Monthly Archives: October 2022

Rian Johnson Announces Poker Face, a ‘Mystery of the Week’ TV Series for Peacock

Knives Out and Glass Onion director Rian Johnson is taking his murder-mystery talents to the small screen, with a new mystery series called Poker Face. The ten-part show is coming to Peacock on January 26. Peacock released a short teaser trailer today, which you can check out below.

Poker Face stars Natasha Lyonne, who is known for playing Nicky Nichols in Orange Is the New Black, and Nadia Vulvokov in Netflix's Russian Doll. Johnson and Lyonne are credited as executive producers, and Johnson is also listed as the creator, writer, and director of the series.

The two creatives shared a summary of what to expect in the show:

"We invite you to follow Charlie (Lyonne) on a cross-country road trip as she meets a rogue’s gallery of characters and avenges a new injustice each episode, armed with little more than her uncanny ability to detect lies and a genuine appreciation for her fellow humans (and the occasional dog).

Now please leave the overthinking to Rian, who has masterfully crafted ten self-contained puzzles for Charlie to solve. Just jump in the back of her ‘69 Plymouth Barracuda and enjoy the ride."

Fans of Johnson's brand of detective stories have a lot to look forward to in the coming months. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is coming to theaters in November before hitting Netflix on December 23. We called the movie amazing in our review, saying, "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is a bigger, bolder, funnier, angrier sequel that improves on almost every aspect of its predecessor." We just wonder what all of these great murder mystery projects mean for Johnson's Star Wars trilogy, which is apparently still in development.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

PlayStation Plus Games for November 2022 Announced

As revealed on the PlayStation Blog, Sony has announced the PlayStation Plus games for November 2022 are Nioh 2, LEGO Harry Potter Collection, and Heavenly Bodies.

All three games will be made available at no extra cost to all PlayStation Plus subscribers on November 1. Nioh 2 is the Soulslike sequel released in 2020 that thrusts the player into the supernatural world of Japanese legend, fighting as a samurai imbued with the supernatural Yokai.

Fighting fire with fire, the player takes on swarms of deadly Yokai, samurai warriors, and gargantuan boss monsters. PlayStation 5 owners will get access to the remastered version while PlayStation 4 owners will receive the standard.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said: "Nioh 2 is an impressive evolution of its predecessor, strengthening everything that was already great, while mostly leaving its already existing issues alone. Its stellar combat is elevated by the addition of Soul Cores, Burst Counters, and the ways in which those two main new mechanics affect enemy AI and how you approach battles."

LEGO Harry Potter Collection puts two classic brick-building titles into one package, letting players journey through every year of Hogwarts as Harry Potter and friends (and foes). Each features a main campaign but also tons of side content and unlockables, there's plenty to keep busy with in the two-game combo pack.

"LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is a love letter to fans of the Boy Who Lived," IGN said in our 8/10 review of the first game. The second performed just as well, as IGN said: "It’s clear that Traveller’s Tales made 5 -7 with a lot of love, and with a great eye for detail."

Finally, Heavenly Bodies puts the player in space as they try to make their way through physics-based scenarios, either alone of with a friend in local co-op. Using the left and right sticks to push and pull, each level is inspired by a famous moment in space exploration history.

PlayStation (strangely) didn't say when these three new games will be available until, but last month's games - Hot Wheels Unleashed, Injustice 2, and Superhot - will be available until October 31.

Sony didn't announce the new games coming to its more expensive services but you can check out our updated lists of all PS Plus Premium Catalogue Games and PlayStation Plus Classic Games Catalogue on IGN Playlist. You can use these lists to plan what to play next, create custom-ranked lists of your favourites, and track your backlog.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

PlayStation Plus Games for November 2022 Announced

As revealed on the PlayStation Blog, Sony has announced the PlayStation Plus games for November 2022 are Nioh 2, LEGO Harry Potter Collection, and Heavenly Bodies.

All three games will be made available at no extra cost to all PlayStation Plus subscribers on November 1. Nioh 2 is the Soulslike sequel released in 2020 that thrusts the player into the supernatural world of Japanese legend, fighting as a samurai imbued with the supernatural Yokai.

Fighting fire with fire, the player takes on swarms of deadly Yokai, samurai warriors, and gargantuan boss monsters. PlayStation 5 owners will get access to the remastered version while PlayStation 4 owners will receive the standard.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said: "Nioh 2 is an impressive evolution of its predecessor, strengthening everything that was already great, while mostly leaving its already existing issues alone. Its stellar combat is elevated by the addition of Soul Cores, Burst Counters, and the ways in which those two main new mechanics affect enemy AI and how you approach battles."

LEGO Harry Potter Collection puts two classic brick-building titles into one package, letting players journey through every year of Hogwarts as Harry Potter and friends (and foes). Each features a main campaign but also tons of side content and unlockables, there's plenty to keep busy with in the two-game combo pack.

"LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is a love letter to fans of the Boy Who Lived," IGN said in our 8/10 review of the first game. The second performed just as well, as IGN said: "It’s clear that Traveller’s Tales made 5 -7 with a lot of love, and with a great eye for detail."

Finally, Heavenly Bodies puts the player in space as they try to make their way through physics-based scenarios, either alone of with a friend in local co-op. Using the left and right sticks to push and pull, each level is inspired by a famous moment in space exploration history.

PlayStation (strangely) didn't say when these three new games will be available until, but last month's games - Hot Wheels Unleashed, Injustice 2, and Superhot - will be available until October 31.

Sony didn't announce the new games coming to its more expensive services but you can check out our updated lists of all PS Plus Premium Catalogue Games and PlayStation Plus Classic Games Catalogue on IGN Playlist. You can use these lists to plan what to play next, create custom-ranked lists of your favourites, and track your backlog.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

George R.R. Martin Says The Winds of Winter Is ‘About Three-Quarters of the Way Done’

Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has said that his latest Song of Ice and Fire book, The Winds of Winter, is about three quarters of the way finished.

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Martin was aptly asked about his progress on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he gave a definitive answer for the first time in a while.

"I think it’s going to be a very big book [more than 1500 pages], and I think I’m about three quarters of the way done," Martin said. "The characters all interweave and I’m actually finished with a couple of the characters, but not others. I have to finish all that weaving."

Doing the maths for himself, Colbert asked that, if it's taken ten years to go 75% of the way, does that mean it will be another three or so years before The Winds of Winter is released. "That's depressing," Martin said, avoiding a yes or no answer.

An estimated release window for The Winds of Winter was first given in 2011 when the previous book, A Dance With Dragons, was released, and Martin said it would take three years to finish at a good pace. That set expectations for a 2014 release date, of course, but year after year, and delay after delay, Martin still isn't ready to release the penultimate A Song of Ice and Fire entry.

He knows it's late himself, and while he respects that fans are eager to read the book, Martin wishes they weren't so mean about it. He said previously: "I say 'Happy Thanksgiving' and they say 'never mind Happy Thanksgiving, where's the book'?"

Martin has been keeping himself busy between writing his next Game of Thrones book and also working with HBO on the latest adaptation of his series, House of the Dragon. You can read our season finale review here.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

George R.R. Martin Says The Winds of Winter Is ‘About Three-Quarters of the Way Done’

Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has said that his latest Song of Ice and Fire book, The Winds of Winter, is about three quarters of the way finished.

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Martin was aptly asked about his progress on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he gave a definitive answer for the first time in a while.

"I think it’s going to be a very big book [more than 1500 pages], and I think I’m about three quarters of the way done," Martin said. "The characters all interweave and I’m actually finished with a couple of the characters, but not others. I have to finish all that weaving."

Doing the maths for himself, Colbert asked that, if it's taken ten years to go 75% of the way, does that mean it will be another three or so years before The Winds of Winter is released. "That's depressing," Martin said, avoiding a yes or no answer.

An estimated release window for The Winds of Winter was first given in 2011 when the previous book, A Dance With Dragons, was released, and Martin said it would take three years to finish at a good pace. That set expectations for a 2014 release date, of course, but year after year, and delay after delay, Martin still isn't ready to release the penultimate A Song of Ice and Fire entry.

He knows it's late himself, and while he respects that fans are eager to read the book, Martin wishes they weren't so mean about it. He said previously: "I say 'Happy Thanksgiving' and they say 'never mind Happy Thanksgiving, where's the book'?"

Martin has been keeping himself busy between writing his next Game of Thrones book and also working with HBO on the latest adaptation of his series, House of the Dragon. You can read our season finale review here.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Blaseball, the Absurdist Horror Fantasy Sport That Won a Cult Fanbase, Is Back After a Year-Long Siesta

“Moments ago on Blaseball dot com, The Coin was melted and a black hole swallowed the universe.”

That’s what The Game Band designer Stephen Bell said when I asked him, creative director Sam Rosenthal, and game design lead Joel Clark to remind me what the most recent happenings in the world of Blaseball were. Bell eagerly volunteered to deliver that explanation, saying he’d “been practicing.”

Of course, “moments ago” in the world of Blaseball was almost exactly a year ago, when the “Expansion Era” came to an explosive conclusion. The rest of the context doesn’t actually matter though. A black hole swallowed everything Blaseball was, and now The Game Band is ready to bring Blaseball back so that its audience can decide what it will be.

Expansion, Contracted

As Rosenthal described it when I interviewed him last year, Blaseball is an “absurdist horror take on fantasy baseball.” It involves a bunch of fictional baseball teams with names like the Canada Moist Talkers, Kansas City Breath Mints, and Charleston Shoe Thieves playing fictional games of baseball run by a simulator over the course of a week.

Its audience “plays” Blaseball by placing bets (in fictional currency, no real money involved) on the outcome of those games. Their winnings are exchanged for votes in a weekly election, where the community decides on new rules for future games. Then the week starts over again, with increasingly ridiculous games being played. Past rule changes have introduced elements like player-incinerating umpires, fourth bases, and even a giant god-like peanut. For those who have been able to follow the increasingly ridiculous plotlines, it’s all been a blast. But by the end of 2021’s Expansion Era, Blaseball had become so lore-heavy and complex that many former fans had stepped away, and new fans weren’t coming in as readily.

But The Game Band wants to change that, hence the year-long hiatus (or “Grand Siesta” in the game’s parlance)

“More than anything, we were using it as a space to take a step back and figure out what we want this to be for the long haul,” Rosenthal tells me. “If we continued to just push forward at the pace that we were at, we had a good sense for where it was going to go…We were having a harder time getting new people into the fold, [hearing] the same refrain over again: ‘I feel like I missed the boat, there's so much happening here all the time, it's so hard to catch up on.’”

At Our Mercy

It was maybe inevitable that The Game Band would end up in this situation. After all, Blaseball was never intended to be the overnight cult hit it quickly became when it launched in 2020. It was initially conceived as a goofy side project while The Game Band worked out what their next full game would be after the release of Where Cards Fall. But it took off unexpectedly, forcing The Game Band to pivot their studio strategy to maintain it. It was a lot of sudden and unexpected work for a team that numbered around six developers.

The Game Band development team has since grown to 27 members, and now it’s launching Fall Ball: a prologue to the next era of Blaseball. Over the next several weeks, various players from Blaseball past will be falling out of the aforementioned black hole (Get it? FALL Ball?), landing randomly in different teams. While that’s going on, the audience can sign up via email to obtain “commemorative rewards” that will be unlocked by the entire fanbase as they reach certain milestone numbers of sign-ups. There won’t be any games during this time, but those are coming at an unannounced date following Fall Ball.

Previously, Blaseball has been a fully browser-based experience, but no more. Alongside Fall Ball, The Game Band is unveiling an app for iOS and Android that will launch alongside the new era. The app will have full parity with features on the website, as well as push notifications, giving Blaseball the flavor of a more traditional sports app like ESPN.

This dovetails nicely with some of the changes audiences should expect to see when Blaseball returns for its new era. It’s still the same structure – a week of games, a championship, voting on Sunday – but Rosenthal says they’re aiming to make it more friendly for folks who can’t stare at the website all day long watching games. He won’t share specific details yet, but does say it will be easier to bet on games in advance. Community social features are coming, too, making it easier for teams to collaborate on voting strategies without individuals having to be dialed into a specific Discord server or Twitter.

In the midst of all this, Blaseball will remain free-to-play. But while it was previously funded largely through weekly sponsorships from various companies, the coming era will see the introduction of optional paid transactions. The team reassures that nothing with real money attached will impact the game of Blaseball itself – it’s all tied to elements that will allow individuals to customize their user experience, especially in conjunction with Blaseball’s social elements.

We have had a lot more time to plan, so we have a lot more thought out in advance. But part of that is allowing the space for improvisation.

Most critically, Blaseball remains at the mercy of its fans. The year-long siesta has enabled The Game Band to play out what Clark calls the “possibility space” much further in advance than before. The team is moving away from the grand, overarching storylines that characterized the first two eras in favor of more of a “monster of the week” format that allows fans to dip in and out without reading pages of wiki articles about what happened months ago. But the stories told week to week will remain in the hands of the sim and the fans.

“We have had a lot more time to plan, so we have a lot more thought out in advance,” Clark says. “But part of that is allowing the space for improvisation, the nature of the simulation being essentially an emergent narrative engine. We have to improvise, right? There's going to be things that the sim does that we can't expect, there's going to be stories the fans tell around the sim that we can't expect. And there's going to be things that they find that they can do that we can't expect. So we're designing the possibility space and trying to give ourselves the tools to be able to improvise and have those ready ahead of time, so we're not building stuff on the fly, but that we have things that we can bring in if necessary.”

An Era of Sustainability

With that comes the hope (if not the promise) that Blaseball is done with year-long siestas like this last one. It is about sustainability, the team tells me – something they have discussed in the past. Clark acknowledges The Game Band has learning a lot about what exactly sustainability means over time. Rosenthal, meanwhile, is optimistic about Blaseball’s prospects now that it has a much larger team to support it and a “much more stable foundation.”

The trio adds that their internal processes will likely still need some refinement. After all, many of the 27 members of The Game Band were hired in the last year, and have never been on the team while games are being played, fans are voting on decisions, and Blaseball is shifting beneath everyone’s feet. It’s daunting, but it’s also an exciting creative challenge for the team.

That push for sustainability extends not just to the team, but to the community creating the story of Blaseball along with them.

“I think that's all we keep returning to, because we heard that and we felt it through two eras of people saying, ‘This was interesting to me, but I bumped off it or I can't find my way in,’” Bell says. “So [success would mean] keeping Blaseball's energy, still getting to do the weird chaos stuff that we like doing, but not blocking the door from new fans.”

Blaseball’s Fall Ball website update is up now, with the first player scheduled to fall out of a black hole on October 28, and the Blaseball app planned for launch at the same unannounced, upcoming time as the next Era.

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

Blaseball, the Absurdist Horror Fantasy Sport That Won a Cult Fanbase, Is Back After a Year-Long Siesta

“Moments ago on Blaseball dot com, The Coin was melted and a black hole swallowed the universe.”

That’s what The Game Band designer Stephen Bell said when I asked him, creative director Sam Rosenthal, and game design lead Joel Clark to remind me what the most recent happenings in the world of Blaseball were. Bell eagerly volunteered to deliver that explanation, saying he’d “been practicing.”

Of course, “moments ago” in the world of Blaseball was almost exactly a year ago, when the “Expansion Era” came to an explosive conclusion. The rest of the context doesn’t actually matter though. A black hole swallowed everything Blaseball was, and now The Game Band is ready to bring Blaseball back so that its audience can decide what it will be.

Expansion, Contracted

As Rosenthal described it when I interviewed him last year, Blaseball is an “absurdist horror take on fantasy baseball.” It involves a bunch of fictional baseball teams with names like the Canada Moist Talkers, Kansas City Breath Mints, and Charleston Shoe Thieves playing fictional games of baseball run by a simulator over the course of a week.

Its audience “plays” Blaseball by placing bets (in fictional currency, no real money involved) on the outcome of those games. Their winnings are exchanged for votes in a weekly election, where the community decides on new rules for future games. Then the week starts over again, with increasingly ridiculous games being played. Past rule changes have introduced elements like player-incinerating umpires, fourth bases, and even a giant god-like peanut. For those who have been able to follow the increasingly ridiculous plotlines, it’s all been a blast. But by the end of 2021’s Expansion Era, Blaseball had become so lore-heavy and complex that many former fans had stepped away, and new fans weren’t coming in as readily.

But The Game Band wants to change that, hence the year-long hiatus (or “Grand Siesta” in the game’s parlance)

“More than anything, we were using it as a space to take a step back and figure out what we want this to be for the long haul,” Rosenthal tells me. “If we continued to just push forward at the pace that we were at, we had a good sense for where it was going to go…We were having a harder time getting new people into the fold, [hearing] the same refrain over again: ‘I feel like I missed the boat, there's so much happening here all the time, it's so hard to catch up on.’”

At Our Mercy

It was maybe inevitable that The Game Band would end up in this situation. After all, Blaseball was never intended to be the overnight cult hit it quickly became when it launched in 2020. It was initially conceived as a goofy side project while The Game Band worked out what their next full game would be after the release of Where Cards Fall. But it took off unexpectedly, forcing The Game Band to pivot their studio strategy to maintain it. It was a lot of sudden and unexpected work for a team that numbered around six developers.

The Game Band development team has since grown to 27 members, and now it’s launching Fall Ball: a prologue to the next era of Blaseball. Over the next several weeks, various players from Blaseball past will be falling out of the aforementioned black hole (Get it? FALL Ball?), landing randomly in different teams. While that’s going on, the audience can sign up via email to obtain “commemorative rewards” that will be unlocked by the entire fanbase as they reach certain milestone numbers of sign-ups. There won’t be any games during this time, but those are coming at an unannounced date following Fall Ball.

Previously, Blaseball has been a fully browser-based experience, but no more. Alongside Fall Ball, The Game Band is unveiling an app for iOS and Android that will launch alongside the new era. The app will have full parity with features on the website, as well as push notifications, giving Blaseball the flavor of a more traditional sports app like ESPN.

This dovetails nicely with some of the changes audiences should expect to see when Blaseball returns for its new era. It’s still the same structure – a week of games, a championship, voting on Sunday – but Rosenthal says they’re aiming to make it more friendly for folks who can’t stare at the website all day long watching games. He won’t share specific details yet, but does say it will be easier to bet on games in advance. Community social features are coming, too, making it easier for teams to collaborate on voting strategies without individuals having to be dialed into a specific Discord server or Twitter.

In the midst of all this, Blaseball will remain free-to-play. But while it was previously funded largely through weekly sponsorships from various companies, the coming era will see the introduction of optional paid transactions. The team reassures that nothing with real money attached will impact the game of Blaseball itself – it’s all tied to elements that will allow individuals to customize their user experience, especially in conjunction with Blaseball’s social elements.

We have had a lot more time to plan, so we have a lot more thought out in advance. But part of that is allowing the space for improvisation.

Most critically, Blaseball remains at the mercy of its fans. The year-long siesta has enabled The Game Band to play out what Clark calls the “possibility space” much further in advance than before. The team is moving away from the grand, overarching storylines that characterized the first two eras in favor of more of a “monster of the week” format that allows fans to dip in and out without reading pages of wiki articles about what happened months ago. But the stories told week to week will remain in the hands of the sim and the fans.

“We have had a lot more time to plan, so we have a lot more thought out in advance,” Clark says. “But part of that is allowing the space for improvisation, the nature of the simulation being essentially an emergent narrative engine. We have to improvise, right? There's going to be things that the sim does that we can't expect, there's going to be stories the fans tell around the sim that we can't expect. And there's going to be things that they find that they can do that we can't expect. So we're designing the possibility space and trying to give ourselves the tools to be able to improvise and have those ready ahead of time, so we're not building stuff on the fly, but that we have things that we can bring in if necessary.”

An Era of Sustainability

With that comes the hope (if not the promise) that Blaseball is done with year-long siestas like this last one. It is about sustainability, the team tells me – something they have discussed in the past. Clark acknowledges The Game Band has learning a lot about what exactly sustainability means over time. Rosenthal, meanwhile, is optimistic about Blaseball’s prospects now that it has a much larger team to support it and a “much more stable foundation.”

The trio adds that their internal processes will likely still need some refinement. After all, many of the 27 members of The Game Band were hired in the last year, and have never been on the team while games are being played, fans are voting on decisions, and Blaseball is shifting beneath everyone’s feet. It’s daunting, but it’s also an exciting creative challenge for the team.

That push for sustainability extends not just to the team, but to the community creating the story of Blaseball along with them.

“I think that's all we keep returning to, because we heard that and we felt it through two eras of people saying, ‘This was interesting to me, but I bumped off it or I can't find my way in,’” Bell says. “So [success would mean] keeping Blaseball's energy, still getting to do the weird chaos stuff that we like doing, but not blocking the door from new fans.”

Blaseball’s Fall Ball website update is up now, with the first player scheduled to fall out of a black hole on October 28, and the Blaseball app planned for launch at the same unannounced, upcoming time as the next Era.

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

Seth Rogen’s Sausage Party Is Coming Back as a Streaming Series

Prime Video has just put in an order for Sausage Party: Foodtopia, an animated series based on the 2016 movie, which will be dished out as "an eight-course television event" in 2024.

The animated streaming series will reunite several stars from the original film, with Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, David Krumholtz, and Edward Norton returning to lend their voices as the culinary crew of the spinoff alongside newly-invited party guests Will Forte, Sam Richardson, Natasha Rothwell, and Yassir Lester.

Plot details are being kept under wrappers for now, but with production already underway, we can expect more information to be served up in the coming months.

"Film used to be the superior art form to television, and we humbly reached the pinnacle of what can be achieved with film in our remarkable opus, Sausage Party," Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg said in a joint statement. "But now that film is completely dead and TV is the forever-king of entertainment, we've decided to continue the epic adventures of our culinary crew in the soon-to-be-legendary televised masterpiece Sausage Party: Foodtopia."

With the announcement of the project, Rogen and Goldberg also promised that the upcoming series, from Annapurna Television, Sony Pictures Television, Amazon Studios, and Point Grey Pictures, will have "all the heart, double the puns, and triple the food-on-food sex" to satisfy all cravings of those who are hungry for laughs.

Ariel Shaffir and Kyle Hunter, who co-wrote Sausage Party with Rogen and Goldberg, are showrunning the series and serving as executive producers alongside Rogen and Goldberg, as well as James Weaver and Alex McAtee via Point Grey Pictures, Megan Ellison, Patrick Chu, and Andrew Millstein via Annapurna Television, and supervising director Conrad Vernon.

"The original Sausage Party was an incredibly hilarious, outrageous, one-of-a-kind entry into the world of animation," said Vernon Sanders, head of global television at Amazon Studios. "We are thrilled to collaborate again with Seth, Evan and their team at Point Grey, as well as our partners at Annapurna Television and Sony Pictures Television, to offer a new look into this world that will be brought to life so vividly for our global Prime Video customers."

Vernon co-directed the original feature film with Greg Tiernan, chronicling the adventures of a sausage on a quest to discover the truth about his existence. The R-rated comedy proved to be a hit with audiences and critics alike, with IGN calling it "an equal opportunity offender" that unpacks a meaty story "with a lot of heart and big ideas to ponder."

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

Deadpool 3: Reynolds and Jackman Say Wolverine’s Return Has Been ‘Brewing for a Long Time’

Hugh Jackman is returning as Wolverine for Deadpool 3 is a crazy enough sentence, but according to Ryan Reynolds this has been in the works for quite some time.

In an interview with Variety, Reynolds revealed that he met Marvel's Kevin Feige three and a half years after Disney acquired Fox, and this was when the idea of teaming-up Deadpool and Wolverine first came up.

"The subject was coming up in the meeting about if we could find a way to do a Deadpool-Wolverine pairing. It wasn't possible then. For this to be happening now is pretty damn exciting," Reynolds says.

While Jackman seemingly retired from the role in 2017 after Logan, the actor says that he might be even better at it now. "A little part of me now thinks I'd be better at it... Is that arrogance of age or something?" Jackman mused.

"Wolverine's a tortured character - more tortured than me. But I always get the feeling of him being comfortable in his own skin. And I feel more comfortable in my own skin now, even though it's messier."

Jackman also explained why he decided to return despite promising Logan was his final outing as the character. During press tours, Jackman said on record it would be his final Wolverine film, but it turns out he was saying these things before Deadpool even came out and realized he may have missed out on one more opportunity.

"I went to a screening of 'Deadpool.' I was 20 minutes in, and I was like 'Ah, damn it!" All I kept seeing my head was '48 Hrs' with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. So it's been brewing for a long time."

Deadpool 3 will be released on November 8, 2024 which puts it in the MCU's Phase 5. Check out our six burning questions for Deadpool 3 and why Wolverine should finally wear his yellow suit.

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

Hideo Kojima Says One of His New Games Is ‘Almost Like a New Medium’

Hideo Kojima says one of his new games is "almost like a new medium," with the potential to change the video game and film industries.

Speaking to The Guardian, Kojima didn't share anything specific about his new games, but said in broader terms that one of them is almost an unprecedented endeavour, and that he's been waiting for the technology to be available to make it.

"It’s almost like a new medium," he said. "If this succeeds, it will turn things around, not just in the game industry, but in the movie industry as well."

Reiterating that it's completely fresh technology and a new concept, Kojima said that he'd perhaps have more commercial success if he wasn't the first person to create new things, as usually the second or third person to attempt something is the one who can make it work in an everyday setting. "For the first person, everything is hard," he said. "But I want to be the first. I want to keep being the first."

Kojima is likely working on a sequel to Death Stranding, per a slip from star Norman Reedus, and is working on a project with Xbox, using its cloud technology. Of the two, it feels more likely he's referring to the Xbox project, as it's not the first time he's spoken about it in such grand ways - when it was announced in June Kojima called it a "never before seen concept" that relies on cutting edge technology.

"It's a completely new game that no one has ever experienced or seen before," Kojima said. "I've waited very long for the day when I could finally start to create it."

Announcing a collaboration with Xbox caused some to question Kojima Productions' connections to PlayStation, where its previous title Death Stranding is a console exclusive, forcing the studio to make clear it still has a "very good partnership" with the publisher.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.