After taking a week off for Thanksgiving, Rick and Morty returned with another new episode tonight. Morty even snagged himself a dragon, forcing Rick to take matters into his own hands and get to slaying.
We’ll have our review of “Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim’s Morty” up a bit later tonight. Until then, let us know what you thought of the new episode in the comments below.
The Epic Games Store has pulled a lot of exclusives with its promise of advances to developers and publishers, and its more generous revenue split compared to Steam, and now it’s taking another step to make things better for the companies releasing games on it. A change in the Epic Games Store policy means that developers are now free to use whatever payment and purchase systems they want within their games.
As reported by Gamasutra, until this change games on the store had to use an Epic-approved payment system for in-game purchases. “We support developers’ right to choose among the best stores, in-app payment processors, online services, and engines,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told them.
This will mean that developers will potentially be able to retain a larger share of the revenue generated from in-game sales, whether those be microtransactions or the purchase of more substantial downloadable content. From a consumer point of view–and, indeed, for a lot of developers–this change probably will not mean much, but there’s now potential for developers to make more money from their in-game sales.
The latest major Epic Games Store exclusive is Phoenix Point, a spiritual successor to XCom.
The developers of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint have released a December roadmap, and have made it clear that they recognize one element of the game that is fundamentally not working at the moment. The Battle Rewards system is being deactivated, with the beginning of Act 2 last week causing problems for many players. However, to make up for it, you’ll immediately get all the rewards from the first two Acts.
“In response to feedback, we are granting to all players every reward from Act 1 and Act 2 next week,” the post reads. “The Hill and Walker figures will not be mass-granted until we have resolved the issues with the items. We are also deactivating the Battle Rewards system until we have implemented solutions to prevent reported issues from reoccurring. Our team aims to have everything ready for the start of Act 3.”
Elsewhere in the roadmap, some details are provided about title update 1.1.0, which is due December 18. It will contain bug fixes and improvements, including better enemy AI, changes to the base jump mechanic, and the addition of night vision goggles. There’s also a Terminator Live Event being planned, which will see you facing off against the T-800–that’s coming between late December and mid-January.
Breakpoint recently added its first raid, as well as an update that introduced easier character customization, among other fixes. Ubisoft has promised that a “more radical and immersive” version of the game is being worked on.
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Everyone knows Disney is a box office behemoth, but just how much money do the film giant’s movies make? After another strong weekend in theatres, Frozen II helped pushed Disney’s 2019 worldwide box office totals past $10 billion to break a yearly box office record set by … Disney.
Collider crunched all the numbers. The $10 billion that Disney has made at the global box office this year surpasses the previous record of $7.6 billion that Disney set in 2016. Disney’s biggest releases of 2019 at the box office have been Avengers: Endgame ($2.79 billion), The Lion King ($1.6 billion), Captain Marvel ($1.2 billion), Toy Story 4 ($1.07 billion), and Aladdin ($1.05 billion). Frozen II, after just three weeks in theatres, is close to becoming the sixth Disney movie to pass $1 billion this year. It currently stands at $920 million worldwide.
Disney’s box office fortunes are set to grow mightier still, as the hugely anticipated Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theatres on December 20. Also of note is that the $10 billion thus far does not include money made by movies from Fox, which Disney acquired earlier this year. Had those numbers been included, Disney’s total worldwide box office haul would be close to $12 billion thanks to films like Alita: Battle Angel ($404.8 million) and Dark Phoenix ($252.4 million), among others.
Disney’s Dumbo ($353.2 million) was among the company’s lowest performing films of the year at the box office, though even that number would be enviable for other films. The company’s Maleficent sequel, Mistress of Evil, pulled in $481.3 million. That was well short of the first film’s $758 million, making it a relative disappointment.
The Rise of Skywalker is set to open in theatres on December 20. Box office estimates project it to make $200 million worldwide over its first weekend. New footage from the film will debut inside Epic’s free-to-play battle royale game Fortnite later this month.
This review contains spoilers for Watchmen episode 8, “A God Walks Into Abar.” To refresh your memory of where we left off, check out our recap of Watchmen episode 7. Once you’ve watched, check out all the Doctor Manhattan teases in Watchmen up to this point, plus our ending explainer on that Watchmen episode 8 post-credits scene.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Watchmen episode 8, “A God Walks into Abar.”
Not that your head isn’t already spinning from this week’s penultimate episode, but Watchmen’s latest chapter also offered up a cool post-credits scene featuring Jeremy Iron’s Adrian Veidt being punished and imprisoned for his crimes on Europa.
And right at the end, we got a huge payoff for one of the pilot episode’s puzzling peculiarities!
Veidt appeared in the actual episode, “A God Walks into Abar,” as well – in a flashback (though that’s not how Doctor Manhattan would describe it).
HBO’s Watchmen broke tradition with Episode 8, “A God Walks Into Abar,” by including, for the first time in the series, a post-credits scene. Hopefully you stuck around for it–but if not, stop right here and go back to watch. We’re going to dive deep into what it might mean and why it matters, so you’re in for some spoilers, even if you finished the episode but shut your TV off early.
To briefly recap, the scene actually starts as audio playing over the credits. It’s a disgusting squishing noise that, we soon learn, is Veidt’s post-trial “punishment.” Each of the clones approaches a bound and prone Veidt and asks him “will you stay master?” When Veidt says no, the clone smashes a tomato (remember, they grow on trees here on Europa) in his face. From there, we abruptly cut to Veidt in a jail cell, reading Fogdancing–a fictional in-universe novel written by the fictional, in-universe author Max Shea, who also wrote the Tales Of The Black Freighter comic-within-the-comic of the Watchmen graphic novel. It’s Veidt’s birthday again, we learn, as the Game Warden brings him his traditional yellow-and-purple cake, topped with 7 candles.
“If you sing ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow,’ I’ll vomit all over your boots,” Veidt says. Thankfully, the Game Warden doesn’t test this threat. Instead, he offers to bring Veidt a new book–but Veidt says he likes this one. Why? The Game Master “wouldn’t understand,” he says. “It’s about loneliness.”
At this moment, the Game Master drops some interesting knowledge. He was actually the first Mr. Philips to be “born” on Europa, which we can assume is why he seems to have more power than the other Philips clones. Of course this only makes us wonder where the first Ms. Crookshanks ended up, or if she’s even still around.
“Why is heaven not enough?” The Game Master asks, to which Veidt responds that this place isn’t his home and that back on Earth “his children, all 8 million of them, [are] undoubtedly standing in their cribs crying out in desperation” for Veidt to return. Knowing what we know about how things are going on Earth, we can confidently say this isn’t true–Earth may be going through some rough stuff, but aside from a few off-handed conversations, news clips, and Trieu’s statue, no one on Earth seems all that interested in Veidt at all. He’s been declared dead, and Elvis Lives-like conspiracies notwithstanding, that’s about the extent of the thought he’s been given.
But of course, someone like Adrian Veidt would never be able to wrap his head around that reality. He’s always, in his own estimation, been the single most important, qualified, intelligent, and capable person on the planet. He also reveals here that it’s not necessarily the superiority that’s most important to him, it’s his own usefulness: “Heaven isn’t enough because they don’t need me.”
That’s when something very strange happens. As the music swells, Veidt realizes there’s a horseshoe baked into his cake. He gleefully pulls it out, tears his cot away from the wall, and begins scraping away at the floorboards while cackling delightedly. If you remember all the way back to Episode 1, you’ll recall Philips and Crookshanks presenting him with a horseshoe rather than a knife during his first birthday party. At the time, it seemed like a bizarre glitch in their “programming,” like they couldn’t tell the difference between a cake knife and a horseshoe. But this moment recontextualizes that entirely.
Is it possible that Philips and Crookshanks have, somehow, been working toward Veidt’s plan all along and that first horseshoe was just a minor hiccup in his timeline? Did Jon somehow pass his own deterministic experience of the world–the idea that everything that has happened and will happen is already laid out and predetermined–on to the people he made? Or is it all just a simple case of one loyal clone–the prosecutor who winked at Veidt after her closing arguments, maybe–being in on the scheme and baking a cake with a hidden key in it under all the other clones’ noses like an old timey prison break?
Either way, the fact remains, Veidt’s plan is proceeding in a way that he’s clearly extremely happy about. And though we can’t tell if he’s planning on pulling some sort of Shawshank Redemption tunnel gambit or if he’s planted some kind of weapon or escape tool under the floor of his jail cell, we’re pretty sure it’ll all be cleared up once and for all next week during the finale.
Watchmen airs Sundays on HBO.
In preparation for The Game Awards later this week, host Geoff Keighley has hosted a Reddit AMA about the show and what viewers can expect. While most questions were fairly straightforward, one prompted a longer response from Keighley: “do you feel that it’s a conflict of interest that you’re the producer of the event and in one of the games nominated for a good number of awards?”
This question is in reference to Death Stranding, the new game from Hideo Kojima’s studio, Kojima Productions. Keighley has discussed his friendship with Kojima on numerous occasions, and appears in Death Stranding as one of several celebrity cameos. In his response, Keighley promises that there is no conflict of interest to speak of, and gets into the specifics of the voting process.
“More than anything, the integrity of the show and the awards is the most important thing of all,” Keighley says. “I don’t vote on the nominees or winners–that’s done by a jury of 80 global media outlets that we list on the website. That process isn’t the result of me having a cameo in a game, but also because I work with developers on world premieres, announcements, sponsorships, and other aspects of the show. I want the jury to be ‘blind’ to all those other aspects.”
He notes that while he is friends with several people within the industry, there are others who also hold him personally responsible when their games don’t win. “If I’m being honest it can sometimes be pretty lonely trying to keep everyone happy,” he says. “But I just have to stay true to the rules and voting and hope that, if I want to build something that stands the test of time, I act as ethically and fairly as I can.”
Keighley notes that his appearance in Death Stranding was recorded in 2017, for a promotional piece that was not used, and Kojima later asked if the motion capture could be used in-game. He did not do the voice acting for his character–that was performed by Matt Mercer. “I certainly get the concern,” he concedes. “As producer of the show I’m inevitably going to have relationships with people in the industry. That’s what allows me to do the show in the first place. The producers of the Oscars, for instance, are often (or almost always) people who produce movies. I don’t make games, don’t invest in games or own game stock. All I can do is be transparent about those relationships and make sure the voting is separate.”
The Game Awards airs December 12 at 8:30 PM ET. You can still vote for your favorite games to win before the show.
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The biggest Arrowverse crossover has begun!
Crisis on Infinite Earths kicked off this week and we are living for these DC cameos! As the first episode got underway, it was clear that this crossover was not only going to feature heroes from The CW Arrowverse, but also a plethora of cameos from the wider DC movie and television universe.
Let’s jump into the cameos from “Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One:”
Robert Wuhl
Warning: this review contains full spoilers for Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part 1, aka Supergirl: Season 5, Episode 9. Watch the video above for our breakdown on the episode’s big death and what it means for the rest of the crossover.
It’s hard to believe the Arrowverse’s big Crisis has finally arrived. This is a story The CW has been building towards in some form since 2014, and certainly with great purpose over the past year. Crisis on Infinite Earths is very much the Arrowverse’s answer to Avengers: Endgame – the culmination of years of planning and an epic crossover that marks the end of some heroes’ journeys and the beginning of others. Even in five episodes, there’s a lot of ground to cover. But if “Crisis on Infinite Earths Pt. 1” is any indication, fans needn’t worry about this ambitious crossover living up to the hype.