Our eye into the world of the Witcher has been primarily through Geralt of Rivia, but it’s a deep world with long history, and Netflix’s upcoming Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf animation will take us further back than we’ve yet been. Netflix revealed today a new teaser trailer for the upcoming show, as well as the voice cast.
“Before Geralt, there was his mentor Vesemir–a swashbuckling young witcher who escaped a life of poverty to slay monsters for coin,” reads the show’s official description. “But when a strange new monster begins terrorizing a politically-fraught kingdom, Vesemir finds himself on a frightening adventure that forces him to confront demons of his past.”
The core voice cast for the show is made up of veterans of Netflix series and sci-fi in general. Theo James will voice Vesemir himself. James voiced Vesemir in the first season of the live-action Witcher series starring Henry Cavill, though he did not actually appear on-screen. Most recently, he finished out his run as Hector the Forgemaster on Netflix’s critically-acclaimed Castlevania animated series. Graham McTavish joins the series as Deglan, who seems to be a sort of father figure to Vesemir, and is the one who set him on the path to becoming a Witcher. McTavish starred alongside James in Castlevania as Dracula himself.
Lara Pulver, best known for roles in Sherlock and Edge of Tomorrow, will play the role of Lady Zerbst. She most recently appeared as Mirana in Netflix’s Dota: Dragon’s Blood series. Finally, Mary McDonnell–President Roslin in Syfy’s Battlestar Galactica and the first lady in Independence Day–will play Tetra.
The series is co-produced by Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and director Kwang Il Han, and written and produced by Beau DeMayo, who also wrote the Witcher live-action series.
The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf streams on Netflix on August 23, 2021. The Witcher season 2 has finished filming, and recently got its own teaser trailer. In addition to the main live-action series and this animated series, a prequel series, The Witcher: Blood Origin, is also in the works.
Netflix has revealed the main characters and voice cast for The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, an upcoming anime origin story telling a tale from the life of Geralt’s mentor, Vesemir.
Vesemir, voiced by Theo James (star of The Divergent Series), is described as a “swashbuckling young witcher” who slays monsters in an effort to escape poverty. In Nightmare of the Wolf, Vesemir will embark on an adventure to rid a politically-fraught kingdom of a strange new monster. This journey will also see him confront his own past demons.
When you’re a monster hunter, every deal has a price. The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf premieres August 23 only on @netflix. pic.twitter.com/M6vFlBG1cO
That journey will see Vesemir come across Tetra (voiced by Lara Pulver), Deglan (Graham McTavish) and Lady Zerbst (Mary McDonnell). You can see all four of their anime renditions in the gallery below.
The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf will be available from August 23, and acts as a prequel to The Witcher TV show. The main show’s showrunner, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, is co-producing alongside Beau DeMayo, and the anime is directed by Studio Mir’s Kwang Il Han.
Konami has officially renamed the Pro Evolution Soccer series eFootball, and it will become a digital-only, free-to-play game coming to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC this Autumn – with iOS and Android versions to follow (Konami refused to comment on any potential Nintendo Switch version). By this winter, all versions of the game will feature cross-play, although mobile players will need to use controllers to play against console and PC players.
It’s a major move for the football series (now called eFootball globally, rather than PES in the west and Winning Eleven in Japan), and it’s been matched with a shift from Konami’s FOX Engine to a custom-built new engine created with Unreal 4. Crucially, it appears that all versions of the game, from new-gen consoles to mobile, will be functionally the same (not unlike Fortnite) – presumably meaning that the hugely successful PES Mobile will also be phased out or replaced.
Speaking to IGN, series producer Seitaro Kimura explained that eFootball is aiming to take a ‘platform’ approach with regular updates – there will no longer be annual paid releases of eFootball, but the platform will get free, yearly updates for new seasons.
eFootball will launch with exhibition matches and seemingly a selection of 9 clubs to play with (see the roadmap below for the full list). It will subsequently sell other modes as optional DLC, seemingly allowing players to pay for what they want out of their game. No mention has yet been made of MyClub, PES’ equivalent to FIFA Ultimate Team, or Master League, the series’ long-running career mode – although it seems likely that the former will be represented by an unnamed ‘Team Building Mode’ coming after release.
We’re still somewhat unclear on how new teams will be added to the game, and the exact breakdown of how eFootball’s modes and monetisation will work won’t be revealed until a later date. However, Konami says that the game is designed to be “fair and balanced” for all players, despite its transition to a free-to-play model – which will also seemingly include Battle Pass-like unlocks called Match Passes.
While a lot of eFootball’s approach is a shift from PES, IGN can confirm two returning elements: Peter Drury and Jim Beglin will continue as English-language commentators, and the much-loved Option Files (which allow players to customise much of the game, including unlicensed teams, and share those files) will be available – although support will be added post-launch, and we’re still unclear on how they’ll be implemented, or whether they’ll come to Xbox platforms for the first time.
eFootball will launch as a slimmed-down experience, with more modes, teams, platforms, and cross-play options added as the year goes on. Konami’s current roadmap is below:
The move to a new engine has also allowed eFootball to add a new Motion Matching animation system, which Konami says allows for four times as many animations as previous PES games. It doesn’t sound unlike FIFA’s newly-announced HyperMotion animation system, but Konami points out that Motion Matching will be applied to all versions of the game, even on mobile.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Although Konami teased it last year, the engine switch is more complex than we thought at first. Although built using the foundation of Unreal Engine 4, the eFootball team spent its year off not just designing a game, but an entirely new in-house football engine. It’s a move befitting of turning your annual game into a live platform that needs to grow more organically – but why make such a huge shift when the team is likely already familiar with the old tools? What does an Unreal base offer that FOX couldn’t?
“I would say that there are more options for approaches, and with so many people using Unreal Engine, we can refer to a lot of knowledge,” says series producer Seitaro Kimura. “At Unreal Fest, I was able to hear about development cases of titles that have been adopted, so I was able to get more practical information from a wider network of developers.”
That ability to learn from others has seemingly been key for the eFootball team. Using an engine built only for one company’s games (as PES has done with Konami’s FOX Engine previously) means building new tools only as you can spare the manpower to get to them – with Unreal already so fully featured, and open to so many people, Kimura says his team reduced “waste” while making what it needed.
All of that work has seemingly been to create a best-of-both-worlds situation – using Unreal as a base allows the team to work with one of the most popular, and more importantly well-supported, game engines in the world, but customising it allows Konami to control the creation and refinement of eFootball more closely, with purpose-built tools.
It’s that dual approach that’s helped along Konami’s wildly ambitious plan to release a version of eFootball across new-gen consoles, last-gen consoles, PC, and mobile – and to eventually allow cross-play across every version. “That’s why we chose Unreal Engine,” Kimura says. “Unreal Engine’s development speed is one of the fastest among game engines, and its scalability includes both high-end and low-end – perfect for mobile and next-gen platforms.”
eFootball will be built for consoles first, and use that scalability to tailor it to other devices, something Kimura assures us will mean it will look and play like a new-generation game on PS5 and Xbox Series X, but still work fluidly with mobile players.
The engine shift has been about more than making a multi-platform game, though. Kimura tells us that the team has used Unreal’s Blueprint visual scripting tool to speed up early development and fix performance issues more quickly – which will presumably help the team to make speedy changes to the live service project. It’s also using Unreal Motion Graphics to create new menus (long a bugbear of PES players) and hopefully improve players’ flow through menus and into the game itself.
And if you’re worrying about the game itself, Kimura tells us this is where the custom-built football engine comes into play. While he won’t outright say that it still feels like the FOX Engine PES games fans are familiar with, he makes very clear that the gameplay itself is being made using Konami’s custom tools, not Unreal’s standard ones. “The football engine is evolving every year,” he says, “and we can feel the changes every year.”
Of course, it’s impossible to assess the results of all this work without playing the game itself – and there’s no word yet on a demo ahead of launch (or if the slimmed-down experience at launch is the demo, in a sense) – but it will be fascinating to see how much of a part the new engine plays in making this feel like something new, rather than simply improved.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
It’s not an overstatement to say that PES’ shift into eFootball is the biggest moment in Konami’s footballing history since, well, beginning to make football games. Last year, it was big news simply that the series was taking a year off to switch to Unreal Engine; today, we know it’s also getting a new name, going digital-only, becoming free-to-play, and will be playable across new-gen and last-gen consoles, PC, and mobile.
It might even be one among the biggest shifts for an established game series, full stop. While recent years have seen the likes of Call of Duty embrace free-to-play and live service approaches for specific modes, this marks one of the industry’s longest-running franchises adopting an entirely different release model. It’s easy to see why Konami thought it needed a new name to go with it – even if the clunky ‘eFootball’ will be a hard title to swallow for many long-time fans.
One of the key figures behind that shift is series producer Seitaro Kimura, who spoke to IGN ahead of the announcement, and explained more of the thinking around it. “We started planning this move roughly two years ago to coincide with the console generation transition and changes in the market environment,” he tells us, before explaining that PES Mobile’s huge success acted as a blueprint for the wider shift. “I believe that we have already proven that this structure can be successful on mobile. By applying the same model across all platforms, we hope that more football fans will be able to play this game on consoles as well.”
Of course, that mobile inspiration will worry fans of the more fully-fledged console PES experience – is this going to be a more casual football experience than the normal simulation approach? Kimura says not to worry: “We’re still making games on consoles first. We then take that exact same experience and make it available for mobile devices. In other words, we are not making the game for mobile, but working to make mobile more console-like.”
Of course, even if that’s true of gameplay, there’s still the thorny issue of trying to make a game that can match other PS5 or Xbox Series X games for looks, while simultaneously being able to run on normal mobile devices. Kimura insists that it’s possible: “We would ask our fans to not worry, we have made great efforts to tailor the visual quality of the game to the hardware of each device.”
That comes down in part to the new tech behind the game, a custom-built football game engine designed from a base of the hugely popular Unreal Engine 4. “That’s why we chose Unreal Engine,” Kimura replies when we ask how new-gen and mobile versions with cross-play are possible. “Unreal Engine’s development speed is one of the fastest among game engines, and its scalability includes both high-end and low-end – perfect for mobile and next-gen platforms.” We’re yet to see the results, of course, but the success of Fortnite’s translation from console to mobile (also using Unreal) is encouraging – although doing the same for a hyper-realistic football sim is a different level of challenge.
But hardcore PES fans have traditionally pointed to how games in the series feel to play, rather than their looks, as what’s important – how will eFootball address the on-the-pitch action? That became a key part of the development team’s thinking while designing a new engine – after working with Konami’s aging FOX Engine for so long, building something new out of Unreal seemingly allowed Konami to reassess what a football game should feel like.
That’s included some fundamental changes, such as altering some of the series’ traditional controls. While Konami won’t tell us the full list of changes, we know that sprinting is now achieved by holding a right trigger, and has added new options for how you players use the ball while sprinting. “‘Ball Control’ is new this year,” Kimura explains, “which takes advantage of the R2/RT [trigger buttons’] analog input to freely control the strength of the ball touch, and ‘Knock-On’ enables instantaneous strong touches. Since dribbling is naturally against a defender, we have also added some new elements to the defensive controls, such as ‘Match-up’ and ‘Physical Defending’.”
It’s perhaps not a coincidence that putting sprint onto a right trigger matches the controls of its key rival – if I was speculating, I’d say that some of these changes could also have been made in order to make switching from FIFA to eFootball a smoother transition for migrating players. As you might expect, Konami didn’t comment on that comparison.
“In order to understand how the best players in the world play the sport, we brought in [footballers Andrés Iniesta and Gerard Piqué] as gameplay advisors and asked for their advice,” Kimura explains. “It was a big decision to change the controls that people are used to, but it made the battle for the ball more realistic and more reflective of the user’s intentions.”
Another key part of that rethink was in tailoring the game specifically for player vs. player matches, rather than player vs. computer. “We’re making it so that people can enjoy playing against other players, as this provides a greater thrill than what AI can provide,” reasons Kimura. “We believe that the 1v1 offense and defense realized in this way is the most important innovation of eFootball.”
Clearly, there are a lot of changes coming to the traditional PES formula – enough that Kimura says that the team isn’t thinking about this in terms of being a ‘new PES’: “We hope that football fans all over the world will enjoy the game as a completely new one rather than a simple update to what came before.”
There’s much more that Kimura won’t talk about. Our questions about how modes and other content will be introduced and sold, how or if MyClub will be adjusted for a free-to-play format, if licensed clubs will get specific DLC, and more were batted away, with many of his answers involving us waiting until August for more information.
It’s also abundantly clear that the version of eFootball we get when the game launches in August will not be the eFootball we’re playing next year, never mind the years to come after that (and Konami is very much thinking of this as a multi-year project). Aside from a roadmap of changes, adding purchaseable modes, mobile versions, and cross-play, Konami is designing this game to be updated in a number of ways.
Like PES, eFootball will see weekly live updates to reflect squad changes and real-world transfers. It will also regularly add what Kimura calls “in-game campaigns” – he doesn’t explain the content of these, but you can likely expect limited-time tournaments and the like. But interestingly, the platform approach will allow for much bigger changes to be made more fluidly.
Ditching traditional yearly game releases doesn’t mean that Konami won’t be updating the game every season. You can expect major roster updates, new kits, and even visual and gameplay upgrades on the normal yearly cycle, but Kimura also says the team will be monitoring player feedback on the game throughout its life, and potentially making alterations well before it would normally be expected to. As the producer puts it, “The platform model gives us the opportunity to provide meaningful updates irregularly, if appropriate, without having to ask users to download a new game.”
I’d argue that the most exciting prospect of eFootball, as opposed to PES, is that malleability – more than ever, fans’ responses to Konami’s work should be a part of shaping what comes next.
As someone who’s dabbled in PES for a very long time, I have a fondness for its earlier, stranger days, when peerless simulation was often balanced with true weirdness, like being able to field an entire team of players in penguin costumes. I ask Kimura if the free-to-play future allows for some of those odder impulses to pop up again in eFootball, as paid cosmetics perhaps. I get a more hopeful answer than expected: “There are no plans to do so currently. However, if there is a lot of demand for it, it may be on the roadmap in the future.”
Improbable as it may sound, that – to me – is the real promise of eFootball as a platform rather than a single entry in a yearly series. Konami is no longer focusing on just getting a game out every year – it’s focusing on getting the existing game right, and making sure that it’s the one fans want. Much about the game we’ll get this Autumn remains to be seen, and I won’t be making predictions about whether this is a ‘FIFA killer’ just yet – but eFootball is already a more intriguing prospect than PES has been for some time.
Without a yearly cash injection, and by tying its monetary success to fans paying for what they want, eFootball will have to be innately responsive to what its players demand of it, which should result in a more mercurial, consistently interesting game. And if penguin-lads are part of that, all the better.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
New photos from The Last Of Us TV show have appeared online, giving us a look at how the HBO production is going. The images were taken in Fort Macleod in Canada by Twitter user @necromonica1, showing a street that’s been made up to look like Austin, Texas.
As picked up byGamesRadar, the images show a number of emergency vehicles including SWAT vans, police cars, and a fire truck showing department logos from Austin, Texas. As fans surmised from thelast photo that was revealed from the set, which included lead actor Pedro Pascal smiling in a car with his co-stars, it’s likely that the HBO production is working on scenes that will mirror one of the game’s most notorious sections.
Series writer Craig Mazin has told fans that the show will follow the story of the game, but has also promised that it won’t just be a shot-for-shot retelling, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the TV show’s version of Austin.
The Twitter user who posted the photos shared other shots from the set, including a set of close-up photos and videos that hold some easter eggs for eagle-eyed The Last Of Us fans.
She said that she was able to wander through the set, but was asked to put her phone away when filming started on the set. In replies to others’ tweets, she added that she only spotted pilot episode director Kantemir Balagov and actress Nico Parker, who is playing Joel’s daughter, on set.
Though I enjoyed most of Cris Tales, one moment in particular really sold the game for me. I was in the midst of a boss battle that had already gone on for 25 minutes against a big robot–every time I destroyed one of the mechanical giant’s arms, a drone would appear to fully repair it, so the only way to end the fight was to scrap the drone. But the drone would only appear when an arm was destroyed, dragging the fight out as I slowly chipped away at the arms’ huge health pools over and over. Then I had an idea: What if I could use protagonist Crisbell’s Regression spell on an enemy? I had only previously used it for its described purpose of regressing allies to a previous state in time, returning them to full health after taking damage or suffering a status effect. To my surprise, my idea worked. By using Regression on the robot’s arms after the drone repaired them, it returned them to their destroyed state, causing the drone to reappear and giving me the opportunity to continuously whale on it. A few minutes later, victory was mine.
This gameplay mechanic speaks to Cris Tales’ overall narrative, which is about the importance of examining the past, facing the challenges of the present, and changing the future for the better. It’s a message that goes beyond trying to hurl the right magic spell at a murderous mining robot too, as Cris Tales is largely a story about humanity’s impact on the world at large and how exploitation of the environment, racism, greed, and hoarding cures to deadly diseases are far more dangerous threats to humanity’s future than an evil witch. It’s a concept that doesn’t neatly wrap itself up as well as I would have liked, but the journey to that point is an incredible RPG experience, one satisfyingly supported by the cool idea of being able to see the past, present, and future all at once.
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In Cris Tales, you play as Crisbell, a young girl with no knowledge of her past who unexpectedly becomes a Time Mage. She meets a talking, time-travelling frog named Matias who explains that Crisbell can now perceive the past, present, and future of the world simultaneously, giving her the unique ability to glean knowledge from people’s histories and alter their fates. Matias takes her to meet Willhelm, also a Time Mage, who tells Crisbell that she’s key to stopping the Time Empress, an immensely powerful Time Mage set on taking over the world. With the help of young knight and mage Cristopher, the trio repel an attack led by two of the Time Empress’ lackies, and the squad, now of four, set out to find a way to enhance Crisbell’s powers so that she’ll be strong enough to save the world, stopping to recruit additional allies and help the world’s diverse assortment of kingdoms along the way.
The interactions between the growing band of friends in Crisbell’s party are the best part of Cris Tales–it’s not even close. The found family trope is a tried and true storytelling method at this point and Cris Tales doesn’t do anything revolutionary with that formula, but the charming character designs, superb voice acting, and regular interjections of quick punchy dialogue lodges this band of misfits into your heart. It doesn’t take long to become deeply invested in the individual motivations of each character, whether it’s Cristopher’s desire to avenge his dead brother or sentient android JKR-721’s quest to acquire purpose and discover their reason for existing.
Willhelm is an especially wonderful character. His unique power as a Time Mage is that his personal time is frozen, so although he appears to be one of the youngest members of the party, he’s actually the grizzled adult shepherding around a group of kids. Actor Lindsey Vega brings Willhelm’s lines to life with a tired exasperation and dry wit that betrays his actual age, leading to the funniest lines in the game and bettering the entire story as a result. The Time Mage’s friendly rivalry with Cristopher and mentor relationship with Crisbell are also very wholesome. Matias doesn’t provide much substance for most of Cris Tales, but the other three members of the core group all have meaningful developments that make the heartfelt moments all the sweeter and all the instances of tragedy that much more heartbreaking–and the excellent writing behind Willhelm’s character is the driving force for much of that.
But as important as Willhelm is, Crisbell is the one that ties Cris Tales together. Her ability to perceive the past, present, and future is at the core of Cris Tales, both in its story and gameplay. It works a lot better for the latter than the former.
In order to proceed in her quest, Crisbell will regularly need to help those around her with their problems. Her ability to perceive different points in time helps with this–if you wander into a new kingdom that looked beautiful in the past, has seen better days in the present, and is completely flooded by water in the future, then you know that part of the solution to save the kingdom is tied to learning why and how the water levels would rise high enough to engulf a city.
The information gleaned from Crisbell’s ability gives you some context for who you need to talk to and what choices you can make, but as Willhelm warns early on, there’s rarely a “right” choice that will fix everything forever. This part of Cris Tales’ storytelling is incredibly rewarding–it feels good to help people with their problems and see the effects of your actions appear in the future. Additionally, Cris Tales has several major choice-driven moments where Crisbell needs to decide the overall fate of a kingdom and you unlock additional, alternate futures depending on the optional side quests you chose to pursue up to that point. As Crisbell and her friends made their way through each kingdom, I felt like my choices carried actual agency and my small decisions in sidequests were having major ramifications on the big decisions in the overall campaign.
Willhelm is easily my favorite character in Cris Tales.
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My issue with all this is that it doesn’t feel like the ramifications of those major choices then carry into the ending of Cris Tales. The final moments of Cris Tales feel like they’re amounting to something fairly significant based on what Crisbell and her friends have done up to that point. However, the ending quickly transitions into a slideshow of all the future events you managed to plan and then concludes with one of the characters implying that there’s more to the story. And then the credits roll. It’s very unfulfilling. For a game all about seeing how your actions carry weight and inform the future, leaving the future open to interpretation is a bit unsatisfying (though, I will grudgingly admit, is realistic). As much as I loved the 24-hour journey through Cris Tales, its final 60 seconds are unrewarding.
Crisbell’s Time Mage powers best come into play in Cris Tales’ puzzles, exploration, and turn-based combat. As Crisbell grows stronger, she unlocks new abilities that tie into her capacity to see the past and future, like being able to rewind or fast forward the time of certain objects. With abilities like that, you can restore a generator to when it was a bunch of pieces in a box, allowing you to push it against a wall, revert it to its present form, and then cause it to decay to the point where it breaks down and explodes, opening a hole in the wall. You can also rely on Matias’ time travelling abilities to solve puzzles, like moving a locked safe in the present beneath a dripping beaker of acid and then sending Matias to the future that Crisbell sees where the safe now has a big hole in it.
Combat is where things start getting really complex but in the best possible way, as Crisbell’s time powers open up a whole mess of different strategies and means of fighting enemies. Cris Tales is your standard turn-based RPG, where everyone in your party and all the enemies present are depicted on a timeline and folks take turns performing actions. But because of Crisbell, you can also send enemies backwards and forward through time. So the wolf in front of you could be rewound into a cute pup or aged forward into a slow, but furious pack leader. Depending on what stage of life an enemy is in, their stats can radically change. Perhaps an enemy has a lot of health in their infancy but less so as an adult–but time has afforded them the chance to learn powerful magic.
In combat, you have to keep track of the turn order, the age of each enemy, and the strengths and weaknesses of your party.
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Crisbell can use her abilities to change how her allies’ attacks behave as well. For example, if Cristopher uses water magic on an impenetrable shield and then Crisbell sends that enemy to their future, the shield will become rusted and weak after being wet for years. Or if Crisbell rewinds a group of enemies to the past, has Willhelm plant a poisonous seed nearby and then returns them to the present on her next turn, it will be like the seed was always there, sprouting a poisonous plant amidst all your foes.
This adds an interesting wrinkle to the traditional turn-based combat, as you now need to consider not only how to beat your enemy but also how to bend time to make that process easier. Crisbell can only send enemies on the left part of the screen to the past and the right side of the screen to the future as well, adding another consideration. And Cris Tales continuously keeps throwing twists at you, encouraging you to evolve your strategies and think outside the box (like regressing a healed robot arm to its destroyed state to continuously bring out your true target: the repair drone). Even if you’re fighting the same enemies, if their ages are different or if they’re attacking you from different sides of the screen, you have to consider different strategies. So despite Cris Tales’ lack of diverse enemy types, combat isn’t boring because the makeup of fights changes enough that you need to keep coming up with new methods for dealing with the similar threats.
Additionally, very similarly to Ikenfell, Cris Tales incorporates a timing mechanic into its combat–you have to time a button press right when your attack lands for it to be more effective or when an enemy attacks you in order to parry their strike and limit the damage against you. This does add an element of satisfying success to overcoming Cris Tales’ challenging enemies, especially if you manage to pull off a clutch parry near the end of a 10-minute battle, keeping your party alive long enough to heal and finish the fight. Thankfully it’s never frustrating, as there are visual indicators to help you get the timing down for each attack even if you haven’t seen the move before. Unfortunately, however, there is no option to turn off this timing feature or increase the window you have for reacting to an attack, so players who don’t possess the physical capabilities to quickly time a button press (occasionally multiple times in a row) will likely find Cris Tales to be inaccessible, as failing to regularly parry the hard-hitting attacks from some of the late game bosses can kill your entire party in a single turn. I don’t have much issue with the timing mechanic (I think it helps the player remain engaged throughout the fight instead of just waiting for the enemy to complete their turn), but the lack of an option to make combat more accessible is disappointing.
This city enjoyed prosperity when it was ruled by a monarchy in the past but it’s doomed to be destroyed under its current leadership…for now.
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When you’re not growing increasingly invested in Crisbell’s plight and second-guessing who the true villains are, or fighting things out in the rewardingly strategic turn-based battles, you’ll mostly just be exploring the world of Cris Tales and soaking in its incredible atmosphere. The game is visually stunning and the music is some of the best I’ve heard. The diverse assortment of instruments and vocal performances used to construct the unique themes for each kingdom really helps differentiate each setting, but the underlying similarities between each one also audibly convey an unspoken unity between all of the cultures. And I just think that’s really neat.
It’s occasionally a little too easy to get lost in Cris Tales as some of the side characters and landmarks you have to travel to don’t have very memorable names or appearances and the in-game hint system is not at all helpful. But even when you’re lost, Cris Tales is a pretty game to look at and listen to, and one that’s fun to explore if for no other reason than to see how characters and places change when viewed via the lens of the past, present, or future.
All in all, Cris Tales is the kind of RPG I traditionally love to play. It delivers a wonderfully satisfying story about a group of troubled individuals striving to save the world for their own reasons, and along the way finding a place to belong with each other. Hilarious characters like Willhelm keep things from getting too stressful, and Crisbell’s powerful Time Mage abilities lead to some intriguing narrative choices, fun puzzles, and engaging combat. The game’s final moments are not conclusive enough to tie everything up in a satisfying way, but the journey to get there is one well worth taking.
A new update for Fallout 76 coming this September will introduce public and custom worlds to the game, giving players the ability to create their own personal Appalachia.
Bethesda announced today that the Fallout Worlds update will hit Fallout 76 in September, bringing a wide list of customizable settings to the game. It will allow players to construct C.A.M.P.S in previously-restricted areas, remove the need for electricity when building, change PvP rules and difficulty settings, and more.
“Our modding community has been an enormous part of our games for over 20 years, and it’s always been our long-term goal with Fallout 76 to give you your own servers to customize for yourself and your friends,” Bethesda’s blog post reads. “After much iteration, we’re thrilled to reveal an exciting new system that’s just the beginning for creating all-new experiences designed by you — Fallout Worlds.”
When players boot up Fallout 76 after the Worlds update goes live in September, they’ll see the standard Fallout 76 Adventure and Private Adventure modes on the main menu as well as two new modes: Public Worlds and Custom Worlds. Public Worlds are a rotating series of Fallout Worlds experiences available to all players. They’re handcrafted by Bethesda Game Studios using input from the Fallout 76 community.
“Each Public World uses a different combination of Fallout Worlds’ settings to bring you a unique play experience,” Bethesda’s blog post reads. “Custom Worlds completely evolves the personalization of Fallout 76’s existing private servers, granting active Fallout 1st members full access to Fallout Worlds’ settings and features to build their own personalized Appalachias.”
Players can invite friends and teammates to their own Custom Worlds, even if those other players don’t have a Fallout 1st membership, Bethesda says.
Those looking to get a taste of what Fallout Worlds is bringing to Fallout 76 can head into the Public Test Servers to do so starting today. A date for the Fallout Worlds update has not been announced, but Bethesda notes that it’s coming in September.
Players who managed to successfully score an early copy of NEO: The World Ends With You over the weekend are in for an unhappy surprise if they happen to go online today. Following an accidental leak of the full retail version of NEO: The World Ends With You, Square Enix is revoking licenses for the game, effectively scrubbing the game from their account until release date.
Rumors of the removal began circulating this afternoon, with several players reporting that they had been kicked out of their game. One Reddit user said they were just “an hour or two away” from finishing the game when they were kicked out — an impressive feat given that the story reportedly takes some 50 hours to complete.
“Nintendo have remotely revoked all digital licenses for the game after Square Enix accidentally sold eShop codes early,” Switch dataminer OatmealDome wrote on Twitter. “Players were kicked out mid-game with the error code 2819-0003. This is, as far as I and others know, a first for the Switch.”
The NEO: The World Ends With You codes were originally leaked on July 17, with some players receiving digital activation codes by mistake after purchasing a physical copy on the Square Enix store. Fans quickly rushed to get an early code that would allow them to play the anticipated sequel 10 days early.
While many were successful, well-known Twitter user Wario64 — who was among the first to alert users of the leak — cautioned them to play with the Switch’s airplane mode turned on lest Square Enix try to revoke the code. It turns out this caution was warranted. With their licenses revoked, users will have to wait for their physical copies to arrive, or buy an entirely new version online. Any save data from the revoked version will no longer be usable.
IGN contacted both Square Enix and Nintendo for statements following the removal. We will update this story if we hear anything. In the meantime, there’s always the demo, right? The World Ends With You will be out on Switch and PS4 on July 27, with a PC release due later this summer.
There’s plenty of big news today in the deal world. If you’re looking for where to preorder the Nintendo Switch OLED, it’s back in stock today at Gamestop (for a very, very limited time).. For those of you looking for where to buy an Xbox Series S gaming console, it’s also available today at two vendors, Lenovo and Sam’s Club. Lenovo even has the standalone console with no bundle attached. In other deal news, grab the Apple AirPods Pro or the AirPods Max at the lowest price ever, get the Logitech G920 racing wheel (Xbox Series X) at nearly 67% off, score an ASUS ROG RTX 3080 gaming PC at the lowest price ever and with fast delivery, and more.
The newest Nintendo Switch model, featuring a larger OLED touchscreen display, new dock, and new Joy-Con colors, will be released on October 8 for $349.99. It sold out very quickly when preorders first launched, but here’s another chance to grab one at Gamestop.
Get the Xbox Series S gaming console without having to buy any sort of bundle for $299.99 at Lenovo. There’s no discount here per se, but the Xbox Series S is still hard to find in stock at all, especially without any add-ons that bump up the price.
If you regret not picking the Airpods Pro up on Amazon Prime Day at 24% off, here’s your chance to get it today at the same price. The AirPods Pro is considered one of the best noise-cancelling in-ear headphones you can get, especially for under $200, and it’s significantly better than even the vanilla AirPods. Woot is owned by Amazon, and in this particular case you’ll have to log in with your Amazon Prime account in order to see the discount.
$95 Off Apple AirPods Max Headphones
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Not everyone can afford Apple’s best AirPods, but for those who can, they’ll be treated to a $95 discount from Amazon, making this the lowest price we’ve ever seen. Obviously the sound quality on these AirPods Max headphones are phenomenal, but what really takes the cake is the build quality. There are no other headphones in its price range that is built as well as the AirPods Max. They are literally a work of art.
Sign up for AT&T Gigabit Fiber Internet for $60/mo
Sign up for the gigabit plan and you get $20 off your first year. That means you pay $60/mo instead of $80/mo. You’ll get access to blazing fast gigabit speeds (both downstream and upstream) with no data cap. As a bonus, you’ll also get a free 1 year subscription to HBO Max. That means you’ll be able to watch Space Jam: Legacy and the upcoming Suicide Squad 2 movies absolutely free. I personally am subscribed to AT&T Fiber and would never dream of going back to my slower and more expensive cable internet.
Factor in the $100 Dell gift card and you’re basically getting this racing wheel set for only $135 (it retails for $400). This is one of the best racing wheels you can get for the Xbox or PC, and easily the best racing wheel under $200 (if you factor in the Dell gift card). It pairs beautifully with Forza Horizon 4 and will probably work just as well with the upcoming Forza Horizon 5 game that’s coming out November 9.
This is one of the best cooperative board games at the lowest price we’ve ever seen. Even if you’re just a casual fan of board games, you’re missing out if you haven’t given this one a try. This is a 2-4 player board game that runs approximately 45 minutes per gaming session.
Hardcore GUNDAM fans rejoice, this very limited edition ASUS ROG Delta gaming headset decked out in GUNDAM color scheme and styling is back in stock. No, it’s not for people who have only a passing interest in GUNDAM because you can get the vanilla version of the same headset for cheaper, but for superfans, Newegg has it in stock and ready to ship immediately.
The Elite controller is compatible with the Xbox Series X|S. The price might be high but it’s worth it if the games you play require precise control. This professional-grade controller features adjustable tension thumbsticks, shorter hair trigger locks, wraparound textured grips, interchangeable thumbsticks and paddle shapes, custom profiles saved on your controller itself, and included USB Type C cable with charging dock. It boasts up to 40 hours of battery life.
ASUS RTX 30 Series Gaming PCs
ASUS RTX 30 series gaming PCs are rarely in stock let alone discounted. The ASUS ROG gaming PCs are currently the least expensive desktops you can get that are equipped with RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 video cards. That’s saying something since ASU ROG rigs are often complimented for their build quality and design aesthetics. ASUS also usually makes the best aftermarket video cards on the market.
In addition to apparel, the IGN Store now carries a huge assortment of licensed popular figures from your favorite games, animes, and manga. Check out this 6.3″ recreation of the Doom Slayer from Doom Eternal. It’s up for preorder right now.
Eric Song is IGN’s deal curator and spends roughly 1/4 of his income on stuff he posts. Check out the IGN Deals articles and subscribe to the IGN Deals Twitter page.
