dokasi.com

“Home Sweet Home,” the first episode of The Walking Dead’s extended 10th season, was released Sunday, February 21 on AMC+ — one week ahead of its Sunday, February 28 premiere on AMC. This is a mostly spoiler-free review for anyone who’s watched the episode’s early debut or wants a hint of what to expect before the show’s cable return. 

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

After COVID delays bumped The Walking Dead’s original Season 10 finale, “A Certain Doom,” by several months, the franchise spun into its own form of damage control. By the time the fall rolled around, AMC announced that, in lieu of Season 11, which would have been in production and airing episodes already, it would extend the show’s 10th season by six episodes (while also announcing the official end of the show and a Carol/Daryl spinoff in development).

Though there’s no more Whisperer War to speak of, these six episodes are meant to act as a creative bridge for our characters as they sort out a bunch of their angry, resentful, complicated emotions before heading into Season 11. That’s not to say there won’t be some interesting things happening during this mini-run, but all in all, these arcs might just be the things that usually happen off-screen, in the weeks and months we tend to skip over between seasons. At the very least, when the dust settles, we’ll have gotten some long-awaited Negan flashbacks.

Speaking of Negan, “Home Sweet Home,” the episode that kicks off this “Season 10C,” draws us back into the Maggie/Negan drama a bit, without any clear resolution. When we last saw these two together it was right before star Lauren Cohan ditched the show to try her hand at a less dour, more traditional network TV adventure series (the short-lived Whiskey Cavalier on ABC). Back in Season 9, Maggie visited Negan in his prison cell with the intent to kill him but instead offered him mercy.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/01/21/the-walking-dead-season-10-official-trailer”]

Now Maggie’s back and Negan is free, or “status pending,” and she’s none too pleased about the situation. Given that we’ll be dropping into Negan’s backstory over the next few weeks, it appears as though this, along with some upcoming Daryl and Carol drama, will be a running focus for these bridge chapters – because nothing ultimately gets solved here in “Home Sweet Home.”

We do get some new villains, who sort of arrive out of nowhere and are an integral part of Maggie’s saga and where she’s been for the past few years. These baddies also wind up being a bit of a “to be continued” situation, though they do provide us with some big action moments to help spice up this somewhat sour midseason opener. Maggie’s story, and where she’s been, doesn’t feel worth the lengthy absence, plus the anger she feels toward Negan (which on paper is totally understandable) feels so distant from where we are narratively these days. The “All Out War”-arc not only feels far removed from viewers in real-time, but in show years it’s even further.

Most of this episode involves a pissed-off Maggie getting distracted by a much more pressing and dangerous threat than her Negan outrage. She and Daryl have some heart-to-hearts, but Daryl’s a much better listener than he is a compelling conversationalist. The plot of “Home Sweet Home” – which is kind of thin and dredges up an old conflict for another go-round – would definitely have never cut it as a Season 11 premiere. And as an indicator of what the rest of these limbo episodes might offer, it seems to suggest we’ll be getting a lot of meditative moments of reproach and repair; which is part of the usual DNA of the series anyhow, but maybe not stretched out like this as a type of postscript.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=the-walking-dead-best-daryl-and-carol-moments&captions=true”]

“Home Sweet Home” does involve Angel Theory’s Kelly a bit more than usual, who’s one of the many underserved characters in this show’s massive ensemble (honestly, most of them come from Magda’s group that arrived in during Season 9). Connie’s still missing (as actress Lauren Ridloff dropped away briefly to film Marvel’s Eternals) so Kelly and Daryl, intermittently, are hunting down clues for her. This doesn’t mean Kelly’s all of a sudden a nurtured character on the series, but it’s still good to see them get more screen time than usual.

Usually, the anticipation of where The Walking Dead is headed and how that lines up with the comic series keeps many fans (still) glued to this show. The crux of this is the enjoyment of seeing new adversaries, obstacles, and tragedies. And we’re currently headed towards the comics’ big final endgame setting – The Commonwealth. The new villains introduced here in “Home Sweet Home,” who are expected to get taken care of before Season 11 officially starts, feel fairly tacked on. Though, to be fair, you can’t really expect the show to run for six episodes purely on character stoicism and/or rumination, so it makes sense to have some stalkers out there. None of them look as cool though as Maggie’s cohort, Elijah (Okea Eme-Akwari), who seems to operate like The Walking Dead’s Snake Eyes at this point, downing foes with Japanese kama blades.

The fear, with these new antagonists, is that Maggie and Negan’s eventual reconciliation, or their version of it, will come via battling these bogeymen – which is exactly how Negan smoothed things over, or his version of it, with everyone else in Alexandria. It’s not the most terrible trope in the world from a storytelling standpoint, but it’s a well that The Walking Dead has pulled water from way too many times at this point.

Multiple reports have come out detailing Google Stadia’s troubles that include everything from internal struggles on the development team to “tens of millions” of dollars spent on AAA games like Red Dead Redemption 2 to  development roadblocks created by Google itself.

Bloomberg reported that, despite all the hype built up by Google for Stadia’s reveal, gamers around the world were disappointed. This led to a lackluster launch and Stadia is said to have “missed its targets for sales of controllers and monthly active users by hundreds of thousands.”

Not even games from some of the best publishers like Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive Software could help turn the tide for Stadia. Those games didn’t come cheap either, as sources from Bloomberg say it cost “tens of millions” of dollars to bring games like Red Dead Redemption 2 to the platform.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/11/22/google-stadia-review”]

Wired also share some of the struggles at Stadia that ultimately led to the closure of Google Stadia’s internal studios. Many of these issues stemmed from Google creating roadblocks for these employees who were trying to staff up to build AAA games.

Google is known for its long and involved hiring process that can take anywhere from six to nine months. On top of that, Google had to change its hiring standards as it was looking to bring in game developers and hadn’t traditionally hired for those positions.

While there were around 150 employees impacted by the closure of Stadia’s internal studios, two sources had said the goal was to bring in over 2,000 over five years.

Above and beyond hiring concerns, sources discuss that “Stadia’s game development process felt stapled on.” Many of the developers felt that “Google wasn’t funding games to sell games; it was funding games to sell Stadia.”

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/17/google-stadia-gm-says-microsofts-bethesda-acquisition-partly-responsible-for-stadia-studio-closures-ign-news”]

Instead of giving the devs the freedom to truly create what they wished, they were told to “design prototypes that showcased Stadia technology like Google’s cloud computing capacity or State Share.”

These issues were undoubtedly frustrating, but many felt secure in their positions at Google, with high paychecks and what felt like little fear of being laid off, which can be a rampant problem at other studios. Then the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Following the start of the pandemic, Google implemented a hiring freeze for all departments except a “small number of strategic areas where users and businesses rely on Google for ongoing support, and where our growth is critical to their success.” Gaming was not one of these areas.

“If the company was OK putting us on a hiring freeze, they were also OK with damaging our ability to build content,” says one source. “The studio was not yet fully formed and ready to produce games. That put on the brakes, and was a statement. We interpreted it as a lack of commitment from Google to make content.”

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/02/08/the-unexpected-reason-terraria-on-stadia-is-canceled-ign-now”]

In late January, Google’s vice president of Stadia and GM Phil Harrison e-mailed employees and praised the platform’s technology, and said that “Stadia Games and Entertainment had made ‘great progress building a diverse and talented team and establishing a strong line up of Stadia exclusive games.'”

Five days later, Harrison gathered the employees and let them know the internal studios were shutting down.

VGC reported on a few of Stadia’s possible cancelled projects and proposals, and one of them was allegedly an episodic horror game from Kojima Productions. That particular proposal was said to have been “blocked by Stadia GM Phil Harrison last year.” Another was said to be from Shenmue’s Yu Suzuki.

A sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet was also said to be in the works by the team formerly known as Typhoon, and a multiplayer action game codenamed Frontier was being developed and was led by former Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate producer Francois Pelland.

[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=all-2021-games-with-confirmed-release-dates&captions=true”]

A Google Stadia spokesperson responded to VGC’s story, saying that it does not “have anything, nor have announced anything, with Kojima or Yu Suzuki.”

“We talk to partners all the time in situations that don’t result in a project or even a proposal,” The spokesperson said of the alleged Kojima project.” This is very common. Speculating that two parties that speak regularly in this industry leads to proposals or otherwise, is inaccurate.”

Even though Stadia’s internal studios have been closed, Google has reassured those that own Stadia that the platform will get “more than 100 games” in 2021.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.