After several betas and an early access period, Diablo 4 is finally available for all to play. IGN’s expert guide writers have been hard at work uncovering its many secrets and adding them to the Diablo 4 Walkthrough. While Diablo 4’s open regions allow you to explore and delve into various dungeons, it’s still worthwhile to tackle the main story as soon as you can, as it’s the only way you can eventually unlock a mount to ride across Diablo 4’s vast areas.
While you’re free to tackle Diablo 4’s first few Acts in any order you like, we recommend taking the bulk of them on in the order listed below, due to the minimum recommended level that increases with each Act. Here’s every Diablo 4 main quest that we recommend doing, in the order we recommend, so far.
Upon completing the Prologue in Kyovashad, the game will open up so you can go out and explore more of Sanctuary’s world, along with continuing the main campaign. Act 1: A Cold and Iron Faith contains 19 quests for you to complete in the main region of the Fractured Peaks, and are best done first.
This section of the game contains 17 main story quests to complete and takes place in the main region of Scosglen to the North, and recommends that you’re at least level 10 or higher before embarking on the journey, so is best completed after Act 1 depending on your level.
This Act contains 16 main story quests to complete in the main region of the Dry Steppes to the West, and it’s recommended that you go into it around level 15 or higher, which is why we advise completing the other two acts first.
After completing the previous three Acts, you’ll be ready to move into Act 4. It only has 6 main story quests, but completing the second quest will finally allow you to visit the Stable and unlock the ability to ride and customize mounts to travel around Sanctuary at increased speeds. It’s recommended that you head into it at level 20 or higher as well.
Diablo 4 was officially released today and if you’re planning to give it a whirl, you should anticipate the game’s servers to be a little rocky.
IGN’s sister site, Downdetector.com, has been sharing user-reported outages for the game’s servers, but these issues aren’t entirely new. Players have reported problems with Diablo 4 since its early access release five days ago. PlayStation 5 players that preordered the $90 Digital Deluxe Edition or the $100 Ultimate Edition reported a day after the early access release that an “Invalid License” error was locking them out.
The sever problems haven’t stopped Diablo 4 from becoming a runaway hit for Blizzard, as the company confirmed that Diablo 4 become its fastest-selling game of all time. They also noted that Diablo 4 players have clocked in 93 million hours, though Blizzard did not specifically disclose how many copies were sold.
In our review of Diablo 4, which we awarded a 9/10, we said Diablo 4 “is a stunning sequel with a near perfect endgame and progression design that makes it absolutely excruciating to put down.”
Of course, if you manage to not encounter any server issues for Diablo 4 today and you are looking to track your progress as you play, check out our interactive Diablo 4 map.
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
2023 might be is finally the year where 2TB PS5 SSD upgrades are actually worth the price. Last year, prices for 1TB PS5 SSDs averaged around $150, whereas 2TB SSDs hovered closer to $300. This year, we’re seeing 1TB SSDs trickle below the $80 price point and 2TB SSDs are as low as $120. Note that you can’t use any old SSD and expect it to perform well on the PS5 console. You’ll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive with a rated 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5’s internal drive. That means, for better or for worse, picking a top-shelf SSD.
Note that Sony recommends a heatsink attached to your SSD. Not all SSDs listed here have pre-installed heatsinks. For the ones that do, we’ll be sure to mention it. For the ones that don’t, all you have to do is purchase your own heatsink (we recommend this one for $10) and install it yourself. It’s very easy.
Silicon Power 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink for $98.97
Includes built-in heatsink!
It’s happened, folks. A 2TB PS5-compatible SSD has broken past the $100 price barrier. Amazon Prime members can get the Silicon Power XS70 SSD, which include a robust aluminum heatsink, for only $98.97. The aluminum heatsink is still slim enough to fit in the PS5 without obstruction. It boasts transfer speeds of up to 7300MB/s read and 6800MB/s write, comfortably faster than the 5500MB/s minimum recommended requirement. It actually performs a little better than the Crucial P5 Plus, the original WD Black SN850, and the Samsung 980 Pro, although that won’t make a difference in your PS5.
Adata Premium 2TB M.2 SSD for PS5 for $108.99
The Adata Premium SSD boasts transfer speeds of up to 6,100MB/s, which is more than fast enough to surpass the PS5’s recommended minimum speed threshold of 5,500MB/s. Yes there are faster SSDs out there, but if your intention is to put this in your PS5, then that extra speed is worthless because you’re bottlenecked by the stock PS5 SSD. Better to save that money and put it to better use. It also includes a thin aluminum heatspreader… too thin to be appropriately called a heatsink, but still enough for the PS5 console.
Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 2TB “Optimized for PS5” SSD with Heatsink for Only $129.99
Corsair is a very well known brand for DIY PC builders. Corsair makes some of the best gaming products on the market, and that includes solid-state memory like RAM and SSDs. The MP600 Pro is Corsair’s fastest M.2 SSD and the “LPX” model is “optimized for PS5” because it includes a rugged preinstalled heatsink that is slim enough to fit in the PS5 bay without any issues. We like this RAM so much, we rated it the best PS5 SSD for 2023.
WD Black SN850X 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink $149.99
Today the Western Digital Store beats out all of its middlemen for the best price on the PS5-compatible WD Black SN850X SSD. The WD Black SN850X is generally considered one of the top three fastest SSDs out there right now, and its also the most popular choice of a PS5 SSD (it’s the only brand officially licensed for the PS5 console).It has newer flash chips (BiCS5 vs BiCS4) and an updated firmware which offer improved sequential and random read/write speeds over the previous generation SN850 (non-X). The version that comes with a heatsink is the one you’d want for your PS5. It’s beefy, but still slim enough to fit.
Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PS5 SSD for $122.99
Best Buy is including a free heatsink
Crucial’s newest M.2 SSD meets all the requirements for your PS5 SSD upgrade. It supports transfer speeds of up to 6,660MB/s which is well above the 5,500MB/s minimum threshold. Yes there are faster SSDs out there, but if your intention is to put this in your PS5, then that extra speed is worthless because you’re bottlenecked by the original PS5 SSD. If you’re worried about opening up your PS5 case, don’t worry it’s very easy. Crucial has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide to see you through the process.
Nextorage 2TB PS5 SSD with Heatsink for $159.99
There’s an interesting story behind this drive. Nextorage was actually originally created by Sony as an SSD division catered to the PS5 console. For whatever reason, Sony decided to ditch that idea and sold this business to another stakeholder in the company, Phison (they make memory controllers found in SSDs from Seagate, Corsair, and Sabrent, and more). Phison eventually accomplished the goal of releasing an SSD catered specifically for the PS5 console in the form of this product right here.
Samsung 980 Pro 2TB PS5 SSD for $149.99
Samsung SSDs need no introduction. They’ve made some of the most popular and reliable PS5 SSDs on the market. The 980 Pro has been out for a while now, and there’s a newer, faster 990 Pro that’s available. However, if used as a PS5 SSD, this card performs equally as well as every faster SSD out there.
SK Hynix P41 2TB SSD for $156.99
Up until the Samsung 990 Pro release, the SK Hynix Platinum P4 was considered the fastest SSD on the market. It’s also considerably less expensive than the 990 Pro. Benchmarks consistently exceed its rated specs and it performs better than other well known brands like WD and Seagate. SK Hynix might not be immediately recognizable to some people, but they are in no way a fledgeling company. SK Hynix is the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker and the world’s third-largest semiconductor company.
More PS5 SSD Deals
There may be other SSD deals out there, but these are the PS5 SSDs we’ve tried ourselves and highly recommend. They also double up as outstanding boot drives for your gaming PC, in case you don’t need additional storage for your PS5 console.
How easy is it to install the SSD?
It’s extremely easy! Removing the case cover is completely toolless. In fact, the only screw you have to remove is the one that keeps the cover for the SSD bay in place. You don’t even put it back when you’re done. Sony has a quick and easy YouTube video guide.
What if the SSD I bought doesn’t have a heatsink?
Sony recommends you install an SSD that has an attached heatsink. If the SSD you purchase doesn’t include one, it’s simple enough to buy one for about $10 on Amazon and add it yourself. Most of these heatsinks are just attached using an adhesive like thermal tape.
For more deals, take a look at our daily deals for today.
Blizzard revealed that Diablo 4 is the company’s fastest-selling game of all time. Although, this milestone has some caveats.
While Blizzard didn’t provide any specific sales numbers, Diablo 4 has been played for 93 million hours since its early access launch on June 1.
“This is a moment years in the making for the Diablo 4 team,” said Rod Fergusson, Diablo general manager, in a statement. “We’re extremely proud to offer players the richest story ever told in a Diablo game.”
He continued: “Since the game was first announced in 2019, the support from millions of players around the world drove us toward this release of our dark vision of Sanctuary. Hail Lilith, Blessed Mother.”
It’s once again worth noting that Diablo 4 has been out for four days before its official release date of June 6. So Blizzard is presumably counting sales from early access members in addition to day-one purchases from everyone else.
The previous record holder for this feat within Blizzard was the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands expansion with 3.7 million units sold on its first full day on PC. However, Diablo 4 was released on multiple platforms.
Diablo 4 also currently has two expansions in the works. In IGN’s Diablo 4 review, we said, “Diablo 4 takes the strategy of refining things the series already did so well rather than giving it a more substantial overhaul, and that careful and reverent path has shaped this massive sequel into one of the most polished ARPGs ever created, which makes slicing through the legions of the damned a hell of a good time.”
Looking for more info? Check out our interactive Diablo 4 map to start tracking your progress as you play.
Respawn’s Jedi: Survivor included a ton of new and returning characters completely crucial to Star Wars Canon but perhaps none more important than Turgle.
Speaking to IGN for Podcast Beyond, Asmussen commented on the fan reaction to Turgle and gave his followers hope that they’ll get even more in the future.
“When you work on a game, you never know what people are going to latch onto and Turgle… the team love Turgle,” he said.
“I think Richard Horvitz, the actor, did a fine job with him, but once it goes live, once it’s out in the wild and seeing people’s reaction with that, it confirmed and validated a lot of the feelings that we had on the team.”
In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “If Respawn makes a third game like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Fallen Order, it’ll complete the best Star Wars trilogy in 30 years, hands down.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
An Xbox Achievement removed from Homestead Arcana was never meant to be in the game according to developer Serenity Forge, leading to the perhaps unprecedented decision to delete it.
Speaking to IGN, Serenity Forge founder and executive producer Zhenghua Yang apologised for the Achievement’s removal causing frustration and confusion.
“The achievement was the result of some miscommunication between our development team and Skybound’s production team and it was never supposed to be in the game to begin with,” he said.
“The achievement was the result of some miscommunication between our development team and Skybound’s production team.”
“We at Serenity Forge care very deeply about our Xbox fans as well as the amazing folks on the Xbox team and we’re really sorry that this caused so much trouble and confusion.”
The response follows a Eurogamer report that flagged the removed Achievement. Homestead Arcana players on Xbox noticed their Gamerscore jump up to 1,000 of 1,000 despite them not unlocking the final Achievement in the game.
Reporting the anomaly on Achievement tracking website TrueAchievements, fans soon realised that a deliberate move had been made to remove the You Can’t Be Too Prepared Achievement altogether. This was a near-impossible unlock for players as it required the crafting of hundreds of items, with some reporting a glitch that stopped it being achieved altogether.
It was unclear at the time who called for the Achievement to be ruled, if it was the developer or Microsoft, but it appears to be the former based on Yang’s comments to IGN.
Removing Achievements is practically unheard of otherwise, and unless Microsoft has done so for a game that’s gone unnoticed, hasn’t happened before Homestead Arcana.
Announced at the ID@Xbox Showcase last September, Homestead Arcana promised to blend an exploration-based farming sim with a magic-based RPG, letting players plough fields and cast spells side by side.
Luis Joshua Gutierrez is a freelance writer who loves games. You can reach him at @ImLuisGutierrez on Twitter.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Editor’s Note: This article previously claimed Microsoft removed the Achievement while that information was not clear. IGN regrets the error and has updated the article with a statement from the developer.
Diablo 4 is experiencing further log-in issues as new players flood the servers.
Diablo 4: Ultimate Edition owners enjoyed four days of relatively smooth-sailing early access. Now Diablo 4 is available to all and launch players are flooding Blizzard’s servers, further log-in issues are beginning to emerge.
“Game servers are down again,” said one Reddit user. “I was teleporting and got stuck on a loading screen. Now I can’t load into the game, getting error 30000. Oh well.”
Unfortunately, some were hit harder than others. When Hardcore mode characters die, they’re gone forever, which makes disconnections even more stressful.
“I literally just lost my [Hardcore] character 95% through the campaign cause the game [disconnected] me during one of the final boss fights,” said a Reddit user.
“Bro when it went down earlier, I was just creating my character,” said another Reddit user. “I said whatever, I’ll go play something else. I LITERALLY just logged back to try it again and this happened.”
Even old-school LAN parties are affected. Diablo 4 is an always-online game, meaning local LANs can be struck with dreaded log-in server issues. “We were stuck queued for hours and ended up playing the Monster Hunter board game to pass the time,” they said.
According to Blizzard Customer Service, the company is working on log-in problems.
“We’re currently investigating an issue affecting our authentication servers, which may result in failed or slow login attempts,” it confirmed on Twitter.
[#DiabloIV] We’re currently investigating an issue affecting our authentication servers, which may result in failed or slow login attempts.
— Blizzard CS – The Americas (@BlizzardCS) June 6, 2023
Diablo’s global community development director Adam Fletcher also chimed in on Twitter. “We see the login/server issues. Team is on it,” he said. “Seeing some improvement but team is still continue to work through the night on the issues.”
Capcom has announced it will be hosting a livestream next week for fans to tune in and see what the studio is preparing to serve up. Capcom Showcase 2023 kicks off on Monday, June 12 at 3PM PDT (6PM EDT, 11PM BST, and 8AM AEST Tuesday, June 13). The show is expected to run for around 36 minutes.
Last year’s Capcom Showcase did not contain any brand-new game announcements, but the 30-minute show did highlight a stack of new details and DLC for games previously announced. The 2022 event featured glimpses of Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak, Exoprimal, and a pile of Resident Evil-related news. It would appear Capcom is leaning into making these showcases an annual occasion.
When many players were just beginning to explore Great Sky Island, the tutorial area in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, headlines began making the rounds that a speedrunner had already completed the game hours after its release – the record was one hour and 34 minutes.
That speedrunner, Gymnast86, whose real name is Carl Wernicke, is part of a growing number of Zelda speedrunners who have already spent thousands of hours experimenting, iterating, and completing run-throughs of Tears of the Kingdom in the few short weeks since it launched. The community is largely the same group of pathfinders and mad scientists who have been setting records in Breath of the Wild for the past six years, though the excitement of this sequel has done wonders to bolster their numbers and renewed interest in their undertakings.
Gymnast’s first TotK record has long-since been toppled by ever-competitive speedrunners, but he and many others continue to discover new glitches, set new records, and improve the community’s understanding of the game for which they’ve developed a deep admiration.
Broken In A Good Way
Many TotK speedrunners found a home with the Zelda series long ago, as it hosts one of the largest speedrunning communities. Ocarina of Time, the original 3D Zelda game, drew many to speedrunning, and still has a competitive scene to this day. One such speedrunner is Venick, who at the time of this writing holds the “All Dungeons” record in Tears of the Kingdom, and says he was originally drawn to speedrunning Ocarina for a simple reason:
“Ocarina of Time is very broken,” Venick says with a laugh. “In a good way! It’s what got me into speedrunning.”
That somewhat backhanded compliment is a point of praise that’s shared by many in the Zelda speedrunning community, where the player’s ability to bend the rules makes the games ideal candidates for competitive speedruns.
Instead of following down a predetermined path, it’s ‘how can I skip half of these options and just get to the end?’
“It’s the way all the Zelda games are built,” Venick says. “In a Mario game it’s: get from the start of the level to the star as fast as you can. That’s your goal. But Zelda requires asymmetrical thinking. Instead of following down a predetermined path, it’s ‘how can I skip half of these options and just get to the end?’ That’s what I love.”
As for Tears of the Kingdom, maybe the most significant reason it’s become a focus for the speedrunning community is the fact that the idea of doing the unexpected plays extremely well with the game’s central premise. Like Breath of the Wild before it, the sequel encourages players to get creative and discover clever solutions to problems, and that’s exactly what the speedrunning community has already been doing for decades.
“We’ve seen descriptions like ‘the game makes you feel like a genius’ or ‘it’s open solution,’ since Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t have a set solution for many of its puzzles,” says Gymnast. “When you complete a puzzle in Tears of the Kingdom you feel smart because you feel like you did some unique critical thinking or testing with the game’s mechanics in order to come to your solution.
“In a way, speedrunning and glitch hunting ha[ve] always been thinking about games like this. We treat every game as open solution with whatever mechanics or glitches we can figure out and try to piece them together to find what the most optimized solution through the whole game is. Finding a glitch that’s useful for a speedrun feels very similar to figuring out the open solution puzzles that are presented to us in Tears of the Kingdom.”
That embracing of TotK’s core concept, taken to its logical extreme, has made the Zelda speedrunning community one of the most active groups in a long time, with new records and dozens of game-altering discoveries being made every day.
Following The Glitches
Speedrunning wouldn’t be the same robust hobby that it is without the exploits and glitches that competitors make use of to pull off their rapid runs, and that’s where self-described “glitch hunters” come in – contributors who focus on finding new, useful ways to break things in hope their bugs might prove useful to a speedrunner.
Glitch hunters aren’t concerned with setting records. Instead, they get their kicks out of experimentation and finding new and creative ways to make the unexpected happen, then document their results in painstaking detail to be recreated and expanded upon by the larger speedrunning community.
“For smaller games, the roles for glitch hunters and runners overlap, but with a game this massive it really is a community effort with many people with different interests that brings the run to life,” explains Sr Tapir, an administrator for the TotK speedrunning Discord server.
In other words, the TotK speedrunning community splits the work and collaborates as they ideate, experiment, and apply the bugs they find in Hyrule’s latest open world.
Mozz, a glitch hunter who’s credited with discovering numerous TotK exploits, explains, “Glitches lead to more glitches, which is why any discovery within the glitch community or speedrunning server is a pretty big deal. Every little thing we find expands on what we know about the game, and that knowledge opens up new paths for other glitches.”
With excitement growing in his voice, he details how a seemingly benign animation cancelling exploit led to the discovery of a glitch called Fuse Entanglement, which allows Link to fuse an item to his shield without moving the object from its original position. That ability paved the way for yet another glitch called Springboarding, wherein Link can bounce along on a shield-mounted spring infinitely, moving the player far distances extremely quickly.
And the glitches haven’t stopped there. “By using Springboarding, we discovered the Entanglement Height Glitch,” Mozz explains. “For some reason, once you’ve left the 60-meter radius at which the spring fused to your shield loads out of the world, the game gets a little confused and so when you start Shield Surfing it thinks the spring is underneath you when it isn’t, suspending Link in the air.”
“Springboarding and the Entanglement Height Glitch then led to yet another glitch called Springboard Clipping, which allows Link to clip through the floor while Springboarding under a low ceiling. So you can find anywhere in the game, Springboard under it, and Link enters this weird state where he’ll start ascending with no collision, then drop him through the floor so you can get under the map,” says Mozz.
The list goes on and on, with new exploits, bugs, and downright weird stuff discovered every day by a community that’s determined to push the boundaries well beyond what the developers thought possible. The current holy grail? Discovering a suitable replacement to the Whistle Sprinting glitch, which allows Link to sprint infinitely without depleting his stamina meter. While this glitch was a key component of Breath of the Wild speedrunning, it isn’t present in Tears of the Kingdom. The community already has a few potential successors in the works, though none have emerged as the clear best option for speedrunning – at least at the time of this writing.
As for why TotK’s glitch hunters go through all the trouble to do what they do, the answer is simple: “It’s just interesting,” laughs Tauktes, a recent glitch hunting neophyte. “It’s fun to find glitches!”
Battle Of The Versions
But as the community finds and exploits a growing number of glitches, Nintendo pushes back by patching out the game’s biggest issues. This means that the speedrunning landscape changes on a regular basis as old bugs are fixed and new ones discovered, which creates a debate over which versions of TotK should be the focus of future speedrunning efforts and how leaderboards should be organized to reflect accomplishments within different versions of the game.
The debate is centered around two of the biggest glitches that shipped with the day-one version of Tears of the Kingdom, both of which have since been (at least partially) patched: “Zuggling” and Auto Build Cancel Slide (or ABC). These glitches were prominently featured in speedrun records set in the earliest versions of TotK, and their absence in more recent versions have changed the speedrunning landscape dramatically.
Zuggling, which duplicates an item in Link’s hand, is a reference to a similar bug in Breath of the Wild the community called “Juggling.” But since glitch hunter Zvleon discovered the obscure mechanics involved in triggering the TotK version, they christened the new version with a Z, in their honor.
“Zuggling involves causing a desync between Link’s inventory gear and the gear that’s on the overworld, which has the effect of stacking multiple active weapon models in Link’s hand which has some other useful effects,” explains Gymnast. “If we do this, say, 10 times, then every time we attack with a weapon, it’ll deal 10x the amount of damage, which absolutely demolishes almost every enemy in the game.”
“If you zuggle enough times repeatedly, the game will begin to behave strangely and lag more due to less available memory to use which we call “zuggle overloading”. One of the strange behaviors is that if you try to hop onto a steering stick in this state, the game gets rid of all collision checks for Link and he just falls through the world without hitting anything (until we press the B button to cancel being in the steering state). Since the final boss is really low down in the depths, this is useful for skipping the path we’d normally have to take down to the depths and also skip past all the enemies and other obstacles that may be in our path. This also has some other funny effects such as Link losing his legs or hair from the memory overloading.”
As you might imagine, this exploit comes in handy during Any% runs where the goal is to beat the final boss as soon as possible, under any conditions.
The second major glitch, Auto Build Cancel Slide, has a similar goal of expedited travel, but is more useful in speedruns where the goal is to complete more of the game’s main quests.
As Gymnast explains: “Autobuild cancelling entails making a contraption that can be selected from the player’s autobuild history, selecting the blueprint from the autobuild menu, pressing B and then Y to cancel the build, and then choosing the same blueprint again. If done correctly the blueprint will be in the air while you have control of Link, but the game will continuously try to move the blueprint structure away from Link at a certain offset. If you can get onto/inside the structure (for instance by using ascend) then the structure will be both pushing Link but also trying to continuously get away from him and this results in accelerating up to really high speeds that can allow you to cross the entire overworld map in under a minute. And considering how big the game world is, that saves massive amounts of time in categories that need to do a lot of traveling like All Dungeons and All Main Quests.”
But with these massive exploits now mostly fixed, the speedrunning community has had a difficult time deciding how to proceed. Mozz, a glitch hunter who doesn’t flinch at Nintendo’s attempts to rollout fixes, finds themself on the progressive side of the debate regarding TotK versions – those who would prefer to see the community collectively leave the old versions of the game behind.
“There’s been a lot of division in the community at the moment over versions. Nintendo has been patching glitches and some people want to run the current version of the game, and others don’t.” Mozz explains. “I prefer to be on the current patch, so I’m finding glitches on the current version of the game. I kind of like the idea of staying ahead of Nintendo.”
In the end, the community took it to a vote, deciding to split the leaderboards in two: one for the original version of Tears of the Kingdom, and one for the most current version.
A Growing Community
The Tears of the Kingdom speedrunning community is an extremely passionate, creative, and dedicated group of people who seem determined to exemplify the freedom and experimentation that recent Zelda games already lean into, and based on the growing number of players who have joined in on the fun, it shows no signs of slowing down.
Tauktes, a 15-year-old German high schooler, says he began glitch hunting only a few weeks ago, but it’s quickly become an obsession.
“Glitch hunting was something I did on my own in Breath of the Wild, but I never reported anything. Now I’m documenting a lot of stuff. I did, probably, over 60 or 70 percent of the spreadsheet!”
KatyMay, a Zelda speedrunner veteran of 10+ years, says she stumbled across Zelda speedruns on Twitch, decided to give it a shot, and never turned back.
Others have become lifelong friends, like Gymnast and Venick, who are now roommates – a friendship born from a mutual love of speedrunning Zelda. They spoke to IGN while attending the Games Done Quick speedrunners convention, which they went to together. Numerous Zelda games are making an appearance at the show, including Breath of the Wild, Majora’s Mask, and Twilight Princess.
After a day on the conference floor, Gymnast sums up the feelings of many speedrunners and glitch hunters well.
“Speedrunning has allowed me to continuously enjoy each of these games for thousands of hours, and it’s still going. The replayability is practically infinite since the games will change over time depending on what glitches and techniques people find causing the speedrun times to get lower and lower, and I don’t see it stopping anytime soon.”
Despite the slow-motion train wreck that led to the ultimate demise of video games preview-athon E3 this year, the 2023 summer season – and especially the month of June – is turning out to be a uniquely spectacular time for games. The groundswell of excellence building up to this crescendo included both Jedi Survivor and Tears of the Kingdom, two of the best games in recent memory. They were soon followed by the similarly epic Street Fighter 6 and Diablo IV, with Final Fantasy XVI right on the horizon.
There have been very few years with this kind of density of excellence in such a short period, and even fewer summers. For those of us that require mundane things like work, sleep, and time with tolerant loved-ones there already aren’t enough hours in the day to possibly enjoy all of these games to their fullest. I have a tendency to be a serial monogamist with games, but I’m also easily distracted by shiny new things – so my journey since Jedi shipped in April has just been a series of disappointing incompletions culminating in an insatiable Diablo habit.
The next couple of weeks will be the real meat of what used to be E3. As I’m writing this, there are no less than 18 scheduled livestreamed events that we’ll be covering and carrying across our platforms in the first two weeks of June. If things continue the way they did last year, there will no doubt be even more shows announced before the end of the month. Those events include indie showcases from The Guerrilla Collective and Day of the Devs, programming from Dames 4 Games, Black Voices in Gaming, and Wholesome Direct along with the PC Gaming Show, the Future Games Show, an UploadVR event, and a Sega Summit devoted to Yakuza games.
There are really three upcoming mega-events that will drive the bulk of the conversation through the summer though. First up is the Summer Game Fest live show on June 8 which should feature an extensive batch of trailers. Last year’s show was 33 games strong and there are lots of signals that this year’s show will be even more packed. Then there’s the Xbox Showcase (which includes a 45-minute Starfield blowout) on June 11, followed by Ubisoft’s Forward event on June 12. We’ll be carrying all of these with pre- and post-shows from our studios in LA. But before that, let’s take a stab at guessing what we might get to see.
Expectations and Wishes
Despite the headline, I’m loath to call any of the following “predictions” because really this is just some stuff that we already know for sure blended with some educated guesses and a healthy dose of wishful thinking. Years and years ago I used to do this every summer with my co-hosts on a podcast that some of you might remember called 1UP Yours, and we got pretty good at it. We’ll see in a couple of weeks whether I’ve still got it…
Microsoft will lean hard into Forza Motorsport, and it’ll go out of its way to show how much prettier and even-more unnecessarily attentive to detail it is than Gran Turismo. See the individual carbon fibers, or something. However long the segment of their showcase is, people will complain that it’s too long.
I think there’ll be a Gears 6 teaser with little to no gameplay shown. I know this isn’t exactly that bold of a guess, but it’s time. It’s not a stretch to assume there’s a Master Chief Collection-style Gears bundle in the works too.
All the glitter-inspired fuss about Playground Games’ Fable reboot will turn out to be true. I’m guessing it’s way further along than anyone thinks, and we may even get a release date.
This one’s probably obvious after Phil Spencer made such a point of saying he’s played it a bunch, but there’ll be a big segment on Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity-expanding first person RPG Avowed.
We’re about due a longer and even weirder Death Stranding 2 trailer.
We’ll certainly see more from Ubisoft on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, but I think we’ll learn that it’s just the sneaky stealth-focused amuse-bouche before the real main course: whatever it is that Codename Red is going to be called. I think we’ll get the name for the game and a reveal showing that it’s a gigantic ninja-filled RPG-style thing that’s even bigger than Valhalla.
The only whiff of anything that smells even vaguely like an acknowledgement of a new Splinter Cell will be in anything Ubisoft shows of XDefiant.
Ubisoft will show Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in all its glory. The comments on every platform will basically be yawns and claims of not giving a shit, and then we’ll see that the trailer has done a gajillion views in the first 12 hours.
If you’re hoping there’ll be anything on Beyond Good & Evil 2, you’re just stressing yourself out. We’re all going to have to let it go.
Ubisoft’s megaton will be its Star Wars reveal. There are all sorts of rumors going around about this one, but my favorite is that it’s a Mandalorian game. Not based on the show, but on The Purge that’s often referenced. Various flavors of wishful thinking have it as an Assassin’s Creed-alike with space flight and combat in-between planets.
We already know the gameplay reveal of Mortal Kombat 1 will be at Summer Game Fest thanks to Geoff Keighley’s frequent reminders, so we can safely file this one under “expectations.”
Warner Bros. Games used Summer Game Fest to show Gotham Knights last year, so it’s possible it may use this year’s event to show something redemptive for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The game isn’t due until next February, but its last showing definitely soured a lot of people to it, so there’s an opportunity for recovery.
I think we’ll see more Sonic stuff at Summer Game Fest. I have no evidence to back this up, I’m just guessing. This may end up being little more than a trailer for the Frontiers DLC featuring playable Tails, Amy, and Knuckles, but I honestly think there’ll be something more than that.
Sega will show a new Hyenas trailer because everyone has forgotten that the game exists.
We’re well overdue for a new update on the many Silent Hills, particularly Silent Hill 2. Time for a new trailer, surely?
Phantom Blade Zero will surely pop up again. After wowing everyone at the PlayStation Showcase, first-time studio S-Game’s tough-to-describe steampunk kung fu maybe-soulslike action RPG was an early surprise that we’ll hopefully see much more of.
Lies of P emerged at Gamescom last August under similar circumstances – a trailer during a showcase that wowed everyone with its gritty visuals and soulslike gameplay. Round8 debuted at Opening Night Live at Gamescom – which is hosted and curated by Keighley – so it seems like a fairly safe bet we’ll see a follow-up at Summer Game Fest. At the very least we’ll get a more specific release date than “August.”
There hasn’t been a Warhammer 40k game announcement in the last five minutes, so there’ll probably be one of those.
Capcom will probably continue down its path of regurgitating itself with the announcement of another remake. The divisive Code Veronica, perhaps? (Yeah, yeah, I know they said last October that they weren’t doing it right now, but do you really believe them?)
We’ll get our first glimpse of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. I’m guessing at Summer Game Fest.
That’s 21 guesses about what we’re going to see. I’ll return to this when the dust has settled in the middle of June and see how I did. I’m sure some of them will turn out to be laughably incorrect, but we shall see. Regardless of what happens, this is already a uniquely phenomenal time for games no matter what platform you play on. Enjoy.
John Davison is IGN’s publisher and editorial lead, and has been writing about games and entertainment for more than 30 years. Follow him on Twitter.
