Far Cry 6’s Weird Guns And Expanded Customization Are Focus Of New Gameplay

Far Cry 6 is shaping up to be a return to the franchise’s exotic, tropical roots while also embracing the over-the-top nature of recent sequels. New footage shown during Ubisoft’s livestream focused on the cast of rebels you’ll partner with to liberate the island of Yara, along with the inventive weapons–like the minigun made from motorcycle parts–that you’ll get to use while fighting for the liberation of the secluded country.

Before the livestream, we got to check out an extended presentation showcasing the different aspects of Far Cry 6‘s open world and its action-oriented gameplay. Along with that, we also heard from developers at Ubisoft as they explained how they made a more vocal and present Far Cry protagonist, and how improvised weaponry offers the most diverse arsenal of tools that the franchise has seen yet.

Now Playing: Far Cry 6 – Everything You Need To Know So Far

Like most recent Far Cry games, at the center of its high-octane adventure across vast landscapes is the main villain. In Far Cry 6, Presidente Anton Castillo–played by Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito–has taken control of the isolated island country of Yara with the aim to bring the nation into a new golden age by any means necessary. While Far Cry 5 and its epilogue, New Dawn, featured custom characters that let their actions speak for them, the next game will see the return of a voiced protagonist. Far Cry 6 focuses on Dani Rojas, who can be either a male or female character. While most Far Cry games follow the “fish-out-of-water” conceit, Dani is a native of Yara, adding further stakes in their attempt to overthrow Castillo’s regime. The protagonist will also be present in the game’s cutscenes (a first since the original Far Cry), which will show off their personality and different outfits when interacting with other characters.

By and large, Far Cry 6 doesn’t deviate much from the loop and gameplay experience of recent Far Cry games. This loop focuses heavily on exploring your surroundings, engaging in side-missions, retaking outposts, and eliminating key members of Castillo’s military to destabilize their control of the island nation. It’s familiar and still looks to capture those same thrilling moments of open-world hijinks that you would expect from the series. However, Far Cry 6 presents a bit more flexibility with how you go about facing off against Castillo’s regime.

One of the more significant innovations in Far Cry 6 is the new weapon types, which now include three special categories of firearms and gear. The first type is the Regular variety, which includes standard pistols, assault rifles, and shotguns–a mix of recycled equipment passed down from the Cold War era along with modern weapons stolen from Castillo’s army. The second type is known as the Resolver: jury-rigged weapons made up of junk items and scrap. Along with the minigun mentioned earlier, there’s also a flamethrower and a disc launcher that fires burned CD copies of the ’90s hit song “Macarena,” which plays whenever you charge the weapon and fire it. The final weapon type is Supremos, specialized augmented backpacks that can unleash super moves–such as a back-mounted mortar launcher or rocket-powered jetpack.

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Furthermore, all of these weapons across three categories are customizable, letting you turn a simple handgun into a machine pistol with a drum magazine. According to the developers, player and loadout customization has a deeper role in this game than in earlier entries. Along with the weapon augments, you can also customize your repurposed classic muscle or town cars with different decals and guns, and even deck out Dani with varying options of clothing that offer bonus perks, such as increased stealth and better weapons handling. It’s an unusual approach for a Far Cry game, which has been primarily focused on what sort of weapons you were carrying until now. Still, it adds an interesting twist that presents more variety and a greater sense of fun in the combat engagements.

Stealth is much more viable, as well. You can even holster your gun to hide in plain sight and bribe roaming guards to avoid engagements. In some regard, it does lean a bit further into becoming an RPG, putting it in line with New Dawn. However, lead game designer David Grivel tempered those expectations and stated that the expanded customization gives a stronger feeling of choice in exploring the island and coming up with your own solutions.

“So Far Cry has always mixed genres; there are bits of RPG-like elements and survival gameplay,” said Grivel. “While that is a standard throughout, it’s also a shooter first. In New Dawn, you would craft a weapon, but you cannot customize them once they are done, so this time around, you can not only acquire new weapons, but you can also craft and upgrade them as you go. We really ran with the do-it-yourself approach, which is a constant in the story and themes of the game. Some of the things that you will attach to your weapon, some scope, some silencers, they will look handmade because that’s the whole point of being a rebel, right? You have to make do with what you have. You can really customize the way you want. That’s the keyword for us: customize. We really tried to embrace that philosophy across the board.”

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As mentioned before, Dani Rojas is more present in the main story than previous Far Cry protagonists. Instead of just being a hired gun who silently takes on assigned jobs, we get a clearer sense of Dani’s personality and motivation for taking part in the conflict. In some of the story scenes we saw during our presentation, Dani will interact and bond with different rebel army members as they take on bolder missions to cripple Castillo’s army. One character in particular we saw was Clara Garcia, who is among the guerrilla army’s most efficient leaders. These scenes show some interesting character moments and fill in many details on what life is like in Yara and how the culture has evolved following decades of isolation. Unfortunately, the devs couldn’t elaborate on if you will be able to make choices in how you interact with these characters in the main story, but I’m excited to see more of what’s in store for these characters and where they fit in on the island.

Like in Far Cry 5, you can also team up with other characters, including rebels and even animals. Known as Amigos, you’ll be able to call in aid to help out with missions or cause chaos in the open world. During the game’s debut last year, we got to see the pet dachshund Chorizo (yes, you can pet them too), who can help sniff out enemies and distract them while you sneak in for the kill. There’s also a pet alligator named Guapo who will chase down enemies and eat them up.

While the plot of Far Cry 6 does deal with some pretty heavy topics related to the occupying army and how that affects the citizens of Yara, the core game itself does keep things pretty light with its over-the-top action and absurd open-world antics. This recent look at the game showcases a lot of the raw thrills you can get, but it still left us with a lot of questions regarding the game’s scope, how the added element of choice and customization will influence the main plot, and even if co-op play will still be available in the game.

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I would have liked to have seen more about Anton Castillo and the sort of activities you can do when exploring the open world, but that will have to wait till a later date. Still, as an admirer of the Far Cry series, Far Cry 6 looks to be shaping up as a solid follow-up that keeps up with the franchise’s fast pace and scope. It may not look to rock the boat or make big sweeping changes for the franchise, but that’s not necessarily a negative. The type of thrills that the Far Cry series offers are usually fun and bombasic and more of that is certainly welcome.

Far Cry 6 is scheduled for release on October 7, 2021, launching on PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Google Stadia. For more on what’s to come with Ubisoft’s slate of games, be sure to check back with GameSpot’s Play For All coverage throughout June.

Griftlands By Don’t Starve Dev Klei Releases June 1

Griftlands by Don’t Starve developer Klei Entertainment will be released on June 1. Initially announced at the 2017 E3 event and released in an alpha version in 2019, the full Griftlands game will first launch through Steam, Klei has announced. Following shortly after, on June 4, you’ll also be able to purchase the game on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PS4.

Griftlands is a narrative RPG primarily driven through card mechanics. According to a PS Blog post by Klei Entertainment’s designer Kevin Forbes, Griftlands will offer both “multiple branching stories” and a “deck-building card game with deep interlocking systems driving both combat and negotiation.”

Now Playing: Griftlands Reveal Trailer | PC Gaming Show E3 2019

Forbes emphasizes Griftlands’ replayability and strong narrative. NPCs who were your ally in one playthrough may be an enemy in the next, and scenarios like boss fights will be shuffled randomly.

The game will first release in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) and English. Official translations in other languages will get added in the weeks following launch.

Griftlands’ alpha edition included only one playable character, Sal, while the full soon-to-be-released version features a total of three playable characters and much more content, cards, bosses, and NPCs. The other two characters players can take control of, other than Sal the bounty hunter, are Rook–“a spy with a mysterious contract”– and Smith–a guy who is just trying to collect his inheritance.

Klei Entertainment made Don’t Starve, a survival game released in 2013 that received positive reviews. In GameSpot’s Don’t Starve review, critic Nathan Meunier rated it a 7/10. He praised the blend of survival, crafting, and exploration elements, while critiquing the game’s “unflinchingly brutal difficulty” and “lacking the rewards that would balance out the repetition.”

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Trials of Osiris Rewards This Week In Destiny 2 (May 28-June 1)

Another chance to take on the Trials of Osiris has come to Destiny 2, bringing with it some of the best rewards in the game. As always, the competitive multiplayer challenge will feature a new map for its weekend run, as well as new rewards you can pick up along the way.

Each week, the Trials of Osiris map and rewards are randomized when the event launches with Destiny 2’s daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET on Friday. Check out this week’s rewards and the map you’ll play on below. As usual, you’ll also be able to earn Trials tokens for your battles in the Crucible, which you can spend with Saint-14 until the weekly reset on June 1.

Trials of Osiris Map And Rewards (May 28-June 1)

  • Map: Exodus Blue
  • 3 wins — Hunter, Titan, and Warlock Gauntlets – Pyrrhic Ascent Grasps, Gauntlets, and Gloves
  • 5 wins — Eye of Sol, Kinetic sniper rifle
  • 7 wins — Hunter, Titan, and Warlock Helmet – Pyrrhic Ascent Mask, Helm, and Hood
  • Flawless run — Shayura’s Wrath (Adept), Void submachine gun

The Trials of Osiris runs from Friday to Tuesday every week, providing one of the toughest challenges in Destiny 2 for Crucible players. Your goal in the PvP mode is to win as many matches as possible before you suffer three total losses, which forces you to reset your Trials run, or Passage, and try again. It’s worth noting, though, that there’s no team matchmaking in Trials: You have to assemble your own three-player fireteam to run the event. You’ll earn loot at certain points as you rack up victories, but the best rewards in the event come when you go on a winning streak of seven matches in a row–a “Flawless” run.

While the goal in Trials is to hit that flawless run, the reality is that Trials is very tough, and most players may never achieve a flawless run. But the event isn’t just for the very best players in the game. You can still earn Trials rewards, some of the best weapons available, just by playing matches, win or lose. The End Game bounty from Saint-14 awards each week’s three-win reward just for participating.

If you can manage to go Flawless, you’ll visit the Lighthouse and earn exclusive rewards. Opening the chest in the Lighthouse now gets you an “Adept” weapon, which has extra stat boosts you can’t get almost anywhere else. Visit Saint-14 to pick up a Trials Passage and bounties to get started, but remember that you have to spend any Trials tokens you earn for wins with Saint-14 before the weekly reset on Tuesday, June 1. These tokens expire at the end of the weekend you earned them, so get your rewards while you can.

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Conan Exiles’ First Major Expansion, Isle Of Siptah, Is Out Now

Conan Exiles‘ first major expansion, Isle of Siptah, is now available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and PC. Conan Exiles is an open-world survival game set in the world of Conan the Barbarian and the Isle of Siptah adds several new features and a bigger map.

The expansion increases the size of the map adding dozens of new points of interest, three new NPC factions, and a new religion. The expansion has been in Steam Early Access since September 2020, allowing for community feedback to influence the changes in the expansion. The vocal community helped point the developers in the direction of the areas players felt were the most important, Conan Exiles Project Director Scott Junior explained.

“The result is a massive and vibrant island, with loads to explore, and more freedom to pursue the objectives you enjoy the most,” Junior said in a press release. “This kind of optimization is precisely what early access should be all about.”

The Isle of Siptah expansion also features over a dozen new dungeons and two new building sets, allowing players to build pirate towns and majestic castles. The base game of Conan Exiles is also now available on Xbox Game Pass for console and cloud, arriving alongside Xbox Series X|S optimization.

Conan Exiles’ Isle of Siptah Expansion is available now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, and PC for $20.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

The Spider-Man: Miles Morales Bodega Cat is Now A Delightful Action Figure

Sure, Insomniac’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales was one of our favorite games from 2020, and it had great characters backing up a fun, heartfelt story, but we all know who the real star is. The Bodega Cat suit, which pairs Miles up with a Spider mask-wearing feline he saves in a side mission, is now an action figure from Hot Toys.

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Standing almost 12-inches tall, this $275 figure is one-sixth scale to an actual Miles Morales and recreates the look from the game remarkably well. Miles has donned his red Spider-Man hoodie, his giant headphones, some solid shoes, and most importantly, Spider-Cat riding in his backpack.

The figure comes with an array of add-ons, including rollerblades for Miles, a smartphone, a coffee cup, multiple eye variants for different expressions, Miles’ sketchbook, and even Venom blast effects. With 30 points of articulation, Miles is pretty flexible for different poses.

Meanwhile, Spider-Cat has two different poses: Riding in Miles’ backpack or standing on his back/shoulders.

Unfortunately, Spider-Cat won’t be swinging into your display case anytime soon. According to toy seller Sideshow.com, the Miles Morales Bodega Cat suit is expected to ship sometime between July 2022 and September 2022. You can pre-order it from Sideshow here.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/genuinely considering blowing a paycheck on this…for IGN.

New to Disney+ in June 2021: Marvel’s Loki, Pixar’s Luca, and More

June 2021 will see the long-awaited arrival of Marvel’s Loki on Disney+. The first episode will air on Wednesday, June 9 and a new episode will air for the next five Wednesdays. This new series starring Tom Hiddleston will follow Owen Wilson’s Mobius and the TVA’s plan to force Loki to fix the mess he made during the events of Avengers: Endgame.

You can watch the official Marvel’s Loki trailer in the video below:

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On the movie front, Pixar’s Luca will become available to all Disney+ subscribers on Friday, June 18 and it tells a coming-of-age story about “one young boy experiencing an unforgettable summer filled with gelato, pasta, and endless scooter rides. Luca (voice of Jacob Tremblay) shares these adventures with his newfound best friend, Alberto (voice of Jack Dylan Grazer), but all the fun is threatened by a deeply-held secret: they are sea monsters from another world just below the water’s surface.”

Additionally, those who have yet to see Raya and the Last Dragon will get their chance on June 4 as it will no longer require Premiere Access.

Check out the slideshow gallery below for a spotlight of some of the most notable June 2021 Disney+ releases, followed by the full list:

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Friday, June 4

  • Raya and the Last Dragon
  • Disney Amphibia (S2)
  • Disney Junior Muppet Babies (S3)
  • Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted (S3) – Ep. Texas Throwdown
  • Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
  • Us Again
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  • High School Musical: The Musical: The Series – Episode 204 “The Storm”
  • Big Shot – Episode 108 “Everything to Me”
  • Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Episode 106
  • Marvel Studios Legends – Loki and the Tesseract

Wednesday, June 9

  • Loki – Premiere

Friday, June 11

  • Disney Junior Puppy Dog Pals (S4)
  • The Happiest Millionaire
  • Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted (S3) – Ep. Portugal’s Rugged Coast
  • The Incredible Dr. Pol (S18)
  • Zenimation – Season Two Premiere
  • Big Shot – Episode 109 “Beth MacBeth”
  • High School Musical: The Musical: The Series – Episode 205 “The Quinceañero”
  • Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Episode 107

Wednesday, June 16

  • Loki – Episode 102

Friday, June 18

  • Luca
  • Big Shot – Episode 110 “Marvyn’s Playbook” (Finale)
  • High School Musical: The Musical: The Series – Episode 206 “Yes, And…”
  • Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Episode 108

Wednesday, June 23

  • Loki – Episode 103

Friday, June 25

  • Disney Bunk’d (S4)
  • PJ Masks (S4)
  • Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted (S3) – Ep. Croatia’s Coastal Adventure
  • Running Wild With Bear Grylls (S6)
  • When Sharks Attack (S1- S6)
  • The Mysterious Benedict Society – Episode 101 “A Bunch of Smart Orphans” (Premiere)
  • Wolfgang
  • High School Musical: The Musical: The Series – Episode 207 “The Field Trip”
  • Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Episode 109

Wednesday, June 30

  • Loki – Episode 104

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and Twitch

Why Burning Crusade Classic is Embracing Change After WoW Classic’s Rigid Faithfulness

It’s a busy time for Ion Hazzikostas, game director for World of Warcraft. His team is hard at work fussing with a new major patch for the game’s retail version, while at the same time they’re preparing to effectively re-release the game’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade, as a part of World of Warcraft Classic.

Hazzikostas doesn’t seem too stressed out, though. In fact, he says the hardest parts of putting together Burning Crusade Classic’s launch (including making sure players didn’t lose all their in-game mail when the pre-patch dropped) are already done.

“Given the nature of the work that goes into reconstructing Burning Crusade Classic, so much of it is actually engineering,” he says, speaking to IGN. “It’s code work. We’re not as worried about like, do the quests work? Do the creatures have the right stats? All that is in. Taking the entire game and updating it to use the Burning Crusade combat formulas, all of that stuff, that’s behind us now.”

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Now it’s just a matter of making sure the servers don’t fall apart on launch day, and aside from ongoing bug fixes, enjoying the ride. Hazzikostas, a World of Warcraft development veteran since the tail end of the original Burning Crusade launch, has a deep love for watching the community discover the worlds he’s helping to create. It’s understandable, given his history as a guild leader and enjoyment of high-level raiding that he maintains even to this day. And he’s been delighted to see that the rediscovery of an Azeroth he’s intimately familiar with in Classic has been met with enthusiasm from the World of Warcraft community.

“The reaction over the last couple of years has been a mix of affirmation of our initial thoughts, and surprise,” Hazzikostas says. “Plenty of people did have that exact experience. There are plenty of people who went in, checked it out, they were like, ‘Okay. Yep. Super not for me.’ And they went back to, back then, Battle for Azeroth, now Shadowlands. And that was fine.

“And then of course there were plenty of other people who were like, ‘I’ve been waiting for this forever.’ And they dove in headfirst. And they were the people who were the most passionate about Classic. The thing that was a surprise was the number of people who were new to World of Warcraft in its entirety, who came in because they just wanted to see what it was all about. They had heard about the legendary game of 15 years ago. And they have been happily playing there ever since.”

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The ongoing community interest in Classic is what ultimately pushed the team to move forward into The Burning Crusade, but Blizzard has learned some lessons along the way. With Classic, Hazzikostas says, the theme was “#NoChanges.” Their goal was to represent the original release of World of Warcraft as faithfully as possible, warts and all. But with The Burning Crusade, they’ve embraced the philosophy of “some changes.” 

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Much of that is inspired by the simple fact that the Blizzard team, the game community, and video games themselves are no longer what they were when The Burning Crusade first came out, and they are now in a position to recognize and embrace that. For one, Blizzard has the advantage of years of institutional knowledge, both from the original Burning Crusade developers who are still on the team, as well as those who have joined the World of Warcraft team since and worked on subsequent expansions. While they don’t ever want to erase the original intent of the expansion’s creators, Hazzikostas says the team is far better equipped to understand why certain decisions were made, and make changes where current understandings of technology, game design, and community would better honor those wishes.

“[Burning Crusade] is running with an authentic foundation, but trying to faithfully reproduce and deliver the intent of the original development team,” he continues. “I think a lot of this experience has been melding my own memories, as a very engaged player from that era, with early development philosophies. Right when I joined the team was when I was able to firsthand absorb a lot of the thinking about, ‘Hey, what worked and what didn’t in Burning Crusade? What do we want to change going forward into Wrath?’ It’s in part because of a philosophical shift in development, which we wouldn’t necessarily want to reproduce, versus, ‘What do we want to change because it didn’t work out in Burning Crusade, and there are regrets?'”

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For one example, Hazzikostas offers the leatherworking profession in-game. By the end of the original Burning Crusade expansion, the community had realized that leatherworking was far and away the best profession to take. That knowledge wasn’t there for most of the expansion — if it had been, people would have played differently. But the knowledge is there now, and will impact how people play. Had the 2007 team known that from the start, Hazzikostas says, they would have changed things at the time.

“From my perspective, part of the process has been melding memories with conversations, with a lot of the same folks who are still around Blizzard, whether they’re on World of Warcraft or on other teams within the company, to really reconstruct and dig into why decisions were made or not made. Which is a fascinating space that we just closed off entirely when it came to Classic Classic, because we were just like, ‘We don’t really care why they were made or not made. We’re just reproducing them as they were.'”

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Hazzikostas’ point about leatherworking is an especially interesting one, and as we talk about The Burning Crusade it becomes apparent just how much collective community knowledge has influenced the expansion’s re-release. At another point in our discussion, he references a bug in one dungeon that lets players get every enemy in the instance stuck on a single ledge, allowing them to farm them and power level.

“15 years ago, no one knew how to do it, and no one did it,” he says. “Now everyone’s doing it and making videos, showing, ‘Hey, this is the way to level from 60 to 70 as a mage in three hours.’

“That’s the part that we can’t change, or that’s the genie you can’t put back in a bottle. The community is so much more sophisticated at this point. They’re just a giant engine that exists to disassemble and solve World of Warcraft. And whether it’s in Shadowlands or various forms back in the day, as developers, we’re trying to add a sense of mystery. We’re trying to add a space to be explored, whether it’s narrative content or whether it’s figuring out how to optimize the system, and what the best way to play a mage is. Part of the novelty of Burning Crusade Classic is seeing, in some ways, what the modern community with all of their knowledge will make of encounters and content that stumped millions of people around the world 15 years ago.”

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Along those same lines, I ask Hazzikostas about an internal office pool he told me about at the launch of Classic, where employees were guessing how long it would take the first raid team to beat Ragnaros. Hazzikostas admits that players were way, way faster than anyone at Blizzard expected, again in part thanks to that growth in community knowledge. I ask him if they have any pools going for Burning Crusade raid bosses.

“At this point, I think we know better,” he replies, but then adds that he thinks the Sunwell will be considered challenging, “even by modern standards.”

“I think that, by the end of Burning Crusade in 2008, that’s actually when the community at large was starting to reach its modern level of sophistication, particularly around information sharing.”

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He reminisces about the early evolution of the World of Warcraft community, which he says entered the game with an inherited ethos from games like EverQuest, where raiding wasn’t instanced. Instead, on a single server, there’d be one dragon. If a guild killed it, no one else could. As a result, guilds had a tendency to keep their strategies incredibly close to their chests, and carried that belief in secrecy over into early World of Warcraft. 

“Burning Crusade was really the first time we started to see kill videos released by World First guilds, sharing of information, but also things like public logging sites, and leaderboards that were global. So you could look at like, ‘Hey, there’s this mage in Korea that’s doing ridiculous damage. What are they doing? What is the rotation? What abilities are they using?’ So I can learn from it. And that exponentially accelerated the rate of sharing knowledge and community mastery. And Sunwell was the first raid that Blizzard ever made that was tuned for that era. It was tested by Cutting Edge guilds, using every trick in the book that they knew on the public test realm, and tuned to challenge them. Are players today even better and more sophisticated? Yes. But the gap, I believe, is far smaller there than it was at any point prior.”

As an MMORPG, World of Warcraft has always thrived or wilted based on the strength of its community, more so than many other games. Though Hazzikostas and the team were always aware that some people would bounce off of Classic and some people would stick, it was never a given that The Burning Crusade Classic would happen. Had Classic been a flop, or a flash in the pan, we might not be here at all. And that attitude, Hazzikostas says, holds true for Classic’s future post-Burning Crusade.

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When thinking of what comes next, Hazzikostas recalls the original launch of Classic, in which everyone was asking in interviews what would come after. Would it be Burning Crusade? At the time, the response was that Blizzard wanted to “wait and see” what the community did. And he affirms that for now, an eventual Wrath of the Lich King Classic is “kind of in the same place.”

“…Just as we say when people ask us with Shadowlands, ‘How long are you going to keep doing this? You’re coming up on your eighth, ninth expansion. Is there an end?’ And my answer there is: no. We have no plans to stop making this. We’re going to keep telling awesome Warcraft stories and expanding this world as long as players want to experience it. And there are no signs of that stopping.

“Similarly, in the growing Classic communities, we’ll see what Burning Crusade versus original Classic ends up looking like in the long run. We are committed to them long-term. And we want to continue to offer an evolving journey, set of experiences. What form that takes — and I know it can sound like just platitudes. It truly will reflect what we hear from that community, What they’re looking to do, how they see the journey ahead of them unfolding. And we have a few options that we can consider, but first things first, let’s get them into Outland. Let’s make sure that experience is smooth and everything is as it should be for them. And then we’ll figure out where we go from there.”

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But while numbers and interest may ultimately determine the viability of future content, they’re not explicitly what define success for Hazzikostas personally. Aside from pretty understandable hopes that the launch is technically stable, he’s ultimately interested in watching players go through the Outland journey he’s familiar with and loves — not by burning through it without thinking as players can now on the retail version of the game, but as a slow, epic adventure.

“There’s something freeing about a large chunk of the community going in to experience the journey. They know the destination. They’re not rushing to the end. Some people in competitive guilds, who want to get their server first or whatever, are. But for a huge chunk of people, they’re there to savor the experience.

“When everyone is sharing that mindset of wanting to appreciate the journey, it’s just a great community to be a part of. And I can’t wait to experience that all over again.”

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic launches on June 1. The pre-patch, which includes the Draenei and Blood Elf races and other updates, is available now.

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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

John Boyega “Open To Come Back” To Star Wars

Actor John Boyega has said he’s “open to com[ing] back” to work on future Star Wars projects, according to comments made in a video posted online. This represents a potential softening on previous, also semi-recent, comments from the actor critical of the franchise and its handling of his character Finn’s arc due to his race.

“Whichever way, I am open to the conversation as long as it is Kathleen [Kennedy], JJ [Abrams], and maybe someone else and the team, it’s a no-brainer,” he said in a short video clip you can see below.

That Boyega referenced Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, by name is both surprising and telling of how conversations behind the scenes may have progressed around Boyega’s frustrations with Star Wars. In the time between the comments mentioned above, Boyega had also alluded to there being conversations at some point with an unnamed high-level Disney executive specifically about his frustrations. At the time, it sounded like Boyega’s concern was about making conditions better for other actors down the road–but, as it turns out now, Boyega has apparently remained open to another collaboration.

Boyega, who is set to reunite with writer-director Joe Cornish on Attack the Block 2, is far from the only big name involved with Star Wars also critical of the recent trilogy. Earlier this week, Abrams reflected on how he wished the recent Star Wars trilogy had a better plan–a statement unlikely to shock vocal fans.

Every IGN Far Cry Game Review

Now that Ubisoft has finally announced a release date for Far Cry 6, we have another four months to kill before we have a bunch of new bad guys to kill. In the meantime, why not look back over the 17-year history of the series to see what IGN’s reviewers have thought of the often tropical, sometimes prehistoric, and always weird open-world shooter series at every step along the way?

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But those are just contemporaneous reviews – snapshots in time from an era long past. Using the powers of 20-20 hindsight, weigh in on which Far Cry cried loudest in your heart.

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