Some of the players partaking in the Elden Ring closed network test last weekend managed to find a way to break out of the game's demo area — only to be met by a very angry bear.

A limited number of players were recently invited to hop into From Software's upcoming open-world Elden Ring as part of network tests that the studio is carrying out. While players were able to check out the game first hand, they weren't granted access to its entire open world, but rather a demo area instead.

Not content with this little slice of paradise, some of those involved attempted to test the game's boundaries in hopes of being able to explore a greater array of what Elden Ring has to offer. As reported by Kotaku, several players eventually found an exploit in the game that allowed them to successfully access areas of the game not yet intended for exploration.

Players' experiences outside of the network test barrier appeared to vary from account to account. While the out-of-bounds region lacked items and reportedly included some areas where players would fall into an endless void, there were also some pretty nifty finds too.

Content creator AllisonByProxy posted a video to YouTube showing their character taking a pretty severe mauling from a ferocious oversized bear that didn't seem too happy to be found in the region. A separate video posted to the same channel also appeared to reveal an undiscovered boss known as Crucible Knight Floh.

While From Software will likely want to keep a number of details about Elden Ring's bosses and enemies close to its chest until closer to the game's release, IGN recently got to take on one of the game's bosses, Margit the Fell, during our time with the game. The character's backstory and lore are still under wraps at the moment, though our preview does include details about the character's move set and devastating lightning hammer.

For more on From Software's upcoming release, make sure to check out our dedicated IGN page for Elden Ring where you can find a range of the latest news, clips, and previews for the game.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Chris Columbus has called on Warner Bros. to release the three-hour cut of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, reinstating scenes with a fan-favorite character from the books.

In an interview with The Wrap, Columbus said he once previewed a version of the Sorcerer's Stone that was three hours long and included an appearance from the prankster poltergeist Peeves, played by Rik Mayall, who didn't end up making it into the 2001 theatrical cut of the first Harry Potter film because it was cut down to run for two hours and 32 minutes.

"We knew that the film worked because we did a couple of previews," Columbus said of his original cut of the film. "Particularly a Chicago preview where our first cut was a three-hour cut. Parents afterwards said it was too long, the kids said it was too short. I thought, well, the kids presumably have a shorter attention span so this is a good thing."

While the longer version of the Sorcerer's Stone proved to be a smash hit with younger audiences, nearly half an hour of footage was removed from the film before it hit theaters, including scenes with Peeves, a prominent character in the books, who also didn't make it into the Ultimate Edition of the film that is seven minutes longer than the theatrical cut.

Columbus would now like to see Warner Bros. release the three-hour version of his film, bringing back the scenes with Peeves that were shot with actor Rik Mayall. "We have to put Peeves back in the movie, who was cut from the movie!" Columbus exclaimed after agreeing with The Wrap reporter who said they'd love to see the original cut be released.

While we wait for news of such a release, Harry Potter fans are invited to join Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson for HBO Max's Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts reunion show on January 1, 2022, which will feature all-new interviews and cast conversations celebrating the history of the Wizarding World franchise.

The retrospective special is just one piece of programming scheduled by WarnerMedia in celebration of the first film's 20-year anniversary. There's also going to be an unscripted Harry Potter quiz show that will see Harry Potter superfans compete in four one-hour challenges over four consecutive days leading up to the Return to Hogwarts.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

While Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser doesn’t open until March 1, 2022, I was given the opportunity to attend a preview event with a small group of press to get a firsthand look at the two-night experience. Though it’s tempting to refer to it as just a really expensive “Star Wars hotel,” it’s actually so, so much more. I’m going to tell you all about it, including details about the Galactic Starcruiser hotel, the otherworldly food, lightsabers, and an immersive story filled with the danger and adventure of a classic Star Wars movie.

But first, two things to keep in mind: the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser experience features a story that unfolds over the course of your stay, so that means there are twists and turns that some may want to experience for the first time on their visit. This report will include some minor plot spoilers but won’t give away any big reveals. Still, if you want to go in completely spoiler-free, it’s best to exit this page now.

Second, it’s important to note that everything I saw on my visit was a work in progress. The building was still under construction, the character actors weren’t in full makeup and costume, and some activities had undeveloped aspects. My visit provided a tour of the Galactic Starcruiser and a few “playtesting” sessions. All of this took place over a few hours, whereas guests’ adventures will unfold over a full weekend. What I saw was very much a brief “beta test” and may be different when it opens, so keep that in mind when setting your expectations.

A Seamless, Immersive Experience

So the first question you may have is, what is Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser? The best way I can describe it is an immersive Star Wars ride the size of an entire hotel that lasts two days, because it’s telling a Star Wars story with a beginning, middle, and end.

From the second you arrive at Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, the immersive experience begins. After arriving at the unassuming slate gray building and dropping off luggage, you’ll follow hallways specifically designed to look like a concrete launch facility and enter your launch pod. The pod’s windows let you watch as you blast off into space and dock with the Galactic Starcruiser, known as the Halcyon.

Walking into the main room at the heart of the Halcyon, the atrium, feels like walking onto a genuine starship right out of the movies. There’s a soft machine hum simulating the sound of the starship engines. All the windows are video screens showing stars, planets, and other ships off in the distance. Various beeps and boops sound off as computers and droids do their duties. A look toward the bridge shows numerous consoles with glowing buttons and levers, and beyond those is a grand view out into space courtesy of the ship’s massive front windshield.

Once aboard the ship, the immersion remains relatively seamless, even when traveling to the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge area inside Disney’s Hollywood Studios park. Before guests can go there, though, the ship will first have to dock at Black Spire Outpost, and guests will enter the park from a new entrance to Galaxy’s created just for the Galactic Starcruiser experience. (The entrance is currently under construction and its exact location has yet to be revealed.)

Both Galaxy’s Edge and Galactic Starcruiser were developed at the same time, so guests will be able to spot Easter eggs that link one to the other. For example, there’s a job posting for a new mechanic hanging on the wall inside Oga’s Cantina, and on the ship you’ll meet the mechanic who got the job.

LARPing Around the Galaxy

To start off the cruise, guests will be greeted by an opening ceremony of sorts where they’re welcomed to the ship by the crew and are introduced to a few of the characters, but for our preview we skipped the ceremony and were given free reign to explore the atrium and its adjoining rooms (including a cantina, natch) and interact with the characters.

I saw a musician strumming an instrument, a smiling man in a purple long coat, and an alien in a beautiful purple dress who only spoke in her alien language but tried her best to communicate with our group via hand gestures. The Galactic Starcruiser is filled with all sorts of characters you can interact with—some who will walk up to you with a question, some who sit waiting to be approached, and others who will call attention to themselves and it’ll be your choice to either go see what the fuss is about or continue to sit back and enjoy your space cocktail. The level of interaction and roleplaying you want on your adventure is completely up to you.

Eventually my little group struck up a conversation with a nervous-looking crew member in a blue mechanic outfit who introduced himself as Sammie—and he asked in a hushed voice if we supported the Resistance, because a famous member was aboard and in need of help. Just then, a First Order officer flanked by two Stormtroopers entered the atrium and began a search for the hairiest of Resistance heroes, Chewbacca, who was hiding on the balcony up above. Sammie told me to create a distraction so Chewbacca could make a break for it, but I wasn’t feeling particularly brave and offered the task to my friend, who lept into action and caught the First Order’s attention (and received a harsh talking-to from the steely officer for it) while myself and a group of other guests created a human wall to cover Chewie’s escape. Afterward, Sammie introduced us to the captain of the ship, a Pantoran alien by the name of Captain R. Keevan, who thanked us for our efforts and taught us a secret code to identify ourselves as allies of the Resistance.

That was just one way this particular “quest” could have unfolded. Each guest is free to make their own choices—maybe you would have turned Chewie over to the First Order instead of helping him, you monster—and those choices are intended to have benefits/consequences that show up later in your adventure. One interaction may even lead you to a new quest at Galaxy’s Edge or lead you to uncover secret areas of the ship that require special access. While there is a larger “main” story involving everyone that unfolds over the weekend, it seems no two guests will have the exact same experience because of the smaller story threads they may choose to follow, or not.

The Galactic Starcruiser Rooms

The cabins on the Galactic Starcruiser feel like a room on a cruise ship, for better or for worse. The room we visited was meant for two adults and two kids. It had a queen size bed and two bunk beds. The bunks looked small but were twin size—the tallest person in our group was able to climb up and fully lay down.

The coolest feature is the large window (screen) looking out to space, which can be switched off for bedtime. There’s always something neat to see on the screen, whether it be a new planet or a spaceship whizzing by, and what’s shown on the screen will change as the Halcyon charts its course through space.

The rooms are tight and compact, with little in the way of free space. They have a sleek design and are outfitted for space travel (everything, including the night stand, is bolted down), but no one would ever accuse them of being spacious. That said, given the abundance of activities to do outside the room, the lack of space will hopefully be a non-issue because you’ll be out helping the Resistance.

Experiencing a Star Wars Adventure

The entire Galactic Starcruiser experience is modeled after a relaxing luxury cruise out into space, and like any cruise, each guest will have an itinerary. At first glance the itinerary seems full of unremarkable activities, but as you’d expect from something set in the Star Wars universe, it’s not long before you get a bad feeling about whatever activity you’re doing and a ho-hum day turns into an exciting adventure. And guests will be encouraged to be a part of the action every step of the way.

The bridge was easily the most entertaining part of my visit. While we initially came to the bridge for some rudimentary training on the weapons, shields, cargo handling, and computer systems, unexpected events involving—you guessed it—the First Order turned our relaxing afternoon of lazily pushing buttons into an intense struggle to survive that involved making daring hyperspace jumps, navigating an asteroid field, and putting those weapon systems to good use. The bridge’s numerous consoles let us take control of the ship and play through scenarios on the massive windshield screen the size of a movie theater screen. We were essentially all players in an elaborate multiplayer video game where we’re able to fire off lasers and missiles to defend the ship (and attempt to beat your friend’s score while you’re at it).

On top of being a huge video game system, the bridge also acted as an interactive theater where dramatic story beats played out both on the comm screens and with actors on the floor with us, often involving guests who are enlisted to help out members of the crew.

We were shown a key story moment from both the first day and the second day of the experience, and getting a peek at what’s to come showed how nothing is included without a purpose. Bridge Training sounded boring but wound up turning into a thrilling adventure. In classic Star Wars fashion, things start out seemingly simple, but it’s not long before something dramatic happens and you’re called to adventure. The few story snippets I saw made me appreciate how the entire weekend is intricately constructed to create a fun, engrossing story that unfolds over the course of your stay.

Food, Drink, and Alien Cuisine

If you liked the weird yet tasty food of Galaxy’s Edge, then you’re going to love what’s on the menu on the Halcyon.

There’s ceviche with a tentacled twist, a grilled cheese “bubble waffle” with a side of tomato bisque soup, and a cube of purple bread with a pat of blue bantha butter, among other delicacies that look downright extraterrestrial but are actually just a salad with funny looking broccoli. The standout dish was a miso-crusted salmon topped with a mystery ingredient that twisted and thrived on the plate. (It stopped moving, eventually.) It doesn’t get more alien than that.

As for the specialty drinks, the Muja Twist is a light and refreshing fruit and vegetable cocktail, while the Hoth Frost comes frozen over in ice you have to break to drink the frothy blue cocktail inside. (Turns out the “ice” was a clear, brittle disc of spun sugar.)

But if you’re not feeling particularly adventurous with your diet—one person at our table was horrified by the calamari in the ceviche—then rest easy knowing there’s more standard food fare available, as well.

Let’s Talk Lightsabers

Finally, the big question: How do you get your hands on a lightsaber on the Galactic Starcruiser?

Everyone will be scheduled for lightsaber training, and what awaits you is a unique playtime session that will definitely scratch that Jedi Knight itch.

The session involves using the provided lightsabers to deflect laser beams fired by a wall-mounted training remote. It starts off slow, letting you get a feel for how it works, and then it ramps up to Jedi level where you’re Forced to block attacks without even seeing the lasers. The lightsaber used in this activity feels about on par with a Force FX lightsaber, though it is a tad shorter, but it’s only meant to be used for lightsaber training and won’t be available for sale.

I’m sure you’re wondering about the new "realistic" lightsaber promised to be a part of the Galactic Starcruiser experience, where the blade extends from the hilt like an actual lightsaber, seen in the video below.

Unfortunately, that lightsaber isn’t for guests to use or purchase. It’s strictly for use by the performers. I didn’t get to see the new lightsaber on my visit, so I have no details to share about it, but given how Kylo Ren and Rey are frequent sights at Galaxy’s Edge, I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up on the Galactic Starcruiser at some point, fancy new laser swords in hand.

That said, the Galactic Starcruiser does have a boutique that sells all manner of merchandise, and a Disney rep said it’s likely some type of lightsaber will be available for sale there.

Final Thoughts

Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is a Star Wars dream come true. Everything about it was insanely cool. It’s like playing a Star Wars video game in real life. You truly feel like you’ve stepped onto an actual starship and are a part of a Star Wars movie. The overall story is exciting, the ship itself is impressively built and overflowing with adventures waiting to be discovered, and the character interactions add a sense of fun and immersion. It says volumes that I only received a brief glimpse at what the Galactic Starcruiser, yet just about everything (except the rooms) was incredibly impressive.

For more details on Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, including information on price, reservations, and more, check out our full guide to the Star Wars hotel experience.

Tick, Tick… Boom! is in limited theaters, and will debut on Netflix on Nov. 19.

When Tick, Tick… Boom! begins, Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield) — the real-life creator of the show of the same name, and of the 1996 Broadway smash Rent — works at a diner, is about a week from turning 30, and has yet to create any works of note. The year is 1990, and these two imposing round numbers hang over him like a dark cloud; the introductory song “30/90,” which Larson performs on the piano for an unseen audience, speaks to his panic as the clock counts down. The film that follows ends up being about a great many things, from Larson’s real life, to creative frustrations, to the nature of adaptation and, ultimately, to the then-worsening AIDS epidemic that would inform his most famous show. Despite this enormous breadth of scope, the aspect of the story which shines the brightest is Larson’s fears of failure during this week-long window, an intimate exploration owed to Garfield’s stellar performance (even if the actor’s singing voice is unremarkable). However, while the rest of Tick, Tick… Boom! remains watchable and engaging, it ends up trapped in an uncanny adaptational limbo, thanks to a narrative structure that undercuts its most impactful moments.

Directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and written by Steven Levenson — who created Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen respectively — the film is an homage to Broadway and to Larson, who died a few weeks before turning 36 (and a day before Rent’s first public performance), but it’s almost too beholden to his work. Its structure is two-pronged. On one hand, it features a mostly straightforward musical narrative unfolding in New York City, and comprising brand-new staging and choreography based on Larson’s original songs. On the other, it features a frequently interspersed framing device in which Larson, accompanied by a few musicians and a pair of supporting vocalists, narrates the story’s events. The latter is a close approximation of the original show, Larson’s thread-bare, semi-autobiographical “rock monologue” about its own creation, in which he played every character (though it contains a few elements of the posthumous Broadway re-staging, in which one actor played Larson, and two others played everyone else). Essentially, Miranda and Levenson attempt to craft a transformative adaptation that visualizes Larson’s narrations in the form of a traditional movie musical, but they simultaneously attempt to film it in its original one-man form, using this stage performance to more closely examine the events that led up to it. It’s a bright spark that works on paper, but in execution, it ends up sucking some of the tension from Larson’s story, and some of the magic from the film’s own big ideas.

The central problem with this approach lies in the fact that the narrative of the original Tick, Tick… Boom! exists largely in the imagination. A story of Larson’s intense focus on his upcoming public workshop of Superbia (his dystopian rock opera that never came to be) and the way he pushes away his girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp), and his best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesús) — an actor turned ad executive, who Larson believes “sold out” — it is told almost entirely through Larson’s descriptive lyrics, which create a soulful overlap between literal events as they unfolded, and Larson’s subjective conception of them. He painted musical pictures that explored the dynamic between reality and the world in his head; thanks to this tension, the resultant show about pursuing artistic greatness at any cost wasn’t just autobiographical, but self-critical. In the movie version, that tension is bogged down by an unyielding literal-ism; almost every lyric is accompanied by an image that portrays exactly what the words have already described. It can’t help but feel like a waste of visual and thematic real estate.

There are a few exceptions, during which characters burst into thoroughly original dream-like dance sequences, but for the most part, when a song speaks of an event, an object or an interaction, the visuals aim to portray these things in their own isolated shots, as if to accompany the lyrics with explainers, rather than complementing them with related ideas or enhancing them with some kind of rhythmic feeling. The pictures feel focused on individual words, rather than on turns of phrase, and they capture ideas out of context rather than as threads in a moving tapestry. In the process, the dramatic tension held by the words — between dreams and reality — is rarely carried over to the images, inadvertently giving way to an entirely new tension: between Larson’s original songs and the filmed adaptation itself, which feels so dedicated to the lyrics as to be hampered by them.

This tension of adaptation, ironically, plays out in the form of the film breaking its own dramatic tension, by cutting away from emotionally charged moments so that Larson can further explain each interaction from his future vantage on stage. The result is two warring films that often feel incomplete: one where straightforward scenes are interrupted before they can play to their emotional conclusions, and another that attempts to re-create Larson’s intimate one-man show, but reduces it to a series of fractured intrusions, thus robbing it of its immersive power (it doesn’t help matters that nearly every scene is drenched in indiscriminate lens flare no matter the light source or emotional tone, a persistent distraction from Larson’s poetry).

However, while the film’s frantic narrative ends up working against it, its frantic central performance is its strongest suit. Garfield usually reads young on screen, but in Tick, Tick… Boom!, he plays Larson with the exhaustion of someone who’s lived a thousand lifetimes’ worth of rejection, and is now paralyzed by the possibility of being rejected again. His wrinkles and receding hairline certainly add to the effect of someone worn down by repeated failure, but what makes his performance so specifically “29” is the way he combines Larson’s mounting regret with a final, desperate shred of excitement and possibility. His tug-of-war between burnout and restlessness makes him seem like he’s charging towards some inevitable explosion, in the form of either enormous success, or a complete and utter breakdown. Just by watching his weary body language, you begin to fear and anticipate the eventual, inevitable “Boom!” once the clock ticks down.

Despite the film’s other failings, this aspect of Larson’s story is its most powerful through line, and is also a major reason Miranda makes for a not-altogether-terrible fit. Miranda has only one prior directing credit to his name — an hour-long project from his teenage years — and while Tick, Tick… Boom! features only a few notable flourishes (his staging of frolic and movement within the confines of cramped New York apartments feels wonderfully true to life), the way he captures Garfield’s frazzled internal terror feels particularly precise. The story often zips between ideas, rarely stopping to consider emotional beats or visual tableaus (it strangely ignores its own dancers; there is but one fleeting group shot of note). However, when a given scene is about the central theme of 29-going-on-oblivion, the focus remains on Larson, and Larson alone. Miranda not only captures this central fear as a fixture of Larson’s present, but late into the film, he finally makes innovative use of the framing device and lets those same fears play out on stage — not through lyrics, but through fleeting moments of silence, focused on Garfield’s contemplative stares, as if Larson were inviting us to fill the gaps with lyrics of our own.

These moments are brief, but they are the film’s heart and soul. They also zero in on the major difference between Larson’s conception of Tick, Tick… Boom! and Miranda’s. Two and a half decades after Larson’s death, the story cannot help but take on a fatalistic tone, as if Larson is singing not only about his life, but his impending demise; his search in the interim becomes especially haunting, but when he finds brief glimmers of meaning, the result feels all the more valuable. It’s powerfully bittersweet. Hamilton, Miranda’s own Broadway hit, features similarly cogent expressions of death anxiety and the race to stake one’s place in history before it’s too late (“How do you write like you’re running out of time?”), and while his two-tiered adaption of Larson’s show rarely finds balance in individual moments, the bigger picture at least makes coherent sense.

While it adapts Larson’s story wholesale, it functions as a posthumous biopic based on an autobiography penned when the subject was still living. While the perspective Miranda brings to the film’s straightforward scenes is one of admiration (rather than the original’s more critical eye), his conception of Larson’s piano interludes feels not unlike his conception of Hamilton, which begins with other characters recalling the titular statesman after his death; perhaps the version of Larson that Garfield plays on stage isn’t Larson at all, but the idea of Larson that remains in the collective memory. The major difference, however, is while Hamilton offers a marginally more complicated portrait of Alexander Hamilton, as told through the eyes of the man who killed him, this approach in Tick, Tick… Boom! inadvertently un-complicates Larson in the process of memorializing him. It seeks to tell the story of those he pushed away and how he found his way back to them (his relationship with de Jesús’ Michael is especially moving, as is their power ballad duet “Real Life”), but the visual focus is so fractured and literal that each time it cuts to Larson on stage, in some future time, it pivots away from the story’s emotional complexities and sweeps them under the rug.

Instead of presenting us with Larson’s self-conception — as someone whose flaws hurt the people around him — Tick, Tick… Boom! places a greater importance on Miranda’s conception of him: as a genius creator preserved in Amber. While a more sentimental approach, it is, perhaps, a less honest one than Larson intended, despite the truth Garfield finds in his performance.

Sega has announced that it is bringing Alien: Isolation to mobile devices "without compromise" as part of a package that will include the base game and each of its seven additional DLC packs.

As revealed in a press release, the publisher has confirmed that the survival horror game will be launching on iOS and Android devices. Fans of the franchise will be able to pick up the game, which is said to have been fully adapted for touchscreen devices, at a price of $14.99/£12.99 from December 16.

"The stunning AAA visuals, arresting narrative and terrifying atmosphere of Creative Assembly’s award-winning sci-fi masterpiece have been faithfully replicated for phones and tablets," says Sega in its announcement. "This is the complete survival horror experience brought to mobile without compromise."

According to the publisher, the game will have its own "bespoke, fully customizable interface" tailored toward touchscreen play. That being said, Sega was also keen to point out that players would also be able to "fine tune the game to their own playing style" which essentially translates to the notion that gamepads will also be supported.

Despite Alien: Isolation originally having released for PC back in 2014, bringing the game to mobile "without compromise" still seems relatively impressive. That being said, if the Switch version of the game is anything to go by, then there's solid hope for a port on mobile, with the Switch version's visuals in particular lauded upon release.

For more from the Alien franchise, make sure to check out this piece detailing how Ridley Scott believes that the Alien TV show he's working on won't be as good as the original movie.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.