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When Marvel’s Midnight Suns was revealed today, one of the featured elements was the Abbey — a home base where you can carve out time to hang out with your favorite superheroes.

The mechanic bears more than a little resemblance to the one found in Persona. First, you choose a character that you want to spend time with, be it Wolverine or Captain Marvel; then you need to choose the right activity, like playing video games. Doing so will raise player-created Hunter’s relationship with the hero in question.

But don’t get any ideas about the Hunter falling in love with, say, Ghost Rider, creative director Jake Solomon tells IGN in a new interview. You will just be “very, very, very good friends,” emphasis on the “very.”

In a separate interview, Solomon characterized it as “math” and “decidedly not romantic.” However, it will be as “deep as friendships go.” Cap and Bucky deep? We’ll see just have to see.

“The idea is that by the time you maximize your friendship with these characters, you are as close to them as anybody else in the Marvel universe. But yeah, not romantic,” Solomon says. “[T]rust me, if I could romance Blade, I would But yes, it’s more a case of these are very well-defined characters. So instead it’s deep, deep friendship.”

Marvel’s Midnight Suns will seek to adapt Marvel’s characters within Firaxis’ popular XCOM formula, which it revived back in 2012. The Abbey will be a key component, with the heroes you invest time into having the potential to unlock special powers that can “change the battlefield” along with a unique costume.

Midnight Suns will be a fast-paced tactics game that seeks to flip the traditional XCOM formula. Instead of soldiers facing overwhelming odds, it will feature powerful superheroes, necessitating major changes to the overall gameplay. We’ll get to see what that will entail for ourselves when Midnight Suns’ gameplay debuts exclusively on IGN on September 1.

Overall, Marvel has offered Firaxis Games a relatively free hand in how it has shaped Midnight Suns’ depiction of the Marvel universe. While Marvel is “pretty involved” in the creative process, they haven’t mandated any of the story elements, Solomon says. Marvel was even amenable to a customizable character despite the obvious difficulty of being able to create a unique hero who could stand next to Iron Man and seem like an equal.

Ultimately, Midnight Suns will seek to adapt the original early ’90s story, which put the spotlight on Marvel’s supernatural heroes.

“For us, it’s fun to take the established characters and pull them into the dark side of Marvel,” Solomon says.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is under development for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. It is slated to arrive in March 2022. For more news and info on Gamescom 2021, check out our Gamescom 2021 hub.

Death Stranding: Director’s Cut has shown off multiple new items and missions – and also a jetpack.

Shown off during Gamescom’s Opening Night Live, an extended trailer showed off multiple new features. New items include thrusters for your jetpack that allow you glide, a cargo catapult that allows you to fire cargo to faraway areas, and a Buddy Bot that can now carry Sam. A new weapon training area includes high score chasing events and virtual combat encounters. Boss battles can also be revisited and refought via your Private Room area, and leaderboards have been introduced.

More music and customisation options have also been added, and jump ramps have also been added that allow you to perform tricks on a bike. The previously announced racetrack addition also got a new introduction.

New delivery missions have also been added, including a stealth-based facility that looks very much like a Metal Gear level (with appropriate music). We also got a curious teaser for what looks like an underwater area, with a potentially dangerous whale.

Death Stranding: Director’s Cut is coming in September, bringing everything from performance upgrades, updated combat, and new items to deploy, with Kojima Productions also promising that it will expand on the social strand system. In fact, it’s adding enough new material for the first time that even its creator doesn’t really agree with the title ‘Director’s Cut’.

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].

That a new Saints Row game is in development isn’t a surprise. And after last week’s blatant tease, neither is the fact that it’s a total reboot of the decade-and-a-half-old open-world crime saga. I got a look at a gameplay demo of Volition’s freshly announced, co-op-enabled project, which is due out relatively soon on February 25, 2022 for PC as well as both current- and last-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles. And speaking as someone whose favorite game in the series is Saints Row The Third, I was pleased to see that Volition seems to be aiming for a similar tone for the reboot, rather than the more GTA-clone feel of the first two and the over-the-top ridiculousness of the most recent two.

Saints Row recasts the purple-clad gang as a group of young friends in the southwest USA-inspired city of Santo Ileso who’ve seen their ambitions in life stifled, and so they bind together with the aim of not starting a mere street gang, but instead building an entire criminal empire. You’ll play The Boss, and you’ll be able to customize your avatar, just as you could in the previous games. This includes eight voice options. Rounding out your crew are Eli, the planner and financial guru in the group (more on this shortly); Nina, your ace driver/mechanic with a background in art history and anthropology; and Kevin, the people-pleasing DJ who’s also a thrill-seeker.

Yes, that means no Johnny Gat, no Pierce, etc. This is a new Saints Row – though Volition did hint at some Easter eggs that will call back to the original games, though we don’t yet know what form they’ll take.

One thing definitely returning, however, is the Insurance Fraud minigame activity. Volition chief creative officer Jim Boone said it wouldn’t be a Saints Row game without it, and said a few other fan-favorite activities would also come back, though he didn’t name-check any others.

Santo Ileso certainly feels fresh compared to Stilwater just on the back of its desert theme. Volition describes it as “one of” the largest cities it’s ever built, and it’ll feature nine unique districts – from El Dorado’s “grime meets glitz” to the Los Panteros gang’s home turf of Rancho Providencia – as well as the ability to buy plots of land and build specific fronts on them that will each unlock new gameplay opportunities.

This seems to be a big focus for Saints Row in addition to the usual driving and shooting, which, rest assured, there will be plenty of. The demo I saw showcased plenty of cars, motorcycles, helicopters, bulldozers, wingsuits, huge stunt jumps, off-road driving, and a ton more. Saints Row may be walking the series back from the crazy corner it had painted itself into, but it’s still very much an over-the-top, arcade-y crime sandbox. Volition cites John Wick, Baby Driver, and Hobbs & Shaw as its creative inspirations.

On the subject of gangs, three of them control the city: Los Panteros, who are the physically imposing melee combat enthusiasts; the Marshalls, a private military conglomerate that favors an abundance of tech; and the anarchistic Idols, who are motivated by fame and notoriety and tend to attack in huge numbers.

The entire campaign is playable in two-player co-op, though when directly asked whether or not the Saints Row reboot supports cross-play either across consoles or across generations (or both), Volition completely avoided the question, so I take that as a “no.”

If Saints Row turns out to essentially be a follow-up to Saints Row 3 with all-new characters in a whole new world, I’ll be plenty happy with that. But at the very least, it’s walking back from a “pure crazy” tone to a more grounded “over the top” tone, and I’m eager to see how that translates into the final game.

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.

Sifu, the new kung-fu game from Sloclap, is coming out on February 22 on consoles and PC. A new release date trailer premiered during Opening Night Live.

As announced during Gamescom, the kung-fu game Sifu gets a February release date. Preorders on PlayStation Store and Epic Games Store are available now.

Also announced at Gamescom, Sifu is getting a special Deluxe edition which includes the base game, 48-hour early access, a digital artbook, and the original soundtrack from Beijing-based composer Howie Lee.

Sifu is a new martial arts game from the developers of Absolver. Sifu features a unique gameplay mechanic where each time the player “dies” they will revive as a slightly older version. In IGN’s interview with the developers, the aging mechanic is a metaphor for the wisdom martial artists gain with age.

Of course, this is on top of the bone-crunching martial arts gameplay and combat.

For more from Gamescom and Opening Night Live, check out IGN’s full coverage for news, trailers, and announcements.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.