Category: Gaming

Final Fantasy VII Remake director Tetsuya Nomura has said Square Enix will be making “various” announcements next month regarding the original game’s 25th anniversary.

As reported by RPGSite, Nomura teased the announcements on a livestream for Final Fantasy VII spin-off The First Soldier, saying that Square Enix would be celebrating the original game’s 25th anniversary.

“Next month, we’re planning to publish information related to VII’s 25th anniversary,” he said. “I wonder how [much] I’m allowed to share about it. Next month we will publish various things.”

Final Fantasy 7 turned 25 years old in January this year, the anniversary of its original Japanese release. It’s western 25th anniversary is still upcoming; the original game launched in the States on September 7, 1997, and in Europe on November 17.

Remake Part 2 entered full development in July 2020 and original Final Fantasy VII director Yoshinori Kitase said earlier this year that the development team would like to announce the game in 2022 if possible.

That being said, Square Enix has other Final Fantasy VII related projects in the works (including The First Soldier and upcoming mobile RPG Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis), but the announcements could be much smaller and more akin to the recent clothing line reveal.

An announcement regarding Final Fantasy XVI is also expected soon, with producer Naoki Yoshida previously promising a big reveal was coming this spring.

The first brand new mainline entry since 2016 is currently in the final stages of development but Square Enix is yet to confirm a release date.

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

Bungie has released a statement on the Buffalo, New York mass shooting that saw ten people killed and three others injured in a what police are investigating as a racially motivated attack.

The Destiny developer has pledged that, for at least one year, all profits from its Black Lives Matter “Be Heard” pin – which has also been moved to the front page of the Bungie Store – will go to a charity who monitors and reports hate groups and extremists in the United States. Bungie worked with its internal inclusion club, Black at Bungie, to plan the response.

Its statement said: “All profits from this pin will be donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a charity whose work includes monitoring hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States and exposing their activities to the public, the media, and law enforcement.

“In addition, our studio is committed to supporting the success of our inclusion, diversity, and equity initiatives for 2022 and beyond. We understand the fight for equality and equity is not easily won but is a constant effort by all people.”

Black at Bungie will also partner with the developer’s player support and community teams to bolster its efforts to make its online spaces safe and anti-racist, urging other game developers and communities to do the same.

It’s not the first time Bungie has been vocal over issues of social injustice, as on May 5 it spoke out against the proposed overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the historic Supreme Court judgement used to secure rights to abortion across the U.S.

Bungie’s message on the Buffalo mass shooting also came after streaming platform Twitch and online chat service Discord released statements over their association with the shooting. The gunman streamed the attack for two minutes on Twitch and planned it using Discord.

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

Thunderful Games has four separate SteamWorld games in development with three expected to launch next year.

The company revealed during its latest financial results that SteamWorld Headhunter – a third person action adventure that was revealed in November – is just one of four different genres the SteamWorld franchise is exploring. It is expected to launch in 2023, along with two others.

Those two, codenamed ‘Strawberry’ and ‘Coffee’, will be followed in 2024 by ‘Caramel’. Are all listed as “SteamWorld IP” games, with Strawberry and Coffee actually listed before Headhunter in Thunderful’s development timeline.

Strawberry is a puzzle game being developed for mobile, Coffee is a city-building game for PC and console, and Caramel is a turn-based tactical shooter and strategy game in development for PC, console, and mobile.

Mixing and matching gameplay styles isn’t unusual for the SteamWorld franchise which has released games in the deck-building, platformer, and Metroidvania genres since the original Tower Defense game was released in 2010.

The number of games in development is a little surprising though, as Thunderful plans to release as many SteamWorld games in next two years as it has in the last nine.

While Headhunter was only official announced in November, the game’s official Twitter account revealed in May last year that several SteamWorld were in development, though we now know a bit more about how many, what they are, and when they’ll be released.

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

Most of Dead by Daylight is spent running away from its stable of horror villains, but a surprise visual novel will soon have players running toward familiar characters like The Trapper… for romance.

At a recent anniversary event, Behaviour Interactive announced a new dating sim titled Hooked On You: A Dead By Daylighting Dating Sim. Developed by Psyop, the creators of I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator, it will feature “romance, steamy references and… shirtless outfits.”

Hooked On You’s stars will be four familiar Dead By Daylight killers who inhabit something called a magical land called “Murderer’s Island:” The Huntress, The Spirit, The Trapper, and The Wraith. Here’s how the official release describes it:

Hooked on You: A Dead by Daylight Dating Sim takes players on Murderer’s Island. Their companions: four dead-sexy Killers who, underneath their murderous exteriors, just want a little romance. Fans flirt their way into the hearts of The Huntress, The Spirit, The Trapper, and The Wraith, uncovering dark twists along the way. Will they find true love, forge friendships or get hacked to death? Only they can decide. As mystery unfolds, it’s their job to make sense of it all. What brought them here? Where did these Killers come from? Why do they show so much interest? And, most importantly, if only one had to be chosen for love… who would it be?

On top of its new dating sim, Behaviour Interactive also announced another crossover with Resident Evil titled “Project W”; a new original chapter titled “Roots of Dread”; an Attack on Titan collaboration, and a major update for its mobile game.

Now seven years old, Dead by Daylight has grown to include some 31 survivors and 28 killers, collaborating with famous franchises such as Hellraiser, Ringu, and Stranger Things. As for its quirky new dating sim, Hooked On You will be out this summer on Steam.

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.

After Starfield and Redfall both got delayed out of 2022 on the same day, we discuss why Xbox fans are understandably frustrated with the lack of major first-party exclusives this year. Next year does look amazing – and we discuss that in detail – but we also talk about how many fans are tired of being told “Wait until next year.” Can the Xbox Showcase provide any immediate answers? Join us!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our latest IGN Unfiltered interview, where Joseph Staten – one of Halo’s original creators and now the head of creative on Halo Infinite – discusses his fascinating career:

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers premieres Friday, May 20 on Disney+.

An animated pop-culture extravaganza, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a fast and funny roller coaster into a cyclone of cartoon characters, with clever gags, inventive action, and enough heart and depth to allow a story to eke through.

Directed by The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer, this particular Rescue Rangers outing is a meta affair, portraying the famous chipmunk BFFs as actors who once starred on the Rescue Rangers TV series decades earlier. Now, appropriately washed up in typical E! True Hollywood Story fashion (thanks to Dale’s solo career attempt), Chip and Dale must bury the past in order to rekindle their friendship and save the day for real.

This hybrid slice of live-action/animation silliness is perhaps the closest thing we’ll ever get to a follow up for 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and not just because Roger Rabbit himself pops up briefly. This is a world — a Los Angeles to be more specific — where humans and cartoons co-exist, and where any cartoon who breaks big in show business films their movies just like any other performer, except on an animated set. It’s not a stretch by any means to imagine this being what Roger Rabbit’s L.A. would be like 70 years later.

Oh, and let’s not forget this La La Land’s seedy underbelly, which is the other noir-ish element present here, helping with the Roger Rabbit vibes. Not everything in the world of cartoons is hand-drawn sunshine and computer-generated puppies. There are criminal activities afoot and when Chip and Dale’s old Rescue Rangers co-star Monterey Jack (Eric Bana) goes missing, the estranged pals reunite to track him down amidst pushers of stinky cheese, promoters of Muppet fights, and a gangland run by bootleggers. No, not prohibited alcohol — bootleg animated movies featuring kidnapped performers changed to look like knockoffs for foreign markets.

John Mulaney and Andy Samberg voice Chip and Dale, respectively. Mulaney lends his analytical, perturbed demeanor to Chip’s cerebral idea-man while Samberg gives his man-child all as Dale, the duo’s impulsive doofus. Will Arnett is on hand as the villain (making this film feel like a Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands reunion of sort) while the rest of the voice cast features recognizable efforts from Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, J.K. Simmons, and Tim Robinson. Original Rescue Rangers voice actor Tress MacNeille reprises her role as Gadget while KiKi Layne looms large, literally, over the proceedings as a rookie police detective helping our heroes crack the case. It’s a strong cast, capable of firing off the rapid jokes — as well as a nicely placed Seth Rogen bit (involving his history in animated voices).

It’s not the cast that warrants the majority of attention, though — it’s the sheer shock of intellectual property collision. Of course, this isn’t a new trick. In 1988, Roger Rabbit gave us Disney swirled up with Warner Bros., mixed in with King Features Syndicate, Fleischer Studios, and more, but studios were less likely to horde and more open to sharing back then, when animation as a whole was taking a bit of a hit. Now we’ve got things like Ready Player One and Space-Jam: A New Legacy giving audiences their fix of crossover battle royales to an extent we’d never dreamed of. And yet, still, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers surprises on that front. With any meta project, there will be a few strained attempts at humor, and this story isn’t fully free of that, but for the most part, the winking jokes and use of cartoon cameos are on point, filling the world with expansive ideas instead of one-off eye rolls.

The human story — or, chipmunk story, really — at the center of this madness involves two friends putting aside old differences and re-discovering the spark that made them buddies to begin with. This arc doesn’t resonate as strongly as it could have, as the world of crotchety claymation cops, Coca-Cola polar bear henchmen, fan conventions featuring the likes of Lumière and Tigra, and other gags take precedence, but it’s still sweet enough to balance the film out and temper the hijinks, and together Mulaney and Samberg deliver some very funny banter. Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers doesn’t reinvent the wheel but it is a much better, and far funnier, animated smorgasbord offering than some of its recent predecessors.

If, for some reason, you decided you weren’t too keen on LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga at full price, well my patient and frugal friend, the Nintendo Switch version is on sale right now at both Walmart AND Amazon.

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga on Sale

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

For Nintendo Switch.

See on Amazon

It’s important to note both Amazon and Walmart’s deals are being offered by 3rd party sellers, but they’re being fulfilled by the respective retailers. I buy 3rd party stuff all the time and haven’t had any problems. At least, not yet.

If you’d prefer, Amazon has the PS4 and the PS5 versions on sale as well, but the mark-down isn’t really that exciting compared to the Nintendo Switch version.

Traveller’s Tales really did an outstanding job with this one. In our LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga review we called it “a series of interplanetary playgrounds that are dense with discovery and entertaining diversions.”

Basically, even the video game versions of the movies you didn’t like are fun to play through. That’s saying something, considering how divisive the nine movies making up the Skywalker Saga actually are. Is there anyone who absolutely loves them all? I’m sure there are, and I’m sure they’ll be in the comments.

Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. You can find him hosting the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast.

Arma Reforger is a work in progress. That point was hammered home over and over again at a recent preview event hosted by developer Bohemia Interactive. It’s been almost a decade since the release of Arma 3, and while a formal sequel is still on the horizon, the company is first offering a smaller, scaled-down version of their traditional warfighting precision. The goal, says Bohemia, is for Reforger to be a “bridge” towards Arma 4; using the platform as a testbed to gauge community feedback throughout the rest of the development cycle. That makes a lot of sense considering how Reforger, and the future Arma 4, are both headed to consoles for the first time in the series’ history. The studio now needs to answer questions it never had to ask before. Can a gamepad mesh with the complex logistics of a military simulator? Does the console audience even have an appetite for Arma’s many quirks? You can understand why Bohemia wanted to dip their toes in first before taking a dive.

Arma Reforger is, in some ways, a reimagining of the first game of the series — 2001’s Operation Flashpoint. A fictional Eastern European island from that game, Everon, has been fully remastered in Bohemia’s new Enfusion engine, and players are cast as either Americans or Soviets in the keening, late-’80s apogee of the Cold War. I was granted access to a pre-release build, which gave me a tutorial and a few multiplayer servers that were otherwise abandoned by any other actual human players, and it was immediately clear that Bohemia’s graphical retrofitting paid off. Pastures bloomed with dewy grass, trees lined the horizon on the impressive draw distance, glassy water lapped against the shores. Bohemia mentioned that development for Reforger has been difficult, likely because importing systems to a brand new gaming infrastructure is always challenging. But this new chapter of Arma is both beautiful, functional, and right in line with other triple-A shooters on the market.

Reforger plans on keeping the vibrant Arma modding scene alive and well. The main menu includes a link to the Workshop, where players will be able to upload their own bespoke creations directly to the game’s servers. Reforger also includes a new game mode called Game Master, which is pitched as a way one player can effectively direct an Arma multiplayer match through the ebb and flow of battle. (It sounds similar to a DM in Dungeons & Dragons.) This should be a boon for diehards of the series; finally, a chance to play around with Arma’s tools using modern technology.

Some PC lifers might fear that Bohemia’s console pivot means that the studio will deemphasize some of Arma’s more fiddly, hardcore tics. I’m not a milsim expert by any means, but from what I saw, those anxieties can be safely put to bed. Reforger keeps both the restless shooting mechanics and all of the administrative overhead; you will absolutely be hauling supplies to different checkpoints in order to construct vehicle depots and armories, and this remains a waypoint free experience. That means Xbox players are going to become very much accustomed with their compass and coordinates, as they triangulate where, exactly, the enemy lines are located.

But anyone spending the $29.99 on Reforger’s early access release should know that, as of this writing, the game seems to be in its opening stages of development — especially compared to how fleshed-out and content-rich earlier games in the series are. Reforger has one gigantic map so far, and only two modes. One is the aforementioned Game Master suite of tools, and the other is a capture-and-hold rigamarole, which means that currently, Reforger has a dearth of single-player content outside of the tutorial. Compare that to Arma 3, which released an expansion focused on a literal alien invasion three years ago. It becomes clear that Bohemia has a long way to go before Reforger reaches feature parity with the rest of the series. (Right now, the studio is saying that Reforger will be in Early Access for about a year, with frequent updates occurring throughout the cycle.)

Unsurprisingly for a work-in-progress Early Access game, I also ran into a number of bugs during my playthrough, including some psychedelic visual glitches and a number of crashes as I attempted to load into matches. Remember, I was playing on empty servers, so I can’t speak to the stability once everyone is piling onto Everon at the same time. I can only imagine that Bohemia is eager to see how their backend holds up.

But hey, these are the growing pains of any intrepid new platform. New Arma games are treated like seismic events in the milsim community, and Reforger – with its new engine and fresh debut on consoles – stands as one of the boldest ventures in Bohemia’s history. We’ll keep checking in as the war rages on.

Techland has revealed the first piece of concept art for its unannounced AAA open-world fantasy action RPG. Additionally, the development team has recently recruited talent that has previously worked at Arkane and CD Projekt Red.

Concept art from Techland’s fantasy RPG project. Image credit: Technland

The concept art features a man looking at some sort of ancient city surrounded by lush trees, pink vegetation, and waterfalls. Notably, the archetecture of this ruin isn’t traditional medieval England in its aesthetic, so we may be in for something slightly left field for AAA fantasy.

For this new IP, the studio has employed narrative director Karolina Stachyra and narrative lead Arkadiusz Borowik, both of whom previously worked on The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The rest of the team has similarly notable backgrounds. Recently recruited members include open world director Bartosz Ochman, who previously worked on Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3. Mario Maltezos, the project’s creative director, has worked on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Mad Max, while lead game designer David McClure worked on Deathloop. Lead animator Kevin Quad worked on Horizon Zero Dawn and its DLC, and lead UI designer Marcin Surosz was a UI/UX designer at People Can Fly.

“We’re very happy with what we have accomplished with the Dying Light franchise so far,” explained Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka in a press release. “Moreover, our journey with Dying Light 2 Stay Human has only just begun as we plan to support this game for at least 5 years, with its scope and size matching, if not exceeding, what we have provided our community with during post-launch support for its predecessor.”

“At the same time, our ambition is to introduce a brand new IP that is vastly different from what we have been doing for the past several years. We want to create a fully next-gen experience,” he continued. “A new fantasy epic set in a sprawling open world, fueled by the skills and experience we have gained as a team over the years, infused with new ideas, passion, and creativity. While we cannot share more details about this project now, we’re all truly invested in it and looking forward to showing it to gamers when the time is right.”

Techland is currently hiring more developers to work on the unannounced fantasy game. This seems to be an ongoing trend of studios trying to court more talent by teasing high profile projects either on social media or showing them off within game showcases, as in the case of Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell remake.

Techland are fresh off developing Dying Light 2, and while many of the development staff are remaining with the zombie open world to create post-release content, it seems clear that the studio is gearing up for production on their next (hopefully major) IP.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of multiplayer survival game Scavengers have been cancelled as developer Midwinter Entertainment has been sold by parent company Improbable.

As reported by Eurogamer, Midwinter has been sold to Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive for an unknown amount, with the most of the studio now working on a new project.

The PC version of Scavengers is unaffected as only a small portion of the development team is required to maintain it, though the game is still in Early Access on Steam and has only had a few hundred players since November last year according to Steam DB.

Improbable CEO Herman Narula told Eurogamer that the publisher sold Midwinter as it’s now switched focus to metaverse development, but Midwinter appears happy with the sale as studio head Mary Olson said her studio and Behaviour share very similar values and development philosophies.

“We are thrilled to join and learn from a team with proven success across a broad spectrum of IP, while in turn leveraging the strong foundation, culture, and team we’ve built at Midwinter to expand Behaviour’s portfolio,” she said.

The console versions of Scavengers already seemed fairly forgotten, as the game’s official website still has them pegged for a late 2021 release date.

Scavengers was first announced in 2018 from former Halo developers from 343 Industries and released several demos and tests for the game before it finally launched in Early Access last May.

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