Vikings: Valhalla is a massive technical undertaking, from recreating Viking weaponry and battles to costumes to, yes, the boats. Fortunately, the crew making the show is working with what's apparently the largest fleet of Viking ships in the world at the moment.

At IGN Fan Fest, actor Sam Corlett -- who plays Leif Erikson in the upcoming show -- talked about getting to film scenes on the giant boats.

"I was unaware that we actually have the largest flotilla of Viking ships in the world," he said. "And to be able to see the craftsmanship there and to be able to play on that as actors, but also it almost suspended you from having to act. Because some of the practical effects where we'd be in a massive tank in the back lot with a crane holding two sides of the boat, pulling us up and over things, wind coming through, a crane causing waves, there was a lot of colliding of many different people creating this moment."

The boats aren't the only major setpiece the actors got to work with. Frida Gustavsson, who plays Freydís Eiríksdóttir, talked about "Viking team building" exercises the actors had to go through including crash courses in axes, saying they did most, though not all, the action themselves. And later on, showrunner Jeb Stuart described a massive London Bridge set piece for season 1.

"[The London Bridge Piece] took 18 months of planning from start to finish. We had to build multiple parts of the bridge, we had to shoot it over many many days and weeks, it's just a very exciting to see how the action components come to play in the actual telling of a story."

Vikings: Valhalla is set to premiere on February 25 on Netflix, and we got a first look at the opening scenes from the historical drama during the full panel at IGN FanFest.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Vikings: Valhalla is a massive technical undertaking, from recreating Viking weaponry and battles to costumes to, yes, the boats. Fortunately, the crew making the show is working with what's apparently the largest fleet of Viking ships in the world at the moment.

At IGN Fan Fest, actor Sam Corlett -- who plays Leif Erikson in the upcoming show -- talked about getting to film scenes on the giant boats.

"I was unaware that we actually have the largest flotilla of Viking ships in the world," he said. "And to be able to see the craftsmanship there and to be able to play on that as actors, but also it almost suspended you from having to act. Because some of the practical effects where we'd be in a massive tank in the back lot with a crane holding two sides of the boat, pulling us up and over things, wind coming through, a crane causing waves, there was a lot of colliding of many different people creating this moment."

The boats aren't the only major setpiece the actors got to work with. Frida Gustavsson, who plays Freydís Eiríksdóttir, talked about "Viking team building" exercises the actors had to go through including crash courses in axes, saying they did most, though not all, the action themselves. And later on, showrunner Jeb Stuart described a massive London Bridge set piece for season 1.

"[The London Bridge Piece] took 18 months of planning from start to finish. We had to build multiple parts of the bridge, we had to shoot it over many many days and weeks, it's just a very exciting to see how the action components come to play in the actual telling of a story."

Vikings: Valhalla is set to premiere on February 25 on Netflix, and we got a first look at the opening scenes from the historical drama during the full panel at IGN FanFest.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Nightingale, the upcoming survival game from Improbable studio Inflexion, is a magical realm-hopping adventure full of bizarre fae creatures and worlds inspired by Victorian themes and fairytales. Just how many mysterious worlds will players get to explore in Nightingale? Inflexion isn't telling, but in an interview for IGN Fan Fest, art and audio director Neil Thompson suggests they will be at least "seemingly endless."

Thompson joined CEO Aaryn Flynn at Fan Fest to talk about the different worlds of Nightingale, which Thompson says Inflexion thinks of as parallel universes inhabited by creatures, monsters, and wildlife. Players travel between the worlds via portals, Flynn says, which appear after they have explored a particular realm sufficiently. Once a portal is found, players can decide whether they want to move on or remain where they are. Flynn adds that while they aren't discussing the details yet, there will be some checks in place to ensure players have the correct gear and other resources to be able to survive what's on the other side.

The creatures and worlds connected via the portals come from a number of different inspirations, including Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Dutch and other classical art, and of course, the Victorian era which Thompson calls "incredibly visually evocative." And it's all deeply rooted in myth.

"From a creature perspective we wanted to delve into this idea of folklore and fairytale," he says. "The Bandersnatch, in our world, is a pretty vicious cross between a raptor and a batlike creature. They're pretty lively in the realms, not necessarily something you'd want to meet on a dark night, that's for sure."

He's more coy when asked if we might run across a Jabberwocky, but is willing to spill some details on other creatures. Thompson goes on to detail The Bound, a faction created by the adversarial Fae as a "mimicry of humanity" to combat the player RealmWalkers. The Bound come in many forms, including minion creatures, long-range attackers, magic users, tank-like creatures, and a bruiser seen in the trailer with a wheel for a head, "just cuz it was kind of cool," according to Thompson.

He also details the Harpies, flying creatures that can steal things from the player's encampment and even disguise themselves as old women wrapped in cloaks to lure players into a false sense of security until they can get close.

We spoke earlier this year with Flynn about the BioWare roots of Nightingale and more about how it will handle things like player choice and worldbuilding, as well as its optimistic tone. Nightingale is preparing for an early access beta sometime later this year.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Nightingale, the upcoming survival game from Improbable studio Inflexion, is a magical realm-hopping adventure full of bizarre fae creatures and worlds inspired by Victorian themes and fairytales. Just how many mysterious worlds will players get to explore in Nightingale? Inflexion isn't telling, but in an interview for IGN Fan Fest, art and audio director Neil Thompson suggests they will be at least "seemingly endless."

Thompson joined CEO Aaryn Flynn at Fan Fest to talk about the different worlds of Nightingale, which Thompson says Inflexion thinks of as parallel universes inhabited by creatures, monsters, and wildlife. Players travel between the worlds via portals, Flynn says, which appear after they have explored a particular realm sufficiently. Once a portal is found, players can decide whether they want to move on or remain where they are. Flynn adds that while they aren't discussing the details yet, there will be some checks in place to ensure players have the correct gear and other resources to be able to survive what's on the other side.

The creatures and worlds connected via the portals come from a number of different inspirations, including Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Dutch and other classical art, and of course, the Victorian era which Thompson calls "incredibly visually evocative." And it's all deeply rooted in myth.

"From a creature perspective we wanted to delve into this idea of folklore and fairytale," he says. "The Bandersnatch, in our world, is a pretty vicious cross between a raptor and a batlike creature. They're pretty lively in the realms, not necessarily something you'd want to meet on a dark night, that's for sure."

He's more coy when asked if we might run across a Jabberwocky, but is willing to spill some details on other creatures. Thompson goes on to detail The Bound, a faction created by the adversarial Fae as a "mimicry of humanity" to combat the player RealmWalkers. The Bound come in many forms, including minion creatures, long-range attackers, magic users, tank-like creatures, and a bruiser seen in the trailer with a wheel for a head, "just cuz it was kind of cool," according to Thompson.

He also details the Harpies, flying creatures that can steal things from the player's encampment and even disguise themselves as old women wrapped in cloaks to lure players into a false sense of security until they can get close.

We spoke earlier this year with Flynn about the BioWare roots of Nightingale and more about how it will handle things like player choice and worldbuilding, as well as its optimistic tone. Nightingale is preparing for an early access beta sometime later this year.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the first time developer Traveller's Tales has portrayed every movie in the mainline Star Wars series. As such, there are plenty of classic creatures the studio had to adapt for the first time, including ones that have never been made by Lego as physical kits. To keep things as authentic as possible, the artists used parts from existing kits as reference for these new creatures, and ‘built’ them from a mixture of existing and original parts.

In a new developer diary debuted during IGN Fan Fest, Neil Crofts, Head of Character Art on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, said: “What we would do is we’d look at the film reference, and we’d take existing Lego creatures and characters that are similar, and then what we end up with is something that is as accurate as we could make it.”

“Take the bantha, for example,” he said. “It’s really true to lego IP and it’s really true to the film IP.”

Concept art in the video also shows how the Rathar, the squid-like creatures from The Force Awakens, was designed using a mix of brand new parts and items from existing kits. The Rathar’s body is a new two-piece component, but it is based on the Lego GyroSphere from the Lego Jurassic World kit. Attached to this body are newly-designed tentacles, but also the Lego dragon kit’s tail and tusks. Finally, the Rathar’s mouth is made up from classic 3794 Lego pieces, perhaps better known as the flat plates with one stud on. This means a minifig character can be easily clipped onto the mouth for any eating scenes.

While other creatures may not use exact pieces from other kits, they’re closely modelled to match any close references in order to maintain authenticity.

For more from Lego Star Wars, check out what comes in each edition of The Skywalker Saga, and an overview of what you can expect from this noticeably different Lego game.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the first time developer Traveller's Tales has portrayed every movie in the mainline Star Wars series. As such, there are plenty of classic creatures the studio had to adapt for the first time, including ones that have never been made by Lego as physical kits. To keep things as authentic as possible, the artists used parts from existing kits as reference for these new creatures, and ‘built’ them from a mixture of existing and original parts.

In a new developer diary debuted during IGN Fan Fest, Neil Crofts, Head of Character Art on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, said: “What we would do is we’d look at the film reference, and we’d take existing Lego creatures and characters that are similar, and then what we end up with is something that is as accurate as we could make it.”

“Take the bantha, for example,” he said. “It’s really true to lego IP and it’s really true to the film IP.”

Concept art in the video also shows how the Rathar, the squid-like creatures from The Force Awakens, was designed using a mix of brand new parts and items from existing kits. The Rathar’s body is a new two-piece component, but it is based on the Lego GyroSphere from the Lego Jurassic World kit. Attached to this body are newly-designed tentacles, but also the Lego dragon kit’s tail and tusks. Finally, the Rathar’s mouth is made up from classic 3794 Lego pieces, perhaps better known as the flat plates with one stud on. This means a minifig character can be easily clipped onto the mouth for any eating scenes.

While other creatures may not use exact pieces from other kits, they’re closely modelled to match any close references in order to maintain authenticity.

For more from Lego Star Wars, check out what comes in each edition of The Skywalker Saga, and an overview of what you can expect from this noticeably different Lego game.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

The upcoming Halo TV show will not take place in the timeline of the video games, and instead uses a newly formed “Silver Timeline”. Despite this, the show is still “rooted in canon” and will feature everything you’d expect from the story of Master Chief’s fight against the Covenant. It just comes from a “different perspective”.

As part of IGN Fan Fest 2022, Halo’s executive producer and 343 Industries’ Studio Head of Transmedia, Kiki Wolfkill, said: “The Halo Silver Timeline is about giving the show and the core canon room to grow, evolve, and be what they need to be. Really think of the Halo Silver Timeline as being rooted in canon, so events and characters and certainly all of the things you see in canon are all part of the show, but sometimes you will see those events from a different perspective.”

“There are times and places where we’ve had to pull events closer together than they may be in the [original] chronology, and that’s a good example of where the context will maybe shift a little bit, but it should feel very Halo,” she elaborated. “At the end of the day the core of Halo are those pillars of heroism and humanity and the wonder of sci-fi and hope. All of those things are core to what we’re doing. It’s a case of when people watch the show it will feel Halo and there will be a lot that they recognise verbatim, and a lot that will feel a little bit different just so the narrative has a chance to go where it needs to go without colliding with some of the core canon.”

One of the things that will diverge from the game’s original canon is that we will actually see Master Chief’s face. In the games, the SPARTAN never publicly removes his helmet.

While the Silver Timeline means the Halo TV show is free to take its own approach for some aspects, plenty of nods to the games will be included.

“There are a lot of Easter eggs in there, and it was a lot of fun putting them in,” said director Otto Bathurst. “We had an incredible team, particularly in production design and the graphic designer, who has absolutely taken it to the n-th level. So I’m going to put my neck on the line and challenge you to freeze frame and zoom in.”

The Halo TV show will premiere on March 24, 2022 on Paramount+ in the US. For more, check out our extensive trailer breakdown and the entire cast revealed so far.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

The upcoming Halo TV show will not take place in the timeline of the video games, and instead uses a newly formed “Silver Timeline”. Despite this, the show is still “rooted in canon” and will feature everything you’d expect from the story of Master Chief’s fight against the Covenant. It just comes from a “different perspective”.

As part of IGN Fan Fest 2022, Halo’s executive producer and 343 Industries’ Studio Head of Transmedia, Kiki Wolfkill, said: “The Halo Silver Timeline is about giving the show and the core canon room to grow, evolve, and be what they need to be. Really think of the Halo Silver Timeline as being rooted in canon, so events and characters and certainly all of the things you see in canon are all part of the show, but sometimes you will see those events from a different perspective.”

“There are times and places where we’ve had to pull events closer together than they may be in the [original] chronology, and that’s a good example of where the context will maybe shift a little bit, but it should feel very Halo,” she elaborated. “At the end of the day the core of Halo are those pillars of heroism and humanity and the wonder of sci-fi and hope. All of those things are core to what we’re doing. It’s a case of when people watch the show it will feel Halo and there will be a lot that they recognise verbatim, and a lot that will feel a little bit different just so the narrative has a chance to go where it needs to go without colliding with some of the core canon.”

One of the things that will diverge from the game’s original canon is that we will actually see Master Chief’s face. In the games, the SPARTAN never publicly removes his helmet.

While the Silver Timeline means the Halo TV show is free to take its own approach for some aspects, plenty of nods to the games will be included.

“There are a lot of Easter eggs in there, and it was a lot of fun putting them in,” said director Otto Bathurst. “We had an incredible team, particularly in production design and the graphic designer, who has absolutely taken it to the n-th level. So I’m going to put my neck on the line and challenge you to freeze frame and zoom in.”

The Halo TV show will premiere on March 24, 2022 on Paramount+ in the US. For more, check out our extensive trailer breakdown and the entire cast revealed so far.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

The upcoming Halo TV show will reveal Master Chief’s face for the first time in the history of the franchise.

Talking to Ryan McCaffrey as part of IGN Fan Fest, Halo’s executive producer and 343 Industries’ Studio Head of Transmedia, Kiki Wolfkill, said that showing the Chief’s face was important for the story the show will tell.

“I think we set out to tell a character story and a personal story,” she explained. “And once we really got into what that story was, it became clear that you really needed to see the person in the armour and under the helmet.”

“You will see his face,” she confirmed. “For some people, it’s been a moment 20 years in the making, and for other people it is something that feels very hard to imagine. We absolutely respect both sides of that fence, those who really want to see Chief’s face and those who really don’t. But for the nature of this story, it felt really important to connect with the Master Chief in a different way, and that meant showing the face.”

Halo will premiere on March 24, 2022 on Paramount+ in the US. It features actor Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief wearing a game-accurate replica of his famous SPARTAN MJOLNIR armour, complete with its yellow opaque visor.

While this has always meant we’ve never seen Chief’s face in the game (aside from very short glimpses of the back of his head or his eyes in cutscenes), it looks like we’ll finally be seeing a Schreiber-shaped face beneath that helmet.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

The upcoming Halo TV show will reveal Master Chief’s face for the first time in the history of the franchise.

Talking to Ryan McCaffrey as part of IGN Fan Fest, Halo’s executive producer and 343 Industries’ Studio Head of Transmedia, Kiki Wolfkill, said that showing the Chief’s face was important for the story the show will tell.

“I think we set out to tell a character story and a personal story,” she explained. “And once we really got into what that story was, it became clear that you really needed to see the person in the armour and under the helmet.”

“You will see his face,” she confirmed. “For some people, it’s been a moment 20 years in the making, and for other people it is something that feels very hard to imagine. We absolutely respect both sides of that fence, those who really want to see Chief’s face and those who really don’t. But for the nature of this story, it felt really important to connect with the Master Chief in a different way, and that meant showing the face.”

Halo will premiere on March 24, 2022 on Paramount+ in the US. It features actor Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief wearing a game-accurate replica of his famous SPARTAN MJOLNIR armour, complete with its yellow opaque visor.

While this has always meant we’ve never seen Chief’s face in the game (aside from very short glimpses of the back of his head or his eyes in cutscenes), it looks like we’ll finally be seeing a Schreiber-shaped face beneath that helmet.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.