Monthly Archives: June 2019
BotW 2 Exists Because the Team Had ‘Too Many Ideas’ for DLC
The team behind The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild opted to create a sequel rather than an entirely new Zelda game due to the amount of DLC ideas it had for the 2017 original.
Speaking with Kotaku, series producer Eiji Aonuma said DLC was a great way to "add more elements to the same world" as Breath of the Wild, "but when it comes down to technical things, DLC is pretty much data — you’re adding data to a preexisting title. And so when we wanted to add bigger changes, DLC is not enough, and that’s why we thought maybe a sequel would be a good fit."
When asked if the sequel was initially planned as an expansion, Aonuma said the team was only brainstorming DLC ideas at first, until it became clear they had greater ambitions. "This is too many ideas, let’s just make one new game and start from scratch," he said.
Disney Pixar Announces New Animated Movie Soul
Disney and Pixar have announced a new animated film, Soul, to be released in exactly one year.
Announced on Twitter, the film is described as “a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions.” Soul is set to arrive in theaters on June 19, 2020.
One year from today, @Pixar Animation Studios will take you on a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions. Disney & Pixar’s “Soul” arrives in theaters on June 19, 2020 pic.twitter.com/xkaFGcKhzI
Amazon’s Wheel of Time Series Casts Its Moiraine
Amazon has officially cast the first actor in its upcoming Wheel of Time TV series adaptation. IGN can confirm that Rosamund Pike has landed the role of Moiraine Damodred, the character who is being positioned as the lead in this telling of Robert Jordan's iconic fantasy series. Pike will also serve as a producer on the show.
Additionally, Amazon revealed that Brandon Sanderson, who wrote the final three novels in the Wheel of Time book series after Jordan's death in 2007, will serve as consulting producer on the series alongside Jordan's widow, Harriet McDougal.
Pike is a notable casting choice for the Amazon series, known best for her roles in Gone Girl, Jack Reacher, and Die Another Day. Her character, Moiraine Damodred, is one of the most respected magic users in the world of Wheel of Time, and plays a pivotal role in the story's central throughline to find the Dragon Reborn, a character who is fated to defeat the evil force known as the Dark One. See Pike side-by-side with artist Dan dos Santos's depiction of Moiraine from the Fires of Heaven e-book cover below:
The King’s Man: Info Released for Matthew Vaughn Kingsman Prequel
The next film in the Kingsman series, a prequel called The King’s Man, is set to hit theaters in February 2020.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, the film’s premise is as follows: "As a collection of history's worst tyrants and criminal masterminds gather to plot a war to wipe out millions, one man must race against time to stop them. Discover the origins of the very first independent intelligence agency in The King’s Man, directed by Matthew Vaughn, coming to theaters February 2020."
The official title card for the film can be seen below.
Credit: 20th Century Fox, Disney
Nintendo Stole E3 2019, According to Twitter
According to Twitter’s own metrics, Nintendo, Keanu Reeves and Final Fantasy VII Remake ranked among the most talked about subjects of E3 2019.
Revealed to The Hollywood Reporter, Twitter claims the biggest moment of the event for their platform was the E3 2019 Nintendo Direct presentation broadcasted Tuesday morning. Nintendo’s big show was followed in popularity by Keanu Reeves' surprise appearance at Microsoft’s press conference on Sunday. The third most tweeted about moment was Square Enix’s conference on Monday, where it debuted new gameplay from Final Fantasy VII Remake and unveiled Marvel’s Avengers.
New to Netflix for July
Netflix is about to hit us with a July heatwave as Stranger Things 3 lands smack dab on Independence Day and the final season of acclaimed dramedy Orange is the New Black arrives on the 26th.
In between, you can catch movies like Philadelphia, Rain Man, Disney's Mary Poppins Returns, Cloverfield, Caddyshack, and Megamind while binging new seasons of originals like Queer Eye and Workin' Moms.
There's also a documentary paying tribute to the tacos along with original films and shows starring the likes of (a bearded!) Chris Evans, Michael K. Williams, Katee Sackhoff, Anthony Mackie, and Benda Song. Take a gander...
Before we unveil the full list of what's coming however, here's everything LEAVING Netflix in July.
Gears 5’s New Map Builder Lets You Make Brutal Maps…on One Condition
The Coalition revealed a new mode for Gears 5 at E3 2019 called Escape. In it, a team of up to three must outrun a cloud of venom while slaying the Swarm that patrols ahead with their limited resources. The thing is, Escape isn’t limited to just one map. The Coalition will be uploading a new Escape hive roughly every week. This mode’s maps are built with a tile system, which will be available to all players through the new 2D Map Builder feature. We sat down with The Coalition to make our first map and explore the lengths at which we could customize a hive for Escape.
My goal was to make something terribly hard but not completely impossible. You have to complete one run on your custom map in order to publish it, which is fair. I began by placing a starting point and picked a few corridors and rooms of varying sizes to lay the framework. For the sake of time, I chose to stick with only one chapter, though The Coalition said you can build your hive to have many chapters, which are sections of the hive that are broken up by Safe Rooms. These Left 4 Dead-style Safe Rooms allow players to get a little bit of a break from the chaos; pause, get a snack, or do whatever you need. Each chapter also has a limit to how many pieces you can add based on a point value assigned to each piece. Once you meet that budget, you need to move onto the next chapter. I didn’t feel like the budget was limiting.
Maneater Is a Deranged, Open World Shark-PG
Maneater is an open-world action game presented as a reality show about a vengeful shark, narrated by SNL and Archer’s Chris Parnell. Somehow, that’s not the strangest part of it. This Tripwire-developed passion project has you chomping your way through several underwater ecosystems, growing and evolving as you go, allowing you to enter harsher waters, all while terrorising the surface world on the hunt for your meaty end-goal. It’s basically F**ko the Dolphin.
In a hands-off demo at E3, my first impression is that Maneater looks far nicer than expected, an oversaturated city casting harsh neon light over a polluted bay as a single fin pokes out of the swell. My second impression is that the shark that fin’s attached to has just grabbed a nearby swimmer in its teeth, breached 20 feet out of the water and whipped the remaining half of the still-screaming man into a concrete bridge strut with a bloody pop. I’m giggling despite myself.
How Superman: Year One Adds a Darker Twist to His Origin
You may think you know Superman's origin story forward and back by now, but there's always room for a few changes. That's the takeaway from the first issue of Superman: Year One, as writer Frank Miller and artist John Romita, Jr. chronicle the formative years of the Man of Steel in the Dark Knight Returns universe.
Read on to find out the major changes this story makes to an established formula, and why this version of Superman's origin is darker than the norm.
Superman's New Power
Superman is well-known for being one of the strongest heroes in the DC Universe, but it's comparatively rare for comics to focus on Clark Kent's heightened intelligence. Miller and Romita depict an infant Kal-El as an unusually self-aware child, one who bears witness to Krypton's destruction and grows steadily more intelligent as his journey toward Earth unfolds. By the time he arrives, young Kal is already in firm command of his mental faculties. This issue even suggests that he uses telepathy to mentally nudge Pa Kent into deciding to adopt him.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall – Hands-On With Cyborg Trash Zombies
Whenever a strategy game gives me the option to choose between several distinct factions, I'm always faced with a petrifying dilemma. Do I choose the stalwart mech-using humans known as the Vanguard that are always reliable and familiar? Do I change things up and go exotic with a race of bug-like aliens called the Kir’ko that are eager to defend their newfound freedom after centuries of enslavement? Wait a minute — is that a faction comprised of undying dumpster divers who meld whatever tech they can find or kill for and graft it onto their bodies? Yes please!
That's right, in my hands-on demo with Age of Wonders: Planetfall, I got some time in with the faction known as The Assembly. True to their name, they love manufacturing: slapping together pieces of people and machinery, engineering virulent diseases — you name it. Somehow, they feel right at home next to the dinosaur-riding Amazons and insectoid aliens all vying for a slice of planetary conquest. So far, each faction I've seen is more than just eye candy, as they all have their compelling backstories in a world reeling from the collapse of an imperious galactic civilization. Even the tech trees and upgrades tell a story of your faction's desire to stand apart and evolve, and you'll have a major role in choosing how they grow each time you play.