Author: Game Infliction

Games Workshop has announced plans to build a new Warhammer World in the United States with a late 2027 target for opening its doors.

Warhammer World, in Nottingham, England, is the focal point for Games Workshop’s various tabletop games and a social hub for the hobby. It includes an exhibition centre with dramatic, large-scale dioramas featuring everything from famous battles in the grimdark sci-fi setting Warhammer 40,000 to the fantasy world of Age of Sigmar.

For competitors, a sizeable castle-themed gaming hall lets fans play matches, often in scheduled tournaments. There’s a themed bar and restaurant, areas to paint miniatures, and an in-house store with exclusive products.

In a post on Warhammer Community, Games Workshop confirmed its plans to start work on the new Warhammer World, to be built just outside Washington DC.

“This new Warhammer World will be a flagship venue that celebrates Warhammer in all its forms: gaming, painting, modelling, storytelling, events, and community,” Games Workshop said.

“The original Warhammer World in Nottingham, UK sets a very high bar. We’re not going to replicate it brick-for-brick, but instead build something equally uncompromising on quality and experience, something worthy of Warhammer’s rich settings and of course the title ‘Warhammer World.’ And of course, at the heart of all this is creating something extraordinary for all of you — the Warhammer fans!

“Now, there’s a lot to do – but with a fair wind, and the might of the Emperor and his inexhaustible armies, we hope to open the doors late in 2027.”

With this new Warhammer World, Games Workshop is clearly hoping to reinforce its explosive success and the ever-increasing popularity of Warhammer 40,000 in particular, which in recent years has grown far beyond the confines of a tabletop game. Its loyal fandom fusses over lore, analyzes new novels for fresh insight into the setting, and speculates about future development. The smash hit video game Space Marine 2 boosted interest in all things Warhammer 40,000 — so much so that playable character Titus is now the poster boy of the tabletop game and is even at the heart of its next narrative expansion. And former Superman actor Henry Cavill’s upcoming Warhammer 40,000 Cinematic Universe for Amazon will undoubtedly take it to new heights. It makes a lot of sense to have a Warhammer World in place to capitalize on the army of newcomers Cavill’s Prime Video work will surely rally together. (Cavill once visited Warhammer World in the UK and posted a video of his tour on Instagram.)

In the shorter term, Warhammer 40,000 fans are bracing themselves for an announcement and release of the 11th Edition of the game, accompanying lore developments, and new model releases. And we’re arguably in the golden age of Warhammer 40,000 video games, with Space Marine 2 still receiving updates, Space Marine 3 in the works, and Dawn of War 4 and Total War: Warhammer 40,000 waiting in the wings.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Last month, Larian Studios presented console players of Divinity: Original Sin 2 with a special treat: an upgraded version of the game for PS5, Xbox Series, and delightfully, Nintendo Switch 2. But while Original Sin 2 has been on Nintendo’s system since 2019, Larian’s next game, Baldur’s Gate 3, never made it to any Nintendo console. Why not? Well, Larian at least says it wasn’t its decision.

In a Reddit AMA today conducted by various members of Larian, CEO Swen Vincke took a moment to answer a question about whether or not Baldur’s Gate 3 for Nintendo Switch 2 was “even possible”. Sadly, his answer wasn’t a happy one: “We would have loved to but it’s wasn’t our decision to make.”

Vincke is speaking in the past tense because officially, Larian is done with Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s still supporting the game with minor bug fixes, but there’s no reason to expect the studio to do a whole new release on a new platform now, especially since it’s moved on to a new Divinity game. That leaves Wizards of the Coast in charge of the future of Baldur’s Gate 3, meaning a port isn’t happening without its blessing.

Which seems to be what Vincke is implying here – that Larian would have done one, but Wizards for whatever reason decided not to. We’ve reached out to Wizards of the Coast for comment on this.

Which is a shame for Switch owners, because Baldur’s Gate is a fantastic game. We gave it a 10/10 at launch, saying that “with crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the new high-water mark for CRPGs.”

We covered other topics from Larian’s AMA today, such as what happened to Wyll’s storyline in Baldur’s Gate 3 and how Larian will (or won’t) use generative AI for Divinity.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

I wouldn’t be doing what I’m lucky enough to do for a living without Mario games. Heck, I’m not sure I’d even be playing video games if not for Mario. And so, when I reviewed Super Mario Odyssey for IGN in 2017, it checked off a career bucket list item for me. And oh how lucky I was that Odyssey turned out to be – and still very much is – one of the greatest 3D platformers ever made.

It was worth the long wait, as in case you’re too young to remember (which would be perfectly understandable at this point), the last mainline 3D Mario game before Odyssey was Super Mario Galaxy 2…all the way back in 2010. Yes, it was seven long years between headlining 3D entries in Nintendo’s biggest franchise, but fast-forward to 2026 and we’ve already surpassed eight years as we continue to wait for Odyssey’s 3D Mario successor. I thought for sure last Fall was going to be when it finally happened, as what better way for Nintendo to have celebrated the 40th anniversary of the original Super Mario Bros. than with the next mainline 3D Mario game, cementing the Switch 2 as the must-have device for its first Christmas, just as Odyssey did for the Switch 1’s first holiday on the market back in 2017? But that big anniversary came and went with nothing but a questionably priced 4K remaster of Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2.

However, I think the wait for the true next-gen mainline 3D Mario game is finally almost over. Let’s run through the reasons:

First and foremost – and this is 90% of my argument – is that Nintendo has essentially fired every other bullet (Bill) in its chamber in recent years! What big megafranchise moves do they have left for this year? A mainline 2D Mario game? We just got that in Fall 2023 in the form of the (sensational) Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Mario Kart? After its own incredibly long hiatus, it was the Switch 2’s big day-one launch title. How about 3D Zelda? Tears of the Kingdom was just two-and-a-half short years ago, after we waited six years for it following Breath of the Wild. That means we won’t see Aonuma’s next effort for at least a few more years. What about 2D Zelda? Echoes of Wisdom was in Fall 2024, and though this year is the 40th anniversary of Zelda, last year’s 40th anniversary of Mario suggests you should set your expectation to, at best, a 4K remaster of Twilight Princess or Wind Waker.

Donkey Kong Bananza dropped in the Switch 2’s launch window and is arguably the system’s best game so far. Super Mario Party Jamboree just released in 2024. Animal Crossing is getting a Switch 2 update in just a few days, making it unlikely we see an all-new game anytime soon. Super Smash Bros., barring a miracle, is retired due its director leaving it all on the field with Ultimate. Is Splatoon big enough to really move the needle? Maybe, maybe not. Pokemon is really Nintendo’s best non-Mario bet, but we just had Legends: Z-A last Fall.

Shall I keep going? The last of Nintendo’s “Big Three,” Metroid, has shipped a 2D (Dread, 2021) and 3D (Prime 4, barely a month ago) entry in recent years. And anyway, Nintendo itself admits that Prime 4 wasn’t it. An unnamed senior source revealed to The Game Business that Switch 2 sales fell behind the pace of the Switch 1 in key markets this past holiday in large part due to the “absence of a major Western game.” Ouch – that is some serious Metroid Prime 4 slander!

But back on topic: what would fit the definition of a “major Western game” for Nintendo that hasn’t already shipped in recent years? How about the next major 3D Mario game, which isn’t just a major Western game but a major global game? Odyssey sold nearly 30 million copies – an absolutely staggering amount that could easily be replicated over the life of the Switch 2 if Nintendo delivers it this Fall…or perhaps even sooner?

That brings me to reason number two: The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the highest-grossing video game movie ever, raking in over $1.3 billion dollars at the box office. Its sequel, The Super Mario Bros. Galaxy Movie, is set to debut in theaters on April 3. What better way to capitalize on what’s likely to be another massive Hollywood hit for Nintendo than to feed those moviegoers’ enthusiasm with the next big 3D Mario entry – one that, as we’ve already established, can easily sell another 25 million copies (which, given the likely $80 price point for the next 3D Mario game, would mean $2 billion in revenue, besting the box office take of the first film – and likely the second) – not to mention a whole bunch of Switch 2’s?

Ultimately, though Nintendo is tough to reliably predict (honestly, I would’ve bet money – and lost – on the next big 3D Mario game arriving last Fall for Switch 2’s first holiday and Mario’s 40th anniversary), the planets do seem to be aligning for Mario’s next major 3D platformer to arrive sometime this year. If I’m wrong and Odyssey’s successor debuts in 2027 (or, gulp, later!), it means we’ll be going at least a full decade since the last mainline Mario, which basically means Nintendo is just torturing us.

Whenever it’s finally confirmed, the next question is, of course, what is it? Is it Super Mario Odyssey 2, or an entirely new adventure? Based on Mario’s history, I’d hope for and expect the latter – in Mario’s 3D era, Nintendo has only ever done one sequel in the form of Galaxy 2 (or two if you want to count 3D World as a sequel to 3D Land). But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, beggars can’t be choosers. We can only hope that 2026 is finally going to be the year. I think it is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to start replaying Odyssey again, just to experience the sheer joy of New Donk City one more time.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our old interview show, IGN Unfiltered. Super Mario Bros. 3 is his favorite video game of all time. Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

The Sims developer Maxis is kicking off the new year with an update on what its whole deal is, after plenty of rumors and concerns about the future of the franchise. Ans as a part of that, it seems to be teasing the “next evolution” of single-player PC and console The Sims games…even as its long-touted “next generation” of The Sims, Project Rene, is relegated to a mobile-only social spin-off.

This comes from a lengthy blog post on the EA website, in which Maxis speaks at length about its philosophy around The Sims in the coming year. Most of it is pretty mission statement-y, but in the middle, we get a glimpse of what’s planned for the future of The Sims.

For three years now, Maxis has been teasing something called Project Rene. Initially billed as the future of The Sims that would exist across PC and mobile, EA nevertheless refused to call it The Sims 5. Since 2022, there have been multiple closed playtests, and the feedback has gradually soured as Project Rene increasingly started to look like a pretty basic mobile game. Meanwhile, while The Sims 4 community remains robust, there hasn’t been much discussion on what The Sims 5 might look like, or if the console and PC base should even expect anything new at all. As recently as last August, EA Entertainment president Laura Miele insisted that it wouldn’t be “player-friendly” to release one when the community had already invested so much time and money into The Sims 4.

Which is why the wording in this blog post is both exciting and nerve-wracking as a The Sims fan. The post separates out its plans for “The Sims” on PC and console, and Project Rene. For PC and console, Maxis reaffirms its commitment to new content for The Sims 4, and adds that “Single-player PC and console experiences will always be a part of our future, with more than half of our global development team dedicated to The Sims 4 and the next evolution. More news in the coming months!”

That wording, “the next evolution,” is huge. While it’s not exactly “The Sims 5,” it’s the first crumb we’ve gotten in years that we might see something like one eventually. What’s even more promising is that EA is designating Project Rene as a social, multiplayer game that’s mobile-first. That’s disappointing for those who were hoping Project Rene would be an exciting new future, but it sounds like that’s still going to exist in some fashion alongside whatever the actual new evolution is.

Still, Maxis has a rough road ahead. Miele is correct that one of the biggest issues with a new The Sims game is that players have spent tons of money already on expansion packs for The Sims 4, and historically brand new The Sims games have felt woefully feature incomplete when they launch with no such packs. That was the case with The Sims 4, which launched to relatively weak reviews as players adjusted to the shock of features they’d come to get used to – pets, interactive children, weather – suddenly gone, until a new paid expansion pack was released.

It would behoove Maxis to figure all this out, because The Sims 4 is over a decade old now, and starting to show its age. What’s more, a number of potential competitors have come out of the woodwork in recent years, including Krafton’s inZOI and the indie Paralives, both in early access.

The most recent The Sims 4 expansion pack was Adventure Awaits, which launched in October of last year.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

In the years since Baldur’s Gate 3’s release, Larian has put a lot of time and energy into updating the game with tons of new content, including new content for some beloved character who got the short end of the wizard staff the first time around, like Karlach. But one character is still coming up short for fans: Wyll. And at least one writer at Larian is just as frustrated by it as you.

This comes from a Reddit AMA today conducted by a number of Larian employees, during which one person asked why Wyll wasn’t developed further in post-launch patches, even as other companions got storyline and even personality updates. We’ve known for a while that the “Blade of Frontiers” warlock Wyll was rewritten significantly from his early access version to final version.

The question was answered by Larian senior writer Kevin VanOrd, who explained that he also wished Wyll had gotten more attention, and that the lack of content compared to other companions was mostly the result of a series of unfortunate timing coincidences. Here’s how VanOrd puts it:

I wish Wyll had gotten more content and a more fulfilling arc too.

As you probably know, we weren’t connecting with Wyll’s Early Access recruitment and initial questing, so we started over at a point when most of the other companion stories were fairly solid. A lot of decisions came later in development than was ideal – and there was a key situation near Baldur’s Gate that I intended to heavily involve Wyll in (the Red War College) that got cut. That meant back to the drawing board again. We eventually tied him to Duke Ravengard and started to work on that element of his arc just in time for me to get unexpectedly ill. I was out of the office for quite a while, and again after the epilogue’s release.

I think that Ansur’s lair was Swen’s idea – we did have the resources for a standalone dungeon, so we got to work on tying Wyll to the Wyrmway, but I couldn’t get more than a dungeon boss out of it. Once the situations were in place, that was that – I had to start writing them.

Wyll’s content is sparser than I’d have liked as a result. He’s also split into two stories, really – the Mizora story and the Ravengard story, and that might have been a mistake in hindsight. I also wish I could given him a stronger endpoint – it always bugged me that he can end up just as he started, as the Blade of Frontiers, without any meaningful difference. All that said, I love the Blade and I am really proud of him, his sincerity, his good nature, and his eager heroism. I’m truly sorry I didn’t give you more quality time with him.

It’s worth pointing out that it’s not that Wyll received no updates post-launch. Patch 7 made some light tweaks to Wyll’s dialogue that helped those pursuing him romantically have a more interesting time, though it didn’t really give him any new story content. But that’s nothing compared to Karlach, who got an entirely new ending in the same patch. Karlach, like Wyll, was considered to be one of the character who had been given the least love in terms of story content in the 1.0 release, and has consistently been a popular favorite. Recently, one fan broke down how many minutes of dialogue every character in Baldur’s Gate 3 had, and Wyll’s down below most of the other companions with just under 9 hours speaking. Still, it’s not as bad as Halsin, Minthara, Jaheira, and Minsc, though admittedly those four companions are a little more complex to recruit and you can’t even get them until Acts 2 or 3.

So, perhaps cold comfort to Wyll fans, but it’s comforting to know that he wasn’t intentionally sidelined. We’re proud of him too.

In the same AMA, CEO Swen Vincke addressed concerns about generative AI use on the studio’s next game, Divinity, following a controversy around some of Vincke’s comments from an interview last year.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.