Monthly Archives: April 2019
GoT Season 8 Premiere’s Best Stunt Was… Nuts for Kit Harrington
Kit Harington experienced a rather uncomfortable incident while filming one of the Game of Thrones Season 8 premiere’s biggest stunts.
Spoiler warning: episode details follow this video.
While filming the first episode of Season 8’s dragon riding sequence, Kit Harington was required to mount a ‘buck’; a mechanical moving stand-in for a dragon that is later transformed via the magic of visual effects. But while riding the buck during one take, Harrington suffered a... painful incident.
“There is a bit where Jon almost falls off the dragon and swings around really violently,” he describes in a YouTube video on the official Game of Thrones channel. “And my right ball got trapped and I didn’t have time to say ‘stop’.”
Judgment: Sega Reveals Replacement Character Model After Drugs Scandal
Sega has revealed the new model for Judgment character Kyohei Hamura after the game's original Hamura actor, Pierre Taki, was indicted for cocaine use.
The change is a fairly subtle one. The new Hamura is an original model, not based on a scan of an actor, and the character's movements and lip-sync remain the same.
You can see both versions in our comparison video below:
Yakuza Studio head Toshihiro Nagoshi previously explained how much had to be altered to remove Taki's likeness from the game:
“First of all we had to replace the character model and re-record all of the dialogue. But replacing the character model is only the start: We had to change all of the pre-rendered cut scenes Hamura appeared in; also, his face appears on some of the evidence that you present on your smartphone, so we had to replace those textures; and some trophies had to be changed too.”
Sony Reveals Next-Gen PlayStation Details
PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny has shown off some of the internal components of the next-generation PlayStation - which he is technically not currently calling PlayStation 5 - which will include a high-spec solid state drive, a GPU capable of supporting ray tracing, will support PS4 backwards compatibility, and won't be download-only.
In a meeting with Wired, Cerny also explained that the console would definitely not be released in 2019, and demonstrated why this is a true next-generation machine, rather than a PS4 upgrade in the vein of the PS4 Pro.
Cerny explained that the console's CPU is a variant of the AMD Ryzen third generation, and that its GPU is a custom version of Radeon's Navi line. That GPU is capable of ray tracing, a high-performance graphical technique with some incredible results. As you'd expect, the console will also support 8K displays.
Here’s How Zelda: Breath of the Wild Works in VR
Following the reveal that Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be getting Nintendo Labo VR support, Nintendo has detailed exactly how BOTW will work when the free VR update arrives on April 26, 2019.
Breath of the Wild's technical director Takuhiro Dohta posted a blog post that details exactly what fans can expect when they put their Nintendo Switch into the Labo Toy-Con VR googles and jump into our game of the year for 2017.
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Released Today: Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (Nintendo Switch)
God of War Teases “Ragnarok is Coming” in PS4 Theme
A God of War PS4 dynamic theme released for the game’s first anniversary appears to be teasing something new from developer Sony Santa Monica.
The theme features an image of Kratos and Atreus sitting in a boat while observing the World Serpent and the Temple of Týr. Look closely, though, and you can see that a series of runes are engraved into the side of the boat. A fan on Reddit (via GamesRadar+) has discovered that, when translated from Norse to English, they spell out “Ragnarok is coming”.
How Palpatine, Darth Maul and Vader Dominated Star Wars Celebration
As much as fans love their noble Jedi and plucky rebels, Star Wars Celebration 2019 showcased how much power the Dark Side still holds over fans and filmmakers alike, as it was the bad guys who stole the show this year.
When fans finally got their first look at Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, there was genuine surprise and excitement when the trailer ended with the familiar cackle of the (presumably) long dead Emperor Palpatine.
This revelation, in turn, triggered a deluge of speculation and theories about how Palpatine could return. We won’t know what the truth of it all is, of course, until Episode IX opens in December, but the apparent return of Darth Sidious will surely remain a hotly anticipated and ravenously searched topic until then.
Game of Thrones: What Do Those White Walker Spiral Symbols Mean?
Warning: This post contains full spoilers for Game of Thrones through the Season 8 premiere, "Winterfell."
As we saw in the Season 8 premiere of Game of Thrones, "Winterfell" - which garnered the show's highest ratings ever - the Night King is back on his death spiral bulls***t. Poor Ned Umber, the newly-annointed young lord of House Umber, was discovered inside his familial home, Last Hearth, as part of a sickening (if artistic) body part mural. Surrounding his corpse, which soon reanimated as a snarling wight, were bits and pieces of stray Umbers pattered into a seven-legged spiral - a known calling card for the White Walkers.
How the Game of Thrones Premiere Tackled Jon’s Big Moment
Warning: this article contains spoilers for the Game of Thrones Season 8 premiere.
The Season 8 premiere of Game of Thrones featured a moment fans have been waiting eight years to see: Thanks to Samwell Tarly, Jon Snow finally learned the truth about his parents, Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, and the fact that he's actually the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.
IGN spoke to John Bradley about shooting the pivotal scene with Kit Harington, and how he found the balance between portraying Sam's grief over losing his father and brother and conveying this vital information to Jon.
Come on, There’s No Way J.J. Abrams Wasn’t Bringing Back the Emperor
Of course J.J. Abrams is bringing back Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Look, the decision to revive the character of the Emperor for The Rise of Skywalker may turn out to be the best idea ever. We can certainly expect it, at the very least, to not be the biggest surprise coming from the film, as Abrams is famous for his mystery box approach when selling his projects. It’s unlikely that Palpatine being teased at this point means we now know who the real villain of the film is, or that the Emperor is going to be the sole throwback to the Star Wars of yesteryear. You can almost bet on Anakin/Vader showing up in some capacity, in fact.
After all, this is the same guy who memeified Star Trek with his film Into Darkness, regurgitating the iconic Spock death scene from The Wrath of Khan while also remixing it so that it was Kirk who died this time. Also, it was Spock who got to yell the immortal “Khaaaaaaan” line in the Abrams version. Of course, that’s also the film where Abrams rebooted the classic villain Khan as well. Regurgitation is the right word in more than one way.