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According to a new potential leak, CD Projekt Red's highly-anticipated and incredibly ambitious PS4, Xbox One, and PC game, Cyberpunk 2077, will release this year on November 28. There's been a few reported leaks and rumors that have placed the upcoming cyberpunk role-playing game in 2019, but this is the first time a specific date has surfaced. The release date comes courtesy of Slovakian storefront Pro Gaming Shop, and at the moment, it's unclear if the retailer actually believes this is when the game is releasing or if this is just an estimation.

As you may know, release date estimations are common by retailers, but normally they don't manifest in specific dates. Usually, if a retailer is estimating when a game is releasing for the purpose of pre-orders, it puts down a placeholder, which is always something generic. Generic placeholder dates are always either the first or last day of any given month. In other words, this doesn't look like a placeholder date. So, is it a mistake? It's possible. Is it an actual leak? Maybe, but even if it is, it could still be wrong the date.

Chances are inaccurate. One, because CD Projekt Red has said nothing to suggest the game will release this year, though a 2020 release seems likely. But two because why would CD Projekt Red tell this retailer the date? You specifically don't tell smaller, region-specific retailers release dates ahead of time for this very reason. But who knows, maybe multiple retailers know of the date, but this is the only one that slipped.

There's also the matter of the date itself. November 28 is a Thursday. And it's also Thanksgiving. Big games tend to release on Tuesday or Friday. For example, CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, released on Tuesday. Thursday is an odd day to release a game, and Thanksgiving is an especially odd day to release a game.

All of this is to say, take this with a grain of salt. Thankfully, we shouldn't have to wait long to know when Cyberpunk 2077 is releasing though, as CD Projekt Red has teased that it will probably reveal the release date this E3.

NEW GAME DARKBORN MAKES YOU A LITERAL MONSTER SEEKING BLOODTHIRSTY REVENGE

BY BRANDIN TYRREL IGN is proud to exclusively reveal Darkborn, the debut game from developer The Outsiders. Previously codenamed Project Wight, Darkborn is a story-focused action game where you literally play a monster in a classic revenge story.

Though still in development in a pre-alpha state, Darkborn is a first-person mixture of stealth and action as you inhabit one of the titular creatures in a bid to visit vengeance on the Viking-like humans who inhabit the world.

But there’s more to it than pulping your way through grunting, barbaric Norsemen. Darkborn is positioned to tell a unique story revolving around opposing powers in the world, while you and your family are caught in the middle. As evident from the 15-minute gameplay reveal above, the opening moments of Darkborn paint the picture of a caring family unit that’s literally ripped apart, sparking your journey to grow and evolve from a cub to a predator, gaining size, strength, and incredible bestial powers.

Speaking with The Outsiders co-founder, project lead, and longtime Battlefield and Payday developer David Goldfarb, Darkborn is about putting you on the other side of the sword, so to speak.

“Darkborn is first and foremost a game about being a monster,” Goldfarb said. “Playing it is about experiencing that monstrous quality – in first person combat, in novel abilities and movement, and even in enemy reactions to you.”

“But it’s not traditional in that humans are murderous, cruel enemies bent on your extinction. You yourself are an innocent caught up in a much larger conflict between Powers, the specifics of which become clearer in the course of the game. It’s a classic revenge story, but also a mystery: what happened to the world and your people? Can they be saved?”

Darkborn’s inspirations are similarly varied. The idea was pulled together from twists on classic epic literature like John Gardner’s Grendel being the biggest influence on Goldfarb, pop-culture staples like King Kong and Bambi, and video games like Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of the Colossus.

“What if the Orcs [in Shadow of Mordor] were the good guys?” Goldfarb said. “What kind of lives did those great beasts [in Shadow of the Colossus] have before you came to murder them?”

At a scant 25 members, The Stockholm-based development studio has been working on Darkborn for nearly three years, albeit with a much smaller development team for half that time – the exception being some outsourced art, and the audio team Two Feathers which is responsible for the incredible, yet heart-wrenching crunches, cries, and whimpers of Darkborn’s opening minutes.

“Originally [The Outsiders] was founded to try to make the types of games we wanted to play that we felt no one else was making,” Goldfarb said. “Darkborn was the first of those games.”

Though there’s currently no release window, The Outsiders’ vision seems to be coming together nicely as Darkborn makes its way to an eventual PC release with the possibility of a home on consoles over the horizon.

“We hope people experience a new perspective,” Goldfarb said of his hopes Darkborn players. “We want them to want to help this lone creature succeed against seemingly impossible odds on their journey of knowledge and vengeance.”

So while there is a huge component of traditional power fantasy in the player’s own growth across the game, there’s also the ‘man this poor thing had it hard and it’s terrible what the humans did and I’m going to help’ element that propels the narrative and, we hope, player engagement.”

BioWare was once a leader in the video game industry, releasing critically-acclaimed hits like Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and the groundbreaking Mass Effect trilogy. However, the studio’s latest efforts have been met with poor reviews, with Anthem in particular a failure for the studio. Unfortunately for BioWare fans upset by Anthem, there are some reports that its next game, Dragon Age 4, may be “Anthem with dragons.”

“Anthem with dragons” is one way Dragon Age 4 has been described to Kotaku report Jason Schreier. Schreier has written a piece on Dragon Age 4‘s development following the explosive article that explained what went wrong with Anthem. Speaking to current and former BioWare employees, several people have given Dragon Age 4 the “Anthem with dragons” label.

However, there are some at BioWare that have pushed back against the Anthem with dragons label, but it seems as though BioWare itself isn’t totally clear on what shape Dragon Age 4 will take in the coming years. One person said that it will change “five times in the next two years,” which could be a sign that the lack of focus that hurt Anthem could also be having an impact on Dragon Age 4‘s development.

There have been reports in the past that Dragon Age 4 would be a live-service game, which could be where the Anthem comparisons are coming from. BioWare itself has suggested that any “live service” elements would just be expanding on the story, but the studio has also been hiring people with multiplayer experience, suggesting that at the very least, Dragon Age 4 will have multiplayer.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom for Dragon Age 4. Dragon Age 4 is reportedly being developed by a BioWare dream team consisting of devs that worked on Baldur’s Gate, Jade Empire, and past Dragon Age titles. And while the reports of Casey Hudson restarting Dragon Age 4 once he returned to the studio may be a sign of troubled development, perhaps this gave the game the new focus it needed to get off the ground.

Beyond a brief teaser trailer, we’ve seen nothing official about Dragon Age 4, and so it will be interesting to see what form it takes once it is finally revealed the public. With Anthem being such a flop with fans and critics alike, here’s hoping Dragon Age 4 is able to turn things around for BioWare.

Dragon Age 4 is in development for unspecified platforms.