In the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered, Ryan McCaffrey was joined by IO Interactive CEO and co-owner Hakan Abrak to talk about the future of the Hitman franchise, along with the team's upcoming James Bond game, Hitman 3, separating from Square Enix, and much more.

Given that Hitman's recent reboot was billed as a trilogy, and that IO is now focusing on the upcoming James Bond game, some have been wondering what the future has in store for the enigmatic Agent 47. Abrak assured fans that this is not the end of the series, but the famous assassin is going to take a much-deserved vacation. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/06/hitman-studio-boss-talks-hitmans-future-the-new-james-bond-game-and-more-ign-unfiltered-57"] "Our thinking right now is, Agent 47 deserves a bit of a rest. He's been busy the last three games. But, when that is said, we're incredibly busy with the live elements, supporting the 'World of Assassination,' as we call all three games. For almost five years now, we've been releasing something new every week for our communities, ever since we launched Hitman 1. And we'll keep doing that, moving forward. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-ign-hitman-review&captions=true"] "This is not the end of Agent 47. I just want to make sure everybody knows that... As we talked about before, it's synonymous with IO, it's a very beloved franchise of ours and, of course, Hitman will continue. Agent 47, maybe, is going to take a bit of a rest, but that doesn't mean that we're not working on some cool, cool stuff within the World of Assassination. So, there's definitely activity coming and I'm looking forward to talking about that sometime in the future." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/hitman-3-reviews-is-this-the-best-hitman-ever-the-review-crew"]

For more interviews with the best, brightest, most fascinating minds in the games industry, check out be sure to check out every episode of IGN Unfiltered, which includes talks with Bethesda's Todd Howard, Uncharted creator Amy Hennig, Valve's Robin Walker & Chris Remo, Respawn's Stig Asmussen, and so many more.

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Brian Barnett writes wiki guides, deals posts, features, and much more for IGN. You can get your fix of Brian's antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).

Respawn Entertainment is looking into creating a system that will compensate players who had their games ruined by cheaters. In a new series, Respawn Responds, Apex Legends design director Jason McCord discussed the negative impact cheaters can have on other players. If a player wins their games using cheats, others players in the match are unfairly marked down as a loss. Respawn is looking at how to retrospectively correct that. “We are currently looking into what we can do for players that have had their game impacted by a cheater,” he says. “This might look something like retroactive loss forgiveness, where you’ll get your RP back if we find that you had a cheater in your ranked match.” [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/01/26/apex-legends-season-8-mayhem-gameplay-trailer"] On the other side of the situation, Respawn are also looking at ensuring players who don’t cheat but who do benefit from cheats are also punished. For example, a cheater can help boost two other non-cheating teammates by cheating the whole team to victory. Respawn is able to detect this, but currently needs to streamline the manual components of the process to improve these efforts. In order to provide some positive feedback to honest players, Respawn is also looking at sending a message to players if a cheater they reported is eventually banned. McCord's language in these discussions makes it seem like these are all on-going conversations, so the eventual manifestation of these solutions is yet to be nailed down, and thus may be some distance away. For something coming sooner, Respawn has promised that Apex Legends Season 9 will feature “a ton” of Titanfall content.

GoodByeWorld Games CEO Will Hellwarth describes an early prototype of his game: you're a character lying in a hospital bed. It's not clear what's wrong with you. A clock is up on the wall, ticking.

Then you, the player, the person in the chair playing the game, physically blink. The scene cuts forward. You're still in the same bed, but the clock has moved forward.

"And you see the clock ticking and you're like, 'Oh, crap, every time I blink, I could be dying.' That was it," Hellwarth says.

The early idea would become Before Your Eyes, a narrative-driven game that players control by blinking, with each close of your eyes tracked by your webcam. Hellwarth first conceived of the idea for Before Your Eyes way back in 2008, when he was a student. Years later, after playing 30 Flights of Loving (a game that plays with the idea of film-like edits in a way Hellwarth was intrigued by), he picked it back up again.

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It was 2014, and Hellwarth was still a student, but this time he wasn't alone. He was joined by game director and composer Oliver Lewin, and lead writer and creative director Graham Parks. The three were childhood friends who had collaborated on film projects before, and initially took a fairly laid-back approach to Before Your Eyes. They worked on it on weekends between classes, jobs, and regular life, undergoing numerous iterations.

At one point, Hellwarth decided he would take the game more seriously if it got into gaming showcase Indiecade. It did. Then it got into the Independent Games Festival. A publisher picked it up, then dropped out. The team ran a successful Kickstarter. For seven years, every time it seemed like Before Your Eyes would never turn into much more than a fun, weird, experimental side project, a wave of interest and excitement for the concept would hit, spurring the group on. Finally, it's ready to launch on PC via Steam tomorrow, with the support of immersive media company RYOT and publisher Skybound Entertainment.

For a long time throughout development, Hellwarth wanted Before Your Eyes' blink mechanic to be very literal -- every single blink the player did propelled them into a new scene. Now, after hours upon hours of player feedback and discussion with his colleagues, he agrees it plays much better. Instead of every single blink being an edit, blinking will only move players forward if a metronome icon is ticking at the bottom of the screen, indicating to them that the next blink will end the current moment. But if the camera rests on certain marked spots in the field of view, blinking will reveal more dialogue, make choices about how the scene moves forward, or show aspects that weren't visible before.

Each transition acts like a cut or edit that's reminiscent of the trio's background in film. Parkes says he was fascinated by what he says Hellwarth described to him as "offloading the cut, the editor's job, to the player."

"Using this physical process that you don't have control over-- games are so often about this empowerment fantasy, but our game becomes this sort of disempowerment thing where no matter what you try to do, you have to blink and move on," he says.

Implementing a control scheme that's at least partially involuntary brought with it a whole host of challenges. For one, Lewin wanted to be sure that the team was using the blink mechanics to the fullest extent, rather than just making a fairly standard game with blinking appended.

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"You don't want to fall into this trap of just replacing the B button with blinking," he says. "We always wanted those new mechanics to be sort of thematically tied to what's special about your eyes, and what's special about having that immediacy, or that imperfection in the interaction."

Another problem was the issue of anticipating player behavior. Blinking can be both involuntary and voluntary, meaning that many players (myself included!) would feel a natural anxiety as they played. Scenes will continue to play until you blink to move forward, so there's a natural, completionist tendency to want to hold your eyes open as long as possible to see as much as possible. For instance, there's an early scene where something seems to be waiting at the end of a long, dark hallway. Players will want to hold their eyes open as long as possible to see what's at the end, but Before Your Eyes expects everyone to blink before the end.

"Every round of testing we did, we had to all sit down and discuss: X amount of people said there was frustration, because they would blink out and they would miss things," Lewin says. "And we're making a game about missing things. So where do you draw the line of saying, 'We want this amount of frustration, but not this bigger amount of frustration?' So it's always been a balancing act...And credit to the way Graham wrote those scenes, because it's really been an intentional thing every second where we expect people to leave a scene."

Parkes, as a writer, saw each scene as effectively an interesting writing prompt.

"It's a great writing challenge to have to write a scene that works in three lines, but then the player might listen on much past that," he says. "So we always made sure to write those scenes as long as possible, so if you keep your eyes open, there's something to stick around for."

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And then of course, there was the sticky point of getting webcams to work in tandem with the game. Hellwarth says Snapchat's various tricks with camera recognition were instrumental in the team's realization that webcams had the power to do what they wanted to do with Before Your Eyes. But accurate blink detection was still a massive challenge. GoodbyeWorld’s early prototypes were heavily criticized and didn't work well with most webcams, and Parkes says the team wasn't able to really address the webcam issue until Skybound got on board and assisted with putting in place a firm quality assurance process.

According to Lewin, the biggest issue with webcams and blink detection wasn't the numerous kind of webcams on the market so much as the variety of environmental situations players might be in, with regards to lighting or positioning.

"There are laptops out there that have their webcams built into the bottom of the laptop, for whatever reason," Lewin says. "Dealing with those edge cases-- I think that you could just spend eternity being like, 'What if someone plays at 5:00 pm and the sun sets at 5:30 pm?' That part just required a lot of realizing that just because it worked really well for one person, it might still not be good enough."

Before Your Eyes has come a long way since it was a prototype of a person in a hospital bed. Parkes describes the process as "iterative, experimental, and exploratory," and the trio says the game's iterations have covered a number of different themes over the years -- especially death and regret. Ultimately, they settled on telling a story of "the breadth of an entire life," with the final version of Before Your Eyes seeing the main character's full life experience from the perspective of the afterlife -- albeit a strange afterlife, where the character in question might not want to be fully honest about every facet of their existence.

"We didn't want to just look at one period; we thought part of the exciting thing about this is that we can really give you that feeling of life flashing before your eyes… Early on, we were all sure of that. But exactly how it was gonna work and how it was going to function -- we really have tried so many different versions of this story."

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With Before Your Eyes finally out the door after seven years, the trio wants to continue working on narrative games with unusual mechanics. They say they hope Before Your Eyes resonates with the general public in the same way it resonated with so many of the smaller audiences they tested the game with at various trade shows. Often, they tell me, it would bring players to tears -- and yes, crying can mess up blink detection (though they hint that the end of the game plays in a way that is cognizant of that).

"We've always known what we want the game to say," Parkes says. "We want it to be a game about enjoying the moment; we want it to be a game about learning to accept and not trying to fight against the flow of time. This is a game that is almost humbling yourself to the fact that time is going to push forward no matter what."

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

Merge Games, Jankenteam, and Sega have announced a June 24 release date for Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, the update to the 1986 Sega Master System classic. It will be released on most major platforms: PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store), PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch for an MSRP of $19.99 USD. Miracle World DX promises new levels, new modes, a remastered soundtrack that also includes new music, as well as "striking new art and tighter, more fluid controls." Check out the new release date gameplay trailer above to see it in action for yourself. There are also some new screenshots in the gallery below. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=alex-kidd-in-miracle-world-dx-screenshots&captions=true"] Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX was first revealed during IGN's Summer of Gaming last year. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Electronic Arts has developed an adaptive difficulty system that dynamically adjusts how difficult a game is. But, as also revealed by EA’s patent application, the system does this with an aim to keep players active for longer periods of time. The patent, which was filed in October last year and published at the end of March 2021, describes a system that can perform automatic granular adjustments to a game in order to change the difficulty of the experience. Similar systems have been used by Resident Evil 4 and Left 4 Dead, in which a system monitors player performance and uses the data to inform enemy behaviour. However, EA seems to have an additional, or perhaps even alternative motive beyond just aiding players overcome a game’s difficulty curve. As outlined in the patent’s abstract, the system can “review historical user activity data with respect to one or more video games to generate a game retention prediction model”. This model is then used to predict how long the user is expected to play for. Using this prediction, the dynamic difficulty system can calibrate the challenge to make sure you play for that duration. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/04/12/god-of-war-gameplay-breakdown-mastering-the-hardest-difficulty-ps4-2018"] More detail on EA’s intention for the system is provided in the Background section. Here, EA states that “software developers typically desire for their software to engage users for as long as possible.” The company notes that “one of the challenges of game development is to design a game with a difficulty level that is most likely to keep a user engaged for a longer period of time.” This dynamic difficulty adjustment system, it would seem, is EA’s answer to that issue. Difficulty is a hugely important issue in game design, and the concept of adaptive difficulty is an attractive one; every player is different, and has different requirements when it comes to challenge. However, the description within this EA patent is incredibly developer/publisher-focused, rather than the emphasis being on the player. It raises questions about what it will do, for instance, when faced with players who only play infrequently for short durations at a time. Will the difficulty be adjusted to ensure adequate progress is made in that short window, or changed to encourage a user to keep playing longer than their data suggests they normally do? For more from the world of in-development video games tech, take a look at the PlayStation patent that lets spectators mess with players in VR, a recent filing for the ability to add PS trophies to older and emulated games, and EA’s other recent patent to allow players to stream full games before they’ve been downloaded. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. 

Writer Pornsak Pichetshote has a real knack for exploring the racial and political tensions of the 21st Century through the lens of genre fiction, as we saw in 2018's Infidel. Now Pichetshote is back with The Good Asian, and it's a story that couldn't be more timely in 2021, despite taking place in 1936. The Good Asian pairs Pichetshote with artist Alexandre Tefenkgi (Outpost Zero) for a gritty murder mystery tale set in historic Chinatown. While the book's main protagonist - self-loathing Chinese American detective Edison Hark - is fictional, the book is set against the very real backdrop of the Chinese Exclusion Act immigration ban and the explosion of racial tensions in the Depression-era United States. Given the disturbing headlines in 2021 and the marked rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, the series is only too relevant. IGN can exclusively debut a preview of The Good Asian #1, which you can read in the slideshow gallery below: [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-good-asian-1-exclusive-comic-book-preview&captions=true"] "For me, this book started with wanting to use noir and everything I love about those old pulp detectives and marry it all with this Asian-American history we've forgotten, like the Chinese Exclusion Act," Pichetshote told IGN. "Never in a million years did I expect it to be so sadly timely, but here's hoping we can do what my favorite comics have always done for me—entertain and educate." "This story is an amazing opportunity to explore the noir aesthetic and put my own spin on it," added Tefenkgi. The Good Asian #1 will be published by Image Comics and is slated for release on Wednesday, May 5, 2021, just in time for the start of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. DC is also celebrating that event with DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration, an anthology special that will introduce a new hero called Monkey Prince. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/06/batman-the-long-halloween-part-one-exclusive-official-trailer"] Note: IGN has put together a list of resources for anyone interested in helping the Asian American community in Atlanta and other regions affected by violent crimes. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Nuclear missiles have been spotted in Call of Duty: Warzone's Verdansk map, but despite landing on target the warheads are doing nothing at all to the world. As spotted and captured by ModernWarzone on Twitter (and seen by myself in a recent game of Warzone), nuclear missiles can be seen soaring across the skies. But when they fall and strike the ground, there's no catastrophic explosion or damage inflicted. At least, not yet.

The best size reference you’ll get for the missiles flying over Verdansk pic.twitter.com/UgLYM6Ejtb

— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) April 6, 2021

These missiles tie into the rumoured Warzone nuke event, which fans believe will occur around April 21/22, when the current season of Warzone is due to conclude. Through in-game hints and leaks, fans have concluded that the Verdansk map - which has now been in service for over a year - will be struck by nuclear missiles and transformed into a new landscape that will tie into the 1980s theme of the current mainline Call of Duty game, Black Ops Cold War. These new nuclear missiles, presumably added to the game as a tease (or a little too early), suggest that the explosive event is real and on the horizon. Call of Duty publisher Activision has not officially announced the 'nuke event' or the transition of Warzone from the Modern Warfare-era Verdansk to whatever the next map may be. However, the company's recent DMCA takedown action on a website that covered the leak of the new map suggests that those leaks were legitimate. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/18/call-of-duty-black-ops-cold-war-warzone-season-two-gameplay-trailer"] Before Verdansk seemingly disappears for good, be sure to check out the map's top 10 roofs. They make great sniper nests, and may be obliterated by nuclear fire in the coming weeks. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. 

Microsoft has added touch controls to more than 50 cloud-based games on Xbox Game Pass. The news arrived as Microsoft revealed the slate of games coming to the platform in April in a blog on the Xbox website. Xbox Touch Controls debuted in September 2020 alongside the launch of Minecraft Dungeons, but Microsoft is now extending the control scheme to the 50+ cloud-compatible games on Xbox Game Pass. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/06/gta-5-could-be-free-and-on-your-phone-ign-daily-fix-"] This means that Android device owners can use the Xbox Game Pass app to pay Xbox Cloud Gaming titles without a controller connected to their phone. The games that will benefit from touch controls include Slay the Spire, Sea of Thieves, Spiritfarer, Gears 5, Tell Me Why, Desperados 3, Dead Cells, Donut County, Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age and more. The full list of 54 games that will benefit from Xbox Touch Controls can be seen here. In other Xbox Game Pass news, Microsoft also revealed that GTA V would be coming back to the service this week, after leaving it in May 2020. Other games joining in April include Zombie Army 4: Dead War, MLB The Show 21 and more. The latter is particularly interesting given that MLB The Show 21 was developed by Sony San Diego. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

BioWare has detailed all of the gameplay tweaks coming to Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. In a blog on the game's official website, BioWare has kicked off a weekly series digging into the making of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, with the first article focusing on gameplay tuning and rebalancing. With regards to tuning the combat of the trilogy, BioWare has tweaked how accuracy, aim assist, and aiming down sights works in Mass Effect, to let players "maintain more consistent firepower" and bring it in line with Mass Effect 2 and 3. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/02/mass-effect-legendary-edition-official-trailer"] Abilities have also been rebalanced, and smaller tweaks have been implemented, such as mapping melee to a button press, and letting players mark inventory items as junk so they can be converted to Omni-gel or sold to merchants. BioWare has reworked some of the first game's boss battles and made it so squad mates can be controlled independently like in the later games. Across the trilogy, entering and exiting cover has been made "more reliable," with additional cover added to some encounters. The Galaxy at War metagame has also been rebalanced and won't be affected by factors that are no longer available such as the companion app or multiplayer. BioWare says that preparing for the climax of Mass Effect 3 will be "more difficult to achieve in the legendary edition" as a result. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/02/mass-effect-legendary-edition-our-first-impressions"] Many will be pleased to hear that BioWare has also calibrated Mass Effect's Mako controls to make the vehicle less bouncy while adding "faster shield recharging and new thrusters." If a player touches lava in the Mako they will also just take damage over time rather than failing the mission instantly. Beyond actual gameplay, the trilogy will feature a set of wider quality-of-life modernizations including a unified launcher, better character customization options, updated achievements, and integrated weapons and armor DLC content, so players can earn them naturally while they play. The trilogy's audio has also been remixed and enhanced for Legendary Edition. Mass Effect Legendary Edition will launch on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on May 14 later this year. In other Legendary Edition news, here's why some fans wanted to keep the original Mako.  [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Nintendo has announced Pac-Man 99, a 99-player online Pac-Man battle royale game that is exclusive to Nintendo Switch Online members, and it's available tomorrow, April 7, at 6am PT/9am ET/2pm BST. Much like Tetris 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35 before it, Pac-Man 99 is another new, multiplayer-focused take on one of the most iconic games.

PAC-MAN™ is back in a new 99-PAC-MAN battle royale! PAC-MAN™ 99 goes live 4/7 at 6 PM PST, exclusively for #NintendoSwitchOnline members! #PACMAN99

https://t.co/mnzEYXJnBl pic.twitter.com/1qOsEEvbHD — Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) April 7, 2021

Speaking of Mario, Pac-Man 99 arrives just a few days after the infamous "Day Mario Dies," a.k.a. the day Nintendo made Super Mario Bros. 35 unplayable and stopped selling Super Mario 3D All-Stars on the eShop. Pac-Man 99 features traditional Pac-Man gameplay with the added pressure of outlasting 98 other players. Ghosts are still present, as are Power Pellets, and eating one will send Ghosts to attack other players at Jammer Pac-Man. Bumping into one of the Jammers will slow you down and make it easier for a Ghost to catch up to you and end your run. The key to victory in Pac-Man 99 is taking advantage of the Sleeping Ghosts. By chomping them, you will create a "Ghost Train" that will provide an all-you-can-eat buffet when you eat a Power Pellet. This allows your to overwhelm your opponents. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=pac-man-99-screenshots&captions=true"] There are also four power-ups - Stronger, Speed, Standard, and Train - and four targeting options - Knockout, Hunter, Counter, and Random. Pac-Man 99 also includes additional paid content that unlocks classic Pac-Man modes and NAMCO themes based on Xevious, Galaga, Dig Dug, and more. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.