CD Projekt Red has admitted it included a few too many points of interest in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's Skellige map, but has also explained the reason why so many question marks filled the screen in the first place.

Speaking during the developer's 20th anniversary stream, Witcher 4 campaign director Philipp Weber, who was a junior quest designer at the time, said that the various smugglers' caches — underwater chests sprinkled in the dozens throughout the oceans of Skellige — weren't actually introduced as points of interest at all.

Given the extraordinary size of The Witcher 3's map, CD Projekt decided it needed something more than just quests upon quests to fill it.

"I can admit freely I'm one of those people that actually put those question marks in the world," Weber said. "It was already late 2014 so not that long before release [in May 2015] when we basically just filled the world with them.

"There was not a lot of time so it was very much, 'okay, we just have to do it and we can't do it perfectlly'. However I do have a defense," he continued. "I did a lot of those terrible — I can say terrible because I did them — smugglers' caches. But originally, we put them into the world, we put some seagulls over them so you would see them circling, but it wasn't planned to actually have an icon on the map."

Instead, Weber explained, the smuggers' caches were intended to be a treat that players would randomly come across, instead of being somewhat of a collectible that took completionists hours to tick off.

"I completely would agree that was a mistake," he laughed. "I wouldn't do that one again."

The upcoming Witcher game seemingly won't include so many question marks on its map then, at least not as many laborious ones. It'll be a while before we find out, however, as The Witcher 4 (for lack of an official name) only entered pre-production in May and is therefore likely years away.

CD Projekt Red has only revealed a single teaser image for the game, but something so small still sparked myriad fan theories. CD Projekt later confirmed the image to feature a Lynx medallion, but whether it's a new Witcher school or not is still up for debate.

We don't know too much else about the game, other than that CD Projekt Red has partnered with Epic Games to build it in Unreal Engine 5 and that its director has promised no crunch on his watch.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Iconic Batman villain The Joker won't be in WB Montreal's upcoming action RPG, Gotham Knights, according to creative director Patrick Redding speaking at a panel today at San Diego Comic Con.

During a fan Q&A, Redding was asked if Joker was in the game, to which he responded no, but added, "I will not confirm or deny whether Harley is," indicating that Joker's clownish compatriot might make an appearance of some sort.

Redding also confirmed that Batman is in fact "really dead" in Gotham Knights (he dies in the first ten minutes, setting up the plot), and remains dead at the end of the game.

He also added that there is "exactly one" Riddler question mark in all of Gotham Knights.

At this same panel, we also got a look at a new trailer showing off Batgirl gameplay, alongside more details about how the four heroes of the game (Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin) have distinct custom dialogue and cinematics depending on which one the player chooses to control at a given time.

Gotham Knights has previously shown Robin and Nightwing gameplay, as well as multiple other trailers. It's planned for release on October 25, 2022 for PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X and S after its PS4 and Xbox One versions were officially cancelled earlier this year.

Meanwhile, there's tons of news for all your favorite shows, films, games, and more coming out of San Diego Comic-Con 2022, and we've got the full schedule to guide you through the weekend of panels, announcements, trailers, and surprises.

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

Star Trek star William Shatner is to appear in Netflix's upcoming He-Man project, Masters of the Universe: Revolution. Revealed during the franchise's San Diego Comic-Con panel, Shatner is the first new actor confirmed for what's presumed to be a sequel to last year's Masters of the Universe: Revelation.

Very little else is known about the project as it was only announced last month at Netflix's Geeked Week. We know Kevin Smith is returning to executive produce the animated project, which is due to pick up right where the previous series left off.

He'll presumably join Mark Hamill, Chris Wood, Lena Headey and other cast members in Revolution, as He-Man and friends are once again forced to take on the nefarious Skeletor.

More will be revealed tomorrow, July 22, however, as Shatner is due to appear on IGN's own Comic-Con Live Show. Though he's most famous for his role as Captain James Kirk in Star Trek, the 91-year-old has featured in countless television shows and films in his career that spans seven decades.

In our 8/10 review of last year's series, IGN said: "Masters of the Universe: Revelation uses the original He-Man sandbox to truly go wild and explore these characters in ways that allow them to break tired moulds and dissolve old conventions."

There's tons of news for all your favorite shows, films, games, and more coming out of San Diego Comic-Con 2022, and we've got the full schedule to guide you through the weekend of panels, announcements, trailers, and surprises.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

The first teaser for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer will debut exclusively in theaters.

The upcoming biopic stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who is often credited as the “father of the atomic bomb”.

The brief teaser will be attached to Jordan Peele’s new sci-fi horror flick, Nope – a move that makes more sense when you consider that both are distributed by Universal Pictures.

Nolan’s last film, Tenet, also pushed its first teaser trailer as a theatrical exclusive, attached to the Fast & Furious spin-off film, Hobbs and Shaw. Tenet’s first trailer was subsequently never released online. It’s thought that Oppenheimer will follow this pattern.

“The world is changing, reforming,” says Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine, according to Variety. “This is your moment.” A countdown timer then begins: “11 months, 24 days, 15 hours, 29 minutes.”

It’s presumably a countdown to the day “the world changes forever” – the launch of the first-ever nuclear weapon by the United States at 5:29 am on July 16, 1945. Code name Trinity, this test was of an implosion-design nuclear device, nicknamed “The Gadget”… the same design as the Fat Man that was eventually detonated over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

As the film’s title appears on screen, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) can be heard saying: “The man who moved the Earth” which is presumably a reference to Oppenheimer himself. Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is then seen on screen, briefly, as footage of fire and smoke are intercut between black and white footage of the man himself.

It certainly sounds like a suitably haunting tease… and we can’t wait to see it on the big screen.

Whether or not it will eventually get an online release remains to be seen.

Oppenheimer stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer alongside an all-star ensemble cast including Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Matthew Modine, David Dastmalchian, and Jack Quaid.

Christopher Nolan both wrote and directed the film based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Today at San Diego Comic Con, WB revealed more details about Gotham Knights, including a new gameplay trailer featuring Batgirl.

The trailer highlights Batgirl's combat, including her wrist blasters and a multi batarang throw. It also gave some insight into her character, with a focus on her desire to protect Gotham City regardless of what name that protection happens to go by. It concluded by announcing that anyone who pre-orders Gotham Knights now will receive a 233 Kustom Batcycle skin.

The SDCC panel included appearances from creative director Patrick Redding, narrative director Anne Lemay, cinematics director Wilson Mui, Cinematics Director, America Young (Batgirl), and Christopher Sean (Nightwing). Comics writer Scott Snyder also made a surprise guest appearance. A chunk of the panel discussion highlighted the ways in which Gotham Knights' dialogue and tone will differ depending on which of the four characters is being played, with Lemay mentioning that WB Montreal did custom dialogue all throughout the game throughout each of their levels and cinematics, and all four choose to fight crime differently.

Gotham Knights has already shown off Robin and Nightwing gameplay previously, as well as multiple other trailers. Its version of Gotham City is supposedly even bigger than Arkham Knight's. Gotham Knights is planned for release on October 25, 2022 for PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X and S after its PS4 and Xbox One versions were officially cancelled earlier this year.

There's tons more news for all your favorite shows, films, games, and more coming out of San Diego Comic-Con 2022, and we've got the full schedule to guide you through the weekend of panels, announcements, trailers, and surprises.