During a special IGN Live edition of Up at Noon today, McFarlane Toys’ Brian Walters (Director, Brand Creative) stopped by to chat with Max Scoville and Brian Altano about what the company has in the pipeline, including their new Elite Edition series that’s kicking off with Doom Slayer from Doom: The Dark Ages, followed by Lilith from Diablo IV.
Walters said the idea behind the Elite Edition was “to create highly decorated, super detailed, iconic version of characters from games.” One way these figures stand out is by their inclusion of soft goods, such as the fur cloak on Doom Slayer, and Walters noted they were “Introducing new materials we haven’t used.”
Walters pointed out the many accessories Doom Slayer came with, including the Pulveriser, flail, combat shotgun, and shield saw, saying he felt it was ”a really great first item for [Elite Edition].” Though pre-orders for Doom Slayer were currently sold out, Walters said the figure would be available at retailers like Walmart and Gamestop upon release. And yes, it was implied some monsters are in the works for the Doom Slayer to battle.
Lilith in the meantime just went up for pre-order today, tied to IGN Live. Her accessories include multiple palace fates for a variety of expressions, and Williams said the idea was they were “holding nothing back with this figure,” including articulated wings and “a soft PVC tail so you can pose it however you want.”
Williams said the challenge with a figure like Lilith was “the balance of executing the design but still making a functional toy. You have to make tough decisions.” He added that probably the hardest thing was pulling off “the engineering without compromising the look of the character.”
As for what else McFarlane Toys had in the pipeline, there’s the Power Armor from Fallout, which is based on the game, not the series. The previous figures they made for the TV version were from the Movie Maniacs line, so the Power Armor will be the first articulated Fallout figure. Williams teased there was “more to come here. We’ve got some good surprises coming.”
Last but not least, Williams showed off two of the figures from the upcoming Mortal Kombat Classics line - including a boxed Sub-Zero, featuring very fun retro arcade packaging that includes joystick controls on the box art and the original character select image of Sub-Zero, along with his bio, on the back.
At IGN Live today, The Last of Us Co-Creator and Executive Producer Craig Mazin was joined by several of the show’s core creative team – including Ksenia Sereda (Cinematographer), Ann Foley (Costume Designer), Don Macaulay (Production Designer), Alex Wang (VFX Supervisor), Timothy Good (Editor), and David Fleming (Co-Composer) – to discuss the tremendous amount of work that went into the just-completed second season of the HBO series.
As the panel began, Mazin remarked, “The truth is that Neil [Druckmann] and I are vastly over-credited for the success of the show. We work really hard on it but these are the people that bring it to life and they deserve so much credit… All of it is necessary to make it what it is.”
When the panel was asked to name their favorite episode from Season 2, nearly everyone named either episode two ("Through the Valley") or episode six (“The Price”), which made sense since they were such standouts - and segued nicely into the fact that these were the two episodes moderator Amelia Emberwing focused on for the conversation.
"Through the Valley” of course had two monumental events, including the horde of infected attacking Jackson and, well… that other thing which we’ll get back to. With footage of the massive attack sequence playing, Mazin noted that there were visual effects in basically every shot, saying, “I think Alex had to touch nearly everything here.”
Rewatching the attack on Jackson, Macaulay joked, “All I can think about is the thousands of meetings we have,” saying they quite seriously probably had 10 meetings about how the barrels would be launched from the town gates into the horde. As he put it, “Nearly every shot in this took 10-15 meetings. Craig loves meetings!” Even after all of that there was “a lot of retrofitting on set. Lots of rooftops we weren’t planning to do.”
Foley said episode two was definitely the hardest part of the season for her as the costume designer because of how many actors and extras were in that episode working on multiple filming units - and that it was all taking place while they were also working on the Seraphite costumes for upcoming episodes. As she explained, this involved "65 people in three different areas.”
Wang stressed that previs is crucial, and the many discussions they have about what Macaulay will build vs. what Wang will oversee being added digitally. It’s a long process, with Wang noting, “You’re planning for success 6-8 months down the line” and that he’s constantly in communication with Macaulay, the stunt team, and many more. Mazin joked that when he calls Wang in for one of his infamous meetings, “His heart sinks because he knows he’s about to go over budget again.”
One reason the infected horde was so tricky was that it dealt with such a large army and as Wang explained, in the visual effects world, when you have a group that large “repetition is usually okay,” since you have characters in the same costumes or creatures of the same type. Here though, Mazin wanted to sell that these were all originally different human beings who were different sizes and ages in different outfits before they were infected. As he put it, they nearly “broke Wētā [FX]” over the specifics they asked for.
Then there’s Good and his crucial work as editor. He has to begin editing without the final effects in place, which can be tricky. And not just because, as he pointed out, in the early footage “a Bloater isn’t a Bloater, it’s a green dot.” But after they may have cut of the episode they're happy with, “we get the animation back and everything’s changed. The motion’s become faster than a human actor is able to do," so they have to re-edit to adjust.
When it came to scoring the “Through the Valley,” Fleming described it as particularly challenging, because Mazin asked him, “How do we start this at 11 and then keep going up for the whole episode?” The idea was they were “building up momentum so it just felt relentless relentless relentless. Then at the end, it was kind of the opposite with the pivotal scene with Joel.” When Fleming paused and said he’d been avoiding talking about how that episode ended for so long, Mazin couldn’t resist chiming in: “He died!”
As Fleming explained, the original music for Joel's wrenching death scene was much busier but then “Craig asked ‘strip it back.’ It was a less is more situation.”
While praising the performances of Pedro Pascal, Kaitlyn Dever and Bella Ramsey, Good revealed that for Joel’s death “I actually edited it five times before I was ready to show it to Craig,” because he knew how important it was to get it right.
As Joel’s death scene played out, the panel couldn’t help but become somber and when Mazin cracked, “Let’s talk about the golf clubs we picked out. They have lots of meaning" to release some tension, he then paused and added that actually, when it came to which exact club Abby would use to beat Joel with, “There was a whole discussion!”
The conversation then moved to episode six and its flashbacks to Joel and Ellie together set between Season 1 and 2. The sequence where Ellie climbs the dinosaur was shown and Mazin remarked, “I love this in the game. I love that we got to do it!”
He added that this was a funny situation where the actual dinosaur built for Ellie to climb “was wobbling too much so then Alex stopped it from wobbling. But then it looked fake so we had to make it wobble [again] a little bit.”
Discussing Joel and Ellie’s clothes, Foley noted they did their best to match their looks in the game, though there might be slight changes occasionally for specific reasons. One such case was in the museum scene. In the game, Ellie is wearing a tank top in this sequence. However, on the show, they wanted to underline that Bella Ramsey was playing a more youthful version of Ellie in these flashback scenes, so they ended up making it a t-shirt because “changing it from a tank to a t-shirt made it look baggier and make her look younger.” In general though, “Joel and Ellie are in the same things they wear in the game because there’s no reason to change it.”
Ksenia Sereda said she was both excited and nervous about shooting the scene where Ellie and Joel go inside the space capsule, because “the way it was done in the game was so brilliant,” including the close up on Ellie smiling, imagining going into space. Sereda joked the game provided “the most expensive previs I’ve ever had to work with.”
Mazin marveled how Sereda lit the screen so that all of the light changes on Ellie’s face were done practically, without visual effects needed. Sereda explained how difficult it was, because “the whole sequence is lit through this teeny tiny window on the side of the capsule. It was very challenging to find this whole look.”
This sequence had particular significance to Mazin because “This is the first thing that Neil ever showed me from the second game.” He elaborated that when he went to Naughty Dog to speak to Druckmann about turning The Last of Us into a TV show, the team were nearing the completion of The Last of Us Part II. When Druckmann showed Mazin the space capsule sequence, his response was, “‘We’re doing that!’ In my mind, I was like, 'We need to do a good enough job for Season 1 that we’re renewed [to do that].'"
With Season 3 of The Last of Us now in the works, Mazin said he was eager to get back in the thick of it, turning to his fellow panelists and saying “I can’t wait to do that. I can’t wait to do that with all of you.” He then proclaimed: “Don, are we going to have meetings!!”
Having already out pre-orders of many packs and bundles already, the Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy cards officially will be released June 13 and Principal Designer Gavin Verhey and Executive Producer Zakeel Gordon were on hand at IGN Live today to discuss the much-anticipated collaboration.
Verhey and Gordon said that there have been other IP crossovers with Magic before, Final Fantasy was particularly exciting because, as Verhey put it, “It’s Final Fantasy! That really helps! We’ve been working on this set for about five years.”
The duo noted everyone at Wizards of the Coast were big fans of Final Fantasy, noting most had been playing the games longer than they’d played Magic and means so much to them.
Verhery said their approach was to incorporate something from all 15 games – which upped to 16 as they were working on the cards – which began with making spreadsheets of all the characters, items and story modes. They then split up the possible inclusions into three tiers - what Verhey described as the "gotta have: primary elements and most popular characters, followed by the second tier, which is where “cool side characters” came into play, while the third tier were the deep cuts, “like Guy speaking beaver. We wanted to get it all in there. Every game is represented from most iconic characters to deep cuts you can’t believe they put on a Magic card.”
There are four Commander decks, based on Final Fantasy X, XIV, VI and VII and Verhery promised “Everything besides the lands is themed to the game” and that playing the FF7 deck “ is like seeing the whole game play out before you eyes.” Added Gordon, “We chose those decks to represent different eras. We tried to really get the breadth of the entire franchise in our product.”
Gordon said inevitably they still couldn’t include every single character or game aspect they would have liked, given they didn’t have unlimited cards, noting, “The big challenge is we were going for the entire mainline series. We limited it to core games which left out a few great characters, but by design.”
Gordon explained that the Through the Ages cards, which include classic Final Fantasy artwork was an idea that came up halfway through the development process, simply because they were looking at the art – from the likes of Yoshitaka Amano and Tetsuya Nomura – so much already and, as Gordon put it “The art was so amazing they wanted to put it on cards.”
A couple of lucky fans at IGN Live were given decks of cards before release and when showing them off, their decks included the likes of Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth and Final Fantasy IV’s Rosa. Verhey said he felt that was an appeal of the Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy cards - taking two characters “you’d never see in [the same] game but here they are together.”
Obsidian Entertainment debuted its special The Outer Worlds 2 Direct today, revealing a planet-sized presentation full of gameplay with new details about its 2025 sequel.
The 30-minute showcase gave players a tongue-in-cheek look at how Obsidian is building on the foundation laid by its original 2019 space adventure RPG with tweaks to existing mechanics as well as completely new gameplay features. It was also all hosted by comedian and Sonic the Hedgehog movie voice actor Ben Schwartz, who helped keep The Outer Worlds 2 Direct going with plenty of skits in between the nitty-gritty details.
From wacky new Flaws and planets to a fresh perspective on player choice, we’ve collected all of the highlights from today’s The Outer Worlds 2 Direct and shared them below. Also, as announced at the 2025 Xbox Games Showcase, The Outer Worlds 2 now has a release date of October 29, 2025. You can read up on everything announced at that show here.
Exploring Space as an Earth Directorate Agent
Players are dropped into The Outer Worlds 2 as an Earth Directorate Agent. Obsidian describes these do-gooders as “space cowboys or space sky marshals” or “good guys that go in to places and fix everything that’s wrong.” How you build out your character and experience from here, though, is up to you.
Filling out your character’s story means choosing things like a Background and Traits, with the latter setting the foundation for how you approach gameplay throughout the story. You can be Brilliant, Heroic, Innovative, Lucky – or Dumb, if that’s your thing.
There are also skills, which have been refined this time around, and perks, which are heavily inspired by the system used in Fallout: New Vegas. One example of a perk shown during the Direct is Assassin, an ability that grants a movement bonus after a stealth kill.
More Guns, More Choice
The Outer Worlds 2 is about expanding the universe Obsidian created in 2019, and that means introducing vast improvements to the gameplay across the board. There are more guns with more unique animations to be found here, with many of them shown off during the Direct.
It’s all very Borderlands, as some weapons carry unique traits. Rookie’s Reward is a great example of what’s in store, as this firearm slowly levels up with the player as it's used through the game, celebrating each new level with a confetti and fireworks show. There’s also the Pop-Up Gun, which distracts enemies with pop-up ads projected by a pesky drone. Another highlight is a music-infused sword that rewards players who smack enemies to the beat of a song.
Much of this creativity was carried over into the new throwable tools. Grenades, for example, can trigger a simple explosion, or players can use science grenades that suspend foes with zero-gravity technology.
As for movement, Obsidian says it’s revamped its approach to exploration, too. That means more freedom to run, jump, slide, and parkour around Arcadia as they find valuable loot. You’ll also be able to take advantage of both first- and third-person perspectives after the option was absent from the original game.
Flaws Are Back and Better (and Worse) Than Ever
One beloved elements from the original The Outer Worlds were Flaws, a feature that gave players the option to take on negative attributes in exchange for other perks. We got to see four Flaws as part of today’s presentation: Bad Knees, Kleptomaniac, Sungazer, and Overprepared.
Bad Knees gives players, well, bad knees, allowing them to move quicker in exchange for joints that pop (and alert enemies) when leaving the crouching position. Kleptomaniac grants higher selling values for stolen items while occasionally forcing players to nick some items against their will, while Sungazer causes permanent vision damage in exchange for a daytime healing passive and increased weapon spread. Overprepared is a Flaw for the kind of player who is always cautiously reloading, granting them increased magazine sizes with a penalty if a clip ever organically runs out of ammo.
Factions and Companions
To no one’s surprise, The Outer Worlds 2 is populated by an army of key factions and individuals to help and halt your journey. The Protectorate, for example, is described as an authoritarian group in the isolated colony of Arcadia.
“Their dictatorship is thematically based around the question of how much freedom people will give up for security and luxury,” Obsidian describes. “For Protectorate subjects, unfortunately, that answer is ‘everything.’”
There’s also the Order of the Ascendant, an offshoot of the Order of Scientific Inquiry from the original Outer Worlds that also has past ties to The Protectorate. These major factions and more have been made to have close ties to the story and themes of The Outer Worlds 2, but they’ve also been made to be even more absurd as Obsidian aimed to expand the humor. Additionally, players can expect to listen to a Fallout: New Vegas-inspired radio system, which features stations from each major faction, with each carrying around 20 original songs.
Factions have been fleshed out and improved for The Outer Worlds 2, and Obsidian says companions, of which there are six, have received the same treatment. Niles, an Earth Directorate agent whose story can be shaped by the player’s action, is the first companion you’ll meet. Today’s Direct also showcased the “somewhat cute” automech drone, who helps Niles, named Val, as well as the deadly assassin and mathematician Marisol, the cultlist Aza, a combat medic who survived experimentation named Inez, and Tristan, a heavily armored Protectorate arbiter.
The Bridge
Obsidian wants players to know that they’ve got options when it comes to how they choose to experience The Outer Worlds 2, and the best example of player choice is an early mission called The Bridge. It’s all about finding ways to lower a bridge, with players able to take more straightforward options like convincing The Protectorate to lower the bridge themselves, sneaking to the control room, and going in guns blazing.
Obsidian takes the options a step further, though, giving players the choice to use a shield that protects against poison gas to get around dangerous areas or jump boots that offer more traversal options. You can even sacrifice a companion in order to gain bridge clearance. This is the kind of freedom the team says players can expect from The Outer Worlds 2.
As today’s Direct came to a close, Obsidian shared its thoughts on the sequel, saying, “The Outer Worlds 2 is really the biggest game we’ve ever made.” As we move closer to its newly announced release date, it’s easy to see why. For more on The Outer Worlds 2, you can read up on its October release date announcement. You can also check out more information on its price, which is confirmed to be $80, as well as our talk with Obsidian's Marcus Morgan at IGN Live.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
Marcus Morgan, Obsidian's VP of Operations, came by IGN Live to discuss The Outer Worlds 2 in the lead up to its much-anticipated October 29 release date, including its Flaws system, a new ice planet that has become one of his favorites, a goo pistol, and more.
Morgan began by sharing that the sequel is digging deeper into the RPG aspects, remarking, “Obsidian is rooted in RPGs. We wanted to evolve with Outer Worlds.” He's not even comfortable calling The Outer Worlds 2 part RPG, part FPS. Instead, he stressed he would "only ever call it an RPG."
However, the team heard a lot of feedback that fans wanted gunplay and combat to evolve, so there will be plenty of new weapons to look forward to, including some that are science-based. Morgan also described “a melee weapon that, if you hit it to the beat, it amplifies the damage.” These new additions are meant to add to the experience while retaining the RPG core.
“One of my favorite weapons is the goo pistol," Morgan added while joking he doesn't condone littering in real life. "You take this biomass canister and you dump the goo into the gun and you chuck the canister away."
Morgan also wants to let those who have never played the first Outer Worlds to know that they won't get lost in this sequel, noting, “We’re moving to a brand new colony, Arcadia. with a brand new set of characters.” He described the Earth Directorate, the organization you are part of, as “sort of the space rangers of the universe. You’re there to protect against the tyrannies of capitalism, authoritarianism and various aspects of extreme religions with certain group."
Morgan was also particularly excited by Outer Worlds 2’s Flaws system, saying it was a way to take the usual idea of leveling up and putting a humorous spin on it. For example, one of these flaws is “The Sungazer Flaw - if you stare at the sun for too long you can regain health but the world is blurred out.” Another is for those who never run out of ammo as you'll do more damage. If you do let it run down, however, you'll be penalized with a debuff for a bit." He described the Flaws as “A fun way to integrate progression with levity.”
As for the Psychopath Perk, Morgan remarked, “One great thing in Outer Worlds 1 is you could kill every single person, and we brought it back in Outer Worlds 2. And you'll get a perk if you do that. Also, you can finish a quest even if you kill the quest giver.” On the other hand, “You can be a pacifist if you choose. You can talk your way through the entire game [without killing anyone]. You’ve got the entire spectrum.”
When it came to bugs, Morgan noted “We’re already in our bug fixing mode. This is probably the earliest we’ve been in that mode.”
Among the new planets in The Outer Worlds 2, Morgan revealed, “One of my favorites is a planet called Cloister. It’s a giant ice planet you go to because there’s a super computer trying to solve a big calculation.” He elaborated by saying the computer is connected to one of the game’s groups of religious fanatics who believe they can predict the future using math. In this case, the super computer and the immense energy (and resulting heat) it takes to power it are on Cloister to keep it cool, and Morgan said “I loved the nuance of why we created the ice world.”
Lastly, Morgan mentioned the first game’s Dumb mode and how they are leaning into those sorts of options again for Outer Worlds 2. They’ve also integrated their dialogue system into the title screen, and Morgan explained that as you load up the game “You might hear prompts like ‘Hey, you seem to be dying a lot. Should you lower your difficulty?’”
Anno 117: Pax Romana will officially be released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on November 13, 2025.
This latest entry in the beloved Anno series is finally taking players to Rome and allowing them to become a governor in charge of, among other things, encouraging economic growth, expanding their empire through war, leading a rebellion, uniting the different people in the region under one banner, and much more.
We were able to get our hands on Anno 117: Pax Romana in May and said, "I can already see myself losing dozens of hours to Anno 117: Pax Romana. Much of what made Anno 1800 such a great time has been deftly carried over here, while the building-specific bonuses and dedicated research tree are each smart innovations that, deployed wisely, can supercharge your economy."
Anno 117 takes place, unsurprisingly, in 117 AD and sets you loose in the uncharted territories of the Roman Empire with two provinces - Latium and Albion - under your control. The choice is up to you in how you rule and expand, and the fate of an empire will be up to you.
"We want to tell the untold story of how it was to govern Roman provinces," Reinher said, "During that era, there was over 200 years of peace and it was the time after a big conquest. And we are talking an empire of people from three continents that accounted for almost 20% of the world's population. So, the story we are trying to tell is how did the Romans manage to stabilize this?"
We’ve finally gotten our first look at IO Interactive’s new James Bond game: 007: First Light. It’s an origin story of the infamous spy, showing how he “earned the number” of 007.
So far, everything we’ve seen has been cinematic and story-focused, so there are still plenty of questions lingering about how First Light will play, and who exactly this new Bond will be. Fortunately, I was able to sit down with IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak at an IO Interactive event this weekend and grill him on everything Bond. While he wouldn’t tell me who they had cast as the new Bond (the internet thinks it’s Patrick Gibson, but Abrak says they’re “waiting a bit” to reveal the cast), he did confirm that 007: First Light isn’t part of the film canon; it’s a “standalone, reimagined interpretation.”
“I think from the get-go that was extremely important for us that we will be able to put our fingerprints on this,” Abrak said. “This is the first game we are making that is not our IP. IO is a creative house that's created five original IPs and we are doing the sixth IP on the Fantasy Project [literally codenamed Project Fantasy] we're working on as well. So we have to pour something of ourselves into what we do.
“...It was such a huge opportunity to take such a beloved franchise and then a privilege to be able to pour our originality into that. And our take was, well, we wanted to reimagine his becoming story. We wanted to reimagine a coming-of-age, this young man with all his quirkiness and optimism, his wits and his personality. Getting introduced to these intrigues and espionage, this harsh world of dog-eats-dog and how he fares and how he manages that with his inner values.”
But even if the story itself is creating its own canon independent from the movies, that doesn’t mean IO Interactive isn’t taking cues from the film Bond. For one, Abrak said he got “some insight” into how film Bonds are typically cast and what the film directors usually look for. But ultimately, IO Interactive was left to its own devices as to how it wanted to proceed on selecting a new Bond. And it did end up picking a real actor.
“It was a blank slate, which is a huge privilege, that we can cast these people or try to 3D-model something," he said. "Is it going to be an actor, or not, and what do we do? So that was really, really daunting. I tell you this, it took a long time, and we've been through a few models to figure out what we wanted. But I think the process was chaotic, to be honest. I mean the process was feeling it, trying some things out, feeling the emotional... And it's not necessarily huge A/B tests out there with a lot of agencies and whatnot. It was very important for us to feel his warmth or charm, his quirkiness and all these things. But then we found someone and we’re really, really happy about it today.”
We’ll be publishing our full interview with Abrak later this week, including discussion of not just 007: First Light, but also the future of the Hitman franchise and upcoming IO Interactive-published game MindsEye. We’ll keep waiting to hear more about 007: First Light, including gameplay, sometime soon. It launches in 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch 2.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Microsoft has confirmed The Outer Worlds 2 costs $79.99 in the U.S. — it's the first Xbox Game Studios game to make the jump.
The Steam page for Obsidian’s role-playing sequel revealed the $80 figure for the standard edition. Microsoft had confirmed it would follow Nintendo’s lead and make the jump with its games in time for the holiday season. It seems The Outer Worlds 2 will kick off this new Xbox video game pricing structure when it comes out on October 29, 2025, but it's worth noting that as an Xbox Game Studios title, it will of course launch straight into the Game Pass subscription service on day one.
Explaining the price-hike decision in May, Microsoft told IGN: “We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development. Looking ahead, we continue to focus on offering more ways to play more games across any screen and ensuring value for Xbox players.”
Last month, Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford sparked a backlash in responding to a fan who had expressed concern about the prospect of paying $80 for Borderlands 4, saying: “if you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”
During a recent PAX East panel, Pitchford offered his thoughts on video game pricing. "On one level, we've got a competitive marketplace where the people that make those choices want to sell as many units as possible and they want to be careful about people that are price-sensitive," he said. "There are some folks who don't want to see prices go up, even the ones deciding what the prices are.
"There's other folks accepting the reality that game budgets are increasing, and there's tariffs for the retail packaging. It's getting gnarly out there, you guys. Borderlands 4 has more than twice the development budget than Borderlands 3. More than twice. So the truth is, I don't know what the price is going to be.”
Given The Outer Worlds 2 costs $80, we can assume the just-announced Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will too, although it doesn’t have a release date yet. 2026’s Gears of War: E-Day, the new Fable, and the next Forza will surely also cost $80.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Dark Horse is releasing a new line of collectibles based on Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds 2. As revealed during the Xbox Games Showcase 2025 stream, the first entries in that lineup include an artbook called The Art of The Outer Worlds 2 and a really cool statue of the iconic mascot Moon Man.
IGN can exclusively debut the first images of The Outer Worlds 2: Moon Man Statue, which is being released through Dark Horse Direct. Check them out in the slideshow gallery below:
The Outer Worlds 2: Moon Man Statue depicts the Spacer's Choice mascot riding atop a rocketship. The statue features a light-up LED exhaust and oversized, glowing head. The statue measures 10” tall, 5” wide, and 3.75” deep.
The statue is priced at $159.99 and is limited to just 500 units worldwide. It's exclusive to the Dark Horse Direct website.
As for The Art of The Outer Worlds 2, this hardcover tome features 192 pages of behind-the-scenes artwork and developer commentary, covering the numerous environments, creatures, and weapons from the game. The book is priced at $54.99 and will be released on December 16 in bookstores and December 17 in comic shops.
Both iterms are available for preorder on the Dark Horse Direct website. Those who opt to preorder both the statue and book will receive a 10% discount.
If you were tuning into Xbox Games Showcase 2025 hoping to see Gears of War: E-Day, you may have been left disappointed. Today's show was light on Microsoft's biggest franchises — with nothing from Forza, Halo or the upcoming Fable reboot.
Instead, Xbox boss Phil Spencer promised that 2026 would be the year Gears of War: E-Day arrives, alongside the next Forza game, as the Xbox brand celebrates its 25th anniversary.
The next chapter in Xbox's veteran Gears of War series was formally announced a year ago, at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024. E-Day will be a prequel set 14 years before the original Gears of War game, and an origin story for classic heroes Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, voiced once again by John DiMiaggio and Carlos Ferro.
Until next year, fans have Gears of War: Reloaded, a remake of the series' original title, to look forward to, which launches for PC, Xbox Series X/S — and, for the first time, PlayStation 5 — on August 26.
Microsoft is reportedly set to release a Halo: Combat Evolved remaster in 2026.
During the Xbox Games Showcase 2025, Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer teased a number of new games coming out next year, including the new Fable, the next Forza, Gears of War: E-Day, and "the return of a classic that’s been with us since the beginning."
While that’s an obvious tease for Halo, The Verge reporter Mark Warren has said it specifically relates to a Halo: Combat Evolved remaster.
here's Xbox chief Phil Spencer announcing Gears of War: E-Day for 2026, and in the same year "the next Forza" and a tease of a Halo CE remaster pic.twitter.com/tTueF3YQcR
Warren had reported on the existence of this game before, which is apparently under consideration for release on rival platforms including PlayStation 5. Of course, Microsoft remastered Halo CE with 2011’s Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, which was made a part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection.
This is not a brand new Halo game, then, which we know Halo Studios, which used to be called 343 Industries, is using Unreal Engine 5 to build. In 2024, Halo Studios released a seven-minute video showcasing the results of Project Foundry — an experimental project designed to show a Halo game built using the Unreal Engine. While it's not much more than a tech demo, it offered a glimpse at a fresh beginning for Xbox's flagship franchise in the wake of 2021's Halo Infinite.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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