Blade Runner 2049: Two New Posters Revealed
Two new posters for Blade Runner 2049, featuring the film's two principal characters, have been released today.
Revealed on the film's Twitter page, the stylish posters show Harrison Ford's Deckard and Ryan Gosling's Officer K in stark contrast:
The Deckard poster shows the ruined landscape we saw in the film's teaser trailer (below), but the K poster features a stylish new car, and a much colder aesthetic than any we've seen thus far.
Directed by Arrival's Denis Villeneuve, the long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi noir will feature a new blade runner on a quest to hunt down Deckard 30 years later.
Darksiders 3 First Hands-On Preview
Gunfire Games has a unique name for Darksiders 3 internally - a phrase I heard multiple times during my visit to Austin: “Classy-Siders”. The latest iteration of the franchise is undoubtedly an extension of those that came before it - our new protagonist, Fury, looks like she’d fit perfectly in a family photo next to the original game’s hero, War, with a frantic assortment of aggressive looking skulls across her armor. It’s still a post-apocalyptic, hack’n’slash, action-adventure, too, with a combat speed somewhere in between the first and second game, but they’ve put a focus on trying to make things less ‘game-y’.
First things first, check out some brand new screenshots below:
13 Star Wars EU Concepts That Have Become Canon
Before April 2014, the Star Wars universe had levels of canon. The films and Star Wars: The Clone Wars were on their own level, while comics, games, and books had different classifications. The latter stories were collected under the Expanded Universe (or EU) umbrella. Things have since become simpler. Since April 2014, the Expanded Universe published up to that point became Legends, or non-canon. New novels, comics, and other complementary material is now canon, however, and part of the current storytelling universe.
If a story is classified as canon, it has to fit within established parameters/stories and can affect or be affected by other canon material. It's that simple. Legends material isn't any less enjoyable or any less valid because it's not canon.
5 Things We Learned About Marvel’s Defenders Comic
Writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist David Marquez have been working at the forefront of the Marvel Universe in the past couple years, first establishing a new status quo for Tony Stark in Invincible Iron Man and then tearing the Avengers down the middle in Civil War II. For their next collaboration, Bendis and Marquez are delivering a new take on the Defenders, one that clearly shares a few things in common with the upcoming Netflix show.
Marvel held one of their "Next Big Thing" press calls on Tuesday to shed more light on the new Defenders comic. Both Bendis and Marquez were in attendance, as was Executive Editor Tom Brevoort. Check out this preview art Marvel provided, and then scroll down to find out what was revealed during the call and why fans shouldn't assume this book is a simple cash-in on the Netflix series.
Arkane’s Answer to Lack of Prey PC Demo: Use Steam Refunds
Arkane co-director Raphael Colantonio has responded to controversy about the lack of a PC demo for Prey, encouraging players to take advantage of Steam's refund policy instead.
The demo is made up of the first hour of the game - a move many (including IGN's Dan Stapleton) have praised - but is only available on the game's console release platforms.
Speaking to AusGamers, Colantonio explained the reasoning for the missing demo, and his thoughts on how Steam's refund policy - which allows players to try up to 2 hours of a game, and claim a full refund - makes up for it:
7 Star Wars Projects That Never Saw the Light of Day
May the 4th be with you! This month will mark the 40th anniversary of the original Star Wars movie, which of course went on to become a massive franchise far beyond anyone’s dreams. After the box office success of A New Hope and the transformation of Star Wars into a cultural phenomenon way back when, George Lucas indicated that he had some very ambitious plans for both a prequel trilogy and a sequel trilogy. Of course, only the prequels emerged as a finished project under his direction, leaving the rest as an unrealized dream until 2015’s The Force Awakens.
However, that’s nothing new for the Star Wars franchise. Over the past four decades, many intriguing plans have been laid out for that universe, and some of them barely made it past the development stages. So in honor of May the 4th, we’re looking back at seven of the cancelled Star Wars films, television shows and even video games that deserved -- but never got -- a chance to show us new sides of that galaxy far, far away.
Exo One Is a Sci-Fi Cocktail of Journey, Tiny Wings, and Marble Madness
Adelaide-based Exbleative has revealed its new sci-fi, momentum-based exploration game: Exo One. The game has been announced alongside a modest Kickstarter campaign to help finish it.
Exo One will outline the story of humanity’s first (and apparently ill-fated) mission outside of the solar system. Players will helm a bizarre, spherical alien vehicle that can roll at high speeds across the alien landscapes, manipulate gravity to gain extra momentum on downslopes, and squish into a disc shape to soar up into the clouds.
Developer Jay Weston notes the game has already been described by some as a cross between Journey and 2001: A Space Odyssey. After a hands-on with the first two planets it seems like a fairly sound assessment.
Comic Book Reviews for May 3, 2017
It was another big week of comics. DC continued the Batman/Flash crossover "The Button" and launched the print version of their Injustice 2 prequel comic. Marvel debuted several promising new series with Secret Empire #1, Jean Grey #1, Black Bolt #1 and All-New Guardians of the Galaxy #1. And Image kicked off the latest incarnation of Youngblood and a new fantasy series called Eternal Empire.
Scroll down to check out our reviews for these and various other new releases, and be sure to let us know your favorite books of the week in the comments below.
Note: We'll have reviews for Nova #6, Spider-Man/Deadpool #17 and X-Men Gold #3 up a bit later today.
DC COMICS
StarCraft Source Code Discovered, Fan Rewarded for Returning it to Blizzard
Blizzard has showered a fan in rewards after the return of a lost gold master source code disc for the original 1998 StarCraft.
As spotted by Kotaku, Reddit user Khemist49 had purchased a "Box of Blizzard stuff" off eBay which happened to contain a disc marked "StarCraft Gold Master Source Code". Unsure what to do with the seemingly valuable object, he turned to Reddit for answers and, after having some users request the code be made freely available or to sell it, was contacted by Blizzard's legal team.
Xbox Scorpio Dev Kit Has a Frame Rate Counter Mini-Screen
We got a glimpse of the sleek Xbox Scorpio development kit last month, but a new video shows it in action - including its LCD screen with frame rate counter.
Windows Central's Jez Corden revealed the video on Twitter, confirming speculation that the front-facing panel was a screen of some kind:
Scorpio dev kit, kinda sexy no? #ProjectScorpio pic.twitter.com/o1FLT6Siv8
— Jez Corden (@JezCorden) May 3, 2017