Xbox and Bethesda have announced that a summer showcase will air on June 12 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK.

This showcase will include upcoming games coming to Xbox and PC, as well as Xbox Game Pass. Currently, the biggest game Xbox has a set release date this year is the highly anticipated Starfield for November 11. So there's a good chance we'll get some more information on it. Arkane's Redfall is also scheduled to launch sometime in 2022, so a release date for it might be revealed too.

Save the date!

Catch the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase on June 12: https://t.co/dmANSvXrbE | #XboxBethesda pic.twitter.com/AMFhrLhAtC

— Xbox (@Xbox) April 28, 2022

While Bethesda already announced The Elder Scrolls VI back in 2018, it might be a while until we hear anything else about it. Since it was annouced before Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda, we could possibly receive confirmation of Xbox and PC exclusivity. MachineGames also announced last year that the studio was working on an Indiana Jones game, so more information about it could be shown as well.

One last possible reveal could be Deathloop's inclusion into Xbox Game Pass in this Fall when its timed-exclusivity period on PlayStation 5 expires.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

Always getting stuck on point-and-click adventure games? Return to Monkey Island has a solution.

During an interview with Ars Technica, creator Ron Gilbert confirmed that the game will have an easy mode, as well as a hint system.

“[One thing] that people really want in games today are built-in hint systems,” he explained. “If [players] don't have a built-in hint system, they're just going to jump over to the web and read a walkthrough.” Encouraging players not to do that, Return to Monkey Island will use a hint system that has been designed to make sense in-game.

It will be “more than just a walkthrough,” he added.

Of course, getting stuck is part of the fun of point-and-click adventures.

Back when The Secret of Monkey Island was released in 1990, I spent hours upon hours clicking around looking for ways to solve puzzles and growing increasingly frustrated when I couldn’t solve them.

But what you always remember is the satisfaction when it finally clicks.

"[There was] a lot of stuff that we did back then and didn't think much about—a lot of very obscure puzzles,” said Gilbert. “Hiding a piece of information somewhere with no clues about where to find it—that kind of thing just wouldn't fly today... Having hint systems means that if you make the puzzle just completely weird and obscure, people just go to the hint system.”

Of course, everyone knew what to do with a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. Right?

Thankfully, there’s also a new easy mode – borrowed from Gilbert’s recent Thimbleweed Park.

This new feature, called “casual mode” in Return to Monkey Island, is designed for “people [for whom] this is their first adventure game, or they haven't played adventure games in a long time, or maybe they have lives and kids now,” explained Gilbert. “They can play the casual mode, which is just a lot of simplification of the puzzles. That is our main way to get people into playing a point-and-click game if they haven't done it before.”

Return to Monkey Island sees Gilbert return to the legendary point-and-click series and is expected to be released later this year.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Nobody asked Zetamasterx to devote a year and a half of their life to capturing Legendary Pokémon with slightly different colour variants to their regular counterparts, but once they started, it became an obsession. For the vast majority of trainers, capturing a Legendary at all is triumph enough – but there are a select few who strive for a prize much, much rarer than that.

In the Pokémon community, these toiling prospectors are known as shiny hunters – a narrow demographic of players who regularly invest hundreds, if not thousands of hours into honing their trade long after the rest of the fanbase have moved onto the inevitable next generation. What this entails is simple: In Gen 8, the most recent generation of mainline Pokémon games, every ‘mon has a 1/4,096 chance to be a different colour to the rest of its species. These odds can be increased to almost 1/100, but even those chances make it a slow process.

If you haven’t already guessed, the objective of shiny hunting is to locate and catch these extremely rare Pokémon. That’s not taking into account that Legendary Pokémon are far rarer than almost any other, meaning shiny versions are very hard to come by.

Zetamasterx collected every single shiny Legendary available in Gen 8.

It’s important to establish the sheer level of busywork here. For Zetamasterx to catch shiny Regirock, they had to soft-reset the game – meaning they saved before the battle, instigated the fight, and then reset their Switch when they realised the Pokémon they were hunting wasn’t shiny – a whopping 18,000 times. And that was after failing their first shiny chance when Regirock struggled to death after 4,000 encounters. Imagine the frustration…

For shiny Palkia, meanwhile, the player embarked on 612 unique Dynamax Adventures, the roguelike minigame introduced in Pokémon Sword & Shield’s’s Crown Tundra expansion. Both the Regirock and Palkia hunts took an entire month to complete, but at time of writing, Zetamasterx is chasing shiny Cresselia in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and is starting to worry that they’ll break that record once more – which certainly isn't helped by the fact they failed to catch their first one of those, too.

These are the most extreme examples of Zetamasterx’s hard work, but there was much more to do than just those – catching every shiny Legendary in Sword & Shield required roughly 18 months of regular play.

What is it that motivates players like Zetamasterx to commit to a time investment of that magnitude?

Danners99, a relatively green practitioner, recently completed their second shiny hunt. Prior to Sun & Moon, their interest in Pokémon was next to non-existent – but after stumbling across some well-known hunters on YouTube, that interest was instantly piqued.

“One [hunt] only took a few hours, but the second spun over two days,” Danners99 says. “As for if I have been enjoying it, I’d say yes – however, I have taken long breaks between hunts because I’m not accustomed to long grinds just yet.”

For some, however, shiny hunting is even more interesting than the base games themselves:

“I got into Pokémon because of shiny hunting,” Late_Experience_1990 says. “I would see YouTubers hunt for them and thought, ‘I want to give this a try!’

“I’ve only been shiny hunting for about a year. As of now, I’m more casual about it – I have school and other games I’m interested in. But it’s pretty rewarding, because most of the time you have to work quite hard for them. It’s like a trophy after a long hunt.”

YouTube is also responsible for FR00DA87’s gravitation to hunting, although their entry point was slightly different. Instead of watching streamers chasing shinies, they got into hardcore Nuzlocke runs, which revolve around a highly specific, self-imposed ruleset: You can only catch the first Pokémon you encounter on each route; if a Pokémon faints, it’s dead; and if you white out, it’s game over. This served as a gateway to shiny hunting, which FR00DA87 soon developed a passion for.

“I think people do it for the satisfaction of the final product,” FR00DA87 says. “That moment when you see the different colour ‘mon with the sparkles after hunting for ages – it feels like pure ecstasy." FR00DA87 is quick to lambast people who pay hackers to artificially generate their shinies, which they see as missing the point.

It's easy to see where they're coming from. FR00DA87 once spent six hours a day, for a week straight, chasing a single, elusive shiny Giratina, which made their reward a whole lot more special than if they'd just bought it off a cloning site for $5.

FR00DA87 is very aware that this isn’t something everyone would be into: “It’s an excessive and boring process for barely anything of worth. If you enjoy feeling great satisfaction after a long deal of non-enjoyable activity, then it’s for you. But if you don't have much spare time or much patience, absolutely not. I just shut my brain off and do a monotonous task for hours on end, so the adrenaline at the end is worth it for me.”

It's no surprise, then, that the single sentiment echoed by all of our interviewees is that the drive to chase shinies boils down to one specific feeling: it’s less the thrill of the hunt itself than the rush of having finished it, with a reward so few other players will have.

This is perhaps best articulated by our most enthusiastic interviewee – a Redditor who goes by the handle Warcraft101.

“I've been into Pokemon for as long as I can remember,” Warcraft101 says. “The hype was unlike anything I'll ever experience again. The cards exploded in popularity – everyone was trading them at school. If you had a holo Charizard, you were Arceus [the name of a Pokémon God].” Just like those shiny cards, the game’s own shinies offer a similar mixture of personal pride and envy from others:

“I believe shiny hunting is popular because of the reward that comes from it. As with most things in life, it’s the journey you remember. Anyone can go out, catch a Pokémon in a minute, and forget all about that moment. When you've spent 20 hours hunting, you feel all types of emotions – and when that sparkle finally appears, it’s absolutely exhilarating.

“We do it because we're dedicated masochists.”

Warcraft101 isn't being hyperbolic when they mention masochism. They're currently 140 runs into their hunt for shiny Ho-oh – whom they affectionately refer to as their "sparkly silver birb" – and it took them an astronomical 1,822 eggs to hatch shiny Pichu, whose very existence they questioned on multiple occasions.

"I started shiny hunting thinking, 'I just want Ho-Oh & Eevee'," they explain. "Boy was I wrong. I still have yet to get my own shiny Ho-Oh, and after I got that first hatched Eevee in 441 eggs, I thought, 'Okay, well maybe I'll just do the Eeveelutions'. Nope. I keep finding random reasons from childhood that inspire me to hunt more.

"Hunts can be very time consuming depending on your method of choice, but [they’re] more rewarding than anything I've ever experienced in a game."

Interestingly, despite some fans’ love for the grind, more recent Pokémon games have taken it upon themselves to streamline the process of shiny hunting. Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee & Pikachu introduced shiny chains, which increase your shiny odds for every Pokémon of the same species you consecutively catch. Pokémon Legends: Arceus, meanwhile, implemented a revised mass outbreak mechanic (a spruced-up version of the similarly named phenomenon from Pokémon Diamond & Pearl) that also heightens your chances. In both of these cases, shinies are visible in the overworld, meaning you don’t have to waste time instigating battles to check your luck.

But the real king – or curse, depending on your preference – of shiny hunting is mobile game Pokémon Go, where your odds and encounter rates can skew higher than any traditional Pokémon game. Alongside Let’s Go and Legends: Arceus, Go is something a lot of shiny hunters feel pretty ambivalent towards.

“I've noticed there are mixed opinions throughout the games,” says Warcraft101. “I personally love most shinies the same, regardless of acquisition. The only ones I'm slightly less fond of are from Go. A lot of people tend to dislike the Pokémon Go shinies because they are easy to get at 1/500 without any extra effort. I've seen some say full odds shinies are the only way.”

Danners99 reckons Arceus’ odds specifically are a little too high. Another interviewee, Whiskey_Rain_, agrees – they believe shiny hunting was too difficult in early games, but was made too easy in Legends: Arceus. In their eyes, Sword & Shield marked the point where Game Freak struck a good balance between the two.

The rest of our shiny hunter interviewees are less worried about the modern trend towards making shiny hunting less approachable.

“I don’t think making shiny hunts easier is a bad thing, because to be honest the 1/4,000 odds are just tedious and monotonous,” says FR00DA87. “Nobody does it for the experience of hunting, so easier odds are never bad. But not stupidly easy like Arceus seems to be, or the Max Lair, which can seem excessive at times when you get two in a row.”

“I think it depends on the game,” another hunter, shiniki, counters. “For example, Dynamax raids feel pretty appropriate for Sword & Shield since that's the mechanic for this gen. I'm not as familiar with Pokémon Go, but I do really enjoy shiny hunting in [Legends: Arceus] – if you complete all the tasks in a Pokémon's ‘Dex entry, you have a higher chance of encountering a shiny. You have to work for it, but the reward is worth it, and you can choose which Pokémon you would prefer to hunt first.

“I know Dynamax wasn't as popular as it could have been due to the NPC AI not being very intelligent, but I would love to see more co-op modes with shiny hunting.”

So what about the future of the series – where do these hunters want their niche pursuit to go in the upcoming Pokémon Scarlet and Violet?

Whiskey_Rain_ is hoping for an additional, ultra-rare shiny variant – particularly for ‘mons like Gengar, whose shiny sprite is barely distinguishable from its ordinary one. Some might point to the even rarer “square shinies” introduced in Gen 8, which are only differentiated by a slightly altered sparkle animation – but fans tend to prefer the idea of all-new colour schemes. For Late_Experience_1990, meanwhile, the current odds in the mainline games are fine. Their main concern about the practice becoming more streamlined is that easier shiny hunting will lead to less valuable shinies.

“I’d like there to be similar odds, because the 1/100ish with the Shiny Charm isn’t awful, but also for each Pokémon to have equal methods of hunting,” FR00DA87 says, referring to how some Pokémon types aren’t affected by the Shiny Charm. “I’ve seen some hunts go into stupid numbers just because of luck, so a hard cap would be nice.”

“I look forward to seeing the new shinies for Gen 9 for sure,” says a more enthusiastic Warcraft101. “I could wish for a ‘complete game’, but I know with the current market in gaming we'll probably be getting a DLC-type deal. I'd love for a returning mechanic such as Mega Evolutions over a new gimmick like Dynamaxing. I've always flirted with the idea of half-shiny distorted-type Pokémon as well.

With all of the above accounts, it’s safe to say that the future of shiny hunting is unclear even for those who devote hundreds of hours to it. After all, with shiny hunting important to such a small sub-set of players, it’s unlikely to be a headline announcement for any new Generation – but that only increases the anticipation for fans when they first get to try out the new games.

One thing is for sure though – shiny hunters will remain as obsessed with the practice as ever. While Zetamasterx has their fingers and toes crossed for a return to Dynamax Adventures, they’re still reeling from the 18-month odyssey they embarked on to complete their collection of shiny Legendaries.

“I’m not sure if I'll hunt them all again in future games,” they say. But the obsession is seemingly never far away. “Maybe I'll give it a try.”

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

Andrew Garfield is taking a break from acting after appearing in a bunch of movies and TV in the last two years.

Speaking to Variety, Garfield said he's ready to relax and live a regular life for a while after appearing in three films last year (including Spider-Man: No Way Home and Tick, Tick... Boom!) and FX's new series Under the Banner of Heaven.

"I'm going to rest for a little bit. I need to recalibrate and reconsider what I want to do next and who I want to be, and just be a bit of a person for a while," he said. "I need to just be a bit ordinary for a while."

For his performance in Tick, Tick... Boom! Garfield was nominated for best actor in a leading role at the Oscars but eventually lost to Will Smith for his performance in King Richard.

He said the awards season, which he described as "a washing machine", alongside the intensity of filming Under the Banner of Heaven - where Garfield plays a Mormon detective investigating the murder of a mother and daughter by fundamentalist members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - contributed to him needing time off.

Especially during filming, "I think it was actually a necessity for us to have game nights and go into nature and hike, and you know, swim and dive and lakes and dance and eat good food, so that we could really come back and fully give ourselves." Garfield said. "We had to keep on taking care of ourselves so that we can take care of the story."

While IGN enjoyed Garfield's performance in Under the Banner of Heaven, we said it feels trapped under the exposition-centric story. In our 5/10 review of the first two episodes, we said: "Under the Banner of Heaven is a plodding adaptation that tries to tell too much and suffers under the weight of it all in its first two episodes."

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

Sony has revealed the PlayStation Plus games for May 2022 are FIFA 22 (PS5 & PS4), Tribes of Midgard (PS5 & PS4), and Curse of the Dead Gods (PS4).

Revealed on the PlayStation Blog, all three games will be made available at no extra cost to all PlayStation Plus subscribers on May 3.

FIFA 22 is the latest entry in EA's football series, which is now almost 'officially' the best football game on the market thanks to the pretty disastrous launch and subsequent updates to Konami's eFootball 2022.

Back to the freebie though, in IGN's 7/10 review, we said: "Microtransactions still loom large, but small iterative changes and the horsepower of new-gen consoles combine to make FIFA 22 feel like a worthwhile upgrade without needing anything revolutionary or terribly exciting from EA’s side."

Tribes of Midgard is a co-op survival game based on Norse mythology, and it's up to the player (or players) to resist the incoming invasion of Giants during Ragnarok. We also gave this one a 7/10 review, saying: "Tribes of Midgard is a hectic, exciting, Norse-flavoured action RPG that is best faced with a shield wall full of friends."

Perhaps saving the best for last, Curse of the Dead Gods is a roguelike action game with fast-paced combat and intense challenges. Players traverse procedurally generated dungeons from an isometric perspective as they build their arsenal before facing different enemies and bosses.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said: "Great action, smart strategy, and random curses carry Curse of the Dead Gods to top tier of the action-roguelite genre."

Players have until May 2 to download April's PlayStation Plus games and PS5 users have until May 11 to add Persona 5 to their library before it leaves the PS Plus Collection.

Sony is launching its "all new PlayStation Plus" in June with three separate tiers that offer different rewards including access to games from PlayStation's entire history.

Users who already have PlayStation Plus alongside PlayStation Now will get the highest Premium Tier at no extra cost for the remaining length of their subscription.

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

Fast & Furious director Justin Lin has stepped down from Fast X, and now the race is on to find a replacement as it’s costing Universal an absolute fortune.

According to Variety, the director’s quick exit from the upcoming Fast & Furious sequel has left the studio forking out up to $1 million per day to keep the production in limbo.

“The production is burning through cash to keep key crew and cast members in limbo,” they explained. “Sources from different studios with experience replacing directors midstream estimated that it could be costing Universal upwards of $600,000 to $1 million a day.”

After just one week in production, director Justin Lin stepped down from Fast X.

“With the support of Universal, I have made the difficult decision to step back as director of Fast X, while remaining with the project as a producer,” he said in a statement.

It’s thought that his hasty exit at the start of the shoot may have been to keep costs down in his wake – beginning expensive stunt work or set pieces would have pushed the studio’s costs even higher while finding his replacement.

“Over 10 years and five films, we have been able to shoot the best actors, the best stunts, and the best damn car chases,” he added. “On a personal note, as the child of Asian immigrants, I am proud of helping to build the most diverse franchise in movie history. I will forever be grateful to the amazing cast, crew and studio for their support, and for welcoming me into the Fast family.”

Of course, there’s also the matter of the film’s busier stars…

Jason Momoa and Brie Larson are both dedicated to other big studio franchises, with the pair suiting up as Aquaman and Captain Marvel respectively. Any delays to Fast X could affect their already busy schedules… and that could cost the studio even more to sort out.

As for who will take over at the helm of Fast X, fans are already pleading for James Wan.

He’s already familiar with the Fast & Furious franchise, having directed Furious 7 back in 2015. The only problem is his availability – currently, Wan is deep into post-production on DC’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

So, it looks as though Universal may have to look elsewhere. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see.

Fast X stars Vin Diesel as Dom Toretto alongside Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Jason Momoa, and Brie Larson.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man is often fondly remembered, and even made a triumphant return recently in Spider-Man: No Way Home. But we need to talk about those web shooters…

During an interview with Variety, director Sam Raimi explained how his organic version of Spider-Man’s iconic web shooters went down with the fans.

“I don’t think that the fans thought I was the right person to direct Spider-Man in general,” he said. “And then the organic web shooters — when the fans found out I was going that way, they tried to have me removed from the picture.”

In the comic books, Peter Parker invents his own web fluid and shooters, but Raimi decided to go a very different way by making them a part of his spider-bite mutation.

Unfortunately, that didn’t go down well with the fans.

Before the film was released, there was a significant backlash to the organic web shooters, with Spider-Man fans demanding Raimi be removed from his director position.

“I was aware of it, and it wasn’t a good thing for me,” he explained. “I didn’t have a great experience of the fans.”

Thankfully, Sony didn’t bow to the pressure and Raimi got to keep his organic web shooters, even if they are a bit gross.

“People had a lot of opinions about what we should and shouldn’t do, who we should hire as the director, who we should hire to play Peter, everything else,” said former Sony boss Amy Pascal. “But it was nothing in comparison to what it’s like now.”

Where did they come from? Well, that’s all down to James Cameron…

Before Spider-Man made it to the big screen, Cameron was attached to write and direct his own version. It ultimately fell apart, but Cameron’s treatment remained… and Spider-Man writer David Koepp liked one of his many fresh ideas.

“He had some very good ideas in it,” Koepp told IGN. “I like the organic web-shooters, which some people liked and some people didn't, but that was his idea and I was happy to use it.”

Ultimately, they made it into the movie – regardless of what you think. And the two other Peters in No Way Home seemed pretty impressed… if a bit freaked out.

Want more Spider-Man action? Read about all the upcoming Spider-Man spin-offs currently in development.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Warning: Spoilers for Nope contained within.

What kind of fiendish threat could make a whole town just say, "Nope"? Thanks to a Universal presentation at CinemaCo today, we might have some clues. Director Jordan Peele took to the stage to shed a little light on the premise of Nope.

The first trailer for Nope only hinted at a fiendish force threatening our main characters. In the trailer, Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer play James and Jill Haywood, folks who own and work at a Black-run horse farm. The farm in question trains horses for Hollywood productions and things are going great until something mysterious appears in the sky above the farm. The trailer then cuts to other characters also seeing something… above them. There are also shots of people that don't seem entirely human. The poster also hinted at a potential alien threat, showing a horse and other objects floating in the night sky.

Peele addressed the many fan theories surrounding Nope on the internet. Peele confirmed today that, yep, the film is about aliens. Nope will involve some sort of alien invasion affecting those in and around the horse farm in question.

"The discovery and the surprise of it is part of the fun," Peele added in Q&A, as noted by The Hollywood Reporter. "Trailers will give you a taste, but we want to retain some of the mystery, so you can be satisfied going to the damn movie."

Nope is shot on 65mm and IMAX, so you can expect some amazing vistas of rural California, right before it's all lifted into the sky. The film's cinematographer is Hoyte van Hoytema, who previously shot Dunkirk, Tenet, Interstellar, and Her.

Like his previous films Get Out and Us, Nope was written and directed by Peele. The movie stars Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun, alongside Barbie Ferreira, Brandon Perea, and Michael Wincott. Peele is producing with Ian Cooper, his long-time partner at Monkeypaw Productions. The Universal Pictures film will debut in theaters on July 22, 2022.

Mike Williams is a freelance writer at IGN

Lucasfilm is doing its best to slowly expand the Star Wars universe in live-action and animation. The latter medium is able to do some things the former is not, on a considerably smaller budget. The Mandalorian and Ahsoka producer Dave Filoni even started out on the animation side of Lucasfilm. Current and upcoming shows consist of Galaxy of Adventures shorts, The Bad Batch, Star Wars: Visions, and the kid-focused Galactic Pals.

Now it seems there's another animated show on the horizon. The panel schedule for Star Wars Celebration Anaheim went up earlier today and as noted by Gizmodo, one panel mentioned an animated series called Tales of the Jedi. The panel description listed Filoni as an attendee, pointing to the series being another show under his purview. That schedule listing has since been scrubbed from the site.

We don't know what the series will entail. It's unlikely that it's another anime anthology series like Visions. "Jedi" is a pretty broad concept, meaning the show could take place anywhere in the Star Wars timeline. It could take place in the Old Republic, the High Republic, the Clone Wars era, or even after The Rise of Skywalker.

The name potentially points toward the show perhaps jumping around through the timeline. Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi was the title of a Dark Horse Comics series that began in 1993. It was one of the many Expanded Universe projects, telling stories involving various mythical Jedi. Many of the stories were set during the Great Sith War in the Old Republic, involving the fall of Jedi Ulic Qel-Droma, the saga of his great love Nomi Sunrider, or the evil Sith Lord Exar Kun.

The comic series was the direct inspiration for the Knights of the Old Republic video games and the subsequent comics of the same name. Despite this, their spot in canon is of a dubious nature, given Disney wiping the Expanded Universe from its ongoing story. That said, it's entirely possible that a Tales of the Jedi animated series could work like many modern Lucasfilm projects, re-canonizing the best parts of those old comics.

We won't know the full scope of Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi until Star Wars Celebration. The convention is taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center from May 26-29, 2022. We'll certainly hear about Tales of the Jedi and all the other upcoming Star Wars projects there.

If you have yet watch any of the Star Wars animated shows, you should probably get on that. Not only is The Clone Wars some of the best Star Wars storytelling around, but it's increasingly clear that characters from the animated projects are continuing to make the transition to live-action. Anakin's Padawan Ahsoka Tano appeared in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett played by Rosario Dawson, with her own upcoming Disney+ series on the way. Likewise, the Mandalorian warrior Bo-Katan Kryze made the jump to live-action in the second season of The Mandalorian.

Mike Williams is a freelance writer at IGN.

The world is ready to give Ewan McGregor a hearty "Hello there!" when he returns as Obi-Wan Kenobi, as the actor is reprising his role in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series on Disney+. The last time McGregor played Obi-Wan, he was closing out the prequel trilogy in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith way back in 2005.

That trilogy was the story of Anakin Skywalker, however. That meant that while McGregor was there swinging his lightsaber around and doing a great job of filling the shoes of Alec Guinness, there wasn't a lot for him to really do. With the upcoming eponymous series, the focus is squarely on Obi-Wan, and McGregor is happy for the change.

"It was nice to come back and to bridge that gap between me and Alec Guinness. I got as much, or more, out of playing him this time than I did in the first three movies put together," he told Total Film magazine. "That’s to do with the writing, and the people we were making the series with, and the technology, and how different everything is."

Obi-Wan Kenobi is a limited series, but McGregor's experience has been so positive that he's up for putting on those Jedi robes and wandering the dunes of Tatooine once again.

"If we were to get an opportunity to do it again, I’d be totally up for that," he admitted.

Obi-Wan Kenobi will premiere on Disney+ on May 27 with two episodes. The show is starring McGregor, alongside Hayden Christensen, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Moses Ingram, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, and Sung Kang. Deborah Chow is directing the series and Joby Harold is the showrunner, with John Williams and Natalie Holt composing the score.

Hayden Christensen has prepared hard for his own return as Darth Vader, binging all of the Star Wars animated shows as research. Christensen said revisting Anakin was "surreal," but "natural" for him, despite the intervening years. And despite the long history between Obi-Wan and Darth Maul, that Sith Lord coming back in the Disney+ series was never in the cards.

Mike Williams is a freelance writer at IGN.