Capcom director Kenji Oguro has been chatting to Very Gary Computing about new spin-off Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, which he describes as “the JRPG the team always wanted to make”. It’s an interesting chinwag, not least for how it maps out differences between expectations aimed at Capcom’s role-playing efforts and the older Final Fantasy series (short version: older fans are more set in their ways).

There’s also a fun segment where Oguro bandies around the idea of a comparable spin-off for Resident Evil. He envisages it as something of a creature collector, like Monster Hunter Stories, but instead of collecting monsters, you’re curing them.

“Off the top of my head, I think Stories took the fundamental concept of the monster as a creature you’re going to battle and slay, and then flipped it on its head and said, the monster is now a creature you’re going to befriend and develop a kinship bond with,” Oguro told the site, through a translator.

“If that’s the fundamental approach of a Stories game, to flip the script on the basic interaction with the enemy, then I think that a Resident Evil Stories game would probably be about… I don’t think you’re ever going to be befriending zombies as such, but you know, perhaps you’d be taking the approach that, ‘I want to find a way to cure these zombies, so these people who’ve been turned into these monsters and get them back to being human’.

“I mean, you almost might end up going in more of a Dead Rising direction in that sense,” he went on. “but you’d be trying to take them and get them back to normal or figure out a way in real time to develop a cure for them. But what sort of game would that be, and whether it would work or not, I don’t know. It’s just as a response to your prompt, that’s how I would see Stories working, is taking a completely different angle on the same universe and developing the gameplay based on that.”

I’m writing this up because Oguro’s remarks have taken me on an exciting mental journey. That journey began with scorn. Making the zombies human again? This is some 1994 Edge Magazine-tier bullshit, Oguro. But then I thought about it more and, well, imagine an open worldy affair like Dead Rising where each T-viral mutant has to be cured and added to your party through some form of action-puzzling, in order to obtain the means to explore later areas.

To those who fret about not being able to do a boomy-shoot on those mutants, I say 1) Resident Evil doesn’t have to be about shooty-booming – Requiem’s stealth segments are pretty compelling, for example. And 2) I’m sure Capcom could design any number of kinetic puzzling/curing mechanics that approximate the experience of gunplay, without perforating anybody’s decrepit grey matter beyond repair.

We didn’t review Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection, but Ed Thorn (RPS in peace) got on quite well with the previous game. “The story isn’t going to make your jaw drop, the world’s rather bland, and it lacks in-depth crafting options,” he concluded. “But – and it’s a big but – the combat is genuinely a lot of fun, and collecting monsties is very moreish. Plus, I like being able to ride my monstie in battle and pull off special moves that practically nuke monsters from orbit.”

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Creative Assembly has reached out to Total War: Warhammer 3 fans, promising that details about “new content” are on the way.

Total War: Warhammer’s game director, Rich Aldridge, opened up about “why we are where we are” in a new video update, and gave a brief – but frank – assessment of the team’s progress to date, as well as reveal that we’ll find out more about the studio’s post-launch content in April 2023.

“We knew that we needed to get Immortal Empires to you in the best possible state, and that’s where we focused all of our efforts last year,” Aldridge said at the start of their five-minute statement (thanks, PC Gamer).

“Looking forward, I think we’ve got a really exciting year,” Aldridge added. “There’s going to be new content, bug fixing, quality of life improvements, taking on-board everything that you’re reaching out and telling us. I daresay some of this is going to hopefully be on your Wanted list, but I also think there’s going to be a few nice surprises there, too.”

The team is reportedly “finishing up with [its] final touches” on that first unspecified “piece of new content” and will be sharing it with the community this “passion project” “come April”.

“A lot of steps are needed in creating a DLC, and I’m sure you’re aware of that,” Aldridge explained. “Starting with the creative spark, development, but much goes on behind the scenes. Everything that we need to get looking and feeling just right before we can showcase and release it to you all.”

Alridge further added that the studio plans to “deliver two more exciting experiences also later this year – so one in summer, and one in the winter” – and confirmed that patches will also be rolled out in between this new content, too.

“We want to be as concrete as possible, but in doing so, we need to be in that position before we can communicate it to you. We don’t want to disappoint, we want to excite. We’re passionate about what we make, and we want to make great content for you to enjoy for years to come.

“We’re moving as quickly as we can on this, so please do bear with us even if it doesn’t always look that way at times. I’d really appreciate that.”

Developer Fatshark has delayed Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s upcoming Xbox Series X/S release, saying it has made the decision to spend the next few months solely addressing fan feedback after the game “fell short” of expectations.

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We’re two weeks away from Destiny 2: Lightfall, the next major expansion for Bungie’s ongoing first-person shooter. Leading up to release, the developers are sharing some goals for the future of Destiny.

On Bungie.net, the studio acknowledged that its stready stream of content updates has made the game feel like a known quantity to its dedicated player base.

“But amid this quality and consistency, Destiny 2 can sometimes feel too predictable,” Destiny 2’s Joe Blackburn wrote. “While some consistency is necessary for us to be able to regularly update the game and prevent players from having to relearn Destiny every three months, as well as to maintain our team health and sustainability, it is clear that too much predictability has created a lack of surprise and delight by the time some of our major game updates get into your hands.”

Destiny 2: Lightfall Screenshots

The team also addressed complaints that “there’s just not enough to do” in Destiny 2, saying they recognize that the most hardcore players often run out of content to dig into at the end of each season.

With those issues laid out, the team listed four big goals for Destiny 2 moving forward: expand players’ imaginations, bring challenge back to Destiny, enrich content, and connect Guardians.

Season of Defiance

Lightfall will launch alongside Season of Defiance, which will reduce complexity in Destiny’s progression system. This includes fewer competing currencies, simpler resource management, and more. Destiny will also begin exploring a wider range of themes and fantasies, citing last year’s reapers, pirates, and cowboys as examples of how Destiny’s settings can push pre-existing boundaries.

Bungie is also planning to tune the balance between players and enemies to bring a higher sense of challenge back to Destiny 2, without making foes feel like nothing but bullet sponges. The developers also hope to bolster the pre-existing PvP and PvE content so players feel like there’s always something to do, even after completing the bulk of each season and expansion’s new content. Finally, the developers are adding new matchmaking tools to help players find a fireteam fast.

Destiny 2: Lightfall is coming on February 28. The expansion is set to mark “the beginning of the end” for Destiny 2, and will introduce a qhole new map on Neptune called Neo Luna. Bungie also confirmed it will not remove any past expansions in the Light and Darkness Saga so new players can experience the entire story.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

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Solid state drives are great, helping to bring faster storage and performance to everyone’s PCs, laptops, and consoles, and thanks to more competition in the space and dropping prices it’s really easy now to upgrade your setup with an SSD.

Western Digital are a quality manufacturer of storage options, and their WD_BLACK range of components repeatedly feature in Digital Foundry’s best SSD for gaming list.

Right now, the WD_BLACK SN770 1TB SSD is on sale at Amazon for £74.99, which is a 15 per cent discount and only £5 more expensive than it was on Black Friday in 2022, when it was the cheapest it’s been:

The SN770 is impressive with read speeds of up to 5,150MB/s, and thanks to the PCIe Gen4 interface your games will feel more responsive, have less stutter, and any streaming you want to do should be much smoother. It’s also a great option to upgrade a laptop’s storage, and WD have improved the SN770’s power efficiency by 20 per cent more than their previous version.

This SSD is an M.2 NVMe drive, meaning you can just insert it straight into the NVMe slot on your PC or Laptop’s motherboard without the need for any cables, and it can just stay there and do its job.

This also means that the SN770 is a good option if you want to upgrade your PS5’s storage too, although this model doesn’t come with a heatsink which is recommended because SSDs can get pretty toasty when running in a PS5. Have a read of Digital Foundry’s best SSD for PS5 guide which contains a list of compatible heatsinks you can attach to the SN770 to keep it cool in there.

If 1TB isn’t enough for you, then you can get the 2TB version of the SN770 for just under double the price thanks to a 16 per cent discount that it has on Amazon right now too.

If you plan on making some more upgrades to your gaming station in the future, why not follow the Jelly Deals Twitter account so you can keep up-to-date with the latest discounts on SSDs, RAM, graphics cards and any other pieces of tech we spot on sale.

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