Good Omens Season 2 has officially kicked off production, with several familiar faces returning to the series alongside David Tennant and Michael Sheen.

The cameras have started rolling on the second season of Amazon's fantasy drama, Good Omens, with production now underway in Scotland. A number of key cast members from the show's first season are returning to support Tennant and Sheen, who are reprising their respective roles as the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale for the next chapter.

Some cast members returning for the show's sophomore season are reprising their roles while others are said to be playing new characters, however, those characters haven't been outlined just yet. The actors on board for Season 2 include Paul Adeyefa, Michael McKean, Gloria Obianyo, Miranda Richardson, Maggie Service, Reece Shearsmith, and Nina Sosanya.

Originally based on Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's bestselling novel, the new season will explore storylines that go beyond the original source material to illuminate the uncanny friendship between Aziraphale and Crowley, who'll be "getting back to easy living amongst mortals in London's Soho when an unexpected messenger presents a surprising mystery."

Neil Gaiman, who has an overall deal with Amazon Studios, is an executive producer on the series and will co-showrun along with executive producer Douglas Mackinnon, who will also direct. Rob Wilkins, John Finnemore, and BBC Studios Productions' head of comedy Josh Cole will also executive produce, with Finnemore serving as co-writer alongside Gaiman.

"We get to have new adventures with old friends, to solve some extremely mysterious mysteries, and we encounter some entirely new humans (living, dead, and otherwise), angels, and demons," Gaiman said of Season 2. "I took pleasure in inviting people back, wherever we could, some in the roles they played originally, some in new parts written just for them."

"Having a company of players reuniting for this second season of Good Omens is like bringing a family back together, this time in Scotland," Mackinnon added. "Our team is being enriched with new talent on both sides of the camera so I am excited to be at the helm for six more episodes of what we hope will be heavenly entertainment."

The seeds for a follow-up season seemed to have been planted in Good Omens' first season finale, which saw Aziraphale and Crowley successfully thwart the end of the world before they engaged in a final conversation together that hinted at an even bigger apocalypse to come: the inevitable war between angels and demons fighting against humanity.

Good Omens will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide at an as yet unconfirmed date.

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

Activision Blizzard is currently facing serious ongoing allegations of harassment and mistreatment of marginalized workers. To learn more, please visit our timeline as well as our in-depth report on the subject.

Blizzard is in the process of launching a player-led Community Council for World of Warcraft, which will allow more direct communication between the MMOs developers and its players.

As revealed on the World of Warcraft website, the Community Council is being set up with the goal of making the voice of all WoW players heard. Applications to join the council are now open, and part of the process requires stating your areas of interest and expertise within World of Warcraft. This is to ensure the developers hear from a cross section of players across casual, hardcore, competitive, and other gameplay styles.

"Player feedback impacts all aspects of the game, and with such a wide range of opinions, playstyles, and interests out there, gathering and understanding feedback is more important than ever," said the World of Warcraft Community Team in the announcement. "To help further our efforts in this area, we’re introducing the WoW Community Council. This program will add another venue for communication between players and WoW developers. Our goal is to gather more detailed feedback on all aspects of World of Warcraft from players around the world with a wide range of backgrounds and interests."

The announcement explains that the Council will have access to a new forum, which will feature topics started by Blizzard developers and share experiences from council members. Responses from the devs will be posted in those forums, which will be viewable by the entire community. Additionally, private discussion channels will be available for Council members to discuss topics between themselves, and direct interaction between members and Blizzard staff will be "encouraged".

Community councils such as this are not uncommon, particularly among games with high populations. However, at 17 years old, it's surprising that Blizzard has only just decided to implement the idea in its MMO, which at one point was the most dominant game in the genre.

For more from WoW, read our report on how raid boosts are a common practice, and how a veteran WoW designer left Blizzard after becoming unhappy with the game. You can also check out our review of the most recent WoW expansion, Shadowlands. For further information on the ongoing Activision Blizzard legal issues, take a look at our story on the company's new zero-tolerance harassment policy, and how the lawsuit could be the death blow for World of Warcraft.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

As a person who waited in a very small line to grab a launch PlayStation 3 and dragon-riding action disappointment Lair, you could say that any talk of flying scaly wyrms fighting in a video game both bristles my scales and ignites my curiosity. After spending some preview time with Century: Age of Ashes, I’m newly optimistic that mid-air monster battles don’t have to just be flights of fancy.

Century is a third person multiplayer shooter that feels more akin to Ace Combat than Panzer Dragoon at first. Teams of three or six riders take to the skies to burn and blast their enemies to secure kills and objectives across a handful of maps and play modes. Before I did any of that, though, I had to take a pass through the tutorial mode, which does a great job at teaching you the many technical aspects of flight, as well as offensive and defensive maneuvers to dominate your airspace with. I initially learned the controls on my keyboard, but soon switched to an Xbox controller with zero down time needed to readjust to the new layout.

Skip the tutorial at your own peril though. Learning how to move your dragon is easy enough to pick up, but the trick to regain lost stamina, for example, is a less obvious core mechanic you’re not likely to just stumble across. The tutorial also gives you lots of opportunities to learn how to throw fire at opponents, both in ball and faucet form. Your fireballs act almost like bullets, auto locking onto a target in range allowing you to pepper them from relative safety. Getting closer still opens up the flame breath option, which douses your prey in a steady gout of blaze that quickly drains their health. In combination, I found that this was my usual opener/closer. The autolock feature is a welcome one, as it puts less pressure on you having fast twitch reflexes and aim, and more emphasis on positioning and maneuvering into and out of danger.

All this heats up further when you factor rider classes, and their powers and abilities. Classes include the damage-focused Marauder and the stealthy assassin Phantom, but I fancied the Windguard, a support style class who can rush to the aid of allies and shield them, or obscure yourself and team with a trail of smoke like a Bond gadget. Both powers and abilities are skills you have to activate, but while powers are static and wholly unique to the rider, you have your choice of a pair of abilities you can ride into battle with, and some of these abilities are shared options among more than one rider class. In this closed test, that meant that Marauder and Phantoms both shared an ability, and in a game with so few abilities to go around at this stage in development, it really didn't help those two classes feel much different from one another.

Once the training wheels were off, the team at Playwing ushered me into the Rookie Skirmish 3v3 game mode. It’s a straight-up best-of-three-round deathmatch, but your additional skills unlock gradually over the course of each round. If a game makes it to the final round, each player will have their full kit available to them. This was an interesting way to ease into the sometimes chaotic combat, but potentially not even getting to full strength win or lose, is a bummer.

After a round or two of Rookie, Playwing called in some heavy hitters from their QA team to join us for what would be my favorite mode of the entire demo, Spoils of War. In it, two teams of six dragoneers fight to accumulate gold from neutral loot dragons flying around an expansive map. Every few minutes, new sub-objectives spawn that make gathering your horde easier, or threaten it entirely. Maybe it’s suddenly locked, and a floating NPC is carrying a key you have to retrieve and return to your base to unlock it. A bomb could spawn, and the team who can successfully secure it and bring it to the enemy horde will blow it up, spilling tons of their gold out into the air, ripe for the stealing. These kept the game tense during the entire length of a round, and was where player skill, map awareness, and team balance all coalesced into a tactical and rewarding experience that stands out among the free-to-play shooter offerings available these days.

When Age of Ashes launches on December 2nd, it will launch with a market brimming with cosmetics for your rider and dragon available to purchase with real money or in-game currency earned through completing daily and weekly missions. Maybe the most curious thing to get into between matches is hatching dragon eggs and raising new dragons. If you're lucky enough to receive a dragon egg as a reward after battle, you can equip it, and complete its list of “growth step” missions in order to raise it to adulthood. It's an interesting, if not a little tedious, way to earn now looks for your scaly mount.

If you’ve been burned by dragon combat in the past, or just looking for a new, outside the box multiplayer shooter to fire up your Winter, Century: Age of Ashes might be worth taking a scalebound spin. It’s narrow offerings in terms of classes and abilities may make teams look pretty similar over time, but its stellar Spoils of War adds enough frantic objective chasing that will surely keep the interest of adventurous action game fans looking for a new challenge.

The Google Pixel 6 rocks the boat of Google’s otherwise fairly steady rollout of small phone upgrades. This is a more dramatic redesign than we’ve seen between generations before, and it brings a big shift in the internal technology, with Google’s in-house Tensor chip sitting in the space that would normally have been occupied by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. At $599, it’s also one of the cheapest base-level flagship smartphones you’ll find. Let’s see how this Pixel overhaul actually plays out.

Google Pixel 6 – Design and Features

One of the most noticeable things about the Pixel 6 is its size. While Google has offered an even larger Pixel 6 Pro, the standard edition is still a substantial phone. It has a 6.4-inch display with a small buffer of bezel all the way around (something that’s trimmed on the Pro model). The 6.24-inch height and 2.94-inch width are sizable, albeit not quite so overbearing as the even larger iPhone 13 Pro Max. The Pixel 6 is thick, though, feeling pretty beefy in the hand and having even more depth where the rear camera bar juts out.

The camera bar is the next big design shift from Google. Rather than having the cameras in a small corner housing, Google has raised a little plateau that stretches across the entire width of the phone. It’s about an inch tall and rises up from the back of the phone about 1/16 of an inch. While it doesn’t snag on pockets as much as I’d initially worried, it does provide a little shelf for collecting a bunch of dust.

The camera bar will likely be a contentious part of the design. It lends a certain flair to the looks of the phone and makes it instantly recognizable. Considering how Samsung and Apple continue to put ever more monstrous camera bumps on their top-end models, Google has simply leapfrogged them here for the most in-your-face camera bump. The design makes more sense on the Pro model, which features three cameras – one of which is a periscope style zoom lens – but on the Pixel 6 there’s only a pair of rear cameras that hardly take up half of the bar. That said, raising the cameras up may have created more room in the phone for its beefy 4,614mAh battery.

Style-wise, it’s a bold new look. There’d always been something of a two-tone element to most Pixel phones, but the Pixel 6 takes that to another level with a solid color on the back complemented by a second color on the strip of glass just above the camera bump. I say bold, but Google has gone with all muted colors for the phone, so it’s more visually striking than colorfully bold.

The phone has a solid construction with an aluminum frame, Gorilla Glass Victus on the front, and Gorilla Glass 6 on the rear. The raised camera bar does feel like it’s slightly more vulnerable than traditional camera bumps though. The phone has an IP68 rating that’s par for the course, though it’s not rated for submersion as deep as Apple latest iPhone 13 models, which can go down to 6 meters.

The way the display sits in the phone is also a minor eye sore. While the Pixel 6 Pro has gone with a more elegant integration of the display with the frame, curving it at the edges a la Samsung, the Pixel 6 simply seats its display with a plastic buffer between it and the frame that makes it kind of stick out awkwardly.

The Pixel 6’s display is solid, and plenty sharp at 1,080 x 2,400. The AMOLED panel is a pleasure to look at, and it’s bright enough for outdoor use. A 60-90Hz refresh rate successfully keeps everything feeling smooth. It’s not as fast or versatile as the 120Hz displays with wide variable refresh rates showing up on the market, though those displays are almost all reserved for the higher tiers like the iPhone 13 Pro or Galaxy S21 Ultra. Google fitted a fingerprint scanner underneath the display, and it works surprisingly well compared to others I’ve used, though it’s still not lightning fast.

Google has built stereo speakers into the phone that push out strong sound levels at max volume, but you’ll likely be relying on Bluetooth for any other audio, as USB-C is the only port on the phone. It does allow fast charging at 30W, but Google isn’t including a charger in the box – the new industry norm. Wireless and reverse wireless charging are also supported, two things that aren’t always a given when keeping the price low.

Google Pixel 6 – Software

The Pixel 6 comes running the new Android 12 operating system. While it leaves a lot that’ll be familiar for long-time Android users, it makes some changes. The first and most noticeable change is to the shortcuts and notification shade. These have received a major redesign that makes them completely overtake the screen with no transparency, so “notification shade” doesn’t feel quite appropriate anymore.

When opening the shade, the notification space will fill the entire screen even when there are no notifications. Google has also made the shortcut buttons much larger, which feels like an unfortunate choice as it makes fewer shortcuts available. Some shortcuts have also gotten less short, as Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity have been grouped together, so trying to turn off Wi-Fi becomes a multi-step process even with it appearing as a shortcut.

A positive change is the clarity on app permissions and mic and camera access. Now, it’s simple to see when the mic and cameras are being accessed, and it’s easy to check to see when apps are using certain permissions through a new dashboard Google has created.

Google Pixel 6 – Gaming and Performance

The Google Pixel 6 had a lot of questions in front of it with the Tensor chip Google threw in, but any concerns about hampered performance can largely be put to rest. The phone is perfectly snappy and as responsive as any other phone I’ve used, from iPhones to the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The camera launches particularly fast, which is a wonder to see since it’s likely going to get a ton of use from anyone who gets this phone.

The phone holds up well in gaming, too. Asphalt 9 loaded up quickly, and ran without any noticeable hitches over the course of a straight half hour of play, even in the 60fps mode. It does get a bit toasty though. The heat is well dispersed, so there’s not a painful hotspot, but it’s surprising that the phone doesn’t stay cooler with so much mass. This may be part of the phone’s use of two high-performance cores instead of the one found running in the likes of the Snapdragon 888 other flagship Android phones include.

Connectivity is another strength. There’s 5G on board, and I was able to see over 300Mbps download speeds in one test with T-Mobile. The base Pixel 6 doesn’t have mmWave for the ultra-fast speeds, but AT&T and Verizon offer a version with mmWave for an extra $100. Wi-Fi 6E also allows the phone to tap into high-speed networks, letting me draw on the full bandwidth my ISP provided at 600Mbps.

Google’s upgrade to voice recognition is also impressive. The phone is very fast and precise in transcribing speech. It even gets things like comma placement and periods between sentences fairly accurate. It’s one of the first times I’ve felt I could rely on voice dictation to write out messages as accurately as I would with my own thumbs.

The battery on the Pixel 6 is a bit of a letdown. Given its large size, I would have expected to have an easier time drawing on it for the long haul, but if I leave it unplugged overnight, I’m usually not looking at a second full day’s worth of charge left come morning. Whether that’s simply from the processors drawing a lot of power or from the display is unclear. Watching a 45-minute show streamed from Netflix at 50% display brightness took 10% off the battery. A half-hour of Asphalt 9 took 13%. The phone is quite capable of chewing through that battery when pushed. Though it’ll still last through the day with more modest use.

Google Pixel 6 – Camera

Google’s cameras are always a highlight, and though the Pixel 6 may not have as much to get excited about as the Pixel 6 Pro, it’s still packing some solid photographic tools.

Here are the cameras the Google Pixel 6 packs:

• 50MP (binned to 12.5MP) Wide, 1.2-micron, f/1.9, Laser AF, OIS
• 12MP ultrawide, f/2.2, 1.25-micron, 114-degree FOV
• 8MP Selfie, 1.12-micron, f/2.0 83-degree FOV

The Pixel 6 notably shares its wide and ultra-wide camera setups with the Pixel 6 Pro, meaning the only thing users will miss out on here is the new 4x telephoto camera and the upgraded selfie sensor. That’s $300 you’ll be able to save if you don’t find yourself snapping a lot of selfies or zooming in subjects.

Across the variety of shooting I did with the Pixel 6, it performed admirably. Whether I was shooting in broad daylight or trying to take nearly impossible night shots, it regularly turned out an image I could use.

The main rear camera takes its 50MP sensor and bins four pixels into one, giving it a lot more light capturing potential than you might expect from 1.2-micron pixels. Clarity is superb while shooting in daylight, and it doesn’t struggle with indoor brightness levels either. That said, just about any phone you find for over $400 can do a solid enough job in these conditions. It’s at night when the Pixel 6 widens the gap between it and other phones.

The Pixel 6 manages to keep brighter details perfectly intact while pulling in a lot of shadow detail that can easily just go black on other cameras, and it manages to do it while keeping the ISO impressively low to avoid image noise. I even managed to snap a photo of the inside of a little free library bookshelf at night that was so dark I could hardly see inside it with my own eyes, and it managed to resolve legible text from the book spines.

I brought the iPhone 13, Pixel 5a 5G, and my personal Galaxy S20 (which shoots near identical photos to the S21) out for testing alongside the Pixel 6. While none of the phones performed poorly in the test, the Pixel 6 managed to outshine them all when it came to balancing a high dynamic range and catching extra details in the dark. That said, the Pixel 5a actually kept up shockingly well with the Pixel 6, even managing to capture a challenging shot of a metal dragon that I found superior to the Pixel 6’s own shot of it. There’s some room for variance between the shots, and the two cameras used different ISO and shutter settings to achieve their results, but this test put just as much a feather in the Pixel 5a’s cap as it did the Pixel 6’s. (Note: Some photos from the iPhone 13 had a photographic style pre-applied that makes them appear cooler and darker.)

The ultra-wide camera mostly keeps up with the main sensor in quality. It gets a little soft toward the edges and shows more noise in the dark, but I have to look pretty closely to figure out which sensor I used in a shot, which is great news for anyone who wants consistency for their photography. Even the selfie camera captures rich details and natural color, though it appears to be the same sensor that both the Pixel 5a and last year’s Pixel 5 offered.

Google has also added a couple of features that take advantage of the extra AI capabilities offered by its Tensor chip. These include a magic eraser to remove objects from photos as well as a Motion mode that can fake a long exposure or an action pan. They’re effective if you want a quick effect, but aren’t producing magical results. The action pan and long exposure both make it seem like there’s a lot more movement going on by applying a blur to the background, but they can get a little sloppy with edges. The magic eraser is a bit cooler, removing extraneous objects from your shot and smearing over them with details from around them. It’s impressive and works quickly, but it doesn’t hold up to close inspection.

Video capture is still not on the same level as photography. Recording at 4K/60 resulted in footage that had small, occasional stutters. Meanwhile, shooting at 1080p/30 didn’t run into the same issues. It’s a trade-off in clarity, but may be worthwhile for the more useful footage. In both cases, the camera manages to capture a decent amount of light and color.

RPG and tabletop publisher Modiphius Entertainment is creating a Skyrim board game that will include a sequel to the original RPG.

As detailed in an article by Polygon, the upcoming co-operative tabletop game will include two campaigns, each with three chapters. In an interview with the outlet, game designer Juan Echenique explained that fans embarking on the first of those campaigns will be able to take part in events that pre-date the narrative set out in its video game counterpart.

“The first campaign is 25 years before [the events of the video game],” said Echenique. “So you get to meet some of the [non-player characters] from Skyrim, but 25 years before when they were a young adventurer and then they take an arrow to the knee — and that happens!"

While finally uncovering the mystery behind that famous – albeit somewhat overused – stock NPC line is sure to peak the attention of Skyrim fans across the community, campaign two is also sure to turn a number of heads as fans will encounter Skyrim's famous Dragonborn from the perspective of other characters in Tamriel.

"The second campaign starts before the arrival of the Dragonborn, and then ends after the arrival of the Dragonborn," said Echenique. "So you get to see all the events that the Dragonborn causes. You’ll cross paths with the Dragonborn — they’re just a different character — and it’s really fun to watch that from afar.”

Aptly named Skyrim – The Adventure Game, Modiphius Entertainment's tabletop experience is currently slated for release next year, with the company's current planned schedule expecting orders to be fulfilled in August 2022.

As previously mentioned, Skyrim – The Adventure Game will form a cooperative experience for 1-5 players who will need to work together in order to complete quests and challenges thrown at them by the game. Sessions should take between 60-90 minutes and players are able to choose their character's race from a selection of those from the Elder Scrolls video game series (Altmer, Dunmer, Imperial, Khajiit, Nord, and Orsimer).

The project is currently being crowdfunded on Gamefound where fans looking to reserve their own copy can choose from three different tier options. These range from an initial tier including the tabletop's base game to more lucrative pledges that include subsequent expansions and additional luxury items.

For more on Skyrim, make sure to check out this article detailing some of the updates and creations coming with the launch of the game's Anniversary Edition later this month. Skyrim isn't Modiphius' first foray into Bethesda's fantasy universe; check out The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms miniatures game, which is currently available from the company.

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