Category: Gaming

Gunfire Games’ Remnant: From the Ashes and Remnant II have been made available today on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass. Uncharacteristically, the games have arrived with no announcement.

Remnant II launched in July this year to significant praise from players and critics alike, and sold more than one million copies in its first week across Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC. It went on to take down Diablo 4 as July’s best-selling game in the US.

IGN’s 9/10 review called Remnant II “a triumphant sequel that doesn’t just reimagine the soulslike genre as a co-op looter-shooter, but absolutely nails that concept in nearly every way.”

The arrival of the Remnant II standard edition on Game Pass comes following the November 14 release of its first DLC, The Awakened King. Two further DLC add-ons are scheduled for 2024.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.

Just one day after the launch of Season of the Wish, Bungie has removed a $15 “starter pack” microtransaction for Destiny 2 that quickly became the subject of criticism and backlash over pay-to-win concerns.

Over the years, Bungie’s monetization model for their long-running live-service shooter has increasingly relied on DLC and numerous microtransaction channels to support its game, but when players noticed a new “starter pack” added to the store yesterday, many voiced concern that the company had gone too far.

How is this microtransaction different from the numerous paid offerings of years past? Well, importantly, it contains powerful guns and in-game materials that can take hours of playtime to earn normally, and while Destiny has flirted with pay-to-win elements in the past, this was the first time they’d very clearly gone beyond cosmetic and time-saving mechanics into the world of pay-to-win.

Among the concerned voices was popular Destiny content creator Datto, who reserved a section of his recent YouTube video to lay into the microtransaction offering, asking “How much more tone deaf can you possibly get?”

One of the ways players expressed their disdain for this pay-to-win package was by taking to the Steam storefront with online reviews, and marking the item with user tags including, “Capitalism,” “Crime,” and “Psychological Horror.” The listing has since been removed.

The controversy comes at a troubling time for Bungie, after an underwhelming expansion earlier this year and poor player engagement leading up to the Destiny saga’s finale. So much so, in fact, that Bungie cited lower than expected revenue when it laid off 8% of its staff last month.

As concerns grew louder in the day since the starter pack debuted, Bungie quietly removed the item from their store in an apparent admission that those concerns were valid. IGN reached out to a Bungie representative who declined to comment on the matter.

Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.

This is the best year ever for Xbox Cyber Monday deals, from the best Cyber Monday Xbox console deals we’ve ever seen, to the lowest-prices on Xbox Cyber Monday controller deals, ever. That’s on top of all the Black Friday deals on Xbox games, too.

The Xbox Series X comes with 1TB built-in storage, and the base-model Xbox Series S comes with 512GB. With modern games taking up more and more room (looking at you Call of Duty), that built-in storage tends to fill up fast, especially on the Series S.

Thankfully, this Black Friday and Cyber Monday stretch has Xbox storage deals to help you easily double the storage of your Xbox Series X.

Best Black Friday Xbox 1TB Storage Card Deal

Unlike the PlayStation 5, which accepts any compatible SSD so long as you’re not afraid to crack open the case of your console, the Xbox Series X and Series S uses a memory-card system with high-speed storage that plugs into the back. The WD_Black 1TB Xbox expansion card adapts the speed of WD_Black SSDs to work with the Xbox storage expansion requirements.

Black Friday External Hard Drive Deals Still Live

The Xbox storage cards increase the capacity of your Xbox and let you play games directly from the cards themselves. However, you can still attach an external hard drive to your Xbox and use it to store your games. The difference is, you can’t play the games from an external hard drive without first installing them to the high-speed storage built-into the Xbox (or expanded with one of the storage cards).

In my experience, this is fine. It takes much less time to move a game from the external hard drive to the high-speed storage than it does to redownload games, even with a fiber connection.

Grabbing an external hard drive Black Friday deal for your Xbox is easily the best cost-saving solution for expanding the room you have for your Xbox games.

It’s a heck of a time, running through an abandoned bunker in the dark with nothing but a hazmat suit on your back and three of your closest buds at your side. Oh wait, that’s not your closest bud at all – it’s a grotesque, white-eyed monster eating their corpse and using their body like a puppet. Welcome to Lethal Company, a co-op survival horror game that’s all about digging deep into the (procedurally-generated and largely haunted) crevasses of exoplanetary human history for loot, which your party of up to four companions will need to figure out how to safely transport back to your ship and eventually sell to your eldritch bosses at the end of each round. This is a simple but highly enjoyable premise, and thankfully, there’s enough chaos decking the halls of its current early access version to sink an entire weekend into its depths without realizing you’ve done so. But, even with such a riveting loop and plenty of monsters to make it satisfyingly treacherous, Lethal Company does still feel like the work-in-progress it is thanks to its janky graphics and having little-to-no story to carry it.

Each successful run through these abandoned lunar tunnels lets everyone in your squad invest in better gear – like flashlights and eventually high-powered jetpacks – so that you can take on higher-tier expeditions to places like the elusive and extremely dangerous moon of Jupiter, Titan. Inventory space is rather limited – you’re given only four slots in total, and they’re quickly strained when you factor in that you effectively need to carry a flashlight or a walkie-talkie. Both are crucial to survival but difficult to recover if something goes wrong deep inside of a dungeon, where your teammates won’t easily be able to recover your body. At least those items aren’t too expensive to replace.

Regardless, everything in your inventory weighs you down, making it appropriately tough to get away if you’re carrying a heavy load of loot. Thanks to Lethal Company’s plethora of challenges and secret dangers, it’s an absolute blast to try to escape, even when you die horrifically. Even after being blasted to bits by a hidden turret or getting chomped on by one of the many cosmic horrors awaiting me in the twisting corridors, it was still a joy to watch my surviving teammates outrun death. My favorite comic relief moments even took place from the comfort of the death cam – for instance, when one of my teammates tried to haul a big piece of scrap, screaming from the top of their lungs in sheer terror while something chased them across the map.

I’ve deeply enjoyed learning how Lethal Company works, getting a little savvier with each run – and even after spending about 15 hours with it, I still feel like there’s plenty left to discover. What’s hiding on the frozen moon of Rend? Has anyone heard about the mysterious ghost girl who only appears to one crewmate at a time before she kills them? How did that guy just get eaten back at base? And, on a side note, why am I gaining experience points and leveling up when there are no unlocks? It’s a little frustrating that Lethal Company raises a few questions like that that it doesn’t yet have answers to. Right now, progression does absolutely nothing, and virtually nothing is carried between save files. That means you’ll need to restart often, even if you survive long enough to reach the endgame in a public group and have to dip out for some reason. But hey, at least there are no microtransactions.

Still, Lethal Company already instills a sense of wonder, subtly mimicking the early days of Minecraft in the way I had almost no clue what I was going to find whenever I selected my destination at the beginning of every in-game day. There are eight different explorable moons, each varying in difficulty – with higher-difficulty moons costing more currency to land on, so you effectively have to ante up before you make your run. The surface of each moon is static, so it’s possible to familiarize yourself with their maps and attempt to plan your route ahead of an excursion. But the real excitement begins once you and your crew enter the labyrinthine underground complexes. Everything from outdoor weather to the interior layout to enemy spawns and loot locations varies between runs, so there’s enough unpredictability to keep you on your toes.

For every run, you’re only given three in-game days to find enough scrap to reach your profit quota, meaning there’s a baked-in deadline and you’re racing against the clock. Once it strikes 5:30 PM you’d better be ready to blast off, because the entire landscape becomes a living threat. Luckily, each in-game day is reasonably long, around 10 minutes or so, and I’ve encountered countless moments where I became separated from a teammate as they faced what seemed like a certain death, only for us to rendezvous back at the ship and share our wildly differing stories of how we individually survived and made our way back to safety.

But it loses some momentum because there isn’t too much to carry you forward from one run to the next. There’s zero story to follow; progress through the campaign is entirely about surviving to meet the next quota, and that’s it. And even with procedural generation, or maybe because of it, the endless bunkers and basements of Lethal Company’s lowest-tier planets all look alike… and this means they can get stale very quickly. It’s nice that there are a few different types of interior environments later on, but they’re locked behind higher-tier zones that require a bit of time and grinding to earn access to. This means you’ll scrounge your way through tens or even hundreds of abandoned bunkers before you find your way to an abandoned mansion, and I wish those alternative locations showed up earlier.

Most of the enjoyment in Lethal Company comes from multiplayer antics. Like any co-op game, communication and coordination are key to carefully planning and executing the safe extraction of loot from the bowels of a dungeon – with all of your party members intact, at least – and all that underlying tension truly reaches its zenith when your initial plan goes awry, scattering your team and sending you running for your lives. Each of these terrifying adversaries have different tricks and strategies, forcing you to adapt accordingly. For example, the shadowy Brakken stalks its prey while shying away from direct light, but it has a knack for easily skirting around corridors in the dark and flanking unaware adventurers. At the same time you have to keep an eye out for the creepy doll-esque Coil-Head, which rushes toward you at lightning speed unless you’re looking directly at it, in which case it freezes in place like a Dr. Who Weeping Angel statue. Most of these opponents range from fairly difficult to impossible to kill, and this is partially because Lethal Company rarely equips you with conventional weaponry. There are no guns here; your best bet is a melee weapon like a yield sign. Thus, combat is largely untenable. Especially against the most challenging enemies, like the giant Forest Keeper or the terrifying jack-in-the-box-like Jester. Most of the time, it’s best to lighten your load and run in the opposite direction.

Spicing things up even more, sounds attract the attention of these nefarious monsters – including any noises picked up by each player’s microphone. Setting up Push to Talk is a good way to stay covert when you don’t need to speak, but chatting with your teammates is a fundamental survival tool. This built-in limitation makes every bit of communication significantly more important – you have to keep chatter to a minimum, especially around sound-sensitive monsters like the Eyeless Dogs that prowl the outskirts of your ship at night. Inversely, talking to your teammates over walkie-talkies or while huddled in a group can keep your avatar’s sanity meter from filling up, lessening the chances of monsters spawning in the first place. This mechanic keeps Lethal Company interesting at all times, especially since you can use a particularly loud teammate as a tool to, for instance, draw monsters away from a valuable piece of loot.

It’s all made a bit simpler once you’re able to equip multiple party members with walkie-talkies, including at least one who can stay behind on the ship – directing your expedition over radio comms while opening doors remotely and helping you navigate around potential threats by telling you where to go. That said, I found it’s a bit of a chore to sit in the ship and direct everything instead of venturing into the dungeon. At least it gets a bit more interesting after dark when monsters spawn near the ship. This forces the operator to be quiet, otherwise, they’ll invite the unwanted attention of passing creatures who can break in and eat them.

Darkness is as much an antagonist as any of the marauding creatures stalking Lethal Company’s hallways. Everything – even the interior of your ship – is dark, dreary, muddy, and deeply unsettling. Most of the time, unrelenting darkness obscures potential threats or even portrays distant team members as oncoming monsters. As in other survival horror games like Alan Wake 2, the most powerful weapon at your disposal is often a flashlight, which cuts through darkness and allows you to safely navigate out of harm’s way. Also, it’s smart that Lethal Company’s flashlights both hold a limited charge and can potentially attract unwanted threats when turned on or off, forcing you to be tactical about how and when you use them. To conserve light during one session, all four of my crewmates huddled together and took turns walking in front with a single flashlight, guiding all of us toward the exit like we were a delightfully doomed version of Scooby and the gang.

Lethal Company’s constant tension is partially due to its low-fi graphical style, which obscures details and makes everything look like it was rendered on a PlayStation 1. That’s a double-edged sword – especially when low-resolution art, inelegant character animations, and chunky monster designs work against its otherwise gripping atmosphere. Sometimes, what would’ve been a scary moment rapidly devolves into a less welcome kind of comedy when a creature glitches through the geometry of the map. That’s a shame, because the way Lethal Company blends built-in voice chat into its 3D-positioned audio system makes it deftly effective as a survival game with rich horror elements – everything from stomping monsters to the terrified screams of your teammates to a rusty door jarring itself open somewhere down the hallway behind you is all skillfully attenuated to up the spooky ante.

During Capcom’s special Dragon’s Dogma 2 showcase yesterday, we not only learned the release date for the hotly anticipated sequel action role-playing game, but we also learned it will be the company’s first $70 game.

The PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Steam standard editions of the game are all listed at $70 USD, with the deluxe edition being priced at $80.

Over the last three years, video game publishers and companies have slowly been adapting the “Triple A” video price bump from $60 to $70. Up until now, Capcom has abstained from selling games with this new price point with the release of titles like Street Fighter 6. Now, it’s looking like the company will finally test the waters with the release of Dragon’s Dogma 2 on March 26, 2024.

This news comes months after Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto revealed that he thought the price of video games were “too low” while speaking at the Tokyo Game Show in September. During the event, Tsujimoto said increasing the price of games would be a “healthy option” for the industry.

“Development costs are about 100 times higher than during the Famicom era, but software prices have not gone up that much,” Tsujimoto told Nikkei. “There is also a need to raise wages. Considering the fact that wages are rising in the industry as a whole, I think raising unit prices is a healthy option for business.”

Tsujimoto went on to argue that an economic slump wouldn’t prevent people from purchasing pricier games: “Just because there’s a recession doesn’t mean you won’t go to the movie theater or go to your favorite artist’s concert. High-quality games will continue to sell,” he said.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the latest in a slew of games with a $70 price tag. Prior to Dragon’s Dogma 2, Nintendo and Microsoft respectively released Starfield and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for a cool $70. Other $70 games released this year include titles like Forspoken, Dead Island 2, Hogwarts Legacy, and Wild Heart.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is slated to release on March 26, 2024, on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Steam.

Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN.

Sons of the Forest will officially leave Early Access and launch its v1.0 on February 22, 2024. Furthermore, X-Men and Quantum Break’s Shawn Ashmore will be joining the cast to voice Timmy as the team works to “expand his role in the game and story.”

Sons of the Forest developer Endnight Games shared the news on X/Twitter alongside thanking everyone who played the game in Early Access.

“Hey Everyone, Sons Of The Forest v1.0 will release Feb 22, 2024 with Shawn Ashmore voicing Timmy as we expand his role in the game and story,” Endnight Games wrote. “We thank everyone who has joined us in Early Access and are super excited for what we have in store for v1.0 and beyond.”

For those unfamiliar, Timmy LeBlanc is the son of Eric LeBlanc, the protagonist of The Forest who crashed with his father on the island where the game takes place and was quickly kidnapped. One of the main goals of the original game was to rescue Timmy. Without spoiling anything, Timmy is back in Sons of the Forest and obviously has a bigger part to play.

As for Shawn Ashmore, he is no stranger to video games as he has previously voiced Tim Breaker in Alan Wake 2, Conrad in The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, and Jack Joyce in Quantum Break. And that’s in addition to him playing Bobby Drake/Iceman in the X-Men franchise, Lamplighter in The Boys, and more.

Sons of the Forest entered Early Access on February 23, 2023, and tasks players with finding a missing billionaire on a remote island that also happens to be home to cannibals and other horrific dangers. This sequel is once again an open-world survival horror simulator and can be played solo or with friends.

In our Sons of the Forest Early Access review, we said it is “already a strong survival crafter sequel that takes all the things The Forest did so well and does them a little bit better.”

“Exploring a huge, beautiful, deadly island through the changing seasons is a treat on its own,” IGN’s Leana Hafer added. “The new base building mechanics could entertain me for days without ever touching the main story. And to top it all off, we have smarter and more unsettling enemy behavior paired with thoughtfully improved combat. It’s already great, and it’s still in Early Access. With some healthy performance optimization and shining up of an impactful but sloppy ending, it could become incredible.”

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Sony has announced the PlayStation Plus games for December 2023 are LEGO 2K Drive (PS4 and PS5), Powerwash Simulator (PS4 and PS5), and Sable (PS5).

As revealed on the PlayStation Blog, all three games will be made available at no extra cost to PlayStation Plus subscribers on December 5.

LEGO 2K Drive combines open world racing with extensive customisation as players can build their perfect car piece by piece. Driving around the world of Bricklandia, racers must complete with rivals and overcome the competition to win the coveted Sky Trophy.

In our 8/10 review, IGN said: “LEGO 2K Drive is a wild and whimsical all-ages kart racer with an incredible custom vehicle creation tool that’s just about worth the price of admission alone.”

Powerwash Simulator offers something very different, and is literally and figuratively all about releasing pressure. Players fire up a power washer and blast away every speck of dirt on various levels in surprisingly satisfying gameplay. It even has some wild and wacky collaborations with the likes of Final Fantasy, Back to the Future, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

This one earned a 7/10 from IGN. “Powerwash Simulator’s simple yet therapeutic style of gameplay provides an enjoyable way to chill out across its numerous generously sized levels,” we said.

Finally, Sable is a coming of age tale of discovery through exploration across a strikingly rendered open world desert, as players are encouraged to go on a deeply personal journey across an alien planet. We also gave this one a 7/10, saying: “Sable is a beautiful, minimalist voyage that’s hindered by bugs and bland puzzles.”

These three games will be available at no extra cost until January 1, while last month’s games — Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Mafia 2: Definitive Edition, and Dragon Ball: The Breakers — leave the service on December 4.

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

Sonic Superstars launched on October 17. Super Mario Bros. Wonder launched three days later, on October 20. Both 2D platformers went up against each other in an old-school video game rumble that rekindled memories of the Sega versus Nintendo playground battles of the 90s. Well, it seems this time around, there was a clear winner.

While Super Mario Bros. Wonder broke sales records, becoming the fastest-selling Mario game of all time with 4.3 million copies sold in just two weeks, Sonic Superstars sales failed to meet Sega’s expectations. Or, as Sega boss Haruki Satomi put it in a recent financial report, Sonic Superstars had a “slightly weaker start than we had anticipated”.

Why? In an investor-focused Q&A, Satomi admitted other games had a “significant” impact. Satomi didn’t name names, but it’s clear Super Mario Bros. Wonder played a part. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nintendo Switch owners preferred Super Mario Bros. Wonder on their console, and on other platforms, Sonic Superstars failed to generate the interest Sega had hoped for. It’s worth noting that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 launched on PlayStation 5 on 20 October, also just a few days after Sonic came out, and sold millions of copies. And there will have been plenty of people still busy playing through games that came out not long before Sonic, such as Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Cyberpunk 2077 DLC Phantom Liberty, Starfield, EA Sports FC 24, and Mortal Kombat 1.

Here’s the question Sega was asked: “What do you see as the reason for the lower-than-expected start of Sonic Superstars?”

And here’s the answer: “We believe that the impact of other companies’ major title released at the same time is significant, but we plan to expand the promotion towards the holiday season, especially in overseas market. Both the Metacritic score and user score are higher than Sonic Frontiers, and we would like to continue to sell firmly.”

Satomi fleshed the idea out a little bit in another statement. “I would like to explain a little about the initiatives of our mainstay IPs,” he said. “As for Sonic, we have released Sonic Superstars and Sonic Origins Plus. Sonic Superstars was released in October, which is a slightly weaker start than we had anticipated, but in reality, when Sonic IP sells the most is mainly November to December, and more than 90% of this title’s marketing cost will be spent in the Thanksgiving and holiday season from November onwards.

“Although in the financial results announced today, we are forecasting this title’s sales slightly weaker with the view of the status of start mentioned above, we plan to continue our marketing efforts to sell on the same level as Sonic Frontiers. Also, we are planning to release the third movie within the next year.”

The third Sonic movie may prove key to the video game’s success. Nintendo has said in recent financial reports that the blockbuster success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie boosted sales of all things Mario, including Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Perhaps excitement around Sonic the Hedgehog 3, due out December 2024, will have a similar knock-on effect.

Until then, Sega has work to do to convince fans to pick up Sonic Superstars. IGN’s Sonic Superstars review returned a 7/10. “Sonic Superstars has a mix of both interesting and ill-advised new ideas, making it an enjoyable Sonic game but not exactly a Super one,” we said.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary Edition has appeared again, this time on Microsoft’s Xbox store.

The unannounced game appeared on the Xbox store overnight with a raft of screenshots before Microsoft pulled the listing offline.

The internet noticed and splurged the details online, of course, including Wario64 on X/Twitter (below). According to the listing, the Anniversary Edition has 4K resolution and 60 frames per second performance, with “improved graphics, controls, and audio, along with brand-new autosave and cross-save features”. Apparently there’s a new speedrun mode, too, and updated achievements.

Here’s the official blurb:

Swoop into the marvelous world of Hillys as action-reporter Jade to investigate the mysterious DomZ alien attacks alongside colorful characters, like her adoptive uncle Pey’j or the valiant Double H.

Embark on this epic adventure in up to 4K, 60 fps with improved graphics, controls, and audio, along with brand-new autosave and cross-save features.

Enjoy exclusive new rewards as you explore the planet and discover more about Jade’s past in a new treasure hunt throughout Hillys.

Put your skills to the test thanks to the new speedrun mode and updated achievements, and learn more about the game’s development and secrets in the anniversary gallery!

Armed with her daï-jo and faithful camera, Jade’s adventure will get you to freely explore Hillys, combat creatures large and small, infiltrate dangerous areas, solve enigmatic puzzles, play addictive mini-games, race the best hovercraft pilots, and take pictures of the whole experience.

Be ready to dive into a trailblazing blend of action gameplay and thrilling emotional cutscenes!

This game leverages Smart Delivery allowing access to both the Xbox One title and the Xbox Series X and S title.

Ubisoft’s Beyond Good & Evil first launched on November 11, 2003, so we’ve skipped past the actual 20th anniversary. Still, it’s likely an announcement and launch is imminent. IGN has asked Ubisoft for comment.

In August, the Electronic Software Ratings Board (ESRB) rated Beyond Good & Evil: 20th Anniversary Edition for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC, so a release is expected across all platforms.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 was officially announced in 2017 and has been in the works in varying states of capacity ever since. It’s unclear when or if this game will see the light of day as updates from Ubisoft have been non-existent, and it’s reportedly still in pre-production even after more than six years of development.

In IGN’s 9/10 Beyond Good & Evil review, we said: “While it’s over a bit before you’d want it to be, Beyond Good & Evil tells its story with amazing pizzazz and polish. Even better, it’s a story well worth telling.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Capcom just brought its latest Dragon’s Dogma 2 Showcase to a close, but it still made sure to show off towering new enemies like Talos, a new vocation in the form of the Trickster, and more immersive RPG gameplay.

It was a short presentation that had its show stolen almost immediately when Capcom began to introduce fearsome foes like Talos, a giant statue capable of destroying its surrounding environment. It appears players can take Talos out by climbing around its body and striking weak points Shadow of the Colossus-style.

Talos is proof that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is bringing a gigantic scale to the series, but that’s not the only thing that’s new. While the world may appear similar to the original adventure, Producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi says the sequel’s story takes place in “a parallel world.” As the Arisen, players will find themselves caught between the struggle of two kingdoms: Vermund and Battahl.

Meanwhile, Dragon’s Dogma 2 Director Hideaki Itsuno introduced us to one of the many quests we’ll encounter. This specific excursion follows the player character as they work with and befriend Elven siblings.

This section of the showcase was used to show off the Elven settlement known as the Sacred Arbor. Here, the Arisen might encounter NPCs that speak their own language that requires translation to understand. If the player has a Pawn nearby who understands Elvish, they will be able to automatically translate it.

“These Specializations that Pawns can acquire will make each of them more unique,” Itsuno said, “and hopefully more enjoyable to journey with.”

Dragon’s Dogma 2 release date revealed

Other new features highlighted in the Dragon’s Dogma 2 Showcase include first looks at a more robust character creator and the new Trickster Vocation. The latter allows players to fight with foggy illusions while providing buffs for Pawns. Itsuno says that this style of combat was made for those who prefer to do their fighting from the sidelines.

Finally, Capcom confirmed that Dragon’s Dogma 2 launches for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S on March 22, 2024. Of course, we already knew that thanks to a leak from earlier today.

Preorders open today, and there are a few options and goodies for buyers to choose from. In addition to the Standard Edition, players will have the option to pick up a Deluxe version of Dragon’s Dogma 2 that bundles the base game with 1500 Rift Crystals, the Dragon’s Dogma Music & Sound Collection, an Explorer’s Camping Kit, and six other useful items.

Those who preorder the standard edition will be granted access to the Superior Weapons set, which includes some shiny tools for the four starting Vocations. Preorders for the Deluxe Edition, meanwhile, come with the Standard bonuses as well as the Ring of Assurance.

For more on Dragon’s Dogma 2, be sure to check out our hands-on preview, where we came away saying, “If there’s one comfort that I can have as a fan of Dragon’s Dogma, it’s that Dragon’s Dogma 2 will offer up more of what I loved about that first game, and that many of those minor elements have been improved upon.”

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

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