Month: March 2019

Octopath Traveler is getting a prequel for iOS and Android devices called Octopath Traveler: Conquerors of the Continent, Square Enix has announced. The first trailer, which you can watch above, shows that the mobile game will retain the striking “HD-2D” visual style that served as one of the main draws for the Nintendo Switch version.

Although details on Octopath Traveler: Conquerors of the Continent are scant, it has been confirmed that the game will take place before the events of the Switch title, with three characters that have unique stories. This format mirrors the distinct campaigns that were tied to Octopath Traveler’s cast of heroes.

Octopath Traveler: Conquerors of the Continent is expected to launch for iOS and Android in Japan in 2019 and is free-to-play. Square Enix has not yet confirmed how it will monetize the game.

The visual style of Octopath was a big point of discussion, and praise, when it was released. The aesthetic was unique enough for Square Enix to trademark the term “HD-2D,” indicating it would be utilized in the future.

In his Octopath Traveler review, Peter Brown said the game “thrives on its character progression and the temptations of high-level challenges and rewards. The promise of new jobs, exciting boss fights, and powerful gear will inspire you to poke around every corner, and there are no shortage of discoveries to strive for.

“And all the while, you’re treated to one of the most interesting and effective re-imaginings of a retro aesthetic around. Octopath will likely be a divisive game due to its fractured storytelling, but it’s one worth playing despite its lesser qualities. Its high points are simply too good to ignore.”

One of the popular, consistent rumours about Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings TV show was that one of its storylines might focus on a young Aragorn.

However, now that Amazon has confirmed when in Middle-earth history the show takes place, that can seemingly be ruled out. Amazon confirmed that the untitled Lord of the Rings show is set during the Second Age. However, Aragorn was born during the Third Age.

The popular theory now is that the Amazon show, being set during the Second Age, will focus on “The Age of Numenor,” and specifically the island of Numenor. The Second Age is a 3,441-year period during which a lot of important Middle-earth history took place.

As Twitter user Dudeseid points out, major events in the Second Age included the forging of the Rings of Power, including the One Ring; the War of Sauron, the beginning of the Ringwraiths, and when Numenor the island sank into the ocean. Also, it was during the Second Age that the Elven city of Rivendell was developed and that the great battle where men, elves, and dwarves fought together for the first time against Sauron.

Some of the significant characters during the Second Age were Elrond, Galadriel, Elendil, and Sauron. Hugo Weaving played Elrond in Peter Jackson’s movies, while Cate Blanchette portrayed Galadriel. The new series is set long before the events of Jackson’s movies.

The Lord of the Rings show on Amazon doesn’t currently have a title or release date, and no casting has been announced as yet. But it’s set to be an incredibly expensive series.

Outside of the TV show, a biopic about Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien is coming out in May. Nicholas Hoult stars as Tolkien, while Lily Collins plays his wife, Edith Bratt–you can see the latest trailer here.

Captain Marvel is finally here, and we are teaming up with CNET and Her Universe to celebrate the opening weekend with this online sweepstakes. Check out the prizes:

Keep in mind that Her Universe has apparel and swag for men and women, so you can start browsing to plan what you’ll get if you win one of those gift certificates.

To enter for a chance to be one of the three winners you have to fill out the form below after reading our rules and accepting the terms and conditions of the giveaway. You also have the option to complete actions to get extra entries, like following us across social media.

Don’t be shy, and head out to our comment section and tell us about your favorite Marvel character. Good luck!

Captain Marvel is the final step before Avengers: Endgame, and no one can blame you for waiting with baited breath all the way through to the credits. After all, Infinity War concluded with the ultimate tease, as the rapidly disintegrating Nick Fury frantically sent a page to who we could only assume was the still-not-officially-introduced Captain Marvel.

With her movie finally here, this is do-or-die time, and our last real chance to get some information before the final showdown with Thanos happens in Avengers: Endgame this April. These may be the most highly anticipated post credits scenes in MCU history for that reason alone–and we’re happy to make sure you’re getting the absolute most out of them.

That said, there are obviously spoilers to follow, so proceed with caution if you’re the sort of person who wants to head into either Captain Marvel or Endgame totally blind.

There’s a pretty major time jump between the final scene of the movie and the first post credits scene–all the way from 1995 to post-Infinity War. We’re not exactly sure how long post-Infinity War, but we have to assume it’s relatively soon thanks to the presence of Steve’s beard (while Cap was fully bearded when Infinity War ended, he’s been clean shaved in both Endgame trailers so far). So, right after Infinity War is where we join Steve, Nat, Bruce, and Rhodey in the Avengers compound for Captain Marvel’s first of two post-credits stingers.

There are several important things to note here. One, they’re monitoring the situation in the post-Snap Earth as best they can–but, as Steve points out, it’s a “nightmare,” and they’re not really getting anywhere. Two, they’ve found Fury’s pager, and and they’ve been monitoring it for some time. How exactly they found it after it was just left on a random street in New York is pretty unclear, but we’ll give Fury the benefit of the doubt and assume his car had some sort of tracking device they were able to follow in order to investigate his disappearance once they left Wakanda. Regardless, they’ve got the pager and they’ve been running it nonstop–but they have no idea what it does, so they’re playing it relatively safe and keeping the whole thing under wraps.

But that doesn’t actually seem to matter all that much because–surprise!–just as they’re starting to debate whether it’s worth trying to send the mysterious signal again, Carol shows up. That’s right! One second she’s not there, and the next she is, right smack dab in the middle of the Avengers compound, which she apparently infiltrated instantly and in complete silence. So that’s how Captain Marvel arrives on Earth–one major question down, about a million more to go.

The most striking thing about Carol’s sudden arrival is that, assuming we’re right about the time elapsed between this moment and Infinity War, this means Carol actually shows up pretty early on in the process–in all likelihood, before the footage we’ve seen in both the Endgame trailers. So where was she during the trailers? Will she actually have a role in the team’s plan to save the world like we all assume she will? Or is there something else going on?

More importantly, if Carol isn’t the lynchpin of whatever plan Steve and co are cooking up, who or what is?

The scene doesn’t go on long enough to give us any real answers–we don’t get to see how the team reacts to Carol or how Carol reacts to the team, what that dynamic will be like, or if they’re even able to trust each other under the circumstances. Looks like we’ll be waiting until April for that.

Enter Goose

The second post credits scene is, unsurprisingly, a gag bit–sort of in the vein of Ant-Man & The Wasp’s giant drumming ant, or Guardian’s Howard the Duck cameo. We see Nick Fury’s desk with everyone’s favorite Goose, coughing up a “hairball” while Nick isn’t around. Of course, the “hairball” is actually the Tesseract, which Goose swallowed earlier in the film to keep it away from Yon-Rogg.

Now, there might be some confusion about this scene, since Nick’s absence makes it actually look like the scene might be set post-Infinity War at first glance. But it’s not, don’t worry. Notice the giant, clunky CRT monitor on Nick’s desk? This scene is definitely still in the ’90s, long before Thor picked up the Tesseract in the first Avengers film. So put those tin foil hats away–Thanos destroyed the Tesseract and got the Space Stone for the Infinity Gauntlet. Goose wasn’t somehow keeping a bonus Tesseract secret from everyone all this time.

…Unless he was? In the comics, Flerken have the ability to access pocket dimensions, which could mean that, if the Russo Brothers totally ran out of ideas, he might actually be able to access some alternate reality version of the Infinity Stones and spit one out.

Probably not, though. But it might be something to keep in mind if you want to get deep, deep into the conspiracy theory well before April 26. You’ve gotta pass that time somehow, right? And we certainly won’t judge you.

Chances are, even if you’re not super familiar with Marvel comics, you could maybe cite some facts about the Skrulls. They’re one of the most iconic fictional alien races in pop culture, from their weirdly ridged chins and green skin to their ominous ability to shapeshift into just about anyone. They’ve been a major thorn in the side of virtually every Marvel superhero team since Fantastic Four #2 back in 1962, and for good reason. Traditionally, the Skrulls have always been seen as an invasive and destabilizing force–they invade planets in secret with their shapeshifting powers to infiltrate and later overtake whole worlds by turning friends on one another and allowing paranoia to do most of the work for them.

Sounds pretty devious, right? So it’s no wonder that fans have been clamoring anxiously about all the new potential threats the Skrulls could represent in the MCU, now that they’re being officially introduced in Captain Marvel. Except, that’s not exactly how things actually panned out in the end. We were ready for just about every possible Skrull-related twist, from the reveal that beloved characters like Black Widow have actually been Skrulls this entire time to a full scale Secret Invasion-based storyline. We weren’t, however, prepared for what we actually got.

Captain Marvel turned the idea of Skrulls on its head–and this changes everything we thought we knew about the future of the MCU. Obviously, we’re getting into spoiler territory here, so consider yourself warned.

The major revelation of Captain Marvel was that Talos, the Skrull “leader” and assumed villain of the movie, in fact was not a villain at all–he, and his people, were victims. Yon-Rogg and the Kree were the bad guys all along, hunting down and massacring the Skrulls after they refused to submit to Kree rule. This, in and of itself, isn’t totally shocking–in the comics the Kree/Skrull war is a pretty infamous storyline that revolves around the endless conflict between the two alien races. The major difference is that, in the comics, the lines between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” aren’t so clearly drawn–both the Kree and the Skrulls are villains, they just so happen to be villains who are fighting with one another.

Not so in the MCU. Captain Marvel makes it perfectly clear that the Skrulls are actually anything but evil this time around–at least, not that we can see. There is absolutely no evidence in Captain Marvel to suggest that the Skrulls have done anything truly villainous, which puts us in an interesting position moving forward.

If the Skrulls aren’t evil, conniving spies, what exactly are they? It certainly doesn’t mean that there haven’t been Skrulls hanging out on Earth for all these years, but it does drastically alter the stakes. For instance, if we suddenly learned that Natasha’s been a Skrull this whole time, it would just be a quirky little character detail now, rather than a major, mind blowing revelation.

It also significantly reduces the chance of a live action Secret Invasion adaptation–a comic book event fans have been clamoring for since the Skrulls were first confirmed for the big screen. In Secret Invasion, the Avengers were devastated as they uncovered a conspiracy by a Skrull princess named Veranke who simultaneously undermined virtually every hero team in operation by placing secret double agents in their midst. Fans assumed that, by seeding the Skrull history back as far as the 90s in the MCU, a potential Secret Invasion-style story with a covert population ready to rise up and attack in the modern day was all but inevitable–but that probably won’t be the case. After all, there isn’t much of a threat behind groups of refugees hiding in plain sight to escape violent, tyrannical rule.

Good Skrulls aren’t a totally new concept for Marvel. The lines between right and wrong for both the Kree and the Skrulls have always been pretty murky, and defectors from either side have cropped up time and time again to side with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The same way heroes like Mar-Vell, Carol, and Noh-Varr of the Avengers are human-aligned Kree, characters like Hulkling (of Young Avengers fame), the Cadre K (a group of X-Men adjacent aliens), and Xavin (of the original Runways) have all been human-aligned Skrulls. Of course, these characters’ choices usually put them directly at odds with the imperatives of their homeworlds, but, hey, at least they’re on our side, right?

Of course, none of this means the Skrulls can never be villains in the MCU. Talos and his group of survivors represent only a small sector of the scattered Skrull population–in his own words, “this is just the beginning–there are thousands of us separated from each other, scattered throughout the galaxy.” This means there could be radical Skrull factions out there somewhere who are less interested in slipping away into a peaceful life than Talos was.

So, will we see a group of Skrulls come storming in to stealthily attack the Earth sometime in the future? Maybe. But are there secretly groups of Skrulls hiding on Earth ready to pounce at the slightest provocation, who have been covertly destabilizing our favorite heroes since the very beginning? Probably not. And since that makes the MCU’s future all the more unpredictable, maybe it’s a good thing.

If you’ve been following Captain Marvel’s promotion at all, there’s a good chance you know about Goose the cat–he’s easily the MCU’s latest breakout star, despite being, well, at cat. He even got his very own character poster right alongside Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson–not bad for someone who can’t actually speak and doesn’t have opposable thumbs.

But the truth about Goose is actually a little weirder than what you might assume. Sure, the internet loves cats, and the MCU has been sorely lacking in plucky animal companions since Rocket was introduced back in Guardians 1, but Goose is actually a lot more than meets the eye–and way, way more than a mascot for Carol and Nick’s fun buddy cop adventures through the ’90s.

Here’s your obligatory spoiler warning: Major Captain Marvel plot points discussed below.

The truth is Goose is no ordinary cat–he’s actually not a cat at all. Like his comics counterpart, Chewie, Goose is actually an alien known as a Flerken, a funny name for a monster that is really anything but.

Introduced fairly recently in Captain Marvel #1 back in 2014, Flerkens are a sort of dangerous alien creature that look shockingly similar to Earth’s cats, but are in fact deadly, monstrous eating machines that procreate by laying over a hundred eggs at a time and can run the risk of infesting any area they call home. They’ve got tentacles in their mouths, voracious appetites, and stomachs that contain “pocket dimensions” that allow them to consume things much larger than their bodies without issue. In a weird way, they’re almost like Star Trek’s infamous Tribbles–but a bit more deadly and sly.

A Flerken infestation could prove deadly if left unchecked, which is why most people who know what they are and how to spot them react pretty violently to them–or, they just try to get as far away from them as possible. It was Rocket Racoon who first realized the truth about Chewie in the comics–which Carol herself vehemently denied, until he was proven right a bit later when we saw Chewie in a nest of all his Flerkhen eggs.

The movie handles Goose similarly, with Talos filling the role of the Flerken-spotter. Our confirmation of Goose doesn’t come from a nest, however, but a starring role as the heroes’ catch-all secret weapon, using his tentacle mouth and interior pocket dimension to not only kill a handful of Kree soldiers, but also to spirit the Tesseract back to Earth unnoticed.

The biggest question for the MCU is how, exactly, did Goose end up on Earth in the first place? He’s not given any real origin story, and instead just shows up at the Project Pegasus base as Nick and Carol work to infiltrate it. The simplest and most obvious answer would be that Mar-Vell herself brought Goose to Earth while she was undercover, but what has he been doing for all this time since Mar-Vell’s death and Carol’s disappearance if that’s the case? Protecting the Tesseract? Sneaking food and shelter from SHIELD? Just getting really into being treated like a house cat? And why would Mar-Vell bring a Flerken to Earth to begin with?

Who really knows? It’s possible we haven’t seen the last of Goose–or, at the very least, of his little Flerken relatives. He was on Earth for an awfully long time unsupervised, and if he’s anything like Chewie, that means there’s probably a big Flerken nest somewhere hidden on the Pegasus base. Maybe they’ve already hatched and there are hundreds of unsuspecting humans out there unknowingly caring for eldritch aliens.

What if the Flerken are the real invading force we all thought the Skrulls would turn into? Watch out, Thanos, there might be a new big bad in town.

Probably not. But maybe. Listen, they’re a cat with other dimensions in their stomachs. They can eat Infinity Stones and hack them up like hairballs. Tell me that’s not at least a little bit terrifying.

One of the most-anticipated upcoming games, Cyberpunk 2077, is coming to E3 in June, but you don’t have to wait that long to hear the developers talk about it. PlayStation has posted a new “Creating Cyberpunk 2077” video in which developers from CD Projekt Red discuss some elements of the long-in-development first-person RPG.

Miles Tost, one of the game’s level designers, speaks in the video about why CD Projekt Red has kept so quiet about Cyberpunk 2077 over the years. He explains that video game development is an “iterative” process, which means things change all the time. That’s just how development works. And it seems CD Projekt Red is more interested in waiting until it has something great, polished, and refined to show.

“The reason why you can’t really go out and show everything is because video game development is such an iterative process,” Tost says. “What we have now might not be there tomorrow. We’ve had ideas that have died over the years then they’ve been resurrected then they’ve died again and now they’re back.”

It’s also confirmed in the video that Cyberpunk 2077 takes place 50 years after the source material and on a parallel timeline, which affords the studio another level of freedom to do new things. You can watch the full video in the embed above.

Cyberpunk 2077 was re-revealed at E3 2018 last year, and a 48-minute gameplay trailer left a lot of people very impressed. The game promises a nonlinear story designed for “mature” players and is set in the metropolis of Night City. According to CD Projekt Red, it will have some sandbox elements and a form of multiplayer.

However, CD Projekt Red has stressed that Cyberpunk 2077 is a “true RPG” and definitely not a multiplayer shooter. There’s no confirmed release date, but the game will come out for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

The game is set to show up again at E3 2019 this June, but there is no word yet on what more we’ll see or learn about the long-in-development game. Keep checking back with GameSpot for more.

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