Month: May 2018

The Witcher franchise is being turned into a TV show for Netflix, and while the project is still a long time away from airing, fans may be happy to learn that things are moving forward. Lead writer Lauren Hissrich announced that the writer’s room for the show officially opened today, while she also announced the names of the show’s co-writers.

We don’t know exactly what Hissrich and the rest of her team discussed, but she teased that the day was “full of ideas and banter and cupcakes and creativity and darkness and champagne.” It’s also now been confirmed that Jenny Klein, who wrote for Jessica Jones, is also on the writing team for the untitled Witcher TV show. In her own tweet, she said she is “super stoked” to be writing the show with Hissrich and others. “Witcher is gonna ROCK THE NETFLIX,” she said. She also shared a picture of what’s in the fridge in the writer’s room.

It’s also been confirmed that The Originals writer Declan de Barra and Daredevil writer Sneha Koorse are on the writing team as well. Additionally Clare Higgins is a writer’s assistant.

The Witcher show for Netflix is based on Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels that inspired CD Projekt Red’s video game franchise. Geralt of Rivia is the hero of the books and the games, so it’s expected he will be in the show. No casting announcements have been made as of yet, however.

Back in April, Hissrich revealed a lot of details about The Witcher’s TV show, including the fact that it isn’t expected to premiere until 2020 at the earliest. Hissrich also confirmed that Season 1 will span eight episodes and it will be filmed in Eastern Europe.

As for The Witcher video game franchise, developer CD Projekt Red is letting the franchise rest after 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The RPG series is expected to return someday, but CD Projekt Red is focusing more on its new game Cyberpunk 2077 right now.

Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, who plays Gregor Clegane AKA The Mountain on Game of Thrones, is a force to be reckoned with in the novels and on the show. He’s also a force in real life, as the actor, 28, recently earned the title of World’s Strongest Man at a competition in the Philippines. Björnssonn, who is 6′ 9″ and weighs 400 pounds, won the title on Sunday, improving from his previous second- and third-place finishes over the years.

The event took place this month and was taped before its airing in the United States on CBS in June. You can see amateur footage of the finals in the YouTube video below. Among other things, Björnsson pulled a bus with a rope and deadlifted a car. You can see these incredible feats and more in the footage below in the video from Power Mafia (via NYT).

Celebrating his achievement on Instagram, Björnssonn quoted the Will Smith movie The Pursuit of Happyness. He wrote: “Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. When people can’t do something themselves, they are going to tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period.”

Björnssonn joined Game of Thrones as The Mountain in its fourth season. He’s the third actor to play the character after HBO recast the role twice.

Game of Thrones Season 8 premieres sometime in 2019. There are six episodes in all, which doesn’t sound like many, but remember that they might all be as long as movies. In other news, we recently learned about a battle scene that took 55 nights to shoot.

Event organisers today announced that video game industry writing veteran Rhianna Pratchett will give the opening keynote at PAX Australia in October. Pratchett wrote the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot and its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, before exiting the franchise in the lead-up to this year’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Pratchett started in games press, where she wrote for PC Zone and others. She transitioned to writing for video games, and some of her credits outside of Tomb Raider include Mirror’s Edge, Heavenly Sword, and the Overlord series. Suffice to say, Pratchett has a wealth of experience and knowledge about video game stories, and her keynote at PAX will surely be one to watch.

In an interview with GameSpot, Pratchett said her keynote address will not be a traditional one where she prepares a speech and delivers it to the crowd. This will be an interactive Q&A where Pratchett will respond to questions from the audience.

Rhianna Pratchett

“I’ve been in the industry for a long time [and] I’ve seen a lot of things change in my particular area so I always have a lot to talk about,” she said. “There isn’t a particular structure to it. As far as I know, it’s going to be a fireside chat-style look at my career in games, what working in narrative has taught me, and where I think it’s going; what I think we’re doing right and what I think we’re doing wrong. Hopes for the future and that kind of thing.”

This is Pratchett’s first ever PAX, and it’s the first time she’s been back to Australia since she was 16 years old. “It’s really nice to be asked to do something in Australia because my family have always been a big fan of Australia. I went there when I was 16 for the first time. My parents used to regularly go back there on holiday. Australia was the last place my parents went together before my dad died. It was their last big holiday.”

Pratchett is the daughter of acclaimed fantasy author Terry Pratchett, who passed away in 2015. One of his most notable works is the Discworld series, which was adapted for multiple video games.

Unlike E3, the PAX events are more focused on the community instead of commercial (though of course there are commercial activities as well). Pratchett said she is excited to engage directly with fans of her work, in particular Tomb Raider.

“It’s always really nice to meet players in the community, particularly when it comes to Tomb Raider, which has such a big fan community,” she said. “They produce such wonderful cosplay, fan fiction, artwork. There is always a pleasure in interacting with them. I’ve been playing games since I was six years old, so I am a gamer first and foremost.”

PAX Australia, which marked the show’s first international expansion, started in 2013 and has been held every year since. This year’s event takes place October 26-28 in Melbourne at the Melbourne Convention Centre. One of the biggest changes for 2018 is that the EB Games Expo is folded into PAX Australia, so the show stands to be bigger than ever.

Organisers say there will be more than 180 exhibitors, “thousands” of playable games, and more than 150 hours worth of panel presentations and events. Single-day tickets are available for $62 each, while you can buy a three-day pass for $165 that saves you some money if you’re sure you want to go each day.

The Forest’s open-world survival also leads this week’s hidden Steam gems, along with competitive dating sim Monster Prom, and Arabian Nights roguelike City of Brass.

by Edmond Tran and Jess McDonell on May 7, 2018 at 4:41PM

The past week of new releases on Steam gave us some pretty great heavy hitters, with the latest entry in the Total War series, as well as super enticing survival game The Forest coming out of Early Access. But as is always the case, there were also a couple of incredibly engaging, lesser-known hidden gems to pick up too in the form of humorous competitive dating sim Monster Prom and the Arabian Nights-themed action roguelike City of Brass. No matter your taste, you’ll hopefully find something to love in our diverse picks this week.

The Forest ($19.99)

The Forest hit Steam Early Access in 2013, and in the time between then and now, survival games seem to be a dime a dozen. But now that it’s hit its full 1.0 release, it’s clear that this game captures something that few others do, and people are responding to it in droves. Maybe it’s the cinematic art direction, the near-complete lack of guidance which forces you to suck it up and make your own strides in learning and progression, or the thrill of having a chance encounter with terrifying cannibals somewhere on the island. The Forest almost feels like you’re in a series of LOST, and that’s pretty great.

Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia ($44.99)

Total War’s Warhammer games were great and all, it’s great to see the series finally going back to the hardcore histories that made so many of us fall in love with the franchise in the first place. Like the ‘Saga’ in its name suggest, Thrones of Britannia is a little more focused compared to the regular full-scope. But if you like the idea of managing politics, lineage, bloodlines, keeping your vassal states in check and getting down and dirty with your aggressors in the muddy lands of Ye Olde England, then the engaging campaign of Thrones of Britannia is most likely going to be right up your alley.

Monster Prom ($11.99)

In a high school attended by strange monsters with equally off-the-wall personalities, you need to find a prom date, and fast. Monster Prom is a multiplayer dating sim (though it can be played single player, too) where you’ll spend your school days working on your attractive qualities and getting into hijinks with the cast of characters, with the goal of catching their affection before you pop the ultimate question. But if your friends have their eye on the same monster as you, there’s going to be trouble! If you’ve played The Yahwg, you’ll have an idea of how Monster Prom’s engaging time-based adventure works. But if not, the aggressively humorous (if a little shocking) writing, beautiful art, and the number of narrative possibilities are enough to make it worth recommending.

City of Brass ($19.99)

Why haven’t there been more Arabian Nights-themed video games outside of Prince of Persia? First-person action roguelike City of Brass makes excellent use of the setting, and with some Indiana Jones-inspired whip dynamics, it boasts a fun and thoughtful combat system. Whip an enemy in the legs to trip them and finish them off with your sword, or snatch their weapon away and push them into a bottomless pit! Is it any wonder that this game was brought to you by people who worked on Bioshock? With impressive procedurally generated levels and a challenging roster of enemy types, there’s plenty of opportunities to get creative with City of Brass’ satisfying combat tools.

What new PC games do you have your eye on? Let us know on Twitter: @EdmondTran + @JessMcDonell

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