Call of Duty: Warzone's new Pacific map debuts on December 2, a little less than a month after Call of Duty: Vanguard launches on November 5.

Activision released Call of Duty's new content roadmap on Thursday, laying out the important dates that will lay the groundwork for transitioning players from Verdansk to the sandy shores of Caldera. Several new images of Caldera were also revealed.

It's all laid out in Call of Duty's colossal blog, but here are the highlights you need to know.

October 28 (console) and November 2 (PC): Call of Duty: Vanguard pre-loading begins. If you're worried that your hard drive will choke on yet another Call of Duty install, the good news is that Vanguard will be 30% to 50% smaller than previous games' install sizes. Still sounds like a good chunk of storage space, though.

November 5: Call of Duty: Vanguard launches on consoles and PC. That includes the campaign, multiplayer, and zombies modes. This is also when Call of Duty's new kernel-level anti-cheat program "Ricochet" will begin server-side implementation. Warzone's Ricochet implementation begins on December 2.

November 5 to December 2: Preseason in Vanguard. This includes a new Vanguard map on November 17.

November 18: Call of Duty: Warzone's Operation: Flashback event begins. This is described as an "encore" limited-time event that celebrates Verdansk's 18 months of service. Players can earn a unique emblem just for participating and an animated calling card for winning their match.

November 24: You can unlock the "secrets of the Pacific" and get intel on the Caldera map by completing Warzone and Vanguard multiplayer challenges.

November 30 and December 1: The "Last Hours of Verdansk" event. Activision is teasing the event saying "bombs away," suggesting we'll see a fairly destructive wiping of the slate before Caldera goes lives. Considering they've already nuked Verdansk once, one wonders how much bigger the bombs can get.

December 2: Call of Duty Season One begins in Vanguard and Warzone. Vanguard players will receive access to new multiplayer maps, 24 hours of exclusive access to Warzone, and Warzone launches the new Pacific map Caldera. Players will also be able to purchase a new battle pass and will receive two free "functional" weapons.

Vanguard will also see some integration in Call of Duty: Black Ops' and vice versa. All operators and calling cards from Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare will transfer to Warzone, including cross-progression and seasonal prestige.

Certain weapons from Black Ops and Modern Warfare will be integrated into certain Warzone playlists. This currently includes Rebirth Island playlists like Resurgence and Mini Royales, along with regular Battle Royale and Plunder modes. All of the 150+ weapons unlocked in previous seasons will integrate with Warzone Pacific as well.

A bevy of new images of Warzone Pacific's Caldera map was also revealed. Check out the gallery below for a look at the mountainous heights and sandy depths we'll be visiting for our next battle royale win. Activision says it'll feature more than 200 points of interest for players to discover.

Don't forget to check out our massive Call of Duty: Vanguard preview coverage. We recently got a behind-the-scenes look at Vanguard's campaign, plus a look at how God of War composer Bear McCreary is bringing his signature musical style to Call of Duty's firefights.

There’s a technique popular in classical music called variation: a composer will take a single melody or musical idea and explore it in many different ways, potentially twisting it into dozens of different styles and structures without the overall work ever getting repetitive or tiresome. While that’s not exactly a concept unique to music, it is a practice I couldn’t help but be reminded of while playing Inscryption – an undoubtedly odd connection to make, given that it presents itself as a horror-themed roguelite deck-building card game. But dig beneath that somewhat familiar shell and it reveals itself to be nothing short of a symphony of exciting twists, clever concepts, and consistently surprising iterations on the fundamentals that hooked me in its very first minutes.

Inscryption holds much more than meets the eye, and a lot of what's so impressive about it are the unexpected places it ends up taking you. That means getting into many of the specific moments that make it so special will blunt their impact to a certain degree, so I am going to try to keep this review as spoiler-free as I can – both in terms of its story and some of its mechanics. That said, you only have to watch its launch trailer to understand that this isn’t just another Slay the Spire-inspired entry into a genre that has begun to feel a little too derivative recently. In fact, it manages to partially live in that genre while simultaneously tearing it to pieces.

Much like developer Daniel Mullins Games’ iconic Pony Island, Inscryption plays with meta themes in more ways than one. In this case, you start off playing a roguelike card game against a mysterious adversary shrouded in darkness, but the overall structure isn’t actually one that’s meant to be infinitely replayed. It took me about nine hours to reach the end of Inscryption, and it’s a proper campaign that tells an interesting and spooky story, takes a few justified jabs at card game culture, and stands as a genuinely fun card game of its own.

That game takes the form of head-to-head battles against an AI opponent: you play creature cards onto your side of the board which will automatically attack whatever is across from them each turn, be that opposing creatures or nothing at all. If it’s the latter, any damage they would have done is instead added to your opponent’s side of a tipping scale, but any damage you take will tip it back toward your direction – once one side of that scale is at least five damage heavier than the other, the match is over. That makes each fight a fun strategic tug-of-war, where taking a hit one turn could mean you’re just out of reach of winning the next. Exciting bosses can also challenge you with prolonged encounters and unique twists, ranging from a miner who turns your creatures into chunks of gold to some later ones that broke my expectations in legitimately jaw-dropping ways.

That’s the core of Inscryption that always stays constant, but the creatures you’ll use, the way you play them, the extra mechanics they have, and the structure of the metagame around each match all shift drastically as you progress. For example, the resource for playing stronger cards starts out by forcing you to sacrifice smaller creatures to fuel bigger ones, which can make for some tough but rewarding choices. But before long you’ll also get cards that instead spend “bones” generated when a friendly creature dies, adding another layer of planning to each decision. Later sections even explore systems closer to something like Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering, which keeps Inscryption’s relatively simple fundamentals constantly fresh.

Similarly, while it starts off using a branching roguelike structure recognizable to anyone who has played Slay the Spire, picking between paths and upgrading your deck as you go, it doesn’t stay that way the whole time. Without spoiling any surprises, the skin and bones of Inscryption can change just as dramatically as its meat, but the heart at its center always keeps everything pumping to a familiar beat. That’s good too, because it’s not too difficult to stumble upon exploitable strategies that feel great in the moment but ultimately reduce any tough choices substantially, meaning certain sections might start to wear thin if they went on for too long on their own. Instead you get a delicious platter of all the games Inscryption could have been without any one of them feeling like a disjointed demo or half-baked idea, and watching it evolve so comprehensively is pretty incredible.

Of course, slinging cards is only part of what Inscryption will ask you to do. In wonderfully strange fashion, it will also occasionally have you to stand up from the literal table you are playing at to explore the 3D room it’s held in. There you’ll solve simple escape room-style puzzles like finding the combination to a safe or figuring out how to unlock a container – many of which are tied directly to the card game itself in clever ways. They aren’t the most complex riddles in the world, with the matches themselves being where I had most of my fun, but the overall vibe of Inscryption shines in these sections. Its dark, retro-ish art style is excellent across the entire campaign, and the creepy mood throughout is perfectly unsettling without ever really dipping into genuine “horror.”

And while it’s hard to say anything at all about the plot itself without ruining some of the surprise, Inscryption’s haunted story is a genuinely compelling one as well. It’s told through a mix of written dialogue and FMV cutscenes, and it provides a great (and often unexpectedly funny) structure to house all of its clever ideas. It feels like the kind of urban legend you’d find propagated across creepypasta posts on message boards and other corners of the internet, but not in a way that feels dated or derivative.

It's a packed episode this week on Nintendo Voice Chat! First up, the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack is out, and there's some frustration over how the N64 games run on Switch. Join Seth Macy, Peer Schneider, Kat Bailey, and our old Ninfriendo Zach Ryan as they hash it all out. Plus, hear about IGN's Mario Party Superstars review, the new Pikmin AR game, and more. Stick around to hear some spoilery thoughts on Metroid Dread.

Timecodes!

• 00:00:00 – N64 Expansion Pack chat
• 00:29:25 – Is Mario Party Superstars the best Mario Party?
• 00:33:32 – The new Pikmin AR game
• 00:37:51 – Top Nintendo Games #43: Metroid Prime
• 00:48:25 – Why Nintendo's history deserves better
• 00:55:10 – Metroid Dread SPOILERCAST

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You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We're all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.

Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.

Director Edgar Wright jokingly said he wants to play the next iteration of The Doctor on Doctor Who.

Speaking to Slash Film about if he would ever step behind the camera for an episode of the beloved sci-fi show, Wright said he was given a chance to direct an episode of the revived series back in the early 2000s. Then-showrunner Russell T. Davies gave Wright an offer to direct the pilot, but Wright was working on Shaun of the Dead at the time.

Now, with the huge news that Davies is returning to the showrunner role for the show's 60th anniversary, Wright has been asked if he hopes to direct an episode. While he couldn't say either way if that's going to become a reality, he did say, "Can I be The Doctor? If the headline is 'Edgar Wright Would Like to Play 14th Doctor', I'd go along with that." So here we are.

Update 10/28 4:27 pm PT: While Wright was clearly joking and presumably would not give up his day job of a critically-acclaimed director, he did say he would recommend Richard Ayoade for the role as The Doctor.

To be clear, I was kidding. But I nominate @RichardAyoade x https://t.co/ojW90344Xr

— edgarwright (@edgarwright) October 28, 2021

Wright is known for directing movies including Shaun of the Dead and Baby Driver. His latest film, Last Night in Soho, stars Doctor Who alumn, Matt Smith.

Current Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall is leaving the show after 2022, along with the current Doctor, Jodie Whittaker. Davies, who was the showrunner for the revival's first 4 seasons starring Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant, will return for the 60th anniversary episode and seasons beyond that, according to the BBC. We don't yet know who will succeed Whittaker as the Timelord.

For more on Doctor Who, check out our Doctor interviews with David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Jodie Whittaker.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

You'd be forgiven if, glancing through Ubisoft's earnings announcements today, you didn't immediately catch onto yet another game delay stealthily snuck in: it's Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland.

When free-to-play Heartland was first announced back in May of this year, it was given a broad release window of sometime either this year or next year. Just a few days later, Ubisoft clarified that a bit to fiscal 2021 – 2022, meaning the period from April 2021 running up to March 2022.

Heartland skipped E3 earlier this year, and Ubisoft seemed quiet on it during its last quarterly earnings, leaving some wondering if it wasn't about time to start showing the game off a bit more if it was indeed coming this fiscal year. Turns out, it is not. Ubisoft's latest quarterly earnings report stated that Heartland would join Prince of Persia and Rocksmith+ in the following fiscal year running from April 2022 to March of 2023.

Notably, both Prince of Persia and Rocksmith have, at last report, been scheduled for sometime in calendar 2022. We haven't heard specific word on whether these will edge back further into 2023, but Ubisoft does appear to be giving itself some wiggle room there.

Ubisoft does this kind of thing a lot. Rainbow Six Extraction, Immortals: Fenyx Rising, and Watch Dogs: Legion were all delayed back in 2019, and then Extraction was delayed again. Riders Republic, out today, underwent multiple delays, Far Cry 6 was pushed back, as was Avatar, Skull & Bones' has been delayed again and again since it was revealed in 2017, and when Ghost Recon Frontline was announced earlier this month, its beta was promptly delayed a week later.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.