Monthly Archives: June 2018

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Has Moved Beyond ‘Early Concept Stages’

Square Enix's Final Fantasy 7 Remake was one of the biggest no-shows at E3 2018, and it may still be a long ways off from release. But Tetsuya Nomura today gave fans a sliver of hope, stating that the remake has at least moved past the conceptual stage and into full development.

Nomura told IGN during an E3 interview that Final Fantasy 7 Remake is being developed "in parallel," to Kingdom Hearts 3, which he's also directing. The director added that he's putting a full effort into Final Fantasy 7 Remake - when he's not working on Kingdom Hearts 3, that is.

"It's not just in the early concept stages," Nomura said of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. "We are actually in development. So right now, I've been putting 100 percent into Kingdom Hearts and 100 percent into Final Fantasy 7 and 100 percent into Kingdom Hearts and going back and forth."

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Joseph-Gordon Levitt on Concerns of Beyond Good and Evil 2 Partnership

Actor and HitRECord director Joseph Gordon-Levitt responded Thursday to criticism of his company for utilizing “spec work” in its partnership with Ubisoft.

“Honestly, this concern was sorta painful to hear,” Gordon-Levitt wrote in a post on Medium. “It’s not at all how I think of our community’s creative process. I do think that part of this disconnect is simple misinformation.”

During Ubisoft’s E3 2018 press conference, Gordon-Levitt announced that HitRECord and Ubisoft are partnering to collaborate on in-game art assets and “pirate radio” music for Beyond Good & Evil 2, the first time HitRECord has contributed to a video game.

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E3 2019: Next Year’s Expo Dates Announced

The Entertainment Software Association has announced the dates for next year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

E3 2019 will take place from June 11-13 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the ESA announced today.

This year's expo comes to a close today after drawing in more than 69,200 attendees who saw over 200 exhibitors, 85 of which were showing at E3 for the first time. ESA President and CEO Michael D. Gallagher called E3 2018 "an enormous success that "reinforced the cultural prominence of video games for a global audience.”

Cyberpunk 2077 has been one of the most-talked about games at this year's show. During E3 2018, IGN's coverage included first-hand impressions of the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 demo, some more gameplay details here, or about CD Projekt’s response to the first-person backlash here.

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My Friend Pedro For Nintendo Switch Will Make You Feel Like Deadpool

My Friend Pedro is a gun-fu ballet 2D action-platformer in which a talking banana assists a man with glowing eyes in the mass execution of, from what I've seen so far, geriatric gangsters.

Are you having trouble visualising what that might actually mean? Yeah, I thought as much, so I brought some gifs.

The problem for your humble video game writer is that the sheer, beautiful excess of My Friend Pedro is extremely hard to put into words. It's a game that presents you with all the tools to do incredible things almost immediately, and turns its snaking levels into playgrounds for you to put them to use.

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Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime on Reaction to Recent Leaks

Through Nintendo's E3 2018 Direct did include several surprise announcements and details, the company has seen some leaks of first-and third-party titles in recent months. With the proliferation of them, it's something Nintendo is disappointed in, as the company is disappointed in, especially as it endeavors to expand and deepen its relationships for the Nintendo Switch.

Speaking to IGN at E3 2018, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime discussed Nintendo's love of surprising fans, but admitted the advances of phones — and everyone having their own camera — has made that more difficult to preserve. This has been evident with all of the rumors and information about Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee that came before the Pokemon Switch games' true reveal.

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Déraciné is a Beautiful, Cryptic Experience From FromSoftware

Halfway through my interview  with Hidetaka Miyazaki, a panel in the Sony booth fell to the floor and crashed to the ground. It ripped some wiring from the wall, so the lights went out. We continued the interview in the dark. It was a fitting second phase for the creator of the Souls series.

But we weren’t there to talk about Souls. We were there to talk about Déraciné,  FromSoftware’s new VR title, that suffered from unfair obscurity due to the fact it was was announced after Sony’s press conference. But I’ve played it, it’s real, and it’s beautiful.

“Déraciné is French for uprooting,” says Miyazaki. “Or someone who’s been displaced from their natural environment.”

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A History of DC’s Crisis Comics

If you've spent much time reading DC's comic books, you've probably encountered the word "Crisis." Whenever there's a crisis in the DC Universe, worlds are destroyed and reborn and the entire fabric of the multiverse is changed.

With DC recently having revealed a very different sort of Crisis story in the form of Heroes in Crisis, we figured now was a good time to explore the history of these stories and the many ways they've affected the DCU.

Heroes in Crisis is a new miniseries from Batman writer Tom King and artist Clay Mann that introduces Sanctuary, a place where DC's most troubled heroes go to recover from the pressures of the job. Click here to learn more about this upcoming DC crossover.

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Octopath Traveler Sees Many Improvements in New Prologue Demo

If you have a Switch and you're a fan of JRPGs, it’s probably safe to say that you’re looking forward to Octopath Traveler from Square Enix. Upon its announcement, the developers released a demo that once completed, promoted users to provide feedback about their experience with the game. Today, Square Enix released an all-new Prologue Demo that features many player requested changes and improvements.

IGN sat down with Ocotopath Director Keisuke Miyauchi and Producer Masashi Takahashi to learn a little bit more about all the improvements the title has seen since the last demo.

Fans really have a lot to look forward to with the Prologue Demo for Octopath Traveler, as the overwhelming amount of feedback has allowed the developers to bring in some much-needed improvements just months before release. "For those of you that played the demo in September of last year, we want to let you know that the graphics have been brushed up and improved upon. We’ve also put a lot of effort into story events, making them a little higher quality then what you saw in the demo. We’d like everybody from around to have a lot of fun playing and trying out each of these eight characters," Miyauchi told IGN.

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Persona 5 Dancing Has Just the Right Amount of Fan Service

One of the most memorable parts of every Persona game is the soundtrack. While every fan has their favorite characters and bosses and dungeons, they probably also have at least one song stuck in their head.

Much like 2015’s Persona 4: Dancing All Night, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight and Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight do a fantastic job of taking the main games’ soundtracks and breathing new life into them. Every memorable song is included, as are remixes, live performances, extended versions, and more.

At E3, a playable demo for each game showed off three songs – Life Will Change, Rivers in the Desert, and Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There from Persona 5, and Burn My Dread, Mass Destruction, and Memories of You from Persona 3. And while it’s great to listen to some of the most memorable songs from each game, the real charm of the Persona Dancing games comes from the characters.

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E3 2018: How Well Do Inklings Play In Smash Bros. Ultimate?

I had an opportunity to go hands-on with the Inklings in Smash Bros. Ultimate to check out just what the squid kids can do and how they hold up against some of the more seasoned fighters on the roster. Simply put, I'm ink-credibly happy with what the squid kids have to offer.