Battlefield 2042's first major narrative reveal includes a returning character from Battlefield 4 who will feature as a playable specialist in the upcoming title.

Exodus, the short film released by EA and Dice, provides a closer look at the events that lead up to the start of the No-Pat civil war in Battlefield 2042. The cinematic reunites fans with Kimble Graves, an old friend of the series more commonly known as Irish who will return as a playable No-Pat Specialist in the game.

Irish, played by Michael K. Williams, is the fifth specialist to be revealed for Battlefield 2042 add will join a roster of other characters including Canadian-born Webster Mackay, veteran medic Maria Falck, expert engineer Pyotr "Boris" Guskovsky, and lone wolf Wikus "Casper" Van Daele.

As with all of the playable specialists that Dice has released for Battlefield 2042, Irish will enter the game equipped with his own gadget and trait. Fans opting to play as the experienced soldier will have access to a fortification system and a veteran trait which could both come in useful during tricky encounters. In addition to the current roster, Dice has confirmed that it is set to debut five more specialists amongst the game's ranks before it launches on October 15.

In the new cinematic, the warship Exodus is rerouted to London with Irish on board. Amongst the other members of the crew is journalist Kayvan Bechir who joins the warship following a 13-month stint embedded amongst the No-Pats. Reports from Bechir's undercover operation can be read on the Battlefield 2042 website where he reveals a range of details about the game's lore.

According to Bechir's reports, the year 2042 sees tensions rise between the US and Russia. The two countries are on the brink of all-out war after the world's resources are stretched to the breaking point and many other nations have collapsed as a result. From the ashes of those fallen nations, Battlefield 2042 introduces us to the No-Pats – a group of nomads who onlookers believe have bound together in the hopes of survival. Despite the speculation surrounding the No-Pats commonalities, Bechir reveals in his reports that they are actually a divided group with conflicting interests.

In addition to Irish, Exodus also sees the reveal of the ominous No-Pat leader, Oz, a new character to the series who hopes to unify the divided groups of No-Pat survivors. In the short animated film, we see Irish and Oz clash in an exchange that seemingly sows the seeds of conflict set to take place in Battlefield 2042's upcoming multiplayer-only narrative.

Fans are likely to find out more about Battlefield 2042's gritty narrative as Dice releases more of its additional playable specialists in the lead-up to the game's launch. For more on Battlefield 2042, why not check out this piece detailing everything you need to know about the game's new portal system.

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

Don't Breathe 2 hits theaters on Aug. 13.

In 2016, Don’t Breathe introduced Stephen Lang as The Blind Man, a past-his-prime Army veteran with some seriously violent tendencies, to say the least. His silently menacing performance made what could've been a tired trope intriguing viewing, and his return to the role in Don’t Breathe 2 mostly delivers on this front. Unfortunately, he just can’t rescue this horror sequel from the trappings of mediocrity.

Don’t Breathe 2 doesn’t bother to shake up the crux of the plot too much; another home invasion movie, it once again finds the house of Norman Nordstrom (the real name of The Blind Man) ransacked. This time around, though, the loot that's being hunted isn't some large pile of cash. Instead, it's a young girl named Phoenix (Madelyn Grace). And news flash: she's The Blind Man's daughter.

We get the idea very early on that Phoenix will go through some sort of life-threatening excursion, as The Blind Man puts her through regular endurance tests of both the mind and body. When the camera follows her through the rundown streets of Detroit, it becomes clear that potential danger exists around each and every corner. Perhaps all this training may come in handy. Perhaps The Blind Man should keep her on a tighter leash. As you would expect, he doesn't.

When things go south, they do so quickly. A gang of military thugs — led in a laughably creepy way by Brendan Sexton III — take over their house, and what transpires is a game of hide-and-seek between Phoenix and her pursuers that uses careful movements and silence to instill that edge-of-your-seat feeling horror fans covet. They never get to the kind of audio manipulation that made A Quiet Place so chilling, but it’s sequences like this one, where the camera work and walking-on-eggshells choreography are on full display, that allow the movie to, uh, breathe.

In fact, there are a few cinematography tricks that work well enough here, delivering a kinetic, disorienting, and brooding experience. However, matching these style choices with a substantive narrative proves to be a challenging balancing act for first-time director Rodo Sayagues. He struggles to create an emotional bond between us and the characters, with some ineffective computer-generated tears failing to achieve that goal.

Camera work and lighting gimmicks only go so far. Instead of solidifying the kinds of connections it needs to sustain its 90-minute runtime, Don’t Breathe 2 relies on clunky dialogue, under-developed characters, and a whole slew of predictable choices. By the third act, the twists that are revealed land more like bad jokes than tension-building plot points.

Even though the blood spilled and gritty violence is copious, the lack of believability driving each character's decision leaves things feeling a bit flat. If we're expected to invest in the father-daughter relationship between Phoenix and the Blind Man, which is the foundational relationship carrying this story, it would surely help if it felt that these two characters really cared for each other. Lang's weathered performance can only carry things so far. It almost feels like everything that happens here relies on the man's broad-shouldered talent for support, but when all is said and done, that’s not nearly enough to justify Don’t Breathe 2 as a necessary sequel.

You know Willem Dafoe. The veteran actor of over 100 movies is practically a household name in American cinema. But if you play video games you’ll hear Dafoe in about a week in Annapurna Interactive’s new game 12 Minutes from one-man developer Luis Antonio.

IGN was able to sit down with Dafoe and Antonio to talk about the upcoming game about a man trapped in a time loop, how the two creatives got working together, and Dafoe’s video game roles which, funnily enough, mirror his film appearances.

Dafoe has an extensive filmography that ranges across film, television, and video games. He’s given Academy Award-nominated turns in films like Platoon, or got down and dirty in arthouse films like The Lighthouse. He’s even appeared in popcorn blockbusters, playing the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man.

In video games, too, Dafoe has seemingly run the gamut. Whether it’s AAA games like Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls, the arthouse indie 12 Minutes, or, hey, voicing the Green Goblin in the Spider-Man tie-in video game.

“It’s intentional and I try to make choices,” Dafoe says about his voice-over work. “I try to be in situations where I feel turned on and engaged, you know, a fire’s lit under me.” At the same time, Dafoe acknowledges there are some choices made for an actor beyond their control.

“The Spider-Man [game] was kind of an extension of something that I had already done as far as performing in the film. And then, Beyond: Two Souls, David Cage is a very interesting guy and he’s got a very interesting stake in how he approaches his work and what he wants to accomplish with it.”

Dafoe shared a story about the copious amount of mo-cap work he did for Beyond: Two Souls along with co-star Elliot Page. “That was a lot of mo-cap work. So basically [Elliot] Page and I did mo-cap work and sketched through all the scenes. And then we created material for the computer people to build the characters.”

And while 12 Minutes doesn’t require Dafoe to do any mocap, the actor says it allowed him to similarly dive into the work of acting.

“You’re working with the voice and there’s a great freedom to just work with your voice… And, also, you don’t have the same kind of responsibilities that you have sometimes about certain technical aspects when you’re doing a film: an awareness of the camera, costume business, all kinds of things… Everything is concentrated. You’re putting everything into your voice.”

For his part, Antonio says he always pictured which actors would voice the characters in his game. Alongside Dafoe, Daisy Ridley and James McAvoy fill out the three-person cast of 12 Minutes.

“Actually, on the early stage, before we have any casting in mind, the way the characters would be as references, Willem was in the list. Once we started the process itself, I mean, Willem was on the list and we were lucky enough that he was available and interested in the challenge.”

Dafoe's video game credits — while not as extensive as his film credits — stretch out over 20 years. And in that time he’s seen the way the medium's approach to acting has changed.

“They’re all quite different,” Dafoe says. “I remember years ago, I did [voiceover] for a James Bond video game, and that was great fun and we did it in an afternoon, but it was just basically a recording session and we did it very fast. Then, of course, the technology, the approach to games has changed a lot.”

“It started out real simple. It’s like, ‘Get it done, send it out there.’ There was less of a respect for what people demanded, but now [games] are so popular, the public has kind of pushed them to be more invested, more involved, more sophisticated, more… They’re more demanding.”

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Back 4 Blood is all about shooting, clubbing, and stabbing zombies in the face, but it’s also a story about a group of immune survivors that band together in an effort to clean up and rid the world of the Ridden menace. But who are these Cleaners? To find out, I talked with Simon MacKenzie, lead writer on Back 4 Blood, and Phil Robb, co-founder and creative director at Turtle Rock Studios.

Check out the slideshow below to get a proper introduction to each of the eight playable cleaners in Back 4 Blood.

That's all we have on the playable cast of Back 4 Blood, but it certainly isn't the end of our month long coverage of Back 4 Blood. Stay tuned for more IGN First coverage of Turtle Rock's latest, and if you missed it, make sure to also check out our preview of the open beta which opens its doors once again later today at noon PT and runs until August 16.

Or if you'd prefer to see the game in action, check out 19 minutes of a full level playthrough with the developers of the game.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit

Join us on The Path to Dune, IGN’s series of exclusive sneak peeks at director Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated, big screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi saga. The Path to Dune will spotlight not only the characters and worlds of the film but also the craftsmanship that went into the making of Dune. We kick off The Path to Dune with the exclusive character videos seen below profiling the members of House Atreides.

House Atreides is one of several major factions jockeying for power in Dune. (To draw a comparison to Game of Thrones, House Atreides is basically the House Stark of the Dune franchise.) Dune takes place thousands of years in the future, during a time when humanity has spread to other worlds in the galaxy. In this future, power is shared between a monarch known as the Padishah Emperor, the Space Guild, and a collection of feudal houses known as the Landsraad. In this era, advanced technology like computers and atomic weapons are strictly forbidden. A substance called Melange is a psychotropic spice that can enhance the mind and prolong life, with some users even gaining psychic abilities and the power to access the shared memories of their ancestors.

Much of Herbert’s Dune saga centers around a desert planet called Arrakis. Though remote and all but inhospitable (thanks to both its extremely dry climate and the presence of massive, roving sand worms), Arrakis is the only major source of Spice in the universe. Whichever house controls Arrakis stands to reap great wealth, but also faces constant danger from rival houses. There's a reason people in the Dune-verse have the saying, "He who controls the Spice, controls the universe."

One of those factions seeking to control the Spice is House Atreides. Let’s break down who the major players are among them, starting with …

Paul Atreides

Timothee Chalamet plays Dune’s main protagonist and the heir of House Atreides. He will learn that a great man doesn’t seek to lead; he’s called to it. Arrakis’ native people, the Fremen, come to believe Paul is the savior they have anticipated for thousands of years. A reluctant hero, Paul’s epic journey sees him assume the Fremen name Muad'Dib and lead them in a massive uprising against the Galactic Padishah Empire.

Duke Leto

House Atreides’ leader Duke Leto (played by Oscar Isaac) is one of the few benevolent rulers in a galaxy where wealth and power are everything. House Atreides, which hails from the planet Caladan, has been granted control of Arrakis by the Padishah Emperor, displacing their generations-old rivals, House Harkonnen. Even as Leto struggles to protect his family from harm, his son Paul comes to realize that a grand destiny awaits him on Arrakis.

Lady Jessica

Rebecca Ferguson portrays Duke Leto’s royal consort and the mother of Paul Atreides. Lady Jessica is a member of the Bene Gesserit, an all-female religious order that serves as one of the greatest political forces in the galaxy. Through a combination of mental conditioning and Spice consumption, the members of the order have honed their minds and gained superhuman abilities. Their leader, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, is obsessed with using selective breeding to produce an all-powerful Bene Gesserit superhuman called the Kwisatz Haderach. She sent Lady Jessica to be Duke Leto's concubine and produce that daughter, but instead, Jessica bore him a son, Paul. After surviving an attack by the Harkonnens, Lady Jessica and Paul find themselves in the deserts of Arrakis among the Fremen.

Duncan Idaho

Played by Jason Momoa, this Swordmaster of Ginaz is one of Paul’s mentors and protectors, a loyal member of House Atreides. Duncan’s good-natured ribbing of Paul speaks not only to his big brother-type relationship with him but also to the fact that Paul is still just a boy who will one day become a ruler — if he can survive until then.

Gurney Halleck

Josh Brolin portrays Duke Leto’s gruff chief officer. Along with Duncan Idaho, Gurney is one of Paul’s tough-love mentors and a staunchly loyal member of House Atreides. A warrior and poet-musician, Gurney instructs Paul in the military arts, including the use of energy shields and daggers. While a shield offers much protection, a dagger — if wielded precisely enough — can penetrate it. Gurney schools Paul in this deadly skill in order to combat their mortal enemies, the Harkonnens.

Dr. Wellington Yueh

The long-serving family physician and a trusted member of the Atreides’ inner circle, Dr. Yueh is a far more complicated character than he may initially seem. And while the likes of Gurney Halleck and Duncan Idaho offer the Atreides physical might, Dr. Yueh possesses a different sort of strength. He utilizes pressure point manipulation on his patients, which allows him to sense illness, detect injuries and even comprehend their psychological state just by touching them. Dune marks the first English-language feature film for actor Chang Chen, whose credits include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Red Cliff.

The second installment of The Path to Dune drops next Thursday, August 19th with character vignettes highlighting the Fremen. And then on Thursday, August 26th, we will profile House Harkonnen with more exclusive videos.

From that point, you can continue with IGN on The Path to Dune for more exclusive first looks every other Thursday until the film’s release in the US on October 22 and in the UK and Australia on October 21.