Respawn's beloved shooter, Titanfall 2, will be free-to-play on Steam this weekend. After a resurgence of popularity for Titanfall 2, which recently hit new player count highs on Steam, Respawn has decided to open up the pilot fun to anyone on PC. Simply head to the Titanfall 2 Steam page and download the game. It's important to note that the game is not being given out for free, but rather, it's receiving the free weekend treatment that many other titles have received in years past.

We heard people want to play Titanfall 2 this weekend? So do we!

Join us on Steam when we make TF2 temporarily free-to-play starting RIGHT NOW through May 3rd @ 10am PT. Get it here: https://t.co/rn4rUSF0RG Your journey begins here, Pilots. pic.twitter.com/SQ9eAIAWka — Respawn (@Respawn) April 30, 2021

Titanfall 2 saw its Steam player base skyrocket 650% in just two days earlier this week, bringing its average daily peak of active players over the last 30 days to 6,815, which is up from its 1,940 player average seen in March. This peak likely occurred as a result of the game going on sale for 75% off on Steam during the weekend of April 17. That's not the only possible factor for the shooter's resurgence as of late, though. Beyond its status as a beloved shooter that many want a sequel too — a sequel that is not in development as of last May — the game's popularity has likely also risen as a result of the new Titanfall-related content coming to Respawn's battle royale, Apex Legends. "Next season, Season 9, you're actually going to see a ton of Titanfall coming back into the game, in one way or another," Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier said. "I've told some people before, if you're a Titanfall fan, hang on for Season 9 because there's gonna be some really cool stuff there." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/29/apex-legends-meet-valkyrie-character-trailer"] The first bit of Season 9 Titanfall-related content came by way of the battle royale's newest character, Valkyrie, who is the daughter of Titanfall 2 villain, Viper. You can read more about Valkyrie, who is a jetpack-equipped Titanfall throwback, here. Be sure to check out this Apex Legends Legacy Update story for details about Valkyrie, Apex Legends' new Arena modes, and more. Read about how Titanfall 2 can now be played at 120fps on Xbox Series X after that. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

Late last year, when We Are the Caretakers designer Sherveen Uduwana approached LIONKILLER creator Sisi Jiang with a game idea, the concept for Midautumn was, in his own words, very vague: Asian diaspora, a midautumn festival, and...something about gentrification. Fortunately, Jiang ran with the concept, teeing up the game's transformation for its announcement today. With Jiang's writing, Uduwana's gameplay and leadership, and the talents of lead environment artist Kiana Mosser, lead character artist Mai Pham, and character portraits by Chi Ngo, the team is ready to show off their roguelike adventure set in a fictional Asian enclave in California, where the spirit world is beginning to encroach on the physical world in parallel with more grounded, real-world gentrification. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/30/midautumn-announcement-trailer"] Speaking to IGN, Uduwana describes Midautumn's gameplay as similar to recent indie hit Hades, but with a very different premise. It takes place in the town of Nambo Quay, a fictional town founded by Chinese immigrants during the gold rush that is now reckoning with economic instability and frustration that will be familiar to most millennials and Gen Z-ers. The main character, Robin, discovers in the opening act that there's a gate to the spirit world beneath their grandmother's basement, and in exchange for rent, they must descend into its depths to keep the spirit world from wrecking the real one using their grandmother's magic staff. Robin will fight through procedurally generated dungeons, avoiding traps and hazards, and discovering the town's secrets by defeating spirit world denizens in top-down, action combat with a focus on magic. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=It's%20like%20this%20place%20I've%20known%20my%20entire%20life%2C%20but%20is%20nowhere%20in%20the%20American%20cultural%20consciousness.%20These%20places%20exist!"] Their activities in the spirit world will ultimately have an impact on the denizens of Nambo Quay, as the creatures beyond the basement gate increasingly try to push their way into disrupting day-to-day life. And in between spirit world jaunts, Robin will explore Nambo Quay, getting to know their neighbors and their community's frustrations, struggles, hopes, and desires. Central to Midautumn is its portrayal of Asian diaspora, specifically surrounding the representation of a very specific type of Asian community that exists in America and which all the team members were familiar with: one where multiple different Asian groups come together, both melding and maintaining their disparate cultures. Jiang says much of their inspiration for the community of Nambo Quay came from visual novel game Butterfly Soup, a lesbian Asian diaspora visual novel about baseball. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=midautumn-announcement-screenshots&captions=true"] "[It's] an Asian ethnoburb," Jiang says, describing their first experience with Butterfly Soup in relation to Midautumn. "It's like this place I've known my entire life, but is nowhere in the American cultural consciousness. These places exist! But you don't know they exist unless you live in one." They add that while Midautumn starts out as a very personal, individual story, it later widens "to how different Asian groups interact and how it's not one monolith and how there can be different strategies to combat the things that are happening with the town. It works really well when you have this cast of characters from different backgrounds, perspectives, and cultural touchstones." That said, Jiang didn't want to make a game about the solutions to the problems these communities are facing, largely because they don't have clear, concrete answers. Instead, Midautumn is "about people doing their best." [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=I%20thought%20that%20the%20roguelike%20structure%20would%20be%20really%20interesting%20to%20do%20a%20narrative%20about%20--%20something%20where%20combating%20it%20takes%20repeated%2C%20almost%20unending%20work."] "I thought that the roguelike structure would be really interesting to do a narrative about -- something where combating it takes repeated, almost unending work," Jiang continues. "Gentrification was really interesting with that; you have to keep working against it." Uduwana says he wanted to create something specifically about Asian diaspora in part because of his own background: He's Sri Lankan, but spent 13 years growing up in Vietnam, and also a portion of his life in Singapore. "I have a weird mish-mash of different influences where I am almost incapable of telling a story that will read as authentic to any other Asian diaspora person if I were to write it," he says. "It's difficult, when you're making games that cater to marginalized audiences, you have to account for the fact that lots of people who play these games have a certain level of wariness in how they're depicted," he says. "So we're trying really early to build up goodwill and trust. We're doing our best to portray these characters, so hopefully people can kind of relax. When I play games, once I get to the point where I feel a certain level of trust with a developer, that's really only when I can start to enjoy games where people like me are depicted." Pham tells me that it was this concept in Uduwana's pitch that drew them to work on the game in the first place, referencing the frustration many Asian Americans have with a lack of Asian representation in video games, and the view of their very separate and unique cultures as a monolith. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=I%20was%20like%2C%20'Oh%20my%20God%2C%20I%20can%20see%20myself%20in%20this%20game.'%20It%20was%20representation%20for%20who%20I%20am."] "There's a lot of Asian representation [in games], but when it comes to different types of Asian people, or Vietnamese people like I am, I was like, 'Oh my God, I can see myself in this game.' It was representation for who I am, and I think that's really cool." Pham is clear that Asian representation isn't the only kind of representation important to the team, though. They tell me about several characters who are diverse in their gender identities, including the game's non-binary protagonist Robin. It's been fun to design such a diverse and colorful cast, they say, and they're trying to be attentive and sensitive to portrayals to ensure that players can see themselves in the game, first and foremost, as human beings. "What really struck me when I was sent the character bios was that Sherveen had said to focus more on body diversity," they add. "It's been really fun tackling different body shapes and different types of people who have such different personalities." For Mosser's part on the environments, she's been making pixel art since she was young, but with Midautumn wanted to do something that both incorporated the themes and roots of the game while also looking very different from anything else that was out there. "One problem I have with pixel art games is they can feel very samey a lot of the time, because they all draw from the same references," she says. "It gets into this cycle of people referencing the same few games, like Earthbound or Pokemon or Final Fantasy. So you end up with styles that look very similar to each other. "But when I came to work on this project, I told Sherveen I wanted to pull from real life. Pixel art is just a medium; we can depict whatever we want. So we took a look at a bunch of different locations across Asia, at a bunch of different art styles and painting techniques people use, and I wanted to take the essence of those and use them in the art style of the game. So in the wood biome, it's a mash-up of three different styles: there's the traditional ink painting you might be familiar with from Chinese landscape paintings. There's a more messy style that's inspired by palette knife paintings that you might see on the street...and then there's a bit of influence of graffiti art as well in the foreground...I think it turned out really unique." [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=The%20kind%20of%20communities%20that%20coalesce%20around%20the%20games%20you%20make%20are%20defined%20by%20the%20values%20and%20morals%20you%20put%20into%20that."] Midautumn is currently planned for release on PC with controller support. While Uduwana is open to console releases down the line, he's not thinking about it for the time being while they focus on development. He's not looking at a release date just yet, but is expecting late 2021 or early 2022 for an early access launch. He says that whether or not Midautumn takes off, he hopes that people who find the game resonates with them are then in turn able to find one another and make connections through the shared story. "Building communities has always been really important to me," he says. "In your career as a game dev, you have a finite number of games you're going to make. The kind of communities that coalesce around the games you make are defined by the values and morals you put into that. For me, especially in a time when I'm getting more disillusioned with a lot of things in the games industry, I become more and more impatient to see the kinds of things that represent me or people I know." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

A billion-year-old fossil discovered in the Scottish Highlands may provide the "missing link" in how animals evolved. That "missing link" is the bridge between the transition of a single-celled organism and multicellular animals, according to the Current Biology study published about the discovery. This billion-year-old fossil "shows an organism which lies somewhere between single cell and multicellular animal," according to a press release published by The University of Sheffield. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/04/dinosaur-fossils-may-belong-to-largest-animal-to-have-ever-walked-ign-news"] "The origins of complex multicellularity and the origin of animals are considered two of the most important events in the history of life on Earth (and) our discovery sheds new light on both of these," University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences investigative lead Charles Wellman said. "We have found a primitive spherical organism made up of an arrangement of two distinct cell types, the first step towards a complex multicellular structure, something which has never been described before in the fossil record." Wellman continued on to say that the evolution of multicellular animals occurred at least one billion years ago and "that early events prior to the evolution of animals may have occurred in freshwater like lakes rather than oceans." Another researcher on the team, Paul Strother from Boston College, said it's long been speculated that the origin of animals included the repurposing of genes from already-evolved "unicellular organisms," but that what's seen in Bicellum Brasieri, which is the formal name of the fossil discovered in Scotland, is an actual example of such an occurrence. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=dueling-dinosaurs-fossil-photo-gallery&captions=true"] "What we see in Bicellum is an example of such a genetic system, involving cell-cell adhesion and cell differentiation that may have been incorporated into the animal genome half a billion years later," Strother said. The fossil, which was discovered at Loch Torridon in the Northwest Scottish Highlands, was in a state of "exceptional preservation," according to the press release, which made analyzing its cellular and sub-cellular levels possible. The team expects to find even more fossils from the Torridonian deposits that could lead to additional revelations about the evolution of multicellular animals. For more about fossils, check out this story about a dinosaur fossil discovered that may reveal the largest animal to ever walk on Earth and then read about this Tyrannosaurus rex fossil that recently sold for $31.8 million. Check out this story about a T.rex and Triceratops locked in the same fossil after that, then read about evidence found by researchers that suggests a microevolution in humans. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has been delayed on Switch and Xbox, but this extra time will let the team add features like crossplay. Mediatonic announced the news in a blog update, sharing that "with so many new opportunities now in our hands, we've realised that our previously announced Summer 2021 Switch and Xbox release schedule is unfortunately just too soon for us to include all of the tasty new features we're working on." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/27/top-10-battle-royales"] The team promises the wait will be worth it, and that this delay will let them add features like crossplay, meaning that "when we add new platforms, players will be able to stumble in harmony with their pals, regardless of their platform of choice." In addition to the new platforms, Mediatonic continues its work on new Seasonal content releases, fresh Shows, Costumes, Rounds, and much more. The upcoming Season 4.5 update is part of this plan and will include two "fiendish" new Rounds and Fall fashion options. This news follows Epic Games' acquisition of Mediatonic in March 2021. Alongside the news, Mediatonic shared that "your gameplay isn't changing" and that the added resources will help them bring a ton of features already seen in Fortnite and Rocket League to Fall Guys. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/20/fall-guys-season-4-how-squads-mode-works"] For more on Fall Guys, check out where it ranks on our list of the 10 Best Battle Royales and learn more about Squad Mode's team element. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

The Call of Duty Endowment, the non-profit charity that helps military veterans, is holding an in-game event in Call of Duty: Warzone in order to raise money to support veteran medics and hospital corpsmen as part of Military Appreciation Month. Additionally, a new DLC pack for Warzone and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is also being sold to raise funds for the cause. The event is The Revival Challenge. Starting today, April 30, and running to May 9, reviving five people in Warzone will unlock a new Call of Duty Endowment calling card. Should a million players unlock this card, a double-XP day will be held for all Warzone players. Additionally, for every Revival Challenge completed, Activision Blizzard has pledged to donate $1 to the charity, up to $1,000,000. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/21/call-of-duty-warzone-destruction-of-verdansk-event-gameplay"] In the store for both Black Ops Cold War and Warzone will be the Call of Duty Endowment Battle Doc Pack, containing skins and medic-themed trinkets. These have been created in partnership with retired Army Veteran Combat Medic Timothy Hobbs Jr., and all net proceeds from the pack sales goes to the Endowment. The aim is to raise $2,000,000 from these packs. Finally, a new connecting screen for Warzone will be dedicated to the Endowment and Military Appreciation Month, and will display for the first ten days of May. For 2021, Call of Duty Endowment’s focus for Military Appreciation Month is veteran medics and corpsmen, who have difficulty finding civilian jobs in medical fields despite having experience and training from their time in the forces. Money raised during the #CODEMedicalHeroes campaign will go towards helping “highlight the immensely qualified veterans who right now have the skills necessary to fill these positions.” For more on Call of Duty, take a look at our stories detailing that Toys for Bob is now developing Warzone, and that main studio Raven is currently working on a glitch fix for the game’s new map, Verdansk ‘84. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. 

Update 05/20/2021: Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom - Prince's Edition has been officially revealed for Nintendo Switch. The new version of the RPG will be released on September 17, and you can watch an announcement trailer below: [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/05/20/ni-no-kuni-ii-revenant-kingdom-princes-edition-nintendo-switch-announcement-trailer"] The Prince's Edition comes with both of the DLC expansions, The Lair of the Lost Lord and The Tale of a Timeless Tome. It will be released both physically and digitally. [poilib element="accentDivider"] A new ESRB rating for Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom Prince's Edition may have revealed that Bandai Namco's RPG will soon find its way to the Nintendo Switch. The ESRB's rating lists Nintendo Switch as a platform for Ni no Kuni 2 and gives it a T (Teen) rating for Fantasy Violence and Mild Blood. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/03/19/ni-no-kuni-ii-revenant-kingdom-review"] Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom was originally released in 2018 for PS4 and PC and, in our review, we said that it "distinguishes itself from its predecessor by layering fast-paced, real-time combat and an engaging kingdom building system atop more traditional RPG systems and quests. It’s a shame it delivers so few truly memorable characters and restricts so much of its storytelling to text on screen, but by the end of Ni No Kuni 2 the broader themes certainly resonate and the 40+ hour journey has been well worth it." According to the Steam page for Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom - The Prince's Edition, this version looks to include the full game, its Season Pass, an Equipment Package, and the Cat King's Claw. Ni no Kuni 2's Season Pass includes both The Tale of a Timeless Tome and The Lair of the Lost Lord. These expansions added new story content, a random dungeon "Labyrinth," and much more. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/03/11/ni-no-kuni-ii-the-tale-of-a-timeless-tome-dlc-trailer"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

A suspect behind the Ubisoft Montréal hostage-taking hoax last year is allegedly an aggrieved Rainbow Six Siege cheater – who reportedly called in multiple threats to the studio. La Presse reports that it has obtained court documents that point to a French citizen named Yanni Ouahioune, who has apparently been banned more than 80 times from Rainbow Six Siege for cheating. La Presse says Ouahioune is being investigated for making the hoax phone call that led to a police situation at Ubisoft Montréal. The individual involved apparently spoofed their phone number to make it appear as though the call came from within the studio, claimed hostages had been taken, and demanded a ransom. Per the report, the incident cost Ubisoft $1.7 million in lost productivity, as well as costs for subsequent psychological support for employees and material damage to the office.

pic.twitter.com/3fKlfoZMsi

— Ubisoft Montréal (@UbisoftMTL) November 14, 2020

Those documents allege that two further hoax calls were made in the following months, one reporting a bomb had been left at the studio, and another claiming that one of the company's executives had been killed. Subsequent calls reportedly saw a caller ask for access to ban people within Rainbow Six Siege, and to ask for Swedish Siege professional Spoit to be banned from the game. An Ubisoft investigation into the matter reportedly led to Ouahioune being named as a suspect. Speaking to La Presse, Ouahioune admitted that he has previously created a site to steal Siege accounts, and had been involved in swatting (in which police are called to rival players' houses using hoax calls). However, he denied any part in the hoax calls to Ubisoft Montréal, claiming that his name has only come up because he's known at Ubisoft. Ouahioune also told La Presse to ask Ubisoft to unban his account because of the amount of money he spent on cosmetics, and told the publication that he no longer participates in illicit gaming activities because he doesn't want his mother to be disappointed anymore. IGN has contacted Service de police de la Ville de Montréal and Ubisoft for comment. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Multiple Spideys, Doctor Strange, Doc Ock, Electro, and maybe even Daredevil. Here's everyone confirmed, and rumored, to be in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

American Horror Story actor Finn Wittrock has been cast as Guy Gardner in the upcoming Green Lantern series at HBO Max. According to Deadline, HBO Max has tapped Wittrock for a lead role in the upcoming series, playing Guy Gardner, a top member of the Green Lantern Corps who's described as "a hulking mass of masculinity, and, as rendered in the comics, an embodiment of 1980s hyper-patriotism," and yet, still "somehow likable." Wittrock is the first actor to be cast in the live-action series based on the DC comics property. As a character, Gardner is instantly recognizable with his bowl-cut red hair and a fiery temper to match. His first appearance in the pages of Green Lantern comics was in 1968, but he didn't find his footing as a hotheaded hero until many years later. His overwhelming anger often proved to be his undoing, but Gardner has shown time and again that he is a loyal friend and hero worthy of the Green Lantern's light. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=green-lantern-whos-who-in-the-hbo-max-show&captions=true"] Wittrock is best known for his frequent collaborations with Ryan Murphy, having starred on several seasons of American Horror Story. He joined the cast in the fourth season of the FX anthology series, American Horror Story: Freak Show, playing petulant psychopath Dandy Mott. He received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his performance and continued to pick up main roles in later seasons. He will now star as one of "multitudes of Lanterns" appearing in the upcoming Green Lantern series, which will feature "Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, and Alan Scott — Earth's first Green Lantern, who, true to the comics, is a gay man — and many more. The series will also include fan favorites such as Sinestro and Kilowog, and will also introduce new heroes to the ranks of the Green Lantern Corps." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/10/30/green-lantern-tv-show-coming-to-hbo-max-ign-now"] Green Lantern's first season will consist of 10 one-hour episodes, telling a story that spans "decades and galaxies, beginning on Earth in 1941 with the very first Green Lantern." The series is coming from Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television, and it will be co-written by Seth Grahame-Smith and Marc Guggenheim, with Grahame-Smith also serving as showrunner. For more from the world of DC, check out all of the new DC movies and TV shows in 2021 and beyond. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Capcom asked its developers to start work on Resident Evil Village six months before Resident Evil 7 was due for release – which left the team unsure about the direction they wanted to take, before the first-ever first-person Resident Evil game saw a positive reception. Revealed in our IGN First feature about the making of and inspirations behind Village, director Morimasa Sato explains: “We were still busy developing Resident Evil 7, but my boss told me to start planning for the next entry in the series. At the time, we had no idea how users would react towards the new horror experience and characters of 7 yet.” [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/resident-evil-village-the-mercenaries-mode-hands-on-ign-first"] It's not hugely unusual that a major series would see plans for a sequel put in place before the preceding game is released – but Resident Evil 7 was a major departure for the series, meaning Village's developers were left waiting to see the reaction to it before fully committing to a straight sequel, rather than another reinvention. “We had no idea how the change of perspective would be received, so at first we were quite worried. But when we released Resident Evil 7 about half a year after the development of Village started, it was received very well. This helped us decide to make Village a direct sequel,” Sato says. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/resident-evil-village-5-hour-ps5-hands-on-preview-ign-first"] That success meant Village moved forward as a first-person game and continued the story of RE7 protagonist Ethan Winters – but the team had already planned the addition of a village setting, inspired by Resident Evil 4. That mixture of old and new has led to Sato describe the game as the 'offspring' of RE4 and RE7, rather than a reboot of one, or a simple sequel to the other. It's meant as a pure blend of the two. You can read much more about that in our extensive interview with Sato and producer Tsuyoshi Kanda, and there's plenty of exclusive Resident Evil Village info for you beyond that. Right now you can read our IGN First hands-on preview of the game's first five hours, meet the game's main villains, and check out the first footage of the game on last-gen. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.