Month: June 2019

The new Avengers game from Crystal Dynamics and its other co-developers is being made in very close collaboration with Marvel, it seems. Crystal Dynamics studio head Scott Amos spoke to GI.biz about the origins of the project and working with Marvel on it.

He explained that Marvel opened a dialogue with Crystal about what kind of Avengers game they wanted to make. The idea from the start, it seems, was for the Avengers game to be an “original take” on The Avengers, so it doesn’t feature the likenesses of the MCU actors.

“Marvel showed up and said, ‘What do you want to do?,'” Amos explained. “That’s how it started. They really looked at us and said, ‘Crystal, you guys are experts at making games, we’re experts at The Avengers. What do you want to do? What’s the original take you want to do on visuals, on story?'”

Amos explained that in the development process, Marvel is the “truth north” as it relates to the direction of the new Avengers game. Marvel’s Bill Rosemann, who is the company’s vice president of creative development, helps direct the team about things like what Tony Stark might say or what kinds of battle moves Hulk might perform.

Amos went on to discuss just how much Marvel is involved with the development of the new Avengers game, and it’s a lot.

“They’re not just collaborators, they’re partners,” Amos said. “They’re embedded with us as a team. We talk to them daily. We send them everything we’re working on, we have builds they play and get feedback. We bring them to the studio and go through it together.”

“[Bill Rosemann] is 25 years at Marvel. He knows everybody. We’re like, ‘So we have a character, and this storyline we saw in issue x,’ and he’s like, ‘I can get you the writer, let’s go see what that person thinks’… We have this amazing collaboration with them that lets us do a little of the iconic fan service and a lot of doing an original take that makes it feel fresh and familiar.”

In other news, Crystal has confirmed that the Avengers game can be played offline. If you do want to venture online, you can team up with other players. Additionally, post-release heroes and locations are free, and there are no loot boxes, but the game still does feature microtransactions.

For more on the new Avengers game, check out GameSpot’s breakdown of every confirmed character so far. The Avengers game launches in May 2020.

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard cancels roughly 50 percent of the games it develops, and one of those projects was the MMO Titan.

Blizzard founder Mike Morhaime, who has since left the company, spoke about the project during the Gamelab convention in Barcelona this week. He said it was planned to be a “next-generation MMO,” but it proved to be too ambitious,.

“We failed to control scope,” Morhaime said, as reported by Eurogamer. “It was very ambitious. It was a brand new universe, and it was going to be the next generation MMO that did all sorts of different things, it had different modes. We were sort of building two games in parallel, and it really struggled to come together.”

Blizzard’s Overwatch was born out of the ashes of Titan, and Morhaime spoke more about how greenlighting that game was “one of the best decisions that we made.”

“We took something that wasn’t going to ship for a very long time, might never have shipped, and turned it into an awesome game,” he explained.

Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan, who worked on Titan, remarked, “We failed horrifically in every way … In every way that a project can fail. It was devastating.”

Titan was officially canceled in 2014, and at the time, Morhaime stated, “We set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn’t come together.”

As for why Titan was canceled, Morhaime said Blizzard “didn’t find the fun … didn’t find the passion.”

The latest project that Blizzard canceled was a StarCraft first-person shooter, according to a report. Blizzard reportedly scuttled the project, which was said to be in development for two yeas, so it could focus on Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2.

IPS monitors have come a long way in the past few years, and can make for an excellent do-it-all gaming monitor. Here’s our picks for the best IPS monitors.

The decision to buy a mousepad is a personal one. Please consult your local PC building doctor, and this IGN guide, before making a purchase.

The recent “Shattered Grid” crossover is easily BOOM! Studios’ most ambitious Power Rangers project to date, one that united the entire Power Rangers multiverse before leaving it broken and possibly irreparably damaged. Now the core Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series is launching into a new story arc entitled “Necessary Evil.” It’s being billed as the successor of sorts to “Shattered Grid,” which probably does the creative team a disservice. The emphasis with issue #40 isn’t so much about launching into the next big Power Rangers event, but introducing a new status quo and jumping-on point that makes the most of classic MMPR continuity.

The series employs a time jump with this issue, leaping ahead to the point in the series where Lord Zedd is the main villain, Tommy leads the team as the White Ranger and Jason, Trini and Zack have vanished on their never-ending UN peace summit. This new status quo makes for an easy entry point into the series for new and lapsed readers. It helps that the conclusion of Power Rangers: Shattered Grid #1 is reprinted here as a sort of prologue/recap sequence. It fits surprisingly well in that context, serving as a poignant sort of farewell to the classic MMPR era while reminding us that the full ramifications of Drakkon’s assault on the multiverse have yet to be deduced.

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Final Fantasy XIV Online currently offers cross-play support between PlayStation 4 and PC, but one of the reasons the game hasn’t released on Xbox One yet is because Microsoft apparently won’t allow cross-play. Game director Naoki Yoshida told wccftech that he recently spoke with Xbox boss Phil Spencer and informed him that Square Enix is “prepared to do cross-play any any time.” However, Microsoft isn’t budging, it seems.

“Two months ago, I discussed with Phil Spencer. I have explained this before but we are prepared to do crossplay at any time,” Yoshida explained.

According to Yoshida, things like in-game chat and social networking in the form of creating and joining guilds are essential for MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV Online.

“I would like to have Microsoft change their regulations,” Yoshida said.

Yoshida told GameSpot in March that Final Fantasy XIV needs to support cross-play to have its playerbases united and offer the best experience. That’s currently possible on PS4 and PC, but not with other systems, which has presumably kept the game off Xbox and Nintendo systems so far.

Sony, as well as Nintendo, is beginning to allow cross-play with competing platforms for games like Fortnite and Rocket League, so it seems more likely than ever that Final Fantasy XIV comes to new platforms.

“Talks with platform-holders has been going on,” Yoshida said about Microsoft, Nintendo, and Google. “The fundamental philosophy with Final Fantasy XIV is we want it on labels with cross-platform play with any devices, hardware possible,” Yoshida said through a translator. “So as long as the regulations with the counterpart hardware companies … we can actually pass that, then the possibility, the chance is quite high [of Final Fantasy XIV coming to Xbox and Nintendo systems].

The next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV Online is Shadowbringers, which launches on July 2. Square Enix is going big to promote the game, bringing on Tom Holland and Hannibal Buress for commercials hyping the expansion.