Arkane Austin has revealed that Redfall will feature a number of powerful bosses known as “vampire gods” that have trapped you in the Massachusetts town.

Speaking as part of the ‘Bringing Redfall to Life’ panel at Quakecon 2022, members of Arkane explained that the vampires in its upcoming open world game are not produced by a virus, but are instead the product of a biotech company. Aevum Laboratories came to the town of Redfall to research life extension and eventually created vampires.

Each and every vampire in the game has chosen to take Aevum’s technology, transforming into a blood dependent being in the name of living forever. But the ones that take Aevum’s technology to its very limits become supremely powerful monsters that Arkane refers to as vampire gods.

“We have a series of vampire gods, which are the most twisted, most changed by the whole process,” explained Arkane Austin’s studio director, Harvey Smith, “and those serve as chapter breakpoints across the game.”

“The vampire gods have the most power,” added creative director Ricardo Bare. “They’re the ones trapping you on the island. They’ve pushed the waters back, they’re the ones who’ve blacked out the sun. They’re tremendously powerful.”

The fact that the vampire gods act as “chapter breakpoints” suggests that they may be Redfall’s equivalent of Dishonored’s targets or Deathloop’s visionaries.

Working with the vampires are a bunch of human cultists, who hang out with their bloodsucking leaders in hope of one day becoming a vampire, too. While some are sired and become hugely powerful, others are turned into familiars and other such lower-end monsters.

“The vampires can choose instead to turn them into these other horrible things,” explained Bare. “One of them is called the Bloodbag, which is just this grotesque creature. It’s like the vampiric version of a milk cow, it just produces excess, bloated amounts of blood for the vampires to sip on when they’re thirsty.”

The panel also confirmed that staking would be one method of killing vampires, alongside a collection of conventional and DIY guns. Stakes are mounted to guns like bayonets, and the panel showed off a few of the more unusual ones, including a snapped guitar neck and a sharpened garden gnome. There will, of course, be many ways to kill vampires.

For more from Redfall, check out our interview with Arkane about how co-op and progression works, as well as how it will be a classic immersive sim-style single-player game, too.

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

Scientists have used a combination of ancient fossil remains and the scans of a great white shark to create a 3D model of a prehistoric megalodon. Armed with this model, the researchers figured out the size of the monstrous carnivore, how much it needed to eat to survive, and how far it could travel.

For over 10 million years Earth’s ancient oceans were presided over by a single apex predator - the megalodon. A relative of the modern day great white shark, this monstrous carnivore was one of the largest creatures ever known to hunt the seas that dominate our planet’s surface.

Most scientists believe that the megalodon went extinct roughly 2.6 million years ago as the ocean cooled, altering its environment and disrupting the food chain it relied upon. However, researchers have been able to shed a surprising amount of light on the nature of the prehistoric beasts by analysing their fossilised remains.

As part of a new study, scientists created a 3D model of a megalodon to shed light on its movement and feeding habits. Ordinarily, the bodies of these ancient predators are poorly preserved, owing in part to the fact that the hard parts of their bodies are made up of cartilage that degrades over time.

However, the scientists behind the new research - published in the journal Science Advances - were able to use the extremely well-preserved remains of a megalodon that was discovered in Belgium in the 1860s as the basis for a 3D reconstruction.

This particular shark was roughly 46 years old when it died some 18 million years ago. Thankfully, a number of its teeth - and a large section of its vertebral column - survived to the present day. The researchers were able to take the remains of this terrifying beast, and combine them with a detailed scan of the body of a great white shark in order to create their model.

“Weight is one of the most important traits of any animal. For extinct animals we can estimate the body mass with modern 3D digital modelling methods and then establish the relationship between mass and other biological properties such as speed and energy usage,” comments co-author of the study John Hutchinson, professor at the Royal Veterinary College, UK, in a press release from the University of Zurich.

Their model revealed that the megalodon would have been around 16 meters long, and weighed in excess of 61.5 tons. Its stomach meanwhile had a volume of almost 10,000 liters. Based on the shark’s likely body mass and its probable energy requirements, the scientists estimated that it would have needed the equivalent of 98,175 kilo calories each day to sustain itself.

However, the shark likely wouldn’t have needed to eat every single day. Instead it’s possible that - like modern day great whites - a megalodon would feast on a large meal that would sustain it for weeks on end.

To this end the megalodon would be capable of eating 8 meter-long whales - the same size as a modern day Orca - in just five bites. A meal of this size could have sustained the megalodon for a full two months.

Based on the amount of food needed to survive, the researchers believe that the ancient shark would likely have travelled thousands of miles in search of its prey, crossing oceans at a cruising speed of 1.4 meters per second and generally being an absolute disaster fish.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that, in a 2021 study published in the journal PLOS ONE, wherein scientists ran tests to see when the megalodon went extinct, 6 out of the 10,000 computer simulations ran had the monstrous beasts surviving to the present day.

Despite the fact that the authors of the study went on to reject the possibility that the megalodon could have survived to the current era, those six simulations continue to haunt my nightmares. And now they haunt yours too.

Enjoy your swim.

Scientists have used a combination of ancient fossil remains and the scans of a great white shark to create a 3D model of a prehistoric megalodon. Armed with this model, the researchers figured out the size of the monstrous carnivore, how much it needed to eat to survive, and how far it could travel.

For over 10 million years Earth’s ancient oceans were presided over by a single apex predator - the megalodon. A relative of the modern day great white shark, this monstrous carnivore was one of the largest creatures ever known to hunt the seas that dominate our planet’s surface.

Most scientists believe that the megalodon went extinct roughly 2.6 million years ago as the ocean cooled, altering its environment and disrupting the food chain it relied upon. However, researchers have been able to shed a surprising amount of light on the nature of the prehistoric beasts by analysing their fossilised remains.

As part of a new study, scientists created a 3D model of a megalodon to shed light on its movement and feeding habits. Ordinarily, the bodies of these ancient predators are poorly preserved, owing in part to the fact that the hard parts of their bodies are made up of cartilage that degrades over time.

However, the scientists behind the new research - published in the journal Science Advances - were able to use the extremely well-preserved remains of a megalodon that was discovered in Belgium in the 1860s as the basis for a 3D reconstruction.

This particular shark was roughly 46 years old when it died some 18 million years ago. Thankfully, a number of its teeth - and a large section of its vertebral column - survived to the present day. The researchers were able to take the remains of this terrifying beast, and combine them with a detailed scan of the body of a great white shark in order to create their model.

“Weight is one of the most important traits of any animal. For extinct animals we can estimate the body mass with modern 3D digital modelling methods and then establish the relationship between mass and other biological properties such as speed and energy usage,” comments co-author of the study John Hutchinson, professor at the Royal Veterinary College, UK, in a press release from the University of Zurich.

Their model revealed that the megalodon would have been around 16 meters long, and weighed in excess of 61.5 tons. Its stomach meanwhile had a volume of almost 10,000 liters. Based on the shark’s likely body mass and its probable energy requirements, the scientists estimated that it would have needed the equivalent of 98,175 kilo calories each day to sustain itself.

However, the shark likely wouldn’t have needed to eat every single day. Instead it’s possible that - like modern day great whites - a megalodon would feast on a large meal that would sustain it for weeks on end.

To this end the megalodon would be capable of eating 8 meter-long whales - the same size as a modern day Orca - in just five bites. A meal of this size could have sustained the megalodon for a full two months.

Based on the amount of food needed to survive, the researchers believe that the ancient shark would likely have travelled thousands of miles in search of its prey, crossing oceans at a cruising speed of 1.4 meters per second and generally being an absolute disaster fish.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that, in a 2021 study published in the journal PLOS ONE, wherein scientists ran tests to see when the megalodon went extinct, 6 out of the 10,000 computer simulations ran had the monstrous beasts surviving to the present day.

Despite the fact that the authors of the study went on to reject the possibility that the megalodon could have survived to the current era, those six simulations continue to haunt my nightmares. And now they haunt yours too.

Enjoy your swim.

One-Punch Man Season 3 is officially happening, almost three years after the second season wrapped its run on the small screen.

As reported by Crunchyroll, the official website for the One-Punch Man TV anime confirmed on Thursday that a third season of the hit show will be going into production. A key visual drawn by character designer Chikashi Kubota was posted alongside the announcement. The artwork features Saitama and Garou, but it doesn't offer any teasers of what will actually evolve in the upcoming season.

Created by Japanese artist ONE, One-Punch Man tells the story of Saitama, a powerful superhero with the ability to defeat any opponent with a single punch. Bored by his flawless battle record, Saitama embarks on a quest to find an opponent who can actually challenge him. The series originally debuted as a webcomic in 2009 before transitioning to the magazine Shueisha's Young Jump Next in 2012.

The manga has already been adapted into a popular anime series and multiple video games, including the recent One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows. The second season of the popular anime series premiered back in 2019, laying the groundwork for another round of exciting fights, terrifying villains, and more Genos and Saitama adventures, with some bad-ass action scenes to boot.

One Punch Man's upcoming third season is being developed alongside a live-action film adaptation, which will be written by Venom's Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinker, with former Fast X director Justin Lin slated to direct. This movie joins several other live-action anime adaptations, including a Netflix series based on One Piece, the perpetually troubled Akira remake, and a reimagined version of Your Name.

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

One-Punch Man Season 3 is officially happening, almost three years after the second season wrapped its run on the small screen.

As reported by Crunchyroll, the official website for the One-Punch Man TV anime confirmed on Thursday that a third season of the hit show will be going into production. A key visual drawn by character designer Chikashi Kubota was posted alongside the announcement. The artwork features Saitama and Garou, but it doesn't offer any teasers of what will actually evolve in the upcoming season.

Created by Japanese artist ONE, One-Punch Man tells the story of Saitama, a powerful superhero with the ability to defeat any opponent with a single punch. Bored by his flawless battle record, Saitama embarks on a quest to find an opponent who can actually challenge him. The series originally debuted as a webcomic in 2009 before transitioning to the magazine Shueisha's Young Jump Next in 2012.

The manga has already been adapted into a popular anime series and multiple video games, including the recent One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows. The second season of the popular anime series premiered back in 2019, laying the groundwork for another round of exciting fights, terrifying villains, and more Genos and Saitama adventures, with some bad-ass action scenes to boot.

One Punch Man's upcoming third season is being developed alongside a live-action film adaptation, which will be written by Venom's Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinker, with former Fast X director Justin Lin slated to direct. This movie joins several other live-action anime adaptations, including a Netflix series based on One Piece, the perpetually troubled Akira remake, and a reimagined version of Your Name.

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

Dungeons & Dragons has announced its intended release schedule for 2023. The lineup includes deep dives on classic D&D items and lore, the expansion of one of Fifth Edition's earliest and most famous adventures, as well as the revival of the classic Planescape campaign setting.

The schedule includes five releases, with one book dropping every season (except for Summer, in which a pair is planned):

• Keys From the Golden Vault (Winter 2023)
• Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants (Spring 2023)
• The Book Of Many Things (Summer 2023)
• Phandelver Campaign (Summer 2023)
• Planescape (Fall 2023)

Details about what's included in each sourcebook were minimal, but several members of the D&D creative team were on hand to provide a bit of insight into each. "Keys from the Golden Vault is Ocean's 11 meets Dungeons & Dragons," says Design Architect Chris Perkins. "It is an anthology of short adventures, each one revolving around a heist." Glory of the Giants is described as a companion to 2021's Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, only focused (as the name implies) on the various types of giants found throughout the D&D multiverse.

The Summer releases are The Book of Many Things, a sourcebook based on the infamous Deck of Many Things from D&D lore, and an updated version of the original D&D 5e adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver, which kicked off Fifth Edition in 2015. "[LMoP] is a fan favorite," said Chris Lindsay, Product Manager for D&D. "And it's going to expand it into a full campaign that is tinged with cosmic horror."

The final release of 2023 will be a revival of the Planescape campaign setting. The product will be presented as a boxed set, similar to the recent Spelljammer: Adventures in Space. Classic computer RPG fans will likely remember this varied web of interplanar realms from 1999's Planescape: Torment, which IGN hailed as an amazing RPG thanks largely to its unique setting, which made it "a hell of a lot different than anything else that's ever been released."

"This is a legendary campaign setting," Perkins says. "A lot of folks out there in the world have been wondering when it was coming back, and here it is."

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.

Dungeons & Dragons has announced its intended release schedule for 2023. The lineup includes deep dives on classic D&D items and lore, the expansion of one of Fifth Edition's earliest and most famous adventures, as well as the revival of the classic Planescape campaign setting.

The schedule includes five releases, with one book dropping every season (except for Summer, in which a pair is planned):

• Keys From the Golden Vault (Winter 2023)
• Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants (Spring 2023)
• The Book Of Many Things (Summer 2023)
• Phandelver Campaign (Summer 2023)
• Planescape (Fall 2023)

Details about what's included in each sourcebook were minimal, but several members of the D&D creative team were on hand to provide a bit of insight into each. "Keys from the Golden Vault is Ocean's 11 meets Dungeons & Dragons," says Design Architect Chris Perkins. "It is an anthology of short adventures, each one revolving around a heist." Glory of the Giants is described as a companion to 2021's Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, only focused (as the name implies) on the various types of giants found throughout the D&D multiverse.

The Summer releases are The Book of Many Things, a sourcebook based on the infamous Deck of Many Things from D&D lore, and an updated version of the original D&D 5e adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver, which kicked off Fifth Edition in 2015. "[LMoP] is a fan favorite," said Chris Lindsay, Product Manager for D&D. "And it's going to expand it into a full campaign that is tinged with cosmic horror."

The final release of 2023 will be a revival of the Planescape campaign setting. The product will be presented as a boxed set, similar to the recent Spelljammer: Adventures in Space. Classic computer RPG fans will likely remember this varied web of interplanar realms from 1999's Planescape: Torment, which IGN hailed as an amazing RPG thanks largely to its unique setting, which made it "a hell of a lot different than anything else that's ever been released."

"This is a legendary campaign setting," Perkins says. "A lot of folks out there in the world have been wondering when it was coming back, and here it is."

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.

Wizards of the Coast announced today that a Doctor Who crossover is in the works for Magic: The Gathering. The latest in a growing list of TV show crossovers, Magic will get new cards and four unique commander decks featuring Doctor Who characters sometime in Q3 of 2023.

Magic’s crossover products fall under a label WOTC calls “Universes Beyond,” separating them from its own canonical universe. For example, today’s Wizards Presents reveal event also gave additional details on a Lord of the Rings-themed set coming out in 2023, though that one will be much larger than the Doctor Who crossover.

The structure of this one is more similar to the upcoming Warhammer 40K commander decks, but it will have booster packs as well. There will be four different Doctor Who commander decks, each with at least some brand new cards depicting characters or events from the show just like the 40K decks. The packs coming alongside those will be Collector Boosters, likely containing special art treatments and foil versions of cards made for the crossover.

While specific cards weren’t shown, we did already get a look at the art for a few of them (viewable in the gallery above). That includes a depiction of Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor giving his iconic speech at the Pandorica, Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor, Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, and even 12 Doctors saving Gallifrey from the Daleks. We’ll have to wait and see what the mechanics of these cards will look like, but so far they seem to be very character-focused.

The exact release date of this crossover hasn’t been revealed, but WOTC says it will be timed around some of Doctor Who’s own show plans in the second half of next year. This is far from the first TV show to arrive on a Magic card either — The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Arcane, and even My Little Pony have all been apart of the Universes Beyond initiative. Magic has also seen crossovers with videogames too, from Street Fighter to Fortnite.

The Wizards Presents event also detailed Magic’s 2023 set plans, as well as WOTC’s upcoming plans for Dungeons and Dragons. Most notably, the tabletop roleplaying game is doing away with "editions" for a new system it calls D&D One, but it will also be reviving the Planescape setting.

Tom Marks is IGN's Deputy Reviews Editor. He enjoys card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

Wizards of the Coast announced today that a Doctor Who crossover is in the works for Magic: The Gathering. The latest in a growing list of TV show crossovers, Magic will get new cards and four unique commander decks featuring Doctor Who characters sometime in Q3 of 2023.

Magic’s crossover products fall under a label WOTC calls “Universes Beyond,” separating them from its own canonical universe. For example, today’s Wizards Presents reveal event also gave additional details on a Lord of the Rings-themed set coming out in 2023, though that one will be much larger than the Doctor Who crossover.

The structure of this one is more similar to the upcoming Warhammer 40K commander decks, but it will have booster packs as well. There will be four different Doctor Who commander decks, each with at least some brand new cards depicting characters or events from the show just like the 40K decks. The packs coming alongside those will be Collector Boosters, likely containing special art treatments and foil versions of cards made for the crossover.

While specific cards weren’t shown, we did already get a look at the art for a few of them (viewable in the gallery above). That includes a depiction of Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor giving his iconic speech at the Pandorica, Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor, Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, and even 12 Doctors saving Gallifrey from the Daleks. We’ll have to wait and see what the mechanics of these cards will look like, but so far they seem to be very character-focused.

The exact release date of this crossover hasn’t been revealed, but WOTC says it will be timed around some of Doctor Who’s own show plans in the second half of next year. This is far from the first TV show to arrive on a Magic card either — The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Arcane, and even My Little Pony have all been apart of the Universes Beyond initiative. Magic has also seen crossovers with videogames too, from Street Fighter to Fortnite.

The Wizards Presents event also detailed Magic’s 2023 set plans, as well as WOTC’s upcoming plans for Dungeons and Dragons.

Tom Marks is IGN's Deputy Reviews Editor. He enjoys card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.

Hot on the heels of the 5e reboot of Spelljammer, the team at Wizards of the Coast has revealed One D&D, which markes the beginning of "a new generation of Dungeons & Dragons."

WotC has been working on "what's next" for D&D since last year, but details have been sparse until now. The creative team appeared in a short video during the recent Wizards Presents digital showcase (alongside more info about the upcoming Dragonlance revival and several MTG crossover events) to explain their plan for the future of D&D.

Throughout the presentation, the team detailed the "three pillars" of this next phase of D&D, expected to launch in earnest in 2024. They include ongoing updates to the D&D rules - as we've seen in recent sourcebooks such as Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - as well as an expansion of D&D Beyond, the popular digital compendium that Wizards recently purchased, and (eventually) a set of digital tabletop tools for players and GMs to use in their games at home or online.

The digital toolset, dubbed D&D Digital, is being designed in Unreal Engine 5 and appears to be an all-in-one hybrid of virtual tabletops like Roll20 and TaleSpire and custom mini makers like HeroForge or Eldritch Foundry. "Currently, players are cobbling together all kinds of different apps and websites to have a true integrated D&D experience," says Kale Stutzman, Principle Game Designer for D&D Digital. "What we want to do is actually just provide all the tools that the players need to play themselves in one space."

The pre-alpha footage shown during the broadcast showed several types and sizes of digitally-rendered tabletop minis, from heroes duking it out with Kobolds and skeletons to a massive Black Dragon looming over the dungeonscape. While these were likely not from a specific campaign or dungeon currently in a D&D adventure, that is one of the goals of the project - though the team is also working to give players the power to build their own worlds, too.

"We might give you a pre-made campaign from us that has an exciting castle or keep with a dungeon inside of it," says Carlo Arellano, Principle Art Director on D&D Digital. "But then you're going to be able to take this place, take it apart, and build your own. We're going to have a really robust tool for you to be able to create your own dungeons."

Despite having an early build of the toolset, it's still a long way off from release. "Right now, we're in early development of our digital experience," Stutzman said. "We can play a game role some dice, see the miniatures moving around in a 3D play space, but that's just the core of it."

The biggest shift - and one that players can get their hands on much sooner - is how the tabletop D&D team is approaching the evolution of the game itself moving forward. "We did a smart thing with Fifth Edition, by listening to the fans," says Chris Perkins, D&D's Game Design Architect. "And what came out of that process was a system that is stable, that is well loved, that incorporates the best elements of earlier editions. Now that we have that, we are no longer in the position where we think of D&D as an edition – it's just D&D."

The next iteration of the core rules is already in its playtesting phase - you can check out the latest Unearthed Arcana on D&D Beyond for the first round of updates and additions. This first release introduces a new player race - the Celestial counterpart to the Tieflings, known as Ardlings - and there are already several noteworthy rules changes, even considering recent alterations to the system in TCoE or Monsters of the Multiverse. For example, characters currently receive additional Ability score points based on their lineage or species - however, these increases are now tied to their Backgrounds in the updated ruleset, and every Background now also provides a Feat. Soldiers receive +2 STR and +1 CON, for instance, along with the Savage Attacker feat, while characters with the Street Urchin background get a bonus to Dexterity/Wisdom and the Lucky feat.

"Backgrounds are something that we took apart, examined every piece of, and rebuilt with the goal of having [them] play an even larger role in your character's identity," says Jeremy Crawford, another of D&D's Game Design Architects, during an extended presentation of the new playtesting rules. Other big departures from current 5e rules include certain Feats being tied to a character's level, truncating the nine current spell lists for each class into just three based on the magic's source (Arcane, Divine, and Primal), or codifying the notion that rolling a Natural 1 always means failure - on any check, no matter how skilled a character may be.

Crawford says that while not all the proposed changes will eventually become official rules, the testing will go on for some time, much like the D&D Next initiative that eventually became Fifth Edition. "The big difference this time is we're giving feedback on the game we're already playing," Crawford says. "Rather than playtesting basically a brand new game bottom to top, instead now it's like 'all right, it's the game we're playing now', but now let's zoom in on this piece of it and think, 'How might we get more fun, more speed, more options here?' And then move on to another piece of the game until all of that coalesces in 2024 in the new books."

One D&D is scheduled to launch officially in 2024. In the meantime, check out what's on the horizon for D&D in 2023, including the revival of another classic setting.

JR is a Senior Producer at IGN, you can follow him on Twitter for more video games and tabletop RPG shenanigans.