Category: IGN

Former Halo developer Bungie is facing a new lawsuit after a Louisiana man claimed the studio stole plot elements from his story and used them for content in Destiny 2.

As first reported by The Game Post, the suit (available to see in full via Scribd) accuses the game company of copyright infringement related to Destiny 2’s 2017 storyline, The Red War. Plaintiff Kelsey Martineau, who in 2013 and 2014 created work under the pen name Caspar Cole, alleges that Bungie lifted elements from a story he published on WordPress.com.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the first game in the fantasy action role-playing game series not to feature spiders, developer BioWare has confirmed.

Fans had wondered about the lack of an arachnophobia mode after BioWare revealed The Veilguard’s accessibility options without one, but it turns out it’s not needed because there are no spiders in the game.

“No arachnophobia mode because there’s no spiders!” posted associate community manager blackhairvioleteyes in the Dragon Age subreddit.

Reaction is mixed. Dragon Age is known for its creepy spiders, which are common throughout all the games. There are even mods that turn the spiders into other animals to help those with arachnophobia. But while some players have said they’re surprised by the omission, others have welcomed it.

And as some have pointed out, this suggests that the creepy spider with human hands creature shown off as part of a behind-the-scenes trailer released in 2020 may not have made the cut. You can see this nightmarish monstrosity in the video below (skip to 3:17 if you dare).

IGN has plenty more on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, including a deep-dive into its development, which is well worth a read if you want to know more about how BioWare realized the game. We’ve also got a lore deep-dive and everything you need to know about relationships and its steamiest romance.

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.

October’s Prime Day has given us a wide variety of discounts to check out at Amazon, but a couple of other retailers are jumping in on the action with their own rival sales. Best Buy is one such place giving Amazon some competition. They currently have a great Xbox Series X deal running for a limited time.

At the moment, you can save $50 on an Xbox Series X console there, dropping its price to $449.99, but that’s not all. Best Buy’s also throwing in a free $25 gift card with your purchase. That’s a nice little bonus on top of the discount, and one you can use towards a game for your new console, if you wish. This deal is only running today, so you’ll have to act fast to pick it up!

Best Buy’s Offering an Xbox Series X Deal in Prime Day Counter-Sale

The developers of A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead have revealed its microphone noise detection, an optional feature that lets the game’s monsters hear sounds players make in real life.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a single-player horror video game based on Paramount Pictures’ popular post-apocalyptic franchise, which revolves around blind extraterrestrial creatures with an acute sense of hearing. The first movie, starring Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, met with criticial and commercial acclaim back in 2018.

Here’s how the noise detection works: by activating your microphone, this optional feature lets the game’s deadly creatures detect every sound you make in real life, bringing the horror “right into your room.”

Here’s the official blurb:

Capturing the frantic terror, unnerving atmosphere and gripping human drama that made the franchise famous, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is designed for fans of the films, horror games, and story-driven adventures alike. With nothing more than your wits and the simple tools you can scavenge, you’ll have to overcome the many treacherous challenges and obstacles that lie ahead, all while trying to survive the ever-present dangers that lurk all around you.

Experience the harrowing journey of Alex, a young college student suffering from asthma and struggling to survive the end of the world alongside her boyfriend, Martin. But the nightmarish creatures stalking the land aren’t the only threat she’ll have to contend with as she travels through the ruins of civilization in search of a safe haven for herself and her family.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is developed by Stormind Games, the Italian studio that created survival horror franchise Remothered and action RPG Batora: Lost Haven, and published by Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 maker Saber Interactive. It launches on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on October 17.

It’s a busy time for the A Quiet Place franchise. Following the breakout first movie in 2018 and its 2020 sequel, prequel A Quiet Place: Day One came out in June, with a third mainline movie expected in 2025.

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.

With the gaming world waiting with baited breath for Nintendo to announce Switch 2, the company behind Mario has once again surprised its fans with the announcement of a completely unexpected piece of hardware: an interactive alarm clock.

“Ever wish that you could wake up in one of the playful worlds from Nintendo?” the company asked in a note to press. “Well, it’s time to stop dreaming!”

The Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo is an interactive alarm clock designed to add “some Nintendo charm to your home and your daily routine.” Alarmo is due out early 2025 priced $99.99, with Nintendo Switch Online members in the U.S. and Canada able to buy it right now via the My Nintendo Store.

Starfield’s Shattered Space DLC was meant to usher in a new era for Bethesda’s divisive space game Starfield, rekindling memories of the studio’s great DLCs of the past such as Fallout 4’s Far Harbor. But following its launch last month, things haven’t gone to plan.

Sci-fi RPG Starfield launched in September 2023 as Bethesda’s first brand new intellectual property in years and its first mainline single-player game since Microsoft bought parent company ZeniMax Media in March 2021. IGN’s Starfield review returned a 7/10. We said: “Starfield has a lot of forces working against it, but eventually the allure of its expansive roleplaying quests and respectable combat make its gravitational pull difficult to resist.”

A year later, Shattered Space has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam, as Starfield players complain about everything from a lack of value to boring quest design.

Now, Emil Pagliarulo, studio design director at Bethesda Game Studios, has responded to one fan’s concern about not just Starfield and Shattered Space, but the direction Bethesda is headed. This concern was prompted by a GamesRadar interview with Pagliarulo who enthusiastically bigged up the expansion. This, the fan said, suggested Bethesda was dismissive of community concern around Starfield.

In a series of tweets, Pagliarulo responded directly to this suggestion and more generally to the ongoing discourse around Starfield and Bethesda. “My optimism is in no way meant to be mud in the eye of any dissatisfied fan,” Pagliarulo insisted. “That’s not how it works.”

Pagliarulo went on to say “I’m also very proud of Shattered Space. We all are,” and confirmed that most of the quests and levels in the expansion were developed by designers who worked on previous Bethesda games and DLC, going all the way back to 2002 masterpiece Morrowind. “They’re good at what they do, and it shows,” he added.

“If folks haven’t played Shattered Space, and they like Starfield, I think they’re missing out,” Pagliarulo continued. “If folks have played Shattered Space and still don’t like it, that makes me sad, honestly. Just know that we’ve also been hearing from plenty of people who love it.”

Pagliarulo offered an explanation of sorts for this apparent disconnect between the way he views Shattered Space and how fans have reacted to it. “Maybe it’s a game of expectations,” he suggested. “Fans want a lot, and we do all we can to accommodate them. Here’s what I can tell you – nobody, and I mean nobody, at Bethesda is patting themselves on the back while ignoring our players.”

Now Shattered Space is out, fans have wondered what’s next for Starfield. In June, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard said the company was committed to supporting Starfield, which has seen 14 million players across PC and Xbox Series X and S, and confirmed at least one other story expansion would release following Shattered Space. Howard said Bethesda is aiming to release an annual story expansion for “hopefully a very long time.”

Pagliarulo reiterated this commitment of support, saying Bethesda will continue to address community concerns and make fixes while “listening to our fans every step of the way.”

“Starfield is a massive game, and it takes time for us to address things,” he explained. “We move as fast as we can, as safely as we can. Game development is always tricky, but with a game as big as Starfield, every fix could potentially break something else.

“To close, let me just say… I love games. I love Bethesda’s games. I’ve been playing them since the Terminator days. All I or anyone here wants to do is make those games and then make them better. No ego. No arrogance. Just a lot of hard work, and appreciation of our fans.”

It’s a busy time for the 450-person Bethesda Game Studios, which currently operates five teams: Starfield; Elder Scrolls 6; Fallout 76; mobile; and external development partnerships. It’s working on the aforementioned Elder Scrolls 6, ongoing content for Fallout 76, various mobile games, updates for older games, and, eventually, the next Fallout.

But will Starfield see a sequel? If it does materialize it may be some time before we see anything of it, with Elder Scrolls 6 expected no earlier than 2028 and another Fallout game set to follow.

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 CEO of the developer behind Spectre Divide, a new free-to-play competitive multiplayer shooter fronted by streamer Shroud, has insisted the game isn’t dead despite low player concurrent numbers.

Spectre Divide launched early September on PC via Steam, where it saw an encouraging 30,971 peak concurrent players. But that concurrent figure has fallen steadily since on Valve’s platform where it has a ‘mixed’ user review rating. Yesterday, October 8, Spectre Divide had a peak of 2,769 concurrent players.

Now, a month on from launch, Mountaintop Studios CEO, Nate Mitchell acknowledged the discourse around Spectre Divide low player numbers, but vowed to stick with the game.

“Some folks out there have declared Spectre ‘dead,’ mostly as a result of low concurrency,” Mitchell said. “It’s true that Spectre’s concurrent player count is lower than we’d all like.”

Mitchell admitted that a PvP game like Spectre Divide needs lots of players for healthy matchmaking, and that without them, players will experience longer queues and less fair matches.

“With that said, I can assure you that Spectre isn’t going anywhere,” he added. “The servers aren’t shutting down, and the updates aren’t going to stop.

“If player count drops from here, we have strategies for bringing players together, like combining the matchmaking queues. And we’ll continue working toward bringing new players in. We love this game – we’ve poured our heart and soul into it these past four years – and we’re just getting started.”

Mitchell explained that Mountaintop is an independent studio with a small team, but “we have the funds to support Spectre for a long time. And I promise: We’re going to make Spectre awesome together.”

As for the future, Mitchell said the developers need some time “to go heads-down, improve the game, and tackle some of your bigger asks,” with Season 1 set to kick off in December or January. Priorities include client performance, ping and server regions, anti-cheat, and game stability.

Last month, shortly after Spectre Divide launched, Mountaintop cut 13 staff, with Mitchell saying at the time that the layoffs “make sure we’re set up to support Spectre and its community for the long term.”

Expanding on the reasoning now, Mitchell said: “We made the difficult decision to reduce our monthly spend to make sure we were set up to support Spectre for the long term. In the run up to launch, the studio grew from more than 85 devs to support a bigger live service roadmap. We’re now back to around 75 full-time devs, but we have plenty of firepower to bring our plans to life.”

Firaxis is working with the Shawnee tribal nation to ensure “an authentic, sincere recreation” in the upcoming Civilization 7.

In Civilization 7, Shawnee are an Exploration Age civilization, which means they will have to become another civ in the Modern Age (presumed to be the Lakota or Iroquois).

Here’s Firaxis’ official description:

An Algonquian-speaking people originally from what is now the eastern United States, the Shawnee fought hard to keep their land and traditions. Their fiercest battles were with the United States, as the new nation pushed westward. Seeking to build a coalition of indigenous people to form a united front, the Shawnee established a settlement at Prophetstown, but the U.S. Army loomed on the horizon.

Speaking to the Associated Press, producer Andrew Frederiksen revealed that developers from Firaxis had asked the Shawnee to imagine a Shawnee university or library of the future and to create new Shawnee words to describe futuristic concepts for use in the hotly anticipated 4X game.

Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes, already a fan of 1999’s Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, jumped at the chance to be involved with Civilization 7 after Firaxis said it wanted to make a playable character out of their famous leader Tecumseh.

“Firaxis was asking questions about language we never would have thought to ask,” Barnes said. The partnership also involves a donation of hundreds of thousands of dollars in language revitalization programs and facilities.

Not all video game remakes are recreated equally. For every genuinely game-changing Final Fantasy VII Remake or Metroid: Zero Mission, you have comparatively more surface-level restorations like 2018’s Shadows of the Colossus or 2020’s Destroy All Humans! that transplant most of the original material into a new game engine that looks nicer but doesn’t really change how it works. Until Dawn fits firmly into that latter camp. Its colourful cast of horny teenagers and spooky snowy mountain setting have never looked better, but its gripping, life-or-death decision-based gameplay is more or less identical to how I remember it from the 2015 original. The general lack of gameplay improvements and noticeable performance problems are a poor trade-off for what it offers, and that makes it tough to recommend, particularly since its premium price makes Until Dawn seem less like a must-have bit of moonlit murder and something closer to a case of daylight robbery.

Here’s what our reviewer said in her review of the 2015 original:

That sentiment still largely rings true – it’s basically the same game, after all. While Supermassive’s subsequent choose-your-own-misadventure horror stories, like 2021’s The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes and 2022’s The Quarry, have come close to matching it, Until Dawn still remains the most well-rounded execution of the choice-and-consequence-heavy formula that the developer has made its own. Its schlock horror story is crammed with entertainingly gory scenarios inspired by the likes of Saw, The Descent, and Poltergeist, and its cast is headlined by strong performances from Hayden Panettiere, Peter Stormare, and Rami Malek, whose characters remain just as engaging today as they were nine years ago – even in spite of the occasionally cringe-inducing dialogue.

Back in Blackwood

While the cast and remote Blackwood Pines setting remain the same, everything has been rebuilt on an entirely new engine (Unreal 5) for this remake, and it shows in ways both good and bad. There’s no question that the higher-quality textures and dramatically improved lighting combine to give this interactive slasher film a considerably more realistic edge, and there are a number of welcome environmental touches, like snow that visibly crumples underfoot and the rays of a setting sun reflected in the window glass of a gondola.

However, these enhancements come at the cost of a frame rate that’s often every bit as shaky as the freaked-out teens onscreen, and at its worst this rebuilt Until Dawn is also prone to coming apart completely like a serial killer’s victim on the sharp end of a saw blade. I managed to make it through my full playthrough without ever being unceremoniously bumped out to the PlayStation 5’s home screen, but another member of IGN’s staff reported no fewer than six crashes within the eight-hour story’s opening half. Until Dawn is supposed to be about preventing its cast of characters from meeting a sudden end at the hands of an unspeakably evil presence, not an indecipherable Sony error code.

Whereas the original Until Dawn is experienced mostly from fixed camera perspectives, the 2024 version – for the most part – favours an over-the-shoulder, third-person view not unlike the recently released Silent Hill 2 remake. There are definite benefits to this manual camera control system, both in the sense that it allows you to better observe the heightened detail in the creepy environments around you, and also swivel your viewpoint around to identify the small number of new areas to explore off the beaten path. For instance, you’ll find a car park outside the ski lift station in the story’s opening hours that wasn’t there before. However, there’s not much of interest to find in this handful of new locations, and I can’t help but feel that the new camera system works against the overall cinematic presentation. Until Dawn’s consistent close-up chase cam meant it felt less like I was puppeteering the characters in an interactive slasher movie and more like I was sauntering my way through a survival-horror shooter, minus the actual combat.

It’s also a strange choice that developer Ballistic Moon has scrapped the ability to walk faster in this remake. Characters will automatically break into a sprint during quick-time event-heavy chase sequences, but otherwise there’s no longer the option of speeding the exploration of environments up a bit with the press of a button like you could previously. Combine that with a distinctly drunken sluggishness to character movement that sees them stumble a few steps too many in one direction after you’ve changed to another, and Until Dawn is now slower and clumsier to control than it used to be, which is not exactly ideal when you’re trying to herd a group of hapless teenagers towards surviving the many horrors of the night.

Teenage Future Injure Totems

The sloppier movement also makes it more of a chore to scour your surroundings for totems. Collecting these scattered Native American artifacts once again gives you brief glimpses at potential character fates, which provide some foresight into your decision-making, only this time their placements have been reshuffled – presumably to make finding them more of a challenge for returning players. That’s all well and good, but I wish that actually triggering the premonitions hadn’t been turned into such a fiddly process.

In the original Until Dawn you found a totem, flipped it over to see a character’s potential death, then moved on. Now you have to pick the totem up, then slowly shift it up and down and swivel it left and right before a tiny glimmer of light appears somewhere on its surface and the vision is finally revealed. It just feels annoyingly unwieldy, like trying to retrieve a pick from an acoustic guitar after you’ve accidentally dropped it into the soundhole, and really only serves to needlessly drag out what was previously a fairly immediate and straightforward process.

This token totem twist is pretty much the only new gameplay mechanic of note. Aside from a slightly lengthened prologue and a new post-credits scene that hints at the possibility of a sequel, Until Dawn otherwise features all the same choices, quick-time events, and potential character fates that it did previously, and the crowd-friendly, pass-the-controller co-op gameplay introduced in later Supermassive Games adventures sadly hasn’t been retrofitted in here. It is slightly more tailorable to personal preferences, though, so if you find that your hands are too shaky for the ‘Don’t Move’ sequences that instruct you to keep the controller as still as possible, you can just go ahead and disable them from the pause menu, for example.

Overall, however, this Until Dawn remake remains a pretty hard sell given that right next to its listing on the PlayStation Store is the PlayStation 4 version, which still looks sharp and runs at a smooth 60fps on the PlayStation 5 at only a fraction of the cost. The new Until Dawn costs over four times as much as the original (at least, here in Australia), and there’s no upgrade path for existing owners of the PS4 version like there has been previously with other first-party Sony games like the PS5 ports of Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us Part II. To be fair, those were technically remasters rather than remakes (The Last of Us Part I is a remake that also had no upgrade path from the PS3 or PS4 remastered versions), but I’d argue that the improvements to Until Dawn are so superficial that it feels much closer to a remaster than a remake anyway.