IGN

Spoilers follow for Captain America: Brave New World.

After 17 years MIA from the MCU, Liv Tyler is back as Betty Ross in Captain America: Brave New World. Or… is she? While Betty is a major part of the character arc for her father President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), Tyler’s return is contained to two extremely brief scenes, both of which have some, shall we say, oddities about them. And given Marvel’s history of digital trickery, they certainly could raise some questions about whether Tyler was on set for this movie at all.

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: Tyler is in the movie. After spending most of the flick wanting to make his estranged daughter Betty proud of him, Thaddeus spontaneously tries calling her from the Oval Office before a critical speech and manages to get her on the phone. And in the movie’s final scene, at least before the post-credits scene, Betty visits her father at The Raft, the floating prison where the MCU sends their super-powered criminals.

Arriving on Shudder just in time for Valentine’s Day, The Dead Thing is a new horror movie about the hell of online dating. As such, it has to compete with the decade-and-a-half of stand-up comedy, articles, books, podcasts, TV shows, friends, oversharers, and, well, other horror movies that have expressed the same feeling about Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, et al.: “The Apps,” as we collectively refer to them, are kind of lousy. With a topic that exhausted, The Dead Thing really doesn’t stand a chance of saying anything new, interesting, or even scary. And it doesn’t help its chances with half-baked characters, moody gestures at style that are quickly abandoned, and moments of psychological horror that frankly, don’t seem very thoughtful.

Alex (Blu Hunt) is trapped in a familiar pattern of boring, repetitive first dates, shallow conversations, and passable sex. She has a pretty soul-sucking job that involves… scanning things? Overnight? The specifics are not very clear, but the isolation is: She only ever has one coworker present in an otherwise empty office, which she enters and leaves at hours where most people seem to be at home. She avoids her roommate, and doesn’t seem to have much in the way of hobbies, choosing to decompress in front of a UV lamp with some music. Then she does it all over again: Swipe the app, go on a date, maybe a hookup, go to work.

If The Dead Thing has anything particular to say about modern dating and the app-fueled meet market, it’s bemoaning the shallowness that afflicts Alex. Elric Kane and Webb Wicoxen’s script underlines how the skin-deep interactions that come with meeting people via a smartphone can cause our emotional muscles to atrophy. We’re left not just yearning for a deeper connection but unable to sustain one once the opportunity knocks. It’s just so much easier to check out, or to settle for the initial thrill of a casual hookup over and over again until it loses all meaning. That’s why things feel different when Alex hits it off with Kyle (Ben Smith Petersen) on an app called Friktion. Finally, the two find something more than the superficial chit-chat that’s turned them numb. Finally, they flash smiles that seem genuine. Finally, the sex is more than just fine. But Kyle has terrible secrets – because of course he has terrible secrets.

This is not the most original idea – in fact, it’s not even one that’s unique to online dating. Originality isn’t everything, though – especially in horror, where execution rules supreme. Unfortunately, The Dead Thing’s early hints of style – dreamy lights and beguiling strings that open the movie – quickly fade away for washed out, harsh-looking scenes that feel more amateurish than intentional. The same applies to the scares, when the movie finally turns towards horror – the ambition of first-time director Elric Kane seems to exceed his movie’s grasp. Moments that seem like they’re meant to disorient mostly just feel muddled, and scenes where characters question their grip on reality end up feeling kind of confused instead – potentially confusing the viewer on accident, instead of on purpose.

It’s also extremely disappointing how light on menace or dread The Dead Thing is, given its fraught subject matter. Horror movies have long made a meal out of dating’s potential for fright. Making a choice to be vulnerable with someone, to meet another person alone, to see where the night goes – it’s high-risk, high-reward stuff! However, the effectiveness of this kind of horror story comes from specificity – the ways in which an individual person might be vulnerable, their distinct worries, concerns, or hopes, and how another person may fulfill or threaten them.

The two leads of The Dead Thing aren’t developed enough for that. They live in rooms that are too spare to clue us into what they might enjoy, they have conversations about how much they don’t like conversations (“We don’t need to talk, do we?” is one character’s go-to line), they have virtually no friends to speak of. Alex and Kyle feel less like people and more like an excuse to just wallow in the misery of what it means to look for connection now, and fret about how we may have encouraged ourselves as a society to take a turn for the worse.

In the broadest possible sense, The Dead Thing is on to something in the way that you might be on to something if you decided to wear a coat during a blizzard. While there are certainly more specialty and niche dating apps designed to ease the pain, the fact remains: It’s bad out there! Unfortunately, The Dead Thing doesn’t make a case for anything more thoughtful than swiping over to the next movie on the queue.

2011’s Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe certainly lives up to its name. It’s a book that reveals what happens when Wade Wilson finally goes completely off the deep end and begins slaughtering the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe. That series proved popular enough that writer Cullen Bunn and artist Dalibor Talajić reunited for a sequel, 2017’s Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again. Now, Bunn and Talajić are getting the band together one last time to chronicle Deadpool’s latest and greatest campaign of bloodshed in Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe One Last Time. The twist this time is that it’s not just one universe facing Wade’s wrath, but the entire Marvel multiverse.

IGN recently had the opportunity to speak to Bunn via email to learn more about the final act in the Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe trilogy. First, check out an exclusive preview of the first issue below, and then read on to learn more about the fourth wall-breaking carnage that awaits.

Bunn is certainly one of Marvel’s more prolific Deadpool creators, having penned everything from Deadpool: Killustrated to Night of the Living Deadpool to Deadpool & the Mercs for Money over the years. Amid all those Deadpool stories, we were curious if Bunn always had the ideas for his sequels in mind. Did he envision this growing into a full-fledged trilogy back when he was first writing Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe?

“I never knew that series would go anywhere or be anything more than me having a good time writing a comic,” Bunn tells IGN. “I can’t help myself, though. I love thinking about where stories could go. I ask myself constantly… what’s next? When I was first working on Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, my first pitch after I completed that series was Deadpool Kills the Marvel Multiverse. At least, that was one of three initial pitches, including Deadpool Kills the Marvel Cosmic Universe, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Zombies, Deadpool’s Secret Wars, and Deadpool Killustrated. Two of those happened, but the Multiverse book was the closest to what we’ve got coming up. And, frankly, now is a much better time to do that story!”

Naturally, the challenge with a trilogy like this is finding ways of continually escalating and growing the conflict. When you start off with a series where Deadpool murders the entire rosters of the X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four, it’s no easy task to keep expanding the scope. For Bunn, the solution was opening up the multiverse. This time, we’ll see Wade battle everything from Cap-Wolves to Worldbreaker Hulks to entirely new and completely distorted versions of Marvel’s heroes and villains.

“The multiverse most certainly opens up a lot of new avenues of exploration,” Bunn says. “We wanted this to be different from what you’ve seen before in the series. We wanted to show Deadpool battling different versions of Marvel heroes (many readers will have seen before, many who are new). I spent a lot of time researching the “worst” (meaning “the best”) variants of Marvel heroes and villains. What I didn’t realize when I set out is that we were creating the most epic Deadpool story of all time. How’s that for an escalation? How’s that for throwing the gauntlet down?”

Bunn is excited for readers to witness the carnage in the book, though he’s keeping mum as to what match-ups fans can expect beyond what Marvel already revealed in the solicitation for issue #1.

“I’m not going to spoil anything in the book. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have even mentioned Cap-Wolf and Worldbreaker Hulk,” Bunn says. “There are some cool, cool characters showing up in this series. Dozens and dozens of them. And Deadpool is battling some of the most powerful heroes and villains in the multiverse. How’s he gonna manage to bring them down? There are some characters showing up in this book that from the ‘I’ve been reading comics a long time and love some obscure characters’ perspective that haven’t been seen in over 30 years. Will those be the most epic of the battles? You’ll have to see.”

Coming back to the idea of escalation, Talajić kicked things up a notch in Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again by bringing a new level of visual flourish to the series. There, Talajić frequently switches artistic styles, contrasting the bloody carnage with the saccharine, sanitized vision of events that exists inside the brainwashed Deadpool’s mind. Bunn promises that Talajić will continue to shake things up from a visual perspective with the grand finale of the trilogy.

“With Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again, we wanted to play with different eras and styles of comics,” Bunn says. “With this new book, we’re not changing the overall visual style for each kill. Where Dalibor really gets to shine, though, is in his interpretations of different worlds… different versions of our heroes… and a different version of [REDACTED] than you have ever seen before. Dalibor is a master of his craft always, but he’s bringing some real insanity to the page in this!”

While we refer to this as being part of a trilogy, it’s important to note that the first two Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe books aren’t directly connected. They instead offer two different scenarios for why Deadpool would suddenly start killing Marvel’s heroes. In the first, Deadpool becomes a nihilistic murder machine after discovering the full truth about his status as a comic book character. In the second, a different Wade is brainwashed by a group of villains into doing their dirty work and slaughtering heroes.

Lenovo has kicked off its Presidents’ Day Sale early with big price drops on two of its most popular Legion prebuilt gaming desktop computers. These systems are:

• Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 RTX 4080 Super gaming PC for $2,132.49
• Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 8 RTX 4070 Ti Super gaming PC for $1,527.49

You will have to apply two stackable coupon codes: “EXTRAFIVE” and “BUYMORELENOVO“, although the second one might automatically be added to your cart. If you’re waiting for RTX 50-series GPUs to come back in stock, don’t. The RTX 40-series GPUs easily meet current gaming needs at a more affordable price point, and they’re readily in stock.

In our recent Legion Tower 7 review, Jacqueline Thomas wrote that “the Legion Tower 7i is an incredibly powerful gaming PC, especially for the money you’re likely going to be paying for it. If all you want is a powerful, upgradeable machine without having to go through the trouble of building it yourself, it’s hard to find many gaming PCs better than this one.”

Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 RTX 4080 Super Gaming PC

Marvel Studios has kicked off its 2025 slate of movies with the release of Captain America: Brave New World. And if this sequel is any indication, we’re looking at a bumpy year for the MCU. It’s not the strong outing we were hoping for from the first movie to star Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson as the new Captain America (see IGN’s Captain America: Brave New World review for more).

At times, Brave New World left us scratching our heads and struggling with some of the film’s unresolved questions and underdeveloped characters. What’s the deal with new characters like Ruth Bat-Seraph and Sidewinder? Why does The Leader seem like something less than a brilliant mastermind? Where’s the Hulk? Heck, where are the Avengers? Let’s break down our biggest WTF questions after seeing Captain America: Brave New World.

Where Was Banner This Whole Time?

It only took 17 years, but Marvel finally gave us a sequel to The Incredible Hulk in Captain America: Brave New World. This movie picked up a lot of the loose ends from Hulk’s first (and so far only) solo MCU adventure. We finally learned what became of Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Sterns after his gamma exposure. Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus Ross is finally paying the piper for all his crimes. It’s even the first time since The Incredible Hulk that Liv Tyler has reprised the role of Betty Ross.

In all of that, there’s only one fundamental ingredient that’s missing. Where is the Hulk himself? Why did Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner have no part to play in a story that builds so directly on the foundation of The Incredible Hulk?

Surely Bruce Banner of all people would have a response to the revelation that his old Ahab-like nemesis has suddenly become President of the United States. Surely Banner would be keen to know that his old friend “Mr. Blue” is now a gamma-irradiated super-genius plotting the downfall of multiple governments. And surely Banner would want to lend a hand when the news starts broadcasting footage of a crimson Hulk smashing up the White House.

It’s not as if Brave New World would have had to work hard to justify Banner’s inclusion. 2021’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings established that Banner, alongside Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, is keeping a watchful eye on the world now that the Avengers have disbanded. We know from the She-Hulk series that he’s still keeping plenty busy with his research and raising his son, Skaar. So why was Banner totally MIA during this latest Hulk-related crisis?

No doubt Marvel will have an explanation for Banner’s absence, revealing that he was off-world with Skaar or something along those lines. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a Banner-shaped hole in Brave New World’s plot. Brave New World is a movie about Sam Wilson accepting the idea that the world needs Avengers again, yet it can’t muster up more than a quick cameo from Sebastian Stan’s Bucky (we’ll get to him in a bit). Surely there would have been room to include Banner in some capacity.

Why Does The Leader Think So Small?

Again, Brave New World marks the return of Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Sterns, a character who has radically transformed since last we saw him in The Incredible Hulk. These days, Sterns is sporting a giant green noggin and a major grudge against President Ross. Thanks to the power of gamma, Sterns has become as superhumanly intelligent as the Hulk is strong.

That’s the idea, anyway. In practice, we’re not convinced Brave New World does such a great job of showcasing Sterns’ tactical brilliance. He’s a man who can calculate probabilities and plan for anything, yet he routinely seems to leave Captain America out of his equations. We’re meant to believe that Sterns orchestrated a war between the US and Japan, yet didn’t factor in the possibility that Cap might successfully intervene?

We’re also confused as to why Sterns willingly turns himself in during the climax of the film. Why did he have to give up his freedom in order to carry out his final masterstroke against Ross, when said masterstroke was nothing more than playing a recording of their phone call to the press? Why didn’t he stay on the lam and leave himself open to hatching new schemes in the future?

Story-wise, Brave New World is a strangely unambitious film in many ways, and nowhere is that more true than with Sterns. In the comics, Sterns is known as The Leader. He’s a brilliant supervillain mastermind who can and has threatened the world many times. Here, he’s just a guy who really, really hates Harrison Ford. Sterns seemingly has no motivation beyond wanting to humiliate Ross. That’s such a small motivation for such a major Marvel villain. Especially one who can see the coming doomsday for Earth. If Sterns has calculated the collapse of the multiverse, you’d think he’d be more concerned with that and less worried about ruining Ross’ reputation.

Why Is Red Hulk So Much Like Green Hulk?

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the last entry Buffy the Vampire Slayer May Be Getting a Reboot, But Maybe That’s Not a Good Thing

This column contains spoilers for the Yellowjackets Season 3 premiere. If you need a refresher, check out our Yellowjackets Story So Far.

Anyone else feel like the past storyline in Yellowjackets’ Season 3 premiere is just a little too idyllic? And what’s the deal with those screaming trees? As is the case with much of Yellowjackets, I think it’s all tied together in a gruesome web. The trees aren’t just a jarring bit of supernatural mayhem, but a hint as to what’s going on in the broader series.

At the end of Season 2, a panicked Coach Ben burned down his and the team’s shared shelter after having just about enough of their cannibalism nonsense. Now, at the start of Season 3, the girls (and Travis) have managed to build an oasis. Spring has sprung, food is now abundant, and each of the stranded team members has their own cozy little shelter. Each shelter even has its own unique style based on the preference of its inhabitant, and not a single word is shared of the struggle they faced as they grappled for shelter or food after their coach finally turned on them (though Shauna does remain rightfully pretty pissed about her baby). One of the girls even throws away a bowl of food in the episode! Given that they had just been eating one another not that long ago, this seems like an unbelievable sin. But all is not what it seems.

Halfway through the episode, Travis (Kevin Alves) gets high on some forest mushrooms and has what we at first believe to be a bad trip. While talking with Lottie (Courtney Eaton) he hears the trees start to scream, but Lottie doesn’t hear a thing. Obviously, he panics, but then he offers Lottie an ominous condolence after she says she can’t hear the trees. “You will,” he says.

While the moment is creepy as hell, it was easy to write off right up until it wasn’t. As Travis predicted, soon all of the girls begin to hear the screams.

Now, half the fun of a show like Yellowjackets is speculating wildly when it comes to the what does it mean of it all. Usually there are snippets of evidence here or there within the show that lead citizen detectives in one direction or another, but it can be hard to speculate so early into a new season’s arc. In the case of the trees, though, the timing doesn’t actually matter. This time, we’ve got science on our side, and it may just explain why most of the girls seem so chipper while going through hell.

Yellowjackets Screaming Trees Explained

What if I told you that screaming trees are real? Ok, they’re not screaming in the way they were at the end of the episode, but they are making noise. You know what leads them to make that noise? Stress. Despair. Dehydration. Hunger.

Basically, a bunch of tiny bubbles form inside of the starving tree to make their noise different from the white noise that trees traditionally make (yes, trees make sound, and not just because wind blows through them). The noise is louder, sadder, and, when dramatized for use in a television show, makes both quite the lasting impression and one hell of a metaphor.

The Yellowjackets have fallen victim to mass delusion in the past, and I’m relatively convinced that’s what’s happening here. It’s not unprecedented to see people going through terrible events experience joy. It is, in fact, necessary to survival in many cases. But there’s something about the team’s oasis that seems uncanny. It feels almost incorrect, like a sparkly sticker on a decaying coffin.

While my prevailing theory is that Travis and the girls heard the trees screaming because they themselves are the ones dying of starvation, there’s an equally nefarious option that would mean that they really did build out their own little paradise in hell but are not out of the figurative (and literal) woods yet.

In Season 2, Lottie gave the same platitude to the group when Javi died in the past and Nat died in the present, noting that the wilderness was pleased with the Yellowjackets’ sacrifice. If the team really has had several months of posterity, then that means that the trees have not been fed in some time, whether via the girls’ own cannibalism or Javi’s unwitting sacrifice. It’s possible the noise the team hears is a warning that their pissed-off gods are dissatisfied and hungry but, if that’s the case, it’s odd that Travis heard them first instead of Lottie.

What do you think? Is the team’s paradise real and the wilderness demands more blood, or are the trees’ screams a signal of another mass delusion from the Yellowjackets?

IGN can exclusively reveal Image Comics’ latest new project, an epic space opera called Free Planet. Image is billing the series as a mash-up of East Meets West and Dune, making this one comic that should be on every sci-fi lover’s radar.

Check out the slideshow gallery below for an exclusive first look at Free Planet #1:

Free Planet is written by Aubrey Sitterson (No One Left to Fight) and illustrated by Jed Dougherty (Savage Hearts). The first issue features covers by Dougherty and Fico Ossio. Here’s Image’s official description of the series:

The first completely free planet in human history has won its independence. Now, a group of revolutionary heroes must defend the planet’s unique energy source from a pair of hostile intergalactic powers while determining what complete freedom actually entails. AUBREY SITTERSON (No One Left to Fight, The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling) and JED DOUGHERTY (Savage Hearts, Worlds’ Finest) blend the intricate future history of EAST OF WEST with the emotional space opera stylings of SAGA in a story about freedom and the sacrifices it demands.

“Free Planet is the shape of comics to come, Jed and my effort to elevate our craft and chosen medium with a truly literary comic, its rich complexity presented visually,” Sitterson tells IGN. “Whether its intense military action, intricate geopolitical machinations, or heart-rending soap opera, every page of Free Planet contains an overwhelming amount of visual information; we’re giving you your money’s worth, with a book meant to be read slowly, again and again. It’s a complex rumination on what everyone – no matter where they fall on the political spectrum – truly wants: Freedom. In light of this, it’s fitting that Free Planet has found a home at Image Comics, a publisher founded for the express purpose of affording comics creators the freedom to make their best, most personal works, completely unfettered.”

“Aubrey and I have collaborated on several comics with fantasy and comedic tones,” Dougherty adds. “Free Planet is our foray into a more serious work: An internally conflicted force of revolutionaries defending their planet’s resources from the depredations of interstellar powers. In keeping with the rich, involved script, I’ve modified my artwork with grittier tonal rendering as well as experiments with page layouts and graphical elements. In the course of drawing this book, the wide cast of characters has come alive for me as they battle on land and in space, as they rebuild a society from the wreckage of revolution, and as they seek out vengeance, justice and even love.”

Free Planet #1 will be released on Wednesday, May 7.

For more on what’s happening in the comic book world, check out what to expect from Marvel in 2025 and what to expect from DC in 2025.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Elden Ring Nightreign‘s first big network test is underway, but eagle-eyed observers have already spotted that the survival royale has more on the way. A now-deleted Steam page mentioned additional DLC, seemingly confirming Elden Ring Nightreign will get additional boss and characters as DLC.

Per PC Gamer, a line on Elden Ring Nightreign’s Steam page read: “Additional DLC — Additional playable characters and bosses.” It’s since been removed, and there’s always the slim chance this was added in error, but it more than likely confirms Elden Ring Nightreign will be getting more content down the line.

Since this particular version of Elden Ring is a bit more online and live service, it’s not a surprising note. Elden Ring Nightreign is a standalone game, and developer FromSoftware has been pretty consistent with producing DLC for its previous games.

If more bosses are in the works, hopes would presumably be high for returning fights from previous games. Elden Ring Nightreign already has a few enemies from previous FromSoftware games, like the Nameless King. Why not more?

Iconic fights like Gwyn, the Looking Glass Knight, or Lady Maria would almost certainly be fun to see in this co-op take on Elden Ring. Nothing’s set in stone yet, but given FromSoftware’s portfolio of bosses, it’s hard not to start picking out some dream matches. And that’s not even digging into the possibilities for new characters to play as, fighting against said bosses.

As for Elden Ring Nightreign itself, the network test is underway today, though not without some network hitches. If you didn’t make it into the beta, you can still check out our impressions of the Elden Right Nightreign network test build here, which seems like a really good time.

Elden Ring Nightreign launches on May 30, 2025 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Last December’s announcement at The Game Awards of a sequel to the 20-year-old Ōkami surprised many – not just because of the original game’s age, but also because of impressions of its popularity. While it has been thought by many that Capcom considered the original game a commercial failure, our recent interview with the project leads suggests Capcom came around on Ōkami’s value a while ago, and has been waiting for the right opportunity ever since.

The impression of Ōkami struggling comes from a number of sources over the years. Back in 2006, we reported that Ōkami had sold 270,000 copies on PlayStation 2 in its exclusive launch on the system – not exactly a milestone figure for a major publisher. It’s also been suggested in multiple interviews with key team members that Ōkami’s lack of sales success contributed in some part to the eventual closure of developer Clover Studio.

However, over time, Ōkami’s fortunes have turned. It’s been released on a number of other platforms since launch, with each new port slowly ticking up awareness and sales to a present-day figure of 4.6 million across all the different version, including HD. That long tail is rather unusual for a game, as Capcom producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi points out in our recent interview with him:

“I know specifically that people are still enjoying this game, just from the numbers. Normally when we look at games, the sales sort of slow down and they decrease steadily. Sometimes they jump up and down, but normally they go down. But for Ōkami, we see that it’s been a steady stream of people always enjoying the game. So in that way Ōkami is a very, very unique IP.”

As a result, Hirabayashi says that Capcom has been considering a sequel to Ōkami for some time. However, as Hirabayashi explains, the publisher “needed to have certain key people in place” and “it took a bit of time for all of the stars to align.” He’s alluding both to Machine Head Works, which features a number of Ōkami veterans including Kiyohiko Sakata, and to director Hideki Kamiya, who left Capcom to found PlatinumGames in 2006 and recently departed in 2023 to found Clovers, where he’s working on the Ōkami sequel alongside Capcom and Machine Head Works.

As for Kamiya, he says he’s always wanted to do an Ōkami sequel. But while he’s had an idea in his head for years, he tells us he didn’t leave Platinum with the thought of making his own studio and working on Ōkami. Capcom’s desire to revisit the IP was a key factor in his decision, but there was one final key: the devotion of Ōkami fans. Just as the great god Amaterasu thrives on praise, the Ōkami sequel came to be thanks to ongoing and growing love for the original game:

“Just hearing all the cheers from the fans pushed me,” Kamiya said to IGN. “Going back to PS2, PS3, PS4, Switch, and then the later versions of the games, we can always see that there’s always merch going out there that the fans like. You can always see the love of the IP is something that’s still spreading amongst fans.

“And so, with everyone cheering on and our desire to create, it was that that led us to the actualization of this project. So without everyone’s voices out there, without everyone cheering us on, we wouldn’t have moved forward with this. So thank you so much.”

You can catch up on our full interview with the leads of the Ōkami sequel right here.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

The Humanscale Freedom is a luxury office chair that doesn’t make any pretenses about doubling as a gaming chair, but that’s not to say it couldn’t be a great fit for both roles. After all, any chair that lets you sit comfortably at a desk for extended periods ought to fit the bill, and the Humanscale Freedom has a lot going for it in this department.

With a retail price of $1545 ($2046 for the headrest and armrests as tested here), it doesn’t come cheap next to most of the seating we’ve tested. At such a high price, it had better deliver some serious comfort, and it does in a lot of ways. But there are a few peculiarities that make it more particularly suited to office use than gaming.

Humanscale Freedom – Design and Features

Jumping onto the Humanscale Freedom doesn’t take long. The chair ships almost completely assembled in the box, with the base simply needing to slot into the bottom of the seat. Unpackaging and getting everything out of the box consumes more time than actually putting the parts of the chair together.

The Humanscale Freedom Headrest looks a little like your typical office fare, but it has an elegant style, combining a wide sweeping backrest, headrest, and seat that look ready to scoop you up. The seat, backrest, and headrest are all cushioned and include colorful upholstery in an incredible variety of colors (pictured here in the Balsam colorway) and fabrics. The armrests can also include matching fabric, but Humanscale offers a rubberized finish as well.

To adapt to different sized users, the seat can slide forward or back with a simple pinch of a lever tucked underneath its front edge. The seat height is similarly adjustable with a little lever on the right side of the seat. The seatback adjusts up and down on rails, and it has a slight pivot to automatically conform to the back. Likewise, the headrest sits on rails for height adjustment. With the chair upright, the headrest sits back out of the way, but as you recline, the headrest sweeps in to cradle the nape of your neck. The armrests also angle up as you recline.

While many chairs have a tensioner to adjust how much resistance the backrest will give while reclining, the Humanscale Freedom uses a weight-based system. The more weight a user puts into the seat, the more resistance the backrest will give to reclining. This helps ensure lightweight users can recline and heavier users won’t immediately flop back. (To dial in this resistance, if needed, there is a small bolt underneath the seat that can be adjusted.)

The armrests are rather simple next to gaming chairs or competitors like the Steelcase Gesture. The standard armrests only have height adjustment, and the “advanced” armrests just get a little track that lets them slide inward and forward or outward and backward – those directions are linked, so if you want a wide but forward position for the armrests or narrow but back, you’re out of luck. The height adjustment also applies to both armrests, so you can’t set them up at different heights. Like other adjustments on the chair, armrest adjustments are simple, requiring you to just lift up on the front edge of the rest and pull the armrests up or hold that edge up and slide the armrests down. With support coming from the back of the chair, there’s a chance to put a lot of leverage on the armrests, and of all the areas of the Humanscale Freedom, it’s only the armrests that gave me concerns about durability – concerns that a 15-year warranty (5-year for cushions/fabrics) allays.

Humanscale Freedom – Performance

With a price like the Humanscale Freedom is asking, it has to do some things really well. It’s safe to say that the seat itself is excellent, offering a wide sitting area and great cushioning, despite looking thin. Even though I’m a heavier user at over 240 pounds, it adequately supports my weight even after hours of sitting. It’s not quite enough space for me to comfortably swing a leg up and tuck it under myself, but it’s spacious enough to allow me to shift my legs around a bit. Among office and gaming chairs, the Humanscale Freedom has hands down the most comfortable seat base I can recall sitting on.

In an upright position, the backrest feels like a great little cradle, wrapping up my back and providing a great deal of support across a wide area. That support transitions naturally as I recline in the chair, maintaining the comfort. The headrest may prove contentious, though.

When I go into a deeper recline, the headrest pushes forward. This effectively supports my head in a forward-looking position. That’s ideal when I want to continue looking at my computer screen. But if you like to recline to take a breather and refresh, the chair doesn’t really allow such a posture. Basically, the chair provides a semi-relaxed position but never a fully relaxed one. This isn’t one of those gaming chairs you can kick back almost flat and take a nap in. At my height, the headrest also feels a little low, and thrusts my head a bit farther forward than feels comfortable in a full recline. This lifts my back away from the seat, taking away that support.

For this specific chair configuration, I find the fabric a little coarse on bare skin, posing some discomfort over longer stretches where it touches my arms most of all, but otherwise it feels like a good quality. This coarseness is also likely playing into its long-term durability.

Now to the armrests – as a large user at 6’3”, I found the armrests always a bit farther back than I’d have liked. They only support a small portion of my forearms, and I have to really hug up to my desk to get the most out of them. This makes them less than ideal when I’m settling in for a long session of work or gaming, as I won’t get consistent arm support in either case. On the other hand, the height adjustment range is exceptional. The armrests can come up plenty high, and they bottom out just a couple inches above the seat itself, effectively getting them entirely out of the way. This is convenient if you want to tuck the chair under a low desk or want to grab a guitar and play it in your chair.