As some may know, May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the United States. Although Asian Americans make up a little over seven percent of the United States population, Asian American is a diverse term encompassing Asian Americans from all kinds of cultures from over 24 countries, and that’s only including the ones officially counted by the United States census.

The history behind the term “Asian American” is complicated, and doesn’t do justice to such a diverse and varied group of people. But in the centuries since Asian immigrants first arrived in the United States, people from numerous countries have left an indelible mark on American culture.

If this list is short, that's because Asian American art is still nascent. But if you want to look back on AAPI month and enjoy some great contributions to culture from AAPI artists, you can start with these.

A note before the list: we've done our best to highlight specifically Asian American media, which is distinct and unique from pop culture hits produced abroad, so don't expect to see films like 2019's Parasite – a brilliant South Korean movie, but not an Asian American one.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

One recent Academy Award-winning picture that is 100% Asian American is Everything Everywhere All at Once. Directed by Daniels, this gonzo, multiverse adventure combines mind-bending sci-fi with a defiant story centered around a Chinese Asian American family. While it drew mass acclaim thanks to its go-for-broke action and eye-popping visuals, the film grapples with heavy themes of immigration. The American Dream never materalized for the Wong family, and furthermore the film also portrayed the stress that can develop between parents and their first-generation children as a result of immigration.

It might be easy to think of Everything Everywhere All at Once of retreading common Asian American tropes like the strict mother, but the film is imbibed with nuance. Raymond Wong, in the award-winning turn from Ke Huy Quan, is the beating heart of the movie and grounds what could just be a sci-fi extravaganza – though it is that as well.

Life is Strange: True Colors

There are plenty of games featuring Asian characters, but consider for a moment how many you can name with Asian American characters. Chun-Li and Ryu might be recognizable icons within games, but they're not part of the Asian American diaspora. While there’s still a ways to go until we see enough games with Asian American protagonists to fill a list, one recent standout is Life is Strange: True Colors, which stars Asian American heroine Alex Chen as she tries to uncover the mystery behind her brother’s death.

The writers behind Life is Strange: True Colors don't make Alex's Chinese ancestry a main part of her story, nor should they need to. Asian American characters are allowed to not bring up their heritage every five minutes, or have it factor into their lives at all if they choose. But her culture is there and ever-present, even if it's not vocalized, and is especially present in scenes with her family.

Not every Asian American character needs to be a ninja or samurai. Sometimes they're just a music nerd in Colorado who likes Radiohead.

Overwatch 2

Still, there's nothing wrong with wanting to play as a ninja warrior. Overwatch 2 features playable heroes from several AAPI countries including Korea, Japan, Thailand, China, and India. I'm cheating a little bit as these characters aren't quote-unquote Asian American, but the world of Overwatch is more inter-connected in a way our real-world is not, so it's hard to say if there's even such a thing as Asian American in the Overwatch universe.

Still, Blizzard has done a great job of not only including diverse Asian characters in the cast, but hiring appropriate voice actors and ensuring these characters' backstories are nuanced and three-dimensional.

Moana

One of the better recent Disney movies, Moana stars a majority Polynesian cast paying homage to pacific island cultures. Disney consulted with an Oceanic Trust of antrhopologists, cultural practicioners, historians, and linguists from Samoa, Tahiti, Mo'orea, and Fiji to help develop the film and ensure it was as authentic as possible while still being a Disney film.

A banging soundtrack and a leading performance by Dwayne Johnson as the god Maui puts Moana a cut above the rest.

Turning Red

Turning Red is technically an Asian Canadian film from director Domee Shi. Set in 2002 Toronto, it centers on a young Chinese Canadian girl and her relationship with her mother who runs a temple in the city's Chinatown. The film portrays a very different mother-daughter dynamic than the one featured in Everything Everywhere All at Once, further expanding on the representation that should be afforded to Asian American characters, but aren't. Wheras Everything Everywhere All at Once's relationship between mother-daughter could be defined by disappointment, in Turning Red, Meilin's desire to have a normal, cool youth collides with her mother's overprotectiveness in hilarious and heartfelt ways.

Oh and check out Shi's previous Pixar short, Bao, too.

Fast and the Furious Franchise

A series with humble roots in Los Angeles car culture has become one of the biggest action franchises in the world, and features a surprising amount of AAPI goodness, but not in the ways you might think.

Firstly, the late Paul Walker was a huge fan of Japanese sports cars, and their inclusion in the series is in large part to his passion – so much so it led to the third entry, Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, which introduced Han Lue into the family.

As far as AAPI characters go, there's only Han, a character so beloved in Tokyo Drift the film franchise literally bent its own timeline to include more Han in the series. And then, later, simply revived him to keep the good times rolling.

Fast and Furious is hardly an AAPI franchise, but its achievements for AAPI pop-culture can be measured by the Asian American creatives behind the camera. Justin Lin and James Wan both helmed major installments of the franchise, and some would argue, the best entries including Fast Five and Furious 7. While on-screen representation is the most visible, Fast and Furious helped pave the way for Asian American directors to start tackling blockbuster productions like Star Trek and Aquaman.

As we wrap up AAPI Heritage Month, consider checking out some of these titles as a way to celebrate all the contributions to pop-culture from AAPI creators and artists.

Also See: 14 of the best TV shows by Asian creators you should watch on Netflix from Mashable. And, if you haven't watched season one of Beef yet, where Steven Yeun and Ali Wong give career-best performances playing angry, lost souls who transform one another's lives, you need to get on that right this minute.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

The PlayStation Plus Game Lineup for June 2023 has been revealed, with NBA 2K23, Trek to Yomi, and Jurassic World Evolution 2 joining the subscription service early next month.

All three games will be available to download on both PS4 and PS5 consoles from June 6 up until July 3 at no extra charge for individuals with PlayStation Plus Essential, Extra or Premium subscriptions.

NBA 2K23

NBA 2K23’s released back in September 2022, bringing with it a slew of online and single player game modes, including the reintroduction of the Jordan Challenge, which tasks fans with recreating 15 moments from the iconic player’s illustrious career. PlayStation Plus subscribers also get access to "exclusive monthly MyTEAM packs", according to the PlayStation blog post detailing the new additions.

In IGN’s 6/10 review we said that the game’s on-court improvements “ should've led it to an easy layup, but the ever-present nuisance of pay-to-win microtransactions make it much harder to enjoy”.

Trek to Yomi

Trek to Yomi meanwhile follows the story of the young samurai Horoki, as he voyages “beyond life and death” to protect his town, and fulfil the vow made to his dying master. In IGN’s 7/10 review we described Trek to Yomi as “a brief but captivating journey that’s like playing through a monochromatic Japanese movie”.

Jurassic World Evolution 2

Frontier Developments’ Jurassic World Evolution 2 rounds out the the June lineup, allowing players to relive the mistakes of the cult movie franchise as they wrangle dinosaurs and manage guest needs across a series of parks. The second entry in the series features four game modes along with an expanded cast of dinosaurs ranging from the noble triceratops to the ever hungry T. rex.

In IGN’s 7/10 review we celebrated Jurassic World Evolution 2’s “excellent dinosaurs”, and improvements over its predecessor, while lamenting some of the game’s relatively shallow management mechanics.

Meanwhile subscribers still have time to download May’s PlayStation Plus offering - GRID Legends, Chivalry 2, and Descenders - before the games disappear from the service on June 6.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Brian Holinka, lead combat designer for World of Warcraft, has announced that he is leaving Blizzard to join Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street in forming a new game studio.

The former World of Warcraft developer made the announcement on Twitter yesterday, saying he's leaving Blizzard on Friday after working with Team 2 for nearly 11 years. This comes over two months after Street, former executive producer of the upcoming League of Legends MMO, stepped down from Riot Games and the game due to personal reasons.

"After nearly 11 years, Friday will be my last day on World of Warcraft and at Blizzard," Holinka wrote in his Twitter thread. "I'm excited to spend time off with my family this summer, after which, I'll begin a new adventure with my old friend and mentor, Greg Street."

After nearly 11 years, Friday will be my last day on World of Warcraft and at Blizzard. I'm excited to spend time off with my family this summer, after which, I'll begin a new adventure with my old friend and mentor, Greg Street.

— Brian Holinka (@holinka) May 30, 2023

He continued, "I will miss the combat team tremendously and my biggest regret is not being there to see them grow, develop and thrive as designers. [Team 2]'s new leadership is very strong and will serve them well. I leave confident that they are in good hands."

Holinka joined Blizzard in 2012 as lead PvP designer for World of Warcraft, eight years after working on Battlefield 1942 and other first-person shooters for DICE, Trauma Studios, THQ, High Moon Studios, and Kaos Studios. In 2017, he took a break from World of Warcraft to develop an unannounced Blizzard project as a senior designer, and returned to the game to oversee the entire class and combat design team as lead combat designer.

Street nor Holinka haven't released any details regarding the name of their new independent studio nor the games they will be developing. Even so, we can't wait to see what projects they'll be cooking up.

Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.

Fans think that Microsoft and Xbox are teasing some Fable news at its upcoming Xbox Games showcase next month.

On Xbox’s official Twitter account, a video was posted showing a person’s Xbox controller covered in glitter. Then it's revealed that the glitter forms a trail that leads to a screen that shows the Xbox Games Showcase logo with the caption, “seems important.”

Do you love ✨ GAMES ✨ as much as we do? Then you won’t want to miss the Xbox Games Showcase: https://t.co/YSurRjtzpn | #Starfield #XboxShowcase pic.twitter.com/O1qSlXHNmY

— Xbox (@Xbox) May 30, 2023

In the Fable games, a glitter trail guided players to their next destination on a mission. So this trail of glitter implies that the Fable reboot will appear at the Xbox Games Showcase. The game is being developed by Forza Horizon developer Playground Games.

The Fable reboot was first announced back in 2020 for Xbox Series X and PC. In the meantime, we’ve learned that the game is being developed using the Forza engine and that Horizon Forbidden West writer Andrew Walsh left Guerrilla Games to join Playground and work on it.

This is the latest mainline entry in the Fable series since 2010’s Fable 3. The Xbox Games Showcase is set to premiere on June 11.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He's been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

I love first-person shooters. Always have. Always will. And in particular I love single-player first-person shooters. Mix a compelling narrative in with some great set pieces and repeatable fun gameplay that makes me feel powerful in some way and I’m all-in. I also love something that feels fresh and new, which is harder to come by in this expensive-to-build, risk-averse genre. That’s why I was intrigued to spend a few hours playing Immortals of Aveum, whose Mad Libs-sounding name belies a great idea I haven’t seen in an FPS in a while: it has zero guns in it. By now you’ve already seen that magic takes its place. It’s a smart choice that allows plenty of depth and variety between its three magic types, and the result thus far is a game that mostly had me smiling the entire time I played.

I say “mostly” because, well, let me get Aveum’s big blemish out of the way now: its dialogue and main character are not good. You play as Jak, a generic cocky rookie who has developed the rare ability in this universe to wield all three types of magic: red, blue, and green. Neither Jak nor the words that come out of his mouth match the tone of this fantasy universe at all. Maybe this was on purpose to try and avoid being Yet Another Fantasy Game, but it just doesn’t work. I’m not looking forward to an entire campaign’s worth of Jak’s cringey dialogue with his superior officers in their Everwar against The Bad Guy.

Fortunately, that downside seems to be drastically outweighed by the good stuff in Aveum: namely, its combat and its visuals. I’ll start with the former. While it’s true that the tri-color magic-spell combat at times mirrors a traditional firearm – like the green-magic spell that is functionally all but identical to a minigun that even takes a moment to spin up – the ways they can be combined and upgraded really allows you to feel powerful in every battle. Maybe you use your green-magic’s machine gun-like ranged attack that homes in on its target slightly to go at some enemies from mid-range before switching to your blue-magic sniper-like shots to pick off other foes from afar. I had fun putting my Bulletstorm-like lash to good use to rein in enemies from afar before blasting them with my red-magic shotgun-esque attack. Frequent mini-boss fights (and regular big-health-bar boss fights!) called for liberal use of my handful of Fury ultra attacks, powered by a separate Mana bar. My favorite of these sends out an underground shockwave that sends a cascade of sharp rocks jutting out of the ground when it reaches its intended target. In short, there’s some real opportunity to show off your skills here, and I can see strategy-minded action-game players (like our own Mitchell Saltzman) making some really great combat montages – much better than what you’re seeing here.

Matching the magic system’s impressive combo capabilities are Aveum’s Unreal Engine 5-powered graphics. To the best of my knowledge, Aveum will be the first major Unreal Engine 5 game to release when it drops on July 20 for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. Simply put, it’s gorgeous. From the in-engine cutscenes that show off really incredible detail in the characters’ faces to the spectacular environments you'll battle in, Aveum definitely looks like a game that would not have been possible without the new consoles. Studio head and game director Bret Robbins (whose resume includes Dead Space as well as Sledgehammer’s Call of Duty games) confirmed to me that it will run at 60fps on consoles, which is not just a plus, but more or less a must given the fast pace of Aveum’s first-person combat.

As an over-40 gamer, Immortals of Aveum does remind me of something near and dear to my heart: Raven Software’s long-ago fantasy first-person shooters Heretic and Hexen. It’s a spiritual connection at best, certainly, but I feel like I haven’t seen magic and first-person shooting blended this well since those ‘90s classics. I’m not optimistic that the full context of Jak’s story will make his or anyone else’s dialogue in this game any more bearable when I get my hands on the full version, but I’m quite confident that the magic-fueled combat will keep me hooked until the end.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Last week’s PlayStation Showcase had a ton of exciting reveals. A remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, new details on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, another killer glimpse at Alan Wake 2… But there was also one glaring flaw a lot of people have since pointed out: There weren't a whole lot of PlayStation exclusives on show, and that is great news for Xbox.

Another Gran Turismo movie trailer, PlayStation earbuds, and CGI concepts for many of the new PlayStation exclusives meant fans were left underwhelmed. Worse, some of those CGI concepts didn’t even do a good job of teasing what you can expect from the full game. Sorry FairGame$, but what is this game exactly?

A total of 4 PlayStation Studios were present at the showcase.

3 out of those 4 had CGI trailers for live service games with 0 gameplay and the last studio showed gameplay for a game that was announced in September of 2021. That's after 1.5 years of waiting.

Wtf Sony.

— MBG (@xMBGx) May 25, 2023

There’s always a lot of hype ahead of a showcase and while PlayStation usually does a good job of at least attempting to manage expectations, this seemed a little different. The PlayStation blog promised “A wealth of new games and new IP are headed to PS5 and PS VR2,” and the switch from the usual State of Play to a full-blown Showcase meant it felt like we were back in E3 territory, even though it’s long gone.

Back in 2021 a hyped-up Showcase revealed the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake, Wolverine, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and God of War Ragnarok. That’s a killer line-up, so understandably there was an expectation from fans that we might get another look at a Wolverine tease, or that the coveted Bloodborne 2 announcement would actually happen. What was actually shown didn’t do that much for most. Metal Gear Solid Delta, a game some thought would be PlayStation exclusive, has me tremendously excited, but it turns out I’ll be able to play that on Xbox or PC.

If the Xbox Showcase has a lot of gameplay and some good exclusives than it is going to be a MEGA dunk on Sony.

Rewatched some of the PlayStation Showcase this morning and it is just bizarre how it is all CGI with little details.

— DreamcastGuy (@DreamcastGuy) May 25, 2023

One unexpected result of the PlayStation showcase was that it gave the Xbox social team an easy win after it posted a graphic containing 12 games from the PlayStation showcase that would also be available on Xbox. Apart from the first-party developed Spider-Man 2, Final Fantasy XVI — a bought third-party exclusive — and a handful of PSVR 2 games, there was little in the way of first-party games to get hyped about as a PlayStation fan. The showcase spoke to Xbox fans as much as it did PS5 players, which I’m sure Sony was hoping wouldn’t be the case.

The #PlayStationShowcase was a 'D' grade from a Shinobi602 perspective.

While games like Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2 & Dragon's Dogma 2 look great & I'm excited for MGS3, we still have no real picture of PS first party studios' future lineup. CG trailers don't sell me on anything.

— Shinobi602 (@shinobi602) May 24, 2023

This sets up Xbox to steal the limelight when it airs its own showcase on June 11th. We already know Bethesda’s Starfield will have its own dedicated showing, Forza Motorsport will make an appearance, but if other much-anticipated games are there too – I’m talking Avowed, Hellblade 2, Fable, and more, then it could be an injection of excitement for Xbox in addition to the hype the PlayStation showcase has also generated.

Phil Spencer may have already teased that the hotly-anticipated Avowed could make an appearance, saying he's played "good builds of Avowed" during the Kinda Funny X-Cast show. “I’m very enthusiastic about Showcase,” he explained. “We’re going to announce some things that people haven’t seen, some new games, [and] we’re going to give updates to some of the things that were on your list,” Spencer commented, when asked if we can expect updates on Avowed, Perfect Dark, Everwild, Fable, State of Decay 3, and Contraband.

What a good looking group 😎 pic.twitter.com/eDZo8vTXtB

— Xbox (@Xbox) May 24, 2023

Historically, PlayStation plays things pretty close to its chest and in this instance I think it's to its detriment. There's no clear picture about what to expect beyond 2023, and that's a pretty big problem for some fans. We know it has Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine, and the Gran Turismo movie is on the way too, but I don't think anyone walked away feeling overly hyped about the rollout beyond 2023.

Inversely, Xbox has so much that has been in development for years, I have to imagine it’s set-up for a massive W here. It could knock it out of the park even further if we get a teaser for say Gears 6, or InXile’s RPG FPS, big third party games hitting Game Pass day 1, or dare I say it, a first look at Indiana Jones. But let’s not get too excited because ultimately that’s what leads to the kind of disappointment many had after PlayStation’s showing.

Come on Xbox, it’s your time to shine. Let’s see what you’ve got.

Destin Legarie is a Director of Content Strategy at IGN. He likes taking bird photos in his spare time when he's not doing Performance Reviews for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter if you want.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Remake (officially Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater) will reportedly feature the 2004 game's original voice acting.

As reported by The Verge, Konami's head of communications for the Americas Tommy Williams said the remake will feature the original game's dialogue with no changes despite being released close to two decades ago.

The status of the remake's voice acting was up in the air due to unclear wording from Konami, who said alongside the announcement last week that it will "star the original voice characters".

This also means that David Hayter, who voiced Snake in nine different Metal Gear games before being passed over for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, will sort of make his return to the franchise. This will seemingly only be through his original lines recorded for the game, of course, and not through new voice acting.

Hayter said following his replacement that he doesn't "feel any need to go back" and work with franchise creator Hideo Kojima (though he's not involved in the remake), and appeared fairly hurt by Konami's decision not to have him return.

"That'll be 60 hours of humiliation that I can’t get to," he said of playing Metal Gear Solid 5 at the time. "I haven’t played the latest two iterations because it’s just too painful."

As for Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater, Konami has also had to explain why there's a strange symbol in its name and that it's not just coming to PlayStation 5 but Xbox Series and PC too.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Venture to the Vile clicked with me the first time I switched layers to solve a puzzle. I was trying to get to a lever that would open a door farther in, but there wasn’t a lever in the area I hadn’t pressed, and none of the ones I had opened the door. Then I remembered that one of them had extended a bridge to an area in the background. So I walked back to the bridge, shifted to the layer in the background, worked my way to the lever, and bingo: one open door. I love it when a plan comes together.

Venture to the Vile is a 2D Metroidvania with a twist. It's set in a 3D world, and you can switch between areas in the foreground and background as long as you find a path to get you there. See something cool? You can probably go there. Developer Studio Cut to Bits wants to emphasize exploration and a sense of surprise in Venture to the Vile, and based on my time with it, I think they’ve nailed it.

Part of the appeal of Venture to the Vile is the world itself. Venture to the Vile takes place in and around the town of Rainybrook, where a mysterious substance called The Vile is corrupting everything, transforming the inhabitants of an otherwise charming and colorful world into horrifying monstrosities. Rainybrook takes cues from the Victorian period, and you can see it in the architecture of the town itself and the masks the characters wear. Speaking of characters, Venture to the Vile’s cast has a lot of personality, from Dr. Crow, who wants to dissect you, to friendly town butcher, or the two shady guys who really don’t want you listening into their conversation. Rainybrook is core to Venture to the Vile: other characters will give you quests, and you’ll be able to visit the town’s many shops to upgrade the abilities you’ll acquire by… ahem, venturing into the vile.

Venture to the Vile also features a dynamic weather and day/night cycle and it’s not just for show. The weather and time of day will change where characters are, what monsters inhabit an environment, the quests you can pick up and do, the narrative you’ll experience, and the upgrades you’ll find.

That, of course, is where the actual gameplay comes in. Venture to the Vile’s unnamed, stag-masked hero is looking for his friend Ella, who has disappeared in the Vile. Going into the Vile is dangerous; it corrupts everything it touches: plants, animals, people, you name it. Our stag-masked hero has a few tools up his sleeve to fight back, though. He can attack enemies with the retractable blade coming out of his arm, parry telegraphed enemy attacks, and double-jump. I was early on, so my ability set wasn’t as robust as it would be later, but it felt good and appropriate to the environment I was exploring. You can save at camps to replenish healing items, but it also returns defeated enemies to life, making for interesting risk-reward decisions if you have to backtrack. Naturally, you will have to if you want to see everything Venture to the Vile’s dynamic weather and day/night cycle opens up. I enjoyed Venture to the Vile most when it asked me to do a bit of everything: switch between the different layers of the world to solve puzzles, fight off corrupted Vile-monsters, and mix my basic platforming abilities up with environmental additions like ziplines.

In fact, I was so into it that I didn’t realize I’d walked into a boss fight against the world’s angriest grasshopper until it started. Like the rest of Venture to the Vile, the fight was a mixture of platforming and combat. I spent most of the fight avoiding the grasshopper, who attacked from various angles, spawned Vile on platforms to limit my movement, and did an area-of-effect attack that forced me to dodge, only hitting him when he stopped for a breather after a flurry of attacks. The fight wasn’t complex, but it was enough to keep me on my toes, and I barely prevailed. My reward was a dash ability.

You see, killing enemies in the Vile rewards currency that can be used in Rainybrook, but killing bosses like the grasshopper allows the protagonist to absorb their abilities, as well. Absorbing Vile means becoming more and more like the monsters you’re fighting, adding an intriguing hook to the narrative. I was excited to try the dash for myself, but the playable section of the demo ended there.

However, I did get to see what Venture to the Vile looked like a little later courtesy of a hands-off showing by Studio Cut to Bits. In it, our stag-masked hero was exploring a windmill overrun with Vile. In addition to the dash I’d unlocked, which can be used in the air as well as on the ground, he also had the time-honored Metroidvania ability to wall jump and a tentacle arm that allowed him to leap to nearby grapple points. The windmill had more layers than the environment I’d seen earlier and was much more vertical. Traversing it meant using those abilities and manipulating the windmill’s internal machinery by riding conveyor belts, hitching a ride on grapple points, and freeing wooden gears from the Vile while navigating environmental obstacles and contending with Vile-infested spiders and rats.

The segment ended with a multi-stage boss fight against a giant tentacle-eye. It’s a complex fight, with players having to deal with the eye’s attacks in addition to stage hazards, a moving conveyor belt that can change directions, and rope-grapple points. I can’t wait to play it for myself.

Honestly, that last sentence sums up how I feel about what I played and saw of Venture to the Vile. Studio Cut to Bits is developing a unique, literally layered Metroidvania with beautiful art and an intriguing world, and I can’t wait to see more of what awaits us – and what our stag-masked protagonist might transform into – in the future.

Will Borger is a Pushcart-nominated fiction writer and an IGN freelancer. His work has also appeared at TechRadar, GameSkinny, DigitiallyDownloaded.net, and Into the Spine. He specializes in covering fighting games, action games, strategy games, and first-person shooters. You can chat with him on Twitter @bywillborger.

CD Projekt Red will lay off around 30 more employees by the end of 2023 as development on Gwent: The Witcher Card Game winds down.

Revealed in a blog post on Gwent's website, CD Projekt Red confirmed that "about 30 remaining Gwent team members are going to part ways" with the studio.

This contradicts a statement from December when the developer told IGN that a small number of employees would be kept on to keep the game running while the remaining staff would be moved to other projects at CD Projekt Red.

A spokesperson told IGN that four team members will be laid off in June, with CD Projekt Red gradually increasing this number throughout the year until around 30 staff have been laid off in total.

"It’s never easy to say goodbye," the developer said in the blog post. "And even though decisions like this are unavoidable and a natural result of the transition, we’d like to express our sincere thanks for all the contributions these team members have made to Gwent. Just like the community, you helped make the game what it is today."

This announcement from CD Projekt Red follows two other waves of lay-offs. The Molasses Flood, which is owned by CD Projekt Red and currently developing the troubled Project Sirius Witcher game, saw 29 team members laid off earlier in May.

CD Projekt Red also announced the closure of The Witcher: Monster Slayer in December last year, revealing that lay-offs would be made at developer Spokko as a result.

Development on Gwent is currently being switched to a community-focused approached. CD Projekt Red announced the change in December though assured the game will remain online for years to come, with final "official" updates being made from the development team between now and the end of 2023.

Gwent celebrated its five year anniversary of entering open beta in May 2022, but was first released in closed beta back in October 2016. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales was released as a full RPG spin-off in 2018 and a single-player standalone expansion called Gwent: Rogue Mage was released in 2022.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

BKOM Studios and Paizo have launched a Kickstarter campaign for a co-op hack-and-slash action RPG based on the Pathfinder tabletop game.

Titled Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults, the Kickstarter says this is the first-ever hack-and-slash RPG based on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. If funded, the title is set to come to PC via Steam.

Pathfinder: Abomination Vaults will support up to four players at a time, as they lead Pathfinder heroes through Gauntlight Keep in a mission to defeat the evil sorceress Belcorra Haruvex. The game will take place in a mega-dungeon beneath Gauntlight Keep that's separated into different biomes. Players can choose between four Pathfinder champions: Amiri the Barbarian, Harsk the Ranger, Kyra the Cleric, and Ezren the Wizard.

Kickstarter backers will be eligible for rewards like an artbook, early access, a custom dice set, and more. The project has a goal of CA$410,000 with 30 days to go.

While this is the Pathfinder franchise's first Diablo-like, the series is no stranger to video game adaptations. Just last year, we got Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, an isometric RPG that we called great in our review.

Speaking of Diablo, we're just a week away from Blizzard's Diablo 4. We called the upcoming game amazing in our Diablo 4 review, saying "Diablo 4 is a stunning sequel with near perfect endgame and progression design that makes it absolutely excruciating to put down."

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Dragon Age writer David Gaider has shared his thoughts on the "lackluster" and "soulless" nature of procedurally generated AI dialogue, while also predicting failure for developers who can't forsee the technology's current limitations.

“Ah, yes. The dream of procedural content generation,” tweeted Gaider in reference to a new Guardian article discussing the potential applications of AI scriptwriting in future video games. “Even BioWare went through several iterations of this: ‘what if we didn't need every conversation to be bespoke?’ Unlimited playtime with dialogue being procedurally created alongside procedural quests!”

The Guardian article focused in part on a game demo called Smallville, which used an artificial intelligence (AI) called ChatGPT to generate conversations amongst a population of 25 NPCs as the characters went about their simulated lives in a sandbox world.

Joon Sung Park, one of the authors of the research, believes that smaller indie developers could start adopting AI like ChatGPT in their development process in as little as a year and a half, with wider uptake of the tech possible in around five years time. As it stands, integrating AI into a video game in any significant way is a costly prospect, which is fraught with potential problems.

Ah, yes. The dream of procedural content generation. Even BioWare went through several iterations of this: "what if we didn't need every conversation to be bespoke?" Unlimited playtime with dialogue being procedurally created alongside procedural quests! https://t.co/iTLAFgRDUk

— David Gaider (@davidgaider) May 29, 2023

However, during a lengthy Twitter thread, Gaider remained sceptical of the short term application of AI in games. While describing his own experiences of working with the tech, the veteran developer noted that his team at BioWare “collectively believed” multiple times that procedurally generated AI conversation and content could work. However, according to Gaider, each time this was attempted the end results were found to be “lackluster” and “soulless”.

He went on to note that future developers might well come to the conclusion that AI tools can generate decent situation specific content if fed the right input, but it is not a sentiment that he himself shares. “The issue wasn't the lines,” Gaider explained.. “It was that procedural content generation of quests results in something shaped like a quest. It has the beats you need for one, sure, but the end result is no better than your typical ‘bring me 20 beetle heads’ MMO quest.”

Gaider proceeded to say that developers who convince themselves that A.I. is capable of generating deep, bespoke narratives, as opposed to what he describes as “superficial content that covers the bases but goes no further”, are liable to fall short.

“I say such an A.I. will do exactly as we did: it'll create something *shaped* like a narrative, constructed out of stored pieces it has ready... because that's what it does,” tweeted Gaider. “That is, however, not going to stop a lot of dev teams from thinking it can do more. And they will fail.”

He also believes that the lure of procedurally-generated AI content will be too powerful to resist for teams working on certain genres. “The fact these dev teams will fail doesn't mean they won't TRY,” predicted Gaider. “Expect to see it. It's too enticing for them not to, especially in MMO's and similar where they feel players aren't there for deep narrative anyhow. A lot of effort is going to be wasted on this.”

Some leading figures in the entertainment industry and select game developers have already signaled their interest in utilizing AI, with Disney CEO Bob Iger going so far as to say that the technology's implementation could be "disruptive". Earlier this year Ubisoft introduced a new AI script writing tool called Ghostwriter, ostensibly with the goal of helping human writers create more believable lines — also known as barks — for its NPCs.

However, as noted in the Guardian piece, numerous others have voiced their unwillingness to incorporate AI writing into their games, citing artistic objections and worries over issues like accidental plagiarism, alongside the simple fact that some, like Gaider, simply find the end result to be disappointing.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Like seeing your favorite band play their greatest hit live, Diablo 4 is completely awesome to behold even though you know exactly how the song’s going to go from the moment you hear the first iconic note. Diablo 4 doesn’t do much to reinvent ARPGs or push the boundaries of a genre its series helped pioneer, but the tweaks, improvements, and borrowed ideas it does introduce have forged this latest model into the best Diablo we’ve ever had. The finely-tuned combat, extensive build options across each class, stellar graphics, and strong live-service foundation are all among the most impressive in the genre, and the endgame activities and grind are so well thought out that I struggle to find any fault in them – as rare an occurrence as rainfall on Mars. A weak story and some irritating bugs do occasionally throw a wet blanket over the fires of Hell, but the 80 hours I’ve spent in Sanctuary have still been overwhelmingly positive, and even after all that demon slaying and obsessing over loot rolls, I’m still very excited to play a whole lot more.

Diablo 4 is the latest in a demon-centric series quickly approaching its 30th birthday, and it largely succeeds at modernizing the depths of Hell enough to finally match its more recent ARPG peers. You’re once again sent on an endless string of dungeon crawls where mastering your hotkey-bound abilities, optimizing your DPS, and improving your survivability are generally more important than things like an engaging story or explaining the insane diarrhea of flickering lights and elemental effects that typically occupy the screen – and practically every moment of that is really, really enjoyable whether you’re playing alone or with up to three friends. Running dungeons captures that familiar but just as compelling loop of killing hordes of enemies, completing objectives, and downing bosses, and running sidequests to learn more about the world’s lore and characters is usually a very good time even while the main plot meanders.

If you were hoping Diablo 4 would shock the ARPG world with massive innovations to the genre, however, you’re likely to be disappointed in that specific regard. Instead of trying to revolutionize ARPGs in any major way, Blizzard mostly seems content to play it safe by making smart but unsurprising changes to the formula, with things like more customizable skill trees and more diverse playstyles between its iconic character classes. This series had a lot of catching up to do in the 11 years since Diablo 3, and whether it’s borrowing combat inspiration from Path of Exile or online elements from Lost Ark, there isn’t really anything about what Diablo 4 does so well that is completely unprecedented. But while there may not be much in the way of game-changing innovations, the good news is that lack of experimentation has resulted in a game that’s unbelievably well-designed and succeeds at practically everything it tries.

I’m one of those weirdos who actually closely follows the story in Diablo, and although Diablo 4’s probably isn’t going to win any awards, it is still a massive step in the right direction compared to its predecessor. The quest to find and stop Lilith, daughter of one of the Prime Evils of Hell, after she unleashes her fury upon Sanctuary serves as a fantastic kicking off point that I was still eager to unravel even after my eighth playthrough of the first act during the pre-launch beta. Gone are the days of WWE-like voice performances and dreadfully cheesy dialogue, and the queen of succubi is one of the most complex villains the series has ever seen, with motivations that even made me question the justness of my own cause.

But before you get any real payoff for what’s expertly set up in the first act, you’ll spend the vast majority of the next four going on tangentially related errands with more filler than a packing peanut factory, before finally getting back to the task at hand. The result is an interesting but disjointed story with a payoff that doesn’t quite stick the landing. The real shame is that anytime Lilith is on-screen or closely involved in whatever action is going on, it’s absolutely engrossing stuff. But she’s largely hidden behind a curtain waiting for the final act for the vast majority of the campaign, and the diversions you’re sent on along the way consistently feel like unnecessary detours. Combine that with some seriously disappointing boss fights I won’t spoil, especially the campaign’s final one, and it’s hard not to feel let down by what this could have been.

It does help that Diablo 4 looks and sounds fantastic regardless of what’s going on in the story. Between the rare but breathtaking CGI cutscenes and the more numerous in-engine cutscenes that happen in between major story missions, as well as the detailed, disgustingly corrupted environments found in dungeons and out in the world, Sanctuary is rarely not a gorgeous sight to behold. It’s no small feat, then, that Diablo 4 sounds even better than it looks, with one of the most memorable OSTs in recent memory, mostly great voice acting, and lots of gross demon roars and shrieks as you lay waste to the minions of Hell.

The ending of the story at least nicely sets up a whole host of possibilities for Diablo 4’s live-service future and inevitable story expansions, but I find myself excited about the potential of where things might go more than I am happy about the base campaign we got overall. It’s no wonder that Blizzard allows you to skip the campaign entirely for every character you make after the first time you complete it – a five-minute recap video would be just as effective as replaying the roughly 15-hour story. That might have been more disappointing if the brief campaign were meant to be the main course of this meal, but thankfully rolling credits in a Diablo game means you’ve only just finished the appetizer.

When it comes to the things that really matter in the long run like combat, buildcrafting, hunting for gear, and especially the endgame, Diablo 4 absolutely knocks it out of the park in practically every way. Even if they aren’t perfectly balanced, all five character classes are a ton of fun to play as. The rogue darts around to deal extreme damage either in melee or from afar with a deadly bow in an exhilarating high risk/high reward tradeoff; The sorcerer creates horrifying cocktails of destruction, like an absolutely disgusting lightning build I brewed up to stun everything around me constantly; The necromancer raises an army of the dead, steals life, and manipulates the corpses of fallen enemies to carry out their foul desires, for when I’m in the mood to keep my distance and let someone else do the hard work for me; When I just want to Hulk my way through the depths of Hell, the barbarian is an expert in all forms of smashing who can charge forward to destroy everything in their path; And the druid uses their Animorph abilities and the power of mother nature to wail on all manner of demons, with probably the most build diversity of any of the classes.

Part of what helps make each option feel unique are the class mechanics that unlock at various points in the campaign. For example, the Sorceress gains access to the enchantment system in Act I, which allows you to enchant a couple of their spells to augment how they work. I used one of my enchantments on my teleport spell to turn the standard dodge every class gets into a second teleport cooldown, greatly improving my mobility. Each class has their own unique twist, whether it’s augmenting your ranks of the dead as a necromancer or bonding with spirit animals to gain beastly enhancements as a druid, and that goes a long way to making your playthrough and buildcrafting on each character feel distinct in some really cool ways.

Gear can also substantially affect the paths you might choose to take a character down. For example, after completing a job for a demented tree, you could be rewarded with a magical pair of pants that heals you over time when standing close to enemies, warranting a shift in your build from slaying enemies from afar to something close quarters. Or maybe, like me, you’ll get devilishly lucky when you find a weapon that has a chance of casting a random lightning spell for free whenever you cast an initial one, leading to absolute mayhem when you bring your electrical might to bear upon an unsuspecting huddle of bandits.

Trying out new builds and experimenting with powerful new pieces of equipment is one of the best parts of Diablo 4, and I spent most of my time on my sorcerer, where I continuously discovered new and extremely rude ways to be the best glass cannon I could be, like equipping an ice shield that froze enemies for the sin of attacking me to remove said shield. The variety of systems available to optimize your character are so numerous that it can be pretty dizzying at first, even for a Diablo veteran like me, but when properly mastered this is easily one of the best buildcrafting toolboxes of all time. Whether it’s the dense skill trees, the endgame paragon boards and powerful glyphs that can be upgraded and socketed into them, the plethora of loot options across various world tiers and rarity levels, the gems and vendor upgrades you can use to make that equipment even better, or the fact that gear perks can be tweaked to optimize them for a certain build, Blizzard seems to have thought of just about everything. And all that control meant I never came close to feeling like my time wasn’t being respected when a loot drop didn’t happen to go my way.

There are just so many ways to interact with your build and make smart use of your gear. For example, whenever I outleveled a cool piece of gear with an effect I loved, I could extract its key perk and keep it in my inventory to be imprinted on a more powerful piece of equipment down the road. And thankfully, Blizzard has backed down from its previous promises to make skill tree respecs prohibitively expensive. Instead, they merely hurt your in-game wallet enough that switching high-level characters to a new build is a serious consideration, but not one that’s impossible or sends you straight to the poor house. After 80 hours on a single character, I was still discovering new ways to tweak and improve my build or new equipment perks that opened up exciting possibilities. That makes it very difficult to log off even when I found myself playing nearly until the sun came up once or twice.

Running through murky halls with my decked out murder machines feels significantly more streamlined since the dungeon tweaking Blizzard rolled out in response to feedback from the beta weekends, with far less backtracking and wasted time. That keeps things moving along at a great pace and makes diving into the bone-riddled halls of an ancient tomb or what I can only assume is a demon body parts exhibit a consistent joy. No matter what class you’ve chosen, shredding your way through piles of wretched reprobates is usually effortless fun that lets you flex your unrivaled power, though some of the more difficult activities like Nightmare Dungeons are bound to put those skills to the test. There’s also a good chance you’ll run into a random event that might have you rescuing some poor souls who find themselves lost in a crypt, or get attacked by The Butcher, a familiar demon who enjoys meat hooks more than I thought possible.

Admittedly, regular minions have very few unique mechanics I could discern in the few seconds it took to send them back to Hell with my coldest regards. Most just run at you while yelping or hurdle some pointy object at you from nearby, which doesn’t make them feel all that different to fight even when they are part of some distinct and cool-looking enemy faction. But you do get the occasional breath of fresh air, like shamans that summon new enemies to the battlefield, making their summary executions a high priority, or skeletons that slowly shamble toward you with big, beefy shields until you’re able to tear through their defenses and finish them off. Dungeon bosses have a bit of a similar inconsistency – I can only fight so many big, floating demon wizards called “The Curator” or some such nonsense before it all just blends together into one big pile of satisfyingly defeated gore. But others are much more memorable, like one where a laughing cultist repeatedly summoned waves of freaks until he ran out of steam and was quickly turned into a bowl of mashed potatoes by me and my friends.

Speaking of friends, Diablo 4 is great for making them, as an online connection is required to push back the forces of evil. While this comes with the expected but rare hitches like getting disconnected from the live servers in the middle of your adventures or having to wait in short queues to get play during a particularly busy time, the benefits far exceed the drawbacks. There’s a much greater sense of discovery now as you encounter other players out in the wild (or murder them in cold blood in a PvP zone), and those chance encounters when you’re taking down a world boss, for example, can turn into new online friends. It’s especially cool that trading and clans seem to have greatly increased in prominence compared to previous Diablo games, and there’s a real sense of community around taking down endgame group activities together and helping one another optimize your builds. That’s the kind of magic you can get in an online game and I’m very excited to see what ridiculous shenanigans the community gets into.

Optimizing your build and coordinating with your squad means nothing if there aren’t endgame activities waiting to be conquered, and Diablo 4 has quite possibly the best day-one endgame experience I’ve seen. Once you’ve beaten the campaign, you’ll be able to run bounties for the Tree of Whispers, an evil plant with dismembered heads hanging from it, which spawns new activities infinitely in exchange for high-level loot drops. Doing so at higher world tiers (essentially harder difficulties) also gives you keys to Nightmare Dungeons, which are more challenging versions of existing levels that add crazy stuff like an invincible crystal that magically chases you around the entire time trying to crush you and your dreams while you fight suped-up versions of the dungeon’s enemies and bosses.

I was around level 43 when I finished the campaign, but at level 50, you’ll also be ready to tackle the first Capstone Dungeon – a mostly by-the-numbers dungeon that serves as a power and skill check in order to unlock the third world tier, and which grants access to a variety of new activities and loot drop ranks. Some of those are called Helltide Events, a completely awesome type of activity where blood begins raining from the skies in certain zones, and uber-deadly enemies swarm everywhere. Killing them and collecting nonsensically named Aberrant Cinders without dying allows you to open special chests that are positively crammed with sacred loot.

But PvP is possibly the endgame activity with the longest tail. You’ll find two PvP zones in Sanctuary where you compete to slay NPC enemies to collect materials while keeping your head on a swivel to defend against rival players who might decide to kill you and take your resources for themselves. Running around in these chaotic zones is completely nerve-wracking and hilarious, especially since even your own party members can betray you by scooping up the valuable materials that are not shared between players, leading to rifts in even the strongest alliance – you might even be tempted to leave the party to rid yourself of that pesky friendly fire protection and lash out at a former ally.

Then at level 70, you get another Capstone Dungeon to unlock the final world tier, which gives you access to even better loot, tougher enemies, and more XP, and, there’s yet another final endgame dungeon designed for level 100 characters after that – the treadmill of things to conquer is so well designed I didn’t want to get off even when I felt like I had seen 95% of what was on offer. The whole time you work towards the max level of 100, you’re earning Paragon points to make your character ever more deadly against your increasingly formidable foes, which serve as a carrot to keep grinding your way through Tree of Whisper Bounties, Helltide Events, and PvP zones. Even after more than 80 hours on my primary character I haven’t reached level 100 yet, but there is a cap on both leveling and earning additional Paragon points once you do, a smart move away from Diablo 3’s philosophy of letting players earn nigh-endless stat increases in favor of a system that forces you to make meaningful choices with the limited upgrades your Paragon Boards can contain. I prefer that approach to the bloated monsters that Diablo 3 characters were known to become, and the endgame grind to reach that max level is practically perfect in terms of variety, replayability, buildcrafting, and more.

Even if you somehow run out of things to do in the endgame for one character, rolling a second or third character instantly becomes a fresh experience since the campaign is optional and many unlocks like Altars of Lilith (fonts of power hidden throughout Sanctuary) and potions/skill points granted from gaining renown in regions of the map are account-wide bonuses that instantly apply to your character. The most important of these instant unlocks is your mount, which allows your new characters to hop on a horse and race off to faraway parts of the map so you can begin leveling by playing whichever activities you want, rather than being stuck to the campaign’s railroad tracks every time you want to try out a new class. Tackling dungeons or participating in PvP from the fresh perspective of a whole new class immediately shakes off any dust Diablo 4’s lengthy grind might gather and extends the good times even further than I thought possible.

The best part about Diablo 4’s endgame successes, though, is that all of it’s built upon a live-service foundation that will allow the world, meta, and activities to evolve over time. Whether or not that model will be updated with content frequently enough to keep people interested remains to be seen, but even without it, the vanilla endgame experience is strong enough on its own. I can only imagine how exciting it’ll be when new experiences are added to the Diablo 4 playground that challenge your maxed out characters in exciting ways and expand upon the story or available character classes. Live-service games get a lot of hate nowadays, and I understand why when there are so many recent examples of how not to do them (I’m looking at you, CrossfireX). But that model can also breathe endless life into a game when done right – we don’t know yet if Blizzard will do it justice, but right now I couldn’t be happier that the groundwork has at least been well laid for Diablo 4 to potentially thrive going forward.

Hopefully some of those updates come sooner rather than later, too, as Diablo 4 does suffer from a few nasty bugs at the moment. For example, if you enjoy teleporting around as a sorcerer, be prepared to get stuck in the ground literally hundreds of times, as Blizzard apparently didn’t account for vertical geometry changes when zipping around the top-down levels. Thankfully the issue can be resolved by just teleporting back to town, but it also forced me to retrace my steps to my original location, wasting tons of time…only for it to happen again when I teleported a few minutes later. There’s also some weird rubberbanding that sometimes goes on when you try to go from one region to another that prevents you from entering a zone. In some instances, my friends and I had to use one another as teleporting waypoints to get into regions we were completely unable to enter. Most of Diablo 4’s issues are extremely specific things that will likely get patched, but they were bad enough to tangibly impact my enjoyment a bit in the meantime.

Microsoft has announced its Xbox Games with Gold line-up for June 2023, with Adios and The Vale: Shadow of the Crown up for grabs next month.

As detailed on Xbox Wire, the two Games with Gold offerings for June will be available to anyone with Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, with Adios coming up first from June 1 to June 30 and The Vale: Shadow of the Crown following between June 16 to July 15.

Adios is a cinematic first-person game about sticking to a complicated moral decision. Players take on the role of a pig farmer who has decided that he no longer wants to dispose of bodies for the mob. What follows is a discussion between him and his would-be killer.

After that difficult conversation, you might want to close your eyes and embark on an audio-based adventure with The Vale: Shadow of the Crown. Players control a blind adventurer who has just been made warden of a small castle on the outskirts of a kingdom.

New games approaching also means that May's Games with Gold will soon leave the service, so be sure to download Star Wars Episode I: Racer and Hoa before time runs out.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater was one of the biggest announcements from the recent PlayStation Showcase, and IGN had the chance to speak to the team behind the game to learn more about exactly what this remake is.

While the team wasn't ready to reveal everything about Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater, which doesn't currently have a release date, they were ready to talk a bit about if Hideo Kojima or Yoji Shinkawa had any involvement in the project, if there will be more remakes from the Metal Gear series, and more.

Who Is Making Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater, and Is Hideo Kojima Involved?

One of the biggest questions many had after the announcement was whether Metal Gear Solid 3 director Hideo Kojima was involved in the project. There wasn't much hope that Kojima was going to be a part of the project, especially after his breakup with Konami, but it was a question nonetheless.

We also asked if Yoji Shinkawa was involved, as he was integral in the art of the Metal Gear Solid series and is now working with Kojima at Kojima Productions.

"They are not involved," a Konami spokesperson said. "However, the development team will work hard to create this remake and also the ports (for Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection) so that they can be enjoyed on multiple platforms by even more players all around the world."

For those unfamiliar, the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 was announced alongside Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater and it includes the original Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and Metal Gear 1 and 2. The collection will arrive in Fall 2023.

So, who is working on the remake? As it turns out, the "central role" will be taken on by Konami developers who have been "involved in the production of the past [games in the] Metal Gear series." These devs will be working with Virtuos, a studio who has also been "involved in the production of previous entries in the Metal Gear series." This confirms earlier rumors that Virtuos, which has worked on everything from Dark Souls Remastered to Uncharted 4, was involved with the remake.

We then asked why the team chose to start with Metal Gear Solid 3 as opposed to the first Metal Gear Solid, and it all seemed to boil down to the fact that this third entry is actually the spark of the larger Metal Gear tale.

"We chose Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater because it depicts the birth of BIG BOSS (Naked Snake), which is the starting point of the Metal Gear series," a Konami spokesperson said. "Another reason is that many fans have been requesting a remake of this game for a long time."

The fans also appear to be a big factor as to whether there will be future Metal Gear remakes or even brand-new games. Konami was careful not to mention new games despite us asking, but it did share that, "regarding remakes of previous games in the series other than Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, we will listen to player demand and consider accordingly."

Why Metal Gear Solid Δ over Metal Gear Solid 3?

Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater is obviously a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, and we began by asking why they chose to go with the Delta symbol instead of just calling it Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Remake of something similar. Konami gave a brief explanation on Twitter about why it made this decision, and the devs elaborated a little more in our chat.

"The Delta symbol (Δ) was chosen because its meaning fits the concept of the remake project," a Konami spokesperson said. "Delta is a character from the Greek alphabet that means ‘change’ or ‘difference’ in mathematics and variables, and also has the meaning of changing an amount without changing the structure."

Speaking of changes, Konami confirmed it isn't going to update or alter the story in the remake. We here at IGN aren't too upset about that as the story was one of the main reasons we placed Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater at the top of our rankings of Kojima's Metal Gear games in 2015.

"And then there's that ending," we said of Metal Gear Solid 3's story. "A gut punch of a conclusion to a story that retroactively sets the entire franchise in motion. Love, honor, betrayal and all the best bits of Metal Gear Solid, wrapped up in one beautifully camouflaged package."

Recasting Snake in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was one of the more controversial decisions of that game, but Konami isn't going to shake the boat in that department either and has shared that all the character's voices from the original game will be the same in the remake. As for whether this means that more Metal Gear Solid remakes are on the way, we'll just have to see.

"Regarding remakes of previous games in the series other than Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, we will listen to player demand and consider accordingly," Konami said.

For more, check out why we believe Metal Gear Solid 3 is the right game to remake first, our side-by-side comparison of the remake and the original, and everything else that was announced at the PlayStation Showcase.

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

Remember when Street Fighter 5 came out and a lot of people were disappointed by its distinct lack of meat on its bones? Street Fighter 6 is the polar opposite. Complete with an excellent 18-character roster of both new and returning fighters rendered in a killer new art style, an incredibly ambitious online Battle Hub that puts all other online fighting game lobby systems to shame, and just about everything you could ever ask for when it comes to training tools and systems to help you get better at fighting games, it’s a spectacularly feature-rich fighting game. Street Fighter 6 takes many swings in many different directions, and though not every blow connects, the ones that do are absolute knockouts.

The gameplay of every Street Fighter game since Street Fighter 2 can generally be defined by a unique mechanic. Street Fighter 3 had parries, 4 had focus attacks, 5 had the V-System, and now Street Fighter 6 has the Drive System. And for my money, it’s the best the series has ever seen.

Every character gains access to five powerful abilities that are all governed by their Drive Gauge: Overdrive special moves, Drive Rush, Drive Parry, Drive Reversals, and Drive Impact. Overdrives are essentially the new EX Special Moves and cost two bars, Drive Rush allows you to quickly close the distance between you and your opponent at the cost of one bar (or cancel out of specific normal attacks at the cost of three bars), Drive Reversals allow you to get an opponent off of you while you’re blocking their attack at the cost of two bars, and Drive Impacts… well we’ll get into those in a bit.

I love this system for a lot of reasons, but chief among them is that it opens up so many options, and at the start of every round you have a full meter and have access to all of them. There’s no building this meter up, or worrying about the amount you’ll have left over for the next round. I could start aggressively by using a Drive Rush right out of the gate to put on pressure; I could save my meter for Overdrive special moves to increase the damage of my combos; or I could fish for a crouching medium kick and then Drive Rush cancel it to convert big damage off of a single hit. Those are just a few of the options, and managing them makes the already extremely cerebral fighting of Street Fighter 6 even more enjoyable.

The way it’s handled when you run out of Drive Meter is also excellent: your character enters a Burnout state where you’re completely unable to use any Drive Meter-related techniques; your opponent’s attacks become more advantageous on both block and hit; you take chip damage, and Drive Impacts are even scarier than before (I swear, we’ll get to Drive Impacts in just a bit).

Being in Burnout is a terrible position, but it is far from an unwinnable situation. You still move at the same speed, your attacks do the same damage, you still have access to all of your super moves, and while your opponent’s Drive Impacts are a huge threat, you know that they’ll be looking to do them, which can lead to some interesting mind games on both sides. Some of the most tense and fun matches I’ve had in Street Fighter 6 have been when I managed to pull out a victory even while in Burnout.

Now let’s talk about Drive Impact, because I have a feeling that for a lot of people, whether or not they enjoy Street Fighter 6 is largely going to come down to their feelings on this one move. Drive Impact only costs one bar of drive meter to use, it has super armor that can absorb up to two hits, and if it hits while your opponent is in the middle of their own attack they will be knocked into a crumpled state, giving you a full combo. And that’s not at all! Even if they block it they get blown back and lose half a bar of Drive Meter, and if they get backed into the corner you get to follow it up with a combo. That’s not all either! Remember how I said that they’re even more scary when you’re in Burnout? Well, if you block a Drive Impact and you’re close to the wall you get stunned and you’ll eat a full combo in the corner, even though you blocked their attack. It’s one of the most powerful universal mechanics I’ve ever seen in a fighting game, and if you don’t respect it, you will get crushed by it.

And yet, I love Drive Impacts, because they’re tuned so that they’re just reactable enough to be defended against if you’re looking out for them, but also still fast enough to catch you by surprise if you’re not. All you have to do is Drive Impact them right back: you’ll absorb their attack, hit with yours, and now the roles have reversed so that you get the opportunity for a full combo. Countering Drive Impacts is just so incredibly satisfying, especially when it’s the key to you turning the tables and winning a tight round.

The New World Warriors

Street Fighter 6’s roster of 18 characters is mostly familiar, with 12 returning characters and six being entirely new, but even the returning characters feel fresh thanks to new quirks added to their move sets. Ken’s command run, for example, now changes up the properties of several of his special moves when he uses them out of it, giving them EX-like properties without having to spend Drive Meter on them; Cammy can now charge her special moves and give them V-Trigger like qualities; and Dee Jay has a ton of new feints that make him an extremely tricky character to use and play against.

The new blood, meanwhile, are some of the best additions Street Fighter has seen. Kimberly is a clear standout, with a ninja-inspired moveset that has her closing the distance with quick teleports, piledriving you into the ground with Izuna drop-like air throws, and mixing you up with tricky leaps from half a screen away. Jamie, meanwhile, is a drunken melee powerhouse who is able to buff himself by taking swigs of his flask, and once he takes four drinks pretty much all of his moves become extremely dangerous with multi-hitting attacks that left me totally clueless on when it was actually my turn to try and fight back until I labbed against him in training mode.

Pretty much every Street Fighter character archetype has representation here. You’ve got your grapplers in Zangief and Manon; your rushdown fighters in Ken, Jamie, and Cammy; your zoners with Guile, Dhalsim, and JP; and your powerhouse bruisers in Marissa and Honda. It’s everything I want out of a roster.

Gonna Take You For a Ride

World Tour is an ambitious single-player mode, and while it is a big step up from Street Fighter 5’s attempt at a cinematic story mode (and anything else Street Fighter has done before) it’s certainly the weakest part of Street Fighter 6. It’s at least a great idea: It’s a surprisingly enormous RPG that allows you to take a created character into the world of Street Fighter, interacting with the playable roster by becoming their disciple and learning their moves, and then building them up from scratch by leveling up, equipping various types of stat-altering gear, and selecting powerful skills. It also does a good job of teaching new players the fundamentals of Street Fighter 6 by including lessons as sidequests, with steadily increasing difficulty over the course of about 20 hours.

However, RPGs live and die by their stories, and the story of World Tour is unbelievably dull. With paper-thin characters, predictable plot twists, and a mute protagonist whose main purpose is just to be an errand boy for various gangs and factions, there’s nothing to get excited about. It feels like it was written with the primary purpose of having your character jump around to various countries to meet the roster characters, and yet it never really bothers to justify those trips. In one chapter, a random gangster all of sudden tells me that I need to get her bag back that my buddy stole. And so without any objection, the most reasonable solution is for me to make a global trip to Rome in order to fashion a counterfeit bag that I can hopefully use to fool the gangster into thinking I got her bag back. In another chapter I had to go to Jamaica and Brazil because my original mentor, Luke, wanted souvenirs from those places and doesn’t know how to shop online I guess?

At least the tone is goofy and fun, which is a great fit for Street Fighter. You can fight just about anyone on the street, regardless of whether they deserve a Rising Uppercut to the face or not; it’s fun to use ridiculous-looking moves like the Spinning Bird Kick to cross gaps like you’re a human helicopter, and there’s a surprising amount of enemy variety, many of which do an admirable job of teaching newer players how to deal with specific situations that will come up outside of story mode. Some enemies will favor blocking high, making them vulnerable to low attacks; others will stay permanently in the air and must be brought down by anti-air techniques; and others still will try to hang back and pepper you with projectiles, forcing you to fight them like you would a zoner-type character. And then you can also fight refrigerators… And Roombas. It’s weird, but in a very amusing, Yakuza-esque kind of way.

There’s also a variety of fun minigames that do a great job of “gamifying” techniques that you actually would use in a typical fight. In one of them you have to chop bottles by holding back for a second and then quickly moving the stick in the opposite direction and pressing a button, which is how you’d perform charge-type special moves on a character like Guile or Blanka; another has you making pizza by quickly performing special move inputs as they appear on screen; and another still has you using your combos to quickly destroy a big rig in a nod to the original car-busting minigame from Street Fighter 2.

The best thing about World Tour, though, and the thing that really serves as the carrot at the end of the stick, is the promise of being able to outfit your character with moves from every other fighter. By the end of the campaign I could use Dhalsim’s teleport to instantly appear behind an opponent, hit them with Zangief’s Spinning Piledriver, and then use Ken’s Dragonlash Kick to get right back up in their face. Being able to customize my character in ways that would make them absolutely broken in the real game is a lot of fun.

The issue is that it takes forever to level up a character’s style to the point where you learn new moves from them. You do this simply by using them, but even though I only used Luke’s and Ken’s throughout the entire mode, I still didn’t max out either of them. Those who love a good grind may enjoy having plenty left over to unlock after the 20 or so hours it takes to complete World Tour, but I would've liked the drip feed of new unlocks to be substantially faster considering the sheer amount of rewards there are to unlock by maxing out the ranks of each character.

I have many more issues with World Tour, but even despite them, I still had a fun time with it in the end. It’s a mode that’s more directly aimed toward people without a lot of fighting game experience, and I think those people will get a ton more out of it than I did. The character customization elements are great, the way it incentivizes fundamental lessons of how to play Street Fighter 6 by dressing them up as side missions and minigames is extremely well done, and there’s just an overwhelming amount of content to discover with two very large open worlds to explore (both of which have day and nighttime versions that each have their own set of side-missions to discover).

I Got Next

Another reason why you might want to go through World Tour mode is that you’re able to take your character and all the gear they’ve earned into the online Battle Hub, which is an online social space where you queue into both ranked and unranked matchmaking, or pull up on a cabinet much like you would in a local arcade and await challengers.

Online lobbies are not a new thing in the world of fighting games, and truthfully, I’ve never been the biggest fan of them, but Street Fighter 6’s implementation of the Battle Hub has won me over. For one, it’s super cool to look at because Street Fighter 6’s character creator is absolutely wild, and gives you the freedom to make beautiful creations with finely tuned features or unspeakable monsters with out of this world bodily proportions, and it’s fun to just wander around the hub and see what people have come up with.

There’s also a lot of things to do beyond just parking at a cabinet playing with either friends or random players. There’s a section of the hub where you can play a rotating selection of classic Capcom games like Final Fight and Street Fighter 2; another section where you can play Extreme Battles with party-like rule sets and gimmicks; a store where you can purchase more customizable clothes for your avatar with in-game currency; and you can even pit your created character against others in Avatar Battles.

But the most important thing about Battle Hub is that it’s all optional. If you don’t want to deal with it, you don’t have to. You can simply queue up for ranked or casual matches via a menu, go into training mode while you wait, or create a custom room for multiple friends without ever having to go through the Battle Hub – which is exactly how it should be.

The Little Things

What really pushes Street Fighter 6 over the edge is how it completely nails virtually everything outside of its main modes that you could ask for in a fighting game. Based on my experience playing pre-launch and in all three betas, including the open beta, its netcode is excellent; it’s got the best training mode I’ve ever seen in a fighting game, complete with frame data and cancel window data; it’s got extremely helpful character guides that make it very easy to learn a new character from scratch; combo trials that teach you practical combos for a variety of situations; load times are extremely quick and rematches are nearly instantaneous; you can search for replays with a ton of different filters to help you learn matchups; there’s crossplay across Xbox, PlayStation, and PC; you can create and join clubs; and so on. Many fighting games also have these features, but very few have all of them, and especially not right out of the gate.

Street Fighter 6 also deserves credit for really making an effort to welcome newcomers in innovative ways. On top of the World Tour mode, there’s also a new Modern control scheme that allows you to play without having to worry about character-specific command inputs or combo routes. Special moves are mapped to a button and a direction, much like Smash Brothers – there’s one button each for light, medium, and heavy attacks, you can execute combos by holding down an assist button and mashing one of the three attack buttons, and you can use super moves just by pressing two buttons at the same time.

The playing field is kept even by the fact that those using Modern Controls don’t have access to a character’s full repertoire of normal moves, but being able to perform special moves with just the press of a button is a tradeoff that makes the Modern Control style appealing even for those who aren’t beginners.

And for those who just want to hold forward and mash on one button to execute special moves and combos, there’s a new Dynamic control scheme that’s only usable offline and essentially lets the AI choose the attacks for you. Capcom’s really covered all the bases here.

CD Projekt Red has revealed that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sold over 50 million copies worldwide.

Furthermore, CD Projekt Red also confirmed that the series as a whole has surpassed 75 million copies sold. This includes 2007's The Witcher, 2011's The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and 2015's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The School of the Wolf is growing! 🐺 Over 50 million people joined Geralt of Rivia on his Path of finding Ciri and defeating the Wild Hunt!

Thank you for your enormous support over the years! ❤️ pic.twitter.com/lhMHmgF34z

— The Witcher (@witchergame) May 29, 2023

CD Projekt Red is currently working on several games in The Witcher series, including Project Polaris, which is presumably The Witcher 4. It likely won’t be released until 2025 at the earliest as it only entered pre-production in March 2022. The studio is also working on a remake of the first Witcher game and has confirmed that it will feature an open world.

The Flame in the Flood developer Molasses Flood is also working on a separate game in the franchise called Project Sirius. However, its development was recently reset and has a new multiplayer framework.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was first released in 2015 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions recently launched in December 2022.

In IGN’s The Witcher 3 review, we said, “Even if the plot isn’t terribly interesting, the many characters who play a part in it are, and along with the excellent combat and RPG gameplay, they elevate The Witcher 3 to a plane few other RPGs inhabit.”

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He's been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

Diablo IV’s Hardcore mode now has even higher stakes – immortalizing the first 1,000 players to reach level 100 by adding their names to a statue of Lillith.

“Think you can cheat death?” asked Blizzard in a tweet (below). “Reach level 100 on hardcore mode and tweet #Diablo4Hardcore with proof to have your username immortalized on a statue of Lilith.”

Diablo’s infamous hardcore mode has the highest stakes of all – a single character death will permanently delete that character. But if you can rush through without succumbing to any of Diablo IV’s monstrous bosses, you could have your BattleTag immortalized forever.

Think you can cheat death?

Reach level 100 on hardcore mode and tweet #Diablo4Hardcore with proof to have your username immortalized on a statue of Lilith.

Offer limited to first 1000, restrictions apply: https://t.co/TLWxZwG0aQ

Get started June 1st. pic.twitter.com/pvVLZNPgx8

— Diablo (@Diablo) May 26, 2023

As well as reaching Level 100 in hardcore mode, players will also need to submit proof, in the form of a photo or video, to Blizzard.

The terms and conditions also state that you’ll need to tweet at the official Diablo account about your accomplishment using #Diablo4Hardcore while also mentioning your Battle.net BattleTag. Of course, you’ll also have to have the Tempered Champion in-game title, but that’s awarded automatically when you reach level 100 in hardcore mode.

The contest begins when Diablo V early access launches on June 1 and ends when the first 1,000 names are gathered or by September 1 if fewer than 1,000 players reach this point.

IGN’s Diablo IV beta impressions said: “Having focused on the Druid and Necromancer classes during the second beta weekend, this one open to more than just those willing to buy an appropriately unholy chicken sandwich, I’m more convinced than ever that this hellish action RPG is on track to deliver something truly special.”

Want to read more about Diablo IV? Check out how Diablo IV’s gothic style reclaims the franchise identity as well as the accessibility features you can find in the upcoming sequel.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Keanu Reeves channelled his inner Johnny Silverhand when he reunited with his rock band Dogstar to play their first public show for over two decades at the 2023 BottleRock Napa Valley music festival.

Reeves, who played Cyberpunk 2077's rockstar-turned-warrior Johnny Silverhand, took to the Verizon stage with his bass guitar on May 27. He performed to the crowd of festivalgoers alongside Dogstar's drummer Robert Mailhouse and guitarist/vocalist Bret Domrose.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Dogstar attracted a sizable crowd with their set, which included songs from their back catalogue and their forthcoming album, generating plenty of cheers and even proclamations of love for "John Wick" throughout the afternoon.

Mailhouse offered Reeves some welcomed advice before heading out on stage with the band after a long hiatus from live public performances. "He was just super positive," Reeves told the outlet. "He was like, 'Listen to the music. Just be present in the song, and it will go from there.'"

Dogstar was formed in 1991 and had moderate success with two studio albums and an EP before disbanding in 2002. However, Reeves had the opportunity to embrace his inner rock star again by lending his voice and likeness to rebel rockerboy Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077.

An upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion titled Phantom Liberty will see Reeves return as Silverhand alongside a new cast of characters, including Idris Elba as Solomon Reed. However, CD Projekt Red has not yet confirmed a price or specific release date for the update.

Reeves' turn as Silverhand is just one of the many hats he has worn throughout his decades-long acting career. He has continually proven to be a force in the business, whether he's playing a cyber-superhero, a time-travelling teen, or the most lethal hitman in the world.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Yakuza fans desperate for more information on Lika a Dragon 8 could hear more at RGG Summit: Summer 2023, which Sega has announced will take place on June 15.

Revealed in a tweet (below), the showcase from Yakuza developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio will be available to stream at 8pm Pacific / 11pm Eastern, meaning June 16 at 4am UK / 1pm AEST.

Sega has yet to reveal how fans can watch along but, as was the case last year, it will likely be streamed on its official Twitch channel.

Get ready for RGG Summit Summer 2023!

📅 June 15
⏰ 11PM ET / 8PM PT
📺 Stay tuned for live stream details#RGGStudio#RGGSummitSummer2023 pic.twitter.com/01WYJ4uAqI

— RGG Studio (@RGGStudio) May 28, 2023

The publisher didn't share any information on what fans can expect, though RGG Studio primarily focuses on the Yakuza franchise (which has been rebranded as Like a Dragon in the west) and it's likely we'll get an update there.

Last year's event saw the full reveal of Like a Dragon 8, which confirmed the return of Kazuma Kiryu alongside an early 2024 release window. Not shy about sharing major updates at the RGG Summit, the developer also announced Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name as a spin-off coming in 2023.

Details are otherwise sparse on the next mainline entry, with RGG Studio more or less remaining quiet since last year's event. The RGG Summit taking place in June could therefore be an ideal time to reveal more of the game, perhaps through a first look at gameplay or a solid release date.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Well, fellow bargain hunters, May is on its way out. Beyond it, a whole month of EOFY savings to look forward to. Desperate merchants making desperate discounts—you just love to see it. I'm starting to detect some signs of this with the likes of cheap 2022-2023 released AAAs on Xbox and PlayStation. Expect more as they appear.

This Day in Gaming

Nostalgia hits for next to nada.

- Shadow Warrior (PC) 1997. FREE

- Borderlands (NS) 2020. Get

- XCOM 2 (NS) 2020. Get

Table of Contents

• Nintendo Switch
• PC
• Xbox
• PlayStation

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