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Ananta producer says every character could have their own game and perhaps unwisely compares it to the Avengers
Game Updates

Ananta producer says every character could have their own game and perhaps unwisely compares it to the Avengers

by admin October 2, 2025


Ananta, whether it ends up being a good game or not, is clearly a confident one. You have to be brave to so blatantly, we’ll say, borrow from so many different games. Like many anime-esque games of its ilk, it will live and die by its characters (which, by the way, you won’t have to gacha roll for), of which it seems to have in spades judging from that first gameplay trailer. These characters will all play differently too, and according to Ananta’s producer Ash Qi, the dev team wants you to think of them like Avengers members. Comparing your new thing to an older, widely loved thing is always a safe move!


Speaking to GamesRadar, Qi said he believes “many of the characters in the game could be protagonists in their own game.” Qi went on to explain that they’re “trying to create a big storyline that will evolve, giving the characters focus, which will add new characters and new cities to explore. Take Marvel as an example; there are many different heroes and champions in The Avengers.


“However, characters like Captain America and Spider-Man have their own storylines, separate from the larger plot, and they are the protagonists of their own stories, each with their unique missions.” Qi goes on to note that this approach, of trying to make each character stand out, is their attempt of keeping them in focus – not to mention a feature they’re working on where several characters can all fight other enemies at once.


One point I do take slight umbrage with is that Qi also said the studio is trying to “achieve a design that feels unique compared to other RPG games.” Sure, there might not be many RPG games like this one, but there are even just some animations that seem uncomfortably similar to other games.


I still have my reservations about Ananta, but I’m still curious to find out how it actually shapes up… whenever that is.



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October 2, 2025 0 comments
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'KPop Demon Hunters' Producer Accused of ChatGPT Use for Songwriting
Product Reviews

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Producer Accused of ChatGPT Use for Songwriting

by admin September 17, 2025


Netflix hit KPop Demon Hunters has stayed in the conversation in large part because of its blockbuster soundtrack, but now one of those songs has come under scrutiny for potentially getting an assist from ChatGPT.

In a recent discussion in Seoul for OpenAI’s newly opened Korean office, songwriter Vince reportedly claimed he used the controversial technology to help pen the song “Soda Pop,” performed in the movie by the demonic Saja Boys. He is credited as one of several co-writers on the track, according to a Netflix blog post.

A now-deleted tweet (preserved in a screengrab on Reddit) said to be penned by an OpenAI exec read: “Fav moment from the launch celebration was hearing singer/songwriter Vince share that ChatGPT helped him write ‘Soda Pop’ from KPop Demon Hunters! It apparently gave him ideas to make it sound ‘more bubbly.’”

Here’s where things get complicated. The alleged use of AI to help write “Soda Pop” was first reported in the English-language version of Joongang Daily—but the original Korean text of the article makes no mention of ChatGPT being used specifically during the production of KPop Demon Hunters’ music.

A translator on Gizmodo’s staff revealed Vince instead made a far broader statement—”I sometimes use ChatGPT to get some inspiration while producing K-Pop”—while discussing how AI technology is already being used in the K-Pop industry.

As Kotaku has pointed out, KPop Demon Hunters has previously had to fend off allegations surrounding its characters being made with AI. Rei Ami, one of the singers for the movie’s girl group Huntr/x, has also had to insist that she and co-singers Ejae and Audrey Nuna are real human beings.

io9 has reached out to Netflix for clarification and will update should we hear back.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.



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September 17, 2025 0 comments
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Better for Battlefield 6 vehicles to start off "too weak", says producer to players sore about tooled-up engineers
Game Updates

Better for Battlefield 6 vehicles to start off “too weak”, says producer to players sore about tooled-up engineers

by admin September 10, 2025



In my experience, there are two kinds of tank in Battlefield games. There are the ones driven by other people, which are cut from solid granite yet move like ballet dancers. And then there are the ones driven by me, which are made out of candy floss and handle like shopping trolleys. Possibly, this reflects some kind of underlying “skill issue”, but come now, that’s speculative reporting that flies in the face of logic. Clearly it’s a balancing issue. Here’s Battlefield 6 lead producer David Sirland with a little more, based on learnings during the new shooter’s multiplayer beta.


You may have found that the tanks, helicopters, jeeps and jets on show in said Battlefield 6 beta were somewhat squishy, versus the hardiness of infantry and especially, engineers equipped with anti-tank mines and rockets. Responding to an aggrieved Xitter post (as reported by PCGamer), Sirland acknowledged that there’s a balancing issue here, but also, suggested that developers DICE, Ripple, Motive and Criterion may have lowballed the rides to begin with, in order to set a good foundation.


“That is a balance issue wholesale, not specific to this special situation however,” he wrote, when one user complained about the potency of said engineers and their dastardly munitions. “And one we are actively working on. Rather have too weak vehicles over too powerful to start. Its a tricky one as players get better at using them over time as well.”


I find this both funny and interesting. Funny because Battlefield 6 has made a drinking game out of slaughtering vehicles in trailers: those choppers certainly don’t seem fit for much besides blowing up. And interesting because it’s a quick glimpse into the ever-gripping intricacies of game balancing.

There is arguably no such thing as “good balance” inasmuch as balancing is an on-going process – developers have to keep adjusting the mixture to keep up with the ingenuity and quirks of clashing groups of players, while hazily targeting some kind of optimal all-round experience. Sirland’s aside has made me consider the prospect that developers might deliberately ship a game they consider ‘unbalanced’ because they’re trying to anticipate how player behaviour might evolve. They’re trying to balance for how people will be playing in a few month’s time, perhaps. A fearful gamble, indeed.


Add these insights to EA’s longer, official account of how they’re changing Battlefield 6 based on the beta playtest. There are vehicle-heavy maps coming in future Battlefield Labs playtests, so we can get another sense of the curiously variable sponginess of those tanks, which assuredly has nothing to do with the steadiness of my thumbs.

The final game will release on October 10th. The single player story sees the US army trying to save NATO from a rogue PMC, which I think is a bit daft given the current US administration’s foreign policies.



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September 10, 2025 0 comments
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Battlefield 6 ui redesigns: A close-up shot of a soldier wearing full headgear turning to look at the camera while holding their gun up.
Gaming Gear

Battlefield 6 producer acknowledges vehicles were underpowered in the beta, but says it’s better than the alternative: ‘Rather have too weak vehicles over too powerful’

by admin September 9, 2025



You know something is off in Battlefield when piloting a multi-million dollar metal box with a building-leveling cannon mounted on the end is a bigger risk than hoofing it across the map.

That was the state of last month’s Battlefield 6 beta: tanks, helicopters, jets, and especially jeeps could never get much room to vroom before getting blasted by any number of anti-armor rockets, laser-guided missiles, stationary cannons, mines, or sticky explosives.

A month ahead of launch, we have our first acknowledgement from DICE that vehicle balance needs work via lead producer David Sirland.


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The exchange began with a video of leaked Operation Firestorm gameplay depicting an engineer sniping and firing rockets from the map’s highest tower. To critics of Battlefield 6’s controversial “open weapons” default ruleset, the scenario is a perfect example of why letting any class use any gun disrupts the balance of Battlefield.

“A classic demonstration of why open classes don’t work. Support with ammo resupply/sniper, and APS gadget and engi[neer] with sniper/launchers on Firestorm getting constantly resupplied. It just creates these ridiculously broken combinations,” wrote Battlefield YouTuber GhostGaming.

(Image credit: David Sirland on X)

Sirland, not usually one to acknowledge leaked gameplay, offered a retort.

“That button still exists (as in the originals) & the fact we have more [anti-tank] on the map isn’t really a problem either?” Sirland wrote. “Let’s not pretend this type of gameplay is effective in any shape or form, it really isn’t (unless you can safeguard the pos – which can be cleansed with fire :)”

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Whether or not you agree with Sirland’s assessment—if you ask me, an engineer holding a sniper rifle is an affront to the very idea of the class system—it was Sirland’s next response, pivoting toward vehicles/anti-air in general, that’s most interesting.

Responding to someone who made the point that engineers carrying up to five rockets and powerful anti-tank mines means “infantry is more dangerous to vehicles than vehicles are to infantry,” Sirland agreed it’s a balance problem that the studio is currently grappling with.

(Image credit: EA)

“That is a balance issue wholesale, not specific to this special situation, however. And one we are actively working on,” he replied. That said, Sirland suggested undercooked vehicles aren’t too big of a deal at this stage of the game, and said it’s at least better than the alternative.

“Rather have too weak vehicles over too powerful to start. It’s a tricky one as players get better at using them over time as well.”

Perhaps that’s true of tanks, APCs, and aerial vehicles, but what about my poor jeep? For four long days, I watched hundreds of teammates ignore my honks of friendship, opting to run an extra 30 seconds instead of climbing aboard. Give those gunners some armor plating at least!

We’ll see what’s in store for rocket pockets and vehicle armor when Battlefield 6 launches October 10.



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September 9, 2025 0 comments
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Everwild's exec producer moves from Rare to Xbox Game Studios following cancellation and Microsoft layoffs
Game Reviews

Everwild’s exec producer moves from Rare to Xbox Game Studios following cancellation and Microsoft layoffs

by admin September 1, 2025



Everwild’s executive producer has a new role at Xbox, following the cancellation of Rare’s long-in-development project.


Amidst layoffs at Microsoft in July, Rare’s fantasy adventure Everwild was cancelled and a number of employees at the British studio lost their jobs.


Now, as reported by VGC, the game’s executive producer Louise O’Connor has moved to Xbox Game Studios as its chief of staff, following 25 years at Rare.

Everwild – Eternals Trailer – Xbox Games Showcase JulyWatch on YouTube


The move comes almost a year after former head of Rare Craig Duncan became head of Xbox Game Studios, after Alan Hartman retired.


O’Connor first worked at Rare on Conker’s Bad Fur Day for the N64. She later worked at the studio as head of animation and its incubation director, responsible for innovation.


Everwild was first revealed in 2019 as the next big project from Rare. It surfaced again in 2020 with a trailer (above) featuring gorgeous environments and creatures, but little was seen aftewards until its cancellation.


Notably, Rare veteran Gregg Mayles also left the studio in the wake of the Microsoft layoffs, after 35 years.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.



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September 1, 2025 0 comments
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Depth, player expression, and years of iteration: Pragmata's producer on the key to nailing the game's weird and wonderful core mechanic
Game Updates

Depth, player expression, and years of iteration: Pragmata’s producer on the key to nailing the game’s weird and wonderful core mechanic

by admin August 28, 2025


“I don’t really want to delve into previous concepts,” Pragmata producer Naoto Oyama tactfully offers, after I prod at the prickly topic of the lengthy development of Capcom’s latest weird and wonderful offering.

This mysterious game about the unlikely pairing of a spacesuit-clad bloke and a barefoot young kid (who is, of course, actually an android) has been rattling around for years. First announced in 2020, it was originally slated for a 2022 release. It was then shunted to 2023, then delayed indefinitely. Now, it’s locked in for a 2026 release. Perhaps understandably, Oyama doesn’t really want to talk about all that.

“Just verbally it might sound like, ‘oh this was great and that was great’ – even if on the whole, in the game, it didn’t work,” the amiable producer, who also worked on Dragon’s Dogma 2, explains. “So we’re going to skip over talking about what we had in the past and delve into what we have here today.”

Which, y’know, fair enough. That tracks, especially in an era where many have a low desire for context and a high affinity for outrage. At the same time, though, Pragmata’s extended development is fascinating – and arguably key to the game’s clear successes.

Watch on YouTube

As has been touched on in two separate Eurogamer hands-on previews since the game broke cover in June, Pragmata is weird, wonderful, and unique. It’s the sort of genre mash-up and mechanical melding that is seldom seen from big-budget, big-money publishers like Capcom.

Experimental concepts like this, bluntly, are usually reserved for indie games. Such a development path is often reserved for smaller-scale game jams or private, never publicly-shown experimentation in the depths of company headquarters – not for games announced with a massive splash in a platform holder broadcast. Pragmata is just that, though – and it perhaps speaks to the strengths of Capcom and its increasingly sure-footed position that it has been willing to allow a team to iterate and experiment with this strange new property.

“The first trailer we put out back in 2020, that was our first base concept trailer. From that base concept to create something that we think is fun, that we think people will really enjoy – it’s taken us a bit of time,” Oyama explains via the Japanese-to-English interpretation of Edvin Edsö, a fellow producer on the title.

“We might have had a concept in the beginning that was fun for a part of the game, for the initial part of the game – that fun might not have reached the entire, full game when we looked at the full picture of it. Having something that’s fun all the way through the game is something we reached towards throughout development.”

room with a Hugh. | Image credit: Eurogamer

That core concept which has survived for the entire development is of course Pramata’s core conceit – the collision of worlds that is the hulking Hugh the the diminutive Diana. Hugh can control a variety of weapons and blast things. Diana hides over his shoulder and hacks enemies. Diana’s hacks aren’t truly enough to take down enemies on their own, but nor are Hugh’s ballistics. Powers combined, the duo has a chance.

I don’t want to retread our previews, but suffice it to say that this results in a curious and engaging system. Squeezing the left trigger to aim at an enemy offers two options – mashing the right trigger to fire away with Hugh’s equipped weapon, or using the face buttons to solve a small puzzle as Diana in order to hack the enemy. This must be undertaken in real time – juggling movement, enemy awareness, two different mechanics, and in a manner of speaking two different characters.

“The general concept of Hugh’s shooting – action – and Diane’s hacking – puzzle – that’s been part of the base concept from the beginning,” Oyama reiterates. “But getting that concept into a game system that’s fun – that took us a bit of trial and error to get to what you see today. Early on, the hacking wasn’t as you see – it was a different sort of style.”

Certainly, one can see where all of that iterative development time went. It would be very easy indeed for a game with a setup like this to be a totally confusing hot mess – but it isn’t. Pragmata is quirky, but the short demos I have experienced so far are nevertheless a joy. The vibes exuded are those of a game that has fallen out of another, more experimental era – from a time when genres were less defined and people were inventing new ones with reckless abandon. In this I find Pragmata instantly enormously refreshing, even if its idiosyncratic core might put some players off.

For this beat, the one thing that differs in the Pragmata hands-on to the previous I’d experienced is the addition of a boss battle. I enjoyed what I had to play before, but the boss really helped to elucidate the reasoning behind some of Pragmata’s weapon design – and how its systems might work across a full-length game. Where the previous demo had me marvelling at a very neat and tightly-executed gimmick, in experiencing a boss fight I now feel I can see the path for the full experience, so to speak.

“Once you see the boss fight, you can more fully see the entire experience,” Oyama agrees when I recount my experience to him.

The world on his shoulders. | Image credit: Capcom

Let me give you an example. Hugh’s Shockwave Gun is basically a shotgun, but it’s a real slow reload even by shotty standards. I didn’t feel very inclined to use the more powerful weapon on normal enemies due to the reload speed – but in a boss battle where regular and repeated hacking is required, those long reloads actually help to give the encounter a textured ebb and flow.

Oyama gets into that a little more, explaining to me how Hugh’s weaponry works. It’s all vaguely cagey stuff – only a tiny fraction of the game has been shown, and the developers clearly don’t want to reveal any unannounced kit. Broadly speaking, though, Hugh has two ‘power weapon’ slots; one slot always dedicated to a damage-dealing beast like that shotgun, and the other home to a weapon which will offer more battlefield control. In this demo that latter weapon was a ‘Stasis Net’ which held approaching enemies still for a short time while dealing minimal damage. Diana’s hacks, meanwhile, will grow over the game via a suite of power-ups.


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Through this, there’s a hope that players can have a good amount of freedom of expression in their play. Plus, there’s no one prescription for enemies – a shooter fan might play more ballistics-heavy, while someone who gets really into the hacking might do the opposite; Pragmata has been carefully designed to work both ways.

“Depending on the player… Well, they might want to play it safe – use the Stasis Net, back off a bit, and then hack and go for careful shots,” Oyama outlines. “Or I can go in hung-ho – skip the Stasis Net, and straight up hack and shoot.

“Also, the actual hacking itself does damage. With that in mind, you can have a playstyle that’s really focused on hacking, or you can hack the enemy once and then just go for shooting outright. So there’s a sort of balance in what you can do there.”

Probably not a paranoid android. | Image credit: Capcom

Part of the challenge of a game like this, with unique and strange systems, is that they can be a difficult sell. It’s plain that it was a difficult thing for Capcom to figure out internally throughout development. Pragmata now works – I can’t wait to play it – but now an arguably even more difficult task is on the horizon – how to explain and sell these mechanics to the public. Even describing it all in a preview is difficult, other than to say: it’s strange, and I love it.

“There’s a bit of a difference in the experience between watching videos of Pragmata and actually getting your hands on a controller, knowing it, and getting immersed in the game. In fact, it’s really different,” Oyama says. There’s a passion in his delivery of this statement – and plainly a clear belief that this team has made something special.

“We’ve worked hard, long years to get something here that people enjoy. And we’re just really glad to see that people are enjoying the game that we put so much time and so much effort into,” Oyama concludes.

He’s hoping that off the back of some strong trade show responses, Pragmata’s unique blend of mechanics can find a broad audience. Honestly, based on what I’ve experienced so far, I hope so too. We need more mad, weird experiments like this, after all.



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August 28, 2025 0 comments
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Dragon Age: Origins - Morrigan holds up her hands in exasperation
Gaming Gear

Former Dragon Age producer Mark Darrah agrees that Mages were the most ‘complete’ class in Origins, says it came from D&D rules and the fact that Warriors and Rogues weren’t allowed to ‘violate physics’ yet

by admin August 24, 2025



In response to a viewer question in a 200k subscriber Q&A for his YouTube channel, former BioWare producer Mark Darrah explained why Mages in Dragon Age: Origins were so feature rich or “complete” when compared to Rogues and Warriors.

“I would say it’s more because the design space that Dragon Age: Origins was being built into was heavily influenced by second edition D&D,” said Darrah. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, or AD&D, formed the basis of the mini RPG golden age of Infinity Engine games started by Baldur’s Gate.

Famously, at the time of its release, Dragon Age was BioWare returning to its roots to make a more tactical, complex RPG like the Forgotten Realms-based duology that put it on the map.


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“The reality is: [Fighters] and Rogues, they were thinner classes. They were simpler classes,” Darrah explained. “And the Mage was the stronger, more fully implemented, more fully considered class. Much more complicated, in terms of spells and such.”

This was something I struggled with coming to Baldur’s Gate after later RPGs like Neverwinter Nights: Feats weren’t really a thing until third edition D&D, cribbing off Fallout’s notes with perks.

Why Mages Shine in Dragon Age Origins #shorts – YouTube

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Fighters and related combat classes in the OG Baldur’s Gates are mostly there to auto attack enemies, the Battlemaster maneuvers and whirlwind attacks of later games just a twinkle in some designer’s eye.

Mages, meanwhile, could summon demons, draw on a host of direct damage and crowd control effects, and even engage with an interactive Wish spell with ironic punishments for poorly worded wishes due to a low Wisdom score. You can see Baldur’s Gate 2’s Throne of Bhaal expansion try to ameliorate this with the addition of “High Level Abilities”—basically feats by another name.

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I’ve always been partial to Rogues in Origins, but you can see who got the most love of the trio: Warriors and Rogues share archery and dual weapon ability trees, with some special dirty tricks and the requisite sneak attacks for Rogues, while Warriors get exclusive access to two-handers and the sword and board setup. Just like in Baldur’s Gate, Mages have a smorgasbord of game-changing spell effects.

But there’s one more factor Darrah points to as well: Origins’ relative realism compared to later entries in the series. “Of all the Dragon Ages, Dragon Age: Origins is the most ‘grounded,'” said Darrah. “It’s the one that’s worrying the most about everything making perfect sense within the overall lore of the game.”

“So Warriors and Rogues in Origins basically don’t have talents or skills that violate physics, whereas, as we move into Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition and Veilguard, you get a lot more things that are not really possible for someone to physically do.”

This is something that always vexed me in Inquisition and Veilguard in particular: Why are Mages so persecuted if basically everyone has godlike magical abilities now? Assassins get flash step shadow clones, Reavers have fire blood dragon claws, Champions in Veilguard can do AoE fire magic spellsword stuff. Everybody’s a super hero.

It’s certainly fun and feels very cool to do wild Tempest elemental stuff in Inquisition or poison Duelist flurry attacks in Veilguard, but I found it contributed to this flattening effect on the class fantasies. Things might have been unbalanced in Origins, but it made Mages feel special in a fiction where they were supposed to be incredibly powerful.



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August 24, 2025 0 comments
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Silent Hill f producer insists it is "an action horror game" and any comparisons to a soulslike are "disingenuous"
Game Reviews

Silent Hill f producer insists it is “an action horror game” and any comparisons to a soulslike are “disingenuous”

by admin August 24, 2025


Silent Hill series producer Motoi Okamoto has called comparisons of the upcoming Silent Hill f to soulslike games “disingenuous”, insisting “a lot of these things we actually pulled from classic Silent Hill titles”.

The comment comes as more and more footage emerges in the run-up to 25th September’s launch day. And while we already knew the combat would have a “heavier focus on melee and be more action-oriented compared to last year’s Silent Hill 2: Remake”, fans have expressed concern about how enemies react, degradable weapons, and “soulslike” boss encounters.

Now, in an interview with IGN, Okamoto – who has become a familiar face having worked on all of the games since the series was resurrected in 2022, including Silent Hill: The Short Message and Silent Hill 2: Remake – insists some of the things fans have seen in the videos “aren’t new and exclusive to soulslike games”.

Everything We Know About Silent Hill f So Far.Watch on YouTube

“This is one of the things that we see – the term soulslike – being thrown around on the internet quite a bit,” Okamoto said. “And I think it’s a label that’s a little bit disingenuous. Modern players will see like, oh there’s a stamina meter, there’s a dodge, and they’re like, ‘Okay, it’s a soulslike’.

“But to be very honest, a lot of these things we actually pulled from classic Silent Hill titles. Look at Silent Hill 4 – there’s a charge meter for your attacks, kind of like our Focus meter. And even for Silent Hill 3 there’s a stamina meter. You see it later on.”

According to IGN’s interview, Okamoto “expressed a degree of frustration with the online dialogue surrounding the game”.

“These things aren’t new and exclusive to soulslike games,” he added. “They’ve been a part of action horror games for a very, very long time. If you have these things you’re labelled a soulslike. And we’d like to reiterate we are an action horror game, but we are not a soulslike.”

Silent Hill f was unveiled as part of Konami’s four-game series revival back in 2022, but it took until the middle of March 2025 to get an update. Now that Bloober Team’s superb Silent Hill 2 Remake is behind us, the publisher is turning its attention to this follow-up, a new mainline instalment set in 1960s Japan.

It’s being developed by Neobards Entertainment (which has previously served as a support studio for Capcom’s Resident Evil games), with creature and character design by Kera, a script by When They Cry writer Ryukishi07, and music from the series’ usual composer, Akira Yamaoka. It’s set to release on 25th September.



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August 24, 2025 0 comments
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'To put it bluntly, it was copying others': Former Dragon Quest producer says he left Square Enix because the developer was too focused on making 'safe' games
Gaming Gear

‘To put it bluntly, it was copying others’: Former Dragon Quest producer says he left Square Enix because the developer was too focused on making ‘safe’ games

by admin August 20, 2025



Former Dragon Quest producer Ryutaro Ichimura says he left Square Enix because the developer and publisher was too focused on making “safe” games.

In a recent episode of ReHacQ (translated by Automaton), Ichimura says he had always planned to go independent eventually, but Square Enix’s way of handling things sped that process up significantly. According to him, the publisher has been pretty focused on “safe” projects over the last several years, which he wasn’t too keen about.

He says that in comparison to current-day Square Enix, the early days of Dragon Quest were all about innovation. “In Dragon Quest 2, you had a three-person party. In Dragon Quest 3, you could change jobs. In Dragon Quest 4, party members could fight using AI,” he said. “Each entry pushed the series forward, both through the evolution of game mechanics and by leveraging the latest hardware at the time.”


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It seems as though Ichimura wasn’t fond of Dragon Quest spin-offs like Builders—a more narrative-driven Minecraft—and the Pokémon Go-inspired Dragon Quest Walk. He says Square Enix pivoted to hitting its own version of popular games to try and nail some guaranteed winners, especially as Dragon Quest’s popularity outside of Japan wasn’t as stellar as it hoped. “To put it bluntly, it was copying others,” Ichimura said.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Automaton notes that Ichimura calls the Dragon Quest spin-offs “pakuri kikaku,” meaning copycat projects. I do feel like that’s a little harsh in the case of Dragon Quest Builders, which feels like it does enough differently from Minecraft to shake off too many comparisons.

I also feel like if anyone is taking risks with strange games right now, it’s Square Enix. Does it put any effort into marketing any of them? Hell no, but it has at least tried to push out some weirder stuff like Foamstars (which, to be fair, was very Splatoon-coded), Harvestella, and The DioField Chronicle. And lest we forget Forspoken, a game that very much had the potential to be rad if it wasn’t, well, a bit boring.

I do agree with his sentiment at large, though: bigger games are getting safer, and we’re all suffering for it. Why reinvent the wheel when there’s a perfectly good one to slap another coat of paint on and roll out to the masses?

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Games are getting more expensive to make and people are increasingly less willing to risk spending the dough on potential duds that get banished to a decades-long backlog. It’s a tough situation to be in on all sides, and while I don’t entirely agree with Ichimura’s sentiment, his frustrations are certainly valid.



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August 20, 2025 0 comments
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Dragon Quest producer Ryutaro Ichimura left Square Enix because it was prioritizing "safe" or "copycat" games
Esports

Dragon Quest producer Ryutaro Ichimura left Square Enix because it was prioritizing “safe” or “copycat” games

by admin August 20, 2025


Dragon Quest producer Ryutaro Ichimura said he left publisher Square Enix because the company was prioritizing “safe” projects.

Ichimura joined Enix in 2000 and spent most of his career working on the Dragon Quest series, progressing to producer on Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King and Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies.

But as the developer told ReHacQ, he ended up leaving because “to put it bluntly, [Square Enix] was copying others.”

“In DQ 2, you had a three-person party, in DQ 3 you could change jobs, in DQ 4, party members could fight using AI. Each entry pushed the series forward, both through the evolution of game mechanics and by leveraging the latest hardware of the time,” Ichimura said (as transcribed and translated by Automaton).

According to Automaton’s reporting, Ichimura felt Dragon Quest was a “leader” in the RPG space, and he was keen to “build something from zero.” But with spiralling costs, the producer felt Square Enix was less willing to innovative and instead focused on its tentpole franchises or “pakuri kikaku” — copycat projects — like the Minecraft-like Dragon Quest Builders, or Pokémon Go-inspired Dragon Quest Walk.

When Square Enix wouldn’t greenlight an idea for “game in which players could learn about wordbuilding and story structure through gameplay, and then build their own Sragon Quest-style games,” Ichimura left.

Ryutaro Ichimura formed PinCool, a new NetEase Games-funded development studio, in May 2023.



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August 20, 2025 0 comments
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  • ASUS TUF Gaming Laptop (NVIDIA RTX 4050) Still at an All-Time Low With Hundreds Off, but Returning to Full Price Soon
  • Absolum Review – A Sleeper Hit
  • Little Nightmares 3 review | Rock Paper Shotgun
  • Heart Machine ends development on Hyper Light Breaker mere months after it entered early access
  • Blatant Animal Crossing Rip-Off Somehow Lands On The PS5 Store

Recent Posts

  • ASUS TUF Gaming Laptop (NVIDIA RTX 4050) Still at an All-Time Low With Hundreds Off, but Returning to Full Price Soon

    October 9, 2025
  • Absolum Review – A Sleeper Hit

    October 9, 2025
  • Little Nightmares 3 review | Rock Paper Shotgun

    October 9, 2025
  • Heart Machine ends development on Hyper Light Breaker mere months after it entered early access

    October 9, 2025
  • Blatant Animal Crossing Rip-Off Somehow Lands On The PS5 Store

    October 9, 2025

Newsletter

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About me

Welcome to Laughinghyena.io, your ultimate destination for the latest in blockchain gaming and gaming products. We’re passionate about the future of gaming, where decentralized technology empowers players to own, trade, and thrive in virtual worlds.

Recent Posts

  • ASUS TUF Gaming Laptop (NVIDIA RTX 4050) Still at an All-Time Low With Hundreds Off, but Returning to Full Price Soon

    October 9, 2025
  • Absolum Review – A Sleeper Hit

    October 9, 2025

Newsletter

Subscribe my Newsletter for new blog posts, tips & new photos. Let's stay updated!

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