while everything else is handled locally on your graphics card.

What sucks is that AMD even has frame generation tech which is supported in Dragon’s Dogma 2, but because it doesn’t run it off of its AI Accelerators – as Nvidia’s does with its Tensor Cores – it comes into the pipeline at a later stage, which introduces latency. You can mitigate this by enabling AMD Anti Lag in your Adrenalin app, but the process will still introduce more latency than DLSS.

Unfortunately, if Dragon’s Dogma 2 proves anything, it’s that AI acceleration is a must in AAA games going forward, and AMD needs to get its shit together to catch up to Nvidia. It’s not really a matter of one graphics card being better than another at this point – PC gaming has kind of grown past that. Everything is riding on upscaling technology if we want to keep having games that look this good, while also having complex physics engines and NPC pathfinding.

It’s either that or we stop demanding that games look photorealistic at all times. I don’t know, pick one.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

What the PS5 Pro Means for Games Like GTA 6

The long rumored PS5 Pro has been (somewhat) confirmed after specifications and internal documents leaked online. Codenamed ‘Trinity’ in a nod to the PS4 Pro’s original codename, ‘Neo’, the PS5 Pro offers an expected sizable spec increase over the almost four years old base model PS5 . While many may focus on how many teraflops the PS5 Pro will cram in, we will cover the leaked specifications and explain how this will impact games running on the machine, along with explaining the new “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution” secret sauce.

CPU

Undoubtedly the smallest change over the base model is that the PS5 Pro apparently uses the same Zen 2-based, 8-core 16 thread AMD CPU as the current PS5. According to the leaked documents, the PS5 Pro will offer a small boost via a ‘High CPU Frequency Mode,’ providing an approximate 10% increase above the base 3.5Ghz speed of the original. This new 3.85Ghz is achieved at the small cost of 1% off the top of the new GPU clock speed. Despite that cost, in reality, games will still perform identically to the base machine when CPU limited. In short, this upgrade feels more like a marketing statement to allow Sony to brag about having the fastest console CPU clock speed than anything else. Nothing to see here.

GPU

The graphics processing unit is where the real magic happens. Similar to the PS4 Pro, Sony has spent the lion’s share of the budget on increasing the graphical quality, resolution, and performance of the PS5 Pro.

The specific architecture changes are not listed, but we have some data from the leaks that we can extrapolate. Based on the notes, the PS5 Pro is likely to have 60 compute units (CU) over the PS5’s current 36 CUs. This is, on paper at least, a smaller leap than the doubling of CUs the PS4 Pro had over the base PS4.

What we end up with in theory is a 67% increase in graphical performance compared to the “standard” PS5. But wait, we have more! The GPU itself is almost certainly based on the latest RDNA3 Architecture of the current AMD Radeon 7000 cards and this offers up some architectural improvements over the old RDNA2-based PS5 GPU. The proposed teraflop number on the documentation adds some weight to this as it states the PS5 Pro has 33.5Tf as opposed to the 10.28Tf of the standard model. This is almost certainly due to the dual FP32 (Floating Point) operations the latest GPU can process rather than a single issue on the older console. Using these numbers we can surmise a clock frequency of approximately 2335Mhz of 56CUs are active and 2180Mhz of the full 60CUs are in operation. In reality though it is going to be rare and isolated occurrences where double the compute can be pushed through the GPU. However, the biggest issue with the PS4 Pro was that the pure compute increase never matched the bandwidth.

Memory

On the memory side, Sony has boosted the PS5’s old 14Gbps 16GB RAM to the latest 18Gbs for the PS5 Pro, which is likely just a benefit of buying the latest nodes available. The hike brings system bandwidth up by 28%, from 448GB/s to 576GB/s, putting it above the Xbox Series X and many current PC GPUs.

Although not confirmed, sources have indicated to IGN that approximately 1GB of game RAM has been added to the total allocation, opening up 13.5GBs available for games. This will be vital for the biggest boosts and secret sauce the PS5 Pro offers with its ray tracing enhancements, as well as Sony’s own competitor to FSR3 and DLSS: PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which is hardware accelerated with dedicated machine learning hardware (ML).

The ‘Secret Sauce’

In summary, then, we have a PS5 that offers nearly the same CPU performance across eight cores and 16 threads as its non-Pro predecessor, paired with faster memory to feed a 67% faster GPU. Sony’s own numbers state an approximate 45% increase in raw rasterization performance (rendering 3D objects into pixels on screen) with the PS5 Pro.

In layman’s terms, a current 1080p title on PS5 would move to 3840 x 2160, or a game that is GPU limited to 42 fps would now be able to hit 60 fps. But the biggest boost comes in that PSSR and dedicated ML hardware, which will be able to increase image quality resolutions without requiring double or more pure hardware muscle. Much like the Tensor cores on Nvidia’s GPUs, this dedicated GPU silicon will take a lower target resolution output – say, 1080p – and upscale that via machine learning reconstruction to a 4K output, all for only the cost of a few milliseconds in rendering time.

Not only does this machine learning system provide a vast increase to all games’ image quality, unlocking 4K (and possibly even better) resolution, but it also solves the issue for higher bandwidth and GPU performance, as this data is inferred rather than rendered. All this means that the PS5 Pro will provide a better-than-4K quality output to your screen at a far lower performance and bandwidth penalty.

The other piece of the graphical pie is, of course, ray tracing. Based on Sony’s own patent and developer documents, the PS5 Pro’s new GPU also offers a base 2x increase to ray tracing performance via improved hardware. In specific circumstances, it can even reach up to a 4x increase.

What about the games?

So enough specs, what does this mean for the games? In reality much of this will come down to how developers use the hardware and new features the PS5 Pro offers. I suspect we will see three main improvements for current games on the PS5 Pro and two more for new titles, with the first being the most exciting.

Dynamic Resolution and Unlocked Frame rates

Dynamic resolution and unlocked frame rates would come for free, tapping into the increased performance and latest SDK that will likely ship with a PS5 firmware update just before the PS5 Pro launches. These benefits could take current games that run at an uneven frame rate and use dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) to instantly run faster and smoother on Sony’s new console.

Games such as Alan Wake 2, which struggle to hit 30 fps and 60 fps in quality and performance modes respectively, could now lock to 30 and 60fps without a developer laying hands on the code. Spider-Man 2’s unlocked VRR mode, which generates frame rates that hover around the 70s, could now leap up into 100s. These are immediate boosts players can expect to see applied to their back catalog.

Developer Update Patch

Via development update patches, studios could easily go back to older games (even PS4 titles) and add an update to the engine code to increase visual quality via the SDK aligned PSSR libraries, or even just by using the increased hardware performance. If they use both, this could mean that an older game that was GPU bound on the PS5 could leap up to 4K/60fps… or maybe even higher, if the headroom was available. Games such as Red Dead Redemption 2 could easily be patched with a 4K/60 fps update that could lean into the PSSR solution to improve image quality, while also leaving enough head room on the table to boost visual quality and match the highest levels available on the PC version.

By leveraging the ray tracing increases in conjunction with PSSR reconstruction, a game could have a PS5 Pro version that could target 1440p/60 with an increased level of ray tracing effects. Cyberpunk 2077, for example, seems a perfect fit for a potential update here that could finally bring the console version close to the high-end PC version.

PSVR2 could also be the beneficiary of these increases, with the PSSR and increased ray tracing capabilities offering up the chance to bring performance better than the current PS5 quality into the VR headset. Gran Turismo 7 could gain the ray tracing effects used in replays during races, but now in VR. The development team could also choose to boost image quality and performance to 120fps and over 4K to improve the immersion of one of the best games on the platform.

New Games

The best thing about new hardware is new games, and with the PS5 Pro I can see a big increase in games pushing harder on frame rates and/or ray tracing as the potential market for them becomes bigger. And here may be a reason why we have not seen new first party titles so far this year, as the PS5 Pro will likely be a tent pole machine to show them off looking their best.

We may also see new titles that ship on both PC and consoles come with a ‘PS5 Pro mode’ that offers either a PSSR reconstructed 4K image and ray tracing effects that aren’t possible on the base PS5, or visuals and performance increased overall to be closer to the PC version. Forthcoming games Black Myth: Wukong and Star Wars: Outlaws have been recently announced to support RTX increases on PC. Some or all of these could now ship on the PS5 Pro and offer a closer alignment to the high end PC version, opening the door for more developers to push harder on ray tracing in games. We could even see older releases such as Doom, Quake, or even Tomb Raider come with a path traced version on PS5 Pro, creating a slew of cheaper remasters that offer a vast increase in quality and true next-generation enhancements for a far lower investment.

But unfortunately due to that CPU, Rockstar’s next visit to Vice City is likely to be capped at 30fps.

The Mid-Cycle Refresh Is Coming

The PS5 Pro may still not make much sense from a pure market place – this is no surefire hit. But the information leaked shows that, with the hardware and software solutions Sony has developed, the increases across current and future games could be transformative.

Cost will likely be around the $499 mark, which may be with or without the detachable optical disc drive we saw last year in the PS5 Slim. The design is likely to mirror that aesthetic, just with a bulkier figure. Based on the specs, it could even be on the same 6nm node as power use is vital, although a smaller 4nm is possible. Whatever the final design and price, the PS5 Pro could breathe new excitement into the console gaming market, as well as the potential for game visuals.

But what about GTA 6? I hear you scream. You will probably expect a beautifully ray traced world in 4K that looks even better than the reveal trailer. But unfortunately due to that CPU, Rockstar’s next visit to Vice City is likely to be capped at 30fps. As before on the PS4 Pro, developers could still ship a single SKU on PS5 base and Pro models and just let the boosted hardware smooth out any performance wrinkles and sharpen the pixels over the base model. This is almost certainly going to happen, but I suspect between now and when the PS5 Pro is inevitably announced at an event later this year, Sony will be working hard to ensure the developers that take this route are in the minority.

Michael Thompson is a freelance writer for IGN.

Hasbro Calls Larian an ‘Incredible Partner’ After Studio Confirms it Won’t be Making Baldur’s Gate 4

Larian Studios is officially finished with Baldur’s Gate. Director Swen Vincke revealed the news at GDC, confirming that the studio has scrapped its DLC plans and won’t be making Baldur’s Gate 4. In a statement sent to IGN, a Hasbro spokesperson responded by calling Larian “an incredible partner,” but offered little insight into what’s coming next.

“Larian has been an incredible partner, and together we are proud of the success of Baldur’s Gate 3. Watch this space for more on some awesome D&D games we are bringing to life through Hasbro’s studios and our network of licensing partners. We have an unbeatable library of toy and game brands and many fantastic partners around the world,” Hasbro’s spokesperson said.

Hasbro didn’t respond to IGN’s question about the future of Baldur’s Gate now that Larian is moving on, nor did it say whether Wizards of the Coast plans to hand the license to a new developer. Baldur’s Gate 3 has made some $90 million for Hasbro, an impressive sum even as the company has struggled overall, experiencing a revenue decline of 15 percent and operating at a loss of $1.5 billion in 2023.

Larian has been an incredible partner, and together we are proud of the success of Baldur’s Gate 3

Last year, Wizards of the Coast confirmed that it had canceled five Dungeons & Dragons games in development with various studios, including an internal project codenamed “Jabberwocky.” Starbreeze is currently working on an untitled D&D game codenamed Project Baxter using Unreal Engine 5, which is expected to be out in 2026. Elsewhere, Wizards of the Coast recently revealed its plans for Dungeons & Dragons’ 50th anniversary.

For now, work continues apace on Baldur’s Gate 3, which is adding additional evil endings among other content. Stay tuned for our full interview with director Swen Vincke on Monday.

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.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev Larian Working on Additional Evil Endings, and ‘They’re Really Evil’

Larian Studios may not be working on full-fledged Baldur’s Gate 3 DLC, but there are at least more evil endings on the way – and founder Swen Vincke says “they’re really evil.”

In an interview with IGN, Vincke teased additional campaign endings, saying that while players are “not going to see massive content changes,” the team is dedicated to delivering on the fan feedback they’ve received since launch. That includes some love for Baldur’s Gate 3’s more villainous players.

“So they’re working on the evil endings right now,” he said. “I’ve seen some of them. They’re really evil. So the evil players will be satisfied with that.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 lets players be the kind of Dungeons & Dragons character they’ve always dreamed of – even if it means being a bad person. Evil acts range from comedically kicking squirrels and being mean to NPCs to creatively killing – and even torturing – some of the characters you can find throughout the story. Larian even included a Dark Urge background for those who enjoy adding a bit of spontaneous evil spice to some encounters. Evil endings in particular, however, are something fans have wanted to be fleshed out since launch. Now that we know they’re on the way, evildoers can finally look forward to more satisfying narrative conclusions.

Support for evil endings should appease some of Baldur’s Gate 3’s more nefarious players, though Vincke says updates will be less substantial after previously promised features launch. He says Larian will eventually “scale down,” adding, “It’s just going to be support on bugs, because we want the team to be working on new things.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 has continued to sweep award shows since its full launch arrived last year, but the victory laps can only continue for so long before Larian finally closes its D&D chapter. To help make the transition a bit easier to swallow for fans, the studio has another promising update on the horizon: cross-platform curated mods.

So they’re working on the evil endings right now. I’ve seen some of them. They’re really evil

“So we are working with Wizards, Sony, Microsoft… a lot of partners to align,” Vincke tells us, “but we’re trying to get cross-platform curated mods in there so that people on console can enjoy the mods that are being made for the PC also. So that’ll be a big thing, I think, because there’s a lot of mods already, and then we won’t be able to support everything, but we should be able support quite a few.”

Even as the Larian team transitions toward a new future, Vincke is confident in the bold new direction. In an X/Twitter thread, the founder sympathized with those who are upset to hear that the developer won’t be creating any major expansions or Baldur’s Gate 4. However, he says the studio’s accomplishments have paved the way for a promising future. It’s unclear when updates for Baldur’s Gate 3 will come to an end or the order players can expect to receive changes, but fans at least have evil endings and more mod support to look forward to.

“The team has grown a lot during Bg3 and I think you can be very excited for what that growth means for our next game,” he said.

Whether your character is good or evil, Larian’s RPG masterpiece is already filled with storylines to discover. It’s so packed with content, in fact, that it features more than triple the word count of The Lord of the Rings books. For more on Baldur’s Gate 3, be sure to check out an early version of Astarion that traded in High Elf ears for a Tiefling’s horns. If you’re still hungry for more, you should check out our 10/10 review.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

Buy One Board Game, Get One 50% Off at Amazon (Now Updated with More Board Games)

Amazon is offering a Buy One Get One 50% Off promo on select board games. The list of eligible board games include several popular and highly rated titles like Wingspan, Cascadia, Star Wars Armada, Pandemic Legacy, Marvel Dice Throne, and more. We’ve sorted out our favorite picks below.

Wingspan Board Game

Wingspan from Stonemeier Games is an incredibly good board game. It came out in 2019, but it’s still one of the best board games to play in 2024. Wingspan looks like a deceptively simple game; the endgame goal is to attract as many birds as you can to your wildlife preserve and help them proliferate. There are only four actions you can perform: draw a bird card, play a bird card, get food, and lay eggs. Sounds simple enough, right? Well let’s just say these four actions mask an incredibly complex engine-building game with which you will have to juggle between bringing new birds into the fold and keeping your existing birds well stocked and in a breeding frenzy. Wingspan is infinitely replayable, and you’ll find yourself developing and honing new strategies with every subsequent playthough.

Cascadia Board Game

There are few games with quite the wide appeal of Cascadia. For starters, it’s got a wholesome theme of exploring the ecology of the Pacific Northwest. The mechanics are very simple, involving you picking one of four pairs of animal token and terrain hex to add to your growing map. The aim is to satisfy a random range of scoring cards by getting animals into particular patterns, and they range in difficulty from an easy family version to challenging gamer-level objectives. There’s even a fun solo campaign where you’re tasked with crossing off a range of variants and objectives. If there ever was a game for absolutely everyone, this is it.

Dice Forge Board Game

Dice Force is one of our favorite dice rolling board games. The faces of the dice change throughout a game of Dice Forge, where you can make offerings to the gods to earn their favor and add bigger numbers to your dice, giving you a better chance at rolling the result you need to succeed. New dice faces can reward different types of resources or even be applied to your opponents dice so you can get a reward based on what they roll. Players compete to earn the most glory, rolling dice to seek divine blessings and spending resources to achieve heroic feats, sometimes kicking other players out of game spaces in the process. Success can reward them with permanent bonuses, giving them the ability to call for reinforcements and gain resources used to improve dice or take extra actions.

Pandemic Legacy Board Game

If competitive gameplay isn’t your thing, how about working together to purge the world of infectious diseases? Building on the success of the original Pandemic, the Pandemic Legacy series introduces “legacy” concepts to the game, in which components are added or removed as you progress through the game, based on your decisions, successes and failures. After a few plays, your copy will be a unique record of your group’s play. So in addition to offering a very personal tale to engage you, Pandemic: Legacy also individualizes your strategic experience. We picked the Pandemic Legacy series as one of the best cooperative board games of 2024.

BOGO 50% Off Select Board Games on Amazon

Wizards of the Coast Unveils Dungeons & Dragons’ 50th Anniversary Plans

To mark the golden anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast is unleashing one of its most powerful monsters to destroy it all.

At GaryCon XVI in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (the hometown of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax), gaming publisher Wizards of the Coast unveiled its product plans for the 50th anniversary of the revolutionary tabletop role-playing game.

While the brand is releasing tie-in products that include fashion wear, like Converse sneakers and Hawaiian shirts by Reyn Spooner, and a partnership with Lego for D&D sets, it’s Wizards’ news gaming-centric books that really get the jubilations going.

In a press-only presentation at GaryCon, Wizards of the Coast — repped by story designers Amanda Hamon, Justice Arman, Jason Tondro, and senior story designer Chris Perkins — revealed more in-depth information about each of the new books than what’s been previously announced.

The main attraction is undoubtedly Vecna: Eve of Ruin, a high-level campaign in which players must stop the dark lich wizard Vecna. While Vecna’s origins date back to the Greyhawk setting in 1976, his name became widely known more recently through the blockbuster fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things.

Perkins says that all the books for D&D’s 50th anniversary “tie so closely to the past, present, and future of Dungeons & Dragons.”

IGN quickly runs down each of the new books hyped by Wizards of the Coast for D&D’s 50th-anniversary celebrations, which you can read below.

Vecna: Eve of Ruin

A new hardcover adventure at 256 pages, Vecna: Eve of Ruin is designed to take player characters from level 10 to maximum level 20. It is scheduled for release on D&D Beyond on May 7, and at retail on May 31.

Vecna: Eve of Ruin’s story opens in the Forgotten Realms, where players are recruited by three powerful known mages — Alustreil Silverhand, Tasha, and Mordenkainen — who inform them of Vecna’s plans to enact his Ritual of Remaking. If successful, all of D&D becomes Vecna’s domain.

Story designer Amanda Hamon revealed Eve of Ruin as “a journey of the multiverse.” “The player characters are made aware of a plot by Vecna to remake the multiverse,” Hamon said. “As you can imagine, that is not a good situation. Vecna is a nasty, petty, evil jerk who has permeated D&D’s fifty year history.”

She added that a key plot device is the Rod of Seven Parts, an artifact weapon from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. Players must travel to different D&D settings, including Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Eberron, Greyhawk, Avernus, and more, to assemble the Rod of Seven Parts before fighting Vecna head-on. Hamon teases these locations also house more iconic villains from D&D past who will show up in Eve of Ruin to foil their efforts.

Perkins says the return of the locations, almost all of which have been reintroduced throughout D&D’s Fifth Edition, are meant to be “subtle nods” to its history. With the inclusion of Greyhawk, Perkins teases Wizards is seeding possibilities for the future.

In addition to Eve of Ruin, Wizards of the Coast will also release the “prequel” adventure Vecna: Nest of the Eldritch Eye. Described as a “bonus adventure,” it is designed for lower-level players to acquaint themselves with Vecna as a threat through his minions, the Cult of Vecna. Nest of the Eldritch Eye will be available with all pre-orders of Eve of Ruin. It can also be purchased for $4.99 on D&D Beyond.

Quests From the Infinite Staircase

A new 224-page anthology book, Quests From the Infinite Staircase republishes six classic adventures from D&D history, all updated for Fifth Edition. It will be released for early access on July 9, and at retail on July 16.

Senior game designer Justice Arman explained that Quests From the Infinite Staircase is unified by a theme of “historical significance.” “I wanted to select adventures that were memorable, beloved, [and] had a common theme to them,” he said. These include creative innovations for D&D, such as quests that subverted hack-and-slash conventions, or defined D&D as a brand, such as adventures written by luminaries Tracy and Laura Hickman.

The revised adventures of Quests From the Infinite Staircase are as follows: The Lost City (1982), When a Star Falls (1984), Phaorah (1982), Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (1982), and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (1976).

Arman revealed the adventures are connected by a central nexus: The Infinite Staircase, an extra-dimensional realm with a staircase that spirals, well, infinitely. Every landing opens a door that leads to one of the adventures. Inhabiting the Infinite Staircase is Nafas, a new character and noble genie whose existence comes from winds blown through Infinite Staircdase’s doorways for eternity. “He is a distant and benevolent observer that helps characters travel from place to place,” Arman said. Arman confirms that Nafas has a statblock, but cautions against fighting him.

Unlike other D&D anthology books featuring planar travels, there is no requirement for plane shift spells or spellcasters. “All that’s needed is to happen upon the right door,” Arman explained. He adds that Quests From the Infinite Staircase are “slottable” into virtually any other campaign.

“I wanted to select adventures that were memorable, beloved, [and] had a common theme to them.

While all the adventures are updated for Fifth Edition, including a cultural inclusion process, Arman says their revival is more “translation, not a transcription.”

“I like to think [that], when we update adventures, we polish the text so the best part of these can shine,” he added. “It’s about the journey, not the destination.”

Revised Core Rulebooks

2024 isn’t just the 50th anniversary for Dungeons & Dragons. It is also the tenth anniversary for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, or 5E, which Perkins confirmed at GaryCon is still the most popular iteration of D&D of all time.

To mark the occasion, Wizards of the Coast is revising the three core rulebooks: Player’s Handbook (releasing September 17), Dungeon Master’s Guide (November 12), and Monster Manual (February 18, 2025). Each will also be made available for access on D&D Beyond a few weeks earlier, on September 3, October 28, and February 18 respectively. The 2024 editions will be priced as they were in 2014.

Perkins clarified that the new revised core rulebooks, officially designated by parenthesis 2024 — e.g. Player’s Handbook (2024) — are not “burning down the game,” but “taking books that are many people’s first steps into worlds of imagination to make them more accessible, easier to reference, [its] content easier to find, [to be] more useful at the game table.”

Overall, each revised book features UX improvements, new art, and “other things people have been asking for.” Perkins didn’t say much more on that particular subject, though he did tease an upgrade to the weapons system.

Player’s Handbook (2024) is a revised and expanded edition of the 2014 original. It has the same core 12 character classes, but now with a total of 48 subclasses with new illustrations for each of them. Perkins said that art is often the invitation that leads players towards classes and subclasses, so it was critical the art feel “aspirational.”

The Dungeon Masters Guide is also updated “for better flow,” along with tips for new DMs to run “a top notch game.

Other changes include a total rearranging of how it dishes out information; Perkins confirmed that the book will first inform players how to play D&D before even creating a character. Character creation will also ask players to select a class first before their species (formerly race) and background.

In a fun twist, Perkins said the characters from the cult classic Dungeons & Dragons animated series from the 1980s appear as illustrations (and aged up, so they are no longer children). Their gear also appears in the handbook with stats.

The Dungeon Masters Guide is also updated “for better flow,” along with tips for new DMs to run “a top notch game.” The revisions are the result of several major DMs that Wizards of the Coast consulted for input; Perkins confirmed only Matthew Mercer of Critical Role and Daredevil star Deborah Ann Woll by name.

The Monster Manual is “bigger” in 2024, with “apex-level monsters” and expanded statblocks for NPCs. Statblocks also have tweaked visuals, with initiative bonuses and even a set initiative score should DMs be disinterested in rolling for them. The revised Monster Manual will not contain every new monster in D&D 5E. Rather, it contains all the monsters from the original 2014 Monster Manual — each monster having undergone mechanical “fine tuning” — plus brand new monsters. Perkins said that other monsters that have appeared in other 5E source books “are still compatible.”

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977

The last book associated with D&D’s 50th year is not a source book, but rather a historical one. Billed as the publication of a historical document, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons 1970-1977 is a thick tome (it does 1d4 bludgeoning damage, or so Perkins joked) that publishes D&D creators Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s original notes that created Dungeons & Dragons. It will be released on June 18.

The book is sourced from the original documents themselves, which entered public record (and subsequently archived at the National Archives in Chicago) by Arneson’s lawsuit against TSR in the 1970s. At GaryCon, Tondro clarified that the book aims to show fans old and new just how D&D originated, without much editorializing. While the book contains commentary by D&D historian Jon Peterson, it is not a documentary nor even a “textbook.” Instead, the book is intended to act as a record that shows the precise germination of one of the world’s most influential and consequential games of all time.

”A lot of our players, quite frankly, don’t know any of this,” said Tondro. “They don’t know where the game came from. They don’t know how it evolved. I think they’d like to know.”

Eric Francisco is a freelance writer at IGN

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game Developers Show Off the Klowns’ Wacky Weapons

Asymmetrical multiplayer action game Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game is set to hit PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on June 4. As it’s playable at PAX East this weekend, IllFonic was kind enough to send over a look at and brief description of some of the weapons and tricks for the Klowns. Note that the tricks unlock over time during a match.

Klown Weapons

  • Cotton Candy Raygun – The main weapon of the Klowns, which fires a steady ray of cotton candy energy. Used for turning humans into tasty cotton candy cocoons by keeping your aim trained on a nearby human. Can also coat escape objectives and the resurrection machine to block human progression.
  • Mallet – a classic melee weapon with a hard hitting melee combo. Klowns can change the mallet for a lunging secondary attack that stuns anyone in the area of effect.
  • Boxing Gloves – Shorties favorite gloves, these dish out quick attacks and feature a block knocking secondary charge up attack.
  • Popcorn Bazooka – A ranged weapon that fires a burst of popcorn. Humans hit are damaged and tracked for a short period of time. Use this to effectively “spot” humans for your fellow klowns to zero in on.

Klown Tricks

  • LOL – Laughter is really the best medicine for Klowns, and with the Laugh Out Loud Trick, the Klown is able to heal, and get a substantial buff for a short period of time. All klowns have this ability standard, much like the Jump trick.
  • Finger Lure – Jumbo perfected the ultimate use of the Finger lure trick to catch humans in a hypnotic trance that pulls them towards a beckoning klown. Humans can break the pull, but it requires completion of a minigame.
  • Pizza Box – Great for camouflaging and sneaking up on humans for surprise attacks. Transform into the pizza box and show the humans that heartburn and indigestion are the least of their worries seeing this little box with legs.
  • Balloon Dog – A trusty balloon dog that Spikey can whip up in no time at all! This cute little companion sniffs out humans and helps the klowns track them down. Listen for barks and follow the dogs pointing directions.

If you’re at PAX East this weekend, be sure to stop by and give Killer Klowns a try.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

IGN UK Podcast 741: Dragon’s Dogma 2 Has the Sauce

Cardy, Dale, and Matt are back again to talk about video games. Who would’ve thought? This week the line-up includes both Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Alone in the Dark, as well as a venture into the world of movies with a look at the first trailer for Alien: Romulus. There’s also too much chat about what constitutes a sauce.

What’s your favourite sauce? Get in touch at ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast 741: Dragon’s Dogma 2 Has the Sauce

Nintendo’s Pastel Pink Joy-Cons for Princess Peach: Showtime Are Out Today

In celebration of the launch of Princess Peach: Showtime, Nintendo has released a set of eye-catching pastel pink Joy-Cons. If you’re someone who’s dying to get your hands on them, we have good news: while they’re sold out at some retailers, they’re still available at Best Buy and Walmart, for $79.99. They are definitely in danger of selling out altogether, so grab them sooner than later if you want them. See below for details.

Pastel Pink Joy-Cons for Nintendo Switch

If you’re looking to get your hands on the game itself, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered there, too. In our Princess Peach: Showtime buying guide, we’ve listed links to where you can buy the game (in both physical and digital formats) at a variety of retailers for $59.99. You can even still get the preorder bonuses at the time of this writing. And if you want to see more of this game before you pick it up, check out our Princess Peach Showtime! review.

Alongside new Nintendo games that are worth keeping on your radar, there are plenty of Nintendo-related deals to check out right now as well. In our roundup of the best Nintendo deals today, we’ve gathered together a variety of discounts, from games to SD cards. If you want to see what deals are available for other consoles, we also have roundups for PS5 deals, Xbox deals, and general video game deals.

Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.