What Hitman 3 Might Tell Us About IO Interactive’s James Bond Game

Hitman 3 stands as the culmination of IO Interactive’s reboot of the series, which took stealth and assassinations into a bunch of intricate, elaborate sandboxes. Though the Hitman series is done (for now), we know IOI’s next move: a James Bond game, tentatively titled Project 007. The details on what exactly that game will entail are pretty thin at the moment, but with its three most recent Hitman games essentially forming one big, expansive package, we have a lot of material through which to search for clues as to what the developer might have in mind for an interactive take on 007.

We’ve played a ton of the World of Assassination series, and some aspects of its levels seem like they could work pretty well in a 007 game. At the very least, we’ve got some ideas about which we can speculate wildly. Take a look below at our notions of how Hitman might inform James Bond when players turn in their ICA 19 for a Walther PPK.

Unconventional Solutions (To The Problem Of Killing Guys)

Most Bond adventures start with 007 visiting Q to pick up whatever new gadgets the scientists working for MI-6 have devised. So we always see Bond heading into a mission with things like a watch that hides a cutting laser or a car with an ejector seat. The thing is, those items rarely get used in a straightforward way. The ejector seat isn’t to save Bond from a wreck but to get rid of a henchman who has Bond at gunpoint.

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Warner Bros. Now Has A Patent For Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis System

The Nemesis System used in the games Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War is one of the coolest open-world gameplay hooks we’ve ever seen, letting you form rivalries against non-player characters based on your previous actions. If you were hoping other games would implement it, however, that will be a lot harder to do now, as Warner Bros. has patented it.

As spotted by IGN, this week the US Patent and Trademark Office announced that a patent for the Nemesis System would be valid as of February 23. However, the page listing the issuing date is not available online at the moment.

This followed years of attempting to patent the system that went back to shortly after the release of Shadow of Mordor. A filing from 2016 described a system “for managing non-player characters and power centers in a computer game [that] are based on character hierarchies and individualized correspondences between each character’s traits or rank and events that involve other non-player characters or objects.”

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Grandmother And Grandson Use Xbox To Finally Connect

It’s never too late to learn how to play video games–or connect with family you’ve never truly gotten to know. That was the case for Mary, a woman from Bolton, England who finally began to learn about her grandson Jason via Xbox Live.

In a video posted by Xbox on February 5, grandmother Mary and grandson Jason–who live hours apart and have never really known each other–finally get to learn about each other through gaming. Mary received an Xbox Series S so she could play Minecraft with Jason, who ran her through how to use the controller and play the game over voice chat.

Over the course of several weeks, Jason learned about Mary’s life, including her large family that included five siblings. Meanwhile, Mary learned how to race across the English countryside in Forza Horizon 4, and she also explored the wide-open water with Jason in Sea of Thieves. It seemed to help her fend off loneliness during the ongoing pandemic. With lockdown in various parts of the world approaching 12 months now, that human connection is extremely important.

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Nintendo Documentary Series Reportedly Set To Air March 1

If you were worried you’d have to go more than a few months without a new video game documentary, worry no longer. A new five-part Nintendo documentary is reportedly planned for a March 1 premiere date, and it will be free for everyone to watch.

According to Deadline, Playing with Power: The Nintendo Story will premiere on Crackle, the ad-supported streaming service previously owned by Sony. Written and directed by Jeremy Snead and narrated by Sean Astin, who previously worked together on Video Games: The Movie, the series will tackle over a century of Nintendo’s history and it was developed over the course of four years.

The series includes interviews with a number of industry figures, including former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime and head of Xbox Phil Spencer, as well as celebrities like Wil Wheaton.

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PS5 Version Of Final Fantasy 14 Revealed, PS4 Owners Upgrade For Free

The Final Fantasy XIV announcement showcase provided a wealth of new information for players of Square Enix’s MMORPG, including details on the upcoming Endwalker expansion set to launch in Fall 2021. Toward the end of the presentation, it was also revealed that a full PlayStation 5 version of FFXIV is in the works. It will take advantage of the new generation of hardware and it’ll hit open beta on April 13 this year.

Although the PS4 version of FFXIV can be played on PS5 through backwards compatibility, this new version features performance and graphical perks. You’ll be able to choose between two graphics options–a full native 4K resolution mode and a frame rate priority mode that uses 1440p resolution. Either way, the PS5 version will benefit from much faster loading speeds, performance stability, and overall visual enhancements.

Continual improvements to graphics and performance are planned to be rolled out in subsequent updates and patches. No official release date was given, although it was said that full service will begin after open beta ends.

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Final Fantasy 14 Patch 5.5 Detailed, A Two-Part Update Leading Into Endwalker

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker was revealed during the FFXIV announcement showcase–it’s the next expansion for the MMORPG, and it came with a teaser trailer and several details outlined by director and producer Naoki Yoshida. While there are wild implications for where the story is going next, that wasn’t all that the FFXIV team had in store. A new Live Letter from the Producer stream followed the showcase to detail FFXIV patch 5.5, which will lead into the Endwalker expansion.

It’s a two-part update that called Death Unto Dawn and will set players up for the Endwalker story. The first part will go live on April 13, which lines up with the PlayStation 5 open beta for FFXIV, and the second part is set for the end of May, which comes after the digital FFXIV Fan Fest event (scheduled for May 15 and 16). The following details may contain spoilers for those not caught up in FFXIV’s main story.

Screenshots shared in the Live Letter stream show a gathering of several major characters who represent the various regions across FFXIV’s world, and this is likely about the events that happened at the very end of the 5.4 storyline. The new main story dungeon was also teased–it’s called Palgth’an and looks like it could be the beginning of destruction across Eorzea. Palgth’an is compatible with the Trust system so you can take AI characters with you.

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Marvel’s Blade Movie Reboot Starring Mahershala Ali Gets A Writer

Marvel has a huge slate of movies on the way over the next few years, but one of the most anticipated movies on the list is the upcoming Blade film. Blade is still a ways out, but Marvel has settled on a writer for the superhero horror film.

Stacy Osei-Kuffour will write Blade for Marvel Studios, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Osei-Kuffour worked previously as a writer and story editor on HBO’s critically-acclaimed Watchmen and Amazon Prime’s Nazi-hunting series Hunters. Marvel first revealed the project at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, where it also revealed that actor Mahershala Ali (Luke Cage, House of Cards, Moonlight) will step into the role once occupied by Wesley Snipes.

THR reports that Marvel spent the last six month searching for a writer before tapping Osei-Kuffour, and that Ali was directly involved. The team seriously considered only Black writers, focusing on diversity and representation. Osei-Kuffour becomes the first Black woman to write a Marvel film (Nia DaCosta will be the studio’s first Black woman director with Captain Marvel 2.)

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