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On a jam-packed show, our Xbox crew gives hands-on impressions of both Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Kingdom Hearts 3. Plus: a big discussion on the newly announced Halo: Fireteam Raven arcade game and what it does and doesn’t mean for Halo 6! Thanks to our sponsor this week, Hims. Check ’em out at ForHims.com.
Oh, and Unlocked now has its own snazzy new homepage! Bookmark this: go.ign.com/unlocked
The influential and massively popular YouTube personality and games critic John “Totalbiscuit” Bain has died at age 33.
Bain’s wife, Gemma Bain, posted a heartfelt message to Twitter announcing the news.
Bain’s passing comes after the announcement that he was retiring on Reddit, citing his growing health problems and confessing to his fans he didn’t expect to live much longer.
Battlefield 1943 makes its way to the Xbox One! Check out some air combat gameplay for this backwards compatible game.Apple revoked approval of the new Steam Link app just one day after its announcement.
According to a statement released by Valve, “Apple revoked its approval citing business conflicts with app guidelines that had allegedly not been realized by the original review team.”
It’s unclear what exactly my have been missed by Apple’s review team, nor what those conflicts explicitly would be. Following Apple’s decision, however, “Valve appealed, explaining the Steam Link app simply functions as a LAN-based remote desktop similar to numerous remote desktop applications already available on the App Store.
“Ultimately, that appeal was denied leaving the Steam Link app for iOS blocked from release. The team here spent many hours on this project and the approval process, so we’re clearly disappointed. But we hope Apple will reconsider in the future,” Valve statement concluded.
The next chapter in the Valkyria Chronicles series is coming this fall. Set in the same period as the original, Valkyria Chronicles 4 introduces new characters, improvements to the battle system, the same hand-drawn art style, and the return of original composer Hitoshi Sakamoto.
There are two versions of the game, both of which are available for preorder right now: a standard edition for PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, and a “Memoirs From Battle” special edition.
If you’re after cool bonuses, the Memoirs From Battle version is the version for you. In addition to the main game, you get the following:
Solo: A Star Wars Story is crammed to bursting with references to previous Star Wars movies, animated series, books, and even video games. It’s way too much for any one fan to spot them all in a single viewing, but you’re going to want to keep an eye out for one Star Wars Easter egg in particular when you see Solo this weekend, according to actor Paul Bettany.
Bettany stars in Solo as the villain Dryden Vos, a powerful crime lord. As such, he has quite the collection around him of oddities and treasures. And at least one of those is a stellar Star Wars reference, Bettany told GameSpot when we asked the actor if he has a favorite reference or hidden gem in the film.
“Yeah, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy on the thing that I saw,” he replied. “I saw a thing on-set and I went up to [Solo co-writer] Jon Kasdan and I went, ‘Is that what I think it is?’ And he went, ‘Yeah, shush!'”
Bettany gave one hint: The object is located in Dryden Vos’s study, a prominent location in the movie where multiple pivotal scenes take place.
According to Bettany, whatever the object is, Jonathan Kasdan himself had snuck it into the picture. Although Bettany isn’t sure if it made the final cut. “We’ll see if it makes the movie,” he said. “But people will pause [in that scene]…There’s a lot of stuff to look at [in that environment].”
In our Solo review, we said, “It’s valid for some fans to wish Disney would devote resources to telling fresher tales that don’t rely so heavily on nostalgia and existing plots and characters…But Solo: A Star Wars Story is what we have right now, and if it’s simply an enjoyably well-crafted side story, well, is that really so bad?”
Also check out our history of the Millennium Falcon, where Solo takes place in the Star Wars timeline, whether C-3PO gets his usual cameo, and everything you need to know about the Star Wars card game sabacc.
Welcome back to Game Scoop!, IGN’s weekly video game talk show. This week we’re talking Battlefield 5, PlayStation 5, a cool new Switch game, and more. Watch the video above or download the podcast below.
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This episode of Game Scoop! is sponsored by ForHims.
Having recently crossed an astonishing 40 million players, Blizzard’s hero shooter Overwatch has been one of the most successful multiplayer shooters in recent years. Part of what makes the game so great is Blizzard’s ongoing commitment to improving the game and responding to fan feedback about what works and what doesn’t. It is a game with a vibrant community.
Overwatch recently celebrated its second anniversary, and Blizzard just this week launched an Anniversary event to celebrate. Up for grabs are 50 new cosmetic items in Loot Boxes, while there is also a new Deathmatch map, Petra, and Brawl events that return from previous events. To further celebrate Overwatch’s second birthday, Blizzard hosted a roundtable interview with Assistant Game Director Aaron Keller and Senior Game Producer Matthew Hawley, who spoke about Overwatch’s achievements over the past two years and teased what’s to come. Among other things, we asked about Overwatch 2, a Nintendo Switch edition, loot boxes, and more. You can see some highlights from this interview below.
For more on Overwatch’s Anniversary event, check out GameSpot’s roundup of everything you need to know about it. The game is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Matthew Hawley: “I think at the core sitting here at the two-year anniversary, we’ve had a wildly successful 6v6 shooter game which has blown us away with how the community has responded to it. We dip our toes into different areas here and there with the Archives event and Junkenstein. But I think our focus is really on keeping the community engaged with the 6v6 shooter that we have on the live service.
Aaron Keller: “Running a live service game takes a lot of work and I hope the community knows we have been committed to continually improving the game and creating content. What people might not realise is the team now is significantly bigger than what it was when we shipped the game, and we have put all of that into working on the live game and the new maps, heroes, and events like Anniversary. At least for the time being, [supporting Overwatch] is our focus right now, and we’re excited to work on this game.”
Matthew Hawley: “I think the cosmetic only, non-power increasing [kind of content] works really well for the type of game that Overwatch is. What is the future of loot boxes? I don’t think anybody in the room knows. Certainly for now, the cosmetic-only side of things is working for Overwatch.”
Matthew Hawley: “I think it is one of those things that we constantly evaluate. Where technology is going; where the industry is going. There are challenges in running on the platforms that we’re not already on, otherwise we would probably already be on some of those other platforms. We’ll see where things go. Certainly, there is a huge number of people out there who have Nintendo Switch and mobile phones, but right now, the core development team is focused on supporting the live game.”
Matthew Hawley: “There is a ton of story that we want to tell and a ton of story that we are going to be telling. We really like not having to carry the full burden of having to explain the whole story in a highly competitive, high-action, 6v6 shooter. I think we get some story elements in the game that work really well, but we’re not going to be able to do something like The Last Bastion and tell that story within the context of a PvP shooter. Where it makes sense we’ll continue to explore and do stuff like that.”
Aaron Keller: “There are still heroes on that list [of 50 that were pitched at the start of development] that we are excited about that we have not made yet. When we bring new people onto the team, they hear us talk about heroes as if they already exist, with their codename and everything like that, and they’re all heroes that we have been excited about for a long time. We just haven’t gotten the opportunity to make yet. There are a lot more ideas that we haven’t shipped than we have.”
Aaron Keller: “It’s always a possibility, but it’s not something that we are currently discussing have happen in the near future. I think the only example, and it’s a very specific example of taking a hero out of the roster, is Symmetra not being in the finals of the Overwatch League. And that’s for completely different reasons. Each time we release a hero, we take this wait and see approach with the hero and with the meta; and if we need to react to something, if we feel like we get to that point where we do need to remove heroes, we’ll do it. But we’re not at that point right now.”