Month: January 2021

Among Us developer Innersloth has released a development log, promising a 2021 content roadmap and explaining why updates to the game have taken longer than might have been expected.

As noted on the Innersloth blog, the enormous, and sudden success of Among Us led to major changes for the game – not least cancelling a sequel in favour of updates for the original. Less visibly, the popularity of the game led to a lot of change behind the scenes, and Innersloth has been  setting up a means to work on the game and its updates in a more sustainable fashion as a result: “We had to spend 2 months just restructuring, figuring out new processes, and getting external partners to help us manage on board,” the blog reads.

“If we wanted this to work long term and hire up, we needed to streamline things. It’s all behind the scenes work, and while it meant time away from the game, it’ll make it easier for current and future us to develop the game better,” Innersloth adds. “We want to do more for you to show you how grateful we are, but without sacrificing on the quality and values we had before this blew up.” Clearly, the small team is heads down right now working on new content for the game and ensuring it is ported to new platforms in the near future.

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As for what’s coming now that a lot of that work is done, Innersloth says it will soon release a 2021 roadmap. The developer notes it had hoped to launch the planned ‘Accounts’ system for the game earlier, but that a first update focusing on moderation is coming ASAP, which will build a foundation for that update. Ultimately, Innersloth wanted to “make sure it isn’t half-baked before implementing. (Trust me – you do not want a bad reporting system with no accountability behind it.)”

As revealed during The Game Awards 2020, a new Airship map is coming to Among Us in early 2021, and the game will also be launching on Xbox consoles this year. In other Among Us news, the game recently made it into Google’s top trending searches of 2020.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

A development build of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has been discovered and it reveals an in-progress look at Kakariko Village, an early archery test, and that Link could have turned into Navi via the Soul Medallion.

As reported by Eurogamer, this demo, which was shown off at Spaceworld ’97, was found on an old N64 development cartridge that was used to hold F-Zero X. Once further inspected, the Zelda demo build was found, and although it was partly saved-over, there was still plenty to see.

Shared by Forest of Illusion on Twitter, one of the most surprising reveals was Link being able to turn into Navi via the Soul Medallion. As you can see in the images below from @MrCheeze and @Zeru64, he would have been able to fly around the map and would still have his Master Sword and Hylian Shield;

Other medallions would have let him cast and dispel fire at will, warp when in danger, and more.

We also get a glimpse of a different looking Hyrule from @MrTalida:

A more basic and less developed Kakariko Village from @shanebattye:

An archery test where you are also riding Epona from @MrTalida and @xdanieldzd:

Here, we get a glimpse of what could have been Link’s Pegasus Boots from @zel640, which appear to have made the final game as the slightly tweaked Hover Boots:

Some of the translated text also hints that the story of Ocarina of Time originally played out a bit differently. One says that the Deku Tree was set to be a prison for fairies where Link would have to go free Navi.

For more on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, check out our original review, a modder’s new adventure created in the Ocarina of Time engine, and other Ocarina of Time discoveries from the Nintendo Gigaleak – which is different from this.

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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.

Activision Blizzard, like many other gaming publishers, is riding high right now thanks in part to the COVID-19 pandemic that’s keeping people at home playing more games and spending more on them. As The Wall Street Journal noticed, the company’s share price recently exceeded more than $95 per share, which is the highest value for the firm since 1984.

MKM Partners, a research firm, recently raised its revenue and earnings-per-share guidance for Activision Blizzard. The firm also raised its price target up to $105 per share.

One of Activision Blizzard’s biggest success stories in 2020 was the free-to-play battle royale game Call of Duty: Warzone, which has generated many millions of dollars from microtransactions. The newest Call of Duty game, Black Ops Cold War, also had a strong year in 2020, as the game was the overall top-selling title of the year in the US.

It won’t be long until we learn more about Activision Blizzard’s financial fortunes, as the company is due to reveal its next earnings report on February 4. Activision Blizzard’s stock price has generally been on the rise for the past decade, apart from a slip in 2018 and 2019.

Activision Blizzard is a gigantic company that has its fingers in numerous pies. In addition to franchises like Call of Duty, Crash, and Tony Hawk, its Blizzard division runs the StarCraft, Diablo, and Warcraft universes. Outside of those, the company owns Candy Crush company King.

Jurassic World: Dominion director Colin Trevorrow has revealed that the upcoming movie will conclude the story of all six Jurassic movies, not just the sequel trilogy.

During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Trevorrow spoke about how Dominion will sink its teeth (and plenty of them) into the larger story of the franchise, which started with Jurassic Park back in 1993. He referred to the next installment as “a celebration of the whole franchise” as it apparently aims to tie together and draw the entire movie series to a close.

“To me, [Dominion] is a culmination of one story that’s been told,” Trevorrow explained. “When you got to the end of the Jurassic Park trilogy, it may not have been as clear in what the complete story of those three movies was because they were a bit more episodic in the way that they were approached. But this trilogy is not that way. It’s very much a serialized story.

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“What was important for me was, when you watch Dominion, you really feel like you are learning how much of a story that first set of movies was and how everything that happened in those movies actually informs what ultimately is able to happen in this. If kids who are born today are going to be presented with six Jurassic Park movies — you hope the parents will buy them the box set — you hope they are going to get to feel like they watch one long story.”

Trevorrow also discussed how Netflix’s Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous fits into the dino-sized franchise. He shared his hopes for the series eventually standing as its own complete saga, telling its own story while still maintaining connections with its big-screen counterparts, including Dominion, the third film in the Jurassic World series, and the sixth Jurassic Park film overall.

“It’s important to me, out of respect for the writers who are continuing to expand and create, to recognize [Camp Cretaceous] as clearly its own story and its own show,” he said. “But this season — and if we’re granted further opportunities to tell the story that we have [in season 3] — will keep weaving in to the larger story and really inform some things, even in Dominion that will connect to discoveries made that I’m really excited about.”

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The second season of Camp Cretaceous will release on Netflix on January 22, so you might want to put on your archeological hats and start digging for clues about Jurassic World: Dominion. The Jurassic World threequel officially wrapped production last November after originally beginning pre-production 18 months ago, and is scheduled to be released in theaters on June 10, 2022.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Fortnite has updated battle royale to v15.21, and this update may seem small in terms of the total number of changes it brings, but they are still significant. They include the introduction of a certain boss character who may give you and your friends a bit of a scare. There isn’t a traditionally-organized set of patch notes, but we’ve laid out all the changes the update brought below.

The biggest addition with v15.21 is the “new boss character,” which is the Predator itself. You can find the boss so you can kill the Predator and get its skin. You can also get a cloaking device mythic item, which can temporarily make you nearly invisible. This will give you a huge advantage in hectic firefights. You can check out a full video of the fight below from YouTuber creator HarryNinetyFour.

The update also comes with new Jungle Hunter quests. These are related to the Predator, as well, and you’ll need to complete them in order to unlock additional cosmetic items for the Predator theme. IO Guards have also been removed from The Arena, which should make things a little less frustrating if you’re into that mode.

In terms of fixes, sand tunneling on the island has been re-enabled. It was previously disabled earlier this month as the team worked on fixing an issue. A fix was also rolled out for billboards hiding text of not working correctly if they used channels.

Fortnite v15.21 Patch Notes

• New boss character with mythic item
• New Jungle Hunter Quests
• Removed IO guards from Arena
• Re-enabled sand tunneling
• Fixed billboards not working correctly

For more help on Fortnite’s Predator challenges, you can check out how to find the Mysterious Pod, as well as how to find Beef Boss, Remedy, and Dummy.

The Fall Guys community has received some mixed messages today about whether or not the battle royale game is coming to Xbox Game Pass, but the official word is that it is not.

This all kicked off after it was discovered in a comment on Instagram that Fall Guys would be coming to Xbox Game Pass. The person running the Xbox Game Pass account said “it’s coming” when someone called for the game to release into the subscription catalog.

However, publisher Devolver Digital quickly followed up to say, “That’s incorrect.” In another tweet, the publisher said, “There are no plans for Fall Guys to come to any form of Gamepass,” a comment that sought to clear up confusion regarding the console vs. PC versions of Game Pass.

And asked for the source of this confirmation, Devolver said with its trademark humor that the information comes directly from “our dark lord Satan.” You can see how the entire exchange played out in the image below.

It’s not clear how this mix-up happened, but for now, it would appear that Fall Guys is not headed to Xbox Game Pass. This isn’t much of a surprise, given that Devolver’s co-founder Graeme Struthers told GameSpot that he worries about subscription services like Game Pass because games might get buried under a mountain of other titles.

Developed by Mediatonic, Fall Guys launched in August 2020 for PS4 and PC. Mediatonic has said it may bring the game to other platforms, but no announcements have been made. The game is being released for mobile devices in China, however.

As a more goofy, approachable take on the battle royale concept, Fall Guys has earned plaudits from fans and critics alike. In GameSpot’s 7/10 Fall Guys review, our critic Alessandro Barbosa called the game simple yet enjoyable. “It can be disheartening to have a game end prematurely due to uneven team matches and, worse still, when you’re forced into one of Fall Guys’ unsatisfying finale modes,” he wrote. “But neither are enough to derail the fun Fall Guys consistently generates, with its chaotic obstacle courses and earworm soundtrack ensuring you’ll be coming back for more.”