Director Tetsuya Nomura has heard the cries for updates on Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 and Kingdom Hearts 4, and he’s happy to report that development is “progressing really smoothly.”

It’s a largely inconsequential but still welcome update for two of Square Enix’s most anticipated games that arrived during the recent Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis second anniversary broadcast. As reported on and translated by Gematsu, Nomura took the opportunity to address waves of comments from fans hoping to see the team make an announcement.

“Apparently, [co-director Motomu] Toriyama mentioned in an interview that something might be released around the second anniversary [of Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis],” Nomura said when addressing comments specifically related to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. “So that’s probably where those expectations are coming from. Right, so things are progressing really smoothly. I can’t really say more — if I suddenly went, ‘Well, actually...,’ everyone would be really surprised! [Laughs.]”

Nomura goes as far as to say that the “release timing has already been decided” but stops short of clarifying when exactly Square Enix will share more. For now, he asks fans to be patient, adding that work on Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 is “moving forward according to that schedule.”

RPG fans have been on the hunt for news about the next entry in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series since its last installment, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, launched in early 2024. We know development started as early as June 2022, with Square Enix saying last year that its goal is to see it launch by 2027. Excitement for the third and final chapter in the trilogy grew even more when the team revealed that it had completed its story earlier this year.

Development for Kingdom Hearts 4, meanwhile, is progressing in a similarly positive direction, though Nomura says even less about when any further updates may arrive on this front.

“And this has also come up in the comments here and there,” Nomura added, “but Kingdom Hearts IV is likewise steadily moving forward according to schedule, so please look forward to it.”

Kingdom Hearts 4 was announced in 2022, and updates have been distressingly few and far between since. It wasn’t until May 2025, not even four months ago, that Square Enix was willing to share a substantial update, and even then, all fans had to hold onto was a handful of new screenshots and a short message from the team.

“We’ve seen how excited you are, and we are truly grateful from the bottom of our hearts," Square Enix said at the time. “We are equally excited and can’t wait to share more about Kingdom Hearts IV when the time is right. Until then, we appreciate your patience.”

There’s no telling when exactly we can expect to hear any additional updates on Kingdom Hearts 4 or Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3. In the meantime, you can read up on everything we know about the former here. You can also learn about why the team behind the latter says it “will not cheat” when it comes to Final Fantasy 7’s iconic airship.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer 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).

LEGO has been hard at work producing sets targeted specifically at adults all year long. Some of the biggest new sets released this September were 18+ builds and there are already even more on the way for later in 2025. But of the new sets that just came out, perhaps the most interesting to me are the latest builds in the LEGO Wicked line. Similar to last year, LEGO released a bunch of new themed sets ahead of the upcoming film, Wicked: For Good. Though there was one major difference this year—two of the sets were targeted specifically at adults.

The two sets, a pair of Glinda & Elphaba Bookends and an Emerald City Wall Art Set, are currently the only new builds from the franchise that are on backorder at the LEGO store. While you can still find these sets at other retailers with faster shipping, the fact that LEGO is having trouble keeping up with demand is a testament to the popularity of these builds with an adult audience.

New LEGO Wicked Sets for Adults

Former Bethesda Softworks marketing boss Pete Hines has opened up about the Fallout 76 bag controversy of 2018, saying it led to "probably the dumbest thing" he ever did at the company.

Hines, who served as senior vice president of global marketing and communications at Bethesda before announcing plans to retire in 2023, touched on the infamous Fallout 76 Power Armor Edition during an interview with DBLTAP. The first true multiplayer Fallout experience came with too many issues to count at launch, but it’s the goodies promised with its collector’s edition that live with the former Bethesda executive to this day.

The company unveiled the pricey Power Armor Edition with the promise it would include a T-51B Power Armor Helmet, an exclusive steel case, collectible figures, and, of course, a canvas West Tek Duffel Bag. Players who picked up their copies upon the launch of Fallout 76 in late 2018, however, were surprised when the package included a cheap, nylon bag instead.

It led to quite the uproar from the Fallout community, which wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea that Bethesda may have pulled a fast one on the group of dedicated fans who paid $200 for the special release with only a small amount of in-game currency to show for it. It was a flub the company was quick to correct, offering fans an opportunity to request a replacement canvas bag by filling out a form by May of the following year.

Hines doesn’t remember this element of the launch of Fallout 76 fondly, recalling how his involvement in the contents of the Power Armor Edition led to one of his biggest mistakes at Bethesda.

“My first reaction was, ‘When the f**k did we add a canvas bag to this collector's edition?’ Because the version I approved did not have one,” he said. “They were trying to add more value to the Collectors Edition. We were always fighting with the finance people about margins, right? I would throw shit fits around. ‘We cannot charge $300 for this, it's f***ing insulting.’ But in this case, their hearts were in the right place.”

Hines continued, explaining that the decision to include a nylon bag came as a result of a canvas shortage.

“There was literally a canvas shortage, and some folks decided we're going to do this instead. My biggest failing there was not pushing immediately for making and sending one to everybody that wants one. Because I was still annoyed that the damn thing was in there in the first place, and nobody had told me and that this canvas shortage happened. It's probably the dumbest thing I ever did at Bethesda.”

Fallout 76 had a notoriously rough start but is generally regarded to be in much better shape these days. Bethesda has delivered an ocean of updates and post-launch content in the years since, with the CAMP Revamp update arriving just a few days ago. We gave the multiplayer Fallout game a 7/10 in our updated review last year.

For more on Bethesda’s history, you can read up on how Hines feels about gaming subscription services like Game Pass. You can also see what the former Bethesda executive had to say regarding the naming of Arkane Austin’s 2017 immersive sim, Prey.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer 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).

Fede Alvarez will not direct the sequel to his hit 2024 film Alien: Romulus. The search is on for a new filmmaker to helm the sequel.

According to TooFab, Alvarez will remain onboard the project as a producer, He also co-wrote the screenplay with Rodo Sayagues. TooFab chatted with Alvarez on Thursday at Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights.

"We just finished the script, actually, for a sequel for Romulus. But I'm gonna pass the torch on this one as director," Alvarez said. "I'm going to produce it, with Ridley Scott, we're gonna produce it together and we're right now trying to find a new filmmaker to come in."

"I think that's usually what has happened, except for Ridley, filmmakers come, you make one and you pass the baton to the next one," the filmmaker added.

"But we wrote the story because we really love what we started with Romulus and we want to continue the story. We love the story and now we just want to find a director that really wants to go for the jugular."

Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson are expected to reprise their respective roles from Alien: Romulus for the sequel, which will be released by 20th Century Studios.

IGN’s Tom Jorgensen was a big fan of Alien: Romulus, scoring it an 8 out of 10 in his review:

“Helped along by a talented ensemble of young actors and reference-quality production design, Alien: Romulus’s back-to-basics approach to blockbuster horror boils everything fans love about the tonally-fluid franchise into one film, and it’s one that you’re going to need to start making time for the next time you plan on marathoning Alien and Aliens.”

Although fans will have to wait awhile to see a Romulus sequel, there’s still plenty of the Alien franchise to enjoy these days.

Be sure to read our Alien: Earth, Episode 5 review, learn how Alien: Earth’s Morrow shares some similarities with Ripley and why The Eye is the true hero of Alien: Earth.

Full spoilers follow for Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 3 - “Another Rick Up My Sleeve.”

In this week’s Peacemaker, James Gunn pulls the rug out from under some of us at least by resurrecting a long-thought-dead character: Rick Flag Jr., Joel Kinnaman’s Special Forces badass who was killed all the way back in Gunn’s The Suicide Squad movie in 2021. Killed, of course, by John Cena’s Chris/Peacemaker himself… But you know, alternate dimensions do have a way of resurrecting folks! Or never killing folks in the first place, or… whatever.

Mark Ruffalo says he still hasn’t seen a script for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in which he’s rumored – emphasis on rumored, it seems – to reprise his role as Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk.

Ruffalo told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet at the premiere of his new HBO show Task that he’s most excited to possibly share scenes with Jon Bernthal, who will reprise his role as Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, in Spider-Man: Brand New Day,

“If I’m doing that — which the rumors are that I am, once I get a script, I’ll know it’s real — but I love him and we have a common friend in Lena Dunham, believe it or not, (laughs) who just adores him,” Ruffalo said.

“I can’t wait to work with (Bernthal), he’s so funny and he’s such a great actor. He plays that character like nobody else. I’m really excited to meet him, I’ve never met him!”

Ruffalo last played Banner/Hulk in 2022 Disney+ show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

The next Spidey movie is rumored to pit Tom Holland’s web-slinger against street-level villains, including the return of Michael Mando’s Scorpion.

Sadie Sink, Tramell Tillman, and Liza Colón-Zayas are also in the cast in undisclosed roles, joining returning franchise vets Zendaya (MJ) and Jacob Batalan (Ned).

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is currently filming in the UK under the direction of Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings).

For more coverage, find out what Tom Holland has done to make the producers of Spider-Man: Brand New Day “absolutely sick” of him and discover Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s connection to one of the most notorious Marvel Comics.

Sony will release Spider-Man: Brave New Day on July 31, 2026.

Dan Brown's new book is coming out next week, and it's great news for fans of his Robert Langdon series. It's been eight years since the last installment in the series (Origin), which is the longest break between books Brown has had since he first published Angels and Demons back in the early 2000s. The new novel, titled Secret of Secrets, is set to release on September 9. You can currently preorder the upcoming book for a discount at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

When Arkane Austin delivered its cult-classic immersive sim, Prey, for PC and consoles in 2017, not everyone at Bethesda Softworks was happy shipping the sci-fi immersive sim with that name.

After Prey 2 met an untimely demise in 2014, fans were elated to see the series return with a completely new look and feel with what was believed to be a reboot in 2016. The problem was Arkane’s Prey doesn’t actually have much to do with the series it pulled its name from.

Instead, what fans received when Prey launched in 2017 was something that was more of a System Shock spiritual successor, leading many to question why it was ever named Prey in the first place. Even director Raphael Colantonio has commented on its title in the past, saying that he wanted to use a different name but was eventually forced to stick with it.

Former Bethesda marketing boss Pete Hines, who announced his retirement from the company in 2023, spoke about the name of Arkane’s now-beloved 2017 game during a recent interview with DBLTAP, saying that he was one individual at Bethesda who feared the baggage that the Prey name carried.

“Don't even get me started on that,” Hines said when asked about Prey’s name. “I definitely pissed some people off internally over that because I fought so hard against using that name. I'm the head of the spear, but I had a lot of people across my team – brand, PR and community – and we feel like we're burdening it with a name where we spend more time explaining why it's called Prey than we do talking about the game.”

Hines adds that he regrets losing the battle to give the 2017 Prey a fresh start. He adds, “But nobody on this planet could have put more of a good faith effort into changing minds on that.”

“My whole point was, look how much time we spend talking about what the game is versus why it's called this and like, that is wasted energy,” Hines continued. “That is wasted excitement. We could be turning that into something positive.”

Prey is now seen as one of the better immersive sims for more reasons than one, but it took some time for it to achieve cult-classic status. In addition to the confusion surrounding its title, game-breaking issues for PC players at launch helped tarnish its reputation out of the gate.

Bethesda eventually issued numerous fixes for those on that platform, but the damage had already been done. Tech issues almost certainly hurt Prey’s commercial performance, with Colantonio believing that its strange name also contributed to lost sales.

We gave the 2017 Prey game an 8/10 in our review. At the time, we said, “Prey's space station is fantastically explorable and its shape-shifting enemies maintain tension when combat doesn't.”

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer 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).

If you're merrily strolling your way through Hollow Knight: Silksong right now, not a care in the world, you may want to brace yourself. Because aside from Silksong's usual slate of super-tough bosses that'll have you corpse running over and over again, there's one very early miniboss enemy that's causing a lot of players a whole heap of trouble.

Warning: Very minor spoilers for an early-game miniboss in The Marrow appear below. Don't read on if you don't want to know anything about any of the game's enemies.

The miniboss in question is considered so minor by the game that it doesn't appear with a name on-screen, making it tough to Google a guide when you get stuck on him. But his name is Skarrgard, and he's a bulky red bug enemy wielding a big piece of bone as a weapon. You can find him waiting in a cave on the east side of The Marrow, just above the prison.

Skarrgard seems inocuous when you first approach him, just like a slightly tougher regular enemy. But this guy really has some folks on tilt. He's got three attacks: one where he disappears underground and pops up for an attack, a jump attack, and one where he swings his bone around. He's got some real range on that bone weapon, and because the tunnel is so tiny, most of his moves are very hard, if not impossible, to jump over. What's more, his attacks hit for two whole masks of damage rather than just one.

There are two ways to beat Skarrgard, the easy way and the hard way. The hard way is to keep practicing and eventually defeat him (see our red axe ant mini boss thing strategy guide for exactly how to do beat him early). You can lure him down the narrow tunnel a bit so he can't do his jump attack more, and if you run past him whenever he goes underground, you can sort of bounce him back and forth in the center of the room, taking careful swings, and eventually bring him down.

But I recommend the easy way, which is to come back later. You'll eventually get a dash ability that makes it much easier to avoid his hits, and it seems like you're meant to have that ability before challenging Skarrgard for real. Even if you're tempted by a juicy reward for killing him early, maybe don't bother? The reward for fighting him is that it unlocks access to a new area, and if you're fighting him early you probably have plenty else to explore that isn't hidden behind a giant, bone-swinging bug man.

Either way, good luck with this guy. For many, he's significantly tougher than any of Silksong's early actual bosses, so don't feel discouraged if you die to him a lot before you finally score a win.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now, and we're hard at work on our Wiki guides of everything you might possibly want to know as you start your adventures in Pharloom. We've also got a review-in-progress covering our thoughts so far that we'll update with a score as soon as we've finished the game.

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.

Bethesda Softworks’ former senior vice president of global marketing and communications, Pete Hines, says gaming subscription services like Xbox Game Pass are “worth jack s***” if the game developers who create content for them are not properly supported.

The ex-Bethesda figurehead, who announced his retirement in 2023 after 24 years with the company, opened up about the state of the gaming industry during a new interview with DBLTAP. In addition to touching on the early days of the company behind Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, Hines spoke about what he feels the future of services like Game Pass looks like.

He admits his retirement from the Microsoft-owned Bethesda means his view on the matter may not be up to date. However, Hines says he witnessed what he “considered to be some short sighted decision making several years ago” that now appears to be “bearing out the way I said.”

“Subscriptions have become the new four letter word, right? You can't buy a product anymore,” Hines said. “When you talk about a subscription that relies on content, if you don't figure out how to balance the needs of the service and the people running the service with the people who are providing the content – without which your subscription is worth jack s*** – then you have a real problem.”

Gamers have discussed the viability of platforms like Game Pass since its launch in 2017. While a service flooded with hundreds of games for subscribers to play sounds like a dream come true for players, how the developers behind these games receive support has been hazy.

As Game Pass pushed forward into the early 2020s and PlayStation eventually established its own PlayStation Plus-centered competitor, more question marks popped up. Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden is one of many who recently critiqued the gaming subscription service model, calling the “’Netflix of gaming’ idea” a “danger” that has him questioning, “…is it healthy for the developer?”

Microsoft touted that Game Pass achieved $5 billion in revenue over the last year this past July after laying off hundreds of workers across its gaming branch earlier that same month. Today, Hines adds that the pressure of an ongoing gaming subscription service is affecting the very developers it needs to exist in the first place. It’s a reliance on this model that he feels is “hurting a lot of people.”

“You need to properly acknowledge, compensate and recognize what it takes to create that content and not just make a game, but make a product,” he elaborated. “That tension is hurting a lot of people, including the content creators themselves, because they're fitting into an ecosystem that is not properly valuing and rewarding what they're making.”

Two Bethesda studios – Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks – were shut down in May 2024, though the latter was eventually saved after PUBG publisher Krafton acquired it from Xbox. In the wake of mass layoffs and studio closures, original Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio called Game Pass the “elephant in the room” and an “unsustainable model.” He added, “I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models, they’ll either kill everyone else, or give up.”

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer 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).

With Hollow Knight: Silksong out now, many players are celebrating its unexpectedly low $20 price tag. But some independent developers are pointing out that great as this may be, it could lead to unreasonable expectations for other indie games that can't afford to sell for that low.

This comes from a number of threads on social media from developers of games such as Unbeatable, Dorfromantik, and others. In one Bluesky thread, Unbeatable director RJ Lake says that Silksong should cost $40, "and I'm not even joking."

But Lake isn't upset at Team Cherry for charging $20 - that's their perogative. But it will have an impact on gaming audiences. As Lake explains:

"millions of people will probably buy silksong on day one, and it was a game that had a very 'low' budget, because the budget is 'these devs worked on it without direct pay for however long they wanted to do that,'" Lake writes. "it had a 'these devs are independently wealthy' budget of 'effectively zero dollars.'

"they can price however low they want, as a result. their return on investment is infinite no matter what they do. but by charging such a low amount, they are causing lizard brain signals to fire off saying 'this kind of game is worth twenty dollars. you should expect this game for twenty dollars.'

"if enough of those lizard brain signals fire, some kinds of games with actual budgets to pay people who need to live are going to get priced out of existence unless they can get the kind of organic groundswell you can't plan for"

A lot of other indie devs think Lake might have a point here, including folks from Deck 13 and Red Squirrel Games. Over on Twitter/X, Basti Games, the developer of Lone Fungus: Melody of Spores, asked the audience how much Lone Fungus should cost given Silksong's $20 price. Basti had originally been planning on making Lone Fungus $20, too. But because it's shorter in length than Silksong, should it be cheaper?

As a dev making a smaller Metroidvania than Silksong, which I originally though would be fairly priced at 20 USD... what should I price it now?

It'll be a 10-15+ hours game, but it was made by one person with limited dev time and funds, I can't afford to give it away for free. https://t.co/FFcgz6TI1z

— Lone Fungus (@BastiArtGames) September 1, 2025

Fortunately for Basti, the replies overwhelmingly encourage them to price it at $20 if that's what's required. "Dude charge 20$," wrote one fan. "Price is not about the game is about context. They are able to price 20$ for a bigger game because they steem to receive a million times the cost. You are a small company, dude charge 20$ you deserve thst"

Another wrote, "10-20 is totally fair imo. Team cherry could have made silksong 40 and still sold hotcakes, the fact they didn't just means they are cool as fuck. Don't hold yourself to standards of giants, or else you'll have to climb a staircase."

Still, other developers are worried too. In an Eurogamer article on the subject, Dorfromantik developer Toukana's co-founder, Zwi Zausch, said that the studio's next game, Star Birds, would have its pricing impacted by Silksong.

"We're trying not to compete too directly with Silksong, both in terms of release date and pricing. Of course, these are two very different games with potentially different player bases, but there's definitely some overlap. That makes things tricky, especially since Star Birds is a joint project between two studios, together employing more people than Team Cherry."

Indie game prices has historically been a challenging subject, as teams balance needing to ensure all their members are adequately paid, uncertainty around sales numbers, and the volatility of audiences in deciding not to buy smaller games at prices they perceive as too high. As AAA game prices climb fro $60 to $70 to $80, there has been renewed discussion on where indies should fall - many can't afford to go lower than $20, but many will also lose sales if they don't.

"People have less money now and are buying fewer games," says Mike Rose, founder of No More Robots, "so you have to set yourself up to hopefully be that one game they buy when they do have money. And if you are a higher price, it's now actually a bit offputting."