IO Interactive revealed that the protagonist of the developer's next game, James Bond, will not be based on any previous actor who played the role – and a company director has suggested a trilogy.

The news comes as part of an interview conducted by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation which also talks about how the studio plans to double its team in the coming years, while working on this ambitious project.

"We were allowed to make our own digital Bond, which would not depend on a Bond actor," IO Interactive director Hakan Abrak told Danish Broadcasting Corporation. This means that we will not see Daniel Craig or Pierce Brosnan's resemblance coming to the game – the character will be totally unique and unrelated to Bond's previous performances. "We also created a completely original story, and you could easily imagine that a trilogy could come out of it," added Abrak.

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This suggests that Project 007 may not be just a singular game. It could be a series, as well as Hitman, with new locations and missions in each iteration. Abrak also revealed that IO Interactive is expanding and planning to hire many more employees to fulfill its ambitions. "Today we are 200 employees and I hope that we will be more than 400 employees in the coming years," said Abrak.

Abrak also told the meeting at which IO Interactive convinced license owners, EON Productions, that the game was a good idea. According to the interview, IO had a meeting with Barbara Broccoli, of the Broccoli family, who controls the rights to the James Bond franchise. Broccoli was "expressionless" at first, but he quickly accepted the idea. Abrak says the "studio background with the Hitman universe" and his vision for Bond "went straight to the heart" of Brocolli, who gave the go-ahead for the project. Abrak also noted the usefulness of "good Scandinavian charm" instead of the "big American arm movements" that Abrak thought EON was probably used to.

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The previous account of the interview suggests that Broccoli mentioned that she did not think that the previous Bond games were "worthy enough" and that they portrayed violence "because of violence", but these quotes have apparently been cut from the interview since writing.

For more details on Project 007, check out our ad coverage here. You can also watch our video that talks about why a Bond game from the creators of Hitman has great potential.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

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Finding out how to adapt a classic collectible card game like Magic: The Gathering into a more action-oriented game genre is no easy task. Fortunately, isometric action RPGs like Diablo apparently lend themselves very well to the deep knowledge, deceptively complex mechanics and underlying sense of constant action that permeates Magic. It's a difficult task for Magic: Legends, an online action RPG that is due to arrive on the Open Beta for PC on March 23, 2021.

A game of Magic can sometimes take hours to finish, depending on the slowness of turns or the skill of the players. The first thing to do to combine this property in a fast-paced action RPG, then, is to eliminate the order of turns and condense the concepts. Notably, the developers were careful not to describe Magic Legends as an "MMO" anymore, but rather a "persistent online action RPG".

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In a recent Magic: Legends automatic demo presentation, developer Cryptic Studios showed me a pre-release version of the game featuring a variety of game styles and an exclusive first look at how deck building works. Take a look at the exclusive trailer & # 39; Deckbuilding 101 & # 39; above.

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If you've played Diablo, Torchlight, Path of Exile or any fast-paced RPG, then you'll have a good idea of ​​what to expect here. The camera is positioned at an isometric angle from top to bottom and you will spend time getting ready and getting ready to return to the central locations of the city before venturing into the game world and on dangerous missions. Unless you are doing a dedicated instantiated story mission, you can find other players in the world or in the city center, but it is not exactly on a "massive" scale. It is similar in concept to how Destiny brings players together to get content.

You start by selecting your own personal Planeswalker with three main choices that define the character: your load of equipment and artifacts, your class and your deck. Your class will determine your innate abilities, such as your primary attack, special secondary attack, and utility skill, such as jumping like a geomancer. And then your deck acts like your real CCG card deck. You will select a variety of spells (each "card" in Magic is a spell) and you will need to build it with a mix of creature summoning spells, sorcery / arcane magic spells and enchantments.

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From what I've seen, just like in the real Magic, deck building is a big part of Legends and it all comes down to how your hand is shuffled. Before starting a mission, you will need to customize your deck (12 cards at this point), as this directly affects which cards are randomly drawn to your hand (4 at a time) during combat. A single curved ball used to mix things up is that the buttons to use your spell cards are randomly assigned each time. For example, a Magma Blast spell can be button B in a moment, but after you cast it and it appears again, it can be X this time.

Another interesting aspect is how they chose to deal with mana costs. In CCG, you have a limited amount of mana resources that slowly build up over the course of a game, but in Magic: Legends the mana pool starts out large and is divided between colors based on the proportion of colors in your deck. If you have an exact 50/50 split between white and blue, your mana pool will be as well. But if it's 8 whites and only 4 blues, the mana pool will reflect that, so the mana you have available is proportional to the types of spells you have ready to use.

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There is a ton of strategy for defining the right character building. Since your class may have a totally different color from your deck's spells, you can be extremely creative, as it takes into account all progression paths and building varieties. Two players using the same class can play with totally different characters based on the colors of the deck they use.

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Similar to how you can switch decks between matches in Magic if you want, you can switch decks and loadouts very easily and quickly in Magic: Legends too. Cryptic did a remarkably efficient job of combining the concepts of a game like Diablo with the basic rules behind Magic: The Gathering.

However, not all card game mechanics are translated directly. For example, in a Magic game, the order of the turn generally dictates that if it is your turn, you "declare" which creatures are trying to attack the player and then the other player chooses which attacks to block with which creatures. Skills like running over, blocking and provoking, of course, further complicate this central idea, but that is always the essence. In Magic: Legends, however, once you summon a creature, it usually follows and fights alongside you based on its powers – you really don't do a lot of micromanagement because the "agitation" of summoning, casting new spells, and the summons is so quick.

As of now, there is a basic 1v1 duel version of PvP, but the focus definitely seems to be more on the cooperative side of things and experimenting with how the various classes and deck combinations can work together. The flow of the game is extremely different, but the flavors of Magic are still there. Watching the incredible and iconic card art come to life in an action game, instead of just another digital CCG, is truly wonderful.

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That said, I definitely have my reservations about the monetization plan. As Magic: Legends is a free game, when you start you choose a single class to use, with all the others blocked behind paid access. Then, using a game currency that you accumulate slowly when playing the game called “planar mana” or spending money directly in the money store, you can unlock the other subsequent classes. Other types of items available in the money store include convenience booster items and random card reinforcement packs, but you won't be able to purchase specific spells or upgrade a specific spell in your deck.

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It doesn't sound like a "pay to win" system, which is good, but it definitely makes me curious about what types of content will be for paying customers only. There will also be a Fortnite-style Battle Pass, in which you sign up for a low-rate content season, typically $ 15 or more in most games, and as you play and move up the ranks, you'll unlock new cosmetics and packages reinforcement, and so on.

After seeing the demo in action and seeing the basic details of how deck building works in Magic: Legends, I am extremely eager to try it for myself. The extra layers of nuances that are transplanted from the CCG seem to give Legends a strong sense of identity that games of this genre often lack, so crossed fingers work.

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David Jagneaux is a freelance writer for IGN. Chat RPGs with him on Twitter at @David_Jagneaux .

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The 2018 Celeste developers released a surprise semi-sequel to mark the game's third anniversary.

Celeste's director, Maddy Thorson, posted the news on Twitter, revealing that Celeste 2: Lani & # 39; s Trek or Celeste Classic 2 is a continuation of the original prototype of the game, built on Pico-8.

Pico-8 is a "fancy video game console" game engine that allows your games to be played in a browser. This means that you can play Celeste Classic 2 now if you follow this link to the game's Itch.io page.

To celebrate Celeste's third birthday, we made a sequel to Celeste Classic for PICO-8: D you can play Celeste Classic 2 now on the web or pico-8! https://t.co/EHp7dTgGlE

– Maddy Thorson (@MaddyThorson) January 25, 2021

According to the brief description that accompanies the game, Celeste Classic 2 was built in just three days. The mini-sequence is a clearly defined challenge within the Celestial universe. You play as a new character named Lani, who has a hook.

Here is our review of Celeste 2018, a game that we scored 10, looking at its incredible platform and countless secrets. If you are looking for more Celeste content, here is a game speedrun that can achieve True Ending in just 54 minutes.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

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More than 19 million people purchased Star Wars Battlefront 2 for free during the recent promotion of the Epic Games Store. It is roughly the same number of new players as the population of Chile.

The news was revealed by EA Star Wars Twitter account in a tweet that thanked players for their continued support. "More than 19 million PLAYERS received #StarWarsBattlefrontII from the Epic Game Store promotion," says the tweet. "Thank you very much for your continued support, even after our final content editing!"

The promotion, which allowed players to purchase the game for free, had a massive influx of new players into the game. The promotion caused some problems with the game servers forcing EA to increase capacity. This also coincided with a bug that caused players to lose XP which was promptly fixed.

More than 19 million PLAYERS received #StarWarsBattlefrontII in the Epic Game Store promotion! Thank you very much for your continued support, even after our final drop in content! We will be watching your careers with great interest! May the Force be with you, soldiers! pic.twitter.com/fC4A92HLNN

– EA Star Wars (@EAStarWars) January 25, 2021

Players who picked up the game during the promotion had access to the Star Wars Battlefront Celebration edition 2, which includes all of the personalization content that can be purchased in the game from launch until the update & The Rise of Skywalker & # 39; of Battlefront 2.

In other EA Star Wars news, a report suggested that a new game Knights of the Old Republic is in the works, without the original Bioware developers. We also learned in early January that Ubisoft is working on an open world Star Wars game together with the recently revamped Lucasfilm Games.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

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UK retailer Argos has been the target of PS5 scalping groups, possibly contributing to less than expected availability during a recent inventory update.

In the early hours of January 26, UK players were delighted to see the PS5 back in stock at Argos. But, as we have seen several times, the action lasted much less than expected, amid widespread problems. Not only was the site full of bugs, along with the app, but there was also supposedly less inventory than expected in the already limited console supply.

Multiple sources (who wished to remain anonymous) confirmed to IGN that this is partly because individuals were able to order Argos PS5 consoles on January 25, a full day before the aforementioned official stock fall. This was due to a breach discovered by the scalping group Express Notify, a paid Discord server that shared links that allowed users to buy the PS5 before the general public knew about the new stock. Express Notify has received public credit with many of its users viewing their orders from various consoles.

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Argos reportedly closed these dishonest links quickly, but not without several consoles being sold and even collected in Argos stores in advance. There was no confirmation of how many PS5s were claimed before the breach closed, but this is just one more example in the growing list of frustrations that customers face when trying to buy the next generation system.

To make matters worse, those who tried to buy legitimately through Argos in the early morning hours did not exactly have an advantage. At first, the stock appeared to be available on the Argos application – which dropped repeatedly for maintenance – but not on the Argos browser-based website. However, even the success with the app depended entirely on her area and whether she wanted to play ball in general. Some users reported success, others said the money left their accounts without a confirmation email, while many others were left without a console again.

We contacted Argos to comment on the matter.

Scalping has become a major problem for the low-stock, high-demand PS5 and has been particularly prevalent in the UK. The consoles disappeared from Amazon deliveries were stolen from moving trucks and retailers canceled large volumes of orders claimed for scalping rings. It was enough for a group of UK politicians to propose a debate on how to make island scalping illegal in the country .

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Robert Anderson is a trade editor and business expert at IGN. Send him screenshots of amazing games @ robertliam21 on Twitter.

Credit to @ PS5StockAlertUK for helping with information.

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Capcom's release of the Resident Evil Village demo, Maiden, is a small part of what the full release will offer … sort of. Maiden doesn't even include combat, it ends in about 15-20 minutes (unless you're stuck in a simple puzzle, like I did), and in one of my favorite demo design choices, nor is it a scenario you & # 39; I will find it in the village itself. Instead, it is a piece of humor, designed to give a sense of the atmosphere of one of the main locations in the Village, provoke some of the characters we can hope to face and, hopefully, leave you scared with a constant feeling of dread, as you did with me.

Although they may be less ubiquitous than when publishers put demo discs in a gaming magazine, Maiden and other recent examples show that there are many right ways to run a demo, reminding us how effective they can be at selling players in a game in a way that no other part of the video game advertising machine can.

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How a demonstration can be so effective

Regardless of the form of a demo, a good one should do at least a few things: allow a player to get a sense of some key aspect of gameplay, be it basic game mechanics or how they have changed within an ongoing series (like the last Bravely Default II demo of the year), or introduce you to a new world atmosphere (as the BioShock demo did in 2007), or give you a sense of scale and spectacle, (as a demo of Final Fantasy VII Remake in 2020).

I will never forget the BioShock demo specifically, since BioShock was a game I wasn't sure I would like before launch. This demonstration, which reproduced the opening minutes of BioShock in Rapture, is forever rooted in my head. I don't know if I would have taken the full game if I hadn't actually played it; gave me just enough to want more. No amount of comments, game taunts or trailers could have adequately conveyed everything the practice did.

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Maiden does a fantastic job of preserving the twists and turns that the developers have reserved for the full game, while still communicating what it is about. Although it is probably the rarest case, a whole new slice of the gameplay can still play thematically and mechanically on the full experience.

Most commonly, a part of the existing game is sectioned as a demo on its own, be it a little bit in the game to give a complete understanding of the gameplay, or even just the opening of the game. And thanks to modern advancements, many of these opening mission demos now allow players to upload progress to the full experience. I will always be happy when I can get back to that point in the full game, without having to repeat anything. Even when progress doesn't continue, however, developers have found clever ways to encourage players to play a demo with content that they may or may not have to play later. See the recent demo of Monster Hunter Rise, which does not load progress to the next Switch game, but when playing it gets a booster of items for players when the full game is available.

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Risk and reward

Games, by their very nature, need to be sold at interactive levels that films and TV do not have. Trailers and images are all that the entertainment media can offer, and while there is no shortage of both in games, they pale in comparison to how much a demo can convey about how playing a game really is.

Of course, there is also the reverse risk – a player can try a demo, decide that a game is not for him and move on without ever buying that game. I can only imagine the risk-cost analysis when launching a demo. Not every game is for everyone, and you can decide to buy a game just as easily after loving a demo or deciding never to play it again.

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But when the demos work, they really work.

I don't know if Maiden will necessarily start a new era of demos – its popularity seems to come in waves, whether from generation to generation or even just on a given console. And many developers have released demos in recent years, so Capcom's move here is not necessarily new or unexpected. It is a reminder of the power of a demonstration. And they are a huge service for the player, allowing them to discover and understand the next games at a deeper level. Demos can help you decide that a game is not for you, but when they help a player fall in love with a new game, they act as incredible portals to worlds you’ve never experienced before, in a way that no other provocation could do .

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Jonathon Dornbush is the senior news editor at IGN, host of the Beyond! And PlayStation leader. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush .

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Scavengers Studio's Season, which had an impressive debut trailer at the 2020 Game Awards reportedly had a tumultuous development due to the latest in a reported pattern of workplace harassment and toxic behavior in the studio.

A new comprehensive report from GamesIndustry.biz features a series of allegations by nine current employees and former employees of Scavengers Studio, the team behind the previous and next season's Darwin Project, against the co-founder and the creative Darwin Project director Simon Darveau. Specifically in relation to the Season, the report describes an alleged earlier concern among Scavengers developers that if Darveau became part of the team working on the Season, he would essentially "replace" the current creative director, Kevin Sullivan ( that IGN previously spoke about the season ), and the rest of the team's work.

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According to the report, these concerns have become real, with claims that, although his actual role in the game remains unclear, it came in and led to "a considerable change in focus and scope" in the season than what had previously happened .

"Several current employees mentioned that Darveau used the partnership with Sony to force his own ideas into the game, saying that he had promised a number of resources to seal the deal – like a bigger world, missions and objective markers – that were not unplanned or has already been dropped by the team. Now, they said, the studio is on the hook for them, "says the Gamesindustry.biz report, with a source quoted in the story saying" I don't even recognize the game "of what was originally planned.

A source even told the outlet "Although it brought me extreme joy to see my friends' work, it hurt a little to see a lot of people praising the studio, saying how calm, relaxed and progressive it all seemed. It may well be true for the season project, but it hasn't been my management experience. "

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And these concerns are not just due to the claims of "Davreau's inability to follow ideas", which was also a striking aspect of the Darwin Project's internal development. Instead, the report shows a series of accusations against Devreau and the current Scavengers CEO, Amélie Lamarche.

Chief among the claims of the alleged hostile workplace created by Davreau and Lamarche is the sense of a "boys' club" atmosphere, with claims that the women in the studio were "often degraded by male employees, including Darveau, or childish and treated as if they were, they didn't know what they were talking about, even when they spoke of a position of specialization about their own work. "

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In addition, the report presents the reported concerns of current and former employees about Davreau's mistreatment and intimidation against employees, except for a group of "commands" that were Davreau's favorites; Davreau's claims groping several employees and Lamarche's implications essentially serving in an HR role for other employees, despite having previously had a romantic relationship with Davreau.

The pickers responded to Gamesindustry, saying "Scavengers Studio recognizes that there have been situations during its rapid growth and takes the position that any type of harassment is undesirable and unacceptable and takes any complaints about it very seriously", and while the studio said to the channel that "Certain elements … are false, a little out of proportion or important pieces are missing", the Waste Pickers did not comment further on what specifically may have been incorrect about the allegations.

The season is scheduled for a release this year on PC and PS5.

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Dragon Age 4's primary location will be Tevinter, according to a new BioWare book.

BioWare: stories and secrets from 25 years of game development was released recently and in it, it is revealed that the next Dragon Age game will be set in the land of Tevinter, as originally reported by Eurogamer . Tevinter, although it exists in tradition, is a place that hasn't been visited in Dragon Age games before, making it a first for the series.

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As pointed out by Eurogamer, Tevinter was created at the end of the Trespasser expansion for the 2014 Dragon Age Inquisition. The book indicates that places other than Tevinter will also be visited, which makes sense, considering that Dragon Age generally sees players traveling by several different lands.

The city of Antiva, capital of Antiva, is also shown in the book. This city borders Tevinter to the east and is surrounded by water. Another concept art depicts a Raven Antivano, who is a murderer "renowned for his mastery of killing with style" who wears a mask, wields a sword and has several companions, according to Eurogamer.

Beside this conceptual art is an image of Mourn Watch, which protects Thedas from hidden threats and is located in a necropolis. Eurogamer recalls that although the location of this necropolis is not mentioned, necropolises are used in Nevarra, which is part of Thedas, as its citizens are known to mummify their dead. Like the city of Antiva, Nevarra also borders Tevinter. Other images in the book depict The Deep Roads, which are dwarf tunnels in Thedas, and The Lords of Fortune, which is a treasure hunter guild.

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While waiting to actually see Tevinter in Dragon Age 4, check out the movie trailer for the game released last December and then read about how this trailer suggests the return of characters . After that, watch this video detailing all the details hidden inside the trailer .

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and creator of guides for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes .

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