Month: April 2018

Spoilers for Westworld Season 2 Episode 1 below!

Westworld Season 2 is finally here, and based on the premiere episode, it seems like it’s taking a very different approach than Season 1 did. Think back to the show’s very first episode: Remember how much time it spent just on Dolores and Teddy’s story? In contrast, Season 2, Episode 1, “Journey Into Night,” is a runaway train that can’t be stopped.

Besides the opening chat between BernArnold and Dolores, Westworld’s Season 2 premiere was a direct continuation of the Season 1 finale. The party is over, and Delos has brought in the big guns to clean up Ford’s mess. The episode flits between the immediate aftermath of the Season 1 finale’s cocktail party, including the following day, and events that take place around two weeks later, after Bernard wakes up on the beach. And boy, does it cover a lot of ground.

Stubbs is alive. Delos is taking control back. Dolores and Maeve are on the warpath. The Man in Black (AKA Bill) has a new game to play. The hosts are all dead. Wait, the hosts are all dead? What in the worlds is going on?

“Journey Into Night” covered more ground in its hour and 10 minutes than any two episodes of Season 1, or so it seemed tonight–especially if you haven’t watched the first season in a while. Just look at all the new things we learned in the Season 2 premiere–was there a single episode during Season 1 that threw this much new information at us? Season 1 was all atmosphere and worldbuilding for long stretches, and this premiere seemed far more concerned with plot and set-up for the rest of Season 2. Catching up with all these characters again was fun, but it would have been nice if the episode gave us a little more breathing room.

There’s one moment in this premiere that exemplified that change of pace better than any other: When some random Delos guy accosts the Man in Black and casually calls him “Bill.” All of Westworld Season 1 was spent deliberately, conspicuously not calling Ed Harris’s character by his name. Westworld in a post-first season era has no time for that level of subtlety–at least not yet. The Man in Black is William is Bill. Try to keep up.

Famously, Westworld Season 2 was always going to be about “chaos.” When Sizemore, the writer from last season who this time around is even more simpering and pathetic, entered the control room, he was shocked: “No one’s in control.” It seems that will indeed be the theme in Westworld Season 2. Even Gustaf Skarsgård’s new character, Karl Strand, is struggling to regain control. This is the Delos big gun they sent in after nearly two weeks of non-communication with the park, and he spends the whole episode playing catch-up. He knows about as much as we do: The rancher’s daughter is on the warpath, tigers and who knows what else are wandering between parks, and s*** is f***ed up.

But “Journey Into Night” felt more like a mid-season episode than a premiere. It mostly just moved the plot forward; Bill has a new game to play, Maeve is searching for her daughter with Hector and Sizemore in tow, Dolores and Teddy are seeking an exit, Bernard and Charlotte need to find Abernathy, and eventually, everyone’s going to wind up dead in a lake. The episode moved those pieces into place, but it didn’t really feel like the soft reset that it could have been.

Maybe it’s better to jump straight to it after so long away–Season 1 aired in 2016, after all–but then again, we still haven’t seen the much-teased Shogun World. How cool would it have been if Season 2 had started fresh with a new setting and characters, then tied it all back to the main plot next week?

There are, of course, some brand new mysteries for Season 2, such as Bill’s new game, finding “the Door.” And given everything going wrong with Bernard–the “critical failure” causing him to suffer time displacement, face blindness, loss of motor function, etc.–our boy is clearly not going to be a reliable narrator this time around (not that he ever was).

That, more than anything, seems like a tool Westworld Season 2 will gleefully use to keep us guessing–and to deny us any real ability to predict the full picture in advance. What have we already glimpsed in “Journey Into Night” that, by the end of the season, we’ll look back on in a new light?

Of course we’re going to continue theorizing, sleuthing, and combing through every frame of each new episode. But with its new breakneck speed and the show’s increased potential for obfuscation thanks to Bernard’s robo-dementia, for once the cadence of Westworld’s reveals might actually outpace us. Season 2 is stampeding to the beat of its own drum, and we’re just going to have to try and keep up.

Avengers: Infinity War is the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that will finally marry the Earthbound and cosmic sides of the MCU. That means the Guardians of the Galaxy are finally joining forces with the Avengers, all to fight against Thanos and his quest for the Infinity Stones.

Most of the action we’ve seen in Infinity War trailers so far seems to take place on Earth. And that makes sense; as the movie’s writers pointed out during a recent interview with GameSpot, half the characters in the movie live on Earth, and several of the Infinity Stones happen to be here.

But Infinity War won’t be as Earth-centric as you might suspect, it turns out.

“I will say we tried very hard to make it not 100% Earth, to make it pretty–I would say it’s 50/50,” Infinity War co-writer Chris Markus told GameSpot.

“Thanos is a cosmic character,” said Joe Russo, one of Infinity War‘s co-directors. “I think there’s a lot of really exotic locations in the movie, throughout the universe. It paints on a wide canvas.”

“I think if you saw [the 22 minutes of Infinity War that’s been screened], it’s more balanced between Earth and the cosmic,” added Anthony Russo, the movie’s other co-director. “I think when you see the movie, you’ll see the balance even more.”

Markus continued that they Earth in Infinity War to be “representative of the universe, not ‘the most special planet ever.’ You don’t want Earth to be, you know, America first.”

That of course brings up Wakanda, the fictional African nation we finally got to know in this year’s well-loved Black Panther. Based on what we’ve seen in Infinity War trailers so far, it seems much of the movie takes place in Wakanda.

It’s easy to forget, though, that with Black Panther and Infinity War coming out mere months apart, they couldn’t have possibly known that Wakanda would become such a popular place–or how it would be received at all.

“It’s lucky that [fans] liked that movie!” said Stephen McFeely, Infinity War’s other co-writer. McFeely and Markus wrote all three Captain America movies, plus Thor: The Dark World, but had nothing to do with Black Panther.

“You just have to have confidence,” Markus said.

“In charting out the story, [Wakanda] was the best place for this part of the movie to go,” McFeely explained. “We all sat around, and Marvel said, ‘Well, they’ll have just been there three months ago, is that a good idea? Let’s talk about that,’ And we tried to find some other way, and we’re like ‘No, this is what’s best for the story.’ And Marvel said, ‘If it’s best for the story, leave it in–and fingers crossed that it’s not boring that we go there again.'”

“And we consulted with them, to see what their battle looked like, what they were doing, so that we weren’t serving the exact same dish,” Markus added.

McFeely said test audiences responded much differently to Infinity War before and after Black Panther hit theaters earlier this year.

“The week before Black Panther came out, we get to Wakanda and people go, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,'” he said. “The week after, people go, ‘Holy crap! Oh my god!’ It’s just free character, it’s free delight, that we didn’t have to work for, you know. It’s very satisfying.”

Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters this Friday, April 27.

With an increase of beautiful games come more and more beautiful screenshots. Sony Santa Monica has confirmed God of War will have its own photo mode to catch every god-slaying moment in action.

God of War’s photo mode hasn’t exactly been a secret. The title’s director Corey Barlog told Daily Star back in March that is was something the team was looking at doing. A tweet on Thursday gave us a sneak peek of the mode with Kratos cheesing next to a seagull. Sony Santa Monica confirmed the mode soon after, giving us a first look at the mode via livestream.

While we’re not sure when the mode will come to the game, we do know it won’t just be about capturing the heat of the battle. The mode will include options to manipulate Kratos’ and Arteus’ faces–so even the angriest of fellows can take a moment to be the prime Dad of War.

For everything God of War, make sure to check out all of our coverage in our hub. Corey Barlog answered all of your questions in this Q&A, and check out how turning off the HUD transforms the game.