In an effort to deal with the ongoing launch day server issues affecting Rare’s Sea of Thieves, the developer has announced a temporary plan to suspend new players from joining the game.
Those who are currently signed out of Sea of Thieves will be unable to sign in for an undetermined amount of time, according to the Sea of Thieves Twitter account.
“In order to resolve the issues players are seeing with the servers, we will be temporarily suspending new players joining the game. We’ll get everyone back in and playing as quickly as we can,” the account said.
Sea of Thieves Executive Producer Joe Neate provided the following statement to IGN about the server issues:
Over the weekend, The New York Times and The Guardian each published stories exposing the exploitation of data from over 50 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, a political analytics firm that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Facebook has since come under fire from politicians, lawmakers, and users alike, as all parties demand answers to how the company managed to mishandle the personal data of millions of its users. To better understand the impact of these reports, IGN has compiled a brief rundown of the events that led to the exposure and an overview of what’s happened since.
Nintendo showcased more than a dozen games during today’s indie-focused Switch presentation. Along with a number of brand-new titles that have yet to be released, the stream revealed a handful of acclaimed games that are being ported or remade for Switch in 2018.
Nintendo kicked off the presentation by announcing a Switch release of Mark of the Ninja, the critically acclaimed 2012 stealth-action platformer. Few details were shared about the title, but the game is slated to arrive for the hybrid console sometime this fall and will be a “high definition remaster.”
In addition to that, the classic puzzle game Lumines is also being remastered for Switch. This “HD remake” will release for the system in spring and features new HD rumble support, which will match up with both the beat of the music and the action on-screen, as well as local multiplayer.
Switch will also receive the humorous RPG West of Loathing and Reigns: Kings and Queens this spring. The former is a quirky stick-figure western that features traditional turn-based battles, while the latter is a compilation of Reigns and Reigns: Her Majesty, two Tinder-inspired RPGs in which players swipe left or right on various cards to make decisions on how to rule their kingdom.
The presentation ended with a look at The Banner Saga 3, which will arrive on Switch (and other platforms) sometime this summer. Before then, however, players will be able to experience the entire trilogy from the beginning with the Switch release of Banner Saga 1 and 2. Those two games are slated to launch for the hybrid console “soon” and carry progress and decisions over from one title to the next.
The latest Nintendo broadcast, the Nindies Spring Showcase 2018, was fairly short–it lasted just over 10 minutes, but it was packed with news on more than a dozen games coming to Switch. Not long after it concluded, Nintendo held a Nindies event for press where it revealed several more acclaimed games that are coming to the system.
Three more game ports have been revealed. First up is Nidhogg 2, the competitive action game where you and one opponent (AI or human) square off in a swordfighting duel to reach the opposite edge of the screen. Developer Mark Essen subsequently confirmed the news on Twitter, saying it’s due out on Switch in North America and Europe sometime in 2018.
Next up is Hyper Light Drifter. The stylish action RPG comes to Switch this summer. (The game will also have a crossover shirt in Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.) Finally, rounding out the list is Crashlands, an RPG where you’re stranded on an alien planet and have to build a base, tame creatures, and fight off enemies to survive. A release date for it has not yet been shared.
It’s unclear why none of these were announced during the stream, which was used to reveal some other remasters and ports. Regardless, the bottom line is this: There are a ridiculous number of Switch games coming, with even more likely on the way, as Nintendo claimed that the number of developers working on Switch content has quadrupled since last year.
Nintendo aired another Nindies Showcase presentation today, highlighting more than a dozen intriguing indie-developed games coming to Switch in 2018. Along with brand-new titles like the “musical bullet hell” game Just Shapes & Beats and The Banner Saga 3, the broadcast revealed a number of Switch ports and remakes of beloved indie classics, such as Mark of the Ninja and the musical puzzle game Lumines.
In addition to sharing some new details on each title, Nintendo showcased a new trailer for most of the games featured during today’s presentation, giving you a much better look at some of the most notable indie games on the way for Switch this year. We’ve rounded up all of the trailers from today’s broadcast below. For more news from the broadcast, check out our roundup of all the new Switch games from the Nindies Showcase Spring 2018.
One of the more intriguing elements of Far Cry 5 is the story–which focuses on a cult called Eden’s Gate in Montana, USA. The leader of the cult is Joseph Seed, a creepy and charismatic madman of sorts whose followers call him The Father. Actor Greg Bryk (Saw V, Netflix’s Frontier) brings the character to life in the game (and the live-action short film), and from what we’ve seen and played so far, his performance is outstanding. He’s chilling in how he believes his cause is the right one and will stop at nothing to get his way. The character is integral to the story, and Ubisoft knew it had to find the right person to play him to get the message across in the right away. As it turns out, Bryk was a late addition to the lineup, a fact that led to some amount of stress and scrutiny within Ubisoft. The game’s executive producer, Dan Hay, thought the game might be in trouble.
Speaking to GameSpot, Hay said Ubisoft was able to build out the game’s supporting cast with relative ease, but it struggled to find the right actor to play Seed. “We took a long time to find him. To be honest, it was a little bit scary because it went around in circles for a while. Everything hinges on finding the right guy,” he said.
Greg Bryk as Joseph Seed in the Amazon series Eden’s Gate
“We were doing all this work and building all these characters, and we … felt good about all these different characters. But we still hadn’t found the Father,” Hay explained. “We had good writing and everybody was feeling good about it. Things got pretty heated, and I was thinking, ‘OK, are we in trouble?’ Meanwhile, I’m trying to put on a brave face.”
About a year and a half ago (“somewhere in the middle of development,” Hay says), Hay was shown an audition tape that would change the course of Far Cry 5. Specifically, Bryk’s audition made Hay believe in Seed’s extreme cause and position and challenge his own thoughts. That’s precisely the kind of compelling cult leader Ubisoft was looking for.
“Somebody pulled me aside and said, ‘You gotta watch this.’ So I went over to my desk and I loaded it up, and it was Greg,” Hay said. “And I think part of me–it’s interesting to breathe a sigh of relief at the same time as holding your breath. Because as soon as he started talking, I was riveted. I was like, ‘Thank god we found him,’ but at the same time, I was holding my breath because his performance was so good. I was in this loop of breathlessness.
“After about a minute, he finished his monologue, which didn’t feel like a monologue, it almost felt like a love letter,” he added. “And I was just like, ‘This is the guy.’ We all think we’re pretty smart and we think that it’s hard to allow somebody to swim in our minds and take us away from our lives and go into theirs. I really had a hard time believe that someone was going to be able to convey that to me–to join their cult. He didn’t do that. He didn’t try. What he simply tried to do was challenge my assumptions that everything is OK. As soon as I believed that his opinion that everything was not okay and that it might be prudent to be prepared for the 1 percent chance that it wasn’t going to be OK. I was like, ‘OK, that sounds reasonable.'”
“Thank god, that was a close one,” Hay recalls saying about casting Bryk. “That was more stress than I need at my age.”
The Switch has quickly become a huge success for Nintendo since its launch last year. Not only has the console broken hardware and software sales records for company, it has also proven to be beneficial to third-parties, with indie games in particular performing exceptionally well on the platform.
During an indie-focused press event following today’s Nindies Showcase, Nintendo revealed the top 10 best-selling indie games on Switch to date. While the company didn’t share specific sales numbers for each of the games, the list is comprised of many popular titles that have experienced a resurgence on the hybrid console, including the beloved farming sim Stardew Valley, the roguelike shooter Enter the Gungeon, the multiplayer cooking game Overcooked Special Edition, and Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, among others. You can find the full top 10 list, in no particular order, at the bottom of this story.
Third-party and indie game have had some notable success on Switch. Many indie developers have reported that their titles frequently sell better on Nintendo’s console than on PS4 or Xbox One, with Switch sales in many cases exceeding sales on the other platforms combined. Shortly after Celeste’s release, game creator Matt Thorson revealed the Switch edition was outselling other versions. Similarly, Super Meat Boy developer Team Meat said sales of the Switch version came “shockingly close” to how well the game sold on Xbox 360 when it originally launched in 2010.
The second season of Westworld will debut on HBO is less than two months. However, after trailers and images from the new season were revealed, the story driving the new episodes remains as mysterious as the secrets of the host-filled theme park itself.
However, thanks to Entertainment Weekly, some of those mysteries are being solved–including one revolving around a major fan theory after the conclusion of Season 1. According to EW, Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the co-creator of the park responsible for its hosts, is indeed very dead. When the character was gunned down by Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) in the Season 1 finale, many theorized that the man killed was actually a host modeled to look like Ford. According to executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, though, that’s just not the case.
It’s not the last you’ll see of Ford, though. Not only will a younger version of the character be seen in flashbacks, but he’ll be joined by Delos founder James Delow (Peter Mullan). Flashbacks also mean the return of Jimmi Simpson as William, before he becomes the Man in Black (Ed Harris).
Beyond that, the world will simply be getting bigger as the hosts begin exploring more. “If we were to describe the show as one camera angle, it would be a steady pull out revealing more and more context,” Nolan tells EW. “So as the hosts learn more about their world—and other worlds, and the real world—the audience is doing the same thing.”
Even as the scope of the series gets bigger, though, Westworld isn’t forgetting the puzzle pieces it already had in play. “There are things I actually said as Dolores [in season 1] that I had no idea of the significance of until filming this season, and now I’m going, ‘My God, [the showrunners] were telling us!'” Wood explains. “I think even when we’re in season 7, you’ll still be able to go back to the pilot and find clues that were right in front of you.”
Those clues point to how different hosts are handling what is essentially a robot uprising. “She’s playing the chess master. She has access to all of her memories, but now she’s in control,” Wood says of Dolores. “There are some scenes where she’s three different people in the span of a minute.”
Less sure of his next moves is Teddy (James Marsden). “Dolores is further along in her advancement, and he’s trying to catch up and make sure the manner in which we proceed still feels like the good parts of Teddy that he remembers,” the actor says.
It’s that pull Teddy is feeling between rebelling and staying true to his programmed personality that Joy says is at the heart of this new season. “The leashes are off,” she explains. “But the question is: How far are you willing to go until you become a reflection of the evil you’re trying to fight?”
There is much more to be learned from EW’s feature about the upcoming season, and so much more that fans won’t find out until the series returns. Luckily, you won’t have to wait long. Westworld Season 2 premieres April 22 on HBO.
