Xbox Dashboard Won’t Get Facebook Gaming Ads, Microsoft Confirms

After Microsoft announced it was shutting down Mixer and moving to work more closely with Facebook Gaming, some wondered what impact this could have on the Xbox dashboard.

Currently, the dashboard on Xbox One contains advertisements and links to Mixer streams. Some were wondering if Facebook Gaming streams will replace them in the carousel. That won’t be the case, according to Xbox’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

The Last Us Part 2 Ending Explained – Here’s What Happened And Why

Warning: This post obviously contains massive spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2. If you’re not finished yet, we recommend you turn back now.

The Last of Us Part 2 is a story about obsession, anguish, trauma, and vengeance. It centers on the inability of some of its characters to let go of their pain, and the massive harm they do to themselves and others as a result.

But even though the revenge aspect of The Last of Us Part 2 is pretty straightforward, its structure is anything but. The game uses multiple flashbacks to alter your perception of characters and events as they unfold. Which people know what information, and at what time, changes how The Last of Us 2 wants you to see and interpret its characters. Most of the twists in the story are flashbacks that work to change your perception of the characters when given new context.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Universal Gave Tarantino an Unusual Pitch for Hateful Eight and It Didn’t Go Well

Prolific director and cinephile Quentin Tarantino was originally pitched on the idea of releasing his Oscar-winning Hateful Eight film on iPhones instead of theaters by NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell.

In a new profile piece on Shell by The Wall Street Journal (via IndieWire), the CEO recalls a time when Tarantino was looking for financing for The Hateful Eight, which was difficult at the time, due to the director’s desire to shoot the film in 70mm and retrofit theaters so they would be able to properly display the movie.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Jeff Shell, at the time the head of the Universal studio, voiced his own pitch. ‘What if we released it on iPhones?’ he said. ‘Great,’ Mr. Tarantino replied, and stormed out of the meeting.”

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Tarantino would end up working with The Weinstein Company on The Hateful Eight, with the film going on to gross over $155 million at the worldwide box office and earn iconic composer Ennio Morricone his first Academy Award.

While Shell’s pitch may seem a bit unorthodox, the NBCUniversal boss has recently found financial success in the digital streaming space by thinking outside the box with the debut of Trolls World Tour, which made close to $100 million in online rental fees after skipping a theatrical release. This unexpected on-demand premiere sparked a feud between Universal and major movie theater chains, with AMC and Regal Entertainment refusing to play Universal movies once their cinemas reopen.

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David Griffin still watches DuckTales in his pajamas with a cereal bowl in hand. He’s also the TV Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter.

IGN Expo Day 5: Everything Announced and Revealed – Summer of Gaming

Day 5 of IGN Expo has wrapped up and there were some new reveals, announcements, and a bunch of Avengers. We’ve collected today’s biggest news, trailers, and more below in case you missed anything.

A special bonus Expo Day to accompany the big Avengers War Table livestream. It wasn’t all just Iron Man and Thor though. There was a first look at some new gameplay for titles like Fall Guys, and as always we are still supporting important causes like the World Health Oragnization and The Bail Project which you can still donate to at donate.ign.com.

What did you think about IGN Expo Day 5? – and IGN Expo as a whole? What was your favorite thing announced during the show? Let us know with a Yap below!

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Avengers War Table

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Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix finally revealed new details about Marvel’s Avengers. IGN was able to interview the developers to find out more about Avengers including a deep dive into its story and gameplay.

Cartel Tycoon – Exclusive Trailer Reveal

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Build up your cartel empire in this new management sim. Create a base of operations and expand your criminal empire in this new trailer.

Dreamscaper – Exclusive Gameplay Feature Deep Dive

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Dreamscaper is a new action-RPG roguelike where our hero ventures into an ever-changing dream world to fight dark forces. The deep dive shows off the combat, story, and world of Dreamscaper coming to Steam Early Access.

Shadow Arena – New Hero Exclusive Trailer Reveal

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The 40-player action arena game announced a new character today named Lahn. Watch the trailer above.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter Ones – Exclusive Behind the Scenes Look

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FrogWare provided a behind-the-scenes look at its newest Sherlock Holmes mystery game.

Surgeon Simulator 2 – Exclusive Gameplay

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IGN revealed gameplay for Surgeon Simulator 2, the madcap surgery “sim” where you don’t practice a lot of real surgery.

Fall Guys – Exclusive Gameplay

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Fall Guys shared new gameplay for the upcoming game show-like multiplayer bonanza.

No Place For Bravery – Exclusive Gameplay and Interview

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Here’s a look at the pixel RPG No Place for Bravery about a father searching for his missing daughter.

Raji: An Ancient Epic – Gameplay Trailer

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Check out 7-minutes of gameplay and developer commentary for the South Asian inspired RPG Raji.

No Straight Roads – Gameplay Trailer

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8-minutes of the music-action game No Straight Roads.

BioMutant – Exclusive Gameplay and Interview

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Check out our interview with the developers of BioMutant, a new 3D action game from ex-AAA developers.

Overcooked! 2 – DLC Exclusive Announcement, Reveal, and Gameplay

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Check out gameplay and trailer for the upcoming, summer-themed DLC for Overcooked! 2.

Haven – Developer Gameplay Overview

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A new developer’s look at Haven, an RPG-inspired adventure game from The Game Bakers.

Cris Tales – 8-minute Gameplay Reveal

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Check out 8-minutes of gameplay for Cris Tales.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Warcraft Movie Director Details What Potential Trilogy Could Have Been

While fans of Warcraft may never get a follow up to 2016’s origin story film, director Duncan Jones has opened up about his cancelled plans for a trilogy. In a response to a fan on Twitter, Jones discussed the potential plots for the remaining two movies.

The overall arc for the trilogy would have seen “the fulfilling of Durotan’s promise to give his people a new home,” according to Jones. The second film would center around the young Go’el, who was picked up by the humans at the end of Warcraft.

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Go’el (who would grow up to become Thrall, leader of the Horde faction) would’ve been a young orc slave in Blackmoore’s gladiator camp where he befriends a Tauren warrior who tells him of a new area where he and his allies could settle.

The third film would’ve focused on freeing the orcs around the Eastern Kingdom and gathering an army before sailing across the sea to Kalimdor and founding the legendary city of Orgrimmar, the future capital city of the orcs.

While Warcraft underperformed in North America, grossing a measly $47M domestically, it is still the most successful video game adaptation of all-time internationally largely due to its popularity in China. Overall, Warcraft brought in $439M for Legendary Pictures who largely deemed it a failure after not breaking even on its massive budget.

The last we heard of a sequel to Warcraft was in 2017 when Jones was “waiting to hear from Legendary” about their plans, which eventually fell through.

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It was definitely a treat to see such iconic characters on the silver screen, but fans can still get their fix in World of Warcraft. The long-running MMORPG has been going strong for more than fifteen years and is set to showcase more of its next expansion, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, on July 8.

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Matthew Adler is a Features and News writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @MatthewAdler and watch him stream a variety of games on Twitch.

How to Watch CD Projekt Red’s Night City Live

In early May, CD Projekt Red announced an E3-style broadcast dubbed Night City Wire. As we draw closer to the event, anticipation for what we’ll see and hear about Cyberpunk 2077 builds. We know quite a bit about Cyberpunk 2077 from the bits of information we’ve acquired from announcements like the E3 2019’s Xbox briefing with Keanu Reeves and behind-the-scenes looks at gameplay. But there’s still plenty we don’t know about and hopefully, some of that curiosity will be satiated with Night City Wire. If you don’t want to miss out, here’s how you can tune in.

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Night City Wire Livestream Start Time

CD Projekt Red’s Night City Wire is scheduled for June 25 at 9am PT/ 12pm ET/ 5pm BST. If you’re in Australia, then that’s June 26 at 2am AEST. We’ll be hosting a pre-show 30-minutes before the event begins so make sure to join us. We’ll be looking forward to seeing your comments and sharing our predictions. Stick around immediately after the show for our impressions.

How to Watch Night City Wire

You can watch the Cyberpunk 2077 event here and across all of our major platforms and channels as part of our Summer of Gaming Event. Here’s a list of all places you can watch the Night City Wire livestream:

What to Expect at Night City Wire

Thanks to a tweet from the Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account, we have a good idea about what to expect to see at Night City Wire. The tweet described it as a 25-minute episode, suggesting this will be the first of more episodes planned, and revealed it’ll include a new trailer, fresh gameplay footage, and a chat with the developers about a game feature called “braindance”.

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Felicia Miranda is SEO Editor at IGN and you can find her on Twitter at @FeliciaVagabond.

Umbrella Academy Season 2, Cursed, and Everything Else New to Netflix in July

Netflix is releasing some classic films and fan-favorite returning series to its lineup for July 2020.

To get things started, Netflix is dropping the hotly anticipated second season of The Umbrella Academy on July 31 and the debut of a new fantasy series on July 17, titled Cursed, which is based on the illustrated novel of the same name from legendary comic artist Frank Miller and author Thomas Wheeler. According to Netflix, Cursed “is a re-imagining of the Arthurian legend, told through the eyes of Nimue, a teenage heroine with a mysterious gift who is destined to become the powerful (and tragic) Lady of the Lake.”

On the movie front, Netflix is releasing the Karate Kid trilogy, the hilarious Star Wars parody, Spaceballs, and the DC animated classic, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. All of the aforementioned movie titles will be available to stream on July 1.

Check out the slideshow gallery below for a spotlight of some of the most notable July Netflix offerings, followed by the full list (U.S. Netflix only):

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July 1

  • Chico Bon Bon: Monkey with a Tool Belt: Season 2 — NETFLIX FAMILY
  • Deadwind: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Say I Do — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Under the Riccione Sun — NETFLIX FILM
  • Unsolved Mysteries — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
  • #Anne Frank – Parallel Stories
  • A Bridge Too Far
  • A Thousand Words
  • A Touch of Green: Season 1
  • A Walk to Remember
  • Abby Hatcher: Season 1
  • Airplane!
  • Ali
  • Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
  • Charlotte’s Web
  • Clash of the Titans (1981)
  • Cleo & Cuquin: Season 2
  • Cloud Atlas
  • David Foster: Off the Record
  • Definitely, Maybe
  • Delta Farce
  • Donnie Brasco
  • Double Jeopardy
  • Fiddler on the Roof
  • Frida
  • I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
  • Killing Hasselhoff
  • Kingdom: Season 1-3
  • Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
  • Mean Streets
  • Million Dollar Baby
  • Paranormal Activity
  • Patriots Day
  • Poltergeist
  • Quest for Camelot
  • Red Riding Hood (2011)
  • Schindler’s List
  • Sleepless in Seattle
  • Sleepy Hollow
  • Spaceballs
  • Splice
  • Stand and Deliver
  • Stardust
  • Starsky & Hutch
  • Sucker Punch
  • Swordfish
  • The Art of War
  • The Devil’s Advocate
  • The F**k-It List
  • The Firm
  • The Karate Kid
  • The Karate Kid Part II
  • The Karate Kid Part III
  • The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
  • The Town
  • The Witches
  • This Christmas
  • Total Recall (1990)
  • Trotro
  • Winchester

July 2

  • Thiago Ventura: POKAS — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL
  • Warrior Nun — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

July 3

  • The Baby-Sitters Club — NETFLIX FAMILY
  • Cable Girls: Final Season: Part 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Desperados — NETFLIX FILM
  • JU-ON: Origins — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Southern Survival — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

July 5

  • Only

July 6

  • A Kid from Coney Island

July 7

  • Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax

July 8

  • The Long Dumb Road
  • Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
  • Stateless — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Was It Love? — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Season 1

July 9

  • Japan Sinks: 2020 — NETFLIX ANIME
  • The Protector: Season 4 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

July 10

  • The Claudia Kishi Club — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
  • Down to Earth with Zac Efron — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants in Space — NETFLIX FAMILY
  • Hello Ninja: Season 3 — NETFLIX FAMILY
  • O Crush Perfeito (Dating Around: Brazil) — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • The Old Guard — NETFLIX FILM
  • The Twelve — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

July 14

  • The Business of Drugs — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
  • On est ensemble (We Are One) — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
  • Urzila Carlson: Overqualified Loser — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

July 15

  • Dark Desire — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Gli Infedeli (The Players) — NETFLIX FILM
  • Skin Decision: Before and After — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

July 16

  • Fatal Affair — NETFLIX FILM
  • Indian Matchmaking — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • MILF — NETFLIX FILM
  • Pride & Prejudice (2005)

July 17

  • Boca a Boca (Kissing Game) — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Cursed — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Funan

July 18

  • Gigantosaurus: Season 1
  • The Notebook

July 19

  • The Last Dance

July 20

  • Ashley Garcia: Genius in Love — NETFLIX FAMILY

July 21

  • How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast): Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Ip Man 4: The Finale
  • Jack Whitehall: I’m Only Joking — NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL
  • Street Food: Latin America — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

July 22

  • 61
  • Fear City: New York vs The Mafia — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
  • Love on the Spectrum — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
  • Norsemen: Season 3 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion
  • Signs — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Spotlight

July 23

  • The Larva Island Movie — NETFLIX FAMILY

July 24

  • ÂĄA cantar! (Sing On! Spain) — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Animal Crackers — NETFLIX FILM
  • Dragons: Rescue Riders: Secrets of the Songwing — NETFLIX FAMILY
  • In the Dark: Season 2
  • The Kissing Booth 2 — NETFLIX FILM
  • Ofrenda a la tormenta — NETFLIX FILM

July 26

  • Banana Split
  • Shameless (U.S.): Shameless: Season 10

July 28

  • Jeopardy!: Collection 6
  • Last Chance U: Laney — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

July 29

  • The Hater — NETFLIX FILM
  • Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons: Season 4 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

July 30

  • Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
  • Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy — NETFLIX ANIME

July 31

  • Get Even — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Latte and the Magic Waterstone — NETFLIX FAMILY
  • Seriously Single — NETFLIX FILM
  • The Speed Cubers — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY
  • Sugar Rush: Extra Sweet — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • The Umbrella Academy: Season 2 — NETFLIX ORIGINAL
  • Vis a vis: El Oasis (Locked Up) — NETFLIX ORIGINAL

Coming Soon (Exact Date TBD)

  • ARASHI’s Diary -Voyage- ep 9 &10 — NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY

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David Griffin still watches DuckTales in his pajamas with a cereal bowl in hand. He’s also the TV Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter.

How CD Projekt Red Designed Meaningful Player Choices in The Witcher 3

This article is part of a new initiative on IGN where we spend a whole month exploring topics we find interesting in the world of video games. June is Icons Month, where we’re profiling iconic video game industry figures, characters, series, and themes.

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Since the release of 2007’s The Witcher, the development team at CD Projekt Red has been offering players epic stories with wildly varied outcomes, and complex moral decisions throughout. From something as simple as whether or not to interfere in a roadside conflict to determining the ultimate fate of life on The Continent, CD Projekt Red puts a staggering amount of effort into filling their games with meaningful choices and memorable outcomes.

We recently sat down with the studio’s Story Director, Marcin Blacha, to discuss the finer points of crafting interesting decisions within their games, and take a closer look at some of the most iconic moments of The Witcher 3.

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Engaging, Believable Worlds

Every aspect of a story stems from CDPR’s core design principles, Blacha explains – an ongoing endeavor to create believable, engaging worlds for their stories to take place in. “The Witcher is set in a really grim and gritty world, and we always want to keep this world realistic,” Blacha says. “We want to talk about serious problems, about complex situations, about things that, sometimes, make the player uncomfortable
 Choices must then be crafted in such a way that they do not simplify the world, but instead, have the player think and interpret it.”

“Sid Meier famously said once: ‘A game is a series of interesting choices’,” Blacha says. “And it’s true — every game consists of choices players make, and these choices engage them on many different levels. My craft is telling stories through games, and interacting with players’ emotions
  I need to present players with choices that are difficult, ones that will have them tear up, laugh, as well as feel relief, and so much more. These emotions — they need to be real, and it’s only possible to achieve that if the choices players make, as well as their consequences, are both meaningful.”

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Part of making those choices truly meaningful – of not only creating interesting narrative moments but also using them to reinforce the studio’s worldbuilding – is to rarely offer choices that can be simply classified as “good” or “bad.”

“We avoid black and white choices because they are not emotionally engaging,” says Blacha.. “They remind players that the world they immersed themselves in, no matter how deep it is, is less complex and interesting than the real one…The world outside is not black and white, it’s not simple. When you want to create something as engaging as the real world, you have to avoid black and white choices.”

Forming Connections

According to Blacha, the impact of all those choices – no matter if their outcomes are good, bad, or somewhere in between – all hinge on one simple thing: a player’s relationship to their character; whether or not the design/writing team has successfully made a player comfortable inhabiting them.

“Everything is based on this connection,” Blacha says. “Sometimes you can hate your character, sometimes you can like them, but you should always be fine with playing as this character.”

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Blacha looks at it much like a foundational aspect of other game mechanics. Just as combat is predicated on being able to move a character and control the camera, our ability to make choices throughout a game – and to truly invest in the consequences of those decisions  – is based solely on our willingness to accept our role. Whether it’s as Geralt of Rivia, Thronebreaker’s Queen Meve, or Cyberpunk’s more customizable V, our willingness to engage with the world is, in no small part, based on how we feel about our avatar in it. And it’s that foundation that then sets the stage for how we handle relationships with other characters.

“A writer’s role is creating characters and relationships between them which gamers can get to know and interpret in their own way,” says Blacha. “Our ambition has always been to create characters that are believable, and relationships between real people are rarely easy. When the player enters the world of complex and ambiguous emotional relationships, they become part of it through the consequences of the choices they make.”

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“From a designer’s point of view,” he says, “the Bloody Baron’s storyline was, I think, the most interesting one to work on. We’d been building up this character across multiple quests, entwined with the Crones storyline, and it was difficult to find the perfect balance for him. The Baron needed to be a character that players couldn’t easily hate or condemn. Like a character from a Greek tragedy, we intended for him to be one you’d pity, and the events that surrounded him — full of dread. In the end, thanks to the involvement of some very talented designers, everything came together into a perfect whole.”

Triviality, Tension, and Trust

Of course, while some memorable story branches are the result of long and convoluted quest chains, there were plenty of other outcomes that rested on more incidental decisions. In the Blood and Wine expansion, for example, the fate of a major character (and potentially the entire Duchy of Toussaint) is entirely dependent on whether or not you choose to play cards with a little girl.

“When you are doing [a game] with many choices and consequences,” says Blacha, “you can always fall into a trap: you start creating a pattern, and this pattern is easy to recognize…We like to keep things fresh as much as we can, so that even the most clever of players will have a tough time seeing through the plots and intrigues we have in store for them.

“Sometimes, it might be a single decision that leads to the death of a key character. Other times, it might be a few smaller ones. In the case of Anna Henrietta, the player had to make two choices and neither of them hinted at the terrible end they would bring about… We don’t want to repeat ourselves, but we want the player to always be aware [of their impact],” he says, before adding with a mischievous laugh, “and suspicious that we are planning something really bad.”

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Another way of changing up their formula is to provide moments during quests that offer a choice, but that are designed more around tension in a given scene than around choices piling up to lead to an outcome.

In the Witcher 3 questline Count Reuven’s Treasure, for instance, Triss Merigold voluntarily gets captured and tortured so Geralt can extract information from one of her guards – all the while listening to her cries through a thin wall. Similarly, in the King’s Gambit storyline, Geralt may get to a point where he’s asked to throw a live baby into a boiling-hot oven.

“In these kinds of decisions – ones that the gamer may not necessarily want to make – you know which decision needs to be made,” says Blacha. “The real dilemma here is: when will it be too late to make the choice? There’s a mechanic at play here not unlike, say, an auction, maybe a little bit of a gamble.

“We divide the scene into a couple of steps, and in each step we give the player something that will peak their interest – usually a piece of information. At the same time, we keep raising the tension, suggesting the risk factor is increasing. It’s important that the gamer believes the threat they’re facing is real: that the baby will end up being burned alive or that Triss might truly die. The Witcher games’ audience has grown accustomed to the fact that the choices we’re putting in front of them are no joke, and we’ve no mercy for our characters.”

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The infamous “throw baby” moment is another linchpin for CDPR’s narrative designers, and how they measure a player’s investment in their game and world. It creates a moment where they ask you not necessarily to put your trust, as Geralt, in Cerys an Craite, but rather you, the player, asks whether or not you can trust the designers themselves. “It isn’t really the kind of choice where we expect you to trust, or not trust, the character,” Blacha says. “This is the kind of choice where we ask you to trust or not trust the game. We’re asking the player if they think the game is intelligent and self-aware enough – and also cruel enough – to let you do this.”

In some games – the end of the original Mass Effect comes to mind – you may be offered a choice that you know you’re not allowed to make, because it doesn’t fit within the rules of a game’s world or story. This moment with Cerys forces you to ask yourself Is this the kind of world where they’d let me barbecue an infant? “All our previous choices and consequences, all our previous stories are preparing the player for this moment; preparing the player for the answer ‘Yes. this is that kind of game,” Blacha says with a devious chuckle. “It’s a little bit meta, but that’s the way it works.”

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Putting it All Together

Despite the variety of ways CD Projekt injects player agency into its story, it was surprising to learn that many of these choices – especially the more impactful ones – aren’t added until later in the development process. “The more meaningful and consequential choices are added to the story rather late,” says Blacha. “Creating them is a fairly time-consuming process, and we’d much prefer to use them to enrich the story once we know what it is about from beginning to end.

“Once we’re at that point, we usually try to select moments we believe are most promising, and then brainstorm ideas about what would happen if, in a particular moment, the player had a meaningful choice to make, and what kind of consequences would that choice entail. Implementing choices and consequences often leads to changes being made in the story itself, which starts branching out more and more. This obviously means more work, but if the ideas that come from this are good and will enhance the experience, it’s definitely worth it.”

It’s a philosophy that’s evolved with the studio along with it’s games. The Witcher 2 focused more on big decisive story branches that essentially split the story in two, but Wild Hunt expanded the scope of its world to allow for more nuanced and diverse stories across its world. “The non-linearity of The Witcher 2 was a direct result of the game’s plot-driven design,” Blacha says. “We wanted to show gamers that their decisions greatly influence the story, resulting in them seeing places and meeting characters they wouldn’t have if they had chosen differently. In The Witcher 3, on the other hand, the narrative structure relies on its strong cast of characters and the relationships they end up having with Geralt, and the choices gamers make directly affect the fate of these characters. In The Witcher 2 we had two alternative paths upriver into the Pontar Valley, depending on whose cause players chose to sympathize with. In The Witcher 3, the alternative paths are emotional ones, resulting in a world of psychological experiences built from many smaller choices.

“One of the benefits of designing this aspect of our games in this particular manner is that the more refined and developed the story is, the more we know about our heroes and the easier it is to craft choices and consequences that feel natural in the context of these characters.”

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Of course, even in a world as large as The Witcher 3’s, not everything makes it into the final version of the game. Apparently there was once a large portion of Wild Hunt that initially had Geralt joining the titular evil band of elves in one way or another. In one version of the story, Geralt traded himself in exchange for Ciri’s life – as he had for Yennefer before the first Witcher game – and in another, he was ‘going undercover’ to acquire some important information or get close to Eredin. “It was like five years ago and that’s a really long time [in game development],” laughs Blacha. “Those quests were cool and I’m pretty sure we could have done something good with them but they didn’t really fit, so we removed them.”

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And once the story arcs and quests are decided upon, that doesn’t necessarily mean everything after that is smooth sailing. Creating such a complex web of relationships – all dependent on the choices we make, in one way or another – creates an intricately balanced network where every new decision has the potential to topple everything else.

“Over time we’ve gained a lot of experience in designing non-linear stories and learned how to keep them in line and under control despite their nature,” Blacha says. “We catch on to the most obvious issues that have to do with choices more quickly now. Still, there’s always the possibility that a cumulation of choices made throughout the game will result in an issue that none of us foresaw — a butterfly effect of sorts. It does happen, usually late in production
 but sometimes it’s beneficial, because then we can make even more consequences, and that’s always good.”

To avoid creating those game-breaking moments, Blacha explains that it’s occasionally important for the team to take control of the narrative in order to avoid creating moments where players are offered a choice that doesn’t actually impact the story. “We really tried to avoid fake choices, because we really care about players’ trust,” he says. “Sometimes the illusion of choice is simply unavoidable, but it might often be better to lean towards a more linear narrative flow and instead of choices, to focus on making a bit great using other techniques.

“Although I consider choices and consequences to be fundamental to games, they are not the only tools in our storytelling toolbox.”

The Evolution of Choice

And with the upcoming launch of new console hardware and more powerful gaming PCs, that toolbox is only expanding. “Storytelling in games is getting better in the same way graphics are,” says Blacha. “It seems obvious that the design of choices and their consequences will keep getting better, too
 I think we’ll eventually see games in which the important choices are camouflaged and their connection with consequences will be less visible as a result.”

Heading into the next generation, game and hardware developers alike have said that the biggest leaps forward may not be graphical, but in the quality of the simulations games provide.

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“We’re currently at a moment in time where movies are starting to become more like games, and games are trying to be more like movies,” Blacha says. “I think that the games will start to look for their own identity, and they will find this identity in interaction. And what is interaction?

“It’s choice and consequences.”

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JR is a Senior Editor at IGN who urges you to donate to the ACLU or NAACPLDF if you’re able. He can’t wait to see how these ideas play out in Cyberpunk 2077 – especially if his theories based on the tabletop end up being accurate. 

Twister Is the Latest Universal Classic to Get the Reboot Treatment

Hide your cows, folks – Universal is reportedly looking to reboot Twister, the iconic 1996 disaster film starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt.

According to Variety, which broke the news, Top Gun: Maverick helmer Joseph Kosinski is in talks to direct, with the search for a writer currently underway.

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The original Twister – written by Jurassic Park mastermind Michael Crichton and his wife Anne-Marie Martin, and directed by Speed helmer Jan de Bont – centered around Paxton and Hunt’s married storm-chasers, whose relationship was every bit as tumultuous as the tornadoes they tracked (it’s a metaphor, see?).

No word on whether the plot of the Twister reboot would tread similar ground or explore a whole new story, but chances are it’ll be extreme.

The original Twister sucked up $494 million worldwide on a budget of $92 million, and the film inspired a special effects attraction at the Universal Studios Florida theme park from 1998 through 2015 that featured appearances from Paxton and Hunt. (It was later replaced with a vastly inferior Jimmy Fallon ride, but that’s neither here nor there.)

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Will you watch a Twister reboot? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Deadpool 2 Director’s Next Movie Sounds Like An Action Fan’s Dream

Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw director David Leitch has announced his next movie, and it sounds like an all-out action affair that should be familiar territory for the director.

Leitch is set to direct a new movie called Bullet Train that will focus on assassins on a train. Fear Street director Zak Olkewicz is writing the script, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie is likened to the Keanu Reeves movie Speed, but this time with a train … and assassins. A group of hitmen and assassins are on a speeding train in Tokyo and they’re out to kill each other. The name of the movie appears to be in reference to Japan’s Shinkansen rail train, known in English as the bullet train.

Continue Reading at GameSpot