Developer Everstone Games has unveiled its new open-world RPG, Where Winds Meet. The PC title is an action-adventure game set in the beautiful Ten Kingdoms period of medieval China.

Where Winds Meet debuted a gorgeous reveal trailer at Gamescom that highlights just how expansive its open-world setting is. While we still need to see the game in action ourselves before making any full assessment, it’s not unfair to say that Where Winds Meet is competing with the AAA open-world games like Ghost of Tsushima and Assassin’s Creed.

The trailer highlights several gameplay elements including horseback riding, combat skills, exploration, hunting, and more. The massive open world is being designed to encompass numerous locations including the windy steppes, bamboo forests, and bustling cities.

The game is set during the Ten Kingdoms era between rival dynasties, at the end of the Southern Tang Dynasty. The main character is a mysterious swordsman navigating these treacherous times.

The game will allow players to pursue numerous choices that will affect the game, including what role the swordsman will have in this conflict.

Not only can players pick sides in the war between Kingdoms, but according to Everstone, players can also choose to pursue other roles whether that’s as a doctor, merchant, or even just a wanderer with no set goals.

Everstone Games is also promising numerous playstyles including sword fighting, Wuxia-style martial arts, and even Tai chi. Mix-and-match sword fighting, hand-to-hand combat, and magic.

For more check out IGN’s interview with Everstone Games in the Post Show and our full rundown of everything announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live.

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

A brand new look at Gotham Knights has revealed that Harley Quinn and Clayface will be major villains. Gotham Knights will be released on October 21.

Shown as part of Gamescom 2022's Opening Night Live, the new trailer put a spotlight on Gotham Knights' rogues gallery, which will feature both Clayface and Harley Quinn alongside previously revealed villains Mr. Freeze, the Penguin, and the Court of Owls.

As announced during the show, Gotham Knights will be released a few days earlier, coming out on October 21 instead of the previously announced release date of October 25.

Gotham Knights will see players take on the role of either Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin, or Red Hood and take up the duties of a recently deceased Batman. While unconnected to the Arkham series of games and different in many ways, there are still some similarities, including an open-world Gotham. Don't expect to find the Joker down a side alley, though.

This month we've seen plenty more of Gotham Knights thanks to IGN First. Among our collection of exclusives is high-level gameplay of Red Hood, how WB Montreal have built a brand new Gotham with 400 years of history, how this game's version of Mr. Freeze was created, and 28 superhero costumes from the game.

A brand new look at Gotham Knights has revealed that Harley Quinn and Clayface will be major villains. Gotham Knights will be released on October 21.

Shown as part of Gamescom 2022's Opening Night Live, the new trailer put a spotlight on Gotham Knights' rogues gallery, which will feature both Clayface and Harley Quinn alongside previously revealed villains Mr. Freeze, the Penguin, and the Court of Owls.

As announced during the show, Gotham Knights will be released a few days earlier, coming out on October 21 instead of the previously announced release date of October 25.

Gotham Knights will see players take on the role of either Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin, or Red Hood and take up the duties of a recently deceased Batman. While unconnected to the Arkham series of games and different in many ways, there are still some similarities, including an open-world Gotham. Don't expect to find the Joker down a side alley, though.

This month we've seen plenty more of Gotham Knights thanks to IGN First. Among our collection of exclusives is high-level gameplay of Red Hood, how WB Montreal have built a brand new Gotham with 400 years of history, how this game's version of Mr. Freeze was created, and 28 superhero costumes from the game.

Age of Empires 4 is getting two brand-new civilizations. The Malian and Ottoman civilizations were revealed during Gamescom Opening Night Live, adding additional layers to the popular game.

As shown during ONL, the Malian civilization will focus on wit and strategy to out-manouvre the enemy. As for the Ottoman civilization, it'll have access to powerful weaponry, including fortress wall-destroying cannons.

The new civilizations arrive on October 25 and join the English, Chinese, Mongol, Delhi Sultanate, French, Abbasid Dynasty, Holy Roman Empire, and Rus civilizations already in the game, bringing the total up to 10. The original release also had four single-player campaigns available at launch.

Age of Empires 4 was released at the end of last year, earning a nomination for IGN's Best Strategy Game of 2021. Our review praised it as an enjoyable RTS throwback, but noted that it was also very safe.

Elsewhere, Gamescom Opening Night Live also included new trailers for Hogwarts Legacy, Dead Island 2, and much more. You can find our full recap here.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Age of Empires 4 is getting two brand-new civilizations. The Malian and Ottoman civilizations were revealed during Gamescom Opening Night Live, adding additional layers to the popular game.

As shown during ONL, the Malian civilization will focus on wit and strategy to out-manouvre the enemy. As for the Ottoman civilization, it'll have access to powerful weaponry, including fortress wall-destroying cannons.

The new civilizations arrive on October 25 and join the English, Chinese, Mongol, Delhi Sultanate, French, Abbasid Dynasty, Holy Roman Empire, and Rus civilizations already in the game, bringing the total up to 10. The original release also had four single-player campaigns available at launch.

Age of Empires 4 was released at the end of last year, earning a nomination for IGN's Best Strategy Game of 2021. Our review praised it as an enjoyable RTS throwback, but noted that it was also very safe.

Elsewhere, Gamescom Opening Night Live also included new trailers for Hogwarts Legacy, Dead Island 2, and much more. You can find our full recap here.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Telltale Games announced a narrative adventure based on the hit sci-fi series The Expanse. At Opening Night Live the first gameplay footage for Telltale's The Expanse was shown off.

Co-developed by Deck Nine Games and Telltale, The Expanse: A Telltale Series will push the gameplay boundaries of the narrative adventure genre by letting players traverse the vast space in zero-g.

While plot details are still under wraps, The Expanse: A Telltale Series will follow a group of scavengers who uncover a gruesome scene while on the job.

Telltale games are narrative adventures where players make different choices to advance the story. Though be careful as each choice will have a lasting consequence. However, it appears Telltale and Deck Nine plan on expanding this formula for the upcoming sci-fi adventure.

Deck Nine, Telltale's co-developer, is also well known for its adventure games having worked on the Life is Strange series.

For everything else announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live check IGN.

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

Telltale Games announced a narrative adventure based on the hit sci-fi series The Expanse. At Opening Night Live the first gameplay footage for Telltale's The Expanse was shown off.

Co-developed by Deck Nine Games and Telltale, The Expanse: A Telltale Series will push the gameplay boundaries of the narrative adventure genre by letting players traverse the vast space in zero-g.

While plot details are still under wraps, The Expanse: A Telltale Series will follow a group of scavengers who uncover a gruesome scene while on the job.

Telltale games are narrative adventures where players make different choices to advance the story. Though be careful as each choice will have a lasting consequence. However, it appears Telltale and Deck Nine plan on expanding this formula for the upcoming sci-fi adventure.

Deck Nine, Telltale's co-developer, is also well known for its adventure games having worked on the Life is Strange series.

For everything else announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live check IGN.

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

When Jeff Gardiner left Bethesda last year after 16 years working on games like Fallout 3, 4, 76, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and Oblivion, he wasn’t doing so with the intent of starting his own studio. In fact, he didn’t know what he wanted to do.

Gardiner at first tried taking a break “to see if the fantasy of just playing games all day was going to be fulfilling,” but it wasn’t. He then interviewed for some high level roles at studios, and thought about consulting. None of that spoke to him.

At the time, Gardiner was also reading a book called First Templar Nation by Freddy Silva – an alternative history book about the origins of the Knights Templar, specifically in Portgual. Coincidentally, he had just visited many of the castles and locations mentioned in the book prior to the COVID-19 pandemic on a trip with his wife. As he continued to think along the lines of mythology, ritual, and the nature of reality, Gardiner found himself inspired.

Eventually, on the advice of a friend, he put together a pitch deck and began shopping around his new game idea. Netease bit, to the tune of $13.2 million. And thus Something Wicked Games was born – a studio collaboration between Gardiner and Obsidian veteran Charles Staples – to work on Gardiner’s idea: Wyrdsong.

Wyrdsong is a “preternatural, occult, historical fantasy” game, and it’s going to be an open world RPG. It’s definitely single-player, no comment for now on multiplayer, and players can be “any race or gender” they want. It’s set in Portugal in the middle ages, and will explore themes around questioning the nature of reality, unreliable narrators, and the stories people tell themselves about their experiences. It is, he says, a “coming together of two great RPG houses” in its Bethesda and Obsidian DNA, and thus will include choices and consequences, Obsidian shades of grey, and in-depth dialogue trees. “We really want to have big, monumental elements you can only do in single-player games where you’re really affecting the world around you, and maybe other worlds as well,” Gardiner says.

But if between this description and the Opening Night Live teaser you still aren’t sure what Wyrdsong really is, don’t worry. Gardiner isn’t 100% sure either, but that’s a good thing - it’s still quite early in development. Gardiner says that this very, very early development announcement is really more of a studio announcement for Something Wicked, but he wanted to “put a stake in the ground” in terms of the type of game he was making so he could attracted developers interested in helping him define more fully what Wyrdsong will be, collaboratively. He’s not interested in being an auteur.

“I don't want to have all these real detailed things that I can't wind back, or things that I am in love with and I can't get rid of. I want people to come and put their stamp on this game… I can give so many examples of my career where folks came in and just put things in the game that we didn't realize were there until we started playing it, or came to me with ideas that we moved the schedule around to make it accommodate. People got into this business and this job to have fun, right? They enjoyed making games, and I want to capture that spirit and excitement from people who've been doing it for a long time, but maybe don't still have that excitement and experience. Or new people. I'm really excited to bring some new people into this industry, and level them up, and share the joy that I've found here.”

There’s plenty of room to grow, too. At the moment, Something Wicked is only 13 people strong. Gardiner wants to aim for around 65-70 people, which he says is a “sweet spot” for making a compelling game that still lets everyone leave their mark on it. Helpfully, Something Wicked is fully remote, which Gardiner says is an approach he embraced following the COVID-19 pandemic – though he acknowledges it’s not necessarily an easy one in every respect.

“You have to be proactive in your approach to doing it,” he says. “If you just operate the way these studios have existed for the last 20 or 30 years, and assume those same things are true, I think you'll be in a lot of trouble in a full remote environment. I do think there might be difficulties with creative… There's people talking about watercooler moments, about getting to know people.

“Something Wicked Games is going to be very proactive in the fact that it is a remote-first culture. For instance, on Fridays, we're spending two hours just playing Valheim together right now, we're picking games. My concept artist is coming up with a Wyrdsong-themed [tabletop] RPG we're going to go through. This isn't about analyzing Valheim, it's about us coming together and chatting as we're playing a game. We plan on doing travel to get as many people together as possible over time, just here and there.”

Now that he’s in the driver’s seat, Gardiner is also interested in proactively building a certain kind of company culture: specifically, one that isn’t tied to the “milestones and requirements of larger organizations.” He recalls a time before Bethesda, he says, where he would often find himself on the hook for getting something done in a very timely, specific way, which he found “very onerous and difficult for the creative process.”

“I learned as a producer for years, that schedules are tools and they're guideposts, but they shouldn't be weaponized,” he says. “.I watched this talk by Steven Spielberg years ago, where he talked about the ‘crisis of faith’ that happens on every film. Despite the fact that he had the same crew and cast [on] every movie he's ever worked on, 80% of the way through, they're like, ‘What are we doing? How is this going to work?’ That happens in games too, but you have to walk through this stuff and get to the other side. It's about making smart, proactive decisions, listening to the people who are on the ground, making the content, not assuming you know things.”

Gardiner is candid that in this respect, as in all others, he’s learning as he goes. Though he’s run massive projects with up to 400 people involved before, it’s his first time running an entire studio. He’s in good company, too. Gardiner is the latest in a multi-year wave of game dev veterans who have left AAA companies such as Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, Riot, EA, 2K, and others to start their own ventures with smaller teams, big funding, and even bigger ideas. I ask Gardiner what he makes of the trend, and his own place within it.

“I think it's a combination of the times we're in, and the industry as a whole,” he replies. “Years ago, these independent studios, I worked at one, came out and they had these onerous milestones and very difficult things, and all these sort of ‘gotchas’ in their contracts. Some of the people were successful there, and they were scooped up by the bigger publishers. Some of them weren't, and they failed and they went away, so there were these years where there was no AAA development happening outside of big publishers. They’re big gambles, right?

“Listen, there's people who invest a lot of money in something, they want to return on that investment. They want to eliminate as many variables as possible to make sure that it's successful, all makes sense to me. But what I saw was this… democratization that's happened between the engines coming out, Unity, Unreal, and then COVID making work from home a lot more accessible and sustainable. I think the combination of that, plus there's been a lot of money in tech, so people can fund these studios and get them started. I can't wait to see what these independent developers make. I think a lot of people like me, we worked for years successfully, and we want to take a shot at making a game that is something of our own.”

Which brings us back to Wyrdsong. Gardiner’s calling it a AAA game, the definition of which can be vague, but when I ask him what he means by it he specifies it as “independent AAA” – an independent studio, setting its own goals, but making “a bigger game with a degree of polish that offers a large, complete feature set that will be a premium product for people to play.” Or, for a shorter definition: “a big, successful RPG.”

Both Gardiner and his co-founder Staples, as well as fellow studio member Ekram Rasid (Fallout Shelter, Elder Scrolls: Blades) have plenty of experience and love for that genre, but they’re looking outside of their own past work for inspiration too. In games, Gardiner says Wyrdsong will take cues from the early work of developer Piranha Bytes (the Gothic series), Larian Studios’ Divinity series, Radon Labs’ Drakensang, and Baldur’s Gate. But he’s also looking outside of games, and in some unexpected places.

“I had the opportunity to go to Paris and to the Monet Museum. I realized that Monet makes his paintings similar to how we make games with LOD [level of detail], so the dots are really cool when you're far away from it, up front. I look for inspiration from all sorts of sources, and one of the things in particular for Wyrdsong was Robert Eggers' The Witch. It was a very popular movie, but for me it was more the elements of the unreliable narrator. The fact that you don't know if they're going insane, if you've seen it, if they're going crazy… I love that. I love to explore these sort of mythological histories and the idea that what if what these people experienced was actually real, or at least real to them? That's what reality is, reality is what's real to you, right?

“That's the point of Wyrdsong, just really delve into this. When you look at modern sci-fi and modern fantasy, they've gotten away from a lot of the Tolkien-esque things. Don't get me wrong, I love J.R.R Tolkien and all that, but there's all these questionings of realities in metaverses and multiverses, and how these things all sort of layer in combined. It's all fascinating to me, and to me, video games are the best way to express these topics.”

And of course, per the inspiration for the studio’s name, Gardiner is looking at Shakespeare.

“Shakespeare did this thing where when you expected something bad to happen, something funny would happen, and when you expected something funny to happen, something bad would happen,” he says. “I'm not trying to make a funny game or a terrifying game, I'm trying to make a game that where you don't know what to expect, and in fact, the things you expect are not what's going to happen.”

Though Wyrdsong is still very early in development, Gardiner hopes to have something to show in the coming year: “at least some teases of actual gameplay.” He wants to actively engage the community throughout development, referencing his previous comments about game development being a collaborative effort – that extends to the audience, too. That same audience’s response to the material he and Something Wicked creative will ultimately be the determiner of success for Wyrdsong, not just in sales, but in Gardiner’s mind as well.

“The most rewarding part of having been able to make these games for the last 20 years is when I wear a Fallout shirt at an amusement park, and some kid comes up to me and goes on and on about how the game was not just amazing, but how it actually helped them get through hard times or things,” he says. “So for me, success looks like if this game goes out, and there are people playing it and enjoying it and having those experiences, and just absolutely enamored with it in the way I am when I play other games.”

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

The original version of this article suggested that Paul Haban was heavily involved in the project. Post-publication IGN was informed he only contributed early in the project and was not full-time, and the reference has been removed.

When Jeff Gardiner left Bethesda last year after 16 years working on games like Fallout 3, 4, 76, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and Oblivion, he wasn’t doing so with the intent of starting his own studio. In fact, he didn’t know what he wanted to do.

Gardiner at first tried taking a break “to see if the fantasy of just playing games all day was going to be fulfilling,” but it wasn’t. He then interviewed for some high level roles at studios, and thought about consulting. None of that spoke to him.

At the time, Gardiner was also reading a book called First Templar Nation by Freddy Silva – an alternative history book about the origins of the Knights Templar, specifically in Portgual. Coincidentally, he had just visited many of the castles and locations mentioned in the book prior to the COVID-19 pandemic on a trip with his wife. As he continued to think along the lines of mythology, ritual, and the nature of reality, Gardiner found himself inspired.

Eventually, on the advice of a friend, he put together a pitch deck and began shopping around his new game idea. Netease bit, to the tune of $13.2 million. And thus Something Wicked Games was born – a studio collaboration between Gardiner and Obsidian veteran Charles Staples – to work on Gardiner’s idea: Wyrdsong.

Wyrdsong is a “preternatural, occult, historical fantasy” game, and it’s going to be an open world RPG. It’s definitely single-player, no comment for now on multiplayer, and players can be “any race or gender” they want. It’s set in Portugal in the middle ages, and will explore themes around questioning the nature of reality, unreliable narrators, and the stories people tell themselves about their experiences. It is, he says, a “coming together of two great RPG houses” in its Bethesda and Obsidian DNA, and thus will include choices and consequences, Obsidian shades of grey, and in-depth dialogue trees. “We really want to have big, monumental elements you can only do in single-player games where you’re really affecting the world around you, and maybe other worlds as well,” Gardiner says.

But if between this description and the Opening Night Live teaser you still aren’t sure what Wyrdsong really is, don’t worry. Gardiner isn’t 100% sure either, but that’s a good thing - it’s still quite early in development. Gardiner says that this very, very early development announcement is really more of a studio announcement for Something Wicked, but he wanted to “put a stake in the ground” in terms of the type of game he was making so he could attracted developers interested in helping him define more fully what Wyrdsong will be, collaboratively. He’s not interested in being an auteur.

“I don't want to have all these real detailed things that I can't wind back, or things that I am in love with and I can't get rid of. I want people to come and put their stamp on this game… I can give so many examples of my career where folks came in and just put things in the game that we didn't realize were there until we started playing it, or came to me with ideas that we moved the schedule around to make it accommodate. People got into this business and this job to have fun, right? They enjoyed making games, and I want to capture that spirit and excitement from people who've been doing it for a long time, but maybe don't still have that excitement and experience. Or new people. I'm really excited to bring some new people into this industry, and level them up, and share the joy that I've found here.”

There’s plenty of room to grow, too. At the moment, Something Wicked is only 13 people strong. Gardiner wants to aim for around 65-70 people, which he says is a “sweet spot” for making a compelling game that still lets everyone leave their mark on it. Helpfully, Something Wicked is fully remote, which Gardiner says is an approach he embraced following the COVID-19 pandemic – though he acknowledges it’s not necessarily an easy one in every respect.

“You have to be proactive in your approach to doing it,” he says. “If you just operate the way these studios have existed for the last 20 or 30 years, and assume those same things are true, I think you'll be in a lot of trouble in a full remote environment. I do think there might be difficulties with creative… There's people talking about watercooler moments, about getting to know people.

“Something Wicked Games is going to be very proactive in the fact that it is a remote-first culture. For instance, on Fridays, we're spending two hours just playing Valheim together right now, we're picking games. My concept artist is coming up with a Wyrdsong-themed [tabletop] RPG we're going to go through. This isn't about analyzing Valheim, it's about us coming together and chatting as we're playing a game. We plan on doing travel to get as many people together as possible over time, just here and there.”

Now that he’s in the driver’s seat, Gardiner is also interested in proactively building a certain kind of company culture: specifically, one that isn’t tied to the “milestones and requirements of larger organizations.” He recalls a time before Bethesda, he says, where he would often find himself on the hook for getting something done in a very timely, specific way, which he found “very onerous and difficult for the creative process.”

“I learned as a producer for years, that schedules are tools and they're guideposts, but they shouldn't be weaponized,” he says. “.I watched this talk by Steven Spielberg years ago, where he talked about the ‘crisis of faith’ that happens on every film. Despite the fact that he had the same crew and cast [on] every movie he's ever worked on, 80% of the way through, they're like, ‘What are we doing? How is this going to work?’ That happens in games too, but you have to walk through this stuff and get to the other side. It's about making smart, proactive decisions, listening to the people who are on the ground, making the content, not assuming you know things.”

Gardiner is candid that in this respect, as in all others, he’s learning as he goes. Though he’s run massive projects with up to 400 people involved before, it’s his first time running an entire studio. He’s in good company, too. Gardiner is the latest in a multi-year wave of game dev veterans who have left AAA companies such as Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, Riot, EA, 2K, and others to start their own ventures with smaller teams, big funding, and even bigger ideas. I ask Gardiner what he makes of the trend, and his own place within it.

“I think it's a combination of the times we're in, and the industry as a whole,” he replies. “Years ago, these independent studios, I worked at one, came out and they had these onerous milestones and very difficult things, and all these sort of ‘gotchas’ in their contracts. Some of the people were successful there, and they were scooped up by the bigger publishers. Some of them weren't, and they failed and they went away, so there were these years where there was no AAA development happening outside of big publishers. They’re big gambles, right?

“Listen, there's people who invest a lot of money in something, they want to return on that investment. They want to eliminate as many variables as possible to make sure that it's successful, all makes sense to me. But what I saw was this… democratization that's happened between the engines coming out, Unity, Unreal, and then COVID making work from home a lot more accessible and sustainable. I think the combination of that, plus there's been a lot of money in tech, so people can fund these studios and get them started. I can't wait to see what these independent developers make. I think a lot of people like me, we worked for years successfully, and we want to take a shot at making a game that is something of our own.”

Which brings us back to Wyrdsong. Gardiner’s calling it a AAA game, the definition of which can be vague, but when I ask him what he means by it he specifies it as “independent AAA” – an independent studio, setting its own goals, but making “a bigger game with a degree of polish that offers a large, complete feature set that will be a premium product for people to play.” Or, for a shorter definition: “a big, successful RPG.”

Both Gardiner and his co-founder Staples, as well as fellow studio member Ekram Rasid (Fallout Shelter, Elder Scrolls: Blades) have plenty of experience and love for that genre, but they’re looking outside of their own past work for inspiration too. In games, Gardiner says Wyrdsong will take cues from the early work of developer Piranha Bytes (the Gothic series), Larian Studios’ Divinity series, Radon Labs’ Drakensang, and Baldur’s Gate. But he’s also looking outside of games, and in some unexpected places.

“I had the opportunity to go to Paris and to the Monet Museum. I realized that Monet makes his paintings similar to how we make games with LOD [level of detail], so the dots are really cool when you're far away from it, up front. I look for inspiration from all sorts of sources, and one of the things in particular for Wyrdsong was Robert Eggers' The Witch. It was a very popular movie, but for me it was more the elements of the unreliable narrator. The fact that you don't know if they're going insane, if you've seen it, if they're going crazy… I love that. I love to explore these sort of mythological histories and the idea that what if what these people experienced was actually real, or at least real to them? That's what reality is, reality is what's real to you, right?

“That's the point of Wyrdsong, just really delve into this. When you look at modern sci-fi and modern fantasy, they've gotten away from a lot of the Tolkien-esque things. Don't get me wrong, I love J.R.R Tolkien and all that, but there's all these questionings of realities in metaverses and multiverses, and how these things all sort of layer in combined. It's all fascinating to me, and to me, video games are the best way to express these topics.”

And of course, per the inspiration for the studio’s name, Gardiner is looking at Shakespeare.

“Shakespeare did this thing where when you expected something bad to happen, something funny would happen, and when you expected something funny to happen, something bad would happen,” he says. “I'm not trying to make a funny game or a terrifying game, I'm trying to make a game that where you don't know what to expect, and in fact, the things you expect are not what's going to happen.”

Though Wyrdsong is still very early in development, Gardiner hopes to have something to show in the coming year: “at least some teases of actual gameplay.” He wants to actively engage the community throughout development, referencing his previous comments about game development being a collaborative effort – that extends to the audience, too. That same audience’s response to the material he and Something Wicked creative will ultimately be the determiner of success for Wyrdsong, not just in sales, but in Gardiner’s mind as well.

“The most rewarding part of having been able to make these games for the last 20 years is when I wear a Fallout shirt at an amusement park, and some kid comes up to me and goes on and on about how the game was not just amazing, but how it actually helped them get through hard times or things,” he says. “So for me, success looks like if this game goes out, and there are people playing it and enjoying it and having those experiences, and just absolutely enamored with it in the way I am when I play other games.”

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

The original version of this article suggested that Paul Haban was heavily involved in the project. Post-publication IGN was informed he only contributed early in the project and was not full-time, and the reference has been removed.

At Gamescom Opening Night Live, former Bethesda lead Jeff Gardiner unveiled his new studio, Something Wicked Games, and teased its debut project: an open-world, preternatural RPG called Wyrdsong.

Wyrdsong is planned as a dark, historical fantasy that takes place in a fictionalized version of Portugal in the Middle Ages. Though we don't yet know any details about the story, players will take on the role of a fully customizable protagonist and will engage with the world through RPG mechanics including combat and questing.

We also know from Gardiner that Wyrdsong will be designed to make players question reality, and will play with concepts such as an unreliable narrator, choice and consequence, the supernatural, and Templar-like conspiracies. We can also get a better idea of what to expect by taking a look at Something Wicked's talent: Gardiner's Bethesda credits include Skyrim, Fallout 3, 4, and 76. His co-founder and design director Charles Staples is formerly of Obsidian Entertainment, where he worked on Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds. They're joined by former Fallout Shelter and The Elder Scrolls: Blades technical director Ekram Rasid.

Wyrdsong is still in pre-alpha, and details such as consoles, multiplayer capabilities, and release window haven't been shared yet. We do know it's bieng made in Unreal Engine 5, and Something Wicked is currently staffing up significantly to get the project fully underway. The studio is headquartered in Maryland but is fully remote, and has received seed funding of $13.2 million from NetEase to make Wyrdsong a reality.

We got a chance to sit down with Gardiner to talk in detail about Wyrdsong, his departure from Bethesda, and his plans for Something Wicked - you can find our full interview right here.

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

The original version of this article suggested that Paul Haban was heavily involved in the project. Post-publication IGN was informed he only contributed early in the project and was not full-time, and the reference has been removed.