Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham came back to the company two-and-a-half years ago after being gone a little over a decade. Today, Adham talks why he left, why he came back, and what to expect in the future from one of the industry's most revered companies.

So, what brought you back?
So, I’ll tell you the short version of the story. So, I ran the company for like the first 13 years as president and then later as chairman and VP of Game Design. And I left amid 2004, right before World of Warcraft launched. And I had been, along with Mike [Morhaime] running the company and game director of World of Warcraft up until that point. And so, we didn’t call it game director back then – there was no game director title – it was lead game designer. And so, I exhausted myself working seven day weeks, 14-16 hour days, for more than a year, and I loved it, but it turns out making an MMO and running Blizzard was two jobs in one.

Sure.
What I should have done was taken a sabbatical. Refresh. And then come back. But what I did, instead, was I went off and started a quantitative hedge fund using computers and artificial intelligence, trading the stock market. And that was super fun too. Another really fun video game in a different sort of setting...

It’s a really big video game.
So yeah, but I knew that after about – it was after about two years, I knew I made a horrible mistake because I was refreshed. The models were done. They were running the market. That game was done, and I was looking, you know [at] the desire to get back to work on gaming again. It was there. But I was now committed to this new path. And it was fun too. And it afforded a really nice quality of life, and I had just gotten married and were working on having kids, but what I should have done was taken a year off and come back.

So, I was really just waiting for the right opportunity to come back, and that happened around mid-2016. The character of the market started to get a little squirrely and I got nervous that we were long in the tooth into a bull market and I didn’t want to leave my own money in, so I took my money out. Sent everybody their money back, said “Hey, we’ve had a great run.” Mike was one of our investors. He said, “Hey, why don’t you come back to Blizzard. We could use kind-of your super power of starting new things.” And I was, you know, there as fast as I could get back there. So, yeah, it’s been a joy actually, to come back to Blizzard – to have access to all these new IPs, all the talent we have. But to be able to start these new incubation teams, it’s like having all the benefits of start-up without any of the risks, nearly unlimited budgets, talent, and IPs.  Super, super fun.

So, are you sort-of tempering your hours now so that doesn’t happen again?
I said that I would. But in practice, what’s happened is there’s been all this pent-up, coiled energy around starting the next new thing and me, coming back accidentally hit like a lightning rod. And so, it takes somebody at a certain level to unlock that energy, especially when you think about how successful our mainline franchises are. Feeding Hearthstone and Overwatch and World of Warcraft – it takes a tremendous amount of energy. So, starting all these new things has been super fun. I won’t say how many we’ve started, but I will say we’ve started a ton. All those teams are scaling, and many of them – not all of them – but many of them report to me. And I have a hard time saying “no” to cool ideas. And so you’ll hear us now say broadly, “we have more products in development, and more in the Blizzard pipeline across all platforms and all of our IPs, than we’ve ever had before, by far.”

Is that sustainable – you’ve got all these games that require tons of constant support – to keep growing?
It is. I’ll tell you why. If you think about Blizzard, Blizzard is fairly unique in our industry. There’s one or two other companies that have been around for almost three decades now. And it took us along time to go from one team to two teams. And the reason we were able to do that is because we had so many people on that first team that knew how we did things. And then as that team scaled, and as everyone on that team became bonafide long-term Blizzard developers – that lets you carve off a chunk of those people and start the next thing. Then you have two teams, and then another decade passes and those two teams have been around for 10 years with lots of very experienced seniors, you can carve off some of them and then start another two teams. And that’s a gross oversimplification, but you can look at our teams now. We have five public-facing teams: Overwatch, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo, and World of Warcraft.

Each one of those teams is between a hundred and three-hundred people. And each one of those teams has been around for at least a decade. So again, staff top-to-bottom with bonafide Blizzard developers, that lets us – and if you look at Overwatch, that’s how Overwatch started. Jeff Kaplan was the co-game director on World of Warcraft for a long time and he left to start something new, which eventually became Overwatch. Tom Chilton – so, this isn’t commonly known, but we do talk about it – Tom Chilton left World of Warcraft a few years ago. He’s on something new. Dustin Browder left Heroes of the Storm. He’s on something new.

On different projects?
Different projects. So our best and brightest – top tier and super seniors ­– many of them have now moved on and taken some of their best friends and bonafide Blizzard developers to start up these new things. We can do many at the same time, because we have five very large, very experienced Blizzard teams. It puts us in a pretty unique position to be able to do that at scale and start that many things that quickly.

How did you get into gaming?
So, I go all the way back. I go back to – I’m going to date myself now – but I was born and grew up before Pong existed. So, you know, playing Pong was the start. Dragon Quest, you know was where really fifty cents in the arcade to play Dragon Quest. And then, of course, all the in-betweens: Space Invaders, Defender. For me, as a freshman in high school, one of my friends had a TRS-80, and one of them had an Apple II. You know, one was black and white, and one had – they said it was eight colors, but it was really only six because two of the colors were black and two were white. So that was definitely a marketing stretch. But I managed to talk my dad – who’s an engineer – into buying an Apple II.

So I could play games and then I started coding in basic because it was super interesting. And then by my sophomore year in high school, me and a good friend of mine, Brian Fargo – Brian founded Interplay – Brian and I used to pirate software together when games were on floppy disks. And a little crew, of you know, fifteen-year-olds, we would all get together and there were so many games every month, and as kids we couldn’t afford them all. We would just use FID, you know, F-I-D, to copy each other’s games. When Brian went on to work, he was a few years older than me, he went on to work at a company called Boone Corporation. I would come in and I would play-test for them. So if you look at the – you remember Bard’s Tale?

Oh, yeah!
If you look at the screenshots on the back of Bard’s Tale, what you’re seeing are my characters.

Really?
And you’ll see one of them named “Omar.” So that’s my brother, he was my mule. I would always send him in first to get killed if I wasn’t sure what was up ahead. So I started play-testing for Boone, while coding at home, an amateur programmer. And Brian went on to start Interplay around the time I was a senior. I’d gotten to know many of their engineers. And I started using their game engines to write games for Interplay, including converting Demon’s Forge and then Mine Shadow, and some of these old, old titles.

I went onto college at UCLA, and my summer job – I would take three months out of each summer, and back then, a single college kid for three months could convert a game, or write one from scratch. So, I did a couple for Interplay, then moved onto Datasoft and The Software Toolworks. And in my sophomore year, just decided I was going to design a code and have friends draw the art. And the first game I ever made that was mine was called “Gunslinger.”

Gunslinger?
So, Gunslinger was mine. It was an adventure game. You know, back in the day, you’d type, “go north.”

Yeah, yeah. Like Zork?
Like Zork with graphics. And that’s how I got started, and that’s around the time I met Mike and Frank, and others. There’s others from UCLA that aren’t part of the sort-of lore, but James Anhalt and Pat Wyatt, we were all computer science and engineering friends together. And I managed to talk them all into coming and starting Blizzard with me. And this craziness all ensued. And had no idea. I still look around, and I don’t know how all this happened. It’s just too much for any one person to understand. It’s pretty nuts.

So, what’s been the biggest challenge since you got back to Blizzard – coming back into it.
Yeah, so I’m starting to see it, but the scope and scale of everything we do, right. So the fidelity of games and game systems now is very different than it was a decade ago. The team sizes back then – you could ship a game: Diablo II or StarCraft – you could ship a game with 40 people in a couple of years. If you really wanted to go crazy, we made an MMO with around 60 people in five years. These days, you want to do an open-world game, you know, Red Dead I think has over a thousand people on it.

So, as we think about the projects we want to work on, that’s very different. The other is, when I left: WoW was really the first really live-service game that Blizzard had done, and I left right before we went into that mode. So, these days, you can’t make a game, put it in a box, and then maybe patch it once or twice, maybe do an expansion, and then you’re on to the next new thing. In many ways, making the game and publishing is really just the beginning of the process. And then, if you’re successful, that’ll exist live for a decade or more, and content and live ops and your teams actually grow, and get bigger, if anything, if you’re successful. Then it’s hard to move off and start to do new things.

For me, those are the two biggest ways that I think I have to think differently about the future. But fortunately, in my job, mostly what I’m tasked with doing is building teams, starting the next new thing, getting them to right before launch, and then right when all that hard work has to start and someone actually has to do a real job, I get to hand it off to somebody else to do all of that, and then just help make the next new thing. Hopefully, I won’t have to move too far away from that act of game creation. Those two halves – we broadly sometimes talk in terms of “starters” and “finishers.” I enjoy the act of creation and that process of starting and we have a lot of people at Blizzard that are very good at coming in and sort of polishing things to a perfect, finely tuned, running live, and growing them from there. That’s not my super skill.

What’s a genre of game that Blizzard hasn’t tackled that you’d like to see?
So, that’s a tricky question, because if I told you the answer to that, you’d know what we are working on next. Here I’ll tell you this, I’ll give you a broad answer. I can tell you – as the guy in charge of incubation and helping us think about new products – I play a ton of games. I play around four hours a day, probably. Two in the morning – on desktop. I wake up pretty early so, I play most PC and console games of any sort of size or coolness whether they’re big marquee titles or indie titles, you can bet I’m playing them. Then in the evenings, when my wife is home and would murder me if I played games all night long, I play mobile titles. I play a lot of both and so, I play just about everything. The recent ones – Red Dead’s been awesome – God of War (the most recent installment) was really inspiring. Some of my favorites going back a ways, The Last of Us – now, I don’t mean to suggest that Blizzard is thinking about those types of games. Those are big teams and narrative teams are different...

We’ve played a ton, as you might guess. PUBG and Fortnite, the survival games, Rust, Day Z. A little indie title called Subnautica, that was really interesting. In the mobile space, I’ve played over a year of all the Supercell games, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Boom Beach. These days I play a lot of Galaxy of Heroes.

Typically, what happens, when that process starts, someone will come to me evangelizing passionately some new game or game type idea that they have so by no means are all our games coming from me. And then I partner with them to help develop those ideas and then we take those to what we call product strat and in that room are guys like J and Ray and (Jeff Kaplan) and Tom. There’s about a dozen of us and we evaluate kind of the coolness of the idea and the people bringing the ideas and how those fit into our kind product slate, and that’s how things get started at Blizzard.

So, with all the incubation, and even going back, how many games never saw the light of day that were past concept stages, that there was stuff there?
We have roughly a 50% success rate. I do a presentation internally for Blizzard and for the Activision companies at large, sometimes our brothers and sisters at King or Activision, Treyarch, Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward, they’re curious to hear how our incubation process works. I have a slide where it shows a curtain, you know, and how does Blizzard consistently make great games and it shows a picture of Blizzard covered by a curtain, and the next slide is this terrifying-looking clown. The truth is, behind the curtain, it’s a horror show. But most people outside of Blizzard don’t realize around half of our titles don’t see the light of day. So, people who think we’re a consistent company, we’re only consistent in that we only release the really amazing games. The other ones – and the public’s heard of some of them, most people know about Titan, most people know about Ghost, most people have heard (if you go further back) Warcraft Adventures, less so the other ones. Some we’ve kept under wraps and some not. The interesting thing about almost all of our failures, they almost all lead directly to the next success. So, Titan lead – one to one – to Overwatch. Nomad – which most people haven’t heard of – lead to WoW. That’s a repeating pattern. We honor our failures, learn from them, and they almost always directly lead to the next blockbuster title. That’s kind of the dirty, behind-the-scenes truth of how we make games at Blizzard. 

What’s your favorite non-Blizzard game of all time?
I would probably say, what I think is the best game ever made was EverQuest. For me – it was terrible in many many ways, the user interface, the difficulty curve, you couldn’t see at night, there were so many things wrong with it – it was so good in its sense of immersion and it was the first time I’d ever played a game in my life where I would completely lose myself in the game. The world felt like a world and I remember running across zones when I was in my low teens just going, “Oh my god I’ve been playing this game every day for a month and I’m just now getting to run across these zones.” The world is big and it’s scary and it’s awesome. Dungeons were scary and real and then the social aspect of it that came into play. I played many MMOs before that, this was he first time that I really got the sense of, “This is a virtual world.” EverQuest was the clear inspiration for World of Warcraft. Even now, when I think about virtual worlds, I go back to EverQuest and tell stories about my experiences there. 

So, with games like Galaxy of Heroes, what do you think about gacha systems and five-star loot box kind of deals?
For me personally, as a player, progression systems and collections systems, they work well on me. I like collecting things and I love that particular IP. Gacha systems in general, I think they’re OK. I know that on premium products, you know, PC products, there’s a strong push to remove them. I think in the mobile space, it’s a balance. If you look at something like Hearthstone, I would say we’ve done it well with Hearthstone. It feels organically correct to that product. The difference between payers and non-payers isn’t so bad that the non-payer feels compelled to monetize. So, you’ll catch up pretty quick, you can get all the cards, and you’ll be competitive even if you never spend a penny. For me, that’s an example of a gacha system that works pretty well. The practically reality is, in the mobile space, on free-to-play games, gacha systems generate more revenue by an order of magnitude than direct purchase. That entire industry is at risk if gacha systems go away. But, there’s a right way to do it and there’s a wrong way to do it. Hopefully, we do it in the way the still stays true to our ethics.

What’s your favorite thing about working at Blizzard?
There’s so many fun and interesting people who share that same passionate, die-hard, love of gaming. It makes me a little sad that, in the United States, those of use that are hard-core gamers are still – it’s not quite as mainstream as it is in some other countries. We heard stories, like in Korea in the hey-day of StarCraft, if you wanted to marry a man’s daughter you had to first beat him at StarCraft. We dream of the day here where gamers are the rock stars of broad society. We’re not there yet but hopefully, we’ll get there soon. Most of mainstream America doesn’t yet know that this business is bigger than Hollywood. Esports is one of the initiatives that I think will help raise that as people realize that as many people or more watch esports than the NFL. The young generation, of course, coming up they consume a ton of entertainment content and game content – specifically esports and Twitch, other venues. I just like being a gamer with other gamers.

After Grand Theft Auto V came and went with no further story missions to enjoy outside of the main campaign, many have assumed Rockstar will take the same approach with Red Dead Redemption II and pour all its resources into the Red Dead Online service that starts later this month. Well, hold your horses just a sec.

When I interviewed Rockstar director of design Imran Sarwar last year, he didn’t rule out story DLC for future games, saying, “We would love to do more single-player add-ons for games in the future. As a company, we love single-player more than anything, and believe in it absolutely – for storytelling and a sense of immersion in a world, multiplayer games don’t rival single-player games.”

Given the zombie craze continues to shamble unimpeded through film, literature, television, and video games, another chapter of Undead Nightmare would likely be well received. But even after spending more than 100 hours in the world of Red Dead Redemption II, I want more narrative content set in this world without the convenient crutch of zombie fiction. Rockstar created one of its most memorable casts with this game, and I’d love to see the stories of a few of these characters play out further. Here are the personalities and subject matter we feel would be the most compelling centerpieces for more story content. Spoilers follow, so don’t read further until you’ve completed the epilogue.

Josiah Trelawny 

Though he's not a mainstay at the camp like the other gang members, Trelawny is a slippery grifter who often supplies Dutch with valuable leads. His fashionable attire and silver tongue allow him to move in and out of several social circles, rubbing shoulders with the elite to find his next big con job. Playing an intellectual character who revels in deception rather than strongman tactics could be a refreshing change of pace, and I’d also love to see Rockstar explore more of relationships to the gypsies he holes up with during the game, giving the story a Peaky Blinders vibe.  

Sadie Adler

Sadie’s transformation from a happy frontier settler to an uncompromising widowed bounty hunter is one of the most interesting character evolutions in a game full of them. Originally serving the camp in a support role underneath Pearson, when shit hits the fan during the Saint Denis bank robbery and much of the Van der Linde gang goes missing, she’s the one who pulls the remaining camp members together and gets them through the rough patch. When we leave Mrs. Adler during the epilogue, she sets off to continue her aspirations of hunting down wrongdoers. Joining her on these adventures and watching her continue to Dead Eye her way through glass ceilings in the process would be make for a compelling journey. 

Charles Smith

A recent recruit to the Van der Linde gang at the start of Red Dead Redemption II, Charles Smith is one of our favorite new faces in the game. Half Native American, half African American, Smith is a drifter who doesn’t feel at home in any part of society. His tracking skills are unparalleled, and his bravery is continually put on display in harrowing moments where the gang narrowly beats the odds. He’s also one hell of a fist fighter. When Smith says his goodbyes in the epilogue, he intends to head to Canada to create his own version of a quiet life. We’d love to ride shotgun on that journey as he powers through discrimination and finds his place in the world.

Archie Downes

One of the most harrowing stories of Red Dead Redemption II is the decimation of the Downes family. Struggling with tuberculosis, Thomas Downes takes an ill-advised loan from Herr Strauss that ends up costing him his life and farm. This puts Edith in the desperate position of doing whatever it takes to provide for her son, Archie. Regretting his role in their dire circumstances, Arthur Morgan tries to raise them from their station with a cash gift, and leaves them with a parting line of wisdom – “Don’t get yourself killed for pride, I’ve seen it kill too many folk.” Assuming the role of Archie as the Downes family tries to rebuild could be an intriguing plotline to follow. 

Angelo Bronte’s Street Kids

We’ve seen Rockstar explore the tumult of adolescence with the criminally underrated Bully. It would be interesting to see that keen eye turned to the orphaned lads running the streets of Saint Denis. These pickpockets are the eyes and ears of Angelo Bronte’s racket, informing the mafioso of the city’s happenings. Missions exploring that relationship could serve the crux of the gameplay, but it would also be interesting to explore the hardships of orphan life and the inadequate societal structure of the time that inevitably pushed these kids into a world of crime. Think season four of The Wire set in the Wild West. 

Dutch van der Linde

We know Dutch is a bad man. His gift for persuasion allows him to continually recruit new soldiers to his side, but during desperate times all the philosophical principles he so readily spouts to followers are abandoned for the baser drive of self-preservation. We know that after the events of RDR II and the dissolution of the Van der Linde gang he eventually forms a new posse. Watching Dutch struggle with the demons of his past firsthand as the law barrels down on his position could add even more depth to one of the best portraits of villainy we’ve seen in video games. 

The Supernatural

The world of Red Dead Redemption II is filled with supernatural creatures and paranormal activities. Exploring the world, you can stumble upon ghosts, werewolves, witches, vampires and the voodoo cannibals known as the Night Folk. If Rockstar wanted to take a similar approach to story DLC as Undead Nightmare but mix it up, it could make these otherworldly factions rise to power and put players right in the middle of a supernatural showdown.  

Sometimes the so-called “bad guy” isn’t actually that bad. They can be sympathetic. Other times, they’re simply hard to judge in worlds where no one is truly a hero. Video games have lots of morally ambiguous antagonists, each with their own backstory and motivation. Here are five of the most common archetypes behind video games’ morally gray antagonists, along with the character who most embodies the archetype.

**This list contains spoilers for the following games: StarCraft series, The Last of Us, Mass Effect series, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Dragon Age: Origins **

Some Monsters Are Born, Others Created

Exemplar: Sarah Kerrigan/Queen of Blades – StarCraft series

Not all antagonists are born evil. Some are just the unfortunate products of their environment. In gaming, there have been many villains forged by the cruelties of life, but none quite as tragic as StarCraft’s Queen of Blades.

The Queen of Blades wasn’t always a ruthless alien overlord; once she was a little girl rocked by tragedy when she accidentally killed her parents with psychic powers she didn’t know she had. From there, she was kidnapped by a heartless government, tortured and experimented upon, turned into a ruthless killing machine, then finally “rescued” by a rebel faction. Only her “rescue,” was really just more of the same, using her for her abilities before abandoning her in the field to face a parasitic alien horde alone. Instead, the alien hive mind adopted her into its fleshy fold and gave birth to the malevolent Queen of Blades, an entity hellbent on destroying the “humanity" which so callously robbed her of her own.

Honorable Mentions: GlaDOS (Portal series), Alma (F.E.A.R. series), Delilah Copperspoon (Dishonored series), The Joker (Batman: The Enemy Within), Sin (Final Fantasy X)

They’re Misguided In Their Beliefs

Exemplar:Illusive Man – Mass Effect series

For many antagonists, the dark roads they’ve taken can be traced back to one erroneous belief. Whether they think they’re saving the world or just fighting against the powers that be, the hubris of these villains is that they often go too far. In the Mass Effect series, the Illusive Man fits this description perfectly.

A “speciesist” who believes humanity must be preserved at all costs and that the ends justify the means, the Illusive Man thinks he’s doing what’s right for the galaxy, but ultimately becomes a pawn for the evil he set out to stop. Still, the terrorist mastermind means well, and will take his own life for the good of the universe if you can convince him. Like with most villains who believe the ends justify the means, the Illusive Man paves the road to his own destruction with noble intentions.

Honorable Mentions: Andrew Ryan (BioShock), Lyon (Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones), Haytham Kenway (Assassin’s Creed III), Selvaria Bles (Valkyria Chronicles), Dutch van der Linde (Red Dead Redemption series) 

They Only Appear Evil

Exemplar: The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater)

You’ll notice a common thread with many of these antagonists: They’re all tragic. When it comes to villains who only appear bad on the surface, there is no greater martyr than Metal Gear Solid’s The Boss.

A character who sacrifices everything for her country and her mission, The Boss opts to die a traitor in the eyes of the world rather than drag the world’s superpowers into another great war. Representing a recurring theme in the series, The Boss is a simple soldier trying to navigate the great powers’ secret wars, doing what she can in a conflict where no choice is easy. Passing on all her lessons to protagonist Naked Snake before she dies, The Boss even imparts a final message to her disciple: The soldier’s life is an “endless battle.”

Honorable Mentions: Great Grey Wolf Sif (Dark Souls), Kessler (Infamous)

Actually, The Antagonist Is The Good Guy

Exemplar: Marlene (The Last of Us) 

Sometimes the antagonists aren’t even evil; the hero is just a piece of crap. Situations like these really give the player pause to reflect on the nature of right and wrong. Few situations accomplish this reflection quite like when you have to choose between the life of a loved one and the lives of many.

In The Last of Us, Marlene becomes the final antagonist when she makes a hard choice, but arguably, the right one, greenlighting a procedure that will kill Ellie but also yield a vaccine to end the infection ravaging mankind. She does make one mistake, however: being merciful. In The Last of Us, we play as Joel, a grizzled survivor who still hasn’t gotten over the death of his daughter, and who chooses to kill everyone rather than lose Ellie on the operating table. Guilt-wracked over her decision, Marlene spares Joel not once, but twice. For her foolish decision-making, she dies begging for her life when Joel doesn’t hesitate to execute her. Agree or disagree, The Last of Us paints its world in shades of gray and darker gray, and when it comes to antihero Joel, let’s just say the word “hero” is used very loosely.

Honorable Mentions: Colossi (Shadow of the Colossus), Sans (Undertale)

They Made A Difficult Decision

Exemplar: Loghain Mac Tir (Dragon Age: Origins)

When you’re in a position of power, it can be difficult to know the proper course of action. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, sometimes good individuals make bad decisions in the heat of the moment and never look back. In Dragon Age: Origins, Loghain Mac Tir made a bad decision (and then more bad decisions) for the sake of his homeland.

Seemingly your average powermonger, Loghain allows his king to be slaughtered at the frontlines, seizes power for himself, and then commits numerous atrocities to stay in power. But, arguably, Loghain does what he does out of love for his country. Stuck between a scheming empire, a demon army, and a young king who was plotting to forge an alliance with that empire, Loghain made the only decision he could. He withdrew his forces to defend his homeland, letting his king die in the process. Proving he’s not all bad, the former general will even repent for his crimes and volunteer to sacrifice himself if he joins your party, proving that people who make terrible decisions are still capable of some good.

Honorable Mention: Daigo Dojima (Yakuza 4)

So that concludes our morally gray list. Was there an antagonist on here who you still think is pure evil? Let us know about it in the comments section below. And for more from us on your favorite heroes and villains, be sure to check out our list of the top 10 deranged video game villains, or our list of the top 10 super hero games of all time.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is now out in the wild (and we love it) but there's still time to watch some great Westerns when you're not living the life of the outlaw on the plains. We’ve compiled a list of 20 great Westerns that not only serve as great companion pieces to Red Dead Redemption II, but also share some thematic or cinematic similarities to the series.

3:10 To Yuma (2007)
The original 3:10 to Yuma is no slouch but the remake, directed by Logan’s James Mangold, is among the most fascinating and complex character studies the Western genre has ever produced. A poor rancher (Christian Bale) is tasked to escort a notorious outlaw (Russell Crowe) to a train as the bandit’s group tracks them to free their leader. While the gunfights are tense and the plot is interesting, the ever-evolving relationship between Bale, Crowe, and Ben Foster (who plays the outlaw’s second-in-command) steals the show. From friendship to animosity and deep respect, all the characters in 3:10 to Yuma are constantly shifting their perspectives on one another even though the rules of the world, and the situations of every character, forces them to play the roles forced upon them. A shocking, poignant conclusion marks this remake as one of the best modern Westerns out there.

The Red Dead Connection: For all its gunslinging, the heart of Red Dead Redemption is humanistic storytelling on an epic scale. Yes, the original game’s sprawling vision of the West was engrossing but it was John Marston’s role as a man trapped between the past and the future that cemented the game as a classic. The sequel looks set to explore even more complex relationships among notorious bandits as their world falls apart. We look forward to seeing how John, Morgan, and Dutch’s relationship plays out in particular.

The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
If you’re looking for an endless string of gunfights, you can skip this measured and methodical revisionist Western. Following the last years of infamous outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt), this work from writer/director Andrew Dominick moves at the languid pace of a Terrence Malick film. As the younger cousin of a James gang member being recruited into the outlaw life, Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) learns over the course of the film how far his mythic image of the renegade life is from reality. His own path turns from perusing infamy to self-preservation as he sees how precarious a life outside the law can be.

The Red Dead Connection: The train heist shots from the early Red Dead Redemption II trailers look to be heavily inspired by a similar scene in this film. Since the game follows the eventual unraveling of the Van der Linde gang, we expect it explores similar themes of a gang members’ disillusionment with a charismatic leader.

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hardly needs an introduction. A mash-up of buddy comedy and Western, the film immortalized itself with fantastic performances from Paul Newman (Butch) and Robert Redford (Sundance) as the two wise-cracking outlaws. A world apart from the bloody The Wild Bunch (also released in 1969), Hill’s film is content to use the old cliché of lovable, mostly huckster outlaws to explore the value of friendship – even in the face of doom. The movie’s blaze of glory freeze frame is easily one of the most famous endings in all of cinema.

Hey, who knows? Maybe they made it to Australia. Right?

The Red Dead Connection: Red Dead Redemption is so renowned for its well-told tragic tale that people often forget just how funny the game is, particularly when it comes to banter between John and characters like Nigel West Dickens, a bumbling snake oil salesman. Trailers for Red Dead Redemption II have shown a fair amount of similar banter, with Morgan telling one of his crew at one point “I’m good as long as we get paid…or you get shot!”

Deadwood
Deadwood’s Shakespearian approach to dialogue can be tough for some to penetrate, but once you embrace the unconventional approach to the Western genre you can revel in the interactions of its complex and memorable cast of characters. Saloon operator/quote machine Al Swearengen may be HBO’s best written anti-hero – yes, we’re including Tony Soprano and Tyrion Lannister in that conversation – and the show features cameos from many well-known folk heroes like Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. Charting the town’s growth from a lawless gold prospecting camp to annexation, show runner David Milch had ample fodder for exploring the nebulous and violent birth of communities during the era of Western Expansion. The critically acclaimed series had one fatal flaw – HBO abruptly canceled the show, leaving the story with no proper resolution.

The Red Dead Connection: You can see some minor influences from Deadwood in the early trailers, particularly where Arthur Morgan uses more flowery language as a weapon against a man who owes the gang money. The fight scene that spills into the muddy thoroughfare also calls to mind the epic fistfight between Al Swearengen’s righthand man and one of mining magnate George Hearst’s enforcers.

Django Unchained
Another in a long line of recent revisionist Westerns, Django Unchained is longtime Spaghetti Western aficionado Quentin Tarantino’s first work in the genre. Taking place a few years before the Civil War, Tarantino takes a comic book brush to the character canvas of his tale, delivering dastardly plantation owners, Stockholm syndrome slaves, and one of the most unlikely duos in film history. Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz pair perfectly as a revenge-fueled former slave and German dentist-turned-bounty hunter teaming up to hunt down a warrant. The film is indulgent and uncontained like many recent Tarantino flicks, but it’s an entertaining romp nonetheless.

The Red Dead Connection: Rockstar games also has a great appreciation for colorful characters, and we expect to run into more than a few in Red Dead Redemption II.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy are three of the most important works in Western film, essentially breathing life into a genre that had been left for dead by Hollywood. However, if you can only watch one of them, the third one is simply the one you must watch. Iconic from beginning to end, with rivalries, pursuits, treasure hunts, and showdowns galore, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is an easy contender for the most important Western ever made.

The Red Dead Connection: There’s just so much that Red Dead Redemption borrows from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly by the nature of it being a Western game in the first place. There’s even Clint Eastwood’s trademark poncho in the game as an unlockable outfit. Dead Eye showdowns are a direct descendent of the famous graveyard duel at the end of the movie. Huge battles and blowing bridges are also both in Leone’s film and Red Dead. More than anything perhaps it’s the sheer sense of scale that Red Dead successfully pulls off that does the most justice by the endearing legacy of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. And on that front, its sequel looks to do the same.

Godless
The most recent work on this list, this 2017 Netflix limited series earned widespread praise for its unique approach to the Western genre. After a tragic mining accident takes the lives of all the men in a remote town, it’s up to the women to put their settlement back together. Their rebuilding efforts are complicated when a local woman shelters a young outlaw Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) being tracked down by his former mentor Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels), a complex villain who one minute isn’t above killing women and children but the next moment tends to a wounded horse. Daniels steals nearly every scene he is in with a commanding performance, which earned the highly decorated actor his second Emmy. Merritt Weaver also took home an Emmy for her performance as the tough-as-nails town leader unafraid to stand up to the opportunistic men circling the camp like vultures.

The Red Dead Connection: Many of the Red Dead Redemption themes appear in this series, notably a protégé rising up against mentor, and a charismatic gang leader who makes convincing arguments for his villainy.

The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino’s second Western film, The Hateful Eight is built almost entirely on the famed director’s penchant for filming tense verbal standoffs. When two bounty hunters (Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell), a fugitive (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a newly minted sheriff (Walter Goggins), a Confederate general (Bruce Dern) and several other colorful characters seek shelter in a Wyoming inn from an unrelenting blizzard, the early salvo of verbal volleys between the parties eventually gives way to lead bullets. Legendary Spaghetti Western composter Ennio Morricone penned the original score.

The Red Dead Connection: The establishing shots of extreme weather in The Hateful Eight look to have served as inspiration for Red Dead Redemption II’s early sequence where the gang tries to lose the lawmen on their tail by taking refuge in the snowy mountains. Of course, a cabin stand-off leads to extreme violence as well.

Hell On Wheels
AMC’s drama about the construction of America’s first transcontinental railroad centers on the life of a former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) who is trying to reconcile his troubled past while charting a new future. In typical Western fashion, this path begins with a revenge quest. Across the five seasons, you can expect run-ins with prostitutes, outlaws, mercenaries, and other ne’er-do-wells. The show is currently available to stream on Netflix.

The Red Dead Connection: Cullen Bohannon, like John Marston, has a past he isn’t proud of and wants to rebuild his life. He’s also quite often running errands or completing tasks for men of power.

Jeremiah Johnson
Early in his career, Academy Award winning director Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa) teamed up with Robert Redford to make this critically acclaimed Western. Written by Edward Anhalt and John Milus (the writer of Homefront and inspiration for The Big Lebowski’s Walter Sobchak), Jeremiah Johnson follows a disaffected soldier who leaves civilization behind in favor of a spartan existence in the unrelenting wilderness. This adventure giveth and it taketh away in equal measures, as he marries a Native American woman, sets up an idyllic life among the pine trees, loses everything, and sets on a bloody quest of revenge.

The Red Dead Connection: A sharpshooting man who just wanted to get away from it all, Johnson shares a lot of similarities to John Marston. Like Marston, his retreat from civilization can’t outpace the unrelenting encroachment of Western expansion, and his violent tendencies are once again put to the test.

The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven is as good as its premise is simple: seven cowboys band together to defend a town from a gang of bandits. A remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven is a fantastic action-packed movie that does a great job of drawing out the personalities of its characters so they become likeable people rather than dull clichés. A star-studded cast featuring Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, and Charles Bronson make The Magnificent Seven’s performances just as enjoyable as the action. Just…don’t watch the remake.

The Red Dead Connection: Red Dead Redemption’s best massive shootouts, throwing the player against towns of foes, often felt like scenes ripped straight from The Magnificent Seven (not to mention the throwing knife weapon probably being inspired by this scene). We can’t wait to stage (and hopefully survive) our own last stands in Red Dead Redemption II.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller
McCabe & Mrs. Miller was famous director Robert Altman’s stab at doing a Western…and it is a trip of a movie. Eschewing the gung-ho antics of the classic Westerns, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is mostly a character study, focusing on the title characters’ efforts to build a successful brothel as well as their growing romantic attraction to one another. Altman’s Western is, well, still an Altman film, which means everything is doomed. The business, the romance, everything. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is notable for being an early fatalistic Western that threw the romantic notions of the genre wayside to focus on the suffering of two people caught in unsavory circumstances, finding a measure of peace in each other’s company before tragedy strikes.

The Red Dead Connection: Though it celebrates and captures the thrills that everyone connects to the Western – hunting outlaws, robbing banks, seeking revenge on horseback – Red Dead Redemption is a tragedy about trying to escape a looming, bleak fate. Everything Rockstar has shown of Dead Redemption II suggests the story is similarly tragic in tone, with the days of Dutch’s band of outlaws being outnumbered.

Once Upon A Time In The West
Lesser known and influential than The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West is a fittingly epic cap to his spaghetti Western filmography. A whopping 165 minutes, the movie uses its real estate well, spinning a fantastic revenge story (starring a younger Charles Bronson) and using it as the foundation to hold together a complex plot about ego, industry, and the dying Wild West. After watching the conclusion, a harmonica will never sound the same to you again.

The Red Dead Connection: Along with The Wild Bunch, Once Upon A Time In The West is one of the big Westerns about the end of the era, with modern industry and the government cracking down on outlaws. Both Red Dead Redemptions clearly make this a focal point of their stories.

The Proposition
Written by rock star Nick Cave (who also composed the score alongside fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis), The Proposition is set in the Australian outback of the 1880s but shares many themes with the traditional American western. When a gang of outlaws rape and murder a family, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) retaliates by killing most of the gang members. The two survivors are given a torturous proposition. If Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) doesn’t hunt down and kill his deplorable older brother (Danny Huston) then the police will hang his younger brother Mikey (Richard Wilson).

The Red Dead Connection: The Proposition director John Hillcoat has a direct connection to Red Dead Redemption – he directed a short film telling the story of John Marston entirely using in-game assets.

The Revenant
Alejandro Inarritu’s impeccable, bleak adaption of the Michael Punke novel of the same name became a hot water cooler topic for the brutal and graphic grizzly bear mauling suffered by scout Hugh Glass (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). The compelling narrative about a fur trading expedition gone wrong explores the emptiness of vengeance and is fueled by fantastic performances by DiCaprio and Tom Hardy. But the real star of the film is the picturesque cinematography. Using all-natural light, Emmanuel Lubezki perfectly captured the harsh, unrelenting conditions of winter in the wilderness. The Revenant earned Oscars for Innaritu, Lubezki, and DiCaprio.

The Red Dead Connection: A lot of the image lighting and composition from the first Red Dead Redemption II trailer looks like it was inspired by Lubezki’s remarkable work. We also know an early sequence of the game is set in the unrelenting winter.

Stagecoach
John Ford didn’t create the Western – he just elevated it to a cinematic artform. Long considered junk entertainment, Ford approached the genre in a novel way, focusing on character development and the spiritual struggles of people in the wilderness. Stagecoach, released all the way back in 1939, is probably the most significant work in his oeuvre and the early Westerns. If you’ve ever found yourself admiring the vistas of The Old West or thrilled by the sight of a cowboy riding into frame, a gun in their hand, you owe your appreciation to John Ford and Stagecoach.

The Red Dead Connection: Stagecoach’s use of landscape is still head and shoulders over most Westerns, with barren wastes and mountains presented as convincingly beautiful but dangerous places – especially in the film’s black and white. Red Dead’s landscape often achieves the same awe, especially as you ride into Mexico, with Jose Gonzalez’s “Far Away” trailing behind you.

There Will Be Blood
If you haven’t seen this Paul Thomas Anderson masterpiece already, you should just to witness acting legend Daniel Day Lewis’ finest performance as oil prospector Daniel Plainview. Hardly above a dastardly grift, Plainview uses his adopted son as a prop for sympathy as he swindles a community out of their oil-rich land. The film lacks the shootouts common to most Westerns, but the period piece is a poignant commentary on obsession, greed, and the destructive forces of capitalism.

The Red Dead Connection: Swindling, unrepentant capitalists are well-trodden fodder in Rockstar games, and we expect Red Dead Redemption II to be no different. We already know one of the trains the Van der Linde gang tries to rob is owned by an oil baron named Leviticus Cornwall, and the map has a region dominated by drilling rigs extracting black gold from the ground.

True Grit (2010)
The original True Grit was an enjoyable enough movie, but the Coen brothers’ remake trumps it and most modern Westerns by a large margin. Old U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) attempts to help orphan Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) track down the man who killed her father and bring him to justice. The Coen brothers’ directing, and the strength of the performances, makes True Grit a great action adventure in a beautifully shot version of the West with more than enough humor and shocking violence to arrest your attention.

The Red Dead Connection: One of the most interesting aspects of True Grit is its spiritual, mysterious undertones, with characters (both good and evil) receiving their comeuppance for violence regardless of the context. The melancholy ending with its spiritualism recalls Marston’s dealings with the stranger, a man who knows all of Marston’s crimes and virtues throughout his life. We’re curious to see what eerie, slightly supernatural elements (if any) return in Red Dead II.

Unforgiven
Maybe the most well-known post-modern deconstruction of The Wild West, Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece went topsy turvy with nearly every cliché and legend of the genre. “I’ve killed women and children. I’ve killed everything that walks or crawled at one time or another,” growls protagonist Will Munny. Unforgiven is void of heroics or honor. This is a movie about people giving into their worst selves, with much of the message skewering the honor supposedly attached to wonton violence. It’s a dark, biting film that’s still worth watching nearly 30 years after its release due to its complexity and message.

The Red Dead Connection: One of the things that makes Red Dead Redemption so special is that it aspires (and succeeds) to be more than just a wild ride through the West. At every turn, characters talk about fate, politics, man’s inhumanity to man, racism, and the righteousness of political violence (see the entirety of the Mexico chapter). With the grim tidings that Red Dead Redemption II has shown so far in our hands-on previews and the trailers, we expect Morgan will be having his fair share of these kinds of conversations as well.

The Wild Bunch
Sam Peckinpah’s epic Western was controversial when it came out in 1969, showering the usually bloodless genre in buckets of red while centering not on a group of heroes but bandits and outlaws as the era of the Wild West draws to a close. Still, Peckinpah’s opus has more going for it than just shock value. Years later, the surprisingly sympathetic portraits of ne’er-do-wells, with thieves struggling against their inner nature to preserve the bonds of brotherhood while pursued by the law, is the movie’s strongest quality…well, next to the infamous final shootout pitting the gang of outlaws against an entire army.

The Red Dead Connection: With its focus on outlaws and Gatling gun fights, The Wild Bunch was a huge influence on the original Red Dead Redemption. Red Dead Redemption II looks to pull even more from Peckinpah’s landmark film, exploring the connections between outlaws as they fend off the modern world and encroaching civilization.

For more on Red Dead Redemption II, check out our review of the game here.

The first trailer for the upcoming Detective Pikachu movie released today, and there is a lot to take in. The Pokémon are furrier and scalier, and there are lots of them. There are plenty you could miss from a casual viewing, which you can see below if you haven't already.

Pikachu is there, obviously, Mr. Mime, and Charizard are pretty front and center, but there are a bunch more milling about the background. Here are some that you might have missed.

In this scene you can see a Rufflet on the left as well as a Squirtle on the right. Pancham is also standing next to Justice Smith's character's feet, though he is there only for a moment.

Psyduck can be seen here standing with Kathryn Newton's character. If the trailer is any indication, it looks like Psyduck is with her the whole movie. There is also a giant Gengar balloon float behind them. There is also a Spoink on the dashboard of the car.  It's unclear if it's a real Spoink, or just a dashboard decoration.

You can't miss all the Bulbasaur running through the water, but there are also a few Morelull floating around, too.

Jigglypuff makes a brief, fuzzy appearance looking very upset. You can also see Machamp and Primeape on the poster on the left.

A whole crew of Greninja make a few appearances throughout the trailer.

It's not there in person, but a Pancham makes an appearance on a poster.

This is a very busy scene. You can see an Unown reference at the top of the image, a group of Emolga on the left, and on the right, I believe there is an Audino, but it's hard to tell.

There are a lot of references to unseen Pokémon in the bedroom of Justice Smith's character (we assume it's his bedroom, anyway). His posters call out Rayquaza, Dragonite, Hypno, Articuno, and Steelix, and another poster shows an image of Reshiram facing off against Zekrom. A few of those are legendary, which raises some interesting questions about the universe of this film.

And finally, there is a lot happening here, which is why it is in GIF form. You can see a Charmander walking up front, a Bouffalant (we think) and a Dodrio walking in the crowd, a Braviary on the right, and a very hard to see Venusaur on the left. You can also see a few Pidgeots (though they could be Pidgey or Pidgeotto) in the sky as well as a Comfey, some more Emolga, a few Flabébé, and references to Emolga, Turtwig, Wooper, and Victini in the signs on the buildings.

We are fairly certain we didn't see every Pokémon in the background so please, let us know who we missed in the comments below!

Before NHL 19 even came out in mid-September excitement was already high for the title. I played it at E3 in June and the new skating gameplay was positively striking.

In August developer EA Vancouver put out a public beta which reaffirmed what I had found out earlier: The game felt so much better – faster, more agile – than ever before. Players lost less speed coming out of turns and cuts, and seeing them doing crossovers and puck handles while in tight spots or screaming through the neutral zone was like a breath of fresh air.

But new tuners before the end of the beta and updates after launch (mandatory for online modes) robbed the game of some of its electricity according to some in the community. Fast forward to today, and some fans of the game (like this NHL subreddit) feel like EA Vancouver has nerfed their own game and wistfully long for the days of the beta.

Curious, I asked NHL 19 producer Ben Ross about the game's contentious journey from beta to release, what's been going on, and whether there are more changes ahead.

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu and Let's Go, Eevee hit this Friday, and we are technically allowed to post our review. However, the implementation of Pokémon Go wasn't available in time to test and assess, so we're holding off on our full review until we can spend time with that feature, but I can still share some impressions.

I'm happy to report that these are strong remakes of the first-generation Pokémon games; as someone who has traveled through Kanto in its entirety six times prior to playing Let's Go, sightseeing these cities in crisp, 3D visuals was a delight, and watching the battles play out with improved animations and visuals is great.

I love the way random Pokémon encounters have been done away with in favor of seeing them walking around on the map. I also like the encounters' simplified approach (which borrows from Pokémon Go), with the focus more on aim and which ball you use in the encounter. It makes the encounters go faster, and it keeps the pace up.

However, I don't like the way motion controls are used in these encounters. Flicking the Joy-Con or the Poké Ball Plus peripheral means inconsistent motion controls led to multiple errant throws, so I settled on handheld mode, where the motion controls are limited to using the gyroscope to aim the ball, then pressing a button to fire it. 

Outside of the annoying motion control implementation, I don't have many things to complain about with Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu & Eevee, but I'm eager to see how the Pokémon Go connectivity works out.

Samwise Didier was working in a movie theater when he answered an ad in a paper to make video games. The first two games Didier worked on at Blizzard (then Silicon & Synapse) were Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings for the SNES.

Didier's exaggerated physiques and vibrant color palette ultimately shaped the style of Warcraft III and eventually World of Warcraft. During our trip to Blizzard last month, the artist shared some background on this Warcraft III concept art, which was drawn by himself and Chris Metzen.

Before Warcraft III, Blizzard worked on a game called Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, an unreleased point-and-click adventure starring a young orc named Thrall who was on a quest to reunite his race after their defeat by the human Alliance. Even though the project was canned, Blizzard was able to repurpose many of these concepts for Warcraft III.

“I remember, we made a couple of trips to Russia to work with an animation house,” Didier says. “It was cool, but one of the reasons we pulled back on doing it was because I don’t think we really found the fun. At that time, other games were coming out that were already doing that and then some. By the time we would be set to come out, it would have just seemed dated.”

Early in development, Blizzard experimented wildly with Warcraft III. Some early designs involved having a dragon race that featured only a single unit. Before the game was even called Warcraft III, Blizzard even experimented with moving the camera closer to the ground – creating a third-person perspective behind the player’s heroes. “We wanted to sell the world a bit more,” says Didier. “We wanted to have more RPG elements. We wanted to make something showing off a 3D engine. But, like with new tech, people tend to go overboard on that, so we kept slowly nudging the camera back up.”

“The first thing everyone wanted to do was make Warcraft III more realistic,” says Didier. “So everything was smaller. Then we saw it in game, and we were like ‘Everything looks dumb.’ So we started making the colors simpler, decreasing the shading, adding flat colors. We scaled the characters back up and made them bigger and bulkier so they read from that top-down camera. That’s one of the reasons we started doing that style, because it read better, but also because everything felt huge. Everything felt heroic and mightier.”

Warcraft III was the first game where Blizzard experimented with 3D, which forced the team to change its approach to art. “We were used to texturing things a certain way,” says Didier. “In 3D, you weren’t able to touch up each individual pixel like you were before. You had to make it look good on the 3D model, so we had to keep simplifying our style.”

“One of the great things about Warcraft III is that this is where everything comes from,” says Didier. “Jaina was born in Warcraft III, and Arthas, Uther, and Illidan. All these characters. There weren’t even Night Elves or Taurens before Warcraft III. We brought every character and race that we had sort of roughly talked about in the other games and fleshed them out.”

Over the years, Blizzard has taken a lot of risks, but the company spends time itterating on those ideas and rarely settles for second best. Warcraft III was technically the thrid game in the series, but it was a pivitol entry for the franchise and for Blizzard. The upcoming Reforged remaster will give fans – both new and old – a chance to experience what made Warcraft III so special.

Click on our banner below to enter our constantly updating hub of exclusive features on Warcraft III: Reforged.

The PlayStation 4 got off to an early lead this generation, and a steady stream of exceptional first-party exclusives, complemented by robust third-party support, has kept it that way. Whether you just picked up a PS4 or have owned one since launch, we’re rounding up the best experiences you don’t want to miss in this continually updated feature.

Please note that while the list below contains 10 entries, we aren’t actually ranking them – if a game has made it this far (and managed to stay here), it’s a must-play, period. As such, we’ll be listing entries in reverse chronological order. Also, you’ll find a rundown of previous entries at the bottom of the list. While those titles have gotten bumped for bigger and better experiences, they are still all great games in their own right and worth exploring if you’re already caught up on the latest hits.

Here are Game Informer’s picks for the top 10 games on the PlayStation 4.

Red Dead Redemption II

Release: October 26, 2018

We’ve waited eight long years for another rodeo in Rockstar’s open-world western series, but the results were worth it. Simply put, Red Dead Redemption II delivers the most immersive and meticulously detailed world the video game industry has seen yet. While not technically a role-playing game, Red Dead Redemption II's level of freedom and player agency allows you to completely lose yourself in the life of a frontiersman, whether you spend your days robbing trains and stagecoaches, or hunting and fishing on the outskirts of society. Arthur Morgan, along with Red Dead’s vast array of supporting characters, is brought to life by stellar performances and the unprecedented interactivity you have with them – from greeting strangers in the road and goading poker players into fights, to bonding over a campfire with your fellow outlaws. It’s not hyperbole to say Red Dead Redemption II is a generation-defining game that you shouldn’t miss.   

Click here for our review.

Spider-Man

Release: September 7, 2018

Just months after Kratos axed his way to accolades, Sony had another exclusive hit on its hands. Spidey’s latest adventure sets a new high bar for open-world superheroes, thanks to a gorgeous recreation of NYC and fast and fluid combat. Insomniac did right by longtime comic book fans by including tons of nods to Spider-Man’s history, while also weaving its own compelling story and interesting takes on familiar characters. While some of the side activities became a bit repetitive, Spider-Man delivered dozens of hours of high-flying, web-slinging action that we won’t forget anytime soon.    

Click here for our review.

God of War

Release: April 20, 2018

The video game industry has come a long way since God of War’s deity-beheading, vase-bumping antics, but thankfully so has Kratos. Santa Monica Studio’s reinvention of the series makes daring changes to virtually every aspect of God of War, from the new camera perspective to the more deliberate and tactical combat. The biggest change, however, lies with Kratos himself and his new role as father and guardian to Atreus. The duo’s relationship casts God of War in a whole different light and allows Santa Monica Studio to weave a mature and thoughtful story that stands among the best this generation has to offer. Thanks to Kratos’ continued penchant for slaughtering any creature that stands in his way, the new God of War still offers plenty of excitement as well, along with the most visually arresting battles to date.

Click here for our review.

Monster Hunter: World

Release: January 26, 2018

Capcom’s monster-slaying sim has been a hit in Japan for over a decade, but it wasn’t until the series finally landed back on consoles this year that it achieved worldwide success. Chasing down and vanquishing towering beasts is the name of the game, but the frantic hack-and-slash action is augmented by over a dozen different weapon types that each takes hours to master. Once you settle on a fighting style, a deliciously deep crafting tree for upgrading weapons and armor provides countless more hours of enjoyment, along with a steady stream of timed events and crossovers from Capcom. Despite all this depth, Monster Hunter: World is also the most accessible entry for newcomers, so if you haven’t joined the hunt yet, now is the perfect time.

Click here for our review.

Persona 5

Release: April 4, 2017

JRPG fans had been pining for a follow-up to Persona 4 for 8 long years, but the wait was worth it. Not only does Persona 5 pack enough depth, strategy, and story to keep players busy for 100+ hours, the stylish presentation puts every other turn-based RPG to shame. Whether you’re acquiring and fusing new Personas, bonding with your fellow classmates, or just enjoying a night out in Tokyo, Persona 5 sucks you into its world and keeps you entertained for the long haul.

Click here for our review.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Release: February 28, 2017

Guerilla Games has been supplying Sony with solid shooters since the PS2 days, but the developer’s decision to ditch Killzone for an open-world robot apocalypse changed everything. Horizon Zero Dawn has proven to be one of the best new IPs of this generation, introducing players to an exciting fusion of futuristic technology and prehistoric warfare. The intense combat, intelligently designed robot enemies, and gorgeous open-world vistas are just a few of the reasons pick up Horizon, while the multilayered mysteries at the heart of Aloy’s journey make it hard to put down.

Click here for our review.

Overwatch

Release: May 24, 2016

Blizzard’s hero-based competitive shooter has been out for over two years now, and yet it remains one of the most frequently played games by the G.I. staff. Part of Overwatch’s longevity can be attributed to its pitch-perfect gunplay, deep roster of characters, and infinitely replayable Assault, Control, and Escort modes. However, what really keeps us coming back are all the improvements and additions Blizzard continues to offer, from countless balance tweaks to the host of new heroes and maps that have been added over the years, to the surprising and creative timed events.

Not everyone on staff loves Overwatch’s implementation of lootboxes, but that doesn’t stop us from jumping back into the grind every time new costumes are introduced, and the additional revenue stream has kept Overwatch’s cornucopia of content updates free for all users. As long as Blizzard keeps updating Overwatch, we’ll keep playing it, making it an easy recommendation for competitive shooter fans.

Click here for our review.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Release: May 10, 2016

Nathan Drake has served the PlayStation brand well over the years, and his final adventure proves to be his best. Not only does Uncharted 4 feature the biggest environments and most bombastic set-piece moments of the series, but it also offers the most mature and nuanced storytelling, delving into Nathan’s childhood and relationship with his estranged brother Sam. As riveting as Uncharted 4’s crumbling clocktower and motorcycle chase sequences are, the quiet character moments with Elena steal the show, and build to a touching finale worthy of one of Sony’s biggest franchises.

Click here for our review.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Release: May 19, 2015

The Witcher 3 still remains the shining example of what we hope is the future of open-world RPGs: a massive, fully realized world to explore, expertly crafted and multidimensional characters, and intriguing choices that ripple throughout the dozens and dozens of hours of gameplay. The hefty Blood and Wine expansion spoiled us with even more fantastic content, but even years after release we look back fondly on our adventures with Geralt. If you’re looking for the best the RPG genre has to offer, The Witcher 3 delivers.

Click here for our review.

Bloodborne

Release: March 23, 2015

Nowadays there’s no shortage of games inspired by From Software’s notoriously difficult Dark Souls series, but the developer’s own Sony-exclusive spinoff remains our favorite of the bunch. Bloodborne’s livelier action and Lovecraftian horror combine to create a captivating and dread-inducing world to explore. True to its roots, Bloodborne’s combat remains as unforgiving and supremely satisfying as ever, requiring you to master both the intricacies of your loadout and your enemies if you hope to survive. Bloodborne’s high degree of difficulty may not be for everyone, but if you are ready to “git gud,” this is the place to start.

Click here for our review.

The games bumped off of the list in recent updates are: Grand Theft Auto V, Diablo III, Dishonored 2, The Last of Us Remastered, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Destiny, Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Witness, Fallout 4, Axiom Verge, Batman: Arkham Knight, and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. They’re all still great games, so give them a try, too!

You stand at the threshold. The great metal door shrieks inward under the weight of all that steel and lead before finally shuddering open and rolling to the side. Beacons flash and sirens wail, warning you of the fateful decision you’re about to make. After a lifetime of safety and security in your vast underground home, you’re being forced to leave, and now you’re at the brink. There’ll be no turning back once you’ve made your decision. Sucking in your breath, you summon all your courage and cross the threshold. When you emerge into the sunlight, you see for the first time, what has become of your world after the gleaming Atomic Age ended in nuclear fire.

Since its beginning, the Fallout franchise has been marked by these such occasions. A hero must leave the safety of his or her home and brave the dangers of a vast, unknown world. And with Fallout 76, Bethesda’s latest venture, the developers likewise are striking out into uncharted territory. But Fallout has never been static. Over the decades, as technology and graphics have improved, the game has changed and evolved to fit the times, but through it all, its spirit has remained intact. To truly understand this, however, first we must step out into the Wasteland.

The Dawn of a Nuclear Age

In 1988, Brian Fargo of Interplay Productions introduced the world to Wasteland, a gritty CRPG that swapped the enchanted forests popular for the day’s high-fantasy RPGs for the devastated ruins of a post-apocalyptic Arizona desert. The game followed a foursome of desert rangers, as they killed children, and blew up mutants like blood sausages, but it was innovative for another reason. Wasteland was one of the first games to let you leave a lasting impact on a persistent open world. The story was colorful with its narrative of four desert rangers stopping a deranged army general and lunatic artificial intelligence. And the humor was jet-black. With the freedom to explore, and practically every obstacle accommodating multiple playstyles, the game was, and still is, recognized as one of the greatest RPGs of all time. But when it came time for a sequel, Interplay no longer held the trademark. So, instead the team took the core pillars of Wasteland and created a new a post-apocalyptic universe that like nuclear fallout would have far more lasting power than its initial inspiration.

Fallout

When Fallout launched in 1997 it took what made Wasteland memorable, and with 10 years of graphical improvements, breathed new life into the wastes. Replacing the text-based descriptions of combat, players were now treated to gristly kill animations whenever they blasted a mutant to pulp. Fully voice-acted characters mystified and repulsed players with memorable performances like that of the many voiced, Cronenbergian Master. And whether you played as a hero or villain, the game actually reflected your good (or bad) deeds with alternate endings.

But Fallout also stood apart from Wasteland with a unique retro-futuristic aesthetic and its dark, satire of post-war American culture. Set in an alternate timeline from our own, the wasteland of Fallout’s southern California is drenched in the 1950s Atomic Age aesthetic. In the game’s opening seconds, the series mascot, Vault-Boy, smiles and waves neighborly in a commercial for space in an underground nuclear fallout shelter; the ‘40s tune “Maybe” by The Ink Spots takes on a wholly sinister character against the backdrop of crumbling skyscrapers; and weapons like the plasma rifle vaporize mutants like something out of a ‘50s-era sci-fi flick.

Apart from its look, Fallout also fleshed out much of the franchise’s universe, giving us the technology-obsessed Brotherhood of Steel, the lumbering super mutant, and Ron Perlman’s “War never changes.” It sprinkled its world with a healthy dose of pop-culture references and with its standard-bearer S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, players had an entire spectrum of playstyles at their fingertips. With this formula, Fallout set the tone for the franchise, and produced the rich lore that all other Fallout games would mutate from.

Fallout 2

Exactly one year after Fallout’s release, Fallout 2 gave fans a wasteland twice as big to explore, a story that continued after the first, and, well, more of the same. Following the descendant of the first game’s protagonist, players once again blasted or charmed their way through the wasteland, only this time, instead of mutants, they ran afoul of the Enclave – the insidious and heavily armed remnants of the U.S. government. The game gave players more shades of gray and more hilarious dialogue options (including one memorable prank call with an Enclave officer) but apart from the new story, the game didn’t really change that much from the first. After Fallout 2, the series would actually go dormant for a time. Minus a few bizarre spinoffs (see sidebar), fans would have to wait another 10 years before their beloved series reemerged like a new hero rising from a new vault.    

Emerging into the Sunlight

In 2004, Fallout changed hands from Interplay to Bethesda Softworks, and with it the series made the great leap from isometric turn-based RPG to 3D open-world RPG. While some fans were afraid of an “Elder Scrolls with guns,” many were excited by the announcement. Brian Fargo of Wasteland fame felt they were well-suited telling us in 2007, “There are not that many companies that could take that legacy and run with it. I think they’re a great fit.”

When Fallout 3 launched in 2008, fans collectively held their breath as they emerged from the vault to witness all the blasted heath and rubble-strewn devastation of a 3D Fallout game. For the first time in the Fallout series, players could go anywhere without the restrictions of a turn-based system. Players could waltz through the mutant-infested National Mall in Washington D.C., look up at the towering Washington monument, then whip out their fatman portable nuclear bomb launcher and wipe out whole gangs of mutants in real time. V.A.T.S. allowed players to freeze time and target an enemy’s individuals body parts just like in the originals. And modding empowered fans to go in and reshape the wasteland in any way they saw fit, ensuring that the game would far outlast its initial release.

Besides the fact that it was now in 3D and in the hands of a new developer, classic Fallout was back. Though the game ended the series’ child-killing days, it didn’t matter because there was still a vast, irradiated wasteland to explore brimming with quests, gallows humor and moral conundrums. Fallout 3 even managed to do what the first games couldn’t – secure the license for The Ink Spots’ “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire,” coloring the world in that dark ‘50s aesthetic as players explored the decaying ruins and blasted outskirts of the Capitol Wasteland. Despite an outspoken minority who decried some of Bethesda’s changes, Fallout 3 proved that the Fallout universe could not only survive but thrive in the modern console era. For every cynic the game produced, a new fan discovered the bliss that was the game’s deep character-building and sprawling, open wasteland. For bringing Fallout to the next generation, Fallout 3 won multiple game of the year awards, and guaranteed many more 3D Bethesda-made Fallout games to come.

Fallout: New Vegas

Surprisingly, though, for its next title Bethesda did the unexpected, and handed the reins over to grizzled Fallout veterans, Obsidian Entertainment for Fallout: New Vegas, a game promising all the new hardware of a Bethesda game, but with the spirit of a classic Fallout:

“For Bethesda’s games, dialogue is important,” CEO Feargus Urquhart told us back in 2010. “For our games it’s been vital. We put more energy into it automatically because it’s kind of the thing that we do, whereas they put more energy into other things.”

Returning Fallout to the West Coast, New Vegas resurrected some of the hardcore RPG elements that were missing from Fallout 3. Bringing back richer, more-branching dialogue trees that revolved around your skills, colorful new factions, and a reputation system. New Vegas was more accommodating to old school fans, and introduced new players to the original Fallout formula. With its sun-drenched, new setting in the Mojave Wasteland and highly replayable gameplay loop, New Vegas gave players hundreds of reasons to replay the game, and above all reminded many that it wasn’t just gory combat or graphics that made Fallout worth playing. Unfortunately, much of this progress would be reversed when Bethesda resumed development for the next Fallout and took the series in a new direction.

More Mutations  

With the success of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, fans were burning for their next post-apocalyptic fix, so when Fallout 4 finally dropped in 2015, it dropped like an atomic bomb. Selling over 12 million units at launch, Fallout 4 marked the series’ entrance into the current generation of consoles and offered much improved gunplay, base-building, and deeper crafting. With these new elements, the game made the series more accessible than ever, and brought a wider audience to the wasteland. But at the price of diluting its RPG elements, Bethesda also turned off some of its core fans.

With games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt releasing that year, Fallout 4 didn’t look like the next-gen sequel fans had been waiting for and with its last-gen engine, the game also didn’t seem to innovate much from Fallout 3. Dividing players even further was the fact that for the first time in a Fallout game, players took control of a fully voiced protagonist. And even more disconcerting, Fallout 4 did a complete 180 after New Vegas and reduced one of the series’ most memorable elements – its dialogue – to a four-button prompt. Despite its commercial success, more than ever, fans were starting to worry that Bethesda was mutating their beloved franchise into a different beast entirely with a focus on combat and not roleplaying.

Fallout 76

Fans were already skeptical about where the franchise was going, so it didn’t help when at this year’s E3, director Todd Howard announced that Fallout would be entering the online multiplayer space with Fallout 76.

“Like many of you, we have always wanted to see what our style of game could be with multiplayer.” Howard said from atop this year’s E3 stage, “so about four years ago we hit upon an idea that’s perfect for Fallout. Open-world survival. Every person and character is real.”

Dropping players in an irradiated West Virginia four times as large as Fallout 4’s Commonwealth, for the first time ever players can explore the wasteland with friends. But in this new landscape, dialogue is dashed and exploration, combat, and looting are paramount. Monsters based on West Virginian folklore may roam the irradiated hills, but when compared to Fallout of yore, some fans have said the new Appalachia feels empty. Sure, the title has stimpaked in new content like the ability to launch a nuclear bomb at an area of the map, but much of what makes a Fallout game unique has been sacrificed for multiplayer, and this fact has not been lost on the Fallout faithful. Regardless, fans have been asking for a multiplayer Fallout for years, and with all the other single-player titles embracing multiplayer like Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto Online and Bioware’s upcoming Anthem, now is the ideal time for Fallout to test the waters.

The Future

As of today, Fallout 76’s “Break-It Early Test Application” has come and gone, and its launch is here. As is expected of Bethesda titles these days, the game had a few nasty bugs, but such is the point of a beta, and Bethesda has been very upfront about that. With Fallout 76, the series is changing, but over the years, Fallout has developed many new mutations in order to keep its core DNA alive. In many ways the game is a survivor, no different from the hardy beasts that roam its radioactive worlds.  Whether Bethesda’s step into the multiplayer space is a step in the right direction remains to be seen, but if history is any indicator, the spirit of the series will survive any type of fallout.

We may still have a while to wait for an all-new Pokémon game to hit Switch, but in the meantime, you can revisit the early days of the series with Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu and Let's Go, Eevee. These games are remakes of the first generation of Pokémon (specifically Yellow), but make several modernizations and take a few liberties.

Join us as we explain how Pokémon Go integration works in these games and take a stroll through Go Park, Pallet Town, and Viridian City. We also show off the drop-in co-op play in a battle against an Elite Four member. The episode culminates with a climactic (?) showdown with an overpowered Mewtwo.

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu and Let's Go, Eevee is out now for Switch. You can check out our review here.

Fallout 76 is out now, and Game Informer's review is coming along...slowly. Bethesda Game Studios has crafted a massive open-world experience, and we want to subject ourselves to as much of it as we can before offering a verdict. My time with the game has bounced chaotically between good and bad, delivering enjoyable exploration that is eventually crushed by glitches, bugs, and puzzling balancing issues.

In the video below, Leo Vader joins me for a brief tour into the wasteland. My character is mid-level and I'm exploring the eastern region of the world. In our previous three-hour video, we showed off cooperative play extensively. I wanted to show off a little of the single-player experience, and what questing on your own can be like. Spoiler: It's a lot like Fallout 4.

If there's anything else you'd like to see, let us know in the comments section below. My play session is occurring around the clock, and I may be able to accommodate your requests.

Red Dead Redemption II has a lot going for it: beautiful story, brutal and gripping combat, fascinating realistic mechanics. Oh, and a bunch of cheat codes. You remember those right? It was before the days of being charged money for "EXP boosts" in games. Anyway, Red Dead Redemption II has a lot of them! Some of them still haven't been unlocked, but here's all of them for now and how you input them.

How To Input Codes

To input cheats, do the following:

Go to settings. Look in the bottom right corner. You'll see the button you need to press to access the cheats menu (Triangle or Y depending on your platform). Press it. You'll come to a screen filled with locked codes. You need to input certain phrases to unlock them. Keep in mind, after you use a cheat, saving becomes disabled as do achievements/trophies.

The Cheats

Here are the phrases you need to enter and their corresponding cheats.

1. Become instantly drunk: "A fool on command"
2. Increase wanted level: "You want punishment"
3. Decrease wanted level: "You want freedom"
4. Own all outfits: "Vanity. All is vanity"
5. Create a wagon: "Keep your dreams simple"
6. Low honor: "You revel in your disgrace, I see" (Complete Chapter 1)
7. Reset your honor: "Balance. All is balance"
8. Max honor: "Virtue unearned is not virtue" (You need to complete Banking, The Old American Art)
9. Get stealthy weapons: "Death is silence"
10. Dead Eye Level 2 : "Make me better"
11. Dead Eye Level 3: "I shall be better"
12. Dead Eye Level 4: "I still seek more"
13. Dead Eye Level 5: "I seek and I find"
14. Increase horse whistle range: "Better than my dog"
15. Obtain standard weapons: "A simple life, a beautiful death"
16. Create a horse race: "Run!Run!Run!"
17. Increase horse bond: "My kingdom is a horse"
18. Health + Stamina + Dead Eye are full: "You flourish before you die"
19. Health+ Stamina+ Dead Eye are fortified: "You seek more than the world offers" (You need to own New Hanover Gazette No.36)
20. Infinite Ammo: "Abundance is desire" (You need to own New Hanover Gazette No. 27)
21. Heavy Ammo: "Greed is American Virtue" (You need to own Saint Denis Times No. 46)
22. Get $500: "Greed is now a virtue"
23. Learn all recipes: "Eat of knowledge"
24. Infinite stamina: "The lucky be strong evermore" (You need to own Blackwater Ledger No.68)

When further codes are discovered, we'll update our list.

For more on Red Dead Redemption II, check out our glowing review.

It's no secret that we at G.I. are huge fans of skateboarding video games, even going so far as to play goo-goo baby crayon games in order to get our halfpipe-hugging fix. Luckily, we've got just the video series to help us through these dark, skateboard-averse times. This week on Replay, Reiner, Suriel, Leo, and I take a look at one of the less-classic entries in the classic Tony Hawk series – and it doesn't take long for things to go...off the rails. Get it? Rails are a skateboarding thing. Oh, nevermind. 

Watch us as we skate our way through New Jersey and New York, helping random citizens and ruining the lives of innocent nut vendors – hey, a skater's life is complicated. We also may or may not discuss the reprehensible lack of modern skateboarding games on the market – you'll just have to tune in to see if that's a real talking point or not!

In 1999, an ambitious crossover game allowed players to experience the video game fights of their dreams. Who would win in an actual fight between Mario and Donkey Kong? Could Samus overtake her fellow space traveler Fox McCloud? What if in his travels, Link encounters Pikachu? These questions may or may not have entered your consciousness before Super Smash Bros. launched on Nintendo 64, but the idea of video game characters leaving their respective games to meet on a battlefield ignited players’ imaginations. Soon, players were fantasizing about what other characters could make their way into a sequel.

Read more...

One of the last big releases of 2018 is sneaking up on us with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. This mega crossover has steadily added new modes and characters since its full reveal at E3 this year, and we finally got the chance to check it all out.

Join us as we sample the new modes including Spirit Board, Adventure mode, and Classic mode (including a boss battle with Monster Hunter's Rathalos).

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is available for Switch on December 7.

Maybe it's just the megaphone effect of social media and various forums, but it seems like fans are angrier than ever about this year's crop of sports games. Are the titles that bad, has the frustration boiled over from previous years, or is something else entirely going on?

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launches in just over two weeks. As the release of the biggest entry to date looms, we had a chance to ask series co-creator and director Masahiro Sakurai about the creation of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and how he views the franchise nearly two decades after the first game launched on Nintendo 64.

For our recent hands-on impressions of every new character and mode in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, head here.

Game Informer: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate includes substantially more fighters and stages than any other game in the series. Why did you decide to include so much content in this game in particular?

Masahiro Sakurai: This time, I worked with the same company and same team that worked on Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS titles. And in those titles, we were able to include quite a few fighters. So I thought, if we work a bit harder, we can make the dream of including all fighters come true, so we went for it.

There will be people who might feel disappointed if fighters that appeared in a previous title are not included. I didn’t want any players to feel that way, so we worked really hard to make this happen.

But what I learned is that regardless of doing our utmost, no matter how hard we try, and no matter how many fighters we include, there will always be people who feel that way.

Because this entry delivers so much history in one title, does it carry special significance for you and your team?

For myself, Smash is always special, and I always put my all into it. So the series is definitely special to me, but it’s not that this specific title is more special than the rest.

While every character in Super Smash Bros. history is in this game, several new characters have also been added. What is the process of deciding new characters to add to the roster?

It is a project after all, so we take into consideration things like labor, man-hours, the time in which the title will be sold. We decide on the fighters from the very early planning stage, and from there, we calculate and begin production. We don’t add or remove any characters during the project.

We do things like base our consideration on the results of the Smash ballot, and also balance things out so that there’s a difference in the types of fighters.

By the way, as for Incineroar, during our planning stage we knew that a new Pokémon game was coming, so we intentionally kept one spot open for that, and we decided which character to create once we received more info on the title.

What special development methods or tricks have you learned from creating earlier Super Smash Bros. games that have aided you in the development of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?

Everything is connected, and so I definitely leverage all the know-how from past development. By developing the game with the same company this time, we did not need to start from scratch, which was good.

This is something that is commonplace for other makers, but Melee was with HAL Laboratories, Brawl was with a freelance team, and Wii U & 3DS were with Bandai Namco Studios, so we had to build everything from scratch, like the development environment and the staff.

Director Masahiro Sakurai

The Super Smash Bros. series is renowned for its attention to detail. How do you ensure you pay such great attention to detail for so many characters and stages?

You might not expect it, but just reproducing the original work does not come out like it should. By emphasizing exaggerations, we are able to create elements in a way where having something realistic and comical does not look awkward.

And being knowledgeable to an extent about each character is a must. There are also times where the staff go deep into the original work, and add even better elements.

The character reveal trailers have all been so creative, were you as involved in the storyboarding of these trailers as you were for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS?

I create all the plot, including that of “World of Light.” I make dense adjustment requests to the CG staff, and I also review things like the audio. I of course take a look at the gameplay portions as well.

Thinking in terms of game development, I should probably entrust this all to someone, but I haven’t really found that someone yet…

Have you enjoyed the fan reception to each new piece of information released for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?

I did plan to create something satisfying for fans, but actual user reactions were a lot more than what I initially expected. Smash Bros. itself is like a big crossover festival, but I’m speechless to see this game being accepted by the fans so much.

The Super Smash Bros. series has always spawned much fan speculation for characters that will be included, but with Piranha Plant, you have given players one of the most unpredictable inclusions. How does it feel to be able to still surprise fans even so many years later? What that one of the intents of the inclusion of this character?

I’m actually not paying too much focus on the surprise element when we introduce a new fighter. The surprise element quickly fades once the announcement has been made.

Rather, I believe it’s important to have a good balance as a game. In the past titles in the series, Mr. Game & Watch, R.O.B. and Duck Hunt Dog were some of the examples we offered outside of people’s typical expectations. However, if we don’t have these types of fighters, and we only had typical “hero/heroine” type fighters in the lineup, there’s not much difference. It’s probably not very interesting. Correct? 

Also, unlike some main characters from some (not widely known) franchises, Piranha Plant is a character everyone knows well. And, I want to make sure to remind everyone that it is a limited-time offer fighter everyone can get for free as an early-purchase bonus.

What was the initial idea behind Spirits and why did you decide to implement them the way that you did?

We wanted to provide a solid single-player experience, but at the same time, we didn’t have enough development resources especially for creating character models. That’s where the idea came from. We needed to come up with a system that is fun and not a repetitive experience even when you battle against [computer players] repeatedly.

Cons for this system are:

• Because there are so many fighters, we can’t tell stories for each individual fighter in detail.
• We can’t support creating exclusive stages/terrains (i.e. side-scroll action game terrain, etc.) for it.
• We can’t add new rules, etc.

On the other hand, pros are:

• We can utilize a variety of characters (But not featuring figures anymore)
• We have a large pool of music, stages and fighters.

With all that in mind as a whole, we concluded that we should create something themed after this large library of characters outside of fighters, and let players enjoy simulating fights using them. Everything else expanded from that base idea.  

You’ve been creating Super Smash Bros. titles for two decades now. As the release of Ultimate looms, how do you look back at your time with the series to this point? Do you have any highlights or favorite memories?

You may not sense that, but it is actually a miracle every time we’re able to create a Smash Bros. game. It’s a bit different from any other game series that regularly comes out with new installments. Unless we get approval from all of the I.P. holders who are involved in this game, we can’t make this game. And every time, we are walking a fine line. 

Especially after I left HAL Laboratories, normally, games continued to be developed by the remaining company. But instead, Mr. Iwata created a development team centered on the director who became freelance. That was his call.

Without that decision, I can easily imagine that we could not release this Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the best possible shape at this point.

Click to see full resolution

In Western markets, the game is called Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which carries two potential meanings. On one hand, “Ultimate” can mean “the best version of something,” which could apply to the idea that everything is in this game. However, “Ultimate” can also mean “final” or “end of a process.” Do you think this game is the end of a chapter in any regard?

With the background I just explained here, every time I work on this game, I’ve devoted myself to making it under the assumption, “this is the last one.” That said, I have no idea what future holds, so I can’t deny that there’s no next one either.

If someone told you in 1998 that your creation for Nintendo 64 would one day grow into something as ambitious and massive as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 20 years later, what would have gone through your mind then?

I would have probably said, “You must be kidding!” But at the same time, I probably was thinking in back of my mind, “that’s not entirely impossible…”  Games were quickly evolving, and even back then, I did believe everything was possible in the future for sure.

For more on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, head here.

Battlefield games have always been about teamwork, and that isn’t changing in the series’ return to World War II. It hardly matters how good your kill-death ration is; lone wolfing or selfishly sniping by yourself in Battlefield V isn’t helping your team’s cause as much as you think it is. Whether you want to win lightning rounds of Team Deathmatch or the long-form engagements of Grand Operations, your team needs to work together to hold important control points and advance the attack. Here are some tips to help your war cause. 

Use Squad Commands

Some players in squads disregard their teammates and simply use them as spawn points to get into the action more quickly. Don’t be that person. A good squad is one with a common objective. If you’re playing as the squad leader, be sure to highlight the next objective you want your squad to attack or defend using the right bumper when looking at the control point. When your team plays the f-ing objective you highlighted, you earn a LOT more experience points, so ignoring them not only hurts your team, but your bottom line as well. If you’re in a squad and your leader isn’t issuing commands, use the commo rose to request one. If your calls go ignored for a period of time, the game will automatically promote you to squad leader so you can make the directives.

Don’t Forget Squad Reinforcements

Every point your team earns applies to the squad reinforcement system, but the game doesn’t do a good job of explaining how squad leaders access these rewards. When you’re safe behind cover, simultaneously press LB and RB to access this menu. Here, you’ll see four rewards to choose from, the availability of which depends on your point balance. The cheapest option – resupply – is a great option for calling in resources behind enemy lines. Spending points on one of the two vehicles allows you or your team members to spawn into it from the redeployment screen after their next death. And the V1 rocket? So worth it. We’ve seen well-placed rockets generate upwards of 5,000 points. 

Spam Supplies To Teammates

The medic and support classes both possess valuable resources in the form of ammo and med packs. In my experience, dropping down crates was less useful than spamming packs to nearby teammates in need of supplies. You can rack up a ton of points this way. 

Always Be Fortifying

It’s easy to ignore Battlefield V’s new fortifications system; if you never press down on the D-pad to pull out your building hammer, you’ll never notice all the places you can improve defenses around a contested control point. This is a grievous error. When the destruction begins and your strong defensive positions are compromised, fortifications may be all you have to withstand a focused enemy advance. 

If you spawn into a base that you know could eventually become a hot zone, like the main hangar in Aerodrome, I recommend taking a minute and building up some defenses. It’s an easy way to rack up some points, and your teammates will be thankful when they need to retreat into a well-fortified position. Any class can contribute to building, but the support role can build faster and has access to more formidable defenses like gun emplacements. 

Calling For A Revive Is Worth It

In previous Battlefield games, waiting for a revive felt like it doubled your spawn time if no one came and you had to wait again in the redeployment screen. Battlefield V is much less punishing, which makes calling for a revive when soldiers are nearby worth it. If the soldiers around you are jerks and ignore your desperate pleas for help, don’t fret. Your respawn time on the redeployment screen is almost nil, and you’ll be back in the trenches in no time. 

Anyone Can Revive, So Just Do It

Just because you’re not playing the medic class doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for helping up a fallen comrade. Don’t be foolish about it – it’s your teammate's own damn fault if he ran haphazardly into an open space with no cover and got himself killed. But if a downed soldier is in a spot where you can revive him without risking your own life, do it. Revives are often the determining factor in overcoming a staunchly defended area. 

Hemmed In By Snipers? Pop Smokes!

Those snipers are so goddamn annoying, aren’t they? If your team is having trouble making headway toward a hotly contested control point, equip some smoke grenades and start tossing. They can give your team the cover they need to cross that death valley and hug up against cover well in advance of the previous stalemate position. Smoke grenades are also valuable for providing cover when several teammates are downed out in the open.

Enemy Tank Approaching? Turn Your Focus There

The assault class is the role best equipped for dealing with menacing tanks, and if you want any chance of winning, it’s in your best interest to make short work of these metal killing machines. I always get into the habit of dropping anti-tank mines on the road leading up to control points. A lot of time, tank drivers are wholly focused on looking for people to shoot, so these undetected mines are a great way to get free points. If they cruise past this defense, get out your panzer and make short work of them. 

Playing As The Recon Class? Spot! 

One of the biggest changes Battlefield V to the class balance is removing the ability for everyone to spam spotting and mark every enemy. While every class can make an indicator that points to a general region where enemies are holed up, only the recon class can 3D spot and mark individual targets. Put this ability to good use between rifle rounds and your teammates will be thankful.

Stick With One Gun A While

Each weapon in Battlefield V has its own tendencies, and with the removal of random bullet deviation, you can truly master the way a gun fires. This makes it valuable to take the time to learn the nuances of a particular weapon rather than continually swapping. Doing so also unlocks several special assignments that lead to new weapon skins and spendable company coins. 

Pick And Equip Your Favorite Scope

One nice quality-of-life change is you don’t have to be stuck with ironsights before unlocking a new scope; several are available for each weapon right off the bat. When you are equipping a new weapon, don’t forget to customize it and select your favorite scope style. 

Check The Redeployment Screen For Vehicles

It’s easy to get into the habit of immediately spawning on a teammate in Battlefield V, but it’s worth it to check back at the redeployment screen every once and a while to see if there is an unused tank waiting to turn the odds in your favor. Whenever these become available, they should immediately be put to good use. You rack up more damage for rockets placed into the back and side of the tank than you do the front, so aim accordingly. 

Keep Assignment Slots Full

Every player can have four active special assignments at one time in addition to the rotating schedule of daily assignments. Don’t miss out on this free XP, keep these slots full. The more you play with a particular class or weapon,  the more special assignments become available for you to activate. 

Tinker With Specializations

Everyone has different tendencies when playing Battlefield, and weapon specializations are a way for you to tailor each weapon to your liking. Maybe you would prefer a faster aiming time, increased range, less bullet spread, or less recoil? The specializations are where you can pick and match between these valuable upgrades. Make a choice you regret? You can always respec any weapon in the game.  

Customize Both Axis And Allied Soldiers

Battlefield V’s new Company hub is a one-stop shop for outfitting your soldiers in various classes. But the changes you make to your appearance, weapons, and gadget loadout don’t apply across all the armies. Don’t forget to customize your Axis soldiers as well as your Allied ones.

Do you have other tips for success in Battlefield V? Share them in the comments section below. 

Red Dead Redemption II is one of the best games we've played all year. Outside of its lengthy, moving story campaign, there's a huge amount of things you can do. We decided to put together a list of 101 such activities, distractions, and things worth investigating for those of you who have beaten the game or simply want a break from the massive story campaign.

The majority of these entries are spoiler-free. The ones that aren't are herded at the very bottom in a single section and have a spoiler warning in bold right before you hit them. With that in mind, happy trails, friends.

1. Get a haircut: Arthur’s hair sure is shaggy. Why not stop in Valentine and give him a trim. If you’re feeling fancy, maybe apply some pomade or give our hero a handlebar mustache? He can pull it off. Probably.

2. Become a master chef: Sure you can hunt down deer, wolves, birds, and other animals for their meat but why stop at some plain steak? Gathering herbs from the world will allow you to spice up those meals and even give you stat boosts. Become the Gordon Ramsay of the West.

3. Be a Bully, Part The First: Try antagonizing everyone in the camp. You might get some surprising results when you push someone’s buttons too much.

4.  Stick up a stagecoach: See that stagecoach on the road there? Why not ride over and aim your shotgun at the driver’s face and let him know that this is a robbery! If he’s wise, he’ll give you everything in his pockets. If not, well, his mistake to make!

5.  Steal a stagecoach: Ok, let’s say the aforementioned robbery doesn’t go well. You’ve hidden the bodies in the reeds like a smart murderer. Why leave the stagecoach there, ownerless and road garbage? After you progress a little of the way through the story, there’s a fence at Emerald Ranch that will buy coaches off you for easy money.

6.  Royal Flush, baby: Why not try your hand at some poker in one of the saloons and impress your opponents with your mad skills. Granted, if you suck, you can always just stand up, shoot the winner in the face, and take back your money! Everybody wins! Well, actually, just you. You’re the one doing the winning. Nobody else.

7.  Gimme the loot: Like the original Red Dead Redemption, there are treasure maps to find and buy that can lead you to some goodies. There’s gold in them hills, so get to it, partner.

8. Fend off a robbery: One of the random events in the world involves you getting robbed on the road by one of the gangs that runs around. You can let yourself be robbed, if you’re in a pacifistic mood, or you can show them why you’re the fastest draw in the West.

9. I call it Vera: Being a Western, you bet your horse there’s a bunch of guns for you to add to your arsenal. However, you can also visit the local gunsmith to customize every weapon, down to what color the metal is and what you want engraved in the stock. Why not make that revolver real special by making the handle nickel-plated?

10. Be a real dastard: Did you know you can lasso people and then hogtie them? Why not leave at least one of those foolish bandits standing after a battle, hogtie him, put him on some tracks and wait for the train to come while you twirl your mustache all evil-like?

11. All the scorched horses: Head over to that one place near Saint Denis where horses are literally becoming immolated. No, really.

12. Take a bath: Being an outlaw is hard, dirty work. Literally. Get knocked down in a fist fight during a thunder storm and you’ll probably find yourself covered head to toe in mud. Townspeople will even comment on your smell if you let it stick to you, the jerks. No biggie. Just find a hotel. Most of them offer baths where you can rub the stink off you.

13. Seaman: Fishing in Red Dead Redemption 2, like most of its systems, is surprisingly complex and deep with different baits working for different fish throughout the world. But you’re already a master horse breaker and deadly gunman, one in dire need of a hobby. Why not relax from all the murder and mayhem by becoming an immaculate fisherman?

14. Slow ride, take it easy: Saint Denis is a haven of technology innovation at the turn of the century. One of those miraculous devices is a trolley, making public transportation a breeze. Let your poor horse rest a bit and take a ride around town to soak up the Frenchiness of the city.

15. Into the wild: Sometimes you just need some space, away from the loud, obnoxious folks at the Van der Linde camp. Luckily, there are deserted mountains to the north. Bundle up and take off, exploring the frozen woods by day and pitching a campfire at night to cook any game you’ve caught.

16. House call: There are various homes throughout the world (look for smoke rising from chimneys) that you can enter while their residents are sleeping and burgle their cabinets for pocket watches, gold, and anything else you can find to sell to a fence. Just make sure to be quiet or your sneaky home invasion might suddenly turn into an unexpected murder.

17. The weirdo trade: Algernon Wasp is located in Saint Denis and tasks you with tracking certain feathers and orchids. That might sound like a dull task but you get something really cool for completing it, so indulge this wacko.

18. Jet Set Radio Past: There’s some curious graffiti on the walls of Saint Denis buildings. The first one is near the trapper in the market. Keep looking around the city for two more of them and the map will spawn a mysterious new X somewhere in Saint Denis. Go there and get ready for something special.

19. You’ve got to love yourself a fire: There are bandit camps throughout the world that spawn independently near you from time to time. You’ll know they’re bandits as you creep up on them because of conversational clues. You’ll often want to invade these camps for the goods they contain but instead of wasting bullets and putting yourself in danger, why not lob a fire bomb dead center in the middle of the place and watch the fireworks.

20. Smoke signals: One of the easiest ways to spot areas worth exploring is smoke rising in the sky. If you’re galloping across the plains and see a pillar of smoke, that means that something—a camp, an event, a group of idiots that need to be shot, a sidequest—is nearby for you to investigate.

21. I am a scientist: You don’t have to hunt animals if you don’t want to (outside of one mission). It’s a pricier choice, with you having to often buy food from stores, but it’s doable. However, you can still study them if you don’t want to hurt the animals you come across in order to complete your compendium.

22. Herbology 101: You’ll also need to sniff out and pick every plant you come across in the world to complete that big book of yours.

23.  Take a train ride: Train rides exist in cities as one of the game’s few fast travel methods. However, you can also just relax and enjoy the scenery if you want…or, and this is a bonkers idea but WHAT IF...

24. Drive a train: Yep. You can literally throw the conductor through the window and steal the locomotive for yourself to ride around the world and ring the bell as much as you want.

25. The not-so-great train robbery: You can also just rob any train you see too. Besides going from passenger to passenger and holding them up, all trains also have special cargo compartments filled with valuables. You just need to plant some dynamites on the safe to blow it. Oh, and get ready for armed resistance too. Most trains have guards ready to fight you tooth and nail for the riches, not to mention the lawmen and bounty hunters who will be riding in as reinforcements.

26. Die savagely: Sometimes someone says the wrong thing to you and you lose your cool a little bit and suddenly there are some dead people on the floor, a smoking revolver in your hand, and the cops are on the way. Whoops. Building up your bounty and getting into intense shootouts in the middle of Saint Denis or Valentine can lead to some great emergent stories, like the time one of our editors shot a lawman as he came up the stairs and he crumpled dramatic, stumbling down the stairwell Gone With The Wind style. Hold out as long as you can and see just how high you can get that bounty up to.

27. Who burgles the burglars: Several stores throughout the world have seedy underground operations going on — like moonshine trading — that you can crash in on to steal their profits for yourselves. Keep an ear out for NPCs in the open world that you help in emergent events, like freeing someone from a paddy wagon. They’ll often clue you in on these criminal enterprises.

28. Top of the food chain: There are ‘legendary’ animals all over the map that represent the toughest beasts to bring down. You’ll be able to find them on the map by looking where the animal drawings with crowns are. Head there to track and square off against the animals that put the king in kingdom.

29. Jurassic Park: To the Northeast of Flatneck Station, you’ll find a bizarre site: an old woman excavating for dinosaur bones! Talk with her to start a quest to find 30 bones littered throughout the map. You’ll need to use your hunter vision to find them all.

30. It’s time to du-du-duel: While most duels in Red Dead Redemption II are random and happen whenever an NPC is irate with you, you can try to jerryrig such sequences. The easiest way to bait an NPC into a duel is cheating at poker (and getting caught) or knocking characters off horses and insulting them until they whip out their pistols.

31. Couldn’t drag me away: Like the aforementioned Stagecoach fence, there’s also a horse fence in the world that you get access to after you progress through the story a bit. That fence is located north of Clemens Point, after you complete a certain mission in Chapter 3. You can bring whatever horses you lasso there, both those on the plains or those you’ve stolen from towns in the dead of night.

32. Fancy yourself a collector: The weapons at the gunsmith aren’t the only ones you can find in Red Dead Redemption II. Littered throughout the world, in both missions and locations, are rare weapons you can’t purchase. A lot of them, too. To find one of the rarer ones, complete the Gunslinger missions for Calloway (who you can find in Valentine).

33. Spirit tracks: When night falls, head to the northwest part of Lemoyne and find the sign that says Lemoyne. See those tracks? Okay, wait until 3:00 AM (you can check the time by hitting down on the D-pad) and ride along the tracks. You should see something very interesting.

34. Press all the buttons: This might sound dumb but listen, Red Dead Redemption II has a habit of burying a lot of relevant information under its tutorials. So take some time, go to a clearing somewhere, and just press all the dang buttons to see what might happen. For example, one of our editors (the tall, lanky dumb one) didn’t realize until he already beat the game that you could use iron sights on any weapons by holding down on the D-Pad.

35. The latest in fashion: Hold on to your pelts, especially the good ones. While it might be tempting to sell them, the trapper in Saint Denis can make great frontiersmen gear for you to wear, including a raccoon hat!

36. The KKK won’t take my baby away: Members of the Ku Klux Klan roam Red Dead Redemption II’s map, especially in the south. You can stumble upon them having rallies or trying to raise crosses to burn. Why not let them know what you think of their prejudiced and regressive philosophies with a stick of dynamite or a hail of bullets?

37. Poke the bear: There are certain animals in Red Dead Redemption II who do not take kindly to your presence. Messing with alligators or bears in particular culminates in one of the most disturbing animations we’ve see in games – one that’s worth triggering at least once for just how shocking it is.

38. Arabian nights: The best horse in Red Dead Redemption II, when it comes to stats, is easily the white Arabian breed. You can buy one for a hefty price in Blackwater but why not be a true cowboy and track one through the mountains around Lake Isabella. Get ready though, this well camouflaged steed will put up a fight for its freedom.

39. The sickest of stunts: The physics and systems in Red Dead Redemption II are the promising foundation to a lot of hilarious, accidental deaths. Experimenting with riding your horse around jagged, rocky territory or pushing people to get a sense of how weighty and manipulated the physics can be. For some examples of sick stunts, watch this collection put together by our mischief maker lads Kyle and Leo. 

40. Make it an Olympic sport: The lasso is a great tool even when you’re not hogtying people. Maybe there’s a bandit who’s giving you a surprising amount of trouble that you want to make an example of. Tie him up and drag him with your horse while he kicks and curses you. If you’re on a mountaintop, you can drift around the edge, let go of the lasso, and send him flying in a downright diabolical maneuver.

41. Lend me your ear: The soundtrack is kind of astounding. Listen as you go from region to region to hear how the music changes to encompass the vibe of each place.

42. Wrath like the cold rain: There are seven gangs in Red Dead Redemption II that are out and about to commit various misdeeds. Why not show them why the Van der Linde gang is the king around these parts? Take down all the hangouts and put these fools in their place.

43. Canonized: It’s real easy to become a notorious outlaw but why not experience the flip side of that and become a saint of the West by doing good deeds and staying your violent hand. Bring bounties in alive and help people to boost your honor rating.

44. Howdy partner: Piggybacking off the last point, a quick way to raise your honor in small increments is to greet everyone you come across politely. No really. It makes you a better person. We’re not joking.

45. Unchained: Chain gangs play a surprisingly large role in Red Dead Redemption II’s open-world. You can come across them in the world and shoot of their locks if you feel so inclined, with the NPC giving you some helpful information about locations worth investigating. There’s also a sidequest on the outskirts of Rhodes involving two prisoners that’s absolutely worth doing.

46. Hammer in the morning: The Appleseed Timber Company is a camp of lumberjacks and construction workers that are near Monto’s Rest. You can go there to sell any extra expendables you have (like whiskey and medicine) for a higher price than other sellers but you can also interact with the camp in ways that lets you help build it up. Be sure to return to Appleseed from time to time to see how it changes.

47. Got a dime, buddy: There are a handful of homeless NPCs in Valentine, Rhodes, Saint Denis, and the world at large. Giving them money not only boosts your honor but they all remember Arthur and will comment on their relationship to him. The beggar you find in the wilderness will give cryptic statements on Arthur’s future.

48. Bonding time: A handful of main story quests will often give you the chance to ride back to camp or do some other activity (like fishing) with whoever you’re with after they’re complete. While it might be tempting to skip these events so you can go explore the world on your own, you should do them as a number of them are funny and poignant.

49. Science experiment: So you’ve shot someone in the middle of nowhere. It happens. But what happens next is probably far more interesting. Stick around and keep an eye on the body. The game has a shockingly advanced (and stomach-turning) decaying system. Blech. Neat but yeah, woof.

50. A lesson in respecting personal space: Find a horse that isn’t yours. Stand behind it for a few seconds.

51. Every dog has his day: While horses and other animals in the wild might not take too kindly to your presence, dogs and cats in the various towns will adore you and even let you pet them. Whatever you do, do not harm them (you monster) or you’ll have all sorts of hell at your doorstep.

52. What lies beneath: There’s something going on in the basement of the gunsmith in Rhodes. Swing by there and circle the building for a bit.

53. The show must go on: In Blackwater, Saint Denis, and on the outskirts of Valentine you’ll find various theatrical shows you can attend. Be sure to catch at least one from every location. Arthur can also boo or cheer on the performers, if you’re feeling like a particularly vocal critic.

54. So many little dots: If poker isn’t your thing, there are also plenty of dominos boards throughout the world, including one at camp.

55. Step into the Twilight Zone: Near the bottom of Saint Denis, you’ll find a local crackpot named Marko Dragic around a pond. Be sure to do his quests. All of them. Trust us on this.

56. Rootin, tootin: You’ll find a couple of big-talking gunslingers throughout the world who want to challenge you to a shooting contest, often involving you blasting a certain number of bottles or birds before they can. Oblige them and use Dead Eye to put them in their place.

57. Window shopping: Yeah, you can go over to the shopkeep in general stores and flip through a catalog to buy whatever items you want. However, you can also walk around the store and literally buy things off the shelves, making the whole experience much more immersive.

58. Trials of fire: There’s a whole collection of challenges for you to take on if you want (kill three enemies with throwing knives in rapid succession, rob four stores in a single day). As a whole, they’re hit or miss, but some of them are very fun, particularly the bandit section. Complete them all for a special reward.

59.  The Good, The Bad, and the Clever: Wanna use your brains instead of brawn to make a fair amount of cash? Northwest of Fort Wallace, there’s a place called Widow Rock. You should find some cave paintings and Arthur will jot them down, kickstarting a quest that requires you to find certain objects throughout the world and culminates in something special.

60. Strike a pose: There’s a photo studio in Saint Denis where you can pose Arthur in his best (or worst) digs and take some great pictures.

61. Extra, extra read all about it: Throughout most cities there are newspaper boys on the corners selling editions that keep up with the exploits of the Van der Linde gang and the world at large. Why not take a breather, buy a copy, and see what other people think about the gang’s adventures and misdeeds?

62. Hair of the dog: True to both The Old West and Rockstar’s open-world games, there are bars everywhere in Red Dead Redemption II. Get Arthur hammered to witness goofy antics.

63. And the law won: Maybe you want to take a break from being an outlaw for a bit. Luckily for you, there are bounties in every city for you to chase down. On the wanted dead or alive bounties, bring them back alive to earn a big honor boost.

64. The photographer’s assistant: Southeast of Strawberry, you’ll find an odd looking fellow with a camera. Talk to him to engage one of the most extensive (and weirdest) side quests in the game.

65. Arthur Morgan, super sleuth: Why be a cowboy when you can be a detective? Available after Chapter 2, this mission is accessible from a cabin on the outskirts of Valentine. Head there to moonlight as a detective on the case of a vicious killer.

66. Create a fashion ensemble: Your horse can carry three outfits. Typically it’s a good idea to have one winter jacket for whenever you ascend into the mountains but the other two outfits are free game, so why not go wild and have clothes for all occasions on-the-go?

67. Get in (or out of) shape: Arthur can gain or lose weight depending on how much he’s eating, with stat bonuses/hits applicable to both conditions. Chomping down on a bunch of deer meat at the campfire is a quick way to make Athur bloat if you want to see the differences.

68. Dirt in the chamber: One of the central gameplay mechanics involves making sure your weapons are maintained by cleaning them with gun oil. However, at least once, you should watch one of your weapons degrade over time to see the visual effects of not cleaning them. It’s another testament to just how much thought Rockstar put into the little details.

69. The first rule of Fight Club: Sure this is The Old West but you don’t need to settle all your disputes with bullets. Sometimes knocking the lights out of that fellow who just insulted you is more satisfying.

70. Bandito: Wear your bandana around town to hear unique comments from everyone, even when you’re not committing a crime.

71. You talking to me: Find a mirror. You’ll see Arthur has a prompt for talking to himself. Hilarity ensues.

72. Tweedledum and Tweedledee: One of the stranger encounters in Valentine, near the general shop, is an amusing questline involving two brothers trying to impress a woman they both love. Arthur gets roped in. Definitely worth doing for the laughs.

73. Gotta Collect ‘Em All: There’s a fellow at Flatneck station who needs help finding all the collectible cards that come with the cigarette packets you find throughout the world. Lend him a hand and you’ll net a fair amount of cash.

74. Dear diary: Arthur keeps a journal where he recounts EVERYTHING he comes across in the game, offering not just summaries of quests from his perspective but also drawing interesting locations and animals he sees. Be sure to stop and read it every now and again.

75. The refuse of the past: There’s an old man sleeping outside of the train station in Rhodes on a bench. Chat him up. He needs you to recover some precious items from his old plantation. Oblige him for one of the most interesting excursions in the game.

76. Put some hair on that chin: Is Arthur’s beard not growing fast enough for you? For some zany hair growth buy the hair tonic for the general store and grow yourself a beard much more quickly.

77. Six pieces, sixteen pigs: You might be disappointed to learn alligators won’t eat bodies. However, pigs definitely will. If you’re morbidly curious, drop a body near a gathering of pigs, and watch as they surge like porcine piranha toward the new meal.

78. The Macgyver School Of Thought: Sometimes you want to fish but you don’t want to fish, if you know what I’m saying. If you want to catch a bass or something but without the fuss of using a rod, just use your bow instead or (better yet) throw a stick of dynamite in there! Presto!

79. Deck Out My Ride: Stables aren’t just useful for housing your various horses. You can customize them to a ridiculous degree, from stirrups to blankets to even dying their manes and tails.

80. Giftwrap: Certain weapons, specifically rifles, come with the option to stick a wrap on the stock. Outside of the visual boon, you also decrease the degradation effect for that weapon, meaning you won’t have to clean it as much.

81. Evel Knievel: Are you standing on a ledge above your horse? Jump off the ledge for a special surprise. Just don’t miss!

82. A thousand words: While it’s not easy to find initially, there is actually a photo mode in Red Dead Redemption II. Progress past chapter one and you’ll get access to the camera in your inventory, which you can use to take standard shorts and selfies.

83. Be a Bully, Part The Second: So you’ve been rude to everyone in camp (including young Jack), why not try win strangers over with your smarm out in the open-world? Arthur’s rudeness can be very amusing. Just don’t be surprised when someone pulls a gun on you because of an off-color remark.

84. Secret shopping: While the tailor offers a ridiculous number of outfits, it doesn’t have all of them. Be sure to check out general stores for clothing in various places for area and honor-specific outfits.

85. The easy way: There are a lot of cheats for Red Dead Redemption II, if you want to spice things up a little with infinite ammo or all unlocked outfits. You can find a whole list here.

86. The outer limits: There’s an interesting sci-fi oriented quest that begins in a shack north of Emerald Station. If you find some corpses inside, you’re in the right place. Search for a hidden note to find the next step.

87. Bring me a dream: There are 20 dream catchers hidden throughout the game among the tree branches of dead trees. Find all 20 and you’ll unlock a useful item for the bow.

88. Cave o’ bones: Want to see something spooky and furry?  Chill around Roanake Valley at night. Chances are you’ll hear a howl and see something quite horrifying. Follow it, if you dare.

89. From the land of the ice and snow: Tired of being a cowboy? Why not try the Viking life? In an old tomb to the northwest of Annesburg, you’ll find a useable Viking helmet (cool), axe (YES), and comb (ok, sure why not?).

90. You did know me: In the west section of the bayou, near the Kamassa River, you’ll find a shack with a painting inside of it. Return to it often during the game, with every chapter. The payoff is worth it.

    WARNING: Spoilers ahead. These particular events relate to main story events in the game or take place in the post-game. Don’t read unless you’ve beaten the game or don’t care about spoilers.
    
    
    
    
    
     

91. Time goes by: Arthur can make certain choices during the main game that will have consequences in the post-game when you play as Marston. There’s on in Saint Denis involving donating to a charity, for example. The homeless people Arthur interacted with during the main game will also remember him. Explore to find all these callbacks.

92. Vacation, all I ever wanted: Chapter 5 takes a diversion to an island off the coast of Cuba called Guarma. Be sure to enjoy the sights as much has you can while you’re there. There’s no going back.

93. Calm before the storm: Whenever you see white quest markers in camp, or with your gang member’s names attached to the, be sure to do so before you go on with the story. People have a habit of not hanging around long in Red Dead Redemption II so foregoing those quests means you could lose them forever.

94. The simple life: Once Beecher's Hope is built you can perform chores around the ranch like shoveling manure or feeding the horses hay.

95. Reunited: After the main game, some of the members who have survived the events of that story are still alive and well in the world. The credits sequence after the post-game gives clues to where in the world they are.

96. Blood on memory lane: Want to relive the incredible mansion shootout (you know which one) or some other level from the game? Go into the story menu and click on the various chapters to get the chance to replay any of them and try and get a gold medal for each one.

97. Man’s best friend: While it might be tempting to ride and own a whole stable of horses, be sure to enter the last mission with a horse you’ve bonded to a maximum level with for a special cutscene.

98. An old flame: One of the side stories you can do is have Arthur reconnect with an old love, Mary. After the first mission, the rest of these are optional, so be sure to do them because if you miss one in a chapter, they fade from the world.

99. Now it’s a party: Certain missions end with the camp throwing a party. You might be tempted to leave and have Arthur hit the hay so you can start the next part of the game. Don’t do that. Be sure to hang around until the celebrations are over to see some special character interactions.

100. The fallen: While there are several gang members living after the events of Red Dead Redemption II’s main story, several weren’t so lucky. See if you can find their graves.

101. Hey, I remember this place: Though you’ll have a ridiculous bounty if you go there before the epilogue, you can visit places from the first Red Dead Redemption including the McFarlane Ranch (No Bonnie, sorry) as Arthur if you want a hit of nostalgia.

For more on Red Dead Redemption II, read our review here or our  feature on quality of life changes we'd love to come to the game.