Category: Gaming

Modern Warfare 3’s latest trailer includes snippets of in-game footage that have set tongues wagging within the Call of Duty community.

While it’s clear from the trailer (below) that Modern Warfare 3 will see Captain Price and company attempt to take down franchise antagonist Vladimir Makarov once and for all, fans are speculating about the missions and settings the campaign may include.

The headline here is a potential fresh take on No Russian, one of the most controversial video game levels of all time. The original No Russian is a mission in 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 in which the player participates in a mass shooting at a Russian airport. While the player is not forced to shoot any civilians, and can even skip the level, No Russian was a graphic depiction of civilian death at the hands of terrorists that caught the attention of press and politicians across the world.

Fast forward 14 years and Call of Duty fans think we’re in for a fresh take on No Russian. Modern Warfare 3’s Makarov trailer includes a brief clip showing panicked civilians in what looks like the Verdansk Stadium. There’s a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ shot of the badge of fictional football team Verdansk Sparks, confirming the original Warzone and Modern Warfare 2019 setting returns.

Given Verdansk was nuked (supposedly destroyed for good, if you believe the developers) in 2021, fans speculate what we’re actually looking at here is a flashback mission that reveals Makarov orchestrated the invasion of Verdansk all along. According to this theory, the player will get a first-person look at this invasion in a new take on No Russian.

The Invasion of Verdansk, dated March 3, 2020, acted as a prelude to the war against Al-Qatala. The conflict includes the Siege of Verdansk Stadium, in which Al-Qatala attack, causing panic among a crowd of football fans who were on their way to a game. Al-Qatala troops end up killing hundreds of civilians, eventually taking control of the stadium. The theory is Modern Warfare 3 includes a flashback mission that makes this siege playable, a No Russian-esque mission that sets up Makarov as the game’s big bad.

Taking this theory a step further, redditor Equinox_106 suggested the live action portion of the Makarov trailer, which shows the terrorist in a prison of some sort, is actually showing us Makarov in the Verdansk Gulag, waiting to be freed during the invasion.

Countering this, however, is the suggestion Modern Warfare 3’s take on the original No Russian is instead a level set on an airplane. In a post-credits scene from 2022’s Modern Warfare 2 campaign, Makarov sends a terrorist cell to hijack a Russian airliner with civilians onboard. Makarov orders them “No Russian” via a text message just before they start the attack. Perhaps Modern Warfare 3 thrusts the player right into the chaos on the plane.

Of course, all we have is speculation for now. But the marketers at Activision know exactly what they’re doing: teasing the Call of Duty fanbase with nostalgia-fuelled nods to 2009’s much-loved Modern Warfare 2 and the original Warzone experience.

We’ll find out more on August 17, when a Modern Warfare 3 event is set to take place within Warzone. The game itself comes out November 10.

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.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Wiglett is finally getting its own plush at Pokémon Center stores, but fans are seeing something else when they look at the official images of the new Pokémon plush. It turns out, the angle at which you take the photo matters a lot:

No, it’s not a photoshop — that’s the first image listed for the new 10-inch Wiglett Poké Plush on Pokemon Center. If you want to add this to your Pokémon collection, it costs $24.99 and is available to ship now.

Wiglett is the garden eel variation of the classic Pokémon Diglett, and it was first introduced in Scarlet and Violet’s Paldea region last year. But it didn’t take long for Wiglett to earn its reputation as one of the most NSFW Pokémon out there. And the internet is having a field day with this new entry into Wiglett’s lore.

In non-NSFW Pokémon news, yesterday the internet was horrified at Scarlet and Violet’s new legendary forms. But we did finally learn the release date for the Teal Mask expansion. For more, be sure to check out everything announced at the August 2023 Pokemon Presents.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Nintendo has made public a slew of patents seemingly related to abilities and design features from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, including aspects of Link’s Ultrahand abilities, loading screens, NPC moves, and more.

According to an article from Automaton, the Japanese gaming giant has made public a grand total of 31 patents linked to Tears of the Kingdom in recent weeks. Some of the patents seem to indirectly address a number of Link’s newfound Zonai powers, while others deal with the behaviour of player companions, and more generic aspects of the open world adventure game, such as the game’s physics, and how the thrust from rockets and fans is governed.

A number of the patents were described by Hatena Blog user ‘naoya2K’, including one that detailed the system preventing Link from moving an object with his Ultrahand ability while he is standing on it. Another seemingly addressed the in-game physics that govern how Link shares movement characteristics with a dynamic object, like an ultrahand-constructed car, when he is standing on top of it.

Remote attacks, such as the lightening-based ability of the Gerudo sage Riju were also seemingly the subject of a patent during the regulatory onslaught. A seperate patent appeared to describe the loading screen that occurs during fast travel, which first shows a rendering of the player’s current position on the in-game map, before shifting perspective to the region of the world that the player is warping to.

The broad scope of the patents has prompted a strong reaction from some members of the gaming community, who voiced fears that they could hamper creativity, and pose damaging restrictions on the design of titles being developed by competitors in the future.

Others worried that Nintendo was engaging in abuse by trying to patent basic video game functions.

IGN has reached out to Nintendo for comment.

This wave of anxiety may not be entirely unjustified, especially considering the video game industry’s history when it comes to big companies collecting, and enforcing patents to protect their IPs. Back in 2021 Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment was able to successfully patent the Nemesis system used in both Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and its 2017 sequel, Shadow of War. Since then, any developer hoping to create a game featuring a similar system would need to secure a licence from WB, or face a potential lawsuit over its inclusion.

There have also been numerous instances of industry heavyweights suing one another over IP infringement. In 2017 Capcom won almost $1.5 million from fellow publisher Koei Tecmo when it was found that the latter had infringed upon two of its patents relating to haptic systems and the ability to import content from an older game to a new title.

One year later in 2018 Microsoft was sued by Infernal Technologies and Terminal Reality, with the companies accusing the tech giant of infringing patents related to graphical lighting and shadowing methods used in games including Halo 5, Gears of War 4, and Halo 5.

Valve was also targeted for copyright infringement earlier this year in a case related to the Steam Deck’s haptic rumble technology brought by Immersion Corporation – a company known for bringing similar lawsuits against Sony and Microsoft.

IGN gave Tears of the Kingdom a 10/10, describing it as an “unfathomable follow-up” to Breath of the Wild that expanded a world “that already felt full beyond expectation”, while “raising the bar ever higher into the clouds”.

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

I keep wanting to love Atlas Fallen. I mean, it’s a delightful Prince of Persia-inspired open-world action RPG with big ideas, big monsters, and even bigger weapons to fight them with, so it’s got that going for it. And I did enjoy myself as I explored each of its four unique zones, which stretch as far as the eye can see and deliver some mouthwatering, if kinda washed out, vistas. After spending about 18 hours with its mix of respectable monster slaying and brisk platforming, I can comfortably say it’s a good time – especially if you bring a friend into its seamless drop-in co-op. At the same time, its C-tier story is so campy and bone-dry – in both writing and character performance – that it’s clear Atlas has fallen a notch or two.

The middling story, which centers around a generic clash between a human rebellion and a tyrannical regime, starts out rough. No, there are relatively few bugs and the opening is pretty short – I mean, like, physically rough for my custom avatar, a rugged yet scholarly desert dweller. After a few introductory conversations with other desert dwellers in the first area, it was promptly implied that he’d been blasted in the face with a whole bunch of sand and left for dead before the opening cutscene, which kinda sucks considering his indentured servitude as one of the Unnamed. That’s the bottom caste of Atlas Fallen’s sand-strewn medieval world – which, as we learn through some apocalyptic mumbo jumbo narration – is ruled by an evil sun god named Thelos and ravaged by giant sand monsters called wraiths.

This is a pretty cool setup, but the execution of the plot that follows is thinner than the middle of an hourglass. For example, poorly synced lip movements and unenthusiastic voice acting sap the life out of cutscenes. On top of that, there’s no action in any of them, so they’re pretty dull – and each of Atlas’ major characters is a cardboard cutout with no personality to speak of. You’ve got the generic thief with the heart of gold, the upstanding knight girl who introduces herself by punching said golden-hearted thief in the face (but secretly has a soft spot the whole time,) and Nyaal, the other sun god. He spends his waking hours talking at you while looking like a knockoff of Jake Sully from Avatar, but more importantly, he inhabits the magical gauntlet at the center of the story which gives you your powers and a new hope for the rebellion against Thelos and his imperialist thugs. Unfortunately, this sun god is always there with you and rarely shuts up.

Luckily, if you can ignore all that, it’s relatively easy to see Atlas Fallen’s joy as an online co-op adventure where you and a friend run around a sprawling open world battling monsters. It’s a well-crafted map, with plenty of opportunity to unearth rare treasures, build up powerful characters, fight big monsters, do a little platforming – or just chill out and collect cosmetics for the excellent transmogrification system to your heart’s content. It balances simplicity and depth so expertly that it’s easily one of the best games to share between two online friends since It Takes Two.

That’s especially true when you get into the rhythm of the open questing system: this game lets you complete side-quests and interstitials between major story events separately while enjoying the same rewards – even when you’re across the world from one another. Given just how many main story quests scatter you to the wind in search of hidden gauntlet pieces, it’s fantastic to be able to freely split up and cover more ground – who knows, your friend might find something you missed instead of making you run around in circles or backtrack by yourself. That said, it’s a missed opportunity that couch co-op is nowhere to be found, and it’s thoroughly disappointing there’s no cross-play to let you and your buddies on other platforms team up.

It’s clear that the main quest is paced around unlocking new mechanics rather than telling a good story. Atlas Fallen spreads its story across four open-world maps, such as the underground fortress of Bastengar and the crater-filled Wildlands, each of which carries a distinct vibe and is packed with enough hidden treasure and decently rewarding side-quests to feel like there’s always something new to find.

Fetch quests make up the bulk of it, with Nyaal frequently asking you to “find three shards” to complete the latest relic and achieve the next major gauntlet upgrade. But I didn’t feel like I needed to work overly hard to find each of the scattered components, and the rewards were always worthwhile. For instance, unlocking the triple air dash was a game-changer that let me reach distant ledges, and Reveal lets you manipulate ancient artifacts that reveal hidden platforming challenges you didn’t even know were there.

Both of these new abilities unlock previously inaccessible areas, giving all four zones extra room to breathe and slowly unravel themselves to those willing to backtrack. But Atlas Fallen doesn’t power-gate its best loot behind that kind of repeated searching, meaning you can choose to only do the main story, skip all that extra spelunking, and comfortably beat the rather underwhelming final boss without the added trouble.

That said, the one thing you can’t skip is sand. Your weapons are made of sand, you move around quickly by surfing across sand dunes, and each of the various monsters is literally made of sand. The only things not made of sand are the many anvils found dotted across the world of Atlas Fallen, which serve as places to save your game, upgrade your armor, and fast-travel to other anvils.

Still, that’s a lot of sand in one land, let alone to conjure out of one hand – but there’s enough variety within this concept to not feel overly repetitive. Boss fights, quests, and random finds often give way to useful loot, armor, and Essence Stones that contribute to the deep customization and combat systems. Granted, many of these finds are cosmetic or simply merchant fodder with some bits of lore attached, but all the rare crafting items and Essence Dust (basically, Atlas’ version of experience points) make all that treasure-hunting feel worthwhile, even when there isn’t another powerful Essence Stone or armor piece around the next corner.

Meanwhile, power climb feels steady from start to finish – making combat encounters balanced as you venture into higher level zones, without making you grind for it – as long as you’re upgrading your armor, perks, Idols, Essence Stones, and Momentum Gauge at an anvil every so often. Those all help with a different aspect of character customization, but the main driver is your armor, which determines your character’s level and most of your combat stats like how much damage your attacks deal and how quickly your health can regenerate mid-combat.

Speaking of combat, Atlas Fallen’s action-packed battles are simple but highly dynamic, thanks to a small number of moves that grow in power as you land hits. Fights center around two basic attacks that work differently based on the weapon you assign them to, but the twist is that your character’s movement style changes depending on which weapon you strike with. For instance, the sword-like Sandwhip homes in on an enemy from a distance before pushing you backward, letting you whip around the enemy mid-air if you dodge around mid-combo like Sora from Kingdom Hearts. Alternatively, the punchy Knuckledust lunges you forward as you pulverize your opponents with both hands. There are three of these, and they all encourage very different styles.

Atlas Fallen also includes a deeply satisfying parry button, offering a generous window to counter enemy attacks, and a perfectly timed parry can turn the tides of any battle by freezing opponents. There’s also a two-handed slam attack that combines the styles of both equipped weapons, and you can top a chain of attacks off with an extremely powerful finishing move. That’s plenty to keep anyone busy in a typical encounter against a group of two or three large enemies like the marauding Tailguarder and the giant crab-like Shellbasher. And it’s a lot of fun to bring these bigger foes down piece by piece – it reminds me of hunting Rathalos across a vast desert in Monster Hunter.

I’m delighted at how Atlas keeps a nice balance between its moment-to-moment smashing and slashing and its resource management systems. This is thanks to the Momentum Gauge, which fills up as you land direct hits and successful parries against enemies, gradually unlocking abilities you’ve slotted along the gauge. These collectable abilities make up the meat of Atlas Fallen’s customization, and they can be crafted, upgraded, and mixed and matched to build any sort of character you’d want – including healers, damage dealers, crowd controllers, tanks, you name it. One of my favorite Essence Stones is the Evasive Burst, which creates a shockwave after every dodge roll or air dash while active. This let me deal incredible amounts of damage while whipping around airborne foes with the Sandwhip.

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The catch is that it can be difficult to maintain high momentum since you receive more damage as your gauge reaches its limit. This risk and reward element keeps things interesting, since the strongest abilities sit on the upper end of the gauge, and it’s always tempting to unleash your highly gratifying finishing move to deal heavy damage at the cost of reducing your gauge to zero. It all comes together toward the end of the campaign, where every other fight has several enemy types filling the screen with lighting effects and clouds of yellowy dust – it’s kind of like the heavier moments of Doom Eternal, but with sand instead of viscera.

I’ve developed what I can best describe as a “love-hate” relationship with Atlas Fallen’s visual style. I’d often be wowed at how gorgeous some of its zones look – some of it made me feel as if I were standing inside a piece of elegant concept art. Especially once I’d unlocked my favorite suit of armor: Red Company, a suit that gleams brilliantly in direct sunlight as tufts of fabric unfurl around it. That looks fantastic on its own, but even better once I’ve dyed it with gold and blue dye I purchased from a traveling merchant.

I’m also pleased that Atlas Fallen produces consistently high frames in the PS5’s Performance mode, but I’m not as impressed that it struggles with its fidelity even in Graphics mode – which is a shame because of how pretty and detailed its zones and armor designs are. Many of its animations are clunky, but what really bothers me is the compressed textures, low-quality models, and graininess that look flat-out ugly on my PS5 in both visual modes, as if I were playing a poorly made port of a Nintendo Switch game. Atlas looks much clearer on PC with none of the aforementioned compression issues, but its character models still evoke the uncanny valley more than most games.

Fallout: New Vegas and Outer Worlds developer Obsidian Entertainment was originally making upcoming RPG Avowed a cooperative multiplayer game before returning to its single player roots.

Speaking in a documentary celebrating Obsidian’s 20th anniversary, studio head and founder Feargus Urquhart admitted to being wrong after pushing for Avowed to be multiplayer.

“One of the things where I really pushed was that Avowed was going to be multiplayer, and I kept on that for a long time,” he said. “I know in the end it was the wrong decision to keep on pushing on it.”

Head of development Justin Britch said earlier in the documentary that Obsidian showed Avowed to Microsoft early on in the acquisition process, and while Urquhart didn’t mention Microsoft specifically, he explained that multiplayer added a lot of value.

“When we were still independent and I was selling it, it was a more interesting game to publishers,” he said. “And when you’re asking for $50, $60, $70 million you’ve gotta have something interesting to talk about. Multiplayer made it interesting. It was this idea of, it’s almost like peanut butter and chocolate, putting it together, like ‘wow it must be interesting’.”

Forcing a multiplayer project, as a studio famous for single player games, caused too many issues for Obsidian, as it was essentially having to relearn every aspect of game development.

“We were too focused on co-op and we were too focused on changing the way our pipelines work, and the way we write conversations and the way we do quests,” Britch said. “We weren’t focused on the things we’re best at. And so we did make a pivot on the game, basically to refocus and make sure that it was, at the end of the day, an Obsidian game and not something different.”

Obsidian’s initial focus on multiplayer bears resemblance to the recent controversy surrounding fellow Xbox Games Studios developer Arkane. Known most for its single player games like Dishonored, Arkane developed the co-op multiplayer game Redfall that launched to scathing reviews earlier this year.

Parent company ZeniMax reportedly pushed for a multiplayer focus that caused myriad issues, and 70% of staff who worked on single player Prey left by the end of Redfall’s development. Things allegedly became so bad at Arkane that, despite having put two years into Redfall at the time of the Xbox acquisition, staff wished it would be rebooted as a single player game or cancelled altogether.

Avowed is sticking to Obsidian’s roots though, and while it’s set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity, the developer wants to make the world and universe much more approachable this time around.

“The thing that was both exciting and intimidating about stepping into this role on Avowed is, it’s an IP that I know but it’s a different style of game for us,” said game director Carrie Patel.

“Figuring out how much exactly we want to take from Pillars 1 and [sequel] Deadfire, and then how we make this game more approachable to a larger audience that maybe didn’t play the Infinity Engine games and maybe didn’t play either of the original Pillars games at all? How do we stay true to that IP but how do we create an experience that’s more approachable for a larger audience?”

Only time will tell whether Obsidian can achieve that goal, with players finding out when the game launches in 2024. No specific release date has been shared, though Obsidian did release a new trailer for Avowed in June.

Relatively little is known about the game so far, though it will reportedly feature destructible environments and is closer in size to The Outer Worlds than Skyrim.

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

Tekken 8 director Katsuhiro Harada confirmed that the next main installment in the Tekken franchise will not include the anti-piracy software Denuvo.

In a post on the social media platform X (spotted by PCGamer), Harada confirmed that the development team will not introduce Denuvo “or anything else” into Tekken 8. Harada made the statement after a now-deleted post pointed out that Tekken 8’s End User License Agreement on Steam mentions Denuvo is being used under the third-party software category.

“[T]his EULA is probably simply a copy/paste of TEKKEN7 or something…” Harada posted. “Anyway, I’ve no plans to introduce Denuvo or anything else in TEKKEN8, so stop your tedious allergic reactions to every single thing & sit quietly (sit the hell down).”

Denuvo is an anti-tampering and DRM software released in 2014 and is commonly used in big PC releases. However, the software has been criticized for altering the performance of a game, and the always-online mandate has made it unpopular in the PC gaming community.

Tekken 8 still has no release date, but we know that in addition to PC, it’ll release on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. In our first hands-on with Tekken 8, Mitchell Saltzman said “Tekken 8 looks phenomenal, its hits feel as impactful as ever, and its iconic cast of characters are even more uniquely defined thanks to the new Heat system.”

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

At the heart of Lords of the Fallen is the existence of two parallel realms: The realm of the living, Axiom, and the realm of the dead, Umbral. What makes them special in gameplay is the ability of the player to both reach across, and fully transition between those realms. But there’s a lot more to Umbral than just a Stranger Things-esque Upside Down dimension with creepy tendrils and eyeballs following you wherever you go. So let’s raise our lamps into the unknown and do a deep dive into Lords of the Fallen’s most unique element.

Illuminate the Dead

When your character begins their journey, they’ll be given the Umbral lamp, which is your bridge between the realms of Axiom and Umbral. While you’re in Axiom, you can open up a window into Umbral by holding up the lamp, allowing you to peer into the parallel world, and potentially spot interesting differences or pathways that may provide you with a clue as to where to go. Some gates may impede your progress in Axiom, but when you hold up your lamp, you’ll find that in Umbral, no such gate exists; what may be a gap between platforms in the realm of the living may have solid footing in the realm of the dead.

Not every path can be illuminated with just a lamp, however, and eventually you will have to voluntarily pull yourself into Umbral in order to physically interact with certain objects that will allow you to find a path forward. Coming into Umbral of your own volition comes with a very significant risk, however. You see, while in Axiom, if you die, you’re able to respawn in Umbral, essentially giving yourself a second chance. But if you die in Umbral, you’re actually dead, and will have to do the usual Soulslike journey of retracing your steps from your last checkpoint back to the spot you died in order to claim your lost Vigor.

This “journey” of running back to your dropped currency when you die is one of the main things that prompted the development of this umbral mechanic. The team was looking for a way to innovate on that “deathloop” that we’ve seen so many times in other Soulslikes and wanted it to check a series of boxes: First, they wanted to avoid the cycle of the game over screen, racing back to get your fallen resources, and repeating this over and over again every time you die. They also wanted to mitigate the frustration caused from sudden deaths that force the player to deal with the consequence of failure. And finally they wanted a system where you didn’t lose your experience upon the first death, and instead had the option to disengage, unless you were in a boss fight.

In the words of Creative Director Cezar Virtosu: “Plunging the player into a shadowy realm of entropic horror ticked all these conditions of satisfaction. The moment we engaged with these concepts such as: Where does the player go upon death? If they resurrect on the spot should there be gameplay modifiers in place to allow a change of approach? How do they resume normal play? [When we started asking those questions] We opened Pandora’s box and the true challenge was to reign in all the emerging ideas”

The final thing to note on this particular aspect of Umbral is that while you cannot physically interact with anything in Umbral while you’re in Axiom, enemies in Umbral are certainly able to interact with you, and if something in Umbral attacks you while your lamp is out, you’ll get pulled into the land of the dead, which basically amounts to an instant kill on one of your lives. So be careful when you’ve got that lamp out.

Umbral Combat

The duality of the realms of the living and the dead also comes into play during combat. Your lamp is able to do more than just provide a window into the Umbral realm, it’s also able to literally rip the souls right out of enemies for a short period of time, allowing you to bypass their physical form and deal damage directly to their soul.

This is called a Soul Flay, and it’s an extremely important technique when it comes to dealing with tougher enemies. The damage you deal to an enemy’s soul is treated as Withered Damage, which is basically temporary damage that gets delivered all at once, if you can land a single hit once the soul returns to the enemy’s body.

There’s another, even more useful function of a Soul Flay, however. When you yank a soul from an enemy, you can direct which way you want it to go. The body follows the soul in this case, so if you were to yank an enemy’s soul off a ledge, you can instantly kill tough enemies in a single blow.

This is obviously a super powerful technique, so it is limited by the number of Soul Flay charges you have available. You can refill your charges by using another one of the lamp’s special abilities: Soul Siphon. You can use it even while in Axiom to absorb both vigor and Soul Flay charges from surrounding enemies.

There’s one other extremely important use of the Soul Siphon technique. Certain enemies will be empowered by an Umbral parasite that makes them extremely resilient. If you’re able to kill the parasite floating around the enemy, you’ll remove their buff and make them much easier to kill, but here’s the catch: Remember that if you’re in Axiom, you can’t interact with enemies in Umbral. Heck, you won’t even be able to see the parasite.

So in order to deal with the parasite while in Axiom, you’ll need to first find it by raising your lamp, run over to it, and use a quick Soul Siphon to burn it away, all while avoiding the actual enemy you’re fighting against. Of course, if you’re already in Umbral, you can just take out the parasite with a simple attack, but it’s an interesting dynamic in the way you have to work extra hard in order to keep the advantage of remaining in Axiom.

Returning to Axiom

As we’ve established, it’s very easy to enter Umbral, but it’s actually pretty difficult to leave. In order to return to Axiom, you’ll need to find a Vestige, which is Lords of the Fallen’s version of a bonfire; a flower bed where you can plant a Vestige Seed to create your own checkpoint; or find an effigy, which are like mini vestiges that can bring you back from Umbral, but won’t let you rest, level up, or warp. When it comes to the flower beds, you’ll need to take care to not waste a Vestige Seed on an unneeded checkpoint, however, as the resource is quite rare, and you’d hate to come across a much needed flower bed, and not have the seed to plant.

Remaining in Umbral is a risky endeavor, as the longer you hang around in the realm of the dead, the worse it is for you. There’s an affliction called Umbral Dread, which deepens every passing second you remain in Umbral, marked by a creepy eye in the top right of the UI. As the affliction deepens, the player will start seeing umbral echoes and illusions of monsters that will occasionally materialize into existence. The worse the Umbral Dread gets, the stronger these monsters will become, ultimately culminating in the appearance of a monster the developers didn’t want to spoil, but described as being the Apex Predator of the Umbral realm. But there is a risk/reward element to remaining in Umbral as well, as the longer you remain, the higher your vigor multiplier will go, granting you more currency with each enemy you slay that you can use for leveling up. On top of that, there are Umbral-only treasure chests with sets of gear, weapons, and important upgrade materials. So if you’re able to brave through the horrors of Umbral, you stand to come out of the other side much richer than when you came in.

There are plenty more surprises that await you in Umbral, but those are left for you to discover on your own when Lords of the Fallen releases on PC, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5 on October 13.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit

EA has announced the next wave of games set to lose their servers.

As noted on EA’s Online Services Shutdown support page (spotted by PureXbox), the publisher plans to close the servers for Crysis 3, Dante’s Inferno, and Dead Space 2 before the year’s end. Crysis 3 will shut down its servers on September 7, while Dante’s Inferno and Dead Space 2’s servers close on December 8.

EA released a remaster of Crysis 3 back in 2021, along with Crysis and Crysis 2. Unfortunately, each game in the Crysis remastered trilogy is single-player only with no online multiplayer component. Though Crytek did announce back in 2022 that it was working on Crysis 4, news on the next installment in this otherwise dormant franchise has been seldom.

These are the latest three games EA is shuttering server support for in 2023, as earlier this year, the company announced it was closing the servers for Kingdoms of Amalur, Shadows of the Damned, Syndicate, and Warp. While last October, EA announced it was shutting down a handful of servers for some of its older titles, the most notable of which was 2008’s much-loved Mirror’s Edge.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Magic: The Gathering competitor Disney Lorcana doesn’t officially launch until August 18, but cards are already selling for several hundred dollars.

Disney Lorcana, which brings the likes of Mickey Mouse, Lilo and Stich, and Frozen’s Elsa into one cohesive trading card game, went on sale early at Gen Con, North America’s largest board game convention.

As reported by ComicBook, those who attended the event and found some of the rarest cards — special Enchanted variants that aren’t guaranteed in an entire box of 24 booster packs — are selling them on eBay for hundreds of dollars.

An Enchanted version of Sleeping Beauty’s Aurora sold for $250, a Stitch sold for $325, and Elsa sold for as much as $750. Prices are currently fluctuating greatly, though, as no collector knows the true value of these cards, or exactly how often they appear in booster packs.

The full release of Disney Lorcana hasn’t happened yet, meaning the market hasn’t settled either. The same Enchanted Simba is listed by different sellers for $350, $1,000, and $2,500, for example, and the final value could be $30, $5,000, anywhere in between, or much more down the line. There is no way to know.

Trading card games are known for high price tags on the most collectible pieces, and most high level play includes “necessary” or “staple” cards that can cost several hundred dollars each. These Enchanted cards are deliberately rare, collectible variants though, meaning they’ll naturally be the most expensive pieces in standard Disney Lorcana sets.

A set of cards exclusive to last year’s D23 will likely forever be the most expensive pieces in the game though. These six cards — Mickey Mouse Cruella De Vil, Elsa, Captain Hook, Maleficent, Robin Hood, and Stitch — were selling for $2,000 during the event, but less than a year later are now listed at $20,000. Even this could seem like pennies in a few years if the game kicks off.

Magic: The Gathering is perhaps most infamous for this, with a recent Lord of the Rings set producing a $2 million card based on The One Ring. Other highly sought after cards sold for several hundred thousand dollars too.

In our preview of Disney’s take, IGN said: “Overall, the Disney Lorcana TCG is an enjoyable game to play casually. It has beautiful card art, makes excellent use of the Disney library, and offers simple and briskly paced gameplay.”

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

Since Baldur’s Gate 3 launched last week, we’ve heard a lot about how wildly horny it lets players be. And in pursuit of steamy encounters, it turns out that many players are willing to overlook some pretty significant character flaws. This has resulted in a lot of the community uttering variations on “I can fix them” for characters like Shadowheart, Astarion, and one other spoilery party member.

Warning: Below are very light spoilers for the early plots of Shadowheart and Astarion. Read on at your own risk.

While all the origin characters have their, well, issues, Shadowheart and Astarion are becoming especially known in the community for being “problematic faves” of sorts. In Shadowheart’s case, she has some pretty strong feelings against certain races (Githyanki and Tieflings especially) that she isn’t shy about uttering.

What’s more, she pretty quickly reveals herself as a cleric of Shar, a goddess that explicitly seeks to destroy order and hope while embracing pain and grief. Shadowheart expresses unwavering, blind loyalty toward Shar early in her quest. Given that her memory has been wiped, it’s entirely possible that supporting her mission could have potentially disasterous consequences.

Astarion, meanwhile, is wildly self-interested and pro-brain tadpoles, and seems to really enjoy it when the player character is mean to people. He’s also, and here comes the spoiler, a vampire, and tries to turn the player character into one too shortly after being recruited. While Shadowheart is over there having moral dilemmas about the nature of good and evil, Astarion is just kind of a massive jerk who thinks it’s fun to mess with others, and supporting him generally seems to involve doing everything from minor mischief to outright murder.

However, both of these characters are very hot, and if people want to roleplay hot makeout sessions with them and more, who cares if we destroy the world a little along the way, amirite?

Of course, there’s a third problematic fave that’s getting a lot of attention from fans too, but they’re an even bigger spoiler than what we’ve discussed above. If you haven’t finished the plot with the Goblin Camp and the Emerald Grove in Act 1, maybe skip this bit and come back later:

It turns out you can also recruit Mithara, the Drow paladin who is one of the three commanders at the Goblin Camp in Act 1. Most players probably kill her in the process of recruiting the druid Halsin. But if you side with her and slaughter the druids in the grove, you can recruit her later in the game and yes, romance her.

But seriously, she’s probably the worst of the bunch. Minthara serves the Absolute, and in order to recruit her you have to do lots and lots of murder of innocent people, and once she joins you, she doesn’t magically become nice. Pleasing her is basically committing to a trail of bloodshed, but just like the other two, fans just really dig the idea of a sultry scene or two with a murderess. Hey, you do you.

In all three cases, players are truly convinced they can “fix” their problematic crushes in Baldur’s Gate 3. We’re not going to spoil the later stages of the game for folks, so we won’t say whether or not those people are right. Good luck to everyone romancing the thieves, vampires, jerks, and murderers. I’ll be over here hanging out with the somewhat less problematic Wyll.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.