Monark, a school-based RPG from former Shin Megami Tensei developers has been officially announced and is coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.
As reported by Gematsu, the game, Monark, was formally revealed in the latest issue of Weekly Famitsu, and is in development at Lancarse, with character design from so-bin and scenario design from SMT veteran Ryutaro Ito. It will launch on October 14 in Japan, but there has been no word just yet about a worldwide release or localization.
According to Ryokutya2098‘s writeup, the game’s protagonist is the deputy head of “the True Student Council,” an organization set up to “solve the abnormal situations in the school”. The game has multiple endings, with different routes depending on which “buddy character” the protagonist picks.
There’s also a “madness” meter in the command-based battle system that you can increase “to use more powerful skills” and an “EGO system” that is related to the seven deadly sins, and will be based on the player’s choices, and their abilities to employ demon underlings.
According to an interview from the magazine, the developers were inspired by 1994’s Shin Megami Tensei If… and the fact that “nowadays there are no games like it”. The interviews also revealed there will be over 100 student stories in the games and “about 40 songs”.
Warner Bros. and DC Films are reportedly planning to send Blue Beetle straight to streaming rather than giving the DCEU movie a theatrical release.
The Los Angeles Times published a report about Warner Bros.’ movie plans, specifically the company’s release strategy in light of the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery. Interestingly, it included a snapshot of the films being made exclusively for HBO Max, and listed Blue Beetle as one of the “mid-budget DC movies on the way for streaming,” along with the studio’s Batgirl project.
Films like Godzilla vs. Kong and Mortal Kombat helped to drive more customers to HBO Max and ultimately keep people from canceling their subscriptions, so it’s perhaps no surprise that Warner Bros. plans to accelerate its DC movie release schedule, with as many as four new movies hitting theaters each year (starting in 2022) and an additional two “riskier” movies debuting on HBO Max.
Blue Beetle has appeared in several animated series, including Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Young Justice. The DC hero is also set to appear in a new DC animated film sometime in 2022, along with three other DC animated shorts that have been announced. All of these films are being produced by Rick Morales, who previously worked on Mortal Kombat: Scorpion’s Revenge.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
The policies put in place by President Trump to ban TikTok and WeChat from the United States have been revoked by President Biden. As a part of a new executive order, Biden has rescinded the blanket bans and has initiated a more measured approach to reviewing foreign-connected software applications.
Back in the middle of 2020, President Trump issued a series of executive orders that required the parent companies of WeChat and TikTok to spin off their United States operations and sell them to an American company or be prohibited. After jockeying from several American corporations, Oracle was eventually settled on to take over certain aspects of TikTok’s infrastructure. However, this deal never went through, and Trump’s executive orders have been dealt blows from court decisions.
After assuming the presidency, President Biden took further steps to prevent the TikTok and WeChat bans from going into effect. Today, his administration officially revoked Trump’s executive orders, meaning that TikTok and WeChat aren’t under imminent threat of prohibition in the United States. However, Biden has also empowered Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to review apps that are directly controlled by or fall under the jurisdiction of “foreign adversaries” (both TikTok and WeChat are owned by Chinese companies).
Under this initiative, the Department of Commerce has the authority to issue bans against apps that are deemed national security risks. Commerce will most likely be closely reviewing TikTok and WeChat, both of which have faced controversies stemming from links to Chinese government censorship and security efforts. In addition, as Bloomberg reports, this review process is designed to be flexible, taking into account the specific context of each company that is investigated.
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Battlefield 2042 has been officially announced, and it’s a multiplayer-only game. Developer DICE also revealed its plans for a beta test, and here’s what we know so far.
A FAQ posted on the Battlefield website reveals that there will be an open beta for Battlefield 2042 that will be released “in the months leading up to launch.” The beta will be available on all platforms, which includes PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
The FAQ also states that people who preorder a copy of Battlefield 2042 will get “early access” to the beta. DICE will announce more details on the open beta in the future, at which point we should learn more about its release timing and content.
In regards to Battlefield 2042’s live service elements, DICE says the studio is taking a “new approach” with the new game with the aim of keeping the community together “for years to come.” While the game has no campaign, DICE says it will deliver new storytelling elements throughout the game’s seasons. Each of these will last “about three months.”
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Each new season will add new free and paid content through its Battle Pass. In the first 12 months, DICE will launch four battle passes, four new Specialist characters, and “more fresh content.”
Battlefield 2042 launches on October 22. A cinematic announcement trailer can be seen above, while the first gameplay footage will be released during the Xbox E3 2013 briefing on Sunday, June 13. For lots more, check out GameSpot’s preview content linked below.
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The world is at war in the next installment of DICE’s Battlefield franchise, but the series isn’t going back to the early 20th Century with its next installment. Instead, it’s projecting into the near future with Battlefield 2042, a multiplayer-focused entry that’s imagining a future for us that’s not particularly bright.
Electronic Arts and DICE gave GameSpot an early look at Battlefield 2042 with a big rundown of some of what we can expect from the game and a chance to check out the game’s reveal trailer. First and foremost, DICE is foregoing a single-player campaign for Battlefield 2042–instead, the developer says, it’s focusing on “what it does best” with multiplayer. But that doesn’t mean there’s no narrative driving the conflict at the heart of the game. Instead, it’s maybe a little too close to home, imagining a world 20 years from now that’s been thrown into turmoil by real-world issues like climate change. And it looks like DICE will still find ways to deliver story through its multiplayer gameplay, albeit in a new, as-yet-unclear way.
Battlefield 2042 puts you in the role of a “No-Pat,” a person from one of the many countries that has collapsed as climate change worsens, resources dwindle, and governments fail. No-Pats, or non-patriated people, have no country of their own, with Battlefield 2042 imagining a worldwide refugee crisis creating a whole lot of conflict itself. The No-Pat people come from all walks of life, but just as farmers, doctors, engineers, and factory workers are displaced by the global problems, so are soldiers–and without a country to fight for, they’re also searching for a way to make a future in the world.
Thrown on top of this is a war that explodes between the US and Russia. With an influx of No-Pats, there suddenly is a huge number of soldiers that each country can recruit and use on the battlefield. So while you might fight for one side or the other, you aren’t really a citizen of either nation; instead, you’re fighting in campaigns all over the globe in hopes that you’ll be on the winning side, and that you’ll earn “a seat at the table” when hostilities finally end.
So there’s what sounds like a fairly deep story setup for Battlefield 2042, despite it being a multiplayer-only game.
“We’re really leaning into the thing that we really do best, we really do massive battlefields, massive multiplayer experiences,” Design director Daniel Berlin said in an interview with GameSpot. “…But there’s still a really important aspect of this, and that is the narrative of 2042, and we still aim to really deliver a compelling story as we develop this world.”
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“As we go through the live service and each season, the first four seasons in year one, we will deliver a new specialist,” Berlin said. “And you will see the world evolve, the locations, and the world which is pushed forward with narrative, and you’ll see it through the eyes of the new specialists that we’re introducing.”
The specialists Berlin referred to are the No-Pat characters you can play as during multiplayer matches, which somewhat replace Battlefield’s traditional class system. Those classes, like Recon, Assault, Support, and Engineer, still exist, but they’re more like categories into which different specialists fall. DICE showed off four different specialists that you can play as in the game, with each carrying a specific trait and gadget that’s unique to their particular character.
The four specialists DICE showed were Webster, a nimble Assault character, who sports a zipline gun for quick repositioning and who can move faster than other characters while aiming; Maria, a Support, whose teammates get more health when she revives them than if others handle that job, and who carries a pistol that can heal and revive allies from a distance; Boris, an engineer who can deploy independent turrets, but whose trait amps up their capabilities when he stays near them; and Casper, a Recon character with a drone he can pilot manually to spot enemies or leave hovering for passive enemy identification, and a trait that allows him to sense when enemies are sneaking up on him, to make sniping a little less dangerous.
DICE said there will be 10 specialists in the game when Battlefield 2042 launches, with four more releasing over the course of its first four seasons. And according to Berlin, those fully voiced characters are the way through which you’ll experience the game’s story. Each one brings a different perspective on what’s happening as the game evolves through its live-service offerings.
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But while you’ll have specific characters with specific items and abilities who fall into general class categories, there’s still a lot of customization in terms of how you play. In Battlefield 2042, any character can use any weapon or secondary gadget, such as grenades–so you’re not locked to a certain loadout based on who you pick or what role you decide to fulfill on your team.
Multiplayer is the main thrust of Battlefield 2042, as Berlin explained, and DICE is looking to expand the scope of what it has delivered in the past. First and foremost, it’s doubling the number of players in its largest matches–up to 128 players, up from 64 in the past. (It’s worth noting, though, that previous-gen versions of the game will stick with 64-player matches, with maps adjusted to accommodate.)
Those big battles will take place in the All-Out Warfare category of modes, which is the 2042 evolution of classic big-team modes like Conquest and Breakthrough. The goal in both modes is to capture sectors on a map; in Conquest, teams can attack any of the sectors at a time, while in Breakthrough, one team attacks and tries to capture sectors in sequence, while the other team defends.
With more players in All-Out Warfare matches, maps are also increasing in size to accommodate. DICE showed several maps that’ll be available in the game, which vary in size to make for different-sized battles. The largest was Breakaway, a map set in Antarctica that includes ice fields, bases, and locations in between.
During the presentation, Berlin said that while maps are huge, DICE is thinking about ways to keep the action flowing. Maps are designed around the idea of “clustering,” pushing you toward locations where you’re likely to run into other players and get into different kinds of battles. The maps might be big, but Berlin described them as being like several smaller maps stitched together. The clustering idea allows you to zero in on sections of the map that’ll offer different kinds of engagements–whether they’re tight infantry fights or larger, vehicle-based skirmishes.
“We’re building these massive, massive maps this time around,” Berlin explained. “So if you just took a classic Battlefield map and a classic size, and you just said like, yeah, we’re just going to scale this up, almost just take it and you just expand it, that doesn’t necessarily turn out to be a good gameplay experience. Talking from experience, we tested it, it didn’t really play well. So we lean into this concept of the clustering, right? And this is a way for us to control the pacing and really let players choose their own pacing in a sense.”
The customization of your loadout plays into that idea of clustering as well, since you’ll be moving around the map based on what objectives you want to take and which battles you want to fight. Battlefield 2042 introduces a new interface DICE calls the Plus system, which allows you to quickly change the attachments on your weapon on the fly. It gets its name from a holographic interface that spreads out from your gun in the shape of a plus, allowing you to quickly swap through all your attachments. So if you’re heading into a close battle, you can swap for a short-range scope, a suppressor, and an underbarrel shotgun; if you’re headed out into a bigger field, you can quickly pop on longer-range attachments so you’re ready for what’s ahead.
Maps are big, but you’ll have an easier time getting around them. Players pack a tablet that lets them request air-dropped vehicles to their locations, making it possible to get a vehicle much more often in Battlefield 2042–and for vehicles to be more plentiful in a match. Those vehicles have also been made more useful for squads, with passenger seats offering more opportunities for shooting, spotting enemies, and helping your group survive while they travel.
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There’s something else that DICE is bringing to its maps beyond additional scope, more players, and more vehicles, though. They’ll also see some extreme weather events and other elements that can change the battle. The “levolution” concept is back, with maps such as Orbital, which has players fighting over a rocket launchpad, potentially changing based on player actions–like causing that rocket launch to fail with catastrophic results. DICE’s presentation also included footage of a tornado ripping through an urban area, throwing players and vehicles around and creating chaos. Another map, set in Dubai called Hourglass, includes a massive sandstorm that sweeps through and blots out visibility. DICE showed off seven maps with a range of sizes and features, and all of them look as though they’ll offer a lot of variety in the fights and situations they create.
Berlin explained that while there’s a lot going on with any given map, given their sizes, vehicles, and even weather, the clustering approach allows DICE to combine those elements in smart ways. Because players zero in on specific locations on a given map, the sandbox elements are forced to work together in specific ways. As Berlin described it, DICE is looking to take players on a “journey through the map,” hitting hotspots where intense and exciting things can happen, without it all devolving into chaos.
Battlefield is a multiplayer-focused game, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be forced to play with other people. At least with Conquest and Breakthrough modes (we haven’t heard much about what else Battlefield 2042 offers), you’ll have the option to play in battles against AI-controlled bots. You’ll have both AI-controlled enemies and friendly AI on your side of the battle, and it sounds like you’ll even be able to bring friends in to join your squad and take on a bot army.
“We are really leaning into the AI for this game, I think it’s a really important aspect of it,” he explained. “When we’re building this game, we really want to lean into when we create a sandbox environment that has all the cutting-edge technology and the tools and everything, we want to really push that far. And to be able to give access to that space and give access to that experience to players that don’t feel necessarily comfortable in a multiplayer setting, I think that’s the outlook here. So we’ve been working with the AI since the start of the project to really make sure that they balance and they play well. But in that regard, when you play against the AI, we want you to also feel a little bit like you’re the hero, right?
Berlin also said the single-player mode is a great way for newer players to learn Battlefield’s ropes, like piloting vehicles and understanding maps.
“It’s a great space for new players to just come in and be like, hey, I’m just going to mess around in a helicopter at my own pace,” he said. “No one is going to get bothered by me. Or even for someone like myself, who plays a s—ton of Battlefield in my spare time, in the evenings and stuff I hop in and I just shoot some AI. Because it’s just a more relaxed, almost a very social environment you can be in with your friends. You’ll kick it back and play against some AI. And [a] very important thing here as well is if you play against the AI, you still progress in the game.”
There’s a lot more information about Battlefield 2042 we still don’t know, however. DICE is planning to announce more in July during Electronic Arts’ EA Play event, which includes another portion of its multiplayer experience, called Hazard Zone. DICE teased the mode a bit during our presentation, explaining that it’s squad-focused and completely new to Battlefield–while also emphasizing that it is not battle royale. In fact, DICE said, there won’t be a battle royale mode in the game at launch.
Apart from Hazard Zone, there’s another multiplayer experience that’ll be part of Battlefield 2042, which DICE described as a love-letter to the Battlefield franchise that fans will appreciate–but again, we don’t really know much about it.
But we do know when Battlefield 2042 will come out: October 22. So expect a lot more information about what the game will be like, how its live-game systems will work, and what its full multiplayer suite will entail. Battlefield 2042 is slated to release on PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Battlefield is going fully multiplayer with the next installment of DICE’s first-person shooter franchise, and it’s also getting bigger on current-generation consoles and PCs. The developer gave the first look at Battlefield 2042, what players were previously calling Battlefield 6, with a new reveal trailer, which depicts a global setting, a whole mess of vehicles, and huge battles where chaos reigns. The game is set to release on October 22.
Check out the trailer above, which zeroes in on Battlefield’s near-future setting and a whole lot of the gadgets that’ll be at your disposal in the game. First and foremost is a wingsuit, but as the trailer goes on, we quickly get a look at helicopters, fighter jets, robotic dogs, and more.
DICE gave GameSpot an early look at Battlefield 2042 that provided a huge amount of information about the game. For instance, we know this new Battlefield will be multiplayer-only, and that on PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S, it’s going to feature engagements that support as many as 128 players per match–twice what’s possible on PS4 and Xbox One.
The game is set in the near future, as the title suggests, after climate disasters have destroyed dozens of nations. That’s caused a huge influx of soldiers without countries, who are pulled into a worldwide conflict between the US and Russia. We also got a look at a few of Battlefield 2042’s maps, which center on conflicts in Dubai, India, Egypt, South Korea, and Antarctica, to name a few. You can get a glimpse of some of these maps in the trailer, including the ice fields of Antarctica, a rocket launch facility in French Guiana, and a shifting shipping yard in Singapore.
In addition to bigger maps, bigger matches, and more vehicles, Battlefield 2042 will also have extreme weather events that can change the tenor of a battle, or even through matches into total chaos. The end of the trailer shows one of those storms–a huge tornado that picks up and throws objects, vehicles, and players. DICE says that with Battlefield 2042, it’s looking to create more “Battlefield moments” like a classic one depicted in the trailer, in which a fighter jet pilot leaps out of the cockpit to finish a dogfight with a rocket launcher. With “levolution” changes on maps, big player counts, and storms like the tornado, it looks like there should be plenty of possibilities.
Check out our full coverage of DICE’s rundown on Battlefield 2042, and don’t miss our trailer breakdown video that points out everything you might have missed in the reveal trailer. Battlefield 2042 is slated to release on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 22.
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The world, according to Battlefield 2042, has only a scant few decades left of normalcy before all hell breaks loose. The atlas has been ravaged by climate catastrophe, as vast swathes of the population are plagued by food, water, and energy shortages. Nations collapse in on themselves, and countless refugees pour through the borders of the few superpowers left afloat. The United States and Russia are engaged in total war, with those same stateless exiles, known as No-Pats, taking sides in the bloody conflicts that now dot the globe. Needless to say, Battlefield 2042 does not have an optimistic outlook on humanity’s near future. For a franchise that has traditionally fixated on some of the most triumphant warfronts in human history — most recently returning to the heroism of World War II — 2042 represents a sobering change in tone. There do not appear to be any good guys or bad guys here as the earth slowly chokes to death.
Longtime Battlefield developer DICE, as usual, has leveraged the prodigious capabilities of its Frostbite engine to deliver the apocalypse in startling detail. Battlefield 2042 intends to up the ante of the series’ formula in every way. The player-count has been juiced to 128 players, (though the cap remains at 64 players on PS4 and Xbox One), the class system is more modular than ever before, and the studio has gone to great lengths to render our coming dystopia. In the multiplayer map Kaleidoscope, set in South Korea, rogue super-tornadoes tear through the alabaster downtown skyline, sucking up every man, woman, and vehicle in its path. In Hourglass, set in a glistening Persian Gulf metropolis, a torrid, red-hued sandstorm threatens to completely envelop both armies. Breakaway, which takes place in northern Antarctica, will push “soldiers to the brink, as an industry clashes with nature and ice gives way.” The gameplay remains pure Battlefield — Conquest and Breakthrough modes both return — and players should expect to be depleting tickets and holding control points like they did all the way back in Wake Island. The only difference is that they’re now inhabiting a universe that is pushing back against them. There haven’t been many triple-A video games that force the player to confront the ecological crimes of humanity, and Battlefield isn’t pulling any punches.
DICE has made some smart changes along the way to furnish the first installment of the franchise on modern consoles. The traditional four-pronged class system has been upgraded into a cast of bespoke “specialists.” Think of them like the operators in Rainbow Six Siege. Each has both a munitional speciality and a trait, which helps define them in the warfront. Take Maria Falck, one of the four specialists already announced, who fits nicely into the support role. She comes equipped with a ranged healing pistol and the passive ability to juice her targets back to full health (as opposed to the partial revive saddled on other players), which could come in handy among thoughtful parties. DICE is promising 10 different specialists at launch, which I imagine could allow for some technical, League of Legends-style compositional strategy that the series has lacked in the past. It should be said that thus far, the company has only shown off its old-school Battlefield game modes, but the studio is promising a “squad-based” module called Hazard Zone which, we’re guessing, will lean into those specialist distinctions even more. Only time will tell.
DICE is buttressing that expansion in tactical scope with the ability to outfit your firearms in real time. With the jump to 128 players, 2042’s maps are considerably larger than Battlefields prior, and include multiple warzones that emphasize different attack strategies. Moving from a wide-open sand dune to a claustrophobic interior corridor? No problem, just take a few seconds to swap out your muzzles, foregrips, and magazines before taking the dive. Plenty of FPSes have allowed us to alter our weapons in the lobby between matches, but 2042 is one of the first to hand over that autonomy in the middle of a firefight.
Battlefield 2042 is scheduled to release on October 22, 2021, hopefully before its grim prospects for the future become manifest. It is strange to live at a time where a major publisher is capable of imagining a complete breakdown of society in only 20 years — to gamify a potential refugee crisis, at a time where global citizens are already leaving their homes to escape an unprecedented apogee of drought and starvation. Perhaps that is Battlefield 2042’s boldest new feature; the feeling that no matter who comes out on top in this war, everyone is going to lose.
The developers of Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance have revealed plans for several DLC updates in the months following its June 22 launch.
According to the team at Tuque Games, the first pack will be free and is said to contain new levels and is scheduled to launch this summer alongside the free couch co-op update that was announced at the end of May. The next free update, containing more new levels and some additional challenges, is targeted for Fall 2021, followed by a paid expansion titled “Echoes of the Blood War.” The expansion will feature new story elements, new levels, and a new playable character focused on using magic.
In Fifth Edition D&D, the Blood War is an endless battle between the devils and demons of the Nine Hells. How, exactly, this will manifest in Dark Alliance remains a mystery – though if its main story is focused on the legendary relic known as the Crystal Shard, it’s a fair bet someone in the infernal planes is going to try and get their hands on it.
With only a couple of weeks left before launch, I recently got another invite into the frozen wastes of Icewind Dale in D&D: Dark Alliance, this time to see how it plays with a full party of four stalwart heroes.
You can get a more in-depth breakdown of its basic gameplay and structure in my initial hands-on impressions, but here’s a quick refresher for anyone who may not be up to speed: Dark Alliance – not to be confused with the recent re-release of the 2001 PS2-era classic Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance – is an co-op action game with RPG-style progression based on characters and events from the D&D novels of the 80s and 90s . You play as one of the four Companions of the Hall – famous in-world adventurers – as you stab, smash, slash, or shoot your way through a nonlinear series of levels full of famous fantasy monsters to amass a horde of kickass loot – and, I guess, save the realm from untold devastation, if that’s your thing.
It was good to finally see what the Dark Alliance experience looks like with a full four-player party… and it was about as chaotic as I’d expected. I’d often finish off an enemy with a plan on who to attack next, only to turn around and find the field already cleared – or in complete chaos. I’m sure that’s somewhat due to the fact that we aren’t yet experts on its mechanics, and some connection issues during our remote play session definitely didn’t help either. I’m looking forward to having the time to actually get familiar with the combat system, though, as after skimming the upgrade trees there appears to be a considerable amount of context-specific moves that you can unlock to create some really interesting combos.
Networking issues aside, our demo wasn’t without its technical hiccups. Elements of the UI would occasionally disappear, animations sometimes stuttered or lagged – there were even some enemies who would refuse to fall over once they hit 0HP, but the devs said they were aware of that one going in, so hopefully it will have been dealt with in the weeks before launch. I also had some input delay issues with traversal during what were admittedly supposed to be fairly simple platforming/exploration sections, though hopefully that can be attributed to the fact that I had to play through a game-streaming service. Regardless, I definitely owe my teammates an apology for my dwarf’s inability to land jumps across lava pits – even if it might’ve worked in-character – but I’m glad to say that, on the whole, I’d still call the session more fun than it was frustrating.
Despite what was a comically difficult time spent exploring around the level we were demoing – seriously, we got stuck in those spike traps forever – we were able to pretty efficiently roll over every combat encounter on the CR1 difficulty. Not to boast, but we managed to take down the mission’s final boss in literally 20 seconds. We decided to give the mission another run on the next-highest difficulty level, and it was a pleasant surprise to find ourselves getting our asses kicked pretty much every step of the way. Even taking every short rest we were offered to recharge our health and potion supply, we barely made it past the halfway point before we had to call it quits.
Seeing as this was just the second difficulty level out of six, I’m curious to see what changes occur at higher levels beyond just “the enemies have more HP and do more damage” – though I’m sure that would be challenging enough in its own right. Our developer guides said that the issue will largely come down to how good your equipped gearset is, though they made sure to emphasize that it wasn’t just about loot, and that with a full roster and enough skill even a poorly outfitted party should be able to take on higher difficulty levels.
We got a closer look at some of the progression specifics beyond getting pointier swords, as well. Our characters were all at fifth level (out of 20) and had already unlocked a full set of attack moves and combos, plus a few feats – basically the D&D equivalent of Perks in other systems. These can range from helpful buffs like extra gold drops or elemental resistance, to offensive bonuses like extra damage against elite enemies, or more specific boons, like being rezzed with full health rather than just a fraction. Some of them had level requirements, though the highest I saw was level 10, so perhaps there are additional unlocks that appear once you cross that threshold.
The team was also eager to talk about their post-launch plans, which currently include two free DLC packs that introduce new levels and difficulty ranks, as well as a paid story expansion that will introduce a new playable Mage character – though we don’t know which, if any, of the tabletop caster classes they’ll be modeled after. The star inclusion for me, though, is the couch co-op update coming alongside those first two DLCs. I had a good time smacking goblins around with four online teammates, but I get the feeling that the real joy of Dark Alliance is going to be with a buddy on the couch. Hopefully, these final weeks before launch give the team time enough to get some of those technical issues resolved so I can say with 100% certainty that getting Faerun’s most famous adventurer killed was nobody’s fault but mine. Or the controller. In fact, it’s probably that.
JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, and really looking forward to seeing how much of the Monster Manual shows up in Dark Alliance. You can follow him on Twitter for more digital and analog RPG nerddom.
A new Dungeons & Dragons game is almost here, and if you’ve been looking to see just who the members of the Dark Alliance are who’ll be opposing the forces of evil, the latest trailer will introduce you to the gang.
Narrated by Jemaine Clement–one half of the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords and occasional Rhymenoceros–the trailer introduces players to the story behind Dark Alliance and the Drizzt Do’Urden, Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Wulfgar heroes of this action-brawler that is set in the Forgotten Realms.
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Drizzt is fast, powerful, and has two Zs in his name, while Cattie-Brie can control the battlefield from any distance. Wulfgar is the muscle of the group who takes on hordes of enemies with his big hammer, and Bruenor will appeal to players who desire a defensive character with impressive stats and facial hair.
Combat also appears to have a lot of depth to it, with each character having dozens of moves, ultimate attacks, and abilities that can be chained together to deliver big critical hit damage. You’ll need this entire arsenal for the more than 30 enemies you’ll face, with Clement noting that they probably “didn’t get enough hugs as baby goblins.”
Dark Alliance is developed by Tuque Games and launches on June 22 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, as well as PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Players who purchase the game on PS4 will receive a code to upgrade the game for free to its PS5 version, while Xbox One players will automatically receive this update when they switch to Xbox Series X|S. Dark Alliance will also be available on Xbox Game Pass on its launch day.
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