Stellar Blade is getting a fully-fledged sequel, developer Shift Up has confirmed.
The PlayStation-published action game launched to a positive response back in April 2024, with players saying its gameplay mixed elements of NieR: Automata and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Now, Korean company Shift Up has confirmed a Stellar Blade sequel is on the way, via a chart showing the company’s future plans published as part of its latest financial results released today.
As confirmed within a presentation slide detailing how Shift Up expects to expand its franchises going forward, a Stellar Blade sequel is listed as coming next among others that look set to be released before 2027.
Before the sequel arrives, there’s mention of a “platform expansion” for Stellar Blade — this likely just refers to the game’s upcoming PC version, which is set to arrive on June 11, 2025.
This development period — before 2027 — will also include the launch of Shift Up’s mysterious Project Witches, a new multiplatform action RPG that’s still yet to be fully revealed.
“Stellar Blade stands out as a gorgeous and well-crafted action game with very impressive strengths and very clear weaknesses,” IGN wrote in our Stellar Blade review.
“Both its story and characters lack substance, and some of its RPG elements are poorly implemented, like dull sidequests that very often require you to retrace your steps through previous levels with very little done to make the return trip feel unique or rewarding.
“But its action picks up most of that slack thanks to the rock solid fundamentals of its Sekiro-inspired combat system, a deep well of hideous monstrosities to sharpen your sword against, and plenty of hidden goodies that do a great job of incentivizing exploration throughout.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
The series, which is already in pre-production, will “build upon the mayhem of the games,” according to a press release from Netflix. The streamer also revealed the series’ plot, which will follow “a determined, but in over his head, Barbarian who must rally a band of misfits to defend their village and navigate the comically absurd politics of war.”
The official Clash of Clans social media accounts also got in on the announcement fun. “Sound the horns, raise the banners, and reinforce your village walls — Clash is invading @Netflix!” they shared alongside a cute teaser video featuring the company’s devs playfully announcing the game via a group FaceTime call. “We’re making a new animated series starring your favorite mustachioed Barbarian and his high-pitched, hog-riding friends. Charge!”
Sound the horns, raise the banners, and reinforce your village walls—Clash is invading @Netflix! We’re making a new animated series starring your favorite mustachioed Barbarian and his high-pitched, hog-riding friends. Charge! pic.twitter.com/55hiZkajni
The Netflix crew also seems very excited to be finally bringing this game to life in a whole new way. “Clash has been a global gaming phenomenon for over a decade – filled with humor, action, and unforgettable characters perfect for an animated series adaptation,” John Derderian, VP of Animation, said.
“Working with the incredible team at Supercell, Fletcher Moules and Ron Weiner, we’re bringing all the fun, chaos and spirit of the world of Clash to life in a whole new way. We can’t wait for fans – old and new – to experience the mayhem.”
Netflix’s Clash animated series is still in pre-production, so we don’t have a release date quite yet. The streamer has invested heavily in turning video games into shows and movies. Arcane, based on League of Legends, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, based on Cyberpunk 2077, are the standouts, but there are Resident Evil adaptations, Tekken: Bloodline, Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, Dragon’s Dogma, Dragon Age: Absolution, Castlevania, and a lot more besides.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
Outspoken Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford has responded to a fan who expressed concern about the prospect of paying $80 for Borderlands 4, saying: “if you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
Publisher 2K Games and parent company Take-Two have so-far remained vague on whether they will go to $80, and Randy Pitchford has insisted the decision is out of his control. But, responding to one concerned fan on social media, Pitchford set the cat among the pigeons by saying that if you’re a “real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
Here’s the exchange:
“Randy, this game better not be 80 dollars. Don’t take that risk, a lot of gamers aren’t gonna pay 80 dollars and feed this notion of constant increase of the price tag. You are the CEO, you have some say with the price when it comes to your publisher.”
And here’s Randy Pitchford’s response:
“A) Not my call. B) If you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen. My local game store had Starflight for Sega Genesis for $80 in 1991 when I was just out of high school working minimum wage at an ice cream parlor in Pismo Beach and I found a way to make it happen.”
As you’d expect, Pitchford’s comment has sparked a vociferous response.
“Lmao CEO said ‘real fan’ WHOOO WEEEE in this economy,” said one social media user. “Wow that’s probably a bad take… cost of living crisis and you’re just gonna say ‘if you’re a real fan…’ damn,” said another. “What an elitist out of touch response,” another said. “His solution just buy it you know you will. Is this how you treat loyal consumers?” “You should have just left that response at ‘not my call’ and kept the gaslighting out of your response,” another added.
Last week, during a PAX East panel, Pitchford insisted that he didn’t know the Borderlands 4 price but refused to rule out $80.
“I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t know. That is the truth. I’ll hit it straight on. It’s an interesting time,” he said.
“On one level, we’ve got a competitive marketplace where the people that make those choices want to sell as many units as possible and they want to be careful about people that are price-sensitive. There are some folks who don’t want to see prices go up, even the ones deciding what the prices are.
“There’s other folks accepting the reality that game budgets are increasing, and there’s tariffs for the retail packaging. It’s getting gnarly out there, you guys. Borderlands 4 has more than twice the development budget for Borderlands 3. More than twice. So the truth is, I don’t know what the price is going to be.”
In a recent interview, IGN asked Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick if the company would go to $80 for its games. Zelnick wouldn’t say either way, but did say consumers would be “willing to pay for the very best.”
“I have said for a long time that we offer enormous value and that that’s our job,” Zelnick said. “Of course, we certainly believe that compared to other forms of entertainment, whether that’s movie tickets or live events or streaming services, the value for our entertainment that we offer is just astonishing, and it’s our job. It’s our job to deliver much more value than what we charge. That’s our goal. We think consumers are willing to pay for the very best. It’s our job to make the very best.”
Earlier this month, 2K announced a cheaper than expected $50 price point for Mafia: The Old Country, confirming that it is not an open-world game, rather a linear, narrative-driven game. The announcement was positively received, with many fans saying they’re more interested in a high quality, cheaper, shorter story-driven Mafia game than a bloated open-world game filled with repetitive mechanics.
Indeed, there seems to be a growing call for more of these cheaper, manageable games, with Sandfall’s well-received Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which has sold an impressive 2 million copies despite being available day-one on Game Pass, held up as a potential trend-setter.
Given Borderlands 4 is due out September 12, 2025, 2K Games will have to announce the price sooner rather than later.
Photo by Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Lionsgate.
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.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 will soon see the release of Patch 8, which publisher Focus Entertainment and developer Saber Interactive have already said heralds the arrival of the hotly anticipated Horde mode.
But what else might it include? Recent datamines of Space Marine 2 itself may hold clues.
Warning! Potential spoilers for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 follow:
Let’s start with perhaps the biggest question Space Marine 2 fans have right now: what is the new class? Datamines suggest it is the Techmarine. Why? Because in the files was mention of a perk called ‘shoulder gun bolter,’ which is a clear indication that Techmarines are finally in play.
For the uninitiated, a Techmarine is a Space Marine engineer-type class who’s a big fan of the Cult Mechanicus as well as their Chapter. They’re big on technology and specialize in fixing and maintaining vehicles and other big stuff, such as Dreadnaughts.
You can see how a Techmarine might slot into a Space Marine 2 squad, which currently lacks a class of this type. And this ties into another datamined detail: the apparent ability to “summon” a Dreadnaught in Horde mode. Dreadnaughts are a part of the Space Marine 2 campaign (one viral moment involves a Dreadnaught being particularly heroic and badass), and you also fight alongside one in a PvE Operations mission. Could you earn the right to summon a Dreadnaught and, as a Techmarine, keep it alive, in Horde mode?
THIS is why I’m a fan of Warhammer 40k! Hats off to @PrimeVideo for producing Secret Level: And They Shall Know No Fear. Watch it here: https://t.co/Gf0i2d0Rus
I highly recommend giving the entire 19 min episode a watch. It’s immersive and awesome. It’s a happy grim dark ray of… pic.twitter.com/iuYxprAo2J
There’s more! As discussed in a recent video by Warhammer 40,000 YouTuber Chapter Master Valrak, dataminers recently unearthed evidence of a Grav-cannon in Space Marine 2. This is, typically, a big gun used by Space Marines that manipulate gravity to cause a target to crush itself to death. Could the Techmarine class, should it be a genuine upcoming arrival, exclusively wield the Grav-cannon? If so, I imagine there will be many players who gravitate towards it with the release of Patch 8.
It’s worth noting that Patch 8 remains under wraps for now, but we’re expecting Space Marine 2-related announcements during the upcoming Warhammer Skulls livestream this Thursday, May 22. Perhaps we’ll find out more there.
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.
Call of Duty fans are still digesting the news that Activision is walking away from Warzone Mobile, the game that was meant to lead the battle royale into a new era.
Over the weekend, Activision pulled Warzone Mobile from iOS and Android app stores, with the scope of the game being “streamlined” and an admission it had not met expectations. While servers will remain online for now, no new content or updates will be issued to the game, and players can no longer spend real money in it.
“We’re proud of the accomplishment in bringing Call of Duty: Warzone to mobile in an authentic way, [but] it unfortunately has not met our expectations with mobile-first players like it has with PC and console audiences,” Activision said.
It’s a brutal end for a game that clearly struggled right out of the gate. Warzone Mobile launched in March 2024 on iOS and Android as a Warzone-specific Call of Duty mobile experience that offered battle royale for up to 120 players, as well as cross-progression with the PC and console Warzone, Modern Warfare 2 and 3, and, later in the year, Black Ops 6.
IGN’s Call of Duty Warzone Mobile review returned an 8/10. We said: “Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile includes all the best elements of Warzone, while speeding up and streamlining matches and using cross-progression to make this a meaningful extension of the traditional experience.”
Activision’s hope was that Warzone Mobile would make a splash in the competitive mobile shooter market, where the hugely successful Call of Duty Mobile, developed by Tencent-owned TiMi Studio Group, is already established. With Call of Duty Mobile, which has seen 1 billion downloads since launch, revenue is shared between Activision and Tencent. Warzone Mobile, on the other hand, was developed entirely in-house at Activision, and so the company received a bigger slice of the money pie every time a player dropped cash on a battle pass or a cosmetic.
But Warzone Mobile, which requires more powerful mobile phones than Call of Duty Mobile to work well, failed to meet Activision’s expectations, and its development team was scaled down when, in September last year, Microsoft-wide layoffs hit across the games business.
Now, Call of Duty fans, especially those who did play Warzone Mobile, have lamented the state of the game and indeed the franchise.
“This game simply came out too early and wanted to be too greedy,” said redditor Maddafragg. “It could be seen on the Reddit videos, a lot of gameplay was not fluid with weird graphics, it could be seen that even if the game is playable, the device struggles to run it. The world of mobile gaming is cursed, it’s not just Warzone that’s dying. Dead by Daylight mobile and Star Wars hunter will also close the doors.”
“Turns out mobile games need to be optimized on most devices to be successful, you can’t just cater to high end devices and hope your game succeed — it won’t,” added piegeamorue.
“Greed is a dangerous thing. Activision was too greedy and when it leaked that they planned on killing CODM in favor of WZM they essentially turned tens of millions of people against the game. It became ‘us vs them’ and CODM is vastly more accessible than WZM — the loss was guaranteed.”
What’s next for Call of Duty, which appears to be in a tricky spot right now? Earlier this month, The Game Business reported that while Black Ops 6 launched big late last year, the Call of Duty franchise saw its users decline afterwards, and “more sharply” than in recent years.
Here’s the relevant blurb:
… the reality is that despite a strong start, Call of Duty has struggled to engage players to the degree it has in the past. According to Ampere, in March 2025, Call of Duty had 20.6 million players. That is still a huge number, but it’s slightly less than March 2024, which had 20.8 million players, and well down on March 2023, which saw 22.4 million players.
Related, there are a number of apparent datamined gameplay videos doing the rounds that show wall-running and even jet packs working in Black Ops 6. This, some believe, indicates this year’s Black Ops 7 will ditch Activision’s ‘boots on the ground’ mantra for gameplay reminiscent of Black Ops 3.
🚨‼️WALL RUNNING CONFIRMED FOR BO7‼️🚨 There is wall running in BO6 currently It is unclear if it’s leftover from BO3 that managed to make it’s way into a glitch through BO6 or if it’s from BO7 and is left in the BO6 files. @charlieINTEL@ModernWarzone@Dexertopic.twitter.com/0FJ0guUIEH
Activision told IGN its teams are busy and moving forward on a variety of work, so hopefully we’ll see the fruits of that soon. Microsoft’s annual June Xbox showcase is around the corner. Perhaps Call of Duty will turn up there. And, meanwhile, Call of Duty: Mobile is going strong, but, as we’ve pointed out, it’s not as lucrative a business for Activision, despite being bigger.
Activision Blizzard’s recent mobile struggles also call into question Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of the company itself, given Xbox boss Phil Spencer has made no secret that the decision was in part motivated by Xbox’s lofty mobile ambitions (Activision Blizzard owns King, the maker of phenomenally popular mobile game Candy Crush). Indeed, Microsoft plans to launch an app store of its own, taking on Apple and Google in the lucrative mobile game space.
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.
Helldivers 2 finally has Super Earth maps to fight on as part of the Heart of Democracy major update.
As had leaked last week, the Heart of Democracy update — out now across PC and PlayStation 5 — sees the Illuminate invasion reach Super Earth. You can now select missions on our home planet in Mega Cities and fight back alongside SEAF soldiers.
The city biomes include operations that work towards liberating the cities, which, developer Arrowhead said, have “a significant impact on planetary campaigns.” This is a part of Helldivers 2’s ongoing Galactic War, a community-driven meta narrative that Arrowhead orchestrates behind the scenes.
The Illuminate have reached the Heart of Democracy.
Our Mega Cities are under siege. Liberty now hangs in the balance. The Ministry of Defence has authorised arsenal upgrades and placed SEAF soldiers on active duty. Today, we fight for the future of Super Earth! pic.twitter.com/GxkrAQCmKD
The Helldivers are tasked with a new objective: to repel the Illuminate invasion by gaining ground over the squids as they fight to control areas where the fleet is landing. It won’t be a walk in the park, divers. Like a game of intergalactic tug-of-war, you will struggle against the incoming forces, gaining and losing control quickly.
You can activate Planetary Defense Cannons and take down the Illuminate fleet, as shown in the trailer. And, as mentioned, SEAF troops will help join the fight to defend the cities. These small squads will fight enemies on their own, or they can be ordered to follow Helldivers and provide temporary backup as you navigate toward objectives. You do, however, need to be mindful of civilians who are still roaming the streets; Helldivers 2 is as much about friendly fire management as it is blowing aliens up.
The Heart of Democracy update is part of Arrowhead’s long-term committment to keeping Helldivers 2 going for years to come following its record-breaking launch last year.
“Nah. It’s ALL Helldivers 2 for now,” he insisted. “A very, very small team will spin up something later this year and go at it sloowly. Helldivers is our main focus and will be for a loooong time.”
So, how long does Jorjani expect content updates for Helldivers 2 to last?
“As long as you folks keep playing and buying Super Credits we can keep it going,” Jorjani said, pointing to Helldivers 2’s virtual currency that’s used to buy Premium Warbonds. “Last summer we were kinda screwing the pooch so it looked like we wouldn’t be able to keep the train going for a long time – but we turned the ship around, you support us a lot so it’s looking bright.”
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.
Marc Laidlaw wrote 400 Boys in 1981 aged 21, long before he ended up Valve’s lead writer and one of the chief creators of the Half-Life games. The short story was published in Omni magazine in 1983, before it was picked up for Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology and enjoyed a wider audience. On Marc’s website, at the bottom of the short story itself, he points out 400 Boys has probably been read by more people than anything else he’s written, except perhaps Dota 2 seasonal ad copy. Yes, the video game world knows Marc Laidlaw as the lead writer of the Half-Life series. But he’s done a lot more than video games. It’s funny how things work out.
In a post-apocalyptic city where warring gangs follow a bushido-like code of honor, a new gang, the 400 Boys, forces them to unite. A blend of beauty and brutality from Canadian director Robert Valley, whose LDR episode “Ice” won the Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Animation.
“The inspiration for it just came out of walking around,” Marc remembers. “I lived in Eugene, Oregon and there was always the phone poles with the names of bands that were playing in town, and it was just name after name of super cool bands, and I just wanted a way to do that. I just wanted to make up lots of band names. So I came up with the idea of, if I have all these gangs in the story, I can come up with names for all these different gangs and that would be fun. And it was funny. That was kind of the thing that drove a big part of the story, just wanting to make band names.”
Now, over 40 years after 400 Boys was first published, it’s an episode of the fourth season of Netflix’s hugely popular animated anthology series Love, Death and Robots. The episode was directed by Robert Valley, the director of Zima Blue in Season 1 and Ice in Season 2. Tim Miller wrote it. The voice cast includes John Boyega, who famously played Finn in Star Wars. All of a sudden, 400 Boys is having its big moment. Marc Laidlaw never expected this.
“The story kind of faded out, but cyberpunk kept going and I didn’t really think about it that much,” Laidlaw tells me over a video call just days before Season 4 of Love, Death and Robots kicks off on Netflix.
40 years. That’s a long time for anything to be turned into something, isn’t it? But it might have happened earlier, around 15 years ago, when Tim Miller from Blur (the company that does all those fancy video game cutscenes and, these days, so much more), got in touch about maybe turning 400 Boys into something. It didn’t happen. Like so many projects, it fell apart following studio changes.
Then Love, Death and Robots exploded onto the scene in March 2019. This edgy, adult-oriented animated anthology was unlike anything we’d seen on the streamer. Some episodes were challenging, some were weird, some were weirdly challenging. Whatever they were, you couldn’t help but watch. And, Marc noticed, Tim Miller from Blur was involved. “I always say, I can’t imagine anybody else who would’ve turned The Drowned Giant, this J. G. Ballard story, into an episode of an animated feature,” Marc says. “So I had a lot of respect for Tim just from that.”
Marc moved to Los Angeles in 2020 and, as the pandemic eased, met Tim a few times at various events around town. He didn’t want to push 400 Boys, but maybe, just maybe, if this Love, Death and Robots thing kept on going, maybe it would come back around. Then, a year ago, Marc got the ‘would you be interested in us optioning 400 Boys?’ email. It was finally happening.
Marc spoke with Tim, who took over the script, about the story itself. He says the episode is faithful to the source, but there’s some new stuff that helps sell the story visually. He had a couple conversations with Robert Valley, the director. He pointed him to the 400 Boys audiobook, which Marc narrated (“I did a reading of this back in the pandemic when everybody was trying to entertain people by posting audio books of their fiction and stuff on YouTube”).
But really, Marc wasn’t that involved. “It just was fun to sit back and not have to be involved in the trenches on something for once,” he says. “And I just kind of wanted to enjoy it when it was done and see what they made of it.”
And Marc has seen the episode, as you’d expect. “John Boyega and the characters and the accents and the setting is just so cool to me. I mean, they made the story just so much more fun visually, I think.”
400 Boys is, as Marc describes it, from “a different me from lifetimes ago.” Of course it is, he wrote it over 40 years ago when he was a young man. “I’m still pretty happy with it considering how young I was when I wrote it.”
“And then there was a long time of not much happening,” he says. And then, as we all know, Marc got into the games industry in 1997, into Valve as it was making Half-Life. “And that whole thing happened…”
Laidlaw “retired” from Valve in 2016, but it came across as a hard retirement from everything. In truth, he’s in a comfortable enough position to be able to do what he wants, pick his own projects and share them when they’re done. “I think I retired too hard,” he admits. He never wanted to stop being creative. He wanted to get back to writing, but the publishing industry sort of disappeared while he was working on video games. Forget new video games, too. “I can’t do games without a bunch of people. I can’t make a game myself.”
So Marc makes music now. He got a boost in audience after Valve’s Half-Life 2 anniversary documentary came out last year and he released a lost development video from the early days on his YouTube channel. “I’m like, I’m in the wrong business!” Marc jokes. “I should just be leaking information about my old employer.”
Did it feel weird looking back at Half-Life all these years later for the Valve documentary, I wonder?
“Yeah, it was good for me to just kind of process and put a bow on that stuff, see a bunch of old friends, think about that, the whole thing,” Marc says.
“I hadn’t talked to or seen a lot of those people for a long time. I still stay in touch with a few folks, but they’re also not really there anymore. I don’t know what’s going on there right now, but it was fun to hang out with people and talk it over and it was therapeutic.”
With Half-Life and Half-Life 2 anniversary documentaries done and dusted, the only Valve game Marc might be asked to reminisce over now is Dota 2, which, ominously, is 12 years old. Perhaps in eight years Valve will come calling. “I could speak to Dota. That’s the only thing left.” Unless, of course, Valve fancies doing something on Alien Swarm (“I did a little bit on Alien Swarm”).
It is impossible, I find, to talk to Marc Laidlaw without talking about Half-Life. With those Valve documentaries out in the wild, there isn’t much left to say about the past. But maybe (hopefully?!) Half-Life has a future, and it’s that thread I want to pull on.
There is no point asking Marc if he knows whether Half-Life 3 is in the works. As he says, he doesn’t really know the people still left at Valve, but even if he did, he’s not about to announce the game here in our interview. Can you imagine the email Gaben would send if he did?
It is a better use of our time, I think, to ask Marc if he’d ever write for a video game again. Marc says he is, generally, still open to writing for a video game, and suggests Hideo Kojima should perhaps have given him a call. “When Death Stranding came out, I just was grinding my teeth. Like, does he know I’m available? I’d be happy to help do the last polish of dialogue on your script and not wreck anything, but just make it lines that actors would sound better coming out of their mouth.”
Marc, as he alluded to earlier, “retired really hard,” and he thinks that because of that, the industry doesn’t think to ask him to do anything. “When I see the Miyazaki stuff, the From studio stuff, of course you go to George R. R. Martin first if you could. Nobody needs my name on their project to sell copies. But I mean, that kind of thing to me is exciting.”
The lack of interesting offers post-Valve came as something of a surprise, Marc says. “I did kind of expect more interesting offers of stuff to do afterward and was kind of like, ‘this is weird: somebody wants me to write their synopsis for their mobile phone laser tag game.’ It’s like, they don’t know what I do.”
Wait, really? Someone actually asked Marc Laidlaw to write a mobile phone laser tag game after he left Valve? “Those are the kind of things I would get,” Marc admits. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know that I have much to offer you guys, but I mean, I don’t really like to say no to stuff.”
Marc continues: “I haven’t really heard any interesting game offers that seemed right for me. People think of me as, you can come in and write a bunch of stuff for a game. I’m like, ‘do you notice how little writing there was in Half-Life?’ Sort of the point of it was I hated reading in games.”
And then the inevitable interview-closer: if Valve gave Marc Laidlaw a call and said, ‘we want to get the band back together for Half-Life 3,’ would he answer that call?
“I would not do that,” he replies, matter of factly. “I can definitely say I would not do that. Even when I was there, I started to feel like, ‘Oh, now I’m the old guy shooting stuff down.’ I think at some point you need to let the people who are the fans and the creators who’ve come in because of what they learned from you maybe, and let them have that. We need new stuff. We didn’t need me going, ‘Well, the G-Man wouldn’t do that in my day.’ And I found I had to restrain myself. People would get enthusiastic about stuff, and I felt like it was becoming a negative force on some of the creative process.
“I haven’t played the VR Half-Life: Alyx, so I don’t really feel like I can. I don’t know what’s going on with anything. And it is not really my place. God knows what it’s doing in terms of creative process of how to get a great experience that will surprise people. And you have to be right at the edge of what you can do in a moment. And I’m not on that edge anymore. That’s not what’s interesting to me at this point. So I don’t think I’d be good.
“Plus, I’m one of the older guys, maybe not the oldest, but it’s so much work. I mean, I don’t think I could do that anymore. I get into my own things, but it’s not on anyone else’s schedule. And yeah, I’m pretty much done. I mean, maybe not done with games altogether, but definitely the Half-Life part of my life is way behind me.”
So, that’s that. Half-Life is done with Marc Laidlaw, and Marc Laidlaw is done with Half-Life. But there’s a lot more he’s done in the past that’s relevant now. Just look at Netflix making 400 Boys, 40 years later. Maybe, at some point in the future, Netflix will knock on Valve’s door and ask to turn Half-Life into something. Then Marc Laidlaw can go through all this all over again.
“The fact that I got into the cyberpunk thing before it was called cyberpunk, and then I came across this sort of beginning game company that ended up making Half-Life… I’ve been lucky to be a part of these things that just kind of become phenomena.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Naughty Dog chief Neil Druckmann has revealed the studio has a secret, unannounced second game in the works other than Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
In an interview with the Press X to Continue podcast, Druckmann discussed his ongoing roles at Sony-owned Naughty Dog. On Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Druckmann works with two game directors: Matthew Gallant and Kurt Margenau, and is co-writing the game with narrative director Claire Carré. Druckmann did not say which director is working on the second game, however.
“There’s another game that’s being worked on at Naughty Dog where I am more of a producer role and I get to mentor and watch this other team and give feedback and be like the executive in the room,” he said.
“I enjoy all those roles, and the fact I jump between one to the next, it makes my job very exciting and always feeling fresh. I’m never bored.”
It is unclear at which stage each game is in production. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is announced, so you’d imagine it’s further along. But what is the second game?
There are some obvious candidates. Could it be The Last of Us 3? Druckmann has expressed his uncertainty in the past about being able to make the game, but has said he has an ending in mind for what the game would be. Based on Druckmann’s comments about having more of a producer role on this mystery second game, it doesn’t sound like it’s The Last of Us 3, as you’d imagine he’d want to be heavily involved and take on a director role for that game.
Alternatively, it could be another Uncharted game. There hasn’t been a brand new Uncharted game since 2017’s The Lost Legacy. Could it finally be time for a return? And there’s always a chance this second game could be a brand new intellectual property, as Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is.
It’s worth noting that there’s always a chance this second game never comes out, or is never properly revealed by Sony. Naughty Dog has endured a tumultuous time in recent years, with the cancelation of its The Last of Us multiplayer game to focus on single-player games coming amid an apparent pull-back of live service titles at Sony.
Naughty Dog stopped development on The Last of Us Online in December 2023, saying it would have needed to put all its resources into post-launch content for years to come — an approach that would have severely impacted its ability to develop future single-player games.
Historically, Naughty Dog has struggled to work on two big games at the same time, with one tending to end up top of the tree internally. The studio hasn’t released a brand new game since 2020’s The Last of Us 2, with remakes and collections in the interim.
As for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, it features a star-studded cast that includes Tati Gabrielle from the Uncharted movie as protagonist Jordan A. Mun, and Kumail Nanjiani of Marvel’s Eternals as a man called Colin Graves. It is not expected to release until 2027 at the earliest. It’s a pretty long wait, but speaking to IGN on the red carpet ahead of The Last of Us Season 2 premiere, Druckmann said that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is not only playable right now, but “really good.”
“I will say we are playing it at the office and it’s incredible,” Druckmann teased. “It’s really good. I’m so excited to finally put gameplay out into the world and show people about it, because we just showed you the very, very, very tip on the iceberg. The game goes pretty deep beyond that.”
Photo by Rich Polk/Deadline via Getty Images.
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.
This list contains spoilers for the Mission: Impossible franchise.
A new Mission: Impossible film is hitting theaters this month – the final one in the franchise, if we’re to believe Tom Cruise and the suits at Paramount – and if you’re like us, you’re probably knee deep in a series rewatch right now.
The focus of the films, spectacular action set pieces aside, has been Cruise’s lead spy, Ethan Hunt. Fellow team agents have often come and gone, and supposedly impossible missions have varied time after time, but Ethan has remained. The only other constant has been a steady supply of villains – men and women with big plans fueled by greed and/or malice, who think they’ll be the one to outwit, outsmart, and outrun Hunt. Fools.
It might seem counterintuitive ranking the Mission: Impossible villains under the banner of “best,” but every great hero needs an equally great villain. Numerous elements come into play when determining the best villain, but we’re zeroing in on the scale of their threat, the weight of the violence (both physical and emotional) they commit against Hunt and his team, and the palpable degree of villainous charisma they exhibit.
So cue up that classic Lalo Schifrin theme, here are the 10 Best Mission: Impossible Villains, Ranked!
10. A.I. The Entity (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One)
“A self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite infesting all of cyberspace” sounds like a pretty cool threat in any other high-octane thriller, but in the Mission: Impossible franchise it’s only good enough to land at number ten. It underwhelms compared to its human counterparts, because let’s be real – zeroes and ones ain’t got shit and madness and guns – but its power and immense reach are undeniable. The Entity began “life” as a digital weapon designed by the U.S. government before going rogue and hopping through cyberspace with the giddiness of a puppy experiencing its first snowfall.
Most villainous act of villainy: While toying with and killing a submarine filled with Russian sailors is an act of murderous cruelty, it’s the Entity’s bigger, broader acts of deception that mark it as a true villain. Its early days of online manipulation saw it shifting public opinion and behavior through social media, and it’s a brutal reminder of events in the real world. We live in a present where people with nefarious agendas are influencing easily shaped minds, and with the increased use of A.I. in our online dealings, it’s not hard to imagine something like the Entity stepping in and really turning our daily lives into a nightmare.
9. John Musgrave (Mission: Impossible III)
Not every villain has direct blood on his hands, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less dangerous. Musgrave is Hunt’s Operations Manager at the IMF, and it’s suggested they may even be minor friends – understandable as he’s played by Billy Crudup, and who wouldn’t want to be friends with Billy Crudup. He brings Hunt in on a mission to rescue one of his proteges, Lindsey Farris, and when that goes wrong and Hunt is blamed for the fallout, it’s Musgrave who helps the agent escape to pursue justice. See? A friend.
Surprise! It’s all a ruse, and Musgrave is actually a traitor working with a man named Owen Davian on some elaborate plan to retrieve a piece of tech nicknamed “the rabbit’s foot.” Musgrave’s a hero in his own mind, though, as he’s hoping to use this as motivation for first strikes against enemy forces. He wants the U.S. and the IMF to play a more aggressive role in the fight against terrorism, and if that means supporting terrorists along the way, well, he’s all for it.
Most villainous act of villainy: Musgrave might think his heart is in the right place here, but in addition to enabling a murderous terrorist in Davian, he crosses an equally big line by pulling Ethan’s wife, Julia, into danger. Worse, he lets Davian shoot Julia in the head right in front of Hunt. Sure, she’s revealed to have been a minor henchwoman in a mask, but the emotional damage is real.
8. Kurt Hendricks (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol)
While some villains act out of greed and others cause misery simply for the fun of it, Kurt Hendricks is a man who only wants the best for humanity. What is the best, you ask? Well, in Hendricks’ mind, our species would benefit from something of a cleanse. From the great biblical flood to the atomic bombing of Japanese cities during World War II, immense disasters lead to rebuilding, recovery, and real improvement… apparently.
Sounds logical, so Hendricks sets out to trigger just such a global debacle starting with a massive attack on the Kremlin in Moscow and leading to the acquisition of nuclear codes. He proves himself to be one of the greatest threats Ethan Hunt has faced to that point.
Except, and this is where casting comes into serious play, the film wants us to see him as a physical threat to Hunt – but that’s nearly impossible. Michael Nyqvist was a fantastic actor, and he makes for a compelling villain through dialogue and intent. But a serious contender in a fight with Cruise? It’s difficult to buy, but that doesn’t stop director Brad Bird from letting him go toe to toe with the film’s star for a weirdly long fight. (To be fair, Chad Stahelski started it by letting Nyqvist seemingly hold his own for a bit with Keanu Reeves in John Wick.) So, while Hendricks is a grand threat on the world stage, he tumbles some in the ranking here as an unserious brawler against the highly trained and in far better shape Hunt.
Most villainous act of villainy: Like Musgrave above, Hendricks seriously thinks he’s doing the world a favor by causing harm. His final act results in a nuclear missile being fired towards San Francisco, something that would have killed tens of thousands of people immediately before triggering the death of millions more. That’s no small thing, and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling IMF agents.
7. August Walker (Mission: Impossible – Fallout)
Hunt and his IMF team have been betrayed by double agents and traitors on numerous occasions, but most of them are greedy middle-aged men in suits who don’t pose an immediate physical threat to our intrepid hero. August Walker is something different entirely. He towers over Hunt and is jacked from his mustache on down. Henry Cavill’s portrayal ensures that he’s already menacing even while pretending to be on Hunt’s side, but once the truth comes out, the gloves come off.
Walker is revealed to be working in cahoots with the brilliant Solomon Lane, and together they frame Hunt and once again pull the love of his life, Julia, into harm’s way. His motivation for it all is a bit over the top and dramatic – he wants the old world to implode and give rise to something better – but what else would you expect from a man who seems to cock his arms like guns during fist fights.
Most villainous act of villainy: Walker and Lane are planning to detonate nuclear bombs, and while the latter stays behind to die in his greatest act of terror, Walker is on a chopper heading to safety. Hunt, of course, catches up to him in pursuit of the detonator that’s needed to stop the countdown. While Walker could have easily escaped by giving up the detonator, his desire to cause suffering – especially Hunt’s suffering if Julia were to die – leads him to a one-on-one fight to the death with the agent. It’s a decision built on rage and self-righteous justification, and it rightfully ends in his painful demise.
6. Paris (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One)
When it comes to villains in the Mission: Impossible universe, few can touch Pom Klementieff’s Paris on style and charisma points. A henchwoman to Gabriel, she lets her gleefully murderous skillset do most of her talking, and it’s a refreshing change of pace from baddies who seem compelled to share their life stories before pulling a trigger.
Her costume and face makeup see her stand apart from the crowd, but don’t let her doll-like appearance fool you. Paris is a merciless fighter who refuses to quit despite the odds, as evidenced by a shootout and car chase in Rome that sees her literally plowing through obstacles both human and otherwise in her pursuit of Hunt.
Most villainous act of villainy: While Paris makes mincemeat out of numerous threats, she ultimately succumbs to Hunt during an alleyway brawl. He spares her life, though, and after being punished by Gabriel – he basically tries to kill her – she chooses to betray both him and her villainous tendencies by saving Hunt’s life. Maybe I’m stretching the definition here, but it takes a real badass to turn your back on villainy with the discovery of unexpected morals and a change of heart.
5. Gabriel (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning)
The mysterious Gabriel arrives in the penultimate entry of the franchise, and he’s a man with deadly skills and an alliance with the Entity. He also comes with a backstory suggesting an integral role in Ethan Hunt’s life. It seems Gabriel killed a woman named Marie thirty years ago, someone Hunt was apparently fond of, and it’s that murder that landed Hunt at the IMF – where he went on to save thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands, even. So maybe Gabriel is a hero? I kid, I kid.
He’s obviously a villain, and he may even be something of a seer (?), but while his late-to-the-party franchise arrival unavoidably undercuts his dramatic weight, the character’s casting lifts Gabriel right back up again. Esai Morales brings real charm and a calm menace to the character, and it’s immediately made clear that he’s not someone to be trifled with. You believe both his physical abilities and deadly intentions, and Morales’ added dramatic weight makes him a real threat to Hunt. He also earns a bump in the rankings by gifting viewers with the best, most unforgettable villain death in the entire franchise.
Most villainous act of villainy: Gabriel’s killed a lot of people, and he even destroyed a rolling Agatha Christie landmark, so it’s clear he’s a bad guy. His most vicious act, though, comes as a bookend to having “fridged” Marie three decades earlier. Gabriel threatens to do it again by killing either Ilsa or Grace – Hunt’s current love interest or the woman who just landed in his lap mere hours ago – and while the film wants to trick viewers into thinking it’s going to be the latter, it’s Ilsa who dies by Gabriel’s blade instead. McQuarrie and Cruise are obviously the real villains here for introducing this tired trope of a woman’s death being responsible for a man’s life, but it’s ultimately Gabriel who thrusts the knife into Ilsa’s gut. It could have been Grace who died. Hell, it should have been Benji. Instead, Gabriel extinguishes the franchise’s brightest flame this side of Hunt himself. J’accuse!
4. Jim Phelps (Mission: Impossible)
Jim Phelps wasn’t the only friend/fellow agent to betray Hunt over the years, but he was the first – and arguably the most shocking. The character, as played by Peter Graves, was the IMF’s lead agent for the bulk of the television series’ seven-season run from 1966 to 1973. He was unquestionably a good guy, so there was no reason to suspect that his presence in the first Mission: Impossible film would be anything different – well, Jon Voight in the role was probably a clue.
Audiences expected Phelps to essentially hand the reins over to Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, but while he did just that, he did so with a major act of betrayal. As he tells Hunt once his ruse is discovered, the end of the Cold War threatens to end the need for the IMF – this is as naive a statement as ever uttered in the entirety of the franchise – and he was worried about becoming a relic barely scraping by on sixty-two thousand dollars a year.
Most villainous act of villainy: The betrayal itself is already brutal as Phelps turns his back on friends and agents who’ve risked their lives together over the years, but it’s the specifics of his traitorous act that hits hardest. In his effort to frame someone else for his crime, Phelps kills off three members of his team during an operation and then fakes his own death. What could have been a simple theft, instead becomes an act of cruelty making his betrayal sting even more.
3. Sean Ambrose (Mission: Impossible II)
“That was always the hardest part of having to portray you,” says ex-IMF agent Sean Ambrose to a beaten and angered Ethan Hunt, “grinning like an idiot every fifteen minutes.” That line alone makes Ambrose a top villain as it’s a terrific zing at both Hunt and Cruise himself. He’s equally dismissive of women as evidenced by his comment that they’re like monkeys when it comes to the men in their lives, that they “won’t let go of one branch until they get a grip on the next.” Say what you will about his greedy desires, but Ambrose (Dougray Scott) understands the assignment when it comes to being a charismatic villain.
That greed has led him to steal a deadly plague with plans to unleash it on whole populations if his demands aren’t met. While cash money is his primary motivator, though, Ambrose also seems fueled by a splash of jealousy towards Hunt. That makes their faceoffs all the more entertaining whether they’re jousting on motorcycles or sharing beatdowns in the sand as only the great John Woo can capture it.
Most villainous act of villainy: The film opens with Ambrose masquerading as Hunt in order to acquire the Chimera plague, but rather than just kill one man, Ambrose and his team crash an entire passenger jet filled with innocent civilians. Acts of terror would claim higher body counts in later films, but this puts faces to the dead in a far more direct way making it more personal and affecting.
2. Solomon Lane (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation)
Whether due to low pay or poor benefits, the world is seemingly overflowing with ex-government employees ready and willing to betray their nations and jump on the train to villain town. Solomon Lane is one such agent, but he goes a step or three further by helping create an organization called The Syndicate that’s built entirely on those bitter, trigger happy ex-agents. They want to sow chaos and reap financial rewards, and they’ve been doing it for years.
Lane is introduced killing a young, unarmed female agent right in front of Hunt, and it’s soon revealed that he’s responsible for thousands of deaths over the years through events made to look like accidents or the work of wholly unrelated perpetrators. Lane’s history of manipulating trust and the world’s various systems makes him one of the most dangerous villains in the franchise. He’s ahead of Hunt at every step, and his mantra – “The greater the suffering, the greater the peace.” – marks him as a man willing to do anything to accomplish his goals.
While many actors go big playing villains, Sean Harris takes the opposite approach and makes Lane a weasel of a man who you just want to see get beaten senseless. It’s an unusually bold choice that leaves him without a darkly appealing persona or personality – he’s just a very bad man who couldn’t care less about you or your loved ones.
Most villainous act of villainy: As the rare villain to be an active threat across more than one film, Lane inflicts plenty of pain, suffering, and stress on Hunt and his team. The bulk of his evil acts were committed before Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation even begins, but his cruelest and most personal action unfolds during the followup, Fallout. Along with August Walker, Lane manages to activate two nuclear bombs threatening not only the water supply for billions of people, but also the life of Hunt’s greatest love, Julia. Seeing her in harm’s way is the kind of gut punch that Hunt felt only once before, and it’s clear just how sorry he is that his choices have once again brought her so close to dying.
1. Owen Davian (Mission: Impossible III)
There’s a lot of competition when it comes to selecting the best villain in the Mission: Impossible franchise, but there was never any doubt who’d land at the top of the heap. Davian doesn’t care about much beyond his own wants and needs, and the film reflects that by never revealing exactly what his end goal is – we know he wants the so-called rabbit’s foot, but what it is and what it does are never made clear. We just know that Davian will cut through anyone and anything to get it, and that makes him an exceptionally dangerous man.
J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III is unfairly maligned, but even those underwhelmed by the film itself can’t help but applaud Philip Seymour Hall’s frighteningly effective and highly entertaining portrayal of Davian. His blistering stares, his lightning quick shifts from dead silence to raging outbursts, and his deceptively calm way of threatening everything that Hunt holds dear all work to make him a villain who commands the screen and even steals every scene from Cruise himself.
There may not be a big, global threat at play here, but Davian is the man who arguably gets closer than any other villain to actually killing Hunt. He injects the agent’s head with an explosive device that gets within seconds of churning Hunt’s brain tissue into ground beef, and he even gets some serious licks in while brawling. You wouldn’t think a Cruise versus Hoffman fight would convince, but the latter’s pure ferocity paired with Hunt’s incapacitation due to the pain in his head makes for a viciously compelling bout.
Most villainous act of villainy: Davian is a mean bastard who, while still in restraints, coldly threatens to murder Hunt’s fiance Julia. “I’m gonna make her bleed and cry and call out your name”, he says, and it’s one of the few times where Hunt’s legendary control tips into real fear and emotion. Davian later comes close to doing just that after abducting Julia, tying her up, and appearing to shoot her in the head. Hunt’s pain is palpable, and it’s enough to damage his heart to the point that he’d go on to never let someone that close again. Davian has literally halted Hunt’s ability to connect with someone on a deeply personal level, and it’s the kind of attack that bullets and bombs just can’t compete with.
Amazon dropped one of the best games of 2024 to the lowest price I’ve seen. As part of the Amazon Memorial Day Sale, you can pick up a physical copy of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 for PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X for just $39.99. That’s 43% off the $70 list price and beats the previous price low (during last year’s Black Friday) by $10.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (PS5, Xbox) for $39.99
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 follows Demetrian Titus, a newly minted Primaris Space Marine super soldier, reinstated into service after a century of inprisonment following the events of the original Space Marine game. Chris Reed reviewed it and gave it a “Great” 8/10 score, mentioning that although “[Space Marine 2] may not break the third-person shooter mold, it looks amazing, makes good use of its Warhammer lore, and has brutal combat that just feels great.”
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
