Rockstar Games has announced that those who pre-order Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition through the Microsoft Store or Nintendo eShop can now pre-load the game ahead of its launch on November 11.

For those who wish to play on either PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 4, pre-loading will begin on November 6 at 12am in your local time. Unfortunately, PC players will have to wait until GTA: The Trilogy's release date to begin downloading the game. However, those who pre-purchase the game on PC will get "a special $10 off bonus on any product priced at $15 or more."

Regardless of if you pre-order or pre-load, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition will be released on all platforms – PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via the Rockstar Games Launcher – on November 11 at 7am PT/10am ET/2pm GMT.

If digital is not your preferred way of purchasing a game, you can purchase a physical copy of the GTA: The Trilogy for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, and PS4 on December 7.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition is a remastered collection of Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas that will cost $59.99. These games have been created for modern platforms in Unreal Engine and will arrive on mobile platforms at a later date.

Each game comes with a "completely rebuilt lighting system; improved shadows, weather, and reflections; upgraded character and vehicle models; along with new higher resolution textures across buildings, weapons, roads, interiors, and more." There will also be greater draw distances, new foilage, and more.

There will also be quality-of-life improvements such as implementing updated controls inspired by GTA 5, "improvements to targeting and lock-on aiming, updated Weapon and Radio Station Wheels, updated Mini-Maps with enhanced navigation allowing players to set waypoints to destinations, updated Achievements, Trophies, and more."

If you aren't ready to purchase these games or really only wanted one of the three, it was also announced that San Andreas – The Definitive Edition will launch into Xbox Game Pass on November 11 and Grand Theft Auto 3 will be added to PlayStation Now on December 7.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

The space tourism race is intensifying, with more and more companies gearing up to offer commercial flights to space via alternative modes of transport, including balloon capsules.

According to Robb Report, tech company World View has designed a space tourism solution that offers curious travellers the opportunity to explore new perspectives from what CEO Ryan Hartman calls, "the edge of space." It will cost $50,000 for a ticket to ride the 14-million-cubic-foot, helium-filled balloon, with first-class seats, meals and drinks included in the fare.

Once aboard the capsule, passengers will travel to an altitude of roughly 20 miles, with wide viewing ports surrounding each seat providing a clear outlook of space during the six-hour trip at altitude. "You can see everything the others see that go slightly higher," Hartman explained. "You're truly seeing the planet from a vantage point that almost no one has."

World View will offer its very first commercial flights from a spaceport at the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, with future voyages slated to depart from several other "world wonder" sites, including the Amazon rainforest, the pyramids of Giza, the Serengeti, the Aurora Borealis, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Great Wall of China.

The company claims that "the World View space tourism experience is the most affordable, longest duration and most accessible space experience on Earth," per CNN. "$50,000 is still a lot of money. But it's our starting point," Hartman told CNN Travel. "And to assist customers in achieving their dream in participating in space tourism, we are offering flexible financing."

While World View wants to make the experience more economic, with tourism duty set to start in 2024, the company hasn't compromised on the quality of its design. For example, they have opted to use helium instead of hydrogen as the balloon's lifting gas, which costs 10 times more than hydrogen but reportedly has a better track record for safety.

Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos both saw their childhood dreams come true this year when they launched themselves to the edge of space. Bezos boarded Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket for its first human spaceflight in July, just nine days after Branson successfully reached the edge of space aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane.

Meanwhile, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight into space last year. Elon Musk has since announced plans to launch a satellite to the moon next year, fully funded by dogecoin, but not before he's raced remote-controlled cars on the lunar surface. There are also plans to return to the moon in 2024, and Musk's company is building the lunar lander for that mission.

Thumbnail image credit: World View

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

The play for attention in the live game space, let alone the competitive shooter space, has only gotten more competitive with each console release and gaming trend. With Halo Infinite, developer 343 Industries is attempting to make its multiplayer more attractive to stick with for the long haul while delivering what could be considered a consumer-first business model through its flexible battle pass system and emphasis on player feedback.

IGN sat down with Halo Infinite's Head of Design Jerry Hook and Lead Progression Designer Chris Blohm to discuss how Halo Infinite's approach to free-to-play is different from others on the market and how they hope to keep players of all kinds returning to the storied FPS.

Halo Infinite's Battle Pass Plan

Hook and Blohm know we play other games — as Blohm said, it'd be "ludicrous to think otherwise." With this and the understanding that some battle passes can encourage unhealthy player habits, they decided Halo Infinite's battle passes should never expire. This was announced back in June, but Blohm said they're doing this as they "don't want people to burn out at the end of the season" and to "feel healthy and come back because they're excited to" rather than because they have to rush and try to finish content they paid for.

"We wanted to be able to say, 'Hey, look, when you put 10 bucks in, you keep that 10 bucks,'" Hook said. Halo Infinite won't have loot boxes either, so once you drop your money on something you know exactly what you can get.

Hook and Blohm also discussed these key details about how battle passes will work:

• You can only have one battle pass active at a time, meaning your chosen battle pass is the one gaining experience you earn as you play.
• You can switch which battle pass is active whenever you want.
• The battle pass from the test flights is not representative of what we'll see in the final battle pass.
• About every quarter of the battle pass will have a legendary cosmetic in it. Legendary-rated cosmetics will be character canon-related or a new type of customization object with special attributes or effects.
• Event rewards are separate from the battle pass.

Season 1: Heroes of Reach Battle Pass

Okay, but what's actually in the first season's battle pass? Halo Infinite's first season is called "Heroes of Reach." This was previously announced by 343 in an Inside Infinite June update, and though we didn't get complete specifics on every item in the battle pass (though you can see a tease of some items we'll see in the battle pass in the image below), Hook and Blohm did reveal more about rewards we can expect to see from the first battle pass.

"We know people like [Halo] Reach and we knew the story was going to have another Reach beat — in the paperback books, there's a Reach beat [in Halo: Shadows of Reach] after Halo 5. The Infinity goes back to Reach. So we just started full speed ahead on the best of the Reach customization," Blohm said.

As expected with a season title of Heroes of Reach, the first armor core will feature Halo: Reach customization options. Think of armor cores as the base of an armor in which all corresponding armor of that type fits. For instance, every player in Halo Infinite multiplayer will get the new Mk. VII armor core. This means all customization options — shoulders, helmets, visors, kneepads, and more — made for the Mk. VII model can be swapped onto their Spartan so long as that specific core is equipped. The battle pass is an opportunity to unlock the classic Mk. V and customization options for it.

"When we were looking at the Heroes of Reach and what [Blohm] and the team pulled together is a really great model of how we're trying to tell a visual story with the battle pass of earning characters, basically through all the Reach characters with the battle pass," Hook said. "For us, the system that's been created with the [armor] core at the center, and then all of the attachments that players can choose to add. Do you want Emile's knives? You want Jorge's grenades? Mix and match how you want to create your own, or if you're just like, 'No, I want to look exactly like Jun' then you can do that. And for the first time, you can look exactly like Kat with the prosthetic arm."

To ensure proper representation of prostheses in Halo Infinite, Blohm said they worked closely with in-house veterans and the non-profit organization called Limbitless. "We want people to build Spartans that they either aspire to be or love to be or if they look cool or represent them," Blohm said.

As for other rewards we can expect in the battle pass, Blohm said we'll see Death Effects (another callback to Halo Reach customization) and other new armor effects. There will also be armor kits. While many of Noble Team's cosmetics can be earned throughout the battle pass, you'll need to unlock a specific kit to look almost exactly like a member of Noble Team. We may be playing Spartan-IVs where Noble Team was mostly made up of Spartan-IIIs, but Blohm said this is as close as we've ever gotten to looking like the Halo: Reach characters in Halo multiplayer.

There are certain things that for sure won't be in the battle pass, though. Like, say, uncharacteristic emotes.

"We struggled a lot with dance moves for Spartans. We feel that more traditional players would reject Master Chief flossing. However, [Personal] AI can go crazy. AI can do what it wants to do. That way you can preserve the militaristic feel without having to break what you would consider canon. Unless of course Joseph [Staten] makes up a whole new story about dancing Master Chief, but until that happens, [we have Personal AI]," Hook said with a laugh.

Weekly Challenge and Event Rewards

New customization options aren't solely earnable through the battle pass or purchasable in the store. Playing the campaign will also earn players new cosmetic items and players can also earn a weekly reward (called the capstone) by completing all weekly challenges.

The challenge system was available during the Halo Infinite test flight and has since undergone some changes based on player feedback. Hook said it was important for them to ensure that challenges are straightforward and are something players actually want to accomplish. The development team monitors stats regarding which daily and weekly challenges players don't complete or opt to reroll. Then, those are phased out to make room for challenges for a trending weapon or tactic. Their goal, Hook said, is to make players feel like they're able to earn constant XP for their battle passes or work toward their weekly capstone reward without forcing themselves to play in unfavorable ways.

"So at launch, we have the challenge system that fuels the battle pass and the event system. Events go live every few weeks," Blohm said.

Hook and Blohm are keeping most event details quiet for now, but they did share that each event will have its own free event pass. This is one of the few timed reward systems in multiplayer and will not include a paid track.

"You get a special playlist and you get a new reward track for [each event]," Blohm said. "That's two weeks for an event and one week for the Fracture, but the Fracture comes back every month and it saves your progress. Now that's another case where we had a long talk. We said, 'How much do we expect people to play?' Right? And let's balance it. So you know what, if they're at their parents' house for a week and they don't have their Xbox they still can get everything that is on the reward track."

Hook said they will monitor progression through events and, eventually, through more test flighting to see what players respond to in terms of rewards or progress and grow from there.

How to Get That Sweet Samurai Armor

Blohm acknowledged that while the more traditional Spartan armor and customizations look great, some of us crave more unique Spartan fashion options. This is where The Fracture event comes in. This recurring event is how we're going to get unique cosmetics that don't quite make sense with the Halo canon, like the teased Yoroi samurai armor. Hook said they watched what the Master Chief Collection is doing with its multiplayer cosmetics (the MCC multiplayer just got Viking and gladiator armor) and how its community is responding to inform their development on The Fracture event.

"Multiplayer Spartans aren't Master Chief. Occasionally they have bright colors. Occasionally, you know in Reach, they have a flaming helmet. We want to be very careful about how we treat some of these things and that's one of the reasons we brought The Fracture in as we brought it in. What we're saying with a Fracture is very clearly, 'Hey, this isn't canon. This isn't a Spartan that's fighting the Banished,'" Blohm said.

There have been other unique cosmetics throughout Halo's multiplayer history of course, like the Hayabusa armor. Everything still has to make sense within the Halo universe and they're intending on leaning on the Halo Fractures story to assist in that. Hook said it's their hope they'll hear from the community on things they'd like to see, though keeping cosmetics consistent with Halo legends is crucial.

Community feedback is a constant focus for this team, and ultimately, they're looking to us to see what we want, whether that's changes to events or more support for a feature like Personal AI. Hook and Blohm made it clear, though, that they want to ensure each part of multiplayer feels rewarding rather than exhausting to keep us hopefully coming back to Halo Infinite's multiplayer.

"The battle pass system is really just a small part of the overall ecosystem for a season,” Hook said. “When we take a look at our events or events structures, it's not just about another place in which you're selling things. It's about taking that structure of a battle pass and layering it with each of the events structures that we have as well. What Chris says a lot, which is I think pretty critical to the success of it, is we want players anytime they engage in an activity to be able to feel rewarded. The battle pass sort of sits above all of that, which is whenever you're playing, you're feeling rewarded from the battle pass. That's our goal."

Halo Infinite is out on December 8, but IGN will keep you covered on brand new Halo Infinite announcements all November long. Be sure to check out the newly revealed Streets multiplayer map if you haven't already.

Miranda Sanchez is the executive editor of guides at IGN and a member of Podcast Unlocked. She's a big fan of stationery and fountain pens. You can sometimes find her on Twitter.

Adi Shankar, the producer behind Netflix’s acclaimed Castlevania series and the recently announced Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, has revealed some more details about his upcoming anime series based on Capcom’s Devil May Cry franchise.

“The season 1 scripts are done,” Shankar told IGN Japan in a new interview. “They are rad. I could not be more excited.”

The scripts have been written in collaboration with Alex Larsen, who wrote the screenplay for the feature film Bodied (produced by Shankar and Eminem, among others) and who has more recently written on the Netflix anime series Yasuke.

Shankar explained that Season 1 will include “eight episodes”, but that the story will not conclude there: Just as with Castlevania, he is planning a “multi-season arc”, meaning that it will unfold over multiple connected seasons.

While Shankar would not reveal specific story details, he confirmed that several DMC franchise favorite characters will appear. “I can confirm that Vergil is in it, as well as Lady, and of course Dante as well,” he said.

“I can also confirm that Chris Pratt won’t be voicing any of the characters,” Shankar joked. Pratt has recently been cast as the lead in high-profile animated movies based on both Super Mario and Garfield.

Shankar commented that working with Capcom on this project has been “a dream”.

“The entire team both from the management side and the creative side have been so incredibly supportive and gracious,” he said. He has been working directly with Hiroyuki Kobayashi, a veteran producer at Capcom who worked on the original DMC and Resident Evil games, as well as 2007’s DMC Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, produced by Japanese animation studio Madhouse.

“Kobayashi-san has been wonderful,” said Shankar. “It’s seriously a joy to work with Capcom. Their character library is unlike anything assembled.”

The DMC anime was first announced by Shankar during an interview with IGN in November 2018. He said then that he had acquired the animation rights for the DMC IP himself, “so that the jabronies in Hollywood can’t f**k this one up too”.

Shankar has maintained a fiercely fan-friendly approach across all of his projects to date, and Castlevania has been acclaimed by many (including IGN) as one of the best videogame adaptations of all time. When asked how he is able to protect the integrity of the games he adapts for TV, Shankar replied that it requires passion and an open mind, explaining, “Just like there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to adapting a book to a movie and just as there is not one right way to make a cover song, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to adapting, translating, or expanding games into another medium.”

In the case of Castlevania, he attributes part of his success to timing, as he feels the market was ripe for authentic adaptations of classic games – and indeed, the success of Castlevania has triggered a landslide in quality game-to-TV adaptations. He sees this as part of a cultural shift in which the public have demanded more faithful treatment of their favorite franchises, just as the cost of producing video content has fallen and the process has been democratized by digital distribution.

“Castlevania had a team of people top to bottom who were fans of the IP and wanted animation to be taken seriously as a medium and not just a genre,” said Shankar. “In 2017, when we launched Season 1, it felt like a fight to be noticed or even acknowledged by the mainstream. The fact that Castlevania has generated not only a spin-off but a has essentially sparked an entire vertical of adult oriented animated content for Netflix is insane. This is a case of right place right time, and I’m honored that I got to be a part of this ride.”

Shankar is also working on an animated series set in the PUBG universe. When asked for an update on the progress of that show’s production, he simply replied, “It’s being fast-tracked, lol”.

Shankar’s own Bootleg Universe has mixed a wide variety of renowned franchises (with and without permission) as his personal sandbox multiverse, and when he first announced his DMC series, he said that it would be a part of “Bootleg multiverse”, but gave no further details. Regarding his PUBG show, Shankar confirmed to IGN Japan that it will not cross over with any other franchises.

Another Shankar series currently in production is Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, which is loosely based within Ubisoft’s synthwave-inspired Blood Dragon universe that originally stemmed from the Far Cry series. Shankar said during the announcement of Captain Laserhawk at Netflix Geeked Week 2021 that the show was partly influenced by 1980s cartoon show Captain N: The Game Master. Long before the MCU, Captain N was Nintendo’s own cinematic universe, featuring characters from NES hits of the day such as the Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Kid Icarus, as well as Konami’s Castlevania and Capcom’s Mega-Man.

“I loved Captain N as a kid,” said Shankar when asked how the classic show has influenced his approach to shared universes in general and on Captain Laserhawk specifically.

“I loved the concept of a kid getting sucked into a videogame world. There were a lot of parallels between Captain N and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon of the same era. I guess, despite it being critically panned, Captain N was a success because it stuck with me and influenced me to create something with my memories of it.

“To be clear the final product of Captain Laserhawk that is being made by the fantastically creative folks over at Ubisoft and the dragon energy animation studio Bobby Pills will bear little resemblance to Captain N. I simply like to cite inspirations.”

Devil May Cry will reportedly go into production in early 2022, and no release date is yet confirmed.

Daniel Robson is the Chief Editor of IGN Japan. Follow him on Twitter right here.

Dwayne Johnson superhero movie Black Adam is apparently going to push the boundaries when it comes to its PG-13 certificate, with a "very high kill count".

During an interview with CBR, producer Hiram Garcia explained how Black Adam has more in common with The Dark Knight than other DC movies:

“Black Adam is edgy, right?” he said. “That's gonna be a PG-13 movie where it was very much like, say, The Dark Knight, where that pushed the edges of PG-13. I think we do that very much with Black Adam. We have a very high kill count in our movie.”

We recently got our first look at Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam movie in a teaser unveiled at DC FanDome 2021. As if to prove Garcia's point, that teaser includes a soldier being choked, turned to ash with lightning, and having his skull popped off.

Dwayne Johnson had been rumoured for the role of Black Adam for a number of years when the film was officially announced back in 2017. After spending years in development hell, the film finally got off the ground with the appointment of director Jaume Collet-Serra.

“Once we got Jaume on board to be our director, things really clicked in,” said Garcia.

Since then, Black Adam has added a number of additional cast members, including Aldis Hodge as Hawkman, Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone, Sarah Shahi as Adrianna Tomaz, Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate, and Marwan Kenzari, James Cusati-Moyer and Bodhi Sabongui in unknown roles.

As well as suiting up in Black Adam, star Dwayne Johnson will take on another DC comic book role – voicing Krypto the Super-Dog in the upcoming League of Super-Pets movie. But don’t expect a gritty style, here.

“Super Pets is a different tone, where it's just fun," said Garcia. "There's a lot of wish fulfilment. It's a lot of laughs. Ultimately, it's a really fun ride that gives you a perspective into the superhero world, especially when you're dealing with the Justice League, through the eyes of these pets, that are awesome.”

“Ultimately, I think so much of the world can relate to the love, the connection someone has with their pet," he added. “We really are able to tap into that when you consider that Krypto is Superman's best friend, and really, Krypto is the only other person on this planet that is from Krypton, like Superman. So, there's a special bond that goes even deeper between the two that we really have fun playing with.”

Originally meant to be part of DC’s Shazam! before that film was split in two, Black Adam has since been confirmed to take on the Justice Society of America.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.