If you’ve been waiting to buy PlayStation 5 games, accessories, and even subscriptions, there are tons of deals from PlayStation Direct. Plus, Amazon and Best Buy also have a bunch of PS5 titles discounted. That’s not all, as you can save $15 on a 12-month Xbox Game Pass Essential subscription, get Super Mario Odyssey for $30, and score the MTG: Lorwyn Eclipsed Play Booster Box for its lowest price. Check out all the top deals below:

TL: DR - The Best Deals Today

Save $15 on an Xbox Game Pass Essential Subscription

PlayStation Direct Sale

$60 Off a PlayStation Plus Premium Subscription

Pokémon Mega Evolution - Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Box

$30 Off Super Mario Odyssey for Switch

MTG: Lorwyn Eclipsed Play Booster Box Back Down to Low Price

Sonic Prime: The Complete Series Steelbook Hits Low Price

Save $150 on Beats Powerbeat Pro Wireless Earbuds

Free Games from Epic

In case you missed it, PlayStation’s Direct store is offering major discounts on first-party PlayStation titles, even offering PS5 games at less than third-party retailers.

One of the best deals we’ve spotted is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, with Insomniac Games’ 2023 adventure seeing a 57% discount from its usual price - bringing it to $29.99.

Best Buy is offering a great deal this week on a powerful gaming laptop. From now until Saturday, you can pick up the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16s RTX 5070 Ti gaming laptop for just $1,549.99 with free delivery. Alternatively, you can upgrade to 64GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD for $1,899.99, but this deal ends today. The Helios Neo boasts a gorgeous 16" 240Hz OLED display, the most powerful Intel Core Ultra 9 HX series processor, and RTX 5070 Ti mobile graphics.

Acer Predator Helios Neo RTX 5070 Ti Laptop for $1,550

If it's time to upgrade your gaming monitor, you can't go wrong with an OLED. And if you've got the funds to get the biggest and best, LG's highest-end OLED is the 45" LG UltraGear 45GX950A-B 5K2K gaming monitor. It normally retails for a hefty $2,000, but LG has just discounted it to $1350 with free delivery. On the product page under the standar $1,599.99 price you should see "Save Big with Outlet Pricing". Select the discounted outlet price and proceed to cart.

45" LG UltraGear 5K2K Gaming Monitor for $1,350

Exciting new details have been revealed by Walt Disney World for The Magic of Disney Animation at Disney's Hollywood Studios, including that an Audio-Animatronics figure of Frozen's Olaf will lead a brand-new Animation Academy alongside pre-recorded drawing lessons from legendary Disney animators.

As detailed by the Disney Parks team, The Magic of Disney Animation is currently set to open in late summer, and this new Animation Academy experience will be one of the highlights. Much like he appeared in the short film Once Upon a Studio, Olaf will be sitting at an animator's desk and guiding you through the drawing adventure. And yes, Josh Gad has recorded new dialogue for the snowman to make the figure feel even more authentic.

Since Olaf can't quite draw all of these characters on his own, he is enlisting the help of Disney animators, directors, and story artists to help teach artists of all ages how to bring their favorite characters to life. While there sadly won't be in-person animators like at Disneyland's Animation Academy at Disney California Adventure Park, the list of artists they have lined up is very impressive. It includes;

• Mickey Mouse, with Dan Abraham, director (“Once Upon A Studio,” “Baymax!”)
• Minnie Mouse, with Hyun Min Lee, animator (“Frozen 2,” “The Princess and the Frog”)
• Donald Duck, with Austin Traylor, animator (“Once Upon A Studio,” Moana 2”)
• Genie, with Eric Goldberg, animator (“Aladdin,” “Hercules”)
• Moana, with Samantha Vilfort, story artist (“Encanto,” “Zootopia 2”)
• Stitch, with Fawn Veerasunthorn, director and head of story (“Wish,” “Raya and the Last Dragon”)
• Olaf, with Trent Correy, director (“Once Upon A Studio,” “Frozen 3”)
• Ursula, with Michael Woodside, animator (“Big Hero 6,” “Encanto”)
• Judy Hopps & Nick Wilde, with Byron Howard, director (“Zootopia,” “Zootopia 2”)

Alongside the Animation Academy experience, guests will be able to visit 'Off the Page!,' an area where fan-favorite characters will leave the screen behind and enter our world. There will be different areas that are inspired by the "real animation pipeline at Walt Disney Animation Studios," and guests will be able to meet and greet with specific characters like Mulan in Story, Rapunzel in Layout, Chip n' Dale in Hand-Drawn Animation, Donald & Daisy in CG Animation, Goofy in Lighting, and Stitch in Effects.

There will also be an Enchanted Art Gallery that will feature tons of gorgeous Disney artwork that just may come alive with new animations created for this experience. To end, guests will enter the Once Upon a Studio Theater to enjoy the short film of the same name, and there may even be characters appearing within the artwork along the theater walls to make everything even more immersive.

As previously revealed, The Magic of Disney Animation will also include an Alice in Wonderland-themed playground called 'Drawn to Wonderland," and the main experience will take place in a building modeled after the real Roy E. Disney Animation Building in California, complete with Mickey's iconic Sorcerer Hat on top!

Lastly, there will be an outdoor courtyard of sorts where families will be able to "play, relax, or snack on tasty treats under lush trees."

All in all, this should be a wonderful nostalgia play for Walt Disney World, and you can check what else they have in store for 2026 and beyond right here!

You can also read all about the next-generation robotic figure of Olaf that will soon appear at World of Frozen at Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland!

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.

Steam Next Fest is back with a new batch of demos, livestreams, and spotlights on several upcoming games from indie developers. And as has become tradition, games from publishing platform indie.io are heavily featured.

There are 13 indie.io games participating, and they’re from a wide range of genres. There’s a card-based city builder (Once Upon a Kingdom), a 2D action platformer based on Mexican folklore (Dark Adelita), and a cozy gardening game where you bring plants back from the dead (Greenhearth Necromancer).

So clearly, there are lots of different gaming experiences on offer. But we decided to focus on four specific titles that you can try for yourself right now, most of which just got new updated demos as part of Steam Next Fest.

Pluto

From a dev team of two co-creators, Pluto sees you play as a less-than-heroic wizard who needs to break out of jail to attend their niece’s birthday party. It’s a roguelike deckbuilder with a unique spellcasting system where elemental sigils are connected to each of your fingers. Your deck is made up of spells that use different combinations of these sigils, and some spells can share sigils, meaning it’s possible for spells to overlap and combine.

So building your deck isn’t just about stacking the most powerful cards, it’s about experimenting with several different cards and finding ones that synergize well together and let you pull off gradually more complicated interactions. You’ll need them to take out the monstrosities you face as you race against the clock to get out of jail in time. Pluto recently announced it will be fully released on March 9, and it got a brand-new demo as part of Steam Next Fest, which you can download for free here.

Esports Manager 2026

As you could hopefully guess from the name, Esports Manager 2026 is a strategy-sim game where you lead an esports team and control its day-to-day operations. That means managing all facets of the team: talent acquisition, team finances, player morale, tournament performance, brand growth, leadership structure, everything.

You can scout and recruit real-life players, and you’ll need to consider market dynamics to figure out the right time to add them to your team. You’ll design training programs to help them grow, hire a staff to support them, and chat with them to make sure they’re happy and their goals are being met. Then take them into Simulation mode, where you’ll take part in esports tournaments and control your team’s tactics as you try to establish yourself as the team to beat. Esports Manager 2026 also has a brand-new free demo included in Steam Next Fest, which you can download here.

SoulQuest

Inspired by Celtic mythology and Arthurian legends, SoulQuest has you take up the sword of Alys, a woman whose husband’s soul has been taken by the gods. She’s not a fan of that and will hack and slash her way through hordes of divine servants and the gods themselves to get him back.

Combat is fast-paced and has you combine sword attacks, magic, and ultimate abilities to unleash your wrath. It’s a system designed to be easy to pick up and play quickly, but difficult to truly master. You can string certain attacks into jump strikes, allowing you to juggle enemies in the air and pull off long combos. There are also secrets to discover, using basic platforming or Alys’s ability to slide down vertical surfaces and jump off them.

Like the previous two entries on this list, SoulQuest also dropped a new demo as part of Next Fest. It adds a new zone with new enemies and the game’s first god boss fight against the pagan deity Cernunnos. It also adds a new secret mission that wasn’t possible to find before. To try it yourself, you can download the demo here.

City States: Medieval

We finish off this list with a medieval city builder from Reverie World Studios, developers of the Kingdom Wars series. In City States: Medieval, a continent lies divided, and you lead a city state as it vies for power, wealth, and status while surrounded by powerful kingdoms. You’ll be charged with leading your city state to prominence by building up trade routes across the known world, improving your economy, and protecting your land from your greedy neighbors.

Your city will also have a legendary hero to help lead it, one whose skills will develop as time goes on, expanding your options for supporting the city. They can do things like defend the city, boost construction and city growth speed, or be sent to foreign courts to engage in political intrigue. You only have one hero, though, so you need to think through how best to use them. If you keep them at home, growth opportunities could pass you by. But if you send them on expeditions, your city’s defenses will suffer. And foreign invaders will try to besiege you. You’ll need to use a combination of real-time strategy combat and tower defense mechanics to push them back and prevent your city from falling. To get a taste of these strategic possibilities, you can try the demo here.

Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends are about to face the biggest threat of their lives, literally. IGN can exclusively reveal Sonic the Hedgehog X Godzilla, a new crossover miniseries that sees Godzilla dragged into Sonic's world. He's fast, but can Sonic do anything to stop this massive kaiju from rampaging through the Green Hill Zone? We're about to find out.

Sonic the Hedgehog X Godzilla is written by Nick Marino (Godzilla Rivals) and drawn by Jack Lawrence (Sonic the Hedgehog), with colors by Reggie Graham. Check out an exclusive preview of the cover art to issue #1 in the slideshow gallery below, and then keep reading to learn more about the series from Marino and the editorial team.

Sonic and Godzilla are easily two of IDW's biggest licensed properties, especially with IDW redoubling its focus on the Godzilla line over the past year. In that sense, it's not surprising that the publisher would seek to bring the two together, and IDW Sonic Editorial reveals that they've been looking for ways to make that happen for some time now.

"IDW is constantly brainstorming new potential crossovers, and we’ve always been especially excited about the possibility of bringing these two iconic licenses together," Sonic Editorial tells IGN. "This crossover in particular is also one that fans have been asking us for loud and clear for years, so it’s been high up on the list to try to make happen. Who wouldn’t want to see the Blue Blur vs the King of the Monsters, after all? So this idea has actually been on the IDW team’s radar for a very long time, but it wasn’t until the last year or so that all the pieces fell into place and we could get to work on it! We’re lucky to have such a great creative team to bring this story to life, and of course, this crossover would not have been possible without a tremendous amount of support from Sega and Toho!"

As mentioned above, Marino is no stranger to the Godzilla franchise, having previously penned the series Godzilla Rivals. But that was a very different type of Godzilla story, and Marino explains what makes Sonix X Godzilla such a unique writing experience.

"The main difference between writing Godzilla and writing Sonic X Godzilla? HUMANS! Aside from Dr. Eggman (who, let's be real, is a very specific kind of human), SxG is populated solely by talking animals, kaiju, and robots," Marino says. "My previous Godzilla work was set in Pittsburgh along my old pizza delivery route. The conflict in that story was all about how the kaiju disrupted human life in that very real city, and my own human experience informed the narrative. SxG takes the Toho monsters to Sonic's world, a place where sassy technicolor animals move at blinding speeds. What does a pink hedgehog with a giant mallet think when she sees an enormous flying insectoid beast the size of a city block? That's a totally different kind of writing challenge."

We were also curious what Godzilla movies or Sonic projects Marino drew inspiration from for this project. Suffice it to say, Sonic Adventure fans will be pleased.

"Sonic Adventure became a huge inspiration on this project somewhere in the second-ish year of development (it's been a long ride!)," Marino says. "When you're dealing with giant monsters, you have to think on a bigger scale, and Station Square provided an incredible canvas for us to splatter with destruction and mayhem. My collaborators, Jack Lawrence and Reggie Graham, have risen to the challenge, depicting that special city with jaw-dropping detail.

Microsoft's divisive 'This is an Xbox' marketing campaign was disliked by many employees, a new report has claimed.

The advertising — which claimed that phones, tablets and smart TVs now all counted as "an Xbox" too — effectively told consumers that you no longer needed to buy an Xbox console to play Xbox games.

While technically true in some respects, it was a bold move from a company badly struggling to compete in the console space — and a rather remarkable stance to take considering Microsoft's established commitment to building and selling yet another generation of Xbox consoles in the future, possibly as soon as 2027.

Now, a new report published by The Verge has labelled this campaign as having "offended many Xbox employees internally", and tied it to the wider "Xbox everywhere" strategy being pushed by now-former Xbox exec Sarah Bond.

Last week, IGN exclusively broke the news that Bond had resigned her position as CEO of Xbox, despite once having been expected to Phil Spencer as Microsoft's ultimate gaming boss (a role that has now gone to gaming newcomer Asha Sharma instead).

The Verge's report links Bond closely to Xbox's marketing efforts last year following the departures of other senior employees, and suggests she was invested in the move to broaden the Xbox brand away from the perception that it was solely console-based. The report also notes the fact that Bond personally announced the Xbox mobile gaming store in July 2024 — a project that would have helped this multi-device Xbox push to become more realized, had it not been continually delayed.

Finally, citing sources among Xbox employees past and present, the report paints a negative picture of Bond's relationship to other Xbox staff.

IGN previously noted that Bond's departure was only officially referenced by Spencer in his own leaving statement. Other statements issued at the time by Sharma, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella, and Xbox studios boss Matt Booty, all made no mention of Bond or her departure whatsoever.

IGN has much more on Sharma's arrival and the departure of Phil Spencer including the many farewells to him from veteran developers, Spencer's personal words to the Xbox community following his departure, and Sharma's own responses to initial concerns around her recent AI work and lack of gaming industry job experience.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

PS Direct has just dropped an exciting variety of deals on PlayStation games, accessories, and more, and it looks like Amazon is joining in on the fun, too. The retailer is currently offering an excellent deal on the fantastic PS5-exclusive game Astro Bot, dropping it down to just $32.99 (see it here).

This is 45% off its full list price of $59.99, but more importantly, it appears to be the lowest price it's hit at Amazon so far, according to price tracker camelcamelcamel. Previously we saw it drop down to $39.97 back at the start of January, so this is a great chance to add it to your library for even less. It's one that's definitely worth the investment, too.

Astro Bot for $32.99

If you're seeking chart-topping gaming performance, then Alienware's biggest and most powerful prebuilt desktop computer should be high on your list. For just a few more days the Alienware Area-51 AMD Ryzen 9800X3D Edition RTX 5090 gaming PC has dropped in price from $5,650 all the way down to $4,499.99, a savings of $1,250. Alternatively you can upgrade to the 9950X3D CPU for an additional $200, which comes out to $4,699.99. These are both competitive prices considering the fact that most RTX 5090 prebuilts are currently selling for $5,000 or more.

Alienware Area-51 Ryzen Edition RTX 5090 Gaming PC

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the best gaming CPU for most people

...but you can also upgrade to the 9950X3D for a reasonable price

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is considered to be one of the best gaming processors on the market and outperforms any Intel or AMD non-X3D chip in games thanks to AMD's 3D-V-Cache technology. It only has eight cores, but that makes no difference in gaming since most games can't utilize more than eight cores (if that) anyways. That's why its gaming performance is nearly identical to the pricier 9900X3d and 9950X3D.

Now if you regularly use your PC for non-gaming applications that actually do benefit from as many cores as possible, then you can upgrade to an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D 16-core processor, which doubles the core count while offering similar gaming performance, for an additional $200. That's actually very reasonable as far as CPU upgrades go; the difference in MSRP between a 9950X3D and 9980X3D is $220, and you're paying less than that.

The RTX 5090 is the most powerful graphics card ever

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has emerged as the most powerful consumer GPU on the market. Although with this generation Nvidia has prioritized software updates, AI features, and DLSS 4 technology to improve gameplay performance, the 5090 still boasts an impressive 25%-30% uplift over the RTX 4090 in hardware-based raster performance. If you want the absolute best performance for your gaming PC, there is literally no other option from any other brand.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

Marvel Comics took to the Comics Pro retailer convention to shine a spotlight on two of its biggest 2026 storylines, Avengers: Armageddon and Queen in Black. Both of these crossover events will help to define the ongoing direction of the Marvel Universe in the latter half of 2026.

First up, Avengers: Armageddon is a new limited series from Captain America writer Chip Zdarsky and artists Frank Alpizar and Delio Diaz. Aramageddon is being compared to 2004's Avengers: Disassembled in terms of being a major watershed moment for the Avengers franchise that will completely transform Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

The queen of weird is joining our new princess of weird. Netflix has just revealed that none other than Winona Ryder is set to join the cast of Wednesday in a guest starring role for Season 3.

The casting marks yet another collaboration between Ryder and the show’s executive producer Tim Burton, who famously worked together on his 1988 hit Beetlejuice and the 1990 classic Edward Scissorhands. It’s also a reunion with the show’s star, Jenna Ortega, who starred alongside Ryder in the recent sequel film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as Ryder’s character Lydia’s daughter (which Burton also directed).

"I'm so excited to be back for Season 3, and it’s great to be reunited with all of the original cast," Burton said. "The addition of some dear friends and past collaborators of mine… makes this season extra special. I feel very lucky."

The details of Ryder’s role are being kept under wraps, so any word on who she’ll be playing and how it will integrate into the show’s ongoing plot are going to be nonexistent at this point — and it’s sure to keep fans guessing until the next season finally drops.

Ryder joins Eva Green, who was recently cast as Morticia Addams’ mysterious sister Ophelia for season 3, as well as Noah Taylor, Oscar Morgan, Kennedy Moyer, and Chris Sarandon (yes, the speaking voice of Jack Skellington himself from 1993’s A Nightmare Before Christmas). That said, it looks as though their roles are also being kept under wraps — at least for now.

Wednesday premiered on Netflix in November 2022 to critical and audience acclaim, and it quickly became the most-watched English-language season of television on the streamer to date. Season 2 premiered August 2025, with the first part becoming available on the platform and the second part arriving the following month.

As for a release date for season 3, no official info has been announced just yet — but hopefully, the Addams family will be back on our screens ASAP.

Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.

“Zero Parades is ultimately about identity,” explains Kaspar Tamsalu, art director at developer ZA/UM. “The conflict between what you subscribe to as an individual, as a private person outside of the professional sphere, and then how that mixes with what your vocation is.”

Your vocation in ZA/UM’s latest RPG is espionage. Hershel Wilk, your protagonist, is a spy for The Superbloc, a union of left-wing republics. She was born bourgeois before ending up spying for the communists, a background story intentionally filled with blanks to allow you to shape Hershel as you see fit.

“Just because she's from a communist country does not mean that she subscribes to the ideology,” says Siim "Kosmos" Sinamäe, Zero Parades’ principal writer. “This is up to the player to decide. Spies can be spies for ideology, for money, for a sense of accomplishment, or because they are batshit insane and want to do things like that.”

Sinamäe quickly offers an example of the latter: “I'm going to subscribe to this thought called Unguided Missile Strikes, because I want to say violent things to people. I want to threaten people with nuclear strikes, because that's the type of spy I am.”

When Sinamäe says “subscribe to this thought”, he’s referring to Zero Parades’ Conditioning system, which reformats Disco Elysium’s Thought Cabinet for an espionage setting. When exploring the world and talking with characters, you’ll encounter new ideas and concepts you can “subscribe” to, rewriting your personality to unlock new dialogue options and roleplaying opportunities. But where ZA/UM’s previous game explored what it would be like for an alcoholic amnesiac detective to soak up ideas like a sponge, Zero Parades approaches the mind of a spy like a collection of masks. Which one is required for today’s task? This required a new method for thought subscription.

“You get the choice about whether or not you want to reinforce or punish the thought,” explains Nicolas Pirot, Zero Parades’ lead technical artist. “You have a branching option of, ‘I don't like this. I don't want that to be a part of myself. I was always a violent spy. I no longer want to be a violent spy.’ You can resist that, and then that'll have a different impact on the way you do things.”

“It's really framed as this violent reordering of your mind,” he concludes.

It’s All in Your Head

That violent reordering is viewed through the flickering glass screen of an old CRT television. Much of Zero Parades’ in-world technology is modelled after the gizmos and appliances of the 1990s – down at the Bootleg Bazaar, you’ll find vinyl records housed in plastic cartridges in an analogue echo of Sony’s old MiniDisc format. This approach extends past the boundaries of reality and into Hershel’s psyche. The art team needed something functional but flawed to represent this spy’s troubled mind – a mind that could tune itself into dangerous thoughts and settle into uncomfortable programming. And so the Conditioning system’s menu sits inside that box of cathode rays.

“It's in an imperfect state,” explains Maeve Bonefacic, a technical artist at ZA/UM who helped create the system’s look and feel. “In the sense that [the television] works, it does, but there's a slight imperfection to that tool. We worked a lot on the particular glitches and effects that a CRT might have.”

The CRT is just one example of Zero Parades’ fascinating, two-pronged approach to art design. There’s the physical – the environments you explore, the people you meet, the items you acquire – and then there’s the creations of Hershel’s mind, represented by the wild art cards assigned to each quest, the disturbing televised thoughts assessed through Conditioning, and the badges assigned to your sentient skills. ZA/UM describes this approach as representing the two realms that Hershel exists in: the objective and subjective.

The subjective side of Hershel’s reality is spearheaded by lead illustrator Anton Vill, who created the surrealist artwork for Disco Elysium, including its grotesque Thought Cabinet. Once again, he took inspiration from the work of David Lynch, particularly the ominous tone of Twin Peaks’ dark forests, reflecting the messed-up thoughts of a broken character in his bizarre, twisted, emotionally heavy artwork. In one example, a collection of five, cigarette-smoking Hershel doppelgangers face each other in an unnerving pentagon as words of insecurity, such as “abandoner”, “liar”, and “f***ing spy”, hover above them on flowing reams of paper.

“I'm a huge fan of this kind of mysterious, dark, inner world of a person,” says Vill. “I think that shines through [in Zero Parades’ subjective artwork] and I think it’s perfect for the game.”

The Portofiran Identity

While the art team understandably wanted to create a sense of warped darkness for Hershel’s interior thoughts, it needed to create a complementary vibe for the physical world. It would need to be via different techniques, though, so that subjective thoughts didn’t merge with objective reality.

“We try to subtly inject this unease for the players,” says Tamsalu. “There is a lot of detail that we put into the game, but the way we have textured these [details], and how we approach lighting for the scenes and set up these situations, there is this underlying current of something brewing.”

This thing that is brewing is, of course, why Hershel is in the city of Portofiro. But her job is very unlike that of Disco Elysium’s disaster cop protagonist, and the espionage story Zero Parades tells had a significant influence on the way the city was designed.

“When you’re a police officer looking into a crime, anybody who's in the vicinity is a potential suspect and expected to speak with you,” Tamsalu explains. “And in a spy game, it's kind of like the inverse of that. You don't want to stand out. And because of that, we needed to create a slightly busier backdrop. That's why you have these characters that go about their own business, and you have your own covert business as you navigate through that.”

While capturing the heart of spy fiction has been an important part of the project, ZA/UM has been very intentional with how it has approached a genre filled with tropes, staples, and conventions. As you’d expect from the studio, this isn’t a James Bond or Jason Bourne adventure, but nor does it aspire to be a John le Carré novel repackaged as a video game. This had to be a fresh take on this shadowy world, and so a number of rules have been set in place. For instance, Herschel is an “operant”, rather than an agent. Her mission takes her “in-theatre” rather than in the field. And her employer, the communist Superbloc, flips the typical capitalist nation perspective of classic Cold War thrillers.

“We wanted to avoid the obvious spy themes,” says character artist Liis Väljaots, who explained how this philosophy extended into the art. “One of the things we wanted to avoid was making the world look too noir-y and too oppressive, to kind of contrast the subject matter, which is quite serious.”

“There are a lot of trench coats in the game, though,” she laughs. “That's undeniable.”

Roll Play

Your choice to wear a trench coat or not is just one of many decisions that shape the kind of spy you are – clothing, as in Disco Elysium, provides stat modifiers that boost or inflict penalties on your skills. That pool of skills has been reduced (now 15, down from Disco’s 24) with the idea of making each attribute more prominent and viable. They’ll also be tested with much more frequency.

“We have a skill check every 3,000 words, compared to Disco Elysium’s every 6,000 words,” reveals Sinamäe. “We feel this makes the player more engaged with what they're doing and what type of spy they want to be.”

As I explored in IGN’s hands-on preview of Zero Parades, skill checks have deeper mechanical complexity this time around thanks to the Pressures system. Each of your skills fits into one of three categories – athletic, psychological, and intellectual - and those categories have corresponding “health” bars that measure your fatigue, anxiety, and delirium levels. Fail a psychological skill check and your anxiety bar will fill. Max the bar out, and you’ll take a permanent stat penalty.

Things are made even more interesting by the ability to “exert” a skill check – you can roll an extra die to increase your chances of passing the check, but at the cost of purposefully damaging the skill’s corresponding pressure bar.

“It's like, how much more can the player take?,” says Bonefacic. “Can I afford to, for example, exert a dice roll? Am I allowed to do that? Do I have the resources to do that? I think it has added an interesting element of strategy.”

That strategy wouldn’t work if there were no method for reducing your pressure gauges. By default, a bar will reset after taking so much damage that you endure a stat penalty, but that’s hardly an approach to build a self-care system around. Instead, you can have Hershel perform a ritual.

“Rituals are a system that we have where you can reduce your pressures by doing all kinds of small things in the world,” explains Pirot. “It can be sitting on a bench and watching the sunrise that might lower your anxiety. It can be smoking a cigarette, having a cup of coffee, or yelling at someone in the street. These very small, very immersive moments, that are available in different parts of the world at different times, that can help an incredibly stressed out, anxious, fatigued, or delirious spy to keep their sanity more or less in check.”

Rather than, say, the classic health potion of other RPGs, which are clearly labelled and a genre staple, you’ll need to discover these rituals through exploration and experimentation. They also unlock further roleplay opportunities – yelling at someone in the street doesn’t exactly sound like a traditional remedy, but for an operant boiling over with rage, it may be very cathartic.

“By the player making a build choice of, ‘I want to be a very violent spy’, they would naturally seek out the rituals that complement that,” says Pirot.

Rituals, mental masks, blending into busy cities, and threats of nuclear armageddon. These are all important aspects of Zero Parades’ spy fantasy, and each is manifested within the game by a different team at ZA/UM. Writing works alongside artwork and system design to produce a world through which you can observe, bargain, and bully. A world in which you can roleplay the type of spy you think can change the world. Or, at the very least, change their place in it.

Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.

It’s hard to believe the Nintendo Switch’s first year gave us The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey just a few months apart, but it really was a fantastic start for the system. So fantastic in fact, that both of which feature as #2 and #3 in our top 100 Nintendo games of all time list.

We’ve got good news as well, as Super Mario Odyssey has dropped back down to its Black Friday pricing at Best Buy, and is now just $29.99 in its latest video game sale. That's 50% off, and one of the best Switch deals of the year so far.