Category: IGN

Shelley Duvall, the actress best known for playing unique and often eccentric characters, passed away today at age 75.

As The Hollywood Reporter writes, Duvall died in her sleep from complications of diabetes. Her life partner, Dan Gilroy, confirmed Duvall’s passing to the outlet. “My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us,” Gilroy told The Hollywood reporter in a statement. “Too much suffering lately; now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”

The First Descendant developer Nexon has issued a significant update for its popular looter shooter and explained some of its thinking behind the game.

Patch 1.0.2, out now across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, adds the promised matchmaking for hard mode Infiltration Operations, renames monster patterns, eases the punishing grind ever so slightly, and makes a raft of bug fixes. Other highlights include slowing down the speed at which the Instructor robot talks (which was too fast to keep up with, really).

As part of the patch notes, Nexon insisted it has no plans to nerf meta builds players are currently using to destroy bosses, called Colossi in-game, in just a handful of seconds. These sorts of builds, which revolve around character Gley and rare machine gun Tamer, were expected, Nexon added.

“It has come to our attention that the community is worried about possible nerfs to Tamer and Gley’s infinite magazine builds,” Nexon said. “This meta is very strong, but since it is within the scope of what the dev team has planned, there are no immediate plans to do so.

“In addition, some weapons are more powerful than Tamer and there are a variety of character builds that rival Gley’s infinite magazine, so please enjoy them fully. We’ve been looking forward to seeing Descendants use creative builds to take down powerful Colossi swiftly, so we’re quite delighted to see this in action now.”

There’s also an interesting note addressing community concern that the drop rates of certain much-needed items were not accurately displayed in-game. In short, some players felt that The First Descendant’s displayed drop rates were not the actual drop rates in gameplay, after many struggled to get these particular items as part of the free-to-play looter shooter’s punishing grind.

“We are well aware that as many Descendants begin farming in earnest, various discussions are taking place regarding drop rates,” Nexon acknowledged. “There is no variable drop rate system in The First Descendant. We are using the fixed rates displayed in the game.

“The dev team has reviewed the acquisition rates across all servers and confirmed that they are dropping according to the rates displayed. We are currently working on various measures to ensure the community can trust the dev team such as disclosing item drop amounts for each content. And we also prepare ways to improve the farming experience. The First Descendant will continue to communicate transparently and honestly.”

However, the patch does not address the The First Descendant’s ultra aggressive monetization, nor has Nexon explained the remarkable similarities between icons used in The First Descendant and Bungie’s rival looter shooter, Destiny.

Still, The First Descendant is pulling in players, with a peak Steam concurrent player count of 264,860 so far — enough to break into the top five most-played games on Valve’s platform. Microsoft and Sony do not provide player numbers for PlayStation and Xbox.

The First Descendant update 1.0.2 patch notes in full:

Content Improvements

– Added the ‘Start Public Operation’ function (matchmaking) to Infiltration Operations (Hard). ‘Start Public Operation’ is available even if you change the selected reward, but if you select an additional option, only ‘Start Private Operation’ will be available.

– Removed the sequential type Immunity Spheres from Named Monsters. They have been changed to either the default or extermination types.

– Increased the quantity of rare basic materials dropped from Encrypted Vaults three-fold. The Elite Vulgus that appear in Field Missions and Infiltration Operations will now drop them too.

– Reduced the time from two 90-second to two 60-second occupations for the Kingston ‘Vulgus Data Transmitter’ Hacking Mission.

– Improved the Battle Pass Battle Supply Shop button’s visibility by redesigning it in the format of the Bonus Shop banner.

– Updated the Library window from closing when the map is opened and closed through the Acquisition Information pop-up.

– Improved the duration of party invitation messages to make them easier to confirm and accept.

– Improved the duration of the Descendant Instructor’s lines.

– Moved the guide NPC you meet after first arriving in Albion closer.

Optimization Improvements

– [PC] Improved the stability of the shader preparation process by reducing the CPU load during shader generation.

Currently, we are actively monitoring this issue, and if you encounter issues with a 13th or 14th gen Intel, please refer to Intel’s official guide.

– [PC] Lowered GPU memory usage when set at High or higher quality.

– [PC] Fixed an issue where character skins were displayed abnormally in low graphics settings intermittently during extended play.

– [PC] Fixed a bug that allowed frame limits to be set when using Nvidia and AMD’s Frame Generation.

– [Common] Fixed an issue where shadows were intermittently displayed abnormally depending on the view.

– [Common] Made various other fixes for optimization purposes, and we will continuously monitor them.

Bug Fixes

(1) UI/UX

– Fixed an issue displaying unused items in the Library.

(2) Descendants

– Fixed an issue where Descendants could not get out of DBNO when their HP was below -100% from module settings.

– Fixed an issue where Kyle would occasionally go up into the air when using ‘Superconductivity Thrusters’ during ‘Repulsion Dash’.

– Fixed an issue where Esiemo could not get back up while using ‘Arche Explosion’ and being inflicted with Knockback.

(3) Modules

– Fixed an issue where the increase in Firearm ATK per stack in the ‘Sharp Precision Shot’ module was summed instead of multiplied.

(4) Equipment

– Fixed an issue where a weapon’s attribute damage did not apply damage over 100,000.

– Fixed an issue where higher values were displayed as the Ultimate (Gold) option despite the Reactor’s Skill Cooldown and Skill Cost stats being preferable with lower values.

– Fixed an issue where lower values were displayed as the Ultimate (Gold) option despite the Weapon Change Speed stat being preferable with higher values.

(5) Field

– Fixed an issue where ‘Amorphous Material Pattern: 118’ and ‘Shape Stabilizer Form 8’ were not dropped at ‘Frozen Valley: Vulgus Strategic Outpost’ in Fortress (Hard).

– Fixed an issue where Elite Vulgus in the White-night Gulch ‘Upper Hatchery’ Battlefield Missions did not drop rewards.

– Fixed an issue where monster spawning was interrupted at some Vulgus Strategic Outposts.

(6) Instance Dungeon

– Fixed an issue where Vespers resource box materials were dropped from Echo Swamp, Agna Desert, White-night Gulch, Hagios, and Fortress Infiltration Operation resource boxes.

(7) Research

– Fixed an issue where the core materials of Ultimate Descendants were incorrectly displayed as Rare instead of Ultimate Tier.

(8) Miscellaneous

– [French] Fixed an issue where the ‘Go to title screen’ menu was displayed with the same phrase as ‘Exit Game’.

– [French] Fixed an issue in the story where ‘Ultimate Chimera’ was used for ‘Dreadful Abomination’.

– [French] Added missing words in the probability display for Executioner Tier 3 Set 4.

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.

BioWare games feature implied nudity and sex scenes, as fans of the likes of Mass Effect and Dragon Age know well, but it sounds like upcoming action role-playing game Dragon Age: The Veilguard will take BioWare romance to a whole new level.

Game Informer confirmed topless nudity in the Dragon Age: The Veilguard character creator, which lets players customize their version of protagonist Rook. Veilguard game director Corrine Busche wouldn’t go as far as to confirm that this also means topless nudity features elsewhere in the game, but it very much sounds like that’s what players can expect. “This is a mature RPG,” Busche teased.

BioWare remained tight-lipped when asked if Dragon Age: The Veilguard also features “bottom nudity”, insisting it wants fans to find out for themselves, no doubt in romance scenes with the various party members.

There are obvious parallels to be made between The Veilguard and last year’s critical darling Baldur’s Gate 3. The latter became known not only for its deep romances (like in The Veilguard, Baldur’s Gate 3 player characters can romance any companion regardless of gender or race), but also for its sex scenes, including one involving a Wild-Shaping Druid that went viral.

Speaking to IGN last month, Busche said how sexually explicit the scenes are varies between characters. “Some of them are more spicy than others,” she said. “Just like real life, our companions have such diverse personalities. Some of them are more physical, more aggressive, and some of them are more… we have a gentleman necromancer, for instance, that is more intimate and sensual.”

BioWare has confirmed that The Veilguard will let you play as a human, elf, dwarf, or qunari. There are seven companions:

• Harding (Scout)
• Davrin (Grey Warden)
• Bellara (Veil Jumper)
• Taash (Dragon Hunter)
• Lucanis (Assassin)
• Emmrich (Necromancer)
• Neve (Detective)

Veilguard launches 10 years after the third game in the series, Inquisition, came out, and 15 years after the first game, Origins. Last month BioWare fully revealed Veilguard alongside its new name, with new info on the character creator and an extended look at gameplay. As part of our Summer Game Fest coverage, we were able to learn a lot about how The Veilguard will handle romance and player choice.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is currently slated to release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC in fall 2024.

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.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake features new story elements, Performance and Graphics modes on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, and more.

Speaking to Famitsu and translated by @Genki_JPN on X/Twitter, Square Enix said the classic role-playing game’s remake features several improvements for modern players while staying true to the original.

Perhaps most notably, Square Enix is adding new story elements to Dragon Quest 3, and while it’s unclear how significant these will be, everything was supervised by series creator Yuji Horii.

On the technical side of things, the RPG will support 4K resolution on PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC, though console players must choose between it and a 60 frames per second Performance Mode.

Players can also choose between two protagonist appearances and three difficulty settings. Myriad quality of life features will also be available, including autosaves (though manual saves are still available), the ability to speed up battle with the shoulder buttons, two camera modes, a mini map which can be toggled on and off, and an NPC conversation log which saves the last 30 interactions.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake otherwise features towns which appear like miniatures in the overworld in classic RPG fashion, monsters which can appear in towns, a day and night cycle, and more.

The game was announced as a recreation of the 1988 original and launches November 14, 2024, meaning it will arrive more than three decades later. The HD-2D style was coined when Square Enix released Octopath Traveller for Nintendo Switch in 2018, which had 2D characters moving through high quality backgrounds in a tribute to classic turn-based RPGs.

Breaking numerical convention, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake will be followed up Dragon Quest 1 HD-2D Remake and Dragon Quest 2 HD-2D Remake at some point in 2025.

In our preview of the game, IGN said: “The HD-2D foundation once again proves to be nearly foolproof when it comes to recreating that classic charm and a great way to modernize an old RPG that many would not have otherwise revisited.”

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

George R.R. Martin has revealed a set of new covers for A Game of Thrones and the entire A Song of Ice and Fire book series.

Revealed on his blog, the stunning new covers “capture the vastness of Westeros and the dangerous journey readers will encounter.” The five books are available in a boxed set and will be available online and in stores in October 2024, though no price was revealed.

“There is a raw and gritty quality to linocut and woodcut art,” the post continued. “A certain starkness that seemed to fit the stories, and a long history to the art form that felt right for this world.

“This cover design process paired linocut artist Mark Seekins and designer Tim Green, with art direction from David G. Stevenson. They worked together to develop sketches and carve the designs into blocks of linoleum, where the raised areas were inked and pressed onto paper. The covers feature several colors, which required separate blocks for each color layer. The finished prints were then photographed and incorporated into the covers.”

This boxset doesn’t include the entire A Song of Ice and Fire story, of course, as Martin famously, perhaps infamously, has yet to finish the final two books.

The next entry, The Winds of Winter, is so far 10 years late and seemingly making slow progress. Martin said in November 2023 that he’d written 1,100 pages of the highly anticipated book, the same number he’d written a year earlier.

No writer is blessed with producing a perfect first draft, of course, and Martin’s “writing” of The Winds of Winter will also encompass re-reading, re-writing, editing, planning, and so on, so there’s still plenty of work to be done without actually increasing the page number total.

Martin said in October 2022 the book was around three quarters of the way done, noting he’s completely finished some characters’ stories but still has others to weave throughout them. The overall progress of The Winds of Winter has become somewhat of an ongoing gag within the fiction community though, with even Martin himself getting in on the joke.

An estimated release window for The Winds of Winter was first given in 2011 when the previous book, A Dance With Dragons, was released, and Martin said it would take three years to finish at a good pace. That set expectations for a 2014 release date, but year after year, and delay after delay, Martin still isn’t ready to release the penultimate A Song of Ice and Fire entry.

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

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is one of three extra games to be offered to Amazon Prime members at no additional cost on Tuesday, July 16 and Wednesday, July 17.

Rocksteady’s controversial DC-themed live-service shooter joins Chivalry 2 and Rise of the Tomb Raider as Epic Games Store games available to download for a limited time: for 48 hours only from July 16 at 12am PT / 3am ET. It’s worth noting Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration, which is the version offered here, includes the base game and Season Pass content.

But Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is the headline as it goes free via Prime Gaming half a year after launch and hot on the heels of the delay of Season 2, which adds Mrs. Freeze as a playable character, to the end of July.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was of course panned by critics upon launch and has extremely low player numbers on Steam. Some of the frustration stems from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League not being another Batman game from Rocksteady, despite being set within the Arkhamverse. The developer’s single-player Arkham series is much-loved by fans, with 2011’s Batman: Arkham City in particular held up as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, superhero video games of all time. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, on the other hand, is a live service third-person shooter in which Batman is a villain. Soon after the game’s February 2024 release, publisher Warner Bros. admitted the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League contributed to a $200 million hit to revenue.

Last month, Warner Bros, told IGN that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will see out its first year of support, but declined to comment on what happens afterwards.

Prime Day’s Prime Gaming Lead-up titles already include Deceive Inc., Tearstone: Thieves of the Heart, The Invisible Hand, Forager, Card Shark, Heaven Dust 2, Soulstice, Wall World, Hitman Absolution, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and Call of Juarez available to claim now, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 – The Sith Lords, Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and Samurai Bringer, all available to claim starting today, July 11.

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.

Nintendo really woke up this morning and chose chaos by dropping a deeply upsetting short teaser for what seems to be a new horror game. We’re not sure of the title just yet, but it might be called Emio, or possibly Smiling Man.

What the heck was that? Nintendo fans are baffled. There are almost no details as to what this “Emio” thing is. Apart from the trailer, the only other info we have is that Nintendo tweeted about it across its U.S., Europe, and Japanese accounts this morning with the hashtag #WhoIsEmio?. There’s an official Nintendo website, too, which just features the creepy dude standing there and occasionally, briefly, changing his expression. And we’ve confirmed that the kanji in the background of all these teases reads “laughing man” or “smiling man.”

So why is everyone so worked up about this? It’s not necessarily that there’s anything abnormal about teasing a work of horror like this. Plenty of films and games have played up horror elements by being deliberately vague and sudden in their reveals. But Nintendo is, uh, not exactly known for that kind of thing! It’s just out of character for them to surprise drop a trailer for what seems to be an M-rated horror game on a random Wednesday morning with no other context.

We don’t even know who’s making Emio. People are speculating that based on the fact that it has an official Nintendo website, this may be a first-party game, which would be even more out of character for Nintendo. That said, a number of individuals have pointed out on social media that noted horror developer Bloober Team announced just two days ago it was working on something called “Project M,” which is apparently coming to Nintendo platforms and is expected to be announced this year. Could this be Project M? Or something else entirely?

Whatever the case, we’ll have to wait to find out, but the prospect of a new horror game made by Nintendo, of all companies, is an exciting one to imagine. Until then, we’ll have to make do with Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

San Diego Comic-Con is back in full force this year (and so is IGN’s livestream), taking place from July 25-28, and we’re just starting to get a good idea of the movies, TV shows, and games that will be holding panels this year.

Headlining the early announcements are movies like Transformers One and TV series like The Boys, The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, Rick and Morty: The Anime, Dexter: Original Sin, various Star Trek shows, and more. And although it hasn’t been officially announced yet, Marvel Studios is expected to return with another jam-packed Hall H panel, which has been held on the Saturday evenings in past years.

This year’s convention should be a return to form after SDCC 2023 was heavily impacted by the writers’ and actors’ strikes, making it difficult for most big stars to appear and promote their upcoming projects. 2022’s convention saw panels for Marvel, DC, HBO, Prime Video, and much, much more.

Keep in mind that official announcements have only started to roll out, so there’s still plenty that will be revealed in the coming days. We’ll update this article as they come in with panel times and official description, but in the meantime, here’s everything we know so far: