Month: February 2020

Let the conspiracy theories commence! Rockstar Games has updated its website with new artwork, and it could be the sign of a new project. That is, of course, unless it is a clever joke from the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption developer.

On the official Rockstar Games website, hitting the tab in the corner will give you dropdown menu with sections on games, news, videos, and more. The background images that appear behind this information are new, however, and one of them is possibly hinting at a new game. The word “bullying” can be seen among several lines of text about “fighting the righteous” and “killing dreams.”

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Amazon matches rival competitors’ sales so frequently that it would almost be a surprise at this point if it didn’t do it. Once again, a day after Target launched its Save 25% Sale, Amazon has kicked off its own very similar sale, offering awesome discounts on a bunch of popular Switch, PS4, and Xbox One games. Target’s sale is for in-store pickup orders only, so Amazon’s sale is better when it comes to convenience. Stock will also probably sell out pretty quickly for the best deals, so you’ll want to get your orders in as soon as possible.

For this sale, you have to check the coupon box to get the additional savings (25%). You’ll see the final price at checkout. Though Amazon doesn’t list end dates on its sales, it will probably run until Target’s promotion ends on March 1. Amazon’s sale doesn’t feature every game offered in Target’s sale, but it still boasts a ton of great deals.

Nintendo Switch users can pick up a pair of excellent RPGs for even more excellent prices. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive drops to $37.49, which is an incredible price for a game that previously never went for under $50. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is just $22.49 (was $50).

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HBO has revealed that Westworld Season 3’s premiere episode will clock in at 1 hour and 8 minutes.

The announcement, shared via TVWeb, was accompanied by six all-new character posters for the forthcoming season, featuring Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores, Aaron Paul’s Caleb, Ed Harris’ William, Jeffrey Wright’s Bernard, Tessa Thompson’s Charlotte, and Thandie Newton’s Maeve.

Check out the all-new character posters in our gallery below:

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HBO Asia released the posters on Twitter, where the images were published in pairs alongside three separate taglines: “The real gods are coming” (Dolores and Caleb), “Welcome to the end of the game” (William and Bernard), and “You’re not the only predator here” (Charlotte and Maeve).

In 2018, Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy discussed how this newest season will be a “radical shift” from what came before, which certainly appears to be true from all of the promotional material that we’ve seen so far.

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The series’ latest trailer revealed more about Aaron Paul’s mysterious character Caleb, who is the most significant new addition to the cast. The recent footage indicated that he would be drawn into Dolores’ war for freedom as she and her fellow androids venture outside of the titular theme park into the human world.

In addition to Paul, new cast members this season include A Black Lady Sketch Show’s Lena Waithe, Black Swan’s Vincent Cassel, We Are Who We Are’s Scott Mescudi, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Marshawn Lynch, The Newsroom’s John Gallagher Jr., Stumptown’s Michael Ealy, and Sons of Anarchy’s Tommy Flanagan.

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Westworld Season 3 is set to premiere on HBO on Sunday, March 15, 2020, at 9 pm ET/PT.

For more on the hit sci-fi drama, read about the three secret trailers that diehard fans found ahead of the third season, check out Westworld Awakening – a VR game where you play as a self-aware host, and find out why the Man in Black’s story is Westworld’s greatest tragedy.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

The Monster Hunter movie has two new teaser posters, and we can exclusively reveal them on IGN.

The posters show stars Tony Jaa and Milla Jovovich respectively, each holding weaponry drawn from the game series. Jaa, who plays The Hunter, is holding the Great Hunter’s Bow, Jovovich (playing Lieutenant Artemis) totes a Great Sword, the Giant Jawblade. The desert setting they’re in is based on the look of Monster Hunter World’s Wildspire Wastes area.

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If you want one for yourself, and you find yourself in Boston, MA, both posters will be given out in miniature form at the Monster Hunter Festa event taking place at PAX East on Saturday, February 29.

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Event Horizon), the movie will alter the normal Monster Hunter storyline somewhat for the big screen. Artemis and her unit of elite soldiers are transported from our world to one filled with monsters (largely drawn from the games), and need to partner with The Hunter to survive and find a way home.

Anderson has previously stated that all of Artemis’ costumes, weapons and equipment are based directly on the games – currently everything we’ve seen hews closest to Monster Hunter World (not a surprise, given that game’s huge success).

We’ve already put together a list of 12 details Monster Hunter fans will recognise based on what we’ve seen of the film.

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The film will be rated PG-13, and arrives on September 4.

It’s far from the only movie based on a video game in development right now – we’ve got a huge list of projects in the works. It’s no surprise, given the fact that game movies are increasingly big business, and might actually be, you know, not terrible these days.

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On this week’s episode of GameSpot After Dark, IGN UK’s Simon Cardy joins the crew to talk about Granblue Fantasy Versus, the new Platinum game, and Cyberpunk and PUBG devs pulling out of PAX East.

League of Legends developer Riot Games is working on an FPS codenamed Project A – but recent details suggest it will be titled Valorant. Now, a new screenshot of the game, and several of its characters, appears to have leaked.

Earlier this week, RespawnFirst pointed to a trademark for Valorant filed by Riot, as well as a Twitter account created at around the same time as the trademark, @PlayValorant. The account is followed by multiple pro gamers and FPS streamers despite being a next-to empty page.

Yesterday, a Project A fan account also posted what appears to be a leaked screenshot of the game featuring a character select screen for a character called Sage:

Most parts of this #ProjectA screenshot have been shared on various pages, here is the the full image in the highest resolution we could find!
L: Three character names [Brimstone; Sage; Viper], type [support; defense; offense?]
B: Chat and avatars
R: Sage‘s ability descriptions pic.twitter.com/3B24nEZQCC

— ValorantTheGame – #ProjectA News & Leaks (@ValorantTheGame) February 27, 2020

That screenshot, if legitimate, also appears to confrim characters called Viper and Brimstone, alongside a number of character portraits.

This design for Sage appears to match up with previously-shown Project A footage (below) of a character that uses a green orb to summon walls and resurrect teammates. Sage’s abilities shown in the image match with that footage, and place her as functioning something like Overwatch’s Mercy and Moira characters.

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Riot announced Project A – a PC hero shooter unconnected to the universe of League of Legends – at the end of last year. The game will be set on a near-future Earth, and will take the form of a 5v5 shooter with a search-and-destroy mode. Former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro HenryG said it felt most similar to CS:GO in action.

It’s not the only secretive game in development at Riot (which, for many years, only worked on League of Legends) – a long-rumoured fighting game, Project L is also in the works, alongside several others.

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It’s PAX East time again, and while some big names pulled out over coronavirus concerns, there’s still an overwhelming number of games and sites to take in. Probably the most popular, based on early observations, is Nintendo’s incredible Animal Crossing booth.

Take a look at the PAX East Animal Crossing booth in the gallery below, although photos don’t really do it justice:

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Not only is the booth a faithful recreation of the world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there are chances to get your photo take with Isabelle or Tom Nook, as well as other parts of the Animal Crossing experience, like fishing and bug catching.

Yesterday, PAX East’s first day, had both the line for game demos and the line for photos closed due to overwhelming demand from those in attendance. It’s easily the most popular booth at PAX East so far, but today is only the second day.

Gearbox had its main theater panel yesterday, showing off the new DLC Love, Guns and Tentacles, as well as a surprise appearance by Borderlands movie director Eli Roth, who said he dreams of casting real-life Borderlands cosplayers as psychos in the movie, and then killing them gruesomely (for the movie).

 

Following the Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay live stream at PAX East, a barrage of news about the upcoming title has hit the Internet. Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke spoke openly, on stream and to various publications, about the Early Access release of Baldur’s Gate 3 and about how companions will work in the game

“The reason we’re selling it through Early Access is we have this many permutations, this many systems that are all working together,” Larian’s CEO Swen Vincke told VG247 during the PAX East livestream. “So it’s going to take us some time to get everything to a state where we can say ‘okay, now it’s robust and it works in every single fashion.'”

While more companions are set to be released at a later date, the five available with Early Access are as follows:

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Onward, Disney Pixar’s new movie, opens on March 6, and as is Pixar tradition a short cartoon will air beforehand. This time, however, the short will not be from one of Pixar’s internal teams–instead, Disney is making use of its newly acquired Fox brands and putting a Simpsons short ahead of the movie.

Playdate with Destiny, the new Simpsons short, has been announced on the show’s official Instagram. It will focus on Maggie, and looks to be set in a beautiful area of Europe, a coastal town with beautiful architecture. You can see the post, which teases the new short, below. Further details will hopefully follow.

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This review contains full spoilers for Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Season 7, Episode 2. If you need a refresher on where we left off, here’s our review for Season 7, Episode 1.

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Disney+ may still be an empty wasteland as far as new, exclusive Marvel content goes, but never let it be said the service isn’t giving Star Wars fans exactly what they signed up for. The second episode of The Clone Wars: Season 7 is another reminder of what was lost when this series was canceled back in 2013, and why it’s such a gift to Star Wars fans that it’s finally returned.

If these first two Season 7 installments are any indication, the final season may be more akin to a trilogy of movies than 12 serialized episodes. The season premiere introduced us to the oddball clone commandos of the Bad Batch and set the stage for the surprise return of Echo, and this episode picks up right where “Bad Batch” left off. There is a certain sense of familiarity or “been there, done that” to the latter half of “A Distant Echo.” Both episodes have focused a great deal of screen time on Rex and the gang navigating Separatist outposts and gunning down legions of droids. Even having Anakin tag along for this second mission doesn’t shake up the formula as much as you might expect.

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To be fair, that problem is definitely more pronounced watching the two episodes back-to-back rather than spaced apart. As much as the idea of Disney dropping all 12 episodes in one bingeable delivery sounds appealing, and as much as this arc is beginning to feel like a movie broken into four parts, there is a lot to be said for the weekly, serialized approach.

Even if Anakin’s role in the mission itself is pretty straightforward, the early portions of “A Distant Echo” really take advantage of the characters in this late, “nearly upon Episode III” timeframe. The scene with Anakin surreptitiously contacting Padme while Rex plays lookout is a real treat. There’s a nice blend of comedy and tragedy fueling this scene. Seeing Padme in the uniform she wears on Mustafar and reflexively clutching her stomach while bidding farewell to her husband is a poignant reminder of the horrible fate awaiting these two lovers. It’s also a reminder that, among other things, The Clone Wars has actively improved the prequel trilogy by actually making the Anakin/Padme romance feel genuine.

There’s a lot to unpack with this scene. When the Anakin/Padme shot first appeared in the Season 7 trailer, Padme’s pose and apparent knowledge of her pregnancy made it seem like this moment was happening during the course of Episode III. That doesn’t seem to be the case, given that Anakin never acknowledges what’s literally staring him in the face. The hope is that this final season might find some room to explore Padme’s reaction to her pregnancy and the struggle over when and how to tell her husband. Similarly, the brief Obi-Wan appearance makes it clear he knew more than we realized about Anakin and Padme’s romance prior to Episode III. It would be very interesting to learn more about his thoughts on the subject, though it doesn’t seem as though this season is going to be particularly Obi-Wan-heavy.

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Season 7 is definitely The Rex and Ahsoka Show by all appearances. Accordingly, we continue to see a lot of development for Rex as he grapples with the tragedy of losing Echo and the possibly false hope of seeing him again. Rex is easily the most fully realized clone character in the series, and this season is already doing a fine job of completing his arc and bridging that gap with Rebels. This is the other area where Anakin’s presence comes in handy. This episode highlights the bond the two have formed over the course of the war, while showing us that even a clone can have trouble separating the mission from their personal desires. You have to assume the reason Anakin is so bothered by Rex’s behavior is because he sees so much of himself in his faithful Captain.

And if the run-and-gun mission is more of the same, at least we get ample payoff with the reveal Echo is indeed alive and being used as a tool by the Separatists. Echo’s revamped character design is haunting – all pasty white skin and emaciated flesh and a pair of metal legs that look a whole lot like those of a certain stubborn Sith Lord. Echo is a tangible reminder of how the clones have been chewed up and spit out by the galactic war machine, and it’ll be interesting to see how Rex and the members of Bad Batch reconcile that in the second half of this arc.