I’ve hit the install cap on my storage drive more times than I’ve rage-quit in Apex. At some point, deleting a 90GB game just to download another becomes a sad cycle of SSD suffering. So yeah, when a bunch of top-tier M.2 drives go on sale, I pay attention. Amazon’s Spring Sale has been great for PC gaming deals, but it’s also the last day of the sale as well, so don’t delay on these latest price drops.
Monster Hunter Wilds is laying out its future roadmap. Alongside its planned Title Updates, director Yuya Tokuda has confirmed a few additional goals the team has, as post-launch support for the latest entry in the Monter Hunter franchise carries on.
In a letter from the director, Tokuda started by laying out the roadmap seen in the recent Monster Hunter Wilds Showcase for Title Update 1 and beyond. The first big Title Update drops on April 4, this Friday. Then, the seasonal event Festival of Accord: Blossomdance runs from April 23 through May 7. Additionally, April 30 through May 21 will see the Arch-tempered Rey Dau storm into Monster Hunter Wilds.
At the end of May, Update Ver. 1.011 will bring an unannounced Capcom collaboration and some “other additional features.” Title Update 2 is then planned for this summer, with a new additional monster and seosonal event. Tokuda confirms more free updates are arriving beyond that.
Part of the Mosnter Hunter Wilds’ director’s letter dug into the question of challenging monster content. Already, fights like Tempered Arkveld, the aforementioned Arch-tempered Rey Dau, and a refight with Zoh Shia are confirmed. Tokuda also confirmed Mizutsune, arriving with Title Update 1, will have an 8-star Tempered Mizutsune fight, available at HR 41 or higher.
The end-of-May update will add even more 8-star Tempered monsters to the Wilds. Tempered versions of Gore Magala, Rey Dau, Uth Duna, Nu Udra, and Jin Dahaad will make their way to the game in this update.
“Each of these monsters have had various behind-the-scenes adjustments to make them more resilient, such as increased health, resistance to wounding, and tweaks to multiplayer scaling,” Tokuda said. “Challenging monsters will also appear in future updates, so keep an eye out for further information about them.”
Specifically addressing feedback from launch, Tokuda said that Capcom is planning to make “various adjustments,” including weapon balance changes.
“These will be implemented gradually with each upcoming title update in order to make the game more enjoyable for everyone for a longer period of time,” Tokuda said. “Depending on the content, these changes may take some time to prepare.”
The director noted the Hammer as one weapon being considered for “upward adjustments,” which sounds like good news for Hammer mains. Some “unintentionally overpowered” things will be adjusted down — the Corrupted Mantle is one example — but Capcom said it plans on adjusting other parts upward, making for a “generally balanced” update. The team is currently aiming to implement the overall weapon balance adjustments in either the end-of-May update or in Title Update 2 this summer.
Additionally, Capcom is targeting stability and performance for Monster Hunter Wilds, specifically noting the PC version. Title Update 1 is planned to bring a reduction in VRAM usage and an upgrade to the DirectStorage version of the Steam version, which should result in an “overall improvement” of stability for PC players.
More improvements are planned, to bolster the overall technical experience for players on all platforms. Additionally, the in-game economy, balance, and other areas are planned for improvement too.
Quality-of-life is also a major target for the Monster Hunter Wilds team moving forward. The Grand Hub, arriving in Title Update 1, is part of this, condensing various functions into one end-game area. The team has also reduced waiting times for facility functions at each location.
The team is continuing to work on UI/UX improvements and other quality-of-life updates too. A few items on the docket include restocking items, checking skill information, engaging in multiplayer quests, using the Seikret, and camera behavior during hunts.
The rollout stars with Title Update 1 this Friday, April 4, and on into the summer as we approach Title Update 2. Though it’s still fresh, Monster Hunter Wilds is already one of the year’s most popular games, and it doesn’t look like Capcom is planning to slow down its roadmap for it anytime soon.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.
Two days remain.
We are rapidly approaching the big Switch 2 Direct on 2nd April, and Nintendo is ensuring the hype train is fully stocked and ready to leave the station as it has just shared a new image of the console via the Nintendo Today app.
Now, the vast majority of us will likely see this image tomorrow when the regional clocks tick over to the ‘One Day To Go’ message that the app has been counting towards in recent days, but thanks to the magic of timezones, those in Japan have already caught a glimpse of the fresh snap.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Today, Jagex has announced that it’s bringing the world of RuneScape into a new genre: survival. The developer revealed RuneScape: Dragonwilds, a cooperative open world survival game coming to early access this spring.
Dragonwilds takes place in Ashenfall, a new continent within the RuneScape universe, where one to four players can work together to learn new skills, build camps, grow stronger, and survive against powerful enemies, including lots and lots of dragons. Ashenfall has two regions, with five unique biomes, and the potential for more to be added later post-launch. Though Ashenfall is not the same continent most of RuneScape proper takes place on, RuneScape fans will find a lot of familiarity in the world, including some locations that may resemble familiar places from RuneScape itself, like a wizard’s tower, or a certain castle…
Monsters may also look familiar, but come with a twist. While you’ll still see rats, dragons, trolls, cows, and other creatures you’ll recall from RuneScape, Ashenfall’s wild magic has warped these creatures into strange, nature-fied versions of themselves with new appearances and fusions with plants, thorns, and other wild bits.
Core to survival in Dragonwilds is development of skills, and yes, they include classic RuneScape activities like cooking and woodcutting. These skills allow you to interact with the world in various ways – when I saw a few clips of the game at the Game Developers’ Conference earlier this month, I was shown clips of a player using wind runes to gain the ability to glide through the air across distances. Even more nostalgic was a woodcutting skill that allows players to line up a row of trees and throw a spectral axe to chop them all down at once. It’s a move I was told was referred to as “ax-tral projection.”
RuneScape: Dragonwilds is entering early access on PC sometime this spring, with hopes for a wider launch (including console) sometime in 2026. Jagex will host a deep-dive reveal of the game on Twitch on April 15 at 9:00 AM PT.
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.
Jagex have announced RuneScape: Dragonwilds, a new open world co-operative survival game set in the same fantasy world as their ancient MMO. It runs on Unreal Engine 5, looks a bit like Valheim and Enshrouded, and will launch into early access this spring. Dragonwilds is set on the continent of Ashenfall, a wild place featuring dragons, and your overall goal is to “slay the Dragon Queen”.
I’m going to make the obvious prediction here: you will spend much more time in Ashenfall chopping down trees and composing their delicious, grainy innards into barn doors than chopping down any dragons, regal or otherwise. It’s a survival game, after all. The ratio of dragons to logging and carpentry in the first screenshots is a nail-biting 1:1 – if it weren’t for that subtitle, I might have assumed this to be a game about woodlands management with optional Smaug-bashing QTEs. Rather than dragon-felling cantrips, the announcement release gives prominent mention to a spell for summoning spectral axes to chop trees down for you, which feels a bit like a car salesman leading with the option to just buy a train ticket instead. Here’s the announcement trailer.
Well, never say Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Studios doesn’t have a dark sense of nostalgia. One year removed from the infamous in-game liberation of Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 is sending its players back to the planet to hold it against surging Automaton forces.
After a recent Major Order failure, players were worried about a return to the Creek, as reports indicated the Automatons — pushing forward with their fiery new Incineration Corps — were targeting the Severin Sector. The sector, and Malevelon Creek in particular, was the center of one of Helldivers 2’s earliest and most notable collective moments in the game. Helldivers converged on the planet to try and keep the Creek under Super Earth control.
The combination of jungle terrain and extremely dangerous foes led to Malevelon Creek being dubbed things like “Robot Vietnam.” After the fight concluded and the Creek was securely under Helldiver control, Arrowhead released a special cape to commemorate the fight.
Well, over the weekend, a new Major Order confirmed Helldivers will be heading back to Malevelon Creek. The offensive, led by the Incineration Corps, is on its way, with Malevelon Creek as the target. Already, invasions and skirmishes are underway across the sector, with lines pushing towards the Creek.
Through the in-game briefing, Super Earth is urging its Helldivers to protect the resting place of many “Creekers” who fell in the push to free the planet. This is all to prevent the “greatest net desecration” of the upcoming Malevelon Creek Memorial Day.
New MAJOR ORDER
:Hold MALEVELON CREEK! pic.twitter.com/Dx6WuhG948
— Helldivers Alerts (@HelldiversAlert) March 30, 2025
Helldivers 2 players are, predictably, amped for this Major Order. Memes invoking everything from Starship Troopers to the Doom Slayer and, somehow, Delicious in Dungeon flooded the Helldivers subreddit. Those who experienced the Creek back then, with its swarms of bots and lasers filling the air, are geared up for round two.
New players who joined after the original fight for the Creek also seem eager to jump in and experience this particularly memorable locale. There’s a lot to be said for these communal efforts, where Helldivers start logging on and building towards big moments together. When it ties into the long-running story and a feeling of a shared experience in a universe, it can be really incredible.
Of course, concerns are already rising that Arrowhead hasn’t fully tipped its hand yet. One post notes that while the defensive efforts are going well and Malevelon Creek is currently safe, there are still five days left on the Major Order. Teams are working to target specific goals as the sector remains a hotbed for Automaton incursions. It’s fascinating to see it unfold in real-time, and will no doubt make this week an exciting one for Helldivers players as the war for the Creek picks up.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.
I used to think any old headset would do. Plug it in, hear the game, done. Then I bought a half-decent one and immediately heard footsteps I’d been ignoring for years. Now I can’t go back. If you’re still gaming with tinny audio and a mic that makes you sound like a drive-thru cashier in a hurricane, Amazon’s Spring Sale is your best chance to escape the audio troubles, and it’s also the last day of the sale as well, so don’t delay on these top discounts.
It might be a while yet before we get Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer 2, after comments from the boss of Rockstar’s parent company revealed his preference for releasing marketing materials relatively close to a release window.
Rockstar released GTA 6 Trailer 1 to record-breaking viewership in December 2023, but it hasn’t released a single asset since. The 15-month wait for more information has fueled increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories about when Rockstar will release GTA 6 Trailer 2.
These have included counting the holes in Lucia’s cell door net, the bullet holes in the car from Trailer 1, and even registration plates. But chief among the conspiracy theories is GTA 6’s ongoing moon watch, which was, remarkably, proven to have accurately predicted the date Rockstar announced when it would release GTA 6 Trailer 1, but debunked as a hint at the release date for Trailer 2.
So the big question right now is, when will GTA 6 Trailer 2 be released? We’re no closer to finding out, but based on comments from Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick, fans may have to wait until much closer to GTA 6’s actual release date for their next look at the most anticipated video game in the world.
In a new interview with Bloomberg, Zelnick was asked straight up: why is GTA 6’s release date such a carefully held secret?
“The anticipation for that title may be the greatest anticipation I’ve ever seen for an entertainment property,” Zelnick replied. “And I’ve been around the block a few times and I’ve been in every entertainment business there is.
“We want to maintain the anticipation and the excitement. And we do have competitors who will describe their release schedule for years in advance. And we found that the better thing to do is to provide marketing materials relatively close to the release window in order to create that excitement on the one hand and balance the excitement with unmet anticipation. We don’t always get it exactly right, but that’s what we are trying to do.”
There are a few things worth digging into here. The first is Zelnick’s comments about keeping GTA 6’s release date such a carefully held secret “to maintain the anticipation and the excitement.” That’s something fans and the media alike have assumed to be true, and indeed former Rockstar developers have tried to explain is true.
Mike York, who worked as an animator at Rockstar New England for six years helping to build Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 before leaving the company in 2017, said on his YouTube channel that Rockstar is playing up to the conspiracy theories, deliberately avoiding saying anything about the game or when Trailer 2 will be released in order to fuel even more speculation within the community.
“They’re reaching and pulling and trying to come up with these really cool theories to decipher when the next trailer will be,” he said of fans.
“Specifically Rockstar, they’re very secretive about what they do, and this is a really cool tactic because it creates allure and it creates mystery and it creates people talking about it without them having to do anything. The more they’re silent the better it is, because the more people will be antsy and want to talk about it and have this feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen.”
York went on to say that Rockstar is likely resisting pressure from its army of fans to announce the GTA 6 Trailer 2 release date for this exact reason.
“They could easily release the trailer date and be like, ‘Hey this is when the trailer’s coming out,’ but they don’t do it. And they don’t do it on purpose because it’s a really, really good marketing tactic. If you think about it, it creates these really cool theories.
“This brings the fans together. This is a really cool way to get fans to talk about your game when you’re not releasing anything yet, in-between the times.
“All these theories are great. They only create hype, they create talk, they create mystery behind the games.”
The second thing worth pulling out of Zelnick’s quote is the suggestion that GTA 6 Trailer 2 won’t be released until we’re closer to the game’s actual release date in fall 2025 (assuming it’s not delayed). If that’s true, it may be half a year before we get another look at GTA 6.
While you wait for GTA 6 to come out, check out IGN’s coverage of an ex-Rockstar dev who says the studio probably won’t be able to decide whether GTA 6 is delayed until May 2025, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick’s response to concern about the fate of GTA Online once GTA 6 comes out, and the expert opinion on whether the PS5 Pro will run GTA 6 at 60 frames per second.
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.
Doom is going medieval. Id Software’s next brutish shooter, Doom: The Dark Ages, was revealed with a shield-flinging trailer last summer, and we’ve since learned more about how it’ll actually play. Nic already summed up the new features but I gots something that Nic boy don’t: three hours of hands-on time with the Doomlad, including some dragonback dog-fighting, and a fifty-storey fistfight in a gargantuan mech. Let me tell you what it’s like.
Totally Bazaar.
Marvelous announced the next title in the beloved Story of Seasons series during last week’s Nintendo Direct, and we’re sticking with the remakes! But this time, we’re diverging from the undisputed classics and going a bit off-piste.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar launches on Switch on 27th August 2025, and it’s a remake of Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar, which came to the DS in 2008 in Japan, and 2010/11 for North America and Europe. It’s not one of the most well-known entries, and it’s not even the next game after the previous remake, A Wonderful Life, but it’s getting a brand new art style and plenty of new features all the same.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
