If you’re playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on Nintendo Switch 2, beware: you’re at a disadvantage in competitive Multiplayer due to crushing input lag that is much worse than the other platforms.

Digital Foundry’s analysis of the performance of the Switch 2 version of Modern Warfare 4 — the first Call of Duty released on a Nintendo console since 2013’s Ghosts — found that the input lag on Switch 2 can be two times longer than on PS5 at 60fps.

In competitive Multiplayer, Switch 2 aims for 60fps and, according to DF, hits that target most of the time (although some things do cause the frame rate to drop, including looking through the transparent visor of a riot shield).

Call of Duty Multiplayer prides itself on rock solid 60fps gameplay, which provides a smooth, responsive experience for those who fuss over their K/D ratio in, for example, 6v6. It’s crucial that all platforms the game is available on offer at least 60fps to provide a level playing field for Multiplayer fans — although the debate about the advantage PC players have over console has dogged Call of Duty since the dawn of crossplay.

DF reports that Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support “helps smooth out” framerate drops on supported displays, although you’ll have a harder time of it in terms of performance playing through portable mode.

And then we come to responsiveness. DF’s tests show 81ms in docked mode and 100ms in portable mode, the latter of which is double the PS5’s 49.1. In fact, DF found that Multiplayer in portable mode ranged from 83ms at best to 125ms at worst. DF called this "actually deleterious to performance.”

DF seems generally happy with the Switch 2 version, which was handled by port specialist Digital Legends with support from Infinity Ward. But if you’re into Multiplayer, the inescapable fact is you are at a disadvantage. No matter how fast your trigger finger, the Switch 2 will take longer to respond.

Outside of Multiplayer it’s a different story. The Campaign runs at 30fps, which was good enough for IGN’s Simon Cardy when he played the Switch 2 version of Modern Warfare 4.

“Granted, the textures are nowhere near as detailed, with flat surfaces and faces smoothed over to give the impression of plasticine versions of the campaign’s characters,” he said. “It's by no means a looker, but considering the reduced horsepower Nintendo’s latest console is working with, the gameplay itself was smooth, running at 30fps at 4K while docked.”

“Yes, it's quite a visual downgrade when compared to the likes of PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X, but that comes with the territory,” he continued. “And if you’re solely a Nintendo owner who’s been locked out of Call of Duty for over a decade, you’re getting a version of Modern Warfare 4 that feels every bit as snappy as the series usually is, even if it’s a bit muddier than Nintendo’s own crisp visuals.”

Why is Call of Duty releasing on a Nintendo console now, 14 years after the last time? It has to do with Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Back when Microsoft was facing regulatory hurdles, one announcement designed to help convince the powers that be to green light the buyout was a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo following the merger.

“Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people — however they choose to play,” then Xbox boss Phil Spencer said in December 2022. Four years later, and with the Activision Blizzard buyout done and dusted, Call of Duty is on Switch 2.

We’ve got an in-progress Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Walkthrough to help you through the campaign missions, plus All Collectible Note Locations, and all the Code Solutions you’ll need to open every keypad and container. For multiplayer, check out How to Level Up Fast in MW4 and our Essential Multiplayer Tips and Tricks alongside the Best MW4 Settings we recommend you use. DMZ is back, so we’ve got a handy DMZ Beginner’s Guide, too.

An EA office building in Madrid was vandalized with the words "Save Mass Effect" just days after the company announced it had shuttered series developer BioWare.

It's the latest update to an ongoing story that started when the beloved sci-fi RPG series was put on an indefinite hold earlier this month. With the studio's Mass Effect: Universe project canceled and the franchise without a future, fans have now seemingly taken their push to see the series continue with spray paint.

EA's Madrid office in Spain was seemingly the target of one disgruntled fan hoping to make a change. Reddit user Ok_Link9625 shared pictures of the graffiti in question, which show at least two separate instances of Save Mass Effect being tagged around the location.

"I stumbled upon the EA offices in Madrid as I was leaving a movie theater and saw this on the floor to the entrance and on the wall in front of the offices #SaveMassEffect," the post said.

#SaveMassEffect is an idea that emerged in the moments after EA put the franchise on hold and laid off BioWare staff, but it didn't take long for it to become more than a social media hashtag. The days following the move saw fans erect a Save Mass Effect petition, which exploded and now stands at 290,000 signatures at the time of this piece's publication.

As some fans called to boycott EA products over its decision, others, like the folks at We Are Mass Effect, took their love for the series to the streets of New York. It resulted in perhaps the most famous play for #SaveMassEffect thus far, as citizens in Times Square were treated to a billboard for the movement throughout October 26. The group said it plans to fund more billboards in the near future, including one set to go up outside this year's The Game Awards.

I WENT OFFLINE FOR FEW HOURS AND SOMEONE PAINTED A WHOLE GRAFFITI IN FRONT OF EA OFFICE?

— #SaveMassEffect #MassEffectIsAlive (@heleuscluster) October 31, 2026

Graffiti, however, is a new tactic, and it has received pushback in the community. While some want to keep the pressure up not only to breathe life into the franchise but also to support the people who have made it, others have said they aren't sure how tagging office buildings will move the needle.

"Hell yeah," one top commenter said.

"I'll admit, I'm not sure this is the way to make them think the IP is worth saving," another top reply argued.

Mass Effect series composer, meanwhile, simply took the opportunity to recognize how quickly the campaign has evolved in just a few days: "The fans are serious as a heart attack!"

We absolutely did not ask people to do this and obviously vandalism is bad, but it's insane to me that #SaveMassEffect is so big that someone in Madrid is this angry. I get it.

— Kala Elizabeth #SaveMassEffect (@kalaelizabeth) October 31, 2026

@heleuscluster Oh shi**, man, we have banksy on our side :D https://t.co/HNHAwdFAtL

— Roma Cherry (@Pugbeer) October 31, 2026

At the moment, it doesn't look like billboards or graffiti have done much to convince EA to support any angle the movement hopes to achieve. The most recent information about the fallout came from Bloomberg, which reported that the publisher canned its plans to release Mass Effect 5 in favor of prioritizing Star Wars Battlefront 3. Alleged details about the canceled game promised that BioWare was creating a story that would have accounted for all choices players made in previous installments.

Anakin Skywalker actor Hayden Christensen has revealed the strangest fan encounter he’s ever had.

Speaking on stage at L.A. Comic Con, as reported by The Nerd Wire, the Star Wars veteran said that years ago, a burglar recognized him during a robbery at his home, apologized, then gave his stuff back.

Christensen was upstairs when he heard the door open, and when he found the burglar, he was holding his belongings. “I’m like, is this a delivery guy?” Christensen was quoted as saying. “And I look and I’m like, this is all my stuff.”

Remarkably, Christensen then offered to buy the man who broke into his house a train ticket home. No, a Jedi mind trick hadn’t caused the burglar to have a surprise change of heart. He just happened to be a fan who decided on a quick U-turn.

Christensen said that the apologetic burglar was struggling for money and was trying to buy a ticket home. And in an act of kindness that Master Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi would have been proud of, Christensen gave the burglar some clothes and shoes to help him in job interviews, then offered to drive him to the train station himself and buy his ticket home the next day.

The burglar failed to show up, however. Perhaps he feared a turn to the Dark side of the Force if he returned to the scene of the crime.

The 45-year-old Canadian first played Anakin Skywalker in 2002’s Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. He went on to reprise his role in 2005’s Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and, via vocal cameo, 2019’s saga-ending Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. He’s since appeared in two Star Wars TV shows: 2022’s Obi-Wan Kenobi and 2023’s Star Wars: Ahsoka.

At Star Wars Celebration last year, Lucasfilm confirmed that Christensen will return as Anakin Skywalker in Season 2 of Ahsoka. In an interview with IGN, he told us that he felt even more connected to Anakin now "because I've had more time to think about him and sort of try to understand him."

"It's a very unique thing coming back to a role after all of these years and an interesting sort of exercise in the craft of acting, having to sort of account for that passage of time," he continued. "But I feel very fortunate that I have the opportunity to do it."

Ahsoka Season 2 hits Disney+ on January 20, 2027. Season 2 arrives three-and-a-half years after Ahsoka's first episodes aired back in August 2023. Rosario Dawson reprises her title role, with Season 2 continuing the story of the infamous Jedi and her friends as they counter an invasion by the villainous Grand Admiral Thrawn and investigate a mysterious neighbouring galaxy.

Season 2 will also see the return of Hayden Christensen in further scenes as Anakin Skywalker, following his Season 1 guest appearance via Star Wars' extradimensional plane, The World Between Worlds. With more Anakin, and more of The World Between Worlds, fans are wondering how Ahsoka might introduce new kinds of storytelling opportunities in future for the franchise.

Photo by Christopher Jue/Getty Images for Disney.

Anthropic has issued an update for Claude that puts a stop to the AI-generated game clones that have filled platforms like Steam.

The term 'AI slop' is something we've heard a lot in the past few years, but it became especially prevalent in the gaming community after Valve launched Steam Next Fest earlier this month. PC users quickly launched complaints that their feeds had been filled with low-effort clones not only of pre-existing games but even some titles that had only just released their own demos.

As players trudged through the slop, developers faced a reality that threw months or even years of hard work into jeopardy. Some, including Drunken Goddess Reflux developer Alliance Arts and Who You, even took action by canceling their Steam demo plans in favor of private playtests. It's a situation that rapidly spun out of control, prompting a response from Valve itself as it said it would be "thinking about how to solve this problem."

ANTHROPIC IS CRACKING DOWN ON VIDEO GAME REWRITES 🚨

Claude Code picked up a new rule around Oct 27, sent from Anthropic’s servers under a flag called "tengu_heron_brook". There’s no setting to turn it off.

The full rule: “Do build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets. Don’t build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original.”

Is this the end of game rewrites, modding and everything in between?

— chasm (@chasmmmmmmmmmmm) October 30, 2026

As reported by Game Developer, X/Twitter user Chasm was one of the first to share evidence of tech company Anthropic taking action against video game copycats. Based on their findings, Claude, the company's AI assistant, recently received an update featuring a new rule. The full rule can be read below:

"Do build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets. Don’t build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original."

When reached for comment by Game Developer, Anthropic pointed to a post shared by Addy Osmani, a member of its technical staff. Osmani's explanation can be read below:

"We added two sentences to Claude Code's prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating someone else's specific game because using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy. Original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to keep working. We'll continue to iterate to ensure we're striking the right balance. In the meantime, if Claude turns down something that's yours, send it my way."

Whether there was a specific event or reason that prompted Anthropic to make these changes is unclear.

Game developers and game enjoyers will no doubt find comfort in Anthropic's changes, though it's worth noting that how impactful any of this will be remains to be seen. At the very least, those who use Claude to rip ideas directly from those who used their minds and time to bring them to life should have a tougher time trying to profit off of the work of others.

The industry is struggling to come to grips with artificial intelligence. Some, such as Epic Games' Tim Sweeney, have insisted that Valve should stray from asking developers to disclose games utilizing generative AI materials. Others, including Super Smash Bros. mastermind Masahiro Sakurai, have compared AI-generated games to "low-quality goods." The developers behind VRChat, meanwhile, recently came under fire for how they are handling AI content.

Getty Images credit: Kenneth Cheung.

Apple TV is continuing its commitment to original programming this month with a slate of star-studded new shows and movies. November will kick off with the return of Owen Wilson's feel-good golf series and end with a new Chris Pratt movie.

You can check out what's premiering on the service in November below, or jump ahead to the full release schedule by day for more details.

New on Apple TV in November

Stick Season 2 - November 4

First up in November, the Owen Wilson golf comedy Stick is back for a second season. Wilson is reprising his role as Pryce Cahill, a former professional golfer who fell apart after his personal life came crashing down on him. In season 1, Pryce found redemption by mentoring a young golf savant named Santi and helping to turn him into a legitimate professional. Season 2 will see Pryce moving beyond his mentor role and maybe getting back into the game himself.

Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook - November 6

Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook is a new docuseries starring Awkwafina being, well, an unlikely cook. The comedian takes a journey across the country to explore Asian American cuisine from influential chefs. Her own cooking skills are non-existent, so she gets put in quite a few situations she's not exactly comfortable with.

12 12 12 - November 13

Anthony Mackie may be the new Captain America, but before the next Marvel movie comes out he'll be playing the role of FBI agent. 12 12 12 is a new series that focuses on time. Each episode will be about a huge heist and will showcase 12 months of planning, 12 hours of heist, and then the following 12 days after it all shakes out. Anthony Mackie plays the FBI agent hot on the trail of the criminal in each episode, with Jamie Dornan taking on the role of the criminal doing the actual heist.

Being Heumann - November 13

Apple TV won its first Oscar for CODA all the way back in 2022, and now that same director (Sian Heder) is back for another heartwarming story. Being Heumman follows the story of disability rights activist Judy Heumann as she leads the 1977 San Fransisco protest known as the 504 Sit-In. This was the longest occupation of a federal building in U.S. history and resulted in new rights and protections for disabled Americans.

Way of the Warrior Kid - November 25

Way of the Warrior Kid is a coming-of-age movie with a surprising stacked cast. The story follows a middle-school kid named Marc who's struggles with bullying are weighing down all aspects of his life. His path takes a turn for the better when his injured Uncle Jake (Chris Pratt), a Navy SEAL, spends the summer with him and his mom (Linda Cardellini). Uncle Jake decides to put Marc through a rigorous training program called "Operation Warrior Kid", teaching him how to have courage and face down any problem with his own inner strength. Way of the Warrior Kid is based on the bestselling novel of the same name.

Apple TV Full November 2026 Release Schedule

Alongside all of the new releases for November, Apple TV will be wrapping up the first season of Brothers, Small Prophets, and Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars. We'll also be getting new episodes of Where's Wanda? every Wednesday and Nocturne every Friday (see our premiere review).

Wednesday, November 4

• Brothers Season 1 Finale
• Small Prophets Season 1 Finale
• Where's Wanda? Season 1 (Episode 3)
• Stick Season 2 Premiere (Episodes 1-2)

Friday, November 6

• Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook
• Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars Season 2 Finale
• Nocturne Season 1 (Episode 3)

Wednesday, November 11

• Where's Wanda? Season 1 (Episode 4)
• Stick Season 2 (Episode 3)

Friday, November 13

• 12 12 12 Season 1 Premiere (Episodes 1-2)
• Snoopy Presents: !2 Days of Snoopy
• Being Heumann
• Nocturne Season 1 (Episode 4)

Wednesday, November 18

• Where's Wanda? Season 1 (Episode 5)
• Stick Season 2 (Episode 4)

Friday, November 20

• Nocturne Season 1 (Episode 5)
• 12 12 12 Season 1 (Episode 3)

Wednesday, November 25

• Way of the Warrior Kid
• Where's Wanda? Season 1 (Episode 6)
• Stick Season 2 (Episode 5)

Friday, November 27

• Nocturne Season 1 (Episode 6)
• 12 12 12 Season 1 (Episode 3)

What appears to be gameplay footage from an unannounced Persona 1 remake has leaked online.

A little less than two minutes of video depicting what looks like a modern version of Sega and Atlus' original Persona game was first shared by a YouTube channel using the name P1REMAKE and was eventually picked up across social media platforms like Reddit. The YouTube account it's tied to was created in March 2010 and has seemingly posted just two other videos, with its previous upload published more than 14 years ago.

The developers behind the RPG franchise have broached the topic of remakes for early installments in the past but never confirmed work was underway, meaning this could be our first look at the series' next remake. In the age of AI-generated fakes, you can never be too skeptical about things like this, but fans generally seem to be under the impression that the footage is authentic. While we won't share it here, you don't have to look too hard to see what everyone's talking about.

Yea that Persona 1 remake leaked footage gotta be 100% real. I refuse to believe someone would do that much work to make a fake leak.

— Johnny 🔥 (@JohnnyLockson) October 31, 2026

There are a few reasons players suspect this to be our first glimpse at a not-so-secret Persona 1 remake from Atlus. Aside from the music, effects, and art, which all fall right in line with much of the studio's recent work, the video on display is much longer and more detailed than any fake leak would typically be. The smoking gun for many, though, is the character animations.

It's specifically Eriko that people are calling out, as she seems to share a summoning animation with Persona 4 Revival's version of Yukiko. Atlus' Persona 4 remake, of course, won't be out until February 18, 2027. There's also the issue of the appearance of Persona 2 protagonist Tatsuya, who seems to be standing in for what may be an unfinished character model.

So, what can we make of all of this? Well, unfortunately, without confirmation from Sega or Atlus, not much. There is always the chance this could be an elaborate fake, with some of these odd details serving as evidence for that argument. On the other hand, it's possible placeholder assets and familiar animations are here specifically because the alleged Persona 1 remake is still very much in development.

Persona 1 leak looks credible, not sure why people are reporting Tatsuya is replacing Masao, that's just complete bogus.

This is most likely an internal investor pitch for remakes of Persona 1 and 2, and not actually Persona 1.

There are Persona 4 Revival animations in the gameplay footage, which definitely helps the case of it being real.

— MeovvCAT (@osu_MeovvCAT) October 31, 2026

That sure is a persona 1 remake trailer. Why is tatsuya there

— julie (@droolvana) October 31, 2026

We don't know when this footage would have been captured, even if it does turn out to be real. That means this could be from yesterday or years ago, with some speculating that the video we've seen today is little more than a proof-of-concept or pitch video.

IGN has reached out to Sega for comment.

If the Persona: Be Your True Mind remake footage is authentic, it wouldn't be the biggest surprise to see it announced. Sega released its Persona 3 remake, Persona 3 Reload, in 2024, and will release Persona 4 Revival in just a few months. Atlus' P-Studio producer, Kazuhisa Wada, stopped short of confirming development for Persona 1 and 2 remakes in August of this year but still admitted that, as far as he's concerned, it's something "we have to do."

Meanwhile, Atlus has absolutely suffered leaks before. The Persona 3 remake had in-development footage questioned by fans when it showed up online back in 2023. The upcoming Persona 6, which, officially, we've seen little of so far, had images leak in June. A massive Steam leak in September then seemingly revealed a list of trophies – including story spoilers – for the upcoming installment.

If you grew up in the 90s’ or early 00s’ and found yourself in middle school during that time, alongside the likes of Harry Potter, Animorphs, and Eragon, there is a good chance you were also reading Brian Jacques’ Redwall series. This fantasy series of forest critters took readers on adventures with mice heroes, rapscallion pirate otters, and Log-a-Log shrews, that spanned 22 books, with the first releasing in 1986. At least, that was the case until a surprise announcement back in September 2026 revealed a brand new 23rd novel releasing in September 2027 - Orphans of Mossflower. Penned by Jacques and releasing posthumously as the beloved British author passed away back in 2011, the new book will bring a conclusion to this land of mice and heroes after 41 years.

In order to catch yourself up on this series before the release next year (or if you are like me, refresh yourself after being away so long) here is a breakdown of the other 22 novels to help see you off.

Reading Order

The Book Timeline (listed chronologically)

Lord Brocktree

After the mighty fortress of his father is overrun and taken over by Ungatt Trun, Brocktree of Brockhole, a mighty Badger Lord will take up his broadsword to reclaim it. Alongside allies he meets along the way, including the Dotti the Hare and Log-a-log Grenn, he will reclaim the Salamandastron and force out the Blue Hordes menace.

Martin the Warrior

The character of Martin the Warrior is one that’s central to Redwall itself, and this book serves as the origin story of the series’ legendary hero mouse. This tale, which will show how Martin goes from being captured by sea rats up through him setting off to eventually found the Redwall Abbey itself.

Mossflower

Following on after the events of Martin the Warrior, Mossflower further fleshes out the origins of the series’ titular Abbey, Martin’s sword, and more moments from the hero’s journey. This time, Martin and his allies work to thwart and save the creatures under the rule of the tyrannical wildcat, Verdauga Greeneyes. It’s only with the help of the local resistance that Martin and villagers of the Mossflower Woods will be free.

The Legend of Luke

After hearing songs that include mentions of his father, Luke the Warrior, Martin sets out on another quest to track down details on his father. This story not only follows Martin, but also features Luke’s trials in the way of the story-within-a-story, “In the Wake of the Red Ship”.

Outcast of Redwall

Following the tales of the badger Sunflash who would be lord and the ferret Veil who was abandoned as an infant will have to contented with what destiny has laid out for them while fending off attacks Veil’s true father, Swartt Sixclaw. Veil will have to have to make the hard choice of who family really is - the ones who gave you life or the ones who made you who you are.

Mariel of Redwall

After being cast out to sea by the King of the Searats, Gabool, while on a trip with her father to deliver a Bel, Mariel washes up on the shore of Mossflower. This story follows Mariel alongside her allies as she sets out to get revenge on Gabool at his fortress, Terramort. Gabool, however, faces dangers not just from Mariel and her lot, but also from those closer to him.

The Bellmaker

Picking up four seasons after the conclusion of “Mariel of Redwall”, Joseph the Bellmaker is warned in a dream that his daughter, Mariel, is in danger. Setting out from Redwall Abbey, Joseph and other returning companions sail for the south to get to the bottom of this ominous warning, while dangers at home threaten also the abbey itself.

Salamandastron

The mountain fortress of Salamandastron lays besieged by a vermin army led by Ferahgo the Assassin and his son, Klitch. While being defended by the current badger lord, Urthstripe, his rebellious daughter Mara runs away. Redwall Abbey is suffering from its own issues as well as a deadly illness sweeps through its people and Thrugg and dormouse Dumble are forced to seek out a cure. A path that will lead them to meet Mara and may lead to the salvation of both Redwall and Salamandastron both.

Redwall

The book that started it all tells the tale of Matthias, a young mouse orphan who grew up at Redwall Abbey. When the Abbey becomes besieged by the army of Cluny the Scourge, a nefarious one-eye rat, Matthias sets out to find Martin’s sword and rescue Redwall Abbey.

Mattimeo

When Mattimeo, son of the now Abbey Warrior Matthias, is kidnapped along with other children from Redwall Abbey, Matthias and allies set out to rescue the kids. While its protectors are away, the Abbey is once again beset and under siege and those who remain must find a way to deal with the invading forces.

Pearls of Lutra

Long ago, six pearls known as the “Tears of All Oceans” were stolen by the weasel thief, Graylunk. Now, the pearls have been discovered around Redwall Abbey. Each one has been hidden separately with riddles pointing to their hidden locations and it’s up to Tansy, a hedgehog and Arven, a squirrel to sort it out. The stakes are raised when the Abbey’s Abbot is taken hostage and the pearls may be the only things that can save him.

The Long Patrol

The Long Patrol is an elite group that serves the mighty Badger Lords of the mountain fortress of Salamandastron and the young Tamello dreams of joining the group. A simple trip to Redwall Abbey will put Tamello on a path that collides with a ruthless band of pirates, the Long Patrol, and leave him changed forever.

Marlfox

Marlfoxes are sly and stealthy creatures and when a group of these sneak in and steal a precious treasure of Redwall Abbey, it’s up to a group of young would-be heroes to get it back. While the group works to reclaim the item, the abbey is once again assaulted and must fight back. This Abbey sure gets attacked a lot.

Taggerung

Tagg is an otter who was raised among the likes of brutal and blood creatures but rejects and flees his clan, sick of their violent ways. Pursued by his former clan’s new leader, Gruven Zann and his rogues, Tagg will team up with allies and make his way to Redwall Abbey where more than safety waits for him.

Triss

Triss tells the journey of three different groups - Triss is a young squirrelmaid who after a daring escape alongside a couple of other slaves, are pursued by pirates; Sagax the badger and the hare Scarum set off from the from Salamandastron for adventure; and the two small dibbuns Ruggum and Bikkle uncover the secret and ancestral home of the Badgers, Brockhall- before all coming together to fend off the new inhabitants of Brockhall and other foes.

Loamhedge

Similar to Triss, Loamhedge features multiple narratives with one focusing on a group that sets out to uncover the mysterious and forgotten abbey of Loamhedge that is said to hold a magical cure while the other deals with badger warrior Lonna Bowstripe and the remain citizens of Redwall Abbey to defend it against the assault of Raga Bol and his sea rats.

Rakkety Tam

After the murder his father, Gulo the Savage and his white-fox horde mission to seek out the Walking Stone - a relic needed for him to claim control - will put him on a path and enemies with the mercenary squirrel Rakkety Tam MacBurl and the mighty Long Patrol. Teaching us all you should never get on the bad side of a Scottish squirrel with a sword.

High Rhulain

Tiria Wildlough is an otter and dreams of one day being the Skipper of Otters at Redwall Abbey and after receiving a vision from Martin the Warrior telling her that the otters at Green Isle need her help, she sets off on her mission. Putting her on a direct course into a confrontation with Riggu Felis, the wildcat warlord of the Isle.

Eulalia!

After being taken prisoner by the sea raider Vizka Longtooh, badger Gorath eventually escapes, aided by the small hedgehog Orkwil Prink, who is currently banished from Redwall Abbey after getting caught stealing. After hearing that his new friend has been captured, Gorath chases after Vizka one last time, settling his revenge for killing his family.

Doomwyte

Little did the young mouse Bisky know that his boasts about how his ancestry stole four jewels from a great idol would result in him going on an adventure to seek out those very gemstones. Unfortunately, one of the creatures that listened to boasts belonged to the group those jewels were stolen from, the Doomwytes, and they want them back.

The Sable Quean

Buckler, a hare of the Long Patrol is sent on a trip to Redwall to deliver some new bellropes after finding himself bored with life at the mountain fortress of Salamandastron, unfortunately, the trip proves to be far less relaxing than he’d like. The dastardly Vilaya the Sable Quean and Zwilt the Shade capture a number of Redwall children including Flandor the otter and the squirrel Tura in an effort to get the Abbey to surrender to their demands.

The Rogue Crew

Redwall Abbey is facing a threat it has never seen before - a ship that can travel both over land and by sea. Captained by the vile Razzid Wearat, the Greenshroud has set its sites on the beloved abbey and its citizens will need to work together with the Long Patrol and the Rogue Crew of otters to save the home of Martin the Warrior.

BONUS: The Picture Books and…Cookbook?

A new weekend has arrived, and today, you can save big on Apple Watch Ultra 4, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Persona 3 Reload, Pikmin 4, The Adventures of Elliot, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Star Wars Zero Company, and more. Check out our top picks for Saturday, October 31, below.

Save $100 Off Apple Watch Ultra 4

Joe Manganiello, one of the most famous Dungeons & Dragons players in Hollywood, said he still wants his Dragonlance TV series to come to fruition despite its cancellation several years ago.

The Justice League and One Piece actor was hired as showrunner and screenwriter on the show years ago, promising a live-action adaptation of one of the stories that helped introduce him to tabletop role-playing. After a series of snags, though, Manganiello eventually went on to confirm that his live-action Dragonlance would no longer come to be.

IGN asked Manganiello about his ill-fated D&D project during a conversation at Lucca Comics and Games 2026. He walked us through how, after five years of work, things fell apart, while also teasing that the door for a Dragonlance TV show – and even his documentary – will never close.

"When both of those got put on the shelf due to a change of leadership – due to shuffling going on within [Entertainment One] – those projects became nobody's child," he explained. "I mean, I was hired by Michael Lombardo, who was my old boss at HBO. He hired me to create a television show, to create the next Game of Thrones for him, but then he was gone.

"He's my guy. He's the guy who understood my pitch. He's the one who believed in me. He's the one who saw what it could be, and he's gone. And then, my other producing partner, he was gone, too. So, the two people that I was there with are gone, and the people there had different ideas. All of a sudden, those things become the priority as I'm turning in my script. Now, my people aren't there. Same with the documentary."

Manganiello went on to say that, as his hands-on time in the D&D universe began to fall apart, he had "nobody helping to fight with" him to bring then-in-development projects to life. With Dragonlance officially confirmed to be canned in 2024, it was around this time the actor thought "OK, I'm out," but as he told us, "there is new hope."

"[President of Wizards of the Coast & Hasbro Digital Games] Dan Ayoub is a fantastic leader. He gets it, and we work really well together," he continued. "I think there are talented people within the building now that are doing some amazing things, and we're going to do some amazing things together.

"The dream was always, always to be off running a Dragonlance series, and I will never give up hope on that. And I think there's a lot of people that share that vision. I think the documentary with Danny Ayoub is actually going to be closer to getting out as well."

That's two big updates on two D&D projects that many fans believed were destined to never see the light of day. Still, as the pieces move into place on the board behind the scenes, it's best not to get hopes up too high until Manganiello and the rest of his team have more to announce. For example, Ayoub took up his position as president just four days ago after previously serving as senior vice president of Dungeons & Dragons. It's unclear how this title change may have affected any plans Manganiello mentioned during our interview.

The world of Dungeons & Dragons is trying to come to the live-action world in more ways than one. After a movie adaptation, Honor Among Thieves, launched to critical success and lackluster commercial response in 2023, we've still yet to see a sequel. There is allegedly a second script floating around somewhere, but whether it will leap off the page remains to be seen. For more on Manganiello, you can read about what he had to share from his time working as Deathstroke on Ben Affleck's canceled Batman movie.

HBO has jump-scared subscribers with a surprise episode of It: Welcome to Derry to help celebrate Halloween.

Log in to HBO Max now, and you'll see a one-off story in Pennywise's playground that no one saw coming headlining the streamer's new arrivals. Titled "A Story of Derry," the episode is only 30 minutes long and takes place hundreds of years before the events of Season 1, meaning you won't have to ditch any trick-or-treating or party prep to get the full picture.

You can read an official description for It: Welcome to Derry's A Story of Derry episode here: "Hundreds of years before Pennywise, three youngsters venture into the Western Wood…where they encounter a terrifying ancient spirit."

IT's a surprise Halloween treat.

Catch this never-before-seen special exploring the origins of IT in Derry. #AStoryOfDerry is streaming now on HBO Max. 🎈 https://t.co/NH3NcMLt8n

— HBO Max (@hbomax) October 31, 2026

It's the kind of shadow-drop Stranger Things fans can only dream of. Despite coming in at about half the length of Welcome to Derry's usual hour-long runtime, It fans will no doubt be happy to see any new content, considering there was no prior announcement that anything was in the works. After all, Season 1 came out just one year ago, and although Season 2 is greenlit, we probably won't get to see it until late 2027 at the earliest.

Still, that didn't stop hardcore Stephen King fans from speculating that a surprise episode was slated to drop sometime around Halloween. In the weeks leading up to today's maybe not-so-unexpected announcement, there were some rumors that HBO had secretly shot a bonus episode.

After Stranger Things left thousands of fans in the dark when their surprise finale episode theories didn't pan out, most Welcome to Derry watchers justifiably thought the rumors were nonsense. You can even see that hesitation in some of their comments.

"Completely fake," one fan said earlier this month.

"I’d be impressed they could keep a whole production with cast and crew under wraps in this day and age so doubting this but would be impressed to learn otherwise," another added.

Well, anyway, A Story of Derry was directed by Reservation Dogs and The Paper alum Tazbah Chavez. It was written by Welcome to Derry producer Cherie Dimaline and the show's writer and editor, Jasmyne Flournoy.

The episode serves as an early, early look at its world, which is something the minds behind the show have teased they've wanted to do for years. Season 1 was set before the events of Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise-led movies, with a story that took place during the Cold War, and Season 2 is expected to follow events from 1935, with the planned third season previously said to be set in 1908.

A Story of Derry turns back the clock earlier than anyone may have anticipated, and that only helps its surprise drop's shock factor. This is unlike anything It fans expected to see on Halloween today, but it'll almost certainly carve out some time in everyone's nights now. Meanwhile, the episode opens up with a bit more text about its premise. You can read it below:

"Generations ago, when the Kollu first preyed on our people, we left warnings for those who would come after. But we hid the truth inside a gentler tale, one our children could carry. This is the story we do not teach. This is the part we left out."

IGN gave It: Welcome to Derry Season 1's premiere an 8/10 and its finale a 7/10. While we wait to see how A Story of Derry fits into King's big picture, you can read about how Season 1 connects to the author's multiverse here.

Disney and Hulu have officially confirmed what’s coming to both streaming services in November, offering up some reality TV, anime, and festive entertainment for the colder months.

Both streaming services will be light on new movies this month, aside from some festive pick-ups like The Polar Express and Four Christmases. However, Disney+ and Hulu are both getting a ridiculous amount of TV, including ongoing seasons of Dancing with the Stars and Grey’s Anatomy and some new premieres. Disney+ will also be the streaming home for live events like the Country Music Awards.

Highlights Coming to Disney+ and Hulu

Check out some of our top recommendations of what to watch this month, or scroll ahead to the full November streaming lineup by day.

Final Episodes of VisionQuest

VisionQuest premiered back in October, and we'll get our hands on the final few episodes at the start of November. While it was a little slow to start, IGN's Jesse Schedeen is of the opinion that more recent episodes have been a real return to form for Marvel TV.

The series is a direct spin-off from WandaVision, which we also loved, following a rebooted Vision as he seeks to learn more about his existence. What other synthetic being may have some insight? Ultron, of course.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3

After VisionQuest, the next big Disney+ series in November is a new season of the live-action Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Season 3 will bring the Camp Half-Blood gang to the events of The Titan’s Curse, introducing new cast members to play Artemis, Hera, and Aphrodite.

This notably marks the first time a Percy Jackson adaptation has made it to the third Rick Riordan book, no offense to the live-action movies.

More Pokémon Anime

Disney officially re-acquired the streaming rights to Pokémon earlier this year, and while some of us expected that to lead to a big burst of Pokémon content, Disney’s instead is taking a slower approach.

The service added the first season of the original Pokémon series back in August, and in November, Disney+ will finally get Season 2. Real slow, I know, but at least the streamer has already announced that it will be home to a new stop-motion animated Pokémon series coming next year.

Mickey 17

Between The Drama, Primetime, and Dune Part 3, Robert Pattinson has been having quite the year. If that’s still not enough Pattinson for you, we’d highly recommend checking out Mickey 17, Bong Joon Ho’s follow-up to the award-winning Parasite.

Mickey 17 is a funky sci-fi adaptation of ADSA’s novel by the same name, where Mickey is part of a program of people who are infinitely cloned to complete deadly missions. In his 8/10 review for IGN, Siddhant Adlakha describes it as a "bleakly hilarious sci-fi comedy."

Christmas Classics and New Holiday Specials

We’re gearing up for the holiday season, and while Disney+ is picking up some Christmas classics, it’ll also be the streaming home for plenty of new holiday specials. For example, Mickey’s Home Alone, a Disney-themed play on the Christmas classic, will stream on Disney+ after airing on Disney Jr.

Both services will also get holiday specials for shows that just happen to exist under the Disney and Hulu banner. The Proud Family ‘Wizmas’ will stream on November 14, a Sofia the First holiday episode will drop on November 26, and Family Guy’s holiday special, already revealed as “The Peter Clause,” arrives at the end of the month.

Everything Coming to Disney+ and Hulu in November

*Note: List is not comprehensive and is subject to change*

November 1

Disney+ and Hulu:

• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)
• The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
• Meg 2: The Trench (2023)
• The Mess Around – New Podcast Episode
• Mission: Yozakura Family (Season 2, Cour 2) – New Episode
• Why Him? (2016)

November 2

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Between Steps (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Handsome – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Dancing with the Stars (Season 35) – Streaming Live at 8pm ET
• Pod Meets World – New Podcast Episodes

Hulu:

• America’s Funniest Home Videos (Season 37) – New Episode
• Black Bag (2025)
• The Mob (Hulu Original) – New Episodes
• Desperately Devoted – New Podcast Episode
• That Was Us – New Podcast Episode

November 3

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Best Friends – New Podcast Episode
• Between Steps (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Clues – New Podcast Episode
• Hey Jonas! – New Podcast Episode
• Perfect Person – New Podcast Episode
• StraightioLab – New Podcast Episode
• Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim – New Podcast Episode
• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode
• Dancing with the Stars Official Podcast (Season 35) – New Episode @ 9am PT

Disney:

• Stick to Football (Season 1) – New Podcast Episode
• Stick to United with Wayne Rooney (Season 1) – New Podcast Episode

Hulu

• Dancing with the Stars (Season 35) – New Episode
• High Country (Season 2)
• Phony (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Reasonable Doubt (Season 4) (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 4

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Merry Berry Love (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• The Remarried Empress (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – Four-Episode Premiere

Disney+:

• VisionQuest – New Episode
• Disney Jr. Ariel - The Little Mermaid: Dolphin Cove Tales: Shorts (Season 1) – Premiere

Hulu:

• All’s Fair (Season 2) (Hulu Original) – Three-Episode Premiere
• All’s Fair Podcast (Season 2) – Two-Episode Premiere
• FX’s The Lowdown (Season 2) – New Episode @ 9pm PT

November 5

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Hey Jonas! – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• Abbott Elementary (Season 6) – New Episode
• Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald – New Podcast Episode
• The Kardashians (Season 8) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Scrubs (Season 2) – New Episode
• Shark Tank (Season 18) – New Episode

November 6

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Wolves Up Close with Bertie Gregory – Premiere

Disney+:

• SuperKitties (Season 3) – Thanksgiving Special Episode

Hulu:

• 9-1-1 (Season 10) – New Episode
• 9-1-1: Nashville (Season 2) – New Episode
• Grey’s Anatomy (Season 23) – New Episode
• Tokyo Revengers: War of the Three Titans Arc (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 7

Disney+:

• Chibi Tiny Tales: Shorts (Season 8) – New Episode
• Locker Diaries: Coven Academy: Shorts (Season 1) – New Episode

Hulu:

• Celebrity Wheel of Fortune (Season 7) – New Episode

November 8

Disney+ and Hulu:

• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• Heart Eyes (2025)
• The Mess Around – New Podcast Episode
• Mission: Yozakura Family (Season 2, Cour 2) – New Episode

November 9

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Between Steps (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Handsome – New Podcast Episode
• Mother Knows Murder – Podcast Premiere

Disney+:

• Pod Meets World – New Podcast Episodes

Hulu:

• America’s Funniest Home Videos (Season 37) – New Episode
• Desperately Devoted – New Podcast Episode
• Fire Force (Season 3, Part 2) (Dubbed) – All Episodes Streaming
• Love Hurts (2025)
• The Mob (Hulu Original) – New Episodes
• That Was Us – New Podcast Episode

November 10

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Between Steps (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – Finale Episode
• Best Friends – New Podcast Episode
• Clues – New Podcast Episode
• Hey Jonas! – New Podcast Episode
• Perfect Person – New Podcast Episode
• StraightioLab – New Podcast Episode
• Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim – New Podcast Episode
• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Dancing with the Stars (Season 35) – Streaming Live @ 8pm ET
• Stick to United with Wayne Rooney (Season 1) – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• Phony (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Reasonable Doubt (Season 4) (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 11

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Merry Berry Love (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• The Remarried Empress (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episodes
• Style Wars (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – Two-Episode Premiere

Disney+:

• VisionQuest – New Episode
• Pokémon the Series: The Beginning (Season 2) – New Episodes
• Pupstruction (Season 3) – New Episodes

Hulu:

• All’s Fair (Season 2) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• All’s Fair Podcast (Season 2) – New Episode
• Dancing with the Stars (Season 35) – New Episode
• The Lowdown (Season 2) – New Episode @ 9pm PT
• Rivals (Season 2, Part 2) (Hulu Original) – Three-Episode Premiere

November 12

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Dancing with the Stars Official Podcast (Season 35) – New Episode
• Hey Jonas! – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Stick to Football (Season 1) – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – Premiere
• Abbott Elementary (Season 6) – New Episode
• The Kardashians (Season 8) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald – New Podcast Episode
• Shark Tank (Season 18) – New Episode

November 13

Disney+:

• Gracie’s Corner (Season 2) – New Episodes

Hulu:

• 9-1-1 (Season 10) – New Episode
• 9-1-1: Nashville (Season 2) – New Episode
• Grey’s Anatomy (Season 23) – New Episode
• Tokyo Revengers: War of the Three Titans Arc (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 14

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Expedition: Saving Our Seas – Premiere

Disney+:

• A Proud Family Wizmas – Holiday Special Episode
• Chibi Tiny Tales: Shorts (Season 8) – New Episode

Hulu:

• Celebrity Wheel of Fortune (Season 7) – New Episode

November 15

Disney+ and Hulu:

• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• Call of the Night (Season 2) (Subbed & Dubbed)
• Hero Without a Class: Who Even Needs Skills?! (Season 1) (Subbed & Dubbed)
• My Gift Lvl 9999 Unlimited Gacha: Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon (Season 1) (Subbed & Dubbed)
• Mission: Yozakura Family (Season 2, Cour 2) – New Episode
• Paddington in Peru (2024)

November 16

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Handsome – New Podcast Episode
• Mother Knows Murder – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Bluey Fancy Restaurant (Season 1) – Premiere
• Pod Meets World – New Podcast Episodes

Hulu:

• America’s Funniest Home Videos (Season 37) – New Episode
• The Mob (Hulu Original) – Finale Episodes
• Desperately Devoted – New Podcast Episode
• That Was Us – New Podcast Episode

November 17

Disney+ and Hulu:

• How The Tudors Lost Their Heads (Season 1) – Premiere
• Best Friends – New Podcast Episode
• Clues – New Podcast Episode
• Hey Jonas! – New Podcast Episode
• Perfect Person – New Podcast Episode
• StraightioLab – New Podcast Episode
• Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim – New Podcast Episode
• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Dancing with the Stars (Season 35) – Streaming Live @ 8pm ET
• Stick to Football (Season 1) – New Podcast Episode
• Stick to United with Wayne Rooney (Season 1) – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• The Circle (Season 1) – Premiere
• Phony (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Reasonable Doubt (Season 4) (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 18

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Merry Berry Love (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• The Remarried Empress (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episodes
• Style Wars (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episodes
• Vienna Game (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – Premiere
• Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• The 60th Annual CMA Awards – Streaming Live @ 8pm ET
• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse+ (Season 2) – New Episodes

Hulu:

• All’s Fair (Season 2) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• All’s Fair Podcast (Season 2) – New Episode
• Dancing with the Stars (Season 35) – New Episode
• FX’s The Lowdown (Season 2) – New Episode @ 9pm PT
• Rivals (Season 2, Part 2) (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 19

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Dancing with the Stars Official Podcast (Season 35) – New Episode
• Hey Jonas! – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• The 60th Annual CMA Awards
• The Kardashians (Season 8) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald – New Podcast Episode

November 20

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Season 3) – Two-Episode Premiere
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians Official Podcast (Season 3) – Premiere

Hulu:

• 9-1-1 (Season 10) – New Episode
• 9-1-1: Nashville (Season 2) – New Episode
• A Christmas Story (1983)
• Four Christmases (2008)
• Grey’s Anatomy (Season 23) – New Episode
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
• The Polar Express (2004)
• Tokyo Revengers: War of the Three Titans Arc (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 21

Disney+:

• How Not to Draw: Shorts (Season 5) – New Episodes
• Miraculous Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir (Season 7) – Premiere

November 22

Disney+ and Hulu:

• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• The Mess Around – New Podcast Episode
• Mission: Yozakura Family (Season 2, Cour 2) – New Episode

November 23

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Handsome – New Podcast Episode
• Mother Knows Murder – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Mickey's Adventures in Wonderland
• Pod Meets World – New Podcast Episodes

Hulu:

• Mickey 17 (2025)
• America’s Funniest Home Videos (Season 37) – New Episode
• Desperately Devoted – New Podcast Episode
• MAO (Season 1, Part 2) (Dubbed) – All Episodes Streaming
• That Was Us – New Podcast Episode

November 24

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Best Friends – New Podcast Episode
• Clues – New Podcast Episode
• Hey Jonas! – New Podcast Episode
• Perfect Person – New Podcast Episode
• StraightioLab – New Podcast Episode
• Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim – New Podcast Episode
• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Dancing with the Stars (Season 35) – Streaming Live @ 8pm ET
• Stick to United with Wayne Rooney (Season 1) – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• Phony (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Reasonable Doubt (Season 4) (Hulu Original) – Finale Episode

November 25

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang – New Podcast Episode
• Merry Berry Love (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• The Remarried Empress (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – Finale Episodes
• Style Wars (Season 1) (Hulu Original) – New Episodes

Disney+:

• Big City Greens (Season 5) – New Episodes

Hulu:

• All’s Fair (Season 2) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• All’s Fair Podcast (Season 2) – New Episodes
• Dancing with the Stars (Season 35) – New Episode
• FX’s The Lowdown (Season 2) – Finale Episode @ 9pm PT
• Rivals (Season 2, Part 2) (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 26

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Dancing with the Stars Official Podcast (Season 35) – New Episode
• Hey Jonas! – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Sofia the First: Royal Magic (Season 1) – Holiday Special Episode
• Stick to Football (Season 1) – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• The Kardashians (Season 8) (Hulu Original) – New Episode
• Mummies (2023)
• Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald – New Podcast Episode

November 27

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Season 3) – New Episodes
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians Official Podcast (Season 3) – New Episode

Disney+:

• Mickey’s Home Alone – Premiere

Hulu:

• Tokyo Revengers: War of the Three Titans Arc (Hulu Original) – New Episode

November 28

Disney+:

• Dasher – Premiere

November 29

Disney+ and Hulu:

• We’re Here to Help – New Podcast Episode

Hulu:

• The Mess Around – New Podcast Episode
• Mission: Yozakura Family (Season 2, Cour 2) – New Episode

November 30

Disney+ and Hulu:

• Handsome – New Podcast Episode
• Mother Knows Murder – New Podcast Episode

Disney+:

• Pod Meets World – New Podcast Episodes

Hulu:

• Desperately Devoted – New Podcast Episode
• That Was Us – New Podcast Episode

TBA in November:

• Family Guy: The Peter Clause – Holiday Special Premiere

Expect Disney+ and Hulu Deals on Black Friday

We’re entering deals season, which hits its peak on Black Friday. In other words, if you don’t already have a Disney+ or Hulu subscription, it might be worth waiting a few weeks.

Last year, the Disney+ and Hulu bundle with ads dropped from $12.99 (at the time) to $4.99/month for your first 12 months. We’ll likely see a similar discount on that same bundle this year, so I wouldn’t expect any discounts on the ad-free subscriptions for either service.

Nintendo has revealed a surprise Nintendo Direct for Pikmin Day because it has apparently decided that's a thing now.

Instead of spooky game announcements or horror movie memes, video game fans woke up to on Halloween 2026 was Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto's face. That's because Nintendo has declared November 1 as Pikmin Day, and it's got a brand-new Direct to celebrate the occasion.

Yes, really. None of this is a joke. There's a little more than nine minutes of announcements to go over. Although there's no Pikmin 5 reveal or anything else too groundbreaking here, Miyamoto did take the time to share new information about Pikmin 4 and promised that, "going forward, I want people to know more about Pikmin."

Tomorrow is Pikmin Day!

Join in on the fun by playing Pikmin games on Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch. https://t.co/iYxZldya7p

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 31, 2026

So, to start, why is the first of November Pikmin Day? Nintendo's miniaturized franchise launched in Japan in October 2001 before coming to North America in December, so there's no tie to a release date like you might have guessed. Instead, Miyamoto explained that November 1 is Pikmin Day because there were originally only three Pikmin, which, when standing next to each other, kinda looks like "11.1."

Pikmin 4 – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Dandori Academy

Ready to test your skills at Dandori Academy?

A free demo of #Pikmin4 – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Dandori Academy will be available on Nov 2. https://t.co/rNHNq35RMT

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 31, 2026

You gotta give 'em credit for creativity, as Pikmin Day is probably one of the last things anyone expected to see today. Still, it served as a nice opportunity to offer an update on Pikmin 4 – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Dandori Academy ahead of its release November 12, 2026. Players will be able to use the new consoles built-in microphone to Oatchi, controlling them by using commands like 'rush' and 'go to work.'

The Dandori Academy mode, meanwhile, comes with new challenges, including exams that take place on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, that give players timed tasks and an opportunity to earn medals. A demo for the Switch 2 version of Pikimin 4 will be available starting November 2, with save data available to transfer to the full launch. It offers access to the Sun-Speckled Terrace opening area, as well as two Dandori Academy stages.

Pikmin Bloom

Secret Caves are coming this winter!

Get ready to explore Secret Caves, face off against familiar creatures, and uncover hidden treasures along the way in @PikminBloom on your smartphone. https://t.co/Nx6Lzba6v4

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 31, 2026

Nintendo first brought its augmented-reality game, Pikmin Bloom, to smartphone devices in 2021, but five years on, and it's still got more to give. As shown in a teaser video featuring a group of the colorful plant-like creatures battling a Bulborb, an update scheduled to arrive this winter will add a new mechanic called Secret Caves. These battle-focused exploration events allow players to take their crew into caves to battle creatures and earn rewards.

Before a cave is explored, players must collect a cave map, which feature information about a cave and can be found on things like Postcards. Then, Pikmin are sent into the cave to search for treasures, with some of the items highlighted during the Direct including a rubber duck, a sword, a cookie, and a chef hat. Should a battle ensue, you'll command your army by sending them in to attack when the moment is right, or retreat if things get too hairy. Pikmin 4's Dandori Academy challenges also give players an opportunity to collect maps by taking exams.

Shigeru Miyamoto Really Likes Pikmin, But He's Not Alone

If you couldn't tell from the video games, shorts, and Easter Eggs Nintendo has highlighted through the franchise's 25-year history, it's got a soft spot for Pikmin. Miyamoto has spearheaded this charge, and because he wants people to know more about the company's adorable little mascots, he's enlisted some help.

Joining him during the Nintendo Direct broadcast was Japanese actress and crafty Pikmin fan Fuka Koshiba. Known for her work on TV projects like Siren and films like Lady Kaga, Miyamoto brought her in to help him "build more excitement around Pikmin going forward" after she shared hand-made Pikmin-themed hats on Instagram.

"Originally, I had heard on social media that you could get hats of the Red Pikmin, Blue Pikmin, and Yellow Pikmin from those claw machines," Koshiba said, holding one of her hats. "I'm not good at the claw machines, but I really wanted the hats, so I thought, 'Well, let's just knit them.'"

"I see," Miyamoto replied. "I'm also bad at the claw machines."

A New Hello! Pikmin Original Short Movie

That was a close one!

Watch Hello! Pikmin short movies and enjoy new Pikmin adventures. https://t.co/8OPB48hDZr

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 31, 2026

The Pikmin Day Direct also featured a brand-new Pikmin Original Short Movie. Following last year's Close to You short, this video sees a Red Pikmin do its best to grab a baseball from a frog. It's as cute as you could ever expect.

As part of Nintendo's initiative to lean harder into the series, new shorts will be released monthly via the Nintendo Today! app, as well as other channels. However, there will also be a new episode released tomorrow, with another set to follow sometime in November. Miyamoto said he's collaborating with Nintendo Pictures staff to make the shorts.

That's all for the Pikmin Day Direct. While there was no hint at anything like Pikmin 5, planting November 1 as an official holiday is probably a sign that Nintendo has no intention of putting a cap on Pikmin content anytime soon. While we wait for any bigger updates on the franchise, you can check out IGN's 9/10 Pikmin 4 review.

“Scientists representing the world’s foremost research centers took part in the examination of the evidence. The facts that will be presented are true. This may be the most startling film you’ll ever see.” -Peter Graves, The Mysterious Monsters (1975)

During the turbulent era of Vietnam and Watergate, the happy veneer of America in the 1950s and ‘60s gave way to the conspiracy-minded ‘70s. Dark revelations about the government, justice system, military, and police made the public begin to rethink their perceptions about a great many things. This led to renewed interest in occult matters like ESP, UFOs, and cryptozoology. These subjects, along with other pseudoscientific phenomena like near-death experiences or the Bermuda Triangle, became the bread and butter of a Utah-based production house called Sunn Classic Pictures. The company made a fortune releasing partially-dramatized “documentaries” that tantalized viewers with possibilities of what could be out there beyond the veil.

“I think it was people just questioning what the norm was… what is real, what isn't real,” James L. Conway, who worked as a writer/producer/director at Sunn Classic, tells IGN. “There were very few outlets back then to experience these things, very few TV channels. Through a theatrical window, we were able to make movies about these subjects. They were incredibly popular because there was no other place for people to get knowledge about this… no YouTube, no Wikipedia, no social media. If you wanted to see something that was on the unusual side, it was a theatrical motion picture.”

Conway was a college senior at the University of Denver around 1971 when he was in the Mass Communications Department and the phone rang. It was Charles E. Sellier Jr., who ran an industrial film and commercial company in Denver.

Continues Conway, “Chuck was looking for cheap labor to edit his industrial films. I said, ‘I'm your guy.’ While I finished college I worked for Chuck, and after about three months I said to him, ‘You know, I can direct these shows better than the people you're hiring.’ Total chutzpah. He gave me a shot, I did really well, and that began our relationship.”

After producing a western comedy called The Brothers O'Toole, Sellier connected with Sunn Classic Pictures, which at that point was a distribution outfit in Utah and a newly-founded division of the Schick razor company. They had made several well-attended hunting pictures like The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, and decided their next avenue would be a series of pseudoscience documentaries kicked off by a re-edited and English dubbed version of the 1970 German doc Chariots of the Gods. Based on Erich von Däniken’s popular claptrap supposing celestial beings who seeded early humanity, in 1973 it grossed over $25M and was nominated for an Oscar.

Noted film scholar Dr. Gary D. Rhodes recently published a book titled Weirdumentary all about this era of strange docs throughout the ‘70s, of which he claims Chariots of the Gods is the urtext: “The fact that it was nominated for an Academy Award suggests how many more people were taking these ideas seriously. I hesitate to think a documentary on that subject now would get an Academy Award nomination. From the late ‘60s we see a rise in interest in everything from occultism and psychic phenomena, new age philosophies, magic, astrology, paganism, life after death, anti-materialism, holistic medicine, reincarnation… there's a desire to find alternate ways of examining our experiences that is unique to that era, including academia. You would not find many parapsychology departments in today's world.”

Once they found the winning formula, Sunn Classic released a wave of documentaries including 1975’s The Mysterious Monsters, where Mission: Impossible actor Peter Graves hosts a Whitman’s Sampler of cryptids.

“For me as a little kid, I certainly loved Mysterious Monsters the most of any of them because it was the era of fascination with Bigfoot, widespread belief that there might be such a creature,” says Rhodes. “There was equal interest in the Loch Ness monster and the Yeti. There were documentary films individually about all of those monsters, but here it was like the Universal monster rally films where you were getting all of them at once.”

The film was actually an amalgam of a few previously-released TV documentaries including CBS’ Monsters! Mystery or Myth, which helped popularize the supposed veracity of the Roger Patterson/Robert Gimlin footage of Bigfoot strolling through the woods. Narrates Graves, “If this film is legitimate, then there can no longer be any question about Bigfoot’s existence.”

Because Sunn Classic was a Mormon-run company, Rhodes says they “wanted to tap into films where everybody from a little kid to the grandparents could go and not feel out of place or offended.” Sellier himself called this demographic “the lost audience” who felt left behind by both the kiddie fare of Disney and the blood-and-nudity-soaked visions of New Hollywood auteurs (Taxi Driver, The Exorcist, etc.). Sunn’s product even included a few movies which attempted to present scientific evidence for aspects of the Christian faith. The most successful was In Search of Noah’s Ark, co-written and directed by Conway based on a book by Sellier and David W. Balsiger. It posits that (conveniently inaccessible) evidence exists that the remains of Noah's Ark lay on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. It includes several non-Russell Crowe re-enactments, as well as a supposed photograph that became the lynchpin for “proof.”

Intones narrator Brad Crandall, “The answer came in late September of 1974 when an expedition from the Holy Ground Mission in Frankston, Texas, scaled Mount Ararat, shooting across the Ahora Gorge with a 35MM Minolta camera. They took this picture that shows what looks like the fore part of a great vessel. The prow can be seen sticking out of the rocks 2000 feet above the location of the Eryl Cummings photo. When studied under photographic enlargement, the outline of the ship is not only clear but planking can actually be seen… the planking of Noah's Ark.”

“We didn't doctor anything… we had a photo that had been in other pieces of research,” Conway explained to us. “In those days, every expert you go to has their own data to support what they believe. Whether it's pseudoscience or not, all these people had books or research they could point to proving their point. A lot of it is things people wanted to believe, and so they'll accept the research more readily than a scientist might. I actually just saw there was a report on the Today Show last week about how they found this thing near Mount Ararat that they think is Noah's Ark. It just never goes away.”

Adds Rhodes of the questionable flood geology, “There's something atop Mount Ararat, and we think it's wood, and then this one explorer went up and claims to have seen it, and another explorer got close, but he couldn't quite get there. For some people, that's still tantalizing.”

Sunn Classics had several innovations to make and market their movies. They would often spend tens of thousands doing market research on whether a subject was viable for public interest. Once a film was complete, they would circumvent Hollywood distribution through a practice known as four-walling.

Conway claims that when Sunn approached local theaters, “They’d say, ‘We're going to pay you $25 cash for Friday night, $25 cash for Saturday night. We control the box office. Everything that comes in is ours.’ Because it was four-walled we did very heavy television commercials. We would only have, let's say, 300 prints of the movie. It would go into a city like Chicago, play two nights at this one theater, three nights at a different theater, four nights at another theater, and the commercials would list all the different movie theaters it was going to be on each night. They were enormously successful. On In Search of Noah's Ark I think our budget was $600,000 and it grossed $55 million. It was the 9th highest grossing movie of 1976.”

“Four-walling was a brilliant strategy,” opines Rhodes. “Sunn Classic were, in some respects, using old tricks of the trade not unlike the roadshow cinema of the early 20th century. In other respects, they were way ahead of their time. They were using surveys, polling at shopping malls: ‘What kind of film do you want to watch?’ They would look at advance weather reports in tandem with four-walling to try and avoid a snowstorm in the weeks ahead.”

“It may start in the Bible Belt, but it was huge everywhere you went,” continues Conway. “It was a huge hit, quite remarkable. That taught us that if you have a great commercial hook you can get a great box office return. That's where a lot of the supernatural elements come in, because there was an appetite for it. It's very easy to do a 15- or 20-second hook in a commercial to get people's interests up. It was so successful that theater runners made us go back to the standard splitting the box office, which was bad for us, good for them.”

Another “bad for us, good for them” was producer Alan Landsburg bringing the formula to television with an In Search of… docuseries hosted by Leonard Nimoy from 1976 to 1982. Landsburg helped popularize the style with the earlier docs In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973), In Search of Ancient Mysteries (1974), and The Outer Space Connection (1975), the latter made and released by Sunn Classic. The show’s subjects (Extraterrestrials, Magic & Witchcraft, Missing Persons, Myths & Monsters, Lost Civilizations, Special Phenomena) were the same as Sunn’s, as was the format of a celebrity host.

“He came after us with the In Search of… television series, basically ripped off our In Search of Historic Jesus and In Search of Noah's Ark,” says Conway. “He made it a TV series that was very successful, but that came after we had done our stuff.”

Many others were tapping into the same material, including the Oscar-winning insectsploitation doc The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) and the Rod Serling-hosted UFOs: Past, Present, and Future (1974), but Rhodes says that “Sunn Classic was at the core of the weirdumentary.” The one defining aspect of all these sensational films was selling the audience on realms of existence which, whether truthful or not, absolutely fall into the category of “fun to believe.”

���Belief was not essential,” Conway says of his Sunn projects, which included The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and Beyond and Back (1978). “Some I believed in more than others. An example is Beyond and Back, which we did about life after death and near-death experiences. As I was interviewing all these different people, I became more of a believer in it. Some of the other things we did, the more people I talked to the less I might have actually believed it, but you still present it.”

Although Sunn had researchers on staff, the scientific accuracy of these movies was debatable. It seems the real science lay in how the movies were made, or – as Conway explains – edited: “We were one of the first people to do a lot of audience testing. We would make a film, and then we would screen it and people would have dials. If they like something they would go right, didn't like it, go left. We would actually adjust the editing based on if something just completely sucked.”

Much of the filmmaking in the dramatizations of Sunn movies is very effective, with Rhodes stating that “Beyond and Back shows the ingenuity of Conway because at times they were actually able to muster really good special effects on low budgets.” Another example is their take on Charles Berlitz’s wildly popular supermarket paperback The Bermuda Triangle (1979), where the famous disappearance of Flight 19 in 1945 – linked to UFOs – is told with eerie lighting and sound effects that transcend the cheapness.

Still, critics were not typically kind, with Variety stating of The Bermuda Triangle, “As with the other Sunn films, recollections from people, both living and dead, who have experienced the phenomenon in question, are reenacted in a silly, unconvincing fashion. So-called experts with degrees and credentials are carted out in front of the camera to add weight to the arguments. Brad Crandall narrates, tying together the bits and pieces.” Yet as Rhodes writes in his Weirdumentary book, “To lesser men we leave these petty slights. As I see it, Sunn had perfected an art form, a very profitable art form, crystallizing a new genre for a new age.”

Eventually conspiracies and psychic phenomenon and weird creatures were no longer controversial, they were part of the norm… hence no longer a viable attraction for theaters. Big movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which tied elements of Bermuda Triangle lore into UFO mythology), Carrie (telekinesis a-go-go), and The Amityville Horror (ghostly possession) made formerly exotic pseudoscience mainstream… and perhaps less exciting. Eventually Sunn and Conway moved on to fictional feature films like Hangar 18 or The Boogens before eventually being folded into the now-defunct Taft Entertainment, acquired by Aaron Spelling and finally Paramount.

“Once Hollywood realized how popular these subjects were, they were suddenly everywhere,” said Conway. “They were TV movies, they were episodes. The Landsburg television show was on every week exploring another mystery from this, that, or the other. Once it became more easily available, there wasn't as much hoopla. When they first happened, they fed on each other… it gave you ink in magazines and newspapers. They kept feeding it and finally ran out of things to exploit. You can only do so many ghost stories, so many UFO things. The first time you're exposed to it, it's all fresh and fascinating and leads you down a lot of rabbit holes. Rabbit holes are much easier now than they used to be to go down.”

Even though we live in an information age, audiences continue to buy into the myths perpetuated during the Weirdumentary era, as exemplified by the continued popularity of such pseudoscience programs on Discovery or The History Channel, covering everything from UAPs to skinwalkers. There’s also a legion of podcasts and blogs which dedicate whole episodes to, say, disappearances in national parks or the history of ghost sex. Ancient aliens is a mini-industry unto itself, despite von Däniken’s work having long ago been exposed as fraudulent. Although it was thought to be a vanished victim of the Bermuda triangle, the SS Cotopaxi was eventually identified in January 2020 off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida. Even the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage of Bigfoot seen in The Mysterious Monsters has now been debunked in this year’s documentary Capturing Bigfoot, where verified rehearsal footage of their Bigfoot costume is revealed. For some, even this has not been enough to dissuade people from believing in the footage.

“Certainly as kids these subjects resonated because you are more naïve,” says Rhodes. “There's always one more piece of possible evidence to be tantalizing. ‘Even if one thing was faked, that doesn't mean it's all fake. What about these others?’ There is a kind of whataboutism. If some UFO footage was fake or a photograph was fake, now we have Air Force footage that's been released that looks – perhaps to some – compelling. We have new Bigfoot recordings, so even if Patterson-Gimlin faked it, that's just their footage. Some of the shows I've been on – Coast to Coast or whatever – the people that speak to me are more interested in the topics than the actual films as films, right?

“From a historical film perspective, these movies are fun,” concludes Rhodes. “There's a nostalgia factor. James Conway, Charles Sellier, Alan Landsburg, Wheeler Dixon… they're heroes to me. They made incredibly fun movies, even if I disbelieve the subjects. They're wonderful.”

Full spoilers follow for Avatar: Seven Havens Season 1!

The first Book of Avatar: Seven Havens is, er, in the books with this week’s finale, “The Root Chakra.” And while the final four episodes answered a number of big questions, they raised a ton more — not just about what to expect in Season 2 of the Paramount+ animated series, but Seasons 3, 4, and perhaps beyond. It’s a good thing, then, that we have show co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino and showrunners Sehaj Sethi and Ethan Spaulding on hand to answer all your burning questions.

…Or at least, answer what they can. While we got to see Pavi (Saheli Khan) step up as the Avatar in the finale, unlock her Root Chakra, and head off on a classic Avatar journey to the Floating Isles next season, Nisha (Aishu Devan) — surprisingly — was not part of that unlocking and is staying (for now) in the Haven of Ellora. Not only that, but we also saw Nisha was at least in part the cause of the Fear Anomaly that’s been attacking Ellora all season long, activated when her parents abandoned her; as a side effect, she accidentally killed her parents in a rock slide.

But there are still the questions of why and how Avatar Korra caused a Cataclysm 225 years earlier, how there are twin Avatars now, and many more mysteries and surprises to explore. So let’s get into it and see what DiMartino, Sethi, and Spaulding can answer about the future of the Avatar franchise.

Remembering Eric Bauza

Before we get to that, though, earlier this week the world of animation suffered a shocking loss with the passing of actor Eric Bauza at age 46. Bauza voiced multiple characters in this season of Seven Havens, and given the pace of animation, we’ll likely hear his voice for several seasons to come. But his passing does leave a huge gap in the world of Avatar.

“Eric meant a lot, obviously, to the show,” Spaulding said. “He's all over Seven Havens, and his contribution to animation in general is so prevalent. He's going to leave a big hole.” Sethi continued, “He worked on this show, but we all have history with him beyond this show. He's worked on so many things. I joked all the time that Bauza was twenty percent of the population of Seven Havens. We used him because he was so brilliant. He could act against himself. He could do young, old, any voice you could think of… Every single time he was in that booth, he was an absolute delight… He was just the kindest person… It's just the biggest loss.”

But Bauza’s contributions stretch beyond Seven Havens.

“He was actually in Avatar: The Last Airbender,” DiMartino recalled. “That was when he was just getting started in his voice-acting career. I think he's like a guard or two in the Boiling Rock. So the fact that he's been part of this universe for so long… I knew he was a big deal, [but] hearing all the stories from people over the past week, just learning more about him and the impact he's had on the community and everyone he's worked with is, it's just very sad. And [we] wish his family the best.”

Pavi And Nisha… Separated?

To get into the show itself, it’s a surprise that Pavi heads off on the classic Avatar journey at the end of the season alongside airbender Jae (Major Curda) while Nisha stays behind in Ellora. That, of course, was always part of the plan.

“From the very beginning, we all wanted this to be a really organic story about two sisters,” Sethi said. “Yes, there's a lot of world-building. There's so much that's going on. But at the end of the day, they are two young girls who fight and have differing opinions. Now that we've spent a whole Book, a whole season, seeing them grow together… What is it going to be like now when they're apart? How are they going to grow apart from one another into their respective roles? That was really interesting to me.”

Added Spaulding, “Also, getting the characters out into the world so the audience can see… other locations, it's a cool thing to have the characters split up at some point in the storyline for the world-building.”

Welcome to the Floating Isles

Part of that world-building is the next Haven Pavi is headed towards: The Floating Isles. We’re told she senses trouble there, and it seems likely that’s the location of the next Chakra she needs to unlock. So what can they tell us about the place?

Not much. “That's Haven Number Two, and Pavi will be visiting there,” DiMartino confirmed. Calling it a “more chill place compared to Ellora,” which was greeted by knowing laughter from Spauling and Sethi, DiMartino continued, “It's definitely a different vibe culturally. We try to make every Haven they're going to visit its own mini-culture [with] different customs and everything. So it'll be fun to start seeing more of the world as we get out there.”

There Will Be More Than One Haven Per Season

Given Book 1 was entirely in Ellora, one might venture that Book 2 will be entirely in the Floating Isles. This would mean that either the show is going seven seasons or we’re going to go a little faster than we did in Season 1; turns out, it’s the latter.

“No, not exactly,” DiMartino said when asked about the ‘one Haven per season’ idea. “We had to split it up a little differently, but we'll get through all the Seven Havens by the end of this series for sure.”

Beyond that, they confirmed that the four seasons of the show is the entire series. “That’s the full story,” DiMartino said. Added Sethi, “When Mike, Bryan [Konietzko], and I started working on it, we always had an end goal in mind — a lighthouse for us to work the story towards — and that's always been the case throughout the series.”

Is Pavi the “Real” Avatar?

Apologies in advance, because the answer to this one won’t be satisfying, but we did ask about the revelation that Pavi’s chakras are messed up and she is able to unlock the Root Chakra alone but not with Nisha. So is repairing the Cataclysm solely up to Pavi? Is she the “real” Avatar, and is Nisha a side effect or something else?

“We’ll see,” Sethi said enigmatically. “You gotta keep watching, man. I promise all of those questions are answered.”

Hey, we tried!

Going Dark

One of the darkest moments in Avatar history is when it’s revealed that not only did Nisha’s parents abandon her, but in the process of summoning the Fear Anomaly, she accidentally killed them in a rock slide. While Sethi confirmed that there’s more to this story to come, it’s still a horrifying duo of revelations that skew way darker than fans were likely expecting.

“I don't want to speak for Mike or Ethan, but when we started the series, I always had a feeling this is going to be darker,” Sethi said. ”We were really tackling some difficult and complex situations. The amount of power these girls wield… I always was interested in the idea of putting very young characters in very mature positions. I thought there was something really interesting there, especially from a storytelling point of view. We're really forcing the girls to grow up in a lot of ways, and so for me that was just an interesting place to go as a storyteller. For the show and for where we are taking the story, it made sense to start dividing the girls on not just a philosophical level but an emotional level, and this is the biggest emotional divide you can give two characters. So to me, I really wanted to explore that in the upcoming season.”

Added DiMartino, “In the early development that Bryan and I did, we had [the] idea of this tragic backstory that happened with Nisha, the family, and Pavi. That's how she lost her leg. So the core of that ended up being what's in the show. We always knew that was going to be a big part of the mystery of Book One and a big reveal, and like you said, it's a dark moment. But it's totally necessary for their characters and the story, and so it all ties together. And yeah, there's more that we will dig into around that story in upcoming seasons.”

Korra Constellations

During a climactic moment in the finale when Pavi unlocks the Root Chakra, she also sees a vision of four past Avatars: Kyoshi, Aang, Roku, and finally, Korra. While Spaulding explained this is a nod to the constellation versions of the Avatars seen previously in both The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, there seems to be a little more to it. And no, it’s not Pavi reconnecting with the Avatar Cycle after Korra broke the connection towards the end of Legend of Korra.

“It’s something else,” said DiMartino. “She has not reconnected. It can't happen that easily. So she does have a connection with Korra, but the other stuff's more of a vision.”

Added Sethi, “That's something we really had to work [on showing] visually that the connection is not complete. It was not just, oh, let's show Korra for a second or something. It was like, hey, she's sort of faded, right? She's not completely there. We wanted it to not just be so easy as, yup, now Korra can talk to you. That's something that still needs to progress in the series.”

Fans did notice in earlier episodes that both Korra and Asami are wearing betrothal necklaces in a “mover,” while in a vision of Korra where she’s tearing down Republic City, she is not. So how worried do we need to be about Asami?

“Asami is definitely dead by our show, which I think is a fair thing to say.” Sethi said. “The main thing to know from that is that there is most likely a time jump. But as to their relationship, you do learn more about that in Season 2.”

More LGBTQ+ Relationships in Seven Havens

One huge leap forward for the franchise is the amount of LGBTQ+ representation on screen. The final episode of Legend of Korra pretty famously had some issues in showing Korra and Asami getting together back in 2014. In 2026? Not only are the duo clearly together (and maybe betrothed), but we’ve also followed a canonically gay couple in Jae and Datu (Topher Ngu), and at least one other female-female pairing has shown up on screen.

“I definitely think that TV [and] even the kids’ animation landscape has definitely changed,” DiMartino reflected. “Whereas on Korra, we ran into some… pushback about what we could and couldn't show, this time around everyone was super supportive and it's more about the storytelling. What is the best way to show these relationships? It's nice to see, and we will see more of what Korra and Asami's relationship was like in the past.”

Return of the Afflicted

Despite Pavi unlocking the Root Chakra, things aren’t quite settled in Ellora, particularly since Chancellor Kayoko (Jennifer Sun Bell) is still clearly possessed by the Fear Anomaly as the season ends. So what’s going on here? Is the Root Chakra still blocked?

“The afflicted stay afflicted until a certain point,” Spaulding explained. “So there's still something that the Avatar has to do.”

Added Sethi, “Yeah, their journey is not finished with just releasing that energy. There's more that they'll need to do.”

We’re Not Getting a Huge Time Jump (Probably [Yet])

Fans at New York Comic Con noticed some designs of Pavi and Nisha that seemed to depict their characters aged up significantly, but as Sethi clarified, “that was concept art. So whether there's a time jump, who's to say, but that was not a time jump piece of art. That was just concept art.”

Other than that, though, time will be progressing forward as it tends to do. “Within the span of a series, there's time in between episodes,” Spaulding explained. “It's not very big, but you could say they're traveling for weeks or months. It’s similar to Last Airbender.”

“Yeah, now that they're on the road, [you] gotta account for the travel time in certain ways,” DiMartino added. “Time passes, but it's not like we're jumping forward years or anything.”

Instead, they’re letting the growing maturity of the characters come from subtle animation changes, like a loosening of Pavi’s hair in the finale and the vocal performances of the actresses.

“I give so much credit to Saheli, who plays Pavi, and Aishu, who plays Nisha,” Sethi said. “I give those amazing young ladies so much credit that they really learned how to grow their performance as the characters got more complex. They did a great job, and shout out to our amazing voice director Kristi Reed, who helped them with that.”

Seven Havens: Fury Road

One of the fun parts of Seven Havens has been picking out post-apocalypse tropes hidden between the Avatar easter eggs. From a Mad Max-style introduction to two other Havens, to a zombie movie-esque Afflicted infestation, the series has embraced the setting in a big way. And while Sethi conceded they don’t have a list of tropes (or movies) they’re trying to hit, it is very much baked into the premise.

“The thing that I always found interesting when Mike and Bryan brought me this idea was that it's almost like post-post-apocalypse,” Sethi said. “They've created a new city, right? They've essentially already done the work of rebuilding, and now it's almost like, oh, is there another impending apocalypse coming? So that was the interesting thing of [doing] some post-apocalypse stuff, but it can't feel like Scavengers Reign because they've rebuilt. There are new places. We tried to weave it in where it really made logical sense with where the story was going and where the world was.”

Added DiMartino, “When you get into Book Two, though, and now that they're traveling, you're going to see more of the Harshlands and stuff. So that gives you more of the post-apocalyptic vibe, and why people aren't living out in these areas.”

Seven Havens Gets Political (or Not)

Despite the multi-year schedule of creating animation, Seven Havens has felt laudably and eerily relevant to our world today. Turns of phrase in the finale like “We can’t just hide from the scary bubble” and “freedom of choice is all I’ve ever wanted” work on multiple levels. So how does a staff aiming for a hopefully timeless children’s animated series also reflect what we’re feeling right now in 2026?

“In a lot of ways, we were trying to really uphold an ethos that a lot of the Avatar world has always upheld,” Sethi explained. “I don't know if it's us getting political or everything that is relevant about humanity just being political at this point. To be truly honest, these were things that we always wanted to talk about, and we always felt they were timeless. We just happen to be in a time where they are incredibly relevant now.”

Added DiMartino, “All the Avatar stuff we've done has some political bent to it, but we're trying to address themes that are pervasive throughout history, not just talking about the current political climate. These are things that societies and people have struggled with throughout civilization’s history.”

“For me, especially, the idea of fear of the other, freedom of choice,” Sethi continued. “These are things that absolutely matter and will always matter. Like Mike was saying, the fact that they matter right now… Honestly, it's kind of cool that people can watch our show and feel a relevance now. But even 20 years from now, I think they'll still feel that relevance.”

The Hardest Part of Writing Seven Havens

Now that the secret of the show is out — that each of the Seven Havens does indeed align with one of the Seven Chakras — it gives the story a very clear, mission-based structure. But what it also does is somewhat dictate where Pavi and Nisha need to go emotionally over the course of the four seasons. So how do the writers balance honoring the emotional truth of those character’s journeys versus “well, we’ve gotta hit this chakra next.”

“Dude,” Sethi said, groaning. “That was the hardest part of the show. Truly, it was a massive undertaking. We did everything we could to make sure that their journeys would align with the world but would also align with them personally as organic characters. This is the hardest show I've ever worked on, and in the room, that was something that we went over and over. We probably tried like 17 different storylines because we wanted to make sure that the one we hit matched the characters as well as this overarching concept. So yeah, the best thing I can say is: It was really hard.”

Added DiMartino, “It's nice to have a structure [for] what we're going to be dealing with thematically. But then you have to honor that and also the characters we have. The thing I was excited about doing, now that we can talk about all the chakras stuff, is that the Guru was one of the people's favorite episodes from Avatar: The Last Airbender. But we had to cruise through the chakras real fast, so when we were revisiting that idea and the series, it was like, oh, this would be cool that we could structure the entire series and really explore these themes and make it not so easy to to unlock all of them. [We made] that the main journey of what Pavi has to go on.”

The Future of the Avatar Franchise From Seven Havens to Wave of Chaos and Beyond

There’s a lot coming in the future of Avatar, including three more seasons of Seven Havens, a new series titled Avatar Kuruk: Wave Of Chaos, and potentially more TBA. So let’s check in on what’s even further down the road than Season 2.

On Where They Are in Seven Havens: “We've been working on this stuff for several years now, so we are deep into Books Three and Four,” DiMartino said. “And yeah, it'll be a little bit before they come out, but rest assured, it’s all being worked on.”

Will Seven Havens and Wave of Chaos Overlap on the Release Schedule? “That is beyond my scope of control,” DiMartino said, laughing. “So it'll depend on what Paramount Plus wants to do, I guess, or whatever the streaming app happens to be at that time. That's just getting started. It might be a bit before we have episodes ready for that.”

Will There Be Further Avatar Shows? How About Movies? “Potentially,” DiMartino said. “I mean, we've got ideas for other Avatar things. We can come up with ideas all day, but we need the higher-ups to greenlight stuff.”

You hear that, Paramount? Start clicking that green light button, because we need more Avatar in our lives!

If you miss the days of Time Crisis, Virtua Cop, or even Duck Hunt, then Arkade Gaming Gun is a PC peripheral that should be firmly in your sights. At this week’s Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show 2026, I managed to get a short hands-on demonstration with this motion-controlled gun controller that’s due to release sometime in 2027 and came away with a strong first impression despite taking a few moments to wrap my head around its unique control setup.

What’s great about the Arkade Gaming Gun straight off the bat is that its proprietary technology doesn’t require a webcam or Wii-style sensor bar to make it work with your display. It’s completely plug and play, you connect its charging dock up to your PC via USB-C, and it doubles as a wireless receiver for the gun itself. A device manager allows you to customise its button layout and calibrate the tracking performance, and away you go.

You basically cradle the Arkade in a two-handed grip. The D-Pad or WASD-style movement of your character is handled by a thumbstick jutting out the side of its chunky barrel – which pulses with customisable LED graphics like a billboard in a Blade Runner skyline – with a pair of buttons on the other side used for other moves like jumping, and controls at the rear for weapon-switching.

Otherwise the actual aiming is handled by physically pointing the gun itself at your target, and that’s where things became initially disorientating during my brief hands-on. Dropped into a demo of Prodeus, a boomer shooter from developer Bounding Box Software, it took a moment for me to get comfortable with strafing and aiming at the same time. This was largely because to activate the aiming ability of Arkade you need to lightly grip the capacitive touch surface of its trigger. Rest your finger on the trigger and the onscreen crosshair will move to whatever target that you aim the gun at. Take your finger off the trigger, however, and you’re basically locked in the direction that you’re facing, as though you were playing with a mouse and keyboard and suddenly slipped your hand off the mouse.

Once I did get a feel for it, though, it largely became second nature. I even started instinctively re-centring myself on the fly with subtle movements of my trigger finger, not unlike when you’re aiming with a mouse and you’re pushing towards the edge of the mouse pad, and you pick it up and place it back in the middle without really thinking about it. It’s a fairly tricky thing to explain, but basically once it clicks it feels incredibly fun to peer down the Arkade’s sights and blaze away at a room of Doom-style demons with no noticeable compromises to the freedom of your movements. I especially like how its trigger features two stages of operation – a half-squeeze basically mimics a right mouse-button by zooming in slightly on your target, while a full squeeze fires the shot.

According to its creator and CEO Joshua Fuchs, the Arkade Gaming Gun isn’t solely designed for first-person shooters. Apparently it also supports a number of third-person shooters as well, from Fortnite to the Resident Evil 3 remake. It can also be used in conjunction with other peripherals to further increase the immersion, with Fuchs showing me a video example of one of his team members using the Arkade Gaming Gun in tandem with a racing wheel to execute drive-by shootings in Grand Theft Auto 5; one hand on the wheel and the other pulling the trigger on the Arkade. I’m not sure how much peripheral-juggling and custom controller-mapping would be required to play the entire game that way, but it certainly suggested that players could have a lot of fun getting creative with this device.

For now the Arkade gaming gun only supports PC, Mac, and Steam OS, but Fuchs has hopes of bringing it to consoles at some point in the future. The gun itself feels really solidly constructed, but light enough that I don’t imagine it would become too tiring to wield it for extended gaming sessions.

One thing that does feel a little heavy though, is the price. Arkade Gaming Gun is launching at $399 USD, although there is currently the option of scoring one at a discounted rate if you preorder from Arkade’s website. That’s a fairly hefty price to pay to bring a feeling of old school nostalgia to new school shooting, but if you’ve got the budget for it then based on my brief blast with it this light gun feels like it could be worth a shot.

Costco has officially revealed its annual Holiday Savings ad and you can already start browsing what will be discounted this year. Similar to other retailers, Costco is offering multiple waves of savings leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The first wave of sales kicked off on October 30 and will run through November 15.

Costco Black Friday Sale Schedule

According to Costco's official page, most the deals will be available both in-warehouse or online except for on Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. You can check out the full schedule below and click on each link to check out the ads for each sale.

• Pre-pre-Thanksgiving Day Sale - October 30 - November 15
• Pre-Thanksgiving Day Sale - October 16 - November 30
• Thanksgivng Day Sale - November 26 (Online Only)
• Black Friday Sale - November 27-30
• Cyber Monday Sale - November 30 (Online Only)

What are some of the best deals?

The different sales have a pretty varied selection of deals, so there are savings to be had pretty much all month long. The pre-pre-Thanksgiving sale that's happening now and the pre-thanksgiving sale both have a good amount of deals on snacks, frozen foods, and kitchen essentials. There's also a decent number of discounts on TVs and gaming monitors during this time, all of which will last until Cyber Monday if they stay in stock.

As you might expect, some of the best deals on tech and other big-ticket items don't arrive until the actual Black Friday sale kicks off after Thanksgiving. This is when you'll find an RTX 5060 gaming PC for $300 off, a Dyson vacuum under $300, and a great 4K TV for under $1,000. This is also when some of the best frozen food deals happen, including $5 off Costco's signature frozen lasagnas.

Both the individual Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday sales offer a few interesting items, but the bulk of the sale is not there. If you need a pair of Dickies men's overalls or cargo pants for $30, you won't want to miss the Thanksgiving sale. And if you plan on eating at Applebee's a lot in the future, the Cyber Monday gift card deal is definitely worth taking a look at.

More Black Friday Sales Announced

Stranger Than Heaven will apparently be the most technically accomplished game that developer RGG Studio has ever produced, and that’s largely due to the fact that it's being created solely for current generation hardware. The game’s producer, Hiroyuki Sakamoto, confirmed as much to IGN during an interview conducted at Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show 2026 this week.

“We set out to make Stranger Than Heaven as a completely brand-new game, with the goal of creating something entirely fresh while putting forth the absolute best quality we can produce right now,” explained Sakamoto. “[So] we decided to drop previous-gen platforms like the PS4 and focus on creating an experience best enjoyed natively on current-gen consoles like the PS5.”

Since the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S systems back in 2020, all of RGG Studio’s games have still kept one foot stuck in the previous console generation. 2024’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth was developed to run across two eras of PlayStation and Xbox, and while Xbox One was finally dropped for Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties earlier this year, support for PlayStation 4 remained.

However, by developing Stranger Than Heaven purely for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, the team hasn’t had to make any hardware-based compromises to its vision for the new game’s multiple decade-spanning journey through early 20th century Japan.

“In the past, hardware constraints meant limiting the number of characters we could display on screen at once, among other things we had to give up on,” continued Sakamoto. “With Stranger Than Heaven, by fully leveraging the PS5's capabilities we were able to showcase more characters on screen simultaneously than ever before and raise character quality to the next level.”

Despite some lingering reservations regarding its digital resurrection of the late rapper Tupac Shakur, IGN's Michael Higham found a lot to like about Stranger Than Heaven in his recent hands-on preview. With just over two months to go before its scheduled release in January, Sakamato seems supremely confident in where the game is at, going on to state, “I think we succeeded in achieving our goal of creating a richer visual experience with a stronger artistic identity than anything we've done prior.”

During the same chat, Sakamoto also confirmed the inclusion of in-game “cheats” in Stranger Than Heaven that you can read about here.

Stranger Than Heaven is set for release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on January 15, 2027.

Final Fantasy XIV Evercold was set to launch sometime in January 2027, which was announced as part of its initial reveal back in April this year during the North American FFXIV Fan Fest. However, this next expansion for the critically acclaimed MMORPG has been delayed – FFXIV Evercold's release date is now February 23, 2027 (and February 19, 2027 for early access). This was announced alongside the new, full trailer / intro cinematic for Evercold at FFXIV Fan Fest in Japan, and was said to only be a four-week delay.

In typical FFXIV fashion, the third and final teaser trailer is the full opening cinematic for an expansion, and it kicked off the Japan Fan Fest keynote where director and producer Naoki Yoshida presented more details on new features, where the ongoing story is headed, and fundemental gameplay changes as FFXIV goes into version 8.0 alongside Evercold's launch.

Pre-orders for Evercold open on November 4, 2026 and will come with a Wind-up Kottr minion to summon and follow you around in the world and Halone's Earring which will boost the EXP you gain for Jobs under level 100 when equipped. The collector's edition comes with the Valhallar Odin mount, the Entreat Crystal emote, and the Crystal Skyltborg which looks like glam for the new Bastion Job's weapons. The physical collector's bundle has the Evercold art book, the Tapestry of the Fourth decoration, a Kottr plush, a keychain of the Ethos Metal, and the Warrior of Light Reaper figure.

Additionally, we got a glimpse of the second new Job coming to his new expansion. It's a ranged DPS called Zephyr, which rocks a crossbow as their primary weapon and commands an avian companion to provide support.

There's a lot coming to FFXIV Evercold in addition to a new world and main story including a Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover raid series (which got a new teaser trailer), a Final Fantasy VII crossover raid series, a new Tank Job with Bastion, and much more. Be sure to check out my Dawntrail review as well to look back at the last expansion before heading into this new era for FFXIV.

Stranger Than Heaven, the upcoming street-brawler from the makers of Yakuza and Like a Dragon, will feature optional in-game assists to make its challenging new combat system more approachable, developer RGG Studio has confirmed to IGN in an interview conducted at Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show 2026 this week.

In IGN’s most recent hands-on with the game, my colleague Michael Higham described Stranger Than Heaven’s parry-based combat system as “demanding”, adding that “you really have to pay attention to attack animations not just for timing, but to make the correct call on the direction it's coming from.” This initially seemed like it could prove to be divisive among fans of the comparatively carefree button-mashing combo systems found in RRG Studios’ previous adventures like Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii and Lost Judgment, but it turns out that Stranger Than Heaven’s more complex combat system will only be as difficult as players want it to be.

“We knew mechanics like parrying would be challenging, but based on feedback from players who tried the hands-on demos at various game shows, like [Gamescom Asia], we’ve fine-tuned details like difficulty balance and control responsiveness,” said Hiroyuki Sakamoto, producer of Stranger Than Heaven. "We've also included difficulty settings and provided plenty of support features, such as cheat items that increase health regeneration. We believe that if we offer enough support for action-game beginners, it will give them the chance to play through to the very end.”

Sakamoto insisted that with some perseverance from players and the inclusion of a lengthy tutorial phase in the early stages of the game to help them, he hoped that most players will eventually start to enjoy the new mechanics. He also stated that the highest difficulty setting is "extremely challenging," so the more battle-hardened gamers will still be able to face a more unforgiving combat experience should they so choose. However, for players who perhaps want to purely focus on enjoying the multiple decade-spanning story and the showbiz-based side activities without mastering the rhythm of the combat, the addition of the cheat items should mean that all fans of RGG Studio’s games will be able to enjoy Stranger Than Heaven.

“Equipping those cheat items makes you much harder to defeat by automatically restoring health and providing other perks,” explained Sakamoto. “For beginners who still struggle with blocking, we’re prepared assistance items that let you clear encounters using basic left and right punches alone.”

There is one small catch to using these assist items, however, but it’s a fairly humorous one in typically cheeky RGG Studio style.

“You can obtain [the cheat items] right from the start of the game,” said Sakamoto. “But because they function as ‘handicap’ items and you wear it as a cloth/garment, anyone watching your gameplay screen will immediately notice you’re wearing them.”

So no activating cheats and pretending to be an absolute parry-beast on a livestream, then.

Stranger Than Heaven is set for release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on January 15, 2027.

Few games have changed the trajectory of their respective series quite like Monster Hunter World, one of the biggest smash hits Capcom has ever created. World was a vibrant, expansive, and ambitious leap that paid off in spades. It makes sense, then, that eight years later the series would still be chasing that high. Even with the time that's passed, I find myself amazed that Monster Hunter Outlanders, essentially, manages to cram the experience of World into a mobile game. This mobile spinoff certainly isn't attempting to reinvent the wheel, but after six hours with the game, it's proving to be a surprisingly competent package, although I have some bubbling hesitations about the grind and encroaching gacha systems.

Anytime there's a mobile spinoff of a major series, the first question that comes to mind is how that game will be compromised, or truncated, from that full console or PC experience. And so often, those mobile games are simplifications of a larger idea, like Fire Emblem Heroes or Diablo Immortal. What I've found fascinating about Monster Hunter Outlanders so far is that it doesn't really simplify the overall gameplay loop and structure. Rather, it's sort of a reconfigured Monster Hunter that strings out progression to support the typical framework of a mobile game, one filled with nearly a half-dozen different currencies to keep track of at any given time. But it also very much feels like Outlanders wants players to engage with it like a full-fledged Monster Hunter, and even includes all the story exposition you'd expect to go along with it.

Like most Monster Hunter games, Outlanders begins with a big cinematic opening where a group of adventurers from the Adventurer's Guild are striking out to an uncharted part of the world – in this case, an island called Aesoland. This island is filled with Radiant species of monsters, beasts whose abilities have been enhanced by a mineral called Radiantite. This is, ostensibly, also the game's reasoning for creating new designs of classic series monsters and tweaking their abilities to match this game specifically, like the Pukei-Pukei focusing more on head or tail attacks, which are easier to target with Outlander's more streamlined lock-on system.

But I cannot stress enough how much Outlanders banks on the same formula as World; it's almost as if the same game was transposed onto different locations and story elements. Even the first area of the game, like World, is a heavily forested area with a lot of verticality for climbing or setting ambushes; intentionally designed to show you the ropes. If you've played any Monster Hunter game, you know that core gameplay loop of what to expect – you take missions or hunts, track down monsters in an instanced map, beat them, harvest materials, and then use said materials to craft more powerful equipment.

Complementing this, you have a moderately-sized open world that you can roam around and explore to take down smaller monsters, find crafting materials, and more. Outlanders also brings back many of the elements that have become mainstays since World: scoutfly trails to guide you to objectives, buildable objects on the map like towers and ziplines, and monsters that interact and fight each other like natural predators. All these elements click together just as well as they did in World, creating a compelling loop that feels like you're constantly doing something meaningful to that overall progress. Outlanders is also impressive in terms of presentation with environments that genuinely look stunning; playing on an iPhone 14 Plus, I had a consistent framerate with very few dips.

However, the differences start to surface as you dig deeper into the minutiae of how the game actually plays and what options are available in combat scenarios. Certain aspects of the combat have been streamlined to fit the mobile experience and accommodate a touchscreen control scheme instead of a controller (although there is controller support if you want it). Movement and actions aren't as intricate, although the game sports two different control methods: Adventure Mode and Classic Mode. The former is intended for new players and streamlines things down to three buttons, Attack, React, and Burst. From there, the game contextually handles a lot of what you're doing, like the React button allowing you to dodge when a monster attacks, or block if the time is right. Classic Mode, on the other hand, gives you full manual control, including traditional button-stringed combos.

What I've found so far, though, is that Classic Mode proves to be unfit for just touch controls, as it's too cumbersome to use all of these different options without a controller. Adventure Mode does, generally, feel good to use, but takes some of the vibrant friction out of the experience by streamlining so much. That means the ideal way to play this, if you can, is on Classic Mode with a controller – which then ultimately raises the question of why you wouldn't just play a console Monster Hunter. There are answers to that question, of course, like if you don't own anything else to play a Monster Hunter game on.

The other two major elements where Outlanders shifts that classic experience is with your ability to build a party of adventurers and how progression works. To try and fit the typical idea of a gacha game, Outlanders creates a group of distinct characters that take part in the story who you can then recruit and use as NPC companions. Recruiting means partaking in those traditional gacha pulls using currency called Rutacoins.

Each Adventurer has their own distinct moveset that builds on one specific weapon type, meaning playing as that Adventurer is different from just slapping any other weapon on your player-created character. This does create some incentive to try and get these various characters. Of course, the real key to this system is how easy or difficult it might be to pull Adventurers and upgrade them to be useful in combat. I was able to build a full four-person party fairly easily with the currency I earned from starting the game. Overall, I like the idea of being able to build a party with these distinct characters and play solo. The option is still there to group up with other players and friends, but the Adventurers make it easy to tackle quests and Contracts on your own. But I can already see hints of it being frustrating to pull repeat characters, let alone anyone new you might want down the line.

This leads to the area I'm not as hot on: the progression system. While almost all of the currency in the game is earnable from playing, as well as spending real money, I'm finding that the classic Monster Hunter progression loop feels a bit slower here. You need Zenny to pay for items, upgrades, and services. Rutacoins are for pulling characters and sidekicks (Palicos and the like). Research Points needed for the upgradable skill tree to unlock more buildable structures, for example. And as you might expect, there are additional materials necessary for upgrading a character or sidekick's level, unlocking their level cap, upgrading weapons, crafting items, and more.

Monster Hunter has always had a lot of elements to juggle in terms of progression, which is arguably the biggest barrier to entry for some people. In many ways, the series has been about busy work, sifting through menus, and meticulously crafting sets of armor and weapons. Those are elements of Monster Hunter I've always enjoyed, but even after a half-dozen hours, I'm feeling quite fatigued by the sheer amount of stuff in Outlanders. There's a lot of currency and whatnot to earn, and equally as much to figure out in terms of how to get things done, as well as hours of tutorials.

This has, ultimately, made the opening hours a bit more of a slog than something like Monster Hunter World or Rise. And even though I'm genuinely having a good time so far, my primary concern at the moment is how all that might affect the experience as a whole, especially as you get to the more difficult and complex hunts. I've played enough gacha games in my life to know that the fun can be brought to a grinding halt pretty quickly when resources become a wall you have to overcome.

Of course, it'll take time to make a final judgement, but my overarching sentiment on Outlanders right now is surprise: for how it still leans into that essential component of timing in combat, and for how uncompromised the visuals and world design are. Those insidious mobile elements that too many games fall into are still nipping at the edges, but I'm hoping the core experience is able to stave it off in the long-run. I'll be pouring more time into Monster Hunter Outlanders in the coming days for the full review coming soon.