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Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have kicked off their year-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Tomb Raider franchise, and the press release suggests that fans can “look forward to additional franchise announcements over the course of the year.” However, it’s unclear what exactly this means for the video game side of the equation, especially when it comes to a hypothetical follow-up to the recent Tomb Raider reboot trilogy.

In the above video released for the anniversary, franchise game director Will Kerslake says that the developer “has no plans for a major game announcement in the near future,” which seems to put a damper on hopes for a big-budget sequel reveal. In the past decade, however, the Tomb Raider franchise has expanded to include mobile games like the recently announced Tomb Raider Reloaded, as well as Lara Croft Go and the well-received Lara Croft spin-off series.

In terms of the franchise’s multimedia efforts, Square Enix recently announced a Tomb Raider anime series that will debut on Netflix. The film reboot series will also continue, with Lovecraft Country’s Misha Green taking the helm as writer and director on the next entry. According to the video, future installments of the core video game series will attempt to reconcile the new reboot trilogy with the more confident globe-trotting Lara seen in the original games.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is bringing us remastered versions of Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3. This trailer gives us our first look at them in action and they are… out of this world. Like space.

Ever since Disney+ launched in late 2019, subscribers have been able to bundle the streaming service with Hulu and ESPN+ for $13 per month. While a good deal, the older bundle contains the Hulu with ads subscription. If you can’t stand ads but like the bundle, Disney has launched a new version of the bundle that contains Disney+, ESPN+, and ad-free Hulu for $19 per month.

The bundle saves you $6 per month overall. Essentially, you’re getting ESPN+ ($6 per month) for free here, as Disney+ costs $7 per month, and ad-free Hulu goes for $12 per month. The signup page for Disney+ now prominently features the bundle and gives you the option between the two different plans.

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When work was first getting underway on Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, the new remastered collection due in May, BioWare had a conversation with Epic, creators of the Unreal Engine that Mass Effect 1-3 were built on. The team wanted to know if it would be feasible to use Unreal Engine 4 for the remasters, in effect rebuilding Mass Effect on modern technology. The possibilities were tantalizing — Unreal Engine 4 is a substantial step up from its predecessor — but ultimately BioWare opted to stick with the Unreal Engine 3 that underpinned the trilogy from its debut in 2007.

“[I]t very quickly became clear that level of jump would really change fundamentally what the series was; how it felt, how it played,” Director Mac Walters told IGN. “A really crisp example of that would be if you look at the Kismit scripting language, it’s a visual scripting language from [Unreal Engine 3], there’s no real copy-paste for that to go into Unreal Engine 4, meaning that every moment, every scene… everything would have had to essentially be redone from scratch. We knew at that point that we’d really sort of start to take away the essence and spirit of what the trilogy was.”

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BioWare’s decision not to use Unreal Engine 4 is emblematic of its approach to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, which aims to modernize the trilogy for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC without completely rebuilding it. It’s a collection that definitely makes some measurable improvements to the original games, but fights to keep its ambitions restrained and practical. If there’s one word to associate with Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, it would probably be “pragmatic” — a response, perhaps, to BioWare’s recent history of having some of its wilder ambitions backfire spectacularly.

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Still, while Mass Effect: Legendary Edition isn’t quite the giant leap that fans might have hoped for — that will likely have to wait until the announced-but-still-untitled Mass Effect 4 is ready for release — it’s also much more than your typical remaster. Some substantial changes are coming to the trilogy, particularly the original game, and they are changes that are in many instances long overdue.

Remaster vs. Remake

“The one thing you realize when you start to really dig into this is that there’s so many quite complex interconnected systems,” Lead Environmental Artist Kevin Meek tells IGN. Meek is further explaining BioWare’s decision to stick with Unreal Engine 3 rather than move to the more modern and powerful Unreal Engine 4.

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If BioWare had opted to go with Unreal Engine 4, he says, the team would have had to completely remake elements like the conversation trees, a process that Meek describes as “death by a thousand cuts.” Suffice it to say that recent experiences on that front have not been good for BioWare. A little less than two years ago — not long before work began on Mass Effect: Legendary Edition — BioWare released Anthem, a case study in a project’s ambitions running wild.

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Adding to BioWare’s determination to keep the project’s ambitions firmly under control was the Mass Effect trilogy being somewhat unique from a technological standpoint, particularly the original game. Meek talks about how the original Mass Effect’s big finale, in which Shepard fights across the exterior of the Citadel, would be a “significant undertaking” in Unreal Engine 4 or Frostbite. Much of the battle takes place in zero gravity, with Biotics being capable of flinging enemies into space as the whole level rotates at 90 degrees.

“I think especially with Mass Effect 1, there’s just this feeling that I think people were a little bit naive about it. It was the first time going into a new engine. A lot of the guys making these levels were relatively fresh out of school,” Meek says. “Sometimes the stuff they were able to pull off was because they kind of didn’t know any better, and just kind of went headstrong into something crazy. So taking the houseplans and completely rebuilding it again somewhere else, I think you end up losing a lot of that soul, that naivete that they might have had that made it so successful and gave it that atmosphere, that feeling.”

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With a total remake out of the question, BioWare instead turned to enhancing what was already there. An A.I. up-res program was used to enhance the texture resolution by as much as 16 times, whereupon BioWare went through and touched up virtually every enemy, gun, and piece of armor across the first two games, and much of the third. The team also unified the customization options across all three games, including the updated version of female Shepard introduced in Mass Effect 3, while adding new skin and hair options.

By BioWare standards, it’s come together rather quickly, with Walters crediting former General Manager and Mass Effect 1 Project Director Casey Hudson — who returned for a second stint with BioWare before departing again late last year — with helping to push it over the finish line. But the challenges of updating it have proven interesting, to say the least. Walters likens it to restoring a beautiful, beloved car that’s been buried in concrete, with the team constantly uncovering proprietary tools written specifically for one version of another. And with all three games being unified in one release, BioWare had to be careful about making wholesale changes to elements like animation, calling it a “house of cards that could affect every character across the game.”

Rebuilding the Original Mass Effect

The somewhat ramshackle nature of the original trilogy’s development is most evident in the original Mass Effect, which was first released on Xbox 360 all the way back in 2007. The original game was replete with bugs and framerate issues, and the human characters had glassy eyes that made them look like aliens. It was kind of miserable to play from a technical perspective even when it first came out, which was a big reason why the more polished sequel was so well received when it arrived a few years later.

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If there was any one element that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition needed to get right, it was updating the original game, and it was to that task that BioWare devoted a large portion of its limited resources. Everything from the character models to stages like Eden Prime, which has gone from something akin to Star Trek’s Planet Hell to more of a verdant forest planet, has received updates. That includes the gameplay, which has been the subject of so much controversy over the years.

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It’s been a trickier task than most would imagine. The first Mass Effect still has its share of fervent supporters who feel that the sequels dispensed with too many of the RPG elements, such as stats-based gunplay, that defined the original. Pretty much everyone agrees that the first Mass Effect needs to be updated, but doing so in a way that doesn’t alienate one side or another is easier said than done.

“With Mass Effect 1 gameplay we had people who said we should throw it out and bring in [Mass Effect: Andromeda] gameplay somehow, to people who said it was their favorite and we shouldn’t touch it at all,” Meek says. “What we’ve done is through a series of small changes is remove all that friction, where cameras will be tracking nicely behind you and interpolating your movement, or entering into cover a little bit easier. Being able to command your squadmates using your different keys where it needed to be. None of these move you too far away from the soul and what it was before, but it all starts to combine together to a point where going back to the original game to capture footage feels clunky, and hard to move around… it doesn’t feel nice in comparison. I think if we had thrown out the system, we would have definitely lost a lot of people on the ‘Mass Effect 1 is my favorite game’ side.”

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The changes are indeed numerous. Improvements include an auto-aim system, more consistent auto save points, and refinements to some of the more frustrating boss encounters, like the fight with Benezia. The infamous elevator rides, which could take more than a minute in the original game, now take fewer than 15 seconds and can be skipped to boot. The once clumsy inventory system is now more in line with that of the PC version, and according to Walters features additional improvements that are designed to smooth away the rough edges without “tearing the whole thing down.”

The gunplay, another point of contention in the original game, has similarly seen major changes. Class-based aim penalties have been removed, meaning that a Vanguard can now effectively carry a sniper rifle. You still can’t train up weapons that aren’t in your class, but “at least you won’t feel completely useless,” Walters says. “The old one I always complained about was that you lined up someone dead to rights with your sniper rifle and yet you still missed,” an experience to which many Mass Effect fans can surely relate.

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Don’t worry though, the old aim cone is still there, it’s just “more generous than it used to be,” Walters says. “[I]t feels more like the aim expression is more tied to your ability, and less tied to some number you don’t see in the background. But for the most part all of the stats, leveling up, and managing your squadmates, we’ve kept true to that.”

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If there’s any reason to pick up Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, it may be to experience the original game again with fresh eyes. Certainly, this is the most attractive the original game has ever looked, running at up to 4K and 60fps with tonemapping, subsurface scattering, depth of field, bloom, and all manner of other enhancements. Even the clumsy Mako, so long the bane of major combat engagements, is getting updated physics, as well as improved controls.

According to Walters, more than a few playtesters say that the original Mass Effect is now their favorite game. No more firing up the old Genesis Comic to roll up a new character and move straight to Mass Effect 2. But of course, you can do that as well in Legendary Edition, if that’s what you really want.

The Problem of Multiplayer

On the flipside, the collection’s one really glaring omission is Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, which remains popular with a small but dedicated group of fans. The original featured an extensive PvE mode in which up to four players could battle against waves of Reapers, Collectors, and other enemies. It included multiple character classes and races, and progress tied into the single-player campaign’s “Galactic Readiness” rating.

The decision to leave it out of the Legendary Edition was ultimately a matter of “knowing where to draw the line,” Walters says. “It obviously had a lot of challenges. Everything from what you do with crossplay, because that’s kind of an expectation now; what you do with people who are still playing multiplayer now — how do you honor that, how do you bring them in, can we somehow bridge that gap? And of course these aren’t insurmountable challenges, there are things that we can do to fix that problem and get multiplayer in there. But when you look at the amount of effort that it was going to take to do that, it was easily commensurate if not greater than uplifting all of Mass Effect 1, and I think our focus was on the single-player experience.”

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With the single-player comprising the bulk of the original trilogy’s appeal, it’s an understandable decision. Still, it’s a shame given that Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer is actually really good. The Legendary Edition was a great opportunity to bring the mode, which still holds up, back in a big way. Instead, it’s apt to fade out of memory, an increasingly obscure footnote in the overall history of the series.

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But like the decision to use Unreal Engine 3 instead of Unreal Engine 4, it speaks to BioWare’s priorities for the Legendary Edition. Multiplayer would have added a tremendous amount of weight to a project that the team wanted to be as lean and efficient as possible. It just wasn’t going to fit.

Will Mass Effect Still Be Legendary?

If there’s one thing that stands out about Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, it’s how much care BioWare takes to set expectations for this collection. It’s not a remake. It’s not being remastered in Unreal Engine 4. It won’t have multiplayer. It won’t immediately be on Switch, nor will it be available natively on next-gen consoles (“I think it’s just a bridge too far,” Walter says of the latter). It will, to be clear, run in compatibility mode on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Asked why the team fought to keep the scope as narrow and defined as possible, Walters says, “I think it’s kind of what Kevin was getting at before in asking where you draw the line. I could really imagine us trying to chase the magic the first game had. […] Once you go beyond that, every question comes into play. If this scene is going to change anyway, why don’t we change the dialogue? I never really liked that actor, why don’t we get a different actor? At some point it’s not what we had originally, and at that point you do lose the magic of the original, in my opinion.”

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Ultimately, the success of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will largely depend on how the original game turns out. If BioWare manages to navigate the equivalent of the debris field from famous Mass Effect 2’s Suicide Mission, the collection as a whole will probably be seen as a success. If it isn’t up to snuff, the Legendary Edition’s pragmatic approach will feel limited rather than smart.

One way or another, Shepard’s adventures have needed a modern update for a while now, and mods can only do so much. Mass Effect continues to be one of BioWare’s most enduring works, and it deserves to be experienced and appreciated in 2021. In that at least, the release Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is extremely welcome, no matter how pragmatic it might be.

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Kat Bailey is the former Editor-in-Chief of US Gamer and the creator of the Axe of the Blood God RPG podcast. Talk RPGs with her on Twitter at @The_Katbot and catch her on Twitch.

Though Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will be forward-compatible with PS5 and Xbox Series X when it launches this year, BioWare currently has no plans for a dedicated next-gen release or an eventual optimization patch.

In an interview with IGN, director Mac Walters said that a full-on next-gen launch of the collection was “just a bridge too far.”

“To me if I’m buying a game on this next-generation of hardware, I expect a lot from it, and I think it’s more than what we could have pushed [Unreal Engine 3] to do, and again more than we could’ve done with a true remaster,” he said. “To me it would have felt a little disingenuous. I think it’s better suited for the next Mass Effect.”

Walters also denied that BioWare was considering an eventual optimization patch instead — at least not for the time being. However, he added that the game would experience some next-gen hardware perks for those playing on PS5 or Xbox Series X.

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“We’ll wait and see,” he said. “But we have some targeted unleashing of the game so that it will leverage a little bit more power of the next-gen series beyond just the faster load times you’d expect from SSD. There are some things that’ll let you get to higher framerates, keep resolution higher, and stuff like that. So it should be a more optimized experience, but at this point nothing in the future.”

Today, BioWare also announced that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will officially launch on May 14, 2021.

The collection includes all single-player base content and DLC from the first three Mass Effect games, and will feature improved framerates and 4K Ultra HD optimization. Though it is officially launching on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, BioWare confirmed in its original announcement that it will be forward-compatible on next-gen consoles with some “targeted enhancements.” You can pre-order Mass Effect: Legendary Edition using our pre-order guide.

BioWare also announced a new Mass Effect game at last year’s The Game Awards, which is currently in “early production.”

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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter with IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

For those looking to re-experience the acclaimed trilogy or jump in for the first time, EA and BioWare have announced that the Mass Effect Legendary Edition collection will be available worldwide on May 14 for PC via Origin and Steam, PS4, and Xbox One. While there won’t be specific next-gen versions available, the Legendary Edition will be available to play on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S via backward compatibility.

EA has confirmed that the Legendary Edition includes the single-player content for Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3, along with more than 40 pieces of downloadable content, including story expansions, weapons, and armor packs, and all the content will be playable in 4K Ultra HD with HDR according to EA.

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The entire collection includes “remastered character models and tens of thousands of up-rezzed textures. Improvements to shaders and VFX, updated lighting and improved dynamic shadows, volumetrics and depth-of-field” according to the announcement, with pre-rendered cinematics also enhanced.

Specifically for the original Mass Effect, EA announced it will have “comprehensive world-building enhancements with added detail and depth to locations like Eden Prime, Ilos and Feros,” alongside improved interfaces and UI, plus a ton of quality of life additions. EA has also confirmed that the original Mass Effect’s combat and exploration have been “modernized” with better aiming, squad controls and behavior, Mako handling, and cameras.

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Character creator options will work across all three games, and those creation options include “improved and expanded selection of hair, makeup, and skin tone options,” with Female Shepard from ME3 becoming the default female Shepard option for all three games.

For more on the Legendary Edition, find out why Mass Effect won’t have dedicated PS5 and Xbox Series versions, and learn about how the devs are treating the canon ending of Mass Effect 3 in the Legendary Edition.

The Legendary Edition previously went up for preorder early in January, following the Mass Effect trilogy’s return announcement last November. And it’s not the only project in the franchise in the works – alongside the Legendary Edition’s announcement, BioWare confirmed a “veteran team” is working on a new Mass Effect, too.

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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

When Mass Effect: Legendary Edition launches in May, it will include all of the content from the original Mass Effect Trilogy and its DLC — including, BioWare confirmed, the Extended Cut’s additional fourth ending.

Speaking to IGN, project director Mac Walters said the decision stemmed from a desire to include as much of the DLC content as possible within the collection as if players had downloaded that content from the outset.

“For the people who had an extended cut, that became the experience for them, and so that will be the experience for everyone who is playing the Legendary Edition as well,” he said. “And ultimately…you finish a game and there are things you wish you had been able to do or things you want to add on, and to me that Extended Cut was that opportunity to add a little bit more love and a little bit more context around the ending. So to me that is part of the canon.”

Mass Effect 3’s endings were famously controversial upon release, with director Casey Hudson defending the game at the time. The subsequent Expanded Cut was released to add more context to those endings: ” It does not fundamentally change the endings,” read a 2012 press release, “but rather it expands on the meaning of the original endings, and reveals greater detail on the impact of player decisions.”

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Walters also confirmed to IGN that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition would not only include content added to the original games later via DLC, but would also include a few small, brand new tweaks to gameplay — specifically to certain boss fights that were unnecessarily frustrating for players. As an example, Walters pointed to the fight against Asari Matriarch Benezia in Mass Effect 1.

“A lot of people were very frustrated due to a number of things: there’s the lack of cover in that fight so you’re constantly getting flanked; her ability to almost immobilize you almost right off the bat,” he said. “So tuning some of those. Not so much that the fight isn’t still a hard fight — it should be a hard fight — but just so that you couldn’t be knocked completely on your back right away.

“And also, just on the frustration side of it, adding in discrete autosaves at certain points as well. I believe in that one specifically you had to backtrack quite a ways if you lost that fight, and now if you lose it first time, you just start over with the fight; you don’t have to go through all the scenes. So things like that. And then it would vary depending on the boss fight what we would try to do, a lot of times it’s around just making sure the player has enough cover and then tuning things accordingly.”

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Today, BioWare announced that Mass Effect: Legendary Edition will launch on May 14, 2021 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and while it is forward-compatible with next-gen consoles, the studio also confirmed today it does not currently have plans for a dedicated next-gen release or optimization patch.

Legendary Edition includes all single-player base and DLC content from the original Mass Effect trilogy, remastered with improvements such as better framerate and 4K Ultra HD optimization. It’s available for pre-order now using our pre-order guide, and you can read our first impressions of the collection here.

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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter with IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

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

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

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

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

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The Relationship Between Quantic Dream Montreal and Paris

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

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

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

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

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

Quantic Dream Goes Multi-Platform

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

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

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

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

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

Quantic Dream’s Unannounced AAA Game

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

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

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

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

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

As a Third-Party Publisher

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

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

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

Fostering a Healthy Studio Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We got to see Mass Effect Legendary Edition recently, so Lucy breaks down every huge change BioWare are bringing to the remaster of the iconic franchise.