While 2026 has so far been packed with incredible PC games, The Blood of Dawnwalker was the one that I was looking forward to the most. Not only does it come from a game director with an incredible pedigree, but ever since system requirements were first revealed in February, I knew that this game would absolutely punish my PC – and I’m into that.

Luckily, Rebel Wolves has since lightened the system requirements a bit, now only recommending an RTX 4070 Ti for 4K 60 fps gameplay, rather than the RTX 5090 I thought it was going to require at the beginning of the year. And now that I’ve had a chance to play it, I’m pleasantly surprised at its performance, even if the visuals are a little mixed.

Just like a lot of RPGs of this scope, much of what makes The Blood of Dawnwalker so beautiful is its environments. Just walking through the town and the forest in the opening chapter is jaw-dropping, with realistic foliage and water. The character models don’t quite reach the same fidelity, but I’m ok with that when just walking through the world looks as good as it does.

While The Blood of Dawnwalker is available on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, PC is where it truly shines. This game has pretty much every graphics option I’d like in a modern game, and avoids clumping a bunch of graphics techniques into one banner. The game is quite heavy to run maxed out, but there is genuinely enough room to dial it in for better performance, pretty much whichever hardware you’re playing it on.

Keep in mind, though, that The Blood of Dawnwalker is running on Unreal Engine 5. The game handily avoids the kinds of problems that have plagued Star Wars Zero Company and Halo: Campaign Evolved, but it is pretty heavy, especially on your CPU. The game will still run on a handheld, technically, but not particularly well. I played it a bit on the Lenovo Legion Go 2 at the lowest settings at 900p, and got around 24 fps indoors. So, I’d stick to your main tower for this one.

But even on a tower, Blood of Dawnwalker can be very demanding. At 4K with DLSS set to Quality and on the Ultra preset, the RTX 5090 gets anywhere from 70–90 fps before frame generation. It is incredibly smooth, but that’s the type of performance you’d expect from an RTX 5090.

Here's my list of recommended graphics settings, so you can spend less time wondering what each option does and more time living your best vampiric life.

Shadow Quality: This one’s pretty simple and just changes the resolution and accuracy of shadows. This game has a lot of dynamic lighting, though, and this is probably one of the first settings I’d turn down to improve performance. But, it is a game where shadows do add a lot to the atmosphere, so you’ll have to weigh the importance there. Mid-Range PC: High; Handheld: Low

Light Quality: It’s hard to tell from looking at this game’s gorgeous lighting, especially in the mornings and evenings, but there is no ray tracing on offer here. Still, this setting will change how detailed lights are, and the intensity of effects like global illumination and diffuse lighting. Turn it down if your performance is struggling. Mid-Range PC: High; Handheld: Low

Reflections Quality: I’ll admit that I’m only a couple of hours into this absolutely massive RPG, but at least in my time with it, there aren’t that many reflective surfaces. Still, this setting will change how detailed screen space reflections are, so turn it down if you start getting performance drops around water or other reflective surfaces. Mid-Range PC: Medium; Handheld: Low

Post-Processing Quality: You’ll be able to toggle individual post-processing features on or off further down in the settings, so this changes how good all of those effects look. I’d keep this up on higher settings if you like a cinematic aesthetic, but you can effectively turn it off if you don’t really care about bloom or motion blur. Mid-Range PC: High; Handheld: Low

Texture Quality: This mostly affects how much VRAM the game is going to eat up. I’ve spent most of my time in this game with this maxed out, and the game ate up about 10–12GB of VRAM. So I’d stick to Ultra on 16GB plus, High on anything from 8–12GB and medium or low if you have less than 8GB of VRAM. This should be one of the first things you turn down if you start running into stuttering.

Effects Quality: This mostly affects particle effects, and there are surprisingly a lot of them in this game. This is going to be heavier on your CPU than anything, so I’d turn this down if you’re getting bottlenecked there. Mid-Range PC: Ultra; Handheld: Low

Shading Quality: This is just another way to scale the lighting in Blood of Dawnwalker. I’d turn this down early if you’re struggling to hit 60 fps. Mid-Range PC: High; Handheld: Low

Foliage Quality: Simply put, foliage in this game is gorgeous, almost at the same level as something like Assassin’s Creed Shadows. But, if you notice your performance start to tank when you’re running around in the wilderness, you should probably drop this to a lower setting. But, really you should at least try running it a higher setting just to see what it looks like. Mid-Range PC: Medium or High; Handheld: Low

Detail Quality: Maybe it’s just me, but having the option to tweak “Detail Quality” feels a little like changing “Detail Details.” Regardless, this changes a lot of volumetric effects like fog, along with destructible objects. I’d turn this down if you’re running into CPU issues. Mid-Range PC: Medium; Handheld: Low

Volumetric Quality: This setting also changes volumetrics, but focuses more on their resolution. I’ll always turn volumetrics down before anything else, and that doesn’t change in Blood of Dawnwalker. Mid-Range PC: Medium; Handheld: Low

Upscaling Technology: Unlike a lot of other Unreal Engine 5 games, Blood of Dawnwalker doesn’t try and shove TSR down your throat. Instead, Blood of Dawnwalker supports all three major upscalers from GPU manufacturers and the one you should choose depends on which graphics card you’re using. Nvidia users should use DLSS, AMD users should use FSR and Intel users should use XeSS.

Upscaling Mode: Because this game is hard to run, I’d go with upscaling on performance mode if you’re struggling to hit 60 fps. However, keep in mind that performance mode will look pretty rough on lower resolutions, so you might want to lower lighting settings first.

Frame Generation: This uses AI to insert interpolated frames in between rendered frames. This will nearly double your frame rate, but will increase latency by a little bit. But because this isn’t a competitive game, and isn’t even that fast-paced, I’d recommend just turning this on, especially if you have a high-refresh rate gaming monitor.

Motion Blur: This is just a toggle to either enable or disable motion blur. I hate motion blur, you might love it. It’s really up to you. It won’t affect performance all that much either way.

Bloom: This is another toggle, but this time for Bloom. These are the little rays of light that you sometimes see coming off of the sun or something. This will affect performance a bit, so I’d turn it off if you’re playing on a low-end GPU. But for most people on a modern gaming PC, it probably won’t make that much of an impact.

Chromatic Aberration: This is an effect that tries to mimic a camera lens. I don’t notice much of a difference whether its enabled or not, so I’d try it each way and see what you prefer. This won’t affect performance much if at all.

Depth of Field: This will blur distant objects, especially in cutscenes. This is a nice effect, and I usually leave it on, but turn it off if you want everything to be crystal clear.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

It seems the drought of Grand Theft Auto 6 news has finally come to an end, as Rockstar has published even more screenshots for fans to comb through.

It seems the floodgates for GTA 6's summer marketing campaign have finally opened after last week's extended look gameplay premiere. Today, instead of video for Jason and Lucia's story, Rockstar has published a nice selection of fresh screenshots, revealing new options for character customization, potential story moments, and a closer look at Vice City.

Rockstar has an entire page on its website dedicated to new GTA 6 screenshots that range from pictures of in-progress robberies and explosive cars to muddin' parties and romantic nights out on the town. Of the 99 images available, at least three have never been seen before, and many of the others are only now getting high-quality releases. You can see the three new GTA 6 screenshots, as well as some of the other images Rockstar shared, below.

Grand Theft Auto fans are still parsing through all of the content themselves, but three images in particular seem to be brand new and have fans especially worked up: one of Jason and Lucia in a car, a real-life Miami condo recreated in Vice City, and a menacing shot of the two protagonists as they looked down on someone they maybe, probably just murdered. It's a lot to go through, so let's start with that first one.

Players will probably spend a lot of time in GTA 6, so it's nice to know there will be what seems to be a shopping mall's worth of customization items to dress up Jason and Lucia. The first image puts that on full display, showing the latter criminal decked out with piercings, tattoos, and bangs. Jason, meanwhile, looks almost like a different person thanks to his slick-backed do and facial hair.

Next up is that seaside condo. The average person may look at the two towering buildings and think nothing of them, but Florida residents (and eagle-eyed GTA 6 fans) immediately recognize the spot as a recreation of Miami's Two Tequesta Point. After one fan located the real-life inspiration for Jason and Lucia's apartment, it shouldn't be a surprise to see Rockstar went all out when it came to creating its ideal modern Vice City.

Then, finally, there's that last image. It, however, raises more questions than answers, seemingly revealing what could be a glimpse from a story mission. Another image of the GTA 6 couple shows them embracing each other as the police close in, but we have some waiting to do before we learn more.

The real news here, though, is that the wait is almost over. The 27-minute extended look has come and gone, Rockstar is reportedly talking with Florida officials about a big marketing rollout, and we've consistently gotten updates for the last few days. X/Twitter user @bb3jc9 also noticed that a GTA 6 pre-order tab recently appeared in GTA Online. More than anything, fans are just happy to see that, after numerous delays and 13 years of waiting, it looks like GTA 6's release date has finally stuck.

pic.twitter.com/apjghUHLMA

Marketing is in full swing, we made it y'all. https://t.co/K2NYAHUXh1

Bro, Jason looks different in every GTA 6 photo I have seen so far pic.twitter.com/XrBsslOoWa

"The next 11 weeks are going to be insane (I hope)," one fan said.

The world will be playing GTA 6 when it launches for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S November 19, 2026. You can check out IGN's interview and preview here. When Rockstar plans to reveal more about its game is unclear, but we'll be sure to catch and report on every drop shared as they're revealed.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Best Buy just launched its Labor Day sale, and we're already seeing a solid spread of deals on Magic: The Gathering bundles.

There's not too many products included in the sale, but the discounts are particularly big on recent expansions like Secrets of Strixhaven, Lorwyn Eclipse, and Marvel Super Heroes. A decent amount of the discounted bundles are targeted toward beginners, offering you a chance to rip open some packs and start playing immediately.

Naturally, all of the products are listed as "High Demand," meaning Best Buy is expecting them to sell out in the near future.

The discounts are pretty much exclusively on new set releases from 2026. If you’re looking for some booster packs, you have a couple of options.

The Secrets of Strixhaven Draft Night box is particularly packed, as it's designed for 4-player draft nights. It comes with 12 play boosters, 90 lands, and a particularly valuable collector’s booster. The $25 price drop on Best Buy puts the bundle below its lowest price ever on Amazon and over $10 under its list price on TCGPlayer.

On the Universes Beyond side, Best Buy has knocked $20 off the Marvel Super Heroes bundle, which comes with nine booster packs, a promo art card, and 30 lands. The TMNT Turtles Team-Up bundle is actually a new product type with its own game mode, but it also offers some particular bang for your buck. It comes with four 60-card decks, each themed after one of the main turtles, as well as four play boosters.

If you just want cards and don’t necessarily need to rip open booster packs to get them, the sale includes around 50% off the new 60-card themed decks released alongside Lorwyn and Strixhaven. These are particularly useful for beginners or anyone trying to buff up a deck that aligns with the synergies or creature types in those themes. I’m personally a very basic Angels person.

As mentioned, these are all “High Demand” deals. While Best Buy’s Labor Day sale technically runs until September 7, these discounts will likely only be available while supplies last. You’ll also need a Best Buy account to actually make any purchases.

Blythe (she/her) is an Audience Development Coordinator at IGN who spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles.