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BOOM! Studios teases dark times ahead for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers as Lord Drakkon returns.

Mike Laidlaw, a BioWare veteran who worked on Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and most recently served as the creative director for the Dragon Age franchise, has left the company. Laidlaw had been with BioWare for the past 14 years.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Laidlaw said, “It’s with a mix of emotions that I’m announcing my time with BioWare has ended. After 14 years and a chance to work on Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and all things Dragon Age, it’s time for me to move on.”

Regarding Dragon Age specifically, Laidlaw said he has “every confidence that the world we’ve created together is in good hands and I’m excited for the road ahead.”

Laidlaw did not give any specifics about what’s next for him, apart from saying he “plan[s] to spend [his] time reconnecting with all the amazing games and worlds that my peers have created.” Laidlaw added that he plans to stream himself playing games on Twitch and connect with fans on Twitter.

“To everyone who’s taken the time to share feedback and experiences, your amazing cosplays and artistic creations: thank you. You’ve made my time ‘in Thedas’ amazing. Your passion inspires and I look forward to our next adventure together.”

It is not immediately clear if Laidlaw’s departure from BioWare was by his own choosing. We’re following up with BioWare studio owner EA in an attempt to learn more.

In June this year, Laidlaw confirmed that “something is happening” with the Dragon Age franchise, though he stopped short of making any kind of announcement. At the time, he also teased that BioWare is working on secret projects he couldn’t talk about.

Mass Effect producer Michael Gamble said goodbye to Laidlaw on Twitter. The wording of tweet suggests that Laidlaw’s departure was not as part of a layoff, though this is not confirmed. “Best to you in everything, Mike. We will miss you, but I admire you for taking the leap, and you can count me as one of your supporters,” Gamble said.

The most recent mainline Dragon Age game was 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition, which won multiple Game of the Year awards. Given the stature of that franchise, and the fact that it held the record for the “most successful launch in BioWare history” at the time, it would be surprising if EA didn’t make some kind of sequel.

Mike Laidlaw Bio:

Laidlaw joined BioWare in February 2003 as a lead story developer and writer for Jade Empire. He worked in the same role for an unannounced game. He also worked on Mass Effect and Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. In November 2008, Laidlaw became the lead designer for Dragon Age: Origins. He was promoted to creative director for the Dragon Age franchise in 2009, working on Dragon Age II and then Dragon Age: Inquisition. Laidlaw was promoted to senior creative director for the Dragon Age franchise in June 2017.

Survival games challenge you to gain control of treacherous worlds. You typically start with very little, and need to scavenge for supplies and resources in order to craft the tools needed to help you avoid death. Success usually means having enough power to establish yourself in a higher place on the food chain, or hunkering down and building a fortified space strong enough to keep the rest of the food chain out. The Flame in the Flood doesn’t allow you to achieve either of those goals and is a consistently gripping experience as a result.

Set in a rural post-societal America, The Flame in the Flood is a procedurally-generated survival game that focuses on constant movement and improvisation. The entirety of the game’s world consists of a large, overflowing river that has engulfed the countryside, destroyed man-made infrastructure, and isolated parts of the geography, turning them into islands.

The Flame in the Flood’s audiovisual presentation is integral to establishing its strong sense of place. The art direction invokes the aesthetic of a gothic storybook. The atmospheric sound design is ever-present. The rush of the flowing river is refreshing, and the heaviness of the thunderstorms is frightening. The musical score is an excellent array of Americana, ranging from mournful blues harmonica, cheerful acoustic guitar fingerpicking, wistful mandolins, and rough alt-country vocals. Together, they give The Flame in the Flood an aura of both despair and quiet beauty.

Your protagonists are a seemingly immortal dog and a survivor whose main concerns are keeping her hunger, thirst, body temperature, exhaustion, and any major injuries under control. Because the survivor can die from neglecting any of these concerns, players must keep them at bay by either scavenging or by crafting a variety of items using resources obtained from the land. But because of the game’s narrative conceit, you’re only able to scavenge on small islands with severely limited offerings. Finding the right components to create items you need often means exploring multiple islands as you traverse the river on your makeshift raft.

There are two major constraints that make this task both interesting and difficult. The protagonist can initially carry only a dozen items in her backpack, and you’ll only be able to dock at one or two islands in a cluster of many before the current pulls you further downriver. This design is frustrating at first–the impulse to grab every item and explore every area will cause you to waste far too much time and energy rearranging your backpack and paddling against the current. But once you embrace the idea of “going with the flow” so to speak, The Flame in the Flood becomes an engaging exercise of short-term prioritization and impulsive decision-making.

Though it will take a number of failures to understand the ecosystem, learning which items are universally useful and avoiding long-term hoarding are the key to staying alive. For example, keeping uncommon fire-starting materials in order to have a method of staying warm, dry, and being able to build a safe place to sleep is more vital than hoarding food–food eventually spoils, and edible flora is common enough in certain ecosystems to snack on as you come across it. Working out your priorities and having the courage to leave valuable things behind is a stimulating challenge. The Flame in the Flood keeps you on your back foot at all times. This feels like true survival.

Unfortunately, the user interface can prove to be a source of frustration. Essential tasks, like sorting your inventory and getting a broad idea of your current crafting options feel unnecessarily taxing because of the number of steps required. All pertinent information is kept within multiple subcategories accessed from a single screen. Inventory management and crafting existing in separate subcategories, and the recipes for different kinds of craftable items are separated into subcategories under that. Finding out what components are missing for a particular tool can be tedious because of the need to flip between menus and scroll through multiple entries to reach the information. Even after hours of play, I was still wrestling with the menu system, especially when using a controller. In fact, I began switching to mouse and keyboard exclusively for menus to make navigation a little easier.

But switching to mouse and keyboard is not something I want to do because movement, especially piloting your raft, is far more precise and satisfying with a controller. Travelling to new locations via raft requires deft avoidance of rock formations, remnants of human infrastructure and floating debris. Lightly flowing waters regularly turn into violent rapids, which are as treacherous as they are fun to navigate–impacts are devastating on both your raft’s integrity and your own vitals. Using the last of your stamina bar to push your raft just shy of a large, jagged outcrop is consistently thrilling, and when things quiet down, gently steering your raft through the remains of drowned towns at sunset while a haunting lap-steel melody plays is a sublime experience.

The Flame in the Flood encourages you to put long-term goals aside and live in the moment, to make choices and overcome short-term problems with risky but satisfying spontaneity. Despite the awkward menu system, it’s an absorbing game that lets you experience a journey in the present, and fully appreciate the sights, sounds, and joys of floating down the river in its alluring world.

Update: The Flame In The Flood’s arrival on Nintendo Switch as a “Complete Edition” comes with the mechanical refinements and feature upgrades that have been added since the game’s initial release. These include quality-of-life tweaks to crafting, an insightful developer’s commentary, and more importantly, an alternate dog companion to choose from. While the visual fidelity noticeably lower on the Switch and there are some minor hiccups in performance that aren’t present on other platforms, The Flame In The Flood still remains a unique and absorbing survival game. We have updated the score to reflect our experience with the Switch version. – Edmond Tran, Fri. October 13, 2017, 9:00 AM AEST

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On this week’s Xbox show, we give our impressions of Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the Star Wars Battlefront 2 multiplayer beta, and The Evil Within 2. Plus: four new Xbox One bundles, the hidden Master Chief inside every Xbox One X, God Eater 3, and more!

Oh, and Unlocked now has its own snazzy new homepage! Bookmark this: go.ign.com/unlocked

And we’ve got our own YouTube channel too! Subscribe here: youtube.com/ignunlocked

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Be sure to visit IGN Tech for all the latest comprehensive hands-on reviews and best-of roundups. Note that if you click on one of these links to buy the product, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.

Whether you like it or not, your credit rating is all important. Besides determining if you can get a credit card or not, it’s also critical for buying a house, how much you pay in interest when you get credit, and even if someone will rent you an apartment. So, it wasn’t great when one of the big three credit rating companies, Equifax, revealed it had been cracked due to complete security incompetence.

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Sony is fast-tracking a movie adaptation of the popular multiplayer strategy board game, The Settlers of Catan.

Variety reports Sony is in negotiations to acquire the film rights and will be working with producer Gail Katz (Air Force One, The Perfect Storm) on the project. It was reported back in 2015 that Katz secured the film and TV rights to the strategy game.

Blaise Hemingway (Ugly Dolls) will write the screenplay for the film, titled Catan, with Dan Lin (It, The Lego Movie) and Jonathan Eirich producing alongside Katz. Sony is reportedly said to be interested in launching a possible franchise.

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Listen to fans, for once

The live-action Akira movie may have a director, with Thor Ragnarok’s Taika Waititi reportedly in talks to take charge. But maybe adapting Akira isn’t a good idea to begin with? Hollywood’s anime adaptations tend to deviate from the source material, throwing cultural and historical value to the wind, and fans rarely end up happy.

Fortunately, there is a solution, but it involves taking risks with anime titles that may not be as popular as Akira. There are plenty of series with universal appeal that would come without the pitfalls of something as iconic as Akira. Here’s our list of anime that Hollywood should adapt instead of screwing up Akira.

Claymore

Claire is a warrior out for revenge. As a “claymore, ” she travels around a fictional medieval landscape fighting “Youma,” which are humanoid shape-shifters that feed on humans. After meeting Raki, a lone man who has lost his family to Youma, the two journey out to kill every last demon, while discovering secrets about themselves in the process.

The armor and weaponry are a point of reference to medieval times but there is no clear indication of where the series specifically takes place. This leaves the series open for any Hollywood screenwriter to create their own set of rules that are digestible for a general audience–unlike Akira, where the rules set in stone and any changes could make the original story unrecognizable.

Attack on Titan

The story of Attack on Titan revolves around the misadventures of Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman, and their childhood friend Armin Arlert, as they fight for survival in a world overrun with flesh eating giants. It’s assumed Attack on Titan takes place in 16th-century Germany (due to some of the language used), but there is nothing concrete that pinpoints what year it is.

As of April 2017, the manga has sold 66 million print copies, and Japan has produced two live-actions films based on the series. Attack on Titan also has a huge fandom in America and around the world. If these type of movies are for fans, why not go with a sure thing that’s easy to adapt and embraced by a large audience?

Berserk

If you ask anime fans what’s one of the most disturbing anime they’ve ever seen, many will name Berserk. It’s a medieval anime centered around Guts, a man who fights demons with an abnormally large sword. What makes this anime unique is it addresses topics like child abuse, physical and mental disability, and sexual assault.

Berserk never hit the mainstream in the United States, but maybe that’s a good thing. Hollywood could add a fresh take on the series and adapt it so general audience and fans can enjoy. Recent big budget sci-fi adaptations like Akira have struggled at the box office, with movies like Ghost in the Shell and Valerian flopping domestically, so why not channel that money somewhere else?

Gangsta

Various crime families fight for dominance in the city of Egastulum. Within all the chaos, Nicholas and Worick are “handymen”–more like hitmen–who play all sides as long as they get paid. The duo have the advantage because Nicholas is a “twilight,” a genetically enhanced human with super speed, strength, and agility. When the two cross paths with Alex (a woman with a dangerous past), they are thrust into the center of a turf war they can’t escape from. Although the Gangsta manga is ongoing, the anime comprised nine animated episodes before the production company, Manglobe, went out of business.

Gangsta is everything Akira is not. It’s a dystopian, action-adventure that tackles themes people can relate to. Akira is slow, and requires a lot of attention to detail. Akira is a lot to take in for a first time watcher. A Hollywood pick-me-up for Gangsta would mean expanding a great story that’s been halted prematurely.

The Rose of Versaille

The Rose of Versailles focuses on Oscar François de Jarjayes, a young woman who is raised as man in order to become her father’s successor to the royal palace guard. She is a master swordsman with a strong sense of justice, but she struggles between her duty to the crown and loyalty to the French lower class. As talk of revolution increases, her relationships with Marie Antoinette and other royal authority figures are tested as she decides which side of the law she’s on.

The French Revolution has been hit (Le Miserable) or miss (Man in the Iron Mask) for Hollywood, but The Rose of Versailles looks at the historical events through a feminine lens while flipping gender norms, and delivering swashbuckling action. In general, most anime centers around young boys or men. Hollywood could use more female-led action films.

Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

While trying to resurrect their dead mother, brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric suffer a great loss due to their inexperience with alchemy. In order to restore their bodies they need the Philosopher’s Stone, and they launch a worldwide search to find it. On their search they learn of a government conspiracy, as corrupt government officials have other plans for the stone’s power.

The series has elements that Akira doesn’t have, like alchemy and magic. There are references to Nazi Germany, and studios love films about World War II. Its episodic nature helps to add depth to the story. There is potential there for more than one movie, where Akira would (should) be a one-and-done thing.

Cowboy Bebop

In the year 2071, 50 years after the Earth became uninhabitable, humans took to space to colonize the Moon and several other rocky planets within the solar system. Instead of calling one planet home, Spike Spiegel and his posse of space misfits enjoy drinking, eating, and getting into trouble. They battle various enemies including space pirates, mercenaries, and the infamous Red Dragon Crime Syndicate. Cowboy Bebop is a space western with something for everyone.

This anime has been on Hollywood’s radar for at least 10 years. There was once talk of Keanu Reeves being involved with a cinematic adaptation. Deadline reports the series will be made for television, but fans still want to see a feature length film.

What anime adaptations are you aching to see? Or are you in favor of Hollywood tackling Akira? Let us know in the comments below.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer provides an update on original Xbox backwards compatibility and teases something related to Xbox One X.

After a brief extension, the Star Wars: Battlefront II multiplayer beta wrapped up this week. Now, developer DICE has published a blog post in which it talks about what it learned from the beta and how the final game may be different as a result of the feedback.

DICE did not say exactly how many people played the beta, only noting that it was in the “millions.” More than 9 million people played the beta for 2015’s Battlefront, which at the time was a record for the company. Whatever the case, DICE surely has a lot of feedback to consider from the Battlefront II beta.

The developer will be looking at things like Battlefront II’s controversial Crate system and progression overall. DICE also is eyeing changes for the Strike mode with the idea of making it a best-of-three gametype. The studio also said that the Specialist’s Infiltration ability is probably too overpowered right now, so you can expect a nerf for launch. What’s more, the First Order Flametrooper is underpowered, DICE said.

Outside of those changes, DICE is also looking to implement systems that allow players to stay grouped together during a match. As an incentive, at launch, Battlefront II will reward players for spawning together.

Regarding Crates and progression, which has been criticized for trending towards pay-to-win, DICE first pointed out that the beta contained an incomplete look at how this will work. The studio promised more tuning over time, with one major goal being that the most powerful items can only be earned through gameplay, not by spending money. For lots more on this topic, check out GameSpot’s further coverage here.

“Your feedback makes a difference, and your passion is what keeps us creating,” DICE said. “We’ll have much more to share with you before we see you on the battlefront in November.”

Battlefront II launches on November for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. This week, EA confirmed that EA Access and Origin Access subscribers will get to start playing the game early through a Play First Trial.

Anyone who has played Epic Games’ incredibly popular Fortnite Battle Royale knows that cheaters have quickly become a major problem. Epic has taken a number of steps to counteract cheating, including new lawsuits against two repeat cheaters.

According to documents obtained by TorrentFreak, Epic launched lawsuits against two alleged cheaters, Mr. Broom and Mr. Vraspir, who have been caught cheating and banned multiple times, yet continue to make new accounts to play. Epic’s complaints point out that cheating, and enabling others to cheat, is in violation of the terms and agreements players must agree to before accessing the game.

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