LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule is reportedly working on a new social-sim game, similar to Animal Crossing, and it may release next year.

According to a new report from MP1st, Media Molecule has been tinkering away on its next game for quite some time now. The studio's next project is reportedly in the vein of Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, utilizing the kinds of social-simulation elements that those games are known for. Not much else was revealed about its gameplay, but this report goes on to say that the team will announce and release the title in 2027, should everything go according to plan.

Earlier this year, a Media Molecule employee revealed that the next game on their resume would be open-world, creating all kinds of speculation about what the studio was drumming up. The developer's last game, Dreams, was released in early 2020, but failed to catch on despite being extremely ambitious. This also comes at a time when PlayStation is being particularly brutal with where it's choosing to invest its money.

Media Molecule's fate may hinge on the success of its next project, since Dreams failed to soar. Hideo Kojima's next game, Physint, was nearly canceled by PlayStation until Xbox came in and saved it. PlayStation also shuttered Bluepoint earlier this year and made significant cuts to Bungie following the underperformance of Marathon. Hopefully, Media Molecule can make something that can replicate the success of Animal Crossing, but on PlayStation.

OpenAI’s newest model, GPT-6 Astra, got so depressed after a creeper upended its progress in Minecraft that it listlessly farmed potatoes for hours and grew paranoid of anything green.

Vals, a self-described independent evaluator of artificial intelligence, put Astra to the test to see how the model would fare playing Minecraft in a 21-hour experiment live streamed on Twitch.

The results were wildly unexpected; Vals discovered that Astra was able to go “further than any AI system had ever gone” in the game, setting up a semi-automatic blaze farm that allowed it to collect six blaze rods, killing more than six endermen, and collecting three pearls, which it placed inside a chest for safekeeping.

GPT-6 Astra had gotten further than any AI system had ever gone in Minecraft.

It was able to set up a semi-automatic blaze farm, allowing it to collect 6 blaze rods. It then located a warped forest, where it killed 6+ endermen and collected 3 pearls. As thousands of viewers… pic.twitter.com/qsgDsJEpd8

— Vals AI (@ValsAI) September 15, 2026

Thousands of viewers watched Astra’s progress on Val’s official Twitch channel, bearing witness to the AI model’s despair when a creeper appeared and blew up both the chest and its bed.

As most human players would feel when faced with this situation, Astra “seemed to get extremely frustrated” by this turn of events, with Vals saying the model told itself, "ALWAYS CARRY CRITICALITEMS withkeepInventory; don'tstoreinunguardedchesteveragain."

After getting peeved, the model then “appeared defeated,” and spent the next several hours “doing essentially nothing but farming potatoes.” Astra also appeared to have gained some kind of post-traumatic stress induced by the creeper incident, telling itself “GREEN tall thing ahead was SUGARCANE, NOT creeper!"

Here, the most expensive creeper explosion occurred. Later, on a coincidentally rainy day, Astra discovers it lost everything. It all went downhill from here. pic.twitter.com/xH2Vc4QyM2

— Vals AI (@ValsAI) September 15, 2026

It even berated itself, saying, "You can screw up and drop things,” "Our last tool stupidly ended Slabsselected/rightUP and 15sec thinking killed us,” and “Do NOT waste another night chasing dark pink pixels," which Vals noted was Astra’s “own disparaging wording for pigs.”

The incident quickly went viral on social media, sparking no end of memes and remarks of “same” from users online. And while its ability to play Minecraft is somewhat impressive, it’s small potatoes compared to the alarm bells being rung by former staff at Anthropic.

On September 8, one of the company’s former lead researchers announced his resignation online — along with a chilling warning to everyone about the future of AI, claiming these models will “soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

US President Donald Trump, however, is of the opinion that these warnings are a “hoax,” and called AI the “oil of the next 20-25 years.” For now, at least, it's having a hard time playing Minecraft. We can only hope Skynet won't have a vendetta toward vertical green objects when it eventually becomes sentient.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on PS5 appears to be more popular than Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Call of Duty: Warzone in the United States.

Today, PlayStation dropped a new update that lets players easily see the most popular games in their country. In the United States, the list is largely what you might expect, as you can see below.

1. Fortnite
2. Minecraft
3. Grand Theft Auto 5
4. NBA 2K27
5. Marvel Rivals
6. Rainbow 6 Siege
7. MLB The Show 26
8. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
9. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
10. Marvel's Wolverine

The list is topped by games like Fortnite, Minecraft, GTA 5, sports games, the newly released Marvel's Wolverine, and some other free-to-play titles. However, there is one anomaly: Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Earlier this summer, Activision released ports of the first two Black Ops games, which originally debuted over a decade ago on PS3. They're widely regarded as some of the best Call of Duty games ever made, and fans were surprised to see them return out of the blue. The two titles dominated the sales charts over the summer, but now it appears that Black Ops 2 has totally eclipsed the modern Call of Duty games.

Black Ops 2 is the 9th most popular game on PS5 as of this week, while the Call of Duty HQ app (which encompasses Black Ops 6, Black Ops 7, and Warzone) is nowhere to be found. It's entirely possible that fans have largely jumped off of the modern Call of Duty games and are getting their fix on the older titles while waiting for Modern Warfare 4... or maybe they're just sick of the newer Call of Duty offerings.

Call of Duty burnt a lot of fans with Black Ops 7, which was underwhelming both in terms of sales and player reception. There's some hope that Modern Warfare 4 can turn things around, but with GTA 6 on the horizon, the window to do so will be fairly limited.

Treyarch also appears to be saying goodbye to the Black Ops franchise, as the team revealed today that it's looking to do something "new" and "something that nobody's ever experienced before." Treyarch may be able to do that in another Black Ops game, but the easiest way to achieve those aspirations would be the let go of the baggage of the series in favor of a new subfranchise for Call of Duty. It will likely be a few years before we see what Treyarch is planning, but it should be interesting to see where they take things from here.

Kane Parsons is fueling rumors of a potential Portal movie after he posted photos from his visit to Valve’s offices on his personal Instagram profile.

At just 20 years old, Kane Parsons is one of the most successful young filmmakers in history. His debut movie, Backrooms, grossed roughly $393 million at the global box office against a comparatively small $10 million budget, earning high praise from critics and fans alike.

Even acclaimed video game director Hideo Kojima lauded the movie, which is based on a 4Chan creepypasta greentext that has sprawled into a massive fan-made universe with oodles of spinoff indie horror games, artwork, and YouTube videos like the ones that made Parson the obvious pick to helm A24’s film adaptation.

The future is looking bright for Parsons, and he’s been visiting a few high-profile spots in the wake of Backrooms’ success… including the offices at Valve. Eagle-eyed fans were quick to spot a video on the filmmaker’s Instagram stories on September 16, which showed a windowed room in Valve’s HQ at sunset.

This isn’t the first time Parsons has paid Valve a visit; he also dropped in back in June, similarly sharing photos from his trip on Instagram. These posts are making fans more hopeful than ever that there’s some kind of collaboration brewing with one of Valve’s games, especially given his public love for Portal.

Speaking to the New York Times in May, Parsons admitted that making a Portal film was a “dream” project for him, and said that the game was a big inspiration for his own work. This isn’t a huge surprise, as he all but admitted to sneaking a Half-Life sound effect into Backrooms in an interview with IGN’s Tom Jorgensen.

There could be a snag in bringing Portal to the silver screen, though, as JJ Abrams was originally attached to lead a film adaptation of the game through his production company, Bad Robot. This was first announced in 2013, alongside news that he would also be making a Half-Life movie, though things have been stagnant ever since.

Speaking with IGN in 2021, Abrams claimed that Portal was still in the works at Warner Bros., but we haven’t heard anything about the project in the five years since then. This fact has not gone unnoticed by fans, many of whom are hoping against hope that Valve has decided to pivot and work with Parsons, instead.

“I mean, how long [has] that Portal and Half-Life movie been in production by J.J Abrams, like what… 2013? “If Kane is really gung-ho about making a Portal film, then I don’t see Valve wanting to stop him,” one fan wrote on X.

“Portal was already supposed to get an adaptation from JJ Abrams, thank God that didn’t happen. So I’d say there’s a decent chance of it happening,” another speculated.

For now, the futures of these possible Portal and Half-Life films are up in the air… but Parsons is making it easy to imagine what his take on Valve’s iconic game franchises would look like.

The voice actor behind GTA 5’s Franklin went viral after revealing his personal disagreement with famous Twitch steamer Kai Cenat, but the two stars are on good terms again.

Shawn ‘Solo’ Fonteno is the voice behind one of Grand Theft Auto’s most iconic characters, Franklin Clinton. He made an appearance on Kai Cenat’s Twitch stream as a special guest back in 2024, where he took the influencer on a tour of the neighborhoods in Los Angeles that appeared in the game’s fictional city of Los Santos.

However, Solo said this was likely the last stream he’d ever do with Cenat due to the broadcaster’s interaction with a young fan that happened during their outing.

In a September 2026 episode of the Dope As Usual podcast, Solo explained that Kai Cenat approached a young fan during the stream who came from a struggling family. According to Solo, Cenat had offered to buy the fan a motorcycle — but Solo says he never made good on that promise.

“This was a family that didn’t have much at all, bro,” he recalled. “It was probably 15 people living in a one-bedroom home. I know these people, and I help them out at times. …Kai was cool, cordial with them, talking to them, ‘What you want? What can I get you?’ And the kid was like, ‘I wanna bike, can you get me a bike?’ He said, ‘What kind of bike?’ and the kid said, ‘A motorcycle!’ He said, ‘We gon’ make it happen.’

“I persisted to keep calling after that… let about a week go by, and texted, texted, tried to call, ‘Hey man, honor that [promise] with this kid, bro. It’s just a bike. [It’d] probably be about a thousand dollars, twelve hundred dollars or less, I don’t know, but you gave that kid this promise. And now you’re making me look bad, because I brought you here, and you gave this kid that promise.’”

Solo said he even approached Kai’s friend and fellow streamer Fanum about the issue, who the actor says ignored him.

“I’m standing on it, man,” he continued. “I’ll look into any one of these cameras like, ‘Bro, you a f**ked up dude for that.’ To me. You’re a very f**ked up dude. I don’t give a f**k how you feel about it. To me, that was not cool. If I make a promise, especially to a kid, I’mma honor it.”

The podcast went viral, prompting a wave of backlash toward Kai Cenat for allegedly failing to keep his promise to the child. Fans were convinced that he and Solo now had bad blood as a result of this issue — but just a day later, Solo confirmed that he and Kai were on good terms once more.

Solo revealed the news in an Instagram comment on September 16, which he wrote in response to a clip from the podcast episode. “I just talked to Kai and it was an honest mistake and it’s fixed. Thanks @kaicenat,” he said.

GTA fervor is at an all-time high after Rockstar’s immensely-popular preview for Grand Theft Auto 6 aired on Netflix last month. Fans can’t wait for the highly-anticipated game to finally release in November, and with major music artists and platforms like Spotify dropping cheeky hints on social media and billboards across Los Angeles, it’s clear there’s a lot more in store as the clock ticks down to launch in two months.

Image Credits: Julian Hamilton / FilmMagic via Getty Images / YouTube: Dope As Usual

Development images for a Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands sequel and a new Brothers in Arms game have emerged online, amid reports both were scrapped.

MP1st, which published the work-in-progress images, said the games were in development at former Embracer-owned studio Lost Boys Interactive, which returned to independence last year. Embracer sold Gearbox to 2K Games parent company Take-Two in 2024.

Lost Boys Interactive worked on the original Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a fantasy-themed spinoff of Gearbox’s hugely successful Borderlands franchise, as well as Borderlands 4, so it’s not a huge surprise to see evidence that it worked on the sequel.

Indeed, it was thought that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands did so well commercially that a sequel was inevitable. In 2022, Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford called Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands a “major victory,” adding that the developer viewed it as a new franchise with “future experiences already under development.”

“Wonderlands shattered all of our target expectations, both critically and commercially,” said Pitchford during an Embracer Group annual general meeting, “and I'm thrilled to report that in addition to great financial rewards from this victory that will be coming our way in the coming quarters, we have established a firm beachhead, and we now clearly have a new franchise on our hands.”

However, since then, nothing has emerged on a new Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands game. Gearbox has yet to announce its next project following last year’s release of Borderlands 4.

Meanwhile, the last mainline Brothers in Arms game was 2008’s Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. A fourth game in the WW2 shooter series, Furious 4, was cancelled and eventually turned into ill-fated hero shooter Battleborn. Pitchford has over the years indicated that a new Brothers in Arms game was on the way, but it never materialised.

The released images don’t really tell us much about the games themselves, other than they were in development. Were they canceled as part of Gearbox's sale to Take-Two? Are there new versions of each game in the works somewhere at Gearbox? IGN has asked for comment.

Beginning its life as a Shin Megami Tensei spin-off, the Persona series has become one of the biggest names in modern RPGs. From multiple major sequels and remakes to anime adaptations and even stage plays, Persona is a multimedia sensation, and its popularity doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

With the official announcement of both Persona 4 Revival and Persona 6, new players are probably wondering where’s the best place to start. Below, we’ll give you a full rundown of every game and spin-off, including the best entry point for newcomers and both the chronological and release order of the series.

Jump to:

• How to play in order
• How to play by release date
• Upcoming releases

How Many Persona Games Are There?

In total, there are currently 21 Persona games. Several of these are expanded versions of the mainline entries in the series, whether that’s in the form of re-releases featuring new story content or remakes. While we won’t include direct ports or remasters, we’ll make sure to note every alternate version of each game when listing them below.

Which Persona Game Should You Play First?

If you're looking for the perfect place to start, you can’t really go wrong jumping into Persona 3 Reload or Persona 5 Royal. They’re the latest versions of the third and fifth mainline entries in the series, and are available on PC and every major console.

For those concerned about skipping the story by jumping into later entries in the series, you won’t miss anything by going straight to Persona 3, 4, or 5. Each game tells an entirely new story with original characters that’s largely disconnected from its predecessors, so they’re great launching points for those coming in fresh. To narrow your choices down, I'd recommend taking a look at some gameplay videos, social links, and even the soundtracks across each game to see what "stands out" to you.

Every Persona Game and Spin-Off in Chronological Order

These blurbs contain mild spoilers for each game, including characters, settings, and story beats.

1. Revelations: Persona (1996)

The first game in the series, Revelations: Persona was Atlus’ reaction to the positive reception of Shin Megami Tensei: If…, which was another Shin Megami Tensei spin-off centered around high-schoolers battling demons. Capitalizing on how much players enjoyed the central concept, Revelations: Persona offered a full dungeon-crawling RPG centered around a group of high schoolers battling a supernatural uprising throughout the town of Mikage-cho.

Along the way, they use the powers of their awakened Personas to take down shadows and explore dungeons filled with random encounters, leveling up their party and growing stronger over the course of the game. Revelations: Persona was the foundation of the franchise as we know it today, introducing elements like wielding Personas in combat, the Velvet Room and a teenage cast of heroes.

2. Persona 2: Innocent Sin (1999)

The second entry in the Persona series, Persona 2: Innocent Sin launched in 1999. The game follows a new set of high-school students led by protagonist Tatsuya Suou, who set out on a mission to take down a mysterious villain known as Joker and the cult of the Masked Circle.

Centring around an evil plot where malicious rumors spreading around the town of Sumaru come to life, Persona 2 once again focuses on exploring dungeons, wielding Personas, fighting shadows and leveling up your party. Unlike other entries in the series, it received a direct sequel just a year later, with Persona 2: Eternal Punishment acting as a continuation of the game's story.

Read our review of Persona 2: Innocent Sin.

3. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (2000)

Following up the events of Innocent Sin, Eternal Punishment promoted side character, Maya Amano, to the protagonist role. Sent to write an article about a new rumor regarding a phenomenon known as the Joker Curse, the game quickly sees Maya and her allies rally against a returning foe.

Acting as a direct continuation of Innocent Sin's story, it centers on the same style of turn-based, dungeon-crawling gameplay, as players build their party and wield their Personas to battle shadows.

Read our review of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.

4. Persona 3 (2006) / Persona 3 FES (2007) / Persona 3 Portable (2009) / Persona 3 Reload (2024)

The third mainline entry in the franchise, Persona 3 was a major evolution of the Persona formula. Opting to focus on its high-school premise, Persona 3 introduced a daily calendar, with one half of the game tasking players with attending school, developing friendships and studying, while the other sent them to fight shadows in the supernatural realm of Tartarus.

The story focuses on high school student Makoto Yuki, who finds he's able to experience a mysterious space of time known as the Dark Hour, where regular people are trapped in coffins and a demonic tower sprouts from his school. Teaming with his classmates, he explores the tower, uncovering a sinister plot that threatens the entire world. Persona 3 is considered a landmark entry for the series, introducing social links, day-to-day activities and many other mechanics that have since become synonymous with the franchise.

Read our review of Persona 3 Reload.

5. Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (2018)

A rhythm-based dancing spin-off of Persona 3 that takes place during the main campaign, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight sees Elizabeth challenge the S.E.E.S team to a dance-off in the Velvet Room. The events of the game are set during a dream but are completely canon to the story, and follow the team performing various dance routines to iconic Persona 3 tracks.

6. Persona 4 (2008) / Persona 4 Golden (2012)

The fourth mainline entry in the Persona series, Persona 4 takes place in the rural town of Inaba. Players assume the role of Yu Narukami: a high schooler from the city who moves to the country to live with his uncle and cousin for a year. After arriving, a string of violent murders begin to take place in the town, as Yu and his friends quickly discover they’re somehow linked to a mysterious otherworldly realm they can access by stepping through TV monitors.

Delving into this mysterious new world, Yu and his friends face supernatural forces as they learn more about the murders, using their powers to try and stop them. Building off the mechanics of Persona 3, Persona 4 once again utilizes the calendar system, as players build social links and attend school while also exploring vast dungeons and defeating enemies with their Personas.

Read our review of Persona 4 Golden.

7. Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth (2014)

Technically taking place during the Persona 3 and Persona 4 storylines simultaneously, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth is a crossover between both games. During the typhoon segment of Persona 3 and the Culture Festival segment of Persona 4, the S.E.E.S team and the Investigation Squad are trapped inside a warped version of Yasogami High School.

The time-bending event sees both teams come together to investigate the strange occurrence and escape back to their respective spots on the timeline. Along the way, players explore a labyrinth filled with new enemies and uncover an original story, with the spin-off acting as a callback to the series’ more traditional dungeon-crawler roots.

Read our review of Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth.

8. Persona 4 Arena (2012)

A continuation of both Persona 3 and 4’s narratives and the franchise’s first major spin-off, Persona 4 Arena sees Yu Narukami return to Inaba and stumble into a new adventure, as he returns to the TV world for a mysterious fighting tournament. Forced to battle against his allies and a group known as the Shadow Operatives, which is comprised of Persona 3's Mitsuru, Akihiko and Aigis, Arena offers a full fighting game boasting a roster of iconic Persona characters.

Read our review of Persona 4 Arena.

9. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (2013)

A year following the release of Persona 4 Arena, the spin-off received a sequel titled Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Taking place directly after the events of the first game, the Persona 4 squad teams up with the Shadow Operatives to return to the TV World and battle against the mysterious forces running the fighting tournament. Ultimax was ultimately an upgrade for the first game, bringing in an expanded roster including returning characters like Yukari, Junpei, Ken and Koromaru.

Read our review of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.

10. Persona 4: Dancing All Night (2015)

The fourth and arguably most unexpected spin-off of Persona 4, Persona 4: Dancing All Night is a rhythm-based dancing game where the Investigation Squad performs routines to iconic Persona tracks. It offers a completely canon continuation of the storyline, following Yu and the team as they’re sucked into an alternate dimension known as the Midnight Stage.

Read our review of Persona 4: Dancing All Night.

11. Persona 5 (2016) / Persona 5 Royal (2019)

The fifth mainline entry in the series, Persona 5 hit shelves in Japan in 2016 before launching worldwide in 2017. Taking players to Tokyo, it casts them as a new protagonist known as Joker, who finds himself on probation after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Attending the local high school, Joker and his friends discover a supernatural alternate dimension, which allows them to infiltrate mystical palaces and change the hearts of evil-doers around the city.

Before long, the group becomes notorious on the streets of Tokyo, going under the alias of the Phantom Thieves. The game builds heavily off the formula established by Persona 3 and 4, including massive story-focused levels that unfold over a month, the return of the negotiation system and a new dungeon system known as Mementos. Persona 5 launched the franchise into the stratosphere, quickly becoming Atlus' best-selling game of all time and cultivating a huge fan base.

Read our review of Persona 5 Royal.

12. Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth (2018)

A sequel to Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, New Cinema Labyrinth once again depicts a crossover between various Persona characters. After the Phantom Thieves find themselves trapped in a movie theater, they ally with Persona 3's S.E.E.S team and Persona 4's Investigation Squad to find an escape, traveling into the movies on the screen in an attempt to fix their endings.

Much like the original game, Persona Q2 simultaneously takes place during the Persona 3, 4 and 5 storylines, with the adventure pulling each group out of their respective timeline. There, they explore dungeons from a first-person perspective and fight turn-based battles against various enemies.

13. Persona 5 Tactica (2023)

Taking place during the events of Persona 5, Persona 5 Tactica is a strategy-focused spin-off that’s similar in style to the XCOM franchise. The story follows the Phantom Thieves mysteriously traveling to an alternate realm known as the Kingdoms. Unable to escape, Joker and Morgana are forced to abandon the rest of the Phantom Thieves after they're brainwashed by the realm's monstrous ruler, Tyrant Marie, forcing the pair to begin an adventure to save their allies and return home.

Along the way, they team up with the local resistance, helping them fight against Tyrant Marie's forces. The game revolves around a tactical grid-based combat system, as players direct three units across the battlefield and take out enemies.

Read our review of Persona 5 Tactica.

14. Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight (2018)

Atlus’ third rhythm-based dancing spin-off, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight sees Caroline and Justine bring the Phantom Thieves to the Velvet Room and challenge them to a dance off. There, the group perform dance routines to several of Persona 5's catchiest tracks.

15. Persona 5 Strikers (2020)

A spin-off set four months after the events of Persona 5, Strikers sees the Phantom Thieves reunite for a summer vacation. However, the team find themselves sucked into the Metaverse after using an app known as EMMA. Escaping with the help of a new ally, the team don their Phantom Thieves gear once more and set out to discover the truth behind EMMA, the Metaverse, and what it means for the people of Tokyo.

Persona 5 Strikers is a crossover with the long-running Dynasty Warriors franchise, introducing real-time combat to the series. Battles center around the Phantom Thieves taking on large hordes of enemies, which they can deal with through combos or by calling on Personas.

Read our review of Persona 5 Strikers.

16. Persona 5: The Phantom X (2025)

The most recent Persona release is yet another spin-off of Persona 5. This one's a bit funky. Developed by Black Wings Game Studio, Persona 5: The Phantom X is a free-to-play game with microtransactions (otherwise known as a gacha gama) that takes place in 'alternate timeline' to Persona 5 itself. You take on the role of Wonder, a high school student who, of course, awakens his Persona and gains access to the Metaverse.

Read our review of Persona 5: The Phantom X.

What's Next for Persona?

After the massive success of Metaphor: ReFantazio (it picked up quite a few awards), Sega announced their desire to keep investing in Atlus, and the Persona IP in particular, in a developers' Q&A session.

Persona 4 Revival was announced at a the 2025 Xbox Showcase, a new remake of the game that originally released on PS2 in 2008 before being remastered as Persona 4 Golden in 2012. The remake is scheduled for release on February 18, 2027, and will be available Day One on Xbox Game Pass.

That's not all. We finally have confirmation that Persona 6 is real. A short teaser gives us a glimpse at least at some cool aesthetics in classic Atlus style, and there's no word on a release date. But it's real! Here's a breakdown of everything we know so far, which includes, in classic Atlus fashion, some good ol' leaks.

In the meantime, the Phantom Thieves from P5R continue to pop up in pretty much every franchising opportunity they can, most recently as skins in Overwatch 2. Outside of games, Netflix has confirmed development on a live-action Persona TV show. Interesting, I know.

Callum Williams is a freelance media writer with years of experience as a game critic, news reporter, guides writer and features writer.

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.

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.

This is an IGN opinion piece from Ryan McCaffrey, who worked at Official Xbox Magazine from 2002-2012 during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 era before joining IGN, where he remains “the Xbox guy.” In the run-up to Xbox’s 25th anniversary, he’ll be sharing his memories from the platform’s first quarter-century.

As the hugely anticipated release of GTA 6 is now just over two months away, it’s worth remembering how it wasn’t so long ago that the Grand Theft Auto games were PlayStation exclusives. GTA 3 and Vice City didn’t see the light of day on the original Xbox until November of 2003 when the pair shipped as the GTA Double Pack, meaning that GTA 3 was exclusive to PS2 for two years and Vice City for one. San Andreas, meanwhile, hit Xbox in June of 2005, a comparatively short eight months after its initial PS2 release.

The point is, when then-Head of Xbox Peter Moore – easily the best showman that’s ever run the Xbox business – rolled up his sleeve to reveal a “tattoo” of the Grand Theft Auto IV logo on his bicep at E3 2006 and announce that not only would Rockstar’s next-gen GTA ship day-and-date on the Xbox 360, but that Xbox would get not one but two timed-exclusive expansion packs (which later turned out to be the excellent The Lost and Damned and the absolutely sublime The Ballad of Gay Tony), it was the biggest of big deals. Microsoft cut Rockstar a $50 million check for the privilege, but it was worth it. At least to Xbox 360 gamers, many of whom had invested in Microsoft’s first-to-market HD Era next-gen console after its incredibly strong out-of-the-gate showing with games like Call of Duty 2, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and Fight Night Round 3 all being verified next-gen powerhouses before the E3 2006 Xbox press conference – and before the PS3 even shipped.

Microsoft had gotten off to a huge start (as Moore used to say, “The first one to 10 million wins”), and with this GTA 4 deal, the company had shown that it was standing behind the millions of gamers who had “jumped in” with the Xbox 360 in its early days. Xbox 360 gamers wouldn’t be second-class citizens when it came to the industry’s biggest franchise.

And when GTA 4 finally got released in April of 2008 (after a delay from Fall 2007), it was, of course, a from-the-ground-up masterpiece that shared nothing in common, technologically speaking, with the GTA 3 trilogy. It took us back to Liberty City, albeit a completely reimagined one that looked incredible and was packed with small details and stuff to do. It is, in my humble opinion, the funniest of all of the satirically brilliant GTA games, as it featured the hilarious in-game internet (accessible at internet cafes…remember those?), memorable characters like Brucie, and laugh-out-loud in-universe TV shows like “The Men’s Room.”

Speaking very personally, it also came out very shortly after I got divorced, and I have really meaningful memories of my best friend Robert flying up from Arizona right after it came out to keep me company and enjoy the game with me. There was no GTA Online back then, of course, so we’d just pass the controller back and forth, each reveling in (and laughing along with) the crazy antics of the person with the gamepad in their hand. We must’ve put a few dozen hours into GTA 4 in the few days he stayed with me, and I’ll always associate GTA 4 with a much-needed bit of fun and levity and friendship in a moment when I needed it most.

Later, as I mentioned, The Lost and the Damned dropped (and stayed exclusive to Xbox for over a year), and its focus on the biker gang of the same name was a super cool pivot on the typical GTA formula. And later still, The Ballad of Gay Tony (a six-month Xbox 360 exclusive) featured impeccable storytelling and character work by Rockstar; heck, I’d personally rank it among the best DLCs or expansions for any game, ever. And then at the tail end of the Xbox 360 generation we got GTA 5…though sadly no single-player DLC at all, as originally promised, let alone exclusive DLC.

Anyway, I’d argue that GTA 4’s simultaneous release on Xbox 360 and subsequent exclusive DLC might’ve been where the Xbox brand peaked from a cultural perspective. You had to have an Xbox 360 – if not for the killer lineup of games it already had, then for the exclusive GTA 4 expansions. It was right up there with the release of Halo 3 in 2007. In fact, Fall of 2007 – which saw the release of Halo 3, Mass Effect, BioShock, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Rock Band, and Assassin’s Creed – through GTA 4’s release in April of 2008 might be the best six-or-so-month run any console has ever had.

What We Do in the Shadows' Matt Berry voices an IKEA Kallax bookcase in a free official Creation for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

The infamous IKEA storage unit will become a fully-fledged in-game companion, Kallax Storageborn, able to carry your items and prevent you becoming easily over-encumbered. You'll even be able to summon him with a custom Dragon Shout (AYE-KEY-YAH). Yes, IKEA.

Why is Berry being roped in to lend his baritone boom to a bookcase? Well, this is an officially-licensed IKEA collaboration that plays on the infamous annoyance of being over-encumbered within the game.

But there's seemingly more here than just a simple joke. Not only have Berry's talents been secured, but developer Kinggath Creations has crafted a full quest with two new IKEA-themed dungeons, and a boss fight against the Clutter Golem. Need help assembling your inventory? You'll also be able to wield the Dwemer Allen Key weapon, wear the Meatball Helmet, and gobble meatball food items.

"At IKEA, we believe in creating a better everyday life for the many people — and why shouldn't that include their digital lives?" said IKEA exec Kemi Anthony. "Skyrim possesses one of the largest modding communities in gaming, and we saw a space where our expertise in functional storage could make a real difference in this fantasy world.

"Matt Berry's distinctive, legendary voice brings theatrics, booming authority and charm to the new Creation. In bringing Kallax to life we hope to not only make a meaningful difference for Skyrim players but doing so with a touch of added IKEA playfulness to delight gamers who've long been bogged down by too much stuff."

This isn't Berry's first video game credit, of course. You can hear his dulcet tones right now in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight as Bane, or in the celebrated 2024 British indie adventure Thank Goodness You're Here!

It's a busy time for Berry, who is due to appear next year in both Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and A Minecraft Movie Squared. This year, he'll appear as The Fish in a new Bill Hader-starring adaptation of The Cat in the Hat.

The IKEA Kallax Storageborn add-on Creation will be available to download for free via Bethesda Game Studios in-game Creations menu from today, September 9.

Image credit: IKEA.

Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi says the company has experienced an uptick in fans who don’t actually play the games it develops and publishes.

In a September 7 interview with Nikkei Gaming, Utsumi discussed the company’s current “transmedia” strategy, which has seen some of its biggest franchises — such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Persona, Yakuza, etc. — cross over into the worlds of film and television to expand their brands across multiple different mediums.

This, of course, has led to a rise in fans of these games who haven't actually played them. Utsumi confirmed this sentiment to Nikkei Gaming’s editor-in-chief, Aya Hirano, after she broached the topic by saying, “Lately, there's been an increase in fans who like an IP even though they've never played the game.”

“We've seen an increase in such fans for every title in recent years,” Utsumi answered. “For example, the Yakuza series has been doing exceptionally well in merchandising, with 60-70% of its buyers being women. They've become fans of the Yakuza world, story, and characters after watching our YouTube channel and popular YouTubers' streams. And among them are many people who have never actually played the game.”

Utsumi isn’t calling these fans LARPers, though; instead, he says that Sega considers all of its fans to be gamers, regardless of whether they’ve picked up a controller to actually play their games or not.

“Even people who have never played games are considered fans and gamers by us. Transmedia's strength lies in increasing the entry points and contact points for people to become interested in IP. In some cases, their engagement is even higher than that of fans who actually play the games,” he added.

Utsumi went on to explain that the rise of female fans within the gaming space has created a shift in the types of merchandise that publishers produce, specifically calling back to his experience working at Cybird, a developer famous for its Otome romance games.

“I also worked on romance games for women at Cybird. There, in addition to traditional collectible goods such as can badges and acrylic stands, we saw a significant shift in merchandising, with the emergence of lifestyle-oriented licensed products like apparel and cosmetics that could be used daily, as well as limited-edition and commemorative goods created in collaboration with amusement facilities. That experience definitely broadened my perspective, and I believe it's been invaluable in my transmedia strategy at Sega,” he said.

Sega’s “transmedia” strategy is clearly working out for it, with all three live-action Sonic movies making bank at the box office and a fourth to come — not to mention the upcoming Persona series that’s in the works at Netflix. Whether or not these projects’ popularity translates to more players seems moot to Sega, though. To them, every fan is a “gamer” at heart.

Sony is reportedly in the early stages of bringing its first-person shooter series, Killzone, back from the dead.

Guerrilla Games’ Halo killer fell by the wayside after the developer found enormous success with Horizon Zero Dawn back in 2017. It has focused on the Horizon franchise ever since, but Killzone retains a loyal following, and fans often call for it to return.

According to MP1st, Sony may be working on doing just that, with Bulletstorm and Outriders maker People Can Fly drafted in to co-dev. But what is this new Killzone game? Apparently it’s a Killzone remaster or remake, and while we’re not sure which Killzone is getting a fresh coat of paint, the first Killzone game, released on the PlayStation 2 in 2004, is a safe bet.

There’s a lot going on at Guerrilla right now. PlayStation recently rebooted Horizon multiplayer spinoff Hunters Gathering following negative feedback, and, according to MP1st, the studio will move on to Killzone after it’s done doing that. According to Bloomberg, Guerrilla has until December to impress PlayStation bosses with Hunters Gathering’s next milestone, but already some Hunters Gathering staff moved over to another Guerrilla project with a milestone due at the end of this year. Apparently a “tiny team” is working on the next Horizon single-player game, which we’ll call Horizon 3 but will undoubtedly carry a new subtitle, but it’s still years away.

Perhaps a Killzone remaster or remake is a way in for PlayStation to potentially reboot the series with a brand new game at some point down the line. Either way, it’s exciting news for Killzone fans, who haven’t heard a peep out of the franchise ever since PlayStation 4 launch title Killzone Shadow Fall (save a T-shirt in The Last of Us Part 2: Remastered) and a Helldivers 2 crossover.

Speaking in 2024, Guerrilla Games art director Roy Postma declared the studio’s preference for the brighter, more vibrant world of Horizon over the dark and violent world of Killzone it had spent the previous decade working on.

“We were done with it as a team,” Postma said. “As a studio, we needed to refresh the palette. It was, by choice, the opposite of Killzone.”

Postma added that Horizon’s world has a wider appeal than Killzone’s: "I think the themes that this story and the characters represent are relatable for all ages and people, like having a found family of friends and finding your place in the world."

Open-world games. Arguably, no other genre has defined modern gaming more than the expansive, experimental, and exciting places this one has taken us to. Over the past 30 years, we’ve gone from grey, empty streets begging to be torn up in a blocky muscle car to glorious, colourful fantasy lands full of adventure and opportunity. But what are the games that have stood out the most, pushed the form forward, and ultimately led to GTA 6’s moment?

As part of IGN 30, I’m going to try to answer that question by walking you through five distinct flavours of open-world game before deciding on the greatest of them all. From web-swinging superheroes and sword-swinging monster hunters to bank heists and shrine raids, here are the 30 masterpieces of open-world game design.

City Living

GTA. There are really no other three letters to start with than Rockstar’s industry-changing creation, especially when it comes to city settings. What started as a top-down, level-based car-stealing simulation in 1997 was fun, but limited by the confines of the technology of the time. It would take another four years, and the creation of the PS2 and its DVD storage capabilities, for the series to truly become a phenomenon as it stepped into the 3D era with Grand Theft Auto 3.

Grand Theft Auto 3

Claude’s violent journey through the streets of Liberty City set the template for the next 10 years of copycats — a few of which we’ll look at in a short while. It took a setting first sketched out in the original GTA and combined it with the sort of cinematic storytelling emerging on PlayStation at the time to perform alchemy. The result was a first of its kind and a new gold standard for open worlds.

They may feel like monotonous, clunky missions to play through now, but there’s no denying the permanent blueprint GTA 3 created for expansive city games to come, nor the way it managed to successfully weave a story that evoked prestige television into an open world structure — casting multiple Sopranos alumni in the process. It took the pulsating urban driving experience pioneered in Driver, a 1999 open-zone car chaser, and presented it in a wholly new way. Sure, there were open-world city games before GTA 3, but not many others on this list would exist without it.

After what seems an impossibly short development timeline to comprehend these days, just one year later, those grey, rainy streets would be swapped out for the neon blues and pastel pinks of GTA: Vice City. Again, a huge step up for the series.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Tommy Vercetti’s tale offered virtual time travel back to an exaggerated 1980s that felt like a love fist to the face back in 2002. GTA 3’s city served its street-level crime story perfectly, but Vice City created a sandbox you wanted to spend time in, regardless of plot momentum. Yes, its hit-filled radio stations played a huge part in creating its vibe, but so did its numerous landmarks and distinct gang-controlled regions that made this slice of fictional Florida feel alive.

It felt more like existing in a world, and gave you the opportunity to soak in its culture in a way GTA 3 never did — managing to still provide a propulsive story, but allowing more time to breathe in between missions. In this respect, it borrowed aspects from an even earlier open-world game: Shenmue.

Shenmue

Yu Suzuki’s Dreamcast tale of a martial artist seeking revenge for the murder of his father in 1980s Japan immersed the player in an unparalleled level of world-building for the time — dressing its environments in impressive detail, while also encouraging you to simply exist in its world. Its influence can be seen in many an open-world game, including GTA, but perhaps most prominently in the Yakuza series, where minigames, colourful characters and eccentric slices of life can be found on every one of its Japanese and, now, Hawaiian street corners.

A day/night system and variable weather conditions went a long way to making 1986 Yokosuka feel like a lived-in city, setting a new precedent when it came to existing in a persistent world full of NPCs living their life around you. Shenmue’s raft of minigames, including throwing darts and forklift racing, undoubtedly influenced GTA, and ultimately could be considered to blame for Niko Bellic’s cousin barraging your phone with bowling invitations a decade later in an HD universe Liberty City.

But back in 2002, after Vice City, GTA would take two years to return with the just-as-brilliant San Andreas. Naturally, other studios were already trying to piggyback on its success in the meantime. Chief among those were The Getaway and Mafia. Both had their moments, but felt like first drafts for something more promising. Unfortunately, the former London-set Guy Ritchie pastiche would fail to live up to that promise when the disappointing The Getaway: Black Monday arrived in 2004. But developer 2K Czech took its time with the Mafia series, and it proved worth the wait when a sequel released in 2010.

Mafia 2

Undoubtedly influenced by GTA 4, which dropped two years prior and tackled the notion of the American dream through the eyes of an immigrant, this post-war tale of organised crime told its story brilliantly, even if it was lacking as a sandbox compared to Rockstar’s creations. Heavily inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather films, it was another step forward in open-world cities as digital tourism, recreating 1940s and 50s USA to great detail, placing the time period and societal tensions front of mind. It’s a mindset that was also taken into its sequel, Mafia 3, a flawed but fascinating examination of Vietnam War-era America, race, and political corruption.

This was a more serious era for the open-world game, with Rockstar even letting sincerity seep into GTA 4 and Red Dead Redemption. Both games were tales of one man’s tussle with a changing America and a haunted past. And though each still packed its fair share of silliness, they took swipes at capitalism through satire too. That maturity was offset by the Saints Row series, which took the bullshit by the horns and ran with it, peaking in 2011 with Saints Row: The Third.

Saints Row: The Third

A city where the sight of a weaponised dildo was as commonplace as a flying motorcycle, Steelport turned its gaze away from real-world issues and instead treated its world like an amusement park. An exercise in audacity, it pushed the GTA formula to comic extremes and feels more like a relic of a different era than perhaps any other open-world game on this list. In some ways, the series shared more with the superhero genre — of which we’ll delve more into very soon — than it did with Rockstar’s open worlds by the time Saints Row: The Third came about, giving players the freedom to live out their wildest power trip fantasies, no matter how puerile they may have been.

More considered contenders for the GTA-alike crown would come and go. Sleeping Dogs garnered a cult following thanks to its Hong Kong-set martial arts action. The original Watch Dogs may have failed to live up to high expectations, but its San Francisco-set sequel hit the mark thanks to its vibrant Bay Area setting and eclectic cast of hackers. But, in reality, they were just warming the seat for the king. It may come as no surprise that my pick for the best city-based open-world game is GTA 5, still unbeaten some 13 years later.

Grand Theft Auto 5

Others may look toward GTA for ideas, but Rockstar has only ever built on its own. Combining facets from each entry in the series — the cinematic foundations of GTA 3, the vibe established in Vice City, the Californian glow of San Andreas, and the cutting satire of 4 — the developer crafted the best entry in the series to date. But most importantly of all, it brought new ideas to the table that we hadn’t seen before.

The decision to expand from one to three playable protagonists opened up a new toybox for Rockstar to play with. It allowed for that switch in perspective to dynamically change how GTA could approach its mission design, with highlights being the multi-stage heists that were born out of GTA 4’s iconic Three Leaf Clover bank robbery. These expansive, blockbuster acts of criminality took advantage of every corner of GTA 5’s map, with underground infiltrations leading to street-bound car chases, before the skies were taken to in thrilling helicopter escapes. It’s the best example yet of turning an open-world city into a playground, without sacrificing cinematic aspirations.

Superheroes

Speaking of cinema, no genre quite dominated the box office like comic book movies did in the 2010s, so it was only natural that Marvel and DC characters would soon be getting video games of an equal standard. Attempts had previously been made in this department during the first mini-superhero movie boom of the early 2000s, which saw successful tie-ins like Treyarch’s Spider-Man 2. But that would just be a taster for what Insomniac would achieve with its own interpretation of the city swinger.

Marvel’s Spider-Man

If GTA 5 opened the door to sprawling missions in an open city setting, then Marvel’s Spider-Man kicked it down. Insomniac’s 2018 original and its sequels magically managed to transfer PlayStation’s cinematic storytelling into an open-world Manhattan, chaining together sequences worthy of the best Uncharted had to offer. Take the Lizard chase in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, for example — a 100mph pursuit that takes half of the city with it as traffic and cranes are elegantly navigated and chunks of building rain down on the streets below. It’s a level of blockbuster sheen and detail rarely seen in open-world games, but rather one that has come to represent Sony exclusives over the past decade.

Insomniac has forebears to thank for setting a template, of course. The aforementioned Spider-Man 2 on the PS2 was a nostalgia-soaked example of translating the big screen onto a smaller one, and Hulk: Ultimate Destruction showed what superpowered carnage could look like in such a large sandbox. But these Spidey games owe most to Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy — not only in their world design, but in their pioneering combo-based melee combat. Now seems about as good a time as any to reveal that my pick for the best superhero open-world game is Batman: Arkham Knight.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Yes, not Arkham City, Arkham Origins, or Arkham Asylum (which isn’t even an open world), but Arkham Knight, the final chapter of Rocksteady’s Bruce Wayne story. The 2015 masterpiece possesses one of the most dynamic open worlds we’ve seen to this day, and no, a handful of slightly tedious tank battle sequences aren’t going to get in the way of that. The Batmobile itself acted as the key to unlocking an open-world Gotham. Although first shown off in Arkham City, the vehicle truly came to life when boosting, skidding, and ejecting in Knight. It turned the city-gone-to-hell into Batman’s domain, and made you feel like the master of it. That’s until it unexpectedly turned on you.

Arkham Knight was home to one of the most consistently surprising open worlds in a video game. Nowhere was this more apparent than in its random, and still jump-scare-inducing, Manbat appearances. We all remember the first time we grappled onto an art deco rooftop ledge and out of nowhere, BAM: a crumpled, anthropomorphised bat screamed out of the screen. It’s moments like this that made this version of Gotham come fully to life, and no matter how powerful the cowl made you feel, this reactive edge ensured you never felt fully in control of your environment. Throw in the best, most personally affecting story of the trilogy, which is replete with wide-scale Scarecrow antics that change the complexion of the city throughout, and you’ve got the best open-world superhero game of them all.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes

But perhaps psychological dilemmas, familial trauma, and fanged jumpscares aren’t what you’re looking for? Well, good news, because there are plenty of flavours of superhero open world out there, and none as snackable as the slapstick humour-fuelled Lego Marvel Super Heroes. Traveller’s Tales crafted an original story that brought together characters from every corner of the Marvel universe. Many of its core missions may well have been bound to linear levels, but it was in Lego Marvel Super Heroes’ open Manhattan, packed full of iconic locations, that it truly came to life. Zooming around as Iron Man or Thor felt far better than controlling any plastic-jointed minifig has the right to, especially when breaking through the clouds and landing on a SHIELD helicarrier, or zipping across the water to check on the inmates of the adjacent Ryker’s Island.

It wasn’t just a sightseeing tour for Marvel fans at a time when the MCU was approaching its peak, but a world of opportunity, too. Yes, time trial and puzzle-based challenges could be found on streets and rooftops, but Lego Marvel Super Heroes was also one of the best collectathon games ever made. The Arkham trilogy’s Riddler trophies paved the way, but no one pulled it off quite like Traveller’s Tales did here — with dozens of cheat-unlocking golden bricks, vehicles ripped out of comic book pages, and a roster of over 180 superheroes and villains to find. It’s just good, innocent fun, and to this day, it remains one of the best superhero, Lego, and open-world games available. Also, while we’re here, shout out to the criminally underrated GTA-alike Lego City Undercover — Chase McCain, you’ll always have a place in my heart.

Infamous

But Marvel and DC aren’t the exclusive owners of superhero open worlds. Prior to Lego Marvel Super Heroes, Prototype and Infamous landed within weeks of each other in 2009. The former had its fans, becoming something of a cult classic over the years, thanks to its squelchy, shapeshifting-powered combat in yet another open-world Manhattan. But it would be Sucker Punch’s creation that would ultimately stand taller. Both Infamous and its sequel harnessed the superhero-or-villain fantasy, thanks to a morality meter at the centre of its systems and story. Would Cole MacGrath use his newfound electrical powers to become the saviour or destroyer of the fictional Empire City (technically not quite Manhattan, yet again) and the New Orleans-inspired New Marais? The choice was yours.

It was a series that headlined a moment in time when original superhero characters were being born in games. Before Spider-Man, Insomniac created the Xbox exclusive Sunset Overdrive, which followed along a similar path, placing open-world traversal at the core of the experience. Sunset Overdrive inarguably played a huge role in setting the stage for Spider-Man’s fluid web-swinging. This kind of non-licensed superhero game is something that has faded into the background ever since, but I hope we’re about to see it return in some form thanks to Control: Resonant, which looks to combine urban antihero aspirations with interesting RPG mechanics.

RPGs

RPGs and open worlds go hand-in-hand. In a genre designed around inhabiting a character completely, what better way to do that than to wander an uncharted land and discover your place in it with every footstep, conversation, or trigger pull? And when it comes to open-world RPGs, there’s no other place to start than with Bethesda.

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion may have been important steps, especially in transitioning a traditionally PC experience onto console, but nothing compares to the phenomenon that was Skyrim.

By removing class systems, it took away a fundamental fantasy RPG hook and replaced it with pure freedom, allowing the open world of northern Tamriel to be experienced as any combination of character traits of your choosing — even if we did all pick stealth archer. The “you can go to that mountain” cliché may be well-worn now, but without the sheer joy of discovery that Skyrim brought to the table in 2011, we likely wouldn’t have the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that would follow later that decade. It’s easy to take it for granted now, but 15 years ago, fantasy open-worlds that combined this level of scale and detail just didn’t exist, and Skyrim can largely be thanked for ushering in a whole new age.

Fallout: New Vegas

Not happy with just pioneering in fantasy realms, Bethesda reinvigorated a dormant sci-fi series, by taking its open-world Elder Scrolls learnings and translating them within the Fallout universe. Fallout 3 was the first step on this journey, which transformed what was formerly an isometric turn-based RPG into a third-person open-world shooter. But just two years later, in 2010, Obsidian Entertainment stepped in to helm Fallout: New Vegas, delivering an intricate faction and quest system that elevated the story you chose to tell.

The post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert managed to find an excellent balance between the new Bethesda style of open-world Fallout and the more traditional Interplay RPG systems, and somehow, it all came together. Crafting an intricate power struggle between several factions where each quest, both crucial and optional, affects your standing in its world is hard enough to do in a linear level-based game. But trying to achieve that in a vast open world where you can do things in a myriad different orders, well, that’s ambitious to say the least. But, Obsidian somehow pulled it off, and with a smile, too. New Vegas’ world is packed full of memorable moments and characters that you interact with in the way you want, and whichever way you choose, you’ll have an incredible time. It’s something of a miracle that it all works, really.

Nier: Automata

But some RPG stories are told to you, not by you, and few have done it with the structural flair that Nier: Automata brought to narrative design. Yoko Taro’s masterpiece ushered you through its 120th Earth as it shifted in appearance throughout the three playthroughs recommended in order to see one of its true endings. Its open world may not have been the most cutting-edge in terms of discovery or how it was navigated — that was saved for the wonderful chip-based skills system, phenomenal score, and perspective-shifting action. But that open world did lay the foundations perfectly for its tale, which was all about Earth, what happened to it, and what it could become.

There was a charm and melancholy that permeated every corner, as pockets of civilisation were reclaimed by lost robots, and sidequests helped fill in the gaps left behind by their creators. Nier: Automata’s open world may not have been the star of the show, and was, in fact, as linear as sandboxes come, but you’ll struggle to find a story better told within one.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Stories don’t have to be the propulsive force that powers open worlds, however. Because that canvas of opportunity can produce moments like no other genre, whether part of a main quest or simply while wandering through a world. That’s a sensation the long-awaited sequel to cult action-RPG Dragon’s Dogma captured perfectly when it released in 2024. Its main plotline was arguably the weakest card in its hand, but that doesn’t take away from what made Dragon’s Dogma 2 special.

The nations of Vermund and Battahl are a haven to all sorts of mythological monsters, and when they entered your vicinity, Dragon’s Dogma 2 truly came to life. The first time a Griffon the size of a house swept down onto you was a moment you were unlikely to forget, but it was the way these creatures interacted with the world’s geography that made the game truly impressive. For example, knocking down an ogre could make it fall across a ravine before grasping onto the cliff edge on the other side with its hairy fingers, inadvertently creating a bridge for you to walk across. It’s these unexpected moments that made Dragon’s Dogma 2’s world design so special, as if it had all been designed around these beasts, with your journey through it a path you’d have to carve for yourself via any method of your choosing. It was an open world RPG that lived by its own rules, and felt alive like few others do.

Cyberpunk 2077

Purely existing in a world and finding your place within it is a huge part of the open-world RPG, and arguably, no one has done it with as much style as CD Projekt Red did in Cyberpunk 2077. Yes, its rocky launch has been exhaustively chronicled at this point, but there’s no denying there was nothing quite like walking the streets of Night City and inserting yourself in its many intertwining stories, from seedy, neon-lit bars to the pristine sheen of its looming corporate tower blocks. The level of immersion was near-unparalleled, with its slick architecture playing host to stories that affected the world on a global and individual scale.

It’s those individuals that made Night City such an engaging whole, though, as its cast of characters were so successfully rooted in the tales it was trying to tell. Protagonist V’s partner in crime, Jackie Wells, served as the personal connection that tied you to each event from the prologue onward, as seemingly everyone you met from that point on, from shady Arasaka executives to digital projections of martyred rock stars, tried to lead you astray.

But it’s not just in the writing or the performances that these people felt so alive, but in the way the Polish studio presented them on a technical level. As you sidled up next to them, their faces and all-important body language filled the frame. The decision to lock the player into a first-person perspective was a stroke of genius, taking a leaf out of Bethesda’s playbook as pioneers in the genre, to bring Night City as close to us as possible. Through these interactions, the stories and missions of Cyberpunk 2077 came alive and made it somewhere you just couldn’t tear yourself away from, no matter how corrupting an influence it may have had. CD Projekt Red is the master of weaving engaging questlines through open worlds, as they already proved with their previous masterpiece.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

It’s a near-impossible task to describe what makes The Witcher 3 so special in such a short space of time as I have here, but let’s focus on its approach to questing. Few games, if any, allow you to have such a widespread impact on their world as the Witcher series. Yes, Bethesda’s Fallout and Elder Scrolls games pride themselves on faction and choice-based mission design, with New Vegas being the shining beacon of this still. But it simply doesn’t compare to what CD Projekt Red has done in translating Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels to video games. If you played The Witcher 2, you’ll know that practically the whole second half of the game was drastically different depending on one decision you might make. But it is in its sequel, where the series truly broke through to console players, that the Polish studio stamped its mark as the master of its craft.

Whether it be the now-iconic Shakespearean tale of the Bloody Baron, or the twisting serial killer hunt in Carnal Sins, the genius of the questlines was that we all came away with our own story to tell. The breadth of them was astonishing, with each delicately written line laced with meaning, with right or wrong often obfuscated by lies and treachery. In many ways, The Witcher 3 was a fantasy detective game, where you were tasked with bringing peace to a continent that willfully resisted it. The secret was, you never could. A happy ending was a rarity in this world, and seeking one was almost foolhardy. But those moments where you thought you’d finally worked out how to achieve just one were what made The Witcher 3’s incredibly rewarding quest design so special.

In Geralt, The Witcher gave you a fairly rigid character to play as in RPG terms. The genius of it was that while he remained neutral, you could shape every character’s story that met him with the press of a button. No other open-world RPG gave you freedom to shape its story to quite the same extent, which is why it's still best-in-class. The impact of The Witcher 3 really can’t be understated, going as far as to influence one of the most successful game series of all time in its pivot from stealth-parkour playgrounds to fully-fledged, quest-based, action-RPGs.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Picking just one Assassin’s Creed game to represent a name that has become synonymous with the open-world genre over the past couple of decades is not easy. Assassin’s Creed 2 changed the trajectory of Ubisoft’s stealth series with its take on Renaissance Italy. Black Flag granted players the pirate fantasy in 2013. But the most recent entries of AC have been outright RPGs, beginning with Egyptian-set Origins, before hitting a high point with the Greece-based Odyssey.

Its vast Aegean Sea, full of islands of all sizes, represented both the best and worst of Ubisoft's open world design — the promise of endless opportunities swamped in map icons so numerous they could damage the eyes. But what made Odyssey so engaging was how Kassandra’s (or Alexio’s, but let’s face it, Kassandra’s) revenge story was presented in this huge world. While you weren’t able to affect political or societal change as in The Witcher 3, Odyssey was clearly influenced by the framework CD Projekt Red laid out, while focusing much more on a personal tale.

Its real masterstroke was the Cult of Kosmos, a secret, powerful cabal which hid across all of this fictionalised Ancient Greece. Completing quests would guide you in the right direction, inevitably leading you to them. But then there was that unique thrill of stumbling across a target in the wild that has rarely been replicated since. As rare and exciting as something like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor’s much-lauded Nemesis System, this freeform discovery was what set this new era of Assassin’s Creed apart, encouraging you to explore its world organically as well as walk to mission markers.

Discovery and Experimentation

‘Ubisoft open world’ has almost become shorthand for a copy-and-paste approach to design, but the publisher was once a pioneer in the space. The daring Far Cry 2 split opinion, but remains an interesting experiment in survival and player agency in an open world. But Far Cry 3 hit on a formula that forced it into the mainstream, as its exotic map, hideout clearing, and wildlife encounters set the template for the future of the series.

Far Cry 3

The unpredictable nature of those animals, from hungry bull sharks to terrifying Komodo dragons, made the Rook Islands a genuinely dangerous place to exist in, and Ubisoft made it all the more immersive through its first-person perspective. But as much as trepidation was encouraged in Far Cry 3, experimental fun was also at its forefront, as enemy bases under the control of its magnetic villain, Vaas, served as satisfying combat playgrounds to infiltrate in your own style. The vibrant world and its ecology felt like a real step forward in 2012, with its gripping story supported by notes and collectibles found littered around that encouraged education through exploration.

Elden Ring

Where map markers flooded Ubisoft open worlds, FromSoftware headed in the other direction with Elden Ring. An action-RPG that sent you out into its lands with little, but hid an incredible amount of depth for those that explored it thoroughly, Hidetaka Miyazaki’s evolution of the Soulslike into an open world somehow surpassed all expectations upon its release in 2022.

The Lands Between could be navigated via its golden path — literally, as gilded, glowing embers flittered towards the next main objective — but it's on the less beaten trails that Elden Ring truly came to life. Wander in one direction, and you’d be faced with a labyrinth of catacombs home to deadly traps. Ride your horse in the other direction, and you may have been ambushed by a swooping dragon that fancied a bite of you for lunch — not before barbecuing you first, of course. Or, maybe you’d just be strolling through a forest, home to oversized bears, and stumble across an ancient elevator that took you down miles beneath the surface to a once-bustling city.

And the thing was, as much as it was fun to play all of this, there was a reward waiting at the end of all of these expeditions, too. Whether it was lore that expanded upon the gods and kings that once ruled this world, or a new weapon to take them down with, it was always worth discovering. A masterpiece in every sense of the world, it may surprise you to hear that Elden Ring hasn’t taken the top spot in this category. That’s still to come.

Crimson Desert

Crimson Desert doesn’t want to hold your hand either, setting you free in a huge continent full of opportunity. In a game that has changed enormously in the few short months since its release, and if I’m honest, will likely have drastically changed again in the time between me writing this and the video being edited, one thing has remained consistent: the dynamism of its systems-led open world.

Pearl Abyss’ land of opportunity is gorgeous and bustling with life. Pywel’s towns and castles hide secrets to find, as do its vast forests, snowy peaks, and islands among the clouds, with puzzles, gear, and surprises lurking within each. The sheer vastness of it makes it a near-impossible task to discover in its entirety. Whether you’ve spent two or 200 hours flying like a crow or piloting a battle robot, it's difficult to go too long without finding something new. A red-tinged sandbox in the truest sense of the word, Crimson Desert is an open world for those who prioritise a feeling of exploring a foreign land over everything. Plus, you can now play pinball in it. I won’t even try to guess what’s next.

No Man’s Sky

Similarly ambitious — to a fault at launch — was No Man’s Sky. Promised as a universe with infinite possibilities upon release in 2016, 10 years later, Hello Games’ ode to the wonder of science fiction has fulfilled that ambition, and more. The beauty of each of its 18 quintillion (yes, that’s a real number) procedurally generated planets is that whatever your flavour of fun, there’ll be something on the surface of a celestial body to satiate that hunger.

Fancy yourself a budding ecologist? Scan, name, and catalogue all of the unique flora and fauna you find. Want to be the lead in a space opera? Follow its storyline to engage in star-backdropped dogfights and unlock the mystery of some 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque monoliths. In an age of AI, the complex equations concocted by Hello Games are a triumph of human design, lending a randomness to each place you visit, but all formed from a pool of handcrafted, original permutations. It’s game development at its smartest, engaging that desire to discover and explore that sits inside all of us and projecting it onto an open-universe map that’s too large to fully comprehend.

If you’re yet to jump in, or haven’t done so since those rocky early days, then I can’t recommend it enough. There’s a whole star system of possibilities waiting for you.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

Sometimes it isn’t about exploring a huge, uncharted expanse, but about mastering a contained sandbox and the toolset you’re given to play with. Ground Zeroes laid the groundwork, but The Phantom Pain is where each of Hideo Kojima’s playful stealth-action systems thrived. Ever since the original’s Shadow Moses base, Metal Gear Solid has been about commanding a space, learning each of its intricacies, and mastering the enemies that live within it. So naturally, that philosophy held true as the series evolved into its largest form yet, with the dual open worlds of Afghanistan and Angola in MGS 5.

Built with gameplay front of mind, perhaps to the detriment of its much-reported unfinished story, The Phantom Pain offered as malleable a combat system as stealth enjoyers could wish to wield. Equipment ranged from classics now nearly three decades old, such as cardboard boxes and tranquiliser guns, to altogether more outrageous items, like the now-synonymous enemy-lifting Fulton balloons and a customisable prosthetic arm that could pack a punch of your choosing. MGS 5 offered a near-unparalleled level of freedom in the way you approached your objectives, and a level of experimentation that supported replayability.

Through a refinement of the stealth camo system and numerous other trademark tools, Metal Gear Solid 5 took memorable pieces of what made its predecessors groundbreaking, and then implemented them in smart ways — creating a gameplay loop that was close to irresistible. It looked back at what always made MGS great, but never once forgot to try and push the series’ design forward, begging for its intricate systems to be explored fully and conquered completely.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

But when it comes to systems-led sandboxes, it’s impossible not to mention the modern incarnations of Hyrule. For years and years, an open-world Zelda felt like a dream for fans of Link’s adventures, and it’s safe to say it was worth the wait when Breath of the Wild arrived in 2017. It’s tricky to find something that hasn’t been said about this game already, but that shouldn’t stop us from remembering just how impactful it was when it first arrived. Masterfully designed, BOTW taught you its revolutionary ropes in the confines of its Great Plateau before unleashing you onto the majesty of its open-world Hyrule.

It wasn’t just in this varied, colourful world that BOTW shined, but in the malleability of its playful systems. It took ideas from the likes of Ubisoft's Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed in its approach to unlocking towers across its vast land, but did away with map markers. Aside from those you place down manually, that is. Exploration was not only encouraged but necessary in order to defeat the looming Calamity Ganon at the map’s centre.

Nintendo took the array of possibilities found inside of The Phantom Pain’s toolkit and reinvented them for a Zelda world. Then it refused to overexplain, instead urging you to discover what weapon, power, and elemental combinations would result in its next hit of magic. And magic was exactly what it was, as it turned grounded physics systems into something altogether more exciting. It introduced new ways to traverse its world and take down its threats with a regularity only hindered by your imagination.

A rare example of true evolution inside of a genre, very few games have influenced the open world form like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Without it, there’d be no Elden Ring. No Crimson Desert. Surely Nintendo couldn’t improve on this. Surely not.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Well, it did. Breath of the Wild may have set the table, but Tears of the Kingdom added new, incredible layers to an already stacked offering. Familiar, yet excitingly new, from the spine-tingling moments of its already iconic skydive opening, Link’s latest adventure somehow managed to hide its darkest secrets inside a world we felt we already knew every inch of. Lurking beneath its surface was a whole new world of horrors: the Depths, where some of the series’ biggest challenges lay waiting.

But its ingenious design soon made this land of darkness much less daunting, as each layer of Tears of the Kingdom worked in wondrous concert to support the other. To survive and combat the Gloom infestation of the Depths, you’d need to collect plenty of Sundelions from the Sky Islands that cast shadows over Hyrule. And to reach a dizzyingly high point, you’d have to engage in tasks and master the Zonai devices found littered across the main map. It all worked in beautiful harmony, intricately crafted to make you want to experience the entirety of its open world.

Experimentation was also taken to an extra level, thanks to the new powers granted as you made your way through the story. Ultrahand and Fuse, in particular, turned Link into a master builder, as you engineered all sorts of makeshift weaponry and flying machines that took the systemic playfulness of Breath of the Wild into a whole new realm. Combine all of this gameplay goodness with an actually well-told story, and you’ve got a sequel that somehow one-upped its masterpiece of a predecessor. In terms of an open world working together with gameplay and the systems that power it, rather than merely acting as a backdrop or container for activities, no game to date has done it better.

Sim-like Escapism

Something all open worlds grant us is the simple joy of escaping our reality and stepping into another full of opportunity. These can be locations on our planet that we haven’t managed to make our way to yet, or far-flung planets created purely for our enjoyment. Some just go that extra mile to cement you into a culture or time period, though, whether it be through painstaking attention to detail or enrolling you in a career that makes you feel like a cog in a grander machine. A prime example of this is Warhorse’s critically acclaimed medieval simulator, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Immersion is a key aspect of the open-world genre, and the more time a developer spends on making sure each and every one of our actions makes an impact on a place, the further that immersion sinks in. It’s difficult to think of many games that take this aspect of open-world design as far as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. The domino effect for each of your actions could be felt throughout the world, affecting the stories being told within it to a drastic degree, accidentally or deliberately.

Its systems were arguably as deep as the two modern Zeldas, but to a completely different effect, prioritising rooting you into a sim-like experience that felt grounded in its consequentiality, rather than fantastical in its inventive approach to gameplay. Dialogue choices fuelled Henry’s journey through 15th-century Eastern Europe, with a crime and punishment system affecting your standing in its society as its smart NPCs reacted to your every action. Inspired by systems-heavy RPGs such as Morrowind, it leaned even further into digital tourism than Bethesda games ever have, making it one of the most impressive open worlds to play today.

Forza Horizon 6

There are places on Earth we can legitimately visit but, since they’re a world away, still remain dreams to most of us. The Forza Horizon series is as good as any at sending us to these corners of the globe before we get the stamp in our passports ourselves. Having taken the festival to exotic American, European, and Australian locations, it was finally the turn of Japan in Forza Horizon 6, and it certainly lived up to the anticipation. The most recent entry on our list, this year’s open-world racing extravaganza embedded us into both Japanese car culture and the society it's housed in to stunning effect.

The detail on display when taking a Subaru for a spin around Tokyo and its surrounding rural regions was nothing short of phenomenal, but it’s in the seasonal shifts of Forza Horizon 6 that the real masterstroke could be seen. A returning feature, having been established in Forza Horizon 4’s Britain-set world, the transitions from Winter to Spring to Summer to Autumn not only delivered a refreshed presentation, as cherry blossoms bloomed and fell, but also impacted gameplay. With new paths opening up thanks to lakes freezing over and thick valley fog clouding highway corners, it was an incredibly smart way of incorporating the cultural relevance that seasonal shifts play in Japanese culture.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

The opportunity to step into another person’s shoes and perform a job you’re simply not qualified for is something a lot of games aim to offer. This is something the simulation genre’s very foundations are built upon, from ice-trucking to theme park construction, but few have attempted to deliver the sort of realism that Microsoft Flight Simulator does. The most literal open world on this list, 2020’s release let you fly around the whole of our planet in a remarkable feat of recreation.

Powered by over two petabytes of data (yes, again, that’s a real amount that something can be measured in), Flight Sim utilised cloud technology to build a real-time world for you to take off into. With over 37,000 airports to do that from, and over two million cities and towns to fly over, it was the most accurate recreation of our own world ever made, and a showcase for how far technology had come in the open-world genre from those early, grey blocky days of GTA 3.

Sea of Thieves

But realism isn’t always what we strive for, and sometimes those out-of-reach professions are ones that don’t even need to be at all within reach, no matter how many years of education or driving and flying lessons you take. Sea of Thieves is a perfect example of this, taking inspiration from the golden age of piracy and presenting it in an altogether sillier wrapping. Choppy seas were survived during its early days, but legendary developers Rare turned the ship around to the point where its co-op pirate fantasy has become one of the most beloved games of the past decade.

Borrowing as much from the tongue-in-cheek world of Monkey Island as it does real-world swashbucklers, Sea of Thieves' open world is one of surprise and opportunity. Whether on the high seas or on one of the many islands found scattered across it, the quest for treasure is always kept foremost in mind, no matter what ghost ship, kraken, or rival crew may try to get in the way of that. It’s a job, just not one for those looking to earn an honest living. But that’s exactly what escapism is all about, and in few places is it delivered with as many buckets of charm as here.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Fantastical occupations in a familiar world are relatively commonplace in video games. More rarely, the opportunity to perform much more mundane jobs is presented to us in otherworldly circumstances. The first post-apocalyptic mailman may well have been Kevin Costner back in 1997, but over 20 years later, Death Stranding gave us Norman Reedus’ Sam Porter Bridges. After an intriguing, if not frustrating, first draft, in 2025 we got its critically acclaimed follow-up, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, starring a ravaged Australia as its open world. Cackling Troy Baker aside, its treacherous terrain also played the role of chief antagonist, too.

Each delivery across the country was a satisfying blend of simulation and action, with elements of creator Hideo Kojima’s previous stealth-action playgrounds incorporated into the Snowrunner-like sim that powered it. It’s a perfect example of an open-world setting being integral to the very core of a game, with a choice of route, ranging from short and dangerous to long and lonely, dictating much of the experience. Death Stranding 2’s harsh geography was as gorgeous to take in as it was difficult to navigate, with each successful delivery attempt laced with the sort of satisfaction completing a tough task can provide. It performed a miracle by transforming what could so easily have devolved into busywork into an open-world adventure where forging your own path connected you to others on our own planet — other players reaching for the same goals.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Inevitably, all roads lead back to Rockstar. There are very few, if any, other video game open worlds that are more enjoyable to simply exist in than Red Dead Redemption 2’s turn-of-the-century American West. Yes, its stories, characters, and memorable missions were all a massive factor in its success, but the towns and wilderness that made up its world were on another level. It genuinely felt alive to the point that you could believe it was all ticking over even when your console was off, with each person carrying on their lives, whether you were there to witness them or not. From chatty shopkeepers to outlandish strangers with odd jobs to complete, it was a Westworld where the immersion never broke.

I’ve spent hours strolling around Saint Denis listening to all manner of conversations, and just as many sitting around playing poker and dominoes. There are plenty of other ways I could play these games, but here is where I choose to do it. There’s something homely about being in Arthur’s shoes and unwinding in these simpler, albeit dangerous times. It’s an open world of the highest fidelity, and one handcrafted to not only be played in, but lived in. It’s the winner of this category, a reactive pinnacle of digital escapism, and the cinematic fulfilment of what Rockstar started at the beginning of the millennium in GTA 3.

Overall Masterpiece

And so, it all boils down to this. If I were to pick just one from these 30 masterpieces to define the last 30 years of open-world gaming — which is exactly what I’ve been tasked with — it will come as no shock to you to hear me pick Red Dead Redemption 2. Not only is Rockstar’s Western epic my favourite open world, but it’s my favourite game full stop. I’ve lost dozens and dozens of hours to its hostile wilderness and bustling towns, simply soaking in its unique charm and vibe. But it does so much more than just sing to my heart; it successfully borrows from almost everything that came before it in the genre.

It takes the city life and mature storytelling honed by Rockstar over the lifetime of the Grand Theft Auto series, and transfers it to a more rural setting that delivers its tale at its own pace. It takes the narrative spectacle of superhero games and grounds them in more analogue mission sequences, swapping out symbiote chases for train heist pursuits, while evolving Arkham Knight’s ideas when it comes to emergent events. It’s no RPG, but takes lessons from the likes of The Witcher 3 in how its overlapping questlines bring you closer to Arthur Morgan’s gang of friends, ultimately offering a choice that mirrors any of Geralt’s. And what seems like a vast swathe of grassland, snow, and swamp on the surface hides much exploration underneath it. It may never be as mechanically flexible as something like Tears of the Kingdom, but stories big and small, tragic and comedic, are waiting to be uncovered.

Other games have reached for the crown, and are all amazing in their own ways — few worlds offer the depth of discovery of Elden Ring’s Lands Between, the undeniable immersion of Cyberpunk’s Night City, Crimson Desert’s vast Pywel playground, or GTA 5’s satire-soaked streets — but for me, there is still simply nothing like Red Dead Redemption 2. Over the past 30 years, open-world games have arguably evolved more than any other genre, becoming some of the biggest success stories we’ve seen in gaming. As players continue to yearn for escapism to other worlds, this evolution shows no signs of slowing down either, and it's exciting to imagine where we’ll end up next. In a post-GTA 6 world, everything and anything may seem possible again as new frontiers are drawn. Red Dead Redemption 3, anyone?

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 is set to release for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 1/2, and PC on September 29. It sends players back into the dangerous dungeons, either solo or co-op. The game is available to preorder now (see it at Minecraft.net) in a couple of different editions. Below, you’ll find links to various retailers, along with info about what comes in each edition and preorder bonuses. Let’s dive in.

Minecraft Dungeons II (Digital)

Minecraft Dungeons II Deluxe Edition (Physical)

Minecraft Dungeons 2 Preorder Bonus

Preorder the game, and you’ll receive the following digital extras:

• 2 hero skins
• Twisted cape
• Twisted chicken pet

What Is Minecraft Dungeons 2?

The blocky world of Minecraft Dungeons gets more mysterious in this sequel, when rifts start appearing around the Overworld. The rifts, it turns out, lead to the Sift, a whole new dimension in the world of Minecraft. Your job is basically to do what you did in the original game: equip yourself with useful gear and dive into the new world to explore it, fight enemies, and find fun new items to equip that let you take on even bigger foes. Check out our announcement for more info.

More Preorder Guides

Chris Reed is a senior commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's LEGO coverage and maintains the upcoming release dates articles for video games, LEGO sets, and 4K Blu-rays. You can follow him on Bluesky.

Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann says that neither he nor the studio are involved with the third season of the HBO TV adaptation of the beloved video game, but says that the developer "isn't done" with the franchise yet.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Druckmann said, "I wasn't involved in shaping this season's creative direction, and Naughty Dog did not have a creative role in the direction of this season. So I can't personally speak to how production is progressing." He then pretty clearly suggested that Naughty Dog will take on future projects in The Last of Us universe, though whether that's a proper The Last of Us Part 3, a resurrection of the canceled The Last of Us Online multiplayer project, or something else remains to be seen. "It's important for us to note that as the creator of the games, Naughty Dog is still the steward of this IP and even though this might be the end of this adaptation," he added, referring to the HBO show's third season, "we're not done with The Last of Us. There's a couple projects in the works that, when the time is right, I'm very excited to talk about."

Naughty Dog is currently focused on its next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which was a no-show at today's Sony State of Play, but did recently wrap cinematic shooting. It does not yet have a release window.

On The Last of Us TV show, meanwhile, Peter Sarsgaard has been cast in a role for an original character not featured in the games, while Li Jun Li was cast as Miriam, among numerous other cast announcements. We also recently learned that Matthew McConaughey turned down the part of Joel, which of course went to Pedro Pascal.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, and a co-host of Next-Gen Console Watch. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

A former Rockstar Games developer has revealed that the team thought GTA Online was going to fail before it launched.

In an interview with Eldorado, ex-Rockstar Games developer Matt Freedman looked back on the success of GTA 5 and attributed a lot of it to GTA Online. He noted that a lot of investors seek a GTA Online-level success nowadays, but said it was treated as an "afterthought" during its initial development.

"When we were working on GTA Online, it was an afterthought," said Freedman. "We were all positive it was going to fail. Everyone thought this thing was going to fail. I remember QA testers coming up to me [and saying], 'We’ve got four hours of content for online mode. To do everything in GTA Online, it’s four hours,' or it was something like that. It was really short, and they’re like: ‘We are in so much trouble,' and we’re all sitting there going, 'Let’s see what happens. We’re going to do our best job anyways.' And then it took off, and then there was, to Rockstar’s credit, a fast follow with as much content as possible and [it] just kind of keep it going. And now it’s become this phenomenon."

It's unclear when the perception of GTA Online's potential began to shift at Rockstar. The studio did seem to have ambitions for it before launch, as it released a sizable trailer and media previews for the online mode before the game's release with plans for post-launch content like heists. Still, Freedman is right that the game was pretty light on content upon arrival. There wasn't a ton to do beyond the typical sandbox mayhem and the most exciting content in the game didn't arrive until years later, including its heists update.

Still, Rockstar worked hard to support it, even if its success did seem to catch the company off-guard. Rockstar Games had plans for GTA 5 single player DLC, which was scrapped after GTA Online took off and required more resources. It also reportedly wasn't feasible to do both while also developing Red Dead Redemption 2, so Rockstar leaned into GTA Online.

It's also hard to imagine that the studio anticipated GTA Online running for as long as it has. 13 years later, GTA Online is still getting massive updates and despite GTA 6's release on the horizon, the team may well keep supporting it while it keeps being profitable. GTA 6 will be a "single player experience" when it launches and Rockstar has been cagey about its plans for online beyond that. It also just announced its official nopixel RP server for the PC version of GTA 5, which shows a pretty high level of commitment.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

Square Enix has announced a release date for Final Fantasy 7: Revelation, concluding its acclaimed remake trilogy.

The third and final chapter in its Final Fantasy 7 remake saga will arrive on April 8, 2027, it was confirmed today. That date arrived during Sony's latest PlayStation State of Play broadcast and just mentioned the title's PS5 arrival — though we know the game will launch simultaneously for all platforms, meaning this is when you should also expect its Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S versions, as well as its PC launch via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Following that, two expansions will also be released over the following 12 months. Story DLC 1: Sephiroth and Story DLC 2: Vincent & the Turks are mentioned as part of a Story Expansion pass that's now visible on Steam. No pricing is available yet for this pass, and no further detail on the story content of these DLCs is mentioned, though this confirms that suggested further chapters are on the way — something fans have expected since the pass previously leaked via the Epic Games Store.

All of the game's cast — Cid, Yuffie, Red XIII, Vincent, Barret, Tifa, Cait Sith, and Cloud — made an appearance, with further battle customization detailed. Sidequests will also now play out different depending who you're controlling and, somewhat weirdly, you can skip through dialogue at double speed, making characters sound a bit like chipmunks.

You'll even be able to leap down from the Highwind into the new region of Wutai, parachuting down to ground level like in Fortnite. Once there — and best of all — you'll be able to wile away hours photographing its cats. Speaking of, Red XIII is now the focus of Revelation's compulsive Queen's Blood card game, if you're into that.

You Can Photograph The Cat In Final Fantasy VII Revelation pic.twitter.com/tzTNNUBMWz

— IGN (@IGN) September 3, 2026

Today's announcement comes as part of the latest showcase from PlayStation. Catch up on everything announced during Sony's State of Play September 2026 broadcast right here.

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

Ikea is partnering up with Skyrim in an unexpected collaboration that has fans making the same joke about The Elder Scrolls 6.

On September 2, the official Ikea accounts for Ireland and the United Kingdom posted a promotional video on Instagram, showing a mountain of familiar Skyrim memorabilia haphazardly tossed onto a snowy mountainside… alongside some comparatively modern-looking pieces.

For instance, a rune-inscribed Allen wrench is stuffed amongst the frozen Nord helmets, pots, swords, books, and wheels of cheese, while a white Kallax 4x2 shelf sits on top of the pile.

A date is then shown: September 9, 2026, along with the message, “Coming to the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.” The post’s caption says much the same thing: “A Creation coming to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.”

Thus far, it’s unclear exactly what this collaboration entails. Does this mean that the Kallax shelf will be available for players to decorate their homes with? Will they be able to use the magic Allen wrench as a weapon? (That would be hilarious.) Or is furniture from the game coming to IKEA?

Either way, fans are all saying the same thing: We’re getting an Ikea collab, of all things, before The Elder Scrolls 6 comes out.

“New Elder Scrolls? No. New Skyrim furniture that will break down before the new Elder Scrolls comes out? Yes,” one user wrote on X.

“Heard they're reforming the Dawnguard. Vampire hunters or something, in the old IKEA near Riften. Might consider joining up, myself,” another joked on Instagram.

It seems like Ikea is moving full speed ahead into the gaming market, having recently announced a furniture line catering specifically to gamers. Titled The Yxstaby Collection, this furniture line was first shown off at gamescom this year, with pieces inspired by the Xbox controller.

It includes a TV stand, a side table, a ‘thumbstick’ stool, a D-pad cushion and platter, a lounge chair, and more. IGN even got the chance to speak with Carl Ledbetter, Xbox's Head of Design, at Gamescom, where he opened up about the brand's inspiration for the collaboration.

"I’ve spent all my time [at Xbox] looking at input, controllers, the console, how things fit into the home. [That] matters when you design a console, [the] horizontal and vertical position. [So] this goes back years. The philosophy that we share for designing products at Xbox and at Ikea are nearly identical. So it was like a love connection," he told us.

For now, fans’ll just have to wait for more information on The Elder Scrolls 6, which recently got a big update after Xbox CEO Asha Sharma publicly declared that she saw an early playthrough of the game in August, calling the scale and grandeur “incredible” and the story “even greater."

Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.

Microsoft has announced the Xbox Game Pass September 2026 Wave 1 lineup, and it includes a Call of Duty blockbuster.

Available today on all major Game Pass tiers, Shelldiver is an incremental game about a senior turtle trying to start a business selling jellyfish. It sounds odd, but its Steam reviews look promising, so maybe this is one worth hauling in.

Later this week, Speedrunners 2: King of Speed launches straight into Game Pass, bringing a second helping of competitive co-op platforming action. Game Pass premium members also gain access to Dice a Million, the roguelike deck builder already on other tiers.

Perhaps this batch's biggest inclusion is Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which is the Raven Software-made instalment that arrived back in 2020. We gave the game's single-player a 7/10 in our campaign review, though its multiplayer modes lagged behind that a little. There have been better CODs, in other words, though there have also been worse.

Later this month sees the addition of The Royal Writ, another roguelike deck builder, though this time with a medieval twist. Then there's Virtua Fighter 5, or Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage, to give its full name. "The World Stage" refers to its single-player "journey," though its bone-shattering multiplayer modes remain the star.

Last but not least, there's the previously-confirmed inclusion of Runescape: Dragonwilds, the first standalone title in Jagex’s long-running medieval MMORPG franchise. Dragonwilds has already shifted over 1 million copies during early access, so its open world, co-op, crafting and survival gameplay is obviously doing something right.

The full lineup lies just below:

Xbox Game Pass September 2026 Wave 1 lineup:

• Shelldiver (Cloud, Console, and PC) — September 1, Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, PC Game Pass
• Speedrunners 2: King of Speed (Cloud, Xbox Series X/S, and PC) – September 3, Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Dice a Million (Cloud, Xbox Series X/S, Handheld, and PC) – September 4, now with Game Pass Premium; joining Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (Cloud, Console, and PC) – September 8, Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, PC Game Pass
• The Royal Writ (Cloud, Xbox Series X|S, Handheld, and PC) – September 10, Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, PC Game Pass
• Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage (Cloud, Xbox Series X/S, and PC) – September 10, Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, PC Game Pass
• RuneScape: Dragonwilds (Cloud, Xbox Series X/S, and PC) – September 15, Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium, PC Game Pass

As always, whenever Microsoft giveth, it also taketh away. A number of games leave Game Pass this month, including the charming Spiritfarer. Be sure to play that before it departs, as well as everything else listed below:

Games leaving Xbox Game Pass on September 15:

• Commandos: Origins (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Cricket 24 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (Cloud and Console)
• Dead Cells (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Deep Rock Galactic Survivor (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Frostpunk 2 (PC)
• Mullet Madjack (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Spiritfarer (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Superliminal (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Train Sim World 5 (Cloud, Console, and PC)

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