With a new trailer that revealed the return of Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus, Spider-Man: No Way Home is teasing an expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that could encompass previous cinematic incarnations of the webslinger. Along with Molina and Jamie Foxx's Electro, the cast is also rumored to include the return of both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's versions of Peter Parker.

While Garfield has emphatically denied any involvement in the MCU film before, the actor offered another canny response when asked about the casting rumors in a recent Variety profile.

"I understand why people are freaking out about the concept... because I’m a fan as well. You can’t help but imagine scenes and moments of ‘Oh, my God, how f—ing cool would it be if they did that?’" Garfield said. “It’s important for me to say on the record that this is not something I’m aware I am involved in.

"I know I’m not going to be able to say anything that will convince anyone that I don’t know what’s happening," he continued. "No matter what I say, I’m f—ed. It’s either going to be really disappointing for people or it’s going to be really exciting.”

Garfield also reflected on his own tenure as Peter Parker in the interview. Although his run came to an abrupt end after the release of 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the actor still thinks back on his time making superhero movies fondly.

"It was only beautiful," Garfield said. "I got to meet Emma [Stone] and work with her and Sally Field. I had karma with [Sony Pictures co-chairman] Amy Pascal, who was a mother figure, and we would fight, but ultimately, we loved each other on a deep level. We tried to meet as much in the middle as we could in terms of why I wanted to do this role, and what her needs were as the head of the studio."

Spider-Man: No Way Home is set to hit theaters on December 17. For more about the upcoming MCU movie, read about how fans are arguing if an old villain is hidden in the teaser and check out our complete analysis of the trailer.

J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

Fallout 76's newest season arrives today, despite a previous announcement that it would be delayed. Bethesda Game Studios says the Fallout Worlds update, along with the start of Season 6, is out today, adding Public and Custom Worlds game modes to Fallout 76.

Fallout Worlds introduces two new customizable ways to play Fallout 76. Public Worlds will feature a rotation of themed experiences that will shake up the world for all players. One example is an option called Happy Builder, that will reduce building restrictions and disable PvP.

The update also introduces Custom Worlds, which will be available for those who subscribe to Falloust 1st, the game's premium membership. Here, players can create a game world tailored to their liking. Up to eight friends can play in one Custom World together, and players can even invite friends who don't have a Fallout 1st membership. You can find more information on the new game modes by reading Bethesda's official patch notes.

Bethesda says custom servers have always been the long-term goal for Fallout 76. Upon announcing the Fallout Worlds update earlier this year, Bethesda said, "Our modding community has been an enormous part of our games for over 20 years, and it's always been our long-term goal with Fallout 76 to give you your own servers to customize for yourself and your friends."

The studio originally decided to delay the new season because of a bug impacting microtransactions. While the developers continue investigating the bug, they are disabling purchased rank-ups at the start of Season 6. The devs say they will announce their plan to reintroduce rank purchases whenever they've solved the bug.

To apologize for the confusion caused by the update's release timing, Season 6 will kick off with special events that will run from today through Monday, September 13.

For more, check out IGN's Fallout 76 performance review, where we tested the FPS boost on Xbox Series X|S.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

We're less than two months away from Ghostbusters: Afterlife's release, and key members of the film are now set to show new footage of the movie at New York Comic Con.

Director Jason Reitman, producer Ivan Reitman, and members of the cast will head to New York Comic Con next month to unveil even more details about the next chapter in the Ghostbusters saga. The panel will take place Friday, October 8 at 3:30 p.m. Pacific / 6:30 p.m. Eastern / 11:30 p.m. UK.

New York Comic Con 2021 will be an in-person event taking place from October 7 to October 10. A virtual element is being planned alongside the event as well.

We won't have to wait long to actually see the movie after its appearance at Comic Con. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is set to release exclusively in theaters on November 19. Earlier this month, the movie was delayed just one week from November 12 to the 19th.

For more, you can watch IGN's exclusive Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer breakdown with director Jason Reitman. Or, take a look at the movie's new and returning cast members, including franchise staples Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. They'll have to deal with the newest ghost to join the series, Muncher.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

With Deathloop less than a week away, Bethesda has released the hardware requirements needed to run the PC version. In addition to specifics on the minimum and recommended specs required to run the game, Bethesda has also revealed that the PC version will include support for FidelityFX Super Resolution.

Released last June, FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is AMD's supersampling technology that aims to make your PCs work smarter, not harder. FidelityFX Super Resolution offers four image upscaling modes: Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced, and Performance. Each mode focuses on achieving either higher image quality or increasing the frame rate in games.

From recommended system specs to pre-load times and file size, here's everything you need to gear up for DEATHLOOP's launch day!https://t.co/OhpYbBsmd7

— DEATHLOOP (@deathloop) September 8, 2021

FSR serves somewhat as a competitor to Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) tech; however, there are some major differences between the two. Mainly, DLSS relies on machine learning, whereas FSR does not. FSR is also open-source and supports AMD and Nvidia GPUs, including the aging GTX 10-series of graphics cards, which do not support DLSS.

Deathloop joins FSR's slowly growing list of games that support the tech. This list includes Valve's Dota 2, Capcom's Resident Evil Village, and Ubisoft Toronto's Far Cry 6.

Here are the full specs for Deathloop below:

ULTRA 4K SPECS: 4K / 60 FPS WITH ULTRA SETTINGS

OS: 64 bit Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
Processor : Intel Core i9-10900K @ 3.70GHz or AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT
Memory : 16 GB system RAM
Graphics : Nvidia RTX 3080 (10GB) or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16GB)
DirectX : Version 12
Storage : 30 GB available space (SSD)

RECOMMENDED SPECS: 1080P / 60 FPS WITH HIGH SETTINGS

OS : 64 bit Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
Processor : Intel Core i7-9700K @ 3.60GHz or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
Memory : 16 GB
Graphics : Nvidia RTX 2060 (6GB) or AMD Radeon RX 5700 (8GB)
DirectX : Version 12
Storage : 30 GB available space (SSD)

MINIMUM SPECS: 1080P / 30 FPS WITH LOW SETTINGS

OS : 64 bit Windows 10 version 1909 or higher
Processor : Intel Core i5-8400 @ 2.80GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Memory : 12 GB
Graphics : Nvidia GTX 1060 (6GB) or AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
DirectX : Version 12
Storage : 30 GB available space (HDD)

Alongside a PC version, Deathloop will also release on PS5 where it will be a console timed-exclusive for one year. Ahead of the release, IGN had the chance to do a hands-on preview of the game.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

It’s been one year since Marvel’s Avengers hit the scene, and developer Crystal Dynamics released a new road map for the rest of 2021. With details for the first raid, a power level cap increase, and, of course, confirming again that Spider-Man is slated to come to PlayStation later this year.

In an extensive new blog, Crystal Dynamics looks back at the year, including all the ups and downs, as well as looks towards the future providing a glimpse at some upcoming content.

First thing’s first, yes, Spider-Man is still slated to be released sometime this year as a playable character in a new Hero Event exclusive to PlayStation players. Unfortunately, that’s about all the details Crystal Dynamics shared today. The team also confirmed that Spider-Man or Avengers will not be showcased in this week’s PlayStation livestream.

The roadmap also revealed Avengers’ very first raid content. Called “Discordant Sound” the raid will come in Standard (power level 150-160) and Elite modes (power level 160-175) and will have players face Klaw. The raid will conclude his story from the War for Wakanda expansion.

Crystal Dynamics says the raid will “be the most challenging content yet” and will test players’ individual skills, four-player teamwork, and observational skills.

On the quality of life side of things, Crystal Dynamics confirmed that there will be a power-level cap increase coming to Avengers. However, Crystal Dynamics says the increase won’t come at the expense of the gear players have already earned. Coming with the level increase, there will be a new system that lets players upgrade Epic, Legendary, & Exotic gear from power level 100 to the new power level cap.

Avengers will also introduce a more streamlined approach to resources at some point in the future. This change will make it so that resources like Polychoron and Upgrade Modules will be reserved for specific uses like upgrading major artifacts and upgrading gear respectively. The only resource that will have multiple uses will be Fragments.

To celebrate the one-year anniversary, Avengers will roll out several in-game community activities. From September 2 - 16, anyone who completed all story-based campaigns including the post-launch content like Reassemble, Taking Aim, Future Imperfect, and War for Wakanda will earn a celebratory nameplate.

The nameplate will be a retroactive reward for anyone who has already completed these campaigns.

There will also be free weekly rewards this month starting with a free Iron Man outfit and anniversary bundle (Black Panther nameplate, Hero’s Catalyst, and Fragment Extractor) followed by a free Thor outfit and additional Hero’s Catalyst a week later.

Although the initial launch for Avengers has been rocky, Crystal Dynamics is working continuously on improving the experience and says that player feedback is the team’s number one priority. And while there’s still no concrete info on Spider-Man just yet, he’s still slated to arrive in 2021 as per the newest roadmap.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Marvel Comics has announced King Conan, their latest new project featuring the iconic barbarian hero. However, this story has a unique selling point. It's poised to finally shed light on the last and least known chapter of Conan's life.

King Conan is written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Mahmud Asrar, the same team who launched Marvel's monthly Conan the Barbarian comic in 2019. This six-issue series picks up where their run left off in Conan the Barbarian #12, as an aging King Conan and his son, Prince Conn, sail west from Aquilonia and seek out new adventures in an unfamiliar land.

Conan creator Robert E. Howard never got around to chronicling this period of the character's long and bloody career before the author's death in 1936, and none of the movies, comics or other licensed stories have ever revealed what happened after Conan sailed west. It's unclear whether this series will actually depict Conan's death, but Marvel is ominously billing it as the Cimmerian's "last stand."

“I knew as soon as Mahmud, Matt and I finished 'The Life and Death of Conan' in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, one of the absolute personal highlights from my career as a comic book writer, that I wasn't done hanging out with everyone's favorite Cimmerian,” Aaron told Marvel.com. “As King Conan rode into the sunset at the end of that story, with his son, Prince Conn, by his side, I always knew where I wanted that story to take us next. Now at last comes that next chapter, as Mahmud, Matt and I reunite to reveal a pivotal moment in Conan's life as a king, as a father, as a mortal enemy of snake-worshipping Stygian wizards and as a barbarian who was born to chase the wind, even to the ends of the earth.”

King Conan #1 is slated to hit stores on December 15, 2021.

Marvel is also gearing up for Star Wars: Crimson Reign, a new limited series that builds on the fallout of the War of the Bounty Hunters crossover. The series will revolve heavily around the familiar movie character who recently made their surprise return in War of the Bounty Hunters.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

After Black Widow's release plans changed, Scarlett Johansson's team reportedly tried to negotiate a deal with Disney for the star to receive $100 million for the movie.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, "the calculation was based on what the star would receive in a hypothetical global box-office take of $1.2 billion," a sum that was estimated based on Marvel's past theatrical releases before the COVID-19 pandemic, plus Johansson's $20 million starting salary for her titular role in the movie.

The actress' representatives allegedly approached Disney with the $100 million figure as a "starting bid" after learning that Black Widow would be released as a Premier Access movie on Disney Plus the same day as it hit theaters — however, the report states that negotiations didn't get off the ground as Disney never made a counteroffer.

Johansson decided to sue Disney over the alleged Black Widow contract breach after the movie debuted simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access, and Disney and Marvel were "unresponsive" to negotiations despite Johansson's contract reportedly assuring her that the movie would be released exclusively in theaters.

According to an email within the lawsuit, highlighted again in the recent WSJ report, Marvel Chief Counsel Dave Galluzzi is said to have told Johansson's representatives that there would need to be discussions if plans changed "as the deal is based on a series of (very large) box office bonuses" for Johansson.

The report notes that one of the reasons contract negotiations fell apart was because of uncertainty over who should lead the discussion. Disney CEO Bob Chapek was reportedly focused on pandemic-related company matters and passed the deal-making power to others in the organization, but Bob Iger and Alan Horn also reportedly stayed out of the dispute.

Disney later responded to Johansson's lawsuit, claiming they had "fully complied with Ms. Johansson's contract" and that Black Widow's release on Disney Plus Premier Access had actually "significantly enhanced" the star's ability to earn "additional compensation on top of the $20M" she received as her starting salary for Natasha Romanoff's solo outing.

For more on this story, go inside the Scarlett Johansson/Disney lawsuit and what it could mean for the future of Hollywood.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Bungie is hiring for a new senior executive who will help to bring Destiny's narrative from video games across to the world of TV, film, and more.

A career listing on Bungie's website for a new senior executive development role at the studio (spotted by TheGamePost) says that the successful candidate will "drive projects that extend the Destiny franchise into new categories including TV, films, books, comics, and audio formats."

Bungie itself doesn't appear to be hiring for positions to create the new range of Destiny products in-house. Instead, the new executive's role will be to "identify, select, guide, collaborate, and provide feedback to third parties and partners enabling them to tell additional myths in the Destiny universe that delight our fans while capturing the hearts and minds of new audiences."

In terms of the expansion, it would seem that Bungie is open to exploring a number of different avenues. As a requirement, the new executive will need to have been credited on a number of films/series with "experience in animation, scripted television development or current programming," also listed. Bungie also notes that additional credit may be awarded to a suitable candidate with experience in fictional novel and graphic novel publishing.

Although Bungie hasn't confirmed any details surrounding Destiny's potential expansion as a television series, the listing seems to suggest that a move toward the format would take the form of an animated series as opposed to a live-action show.

With Destiny already a globally recognized franchise with an incredibly devoted community behind it, some fans may fear that a move to other formats under incorrect supervision could be detrimental to the game's lore and characters. With this in mind, it seems that Bungie is looking for someone already heavily invested within the Destiny Universe. On top of extensive multimedia experience, Bungie requires applicants to have a passion for the Destiny Universe and says that an ideal candidate will have spent hundreds of hours playing Destiny and exploring its world.

In other related news, Destiny 2 recently launched into its latest Season of the Lost update and announced details surrounding the game's upcoming Witch Queen expansion, which is due out February 22. As Bungie looks to take Destiny to new mediums, perhaps we'll see Savathûn and her siblings make their debut elsewhere on other formats in the future.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Sony has acquired UK developer Firesprite, marking the third studio acquisition from Sony this year alone.

As noted on the PlayStation Blog, Firesprite has worked closely with Sony, creating several titles together. Most notably, the developer helped to create The Playroom and The Playroom VR. Firesprite is also the developer behind The Persistence, a horror shooter originally released on the PS4 as a PSVR title before becoming a non-VR version on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC two years later.

"We’ve had the pleasure of working with many talented developers and publishers across the industry and PlayStation, in particular, has been a friend and co-development partner for the best part of a decade," Firesprite Managing Director Graeme Ankers said in the announcement post.

It's something of a full circle moment, as Firesprite was formed by members of the disbanded Sony Liverpool after it closed in 2012. With over a 250-person team, Firesprite marks a major addition to PlayStation's stable of developers, too. In an interview with GameIndustry, Firesprite confirmed that it would work on games outside of the genres currently covered by Sony's other in-house studios.

This marks the third studio Sony Interactive Entertainment has purchased in 2021. In June, Sony acquired Housemarque, the Finnish developer that released the PS5-exclusive Returnal earlier this year. In July, Sony announced that it had acquired Nixxes, a Dutch studio that specializes in porting games to PC. Firesprite becomes the 14th studio in the wider PlayStation Studios stable.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Activision Blizzard is currently facing serious ongoing allegations of harassment and mistreatment of marginalized workers. To learn more, please visit our timeline as well as our in-depth report on the subject.

Diablo 2: Resurrected won't feature ultrawide monitor support when it launches on September 23 due to the discovery that the wider screens break AI mechanics within the original game.

Following the technical beta for Diablo 2: Resurrected, developer Vicarious Visions and Blizzard Entertainment took to updating fans on a number of in-game features that the team has revisited. As well as briefing players on changes that had been made to console lobbies and offering more insight into the removal of TCP/IP support (which it dropped back in August), Blizzard also updated fans on the subject of ultrawide monitors and why players won't be able to utilize the full width of their 21:9 screens when the game launches.

According to Blizzard, the issue mainly stems from the game's AI not registering players at distances available to those using 21:9 ultrawide screens. The update post expands on issues caused by ultrawide screens in the game:

"Ultrawide monitor support being modified was a subject we saw heavily discussed across our channels following the Beta. In the Technical Alpha, players with Ultrawide hardware saw their full 21:9 screens utilized during that test. However, during that test we identified limitations affecting those players and others. For example, the AI failed to sense the player and trigger attacks. Furthermore, players with 21:9 monitors were able to pull many more monsters into battle at a range limit beyond the original game’s intention. In a scenario where players (for example: playing a ranged class) were attacking monsters, players with 21:9 monitors could hit enemies with that extra screen space, but the monsters would not pull or react, but could still be defeated. Ultimately, the AI doesn’t register getting hit from that additional distance a 21:9 monitor provides. That’s not intended, especially if you’re sharing a game with a 16:9 user. To protect the integrity of everyone’s experience and promote an equal playing field for all, those with Ultrawide monitors will be able to have their game screen purview extended to 19:9 (the maximum length of the in-game limitation zones) with a vignette on the sides of the game screen."

Blizzard acknowledged that players are likely to have paid top-dollar for their ultrawide monitors and in doing so may feel irritated by the inclusion of black bars on the screen during their playthrough. In response to this, Blizzard has said that that it will continue to "explore possible solutions that don’t change how the game is played."

Elsewhere in the post, Blizzard said that two of its core principles for the game are "protecting the authenticity of the original Diablo II experience and making it more accessible in this modern age." Whilst finding a way to include ultrawide monitor support would arguably lean into the latter, a future patch to address the issue currently looks far from certain.

To read more about the upcoming remaster for Diablo 2, you can check out this piece that details everything you need to know about the game.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.