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.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game has been announced, the latest in an increasingly long line of '80s horror movies turned into asymmetric multiplayer games.

Announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live, the new game will be created by Teravision Games and led by Randy Greenback (who previously served as executive director on Friday the 13th: The Game). It will arrive for PC via Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in early 2023.

The 3v7 asymmetric multiplayer game will pit a team of humans versus a team of alien Klowns. Both sides come with character classes, and publisher Good Shepherd says the randomly genrated map will be "expansive" and "ever changing". The game will be released as a live-service title, with "multiple content updates planned for post-launch".

It looks as thought this may be a more action-packed take on multiplayer horror, with the trailer showing off human players crafting and using guns, while Klowns have weaponry and special abilities. While the Klowns are simply seeking to hunt down humans, the humans themselves will be looting the city, while trying to "avoid getting captured by Klowns, and try to survive – or sabotage – the alien invasion."

The game's being made in collaboration with the movie's original creators, the Chiodo Brothers, who serve as executive producers. The score is also being created by the movie's composer John Massari.

"When we first heard that someone wanted to make a Killer Klowns From Outer Space game, we all had the same initial reaction: finally!," said the Chiodo Brothers in a statement. "But nothing could have prepared us for the experience that the Good Shepherd Entertainment and Teravision teams were creating. We are thrilled by the sheer passion these folks share for the world of Killer Klowns and the care they have invested in bringing it to life in surprising new ways. We know our fans will be excited to be able to step into the oversized shoes of the Klowns for the first time… Because we are.”

If you aren't aware of the original 1988 comedy-horror movie, it's about... well... Killer clowns who come from outer space.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Work on The Batman 2 appears to be moving ahead, seemingly putting to rest concerns that the film wouldn't be greenlit amid huge changes at Warner Bros. Discovery.

Buried in a Deadline article about Reeves getting a multi-year first look film deal was the news that the director is back at work on the sequel alongside co-writer Mattson Tomlin. Robert Pattinson is also reportedly returning as the title character.

Think The Batman 2 is too big to be canceled after racking up a global gross of more than $770 million? Consider that Warner Bros. is set on finding its own version of Kevin Feige and rebooting the DCEU, which might not have room for Reeves' version of The Batman. Either way, The Batman 2 is said to be "years away."

We loved The Batman when it released earlier this year, awarding it a perfect score and writing that "Matt Reeves' violent, thrilling, darkly beautiful take on The Batman more than justifies its place in the franchise's canon." Other Bat movies have been less fortunate, with Batgirl being unexpectedly canceled

Meanwhile, Joker: Folie à Deux has been formally confirmed, with Lady Gaga playing a starring role. It will premiere on October 4, 2024.

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.

Bungie has revealed a ton of new information regarding Destiny 2's upcoming Lightfall expansion including a February 28 release date.

Announced during its Destiny 2 Showcase 2022, Lightfall will mark "the beginning of the end" and is set to be the next major expansion that pushes Destiny 2's story and gameplay forward, featuring the game's second Darkness subclass called Stand.

This new style of play appears to be heavily linked to traversal, as players will use it to grapple and swing around a whole new Destiny 2 map on Neptune. Strand involves the manipulation of spooky green psychic energy and will materialise in different ways depending on which class the player uses.

The Neptune map is called Neo Luna, a newly discovered city built by an alternate evolution of humanity. Unlike the derelict and destroyed communities that the known version of humans left behind, however, this new city is a thriving metropolis. It acts as a battlefield in Lightfall as Calus arrives, allied with new big-bad The Witness, and the player is tasked with saving the day once again.

Guardian Ranks is another new feature coming to Destiny 2 in Lightfall, with the intention being to to introduce new players to every element of the game. The 11 available ranks will take players through each type of activity, map, raid, and so on in order to slowly but surely explain how each part of Destiny 2 works.

Also on the accessibility front, Bungie is adding a Fireteam Finder (essentially cooperative matchmaking) sometime in 2023.

Given that Lighfall is also the next part in an ongoing story being told in the Light and Darkness Saga, Bungie has confirmed it will not remove any past expansions so that new players can experience the entire story. To celebrate the announcement, Bungie has also made every one of the game's expansions free for one week starting today, August 23.

In our 8/10 review of the base game released in 2017, IGN said: "Destiny 2's excellent co-op and competitive shooting, rewarding loot, and strong social elements will keep us playing."

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

A brand-new open-world roguelite is on the way, and it has some major Skyrim vibes based on its intial trailer. Titled Ravenbound, Systemic Reaction's newest game will let you take flight over its expansive world, which draws heavily from Scandinavian folklore.

Ravenbound bills itself as having the "challenge of a roguelite" and the "choices of open world," inviting you to explore its large fantasy world either on foot or in the sky as a raven. Being a roguelite, Ravenbound will feature both randomization and permanent death, with deck-building mechanics being included for good measure Ravenbound mixes these elements with "fast-paced, up-close combat" against a variety of fantasy-themed enemies.

Ravenbound is being developed by Systemic Reaction, a veteran studio within the Avalanche Studios Group that has previously worked on Generation Zero and Second Extinction. We gave Generation Zero low marks for being "buggy and poorly-designed," but Second Extinction fared better as an "intense three-player cooperative shooter."

Ravenbound, for its part, takes Systemic Reaction into new territory.

"It's really exciting to be entering a new genre for Systemic Reaction," lead game designer Simon Laserna says. "It's been a fun challenge to combine our open-world legacy with roguelite mechanics and the monsters from the Swedish woods!"

Roguelites remain extremely popular with smaller developers, with Cult of the Lamb among those receiving critical acclaim. In mixing these elements with open-world exploration and Skyrim's distinctive look, Systemic Reaction hopes to have a winner.

Ravenbound is currently under development for release on Steam. It does not yet have a release date.

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.

The James Webb Space Telescope has snapped a glorious new planetary vista capturing the complex layers of Jupiter’s cloud surface, its delicate ring system, and two of its photobombing moons.

The JWST, which snapped images of Jupiter on July 27, is particularly fascinating because it specializes in capturing a type of light that would ordinarily be invisible to our human eyes. Light is, essentially, a form of radiation that travels in waves. Our eyes have evolved over billions of years to be able to detect certain frequencies of light in what we have come to know as the ‘visible’ part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

However, there are many other frequencies of light such as X-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared light that are beyond our sensory capabilities to detect.

Thankfully, humanity is now advanced enough to create sensors that can detect these invisible frequencies of light, and scientists are able to take the raw data collected by telescopes such as the JWST and assign these phantom wavelengths colors from the visible spectrum. This essentially allows us to perceive the invisible, and gain a more complete understanding of the cosmos.

By analyzing these different wavelengths of light, astronomers can probe the characteristics of stars and nebulae millions of light years from Earth. Closer to home, it also makes for some pretty outstanding planetary photography.

The new image of Jupiter was captured using the JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) using a range of three infrared filters. The longer wavelengths of light - which represents light reflected from Jupiter’s clouds, haze, and aurora - are made to appear redder, while the shorter wavelengths that represent light from deeper clouds have been mapped to appear blueish. A third filter that highlights the polar aurora is mapped to yellower and greener hues.

Citizen scientist Judy Schmit was primarily responsible for combining the multiple shots from the JWST and mapping the infrared colors to visible wavelengths in order to create the new composite image. Jupiter’s rotational speed and the motion of its ever shifting atmosphere made this a challenging prospect, which at times required Schmit to make slight digital alterations to the images to allow them to fit together.

We now know that Jupiter is a gas giant twice as massive as all of the other planet’s in our Solar System put together, and that its roiling cloud surface plays host to storms that have raged uninterrupted for over a century. The greatest of these vortexes - a gargantuan storm known as the Great Red Spot - is so massive that you could easily fit two Earth-sized planets in its expanse.

“The brightness here indicates high altitude, so the Great Red Spot has high-altitude hazes, as does the equatorial region,” said Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations and vice president for science at AURA, Heidi Hammel. “The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms.”

In the wide-field version of the image, two of Jupiter’s smaller moons - Amalthea and Adrastea - become visible, as do the gas giant’s tenuous rings. The Jovian system is currently being explored up close and personal by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, and is also due to be visited by the Europa Clipper in the coming decade.

This mission will attempt to see beneath the thick icy shell of one of Jupiter’s moons to shed light on whether its global subsurface ocean could play host to extraterrestrial life.

When the Romans looked up at the ancient night sky, they gazed upon the planets and named them after their gods. The mighty gas giant Jupiter was named for the king of that pantheon, and it's easy to see why.

Back in antiquity, the planet would have been seen as little more than a brilliant, bright point in the darkness, as it roved back and forth across the heavens. Thankfully, the advent of modern astronomy has allowed us to better understand Jupiter’s true nature, and to observe its ever changing face in exquisite detail.

Anthony Wood is a Freelance science writer for IGN.

Resident Evil 7 Biohazard was almost a live service game filled with microtransactions according to Capcom producer Jun Takeuchi.

Speaking with horror game veteran Shinji Mikami (and spotted by VGC), Takeuchi said there was a big marketing push at Capcom to make a game that “players are asking for”. At the time, this meant making a game with live service features, microtransactions, and other online elements.

"We were being told ‘make this, make that’," Takeuchi said. "It was really hard on the directors at the time. Online multiplayer this, downloadable content that. Ongoing service games. Microtransactions. 'Make a Resident Evil game that ticks all those boxes [they were told]'."

There were so many demands placed on the directors that Capcom president Kenzo Tsujimoto eventually intervened. He called Takeuchi to say the current state of Resident Evil 7 was not good.

When Takeuchi joined the development team, he also wanted to appoint Koshi Nakanishi as the game’s director, saying that he was the best one on staff at the time.

"First, we decided that Resident Evil’s roots are in horror. We talked about it a lot," Takeuchi said. "The idea of multiplayer got killed off pretty quickly. If we could properly put it together we could make an exciting horror multiplayer game, but we didn’t really have any good ideas so we set it aside.

"We went down the list, chopping them out until we had marketing’s worst nightmare: a regular old single-player horror game. That’s what we ended up with. What we ultimately wanted to make was exactly what you were saying, Mikami-san: a game that’s scary for the players and the creators."

Resident Evil 7 Biohazard wound up garnering good review scores and bringing the series back to form, however. In our Resident Evil 7 Biohazard review, IGN said, “Resident Evil 7 grounds itself in elements that made the original great while still indulging in a risky new shift in style that both helps and hurts the beloved formula in equal measure.”

Speaking of multiplayer though, Capcom’s newest attempt, Resident Evil Re:Verse, will finally launch on October 28 after being delayed multiple times. It was originally intended to release alongside Resident Evil Village last year.

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

The epic Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power just got its official trailer, showing off characters including Galadriel, Durin IV, and more.

Whether it’s sweeping elven vistas, underground dwarven cities, or orcs and goblins tearing through the woods, the new trailer (below) for The Rings of Power gives us a glimpse of an era of Middle-earth we’ve never seen on screen before.

We also meet Durin IV (Owain Arthur), the dwarven prince of Khazad-dûm in the midst of finding his feet and working out where he fits into his eventual kingdom. Then there’s the Hobbits, a family of Harfoots with youngster Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) eager for adventure.

While we'll see a lighter side through some of these characters, the trailer also features a stark warning that hints toward the inevitable rise of Sauron.

A prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the upcoming Amazon Prime show will take us back in history to a time thousands of years before The Hobbit, and it looks as though it’ll be packed full of fantasy action and adventure.

Having been in the works for years, The Rings of Power finally debuts next week on September 2. Of course, it brings with it the hype and anticipation of a legion of J.R.R. Tolkien fans, and thankfully, it looks as though they might approve.

It stars Morfydd Clark, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Sophia Nomvete, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Lenny Henry, Markella Kavenagh, Sara Zwangobani, Megan Richards, Daniel Weyman, Charles Edwards, and many more.

Want to read more about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power? Check out when you can watch new episodes of The Rings of Power as well as who’s who of the new elves, dwarves, and hobbits.

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

2022 has proven to be another banner year for the comic book horror genre, and Comixology is throwing its hat into that arena once more with Blood Oath. IGN can exclusively reveal the latest addition to the Comixology Originals library.

Blood Oath is a collaboration between writers Alex Segura (The Black Ghost) and Rob Hart (The Paradox Hotel), with art by Joe Eisma (Morning Glories). Set in Prohibition-era Long Island, the series focuses on struggling farmer Hazel Crenshaw. Hazel has taken to bootlegging to keep her family farm afloat. And as if New York's growing mob problem wasn't enough of a problem, Hazel also has to contend with a supernatural force tightening its grip on the criminal underworld.

Check out the slideshow gallery below for an exclusive preview of Blood Oath #1:

The Blood Oath creative team also includes colorist Hilary Jenkins, letterer Jim Campbell and editor Heather Antos.

“It's always been a dream of mine to write a comic book, but coming from novels, it's like learning a whole new language,” said Hart in Comixology's press release. “I was incredibly lucky to work with Alex, Joe, and the rest of the team, who helped guide me through the process and learn the fundamentals. Alex and I first started working on this years ago, and it's incredible watching it come together, piece by piece. I can't wait for people to read it.”

Segura continued, “Rob and I have been cooking up this story for a long time, and we found the perfect artistic partner in Joe, who I’ve worked with numerous times as a writer and editor over the years. He’s passionate and super-talented. We’re excited for readers to meet Hazel, Walt, Geraldine and the entire Blood Oath crew. Who knows if they’ll survive!”

Blood Oath will run for five issues, with the first chapter debuting on Comixology on Tuesday, August 30. As with all Comixology Originals titles, Blood Oath will be free to read for subscribers of Comixology Unlimited and Kindle Unlimited, and will also be available for individual purchase.

That's not the only Segura-penned comic launching on August 30. That date also marks the start of The Black Ghost: Season 2 on Comixology Unlimited. For those that prefer print comics to digital, Dark Horse will release a trade paperback collection called The Black Ghost: Shame the Devil on January 3, 2023. The first volume, The Black Ghost: Hard Revolution, is available now.

You can learn more about the very personal inspirations behind The Black Ghost in IGN's exclusive conversation between Segura and Youth writer Curt Pires. IGN also recently debuted a preview of Pires' latest Comixology series, a futuristic political thriller called New America.

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

Sega itself appears to have leaked a November release date for Sonic Frontiers after a new trailer for the game appeared on YouTube before being swiftly taken down.

Industry insider Nibel spotted the new trailer (below), grabbing a screenshot of its title screen that shows a November 8 release date. This matches the previously mapped fourth quarter of 2022 release window given by Sega, though the publisher hasn't explicitly confirmed this new date as of yet.

The trailer was publicly available on the Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog YouTube channel for just a few minutes before it was quickly made private (and therefore unviewable) again. It's likely the trailer that Sega planned to release during Gamescom that was teased by the game's official Twitter account yesterday, August 22.

A new Japanese Sonic Frontiers ad includes a November 8 release datehttps://t.co/Y6moP1tQVT pic.twitter.com/suJeGqPmUt

— Nibel (@Nibellion) August 23, 2022

Confirming it would be revealed today, August 23, the trailer will likely be officially revealed during Gamescom's Opening Night Live, as host Geoff Keighley has already confirmed that Sonic Frontiers will make an appearance.

IGN will be providing live coverage of the entire two hour show, which takes place at 11AM Pacific / 2PM Eastern / 7PM UK (and therefore 4AM AEST), and is also hosting an After Show with our own exclusive reveals, interviews, and deep dives surrounding the biggest announcements.

Sonic Frontiers is the franchise's first "open-zone" game that promises an extensive story, unique combat, and a whole new take on 3D sonic games.

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