How About a GTA Set Outside the United States? 'Never Say Never,' Rockstar Boss Teases, but Don't Hold Your Breath

Rockstar isn't ruling out a GTA set outside the United States, but don't hold your breath: the studio says there are plenty more stories to tell in America.

In an interview with The Guardian, Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson was asked whether or not the developer would ever make a GTA game set outside of America. His response was simple: "Never say never." However, Nelson continued his response by stating, "There’s still so much to do in America."

The GTA series has largely rotated between three locations for the last 25 years: Liberty City (New York), Vice City (Miami), and San Andreas (California). We got a brief glimpse at the Midwest of GTA in GTA 5, when the game's story opened in a snowy state called North Yankton. But that's about as much as we've gotten outside of the coastal cities that GTA rotates through. It's unclear what else Rockstar wants to do with GTA, specifically the American setting.

GTA has flirted with going overseas before, as Rockstar came close to making one set in Japan in the early to mid-2000s. The first GTA also had an expansion set in London, and GTA 5 seemingly had scrapped DLC that would've at least partially taken place in Paris. Ex-GTA writer and creative director Dan Houser also stated last year that he doesn't think GTA would work as well outside of America.

"I think for a full GTA game, we always decided there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else," said Houser. "You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters. It just felt like the game was so much about America, possibly from an outsider's perspective. But that was so much about what the thing was that it wouldn't really have worked in the same way elsewhere.”

Maybe one day it will happen, but it does seem like Rockstar's interests with GTA are rooted in American culture.

GTA 6 will, of course, take us back to Vice City next week when it launches on November 19. It is expected to have one of the biggest launches in history, with it already being the most preordered game in the history of Xbox and PlayStation's digital stores. Players are able to preload the game right now, and they absolutely should, as the game is a whopping 210 GBs.

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WoW Forever's First Big Secret Has Been Discovered by Players

If there's one thing that's true about any version of World of Warcraft, it's that Blizzard loves hiding convoluted quest chains behind mundane objects, the first of which has been found in WoW Forever.

If you've started a Skyborne character in Forever, you've probably completed a quest that rewarded you with an 'Ancient Heirloom' ring with no stats, and wondered why it even exists. Well, it turns out that it kicks off a whole hidden quest chain if you know where to look.

This secret was discovered by the WoW Secret Finding and Collections Discord, and it involves getting that ring, finding a sword hilt that only shows up when you're using a specific torch, then finding a blade with a random location and then finding and cleansing a 'Befouled Water Globe.' The community has put together a guide on Wowhead of the known steps so far, but there's a catch – it doesn't seem like anyone has actually finished the little scavenger hunt yet.

As of this morning, folks in the WoW Secret Finding Discord are still actively trying to see what gets unlocked at the end of this convoluted chain, but for now, the community is calling it the "Dawn Waker Secret" and seems to believe it revolves around a couple of swords: Eluvi'ana and Eluvi'tor.

As part of the process, you'll end up with a sword that you need to cleanse, and to do that, you'll need to clear the Capital Gardens section of Dire Maul and talk to Prince Tortheldrin, whose dialog hints that "such knowledge is reserved by those honored in my royal court." And, in classic WoW fashion, this probably means a lengthy rep grind is needed.

According to admin Miko in the WoW Secret Finding Discord, "Our most recent discoveries hint us that the rewards for this chain will involve the swords of Eluvi'ana and Eluvi'tor. The most recent step points us to a rep grind with the Shendralar Faction, as Prince Tortheldrin in Dire Maul tells us that only those Honored with his court are worthy enough to obtain the knowledge about these blades."

Depending on how long it takes players to actually get Honored with the Shendralar faction, it might be a while before the final reward is actually revealed. But there are hundreds of players in this Discord channel working on the secret, so it's only a matter of time.

We're still in the early days of WoW Forever, after all, and it's been a massively successful launch. And as more players start to get to max level, more secrets are sure to pop up in the world. After all, while World of Warcraft takes a lot of queues from Classic WoW, the developers have added a ton of content, so who knows how many secrets have been buried in the corners of Azeroth?

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Bethesda Sets Expectations as Fans Hope for The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel News Today

Bethesda has issued an official response to fans expecting a major announcement for The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel at some point today.

In a post from the company's official account on reddit, Bethesda said it had seen the growing speculation among its fans that today, November 11, would bring more details on Sentinel, hot on the heels of the game's subtitle and logo reveal just last week.

Alas, today will not be when we find out more about the game, Bethesda has now said — pouring cold water on hopes that we would see more of the Hammerfell-set role-player anytime soon.

Despite being announced eight years ago, Sentinel is reportedly still two years away from launch — at least. We don't even know which platforms it will launch on (could it be an Xbox Helix launch title?) or whether it will be an Xbox console exclusive. Of course, that hasn't stopped Bethesda already beginning to sell Sentinel merch.

"Hey everyone, wanted to pop in to say that we aren't going to have any big announcements tomorrow," Bethesda wrote overnight (tomorrow meaning today, November 11). "We're excited you're excited but we will not be sharing anything new on Sentinel for some time."

Response to that statement is unsurprisingly a little mixed, with some fans commenting that they appreciate the clarity from Bethesda, while others joking that it will be another eight years before we see anything more of the game.

Of course, November 11 is an important date in the minds of The Elder Scrolls fans. It is the original release date for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, all the way back in 2011 (memorably, on 11/11/11). 15 years on, you can see why some had hoped Bethesda might have more to say today — but alas that is not set to be the case.

For those wanting to read more Sentinel today, however, IGN has you covered. We've got a deep dive on what Sentinel actually means based on The Elder Scrolls lore, and why Sentinel's in-universe quote teaser is sparking particular timeline speculation. We also have a roundup of former Bethesda design director Bruce Nesmith's wishes for Sentinel, whenever the long-awaited game does finally arrive.

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Blizzard Changes World of Warcraft Forever Gold Rewards For High Level Quests, and Players are Celebrating

For the longest time in World of Warcraft, when you finished a quest at max level, the experience you would earn would get converted to gold. But in WoW Forever, Blizzard killed off that conversion, and has now added a fix.

The experience-to-gold conversion for quests completed at high level has been a part of WoW for nearly 20 years, to the point where a lot of players rely on it to build up some cash when they hit max level, especially in the Classic versions of the game. But, when WoW Forever launched last week, that conversion was missing, and now that players are starting to hit level 60, they're starting to feel that loss of gold.

Thankfully, Blizzard community manager Kaivax has posted on the WoW forum to say a hotfix will go live "in the next 24 hours or so" to help high level players earn a little bit of gold. Rather than converting experience to gold, Blizzard will buff the gold rewarded for high level quests, regardless of what level you are.

According to Kaivax: "we’re preparing a hotfix that will add additional gold rewards to most quests with a quest level of level 48 or higher, including adding gold to quests above level 48 that never previously rewarded gold at all. The idea here is that you should feel good about doing quests at the appropriate level to progress your character, and you should feel adequately rewarded with gold for doing so."

But why change that experience-gold conversion in the first place? Well, according to Kaivax, that conversion "created an incentive for players to hold a full quest log worth of completed quests to hand in after hitting level 60 for maximum gold returns. Under those conditions, the optimal way for players to level to 60 was to simply grind creatures for XP and not hand in quests at all, which is not a design we want to retain in WoW: Forever."

Kaivax's post was in a thread where players were complaining about not being able to earn gold from quests. The original post was from Faze, who said four days ago that "the change to not give additional gold in exchange for EXP at 60 needs to be reverted. Quests are basically useless at 60 if they don’t have a reward. This was one of the easy ways to make gold to afford spells and mounts. This is a horrible design and change. It feels good to complete quests and now this just feels BAD at 60. Change this back ASAP."

Before Kaivax posted, nearly 100 replies deep, there were a ton of players who were essentially saying that they'd stop playing the game over this. Player Glôwstick said: "this is a deal breaker for me, wont be playing any more until this is reverted," while Rackjaw commented: "WoW Forever devs seem to be obsessed with 'fixing' things that aren’t broken."

However, players seem to have changed their tune immediately after Kaivax's response. Danni said: "Nice change. Quests giving consistent gold whether you do them at 59 or 60 makes sense, and doesn’t punish people for handing them in 'too soon.'"

There are some players that are skeptical about the change. For instance, Jalesanda posted: "I will withhold putting the pitch forks away for now until we see how much gold this is, and how it compares. But it’s put down, for now."

This change really does highlight the philosophy that the WoW Forever team is taking with the new game mode, though. While there are players who probably want a 1:1 copy of Classic, Forever will make changes as long as they stay within the 'spirit' of the game. That's why, for instance, the devs held the line on group tagging, but had no problem adding some quests like the beloved 'Kyle's Gone Missing' or changing how dungeon experience is earned.

And as more players start to reach max level, the initial design of WoW Forever is going to be pushed to its limits, and we'll just have to see the extent of changes that Blizzard is going to be willing to make. Right now, WoW Forever is kind of like a blank canvass, and while I've been given some hints of where the game might go in the future, I can't wait to see the unique path Forever takes. And this experience to gold conversion change is really just the first of many changes I'm sure we're going to see.

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GTA 6 'Preload Now' Trailer Includes Nearly 30 Seconds of New Footage — SWAT Team, Nightclub Dancing, and More

Rockstar has released a new GTA 6 trailer announcing the launch of preloads, and it includes new footage.

Preloading is now available for everyone who has preordered GTA 6 digitally (those who preordered the code-in-the-box version can also activate their code and begin preloading as soon as it’s received).

Rockstar has also, finally, announced the performance specifications GTA 6 is shooting for across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro, Xbox Series X and S, and even Xbox One, but our focus here is the accompanying new trailer. While it’s only 29 seconds long, it does include snippets of never-before-seen footage, which has already got fans talking.

The trailer, which features ‘Blood in Your Eyes’ by Tove Lo from Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album, starts with the “Plays Best on PS5” message we’ve seen on pretty much all the GTA 6 marketing material so far, per Sony’s partnership with Rockstar Games. We then see Lucia and Jason dancing together in a nightclub, before we switch to a racetrack in the daytime, where Lucia watches an enthusiastic driver do a backflip.

We then switch to a character saying, “I mean, it’s not really my thing, you know what I’m sayin’?” This is music producer Dre'Quan Priest (“Now that he's signed the Real Dimez, Dre'Quan's days of booking acts into Boobie's strip club might be numbered as he sets his sights on the Vice City scene.”)

We then see Jason push someone into a shower (I think it’s a shower!), a party on a boat called “Ships And Giggles,” and then something interesting: a SWAT team that looks like it’s responding to an emergency of some sort. My best guess is these guys are part of the team that assaulted the building Jason and Lucia escape from in the Extended Look.

We then see Lucia and a friend getting ready for a night out, before another character makes a dramatic exit, saying, “Oh, it is so on now!”

GTA 6 launches on November 19, and we’ve got the global release times so you know when you can start playing. This week, IGN interviewed Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick to talk GTA 6 expectations, Online, and what the next decade looks like. We’ve also got a report on the hunt for information dataminers are currently on following the launch of GTA 6 preload.

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You Don't Need a Current-Gen Console if You're Happy to Play GTA 6 at Xbox Series S Settings

After months of speculation, Rockstar finally revealed that GTA 6 would be targeting 30fps on all of the current-generation consoles, including the Xbox Series S. But, thanks to a cloud streaming deal with Xbox, you can technically play the game on the Xbox One.

While GTA 6 will only be running locally on the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, Rockstar finally detailed which devices will be able to use Xbox Cloud Gaming to play the game. Its blog post says, "The game will also be available via Xbox Cloud Gaming on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles, utilizing Xbox Series S graphics settings." So, you can technically play GTA 6 on the Xbox One, which launched all the way back in 2013, it just won't be, well, running on the Xbox One itself.

We've known for a while that GTA 6 would be playable via Xbox Cloud Gaming, after an exclusive deal was announced in October. At the time, because of the wide swath of devices that can use Xbox Cloud Gaming, this deal fueled speculation that you'd be able to play GTA 6 on everything from a gaming PC to an iPhone. However, Xbox Chief Strategy Officer Matthew Ball later clarified that the game wouldn't be streaming to PC. But, now, thanks to Rockstar's blog, we now know the full extent of devices that can stream GTA 6.

The real catch to streaming GTA 6 is going to be the quality. According to the blog, the streaming version will be running at the same graphics settings as the Xbox Series S version, which is the weakest current-gen system. It's not clear yet what the game will look like running on the Series S, but Rockstar did say that it was targeting 30fps on all of the consoles.

It's likely that the Xbox Series S version of GTA 6 will be running at a lower resolution, though, which is probably the reason why Rockstar opted for that version of the game being used for streaming. Due to the immense demand that this game has, it's likely that a ton of people are going to be trying to stream this game at launch, and opting for the lowest resolution version means less risk of Microsoft's servers buckling under the weight.

If you do want to play GTA 6 this way, though, keep in mind that Xbox Cloud Gaming comes with its own list of caveats. You're at the mercy of your internet connection and Microsoft's servers, and could deal with graphics artifacts due to bandwidth issues, lag, or just getting booted out of the game if the servers go down. Plus, Microsoft's limits to Xbox Cloud Gaming went live this month, so even if you have a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you'll be limited to 15 hours of game time before you have to buy more.

If you are going to play GTA 6 locally on your own console, you might want to save a nice chunk of storage for it, as it's going to take up 212GB of space. With a game that big, you're going to want to preload it if you want to play right when the game goes live too, and luckily preloads just went live this morning.

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The Witcher 3’s New Expansion Has Me Wondering if BioWare Should Have Focused on Dragon Age and Mass Effect DLC Rather Than Big New Games

This is an opinion piece from writer Jess Kinghorn. IGN's opinion columns represent the personal viewpoints of the writer, drawing on their own experiences and research to explore the exciting world of video games.

Unless you’ve been camping out on some far flung space rock, you’ll have heard that EA shut down BioWare last month. 50 developers lost their jobs, and Mass Effect 5 was cancelled. It’s a disappointing end for the studio so foundational to the modern RPG.

BioWare’s final years were plagued by lengthy, troubled development cycles and messy final products. I’m left wondering what could’ve been – particularly when fellow genre titan CD Projekt Red continues to find success updating Cyberpunk 2077 and has even announced a new expansion to the decade-old The Witcher 3. Could BioWare have found a more secure future by developing expansions for its older, more beloved games rather than struggling on with Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Mass Effect 5?

Songs of the Past will be the third expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and by the time it drops in 2027, the original will be 12 years old. I don’t know about you but back in 2015 I was going out of my gourd over every fresh revelation throughout Life Is Strange’s first season, and making Undertale my entire personality. Point being, that might as well be ancient in video game years.

Add to that The Witcher 3 Remastered, Cyberpunk 2077 2.0, plus its Phantom Liberty DLC, as well as the brand new Edgerunners Season 2 update, and it’s clear to see CD Projekt Red always has the long term success of its games top of mind. Remasters and DLC not only fill the boots of existing fans, but no doubt charm gamers new to these realms. All of it leaves me longingly looking at my copy of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, wondering what could have been for BioWare.

Mass Effect has always been at its best delivering snappy, episodic adventures in the mold of classic TV shows like Farscape (big up my sexy blue ladies). The Legendary Edition, launched in 2021, could have been the start of a new era for the original trilogy, introducing a steady trickle of new missions, DLC packs, or perhaps even a CDPR-style expansion which would have kept the series front of mind. Who would say no to, for instance, a fresh string of missions revolving around The Shadow Broker - especially as the studio had seemed keen to lean on Liara hype to stoke interest in future entries (again: big up).

But instead of continuing to build on what Mass Effect fans already loved, the studio was locked into working the live service mines for a completely different sci fi project, Anthem. Following a troubled 2019 release, the game was completely shut down earlier this year. The ripple effects of Anthem’s misfire would be felt throughout the rest of BioWare’s existence. Case in point, Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Work on the original incarnation of this devisive RPG began about a decade ago, before being rebooted in 2017 as a live service game built with Anthem’s development tools. To be fair, the live service model is one way to sustain storytelling in an established setting, though this was not the fate fans had wanted for the world of Thedas.

The project was officially unveiled as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in 2022, promising a conclusion to the arc of a certain bad boy elf in Dragon Age: Inquisition and its Trespasser DLC. The project was ultimately retooled as a single-player experience and released as Dragon Age: The Veilguard in 2025, a game that feels distinctly at war with itself.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition could have been the start of a new era for the original trilogy, introducing a steady trickle of new DLC packs.

Imagine a world where the Dreadwolf wasn’t sidelined in the very game that once carried his name. Imagine instead that my female elf inquisitor had been able to have the last word with everyone’s favourite evil egg years ago in one last massive hurrah for Inquisition, an expansion that had the space and focus to conclude the base game’s many threads. Imagine The Veilguard had been properly free to tell a new story all its own.

Instead, the ending The Veilguard offers us Solas romancers is…mostly fine. But, at the risk of skirting some major spoilers, I’ve no doubt it would have been all the more impactful to be in the driver’s seat rather than watching some NPCs walk off into the sunset. It’s yet another example of the weird clash at the heart of The Veilguard: it explores the northern reaches of Thedas for the first time, while the story is still trying to wrap up everything that went on down south.

After all of Tresspasser’s set up, chasing Solas through The Veilguard's flashy opening ends up feeling like I’ve skipped over a whole other Dragon Age game. Hastily punting the bald baddie into the Fade and introducing new villains feels like a lapse of judgement, misunderstanding what fans were looking for after following this story across so many years. Inquisition and Veilguard launched 10-years apart (with The Trespasser DLC dropping just one year after Inquisition). Is it really too offbase an idea to suggest that 2014's award-sweeping megahit could have gotten more DLC releases to bridge the gap? If games like The Witcher 3 can still get its hooks in with a new expansion, it seems like a massive missed opportunity here.

It’s hard not to see 2017’s Mass Effect: Andromeda as a similarly troubled false start. The Legendary Edition remaster could’ve been a fantastic platform for original space-faring stories with established characters. Unfortunately, BioWare began development on yet another fresh start taking place hundreds of years after Mass Effect 3 instead. As this project was cancelled with the studio’s closure, Andromeda’s infamy is left to linger over the series’ legacy like its very own accursed veil.

As nostalgia is not a particularly deep well to draw from, each attempt to reinvent BioWare’s RPG wheels are at least understandable. Still, pivoting a beloved RPG studio to live service games will forever remain a headscratcher. It’s hard not to wonder what could’ve been if BioWare had been allowed to tell smaller scope follow up stories instead – would the studio have avoided being on EA’s chopping block altogether? By all rights BioWare should have been in a position to match Baldur's Gate 3’s success, rather than see that particular hype train and the wider genre revival chug along right past them.

It’s clear EA didn’t know what it had with BioWare. The studio we knew is gone – though perhaps not completely dead if recent comments made by Canadian MP Don Davies in response to a fanmade petition are any indication. If BioWare’s laid off developers are able to ‘buy back their studio’, here’s hoping it's the fresh start that finally sticks the landing. In the meantime, the spirit of BioWare lives on in plenty of RPGs - though with former staff involved in Exodus, maybe evolution is more likely than a resurrection.

Jess Kinghorn is a freelancer writer who has written for PC Gamer, PLAY, and GamesRadar+.

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