The "one-person, one-dog action-RPG" Beast of Reincarnation looks like a larger endeavor than developer Game Freak's previous titles--large enough to require support from outside partners to bring the studio's vision to life.

Speaking to IGN, game director Kota Furushima said that Game Freak's team is "quite large," but the studio "managed to seek out a lot of partner companies" and was "lucky to have a lot of people working on it externally as well." A PR representative clarified with IGN that Game Freak's internal team for Beast of Reincarnation is "relatively small" and is still leading the project in a core role.

Neither Furushima nor the PR spokesperson gave any numbers for how large or small Game Freak's team is. Working with external partners isn't unusual for a AAA video game--the credits for Game Freak's Pokemon Legends: Z-A list around 30 partner companies that worked on the project.

Nintendo has announced a new Super Mario Galaxy Movie Direct, and it's not being held on a weekday. Nintendo fans can get an "exclusive look" at the sequel to the Super Mario Bros. Movie on Sunday, January 25, at 6 AM PT / 9 AM ET.

Beyond that, Nintendo is staying tight-lipped about what else you can expect or how long the Direct will run. This will be focused purely on the animated movie, which sees the return of Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, and Keegan-Michael Key as Toad. New additions to the cast include Brie Larson as Rosalina and Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr.

Join us on Sunday, Jan 25, at 6am PT for the #NintendoDirect featuring an exclusive look at The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Please note that no game information will be included in this presentation.
Watch here: https://t.co/gTC114mMLz pic.twitter.com/4DOoFU1fFJ

The first trailer for the Super Mario Galaxy Movie was officially shown off last year, and was followed up by a brief scene where Mario and Luigi chat with Bowser, who is still imprisoned in Princess Peach's castle after he was shrunk down from his monstrous size. The scene ended with the appearance of Bowser Jr., who is aiming to break his dad out of his makeshift prison.

While Microsoft has stated an intention to bring its games to Nintendo Switch 2, Fable won't be one of them--at least, not immediately. According to Windows Central's Jez Corden, a port is "under consideration for the future."

Corden claimed in an X post that a version of Playground Games's reboot of Fable for Switch 2 "isn't 100% definite for now." In a follow-up post, Corden stated that a port is not currently in development because of "purely logistics," but he expressed belief that it'll eventually happen.

Putting Fable on Switch 2 would fit with Xbox's multiplatform strategy--it's coming to PlayStation 5, after all. While the rollout of Microsoft-owned titles on Nintendo's new machine has been slow so far, both Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and South of Midnight are slated to release on Switch 2 this year.

A romanticized slice of Japan is the playground that Forza Horizon 6 takes place in, but if this week's Developer Direct livestream is any indicator, the game looks like it'll have plenty of anime inspiration under its hood. One such example was seen in Forza Horizon 6's Touge Battle mode, which looks like it was pulled straight from the cult-classic street-racing manga and anime series Initial D.

The Touge Battle mode was briefly described by developer Playground Games as a series of nighttime races down Japanese mountain passes, and to hammer home the Initial D influence, the gameplay footage showed a Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 drifting through tight corners. The same car used by the manga's protagonist--and which has become an icon of street racing over the years--the tribute to the series was joined by a very brief glimpse of what appeared to be a full-sized Gundam.

If previous games with their showcase races are any indicator, don't be too surprised if you're tasked with racing a skyscraper-sized robot in Forza Horizon 6.

Cult of the Lamb's massive new paid expansion Woolhaven is out today, marking the biggest influx of new content since the game released in 2022. The $17 expansion takes the cult and its followers to the wintry new region of Woolhaven, the ancestral home of the Lambs.

Devolver Digital and developer Massive Monster celebrated Woolhaven's release with an animated trailer showing the spirits of Lambs past helping the Lamb face off against new enemies in the snowy mountains. Devolver also hosted a live stream where players could watch a Lamb ice sculpture slowly melting--with just a tiny bit of help from a blowtorch.

Players hoping to get stuck into Woolhaven will need to have played the base game to near completion, as the DLC picks up after the end of the game. Continuing the main story of the Lamb and their growing cult, Woolhaven explores the history of lambkind, tasking the player with restoring an abandoned village to its former glory and restoring the power of Yngya, the forgotten god of the Lambs.

One of the biggest stories to emerge out of this week's Xbox Developer Direct was the long-awaited update about the new Fable reboot. It's been 15 years since Fable 3 wrapped up the original trilogy, but one of the franchise's key features won't be returning in the new game.

In the first three Fable games, the physical appearance of player characters changed depending on their moral alignment. This was called "morphing," and players who were particularly bad took on a devilish appearance complete with horns. According to Fable general manager and director Ralph Fulton, that won't be the case in the new game.

"That sort of character morphing feature--obviously a really central part of the original games--it's not in ours," Fulton told IGN. "There is no objective good and evil. And the original games were predicated on there being an objective good and an objective evil, and you were somewhere along that scale, and that's what determined how your appearance changed. But for us, that doesn't really work. The way I've described our morality system working, you're never that thing, absolutely. You're different things to different people based on what they like or what they choose to value. So, that's one reason that it didn't work."