The creators of Stranger Things have referenced Game of Thrones while speaking about Season 4, explaining that the story just became "bigger and bigger."

Speaking at Deadline's Contenders Television conference, Matt and Ross Duffer revealed they refer to Stranger Things Season 4 as their "Game of Thrones season" because it has a sprawling story that takes place across different locations, with various groups of characters driving forward separate narratives, all packaged together in the longest season yet.

"We kind of jokingly call it our Game of Thrones season because it's so spread out, so I think that's what's unique or most unique about the season," Matt shared, while Ross explained that they didn't know how big the season would become when they were in the early stages of developing it as they had to consider how much story they wanted to tell in the next chapter.

"Game of Thrones is one thing we've referenced, but also for us really what it's about is revelations, in that we really wanted to start giving the audience some answers," Ross added, revealing that they wrote "a giant 20-page document" for Netflix during the first season to outline the mythology of the show and explain what exactly was going on.

"This season, we really wanted to really get into it and [revealing] some of those answers. But to do that properly, we needed time, so it just became bigger and bigger," the brothers explained, addressing the season's expansive story landscape. "We have these three storylines, are all connected and kind of interwoven together, but it's just very different tones."

While speaking on the panel, Matt and Ross confirmed Season 4 will be "double the length" of any other season that has come before it, with every single episode of the next season running for an hour or longer. Up until now, the longest episode of Stranger Things came at the end of Season 3 during The Battle of Starcourt, which played out across 78 minutes.

"I don't think we have an episode clocking in under an hour – even in Season 1 there were episodes that were like 35 minutes. You kind of forget that," said Matt. "This season, they're very long, so I think it's almost double the length of any season. So that's one reason it's taken so long. It does have this sort of epic quality to it. It's a different feel, for sure."

The penultimate season of Stranger Things is expected to be "bigger, bolder, and more intricate" that previous installments, and will have plenty of surprises in store. As such, the fourth chapter will be split into two parts, with Volume 1 making its debut on Netflix on May 27, and Volume 2 releasing five weeks later on July 1 to complete the nine-episode season.

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

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs is getting an official manga set in Tokyo. The manga will debut in Japanese on April 12 and is simply called Watch Dogs Tokyo, as spotted by manga news feed Manga Mogura RE (below) and shared by Games Radar.

It will feature the evil Bloom Corporation from the Watch Dogs games — which have so far been set in Chicago, San Francisco, and most recently London — as it extends its reach to Japan.

A new manga series based on the "Watch Dogs" video game series by Ubisoft titled "Watch Dogs Tokyo" drawn by Kamo Syuhei (Gangsta: Cursed) & written by Shirato Seiichi will start on Kurage Bunch website on April 12, 2022

Image © Shinchosha, Ubisoft, Kamo Syuhei, Shirato Seiichi pic.twitter.com/XSGhtKiths

— Manga Mogura RE (@MangaMoguraRE) April 7, 2022

Manga Mogura RE also shared a plot synopsis, saying: "It will be about a special new infrastructure system from a company called Bloom Japan used by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to change people's lives. However this new system does in fact also harbour a great darkness.

Not much else is know other than it will be released on manga website Kurage Bunch and is drawn by Kamo Syuhei and written by Shirato Seiichi. It's currently unknown if an English version of the manga will be released.

This isn't Watch Dogs' first foray into the comics world. A four-part series based on Watch Dogs Legion was released last November..

The series has otherwise been quiet since last summer when the Legion of the Dead DLC was released and Ubisoft is yet to confirm if another Watch Dogs game is in development.

IGN has reached out to Ubisoft for comment on the manga's release.

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

A new show from Peacock wants to make you think about death and get sad and stuff. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning is an hour-long home makeover show narrated by Amy Poehler and based on the best-selling book by Margareta Magnusson.

Essentially, it will help people organize their homes and prepare for death… while enjoying the rest of their lives.

“We are so excited to work on such a life-affirming project with the genius creators at Scout,” said Poehler in a statement. “Swedish Death Cleaning reminds us to focus on what is truly important, and we couldn’t find a better team to take this journey with than Peacock and the incredible Scout Team.”

The show will star a Swedish Death Cleaner who helps people who “are at a major crossroads” to organize and declutter their homes.

The art of Death Cleaning (or Döstädning) is a Swedish trend that involves people and their families putting their affairs in order and cutting down on clutter before the person’s death. The idea is to do away with stress and take stock of what’s important.

It’s a little bit Marie Kondo… but with more of a focus on kicking the bucket.

“Whether it's sorting the family heirlooms from the junk, downsizing to a smaller place, or setting up a system to help you stop misplacing your keys, death cleaning gives us the chance to make the later years of our lives as comfortable and stress-free as possible,” reads the book’s synopsis. “Whatever your age, Swedish death cleaning can be used to help you de-clutter your life, and take stock of what's important.”

Each episode of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning will focus on a different person who is visited by the Death Cleaner to help them organize their lives.

It will feature interviews with the homeowner and their families, as well as friends and neighbors as the Death Cleaner encourages their subjects to pass along mementos before their death… and get rid of things they don’t really need.

Peacock has ordered a full series of the show which is created and produced by Scout Productions alongside Amy Poehler’s production company, Paper Kite Productions.

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

Elden Ring seemingly once featured items and quests that focused on exploring NPCs dreams.

Lance McDonald, a prominent dataminer who's previously revealed secrets in Demon's Souls and Bloodborne, explored the mechanic using 2021's network test version of Elden Ring (spotted by Eurogamer).

Though cut from the final game, the content had a unique, fully voiced and animated character called Monk Jiko who requested the player bring him Dream Mist - an item acquired from the dreams of certain NPCs.

I worked really hard on this video you should look at it and tell your friend(s) to look at it https://t.co/bU7soHcJP0

— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) April 11, 2022

Exploration was limited in the early version of Elden Ring but McDonald showed two sleeping characters, a Wolf and Land Octopus, with a "dense fog of sleep" floating around them, indicating that Dream Mist could be extracted.

These were exchanged with Monk Jiko (who was found at the Scavenger's Shack location) for Dreambrew, an item that could be given to different NPCs, sending them to sleep and prompting new dialogue options based on the dreams they had.

McDonald's video shows Dreambrew being used with an early character, Merchant Kalé. After a short bit of voiced dialogue, a message appears saying, "After drinking, he sleeps. His sleep is disturbed by a nightmare of his eyes being burned by the frenzied flame".

McDonald says that Monk Jiko originally had a questline that would weave across much of the game world, and that many characters in the game have unused dialogue related to it. A similar mechanic was seen in previous FromSoftware title Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, where players could uncover new information about the characters and world by sharing a cup of sake with certain NPCs.

Players have uncovered several other bizarre secrets in Elden Ring including a way to make one of its toughest bosses defeat itself, a pair of fancy underwear hidden away in the game files, and a hidden wall that only opens after 50 hits.

In our 10/10 review, IGN said: "Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path."

To make those choices with the best available information, check out our full guide that features everything you could ever hope to know about Elden Ring, including collectible locations, boss strategies, and more.

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

Warning: This article contains potential spoilers for Thor: Love and Thunder.

Thor is getting an all-new look in Thor: Love and Thunder, and it might give us some idea of what he’s been up to since Avengers: Endgame.

It’s no secret that Thor chose to head off into space after that climactic showdown with Thanos in Endgame, and while we all assumed he would join the Guardians of the Galaxy on their cosmic adventures, it looks as though he might have taken a slightly different path.

A new line of Marvel action figures unveiled via Reddit has revealed a new look for the Asgardian ahead of the upcoming sequel… and it’s a surprising glimpse into his recent activities.

That’s right – it looks as though Thor has become a Ravager.

The new toy line reveals several new looks for the Norse god, with a couple of cool riffs on his classic costume. However, it’s the “Ravager Thor” figure that’s really got us scratching our heads. Has Thor decided to take up the Ravager lifestyle?

The toys also include another look at Natalie Portman's appearance as Mighty Thor, and a full look at Christian Bale's take on Gorr the God Butcher.

We've actually already seen parts of Hemsworth's real-life costume before – we just didn't know quite what we were seeing. This set photo shows Chris Hemsworth in what we now know is the “Ravager Thor” costume:

Does this mean we’ll see Thor rolling with Kraglin and the other Ravagers? It certainly seems like a missed opportunity if Sylvester Stallone’s Stakar Ogord isn’t in the mix, too. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see.

Thor: Love and Thunder stars Chris Hemsworth as Thor alongside Natalie Portman, Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Karen Gillan, Jaimie Alexander, Chris Pratt, Sean Gunn, and Taika Waititi.

Taika Waititi directed the film based on a script he co-wrote with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. Marvel boss Kevin Feige produced the film along with Victoria Alonso, Louis D’Esposito, and Todd Hallowell as executive producers.

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

One of the lasting images of Nintendo's motion control era is a Wii Remote crashing through a high-definition television, its hapless owner looking on in shock. It would wind up lodged into the collective memory to such an extent that the Hard Drive would eventually memorialize it with the headline, "Neglected Wii Controller Hurls Itself at Flatscreen TV," complete with a cracked image of Wii Sports Tennis.

It captures a particular moment in video game zeitgeist, when Nintendo inaugurated a new era for motion controls by releasing the Wii and making the world go wild for waggle. It's a moment that Nintendo Switch Sports seeks to recapture, and as I discovered when my shoe went flying off my foot and bounced off the (thankfully) undamaged television screen, it's largely successful.

Nintendo Switch Sports is a collection of six sports – some of which will be familiar to longtime Nintendo fans, some of which are brand new. Tennis and bowling are functionally very similar to their counterparts on the Wii, while the more complex motion controls of Badminton and Swordfighting are reminiscent of Wii Sports Resort. It’s worth mentioning that Nintendo Switch Sports has roughly half the number of minigames available in Wii Sports Resort, though it will add Golf as a free download later in the year to bring the total to seven.

What it offers instead is online multiplayer – a first for the series – adding expanded functionality for some of the games, such as eight player multiplayer in bowling. Feedback from a recent online test was good, and there’s every indication that Nintendo Switch Sports’ online multiplayer will be a strength when the final release becomes available later this month.

Realizing the dreams of the Wii

But local multiplayer is the heart of Nintendo Switch Sports’ appeal, and that was how I spent most of my time in my recent hands-on preview. After choosing my customized “Sportsmate” – Nintendo’s replacement for the Mii – I tried all six minigames, beginning with a 13-round shooting session in soccer and finishing up with swordfighting. By the end I had even managed to work up a little bit of a sweat, bringing me back to the days when I would treat Wii Sports as actual batting practice rather than a series of half-hearted wrist flicks.

My favorite of the minigames was the swordfighting. Referred to as chambara – a nod to Japan’s samurai film genre – it pits two swordfighters against one another as they try to push each other off a platform and into the water below. Rounds consist of a breathless flurry of blocks and ripostes that at first feel like the motion-controlled version of button-mashing, but soon reveal a deep and entertaining level of strategy that belie its deceptively simple mechanics.

It made me think of the early days of the Wii, when everyone was obsessed with the notion of a lightsaber game using the Wii Remote. The demand laid bare the limitations of the original Wii Remote, prompting Nintendo to release the improved Wii MotionPlus peripheral alongside Wii Sports Resort. We’ve had many sword games since, but as I overwhelmed Nintendo’s PR rep with a flurry of diagonal slashes, I thought of my once fervent wish for a motion-controlled lightsaber game.

Tennis, by contrast, utterly defeated me. Having made the leap to Switch more or less unchanged, it’s still based more on timing than actual finesse, or so it seems to me. Of course, I’m pretty miserable at tennis in real life, too, so maybe this is just an example of Nintendo Switch Sports being more realistic than I give it credit for. I had better luck with badminton, which was similar to tennis, but featured more precise motion controls on top of a deeper strategy layer thanks to its spike mechanic.

The best moment, though, was when I accidentally reenacted one of the famous memes from the mid-2000s… with my shoe. Nintendo Switch Sports supports Ring Fit’s leg strap, which is used for its new soccer minigame. I was trying out its shootout mode, which involved swinging my leg awkwardly at just the right moment, and off my shoe went. It goes to show that the more things change with Nintendo Switch Sports, the more they stay the same.

Motion controls have come of age in the years since the Wii. They're far more sophisticated now, and they can be found in everything from Doom to VR platforms. They haven't quite been the fundamental paradigm shift that some imagined they might be when the Wii was released, but they've certainly found their niche.

Either way, I had fun revisiting the early days of motion controls for an afternoon. Like the original Wii Sports, most of the minigames rely more on novelty than substance, which makes me question whether they will ultimately have any degree of staying power. But I don’t think anyone expected to still be talking about Wii Sports more than 15 years after its original release. Some games are just timeless.

Nintendo Switch Sports will be out April 29 on Nintendo Switch.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

The Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer could be teasing the inclusion of a Star Wars section.

Eagle eyed fans have noticed what could be the foot of an AT-ST walker during a brief scene in the trailer, indicating that Star Wars could be one of the Disney properties included in the next game.

Images circulating on the Kingdom Hearts reddit (as noted by VGC) show side-by-side comparisons of the trailer and the AT-ST foot, with fans speculating that the jungle setting could be Star Wars' Endor.

Each game in the series features several Disney-themed worlds to play through, with Kingdom Hearts 3 including properties such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Frozen, and Toy Story.

Neither Star Wars nor Marvel – two of Dinsey's biggest franchises – have appeared in Kingdom Hearts games before, and neither developer Square Enix or Disney itself has confirmed if this will be the case in future.

Series creator Tetsuya Nomura previously confirmed that the reason for Star Wars and Marvel properties not appearing in Kingdom Hearts 3 was simply down to contrctual issues. If those have been thought about far in advance for the new game, it's entirely possible we could see brand new universes popping up in future.

Fans likely won't get a confirmation for a while as the game was only unveiled yesterday at the Kingdom Hearts 20th anniversary event. Square Enix also confirmed the game was still in "early development" and Kingdom Hearts 3's production infamously lasted 13 years.

While some gameplay was unveiled showing protagonist Sora traversing what appears to be a fairly normal city (aside from the giant Heartless monster), we've since learned that it was from a demo developed on Unreal Engine 4. The final game itself is being made on Unreal Engine 5, meaning those sections may not be playable in the same way for some time.

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

It looks as though Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness won’t be one of the MCU’s longest films after all.

According to ticket slaes website Fandango, the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel clocks in at 126 minutes – a far cry from the 181-minute runtime of Avengers: Endgame. Taking credits into account, this means it’s likely the movie itself will actually run less than two hours long.

Per ComicBook, recent rumors suggested that Doctor Strange 2 would run to almost 2 and a half hours. That would have put it among the longest MCU movies to date, but it looks as though that’s not the case. Instead, it sits in the lower half of MCU movies to date, on par with the original Iron Man.

The much leaner runtime could be reflective of recent reshoots, which saw Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness undergo “significant” changes. One source claimed there have been “bigger reshoots on other MCU movies” while another said they were large enough to be “like a whole other movie.”

Either way, it looks as though Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness won’t be as bulky as we may have thought.

Elsewhere, director Sam Raimi has expressed interest in working with Tobey Maguire again, saying that the thought of making another Spider-Man movie with him “sounds beautiful”. He also weighed in on exactly who the Doctor Strange 2 villain will be.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, alongside Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch. They’re joined by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Rachel McAdams, and Xochitl Gomez.

Sam Raimi directed the movie from a script by Michael Waldron, based on characters created by comic book legends, Steve Ditko, and Stan Lee.

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

Kingdom Hearts 4's impressive gameplay introduction was made using Unreal Engine 4 – but the final game is being developed on Unreal Engine 5, and will see improved visuals when it's released.

A lengthy reveal yesterday showed off a more realistic visual look in the game's Quadratum area, as well as shots that may hint at a Star Wars section of the game. It seems this is only a taster of how the final game will look, as a Famitsu article (translated by IGN) points out.

Speaking at the Kingdom Hearts anniversary event where the game was revealed, co-director Yasushi Yasue explained that the trailer was made using Unreal Engine 4, but the game itself is being developed using Unreal Engine 5. Yasue pointed out that the final game will see better lighting and visual detail in particular.

However, it seems it'll be a little while before we see any of the fruit of that work – the game has no release date, and Famitsu indicates that there won't be any more information released in June, the usual timeframe for E3 and other major game reveal events.

Unreal Engine 5 was officially released last week, and creator Epic has shown off some extremely impressive creations already – it bodes well for Kingdom Hearts, which tends to skip between multiple visual styles, so could benefit hugely from the more advanced engine.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

An Elden Ring speedrunner has now beaten the game in less than nine minutes.

YouTube user Distortion2 has cut his time down to just 8 minutes and 56 seconds, primarily using the Zip glitch – which essentially allows players to teleport across different parts of the map.

Combined with other exploits that allow most of the game to be skipped, Distortion2 has shaved minutes from his time day after day since setting the first under-30 minute speedrun a month ago.

Several different speedrun styles already exist such as runs without taking damage, runs without dealing damage, and more complete playthroughs in which players beat all of Elden Ring's major bosses.

Like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, players will likely find new ways to play and exploit Elden Ring for years to come, resulting in even more ridiculous speedruns down the line.

Just last week players discovered a way to make the infamous boss Starscourge Radahn defeat himself, for example, luring him to the water's edge so that he splashes in and dies.

Elden Ring's other bizarre secrets discovered so far include a pair of fancy underwear hidden away in the game files and a hidden wall that only opens after 50 hits.

In our 10/10 review, IGN said: "Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path."

To make those choices with the best available information, check out our full guide that features everything you could ever hope to know about Elden Ring, including collectible locations, boss strategies, and more.

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