Month: December 2020

Thor: Love and Thunder isn’t just bringing back Natalie Portman. Lady Sif, once again played by Jaimie Alexander, is set to return, according to a report by Deadline.

Sif/Alexander was absent from Thor: Ragnarok, though her co-stars returned to portray the Warriors Three, who fought against Cate Blanchett’s sinister Hela.

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Deadline also reports that Lady Sif may appear in other Marvel properties, including Disney Plus’ Loki series.

Sif was featured throughout the first two Thor films as a dedicated ally and secondary possible love interest to the Asgardian god. She also appeared in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where she aided the cast in pursuing escaped sorceress Lorelei.

Disney spent several hours pouring over details about its plans for 2021 and beyond on Thursday during an investors presentation. This included a multitude of announcements about Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney Plus properties.

Perhaps the most interesting announcement for Thor fans was that actor Christian Bale (Dark Knight) will play Gorr the God Butcher, a fan-favorite nemesis of Thor’s who, as the name implies, sets off a campaign of deicide.

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You can read much, much more about Kevin Feige’s updates on the MCU here.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/warrior one for IGN.

Glen Schofield wants space to be scary, again. 12 years after creating Dead Space, Schofield is back in the world of sci-fi horror with his new studio Striking Distance, which just announced its survival-horror game The Callisto Protocol.

IGN spoke with Schofield a day after The Callisto Protocol was revealed to find out more about the project. And one thing is clear, Schofield’s first and foremost goal with the game is to scare you.

“I’m looking forward to really trying to make the scariest game on next-gen platforms [and PC],” says Schofield. “From what I hear — it’s hard to be the creative and talk nicely about it — but from what I hear… [Dead Space] was one of the scarier games of [its generation] and I want to do the same on next-gen, or what’s considered now the current-gen.”

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Striking Distance has a peculiar origin. Founded in 2019 by Schofield after he co-directed several Call of Duty games, including Black Ops, Modern Warfare 3, and Advanced Warfare. Striking Distance was built under the PUBG Corp, best known for the battle royale hit PlayerUnknown’s Battleground. Striking Distance then set out to expand the PUBG universe by creating a new narrative experience within it.

And The Callisto Protocol is just that. According to Schofield, there is a big combined effort to flesh out the narrative universe of PUBG, and The Callisto Protocol is set within that universe, but 300 years after whenever PUBG is set.

“The funny thing is, I came in with this story when I went and met with the PUBG people for the first time and started talking about [The Callisto Protocol] and building a studio. I presented this game to them, and so what we did was we made it fit within the PUBG storyline.”

But don’t let the PUBG connection mislead you. Schofield says The Callisto Protocol is not a battle royale game, but a full-on, third-person survival horror game.

“You want to see your character and you want to see you going into danger,” Schofield explains when asked about the appeal of the third-person horror genre. “You want to see yourself and what happens to you during the course of this… as you get blood on your suit.”

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Schofield is particularly passionate about next-gen, or rather current-gen, technology and how The Callisto Protocol will take full advantage of the latest tech and development innovations.

He highlights innovations in lighting and sound, and how the developers can take advantage of all kinds of new lighting techniques and 3D audio to create a new level of immersion.

“When the player is walking, your clothes make a sound when your arm is going across the cloth on your chest and things like that. And so we’re getting all those sounds. The sound of the wind just so slightly blowing through your hair. It’s crazy.”

The Striking Distance team is also working on integrating haptics, presumably for controllers like the DualSense. But Schofield lights up when he talks about the visuals. “You got to see the graphics, the graphics are just freaking amazing now,” Schofield tells IGN.

“We’re getting so detailed, it slows us down on production, you know what I mean?… We can get so detailed now and fit those graphics on the screen and it’s taking a lot of time to build it.”

Schofield still couldn’t share too much about the project, but immersion is the main pillar of its development.

“We’re trying to make you really feel like you’re in this world. Even though it’s you escaping from this prison and you’ve got to survive these unthinkable horrors.”

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“The more you are immersed, the more you want to know about that story, the more you want to know about those little hints that we put around. You’re like, ‘What the heck is that about? What is this mystery?’”

If immersion comes through the advancements in visuals and audio, the other draw for players in The Callisto Protocol will be the story, one that’s being handled by a dedicated writing team working to create a deep story.

“All I can say is… that my goal and the goal of the team is to make the scariest game on next-gen platforms. So if that’s what you want to play, that’s what we’re bringing.”

Check out IGN’s full recap of all the announcements and reveals from this year’s Game Awards.

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Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Following launch issues surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red has allegedly changed its developer’s bonus structure to ensure they will still get their bonuses.

As reported by Bloomberg, executives at CD Projekt SA have taken “responsibility for the buggy release of the highly-anticipated title Cyberpunk 2077 this week” and have made changed to make sure that the team “will receive their full bonuses no matter how the game is reviewed.”

“We initially had a bonus system that was focused on the game’s ratings and the release date, but after consideration, we believe that measure is simply not fair under the circumstances,” wrote Adam Badowski, studio head and creative director for Cyberpunk 2077, in the email to staff that was obtained by Bloomberg. “We underestimated the lengths and complexity involved to make this a reality, and still you did everything you could to deliver an ambitious, special game.”

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As of this writing, Cyberpunk 2077 has a 90 on review-aggregate site Metacritic, which reveals that high standards the team had set for itself. Despite these high review scores, Cyberpunk 2077’s launch has been impacted by many factors, including a possible seizure-inducing sequence in the game, poor performance on base PS4 and Xbox One units, and copyrighted songs that may cause DMCA strikes for streamers. Furthermore, these issues and others have caused CD Projekt Red’s stock to drop 29% around the launch of Cyberpunk 2077.

Current and former employees talked to Bloomberg about how the bonus structure previously worked for Cyberpunk 2077 devs, and it’s a bit complicated. Every month, team leads would give out tokens – styled after the company’s logo, no less – to “members of the their team they felt deserved honors.”

These tokens could then be transferred into bonuses if Cyberpunk 2077 were to meet certain criteria. Under the revised system, those “payouts will be guaranteed even though Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed and the review score has been mixed.” Bloomberg also notes that these bonuses come “on top of regular annual profit-sharing payouts,” but that “there has been concern it pushed them to work longer hours.”

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This tracks with an earlier report that revealed CD Projekt Red had enacted mandatory six-day work weeks to finish work on Cyberpunk 2077. This came after promises that no crunch would be implemented.

All these issues aside, Cyberpunk 2077 appears to be a bonafide commercial success. CD Projekt revealed that its pre-order sales had already covered the entire development and marketing cost of the game, and that Cyberpunk 2077 had sold 8 million copies before launch.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

I’ve waited a long time to say this with confidence: Microsoft is finally – finally – set up for sustained first-party success. Xbox Studios’ on-paper portfolio was capped off by The Game Awards’ riveting reveal of Perfect Dark, which will revive a beloved N64-era franchise that has been dormant for 15 years. It’s been entrusted to The Initiative, Microsoft’s lone new homegrown studio located in the development hotbed of Santa Monica that’s staffed by talent with impressive resumes. Perfect Dark’s director, for instance, is Drew Murray, who also helmed the sublime Sunset Overdrive.

But let’s back up a bit first. The story of the Xbox One’s disastrous launch has been well-told at this point, though I’d argue that Microsoft’s failures in the first-party/exclusive games department over the past generation have been just as damaging to the brand, if not more so. Funny enough, Xbox One had a pretty solid launch window’s worth of exclusives, including Forza Motorsport 5, Dead Rising 3, Ryse: Son of Rome, and Titanfall. But since starting reasonably strong on the software side, the well has gone and stayed dry, year after year. And while there have been some gems, they’ve been overshadowed by studio closures, franchise failures, and high-profile cancellations and even higher-profile delays.

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You know the recent Xbox story: a host of studio acquisitions, a megaton Bethesda purchase, the rise of Xbox Game Pass, and the release of a great new next-generation console in the Xbox Series X. The last and most important piece of the puzzle has always been first-party and/or exclusive games, though, and it’s also the problem that takes the longest to solve. You simply can’t get major, system-selling exclusives overnight, even when you pay $7.5 billion.

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That brings us to today, when we can finally take a holistic view of Microsoft’s first-party roadmap and genuinely get excited about what we see:

 

• Halo Infinite
• Perfect Dark
• Fable
• Starfield
• The Elder Scrolls VI
• Avowed
• Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
• Everwild
• Forza Motorsport
• State of Decay 3
• Microsoft Flight Simulator (Xbox Series X version)

 

That’s a damned impressive list, and that doesn’t even include unannounced-but-inevitable sequels like Forza Horizon 5, Gears 6, Fallout 5, and Doom 3. Nor do we know what talented studios like Machinegames (Wolfenstein) and Compulsion (We Happy Few) are up to yet. Meanwhile, Microsoft has also inked a handful of third-party console launch exclusives, including Warhammer 40,000: Darktide and the Vin Diesel vehicle Ark 2.

The bad news is that most of those are still pretty far away. Granted, 2021 should still see a number of exclusives land on Game Pass, though not many heavy hitters. The Medium, Scorn, CrossfireX, Psychonauts 2, Warhammer, 12 Minutes, The Ascent, and the console release of Flight Sim are all on tap to be appetizers for 2021’s main Xbox course in the Fall, Halo Infinite.

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And look, no one’s saying these games are “better” than PlayStation’s exclusives. Sony has earned its sterling reputation amongst gamers by consistently delivering fantastic first-party games. I’m not writing this as a comparison at all. Quite frankly, Microsoft has to get its own house in order before it can worry about Sony. All of these games have to actually be stellar, not just good, in order for that to happen.

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But there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel for Xbox gamers. Perfect Dark, a first-person “more than a shooter” according to The Game Awards reveal video, gives Microsoft the chance to do what a new IP can’t: tap into a groundswell of nostalgia and resurrect a fan-favorite franchise in a way Xbox has never really done before. It could prove to be the perfect complement to the rest of the newly impressive first-party roster. Here’s hoping Microsoft can pull the whole thing off, and that Xbox’s first-party problems finally become a thing of the past.

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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Bad Robot Productions, JJ Abrams’ movie, and TV production company, has launched a video game division under the guidance of former Valve executive Michael Booth.

In 2018, Abrams announced that Bad Robots will be expanding into video games with Bad Robot Games, but the newest venture under Booth will bring video game development in-house. Meaning Bad Robot themselves will begin developing and designing games on their own.

Booth will serve as general manager and will lead the creative team through the company’s first game, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Booth was formerly a developer for Turtle Rock Studios, the developers of Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood. He was project lead on games such as Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Nox, as well as working on Team Fortress 2 and Command & Conquer: Generals.

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In a statement to Hollywood Reporter, Booth says, “My career has been driven by a desire to innovate new ways of bringing people together for epic adventures online, leaving them exciting stories they can tell their friends afterward.”

Booth added, “The games I create center around people working together to survive and thrive in fantastic worlds, which seems an excellent fit for JJ Abrams’ approach to moviemaking. As a huge fan of JJ’s work, I’m incredibly excited by the unique opportunity to create something new at Bad Robot Games Studios in collaboration with the world-class talent at Bad Robot.”

There has been no word on what Bad Robots’ first project will be.

[poilib element=”accentDivider”]Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.