The highest scores on IGN’s review scale are 9 for “Amazing” and 10 for “Masterpiece.” This year, only sixteen films received the highest marks from IGN’s roster of critics, and of those, only two films received a perfect score of 10.
Horror movies were particularly well received by our reviewers, as were indie films, but the most obvious throughline with all of these picks is that they were films made by great directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Lee, Guillermo del Toro, Ryan Coogler, and Kelly Reichardt, just to name a few. Surprise! Great directors usually make great movies.
Here are IGN’s best reviewed movies of 2025, starting with all the 9s:
“We’re the Real Monsters”
From one of the most iconic creatures in cinematic history to blues-lovin’ vampires and a new breed of the Infected, this was a big year for monster movies. And by monsters, we mean humans; there are no Xenomorphs or killer sharks to be found on this list.
Guillermo del Toro finally realized his decades-long ambition to adapt Frankenstein, which IGN’s Scott Collura called “a crowning achievement for the beloved genre director and one of the most effective adaptations of the Mary Shelley story ever put to film.” In his review, Collura hails del Toro for going “for a tale of tragedy, romance, and redemption rather than a straight horror flick. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t plenty of gore or creepy moments, but that’s the trimmings of this film, as blood-red as they are. No, del Toro’s really interested in – to paraphrase the Creature – why violence so often feels inevitable. And what it takes to stop it.”
Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein and Charles Dance as his nasty dad are the true monsters in the film, with the Creature being written by del Toro and, in a revelatory performance, played by Jacob Elordi as “a sympathetic, sad-sack SOB who just wants a friend. That the actor also seems to be channeling the body work of GDT regular and creature-player extraordinaire Doug Jones only accentuates how different Elordi’s Creature is from past incarnations.”
Ryan Coogler also found the humanity in the monsters of his film Sinners, with Eric Goldman writing in his review: “They’re sufficiently creepy and bloodthirsty, but Coogler also leans hard into the idea that vampires, in many cases, are depicted as seductive, sexual creatures – and there’s an allure to joining their undead ranks.”
“The vampires of Sinners share something of a hive mind. Amid all the racism and other senseless reasons humans turn on each other for – which Smoke, Stack, and their loved ones are especially familiar with given where they live – here is a society that moved beyond such petty hatred. If you’re a vampire, you’re accepted, regardless of your skin color. You only need to watch out if you’re not one.”
And there’s Weapons, Zach Cregger’s darkly funny horror-thriller that examines an entire community of people. “The mystery of a mass disappearance and its impact on a small town unfold in a fascinatingly layered way that gives every character a chance to shine; the wise decision to break their stories up into multiple, time-scrambling chapters creates multiple cliffhangers that set up a shattering finale,” Tom Jorgensen wrote in his review.
“From that primal starting point, Weapons unfurls itself in time-hopping chapters that afford the story a tremendous sense of scope in spite of its relatively diminutive setting. Each segment takes its time to dig into how the disappearances have affected the lives of those closest to the situation, and Cregger takes care to introduce the audience to the characters in quiet, personal moments of struggle. No one person’s perspective feels more important than any other’s; what’s revealed by these various vantage points makes us constantly reassess our own view of Weapons' bigger picture.”
Across the pond, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland revisited post-apocalyptic Britain in 28 Years Later. The movie introduced the Alpha, a subspecies of the Infected who procreate and run around buck naked and buck wild; they’re returning for the upcoming sequel, 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple. “These crazy-ripped, nigh invincible hulks immediately ratchet up the tension any time they’re on screen, with finishers that would make even Sub-Zero exclaim ‘flawless victory’ in satisfied wonder,” Tom Jorgensen wrote in his review. “But as is often the case in zombie fiction – here, let me just lean in and whisper real quick… maybe we’re the real monsters,”
In the film, generations of young Brits have had to grow up too quickly and have only ever known life with the Rage Virus. “The way Holy Island’s citizens are lionizing Spike’s ascension to the hunter role, good-natured though it is, has a haunting, violence-begets-violence quality to it, underlined by the montages of child soldiers and the war poetry of Rudyard Kipling peppered into the edit,” according to Jorgensen.
Elio: The Pixar Box Office Bomb We Loved
Pixar Animation once had the Midas touch at the box office, but in the wake of flops like The Good Dinosaur and Lightyear, they’re no longer a sure thing commercially. That’s too bad, because we found their most recent film, Elio – about a boy who wants to venture into outer space to live with aliens – to be an audience-pleaser despite its dismal box office performance.
“With incisive humor, radiant, eye-catching animation, and peculiar alien characters, there’s enough entertainment value in Elio to satisfy viewers who are the protagonist's age or younger,” Carlos Aguilar wrote in IGN’s review. “But it’s the heartfelt insight about universal (literally and figuratively) sorrows and joys that make this one of the studio’s most poignant projects to date – even if it leaves you wishing some of its imaginative concepts and creations would have received more screen time.”
This Is Bananas
One film has a pop star chimp, the other has an evil wind-up monkey toy, and both received a 9 from our critics.
First up is the Robbie Williams biopic, Better Man, which depicts the British singer as a CGI chimp brought to life by Weta. “The bold risk of transforming Robbie Williams into an enjoyable CGI chimp pays off both emotionally and visually,” Hanna Ines Flint wrote in IGN’s review. “Turning his back catalogue into epic musical numbers with stunning choreography and heart-wrenching storytelling, Better Man comes out swinging and winning.” (Editor’s note: Better Man had a limited theatrical release in North America during the Christmas week of 2024 before it opened wide on Jan. 10, 2025; our review was posted on Jan. 8, 2025, so we have included the film among this year’s releases.)
Then there’s Osgood Perkins’ horror film, The Monkey, which we hailed as “a multifaceted rollercoaster of a midnight movie that elicits as many laughs as shocks or gross-out gags.” IGN’s Tom Jorgensen wrote in his review that “The Monkey marches to the beat of its own bloodstained drum – and it’s an irresistible rhythm to groove to. Osgood Perkins and cast balance the horror and comedy inherent in the movie’s silly premise exceptionally well, and the surreal, absurd touches the Longlegs director adds to a world sketched out by Stephen King only help to set it apart from less imaginative, body-count-obsessed movies.”
The Return of the Indie Auteurs
Two of the biggest names in ’90s and ’00s indie cinema had new films out this year. Kelly Reichardt was back with The Mastermind, which our critic Chase Hutchinson noted in his review features “career-best work from Josh O’Connor” and cements Reichardt’s place as “one of the best filmmakers working today, cutting deeply into both character and country to make a great new American heist film.”
That OG slacker, Richard Linklater, had not one but two new movies this year, Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon, the latter earning a spot on this list. In his Blue Moon review, Siddhant Adlakha praised Linklater’s film about “the final days of Broadway songwriting legend Lorenz Hart (a magnificently melancholy Ethan Hawke) on the opening night for one of his former creative partner’s biggest hits. Jealousies and creative anxieties fly as Hart tries to maintain balance through friendly conversations, all while the specter of World War II hangs overhead, posing the question of what makes art, artists, and audiences tick during difficult times.”
A Cut Above
Not one but two action movies about vengeful women with samurai swords have landed on our list of best reviewed movies of 2025… albeit one movie is actually a combination of two films released over 20 years ago.
Although it screened at film festivals years ago, Quentin Tarantino waited until he could own the rights before seeking theatrical distribution for the four-and-a-half-hour-long Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.
“The film is as vicious, fun, and sentimental as it’s always been, and although you could technically rewatch Vol. 1 (2003) back-to-back with Vol. 2 (2004) for a similar experience, nothing rivals the delights of watching Tarantino’s cross-cultural mash-up the way it was meant to be seen,” Siddhant Adlakha explained in his review.
“It’s perhaps the mash-up maverick’s most overt work of cultural bastardization-slash-homage, a thin line he traipses with gusto by combining the sounds and styles of spaghetti Westerns, spy B movies, Japanese chanbara (or swordplay) and Chinese wuxia, all choreographed by Hong Kong stunt legend Yuen Woo-ping. However, the long-overdue release is also a more mournful tribute to bygone eras of cinema, simply by virtue of the passage of time: Many of its stars have since departed, including David Carradine, Sonny Chiba, Michael Madsen, and Michael Parks, as well as the film’s editor, Sally Menke. Kill Bill should have always been this way, but it’s better late than never.”
Tarantino veteran Tim Roth, meanwhile, plays the villain in Slow West director John Maclean’s period action film, Tornado. Hanna Ines Flint’s review said “Maclean brilliantly captures the brutality and hardship of 18th-century Britain in a bleak but blistering coming-of-age tale loaded with nods to the samurai stories of Akira Kurosawa. Japanese actor Kōki is sharp and passionate in the lead role, Tim Roth impresses as a tired but ruthless crimelord, and Takehiro Hira and Jack Lowden are compelling in their supporting roles. With a blistering score and a darkly comic undercurrent, Tornado is a timeless revenge thriller filled with hurt and heart.”
A24’s Big Year
Indie distributor A24 released many notable films this year, many of which were well received but – IGN score-wise – fell short of meeting this article’s threshold of a 9 or above. Among the A24 films that didn’t make the cut were Civil War, Eternity, Eddington, Bring Her Back, Ne Zha II, Friendship, Opus, The Smashing Machine, and The Legend of Ochi.
However, Josh Safdie’s table tennis dramedy, Marty Supreme, featuring a stellar lead performance by Timothée Chalamet, earned a 9 from IGN’s Michael Calabro. In his review, Calabro forecast that “Marty Supreme and Uncut Gems will spawn many of their own Goodfellas/Casino debates in the future. It doesn’t matter what side you take; we’re insanely lucky all these films exist.”
Meanwhile, Spike Lee was back in a big way with Highest 2 Lowest, his remake of an Akira Kurosawa classic that Siddhant Adlakha explained in his review “begins as an austere class melodrama, but soon gives way to some of the most exciting, visceral images of Spike Lee’s career. It filters the kidnapping conundrum of its source materials through a kaleidoscope of Black culture, anchored by the great Denzel Washington at his most Shakespearean. It’s been nearly 20 years since the director and actor last collaborated, but neither man has lost a step.”
Celine Song followed up her Oscar-nominated Past Lives with Materialists, a romantic drama about dating in middle age. In his review, Adlakha wrote that Song “uses the screen presences of lovelorn leads Dakota Johsnon, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal to play with rom-com expectations. The result is an unexpected love triangle of cynics, both rich and poor alike, caught in a world where dating can be a game of numbers, forcing them to harden themselves towards romance. But as the possibility of the real thing rears its head, Song presents it in deeply alluring hues without ever shying away from the realistic allure of even the most bitter alternatives.”
But our highest-rated A24 film of the year – Sorry, Baby – is also one of only two films we awarded a perfect score of 10.
The 10s: Our Top Two Films of the Year
Films that earn a score of 10 are labeled by IGN as Masterpieces, which our review scale explainer describes as “classics in the making.” But what does that actually mean? IGN’s Michael Calabro wrestled with that very question in his One Battle After Another review:
“Frankly, when trying to come up with my final score for this movie, I’ve spent an absurd amount of time trying to figure out the difference between a 9 out of 10 and a 10 out of 10. What does an abstract “one better” mean? Then it hit me: Who says our review scale is linear, with each number being equally spaced from the other? We’re ‘measuring’ art with numbers, for Christ’s sake; it’s all a construction we’ve collectively made up.”
In delivering his score, Calabro ultimately concluded that “the elements that separate an ‘amazing' film from a ‘masterpiece’ are minor. … There are so many little details, seemingly inconsequential touches – the filmmaker’s style, if you will – that all add up bit by bit to turn this amazing movie into a masterpiece.” But Paul Thomas Anderson’s politically charged and darkly funny saga of revolutionaries and fascists wasn’t the only film to receive a perfect score from us in 2025.
Eva Victor made a stunning directorial debut with Sorry, Baby. Carlos Aguilar called it a “bittersweet, unassuming stunner,” writing in IGN’s review that “Sorry, Baby pulls off astounding feats of storytelling. It’s not only because it jumps across multiple time periods with powerful impact, but also because it addresses a challenging topic like the trauma of sexual assault with nuance, restraint, and even effective and consistent humor. Writer-director-star Eva Victor has made a movie that’s at once approachable, incredibly perceptive, and subtly stirring.”
A musical biopic fittingly composed of religious ballads, The Testament of Ann Lee chronicles the life of its eponymous 18th century religious leader, played with tremendous passion by Amanda Seyfried. It spans several decades and traces Ann’s travels from Manchester to New York as well as the newly-invented religious dogmas that guided her journey. It’s a film of spiritual ecstasy that lives on the edge of realism – for better and for worse – while mythologizing an oft-forgotten historical figure whose unusual beliefs about celibacy had altruistic ends, making for a particularly compelling experience.
Directed byThe Brutalist co-writer Mona Fastvold and co-written by that film’s director and other co-writer, Brady Corbet, The Testament of Ann Lee arrives with all the lush historical detail you’d expect, made even more inviting by William Rexer’s 70mm cinematography. It begins with a decontextualized vista of women in bonnets and religious robes moving rhythmically in the woods in the late 1700s. This image, removed from time, is all that’s known to most people about the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, also known as the “Shakers,” a particularly enduring Christian sect – their number recentlyrose to 3. Ann was once their prophet, one of the rare female figures of such importance at the time.
One of these dancing women, Mary Partington (Thomasin McKenzie), is both a key supporting character in the film as well as its narrator, providing conflicting accounts of Ann’s life but ultimately deciding which parts of her story are worth telling… and believing. It’s a film about the reinterpretation of doctrine that is itself reinterpreted for the audience by a woman invested in making Ann (affectionately called “Mother” by her worshippers) seem like the Second Coming. Regardless of what the filmmakers themselves believe – Fastvold was raised in a secular household – they present The Testament of Ann Lee as though it were an article of faith, making it particularly intoxicating.
In her childhood and early adult years, Ann is seen to have a complicated relationship with her body and beliefs, from her revulsion towards sex to the movie’s sudden flashes of visceral biblical imagery; brief inserts of Renaissance paintings depicting Eden feature particularly phallic snakes. As she molds her own outlook, she and her supportive brother William (Lewis Pullman) join the Shakers in their early days, attending closed-door meetings involving confessions in the form of song, and exorcising sin through writhing and rhythmic thumping. It’s a time of great religious upheaval; Methodism has just been born, the Church of England is entwined with state power and cruel penalties, and the Shakers worship in secret.
Seyfried sells Ann’s unshakable zeal with tremendous gusto, turning in a career-best performance.
After marrying fellow congregant Abraham (Christopher Abbott), Ann’s experimentations with sex and BDSM leave her spiritually unfulfilled. As the years go by, she bears four different children, all of whom die before the age of one, resulting in a pervading grief that informs the way she eventually reshapes the Shaker church. The film frames Ann’s mourning as not only a key to her rejection of carnal impulse, but the foundation of her self-proclaimed divinity. Her visions, she claims, come to her in moments of mania, like when she’s imprisoned for her beliefs, and likely ill and dehydrated. However, the film finds no need to employ a skeptical lens to its chronology. Instead, the camera buys into Lee’s theological stature, and the frame becomes enraptured by the Shakers’ ritualistic motions, capturing worshippers in alternating close-ups and panoramas as they beat their chests with open palms.
The songs and movements, drawn fromreal Shaker music, are acoustically addicting, even when the people singing don’t have particularly dulcet tones. Your mileage may vary, but this is part of the film’s commitment to naturalistic performance. Not every churchgoer would be a professional singer, though each member of the flock is fully devoted to Ann’s premonitions of a better world, free from tyranny and cruelty. It’s hard not to agree with her objective, even if the notion of lifelong celibacy seems strange or self-defeating.
The film’s ensemble is wonderfully fine-tuned, especially Tim Blake Nelson and Jamie Bogyo as elder churchgoers who – in a decision that feels almost countercultural despite the Shakers’ conservative constraints – yield to the word of a young woman. This faith eventually leads the Shakers across the Atlantic to the New World, where they remain largely apolitical, but invite the consequences of doing so during the Revolutionary War. However, As Ann’s convictions grow stronger, Abraham wavers, testing each of their commitments to the cause of an abstract utopia with no clear path beyond what Christ allegedly tells her.
Seyfried, however, sells Ann’s unshakable zeal with tremendous gusto, turning in a career-best performance as a woman who emerges from the throes of anguish so convinced of herself that she believes with every fiber of her being that her conception of the world and its suffering is the right one, and that everyone deserves a part of her, though they must partake willingly. However, if there’s a downside to the movie’s framing of Ann through Mary’s eyes, it’s that her conception as a holy figure yields a narrative in which she’s rarely tempted to stray from her path, offering little by way of dramatic tension as the film plays out.
There’s nothing especially cruel about the Shakers, other than how they excommunicate members who break their rules concerning fornication. That aside, being immersed in their world for two hours and change verges on liberating, especially during scenes of percussive prayer. The instrumentation by composer Daniel Blumberg remains largely faithful to what one might have heard at the time, but when characters like William get swept up in the word of Mother Ann – Pullman, in these moments, gives himself over to the film completely – the rules break, and the music cracks through space and time with electric guitars luring the Shakers into the future. That they don’t make it to the 19th century in one piece, owing to violent eruptions, feels incredibly tragic by the end.
Want to swap your bulky gaming headset for something a little more compact and comfortable? Best Buy just dropped the price of the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds to a new low, beating Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Today only, you can grab our favorite gaming earbuds for just $119.99. That’s an epic $80 in savings. And if you happen to live near a Best Buy that has the earbuds in stock, you could potentially get them today to have under the tree Christmas morning. It’s an awesome last-minute gift any gamer will love.
40% Off SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds
Gaming earbuds might not get as much hype as top gaming headsets. Still, there’s a case to be made for these ultra-portable and versatile alternatives, especially for gamers who like to play on the go. The SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds are the best option, and work great whether you’re connecting via Bluetooth 5.3 to your phone or opting to use the reliable low-latency USB-C dongle when playing on your PS5, Switch, PC, or gaming PC handheld. That dongle is what puts these earbuds in a completely different realm from non-dedicated gaming options. Oh, and the sound isn’t too shabby either.
The SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds feature 6mm neodymium magnetic drivers ready to pump out well-balanced sound and even simulate bass. With ANC baked in, you can focus on the action rather than outside distractions, while spatial audio delivers directional cues to give you a leg up on opponents. If you’re not a fan of the out-of-the-box sound, the earbuds are loaded with over 100 different EQ presets, which can be easily adjusted based on the types of games you play using either the SteelSeries mobile app or PC software.
Comfort is key, no matter what gaming headset you use, and the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds don’t disappoint. These tiny earbuds don’t add any pressure to your ears, and instead rest securely with three different eartip size options to choose from. Plus, the 10-hour battery life with 40 additional hours from the case is solid. There’s a reason IGN expert Michael Higham stated, “few earbuds are able to cover every base as competently as the SteelSeries GameBuds,” in his review of the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds.
Danielle is a Tech freelance writer based in Los Angeles who spends her free time creating videos and geeking out over music history.
Beyond the humongous stage, tense in-game stand-offs and hard-fought Winner Winner Chicken Dinners of PUBG United 2025 (the combined Global Championships for both PUBG MOBILE and PUBG) fans and players in the host city of Bangkok were reminded that PUBG MOBILE is more than a game; it’s also a platform where creators, artists and players can bring their ideas to life, contribute to the game’s creative ecosystem and receive recognition and rewards for their hard work.
For aspiring creators, WOW and PDP are more than platforms, they’re launchpads for ambition and imagination. This month, creators from around the world gathered at the PMGC in Bangkok, where 16 standout creators were celebrated on a global stage at the PUBG MOBILE Creative Vision Awards 2025, which recognises contributions across World of Wonder (WOW), PUBG MOBILE’s in-game creation platform, and the Ptopia Design Project (PDP), the platform of the game’s global design contests. If you’re interested in becoming a creator yourself, there’s good reason, thanks to the incentives from the WOW $10 million dollar prize pools and more across PDP contests – and with modern creator tools, a supportive community and a focus on accessibility, there’s virtually nothing to stop you.
Who better to learn from than the winner creators themselves; here’s what they have to say about their creative process, and how PUBG MOBILE provides them with creative freedom.
Where to Start in This World of Possibilities
With over 5.4 million maps created and over 8.5 million peak daily players, WOW’s mobile UGC creation platform is undeniably huge, but that continued support had to start from somewhere. For creators of all kinds, it’s almost always making the first step that is the hardest. Whatever your motivation, with PUBG MOBILE, the gap between initial idea and active creation is designed to be small.
For Kuwait based ناايل؟, Creator of the Year for Best Story, it was “curiosity” and being “drawn to the feeling of turning a simple idea into something players can enjoy” that first sparked his interest in creating in WOW. Taking inspiration from his culture, environment and personal stories, it was the tools within WOW that enabled him to turn “complex ideas into clear systems without needing prior coding experience.” Paired with a design principle to create experiences that are clear and easy for players to understand, ناايل؟ has now been recognised as one of WOW’s top creators – an experience that is sure to boost his confidence as a creator.
Speaking on how creating for WOW has impacted him he said: “Seeing players enjoy my work made me realize that I have real creative potential. It also encouraged me to take creation more seriously and to keep improving my skills on a higher, more professional level.” His recommendation for players looking to create for PUBG MOBILE in WOW? Start simple, build small ideas first, explore the tools, and most crucially "experiment and learn from mistakes.”
Freedom to Create
Every creator needs to have an element of curiosity to get started, but for Creator of the Year: Best Scene Designer winner CaiCai, it was wanting to create triathlon challenges for their teammates where they could try, fail and laugh together, that sparked an interest in creating in WOW.
CaiCai’s background in design and architecture may have given the Australian creator an edge when it came to shaping and building maps, but its WOW’s suite of visual programming, AI supports and open logic tools that not only made the process possible, but also easy. Visual programming “expands the creative possibilities and greatly enhances interaction and flexibility within my maps” they said, noting also how “it removes many limits and truly empowers creators.”
It’s a sentiment that is also shared by Egyptian creator and winner of Creator of the Year for Best Stage Design Y O Y O, who praises the tools for their ease of use, saying, “the mix of visual programming, AI support, and open logic tools lets me build ideas exactly the way I imagine them. Instead of spending hours trying to translate an idea into code, I can see everything laid out clearly and make changes instantly.”
MURSHAD, who won Creator Of The Year for Best Creative Gameplay, similarly notes how WOW can turn ordinary players’ imagination into playable worlds through the platform’s accessible tools: “visual programming and AI support have made map creation much easier for me by allowing me to design and implement complex mechanics visually, without having to write extensive code. This makes the entire process more intuitive and efficient, enabling me to create better and more intricate maps with ease.”
NexusSPIKE, winner of the Popular Creator Award Winner for Arena - Themed Maps, echoes a similar ethos for aspiring creators, highlighting the importance of patience and originality in map design: “I would advise new creators to take their time in learning how to build maps. I would also advise creators to make original maps. While copying maps may seem like a quick way to get plays, it is not a sustainable practice.”
How to Create a Winning Idea
PDP empowers designers from around the world to create outfit, weapon and vehicle designs to be added to PUBG MOBILE. With over 13 diverse contests, a prize pool totalling $1,000,000, and 1,366 PDP winners in 2025 alone, there’s plenty of opportunities for creators to submit their designs and receive recognition, whether they’re professional designers or amateur artists.
For PDP creators such as Ariestrada, winner of the Best Outfit Design Silver Award, the open-themed contests are a chance to flex his creative muscles and create designs that players actually want. Ariestrada’s success started with winning an Outstanding Award in PDP in 2023 – since then he’s also received double awards, Silver and Bronze, in the first Ultimate Set Design contest, followed by a Gold Award in the third Ultimate Set Design Contest, plus two Best Design Awards and a Judges' Choice Award in the PDP Fashion Icon contest.
How has he created so many winning ideas? For him it's all about “keep[ing] an eye on trends outside the game and mix[ing] them with something unique to create something fresh.” His experience with the game has also been a crucial component. “I've played PUBG MOBILE a lot and followed their tournaments, which has helped me understand what works well in the game, what players want.” Based in Bali, Ariestrada also utilises PDP to bring elements of their traditional culture into their ideas whilst also leaning into their knowledge of PUBG MOBILE as “ players love sleek designs because they feel "light and fast," so I always adapt to that style”.
Support to Keep Creative
What sets PUBG MOBILE’s WOW and PDP creative systems apart are their focus on giving creators financial incentives, rewarding creators and growing its community. Together, all of this works to ensure the imagination of players fuels PUBG MOBILE’s evolution, while still providing real-world rewards for contributors.
WOW creator ناايل؟ feels that the community visibility, contest rewards and financial incentives have “had a significant impact as a creator. They made me feel that my work has real value, pushed me to keep improving, and encouraged me to pursue bigger and more creative ideas.” Understandably, the feeling of seeing your work in-game and recognised by the community means a lot for ناايل؟ who says it gives a “strong motivation to keep growing”, while fellow creator CaiCai highlights how the financial rewards are encouraging “because they make me realise that creating isn’t just a hobby—it’s something that could potentially grow into a professional path”.
Future Ambitions
For this class of creators recognised at PMGC 2025 it was a chance to acknowledge the hard work and dedication they’ve given to their respective creative outlets – but creativity is an infinite resource, and there is always another project, map, or design to be working on. So what’s next for them, what do they hope to achieve and how do they plan on evolving as creators?
CaiCai has the noble goal of becoming a “more well-rounded creator with stronger gameplay design skills” by experimenting “with more detailed mechanisms and dynamic elements to make maps feel more alive.” Discussing what he wants design next, ناايل؟ is set on exploring “ideas that feel unique and push WOW’s tools to their limits” with a particular interest in more experimental styles “and unique gameplay concepts that haven’t been done before.”
PDP creator Ariestrada reflected on the importance of the community and how learning from “amazing artists” has helped him improve and grow. As for what he’ll explore next in PDP, he remarks “we already have many anime-themed outfits, and I'd love to create more anime styles with PDP, but with our own twist to it.”
For those looking to start their creative journey, PDP creator Mranderson, winner of the Best Creative Silver Award, only has words of encouragement. He began his creative journey as a traditional illustrator, but over time discovered a deeper passion for gaming as a world where he could merge his artistic talents with interactive storytelling. Through this fusion of art and gaming, his work has reached tens of millions of players across the globe, earning him widespread recognition and respect within the community. “Participating in PDP allowed me to fulfill a major dream in my life—seeing my creations featured in one of the world’s top tactical battle royale games, and experiencing the profound emotion of wearing outfits designed by myself in the game,” he reflects.
For all aspiring creators, he has a clear message: “I simply say: give it a try, seize this opportunity to be part of this incredible design project and this wonderful family of artists and friends from all over the world. And, why not, with your results in each competition, your consistency and dedication, you might even be invited at the end of the year to the PDP awards ceremony, which has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life.”
Download PUBG MOBILE and try WOW and PDP for free via the App Store and Google Play Store. Also make sure you follow the WOW social channels on Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube, PDP social channels on Instagram, X, and TikTok, and PUBG MOBILE social channels on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube to stay up to date and learn more about WOW and PDP’s creator programmes, contests and toolsets.
Warning: Spoilers follow for Season 1 ofPluribus, Carol.
Have you been watching Pluribus, the new sci-fi show from Vince Gilligan of X-Files, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul fame? Apple TV has confirmed that it’s themost watched show in the platform’s history, and that’s an impressive feat since between series like Severance, Foundation, For All Mankind, and Silo, Apple TV has been theplace to be for science-fiction programming for a while now. Even among such esteemed company, Pluribus is an excellent addition to the sci-fi canon (see IGN’s ownstellarreviews for more).
With the first season now wrapping up with the Season 1 finale “La Chica o El Mundo” (which translates to “The Girl or the World” in Spanish), and a Season 2confirmed to be on the way, IGN interviewed Gilligan and his writing/directing/producing partners Gordon Smith and Alison Tatlock. Smith and Tatlock co-wrote the finale, with Smith directing, so we dove with them into some of the biggest events of Season 1’s ending – and what they could mean for Season 2.
Carol, the Joined, and the Road to Albuquerque
Just so we’re all on the same page, Pluribus is about Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), a writer of fantasy romance novels from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is one of only 13 people on Earth who is immune to an alien virus that turns all of humanity into a hive mind known as the Joining. The blueprints for the RNA sequence that creates the “psychic glue” which joins all of mankind were transmitted from another planet, and DNA scientists seeking to recreate it accidentally unleashed the infection into the human population.
Despite this seemingly apocalyptic scenario, which included over 800 million people dying worldwide when the virus was released into the atmosphere, the “Others” are kind and affectionate towards Carol. But a combination of her grief at the loss of her manager/life partner Helen (Miriam Shor), her complicated feelings towards her Joined chaperone Zosia (Karolina Wydra), and her own prickly personality have led Carol to going through the emotional wringer as she tries to figure out what to do in a world that’s been horrifically changed but also doesn’t want to be saved.
Pluribus Season 1 Ending Explained
Kusimayu’s Joining
“La Chica o El Mundo” opens with Kusimayu (Darinka Arones), a Peruvian woman and one of the 13 “survivors,” who has requested to be added to the hive mind. The Others can develop a specific pathogen for those with immunity by harvesting their stem cells. We see Kusimayu and her village preparing for what feels like a ceremony, singing songs and helping settle her after she inhales the pathogen.
But once she’s converted, all of that cultural specificity disappears, and Kusimayu joins the Others as they abandon the village, including the domesticated animals, with one particular baby goat seeming very confused and anxious when the previously warm Kusimayu coldly leaves them behind. It’s a chilling scene that strikes at the heart of what the Joined have been taking away from the world despite their friendly exteriors, and sets up the tension at the heart of the finale perfectly.
“It just seemed like this incredible opportunity,” Tatlock told us, “to go to a very specific cultural place and have the Others in her world recreating what is familiar to her, and then see what happens when it is dropped.”
'Hopefully we could see that there was a loss of culture, that there was something that goes away when Kusimayu as Kusimayu goes away.'
Added Smith, “This is the first person, really, that we've seen, possibly in the world, do this on their own – that they chose this. She absolutely chose this, but she's still real nervous. And hopefully we could see that there was a loss of culture, that there was something that goes away when Kusimayu as Kusimayu goes away.”
The reference to Kusimayu “going away” highlights that the Joining, while technically preserving the thoughts and memories of every person they subsume, do not truly remain themselves under most circumstances.
The Real Zosia
And then there’s Zosia, who Carol has tried to help become a coherent individual as they settle into a romantic relationship, including encouraging Zosia to use the personal pronoun “I.” This of course raises the question of whether or not it’s possible for Zosia to “love” Carol as an individual and not as an avatar of the Joining.
When asked about Zosia’s development in the last few episodes, Gilligan said, as he often does when discussing Pluribus, that he wants the audience to come up with their own answers. But he also added that if someone like Carol sets out to put the world back to the way it was, then that would mean every single person would become their former self again.
“So if you believe that's possible, and Carol does at this point in the story, then I think you’ve got to think there's a Zosia, a real Zosia, in there somewhere,” he said. “But also, Carol in Episode 8 is coming off of a really bad time, a really bad 40-day stretch where she was essentially in solitary confinement. … After 40 days of not interacting with any other human being, she's kind of broken.”
Smith also points to something Zosia says to Carol, which is a key to the true nature of the Joined: “We love you exactly the same as we love Manousos.”
'Carol kind of goes back and forth with her understanding of things, I think.'
“And Carol says, ‘No, it can't be the same,’” explains Smith. “So… is it that she understands that there's some [part of] Zosia that she's looking for, or that she maybe even thinks, ‘Okay, even if this is the person, this Joined person, maybe that's the person I like, this hive mind in some way. Because she's on the horns of a dilemma. She kind of goes back and forth with her understanding of things, I think.”
And Finally, Manousos Arrives
Things get complicated when Manousos Oviedo (Carlos Manuel-Vesga), a Paraguayan survivor who has refused all contact with the Others and wants to find a way to reverse the infection, finally arrives at Carol’s house after making a multi-month trek from his home country. The language barrier, Manousos’ paranoia, and Carol needing to hide her relationship with Zosia make their early encounters more combative than either likely hoped.
Tatlock elaborated on Manousos’ headspace when he meets Carol, saying he’s probably a little nervous: “He wants to make a good impression, and then 10 minutes later, he's probably wondering why. Why was I trying to make a good impression on her? She's not my leader. What is happening?” He seems quite disappointed that Carol’s resolve to stop the Others isn’t as strong as when she sent him her first video.
Gilligan spoke about what the team was hoping to achieve by finally bringing Carol face to face with the only other human being to resist the Others. As he says, we’ve been waiting a long time for this moment.
“Nine episodes for Stanley to meet Livingston here, and it's been hard fought,” he said. “He literally hacked his way through the Darién Gap just to meet this woman. And then he arrives in her neighborhood and maybe he's expecting – what we’d say in the writer's room – he's kind of expecting Che Guevara or some really charismatic leader. And in Che's driveway is a Rolls-Royce.”
But of course where would the fun be if Carol and Manousos just hit it off instantly? “I think you hope always for fireworks,” says Gilligan. “You're hoping for drama.”
“They were so great together and their distaste for each other was really fun,” laughed Tatlock.
Things get worse when Manousos reluctantly takes up residence in the house of one of Carol’s neighbors, and he contacts Zosia and interrogates her without Carol’s knowledge. Because the Others can’t lie, he learns all about Carol’s affair with Zosia and how the Others function. He continues his experiments by shouting at another Other and exposing him to a radio signal Manousos believes is possibly linked to a way to reverse the Joining, causing the Others to go into convulsions, something Carol did earlier in the season by showing anger towards them. Worried for Zosia’s safety (Others can be killed by the convulsions), Carol interrupts Manousos by threatening him with a shotgun. The Others subsequently leave Albuquerque, abandoning Manousos the same way they abandoned Carol earlier in the season.
Oh, and Carol also has an atom bomb with her. The end!
With the Others gone, Manousos claims he and Carol can now work on finding a cure for the Joining, but Carol leaves him as well, wanting to be with Zosia. Carol and Zosia go on multiple romantic trips, and it seems for a few days that Carol has found some happiness in a post-Joining world. However, while staying at a ski resort, Carol discovers that the Others have found a way to circumvent needing her consent to obtain her stem cells: They have her frozen eggs from her time with Helen, and are currently working on a pathogen to add Carol to the Joining whether she wants to or not. Heartbroken at the betrayal, and knowing she only has months before the Others have a working pathogen, Carol has Zosia return her to Albuquerque via helicopter.
Upon arrival, Carol tells Manousos she’s ready to “save the world.” Oh, and she also has an atom bomb with her. The end!
What Does This Mean for Pluribus Season 2?
Talk about a hell of a way to end the season. Carol and Zosia’s romance has crashed and burned, Carol is recommitted to curing the Joining, and now we have a ticking clock as to when the Others can forcibly convert Carol.
We don’t know exactly what will happen in Pluribus Season 2, but we can make some educated guesses. Now that Manousos is in Albuquerque, he and Carol will likely become a main cast duo looking to find a way to subvert the Others. Will we finally learn more about that mysterious radio frequency Manousos has been investigating? He seemed to believe he could bring an Other’s original personality back to the surface by playing the signal while they’re convulsing. Is this the method of curing the Joining that Carol nearly discovered when Zosia was in the hospital? And now that Carol has severed her bond with Zosia, will Zosia take on a more openly antagonistic role, or will the Others stay committed to their “smile and wave” attitude? Maybe Carol and Manousos will cure at least one or two people, if only so they’ll have more characters to talk to now that Carol and the Others are once again enemies. No matter what happens, we’ll definitely be watching when Pluribus Season 2 drops.
What did you think of the Season 1 finale of Pluribus? Let us know in the comments!
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles, and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations onTwitter.
As the hype train for Avengers: Doomsday picks up steam, the realization that Dune: Part 3 shares the same release date as Marvel’s behemoth is spreading across social media — and Shang Chi star Simu Liu has come up for the perfect name for this double bill: DUNESDAY.
At the time of this article’s publication, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 3 is still on track for release on December 18, 2026 — the same day as Avengers: Doomsday. This heavyweight science fiction blockbuster clash will be a bonanza for theaters and cinemagoers, you’d imagine. But can it prove to be 2026’s version of the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon of the summer of 2023?
For now, it’s all hype. Simu Liu, who is set to reprise his role as Shang-Chi in Avengers: Doomsday, took to Twitter / X to declare: “Prepare for DUNESDAY.”
But will DUNESDAY actually come to pass? While Warner Bros. still has Dune: Part 3 down for December 18, 2026, it perhaps wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see the company bring the film forward, even by a week or two, just to get out of the way of the actual Doomsday. As of now, though, a year from launch, we’re set for a clash.
We’re still waiting for the debut trailer for Dune: Part 3, which will see Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson, and Anya Taylor-Joy all reprise their roles from the previous films. Meanwhile, we have our first teaser trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, which confirms the return of Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, apparently with a baby in tow. A leaked Thor-themed second trailer is expected to hit theaters alongside Avatar: Fire and Ash later this week.
In a post on Instagram, the Russo brothers, who directed both Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, issued a statement on Steve Rogers' return: "the character that changed our lives. The story that brought us all here together. It was always going to come back to this…"
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Mario fans, here is something special for you today. An unofficial native PC port of Dr. Mario 64 has just been released, allowing you to experience this Mario game natively on PC. This is a must-have for everyone who wanted to play this 2001 tile-matching action puzzle game on PC. Dr. Mario 64 Recomp focuses … Continue reading Dr. Mario 64 Unofficial PC Port Is Available for Download→
For years Grand Theft Auto fans have wondered whether Rockstar might take the franchise out of its traditional America setting into cities in other countries. But according to one former developer, that’s never going to happen — and fans just need to accept it.
In an interview with Gameshub, former Rockstar Games technical director Obbe Vermeij, who worked at the company from 1995 to 2009, said there were “ideas” about post-Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City GTA games set in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, and Istanbul, but it was GTA: Tokyo that “almost actually happened.”
According to Vermeij, who left Rockstar just after finishing GTA 4, another studio in Japan was going to take Rockstar’s code and develop GTA: Tokyo (Vermeij didn’t say which studio). “But then that didn’t happen in the end.”
Why? It sounds like Rockstar came to the realization that American cities are the natural and best setting for GTA, and given it takes so long to release new games in the series, going international is too big of a risk.
“People love having these wild ideas but then when you’ve got billions of dollars riding on it it’s too easy to go let’s do what we know again, and also America is basically the epicenter of Western culture, so everybody knows the cities, even people who haven’t been there,” Vermeij said. “They have a mental image of the cities.
“I think it’s unlikely it’s going to be in Bogota next time, especially since there’s just more and more money involved as the project gets bigger. It doesn’t make sense to set it in some left-field location for novelty. GTA: Toronto? It just wouldn’t work.”
GTA 6 is of course set to return to Vice City, the GTA series’ fictionalized take on Miami, Florida. But then what? Will Rockstar ever take GTA international and set it across mainland Europe or in London?
“It’s just not realistic,” Vermeij countered. “I would love it, and if games still took a year to make then yeah sure, you can have a little fun, but you’re not going to get that when there’s a GTA every 12 years.
“You’re not going to set it in a new location. You don’t really need to either because the technology changes so much. Nobody is going to say that they’re not going to play GTA 6 because they’ve already played Vice City. That doesn’t make sense. It’s completely different.
“They’ll revisit New York again. They’ll go back to LA or maybe Las Vegas. I’m afraid we’re stuck in this loop of about five American cities. Let’s just get used to it.”
Speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast, Houser said that — GTA London apart — Grand Theft Auto remained firmly rooted in the United States because it leans so heavily on Americana.
“We made a little thing in London 26 years ago — GTA London — for the top-down for PS1. That was pretty cute and fun, as the first mission pack ever for PlayStation 1. I think for a full GTA game, we always decided there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else.
“You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters. It just felt like the game was so much about America, possibly from an outsider's perspective. But that was so much about what the thing was that it wouldn't really have worked in the same way elsewhere.”
Indeed, such is GTA’s relationship with America, built up over the course of its many video games, that a University of Tennessee history professor will teach a GTA college history class early in 2026. Professor Tore Olsson recently told IGN: “Video games are great at conjuring fictional worlds, but they also impact players’ thinking about real-world times and places. And just as Red Dead Redemption 2 has shaped folks’ perception of the nineteenth-century American West or Ghost of Tsushima has informed their vision of feudal Japan, millions of people around the globe imagine contemporary America through the lens of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Just think of how many GTA veterans have recognized landmarks in Los Angeles and New York thanks to their hours in Los Santos and Liberty City!”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
CD Projekt has said huge discounts on Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition displayed on the Nintendo Switch 2 eShop this week were a mistake, but it will honor any sales made at the discounted prices.
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition for Nintendo Switch 2 went on sale with a whopping 75% off in the U.S. earlier this week, making the normally $69.99 game just $17.49. Making this deal all the more eye-catching is the fact the Ultimate Edition includes the DLC expansion Phantom Liberty. This DLC normally costs around $30 (or around $21 with a discount), which meant the base game plus the DLC was cheaper than the DLC itself if you bought it with the discount. As you'd expect, plenty of people bought the game at that price. "I couldn’t believe it lmfao," one fan said. "I bought as soon as I saw the price. I had been waiting for it to go on sale but was amazed at the discount." Said another: "I was on the fence for a few hours, and would have skipped it if it was $20. So they got money out of people like me who weren’t super interested. Bought it on PC years ago and barely started it. Hoping the switch 2 edition/cross save gets me to finish the game."
Now, CD Projekt has corrected the discount so Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition costs $39.99 (a 42% discount). The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition, meanwhile, now costs $14.99 with a 75% discount properly applied.
CD Projekt issued the following statement on social media:
The discounts for Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition displayed on Nintendo Switch 2 eShop in the Americas on December 22, 2025 were incorrect.
The situation is a result of an error we made when submitting the discount. We have corrected the error and new discounts have now been applied.
Purchases made at the previous discount rate are unaffected by this change.
As you'd expect, CD Projekt's statement is going down well with fans of the company and its games, and in particular with those who jumped on the discount error before it was corrected. "At that price it's basically a no-brainer impulse buy. Props to CDPR for honoring it though, lot of companies would've just cancelled the orders and blamed a 'system error.' Makes me want to support them more," said one fan.
If you’re jumping into Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time this Christmas, check out our huge guide. Similarly, if you’re getting to grips with The Witcher 3, we’ve got a sweeping guide to help.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
The Fallout TV show is packed full of characters, factions, locations, and items familiar to any who has played the beloved RPGs. There are so many easter eggs to spot that we found 111 video game details in Season 1 alone. With season two heading to a fan-favourite part of the Fallout universe, New Vegas, naturally, a whole new flood of iconography is set to make its way from the games into the Prime Video series. So, we’ll be digging into each and every episode and picking out everything we’ve noticed that relates to the source material.
You can check out everything we found in episode one, but here, we’ll be taking a look at every video game easter egg and details we spotted in episode two of Fallout Season 2.
Characters, Factions, and Locations
1. Right at the start of the episode, we get a good look at some New California Republic rangers. They’re sporting the iconic duster jacket look from the Fallout: New Vegas box.
2. We can see that these soldiers are stationed at Shady Sands. This is a highly important location in both the games and show, as it isn’t only where Maximus grew up before its inevitable annihilation, but also features prominently in both Fallout 1 and 2.
3. Fast forward a minute or two, and we get to hear the “patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter” line, delivered by a mind-controlled wandering trader. This is a famous New Vegas quote said repeatedly by the NCR as they walk around the desert.
4. Right at the end of the episode, we also get our first glimpse of Caesar’s Legion as Lucy finds herself captured by the Ancient Roman-inspired faction. It looks like we’ll see a lot more of them next week, though.
5. One faction that features prominently in this second episode, though, is the Brotherhood of Steel. Split into Chapters, Maximus’ group is now calling the famed mysterious facility Area 51 its home. Though not featured in Fallout: New Vegas, there is a long-held myth about it being a military base in-universe among the community.
6. Three other Brotherhood Chapter leaders visit the base in the episode. One is from Yosemite. Are they stationed at Mariposa Military Base featured in Fallout 1?
7. Another hails from the Grand Canyon. Although not seen in the games, Fallout lore says that the region has been taken over by Caesar’s Legion. Perhaps in the 15 years between the New Vegas game and the show, a chapter of the Brotherhood has made a foothold there?
8. And last up is the Coronado Chapter. This location is not officially home to a Brotherhood base in the games, but is a part of the Fallout Senora fan project. Could this be a nice little nod to the mod?
9. During the Brotherhood’s heated conversation, there is also a mention of The Commonwealth. Within the context of the Brotherhood, this refers to the Commonwealth expedition force, the faction’s Boston-based chapter. It’s also the name of a region of the East Coast; first referenced in Fallout 3, it’s the area of the USA that encompasses Massachusetts and is the setting for Fallout 4.
Items and Iconography
10. Of course, it wouldn’t be Area 51 without talk of aliens. We see what we can only assume is an extra-terrestrial lifeform stored in a freezer at the base, which does fit in with what we know about the Fallout universe. The games have a long history of alien phenomena and, specifically, weaponry, turning up, especially in the Mothership Zeta DLC for Fallout 3.
11. A creature slightly more from our world is the Brahmin, a multi-headed bovine that serves as a workhorse for many traders and dealers around the wasteland.
12. Much more threatening are Radscorpions, larger-than-normal mutated scorpions that have the power to poison. We see Lucy and The Ghoul battle a nest of these partway through episode two.
13. That swarm of Radscorpions appear to have an alpha with them, though, as a much bigger, nastier version makes itself known. We can’t quite work out if this is a Giant Radscorpion or the much lesser-seen Radscorpion Queen, though. What do you think?
14. Back in Shady Sands, we see the foreshadowing Nuke arrive as Maximus’ father attempts to defuse it. This plump, green design of the explosive is the exact same as we see in the games.
15. A grown-up Maximus later comes face-to-face with some Feral Ghouls while out on a mission. The Brotherhood refer to them as Abominations, which is a catch-all term in the Fallout universe for some vicious creatures, but, interestingly, it doesn’t include ghouls in New Vegas, but rather things like Deathclaws and Centaurs.
16. Speaking of The Brotherhood, their signature vertibirds and airships can be seen high above the Nevada skies throughout the episode.
17. It seems that much of The Brotherhood’s mission in the desert circles around one of Fallout’s most prized power sources: Fusion cores. These fuel some of the more technologically advanced equipment found in the wasteland, including the Brotherhood Knights’ power armor. We can see one being used to power up the turbines that blow away the sand to reveal Area 51.
18. After her and The Ghoul’s face off with the Radscorpions, Lucy is given a choice not too dissimilar from what we’d expect from one of Bethesda’s RPGs: whether to give her only Stimpak to her radiated companion or a woman in need. Stimpaks are a player’s primary method of healing in the games.
19. The Fallout universe is also home to a fair amount of healthbar-draining heavy weapons, just like the one we can see some Brotherhood members investigating as they enter their new base. It’s a Cryolator, an energy weapon that freezes foes with a cryogenic spray.
20. That’s not the only piece of heavy artillery the Brotherhood discovers in Area 51 – we also see them messing around with a motorized Minigun, too.
21. Speaking of Brotherhood members messing around, things almost go disastrously wrong when we see them playing with a plasma grenade. These high-powered explosives possess the power to superheat those they impact and turn them into piles of green goo. Not exactly something to be throwing around between friends.
Music
22.“Lazy Day Blues” is the instrumental track performed by Bert Weedon that can be heard as Lucy and The Ghoul walk towards the abandoned hospital. This track is played on the radio in Fallout: New Vegas.
23. Another track from the games can be heard when “Ac-Cent-Tchu-ate The Positive” by Bing Crosby plays. This featured in Fallout 4 and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Song at the 1945 Academy Awards after appearing in the film “Here Come the Waves”.
24.“You Belong to Me” is the song that opens the episode and is from 1952, with its most popular recording being performed by Jo Stafford. Though not actually in any Fallout games, versions can be heard in Bioshock Infinite, along with movies Natural Born Killers and Shrek.
25. The two other songs that can be heard in this episode also have no connection to Fallout, but are certainly representative of the ‘50s era stylings this world finds itself locked into. They are “Secrets” by The Dale Sisters and “Let’s Twist Again” by Chubby Checker.
And that’s everything we spotted in the second episode of season two of the Fallout TV show. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments. For more Fallout, check out our review of this episode, and stay tuned next week for all of episode three’s easter eggs.
This review contains spoilers for Fallout Season 2, Episode 2, “The Golden Rule,” which is available to stream now on Prime Video.
Last week I wondered if, by holding back the return of Maximus and the Brotherhood of Steel beyond the premiere, we’d have to spend a chunk of this week’s episode further recapping events and re-introducing ideas. Thankfully no such issues weigh down Fallout Season 2’s second chapter, “The Golden Rule,” which wastes no time not only expanding the scope of the Brotherhood, but also sowing the seeds of violent rebellion among its members.
Uneasy friction between factions is the defining factor of Fallout: New Vegas, the video game this season draws most heavily from, and it’s a great idea to replicate that in the movements of the Brotherhood, which turns out to be an uneasy alliance of multiple chapters rather than a unified force. Now conspiring with groups from the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Coronado, it’ll be fascinating to see how Quintus (Michael Cristofer) attempts to seize control of the Brotherhood from the Boston-based Commonwealth chapter – especially with the last-minute arrival of its liaison, Kumail Nanjiani’s Paladin Harkness.
The Elder Cleric’s first steps on that journey provide quite a spectacle. The circling vertibirds, spinning wind turbines, wide-angle desert shots, and Ramin Djawadi’s exceptional Brotherhood of Steel signature theme all combine to lend the reveal of Quintus’ new military base a little Dune-flavoured grandeur. Of course, Fallout can’t deliver all that with a completely straight face, so the base is Area 51 and there’s an alien hidden in the freezer – both among the episode’s funniest reveals. These sequences also never forget to emphasise that the Brotherhood’s incredibly imposing, efficiently violent, power-armoured knights are hilariously stupid. This episode is perhaps the best example so far of their child-like tendencies, with the warriors constantly beating each other up or fiddling with live plasma grenades.
With civil war brewing, it seems like the Brotherhood itself will have one of the season’s most significant storylines, rather than simply being the background fluff for Aaron Moten’s Maximus again. That’s not to say he’s been reduced to simply part of an ensemble, though. Now an obedient Brotherhood dog who’s totally numb to violence, he’s been crushed and reshaped by Quintus in the weeks that bridge each season’s events, so much so that the sneering Cleric finally admires him. Maximus has always been weak, unsure of what to do and easily manipulated, but it’s now clearer than ever that he has no control of who he is or his own destiny. Yes, he’s finally the knight he lied his way into becoming, able to kill a man twice his size, but none of it is his doing.
Maximus’ pathetic existence is made all the more tragic by the episode’s cold opening, which takes us back to his childhood in the ill-fated Shady Sands. Writer Chris Brady-Denton successfully captures the emotion of Maximus’ family saying their hurried goodbyes, knowing full well that they’re about to be nuked off the face of America. As the boy is bundled into the kitchen refrigerator (a tactic presumably taken from the Indiana Jones school of survival), his father reassures him that “you will be a good man.” How disappointed he’d be, then, to see what a spineless creature Maximus has become. The two time periods contrast perfectly, and establish the path down which Maximus must surely walk this season. It’s time to make dad proud.
Maximus has always been easily manipulated, but it’s now clearer than ever that he has no control of who he is or his own destiny.
Talking of proud dads, Shady Sands’ demise was, of course, the work of Hank MacLean. The flashback really does cement him as a truly evil piece of work, as this is the first time we get to see what the town had flourished into. Once little more than a few crop fields and buildings during the timelines of Fallouts 1 and 2, it became an incredible bastion of progress with access to clean water… and Hank took it all away in a flash. We always knew that he was motivated to do so because his wife and daughter ran away from his vault to live there, but Season 1 left the half-answered question of how the bombing was linked to Vault-Tec’s wider corporate plans. That question only gets more complicated now we’ve seen that the explosion was achieved through the use of the mind-control chips that Mr. House was testing in last week’s flashback. Hank, House, and Vault-Tec are all linked, but I don’t think the relationship between the three is as simple as the Season 1 finale’s board meeting made it seem – this will be a great mystery to be unpicked over the next few episodes.
Of course, anything with Kyle MacLachlan in it can’t be 100% sinister, and his mouse-testing trial-and-error montage is one of the episode’s comedic highlights. There’s so many fun details – the cheerful tune, the tiny rodent Vault-Tec office, the constant yo-yoing, and the perfect timing of each bursting mouse. And while it’s fun, it’s all in aid of showing how flawed the control-chip tech is. A similar trick is executed in the Shady Sands flashback, with the mind-controlled travelling trader repeating “Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter” on a never-ending loop. That’s a nod to the New Vegas video game, where budget restrictions meant dozens of characters across the wasteland would parrot the same line ad nauseum. But here, the meme becomes a smart, funny way to depict the tech’s deficiencies.
Also providing a few chuckles is Norm, who has found himself in charge of a gaggle of clueless middle managers after thawing the entire population of Vault 31 last week. In a smart recognition of how little screentime this storyline has, things move at a rapid pace, and the entire group are out on the surface before the credits roll. Norm’s story was a slow burn last year, and while it ultimately paid off, it did require patience as it built from frivolous distraction into one of the show’s key reveals. I’m pleased the momentum continues here, rather than being reset, and does so while still dropping a bunch of “idiot vaultie” jokes along the way. It fulfills the show’s more dedicated comedy needs without feeling inconsequential – something I hope the storylines of vaults 32 and 33, which are absent this week, will adopt when we rejoin them in later episodes.
As Norm sees the ocean and sky for the first time in his entire existence, his sister continues her long walk to find dad almost 300 miles inland. Slightly frustratingly, Lucy and The Ghoul are once again stuck in recap mode this week, as they go on a side quest that closely echoes the events of last season’s trip to the Super Duper Mart, where Lucy could have abandoned The Ghoul after he betrayed her, but instead gave him the life-restoring drugs he needed. It’s largely the same story here – Lucy is poised to leave him for dead after yet another bout of needless violence, but she promises to return for him, proving that she’s “nothing like” him in the process. The parallel between these two scenes is made all the more clear by having the duo’s original tiff in the “previously on Fallout” recap, and so once again it feels like this relationship is treading water… or perhaps it’s such an incompatible pairing that growth is impossible. Only with the entire season in the rear-view will we know if this sense of arrested development worked or not.
That’s not to say Lucy and The Ghoul don’t have any fun, though. Far from it. We have an enjoyably chaotic run-in with radscorpions, a quintessential Fallout monster brought to life with some top-notch visual effects. Also brought over from the games is the classic “choose between these two people in need” dilemma, in which Lucy must decide which dying person is most deserving of her final stimpack. Of course, to have Lucy pick the tunic-wearing woman, seemingly the obvious choice between a vulnerable mortal and a 200-year-old mutant, only for that choice to lead her right into the den of Caesar’s Legion, New Vegas’ cruellest faction, is a wonderful translation of the video games’ unforeseen consequences. Next week’s episode, where we’ll learn more of Lucy’s infamous captors, is sure to be a treat.
Connexion
PC Gamer
IGN
