Category: IGN

Bethesda Softworks head Todd Howard knows fans are looking forward to Fallout 5, especially in the wake of the Prime Video show’s success, but he isn’t interested in rushing it out the door.

Howard opened up about the future of the hit post-apocalyptic RPG series during an interview with YouTube content creator MrMattyPlays. He says Bethesda spends a lot of time plotting out how to handle the direction of its franchises.

“For other Fallout games in the future, you know, obviously I can’t talk about those right now, but I would say, sort of rushing through them, or we kind of need to get stuff out that is different than the work we’re doing in 76…we don’t feel like we need to rush any of that,” he said. “The Fallout TV show fills a certain niche in terms of the franchise and storytelling.”

Blizzard Entertainment is teasing an Overwatch 2 Transformers crossover when Season 11 arrives in just a few days.

The quick tease arrives at the tail end of a new Season 11 trailer that premiered earlier today. It takes up so little space in the video that there’s a good chance many may have missed it, but those who stuck around to the end will catch the familiar Autobot logo and its iconic transformation sound effect.

That’s all we can see from what will inevitably become a full-fledged collaboration between Overwatch 2 and Transformers for now. Thankfully, this is far from the first time Blizzard has tied its hero shooter in with another property, so we at least have a few guesses about how the Autobot and Decepticon content will eventually roll out.

One of the earliest collabs saw One Punch Man skins making their way into the game, giving characters like Doomfist, Genji, Soldier 76, and Kiriko outfits themed after characters like Saitama, Genos, Mumen Rider, and Terrible Tornado. This same crossover event introduced additional anime-themed challenges, poses, voice lines, and more. Other crossovers brought IP like Cowboy Bebop, Diablo, and even Porsche into the fold, with each giving at least one character special skins for players to purchase and wear into battle.

While the Cowboy Bebop event saw Overwatch 2’s resident cowboy, Cole Cassidy, getting a Spike Spiegel skin, we can probably guess that some of Blizzard’s many robotic characters will be the ones gifted Transformers skins this time around. Our eyes are on heroes like Bastion, Orisa, Zenyatta, Ramattra, and Echo.

Overwatch 2 Season 11 drops June 20. While it’s unclear how and when the Transformers content will appear, today’s trailer gives players a look at a lot of the other highlights the forthcoming additions will bring. This season’s battle pass is Ultrawatch superhero-themed, introducing a long list of very ’90s, Power Rangers-like cosmetics to suit up with. Ashe gets the Mythic skin this time around, meaning her robot counterpart, B.O.B., gets some powerful new threads, too. Other promising additions include items that celebrate Overwatch 2 reaching the 100 million-player milestone, a new Push map called Runasapi, a Mythic weapon for Reinhardt, and a rework for the Colosseo map.

For more on how Blizzard is keeping Overwatch 2 up to date, you can read up on why the studio chose to remove its Hero Mastery Gauntlet PvE mode last month. Then be sure to check out our 8/10 Overwatch 2 review, where we said, “Overwatch 2’s switch to a 5v5 format breathes new life into what was once the sharpest shooter around. It just hasn’t quite recaptured all of that glory – yet.”

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

Warner Bros. Games’ long in-development Wonder Woman game appears to have suffered a leak stemming from an online marketing survey.

Users on Reddit and ResetEra posted concept art and a synopsis of the Wonder Woman game, currently in development at Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor maker Monolith Productions, based on this apparent survey. The concept art was subsequently removed from Imgur and various social media posts “in response to a report from the copyright holder.” It is unclear when the marketing survey was released. Warner Bros. declined to comment when contacted by IGN.

NEW look and concept art from Monolith’s WONDER WOMAN game pic.twitter.com/GH3IIyPqTY

— Wonder Woman Game Updates (@WWGameUpdates) June 16, 2024

IGN will not publish the leaked artwork or details, but the leak is worth being aware of if you’re hoping to go into the game completely fresh when it eventually comes out.

Monolith Productions is famous for Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis System, which in that game generates seemingly endless possibilities for the enemies you face, the way they act, and the stories that emerge as they face you again and again. The Nemesis System returns for Wonder Woman, Warner Bros. has confirmed.

Wonder Woman was announced in December 2021 with a brief teaser trailer and description. Warner Bros. has remained largely quiet on the project in the years since, although we do know Wonder Woman is a single-player action adventure set in a “dynamic” open-world, is played in third-person, and lets players become Diana of Themyscira in an original story set within the DC universe. Based on what we know of the game and what we’re hearing now, Wonder Woman sounds like a mix between the Batman Arkham games and Monolith’s own Shadow of Mordor.

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.

Bethesda Game Studios chief Todd Howard has responded to a backlash over Starfield paid mods, confirming the developer will look at its pricing model for Creations content.

On Steam, Starfield’s recent user reviews are now on ‘Mostly Negative’ after disgruntled players hit out at Bethesda for charging $7 for a single Starfield mission. The second mission of the recently released Trackers Alliance is only available as a Starfield Creation and costs $7, or 700 credits.

Creations are built via Starfield’s Creation Kit, and include free and paid-for mods. Creations include new missions, gear, skins, and weapons. Here’s the official blurb from Bethesda:

Trackers Alliance establishes the first of several missions enabling you to live your best bounty-hunting life. The first mission, The Starjacker will have you in contact with a mysterious Tracker located in settlements throughout the Settled Systems. From there, let the hunts begin!

The second Trackers Alliance mission, The Vulture is available within the new Creations menu. And what bounty hunter is without their trusted methods to get the job done?

FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki has said the studio may consider including “beginning to end, total co-op” in future games.

Elden Ring’s co-op summoning system can be a lifesaver for tarnished in need of a little help to take down a troublesome boss. However, its design leaves some pretty significant barriers to players hoping to enjoy a sustained co-op experience. For example, players are booted back to their own world rune arc in hand the moment the area boss is defeated, or as soon as they unceremoniously bite the dust. Summoning also prevents you from riding atop your trusty steed Torrent, which can make Elden Ring’s expansive open world seem a little too expansive on occasion.

To get around these limitations, Elden Ring’s modding community created the seamless co-op mod for the PC version of the game, which theoretically allows a band of up to five tarnished to complete the entire game from tutorial to conclusion in a single uninterrupted session. It’s a pretty significant overhaul of FromSoftware’s vanilla Elden Ring co-op experience, which removes the fog walls that ordinarily restrict a party’s movement, while ensuring that the death of a boss, or player, won’t boot your compatriots back to their respective worlds.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer ahead of htis month’s launch of Elden Ring’s first and only DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, Miyazaki revealed that he has no hard feelings over the unsanctioned multiplayer overhaul, or its burgeoning popularity.

“It’s definitely not something we actively oppose or want to downplay, wanting to go through the whole game together,” explained Miyazaki. “In terms of where we were with Elden Ring, it was simply a case of wanting that more loose, casual style — drop in, defeat a boss, drop out. It doesn’t put any technical restrictions on the player, it just sort of lets them complete this focus and then move on, so to speak.”

During the interview, Miyazaki revealed that FromSoftware may consider taking a more comprehensive approach to cooperative play in subsequent titles, which would prove to be a popular decision among the over 3.7 million PC gamers who have already downloaded the unofficial mod. “That’s not to say we won’t consider other ways, like you and your friend played, from beginning to end, total co-op — that’s not to say we won’t consider ideas like that with our future games,” said the FromSoftware president.

Shadow of the Erdtree is set to expand on Miquella’s story, and introduce a host of new enemies, bosses, weapons and fighting styles to FromSoftware’s hit RPG when it releases on June 21. Be sure to check out IGN’s comprehensive guide detailing how to get your tarnished warrior ready for everything that the DLC has to throw at you, and be wary of spoilers that have emerged online.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

When a game is trying as hard to terrify and unsettle me as Still Wakes the Deep is, and instead I mostly feel kind of bored a lot of the time, I start to question whether this type of experience simply doesn’t tingle my spine anymore. But digging deeper, there are a lot of specific reasons this feels like a lackluster attempt at that formula. It has almost all of the hallmarks of a creepy, Amnesia-style, first-person horror game with a powerless protagonist – the very same sort I’ve been playing and enjoying for almost 15 years now. But despite great dialogue, superb voice-acting, and a memorable setting, irritating level design and sometimes silly scenarios meant this dreary tale never fully got its Lovecraftian tendrils into me.

The premise is simple but promising: You play as Caz, an electrician on an offshore Scottish oil rig in the 1970s, diving head-first into a world that has been meticulously realized – from the period-accurate outfits to the technology to the delightful dialects of the cast. They even have dialogue subtitles and a full translation of the UI into Scottish Gaelic, a language with less than 100,000 native speakers, and I have to respect that. It clearly wasn’t going to boost their sales, so they must have included it for cultural or artistic reasons.

The rig, unfortunately for everyone on it, drills down into some kind of deep sea alien nonsense that starts transforming the environment and the crew into Cronenbergian body horror abominations, leaving poor Caz to traverse storm-swept decks and cramped corridors to try and escape. And damn, it is a beautiful game. From the weathered, hulking, industrial presence of the rig itself, to the unsettling infection spreading throughout it, to detailed weather effects that I could practically feel on my own skin, developer The Chinese Room has gone above and beyond in taking full advantage of Unreal Engine 5 here.

It’s a shame, then, that these environments end up being absolutely, tyrannically linear most of the time. Still Wakes the Deep feels like it absolutely hates the concept of exploration, and that got on my nerves. There is generally exactly one path, rarely more than an arm’s length wide, through any given area. The very beginning sequence allows you to collect some lore on your fellow crewmates by visiting their cabins, but never again was I rewarded for trying to go off the main track or snoop around in side areas – of which there really aren’t many to begin with.

Almost every door you find is locked, unless you need to be able to break it open for plot reasons. Outside that very beginning area, there are no hidden collectibles, not even stray bits of paper strewn about that give you more context on the story. A single six-hour playthrough, sprinting to the end, will show you 95 percent of everything there is to see. There are entire plot points that could have been resolved by someone being able to fit through a gap that looks easily big enough for their body.

And I know “yellow paint” being used to indicate interactable objects or the correct path forward has become a point of discourse again recently, but Still Wakes the Deep is like Yellow Paint: The Game. There is so much yellow paint everywhere that it almost starts to feel like a parody of the entire debate. They’ve gotten enough feedback on it, in fact, that the studio informed us the day I finished writing this review that it is planning to add an option to hide most of the paint at some point after launch. But I’m not sure that’s actually the main problem. The real issue is that the level design doesn’t seem to have any other way of indicating where you’re actually, physically allowed to go, so I think people would get hopelessly confused without it.

I’d commonly come across obstacles about the height of my shins that couldn’t be jumped over due to invisible walls. Why even give me a jump button then? Certain fences can’t be climbed, except at one specific point where they put a yellow blanket over one of them and now, magically, you can! And this happens basically everywhere. There is so little in-world logic to which areas can be traversed and which can’t, that I often needed the yellow paint to figure out what the hell they even expected me to do. It’s a very heavy-handed fix for a fundamental failing in the way areas are presented and laid out.

Gaps in logic extend to the story as well. In fact, one of the main emotional moments, which I won’t spoil here, is greatly undercut by the fact that it only happened due to the kind of willful, “Let’s split up, gang!” stupidity that you’d expect in a schlocky slasher flick or an episode of Scooby Doo. One developer described the story as “The Thing on an oil rig,” which is an unflattering comparison, as it only highlights the lack of intrigue and interpersonal drama that made that film a classic. The only characters you will have any meaningful conflict with have already clearly turned into monsters, for the most part. It doesn’t really dial up the paranoia.

And that’s where my biggest point of disappointment comes in: Still Wakes the Deep is not that scary. Not for a lack of trying, of course. I played it in the dark, with the windows shuttered, in 4K HDR, while using high-end, noise-canceling headphones – doing it as many favors as I could – as all horror games deserve to be experienced. But the fear I was hoping would grip me, like it did in previous games by The Chinese Room like Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, never arrived.

I even had to stop and ask myself if that was a sign I’ve just become completely jaded and inoculated to these sorts of “Amnesia-like” horror experiences. It’s hard to say. Certainly, this one doesn’t do anything new or surprising that might have put me on my toes right when I thought I knew I was in for. Sometimes you have to run from a monster down a corridor while it screams bloody murder behind you. Sometimes you have to sneak around through the vents, or throw a bottle to distract them. You pull some levers, turn some valves, and occasionally engage in some fiddly swimming and platforming. It’s all pretty familiar, uninspiring stuff to me at this point, which doesn’t really retain its impact when I’ve seen it so many times already. Someone completely new to this kind of game might find it more affecting, but I can only speculate on that, because I really didn’t.

There isn’t even anything I would really describe as a puzzle. It’s all going from one place to another and then interacting with clearly-labeled machinery. You never really even have to backtrack, except in a couple cases where one linear segment is just going through the previous linear segment in the opposite direction. I never even had to search for a door code or a key or anything like that. So Still Wakes the Deep not only discourages exploration, it doesn’t even want you to have to think too hard about how to overcome its obstacles, which makes it more underwhelming.

All the same, I did care about Caz and his crewmates. The voice acting, as I mentioned before, really is top-notch, with a cast of mostly Scottish actors speaking in authentic and evocative dialects. Few games are this effective at making me feel transported to a specific place at a specific point in time, and the backdrop of the tempestuous, unforgiving North Sea adds a lot to the experience – especially when the storms really start raging. And the great sound design only enhances this.

We learn a fair bit about Caz’s backstory and why he’s here, which lends heartbreaking context to his plight. The final moments are an emotionally-affecting payoff to his character arc, but once again, the stifling lack of anything approaching player agency throughout the story undersells it a bit. We’re watching someone else’s tale, through his eyes, but I never came to identify with him as strongly as I might have if at least some of these important choices had been within my control. I probably would have made the same choices Caz did anyway, but it would have been nice to have a choice.

Cyberpunk 2077 files allegedly stolen from developer CD Projekt Red in 2021 have appeared online and seemingly revealed scrapped missions set on the moon.

As reported by Insider Gaming, images which surfaced online of concept art, blueprints, file repositories, and map data appear to hint at what could be a cancelled expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 that would have taken players well beyond Night City. CD Projekt Red declined to comment on the alleged leaks when contacted by IGN.

The moon is an established hub in Cyberpunk 2077 lore and can be visited fairly simply for those with enough money. It features as a significant plot point in the Cyberpunk Edgerunners animated series but is only touched on briefly in the game, though off-planet locations are teased in a handful of missions.

The leaks allegedly come from the stream of stolen data hackers obtained from CD Projekt Red in 2021. Other content including a scrapped third-person build appeared at the time but these references to moon missions, if real, are the first to emerge in a long time.

It’s no secret CD Projekt Red scrapped a wealth of post-launch content for Cyberpunk 2077 after it launched in 2020 with myriad issues, however, including a multiplayer mode that will never see the light of day (but maybe in Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel).

CD Projekt Red thus switched its focus to fixing Cyberpunk 2077 though eventually released Phantom Liberty as its one and only expansion. This arrived after the game-changing Update 2.0, which completely revamped Cyberpunk 2077 with features such as a new perk system and improved AI, and was followed by another big update in 2.1 but only minor changes afterwards.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “Cyberpunk 2077 throws you into a beautiful, dense cityscape and offers a staggering amount of flexibility in how you choose to take it from there.”

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

Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has filmed the final video for his aptly named Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games YouTube channel.

As reported by Nintendo Life, Sakurai revealed on X/Twitter the recording of the final episode was now complete, though assured fans it would still be a while before it’s released. The famed video game developer announced in January that he’d be quitting YouTube sometime in 2024.

The list of impressive looking soulslike games on the horizon is long, with games like Phantom Blade Zero, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and Wuchong: Fallen Feathers all having solid showings this summer event season. But there’s always been something extra special about Black Myth: Wukong. It’s stunningly gorgeous, the animations are incredibly fluid, it’s steeped in rich Chinese culture, and there’s just something immensely satisfying about playing as a Monkey King and beating up all sorts of mythical creatures with a giant extendable staff. While this isn’t the first time IGN has gone hands-on with the game, it is my own personal first time with it – and after two hours of playtime with the opening chapter, I somehow walked away even more excited for its August 20th release.

IGN China has already done an extensive preview on what Wukong plays like on a late game build with many techniques, stances, and transformations already unlocked, which is great because my two hours covered pretty much the very start of the game. The first thing that I noticed as I started playing was how fluid and fast Wukong feels to control. Many soulslikes are built on a foundation of slower and more methodical combat, but Wukong feels exceptionally quick and agile. From the beginning, there’s actually no block button. Wukong can twirl his staff to block projectiles, but as far as melee attacks go, everything must be dodged. To that end, there’s a Bayonetta-style dodge system where you can dodge up to three times very quickly, but after the third one, you’re punished with a lengthy recovery time to try and curb people from just mindlessly mashing the dodge button.

Perfectly timed dodges will reward you with extra focus, and once your focus bar has been filled, you get a focus point that allows you to chain a strong attack into your light combo string for a big chunk of damage. Later on, those focus points can also be spent on different types of special moves that you unlock in the skill tree, which we’ll get to later.

Wukong also has access to a number of spells that consume his mana. I only really got to play around with the immobilize spell, which as you can imagine, stops an enemy in their tracks and allows you to sneak in a few free hits before the spell’s effect wears off. Stronger enemies and especially bosses are affected by the spell much less, and sometimes they were able to shrug it off entirely.

Even at just an early stage, combat was a fun dance of actively looking for opportunities to avoid enemy attacks and find openings to attack, keeping an eye on my focus meter so I could use a damaging heavy attack whenever I had a chance, while also managing my mana and cooldown for my immobilize spell. Eventually I got my first transformation, which turns Wukong into an absolute beast, with much stronger attacks, and a hugely damaging super attack that he can use out of a dodge if he manages to build up a focus point. One of his moves in this transformation is a lightning fast dash attack that made me feel like I had basically turned into the boss that I got the transformation from.

Later on I added another tool to my repertoire: the tower stance, which swapped out my chargeable overhead strong attack for the ability to stand on my staff and avoid damage on the ground as long as my stamina held out. If I managed to stay on the staff long enough for a focus point to charge, I could spend it to leap off the staff, flip it around, and come crashing down with a powerful strike that felt incredibly cool to pull off.

These stances, along with my general combat abilities, could all be upgraded through a level-up system that works a lot like Sekiro’s. As you defeat enemies, you’ll gain Will, which builds up a bar in the top right of the screen. When the bar is full, you gain a Spark, which can be used to purchase upgrades from one of your various skill trees. Once you fill the bar and bank a point, you can’t lose it. You can even add that skill point whenever you want, not just at a shrine, which serves as Wukong’s version of a bonfire-like checkpoint. However, if you die before you manage to fill the bar, a portion of that experience will be lost in typical soulslike fashion.

Don’t let that trick you into thinking that Wukong is an easy game though, because it certainly is not. Enemies are aggressive, bosses are relentless and even more so in their second phases, and you only have a scant few restorative potions to keep yourself alive. I also managed to find a secret boss room behind a waterfall that took me to a dragon boss that just absolutely wrecked me. Fortunately, you can teleport from shrine to shrine, so you can come back to him much later down the road once you’ve upgraded your gear and added some more points into your skill trees. And speaking of gear, I didn’t manage to find all that much, but I did find enough to at least know that there are sets of armor that grant extra bonuses for wearing multiple pieces of gear from that set.

The levels themselves were fairly linear with a couple of branching points that led to some sort of treasure or item pickup. The real star of the show, though, were the boss battles. Even in just two hours I fought against a wide variety of bosses, from a speedy wolf boss that I snagged my first transformation from, to a mule-kicking frog in human clothes, to an extremely difficult two-phased battle against a snake man.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed my time with Black Myth: Wukong. Even in just two hours of playtime, I felt like I got to experience a lot of combat progression and am excited to see how things continue to evolve as the game goes on. We won’t have to wait much longer to see how the full game shakes out, as Black Myth: Wukong releases on PC and PlayStation 5 on August 20.