Category: Video Games

17-Year Halo Veteran Sparks Fan Concern After Departing Franchise With Ominous Message About Not Trading Away ‘Ethics or Values,’ and Promising to Explain More ‘When It is Absolutely Safe to Do So Next Year’

Glenn Israel, a 17-year veteran of Halo game development, has announced his departure from the series via a startling message that has left fans worried over the future of Xbox’s flagship shooter franchise.

Originally an artist at Bungie, Israel ultimately served as an art director at 343 Studios (now Halo Studios), with contributions to a long list of Halo projects from 2009’s Halo 3: ODST, through Halo: Reach, Halo 4, Halo 5 and Halo: Infinite.

Now, however, Israel has announced he is “officially no longer contributing to the Halo universe” via a post on LinkedIn, and updated his profile to indicate he departed Halo Studios this month.

“As of today and after 17 long years, I am officially no longer contributing to the Halo universe,” Israel wrote. “There is little more I can say for the moment, though I intend to share this particular story in its entirety when it is absolutely safe to do so next year. In the meantime, I have a message for anyone and everyone who needs to hear it.

“I know that the state of our industry seems dire, but never forget that you are *free to choose*. No illusion of security nor promise of wealth or fame or power is worth trading away your health, your dignity, your ethics or values – and no one can force you to. Stay strong, take evidence when necessary, and find where you belong.”

Needless to say, Israel’s statement has prompted concern and confusion among Halo fans, at a time when the future of Microsoft’s once-emblematic series is far from certain.

Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer has previously suggested that a new Halo project will launch in 2026, with the expectation being that this is the previously-reported Halo: Combat Evolved remaster that will also see the series launch on PlayStation for the first time.

Fan hopes are high ahead of a much-trumpeted announcement due later this month where Halo Studios has said it will be “sharing more about what we’ve been working on” since it revealed a first look at the franchise’s transition to Unreal Engine 5 exactly a year ago.

With all this in mind, however, fans now say the timing of Israel’s departure seems particularly ominous, with Halo Studios on the cusp of revealing what it has planned for the franchise’s future, and just a few weeks after the quiet departure of Halo Studios chief of staff Melissa Boone.

For Microsoft, meanwhile, which has suffered a tumultuous year marked by layoffs and increasing fan dissatification around price rises, Israel’s public statement likely couldn’t have come at a worse time. Though more worrying still, perhaps, is the developer’s statement of sharing a more detailed account at a later date.

IGN has contacted Microsoft for comment.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Arc Raiders won’t force you to give up all of your progression via mandatory wipes, at least for now

Right, it’s that time again. Get ready to slide back down the ladder of powerfulness, because mandatory wipeage is required to stick everyone back on the same trajectory ahead of [insert new thing here]. No, say the developers of shooter Arc Raiders. They will not bow before the mandatory wipe gods at this time, instead trying out a voluntary wipe system dubbed Projects.

Yep, rather than leaning on the same unavoidable resets which plenty of extraction shooters and survival games employ to ensure newbies aren’t always guaranteed to run into folks with more levels someone playing a platformer in a regularly-stopping elevator to the sun, Embark Studios plan to do their own thing.

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Switch 2 Bundles Get A Surprise Price Drop At Select French Retailers

Well that’s… unexpected.

Yes, you read that headline correctly, rather than pushing the prices up to match what we’ve seen everywhere else in the industry of late, select EU retailers appear to be cutting the cost of Switch 2 consoles and bundles (thanks for the heads up, My Nintendo News).

Amazon France was the first retailer brought to our attention to be implementing such a cut, with the Mario Kart World Switch 2 bundle and pre-orders for the Pokémon Legends: Z-A option now down to €469 (a 6% drop from the previous €499,99). Standard Switch 2 purchases are currently sold out on the online storefront, but French outlet Nintendo Town reports that it has seen the same discount and is now listed at €419.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

As Datamining Begins, Fans Warn That the Pokémon Legends: Z-A Spoiler Floodgates Have Now Opened

With a week to go until the official launch of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, fans have issued a warning over online spoilers, as datamined details from the game have begun to leak online — including word of even more new Mega Pokémon.

Pokémon Legends Z-A is due to launch on October 16 for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, but already there’s evidence of early copies filtering out into the wild. And now, as of this morning, IGN has seen evidence that the game is actively being datamined to extract its secrets.

To date, The Pokémon Company has revealed just a handful of the new Mega Pokémon expected to make up the game’s final roster of fresh Mega species. And while an older leak had listed out many of the still-to-be-confirmed Mega Evolutions, there’s evidence today that even more creatures may be included than first expected.

In response to all this, Pokémon fans have now begun signalling that anyone hoping to go into Pokémon Legends: Z-A without seeing spoilers should be mindful of where they click online over the next few days — or log off social media completely. (IGN will not be spoiling any of the new species here.)

Set in Kalos, home of the Mega Pokémon mechanic, Pokémon Legends: Z-A adds the first new batch of superpowered creatures to the franchise’s Mega Pokédex in over a decade, although no all-new Pokémon species are expected.

New Mega Evolutions include the majestic-looking Mega Dragonite — which has also now made its Pokémon anime debut — plus Mega Victreebell, Mega Hawlucha and Mega Malamar.

Post-launch, Pokémon Legends: Z-A will unlock Mega Evolutions for each of the three fully-evolved Starter Pokémon, available via online play: Delphox, Greninja and Chesnaught. And beyond that, you can already buy Pokémon Legends: Z-A: Mega Dimension, a paid DLC which will add two new Mega Evolutions for Raichu.

Indeed, some fans have complained about the costs of obtaining every Mega Pokémon announced so far, something which requires more than $100 to obtain the base game, DLC and a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

How many other new Mega Evolutions will Pokémon Legends: Z-A include? We’re about to find out.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Potential BIOS dive aside, Battlefield 6 goes surprisingly easy on PC hardware

Battlefield 6 marks the first time, in all my years of hardwaring, that I have been summoned to someone’s house in order to make a PC game work. I can’t offer this Jim’ll Fix It service to everyone, not least because IGN’s lawyers have issues with the name, so I’ll just say this: Enabling Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 is inconvenient, but not as fiddly as it sounds, and can be done with at most a couple of toggles in your BIOS/UEFI’s Security section.

As it turns out, that’s probably the worst of BF6’s hardware worries. I don’t know who forgot to tell DICE that all FPS blockbusters must now be callously demanding graphics card shin-kickers, but in both the campaign and multiplayer, this seems to run quite… well? Likely well enough that as long as you’re on any reasonably modern rig, you might not need to do much twiddling with the visual settings.

Still. Let’s have a go at it anyway.

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EA Exec Insists Players Won’t See Anything Made by ‘Very Seducing’ Generative AI in Battlefield 6

EA has insisted players won’t see anything made by generative AI in Battlefield 6.

The use of generative AI is one of the hottest topics in the video game industry, with the pressure on publishers to cut costs and speed up development in order to boost profits despite the risk of backlash from some fans. Indeed, according to a report by The Financial Times, EA’s new prospective owners (the ones who just spent $55 billion to take the company private) are betting on the use of generative AI to do just that.

And EA itself, even before it was bought out, had signalled that it was all-in on generative AI, with CEO Andrew Wilson insisting AI is “the very core of its business.”

For now though, at least when it comes to Battlefield 6, generative AI is taking a backseat. Rebecka Coutaz, general manager of original series developer DICE in Sweden, and Criterion, the UK studio now also a part of what’s collectively called Battlefield Studios, told the BBC that while generative AI “is very seducing,” currently there is no way to work it into the developers’ daily work.

However, Coutaz clarified that generative AI is used in preparatory stages “to allow more time and more space to be creative.”

EA’s approach here for Battlefield 6 is in contrast to Activision’s for Call of Duty. Call of Duty has suffered a number of generative AI controversies in recent years, including the now-infamous six-fingered zombie Santa bundle. Earlier this year, Activision was forced to add an ‘AI generated content disclosure’ to the Steam page for Black Ops 6 after Valve changed its storefront rules.

Based on Coutaz’s comments, and the current lack of an AI generated content disclosure on the Battlefield 6 Steam page, we won’t see something similar in EA’s rival first-person shooter.

In August, Treyarch associate creative director, Miles Leslie, suggested generative AI images had made their way into Black Ops 6 by mistake.

“We live in a world now, where there are AI tools,” Leslie told IGN ahead of Black Ops 7’s reveal at Opening Night Live 2025. “I think our official statement we said last year, around Black Ops 6, is that everything that goes into the game is touched by the team a hundred percent. We have generative AI tools to help us, but none of that goes in-game.

“And then you’re going to say, ‘Yeah, but it has.’ I’ll say it has by accident. And that was never the intention. We’ve come out and been very clear that we use these as tools to help the team, but they do not replace any of the fantastic team members we have that are doing the final touches and building that content to put it in the game.

“So everything you play: human-created and touched. AI tools in the world we live in: it’s, how do we streamline it? That’s really the goal. Not replace, but streamline.”

It’s worth noting the Black Ops 7 Steam page does include the AI disclosure.

But will Battlefield Studios’ stance on generative AI hold for much longer, especially with EA’s new owners breathing down its neck? In the interview with the BBC, Coutaz sounded optimistic about the use of the tech going forward. “If we can break the magic with AI it will help us be more innovative and more creative,” she said.

The debate over generative AI is bigger than in-game assets. Earlier this week, Nintendo issued a statement in response to claims around generative AI, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman calling Sora 2 copyrighted character videos “interactive fan fiction.”

Last month, the famously litigious The Pokémon Company formally responded to the use of Pokémon TV hero Ash Ketchum and the series’ theme tune by the Department of Homeland Security, as part of a video showing people being arrested and handcuffed by law enforcement agents. “Our company was not involved in the creation or distribution of this content,” a spokesperson told IGN, “and permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Bribe pigeons into criminal acts with infinite bread in The Bench later this month

Altruism is a funny concept. Most of us can agree that bestowing a generous gift of greening shelf-stable bread-like product on the local park pigeons is a nice thing to do, but what of the knowledge that moulders in the back of our minds all the while, telling us: keep this up long enough, and you’ll definitely end up with a loyal army of skyborne scavengers willing to enact your every destructive whim at a mere flick of your wrist? Feed them the really good bread, they might even let you throw them at things. From super seeded, to superceding god. Here’s the trailer for The Bench.

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Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter Update Adding “Image Quality / Performance Settings” On Switch 2

A first-person perspective, too.

Following last month’s release, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is now getting updated to Version 1.05 on the Switch and Switch 2.

Perhaps, most notably, the Switch 2 update will add “image quality and performance settings”. Additionally, there is also a first-person perspective mode. Here’s the translation from the official Falcom website (via Gematsu):

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Switch 2 Launch Title Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster Updated (Version 1.0.2), Here Are The Patch Notes

Improvements, adjustments, bug fixes and more.

The Switch 2 had all sorts of third-party support at launch, and one of these titles happened to be the Square Enix role-playing game Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster.

This remaster comes loaded with not only the main adventure but also brand new minigames utilising the Joy-Con 2 mouse mode. Now, Square Enix has released the Version 1.0.2 update.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com