The European Medicines Agency approves use of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine for people across the bloc.
Destiny 2 Players Concerned About Bungie’s Plans for PC and Console Crossplay
Bungie has left members of the Destiny 2 community concerned after publicly targeting changes to the game ahead of the addition of full crossplay later this year – possibly signalling that it will merge mouse-and-keyboard and controller players in matchmaking.
In the latest Bungie blogpost, senior community manager dmg04 writes, “This Season, we’re making some targeted changes to weapon archetypes that need some love as well as beginning some preparations for crossplay.”
The major change involves increasing recoil on certain weapon types solely for mouse-and-keyboard players, bringing the level of recoil closer to that of the same weapons when used on controller.
While this might seem a relatively small change, the mention that the move is being made with crossplay in mind has led community members to wonder if it means that Destiny 2 PvP will matchmake a mixed pool of PC and console players by default, or even as the only option.
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It plays into longstanding problems for players across platforms, with mouse-and-keyboard play seen as offering an innate advantage, particularly in shooters (although Destiny 2’s heavy aim-assist for controller players complicates that theory a little in this case). Cheating is also generally more prevalent on PC versions of games. Many current crossplay games offer controller-using players the choice to play only with other controller players, but Bungie hasn’t specified Destiny 2’s approach as yet.
With crossplay due later this year but details still somewhat hazy, players are speculating what approach Bungie will take – and even trying to alter the developer’s course. At time of writing, one of the most popular posts on the popular DestinyTheGame subreddit is titled ‘Do NOT mix the console and PC PvP player pool (by default)‘.
“These are exactly my thoughts as well,” replies 1Soulbrotha, “I was really nervous to read about the recoil changes for PC. If they go the route of everyone being lumped into the same queues for PVP then this coming recoil change is just a lazy way to ‘balance’ things.”
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While many console players are concerned about being put at a disadvantage, PC players are also concerned about Bungie’s balances impacting the game they know. In a separate thread, SilverCervy writes, “It just creates a situation where the game has to be dumbed down for some to make things more fair for others. PC players should not have to deal with gameplay nerfs for the sake of console players.”
We’ve contacted Bungie for comment.
Destiny 2’s Beyond Light expansion already added cross-generation play within console families, with the promise of full crossplay to come. We awarded Beyond Light a 7/10 review, calling it a “solid expansion to the ever-evolving shooter that you know and love, but falls prey to the same content scarcity and repetitious grind it’s always had”
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Coronavirus: EU confirms export controls on vaccines
The controls will apply to vaccines made within the bloc, amid a shortfall in deliveries.
Halo Infinite Will Be A “First-Class” Experience On PC
Halo Infinite is set to launch across Xbox Series X, Series S, Xbox One, and PC this coming Fall, with 343 Industries saying that the latter will be a “first-class” experience.
Unlike every other Halo game before it, Halo Infinite is being developed for PC in tandem with its console versions, allowing 343 Industries to apply lessons already learnt about the platform immediately. David Price, lead weapons designer at 343 Industries, explained that the Master Chief Collection’s rollout on PC has helped the studio with Infinite’s development.
“A major goal for Halo Infinite on PC is to hit that top tier PC experience that is as good or better than other shooters,” explained Price “Having MCC on PC is also a great help. It allows us to get player feedback on a live PC Halo game.”
Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 Remastered On PC And Xbox Means You Have No Excuses
It’s only been about three years since I had my first encounter with the Yakuza franchise, but it seems a lot longer. Many folks, including myself, picked up the series with Yakuza 0 since it was the perfect entry point to an ongoing story, one that had trouble showing off its strengths to a new audience. Since then, Sega and developer RGG Studio have made great strides in building a new life for Yakuza with the Kiwami remakes and remastering of everything else, to bring the whole series to platforms it was never on before.
With the release of the Yakuza Remastered Collection (which includes Yakuza 3, 4, and 5) for PC and Xbox consoles, the effort is nearly complete. It is a bit odd to think of Yakuza finding its footing on PC and Xbox–part of me still thinks of series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu as one of the faces for PlayStation. But I share the joy that owners of these platforms, eager to continue down Kiryu’s path, have that opportunity.
Technically Speaking
The good news, too, is that these Yakuza remasters run incredibly well on both PC and Xbox. It’s not too much of a surprise considering that this collection rolled out on PS4 starting in 2019 with great technical results. While these are three PS3-era games with some dated assets and compressed cutscenes, each one is running much higher resolutions and frame rates, with better lighting and finer graphical detail to bring them closer to the modern entries.
Friday The 13th Producer Is Suing Studios Over Profits
Friday the 13th producer and co-creator Sean Cunningham is suing distributors Warner and Paramount. Cunningham claims that the studios have “systematically misaccounted” how much the money the slasher franchise has made over the decades.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cunningham has filed the complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court. He states that Warner and Paramount have been guilty of what is commonly known “Hollywood accounting.” This is where a studio claims a movie has made far less money than it actually has by deducting additional fees and under-reporting elements like merchandising and TV revenue. As a result, profit participants, such as producers, get paid less when the movie goes into profit. Cunningham claims that the series has made more than $129 million.
This is the second Friday the 13th lawsuit that Cunningham has filed in recent years. In 2016, Cunningham sued Victor Miller, who wrote the screenplay for the original movie back in 1980. Cunningham argues that Miller was just a writer for hire and has no claim on the rights to the story or characters in that first film, while Miller is seeking ownership of them. THR states that a ruling on this case is “pending.”
Game Of Thrones: Original Daenerys Actress Talks About Why She Quit After The Ill-Fated Pilot
Before Emilia Clarke signed on to play Daenerys in Game of Thrones, HBO hired a different actress, Tamzin Merchant, to play the role in the pilot. Merchant hasn’t said much about her experience as the Mother of Dragons, but she is now discussing how it all went down.
She told EW that she had a bad feeling about the Game of Thrones pilot from the beginning. As fans know, the pilot was something of a disaster. She told the publication that filming the pilot was “a really great lesson” because she learned to pay more attention to her instincts.
“It was an affirmation about listening to my instincts and following them, because I tried to back out of that situation and, during the contract process, I did back out,” she said. “I was talked back into it by some persuasive people. Then I found myself naked and afraid in Morocco and riding a horse that was clearly much more excited to be there than I was.”
Star Wars Battlefront Soundtrack On Spotify Now, Battlefront 2 Coming Next Week
Star Wars is known for its iconic soundtracks, and now you can start listening to the tracks from the two recent Star Wars Battlefront games. The first one is already available, and the next from Battlefront 2 will follow on February 5.
The Star Wars Battlefront album consists of 13 tracks with a total runtime of roughly an hour and a half. It doesn’t include themes you’d recognize from the Star Wars movies, like the Imperial March or Duel of the Fates, but the arrangements definitely share some of its orchestral action vibe.
The announcement came from DICE producer Ben Walke, who also noted the drop date for the next soundtrack.
Biomutant: Here’s Why the Developers Have Been Quiet for So Long
After an extended period of being almost silent, developer Experiment 101 recently announced a May release date for Biomutant, its long-awaited open-world action game. That silence was for good reason – studio head Stefan Ljungqvist tells us that parts of the game have become bigger and more complex, but with only 20 people to make all that extra work happen. Rather than ship a buggy game, Ljungqvist says Experiment 101 has been taking its time to quietly build a truly finished product.
“It’s a big game, a big bite for 20 people to chew off,” says Ljungqvist. While Biomutant’s map may be just eight square kilometers, it’s packed with warring tribes, conquerable outposts, strange creatures to fight, and a protagonist who can mutate into new forms to overcome obstacles. As we’ve said before, Biomutant looks bananas, and it’s many moving parts are a challenge for the studio behind them.
That 20-person team, established by ex-Avalanche Studios employees, is determined to stay small. But while that helps keep the studio nimble, it also imposes some restrictions. “At the end of the project, there’s only a certain amount of bugs that you can physically fix during the course of the day,” says Ljungqvist. And that’s what much of Biomutant’s last year of development has been: bug squashing.
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“It’s been a huge amount of work for QA, because it’s not easy in an open-world game to find them,” explains Ljungqvist. “And then once they’ve been found, we have to fix them, and that’s put some additional challenge on us, being a small team.”
Ljungqvist is realistic about being able to ship Biomutant completely bug free – a game with so many systems in its sandbox world is difficult to deliver without the odd problem – but he wants it to arrive in players’ hands as solid as possible. “Any game is going to ship with [smaller] bugs, but I’m talking about bugs that are truly disruptive to the game experience,” he says. “We don’t want to ship with that. I think that’s what caused us to just wait until we were ready to do it.”
Quality assurance isn’t the only thing that’s been happening at Experiment 101 over the last year, though. Biomutant has, well, mutated in that period, too. “If you look at the script, by the end of 2019 I think it was about 80-85,000 words. Pretty much a novel,” recalls Ljungqvist. “But in the final game, it’s closer to 250,000 words. That was a big thing, to wrap that script.”
Those new words are scattered across many different areas of the game, which in turn has demanded further development work on those features. Ljungqvist notes that, as a result of the expanded script, players can expect a reactive karma system called Aura, which will change NPC dialogue based on your light or dark allegiance. There’s also a better tutorial system, which more effectively communicates Biomutant’s overflowing toy box of ideas. On top of the additional script forming the basis of these features, the game will be available in 13 different languages, 10 of which are fully voiced, and so localisation is required on all those added words. It’s safe to say it’s been a busy year for Experiment 101.
Ljungqvist has been careful to pace the studio, though. “I’ve been doing this for quite some time,” he says, referring to his almost decade-long tenure at Avalanche Studios. “I myself was burned out. I learned a lot on those themes, on those subjects. I learned to recognize it.” This goes some way to explain the studio’s ‘ready when it’s done’ approach, and lack of constant public updates. It’s an approach that has been supported by publisher THQ Nordic, Ljungqvist says, at a level he’s “never had before”.
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The lack of pressure from THQ Nordic to ship Biomutant has been a blessing, as the negative outcome of crunch would be destructive to both individual staff and the studio overall, Ljungqvist explains. “I mean, the studio, we are 20 people and we can’t afford to have [staff] leave the studio, or be destroyed during development. That would be devastating.”
“For certain pushes, you might do it in a limited form,” he acknowledges. “But the most important thing is you get paid, which is not common in our industry, crazily enough. And also you get ‘recap time’, because you have to have rest. If you’re just doing this constantly for 12-14 hours a day, you will eventually have to pay for it.”
“I think it’s part of the DNA of the studio to not do it,” he concludes. “That’s why I think for us, if we do it, it’s controlled, and it has been rare. I guess now moving into the release, we’re prepared to do it for some days, but it’s not the constant thing. It will kill you.”
With the announcement of the May 25 release date, some fans may have been surprised to see that PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are not listed as platforms that Biomutant will launch on. It is, afterall, easy to assume Experiment 101’s silence and the continued development was due to the team preparing Biomutant for next-generation systems. Ljungqvist confirms this is not the case – Biomutant is a ‘last-gen’ game – but there’s good reason for that.
“When we developed the game, we lead on the last-gen,” says Ljungqvist. “And if you look at it from a development perspective, that’s really important because it’s easier to scale up than to scale down.”
“I think for us, as a team, we would like as many as possible to be able to play the game,” he adds, noting the currently small install bases for PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. “So, if we just release it for ‘next-gen’, I think that would not have been a good way forward.”
Despite this, Biomutant still takes advantage of high-spec hardware. “There is a high-end version of Biomutant already made for PC high-end versions,” Ljungqvist says. “I mean, the game already in some form exists in what you would expect on the current-gen platforms.”
“Are you going to be able to play it on those consoles?” he asks himself of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, teasing the future of Biomutant. “Definitely. We will see moving forward what’s going to happen, but you will definitely be able to play it on those consoles.”
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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.
Requiem For A Dream’s Aronofsky and Leto Teaming For Adrift
Actor Jared Leto and director Darren Aronofsky will reportedly be reuniting to work together on Adrift, an upcoming movie currently in pre-production according to Deadline. The pair arguably helped launch each other’s careers in the 2000 psychological drama Requiem for a Dream–a cautionary tale about drug addiction that doesn’t pull any punches–and Adrift would be their first re-teaming since that film.
Like Requiem for a Dream, which was an adaptation of the 1978 novel of the same name, Adrift also has literary roots. The film is based on a short story by Koji Suzuki, who wrote The Ring, so it’s safe to guess that Adrift on the big screen’s vibe will be generally unsettling and at sea.
The story Adrift comes from a collection of short stories whose title translates into English as Dark Water. Each of the book’s short stories dives into a different atrocity committed by humans against themselves–which, knowing Aronofsky and his established fascination with the same in his films, should be fertile ground as inspiration for another movie.