If you want to take in the full scope of the Halo cross-media universe, you need to be reading dark Horse's Halo comics. Fortunately, that task is about to get much easier thanks to the release of a softcover omnibus collection called Halo: Initiation and Escalation Compendium.

This hefty graphic novel collects the entirety of Halo: Initiation and Halo: Escalation, totaling 27 issues and 650 pages. Both series greatly expand on the story of Spartan-IV Sarah Palmer, with Initiation serving as a prequel to 2012's Halo 4 and Escalation picking up where the game leaves off.

Check out the cover to Halo: Initiation and Escalation Compendium below:

Here's the official description for the compendium:

In the dark years following the war with the Covenant, the Spartans of UNSC Infinity represent humanity's best hope against a growing tide of enemies that imperil all they have tirelessly worked to recover. Led by Commander Palmer, these super-soldiers are unparalleled warriors, but it will take more than raw combat skill and dogged bravery to keep humankind safe from the danger that approaches on all sides.

Halo: Initiation originally debuted in 2013, making it the first Halo comic published after Dark Horse acquired the Halo license from Marvel Comics. Escalation followed shortly after, ultimately running for 24 issues. Dark Horse has yet to announce any follow-up books, though they did recently publish The Art of Halo Infinite.

Halo: Initiation and Escalation Compendium is priced at $39.99 and will be released on June 29, 2022.

Paramount+ recently debuted the long-awaited live-action Halo series. While the series isn't set in the same continuity as the rest of the Halo franchise, we think that's worked to the show's benefit so far.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Frank Langella has reportedly been fired from Netflix's The Fall of the House of Usher following an investigation into his alleged misconduct on set.

According to Deadline, Mike Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher was about halfway through production when Langella was reportedly terminated from the series following an investigation into sexual harassment claims, in which Langella was allegedly accused of "making inappropriate comments to a female co-star on set during work."

The investigation apparently determined that Langella had been "involved in unacceptable conduct" on the set of the eight-episode Netflix series based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he was starring as Roderick Usher. His role will now be recast and all of the scenes that were already filmed with Langella will be reshot with a new actor.

Langella previously portrayed disgraced former U.S. President Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon. He also starred in 1979's Dracula, 1987's Masters of the Universe as Skeletor, FX's The Americans, and more recently Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7. Flanagan announced in December that Langella had been cast as the patriarch of the house in his Netflix series.

Filming on the series will apparently continue with scenes that do not involve the Roderick Usher character until a new actor has been drafted into the role. Mark Hamill, Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell, and Carl Lumbly are among the cast members that have been announced for the series, which joins several other Flanagan-helmed horror series on Netflix.

Flanagan previously adapted two other novels, turning them into The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor for Netflix. He recently followed those shows up with Midnight Mass, and he also has two other novel adaptations in the work, including 1994's The Midnight Club and 1992's The Season of Passage, which is said to be a horror story set on Mars.

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

It sounds as though Top Gun: Maverick was quite a grueling shoot, with director Joseph Kosinski filming over 800 hours of footage.

During an interview with Empire Magazine, the director revealed that he shot the equivalent of what Peter Jackson and co. did for all the Lord of the Rings movies put together.

“Out of a 12- or 14-hour day, you might get 30 seconds of good footage,” he explained. “But it was so hard-earned. It just took a very long time to get it all. Months and months of aerial shooting. We shot as much footage as the three Lord of The Rings movies combined. I think it was 800 hours of footage.”

Top Gun: Maverick sees Tom Cruise return to his iconic '80s role. However, this time he’s tasked with training up a new generation of fighter pilots. An experienced pilot himself, Cruise had to take a hands-on approach when it came to training up his new recruits – much like Maverick in the movie.

“I had to teach them how to turn the cameras on and off, and about camera angles and lenses,” said Cruise. “We didn’t have unlimited time in these jets. If they were going up for 20-30 minutes, I had to make sure that we got what we needed.”

The result is some spectacular in-flight shots as we saw in the recent trailer. However, it sounds as though his pilots-in-training had to work a lot harder to get those shots.

“You had to be incredibly efficient,” said Teller. “You had to, a lot of the time, create an imaginary eyeline to where another jet would be, and when you say a line, your face better be telling the story. The sun needs to be at the right angle.”

Unfortunately, it looks as though despite Val Kilmer’s return, he’s going to be grounded this time around. Equally, Cruise was stopped from flying an F-18 jet despite his eagerness to clamber into the cockpit.

Top Gun: Maverick stars Tom Cruise as Maverick alongside Val Kilmer, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Ed Harris, Danny Ramirez, Manny Jacinto, and Greg Tarzan Davis.

Joseph Kosinski directed the film based on a script by Christopher McQuarrie, Ehren Kruger, and Eric Warren Singer.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

The full version of eFootball has finally been released but it's still missing some of the PES series' major modes.

Master League, Team Play, Co-Op, Match Lobby, and Edit are all missing from the 1.0 update that promised to turn the game from what Konami called "basically a demo" into the fully-fledged version of its new soccer series.

These modes "will unfortunately not be included in v1.0.0", the game's official Twitter account tweeted (below). "We ask for your kind patience until they are ready," it said.

Lastly, we have received a lot of questions regarding 'Master League', 'Edit', 'Team Play', 'Co-op' and 'Match Lobby' (where you can create a room to play with your friends).
They will unfortunately not be included in v1.0.0. We ask for your kind patience until they are ready.

— eFootball (@play_eFootball) April 14, 2022

The missing Master League is the manager mode from PES where players start with a basic team and build it up to brilliance. It's something of a signature mode for the PES series, but it seems Konami is placing less importance on it having shifted to eFootball for th enewest iteration.

The absence of Match Lobby (which let players create an online room for playing with friends) and Co-Op also severely limits the ability to play with others that PES was known for.

The development team said last week it was working to "regain the trust" of players after a pretty disastrous launch last October and the new update has made several improvements to the previous version of eFootball (that IGN said was awful).

Most gameplay mechanics received changes, including to defending, passing, and shooting, while on a team level options were added that let players change formations, alter player roles, deploy tactics, and so on.

Arguably the biggest addition comes in the Dream Team mode, previously called Creative Team, which allows players to combine a mixture of their own players with real-life soccer stars to form their perfect team.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the CEO of SpaceX and world's richest person has made a "best and final" offer to buy the social media company. That offer states that he will pay $54.20 per share in cash, which is 54% higher than the company's share price the day before Musk began his recent investment in the company. In total, Musk's offer for 100% of the company is valued at around a staggering $43 billion.

I made an offer https://t.co/VvreuPMeLu

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2022

Right now, Twitter's market valuation is $37 billion, so Musk's offer is significantly higher.

Elon Musk is currently Twitter's largest shareholder, with a 9.2% stake. But following that recent investment, Musk appears to be having second thoughts about his relationship with the company.

As noted in the Bloomberg report, in a letter sent to Twitter Musk said, "since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve [its free speech] societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

“If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” said Musk.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO's offer was announced in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Comission, and comes following his decision to turn down a seat on Twitter's board of directors.

Following the news of his 9.2% share purchase going public, he began discussions with his followers on Twitter about what could be changed at the company. Despite turning down the board position, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said that the company would always be open to Musk's input, but it appears Musk wants more than that.

Most of these “top” accounts tweet rarely and post very little content.

Is Twitter dying? https://t.co/lj9rRXfDHE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2022

As seen in the tweet above, Musk clearly believes that major change is needed at Twitter, and evidentaly from this offer believes he's the one to make it happen. It's now in the hands of Twitter's board and shareholders to accept or reject Musk's money.

Header image credit: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

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

David Cronenberg’s new film Crimes of the Future just got its impressive first trailer.

Giving us a glimpse at some of the weird and truly horrific wonders that await, the trailer sheds some light on this mysterious project, as we get a glimpse of the future of human evolution from the twisted mind that brought us Scanners and Videodrome.

“As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, the body undergoes new transformations and mutations,” reads the official synopsis. Viggo Mortensen stars as Saul Tenser – a whole new kind of performance artist who, along with his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux), publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances.

It all sounds completely out there, and with some Geiger-esque visuals depicting the sheer horror of humanity’s newfound technology, it’s quite the return to form for Cronenberg.

There's even a pretty ominous new poster, too:

“Timlin (Kristen Stewart), an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed… Their mission – to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.”

Quite how far Saul will go in his pursuit of body modification remains to be seen. Besides this brief synopsis, little else is known about the film, although Mortensen did previously tell GQ that this idea has been on the backburner with Cronenberg for quite some time.

“It's something he wrote a long time ago, and he never got it made,” he said. “Now, he's refined it, and he wants to shoot it. Hopefully, it'll be this summer we'll be filming. I would say, without giving the story away, he's going maybe a little bit back to his origins.”

Crimes of the Future stars Viggo Mortensen as Saul Tenser, alongside Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, and Scott Speedman. David Cronenberg directed the film based on his own original script.

The film will debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022 before its official release in June.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has been accused of interfering in the Activision Blizzard sexual harassment lawsuit.

Allegations were made by Melanie Proctor, assistant chief counsel for California's Department for Fair Employment and Housing, after her boss, Chief Counsel Janette Wipper, was fired by the governor last month.

As reported by Bloomberg, Proctor resigned in protest to the firing and sent an email to staff saying the governor "began to interfere" in recent weeks and, "as we continued to win in state court, this interference increased, mimicking the interests of Activision's counsel."

She added: "The Office of the Governor repeatedly demanded advance notice of litigation strategy and of next steps in the litigation," and that her boss Wipper "attempted to protect" the agency's independence.

"I hereby resign, effective April 13, 2022, in protest of the interference and Janette’s termination," Proctor said.

Newsom's communication director Erin Mellon said "claims of interference by our office are categorically false", adding that the governor's office "will continue to support DFEH in their efforts to fight all forms of discrimination and protect Californians."

The lawsuit was filed on July 20 last year and became the first in a long series of accusations against Activision Blizzard over its alleged "frat boy" culture. It's currently pending in Los Angeles Superior Court with an expected trial date in February 2023, though it's unclear if these current allegations and the departures of Wipper and Proctor will affect the lawsuit.

Activision Blizzard recently settled another sexual harassment lawsuit with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $18 million but faces similar allegations from an anonymous individual and, of course, the state of California.

For a full timeline of the events that have transpired since, including Xbox's intent to acquire Activision Blizzard, check out IGN's story here.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Thumbnail image credit: Aric Crabb/MediaNews Group/East Bay Times via Getty Images

Hasbro announced today that it will be acquiring D&D Beyond the digital toolset and library for fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons.

The announcement came by way of Hasbro's investor newsfeed, followed by a post on the official Dungeons & Dragons website.

Welcome to the party, @DnDBEYOND – are you ready for the next adventure? https://t.co/iGtHcnRVUH pic.twitter.com/Ph5kkn7xMk

— Dungeons & Dragons (@Wizards_DnD) April 13, 2022

"Dungeons & Dragons and D&D Beyond have always felt like a part of the same family," reads D&D's announcement. "That’s why we are excited to welcome everyone at D&D Beyond to formally join us at Wizards of the Coast, bringing together two teams dedicated to continuing to make Dungeons & Dragons easy to run and accessible to all!"

More importantly, it seems that current D&D Beyond members needn't worry about losing access to their catalog of campaigns, created characters, or purchased books.

"You’re probably wondering what kind of change might happen as a result of these two teams coming together," Wizards writes, "so let’s make this clear: we have no plans to stop supporting D&D Beyond. The purchases you’ve made, the characters you’ve created, and the campaigns you’ve run aren’t going anywhere."

Calling it a " strategic acquisition", Hasbro seems to consider the purchase—which will cost the toy giant the "immaterial" sum of $146.3 million—an obvious step, citing D&D Beyond as a "significant contribution" to D&D's fastest-growing revenue stream. "The acquisition of D&D Beyond will accelerate our progress in both gaming and direct to consumer," said Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, "two priority areas of growth for Hasbro, providing immediate access to a loyal, growing player base."

Since launching in 2017 as an officially-licensed online compendium for both the free version of the D&D ruleset (with digital editions of published sourcebooks available for purchase), D&D Beyond quickly gained popularity with its additional tools for both Dungeon Masters and players. It's digital character sheet pulled from official content and playtest material—along with a wide variety of homebrew content shared by the community—and has since added other tools such as digital dice that do the math for you, encounter builders, and a combat tracker. With the onset of the global pandemic in 2020, the service saw a massive increase in active users as players started to move their weekly D&D games online.

There's been no word on whether or not players who purchase physical copies of new fifth-edition D&D books will be able to receive free or discounted digital copies, which has long been a topic of discussion within the digital D&D community. However, Hasbro's announcement does claim that the team aims to follow "a unified, player-centric vision" of Dungeons & Dragons moving forward.

“The team at D&D Beyond has built an incredible digital platform," said Cynthia Williams, President of WotC and Hasbro's Digital Gaming division, "and together we will deliver the best-possible Dungeons & Dragons experience for players around the world.”

The transaction still isn't final, though it has been approved by both Hasbro’s and Fandom’s Boards of Directors and is expected to close during the second or third quarter of 2022. Follow along here for more updates on digital D&D, as well as all the upcoming book releases and everything we know about the next version of Dungeons & Dragons.

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

Hasbro announced today that it will be acquiring D&D Beyond the digital toolset and library for fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons.

The announcement came by way of Hasbro's investor newsfeed, followed by a post on the official Dungeons & Dragons website.

Welcome to the party, @DnDBEYOND – are you ready for the next adventure? https://t.co/iGtHcnRVUH pic.twitter.com/Ph5kkn7xMk

— Dungeons & Dragons (@Wizards_DnD) April 13, 2022

"Dungeons & Dragons and D&D Beyond have always felt like a part of the same family," reads D&D's announcement. "That’s why we are excited to welcome everyone at D&D Beyond to formally join us at Wizards of the Coast, bringing together two teams dedicated to continuing to make Dungeons & Dragons easy to run and accessible to all!"

More importantly, it seems that current D&D Beyond members needn't worry about losing access to their catalog of campaigns, created characters, or purchased books.

"You’re probably wondering what kind of change might happen as a result of these two teams coming together," Wizards writes, "so let’s make this clear: we have no plans to stop supporting D&D Beyond. The purchases you’ve made, the characters you’ve created, and the campaigns you’ve run aren’t going anywhere."

Calling it a " strategic acquisition", Hasbro seems to consider the purchase—which will cost the toy giant the "immaterial" sum of $146.3 million—an obvious step, citing D&D Beyond as a "significant contribution" to D&D's fastest-growing revenue stream. "The acquisition of D&D Beyond will accelerate our progress in both gaming and direct to consumer," said Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, "two priority areas of growth for Hasbro, providing immediate access to a loyal, growing player base."

Since launching in 2017 as an officially-licensed online compendium for both the free version of the D&D ruleset (with digital editions of published sourcebooks available for purchase), D&D Beyond quickly gained popularity with its additional tools for both Dungeon Masters and players. It's digital character sheet pulled from official content and playtest material—along with a wide variety of homebrew content shared by the community—and has since added other tools such as digital dice that do the math for you, encounter builders, and a combat tracker. With the onset of the global pandemic in 2020, the service saw a massive increase in active users as players started to move their weekly D&D games online.

There's been no word on whether or not players who purchase physical copies of new fifth-edition D&D books will be able to receive free or discounted digital copies, which has long been a topic of discussion within the digital D&D community. However, Hasbro's announcement does claim that the team aims to follow "a unified, player-centric vision" of Dungeons & Dragons moving forward.

“The team at D&D Beyond has built an incredible digital platform," said Cynthia Williams, President of WotC and Hasbro's Digital Gaming division, "and together we will deliver the best-possible Dungeons & Dragons experience for players around the world.”

The transaction still isn't final, though it has been approved by both Hasbro’s and Fandom’s Boards of Directors and is expected to close during the second or third quarter of 2022. Follow along here for more updates on digital D&D, as well as all the upcoming book releases and everything we know about the next version of Dungeons & Dragons.

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

Just in case you didn’t think Call of Duty could get any crazier, season 3 seems to hint that Godzilla himself will show up to wreak havoc.

Call of Duty released Season 3’s “Classified Arms” trailer that has the team uncovering a mysterious device while searching for the released Nebula gas released by the Nazis.

The device is broadcasting an audio signal that’s heard at the end of the cinematic. The audio itself is somewhat broken up but sounds suspiciously like Godzilla’s signature roar.

YouTuber PrestigeIsKey posted a screenshot on his Twitter account of the audio ran through a spectrograph and found the words “Monsters Are Real.” And another Twitter user replied with a looping sound of Godzilla’s orca-like sound that matches the audio from the trailer. Both of these clues strongly hint at the famous kaiju making its grand appearance in Warzone.

When you run the audio through a spectrogram... https://t.co/7Xf06mYsb5 pic.twitter.com/qaq6D3cYbd

— Ryan B. (@PrestigeIsKey) April 13, 2022

Literally the same soundhttps://t.co/dPN6iebs2l

— BeeAggressive #MonsterverseShallContinue (@BeePlayingGames) April 13, 2022

Activision has attempted to tell an overarching story for the Warzone battle royale mode beginning in the Modern Warfare reboot in 2019. Since then, each successive Call of Duty has incorporated some of their worlds into the grand Warzone narrative. Recently, the original Verdansk play area was destroyed and replaced by Caldera after Call of Duty: Vanguard was released.

The inclusion of Godzilla would represent a radical change from the semi-realistic atmosphere of Call of Duty games (excluding Zombies mode). This could be an attempt to match Fortnite’s successful partnerships with third-party properties such as Marvel, DC, and Naruto.

That said, Call of Duty has included licensed material in the game before. Rambo, Jigsaw from the Saw horror movie franchise, and John McClane from Die Hard were playable operators in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. More recently, Snoop Dogg joined the lineup as an operator.

Call of Duty Vanguard, the most recent in the franchise, launched to lukewarm reviews. We thought the single-player campaign was highly polished if lacking a bit of variety. The multiplayer felt simple and underwhelming despite running on Modern Warfare’s engine.

David Matthews is a freelance writer for IGN.