Category: Gaming

While Elden Ring doesn’t include intrinsic difficulty settings, players looking for (much) more of a challenge can now turn every enemy in the game into Malenia, Blade of Miquella thanks to a new mod.

As spotted by PCGamesN, YouTube user Bushy used thefifthmatt’s Elden Ring enemy randomiser mod to fill The Lands Between with the infamous boss. Bushy somehow still managed to beat the game in around eight hours, despite coming up against up to five Malenias at once in some areas, a highlight reel of which can be watched on his YouTube channel.

Malenia has emerged as the toughest boss in Elden Ring since it was released in February, with all sorts of storylines emerging from the fight. Developer FromSoftware didn’t help the situation by removing a popular way to defeat her and a glitch made her ridiculously overpowered. Another mod has even pitted Malenia against every other boss in the game (and it didn’t end well for most of them).

To balance the universe, however, a hero emerged to put Malenia in her place. Elden Ring’s first legendary player, Let me Solo Her, would appear in players’ games to take Malenia down single handedly, and has now done so more than 1,000 times.

In our 10/10 review of the game, IGN said: “Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path.”

To make those choices with the best available information, check out our guide that features everything you could ever hope to know about Elden Ring, including collectible locations, boss strategies, and more.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries has changed an offensive cosmetic name released as part of a Juneteenth event, and apologized to fans for what it called a “hurtful” mistake.

A Halo Infinite nameplate color palette released to celebrate Juneteenth – a federal holiday in the U.S. commemorating the emancipation of slaves – was named Bonobo, a species of great ape.

The offensive name was called out by players, including Sean W on YouTube, which prompted 343 to quickly change the palette’s name to Freedom and apologise for what it claimed was a mistake.

“While the original name refers to an internal toolset, it was not intended to be applied to this content and we recognize the harm it may have caused,” said Halo’s senior community manager John Junyszek on Twitter. “The palette was incorrectly named and we immediately renamed it via an update.”

343 boss Bonnie Ross also apologised for the name (below). “We were made aware of a palette option for our Juneteenth emblem that contained a term that was offensive and hurtful. The team immediately addressed this issue via an update,” she tweeted.

“We are a studio and franchise that is committed to inclusivity where everyone is welcome and supported to be their true self. On behalf of 343, I apologize for making a celebrated moment a hurtful moment.”

Halo players have continued to ask for a deeper explanation, however, asking why this item in particular was named Bonobo after an internal toolset and how no quality assurance staff noticed the issue. IGN has reached out to Microsoft for comment.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Developer Spiders is best known as something of a BioWare tribute studio. Its most successful game, GreedFall, is the latest in a modest line of RPGs that draw heavily upon the likes of Mass Effect and Dragon Age. But Spiders’ next game, Steelrising, is nothing like a BioWare game at all. Instead, it’s an ode to FromSoftware. Specifically, it is Bloodborne set in the French Revolution, with Yarnham’s beasts swapped out for Parisian clockwork robots. As a pitch, it sounds a little derivative (at least mechanically). But despite seemingly minimal innovations, playing Steelrising reveals something that has genuine promise.

At a recent hands-on event I was able to play around three hours of Steelrising, which covered the opening locations and the first major boss. Playing as Aegis, a clockwork automaton ballerina-turned-bodyguard, I explored a small variety of twisty rural village and Parisian city locations that knotted themselves together with shortcut routes. As I tore apart robotic enemies with blades and bullets I collected Anima Essence, a resource that I could use to upgrade my stats and improve my weapons, provided I didn’t lose it upon death. Upgrades were conducted at ‘Vestal’ checkpoints, which also refilled my health restoring oil burette with a fresh supply. If it’s not already clear, Steelrising plays exactly like a FromSoftware game.

It’s easy to be cynical about this. Where, exactly, is Spiders’ original work here? But look at FromSoftware’s own library, and it can often be difficult to see the difference between Demon’s Souls and Elden Ring. The Soulslike formula seems fated to remain as ‘pure’ as possible, and so it’s in the details that we find each new game’s differences. With Steelrising, those differences appear to vary in significance as well as quality.

Like Bloodborne, Steelrising is an action-RPG that promotes aggression. With only a few weapons that offer the ability to block or counter, this is a combat system in which you dodge and jump your way through incoming blows in an enjoyably mobile manner. While it’s governed by the genre staple stamina system, when your endurance is exhausted you can rapidly cool your robot’s internal mechanisms with an active reload-like button press, which instantly tops your stamina up and throws you back in the fight. This is particularly helpful in mastering Steelrising’s staggering mechanic; give an enemy no reprieve and a diamond-shaped gauge will build to breaking point, allowing you to land a high-damage critical attack. These are minor tweaks rather than big changes to Bloodborne’s core, so consider this an alternate recipe to an already great meal, rather than a different dish entirely.

Across my three hours I discovered that this combat core can be expanded upon with a range of weapons that influence small variations in playstyle. A pair of metal corrugated fans can be used to slice apart brass baddies, but slam them together and they become a shield (or, more accurately, Sekiro’s Loaded Umbrella) for a more defensive approach. A better offense can be found in the dual-wielded falchion and saber, which sends Aegis pirouetting through the air like a deadly tornado. A more exotic option is what can only be described as a scorching yoyo, which can be slammed against the floor to create a flaming detonation that inflicts damage-over-time. For longer range engagements, a pistol can fire a volley of freezing alchemical bullets that disable enemies and open them up for a brutal melee.

While I eventually settled on the falchion and saber for the final half of my demo, I was eager to experiment with each and every weapon I found, and discovered something to like in all of them. The fun of them helps overcome what I foresee will be Steelrising’s main combat problem; rhythm. It is notably choppier than its apparent inspiration, with your actions never quite flowing together with the same fluidity as the best Soulslikes. More than anything, this highlights Steelrising’s significantly lower budget and holds it back from being a true peer of FromSoftware’s catalog. And yet this never bothered me across my hours of play.

Enjoyably goofy enemy designs with well-drawn attacks, from fire-breathing metal snakes to walking electrified battering rams, keep combat consistently fun, if not smooth. The fiction also helps do a lot of lifting; since the enemies are all robots, their jerky movements, frequent pauses, and stiff, exaggerated wind-ups feel in-keeping with their nature. Aegis is thankfully a much faster automaton, and while her animation transitions could flow better, her speed and ability to swiftly dodge around enemies ensured that her mechanical movement never felt to my detriment.

The combination of a fast protagonist and jerky, easily-read enemies meant Steelrising, at least in these opening hours, felt a touch easier than the usual Soulslike offerings. But for anyone who does struggle, Assist Mode offers a significant advancement in the ongoing difficulty debate around Soulslikes. Rather than being a straight up easy mode, Assist allows you to manually adjust various factors to tailor the challenge. You can reduce enemy damage in percentage increments, opt to keep your Anima Essence on death, and adjust how quickly your stamina replenishes. If nothing else, I hope Steelrising is influential in aiding other developers find new and innovative ways to help people enjoy Soulslikes.

It seems that Spiders is doing plenty right with its tribute to FromSoftware, then. But my play session also highlighted a number of things the studio is struggling with. The demo opened on a plodding conversation between historical figures Marie-Antoinette and her favourite, Gabrielle de Polignac, which suggested that while Steelrising will have a more cinematic approach to storytelling than Dark Souls, that may not be in its favour. Its environmental storytelling may fare no better; while I enjoyed that the world displayed the hallmark Soulslike design where all roads eventually lead back to a central checkpoint, I found little to be truly fascinated by on my travels. Aside from some notes left by long-dead NPCs, the few areas I explored felt more like maze routes than an actual country in the midst of a political upheaval.

And yet, despite these flaws, Steelrising remained really engaging, at least in those opening hours. That satisfying combat with its oddly mechanical rhythm is accompanied by a beautiful, intricate ‘clockpunk’ art style, which sees the grandeur of Assassin’s Creed Unity blended with the ticking metal monsters of Doctor Who’s 2006 episode The Girl in the Fireplace. Aegis herself is a mechanical marvel, her weapons elegantly sliding out from body panels like a renaissance-era Robocop. Treasure chests click and whirr as their mechanisms pop into place, and the Vestal checkpoints clatter as their cages rise out of the ground to reveal the chairs that upgrade Aegis’ abilities. Despite its clearly modest budget delivering something that’s far from a technical powerhouse, Steelrising powers through to deliver surprising good looks.

It was in my final task of the demo, a fight against the gargantuan Bishop of the Cité, where I could see all of Steelrising’s best ideas come together. The boss itself is an amusingly tiny cleric piloting a massive rolling pulpit; a Catholic Weeble, basically. It’s armed with a colossal Bible on a chain, swung in heavy arcs that are easy to dodge but lethal if you get complacent. The ball it rolls around on is impervious to damage, meaning you have to leap up to strike at the little bishop himself. That demands burning plenty of stamina, and so using the rapid cool mechanic to regain stamina is vital to chaining together the leaps, attacks, and dodges required to bring down this mechanical menace. It’s the combination of meshed combat systems and absurd alt-history fiction that makes Steelrising endearing to me despite its struggles. I doubt it’ll give Elden Ring a run for even its small change, but I’m nonetheless fascinated to see what other wild enemies and weapons remain to be found in the burning streets of Paris when Steelrising releases this September.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.

StudioMDHR has been working on Cuphead in one way or other for over a decade now. With Delicious Last Course imminent, though, StudioMDHR has to look toward the future. Could there be more Cuphead after Cuphead?

According to Maja Moldenhauer, StudioMDHR got to work on Delicious Last Course because it still had left plenty of Cuphead on the cutting room floor after the first time around. Elements such as a playable Miss Chalice, and many of Delicious Last Course’s new bosses, were ideas born during the original game’s development that needed the extra time of a DLC to see the light of day.

But now, with Delicious Last Course wrapped, Moldenhauer says there’s nothing left sitting on a drawing board somewhere. “We got it all in.”

So where does that leave StudioMDHR, a studio that has been about nothing but Cuphead since 2010? Moldenhauer confirms that while this is indeed the end of Cuphead ‘Don’t Deal With the Devil,’ it’s certainly not the end for the studio’s work. She isn’t giving specifics just yet about whether or not the sentient drinking vessels will return in the future, but she did offer one clue:

“The sky is the limit,” she says. “We have a lot of ideas in our head in terms of where we want to go, what we want to do. I will say that we love 2D animation. We love pencil to paper, but beyond that, it can go anywhere.”

Whatever Moldenhauer has up her sleeve, it will likely take quite a while before we see it given the long development cycle of both Cuphead and Delicious Last Course – a fact Moldenhauer isn’t too concerned about, as long as it means the team at StudioMDHR is taken care of.

For more Cuphead ahead of its Delicious Last Course on June 30, 2022, check out our reviews of the original game and the Netflix show, aptly titled, The Cuphead Show!.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Sonic Frontiers will be the first new 3D Sonic title since 2017’s Sonic Forces. Unlike previous level-based endeavors, however, Sonic Frontiers will be the series’ first title to boast a vast and freely explorable world, which Sega refers to as ‘Open Zone’.

So why is it an Open Zone, as opposed to an open world? Director Morio Kishimoto told IGN all about it. Kishimoto refers to Open Zone as “Sonic Frontiers’ secret weapon”:

“Level-based platformers often have a world map. Our Open Zone is a world map, only we’ve made it entirely playable,” Kishimoto stated.

“A playable world map that includes stage-like elements is something that hasn’t really been done before, so we had to come up with a new name. What is often defined as a World in other level-based platformers is called a Zone in Sonic games, so we took that and combined it with Open, which refers to a freely explorable field. So that’s what Open Zone stands for.”

Kishimoto sees the Open Zone as an evolution of the traditional world map – of course, one that has been tailored to match Sonic’s high-speed gameplay.

“Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in Japan in 1988. I believe this was the first game to introduce a world map. The system has been used by countless platformers since, even to this day. A true evolution of this structure is what we see as the essence of Sonic Frontiers’ field. We wanted to provide a next-gen level-based platforming experience. But how do we evolve a level-based platformer like Sonic into this new Open Zone? That’s what Sonic Frontiers is all about,” said Kishimoto.

Usually, a level-based platformer’s world map is an area from which the player departs to various stages. However, going from Kishimoto’s explanation, Sonic Frontiers’ Open Zone is much more than just a 3D hub world of the likes of Super Mario 64 or Sonic Adventure.

“The Open Zone stands central in Sonic Frontiers’ gameplay, and the game’s levels exist as elements within this area. From grind rails to platform objects, loops and so on, the Open Zone is packed with the athletic action we love in Sonic games,” Kishimoto explained.

Since the Open Zone’s design was based on the concept of a world map, Kishimoto sees Sonic Frontiers as a rival to other platformers such as Mario, Kirby and Donkey Kong rather than other free-roaming experiences. Mario’s recent 3D endeavors have been more open-ended as well, and Super Mario Odyssey and Bowser’s Fury seem to share similarities with the direction that Sonic appears to be taking in Frontiers’ Open Zone concept. What should differentiate Sonic Frontiers from such titles is, as always, pure speed.

“In the Open Zone, the high-speed gameplay can carry players in any direction without the limitations of a stage or course,” Kishimoto said.　

“In previous Sonic titles, we had to gradually make the stages more difficult in order to reach an amount of play time that would satisfy players. It is natural for level-based platformers to become more difficult as you progress. However, for Sonic games the problem has always been that higher difficulty can get in the way of the game’s sense of speed. In Sonic Frontiers, the Open Zone offers a lot of content already, so raising the difficulty in order to increase the play time was no longer necessary. From start to finish, we were able to maintain a sense of speed with ideal level design for a Sonic game.”

Going by Kishimoto’s comments, the contradiction between speed and platforming – a balance that has always challenged the Sonic series – could have been solved by the Open Zone’s new structure. Kishimoto added that instead of an increase in difficulty, Sonic Team has found new ways to challenge the player, so Sonic Frontiers won’t be an experience that players will find too easy either.

The Open Zone also gives room for more diverse gameplay. Sonic Frontiers comes with a more fleshed-out combat system as well as puzzles scattered throughout the Open Zone. The latter will offer some quieter moments, a rarity in Sonic games.

“Some of the puzzles are brain-teasers, while others test your action techniques or play out as a minigame,” Kishimoto explained. Kishimoto assured us that the game’s main focus remains on Sonic’s exhilarating sense of speed, which is why tackling these puzzles is mostly optional. “That being said, we’ve included ways for players to get hooked by the puzzles, so please look forward to that,” Kishimoto added.

With the implementation of the Open Zone, Sonic Frontiers boasts a lot more content than previous Sonic games. Kishimoto says that it should take the average player between 20 and 30 hours to finish the game, while completionists can easily spend double the time to see everything. To keep the player motivated throughout the journey, Kishimoto and his team decided to implement character progression to accompany the longer playtime.

“While this might be unusual for a level-based platformer, we decided to implement a skill tree and the ability to level Sonic up,” said Kishimoto.

Interestingly, Sonic’s speed itself can also be leveled up. When running, a speedometer indicates just how fast Sonic is running, and this can be upgraded. Details like this seem to indicate that no matter how much the Open Zone shakes up the formula, the main concept of what makes a Sonic game hasn’t changed one bit.

“In previous titles, Sonic fans have enjoyed time attacks for each stage. For Sonic Frontiers, doing a speed run for the entire game might be a fun challenge,” Kishimoto said with a smile.

Sonic Frontiers will be released for Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and PC this winter. In the meantime, you can enjoy our exclusive first look at Sonic Frontiers gameplay. From more gameplay footage to previews and interviews, IGN First will bring you loads of exclusive Sonic Frontiers content throughout June, so please stay tuned!

Esra Krabbe is an editor at IGN Japan. Follow him on Twitter if you can keep up with his speed.

Growing up as a child of the 90s, whenever I stepped into an arcade, I’d always do a walk around to see what they had before putting my quarters into any machines. This usually didn’t last very long because as soon as I saw a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet, I’d shout to my friends “They got Turtles!” and we’d rush on over.

It’s abundantly clear that the developers at Tribute Games share a similar love for the 90s TMNT beat-em-ups. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is nothing but unwaveringly reverent to the classic 1989 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade game, and more prominently, 1991’s Turtles in Time. Best of all, it transforms the arcadey quarter-munching design of combat into something much more skill forward while still maintaining the same button mashy appeal. Put simply, Shredder’s Revenge is a prime example of how to breathe new life into a classic arcade beat-em-up.

Shredder’s Revenge is full of all sorts of winks and nods to the arcade games that inspired it, but it smartly doesn’t chain itself to them. Arcade beat-em-ups were originally designed to suck as many quarters as they could from the pockets of players, and thus have inherited a tendency to limit your ability to get out of the way of attacks or ramp up the difficulty without also ramping up your own power. Shredder’s Revenge changes all of that, as the turtles and friends can now freely dodge roll left and right; they can hold the attack button down to charge up attacks, which also has the added bonus of letting them take damage without flinching; they each have a Shoryuken-like rising attack that makes hitting aerial enemies a breeze; and most importantly, they each have a meter that allows them to use a screen clearing super attack when it’s full.

The meter fills by landing hits and resets when you take damage, but the kicker is that if you’re able to fill it up completely, the super charge is stored until you use it. This adds a nice extra incentive to play smart and be vigilant about avoiding damage, because those super moves are clutch, especially in the later stages when enemies start to get tankier and more aggressive.

Aside from those additions, this is still very much the same type of game that fans of the old arcade cabinets know and love. It’s simple beat-em-up action at its finest – with a big focus on crowd clearing AOE attacks, power ups, and environmental interactables that can turn the tide of a fight in your favor.

There are a total of 16 levels in Shredder’s Revenge, and many of them are arranged like a remixed “Greatest Hits” of previous games. You’ve got the streets and highways of TMNT: The Arcade Game, the sewers and subways of The Manhattan Project, and the prehistoric settings of Turtles in Time. But there are also a handful of levels that are wholly original, including one that takes place at a zoo and had me contending with regular stampedes, Foot ninjas, and aggravating little monkeys in cages that threw bananas at both me and my enemies. The levels are all charming in their own right, with plenty of easter eggs and gags throughout, though I do wish there was a little more variety in the mix. There are only two types of levels: traditional stages where you just move from left to right, beating up all the baddies in your way, and high speed hoverboard stages where you move from left to right, beating up all the baddies in your way, only faster and on a hoverboard. Tribute Games plays it safe with its level design, and the result is a very even experience, but also one that started to feel quite samey by the end.

Each of the levels are brought to life thanks to an impeccable soundtrack. It’s high energy, completely fits the 90s nostalgia vibe, and features a eclectic mix of remixes of familiar songs from the original games alongside entirely new songs that are equally catchy. That includes tracks from big names like Ghostface Killa and Mega Ran, a rap about the Turtles “rollin’ on broadway” in the level “Mutants Over Broadway,” and even a super cheesy rock song that feels like it’d be right at home in a Sonic Adventure game. It’s honestly one of my favorite soundtracks of the year so far.

Heroes in a Half Shell

Of course, a lot of the appeal of Shredder’s Revenge is playing as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themselves, and Tribute Games has done a wonderful job of making each character feel distinct and true to their personality while still having essentially the same set of moves. Obviously they each have their own attack animations with their own unique weapons, but it’s the little things that really go a long way. That could be the way Mikey runs like a goofball, Raph’s permanent scowl and intimidating grimace, or Donny’s amusing taunt where he pulls out a gameboy. There are some notable gameplay differences between them as well: Leo’s the only character with a flipping summersault attack out of his double jump, Michelangelo can bounce off enemies with his divekick, Raph can german suplex his opponents, and Donny can hit from a football field away thanks to the reach of his staff.

The Turtles aren’t the only playable characters either. Splinter and April O’Neil also join in on the action, with Splinter using his claws, martial arts, and walking stick, and April fighting with TV cameras, microphones, and array of punches and kicks. All together, there are six characters playable right from the start, and Shredder’s Revenge even allows for up to six people to play simultaneously. I haven’t done that yet myself, but even playing with just three players is absolute chaos in the best kind of way.

Tribute Games does a great job of appropriately scaling the difficulty with more players by both adding more enemies and upping their aggression with each new player that joins in. There’s also a handful of fun team up attacks that are a little difficult to coordinate, but feel great when you manage to pull them off, such as the ability for one player to dive kick into another, who can catch them and throw them like a projectile to deal big damage to anything in your path.

There are only two modes of play in Shredder’s Revenge: A campaign mode that lets you select levels from an overworld, and an arcade mode that gives you that classic experience of taking on the whole game from the start with a limited number of lives and continues, with no checkpoints and no saving your progress. The whole game can be completed in about two hours, so arcade mode isn’t as daunting of a task as it might initially seem, and it ultimately ended up being my preferred way to play after beating the campaign once. Those who are completionists might find themselves preferring campaign mode, however, as it features hidden collectibles, a variety of challenges to complete per level, and persistent progression per character with new stats and abilities unlocked every time you level up. Arcade mode simply gives you all these abilities from the outset.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords will have the original version’s cut content added to the Nintendo Switch re-release in Q3 this year.

The content was removed from the original version of KOTOR 2 and includes new missions, dialogue, and other content that’s woven throughout the entire game. Given how intrinsic it is to the game, players will need to start a fresh save file in order to experience it.

Eurogamer spotted a tweet from developer port developer Aspyr, which confirmed: “You will need to start a new game with the DLC content enabled to access the additional content, however after the DLC releases and you still wish to finish your non-DLC playthrough, you can access those base game save files by disabling the DLC in the in-game main menu.”

The extra content – which will be added for free – includes a mission where players play as their droid companion HK-47 and explore a mysterious HK manufacturing plant, a new and improved ending that includes more party interactions and extra acknowledgement of the player’s past choices, livelier crew conversations overall, and a variety of other quests and challenges across the galaxy.

The Switch version of KOTOR 2 was released on June 8 and only announced shortly before that, during Star Wars Celebration. In our 8/10 review of the original, IGN said: “If you like roleplaying games or if you like Star Wars, you’ll be hard pressed to find a game as enjoyable as Knights of the Old Republic II. Sure, it’s got some technical problems and, sure, it starts fairly slowly but if you can see past those flaws, you’re in for one hell of a treat.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Lollipop Chainsaw is seemingly making a return, following an announcement on Twitter from the game’s executive producer.

As spotted by Siliconera, Yoshimi Yasuda said simply: “Lollipop Chainsaw is back by Dragami Games. Please look forward to it.” The veteran developer was previously CEO of Kadokawa Games (who published the original in 2012) but left to start Dragami Games in May 2022.

Yasuda didn’t share further details on the nature of the game – whether it’s a sequel, remake, remaster, reimagining or anything else – but it would be the first chance for players to try the franchise in more than a decade. The original doesn’t exist outside of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware, as it lacks a PC version and isn’t available through any form of backwards compatibility.

Lollipop Chainsaw is a hack and slash action game in which high school cheerleader Juliet Starling must fight through hoards of zombies using the game’s titular chainsaw (and with her boyfriend’s severed, still-living head attached to her belt). The game was a collaboartion between No More Heroes’ Suda51 and James Gunn, who’d go on to direct Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad.

The game picked up a cult following but in our 5/10 review, IGN said: “Lollipop Chainsaw doesn’t even attempt to differentiate itself from the genre, and most of what it does try new in the realm of its characters and writing ultimately ends up taking away from an incredible-on-paper action game.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Arkane Austin has a lot of experience open-ended gameplay design, but when it came to designing Redfall‘s open world, the famed studio behind Prey had a unique problem ⁠— Redfall’s open world was actually a bit too open.

In a new interview with IGN, Redfall designer Harvey Smith talked about designing the Massachusetts town in which Arkane’s new supernatural shooter is set, describing it as “very open.” Redfall is an on-foot game he says, and the team has worked to make sure that the setting’s design fits within that dynamic.

But at first, Redfall was “too open,” Smith says.

“It was like there was not enough blocking you or channeling you, but it’s very, very open rooftops and alleys and streets of this small town, Redfall, Massachusetts, which is like a fishing community, a tourist community — quaint, historic, New England stuff with this stealthy takeover by vampires. But the one thing that we do in terms of that gating pretty heavily is we divided the world into two districts. District One is the first half of the missions, and it’s the downtown part of Redfall, while District Two is more rural. It’s farms, lighthouses, churches, things like that.”

Arkane has worked to refine the town’s design, with the end result being an open world co-op game in which multiple players work together to take back Redfall’s neighborhoods from the vamps. In so doing, they are free to venture off on their own, but at the cost of potentially making things more difficult for themselves; as they say in Dungeon & Dragons, you should never split the party. It’s very much in keeping with Arkane’s earlier games, where players are encouraged to explore, experiment, and develop unique solutions to their problems.

“What would the Arkane DNA look like in the open world?” Smith asks. “The way we do resources, scrounging for ammo and medical stuff and lock picks, and the way we approach buildings — there’s multiple entries and problem to gameplay encounters, there’s multiple ways you can approach it. What would it be like to work together?”

He continues, “Because if you play solo, it’s a lot spookier, it’s a lot more atmospheric, it’s more slow-paced. As soon as you add another person, you’re not really afraid anymore because you have a friend there, but there’s got to be something to make up for that. So the social aspect, the narrative changing in terms of the banter between the characters, just the fun of playing with another person… Layla drops the elevator and everybody can get on the roof or get up to a higher vantage or whatever. There’s lots of little synergies like that that are good.”

Redfall takes aim at a 2023 release date

In the rest of the interview, Smith talks about how the various characters work together, and how Redfall has some “very dynamic systems” driving the narrative design as characters get to know each other over time. That said, Smith says Arkane is deemphasizing branching missions this time around, meaning Redfall won’t have multiple endings in the traditional sense.

Redfall was first announced as an Xbox exclusive during its E3 2021 showcase, after which it dropped out of sight. It reappeared with a new gameplay trailer at Sunday’s Xbox + Bethesda Showcase, in the process confirming that Redfall will be a classic Arkane single-player game even when playing co-op.

Redfall was slated to release in 2022, but was pushed to 2023 along with Starfield, joining a long list of games that have been delayed. Still, there’s plenty to look forward to in the world of games, so keep an eye on all the rest of our coverages as the Summer of Gaming continues.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Sonic the Hedgehog won’t be kissing any more humans if Sega veteran Takashi Iizuka has his way.

Iizuka has worked on the franchise since 1994’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and told Axios what the two critical rules for a project featuring the Blue Blur are – alongside an additional, unofficial one regarding the infamous smooching scene from 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog.

In the game, the very human Princess Elise the Third used the Chaos Emeralds to save Sonic’s life and kissed the anthropomorphic hedgehog as she did. Though he didn’t work on that particular entry, Iizuka said “I don’t think we’ll be doing that again”.

The other rules are more on brand, with the first simply being “speed”. Iizuka said the games need to be built around Sonic moving quickly – he quite literally “gotta go fast” – while the second rule is that he cannot swim. Even in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games franchise, Iizuka pointed out, Sonic has to use a flotation device in swimming events. The more you know!

All of these rules will, of course, be applied in Sonic Frontiers, the latest entry in the franchise and first with open world elements. First teased in May last year, it also features extensive combat that was actually based in part on the Sonic Movie,

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.