Don’t get me wrong, we already have Payday, we already have The Swindle, and of course we already have Grand Theft Auto V. But these games are all more “Heat” than “Ocean’s 11.” We need more suave, non-violent games where it feels like you’re manipulating and hacking a building to your will – and executing a plan to perfection.
When we started building Relooted years ago, this was our goal. We made many prototypes. We tried many things. But we didn’t make much headway.
Laying the Groundwork
The problem lay in hidden information. The best heist movies are similar to detective stories – you don’t know who killed the victim until the end. In heist movies, you never really know the plan and how they pull it off until you’re in the heist montage at the end. But how can you keep the plan of a heist from a player when they are the one making the plan AND executing it?
We were stuck on this problem until the impeccable Teardown came out. As it should, Teardown gets a lot of praise for its destructible terrain mechanics, but its core gameplay loop is brilliant as well. Pick up your target, and the alarm goes off – you only have 30 seconds to get out after that, so better make sure you’ve planned your route out of there.
Inspired by this loop, we decided to try this out with Relooted, and it instantly clicked and made sense. Explore the space, set up your team members, manipulate the guards to where you need them and flow through your escape. Relooted takes this incredible loop and builds upon it, adding crew members, a different perspective, and even more heist tropes! In Relooted, each heist is made up of three phases: casing the joint, setting up the plan, and executing it.
Executing the Plan
When casing the joint, you get an understanding of the space – where the obstacles you might need to address are, and placing your crew members where you’ll need their help. Your brain develops a sense of the building and the space and gets an idea of the possible routes to escape when the sirens begin to blare.
In the setup phase, you specify the details. Your crew member might be assigned, but do you want them to grapple you up somewhere? Or throw you through a window? There is a security shutter that will close – do you block it from closing, or go around it?
In the escape phase, whatever the choices you’ve made, you can flow through your plan. Your crew appearing where they should be at just the right moment, your character, Nomali, effortlessly maneuvering over and under obstacles in her path.
The goal of Relooted was always to make you feel like you were in a heist montage from a movie of your own planning.
Complications Arise
Figuring out how to enable players to pull off these heist montages was an interesting problem! All plans (in life and in Relooted) are made up of a series of steps. Move from here to there, jump here, grapple up here, etc. Because the human mind can only hold onto roughly 7 things at a time, each step has to be quite simple. Each puzzle has to be quite simple.
Each individual puzzle in Relooted is only a few steps to solve if you can figure it out. But each heist, each level, is made up of 5-15 puzzles that you have to solve and execute in one go in the escape! Once you’ve figured out these puzzles, you’ve created your plan. Executing them as the alarms go off with your pre-prepared solutions becomes your heist montage.
Relooted comes out tomorrow on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox on PC, included in Game Pass Ultimate and PC plans! We hope you enjoy planning your heists, and feel the thrill of being in your own montage.
Unlike in “Ocean’s 11,” you’re going to know the plan ahead of time, because you are the mastermind who planned it, and not just a viewer appreciating it.
A crew. A job. A plan. Toss those ingredients together, and you’ve got yourself a classic heist — but with a few twists. Your crew members are everyday citizens (from different countries in Africa) with pretty normal careers. The job is to liberate African artifacts from Western museums. And the plan? Well, that’s up to you to create.
Africanfutur-heist
Near the end of the 21st century, the political powers that be brokered a Transatlantic Returns Treaty, promising the repatriation of African artifacts from museums. Good old fashioned diplomacy was working — until it wasn’t. An amendment switched up the terms and conditions of which objects were to be returned. Museums, now knowing that only publicly displayed artifacts would be given back, were slowly removing artifacts from public display.
When life gives you lemons and museums pulling shady moves, it’s time to chuck the lemons back at life and try a new, stealthier form of diplomacy. You’ve got 70 of these artifacts to (re)loot, all of which exist in real-life and are of huge cultural, historical, and spiritual significance to the people they were taken from.
Teamwork Makes The Heist Work
It all starts with a troublesome little brother, who, yeah, gets you into all sorts of messes. But thankfully, as Nomali, you’ll meet more reliable crew members from different African countries. Recruit people from the classic hacker to… your prim and proper grandma? Don’t worry, grandma pulls her weight.
Case the Joint
Plan ahead to lay the groundwork for a beautiful masterpiece of an escape. Check the getaway route, fiddle with puzzles and obstacles, and find spots to recruit the help of the right teammates.
Get In. Get Out.
Once you’ve set the stage carefully and the artifact is sitting all pretty — looking quite not-stolen, but no worries, you’re gonna fix that ASAP — this is the moment to perform. Plucking an artifact from its resting spot starts the countdown timer, and with Nomali’s flow-based parkour abilities, escape should feel like you’re in the fun, montage part of a heist movie. But if you slacked on the planning phase, you’re gonna pay for it!
Key Features:
• Pull off heists: Plan and prepare your escape route by solving puzzles and placing teammates in the right place. When you’re ready, take the artifact and escape with Nomali’s flow-based parkour abilities.
• Recruit a crew: Meet and gradually recruit different team members with their unique abilities.
• Explore an Africanfuturist setting: With a Hideout based in South Africa, you’ll see parts of Johannesburg imagined in the future.
• Reclaim Real Artifacts: Recover 70 artifacts that exist in real-life, all of which are of huge cultural, historical, and spiritual significance to the people they were taken from.
Hey PlayStation Blog readers, ever hear the story of the FBI Space-Time Police Special Agent Romeo, who takes down space-time criminals in search of his lost girlfriend? No? Well, you’ll be able to find out when Romeo is a Dead Man launches on February 11!
We’ve uploaded one final trailer for you all today featuring some brand new music that’ll be in the game. Seeing is believing as they say, so take a good hard look.
As you can see we’re getting some pretty serious artists to contribute to the game’s soundtrack, further reinforcing Romeo is a Dead Man as a dead-serious action-adventure game. How serious exactly? Well, we asked Grasshopper Manufacture CEO, director, and scenario writer Goichi Suda (pictured left) and co-director and scenario writer Ren Yamazaki (pictured right) to find out.
The character clicked as soon as they realized Romeo was also DeadMan
Daisuke Koyama: Is the game based on Shakespeare’s play? What made Romeo’s story take the form it has now?
Goichi Suda: It’s not entirely based on Shakespeare, no. The protagonist was always named Romeo, and if we were going to include a character named Juliet at all we figured it’d be something of a cameo at first. While writing the script, though, we noticed she became more of an important character as it went along.
Romeo and his grandfather Ben are pretty clearly based on the old man/young man dynamics you see in Back to the Future or Rick and Morty, and we originally figured it would be about their journeys through space-time. But when we threw Juliet in there, it was like a missed connection or something slowly taking shape into a full-blown relationship. In other words, we never really thought too hard about making this into a “tragedy” like the original play.
So Suda-san originally came up with the character of Romeo and wrote the basic scenario for the game, and then Yamazaki-san turned it into a full script, right? What kind of character is Romeo to you?
Ren Yamazaki: Compared to previous protagonists Suda has written, I think he’s quite a serious and straightforward character with no hidden agenda.
Suda: I wanted to write the story of a good-natured young man maturing over time. Travis, the protagonist of the last scenario I wrote—No More Heroes 3—had a wild and violent journey, so I wanted a protagonist who’d be the exact opposite of that.
He ended up being a masked protagonist, too.
Suda: I always wanted Romeo Stargazer to be a character that left a strong impression not just through his in-game skills and weapons, but as a character too. Our past titles feature all sorts of characters who are loved by gamers, so I really thought hard about how to make Romeo a character who’d be just as praised. When Romeo got the DeadMan moniker along the way, he really started to come to life in a way that made me confident in him. I thought to myself, like, “Romeo really is DeadMan!” and then it all kind of fell into place. That’s why we made it the title, too.
The action itself is quite the strong-style hack-and-slash, isn’t it?
Yamazaki: Yeah, I was firm about that. So many different aspects and systems of the game changed throughout development, but in my discussions with our main programmer, Hironaka, we made sure the battle system delivered a strong sense of action from the beginning to the end of development.
How’s the combat balanced?
Suda: In a full course dinner, the ingredients used are usually pretty standard no matter where you go, right? Looking at this game’s development as a full course meal, when it comes to graphics, sound design, and also the actual gameplay, we ended up using all sorts of ingredients that you normally wouldn’t find in a regular kitchen. But no matter what ingredients we were handed we used them to our fullest ability, which I think is our strongest point as a studio. We kept making adjustments right to the very end to create a perfect rhythm to our own course meal.
Is there anything about the action you paid particular attention to?
Suda: The big finisher—Bloody Summer—I paid a lot of attention to how exactly it felt, and to that end the general movement of swords were refined meticulously so that it would feel as authentic as possible. I’m pretty sure I also made a lot of adjustments to the actual moment of impact, but that was years ago development-wise now and I’ve totally forgotten what exactly I requested (laughs). Action games are the kind of thing that get better and better with each and every minor tweak.
We also paid special attention to how many enemies appear and where in each level. Each time I played through the game to make adjustments, I imagined myself to be playing it for the first time and really considered the emotions that come with that. Even on a first playthrough, I really wanted it to feel as smooth as it is challenging, and I think we got a good balance there. The end result is obviously dependent on the players, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how it’s received by the public.
Romeo uses both swords and guns. Was it hard to balance the action between the two?
Yamazaki: When you think of it at a pure game design level, close combat weapons and ranged weapons are kind of polar opposites in terms of action. I paid a lot of attention to creating situations where both would be valid options to use. Of course, shooting an enemy from outside their own range of attack is still the strongest method of attack, technically.
That’s specifically why we introduced the Bloody Summer system, the crazy finisher move that only charges when you attack enemies with close combat weapons. Sure, it’s riskier because there’s far more of a chance of taking damage as well, but that’s the gamble. It’s safer to hit enemies from afar with your guns, but the gauge doesn’t fill. Basically it’s a battle of merits and demerits that has to be figured out moment-to-moment to ensure your victory.
There’s also the Bastard system where you summon support characters. Where did this idea come from?
Yamazaki: We were already experimenting with gimmick skills outside of the main character’s regular move set in Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes 3. Bastards are kind of a natural evolution of what we were doing there. Suda was pretty adamant about adding in a crafting system in the game, and when we were brainstorming on two separate skill and crafting systems, we realized it might be more interesting if they were connected to each other. There’s a ton of variations to make, so be sure to switch them out whenever you can.
Suda: The Bastards really have a nice sense of presence in the game itself. They alter the way you approach battles, and you really have to think about how you raise them, not to mention what the ideal loadout is at any given time. If you raise them right, they end up being stronger than your regular weapons. Also, on PlayStation, when you harvest Bastards from the soil they react to the adaptive triggers.
That’s one way of using them. Do you have any Bastards you’re particularly fond of?
Suda: The one I used right to the end was called Mictlantecuhtli. Definitely my strongest. Also, FrostBolt, which freezes enemies.
Yamazaki: It was SuicideAttack for me, which blows itself up. The more you raise it, the stronger it gets. I think it’ll be fun for everyone to come up with their own combinations. Make sure to give a try! And if you do, keep playing all the way to the end–the second half in particular’s got quite the surprises in store.
On getting players into the action as fast as possible
It seems in classic Grasshopper style, the story itself and its presentation is trying to confuse players. The opening sequence is pure chaos.
Suda: The opening in particular is full speed ahead, yeah. I think it’s quite the good composition, if I do say so myself. If we’re gonna cause some ruckus right off the bat, we might as well equally get the player in the thick of the action as fast as possible so they don’t have to think too long about it. I’m just glad if they can enjoy the action right from the start.
Yamazaki: I’ve been at the company for quite some time now, so I’m really used to Suda’s storytelling style. I guess from that perspective, it’s nothing too unusual for me. It’s, like, yeah, business as usual. Of course, I understand it’s probably confusing to first-time players, but that confusion itself is fun to see. I’m especially excited for how people will react to the story as a whole.
Suda: There’s plenty of things that go unused over the course of game development. I really hate just leaving things on the cutting room floor, so I try to use as much of it as possible. The opening to the game used to be much longer, but due to a variety of factors it turned into what it is now. Of the things that seemed like they might go unused, we tried to put all of them in full right from the get-go, so the opening is basically the best possible outcome of it. We wanted players to feel this kind of rush going into it that leads them straight into the action.
Right, a longer opening makes people impatient. Is that how you convinced the staff, too?
Suda: Actually, about half the staff working on Romeo is a Dead Man were joining Grasshopper for the first time, and I probably think they felt a huge kind of anxiety about it throughout the entire production.
How do you mean?
Suda: I think for the most part everyone made it not really understanding what kind of game it would eventually turn into. I think only around debugging time did most people really start to see the whole shape of the game as it was.
Why do you think that happens?
Suda: Our development style is kind of ad-libbed, I’d say. Basically we bring a bunch of ideas to the meetings and develop them just through talk and pick apart what seems like something worth implementing, and for the most part we just pick the most interesting ideas and ad-lib ways to put them in. But as the number of staff involved with development increases, that becomes more and more difficult. At a sheer numbers level, it’s hard to communicate those ideas to every member of every section of the company.
Sounds very ad-libbed to me.
Suda: But I think that feeling of a bunch of interesting ideas packed into one is what sets Grasshopper games apart. Especially when it comes to action games, they’re not really something where you decide on a super rigid spec sheet from the beginning and follow it all the way through—it changes throughout development. You basically have to keep polishing really small parts to make the overall product better.
That kind of ad-libbing and improvisation is what connects the chaos of the game’s opening to the various forms of expression we see used in the rest of the game too, right?
Yamazaki: Of course, Suda’s directing style and the new staff are one thing, but about half the staff is made up of long-time members who more or less understand the unique culture that makes the base of our development cycle. I’m not sure if that’s an advantage or a disadvantage, but that’s precisely where that bold flavor unique to our games comes through; I think that really works for the people who enjoy it, and is more of an acquired taste for a first-timer. It’s kind of like a ramen shop with a thick, strong broth.
But you don’t plan on changing that, do you?
Yamazaki: There are definitely times we consider making things a more general, salty flavor for the
public at large; though, I’m not sure it works out that way even when we try (laughs). Usually I start out that way, but somewhere along the way I get bored with the blandness and end up putting a bunch of spice in without even realizing.
Suda: There are already enough “orthodox” games out there to begin with, and I don’t think it’s our place to compete with them. The world is already overflowing with “perfect” games that look like something Dekisugi-kun (from Doraemon) would make. But if they were all Dekisugi-kun games, then there’d really be nothing interesting. We definitely need more Nobitas in the world, and I think our studio is one of them. Whether or not Doraemon is with us, who knows? (laughs)
Embrace the chaos on February 11
How was the interview? Our quirky action game’s got a strong backbone to it. It definitely requires a bit of skill; each enemy’s got its own characteristics and combat changes with each weapon. Also, the stronger you make Romeo, his weapons, and support characters through mini-games, the battle encounters themselves evolve with it. This thing’s got some pretty satisfying punch to it, if I do say so myself.
Do what you want, however you want it. If I was to measure what kind of excitement we want to deliver, imagine you order ramen and gyoza, and then you get what looks just like ramen. But then you finish the soup, and bam, at the bottom of the bowl: there was your gyoza the whole time! You’ll be like, “whoa, who knew video games could be this free?” Anyway, we hope you can feel the overflowing passion, joy, and pure human spirit that radiates from Romeo is a Dead Man. Give it a try!
Helldivers 2’s next big update, Machinery of Oppression, launches the Battle for Cyberstan, and sees players head to the alien homeworld and take on the Cyborgs, a new Automaton-adjacent enemy type that’s set to usher in a new round of terror — and chaos — to Arrowhead’s explosive third-person shooter.
Machinery of Oppression also triggers the next big narrative beat in the Galactic War’s ongoing meta narrative, a community-driven story that has captivated fans ever since Helldivers 2 set PlayStation sales records two years ago.
Two years ago! Where has the time gone? For the developers at Arrowhead, the launch and ongoing development of Helldivers 2 has been something of a rollercoaster, with ups and downs dominated by community love and hate. But now, as Helldivers 2 enters its third year, Arrowhead is coming to understand the game it has on its hands, and how to fuel the live-service beast in a sustainable way while keeping player numbers healthy. Steam concurrents are there for all the world to see, and even now, they are in a good place.
So what happens next? The Battle for Cyberstan is yet another player-directed update. Players will take Cyberstan, or they will fail — Arrowhead doesn’t know how it’s going to go. But can Arrowhead make meaningful updates to Helldivers 2 beyond the sort of things we’ve seen in the last two years? In December, Johan Pilestedt [CCO of Arrowhead and creative director on Helldivers 2], talked about the possibility of a Helldivers 2 rogue-lite mode. But can the developers expand the scope of the game to, say, increase the squad count? Increase the number of players in a squad? Release bigger maps?
Ideas aren’t the problem, of course. The problem, as with everything, is time, energy, and ideas. But, as game director Mikael Eriksson tells me in the interview below, these sorts of game-changing updates are being worked on. They are possible. And, he insists, the future of Helldivers 2 is bright indeed.
IGN: Players have spent the week marching towards Cyberstan and they have tanks as well. I know you have big ambitions for how this new update will let the community direct the events of the Galactic War in an even more direct way than before, but how exactly will it work?
Mikael Eriksson: February 10, that’s when Super Earth will commence the battle for Cyberstan. And you’re right, this is the most ambitious one yet for us. One of the central points of Helldivers is that we play the game together with the community, and the actions of the community are not known to us and the outcomes are not predetermined. This has been the case since launch, but of course we’ve tried to expand on this with almost every update to make this more impactful, and to make it more obvious what the different outcomes are and what the consequences will be.
We still have many ambitious plans on how to expand on this even further, but for this time, the Battle for Cyberstan, will be the most ambitious one yet with a new type of meta gameplay. So it would be much more clear now for players what the consequences would be depending on how they choose to tackle this. So they can attack the planet from many different angles and it would be very obvious when players get there, what the consequences are and what’s at stake.
But again, the outcome is not predetermined, so we don’t know what will happen. Players can win and players can lose, and it’s going to be super fun to see that play out. Last time, with the Battle for Super Earth, which I think was maybe the biggest one before this, we also didn’t know. Eventually players actually managed to defend Super Earth, which was super cool to see. Following that was pure fun for everyone at the office except for maybe the Game Master who was sweating a little bit, but for everyone else it was fun to see.
IGN: Are you suggesting significant differences between outcomes this time around in a way that players haven’t seen before, where things you might have created for one outcome just might never see the light of day?
Mikael Eriksson: I want to make sure to set the right expectations here. Our primary inspiration for the Galactic War is tabletop role-playing games. And in tabletop role-playing games — for anyone who’s played this — they know that there’s a story that you can follow. This story is basically set, and the Game Master tells this story, but the players engage with the story in different ways and they create memories together, really powerful memories together that they share. It’s a shared fantasy that they have. And this is unique, because how things play out in the tabletop role-playing game is not predetermined, but you take these memories with you and they can be and often are very powerful.
I would say that what we’re aiming for with Helldivers is similar, where we do want things to be consequential, and the type of consequences that we talk about is, for one, the story plays out in a way that we don’t know, and this is up to the players to determine, or the story outcomes I should say, because we have the story that we’re telling, we know what’s going to happen. We know that players will now go to Cyberstan, but we don’t know how it will play out. We don’t know if they will win. We don’t know if they will lose. And there will be impacts on the Galactic War level. So the story that is being written in the Galactic War will change depending on what they do. And it can be quite consequential. Planets can get destroyed to never be able to be played on again. That sort of thing can happen. Or they don’t get destroyed. This has happened in the past. Players have even voted to blow up planets, and they show us what to do.
So what we are trying to do is we’re trying to go as deep as we can, and deeper with every update, into this kind of experience where it really feels impactful on the meta layer, where you can see afterwards on the Galactic War screen. You can see it only looks like this because of all the actions that we took. But then there’s of course additional things that we’re talking about, which is impactful and persistent gameplay changes as well.
So we’re playing a little bit with all kinds of things here for this experience, and I don’t want to spoil things so players will know what I’m talking about as soon as they’re fighting this battle. But for the future, the summary of what we’re doing is that we really want to have persistent story changes depending on community actions, and also persistent Galactic War consequences that you would be able to see and shape for all future time, and also tie rewards and actual gameplay differences to these things as well. That’s the more high-level goal. And I think it is one of the most fun things with this game, the stories that the players create together when they interact with this game. I do think that’s extremely powerful and it’s one of the most fun things that we do with this game.
IGN: So are you looking to improve how the game itself helps players understand their role in the Galactic War and how they impact it?
Mikael Eriksson: Yeah. Okay, so I’ll jump ahead a little bit. Even though I do think that we make strides in this direction with this upcoming update, the one that’s going live right now, I also agree completely with what you’re saying. As a new player or even an experienced player, when you come into the game, it can be confusing. What’s happening in fact right now? For what reason? What’s the context? Do I have to understand the full Galactic War to be able to understand this? Or is it okay if I just understand the current event? This can be quite tricky for players, and this is not what we want. So I can openly say that we are actively working on getting to a point where regardless of if you’re new or if you’re experienced, you should just be able to get into the game and understand very easily exactly what’s happening and why we’re fighting the fight that we’re doing right now. And additionally and more importantly for me, what the consequences are, or rather what’s at stake. So that’s something that we are actively working on. It’s one of the key things and key focuses for upcoming updates. So I’m happy to say that this is a really big part of what we’re focusing on for the future.
IGN: It must be an interesting design challenge for you to maintain what makes Helldivers special, but also accommodate people who are either newcomers or returning players who haven’t played for a while in a gameplay sense?
Mikael Eriksson: Yeah. I think one of the strengths of Helldivers is that it is very easy to understand the fantasy and get into it quickly. You can watch the opening cinematic with our John Helldiver character — named by the community — you can watch that and you can get it immediately. Then you can just participate in the fantasy and have fun. And we never want to stray away from that. We never want to get to a point where we’ve built so much complexity into the game that it’s a real uphill battle to get into it. That’s not what we want to do.
We of course think a lot about this. Players will leave for a while and then will return, and we think it’s very important that when they return, they can very easily get back into it and they can participate in this epic fantasy together and create these great memories that they can then bring with them for, I mean, ideally their entire lives. We want to believe that we actually add real value to the lives of real people. And so we do not want this to feel like an uphill battle.
With this new update, I do think that it will be quite straightforward what the goals are. Everyone’s marching towards Cyberstan and there will be an epic battle on Cyberstan, and I do think it’s going to be easy to understand what the stakes are and what’s at play. But yes, for every coming update that we’re going to do now, this will increasingly be a focus. So that should always be easy to get into and always be easy to understand.
IGN: Last month Johan Pilestedt [CCO of Arrowhead and creative director on Helldivers 2], talked about a rogue-lite mode casually on Twitter as if it was nothing. I’d love to pick your brains about what’s going on there.
Mikael Eriksson: Rogue-lite is a very big umbrella. I’m always happy when the community is active and speculating and coming up with ideas and just participating in the conversation. We have a really awesome community, so the more the merrier, keep it coming! I’m very happy about all this.
Rogue-lite, very big umbrella. A lot of people hear it and a lot of them have different opinions about what this sort of means. What I can say is with this new update, players will see that there’s at least some similarities to rogue-lite with how the meta game plays out on Cyberstan. There’s going to be some elements there that the players will think are quite interesting. But tempering expectations here, it’s not full rogue-lite. We do draw some inspiration from that in some aspects with this new updates.
For the future, here’s what I’ll say without confirming anything: we are experimenting with many different game modes. I can tackle it actually from this direction with this game: we want to basically offer all kinds of experiences that make sense in this universe. The way I view this game is I view it as a living universe. It’s actually out there, where things are happening and players can be invaded from nowhere with an enemy that they didn’t anticipate and so forth. And in this kind of universe, it makes sense that it would have an impact on what you choose to do. So if you choose to defend one planet or you choose to do a mission on this specific location, that should have an impact that should be persistent, and you should carry that with you to the next mission in the operation and so forth.
So I do think that with the game that we have right now, it’s actually not as consequential as it would actually be in this actual universe. Do you see what I’m saying? So it makes sense to draw inspiration from that kind of game in our universe, not because we want to emulate any other game, but rather because yeah, this actually does make sense in our universe. So for that reason, we are experimenting with all of these different kind of modes, but it’s coming from a place of, how do we make sure that this game delivers on the promise that this game is, to deliver on this universe and everything that makes sense within it? That’s why we choose to go to Cyberstan. Of course, in this universe, Super Earth should be able to attack the enemy home planets, right? You couldn’t do that when we launched the game, but of course we should be able to do that.
And of course that home planet should look different and play different from if we are being invaded, or if we’re playing out in an open landscape. And of course it should make a difference if the battle goes very quickly or if it takes a long time. There’s also a resource war going on. We don’t have to build a super advanced strategic game, but we still need to stay true to this fantasy. So yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that we still want to do, and we’re exploring many things, but it’s all coming from a place of how do we deliver on the full promise of what this game is and what it should be.
IGN: Helldivers 2 is two years old now. Do you have a better understanding of what Helldivers 2 is, how to work on it, how to meet community demands? Do you feel like you’ve gotten to a place that is better for you guys as well as players? How would you assess the state of things now?
Mikael Eriksson: When we launched the game, we were not really used to being a live-service studio of this size and with an audience of this size either. So we were really finding our way in this new environment. We’ve come to a point now after many ups and downs where we’re starting to really find our identity as a live-service studio that is in it for the long haul. We can have this conversation again when Helldivers 2 is 10-years-old! We can talk about it then! But that’s where we’re going. We’re in it for the long run. And I do think it’s getting way more stable. So we still have some issues lingering in the game, but we’re dealing with them one at a time. And I really believe that the future is looking bright and that we can get away from the really big ups and downs. Hopefully we’re looking at this year being the most stable and most predictable yet I think in terms of just quality of our updates, and to be able to deliver a consistently smooth experience to players. So I’m very happy with where we are heading, and I really do believe that the future is very bright for Helldivers in this year and many years to come.
And it’s also super fun. Working on Helldivers as a live-service game is just bliss, because it’s such an interesting universe, endless possibilities, and we have many, many ideas that have yet to come to fruition. And I just want to see what the future holds and stick around for long enough to build everything that we want to build. That’s what I’m hyped about.
IGN: Would Helldivers 2 need a significant tech overhaul, almost like a tech rebuild, for you to implement really game-changing systems and mechanics? The first two years we’ve seen great updates. You’ve added new vehicles, various new weapons, strategems, new planets of course. But I mean to the point where it would be considered significantly game-changing — if you’re talking about a 10-year plan, something really attention grabbing that fundamentally changed the way the games works — would it need something like that to support it? Or do you feel like the way the game is now could support those game changing updates?
Mikael Eriksson: I think what I can say there is that when we launched, we had to prove to ourselves and everyone that we had a good formula for live-service games. So you’re right that we have added a lot of really interesting, cool updates and I think that we have a good formula. We are doing what we call ‘good FOMO,’ that’s what I call it at least, where we do these really cool updates where the outcomes are not predetermined and the community comes together, and they really love it, we really love it, and it’s super fun to play with them. And so we got to a point where, alright, we believe that we have something that works and we have many awesome plans for the future — this being one of them with The Machine of Oppression. And you’re right that we’ve had these tech issues lingering in the meantime that we’ve had to deal with. I won’t speak to any sort of tech overhaul that we need to do or not, but what I can say is that we’ve invested heavily into tech improvements over the last year, and these things can sometimes take a while to cook, but we’ve already managed to, for example, reduce the fight size by over 100GBs on PC.
So that was a massive win for us, and there’s many other initiatives that’s happening. We brought many more people in to work on these tech performance improvements. More is to come with every other update. I really do believe that we would be in a better place. And we fully intend to keep developing our tech and keep building on it to allow for even more things in the game, more variety of the sort that we struggle to do now because we are limited by tech. So yeah, we’re committed and we are spending a lot of time and effort just working on these improvements.
IGN: Helldivers 2, you are a single squad of four players that drops down onto a planet and goes about its business and escapes having completed various objectives, and it’s wonderful fun, I absolutely love it. But when I’m talking about the previous question, it’s setting up the idea that that scope could be significantly expanded. What if there were two squads competing against each other in some way or working together in some way? What if there were three squads? What if a squad was bigger? Or the play space was bigger as a result? And that sort of tech question comes from a place of wondering about whether those sorts of things are possible in the current Helldivers 2, or it would require significant work to be able to enable those things. That’s more what I was getting at with the previous question, but it’d be great to get your take on that.
Mikael Eriksson: One of the best things about working with this game is that the cool things that you can do in this universe are kind of obvious, at least many of them are. So having multiple squads working together, or bigger squads, or way more enemies, or way more friendly NPCs by your side, like with the SEAF soldiers that we have in the Super Earth cities, these are things that we know — at least we think we know — can be super cool. What I’ll say is of course we’re experimenting with this and we do have grand plans in this sort of area.
Getting the game to be a consistently smooth experience for everyone is a number one priority. This has to be the case across all platforms and on the recommended specs for PC, on the lower end hardware and so forth. That will be the first priority and that’s what we’re doing first. But then yes, we are of course looking into how to expand the game in ways that is not currently possible with, for example, more players and so forth. But I really want to make this clear: I’m not promising anything or announcing anything with that. But what I want to emphasize is, we are working with a game that has these quite obvious things that you would want to test, me included. And I’m very hyped about pushing this game to say, okay, what can it be? It comes back to the delivering of the fantasy of this game is delivering on the promise of this universe. That’s where we keep going, and we want to keep going for many years. And assuming that we can do that, then I’m sure that there will be many, many things of this sort that will come up as we go into the future.
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.
PlayStation will stream a major State of Play broadcast this week, featuring over an hour of news and reveals, including the latest updates from its own teams within PlayStation Studios.
The event will be held this Thursday, February 12 at 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern / 10pm UK time — and as ever, IGN will be reporting live.
Sony has said that the broadcast will run to “60+ minutes” — suggesting fans have a meaty show to look forward to. But what could PlayStation have up its sleeves?
Sony’s last major State of Play broadcast, held back in September 2025, finally treated fans to a good look at Marvel’s Wolverine, which is in development by the talented team behind the console’s various Spider-Man titles: PlayStation studio Insomniac Games. Other games showcased included Saros, the next project from Returnal studio Housemarque, as well as third-party titles such as Battlefield 6 and Nioh 3.
PlayStation fans will certainly be keen to see more of Wolverine and Saros, and potentially discover a release date for the former. We’re also likely to see something of Bungie’s long-delayed Marathon, which will finally arrive on March 5 — less than a month away.
Saros has already been dated for April 30, though currently all we know for certain of Wolverine’s arrival is that he’ll land in the second half of this year. (With GTA 6 due on November 16, it’ll likely be earlier, and well clear of that.) Last week, a tease from Insomniac Games hinted at Wolverine meeting Daredevil in the game.
Third-party games set for PS5 in the coming months include Capcom’s Monster Hunter Stories 3 and Pragmata, which just got a showing in Nintendo’s Partner Direct, Square Enix’s climactic Life is Strange Reunion, Hitman developer IO Interactive’s 007 First Light and Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight from Warner Bros. Games.
The confirmation of a State of Play this week will mean that all three major platform holders will have held some form of announcement broadcast within the first six weeks of 2026 — though Nintendo fans still hope there is a dedicated first-party Nintendo Direct also waiting in the wings with more news on the company’s own games (and perhaps a new 3D Mario).
For now, though, join us here on IGN for all of the news and reveals from this week’s State of Play in just a few days.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Last year I covered the demo for Void War, robotically describing it as FTL meets Warhammer 40,000, because that is what it is, and sometimes, you have to call a Spade Marine a Spade Marine (I did enjoy the demo, as flagrantly combinatory as the game may be).
Epic Games has hit back at claims it made “provably incorrect statements” about controversial horror game Horses, and instead insisted it was transparent with developer Santa Ragione about its inability to sell the game via the Epic Games Store as planned.
Horses, the indie horror game banned from both Steam and the Epic Games Store ahead of its launch in December 2025, is an indie first-person horror game with live-action sequences set in a horse farm. Over the course of 14 days, it “welcomes you into encounters that test your obedience, complicity, and restraint.” The player experiences “the farm’s unspeakable horrors through daily unique interactions,” as they must “withstand 14 days of spiraling dread as the reality of the farm unfolds.”
Horses was first banned from Steam two years ago after the team submitted an in-progress prototype. While some feedback was provided, Santa Ragione insists that no specifics were shared with the team at the time, nor was there an opportunity to appeal. It was banned again in December due to its disturbing imagery, and while violent and sexual content is hardly new for either Steam or Epic, Santa Ragione took issue with what it deemed to be censorship, calling for “clearer rules, transparent processes, and meaningful accountability from near monopolistic distribution platforms and the systems they enforce.”
Fast-forward to this past weekend, and Santa Ragione posted a statement refuting Epic VP Steve Allison’s comment that said “we love [its] studio,” blasting the firm for “refus[ing] to provide details supporting their claims,” and accusing Epic of making “provably incorrect statements about the game’s content.”
“Epic made provably incorrect statements about the game’s content, refused to provide details supporting their claims, and has not shared their claimed AO IARC certificate, which normally includes a link for the developer to appeal,” the studio posted in response to an interview with Game File. “They do not ‘love that studio’, they have effectively ghosted us.”
“The fact that the game does not deserve an AO rating is apparent from the widely available full walkthroughs on YouTube and Twitch, as well as from its distribution on the Humble Store.”
Epic Games, however, has remained adamant that the game violated the Epic Games Store’s Content Guidelines. In a statement to IGN, Epic Games’ senior communications manager, Brian Sharon, said: “Our team played the game and found it violated the Epic Games Store’s Content Guidelines, specifically the ‘Inappropriate Content’ and ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policies.
“We did a secondary check by filling out the ratings questionnaire for the game ourselves and the content got an Adults Only (AO) rating — which we do not allow on the Store. Because this wasn’t an official submission, we do not have a certificate to share with the team. We did give the developers context around the policies they violated. When they appealed, we reviewed the content again, and let them know the decision was appropriately applied and will remain in place.”
Despite the distribution issues, Horses has managed to sell over 18,000 copies. Though that’s not enough for the publisher to fund a new game, it says it has been able to generate $65,000 in net revenue by mid-December, which was enough to pay off loans and settle royalties owned to creator Andrea Lucco Borlera. Our own reviewer gave it a 7/10, calling it “an affecting first-person horror game that, despite some repetitive tasks and signposting issues, delivers a harrowing story you won’t forget in a hurry.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Late last year, horror game Horses was denied a release on Steam and the Epic Games Store. Both Valve and Epic judged that Santa Ragione’s surreal work violated their rules regarding adult content, while the studio have asserted the the game “uses challenging, unconventional material to encourage discussion” rather than sexually titillate.
Now, an interview given by one of the Epic Store’s executives has reignited the war of words between the storefront and Santa Rangione, with the latter accusing Epic of making “provably incorrect statements about the game’s content”.
Mario Tennis Fever arrives on Switch 2 this week, and to mark the occasion, Nintendo has released the game’s action-packed opening movie.
You’ll find the full cutscene above, which shows Mario and Bowser locked in a bitter back-and-forth on the court with Peach and Daisy. Naturally, the Fever Rackets are the stars of the show, with the movie showcasing a whole host of power-ups and their effect on the court — stick around until the very end to see the clean-up operation.
Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski has said that his scrapped BioShock film adaptation would have somehow included both of the original game’s endings to mess with the audience’s heads.
Verbinski was attached to make a movie version of the beloved game back in 2008 alongside Universal Studios, with a script in place from Gladiator and Skyfall scribe John Logan.
Alas, the project never materialized due to lengthy wrangling over its planned $200 million budget — deemed risky due to it also aiming for an adults-only R rating. Verbinski has previously said the movie came within eight weeks of shooting, before plans faltered. Work continued to try and get the film financed for several more years, though BioShock creator Ken Levine confirmed the project had been fully cancelled by 2013.
“I loved this project when we were getting close to making it at Universal,” Verbinski has said now, discussing the project in a reddit Q&A. “I was going to dive deeply into the Oedipal aspect and definitely keep it hard R with the Little Sisters, and the ‘choices’ the protagonist makes… and the consequences.
“I had worked out a way with writer John Logan to have both endings and I was looking forward to bringing that to the big screen and really f***ing with people’s heads,” he continued. “[We] had some great designs for the Big Daddies and the entire underwater demented art-deco aesthetic. Every year I hear something about the project, but I’m not sure any studio is quite willing to go where I was headed.”
The original BioShock has two endings, based on the player’s choices to either rescue or sacrifice the game’s Little Sisters — and the two very different outcomes you get based on your level of mercy. The game’s ‘happy’ ending — seen if you rescue every Little Sister — rewards the hero with a long life and the surviving sisters present on his eventual deathbed. However, if you harvest any Little Sister, your character is shown instead having influenced Rapture’s citizens to believe that power is all that matters. An ominous final cutscene then shows what looks to be a nuclear submarine being taken over in an attack.
The two endings are pretty different, then — a long and happy life or potential nuclear apocalypse — and it’s unclear exactly how Verbinski’s movie would have shown both. Could one have been a dream sequence, showing what might have been the alternative outcome? Or would the movie have presented audiences with two possible futures, and left viewers unclear as to which actually played out?
The later BioShock Infinite played on the multiverse theory (“there’s always a lighthouse”!) but it’s worth pointing out that this was still years away at the point of Verbinski being involved. Still, it’s fun to ponder how an adaptation might treat the game’s two endings now. Especially as plans to adapt BioShock have since resumed — with Netflix now involved in a potential adaptation.
Netflix announced plans for a fresh adaptation back in 2022, though recent years have seen the project stall again, as cuts changed the scope of the movie, necessitating changes to its script. In September 2025, producer Roy Lee confirmed the project is still in active development, with director Francis Lawrence on board to direct after finishing his work on the forthcoming The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
“It’s a tricky adaptation, so there’s lots of things to figure out and to get right,” Lawrence told IGN previously. “There’s regime changes at Netflix, and so things stall out and get re-energized and stall out and get re-energized, and I think we’re in a pretty good place, honestly.”
Back in the world of video games, 2K confirmed last summer that it had overhauled the similarly long-awaited BioShock 4, which has been in development for the last decade. Amid layoffs and a further delay to the project’s release, former Gears of War head and Diablo franchise lead Rod Fergusson will now oversee the project. Fergusson will also head up the game’s development studio Cloud Chamber, as it attempts to finally wrestle the project to release.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
