When Pokémon Legends: Z-A was first revealed, we all immediately got to work speculating on when it would take place in the Pokémon timeline. Not where, we knew that: it takes place entirely in Lumiose City from Pokémon X and Y's Kalos region. But given that Legends: Arceus was a time-traveling narrative going back hundreds of years into Sinnoh's past, we had every expectation based on trailers that Z-A would be many, many years in Lumiose City's future.

We were incorrect! We now know exactly when it takes place, and it's not nearly as big a leap as you'd think.

We've been playing Pokémon Legends: Z-A for review and the embargo has now lifted. So we can confirm, from first-hand experience talking to multiple characters (most of which we unfortunately can't directly cite or show due to the ongoing embargo restrictions), that Z-A takes place just five years after the events of X and Y. It's not a time traveling narrative, it's a direct sequel that offers a follow-up to many of the characters and situations introduced in X and Y.

For instance, we already know that you get to hang out with AZ, a 3,000-year-old man who plays a pivotal role in X and Y. We also know that Mable, a former member of Team Flare, takes on the role of Pokémon professor in this game and sends you out to catch Pokémon with various challenges. Other characters you'll remember from X and Y show up as well, some of them dramatically changed, but we can't and won't spoil them just yet.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A being a direct sequel is actually a pretty big deal. The Pokémon universe has been real hand-wavey with how the different games and regions relate to one another over the years. While there have been some direct sequels before (Gold and Silver after Red and Blue, Black and White 2 after Black and White, etc), later games have introduced time travel (Legends: Arceus), alternative universes (Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire), and basically every game has implied that all the other games' locations and monsters exist in the same world, but events taking place in those games may or may not be canon depending on which one you're playing. The Pokémon timeline, if drawn out, probably looks far more ridiculous than the Zelda one at this point.

But if you were wondering what happened to most of the main cast of X and Y five years after the events of the game, here you go: this is just a straightforward sequel! In hindsight, we should have seen this coming when they named it "Z-A" after X and Y.

My review-in-progress of Pokémon Legends: Z-A is now live, if you want to check out my impressions of the first 24 hours, with a full review coming next week. I've also been writing about how the Nurse Joy job is now open to people who don't look exactly identical to the original Nurse Joy after 27 years in Z-A.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Review codes for Pokémon Legends: Z-A were only sent out less than a week ago, but I’ve already put in around 24 hours or so in the last five days. Across that time I’ve been catching every new species of Pokémon I find, doing every side quest that pops up, and stopping every so often to completely change my outfit. I’ve currently got a full team all in the level 50s, and I can’t wait to stop writing this review-in-progress to go play more. It’s real good so far!

Ah, feels nice to say that after, uh… this.

There are a few reasons why I don’t feel comfortable scoring Z-A right now. Apart from simply not having beaten it yet, the embargo we’re publishing this under is pretty strict about what we can and can’t say or show. We always try to avoid spoilers (and recent leaks mean plenty are already in the wild), but here we can’t even talk about basic plot details that happen literally in the first 10 minutes. We can’t mention loads of the specific Pokémon in Z-A, despite the fact that any number of them might casually roam across our footage at any time. We can’t even show you the map of Lumiose City, where everything in Z-A takes place. It’s difficult to say exactly how close to the credits 24 hours puts me, but I’ll likely be back with my final, scored review shortly after launch.

We also haven’t had the chance to test it on Nintendo Switch 1 ahead of time, although I am at least so happy to report that Pokémon Legends: Z-A runs great on Nintendo Switch 2. It glides along at a smooth framerate with very, very few hitches or hiccups. There is occasionally still some sudden pop-in of NPCs, including ones positioned very close to the player, and here and there I’ve seen a character do that creepy thing where their head and neck suddenly snap into place as I get closer. But critically, unlike Scarlet and Violet, none of this is horribly distracting, nor does it really detract from the overall experience. Because of Scarlet and Violet, I spent the first 20 minutes or so paying close attention to whether or not Z-A ran well. But then, after that, I barely thought about it again, a state of mind which I consider ideal. Here’s hoping that’s still the case with the Switch 1 version, which I will take into consideration as part of my final review either way.

Running well doesn’t equate to a game being pretty, of course, and Z-A isn’t going to win any beauty contests. Lumiose City looks fine. Its buildings are covered with mostly flat images of the same couple of window and terrace patterns over and over again. Up close, the effect is pretty weird – like someone painted a Looney Tunes door on a wall so Roadrunner would crash into it. The samey buildings are broken up with occasional trees, battle courts, parks, and the same bench copy-pasted about 100 times. There’s a greyish sewer system with greyish water running through it, and rooftops occasionally interrupted by same-looking cafe set-ups.

That said, I do think that the reduced scale of the world has worked in Game Freak’s favor with Z-A when compared to, say, Arceus or Scarlet and Violet. The city is smaller, so it’s more densely packed with trainers, Pokémon, items, shops, and other actually interesting things to see and do. I’m not running for minutes on end through massive fields of flat, GameCube-style textures, with nary a point of interest in sight. As a result, similar to Z-A’s performance, it was easy to stop thinking about the low-quality building design fairly early on.

That’s also helped by the fact that building interiors and the character and Pokémon models themselves look pretty good, and the human characters in particular are more varied than ever before. While almost every NPC you meet in the city is categorized by trainer type and given an appearance to match, Game Freak is now experimenting not just with diverse facial features and skin tones, but also clothing items. We saw some of this in Scarlet and Violet, but almost everyone was wearing school uniforms, so it wasn’t nearly as noticeable. Now, you might see two athletic trainers wearing differently colored versions of the same athletic gear, or two artists with different colored aprons.

Small a touch as this sounds, combining that with facial differences does a lot to make Lumiose City feel inhabited by many different, diverse people instead of the same 10 trainer types repeated ad nauseum. That customizability extends to the protagonist, too. There are tons of hair, facial, and fashion choices to choose from, including new options to mix and match certain types of outfits (different undershirts with different jackets, for instance). It’s a massively refreshing improvement after spending most of Pokémon Violet expressing myself via the same four ugly purple uniforms and a variety of mismatched hats.

Another element that I think elevates Lumiose City far above the much larger overworld of Scarlet and Violet is that it’s dense with interesting landmarks, items, obstacle courses, stores, Wild Zones, shops, and people. Lumiose is round, with different streets running out from the center like wheel spokes, and the entirety of it is open to you within just a few hours of starting your journey. You can, if you want, scour the whole map very early on, though it won’t be especially interesting at first blush. But over time, you’ll gradually unlock new ways to get around and new things to see when you get there: a new travel method that lets you scale scaffolding to collect rare items at the top, new ways to get onto buildings and Assassin’s Creed your way to little nooks of the city you couldn’t quite reach before, and new Wild Areas teeming with new Pokémon to catch. That steady unlocking of a city you always had free reign of adds to the feeling of getting to know a new place you’ve just moved to.

Exploration is often rewarded, too. While I criticized Scarlet and Violet for just sort of slapping large quantities of Pokémon haphazardly over a big map, especially in later areas, every single spawn location in Lumiose City feels deliberate and well-considered. A line of trash bins might not have anything interesting to see when you pass by on one visit, but there could be a Trubbish on top the next. Flocks of Pidgey and Fletchling scatter as you dash into a courtyard. Spinarak regard you calmly while hanging from tree branches. If you really explore, you might encounter a rare dragon-type on a rooftop (the embargo forbids me from saying which one despite the fact that its evolutions have been confirmed for the game already); a Spritzee floating idly in a hidden cafe; once, I turned just in time to see an Eevee sprint past me into an alleyway, and I barely threw a PokeBall quickly enough to catch it.

I won’t (and can’t) spoil too much of the story, but what I can talk about is the interesting rhythm it establishes that feels, in practice, quite different from any other Pokémon game so far. Like Arceus, Z-A foregoes the traditional “gather eight badges” structure, though here you’ll divide their time between day and night – during the day, you’ll be catching Pokémon in Wild Zones, battling rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon, performing goofy side quest errands for individuals around the city, shopping, and exploring. At night, you have the option to visit Battle Zones where you take on trainers and complete challenges to raise your score and eventually collect a Challenger’s Ticket, which unlocks your promotion match for the next level of the “Z-A Royale.” There are 26 ranks total, one for each letter of the alphabet. I am currently at rank D, though I wish this was slightly more fleshed out as a proper competitive mode rather than just a story vehicle – for instance, you don’t exactly spend a meaningful amount of time at every single one of the 26 letter ranks.

I’ll have more to say on this in the final review, free from my embargo shackles, but I am really enjoying the story so far. Ditching the eight badge trainer journey like Arceus before it allows Game Freak to flesh out a deeper, more interesting cast of characters, both the heroes and the villains. There’s simply more reason for them to be where you are, doing things alongside you and participating in the world-changing events you’re experiencing. I’m also fascinated by how much Z-A appears to be inspired by the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. The enclosed city setting, the absurd and silly tone of the side quests, the story’s concerns with community and civic issues, and the protagonist bopping around a metro area solving problems by being absurdly stronger than everyone else all lend Lumiose City big Kamurocho energy.

Which leads me to the meat and potatoes of any Pokémon game: the battling. With Z-A, Pokémon has gone full action game. Not a turn-based battle in sight. While I don’t think I want Pokémon to fully depart from doing turn-based combat forever, this works pretty well as a detour. Game Freak did an admirable job translating its traditional battle system into one that works in an active-time environment, especially with moves seemingly so specific to the turn-based format. Protect and Detect now stop damage for a set period of time instead of one “turn.” Spikes dumps, well, spikes all over the floor in an area, forcing you to steer your Pokémon out of it. Long-range moves keep Pokémon out of harm’s way, but take longer to execute and recharge than more risky, short-range ones.

There are a lot of new tactics and strategies to mess around with, such as how movement and dodging works. You control your trainer directly, and can either hold ZL to open the move select menu to send your active Pokémon into the fray, or release it to have them follow you around, allowing you to guide them while dodging. This makes for an interesting combat flow as I strategize around calling my Pokémon back to me to dodge an attack, then positioning them ideally to set up their next move before the opponent can swing again. The system is a bit awkward at times, especially in enclosed areas, but I’m interested to see what a competitive meta looks like with this format.

These tactics grow even more critical and chaotic in boss battles with Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon, of which Z-A has many. These battles all take place in uniform, wide, circular arenas, but the Pokémon themselves are far from ordinary. Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon are essentially Z-A’s answer to Arceus’ Frenzied Noble Pokémon. In addition to their regular movesets, they each have additional unique abilities you’ll have to avoid, such as turning the arena into a bullet hell you have to dodge around, or suddenly appearing right in front of you for an attack. Like in Arceus, your trainer can get hit and even die (sorry, I mean “black out”) if they’re attacked too many times by an enemy Pokémon, and that becomes a legit concern as Rogue Megas will enrage partway through and try to attack you directly.

The best way to counter this is to Mega Evolve your own Pokémon or use “Plus” moves, which are superpowered versions of regular moves that also consume the energy you need to Mega Evolve. Unlike in Pokémon X and Y, where you could get away with fighting Mega Evolved Pokémon with regular monsters, you really do need to engage with the Mega mechanics in Z-A. Though it starts off pretty tame, Z-A quickly ramps up the difficulty – even doing every side quest, I’m still finding its boss battles will make me sweat a little.

Man, I was going to try and hold back a bit on this review-in-progress since I still have plenty to see before my final review, but I’m just so genuinely excited about what Game Freak has done here. I liked Arceus a fair amount and thought it showed promise, but have been broadly disappointed with the slow backslide I saw from the studio in its move to console game development, and worried the quality dip was a new trend for 3D Pokémon games that we’d never escape. Pokémon Legends: Z-A, at least across the first two-dozen hours, is putting a lot of my fears to rest. It’s not revolutionary by any stretch, but it’s really good! I’m having fun, I’m excited to keep playing, I feel rewarded for exploring every corner, the story’s got my attention, and I’m not distracted by my Pokémon falling through the floor while they battle or everything crashing when I try to climb a ladder. If the rest of my adventure holds up (and the Switch 1 performance isn’t a disaster), we could finally have a 3D game worthy of the Pokémon franchise on our hands. It’d be about dang time.

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has revealed it's putting a temporary pause on content updates while it works on improving performance.

In an interview on the official Helldivers YouTube channel, director Mikael Eriksson admitted the game's most recent big update, Into the Unjust, had "more issues than [the team] were comfortable with," which is why the studio has now decided "to push some of our content and feature updates a little bit into the future."

Recent reviews for Helldivers 2 on Steam are 'mixed,' with most of the complaints revolving around performance trouble. The 'most helpful review' penned over the last 30 days is a negative one from a player with over 500 hours in-game. They called Helldivers 2's performance "inexcusable," pointing to stuttering and freezing during gameplay and crashes.

"Arrowhead, Sony, PLEASE put less focus on new content and live service updates," they pleased. "PLEASE stop nerfing loadouts that are already underpowered or underused with the guise of 'realism' or 'balance.' It's a PvE game; no one cares if people are cheesing hulks with a flag. The game needs to be fun and PLAYABLE before you can rake in the cash with a new warbond.

"FIX THE GAME <3"

Now, Arrowhead has addressed those complaints. "After the last big update, Into the Unjust, we experienced more issues than what we were comfortable with," Eriksson said, as spotted by Eurogamer. "Players felt it, we felt it, and I would say the feedback that we've got has been very justified.

"We're taking this very seriously and we are focusing way more now on addressing these issues to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again," he added. "We have made the decision to push some of our content and feature updates a little bit into the future while we're addressing these things to make sure that we can get to a much more stable state that we can believe in.

"We are already making really big improvements and I'm confident that we will get there and we will be able to talk in more detail about this hopefully quite soon."

Last week, developer Arrowhead Studios said it still didn't have a solution for the shooter's groaning installation size on PC, but did confirm it was working on it. In an update posted to Steam, Arrowhead's deputy technical director, Brendan Armstrong, penned the first in a series of posts in which the engineering team talks about the "technical health" of the game, as well as the "technical challenges we're working through." Admitting that the installation size "seems to be a hot topic right now" — at 150GB, Helldivers 2 takes up three times the space on PC than it does on console — the developer revealed that one of the reasons the PC size is so much bigger is because of data duplication and mechanical hard drives.

Check out IGN's review of Helldivers 2 on Xbox Series X and S to see what we think of the game as it is today. Arrowhead has also revealed it has no plans for Helldivers 3 right now. Instead, it wants Helldivers 2 to keep going for years and years, like veteran MMO RuneScape.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

The Japanese government has made a formal request asking OpenAI to refrain from copyright infringement (as reported by ITMedia). This comes as a response to Sora 2’s ability to generate videos featuring the likenesses of copyrighted characters from anime and video games.

Sora 2, which OpenAI launched on October 1, is capable of generating 20-second long videos at 1080p resolution, complete with sound. Soon after its release, social media was flooded with videos generated by the app, many of which contained depictions of copyrighted characters including those from popular anime and game franchises such as One Piece, Demon Slayer, Pokémon, and Mario.

Speaking at the Japanese government’s Cabinet Office press conference on Friday, Minoru Kiuchi (the minister of state for IP and AI strategy) informed attendees about the government’s request, which called on the American organization to refrain from infringing on Japanese IPs. The request was reportedly made online by the Cabinet Office’s Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters. Kiuchi went on to describe manga and anime as “irreplaceable treasures” that Japan boasts to the world.

Fallout creator Tim Cain has continued his insightful video series on the development of the original Fallout game, this time focusing on lore with a number of fun reveals that have got fans talking.

Cain, the creator, producer, lead programmer and one of the main designers of Interplay’s 1997 post-apocalyptic role-playing game Fallout, released a video in which he talked about lore in the original Fallout that the team assumed was true but was never directly stated.

This “non-expository Fallout lore,” as Cain calls it, is lore from the first game only, lore the original team discussed among themselves and decided was true, and then made the game based on that. “None of this was written down” by any one of the 15 core people who developed Fallout, Cain said.

As a result, it is “not canon.”

“This is stuff that was true in the first game, but because it doesn’t exist in a design document anywhere, Bethesda is free to invent different reasons that the things that are in the game exist,” he prefaced. “I’m not canon, not anymore. You’re not canon just because you played the game or like it a lot. Bethesda’s canon. You don't have to like that. You don’t have to like that water’s wet. I don't like that white chocolate exists, but it does. So there we go.”

Why China nuked first

Top of the list is the explanation for why China nuked first. This is in reference to Fallout’s Great War, which took place on October 23, 2077 (Bethesda now hosts showcases on October 23 each year, aka Fallout Day). Cain had already said China nuked first in a previous video, putting to bed decades of fan speculation. But in this latest video he explained why China nuked first.

“This is not canon, but let me explain what I mean and why we thought that,” he began. “In the original game we had established FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) and that the U.S. was doing bio-weapons research. We weren’t supposed to. In fact, we had signed a UN treaty saying we wouldn’t do that, and I think you can find that out in the game. China discovered that we were doing it. How did they discover it? Espionage. But they found out we were doing it, and we went, ‘Oops our bad, we won’t do that anymore.’ But we kept right on doing it, we just moved the research to another base. It was the hidden base that’s in The Glow, where you eventually discover ZAX the supercomputer.

“When China found out we were still doing it and we had just moved, well they had already tried diplomacy and espionage and none of that was working, so they just nuked us. They nuked us. We nuked back. Other countries nuked because all we saw, all anyone saw, were missiles flying.

“China technically started it by firing the first nuke. But you could argue that the U.S. technically started it by doing illegal bioweapons research and then lying about it multiple times.”

And what of Russia’s involvement? Cain went on to explain that the development team assumed Russia in the ‘90s (and therefore in the ‘50s projected future in the Fallout alternate history timeline), had broken up to become “a bunch of little bickering states.” The EU had unified, and the U.S. had annexed Canada (a prediction not lost on Cain given current events). “But anyway, we were kind of on friendly relations with Russia in the Fallout universe,” he added.

This is why one of Fallout’s pre-made characters is Natalia, the granddaughter of a Russian diplomat. “Obviously, we were friendly enough with the Russian embassy that they got some of their diplomats into one of the vaults, the vault you're in,” Cain explained. “So, obviously, this wasn't a country we were at odds with.”

The Vault 13 lottery

So, that explains the unspoken lore behind why China nuked first. But Cain had a lot more lore to reveal. It turns out that the three pre-made characters the player could choose from were in fact selected via a lottery by the inhabitants of Vault 13 — a lottery that was rigged.

“We had three pre-made characters in Fallout,” he went on. “There was Max, who was the big dumb idiot combat guy. There was Natalia, who was the dextrous thief kind of character. And then there was Albert, who was the smooth talking manipulator talkie guy.

“If you look at those three characters, you may go, that's the best the vault had to offer? No, the vault did a lottery. They basically drew straws. They knew they had to send someone out. So they had people draw straws and whoever drew the short straw had to go out into what was presumed to be a radioactive wilderness that would kill them. But hopefully they would get back before the radiation killed them with a water chip replacement.

“This was just assumed. The pre-made characters support it. I believe there's some dialogue here and here that kind of supports that no-one chose, especially if you play Max, no-one chose for that character to go. That wasn't their first choice. That wasn't even their best choice. That wouldn't even been anywhere near the choice.

“Except one thing we also talked about and laughed about as also possibly being true was that the entire lottery for who leaves the vault was rigged. And that would explain those three characters. You have this guy who's an idiot. Why would you send him out? Well, gets him out of the genepool. Then you have Natalia who's stealing everything. Probably had pissed people off because she had stolen other people's stuff. She's gone. Albert was always trying to manipulate everybody because he's such a smooth talker. He's gone. So getting rid of these characters was probably high on someone's list.”

The lead designer of Skyrim is "eternally shocked" at not just the RPG's success, but its enduring appeal, suggesting it's the game's open world and "quirkiness" that keeps players coming back 14 years after its debut.

Skyrim released way back in 2011. An open-world RPG, it puts players on the precipice of determining the future of Skyrim as the Empire waits for the prophesied Dragonborn to come, a hero born with the power of The Voice, and the only one who can stand among the dragons. IGN's Skyrim review returned a 9.5/10. We called it "a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced."

Now, speaking on the FRVR Podcast, lead designer Bruce Nesmith offered his thoughts on why so many people continue to play and enjoy Skyrim so many years later. "I think Skyrim did the open world in a way that nobody had ever done before and very few people have really tried to do since," he said, adding: "By all rights, a year later, some other game should have eclipsed it. And then two years later, three years later, five, 10. It’s like ‘what the hell is going on here?’

"Todd [Howard, Bethesda boss] would even go to these meetings and show us information, which I can’t give you the details of, about how many people are playing it. It’s like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’ Seriously, still, 10 years later."

Exploring the game's legacy and lasting community, he added: "I think Skyrim did the open world in a way that nobody had ever done before and very few people have really tried to do since. And one of those things that we accepted, which a lot of developers struggle to accept, is that this means you’re going to have quirkiness. You’re going to have weird stuff happen. And if you say that’s okay, you can get this diamond."

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Nesmith believes that if a developer tries to "smooth everything out" to prevent that aforementioned "weird stuff," "you’re going to lose some of that magic" that makes some games so special.

"And we didn’t make that as a conscious decision," he added. "It just sort of happened. You know, we kind of prioritize functionally and 'well, okay, that bug’s acceptable. This behaviour is less than ideal, but we can live with it because look what we’re getting over here.'

“We didn’t put anything off limits. We didn’t try to manage the experience. We let it be your experience, it was a player-driven experience. And very, very few games have mastered that because open world is now almost a cliché statement... ‘Oh yeah, we have open world.’"

Bethesda is of course working on its hotly anticipated Skyrim follow-up, The Elder Scrolls 6. Bethesda has said next to nothing about it, but we do know it will include a character designed in memory of a much-missed fan, after a remarkable charity campaign that raised more than $85,000 for Make-A-Wish.

Meanwhile, one of Skyrim's best-known players, Shirley Curry — known to fans as Skyrim Grandma — recently announced her retirement from uploading The Elder Scrolls videos ahead of her 90th birthday.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Battlefield boss Vince Zampella has said that Activision's best-selling Call of Duty franchise only exists "because EA were dicks."

It's an eye-opening but typically frank statement from Zampella, who is of course now an EA employee himself once again.

Over his career, Zampella has ping-ponged between rival publishers EA and Activision, working first on EA's Medal of Honor series, then founding Infinity Ward and helping create Call of Duty — specifically so it could be Activision's Medal of Honor "killer" — before returning back to EA after helping create Titanfall and Apex Legends at Respawn.

"The only reason that Call of Duty exists is because EA were dicks," Zampella told GQ, reflecting on his career.

Zampella initially worked on EA's Medal of Honor franchise from 1999 to 2002, and served as lead designer on the celebrated Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. After this, Zampella co-founded his own studio, Infinity Ward, with initial plans to continue working on Medal of Honor left up in the air when EA decided to take development of its franchise in-house.

"For legal reasons I will say things didn't go as planned with it," former Infinity Ward artist Justin Thomas previously revealed of the situation in an MCV interview, back in 2013. "We were left in a situation of unpaid milestones that were delivered and no finances to operate on."

It was at this point that Activision answered a last-ditch call by Infinity Ward, intrigued by the potential of working with the team behind Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and driven by the idea of creating a new franchise that could topple EA's own.

The rest, as they say, is history. Call of Duty became a behemoth, though Activision and Zampella parted ways following the launch of 2009's Modern Warfare 2, prompting a bitter legal feud over unpaid bonuses and royalties that dragged on for years (until Zampella ultimately earned a sizable payout).

That situation then led to Zampella co-founding Titanfall and Apex Legends developer Respawn, which EA partnered with then ultimately acquired. Zampella was then repeatedly promoted to look after more of EA's gaming portfolio, ultimately becoming boss of the embattled Battlefield franchise, turning its fortunes around to deliver this month's successful release of Battlefield 6.

GQ's interview also includes a snippet on the now-distant plans for Alien director Ridley Scott to direct a Call of Duty movie, something which ultimately never came to pass.

"Ridley Scott came in one time – who's a hero of mine – but he's not connected to games, so he'd ask these questions like, ‘How do you script what happens?’" Zampella recalled. "There was a bit of a talk around him doing a Call of Duty film, but we never really took it seriously. Video game movies at that point were never really that good."

Battlefield 6 launched last week and earned EA its best-ever game launch on Steam, beating that of Apex Legends. For more, check out IGN's Battlefield 6 multiplayer review in progress, our Battlefield 6 campaign review, and what to expect from Battlefield Season 1.

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for EA Entertainment.

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

Pokémon Go's new level cap requirements have leaked, and some fans say the fresh XP total required, as well as the some of the extra tasks involved, are too easy.

This week, Pokémon Go will raise its current level 50 cap for the first time in five years, and allow players to reach level 80 for the first time. But this change will come alongside an overall rebalancing of XP — meaning many players will find themselves transported to a much higher level, and potentially far beyond the XP needed to instantly hit level 80.

Of course, players won't simply log on and find themselves at the finish line. As is the case currently, a fresh set of additional tasks will need to be completed to progress through the game's final tier of levels (from 70 to 80, replacing similar tasks required to move from 40 to 50). But even these — which have been datamined by fans — have been dubbed as rather straightforward.

Last night, a post on the official Pokémon Go blog listed out the new XP requirements needed after the game's level cap increases tomorrow, October 15.

Pokémon Go rebalanced XP requirements:

• Level 10: 48,000 total XP
• Level 20: 258,000 total XP
• Level 30: 1,083,000 total XP
• Level 40: 3,953,000 total XP
• Level 50: 12,753,000 total XP
• Level 60: 34,353,000 total XP
• Level 70: 85,853,000 total XP
• Level 80: 203,353,000 total XP

It's interesting to compare these fresh totals with the amounts of XP needed to hit the game's level 50 cap now. Currently, hitting level 50 requires a lifetime total of 176 million XP. (This week, following the game's rebalance, level 50 will require just 12.75 million XP.) This means the new level 80 cap requires just 27 million more XP than the current level 50.

While it's been clear for a while that Pokémon Go's new level cap will come alongside an overall smoothing of the game's overall XP requirements, hardcore fans have still been surprised to discover that many of them will once again be in Pokémon Go's new endgame, with little to no actual XP grinding required.

Moving on to those level up tasks, fans examining a datamined list of what will be needed have judged the requirements as rather straightforward. Each level requires players hold an increasing number of platinum in-game medals, though these can be earned in a way that reflects your playstyle. Some will take time — Purifying 100 Shadow Pokémon — but with planning there's nothing here which should hold up hardcore players for too long.

Indeed, there is also palpable relief among fans at the lack of any artificial timegating here — such as requiring a Pokémon be caught on 30 days, holding progress back a month — something which has been found in other challenges previously.

Pokémon Go Level 71-80 level up tasks

• Level 71
  Earn 15 platinum medals
  Power up Legendary or Mythical Pokémon 20 times
  Make 999 Nice Throws
  Catch 100 Pokémon in a single day
• Level 72
  Earn 20 platinum medals
  Complete a Route 7 days in a row
  Use 200 supereffective Charged Attacks
  Earn 1,000,000 Stardust
• Level 73
  Earn 25 platinum medals
  Purify 100 Shadow Pokémon
  Power up 3 Pokémon to their max CP
  Win 30 Raids
• Level 74
  Earn 30 platinum medals
  Level up a Max Move 20 times
  Explore 200 km
  Complete 250 Field Research tasks

• Level 75
  Earn 34 platinum medals
  Make 999 Great Throws
  Hatch 75 Eggs
  Send 500 Gifts to friends
• Level 76
  Earn 38 platinum medals
  Defeat 100 Team GO Rocket Grunts
  Explore 300 km
  Catch 200 Pokémon in a single day
• Level 77
  Earn 41 platinum medals
  Win 100 Max Battles
  Power up 7 Pokémon to their max CP
  Make 10 trades with Pokémon caught at least 300 km apart
• Level 78
  Earn 44 platinum medals
  Earn 400 hearts with your buddy
  Explore 400 km
  Complete 500 Field Research tasks
• Level 79
  Earn 47 platinum medals
  Defeat a Team GO Rocket Leader 30 times
  Obtain 50 Lucky Pokémon in trades
  Hatch 100 Eggs
• Level 80
  Earn 50 platinum medals
  Win 80 Trainer Battles in the GO Battle League
  Make 999 Excellent Throws
  Win 80 Raids

With these tasks, and with Pokémon Go's new XP rebalance, it feels clear that the game is adjusting itself for newer players, and leveling the playing field somewhat so there's a chance for newcomers to catch up with those who have been playing for almost a decade. As the game approaches its 10-year anniversary next year, its developers will likely want to ensure Pokémon Go continues to welcome fresh blood to its userbase, without giving them too steep an XP mountain to climb. But some veterans are less impressed.

"These are all so easy," wrote Old_Indication_4379 on top Pokémon Go fan reddit TheSilphRoad.

"I'm disappointed beyond disappointment," added another fan, avaible17. "I'm sitting at 352M xp and I doubt that it is very impressive number for most of the old players. I hoped for a challenge and motivation to play, I've got easy and repetitive tasks, that most of them can be done in a day (except walking ofc).

"I was hoping for introduction of new type of medals, that would make my grind beyond capabilities of human flesh," they continued. "Now I'm writing this and thinking, that they just make it easier for beginners, not more challenging for old dogs."

Batman & Robin is considered the worst Batman movie ever released, but Alicia Silverstone and Chris O'Donnell, who played Batgirl and Robin respectively, are philosophical about it now, nearly 30 years later.

1997’s Batman & Robin, directed by the late Joel Schumacher, saw George Clooney’s Batman go up against Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze, with Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy thrown into the mix. It was panned by critics for the performances of its actors and ultra camp tone, and underperformed at the box office.

Now, 28 years after the movie came out, Alicia Silverstone and Chris O'Donnell have recounted their experience working on the movie and having to promote it knowing it was being savaged by critics. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the pair described the difficulty they had filming scenes without knowing how special effects would factor in, then having to go on a press tour with journalists who were out for blood.

"All of a sudden, you were starting to get the feedback, and you realize it was just going sideways," O'Donnell said. "There was so much hatred of the film when it came out. It was like, 'Oh my God.' And you want to do your job and promote the movie... I remember at one point Joel Schumacher just threw up the flag. He's like, 'I'm out. I can't do it anymore.' He was so heartbroken and kind of bummed out about it."

O'Donnell went on to say "it was a tough one for us to all to digest," but now feels "we were lucky to be in the movie, and it was fun to be a part of it. It is what it is. Some work out and some don't."

Silverstone won a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress following her performance at Batgirl, but now says sentiment has shifted.