Author: Game Infliction

Remember those mockumentary-style interview sections in the original reveal trailer for Fable? Well, those will actually be in the game, and they’re inspired by an unlikely source — The Office.

Fable is a distinctly British video game series, and one where comedy has always been allowed to thrive. Both deadpan and absurdist British humor were at the centre of Lionhead’s original trilogy, and it’s great to see that ethos carrying forward into Playground Games’ 2026 reboot, which we recently got an extended look at during January’s Xbox Developer Direct.

Speaking to Xbox Wire, Playground founder and general manager Ralph Fulton mentioned a handful of classic 21st-century British sitcoms as touchstones for Fable’s tone. “We were inspired by the incredibly rich variety of British comedies that have been around over the last 20 years, like Peep Show, The IT Crowd and so many others,” Fulton revealed. “We started with The Office, which again started out as quintessentially British, but also travels really, really well.”

“Not just that IP, but a lot of the techniques and the devices that it’s popularised, you know. It’s that really grounded, awkward style of humour which really appeals to us. And the actors who have been in a lot of these shows — and indeed some of whom are in our game — they’re known all over the world.”

It isn’t just the style of humor from these comedies that Playground is taking inspiration from, but filmmaking techniques, too. “The other cool thing about The Office is something we’ve kind of nicked,” Fulton revealed. “You’ve maybe seen in our trailers that we have a sort of mockumentary interview style. I think a lot of people assume we just did that for those trailers, but it’s actually a device we use throughout the game.”

“I’ve never seen it in games before,” Fulton continued. “But it allows you a way to really neatly tell a joke or drop a little bit of character detail in a way that would feel really clunky in a dialogue, but suddenly feels entirely natural when you do it to ‘camera’.”

This can be seen in the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase trailer for Fable, above, in which Peep Show’s Matt King speaks to us straight down the lens as Humphrey the Golden, Guildmaster of Albion. It’s a sitcom technique pioneered by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the original BBC version of The Office, before, obviously, making its way overseas for the likes of Pam and Jim to take full advantage of with their knowing looks to camera in its U.S. edition. This mockumentary-style has spawned dozens of similar TV shows since, but, as Fulton said, it’s something we’ve never really seen in a game before, which makes for an intriguing proposition.

You can check out our own big interview with Ralph Fulton about Fable here, as well as learning about how you can marry each and every one of its 1,000 NPCs.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

Magic: The Gathering has kicked off 2026 with a return to Lorwyn, and Lorwyn Eclipsed might be the most excited I’ve seen the community since, well, Edge of Eternities (the last Universes Within set).

It’s a trip back to a simpler time, without bagels (Spider-Man), bending (Avatar), or the Buster Sword (Final Fantasy) – just fantasy creatures throwing spells at each other all day long.

Not only is it the first set of a packed year, but it marks big changes to the product lineup. Theme decks are back for Standard play, while a new Draft Night boxed product encourages players to, well, draft cards to build their decks. Then there’s our first Commander decks since Edge of Eternities, and both look pretty great, actually.

Here’s everything on offer (including some brand new discounts to consider), and where you can find it now that the new set is regularly available. Just be warned that prices are still all over the place, and many products are running low on stock even on release day.

Play Boosters

Bundle

Commander Decks

After no Commander Decks for Marvel’s Spider-Man or Avatar: The Last Airbender, they’re back with Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Collector Boosters

Draft Night Box

Theme Decks

UK Preorders

Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.

The Pokémon TCG: Pokémon Day 2026 Collection is back in stock at Amazon right now for $26.99, a steep drop from its $49.99 list price and easily the best price seen for this release so far (especially since market price is around $60 right now).

If you’re in Melbourne Australia this holiday long weekend, you’ll get the chance to step into the world of Azeroth’s prime real estate. Ahead of the launch of the next World of Warcraft expansion, Midnight, Blizzard have constructed an impressive interactive display, appropriately called the “Midnight House & Lounge” in Federation Square.

Just in time for a certain racquet-swinging international sports event in town, this interactive slice of Atherothian lifestyles of the rich and orcish allows fans to experience a so-called “home away from home… a sanctuary crafted for heroes of Azeroth to relax and unwind and explore what’s next for World of Warcraft.”

Plus, Blizzard will be giving away exclusive gifts at the venue until they run out – so be quick if you want to get your gauntlets on them, adventurer.

Check out a peek below:

There isn’t really a better way I could describe Hytale, the new survival crafter from some former Minecraft modders, than to say it’s basically Minecraft 2. From the block-by-block breaking and building, to the stylized environments and enemies, to the procedural world generation, this feels like the, “What would we change if we had the chance to start over again?” version of the now legendary 2009 classic. Many games have been influenced by Mojang’s trendsetter, but this one is more of a cover song than a subgenre. And while developer Hypixel Studios’ lawyers might not love hearing me say that, I honestly don’t think it’s a bad thing. Even in Early Access, it’s a good cover!

All of this will be pretty familiar if you’ve put any time at all into Minecraft, but with some streamlining here and there. You no longer have to begin your journey punching trees, for instance, since basic tools are made with sticks and rubble that can be collected easily with your bare hands. Also, breaking the trunk of a tree will cause everything above it to collapse and drop its resources, which was almost enough to win me over on its own. I still to this day hate having to chop upwards to hollow out a tree in Minecraft!

Movement is also a lot more modern and fluid. You can jump up to three blocks high and pull yourself up, which feels like such a huge quality-of-life improvement over the one-block jump limit in Minecraft. It’s even possible to take a running leap at a ledge, hit the side, and pull yourself up. We’ve got proper parkour now, and I don’t know that I would ever want to give it up.

Building has some welcome additions as well. There are actual roof pieces, for instance, so you don’t need to repurpose stairs. Most block types can be rotated using the R key before placing them. Half slabs can even be placed vertically to create thinner, interior walls. However, the way they’re aligned on the grid and the lack of corner pieces mean you either end up with oddly offset layouts or missing corners, which is a bit of a shame. I wish they could dynamically snap together the way fences do.

It also just runs better than Minecraft on my Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB RAM, and RTX 4070 Ti-powered system. Even with the draw distance cranked up, my framerates sit comfortably above 60. I haven’t had time to stress test it with anything as elaborate as a 1:1 recreation of Minas Tirith or whatever, but for now it’s like butter.

Combat is fine. There are a handful of different weapon types, from swift-slashing double daggers to a classic sword and shield setup with more defensive options. Each one has its own unique charge attack and a special meter that can be filled up to release a devastating finisher. Archery can be exciting, but I feel like arrows drop off too quickly to allow for really impressive long-range shots. And I suspect this has to do with the fact that enemies shot from even the current max range often have a really hard time figuring out where the shot came from, which makes it a bit too exploitable.

I’m quite impressed with the enemy variety already, with everything from goblin bomb-throwers to really terrifying lava toads that can catch you with their tongues and pull you in for a very painful bite attack. There are a handful of new creatures to fight in every biome, like yetis in the cold mountains and flying insects in the desert. The way they spawn can feel strange and off-putting though. Especially when exploring underground, it seems like they’ll tend to clump up just on the edge of the small safe zone around a player, so I often turn back to leave the way I came only to find an almost literal wall of enemies behind me.

The biomes themselves have a pretty good variety as well, ranging from a chill fairy tale forest all the way up to intimidating basalt islands that can only be accessed with some intense mountaineering. What’s even cooler is that every surface biome has its own associated subterranean environments that can spawn below it. Underneath the desert, you might run into harrowing hives for giant insects. Deeper underground are scorching lava tunnels filled with fire-themed enemies.

As someone who usually plays Minecraft on Large Biomes mode, though, they do feel a bit cramped, and this can’t be adjusted yet. If you’re standing in the desert and you can see a swamp and a lava island just over the next hill, it gives the impression that the world is more of a theme park patchwork than a real place. Hytale also doesn’t support the kinds of extremely deep caverns and monumental mountains that came to Minecraft in the last couple years when they raised both the floor and ceiling for world generation significantly, which contributes to that diorama feeling.

That said, the generated structures scattered around enhance exploration quite a bit. Trork strongholds full of hidden loot chests, often guarded by about a dozen minions and a stronger chieftain, offer exciting targets with worthwhile rewards, at least the first time through. There are even villages of neutral Kweebec, though at this point they only have a limited selection of items to sell. And some of them, like recipes and new seeds for farming, feel a little bit pointless at the moment since there isn’t much difference between the dishes you can cook other than the broad tiers of quality.

There’s very little direction in the Early Access launch version of Hytale, either. The main hub area, the Forgotten Temple, is a rotunda of literal Under Construction signs. I even stumbled into some dungeons out in the world where I’d be excited to throw the doors open only to find one of these barriers promising there will be something here, some day. It’s not clear what the larger, overarching goal is supposed to be. You can progress through the different tiers of materials that are found in increasingly dangerous biomes, but I quickly ran out of things to do after that.

I’m not sure if there will eventually be a story or bigger bosses to find or anything like that. I haven’t run into them yet if they exist already. The only really specific endgame activity revolves around craftable Fragment Keys, which teleport you to a smaller challenge map to collect rare resources within a strict time limit. I found the whole system a bit underbaked so far, though they are one of the only efficient ways to acquire certain late game materials.