Netflix has released Making The Witcher, a behind-the-scenes special exploring the story behind The Witcher’s fantasy world of magic and monsters.
The Witcher’s official Twitter account shared a trailer for the new Netflix original documentary, which offers an exclusive backstage look into the production of the live-action series adaptation, starring Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, the titular monster hunter.
The video teaser for the 32-minute special features several cast and crew members divulging “the secrets behind the saga,” providing fresh insight into the show’s casting processes, the choreography of its action sequences, the application of different storytelling perspectives, as well as the show’s visual effects and make-up design choices.
One clip shares thrilling footage of Cavill and Emma Appleton sparring with swords as part of their 10-day training session to prepare for Geralt and Renfri’s climactic fight scene, which features in the very first episode of season one, while other segments offer glimpses at the crafting of the world’s monsters and the CGI construction of its landscapes being created “from the ground up.”
As Tenet begins its release in international markets, we’re taking a look back at filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s entire feature-length filmography, exploring each of his films one day at a time. Today we continue with his second feature, Memento. Read about Nolan’s earliest films Following and “Doodlebug” here.
Full spoilers for Memento follow.
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“I always find myself gravitating to the analogy of a maze.”
That quote by Christopher Nolan, in a 2010 interview with the LA Times, sums up the director’s approach to narrative point-of-view. “Making the turns at [the characters’] side,” he says, “keeps things more exciting.” There’s perhaps no better illustration of this than Memento, his 2000 nonlinear neo-noir thriller, based in part on brother Jonathan Nolan’s short story “Memento Mori.”
In Memento, protagonist Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) searches for the mysterious “John G,” the man who raped and murdered his wife Catherine (Jorja Fox). Leonard leaves himself a labyrinth of clues via polaroid photos and tattoos on his skin, made necessary by his anterograde amnesia; he hasn’t been able to retain new memories since the day John G attacked him. Every few minutes, Leonard’s brain re-sets, forever trapping him in the moment of his trauma.
In the second part of our deep dive into Nolan’s work, we examine Memento’s unique structure, the way it blurs the line between facts and feelings, and how it’s the ultimate expression of Nolan’s maze concept, albeit one from which its main character cannot escape.
What ought to have been a standard revenge flick with a psychological twist becomes a labyrinthine treatise on memory, thanks in part to editor Dody Dorn (who received an Oscar nomination for her work). While placing scenes in reverse-chronological order dates back to the early days of cinema — Jean Epstein’s 1927 film La glace à trois faces (The Three Sided Mirror) uses the technique to expand its point of view, albeit only once — Memento is perhaps the most comprehensive, well known and thematically appropriate use of the form. Watching Leonard’s story means being dropped into situations without nearly enough context; the main plot, therefore, unfolds in reverse.
Two alternating timelines make up Memento: The first, in colour, begins at the seeming end of Leonard’s journey, with each subsequent colour scene showing us what transpired immediately before. The second, an apparent flashback in black & white, functions as exposition, and moves forward in time as Leonard explains his condition to someone over the phone. The film alternates between these two modes of expression — backward and forward, vivid and colourless, instinctive and clinical, now and then — one scene at a time, as if cutting between two trains speeding towards each other, destined to meet in the middle.
Chronologically, it goes: scene 44, scene 1, scene 43, scene 2, and so on, but breaking it down mathematically is a disservice to how instinctive it feels. Each new scene begins and ends with a precise impulse, orienting us in time and place: a note Leonard wrote to himself, the arrival of a new character, a specific object or sound, a state of transformation. More than a logistical roadmap, it’s an emotional one, drawing Leonard further into the mystery. Scenes begin and end in medias res, as characters like Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) pull Leonard into (or out of) what feels like a dream; “Lenny!” he yells, smacking the hood of Leonard’s car, jolting him to attention at the beginning of one scene, and at the end of the next.
Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby in Memento.
Though what we know, and what Teddy does not, is that by the end of the story, he’ll be dead and Leonard will have pulled the trigger. Memento is a mystery in reverse, one in which we have the answers, but slowly uncover the questions. The film begins (much like its predecessor, Following) with the mysterious details of a crime. In the film’s only sequence that plays rewound — disorienting us before we’ve had a chance to get settled — a bullet returns to the barrel of Leonard’s gun (a la Tenet), and a polaroid photo of Teddy’s body begins to fade from existence, like a fleeting memory.
Then a gunshot. Then we see the murder play out, in an abandoned warehouse, and we see what brought Leonard and Teddy there. Though, as the film goes on to reveal, much of Leonard’s journey up to this point is a self-constructed game; a lie he’s convinced of, but one he doesn’t remember telling himself.
The “backward” colour narrative is propelled by Leonard scrambling to uncover clues. He interprets information from photographs, placing them in a specific order and ascribing each one meaning based on notes — as if he’s editing a film, though what he’s really been editing are his own memories. Meanwhile, the “forward” black & white timeline is grounded in the facts of his affliction. He tells the tale of Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky), a man with a similar condition, who Leonard investigated when he worked in insurance prior to his own accident. It’s a time Leonard remembers clearly.
The “backward” timeline reveals itself through conflict with duplicitous side characters like Natalie (Carrie Anne Moss), a femme fatale who kisses Leonard with open eyes, gazing just off-screen as if she were scheming — like “The Blonde” in Nolan’s Following (or Bonita in 1964 Bond film Goldfinger), embodying fears of intimacy. As the film moves backward, it reveals an unspoken story of a man instinctively using humour and violence to stave off any real human connection in the present.
In contrast, the “forward” flashbacks function as a clinical guidebook to understanding Leonard’s routine, the way he navigates the world, and the film’s own premise. After all, that premise — a man who can’t remember, trying to heal through violence — is the only thing Leonard knows for sure. Everything else is in question.
What Do We Trust More: Facts or Feelings?
Leonard categorizes facts and evidence, but he also finds himself stuck within fleeting moments and heightened emotional states he can’t fully understand. “You feel angry, you don’t know why,” he explains. “You feel guilty, you have no idea why. You could do anything and not have the faintest idea 10 minutes later.” No matter how much Leonard organizes his redacted case files, the memories and sensations attached to his mission still confuse him and throw him off balance.
He trusts his notes more than he trusts his memories, so he creates a base for himself using maps, photographs and tattooed instructions, as explained in the “forward” timeline. It’s a map to his own history, expressed in a black & white visual palette, which we associate with the past (given how colour film has become the language of modernity). These exposition scenes in Leonard’s motel room are focused and contained, portraying old events which have already unfolded — for instance, a clue Leonard tattoos to his skin has already appeared “later” in the timeline. These scenes are ordered in a way we intuitively understand, and can be implicitly relied upon, like factual information with a defined point of origin.
Leonard creates a base for himself using maps, photographs and tattooed instructions.
The “backward” timeline, meanwhile, is a journey through sensations. It may not technically be a flashback, but it feels like walking through dreams or memories, as Leonard travels from place to place with no sense of time, and no sense of how he got there. His surroundings are littered with vivid blue objects — his truck, his shirt, the walls of the motel — like constant reminders of the blue marbles that shattered in his bathroom the night of the attack. It’s also a timeline in which he scrambles to write down information, and creates notes that are sometimes contradictory. Given this timeline’s backward structure, it’s fundamentally untrustworthy, like an obtrusive emotion whose cause you can’t identify.
Using the narrative and aesthetic clashes between the two timelines, the film seems to ask: What do we trust more? Something that feels like a fact, or something that feels like a memory? At first, Leonard trusts the system of facts he’s built for himself. However, by the end of the story (or rather, the middle), the colour and black & white timelines fade into one another, leaving little distinction between fact and memory in Leonard’s world. Both are up to interpretation, and the film no longer offers a clear answer.
Both timelines feature their own flashbacks to before Leonard’s accident, which are later revealed to be unreliable; “Memory can change the shape of a room,” after all, according to Leonard himself. When he mentions his wife Catherine, he does so in the “backward” scenes and recalls her in vivid colour; their petty arguments, their playfulness, the minute details of who she was, all of which appear in the form of brief flashes — fragments unmoored from time. It’s a potent expression of the way it feels to love another person, or to remember a love lost. But Catherine exists only in these disconnected moments, shot shakily and hand-held. She’s a distant recollection, and yet, in Leonard’s mind, he only lost her moments ago. He remembers who she was, but not when she was.
The visual language of the flashbacks changes drastically when Leonard retells the story of Sammy Jankis, in black & white. The camera is more stable and scenes play out in full, as if Leonard were narrating one of his case files. He casts Sammy as a helpless, innocent man, and Guy Pearce plays the past version of Leonard as ruthless and cold-hearted, as if his own self-image is warped by guilt. At first, this appears to be the guilt of having doubted Sammy’s condition, leading Sammy’s diabetic wife (Harriet Sansom Harris) to test Sammy by making him inject her with insulin over and over to see if he’d remember to stop. He didn’t.
Though, as the film goes on to reveal, Leonard has told this story so many times he’s convinced himself of its veracity. The meaning he interprets from his “Remember Sammy Jankis” tattoo has fundamentally changed. Sammy, in truth, never had a wife (if Teddy is to be believed). He was a conman, and it was Leonard’s wife who — having survived the attack by “John G” — tested Leonard with the insulin, causing her to slip into a coma from which she would never wake. But by this point, months, perhaps even years later, Leonard’s bridge to the past is so winding, and so self-deluded, that he can’t even remember if his wife had diabetes.
This revelation places his made-up Sammy “flashbacks” in perspective. The guilt Leonard feels, having caused “Sammy’s” wife to kill herself, is just one of his many misappropriated emotions. Another inexplicable, lingering sensation he still lives with, and wrestles with, but one he has poured into a fictional story since he can no longer trace its origins.
Healing Through Violence
“I don’t even know how long she’s been gone,” Leonard says. “How am I supposed to heal if I can’t feel time?”
The fear of time being unable to repair emotional wounds rears its head throughout Nolan’s work, often taking the form of a dead wife or girlfriend. While the trope is socially malignant from a big picture standpoint — male artists often write female characters only as fuel for their rage, or as disposable extensions of themselves — the version seen in Memento feels more emotionally honest than run-of-the-mill rape revenge stories.
Carrie-Anne Moss and Guy Pearce in Memento.
These tales often use women’s trauma as a means to center men’s power fantasies, and while Leonard’s wife is by no means the center of attention — in his mind, her life beyond the attack never even happened — Leonard himself is framed with an awareness towards such genre stories. He has, by lying to himself through his notes (and by stealing suits and fancy cars), created a suave, covert persona, bringing to mind the Bond influence on Following, and several of Nolan’s future films. Only here, it plays like a winking homage; Leonard is an insurance claims investigator biting off far more than he can chew, and the power fantasy is one he both writes for himself and often lucks his way into.
The philosophy Leonard espouses, about being unable to let go of the past, is his wife’s narrative re-spun to fit his own. Sammy’s wife, a figment based on truth, was unable to accept the “new Sammy,” in a story that hints at Leonard having witnessed (and absorbed, in some subconscious way), his own wife’s inability to move forward. The story he creates for himself is similar in theme, but he grafts it onto a self-constructed vigilante identity — Leonard isn’t all that different from Nolan’s Bruce Wayne — living the tale of a righteous man on an endless search for justice, unable to move on until he finds it.
And so, Leonard re-enacts a story akin to a spy movie or detective novel in order to feel a sense of purpose. His lies are more gratifying than having to face the truth of having harmed his wife, and casting “John G” as a phantom mastermind (rather than a junkie he already killed) creates a neat narrative bow for him to chase in perpetuity. This is his “truth,” while his “facts” — manipulated and redacted to send him on his quest — have him returning to an abandoned warehouse to kill the wrong man over and over again. He’s caught in an impotent loop, forever chasing, in his wife’s name, a violent catharsis that will not and cannot last. Or, as Nolan’s brother writes in “Memento Mori”:
“Never-ending grief, never-ending anger. Useless without direction.”
However, Nolan’s “dead wife” trope, while certainly questionable, isn’t just familiar dramatic short-hand. This theme appearing film after film no doubt feels rooted in fears of losing a loved one (and of no amount of time being enough to heal from those wounds). But Emma Thomas, who Nolan married in 1997, isn’t just his wife. She’s also the producer on every single one of his feature films (and his short film, “Doodlebug”). In fact, hers is the very first name to appear in Memento’s closing credits. She is, in many ways, the co-author of his career, so the repeated motif of characters losing their wives isn’t just a narrative crutch. In Nolan’s films, this specific loss is grounded in losing one’s creative partner, and losing a sense of direction. And so, widower characters like Leonard — or Cobb in Inception, whose wife was his co-architect, or Angier in The Prestige, whose wife performed alongside him — are left stumbling around in the dark, in search of purpose.
Left to his own devices, Leonard sticks himself in a labyrinth from which he cannot escape. He can never see himself from above the maze, winding around each corner the way we, the audience, eventually can. Without anyone to remind him of who he is at his core — an average man, with an average job, and a loving partner — Leonard creates a detached and violent persona instead of trying to heal, willingly facing the back wall of Plato’s cave. (The cave allegory, created by 4th century BCE Athenian philosopher Plato, describes people imprisoned in a cave from birth, and shackled so that they may only gaze at its back wall; to these prisoners, who have never seen the the outside world, the shadows cast on this wall are all there is to reality.)
While guilt, loss and time re-appear in similar permutations in Nolan’s other films, Memento remains an intimate blueprint for much of his work. It would be his first of many collaborations with co-screenwriter Jonathan Nolan and with cinematographer Wally Pfister, but it would also be his most clear-eyed expression of themes that, one might argue, would eventually play second fiddle to scale and spectacle in his later films. Granted, few are as adept as Nolan at injecting big-canvas action with personal fears and ideas, but there are no more potent onscreen manifestations of his anxieties than Memento.
During the film, Leonard is asked to close his eyes and remember his wife. “You can just feel the details,” he recalls, with a tinge of nostalgia buried deep beneath layers of grief and regret. “The bits and pieces you never bothered to put into words.” Nolan’s winding timelines and practical stunts are marvels to behold, but they seldom compare to the slow push-in on Leonard’s face, as brief but powerful bursts of memory envelop the screen.
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, the popular 2018 game from Funcom (which itself was based on the decades-old Swedish tabletop RPG), is being given a full-length CG animated film treatment. The movie, which is being rendered using the Unreal Engine, is produced by Pathfinder and HaZ Films, and will be directed by Hasraf ‘HaZ’ Dulull, the indie filmmaker behind The Beyond and 2036: Origin Unknown. Watch the first full-length trailer for the film below.
HaZ explains the story of the film as follows, if you’re not familiar with Mutant Year Zero: “The story is set in a post-apocalyptic future, where civilization is rebuilding itself via The Ark , we follow a group of mis-fits, anthropomorphic mutants on a mission to locate the engineer of the Ark who has mysteriously gone missing, and they believe he holds the key to a mystical place of salvation known as Eden. But the deeper they venture, the more they discover that things are not what they seem outside the Ark, and soon they begin to question their existence as mutants.” He adds, “This is an action adventure movie with the core theme of Hope as the beating heart of the story.”
HaZ says he was attracted to the film because “I fell in love instantly with the characters of Dux and Bormin, I remember playing the game and just smiling throughout all the cool character moments they had including some hilarious quips, reminding me of moments I love in the great buddy cop style movies.” On the use of the Unreal Engine to render the film, he explains, “We have spent many months (before COVID) developing a unique and efficient pipeline that streamlines the way we produce our animated films with Unreal Engine powered by Nvidia’s Quadro RTX graphics.”
The director concluded by saying, “I am excited to say there is going to be some pretty insane, edge of the seat, wall to wall action like you have never seen before, driven by emotionally charged and extremely witty characters throughout, whilst having a strong story that is full of twists and mystery. We are going to laugh out loud with the banter and quips between our characters and be emotional moved with the heart felt moments and then gripped with tension and thrown into a rollercoaster of action.” Look for more on the Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden movie soon. If you missed our review of the game, give it a look.
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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
Outside of each new Assassin’s Creed action-RPG, nobody is really doing fleshed-out, open-world period pieces anymore. That’s one of many reasons why Mafia: Definitive Edition, the from-the-ground-up remake of 2002’s original Mafia game, feels as fresh as ever in 2020. It also helps that it looks fantastic. I played half a dozen missions of the new-old crime epic and came away sufficiently impressed ahead of its release on September 25 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
Many who play the remake of Mafia 1 will have likely never played it previously. But even those who have, like me, probably haven’t looked at it in well over a decade – also like me. Thus, most people are going to come at Tommy Angelo’s 1930’s mob adventure with fresh eyes. And thankfully, this Definitive Edition looks right back at you with fresh eyes of its own. Let’s get the most obvious thing out of the way first: Mafia looks fantastic as a full-blown remake; I’m so glad it’s been given that down-to-the-roots treatment rather than having taken the easier remaster path. From the super-detailed character faces to the gorgeous rain effects to the overall look of Lost Heaven, the Prohibition-era Chicago-ish metropolis the game takes place in, Mafia looks stellar most of the time – which the Disney California Adventure Soarin’ Around the World-style intro flythrough of the city does a great job of showcasing. There are some imperfections – some last-gen lighting still jarringly jumps out on occasion – but by and large Mafia looks like a brand-new 2020 video game.
It also plays rather like one as well. The developers at Hangar 13, which includes some members of the original Illusion Softworks team that first built Mafia, have worked in some of Mafia 3’s modern gameplay mechanics, most notably in its third-person combat. The result is a game that doesn’t feel particularly stiff, with the minor exception of melee combat, which doesn’t have a lot of weight to it.
Driving will also take some getting used to if you’ve never played Mafia 1. This game is set in the 1930’s, after all, and cars weren’t exactly doing zero to sixty in three seconds back then, and they drove more like boats than F1 race cars. I think the driving model grounds the game in its time period rather effectively; in fact, you can even get in trouble with the police for speeding (although I should point out that you can turn that off in the Definitive Edition if you like). And the organic GPS directions insert ed into the game world as road signs is a brilliant touch. That said, one of Mafia’s most infamous missions – and not in a good way – remains on the annoying side. You’ll need to steal a race car, sabotage it, and then win the race yourself, lest your mob boss Don Salieri lose a lot of money. The AI follows an almost-perfect driving line, and you have to run a nearly perfect trio of laps in order to clear the mission, lest you start the entire race over again (complete with a cutscene you can’t skip).
Still, the story is arguably the biggest reason why Mafia is remembered fondly, and a fresh run through the first half-dozen chapters of the game left me with little doubt that it will hold up in 2020. Tommy’s story of unwittingly becoming a driver and later full-fledged member of the Salieri crime family is told in flashback chapters, with the action eventually catching up to Tommy the narrator. This clever tool allows the game to move forward at a brisk pace, with little of the busywork and minutiae that bogs down so many open-world games. That’s important to know about Mafia 1; even though it’s set in an open-world, it’s really a fairly linear narrative-driven game. And I mean that as a compliment. You’ll want to see Tommy’s story through to the end; the payoff is well worth it, I assure you.
The first Mafia remains my favorite after three games and almost 20 years, so I’m thrilled to see it come back around and still be so much fun to play. The remake is very technically impressive, and the story has aged well. So far so good, Tommy.
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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
CD Projekt has announced a new augmented reality mobile game set in the world of The Witcher. The Witcher: Monster Slayer will be released on Android and iOS devices and will use location data to power its gameplay.
Developed by CD Projekt studio Spokko, The Witcher: Monster Slayer will be free-to-play and ask players to explore the real world to track, study, and fight monsters in augmented reality. The game uses time of day and real-life weather conditions to determine certain aspects of gameplay.
“Preparation is key in order to defeat tougher enemies, as players will need to brew powerful potions and oils, craft bombs and monster bait, and upgrade their character before putting these beasts to the sword and signs in first-person AR combat,” explained CD Projekt.
Killing monsters will allow you to take trophies as proof of your conquest, akin to Geralt in The Witcher.
Monster Slayer features story quests based on narratives from the mainline series, so it will presumably be a little more lore-focused than something like Pokemon Go. However, like Pokemon Go, Monster Slayer does use a real-life map of your local area as the basis for the gameplay, with a fantasy like skin. Monster battles also look similar to the Niantic game’s catching mechanic, albeit with a big sword.
A release date for the game has yet to be announced, but will be revealed later this year. You can sign up for details at The Witcher: Monster Slayer website.
Giancarlo Esposito has confirmed that he carried out all of his own stuntwork while portraying the villainous Moff Gideon on Season 2 of The Mandalorian.
In an interview with Collider, Esposito offered up some more details about his expanded role in the upcoming season of the Disney+ Star Wars series. In particular, he spoke about his recent experiences on the set, as he explained that he was responsible for performing all of his own stunt scenes, including those that featured the ancient Darksaber.
“I don’t want you to have any spoilers, but I did all my stuntwork on my own, without a lot of rehearsal, even though it’s a fairly big budget, technological piece with the volume and all the things that are going on,” Esposito shared with the outlet. “Sometimes that leaves less time to pay more attention to, and the stuntwork, by the way, has been with an Emmy nomination as well, to do that.”
The Mandalorian’s season finale was filled with several big surprises, leading right the way up to the closing shots that showed Esposito’s character carving a segment out of his crashed TIE Fighter and emerging from the wreckage with the famed black-bladed lightsaber in his possession, which illuminated the fact that Gideon is likely to become a greater physical threat in the next season.
“Having a lightsaber, I have a couple different ones, because of the technology that’s involved,” the actor said of his lightsaber training. “They sometimes put the saber in and I have to have a handle only. But in working with that handle, I have to remember that there’s four and a half, five feet more of that saber. So it’s the way you handle it, so I had to practice. And sometimes I have a full saber that lights up.”
“I hope I’m not giving too much away in regards to the technology of it,” he added. “It was a bit complicated, and I have to laugh because I don’t hold back. And so, some of our stuntwork in this season… I remember the props guy coming to me and saying, ‘Okay, this is our last lightsaber,’ because you gotta pull your hits… but you want it to look real.”
The Darksaber is considered to be one of the most important artifacts in Mandalorian culture. The weapon was created by a warrior named Tarre Vizsla, and over time it has come to serve as a symbol of power. In fact, whoever wields the blade is viewed by Mandalorian traditionalists as the rightful ruler of Mandalore, and defeating the blade’s owner in ritualistic combat is seen as the rightful path to power.
Esposito previously reflected on his character’s possession of the Darksaber and what it symbolizes to him. In fact, he hinted that Moff Gideon might be a Force-sensitive villain whose physical powers extend far beyond the abilities of the weapon, as he explained how the saber being in his hands “creates the possibility that he is one of the ones.”
Strictly Limited Games and Factor 5 have announced that a project celebrating Turrican’s 30th anniversary will be revealed as part of Gamescom’s Opening Night Live.
In a press release, Strictly Limited Games said “After three decades in dormancy, we welcome the return of a true legend. Developed by one of Europe’s greatest independent studios of all time, Factor 5’s Turrican series became one of the most acclaimed and well regarded video games of all time shortly after its release in 1990. Now, teaming up with the original development team, Strictly Limited Games is excited to bring back this legendary IP.”
If you weren’t alive back then or your memory is a little fuzzy, Turrican is a German game originally released on Commodore 64 by developer Rainbow Arts. It was ported to Amiga by Factor 5, the developer working with Strictly Limited on this new release. Turrican is a Metroid-like game, featuring non-linear level exploration and the ability to morph into a ball.
It’s unclear if this will be a remastered re-release of the 30-year-old original, or something smaller/larger, but we’ll find out exactly what it is during Opening Night Live on August 27. More details and a trailer are promised.
For more on Gamescom, check out our comprehensive Gamescom schedule, which details how to watch all the shows and reveals coming as part of the digital version of Europe’s big games convention.
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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.
Nintendo has surprise dropped a new Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase that features such games as Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend, and more.
You can find a breakdown of each announcement below, as well as the full video of the Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase!
A new gameplay video showed some of the Kingdom Hearts and Disney worlds players will be traveling to. There will be a story archive that will allow you to unlock and view scenes from Kingdom Hearts history.
There will also be online and local multiplayer options, a Free-For-All mode that is exclusive to Nintendo Switch and supports up to 8-player local play. As previously revealed, it will also feature a brand new chapter in the Kingdom Hearts story.
Fuser Shows Off Collaborative Multiplayer and Reveals New Songs
Harmonix showed off collaborative multiplayer in its upcoming Fuser, and revealed three more songs coming to the game – Ghosts N Stuff by DeadMau5, Dance Monkey from Tones and I, and Blinding Lights by The Weeknd.
Additionaly, it also showcased a new stage in the gameplay demo.
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure Pack Arrives on Nintendo Switch
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure Pack brings together both Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure 1 and Rhythmic Adventure 2. These games will allow players to take part in two time-traveling RPG adventures with Don-chan as they try to save the world from “strange incidents.”
Recruit monsters, form a powerful party, and enjoy over 130 songs this Winter.
World of Tanks Blitz Arrives on Nintendo Switch Later Today
World of Tanks Blitz is a free-to-play online multiplayer game that features over 350 unique and exclusive combat vehicles, including historically accurate vehicles, experimental tanks based on blueprints of famous engineers, and armored monsters from popular alternate universe.
World of Tanks Blitz launches on Nintendo Switch later today.
Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions Arrives on Nintendo Switch in Spring 2021
Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions allows you to rise through the ranks of this game that features iconic characters like Rocky Balboa, Adonis Creed, and Viktor Drago. There will be story-driven interactions, a way to hone your skills in classic Rocky training montages, and much more.
Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champion will arrive on Nintendo Switch in Spring 2021.
Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend Arrives on Switch on December 15
Originally released on Game Boy, the first three titles in the SaGa series – Final Fantasy Legend, Final Fantasy Legend II, and Final Fantasy Legend III – will arrive on Nintendo Switch in one package on December 15, 2020.
Explore fantasy worlds, fight monsters, customize your characters, explore towns and dungeons, and more, all while taking advantage of a high-speed mode and other helpful features to make these classics hold up a bit more in modern times.
Just Dance 2021 Dances Its Way to Switch This November
Just Dance 2021 is the latest entry in the long-running dancing franchise, and this version features 40 new tracks, including Don’t Start Now by Dua Lipa and Feel Special by TWICE.
Just Dance 2021 will be released on Nintendo Switch on November 12, 2020.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 Brings a New Puzzle Adventure to Switch This December
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is the second entry in the series that mashes together two legendary puzzle games, and this sequel includes all the modes from the original game and a new Skill Battle mode that introduces character-based skills and item cards that can be equipped to power up the team and quickly turn the tables on opponents.
There will also be a new Adventure mode with a full story that has players traversing space and dimensions , an expanded online mode, and more.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 arrives on Nintendo Switch on December 8, 2020.
Minecraft Dungeons Creeping Winter DLC Adds New Missions, Weapons, and More
Jump Force – Deluxe Edition will be released on Nintendo Switch on August 28, 2020. Choose from over 50 fighters from One Piece, Dragon Ball, Naruto, and More to battle in various modes, including online modes and a local tag team mode that is exclusive to Nintendo Switch.
Jump Force – Deluxe Edition will also include the Characters Pass 1.
Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions Brings Arcade Soccer to Switch Tomorrow, August 27
Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions is an arcade soccer game that features powerful offensive and defensive moves to gain the advantage over your opponents.
Customize characters, build a dream team, play soccer online or locally, and more beginning tomorrow.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition Arrives on Switch Tomorrow, August 27
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition brings the 2003 GameCube Classic to Nintendo Switch on August 27, 2020.
This Final Fantasy entry is a 1-4 player RPG that follows the Crystal Caravans, a group of adventurers on the hunt for a previous and rare liquid known as myrrh that can cleanse and maintain a “crystal that protects them, and their world, from a poisonous gas.”
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
Puyo Puyo and Tetris are teaming up again this holiday with Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. Sega announced the sequel to its puzzle crossover will arrive with a brand new story mode and puzzles.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is a sequel to Sega’s popular action puzzle game which combines the classic gameplay of Tetris with Puyo Puyo, a popular puzzle series from Japan. There are a variety of modes in Puyo Puyo Tetris that combine the two series such as a head-to-head vs. mode and a fusion mode that combines elements from both series into a single, frantic puzzle match.
With Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, Sega is introducing a new Skill Battle mode that introduces character-based skills and equippable item cards to add new layers of strategy. There’s also a new adventure mode which tells a new story set in the cute Puyo Puyo Tetris universe with both returning and new characters.
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 will be released for Switch, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PS4 on December 8; and holiday 2020 for PS5.
