Hello fellow NAGians (NAGites?) and welcome back once again to your weekly dose of my opinion masquerading as objective journalism. This week was a bit slow, but I’ve got more news of the Wii U’s demise, a rant on Sony’s awful marketing team, the videos you actually clicked through for and your usual mix of whatever it is I felt like talking about.
Sony Pictures Entertainment has picked up the worldwide distribution rights to the long discussed Angry Birds movie. The movie is very specifically scheduled to hit cinemas on 1 July 2016. It is unsurprisingly being created in 3D and is being developed, produced and funded by Rovio; the company responsible for the entire franchise to date. Iron Man and Despicable Me producers David Maisel and John Cohen have officially signed on to the project.
Sony chairpeople Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal said, “Every studio in town would love to add Angry Birds to their slate. There are few titles out there that bring this kind of excitement, brand awareness and built-in audience to the table.”
The idea of an Angry Birds feature film is one that I’m sure many will find disturbing. However, with downloads across the franchise to date (across all the platforms on which it appears combined) exceeding 1.7 billion, there’s no doubt that the movie will have an audience.
Don’t Starve has redefined my relationship with digital death.
I mean, I’ve died a lot. There is only so much in the way of mauling, biting, goring, pecking and downright elephanting one can take before pulling the permadeath plug. Usually, dying this much in a game with (for the most part) permanent death would cause me to ragequit and never return ever.
So why am I still playing?
City Interactive Games, the Poland based developer and publisher responsible for the Sniper: Ghost Warrior games, has announced Lords of the Fallen for the PC, PlayStation 4 and next Xbox. The game is described as a “hardcore action-RPG” with combat and difficulty akin to Dark Souls, and a skill tree like those found in Borderlands.
The game is being headed by Tomasz Gop, who was the senior producer for the critically acclaimed The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings. “Our team is building Lords of the Fallen specifically for players who enjoy taking on huge challenges, where the odds are stacked against them,” explained Gop. “From the very beginning, Lords of the Fallen will intrigue and satisfy players’ hunger to explore each corner of a brand new world, freely customize and build their own character, and take down some of the most epic enemies ever seen.”
The game takes place in a “richly created fantasy world”. According to the game’s lore, the gods of this world have failed mankind and as such there’s an “apparently unstoppable supernatural force” which is causing all sorts of chaos. Players will take on the role of a bloke called Harkyn who decides to try and make a difference. The game will feature player decisions that will alter the state of the world around them. No release date as yet but we’ll keep an eye on this one; there’s potential here.
There’s less than a month to go before The Last of Us hits the PlayStation 3. I’ve got this feeling that the game will be the final hoorah for Sony’s console before the PlayStation 4 begins to hog the limelight; a swan-song of sorts, I guess.
Despite the fact that the game is still a few weeks away, Sony Computer Entertainment of America is not wasting any time when it comes to planning the future of the IP. Domain names for lastofus2.com and lastofus3.com have just been registered. As Shacknews points out, every title that Naughty Dog has developed thus far has been turned into a long-running series, so it wouldn’t be surprising if The Last of Us maintained this tradition.
This could, of course, all just be cautionary planning. As we’ve seen in the past, private individuals regularly squat on domain names with the sole intention of selling it on to big companies. It’s likely that SCEA is moving to prevent this happening for the off-chance that the game gets two sequels. Hell, at least they didn’t go nuts like EA recently did when they registered domains for Battlefield13.com all the way to battlefield20.com.
Source: Shacknews
In this episode of “Conversations with Creators”, Sony has rounded up three Blizzard folks integral to the porting of Diablo III to PS3 and PS4, and made them gush about how awesome the PlayStation 4 is going to be. They also make frequent assertions that the PlayStation 4 and Diablo III were practically made for each other in some infernal fire pit of hell.
While it’s easy to roll your eyes and sigh in the face of this rather gaudy PS4 marketing campaign, this particular episode of what will probably be a very long-running web series for Sony, actually manages to discuss some aspects of Diablo III as well. It is actually pretty interesting to hear how much the control scheme is going to be different, and how Blizzard realises that a change of control scheme fundamentally changes the connection one has with a character. I haven’t thought about it much until now, but there is this remarkable disconnect between player and character in the Diablo games on PC. When Diablo III is played on console however, there’s far more direct control over one’s character, and this will probably lead to a greater sense of connection. I found myself not really giving a crap about my characters in Diablo III, but my character in Skyrim I find myself quite firmly attached to.
Hit the jump for the video. Maybe grab some coffee beforehand because it’s about seven minutes long, which is practically a feature film by Internet standards.
Capcom and developer Dontnod Entertainment’s Remember Me is shaping up to look pretty damn impressive. The game’s primary premise is that memories have become a commodity. People are able to buy other people’s memories as well as sell their own. In the game, this new form of social media is controlled by a company called Memorize. Here’s an in-narrative video that explains the rise of memories as a commodity; the whole thing has been put together to seem like Memorize developed it. It’s a stunning video, and a very good piece of viral marketing for the game. Check it out.
So just over a week ago we thought this scenario was getting messy. Now, however, it’s way past messy; we’re into full-on clean-up crew required with hazmat suits and danger pay. When Patrice Désilets was fired by Ubisoft, his new IP 1666 (which is believed to be a competitive title to the Assassin’s Creed franchise) remained behind with the publisher. Désilets is looking into legal options at present, and if you need to catch up on what’s going on, you can read this.
Ubisoft’s next move in this sordid affair has been to place the development of 1666 on indefinite hold. This news came out of a recent investor call, with Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot stating: “So, for Patrice, after more than two months of discussions with him, we couldn’t align our vision both on project development and team management, so consequently our collaboration has ended, and we have suspended 1666 for an undisclosed period of time.”
Here’s where it gets really mean: according to Internet super-sleuth Superannuation, Patrice Désilets’s contract with Ubisoft stipulated that all ownership of 1666 would revert back to Désilets in the event that Ubisoft cancels development proceedings. With Ubisoft choosing to place development on indefinite hold, it’s essentially locked the IP in some weird limbo state meaning that Ubisoft retains all ownership and Désilets leaves with nothing.
Source: Kotaku
Well now, this is a pleasant surprise: publisher Electronic Arts has announced that they’re doing away with their online pass system. Introduced back in 2009 and known as “Project Ten Dollar”, EA pioneered the online pass system that requires players to input a single-use activation code in order to access online components of a game. The system was one to combat the second-hand games market, with second-hand purchasers requiring an additional online purchase directly from the publisher in order to gain access to the locked down content.
EA’s senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg told website GamesBeat: “Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format. We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.”
Shortly after EA introduced the system, many other publishers started doing similar. A lot of people have complained about the inconvenience of the online pass, and this feedback was what’s prompted EA to drop the system from all of their future releases. Here’s hoping other publishers follow suit once again.
This is the fourth time this rumour has surfaced, but website The Verge isn’t even labelling it as such this time. They’ve learnt from Microsoft sources that the company will soon do away with the loathed MS Points system in favour of cash vouchers similar to what Apple has on offer for iTunes. Apparently you’ll also be able to purchase directly with a credit card or debit card instead of going the voucher route. These MS Vouchers will work across all of Microsoft’s online stores, from Xbox LIVE to the Windows Store.
Source: The Verge
Developer 5TH Cell has joined forces with DC Comics to bring a new Scibblenauts game to the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and PC. Dubbed Scibblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure, the game has one lofty goal: to include every DC Comics character ever created. Scibblenauts Unmasked was recently revealed to journalists in LA, and during the presentation it was shown just how close 5th Cell has come to their goal.
The game maintains the standard Scibblenauts formula: players follow the adventures of Maxwell, who can summon any noun into the world using his magic pen and paper. So long as the noun isn’t a proper noun, the object will appear in game for aid in solving the level’s puzzles. In Scibblenauts Unmasked you’ll be able to summon ordinary nouns, as in the previous games, but you’ll have nearly 80 years’ worth of DC Comics characters to summon as well. 5th Cell has also included the adjective system that was introduced to the series in Super Scribblenauts. Consequently you could, if you needed to, summon a “dancing Two-Face” if you felt that that particular character getting his groove on would help you solve the puzzle.
So with the GT6 reveal taking up most of the hour that’s just passed, I’m heading into the Google I/O event. I/O is the premier developer even for Google’s services and they also talk new standards there as well, like HTML5 adoption and all sorta of other things. The I/O keynote is said to be three hours long (I damn hope not!) and we’ll see if we can join in the fun. Luckily, there is a live stream. Sadly, its just gone down.
