Monthly Archives: February 2021
Bugsnax’s Final Showdown Once Included a Tower Defense Mechanic
IGN spoke with Bugsnax Creative Director Kevin Zuhn about how Bugsnax's ending went through some dramatic shifts, originally including a darker ending and some twists that didn't quite settle into the rest of the game's themes.
And while diving into the major story changes that occurred throughout development, Zuhn also explained how some mechanical shifts also occurred. And perhaps most notably, the final showdown in the game's Grumpus village was once quite different from what players experience in the final game. Namely, it looked a lot more like a brand-new tower defense game.
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Spoilers for the ending of Bugsnax follow.
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Zuhn explained how, in the original script's ending, the player mostly makes their way back from the UnderSnax, only to have the fate of the other Grumpuses be decided by the amount of Bugsnax they had eaten. There wasn't even much players did at that point.
“As far as the way that the ending worked mechanically, this is something we also struggled with for a long time because you cannot catch Bugsnax after learning the truth from Lizbert, that can't be a mechanic anymore because you're not going to feed anyone deliberately.”
Instead, in the final version, players defend Snaktooth Village and the Grumpuses, using the various tools they’ve become familiar with throughout the game to defend against waves and waves of Bugsnax.
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The idea was actually even more elaborate at one point, with Zuhn explaining how a sort of Bugsnax tower defense game was introduced at this point in the adventure, and it was actually quite robust.
“John Murphy, he designed most of the Bugsnax behavior patterns and systems of the game. He was working on, effectively, a tower defense mode. The early versions of it were, you had a big central location and Bugsnax were coming from every direction. We scaled back on that because it was a little too demanding and hectic for a thing that you have just learned how to do,” Zuhn explained. “You can't have a tutorial for this because it's the end of the game.”
Instead, the attack on the village became a little simpler, but still informed by all of the adventure that preceded it.
“We wanted to keep it down to dealing with a couple of characters at a time just to make the scope manageable for the amount of things that could happen, especially in terms of whether characters make it or don't,” Zuhn said. “One of the difficulties with the big tower defense mode was, if a character died, you couldn't stop to pay attention to that because too much was already happening. And it felt like people were just silently dropping and that's not thematically resonant.”
For more, be sure to read our full deep dive with Zuhn on Bugsnax's major changes.
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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN's Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.
Transformers: New Animated Series Announced by Nickelodeon, Entertainment One
Nickelodeon and Hasbro's Entertainment One are set to roll out an all-new animated Transformers series.
The animated action-comedy series will consist of 26 half-hour episodes, following a new species of Transformers on a mission to find their place and purpose among Autobots, Decepticons, and the human family that adopts them. The series is being co-produced by Nickelodeon and eOne and will premiere exclusively on Nickelodeon in the US before debuting in other countries.
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The creative team is built up with several animated TV show veterans, including Ant Ward (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and Nicole Dubuc (Transformers: Rescue Bots), who are both serving as executive producers, together with co-executive producer and developer Dale Malinowski (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). Production will be overseen by Nickelodeon's Conrad Montgomery and eOne's Mikiel Houser.
"As soon as I read the creative concept, which at its core is about family, I knew we absolutely had to tell this story with our good friends at eOne and Hasbro," said Ramsey Naito, President of Nickelodeon Animation. "The series will tell a reimagined story featuring both original characters and fan-favorites for a whole new generation of kids and families. The creative team at Nick, overseen by Claudia Spinelli, SVP of Animation Development, can't wait to get started on building this new world."
"We're thrilled to be working with Nickelodeon to expand the Transformers animated universe and bring an all-new more than meets the eye story to life," added Olivier Dumont, eOne's President of Family Brands. "This new series is a fresh creative take on the brand, which will excite longtime fans around the world and soon-to-be fans alike, all being introduced to the robots in disguise by an A-list creative team led by eOne's Mikiel Houser."
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The Transformers have had a long history on television, all beginning with The Transformers that aired from 1984 to 1987 and is still one of the most beloved.
The new Transformers series is part of Nickelodeon's strategy to be the home of the biggest franchises kids and families love, as it joins a growing animation slate that already includes SpongeBob SquarePants, plus the first-ever SpongeBob spinoff, Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Under Years, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Star Trek: Prodigy, amongst others.
As part of its expansion, Nickelodeon recently announced the launch of a new division dedicated to creating series and movies based in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. The division will be called Avatar Studios and will produce content for Paramount+, Nickelodeon platforms, and unspecified third-party platforms, as well as in cinemas.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Kingdom Hearts Union X Dark Road Is Shutting Down, But Will Be Made Available Offline
Square Enix has revealed that it is shutting down its mobile title Kingdom Hearts Union X Dark Road, but an offline version will be made available, so players can still enjoy the story.
You can read the End of Service Announcement on the Union X Dark Road website. The game's story will conclude in April, and the servers will shut down on May 30, 2021. As of February 24, players will no longer be able to purchase the in-game currency Jewels, though any that have been purchased prior will be available to use up until the end of service.
A message from KINGDOM HEARTS series director Tetsuya Nomura: pic.twitter.com/ENWyoRBbyN
— KINGDOM HEARTS Union χ[Cross] (@kh_ux_na) February 25, 2021 It's not going away forever though, as an offline version of the game will also launch on May 30, and this will then be updated to include the Dark Road content later in September 2021. "KINGDOM HEARTS Union χ Dark Road will be playable offline and KINGDOM HEARTS Union χ will be available as a theater mode," the announcement reads. Players can also transfer their data to the offline version to continue their progress. In a tweet from the Union Cross Twitter account, Series Director Tetsuya Nomura thanked fans "for taking the journey with us for over 5 years," and said that they will be able to enjoy the story at their own pace in the offline mode. "The excitement and intensity of the remaining chapters is really going to ramp up, and I think you'll all enjoy what we have planned," his statement reads. In other Kingdom Hearts news, the series is coming to PC in March. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead: First Trailer and New Images Released
Netflix has released the first trailer and new images for Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead.
The first trailer for the zombie heist movie offers fans a closer look at the corpse-filled chaos that will ensue in the post-apocalyptic picture, as a ragtag group of mercenaries team-up and take the ultimate gamble when they decide to venture into a Las Vegas quarantine zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted, raiding a casino for its vault full of cash.
The adrenaline-fuelled footage is loaded with quickfire shots of fiery explosions erupting among hordes of the shambling undead, including one flesh-eater who appears to have a penchant for Elvis.
Get your first taste of the R-rated thriller in the trailer below:
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In addition to the above teaser, Netflix also shared some new photos of Snyder and the Army of the Dead cast, which features Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera, Garret Dillahunt, Raúl Castillo, Omari Hardwick, Tig Notaro, Nora Arnezeder, Matthias Schweighöfer, Samantha Win, Theo Rossi, Huma Qureshi, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Richard Cetrone.
The streamer unveiled three additional behind-the-scenes photos from the upcoming horror heist movie after plaguing our timelines with the poster earlier this week. The new snaps reveal shots of Snyder stood with Dave Bautista in a corpse-ridden location, as well as a stoic shot of Tig Notaro's helicopter pilot, and another scene teaser showing an interaction between Bautista's character, Scott Ward, and Matthias Schweighöfer's character, Ludwig Dieter.
Feast your eyes on the new photos in our gallery below:
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Army of the Dead is also getting a prequel movie and an anime series at Netflix, with Shay Hatten onboard to write the scripts for both. Schweighöfer is attached to helm and star in the international prequel movie, which is said to follow his Army of the Dead safe-cracking character, while the anime series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, will chronicle the origins of Bautista's Scott Ward.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Biden Administration to Review Supply Chains Causing PS5, Xbox, Graphics Card Shortages
President Joe Biden's administration has signed an executive order pledging to review the supply chain issues that have led to PS5, Xbox Series and graphics card shortages.
As reported by NBC News, President Biden is looking into the gaps in America's supply chains amid the pandemic. The 100-day review will look into vulnerabilities and improvements in supply chains for pharmaceuticals, rare earth minerals, semiconductor chips and large-capacity batteries. It will focus on increasing production within the US, as well as strengthening ties with those exporting the products involved.
Biden made clear that this won't be an immediate fix for shortages, but should help stop similar problems in the future. The semiconductor shortage has caused major issues for the video games industry in recent months, and has been brought up by many games industry figureheads, including most recently PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan.
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In an interview with GQ published earlier this week, Ryan said that the semiconductor shortage was one of the main issues affecting PS5 production - with semiconductor chips in short supply, it's tricky for automobile, phone, console and PC hardware manufacturers to operate at full capacity and get their products into the hands of consumers. AMD's chips power both of the next-gen consoles and CEO Lisa Su raised similar concerns during the company's Q4 2020 earnings call, forecasting chip shortages to last throughout the first half of 2021.
With this executive order, Biden's administration is planning to assess and hopefully remedy these supply chain issues, with a focus on boosting domestic production in the US to mitigate these problems in the future. Beyond chip shortages, scalpers are also causing problems for consumers trying to pick up top-tier graphic cards and next-gen consoles. A potential console scalping ban is currently gaining momentum in the UK in light of recent market troubles.
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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
Pokemon Presents Broadcast Coming Tomorrow Amid Remake Rumours
The Pokemon Company has announced a Pokemon Presents video presentation for Friday, February 26.
The presentation will air at 7am Pacific / 10am Eastern / 3pm UK (that's 2am AEDT on February 27) on the Pokemon YouTube channel. The Japanese Pokemon Twitter account indicates that the show will be around 20 minutes long.
The news arrives after consistent rumours about the announcement of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl remakes, including repeated leaker Centro Pokemon saying that fans wouldn't have to wait until Febrary 27 for "big news they've been waiting for", accompanied by images of legendary Pokemon introduced in Diamond and Pearl. February 27 marks the Pokemon series' 25th anniversary, lending some credence to the idea of an announcement – and one that looks back to the series' past feels somewhat appropriate. All rumours should be taken with a grain of salt, however. It seems likely that we could also learn about yet-to-be-released Pokemon games such as New Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Sleep, and the (somewhat controversial) Pokemon Unite. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.Get ready, Trainers.
A Pokémon Presents video presentation will be taking place on the official Pokémon YouTube channel tomorrow—Friday, February 26—at 7:00 a.m. PDT. Don’t forget to subscribe–hit that bell to be the first in the loop! https://t.co/EWuPwUX9s2 pic.twitter.com/zisPK8Xa6e — Pokémon (@Pokemon) February 25, 2021
Bravely Default 2 Review
The Bravely series has always excelled at evoking the feeling of playing classic Final Fantasy-style RPGs, while sanding off some of the rough edges that may make those classic games less approachable to modern audiences. Bravely Default II, confusingly enough the third game in the franchise, maintains much of its predecessors' retro charm--but it actually removes some of the quality-of-life features that made the first two such breezy nostalgic throwbacks. Instead of simply reminding you of the satisfaction of playing a classic RPG, Bravely Default II demands that you relive the entire experience, faults and all.
For the uninitiated, Bravely Default gets its namesake from its innovative risk-reward combat system. Along with your typical health and magic meters, you have Brave Points (BP). And rather than a standard Defend command, you can choose to Default, which both defends and banks BP for later use. You can spend up to four actions using Brave command, but if you don't have enough BP banked you go into debt and skip future turns undefended.
This has always been key to Bravely Default's battle system, and it remains essentially untouched here. The approach is a little less novel the third time around, but it still creates a unique wrinkle of strategic RPG battle planning. Do you go into debt to unleash a flurry of attacks or do some emergency healing? Do you bank first and take the damage for a few turns? Bravely veterans will fall right back into the habit, but nothing about it feels too complex that it should give newcomers trouble. And newcomers will be able to jump in here because, like Final Fantasy, Bravely Default II's story is disconnected from any continuity. Four strangers come together as the selfless Heroes of Light to stave off certain doom--you know the drill.
Continue Reading at GameSpotBravely Default 2 Review
The Bravely series has always excelled at evoking the feeling of playing classic Final Fantasy-style RPGs, while sanding off some of the rough edges that may make those classic games less approachable to modern audiences. Bravely Default II, confusingly enough the third game in the franchise, maintains much of its predecessors' retro charm--but it actually removes some of the quality-of-life features that made the first two such breezy nostalgic throwbacks. Instead of simply reminding you of the satisfaction of playing a classic RPG, Bravely Default II demands that you relive the entire experience, faults and all.
For the uninitiated, Bravely Default gets its namesake from its innovative risk-reward combat system. Along with your typical health and magic meters, you have Brave Points (BP). And rather than a standard Defend command, you can choose to Default, which both defends and banks BP for later use. You can spend up to four actions using Brave command, but if you don't have enough BP banked you go into debt and skip future turns undefended.
This has always been key to Bravely Default's battle system, and it remains essentially untouched here. The approach is a little less novel the third time around, but it still creates a unique wrinkle of strategic RPG battle planning. Do you go into debt to unleash a flurry of attacks or do some emergency healing? Do you bank first and take the damage for a few turns? Bravely veterans will fall right back into the habit, but nothing about it feels too complex that it should give newcomers trouble. And newcomers will be able to jump in here because, like Final Fantasy, Bravely Default II's story is disconnected from any continuity. Four strangers come together as the selfless Heroes of Light to stave off certain doom--you know the drill.
Continue Reading at GameSpotKevin Feige Says No MCU Project Has Been Held Back by PG-13 Rating, Deadpool an Exception
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige recently asserted that the studio has never been stifled by PG-13 ratings when bringing MCU stories and character journeys to the screen, and made clear that Deadpool is an exception to that policy.
During a Disney+ panel at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour on Wednesday, Feige participated in a Q&A session where one participant asked about the possibility of Marvel Studios creating more adult-orientated projects in the future, especially now that the streaming service has expanded its library of content with more mature offerings through Star — a new entertainment section that has been added to the platform in multiple locations.
"I think we target everything we're doing now for kids and adults. So I think your question is more adult, or R-rated," Feige clarified in his response before delving further into the subject of ratings.
He then added: "Other than Deadpool, which has already established itself as a certain genre and a certain rating that we've already said we would not mess with when we start working with Deadpool, which we have, other than that, we've not ever encountered a story or a storyline or a character's journey that a PG-13 or the tone or the ratings that we've been using up to this point has prevented us."
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Feige went on to say that he isn't opposed to the idea of R-rated Marvel projects, as he explained that he would be open to venturing down that avenue if there was ever a specific project that suited a different tonality and rating structure, but for now, the studio hasn't been prevented by ratings when telling the stories that they've wanted to tell on the big or small screen.
"We've never been held back by it," he stated. "If we ever are, then certainly there could be a discussion to be had now that there are other outlets, like Hulu, like Star, but that just hasn't been the case yet. We've been able to tell all the kinds of stories we've wanted to with the tonality and the rating structure that we have now."
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At the beginning of the year, Feige confirmed that the next Deadpool movie will be R-rated, and be part of the MCU – with Ryan Reynolds working on a script right now. The news arrived after some confusion arose over whether the MCU would (or perhaps could) include Deadpool, particularly as no Marvel movie had yet crossed over into R-rated territory.
There is a lot of MCU to come before Deadpool, however – with pandemic-related delays meaning no MCU content arrived in 2020, many of us have been tuning in each week for WandaVision, as the first Marvel project to hit our screens this year. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is up next and launches on March 19. There's also Black Widow, Loki — which has had its release date pushed back from May to June — Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, What If...?, Eternals, and the new Spidey sequel, now officially titled Spider-Man: No Way Home. Here's every official project on the MCU slate right now.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
PUBG: New State Is a Mobile Sequel to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Krafton Inc has revealed PUBG: New State, a mobile sequel to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds set in 2051.
Developed by PUBG Studio as a full battle royale experience for iOS and Android, the game will "evolve" the original PUBG experience, adding in-game weapon customization, drones, a combat roll ability, and more. New State will also feature destructible windows, interactable objects, futuristic ballistic shields, and new environments to explore, including a defunct shopping mall. A press release for the game mentions how New State will leverage "state-of-the-art Global Illumination rendering technology" to push the game's mobile graphics to their limits while remaining stable.
New State is set in 2051 and features futuristic buggies and bikes, which players can use to cross 8x8 maps. You can check out the pre-order trailer for the game below, which provides a glimpse into how the game will look and play when the free-to-play title launches later this year.
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"Players will be dropping into a brand-new battleground called TROI," reads a press release, "where they will have the opportunity to discover how the universe has evolved." Players can pre-register for the game right now via the Google Play store, with iOS pre-registration coming at a later date. Alpha tests for PUBG: New State are also on their way and set to launch later this year.
New State appears to be the game reported to launch in 2021 during a Bloomberg interview with Krafton CEO Kim Chang-Han. The same interview mentioned that another PUBG game was on the way in 2022, a "PUBG-related PC and console game" which is separate from the survival horror title The Callisto Protocol, which is set in the far future of the PUBG universe, and was revealed during The Game Awards 2020.
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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.