Category: IGN

At the Develop Conference in Brighton, MachineGames’ Design Director Jens Andersson and Audio Director Pete Ward told an audience how the Swedish studio approached making Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the well-received return of the adventuring archaeologist to the world of video games.

Their talk revealed a number of insights into the stresses of the game’s development, how it all came together pretty late in the day (as video games tend to), and the audio quirks that threw more than a few spanners in the works. But what shone throughout was just how much effort the developers put into recreating the world of Indiana Jones as authentically as possible. Everything from the iconic sound of the whip to how market stalls would have looked in the late ‘30s was fussed over in order to help create the right atmosphere for the game.

And it worked, with significant praise from critics and players alike. IGN’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review returned a 9/10. We said: “An irresistible and immersive global treasure hunt, and far and away the best Indy story this century, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle doesn’t belong in a museum; it belongs on your hard drive where you can play the heck out of it.”

DLC beckons, and questions are swirling around a potential sequel, set up by the ending of The Great Circle itself. It was with all this in mind that IGN sat down with both Andersson and Ward at Develop to follow-up on their talk, to find out more about the dramatic changes that were made in its last year, and to ask a few cheeky questions about the future.

IGN: There was something interesting that you said in the talk, which was around licensing. You said that at the start, the iconic Indiana Jones music had to be licensed. It wasn’t a given. And that surprised me, because I would’ve thought that when it’s agreed to do an Indiana Jones game with Lucasfilm, that just all comes as part of it. That there wouldn’t be subsequent things that you’d have to do for individual bits, especially something so big and important as that. So it’d be great to get some insight into the process you had to go through to get all that agreed.

Pete Ward: So for the music, I don’t actually know how all the legal framework and systems work exactly. From my perspective, I just knew that we needed to get this theme and also Marion’s Theme, and also the music from the Peru section of the level, because that’s original John Williams scoring as well.

And we didn’t want to use the original recordings because then there’s a mechanical copyright issue there as well, and we’d have to license all that too, because mechanical copyright is the scoring or composition copyright. So that’s why we recorded all of our music, again, it was re-orchestrated, we recorded so that we — by we I don’t mean MachineGames, I mean Disney — owned the mechanical copyright for those new recordings.

But we needed to make sure that we were allowed to use the Raiders March theme, which is the famous one everyone knows. And we agreed that we could use that wherever we wanted in the product. So there was an unlimited number of times that we could quote it or reference it. But then for some of the other themes like the Peru content, we agreed to use that once, and we agreed to use Marion’s Theme a handful of times. There were very specific legal rules that we had to follow, and what we could use where and when, and all that stuff had to be approved and agreed by Lucasfilm Games obviously as well.

Jens Andersson: Is this because they have on their end agreements with John Williams?

Pete Ward: I think it’s to do with that. So that had to go through our legal team and they did a really good job with that. It took a little while to get through and we had to assume that we’d be able to use it and then confirm we could during development.

Jens Andersson: And they are super careful about that stuff, which kind of makes sense. Like all the rights, it goes for fonts, it goes for everything. It needs to be by the book.

Pete Ward: The other sound example is there’s some specific Marion lines in the first level that were performed by Karen Allen. They’re recordings from the original films, and those had to be licensed properly as well. We couldn’t just take that and use it.

IGN: Some people would have liked to hear a bit more John Williams in there, but maybe that’s to do with what you’re talking about, which is it is not as simple as just having access to everything that’s ever been, and you have to almost go piecemeal with it.

Pete Ward: Well, we had really careful discussions actually with Lucasfilm Games throughout about where to first use the theme, and how it should be used. We definitely had feedback that people would like to hear The Raiders March more, but then when we’re developing it, we didn’t want to create a game where every time you punch someone heroically, you get that theme. People would get tired of it in the end.

So there was a bit of feedback and back and forth about how we should use that theme. And one of our main goals was to use it in the same way as it was used in the movies. And it gets quoted in the movies a number of times and there are some bits where it’s quite strong, but you only really hear the whole thing as far as I know — I hope I don’t get this wrong! — but you only really hear the whole thing in the credit sequence at the end. So the whole thing leads up to that and then you get the dun, dun dun dun… and it rolls out along the credits. So we were trying to emulate that basically. We wanted to use that theme where it really mattered and we needed to hear that.

IGN: One of the other interesting things you said in the talk is that the design changed quite late in the day. It didn’t sound like this was a massive surprise to anyone, more just this seems to be the way MachineGames develops games and yes, it can be stressful from what you were saying in the talk, but ultimately everyone understands the bigger picture.

Jens Andersson: Most days.

IGN: Were there any specific examples where you had to make a dramatic decision late in the day that people who played the game will recognize as being a good decision, they got something that they wouldn’t have otherwise experienced it, or maybe something that you had to say, this isn’t going to work, we’re just going to have to cut this?

Jens Andersson: It is really hard to remember to be honest, because a lot of things change a lot of the time. Luckily it becomes smaller and smaller, but at the time it feels really, really big. One thing that I remember, it was just four months before we shipped, we changed how we set up the in-game guidance system, like markers on-screen and stuff like that. Sort of really committed, this is how we do it and we had to redo the whole thing. It turned out really well…

IGN: People love the map in the game.

Jens Andersson: Yeah. Basically if you walk around in “lowered” mode, you see markers in the world. And that’s something we fought for a long while. We didn’t want to have markers in the world because we hate games where there are constantly markers in the world and they start looking at the markers and you go follow them.

But having that only appear in this “lowered” mode as we called it, that proved to be this good balance where it was still very much opt in for the player. But it took us a lot of iterations to get there very late into the process and obviously had a huge effect on evaluation of player guidance. And even we weren’t always sure that the player would understand this, discover this by themselves.

So a lot of these kind of things that feels like in the end it’s like, oh, when do we turn this on? When do we turn it off? That feels like it’s a small code change, but it has huge implications for how people play the game.

IGN: And that was just a few months before you shipped?

Jens Andersson: Yeah. Similar with the whole stealth UI. We have these markers on top of a more classical version. We had a completely different system six months before ship that was hub based, more like if you know Fortnite, how you see firefights. But in the end decided that it wasn’t clear enough, we were going to go back to previous design and do that.

So it’s iteration and it’s frustrating and it’s hard and at that point when the pressure is really on as well, it becomes very emotional. You invested a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of work, a lot of pride in this is what we’re doing, and you need to be absolutely convincing to the rest of the team: this is how it’s going to be in the game, this is going to be excellent. And then one month later it’s like, no.

But speaking about MachineGames in particular, I know other studios who do this completely differently, but MachineGames has a strong tradition of doing it like this. There’s a lot of fear that plays into this kind of final phase of development, where what if you make the wrong choices? And you rarely know all the consequences of the decisions you need to make. You just need to trust your gut sometimes and say this is going to make the game better, trust me. And you’ve been arguing about this for years usually, and you have all these kind of informations and all the permutations and everything, and there’s no explaining that.

So people are like, Jerk [Gustafsson], our game director, he needs to be the one saying, okay, this is what we’re going to do. I know it’s late, we are past beta, but this is the feedback, this is the data that shows we need to change. This is what we’re going with and this is what we know is going to happen when we do this. And then most of the time it’s correct.

Pete Ward: My experience of that was that Jerk would quite often come into my room and ask me what the audio consequences of a particular change would be. For example, putting an interactive moment or taking one out or something like that, he would come to me and ask me how bad would it be if we do this? And that was really nice because sometimes it was very easy for us because of how all the scenes were put together, and sometimes it would be very, very difficult and expensive.

I had the opportunity to say, to just give Jerk that information and then he could choose whether he wanted to, and why he wanted to do that. But I felt like I was listened to and my team was listened to, rather than things just happening. The big stuff we were consulted about and that was nice.

IGN: The game really came together in the last year, but it had been in development for five years?

Jens Andersson: Yeah, almost five years. But it is always hard to put a starting point on development. The first six months was just a few people, but yeah, almost five years is a good answer.

IGN: I often hear from AAA developers that this is often the case, that there’s no game at all and then all of a sudden there is a game, which must be very difficult to have to plan for because you can’t really know until right at the end if something’s working.

Pete Ward: It’s terrifying!

Jens Andersson: Yeah, it’s not a great way to work. I wish there was a different way to work.

Pete Ward: Yeah, the reason it’s terrifying for me is because there are some big things in audio, like massive tankers that take a long time to steer music. Recording on this game is one of those. If we were making a game that was not fully orchestral score and recorded, it would be easier because we can make changes later.

But when you have to commit to recording sessions and compose well in advance before you know actually how much you need, that’s a bit tricky. Lots of games have a lot of localization in as well and lots of VO, but that’s one of those things where you have to get the script locked and record it and then do the localization and there’s big processes that you can’t just change on a whim.

IGN: One of the other things that came through really strongly from the talk was how much effort went into trying to make it authentic as a period piece, which I think people really did appreciate. I’d love to get some more insight into some of the extreme lengths you went to try and make it really feel like what it would be like at that time period in all those locations around the world.

Jens Andersson: I have an anecdote that I really like personally. A lot of the game takes place in the Vatican and we had artists who went there. I remember having a conversation with one of the designers about the opening level in the Vatican where you scale the Castel Sant’Angelo. We had some player guidance problems there and everything and I asked, how about we do this and that and this? We change, we move this thing so you come up there instead of over there. And the answer is, well then it wouldn’t look like it does in real life. And I was like, what do you mean? Yeah, here are the reference photos. And they pulled up the reference photos and it looked identical, almost.

And it’s almost like an opportunity lost here because players don’t really understand how accurate it is. I proposed a developer’s commentary mode where you could pull up the photos and see the reference. That would be super cool! Who knows, one day when they do the remake in 20 years!

But it was so ingrained with the team that this is important. We had that throughout. I know they worked a lot with Sukhothai, really fought hard to dig up old photos from when they first started excavating Sukhothai and the temples around there just to find reference for how it actually looked before. Now it’s very clean and touristy with walking paths and everything. But finding good references to that. And then of course our layer on top of that, the whole thing is flooded as part of the narrative twist we have to Sukhothai. What would it look like in 1937 if it was flooded and the enemy was there doing huge excavations?

IGN: And it sounded like you found quite a character to help you recreate the whip sound? I have a picture in my head of some sort of Thor looking character wearing very little smashing trees with a whip or something. I dunno if that’s the reality?

Pete Ward: You’re not totally wrong! I think his company’s Witchcraft Whips. He’s based up in northern Sweden somewhere. He builds whips. He’s won competitions doing that as well. He was just incredibly good at consistently cracking in different locations with different methods. So yeah, it was much better than me doing it!

Jens Andersson: We had one of those whips in the motion capture room in the basement.

IGN: Did you have a go?

Jens Andersson: Yeah, yeah, absolutely! I think everyone did at some point, walking down there and there’s no one around, trying…

IGN: But beyond just the audio, it sounds like it was quite a design challenge to make the whip because of course that’s going to be one of the central pieces of the game, but making that into a fun AND functional part of the game that doesn’t clip through things or look like it’s broken and the animations make sense. That must’ve taken years to perfect?

Jens Andersson: It took years, absolutely. And it took years because we kept changing inventory systems. Right now we have a reserved button for the whip, but that wasn’t always the case. In an earlier version you had to equip it, stuff like that. And then really the challenge was to find great opportunities in gameplay to use it. It isn’t a very natural tool for an action hero.

IGN: Or games really. You don’t really have first-person games that revolve around a whip.

Jens Andersson: No, because it’s not very effective.

IGN: It’s not a gun.

Jens Andersson: It’s not a gun. Or a flyswatter. So the traversal stuff, that was pretty clear where we needed to go with it. Scale walls and all that kind of stuff. But we tried a lot of different things, using it in puzzles and stuff like that. But I think it started to come together when we started using it as an entry point to combat, is kind of the final pitch for how it was used in combat. So you can use it to disarm, but you can also use it to pull people into what we call ‘clinch.’ So it became a good reminder to the player, here’s a good opportunity for the whip, use it to disarm, run up, punch them, rather than try to fiddle with it mid-combat. At the same time we were careful not to create a situation where you could whip people to death. It comes with certain problems…

IGN: People definitely would have tried that!

Jens Andersson: Well… they do! So all these things in conflict at the same time, you’re just trying to get a fun semi-chaotic combat experience that fits in Indiana Jones.

Pete Ward: And those little set piece moments are really fun as well. You disarm someone and pull their weapons to you, or trip them over or something, or whip them in a place where they don’t want to be whipped and they have an animation reacting to that, which is fun.

IGN: Some Indiana Jones fans really want to know if your game is canon alongside the movies. Did you ever care that much about that? Did you have to make the game make sense within the context of a Lucasfilm guided canon? You are set between two movies.

Jens Andersson: It was super important for us to create this authentic Indian Jones experience and we worked directly with Lucasfilm games on doing that. And that was in their interest too. I know the word canon… it’s the word that’s banned more or less because it comes with a lot of baggage. So it doesn’t matter, is the point. People can change things later on. It’s their IP, they can do whatever they want. What’s important is that we’re creating an authentic Indiana Jones experience with the backing of Lucasfilm, and making sure it fits into the universe. We really feel like we are extending the world. Our game is contributing to what Indiana Jones is. And I feel like we have absolutely Lucasfilm Games’ backing on that and that’s what they’ve expressed as well.

IGN: You went with the likeness of Harrison Ford and very successfully recreated his likeness, but obviously Troy Baker for the performance. Was there ever any thought about recreating Harrison Ford’s voice through whatever means, whether that be technological or with his involvement? Did you ever have any considerations of doing what I know IOI is doing with James Bond where they’re creating an original likeness of James Bond? Was it ever on the table to do either of those things?

Jens Andersson: Indiana Jones is so tied to Harrison Ford as a character, so it would be a worse Indiana Jones game if we couldn’t use this likeness. And we chose in-between Raiders and The Last Crusade intentionally because that’s Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones in his prime. That’s the one you want to be. That’s the one I want to play. So for us, that was always a given.

And as for the voice, it became very clear very quickly when we got Troy Baker on board, that was the way for us to go. I can’t speak about all the things that went on before that, but very soon when he came in, he can do it. And we were so incredibly lucky to have him and his enthusiasm, just the effort he put into creating his version of Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones. And you see that right?

IGN: Yeah. And Harrison Ford loved it!

Jens Andersson: And that was such a good moment for us as well, at The Game Awards when he came out and basically gave praise to… this is the way to do it. And that felt like, yes, that means a lot coming from him.

IGN: I’d love to talk to you about the future. You’ve got the DLC coming out obviously, and there’s been a little bit of information about what fans can expect from that. This DLC is set during the events of the game itself as opposed to continuing the story from the ending of The Great Circle.. So just to make that distinction, is it the case that this isn’t going to resolve all the teases at the end of the various endings that are in the game and all the Antarctica pointers and stuff?

Jens Andersson: It is self-contained. It is set in Rome. It does take place during the events of the main storyline. A lot of this stuff, I think we’ll talk more about Gamescom so we can’t talk too much more about it.

IGN: I’d like to ask about a potential sequel, which your ending did tease, especially the secret ending obviously. I’m not expecting anyone to confirm Indiana Jones and the Great Circle 2 or anything. But from your point of view, would you like the opportunity to pay off that tease? Is there an internal drive to want to do that? Or was it always designed to just be a sort of like, if this is the only one that can happen, that’s how you set out to make it, that’s fine and you’ll be completely happy with that? Is there a grander ambition story wise, which the game itself does suggest for you to realize at some point down the line?

Jens Andersson: Obviously we can’t talk to anything about future projects at this point. But it’s still easy to answer your question because all the individual Indiana Jones movies have self-contained stories.

IGN: They don’t have secret endings though that suggest future destinations that players might be able to experience at a later time!

Jens Andersson: There are so many storylines in the game, right? So you can do whatever. But yeah, no comment!

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.

Former Dragon Age franchise boss Mark Darrah has discussed BioWare’s difficulty getting a remaster of the series’ first game off the ground, and why it would be a much tougher project than Mass Effect’s trilogy re-release.

Firstly, speaking about the future of the Dragon Age series after the mixed response to last year’s Veilguard, Darrah told YouTube channel MrMattyPlays that he was “not sure” how a new entry in the series would get started. Darrah has spoken in the past of how BioWare is now a single-project studio, and with the company now slimmed-down in size and solely focused on Mass Effect 5, that leaves Dragon Age on pause for the forseeable future.

Instead, Darrah said, he believed BioWare should next focus on remakes of the series’ first three games, starting with Dragon Age: Origins — something that had previously been discussed, but has not happened for various reasons.

“I honestly think they should do — I don’t think they will, but they should do — a remaster of the first three [Dragon Age games],” Darrah said. “One of the things we pitched at one point — pretty softly, so pitched is a massive overstatement — was to retroactively rebrand the first games as if they were a trilogy, call it the Champions Trilogy, so you have these larger-than-life heroes… maybe you do that as a first step.

“You shine them up, you re-release them — probably remaster, probably not a remake — see what happens and maybe go from there,” Darrah continued. “I’m very curious to see… in a weird, twisted way, the Mass Effect franchise and the Dragon Age franchise are in similar states. They have a trilogy of games that are pretty well received, and then a fourth game that’s less well received. I’ll be curious to see what Mass Effect does with Mass [Effect] 5 — how does Andromeda fit in there?”

Early trailers for Mass Effect 5 acknowledge the Andromeda galaxy, and there is an expectation among fans that the events of the sci-fi series’ fourth entry will be a part of the game’s narrative — even if the main thrust of the game’s story will be back in the series’ original Milky Way setting, following more familiar characters, alien races and themes.

So why hasn’t a Dragon Age remaster happened? Well, according to Darrah, a lack of enthusiasm within publisher EA is at least partly to blame.

“EA’s historically been — and I don’t know why, but they’ve even said this publicly — they’re kind of against remasters,” he continued. “I don’t really know why, and it’s strange for a publicly-traded company to seemingly be against free money but they seem to be against it. So that’s part of it.

“The other problem is, Dragon Age is harder than Mass Effect to do. To some degree unknowably harder, maybe only a little bit harder, maybe a lot harder?” Darrah pondered. “One of the very earliest things for Joplin [BioWare’s initial version of Dragon Age 4, before its multiplayer reboot, and before the subsequent single-player version that became Veilguard] was, ‘let’s do Frostbite tools, and then let’s find a mod house that seems talented, and just uplift them, and pay them to do a remake of Dragon Age: Origins.'”

In other words, Darrah is saying that during the early days of development on Dragon Age 4, a remake of the franchise’s first chapter was discussed — even if it never moved forward.

“There were lots of pitches around, is there a way to bring Dragon Age: Origins forward? And depending what you do, a remaster you kind of get Dragon Age 2 for free, a remake you don’t.”

Alas, the difficulties in working with Dragon Age: Origins already-archaic engine made it a harder task than remastering Mass Effect (whose entire trilogy was made in the more commonly-used Unreal Engine), and hiring people to either work on a remaster within BioWare or work with an external team was a tough sell.

“You can’t really remaster Dragon Age externally, you probably have to do it internally,” Darrah said. “The studios run their own financials within themselves, and to some degree EA’s stance was probably ‘sure, go ahead and do it, but do it with the money you already have’,” Darrah said. “And it was like, we can’t do it with the money we already have because we’re doing all these other things.”

As for BioWare’s future, Mass Effect 5 is now in early production, but still seems to be years from release. A few months ago, we did at least get confirmation of one particular returning feature.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

If your wallet is still nursing bruises from the Final Fantasy and Edge of Eternities Magic: The Gathering sets, you might want to brace yourself for another hit.

For the first time in months, Amazon has restocked part of the Marvel’s Spider-Man MTG lineup, one of the most sought-after Universes Beyond releases of 2025.

The Spider-Man Play Booster Display set is back and available to preorder now, with Amazon not charging until it ships. Given how fast these have been selling, you might not want to hang around.

We’re now half a year since the troubled launch of Civilization 7, which has fewer players on Steam than both Civilization 6 and the 15-year-old Civilization 5. But according to the boss of Take-Two, Civ 7 is projected to meet the company’s initial internal expectations over the course of its lifetime.

Civilization 7 has had a rough launch on Steam and has struggled for players on Valve’s platform ever since its launch in February. Reaction is ‘mixed,’ according to Steam user reviews. Civ 7’s Steam performance does not paint the entire picture, of course. The strategy game also launched on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch (the Nintendo Switch 2 version and a VR version recently launched, too). But Civilization’s bread and butter is PC, and there Civ 7 is clearly struggling.

In an interview with IGN to discuss Take-Two’s hugely positive financial results for the latest 2025 quarter, CEO Strauss Zelnick admitted Civ 7 had got off to a “slow start,” but he insisted that the company’s internal projections for what he called the “lifetime value” of Civ 7 still match its initial expectations.

“It’s definitely improving,” Zelnick said of Civ 7 (Take-Two has yet to announce a sales figure for the game).

“I think the key thing is that Civ has always been a slow burn. It’s always been a title that had — I’m not really a big believer in the long tail theory of the entertainment business — but Civ is an example of that theory. And right now our projections for the lifetime value of the title are very consistent with our initial expectations for the title.

“So while we were off to a slow start and while we have had to make changes — and there are more changes coming — I feel like consumer uptake is better and better and we feel really good about the title. I think over time it’s going to take its place in its civilization pantheon in a very successful, credible way.”

When Civ 7 launched, players highlighted issues with the user interface, a lack of map variety, and expressed a feeling that the game launched without a number of features they’d come to expect from the franchise. But some veteran Civ fans also didn’t get on well with the dramatic changes developer Firaxis made to the game.

A full campaign in Civilization 7 is one that goes through all three Ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Once the Age is completed, all players (and any AI opponents) experience an Age Transition simultaneously. During an Age Transition, three things happen: you select a new civilization from the new Age to represent your empire, you choose which Legacies you want to retain in the new Age, and the game world evolves.

The Civilization games have never had such a system, and it has proven divisive. But Firaxis has launched a number of key updates to Civ 7 since launch, most recently patch 1.2.3, which made Age Transition improvements.

The question now is, can Firaxis turn Civilization 7 sentiment around from its current ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam, and get more people to make the jump from past Civ games to the latest effort?

We’ve got plenty more from our interview with Strauss Zelnick, including his thoughts on controversial Borderlands developer Randy Pitchford, and his response to recent reports around the troubled BioShock 4.

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.

We’ve rounded up the best deals for Sunday, August 10, below, so don’t miss out on these limited-time offers.

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In the world of movies, prequels have a somewhat mixed reputation. There’s the ones that enrich their existing worlds and stories, like X-Men: First Class. There’s the ones that ruin the mystery, like the heinous Hannibal Rising. And then there’s the ones no one can actually agree on, like the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Over in the world of games, though, prequels tend to fare better than their cinematic counterparts. Just look at the recently released Mafia: The Old Country, an enjoyable romp through the early 1900s that chronicles the formative years of the earlier games’ criminal empires.

Prequel games often benefit from better technology and development tools, making them visually and technically more impressive than their predecessors. But truly great prequels aren’t just remembered for how they look or play, but by how they transform the way we experience the original games we fell in love with and add to the stories we already hold dear.

With that in mind, the following prequels were chosen not just for their technological and gameplay achievements, but because they forever changed the way we look at some of our favorite characters and worlds. That extra chance to develop and deepen what we already hold dear means some games on this list are even considered the best in their entire series. So without further ado, here are the 10 best video game prequels ever made.

10. Batman: Arkham Origins

Released in an effort to shorten the wait between Rocksteady’s Arkham City and Arkham Knight, Batman: Arkham Origins is described as a “Year Two” story, taking place on Christmas night, eight years before the events of the first game. Developed by WB Montreal, it stars a 27-year-old Batman facing off against eight of Gotham’s deadliest assassins, including Bane, Deathstroke, and Deadshot, who have all been hired by Black Mask to kill the Bat for $50 million. These events also serve as an origin story for The Joker, who makes himself known to Gotham for the first time and introduces the city to his unique brand of criminal lunacy.

At the time of release, Arkham Origins was perhaps unfairly compared to Arkham City. But this comparison was a disservice to Arkham Origins, which acts as a fantastic accompanying act to Rocksteady’s second chapter rather than one-upping it. WB Montreal took everything that made Rocksteady’s games so great, held them faithfully in place, and used them to create a compelling early story for the Arkham-specific versions of Batman and the Joker. More than that, Arkham Origins sets the stage for the main Arkham trilogy by introducing TN-1, Bane’s super soldier serum that’s eventually used as the basis for Titan, a more powerful drug that has major consequences over the events of Arkham Asylum and Arkham Knight.

9. God of War: Chains of Olympus

Despite arriving on a handheld, the PSP’s God of War: Chains of Olympus was no smaller in scale than the original home console trilogy when it came to story.. A prequel to 2005’s God of War, Chains of Olympus takes Kratos and his Blades of Chaos to The Underworld and back on a foreboding tale that sets his’ story in motion, laying the building blocks for his disdain for the Gods.

By fueling that fire of hatred, developer Ready at Dawn not only created an entry steeped in exciting God of War lore, but performed borderline witchcraft in getting a PlayStation Portable game to both look so handsome and play so responsively. Perhaps the most visually impressive release to hit Sony’s first handheld, the studio managed to translate God of War’s breakneck action and signature head-splitting combos for the tiny device, ensuring those blades felt just as satisfying to swing with abandon despite the lack of a second analog stick. It’s a short, stylish burst of ungodly violent action that could easily stand alone, but as a prequel to one of PlayStation’s landmark trilogies, it serves as a fantastic expansion of Kratos’ blood-soaked Greek saga.

8. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

Following the release of Super Mario World in 1990 and with the 3D revolution looming on the horizon, Nintendo needed one last, great, side-scrolling Mario platformer for the SNES. So, with Miyamoto’s blessing, Yoshi creator Shigefumi Hino received the green light to develop a game starring his popular dinosaur creation. The result was Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time.

Nintendo’s headline act is not typically concerned with timelines and canon, but Super Mario World 2 jumps backwards to tell a story about how a group of Yoshis rescued Baby Mario before they all set off to rescue Baby Luigi from Kamek. It’s a cute origin tale that explains how an infant plumber became friends with a dinosaur, but narrative is really beside the point. With Yoshi’s Island, Nintendo set out with a goal to make a more “gentle and relaxing” game that encouraged exploration over precise platforming. To do this, Nintendo removed time limits for players so they can progress at their own pace, and Yoshi’s specific moveset, like the flutter jump, made it easier to control the character in the air.

But beyond just Yoshi’s unique abilities, Super Mario World 2 is an iconic send-off to the SNES era. The beautiful, marker-like art style was drawn by hand and scanned digitally, and Koji Kondo’s Yoshi’s Island theme is an earworm so perfect you can’t help but hum along with it whenever it comes on. It may show us some of Baby Mario’s very first steps, but as a full package, it is the culmination of a 2D-platforming development team putting all of their exceptional visual, audio, and technical design experience on display.

7. Divinity: Original Sin

While Divinity: Original Sin isn’t technically the earliest point on the Divinity timeline (that would be Dragon Commander, an unusual marriage of role-playing and strategy game systems) it is the only game in the series we’d genuinely consider a prequel. Taking place over a millennium prior to 2002’s Divine Divinity, this RPG charts the early years of Rivellon, Larian Studios’ original high-fantasy world. While not an essential foundational chapter of the land’s lore, Original Sin does a fantastic job of establishing the dangers of Source magic and the motivations of those who use it. And thanks to Divinity’s immortal wizards, longtime fans get to meet much, much younger versions of characters like Zandalor and Bellegar.

But Original Sin’s story is not what makes it special. Instead, this prequel’s triumph is in how it spun the fate of the Divinity series on its head, taking it from a struggling cult curiosity and putting it on the road to becoming an all-time RPG heavyweight. Larian developed a brand new turn-based combat system for Original Sin, fuelled by an elemental approach that allows you to combine effects to produce exhilarating results; freeze liquid with an ice spell and force your foes to slip on the blood that they spill, or bolster forked lightning with the help of a little electricity-conducting rain. All this makes battle a deeply tactical, flexible affair, and the same attention to detail is afforded to the RPG elements, too. With the freedom to approach quests in almost any manner you can think of, Original Sin laid down the rules for not just its exceptional successor, Original Sin 2, but also Larian’s multiple Game of the Year-winning Baldur’s Gate 3.

6. Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening

Set several years before the first game, Devil May Cry 3 features a much younger Dante, once again sporting the cool and arrogant persona that had been lost in the moodier, more serious second game. Going back in time allowed developer Capcom to restore the personality that fans fell in love with in the first place. More than that, Devil May Cry 3 even retcons the early life of Dante’s twin brother, Vergil, ensuring a teenage version of the fan-favorite character could be alive for the events of Dante’s Awakening.

Devil May Cry 3 had the unenviable job of salvaging Dante’s sullied reputation and did so with aplomb. What’s more, while Devil May Cry 2 is still technically canon, the events of Dante’s Awakening serve as the foundations for all later DMC games, and explain important character motivations while fixing plot holes.

Beyond returning Dante to his cool roots and resurrecting Vergil, Devil May Cry 3 delighted fans by being wickedly difficult. To put things into context, Capcom famously made the Japanese version of the game’s hard mode the normal difficulty for the North American release. That posed a hurdle for some, but many fans relished the extra challenge, especially given how popular the changes to the battle system were.

While Dante was always able to mix-and-match melee and ranged weapons to chain stylish combos, DMC 3’s biggest improvement was adding different combat styles that changed the way Dante controlled. You could focus on either melee (Swordmaster), ranged (Gunslinger), dodging (Trickster), or parry (Royal Guard) styles and play using your most preferred playstyle, an overwhelmingly popular choice for a game that challenges you to chain the biggest, coolest combos.

5. Halo: Reach

For 10 years, fans journeyed alongside the silent Master Chief as he fought and ultimately defeated the alien invaders known as the Covenant. But for its final Halo game, Bungie rewound the clock to the early days of the intergalactic war, when humanity was very much on the losing side.

Set during the weeks before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo: Reach casts you as a member of Noble Team, a special-ops Spartan unit, on a fateful mission to protect the planet Reach from falling to the Covenant. The fully self-contained prequel feels almost liberated by the absence of Master Chief, with the varied personalities of Noble Team highlighting how different other Spartan soldiers can be from the series’ most famous character, despite their shared heritage.

This team’s doomed but nevertheless vital final mission sees them escort Cortana from a lab on Reach to the UNSC Pillar of Autumn ship, thereby kickstarting the events of the first Halo. It’s both a perfect send-off for Bungie and an excellent closing-the-circle moment for the Halo story. But those triumphs are tinged by tragedy; Noble Team’s actions may trigger Master Chief’s quest to save the universe, but their final mission demands heavy sacrifices. Noble Six remaining on the dying planet in a last-stand fight against the Covenant is now a legendary moment in the Halo franchise – its own Rogue One moment that arrived years before Star Wars did it – and one of the greatest final levels ever made.

4. Yakuza 0

Yakuza has long been one of Sega’s biggest Japanese series, but only relatively recently has it gained traction in the West. This surge in popularity can be traced to Yakuza 0, a prequel that reintroduces heroes Kazuma Kiryu and Majima Goro to a new generation of fans who may have missed out on the first Yakuza game back in 2005.

Yakuza 0 is set nearly two decades before the events of the first Yakuza game, and tells the curious story of a small vacant property lot that somehow drags all of Kamurocho’s biggest crime families into an unlikely turf war. To say anymore would spoil a wild story full of Yakuza bosses jockeying for power, Chinese assassins, and head-spinning betrayals. Luckily, due to its prequel nature, players need no prior knowledge of the series to jump right in.

While Yakuza 0’s engrossing story will please any fan of Japanese crime dramas, it’s the chance to see a younger Kazuma and Majima, who act quite differently in their youth compared to their later years, that delivers the game’s biggest surprises. Kazuma is more hot-headed, not yet the stoic elder gangster he eventually becomes, while Majima’s wild dog persona has yet to fully form, so the Joker-like gangster is instead more of a silent and cool protagonist. Their evolution into the characters they eventually become forms the backbone of Yakuza 0’s sprawling narrative, and makes this prequel the perfect starting point for anyone looking to get into Sega’s now massively popular series.

3. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

There’s an argument to be made that Deus Ex: Human Revolution watered down a lot of what made the original Deus Ex a landmark success. It’s less flexible and more streamlined than its incredibly freeform forerunner. Despite this, Human Revolution earns its place among the greats, in part due to how its prequel story takes a deeper, more personal look at the series’ transhuman elements.

Protagonist Adam Jensen is robbed of his arms in an early-game disaster, his limbs forcibly replaced with mechanical prosthetics. But while they save his career, they unwittingly force him into a cultural war between the world’s wealthy, augmented elite and the deprived working classes. As both Jensen himself and his broken bathroom mirror tell you, he “never asked for this.” While the game’s central tale successfully takes on the conspiracy-fuelled sci-fi of the original, it’s the cultural and ethical questions posed by Human Revolution’s augmented society that really lift it high. Every character has their own take on the world’s dividing issue and, despite some slightly hamfisted racism metaphors, the story makes salient points on the dangers of unrestrained, capitalism-fuelled science.

Deus Ex’s Matrix-coded, nanotech-fuelled world was a far-fetched fictional future at the turn of the millenium, but it has only grown increasingly realistic with each passing year. Human Revolution successfully bridges the gap between the original’s almost satirical approach and something more knowingly serious, resulting in a deeply compelling cyberpunk dystopia.

2. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Hideo Kojima played the ultimate prank in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, making newcomer Raiden the surprise protagonist instead of everyone’s favorite spy hero, Solid Snake. Three years later, Kojima performed another variation of this prank by having Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater be a prequel starring Naked Snake, the man who would eventually become the series’ main antagonist, Big Boss.

We didn’t know when it was first announced, but Metal Gear Solid 3 would become arguably the most important game in the series, both from gameplay and story perspectives. It revolutionized the stealth genre by putting Naked Snake out in the open jungle and fulfilling Kojima’s dream of having a Metal Gear game take place in an expansive setting. A technical triumph, the PS2 hardware-pushing Soviet jungles were a major departure from the walled corridors of Shadow Moses or Big Shell, with a smart adaptive camouflage system replacing static hiding places like lockers. As a result of this new design, everything from stealth to boss fights is dramatically different in Metal Gear Solid 3 compared to previous games, with plenty of room to experiment with how to defeat a boss or infiltrate a compound.

But it’s not just in how you fight each boss that magic can be found, but in the story that each of them tells. The events of Metal Gear Solid 3 set the foundations for everything that came before and after it. Not only does Snake Eater reveal the origins of the Patriots, the shadow organization and ultimate antagonist of the series, but also the tragic origins of Big Boss. The aftermath of his face-off with The Boss forever changed the way we view Kojima’s iconic villain. As his mission progresses, Naked Snake transforms from CIA spy into a tragic figure, whose betrayal at the hands of his country sets him on a path that leads through every Metal Gear game, all the way to the saga’s chronological ending in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

1. Red Dead Redemption 2

How do you follow up a masterpiece? Well, if you’re Rockstar Games, you simply make another masterpiece.

Taking full advantage of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Rockstar created one of the most breathtaking, expansive open-world games ever put on a disc with Red Dead Redemption 2. The level of detail the studio put into it is simply head-spinning, from the way new protagonist Arthur Morgan’s weight fluctuates depending on how much he eats, to how animal carcasses will decompose almost in real-time. And yes, Rockstar may have gone a bit overboard when they made it so your horse’s testicles shrink and grow depending on the temperature, but it all goes towards fully recreating a beautiful(?) vision of the Old West.

But the technical achievements almost pale in comparison to Red Dead Redemption 2’s epic story of a dying Wild West on the cusp of a new, industrial century. Arthur Morgan is a man whose time is coming to an end, not because of his criminal lifestyle, but because he’s slowly being made redundant by the rapidly changing United States as it evolves into a modern nation. Roger Clark’s performance as Morgan is frankly staggering, portrayed with equal parts confidence and vulnerability as his accomplices, lifestyle, and own body continue to betray him. Across the twilight years of his criminal career, Arthur sees firsthand how his beloved gang disintegrates due to the negligence of its leader, Dutch, and that downfall provides a strong platform for the passing of the baton from Arthur to John Marston, the original game’s protagonist.

Red Dead Redemption 2 does everything you could ever wish for from a prequel — from improving on every aspect of a series’ gameplay, to telling a story that builds out its world’s mythos to incredible effect — and is why it tops our list of the greatest video game prequels.

And there you have it, our picks for the best prequels in video games. Was your favorite included? Let us know what you think of our choices, or share your favorites in the comments below.

Matt Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. Additional contributions from Matt Purslow and Simon Cardy.

Prismatic Evolutions is still one of the most valuable Pokémon TCG sets out of the whole Scarlet and Violet era. Its main chase card (Umbreon ex-161/131) is commanding over $800, with lower-end SIR cards still pulling well over $100.

The difference between now and a couple of months ago is getting these insanely valuable cards for the right price instead of paying over the odds. Here’s a quick look at the top 10 most valuable cards to add to your collection, or deck if you’ve got Pokécoins coming out of your ears.

I’ve gone into a bit more detail on every card, a touch more into the article, but the gist is that it’s a good time to start collecting Prismatic Evolutions chase cards.

Believe it or not, prices have actually been correcting over the past two months, with some cards holding double their current value just a couple of months ago.

This is very positive, meaning players and collectors can get their chase cards for the right price and watch them climb in value as time goes on.

Prismatic Evolution: Honorable Mentions

Wait! Before we start: My favorite thing about Prismatic Evolutions is the sheer number of SIRs featuring non-Eeveelution Pokémon.

They deserve some recognition too, so I’ve put together this extra list to balance out the usual Eevee dominance. Here are my top ten honorable mentions for Prismatic Evolution, with artwork that’s arguably among the best we have ever seen.

From the fantastical pastel color busts from Terapagos ex SIR and the abract highlight work on Iron Hands ex SIR to The stained glass style of Dragapult ex SIR and the charging yet chaotic pose of Ceruledge ex SIR.

They’re considerably more affordable too, peaking at just under $94. That’s where the value in Pokémon TCG is for me, the overlooked cards that are fantastic showpieces.

Looking to collect Prismatic Evolutions for cards that will increase in value over time without breaking your credit rating? This is where savvy collectors need to be looking in my opinion.

10. Eevee ex – 167/131 – $112.98

Diablo general manager and Gears of War veteran Rod Fergusson has left Blizzard.

Fergusson confirmed the news on his personal Twitter/X account:

After five years of driving the Diablo franchise forward with four big launches, it’s time for me to step away from Blizzard/Microsoft, sword in hand, and see what’s next. The teams are set up for success, with an exciting slate of releases ahead. I’m incredibly proud of what… pic.twitter.com/Fsh4gjmgVl

— Rod Fergusson (@RodFergusson) August 8, 2025

“After five years of driving the Diablo franchise forward with four big launches, it’s time for me to step away from Blizzard/Microsoft, sword in hand, and see what’s next,” Fergusson wrote. “The teams are set up for success, with an exciting slate of releases ahead. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built together and looking forward to what comes next for Diablo, and for me.”

Blizzard confirmed this news to IGN today as well, but declined to offer further comment as to why Fergusson has left the company, or who will run the Diablo franchise going forward.

Blizzard president Johanna Faries responded on Twitter/X, with the following:

Guiding a franchise like Diablo takes rare talent, vision, and collaboration. Thank you, Rod, for bringing all of those in spades. Sanctuary’s future is brighter because of the impact you’ve had! 🙏🏽✨ https://t.co/r479RGDkm3

— Johanna Faries (@Joh_Burg) August 8, 2025

Xbox head Phil Spencer also responded on BlueSky: “You brought strength, hellfire, and vision to one of gaming’s most iconic franchises. Playing Diablo IV with you was a blast—thanks for everything you gave to the game and the community.”

Rod Fergusson joined Blizzard in 2020 after leaving Microsoft’s The Coalition. Fergusson previously worked on every Gears of War game across his time at both Microsoft and Epic Games. At Blizzard, Fergusson headed up the Diablo franchise, joining shortly after Diablo 4 was first announced. Fergusson has done numerous candid interviews about his vision for the direction and future of the Diablo franchise. In April, Blizzard unveiled a roadmap for Diablo 4 for 2025 that did not go down well with fans. Most recently, Diablo 4 received the Sins of the Horadrim update with new Nightmare Dungeon updates and customizable spells.

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.

Wizards of the Coast is gearing up to release a brand-new introductory D&D set. Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set: Heroes of The Borderlands is set to release September 17, but it’s now available to preorder over on Amazon. It comes with everything you need for you and your friends to get started on your first three adventures.

Dungeons & Dragons – Starter Set: Heroes of The Borderlands