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Quantic Dream, the studio behind AAA narrative adventures like Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, has long been one of France’s most famous video game developers. Now, they’re expanding into North America with the announcement of a new studio in Montreal, Canada.

Founded by David Cage in 1997, Quantic Dream has made a name for itself with story-driven, graphically sophisticated titles, most recently with Detroit: Become Human. For its Montreal studio, Square Enix Montreal founder and Eidos Montreal alumn Stéphane D’Astous has been tapped as General Manager for the new location.

Yohan Cazaux, Project Lead Designer on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, will also join as Gameplay Director for a new, unannounced project in development at Quantic Dream.

IGN spoke exclusively with Quantic Dream founder and CEO David Cage, Co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumière, and D’Astous about the new Montreal location, Quantic Dream’s goals for the location, and its future now that it is a third-party studio.

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The Relationship Between Quantic Dream Montreal and Paris

Quantic Dream games have been lauded for innovations in technology and visual storytelling. As such, there’s often a long time between the release of Quantic Dream titles. Cage says that despite opening a new, “human-sized” studio, the goal isn’t simply to make games faster:

“With this opening, we are following a long-term vision to seek the best and most experienced talents having specific expertise, people who are passionate and want to work on innovative and ambitious AAA games. Our goal is not to expand, nor accelerate cadence and become a ‘factory’ with this new studio.”

D’Astous agreed, adding, “Time and schedule are obviously an important factor in developing AAA games, but please do not think by adding a second studio we will cut the dev phase in two. The ambition of our next game is great and we will release it when it is ready, as we have all other games that were released from Quantic Dream.”

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Rather than two studios, D’Astous says Montreal and Paris are “one unified body located in two regional hubs.” As such, the two offices will collaborate on “the same new unannounced AAA title.”

“We have structured the relationship between the two entities so that they work together as one team with a distinctive core perimeter on both sides in order to build this project together,” D’Astous says. Something that helped the process of collaboration — not just between Montreal and Paris, but all Quantic Dream developers — were the new COVID-19 protocols that allowed the studio to recruit new talent who didn’t want to live in Paris but can still collaborate with the studio remotely.

Quantic Dream Goes Multi-Platform

In 2020, Quantic Dream announced that after 12 years the studio will no longer be make PlayStation exclusive games, instead returning to multi-platform development. Although developing for a single platform allowed the developers to focus on optimizing for one piece of hardware and controller, Cage says the studio’s internal tools and pipelines were using their PC engine, so multi-platform development is not new.

The challenge is actually in next-gen game development, which Cage says requires new pipelines and new tech. “This is the reason why we keep investing in our infrastructure… we are always looking for the best talent to reinforce our R&D department, which today is 60 staff strong. We also secured funding to compete with the best AAA studios in the world.”

As part of this commitment, Cage says Quantic Dream renewed its motion capture studio, added a 7.1 surround sound studio, and is building a high-end photogrammetry studio.

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When asked what about next-gen tech Cage finds exciting to work with, he says that it’s actually lighting which excited him the most. “As cinema showed, [lighting] is a language by itself. Hardware always had heavy constraints that altered the quality of real-time rendering, but it feels like the present generation of consoles will see a real gap in this area with new features like ray-tracing.”

Other focuses include improved AI, dynamic destruction, more interactive environments, and even increased crowd sizes. “We’ve reached a point where the limits will be the imagination of the developers,” Cage says.

Quantic Dream’s Unannounced AAA Game

But what about the new unannounced AAA game? Will it be a similar narrative-style game as past Quantic Dream games? Details are being kept hidden, but Cage tells IGN that he and the developers are interested in new genres and directions.

“As a designer, my professional journey made me discover that I really enjoy telling interactive stories in which players are the heroes, that creating emotion in a game is something challenging and fascinating, that I love to create meaningful experiences questioning players’ moral values… But I also believe that there are other ways of telling moving and emotional stories that we haven’t tried out yet, and I am really interested in exploring new directions.”

At 51 years old, Cage says he is not at the stage in his career where he wants to “milk the cow, and just make more games in the style that we created in the past.”

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“Each game has its own language, its own voice, and repeating things that worked in the past is not necessarily a good recipe to move forward,” says Cage. “You can expect a continuity in our intentions, but we also want to continue experimenting and trying new ideas. This is what our team really likes, and I think what our fans also expect from us.”

D’Astous says that with the studio’s next game, “we hope, will demonstrate our ongoing pursuit to craft superior-quality and innovative games enjoyed by millions.”

As a Third-Party Publisher

Quantic Dream also announced in 2019 that it will work as a publisher as well as a developer. Guillaume de Fondaumière says the Montreal location will help Quantic Dream set up a publishing presence in North America so that the studio can release both internal and third-party titles worldwide.

“We are interested in publishing games in any genre, as long as they are original and creative, and that they stand out,” says de Fondaumière. “We offer these studios funding and publishing capability, of course, but most importantly perhaps, also creative and development support, access to our infrastructure and expertise in different technical and artistic fields, and much more.”

Quantic Dream is already working with Jo-Mei studio on Sea of Solitude: The Director’s Cut and Red Thread Games on Dustborn.

Fostering a Healthy Studio Culture

In 2018, investigative reports alleged that Quantic Dream’s Paris office fostered a toxic corporate culture.

One of the most damning allegations was from the studio’s head of IT who filed a complaint that claimed photoshopped images of employees featuring racist, sexist, and homophobic elements were created by some staff and distributed around the office.

A Paris Labor Court awarded a former employee €7,000 who was photoshopped doing a Nazi salute. In a statement, Quantic Dream said the fine was for a “security obligation,” and not over any deterioration in working conditions for the employee. Though Le Monde quoted the judge in the tribunal chastising Quantic Dream’s management for “remaining passive in the face of this more than questionable practice[.]”

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When asked how Quantic Dream will foster a healthy work environment in its new studio, Cage first said that “all allegations about our studio have been indisputably proven wrong by verifiable facts, independent audits, the French Labor Court, state agencies, independent journalistic investigations, and by our employees themselves.”

Cage says Quantic Dream has built a diverse team who are also shareholders in the company, owning 10% of the capital – a benefit that will be extended to its Montreal employees.

Nevertheless, Cage says that the employees at Quantic Dream have a variety of tools to build a healthy work environment. There are dedicated representatives who accept any issue anonymously, and there is a third-party anonymous investigation into the company every year.

As for the new studio, Cage says there will be a dedicated human resource team “operating locally whose mission is to specifically ensure that any workplace issues that may arise are dealt with in a swift and professional manner.”

Management will also undergo harassment training in both Paris and Montreal “to be best prepared, to better know, to identify, and to best react to such incidents, if they ever were to happen at our studio.”

“We are very proud of our team spirit, our collaborators are very attached to the studio, its ambition, its projects, its culture of excellence through passion, and work through friendships,” Cage says. “These are some of the values that we will share with our studio in Montreal.”

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Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

IGN is excited to debut the first trailer for Justice Society: World War II, due out later this year on Blu-ray and Digital from Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC, and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the movie is officially described as a “time-skipping World War II thriller” that sees Barry Allen’s travel back in time thanks to his first encounter with the Speed Force.

You can watch our exclusive trailer debut for Justice Society: World War II in the player below:

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This is the 42nd entry in the DC Universe Movie franchise and the first to feature this Golden Age superhero team. The Justice Society previously appeared in various live-action incarnations on television in Smallville, The CW’s Arrowverse, and Stargirl.

Justice Society will make their live-action big-screen debut in Black Adam, starring Dwayne Johnson.

As detailed in our explainer on DC’s Justice Society of America, they are “a classic Golden Age superhero team — the first superhero team actually — that was born out of the minds of Sheldon Mayer and Gardner Fox. The team debuted in 1941’s All-Star Comics #3 — predating the Justice League by almost two decades.”

This official synopsis sheds some additional light on the new animated film’s plot:

“Justice Society: World War II finds modern-day Barry Allen – prior to the formation of the Justice League – discovering he can run even faster than he imagined, and that milestone results in his first encounter with the Speed Force. The Flash is promptly launched into the midst of a raging battle – primarily between Nazis and a team of Golden Age DC Super Heroes known as The Justice Society of America. Led by Wonder Woman, the group includes Hourman, Black Canary, Hawkman, Steve Trevor and the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick. The Flash quickly volunteers to assist his fellow heroes in tipping the scales of war in their favor, while the team tries to figure out how to send him home. But it won’t be easy as complications and emotions run deep in this time-skipping World War II thriller.”

Justice Society: World War II’s voice ensemble is led by Stana Katic and Matt Bomer, who made their DC Universe Movies debuts starring opposite each other as Lois Lane and Superman in the 2013 film Superman: Unbound.

As you can see from the full cast list below, Katic and Bomer are not reprising their Superman roles in Justice Society: World War II:

• Stana Katic (Castle) as Wonder Woman
• Matt Bomer (Doom Patrol) as The Flash
• Elysia Rotaru (Arrow) as Black Canary
• Chris Diamantopoulos (Silicon Valley) as Steve Trevor
• Omid Abtahi (American Gods, The Mandalorian) as Hawkman
• Matthew Mercer (Critical Role, Overwatch) as Hourman
• Armen Taylor (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind) as Jay Garrick
• Liam McIntyre (The Flash, Spartacus, Justice League Dark: Apokolips War) as Aquaman
• Geoffrey Arend (Batman: Hush) as Charles Halstead/Advisor
• Ashleigh LaThrop (The Handmaid’s Tale) as Iris West
• Keith Ferguson (Overwatch) as Dr. Fate
• Darin De Paul (Overwatch, Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge) as Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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Behind the scenes, Butch Lukic serves as Supervising Producer with Sam Register as Executive Producer. Jim Krieg (Batman: Gotham by Gaslight) and Kimberly S. Moreau (Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) are producers.

Justice Society: World War II is directed by Jeff Wamester (Guardians of the Galaxy TV series) from a screenplay by Supernatural’s Meghan Fitzmartin and Jeremy Adams.

Included with the purchase of Justice Society: World War II is the new animated short Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, one of four newly announced DC animated short films.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition collects the trilogy of games into one convenient place, bringing together over 40 pieces of DLC to make it a complete single-player experience. However, one notably missing aspect of the original trilogy is Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, which didn’t make it into Legendary Edition because of the amount of work that would have been required.

According to project director Mac Walters, restoring the multiplayer component of Mass Effect 3 would have been a significant undertaking, comparable to updating the entirety of the first game.

“At least at one point in time, everything was on the table and ultimately we looked at what it would take to [add Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer]–it obviously had a lot of challenges,” Walters explained. “You look at everything from what you do with cross-play–because that’s kind of an expectation now–what do we do with people who are still playing multiplayer now, how do we honor that, how do we bring them in, can we somehow bridge that gap? And, of course, these aren’t insurmountable challenges–they’re all things that we could do to fix that problem and get multiplayer in there.

“But when you look at the amount of effort that it was going to take to do that, it was easily commensurate if not greater than uplifting all of Mass Effect 1. And I think our focus really was on the single-player experience and, at some point, we just had to draw the line. I love Mass Effect 3 multiplayer–and like I said, people are still playing it today, but ultimately the product, the overall Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, is a better representation of the original trilogy because we were able to focus on those single-player moments.”

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition’s release date has been confirmed as May 14. It will launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. The game will be playable on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 through backwards compatibility. For more on Mass Effect, check out the latest episode of Audio Logs, which features a look at cut characters, and our breakdown of the changes in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition represents a chance for BioWare to retroactively fix things with Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 that the studio didn’t account for when first developing those games. As we learned while attending a presentation for the remaster, that includes the depiction of female Commander Shepard.

“We definitely wanted to make sure that we were able to bring her back as an option in the trilogy,” environment & character artist Kevin Meek said. “In fact, that was one of the very first things we did.”

Meek cites female Shepard as one of the few characters in Mass Effect 3 who stands to use some improvements in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. “We’ve done another pass on her where we’ve done everything from slightly modifying some larger forms of her face or adding some medium and fine details like wrinkles and pores and specular breakup,” he said.

Beyond these added details, both female and male Shepard will have additional character customization options in the Legendary Edition. “We also knew that other players who found the custom character creator–especially in the earlier games–might have had limited options. Options for things like eye color or makeup or hairstyles get expanded throughout the trilogy so you might be able to make something you really connect with in Mass Effect 3 but [are] not able to reproduce that look back in Mass Effect 1 or 2 again,” Meek said.

He continued: “So one of the first things we really wanted to do was, throughout the trilogy, unify the options–if something exists in 3, we want it to exist in 1 and we want that to be able to be consistent. And we also really wanted to expand choices for things like skin color and hairstyles–which weren’t wide enough initially to support the diversity of our playerbase or give fans the opportunity to create that Shepard that they really wanted to play as. So in the Legendary Edition, when you create your Shepard–whether you want to go for an iconic look or custom look, you’ll be able to create a character that is more representative of and consistent across the entire trilogy.”

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition’s release date on Xbox One, PS4, and PC is set for May 14. Xbox Series X|S and PS5 will also support the remaster through backwards compatibility, enhancing all three games with faster load times. For more, check out our rundown on all of the improvements in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, a remaster of BioWare’s sci-fi trilogy, was not remade using Unreal Engine 4, the latest and greatest version of the popular game engine. As game designer Mac Walter explains, had BioWare chosen to go with Unreal 4, as opposed to sticking with Unreal 3, it would have too drastically changed the trilogy.

“One of the things we did early on, to sort of set some context, is we actually talked to the people at Epic and we said, ‘What would this look like if we brought it into Unreal 4?'” Walters told us during a presentation for the Legendary Edition. “And it very quickly became clear that that level of jump would really change fundamentally what the trilogy was, how it felt, how it played.”

As an example, Walters pointed out how Kismet–a visual scripting language in Unreal 3–has no exact equivalent in Unreal 4. “Which means every moment, every scene, everything would have had to have been essentially redone from scratch and we knew, at that point, that we’d really be taking away from the essence and the spirit of what the trilogy was,” he said.

That said, BioWare has been using some clever tricks to push the limits of Unreal 3 and craft a more visually pleasing experience for the Mass Effect trilogy. Via Unreal 3, BioWare has implemented forward rendering in the remaster. Essentially, the developer has just stuck another camera into every scene, rendering each one twice, allowing for real-time dynamic reflections.

Additionally, the Legendary Edition will be playable in 4K HDR, running at 60 FPS on Xbox One X, Xbox Series X|S, PS4 Pro, and PS5 and with unlocked frame rates on PC. “Ultimately, what this was about was bringing [the trilogy] forward onto the current gen–and future generations as well–with a new kind of fidelity and taking off some of the edges with that,” Walters said.

For more on what’s different, check out our rundown on the changes in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. The package releases in May.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will launch on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on May 14, bringing BioWare’s much-loved sci-fi RPG series to modern consoles with a number of tweaks and upgrades that leverage more modern hardware. You can check out the debut trailer below.

All three games in the core series–Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3–will be available in the package, along with over 40 pieces of downloadable content, including special weapon and armor packs, campaign expansions, and more. All of this will be playable in 4K with HDR. Each game has been given a fresh coat of paint, with character models improved, high-resolution textures, new lighting, depth-of-field, and other visual bells and whistles. You can get more info in our article covering everything different in Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

“It’s been an incredible journey revisiting the stories, characters and iconic moments of the Mass Effect trilogy, enhancing the experience for modern platforms while staying true to the spirit of the original,” said project director Mac Walters. “Remastering a game, let alone three, is a huge undertaking as there’s over 100 hours of gameplay included, but we wanted to do this for our fans as well as a new generation of gamers looking to jump into the iconic story of Shepard.”

In addition to launching on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, the console versions will be playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S through backwards compatibility. Playing on those consoles will come with the benefit of improved loading times.

We recently attended a preview event with BioWare, where Legendary Edition game director Mac Walters said that the remaster is a welcome second chance to take another stab at Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

“It’s probably no surprise to everyone that’s here today, that fans of the trilogy, that fans of the franchise have been asking for a remaster for some time,” Walters said. “I think what’s interesting and noteworthy today is that this [remaster] is as exciting for someone like me as it hopefully is for our fans.”

Walters went on to talk about how, when you’re developing a game, there’s always an unfortunate moment where you’re forced to let go of the project. But because you’ve been working on it for so long, you can still see all the ways that the game isn’t perfect.

“The unique thing about the [Mass Effect] franchise was that we could sort of take all that developer angst and move it into the next game, and then into the next game,” he said. “So over the course of three games, we were fortunate enough to build on that and really bring the game and the franchise to where we saw it in our mind’s eye at the very beginning.”

He continued: “So the opportunity now to go back with all those lessons learned and all those advancements and changes we saw in the original trilogy and go back to Mass Effect 1 and back to Mass Effect 2 has been a dream for me in order to do that, to get back in there and see all these familiar locations and characters again. But ultimately, I think it’s also been a huge passion project as well. You don’t often get a chance to revisit a lot of these things, and the opportunity to do that, for me, has been wonderful.”

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition was announced alongside news that a new Mass Effect game is in development. EA and BioWare also showed a very brief teaser-trailer that featured a character speculated to be Liara T’Soni. She is seen picking up an N7 Armor fragment.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is coming to Nintendo Switch on February 12, 2021 (see it on Amazon). It includes the full original Wii U game from 2013, plus a new expansion called Bowser’s Fury. Nintendo has released a two-minute trailer showing some of the new content added to this version of the game. In any case, it’s up for preorder now.

Also available for preorder are two new amiibo (Cat Mario and Cat Peach) and two older re-issued Super Smash Bros. amiibo (Bowser and Bowser Jr.). These unlock special activations when scanned in while playing the game.

Preorder Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

• Get it at Amazon – $59.99
• Get it at Best Buy – $59.99
• Get it at GameStop – $59.99
• Get it at Nintendo eShop (digital) – $59.99
• Get it at Amazon UK – £49.99

As usual with Nintendo games, the standard edition is all that’s available. No special editions or preorder bonuses have been announced. If they are in the future, I’ll add them here. There are, however, some amiibo…

Preorder Cat Mario, Cat Peach, and More Amiibo

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The Cat Mario amiibo lets you transform into the invincible white cat Mario. The Cat Peach amiibo drops a random power-up into the game. Nintendo hasn’t yet announced what effect the Bowser or Bowser Jr. amiibo have in the game.

The original Super Mario 3D World is a fantastic Mario game that, judging by Wii U sales figures, many Switch owners missed out on when it was first released. Up to four players can play simultaneously either online or locally. A power-up available in the game turns the characters into cats that can claw enemies and climb walls. You can read our 9.6/10 Super Mario 3D World review for more details on the game.

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Other Preorder Guides

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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“OLED televisions are wildly expensive.” Well, that has been historically true, but Vizio decided to take a stand against that when the company released its first OLED 4K TV, the H1. At launch it was $500 cheaper than the king of OLED, the LG CX. Since both have been on the market a few months, that price gap has tightened a bit to around $200, which makes picking between these two televisions a bit more of a challenge.

While I think that overall the LG CX is a better display, I think the Vizio is a better television. LG’s webOS operating system is, in this reviewer’s opinion, considerably worse than Vizio’s latest SmartCast OS, making the Vizio a more pleasant daily-driver television than the CX for most people. And with pretty similar performance in the gaming arena, I have a feeling I’ll find myself recommending the Vizio OLED H1 to more people, more often.

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Vizio OLED H1 – Design and Features

When you get the Vizio OLED home, you’re not going to want to set it up without a large, flat surface to work and a second person to assist you: this television is not only gigantic, it’s also incredibly fragile. Vizio does a good job providing you with instructions on how to lift it and where not to put your hands, but if you ever intend to move it once you’ve gotten it into place, it’s going to be a real challenge.

The OLED stand looks fantastic once you set it up, but getting it together can be a bit confusing without paying close attention to the included instructions. It’s not a quick process and you’re going to need a screwdriver, but the end result is a system Vizio put together for some seriously nice cable management.

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While the cable management looks good, it also demands that you own some very long HDMI cables because of how they wrap half the length of the television and route down through the rear foot behind the OLED. This makes for a really nice, neat cable bundle that is completely hidden from the front of the television, but also is a long way to travel. It’s highly likely that cables you own won’t be long enough to make the journey. For example, the HDMI cable that came with my Nintendo Switch is laughably too short.

When you get everything in place, most of the cables are fully hidden behind two large panels in the back of the television, with the primary HDMI ports and the HDMI eARC port hidden back there along with the power cable that sits on one site all by itself. There are two more ports on the side of the television that cannot take part in the cable management system, which is a bit of a bummer since I used almost all of the ports on the OLED and have one that kind of dangles in an rather unsavory manner on the left side of the television.

Speaking of ports, the Vizio OLED offers a very good array of choices. It features four total HDMI inputs, two of which are equipped with HDMI 2.1 technology. It also has one USB 2.0 port, one optical input, one analog audio input, an ethernet port, and composite video input. It also supports Apple Airplay 1 and 2 as well as Google Chromecast, and works with Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa if you enjoy connecting your television to your smart assistant.

Once you get cables in place and pop on the back panels, it feels semi-permanent. The panels do not come off easily, and the way the cables are routed through the rear foot is also pretty firmly set. So while it looks nice, and I personally prioritize this over anything else, it’s not particularly practical if you’re changing around cables with any frequency. I don’t, so it didn’t bother me much.

Once in place, the Vizio OLED is one of the nicest televisions I’ve ever seen. The front-facing swoop of the stand curves up beautifully into the base of the television and raises it a good height above my media stand. I can imagine it also looks stunning wall-mounted, and that swooping stand is designed to work perfectly with the Vizio Elevate Dolby Atmos Soundbar, which I highly recommend you consider for reasons I’ll get into in the audio section.

Vizio OLED H1 – Remote

The Vizio remote is pretty much identical to the one that ships with the P-Series Quantum, and I overall like it. It’s slim without being too small and offers enough buttons to satisfy me for the most part. I do wish it had a dedicated pause/play button, but the center “ok” button works fine.

As with the P-Series, the OLED remote does not have voice activation, so searching for content on YouTube can be tedious. I also don’t particularly like the number of sponsored channel buttons on the remote, but they’re mostly harmless.

I had one weird issue with the remote and my Klipsch The Fives bookshelf HDMI speakers: they appear to share the same IR band. I cannot adjust volume (or mute) my speakers using the speaker remote, because for some reason that causes the OLED to launch Netflix. This is not an issue I have experienced before with any other television, so I thought I should mention it.

Vizio OLED H1 – Ease of Use

I’ve traditionally been wary of built-in smart TV operating systems since, up until this year, Android TV’s atrocious interface did a great job souring me to anything other than dedicated external devices. But as of late, televisions have finally been getting processors that are capable of running smart TV operating systems well and the Vizio is no exception.

With the experience I’ve had on this television, Vizio’s own SmartCast OS is probably my second favorite proprietary TV interface now.

Roku is, in my opinion, still better, and Android TV offers you more options for content, but SmartCast beats the pants off LG’s now-dated webOS and Samsung’s lackluster Tizen. SmartCast doesn’t try to be too much, and it operates a lot like Android TV but without all the bulk that can come with that system. The interface is snappy and easy to navigate, and I never really found myself in a situation where I wished something loaded faster. I think it’s even faster at launching apps than my Roku Ultra is, which is high praise.

I will say, on occasion, the operating system seemed to snag for an undue length of time, and it can be a bit slow to boot up as well. But once you’re up and running, it’s a very nice experience.

The setup of this television was pretty quick. After giving it some basic information like my WiFi password and location, as well as giving it a few minutes to download the latest update from Vizio, it launched SmartCast and I was watching content.

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The Vizio comes pre-loaded with a lot of apps. Actually, that is a bit misleading: It comes pre-loaded with every app available for SmartCast. There is no App Store, but you are free to organize the apps in the order you would like to see them. While this meant that I was instantly able to start watching YouTube and Netflix without having to download them, it also means that if you don’t see a streaming service you use listed, it doesn’t exist for SmartCast. Anime fans will be out of luck, for example, as neither Funimation nor Crunchyroll are supported apps.

This may dip a bit into a discussion about picture quality, but I wanted to point out that this television comes out of the box nearly exactly where I wanted it. The “motion” setting is off, it smartly swaps among supported HDR formats like HDR10+ and Dolby Vision when the content launches, and it remembers what settings you might change and applies them across the board where they are relevant. The only thing I needed to change was to adjust the color Picture from “Vivid” to “Calibrated” and turn the color temperature from “Warm” to “Natural” for standard dynamic range content. In Dolby Vision, I thought the out of the box options were perfect. More on these specifics below.

So as far as ease of use is concerned, most will find that the TV is ready to watch and enjoy quickly, easily, and with next to no roadblocks.

Vizio OLED H1 – Picture Quality

As an OLED, the Vizio H1 is hard to beat when it comes to picture quality. Colors are gorgeous, and blacks are truly black which results in excellent contrast. You’ll need to make just a few adjustments out of the box to get it to where you might want it, but once there it’s really hard to not enjoy how great this TV looks.

I tuned the television to the Calibrated picture setting, maxed out the Luminance, turned off judder and stutter reduction, and changed the color balance from “warm” to “normal.” I played with a few other settings to see how they affected the television’s performance, but found that I didn’t really need to adjust much else. I did the same when viewing Dolby Vision content, which is the only way to gain access to those settings and then the TV remembers them when you watch DV content in the future.

Unlike LCD televisions that rely on local dimming zones, an OLED controls the display at a pixel level, which means that there is no bloom or haloing at all to worry about and the display is capable of achieving clean, crisp color and contrast lines: when you see black, you can get truly black.

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OLED also has a really wide viewing angle, meaning everyone in your living room, regardless of their seating position, can enjoy the H1 without seeing any issues with contrast loss or panel uniformity issues. For a big family sitting together in a living room setting, this is the kind of performance you are going to want.

HDR content looks solid, but the Vizio OLED is only just barely capable of giving you what I would consider “good” HDR since it doesn’t get particularly bright. To really see a difference with HDR, which shows a true range between highlights and shadows, you need at least 600 nits of peak brightness. The brighter your display can get, the more you see the difference with HDR over SDR. The Vizio OLED has around 800 nits of brightness when measured at max luminance, so while it’s more than enough for HDR, I’ve seen more “wow” out of LCD televisions which typically can produce a much brighter picture (generally at the cost of those deep blacks, however).

Compared to an older Sony LCD television I have, the H1 is much brighter, so it is definitely an improvement for those who are upgrading from LCD televisions bought three or four years ago. I also have not had a particular problem watching football games with a big window behind my couch facing the television (not ideal placement, but it’s all we have to work with at my house). That said, I would often wait until after dark in order to watch either Ozark in Dolby Vision or The Mandalorian from Disney+ just because I didn’t want to deal with any glare issues, which definitely show up when watching content that has a lot of shadows.

Compared to the Vizio P-Series Quantum, the OLED is most certainly dimmer and as a result HDR content actually looks comparable between the two. The P-Series can get brighter but at the cost of color and contrast definition, while the OLED has great color and contrast definition but isn’t quite as bright.

In short, you’re going to enjoy the OLED more in darker rooms, but it’s not unwatchable in bright light either.

Just like with the P-Series, the H1’s processor does show how far behind Sony and LG that Vizio is when it comes to low bitrate content. When streaming Mr. Robot from Amazon Prime, dark shadowy areas contrasted with lit actors resulted in really unpleasant and visible artifacts as the light blended into dark. The same can be said with YouTube content and even shows from Disney+, where bright skies will have visible banding. Though the 4K upscaling looks really good, Vizio just can’t compete with the top dogs when it comes to picture processing. This is by no means a deal-breaker for a television that comes in less expensive than OLED offerings from LG and Sony, but this is primarily where you’re going to see the reason those companies choose to, and can, charge more.

Dolby Vision Netflix content looks spectacular, however, so if you spend most of your time streaming from Netflix you probably won’t notice too much of an issue.

Vizio OLED H1 – Gaming Performance

While there is a deep fear of burn-in when it comes to OLED, it’s really hard to beat the mix of response time, low latency, and picture quality that you get out of one, and the Vizio is no exception: gaming on the Vizio OLED H1 is a dream.

I tested Trials of Mana on the Nintendo Switch as well as Apex Legends, Destiny 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and Risk of Rain 2 through the Playstation 4 and the Playstation 5 with the Vizio OLED and was consistently impressed with how good gaming is on this television.

I also had the opportunity to test gaming on the LG CX and found that because OLED has a bit of a problem coming out of black, shadows tend to be too dark for competitive gaming. It’s just too easy to lose targets in dark, inky shadows.

I have not experienced this problem to the same degree on the Vizio OLED. I think gaming on this TV is truly excellent and I have no issue recommending it for both casual and competitive console gamers.

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Games that max out at 60 frames per second look beautiful. Apex Legends, Ghost of Tsushima and Risk of Rain 2 all looked and played wonderfully. Ghost of Tsushima was especially rewarding to play, as the game’s gorgeous scenery floods out from the OLED and into your living room.

When you are able to play games that support the full power of the Playstation 5, you’ll be rewarded with beautifully smooth, high resolution gameplay that feels exceptional. The Crucible in Destiny 2 is one such experience and the Vizio OLED plays its role here fabulously. Low input lag, fast response time, and beautifully rendered HDR gameplay is fully on display.

I want to address burn-in concern with this television because it is a common fear with OLEDs. Based on my testing, I don’t think it’s going to be an issue. Every game I played, and played for hours at a time, has static elements on screen. I intentionally kept moving my cursor in a menu to keep the television from dimming (which it does automatically and very quickly when it senses that nothing is happening on screen to prevent burn-in) and have not seen any evidence of burn-in. Is it still possible to happen for you? Yes. I won’t say it’s out of the question, but I think that Vizio has done a great job with how this television is programmed to make it pretty much a non issue for most of the user base.

If you are going to play the same video game with the same, unchanging HUD for 10+hours a day, every day, for months, then yeah you might get some burn in. Same thing would happen if you left this television on CNN for that same amount of time. But most of the user base won’t do that, and for them burn-in is unlikely.

Vizio OLED H1 – Sound Quality

While Vizio equipped the OLED H1 with a 30-watt speaker, don’t use it: sound quality is really bad with this television. I complained the P-Series Quantum sounded tinny and underwhelming, and the OLED is even worse. This is what happens with ultra-thin displays: there just isn’t much room to work with to allow it to make quality sound.

You’re going to want to get some kind of sound system for this. Vizio will recommend its Elevate Soundbar because of how it is designed to fit neatly in the swoop under the screen, and I think that’s probably a solid choice. Whatever you choose, just don’t use the built-in sound.

Purchasing Guide

The Vizio OLED H1 retails for

Bungie has revealed Destiny 2 Season 13, the Season of the Chosen – and given us a look at what’s coming.

Launching on February 9 and running until May 11, Season of the Chosen will introduce new strikes, new gear, and an all-new mode called Battlegrounds.

Battlegrounds is a three-player matchmade activity where players “will engage in ritual combat” against the warriors of the Cabal. Old and new strikes will also be peppered throughout Season 13, with Destiny strikes Devil’s Lair and Fallen S.A.B.E.R. returning at the start of the season, and a new strike called Proving Grounds unlocking later, which will “determine the fate of the Last City.”

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Players who own the Destiny 2 Season Pass will unlock the Praefectus Armor Set and an Exotic bow called Ticcu’s Divination, which launches Solar arrows that can track “several targets at once.” Over 25 new weapons will also be added alongside the Season Pass additions.

The story of Season 13 centres around a political feud between Empress Caiatl and Zavala. “With the Pyramids and Xivu Arath destabilizing the system, Empress Caiatl, leader of the Cabal and daughter of Calus, seeks an alliance. But when she demands more than Zavala can offer, negotiations collapse.” Guardians will do battle with Caiatl’s growing war council to stabilize the situation.

In other Destiny 2 news, the community has raised concerns over Bungie’s plans for PC and console crossplay. Bungie recently filed a lawsuit alongside Riot, targeting cheat-making companies allegedly creating software hacks for Destiny 2.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.