In the wake of the initial announcement of Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart, one question was on everyone's minds: who was that very cool new lombax?

After months of internet theories and embarrassing people referring to her as just "Girl Ratchet" or similar, we finally learned her name was Rivet — an absolutely perfect name for an equal fighter to Ratchet from another dimension. But as it turns out, it wasn't an easy road for developer Insomniac to arrive at Rivet's incredible design, her place in Rift Apart, or even her excellent name itself.

In his GDC talk: "Lombax Lessons: A 'Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart' Design Postmortem," Insomniac lead designer Mark Stuart walked attendees through the story of Rivet's naming and design. Rivet was born from one of Rift Apart's design pillars, he said, which is that “Everyone's a Hero,” meaning the team had an opportunity to create a "strong, playable, female lead" alongside Ratchet.

They began work on Rivet early on under the code name "Ratchette," but quickly nixed it for being "too diminutive" and "reducing her existence to a gender-swapped Ratchet," he said.

And then, Stuart continued, things got even sillier.

"For a while we switched to her just being named Ratchet. After all, she and Ratchet are technically dimensional counterparts. Ratchet is a non-gendered name. This stuck for a while, but ultimately made every draft of the story very confusing. For example: 'Ratchet needs to rescue Clank from Ratchet, who doesn't trust Ratchet and has a long history battling Nefarious.' At a time where story treatments were being rapidly iterated on, it was hard to tell what dimension you were in, but also which Ratchet you were talking about."

Next, Stuart said, they switched to the codename Gadget. That was better, but it ultimately didn't sit right with team members who were kids in the 80s due to multiple other similar characters named Gadget from around that era (Inspector Gadget and Gadget from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers were given as examples in his slideshow).

Then in a weekly meeting where name ideas were being thrown around, someone pitched Rivet off the cuff and people immediately loved it. It fit perfectly as another tool like Ratchet, and it also called to mind an image of Rosie the Riveter. And so Rivet became canon.

Stuart then went on to share details about the early visual designs of Rivet. He took us through a number of interesting pieces of concept art (which artist Dave Guertin has also shared on his personal page), showing off how the Insomniac team explored different themes for the character. Early on, one they honed in on was the concept of the "survivalist beastmaster."

This version of Rivet would have leaned into her grudge against Nefarious, extending it to all machines to the point of a total rejection of machinery. Instead, Rivet would embrace nature, and would have the ability to tame three different mounts: a beetle, a flyer, and an Agorian beast.

Rivet's beast taming ability was ultimately rejected, though, in part because in this version of the game Ratchet was turning out to be much more fun to play. His regular toolkit let him do everything Rivet could do without the assistance of other creatures. But there's another reason they nixed the idea.

"We realized the nature-loving woman was a trope," Stuart said. "Think FernGully, Pocahontas, or Krystal from Star Fox. Moreover, constraining the theme of her weaponry stifled the creativity the franchise was known for. Ratchet's weapons can shift, cut, bomb, and transmute. Making her set exclusively nature-based put unnecessary constraints on us."

Ultimately the nature design did inspire a few of Rivet's final weapons, like Mr. Fungi, and some of the beast ideas were later recycled into Rift Apart's Speedle and Trudi, though Speedle lost an earlier concept ability where it had a large, glowing butt that would explode whenever it collided with something. Apparently, murdering your mounts didn't jive with the idea that "everyone's a hero".

Insomniac still struggled to find a good way to make Rivet distinct, though. They tried giving Rivet and Ratchet completely different ability sets, but that made it frustrating for playtesters, who would forget which lombax they were in control of at a given time and realize mid-jump they didn't have the abilities they thought they did. So Insomniac added the ability to swap between the two on the fly, but that was also confusing in action, and they were hard-pressed to create a lore explanation for where the other lombax went when they swapped out, or who was where during the cinematics.

"Faced with the knowledge that strongly differentiated playstyles were actively hurting the holistic experience, we were forced to reexamine how long we were going to play as each lombax," Stuart said. "Or to put it another way: is Rivet cake, or frosting? Is she what makes up the core of the game, like Ratchet, or is she a unique and enjoyable diversion in small doses throughout? After all, Clank has drastically different mechanics than Ratchet in most games, but we only play as him for [a small portion] of the game. Clank is generally considered to be delightful frosting. A lot of these problems go away if Rivet is only playable for small, focused sections of the game."

But to find an answer, Insomniac had only to look back to its design pillars, including "Everyone's a Hero." Insomniac had wanted from the beginning to include a strong, playable, female protagonist, and they wanted to make the best distinctively Ratchet & Clank game they could from start to finish. Put together, that meant no shortcuts with Rivet.

"Rivet needed to be pure cake like Ratchet," Stuart continued. "We wanted Rivet to be core gameplay. Her inclusion was meant to be inspirational representation and not a bonus mechanic. In fact, in the final product, she makes up about 50% of the playtime."

Which is how we got the Rivet we know today. Insomniac unified the two under the same pool of weapons and abilities, then differentiated them in other ways, such as personality, appearance, animations, and obviously the story. And we're glad they landed on the Rivet we know and love, as you can tell from our launch review of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and its place as one of our favorite games of 2021.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Blizzard has clarified that the launch date listed for Diablo Immortal on iOS and iPadOS is only a placeholder and that an official date will be announced in the future.

The company opened iOS and iPadOS pre-orders for Diablo Immortal today, as well as pre-registration for Android users, with a listed release date of June 30. Placeholder dates are common for upcoming games, but they can often provide a bit of confusion, thus Blizzard has sought to clear things up.

"As a point of clarification for anyone who pre-registers on iOS and iPadOS, players will notice that the game is listed with a launch date of June 30," Blizzard told IGN in a statement. "We want to make it clear that June 30 is not the official launch date of Diablo Immortal, and this is just a placeholder for the time being as we lock in our final plans. We will update the community with our official launch timing at a later date."

In addition to opening pre-orders, Blizzard also shared that Diablo Immortal will feature an option for users to change their class without having to start new characters. By visiting Westmarch, players can select a new class and fresh visuals for their character without losing any of the progress made with previous classes.

The ability to change classes with relative ease appears to function similarly to Final Fantasy 14's job system, which allows players to move effortlessly between different styles of play without any notable downsides. This type of functionality effectively removes the need for alt characters, granting users the freedom to remain invested in a single character regardless of what role they wish to play.

We went hands-on with Diablo Immortal's closed beta, as well as its closed alpha last year and had mixed feelings. Though it's a fun romp with the series' iconic setting and slick gameplay, we found that some of its convoluted free-to-play mobile elements brought the experience down.

Hopefully, some of these issues will be ironed out in the final release, which is planned for sometime in 2022.

Billy Givens is a freelance writer at IGN.

The Batman director Matt Reeves has considered whether Barry Keoghan's Joker might return in the future, noting that a project in the "Arkham space" has already been discussed.

Fans have been keen to see more of Keoghan's Joker ever since Warner Bros. released The Batman deleted scene featuring the Clown Prince of Crime – officially credited as "Unnamed Arkham Prisoner" – though many wondered whether they would actually get to see the villain on-screen again after Reeves confirmed that it wasn't an easter egg for the next movie.

However, in a new interview with Variety, Reeves sounded a lot more hopeful about the prospect- of Keoghan's Joker returning for another project. He suggested that it is "very possible" they could find places for the character to re-emerge in the future and that he has already talked about exploring certain areas further, "potentially for HBO Max."

"There might be places," Reeves said, regarding the return of Keoghan's iteration of the Crown Prince. "There's stuff I'm very interested in doing in an Arkham space, potentially for HBO Max. There are things we've talked about there. So it's very possible. It also isn't impossible that there is some story that comes back where Joker comes into our world."

The Batverse is already expanding with multiple spinoffs, as Colin Farrell has signed on to star in a Penguin series for HBO Max, and the Gotham City PD series that was originally announced in 2020 has now "evolved" into a series focused on Arkham Asylum. The full cast for these two projects has yet to be announced as they're both in very early development.

It remains an open question as to whether or not Keoghan will keep playing the Joker, but the character is certainly looking rougher in Reeves' version of Gotham. The director elaborated on Mike Marino's makeup design for Joker, telling IGN that he wanted to "create an iteration of him that felt distinctive and new, but went right back to the roots."

Despite giving the character much consideration and including a tease to the Joker at the end of The Batman, it's clear that Reeves hasn't fully committed to him being a villain in the sequel. Reeves has, however, teased other potential sequel villains including Mr. Freeze and Two-Face while Pattinson has said he'd like to see Batman take on the Court of Owls.

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

One Piece Odyssey is a new JRPG coming in 2022 to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

The official One Piece YouTube channel revealed the game in a live stream with Bandai Namco confirmed to be publishing the game in the west.

One Piece Odyssey's producer Katsuaki Tsuzuki has promised "an epic drama adventure which both One Piece fans and JRPG fans can experience and enjoy."

He added: "One Piece RPG experiences are scattered throughout the game such as the story woven by Straw Hats, the dungeon experience, and various quests."

Eiichiro Oda, author of the One Piece manga, designed the characters and monsters in Odyssey, and Bandai Namco has confirmed several playable characters including Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper, Robin, Frankie, and Brook.

A blog post on the publisher's website also offers a story synopsis: "During their voyage, the Straw Hats, led by Monkey D. Luffy are swallowed by a huge storm at sea. They end up on a mysterious island full of nature amidst the storm and become separated from each other.

"The crew set outs on a new adventurous journey filled with wonders of a raging nature, powerful enemies, and strange encounters with island locals."

Motoi Sakuraba, a composer who worked on both the Dark Souls and Tales series, is also confirmed to have written the music for Odyssey.

The news came as part of a One Piece news update, which also spoke more about Netflix's live-action adaptation of One Piece.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Call of Duty Warzone can't have multiple main maps available at the same time because the install sizes are too big.

In an interview with streamer TeeP, as spotted by PC Gamer, Call of Duty live operations lead Josh Bridge said he and the team want to include more maps but the install sizes are "f**king crazy".

Warzone's original map, Verdansk, was replaced by Caldera in December 2021, and TeeP asked if a map rotation option similar to the one in Apex Legends would ever come to the game.

Bridge said: "We want that. We all want that, [but] there's a technical problem: the install and reinstall sizes are f**king crazy."

Warzone currently requires more than 120 gigabytes of storage on PlayStation 5 and a similar amount on other consoles, while the PC install requires around 80 GB.

The huge install size puts players off, Bridge said, adding that each new update (that requires more storage space) loses the game players.

This is because Warzone was built within Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, meaning its assets were intended for the usual six versus six player matches on small maps. "Verdansk was never authored with the idea that 180 weapons were going to be added to it," Bridge said.

Major changes came to the battle royale last week in the Season Two Reloaded update, which gave Warzone's Rebirth Island its biggest update since launch.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land marked the franchise's first foray into 3D but fans shouldn't assume its the new normal.

Developer HAL Laboratory's general director, Shinya Kumazaki. told The Washington Post that 3D Kirby games won't necessarily "be the standard going forward".

He added: "Nintendo is on the same page as us, and this is something we talk about often. We hope to go beyond what is currently imaginable and challenge ourselves to create new and innovative Kirby games.

"This game was one of those challenges coming to fruition. We will continue to explore via trial and error and not just limit ourselves to 3D."

The leaps taken in Kirby and the Forgotten Land should not be understated though, Kumazaki said, and it can certainly be considered an "important milestone" in the franchise.

As the Switch exclusive only released a few days ago on March 28, it's unlikely that HAL Laboratory will release information on what these future games might be anytime soon. That being said, Nintendo has promised that a variety of Kirby announcements are coming in 2022 as the franchise celebrates its 30th anniversary.

In our 8/10 review, IGN said: "Kirby and the Forgotten Land successfully warps the series’ classic mix of ability-based combat, platforming, and secret hunting into the third dimension."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Viral hit Vampire Survivors is getting a lot more content ahead of its official launch on Steam.

Developer Poncle has released a roadmap for the game after its Early Access launch on December 17 became a huge success.

Five more levels, nine more characters, 16 more weapons, and two more power ups are being added to Vampire Survivors, and it's also being ported to an industry-standard game engine.

Poncle is also adding new achievements and Relics alongside a brand new item called Arcanas, but no further information on what these do was given.

A "new major gameplay mechanic" will also be implemented, the developer said, and while it's currently undecided which one, "some kind of endless mode" is the frontrunner.

This will come at the expense of the story mode, however, but "this doesn't necessarily mean that story mode is gone forever," Poncle said in the post, indicating that Vampire Survivors' lore may be best told through environmental storytelling.

The post added: "Thanks to the overwhelming success and support from the players, new content has started to come out at a much faster pace than anticipated and the roadmap has also been expanded significantly.

"The amount of playable characters planned for version 1.0 of the game has been doubled and so has the number of stages with the introduction of bonus/challenge ones."

The port to an industry-standard engine is being worked on alongside these outlined updates with the help of a newly recruited team. Poncle said the port is "going smoothly" and is showing "a tenfold increase in performance". Poncle aims for work on this to be completed in the summer, and save games will transfer from the old version to the new engine.

No timeframe was shared in the post but it said the game is currently 70% complete, compared to 60% when the game was first released in Early Access.

In our 7/10 review, IGN said: "It may look extremely basic, but if you give Vampire Survivors' clever one-stick shooter idea a chance to sink its teeth into you it might not let go for a while."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

NASA is gearing up to launch its first-ever space tourism mission to the International Space Station, with liftoff currently scheduled for April 3.

As Digital Trends reports, the space agency is just days away from launching its very first privately crewed mission that will see three amateur astronauts travel to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which will lift off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on April 3, with the company's Falcon 9 rocket powering its trip to orbit.

Former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría will serve as commander on the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) alongside a trio of space tourists who reportedly paid around $55 million to travel to the space station and spend eight days at the off-Earth outpost where they will conduct "scientific research, outreach, and commercial activities," per a recent NASA press release.

López-Alegría, who is now a vice president at Axiom Space, will be joined on the mission by Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy, American entrepreneur Larry Connor, and former Israeli Air Force pilot Eytan Stibbe, who have participated in hundreds of hours of training ahead of the upcoming launch, including test driving the Dragon spacecraft.

After months of training, the #Ax1 Crew is getting ready to head into quarantine for the final phase of preparation for this historic mission.

Check out the new crew photo: https://t.co/UhX4uACuAN pic.twitter.com/gaPhcYfTAK

— Axiom Space (@Axiom_Space) March 16, 2022

The International Space Station has been orbiting Earth for 23 years, but NASA has plans to retire the outpost in 2030. It could possibly be succeeded by Axiom Space's commercial space station or the Orbital Reef station, which is being built in low Earth orbit by Blue Origin in partnership with several other space companies, including Boeing, Sierra Space, and more.

The space tourism race is certainly intensifying, with more and more companies gearing up to offer commercial flights to space via various alternative modes of transport. World View announced last year that it had designed a 14-million-cubic-foot, helium-filled balloon capsule to send curious travellers to "the edge of space" for $50,000 per ticket.

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

Thumbnail image credit: NASA.

Bretwulfo kept stumbling across a message that will be familiar to anyone who’s played Elden Ring: “Try finger, but hole.” At this point, many players would probably roll their eyes at finding yet another use of the game’s messaging system to graffiti crude humour across FromSoft’s incredible fantasy world. The problem was that Bretwulfo is Brazilian, and plays the game in Portuguese – that oft-seen message simply does not translate the same way.

“I was always plunging into holes thinking there was going to be something in it,” Bretwulfo says. “I only got what it was supposed to mean after someone placed it on the ass of a corpse.”

For players who don’t speak English as their first language, Elden Ring’s many meme-messages can be far more of a troll than they were ever intended to be – and English-speaking players may well be getting just as confused by some international equivalents.

“Try finger, but hole”; “Fort, night”; “Dog”; these are just some of the many memes that the English-speaking Elden Ring community have been flooding the game’s messaging system with over the last month. While they might seem like strange phrases in isolation, they’re a product of the game’s communications being restricted by design. You can’t just freely write whatever you want in Elden Ring and stamp it outside some boss fog. Everyone has the same limited number of phrases to choose from, all of which can be cleverly combined to help or hinder fellow Tarnished (it’s usually hinder).

What you may not have known is that the game’s messaging system operates on a global scale – and understandably these player-posted phrases aren’t fully localised for other languages. Instead, they’re translated quite literally – and it’s led to all kinds of international confusion in The Lands Between.

The most famous early example comes from a Twitter user named ETC_only, who recently posted about their experience with the “Fort, night” meme. Anyone who plays Elden Ring in English will easily recognise this for what it is -- a pun on the only game on Earth where Neymar can beat up Kratos next to a stage Travis Scott has performed on. But ETC is from Japan, and the translation is far too literal for the joke to carry over. ETC’s resulting Twitter post about the issue went viral, roughly translating to:

"I've been searching for a big night-only event at some fort because I see messages like 'Fort, night' everywhere in Elden Ring, but apparently people playing in English are [just posting] Fort and Night."

ETC spent a significant amount of time trying to trigger nighttime events in Elden Ring purely due to the number of “Fort, night” messages they came across. To make matters worse, Elden Ring actually does feature a variety of different scenarios that are locked to different times of day -- bosses like Night’s Cavalry, Deathbird, and Bell Bearing Hunter will never appear while the sun is up. In that context, when you come across a note saying “Fort, night”, it’s only natural to assume that someone or something is planning to throw down at Stormveil or Castle Morne once dusk hits.

IGN recently had a chat with ETC about their time with Elden Ring, as well as several other players from various different countries who echoed their experience. At time of writing, we have been informed of similar misinterpretations occurring in Japanese, Chinese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, and more -- and that’s just for “Fort, night.”

“The ‘Fort, night' one did something very different to me,” Erikviking98, an Italian, tells IGN. “For me, the situation got worse. One of the first times I saw the ‘Fort, night’ message was in front of the Warmaster’s Shack. If you go [here] at night, you will find a boss. The problem comes because in Italy, the word that translators use to say ‘Fort’ is unusual to indicate a fortress -- the same word is more commonly used to say ‘strong’ or ‘powerful’.

“So, in my eyes, the message was actually saying to look for a strong enemy at nighttime. Since that first time there actually was one, I was misled to believe all of them meant the same thing. Every time I found one of those messages -- which are basically always found in empty shacks like the Warmaster’s one [presumably because they slightly resemble Fortnite’s rickety wooden constructions] -- I thought there was a nighttime-only boss. I came back to the closest Site of Grace countless times to set it to nighttime.”

This is just one meme that unintentionally caused players from non-English-speaking countries to conduct weird and unpredictable experiments. There are lots of other phrases that are translated a bit too literally. ETC explains that messages like “bug ahead” posted in response to weird gameplay behaviours don’t really work in Japanese, because “bug” becomes “虫,” which only means “insect.” Phrases like “Edge, lord” -- pertaining to Ensha, the woman who stands with her arms folded outside Gideon’s study -- are similarly confusing. Lofkor says this appears as “Limits, sir” in Spanish, which led them to believe it had something to do with flirting. Hilariously, she will never actually talk to you -- any attempt to speak to her will only end in silent tears.

Of course, these examples are only for English translations to international versions of the game. It can just as easily work the other way round – ETC alone can think of plenty of other potential mistranslations.

“「この先、馬はないぞ」（no horse ahead）is Chinese internet slang for ‘liar ahead’ that makes no sense in Japanese or English,” they explain. This was later corroborated by Hkgpeanut, a Mandarin-speaking player from Hong Kong:

“The Mandarin for horse(馬) sounds similar to mother(媽), and saying ‘no mother ahead’ [is] similar to ‘f**ker ahead’. If you find it in front of a ‘hidden path ahead’ it’s probably a Mandarin way of saying ‘liar ahead’. Curses related to mothers are common for Mandarin speakers.”

While this hasn’t had as much of an impact on English-speaking players as “Fort, night” has had on people who speak other languages, it could still have an undesirable effect. If an English speaker leaves a message saying “No horse ahead,” another player will likely perceive it as a warning that the in-game horse, Torrent, is unusable in the next area. If they were to unequip their Spectral Steed Whistle -- which would be an efficient choice given that it speeds up cycling through consumables -- they’d possibly never realise that, actually, it was just a Mandarin-speaking player bemoaning someone for making them whack a wall for the 50th time (even if that does work in one specific area). You could have used your horse all along. Sorry.

ETC also wonders if 蛇 (snake), a message often posted in grass or near ladders, isn’t always as obvious a reference to Metal Gear Solid’s Snake for English-speaking players as it is to Japanese ones.

Another potential point of confusion you may have come across: how many of you are wondering why you keep coming across the word “Grass?” Does it mean you should go out and search through grass? Is it a bastardisation of “Grace”? Has someone found a funky farm in Limgrave?

“Grass means lol [for Japanese players],” ETC says. “The word itself became [so] much of a meme that you don't really have to find something laughable, you can just put a「草」message in front of a piece of grass and it would ironically be funny, since most Japanese people would find it hard to interpret the word with its former meaning when it’s actually just a piece of grass.”

Brilliantly, it can have an entirely different meme-meaning if it was posted by a player who speaks Mandarin. “‘Grass’ in Mandarin sounds like ‘f**k’,” Hkgpeanut says. “I saw it near a chest that you have to parkour your way down to. Guess that guy died a lot to reach it.”

For anyone who sees the very similar “Grace” message -- particularly in places where there is not, in fact, a Site of Grace -- there’s a very real possibility you’ve just stumbled across something a Spanish player got a laugh out of.

“I´ve only seen one in-game message that I´m almost certain was posted by a Spanish speaker,” Lofkor says. “In Spanish, ‘Grace’ can also mean ‘funny’ or ‘sense of humour’, so people are making shitposts with dad jokes or old memes followed by a screenshot of ‘Lost Grace Discovered’ (Lost Sense of Humour Discovered). There was this guy that posted a message at the bottom of a ladder saying, ‘Try looking for grace’ -- ‘Intenta buscar gracia’ -- which reads like, ‘Think about why this is funny’. That, I must admit, was pretty funny. Unlike the horde of enemies I was ambushed by because someone put a message under the ladder…”

The beauty of all of this relatively harmless confusion lies in the simple fact that Elden Ring’s messaging system is sufficiently cryptic for overly direct translations to seem genuine.

Most of the players we spoke to have noted that this phenomenon isn’t new to Elden Ring. According to several of the people included in this piece, some more lewd players have been posting messages like “Big chest ahead” in relation to certain bosses since way back when the first Dark Souls launched -- and even back then it was causing people to go looking for extra-large treasure. Lofkor says they would have been much more confused by the number of times they’ve read “however orifice” if not for the fact they’re already acutely aware of “the obsession Dark Souls players have with buttholes.”

Rimavelle, a player from Poland, concurs – and even considers the confusion of older FromSoft games’ messaging systems as something like practice for filtering out the memes in Elden Ring.

“Some of those are old community memes, so I'm familiar with them already and just memorised them,” Rimavelle says. “Sometimes when I'm confused about a message, especially when I've seen multiple of the same ones, I translate them back into English in my head and check if they make sense.”

While Rimavelle’s prior experience with the Souls series gave them greater insight into the kind of jokes the community might be telling, even they struggled with some of the more esoteric phrases. Because “Edge, lord” translates literally in Polish, they spent ages looking at various edges and ledges in the hopes of uncovering some kind of secret.

“Like an idiot,” Rimavelle says. “I figured it was yet another meme when I saw a few of them in a row, and translating them in my head made it finally make sense. Weirdly enough, I didn't see much of the ‘Fort, night’ ones.”

It’s amazing to consider how a messaging system as limited in scope as Elden Ring’s has fostered so much mayhem. People are accidentally playing this game in unusual ways because they’ve been tricked into thinking a Fortnite meme has some kind of deep, hidden significance. It’s an effect that could likely only ever be accomplished in games as lonely, strange, and cryptic as FromSoftware’s creations.

The further question, then, is whether or not this confusion is actually good for the game. While the majority of the people we spoke to appreciate that it’s all in jest, some players online have been quick to label the jokesters of The Lands Between as “trolls” or “griefers.” This is generally more applicable to Tarnished who post messages like “Try jumping” in front of a cliff, as opposed to anyone whose memes are being lost in translation, but it’s still a point worth paying attention to.

“To be honest, FromSoftware should allow players to set a flag on messages like the ones we have on subreddits,” says Erikviking98. “Users could mark messages as jokes, gameplay tips, secrets, spoilers, and so on.”

While this poses an interesting solution, it also invites new problems. There is a genuine divide among players when it comes to FromSoft’s famed messaging systems. People like Erikviking98 might want more transparency when it comes to the nature of individual messages, but Lofkor reckons they’re “pretty impressive given how restrictive the system is.” There’s no clear-cut answer here, which is arguably what the notoriously quiet devs at FromSoft want. Let’s be real -- it would be pretty funny to watch some random guy voluntarily roll off a massive cliff in a game you spent several years of your life working on.

Speaking of which, the idea of FromSoft allowing their extremely serious games to feature cheap tricks and fully-fledged toilet humour is fascinating. What’s the game here? The world lies in ruin, as power-hungry demigods toil over meaningless titles while the weak indiscriminately war with one another like feral animals. Then some lad walks up to a face-down skeleton and writes, “Time for pickle” with a crusty old finger.

It’s ridiculous, but then again, so are most of these games. The conscious juxtaposition of how grave these worlds are with how moronically their inhabitants (read: us) often behave allows experiences like Elden Ring to revel in what is arguably video games’ best attempt at absurdism.

Or maybe it’s just a load of devs giggling whenever someone combines a couple of monosyllabic words to say something really crude. After all, when quizzed about what they did because of these messages, Bretwulfo was plain with their answer:

“Mostly throw myself into holes, haha.”

Cian Maher is a freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter.

An Elden Ring dataminer has found 128 unused icons with detailed artwork hidden in the game files.

Twitter user JesterPatches posted images (below) of the icons which depict the various wildlife and enemies found in Elden Ring.

Each NPC has two icons, one blurred out and one filled in, and JesterPatches believes this indicates that developer FromSoftware once planned to include an in-game bestiary.

#ELDENRING

Looking through the game files I came across a few icons making me believe that a bestiary was planned at some point.

There are 128 icons showing different NPCs. Each NPC shown has 2 icons, one greyed out and another one filled in, so it could be not found and found. pic.twitter.com/9b0Tj6ckm3

— JesterPatches (@JesterPatches) March 27, 2022

If this was the case, players would perhaps have been able to tick off which enemies they had encountered, or maybe even where to find them in the map (like Elden Ring's version of a Pokédex). There's nothing to confirm this was the case, however, as the bestiary idea is just pure fan speculation.

FromSoftware games are known for their deep-rooted layers of secrets, with fans pouring over games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne for years after release.

Elden Ring will likely be the same, as despite being released over a month ago to incredible success in the U.S. and Europe, fans are still finding some pretty bizarre secrets including a pair of fancy underwear and a hidden wall that only opens after 50 hits.

Honorable mentions for "Crab" and "Rennala's Student". pic.twitter.com/O4HmE4bfBQ

— JesterPatches (@JesterPatches) March 27, 2022

Speedrunners have also recently discovered a new glitch dubbed "the Zip", which essentially allows players to teleport through parts of the map. Elden Ring has been completed in under 25 minutes thanks to it, despite the community claiming that speedruns were dead following a patch that nerfed key items.

In our 10/10 review we said "Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path."

To make those choices with the best available information, check out our full guide that features everything you could ever hope to know about Elden Ring, including collectible locations, boss strategies, and more.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.