Nioh 2 is set for release on March 13, 2020 for PlayStation 4 and details on the sequel’s upcoming beta have been revealed.
The news was announced in a PlayStation Blog post on Wednesday. The game’s producer shared information about the beta’s stage and the in-game reward players will achieve for completing it. A trailer for the game has also been released showcasing new gameplay.
Completing the beta will earn players “The Mark of the Demon Slayer” which will unlock the Kamaitachi Helmet in the full game when it’s released. The post also says preorders are live on PlayStation Store and preordering will come with additional rewards. Those rewards weren’t revealed in the blog.
In a week of major entertainment news, few stories have stood out more than the announcement that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have stepped away from their planned series of Star Wars films. In a statement released to Deadline, the duo chalked up their departure to a very busy schedule and their overall deal with Netflix. “There are only so many hours in the day, and we felt we could not do justice to both Star Wars and our Netflix projects,” they said. “So we are regretfully stepping away.”
While the streaming and box office wars continue, some of Hollywood’s biggest executives came together for a rare roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter, and with Disney’s Marvel movies’ continued domination, feelings run a little hot.
When THR reporter Matthew Belloni asked if, like American Idol, there would come a point where it wasn’t “cool” to watch Marvel movies, Disney Studios CCO Alan Horn pushed back.
“The answer is no,” Horn told THR. “If the film has a compelling storyline, if it has heart and humor, two things that I insist on, and it’s terrifically well executed, I think there is an audience. But who knows?
Like any self-respecting animated sitcom, South Park has a long history of Halloween specials under its belt. Apart from a handful of real classics (“Hell on Earth 2006” comes to mind) and a couple clunkers, these specials tend to fall into the “decent, not great” category. So it is with the show’s latest Halloween episode, the meta-heavy but only intermittently funny “Tegridy Farms Halloween Special.”
The good news is the series hasn’t quite squeezed the last juice out of the fruit that is Tegridy Farms. That ongoing storyline has often threatened to overstay its welcome this season, but at the end of the day it’s hard to argue with the show redoubling its focus on all things Randy. The stupider and more self-absorbed Randy gets, the more the show benefits. It helps that this episode shifts focus to Shelly for a change, allowing her to do more than just show up for 30 seconds a week and yell at her dad. Casting Shelly as a cauldron-brewing saboteur with a marijuana “problem” definitely helps inject new life into Tegridy Farms.
Even when a comic is technically about the Joker, it’s difficult to actually cast the Clown Prince of Crime as the main protagonist. Unlike the Joker movie, DC Comics has always shied away from stories that shed too much light on the character’s origin or his manner of thinking. Better this villain’s story be expressed in multiple choice. With that in mind, Joker: Hidden Smile is another strong addition to the library of Batman comics that are less about the Joker himself than his effect on those trapped in his orbit.
Killer Smile’s premise may sound familiar at first glance. An ambitious psychiatrist thinks they have the key to cracking Joker’s mind and curing his unique brand of madness, only to find their patient may be manipulating them instead. But this isn’t really a retread of the classic Harley Quinn origin. Killer Smile is much more a psychological horror tale in the vein of Jacob’s Ladder and Altered States. It’s a comic where Dr. Ben Arnell finds the lines between reality and horrific fantasy blurring.
In a big Star Wars shakeup, Game of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff exited their planned trilogy in what was just the latest loss of top talent for the sci-fi series. At the time, it was believed that the pair’s commitment to Netflix was partly the reason they stepped away, but it appears that isn’t the whole story.
Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Weiss and Benioff had been thinking about leaving Star Wars since August. That was when the pair signed a five-year, $250 million deal with Netflix to create new movies and TV shows for the streaming network. At the time, Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy was reportedly “unhappy” about the deal with Netflix, which Weiss and Benioff are said to have signed just before they were due to start working on their Star Wars movies.
The report goes on: “Kennedy was not convinced the pair–known for focusing on one project at a time–could develop a sci-fi trilogy while also overseeing film and TV projects at Netflix. Sources say that as the duo shopped for an overall deal over the summer, they told potential suitors that they planned to work on Star Wars concurrently with any projects under their new deal.”
It was also reported that Kennedy became nervous over the idea of Weiss and Benioff sharing time between Star Wars and the Netflix projects. Netflix reportedly required Weiss and Benioff to physically be on set for their projects.
Weiss and Benioff became just the latest top talent to quit or be fired from high-level Star Wars creative posts. Disney fired Chronicle director Josh Trank from a Star Wars movie in 2015, while the company also removed directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord from Solo: A Star Wars Story during development in 2017 (Ron Howard was later brought on). Also that year, Disney parted ways with Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, who was due to direct Star Wars: Episode IX. The 2016 movie Rogue One also faced some trouble, as Tony Gilroy was brought on to rewrite and re-shoot some of Godzilla director Gareth Edwards’ standalone movie Rogue One.
The entire story at The Hollywood Reporter is very fascinating and incredibly in-depth, offering a lot of insight and context on the matter–you should read the whole thing here at THR.
The official line on the matter is that Weiss and Benioff did not feel comfortable splitting their time between Star Wars and Netflix. “There are only so many hours in the day, and we felt we could not do justice to both Star Wars and our Netflix projects,” Weiss and Benioff said. “So we are regretfully stepping away.”
The new Star Wars trilogy is not the first casualty related to Weiss and Benioff signing with Netflix. Their controversial HBO show, Confederate, was also killed off after the pair signed for big money with Netflix.
While the new Star Wars trilogy from Weiss and Benioff is finished, Disney is still moving forward with another trilogy of new Star Wars films from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. There is no word on if Lucasfilm plans to greenlight a new trilogy of Star Wars films to replace the three movies that Weiss and Benioff were expected to make.
The next Star Wars movie is this December’s The Rise of Skywalker, which wraps up the entire Skywalker Saga that began back in 1977.
BioWare continues to work on Dragon Age 4, but don’t expect it to release anytime soon. Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen said on an earnings call that Dragon Age 4 is likely still two or more years away from releasing.
He said fans can expect to play Dragon Age 4 after Fiscal Year 2022. That period runs from April 1, 2021 through March 31, 2022, so fans shouldn’t expect Dragon Age 4 until April 2022 at the very soonest. Jorgensen said “plans are underway for that product,” which makes it sound like it’s still early days for Dragon Age 4.
In a 2018 blog post, BioWare’s Mark Darrah confirmed that Dragon Age 4 has been in the works for “quite a while.” Some of the “core” team that worked on the previous Dragon Age games are back for the new one, while BioWare’s plan is to “push BioWare’s storytelling to the next level.”
Dragon Age 4’s creative director is Matthew Goldman. He said BioWare has put together its “strongest team yet” to work on the new Dragon Age. He called it the “most epic quest ever.”
Dragon Age 4 may not be the only title BioWare is working on right now, as Jorgensen added that BioWare has other titles in the works, though he did not name them.