Author Archives: Ryan McCaffrey

Our Xbox crew spends a ton of time digging into the just-released masterpiece that is Forza Horizon 5, including why we love it, and we feel like it’s finally getting its due as a series after all these years. Plus: we’re less enthusiastic about Call of Duty: Vanguard, huge games like Diablo 4, Overwatch 2, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns get delayed, and more!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our new YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our Halo Infinite new multiplayer map reveal below:

Oh, and you can be featured on Unlocked by tweeting us a video Loot Box question! Tweet your question and tag Ryan at @DMC_Ryan!

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

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

[Minor spoiler warning for Halo Infinite. There aren’t any formal story spoilers here, but if you don’t want to know anything about the campaign, turn back now.]

Halo Infinite sees Master Chief square off against The Banished, a renegade faction of The Covenant who’ve taken over the Zeta Halo ring that Master Chief finds himself on in this, the sixth mainline Halo campaign. The Banished are led by Atriox, the main antagonist in 2017’s real-time strategy spinoff Halo Wars 2. But Atriox isn’t just a CEO with an army of direct reports. That wouldn’t be a very efficient management structure. No no…he’s got layers of middle management that Chief is going to have to shoot his way through before he can get to the guy at the top of the pyramid.

We’ve already learned a little bit about War Chief Escharum, the second-in-command to Atriox revealed in Halo Infinite’s 2020 campaign demo who’s leading The Banished forces on Zeta Halo. But there are also the so-called Spartan Killers, a group of top-shelf fighters who are hellbent on ending Master Chief’s reign as the Covenant’s own personal collective “Demon.” During our visit to 343, we spent time sitting down with the Halo Infinite team to discuss the notion of a boss fight in a Halo game, and more specifically, one of those bosses: Jega ‘Rdomnai, a dual-red-plasma-sword-wielding Elite who is among the Spartan Killers – who are also known as the Hand of Atriox – and should make for a fierce encounter on any of Halo’s legendary (including Legendary) difficulty levels. He was briefly shown in the recent Halo Infinite Campaign Overview trailer, but we learned a lot more about him.

“One of the things we tried to do with Jega was make him into the creepiest, most disturbing character that’s been in Halo,” said associate creative director Paul Crocker. “Just every time you see him…he looks at things as prey. The whole experience of how he toys with Chief is just…how he is.”

Elaborates Halo franchise narrative writer Jeff Easterling: “We wanted to build a character up to be more like a kind of subtle sidekick to Escharum. They have the closest relationship; they’ve worked together the longest. [Jega] is his most respected soldier, his closest friend.

“The entire group [of Spartan Killers] is a showcase of The Banished’s power,” Easterling continued. “Not only are they furthering the cause of The Banished, they are also inspiring all of the troops that are beneath them.”

But getting back to Jega and that creepiness, Easterling explains: “He was a member of the Silent Shadow.” And in one of his many secret missions, “One of those endeavors left him in the state we see him in now, [where] his lust for battle and vengeance completely outweighs even his own pride in his own culture.” Easterling is referencing Jega’s mangled appearance. As you can see in the images above, he has not exactly won every battle he’s been in, despite his ferocity and ruthlessness. So, going against Covenant tradition and principles, he accepts a robotic arm and mandibles. “The Banished represent what the Covenant would’ve been like if you didn’t have the [group’s] dogmatic restraint on things,” Easterling said.

“He’s almost like the inverse of what you’d expect from the Arbiter. Instead of the [taking] high road, it’s stripped down…we asked ourselves, ‘What is the psycho element of the Arbiter?’” Easterling added, “I want [new fans] to feel like they’re on the same even footing as an old-school fan when they play Infinite, and then when they get to the end of it, be so inspired that they want to maybe go play other games, or maybe dig in deeper and explore other parts of the universe.” At the same time, though, he clarified that “There are actually hooks into old storytelling, but it’s something that you can come in absolutely cold and just want to know more about this character.”

Welcome to IGN Unfiltered, our (somewhat) regularly occurring interview series where we sit down with the best, brightest, and most fascinating minds in the video game industry. (Catch up on the other 60 episodes here.) My guest this episode is Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard – my first repeat guest! – who returns to discuss Skyrim as The Elder Scrolls V celebrates its 10th anniversary this week. Of course, we don’t just talk about this past. Todd also discusses his next big project, Starfield, and his next next project, The Elder Scrolls 6.

Check out the full episode in the video above, but if you’d prefer to listen to the interview, here’s an audio-only podcast download link (or you can listen via the IGN Unfiltered feed on your favorite podcast service). One way or the other I hope you’ll check out the interview! And if you missed it, here’s the previous Unfiltered interview with Todd Howard from 2019, covering his early career:

Catch up on every episode of IGN Unfiltered here, including conversations with Bethesda game director Todd Howard, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton, Journey creator Jenova Chen, Halo boss Bonnie Ross, and many more!

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

If you’re a reasonably dedicated fan of ARPGs in the vein of Diablo, or you’re into story-driven MMORPGs like Final Fantasy 14 or Elder Scrolls Online, you may have already had your eye on the upcoming western release of Lost Ark, the MMO-slash-ARPG hybrid which (by no coincidence at all) has taken South Korea by storm over the last three years. Good news: we’ve already played our very own Striker — one of 15 playable advanced classes — all the way up to level 20 in Lost Ark’s closed beta. During which we cleared the very first continent, delved into Lost Ark’s epic storyline and several of its dungeons, including the visually gorgeous Morai Ruins, and also got a solid taste of this surprisingly deep character customization system. With all that exposition out of the way, here’s what we learned in Lost Ark’s first 20 levels — and why eager anticipation is building for the upcoming 2022 westernization of this seemingly stellar action-MMORPG hybrid.

Before we dive into anything else, we need to address Lost Ark’s combat straight away: it’s very, very good, combining the best elements of MMOs and ARPGs, and somehow reaching a height that exceeds the best of both genres. Where many other MMORPGs stick to simple tab-targeting combat and repetitive loot treadmills, Lost Ark greatly ups the ante with an action combat system that looks and feels incredibly cool at all levels — at times facing you against tens or potentially hundreds of enemies in a single fight — but it stays balanced, never making you feel totally overwhelmed or, inversely, like you have to turn off your brain for long periods of time to get through it. During the first 20 levels, you don’t feel over or underpowered at any point, which was often the case during a complete playthrough of Diablo 3.

Back on topic: Lost Ark’s great combat is due in part to how smooth it all feels when you’re powering your way through each of these meaty opponents in a spectacle of blood and effects, but it’s also due to the sheer number of class skills you can mix and match between, both when assigning up to eight skills on the hotbar itself and when unleashing them in various combos that often elicit a sense of creativity and freshness when executed in different orders or when responding to different enemy types. And it’s flexible — even letting you respec your loadout on the fly, or completely change how each skill behaves.

It’s also fantastic that each advanced class seems to have its own fighting style, special moves, combos, and class dynamics that would potentially make it a vastly different experience to play as a Monk-esque Striker vs, say, a sword and shield-wielding Paladin. We tried both classes and enjoyed the fact that both had their own unique take on Lost Ark’s bombastic combat system, both handling these massive fights with their own signature flair. It’s also fantastic that Lost Ark has a dodge roll button and a full arsenal of special “combat items” like bombs, single-use trinkets, or potions that quickly grant you buffs, and these are all often necessary to use in conjunction in order to push through some of the tougher boss fights — which can be as unrelentingly difficult and mechanically clever as any “Dark Souls”-style boss.

It’s possible to camp specific zones for loot and XP, but it’s never really worth doing so, since the rewards are always so meager. This seems like it’s by design, since Lost Ark did its darndest to keep us moving forward in its storyline, corralling us from one quest to the next as it rewarded us with perfectly adequate XP and loot along with the next cutscene or access to the next zone or dungeon — much like Final Fantasy 14 does, which also similarly encourages you to engage with its storyline, dungeons, and NPCs for their own sake rather than sit and grind the same content over and over. The story itself, despite playing on the overly familiar fantasy RPG notes of “good angels vs evil demons”, seems like it’ll be captivating enough through its likealikableble characters to keep things rolling. Its cinematics and consistent voice acting certainly make this all more engaging than other MMORPG and ARPG campaigns, which share in common the fact that both genres normally force you to grind out each level through combat and fetch quests alone.

Lost Ark’s world and scope already seems so much bigger than what has been experienced so far. There are plenty of systems that were toyed with or witnessed in menus but simply did not get far enough to meaningfully engage with, like the pet system, mounts, and the NPC-focused Rapport system that seemed to even let you potentially romance certain NPCs — or at least become very friendly with them. It sounds like there’s even a point where you get your own ship to sail the seas with, as well as a settlement system that lets you place a stake on your very own land. Whether or not any of that turns out to be any good, there’s still such a sense of wonder surrounding this game that has us greatly excited for its proposed 2022 launch window in the west.

Publisher WayForward (also known as the beloved developer behind games like Contra 4, Duck Tales Remastered, and A Boy and His Blob) is partnering with developer 13AM Games on Dawn of the Monsters, a new co-op brawler in which you get to play as a Kaiju who stands up to other giant monsters and inadvertently trashes the fully destructible fictional city of New Toronto in the process. It is due out in the first half of 2022 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

There are four playable beasts: Megadon, Ganira, Aegis Prime, and Tempest Galahad. Each has Brutal Rage abilities, Cataclysm Attacks, and finishing moves. As you can see in the trailer above and in the screenshots below, Dawn of the Monsters has a unique comic book-like art style, and WayForward says that the kaiju designs are done by legendary Godzilla character creator Shiji Nishikawa and Godzilla comic book artist Matt Frank.

It won’t be all boss fights across Dawn of the Monsters’s 35 missions; there are over a dozen regular enemy types standing in your way as well, and you’re able to bring one friend into the battle in co-op. You can also customize your kaiju.

Expect to see and hear more about Dawn of the Monsters next year as its release window approaches.

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