During its Animal Crossing-focused Direct, Nintendo once again confirmed that the upcoming New Horizons will not make use of Nintendo Switch Online’s cloud save backup function, but NSO subscribers will have a way to recover their save data should something unfortunate happen to their system. However, this feature comes with one notable caveat.

In fine print during the presentation, Nintendo specifies that you will only be able to recover your Animal Crossing: New Horizons save data one time should your Switch get lost or damaged. As previously mentioned, this service will only be offered to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, and it won’t be available until sometime after the game launches.

This isn’t the only unusual save data restriction New Horizons imposes on players. Nintendo recently confirmed that only one island can exist per Nintendo Switch console–so if another player who shares your system would like to start their own island, they’ll need their own Switch and game. Additionally, you will not be able to transfer your New Horizons save data from one Switch system to another.

We learned a lot of other details about New Horizons during the Animal Crossing Direct. Nintendo showcased a variety of quality-of-life improvements, as well as some new and returning characters you’ll meet in the game. New Horizons also lets you change your island’s terrain for the first time in the series, and it’ll make use of both the Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app and the Animal Crossing Amiibo figures and cards.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons releases worldwide on March 20. You can see what pre-order bonuses are available for the title in our Animal Crossing: New Horizons pre-order guide. For more on the game, be sure to check out our roundup of everything we know about New Horizons.

All of the Animal Crossing games are filled with a collection of adorable anthropomorphic animals (save for Mr. Resetti–he can go to hell). In the February 2020 Nintendo Direct, we see that Animal Crossing: New Horizons is no different, featuring a motley crew of faces, some old and some brand-new.

Long-time fans will recognize the Museum (traditionally run by Blathers and Celeste), Nook’s Cranny (traditionally run by Tom Nook or his children), and Able Sisters (traditionally run by Mabel, Sable, and Label)–all hallmark stores of the Animal Crossing franchise. Animal Crossing: New Leaf’s Campground (overseen by Harvey) makes a return too.

Isabelle will return from her summons to rumble in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to join your fledgling town as well. Once you upgrade your Resident Services tent into a full-fledged Town Hall, it appears Isabelle will move in to offer you the same services she did in New Leaf.

The Direct also showcased Saharah. Since her role in every game changes, it’s not immediately apparent what services she provides in New Horizons (though she always has something to do with rare carpets and wallpapers). Kicks, who shined shoes in Animal Crossing: City Folk and sold footwear in New Leaf, can be seen as well. The two Dodos that operate the airport and fly the private plane are named Orville and Wilbur, an homage to the Wright Brothers.

The Direct also revealed brand-new characters: Daisy Mae, C.J., and Flick. Daisy Mae is a turnip seller like Joan, while C.J. seems to represent the Fishing Tourney and Flick seems to handle the Bug-Off (Joan is mysteriously absent).

Nintendo revealed a ton of new information about Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the game’s dedicated Direct presentation. On top of showing off a variety of welcome quality-of-life improvements, the company confirmed New Horizons will have Amiibo support. Here’s how it’ll work.

New Horizons will be compatible with both the Animal Crossing Amiibo figures as well as the Amiibo cards. By scanning an Amiibo, you can invite that character to your island’s campground. You can also take photos with them in a new photoshoot mode called Photopia.

There are currently 16 different Animal Crossing Amiibo figures, many of which can still be found for cheaper than their release price. Given that New Horizons is one of the most anticipated Switch games of the year, you’ll probably want to snap up some of these Amiibo while you can, in case their price increases closer to the game’s launch. We’ve rounded up where you can snag each Amiibo figure–as well as some other great Animal Crossing-themed gear–in our Animal Crossing accessory guide.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons arrives on Nintendo Switch on March 20. Many retailers are offering their own unique pre-order bonuses for the title, such as the adorable bell bag at Best Buy. You can learn more in our Animal Crossing: New Horizons pre-order guide. The game is also available to pre-order digitally on the Switch Eshop and is eligible for the Switch voucher program (if you have any game vouchers remaining).

Like all good entrepreneurs, The Nook empire is diversifying in Animal Crossing: New Horizons – by spinning up a new business venture: island getaways. In my time with New Horizons (the first 30 minutes) gameplay doesn’t stray far from what makes Animal Crossing so charmingly addictive a few key updates aim to make it the most customizable entry in the series.

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The Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct showed massive potential for the newfound deserted island to grow into a proper village, and I got to see what it’s like from its meager beginnings. Granted, one half-hour isn’t enough time to get a true sense of New Horizons’ day-to-day gameplay, but I did get to see some of its new systems. If you’d like to keep your character’s island arrival a surprise, stop here and instead go check out the wrap-up article of the Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct and our interview with Animal Crossing developers at E3 2019.

Preparing for Island Living

Move over Rover and Kapp’n, Timmy and Tommy Nook are open for business. These two cute twin tanuki set you up for your new adventure by checking your information at an airline counter. Before you’re able to board your flight, Timmy and Tommy check your name, allow you to customize your character through simple menus rather than have it determined by a quiz (hurray!), and choose your island design from one of four layouts. A representative from Nintendo said additional character customization options unlock as you play too.

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With the bulk of the customization done, Timmy and Tommy have one final question: what’s the one thing you’d bring with you to a deserted island? I was asked to choose between a sleeping bag, a lamp, some food, or something to kill time. I like wandering around at night so I chose the lamp. Timmy reassured me that Nook Inc. would provide all essentials despite my choice, and the Nintendo rep said my answer wouldn’t do anything directly but didn’t elaborate on the possibilities. With the profile complete, my character was taken to the deserted island.

This introduction is a mild departure from previous Animal Crossings where you arrive by train, taxi, or bus and set up your profile along the way before arriving in an established but fledgling town. In New Horizons, however, they’re not kidding when they say you’re going to a deserted island – save for Tom Nook’s tent and the tiny airport, nothing else is built. Knowing how I’ll eventually be able to manipulate the terrain, place items outside, and customize even more made this airport scene an exciting introduction.

Once the plane touched down, I was greeted by Tom Nook and made excited introductions with my first two island friends, Hamlet and Hazel – it’s not every day you get to start a new life on a deserted island! Tom walked us through the Resident Services tent that houses a crafting workbench, an item shop, the recycling box, and the latest automatic bell dispenser, and then instructed us to find a spot on the island to claim as our own. I chose to set up my tent in a strategic spot behind Resident Services, though I was told I could move my tent later.

A New Debt to Pay

Sadly, you can’t vote your new neighbors off the island if you’re not pleased with them, but at least you can choose where they’ll set up camp. Once I was all settled I found my neighbors and was able to decide whether or not I liked their pitch for their new home. You’ll have the option to let them settle there, tell them to find another spot, or choose a spot for them yourself. When setting up your tent and theirs, you’ll be able to “imagine,” or preview, what the tent will look like in that location, which was helpful. I appreciate having more of a hand in designing my island right from the start, and it was nice that Hamlet and Hazel appreciated my input.

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With our homes settled, Tom Nook requested I gather sticks for a fire, and some peaches, my island’s randomly chosen native fruit. The actual collection process is the same as it’s always been and I wasn’t given access to tools, so my actions during the first day were limited. But eventually, the day came to a close and when my character awoke New Horizons had synced to real-time (it runs on its own time for the first tutorial day) and saddled me with a massive 49,800 bell debt. We may be in a new kind of environment, but this is the same old Tom Nook.

Fortunately, Tom did offer to let me pay off my initial charge for the island getaway package with a new kind of currency called Nook Miles. These miles are earned by completing objectives, like “Angling for Perfection,” a challenge that requires you to catch 10 fish. I didn’t get to explore exactly how much you can earn from each completed objective, but I know I’ll be putting my first 5,000 miles toward paying my debt and save my bells for an eventual house upgrade. And Nintendo confirmed that you can only pay off your debt with Nook Miles the first time, so don’t get used to that convenience.

Quick Crafts

Unfortunately, my time with New Horizons was coming to an end, so I ran straight for the Resident Services tent to test out the new crafting system. Here, Tom Nook hosts DIY classes, and he just so happened to have time to teach me how to craft items through recipes. I downloaded the DIY Recipes app for my NookPhone – a handy smartphone equipped with a camera, a rescue service to get you out of tough spots, a Nook Miles tracker, and other apps – that let me save the recipe for a flimsy fishing rod.

These DIY recipes can be earned in a variety of ways – you might receive one in the mail and islanders can gift them to you. I hunted down the five tree-sticks needed to make the fishing rod, crafted it with the press of a button, and was ready to fish – and I would have if my time hadn’t run out. Crafting seems like a fun way to build items that would otherwise take from my precious bell-debt fund, though items like the flimsy fishing rod and others will be available for purchase.

There are still tons of features I’m excited to fully get my hands on: Customizing crafted items, making paths, exploring truly deserted islands through Nook’s travel service, and pretty much everything announced in the Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct (you can read our summary of the biggest announcements here if you haven’t already!). New Horizons doesn’t seem like it’ll be a major departure from what we know and love about Animal Crossing, but it sure does seem to have plenty of quality-of-life improvements and better customization options that’ll likely keep it as engaging as ever.

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Miranda Sanchez is an executive editor at IGN. She hopes Roscoe and Goldie settle on her island sooner than later. You can chat with her about video games and anime on Twitter.

As part of its Animal Crossing-focused Direct, Nintendo has detailed plans for how it intends to support the upcoming Switch entry, New Horizons. As revealed during the Nintendo Direct, Animal Crossing: New Horizons will have multiple free updates post-launch.

The first of these free updates arrives on March 20–the game’s release day–and will introduce Bunny Day. From that point on, holidays and events that aren’t already in the game will be introduced as they come up in the real-life calendar. This gradual rollout means that the system clock and other exploits can’t be manipulated to do some virtual time-travelling and see events before Nintendo intends them to be available.

The Animal Crossing franchise delivers what many treat as lifestyle experiences. Each game invites players to check in day after day to do small tasks, chat with friends in the world, progress in developing their place in the town, and customize their living spaces. As such, events are a big part in keeping the games fresh, and it looks like Nintendo has grand designs on making sure players are always entertained and excited about what’s happening.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons launches on March 20 and, ahead of that, Nintendo is releasing a special Animal Crossing-themed Switch console on March 13. The system features pastel green and blue Joy-Cons and a white dock, which has Tom Nook and his nephews on an island adorned on it.

During the Direct, Nintendo also revealed that New Horizons will let you change your island’s terrain and the game uses the Switch Online app in clever ways.

During its Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct, Nintendo revealed new construction features to help you customize your island. As shown during the presentation, the Nook Phone–an in-game smartphone with a variety of helpful apps–includes an unlockable “Island Designer” app that allows you to mold your island to your liking.

The most drastic feature is the ability to change your island’s terrain, a first for the series. In past Animal Crossing games, you’d have to reset the game if you didn’t like your town’s layout at the start. Like previous games, New Horizons gives you a choice of four island layouts at the beginning–but even if you like your layout to begin with, you can now alter it over time and as your needs or aesthetics change.

This includes adding or deleting cliffs, adding or removing water features, and even adding slopes to aid in island navigation. You do all this in real-time via the Island Designer mode rather than scheduling construction somewhere and then waiting for it to finish, though it appears you can still pay to construct bridges like you could in New Leaf. You can also pay to build staircases around town, a brand-new feature that should also help you get up cliffs with ease.

Another major addition in this realm is veritable pathways. Making paths around your town was an arduous process in past Animal Crossing games, to say the least–you’d either have to run over the same patch of grass over and over or place path-pattern tiles one by one on the ground. Now, you can lay out paths of various types, from dirt to stone, via the Island Designer app via what looks like a much easier, smoother process.

Based on the Direct, it seems New Horizons is making town-building and customization breezier than ever–you can even control where villagers put their houses so they don’t ruin your whole vibe.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons launches on March 20. Ahead of that, Nintendo is releasing a special Animal Crossing-themed Switch console on March 13 that includes a white dock with Tom Nook, Timmy, and Tommy on it as well as pastel blue and green Joy-Cons.

Nintendo shared a wealth of new details about Animal Crossing: New Horizons during its Animal Crossing Direct broadcast. As we recently learned through the company’s website, New Horizons will support the rarely used Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app, and now we know exactly how it’ll be used.

Shortly after New Horizons launches, the title will get its own game-specific service in the NSO app called Nook Link. Among other things, you can use this feature to scan QR codes of patterns designed in the series’ 3DS games, New Leaf and Happy Home Designer, letting you import those patterns into New Horizons easily.

Nook Link also lets you communicate with other players when playing. Not only can you voice chat through the app, as you can with a handful of other Switch games, but you are also able to type out text messages. These messages will then be displayed in the game as a speech bubble above your character’s head.

Nintendo hasn’t specified when the Nook Link service will go live, only noting that it will roll out “soon after” New Horizons launches next month. To use the app (as well as New Horizons’ other online features), you’ll need to have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Individual memberships cost $4 for one month, $8 for three months, and $20 for a year. Nintendo also offers an annual Family Plan that costs $35 and covers up to eight Nintendo Account holders across multiple systems.

New Horizons launches exclusively for Switch on March 20. There’s still time to pre-order the game, and a handful of retailers are offering their own unique pre-order incentives, such as the adorable bell bag bundle available at Best Buy. You can learn more in our Animal Crossing: New Horizons pre-order guide.

As someone raised along the stretch of New England coastline where they shot the first two Jaws movies (and, yes, part of the fourth, but we don’t talk about that one), Maneater has been on my radar since it first burst onto the stage at E3 2018 like it was hungry for some Robert Shaw.

Since then, we’ve been given a pretty good idea of what to expect from Tripwire’s open-world Shark RPG. There’s a large open world ocean to explore, ranging from brackish backwater bayous to polluted lakes, ponds and coastlines (even what looks like a Sea Wolrd-esque amusement park), plenty of sea life – and any humans unfortunate enough to get too close to the water – to devour, and an evolution system that drives your progress through the game forward, all tied together (successfully, based on what I’ve seen) a reality TV series narrated by veteran voice actor Chris Parnell. Recently, I got a chance to swim through the opening hour or so of Maneater, and even though it wasn’t all smooth sailing, I’m eager to get back in the water for more.

Okay, those are all the ocean puns I’ve got, I promise.

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During our demo, I was able to play as both a powerful adult bull shark and then later her orphaned pup, which is the shark that you spend the remainder of the game controlling. The unbridled power fantasy of the full-grown shark was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the more immediately satisfying of the two; but the younger, weaker shark had its own intriguing elements as well, and it was clear that transitioning from one to the other would be a fun process. As a (surprisingly adorable) pup, and later as a “teen shark*”, I found the world much more dangerous. Even a small garfish can pose a threat, and while it’s relatively easy to take on smaller prey like grouper or turtles, the way you have to approach fighting more aggressive enemies is far more tactical than you might expect.

“The combat felt a little stale initially,” admits Tripwire’s CEO and Co-Founder John Gibson, looking back on the early stages of Maneater’s development. “The shark would swim through the world and just bite. You know, it was a bit like PAC man… but when we added some movement, some lunges to those attacks, then it started feeling like a knife fight.”

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It was a fair comparison – once I got the hang of it, a fight with another sea creature was more reminiscent of a sword fight or a boxing match than the typical “freight train with teeth” violence we usually associate with sharks. When the Tripwire team demoed it for us at last year’s GamesCom, they jokingly called it “Shark Souls,” and while relating a game to From Software’s hugely influential series has become something of a meme, it’s not an entirely incorrect comparison. Especially when punching above your weight class – in this case, I thought it would be a good idea to pit by tiny little shark pup against an adult alligator, for example – every attack, dodge and counterattack felt important, and each error I made was a lesson learned, and a mistake to avoid next time. “Every battle has a cadence,” Gibson says. “That was the moment where the light bulbs came on.”

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That said, the most enjoyable – in the guiltiest of pleasurable ways – was, of course, when I took the shark to the surface to terrorize the human population of the region I was in. As both a teen shark and an adult, wreaking havoc among boaters and beachgoers was intensely – and horrifyingly – satisfying. Being able to latch onto a diver and drag them, screaming, through a crowd of panicked swimmers or breaching from below the surface to slam down onto an inflatable unicorn raft and pop it, bouncing more potential food into the red-churned waters, was gleefully wicked fun. In those moments, it didn’t feel quite like an action or reverse horror game, along the lines of GTA or Carrion, but more like the shark a variation on House House’s mischievous goose, if the goose devoured people for nourishment instead of just stealing their house keys.

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To be clear – it still controlled like an arcade/action game, through and through. Single buttons control each function, from chomping down on a fish or foe to whipping your tail around to stun them. When I’d gorged myself on enough swimmers, local shark hunters would arrive (to claim the bounty that inevitably gets placed on an animal that kills a bunch of humans), and these simple controls worked well to let me bring the fight to the cocky fishermen. Often literally, as the ability to hurl the full weight of my shark body onto their boats and eat whoever was standing on deck was a strategy I enjoyed far too much and employed often.

I didn’t get to spend much time with the evolutionary end of Maneater’s “Eat, Explore, Evolve” gameplay pillars, but based on the info I gleaned from the dev team and by exploring its starting areas, there are plenty of interesting ways to shape what my shark can do over the course of Maneater’s 8-10 hour campaign. As your shark gets older and larger, it will evolve from a pup to a teen, then adult and eventually become an Elder shark – and that’s when things get especially wild, it seems.

While there are certain abilities you can pick up early on, like a unique form of echolocation or the tail attack mentioned earlier, late-game evolutions include bizarre mutations absorbed from toxic waste dumps or by hunting and defeating each region’s mutated apex predators, like a chitinous bone plating that offers more protection in battle or bio-electric fins that deal bonus electricity damage. Gibson says that finding taking the time to find and unlock everything it has to offer can take well past 15 hours, and that’s not including all optional objectives or their post-launch content, which will likely include “different areas and new gameplay”.

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I thoroughly enjoyed my initial time with Maneater, and I’m eager to explore more when it launches this May. “[We’re] taking what is something that people are familiar with and that they know, but taking it somewhere really unique so they can experience a genre that they love but in a way that they’ve never experienced before,” says Gibson.

While there were a few small issues that made my demo a bit clunky – the UI might have benefitted from a tutorial explaining the distinction between dodge indicators and counter-attack indicators, for instance, and there were some interesting collision hiccups – but those are small and easily remedied problems, ones that I trust Tripwire to address by the time they launch. And after all, aren’t all the best shark adventures a little rough around the edges? The issues weren’t enough to sour me on the shark-sperience, by any means; if anything it just made me wish for a longer demo; you could say learning its intricacies really made me want to sink my teeth in.

Okay, that was the last last one, I swear.

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JR is a Senior Editor at IGN, and very sorry about all those nautical puns. You can yell at him about them on Twitter.

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*I’d 100% watch a Teen Wolf reboot where they replace lycanthropy with whatever disease those dudes on Street Sharks had.

The Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct is now live, and host Tom Nook is here to show us plenty of new things about the upcoming island adventure. He’s split the information into two informational sections, and the Direct finishes off his with an FAQ, all presented by our favorite entrepreneurial tanuki. All of it is covered here, just in case you’d rather not listen to his chirps.

If you’re looking for more information on what we’ve learned about New Horizons already, be sure to visit the IGN Animal Crossing: New Horizons wiki for more information on NookPhone Apps, all confirmed villagers (prior to the Direct), and more. We also recently learned more about how saves will work on the Switch.

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Seasons

The Direct kicks off with a very important part of Animal Crossing: seasons. For the first time, Animal Crossing: New Horizons allows you to choose either the Northern or Southern Hemisphere so that your season matches your local season. This was revealed back during Nintendo Treehouse’s E3 Live event, but rather than just being a comment in a stream, we got a nice preview of what we’ll see in New Horizons’ seasons. As always, there will be seasonal events and activities, like collecting seeds, leaves, and mushrooms. The furniture placed outdoors seems coordinated with each season too.

Island Services

The features tour continues with details on spots we’ve seen previously. The Resident Services tent is available 24/7 for crafting, tips, a shop, and a place to sell items. Then, the day after you arrive on the island, you’ll have access to the airport that also houses the post office and online portal that allows you to visit others.

NookPhone and Nook Miles

Also seen previously, the NookPhone is a new menu with several useful apps that are acquired over time. There’s a camera, map, DIY app, and plenty more. This smartphone also gives Nook a direct line to you. At the start of each day Nook will put on an island-wide broadcast about… something. Nook didn’t elaborate in the Nintendo Direct. Nook Miles were discussed again, though. Points earned through this acheivement-style system can be used to pay off the initial getaway package then used to purchase special rewards only available through Nook’s shop. You can also spend Nook Miles on a special ticket for a trip to a random deserted island. They’ll be filled with resources for crafting, fruit, and animals you can invite to visit your island.

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Island exploration

Wasps are, unfortunately, back, as are scorpions. Though scorpions used to be a rare find only on summer nights in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, it looks like they might be more common in New Horizons. A few short scenes also confirmed the return of special characters like Wisp and Gulliver. If you happen to end up in a bad spot, though, the Rescue Service app can instantly teleport you home. That home, by the way, is still upgradable like past games.

Home Upgrades/Decor

Home upgrades still cost a heavy chunk of change — 98,000 bells, we saw on the screen — but this time around they come with their own hidden storage. The Nintendo Direct didn’t reveal the size of this storage, though we did see that multiple items can be selected and moved all together.

Crafting

Crafting is as simple as learning a new DIY recipe, collecting the materials, and pressing a button to make it. We’ve seen this in previous New Horizon videos, but we learned that you’ll also be able to customize furniture too. You’ll also be able to learn new skills through workshops held at the Resident Services center.

Party Play

If you’ve got multiple Joy-Con handy, you can have up to four people play New Horizons on one Switch at a time (or up to eight in online multiplayer). This was revealed back at E3 2019, but the Nintendo Direct showed off more of the leader and followers feature and explained that any items found by followers will be stored in the recycling box. They can also have their own homes.

Nook Link

There isn’t an actual in-game voice chat for New Horizons. Instead, Nook Link is available through the Nintendo app that will instead facilitate voice and text chat along. More importantly, though, you can use Nook Like to read QR code designs from Happy Home Designer and Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Nook Link will be available after launch, but still some time in March 2020.

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Customizing the island

New Horizons is set on a deserted island, so it’s only fitting that when you’re building a community from scratch that you’d have a say in its development. This starts with choosing where your first new islanders live. Eventually, as shown in a montage, your island will grow into a reliable Animal Crossing town we’ve come accustomed to, complete with a museum, a full Nook shop, the Able Sisters shop, and eventually a campground for guests to visit. You can ask a guest that stays here to move onto the island. Upgrading Resident Services enough brings back Isabelle. It looks like she’ll help you proceed with an island evaluation, customize the island flag, and more.

Island activities

In addition to Isabelle the Direct showed off plenty of returning specialty characters like Celeste, Sahara, and plenty of others. The Direct also confirmed that things like fishing tourneys and bug offs return to New Horizons. There will be free updates with seasonal events, too.

Island Designer

We’ve seen new tools that make traversal a bit easier, like a way to pole-vault over rivers rather than walking over to an out of the way bridge. There’s also a ladder for scaling ledges and cliffs. As you progress more you’ll be able to build bridges and staircases, but after that, you’ll earn construction permits that’ll allow you to alter the terrain altogether. The Nintendo Direct showed how you’ll be able to expand or remove rivers, pave paths, modify cliffs.

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Frequently Asked Questions

• The Direct also answered several frequently asked questions from fans, starting with an explainer for how multiple players on a single console will work. Only eight profiles can be made to use a Switch’s single island, but all eight of those profiles will get their own home.
• Amiibo and Ambiibo cards are supported by New Horizons. These characters can visit your island’s campgrounds, but not quite all of them yet. The Nintendo Direct showed K.K. as one of the ones who were unable to visit. However, you can use these visitors in a new photoshoot mode called on the island of Photopia.
• Visitors to your island can’t use axes and shovels to redesign the landscape unless you designate them as a “best friend.” This is a nice feature that should successfully prevent griefing.
• There is no cloud backup support for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but Nintendo is planning to offer backups from its own servers in select cases, such as if a Switch is stolen or broken. This service will be available sometime after launch.
• Free seasonal event updates will be available through the year. The first of these updates will be available on launch day, with an event for Bunny Day coming in April.
• There will also be some special in-game collaboration for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, but specific details won’t be announced until later. It was confirmed that the collaboration will provide special items for both games.

For more, be sure to take a look at our hands-on preview of the first 30 minutes of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. We’ve also got all the news we have on Animal Crossing: New Horizons multiplayer, every villager we’ve seen so far, and all the big and small changes this entry is making to the series.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter. Miranda Sanchez is an executive editor at IGN. She’s really excited to make a nice island and hope she’ll see Roscoe and Bones there. You can chat with Miranda about video games and anime on Twitter.

Full spoilers follow for this episode.

Episode 5 of Star Trek: Picard, “Stardust City Rag,” opens with the rather graphic mutilation of a semi-regular Star Trek: Voyager character of old — the former Borg known as Icheb. While by no means a recognizable face to casual viewers, Icheb was popular enough in some quarters. There was even a minor fan campaign to bring Icheb actor Manu Intiraymi back for Picard; the role has been recast here, however, and somehow one doubts this is what those fans had in mind for the character anyway.

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Still, it’s a striking and emotional scene, as Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine bursts in, phasers firing, only to find she’s too late to save her “child.” Back on Star Trek: Voyager, Seven formed a bond with the young man, as they had both escaped the Borg Collective, and it’s a nice play on continuity to bring him back into the fold here, even if it’s just to give Seven some revenge-based motivation on the new series.

This episode was written by Picard co-creator/supervising producer Kirsten Beyer, who has also penned an array of Voyager novels, and directed by Jonathan Frakes himself, so it’s no surprise that it would be particularly steeped in the details of Trek history. For in addition to reintroducing us to Seven — and introducing her to her fellow ex-Borg Picard for the first time — this is also the episode where we’re finally reunited with the Next Generation minor player Bruce Maddox, after the show spent the past four weeks talking about him.

Maddox has been recast as well (he’s now played by John Ales, who replaces Next Gen actor Brian Brophy), which seems sort of appropriate since much of this episode is about disguises. It starts with the Picard Squad donning disguises — some more outlandish than others — for a heist-style story, and also includes Seven disguising what she’s really up to on two different occasions.

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The big draw of this episode of course is seeing Jean-Luc and Seven finally interact, and these scenes pay off as the philosophies of the two iconic characters clash in the brave new world of Star Trek: Picard. It seems Seven’s Fenris Rangers have taken it upon themselves to hold the former Romulan Neutral Zone together as best they can in the chaotic aftermath of the supernova, whereas Picard, after resigning from Starfleet, essentially turned tail and went home. It’s not hard to see why Seven has a chip on her soldier when she meets Picard.

Both actors, Stewart and Ryan, meld perfectly together; Ryan is completely believable as this latter-day version of Seven, more human and yet still always struggling with her Borg side. And while the pair’s ultimate connection — that very Borg-ness — isn’t directly dwelled upon initially, it does become a linchpin of their relationship by episode’s end in the hour’s finest scene.

“After they brought you back from your time in the Collective, did you honestly feel that you regained your humanity?” she asks him. He responds yes, and she counters with “All of it?” To which Picard must admit, “No. But we’re both working on it, aren’t we?” “Every damned day of my life,” she answers.

It’s a great moment, but then in the next scene we see what’s really going on with Seven. Despite convincing Picard that he had talked her out of her revenge plan against the woman who tortured (and caused the death of) Icheb, she returns to Freecloud and disintegrates her. Despite how awful the woman was, this would seem to be an irredeemable act on the part of Seven. Is she so far gone that revenge killing is O.K. now? It’s troubling for a Star Trek hero to do this, but then again, she said it herself — she’s still working on regaining her humanity. After a lifetime as a Borg drone, Seven was an individual again for, what, less than 10 years? Who can say how far back she’s fallen after the trauma of the past 14 years?

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Elsewhere in the episode, the fun continues in Picard’s holo-office as the gang plays dress up for their mission, proving as in last week’s segment that this group of actors works really well when bouncing off of one another. Even Evan Evagora’s Elnor, who doesn’t get to do much this time around, is a laugh as his Romulan warrior plays catch up with everyone else.

Michelle Hurd does get a subplot in “Stardust City Rag” as we see that she’s been tracking her estranged son to Freecloud this whole time, but his rejection of her seems likely to drive her back to her drinking and vaping ways. The scene benefits from Hurd’s plaintive and sad performance, though the treacly music playing throughout doesn’t help, and it all seems a bit abrupt. She came all that way and then that’s it?

As for Maddox, it turns out he and Agnes Jurati used to be in a relationship, which isn’t surprising, and which also serves to set up the apparent heel turn at episode’s end that sees her killing her former lover. Before he went to the Great Robot Lounge in the Sky, Maddox did provide Picard with the next clue he needs to move this story along — Soji is on the Artifact — but you gotta figure there’s more going on here with Agnes. Just what did (presumably) Commodore Oh show her that so freaked her out?

And speaking of the Artifact, we skipped going there this week. Thankfully!

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Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:

• “Are we still pretending?”
• Voyager gets a name drop, though we have no idea what happened to the rest of her crew.
• It turns out that since Seven was assimilated at a young age, she is still full of Borg implants, unlike someone like Picard who could be de-Borgified much easier apparently.
• Some fans were complaining last week that Seven should be going by her human name of Annika now, but it seems clear that she gave up that name after Icheb’s death and other troubling experiences as part of the Fenris Rangers.
• Easter eggs abound on Freecloud, including signs for Mr. Mot and Quark’s!
• What’s the Conclave of Eight that Raffi is on about?
• Why was Agnes so nervous? She’s a cyberneticist but doesn’t know how to use a transporter? Or is it the return of Maddox that actually had her worried?
• This season has now given us Picard speaking French and Picard playing a French stereotype. Oui oui!