Category: Video Games

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach’s latest trailer revealed a bevy of new information, including one particular casting that’s caused quite a stir thanks to the character’s distinctly Solid Snake-esque vibes. As it turns out, casting this character went a bit further, as director Hideo Kojima tried to find someone who could surpass a standout from the first Death Stranding.

On X/Twitter, Kojima wrote a lengthy post about the process of casting Italian actor Luca Marinelli to play Neil in Death Stranding 2. “During the pandemic, I was casting for DS2,” Kojima said. “Neil would be an important role that replaces Cliff from DS1. The fans would not be satisfied unless the casting would surpass Mads.”

Kojima first learned of Marinelli through his role in the Italian film They Call Me Jeeg, and a correspondence sprung up around the Japanese distribution of the film Martin Eden. Marinelli sent an email to Kojima, which read: “I grew up with Metal Gear. I am a big fan of yours. I am very honored that you saw the film I starred in. I wanted to tell you this directly.”

After seeing Marinelli in The Old Guard, Kojima sent the actor an email offer and talked with him after the actor wrapped filming The Eight Mountains. Once pitched, Marinelli agreed and, after learning Kojima was looking for someone to play Lucy, introduced the game director to his wife Alissa Jung.

“We did their scan and pcap [performance capture] during the height of the pandemic, but their on-set performance was excellent,” Kojima said. “You can see that in the digitized results from even the small bits of the trailer. I can only thank Luca and Alissa for agreeing to perform when we didn’t even have a script yet.”

Marinelli’s character, Neil, has been one of the breakout reveals from the latest Death Stranding 2 trailer. At its conclusion, we see Neil don a bandanna in the same way Solid Snake would in Metal Gear Solid, before directing a squad of soldiers in the same manner as Cliff in the first Death Stranding.

The casting has clearly been on Kojima’s mind for some time, as has the imagery of Luca donning the bandana. Back in 2020, Kojima talked about how Marinelli had caught his attention, adding: “I think if he donned a bandanna, he’d be a spitting image of Solid Snake!”

While it’s unlikely Neil is some multiversal Snake, the imagery certainly brings to mind Kojima’s legacy with the Metal Gear franchise. Hopefully, he’s picked the right man for the job. For more, check out IGN’s feature, Who Is Kojima’s New ‘Solid Snake’ and Why Death Stranding 2 Looks Like the Closest We’ll Ever Get to Another Metal Gear Solid.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is set to launch on June 26, 2025 exclusively on PlayStation 5.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Monster Hunter Wilds has emerged as one of the most popular games of the year thus far, setting records for both the series and Capcom. The reason for its popularity, according to series producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, comes down to story, immersion, and cross-play.

Tsujimoto spoke to The Nikkei (via Automaton) about Monster Hunter Wilds. According to the producer, the biggest factors that influenced the new Monster Hunter’s popularity are an emphasis on story, heightened immersion (citing Wilds being fully voiced), and cross-play.

It might sound a bit strange, but Monster Hunter Wilds does have a surprising interest in the story and “why” behind all of the monster hunting. Alongside the obvious points like cutscenes and a sizeable cast of characters, the low-rank section of the campaign moves along at quite a pace.

In IGN’s review of Monster Hunter Wilds, we noted as much. While the trek to the first credits roll is a little short than you might normally expect, the intent felt like a desire to have more players get through the campaign and see higher-end content.

It might be working, if player numbers are anything to go by. Capcom confirmed that Monster Hunter Wilds surpassed 8 million units sold in three days to become the fastest-selling Capcom game of all time. At launch, Monster Hunter Wilds was charting over 1 million concurrent players on Steam, and helped Valve’s storefront to crack the 40 million concurrent players mark.

Monster Hunter Wilds is due for its first big post-launch update in early April. Title Update 1 will add a monster of “formidable strength at a level above Temprered,” as well as an endgame area to gather. Though there have already been patches for Monster Hunter Wilds, they’ve mostly been addressing bugs and immediate issues.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Despite requiring players to sign NDAs to prevent details of EA’s upcoming untitled Battlefield game leaking online, it leaked online anyway, with dozens of video and screenshots popping up, showing off what players participating in the game’s closed playtesting have been up to.

As we reported when the leaks surfaced, the footage seems to confirm the “modern” setting previously teased by Vince Zampella, distinguishing it from other Battlefield games. A quick scroll through the Battlefield subreddit gives us plenty of firefights, as well as a taste of the game’s destructible environments and a handful of new mechanics, including the ability to hang off vehicles and dragging wounded teammates out of harm’s way.

Perhaps most surprising of all, however, is EA is seemingly doing very little to combat the leaks.

Most publishers are fiercely protective of leaked early footage as pre-release gameplay can feature incomplete animations, unfinished UI, and less-than-stellar graphics. This time, however — despite the fact players are breaking confidentiality agreements by uploading videos or screenshots — EA has yet to issue takedowns.

Perhaps that’s because, unlike Battlefield 2042’s lukewarm reception, fans seem pretty pleased with what they’ve seen so far.

“I am scared to say that but this game is shaping up very damn well. I hope there are no catches…” said one player, with another adding: “The animations of the weapons moving around while running / doing anything look better than 2042 to me.”

“Dude, even in a pre-alpha state, the explosions, bullets, and projectiles whizzing by, buildings crumbling down, dust kicking up. This has so much potential!” exclaimed another happy player.

“I can’t get over how good the sounds and the destruction look at alpha,” opined someone else.

EA expects its next Battlefield game to launch in the fiscal year 2026, which means we’ll see it released sometime between April 2025 and March 2026. From our first official unveiling just last month, we now know the new Battlefield will include the return of a traditional, single-player, linear campaign, which has been welcome news to players disappointed it was excluded in the multiplayer Battlefield 2042.

Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

A leaked internal video has revealed Sony is experimenting with AI-powered PlayStation characters.

The Verge reported on the emergence of an internal video allegedly created by PlayStation Studios’ advanced technology group that uses Aloy from the Horizon games to demonstrate AI-powered game characters.

The video was subsequently pulled from YouTube following a copyright claim from Muso, an internet enforcement company The Verge said lists Sony Interactive Entertainment as a client. This suggests the video is legitimate. IGN has asked Sony for comment.

In the video, as reported by The Verge, Sony Interactive Entertainment director of software engineering, Sharwin Raghoebardajal, has a conversation with an AI-powered Aloy via voice prompts and AI-generated speech and facial animations.

The speech recognition is via OpenAI’s Whisper for speech-to-text, the conversational AI via GPT-4 and Llama 3 for dialogue and decision-making, the speech synthesis via Sony’s Emotional Voice Synthesis (EVS) system, and the facial animation via Sony’s Mockingbird technology.

In the tech demo, Raghoebardajal asks Aloy how she’s doing, to which she responds: “Hello, I’m managing alright. Just dealing with a sore throat. How have you been?”

The voice heard coming from Aloy’s mouth is not that of voice actor Ashly Burch, who famously plays the character in the video games. Rather, it is a robotic voice similar to the kind you get from any of the thousands of text-to-speech voice generators used to narrate social media posts. AI Aloy’s facial movements are stiff and her eyes appear lifeless as she converses with Raghoebardajal.

When asked how Aloy’s search for her mother is going, she replies: “I discovered I’m a clone of Dr. Elizabeth Sobeck, which led me to understand my purpose and origins.”

How does it feel to be a clone? “Being a clone feels unique, connecting me to the past while allowing me to create my own path and future,” Aloy replies.

The demo then transitions into the actual Horizon Forbidden West game world, and Raghoebardajal continues the conversation while playing the game. It’s slightly jarring to see the player converse with a character they’re in control of, and the irony of using Aloy as an AI-powered PlayStation character given the plot of the Horizon games is obvious.

The demo is described as a prototype developed with the help of Horizon studio Guerrilla Games to show off the tech internally at Sony. “This is just a glimpse of what is possible,” Raghoebardajal says in the video. And while the video shows an investment from Sony in the exploration of AI-powered PlayStation characters, it’s worth noting the company has yet to confirm plans to incorporate the tech into any public-facing PlayStation product, and there is no suggestion it would even be possible with PS5 games at this stage.

But it perhaps comes as little surprise to see Sony’s work behind the scenes here, given pretty much all its competitors in the video game space are working on AI tech of some description. Indeed, Xbox maker Microsoft is all-in on AI, and recently announced an AI called Muse designed to generate ideas for a game’s design.

Generative AI is one of the hottest topics within the video game and entertainment industries, which have both suffered massive layoffs in recent years. Generative AI thus far has drawn criticism from players and creators due to a mix of ethical issues, rights issues, and AI’s struggles to produce content audiences actually enjoy. For instance, Keywords Studios attempted to create an experimental game internally using entirely AI. The game failed, with Keywords citing to investors that AI was “unable to replace talent.”

EA said in September that AI was “the very core” of its business, and more recently Capcom said it was experimenting with generative AI to create the “hundreds of thousands” of ideas needed for in-game environments.

Head of PlayStation Productions and head of product at PlayStation Studios Asad Qizilbash weighed in on AI to say its use in video games is important to Gen Z and Gen Alpha gamers who seek “personalization across everything.”

“For instance, non-player characters in games could interact with players based on their actions, making it feel more personal,” Qizilbash said. “This is important for the younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, who are the first generations that grew up digitally and are looking for personalization across everything, as well as looking for experiences to have more meaning.”

Activision recently admitted the use of generative AI for some Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 assets amid a backlash to an “AI slop” zombie Santa loading screen.

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.