The Outer Worlds 2 is almost here, aiming to not just be bigger than its predecessor but a better RPG in every respect when it releases on October 29 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S.
We had a great time with The Outer Worlds 2 when we previewed it back in August, writing: “If it’s not clear by now, I’m really into what Obsidian is doing with The Outer Worlds 2. While I appreciated Obsidian’s prior attempt at this universe, I never totally fell for it, but what the studio has achieved here in this prologue is exactly what I’d hoped for the first time around. And that’s exactly why I’m willing to bet that The Outer Worlds 2 will be one of those sequels. The ones that finally take an idea all the way to greatness.”
The Outer Worlds 2’s official release date is October 29, but if you’ve bought the $99.99 Premium Edition, you can jump in five days early from October 23-24, depending upon where you are in the world. Xbox Game Pass subscribers can also jump in early if they have a valid subscription and upgrade to the premium edition for $29.99. The Outer Worlds 2 is available for pre-download now.
The Outer Worlds 2 Early Access Launch Times
Thursday, October 23, 2025
PDT (San Francisco):
9pm
Friday, October 24, 2025
EDT (New York):
12am midnight
BST (London):
5am
CEST (Paris, Rome, Berlin):
6am
EEST (Turkey):
7am
HKT (Hong Kong):
12pm noon
CST (Beijing):
12pm noon
JST (Tokyo):
1pm
AEST (Sydney):
3pm
The Outer Worlds 2 Global Launch Times
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
PDT (San Francisco):
10am
EDT (New York):
1pm
BST (London):
5pm
CEST (Paris, Rome, Berlin):
6pm
EEST (Turkey):
8pm
Thursday, October 30, 2025
HKT (Hong Kong):
1am
CST (Beijing):
1am
JST (Tokyo):
2am
AEST (Sydney):
4am
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Ghost of Yotei sales are in-line with Ghost of Tsushima’s in Europe, new data shows.
As reported by The Game Business, Ghost of Yotei debuted at No.2 in the GSD European charts behind EA’s FC 26.
Sony has yet to announce a sales figure for Ghost of Yotei, which launched exclusively on PlayStation 5 on October 2, 2025. But we now know that in Europe it’s doing about as well as its predecessor, which launched in 2020 exclusively on PlayStation 4. That is, for its first few days on sale, as the GSD European chart runs to October 5.
There are a number of things worth noting here. Not only did Ghost of Tsushima launch on a console with a bigger install base at that point than PS5 has now, it launched during the pandemic, which saw record video game sales and player numbers as people were forced to stay at home during lockdowns.
The Game Business noted that Ghost of Yotei is the biggest first-party PlayStation launch since Spider-Man 2 in October 2023. Helldivers 2, which launched February 2024, remains the fastest selling PlayStation Studios game of all time, with an incredible 12 million sold in 12 weeks. The question is whether Ghost of Yotei will end up meeting Sony’s sales expectations over time; Ghost of Tsushima ended up a hugely successful release, with over 13 million sold as of September 2024.
But it shines a light on just how few new games Sony’s first-party studios have released over the last few years. Since Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 came out in October 2023, we’ve had the aforementioned Helldivers 2, the disastrous Concord, Team Asobi’s wonderful Astro Bot, Lego Horizon Adventures, MLB The Show 25, and a bunch of remasters. Naughty Dog has seemingly skipped the PS5 generation entirely in terms of brand new games.
First-party Sony games we know to be in the works include Bungie’s Marathon, Housemarque’s Saros, Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine, Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Haven’s Fairgames, and a multiplayer Horizon game from Guerrilla. A whole bunch of Sony first-party games were canceled as the company’s live-service push faltered, including a multiplayer The Last of Us game, a live-service God of War game, and another live-service title from Bend Studio. Bend’s last brand new game was 2019’s Days Gone on PlayStation 4, which launched on PC in 2021.
But how has Ghost of Yotei done in the U.S.? According to Mat Piscatella, senior director at Circana, Ghost of Yotei ranked 12th on its Top 15 Titles by Total Weekly Active Users chart for the week ending October 4, with 4.4% of active PlayStation players giving it a go. Coincidentally, Ghost of Tsushima also ranked 12th in its launch week back in 2020 with 4.4% of active PlayStation players engaging.
So it sounds like Ghost of Yotei has done about as well as Ghost of Tsushima did, at least at launch. It will be interesting to see if Sony says anything about its performance in upcoming financial reports, and how sales hold up in the coming weeks as we head into the crucial holiday season.
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.
Fans across the world are paying tribute to “titan of soul” D’Angelo, who died yesterday aged 51 after an undisclosed battle with cancer.
D’Angelo was behind the hugely popular Red Dead Redemption 2 track, Unshaken, and fans of the game as well as developer Rockstar paid tribute following the news.
In a statement posted to social media, Rockstar Games called D’Angelo a “true titan of soul,” writing: “We are eternally grateful for his track Unshaken which will forever be an enduring part of the legacy of Red Dead Redemption 2.”
The Grammy-award winning musician released three albums over his career. 2014’s Black Messiah was his last album, which makes the iconic track included on 2018 Red Dead Redemption 2’s soundtrack one of his final pieces. The entire track can be heard in the mission Dear Uncle Tacitus, in an impactful segment when you’re riding a horse back to camp. It boasts over 55 million streams on Spotify alone.
D’Angelo was a huge fan of video games and would visit Rockstar during Red Dead Redemption 2’s development after reportedly reaching out to Ivan Pavlovich, director of music and audio at the studio, through an intermediary, to “just play the game.”
“We weren’t even talking about doing music,” Pavlovich told RollingStone in 2018. “When D’Angelo comes through, he shows up at midnight, and he’s playing the game until four in the morning. Each time he was just like, ‘It’s incredible.’ It just blows his mind. He’s such a fan. I have never seen someone that excited. D’Angelo’s actually a massive, massive, massive fan of the game — more than I ever knew.” It was because of this that Pavlovich asked if D’Angelo would be interested in contributing to the soundtrack, which is partly why there are some vocal tracks on an otherwise chiefly instrumental score.
Dozens of artists have paid tribute to the musician, including Flavor Fave, Beyoncé, Nile Rodgers, Lauren Hill, and Doja Cat, but so have hundreds of gamers, some of whom were introduced to D’Angelo’s music through Red Dead Redemption 2. Others are learning for the first time that D’Angelo was behind the notable track.
“I can’t think about RDR2 without Unshaken and how that particular transitional scene changed the game to such a complete form of entertainment for me,” wrote one affected player. “For anyone who says ‘it’s just a game’ – they need to experience how this song was used.”
“If you haven’t heard any more of his music, you need to know the man was one of the absolute best in his genre, an elusive legend,” said another. “His album Brown Sugar is literally no skips, if you’re interested in music at all, it’s worth a listen.”
“My favourite video game song of all time. RIP. That song will always be a part of me,” wrote another fan.
Photo by Frans Schellekens/Redferns.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Battlefield 6 players haven’t decided what their favorite weapons are yet, but they’ve already fallen in love with a new movement tech called “ladder launching.”
To catch you up to speed, the ladder is a gadget available to use with the Assault class in Battlefield Studios and EA’s latest Battlefield game. It’s a traversal tool that can be used to reach high-up places, opening up opportunities to gain new vantage points or even sneak up on unsuspecting enemies. The thing is that now, just days after Battlefield 6 launched for PC and consoles, the ladder is also being used for much, much more.
If you’ve even accidentally whipped out the ladder while playing Battlefield 6 multiplayer, you might have noticed that actually mounting it can be a hassle. The bottom of the gadget bumps players around if placed at a certain angle, triggering moments that balance frustration with slapstick humor.
While some Assault classes in Battlefield 6 have found practical uses for the tool, others are struggling to use it at all. However, it’s a secret, third segment of the community that has pushed things even further by using those wonky physics to catapult themselves around maps.
X/Twitter user @mokeysniper published a video detailing exactly how the ladder launch works, admitting that, while the move is far from a game-breaking exploit, it is quite fun to pull off. All it takes is maneuvering around the gadget at the right angle and speed, causing a chain reaction that sends players careening through the air.
Sadly, ladder launching is, mostly, practically useless in Battlefield 6. That said, some players are still finding ways to create entire montages centered around ladder launching.
Players probably should get too used to ladder launching in Battlefield 6, though, as David Sirland, lead producer at Battlefield studio DICE, has already confirmed the Battlefield Studios team has plans to deliver a patch in the future. Considering the average player will find its bumpy edges more annoying than useful, a patch is probably a good call.
We can likely expect even more ladder launching clips to show up online while the team fixes the Assault ladder. In the meantime, you can see how other players are at least trying to use the ladder, below. You can also read our Battlefield 6 multiplayer review.
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).
Battlefield 6’s multiplayer action is all about layers. You have an infantry layer, where teams exchange gunfire on foot; there’s the land vehicle layer, where tanks and armored cars reshape the front lines with powerful weapons capable of decimating infantry and bringing entire buildings to the ground; and then there’s sky layer, where a small number of flyers hold dominion over the air, with the potential to flatten ground forces outright. What’s impressive is not only that each layer is so different, but also so well constructed, and somehow they all fit together seamlessly. A few of the maps have a bad habit of becoming sniper-infested hellscapes, and it takes a little too long to unlock the better equipment that makes your loadouts really interesting, but those are minor gripes with what is otherwise one of the best multiplayer shooters of the year.
Most of the fighting happens between general infantry, and great moment-to-moment gunplay is the anchor of the whole experience. Weapons look and sound awesome, especially if you have headphones or a good sound system to pick up the deep booms and subtle details like bullet casings falling to the ground. Guns are accurate, but account for bullet travel and drop just enough to reward skillful shooting – though the modest recoil and bullet spread in most weapons also means you don’t need to be a hardcore shooter veteran to be able to land shots.
There are four classes to choose from that are well balanced overall despite having very distinct identities. Running and gunning as the Assault Class is a lot of fun, but switching gears and focusing on keeping your allies alive as a Medic is rewarding in its own right. Using your defibrillator to keep your team’s collective stock of lives from draining while simultaneously getting one of your fighters back in the action can help turn a match of attrition, even if you choose to be less involved in the actual combat. It’s great for ensuring that anyone can contribute by playing a role well.
That said, I have some mixed feelings about how the Loadouts are assembled. Any class can equip any gun, and while I appreciate the freedom, it’s hard not to want to just put my favorite assault rifle on every class and call it a day. Sure, there’s a bonus effect for using the weapons traditionally associated with each class, like how the sniping-focused Recon class has a faster rate of fire and better accuracy while using snipers, but the effects are modest enough that I quickly found myself ignoring them. That’s not to say that classes don’t matter – you still need to be an Engineer in order to repair tanks, for example – but the lines are a little too blurry for my taste.
Being a good tank commander can make or break a match.
The other issue is with how long it takes to unlock things between matches. Most equipment and weapon options require you to reach certain levels or complete multi-tiered challenges to access them. That’s all well and good, and a standard set of daily and weekly challenges help keep the level ups from being a painful slog, but the level requirements are too high. You can’t even start working on the class specific challenges, which are necessary for earning alternate sub-class-like training paths, until you hit level 20, which could take dozens of hours. Given that really powerful equipment options like the Deploy Beacon, which acts as remote spawn point for your squad, are locked behind that, it holds back the early experience an unfortunate amount before eventually hitting its stride.
The next layer up is when vehicles get involved – while relegated to the larger maps, all hell starts to break loose in the best way with their arrival. A tank rolling down the street creates equal parts control and chaos. They are a focal point of every fight, able to send the enemy scattering as its machine guns and cannon erupt. As buildings explode and debris rains down, they also become the most important target to clear. Whether that means calling in a tank of your own, switching to the Engineer class after getting taken out so you can fire rockets, or something else entirely is up to you, but the way vehicles flip strategic calculus is extremely effective for keeping matches interesting. I also appreciate that, while not necessarily hard to use, tanks do have a higher skill requirement than fighting on foot. Knowing when to use defensive countermeasures or when to push forward to seize territory rather than retreat and let friendly Engineers repair you means a good tank commander stands out, and they can make or break a match if handled correctly.
As a bit of an aviation nerd, I’m a sucker for the final layer: the skies. I love getting in a jet, winning dogfights, then strafing the other team, with some bombing runs mixed in for good measure. Airplanes and helicopters make it fun to be in the skies, terrifying to be underneath, and so satisfying to shoot someone down with a well-placed rocket while on foot. They have the highest skill requirement, asking you to learn a complex set of controls and have a more nuanced understanding of how aircraft operate in order to best utilize them. I’m ok with that in principle, but the lack of a good method to train or practice those skills also means it’s extremely difficult for newcomers to learn to fly. There’s a great firing range for trying out guns, and the lack of a similar option to practice flying means fewer players will be able to enjoy success in the skies.
The classic smattering of Battlefield modes returns, and they are just as fun as ever. Team Deathmatch is a good warmup, but the 64-player battles of Breakthrough and Conquest remain the standouts due to their stunningly massive scope – the former asks one team with limited lives to capture points and advance the frontline against limitless waves of defenders, while the latter has both teams fight for control of shared territory. They are as good as ever at funneling the action towards specific areas, leaving room for big battles in the streets and skies while up-close and personal skirmishes happen on the objectives.
The maps are generally strong, though some have been taken over by snipers.
Beyond that you have options like Rush, a Counterstrike-like mode focused on smaller groups that became another one of my favorites due to it’s instant action and short duration, making it a good alternative for quicker sessions where I don’t have time for a prolonged tug-of-war. The brand new Escalation mode has also impressed, having you fight for a large number of control points that decreases over time, forcing more and more intense battles as you near the end. I like that quite a bit, as the changing shape of the battlefield necessitates a fun shift in tactics throughout.
There are nine maps at launch that are generally strong, ranging from the crowded streets of Saints Quarter, which is perfect for close quarters action, to the enormous, vehicle-filled Operation Firestorm. Empire State is one of my favorites, with a great mix of open areas full of roads, buildings to duck into, and rooftops to snipe from. It’s a tactical advantage to learn the maps, and knowing that seizing the rooftop of a building opposite an objective point so you can wipe out an enemy squad from on high emphasizes the thoughtful nature of Battlefield 6’s combat.
Not every map is a winner right out of the gate, however. Liberation Peak has already become a well deserved meme in the community because of how one hill is always filled with snipers, which really takes away from the class balance that Battlefield thrives on. Mirak Valley is pretty similar, particularly in games of Breakthrough, where the attackers have too little cover in their push against a team of sharpshooters. And while I really like New Sobek City overall, with varied terrain and joyfully destructible structures that help it stand out, it can also become littered with anti-vehicle mines to the point of rendering tanks useless. That might be more of an issue with how the mines themselves are balanced, as they have a tendency to become far too numerous very quickly, but it takes away from what is otherwise a top tier place to fight.
It certainly helps that the maps all look great, especially once you factor in their excellent destructibility. Chunks of cement rain down as bullets collide with buildings. Cars and buses explode, and cover can be erased in an instant with a well placed shot from a grenade launcher. Bring a tank to bear and you can crumble entire buildings (which is terrifying to be on the wrong side of), changing the terrain in ways that are meaningful, and never quite the same from match to match.
But the most impressive part is how all of it – the combat, the levels, the destruction – comes together. There was one moment where I was in a pitched battle for control of a zone in the construction sites of New Sobek City. The enemy was entrenched until I rode my tank in, smashing through a wall and a few support columns in the process. Dust and debris covered everything, but I ignored it as I sprayed gunfire from my machine gun, and my teammates mopped up the rest. It was gorgeous, and something you simply won’t find at this scale in any other game.
It’s time for my weekly Pokémon TCG sealed product price watch. Suprise suprise, the secondary market in TCGPlayer is giving big box retailers like Amazon a run for their money. Let’s just keep in mind that TCGPlayer is a marketplace, so this is small to medium sellers undercutting billion and trillion dollar companies here.
TL;DR: Deals for Today
I’ll give it to Amazon, some in-demand products are cheaper on there today too, we’re talking Mega Evolution sealed product, Black Bolt and even a premium collection ex box. Don’t forget that Pokémon Legends: Z-A drops on Thursday too, and I’ve got all the preorder links you’ll need above and below. There’s a song in that somewhere? Let’s get into it:
TCGPlayer is really showing up big box retailers. The secondary market is saving trainers a fortune right now, and will continue doing so until the Pokémon Company floods the marketplace with sealed product, which will happen eventually. A good example here is the Surging Sparks ETB, which is currently $92.94 on Amazon. If you check over on TCGPlayer right now, you’ll pay $74.95. That’s nearly $20 over market value, and there’s plenty more where that came from in the carosel above.
MTG: TMNT Preorders are Live
New game mode aside, MTGs latest Universes Beyond addition is another huge IP with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Play Boosters are available, so getting a box is a great idea before preorders sell out and it becomes harder to build a deck. The Commander Deck is ideal if you want a solid foundation for a game of Commander but want to modify it with single cards down the line. Of course, the TMNT bundle comes with a few goodies including 9 play boosters, foil alt art promo card, 30 land cards and some tidy accessories.
Pokémon Legends: L-A Preorders
It’s nearly time trainers! Thursday see’s the release of the most radiacally different mainline Pokémon game, Legends: Z-A. Set as a continuation of Pokémon X and Y and continuing the game mechanic changes seen in Legends: Arceus, Legends: Z-A is going full real-time combat over it’s tried and tested turn-based battle style. It’s going to be a landmark moment for the worlds most popular entertainment franchise, so make sure you have your preorder in.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (3 Months)
Well, Xbox isn’t in the good books of gamers worldwide right now, but you can dodge the Game Pass (eventual) price hike with 3 months of Ultimate for $59.99, which is $30 cheaper than the dramatic price hikes. If you’re on Xbox, this is a good time to stack up on Game Pass.
Final Fantasy IX (Nintendo Switch)
We gave Final Fantasy IX a 9.2 back in 2000, so $40 for a JRPG classic isn’t much to ask, right? Well if the re-release hasn’t sold you on it’s own, this version comes with high resolution cut scenes, and game modifiers including high speed and no encounter modes topped off with an Auto Save function. Also, character models are high resolution now too, so this physical edition of FFIX should wet you nostalgia appetite.
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.
Ubisoft staff were informed of the news this afternoon via an internal email which simultaneously discussed the need for Vantage Studios’ leadership team to be “aligned” with its core goals, while wishing Côté well for the future. IGN understands that Côté was offered a role as part of Vantage Studios’ leadership, but declined.
In an internal note to Ubisoft staff obtained by IGN, Vantage Studios co-CEO Christophe Derennes said he was “disappointed” by Côté’s decision, and that the former leader “had his own expectations and priorities related to Vantage Studios’ creation and future.”
“Following the organizational restructuring announced in March 2025, Marc-Alexis Côté has chosen to pursue a new path elsewhere outside of Ubisoft,” a Ubisoft spokesperson told IGN today. “While we are saddened to see him go, we’re confident that our talented teams will carry forward the strong foundation he helped build.
“We are deeply grateful for the impact Marc-Alexis has had over the years, particularly in shaping the Assassin’s Creed brand into what it is today. His leadership, creativity, and dedication have left a lasting mark on our teams and our players. We thank him sincerely for his many contributions and wish him continued success in all his future endeavors.”
Côté, known internally by his initials as Mac, joined Ubisoft in 2005 as a software engineer, before working as a lead engine programmer on Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. From there, he joined the Assassin’s Creed series in time for Brotherhood, working as a lead level designer, before serving as a game director on Assassin’s Creed 3.
As creative director, Côté led development on a string of projects built at Ubisoft Quebec, the talented team which made Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag DLC Freedom Cry, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, and then Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, for which Côté served as senior producer.
In March 2022, as Quebec worked on Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Ubisoft sought to relaunch the series with a more consistent story focus via the Animus Hub (then referred to as Assassin’s Creed Infinity), it was Côté that took the reigns on the entire franchise, laying out a Marvel-style slate of upcoming projects that included the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed Hexe, which still lacks a release date.
More to follow…
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
When Pokémon Legends: Z-A was first revealed, we all immediately got to work speculating on when it would take place in the Pokémon timeline. Not where, we knew that: it takes place entirely in Lumiose City from Pokémon X and Y’s Kalos region. But given that Legends: Arceus was a time-traveling narrative going back hundreds of years into Sinnoh’s past, we had every expectation based on trailers that Z-A would be many, many years in Lumiose City’s future.
We were incorrect! We now know exactly when it takes place, and it’s not nearly as big a leap as you’d think.
We’ve been playing Pokémon Legends: Z-A for review and the embargo has now lifted. So we can confirm, from first-hand experience talking to multiple characters (most of which we unfortunately can’t directly cite or show due to the ongoing embargo restrictions), that Z-A takes place just five years after the events of X and Y. It’s not a time traveling narrative, it’s a direct sequel that offers a follow-up to many of the characters and situations introduced in X and Y.
For instance, we already know that you get to hang out with AZ, a 3,000-year-old man who plays a pivotal role in X and Y. We also know that Mable, a former member of Team Flare, takes on the role of Pokémon professor in this game and sends you out to catch Pokémon with various challenges. Other characters you’ll remember from X and Y show up as well, some of them dramatically changed, but we can’t and won’t spoil them just yet.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A being a direct sequel is actually a pretty big deal. The Pokémon universe has been real hand-wavey with how the different games and regions relate to one another over the years. While there have been some direct sequels before (Gold and Silver after Red and Blue, Black and White 2 after Black and White, etc), later games have introduced time travel (Legends: Arceus), alternative universes (Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire), and basically every game has implied that all the other games’ locations and monsters exist in the same world, but events taking place in those games may or may not be canon depending on which one you’re playing. The Pokémon timeline, if drawn out, probably looks far more ridiculous than the Zelda one at this point.
But if you were wondering what happened to most of the main cast of X and Y five years after the events of the game, here you go: this is just a straightforward sequel! In hindsight, we should have seen this coming when they named it “Z-A” after X and Y.
My review-in-progress of Pokémon Legends: Z-A is now live, if you want to check out my impressions of the first 24 hours, with a full review coming next week. I’ve also been writing about how the Nurse Joy job is now open to people who don’t look exactly identical to the original Nurse Joy after 27 years in Z-A.
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.
Review codes for Pokémon Legends: Z-A were only sent out less than a week ago, but I’ve already put in around 24 hours or so in the last five days. Across that time I’ve been catching every new species of Pokémon I find, doing every side quest that pops up, and stopping every so often to completely change my outfit. I’ve currently got a full team all in the level 50s, and I can’t wait to stop writing this review-in-progress to go play more. It’s real good so far!
There are a few reasons why I don’t feel comfortable scoring Z-A right now. Apart from simply not having beaten it yet, the embargo we’re publishing this under is pretty strict about what we can and can’t say or show. We always try to avoid spoilers (and recent leaks mean plenty are already in the wild), but here we can’t even talk about basic plot details that happen literally in the first 10 minutes. We can’t mention loads of the specific Pokémon in Z-A, despite the fact that any number of them might casually roam across our footage at any time. We can’t even show you the map of Lumiose City, where everything in Z-A takes place. It’s difficult to say exactly how close to the credits 24 hours puts me, but I’ll likely be back with my final, scored review shortly after launch.
We also haven’t had the chance to test it on Nintendo Switch 1 ahead of time, although I am at least so happy to report that Pokémon Legends: Z-A runs great on Nintendo Switch 2. It glides along at a smooth framerate with very, very few hitches or hiccups. There is occasionally still some sudden pop-in of NPCs, including ones positioned very close to the player, and here and there I’ve seen a character do that creepy thing where their head and neck suddenly snap into place as I get closer. But critically, unlike Scarlet and Violet, none of this is horribly distracting, nor does it really detract from the overall experience. Because of Scarlet and Violet, I spent the first 20 minutes or so paying close attention to whether or not Z-A ran well. But then, after that, I barely thought about it again, a state of mind which I consider ideal. Here’s hoping that’s still the case with the Switch 1 version, which I will take into consideration as part of my final review either way.
Running well doesn’t equate to a game being pretty, of course, and Z-A isn’t going to win any beauty contests. Lumiose City looks fine. Its buildings are covered with mostly flat images of the same couple of window and terrace patterns over and over again. Up close, the effect is pretty weird – like someone painted a Looney Tunes door on a wall so Roadrunner would crash into it. The samey buildings are broken up with occasional trees, battle courts, parks, and the same bench copy-pasted about 100 times. There’s a greyish sewer system with greyish water running through it, and rooftops occasionally interrupted by same-looking cafe set-ups.
The reduced scale of this world has worked in Game Freak’s favor.
That said, I do think that the reduced scale of the world has worked in Game Freak’s favor with Z-A when compared to, say, Arceus or Scarlet and Violet. The city is smaller, so it’s more densely packed with trainers, Pokémon, items, shops, and other actually interesting things to see and do. I’m not running for minutes on end through massive fields of flat, GameCube-style textures, with nary a point of interest in sight. As a result, similar to Z-A’s performance, it was easy to stop thinking about the low-quality building design fairly early on.
That’s also helped by the fact that building interiors and the character and Pokémon models themselves look pretty good, and the human characters in particular are more varied than ever before. While almost every NPC you meet in the city is categorized by trainer type and given an appearance to match, Game Freak is now experimenting not just with diverse facial features and skin tones, but also clothing items. We saw some of this in Scarlet and Violet, but almost everyone was wearing school uniforms, so it wasn’t nearly as noticeable. Now, you might see two athletic trainers wearing differently colored versions of the same athletic gear, or two artists with different colored aprons.
Small a touch as this sounds, combining that with facial differences does a lot to make Lumiose City feel inhabited by many different, diverse people instead of the same 10 trainer types repeated ad nauseum. That customizability extends to the protagonist, too. There are tons of hair, facial, and fashion choices to choose from, including new options to mix and match certain types of outfits (different undershirts with different jackets, for instance). It’s a massively refreshing improvement after spending most of Pokémon Violet expressing myself via the same four ugly purple uniforms and a variety of mismatched hats.
Another element that I think elevates Lumiose City far above the much larger overworld of Scarlet and Violet is that it’s dense with interesting landmarks, items, obstacle courses, stores, Wild Zones, shops, and people. Lumiose is round, with different streets running out from the center like wheel spokes, and the entirety of it is open to you within just a few hours of starting your journey. You can, if you want, scour the whole map very early on, though it won’t be especially interesting at first blush. But over time, you’ll gradually unlock new ways to get around and new things to see when you get there: a new travel method that lets you scale scaffolding to collect rare items at the top, new ways to get onto buildings and Assassin’s Creed your way to little nooks of the city you couldn’t quite reach before, and new Wild Areas teeming with new Pokémon to catch. That steady unlocking of a city you always had free reign of adds to the feeling of getting to know a new place you’ve just moved to.
Every Pokémon location in Lumiose City feels deliberate and well-considered.
Exploration is often rewarded, too. While I criticized Scarlet and Violet for just sort of slapping large quantities of Pokémon haphazardly over a big map, especially in later areas, every single spawn location in Lumiose City feels deliberate and well-considered. A line of trash bins might not have anything interesting to see when you pass by on one visit, but there could be a Trubbish on top the next. Flocks of Pidgey and Fletchling scatter as you dash into a courtyard. Spinarak regard you calmly while hanging from tree branches. If you really explore, you might encounter a rare dragon-type on a rooftop (the embargo forbids me from saying which one despite the fact that its evolutions have been confirmed for the game already); a Spritzee floating idly in a hidden cafe; once, I turned just in time to see an Eevee sprint past me into an alleyway, and I barely threw a PokeBall quickly enough to catch it.
I won’t (and can’t) spoil too much of the story, but what I can talk about is the interesting rhythm it establishes that feels, in practice, quite different from any other Pokémon game so far. Like Arceus, Z-A foregoes the traditional “gather eight badges” structure, though here you’ll divide their time between day and night – during the day, you’ll be catching Pokémon in Wild Zones, battling rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon, performing goofy side quest errands for individuals around the city, shopping, and exploring. At night, you have the option to visit Battle Zones where you take on trainers and complete challenges to raise your score and eventually collect a Challenger’s Ticket, which unlocks your promotion match for the next level of the “Z-A Royale.” There are 26 ranks total, one for each letter of the alphabet. I am currently at rank D, though I wish this was slightly more fleshed out as a proper competitive mode rather than just a story vehicle – for instance, you don’t exactly spend a meaningful amount of time at every single one of the 26 letter ranks.
I’ll have more to say on this in the final review, free from my embargo shackles, but I am really enjoying the story so far. Ditching the eight badge trainer journey like Arceus before it allows Game Freak to flesh out a deeper, more interesting cast of characters, both the heroes and the villains. There’s simply more reason for them to be where you are, doing things alongside you and participating in the world-changing events you’re experiencing. I’m also fascinated by how much Z-A appears to be inspired by the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. The enclosed city setting, the absurd and silly tone of the side quests, the story’s concerns with community and civic issues, and the protagonist bopping around a metro area solving problems by being absurdly stronger than everyone else all lend Lumiose City big Kamurocho energy.
Which leads me to the meat and potatoes of any Pokémon game: the battling. With Z-A, Pokémon has gone full action game. Not a turn-based battle in sight. While I don’t think I want Pokémon to fully depart from doing turn-based combat forever, this works pretty well as a detour. Game Freak did an admirable job translating its traditional battle system into one that works in an active-time environment, especially with moves seemingly so specific to the turn-based format. Protect and Detect now stop damage for a set period of time instead of one “turn.” Spikes dumps, well, spikes all over the floor in an area, forcing you to steer your Pokémon out of it. Long-range moves keep Pokémon out of harm’s way, but take longer to execute and recharge than more risky, short-range ones.
There are a lot of new tactics and strategies to mess around with.
There are a lot of new tactics and strategies to mess around with, such as how movement and dodging works. You control your trainer directly, and can either hold ZL to open the move select menu to send your active Pokémon into the fray, or release it to have them follow you around, allowing you to guide them while dodging. This makes for an interesting combat flow as I strategize around calling my Pokémon back to me to dodge an attack, then positioning them ideally to set up their next move before the opponent can swing again. The system is a bit awkward at times, especially in enclosed areas, but I’m interested to see what a competitive meta looks like with this format.
These tactics grow even more critical and chaotic in boss battles with Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon, of which Z-A has many. These battles all take place in uniform, wide, circular arenas, but the Pokémon themselves are far from ordinary. Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon are essentially Z-A’s answer to Arceus’ Frenzied Noble Pokémon. In addition to their regular movesets, they each have additional unique abilities you’ll have to avoid, such as turning the arena into a bullet hell you have to dodge around, or suddenly appearing right in front of you for an attack. Like in Arceus, your trainer can get hit and even die (sorry, I mean “black out”) if they’re attacked too many times by an enemy Pokémon, and that becomes a legit concern as Rogue Megas will enrage partway through and try to attack you directly.
The best way to counter this is to Mega Evolve your own Pokémon or use “Plus” moves, which are superpowered versions of regular moves that also consume the energy you need to Mega Evolve. Unlike in Pokémon X and Y, where you could get away with fighting Mega Evolved Pokémon with regular monsters, you really do need to engage with the Mega mechanics in Z-A. Though it starts off pretty tame, Z-A quickly ramps up the difficulty – even doing every side quest, I’m still finding its boss battles will make me sweat a little.
Man, I was going to try and hold back a bit on this review-in-progress since I still have plenty to see before my final review, but I’m just so genuinely excited about what Game Freak has done here. I liked Arceus a fair amount and thought it showed promise, but have been broadly disappointed with the slow backslide I saw from the studio in its move to console game development, and worried the quality dip was a new trend for 3D Pokémon games that we’d never escape. Pokémon Legends: Z-A, at least across the first two-dozen hours, is putting a lot of my fears to rest. It’s not revolutionary by any stretch, but it’s really good! I’m having fun, I’m excited to keep playing, I feel rewarded for exploring every corner, the story’s got my attention, and I’m not distracted by my Pokémon falling through the floor while they battle or everything crashing when I try to climb a ladder. If the rest of my adventure holds up (and the Switch 1 performance isn’t a disaster), we could finally have a 3D game worthy of the Pokémon franchise on our hands. It’d be about dang time.
Cain, the creator, producer, lead programmer and one of the main designers of Interplay’s 1997 post-apocalyptic role-playing game Fallout, released a video in which he talked about lore in the original Fallout that the team assumed was true but was never directly stated.
This “non-expository Fallout lore,” as Cain calls it, is lore from the first game only, lore the original team discussed among themselves and decided was true, and then made the game based on that. “None of this was written down” by any one of the 15 core people who developed Fallout, Cain said.
As a result, it is “not canon.”
“This is stuff that was true in the first game, but because it doesn’t exist in a design document anywhere, Bethesda is free to invent different reasons that the things that are in the game exist,” he prefaced. “I’m not canon, not anymore. You’re not canon just because you played the game or like it a lot. Bethesda’s canon. You don’t have to like that. You don’t have to like that water’s wet. I don’t like that white chocolate exists, but it does. So there we go.”
Why China nuked first
Top of the list is the explanation for why China nuked first. This is in reference to Fallout’s Great War, which took place on October 23, 2077 (Bethesda now hosts showcases on October 23 each year, aka Fallout Day). Cain had already said China nuked first in a previous video, putting to bed decades of fan speculation. But in this latest video he explained why China nuked first.
“This is not canon, but let me explain what I mean and why we thought that,” he began. “In the original game we had established FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) and that the U.S. was doing bio-weapons research. We weren’t supposed to. In fact, we had signed a UN treaty saying we wouldn’t do that, and I think you can find that out in the game. China discovered that we were doing it. How did they discover it? Espionage. But they found out we were doing it, and we went, ‘Oops our bad, we won’t do that anymore.’ But we kept right on doing it, we just moved the research to another base. It was the hidden base that’s in The Glow, where you eventually discover ZAX the supercomputer.
“When China found out we were still doing it and we had just moved, well they had already tried diplomacy and espionage and none of that was working, so they just nuked us. They nuked us. We nuked back. Other countries nuked because all we saw, all anyone saw, were missiles flying.
“China technically started it by firing the first nuke. But you could argue that the U.S. technically started it by doing illegal bioweapons research and then lying about it multiple times.”
And what of Russia’s involvement? Cain went on to explain that the development team assumed Russia in the ‘90s (and therefore in the ‘50s projected future in the Fallout alternate history timeline), had broken up to become “a bunch of little bickering states.” The EU had unified, and the U.S. had annexed Canada (a prediction not lost on Cain given current events). “But anyway, we were kind of on friendly relations with Russia in the Fallout universe,” he added.
This is why one of Fallout’s pre-made characters is Natalia, the granddaughter of a Russian diplomat. “Obviously, we were friendly enough with the Russian embassy that they got some of their diplomats into one of the vaults, the vault you’re in,” Cain explained. “So, obviously, this wasn’t a country we were at odds with.”
The Vault 13 lottery
So, that explains the unspoken lore behind why China nuked first. But Cain had a lot more lore to reveal. It turns out that the three pre-made characters the player could choose from were in fact selected via a lottery by the inhabitants of Vault 13 — a lottery that was rigged.
“We had three pre-made characters in Fallout,” he went on. “There was Max, who was the big dumb idiot combat guy. There was Natalia, who was the dextrous thief kind of character. And then there was Albert, who was the smooth talking manipulator talkie guy.
“If you look at those three characters, you may go, that’s the best the vault had to offer? No, the vault did a lottery. They basically drew straws. They knew they had to send someone out. So they had people draw straws and whoever drew the short straw had to go out into what was presumed to be a radioactive wilderness that would kill them. But hopefully they would get back before the radiation killed them with a water chip replacement.
“This was just assumed. The pre-made characters support it. I believe there’s some dialogue here and here that kind of supports that no-one chose, especially if you play Max, no-one chose for that character to go. That wasn’t their first choice. That wasn’t even their best choice. That wouldn’t even been anywhere near the choice.
“Except one thing we also talked about and laughed about as also possibly being true was that the entire lottery for who leaves the vault was rigged. And that would explain those three characters. You have this guy who’s an idiot. Why would you send him out? Well, gets him out of the genepool. Then you have Natalia who’s stealing everything. Probably had pissed people off because she had stolen other people’s stuff. She’s gone. Albert was always trying to manipulate everybody because he’s such a smooth talker. He’s gone. So getting rid of these characters was probably high on someone’s list.”
Cain said that all this is hinted at by the corpse wearing a vault suit you see as soon as you step out of Vault 13 at the beginning of the game.
“They’d already sent someone out,” he said. “That also explains why they didn’t have much to give you. They probably had supplies for doing external exploration, maybe a radiation suit, maybe better weapons or whatever. But you’re not the first person they sent out. You have evidence of that the moment you step out. Whoever that guy was, I think we said his name was Ed, which means you knew him or you knew his name. Ed stepped out. Ed got attacked by rats. Ed died. All that’s left is Ed’s bones and a raggedy old vault suit. So, there’s evidence that yes, there was a lottery for and and you were not the first person sent out.”
Vault suits are 3D printed from a machine
Here’s a fun bit of ‘Non-Expository Fallout Lore’: the series’ iconic vault suits aren’t made of cloth, nor were they sewn together. There wasn’t a warehouse room full of them somewhere in the vault. Rather, vault suits were extruded. Yes, that’s right… the vaults had a machine that 3D prints the vault suits.
“I know this was something we had because one of the vault ideas we had was the vault suit extruder was broken, so everybody in the vault was naked,” Cain revealed.
“The reason, though, we wanted to do an extruder was first of all, that vault suit was skin tight. It was obviously highly tailored, but if this vault was supposed to be closed for hundreds of years, there’s no way you could have enough suits in there for everybody because there’d be multi-generations. Suits would wear out. People come in all shapes and sizes, especially if you throw kids into the mix. So, there was no way they could possibly stock vault suits for everybody, or even cloth to make all those suits for everybody.
“So, we just said, ‘Oh, there was some kind of extruder.’ You know, you typed in measurements, you stood in front of a scanner or whatever, and then a vault suit expressly for you was extruded. And that’s why they were all skin tight. That’s why they all had the numbers on the back. That way they didn’t have to make vault suits, a different vault suit for every single vault. When it extruded, it added your vault’s number on the back.
“So, we used to always assume that was going to be true, but then it never ever came up again. But if you do look in vaults, you never find, at least not in the base game, you never find boxes and boxes of vault suits.”
What the hell is Harold?
Next up is fan-favorite Fallout character Harold, a presumed unique FEV mutant who was once a sort of ghoul, but had become a sort of tree thing. Harold appeared in Fallout, Fallout 2, and even Bethesda’s Fallout 3, where he is worshipped as a deity at Oasis, but we’re never quite sure what he is or why he is in the state he’s in.
According to Cain, all the developers were trying to do with Harold was create a character who clearly wasn’t normal, someone who hinted at what might be possible beyond the confines of Fallout’s Southern California setting and all the horrible things that people were exposed to beyond the realm of the first game.
“People called him Harold the ghoul in the hub, but we didn’t necessarily agree that he was a ghoul,” Cain said. “I kind of thought he was a ghoul. Other people on the team thought he was FEV. Other people thought he was some mix of ghoul and FEV, even though FEV wasn’t supposed to work right on people who had been radiated.
“Harold was weird. That’s what we all agreed on. Harold was our example of, there’s some weird stuff out here. You want to see an example of that? Look at Harold. We don’t know what Harold is. Harold doesn’t know what he is.”
Why Sugar Bombs?
And finally, Sugar Bombs. For the uninitiated, Sugar Bombs are the Fallout franchise’s sugar-drenched cereal aimed at children despite being entirely unhealthy for anyone. Sugar Bombs didn’t actually make it into Interplay’s Fallout games, but were picked up by Bethesda for Fallout 3 and beyond (we even see them in the Amazon Fallout TV show). But Cain remembered how he came up with the idea, pointing to his obsession with the daily American comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.
“We designed Sugar Bombs,” Cain said. “I found notes where I mentioned Sugar Bombs. I was a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan. I had the box set. It was designed, but it was never added. We talked about it. We never added it. And it was purely I loved Calvin and Hobbes, so of course Sugar Bombs are in one of my games.”
So there you have it: why China nuked first; the lottery that decided who left Vault 13; vault suits being extruded; Harold not being a typical… anything; and the origin of Sugar Bombs. That’s quite the treasure trove from Cain, a collection of things that were a part of the original Fallout but were never described directly.
But remember, none of this is canon. As Cain says: “This is just for fun.”
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.
