Category: IGN

Nintendo has added a rewind mechanic to Pikmin 4 that lets players easily undo their mistakes.

It’s a tragedy every Pikmin player is familiar with: one simple mistake can lead to dozens of the little beasties being lost, but this seemingly won’t be an issue in the Nintendo Switch version.

As reported by Go Nintendo, Pikmin 4 has the typical day and night cycle of the franchise, though players can now opt to rewind time too if something goes wrong.

There won’t be a penalty for doing this, nor a limit to how many times it can be done, meaning players looking to make the most efficient use of their days now can.

The July 21 release date of Pikmin 4 is fast approaching and Nintendo is upping its promotion for the game as a result. It revealed a ton of new details during the June Nintendo Direct, for example, including information on its new Dandori Battle mini-game.

In our final preview of the game, IGN said: “Playing Pikmin has always felt like a warm hug, and [we’re] delighted to report that nothing in that regard has changed in Pikmin 4.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Nintendo plans to give Switch players a “smooth transition” to its next console using Nintendo Accounts.

Speaking during an investors Q&A session, translated by Genki on Twitter (below), Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa indicated that Nintendo Accounts would be a staple for users going forward.

“As for the transition from Nintendo Switch to the next generation machine, we want to do as much as possible in order to smoothly transition our customers while utilising the Nintendo Account,” he said.

Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa says they plan to make a smooth transition for customers from Nintendo Switch to the next-generation console by using the Nintendo Account!

– There are currently 290 million Nintendo Accounts across console & mobile.https://t.co/Y9O8vmeySz pic.twitter.com/OrIYQ1K5XU

— Genki✨ (@Genki_JPN) June 27, 2023

Nintendo isn’t historically known for a strong or consistent online infrastructure as Nintendo Accounts were only introduced with the Switch. The Wii U and 3DS both utilised a Nintendo Network ID, and while these can be connected to the modern service, the transition was considered far from smooth by many.

Furukawa said there are now more than 290 million Nintendo Accounts in use across console and mobile, however, seemingly giving the company a strong foundation to build its next generation infrastructure on.

This will therefore be a move similar to what Sony and Microsoft have been doing for years, with users’ PlayStation Network and Xbox Live accounts now having transitioned between three generations of hardware.

Chatter around a next generation Nintendo console has been slowly increasing recently, with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot saying earlier in June he regretted releasing Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope on the Switch, instead wishing he’d waited for the console’s successor.

Nintendo maintains the Switch is good for another year at least, however, saying in May a Switch successor won’t be released until April 2024 at the earliest. This comes despite a decline in Switch sales. The console sold close to 18 million units in the last financial year, down from 23 million sold the year before and 28 million the year before that.

Rumours surrounding a new console have been circulating for years, with even analysts unsure if Nintendo was planning to release the Switch 2 (for lack of a better name) as early as 2021. The new console was said to offer boosted graphics akin to the PlayStation 4 and its Pro model, but there is no official information regarding the next piece of Nintendo hardware yet.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Ninja Theory was acquired for $117 million by Microsoft, according to FTC filings. The FTC v. Microsoft case has revealed some new information recently about Microsoft’s proposed acquisitions.

FTC filings showed internal emails from Microsoft about which studios and publishers to be on the lookout for regarding potential acquisitions, and candidates included Bungie and Sega. In the internal email detailing a pitch to acquire Sega, there was a list of “precedent transactions” on page 10 and it noted previous acquisitions from many different companies including Sony, Microsoft, and Electronic Arts.

Within the list was Ninja Theory, which was noted to be bought for $117 million. It also mentions the date when the acquisition was made public, June 10, 2018. That was during E3 2018 where Microsoft also announced that it had acquired Turn 10, Playground Games, Compulsion Games, and Undead Labs.

Ninja Theory’s latest title, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, is set to release sometime in 2024.

Check out our daily summaries right here on IGN for updates on everything happening in FTC v. Microsoft, and get caught up on our detailed analysis of day one and day two of the trial before it reconvenes tomorrow.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

IO Interactive’s upcoming online fantasy RPG may very well be an Xbox exclusive, according to internal Microsoft documents.

In evidence submitted in the ongoing FTC v. Microsoft trial over the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, one specific document detailed Xbox’s research into potentially acquiring a number of companies, including Hitman developer IO Interactive. On a page listing “expected and previously shipped games,” IOI was listed as working on something called “Project Dragon,” an RPG shooter for PC and Xbox Series X and S. Elsewhere in the document, it is stated that Project Dragon is “for XGS Publishing,” or Xbox Game Studios.

FTC’s legal battle to stop Xbox from acquiring Activision Blizzard continues on this week, and while the trial is off for today, a rash of evidence documents appeared online during the break that have brought to light some interesting clues about who all Xbox is interested in acquiring. Namely: Sega.

An internal Xbox document submitted as evidence in the ongoing trial shows the company’s acquisition strategy as of May 2021. The document begins by recommending multiple acquisitions to fill perceived content gaps in mobile development as well as “franchises with strong communities and deep engagement” and “casual, social, and cross-generational franchises.”

Some of the most memorable action games I’ve played are 2012’s Max Payne 3 and 2005’s F.E.A.R., and Trepang2 cashes in hard on those memories of slow-motion action and strong enemy AI and variety. Yes, it’s really called Trepang2. No, it has nothing to do with the sea cucumbers of the same name. Instead, this is a first-person, stealth-action shooter that’s tilted decidedly toward action. It’s got plenty of excellent running and gunning, and while its story isn’t all that frightening there are occasional successful jumpscares that mix up the near-constant mayhem of battling its surprisingly smart commandos and corporate cultists. Granted, it’s also a bit short if you’re focused on its main objectives, but that just means it never outstays its welcome.

Trepang2’s brisk six to 12-hour campaign puts you into the boots of Subject 106, a generic super soldier type working for the equally unimaginative secret Task Force 27. After escaping a chilly underground Alaskan prison, you spend the next 10 or so hours in pursuit of the evil overlords of the Horizon Corporation – a Dr. Evil-like entity that is notorious for its failed attempts at creating its own super soldiers, among other evil schemes. What ensued was a series of video game and action movie cliches executed with such over-the-top violence that I had no problem suspending my disbelief – often in unimpeded bliss.

That is, except for when Trepang2’s gimmicky and cheap monsters popped on-screen in classic jumpscare fashion, before the story just sort of… forgot about their existence entirely, thrusting me right back into its gory military shooter-inspired action without more than a shrug and an occasional intel entry with a grotesque drawing on it. Let’s be clear: these monster encounters are perfectly fun, I’m just disappointed that Trepang2 doesn’t lean into them even more. Some excellent setups like a creepy homage to The Backrooms meme create a dark atmosphere to set some fights in, but don’t keep the story’s attention more than one segment of one level at one time apiece. There’s no character like F.E.A.R.’s Alma Wade keeping the steady tension of a more personal horror story rolling under the waves of Trepang2’s action, and as a result, the Horizon Corporation and all of its monsters come across as satirical rather than spooky. But there’s little indication that’s done on purpose.

At its best, Trepang2 is a clear tribute to the dreary, blood-drenched shooters of the mid-to-late 2000s, but without all the added melodrama to slow down its pacing between battles, a la F.E.A.R. 2 or DOOM 3. Most of the time it deftly connects the corridors of its various military compounds and corporate strongholds with a steady supply of boss fights that are often fun but simple, in that they rely on a single gimmick. The Mothman, for instance, chases you around a maze-like structure and can only take damage on specific parts of his body that are easiest to hit while he’s spitting acid. Meanwhile, each level’s nooks and crannies are littered with weapon customization parts and bits of intel to gradually explain what’s going on, which turns out to not be that interesting.

That said, it’s nice that you can comfortably ignore the story; much like the Doom Slayer, protagonist Subject 106 callously rips and tears his way through the corporate underbelly that serves as the main enemy of Trepang2’s campaign. He does so with enough gusto to make short work of everyone he runs into, to the point where other members of Task Force 27 will often comment on just how superhumanly powerful he is. This is played unironically, but it works for a few chuckles, not unlike off-the-cuff commentary given to the Master Chief by UNSC soldiers in Halo. It takes itself a bit more seriously than that, but it still adds to the over-the-top spectacles of B-movie violence throughout.

Halfway through the first level you’re already introduced to Subject 106’s nifty Cloak and time-slowing Focus abilities. Mixed with a button that lets you dive into a crouching position whenever you want, these abilities give you superhuman prowess in most situations, but not so much that Trepang2 ever made me feel overpowered – at least once I turned the difficulty up a notch or two.

It’s especially important to remain versatile since there are often so many enemies on screen at once – maybe as many as 20 or 30 – and they will relentlessly group up on you, flank you, and appear to communicate your position to one another, making cover basically useless in the heat of battle unless you’re able to stay hidden. I’m not much of a stealth player, and it always seemed like the cooldown timer for my Cloak ability was a bit too long for my tastes anyway, so I generally forgot about it. And I didn’t miss it, because great level design is far more important to stealth than a lazy invisibility button. Trepang2 often lets you shoot out lights to pass under the cover of darkness or set traps for a good old ghillied-up time. This all speaks to its excellent open-ended combat across its six primary and six side missions, wherein its eight highly customizable weapons gave me just as much leeway to simply dive into the action and kill everyone in sight on my own terms.

The rhythm of Trepang2’s combat is less about choosing the right gun; every weapon is viable in every battle, whether you’re dual-wielding assault rifles or finessing your way through enemy squads with a single handgun. Instead, it’s all about carving out the right approach: aside from the rank-and-file enemy soldiers armed with SMGs and pistols, many of Trepang’s enemy types are shielded or armored and only vulnerable to headshots. Some come equipped with long-range firearms and will scurry around the outskirts of a battle to pick you off when you stray out of cover, and some even chase you around with explosives in hand. Each enemy demands a different approach, and my favorite moments were when I was surrounded on all sides by a vast array of different variants, forcing me to improvise rather than stick to any specific weapon or tactic.

Its run-of-the-mill arsenal of weapons may bore at first glance, but they handle well with a mouse and keyboard, and I enjoyed using them just as much with my handy Xbox One controller. Pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles can be dual-wielded once you find the hilariously titled “Dual-Wield Serum”, and that’s fortunately unlocked about halfway through the campaign. Dual-wielding adds an extra dimension to gunplay in that you can become lethal at close range when dual-wielding any weapon, though you’ll struggle to pick off enemies from afar. Likewise, it’s slightly disappointing you can only dual-wield identical weapons, so there’s no mixing and matching a shotgun with an SMG.

But it pays off with a gratifying spectacle when you decimate a crowd of armored bad guys in slow motion, brandishing two shotguns or assault rifles like toys. The reload animation when dual-wielding two unfolded shotguns will never cease to make me laugh, and running into the fray with two weapons of any variety feels badass no matter how successful you are at landing kill shots. Adding to the frenzy of Trepang2’s combat is a melee button that feels great to use, and it lets you beat your enemies down or unleash a Spartan Kick once you’ve closed the gap, making it easy and often hilariously fun to direct the flow of the carnage in slow-mo.

Dipping into that slow-mo Focus ability almost always let me pick off a few pesky foes before my meter ran out, and since diving around cost nothing, Trepang2 is at its best when you stay on the move while your Focus meter recovers in the background. Powersliding through ammo, health, and armor pickups and occasionally popping up to wreak carnage on the next group of enemies I encounter feels great.

I’m ambivalent about Trepang2’s lack of a default aim down sights feature for weapons with iron sights, veering toward Counter-Strike rather than Call of Duty in its military shooting inspirations, but it still works just fine without it. While ADS for non-scoped weapons is accessible to a limited extent via a cheat code that can only be unlocked later in the campaign, Trepang’s slick movement and slow-mo features make it easy to close the gap between opponents, effectively balancing combat around the use of crosshairs for aim akin to old-school shooters like DOOM and Halo. I’m used to it, coming straight off of DOOM Eternal which uses that style of shooting, but it’s still potentially disorienting for those transitioning from modern military shooters like COD.

It’s great that you can pick up different parts as collectible items in each mission, but it’s a slight disappointment that you can’t alter your loadout just anywhere. Ever so often, you’ll run into a weapon customization crate where you get a Crysis-style weapon customization menu, where you can individually customize different parts on your current weapon. For instance, the Pistol can be equipped with Silencers and Laser Sights, meanwhile, the Shotgun can be equipped with Incendiary ammunition and its stock can be folded. Every addon comes with a drawback that’s described in text, such as the Laser Sight making you more visible to enemies or the Unfolded Stock making reload times slower in exchange for better recoil, so it all feels balanced and often broadens the number of viable playstyles available.

There are also a variety of throwables like frag grenades, flash grenades, incendiary bombs, throwing knives, mines, and even “rat bombs”. All of these feel good to use, but you can only carry up to five at one time, and only of one type. It’s great that each level is generous with these, encouraging you to use up your stock in the bigger battles.

Trepang2’s wild action also consistently looks awesome. Sparks and blood fly in all directions at gloriously high framerates in 2K resolution at max settings on PC, even when the action seems like it should be too much to handle for my now-aging GeForce RTX 2080 Super. Some of Trepang’s levels are drab and colorless like a typical shooter from the Xbox 360 era, but its action truly comes together in some of its more detailed environments. In the Horizon HQ, the festival of carnage is contrasted against arrays of LED panels refracting colorful waves of light across the tower’s glimmering marble floors.

I’ve seen better, of course; enemies can glitch out sometimes, and it can be somewhat irritating to walk through a pile of corpses and then hear them all shuffle around behind me like a monster sneaking up on me, only to realize it’s their ragdoll physics glitching. But these are minor complaints in comparison to how well my system held up, both in ultrawide (with an expanded field of vision, demanding more processing power in exchange for a broader view of the action) as well as in plain 16:9 widescreen mode. It rarely stuttered or lurched to a halt when tens of things were happening at once, giving an almost consistently smooth shoot-’em-up experience from start to finish.

A decently-sized hub area ties everything together between missions, and this is where you can customize your loadout and restock your armor and equipment, or train in the infinitely replayable combat sim which gives a broad number of environments to play around with and learn various weapon configurations in a controlled environment. There’s also some extra replayability here if you’re willing to stretch out Trepang2’s slim campaign with increasingly difficult challenges, though those just involve beating the same missions over again at higher difficulty levels. This puts you in front of tougher boss fights, including some that only appear at higher levels, in exchange for unlockable cheat codes and secret gags. They’re delightfully old-school, and range from Infinite Ammo to a Big Head mode that makes shooting bad guys in their faces that much sillier. It’s a chaotic joy to go back through the campaign with different configurations of cheats.

The gang is back and this time they’re in New York City pulling off the most daring heists. The setting change up from Washington DC from Payday 2 is supposed to be an “enormous living breathing world” that aims to add new layers to the gameplay experience. Dallas, Hoxton, Wolf, and Chains are on the returning cast roster and the story is picking up where it left off. Our favorite heisters are coming back from retirement.

Payday 3 sticks to the classic formula of being a four player co-op shooter. You create your ideal team loadout with your friends and you can bring various weapons and gadgets into the heist with you. You can play solo and with AI teammates if you’re really a solo player but I can’t speak to how that feels since the hour I played was in a full group.

You can approach each heist with various different paths. You can choose to go quietly and stealth around and try not to get caught through the entire mission, or you can go loud and just go guns blazing from the get-go. Starbreeze promises lots of different ways around accessing locked doors and stealthing through the various new tools added to Payday 3.

In fact, there are now new heist phases: Search to go looking for you, Negotiation phase to give yourself more time, and Assault. The gameplay loop has you equipping your preferred loadouts, selecting new skills that you want to use, then entering the heist, assessing the map layout, initiating the heist however you want (stealth or loud), the getaway, then payout.

But of course, before you load into a heist, you have to perfect your gun loadout, along with the specific items and skills you want equipped. There are new skill trees for you to unlock different perks and bonuses. You have to level up to unlock some skills and clicking on a skill before entering a heist lets you “research” that particular skill and unlocks it for you once you’ve leveled. You can also equip your loadout with deployable items that will benefit your team like a Medkit, Ammo Bag, an Armor Bag, and a Zipline Bag (a new device that lets you link cash bags to a zipline to get it quickly to a new location.

I got to play two heists during the preview: Capital Bank and Surphase Art Gallery. Capital Bank was your pretty standard heist where you go in and try to grab all the cash you can while also reaching your goal of infiltrating the larger vault and getting a bigger cashout. Surphase Art Gallery, on the other hand, was an interesting twist on the heist system with the goal being to steal some of the displayed art in the museum, Mission Impossible style.

Capital Bank felt like a familiar return to the Payday 2 days. During the preview play period, I was teamed up with two devs and one other journalist. Dropping us into the game immediately was a bit overwhelming. For context, we were dropped into matches without playing the tutorial mode so I’m sure this won’t be as overwhelming to day one players but there are definitely way more elements to Payday 3 that can get to be a lot to remember – especially if you’re just going off what Payday 2 felt like. We attempted to try the quieter method of stealthing but because of the confusion of what the new first heist phase was, we ended up triggering security and just going guns blazing.

That was kind of the theme of the entire play session. Even though we did get a grasp of the new concepts and mechanics, the actual stealth play is extremely difficult and really punishing if you make the slightest mistake. I’m all for a challenge, but it was unfortunate that we didn’t really get to experience a proper stealth playthrough during my hour of hands-on time. The few times we got the furthest in stealth gameplay, it was really cool to find different keycards through pickpocketing guards or unlocking rooms to access safes that have documents containing info on where security breaches would be the safest.

The concepts of stealthing in this heist game that’s all about high-octane action are really cool, but I worry that most people won’t really experience that very much, since most people are used to just going guns blazing from the jump. Most players won’thave the patience to move really slowly and deliberately to set up a stealth intro when it feels like you’ll just have to eventually go loud once the heist really swings into gear because a single mistake from anyone will guarantee an immediate alert.

Speaking of going loud, the Capital Bank heist has you throwing thermite to breach the vault walls while fighting off waves of law enforcement who get increasingly beefier as time goes on. You start with fighting standard cops, then SWAT-like members who have heavier armor and riot shields, and then you’ll battle a terrifying division of special ops returning from Payday 2 called the Cloakers. These guys got an upgrade in Payday 3 and they can mask themselves and go invisible and reappear wielding blades that can knock you on your ass with one hit.

Once you do make your way into the vault, you actually have to take even more time to make sure you deactivate the security ink pods that will explode if you try to steal the cash under it without successfully deactivating them, rendering the money useless and uncollectible. Once your team has all the cash loaded up in their bags, you can make your way out to the streets and start your escape.

The art gallery heist, meanwhile, was a lot of fun since it was a new environment and gave off an Ocean’s 11 vibe. Stealthing here was pretty difficult, too, since this map requires you to climb around if you want to find a quiet way into the art museum. The gameplay loop was similar to Capital Bank, but instead of cash you steal paintings or small statues and you have to verify which piece of art is the one you’re looking for.

For instance, one of the objectives was to validate the real painting from fake copies by getting a blue light tool to check for blood that was only on the real paintings. Once validated, you cut through the glass on the displays like a true art thief and make away with the treasure. I enjoyed the gameplay and environment way more in the art gallery and the actual museum has a few levels and exhibits you have to navigate through. Hilariously, you’ll actually end up using the “you are here” maps in the levels a lot to figure out where to go, as if you’re actually visiting a real museum.

Payday 3 was developed on Unreal Engine 4 which is a swap from Payday 2’s Diesel Engine. While there is definitely a visual upgrade from Payday 2, Payday 3’s graphics weren’t so incredible that I was blown away by this modern update to the series. Graphically, Payday 3 looked like Payday 2 but with more shading and lighting upgrades. But Payday 3 being built off Unreal 4 lets them do more consistent updates and have more support so I’m not too concerned with how Payday 3 looks visually. I was just surprised to see there wasn’t a real visually upgraded feel to the latest entry.

Payday 3 gives you way more time with mask off gameplay as opposed to Payday 2 where you just walk into the targeted building and strike into action. With Payday 3, you’re able to look around for safety faults, maybe a take a lap around the block to see what’s up and what some potential escape routes can be, and also examine the building from both the inside and outside to assess what your options are to either sneak or bust into the high security rooms.

The mask off gameplay is a bit restricted to what you can do movement-wise, however. For example, it took me a few matches to understand that you need your mask on to be able to climb things around the environment. I understand why that’s a mechanic tied to the mask, since you are most likely trying to climb and break into a locked building, but it was a bit frustrating and not entirely clear. Having to put the mask on for basic movements like climbing also puts you at risk of getting noticed before the heist even gets started so it forces you to really calculate the best moments to utilize the mask and stay alert.

The NPCs are more dynamic as well and you can destroy more things in the environment. There are now new heist phases: Search to go looking for you, Assault (when you’re initiating the heist), and a new negotiation phase that lets you coordinate a plan to give yourself more time in the heist.

When things inevitably go sideways, negotiation is by far the most interesting part of Payday 3. You’re able to actually negotiate with the police using your hostages trapped in that building with you. So you have to manage the hostages while also raiding the bank or museum you’re stealing from. You can use hostages as body shields since the security won’t shoot you if you’re holding an innocent person, or you can choose to release a few hostages to buy you some time for the heist.

The gunplay in Payday 3 feels really good. The transition between hipfire and aiming down your sights is pretty quick and the guns feel heavy and realistic. The different sights you can use for your weapons are varied so you can definitely find one that works for your preference. The movement in Payday 3 also feels pretty fluid. There is a new slide mechanic but I really didn’t find myself using it too much since it doesn’t work to increase your movement speed or hold too much momentum. Your armor segments regenerate over time if it’s not completely gone which lets you get back into the fight pretty quickly.

The initial fighting feels pretty easy, the waves of basic security feels almost like playing a normal horde mode since they never seem to really pose a real threat of gunning you down. It’s only after about ten to fifteen minutes into the heist that enemies seem to really crowd you and your team and the more armored and tankier enemies come out making it a real challenge. It may have also helped that I did have teammates who were good at communicating and supporting each other during matches, but the combat felt very easy until the escape portion of the heist.

One of the most fun parts of Payday 2 was customization. You’re still able to customize your characters in Payday 3 by unlocking different masks, outfits, and various other cosmetic items. You get access to more as you level up and get more money and you use the cash earned in game from heists to unlock them. There was a currency system set up in the shop when I looked during the preview, but we haven’t been given a real idea of what the real money bundles will consist of other than they will only be for cosmetic items.

Overall, I’m pretty excited to play Payday 3 again, especially with the same friends I played Payday 2 with and relive those old memories in a modern setting. Payday 3 is also going to be cross platform and cross progression so you can play anywhere and with anyone you want. It’s set to have quite a bit of post-launch content updates as well – like new characters, heists, weapons, and updated skills and challenges – so hopefully there’s a good flow of new stuff to keep players invested. Payday 2 had 20 DLC packs after launch so it’s not a huge worry of mine.

The Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct DLC comes out August 2, publisher Focus Entertainment and developer Mundfish announced.

This DLC, the first for the action-RPG, adds a new area, new weapons, new enemies and a new glove ability. The trailer is below.

Here’s the official line on the new DLC: “Continue the story in the Annihilation Instinct DLC and learn what happened to this dystopian world after the climax of Atomic Heart. Prepare to embark on a journey through the new mind-bending Mendeleev Complex and its surrounding swamps, and discover the truth about NORA as Major P-3 is pulled back into Facility 3826.

“Survive vicious, shapeshifting new enemies, and take them down using two cunning new weapons – the ranged Secateur and the melee Klusha – as well as your glove’s new Techno-Stasis ability, allowing you to manipulate time itself.

“Meet a new enigmatic character, as well as returning ones in surprising circumstances, and dive deep into the AI’s insanity to curb its Annihilation Instinct.”

Meanwhile, out now is a New Game+ mode for free alongside a new update. This is designed to offer Atomic Heart’s most difficult mode yet. “Players will need all of their previously unlocked skills and arsenal to deal with the strongest enemies Atomic Heart has ever unleashed, thanks to their new specific resistances and attack effects, which will be reflected in the different colors of enemy auras,” Focus said.

The Atomic Heart: Annihilation Instinct DLC is included in the Atomic Pass and in the Gold and Premium Editions. IGN’s Atomic Heart review returned an 8/10. We called it “a highly imaginative, atompunk-inspired attempt at picking up where the likes of BioShock left off that makes missteps but definitely has the ticker to punch well above its weight”.

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.

At The Game Awards 2020, Xbox unveiled a new game from its fledgling studio The Initiative: a reboot of Perfect Dark.

The two-minute trailer was purely cinematic, showing off an “eco-futuristic” Earth as a camera soared over a massive city bedecked in greenery. After zipping through a skyscraper, we saw a woman gazing at distant pyramids amid a raging storm. “Did you find what you’re looking for, Agent Dark?” a voice asks. “Not yet,” replied Joanna Dark. “This is only the beginning.”

Three years later, developer The Initiative is still, in many ways, only at the beginning.

At the time the trailer – created by an external CG house – was shown, it was “very obviously way far ahead of anywhere the game was at,” according to one developer who was working at The Initiative at the time. “We hadn’t even figured out any of our core game mechanics. We didn’t even really know what type of game we were making.”

Teasing new games with cinematic trailers years before the game itself is ready is a common practice in the industry. But The Initiative’s radio silence since combined with reports of major attrition at the studio have sparked questions about the project, exacerbated by its recent absence from Xbox’s summer games showcase. The concern is not unfounded: according to conversations with 13 sources familiar with the game’s development, little meaningful progress has been made on Perfect Dark since that 2020 trailer.

Why? The answer isn’t glamorous, but rather wrapped up in the realities of game development. The project has seen roadblock after roadblock, with problems such as a fraught co-development partnership, a pandemic, technological challenges, an ongoing exodus of significant talent, and unclear direction from management keeping the game in development limbo. And while a new partnership with Crystal Dynamics appears to finally be bearing fruit, multiple sources who have worked on the game recently say that Perfect Dark is still “in the earliest stages” of development, estimating that it is still roughly two to three years away from being ready for release.

Spy Experiments

The Initiative was founded and first unveiled at E3 2018, a strange outlier among a rash of significant acquisitions. The goal in all these acquisitions, as stated by leaders like Xbox head Phil Spencer and corporate VP Matt Booty, was to build out a massive catalog of games to sustain Xbox not just as a console, but as a broader service encompassing console gaming, cloud gaming, mobile, and more.

Amid Xbox Game Studios’ sudden ballooning to 23 internal studios, The Initiative stood out. It was one of only two studios added during that time that wasn’t an acquisition, and was instead spun up internally from scratch. The other, World’s Edge, was formed by existing Microsoft leads to shepard the already-internal Age of Empires franchise. But The Initiative was somewhat experimental: wholly new at the time it was announced, headed up by former Crystal Dynamics chief Darrell Gallagher, and with his former Crystal colleague Dan Neuburger as game director. Based in Santa Monica, the newly-formed creative team was, per Xbox, given freedom to select its first project, and opted to bring back Rare’s lapsed spy IP, Perfect Dark. Their selection dovetailed neatly with Xbox’s goals: Xbox wanted a “flagship” title within every major genre, and Perfect Dark could be the flag it planted in the underserved realm of spy/espionage.

Gallagher’s plan, which he and other studio leads partially laid out in a development video alongside The Game Awards trailer, was for The Initiative to craft a reimagined Perfect Dark that would be a true blockbuster, with the best graphics, innovative gameplay and tech, driven by a powerful narrative and a strong protagonist in Joanna Dark. Internally at The Initiative, early employees recall hearing comparisons to massive TV and film franchises, such as Game of Thrones or Westworld. Gallagher imagined a spy thriller with big, memorable set pieces, lots of physicality, and plenty of gadgets, all amid a hopeful eco-futurist setting masking a corrupt underworld. Several employees from the early days of the studio recalled the designation “AAAA” being thrown around as a way to emphasize the sheer size and scale of what they should be building (it was also used in at least one public job listing). Everyone I spoke to who recalled hearing the term said there was never a clear explanation of what it practically meant.

AAAA or otherwise, Perfect Dark was a big vision for what Gallagher expected would ultimately be a fairly small studio, even one that was packed with experienced, senior talent. His plan, sources say, was to have The Initiative work closely with other partners to become effectively a franchise steward of the Perfect Dark IP that would eventually become a long-running Xbox tentpole. And while The Initiative did eventually make a public announcement that it would be bringing on Crystal Dynamics to fill the partner role, it actually had a different co-development partner for the first several years of Perfect Dark’s life: Halo co-development studio Certain Affinity.

Uncertain Affinities

In the early days of the project, the overall mood was optimistic. Perfect Dark was an exciting IP that most were thrilled to be working on, first at The Initiative and then at Certain Affinity when the studio signed onto the project in 2019.

As with any early development process, much of this initial work consisted of nailing down a clear creative vision for what the game would consist of, and then developing a core gameplay loop that is both supportive of that vision and fun for the player. Studio leadership was fairly clear from early on that The Initiative’s Perfect Dark would see a balance of combat and espionage elements that would ideally feel like playing through a James Bond or Mission: Impossible film – the developers just had to figure out how to translate those memorable movie moments into video game format.

But while these core ideas remained roughly consistent throughout Perfect Dark’s development, exactly what the player would be doing to express them kept changing as ideas were pitched, prototyped, and then scrapped for something completely different over and over again. This process was expected at first, as a fairly normal component of game development. But as Perfect Dark moved into its second and third year, sources tell us that this process began to drag on much longer than expected, as leadership’s refusal to commit to any specific ideas or shape for the game began to frustrate both teams.

One former employee, a woman, also expressed frustration both with the low numbers of female creative staff on the project generally during this time, as well as multiple meetings where male creative heads made insensitive suggestions that were difficult to push back on without more women in the room to support potential concerns. An Xbox spokesperson offered the following response to this specific topic:

“We are committed to addressing any and all concerns employees have, in accordance with our company policies. We have been and will continue to encourage employees to report workplace concerns when they have seen or experienced behavior that falls short of our culture, values, or policies. Employees can report workplace concerns in a number of ways, including anonymously.”

Among even more former employees we spoke to was a sense that the people in charge were unable to communicate a clear vision for the game they had so enthusiastically signed up to make. Or, some said, when they did manage to communicate that vision, leadership ignored or dismissed feedback from the experienced team they had put together. These repeated struggles over creative vision resulted, sources said, in build after build being thrown out, and internal frustration growing with each new reset.

“It was not that we didn’t know what we wanted, it was that we kept making things that weren’t what we wanted,” said one The Initiative developer. “We’d do it over and over again. The…levels we had when I left weren’t the same ones we’d had three months prior, or three months prior [to that]. I don’t know why people just kept hitting the reset button. That was definitely contributing to that feeling that we weren’t making any progress. People kept starting over.”

Some of this may have come down to a challenging relationship between The Initiative and Certain Affinity. Both Certain Affinity and The Initiative employees told me there was a seeming mismatch between Certain Affinity’s experience building focused, specific elements of clearly defined games as instructed, and The Initiative’s desire to have a creative partner to bounce ideas off of. What’s more, The Initiative was a very small studio still hiring up, and Certain Affinity was a large, established studio whose team vastly outnumbered The Initiative’s. As The Initiative began to staff up, the two studios found themselves with numerous senior staff roles duplicated across both offices whose visions often clashed, causing further tension on both sides and a general feeling of mistreatment across Certain Affinity in particular.

“We were set up in a way where no one at the remote studio reported to anyone at our studio,” one person recalled. “Only the top level of management had any established accountability relationship.”

And all these problems were worsened for everyone as the COVID-19 pandemic sent the world into a work-from-home situation that abruptly disrupted internal communications, lowered morale, and diluted any early attempts to build a studio culture at The Initiative. Multiple people I spoke to recalled the onset of the pandemic as a major morale killer, even for employees who were already used to working from home. But they also noted that the pandemic was but one major stumbling block for a studio already struggling.

“I blame The Initiative,” said one former The Initiative employee. “I don’t blame our development partners. We chose not to hold anyone accountable to the vision, and we just let people keep trying things. Yeah, people were all over the place. It was a giant game of telephone. You heard that expression thrown around in the process all the time. ‘Oh, it’s telephone! I said this, but then this person said this, then they went and talked to their manager, then their manager talked to our manager, then our manager talked to this lead, and by the time the message got to the other side, it’s been completely mangled beyond recognition.’”

Despite all these setbacks, in the spring of 2021, a few months after The Game Awards trailer announcement was shown, the two studios had put together a fairly polished proof of concept of Perfect Dark. It included a handful of unfinished, prototype levels, a loose narrative, and showcased some basic traversal, gadgets, and combat. It was a major milestone for the team, but hardly anyone was happy in its wake. Not long after, the news came that Certain Affinity and The Initiative would not renew their contract for another year. While the decision came as a relief to both parties, it left Perfect Dark short over half its development team at a time when it was supposed to be entering the next major phase of development. And more departures were on the horizon.

A Lack of Initiative

In early 2021, before Certain Affinity’s departure and the major development milestone, Perfect Dark design director Drew Murray left the studio to return to his former employer, Insomniac Games, as a principal designer. All our sources who were there at the time cited him as the first significant exit in what would become a veritable avalanche throughout 2021 that would nearly deplete the studio.

A tally of those who list their work at The Initiative on LinkedIn reveals 35 total departures in 2021 alone. The Initiative lost another 12 in the first three months of 2022, and LinkedIn numbers indicate the studio did not hire nearly as many new employees in the same period or even since. While these numbers are rough estimates, those who were there at the time suggest that roughly half the studio was gutted, with the total number of employees dipping down into the 30s at its lowest.

Why were so many people leaving? Largely, frustration at a perceived lack of forward momentum, exacerbated by more and more people departing. Because The Initiative had hired so many industry veterans in a competitive geographic location, many found new roles quickly and easily. Entire departments were hollowed out, and progress on Perfect Dark halted as people waited for key decision-making roles to be filled. One developer there at the time recalled “literally” doing “almost nothing for nine months,” waiting for positions to be filled and decisions on key game elements to be made.

“It’s frustrating to not make progress…it was just a dark time,” they said. “You’d basically get two or three people that would show something off at a ‘show and tell,’ like new texture mapping or a lighting thing they did or a blockout of a new level they’re messing with or whatever, and then you’d get the announcement that two or three people were leaving. It was very hard to stay positive when that kind of energy and lack of progress happens.”

Sources at The Initiative during this time recall Gallagher and other studio leads trying to maintain a positive outlook, reassuring employees that Microsoft believed in them and that a new co-development partner was on the way. Multiple people recall Microsoft Studios head Matt Booty giving a “pep talk” of sorts, reassuring remaining employees that the parent company thought things were going great.

In the middle of 2021, with Certain Affinity gone and the studio bleeding talent, leadership at The Initiative had to figure out who, exactly, would be doing the bulk of the development work on the project going forward. And in September, a savior arrived in Gallagher’s old studio: Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics. According to one former Crystal Dynamics employee, the plan was for their studio to supplement and support The Initiative’s vision – not to fully take over. But rather quickly it became apparent to Crystal Dynamics that Perfect Dark and The Initiative were going to need a lot more help than they had realized.

After multiple necessary months of onboarding and discussion, the new co-development partner of Perfect Dark was handed the vertical slice that The Initiative had assembled with Certain Affinity. But according to individuals who worked at Crystal Dynamics at the time, what they received was a bit of a mess. While some sources attributed that to the chaotic relationship between Certain Affinity and The Initiative, as an added stress, The Initiative had opted to jump to Unreal Engine 5 in the interim before Crystal Dynamics came on board, adding to the amount of work needing to be done. One former Crystal Dynamics employee described what they were handed as a construction with no foundation. “A lot of the project, if not almost all of it, ended up needing to be wholly reworked,” the source said. “They had done three years of work on it already, but we didn’t benefit from three years of work.”

Which is how in 2022, nearly four years after the studio was formed, Perfect Dark was essentially started over from scratch in Unreal 5. And while the two studios did broadly seem to get along better than in the previous partnership, after a year of high attrition at The Initiative, it was hardly in a state to lead development on a massive project. Crystal Dynamics, well-staffed, began to step into missing leadership roles and take more and more ownership of the project. This once again resulted in disagreements and infighting in departments that had established leaders on The Initiative side.

Management, meanwhile, seemed impatient. The Initiative had been working on Perfect Dark in some form since 2018, announced it in 2020, but in 2022 still didn’t have much to show for itself. Sources at The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics say that leaders at both studios began pushing for speed and tighter deadlines as a result. But the development team was still building the game’s foundations. Even with Crystal Dynamics’ resources, the studio didn’t seem to have the numbers to meet the tight deadlines being demanded of it. Crystal Dynamics did hire more people onto the project over time, but those I spoke to described feeling constantly understaffed for what was asked of them. Multiple leads told me of struggling to fill necessary roles on their teams, and described notable numbers of developers departing in frustration (though not as severe as in 2021). While no one we spoke to reported significant crunch, many described a sense of stress associated with fears of what would happen if deadlines weren’t met.

Despite these troubles, throughout 2022 progress was slowly but surely made on Perfect Dark. Crystal Dynamics employees tell me that Embracer Group’s acquisition of the studio in August of that year didn’t impact much internally, and by the end of the year, it had fully settled into the driver’s seat on the project. A recent announcement of Embracer-wide layoffs has employees nervous but (at least at the time of this writing) unimpacted so far. Multiple sources who have worked on Perfect Dark in the last year told me that in its most recent iteration, they would consider Perfect Dark to be more of a Crystal Dynamics game than one by The Initiative.

A Hands-Off Approach?

I reached out to all three studios involved with Perfect Dark – The Initiative, Certain Affinity, and Crystal Dynamics – for comment ahead of this piece’s publication. Certain Affinity responded directly in the following way:

Certain Affinity is proud of its 17-year history of co-developing hugely popular games like Halo and Call of Duty, among many others. We’ve partnered with and continue to co-develop alongside talented teams of all sizes and at all stages of development, including early ideation, concept, pre-production, production, and beyond. We’re incredibly grateful for our deep, longstanding partnerships across the industry, including with Microsoft.

We collaborated closely with The Initiative during the initial stages of ideation for Perfect Dark. Following the successful completion of our engagement, we have not been involved with the project. We’re excited to see what the team has come up with for the newest installment of the Perfect Dark franchise. We’re rooting for The Initiative and can’t wait to jump in and see what Joanna Dark is up to when the game is released.

Xbox took a different approach. In direct response to my specific inquiries, Xbox provided contextual information from past interviews with Darrell Gallagher about the purpose and direction of The Initiative and its Perfect Dark reboot, all of which complimented what my sources told me and has been included in the narrative above where relevant. But Xbox also connected me with Booty following its Xbox Games Showcase in June for an interview about its larger strategy for its studios, as well as regarding The Initiative more specifically.

Developers from all three studios involved with Perfect Dark told me that throughout development, Xbox has been remarkably hands-off with the project – not unlike its reported attitude toward Arkane’s Redfall. One described the parent company’s involvement as simply “giving us money and letting us decide how to move forward and requesting milestone updates.”

I questioned Booty on this point – his response was surprisingly jovial.

“I will just chuckle a little bit at the ‘hands-off,’” he said. “The amount of time I’ve spent on the phone with Darrell and everybody at that studio is sort of the opposite of hands-off, and the amount we’ve been down there.”

Booty later explained Xbox’s approach as a middle ground, of sorts, between very hands-on parents that retain full control and total autonomy. And his explanation makes sense – Booty could be on the phone every day with The Initiative leadership, but rank and file employees might never know about it. He went on to say that some of The Initiative’s struggles were less a result of Xbox’s attitude toward its studios, and more an inevitable reflection of the struggles born from starting a studio from scratch just ahead of a global pandemic, which we spoke about in detail elsewhere in the interview. And he confirmed some of what many sources suggested to me about why things didn’t work out: early-stage creative ideation during a pandemic was difficult, and the mismatch between The Initiative and Certain Affinity’s respective needs and skillsets made things even more challenging.

“So many things have changed in terms of how we want to staff games. I think that going forward, almost every major AAA game out there is using some level of co-development, which I separate from outsourcing. Outsourcing is very: Here’s a spec, please go build this, give it back to us. Co-development is: This is a studio, a group of people who are a creative entity, how can you work with them? One of the things we learned on Perfect Dark is there is a difference between studios that have that creative DNA versus studios that have done more traditionally outsourcing, no matter how complex, and we just had to find the right rhythm there.”

Booty goes on to pin the wave of departures, at least in part, on the specific flavor of co-development that The Initiative is trying to pioneer. “Is it perhaps a little different than what has been done over the last five to ten years? Sure. But I think it’s more of the way that we’re going to see things getting built going forward than not. And that’s why, despite all the bumps in the road and the hiccups, we’ve had some people come on board from other very traditional teams that show up and go, ‘Wait a minute, this is not how I’m used to working.’”

Amid all this, though, he affirms that The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics have “hit their rhythm” on Perfect Dark, saying he had a “full review” of the game in May. He adds that they’re continuing to try and build a leadership team at The Initiative and grow the studio. When I ask him if Crystal Dynamics outnumbers The Initiative on Perfect Dark, he says “not really,” but declines to get into specifics. He maintains that the two studios are not thought of as separate entities, but rather “Team Perfect Dark,” though he does note that “half of Crystal” is working on Perfect Dark right now (the other half is on other projects, most notably Tomb Raider). At the time this piece was written, there was a single job posting for The Initiative on the Microsoft website – for an IT Manager. At this same time, LinkedIn indicates 48 employees work at The Initiative.

My takeaway from talking to 13 individuals from across these three companies, as well as formally with Booty, is neither tidy nor especially earth shattering. Game development is hard and getting harder, especially in recent years amid the ripples of a pandemic, economic struggles, and increasingly complex technology being used to both create and run AAA games. Co-development relationships, while quite common industry-wide, can make all this even more challenging if not managed carefully. But it’s also true that many studios industry-wide are grappling with these problems and succeeding in spite of them, while The Initiative’s struggles with management, communication, and creative vision were only increasingly exposed by the challenging environment it found itself in.

The good news, though, is that The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics – or rather “Team Perfect Dark” – seem to at last be making progress. Perfect Dark is now further on than Certain Affinity’s vertical slice from 2021 and with stronger foundations, though it still has a long way to go. All my sources with recent knowledge of its status say it’s still in pre-production, roughly two to three years away from release. It’s still an FPS balancing combat and espionage, with an emphasis on spy gadgets, some experimental movement tech, and a focus on narrative. Recent plans seem to be leaning toward some kind of episodic format – though the exact form and shape of it has yet to be determined, and could still change entirely before release.

It’s still far too early to say whether or not Xbox’s The Initiative experiment from 2018 will be a success or not. The company has not spun up any new internal studios since then (not that it’s announced, anyway), but it has continued its acquisition spree, most recently with efforts to bring the behemoth that is Activision Blizzard into the fold. “We can’t lose the ability to start a new studio,” Booty emphasizes during our interview. “It’s really important.” And Booty is right. In these recent years of transformation and growth for Xbox gaming, the jury remains out on a critical question: does Xbox’s middle-ground studio involvement strategy work for a brand new initiative? Or is Xbox doomed to keep gobbling up the studios of others if it won’t change its tactics? In that context, there’s a lot more riding on Perfect Dark than just one game. The answer, potentially still years away, could be a harbinger both for the future of the Perfect Dark franchise, and for the future of Xbox.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.