The veil has finally been lifted on the eighth generation of Pokémon games, dubbed Pokémon Sword and Shield. The reveal was a big moment for the series, as it marks the first time a mainline Pokémon title has appeared on the Switch. The promise of a new region to explore, new Pokémon to find, and new mysteries to unravel is more than enough to get us excited, even this early on. Fans are already pouring over the new starter characters and deciding what allegiances they’ll be making, designing fan art, and coming up with memes and jokes as they indulge in all the new details the trailer revealed to us.

As the Nintendo Direct showed us the games in action, they were clearly every bit the Pokémon we know and love. But are they too familiar? While it’s too early to tell just how unique a mainline Pokémon experience Sword and Shield will be on a current generation Nintendo console, especially after just one short trailer, some of the more critical sentiments online bring up a few good points.

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MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

A new trailer for X-Men: Dark Phoenix was recently released and hinted at the death of a major character and the director of the film, Simon Kinberg, confirmed the shocking move.

In an interview with EW, Kinberg discussed the reveal that Mystique, played by Jennifer Lawrence, dies at the hand of Sophie Turner's Jean Grey while Grey is "struggling with the emerging Phoenix inside her."

When asked about why Kinberg and the team decided to reveal Lawrence's fate in this trailer, he responded that it was "to primarily show that this is a movie that is unlike other X-Men movies."

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I’ve been a gamer for almost three decades, but I’ve been black my entire life. When I started gaming on my first Atari 2600 in 1982, the thought of having characters who looked like me -- in stories relevant to my background or culture -- was the furthest thing from my mind.

In ‘82, I was obsessed with roping pixelated cattle on Stampede and dodging crocodiles with Pitfall Harry in Pitfall. In 2019,  I find myself confused as to why there hasn’t been a huge amount of progress in black representation in video games. From the lack of black protagonists in triple A titles to the uneasy fact that black avatars always play second fiddle to white ones --  I have to pay almost $10 just to have a black avatar represent me in a free-to-play game like Guns of Glory -- the slow progress is puzzling.

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Weird City is a new YouTube Premium sci-fi anthology series set in the futuristic metropolis of "Weird." Created by Charlie Sanders and Jordan Peele, this six-episode dark comedy has some serious star power, featuring household names like Ed O’Neill (Modern Family), Rosario Dawson (Luke Cage), and Michael Cera (Arrested Development). Sanders spoke with IGN about the series' humble beginnings.

"It all started in 2011," Sanders told IGN. Back in those days, before Sanders had his own show, he was a writer for Comedy Central on Key & Peele. For five seasons, Sanders worked alongside one of television's funniest duos and wrote some crazy sci-fi sketches that his boss was fond of. "I was writing a bunch of weird sci-fi sketches for the show that Jordan really liked," Sanders explained. "And so we just started talking about, if Key & Peele blew up, maybe we’d take some of the sci-fi ideas and blow them out into bigger episodes and make our own show out of it."

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Update: Gearbox has teased its upcoming PAX East 2019 main theater show with a new image that undoubtedly points to something Borderlands-related appearing at the show, which would line up with heavy speculation of a proper Borderlands 3 announcement.

Gearbox's teaser image teases the March 28 show in Boston, Massachusetts, with a stylized, cel-shaded highway sign set in a desert area. The sign also bears the marker "Exit 3."

via Gearbox's Twitter

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