The Steam Autumn Sale returns today, November 22, and brings with it early Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that see the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Stray, and more discounted.

Kicking off Nov. 22 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6PM UK (so 4am on November 23 AEST), the Steam sale will run for exactly one week and end on November 29.

Valve's announcement trailer features its usual long list of heavily discounted games, spanning a library of new and old hits, major publishers, and smaller indie projects. Alongside Cyberpunk 2077 and Stray, Hitman 3, Hades, V Rising, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Slime Rancher 2, and Satisfactory were also shown off to tease the sale.

IGN has reviewed several of these games, saying of CD Projekt Red's latest that "Cyberpunk 2077 throws you into a beautiful, dense cityscape and offers a staggering amount of flexibility in how you choose to take it from there."

We called Stray "a delightful cat-based platforming adventure in a cyberpunk world worth exploring," and said Hades is "a one-of-a-kind rogue-lite that does a brilliant job of marrying its fast-paced action with its persistent, progressing story through a vividly reimagined Greek mythological underworld."

To take these games on the go, Valve's portable PC gaming platform the Steam Deck seems to have eliminated its lengthy waiting list, meaning a reservation is no longer needed. Just make sure the games you pick up are on the Steam Deck Verified Games list if you want optimum performance.

H2 The Best Black Friday Sales and Deals

Andrea Shearon is a freelance contributor for IGN covering games and entertainment. She's worn several hats over her seven-year career in the games industry, with bylines over at Fanbyte, USA Today's FTW, TheGamer, VG247, and RPG Site. Find her on Twitter (@Maajora) or the Materia Possessions podcast chatting about FFXIV, RPGs, and any series involving giant robots.

The Steam Autumn Sale returns today, November 22, and brings with it early Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that see the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Stray, and more discounted.

Kicking off at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6PM UK (so 4am on November 23 AEST), the sale will run for exactly one week and end on November 29.

Valve's announcement trailer features its usual long list of heavily discounted games, spanning a library of new and old hits, major publishers, and smaller indie projects. Alongside Cyberpunk 2077 and Stray, Hitman 3, Hades, V Rising, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Slime Rancher 2, and Satisfactory were also shown off to tease the sale.

IGN has reviewed several of these games, saying of CD Projekt Red's latest that "Cyberpunk 2077 throws you into a beautiful, dense cityscape and offers a staggering amount of flexibility in how you choose to take it from there."

We called Stray "a delightful cat-based platforming adventure in a cyberpunk world worth exploring," and said Hades is "a one-of-a-kind rogue-lite that does a brilliant job of marrying its fast-paced action with its persistent, progressing story through a vividly reimagined Greek mythological underworld."

To take these games on the go, Valve's portable PC gaming platform the Steam Deck seems to have eliminated its lengthy waiting list, meaning a reservation is no longer needed. Just make sure the games you pick up are on the Steam Deck Verified Games list if you want optimum performance.

Andrea Shearon is a freelance contributor for IGN covering games and entertainment. She's worn several hats over her seven-year career in the games industry, with bylines over at Fanbyte, USA Today's FTW, TheGamer, VG247, and RPG Site. Find her on Twitter (@Maajora) or the Materia Possessions podcast chatting about FFXIV, RPGs, and any series involving giant robots.

Following his announcement that he's taking a break from acting, MCU star Chris Hemsworth has also revealed he's ready to "close the book" on his time as Thor. Speaking to Variety, the actor said he would want his next potential appearance in the MCU to be Thor's final chapter.

"I feel like we'd probably have to close the book if I ever did it again, you know what I mean?" Hemsworth said. "I feel like it probably warrants that. I feel like it'd probably be the finale, but that's not based on anything anyone's told me or any sort of plans. You have this birth of a hero, the journey of a hero, then the death of a hero, and I don't know — am I at that stage? Who knows?"

The end of this year's Thor: Love and Thunder teased that Thor would return. However, director Taika Waititi and Hemsworth were both surprised when the note appeared, as they are currently unaware of plans for a Thor 5. Even with no plans on the books for now, Hemsworth is open to the idea of returning to Thor for one last ride.

"I'm completely open to it, if there is something unique and fresh and unexpected to do with the character and the world. I've always loved the experience. I've been very thankful I've been able to do something different each time."

Hemsworth appeared National Geographic's Limitless, where he learned that he's genetically pre-disposed to develop Alzheimer's disease. Following this, Hemsworth said the experience "really triggered something in me to want to take some time off,” and he's planning to simplify his life and spend more time with his wife and kids after wrapping up his current commitments.

Thor has been a pillar of the MCU for over a decade. Hemsworth has starred in four solo Thor movies, which is the most of any MCU character. He's also appeared in all four Avengers movies.

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.

It looks like an internal logo for Nintendo Switch’s codename, “NX,” has been discovered and leaked online.

The NX logo was found through a prototype build of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe dated October 18, 2016, two days before Nintendo officially revealed the name of the Switch.

The logo itself features a circle with a blue dot that rolls counter-clockwise and features the letters “NX” right next to it. It also sports a similar light blue color as the Wii U’s logo did rather than the Switch’s red color.

The Nintendo Switches Codename was the NX and this was an early Logo / Boot Up animation used during development of the Console ( It was found in the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Prototype ) This was never seen outside Nintendo pic.twitter.com/B1bS5zCKOu

— Paul Kelly (@PaulFelixKelly) November 20, 2022

While we can't fully verify the legitimacy of the boot up sequence, and given that it's Nintendo we will likely not get an official confirmation. But this is a rare glimpse of an early prototype from Nintendo.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was a Switch port of the Wii U’s Mario Kart 8 but with all of the latest DLC included. The game even got more DLC courses this year as well, in the form of the Booster Course Pass. It has become so successful that it has surpassed those of Mario Kart Wii, making it the best-selling game in the franchise, but it has also become the best-selling racing game in US history.

It seems like Nintendo is in no rush to create Mario Kart 9 since Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is doing so incredibly well. However, a successor is reportedly in active development with some sort of "new twist" on the series formula.

The Switch is nearing its sixth birthday, so a successor to the device could be coming soon. So far, there aren't any details or codenames, but Nintendo said that it is working on not repeating the same mistakes as it did with the transition from the Wii to Wii U.

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

Indiana Jones 5 director James Mangold has revealed that VFX technology was used to de-age Harrison Ford for the opening sequence of the upcoming movie.

Mangold told Empire magazine that Ford was digitally de-aged for the movie's opening minutes because they wanted to give the audience an "adrenaline" rush at seeing a young Indiana Jones swing back into action. The scene will drop Indy into 1944 where he'll have to navigate a castle swarming with Nazis before transitioning into the main adventure.

"I wanted the chance to dive into this kind of full-on George-and-Steven old picture and give the audience an adrenaline blast," Mangold explained. "Then we fall out, and you find yourself in 1969… The audience doesn't experience the change between the '40s and '60s as an intellectual conceit, but literally experiences the buccaneering spirit of those early days… and then the beginning of now."

"My hope is that, although it will be talked about in terms of technology, you just watch it and go, 'Oh my God, they just found footage. This was a thing they shot 40 years ago,'" producer Kathleen Kennedy added. "We're dropping you into an adventure, something Indy is looking for, and instantly you have that feeling, 'I'm in an Indiana Jones movie.'"

The VFX team reportedly used several different techniques to pull the scene together, including the use of a new ILM software that scanned through archived footage of Ford in his earlier years before matching it to the footage shot for Indiana Jones 5. In the scene, he'll be wearing a replica Raiders jacket that is a "thread-for-thread" dupe of the original.

"This is the first time I've seen it where I believe it," Ford admitted, praising the de-ageing technology for successfully bringing a younger version of Indy back to the screen. "It's a little spooky. I don't think I even want to know how it works, but it works. Doesn't make me want to be young, though. I'm glad to have earned my age."

Indiana Jones 5 may be the last time we see Ford don the iconic hat and whip. However, Steven Spielberg has confirmed that the franchise will "certainly continue after that." According to reports, Disney and Lucasfilm are "actively" looking to develop a Disney+ series with the legendary archaeologist, but it's unclear who will star in the lead role.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are full of technical problems, and the community has uncovered a hack that lets your Trainer sprint across the Paldea region at double speed.

First discovered on Reddit, players discovered that you can run twice as fast simply by connecting two controllers at once and holding both left joysticks down.

IGN's Rebekah Valentine tested the hack by using the two Joy-Con controllers attached to the Nintendo Switch and a wirelessly connected Pro Controller, confirming that the exploit does work. According to IGN's findings, it only seems to work for us when we run diagonally and in handheld.

Tested and confirmed the two controllers making you run double fast thing. Wow!!! pic.twitter.com/eHWUmrHPv7

— Rebekah Valentine (@duckvalentine) November 21, 2022

This exploit could definitely change the speedrun game for Scarlet and Violet, although it's very possible it could be removed in a post-launch patch. It's also somewhat cumbersome to pull off, as playing in handheld mode with an extra controller connected appears to be the only way to access the higher speed.

Scarlet and Violet's technical problems were the biggest problem with the games in our review in progress, where we said, "It is, by far, the worst-running Pokémon game I have ever played, and among the worst-running AAA games I’ve played on the Switch so far."

Upon launch, players quickly started to discover some of the issues for themselves, including Pokemon trainers bugged into the middle of battle, extreme framerate drops, falling through the world, infinitely falling into the ground, and more.

For more on Scarlet and Violet, check out how the rare virus Pokérus is no longer present in the new games. Or, check out our Pokémon Scarlet and Violet performance review, where we break down the technical issues players are experiencing.

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.

Netflix has announced that all eight episodes of Vikings: Valhalla Season 2 will be available on January 12, 2023.

Revealed on its Tudum website, Netflix also shared another look of Season 2 with photos (below) of protagonists Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett), Freydís Eiríksdóttir (Frida Gustavsson), and Harald Sigurdsson (Leo Suter) on their new adventure.

"The whole concept of Season 2 is that we take these three heroes who are in Scandinavia and blow them out of their comfort zones,” said show creator Jeb Stuart. "Season 2 for Harald and Leif is a road trip: It’s Thelma and Louise on the Dnieper River. The two of them will begin this incredible journey. Freydís has to go to Pomerania, which is a very difficult environment.

"Season 2 will show that sometimes when you hang out with the people that are just like you, eat like you, talk like you, you can still run into trouble. So you need to stir the pot, which I think is what the Vikings did," he continued. "So we put together this motley crew of Russian nobles, Muslim astronomers ,and con men, and they shove off from Novgorod."

Vikings: Valhalla's second season was announced back in March after Netflix turned its original 24-episode plan into three separate, eight-episode seasons. Season 1 premiered on the streaming service in February, and with Season 2 coming in January, it will likely be towards the start of 2024 that we see Season 3.

In our 7/10 review of Season 1, IGN said: "Vikings: Valhalla, set 100 years after Vikings, may miss out on some of the magic of the original series, but the might remains intact."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for God of War Ragnarok

Eagle-eyed players could potentially spot a major plot twist in God of War Ragnarok fairly early on.

The big, late-game plot twist in God of War Ragnarok is that Týr, the one you rescued early in the game, is not actually the Norse god of war but rather Odin in disguise. While the trickery was caught when Týr kept calling Atreus, Loki, the developers hid a tell the moment you meet him.

“I saw someone finally figure it out the other night,” Williams says about one early Odin tell which is hidden in the subtitles. “When Odin as Týr speaks, there’s no accent on the ‘Y’ in the subtitles.”

So in the subtitles, when Odin speaks it is simply “Tyr,” but when the real Tyr is found in the post-game it’s correctly spelled as “Týr.”

Williams revealed when the team first thought of the idea of having Odin disguise himself as Týr. “We were in a meeting one day, we were talking about the Týr prison and all that, and I said to the writers, I was like, ‘What if Týr’s Odin?’ And they were like, ‘What?’”

After the idea the writers left for a week to see if the plot twist could work and came back to Willaims. “They were like, ‘I think we can pull it off.’”

After that, the developers ran away with the idea to hide clues early on. “There’s so many little clues. You know the prison where you break [Odin/Tyr] out? If you go back in there, in that room, there’s like raven feathers in the corner. You can see it in the broom closet. Even just the stuff he says like he calls Freya ‘Frigg’ just like to dig the knife into her. When you go back it’s — you can see it all.”

The twist was a true gut punch, and even though the real Týr lives at the end, it just goes to show how Odin is a trickster as well as the Allfather. For more on God of War Ragnarok, check out IGN’s perfect score review and for the full interview check out the special episode of Beyond.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for God of War Ragnarok

According to God of War 2018’s director Cory Barlog, the sequel God of War Ragnarok needed to have these three things, without fail.

This article contains details from an interview in a special spoilercast episode of Beyond. Spoilers for the ending of God of War Ragnarok below.

In an interview with IGN on a Beyond spoilercast, God of War Ragnarok director Eric Williams shared that Barlog said three things “had to be done” for the sequel to not only work but conclude the Norse saga for Kratos.

“[Barlog] gave me three things that had to be done, and I said okay,” Williams recalled. “And I was like, ‘What are the three things?’ [and] he’s like, ‘Well, Ragnarok’s going to happen. The kid’s got to leave, and Brok’s going to die.”

Barlog then asked Williams if he knew why Brok had to die and Williams shared that this topic was discussed between the two of them previously some years ago. “He’s the family dog,” Williams responded.

Ragnarok happening, Atreus leaving, and Brok dying indeed all happen in the God of War reboot sequel, making for some of the most emotional moments in the game. According to Williams, these three things would ensure that Kratos’ Norse story could play out in two games instead of three.

According to Williams PlayStation “most definitely” wanted the studio to make a sequel but the team was debating whether it was going to be two or three games. Williams believed the story could be achieved in two games and Barlog agreed and was “adamant” that “two’s the way to go.”

And the team nailed it. IGN’s God of War Ragnarok review awarded the sequel a perfect score, calling it a blockbuster masterpiece. For more behind-the-scenes secrets with the game’s director check out IGN’s special episode of Beyond.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

This article contains late-game spoilers for God of War Ragnarok.

In the final third of God of War Ragnarok you obtain the Draupnir Spear, the third and final weapon in Kratos’ Norse adventure arsenal. Creating a new weapon for Kratos was naturally a major task for the development team at Santa Monica Studio, and game director Eric Williams has revealed just how the spear became a reality, what ideas were cut, and why they didn’t just let players wield Thor’s hammer.

Talking to IGN’s Beyond podcast, Williams said “When we started early on, in I would say the fall of 2018, people were pitching everything [for a new weapon]. Obviously Mjölnir was on the table, but I really wanted to go back and show who [Kratos] really was, and if he was going to lead these people to this war, I wanted to see that guy, the guy we never really get to see.

“We saw a little bit of it in Ghost of Sparta,” he explained. “The Spartans bring him his weapons. They bring him the arms of a Spartan with his spear and his shield, and you get to see that general a little bit, but we wanted to see that in the Norse mythology [setting].”

So Ragnarok sees Kratos get a Norse-variant of the iconic Spartan weapon. But the physical form of a God of War weapon is just the start. Like the Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos, the Draupnir Spear has a fully developed gameplay style and upgrade tree. All of that started with a phrase that would shape the team’s goals for the weapon.

“We kind of have these little phrases for the weapons internally for how we bake all the ideas in. And the axe [...] was like this ‘frozen lumberjack’. And then the blades have always in this been this ‘ballet of fire’. And so for the spear, coming up with that, I challenged [combat designer Mihir Sheth]. I was like, ‘Hey, come up with the phrase that people can get behind this.’ And he had this idea, he was like, ‘It's just beat the door down.’ And that's what he wanted out of that spear. It wasn't just this pokey thing that thrusted, it was this thing that just literally smashed your face in. And [Kratos] does that, when you start hitting the R1 and he starts stabbing, but then he starts coming with the blunt side and just everything crushes. And then when you detonate it and you see all those rocks explode.”

That design philosophy tied into William’s desire for a weapon that would demonstrate Kratos’ credentials as a leader. “It just had this violence to it, but it was through this kind of very forceful, Kratos imposing his will as a general with a thinking mindset. Because you can't just go berserk with that weapon. You have to think about what you're doing. It has precision. It has a tight area of hit. There's so many things that are put into it from both the storytelling and the combat that we wanted to be folded in where you kind of can't tell the difference.”

In the story, the spear is forged using Draupnir, a ring from Norse mythology that is able to replicate itself. But the decision to have a spear that can replicate itself actually came before the team settled on using Draupnir as the weapon’s base.

“I started to think about, well, if we want to have infinite spears, we have to come up with some way to do this,” recalled Williams. “We can't just gamify it. We want it to be part of the lore. And we were talking about Draupnir and we were like, ‘Oh, well, it does duplicate.’ And then it was just one of those peanut butter chocolate moments in my head where I was like, ‘Hey, what about this?’ And they're like, ‘Are you serious? You think we could pull that off?’”

While the Draupnir Spear has many abilities, one particular skill had to be cut. “We even had a crazier thing,” Williams revealed. “I had the wind element early on where when you would detonate it, it would shatter into a bunch of rings and it would leave shrapnel on the ground. And then if you were able to use the wind, it would pick that up and you would get this kind of shotgun pelting effect. But it just became too much, where the player was just overwhelmed with too many things to worry about. So we ended up pulling that idea back.”

As previously mentioned, one of the early ideas for Kratos’ third weapon was Mjölnir, Thor’s iconic hammer. But Williams was against the idea, and wanted something significantly more surprising.

“The axe was made to be the counter to [Mjölnir],” he explained. “It's almost like the good and evil weapon. So [Kratos] wields the weapon for just. Thor wields the weapon for tearing down the giants and things like that. So we didn't think fitting [Mjölnir] into Kratos would work very well.”

“I'll also be completely honest, I'll tell you what I told the team, [...] to me it was too easy. It was expected. It's what people, they could understand it. They could think about it. It wasn't going to surprise. But the weapon that was going to surprise was the weapon that we gave him.

By creating a new weapon forged specifically for Kratos and his end-of-everything campaign, the narrative team at Santa Monica Studio were able to weave together a story that made the weapon immensely personal to Kratos. It’s something that would have been impossible with Mjölnir.

“The way the story's told on how he gets it, who he is… if you think about his weapons, they've been bestowed upon him,” Williams explained. “The blades, they're pulled out of the river of lava and dropped into his hands. The axe is bestowed to him by his wife. So when that spear is made, it's for him. It has his blood in it, you know what I mean? They prick it and his whole history. If you watch that scene specifically, the blood comes out as the Omega first, which is that old version of him. But the thing that really cements it is the symbol of Sparta, that he is that just general that's going to take care of business.”

“We put a lot of thought into that, and I challenged the team too,” he added. “I said, ‘Hey, we want to make the best stick ever, that all spears will be judged against.’ And I'll be honest, I think I'd put ours up against any I've seen in a video game.”

For more from God of War Ragnarok, see how Thor's actor took inspiration from a Marvel character, and that Ragnarok makes PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale canon. Developer Santa Monica Studio also has "a lot of different things" in the works, so is more God of War on the way?

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Features Editor.