Month: September 2019

The Epic Games Store’s Trello roadmap has been revamped and will no longer list the planned release dates for features currently in development. The company created the Trello board close to the store’s launch in an effort to increase transparency.

In a blog post, Epic announced that dates and expected delivery times have been removed. The Trello board previously listed target windows so players could track when new features were arriving, but Epic often missed these dates or rolled them out to select games rather than the entire store.

“The Trello roadmap is not fulfilling the goal we set when it was introduced,” the blog post says. “The goal with the Trello roadmap is to provide visibility into the development cycle for the store’s more player-centric feature set. While it’s accomplished that to some degree, we’ve missed the mark accurately displaying the timelines for feature delivery. We regularly delay feature releases due to shifting priorities and the need for further iteration. We’re always focusing on improving, and we believe the Trello can be improved as well.”

Instead of showing the time of delivery, the Trello board will now be focused on what’s actively in development and provide “more granular updates on individually listed features.” These will be split up into vague categories for what’s up next, and what’s in the plan for future development. Epic says the Trello will be updated every two weeks, and it also plans to detail larger feature updates in its blog, much like it did last month with a post on cloud saves, new product pages, and more.

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red is so committed to first-person in its upcoming role-playing game, that even cutscenes will be locked to the perspective (and yes, that includes sex scenes as well). It marks a notable change for the studio after its work on the third-person Witcher series.

CD Projekt Red already explained the importance of Cyberpunk 2077’s first-person viewpoint at E3 2018, and has clearly stuck to its guns despite some early backlash. Marcin Momot, the global community lead at CD Projekt Red, recently reiterated the studio’s choice. “Achieving full immersion in a [first-person perspective] game is extremely important,” he said in a tweet. “The decision made by the team to go 100% first person in Cyberpunk 2077 is something that will benefit it greatly from gameplay and story-telling perspectives.” He adds that players will still see their created character in the inventory screen, during driving sequences, in mirrors and, very occasionally, in some of the cutscenes. While the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account replied to a direct message confirming that the game’s sex scenes will also be locked into first-person.

Over on the official Cyberpunk 2077 forums, user Shavod translated an interview with senior level designer Miles Tost from the German site Night City Life. Tost offered some insight into Cyberpunk 2077’s level design, comparing the differences between designing for a first-person game as opposed to a third-person game like The Witcher 3. In the latter, Geralt would always enter a house first, with the camera following behind. Because of this, the designers would always have to leave an extra bit of free space by the entrance to any building to avoid Geralt colliding with objects. In Cyberpunk 2077, the first-person perspective means they don’t have to worry about this anymore, allowing rooms to be designed with more authenticity. It’s not something you might ever notice, but it’s an interesting detail about one of the lesser-known aspects of level design.

Tost also notes how convenient the open spaces in The Witcher 3 were for allowing him to expand locations however and whenever he needed to. This isn’t possible in Cyberpunk 2077 with the way the city is designed, but the limitations forced him to be more creative in how he packs a lot into limited horizontal spaces. Despite this, Tost says protagonist V’s greater mobility allows for the level design to be more expansive, offering lots of hidden and alternate paths that V can reach using double jumps and charged jumps. He also mentions that V is capable of climbing the exteriors of tall buildings to reach a lot of dizzying heights.

CD Projekt Red recently showed another 15 minutes of gameplay from Cyberpunk 2077, focusing on combat, customisation, different play styles, and the Night City district of Pacifica.

The upcoming action-RPG has also dropped binary male/female options in favor of inclusivity. “You know, we really want to make a video game that’s really inclusive,” senior concept artist Marthe Jonkers told Metro. “Of course, if you tackle certain subjects then you will expect people to have an opinion about it and we respect that. And it’s good that people give us feedback.”

Cyberpunk 2077 is expected to launch on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 16, 2020. The game is also scheduled to release for Google Stadia in 2020.

Martin Scorsese recreated an iconic scene from his 1990 mob masterpiece Goodfellas to quality-check the potential use of digital de-aging technology in his upcoming film The Irishman.

According to Empire, the director enlisted Robert De Niro to re-enact one of the key scenes from Goodfellas, wherein De Niro’s Jimmy Conway orders his high-flying cohorts to dispose of their extravagant purchases to avoid unnecessarily drawing attention to their criminal activities.

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GameStop’s Labor Day sale is officially live. As of midnight on Monday, Sept. 2, you can find a wide range of new deals available on GameStop’s website, and they’re live for today only.

The sale includes popular products that once lived on ThinkGeek’s website (which shut down earlier this summer), like the Poke Ball waffle maker and Thor’s hammer toolbox. The PlayStation Classic is available for just $20 (as a reminder, it launched at $100 MSRP just last December). You can also save on games like Rage 2 ($30), Kingdom Hearts III ($25), and Days Gone ($40). Pre-owned games are buy one, get one 50% off. Retro accessories are 15% off, and retro racing games are 25% off.

GameStop relaunched its website late last week, acknowledging that its old website layout had become “increasingly difficult” to use. The new website features more prominent visuals to help shoppers discover new games and deals, more visibility for trade-in values, a streamlined experience for buying or reserving online pickup for multiple items, and more. This is part of GameStop’s “multi-year, multi-million” dollar strategy to revamp its business plan amid falling stock prices and recent layoffs.

See all Labor Day deals at GameStop

Check out some of the best discounts available now below. Plus, don’t miss some of the other sales happening this week around Labor Day, including some great deals at Ebay.

Games

• Assassin’s Creed III Remastered — $20 ($40)
• Blood and Truth PSVR — $20 ($40)
• Rage 2 — $30 ($60)
• Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age — $35 ($50)
• Kingdom Hearts III — $25
• Kingdom Hearts III – Deluxe Edition — $40 ($60)
• Destiny 2: Forsaken – Legendary Collection — $10 ($20)
• Anthem — $10 ($20)
• Days Gone — $40 ($60)
• Mafia III — $13 ($20)
• Borderlands: The Handsome Collection — $10 ($20)
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night — $20 ($40)
• The Division 2 — $25 ($60)

Accessories

• Pokemon Waffle Maker — $10 ($35)
• Ghostbuster Collector’s Box (exclusive) — $25 ($50)
• Marvel Thor Hammer Toolbox (exclusive) — $75 ($100)
• DualShock 4 Black Wireless Controller — $30 ($60)

Collectibles

• Pop! Gears Collector’s Box (exclusive) — $40 ($80)
• Star Wars: Episode One – Darth Maul Red Lightsaber Replica — $100 ($150)
• Nerf Rival Overwatch Reaper Blaster (Wight Edition) Collector’s Pack — $100 ($130)
• Select Animal Crossing Amiibo figures — $1 ($5)

New consoles

• PlayStation Classic — $20 ($40)

Pre-owned consoles

• PS4 Pro 1TB system — $300 ($330)
• PS4 Slim 1TB system — $230 ($250)
• Xbox One X — $300 ($350)
• Nintendo Switch — $250 ($280)
• Nintendo New 3DS XL — $100 ($130)
• Nintendo New 2DS — $40 ($60)