If you've ever wondered which Overwatch heroes the people actually making the game enjoy playing, the answer is surprisingly varied. At BlizzCon 2026, GameSpot spoke with Overwatch game director Aaron Keller and associate game director Alec Dawson about their personal favorites, their original mains, and the newer heroes they think you should be playing.

Here are the best Overwatch heroes according to Blizzard developers:

Lucio

For Dawson, it all started with Lucio. "My first main, like, 'I want to play this character all the time,' was Lucio, he said. That's mostly down to Lucio's impressive movement, he explained. "When there's a character with very fluid mobility, I'm like, 'I'm going to lock in and learn as much as I can about this hero.'"

Lucio's mobility is one of the defining things about his kit. He can wall ride, allowing him to move quickly around the map by chaining movement across walls rather than taking the ground approach. His Crossfade also gives him an area-of-effect speed boost which applies to any teammates within the radius. Combined with wall riding, this makes him especially good at quickly repositioning, escaping danger, chasing enemies, or returning to the point after death, as Dawson agrees.

"I think Lucio just spoke to me on a level--I was like, 'Wait, I can do all of those things?' This guy's slide-sliding around walls! That was awesome from the start."

And yes, you can count on it that Dawson has used Lucio's Soundwave to boop more than a few opponents down the well in Ilios.

Tracer

For Aaron Keller, his original main was Tracer. As someone who has been working on Overwatch from its inception, Keller's endorsement of the hero from the original roster is glowing.

"I don't know if I have a main now, but my first was probably Tracer," he explained. "I just loved the mechanics. I feel like the kit is almost perfect, the way that it works."

Tracer's kit is built around speed, mobility, and constant repositioning, which helps to explain why Keller finds it "almost perfect." Using her Blink ability, she can teleport a short distance, and it has multiple charges to escape danger quickly. She can then hit her Recall ability to essentially rewind to where she was a few moments earlier, restoring her previous health and ammo. Then there are her Pulse Pistols, which do huge damage at close range.

It's that coherence and synchronicity that Keller loves. While he ends up taking the tank role pretty often these days, when he's playing damage, he'll opt for Tracer, although he admits, "I'm a lot worse at damage than I used to be."

Reinhardt, Winston, Zayra, and Orisa

When he is playing tank, Keller has several favorites rather than one definitive main.

"I typically queue flex now, which means I typically queue tank now, is what happens. So, I rotate through a few of the tanks, between Reinhardt, Winston, I love playing Zarya. I'll play Orisa, also," he explained.

If you're wondering which tanks have the seal of approval from one of Overwatch's key developers, that's Keller's shortlist.

Doctrine

When it comes to the newer heroes, Dawson singled out Doctrine as an example of the development team getting many different elements right at once.

"Doctrine is a wonderful example of taking an art visual archetype that we hadn't explored yet, this techno-vampire, making it the Overwatch version of that, with all the gameplay bundled together for his drones," he said. "I thought that was just a really perfect sandwich of things all coming together."

He's not alone in his admiration for Doctrine, though, as Keller agreed with him. "It's like this amazing combination of backstory, visuals, and gameplay that really supports this, sort of, vampire fantasy," he added.

Doctrine takes the classic vampire concept and mixes it with Overwatch's futuristic sci-fi world. Instead of making a traditionally supernatural vampire, Blizzard created the "techno-vampire" by combining classic vampire imagery with futuristic technology.

Doctrine has the seal of approval from both developers. That's probably as close as you can get to an official developer-certified hero recommendation.

Shion

Dawson's personal favorite among the newer heroes is Shion. "I think the one that I personally vibe with the most, 'cause it was just over the top, is Shion," he noted. And the developers apparently knew exactly what kind of hero they wanted Shion to be from the beginning.

"From the very get-go we were basing this off some action movies; we need to kick a motorcycle from the air. It was like we're going crazy with this hero," Dawson explained.

It seems Shion's personality is something that the developers feel connects her to players. "She just had that personality that's, sort of, villainous to her that I think also struck a really nice chord with people."

It's those over-the-top, action-movie-inspired, slightly villainous elements that Dawson thinks resonate particularly well with players. Her personality matches the extravagance of her concept, and she's certainly not designed to be understated.

Emre

Keller's pick of the newer heroes is a little less flashy, but that's exactly where his praise is aimed. "I think the primary file of Emre feels so good," he explained. That primary fire is Emre's Synthetic Burst Rifle, a three-round burst weapon. That straightforward, satisfying burst-rifle shooting makes Emre easy to learn how to play.

"Overwatch is a first-person shooter, so you just want a weapon like that in the game," Keller explained. "He might not be the flashiest character that we've got, but he has really resonated with a lot of players, and I think one of the reasons is that primary fire."

While these heroes come highly recommended, they didn't always function in the way that you see today. Tracer used to shoot lasers from her eyes, while two of Overwatch's most-criticized characters are getting a rework.

Diablo 4 is far from dead, but don't expect any new expansions for the game going forward. Instead, Blizzard is preparing to tell the darkest story yet in Diablo 5, one that required a new numbered game to properly reintroduce Diablo himself back to the series, following his defeat in 2012's Diablo 3. Currently aiming for a 2029 release, this would mean that players are in for a relatively short wait for a new Diablo game--compared to previous releases--as Diablo 5 will arrive a mere six years after Diablo 4.

Speaking to GameSpot at BlizzCon, Diablo senior production director Tiffany Wat and executive producer Matt Zitterman explained that it made sense for Blizzard to move to a new Diablo so that the studio could make structural changes to the game--changes that would have been very challenging to pull off within the framework of a Diablo 4 expansion.

"It really started by looking at who our players are," Zitterman said. "Who are Diablo players? Why are they playing Diablo? What do they want out of a Diablo game? That is a really critical step in the early conceptual phase for a game, even before you're thinking about, like, 'Gosh, should we make this an expansion? Should we make it a sequel? How do we do this?' Looking at past examples, looking at what's working well in Diablo 4, where there are opportunities for improvement, and we kind of build our ambition for the game at the conceptual phase through those avenues of information."

https://youtu.be/Y8HaSFXR7tU

"And as we started to understand and kind of solidify what that ambition was, it became very clear to us pretty early that in order to achieve what we wanted to achieve with this game, we needed to make some more deeply structural changes to the way the game works, changes that are just frankly hard to do in an expansion. Again, it's all about figuring out what the best way is to make the best Diablo game we can for players. Diablo is the main villain. Diablo is the guy that we want to tell a real story about. We want to tell a story that's on par with--and hopefully exceeds--the story we told with Lilith and Mephisto."

"And to do that in an expansion just didn't feel right. We needed to give him his own game."

Player feedback also plays a vital role in the development of Diablo 5, and Zitterman said that by announcing the game this early, Blizzard could make important changes well ahead of the game's eventual launch. "If we didn't announce now and we kind of held back until we were much further along in development, at that point, it's much harder to take that feedback and use it to make those really important changes and refinements to the game throughout development," Zitterman explained.

For more on Diablo 5, you can learn how combat could be even more ferocious, how the game will offer more character classes than ever, and how the Plague Knight uses the grossest powers to stay a step ahead of Diablo's demonic armies.

With the FPS Wardogs dominating the Steam charts, developer Bulkhead is paying close attention to the game's various systems. The studio recently dropped a new patch that makes some necessary changes for server stability, while confirming that the team has their eyes on cheaters and exploiters.

As part of Patch 0.11, which came out on September 14, Bulkhead announced that should any dogs of war take advantage of Wardogs' economy by farming servers, they'll find themselves either temporarily or permanently banned from the game.

"As an early access game, we’re not perfect, and we never will be," Bulkhead said in the patch notes. "But if you do find something and take advantage of it, we have decided to come down hard."

To be specific, Bulkhead outlined three different scenarios that will come with three different repercussions depending on the type of exploit you partake in.

Scenario 1: Stockpiling money by abusing cash exploits and bugs will result in a timed ban, with the length determined by whether you were banned previously. Your cash and experience will get reset, too.

Scenario 2: Showing economy exploits through tutorial content will be treated as "advertising cheats," resulting in a permanent ban. However, if you happen to stumble upon an exploit and share that with Bulkhead on Discord or social media, that'll be seen as an "alert," which prevents you from being permanently banned.

Scenario 3: If you're farming experience via server exploits, which Bulkhead says will result in "the most serious bans," your account will get banned permanently.

The studio clarified, though, that it's open to feedback on this policy, stating that these positions could change if enough people believe they're too harsh.

"In the very early stages of finding these issues you may find yourself getting away with it, but it doesn't take long for our backend data to flag abusers," Bulkhead said, "Effectively, if you find something and you then keep doing it, over and over again, that is abuse of an exploit. If you figure something out and test it once or twice, no biggy, thanks for helping us QA."

Wardogs is currently Steam's hottest game right now, with over 320,000 people playing at the time of writing. It didn't have the smoothest of starts, but the kinks are getting ironed out as the days go on. Players are a little riled up at the moment, though, particularly because people don't know how to close the door behind them.

One of the big announcements at BlizzCon was WoW Forever, the next iteration of offering a classic-style WoW experience. Blizzard is hoping to draw players back to the OG WoW in a number of ways, including with the introduction of 1,000+ new quests. GameSpot caught up with Blizzard senior game designer Josh Greenfield to discuss this, along with why the game's OG quests--from 22 years ago--still resonate today.

If Blizzard is adding 1,000 more quests to WoW with the update, how many does that bring the game up to in total? It's a tricky question to answer, Greenfield said, in part because some of WoW's original quests are "tracking quests," but if you're counting "actual playable quests," the game has around 3,000 to 3,500.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEMrosrAVH0

So with 1,000+ more added of actual playable quests, that's a significant increase. WoW Forever also adds four new zones, and each of these has between 50 and 200 quests, so that's where many will come from. Additionally, the existing zones have been "glowed up," with the Wetlands and Azshara, specifically, getting a "lot of new quests to round them out as zones."

"Every nook and cranny, you're going to find something, even from like level five ... onward, you're going to start seeing new stuff," Greenfield said.

Also in our interview, we asked how Blizzard came up with the inspirations for the 1,000 new quests, and if there might be a new version of The Green Hills of Stranglethorn, which is regarded as perhaps the game's worst quest.

Greenfield said that was "kind of a terrible quest," but it still has charm and remains memorable even to this day. A lot of the original WoW is full of similarly memorable and "super iconic" quests, Greenfield said, and Blizzard is keen to carry the torch forward with WoW Forever.

"I think a lot of those quests explored the world at a very like ground level, and they they told stories at a very like ground level, a very like relatable level. You know, 'I am not the hero, I am a hero, and I'm going on this adventure with my dented shield and rusty sword.' And, you know, like things like The Missing Diplomat and things like that, like being able to kind of jet-set around the world and talk to different people and learn more about the cultures of each of these different zones, and learn a mystery and try and unravel a mystery."

Greenfield teased that Blizzard might "help finish unraveling that mystery" in WoW Forever. He went on to say some of the original WoW's quests were dark and grim, and Blizzard is embracing that philosophy with a lot of the new quests.

"Even Zephyr Isle, it's in the sky, it's nice and bright, but it's the story once you get into it, it's not it's not all, you know, sunshine and rainbows up there. It can be a little little hard," he said.

WoW Forever releases on November 4. In addition to the new zones and quests, players can expected update class designs, revamped systems, visual and gameplay improvements, and an expanded list of race and class options.

Players can access WoW Forever via their existing WoW subscription. However, players can buy the $80 Warcraft Forever Collection to receive the new Skyborne race, beta access, and early name reservation for WoW Forever. The Collection also includes Warcraft III: Reforged and Warcraft III: Reforged Forsaken Kingdom

The Crazy Taxi franchise isn't just getting a brand-new game next year; it's also getting a live-action movie. Netflix and Sega have announced a new partnership that will see a Crazy Taxi film coming to the streaming service in 2027. Dan Gregor and Doug Mand are penning the comedy's screenplay, after previously working together on Naked Gun (2025), Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and How I Met Your Mother.

There's no director attached to the project, yet. However, Original Film's Neal H. Moritz and Toby Ascher are producing the Crazy Taxi movie, alongside Sonic the Hedgehog series producer Toru Nakahara. "This film is for anyone who's spent hours behind the wheel of a yellow cab on their Dreamcast, with the music cranked up, smashing through everything in sight just to make the next fare," said Moritz and Ascher in the Netflix press release.

The Netflix and Sega collaboration also includes a new Sonic animated show aimed at "an upper preschool audience," as well as a live-action movie based on Stranger Than Heaven. The latter is the newest game from developer RGG Studio--known for the Yakuza and Like A Dragon titles.

Meanwhile, it will be intriguing to see how much the Crazy Taxi movie ties into Crazy Taxi: World Tour. The new arcade racing game will feature lore this time, such as driver backstories for why they got behind the wheel in the first place. 

Fascinatingly enough, Sega has been trying to get a Crazy Taxi movie out on the road for basically two decades. In fact, Superman and The Goonies director Richard Donner was attached to direct the adaptation at one point. 

Top 10 Highest Highest-Grossing Video Game Movies View Images

Combat has grown massively between each numbered Diablo game, and for Diablo 5, Blizzard is aiming to once again elevate those gameplay mechanics to new heights.

"Fundamentally, we're an isometric action-RPG, and we're not looking to shake that up with Diablo 5," executive producer Matt Zitterman said to GameSpot at BlizzCon 2026. "We're looking to improve on it, evolve it, and we have some great, interesting ideas about how to make combat feel even more visceral, even more action-forward. Kind of continuing to build on the success of that fast combat that started in Diablo 3, improved in Diablo 4, and we want to take it even further in Diablo 5. That's really what we're focused on from a combat and gameplay perspective."

Zitterman added that Blizzard was also looking to the past for inspiration, picking the best elements from those games and building them into Diablo 5.

"Something we talk about a lot on the team is we want Diablo 5 to be a game that feels like it has elements for you, regardless of which Diablo game was your favorite," Zitterman said. "We talk a lot about itemization in the game. Clearly, there's some inspiration being taken from Diablo 2 there, but we're also looking at Diablo 4 and the successes we've had there, and pulling forward ideas from there as well as Diablo 3. I think for us, Diablo 5 represents this really special moment in the franchise's history where we get to look at the past and bring forward things that feel really familiar, but give them a fresh take."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HaSFXR7tU

Diablo 5 will launch in 2029, and this time, Diablo has finally won. Set decades after the Lord of Terror successfully conquered Sanctuary, there's no safe harbor or stronghold to retreat to this time, as players have to keep on the move and recruit allies to their caravan of survivors.

Diablo 5 will also give players more character classes to choose from than ever before, including the Monk, Demon Hunter, and the all-new Plague Knight that is empowered by spreading disease and pestilence across the battlefield.

If early iterations of characters had survived the development process, Tracer could have been a very different Overwatch hero. Speaking to GameSpot at BlizzCon 2026, game director Aaron Keller mentioned that he had been playing Overwatch since 2013, "since Tracer was shooting lasers out of her eyes."

When questioned about such a strange sequence of words, Keller explained that the bizarre version of Tracer came from the first days of Overwatch's engine development in late 2013.

"When we were creating the Overwatch engine, you know, so this is late 2013, the first day we got Tracer in we all ran around but we didn't actually have a projectile system yet," he added. "So when you would fire, just like straight out of her eyes, [it was] two red lines."

There weren't even any proper visual effects involved at that point. According to Keller, it was "literally two red lines," because the game was firing the weapon from the camera's position. "And so we had a blast running around, just shooting lasers at each others," he recalled.

While the laser-eyed Tracer was ultimately replaced by the pulse pistols players know today, the idea apparently hasn't been completely banished from Blizzard's considerations. When asked whether the team might ever bring back a hero capable of shooting lasers from their eyes, associate game director Alec Dawson responded positively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK877kcyMTY

"I think shooting lasers out of your eyes is pretty cool. Yeah, we can figure something out," he said.

If Overwatch can finally have Jetpack Cat flying around the map, it can certainly have its roster stretched to accommodate laser beam eyes. "I think the possibilities are endless," Dawson added. He also joked that GameSpot's Jessica Cogswell should take credit if a future hero suddenly starts firing lasers from their eyes.

So, while Blizzard hasn't announced a laser-eyed hero, the idea was explicitly floated around during our interview, and the developers certainly didn't seem opposed to it. And honestly, after a decade of Overwatch, a hero shooting lasers out of their face might still be one of the least strange things Blizzard could add.

Overwatch's next character is Doctrine, while two existing heroes are getting substantial reworks.

The hottest game on PC right now is Wardogs, the Battlefield-like mass multiplayer FPS by developer Bulkhead that's soaring up the Steam charts. While it may not be as hot as the game itself, the game's subreddit is full of hotheads demanding you do one teeny-tiny thing. Close. The. Doors. Behind. You.

Released in a closed beta state in August 2026 before entering early access in September 2026, Wardogs has taken PC gaming by storm. It's not only the number-one trending game according to SteamDB, with an all-time peak of 428,666 concurrent players on September 13, but it's also the fourth-most-played game on Steam, trailing behind Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds. Folks can't get enough of being a dog of war.

Something folks would love to get enough of, though? Players leaving those gosh-darn doors and gates open when venturing out onto the battlefield.

All over the official Wardogs subreddit are a ton of players decrying the carelessness of other players when it comes to not closing doors and gates behind them. Redditor demonmit1 posted on September 14, pleading for people to stop building so many gates and close the ones they open.

"If you're helping build a FOB, please… We only need one air locked gate for logistics," demonmit1 said. "No one closes them anyways, so adding more is not good. Stop it. If someone wants to leave the base, they can jump over a wall. They don't need to leave through a door they'll forget to close."

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wdpm7n/close_your_fob_gates_please/

"[PSA]: stop leaving my doors and gates open at my fobs," wrote Redditor novastar17 on September 12. "i have been trying to build mortar complexes and random allies come open doors and let enemies in to just wipe all of us while im busy building. stop that, thanks."

"There should be upgraded doors / gates that auto shut after a few seconds," user GOpencyprep suggested on August 23 in a very potty-mouthed Reddit post. "Or teammates who forget to close the door behind them should be fired into the sun...one or the other. Seriously though this is a problem."

What these FOBBs, or Forward Operating Base builders, are talking about are the doors and gates you can add when constructing bases that act as central operating hubs for your team. These FOBs allow you to create fortified defenses, as well as construct weapons and other armaments to keep your team ready for when the fighting gets particularly intense. Unfortunately, because the doors and the gates don't close behind you once opened, this gives the enemy team the opportunity to waltz in, shoot up the place, and leave as if they were invited in the first place.

Even though only you and your teammates can open and close doors and gates, meaning the enemy can't just pry your FOB open, leaving any access point open leaves you, ahem, open to a raid. You can imagine how frustrating this would be.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarDogs/comments/1wf7gwf/friendly_tutorial_on_how_to_close_doors/

"While Servers are down CLOSE THE DAMN DOORS," Redditor xMrStonex put it bluntly on September 14. "Title. Thank you."

"I get killed so often when using mortars or working on the FOB, because lazy people can't be bothered to close the door when they leave the FOB," Automatic_Reach_32 suggested on September 14. "You can't force people to close the doors, but I think this could be helped with some monetary encouragement. Pay people if they close the door behind them! Nothing game changing, something modest like the revive / heal tips, $15 to players who close the door, reward good behavour!!"

"I just have to say one thing," Icy-Sock-2388 said in the title of their September 5 Reddit post. "CLOSE THE F***ING DOORS! Countless times now I've meticulously spent tens of thousands to rapidly build a mortar, AA, and respawn fob...only for it to be taken by the enemy because they casually walked through the front door, past the multi-layered airlocks, into the tower airlock, and then into the fob airlock room because EVERY one of those doors was open."

There have been some threats in the subreddit, too! It's really just people announcing that, if you leave a FOB door or gate open, you'll get a chest full of lead from your own team if the enemy team hasn't pumped you full of it already. Clearly, no one wants to let the AC out and the enemies in.

Speaking of being let in, Wardogs suffered brutal server queues once it entered early access. Thankfully, Bulkhead released a hotfix that kinda-sorta addresses the long server wait times, but you may still encounter the dreaded WD-L014 Error Code. We've broken down how to get past that so you can be a dog of war again.

The Triple-I Initiative Showcase is officially coming back on October 8 at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET, and this second instalment of the show will once again offer plenty of trailers and announcements from a wide variety of publishers and developers. Since the first presentation kicked off in 2024, the Triple-I Initiative has been an annual event, but the organizers say they have even more to show next month with a second dose of back-to-back video game trailers.

Viewers can expect eight exclusive world premieres from studios such as Team17, Amanita Design, Strange Scaffold, and Norsfell, as well as reveals for Dave the Diver, Brotato, Chained Together, Risk of Rain 2, and Windrose. The showcase will run for around 45 minutes, and there'll also be news for games like Hela: of Mice and Magic, Militsioner, the new Among Us title, Pony Island 2: Panda Circus, Haunted Paws, and Outward 2.

As usual, you can catch it live through the Triple-I Initiative's usual channels, like YouTube and Twitch.

https://youtu.be/SUQZF72d92A

The April showcase was a pretty impressive one from the Triple-I Initiative, as it featured back-to-back trailers for Risk of Rain 2 DLC, a darkly creative typing game called Final Sentence, and Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. As with several other video game showcases, the Triple-I Initiative has adopted a format that focuses purely on game trailers, with no adverts or sponsors wedged between them.

Organized by Evil Empire--the developers behind the new Castlevania game that's out in October--the presentation is designed to offer high visibility for a curated selection of games from various creative teams.

Naughty Dog's The Last of Us franchise featured a multiplayer mode in Factions, and while the studio planned to add multiplayer to the sequel, it abandoned those ambitions before release. A modder spent months this year working on a multiplayer mod for The Last of Us 2, but its lead has now said it's not going to be released due to a request from Sony to shut it down.

Modder @Speclizer_ said on social media that the mod was due to launch this month. However, they said they "recently received a letter on behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment requesting for the mod not to be released."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_hZQn8_1WA

Speclizer said this is an "extremely sad" development, but they hope people who supported the project will stick with them for the next one. Their next project will be "something of my own" as opposed to an extension of an existing game.

"Thank you all for the incredible amount of support over the last year. I hope to bring you something bigger and better soon!" Speclizer said.

GameSpot has contacted Sony in an attempt to get more details.

Naughty Dog was set to expand The Last of Us into an online multiplayer experience in a very big way with The Last of Us Online. The game was in development for years with significant resources dedicated to it, and it was reportedly almost ready for release. However, in December 2023, Naughty Dog canceled the game, saying at the time that it was going to focus on single-player games instead.

Also at that time, Naughty Dog confirmed that it had two single-player games in development. One has been revealed to be Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, while the other remains a mystery; many believe it's The Last of Us 3.

In other Naughty Dog-related news, studio head Neil Druckmann has confirmed that the studio has no creative involvement in the upcoming third season of HBO's The Last of Us. This is a big change, as Druckmann himself was personally and directly involved in the previous two seasons.

Actor Roger Clark played Arthur Morgan in Rockstar's celebrated 2018 Western Red Dead Redemption 2, and his performance was memorable for many reasons. In the game, Arthur suffers from tuberculosis, and he coughs a lot as a result. Was it challenging for Clark to perform those sequences in particular? Yes, but it was "not as bad as you'd think," Clark said in a recent interview, in part because sometimes Clark recorded when he himself had a bad cough.

Clark told Cade Onder that he had "five years to spread it out," regarding his voice-capture performance in Red Dead 2, and that's part of the reason why it wasn't as difficult as you might imagine. Additionally, Clark said if he was performing a "really bad coughing scene," this would be saved for the end of a given recording day, when his voice was already hoarse from all the work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceGnING8zhg

Beyond this, Clark said over that five-year period, when he recorded his lines, he, like most people, got sick--and he used this to his benefit.

"In five years, there's plenty of colds. There was a lot of data we got that was pretty damn genuine. […] I'd be like 'Hey, I've got a cold, let me get in there.' And they'd be like, 'Okay.' […] Nice good bit of phlegm," he said.

In addition to his leading role in Red Dead 2, Clark is known for his roles in the games Fort Solis, Rosewater, and Marathon. He won Best Performance for his role as Arthur Morgan at The Game Awards in 2018.

With more than 87 million copies sold, Red Dead 2 is one of the top five best-selling games of all time. Rockstar's next big release is GTA 6, which launches in November for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Given the immense critical and commercial success of the Red Dead series, a third game from Rockstar (or actually fourth, counting Red Dead Revolver) is expected sometime down the road, but definitely not soon.

Lies of P was a big hit when it was first released, and several years after it was confirmed that a sequel was in development, a new trademark by developer Neowiz has popped up online. As spotted on the European Union Intellectual Property Office website (via ResetEra), the studio has registered a trademark for "Wonders of O," suggesting that the game will put own macabre spin on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz books.

The listing is for "interactive multimedia software for playing games," but beyond that, no other details on the game can be gleaned from the registration. Lies of P had previously hinted at a trip to the Emerald City; in the mid-credits sequence, a familiar pair of ruby-red shoes could be seen. Neowiz will have free rein to put a souls-like twist on the book--which entered the public domain in 1956--since the original story includes all manner of fantastical creatures. From flying monkeys to the Tin Man, the Wicked Witch of the East and the manipulative Wizard of Oz himself, there's plenty to work with here--and we've got a few ideas of our own for where Agent P can travel to next.

Following the launch of the game in 2023, Neowiz continued its twisted rendition of Pinocchio with the Overture expansion in 2025. A prequel, the expansion shed light on the events that led to the Puppet Frenzy massacre and subsequent collapse of the city of Krat. The game also came to Switch 2 earlier this year.

Neowiz has periodically spoken about its approach to crafting a Lies of P sequel, and in January, the developer said it was exploring how technology-based solutions, like AI, could be used to "automate routine operational tasks" during game development.

While the use of generative AI in games is a controversial topic in the West, in countries like South Korea it's actively used and considered an essential set of tools. "By processing data faster, our teams will arrive at better, more informed strategic decisions on how best to support our developers and engage with our community," Neowiz co-CEO Sean Kim said.

Diablo 5 will launch with more classes than any other game in the franchise, according to game director Joe Shely.

Shely revealed more details about what to expect from Diablo 5's launch roster during a BlizzCon 2026 panel, following the game's surprise reveal (and Spring 2029 release window) as part of BlizzCon's opening ceremony. During the panel, Blizzard revealed three of Diablo 5's classes: Monk, Demon Hunter, and the new Plague Knight.

"Diablo 5 is going to launch with more classes than ever before," Shely said. "And I don't just mean more classes than another Diablo game at ship. I mean more classes total."

That means Blizzard is aiming for nine or 10 classes in Diablo 5 at launch, depending on whether or not they are counting Diablo 4's newly revealed Amazon class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HaSFXR7tU

Shely elaborated on how the team was viewing classes, and the number of them coming right out the gate, in a group interview attended by GameSpot at BlizzCon.

"What that does...it allows us to, if you started playing Diablo in Diablo 3, you probably know the Demon Hunter, and you can jump into Diablo 5 and have an experience that's familiar and new at the same time," Shely said. "It's a new representation of the class. It's going to be different, but you're still going to have twin crossbows. We're going to pay off that nostalgia you have and that feeling of what that experience was like. Having a lot of classes lets us do that in a way we haven't been able to do before. It also affords us the opportunity to explore new classes like the Plague Knight."

With work on Diablo 5 in full swing, Blizzard confirmed Diablo 4 won't receive new expansions going forward. It will, however, continue to receive new seasonal content. Season of Hell's Legacy goes live September 15 and sees the return of Deckard Cain. The iconic Horadrim from previous Diablo games will task players with taking on echoes of the Prime Evils, including Diablo himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FfJppNJsNY&t=7s

On paper, Zach Cregger directing a Resident Evil movie sounds like a smart move. The director has earned critical acclaim for his work on spooky flicks like Barbarian and Weapons, while Resident Evil is experiencing a resurgence thanks to several years of hit games. But that's a pairing that almost never came to be, as after the dismal box office performance of 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, movie distributor Constantin Films--who own the film rights to Resident Evil-- wanted to give the franchise a chance to rest before greenlighting a new project.

That all changed when Cregger approached the company, as Constantin Films CEO Oliver Berben said that he already had ideas in mind for the Resident Evil movie he wanted to make. This was prior to the release of Weapons, as Barbarian had shown that the former member of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U Know was a heck of a horror movie director; his follow-up film put him on the Hollywood map as a rising star behind the camera.

"Zach Cregger actually approached us, together with Roy Lee (a producer on Cregger's movies). He basically came to us,  and asked if this franchise, if this IP, was available," Berben said in an episode of The Town. "And it was really strange because at that time, first of all, we were in that situation that we said, 'Okay, we're going to leave it alone. We're going to need to find a completely new way on how to adapt this for the future.'  And on the other hand, Zach, just only came out of Barbarian.  So it wasn't at all that everybody was jumping on it immediately."

https://youtu.be/mNrW3GF-TeY

"He came to the table and he had this idea. In his head, he knew exactly what he wanted, and he presented it to (Constantin Films co-president) Robert Kulzer in a cafe in Beverly Hills. And he knew the whole movie. He knew everything he wanted to do, and it was so different from everything we had done so far that we started digging into it. It was more moody, more like the game. He's a gamer, he loved playing the games. So he came to this from a completely new direction."

Berben added that Cregger had not seen the live-action movies directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, and that Cregger's pitch of a "normal guy" thrown into a nightmarish situation won over the studio's leadership.  It's not too long to go now before Resident Evil hits theaters--September 18--and ahead of its release, Cregger has been doing the media rounds to talk about the movie. The director recently spoke about how Resident Evil was originally a funnier movie before he dialed back the jokes, and he even took time to weigh in on the physical media debate for video games--spoiler: he's fine with digital games, even if he's aware of potential pitfalls with them.

If box office predictions are on the money, Resident Evil could scare up the best opening weekend in the entire film franchise, as analysts are estimating that it could make between $40 and $50 million in North American alone.

The Resident Evil movie from Barbarian and Weapons director Zach Cregger releases on September 18, and now he's revealed a key detail about what people won't experience in the movie. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger shared what he learned from test screenings, and that was that an earlier version had too much humor.

People who saw Barbarian and Weapons know that those spooky movies had humor sprinkled in, and Cregger himself comes from a comedy background with his role in the sketch comedy group Whitest Kids 'U Know. He and co-writer Shay Hatten apparently imbued a bit too much comedy in Resident Evil, so they dialed things back for the final version.

"I learned [from test screenings] that people really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny. So over the course of my testing, I stripped out as much of the jokes as possible,” Cregger said. “I then found that not only did the audience enjoy the movie more, but I also liked the movie a lot more. A little bit of humor goes a long way in a horror movie, and there’s not a single joke I took out of this movie that I miss.”

Be that as it may, as a big fan of Cregger and his work in WKUK, I sure hope one day we get to see the Resident Evil: WKUK Cut, or at least learn more about these jokes that were left on the cutting room floor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNd1gb19A-c

Also in the interview, Cregger discussed how he understands he cannot please everyone, especially a group as passionate as gamers. He previously said he felt like his press tour was more of an "apology tour" because he's not delivering the movie some fans wanted. However, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger said he is not interested in pleasing everyone; instead, his North Star is making the kind of Resident Evil movie he wants to make.

"If I tried to please everybody, I’d end up pleasing nobody. That much is obvious,” Cregger said. “I just have to be okay with people voicing their opinion. I’m a grown-up. When I took this on, I understood what I was walking into. So it would be weird for me to act surprised or bent out of shape that the thing that was obviously going to happen is now happening.”

He went on to say there are fans of the games who "specifically love the lore and the characters and the nitty-gritty details of the backstory." But Cregger's movie tells a different story, involving no characters from the games.

"I’m not putting any of the legacy characters into this movie. So if that is what you love about these games, then you’re going to feel a certain way about it. 'Here comes yet another Hollywood movie, and they’re once again not doing Leon and all the characters I was hoping they were going to do,'" he said.

The Resident Evil movie releases on September 18, with screenings starting a night earlier. The film is expected to be a huge hit, potentially achieving the biggest opening weekend in franchise history.

Cregger has a number of other projects in the works, including his next movie, the sci-fi deep-space movie, The Flood. He's also discussed a Weapons prequel about Amy Madigan's Aunt Gladys character (for which she won an Oscar), though he will not direct it.

Amidst a flurry of rumors and teases, a brand-new StarCraft game was officially revealed at BlizzCon 2026. While the series started off as a real-time strategy experience, the new StarCraft is switching gears and has been billed as an open-world shooter. While it won't be out for several more years, Blizzard did reveal several details about the game, along with a slick cinematic trailer to set the stage for what's to come. Here's a closer look at everything we know about StarCraft so far.

StarCraft release date https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2tGCCKQw

You're going to have to be patient, as Blizzard is targeting a 2030 release date for StarCraft. Why was the game revealed so early? Blizzard general manager Dan Hay said that the company had made enough progress on the game to officially announce it and gather feedback from the reveal. "There’s a moment when you're making a game where you're like, 'Have we landed the emotion? Do we feel like we have enough of the verve, the identity, and the feel of it to start to share it?" Hay said to GameSpot. "About a year ago, we started to feel like we were there, so we were like, ‘Okay, it’s time to show it. It’s time to get feedback.'"

StarCraft platforms Holt is clearly going to have a long and successful career as a Dominion Marine.

While official platforms have yet to be revealed, it's a safe bet that StarCraft will probably launch for PC. But what consoles could it land on? By 2030, we're expecting to be playing on Sony's PlayStation 6 and Microsoft's Xbox successor, Project Helix, so we might be looking at a next-gen game when StarCraft eventually launches.

StarCraft gameplay "Give me something to shoot."

Unsurprisingly, StarCraft's only public footage currently is a cinematic trailer. What we do know is that this will be a major departure from the RTS days of StarCraft, as the game will be a third-person experience focusing on single-player and co-op elements. Hay explained that players will be able to build their reputation and rapport with in-game characters as they step into a Marine's power armour. There's also a big focus on the power fantasy of being one of these Dominion soldiers

"Combat has to feel powerful," Hay explained. "You're in this armor; you're a living tank. You have to feel powerful. When you hold that Gauss rifle, and the thing weighs something ridiculous, you have to feel like you’re just pushing through the Zerg. The Zerg have to feel like those raptorial claws are going to shuck you like an oyster in that thing. So you have to feel the weight of all that."

Hay added that the goal is for players to feel not only a sense of discovery when they set out, but a "notion of disruption" to their actions in the world around them.

Is StarCraft a live-service game? "I vote we frag this commander."

Yes and no, by the sound of things. While the focus is primarily on giving players a single-player open-world adventure to enjoy, Hay said that StarCraft's story will have a definitive conclusion, and that Blizzard wants it to feel like a "boxed product" that players can return to whenever they want. "We like a named character, right?" Hay said. "When it comes down to this, we want to be able to make sure that what you have is a character that has a name, a character that people in the world can know. What it does is it makes the story have a little bit more life to it."

StarCraft story Well that didn't last long.

Speaking of the story, Blizzard is keeping a tight lid on the narrative. The cinematic trailer hinted at new Dominion recruits being thrown into a meat-grinder against Zerg forces--and you'll also encounter the Protoss. Hay has confirmed that StarCraft is set 70 years after StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void--that won't be confusing, a leap forward in time that could allow for some bold storytelling and new characters to emerge.

Even with the Protoss reclaiming Aiur, the reformation of the Dominion under Valerian Mengsk, and Zagara aiming to lead the Zerg into an era of peace, nothing is ever certain in the StarCraft galaxy and it's going to be interesting to learn what happened in those decades.

Resident Evil movie director Zach Cregger has shared his thoughts on the ongoing debate and discussion about physical media in games. He wasn't speaking directly about Sony's decision to end support for physical game discs in 2028, but rather commenting generally on the matter.

Speaking to IndieWire, Cregger said he is "not a physical media guy" today. He said he was previously, but he is a person who often loses or damages the physical media he owns, and he doesn't have enough space for all the discs and boxes he might collect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOhRtPbr8mI

Cregger said he is "not bent out of shape" about downloading games because "at least it means it's always going to be there when I need it."

At the same time, Cregger said he's aware that companies can "just delete it" even after someone has paid. "And, yeah, that's too bad. I don't like that," he said.

Sony's decision to end support for physical games may make sense financially, but it's upsetting people who still buy physical media, and there are many of these people. In the last year, Sony sold many millions of physical game discs. But starting in January 2028, discs from Sony and other companies will no longer be supported, so everyone will have to buy games through the PlayStation Store.

The move to end support physical game discs on PlayStation is really about profitability and control, experts say. Microsoft recently announced a disc-to-digital program for Xbox, but many believe the company's next-gen platform, Project Helix, will not support discs.

Something else at play here is that, if next-gen consoles are indeed priced at $1,000 or more, Sony and Microsoft may sell fewer of them. But by eliminating discs, Sony and Microsoft can make up some of the difference by selling digital games exclusively, and these have fatter margins.

The Resident Evil movie, which is backed by Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions, is set for release on September 18.

There's been speculation for months over who could be voicing the GTA 6 cast, but nothing has been officially confirmed, either by developer Rockstar or any of the starring talents, until now.

At the BAFTA TV Tea Party, held at The Maybourne Beverly Hills in California, actor Stephen Root was in support of his Emmy nomination for his role as Wyck in Apple's Widow's Bay. However, when asked about the rumors around his involvement in GTA 6, Root confirmed (via AP) that he does appear in the game.

"Yeah, you're going to see me in there," he confirmed. "I think from the first rollout of GTA that they were doing almost a year ago they had my character in there, and there were too many people that knew me from King of the Hill and my voice. So, I think that secret kind of got divulged then."

https://youtu.be/kTFxs3AcBCQ

"I'm so happy to be involved with it; it's an amazing thing to look at," he added.

Root, who is known for voicing King of the Hill's Bill Dauterive and playing Milton Waddams in Office Space among hundreds of other credits, will play Brian Heder. Although he didn't confirm as much in the interview clip from AP, Root's distinctive voice makes him easy to pick out from the various GTA 6 trailers.

Root played Office Space's Milton Waddams.

Brian is a veteran drug smuggler working around the Leonida Keys area and also seems to be protagonist Jason Duval's landlord--although he doesn't charge him any rent.

Rather than just a random NPC, Brian seems to be a key figure in the story of GTA 6. He's got his own profile on the official GTA 6 website, for a start. That profile notes that Brian's still moving drugs through his boatyard with his third wife, Lori, but prefers to let others do his dirty work.

GTA 6 will be released on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and Rockstar is hard at work fighting drones and hackers to keep the game's secrets safe.

StarCraft's reveal trailer squarely put the focus on the Terrans, who later in the cinematic face a terrifying confrontation with the Zerg. The franchise's three franchises--including the Protoss--have always been a central element of what distinguishes StarCraft from other strategy games. Although the Protoss were effectively absent from the trailer, they are a foe you will face at some point.

GameSpot spoke with GM and creative director Dan Hay at BlizzCon and asked him about how the three factions will interact with each other. Although he was expectedly coy on specifics, he did offer up some thoughts.

"The answer to that question is I absolutely unequivocally can't say," Hay said. "But what I can do is tell you what I would want as a player. I'll hint at sort of not what we're doing, but some of the things that we think about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2tGCCKQw&pp=0gcJCf4LAYcqIYzv

"Of course, what you want to be able to do... you think about the Protoss and how reverent we are. They're older, and there's a mystique and a grandness to them, right? They have just a completely different flavor. Then you have the Zerg, and the Zerg are just numberless; they're infinite from the standpoint of they just overwhelm you with sheer organic power. Then you have the Terrans, that are this group of... they're working their way through the sector in kind of a haphazard and industrial way. We want that feeling.

"We want it to not all just be one taste. So we want to have moments where you're fighting things that are organic, and then moments where you're fighting things that are this wonderful legacy and that are ancient. I want to tell you a lot more, but I can't."

Hay did point out something that was easy to miss in the trailer: a small hint of the Protoss. 

"You saw more than the Zerg in the trailer," he said. "If you look a little deeper, there's a moment when the thing opens and you hear that great horn go off. If you look in the background—just in the background, adjust the lighting just a tiny bit—you'll see some architecture that is very not Terran and very not Zerg. It's there."

Hay also confirmed a third-person perspective for StarCraft. While the trailer may not reflect gameplay, it does showcase one way that could impact the feel of the game, as we see the Terran soldier look up in terror at the size of a Zerg Overlord, something you ordinarily only see from an isometric camera view in past StarCraft games.

He also said StarCraft will have a "single-player focus" and offered some insight into why the game was announced now despite arriving in 2030.

If you walked away from the StarCraft reveal excited for the franchise to return, but unsure what this new game even is, you're not alone. Aside from being described during the BlizzCon Opening Ceremony as an open-world shooter, Blizzard didn't share much else. In an interview with GameSpot, Blizzard GM Dan Hay provided a few more details, including the fact that it's a third-person game.

The StarCraft franchise, having taken the form of real-time strategy games previously, has typically used an isometric perspective. When it came to choosing what perspective to offer in the new shooter, it sounds like it wasn't a difficult decision.

"Oh, that's easy," Hay said when GameSpot asked him about whether StarCraft will be a first- or third-person game. "I want to be able to see my armor. First thing we did is we built it, put it on a turntable, and spun it around like, 'Ah, awesome, cool!' I want to be able to see it, so third-person, right?

"That doesn't mean that we don't have the license to, in a couple of spaces, do a little bit different and whatnot, but third-person: You get to see your armor, you get to see the full weight of everything you have, and then you get to see stuff that's in my head that I can't tell you."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2tGCCKQw&pp=0gcJCf4LAYcqIYzv

Hay spoke to us a great deal about the fantasy of having this armor to protect you. Asked about character progression or customization, he said, "If I was to get—in theory, hypothetically, purely hypothetically—this is what I would want: I would want to be able to make sure that my armor can be made better, stronger, and different. I would also want to be able to make sure that I could make it feel like mine. I would want it to be a visitation of the legacy of the things that I had done. I would want to show that it looked different from the first moment that I got it to the last moment I got it. So, read into that how much you will hypothetically, but that's what I would want as a player."

"We have to make sure that we're thinking about—and I have to be careful not to talk about this too much—combat has to feel powerful," he added. "You're in this armor; you're a living tank. You have to feel powerful. When you hold that Gauss rifle, and the thing weighs something ridiculous, you have to feel like you're just pushing through the Zerg. The Zerg have to feel like those raptorial claws are going to shuck you like an oyster in that thing. So you have to feel the weight of all that.

"We take that very seriously. We know that people who are out there are going to be going, 'The teaser was amazing, super cool, the story sounds great, but we want to see that combat. We want to feel those moments. We want to feel the exploration, the sense of discovery, and we also want to feel this notion of disruption—that when I go out into the world, it pushes back in a way that I wasn't expecting, and then I have to figure out a new way to play.' It's how our world works."

Hay also revealed to us that StarCraft is a single-player game (or single-player is at least the focus) and shared why Blizzard decided to reveal it so soon, given it won't be out until 2030.