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Dead by Daylight's All-Kill: Comeback Adds Game's First Urban Map

The new Dead By Daylight chapter, All-Kill: Comeback, will add the game's first urban map, which will include a two-story nightclub and plenty of neon lighting. The Trickster’s Delusion Map is part of the new chapter that launches on March 17, along with new survivor Kwon Tae-young, and an update to K-pop Killer the Trickster himself. If you can't wait, today marks the launch of the PTB for the new chapter on Steam.

"Woven by The Entity from The Trickster’s twisted subconscious, the new area features shops to browse, a marketplace, and a two-story nightclub, along with scattered details reflecting the Killer’s erratic state of mind," reveals developer Behaviour Interactive.

Yesterday IGN revealed that Kevin Woo, who had previously consulted on Dead By Daylight for the first All-Kill K-pop themed chapter, was returning to voice Survivor Kwon Tae-young. Even if you don't recognize Woo's name, you've definitely heard his voice, as he provided the vocals for demonic boy band member Mystery in KPop Demon Hunters. His Survivor isn't an idol though, he's a tech specialist working on a virtual idol called MiNA, designed to replicate the original K-pop star turned Killer, the Trickster.

"Voice acting for KPop Demon Hunters deepened my appreciation for how much storytelling can be communicated purely through tone, breath control, and texture. Without physical performance to rely on, your voice becomes the entire emotional instrument. In a game like Dead by Daylight, that responsibility is amplified," he explained.

"As a consultant, I wanted to ensure that the cultural references remained authentic. As a voice actor, I focused on making every breath, every strained scream, and every moment of fear feel grounded within the brutal, high-stakes environment of the Entity’s realm."

The Trickster's update is focused on the Killer's gameplay, with a new Style Rank system "rewarding creativity, aggression, and momentum as The Trickster builds towards unleashing his Main Event and a barrage of blades."

Other adjustments players can expect to see are a new Aura Accessibility feature, refined perk descriptions are also getting an overhaul for readability.

Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She's been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.

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KPop Demon Hunters Singer Kevin Woo Exclusively Reveals His New Dead By Daylight Survivor

KPop Demon Hunters voice actor Kevin Woo has exclusively revealed a new Dead By Daylight Survivor to IGN — for which he'll be providing the voice, if not his singing talents.

If you've watched or sung along to the animated Netflix phenomenon, you'll have heard Woo as the singing voice of Mystery (the boyband member with purple hair over his eyes).

"I personally think as a Killer, Mystery Saja would thrive on psychological manipulation rather than brute aggression," Woo said Woo, who's set to star in a brand new chapter for the horror game, All-Kill:Comeback.

Here, he plays Kwon Tae-young, a tech designer Survivor hired to work on a virtual idol. Players will be able to check him out in a Public Test Build that will go live on Steam tomorrow, on February 24.

"I focused on making every breath, every strained scream, and every moment of fear feel grounded"

Woo previously worked on Dead By Daylight as a consultant on its previous K-pop storyline, which introduced the sociopathic idol the Trickster.

"Transitioning from consultant to fully embodying a character through voice was both surreal and deeply fulfilling," Woo said. "As a consultant on the original chapter, I was involved in shaping the Trickster’s emotional identity — his ego, his obsession with artistry, and the narcissistic rage simmering beneath his polished idol exterior.

"Stepping into Kwon Tae-young’s perspective in this new release allowed me to approach the world of Dead by Daylight from the other side of that mythology. Because I understood the Trickster’s lore so intimately, his betrayal, his fixation on control, and his warped perception of performance. I was able to layer that history into Kwon Tae-young’s fear and internal conflict."

Woo is the perfect person to act as a consultant on the world of K-pop. He performed as part of the line up for K-pop bands XING and U-KISS, and recently announced he was part of a new subunit of U-KISS with bandmates Hoon and Kiseop. But how did his bandmates feel after his consultant work on the role of a killer K-pop idol?

"The irony is that while Ji-Woon Hak’s lore in Dead by Daylight explores betrayal and ego within a band dynamic, my real-life band experience was built on camaraderie and growth. That contrast actually helped me understand the tragedy of the Trickster even more," he revealed.

"They mostly praised me about becoming a 'global Hollywood superstar' after KPop Demon Hunters. It was flattering — but I reminded them that none of this exists without our shared experience as global idols that paved the way for K-pop."

Since Woo first worked on the game in 2021 the world of K-pop has grown to be a much bigger force in the world of global entertainment, in no small part thanks to the incredible success of the Netflix movie KPop Demon Hunters, which first aired last year. Woo explained how his work on that project helped him embody the character of Kwon Tae-young in All-Kill: Comeback.

"Voice acting for KPop Demon Hunters deepened my appreciation for how much storytelling can be communicated purely through tone, breath control, and texture. Without physical performance to rely on, your voice becomes the entire emotional instrument. In a game like Dead by Daylight, that responsibility is amplified," he explained.

"As a consultant, I wanted to ensure that the cultural references remained authentic. As a voice actor, I focused on making every breath, every strained scream, and every moment of fear feel grounded within the brutal, high-stakes environment of the Entity’s realm."

He also revealed that voicing a Dead By Daylight Survivor demanded a lot more of him than just reading a script.

"To authentically capture that experience, I had to embody exhaustion, adrenaline spikes, and sudden bursts of panic. I would run in place during takes to elevate my breathing. I rehearsed strained vocalizations that mimic being hooked, injured, or chased," he continued.

"Unlike polished K-pop tracks, which prioritize control and tonal perfection, horror voice work embraces imperfection, cracked screams, unstable breathing, and vocal strain. The chaos is the performance."

And Woo isn't just a consultant or a voice actor when it comes to Dead By Daylight, he's a player too.

"I gravitate toward a tactical Survivor play-style, focusing on stealth loops, careful map awareness, and team synergy," he said. "I’m usually the one prioritizing safe unhooks, body-blocking when necessary, and healing teammates in concealed areas."

Dead By Daylight was first released in 2016 and since then has introduced a steady and increasingly terrifying number of Killers and Survivors to the game, including characters from Stranger Things, Attack On Titan, Resident Evil and of course, Nicolas Cage.

Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She's been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.

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Styx: Blades of Greed Review

It might not have the same kind of ambition or bells and whistles as its contemporaries, but Styx holds a special place in my heart as one of very few pure stealth game series we have left. Will you find the incredibly creative scenarios of Hitman or the insane level of polish and replayability of Dishonored? Nope. Instead Styx contents itself with simply being a reliable way for stealth fans to get their fix, and Styx: Blades of Greed is no exception. More often than not, the usual playbook of sneaking around, stealing and assassinating everything in sight, is as fun as it’s ever been, and this sequel makes some important tweaks, like removing weak multiplayer mechanics to refocus on a solo stealth experience and swapping smaller, mission-based maps for absolutely massive regions. But it’s also saddled with quite a few of the same issues it’s always had, finicky movement, performance issues, and an unremarkable story, which are as disappointing as they are completely expected.

Like its predecessor from 2017, Blades of Greed puts you in the leather boots of an elderly, grumpy goblin as you sneak into small spaces, stab humans, elves, and monsters in their soft places, and use an arsenal of gadgets and special abilities to overcome the fact that getting spotted will get you killed in two seconds flat. There are some modest additions, like a couple of new gadgets and abilities that let you do things like mind control NPCs from afar or use a grappling hook to close large gaps in a short period of time, but for the most part there’s very little that’s changed about the moment-to-moment gameplay. You’ll still find, for example, the ol’ reliable ability to turn yourself invisible for a short period of time, and will still find yourself hiding inside closets and barrels before popping out to slit the throat of some idiot guard. Good times. As ever, stealth is absolutely the star of the show, and Blades of Greed has the same high quality sneaking around that you’d hope it would.

The story in Styx has never been very good, and Blades of Greed lives up to those low expectations by having a completely forgettable story in spite of the fact that its protagonist is inherently interesting and unique. After developing a craving for magical abilities granted to you by quartz crystals found throughout the world, you begin a repetitive journey to, well, find more of it, and 90% of the campaign is just going from place-to-place stealing these glowing rocks to power yourself up with little in the way of plot in between those scavenger hunts. You meet some characters along the way, like a gadget-obsessed dwarf and an orc who becomes your spiritual guide, but they don’t get enough screen time to leave much of an impression and what they do get isn’t used effectively, with everyone spouting off explanations of telling you what you need to do next and little else. You’re unlikely to have come to the Styx series looking for an engaging story, but just in case you were hoping to be pleasantly surprised: I wouldn’t count on that.

Though the vast majority of Styx’s bones remain the same, one major change is that instead of treading (and sometimes retreading) through mission-specific levels, Blades of Greed lets you loose in three extremely large maps filled with both mandatory and optional areas to explore, pilfer, and fall to your death within. It’s a neat idea that allows for significantly more freedom over prior adventures, and it’s quite easy to become distracted and assassinate your way through an entire region before realizing you didn’t even really have any objective behind any of it, except that it’s just hard to see a guard walking by unaware and not take him down. These huge levels also allow you to express creativity in how you navigate the area and solve the problem of getting around when every 10 feet there’s someone who could kill you by breathing on you. When you’re staring at an objective that’s a mountain’s distance above you, you’ll need to just creep around and try things to figure out how to get there – maybe you’ll find a nice spot on the side of a tower to make daring leaps while avoiding the notice of guards along the way, or maybe you’ll find a quieter path via a sewer system that leads you to the same spot, but is infested with giant bugs that will swarm you if you get too close.

That can be a really interesting stealth challenge to figure out, but comes with some unique drawbacks as well. For one, it can be exhausting to have to cross such a massive area slowly sneaking along all the while, and if you try to just sprint past everything to get to the objective, you should be prepared to reload a whole bunch as you work through the trial and error process of doing so. That travel time feels significantly less focused and curated than the more linear model for level design as well, and oftentimes you’re kinda just half-assedly sneaking through ruins and across rooftops with no real obstacles along the way until you get to the place that the objective marker wants you to be, at which point things start to feel much more focused. In other words, it’s a whole lot of fat before you get to the meat of the main objectives. I actually spent the vast majority of the more than 20 hours it took me to beat Blades of Greed trying to figure out where exactly my next objective was and how to get there, rather than actually pulling off the heist in question.

The good news is that each of these maps is pretty awesome across the board. The Wall is an absurdly cool vertical labyrinth of concrete castles and rickety slums, Turquoise Dawn is a jungle of trees, swamps, and massive, deadly roaches swarming in dark areas, and the Akenash Ruins are a ruined, kingdom where everything floats in the air unnaturally and enemies are extremely weird monsters, like something out of Elden Ring. Each visit to these places throughout the story unlocks new areas to explore, though you’ll also do quite a bit of backtracking through areas you’ve already been, which is a bit of a drag. Still, these are some of the more interesting areas I’ve stalked the halls of in a stealth game and highlights the unique, strange, and magically-infused world that this curmudgeonly goblin calls home.

Though the huge amount of space these maps have can be pretty great to explore, they sometimes feel a bit too big for the much smaller objectives within them. The story’s main objectives are much smaller than a typical stealth mission, usually just requiring you to steal a key and open a locked door, or shut down a machine so you can reach your objective – miniature quests that usually only take a couple minutes to complete, if that. Once you’ve checked it off your list, you’re back to the mostly uneventful traveling stealth as you find a way to the next objective, often requiring you to backtrack through some of the same spots in the process, which is how I have spent the bulk of the adventure so far. On the bright side, this format means you’re basically just locked into a constant stream of pure, unadulterated stealth scenarios for hours on end as you work your way through each set of missions, and since that’s Blades of Greed’s strong suit, you’re getting exactly what the doctor ordered.

If you’re familiar with the shortcomings of the previous Styx games, then you’ll probably be less-than-stoked to hear that Blades of Greed doesn’t address most of these. Combat, which is a last resort, but sometimes required, is quite sloppy and overly simplistic, and moving around, especially jumping onto ledges and the like can be finicky at times and caused me to fall to my death or get caught out in the open dozens of times by this point. Worse than those though, are the usual performance issues and technical challenges, like NPCs becoming invisible while talking to them and frames dropping to horrifyingly low levels after extended play sessions. Framerate issues are actually a fair bit worse than I remember them being in previous games, presumably due to the significantly larger maps, and it can get pretty bad for long stretches when there’s a lot happening on screen. Most of these issues are sort of baked into Styx by this point, but it’s still worth shouting out that the bulk of this stuff has mostly gone unaddressed, seemingly.

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