Respawn has released a new gameplay trailer for the Nintendo Switch port of Apex Legends. The trailer reveals a new Pathfinder skin as well, which will be exclusive to the Switch version of the game for a limited time.
As seen in the trailer, the new legendary P.A.T.H. Pathfinder skin recolors the happy-go-lucky robot with a sleek red-and-white paint job. The trailer doesn’t mention how long this skin will remain exclusive to the Switch version.
Apex Legends makes its long-awaited debut on Switch March 9! Switch players, get ready for 🙌 30 free Battle Pass levels ✌ Double XP for the first two weeks after launch 🤖 Limited-time Legendary Pathfinder skin – P.A.T.H. – We can’t wait to welcome you to the Outlands. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/zVUgbuDvIM
Interestingly, this trailer may also tease more, currently unannounced additions to Apex Legends. At 0:26, you can see Rampart dancing with a microphone and at 0:38, you can see Mirage, Bangalore, Lifeline, Gibraltar, Pathfinder, and Wattson also all doing emotes that aren’t present in the game.
These could be upcoming banner poses that may be added in future events (maybe one that’s tied to a future Caustic town takeover), or perhaps Respawn will begin adding brand-new ground-based emotes alongside the current collection of skydive emotes and holo-sprays. Banner poses make more sense given Apex Legends is a first-person shooter and you normally can’t see your character, meaning you wouldn’t even see the emote you’re using. But we’ll have to wait and see.
Those who download Apex Legends on Switch within two weeks of its launch (so between March 9 and March 23) will automatically unlock the first 30 levels of Season 8’s battle pass. Additionally, all Switch players will earn double XP during that two week period.
Players of one of the hottest PC games right now, Valheim, are finding ways to exploit the title to make new experiences–like using the ocean as a giant trampoline to launch themselves.
Reddit user HotGuuuuu uploaded a clip of their exploit: hurtling a massive longboat down a tree-constructed ramp and using the vast ocean as a springboard to catapult themselves into the air. The ramp is built atop a mountain, so you can really see the speed they accumulate.
Curiously, despite the ocean looking very much like real water, the longboat simply bounces off the surface as if it’s made of rubber. HotGuuuuu bounces off the water’s surface a couple of times, launching several hundred feet into the air, before plummetting into a nearby forest.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons fans are always expressing their creativity through the game’s building mechanics, and they can sometimes achieve goals that seem impossible to casual players. That is definitely the case with Twitter user doom_mori, who managed to create a Mario-like platformer experience on their island using the themed items added for Mario’s 35th anniversary by a recent update.
While parts of this build are not possible without hacking the game–which we don’t recommend, as it can get your island’s Dream Address taken down, among other consequences–it’s still incredibly impressive. Especially lucky is the fact that the warp pipes work in the order they intended; the direction you exit a warp pipe is random, and if you have more than two on your island at a time, the connection between pipes is random, too. The Super Mario Sunshine music also adds a bit of atmosphere to the clip.
Square Enix has shared more details on Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, including story info on the Yuffie DLC episode. The company also outlined some of its enhancements and new features for the PS5 port.
The Japanese publication Game Watch (translated via Gematsu) explains the background of Yuffie and her partner, the new character Sonon. The two are elite operatives for Wutai, and are dispatched to Midgar to steal the “Ultimate Materia” from the Shinra company. Yuffie herself is a ninja who uses a shuriken weapon. Yuffie is the commanding officer to Sonon, though he’s older, and he is said to have trained under Yuffie’s father.
The new episode starring the pair will take place over two chapters: first as the two hook up with Avalanche, and then the Shinra heist attempt. Yuffie has both short- and long-range combat capabilities, and she can perform special contextual actions like breaking Shinra boxes and crossing a wire fence.
The Yuffie episode will require a separate purchase, but upgrading to the PS5 Intergrade version from your PS4 copy is free and you can carry over your previous save data. The PS5 version will feature new lighting effects, fog effects, and some upgraded resolutions. You’ll also able to choose between the 4K Graphics Mode and the 60 FPS Performance Mode. And a new photo mode will let you adjust the angle, colors, and exposure.
A new patch is available now for the hit Norse multiplayer game Valheim. Among a handful of smaller changes, it makes a big change for dedicated servers and also tweaks the game balance so wolves are less horny.
Starting with the dedicated servers, this new update makes it so dedicated servers now always use direct connections instead of using the Steam Datagram Relay (SDR) system.
“This should result in much lower latency for most players,” developer Iron Gate said. “I really hope this patch solves a lot of connection issues introduced in last weeks patches (due to switching socket backend),” the studio said.
Elsewhere, the March 2 update for Valheim contains a change that makes wolves less likely to mate. The patch notes state that the update “lowered wolf procreation slightly.” The developers apparently thought there was something wrong with wolves making cubs more than they should, so wolves are slightly less horny now, to borrow a phrase from PCGamer.
The Valheim patch notes also mention some localization updates, while the Bonemass enemy’s puke effect should not work properly, thank goodness. You can see the full patch notes below, as posted by Iron Gate on Steam.
Object network interpolation is skipped if object was far away, solved issue with network players flying through the air when entering dungeons & exiting portals etc
Added -public 1/0 flag to dedicated server again, Allows players to host local lan only servers
Join IP-button updated to allow for lan-connections (dedicated servers only) & added DNS support
Dedicated servers use directIP connection instead of SDR, solves issues with slow steam relays in some areas of the world
Bonemass puke-effect network fix
Updated Dedicated-server PDF manual
Prevent pickup items when entering portals
Lowered wolf procreation slightly
Lowered chance of boss trophy talking
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Peacock has ordered the science series The End is Nye, hosted and co-executive produced by pre-eminent science guy, Bill Nye. According to a release, each episode will dive into the mystery and reality of both natural and unnatural threats, “from viruses to volcanoes, asteroids to authoritarianism, and climate change to chemical warfare.”
The show, the release promises, is intended to explore “worldwide catastrophes” and their ability to provide both “thrills, but also hope and a way forward… The End is Nye offers a scientific blueprint for surviving anything that comes our way.” No release date has yet been announced, nor has it been disclosed how many episodes of the new series will be in the works. Previously, Nye’s Bill Nye Saves the World ran for three seasons on Netflix.
Brannon Braga (Cosmos: Possible Worlds, Star Trek) will serve as showrunner, director, and co-executive producer of all episodes. Fuzzy Door Production’s Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) and president Eric Huggins will round out the co-executive production duties. The series is coming about via Fuzzy Door’s current overall deal with NBCUniversal.
Mike Mignola’s name may be synonymous with Hellboy, but he’s far from the only creator to work in this iconic horror universe. Mignola’s career and pop culture influence are the subject of a forthcoming documentary called Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters. Drawing Monsters is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter, though the film has already earned several times its funding goal within the first 24 hours.
One of the Kickstarter tiers includes a portfolio set featuring art prints drawn by various Hellboy veterans. Along with a new image by Mignola himself, that creative lineup includes artists Dave Stewart, Laurence Campbell, Duncan Fegredo, Alex Maleev, Fábio Moon, Mike Norton, Paolo Rivera, Craig Rousseau, Tim Sale and Ben Stenbeck. IGN has an exclusive preview of that portfolio set. Check out the slideshow gallery below for a look at the process art for four of these prints, including rough pencils, inked versions and finished, colored images. It’s a unique opportunity to see how Hellboy and his world are given life by these talented artists.
Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters is co-directed and produced by ECCC founder Jim Demonakos and Clockwork Girl director Kevin Hanna. The film features behind-the-scenes footage of and interviews with Mignola, along with interviews featuring American Gods creator Neil Gaiman, Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar, Victor LaValle (The Ballad Of Black Tom), artist Tara McPherson and comic book creators Vita Ayala, Duncan Fegredo, Fábio Moon, and Joe Quesada. Production on the documentary is currently underway, with the directors aiming for a Spring 2022 release.
“There’s already eighty hours of footage in the can that we have shot over the last year and a half,” said Hanna in a press release. “This is an ambitious in-depth documentary to celebrate Mignola’s legacy in style.”
While Dark Horse continues to publish new comics set in the wider Hellboy/BPRD universe, the core Hellboy saga reached its dramatic conclusion in 2019 with the release of BPRD: The Devil You Know #15. Find out why we think the Hellboy saga is an unprecedented accomplishment for Mignola and his collaborators.
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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.
Hironobu Sakaguchi told me that three years ago, he had the chance to replay Final Fantasy VI with some of his peers who worked on the game with him. He was the lead producer on that 27-year-old classic, which is often regarded as the best entry in the storied series. “It really brought me back and reminded me why I love the RPG genre so much,” he said, thus, inspiring his latest project, Fantasian.
It’s been almost two decades since Sakaguchi had been involved with Final Fantasy, but as the creator of the illustrious franchise, he’s still trying to capture the spirit. “I went back to my roots into the pixel art era of RPGs and paid a lot of attention to that nostalgia element in the game’s overall construction,” Sakaguchi said when I asked him about how the past work of his development studio Mistwalker influenced Fantasian. However, he and the team aren’t simply resting on the laurels and relying on our love of old-school RPGs.
When Fantasian was first revealed during the Apple Arcade premiere in March 2019, Sakaguchi was shown working with handmade dioramas–this is how in-game environments are made for Fantasian. The game boasts over 150 dioramas used for scenes, backdrops, interiors, and overworlds to explore, and even the objects and props in these environments were physically created.
This is a unique method of constructing a game world, and I asked Sakaguchi how it affects the development process. “Once you commit to a design, there really isn’t a lot of leeway in terms of changes,” he said. “You might want to add a road here, maybe connect these two areas–that really isn’t possible. So in the concepting phase, it’s very important to have a clear vision of what it is you’re trying to build and create as the environment.”
As intimidating as that might sound, Sakaguchi also said working with dioramas was key for the vision of Fantasian. “When you construct these dioramas, seeing the actual objects in person can almost inspire and inform new gameplay or new elements in that, you see how a house is constructed,” he explained. He continued with examples of how he can set up in-game scenarios, concluding, “Because the object is present, it gives you a different perspective on how the characters might be able to interact with the environment, which was kind of fresh.”
Fantasian might draw you in with its elaborate diorama sets and throwback sensibilities, but Mistwalker is trying some new things gameplay-wise as well. What stuck out most to me was the Dimengeon system, which seems to solve the pesky problem of frequent random encounters. Essentially, the Dimengeon system lets you stack several instances of random encounters in your back pocket as you explore hostile areas, then initiate them all at once to take out all those enemies in one longer battle.
Although Fantasian uses a turn-based combat system, there are some active elements to battles. Some character abilities require you to aim spells in lines or curves to hit multiple enemies effectively, while some have area-of-effect properties. Sakaguchi also mentioned that boss battles will emphasize strategy, saying, “Even if the player’s characters might not be at the so-called recommended level, if they have a lot of cunning and items and use skills properly, then they can still defeat the boss.”
With world design and gameplay innovations, Fantasian seems to have a lot going for it. But a major reason why we hold some classic RPGs in high regard is for their storytelling. Fatasian has a familiar setup–the protagonist, Leo (who looks straight out of Nier), is in search of his father in their world governed by machines. He loses his memory after causing an explosion at a magic-tech (sounds awfully familiar!) and meets Kina, the girl in his one remaining memory. They embark on a multidimensional journey, jumping between worlds of chaos and order, and picking up several companions along the way.
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Fantasian – Official Special Features Trailer
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Sakaguchi explained the hooks of Fantasian’s story a bit more. “Because each character brought into the story has their own history, their own kind of encounters, and then departures from each other, this tension creates a unique feel and experience,” he said. He further explained that the game is made up of two parts or phases. The first of these is heavily driven by narrative, following storylines from different characters’ perspectives. The second part is said to bring the team together and give players more freedom to take on quests and choose how they want to progress.
If Fantasian sounds like a traditional RPG, that’s because it is. To address the elephant in the room, there’s a certain connotation that an RPG on a mobile platform carries. Even though it’s a mobile game exclusive to Apple platforms, titles curated for Apple Arcade have a more conventional design philosophy.
“First we took an approach quite similar to how we might set up the development team for a console game,” Sakaguchi said in response to overcoming the perception of a mobile game. He continued, “Diorama aside, we used a lot of the same methods and the same kind of approach in developing the world. The feel and the experience will be much closer to something you would expect to find on console in terms of the immersion and interaction.”
And one of the important aspects that’s hoping to drive that traditional Final Fantasy-like experience is the work of long-time composer Nobuo Uematsu. He’s scored many iconic soundtracks that Final Fantasy fans remember so fondly alongside the great gameplay experiences through the years–and he has composed 60 fully-orchestrated songs for Fantasian.
“Me and Uematsu-san being the age that we are, I think we’re kind of closer to the latter chapters of our game development careers. We’ve been talking quite a bit,” Sakaguchi prefaced. “And I don’t mean this to say Uematsu-san is going to quit composing music by any stretch of the imagination–but whether he takes on another entire game, he said, this might be the last time he composes an entire game on his own. I think because of that, he did pour a lot of his heart and soul into this.”
Uematsu had been composing Mistwalker’s games since the developer’s inception, and occasionally returns to Final Fantasy every now and then. But Sakaguchi asserts that Uematsu is still trying new things with his music. “There’s definitely going to be some recognizable Uematsu melodies, but there’s a lot of experimentation,” Sakaguchi mentioned. “Early on in the music composition process, he and I talked about implementing even some disharmonies as well as scales that [differ] from the standard C scale, etc. It branches off from that as well as integrating even the sound of some more ethnic instruments, which brings another flavor to it altogether.”
Fantasian seems to represent the old and new, from the gameplay and story concepts to the world design and music. Even late in his career, Sakaguchi still wants to capture that JRPG magic he once pioneered and understands that he and his team can still be inventive in the process. “Like the Final Fantasies of old, I always wanted to have this kind of spirit of innovation, which would kind of push the boundaries a little bit in terms of the genre,” he said.
As you can gather from his sentiments, Sakaguchi still has a lot of love for the franchise he created. So, I asked about how he feels looking at the franchise today. He reminisced about one of his last official Square-related projects, talking about Final Fantasy XI and the conversations of what to call it and how to handle the first MMORPG in the series and his insistence on making it a numbered entry. And he concluded, “[Naoki] Yoshida working on Final Fantasy 14 has done some amazing things. And even [Yoshinori] Kitase, who is working on Final Fantasy 7 Remake. They really pushed the boundaries in terms of visual expression and fidelity as a form of storytelling. I see everyone just working really, really hard on this franchise and it really just makes me very happy to see that.”
It likely won’t be long until we get to see how this project from Sakaguchi and Mistwalker comes together. Although there’s currently no definitive release date, Fantasian is said to be coming soon–and it will launch on Apple Arcade for iOS, Apple TV, and Mac devices.
Quotes used in this article were translated live by a third-party on a video call, which were edited for readability and clarity.
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Ubisoft has released a new trailer for Hyper Scape, its free-to-play battle royale. The trailer showcases how the game’s map will evolve for Season 3, which begins March 11.
At the start of Season 3, in-game map Neo Arcadia will transform into Neo Arcadia 2.0. This expands the overall size of certain landmarks and implements new types of traversal spaces, such as boats anchored in a river that allow you to bunny hop from one shore to the other and tunnels carved into rocky terrain that add brand-new chokepoints.
The corruption at the center of the map will also erupt to infect the immediate area, twisting the environment in unnatural ways. This will likely add a bit more of a challenge to navigating the most central zones of Neo Arcadia 2.0. In the trailer, you can see how areas of the train tracks have been destroyed, as have certain buildings.
In GameSpot’s Hyper Scape review, I wrote, “Hyper Scape is an okay battle royale game. The game has solid weapons and hero-like Hack abilities, but you’re at the mercy of being lucky enough to get what you need to have a higher chance of winning. The battleground doesn’t help in this regard, since it’s difficult to know where you’re going and make a plan about where to loot next without stopping to open the map. At least the individual moments in Hyper Scape are fun. A match could be ruined by the randomness working against you, but that doesn’t stop moments like turning into a ball and trying to out bounce three enemy balls any less fun in how ridiculously silly it is.”
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