When it comes to carry cases, many people swear by ‘official’ options, and with good reason; when Nintendo is tasked with making a case for its own console, you’d assume the company would produce a decent product.
How Mudang: Two Hearts Fuses Storytelling and Stealth to Deliver a Captivating Action-Adventure Game
Min DongjunDirector, Mudang: Two Hearts
Mudang: Two Hearts – coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC as an Xbox Play Anywhere title in 2026 – is a narrative-driven, third-person action adventure game that blends cinematic storytelling with immersive stealth and dynamic combat set on a politically volatile Korean peninsula. Built on our state-of-the-art performance capture pipeline, it integrates fluid motion-matched animations, open-ended level design, dynamic spatial audio, and intelligent AI— woven seamlessly to deliver a harrowing journey through a fractured future Korea. This isn’t a story of triumph or glory — it’s a search for truth.
You will be challenged to uncover that truth for yourself as you confront engineered emotions, falsified information, and manipulated beliefs throughout the story. When even your rage and innermost beliefs may have been carefully shaped by unseen hands, truth becomes your only weapon.
Someone Is Using Your Rage
The world celebrated as the two Koreas signed a historic reunification treaty, promising to end decades of division and bring lasting peace to the peninsula. But beneath the surface, darker forces stirred.
On the day the pivotal bill was set to pass, a mysterious terrorist group attacked the South Korean National Assembly, drenching the symbol of peace in blood. Chaos erupted across the peninsula.
Ji Jeongtae is a North Korean special forces operative dispatched to the South under the terms of the new peace accord. Neither friend nor foe, Jeongtae quickly finds himself isolated within his new unit. As suspicion festers, he is tasked with putting an end to a string of bloody terrorist attacks that have been driving civilians into uncontrollable rage. As his pursuit of a terrorist group calling themselves Beolmuban hits a dead end, he manages to catch a glimpse of the faceless power lurking in the shadows.
Eight months have passed since the last attack, but the fear hasn’t gone away. The South Korean military declares martial law, restoring order at the cost of constant surveillance.
As the public adjusts to this uneasy calm, a K-pop group named ORDO announces the first state-sanctioned concert under martial law. Now part of the newly formed Martial Law Command, Jeongtae is assigned to security detail for the event.
When Beolmuban suddenly storms the stage, Jeongtae is thrown into familiar chaos — and uncovers a dangerous secret involving GAVI, ORDO’s brightest star.
Strategy Before Instinct
In Mudang you can choose between stealth, CQC (close-quarters combat), or all-out aggression at any moment. No matter the approach, the game offers a wealth of options: environmental takedowns, a wide range of CQC moves — both lethal and nonlethal — a robust toolkit of gadgets like goggles, EMPs, grenades, lures, and mines, and a deep arsenal of firearms to round it all out. But without the right strategy, you can quickly become overwhelmed by the enemy’s response.
Our enemy AI was built from the ground up with versatility in mind, dynamically adapting to your actions in real time. While you remain hidden, enemies form search parties, investigate suspicious signs — like fallen allies, disabled lights, or even nearby footsteps — and raise the alarm when something’s off. In combat, they coordinate to flank and outmaneuver you and use every gadget, CQC move, and weapon that you can use as well. To stay ahead, you’ll need to adapt and experiment.
Our open-ended level design supports that experimentation, offering multiple routes and vantage points: hide in the shadows, hang from pipes, slip through vents, climb buildings, or destroy parts of the environment to set up ambushes.
Put together, Mudang’s unique blend of stealth and action creates a steady ebb and flow in every battle, with close-quarters combat inspired by real Korean Special Forces tactics grounding each encounter in visceral, tactical realism.
Two Playable Characters, Two Perspectives
You’ll take on the roles of two protagonists from seemingly opposite walks of life. As the story progresses, you switch between them at key moments and experience the narrative from their distinct perspectives.
Ji Jeongtae: An elite special forces operative who shines on the battlefield. He uses his military training and equipment to fight his way through enemy forces in pursuit of the truth.
GAVI: A famous K-pop star who shines on stage. Living under constant surveillance, she longs to reclaim control over her life. Though she’s never handled a weapon, she plays a pivotal role in uncovering the truth.
The use of dual protagonists allowed us to build two contrasting gameplay experiences — and two distinct narrative threads that converge to reveal a single truth.
Reflecting Emotional Momentum In Gameplay
Missions in Mudang aren’t built on repeating gameplay loops. Instead, it evolves alongside the narrative, reflecting each character’s emotional stakes at every turn. From infiltration and reconnaissance to rescue and pursuit, every sequence is crafted to draw you into the moment, letting you feel as though you’re living the events as they unfold.
No Borders Between Cutscene and Gameplay
Mudang’s cutscenes are rendered in real time using in-game assets, allowing for seamless transitions between story and gameplay. Characters move naturally in and out of scripted moments without jarring cuts or loading screens, keeping you immersed in the moment and maintaining the emotional throughline without interruption.
Capturing Emotion
In a narrative-driven game like Mudang, our characters needed to feel real, not just in cutscenes, but in every moment of gameplay. With Korean film and TV actors lending their talents, we used cutting-edge volumetric and motion capture technologies to bring every subtle glance, delicate gesture, and nuanced expression to life within the game.
Mudang: Two Hearts is set to arrive in 2026 for Xbox Series X|S and Xbox PC as an Xbox Play Anywhere title. And while the wait may feel long, the world we’re building demands time, care, and precision. Every scene, every emotion, every choice is being crafted to deliver a story that lingers — one that stays with you long after the screen fades to black.
In a unified Korea, masked terrorists strike at the heart of Seoul. Ji Jeongtae, a soldier sent in to stop the attacks, stumbles upon a K-Pop star named Gavi at the center of the unfolding crisis. As their stories intertwine, a chilling truth begins to take shape.
When you have a game that is so run focused like Elden Ring Nightreign, balance is the key to not getting someone to throw their controller at a wall, cursing their own birth as they do so. Up until now, there were parts of Elden Ring Nightreign that certainly weren’t balanced, though that mostly came down to a few bugs. As of today though, there’s a new update you can download for the roguelike which brings in some much needed fixes.
Among all the Switch 2 excitement, we didn’t want this to get lost: Xenoblade Chronicles is now 15 years old! To celebrate, Alana recalls something which turned the game from a great one into a special one.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles, so be wary if you haven’t at least made it to the final hours of the game.
Hello! We’re Kati and Florent, Lead Narrative Designer and Creative Director, from the Aphelion team at Don’t Nod. Now that you’ve seen our game’s world premiere during Xbox Games Showcase, we wanted to talk more about it – including its conception, story, and what you can expect in terms of gameplay before it launches in 2026.
Aphelion is a linear action-adventure game set in space, blending exploration, traversal, stealth, and mystery. But more than anything, it’s a story-rich human journey with a grounded approach to sci-fi, and includes a dual-protagonist structure that shapes both the gameplay and the emotional core of the story.
Aphelion is set in the near-future – Earth is dying and humanity is desperately searching for another home in Persephone, the uncharted icy planet that Ariane and Thomas find themselves on. One of our early inspirations was the real-world hypothesis of Planet Nine – the theory that there’s a previously undetectable planet in the outer edges of our Solar System: what if it existed? What if we found it? In developing this vision, we’re proud to be collaborating with the European Space Agency (ESA) on Aphelion to ground our game’s science in reality.
You’ll play as both Ariane and Thomas, alternating between their perspectives as they try to find one another and reunite after a crash landing. Their separation is central – not just to the story, but to the game design too. Each character offers a different experience, and their unique situations reflect their personal journeys.
Ariane is physically capable and equipped for traversal. Through her, players will explore dangerous terrain by climbing, rappelling, navigating environmental hazards, and more. Thomas was injured in the crash, but can investigate and discover the mystery of the planet in different ways. This contrast creates a rhythm and duality that allows you to feel the weight of each character’s journey, separately and together.
Exploration is the heartbeat of Aphelion. What starts out as a mission compromised from the beginning becomes a deeper journey into the unknown. As you explore the environment and gather information, you’ll uncover clues as to the planet’s strange conditions, and what caused the crash of Ariane and Thomas’s ship, the Hope 01.
But at its core, this isn’t a game about a planet. It’s a tale about what we bring with us when everything else is lost. The game’s conception began with Ariane and Thomas, not the wider story around them. Their relationship, strained by duty and sacrifice, is the emotional heart of Aphelion. As they navigate this new world and the unknown, they are confronting something deeply personal: how we face the prospect of loss, and whether hope can survive in the aftermath.
It’s an emotional story about love, resilience, and hope, and we can’t wait to show you more. Aphelion will be released in 2026 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Xbox Cloud. It will be an Xbox Play Anywhere title, and available day one with Game Pass. To stay up to date, follow Don’t Nod on X, Instagram, and TikTok.
A SCI-FI ACTION-ADVENTURE ON THE EDGE OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
By 2060, Earth will be uninhabitable. The discovery of a 9th planet – Persephone – at the edge of the solar system, is humanity’s best hope. The European Space Agency is dispatching the Hope 01 scientific mission, consisting of 2 of their accomplished astronauts, Ariane and Thomas. Their mission: to survey the planet and determine whether humanity can prosper anew here.
Your adventure begins in chaos, as the crash landing of their ship scatters them across the planet, launching them on a desperate quest to find one another.
Aphelion is a cinematic third-person action-adventure set on the planet Persephone, an uncharted, frozen world. Stranded and isolated, you must survive the truly unknown, find each other, and complete the mission. Traverse stunning alien landscapes, avoid lurking threats, and discover the haunting secrets buried beneath the ice.
EXPLORE AN UNCHARTED PLANET
Explore the surreal beauty of Persephone, a vast frozen world shaped by deadly weather and ever-changing terrain.
Armed only with your explorational tools – pathfinder, oxygen tank, grappling hook, and more – you must face the unknown, traverse treacherous terrain, and gather clues about the strange, reality-bending phenomenon threatening your existence.
FIND EACH OTHER
Helpless on the edge of the solar system, the Hope 01 crew faces a brutal new world and the echoes of a complicated past. Ariane Montclair and Thomas Cross share a deep connection, a relationship left unresolved by the demands of their careers and their mission. Facing overwhelming odds, their fractured bond becomes a lifeline as they grasp in the dark for one another.
HIDE TO SURVIVE
You’re not alone. Something lurks beneath the ice.
Key Features:
– A realistic depiction of space exploration
– An emotional drama on an alien world
– Cinematic action-adventure with gripping traversal gameplay
– Tools-based exploration and survival
– Tense and exciting stealth-based sequences
A game in collaboration with: European Space Agency (ESA)
If you’re playing Mario Kart World, you’ll likely be unlocking a steady stream of new vehicles simply playing the game as you normally would — progressing through Grand Prix Cups, Knockout Tour and hunting down challenges in Free Roam.
All in all, there are 30 karts to unlock on top of the game’s basic eight vehicles. Every 100 coins unlocks a new kart, so you’ll need 3,000 coins to nab them all.
It’s not a particularly tall order, but that hasn’t stopped fans from immediately trying to maximise their Mario Kart World time to get everything even quicker.
Most tips involve Mario Kart World’s Free Roam mode, where players are hunting down the most lucrative spots to grind for coins — or even go AFK and watch their coffers slowly fill.
If you’re happy to rinse and repeat loading the game over and over, fans are recommending honing in on any of the game’s giant stacks of coins you can find in Free Roam which respawn every time you reload the game.
IGN has tested this method with the stack of coins by the Boo Cinema fast travel spot. Load into Free Roam from the game’s main menu, turn around and you’ll see the coin stack to your left. After collection, simply reload the game and repeat the process.
For something less labor intensive, other fans recommend parking up at Toad Factory, behind the conveyor belt which continually spits out a stream of coins and item boxes. It’s going to take some time to collect individual coins this way, but as an AFK method when you wouldn’t otherwise be playing the game… it works.
Finally, if you fancy chilling in Free Roam while actually driving, keep an eye out for the coin cars which toss out coins behind them as they drive. You’ll need to follow these vehicles fairly slowly to collect the currency it drops, but as an activity to cool off from a heated few Knockout Tour matches, it’s quite relaxing.
After unlocking all of Mario Kart World’s 38 karts, players are reporting still receiving stick rewards for milestones at 18,000 coins and beyond. But beyond stickers, there does not seem to be any reason (yet) for continuing to farm coins beyond the 3,000 mark.
Could a top secret golden kart still be hiding in the game, as it has in other Mario Kart entries? If it is, players are yet to find it. But there’s clearly plenty to do in the game — 394 P-Switches, for one — and fans are still discovering more. Earlier today, we noted the secret method that’s been found to explore the game’s world in Mirror Mode Free Roam, for example.
Finding Lies of P: Overture a bit too hard? Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you just “get good” like those randos you see littered all over Twitter. I’m actually here to say that you’re not alone on this one. The story expansion for the conceptually weirdest Soulslike in town dropped during Geoff’s Onslaught Of Generally OK Announcements (aka, Summer Game Fest) as a surprise release, and it seems like the general feedback so far has been “please make it a bit easier so Twinkocchio doesn’t get battered so hard.”
IGN’s Dune: Awakening map is here! Our interactive map tracks essential locations across Arrakis, including Main Quests and Contracts, Enemy Camps and Enemy Outposts, and Trainer locations.
Meg Koepp is a Guides Editor on the IGN Guides team, with a focus on trends. When she’s not working, you can find her playing an RPG or cuddling her corgi.
Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead have unleashed the latest twist in the game’s Galactic War, with urban battles against the Terminids now on the cards. Rather than defending cities on Super Earth, this time the task is swatting bug invasions of population centres across multiple planets.
A tough assignment, but to be fair, successfully protecting their home planet against the still-at-large Illuminate should have given players plenty experience of street fighting (not the Ryu and Chun-Li kind).
Dune: Awakening won’t release on console until some point in 2026, developer Funcom has said.
The survival MMO launched as planned on PC on June 10, and it had been hoped the console version would release not far behind. But it sounds like fans will have a bit longer of a wait than expected.
Funcom failed to expand on why the survival MMO had been delayed on console, only writing in a press release that while the game “will be coming” to PlayStation and Xbox, that release is expected “sometime in 2026.”
The team was able, however, to confirm that the Dune: Awakening Season Pass is now live, offering the Wildlife of Arrakis DLC which boasts four in-game statues celebrating some of the planet’s most “tenacious” creatures: the sandworm, chiroptera, kulon, and Muad’Dib.
Three more DLCs are scheduled over the next year or so — expect one in Q4 2025, Q1 2026, and another in Q2 2026 — with free updates peppered between those bringing “new content, features, and enhancements.” Funcom also strengthened its commitment to “no subscription fees or microtransactions.”
We’re still in the process of reviewing Dune: Awakening. While there’s no score at yet, and we’re still a little unimpressed by the gunplay, our reviewer wrote: “After more than 35 hours I still feel like I’m fairly early into my Dune: Awakening adventure, and still have new zones to visit, haven’t gotten very far into the main story, and have only had a few encounters with PvP. There’s a ton for me to do, so look for an update sometime this week as I work my way through to the endgame.”
Did you know that you can (sort of) ride sandworms in Dune: Awakening after all? It turns out that if you’re super patient and don’t mind a little screen-tearing or clipping through assets, it can be done if you’ve the right equipment. Here’s how.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
