Dungeons & Dragons has announced its intended release schedule for 2023. The lineup includes deep dives on classic D&D items and lore, the expansion of one of Fifth Edition's earliest and most famous adventures, as well as the revival of the classic Planescape campaign setting.

The schedule includes five releases, with one book dropping every season (except for Summer, in which a pair is planned):

• Keys From the Golden Vault (Winter 2023)
• Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants (Spring 2023)
• The Book Of Many Things (Summer 2023)
• Phandelver Campaign (Summer 2023)
• Planescape (Fall 2023)

Details about what's included in each sourcebook were minimal, but several members of the D&D creative team were on hand to provide a bit of insight into each. "Keys from the Golden Vault is Ocean's 11 meets Dungeons & Dragons," says Design Architect Chris Perkins. "It is an anthology of short adventures, each one revolving around a heist." Glory of the Giants is described as a companion to 2021's Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, only focused (as the name implies) on the various types of giants found throughout the D&D multiverse.

The Summer releases are The Book of Many Things, a sourcebook based on the infamous Deck of Many Things from D&D lore, and an updated version of the original D&D 5e adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver, which kicked off Fifth Edition in 2015. "[LMoP] is a fan favorite," said Chris Lindsay, Product Manager for D&D. "And it's going to expand it into a full campaign that is tinged with cosmic horror."

The final release of 2023 will be a revival of the Planescape campaign setting. The product will be presented as a boxed set, similar to the recent Spelljammer: Adventures in Space. Classic computer RPG fans will likely remember this varied web of interplanar realms from 1999's Planescape: Torment, which IGN hailed as an amazing RPG thanks largely to its unique setting, which made it "a hell of a lot different than anything else that's ever been released."

"This is a legendary campaign setting," Perkins says. "A lot of folks out there in the world have been wondering when it was coming back, and here it is."

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.

Wizards of the Coast announced today that a Doctor Who crossover is in the works for Magic: The Gathering. The latest in a growing list of TV show crossovers, Magic will get new cards and four unique commander decks featuring Doctor Who characters sometime in Q3 of 2023.

Magic’s crossover products fall under a label WOTC calls “Universes Beyond,” separating them from its own canonical universe. For example, today’s Wizards Presents reveal event also gave additional details on a Lord of the Rings-themed set coming out in 2023, though that one will be much larger than the Doctor Who crossover.

The structure of this one is more similar to the upcoming Warhammer 40K commander decks, but it will have booster packs as well. There will be four different Doctor Who commander decks, each with at least some brand new cards depicting characters or events from the show just like the 40K decks. The packs coming alongside those will be Collector Boosters, likely containing special art treatments and foil versions of cards made for the crossover.

While specific cards weren’t shown, we did already get a look at the art for a few of them (viewable in the gallery above). That includes a depiction of Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor giving his iconic speech at the Pandorica, Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor, Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, and even 12 Doctors saving Gallifrey from the Daleks. We’ll have to wait and see what the mechanics of these cards will look like, but so far they seem to be very character-focused.

The exact release date of this crossover hasn’t been revealed, but WOTC says it will be timed around some of Doctor Who’s own show plans in the second half of next year. This is far from the first TV show to arrive on a Magic card either — The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Arcane, and even My Little Pony have all been apart of the Universes Beyond initiative. Magic has also seen crossovers with videogames too, from Street Fighter to Fortnite.

The Wizards Presents event also detailed Magic’s 2023 set plans, as well as WOTC’s upcoming plans for Dungeons and Dragons. Most notably, the tabletop roleplaying game is doing away with "editions" for a new system it calls D&D One, but it will also be reviving the Planescape setting.

Tom Marks is IGN's Deputy Reviews Editor. He enjoys card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

Wizards of the Coast announced today that a Doctor Who crossover is in the works for Magic: The Gathering. The latest in a growing list of TV show crossovers, Magic will get new cards and four unique commander decks featuring Doctor Who characters sometime in Q3 of 2023.

Magic’s crossover products fall under a label WOTC calls “Universes Beyond,” separating them from its own canonical universe. For example, today’s Wizards Presents reveal event also gave additional details on a Lord of the Rings-themed set coming out in 2023, though that one will be much larger than the Doctor Who crossover.

The structure of this one is more similar to the upcoming Warhammer 40K commander decks, but it will have booster packs as well. There will be four different Doctor Who commander decks, each with at least some brand new cards depicting characters or events from the show just like the 40K decks. The packs coming alongside those will be Collector Boosters, likely containing special art treatments and foil versions of cards made for the crossover.

While specific cards weren’t shown, we did already get a look at the art for a few of them (viewable in the gallery above). That includes a depiction of Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor giving his iconic speech at the Pandorica, Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor, Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, and even 12 Doctors saving Gallifrey from the Daleks. We’ll have to wait and see what the mechanics of these cards will look like, but so far they seem to be very character-focused.

The exact release date of this crossover hasn’t been revealed, but WOTC says it will be timed around some of Doctor Who’s own show plans in the second half of next year. This is far from the first TV show to arrive on a Magic card either — The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Arcane, and even My Little Pony have all been apart of the Universes Beyond initiative. Magic has also seen crossovers with videogames too, from Street Fighter to Fortnite.

The Wizards Presents event also detailed Magic’s 2023 set plans, as well as WOTC’s upcoming plans for Dungeons and Dragons.

Tom Marks is IGN's Deputy Reviews Editor. He enjoys card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

Hot on the heels of the 5e reboot of Spelljammer, the team at Wizards of the Coast has revealed One D&D, which markes the beginning of "a new generation of Dungeons & Dragons."

WotC has been working on "what's next" for D&D since last year, but details have been sparse until now. The creative team appeared in a short video during the recent Wizards Presents digital showcase (alongside more info about the upcoming Dragonlance revival and several MTG crossover events) to explain their plan for the future of D&D.

Throughout the presentation, the team detailed the "three pillars" of this next phase of D&D, expected to launch in earnest in 2024. They include ongoing updates to the D&D rules - as we've seen in recent sourcebooks such as Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - as well as an expansion of D&D Beyond, the popular digital compendium that Wizards recently purchased, and (eventually) a set of digital tabletop tools for players and GMs to use in their games at home or online.

The digital toolset, dubbed D&D Digital, is being designed in Unreal Engine 5 and appears to be an all-in-one hybrid of virtual tabletops like Roll20 and TaleSpire and custom mini makers like HeroForge or Eldritch Foundry. "Currently, players are cobbling together all kinds of different apps and websites to have a true integrated D&D experience," says Kale Stutzman, Principle Game Designer for D&D Digital. "What we want to do is actually just provide all the tools that the players need to play themselves in one space."

The pre-alpha footage shown during the broadcast showed several types and sizes of digitally-rendered tabletop minis, from heroes duking it out with Kobolds and skeletons to a massive Black Dragon looming over the dungeonscape. While these were likely not from a specific campaign or dungeon currently in a D&D adventure, that is one of the goals of the project - though the team is also working to give players the power to build their own worlds, too.

"We might give you a pre-made campaign from us that has an exciting castle or keep with a dungeon inside of it," says Carlo Arellano, Principle Art Director on D&D Digital. "But then you're going to be able to take this place, take it apart, and build your own. We're going to have a really robust tool for you to be able to create your own dungeons."

Despite having an early build of the toolset, it's still a long way off from release. "Right now, we're in early development of our digital experience," Stutzman said. "We can play a game role some dice, see the miniatures moving around in a 3D play space, but that's just the core of it."

The biggest shift - and one that players can get their hands on much sooner - is how the tabletop D&D team is approaching the evolution of the game itself moving forward. "We did a smart thing with Fifth Edition, by listening to the fans," says Chris Perkins, D&D's Game Design Architect. "And what came out of that process was a system that is stable, that is well loved, that incorporates the best elements of earlier editions. Now that we have that, we are no longer in the position where we think of D&D as an edition – it's just D&D."

The next iteration of the core rules is already in its playtesting phase - you can check out the latest Unearthed Arcana on D&D Beyond for the first round of updates and additions. This first release introduces a new player race - the Celestial counterpart to the Tieflings, known as Ardlings - and there are already several noteworthy rules changes, even considering recent alterations to the system in TCoE or Monsters of the Multiverse. For example, characters currently receive additional Ability score points based on their lineage or species - however, these increases are now tied to their Backgrounds in the updated ruleset, and every Background now also provides a Feat. Soldiers receive +2 STR and +1 CON, for instance, along with the Savage Attacker feat, while characters with the Street Urchin background get a bonus to Dexterity/Wisdom and the Lucky feat.

"Backgrounds are something that we took apart, examined every piece of, and rebuilt with the goal of having [them] play an even larger role in your character's identity," says Jeremy Crawford, another of D&D's Game Design Architects, during an extended presentation of the new playtesting rules. Other big departures from current 5e rules include certain Feats being tied to a character's level, truncating the nine current spell lists for each class into just three based on the magic's source (Arcane, Divine, and Primal), or codifying the notion that rolling a Natural 1 always means failure - on any check, no matter how skilled a character may be.

Crawford says that while not all the proposed changes will eventually become official rules, the testing will go on for some time, much like the D&D Next initiative that eventually became Fifth Edition. "The big difference this time is we're giving feedback on the game we're already playing," Crawford says. "Rather than playtesting basically a brand new game bottom to top, instead now it's like 'all right, it's the game we're playing now', but now let's zoom in on this piece of it and think, 'How might we get more fun, more speed, more options here?' And then move on to another piece of the game until all of that coalesces in 2024 in the new books."

One D&D is scheduled to launch officially in 2024. In the meantime, check out what's on the horizon for D&D in 2023, including the revival of another classic setting.

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.

Hot on the heels of the 5e reboot of Spelljammer, the team at Wizards of the Coast has revealed One D&D, which markes the beginning of "a new generation of Dungeons & Dragons."

WotC has been working on "what's next" for D&D since last year, but details have been sparse until now. The creative team appeared in a short video during the recent Wizards Presents digital showcase (alongside more info about the upcoming Dragonlance revival and several MTG crossover events) to explain their plan for the future of D&D.

Throughout the presentation, the team detailed the "three pillars" of this next phase of D&D, expected to launch in earnest in 2024. They include ongoing updates to the D&D rules - as we've seen in recent sourcebooks such as Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - as well as an expansion of D&D Beyond, the popular digital compendium that Wizards recently purchased, and (eventually) a set of digital tabletop tools for players and GMs to use in their games at home or online.

The digital toolset, dubbed D&D Digital, is being designed in Unreal Engine 5 and appears to be an all-in-one hybrid of virtual tabletops like Roll20 and TaleSpire and custom mini makers like HeroForge or Eldritch Foundry. "Currently, players are cobbling together all kinds of different apps and websites to have a true integrated D&D experience," says Kale Stutzman, Principle Game Designer for D&D Digital. "What we want to do is actually just provide all the tools that the players need to play themselves in one space."

The pre-alpha footage shown during the broadcast showed several types and sizes of digitally-rendered tabletop minis, from heroes duking it out with Kobolds and skeletons to a massive Black Dragon looming over the dungeonscape. While these were likely not from a specific campaign or dungeon currently in a D&D adventure, that is one of the goals of the project - though the team is also working to give players the power to build their own worlds, too.

"We might give you a pre-made campaign from us that has an exciting castle or keep with a dungeon inside of it," says Carlo Arellano, Principle Art Director on D&D Digital. "But then you're going to be able to take this place, take it apart, and build your own. We're going to have a really robust tool for you to be able to create your own dungeons."

Despite having an early build of the toolset, it's still a long way off from release. "Right now, we're in early development of our digital experience," Stutzman said. "We can play a game role some dice, see the miniatures moving around in a 3D play space, but that's just the core of it."

The biggest shift - and one that players can get their hands on much sooner - is how the tabletop D&D team is approaching the evolution of the game itself moving forward. "We did a smart thing with Fifth Edition, by listening to the fans," says Chris Perkins, D&D's Game Design Architect. "And what came out of that process was a system that is stable, that is well loved, that incorporates the best elements of earlier editions. Now that we have that, we are no longer in the position where we think of D&D as an edition – it's just D&D."

The next iteration of the core rules is already in its playtesting phase - you can check out the latest Unearthed Arcana on D&D Beyond for the first round of updates and additions. This first release introduces a new player race - the Celestial counterpart to the Tieflings, known as Ardlings - and there are already several noteworthy rules changes, even considering recent alterations to the system in TCoE or Monsters of the Multiverse. For example, characters currently receive additional Ability score points based on their lineage or species - however, these increases are now tied to their Backgrounds in the updated ruleset, and every Background now also provides a Feat. Soldiers receive +2 STR and +1 CON, for instance, along with the Savage Attacker feat, while characters with the Street Urchin background get a bonus to Dexterity/Wisdom and the Lucky feat.

"Backgrounds are something that we took apart, examined every piece of, and rebuilt with the goal of having [them] play an even larger role in your character's identity," says Jeremy Crawford, another of D&D's Game Design Architects, during an extended presentation of the new playtesting rules. Other big departures from current 5e rules include certain Feats being tied to a character's level, truncating the nine current spell lists for each class into just three based on the magic's source (Arcane, Divine, and Primal), or codifying the notion that rolling a Natural 1 always means failure - on any check, no matter how skilled a character may be.

Crawford says that while not all the proposed changes will eventually become official rules, the testing will go on for some time, much like the D&D Next initiative that eventually became Fifth Edition. "The big difference this time is we're giving feedback on the game we're already playing," Crawford says. "Rather than playtesting basically a brand new game bottom to top, instead now it's like 'all right, it's the game we're playing now', but now let's zoom in on this piece of it and think, 'How might we get more fun, more speed, more options here?' And then move on to another piece of the game until all of that coalesces in 2024 in the new books."

One D&D is scheduled to launch officially in 2024. In the meantime, check out what's on the horizon for D&D in 2023, including the revival of another classic setting.

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.

Gotham Knights has an unexpected philosophy at its heart. While it might be a game about four superheroes trying to fill the void left by a murdered Batman, the developers don’t want you to feel like you’re creating four successors. They want you to find a favorite, and turn them into a single new Dark Knight.

"We always understood that there had to be a sense, by the end of the story and by the end of your investment in the hero, that you have in some way transcended the obvious potential of this character in order to become a symbol," says Creative director Patrick Redding.

"This is someone who I believe can fill the vacuum Batman has left behind. So that's such an essential aspect of the fantasy that we felt like there needed to be a moment where that was reflected in the ability tree, where it was reflected in the RPG foundations of the game."

With that overall philosophy in mind, a game mechanic that has you constantly changing and experimenting with new techniques feels apt. Gotham Knights offers a lot of options in that regard, from new superhero suits, to ability-changing gear – but it doesn’t make that idea clearer than in its skill trees. Each character has four ability trees, which offer separate directions in which to specialize your hero.

"The main abilities that you see on the ability tree are abilities that you unlock after you've earned ability points, and that's something that's a natural functional leveling up in this standard RPG way," Redding explains. "You get XP, you level up, you get some ability points. And there's dependencies and prerequisites like you would normally see in an action-RPG, but that is the gating mechanism for those abilities. You're spending points, you're deciding where you want to spend them."

Of course, with four heroes, you’ll likely want to experiment, and the game accounts for that, without feeling like you’re leaving anyone behind while not playing with them.

"So, obviously," assures Redding, "we're a multi protagonist game and we expect that a lot of players are going to identify, fairly quickly that, 'Okay, I like this hero. This character matches my style of play. I'm invested in their progression and in their evolution. I want to play that character for a long time.' That said, there's three other heroes that you may decide at some point, it would be interesting for you to try, and that you want to be able to jump into playing without feeling like you're being penalized or need to go back and redo a whole bunch of work in order to get them advanced.

"So then what happens is, if you decide to switch characters, basically, you now have a surplus of ability points that you can go into the menu and spend. You'll sit there, you'll allocate them. You can look at the whole ability tree. You can decide what you want to have access to."

The skill trees themselves are made up of a mix of ability or stat-changing upgrades – but the paths they can take you down are purposely varied, allowing you to build different versions of the same hero.

Batgirl can specialise in 1-on-1 melee combat, but she can also focus on hacking abilities, or survivability. Nightwing can build on his acrobatics, but can also offer massive buffs for co-op play. Robin can build on his preternatural talents for stealth, but could equally work on tech that helps provide decoys, or enhance elemental effects.

We got a more in-depth look at the trees for the final hero, Red Hood (which you can see in the slideshow above) – Marksman, Brawler, and Vengeance. "So the Marksman tree is self-explanatory," says game director Geoff Ellenor. "It's really about dealing more damage at range. That skill tree focuses mostly on damage per second and rewards for shooting and rewards for taking the time to use precisioning.

"The Brawler skill tree is about melee combat, but more importantly, it's about powering up the fact that Red Hood is our largest character and he's got the best grab and throw mechanics in Gotham Knights. And that's a really brutal hand to hand focused skill tree. So if you're into that style of play, it's a great place to invest early, to get the most out of Red Hood.

"The Vengeance tree is essentially reflecting Red Hood's rage in different ways. He can be an intimidating character, so it's about leveraging parts of his personality and embodying them as abilities that allow him to be more frightening and to deal more damage against certain types of enemies that he is truly angry inside about."

You may have noticed that we talked about four skill trees earlier, and there is one more unique set of options – Knighthood. Perhaps the most interesting of all the ability options, Knighthood is available for every character, and represents a moment of self-actualization where your hero has worked out how they can become their own Dark Knight, rather than just a new Batman. It will begin to unlock after a specific point in the story, but every character will have to complete a set of unique challenges to begin earning the abilities inside.

"Unlocking the Knighthood tree gives you a couple of things," says Ellenor. "It unlocks the hero traversal for that hero. So if you're Batgirl, suddenly you can glide. It unlocks your ultimate ability – for Batgirl, that's the drone – and it unlocks the Knighthood ability tree where you can start to add additional, very powerful mechanics to your hero that are otherwise not available to you until that point in the story."

Redding adds, "Once you've unlocked Knighthood for one character, you don't need to go and do the story beat again for the other heroes in order to gain access to that progression, but you'll need to go out and do the challenges for that hero that are associated with these additional abilities."

Knighthood is a truly interesting combination of narrative and mechanic, a way of using traditional RPG ideas to help tell the story of Gotham Knight’s budding heroes.

"So literally, there is a moment where it's possible for you to have this epiphany with your character," Redding enthuses. "It can be the moment that Robin, suddenly... he's staring at the Batman shrine in the Belfry, and he's looking at the gauntlet and thinking about the technology and how Batman used it, because he's like the most recent member of that team. And Robin's thinking to himself, 'Wait a minute. Batman wasn't just what was in the Batcave or what he had on his person. It was also his relationship and his connection to the bigger universe of these superheroes.' The Justice League Satellite.

"So that's kind of the moment where he goes, 'Wait, I can tap into that. I can absolutely tap into that, and if I use it this way, it's going to open up a set of abilities and some ways of fighting crime.' And so that first moment is what opens up his heroic traversal. It's where he goes, 'I can do short-range teleportation. Okay.' So these are the kinds of thematic links that we've tried to create with the Knighthood branch."

Alongside all of these skill trees is another menu of unlockables – Momentum Abilities. These amount to special attacks that can be assigned to specific button combos. Many of the Momentum Abilities tie into the skill trees – but they’re earned differently.

"In the case of the Momentum abilities, you're getting those by engaging in challenges in the world, explains Redding. "You know when you look at the momentum ability breakdown, 'In order to unlock that, I need to do the following four or five things.'"

Ellenor continues: "I will say that the most amount of synergy between abilities in different trees actually happens between the Momentum abilities tab and the rest of the trees. For example, Batgirl's beat down is a Momentum ability, but can be powered up by other abilities in her tree that allow her to do it more effectively and with piercing damage, which the ability doesn't usually have at the start."

The developers’ goal with all of these trees isn’t just to tack on RPG mechanics to an action game, but to provide a legitimate sense that your heroes are growing, learning, and changing throughout the course of Gotham Knights’ story. As a player, you’re being asked to help create your own versions of those heroes – and the team doesn’t want you to simply be able to fill out an entire skill tree on your first playthrough, encouraging you to pick and choose carefully.

"If [I'm] playing through Gotham Knights in a regular way – so, I'm going after all of the main story arcs and I'm fighting the villain arcs – I will have unlocked most, but not all of the skill tree. So your choices are always going to matter as you, at least as far as what it takes for you to beat the story.

"I think players will, and probably should, mix and match to get the best out of the abilities in Gotham Knights. We know that players will choose ability clusters as we've arranged them in the trees, because they are excited about an individual ability, but there is a lot of synergy between trees and also, you have to experiment to find out what you really like."

You'll see how that experimentation can play out in our video of two different versions of Red Hood playing co-op together, and you can see how visual expression will be important alongside all this in our reveal of 28 superhero suits. If you want to see everything we've revealed from Gotham Knights so far, check out our IGN First hub.

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.

Gotham Knights has an unexpected philosophy at its heart. While it might be a game about four superheroes trying to fill the void left by a murdered Batman, the developers don’t want you to feel like you’re creating four successors. They want you to find a favorite, and turn them into a single new Dark Knight.

"We always understood that there had to be a sense, by the end of the story and by the end of your investment in the hero, that you have in some way transcended the obvious potential of this character in order to become a symbol," says Creative director Patrick Redding.

"This is someone who I believe can fill the vacuum Batman has left behind. So that's such an essential aspect of the fantasy that we felt like there needed to be a moment where that was reflected in the ability tree, where it was reflected in the RPG foundations of the game."

With that overall philosophy in mind, a game mechanic that has you constantly changing and experimenting with new techniques feels apt. Gotham Knights offers a lot of options in that regard, from new superhero suits, to ability-changing gear – but it doesn’t make that idea clearer than in its skill trees. Each character has four ability trees, which offer separate directions in which to specialize your hero.

"The main abilities that you see on the ability tree are abilities that you unlock after you've earned ability points, and that's something that's a natural functional leveling up in this standard RPG way," Redding explains. "You get XP, you level up, you get some ability points. And there's dependencies and prerequisites like you would normally see in an action-RPG, but that is the gating mechanism for those abilities. You're spending points, you're deciding where you want to spend them."

Of course, with four heroes, you’ll likely want to experiment, and the game accounts for that, without feeling like you’re leaving anyone behind while not playing with them.

"So, obviously," assures Redding, "we're a multi protagonist game and we expect that a lot of players are going to identify, fairly quickly that, 'Okay, I like this hero. This character matches my style of play. I'm invested in their progression and in their evolution. I want to play that character for a long time.' That said, there's three other heroes that you may decide at some point, it would be interesting for you to try, and that you want to be able to jump into playing without feeling like you're being penalized or need to go back and redo a whole bunch of work in order to get them advanced.

"So then what happens is, if you decide to switch characters, basically, you now have a surplus of ability points that you can go into the menu and spend. You'll sit there, you'll allocate them. You can look at the whole ability tree. You can decide what you want to have access to."

The skill trees themselves are made up of a mix of ability or stat-changing upgrades – but the paths they can take you down are purposely varied, allowing you to build different versions of the same hero.

Batgirl can specialise in 1-on-1 melee combat, but she can also focus on hacking abilities, or survivability. Nightwing can build on his acrobatics, but can also offer massive buffs for co-op play. Robin can build on his preternatural talents for stealth, but could equally work on tech that helps provide decoys, or enhance elemental effects.

We got a more in-depth look at the trees for the final hero, Red Hood (which you can see in the slideshow above) – Marksman, Brawler, and Vengeance. "So the Marksman tree is self-explanatory," says game director Geoff Ellenor. "It's really about dealing more damage at range. That skill tree focuses mostly on damage per second and rewards for shooting and rewards for taking the time to use precisioning.

"The Brawler skill tree is about melee combat, but more importantly, it's about powering up the fact that Red Hood is our largest character and he's got the best grab and throw mechanics in Gotham Knights. And that's a really brutal hand to hand focused skill tree. So if you're into that style of play, it's a great place to invest early, to get the most out of Red Hood.

"The Vengeance tree is essentially reflecting Red Hood's rage in different ways. He can be an intimidating character, so it's about leveraging parts of his personality and embodying them as abilities that allow him to be more frightening and to deal more damage against certain types of enemies that he is truly angry inside about."

You may have noticed that we talked about four skill trees earlier, and there is one more unique set of options – Knighthood. Perhaps the most interesting of all the ability options, Knighthood is available for every character, and represents a moment of self-actualization where your hero has worked out how they can become their own Dark Knight, rather than just a new Batman. It will begin to unlock after a specific point in the story, but every character will have to complete a set of unique challenges to begin earning the abilities inside.

"Unlocking the Knighthood tree gives you a couple of things," says Ellenor. "It unlocks the hero traversal for that hero. So if you're Batgirl, suddenly you can glide. It unlocks your ultimate ability – for Batgirl, that's the drone – and it unlocks the Knighthood ability tree where you can start to add additional, very powerful mechanics to your hero that are otherwise not available to you until that point in the story."

Redding adds, "Once you've unlocked Knighthood for one character, you don't need to go and do the story beat again for the other heroes in order to gain access to that progression, but you'll need to go out and do the challenges for that hero that are associated with these additional abilities."

Knighthood is a truly interesting combination of narrative and mechanic, a way of using traditional RPG ideas to help tell the story of Gotham Knight’s budding heroes.

"So literally, there is a moment where it's possible for you to have this epiphany with your character," Redding enthuses. "It can be the moment that Robin, suddenly... he's staring at the Batman shrine in the Belfry, and he's looking at the gauntlet and thinking about the technology and how Batman used it, because he's like the most recent member of that team. And Robin's thinking to himself, 'Wait a minute. Batman wasn't just what was in the Batcave or what he had on his person. It was also his relationship and his connection to the bigger universe of these superheroes.' The Justice League Satellite.

"So that's kind of the moment where he goes, 'Wait, I can tap into that. I can absolutely tap into that, and if I use it this way, it's going to open up a set of abilities and some ways of fighting crime.' And so that first moment is what opens up his heroic traversal. It's where he goes, 'I can do short-range teleportation. Okay.' So these are the kinds of thematic links that we've tried to create with the Knighthood branch."

Alongside all of these skill trees is another menu of unlockables – Momentum Abilities. These amount to special attacks that can be assigned to specific button combos. Many of the Momentum Abilities tie into the skill trees – but they’re earned differently.

"In the case of the Momentum abilities, you're getting those by engaging in challenges in the world, explains Redding. "You know when you look at the momentum ability breakdown, 'In order to unlock that, I need to do the following four or five things.'"

Ellenor continues: "I will say that the most amount of synergy between abilities in different trees actually happens between the Momentum abilities tab and the rest of the trees. For example, Batgirl's beat down is a Momentum ability, but can be powered up by other abilities in her tree that allow her to do it more effectively and with piercing damage, which the ability doesn't usually have at the start."

The developers’ goal with all of these trees isn’t just to tack on RPG mechanics to an action game, but to provide a legitimate sense that your heroes are growing, learning, and changing throughout the course of Gotham Knights’ story. As a player, you’re being asked to help create your own versions of those heroes – and the team doesn’t want you to simply be able to fill out an entire skill tree on your first playthrough, encouraging you to pick and choose carefully.

"If [I'm] playing through Gotham Knights in a regular way – so, I'm going after all of the main story arcs and I'm fighting the villain arcs – I will have unlocked most, but not all of the skill tree. So your choices are always going to matter as you, at least as far as what it takes for you to beat the story.

"I think players will, and probably should, mix and match to get the best out of the abilities in Gotham Knights. We know that players will choose ability clusters as we've arranged them in the trees, because they are excited about an individual ability, but there is a lot of synergy between trees and also, you have to experiment to find out what you really like."

You'll see how that experimentation can play out in our video of two different versions of Red Hood playing co-op together, and you can see how visual expression will be important alongside all this in our reveal of 28 superhero suits. If you want to see everything we've revealed from Gotham Knights so far, check out our IGN First hub.

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.

Owen Wilson has revealed he's been scolded "multiple times" by Marvel for letting details slip about Loki, so he is treading more cautiously with Season 2.

The actor told ComicBook.com that he's currently filming the sophomore season of the Disney+ MCU series in London, but he stopped short of sharing any other information as he admitted that he's landed himself in hot water for being loose-lipped in the past. "I do think that... you know, we'll see what happens with this one," Wilson said. "I immediately get kind of self-conscious because they're so kind of uptight."

When asked if he had ever been "scolded" by Marvel for saying too much about the projects he's involved in, Wilson simply replied, "Yes. Yeah, multiple times."

While Wilson didn't share the exact details of the spoilers he's been reprimanded for, the Loki star told Esquire magazine last year that he received a mysterious text message after he "let it slip" that he had a moustache for his role on the MCU series. "I got an ominous text saying 'Strike 1,'" he said. "I don't know who that was, we think it might have been Kevin Feige using a burner phone but that wasn't confirmed."

Marvel is notorious for keeping spoilers under wraps and will take extreme measures to stop information from being leaked, though their attempts are not always successful. Tom Holland has been pretty bad at keeping secrets regarding the MCU, along with Mark Ruffalo who revealed that "everyone dies" in Infinity War, a mere nine months before the Avengers movie arrived in theaters.

Wilson will have to continue to keep things under his hat (though he won't confirm or deny whether he's actually wearing one), as Loki Season 2 isn't going to hit screens until next year. The plot is currently top secret, with the first season leaving plenty of unanswered questions. Additionally, only three cast members have been confirmed to return so far – Wilson, Tom Hiddleston, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

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

Owen Wilson has revealed he's been scolded "multiple times" by Marvel for letting details slip about Loki, so he is treading more cautiously with Season 2.

The actor told ComicBook.com that he's currently filming the sophomore season of the Disney+ MCU series in London, but he stopped short of sharing any other information as he admitted that he's landed himself in hot water for being loose-lipped in the past. "I do think that... you know, we'll see what happens with this one," Wilson said. "I immediately get kind of self-conscious because they're so kind of uptight."

When asked if he had ever been "scolded" by Marvel for saying too much about the projects he's involved in, Wilson simply replied, "Yes. Yeah, multiple times."

While Wilson didn't share the exact details of the spoilers he's been reprimanded for, the Loki star told Esquire magazine last year that he received a mysterious text message after he "let it slip" that he had a moustache for his role on the MCU series. "I got an ominous text saying 'Strike 1,'" he said. "I don't know who that was, we think it might have been Kevin Feige using a burner phone but that wasn't confirmed."

Marvel is notorious for keeping spoilers under wraps and will take extreme measures to stop information from being leaked, though their attempts are not always successful. Tom Holland has been pretty bad at keeping secrets regarding the MCU, along with Mark Ruffalo who revealed that "everyone dies" in Infinity War, a mere nine months before the Avengers movie arrived in theaters.

Wilson will have to continue to keep things under his hat (though he won't confirm or deny whether he's actually wearing one), as Loki Season 2 isn't going to hit screens until next year. The plot is currently top secret, with the first season leaving plenty of unanswered questions. Additionally, only three cast members have been confirmed to return so far – Wilson, Tom Hiddleston, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

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

The Pokémon Company has confirmed that new information regarding its upcoming Pokémon Scarlet and Violet video games will be revealed on Sunday, August 21.

Revealed during the Pokémon World Championship's opening ceremony, president of The Pokémon Company Tsunekazu Ishihara announced some new content for mobile game Pokémon Masters EX and MOBA Pokémon Unite before teasing that the biggest news would be coming during the closing ceremony.

"We also have news for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and the future of the Pokémon Trading Card Game," Ishihara said, "but I'd like to share those updates with you during our closing ceremony, so I ask that you wait just a little bit longer."

Despite the wave of disappointment heard throughout the crowd, fans won't have too long to wait as the closing ceremony begins at 8AM Pacific / 11AM Eastern / 4PM UK on August 21. The Pokémon World Championships - essentially the premiere competitive Pokémon gaming event with the TCG, mainline series, Pokkén Tournament, and so on - typically features big announcements including the reveals of brand new Pokémon.

It's also often the event where new TCG mechanics are announced, with the likes of Ultra Beasts, Tag Teams, and more having been announced at the World Championships in the past.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will likely be the headlining news, however, as only a handful of new pocket monsters have been shown off so far. The ninth generation of games will be released for Nintendo Switch on November 18, bringing with it a series first cooperative mode, an open world set in the Paldea region, and legendary Pokémon that turn into motorbikes.

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