Category: Video Games

Remedy’s Control spin-off shooter, FBC: Firebreak, has topped one million players. While the game is free-to-play for Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus subscribers, the studio called it a “significant milestone,” despite acknowledging “there is still a lot of work ahead of us.”

“As of last night, we have surpassed 1 million players in FBC: Firebreak. This is a significant milestone, so thank you for playing from all of us at Remedy,” the studio said in a post on social media.

“We know there is still a lot of work ahead of us, and we are super-motivated about it. We have a lot of exciting things cooking for Firebreak players! More about that soon.”

Last week, the team identified a problem with “the first hour experience,” saying that FBC: Firebreak’s opening gameplay was not “a great experience due to a combination of things,” including issues with onboarding, poorly explained systems and tools, and “a lack of clarity as to what to do in the Jobs and how to do the work effectively.” The developer also said: “the power fantasy isn’t great in the first hours of the game as starting weapons feel weak, and unlocking higher-tier weapons requires a bit too much grinding.”

“Right now, despite how sparse the story can seem in moments, there’s a lot of fun to be had wrangling erratic monsters in Remedy’s spectacularly absurd bureaucratic setting,” we wrote in IGN’s FBC: Firebreak review in progress. “I’ll be playing more this week and wrap up this review as soon as I’ve tested the limits of Remedy’s chaotic cooperative job simulator.”

Remedy also recently confirmed its plans for ongoing support post-launch, including two new Jobs (missions) coming in 2025. More updates will arrive in 2026, the developer said. All playable content released post launch, such as Jobs, will be free to all players. Players have the option to buy cosmetics, but none of these items will affect gameplay, and there will be no limited-time rotations or daily log-ins, Remedy insisted.

It’s a busy time for Alan Wake developer Remedy, which has a number of projects on the go. As well as FBC: Firebreak, it’s working on Control 2 and the Max Payne and Max Payne 2 remake compilation.

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.

After half a dozen hours in the earliest moments of the upcoming pirate RPG Sea of Remnants, I was left with tons of questions about how this one will ultimately turn out, whether it was the currently barebones turn-based combat system, the convoluted labyrinth of vendors and upgrade paths that reminded me a bit of an MMO, or the story and dialogue that were sometimes difficult to follow given this early build’s lack of English voice acting or reliable subtitles. But one thing that was never in doubt throughout all of that is just how much this colorful, over-the-top adventure is already absolutely dripping with style that’s so unbelievably hard to look away from, it made me eager to see more in spite of those rough edges. Seriously, the cartoonish characters, exaggerated (and often hilarious) animations, and gorgeous menus are some of the coolest I’ve seen since Persona 5, and even when I didn’t understand everything that was happening, I often couldn’t help but smile ear-to-ear. The version I played is so early and unfinished, it’s still pretty hard to tell if this will deliver in plenty of other areas, from gameplay to technical stability, but there’s plenty of time before the unspecific 2026 launch window to iron all that out, and it already has so much unique charm that I’m officially adding this one to my list of games to follow closely.

Before I get into what I liked and didn’t like in my time with Sea of Remnants, it’s worth mentioning again that what I played appeared to be an extremely early build that was quite unfinished and prone to all sorts of bugs and rocky technical performance. I’m used to playing unfinished products months and sometimes years before they see the light of day, but even by that measure, this one felt especially under construction. Menus and dialogue were riddled with placeholder text, crashes and bugs were quite frequent, and the entire thing hadn’t been optimized for non-Mandarin speakers like myself, which often left things lost in translation. For all of these reasons and more, it was more than a little hard to tell how things will pan out, both from a technical perspective and where gameplay is concerned, since many ideas were clearly extremely unbaked. Keep that in mind as you watch this video.

What I do know about Sea of Remnants is that it’s playing in a lot of the same space as Sea of Thieves, with open-world high seas to explore as a pirate crew and islands to visit, filled with loot waiting to be plundered. But it also distinguishes itself with unexpected elements, like the turn-based combat that happens when you’re ashore, or the RPG/MMO mechanics that accompany it – to the point where I’m not even sure what odd blend of genres the final product is shooting for, and every 30 minutes came with another surprise that added to that confusion, like how, late in the demo, I learned there were hundreds of recruitable companions I could take with me on voyages and build bonds with. And this is all without having been able to see any of the planned multiplayer components in action, as this will all apparently be taking place in an online world where you can interact with other pirate captains.

Unfortunately, a lot of the ideas Sea of Remnants threw at me were pretty hard to get a sense for in this build, like the turn-based combat, where my buccaneer crew and I crossed swords and blunderbusses with rival skallywags and local fauna. While beautifully animated, the bits I played were also extremely oversimplified, either due to the section I played being pretty early on in the adventure, or just because it was quite clearly still a work in progress. As a big fan of turn-based battles, I’m hopeful they can flesh out some of the mechanics here to reach the heights of some of my recent favorites like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, but for now it mostly reminded me of a very stripped-down version of Persona 5.

The good news is that, no matter how unfinished any aspect of Sea of Remnants was, it was consistently and without exception one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long time. The humanoid characters (all of which are puppets for some reason) have a ton of personality despite their wooden faces, and their exaggerated animations really cracked me up. And despite having Sea of Thieves pirate vibes, I rarely felt like I knew what was going to happen next, like how after beating a giant ape boss on an island and getting back on my boat to go home, I suddenly found myself under attack by that same monkey out for revenge, who now captained his own vessel and blasted me with cannon fire. Then, even though I sent him to Davy Jones’ locker, my ship was sunk moments later anyway in the most silly cutscene imaginable. I still feel like I don’t really understand what it will feel like to play the final product, as it swings so wildly between juggling an inventory of loot, blasting cannons on a boat, and choosing between very confusing dialogue options with various party members, but even though playing through that confusion was often a little unintuitive, I certainly can’t say it wasn’t interesting – quite the opposite.

It was also really nice to see such a unique setting, because although there’s a lot of typical piracy shenanigans you might expect, there are also really strange concepts peppered throughout that kept me on my toes, like how my journey started out with me finding the moon buried beneath the sea (!?), or how the marionette characters apparently lose their memory whenever they’re destroyed on an adventure, but always find themselves back inside the main island of Orbtopia to begin again. There’s also a really distinct punk vibe throughout the entire world, as everything is covered with graffiti and many of the characters act like reckless teenagers who cut class to cosplay as mischievous pirates.

The big question with Sea of Remnants is if its unmistakably cool presentation and interesting hodgepodge of ideas can actually come together into something coherent, and I truly feel no closer to answering that after more than six hours with it. For now, it’s definitely interesting and distinctive enough for me to anxiously wait to see more, but we’ll likely need to wait a fair bit longer before we can get a better feel for how it’s shaping up – especially when it comes to technical performance and the online aspects that were completely absent from this build.

I can definitely see the beginnings of a vision here though, where the punk aesthetic and killer art style play well with over-the-top ship combat and slower, more tactical turn-based battles on foot to create something really special. Plus, we can always use more pirate fantasy in our lives, and I can already tell that this goofy take on the genre will bring a very fresh perspective. Granted, I have no idea how they’ll make online multiplayer, where friends would presumably come along for the ride, work with the turn-based combat and NPC party members. But hey – if they manage to pull it off it sounds like it’d be awesome, and if they don’t at least it’ll be something unique nonetheless.

Capcom has said that Leon S. Kennedy is a “bad match for horror” amid ongoing speculation he is a yet-to-be-revealed second protagonist for Resident Evil Requiem.

In a fresh look at Requiem shown during the publisher’s Capcom Spotlight 2025 broadcast, the floppy-haired fan-favorite was nowhere to be seen.

Still, his absence was made notable by the fact that Requiem director Koshi Nakanishi offered an umprompted explanation for why Leon, of all past Resident Evil protagonists, had not been picked as this particular game’s star.

“The protagonist this time is an intelligence analyst for the FBI, Grace Ashcroft,” said Nakanishi, explaining that the new character was a good fit for Requiem’s renewed horror focus. “She’s introverted and easily scared, which is a new type of character for the Resident Evil series.”

“We wanted someone that experiences horror from the same perspective as the player,” he continued. “She learns to overcome her fears throughout the course of the story, but she’s also an analyst for the FBI who’s trained with guns, and is able to act with calm deductive reasoning.”

Capcom’s first trailer for Requiem, aired earlier this month, introduced Ashcroft and the game’s returning Raccoon City setting in a manner that only fuelled the flames of fan speculation that Leon would also feature in some capacity. Indeed, fans were quick to spot a number of clues they said pointed to Leon’s presence — including his old truck, still parked outside the ruins of the Raccoon City Police Department.

Is the recent fan speculation around Leon’s presence why Capcom has addressed his apparent absence now? Here’s what Nakanishi said next, on the character’s status in the game:

“We always thought about making Leon the protagonist,” Nakanishi explained, “but making a horror game based around him is difficult. He wouldn’t jump at a bucket falling. No one wants to see Leon scared by every little thing. So he’s actually quite a bad match for horror.”

Is this Capcom ruling Leon out of Requiem? Nakanishi seems clear that the combat-tested Leon would no longer work as the hero of a game focused around horror. But the publisher also stopped short of ruling the character out altogether.

Leon’s status is clearly an important enough talking point that Capcom decided to include discussion of it in tonight’s showing — which still showed only a fragment of the full game. With more than six months still to go, Capcom will of course have more up its sleeve to reveal. Could this all be some kind of ruse, and Leon still be a part of it?

Recent entries in the Resident Evil series have taken different approaches to balancing horror and action — some to better results than others — but it’s worth remembering how popular the Leon-focused, action-heavy Resident Evil 4 remains among fans. Could Capcom still be holding back a look at Requiem’s more action-heavy moments, where Leon would be a better fit? There’s still plenty of time left for the publisher to tell.

Resident Evil Requiem will launch on February 27, 2026 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S.

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