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Welcome back to IGN Game Scoop!, the ONLY video game podcast! This week your Omega Cops — Daemon Hatfield, Sam Claiborn, Justin Davis, and Nicholas Limon — are discussing the richest and poorest video game characters, Elden Ring, Rogue Legacy 2, Spiritfarer, and more. And, of course, they play Video Game 20 Questions.

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Back in 2012, the pirate-themed title Libertalia, from a then little-known designer called Paolo Mori hit the shelves. Its blend of bluffing and hand management with that popular piratical theme made it a minor hit — but after stock sold out it sunk without trace.

As it transpired, it’s a favourite of Stonemaier game’s Jamey Stegmaier, who has now bought the considerable might of his publishing house to issue a new edition. Moving the action from the high seas to the higher skies, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest (see it at Amazon) adds some new cards and refreshes the components for modern production values.

What’s In The Box

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is mostly a card game, with an identical deck for each player, and the cards themselves are something of a letdown. While sturdy enough for play, the art, depicting anthropomorphic pirate animals, is odd. The aim is to emphasise the move from the high seas to high fantasy but the execution is lacking.

Other components are much better. There’s a big bag of chunky plastic loot tiles to draw from, similar to those in Azul, which slide and clack in a most satisfying manner as you rummage around amongst them. Players have score dials to track their booty and there are also coin tokens with a fun little plastic treasure chest to keep them in.

The only other component is a board plus some tiles to place on it to vary the effects of the loot tokens. It’s double-sided, printed with player aids and everything is laid out in a neat and effective manner to help facilitate the gameplay.

Rules and How it Plays

At the start of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, one player shuffles their deck of forty crew cards and draws six at random. The other players then go fishing in their own decks and draw out the same, matching cards. So everyone starts with the same cards. You also draw out one loot tile per player to lay on the board for each day of the upcoming voyage. There are three such voyages, starting at four days and then increasing to five and six.

Each day players must choose a card from their hand in secret. The card will have a rank number and one or more special powers. Once all players have chosen, the cards are arranged in rank order and their “day” powers get activated from left to right, in increasing rank. Then, their “dusk” powers get activated in the opposite direction, highest rank first, after which the owning player can choose a loot tile from that day’s selection. These loot tiles sometimes also have a dusk effect which happens as they are picked. Finally, a few cards have a “night” effect which is applied simultaneously.

That’s pretty much all the rules: it’s very easy to learn and teach the basic game flow. But beware, because the devil is in the details. The special powers on both crew and tiles are very varied and spice proceedings up like a tot of rum. At the same time, the information you need to play strategically is printed on the cards and tile effects and makes the game feel more complicated to newcomers than the tiny rule booklet.

Let’s illustrate this with an example. Loot tiles aren’t all equal in value: indeed one, the Relic, costs you points if you collect it. So if there’s a day with a couple of Relic tiles among the loot and you have the rank 5 card Cabin Boy, you might be tempted to play it. The Cabin Boy’s “day” power nets you gold if he’s the leftmost card, which is likely given that he’s rank 5. At “dusk” he stops you from taking any loot which, if it’s a Relic, is quite helpful. So he looks like an easy choice: except all the other players will have a Cabin Boy and they’ll all be thinking the same thing. All of a sudden he’s not likely to be the leftmost card anymore, and you might want to reconsider. Unless all the other players are also thinking that same thing, in which case …

And so the decisions go on, like a galleon spinning in an endless whirlpool, until you’ve tried to out-think all the double-think and come to a conclusion. After the tension of waiting for the other players, you go up the scale and back down again, scrabbling to try and work out what the cascade of powers is going to be and what loot you’re going to secure. It’s a neat mechanic with plenty of scope for excitement, planning and bluff. At the same time, the simultaneous choice of cards means your strategies can and will get torpedoed through no fault of your own, which can be unsatisfying.

At the end of each voyage, some cards and most loot tokens also have an “anchor” power that activates. These mostly net you some bonus gold but there are fun exceptions such as the hook token that lets you keep a card you’ve played in your tableau, which can be handy if it has an ongoing “night” effect. Libertalia: Wind of Galecrest makes full use of the simple day, dusk, night and anchor system to come up with some really engaging effect combos, ensuring there’s plenty of variety among its motley crew. The flip side of the board even has a whole new set of loot token effects to increase player interaction.

Before starting a new voyage, players get six new cards for their hand — and this is where things really start to heat up. Although all players get the same six cards, chances are they played different cards during the preceding voyage which means everyone is now holding different hands. This brings a memory element into the game as you’ll be at an advantage if you can recall what other players are holding; but either way, it opens up more variety in potential effect combos. Despite this fresh blood, the arbitrary nature of simultaneous play does make the hour-odd play time feel a little overlong.

One thing that comes as a particular surprise for a game that thrives off having lots of cards working in opposition to each other is that it works well as both a solo board game and a two-player board game. Played solitaire, there’s a simple AI system to choose cards from an opponent’s hand together with a random “pilferer” card to mix up the order. With two players, there’s a dummy rank 20 card that punishes low play by stealing a loot token if both players have cards that rank below it. These are neat, simple solutions that keep the game fast and fun at every player count.

Where to Buy

A big part of the appeal of Fortnite is that it gives life to all our childhood fantasies about heroes from different universes teaming up to battle evil. The game now includes skins based on Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Tron, Naruto, Street Fighter and countless other iconic franchises. But sometimes those crossovers are more than merely superficial, and that’s where Fortnite x Marvel: Zero War comes in.

A followup of sorts to 2021’s Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point, Zero War explores a major escalation in the endless conflict raging on Fortnite’s Island. In this story, a fragment of the Zero Point lands in the Marvel Universe, forcing the heroes of Fortnite to join forces with the Avengers to prevent a disaster that could affect all worlds. It’s a conflict that fans will see play out in both the game itself and the pages of the comic.

The comic series reunites the Zero Point writing team – Epic Games’ Chief Creative Officer Donald Mustard and prolific Marvel writer Christos Gage – with Sergio Davila (Wonder Woman) handling the art. Check out an exclusive preview of the first issue in the slideshow gallery below, and then read on to learn more about this major crossover from Gage himself.

From the DC Universe to the Marvel Universe

Zero War is probably the closest thing comic book fans will see to a true Marvel/DC crossover for the foreseeable future (unless you count the recent reprint of JLA/Avengers). While there won’t be any DC characters appearing in this story, Fortnite’s Island has now officially played host to heroes from both universes. Zero War’s conflict builds on the foundation of Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point and the previous, Thor-centric Fortnite x Marvel crossover, so it’s just as well Mustard and Gage are collaborating again.

“It’s still a delight,” Gage said regarding that collaboration. “If anything it’s more instinctive now, as Donald and I are really familiar with each other’s creative processes, but that was true midway through Batman/Fortnite…we clicked really quickly. So from the standpoint of collaborating with Donald, it felt like a direct continuation. We both love comics, we both love the Fortnite lore, and we both want to deliver something awesome for fans of both the comics and the game. Hopefully that showed last time, and will show again this time.”

Art by Leinil Yu. (Image Credit: Marvel)

The biggest change between Zero Point and Zero War is that Gage and Mustard are working with Davila, whose recent Marvel work includes Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade. While Davila’s style is similar in some ways to what we saw on Zero Point, Gage said he also brings some particular skills to the table in this story.

“The idea is to find the best artist for the story we hope to tell, and when [editor Alanna Smith] recommended Sergio, we saw what he’d been doing with his inventive layouts and crazy action scenes and knew he was perfect,” Gage said. “Given that we’re depicting what is basically the culmination of the war between the Seven and the Imagined Order, the poor guy was going to have to draw armies, but he was also going to have to make some smaller, more character-focused scenes work too. And he’s done it brilliantly, as the images released thus far show beyond a shadow of a doubt. He’s the hardest working one on the team, for sure!”

As mentioned above, this isn’t the first Marvel/Fortnite crossover comic, but it’s certainly much larger in scope than 2020’s Fortnite x Marvel: Nexus War – Thor #1. Where that comic was basically a prologue story setting up an in-game story event, Zero War is a five-issue series telling a complete story unto itself. However, Gage teases there will be some major connective tissue between the comic and the game, particularly as the Zero War event reaches its climax later in 2022.

“There’ll be a few things you see in both the game and the comic – mostly in our final issue,” Gage said. “But for the most part, what happens in the game and what happens in the comic are different fronts in the same war. Some questions that players might have about the game are answered in the comic, and vice versa, though neither are required to follow the story in the other.”

The Heroes of Zero War

Another notable difference between the previous Thor tie-in and the Zero War miniseries is that the former springs out of a very specific moment in Donny Cates’ ongoing Thor series, whereas Zero War takes a slightly more evergreen approach to the Marvel Universe. The costumes and team rosters are reflective of the current state of the Marvel U., but the plot isn’t necessarily pinned down to a specific point in time.

“We talked about the fact that in the future, people will be reading the story as a collected edition,” Gage noted. “So the emphasis wasn’t about ‘This moment takes place on page X of comic book Y.’ Now, we are reflecting the current status quo of the Marvel Universe. The Avengers lineup is what it currently is in the Avengers title. But someone who picks up the collected edition two or three years from now won’t need to know exactly what issue of Avengers was out that month and what was happening in it.”

For Gage, one of the main challenges with Zero War was writing a comic that could be accessible to both Fortnite fans who don’t actively read Marvel’s comics and comic fans who haven’t been playing the game. It’s a tough balance to strike, given how steeped in Fortnite lore this new series is. In the end, Gage followed Smith’s editorial advice, using Wolverine and Spider-Man as focal points to deliver critical information to Fortnite newcomers in issue #1.

Art by Ron Lim. (Image Credit: Marvel)

“It was challenging, because you have to consider that this will be read both by Fortnite fans who aren’t immersed in Marvel lore and vice versa, but luckily everyone on the creative team was aware of that and eager to make it accessible. That’s why we were given 30 pages for issue #1. (Subsequent issues are the usual 20 pages…until our explosive 30-page finale!) Our editor, Alanna, had a brilliant suggestion after reading the first draft of the first issue’s script, which was to move Spidey finding Wolverine from the end of the issue to the beginning, and then have Spidey narrate the whole issue as a sort of flashback as he brings Wolvie up to speed. Which was utter genius. Because now, instead of exposition, you have Spider-Man’s distinctive voice telling this insane story about converging realities and giant robots and never-ending battles where people break for a dance every now and then.”

Gage added, “I’ve written my share of Spider-Man in the past 17 years…loads of comics, and a PS4/5 video game you may have heard about… so his voice leaps into my head pretty naturally. Alanna’s approach made it all fall into place. And that, folks, is just one aspect of what a good editor does.”

The comic will feature a sizable cast of Marvel heroes, but the story specifically centers around three – Wolverine, Spider-Man and Shuri. That cast of characters wasn’t mandated by either Epic or Marvel, but rather by which best suited the story and which characters the creative team had the most affinity for.

“Donald loves Wolverine, and specifically his ‘Patch’ identity from the early days of his first solo series,” said Gage. “Every time we’d talk over Zoom, I could see two pages of original art from that book framed on his wall behind him. So we decided to use that take on Wolverine. The idea is that when he wants a breather from all the stuff going on in Krakoa, Logan heads over to Madripoor for some cheap beer and a good brawl, and that’s where we find him. Donald also really wanted to use Spidey, who is in Fortnite now, and I love me some Spidey, so that was a big thumbs up. I think it was Alanna who suggested Shuri after the talk of Patch led to the idea of an almost Indiana Jones-style quest for an artifact – in this case, the Zero Shard, a crystallized piece of the Zero Point itself that broke off and was drawn back to the Marvel Universe when Galactus was driven out of Reality Zero in the previous Marvel/Fortnite crossover.”

Gage continued, “We were talking about cool Marvel locations, and of course Wakanda came up, and we realized Shuri was a natural. There was also discussion of what Fortnite characters would have good chemistry with the Marvel characters we were using. So we have a very familiar Fortnite character in Jones, who we will be learning some previously unrevealed things about, and a pretty recently introduced character in The Imagined. Conversely, there are some Marvel characters appearing in Fortnite right now, like Moon Knight, who aren’t in the comic at all. It was all about the story and what serves it.”

Fortnite x Marvel: Zero War #1 will hit comic shops and Marvel Unlimited on Wednesday, June 8.

Epic has added all sorts of interesting new characters to Fortnite in 2022. Nathan Drake from the Uncharted movie and games was recently added, alongside Marvel’s Moon Knight, Dwayne Johnson, Bruno Mars, and outfits from Cobra Kai. It even added virtual attendees of Coachella alongside music from the festival itself.

It all appears to feed into Epic Games’ metaverse, with the Coachella collaboration in particular feeding into the idea of bringing “the real world” into a shared online space, especially as the event was announced just days after Sony and LEGO’s parent company KIRKBI invested $2 billion into the publisher.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Microsoft has announced that May 2022’s Games with Gold are Yoku’s Island Express, The Inner World – The Last Wind Monk, Hydro Thunder Hurricane, and Viva Piñata: Party Animals.

As revealed on Xbox Wire, the four Games with Gold will be available to anyone with Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, with Yoku’s Island Express and Hydro Thunder Hurricane available starting on May 1.

Yoku’s Island Express is an open-world pinball game with Metroidvania and platforming elements. Players take on the role of Yoku, a pint-sized mailman turned hero as he traverses and works to save Mokumana Island.

We named it among our top ten Metroidvania games (that aren’t Metroid or Castlevania), and in our 8/10 review said: “Yoku’s Island Express is a novel Metroidvania-pinball hybrid that stands as something wholly unique and incredibly fun.”

Also available on May 1, but only until May 15, is Hydro Thunder Hurricane. This rocket-powered speedboat racing game from 2010 didn’t receive as much of IGN’s favor.

“Between uninspired references to the original game and its reliance on aged arcade racer elements,” we said in our 5/10 review, “Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a dull, monotonous experience that shows its hand early and fails to deliver on its pedigree.”

Available later in the month on May 16 is The Inner World – The Last Wind Monk, a sequel to the 2013 point and click adventure game. Players take on three characters – Robert, Laura, and Peck the pigeon – as they embark on an adventure to save their friends in a completely wacky world.

Last but not least, Viva Piñata: Party Animals is available on the same day but only available for two weeks until May 31. This isn’t a traditional Viva Piñata but a party game instead, featuring a number of minigames that players take part in using beloved characters of the franchise.

IGN didn’t love this one either, as in another 5/10 review, we said: “The inherent problem that really bogs down the action in Viva Pinata’s aesthetic successor is that the mini-games simply don’t stem from a fun design scheme.”

Be sure to redeem April 2022’s Xbox Games with Gold before they leave the service, which includes Another Sight, Hue, Outpost Kaloki X, and MX vs ATV Alive.

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

PlayStation has quietly announced a delay to it’s cat game Stray with a release now expected this summer.

The release window was previously set as spring 2022, but in a tweet (below) advertising indie games coming soon spotted by Eurogamer, PlayStation sneakily confirmed the delay.

Stray’s launch on PS5, PS4, and PC will mark two years since it was first shown at the PS5 reveal event, when it was originally expected to be a 2021 release.

Developer BlueTwelve’s objective is simple: “Our goal is to create a unique experience playing as a cat,” they said at the time.

But this isn’t your average house cat, as the players controls the kitty as it explores a robotic cybercity and tries to return home with the help of a drone called B-12.

BlueTwelve has been pretty quiet since the original reveal, only really sharing more information about the game in July last year when the postponement to spring 2022 was announced.

Several games from the original PS5 reveal, which took place in September 2020, have suffered from delays, with the COVID-19 pandemic doing game development no favours.

Gran Turismo 7, Horizon: Forbidden West, Deathloop, were among the biggest games to see delays, but Stray, alongside Goodbye Volcano High and Forspoken, remain the only games to remain unreleased.

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

Mobile Legends: Adventure (MLA) is the sequel to the addictive MOBA, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB). Unlike most mobile RPGs, MLA is an idle RPG that doesn’t demand hours of grinding as your heroes are always collecting resources for you, even when you are offline. You can pick it up for just a few fun minutes, and use the options to skip battles or enable auto-battling, to just kick back and watch the action.

Coming in May is New Era, a new annual event that will introduce a ton of updates such as new events, new heroes, and limited-time game modes with plenty of rewards. With this event you can gain a huge amount of rewards that will help you get your pick from over 100 heroes that you need to build your dream team.

1. Golden Wishes will be giving away a High Star-Level Hero

Beginning April 29th, if you complete tasks for 28 days you can permanently unlock a hero of your choice. By completing these tasks you will also be able to rack up thousands of diamonds and lots of upgrade materials. This high Star-Level hero is not only great for veterans looking for a huge power increase, but also for new players wanting to quickly beat the early stages.

2. A Tinted Mirage event will feature the release of the new hero Pharsa

The new Epic Hero, Pharsa, will be free to get during this Tinted Mirage event, and more Epic Pharsa cards and resources will be obtainable if you clear more stages. The new Tinted Mirage also comes with an interesting storyline about Pharsa’s revenge and Selena’s betrayal.

3. Call of the Crows, the new PvE card game mode, will be available for a limited time

MLA’s New Era is also introducing a new PvE card game mode, Call of the Crows. In Call of the Crows, you strategically select Hero Cards to craft a deck and then start a game. You will then tactically drag the cards onto the battlefield to defend the base, known as the Energy Core, and fight the enemies spawning on the right side. If you manage to win all levels you will collect all the extra rewards!

4. Four new hero skins will be available

Mobile Legends: Adventure has over 100 heroes with different skills and animations. During the New Era event, the Skin Store will feature four new hero skins for that limited time, each with diverse backgrounds and unique stories. Make sure to grab them while they’re available!

The 2022 New Era event will be available starting on April 29th and ending on June 2nd. Download Mobile Legends: Adventure for Android and iOS now and get in on this event before it’s too late.

Final Fantasy 16’s producer Naoki Yoshida has said the game is in its final stages of development.

Yoshida confirmed the progress in a pamphlet that accompanied the franchise’s official clothing line, translated by Twitter user @aitaikimochi, saying “We’re in the final stages of development for the numbered game in the series, Final Fantasy XVI.”

Yoshida added that he thinks the game’s story, which is obviously a very different experience from Final Fantasy 14 Online (which he also produces), is a fleshed-out experience that will bring older fans back.

“Unlike an online game that involves many players at the same time, Final Fantasy 16 offers a different experience where it focuses on the individual player and immerses you in the story,” he said per the translation.

“For those who have grown up and realised that reality isn’t kind to you and have drifted away from Final Fantasy, we hope that Final Fantasy 16 will be a game that can bring back anew the passion that you once had with the series.”

Yoshida has been fairly open about the game’s development timeline. He said in July last year that the story and English voice over was almost complete but the game was later delayed as a result of COVID-19.

He also promised that a big reveal would take place in spring this year, meaning it may not be long before fans find out when they can expect to play the game.

Given that Final Fantasy 16’s development is in its final stages, and 2022 marks the franchise’s 35th anniversary, it would certainly make sense for Square Enix to release the first mainline entry since 2016 this year.

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

While Star Wars Celebration 2022 is still weeks away, we already know one of the new projects Lucasfilm will be revealing at the convention. Thanks to a now-deleted panel schedule posting, we’ve learned a new animated anthology series called Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi is in the works.

Fans of the classic Legends timeline will probably recognize that particular branding. Tales of the Jedi is a name with deep significance to the Star Wars mythos. The original Dark Horse Comics series was among the first Star Wars stories to flesh out the ancient history of the Jedi Order and their war with the Sith. Will this animated series follow that example? We don’t know much yet, but this is a good opportunity to look back at Tales of the Jedi and how the original comics may inform the newest animated Star Wars series.

These are the topics we cover here:

Tales of the Jedi: The Basics

Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi is a series of comic book story arcs published by Dark Horse between 1993 and 1998. The series was originally conceived by writer Tom Veitch, who is considered to be one of the core architects of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While Veitch’s first Star Wars project, Dark Empire, was a sequel set six years after the events of Return of the Jedi, Veitch included references to ancient Jedi Knights and Sith Lords in that series. Those references became the foundation on which Tales of the Jedi was built.

Tales of the Jedi is largely set 4000 years before the era of the movies, in a time when the ancient Jedi Order is at war with the Sith (who at that point were depicted as a singular race of Force-sensitive aliens rather than the secretive order they would later become). Later Tales of the Jedi arcs delved even further back in the Star Wars timeline, exploring a period 5000 years before the movies.

Together with co-writer Kevin J. Anderson (who also penned the Jedi Academy Trilogy of novels around the same time), Veitch fleshed out an era of Star Wars history that fans knew almost nothing about at the time. And even though Tales of the Jedi has been rendered non-canon like most of the Expanded Universe, it’s a series that continues to exert a strong influence on contemporary stories.

The Plot of Tales of the Jedi

While Tales of the Jedi is ostensibly an anthology series focused on different characters and conflicts in the Old Republic era, the various stories do connect to form an overarching narrative. The series is largely about the rise and fall of Ulic Qel-Droma, a Jedi Knight from Alderaan who becomes corrupted by the Dark Side. Over the course of the series, Qel-Droma battles the Sith Empire and falls in love with fellow Jedi Nomi Sunrider, only to succumb to the temptation of darkness himself.

Ulic Qel-Droma is the prototypical fallen Jedi Knight.

Qel-Droma’s story is deeply intertwined with that of Exar Kun, another former Jedi who turns to the Dark Side. Kun was originally created by Anderson for the Jedi Academy Trilogy, which reveals that his spirit was tethered to the abandoned temple on Yavin IV that briefly served as the base of the Rebel Alliance. Working together, Anderson and Veitch integrated Kun into the overarching Tales of the Jedi storyline, and the comics showcase the Sith Lord at the height of his power and reveal how he met his eventual end.

Tales of the Jedi proved to be hugely influential for the franchise, establishing key pieces of the Jedi/Sith mythology in a time before the Star Wars prequels began to cover that ground. Among other things, these comics cover pivotal conflicts like the Freedon Nadd Uprising and the Great Hyperspace War and introduce the ancient Sith Empire and the warriors of Mandalore. Above all, Tales of the Jedi proved that even thousands of years before the time of Luke And Anakin Skywalker, some of the galaxy’s most powerful Jedi battled the influence of the Dark Side.

You may be wondering where the Knights of the Old Republic games fit in. The KOTOR name actually originated in the comic, as it’s the subtitle of one of the major Tales of the Jedi story arcs. The games themselves are also essentially direct sequels to the comic. The original Knights of the Old Republic is set roughly 40 years after the conclusion of Tales of the Jedi.

KOTOR builds on the Jedi/Mandalorian conflict introduced in the comic, introducing Sith Lord Darth Revan and their apprentice Darth Malak. Like Exar Kun and Ulic-Qel Droma before them, Revan and Malak were distinguished Jedi Knights who fell to the temptation of the Dark Side. The exact reasons for their shared downfall weren’t revealed until the release of The Old Republic, an MMORPG set several centuries later. In the process, The Old Republic ties back to the Sith Empire mythology introduced in Tales of the Jedi.

Long before Darth Maul, Exar Kun showed the power of a double-bladed lightsaber.

KOTOR puts players in the shoes of an amnesic main character and a ragtag band of Jedi, smugglers, Mandalorians and one extremely cranky droid as they seek to prevent Malak from unleashing one of the galaxy’s deadliest super-weapons. The sequel, set a decade later, shifts focus to a disgraced Jedi known as the Jedi Exile as they battle a triumvirate of upstart Sith Lords.

While the KOTOR games are sequels to Tales of the Jedi, there are some storytelling discrepancies between the two. Tales of the Jedi was released before the Star Wars prequels materialized, whereas KOTOR arrived a year after Episode II hit theaters. When Tales of the Jedi was being published, George Lucas hadn’t established basic details like the idea that “Darth” is an honorific adopted by all Sith Lords, not just Vader. The technology and architecture of KOTOR is also wildly different from Tales of the Jedi. The latter showcases the Star Wars universe in a much more primal and less technologically advanced state, one where the influence of Westerns and samurai movies is even more apparent.

With the announcement of a Tales of the Jedi animated series and the upcoming Knights of the Old Republic remake, it’ll be interesting to see how closely intertwined the two projects are. Will we see a more unified vision for how the Star Wars universe looked 4000 years before the movies?

Tales of the Jedi: The Animated Series

Currently, very little is known about the Tales of the Jedi animated series, and that likely won’t change until the show’s official reveal at Star Wars Celebration 2022 on May 28. For now, only two details have emerged – Tales of the Jedi is an anthology series consisting of short, animated episodes (similar to the anime-styled Star Wars: Visions), and The Clone Wars executive producer Dave Filoni is involved. Presumably, the series will be exclusive to Disney+, but even that detail has yet to be confirmed.

At this point, it’s unclear if Tales of the Jedi is directly inspired by the original comics or simply repurposing the name. It’s possible the series will take place in a similar setting, exploring the Old Republic era and introducing reimagined versions of characters like Ulic Qel-Droma and Nomi Sunrider into the official Disney canon.

Star Wars: Every Jedi and Every Sith Ever

However, it’s also possible the series might cast a wider net. The show might focus on established Jedi like Luke, Rey and Ahsoka Tano as well as older generations of Jedi Knights. It could also explore the High Republic era, a setting that has been a major focus of Lucasfilm’s publishing division in recent years. If so, it would be the second Star Wars series to take place during the High Republic, after Leslye Headland’s Star Wars: The Acolyte.

Be sure to stay tuned to IGN for more on Tales of the Jedi and other big announcements from Star Wars Celebration. Until then, cast your vote in our poll and let us know what era you most want to see in Tales of the Jedi:

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

The Overwatch 2 beta is live, so of course, we’re going to talk about it. To do just that are Cardy, Matt and Alex who delve into just how new it feels. We also have impressions of Switch Sports and Richard Linklater’s latest film, Apollo 10 ½. Then there’s the stuff you care about, such as milk, out of date chocolate, and father and son bonding stories.

Want to get in touch to talk about digging graves? Or maybe about chocolate? Feel free to send us an email at ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast #642: Overwatch 2 is a Playable Thing that Exists