Month: January 2020

Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok is reportedly the next mainline Assassin’s Creed game, if recent leaks are to be believed. Thanks to alleged Amazon and GameStop item listings, we can surmise a few things about the next installment in the long-running franchise. What’s next for Ubisoft’s biggest franchise? Read on below to find out what we know, and what our best guesses are. If you want to stay completely spoiler-free on certain (unconfirmed) story details, skip past the appropriate sections.

Keep in mind though that Ubisoft has yet to confirm any such information, so take everything with one seriously large grain of salt.

Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok Release Date

Ubisoft hasn’t confirmed AC Ragnarok’s existence yet, much less a release date. That said, like many big-budget video games of its kind, it’s likely to release somewhere between October and early December to line up with the holiday season. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey released on October 5, 2018, while its predecessor Assassin’s Creed Origins released on October 27, 2017. Ubisoft likes to get things out a little ahead of the usual November deluge (where the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield usually reign), so don’t be shocked if we see preview coverage sometime around E3 2020 and then a strong leadup to mid-October.

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What systems is Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok on?

According to the leaked info, Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok will be on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and then also the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Ubisoft has not confirmed any such details.

When does Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok take place?

(Possible spoilers follow) 

Judging from the leaks, Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok will take place in the Viking era. According to leaked information shared on Reddit, AC Ragnarok will start in or around 845 CE, during the Viking-led siege of Paris.

The period between 800 CE and about 900 CE were heavily characterized by these Viking incursions. According to the leaked info, the meat of the game will start during 863 CE with a character named Jora, who can be either male or female.

As is customary for Assassin’s Creed games, we’ll meet a number of broadly defined historical figures. According to the leak, the player character will meet King of Wessex Alfred, Rollo, the first ruler of Normandy, and Charles the Fat, the emperor of the Carolingian Empire.

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What will Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok gameplay be like?

Ubisoft hasn’t shown any official gameplay as of yet, and they’ve certainly not confirmed anything from the leaked information. That said, if any of the leaked info is to be believed, there could be a significant number of updates. You can read the full list of leaked (and unconfirmed) gameplay info here, but we’ve whittled it down to what looks to be the most important stuff.

• Up to 4-player drop-in/drop-out co-op much like Ghost Recon Wildlands.

• New RPG mechanics introduce a new class system and skill tree changes based on that choice. You’ll be able to change your character class.

• More weapon types, and weapons can be upgraded with runes, special abilities for certain groups of weapons. Durability will play a role, too.

• Rather than adrenaline, players can activate a berserker mode that also activates rune powers based on elemental types – lightning, fire, frost.

• Sailing is back, with more focus on exploration than combat.

• The hidden blade returns and can be upgraded for one-hit kills.

• Stealth is receiving some upgrades, like allowing a player to hide in mud, snow, crouching in bushes, and other hiding options. Players can also hide themselves in crowds of people so long as their clothing doesn’t stick out.

• Reputation system based on who, what, and where you conquest.

• Conquest battles return.

• Battles between independent kingdoms (as in you don’t control them yet) may occur naturally.

• Players can organize large-scale raids on forts and large cities, or just go it alone.

• Difficulty has been overhauled. Rather than being about enemy health, difficulty will determine your own health, parry times, and enemy reaction times.

• Leveling is also getting an overhaul, allowing players to improve their individual skillsets and gain experience in them. The leaked info describes it being similar to The Elder Scross V: Skyrim. This also means that regions being locked by level number is gone.

• As for the map, the leaked info says it comprises most or all of northern Europe, including the cites of York, London, Paris, and Kiev.

It’s worth reiterating that none of this information has been confirmed by Ubisoft, so take it all with a huge grain of salt. While past Assassin’s Creed leaks have historically been mostly on the money, that doesn’t mean that any one of these supposed details is really in the game.

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Will Layla and Abstergo return?

We don’t know anything about the modern-day portion of Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok quite yet. Odds are it will continue to focus on the character of Layla and her journey with the brotherhood. Interested in more juicy historical details and possible connections? Read how Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok could connect the franchise back to the first Assassin’s Creed game.

Where to get the Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok Special Edition

No information on a special edition or collector’s edition for Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok has been publicly announced, although considering Ubisoft always has at least one special edition for each game, it’s a safe bet they’ll do it again. Historically, the pricier bundles come with a small statue, while the slightly-higher-than-$60 bundles come with extra digital content. We’ll update this section when we know more.

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Where can I pre-order Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok?

Since the game hasn’t been officially announced, there’s no real way to pre-order it quite yet. Amazon and GameStop were the sources of some of this leaked information, though, so it’s likely the game will appear there and other major retailers. We’ll be updating this section and creating pre-order guides when we know more.

If any of this information on Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok proves true, what are you most excited for? Do you think Ragnarok will be a meaningful evolution of the Assassin’s Creed franchise or will it be the same old sneaky stabbing and swordfighting business as usual? Let us know in the comments below.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

Almost a year back, it was announced that a TV series continuation/sequel to the long-running Child’s Play horror franchise was in development. Today at at NBC Universal’s TCA winter press tour day, we learned that Syfy has officially ordered this show straight-to-series.

Titled Chucky, the sequel series comes from franchise creator Don Mancini and franchise producer David Kirschner. Chucky, unlike the recent 2019 Child’s Play reboot featuring Mark Hammill as the voice of the killer doll, is an actual continuation of the existing story rather than a remake.

That means it’s a direct follow-up to all seven Child’s Play films, including 2017’s Cult of Chucky, which were written by creator Mancini. Mancini now will serve as the series’ writer and showrunner while also directing the first episode.

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From Syfy’s official synopsis: “When a vintage Chucky doll turns up at a suburban yard sale, an idyllic American town is thrown into chaos as a series of horrifying murders begin to expose the town’s hypocrisies and secrets. Meanwhile, the arrival of enemies — and allies — from Chucky’s past threatens to expose the truth behind the killings, as well as the demon doll’s untold origins as a seemingly ordinary child who somehow became this notorious monster.”

“The character Don and David created has terrified audiences for over 30 years. The longevity and legacy of Chucky speaks to the creative storytelling and the loyal fans the film series has collected over the years,” said Chris McCumber, President, Entertainment Networks – USA & SYFY. “We are excited to once again partner with Nick and UCP on this new SYFY series, and are incredibly proud to bring Chucky to television for the first time with the original creators.”

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

We’re excited for Ryan Reynolds’ Grand Theft Auto-inspired NPC movie Free Guy (watch the trailer here), which features a bank teller in Free City (which is actually an open-world video game filled with no-holds-barred violence), decides to break out of his everyday punching bag rut and stop a robbery. This self-aware act causes him to think he can stop all the crime, committed by players, in his war-torn town.

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Obviously, this isn’t the first film to involve a clueless citizen of a mysterious municipality learning the truth about their reality while also discovering they have secret powers that can override the system. In fact, the premise goes back almost four decades, to Disney’s Tron. So let’s digitize ourselves into “The Grid” and look at the best video game/virtual world movies to date!

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Tron/Tron Legacy

Back when computers and video games were still in their infancy, 1982’s Tron posited that a human being could be disassembled by a laser and reanimated inside a computer system, where, in a virtual setting, all the programs were represented in humanoid form. Jeff Bridges’ programmer-slash-arcade owner Kevin Flynn gets sucked inside “The Grid” and uses his abilities as a “User” to save his old company’s files from an evil Master Control Program.

2010’s Tron Legacy continued the tale, decades later, using some snazzy 3D, stunning visuals, and a kick-ass score by Daft Punk. Nothing about Tron makes much sense, even from a virtual reality standpoint, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Wreck-It Ralph/Ralph Breaks the Internet

2012’s Wreck-It Ralph featured a lovable arcade game villain, voiced by John C. Reilly, who, like Ryan Reynolds’ Guy, longs to free himself from the role he was designed to play. Tired of being stuck in a cycle of bad guy buffoonery, Ralph leaves his game in search of a medal and throws the entire video game realm into chaos.

The LEGO Movie

While not exactly a virtual world, The LEGO Movie’s land of make-believe still counts as a functioning realm with a know-nothing hero, in this case Chris Pratt’s Emmet, who finds themselves caught up in a giant adventure where they’re the unlikely key — in this case, Emmet’s everyman dolt being “The Special.” The one who can stop the Kragle. Emmet is ripped from his lonely (but awesome?) routine and discovers his innate ability to be a Master Builder, saving the day.

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The Matrix Trilogy

Probably the most famous instance of a hero discovering the truth about their faux reality and then rising up as a near-unstoppable force, committed to toppling the entire system, was Keanu Reeves’ Tom Anderson (hacker name: Neo) and his ascension to “The One” — as in the one foretold to save humanity from robot overlord oppression. You see, Anderson, along with almost every other human being, was now just a motionless form in an energy pod providing A.I. beings with juice while their minds existed in a virtual world. And with Matrix 4 officially on the way, it looks like Neo’s quest to thwart evil A.I.s isn’t over just yet!

Ready Player One

Stephen Spielberg’s Ready Player One was an absolute avalanche of ’80s and ’90s pop culture references, as citizens in a dystopian future escaped their miserable lives by syncing into a global online open-world realm called the OASIS. It’s here that an orphan embarks on an adventure to save society by competing in a scavenger hunt designed to give someone complete control of the game. Tye Sheridan’s Wade — aka Parzival — didn’t have any special “Chosen One” game powers, per se, unless you count his decency and narrative advantage of being an underdog with a kind heart.

Dark City

Alex Proyas’ underrated sci-fi noir mystery, Dark City, starred Rufus Sewell as a man who starts to realize things are dreadfully askew in his dreary always-midnight city – eventually learning that he’s part of a grand experiment run by alien scientists ominously called “The Strangers.” Everyone in town has their memories reconfigured and rebooted each night so they awaken to a new life in the morning as the galactic ghouls try to figure out how the human mind, and emotions, truly work.

eXistenZ

This David Cronenberg virtual reality adventure had the misfortune of opening the same year as The Matrix, but it was still able to hold its own as a (way) lower-budgeted story about a virtual game designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) getting trapped inside her own creation, targeted by assassins. The movie also was able to stand apart from The Matrix in a very ooey-gooey Cronenberg way as the game, eXistenZ, was bio-tech that used umbilical cord-style tentacle connectors that inserted into players’ spines.

The Cell

The Cell, Tarsem Singh’s nightmare-filled head trip from 2000, presented us with a type of proto-Inception. Jennifer Lopez played a psychologist who enters her patients’ minds in order to discover the source of their trauma. Things get nuts when she’s tasked with entering the brain of a comatose serial killer, who’s kidnapped a woman, in order to go toe-to-toe with his emotional scars and agony and discover her location. To do so, she’s forced to make herself more powerful than the killer’s own personal pain and vanquish it as a full-on dream warrior.

Inception

Obviously, Christopher Nolan’s Inception plays by different rules (and there are so many rules!) than most of these other films since it’s about mind invaders traversing someone else’s psyche while they sleep, but Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom and his team do find themselves trapped inside the head of a tech conglomerate heir, unable to leave after things go sideways, while trying to plant an idea in his brain. From there, the only way out is through.

Which of these are your favorites? And what did we miss? Let’s discuss in the comments!

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

Netflix’s The Witcher was purposefully designed to be a TV adaptation of the series of fantasy stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski and not the CD Projekt Red video games, despite U.S. viewers being more familiar with the games than the books, according to showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.

“I think Amercian audiences mostly know about Geralt from the video games,” Hissrich said, while speaking to host Brandon Jenkins on Netflix’s Behind the Scenes podcast. “The answer [to why the show adapts the books] is very simple though and it’s that the video games are are based on the books. They are an adaptation of the books. For me it didn’t make sense to make an adaptation of an adaptation of something.”

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“What that does is allow us to tell The Witcher story but just in a different way,” she added. “I think a lot of video game fans are concerned that we’re taking something from them. That we’re usurping something that’s theirs. And the truth is, I love the video games. They are not going anywhere. They are insanely successful. I can only hope that our show is that successful. The video games aren’t going anywhere and the books aren’t going anywhere. This is just a third way to enjoy these same characters and this same world.”

Speaking of The Witcher video games, CD Projekt Red just struck a new deal with author Andrzej Sapkowski to continue making Witcher games.

Meanwhile, showrunner Hissrich has stated that The Witcher: Season 2 will land in 2021 and be much more linear in its storytelling.

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

Third-generation pro-wrestler Tessa Blanchard, who was just named Impact Wrestling’s “2019 Wrestler of the Year,” is set to make history once again this Sunday, January 12, when she challenges Sami Callihan in the main event of the Hard to Kill PPV for the Impact World Championship.

Blanchard and Callihan clashed in a historic intergender main event match back at July’s Slammiversary and that clash took home the honors of Impact’s Wrestling’s “2019 Match of the Year.” This time however, the world title is on the line and Blanchard is the first woman ever to viciously vie for it.

“There are a bunch of firsts happening and women are given such a big platform now,” Blanchard told IGN. “I’ve always wanted to make history in my own way. A way that’s unique to me. A way that disrupts the business but also breaks barriers. I think Impact is giving us the platform right now where we can do something a little different and that’s been my goal since day one. I want to do something different. I never knew exactly what that looked like. But this Sunday, this feud has been eight months in the making.”

“When [Blanchard and Callihan] were the main event at Slammiversary we didn’t even know until the day of,” Blanchard continued. “But going into this pay-per-view knowing we’re the main event, knowing that we’re doing something different, something that’s making some people uncomfortable…it’s something that some people support but for some people it disrupts them. It’s cool because it shows that we’re doing something special. It shows that maybe we are accomplishing something by evolving things on both sides of the locker room. It makes me a little bit nervous too just because it’s something that I’ve thought about for six years. I never knew what making history in my own way would look like but it’s all piecing itself together and coming full circle now. There’s pressure that comes with that. There are nerves that come with that. But there’s a lot of excitement too.”

With Blanchard’s bout on Sunday, intergender wrestling takes a big step forward, possibly moving away from an “attraction” to something resembling more of a normal modern-era wrestling scenario. “I know it makes some people uncomfortable for obvious reasons,” Blanchard said. “Because it’s ‘just not normal.’ It’s not what people are used to seeing so they don’t think that’s what pro-wrestling is. It’s not the typical story that we tell. It’s not on Monday night. It’s not something they’re comfortable letting their kids watch. But in my mind I find it very empowering because I think that women can go out there and tell that story with a man. I think there’s a way to do it.”

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“Some people write it off right away without giving it a chance,” she added. “For instance, I had a match during WrestleCon weekend against a man. And Santino Marella came up to me afterward and said ‘I wasn’t a fan of intergender wrestling, but now I get it.’ And that’s my goal. I want people to stay open minded it and get it. They don’t have to like it. It’s not for everyone. It’s just like how there are so many different styles of wrestling. There’s Strong Style, Luche Libre, and so many others. Maybe you don’t like every style. There’s nothing wrong with that. But at least give it a chance. What we’re doing is something cool.”

Impact Wrestling’s Hard to Kill PPV goes down January 12 at 8/7c. The official live stream can be found on FITE TV.

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.