Gamasutra has reported on a recent Reddit AMA with Ian Howe, CEO of Skybound Games, and Kent Mudle, former creative doirector at Telltale.
In this AMA, it has been confirmed that Skybound will be working with the “Walking Dead” team formerly of Telltale to finish “The Walking Dead: The Final Season”. Earlier in the month, it was announced that Skybound will be finishing the final two episodes of “The Walking Dead: The Final Season”. “While the terms of the deal are still being fleshed out, Skybound has confirmed that members of the original development team will be brought back to finish the project,” said Emma Kidwell in an article on Gamasutra. The original scripts for the episodes will also be preserved, so the ending envisioned by the original writers will still be preserved. “The plan is for it to be staffed 100% by former Telltale staff, the only time we'd look elsewhere is if we can't fill a particular role from former TT people,” said Howe in the AMA. Howe answered a question regarding the release dates of the remaining episodes. Episodes 3 and 4 were scheduled for November and December respectively. “What I can say is that the team is not currently working on the game and until we're back into production, it's going to be nearly impossible to give an accurate answer,” said Howe. “What I can say is that we will announce new dates as soon as we know what they are, there is no reason for us to hold that information back, so it will be public immediately that we can talk about it with confidence.” In response to another commenter, he said that he expects to have episode 3 out by the end of the year and that he would be disappointed if they were unable to accomplish that. As a fan of the series, it is a relief to hear that the original team and script are being brought in to finish this game. I was fearing that a new team of writers would take the season in a totally different direction. It is comforting to know that “The Walking Dead: The Final Season” will be the intended ending for this franchise.
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To those waiting for “Days Gone”, you’re going to have to wait even longer. Sony announced earlier today that the game will be pushed due to the busy release schedule in February.
“We want to share a change in release date for this highly anticipated title from Bend Studio. We recently decided to move the release of Days Gone from the crowded February timeframe to April 26, 2019,” said Asad Qizilbash, vice president of marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment America, in a post on the PlayStation Blog. “While the studio is eager to see Days Gone in the hands of fans, Bend Studio will take the opportunity to further polish Days Gone.” It is a rare sight to see a developer use this sort of candid language. Commenters on the post are giving Sony credit for outright admitting that the delay is to avoid the hectic release landscape of early 2019. January will see big titles like the “Resident Evil 2” remake and “Kingdom Hearts 3” and Feb. 22 itself had “Metro Exodus” and “Anthem”. The post included updates on other upcoming Sony titles. The VR title “Déraciné” from FromSoftware that was announced earlier this year at E3, will be releasing on Nov. 6 of this year. “In an emotionally deep narrative, players will take the role of an unseen faerie who forges a personal bond with the children in a secluded boarding school,” said Qizilbash. “While moving around the boarding school in frozen time, players will collect and piece together various bits of information that serve to unfold an overarching mystery. Déraciné is the VR debut from Bloodborne director Hidetaka Miyazaki, and FromSoftware.” “Déraciné” was not the only VR title mentioned. The post also announced the release window of “Everybody’s Golf VR”. The successor of “Hot Shots Golf” is set for release in Spring of 2019 along with “Concrete Genie”. “Concrete Genie” also debuted at this year’s E3 and “follows bullied teenager named Ash who escapes his troubles by painting spectacular living landscapes and mischievous creatures in the walls of his abandoned hometown of Denska,” said Qizilbash. “Using a magical paintbrush, Ash discovers his paintings can purify Denska’s polluted walls and bring life back to the town.” There are other high profile titles in the works at the various Sony studios. “We know many of you will want to know about key upcoming titles such as the beta for ‘Dreams’, ‘Blood & Truth’, ‘Death Stranding’, ‘Ghost of Tsushima’ and ‘The Last of Us: Part II’. The studios are hard at work polishing up these epic PS4 games, but we aren’t yet ready to share a release timeframe,” said Qizilbash. He adds that Sony will keep gamers informed about any change in status of said titles. After its debut at this year’s E3, information about Square Enix’s “The Quiet Man” has been slowly trickling out.
“The Quiet Man” unravels over the course of a night. Players control Dane, a deaf man who is out to rescue a singer from a mysterious masked antagonist. The developers are looking for players to experience the world as Dane would. This makes sound design a key aspect of “The Quiet Man”. Players will go through the short three hour experience with “very little distinct audio and no subtitles: it’s up to you to make up your own interpretation of the story as your search for the masked man unfolds,” according to the game’s Steam page. The game will also feature both live action and rendered cut scenes, a rare occurrence in modern gaming. According to Eurogamer, completing “The Quiet Man” will unlock a mode where audio and voices are turned on. “The second playthrough, therefore, is supposed to reveal the ‘truth’ by introducing the full dialogue,” said Emma Kent in her article for Eurogamer. The removal of the key unique element of the game is an interesting decision. Other than Dane’s deafness, there is little to separate this game from a traditional brawler. Combat looks smooth and polished in the bits and pieces that have been revealed, but it is hardly a ground breaking idea and would be lost in the mass amount of games still scheduled to release before the end of the year. This would be similar to removing the main character’s blindness in “Perception”. While “Perception” failed to generate great reviews, its idea of having a blind main character in a horror game was praised. I do like that the developer is giving audiences the chance to see how the story that they envisioned plays out, but I also understand that this mode may put off fans of the original concept. “The Quiet Man” will release Nov. 1 on PlayStation 4 and PC. The game will be discounted 10 percent from it $14.99 price, from its release to Nov. 15 on both platforms. Fans of Insomniac’s “Spider-Man” have even more content to look forward to as the first of three DLCs is set to release on the 23.
The post-launch content, entitled The City That Never Sleeps, will be a three part DLC with releases this month, November and December. The first chapter “The Heist” will introduce Black Cat to the cast. Cat was a minor part of the main game. She took Peter on a wild goose chase of robberies she had been committing across the city. This will mark the characters first in person appearance in the game. “As you play Marvel’s Spider-Man: The Heist, you’ll encounter the beginning of a new, interconnected story taking place over the three chapters of Marvel’s Spider-Man: The City That Never Sleeps. A robbery at an art museum entangles Spider-Man and MJ with an old flame from Peter Parker’s past, Felicia Hardy, aka Black Cat,” said Ryan Smith, game director for “Spider-Man”, on the PlayStation Blog. “Beyond new story missions, there’s a whole new faction of enemies, new crimes, new challenges, new trophies, and of course, three brand new suits.” The City That Never Sleeps is not the only new thing coming up for “Spider-Man”. According to Smith’s original post, Update 1.07 is set for launch worldwide tomorrow Oct. 17. The post has since been updated and according to the Insomniac Games Twitter account, the update is “coming soon”. The update is not just a bug fix, the update will also add New Game+ and the Ultimate difficulty for the game. “Speaking of that, we’re adding two new trophies as well – one for completing the game on Ultimate Difficulty, and the other for finishing a NG+ run,” said Smith. The post also mentions that the easiest game difficulty is getting a tune up. “The Heist” launches next week on Oct. 23. The City That Never Sleeps is part of the season pass and can be purchased for $24.99. The individual chapters can be purchased separately for $9.99. Multiple PS4 users have reported that an exploit of the PlayStation message feature is “bricking” consoles, according to Polygon.
Originally reported earlier today by Owen S. Good, users are fixing this issue by a factory reset of the console. This has not been confirmed by Sony and neither have they released a statement addressing these claims. According to Good, it has been suggested that changing messaging settings to “friends only” is a way to avoid this problem. “As I’ve had friend-only messaging enabled for a while, I can’t tell if this threat/exploit is legitimate, or if this is the way to thwart it. Numerous users in the PS4 subreddit say they’ve been hit, though, and many describe the same effects,” said Good. “The message attack appears to be similar to others seen in mobile platforms, where a message containing a string of characters (or a specific one) can shut down the hardware.” Polygon has reached out to Sony for a statement about these claims. I will update this story as more information is revealed. Update: According to the Ask PlayStaion UK twitter, the problem has been fixed. "We've since fixed the issue, and it wasn't bricking consoles, just sending them into a crash loop that can be quickly fixed in under 5 minutes. Delete the message on the PS mobile app, go into Safe Mode, use Option 5, console back to normal," said the PlayStation Twitter account. Ubisoft has announced a free-to-play mobile game set in its hit Assassin’s Creed franchise.
“Assassin’s Creed Rebellion” is coming to iOS and Android on Nov. 21. “Rebellion” is being developed by Behavior Interactive, the studio behind “Fallout Shelter”. “It's 15th century Spain, at the height of the Inquisition, and you're attempting to build up your own Brotherhood - establishing an HQ to accommodate a growing army of assassins in order to infiltrate Templar strongholds,” said Matt Wales in an article for Eurogamer. Images of base building in “Rebellion” is eerily similar to that of “Fallout Shelter”. Instead of being built underground, players will build rooms within a villa. The exact purposes of the rooms are hard to determine through the screenshots, but rooms that would make sense given the context are at least lodging, dining, and training. “Assassin’s Creed Rebellion” also features side-scrolling infiltration missions. There are multiple variants of these missions. For reference, Eurogamer compares these missions to the side-scrolling missions from the recent “Assassin’s Creed Chronicles” games. Ubisoft Quebec’s “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” has made headlines recently as the highest opening sales of any of the franchise’s releases on the current generation of consoles. "We are incredibly proud of what the team accomplished with Assassin's Creed Odyssey and humbled by the amazing reception from critics and players. Based on the quality of the game and the very encouraging reactions from players, we expect Odyssey to be one of the top performing Assassin's Creed games of all-time,” said Geoffroy Sardin, senior vice president of sales and marketing, in a press release Ubisoft release on Wednesday. “Assassin’s Creed Rebellion” is set for release on both iOS and Android on Nov. 21. On the heels of even more layoffs at Telltale, “The Walking Dead: The Final Season” finds a new developer.
Yesterday, it was announced that Skybound Games will be finishing the remaining two episodes of the final season of “The Walking Dead” in place of Telltale. This news came at the perfect stage, New York Comic Con. “We’re SO happy to announce that we’ve reached a deal with @telltalegames that will allow Skybound to continue #TheWalkingDead: The Final Season! Let’s wrap up Clem’s story right! More details to come soon,” said a tweet from Skybound. This is almost fitting news as Skybound Games is run by “The Walking Dead” creator Robert Kirkman. Skybound Games is a publishing arm of Skybound Entertainment formed earlier this year in April to focus on the publishing of indie titles. Skybound is looking to work alongside the team who worked on “The Walking Dead” at Telltale. ”This didn’t just affect us as partners—we were among those fans. Since Telltale’s closure notice, we’ve been spending long hours figuring out if we could help complete this game. And as of today, we are VERY pleased to announce that we are taking on the job of finishing The Walking Dead: The Final Season and seeing an end to Clem’s story line, while working with members of the original Telltale team,” said Brian Huntington on the Skybound website. “We’re currently ironing out some of the details as this is a pretty major deal, so we’ll have more info on the who/what/where/when/how very soon as those details are finalized. We appreciate your patience during this process.” There is no date set on when fans can expect episodes three and four, but it is nice to know that the series will see a true conclusion. Yesterday, a now former Telltalte employee took to Twitter to announce that her team had been laid off.
“Heeeeyyyy remember how there was going to be a skeleton crew staying on for a while and I was part of it? Nah, jk, we all just got laid off, too,” said Rachel Noel, a former narrative designer at Telltale. This is in the wake of news from a few weeks ago that Telltale had laid off a majority of their staff and that a small 25 employee crew will stay behind to work on some remaining projects. “In September that saw the elimination of all but a ‘skeleton crew’ of 25 employees. CEO Pete Hawley insisted in the wake of the layoffs that Telltale wasn't actually closing, but would continue operating for the foreseeable future,” said Andy Chalk in his original article for PC Gamer. Earlier today there was an update to this story. Telltale has not completely removed their remaining 25 employees. Noel’s tweet was in reference to her team specifically. “Noel clarified in a follow-up tweet that some people are still at Telltale, although she wasn't sure about the numbers, saying only that ‘not many’ remain,” said Chalk in an update to his article. Questions still remain about the status of “The Walking Dead: The Final Season”. Episode two of the four episode season was released a few weeks ago, and the team working on the game was gone in the first round of layoffs. The last bit of news on this front was in a statement from telltale shortly after the layoffs saying that there are “multiple potential partners” interested in completing the final season. The writer of the popular “Witcher” series, Andrzej Sapkowski, is seeking additional compensation from video game developer CD Project Red.
CD Project Red made their name from the video game adaptation of the “Witcher” series. All three games are considered to be genre defining at their respective times, and the third game holds a litany of awards including Game of the Year in 2015. Sapkowski is seeking payment to the tune of 60 million Zlotys (about 16 million USD), or “6 percent of the profits obtained by the developer off his property,” said Colin Stevens in an article for IGN. According to a report released on the CD Project Red website, the company received the demand from Sapkowski on Oct. 1. “The notice indicates that Mr. Andrzej Sapkowski expects payment of additional royalties beyond what had been contractually agreed upon between himself and the Company,” according to the report. “The notice claims that the original agreement only counts for the first Witcher game (though CD Projekt Red denies this) and cites Article 44 of Poland’s Act on Copyright and Related Rights, which states ‘In the event of gross discrepancy between the remuneration of the author and the benefits of the acquirer of the author's economic rights or the licensee, the author may request the court for a due increase of his/her remuneration,’” said Stevens. In their report, CD Project Red claims that Sapkowski’s claims are “groundless” and that they obtained the rights to make the games legally. Both parties are looking to come to an amicable solution that benefits all parties. Rockstar Games released gameplay footage yesterday of their highly anticipated “Red Dead Redemption 2” set to launch on Oct. 26.
The five minute footage was underwhelming to say the least. About a month ago, Rockstar launched similar footage showing off and describing some of the games new systems. This latest footage did not show anything that was not already known or used language that was so broad it could mean just about anything. This footage focused on the changes to the open world of “Red Dead Redemption 2” and how the players will interact with it. According to the footage, which was clips of gameplay with narration, that players will experience a fluid transition from event to event. “The world is full of adventures and experiences that you discover naturally as you move fluidly from one moment to another,” according to the video. This sort of broad language makes definitive analysis difficult. I would guess that transitions in and out of cut scenes will be smooth and without load screens, similar to that of “Grand Theft Auto 5”. From the footage, it is hard to tell when it is a scripted event and what is randomly occurring. This looks like a way to draw the player from event to event without having to place a marker on the map, basically saying “Go here.” The main character, Arthur Morgan, is a member of the Van Der Linde Gang. It was previously announced that the gang travels as a roaming camp. The footage shows Morgan participating in various with other members of the gang. “Arthur can undertake a wide array of nefarious activities with his fellow gang members. Some are large scale heists, while others are more personal,” according to the video. It’s already known that Arthur can travel with other members of the gang, but not much is exactly known about how, when or how often they join Arthur. One of the more interesting things from that excerpt was the mention of heists. In Rockstar’s previous title, “Grand Theft Auto 5”, heists played a major role in the game. Before the major heists players could make decisions about certain aspects of the heists: Go in loud or quiet, what kind of getaway, who to bring along, etc. With the mention of heists, it begs the question of whether or not a similar mechanic will be used in “Red Dead Redemption 2”. The end of the video showcases the first-person mode in the game. This game is primarily a third-person game, but playing the game in first-person is an option. This was a mode that was brought to “GTA V’ post launch when it came to next generation consoles. Gameplay looks solid in this mode, but it did look like a rail shooter at times. At this time not, many specific gameplay details are unknown. There are broad strokes shown in this footage, but specifics will most likely be held back until release on the 26. What can be seen is that “Red Dead Redemption 2” is a beautiful looking game with a world full of content. |
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September 2019
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