With less than two months to go until the premiere of HBO's The Last of Us adaptation, we're getting a closer look at most of the show's prominent characters.

HBO released posters for 11 of the show's characters, including Joel, Ellie, Marlene, Tommy, Tess, Bill, Sam, Frank, Henry, Riley, and Sarah. You can take a look at all of the new posters in the slideshow below.

The handful of characters featured in the posters are all from the 2013 video game to some extent, although characters like Bill's partner Frank never actually appear onscreen. We also know the show will include two brand new characters named Marlon and Florence.

The Last of Us will premiere on HBO on January 15, 2023. Season One consists of 10 episodes and will cover the events of Joel and Ellie's cross-country journey from the first game. However, the show will "deviate greatly" from the original game's story in some episodes.

Another clue that tells us the show will feel different from the game is the fact that both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey both stayed away from finishing The Last of Us game to avoid copying Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson's performances of Joel and Ellie.

The first trailer for The Last of Us gave us a look at live-action Clickers, the post-apocalyptic United States Joel and Ellie will trek across, and the opening scene from the game. For more, you can check out our side-by-side comparison of the first teaser trailer and the game.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

For the first time in nearly three decades, video game composer and designer Yuzo Koshiro is working on a new game for the Sega Genesis.

Koshiro is best known for contributing music to classic game series like Streets of Rage, The Revenge of Shinobi, Actraiser, Ys, and more. Now, the developer is working on a brand new shoot 'em up game designed for the original Genesis/Mega Drive hardware.

As revealed on Twitter, Koshiro posted a couple of images of the game that depict a spaceship flying through what appears to be an alien planet.

It looks like an old shoot 'em up but is a new game we're developing, harkening back to famous franchises in the 80s. We will release it for MD/Genesis. I'm making the soundtrack and have been back also as a game designer since Beyond Oasis. pic.twitter.com/nFPEDoYj1B

— Yuzo Koshiro (@yuzokoshiro) November 30, 2022

Koshiro wrote, "It looks like an old shoot 'em up but is a new game we're developing, harkening back to famous franchises in the 80s. We will release it for MD/Genesis. I'm making the soundtrack and have been back also as a game designer since Beyond Oasis."

The composer added that the soundtrack and sound effects will run off the authentic hardware, as well.

The game is under development at Ancient, which has been Koshiro's studio since the 1990s. This new title will be the first Genesis game from Koshiro since 1994's Beyond Oasis.

In various replies on Twitter, Koshiro said the studio is considering multiple ways to release the game, including physical carts. The developer also wrote that progress on the game just started and that the release date, price, and platforms are all up in the air right now.

Koshiro has remained active in the video game scene over the last number of years. The composer is credited on several recent games, including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Streets of Rage 4, the upcoming Mina the Hollower, and more.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Shakeups are continuing over at Warner Bros. in regards to DC-branded content. According to Channing Dungey, a high-level executive at Warner Bros TV group, Warner Bros. Television Studios is in the process of closing a major animation deal with Amazon for DC content, possibly introducing some animated DC content onto Prime Video.

According to Deadline, Dungey revealed the news at Content London, saying the studio is "exploring animated IP on different platforms." This includes HBO Max, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

“With animation we used to be about staying in-house but now we are doing it on different platforms,” Dungey said. “HBO Max is the first stop but we are in the process of closing a big deal with Amazon featuring DC branded content in animation.”

Dungey didn't elaborate further on the deal between the two mega companies.

Warner Bros. Discovery has made it clear that they are looking to merge HBO Max and Discovery Plus into one streaming service, so it is possible the new deal with Amazon is in search of a new home for DC animated projects.

The news comes at a time of drastic change at DC. Ever since Warner Bros was acquired by Discovery back in April, the company has implemented significant changes to the DC Extended Universe. From axing Batgirl to naming James Gunn and Peter Safran as heads of DC Studios, a new era of DC is surely upon us.

One of Gunn and Safran's main responsibilities is in animated DC properties, so the Amazon-WBD deal would likely have large implications for the duo's future plans. As Gunn and Safran continue to formulate their 8-10 year plan for DC, the future of animation seems to have just gotten a bit more complicated.

What the move would mean for current DC TV shows on various networks is yet to be seen, but hopefully things will become clearer once the deal is finalized.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.

Sega has revealed the 2023 content roadmap for Sonic Frontiers. The game will receive 3 updates throughout the year, including a new playable character and story.

In a roadmap, Sega revealed the first update will include a Juke Box feature which could potentially allow players to choose the music they hear in the game. There will also be a Photo Mode and new Challenge Modes for players to tackle.

New modes, new Koco, new...playable characters!? More Sonic Frontiers content coming your way next year! pic.twitter.com/MoZ8Gtj4Ro

— Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) November 30, 2022

The second update will celebrate Sonic’s birthday in some sort of fashion. The franchise's birthday is in June, so that could be a hint as to when the update could potentially arrive. It’ll add more Open Zone Challenges to play and Koko to collect.

The third and final update is the biggest one, which will include more playable characters and a new story expansion. The details of the additional story are currently unknown, but the roadmap depicts Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and Sage, so it may revolve around them.

We'll have to wait for additional details, especially on the new character and story. But for more you can check out IGN’s Sonic Frontier’s review, where we said, "Sonic Frontiers is a delightfully weird and experimental evolution of the Sonic games so many of us grew up with."

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He's been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

Sony has announced that the PlayStation Plus games for December 2022 are Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (PS4), Biomutant (PS4 and PS5), and Divine Knockout: Founder's Edition (PS4 and PS5).

As revealed on the PlayStation Blog, all three games will be made available at no extra cost to all PlayStation Plus subscribers on December 6.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition turns the three-game line-up into a heftier five as it contains remastered versions of all three original Mass Effect games. Widely considered some of the best RPGs of all time, these modern sci-fi classics follow the story of Commander Shepard as they embark on several galaxy ending missions.

In our 9/10 review of what we called the best of the bunch, IGN said: "Mass Effect 2's Legendary Edition upgrades the graphics to near-modern standards and lets us immerse ourselves in the best game in BioWare's epic RPG trilogy all over again."

Biomutant is another RPG, this time set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world full of kung-fu. Players can blend together melee combat with shooting and mutant abilities as they seek to save (or destroy) their complex planet.

IGN said it was "okay" in our review, adding that: "Biomutant has a lot of the building blocks of a top-drawer action RPG but its cookie-cutter approach to objectives and puzzles starts feeling very repetitive very early on."

Finally, Divine Knockout: Founder’s Edition launches directly on PlayStation Plus. This colourful third-person arena fighter has players adopt godly powers playing as the likes of Hercules, Thor, and more. Various modes are available including one on one, two on two, and three on three, with multiplayer featuring too.

All three games will be available at no extra cost until January 2, with last month's games - Nioh 2, LEGO Harry Potter Collection, and Heavenly Bodies - leaving the service on December 5.

Sony didn't announce the new games coming to its more expensive services but you can check out our updated lists of all PS Plus Premium Catalogue Games and PlayStation Plus Classic Games Catalogue on IGN Playlist. You can use these lists to plan what to play next, create custom-ranked lists of your favourites, and track your backlog.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Blizzard Entertainment has revealed what we can expect from Season 2 of Overwatch 2, including balancing updates, limited-time events, skins, and more ahead of its December 6 launch date.

Alongside the introduction of the new Omnic revolutionary tank hero Ramattra and the winding Shambali Monastery Escort map, Season 2 is also bringing some important balancing changes, according to Blizzard Entertainment’s official blog post.

Most significantly, Blizzard Entertainment has moved to nerf the damage hero Sojourn, who according to a blog post on the company’s website has been dominating the high-skill competitive scene in recent weeks, while “remaining a challenge for players without the same mechanical skills”.

To address the issue, the developers announced that they would be “focussing on the lethality of her Rail Gun at distance for Season 2”. This has been done to encourage players of all skills to use Sojurn’s mobility and her power slide to “close the distance for more devastating right-clicks”.

Doomfist — another tank — will also receive significant balancing tweaks to better reflect “his role as the team’s front line”. Ana, Bastion, Junker Queen, Kiriko, Mercy, and Symmetra will also be tweaked when the new season goes live on December 6, though Blizzard Entertainment has yet to reveal exactly how.

Next month's launch will also bring a new map pool to Overwatch 2. Rialto and Blizzard World will be entering rotation alongside the new map Shambali Monastery. Oasis and Nepal will also be appearing “at different times of day”, while Hollywood and Watchpoint: Gibraltar will be rotated out.

Blizzard revealed details for the Greek mythology themed Season 2 Battle Pass. Progression rewards for the premium pass will include a Poseidon skin for Ramattra and a Hades costume for Pharah. The “pinnacle reward” for the pass is a Mythic Zeus skin for Junker Queen, which comes with “new customizations, weapon models, voice lines, and special effects".

Season 2 is also set to bring three special events to the game. Winter Wonderland will run from December 13 - January 4, while the Lunar New Year event will start on January 17 and end on February 1.

Special skins will be up for grabs during each event, including “Epic Ice Queen Brigitte, Legendary Winged Victory Mercy, and Legendary Kkachi Echo.”

Sandwiched between these seasonal celebrations is the Battle for Olympus event, which will be around for a limited time from January 5 - 19. During this period players will be able to earn skins as they engage in a new game mode which will see certain heroes “imbued with awesome god-like powers”.

Finally, Season 2 will feature catch up challenges that will allow players to unlock heroes, including Kiriko from Season 1. To stay up to date and find out how to get the most out of your hero, be sure to check out more of IGN’s coverage of Overwatch 2.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Amazon's Fallout TV show will tell a fresh story completely separate from the games, though still in the same world.

Speaking to Lex Fridman on the latest episode of his podcast, Bethesda director and executive producer of the Fallout TV series Todd Howard said he'd been turned off by previous adaptation offers that only wanted to transfer the story of Fallout 3 or 4 into a film. When the idea was proposed to tell a new story adjacent to the events of the games, however, Howard got on board.

"When people wanted to make a movie they wanted to tell the story of Fallout 3 or tell the story of Fallout 4, and it was meh," he said. "For this it was, 'hey let's do something that exists within the world of Fallout.'

"It's not retelling a game story. It's basically an area of the map. Let's tell a story here that fits in the world that we have built, doesn't break any of the rules, can reference things in the games, but isn't a retelling of the games," he continued. "[It] exists in the same world but is its own unique thing, so it adds to it. While also, people who haven't played the games, who can't experience how crazy cool Fallout is, can watch the series."

Amazon has otherwise been tight-lipped about the plot of the Fallout show, not making clear (until now) if it would be a partial or full adaptation of the games. A brief teaser trailer released in October 2022 suggests the story will revolve around Vault 33, but details beyond that are still hazy.

The Fallout show was announced in July 2020 with Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan directing at least a few episodes. Walton Goggins will play the lead role alongside Ella Purnell and Kyle MacLachlan.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

The upcoming Indiana Jones game executive produced by Bethesda's Todd Howard will be a "unique" mash-up of different genres.

Speaking to Lex Fridman on the latest episode of his podcast, Howard denied to comment on which one genre Machine Games' Indiana Jones would be, instead saying it was a blend of different things.

When asked if it will be an action-adventure game, Howard said: "I will just say it's a mash-up. It's unique. It isn't one thing, intentionally, so it does a lot of different things that myself and the folks at Machine Games have wanted to do in a game. So it's a unique thing."

Very little has been said about Indiana Jones since Bethesda announced it in January 2021. It is confirmed to have an original story, at least some of which is set in 1937 and probably in Vatican City, meaning it's somewhere between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

A very brief teaser trailer released alongside the announcement (above) also alludes that Indy will visit Egypt, Peru, and Mesopotamia.

Indiana Jones was thought to be in early development around that time, meaning it'll likely still be a couple of years before it's released. Given that Xbox now owns Bethesda, it will probably follow Starfield's lead of being an Xbox exclusive, though no hard details regarding a release date or platform have been given so far.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Starfield developer Bethesda is currently working on a new mobile game, though it's unclear which of its famous franchises it's based on.

Speaking to Lex Fridman on the latest episode of his podcast, Bethesda executive producer and Starfield director Todd Howard revealed that the Elder Scrolls and Fallout developer has another mobile game in the works.

Talking about the conceptual differences between designing a console game versus one for mobile, Howard said plainly: "Well we've done a few things, and we have a new mobile game that we're working on that we haven't announced yet that I am in love with."

He didn't give anything else away regarding its genre, release date, and so on, but did allude that it would be a more in depth experience rather than a game intended to be played in short bursts.

"We have found with our games, particularly Fallout shelter, people will sit there for an hour or two. They will just sit there and play it. Large numbers of people will play it for hours a day."

Fallout Shelter was released in 2015 as a construction and management simulation game where players take over a Vault and expand it over time, but the developer hasn't done much else in the mobile arena since.

It'll likely be a while before we hear more about this new game as it hasn't been officially announced by Bethesda. Fallout Shelter was released around the same time as Fallout 4, however, so if it's a tie-in to Bethesda's space RPG Starfield, it'll perhaps be released around the same time next year.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Supermassive Games has revealed that The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR will launch as a day one title for the PlayStation VR2 on February 22, 2023.

As reported by Eurogamer, developer Supermassive Games has announced the release date and pre-order bonuses for Switchback VR, its upcoming action-horror shooter set in the same unsettling universe as The Man of Medan and other Dark Pictures titles.

According to its PlayStation Store page, customers who purchase the title early for $39.99 will be rewarded with a number of cosmetic items including the Demon Handgun, a premium skull and bones cart, a skull bobblehead, and a special edition gold gun.

Switchback VR will see players subjected to a horror-themed on-rails shooter steeped in content from The Dark Pictures games. Generally speaking, Switchback looks to offer a similar experience to the developer’s 2016 rollercoaster spin-off Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. This time around the developers have made use of the PSVR2’s eye-tracking features and haptic feedback capabilities intending to draw players deeper into the experience.

This latest VR horror-shooter is just one of several new games from Supermassive Games that will be released in the coming years. Other titles trademarked by the developer include The Craven Man, Intercession, and O Death, and we already know that Directive 8020 is the next mainline Dark Pictures title in development.

Back in November, PlayStation revealed that its next generation of VR console would come with a price tag of $549.99. This includes Sony’s new VR2 headset, a pair of PS VR2 controllers, and a set of stereo headphones. Needless to say, you’ll also need to own a PS5 console as well.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer