Monthly Archives: February 2020
Harrison Ford: ‘I Don’t Know What a Force Ghost Is’
Persona 5 Royal Will Change Homophobic Scenes For Western Release
Atlus has confirmed that certain scenes in Persona 5, which were considered homophobic and offensive by many fans, will be updated and altered in the Western release of Persona 5 Royal.
Speaking to IGN during a Persona 5 Royal preview event, Atlus Communications Manager Ari Advincula explained that dialogue in certain scenes – specifically ones involving Ryuji and two effeminate male characters – would be changed so that those men were no longer shown in a “negative light.”
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“We actually were able to go through some of the lines that players may not have received as well, look at that feedback, and then [update it] for the current generation,” Advincula said, explaining that they’ve changed both the first scene in which you meet these characters as well as the notorious beach scene they are featured in later on.
The dialogue in these scenes has been widely criticized since Persona 5’s Western launch for a variety of reasons. Many fans consider the depiction of these characters to be offensively stereotypical, presenting the most prominent homosexual characters in Persona 5 as extremely sexually aggressive (toward a minor, no less) and intentionally ridiculous with intent of making their “weirdness” the joke – made worse by the fact that your protagonist provides similarly insensitive responses to their actions.
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While Atlus didn’t share exactly how these scenes would be updated in response to these complaints, Advincula said asking if they would be addressed was one of the first things she did when joining the team. “That's really important to me, and I think it's really important to the community as well.”
Advincula also explained that their localization team has an “internal content review team” she described as “very on the pulse about what’s right and what to do.” She explained Royal was “a chance to make it right.”
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That said, reports around Royal’s Japanese release late last year seemed to indicate these conversations were generally unaltered in Japanese, and we still don’t know exactly what the updates for the Western release will look like.
Atlus also told us that fans shouldn’t give up hope for a Persona 5 port on Switch, asking them to keep telling them they wanted it or they would never be able to make it. Persona 5 Royal is out in the West on March 31.
[poilib element="accentDivider"] Tom Marks is IGN's Deputy Reviews Editor and resident pie maker. You can follow him on Twitter.‘Keep Fighting’ For Persona 5 on Switch, Atlus Says
Persona 5 still hasn’t been announced for the Nintendo Switch, but publisher Atlus says it doesn’t want fans to give up hope just yet.
Rumors have swirled around a potential Persona 5 Switch port for a long time, with a bogus Best Buy listing even popping up in 2019, but that momentum has slowed considerably. So IGN asked Atlus Communications Manager Ari Advincula if it was finally time for fans to give up on hope for a potential port during a Persona 5 Royal preview event earlier this month, to which she responded “I am a strong believer in ‘never ever give up on hope’.”
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/02/17/thieves-den-and-tycoon-gameplay-persona-5-royal-4k"]
The fervor for a port was spurred on by protagonist Joker coming to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate early last year, but ended up being squelched somewhat when the teased P5S turned out to be Persona 5 Scramble, an entirely new game (and essentially a full-on sequel) coming to Switch. But Advincula says fans making their voices heard is the only way it’ll happen.
“You want what you want,” she explained, “and if you don't let us know it we’re never going to be able to make it.” Advincula said Atlus is listening and does see the desire for Persona 5 on Switch, saying “it’s important to always voice your opinion.”
Advincula encouraged fans to “keep telling us what you want,” saying she was fighting for it internally as well. However, it’s important to point out that she also said she’s obviously “not the decision-maker” in a situation like this despite being an “internal champion” for it, so this shouldn’t be taken as an indication of what is happening or could happen down the line.
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/is-persona-5-scramble-actually-just-persona-5-2"]
Still, Atlus has made it clear it is listening to the Persona community and taking feedback seriously, notably also revealing that it will change a handful of scenes in Persona 5 Royal fans previously condemned for being homophobic for its Western release on March 31.
[poilib element="accentDivider"] Tom Marks is IGN's Deputy Reviews Editor and resident pie maker. You can follow him on Twitter.Overwatch Cartoon and Diablo Anime Seem to Be on the Way
It seems that both an Overwatch cartoon and Diablo anime are in the works. Neither have been confirmed by Activision Blizzard yet but new evidence from a high-ranking employee makes it pretty likely they are in production.
Nick van Dyck, who is the president of the film and TV division of Activision Blizzard, says he has worked on both of these unannounced projects in his LinkedIn profile.
His profile lists him as being the executive producer of a TV adaptation of Diablo that is "rendered in anime style." Apparently it's in pre-production and will be distributed worldwide through Netflix. This isn't the first time we've heard about a possible Diablo animated series for Netflix.
If it really is coming, then it will probably look to follow in the very successful footsteps of the Netflix Castlevania animated series. Season 3, of which, is due out on March 5 and recently got a bloody, monster-filled trailer.
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/11/01/diablo-4-reveal-trailer"]
More of a surprise is that Dyck's profile also says that he has "developed and sold an animated series based Blizzard's Overwatch franchise." Nothing else about this is revealed. The fact that this has been "sold" suggests it isn't another of Blizzard's in-house Overwatch short films and is potentially a larger project.
Both of these animated series make a lot of sense given that franchises have a new game on the way. Diablo 4 was announced at BlizzCon last year but there's no word on when it might launch. The same goes for Overwatch 2, which will add story missions alongside new heroes and modes to the first game's formula.
Hopefully the success of recent video game adaptations, like the Castlevania series and the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, will carry over to these animated series.
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[poilib element="accentDivider"]Chris Priestman is a freelancer who writes news for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
Rainbow Six Siege Confirmed for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X
Ubisoft has confirmed that Rainbow Six Siege will be available on next-gen consoles.
Roy Del Valle, the game's product manager, made the announcement yesterday, on the final day of the Six Invitational 2020 playoffs in Quebec, Canada.
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He was invited onto a panel to talk about the major changes that will be introduced to Siege over Year 5 and Year 6 - across 2020 and 2021, essentially. In particular, he addressed why Ubisoft will only be releasing one new operator per season instead of the usual two from Year 5 Season 3 and beyond.
"When we look at the amount of stuff that the team can work on today there's no doubt that this is the right choice to go into the future with full confidence for Rainbow Six Siege," Del Valle said.
"This is allowing us to do a lot of things. It's allowing us to have a core gameplay focused philosophy, to dive deeper into those aspects. It's allowing us to polish a little bit more our operators, the operators that we're going to be bringing into the roster of 50+ operators that we have today."
"And this is a bit of a soft announcement," he continued, "but it's allowing us to work for next-gen, so we are on next-gen in the coming years."
No date as to when Rainbow Six Siege will launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X has been given yet but Ubisoft is aiming for the launch of those consoles. The developer also wants to avoid fragmenting the community and told Windows Central that the next-gen versions of the game will have cross-generation multiplayer with the PS4 and Xbox One.
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Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are due out in holiday 2020 so, obviously, the next-gen versions of Rainbow Six Siege won't be available before that.
There's also the question of what the differences will be, if any, in the next-gen versions of Siege, especially as both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are backwards compatible anyway.
Regardless, Ubisoft will be looking to do what's best for all of its Siege players, especially after the hard fight it has had to grow the game over the past five years. Ubisoft stated during the same panel that it's committed to work on Siege for the next five, 10, or 15 years if it has to - however long people continue to play it. It was also revealed that Tachanka is getting a rework this year.
[poilib element="accentDivider"]Chris Priestman is a freelancer who writes news for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
HQ Trivia’s Final Broadcast Was One Heck of a Wild Ride
There are sendoffs, and then there’s whatever just happened on HQ Trivia’s final broadcast.
The popular live trivia game app company, which pitted contestants against countless others for a chance at real-world money, has shut down after a last-minute acquisition attempt fell through, leaving the company to lay off its 25 employees and shut its doors. What’s a broke company to do for their last ever broadcast? Host Matt Richards took $5 out of his own pocket for the show’s last prize pool.
And then he flipped off the audience and said he would crap on the homes of every troll in the game’s chatroom.
“Not going to lie, this [expletive] sucks,” Richards said. “This is the last HQ ever.”
With a bottle of champagne sitting front and center before the camera, Richards and co-host Anna Roisman proceeded to give not one single crap for their final broadcast, cracking jokes, swearing loudly, all while seemingly a bit drunk. The pair also jokingly begged the viewers to hire them and verged on tears every now and then.
Some choice quotes.
“I was never allowed to plug [expletive] on HQ. Please follow my podcast. Unemployed With Anna Roisman.” - Roisman.
“I used to never wear pants here when I started at HQ Trivia.” - Richards
“Should HQ shut down? No, yes, or [expletive] no!” - Richards, posing a trivia question to the audience.
“I met a couple that told me HQ was part of their foreplay.” - Richards.
HQ Trivia launched back in 2017, quickly skyrocketing to popularity with trivia lovers everywhere hoping to make a buck. Original host Scott Rogowsky proved popular as well. So popular that he announced last April that he was leaving HQ Trivia to focus on a baseball show on the sports streaming service DAZN. The loss of Rogowsky, internal struggles at the company, and the introduction of an unpopular points-based scoring system helped bring the app’s popularity crashing down. HQ’s former CEO and co-founder Colin Kroll also died of a drug overdose in December 2018.
The crew closed out the broadcast with an emotional rendition of “Memory” from the musical Cats, before Richards sprays the studio and himself with the champagne.
At least the hosts can say they went out with a bang, and then some.
[poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.A Playable Build of the Canceled Starcraft Ghost Has Appeared Online
An early, playable Xbox build of Starcraft Ghost, the canceled third-person shooter set in Blizzard’s Starcraft universe, has reportedly leaked online, according to Kotaku. The footage gives us a major look into Blizzard’s troubled offshoot game.
Images of Starcraft Ghost appeared on Twitter user Andrew Borman’s feed Sunday morning, who said that the images were posted anonymously in Xbox forums.
If a couple of screenshots aren’t enough for you, another person has uploaded about 11 minutes of footage from Starcraft Ghost to YouTube. YouTuber Leers Meneses shared the footage, which appears to be from the third mission of the same game that Borman earlier tweeted about. [caption id="attachment_2303930" align="alignnone" width="720"]Who would have thought a month ago that Starcraft Ghost would leak in some form? pic.twitter.com/24wCp4XBsE
— Andrew Borman (@Borman18) February 16, 2020
Screenshot: Starcraft Ghost from Leers Meneses[/caption]
In the footage, we can see Starcraft Ghost protagonist Nova running around a very early 2000’s 3D alien planet, climbing some ledges, and firing on a massive alien with her Gauss Rifle, which, instead of firing projectiles, appears to call down a Hammer of Dawn-style energy beam. Nova later ziplines across a battlefield.
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Screenshot: Starcraft Ghost from Leers Meneses[/caption]
The gameplay itself seems pretty bog standard, even by early 2000s standards (to say nothing of the usual Blizzard polish), which may indicate at least one reason the game struggled to reach completion. Meneses says he used a modded Xbox 360 to access the game.
Another user by the name of Delso Bezerra appears to have uploaded separate footage of Starcraft Ghost as well. The footage shows a noticeably more visually polished version of Starcraft Ghost, featuring a lot of similar running and shooting gameplay.
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Screenshot: Delso Bezerra[/caption]
Kotaku later updated its story saying a source had provided a link to the build of Starcraft Ghost that people have managed to get their hands on, saying it was from a dev kit of the game.
Starcraft Ghost was announced in 2002, and was originally going to launch on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Gamecube. Blizzard first worked with developer Nihilistic Software, then later Swingin' Ape Studios. After several delays in development, the game was put on an indefinite hold in 2006. Former Blizzard president Mike Morhaime put the final nail in the coffin of Starcraft Ghost by confirming its cancellation in 2014.
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2016/05/10/the-13-biggest-games-that-never-came-out"]All that said, it looks like this Xbox build of Starcraft Ghost is now out in the wild proper now, so hardcore fans will almost certainly be able to get their hands on it if they know where to look.
[poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.WWE’s Sasha Banks Reportedly in Season 2 of Star Wars: The Mandalorian
Rainbow Six Siege’s Tachanka Is Getting a Full Rework In 2020
Rainbow Six Siege Year 5 Will Rework House
Operators and Maps
Operator reworks and re-balances will be applied throughout a season, rather than just at the start, which should keep the flow of content feeling more continuous. Those reworks have yet to be entirely detailed, but it’s been confirmed that Siege’s long-term joke Operator, Tachanka, is getting an overdue complete overhaul. The roadmap will deliver eight maps over the two years, with all of them being reworks rather than new locations. Year 6 maps have yet to be announced, but Year 5 will see, in order, reworks of Oregon, House, Skyscraper, and Chalet. While only Oregon has been detailed so far, as part of the Operation Void Edge presentation, and is a small but impactful change, it seems as if House will be a more major rework than those seen through Year 4. “We didn’t want to lose too much of [House], but it really was too small,” explains Alex Karpazis, Art Director on Rainbow Six Siege. “So we wanted to grow it a little bit more, provide more mobility, but still have it as a great introduction map for new players.” When quizzed about why Siege seems to moving entirely away from new maps for the next two years, Hallé says “We’ve observed that the enthusiasm from our player base when they get a rework, when they see that the problematic parts have been fixed or changed, that has a better level of success.” “You don’t have to learn the map from the ground up,” he adds. “You’re still familiar, but it’s also fresh and new.” A map ban phase will be introduced to Ranked play, akin to the pick and ban system used for Operators. A selection of three maps will be provided for teams to decide upon, which will allow more player agency in determining the location of each match.
Core Gameplay Reworks
Ubisoft is also planning several major feature overhauls, with plans to make elements like the preparation and support phases more engaging. The first change to be announced is Ping 2.0; an Apex Legends-like system that allows attackers to mark defender equipment such as Kapkan and Frost traps. “It will give you more impact as an attacker during the preparation phase because you are able to pinpoint the position and the nature of gadgets and share it with your teammates,” explains Hallé.
There will also be new secondary gadgets introduced, such as a new hard breaching option, and a proximity alarm that can be used to help defenders track attacker movements. A new replay system is also in the works, which Ubisoft notes will be a helpful tool for those looking to learn from their defeats.
What will perhaps bring the biggest sense of relief, though, is news that Ubisoft is working on a player reputation system. “It’s a system we’ve seen used by our competitors and it gives good results when it’s well done,” Hallé says. “We know it’s going to be a tough one, but we think in the long run it will help fight against problematic behaviour and encourage the positivity we want to see in our community.”
While the team does not have the specifics locked it at current, the core idea is that players will have a reputation score that will be clearly visible. “A certain amount of what you can do will be tied to that score,” Hallé reveals. “Maybe if you get a bad score, certain playlists will be forbidden.”
Each season will feature some kind of core gameplay change, which the team explained could not happen were it not for the reduced Operator count. Ubisoft also promises that being able to focus on a single Operator will allow the character to be more polished upon release.
