If you’ve ever wanted a Slowpoke summoning circle or a Slowpoke crown, well then, we have the toy for you. Bandai has revealed it’s releasing a plastic Pokémon model for Slowpoke, and it can latch onto other Slowpoke toys by biting their tails.
Shared by PokéJungle on Twitter, the plastic model (from Bandai Spirits via the Bandai Hobby site) is 120mm in length once put together and is slightly curved so that when you attach it to multiple Slowpokes, it will form a circle. It comes with four different eye stickers, so you can give it a handful of different expressions, too. It’s pretty adorable, but it’s only been announced for Japan so far.
At GDC 2023, Epic Games held a State of Unreal event, where the company unveiled the latest updates for Unreal Engine. We got a fresh look at some new tools coming soon to creators, as well as how some of these tools are being used in upcoming games like Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2.
If you missed the livestream, here’s a quick roundup of everything announced during the 2023 State of Unreal event.
Unreal Editor For Fortnite allows players to develop their own games inside the popular Battle Royale
Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) is a new add-on available for the PC version of Fortnite. As Epic Games notes, the application works side-by-side with Fortnite’s existing creative toolset and is to be used for “designing, developing, and publishing games and experiences directly into Fortnite.” UEFN also includes a new scripting language called “Verse,” which Epic notes is a “powerful customization capabilities such as manipulating or chaining together devices and the ability to easily create new game logic.”
The Unreal Editor for Fortnite is available now on the Epic Games Store as a public beta.
Ninja Theory is Using MetaHuman Animator to push the “boundaries of realtime facial animation”
We already knew that Ninja Theory is hard at work on Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. And during today’s State of Unreal presentation, we got to see a sneak peek at how the developer is taking advantage of the new tools provided by Unreal Engine, and how it is using MetaHuman Animator to provide realistic facial animations on the its characters.
MetaHuman Animator will allow creators to use an iPhone or a stereo helmet-mounted camera to “reproduce any facial performance as high-fidelity animation” on MetaHuman characters. Epic touts that this new feature will allow creators to “capture the individuality, realism, and fidelity of your actor’s performance, and transfer every detail and nuance onto any MetaHuman to bring them to life in Unreal Engine.”
Epic Demos and Details New Features Coming to Unreal Engine 5.2
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and Unreal Engine head Nick Penwarden shared new information on Unreal Engine 5.2. The company teamed up with EV manufacturer Rivian to create the stunning Electric Dreams demo to demonstrate some new things developers can do.
Unreal Engine 5.2 will roll out new features, most notably, Substrate, a new method that will offer those using Unreal Engine 5 “more control over the look and feel of objects used in real-time applications,” including games.
More interestingly, Epic notes that Unreal Engine 5.2 will introduce the Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG) during the State of Unreal Presentation. Epic claims that these new in-editor and run-time PCG tools will allow artists to “define rules and parameters to quickly populate expansive, highly detailed spaces” faster and more efficiently.
Everything Else from State of Unreal 2023
Epic announced it was consolidating its digital asset stores into one huge marketplace that will launch later this year. Called Fab, this new store will provide available assets in the Unreal Engine Marketplace, Quixel Bridge, Artstation Marketplace, and Sketchfab.
The company also announced “Creator Economy 2.0,” which is launching alongside UEFN to allow those that use the Fortnire Island creators to receive more money based on how much engagement their published content receives. Additionally, Epic pledged that 40 percent of the game’s net revenues would be put back into a pool for creators.
Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
Welcome back to Forgotten Gems, my column about games that have faded but shouldn’t be forgotten. Last time, I took at a look at the unexpected return of one of Square’s most unique 16-bit RPGs, Live a Live. While there may be no happy ending this time, hopefully you’ll still enjoy this look back at an entire game series that almost all but faded from public discourse: Goemon, Konami’s Mystical Ninja.
Namco has Pac-Man. SEGA’s got Sonic. Nintendo has Mario. Konami’s got… Frogger? Twinbee? The Parodius Octopus? It’s honestly a bit surprising that one of the most prolific game developers of the ‘80s took so long to develop a stable of recognizable characters; let alone a core company mascot. Before it became known for the exploits of the Belmonts and Solid Snake, Konami dazzled us more with clever concepts like Time Pilot, Gyruss, and Track & Field, as well as competent game adaptations of animated shows like TMNT or the Simpsons.
Enter the Ninja
But the roots for Konami’s own Mario were already taking hold in 1986 when it released Mr. Goemon. Based on Japan’s 16th-century Robin Hood, the outlaw Ishikawa Goemon, Mr. Goemon is an unusual platformer. For one, it took its art style from famous woodblock prints depicting kabuki enactments of the folk legend, but more importantly, it played very differently from platformers of the age. Whereas bumping into enemies in its contemporaries would mean losing a life or taking damage, Mr. Goemon is an oddly-controlling, hectic jump ’n’ run in which you can push and shove your enemies as you infiltrate enemy fortresses. Goemon can use a “kiseru” pipe to smack his enemies or toss gold coins and other pick-ups, including the famous Japanese maneki-neko cat figurines.
If all that sounds unconventional and confusing, you should know that these kiseru pipes weren’t just for smoking. They became quite the rage among Japanese warriors, who would carry iron or brass pipes and use them as weapons when they didn’t have access to their swords. As for throwing those oval koban coins, gourds, and nekos – that’s vintage, economical video game character development on display right there. Being an honorable outlaw, Goemon allegedly gave to the poor – thus, he has no need for money and happily tosses around symbols of good luck, such as hyotan gourds and cat figurines.
Mr. Goemon was not a hit. But Konami clearly liked the idea of “owning” a truly Japanese video game hero enough to greenlight a completely different Goemon game for home consoles and computers before Mr. Goemon was even in arcades. Released in July 1986, Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Douchuu lays the foundation for an entire series of unique platformers in an alt-history, mechanized Japan. “Ganbare!” is a Japanese rallying cry, and is best translated as “go for it!” or “keep it up!” and would become intrinsically linked with the Goemon series for many years. But one thing was still missing that would come to define the Goemon games – and made it one of my favorites on the Super Famicom: co-op gameplay.
With 1989’s Ganbare Goemon 2 for the Famicom, Konami found its success formula. The game combined the three-quarter-view town sequences of the second game with the side-scrolling jump and fight action of Mr. Goemon. It also added the defining co-op mode where a second player could join the fun as the supremely weird Ebisumaru, a combination of the Japanese thief Nezumi Kozo and Konami producer Ebisu Etsunobu.
Goemon 2 kicked off a series of 20 full-fledged Goemon platform and RPG games, not including some lesser spin-offs and mobile minis, spanning 20 years of game development and some truly creative efforts by multiple Konami studios. It’s a series known for its silly sense of humor, for taking you on a trip of the sights and sounds of a not-quite-historically-accurate Japan, for dozens of memorable tunes and fully vocalized songs, screen-tilting, screen-warping, screen-flipping Mode 7 effects, 3D mech battles, and for a range of clever mini-games – including a playable 16-bit version of Konami’s own Gradius.
Which brings us to 1991, when Konami undertook the unlikely step to bring the most Japanese mascot in gaming to the west.
American Ninja Warriors
We can’t be sure what made Konami consider the sixth game in the series, Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyuushutsu Emaki, for a western release in 1992, a year after it debuted to acclaim in Japan. Perhaps it was the impressive graphics that make it one of the best Mode 7 showcases to date, or the incredible soundtrack that really puts the Super NES sound chip through its paces. But most likely, it was an attempt to capitalize on the excitement surrounding the impending US release of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which also seemed to be the inspiration for the newly minted English title: The Legend of the Mystical Ninja.
This sudden spark of courage did not extend to trusting overseas audiences to engage with or understand Goemon’s historical origins. The game received an infamously terrible localization treatment. Japanese food items like onigiri rice balls became pizzas. And our heroes Goemon and Ebisumaru were unceremoniously renamed to Kid Ying and Dr. Yang, with a typo-laden manual contributing even more cringe-worthy Asian stereotypes, like naming the monkey “Fur Man Chu”. It’s not that Goemon isn’t an inherently silly game – one of the sequences removed from the localized version was Ebisumaru baring his butt and farting at the end of a dance performance – it’s that its silliness is so uniquely and unapologetically Japanese that randomly dubbing it with Chinese terms and concepts just stunningly misses the point.
But localization aside, Goemon’s first western showing went over pretty well. EGM rated the game 8, 8, 9, 8 and lauded it for its gameplay, co-op mode, and soundtrack – while expressing some consternation over its presentation. “The graphics are too cheesy for me, with lots of pastels,” said the legendarily mystical Quartermann. Konami never disclosed official sales numbers for the title, so we’ll never know whether its distinct visuals and themes or lack of awareness kept it from achieving bigger success in the US, but we do know that whatever courage had led to the publisher giving Goemon a shot quickly dissipated.
Goemon’s further Game Boy and Famicom/NES outings wouldn’t see stateside release, but more egregiously, Mystical Ninja’s direct sequel, Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shogun Magginesu! remained forever a Japan-only delight. In this humble writer’s opinion, Goemon 2 is the best co-op platformer on the Super NES, adding drivable vehicles, a third playable character, and a Super Mario World-style overworld map to the mix. Bolstered by critical success in Japan, Konami took the series even further.
Goemon 3 wasn’t a linear sidescroller like its predecessor: instead, the ninja head-on pursued another legendary inspiration. Goemon 3 is a top-down, The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past-style action adventure that has players switch between characters – now also including Yae the Kunoichi – to access their different powers and progress on the world map. The next game, Kirakira Douchuu, went back to the setup of Goemon 2, but put the different characters’ unique abilities to effect with separate maps and character-specific quests. But the series had peaked with Goemon 2 and my personal interest in it waned, even as it continued on PlayStation and with a Ebisumaru-led spin-off title – both 2D games.
In 1996, General Manager of Konami Nagata Akihiki told Next Generation magazine: “There are some Japanese games we cannot release worldwide because they are too specific for the home market – Goemon, Parodius, and games which use Japanese characters, for example.”
The Legend of Goemon 64
It wasn’t just me who had moved on. Gaming was about to take a significant leap towards polygonal 3D. And having exhausted 2D gaming in all its formats and genres, Goemon was ready to evolve and pull off an impressive feat: a fully 3D action-adventure in the style of Ocarina of Time… in 1997, before Ocarina of Time. The plot of this new Goemon game reads almost like self-referential commentary on the first Goemon game’s coming to the west: the Momoyama Shogunate is planning to westernize Japan and steal all its castles.
What followed was Goemon’s second outing in the west – and one that many Nintendo 64 fans may fondly remember. Announced early on as a Nintendo 64 flagship title, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon struggled in development hell. As a young reporter and a big fan of the series, I kept a close watch of the game and used all my persuasive powers to ensure that Goemon wouldn’t be called Kid Ying again (success!). Konami producers would frequently talk about the struggles of recreating their series as 3D games and having to dial back their ambitions when moving from development hardware to the final N64 spec. The lack of a dedicated sound chip and need to handle music via the CPU led to pared down visuals as Konami was unwilling to sacrifice audio fidelity and go with sampled, mono tracks, a la Shadows of the Empire. The challenges with getting the game to run at a decent framerate meant abandoning the planned two-player co-op mode. Konami even had to cut some of the Japanese voice-overs from the US/PAL versions to get the localized version to fit on a 128-megabit cart. It was bad news for a while – but with a happy ending.
The final game was an enjoyable 3D take on the Goemon 3 / The Legend of Zelda formula and it sold more than 200,000 copies in Japan and the US. Even though only a quarter of those sales were stateside, Konami seemed emboldened to keep trying and brought both the Game Boy adventure, also called Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, and the N64 sequel Goemon’s Great Adventure to the west.
The Downfall
And that was the end of the song. After the second N64 game bowed at 50k units sold, Goemon returned to being a Japan-only series. You can see the rest of the lineup of games – from digital board game outings to two attempts at redesigning and modernizing the character on our playlist:
Konami didn’t know what to do with Goemon, failing to endear players to the more Dragon Ball-like, edgy character designs and disappointing the remaining player base with some cheap shovelware mobile games. Even long-time partner in crime Ebisumaru got the boot. And despite a showing at E3 2002, an attempt by Working Designs to bring Goemon’s PS2 outing Bouken Jidai Katsugeki to the west as Mystical Ninja Goemon Zero failed.
“There are some Japanese games we cannot release worldwide because they are too specific for the home market – Goemon, Parodius…” – Nagata Akihiki, General Manager, Konami
The last hurrah for the series came in 2005. Konami brought back fond memories with a GBA conversion of the two first (and best) Super Famicom games in a Japan-only double pack, followed by a forgotten gem of a Nintendo DS game, Ganbare Goemon: Toukai Douchuu Oedo Tengu ri Kaeshi no Maki. Utilizing stylus controls and a very pretty sumi-e watercolor graphical style, Goemon once again paid homage to The Legend of Zelda series. I imported the game and shared my very favorable impressions of the game back then, thinking, for a brief moment, that Goemon was back – and that Goemon was forever.
But Goemon is gone. We’re quickly approaching the two decade mark without a new game release – not counting two Pachislot arcade slot machines released back in 2009 and 2011 under Konami’s new, old focus on gambling hardware.
It’s a very rare occurrence that a series 29 titles strong just ends and disappears. After all, Nintendo and Konami added the even more obscure Super Famicom shooter Pop’n TwinBee to the Nintendo Online service in 2020 – wouldn’t the already localized Goemon SNES or N64 games be solid selections for the service?
There are still occasional signs that Konami hasn’t completely forgotten about its memorable mascot. On December 7, 2018 a Mii Swordfighter costume featuring Goemon’s trademark spiky hair, red outfit, and kiseru pipe were added as paid Wave 3 DLC to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Let’s hope that little cameo wasn’t his last.
As for whether Goemon will ever return in an all-new game outing? Unlike the real Goemon Ishikawa who was famously boiled alive for trying to assassinate warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, our blue-haired video game hero got off easy and at least ended on a high note. The series is cooked for now, but who knows, maybe Konami’s recent successes with the Hudson-made Momotaro Dentetsu on Switch could bring Goemon out of retirement. If Momotaro, ripped from the pages of Japanese fairy tales, can sell more than 3 million copies with a digital board game that celebrates Japan (yes, it sold better than Zelda: Breath of the Wild in Japan), perhaps Konami’s OG mascot can at least headline a feudal comedy take on Mario Party.
Ganbare, Goemon!
Where can you play the Goemon games today?
While Nintendo hasn’t added any of the Goemon games to its Nintendo Online service on Switch yet, Mystical Ninja did see multiple re-releases on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS Virtual Console in the west. The Japanese Super Famicom games were also available as VC downloads — and Mystical Ninja was even included with the Super Famicom Mini console as a regional exclusive. With the shutdown of Nintendo’s 3DS and Wii U eShops this month, all nine remaining Goemon Virtual Console releases will no longer be accessible.
Which leaves hard copies. Unfortunately, because of the low sales volume and limited runs, SNES and N64 cartridges can command a high price on eBay. Even a loose Mystal Ninja cart will sell for $60 and upwards. The Japanese games are quite a bit cheaper, but unless you read Japanese, I wouldn’t recommend pursuing them. There are occasionally moments where a character will ask you to retrieve a certain item to progress that can be tricky.
The sad reality is that out of all 30 Goemon games released, only a single one is available to play on modern platforms, and it’s, ironically, the oldest one of the bunch: Mr. Goemon. Hamster made the old arcade game available to play on PS4 and Switch as part of their Arcade Archives series.
Peer Schneider joined IGN as editor of N64.com/IGN64 back when games still had manuals. If you enjoyed his column, Forgotten Gems, be sure to check out our other regular IGN columns, accessible from the News section of the IGN navigation.
Skyrim’s “I used to be an adventurer like you” is probably the most famous example of a bark. Ubisoft Ghostwriter has been met with passionately negative responses from some narrative designers, while others have been arguing for its use cases.
When Miles Tost moved from The Witcher 3 to Cyberpunk 2077 in 2016, he soon realized that he was dealing with a unique challenge. Despite both being RPGs, the two “couldn’t be more different,” with CD Projekt aiming to make a “gigantic leap forward” in terms of the freedom that Cyberpunk 2077 offered with gameplay. As a level designer, Tost was asked to create levels that supported every style of play, from brute force to stealth to everything else in between, all in a huge open world.
“As insane as it sounded, it also sounded f*cking awesome, and boy were we up to the challenge,” Tost said.
Of course, we know what happened next. Cyberpunk 2077 struggled when it was released in 2020, especially on older consoles like the PlayStation 4. Even beyond its technical problems, though, many players observed its shortcomings as an immersive sim. In particular, it did a poor job of making the various playstyles feel meaningful, dampening the sense of reward gained from exploration. Cyberpunk 2077 has since recovered somewhat, but CD Projekt remains keen to figure out exactly what went wrong with its ambitious RPG.
‘We pride ourselves on being storytellers’
Tost’s observations were part of a GDC 2023 panel entitled “What Cyberpunk 2077 Taught Us About Non-Linear Level Design,” which delved into the issues that CD Projekt Red encountered in trying to make branching paths feel rewarding and special. Like many of CD Projekt’s developers, Tost has a blunt and self-deprecating sense of humor about Cyberpunk’s launch. When a power surge makes it difficult to make out some of his level design diagrams during the talk, he joked, “It wouldn’t be a Cyberpunk talk if everything was working fine.”
But these quips belie a company-wide desire to learn as many lessons as possible from its troubled launch, leading the design team to conduct a comprehensive analysis of where Cyberpunk 2077 went wrong. For his part, Tost chose to focus on why the non-linear level design didn’t seem to work. How was it that games with less variety seemed more vital and open-ended than Cyberpunk 2077?
Tost ultimately determined that one of CD Projekt’s biggest strengths – its commitment to telling a strong story – was also a key stumbling block.
“We pride ourselves on being storytellers, and we didn’t want to stop a player’s lack of foresight from enjoying the narrative,” Tost explained.
That meant including what Tost calls a “generic path” for anyone who didn’t properly spec their character, and just to make sure they didn’t miss it, making it as obvious as possible. The result, Tost says, is that most players opted to take the path of least resistance, trivializing what was meant to be a robust selection of playstyles.
As insane as it sounded, it also sounded f*cking awesome, and boy were we up to the challenge.
When criticizing Cyberpunk 2077, many reviewers point to this aspect as one of its fundamental weaknesses, and perhaps a crucial reason that no amount of polish can ever make it a truly great RPG. But in analyzing Cyberpunk 2077’s level design, Tost came away with a handful of new design principles he hopes will inform CD Projekt’s work going forward.
“We need to treat paths as special,” Tost explains. “This is what creates value in the choices players make.”
By contrast, Cyberpunk 2077’s generic path would often have what he called a “cool, bespoke experience,” such as custom interactions or chatter. Often, Tost says, Cyberpunk’s paths would come together in a bottleneck filled with these rewards, leaving players with the sense that none of their choices ever mattered.
Remedying this problem can be as simple as placing separate paths further away from one another, observing that as long as two paths are close to one another, they’re perceived as the same path. The more isolated or exclusive a path feels, Tost says, the more special it can become in the player’s mind, allowing them to “fully focus on experiencing the chosen path.” It also produces a heightened sense of curiosity, he explains, making players wonder what they might have missed.
Three basic principles
Ultimately, Tost developed three basic principles for level design, though he cautions that it ultimately depends on the game they’re being applied to.
The perception of distance. The closer paths are to each other, the less it feels like picking one makes a difference.
The more exclusive or isolated a path feels, the more special it can become in the player’s mind. It allows players to fully focus on experiencing the chosen path. It heightens player’s curiosity about “what if.”
Validation. Paths need to be treated as special. This is what creates value in the choices the player’s make. Make it worth their time and give them a show. Provide exclusive scenes, encounters, or world-building.
Taken together, Tost believes the desired effect can be achieved by spreading out the entrances to the different paths; limiting and controlling what players can see; forcing them to commit to a choice using tricks like one-way drops and passages, and then properly rewarding them with exclusive content and other incentives. Doing so will also give designers more freedom to create incentives to use playstyles, Tost says, such as utilizing stealth abilities to sneak past a powerful enemy to a secret passage.
Even without these improvements, though, Cyberpunk 2077 seems to be growing in esteem among fans, not the least because it’s one of the most technically ambitious RPGs ever made. Whether it ever lives up to its original potential remains an open question, but Tost at least seems confident that these lessons can be applied to future games.
“All three principles [perception, exclusivity, and validation] are not restricted to, but particularly effective at enhancing the powers of two different level design beats, designed to maximize choice and reward: that is, discovery and exploration,” Tost concluded, calling it “food for thought” for other developers.
We’ll get to see whether these lessons pay off with the Phantom Liberty expansion, which is set to launch later this year. For now, Cyberpunk 2077 is available on PS5, Xbox, and PC. A sequel is also in development. Keep an eye on this space for lots more coverage as GDC 2023 continues.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Developer and publisher COWCAT Games has announced that BROK the InvestiGator has received a new update that introduces a range of accessibility features for visually impaired players.
The update is available now and adds full narration via text-to-speech, along with adapted puzzles, tutorials, and positional audio during fights. Here’s a look at everything included in the new update:
There’s an Elite controller for everyone. No matter what games you like to play, the controller provides you with the best experience to fit your gaming style. To highlight this, we’re introducing Xbox Elite Cereal, which puts passionate gamers at the forefront of popular culture in a way that’s reserved for traditional athletes and celebrities. While not a real cereal, it’s a metaphor for all the ways any gamer can be Elite with their own perfect Elite Series 2 controller.
We’ve partnered with gaming influencers, Chica, Myth, and Loserfruit to celebrate the unparalleled value, choice, and diversity of the Elite Series 2 lineup. They will share more about their experience with Elite and this new partnership on their respective TikTok channels throughout the rest of this month.
Of course, if this was a real cereal, it would need to come complete with an Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 inside as a prize. We’ve even come up with some fictional flavors for Xbox Elite Cereal, each representing the three different members of the Elite family:
Wheat Flakes: Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2
Frosted Wheats: Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 – Core in white
Mallos: Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 with Xbox Design Lab
Every good cereal also needs its own jingle and mascot. Inspired by the iconic characters and catchy tunes of classic cereal advertisements, the Xbox Elite Cereal commercial introduces our new Elite mascot, who’s here to help everyone choose the Elite Series 2 controller that’s best for them. Watch the official Xbox Elite Cereal commercial below/here:
Visit the brand-new Elite Family page on Xbox.com to learn more and find your own Elite Series 2 controller.
Are you looking to build out your collection of board games at home, or want something new and exciting to play during your next game night? If so, there’s no better time than now to buy one, thanks to Amazon’s board game sale. During this time, you can save plenty (up to 51%!) on select board games, from Pandemic to Betrayal to Azul.
Below, you can see which board games are included in Amazon’s sale right now, along with how much you can save on each one.
Board Games on Sale At Amazon
If you want to see a collection of some of the best board games to play throughout this year, we’ve got you covered there, too. In our guide to the Best Board Games to Play in 2023, we’ve curated a wide selection of board games, from classic picks to exciting new ones, that are perfect for including in your next game night. This selection includes Ticket to Ride, Gloomhaven, Codenames, Pandemic, and many more. Some of these games are even included in Amazon’s board game sale listed above, which is even better! You can now add some of the best board games around to your collection at home for a much cheaper price.
Board games aren’t the only items on sale on Amazon right now, either. For those looking to buy some new tech, you can also save 20% on 2nd Generation Apple Airpods Pro earbuds, which are originally $249and are now available for just $199.99. Or, if you’re looking for a new microSD card for your Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck, you can find the Samsung EVO Select 512GB microSD card on sale on Amazon as well, docked down 53% from $84.99 to $39.99.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.
Storyteller is a make-your-own drama puzzle game, taking place on the pages of a book and within empty comic-ish panels on those pages. For each puzzle you’re given a set of characters and scenarios (the Baron, the Knight, the Queen; a wedding, a kidnap, an execution) and are tasked with arranging them in a combination that fits the story title you’re given (The Queen Marries). It’s playful and cute, with surprising depth that draws inspiration from classic stories. It’s also very short. I’d wager you’ll have hunnerpercented Storyteller in two hours max, which will sound like mana from heaven to some, but may disappoint you if you’ve been waiting for Storyteller for over a decade.
Arkane Austin has said that it is working on a fix that will reverse Redfall’s always-online requirement, an aspect that was met with backlash when first announced.
In an interview with Eurogamer, game director Harvey Smith said, “We listen. And we have already started work to address this in the future. We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it. And so we are looking into – I’m not supposed to promise anything – but we’re looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.”
Smith also went into more detail about why Redfall was designed as an always-online experience from the start. It wasn’t to sell microtransactions from an in-game store, as the game doesn’t even have one (DLC is planned, including guns and costume bundles, but they will be sold via the Xbox store). Instead, the decision behind requiring an online connection was to help Arkane understand how people were playing Redfall and when they were facing difficulties.
“It allows us to do some accessibility stuff. It allows us for telemetry, like – if everybody’s falling off ladders and dying, holy shit that shows up,” Smith explained. “And so we can go and tweak the ladder code. There are reasons we set out to do that that are not insidious.”
Smith noted that Arkane wanted to take the empathetic approach to players’ concerns as not everyone has a stable internet connection and are sometimes prone to outages. “And so I think it is a legitimate critique,” said Smith.
Smith’s use of the term “fixing that in the future” may point to the system being changed after launch, so it currently seems sensible temper any expectations that Redfall will definitely launch with an offline mode.
Redfall launches on May 2 for PC and Xbox Series X|S. In IGN’s Redfall preview, we said, “If Arkane Austin can bring its own version of the kind of innovation [Far Cry 2 and STALKER] did back in the late 2000s, then Redfall could well inject a static genre with some long-overdue excitement.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
 that generates first drafts of NPC barks, which are the offhand remarks you might hear when running past NPCs. <a href=)
Skyrim’s “I used to be an adventurer like you” is probably the most famous example of a bark. Ubisoft Ghostwriter has been met with passionately negative responses from some narrative designers, while others have been arguing for its use cases.
Storyteller is a make-your-own drama puzzle game, taking place on the pages of a book and within empty comic-ish panels on those pages. For each puzzle you’re given a set of characters and scenarios (the Baron, the Knight, the Queen; a wedding, a kidnap, an execution) and are tasked with arranging them in a combination that fits the story title you’re given (The Queen Marries). It’s playful and cute, with surprising depth that draws inspiration from classic stories. It’s also very short. I’d wager you’ll have hunnerpercented Storyteller in two hours max, which will sound like mana from heaven to some, but may disappoint you if you’ve been waiting for Storyteller for