343 Industries has confirmed that Halo Infinite's multiplayer will not only get Slayer, Fiesta, Free-For-All, and Tactical Slayer (SWAT) playlists on December 14, but there will also be changes to make challenges less frustrating.

Halo's community director Brian Jarrard shared the news on Reddit, confirming that the much-requested Slayer playlist will be available to all Spartans very soon.

Jarrard notes that the "team's original plans for a Slayer playlist included a variety of new variants that weren't going to be ready in time to deploy before the holiday break." In the meantime, players will still be able to enjoy a "basic Slayer offering to start and [the team] will look to bolster and expand with more variants in a future update."

Alongside these new playlists, 343 is also adjusting challenges to remove "some particularly frustrating mode-specific ones, reducing some requirements for others, making the weekly ultimate challenge less intensive (getting there is tough enough), and adding brand new challenges specific to the new playlists."

There will even be one that is "based on accumulating player score" and is a "small initial step towards 'performance based XP.'" 343 will share more details about these changes on next week's Halo Waypoint.

To end the post, Jarrard also wanted to let Halo Infinite players know that the team is "aware and actively investigating reports of intermittent hiccups affecting some players in BTB over the last few days." It is also continuing to look at Ranked matchmaking and "player feedback around potential anomalies."

The lack of dedicated playlists was one of the few complaints that we and many others had for Halo Infinite's otherwise "spectacular modern version of gaming's most esteemed first-person shooters."

While you wait for these new playlists to arrive, we hope you enjoy your time exploring Zeta Halo in Halo Infinite's campaign. If you haven't check it out yet, be sure to read our thoughts on how Master Chief's latest adventure turned out.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, in response to the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle, has both questioned Netflix's double standard when it comes to its creators and released the script of a cut scene after raising money for Trans Lifeline.

As reported by Deadline, Bob-Waksberg took to Twitter to share his confusion as to why Netflix allowed Chappelle's specials to stay unedited, while he had one of his scenes from BoJack Horseman asked to be removed "because they were worried it might upset David Fincher." Fincher is the director of, among many other things, Netflix's Mindhunter and Mank.

"Still mystified that apparently Dave Chapelle’s deal is that he says whatever he wants and Netflix just has to air it, unedited," Bob-Waksberg wrote. "Is that normal, for comedians? Because Netflix once asked me to change a joke because they were worried it might upset David Fincher."

In a follow-up tweet, he said he would release this so-called "controversial" scene if 100 people were to respond to him with a picture of a donation to Trans Lifeline, a non-profit that works to help trans people in crisis.

After raising over $2,000, he stayed true to his word and released the script for the aforementioned scene, which was written for episode 107. The scene was, according to Bob-Waksberg, "early in the show's run and we were still getting out some kinks as far as tone and process."

"CONTEXT: amidst Princess Carolyn’s busy day of agency mergers and projects falling apart, PC has ALSO been recruited by Brenda to organize a baby shower for Kristin," Bob-Waksberg wrote. "(Who are Brenda and Kristin? Apparently Princess Carolyn’s friends who would have surely become fan favorites.)

"Can Princess Carolyn go to the baby shower and ALSO find a cool director for her new project? And might that cool director be someone who happened to be concurrently producing a different show with Netflix?! Only fifty more donations to find out!"

After sharing the script, which you can see below, he shared a few more thoughts on the matter before he would "turn off this hell machine for the night."

Yay! THANK YOU! I don't know if this scene is worth it, but you gave over $2000 to Trans Lifeline today and that's definitely worth it. pic.twitter.com/i6ztDYxP3C

— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) December 8, 2021

"1) Good pushback and feedback (if it's good!) makes art better and if you as a network don't know how to give it, you might as well be throwing your money down the toilet," Bob-Waksberg concluded. "2) For a comedian who famously walked away from his hit TV show because he was worried he was Making Things Worse, it's remarkable how many of his fans (and collaborators!) believe comedians have no responsibility to not Make Things Worse."

Netflix faced criticism over Dave Chappelle's latest stand-up special "The Closer," alongside internal pushback from employees at the company, as it featured a series of transphobic jokes.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, in response to the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle, has both questioned Netflix's double standard when it comes to its creators and released the script of a cut scene after raising money for Trans Lifeline.

As reported by Deadline, Bob-Waksberg took to Twitter to share his confusion as to why Netflix allowed Chappelle's specials to stay unedited, while he had one of his scenes from BoJack Horseman asked to be removed "because they were worried it might upset David Fincher." Fincher is the director of, among many other things, Netflix's Mindhunter and Mank.

"Still mystified that apparently Dave Chapelle’s deal is that he says whatever he wants and Netflix just has to air it, unedited," Bob-Waksberg wrote. "Is that normal, for comedians? Because Netflix once asked me to change a joke because they were worried it might upset David Fincher."

In a follow-up tweet, he said he would release this so-called "controversial" scene if 100 people were to respond to him with a picture of a donation to Trans Lifeline, a non-profit that works to help trans people in crisis.

After raising over $2,000, he stayed true to his word and released the script for the aforementioned scene, which was written for episode 107. The scene was, according to Bob-Waksberg, "early in the show's run and we were still getting out some kinks as far as tone and process."

"CONTEXT: amidst Princess Carolyn’s busy day of agency mergers and projects falling apart, PC has ALSO been recruited by Brenda to organize a baby shower for Kristin," Bob-Waksberg wrote. "(Who are Brenda and Kristin? Apparently Princess Carolyn’s friends who would have surely become fan favorites.)

"Can Princess Carolyn go to the baby shower and ALSO find a cool director for her new project? And might that cool director be someone who happened to be concurrently producing a different show with Netflix?! Only fifty more donations to find out!"

After sharing the script, which you can see below, he shared a few more thoughts on the matter before he would "turn off this hell machine for the night."

Yay! THANK YOU! I don't know if this scene is worth it, but you gave over $2000 to Trans Lifeline today and that's definitely worth it. pic.twitter.com/i6ztDYxP3C

— Raphael Bob-Waksberg (@RaphaelBW) December 8, 2021

"1) Good pushback and feedback (if it's good!) makes art better and if you as a network don't know how to give it, you might as well be throwing your money down the toilet," Bob-Waksberg concluded. "2) For a comedian who famously walked away from his hit TV show because he was worried he was Making Things Worse, it's remarkable how many of his fans (and collaborators!) believe comedians have no responsibility to not Make Things Worse."

Netflix faced criticism over Dave Chappelle's latest stand-up special "The Closer," alongside internal pushback from employees at the company, as it featured a series of transphobic jokes.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Marvel Cinematic Spider-Man Tom Holland seems to really enjoy being Spider-Man. Enough that he wants to be Spider-Man in other universes too — say, like a Spider-Verse. And it turns out he was even approached for an appearance in Sony's animated hit at one point.

In an interview with SYFY Wire, Holland joined Marvel's MJ, Zendaya, its Ned Leeds, Jacob Batalon, in expressing a desire to make an appearance in the animated Spider-Man world. It's an idea that seems at least possible given the ways in which Enter the Spider-Verse and, presumably, Across the Spider-Verse play with multiple dimensions.

Holland especially is eager, given that apparently former Sony Pictures head and current Spider-Verse producer Amy Pascal approached him during the filming of No Way Home about a potential appearance.

“Amy actually asked me on the set of this movie and no one has come back to me,” Holland said, to which Zendaya followed up with, “Yeah, what the heck?”

Holland pleaded on behalf of himself, Zendaya, and Batalon:

"Love them and I'm just waiting for the phone call,” Holland said. “Guys, call us. Put us in your movie, we want to be in it.”

Sony's Into the Spider-Verse's release in 2018 brought a groundbreaking visual style to the world of Spider-Man alongside Miles Morales' big-screen debut. It's set to be followed up with Across the Spider-Verse Part One, which we got a first teaser for just a few days ago.

The sequel also seems to include lots of interdimensional travel and yes, more Spider-People, even if none of them as of yet have been revealed to be Tom Holland. Meanwhile, Marvel's take on Spider-Man has plenty of Tom Holland in it with No Way Home headed to theaters on December 17.

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

Marvel Cinematic Spider-Man Tom Holland seems to really enjoy being Spider-Man. Enough that he wants to be Spider-Man in other universes too — say, like a Spider-Verse. And it turns out he was even approached for an appearance in Sony's animated hit at one point.

In an interview with SYFY Wire, Holland joined Marvel's MJ, Zendaya, its Ned Leeds, Jacob Batalon, in expressing a desire to make an appearance in the animated Spider-Man world. It's an idea that seems at least possible given the ways in which Enter the Spider-Verse and, presumably, Across the Spider-Verse play with multiple dimensions.

Holland especially is eager, given that apparently former Sony Pictures head and current Spider-Verse producer Amy Pascal approached him during the filming of No Way Home about a potential appearance.

“Amy actually asked me on the set of this movie and no one has come back to me,” Holland said, to which Zendaya followed up with, “Yeah, what the heck?”

Holland pleaded on behalf of himself, Zendaya, and Batalon:

"Love them and I'm just waiting for the phone call,” Holland said. “Guys, call us. Put us in your movie, we want to be in it.”

Sony's Into the Spider-Verse's release in 2018 brought a groundbreaking visual style to the world of Spider-Man alongside Miles Morales' big-screen debut. It's set to be followed up with Across the Spider-Verse Part One, which we got a first teaser for just a few days ago.

The sequel also seems to include lots of interdimensional travel and yes, more Spider-People, even if none of them as of yet have been revealed to be Tom Holland. Meanwhile, Marvel's take on Spider-Man has plenty of Tom Holland in it with No Way Home headed to theaters on December 17.

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

Nintendo is expanding in order to have more game development space. To do this, Nintendo will build a new office where its old headquarters used to be.

In a report from Nikkei (translated by VGC), Nintendo will build two new major offices so that it can develop more games in-house instead of outsourcing development. The first new office will be located in the Kyoto City Waterworks Bureau's new government building. It is located next to Nintendo's current headquarters and the company will rent out the 6th and 7th floors starting from May 2022.

Nintendo is participating in Kyoto City's Corporate Location Promotion System, so the company will receive up to 1.4 million every year for three years to cover some operational costs and is dependent on how many new employees that it brings on.

The second new office is going to be built from scratch, where Nintendo's previous headquarters was located. The area currently has the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center and its Mario Club QA team. However, it also has empty land, so Nintendo is possibly using that to build its second building.

Meanwhile, as Nintendo in Japan is expanding, its North American branch has been doing the opposite. Back in October, Nintendo decided to shut down its offices in Redwood City, California, and Toronto, Ontario. We currently don't know what the new offices in Japan will look like, but certainly, it won't be the same as was it might have looked like almost 130 years ago.

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

Nintendo is expanding in order to have more game development space. To do this, Nintendo will build a new office where its old headquarters used to be.

In a report from Nikkei (translated by VGC), Nintendo will build two new major offices so that it can develop more games in-house instead of outsourcing development. The first new office will be located in the Kyoto City Waterworks Bureau's new government building. It is located next to Nintendo's current headquarters and the company will rent out the 6th and 7th floors starting from May 2022.

Nintendo is participating in Kyoto City's Corporate Location Promotion System, so the company will receive up to 1.4 million every year for three years to cover some operational costs and is dependent on how many new employees that it brings on.

The second new office is going to be built from scratch, where Nintendo's previous headquarters was located. The area currently has the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center and its Mario Club QA team. However, it also has empty land, so Nintendo is possibly using that to build its second building.

Meanwhile, as Nintendo in Japan is expanding, its North American branch has been doing the opposite. Back in October, Nintendo decided to shut down its offices in Redwood City, California, and Toronto, Ontario. We currently don't know what the new offices in Japan will look like, but certainly, it won't be the same as was it might have looked like almost 130 years ago.

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

Hello Neighbor 2 is bringing some big changes to the original’s stealthy formula, including a wider open-world sandbox, multiple creepy characters, and a neural network to make enemy characters more dangerous than ever.

IGN got the chance to sit down with TinyBuild’s CEO Alex Nichiporchik as well as the game’s Head of Franchise Mike Rafiienko, Assistant Producer Nadya Zhuk and Lead Designer Alex Kravchenko to dig a little deeper into what fans should expect from the game’s sequel.

Hello Neighbor 2 will look to greatly expand on a number of elements that contributed to the commercial success of its predecessor while also adding to the multimedia story that TinyBuild is trying to create for the franchise. In an exclusive hands-off look at the game, we took a closer look at the game’s new open-world sandbox setting, quirky characters, and intuitive AI.

Expanding the Neighborhood

As was noted in our first preview of the game, one of the biggest changes in Hello Neighbor 2 is its new open-world sandbox style. The game has made an impressive jump in scale when compared to its predecessor, and with a complete graphics overhaul, it looks stunning too.

“Raven Brooks is not a particularly big town,” Kravchenko says. “But it’s pretty dense with all of the other bright characters that are colorful and interesting. I would say it’s gorgeous and I think our artists did a great job.”

When Hello Neighbor 2 is released, players will be able to explore the town of Raven Brooks as they please. Stepping into the shoes of the game’s new protagonist, investigative journalist Quentin, the game’s sandbox-style will give fans the tools to dig deeper into the events taking place in the town, while ensuring that each player’s investigation feels personal to them.

With that newfound freedom, one particular feature that is likely to become helpful in Hello Neighbor 2 arrives in the form of a progress pinboard. As opposed to a system where players can track their current missions through objectives in a menu screen, Hello Neighbor 2’s pinboard reflects how your findings are more like clues than story beats.

The pinboard comes into effect when you happen across a clue in the game that may be useful toward the story’s investigation. At this point, an indicator flashes up on Quentin’s wristwatch to show that you have found something new and noteworthy before the evidence is then automatically added to a pinboard in your office as a picture of the thing that you’ve discovered.

That ability to more easily keep track of discoveries will likely come as a welcome addition in comparison to the first Hello Neighbor, which received criticism at launch over its tricky to negotiate puzzles.

Hello Neighbors

While Hello Neighbor 2’s open-world sandbox setting is impressive, it would be far from complete without its cast of charismatic and creepy characters. “With Hello Neighbour 2, we tried to focus on creating multiple different characters, each of which is very unique in its own way and requires a special approach from the player,” explains Kravchenko.

“[The story includes] all of the characters and it’s interconnected. It’s not enough to just go to the neighbor’s house and figure out the whole story. You have to travel around the village and figure out what’s going on and how all of those characters are connected.”

During our conversation, the team spoke in detail about two of the characters that will feature in Hello Neighbor 2. Unlike the first game, where antagonist Mr. Peterson acted hostile toward the player throughout the game’s narrative, characters in Hello Neighbor 2 have a range of behaviors depending upon when and where you encounter them.

This is the case for Baker Gerda, who I met during the in-game bakery’s operating hours. When we first came across Gerda, she was tending to the cash register and watching over her stock of baked goods. “Here’s the baker,” says Kravchenko as he enters the store. “And, she’s friendly to us because this is a public zone so we can walk around and she won’t be aggressive to us. [...] ”

“[A number of characters] have different daily routines depending on the part of the day. For example, during the night she might go upstairs to sleep on the bed or she can be doing something suspicious or fishy that she doesn’t want other people to know about. This is where our investigating [takes place] and we might encounter things about characters that they didn’t want us to know about.”

While a range of the NPC characters within Hello Neighbor 2 have their own daily routines that players can uncover to aid their investigation, the game will also allow you to manipulate its characters through your interactions with them. In doing so, players in Hello Neighbor 2 can, at times, trick and coerce the game’s NPCs into crafting items for them that provide the tools necessary to bypass other NPCs that may be causing them trouble.

“To solve any small quest, you have to plan forward,” Kravchenko explains. “For example, to go into the mayor’s house maybe you should first stop by the bakery to get some dog treats. Then, [you can use these to] distract the dog and then go inside. Or maybe, if you want to befriend the police officer you might give him some doughnuts so he’ll be less aggressive to you and he’ll allow you to do your own investigation. There are all kinds of possibilities and we’ve tried to interconnect all the characters and things that they do.”

During our first preview of the game, we briefly touched on this by explaining that certain objects in the game will create temporary status effects that will hinder the game’s AI for a brief period of time. However, in our most recent chat, Kravchenko delved into this idea further, explaining that items in the game will have different effects on characters depending on who you use them on. For some characters, a cherry pie to the face might cause them to take a shower and distract them for a brief period of time, while for others, the same trick might be rendered useless as the character will proceed to wipe away the muck and continue to pursue you.

As well as showing off the town baker, the team were also keen to share more on the game’s resident taxidermist, Mr. Otto. “Mr. Otto lives on the outside of the village and he doesn’t like intruders,” says Kravchenko. Among the different areas of the town shown off during our gameplay preview, Mr. Otto’s house certainly felt like one of the more sinister. Upon discovering the character, he stood in his garden, with a loaded rifle at the ready.

“One of the things that we’ve really focused on is that you’ll have to understand what this character is, what’s different about them, and what approach you’ll have to use with the character,” Kravchenko continues. “For example, since [Mr. Otto] is very dangerous and shoots at you, you might have to be very stealthy with him. [...] Whereas other characters might require you to distract them with sound, or scare them to death. So [overall], there are a lot of things that you can work with.”

The Neighborhood Watch

But just because you have more means of fighting AI characters, that doesn’t mean they won’t fight back. In order for enemy characters to pose a constant threat to players, Hello Neighbor 2 features self-learning AI, which will players’ actions from across the whole community to develop and learn how to surprise them.

“Each player knows that they affect the AI in some way,” explains Kravchenko, “and, [for] any play style that you choose, the AI will accommodate for [this] over time so you’ll feel like you are part of something bigger than just your play session and investigation. It feels very personal because you’ve conducted your investigation your own way, but at the same time you can affect the whole community, so we are really striving for that with the AI’s machine learning.”

With an AI that is set to grow and learn, I was keen to find out more about any longer-term goals that the developers had for the neural network that it’s building. The team explained that one of its overarching goals is to be able to teach the AI to make improvisations.

In this way, the AI would use its knowledge of the community to make predictions of what the player’s next moves might be during moments where both the player and character are attempting to outsmart one another. This would create a set of enemies within Hello Neighbor 2 that not only feel more human, but that also create challenging and unique environments for the franchise’s community to overcome.

The issue, says Kravchenko, is ensuring that you get the balance right in terms of the game’s difficulty. “One of the biggest challenges design-wise is to not just make a Terminator that is better than you all the time and is too optimized, because that wouldn’t be fun anymore,” he says. “So the AI should be a worthy opponent to you and accommodate to your playstyle and how skillful you are.”

With a number of different AI characters set to launch with the game, it will certainly be interesting to see how each of Hello Neighbor 2’s different characters respond to their environments, especially as they learn more about player behavior. While the team did briefly discuss their plans to grow the game post-launch by adding new characters into the mix at a later date, they weren’t able to share any further details on that at this time.

During the end of our time together, CEO Alex Nichiporchik summarised his thoughts on the upcoming game, highlighting how far the team has come since the release of the franchise’s original title. “I’m really amazed that the original had seven people plus me working on it,” concludes Nichiporchik. “Right now we have a hundred really talented people working in very different time zones. With the pandemic and everything that’s happened we found our product here that a lot of people are really excited for and it’s really exciting to talk about [it].”

As announced at The Game Awards last night, Hello Neighbor 2 will be available to pre-order from April 7, 2022. While a release date for the game proper is still to be announced, anyone who does pre-order Hello Neighbor 2 will gain access to the title’s beta.

For more on Hello Neighbor 2, make sure to check out our first preview of the game.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Hello Neighbor 2 is bringing some big changes to the original’s stealthy formula, including a wider open-world sandbox, multiple creepy characters, and a neural network to make enemy characters more dangerous than ever.

IGN got the chance to sit down with TinyBuild’s CEO Alex Nichiporchik as well as the game’s Head of Franchise Mike Rafiienko, Assistant Producer Nadya Zhuk and Lead Designer Alex Kravchenko to dig a little deeper into what fans should expect from the game’s sequel.

Hello Neighbor 2 will look to greatly expand on a number of elements that contributed to the commercial success of its predecessor while also adding to the multimedia story that TinyBuild is trying to create for the franchise. In an exclusive hands-off look at the game, we took a closer look at the game’s new open-world sandbox setting, quirky characters, and intuitive AI.

Expanding the Neighborhood

As was noted in our first preview of the game, one of the biggest changes in Hello Neighbor 2 is its new open-world sandbox style. The game has made an impressive jump in scale when compared to its predecessor, and with a complete graphics overhaul, it looks stunning too.

“Raven Brooks is not a particularly big town,” Kravchenko says. “But it’s pretty dense with all of the other bright characters that are colorful and interesting. I would say it’s gorgeous and I think our artists did a great job.”

When Hello Neighbor 2 is released, players will be able to explore the town of Raven Brooks as they please. Stepping into the shoes of the game’s new protagonist, investigative journalist Quentin, the game’s sandbox-style will give fans the tools to dig deeper into the events taking place in the town, while ensuring that each player’s investigation feels personal to them.

With that newfound freedom, one particular feature that is likely to become helpful in Hello Neighbor 2 arrives in the form of a progress pinboard. As opposed to a system where players can track their current missions through objectives in a menu screen, Hello Neighbor 2’s pinboard reflects how your findings are more like clues than story beats.

The pinboard comes into effect when you happen across a clue in the game that may be useful toward the story’s investigation. At this point, an indicator flashes up on Quentin’s wristwatch to show that you have found something new and noteworthy before the evidence is then automatically added to a pinboard in your office as a picture of the thing that you’ve discovered.

That ability to more easily keep track of discoveries will likely come as a welcome addition in comparison to the first Hello Neighbor, which received criticism at launch over its tricky to negotiate puzzles.

Hello Neighbors

While Hello Neighbor 2’s open-world sandbox setting is impressive, it would be far from complete without its cast of charismatic and creepy characters. “With Hello Neighbour 2, we tried to focus on creating multiple different characters, each of which is very unique in its own way and requires a special approach from the player,” explains Kravchenko.

“[The story includes] all of the characters and it’s interconnected. It’s not enough to just go to the neighbor’s house and figure out the whole story. You have to travel around the village and figure out what’s going on and how all of those characters are connected.”

During our conversation, the team spoke in detail about two of the characters that will feature in Hello Neighbor 2. Unlike the first game, where antagonist Mr. Peterson acted hostile toward the player throughout the game’s narrative, characters in Hello Neighbor 2 have a range of behaviors depending upon when and where you encounter them.

This is the case for Baker Gerda, who I met during the in-game bakery’s operating hours. When we first came across Gerda, she was tending to the cash register and watching over her stock of baked goods. “Here’s the baker,” says Kravchenko as he enters the store. “And, she’s friendly to us because this is a public zone so we can walk around and she won’t be aggressive to us. [...] ”

“[A number of characters] have different daily routines depending on the part of the day. For example, during the night she might go upstairs to sleep on the bed or she can be doing something suspicious or fishy that she doesn’t want other people to know about. This is where our investigating [takes place] and we might encounter things about characters that they didn’t want us to know about.”

While a range of the NPC characters within Hello Neighbor 2 have their own daily routines that players can uncover to aid their investigation, the game will also allow you to manipulate its characters through your interactions with them. In doing so, players in Hello Neighbor 2 can, at times, trick and coerce the game’s NPCs into crafting items for them that provide the tools necessary to bypass other NPCs that may be causing them trouble.

“To solve any small quest, you have to plan forward,” Kravchenko explains. “For example, to go into the mayor’s house maybe you should first stop by the bakery to get some dog treats. Then, [you can use these to] distract the dog and then go inside. Or maybe, if you want to befriend the police officer you might give him some doughnuts so he’ll be less aggressive to you and he’ll allow you to do your own investigation. There are all kinds of possibilities and we’ve tried to interconnect all the characters and things that they do.”

During our first preview of the game, we briefly touched on this by explaining that certain objects in the game will create temporary status effects that will hinder the game’s AI for a brief period of time. However, in our most recent chat, Kravchenko delved into this idea further, explaining that items in the game will have different effects on characters depending on who you use them on. For some characters, a cherry pie to the face might cause them to take a shower and distract them for a brief period of time, while for others, the same trick might be rendered useless as the character will proceed to wipe away the muck and continue to pursue you.

As well as showing off the town baker, the team were also keen to share more on the game’s resident taxidermist, Mr. Otto. “Mr. Otto lives on the outside of the village and he doesn’t like intruders,” says Kravchenko. Among the different areas of the town shown off during our gameplay preview, Mr. Otto’s house certainly felt like one of the more sinister. Upon discovering the character, he stood in his garden, with a loaded rifle at the ready.

“One of the things that we’ve really focused on is that you’ll have to understand what this character is, what’s different about them, and what approach you’ll have to use with the character,” Kravchenko continues. “For example, since [Mr. Otto] is very dangerous and shoots at you, you might have to be very stealthy with him. [...] Whereas other characters might require you to distract them with sound, or scare them to death. So [overall], there are a lot of things that you can work with.”

The Neighborhood Watch

But just because you have more means of fighting AI characters, that doesn’t mean they won’t fight back. In order for enemy characters to pose a constant threat to players, Hello Neighbor 2 features self-learning AI, which will players’ actions from across the whole community to develop and learn how to surprise them.

“Each player knows that they affect the AI in some way,” explains Kravchenko, “and, [for] any play style that you choose, the AI will accommodate for [this] over time so you’ll feel like you are part of something bigger than just your play session and investigation. It feels very personal because you’ve conducted your investigation your own way, but at the same time you can affect the whole community, so we are really striving for that with the AI’s machine learning.”

With an AI that is set to grow and learn, I was keen to find out more about any longer-term goals that the developers had for the neural network that it’s building. The team explained that one of its overarching goals is to be able to teach the AI to make improvisations.

In this way, the AI would use its knowledge of the community to make predictions of what the player’s next moves might be during moments where both the player and character are attempting to outsmart one another. This would create a set of enemies within Hello Neighbor 2 that not only feel more human, but that also create challenging and unique environments for the franchise’s community to overcome.

The issue, says Kravchenko, is ensuring that you get the balance right in terms of the game’s difficulty. “One of the biggest challenges design-wise is to not just make a Terminator that is better than you all the time and is too optimized, because that wouldn’t be fun anymore,” he says. “So the AI should be a worthy opponent to you and accommodate to your playstyle and how skillful you are.”

With a number of different AI characters set to launch with the game, it will certainly be interesting to see how each of Hello Neighbor 2’s different characters respond to their environments, especially as they learn more about player behavior. While the team did briefly discuss their plans to grow the game post-launch by adding new characters into the mix at a later date, they weren’t able to share any further details on that at this time.

During the end of our time together, CEO Alex Nichiporchik summarised his thoughts on the upcoming game, highlighting how far the team has come since the release of the franchise’s original title. “I’m really amazed that the original had seven people plus me working on it,” concludes Nichiporchik. “Right now we have a hundred really talented people working in very different time zones. With the pandemic and everything that’s happened we found our product here that a lot of people are really excited for and it’s really exciting to talk about [it].”

As announced at The Game Awards last night, Hello Neighbor 2 will be available to pre-order from April 7, 2022. While a release date for the game proper is still to be announced, anyone who does pre-order Hello Neighbor 2 will gain access to the title’s beta.

For more on Hello Neighbor 2, make sure to check out our first preview of the game.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Hello Neighbor 2 has been pushed back to an unannounced date in 2022. Publisher TinyBuild has announced that pre-orders will begin in April, and that an upcoming beta will show off some of the game's open world.

According to the publisher, pre-orders for the stealth horror sequel will go live from April 7, 2022. The last time we heard about the game's release, it was due for 2021, meaning it's received a quiet delay.

As well as ensuring that they'll be able to play the game at release, fans pre-ordering Hello Neighbor 2 will also receive access to the game's beta when it releases.

While a release date is yet to be announced, the studio has said that those accessing Hello Neighbor 2's beta will be able to explore a good part of the game's fictional town, Raven Brooks. Elsewhere in the announcement, the publisher also shared a short trailer for the game.

"In this game, you'll be playing as Quentin - a journalist investigating a series of missing person cases in the open world of Raven Brooks," explains a narrator over the top of the trailer. "Create your own adventure as you interact with a host of new characters and take on the infamous Mr. Peterson - a suspect who has been hiding from the police and is now designed with a neural network. But trust no one, everyone's a suspect."

In the trailer, fans are introduced to a number of different new characters from within the game including what appears to be an AI dog, a gun-wielding taxidermist, and the town's Mayor (as previously referenced in the game's first devlog). The clip also appears to show off a number of new items that players will be able to collect within the game such as a doughnut, which Quentin uses to distract a dog, and a rifle, which is taken from a wall.

For more on Hello Neighbor 2, make sure to check out our first preview of the game, where we sat down with the game's creators to talk about the sequel's improved AI, new protagonist, and expanded open world.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.