With Sea of Thieves set to launch on PlayStation 5 on April 30, developer Rare has answered a number of questions about how the soon-to-be former Xbox exclusive works on PlayStation.

The highlights here are that progress and items transfer from the Xbox version to the PS5 version, there are PlayStation-only servers with the ability to disable crossplay, and performance options match the Xbox Series X version. Elsewhere, the PS5 version has 60 base Trophies and a Platinum Trophy called Pirate Perfectionist.

In a blog post, Rare said there are some PlayStation-exclusive cosmetics, including the Ruby Viper cosmetics or Dauntless Adventurer Closed Beta rewards, which are exclusive to the PlayStation pre-order campaign. These won’t be equippable on Xbox or Steam. Rare said it’s making plans for a unique sail that will be available to all players during the PS5 launch period. This sail will “commemorate the coming together of pirates across all platforms”.

It’s worth noting that PS5 players need to use a Microsoft account to play Sea of Thieves. “Newcomers will find that their Microsoft account keeps track of their pirate’s journey, antics and adventures, making sure everything stays in place between gaming sessions,” Rare said. This also enables progress tracking on the Sea of Thieves website, and lets players buy cosmetics from the Pirate Emporium.

As expected, PlayStation players need a PS Plus subscription to play Sea of Thieves multiplayer. Solo play in Safer Seas mode does not require a sub, however.

The aforementioned PlayStation-only servers let players deactivate cross-play functionality, thereby restricting their gaming sessions to exclusively include other PlayStation users. Players will also have the option to confine gameplay to fellow controller users, enabling play between both PlayStation and Xbox players who favor controller-based gameplay.

Sea of Thieves makes use of the PS5’s DualSense controller in a number of ways. Here’s the breakdown, from Rare:

• Haptics – Sea of Thieves uses the haptic feedback technology within the DualSense controller to enhance the experience of movement and interacting with the world.
• Adaptive Triggers – Sea of Thieves uses the adaptive triggers within the DualSense controller to heighten gunplay, allowing players to feel each pull of the trigger.
• Built-In Microphone and Speaker – Sea of Thieves uses the built-in microphone so players can chat to their friends without the need for a connected headset.

Meanwhile, Rare confirmed Sea of Thieves is playable via the PlayStation Portal. Sea of Thieves on PS5 is “optimized” to run at 60fps in 4K resolution, with an additional performance mode available for supported TVs allowing for 120Hz refresh rates at 1080p resolution. This has parity with the Xbox Series X experience, Rare clarified.

All active Sea of Thieves achievements on Xbox and Steam will convert into Trophies on PS5, Rare continued. “While existing achievement progress may result in some Trophies unlocking immediately upon login, players will need to replay to fully unlock Trophies on PS5.”

And finally, detail on the upcoming closed beta, which lets players earn Renown, currency and cosmetic rewards as part of the Season 11 Seasonal progression track. Their pirate will keep these rewards, and these items will be accessible when the game launches globally at the end of April, Rare clarified. “They will also be awarded 10 levels of Renown towards their Season 12 Seasonal progression track, as a thank you for participating,” Rare said.

“Closed beta participants will not be able to engage with the Pirate Emporium, and will only be playing with other PlayStation players during this period. While Trophies will be disabled during the Closed Beta, progress towards them will be tracked, carried over and unlocked appropriately upon launch of the retail version.”

The closed beta is planned for April 12-15 (you need a pre-order to play), with the premium edition offering five days of early access from April 25.

Sea of Thieves is the latest Xbox game to make the jump to rival platforms, joining Grounded, Pentiment, and Hi-Fi Rush. Microsoft is testing the multiplatform waters with this quartet, and may release more of its first-party games on non-Xbox consoles in the future. In an interview with IGN, former Xbox chief Peter Moore offered his thoughts on why Microsoft was making this move now.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Gameplay and images for the canceled ‘Nolanverse’ Batman game that was once in development at Monolith Productions have emerged online.

Before it released the much-loved Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor in 2014, Warner Bros.-owned studio Monolith worked on a game codenamed Project Apollo that was intended as a Nolanverse Batman game based on the version of the Caped Crusader played by Christian Bale. Liam Robertson of DidYouKnowGaming? has reported that director Christopher Nolan himself may have killed the game because he wanted to focus on The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final movie in his Batman movie trilogy. Project Apollo was said to feature the genesis of the Nemesis System Monolith later used with great effect in Shadow of Mordor.

Now, years later, X/Twitter user SpideyRanger has unearthed images and gameplay footage that gives us an idea of what might have been. They show Monolith’s intent to create an open-world Batman game set in Gotham, with stealth and combat mechanics that will look familiar to anyone who’s played Rocksteady’s Arkham games.

The open world of Gotham could be traversed by either gliding and utilizing the grappling hook (as established in the Arkham games) or by operating the Tumbler/Batmobile. pic.twitter.com/VZKXJBFsgP

— SpideyRanger 🇬🇭 (@Dageekydude) April 3, 2024

Early stealth sequence and combat mechanics (Latter would’ve been based on the Arkham system) pic.twitter.com/18uTxPzKm6

— SpideyRanger 🇬🇭 (@Dageekydude) April 3, 2024

Warner Brothers didn’t think that having two Batman gaming franchises was a great idea so the Batman game was retooled to a Lord of the Rings project and that’s how we got “Shadow of Mordor” pic.twitter.com/dkfJv2Jvua

— SpideyRanger 🇬🇭 (@Dageekydude) April 3, 2024

Warner Bros. studios are no strangers to canceled Batman video games. Gotham Knights maker WB Games Montréal had its Damian Wayne Batman game canceled before it was even announced. Work on that game followed the cancellation of a Suicide Squad game in 2016. Batman Arkham developer Rocksteady released a Suicide Squad game of its own, called Kill the Justice League, earlier this year.

As for Monolith, after scrapping the Nolanverse Batman game it went on to release the aforementioned Shadow of Mordor, then its follow up, 2017’s Middle-earth: Shadow of War. It’s now working on an untitled Wonder Woman game.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Spider-Man 2, Starfield, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom all launched in 2023 but these blockbusters didn’t stop Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch players from spending most of their time with older games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Fortnite.

As reported by Kotaku, video game market analyst Newzoo released a report which revealed 66 titles accounted for 80% of overall playtime in 2023. Of that number, a huge 60% of playtime was spent with games released six years ago or more.

Newzoo ranked games on each platform based on their monthly active users across 37 markets, with the exception of Switch which only used data from the U.S. and UK. Not one new release breached the PC list, while only EA Sports FC 24 made it onto PlayStation’s. Starfield was the only 2023 game on Xbox’s list, while Switch saw three new additions including Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Hogwarts Legacy.

EA is bringing Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes to PC eight years after it launched on mobile.

Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes is a free-to-download collectible role-playing game that launched on iOS and Android in November 2015.

EA announced Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes launches soon on PC, with registrations now live for a closed beta for mobile players via the EA App. There is no mention of a console port.

Palworld developer Pocketpair has released the biggest update to the game yet, adding its first raid boss, called Bellanoir, alongside a long list of new content.

Palworld update v.0.2.0.6, out now on Steam and coming soon to Xbox, lets players summon Raid Boss Pals by using slabs at the new Summoning Altar. Pocketpair warned that Raid Boss Pals summoned by slabs are “very powerful” and cannot be captured. The developer recommended players work alongside their base Pals to take on these powerful foes.

There’s even an “extreme” version of the Raid Boss that Pocketpair described as “incredibly powerful and difficult to defeat.” Pals Eggs can drop after defeating Raid Boss Pals.

Elsewhere, a number of new items are added to the game, including new Training Manual items that let you give experience points to Pals. New Recovery Meds items slowly recover your HP over time. And the new Homeward Thundercloud item instantly moves you to your nearest base.

There’s a lot more to the update (check out the patch notes below), such as changes to the Pals, improvements to the user interface, balance adjustments, bug fixes, and more cheat prevention measures. Changes to bases are also included. For example, you can now force a Pal to work and cancel their break by picking them up and throwing them towards a facility.

Palworld update v.0.2.0.6 Steam and Xbox patch notes:

▼New Content

・Implemented the first Raid Boss

⤷ You can summon Raid Boss Pals by using slabs at the new Summoning Altar

⤷ Raid Boss Pals summoned by slabs are very powerful and can not be captured. Work alongside your base Pals to take on these powerful foes.

⤷ Pals Eggs can drop after defeating Raid Boss Pals.

⤷ The “extreme” version of the Raid Boss is incredibly powerful and difficult to defeat

・New “Training Manual” items have been added. These manuals allow you to give experience points to Pals.

・New item “Ancient Technical Manual” has been added. This manual gives you ancient technology points and can be randomly found inside dungeon chests.

・New “Recovery Meds” items have been added. Using these meds will slowly recover your HP over time.

・New item “Homeward Thundercloud” has been added. When used, this item will instantly move you to your nearest base.

・New item “Ability Glasses” has been added. When equipped, you can see Pal’s stats.

・New stat boosting items have been added: “Power Fruit, Life Fruit, Stout Fruit”. These items will boost Pal’s stats when used.

・Added a new passive “Mercy Hit”. Pals with this passive cannot reduce enemy HP below 1 when attacking.

・New item “Ring of Mercy” has been added. When wearing this ring, you cannot reduce enemy HP below 1 when attacking.

・New armour “Multiclimate Undershirt” has been added. Protect yourself against both the heat and the cold with just one slot!

・New building “Electric Egg Incubator” has been added. This incubator consumes electricity to automatically adjust the temperature to the optimum temperature for each egg.

・New building “Ore Mining Site” has been added. This mining site allows you to produce ores from the comfort of your base!

▼Pals

・Kelpsea can now produce Pal Fluids at the ranch

・Dumud can now produce High-Quality Pal Oil at the ranch

・You can now reduce the weight of metal ore while riding Surfent Terra

・Increased the amount of ore dropped while riding Astegon

・You can now raise Pal’s rank to the maximum with a single synthesis using the Pal Essence Condenser.

(Condensation progress is now accumulated in the individual Pal)

・Negative Pal status will now be resolved after spending some time in the Pal Box

▼UI

・While aiming a sphere, it will now display how many of the target Pal has already been captured

・You can now check the cooldowns on partner skills for all your Pals on the main screen

・Equipment and item stats are now visible on the technology screen, even if you have not unlocked them first

・The tutorial has been improved and renamed to “Journey”

・You can now show/hide the “Journey” in the game options

・Damage number display size can be changed in the game options.

(In Raid Boss battles, the damage numbers tend to overlap a lot and it may be difficult to see, so we recommend adjusting the size)

▼Player

・Items dropped by players after death on a dedicated server can now be picked up by anyone after 24 hours of real-time have passed

・Added a new “sleeping” player emote (edited)

▼Base Related

・You can now allow/disallow certain work for base Pals at the Monitoring Stand

・Chest filters have been added. Select item types to allow or disallow inside chests

・Crafted items are now transported from crafting facilities. Selecting “allow transport” when crafting will result in Pals transporting those items to chests when finished

・You can now edit your character’s appearance at any time by using the “Antique Dresser”

・Building and building piece placement rules have been relaxed

⤷ You can now connect stairs facing upwards

⤷ Roof pieces can now directly connect to foundations

⤷ Triangular walls can now be connected to stairs

・You can now force a Pal to work and cancel their break by picking them up and throwing them towards a facility

(Pals recover their SAN while taking a break, so be careful!)

・Fixed assignments remain fixed, even after bad events occur. Previously, some assignments would change due to certain conditions, but now they will remain fixed unless the Pal is placed inside the Pal Box

▼Balance Adjustment

・Minimum heat and cold resistance have been added to various armour. You will no longer need to take off your heat-resistance armour when it is cold at night in the starting areas!

・Reduce the button press time in the egg incubator

・Change the pattern for Jormuntide Ignis to something more unique

・Added legendary blueprints for some firearms (Dropped from specific enemies)

・Corrected the selling price of diamonds

・In single-player, it is no longer possible to select the initial spawn point for multiplayer

・Blocked the back of the starting area with rocks to prevent players from getting lost or stuck

・The increased attack power multiplier of partner skills that increase the player’s attack power while riding has been uniformly reduced from 2.0 to 1.2

・Eggs now have a small chance to produce Alpha Pals

・Flying and floating Pals are now immune to falling damage

・Shop price adjustments

▼Bug Fixes

・Fixed a bug where treasure chests would become empty when dying in a dungeon, etc

・Fixed an issue where the effect that increases the player’s attack power while riding was duplicating and accumulating under certain conditions

・Fixed an issue where players were not receiving loot when capturing Pals while mounted

・Adjusted the HP of the Legendary Pal and fixed an issue where the difference in HP between the captured Legendary Pal and the bred Legendary Pal was too large

・Fixed an issue where Pal would eat while riding.

・Fixed an issue where spheres thrown close to wild pals would not hit and be lost

▼Others

・Improved various Pal models and textures

・Added and adjusted some sound effects

・Many other minor bug fixes

▼Dedicated Server

・Fixed an issue where sorting did not work in the server list

・Improved the server list to allow page transitions

・Dedicated servers now support various log outputs

・Implemented REST API

※ Please check the tech guide for details

https://tech.palworldgame.com/

▼Cheat Prevention

・Fixed a vulnerability that allowed Steam account spoofing

・Fixed 7 other critical vulnerabilities

===

▼Soundtrack

・One new song has been added to the soundtrack. If you have already purchased the soundtrack, please update and enjoy the new song!

※ Please note that the soundtrack may take a few days to update

While today’s update is the biggest yet for Palworld, Pocketpair said it’s planning “a larger, more content-packed update” for summer 2024. This includes never-before-seen scenery and “thrilling adventures on a new island, home to many new pals.” Pocketpair also plans to add new buildings, weapons, and tower bosses.

Palworld launched in January and overnight became one of the biggest games in the world, setting records not only on Steam but on Xbox Game Pass, where it is the biggest third-party game launch ever. So far, the $30 ‘Pokémon with guns’ game has seen an incredible 25 million players, with 15 million copies sold on Steam and 10 million players on Xbox. Last month, Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe said the company couldn’t handle the massive profits Palworld has generated.

While Palworld is one of the biggest game launches ever, it’s also one of the most controversial. Pocketpair has said its staff has received death threats amid Pokémon “rip-off” claims, which it has denied. Soon after launch, Nintendo moved quickly to remove an eye-catching Pokémon mod, then The Pokemon Company issued a statement, saying: “We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to Pokémon.” IGN asked lawyers whether Nintendo could successfully sue.

If you’re playing, be sure to check out IGN’s interactive Palworld map.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The developer of Hellblade 2 has explained why it prefers making shorter games, insisting digital distribution has opened the door “to games of all shapes and sizes.”

Microsoft-owned developer Ninja Theory will soon release Hellblade 2, which costs $50, is digital-only, and about eight hours long. It follows 2020’s multiplayer online game Bleeding Edge, and 2017’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, itself a cheaper, shorter game that launched without a physical release.

In a recent interview with IGN (check out IGN’s Hellblade 2 preview for more), Ninja Theory studio head Dom Matthews said Hellblade 2 is “the right shape and size of experience” to tell the story the developers intended to make.

“I think what we always set out to do is to tell a story and for the game length to be appropriate for the story that we want to tell,” Matthews said. “So it’s not really a case of setting out to make shorter experiences. I think it is… There is a story that we want to tell here with a beginning, middle and end and what is the right shape and size of experience to tell that story? So that’s kind of where we start.”

Matthews said Ninja Theory has found an audience for shorter games where “every step of that journey is meaningful.”

“What I would say as well though is that I think that since digital distribution has become a thing, it has opened the industry up to games of all shapes and sizes, which I think is really great,” Matthews commented. “So I’m really pleased to see that there’s a lot of people that actually enjoy a shorter experience, something that they can sit down on a whatever Friday night, stick their headphones on, turn the lights off and kind of sink into an experience and players who don’t necessarily want something that is 50 hours long, a 100 hours long, so it’s as long as it needs to be. And I’m one of those people, I like shorter games.

“I think there’s a lot of pressure on people’s time these days and I think our fans, from what we hear from them, they enjoy a shorter game where our intention is that every step of that journey is meaningful… There’s an audience of people that want games that are focused.”

Nowadays, with more video games launching straight into subscription services and without physical versions, it has become increasingly difficult to measure success, at least from the outside looking in. As a first-party Xbox game, Hellblade 2 launches day-one on Game Pass on May 21, 2024. While it will also be available to buy standalone across PC via Steam and Xbox, Hellblade 2 seems unlikely to prove its value through sales alone.

For Ninja Theory, though, there are many measures of Hellblade 2’s success. “I think for us as a studio, well my focus as well as studio head is how can we empower the team here, the artists here to go and create an experience, and how do we get it out to the widest possible audience?” Matthews explained.

“I think success for us is, we would love for as many players to play our games as possible, but I think particularly with Hellblade we love and I love that magic that you can achieve by creating something that makes people think and feel. So if I think about the things that I want to achieve in Hellblade 2, once it’s released, the thing that will put the biggest smile on my face is to see fans of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and people who like those kind of game saying you’ve continued Senua’s journey in a way that is worthy of that character.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

To say that Senua’s next story is an immersive one would be an understatement. During my recent hands-on preview, I was able to sample Hellblade 2’s practically palpable atmosphere, delivered via immersive visual and audio techniques. In fact, immersion is the word that powers each aspect of Ninja Theory’s sequel. Everything from its character-focused storytelling, high fidelity art design, and meatier, revamped combat is there to envelop you in Senua’s world. It’s a mantra instilled in the team by studio head Dom Matthews.

“The technology and the techniques that we push here are in pursuit of immersion,” he explains. “So the questions that we ask ourselves at all times in the game are, ‘What’s the story that we want to tell, and then how do we utilize the tools and the creativity that we have available to us to tell that story?’”

Those tools are used in a honed, focused way to ensure Hellblade 2 doesn’t lose sight of its goals. “We want to stick to that kind of very immersive narrative experience,” says VFX director Mark Slater-Tunstill. “We know our skill sets, we know the sort of people in the team, so let’s not go crazy and make a massive open-world game. Let’s keep it really kind of controlled, immersive, and true to what we’re trying to do as storytellers.”

While Hellblade 2 remains a ‘small’ game, at least in comparison to its first-party powerhouse peers, it has widened its scope over that of its predecessor. Senua’s journey will be a lot less isolated this time around, with other humans turning up along the way to share in her story. “One of the things that we really wanted to explore in Hellblade 2 was when you’ve got someone like Senua, who has a unique model of the world and a unique perspective of the world, what happens when that comes into contact with other people’s models of the world?”, Matthews explains.

It’s a new challenge that the actress who brings Senua to life, Melina Juergens, embraced. She credits the new studio space at Ninja Theory, which was built on the success of the first game, for aiding with that process.“I think having a new stage enabled us to just have more characters,” she says. “Before we were shooting in a little meeting room in our old office. It was just me on set as an actor, maybe three or four more people on set. So it was very intimate, very private. Now we’ve got this custom-built massive stage, so that allows us to have more actors in motion capture, have a stunt team, do our own builds, like hang stuff from the ceiling. There’s just so many more possibilities that we can do now.”

The addition of a wider roster of characters should make Hellblade’s world feel more populated and lived in, and as a result push that sense of immersion. Narrative elements like these new characters go hand-in-hand with more technological solutions, many of which have been made possible thanks to Ninja Theory’s transition to Unreal Engine 5. The software has enabled the team to both recreate real-world locations with extreme detail, and bring the wildest parts of their imagination to life.

“As a creator, UE5 is amazing,” Slater-Tunstill explains. “We can kind of dig in and use parts of the internal screen rendering to do some interesting effects. And yeah, obviously the real-time nature of all the lighting, and now a lot of our effects can be lit as well. It just beds everything in, and everything just fits together much more nicely.”

Nature has been a big influence for the studio, particularly the stunning vistas of Iceland, but the pursuit of immersion in AAA video games often looks to cinema as much as reality. The filmmaking techniques of director Robert Eggers are of particular inspiration to Dan Atwell, Ninja Theory’s environment art director. “We really like his idea of the methods that he used within [The Northman’s environment]” he says, going on to recount a tale of Eggers demanding the film’s prop department craft replicas of excavated historical swords rather than making blades based on mere historical theory. “Doing that research and making it as grounded in that sense as possible, we really like his ideology of that stuff.”

It will come as no surprise to learn, then, that Ninja Theory makes physical props of its own. On a tour of the developer’s studio, I was shown era-appropriate Celtic and Viking outfits, which had been woven on wooden looms using materials commonly used in the 9th century such as hemp. These were then scanned into the game to allow their digital counterparts to be rendered as realistic as possible – something further aided by the studio’s switch to Unreal Engine 5. Combined with many other artistic and technological approaches (including building rocks from hundreds of photographs taken on-location in Iceland), it all makes Hellblade 2 undeniably one of the most graphically impressive games I’ve ever played. Its character models and lighting effects in particular stand out from the crowd.

Juergens herself even made the trip out to Scandinavia to take in the harsh surroundings and store those memories for when it came time to reflect on them during her performance. “It’s very windy, it’s rainy, there’s sharp rocks everywhere”, she recalls. “It’s quite a daunting place to be. So I actually got quite frightened when I was out there in that stormy weather. And I try to remember that when I perform, so if there’s a scene with rain, I try to squint my eyes as if it’s raining or windy and just try to remember that trip to Iceland and how terrified I was feeling in that environment. I think the technology is so advanced now as well that I don’t need to overact. It picks up every little eye twitch or lip shake or finger movement.”

This very real grounding only serves to make the firmly other-worldly shine even brighter, though. Once again, we can see parallels between Ninja Theory and cinema; some of the reference footage the studio shot in Iceland is of the same locations used by Ridley Scott to craft the planet in Prometheus, which too used grounded reality to help pronounce its supernatural elements. Horrors of a completely different alien variety are no stranger to Senua, though, and some of her nightmarish visions will be familiar to those who played the original.

“Trying to come up with visual things based on people’s descriptions of hallucinations is a really interesting challenge”, says Slater-Tunstill. “That’s where you can lean on some of the new features of Unreal 5, and have all the geometry you want to replicate those things. Like in the Leap of Faith demo we did last year, with all the repeated rock patterns as the voice is speaking, that would’ve been trickier beforehand.”

A large offering of Hellblade 2’s horrors makes themselves apparent during combat, where hulking attackers throw axes and spit fire at you as hell encompasses the arena in shadows of death. It’s an area that the team knew they needed to focus on to make it as immersive as possible in Hellblade 2.

“The question was how do we utilise combat as a tool to tell the story, to enhance the story, to move the story forward”, explains Matthews. “I think games traditionally can at times be segmented from gameplay, story, gameplay, story, gameplay. For us, the approach has been ‘How do we have every step be meaningful for the story?’ It was starting with that mindset and thinking about what does that combat system look like when at the forefront of our minds is turning a narrative through it.”

Battles in Senua’s Saga are exclusively one-on-one affairs. But in the background, scenes are playing out with their own stories to tell, whether that be the untimely demise of a villager or the continuation of a horrific ritual. The trick is to not make these vignettes a distraction from the fight itself, and that’s achieved through engaging swordplay.

Every combat animation has been recorded through performance capture, meaning every swing of Senua’s sword is one of many skillfully executed by the talented stunt team. When visiting Ninja Theory’s motion capture stage I got to see some of this fight choreography in action, and let me tell you they don’t hold back. Things started steadily enough with a few sword-on-axe clashes but swiftly escalated as the stunt performer for Senua was lifted into the air by her neck and violently choke slammed into a cushioned mat. The real-life action was impressive, just as it was when minutes later I saw it translated into the game. There’s a real heft and flow to combat in Hellblade 2 that wasn’t quite there in its predecessor, and that’s largely thanks to this newfound approach.

It’s been a long time since 2017’s Senua’s Sacrifice, but Ninja Theory is a studio focused on getting the small details right, hoping they all add up to an impressive whole. Over the past seven years, they’ve increased the size of their team and upgraded the facilities and technology at their fingertips. All of the immersive techniques the improvements provide are in service of Senua’s story. Not only is the studio looking to create a fun game for players to enjoy, but it’s also seeking to use its platform to raise mental health awareness through Hellblade’s depiction of psychosis – the hallucinatory mental health condition that Senua experiences. It’s a cause close to Juergens’ heart, and one she’s very keen to share widely.

“Games can be more than just entertainment”, she states. “You can make a game that sparks conversations, tackles difficult subjects, and just raise awareness about certain conditions such as mental health. I’m proud of just having the honor of representing the mental health community, making sure that I do it in the best way possible, the most realistic way possible. Don’t let them down and make them proud as well.”

Simon Cardy is glad that this is one game he can’t smell. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon.

You died. That much is obvious in the opening moments of Astra: Knights of Veda, which drops you straight into a war, clashing swords with strangers in suits of armor. Suddenly, just as it starts to seem like this will be another standard medieval hack-and-slash, the warriors around you fall to their knees and transform into grisly, undead versions of their former selves. The zombie-infested battlefield that eventually kills you does a good job of teasing the mystery about to unfold, setting the stage nicely for your resurrection into this tragedy-stricken kingdom. But while Knights of Veda’s detailed world, heart-racing drama, and challenging combat show promise, its overly aggressive grind and unnecessarily complex progression systems dampen the charm.

You play as the Master of the Book, a stereotypical “Chosen One” role given to you by the Goddess Veda, who asks for your help finding the missing pieces of her “heart” after reviving you. She also enlists help from a mini version of herself, a fairy-like companion named Belle, who might give any Genshin Impact fans some potentially traumatic Paimon flashbacks. However, Veda’s request sits oddly on the back burner for the majority of the story, instead giving way to the takedown of the corrupt King Magnus and a fight to stop the spread of the Undead. Most of the campaign focuses on uncovering the tantalizing pieces of your missing memories, as well as the truth behind the apocalyptic present, which is a more compelling goal than tracking down the goddess’ heart. I could have done with less of Belle screaming over my shoulder and stating the obvious, like that I’m low on HP, though.

Knights of Veda also weaves in stories about the allies you meet along the way, each with their own agendas, smartly tying them into the kingdom’s larger history. I appreciated the character-focused chapters that extended beyond Veda’s overarching fetch quest, and the story does its best to connect all those dots (even if it’s sometimes in convoluted, soap opera-ish ways). It’s the kind of story that needs a white board to piece together the web of connections, and one I enjoyed better once I embraced a certain suspension of disbelief.

This isn’t your typical cutesy anime RPG, either – Knights of Veda’s hauntingly detailed dark fantasy world shows in its grotesque enemies and corpse-filled landscapes. Instead of rescuing a hostage just in time, you’ll more likely watch a monster crush his head like a tomato. (His bulging eyes and crumpled skull are still stuck in my mind.) Corpses hang from light posts and ravens scatter from decaying bodies as you scamper past. Even at your headquarters, a potbellied villager can be seen solemnly downing a mug of who-knows-what through a doorway. These environments are perfectly crafted to reflect the troubled times of this world in a more graphic way than many games in the genre are willing to.

Knights of Veda isn’t always so bold, however, and it took me a bit to get over the hurdle of cliches at the beginning (including Belle’s constant whining during battle). A slow start veils a genuinely intriguing story about how this tragedy-struck nation came to be, the history of the corrupt King Magnus, and how your past self fits into it all. It’s also clever that it manages to subvert the “hero with amnesia” trope that kicks things off by having the memories from your past life actually be relevant to current events! Knights of Veda ends up feeling like the gaming equivalent of a “true crime” show, which was perfect for a fan of that genre like me once I was able to make it past the less thrilling start.

Even still, Knights of Veda focuses most of its complexity on its combat, with side-scrolling action reminiscent of arcade beat ‘em ups alongside the leveling systems and party management more typical of an RPG. You control a team of four characters that you can instantly swap between depending on your strategy. For example, you could deploy shields using a tank character and then swap a damage dealer in to attack enemies from behind that layer of armor. Managing these characters and optimizing their synergies balances nicely with the timely attacks and dodge rolls needed to survive powerful bosses. And while you can bulldoze through the more common baddies with button-mashing, enough enemy variety exists that you’ll still need to adjust battle strategies on the fly often.

Also similar to games like Genshin Impact, Knights of Veda has separate leveling systems for your individual characters, weapons, power-ups, and skills. Each of these requires enhancement materials that you can grind for by replaying chapters in the story. It’s a lot to juggle, but there are some helpful little touches like getting recommendations for which items to level up next if you ever lose a battle. All these upgrade systems helped it feel like I was constantly improving my characters, but they also made it seem like I was constantly running out of resources.

Knights of Veda is a live service game with more on the way. There are currently six chapters that take about 30 hours to complete, assuming you decide to focus on the story by mostly sticking with the same team to minimize the time it takes to level up new characters. This first arc of Knights of Veda tackles the truth behind your role in the current world war and why Magnus did what he did. It neatly wraps up one major mystery while leaving smaller threads and a cliffhanger ending that have me looking forward to coming back for the second arc.

About halfway through the current story, however, I started to feel the pain of the grind because of how often I needed to farm for character enhancement materials. Knights of Veda has “MMO-like” leveling, where anything above a three-level difference between you and your enemies is a noticeable challenge, with attacks that will eat significantly more of your HP. It isn’t like some other RPGs, where smart play might let you squeeze by a tough opponent with that kind of level difference. Grinding for materials to overcome those hurdles is typical for free-to-play RPGs and gacha games like this, but ideally they’ll also have systems to make that process less painful, such as an auto-battle option. Knights of Veda doesn’t – or, at least, it doesn’t implement them in a way that makes the grind any easier.

For example, Genshin Impact locks character and weapon enhancement materials behind quick challenges. Only when you start maxing out character skills at the highest levels will it demand you revisit the toughest bosses that take more brain power and reflexes to take down. Meanwhile, Knights of Veda will make you redo a brutal boss battle you only just survived right away in order to obtain basic leveling materials. You can fuse together Adventurer’s Shoes, a currency for collecting enhancement materials, into Hero’s Shoes, which rewards you with more than five times the average amount of drops to quicken the process – but doing so requires 80 out of the 120 maximum Adventurer’s Shoes you can hold. That meant I ended up trading many of the gems I could have used on gacha pulls to get new characters to instead replenish my Adventurer’s Shoes so I could gather more materials at once and not be forced to redo the same battles over and over.

And while there is an auto-battle option to initially speed things up, it becomes useless in later chapters. At first, I thought it could be a helpful tool for effortlessly running through repeated battles to farm materials – but in practice, it’s only good for auto-attacking. The AI powering it doesn’t know to step back when there are too many enemies or avoid environmental hazards, and will gleefully walk into poison without thinking about the damage over time it will cause. If auto-battle at least evaded lightning and similar dangers, it would help automate a larger part of the process, even if I still need to go hands-on for tougher enemies.

Because progression is so slow, I didn’t have the resources to properly experiment with a wider variety of characters. Knights of Veda has a rock-paper-scissors type elemental system that encourages you to consider who you are using when facing different enemies. Unfortunately, I largely had to ignore the elemental pentagons and triangles that balance strengths and weaknesses out of necessity. I would’ve loved to try out more characters, but that would’ve meant hours of grinding to fully level a single one that likely wouldn’t even become a mainstay of my team afterward. As a result, I generally kept three of my four party members the same throughout the campaign, and only swapped the fourth around when I wanted to experiment with those elements.

As a gacha game, your team could be heavily influenced by which characters you manage to randomly pull – for example, I forced my way through the campaign with a 5-star archer named Eliyor I lucked into, but I frequently used free units like Leon and Lucian for support. (Lucian in particular came in clutch with his healing abilities and serviceable Light-based damage.) I unlocked multiple characters as I progressed through the story and completed challenges, so I don’t think the gacha structure is a particular problem here. You get at least 10 pulls for free whenever you hit level 5, level 10, level 15, and so on. I’m not sure my life would have been as easy without Eliyor, of course, but most of my free units were helpful enough that I didn’t feel the need to pay real money for more pulls. Knights of Veda also guarantees you at least one 5-star character from its standard banner after 50 pulls, so that means a chance for everyone to pull their own powerhouse.

Gacha concerns or not, there is plenty to talk about in terms of overall jank. Small optimization issues and bugs weren’t very distracting individually, but Knights of Veda has enough of them that it feels sloppy all together. First off, controller support is only half-finished, so you will need to switch to using a keyboard and mouse for things like navigating between character menus if you play on PC like I did. I got used to that annoyance after a while, and the UI at least tells you when to switch most of the time… if it doesn’t crash first. NPCs in the main town would sometimes show me an unfinished menu before freezing, overlapping text is the norm throughout, and random Korean phrases will sometimes pop up in service messages, so the whole package comes across as unpolished.

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