Brandon Sanderson and Brotherwise Games have been hard at work producing Cosmere tabletop games since 2020. In addition to board games, the first core rulebooks for a full-on Cosmere RPG launched just last year after a very successful crowdfunding campaign. And now in 2026, the highly anticipated Mistborn expansion is up for preorder.

The Mistborn Handbook, Campaign Guide, and Welcome to Scadriel guide are available to buy at Amazon with a November 4 release date.

The Mistborn Handbook is the main thing you'll need if you want to build characters in either era of Mistborn. You'll also get some general guidance for GMs building out a campaign in the world of Scadriel. Since it is a Mistborn game, there's also a focus on the metallic arts of allomancy and ferochemy you wouldn't get from the Stormlight characters.

While the handbook is essential for the basics of the RPG, you'll still need the campaign guide to insert your characters into a realistic setting from the books. You can choose to play a campaign through two different Eras, with consequences that 'echo across the centuries'. Your campaign through Mistborn Era 1 is designed to be played through levels 3-6 while Era 2 is designed for levels 3-9.

In addition to these two core guides, you can also pick up the smaller 24-page welcome guide. This book is designed as a visual guide for beginners and new players to get up to speed on what to expect from the world of Scadriel before they start playing. This is ideal for introducing players who maybe haven't read any of Sanderson's Cosmere books yet.

This Isn't the First Mistborn Tabletop Game

This upcoming expansion to the Cosmere TTRPG isn't Sanderson's first attempt at a Mistborn game. In fact, it's not even the first attempt at a TTRPG for the series. Back in 2012 Crafty Games produced the Mistborn Adventure Game, which was a tabletop adventure set in Era 1 of Scadriel. There were additional expansions and books released for this game, but it's mostly been forgotten with the release of Brotherwise Games Cosmere RPG.

More recently, Brotherwise has also released a Mistborn Deckbuilding game that is actually quite good. We gave it an 8 out of 10 in our review, calling it a "refreshing offering among its deckbuilding peers" and an easy recommendation for fans of Mistborn.

Grand Theft Auto 6 fans believe its nudist resort was inspired by a real-life location, and its owners are already being bombarded with problematic reviews.

As if there was ever any doubt, GTA 6 fans are all over Rockstar Games' new video game. They've measured oxygen levels in hopes of predicting big reveals, showed up for Netflix announcements, and now, they've discovered what they believe was the inspiration for one of the many locations they'll visit in-game this November: Kissimmee, Florida's Cypress Cove Nudist Resort (via GamesRadar).

Fans tracking down the locations behind some of their favorite video game levels is nothing new; Arc Raiders fans did something similar in January. But where the sleuthing for some games has often resulted in real-world positivity, Cypress Cove Nudist Resort isn't enjoying the increased visibility brought by GTA 6.

"For anyone wondering about the suddenly recurring references to 'Jason Duval,' 'Lucia,' binoculars, a pool, firearms, and other suspiciously similar details — those are references to Grand Theft Auto VI," the site owner said in response to just one of the many reviews that have shown up on the Cypress Cove Nudist Resort Google page recently. "Yes. A video game."

The owner, which has already taken what action it can against the reviews, said the influx of reviews is a "coordinated series of fabricated posts using GTA VI references." They then allege that some posts were followed by requests that the rest "pay money to have the reviews changed or removed."

Their message continued, stating, "we will not pay" and "we will not negotiate," confirming it had "documented the reviews and the request for payment." It added, "This activity is being reported through the appropriate channels."

"For our actual guests and anyone researching Cypress Cove: please understand that these posts do not describe genuine guest experiences at our resort," the Cypress Cove Nudist Resort's Google representative said. "And to whoever is behind them: We appreciate the commitment to the GTA storyline, but Cypress Cove is located in Florida — not Leonida."

GTA 6 fans first caught wind of an in-game nudist resort not from Rockstar but from leaks that polluted the internet last month. Despite the lack of an official showing, early footage provided enough information for watchers to piece together how the developer might have pulled from the real world for its upgraded version of Vice City.

Whether this is the location Rockstar looked to or not, it seems that, for the most part, GTA 6-related reviews have been scrubbed from the Google page, but the site owner's message can still be found on a few of the more suspicious messages. These include references to leaks, such as a man who "pulled out his binoculars." One posted yesterday directly referenced GTA 6, saying, "Will be trying to book a reservation on Nov. 19th. I will be playing GTA 6 for three days straight while nude in my RV. Shout out to Rockstar for showing me this gem of a place!"

November 19 is, of course, the long-awaited release date for the new Grand Theft Auto game. The 13-year wait has led to lots of excitement, for better or worse, as players prepare to pick it up on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. GTA 6 fans were also able to track down the location they suspect inspired Jason and Lucia's apartment, although it is safe from any kind of review bombing.

Citizen sells an entire line of Star Wars themed watches based on its well-established Eco-Drive platform and two of the more popular models are on sale today during the Jomashop End of Summer Clearance Sale. For a limited time you can save up to 45% off either the Citizen Luke Skywalker Chronograph Blue Dial Men's Watch or the Citizen Rebel Pilot Chronograph Black Dial Men's Watch, both with free shipping. They normally retail for $475 a piece.

Save Up to 45% Off Citizen Star Wars Eco-Drive Men's Watches

Polyarc Games, the developer behind the critically acclaimed Moss games, has announced it is shutting down.

The Seattle studio announced it is ceasing operations starting today, September 11, 2026, with a post on LinkedIn. It's a shock announcement that will see the company close its doors after 12 years.

"After nearly 12 years riding the joyous rollercoaster of emotions that is making video games, our time together has come to an end," Polyarc said. "As we wind down active development, we are saying our farewells to each other.

"Working together over all of these years has been an honor. Bringing surprise and delight to those who played our games has been a privilege. Thank you to everyone at Polyarc, our work is now finished. Polyarc has been home to exceptional developers across all disciplines.

The post then signed off, encouraging game developers looking for talent to hire members of its team. The full list shared with the message totals 29 names, including artists, designers, animation experts, engineers, and more.

"Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey," Polyarc signed off.

Polyarc developed and published its first title, Moss VR, in 2018. An action-adventure puzzle game starring a small mouse named Quill, the game was well-received by critics and fans alike. IGN gave it an 8.5/10 upon its release, saying, "Quill and her fantastical world of Moss are instantly likable. This storybook action-adventure makes stellar use of VR."

We also found 2022's Moss: Book 2 to be found similarly enjoyable. In our 8/10 review, we said it "builds upon its predecessor nicely with a captivating world and entertaining platforming, let down primarily by the PSVR’s aging tech."

In 2023, Polyarc released Glassbreakers: Champions of Moss, a more tactical take on the series. A non-VR version of both Moss and its sequel, Moss: The Forgotten Relic, was released just two months ago in July 2026. It also received an 8/10 from IGN.

"Moss: The Forgotten Relic is an incredibly charming fairy tale, and aside from a couple of minor issues, this is a very smooth remake that doesn’t feel compromised by breaking free of its VR-exclusive origins," we said at the time.

Polyarc is, unfortunately, far from the first studio closure in 2026. PlayStation's Bluepoint Games and Dark Outlaw Games were both shut down earlier this year. Ubisoft announced it was closing some of its studios in June. The list goes on, with Netflix also shuttering Oxenfree developer Night School just last month. GreedFall developer Spiders shut down in April. Microsoft announced plans to cut 3,200 staff in July.

Magic: The Gathering’s next set is the world-bending Reality Fracture, which centers around an alternate universe with twisted mirror versions of many the game’s characters (available for preorder at Amazon). We’ve got an exclusive look at two new cards from the set, and while they are a little less twisted than others, they are both pivotal to the story that plays out (so here’s a spoiler warning if you were waiting to read that first).

The first card is a key object in Reality Fracture: The Echoverse Fulcrum. This Mythic Rare legendary artifact is meant to merge universes together, but its functional effect is a board wipe with a little bit of card selection attached.

Colorless cards have had plenty of conditional board wipes like this before, but to my eyes, the low initial mana cost and immediate benefit of drawing and then discarding a card could make this one more broadly useful in a format like Commander. Five mana to activate its ability and only at sorcery speed are both real drawbacks, but that’s easier to stomach when you’ve already gotten something (admittedly minor) out of it.

The other card we are revealing depicts the final moments of Reality Fracture’s hero-turned-villain, Jace. Vraska’s Final Mercy is a Rare sorcery that can either be a removal spell or effectively draw you two cards as it either strikes down or builds up Jace himself.

The first mode’s most immediate parallel is Infernal Grasp, which also destroys a creature at the cost of two life. There are some important differences, though: Vraska’s Final Mercy also hits planeswalkers, but it is severely hampered by being a sorcery instead of an instant, and the mana cost is much more demanding with two black pips.

The second mode’s easiest point of comparison is probably Night’s Whisper, though there are caveats here as well. In addition to the same mana cost difference, the Empower Jace mechanic means you are only able to draw one card the turn you play this and the other on your next turn. It also gives you the flexibility of giving a big boost of loyalty to your Jace token for other shenanigans, and the ability to Surveil if you want to that instead of draw, but not drawing two cards right away is quite rough.

So while it’s arguably worse versions of two similar cards stapled together, it’s not one to fully count out when it comes to stuff like Draft or Sealed, because having options is always powerful in Limited formats like that. My guess is that this card, like The Echoverse Fulcrum, won’t make a ton of waves outside them, but it is an interesting design all the same – and the story moment it depicts makes it quite a flavorful one.

Reality Fracture arrives on MTG Arena on September 29, followed by its tabletop release on October 2, with pre-release events kicking off on September 25. This is the capstone to a story that’s been building for multiple years now, and the last Magic-themed set before it goes back to Universes Beyond with a Star Trek expansion later this year.

This was very nearly a 10/10 week for trailers. On top of two Nintendo Directs that delivered, the first trailers for the slates of the early fall film festivals like Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York have started dropping with some really strong stuff in the mix. On top of that: M. Night Shyamalan’s first post-Trap movie (which some people are already theorizing to be a Sixth Sense sequel) and some early October TV thrillers. Read on for the trailers worth watching this week. (And check out last weeks’ batch too.)

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake

Adventure through Hyrule and become the Hero of Time when The Legend of #Zelda: Ocarina of Time releases Nov 5 on Nintendo Switch 2. #NintendoDirect pic.twitter.com/rW3r7o2L9r

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 8, 2026

This week’s first Nintendo Direct focusing solely on the Ocarina of Time remake provides an extended gameplay look AND an official trailer. It’s lookin’ pretty one-for-one (mixed feelings, for me!), but we also found 40 differences that you can read all about. There are no bench-sitters on this matter: Do you like the updated art style or not?

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time Remake releases on Switch 2 November 5. Read about everything that was announced at The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Nintendo Direct.

Metroid Ravenous

It’s eat or be eaten when Metroid Ravenous, the latest game in the 2D Metroid series, arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 Jan 28! #NintendoDirect pic.twitter.com/3yOE6L5X1R

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 9, 2026

I was doing the Vince McMahon meme, falling back and out of my chair (OK, I didn’t), when this trailer aired in the second-day Nintendo Direct. Of everything shown off, the 2D Metroid Ravenous, the followup to 2018’s Metroid Dread, had me (and my colleagues live-reacting on NVC) most hyped on everything from the saturated art direction to the brief story tease. Pissed-off Samus, coming through! My girl is hungry!

Metroid Ravenous will release on Nintendo Switch 2 on January 28, 2027. Read about everything else announced during the Nintendo Direct.

Kirby and the World Beyond

Kirby and the World Beyond releases spring 2027 on Nintendo Switch 2!

Get ready to explore the World Beyond using Copy Abilities in Kirby's latest 3D adventure. #NintendoDirect pic.twitter.com/JLtr5271Aa

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 9, 2026

This was maybe not the thing most people were expecting to close out the Day 2 Nintendo Direct (it was NOT a Trojan horse for a new SmashBros.) , which is a bit unfair to Kirby because this does look kind of great! Kirby finally gets a 3D open-world game

Kirby and the World Beyond will release on Nintendo Switch 2 in spring 2027.

Godzilla Minus Zero

The sequel to 2024’s excellent Godzilla Minus One is finally right around the corner. The first trailer doesn’t give too much away — two years have passed, Godzilla still lives (because of course he does) — but apparently the three-headed King Ghidorah will make an appearance. I’m looking forward to seeing what an Oscar-winning VFX team can do with a kaiju faceoff!

Godzilla Minus Zero releases in theaters November 6.

Carrie

If you think you know her story, you’re dead wrong. All episodes of Carrie, a new series from Mike Flanagan, premiere October 7 on Prime Video. pic.twitter.com/e21yA4nj4E

— Prime Video (@PrimeVideo) September 9, 2026

2026 has already been Prime Video’s year of the hit high school and college age series (see: Off Campus, Sterling Point), but Carrie will, uhhhh, be a little different than those! It’s Mike Flanagan’s long-awaited Carrie adaptation, rejiggered for a very of-the-moment story about high school girls. TBD on the amount of fake blood used throughout, but I’m getting the sense that it’s a lot.

Carrie releases on Prime Video October 7.

You Can See Everything

The Telluride Film festival had been teasing a secret screening, and it ended up being You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder’s first feature film project that he made alongside Lance Oppenheim, whose first fictional feature Primetime is also coming out this fall. For this, Fielder lived with Elizabeth Holmes for 34 days before she reported to her 11-year prison sentence for the Theranos fraud. Everything about this documentary seems nuts, including the borderline horror vibes the first trailer gives.

You Can See Everything releases in theaters October 16.

Artificial

Another controversial movie! This one’s Luca Guadigno's Sam Altman / OpenAI biopic, à la The Social Network, that Amazon shelves for being too mean. Luckily ?? picked it up and did not hesitate to release it. (?? timing with the news that AI might have a non-zero chance of wiping out humanity.) I gotta say, in just two minutes Artificial seems just as mean-spirited as promised. Yay!

Artificial releases in theaters on December 25.

Remain

Jake Gyllenhaal is in love with a ghost in this first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's new movie, written by Nicholas Sparks (yep, The Notebook guy). Or... maybe Phoebe Dynevor isn’t a ghost? Get cracking on your theories now, folks.

Remain releases in theaters February 5, 2027.

Below

There’s something in the water.

Josh Hartnett, Charlie Heaton and Mackenzie Davis star in BELOW. A suspenseful new thriller set on the rugged coast of Newfoundland. Premiering October 8. pic.twitter.com/WkqXp3CnG5

— Netflix (@netflix) September 10, 2026

There’s something in the water! And what’s a giant iceberg got to do with it? What does it want with Josh Hartnett and Charlie Heaton, both doing some pretty intense Newfoundland accents? Below seems like it’s following in the footsteps of Widow’s Bay, where a small seafaring town gets rocked by unseen forces, though this one plays like a straight thriller.

Below releases on Netflix October 8.

Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming to real-life Miami after a city meeting resulted in the approval of a "discreet" – and controversial – marketing campaign.

The City of Miami Beach gave the OK for the famed game developer to bring GTA 6 to the area September 10, 2026, following a 4-3 vote in favor of the decision. The meeting saw strong arguments on both sides, with the deal promising that Rockstar will pay at least $3 million to the city as related logos and branding populate the town from October 15 – December 31.

GTA 6's Vice City setting is, of course, based on the very real Miami, Florida, and Rockstar is looking to capitalize on that. Arguments against the move touched on the violence of the Grand Theft Auto series, which, as stated by Commissioner David Suarez, allows players to "steal cars, deal drugs, commit robberies, murder civilians, and assassinate police officers."

"That's their right. They can make it, they can sell it, and they can advertise it, but that doesn't mean that the city of Miami Beach has to help them do it," Suarez argued. "We ask our police officers every day to put themselves in harm's way, protecting this community. We spend enormous resources fighting drugs, violent crime, and disorder, and we've spent over a million dollars over the past three years on a spring break marketing campaign trying to move Miami Beach away from an image of chaos and lawlessness.

"Now, we're going to take our beaches, one of the most recognizable symbols of this city, and turn them into a space for Grand Theft Auto. What kind of message are we sending to the world?"

Later, Suarez added, "I don't think that this is worth what they're offering. I don't think it's worth really anything." Commissioner Matteo-Salinas fell on the other side of the fence. Her vote to approve Rockstar's GTA 6 marketing campaign came from her desire to represent gamers – herself included.

"I play GTA," Matteo-Salinas said. "I played it in 1997 when the first game, the Vice City version, came out, and I'm going to play it again when this one comes out, and I'm not going to play the game and then go on a crime spree. That's not what this is about."

Commissioner Joseph Magazine agreed, arguing that, although "Grand Theft Auto isn't for everyone" and "there are certainly aspects of the game we likely don't want associated with the values" of Miami Beach, "we also have to deal with reality." He added, "I can walk and chew gum at the same time."

"This will be the biggest and most anticipated video game launch in global history, and whether we embrace this partnership or we reject it, millions and millions of people around the world are already going to experience a fictionalized version of Miami Beach through this game. We have no control over that. That spotlight's coming."

How exactly GTA 6 will take over Miami Beach in October was not revealed. However, commissioner Laura Dominguez did tease some of what's on the table.

Rockstar will not plaster logos on city property, such as lifeguard stands or in "iconic public spaces." She said Grand Theft Auto will be advertised "discreetly" with the city's marketing partner, the Boucher Brothers. As mentioned by X/Twitter user @GTAVI_Countdown, the Boucher Brothers is a company Rockstar has parodied before, with its in-game spin instead called "Sol Sisters."

Dominguez added that, through the October – December marketing window, Miami citizens will spot things like "Vice City or 'VI'" on things like chairs and umbrellas. It suggests the words "Grand Theft Auto" won't be visible in any official capacity, with the commissioner also saying that Rockstar will not be permitted to advertise GTA 6 during the city's Art Basel, which is scheduled to take place the weekend of December 4.

"I think the city has done our part to make sure that our brand is protected but still keeping with the importance of the massive global reach that gaming has today, and the city is going to be receiving a couple million dollars," Dominguez said.

She added with a smile, "If there's wiggle room to negotiate more, let us know."

Dominguez mentioned that the deal with Rockstar will give the City of Miami Beach money that is "critical." How exactly the $3 million will be dispersed was not detailed, but Commissioner Tanya K. Bhatt expects the total benefits to produce a number closer to $4 million. She said, "[GTA 6] is coming to Miami Beach with or without us, and to pretend that it isn't is a missed opportunity."

One item on Bhatt's mind when the money comes in is Florida's Flamingo Park. Rockstar's financial support could "in and of itself" pay for a Flamingo Park Memorial Football Field renovation project that is currently slated for next year but lacks proper funding.

"Our city manager and those of us who have engaged have been very clear that this is not to be an in-your-face marketing campaign," she added. "It is very discreet, understated, [and] mostly the Roman numeral six, which most people won't even understand. They'll go around calling it 'V' or 'VI,' probably."

GTA 6's release date falls directly in its Miami Beach marketing window with a November 19, 2026, launch. It will be available for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. IGN recently got in touch with Rockstar to learn more about how its new take on the series will be worth the wait, resulting in an interview and preview following its big Netflix extended look reveal.

Some fans have recently argued that Rockstar's latest almost looks too realistic for its own good. Others are mostly just concerned with making sure they're able to grab one of the new limited edition PS5 controllers.

We’re back for another installment of our The Long Game series, where we focus on things you can invest in early in games that will pay off in the long run. Today we’re diving into Star Wars Zero Company, the turn-based tactics game from Bit Reactor that drops you into the twilight of the Clone Wars.

Zero Company gives you lots of ways to customize your team, including a variety of specializations (aka character classes), different weapon types, weapon mods, and equippable items that can define each character’s playstyle. You can swap all of these things at the Den at any time, giving you flexibility and allowing you to experiment with different builds for characters and teams.

But regardless of what builds you use, there are some things you’ll need to get a handle on no matter what. Zero Company is a great introduction to the turn-based tactical genre, but it throws a lot at you during its tutorial missions. If you’re new to the genre, it can be tough to remember everything or realize how important some of the basics are.

That’s what we’re here to help with today. These are four things that you can utilize from the opening chapters all the way to the end of the game, and mastering them early can really help your missions run smoothly.

Overwatch Is Your Friend

Aggressively attacking on your turn is a big part of combat, but don’t forget about Overwatch. It’s available on every turn to almost every member of your team (notably not the Padawan or Astromech droids). It allows you to create a cone-shaped area on the battlefield, and that character will automatically shoot at an enemy that moves or takes an action in that area.

So when you’re in a situation where every enemy is hiding behind cover and you don’t have enough AP to flank them, Overwatch can come in clutch. It lets you attack enemies during their turn when they run out into the open. But pay attention to the colors of your Overwatch cone as you’re creating it. Blue sections are areas where you’ll shoot at enemies, but grayed out zones are blind spots where cover is blocking your line of sight, meaning you won’t fire a shot at an enemy in that zone.

Overwatch is capable of extending over a significant distance, but the longer you extend, the lower your accuracy will be. You can see your percentage chance to hit as you’re choosing where to place your cone, and it will continually drop by 5% the farther you reach. So you want to find a happy medium, where you’re covering enough space to be confident an enemy will run into that area, but not extending so far that your shots will probably miss.

Overwatch is particularly useful when enemy reinforcements are on the way. You’ll get on-screen prompts letting you know where they’re coming from, so you can set up firing squads and greet the arriving enemies with blaster bolts before they ever have a chance to attack. It’s also important to remember that putting a character into Overwatch will use all of their remaining AP, and the number of enemies they can fire at is equal to how much AP they spent. So you can attack up to three enemies with one character’s Overwatch if you position it well.

Bringing Backup Builds Bonds

The tutorial missions will introduce you to the Call for Backup system, but it might not convey just how pivotal this will be for the whole game. In every turn of combat, a member of your team will get the ability to request backup, where you can choose any teammate to pair up with and attack the same enemy back-to-back.

The character that can request backup is random on each turn, and they’re noted by an icon you can see on their portrait in the bottom left corner of the screen. You should make use of this on every turn, because it’s a free attack that costs no action points. And even better: the backup character’s attack is guaranteed to hit.

The only caveat is that both characters need to have line of sight on the same enemy in order to pull off a combo attack. Once you’ve chosen an ally to back you up, you can double check their status in the top right corner of the screen when you’re lining up the first attacker’s shot. If the backup character doesn’t have line of sight, it will say so. If they do, it will say “Assisting,” meaning they will successfully attack.

There are many strategic uses for these assisted shots. The assisting character will follow up on any attack, not just a regular blaster shot. There are multiple specializations that have extra powerful attacks, and assisted shots will fire after those too. You can use this to pile up a ton of damage at once on exposed enemies, which is especially useful against ones who can counter attack, since you want to finish them quickly. Or since the backup shot is guaranteed to hit, you can use it to finish off an enemy that’s low on health and is trying to hide far away behind cover.

The biggest long-term benefit of backup shots is that they gain bond points for the two characters who team up. In Zero Company, the progression of your characters is defined by their bonds. Bond levels will allow you to choose cross training to give the same benefit to both characters, which is how you’ll add to their stats. If you use backup on every turn, you’ll gain bond levels very quickly, and reaching max bond can unlock build-defining boosts, so you want to get there as early as possible.

Make Sure to Take Advantage

Advantage is a resource shared by the whole squad that powers some of your best abilities. Whenever you damage an enemy, whether it’s with a regular shot or a utility item, you gain Advantage. So that means if you hit three enemies with a grenade, you get three Advantage all at once. Your current Advantage is displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen, and it maxes out at 10.

There are upgrades you can purchase in the Den that let you start every battle with some Advantage already banked, which can help you start combat with some momentum, especially if you’re a fan of Cly the Mandalorian. And if you’re in a multi-part story mission, your Advantage points will carry over from one phase to the next.

If you plan things well, it’s very easy to build up Advantage quickly, so you don’t need to be shy about using it. And remember that characters can still use their Advantage abilities even after they’ve used up all their AP for that turn. Different ultimate abilities use a different amount of Advantage, so pay attention to how much each costs so you can use them effectively.

Some abilities that use Advantage, like the Soldier’s Rocket Strike or the Assault’s Sweeping Salvo, are for straightforward damage dealing. Others, like the Medic’s Morale Boost or the Heavy’s Bulwark, are for support or to manipulate the enemy. But they’re all useful in the right hands, and you should use them frequently.

Equip Your Utilities

Utilities are items you can equip on characters at the Den. Unlike Advantage, they’re specific to the character they’re equipped on and can’t be shared with teammates. When the game begins, characters will have one utility slot, but you’ll unlock more as you progress.

At the start, most of your utilities will be consumables you can use in combat, like grenades or medpacs. These have limited uses, so you’ll want to pick your spots wisely, but they can swing momentum in a fight when used at the right moment.

As the game goes on, the variety of utility items will increase, giving you access to items that can boost stats and help boost your build. There are items that give you extra defense, increase movement distance, improve your accuracy, increase crit chance, and make you immune to certain status effects. And there are even secondary weapons that unlock unique attacks, like flamethrowers, gas canisters, and scatter guns.

You’ll get utility items as rewards for operations and tactical missions, some of which will be randomized. You can also buy them from the Black Market, which you’ll unlock early in the game, and you can use Den upgrades to increase the odds of getting rare ones. Higher tiers of stat-boosting utility items can give you significant buffs, so don’t ignore them. And don’t forget to equip them either, they don’t do any good just sitting in your inventory.

And there you have it, four tactics that you’ll be able to make use of throughout the whole game. If you’ve been playing Star Wars Zero Company, what have been some of your favorite builds? Let us know in the comments. For more coverage of Zero Company, check out our review and what we wish we knew before starting. And for future entries in The Long Game series, stay tuned to IGN.

Article authored by IGN Global and presented by Charles Schwab. IGN Global and Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. are separate, unaffiliated companies.

We now have our hands on the Nintendo Switch 2, a new console from one of the biggest names in gaming. Alas, a new console is only as valuable as the library of games you can build on it.

Thankfully, Nintendo hasn't been shy about planned releases over the next year. In the second half of 2026, we'll be getting our hands on a mix of Switch 2 exclusives, third-party releases, and the benefit of backward compatibility with any games still launching on the original Switch. Without further ado, here are all of the new Switch 2 games we can look forward to in 2026 and beyond.

All Upcoming Switch 2 Games With Release Dates

RuneScape: Dragonwilds (September 15, 2026)

RuneScape got a bit of a makeover with this new open world crafting and survival game that was initially released last year, and is finally coming to Switch 2 this fall.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave (September 17, 2026)*

We finally have a release date for the next game in the Fire Emblem series, which already happens to be available to preorder. Here’s a snippet of what to expect from the official Nintendo listing: “Worthy fighters from all over the land have come to Dagsion, the capital city of the Dagdan Empire, to compete in the Heroic Games for the chance to win one wish. Among the combatants are four heroes tied to the fate of the world.” You can learn more about how the game balances those four heroes in our hands-on preview.

This is an IGN opinion piece from Matt Purslow, who has been there from day one for every PlayStation generation since the PS2. He loves the style of narrative single-player adventures that Sony's studios have historically championed.

It’s impossible to know how PlayStation bosses felt after seeing many critics walk away from Insomniac’s Wolverine with an apathetic shrug. A sub-80 on Metacritic is infamously considered a disaster in the triple-A space, and so Sony certainly won’t be thrilled, but it would be easy for the company to brush this away as an uncharacteristic miss. Even Capcom, across its near decade-long hot streak, put out the middling Exoprimal, after all. However, that would require wilfully ignoring the sad reality that PlayStation Studios is currently far from fertile ground for single-player adventures.

What was once the miracle recipe behind Uncharted has now become the de facto template for almost every Sony project, resulting in an incredibly polished homogeneous mass. It’s a video game design rulebook later refined by the likes of The Last of Us and God of War: lavish cutscenes, approachable combat with a light sprinkling of RPG skills, sneaking through waist-high grass to perform simple stealth takedowns, and filling a rage meter to trigger an ultimate ability. Ten years ago, this was all incredibly exciting. Five years ago, it was comfortingly familiar. Today, it’s wearing thin. Never has it been clearer that PlayStation Studios needs to find the next evolutionary stage of the “traditional” video game. Never has it been clearer that it needs its next Metal Gear Solid, the revolutionary Hideo Kojima game that defined what we could expect from PlayStation back in 1998.

Now would be a very good time, then, for Sony to cancel Hideo Kojima’s PlayStation-exclusive spiritual successor to Metal Gear Solid.

“In mid-June of this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the Physint project,” explained Kojima in a recent social media post. The project is now, in a bizarre twist of fate, being financed by PlayStation’s direct competitor, Xbox. That itself is a whole cursed kettle of fish – it’s no doubt a kick in the teeth for the recently disbanded stealth specialists at Arkane to see Microsoft invest untold millions in a Kojima espionage game – but when it comes to PlayStation, the brand has cut ties with a distinctive creative powerhouse at a time when it’s in desperate need of a distinctive creative direction.

First announced during a Sony State of Play in early 2024, Physint was described as “a completely new 'Action Espionage' for the next-generation.” That specific wording, of course, is intended to evoke Metal Gear Solid, which sports the tagline “Tactical Espionage Action” across each of the series’ logos. The intention was crystal clear: Sony and Kojima were working together on a successor to MGS, and PlayStation would be the place to play it.

There are several obvious reasons why a new Metal Gear Solid in all but name would be good for PlayStation (and now stands to be good for Xbox). The name “Kojima” is pretty much as important as the MGS brand itself, and so a new Kojima game is potentially good business. The team at Kojima Productions are talented creatives, and so Physint has a high chance of being a critical success. And, perhaps most important, culturally speaking, Kojima’s “walking simulator” Death Stranding series has proved divisive, and so PlayStation Xbox gets to be the stage for his glorious return to the genre he’s so beloved for.

But there was more to this union than cultural “victories” and brand recognition. PlayStation has never felt more stagnant. The PS5 has been something of a disaster generation for Sony, and while there are numerous terrible business decisions to talk of – from Concord to physical media to pay-extra-to-stand-your-console-vertically – I believe one of the most crucial problems is that the PlayStation identity has begun to crumble. Historically, PlayStation has been the place to play exceptional, elite-tier single-player games that were constantly on the cutting edge of the medium. It’s a near-30-year reputation that goes right back to 1998’s Metal Gear Solid. But since the PS5 arrived in 2020, it’s been near-impossible to find the brand’s historic innovation in cinematic adventures. Somewhat ironically, Kojima’s own Death Stranding 2 is the alarming outlier.

Four of this generation’s major first-party exclusives – Ghost of Yotei, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, and Horizon Forbidden West – are almost indistinguishable from their PS4 predecessors when it comes to how they play. Never mind the fact that there is significant overlap between each game’s design language; there’s a real sense that this generation has done little to advance the art form that so many buy a PlayStation for. The age of the glittering PlayStation exclusive – the “genre” that helped elevate the PS3 out of arrogant mediocrity and define the PS4 – feels well and truly over.

There was no guarantee, of course, that Physint could have been the miracle cure to reverse the rot. But if there was any project that could have reignited PlayStation’s spark, a spiritual successor to Metal Gear Solid directed by the man who started it all is the one I’d have put money on. Kojima is famously bold – his bizarre meta experiments in the early MGS games are the stuff of legend, and there’s no arguing against the fact that Death Stranding was an exercise in wild creativity, even if a big walk wasn’t your idea of a good time. If anyone was to be the spearhead for a new generation of PlayStation single-player, it was undoubtedly Kojima.

Just as important, though, is the nostalgia and trust in Metal Gear Solid. While Physint will surely (hopefully) build atop MGS’s achievements with creative new ideas, the fact that it’s an “Action Espionage” game provides it with just enough franchise energy that it’s not as risky as betting on a completely original idea. Physint is a much safer bet than Death Stranding ever was (even if connoisseurs know that the gulf between Death Stranding and MGS 5 is about as wide as a pencil).

In this way, Physint potentially could resemble the recently released The Blood of Dawnwalker, an RPG developed by The Witcher 3 developers which plays a lot like The Witcher 3, but features an innovative time pressure system that puts a new spin on choice and consequence. It sold over a million copies in just two days. In parallel, we saw Capcom’s Onimusha: Way of the Sword – a game that similarly blended a familiar base with fresh new ideas – also sell a million copies in 24 hours. It’s clear that people are hungry for something new, but that it’s easier to secure a sale if there’s some kind of connection to a prior experience. Physint could have been that for PlayStation. Now, it’s the project that could help define Xbox’s Project Helix generation.

Of course, a million copies in a day or two could well be considered small fry by PlayStation. It’s never been more apparent that money is the driving force behind Sony’s gaming division, and Kojima’s recent financial results could have poisoned the well. Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Japanese consultancy firm Kantan Games, recently said that Sony’s choice to pull out of its deal with Kojima Productions may well be due to the “steep” sales drop-off between Death Stranding and its 2025 sequel. Recent figures from Alinea Analytics suggest Death Stranding 2 has sold just 2.5 million copies – an understandable decline, considering a sequel to a divisive game about delivering packages across dangerous terrain was naturally going to be niche at best, but not the ideal outcome for a project that cost millions and took half a decade to make. Physint’s budget would likely eclipse Death Stranding 2’s, considering Kojima’s estimate in 2025 was that the game was still 5-6 years from completion, and its promised ambition no doubt demands increased investment. It’s the kind of situation that repels the spreadsheet suits at a corporation like Sony.

But the big picture question remains: if Kojima returning to the espionage genre that helped define PlayStation in the first place isn’t the correct move, then what is? If Sony doesn’t want to invest in arguably one of the most obvious solutions to push its signature single-player games forward and break its creative stalemate, then what will define the PlayStation 6? Sony’s own actions would suggest live-service – the company has continually attempted to break into the market and establish its own never-ending multiplayer game that can print money for a decade. And yet, despite millions invested, it has almost nothing to show for it. Concord is dead. The Last of Us Online cancelled. Destiny 2 wrapped up. Horizon Hunters Gathering sent back to the drawing board. No one’s playing Marathon, and even Sony’s one live-service victory, Helldivers 2, can’t command the attention it once did. It’s hard to see a good reason to buy a PlayStation 6, because it’s hard to see what PlayStation even means anymore.

Sony, of course, is about to bathe in what will surely be the biggest river of money in its lifetime thanks to Grand Theft Auto 6. Its exclusive marketing deal with Rockstar has done a phenomenal job of making it appear that GTA 6 is a PS5 exclusive to the casual eye, and so the biggest game of all time will no doubt bankroll PlayStation into the future. But GTA 6 only reinforces the question of PlayStation’s identity; right now, GTA's next online iteration is merely an assumption, and so the untold millions of copies sold on November 19 will have been bought to access a single-player video game. The constant survival of solo play despite decades of naysayers claiming multiplayer would wipe it out is something that can’t be ignored, and has there ever been a better home for single-player adventures than PlayStation? It’s an identity Sony would be foolish to squander.

Physint wasn’t necessarily the answer to PlayStation’s woes. Perhaps, if recent reports regarding Kojima’s approach to budget and deadlines are to be believed, it would only have caused more problems. But the question of PlayStation’s identity still needs an answer, and so, as Kojima departs for Xbox and Sony bosses continue to chase the live-service dragon, there’s never been more pressure on Naughty Dog. It feels like Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet has to be an Uncharted-like revolution that propels PlayStation single-player into a brave new future. Because if it relies on lavish cutscenes, approachable combat with a light sprinkling of RPG skills, sneaking through waist-high grass to perform simple stealth takedowns, and a rage meter that triggers an ultimate ability, it’s game over.

Fans are potentially saving as much as $20 on their preorder of the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake for Nintendo Switch 2.

The game is already $10 off at Walmart and Amazon, but we've now seen multiple reports of shoppers getting another $10 knocked off at Walmart by using a specific promo code.

That code is SAVE3X, and we decided to put it to the test ourselves. Fellow Senior Commerce Editor Chris Reed successfully preordered the game with the code, bringing his total down to just $49.88. Unfortunately, our Senior Social Producer Seth Macy wasn't so lucky when he tried it himself. Womp womp.

So, this is very much a YMMV situation, but it's certainly worth trying if you're planning to pick up the remake anyway, especially if you want that rather lovely limited-edition "textured foil" cover art.

Rockstar Games has released its opening note in the employment tribunal to determine the fate of the 31 GTA 6 developers it fired last year, and in doing so has revealed the extreme lengths it goes to in order to prevent security breaches.

The hearing, which got underway yesterday at Glasgow Employment Tribunal, revolves around allegations made by the Independent Workers of Great Britain union (IWGB) — allegations Rockstar strongly denies. The IWGB claims the staff were unlawfully blacklisted and targeted for their union activities, and that the manner in which they were dismissed was also unlawful because it came without disciplinary process or right of appeal.

Rockstar has insisted it fired the staff because they leaked GTA 6 game features via Discord, not because they were trying to unionize. 34 members of staff at Rockstar were dismissed — 31 in the UK and three in Canada — sparking protests outside the office of Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland, and parent company Take-Two in London.

Rockstar maintains that at the time of the dismissals it didn’t know that the people it fired were involved with a union. As for the Discord comments at the heart of this case, Rockstar says they had to do with GTA 6 features, overall progress and timelines to launch, as well as company IT security protocols. Rockstar believes that if the Discord comments had leaked they would have been big gaming news and might even have affected Take-Two’s share price. When Rockstar officially announced that GTA 6 would be delayed by six months to November 19, 2026, the market value of Take-Two plummeted $3.75 billion in a single day.

In its note, Rockstar goes into detail on the intense scrutiny it is under as developer of GTA 6 — predicted to be the biggest entertainment launch of all time — and how it works to prevent security breaches.

“Guarding the secrets of the unique gameplay and design are akin to Apple protecting the iPhone or Coke protecting its formula,” Rockstar said, adding that it adopts “the security posture of a Wall Street bank.”

Rockstar’s secrecy is well-known within the industry, as are the security breaches it has faced in the past. Last month it suffered one of the most high-profile video game leaks in history when GTA 6 gameplay was published online ahead of the game’s Netflix gameplay reveal. But that was just the latest in a string of leaks that have affected GTA 6 over its decade-long development.

In April 2025, Rockstar dismissed an employee in Lincoln, UK, who it alleged disclosed confidential information about GTA 6 to a third party who then published the information to social media. Rockstar dismissed an employee in the U.S. in November 2023 and another in India in November 2025 for two separate acts of information leaking.

“The standards and expectations regarding information security and privacy are exponentially beyond that of most employers,” Rockstar continued in its opening note. It said all visitors to Rockstar’s offices must sign non-disclosure agreements, and any contractors working on site are escorted, while there, by security. Remote working for employees is severely restricted. Flash drives / USB keys and other external storage devices are banned. Photography at work is strictly forbidden. Employees’ personal laptops, tablets and phones are blocked from connecting to the Rockstar systems. Rockstar staff are ordered not to disclose confidential information even to family members.

“The Respondent’s [Rockstar's] detailed Social Media Guidelines confirm that even innocuous pictures of an employee’s desk could unacceptably reveal confidential information,” Rockstar said. The company faces regular attacks on its security and systems, and was forced to put privacy films on its buildings after drones were used to try and photograph through office windows. Staff have been harassed online, Rockstar said. Rockstar employs a full-time team of five investigators and a director to monitor for and investigate potential data leaks. Its employees face phishing and social engineering attacks seeking to trick them into giving up passwords and login credentials.

“Some of those attacks have been successful,” Rockstar said, including a 2022 leak of dozens of videos of unfinished development footage of GTA 6. That was obtained through phishing, which gave a hacker access to an employee’s computer and from there, material shared on Rockstar’s own internal Slack communication channels.

“The history of leaks has made the Respondent hypervigilant to lock information down as tightly as possible,” Rockstar added. “Most recently, in the last few weeks, a hacking group attempted to blackmail the Respondent,” Rockstar said, referencing the CyberLeek breach. “If any more proof was needed that the Respondent’s sensitivity to security and confidentiality is justified, it is the wiping of $2 billion from the Respondent’s parent company’s share value within a few days as that recent hack became public.”

“The Claimants were all aware of this culture, referencing it numerous times on their own Discord posts,” Rockstar said.

Rockstar’s note goes on to discuss the extreme levels of scrutiny it is subject to, pointing out the frequency of coffee shop trips by employees and pizza deliveries to the Rockstar offices have been monitored by fans, and traffic volumes by its workplaces were allegedly tracked in a bid to get an inside track on the GTA 6 release date.

It also noted how in 2025 two innocuous tweets from employees sparked a (mistaken) fan theory that a new GTA 6 trailer would be released on December 27, 2025 as a precursor to sales of the game itself. “The theory snowballed from the backwaters of the internet to industry and mainstream coverage around the globe,” Rockstar said.

The hearing runs until October 16, a month before GTA 6 comes out. The workers want reinstatement or, failing that, compensation, as well as a finding from the tribunal that their dismissals were unfair. The IWGB alleges that on the day of the dismissals, employees were called into meetings, told they were being fired with immediate effect and escorted from the building. Workers who were not at the office allege they were informed during phone calls lasting around two minutes before being locked out of their work accounts. The IWGB also alleges that one of the dismissed workers, Will Mesilane, had to leave the UK and return to Australia after Rockstar withdrew his work visa and reported him to the Home Office, without giving him a chance to appeal.

In a statement issued to IGN, a spokesperson for Rockstar Games insisted the studio was ready to defend itself from the claims. The statement is below:

“Rockstar Games' position has been clear and consistent throughout. Individuals across the UK and Canada were dismissed for gross misconduct following the sharing of confidential company information, not because of alleged trade union membership or activity. We reject the claims and will defend them vigorously before the tribunal.”

Jason Lewis, former Rockstar employee and IWGB Union member, commented: “For almost a year, the truth about what happened to us has been buried by Rockstar and surrounded by speculation. Now we finally get the chance to put it on the record. None of us imagined that talking to each other about our working conditions would turn our lives upside down and catapult us into the centre of a global media storm. As the world prepares for the release of GTA 6, we are reliving the heartbreak of being thrown out of a project we poured so much of our lives into. We lost our jobs, our income, our community and the chance to see the game through to release after spending years helping to build it. It was devastating.

“We have fought tooth and nail to get to this point, not just to be able to win justice for ourselves, but to draw a line in the sand for any employer that thinks it can attack workers for unionising. It has been an emotional journey and it is not over yet, but we can now see the finish line, and justice at last feels within reach.”

Last month, the fired Rockstar workers told fans they shouldn’t boycott GTA 6 to protest on their behalf, but buy T-shirts launched to raise money towards their legal costs instead. Alex Marshall, president of the IWGB, said: “We believe Rockstar has tried to get away with Grand Theft Employment Rights. After a year of fighting to get answers, we hope this tribunal will finally back them into a corner and bring the truth to light. As the world gets its first proper look at GTA 6, this hearing will give people a chance to look behind the scenes at what happened to the workers who helped make it.

“That is why this hearing matters for every worker across the UK, whether their job is in entertainment, education or anywhere else. It is a moment to send a clear message to each of them: you have the right to join a union, that right is protected by law, and employers cannot punish you for exercising it.

“If Rockstar can get away with firing workers for organising, then every employer in Britain gets the message that they can do the same. We cannot let that happen.”

Meanwhile, negotiations are ongoing between Rockstar and the IWGB over formal union recognition, even amid this legal battle. The union wants greater pay transparency, protection from post-release layoffs, an end to "crunch," and improved flexible working arrangements, it’s said. If an agreement is reached, Rockstar would become the biggest recognised unionised game studio in the UK. Workers hope to secure recognition before the release of GTA 6.

Photo by Lesley Martin / AFP via Getty Images.

Sony's decision to walk away from its deal with the legendary Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima for upcoming PlayStation game Physint was reportedly the result of budget concerns and missed deadlines.

That's according to a fresh Bloomberg report that details some of Sony's thinking behind the decision to walk away from Physint, which Microsoft subsequently snapped up for Xbox.

As suggested yesterday by analysts speaking to IGN in the aftermath of the news breaking, Sony appears to be reigning in its spending after a woeful run of first-party game flops and cancellations. After wasting hundreds of millions of dollars developing the short-lived Concord, Naughty Dog's now-canned The Last of Us Online, and the still-limping Marathon, Sony is apparently enforcing stricter production milestones.

Bloomberg's report includes the direct assertion that Physint "missed deadlines and was on track to be well over budget despite being years away from release," according to the publication's sources.

The revenue performance of Death Stranding and its sequel, another factor previously mentioned by analysts, also played a part in Sony's decision, it's claimed. While the first title turned a profit for Kojima Productions, Death Stranding 2 failed to build on this success.

Analysis from Alinea Analytics previously suggested that Death Stranding 2 sales have now slowed to a trickle, that several notable discounts on the game have failed to move the needle, and that revenue for the game remains far lower than that of its predecessor.

Several other factors also came into play for Sony, Bloomberg's report continues. One is Sony's previously-reported decision to stop releasing many of its single-player games on PC — something that would have cut into Physint's potential audience further. And another reason is apparently that, while Kojima and PlayStation have enjoyed a long partnership together since the days of PS1, many of the Sony chiefs who previously worked with the Metal Gear creator have since moved on.

With Kojima cut adrift, the report closes with details on why Xbox immediately swooped in, other than to secure the obvious PR win of nabbing Kojima from PlayStation. It's claimed that Xbox's new leaders under boss Asha Sharma saw Physint as a strong investment, with plans to launch the game on PC (no surprise there) and as an alignment with Sharma's stated goal of expanding Xbox's reach beyond games to film and TV. As part of Sony and Kojima's original announcement, some form of movie studio involvement was teased — though exactly what's being planned, we're still waiting to hear.

"This doesn't look great for PlayStation among core gamers," Alinea Analytics analyst Rhys Elliot said yesterday. "Especially right now. From a strictly financial perspective, though, I can understand Sony’s position. In a vacuum, anyway.

Next up from Kojima will be OD, the PT-like project already confirmed as coming to Xbox. As of yet, there's no word on when that will arrive, let alone Physint — though the latter has been described as a next-gen game.

Image credit: Kojima Productions.

Key Preview Takeaways:

• A dedication to martial arts is a key differentiating factor for this soulslike.
• It’s reminiscent of the wuxia action of the classic film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
• Boss fights should be fairly memorable based on what I’ve experienced so far.

In the wake of this year’s Gamescom, it's been very clear that a wide assortment of new action titles have been looking to make their mark, especially in the soulslike sub-genre. One game in particular that's aiming high is the upcoming action-RPG A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei, which brings fast wuxia-inspired combat and spectacle-driven set-piece encounters to the historical Ming Dynasty setting.

We recently got some hands-on time with an early build of this soulslike action-RPG, which blends tense, martial-arts style action from the school of Black Myth: Wukong to the parkour-style action-platforming from Assassin's Creed. So far, A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei has a promising hook and serious style that makes a decent first impression, and hopefully it can build on that excitement from here.

The main story of A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei follows a mysterious boatman thrust into the political upheaval of the Ming Dynasty, which is in turmoil from encroaching threats both outside the kingdom's walls and within. Taken on as a new agent of the Ming Dynasty, the protagonist becomes the titular Jinyiwei, an imperial agent tasked with striking down invaders and other threats to the kingdom, while expanding his tools and resources to keep the fight going.

Like recent Chinese-developed games such as Swords of Legends or Phantom Blade Zero, A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei is built on Chinese historical settings and mythology, channeled into the framework of an action-RPG soulslike. However, compared to the over-the-top spectacle of the aforementioned PBZ, Jinyiwei takes a less fantastical approach and tilts more toward a blockbuster action-thriller. Yet it still leans into that wuxia-inspired influence, with Jinyiwei using different weapons in martial-arts combat, wall-running, and even fighting while wall-running and streaking through the air. It all makes for a slick, visually exciting approach that feels in step with the 2000 wuxia classic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

As mentioned, the build I played of A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei was still very much an early showing, but it laid the groundwork for a fast and captivating action game all about taking out foes with style and grace. It really leans into that martial arts action feel. Still, it goes further by making the engagements you have with enemies more about reading their movements so you can effectively take them out as quickly as you can.

My demo focused on the Jinyiwei's infiltration of a mountainside bandit base. As I was exploring it, using wall-runs to reach higher vantage points and finding upper ledges to get the drop on enemies, it really reminded me of a type of stealth-action game from the Assassin's Creed series, and even with the fairly modest level design, I did appreciate that A Whisper of Fall still presented different ways to go about engaging in battles. In one instance, I encountered a group of three foes on patrol. While the direct approach was doable, I found it better to pick off two enemies from above with a leap-down attack, letting me mop up the last enemy quickly.

The flow of these battles matches the pacing of other, more grounded soulslikes. Still, in keeping with the martial-arts action influence, the protagonist can use his intuition to land critical strikes after evading and whittling down defenses. It captures that feeling of being a badass martial artist, using quick reflexes and your ability to read an opponent to effortlessly take down enemies. During battle, the Jinyiwei can also charge up internal energy based on his performance. Along with using that energy to restore health when you are in a pinch, you can use a fully charged meter for a special attack to tear into enemy and boss defenses, which is super satisfying to nail.

Along with getting new armor to deck out his appearance and defenses, the Jinyiwei can acquire new weapons and can carry two in battle, which can be switched off from each other in mid-combo. I used the traditional Chinese straight sword and a curved bandit sword, swapping between them with special weapon attacks that lead into a new combo. In my experience so far, the combat has a satisfying flow. However, I hope the developers can keep refining and polishing the experience, as one recurring issue was disruptive camera angles that reared their ugly heads during some of the tougher battles.

Where A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei really goes all in for its spectacle fights is with the boss encounters. Instead of large monsters and other oversized enemies, the boss gauntlet I got to experience was against other equally matched martial artists who had unique fighting styles, such as a rival mercenary who uses his long sword to create razor-sharp gusts of wind and tosses homing darts to pick me off from a distance. The final boss of the demo was the bandit leader, who then revealed his true form as a fiery, flamesword-wielding warlord. It was a tough fight to get through, but it was all about patience and not getting overwhelmed.

As challenging as these bosses were, what really stood out for me was how evenly matched most of these fights were. There was never that awkward dance of having to figure out the big puzzle of the fight to survive – such as which targets to strike first to open their defenses up. It was really about keeping your composure and reading their movement style to stay ahead of them and steadily cut them down to size with carefully laid-out counterstrikes and parries. It has the fundamentals of satisfying boss encounters, and I hope the larger game will keep building that pacing further.

A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei does an impressive job of drawing players into its world of martial-arts action, and I appreciated that it really leaned into the vertical exploration. I would have liked to see more open exploration of towns and communities to understand what the larger world of Jinyiwei is about, but the demo I played is a promising start. It does well to capture that experience of being an action hero, and with later stages focusing on battles within crumbling battleships during storms and all-out brawls while wall-running above death-pits, A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei has the makings of an action-RPG that can make an impact with its martial arts action-adventure.

While you're here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we've checked out recently!

• Grand Theft Auto 6
• Fable
• Exodus
• Final Fantasy 7: Revelation

Alessandro Fillari is a longtime games media professional. Talk video games with him on BlueSky at @afillari.bsky.social.

Over the next few months, I’m going to be taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.

Today it’s time to take these broken wings and learn to fly again in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is emblematic of a long-extinct era. I’m not actually talking about its famous 1980s setting, though; I’m talking about the games industry at large. While we’ve had to patiently wait more than 12 years between GTA V and GTA VI, 2002’s Vice City arrived first on PlayStation 2 a mere 12 months after the genre-defining GTA III. Nothing as good as Vice City happens this rapidly anymore. And make no mistake – it is very, very good.

Vice City introduces a pile of new vehicle types and weapons, and its missions are immediately more imaginative and varied than its predecessor. It also embraces a noticeably different approach to its storytelling, benching the mute protagonist concept for a fully voiced lead character, giving him the ability to have far more entertaining interactions with a considerably more memorable supporting cast of allies and antagonists. Above everything, however, it oozes unrivalled personality and style thanks to its ’80s backdrop, and is elevated to untouchable heights by its sonically unmistakable soundtrack. I love this game. It grabs me by the crotch and shakes me around until I am not sure if I am a man or a woman. Then I remember I am Luke Reilly – Mister Luke Reilly – and this is Rockstar North with GTA: Vice City.

Realistically, Vice City could have been little more than another serving of the formula that had just completely revolutionised open-world games and it still would’ve sold truckloads. Indeed, for a brief spell, it began life as exactly that. After finalising GTA III on PC, the first thing the team behind it did was begin thinking about what vehicles, weapons, and missions could potentially go into a mission pack for their blockbuster crime sandbox. However, after realising there was too much content to squeeze into an expansion, the next chapter in the GTA saga became a fully fledged sequel instead.

I guess, strictly speaking, the decision to brush aside the present day and place Vice City’s action in 1986 actually makes it a prequel. Whatever you want to call it, it was astounding – and it remains so today.

Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’

While GTA III changed the trajectory of the GTA series forever – and set the stage for an entire ecosystem of open world action games to follow – Vice City is notable as the GTA that properly introduced the broader spectrum of vehicle variety we expect from the series today. Motorcycles made their first reappearance since the top-down era, and we could now effectively pilot aircraft – including choppers, and a seaplane with a complete set of wings. It also brought in outfit changes, property purchases, and even an in-game map (although it still came with a paper one, too).

Importantly, however, Vice City also introduced a protagonist with a voice of his own. In GTA III, dialogue typically consists of one-sided monologues – or characters simply barking a batch of mission instructions at you. Vice City is completely different. Thanks to leading man Tommy Vercetti having a voice of his own – provided by iconic Goodfellas star Ray Liotta himself – Vice City is far closer in tone and spirit to the classic crime movies and TV that inspired it in the first place. It’s funnier, snappier, and packed with so much more personality thanks to Tommy’s ability to bite back, express emotion, and give voice to his ambitions. Tommy’s ambition is actually a really important part of the equation, too, and something that further distinguishes Vice City from GTA III. That is, while GTA III is about survival as a little fish in a big pond, Tommy Vercetti is here to become Vice City’s great white shark. Vice City is not about scraping by; Tommy is here to take over this whole town.

Rockstar has since largely pivoted away from casting GTA characters with high-profile film actors, but during Vice City the practice was just about at its peak. Alongside Ray Liotta, Vice City features Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, William Fichtner, Robert Davi, Luis Guzmán, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, Danny Trejo, Danny Dyer, and even Philip Michael Thomas as Lance Vance. Yes, Miami Vice’s legendary Ricardo Tubbs was tapped for a key role in Vice City. Vice City is nothing if not hilariously unapologetic about its reverence for classic Miami crime dramas like Miami Vice and Scarface. It’s certainly no accident that Diaz’s mansion practically still has Al Pacino’s butt print in the office chair, or – if you get your wanted level up to three stars – you’ll be set upon by plain clothes Vice Squad detectives who show up in Cheetah sports cars.

Cum On Feel the Noize

In 2002, Vice City absorbed me immediately. I was obsessed and could not stop playing it. In 2026, I’m hooked all over again. I’d honestly forgotten how great it was to look at, certainly by PS2 standards. I actually don’t know what looks better: the evenings, or the sunrises. I also love all the little flourishes embedded in it – from the glinting ocean chop to the subtle way Tommy’s clothes flap as he whips through the air on a motorcycle. Bikes are such an excellent addition and feel great to ride, and I really dig the way they’re tuned to let you slide them aggressively into corners without abruptly gripping up and high-siding Tommy over the top of them. Cars handle more sharply than GTA III, too, and have a better sense of weight, which is such a crucial part of open-world action games for me.

The combat? Well, I’m still in a love/hate relationship with the general blasting. Yes, the auto targeting is effective in locking on and cutting down your opposition, but only when it’s locking onto your actual opposition – and not your literal allies who you drove to the shootout personally. I just wish it knew the cops directly in front of me are a bigger threat than the distant motorcyclist trying to flee the scene, and it remains an annoying idiosyncrasy of this era of GTA, particularly when it causes me to fail a mission. There are still no mid-mission checkpoints in Vice City, but it does introduce helpful, automated taxi rides back to the start of missions you were just wasted on. By cutting down on repetitive travel, Vice City is not only more respectful of our time, I also think it reduces the risk of players growing to resent particular stretches of the map they otherwise might’ve been forced to drive to and fro across one too many times.

That said, it’s hard for me to grow tired of being in a vehicle in Vice City thanks to the soundtrack, which weaponised licensed music so successfully it single handedly reinvented the etymology of many of these songs in my brain. Can you hear Mister Mister’s Broken Wings without thinking of Fernando Martinez? I can’t. Perhaps the most impressive side effect of having a soundtrack this vast, memorable, and expertly curated is the way it flavours the missions in different ways for different playthroughs. Almost a quarter of a century after playing it for the first time, I found myself in a dirtbike chase through the back alleys of Washington Beach to the pop strains of 99 Luftballons. Not a song I would’ve considered for a frantic, high-speed chase – and yet the uptempo pop jam worked a treat. The fact that you can Baby Driver yourself to an unexpectedly brilliant bit of backing music is one of the GTA series’ greatest strengths, and Vice City is arguably the absolute acme. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not just the best soundtrack of the GTA series – edging out San Andreas and Vice City Stories – it’s one of the best soundtracks in video games full stop.

Never Too Much

Vice City occupies a special spot in the history of the series as the first game out of its then-newly rechristened development team, Rockstar North – although it should be noted the studio did have somewhat of a running start. The operation had initially been established as the Edinburgh arm of original GTA creators DMA Design, but DMA’s original Dundee branch had been shuttered shortly after. In other words, the prehistory of Rockstar North stretches back to the founding of DMA in the ’80s – so it’s coincidentally quite fitting its first official project became gaming's most quintessential tribute to that decade.

To be fair to some of the GTA series’ most memorable genre peers, Vice City wasn’t the first open-world action and driving game to use the past as a backdrop. The funkadelic Driver and Driver 2, set in an undefined moment at some point in the late ’70s or early ’80s, rolled back their own clocks some years before Vice City. On top of that, the original Mafia took us on a journey back to the 1930s, during the closing chapter of the United States’ Prohibition era. However, there’s just something richer and more special about the way Vice City transports you back to the beachside, neon-drenched excess of 1986.

There are a combination of elements all working in concert with each other to crank up the atmosphere to irresistible heights. The large fleet of angular exotic supercars and boxy American land whales on the roads, glinting as the beaming sun catches their windscreens. The pedestrians strutting the sidewalks in leather jumpsuits that look like they’ve been peeled directly off Michael Jackson. A bright, sun-kissed cityscape that’s so different to the dense, grimy greys of Liberty City, and which sits atop a seedy underbelly of chainsaw carnage, cartel chaos, cocaine, and cheap porn. The pastel pants, the palm-lined streets, the pulsating soundtrack – all of this in unison made Vice City a magically immersive time capsule like no other game at the time, and like few others since.

I’ve seen it argued that the incredibly successful Vice City served as the primary catalyst for the tidal wave of ’80s nostalgia that followed – ground zero for an exploding obsession with this pastel-powered decade – but I’m not entirely sold on that theory. Don’t get me wrong, Vice City was a genuine cultural juggernaut – but I think it’s better viewed as one significant part of a much broader picture. After all, the back stretch of 1997’s Boogie Nights leaned heavily into the early ‘80s, and The Wedding Singer very famously and successfully transported us back to 1985 when it was released in 1998. 1999’s 200 Cigarettes, 2000’s American Psycho, and 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer also all wound things back to the ’80s prior to the arrival of Vice City. Nostalgia has been powerful and bankable for a long time. Back in the ’90s and 2000s, if we weren’t being whisked back to the ’80s, it was the ’70s, via The Wonder Years, Dazed and Confused, 54, That ‘70s Show, and Detroit Rock City.

No: Rockstar didn’t discover the retro lens with Vice City, nor did it invent ’80s nostalgia. However, all those examples above are movies or TV shows. Vice City is neither. Vice City is a video game, and I probably don’t need to explain to you why that sets it apart. Vice City wasn’t just a window into the past we were restricted to passively peering through for a predefined running time. Rather, it became a living, breathing portal to the past that let us actually explore, experience, and inhabit a long-ended era.

Verdict

To this day, the opening moments of GTA: Vice City remain one of my most memorable gaming experiences ever. After getting into your first car, you’ll immediately hear the unmistakable bass line of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. It’s a small but meaningful moment that instantly plunges you into the past and feels like a happy accident, but it wasn’t – it was engineered to always be Billie Jean. Everyone heard it. Or, at least, they did until later re-issues and remasters of the game unfortunately trimmed it from the soundtrack. Either way, I was completely enchanted by Vice City from that moment. In 2026? I still can’t get enough of it. With its wide variety of vehicles, weapons, and missions, its stacked cast of recognisable voices, and its unmatched atmosphere, Vice City may have gone backwards in time – but it was a huge stride forward for the series and one of my all-time favourites.

For more reflections on the incredible Grand Theft Auto series, you can read our new Legacy Reviews of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, and Grand Theft Auto III, with more to follow over the coming months.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.

Key Preview Takeaways:

• My demo focused largely on combat, but it nevertheless impressed me.
• Emberville’s pixel-art look quickly won me over.
• It remains to be seen if its crafting and city-building systems will integrate nicely into Emberville’s whole package.

Described by many as “Diablo meets Stardew Valley,” Cygnus Cross’ debut title, Emberville, is just a little over a month out from welcoming players to check it out. IGN recently had the chance to get an early look, fighting through some mobs, meeting some of its NPCs, and even testing our mettle against an imposing spider boss. All while getting little teases and tastes of the crafting and character depth that we can look forward to when it enters early access in October.

Most of my time with Emberville consisted of fighting through the first biome of the prologue, ending with my arrival in the titular Emberville. After awakening in a strange room, I found my way outside, where a mysterious hooded figure turned me inside-out, leaving a bloody mess of bone and gore where I once stood. I quickly popped back into existence, and thankfully, this time the murder-hungry figure outside was gone, and I could get to exploring. The dungeon-like area I found myself in, which I’d later learn was known as the Vitromotus, serves as a prison and makes those within essentially immortal as they wait out their sentences. Some of these prisoners have even spent so long inside that they have forgotten how long they have been there or lost their memories, requiring special magical devices to help them reclaim what has escaped them.

The story and lore behind what the Vitromotus is, the mysterious magical energy known as Kymia, and even who or what killed me at the start were explained to me through a mix of both talking to NPCs I came across and various books and other notes scattered around the dungeon. Most of that dialogue was voiced, including Alex Jordan’s performance as the elderly and not quite-all-there Adeos, or Matt Mercer’s gremlin-like shopkeeper, Gumu. One of the big selling points that Emberville is pushing is its incredibly robust and talent-rich voice cast that will help give the people of this world life, and while a vast majority of them were not present in the demo, what was there was really well done. I don’t tend to associate A-tier voice acting with games that look like Emberville, so even though I knew going in that the cast was stacked, it was still a pleasant surprise to hear it.

As someone who believes that good pixel art will always be timeless, Emberville’s early dungeon and denizens are right up my alley. With rich and detailed landscapes of dank spiderweb-covered caves, crumbling stone walls, and rotting wooden buildings to rummage through, I have already become enthralled by its graphics. Enemies like the spiders had ominous spotted mushrooms growing on their backs, and I could see the mystic beads dangling from the staves of the acolytes as they conjured their spells to send at me. My character was perhaps the most simplistic-looking element of Emberville, but considering that the various pieces of armor I would equip actually showed up on them – a feature I tend to associate with 3D games, and even then, it doesn’t happen particularly often – it made sense, and the gear itself was detailed and blended in with the rest. I only hope that in the final release you are able to dye your gear as well, to really help with your “drip,” as the kids say. They do still say that, right?

When it came to my character, being rather hooked on the Dungeon Crawler Carl books lately, I decided early on, even while creating my character (which has some decent options for customization), to make a pants-less dude that likes to punch things and step on things, rather than swing a sword or shoot magic spells. Unlike, say, Diablo, which features a single main attack and is backed up by spells or abilities, Emberville has a sort of combo system, where mixing the main and alternate attack buttons in a specific sequence results in a more powerful final hit. In Carl’s case, punching twice – which is the knuckles main attack – and using his alternate kick attack for the final strike in the string would result in a satisfying roundhouse kick that had a chance of leaving the enemies stunned. Throw in the powerful strike I opted for when picking my Wanderer class perk, and I can frequently pull off a satisfying four-hit flurry. That said, I’m still a bit on the fence about it, finding myself wondering if I like it more in principle than in practice.

For smaller groups, and particularly against the large and imposing Spider Matriarch that awaited me at the tail end of the demo, I think this combo approach was pretty neat. On the other hand, when dealing with large mobs or when under pressure, it all went out the window, and I resorted to my tried-and-true frantic clicking to thin the threats around me. Having played the demo on both my PC and my AYN Thor handheld, hitting combos came more naturally for me, alternating face buttons instead of the left and right mouse, so it may just take some time to get used to until it becomes muscle memory. Regardless, it’s certainly a feature that helps set Emberville apart at the very least, I’ve seen enough to be intrigued.

While most of the time was spent throwing hands, I did still try each of the various weapons. Everything from the sword’s swishes and swooshes to the bow's charged shot had a good impact and feel to them, and I appreciated how I could use the staff to either bludgeon foes across the head or blast them with magic. And each of them comes with their own mastery trees that will unlock even stronger attacks should I fight with them, just like with the knuckles. These mastery trees extend not just to weapons either; with the other masteries you can invest in, such as armor, alchemy, and resource gathering, each offering their own benefits.

The scope of the build I got to check out really was combat- and exploration-focused, showing off the looks, enemies, traps, and even the boss of what will serve as the prologue area, but this is just part of what Emberville looks to offer to prospective acolytes when the game launches proper. Emberville is also positioning itself as a solid crafting and even city-building game too. The city and some of its customization have been shown off in previous trailers, but were completely absent in what I got to play, which is a shame.

I did get a slight tease and peek at how crafting and general collection will work, thankfully. Similar to, say, Stardew Valley, or other cozy gathering sims out there, as I explored the Vitromotus, I came across veins to mine for ore, trees to cut down, plants to pull, and other goodies to fill my bag with. Enemies also would drop various components that will no doubt be of great help in brewing bubbling potions or cooking up delicious meals. I occasionally would stumble on a cook fire while exploring, allowing me to do just that, turning raw meat into cooked meals, granting better healing effects. The masteries for all of this, though, weren’t implemented yet, with a “Coming Soon” notice teasing what’s still to come.

Brief as my time was, Emberville still leaves me eager to explore more of its world. The big question now is whether Cygnus Cross can successfully bring all these various systems together into a cohesive package without it feeling like random things just tacked on. The combat already has the bones of a solid ARPG, but I haven't seen enough of the crafting and village-building systems to know whether Emberville's cozier side complements it or just gives the whole thing a bit of an identity crisis, but I'm just as excited to find out as I am to dive deeper into its classes and RPG mechanics.

What is here is already an impressive start. Between the mastery and class skill trees, loot, and stat points to distribute, Emberville already appeals to my love of ARPGs, while its gathering and crafting systems have the potential to appeal to a whole different crowd too, like my wife, who is a fan of cozier games. That could make Emberville one of those rare games that we can both enjoy together when it releases and serve as an introduction to the genres for both sides. It's hard to say just yet whether Emberville will be something that draws and keeps me close, like a moth to a flame, or if it will fizzle out like a birthday candle in the wind, but this early look at least shows that this ember is glowing pretty bright.

While you're here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we've checked out recently!

• Grand Theft Auto 6
• Fable
• Exodus
• Final Fantasy 7: Revelation

It's only been a few months since developer Double Fine's split from Microsoft, but the team behind Psychonauts 2, Kiln, and Keeper is looking ahead. With another successful Kickstarter campaign under its belt, the newly independent studio's second (or should that be third?) life as an indie is off to an optimistic start. With the current Kickstarter focusing on the developer's latest Amenesia Fortnight — a developer-run game jam where new micro games are produced — it's allowing the developers to build up some much-needed runway as they plan for their next major project.

At PAX West 2026, we spoke with Double Fine studio head and president, Tim Schafer, about the developer's current path forward. Along with talking about his return to independence following the biggest restructure in Xbox history, Schafer reflected on Double Fine's years under Microsoft's banner, and explained how Game Pass can still potentially work as a subscription service. He also reaffirmed his commitment to making Brutal Legend 2 (provided someone can front the money for it).

IGN: It's been seven years since the Microsoft acquisition, and the game industry has gone through so much change. What's it been like to return to being an independent developer?

Tim Schafer: It's been exhilarating. Like, it's scary because we've got to make our own way in the world, but we did that for 19 years before Microsoft, so we have a lot of great ideas and a lot of experience pitching them. A lot of people know it's a tough time out there. A lot of people, and now especially a lot of the older developers, are gone. A lot of the old avenues we used for funding are gone, but there are a lot of new ones. So we're just putting ourselves out there, meeting a lot of new people, and talking about who wants to make games with us.

IGN: I think what's been great to see with Double Fine is that it has a core audience of players that are invested in seeing the studio thrive. I remember the original Kickstarter campaign for Broken Age was a big breakthrough for Double Fine.

Schafer: Yeah, I mean that sort of thing was quite like a big financial impact, but it was also an awakening of just how tight we are with the community, like how dependent we are on them, and how much they're willing to participate. You know what I mean? Because they participate financially, but also creatively. Like, they really want to make art as well. I feel like that's something special about our fans, and it's because our number one thing is creativity. So I think it breeds a fan who also likes creativity, and I think it, hopefully, helps our games inspire not just players, but people to like learning to draw or program, or, you know, people who want to know how to make a game.

IGN: Now that you are an independent developer again, and with all this attention on you, do you feel there's a certain responsibility placed on you all to make it as an indie studio?

Schafer: I don't see it as a responsibility. I mean, I don't expect anybody to look at us and know what to do, because our situation always feels really unique to Double Fine and me. Like we're an indie game studio, but we have a lot of employees, and we have healthcare, and we have a lot of stuff like that. There's not a lot of companies our size anymore, like AA-size studios, kind of. So, I wouldn't say do everything that we do. I hope no one's following our example because I don't know if it works for anyone but us.

IGN: The Kickstarter for the Amnesia Fortnight is an interesting way to start this comeback, it's all about this big push to produce some new ideas and bring to life.

Schafer: It's kind of like a celebration of what we can do now that was harder to do before. Even being at PAX, Microsoft usually likes to have one big booth. So having little booths all over is not what they're into. They're not even here at the show. So being independent, we can come to PAX, we can talk to the fans, we can set the prices of our games. We can do tiny games like Thank You Bus Driver, which is a new project for us, and we made a whole special label for them called Double Fine Action Labs, where we can release smaller ideas, do game jams, and do the kind of things we like to do. So it's a celebration of both what we can do and what we like to do, which is high-bandwidth interaction with the fans, doing silly creative things, and just having a lot of fun.

IGN: I would be remiss not to say that a lot of people took notice of the Kickstarter mentioning that Brutal Legend 2 can be made if you secure $100 million. I understand it was meant as a joke…

Schafer: I mean, it was a joke, but also, it's not a joke. Sure, I mean, if we got $100 million, we would do it for sure. I would happily put everything aside and make Brutal Legend 2, as long as I could talk Jack Black into it. Yeah, but if we got $100 million, that's great. Yeah, I could do a demo for $100 [laughs]. But it's not a joke — I would do it if we hit that goal. We're probably not going to hit that, though. But any rich guys out there, if you ever want to see Brutal Legend 2, come help us out.

IGN: Now that you're back as an independent developer, how do you feel about those seven years working under Microsoft? Would you say that it was a valuable experience in the end?

Schafer: I learned a lot from it, and it was a really great experience overall. They invested a lot in the company, and their mission was to support Game Pass and other projects. So for a while, we were very closely aligned, and it was great. It was a great partnership, and then their goals changed, and so we parted ways because of that.

But I feel like, in the meantime, we had a great little collection of studios within Xbox Game Studios, like Compulsion, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, and inXile. We got to meet all the studio heads and talk to them, and our programmers got to talk. Their programmers are artists, and everyone was exchanging ideas and technology, and it was really a great learning experience about how other companies are run. So, because you're independent, you're a little more like an island. So, being an island that was temporarily pushed, hitched up to a bunch of other islands was very much, "Oh, that's a cool game right there, we could go play that game."

IGN: Game Pass was such a big part of the Xbox brand's push for a larger games audience. Do you feel that Game Pass still has value and potential as a service?

Schafer: I really want Game Pass to work. I like the idea of subscription models for companies like us, who, you know, lower the barrier to entry for everyone. We want to make games that are weird and creative, that you might not understand at first. I think that's the kind of stuff we like to do. Do people see the key art and go like, "What?" And if it's on a subscription, you've already kind of paid for the game. You'd be more likely to try it, so that sounds good.

But there are other ways to reach people like that, like lowering your prices, for example. You know, getting people to try your games like that. I think it could have worked. I don't understand why Netflix worked and Game Pass didn't, and I think that's something I just don't know enough about, but that's the way it is. So now we're taking another approach: making it really affordable.

IGN: It's been interesting to see the rise of these micro-games, ones that are fairly modest in concept, but offer variety and fun for groups of players. I know the term "friendslop" is used a lot, but I kind of see some of Double Fine's games, and experimental ones, being right at home with those styles of games – particularly Kiln.

Schafer: Yeah, I think the difference is multiplayer. We have built a ton of multiplayer, but the thing about those games kind of aligns with what we're doing with our Amnesia Fortnight, which is just trying stuff. A lot of those games came from game jams. I think the game Peak came from a game jam, and we just want to give everyone in the company a chance. Really, people feel safe to experiment and try creative ideas, and then to not spend $300 million on them, just spend like sticky bus drivers for six weeks, put it out there, and just see what you know.

The thing about those 'friendslop' games, people mostly focus on successes, but there's tons of them that don't work out. I think the idea is that you never know which one's going to take off, so don't bank the future of your company on any one individual idea for sure. But these games were called "friendjank" for awhile, you remember that? It's also about casual pacing, it's basically games where it's mostly about hanging out with your friends.

IGN: What are your thoughts on the state of the industry now? There's been a lot of reports and stories of developers struggling to stay open and some creatives having to leave the field. Do you feel optimistic that things can improve?

Schafer: It's a shitty time out there, and it's been getting worse for longer than I've ever seen it get worse. I usually try to comfort people by saying to the team, "Well, there are cycles, there are downturns, but it always turns back up again because you need people to make games, and that comes and goes." But this has been going on for at least four years, and I feel like I've never seen a cycle plunge so low.

Is it a permanent change in just the economics of it all? But people are still needed to make games. It's not like AI has replaced everybody, and for all the talk about it replacing Google, it's not effectively replacing anybody right now. So where are all those jobs going? I still see a bunch of games getting made, and people are still needed. So I wish I were smarter and knew the answer to that. But it seems like you need people to make games, and so there should be a ton of opportunities, and they're still making a lot of money.

For creatives, you have to have fun making games because they're really hard to make. A lot of these people could make more than money in a tech company, so they're here because they love games. And if you're here because you love games, then you should love what you're doing, love making games, and have fun.

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images.

John Carpenter's Toxic Commando’s launch came in below publisher Focus Entertainment’s expectations, but for Saber Interactive it was successful in commercial terms — and according to development chief Tim Willits, the tech work done for it will go on to benefit the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3.

Toxic Commando builds upon Saber’s proprietary tech to present a zombie swarm for co-op players to gun down. It’s technology used for Saber’s World War Z, for the Tyranids in Space Marine 2, and will once again be utilized for the upcoming Space Marine 3.

In its recent financial report, Focus owner Pullup issued a somewhat downbeat note on Toxic Commander, which came out in March. But in an interview with IGN at gamescom, Saber’s Tim Willits was more positive, confirming it was a profitable project for the company.

“We're really happy with it,” he began. “Focus' opinion, they're a publicly traded company, so they have to say what they have to say. We'll leave that to them. But for us, we're really excited about it. We have some new stuff coming out. We actually have a good playerbase.

“It brought more people into the Saber universe. When I say Saber universe, it's people that fall in love with one game who now start to look at us, like Space Marine 2 with our 14 million players. It's f***ing ridiculous. Just a few! And then World War Z, remember that's 30 million people that played that game. It's nuts. More people played that game than saw the movie or read the book.”

Willits went on to say that the tech improvements made for Toxic Commander will be further improved for Space Marine 3. Indeed, you can trace a line from World War Z through Space Marine 2 and Toxic Commando right to Space Marine 3.

“[Toxic] was a well-made game that was fun to play, and it shows people what we do really well,” Willits said. “It shows people that Saber games are enjoyable to experience with your friends. It's over-the-top. It built on our technology. You'll see more of that in Space Marine 3. You can see the progression with our technology moves. I feel that it was a good brick in that Saber wall.

“We're growing the company, we're growing the project, we're growing the technology. It was profitable for us. We don't lose money. We don't lose money on anything.”

I asked Willits how Toxic Commando’s tech will be improved for Space Marine 3, and while he kept his cards close to his chest on actual game features, he did hint at an expanded scope.

“It's the maturity of the technology,” he said. “You can see the bigger swarms, you can see the bigger areas, you can see the better AI. There's cars — you didn’t have cars in Space Marine 2. I'm not saying we're going to have cars in Space Marine 3. I'm just saying the technology is growing and developing and that's our technology. So we can focus on technology pillars that will support our future games like Space Marine 3 and Jurassic Park — that uses the same technology.”

One of the big questions for Space Marine fans is how Saber will expand upon the gameplay. Space Marine 2 limits squads to three characters (modders increased this), and while some of the play spaces are big, there’s nothing you’d describe as having any sort of open world design. Willits has talked about three being the magic number for Space Marine 2 because of the maximum number of enemies it’s able to throw at squads — having four Space Marines, say, would make the game too easy and “scaling enemy assaults to justify bringing a fourth player was too great of a challenge.”

But could Space Marine 3 up the player count by upping the enemy count and playspace? Could it increase the scope of the battles, which in Space Marine 2 are limited in terms of area and units? Willits says he’s not saying Space Marine 3 will have cars, but it does beg the question: will Space Marine 3 have vehicles? A Land Raider, perhaps? Maybe some flying missions in a Gunship?

As for Saber's swarm tech, I'm not sure repeating the trick with Tyranids will be enough for Space Marine 3 after fans spent so much time with them in Space Marine 2. Most believe Space Marine 3 will feature the Necrons, based on hints sprinkled throughout Space Marine 2. But what other factions would fit the bill? A return to the Orks seen in Space Marine 1? (Orks are the primary antagonist of the 11th edition of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game.) How about a focus on the relentless Death Guard and swarms of shuffling Plaguebearers? Saber has form when it comes to zombies after all.

As for how Space Marine 3 development is going, Willits was very enthusiastic, but again didn’t give much away. Speaking of how well Space Marine 2 had gone (he previously told IGN its success had changed everything for Saber), Willits said the development team was now working to top it.

“The Emperor loves us. We are The Emperor’s favorite,” Willits joked. “All I can say is 3's going great. 2's been really successful. Our DLC's been super successful. People love the mods. It helps the team with experience, knowing what fans actually want, making sure that we adhere to the true Warhammer 40K universe franchise.

“The success of Space Marine 2 has really made the team passionate about making sure that Space Marine 3 is even better. They feel that there's this confidence and passion and vigor, and you can see it. When you talk to the team, they're just in it. So I'm really excited about that.”

Willits recently told IGN that no generative AI was being used in the development of Space Marine 3, after a backlash online to its use in Saber’s Rideshare Stimulator. Space Marine 3 currently does not have a release window.

Maggie Robertson has said she would accept any opportunity from Capcom to reprise her breakout role as Lady Dimitrescu in the Resident Evil series, calling the character her “firstborn.”

Lady Dimitrescu, the towering face of Capcom’s phenomenally successful 2021 game, Resident Evil Village, was Robertson’s first video game role, and it changed her life forever.

Speaking to IGN at gamescom while promoting her latest video game gig — the sultry and scheming Tasha in upcoming Dungeons & Dragons game Warlock — Robertson said the last five years had been a surreal experience.

“That game, that character changed my life in every way,” she said. “There's no aspect of my life that has not been touched by that character. That was the very first game I ever did. And I had just done my graduate degree. I just came from a drama program. I lived the Hollywood dream in a surreal way. So I just graduated, moved to LA January 2019 and was throwing paint at the wall. I didn't have an agent. I was just self-submitting for things, seeing what stuck. I moved out here to pursue on-camera predominantly, but then this breakdown happened across my path and it was a day where I was just feeling like I might as well try something new. F**k it. Let's go for it. And it turned out to be this.”

Robertson said she had no idea which game or character she was auditioning for when she went in for Lady Dimitrescu, due to the secrecy that surrounds the video game industry, and even afterwards, could never have predicted the impact it would have.

“Video games also are always under NDA. So everything about the breakdown, the character names, the sides that I auditioned with, all of that was fake,” she said. “I had no idea what I was even auditioning for. I had no idea of the scope of what video games could offer me in terms of a career, in terms of acting, in terms of the roles that I would have access to.”

Such was the online popularity of Lady Dimitrescu following the character’s reveal ahead of Resident Evil Village’s release, that Capcom thrust her into the forefront of the game’s marketing. Lady Dimitrescu appeared on billboard advertising, in viral social media posts, and was in pretty much every Resident Evil Village trailer as Capcom doubled down on the vociferous fandom that emerged around the character.

Fast forward five years, and Robertson has acted in everything from Baldur’s Gate 3 (Orin the Red), to Fortnite (DJ PJ). In Warlock, Robertson plays another Dungeons & Dragons villain, Tasha, patron to the playable character. Such is Robertson’s fame within the video game industry that she appeared on-stage at Opening Night Live last month to introduce Warlock gameplay. And there are more video game roles to come.

“Ultimately, I'm so grateful for it because I think my type with theater, my type with on-camera, the roles that I am so right for are roles that are waiting for me when I am 50 and 60 years old,” she continued. “And I didn't have access to those at the time that I was entering the industry. And being able to become a part of this industry helped me have access to those roles now. And I didn't have to wait. I didn't have to be limited by the way that I looked. Again, it's like, if you imagine yourself, if you can imagine it, you can be it. And I find that so liberating.

“But that is the Hollywood dream. That is what they sell you, is that you never know when your big break is going to happen. You never know what opportunity is going to be your next big break. And that happened to me. I just said yes on a random thing.”

The big question for Resident Evil fans is whether Lady Dimitrescu might appear in another game in the series, or perhaps in an animation or maybe even in live-action. Capcom has yet to say either way, but Robertson would jump at the chance.

“Oh, of course!” she said. “A hundred times, yes. She's my firstborn. So anytime they call, I will say happy days.”

For now, though, the focus is on Warlock and her character, Tasha. "What I like most about Tasha is that she's neither good nor evil," Robertson said. "She's complex in that way. She can go either way depending on the day. I think that gives you a lot of fun to play with. She's so charming and charismatic, but also cunning, and is ultimately looking after number one, which is herself. And she'll help you for sure, but there's always something in it for her if she decides to help you. And you don't always know what that is. So I found her to be a nicely complex character. I always like getting to work on those."

Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images.

Forza Horizon 6 has a new, dedicated drifting mode, dubbed Drift Attack. The mode functions similar to the existing Time Attack mode, and is accessed directly from the open world with no additional loading or lobby system. Just like Time Attacks, all you need to do is drive through the gantry and Drift Attack will begin.

The home of the new mode is the existing Shimanoyama Circuit. While lapping the course, points are earned the same way they are in Horizon Drift and at Drift Zones – but Drift Attack adds a new scoring layer to consider with the addition of “Clipping Zones” around the track. These zones will boost scores for drifts executed within their marked boundaries.

Drift Attack features the same in-world leaderboard functionality of Time Attacks, and has been integrated into the Horizon Festival campaign (unlocked by obtaining the yellow wristband). Knocking off Drift Attack Collection Journal tasks will score you the Drift Attack racesuit and helmet, plus a brand-new Forza Edition car: the 1990 Jaguar XJ-S Forza Edition. Pleasingly, a stock XJ-S has also been added to the Autoshow for all players to purchase at any time.

The addition of Drift Attack comes alongside the arrival of the Horizon Playlist Series 5, ‘British Automotive’, which will run from September 10 to October 8. The 10 series reward cars (three of which are new-to-Horizon) are listed below:

• 2019 Ginetta G40 Junior (earn 20 points during the Summer Season)
• 2021 McLaren 620R (earn 40 points during the Summer Season)
• 2015 Jaguar XKR-S GT (earn 20 points during the Autumn Season)
• 2021 MINI John Cooper Works GP (earn 40 points during the Autumn Season)
• 2006 Vauxhall Astra VXR (earn 20 points during the Winter Season)
• 2016 Bentley Bentayga (earn 40 points during the Winter Season)
• 2002 Lotus Esprit V8 (earn 20 points during the Spring Season)
• 2023 Lotus Emira (earn 40 points during the Spring Season)
• 2025 Bentley Continental GT Speed (earn 80 points over the course of the whole ‘British Automotive’ series)
• 2019 Aston Martin Valhalla Concept Car (earn 160 points over the course of the whole ‘British Automotive’ series)

Playground Games also confirmed the next series will be called ‘Horizon Meets’, which will feature a temporary 7-Eleven Konbini evolving world feature, plus more Eventlab content and new-to-Horizon cars.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.