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Two prominent Call of Duty developers from Infinity Ward have left the studio to pursue what they are calling a “rare and exciting new opportunity.”

Narrative director Taylor Kurosaki and design director Jacob Minkoff left Infinity Ward earlier this year, though the news is only just becoming public now. “It was an honor to be a part of the studio for the last 7 years and we’re so proud of what we created together with Modern Warfare and Infinite Warfare. We wish the team nothing but the best,” they said in a joint statement.

The statement goes on to explain that Kurosaki and Minkoff are not yet able to announce their next gig, but they remarked that more details should come soon. The joint statement was attributed to both Kurosaki and Minkoff, so they are presumably sticking together for whatever they are working on next.

Before joining Infinity Ward, Minkoff spent years at Naughty Dog where he worked on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, including its acclaimed train level. He was promoted to lead designer for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and The Last of Us.

As for Kurosaki, he also came to Infinity Ward from Naughty Dog. He worked at the Sony studio for more than 10 years as a narrative design lead across a number of projects.

Given their experience, it will be interesting to see where Kurosaki and Minkoff land next. The statement says only that they are leaving Infinity Ward and not Activision overall, though that could be a possibility as well. We’ll report back with more information as it’s announced.

2021’s new Call of Duty game is coming from Sledgehammer Games, the developer of Call of Duty: WWII. The new game, which is due out this holiday, is rumored to be another WWII game that may be called Vanguard. This game is expected to integrate with Call of Duty: Warzone in some capacity that hasn’t been clarified yet.

Image Comics has just launched Made in Korea, a new science fiction series set in a world where biological children are a thing of the past. Instead, becoming a parent is as simple as placing an order, unpackaging your “Proxy,” or synthetic child, and powering them on. The series aims to explore what it means to be a family in this post-biological era, as seen through the eyes of an artificial intelligence named Jesse.

With Made in Korea #1 on store shelves, IGN can exclusively reveal a preview of the second chapter in this six-issue limited series. Get a first look at Made in Korea #2 in the slideshow gallery below:

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Made in Korea is a collaboration between writer Jeremy Holt (Skip to the End) and artist George Schall (Chasing Echoes). The series is inspired by Holt’s own background as a transracial adoptee, with the goal of exploring themes of identity and belonging and providing a commentary on the Asian American experience. It’s no coincidence the series made its debut during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

“Made in Korea is the story I was born to write, literally and figuratively,” Holt tells IGN. “And it was fate that I crossed paths with George who’s helped me craft a unique take on the AI narrative.”

Made in Korea #1 is available to purchase in print and digitally now. Issue #2 will debut on June 30, 2021.

In other comic book news, Marvel has revealed Jonathan Hickman’s next X-Men series, and Marvel will introduce a brand new version of Darkhawk in August.

How to Help and Support the Asian American Communities in Atlanta and Other Regions

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Virtua Fighter 5 is making a comeback next month on PS4, in a new package that has completely remastered the original game using Yakuza studio Ryu ga Gotoku’s Dragon Engine. If you’re wondering what a 14-year glow-up looks like on a more modern console in comparison to the game’s 2007 release on Xbox 360 and PS3, you can watch a new trailer below that highlights the more detailed character models and stages.

These upgrades have been applied to all 19 fighters, arenas, and cinematics ahead of Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown’s launch on June 1. Not everyone’s a fan of high-definition visuals though, and if you want to take the game all the way back to its arcade roots, there’s an option available for a 1990s graphics mode:

If this looks like your type of game but funds are a bit tight currently, the good news is that Virtua Fighter 5’s upgraded edition will make its day one debut on PlayStation Plus and will also be available through PlayStation Now. As a PS4 game, it’s presumed that it’ll be fully backward compatible with the PS5 console as well.

“This project started as a part of Sega’s 60th Anniversary Celebration; it was made as a gift for our community,” chief producer Seiji Aoki explained to GameSpot just before the game was revealed. “We want as many people to play it as possible. Launching on both PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now allows us to offer the definitive Virtua Fighter experience as an essentially ‘free’ game for millions of players around the world, many of whom may just be trying out the series for the first time!”

The rest of June’s PS Plus offerings include cooperative spy adventure Operation Tango and space combat game Star Wars: Squadrons, while the deadline to grab May’s current offerings, Battlefield V, Stranded Deep, and Wreckfest: Drive Hard Die Last, is starting to draw closer.

Nintendo is taking two of its top competitive titles back to school, announcing a partnership with amateur esports organizer PlayVS to bring Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Splatoon 2 to the high school and college level.

The deal will add Smash Bros. and Splatoon to PlayVS’s growing list of offered esports titles–which already includes EA’s Madden and FIFA franchises, Riot’s League of Legends, and Psyonix’s Rocket League–for the Fall 2021 competitive season. A third Nintendo title, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, will begin competition in Spring 2022.

Qualifying schools will be sent a Nintendo Switch system, as well as the game they register to play and a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online individual membership. According to the official release, schools can “check with their respective state athletic associations to see which games will be available for their state leagues this fall,” and coaches interested in joining the leagues can apply for the waitlist here.

“Partnering with Nintendo and offering our players a selection of titles from its legendary roster of games is something I’ve wanted to do since I started PlayVS,” Delane Parnell, founder and CEO of PlayVS, said in the official release. “This partnership ensures that high school students now have an official path to competitive play for these immensely popular games.”

PlayVS is the only scholastic competitive gameplay platform that qualifies as sanctioned high school athletics in the U.S. and Canada. The organization runs competitive seasons in both fall and spring, with over $600K in scholarships being awarded to the winners this year alone.

C. Robert Cargill, who co-wrote the script for the first Doctor Strange film, has expanded on the reason why Scott Derrickson and Marvel split for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Speaking to CinemaBlend about his new book Day Zero, Cargill addressed the root cause of Derrickon’s decision to step down from directing the Doctor Strange sequel. Cargill explained that Derrickson and Marvel had very different ideas for the movie and Derrickson ultimately didn’t want to compromise his vision to helm that movie in lieu of directing the big-screen adaptation of Joe Hill’s The Black Phone.

“It was creative differences,” Cargill confirmed before elaborating further on why they didn’t creatively align. “[Scott Derrickson] wanted to do one movie, and Marvel wanted to do another movie. So he sat there and said, ‘Well s***, I’ve got this great script that I wrote with Cargill, and I’m really proud of.’ We were actually going to go out to other directors for The Black Phone.

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“Scott called me up and said, ‘Dude, I have to make this movie. It’s gotta be my movie, I have to do this. Do you mind waiting until after I’m done with [Doctor Strange 2], and he really wanted to bring me onto Strange as well. But in the event that it didn’t happen, he was like, ‘Do you mind waiting?’ And I was like, ‘You know what, if you feel this passionately about it, no. I’ll wait a couple years to make this movie.'”

While Cargill was willing to wait for Derrickson to join him on The Black Phone adaptation, Derrickson decided to depart Doctor Strange 2 because he and Marvel couldn’t reach an agreement on the direction that the movie should take. Cargill noted that it wasn’t an easy decision for Derrickson, but it did help that he had a project he could refocus his energy on.

“Scott’s like, ‘Well, I can make this movie that I’m compromising what I wanted to do on, or I could make The Black Phone,'” Cargill explained. “It was, as he said publically, it was a hard choice to leave Strange behind; but it made it easier that he had a movie that he was looking forward to. And then the experience was just so great that we’re just are so proud and happy with what we made.”

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Derrickson, who directed the first Doctor Strange movie in 2016, issued a joint statement with Marvel Studios in January of last year to announce his “amicable” departure from Doctor Strange 2. By April, Sam Raimi had confirmed he was taking over as the director of the sequel. Derrickson praised his successor, referring to Raimi as “one of the nicest people” he’s known in the business.

The Doctor Strange sequel is scheduled to be released on March 25, 2022, but there’s a lot of MCU to come before that. After the credits rolled on WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, many have turned their attention to Loki, which is the next Marvel Studios project to hit Disney Plus. There’s also Black Widow, Shang-Chi, What If…?, Eternals, and Spider-Man: No Way Home starring Tom Holland.

For more on Marvel Studios’ upcoming slate of projects and releases, read our breakdown of the biggest and most noteworthy developments in the MCU, on Disney+, and in comics this year.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Ghostrunner will add a roguelike-inspired Wave Mode and a more accessible Assist Mode in a free upcoming update later this summer.

The cyberpunk first-person action game has been gradually adding modes since release in October, but Wave Mode promises to be the most outlandish yet, turning the high-speed katana action into a roguelike structure. Wave Mode tasks players with beating 20 waves of increasingly difficult enemies, while being rewarded with randomly-chosen upgrades between each wave.

Of course, Ghostrunner is already a pretty tough experience at the best of times, and the developers make clear that dying doesn’t send you back to the start of Wave Mode – just back to the start of the last wave. Beat all 20 waves and you’ll unlock a brand new sword. You can apply to play a closed beta of the mode right now.

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Alongside Wave Mode comes Assist Mode, which aims to offer a slightly easier experience for those who don’t want the stress of Ghostrunner’s normal one-hit-death experience and just want to see the story. Assist Mode offers your character armour, which can absorb a number of hits before sending you to your death.

We awarded the base version of Ghostrunner an 8/10 review, saying that its “lightning-fast gameplay makes for a short-lived but memorable action game with some incredible moments.” If you’re waiting for more Ghostrunner, the developers have teased to IGN that hints about what’s to come in Ghostrunner 2 will be coming later today as part of an Epic stream.

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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].