Join Emma, Mat, and Matt as they discuss the new Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie, followed by a special interview segment with directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. The ‘Matt’ Trio also talk about this week’s TV highlights as both Succession and Yellowjackets are back on our screens, then move onto Counter-Strike 2 thoughts, and some doughnut-fueled feedback.
Got a game for us to play, or just want to tell us the weirdest thing you’ve eaten for breakfast? Drop us an email: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.
While on previous Forza Horizon games the wild, toy-themed expansions have come after a more grounded one, for Forza Horizon 5 developer Playground Games led with its terrific Hot Wheels add-on last year. However, after seven months of pounding the orange plastic high above the clouds, the team has taken us right back down to the desert and dust for some new rally-themed racing across a fresh slab of Mexican countryside. It admittedly isn’t quite as eye-catching – and it’s regressed from some key tweaks to the progression system introduced in Hot Wheels – but competing against the clock with a co-driver is a great new way to race in Horizon, and the excellent map is packed with far more technical routes than found in the main game.
This map, which Playground has dubbed Sierra Nueva, is really the highlight of Rally Adventure – and perhaps deceptively so, considering it’s not as immediately distinct from the main game itself as, say, the snowy Blizzard Mountain DLC was from the core Forza Horizon 3 map. There are six different environments blended together in Sierra Nueva, and on closer inspection it does effectively look and feel like a separate part of Mexico than what we’ve been driving around since late 2021. There’s new vegetation, and zones like the quarry are unlike anything already in Horizon 5.
Sierra Nueva’s real strength, however, is its road network.
Sierra Nueva’s real strength, however, is its road network. Don’t be fooled by the early pop-up that indicates you’ve only got 32 roads to drive down before you’ve seen them all – many of these roads are long and technical, like the guitar solo in Free Bird. The best among them are characterised by tighter corners and more hairpins than you’ll find on a typical Forza Horizon 5 road, plus more bumps and jumps, as well as longer stretches between junctions. Sierra Nueva’s new dust effects are also a standout, and it hangs in the air above the dirt and gravel for far longer than before.
After a strong opening drive, where the route into the festival is clogged with campers on the way into the main hub, Rally Adventure breaks the racing up into three threads – each with a slightly different take on rallying. In a somewhat unfortunate step back, things have reverted to a bit of a free-for-all rather than the gated class system that gave the Hot Wheels expansion a nicer sense of progression. Of course, you can still use any car you want to enter events and the AI will adjust class accordingly. This is how I played, changing cars for each of the nearly 30 events to keep things varied. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by blazing through everything in your fastest hypercar, unless you’re only here for a short time rather than a good time.
Each event can be played two ways – either as a single car rallying against the clock or a standard race against a pack of opponents – but the proper rallying is the highlight. It’s not a particularly demanding simulation (and its straightforward pace notes crib plenty from the pick-up-and-play pleasure of genre granddaddy Sega Rally) but it’s absorbing, arcade-inspired fun. Having your co-driver soaring over the stage above you in a helicopter is a cool touch, too. It doesn’t just look slick, either – it’s also a smart solution to explain why you’re still receiving co-driver audio in single-seater vehicles.
Dust ’Til Dawn
As with Hot Wheels, Rally Adventure adds 10 new vehicles to the garage – and it’s worth noting the selection here is a way more natural fit in this rally-themed expansion than it was last time around. Now don’t get me wrong, because there are some wicked cars that come with Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels – especially if you’re into… supercars named after Australian 24 Hours of Le Mans winners, which peculiarly accounts for 20 percent of them. However, it’s hard to say there’s much inherently “Hot Wheels” about cars Mattel has never made diecast versions of.
I’m an enormous fan of the iconic 2001 WRC Ford Focus RS of Colin McRae and Nicky Grist, and it’s a perfect fit as essentially the hero car of this expansion.
In Rally Adventure, the curation leans entirely into rallying and off-roading. I’m an enormous fan of the iconic 2001 WRC Ford Focus RS of Colin McRae and Nicky Grist, and it’s a perfect fit as essentially the hero car of this expansion. I also love the Hoonigan Beetle, affectionately nicknamed the Scumbug. It’s not quick, but lower-powered cars are regularly a lot of fun to use as it’s all about pushing them up to their absolute limit and keeping them there on the brink of losing control in order to maintain your momentum. It’s especially serendipitous here considering the Scumbug was literally built by the Hoonigan team to rally in Mexico.
There’s an argument that the 10 new cars are too heavy with trophy trucks and buggies over traditional rally cars, but keep in mind the latest update to the main game just added a host of new rally parts for pretty much every traditional rally car already in the existing garage. On top of that, the incredibly talented community has whipped up excellent replica liveries for all of them over the past few years. The lack of a license for Lancia in Forza Horizon 5 hurts, and it definitely leaves a hole in an experience so overtly inspired by the likes of Sega Rally, but there are plenty of other rally legends that can be built to tackle this new map.
The Legend of Zelda is one of the most beloved franchises in video game history, right next to Super Mario Bros., Pokemon, and Sonic the Hedgehog. For nearly 40 years, fans have enjoyed playing through the vast world and lore of Hyrule with various incarnations of Link, the mute green-clad knight sworn to protect the kingdom and Princess Zelda from the evil of Ganon.
Now that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is approaching its release date in May, you may be looking play all the games in the series in release order or chronological order. If you’re going down the latter route and don’t know which Zelda game to start with, you’ve come to the right place. Read on for the full timeline.
How To Play The Legend of Zelda Games In Chronological Order
If you’ve been a hardcore Legend of Zelda fan since 1986, you may have noticed that Link appears as a young adult in one game, a child in another, and vice versa. The inconsistency in Link’s age is because Nintendo made the timeline open to interpretation. However, Nintendo released the master timeline in Hyrule Historia in 2011, which starts with Skyward Sword and branches into three different timelines after Ocarina of Time: the Child Timeline, the Adult Timeline, and the Fallen Hero Timeline. The Calamity Timeline, which aptly starts with Age of Calamity, is separate from those timelines because it rendered them a myth.
That being said, here is the list of The Legend of Zelda games in chronological order according to the fictional continuity. Hyrule Warriors is its own separate thing because it was developed by Koei Tecmo, Omega Force, and Team Ninja — the creators of Dynasty Warriors — so we’re excluding the game from the list for that reason.
Skyward Sword takes place thousands of years after the Ancient Battle in the Era of the Goddess Hylia, set on the floating island of Skyloft where knowledge of the surface world below is nonexistent. This game stars the first Link, who forges the Master Sword from the Goddess Sword with the help of Fi as he rescues Zelda from the demon lord Ghirahim in order to revive his master, Demise.
Nearly 10 years after its release as a Wii game, Skyward Sword received an HD remaster for the Nintendo Switch. The remaster has two control schematics: one where the Joy-Cons replicate the motion control maps of the Wiimote and the Nunchuck, and another where the sword can be used with the right analog stick in handheld mode.
The Minish Cap is the only canon Zelda title developed by a company other than Nintendo, which is Capcom. Link accompanies Zelda to the Picori Festival to celebrate tiny people who call themselves Minish. It’s here that sorcerer Vaati, the first reincarnation of Demise, seeks the Light Force as he believes it hides the Picori Blade. After Vaati unleashes a horde of monsters from breaking the sword’s seal and turns Zelda to stone in the process, Link sets off to reforge the Picori Blade with the help of Ezlo, the eponymous Minish Cap who has the power to shrink the wearer down to the size of the Minish..
The Minish Cap is a prequel to Four Swords because once the Picori Blade is reforged, it turns into the Four Sword, which seals Vaati inside it. You can currently play the game on Nintendo Switch thanks to the GBA game update.
Vaati breaks from the seal of the Four Sword and kidnaps Zelda with the intent of making her his bride. After drawing the Four Sword, Link splits into four copies himself — green, red, blue, and purple — and they all have to work together to defeat various foes to get to Vaati, reseal him in the Four Sword, and rescue Zelda.
Fours Swords is the first multiplayer game in the series that was bundled with the 2002 Game Boy Advance version of A Link to the Past. It was later released as a standalone game for DSiWare.
After having premonitions of Ganondorf seizing the Triforce, a young Link is gifted the fairy Navi by the Great Deku Tree, who is cursed and dying, and sets them on a quest to stop him. He meets Princess Zelda, who had the same prophetic dreams as Link and they plot together to open the Door of Time to get to the Triforce before Ganondorf does. Unfortunately, when Link attempts to draw the Master Sword from the Pedestal of Time, he gets sealed away for seven years and wakes up to a Hyrule ravaged by Ganondorf. Finally old enough to wield the Master Sword, he accepts his destiny as the Hero of Time, and travels throughout the broken kingdom — and time — to re-assemble the Triforce and defeat Ganondorf.
Here’s where the time split comes in. After Ganondorf is sealed away in the Evil Realm, Zelda uses the Ocarina of Time to send Link back to his own time, but it splits into three branches — the Fallen Hero Timeline, where Ganon defeats Link; the Child Timeline, which follows Link back to his own time; and the Adult Timeline, where Link disappears from Hyrule. The Master Sword exists in the last two timelines; however Link places the sword back in the Pedestal of Time in the former, while Zelda does so in the latter.
During his months-long search for Navi in this direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, Link runs into the Skull Kid, who wears the titular mask and steals Link’s horse, prompting the hero to chase him into the parallel world of Termina. The mask itself is inhabited by a demon named Majora, and corrupts the Skull Kid to the point where he plots to destroy Termina by bringing down the moon. With only three days to stop the apocalypse, Link uses transformative masks to free the Four Giants from four different regions to help keep the moon from colliding with the earth and defeat Majora.
After saving Termina from getting pummelled by the moon, Link resumes his search for Navi, never to be seen again. He turns into the Hero’s Spirit after his death.
In Twilight Princess, Link is a ranch hand and a descendant of the Hero’s Spirit. His peaceful life in Ordon Village is shattered by the shadow monsters called Bulbins, who he pursues after they kidnap the children and plunge most of Hyrule into Twilight. When Link enters the Twilight, he transforms into a wolf and teams up with an imp named Midna to go up against Zant, King of the Twilight, who seeks to rule over the realms of light and shadow.
After Link kills Zant with the Fused Shadow, he rescues Princess Zelda from a resurrected Ganondorf at Hyrule Castle and kills him with the Master Sword, which broke Link’s wolf curse after he drew it from the Sacred Grove, where the Temple of Time once stood.
Twilight Princess was the launch title for the Wii and the last first-party release for the Nintendo GameCube in 2006. It was remastered for the Wii U a decade later.
Centuries after Ganondorf’s death, Princess Zelda summons Link to the castle to protect her and her shrine maidens after figuring out that the strange occurrences plaguing Hyrule were caused by the weakening of Vaati’s seal. As Zelda works with the maidens to restrengthen the seal, Shadow Link appears and kidnaps them. This forces Link to pull the Four Sword and work his multi-colored clones once more to defeat his evil doppelganger, who turns out to be the minion of Ganon, who wants to plunge most of Hyrule into darkness.
In the first GameCube game of the series, Link is a resident of Outset Island who is not related to the Hero of Time whatsoever. He sets out to rescue his younger sister Aryll, who gets kidnapped by the Helmaroc King per Ganondorf’s command to kidnap young girls with pointed ears in the hopes of capturing Zelda. He gets help from the pirate captain Tetra — an incarnation of Zelda. With the help of her pirate crew and a talking boat called the King of Red Lions to sail the ocean, they explore the islands to gather the powers necessary to defeat Ganondorf.
Nintendo remastered The Wind Waker in HD for the Wii U in 2013 to hold fans over while they wait for a new entry to be developed the same console — which turned out to be Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch — and to give developers room to test what they can do with the new hardware.
After the events of The Wind Waker, Link sails with Tetra and her crew when they happen upon the Ghost Ship, one of the ships rumored to disappear in the World of the Ocean King. When Tetra boards the ship in sight, she disappears with it, prompting Link to rescue her only to get thrown overboard and wash up on Mercay Island. There he meets a fairy named Ciela and her grandfather Oshus, who gives Link the Phantom Hourglass to fend off the curse placed on the Temple of the Ocean King by Bellum.
A century after the events of Phantom Hourglass, Link is a Royal Engineer who goes to the Tower of Spirits with Princess Zelda to investigate the disappearance of the Spirit Tracks. Their train gets derailed by Chancellor Cole, an advisor to Zelda who reveals himself to be a demon on a mission to revive Malladus, the Demon King sealed underground long ago by the Lokomo people. Cole casts a spell that separates Zelda’s soul from her body in order to use her body as a vessel for Malladus, fragmenting the Tower of Spirits, while her soul stays with Link as they work to put it back in its rightful place.
Link heeds a telepathic call from Princess Zelda to come to Hyrule Castle to save her from her imprisonment by the dark wizard Agahnim that used his powers to brainwash Hyrule’s soldiers, depose the king, and banished six maidens to the Dark World in order to break the seal on Ganon and rule both the Light and Dark Worlds. Link’s uncle also heeds the call, but dies in the dungeon — but not before telling Link he’s the heir to the Knights of Hyrule. Link learns that in order to defeat Agahnim, he’ll have to collect the three Pendants of Virtue from dungeons across Hyrule and then get the Master Sword from the Lost Woods.
During Link’s travels to the Dark World via the Magic Mirror to rescue the maidens he discovers Agahnim to be Ganon’s alter ego and fights Ganon in the Pyramid of Power.
On his way back to Hyrule following his training to prep for new disasters that would threaten the kingdom, Link gets caught in a storm in the middle of the ocean and ends up shipwrecked on the island of Koholint, where a giant egg sits on the peak of Mt. Tamaranch. He is rescued by Marin, a young woman who strongly resembles Princess Zelda despite the game not featuring her in any capacity, and learns that in order to leave the island, he’ll have to collect eight Instruments of the Sirens and wake the Wind Fish who sleeps in the egg.
Link’s Awakening received a 3D remake for the Nintendo Switch in 2019, which saw Link upgraded to a chibi design.
The Triforce calls Link to Holodrum, where he witnesses a dancer named Din, the titular Oracle of Seasons, get kidnapped by Onox, the General of Darkness. This event throws the seasons of the land into disarray. To restore the balance of the seasons, Link has to collect the eight Essences of Nature and use the Rod of Seasons to manipulate the seasons everywhere he goes. After rescuing Din, he gets transported to Labrynna, where Oracle of Ages takes place.
As in Oracle of Seasons, the Triforce beckons Link to Labrynna, where the singer Nayru is possessed by Veran the Sorceress of Shadows, disrupting the flow of time. Link uses the Harp of Ages to travel between past and present to collect the eight Essences of Time and fight Veran atop the Black Tower.
Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons have an ending that is linked with a password, so if one game is played as a sequel to the other, Twinrova captures Princess Zelda and lights the Flame of Despair. Link defeats Twinrova and a poorly revived Ganon and frees Zelda, leaving Labrynna by boat.
In this game, Link, an apprentice to a blacksmith, encounters Yuga, who has been turning people throughout Hyrule into paintings, including the Seven Sages and Princess Zelda. Using a magic bracelet given to him by a mysterious peddler, Link travels to Lorule to stop Yuga’s ambitions to consume Hyrule and Lorule with Ganon at his side.
A Link Between Worlds is famous for its dual gameplay, as Link becomes a two-dimensional painting himself while traveling through the walls of Lorule and turns back into his three-dimensional self when he returns to Hyrule.
Tri Force Heroes is set in the kingdom of Hytopia, where Princess Styla is known for her beauty and impeccable taste in fashion. Unfortunately, the witch Lady Maud cursed Styla with a brown jumpsuit that she cannot take off at all, so Link joins two doppelgangers to gather the pieces of the Lady’s Ensemble and cure Styla of her fashion disaster.
Tri Force Heroes is the first game in the series to support online multiplayer. The controls are the same as Four Swords, even though there’s one less Link in the group.
Ganon is revived to lead his army to attack Hyrule, steal the Triforce of Power, and kidnap Princess Zelda. But before she was taken and subsequently imprisoned, Zelda splits the Triforce of Wisdom into eight pieces and scatters them throughout the kingdom to keep it from falling into Ganon’s hands, leading her nursemaid Impa to find Link. After learning of Ganon’s invasion, the hero finds the eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom, defeats him, and rescues Zelda.
Six years later after Ganon’s death, while helping to restore Hyrule, Link receives a glowing Triforce mark on his left hand on his 16th birthday. The mark opens the door to the altar where Princess Zelda I is under a sleeping curse, and Link learns the she’ll only be awakened with the Triforce of Courage, which is kept in the Great Palace. So Link sets out to deposit six crystals in the palaces around Hyrule, defeat six guardians, and beat any of Ganon’s minions trying to get his blood to revive him.
Set 100 years before the events of Breath of the Wild, Link and Princess Zelda round up their allies to defend Hyrule against Calamity Ganon, who is attempting to revive himself and destroy the kingdom with his Malice. When a mysterious Guardian comes from the future bearing evidence of their failure, they expedite their efforts to team up with four champions of Hyrule’s other races to strengthen their forces and find the Master Sword in the Korok Forest to change the outcome of their battle.
Unable to defeat Calamity Ganon, even after the Divine Beasts have weakened him, Zelda seals herself and him away in Hyrule Castle, and sends Link to sleep at the Shrine of Resurrection for 100 years to heal his fatal wounds.
A century has passed, and Link awakens from his restorative slumber without his memories. Meanwhile, Zelda’s awakening powers have weakened, Calamity Ganon has grown stronger, and Hyrule has been completely destroyed by the Great Calamity. Link travels all over Hyrule to regain his memories, free the Divine Beasts of the Blight Ganons, and confront Ganon once more.
Breath of the Wild is still widely praised as one of the best open-world games, with a style that has inspired games outside the series like Immortals Fenyx Rising, Genshin Impact, and Sonic Frontiers.
How To Play The Legend of Zelda Games By Release Date
If you want to play The Legend of Zelda games in the order in which they were released instead of switching between the modern games and the classic ones, here are all the mainline games by U.S. release date.
The Legend of Zelda – August 22, 1987 – NES
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link – December 1, 1988 – NES
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – April 13, 1992 – SNES
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – August 6, 1993 – Game Boy
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – November 21, 1998 – N64
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – October 26, 2000 – N64
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages – May 13, 2001 – Game Boy Color
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords – December 2, 2002 – Game Boy Advance
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – March 24, 2003 – GameCube
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures – June 7, 2004 – GameCube
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap – January 10, 2005 – Game Boy Advance
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess – November 19, 2006 (Wii) / December 11, 2006 (GameCube)
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass – October 1, 2007 – Nintendo DS
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks – December 7, 2009 – Nintendo DS
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D – June 19, 2011 – Nintendo 3DS
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – November 20, 2011 – Wii
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD – September 20, 2013 – Wii U
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D – February 13, 2015 – Nintendo 3DS
The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes – October 23, 2015 – Nintendo 3DS
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD – March 4, 2016 – Wii U
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – March 3, 2017 – Nintendo Switch
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (2019) – September 20, 2019 – Nintendo Switch
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD – July 16, 2021 – Nintendo Switch
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – May 12, 2023 – Nintendo Switch
MultiVersus is closing its doors – well, early access doors – on June 25, and there’s been a lot of discourse about this move by Warner Bros. Games and Player First Games. I think the general consensus is that everyone sort of forgot MultiVersus was an Early Access game as it’s had not one but two seasons since it launched.
A lot of games recently have been coming out as Open Beta, Beta, or Early Access, and they just kind of stay that way. DayZ is the biggest example I can think of; the game had been in alpha for five years but just came out as a beta in 2018. Now, this isn’t a great example since you can’t buy a battlepass or cosmetics for DayZ, and MultiVersus has a battlepass and cosmetics system in place, but you can still purchase DayZ to play this beta.
Generally, if an early access game does close down for a bit, it’s not a big deal. But MultiVersus’ early access really appeared to be a fully released game. There were more than a handful of tournaments for MultiVersus at big competitions like EVO, and it even won a Game Award for Best Fighting Game 2022.
When MultiVersus launched in early access, it appeared to continue with that early access title until it was ready with its full release – sort of like how Fortnite went from open beta to a fully released game. But it turns out that’s not the case, and it’s frustrating to see players lose a game they’ve been playing openly without worry, and also been putting money into.
During the time that MultiVersus is going to be completely offline, players will not be able to get a refund for anything they’ve purchased in the game. Their progress and cosmetics will transfer over when the game is fully released in 2024, but for now, these things are just left up in the air. You can still play the game offline (so it can still be a part of in-person tournaments) and have access to your characters, cosmetics, and the training room.
MultiVersus going offline to improve the quality of the game, netcode, and content cadence is great for casual players who may want to try the game in the future, but it’s not so great for the players who were already dedicated to the game. As someone who plays a lot of free-to-play, live-service games, I am pretty tired of seeing games go free-to-play with the general live-service battlepass system.
Of course, there are some games that have found success with this format, like Warzone, Apex Legends, and Fortnite, and I don’t think that should change. Those formulas work really well for games that have repetitive formats like battle royales. There needs to be regular content drops with new limited time modes (or permanent modes), cosmetic updates, and other seasonal events to keep the game feeling fresh so it’s not so repetitive.
MultiVersus going offline is not so great for the players who were already dedicated to the game.
Yes, I did not include Overwatch 2 as I don’t feel it fits that live-service model very well right now. I’m glad it’s free-to-play but locking characters behind a battlepass is pretty frustrating. I understand there are other ways to unlock that character, like with specific challenges, but it’s not as fast as just unlocking them through the battlepass purchase.
For example, Overwatch’s latest character, Ramattra, was released extremely strong and was available to play in competitive mode. It honestly felt like if you did not have a tank on your team who had unlocked Ramattra, you were bound to lose, or at least have a high likelihood of losing. So you feel pressured to unlock that character the fastest way possible, which is through buying the battlepass. But this makes an uneven battleground for players who may not have the time to grind to unlock new characters or have the money to purchase a battlepass.
Live-service games are fine if the formula can be hit just right with consistent content drops, changes in balancing, and a good offering of cosmetics. But a lot of games now struggle with that cadence, which often leads to the sunsetting of those games. I liked Knock-Out City and I know a lot of people loved Rumbleverse, but they’re part of the unsuccessful crowd that could not figure out a good rhythm to updating the game.
I’ve also personally gotten really tired of trying to keep up with all of the live-service games I have attachments to, especially if I have multiple battlepasses to finish. Keeping up with Apex’s 100-tier battlepass and Warzone’s own 100-tier battlepass is difficult enough and I’m starting to feel that live-service fatigue to the point where I don’t want to get involved in yet another free-to-play live service game. It would likely be the same content for a month or two and I’ll fall off and then come back once a major update is through.
I’m lucky enough to have other games to play and cover for work so I’m never tied down to one thing. It’s just sad to realize that I’m growing more detached from these games that I genuinely like just due to their content format. I will say though that it’s nice to know that the base game stays unchanged and is great to come back to when I’m wanting to revisit it (like battle royale formats).
I feel like we’re at a point in gaming where a majority of players are also very tired of live-service formats and we just want to play a game we’ll enjoy. The fact that most live-service games are free is great, since anyone can play, but the games often just become a bit stale after major season updates and there’s not a lot to make you want to play consistently. And expecting content updates regularly has become a big complaint with the community, especially with live-service games since that’s what the game relies on to stay fresh and replayable.
MultiVersus going offline until next year is a bold move and I’m not sure it’ll pay off. Tekken 8 will be coming out and there really won’t be much space for discussion around MultiVersus with it being basically unplayable for months. The only game that I feel can afford to take a day or two off (or a week at most) is Fortnite because they have really honed in on what makes a live-service game great and how to handle major season turnovers quickly with the least bit of hassle.
The people behind MultiVersus have said they plan to make some major overhauls, so it’s possible it could come back with a big, renewed interest, but they still have to face the issue of setting the pace on when they’ll update their content. This was a pretty big problem in Season 2 where there were very little updates and the player activity dropped 99% on the PC version.
I understand there’s a good market for live-service games and it could be more profitable than a fully-released game with a set price that players can purchase once and be done with. But there’s also value in having a full game at launch that players can rely on to be ready to play. Updates can still be provided with fully released games and reduces pressure to constantly drop new content for devs and players all around.
Hopefully MultiVersus has a great launch, but the decision to take it completely offline really had me thinking about how I feel about live-service games and I’m definitely fatigued with them. There’s certainly a marketplace for free-to-play live-service games to live in the gaming world, but I feel not many developers have been able to find that balance. I genuinely hope the team behind MultiVersus takes this time to consider the game’s future and make a full comeback. But I also want to remind developers there’s nothing wrong with releasing a game with a set price instead of going the free-to-play live-service route.
Following IGN’s report earlier today that E3 has officially been canceled, GamesIndustry.biz has published an interview with ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis in which he was asked about what went wrong with the show and whether or not the show would return in the future — though Pierre-Louis was fairly tight-lipped about the answers to these questions.
When asked what went wrong with the show this year, Pierre-Louis pointed to larger industry challenges that proved “too large to surmount.”
“First, several companies have reported that the timeline for game development has been altered since the start of the COVID pandemic. Second, economic headwinds have caused several companies to reassess how they invest in large marketing events. And third, companies are starting to experiment with how to find the right balance between in-person events and digital marketing opportunities.”
Later in the interview, Pierre-Louis was asked if ESA members were no longer interested in the event, what E3 would look like if it continued, if E3 needed the three big platform holders to have any chance of success, and if E3 would return in 2024. Pierre-Louis did not provide any direct answers to any of these questions, though he did seem to deny that communication was an issue in setting up E3 2023 (something IGN’s sources have said was a recurring problem). He directly confirmed that the cancellation of E3 would not impact the ESA’s advocacy work for the games industry.
The ESA announced E3 2023’s cancellation to its members earlier today, stating in an email that the 2023 version of the event “simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry,” though it did not mention whether or not the event would return. A press release sent to media following our report said that ReedPop and the ESA would continue to work together on “future E3 events.”
This is the latest in a string of cancellations of what was once the largest event in gaming, following the 2020 cancellation during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and another cancellation in 2022 — broken up by a quieter digital event in 2021.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
After over 2 years on the market, the Meta (Oculus) Quest 2 VR headset is still far and away the best value when it comes to VR gaming. For a price that beats every other comparable VR headset out there, it offers a completely tether-free experience, phenomenal inside-out tracking, and a huge library of games. Also, starting August of 2022, you do not need a Facebook account to login to your Quest 2. That was justifiably a sore point for many people and Meta eventually realized that.
The Quest 2 originally started out at $299.99 at launch, but those days are long gone. Last year Meta raised it to $399.99, a rather significant price hike. Fortunately today, there’s a $50 price drop that brings it down to $349.99. The current gen Quest 2 features 128GB of internal storage (compared to 64GB from the OG $299 model) and also includes two games: Golf+ and Space Pirate Trainer DX, both are which are really good.
$50 Off Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset
The Quest 2 is the best VR headset for you to jump into Beat Saber, easily the most successful VR game in history. Beat Saber is a simple rhythm based game that doubles as an outstanding fitness tool. By now there are hundreds of official songs available and the game receives plenty of regular updates. If that’s not enough, there’s a huge modding community out there with access to tens of thousands of user created songs that are every bit as good as the official songs. Beat Saber needs to be purchased separately ($29.99), but really you shouldn’t be getting a VR headset if you don’t get this game.
On a personal note, I own the Oculus Quest 2 specifically for Beat Saber. I purchased the original Rift CV1 headset and a third sensor back in 2016 and since then I’ve clocked almost 1,000 hours in Beat Saber and I’m pretty good at it. In my opinion, the Quest 2’s simple inside out tracking is superior to the original Rift’s 3-sensor setup. In conjunction with the light weight and comfortable ergonomics of the Touch controllers, you can’t really ask for a better control setup for a fast-paced precision game like Beat Saber. I’ve tried other VR headsets and the only other headset that comes close is the Valve Index, and that setup will run you hundreds of dollars more. As someone who plays VR games religiously over PCVR with his RTX 4090 gaming rig, I can say that getting a $1000 VR setup is still not worth it.
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Blizzard has revealed the Diablo IV beta that took place over the last two weekends was the largest in the franchise’s history. Thanks to the official Diablo Twitter account, we now have information on how many times players died, which classes were the most played, and more.
The popular classes throughout both betas were the Sorcerer and Necromancer. The Sorcerer was available during the Early and Open Beta, while the Necromancer was only playable during the Open Beta.
In our review-in-progress of the Diablo 4 beta we wrote that all three of the initially available character classes in the beta were “pretty great,” saying of the Sorcerer, “The Sorcerer has a similar set of mostly long-range skills based on fire, electric, and ice attacks, but I found them to be better at controlling large groups of enemies (like with a chain lightning attack that zaps six enemies with every blast) rather than doing high damage to a single opponent. Plus, dealing elemental damage and freezing enemies in their tracks or lighting them on fire is great – they even have different death effects.”
We also called the Necromancer “among our favorites” out of the gate. “The fantasy of raising a private militia and making atrophy and death your wicked allies is wonderfully realized, and once I got aboard the dastardly train the Necromancer was all I wanted to play,” reviewer Travis Northup wrote.
A popular beta
Throughout the six days that Diablo IV was available, players invested over 61 million hours of gameplay, equating to a little over seven thousand years, and over two million players earned the Beta Wolf Pack.
With all those hours invested into the game, players managed to kill over twenty-nine billion monsters. But there were also forty-six million deaths recorded, with Ashava being the cause of ten million people dying and the Butcher being responsible for over a million players being killed.
I’m maining a Necromancer in the second round of the Diablo 4 beta and… I understand. Me and my skellies are going places. pic.twitter.com/h6mnBYHq1q
Even though both of these monsters were the main reason for many people dying, players managed to kill the Ashava over one hundred thousand times and the Butcher over five hundred thousand times.
With the rocky launch of Cyberpunk 2077 firmly in the rearview, CD Projekt seems to have fully bounced back from where it was at the end of 2020 both in good will and in financials, celebrating its second-best earnings year in 2022 despite no new major releases.
Per CD Projekt’s earnings report, Cyberpunk 2077 revenues were up 18% year-over-year in 2022, with 94% of the units sold being digital. That’s a pretty unusual figure in video games, which typically release to enormous unit sales and then see a steady but consistent drop over time. CD Projekt attributes the sales to their long-term work on improving issues with Cyberpunk 2077, as well as the success of the companion Netflix series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. And having The Witcher 3 around doesn’t hurt either.
CD Projekt expects to release a Cyberpunk 2077 expansion in the second half of this year, titled Phantom Liberty. One slide in the investor presentation indicates that a “marketing campaign” is planned to begin for the expansion in June.
Consolidated revenues for CD Projekt in 2022 reached 953 million PLN ($222 million), with 347 million PLN ($81 million) in net profit. Both revenue and net profit were the second-best in company history. CD Projekt says it has reinvested over 200 million PLN ($47 million) back into future development projects, including the recently “re-evaluated” multiplayer Witcher game codenamed Project Sirius from Molasses Flood.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
Tim Sweeney isn’t a fan of what blockchain has done to game development. Epic’s CEO bemoans “a whole generation” of computer scientists focusing on technlogy such as cryptocurrency, which he believes is impacting the core technology needed to make truly revolutionary game experiences
“There’s been a lot of neglect, as everybody’s going off…we’re missing a generation of computer scientists who would traditionally be pushing forward that set,” Sweeney says. “So, we’re trying to fill in the gaps in building the research team we have here. I think there are new genres of games that will emerge from the technologies that are just in the pipeline being built right now.”
Saxs Persson, Epic’s executive in charge of Fortnite’s ecosystem, agrees.
“I think it’s non-obvious because it’s not like the thing you put on screen right now, but most… all game engines really… commercial game engines, their architecture is what it’s been for, I don’t know, 20, 30 years,” he says. “Nothing really has changed. It has to change, or you’re just trying to squeeze more blood from that stone. The fundamental programming model has to change in order to break into beyond what battle royale really can do.”
The pair is fresh off Epic’s State of Unreal presentation, which last week saw the company unveil Unreal Engine 5.2 while rolling out new creation tools and revenue sharing for Fortnite players.
Speaking with IGN in an interview conducted during the Game Developers Conference [GDC], they talked about the potential of the Unreal Editor for Fortnite [UEFN] toolset, which they liken to an evolution of the modding scene that has birthed a host of new genres over the years. They also reflected on state of gaming tech in 2023, which is so heavily driven by Epic’s Unreal Engine.
Looking toward the future
Both are planning ahead, as they so often do, with Sweeney regularly bringing up the concept of the metaverse – a term that tends to serve a punchline in gaming circles, but makes more sense when paired with Fortnite’s flourishing ecosystem. Epic’s latest developments, which empower Fortnite’s creators while giving them a share of revenue, are intended to make good on the common sentiment that Epic’s battle royale is the real metaverse, though Persson cautions against calling it a “platform.”
“It’s not a technology platform; it’s a place people go to get entertained and we need to entertain them, and more and more of them. That’s the challenge: how do we find a way for people that don’t care about shooters? They should be welcome too…The real challenge for us is, in the maturation of Fortnite, is to embrace that we are much broader than just the day one shooter that was launched,” Persson says.
Epic recently announced a new revenue-sharing plan, setting aside 40% of the game’s net revenue for creators. Payments are based on overall engagement with custom islands and other creations. It’s a major change that seeks to push Fortnite further beyond the bounds of the battle royale genre.
But even as Epic looks to grow Fortnite’s ecosystem, fans are looking back with growing nostalgia for the original battle royale. When the UEFN tools became available, players immediately scrambled to remake the original Fortnite Battle Royale as it existed in 2018. Asked for his reaction to this development, Sweeney said “we have nostalgia for it too,” but that for him it “immediately highlighted a topic about intellectual property.”
How do we find a way for people that don’t care about shooters? They should be welcome too.
“You can’t just remake a Call of Duty map. And we were digging into what was happening with Fortnite Chapter One map, and we decided that was a really cool thing to happen because it was for Fortnite, so we gave permission to do it on a non-monetized basis. But I think the real innovations here have got to be an original new work, right?” Sweeney said. “Because some of these things… Works of nostalgia are cool, but most of the time they’re going to be other people’s work and they’re likely not going to give permission. And we really urge everybody to think about what can we really do to create news genres or games and really very original things”
Persson added that “nostalgia is often the first thing that comes to people’s mind when you get capabilities,” but that Epic “wants people to make their own [stories and characters].”
What they really want is something like what happened with Defense of the Ancients, better-known as DOTA, which was popularized by Warcraft 3’s map editor scene, or PlayerUnknown’s Battleground [PUBG], which sprang out of Arma 3. In fact, Sweeney says he recently ran into PUBG creator Brendan Greene at GDC, whom he credits with “really reinvigorating shooters.”
The problem, Sweeney claims, was that map developers on platforms like Warcraft 3 couldn’t easily profit on their creations, leading them to create standalone games elsewhere. It’s a problem that he claims Fortnite’s newly updated revenue-sharing system will solve.
“The tragic thing that happened there was, in order to succeed on their own scale, they had to leave their own ecosystem behind and build a new one. That’s a failure we don’t want to have in our system. We would love to be able to grow Fortnite and the financial opportunities for all creators, to the point where if you build a really successful game, you don’t have to leave and build it as a standalone game in Unreal Engine,” Sweeney says. “Now, you’ll be able to, and we’ll support you in doing that if that’s what you want. We really want the best opportunity to stay in this as we build the open metaverse together.”
‘Underestimating the opportunity’
Elsewhere, Sweeney says that he’s interested in further advances in proceduralism, calling the implications “really awesome.” He’s also impressed by the growth of content marketplaces, which are making it easier for game developers to obtain generic assets that allow them to save time. But there are still a lot of improvements to be made, he says.
“I think people are underestimating the opportunity for advances in the programming, language technology, and programming stack to improve the state of game development. Fortnite Battle Royale is 100 players because we can’t support more. That’s as many players as we can fit on a single server, on a single floor, on a machine,” Sweeney says. “We don’t have the technologies to scale up to lots of cores or a core data center. Nobody’s just built technology for doing that without really dire loss of quality in the programming model. I think there’s a lot of core computer-science level improvements that can be made there.”
With the release of Unreal Engine 5.2, though, Sweeney is hopeful developers will “jump right in” to the new tools.
Fortnite Battle Royale is 100 players because we can’t support more.
“I start using this month, and of course the pipelines… building a game of the caliber that uses this kind of tools is generally pretty long. But I think people can immediately use the procedural systems, the MetaHuman animator capabilities and these things, and they’re all just designed to take away the existing flows developers already use, make them more productive and higher quality. I think what the big impact you’ll see is that just quality goes up without an increase in cost or development time,” Sweeney says.
Persson claims that developers are already reaching out to him about the possibilities of the tech.
“The first demo we did with the Rivian R1T demo… two separate indie developers that were in the audience that I know both texted, and one of them was like, ‘That’s the workflow that will enable us to make the game we want. Taking custom-built areas, but turning them into procedural assemblies.’
“And the second one had a comment about MetaHuman and how this is what was missing for them to unlock the last bit of how they can make a range of NPCs, not just the one NPC that they could afford. I think that’s the beauty of it. A lot of these tools they lay upon workflows that already exist. They just make them more productive.”
That’s ultimately one of the biggest themes in the games industry right now: streamlining game development in a way that makes today’s increasingly ambitious projects more achievable. Otherwise, game development teams will be forced to continue scaling up in a way that’s unsustainable.
In the meantime, AAA developers are still working to unlock the secrets of Unreal Engine 5. While several Unreal Engine 5 games are currently under development, with others pivoting to the technology, it has yet to reach mass adoption.
We’ll see it gain more of a foothold later this year, with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl and Ark 2 among the games that will utilize Epic’s tech. For now, Epic will try to realize its dreams for the future elsewhere, with its new Fortnite ecosystem serving as the starting point.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
Microsoft has announced that the Xbox Games with Gold line-up for April 2023 includes Out of Space: Couch Edition and Peaky Blinders: Mastermind.
As detailed on Xbox Wire, the two Games with Gold offerings will be available to anyone with Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, with Out of Space: Couch Edition available first from April 1 to 30, and Peaky Blinders: Mastermind available later from April 16 to May 15.
If the title wasn’t obvious, Out of Space: Couch Edition is set in outer space. The aim of the game is to create resources and work out housekeeping systems to build a sustainable environment, all while dealing with a deadly alien infestation that has also settled in.
After exploring the vast cosmic arena, you might want to dive into the criminal underworld in Peaky Blinders: Mastermind. This puzzle-adventure game acts as a prequel of sorts to the first season of the TV show, with players taking control of Thomas Shelby and his cohorts.
