Month: April 2021

A new Life Is Strange: True Colors trailer sets the stage for the narrative adventure game’s events by highlighting Alex Chen’s exit interview from foster care.

In the nearly two-minute long clip, which comes from True Colors’ opening scene, Alex talks to her social worker at the Helping Hands Group Home about what’s next for her. After eight years there, Alex is heading to her brother Gabe’s place in the fictional mountain town of Haven Springs, Colorado. But her social worker has some concerns, particularly about Alex coming into contact with other people.

The social worker, named Dr. Lynn, asks if Alex’s brother knows about her “issues,” saying she “cares” about Alex and “just wants what’s best” for her. It’s an uncomfortable exchange, with Alex visibly sorting through her emotions to arrive at a simple point: She will just be a “normal girl in a normal town” once she leaves.

Things don’t turn out that way, unfortunately. While the specific events are still under wraps, True Colors’ narrative is thrust into motion when Gabe is killed. Alex then embarks on an investigation into her brother’s mysterious death by using her psychic powers of Empathy to tap into and manipulate the emotions of others.

We chatted with Alex Chen voice actor Erika Mori and senior staff writer Felice Kuan about True Colors, how developer Deck Nine crafted the character, and what it was like to tell a story with full body and facial mocap. Turns out, it was an “actor’s dream” for Mori, who has appeared in stage plays like A Christmas Carol and Macbeth.

Life Is Strange: True Colors drops on September 10 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. Hit up our Life Is Strange: True Colors preorder guide to find out what comes with buying early.

Dave Bautista has revealed more about the time that he pitched Warner Bros. and DC to let him play Batman’s arch-nemesis, Bane.

According to Collider, Bautista shared details about his pitch to portray the classic Batman antagonist during an appearance at Justice Con promoting his role in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. He revealed that, at one point, he went directly to the studios to strongly express his desire to portray Bane on the big screen in any future projects they had planned.

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“I’ve made no secret about this,” Bautista said after highlighting the DC villain as one of his dream roles. “I want to play Bane so bad I went to Warner Bros., had an appointment with them, had an appointment with DC, walked in the door and said, ‘I want to play Bane.’ I’m not kidding. They were a little like ‘Woah, we’re not even casting Bane.’ I was like ‘I don’t care, I’m playing him.'”

After the event, Bautista took to social media to confirm his statements as fact. “I wasn’t joking,” he posted on Twitter alongside a photo of him at the Warner Bros. lot. “But in all honesty they did have a good giggle and show me the exit. At least I gave it a shot. My life seems to be a continuing mission to find an alternative route to get to where I want to be. I’m good with that.”

Bautista has been vocal about playing Bane for quite some time now. Last year, he replied to a comment on social media where the tweeter shared that they had read an article speculating that Bautista could be playing the iconic villain in Matt Reeves’ The Batman opposite Robert Pattinson. In response, Bautista explained that he had tried his best to win the role.

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Though it sounds like he won’t be appearing in the next Batman solo movie, The Batman is set to feature a “rogues gallery” comprised of Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Colin Farrell as Penguin, Paul Dano as Riddler alongside Peter Sarsgaard as Gotham’s District Attorney Gil Colson, who may very well be one to watch out for, as Sarsgaard was previously rumored to be playing a pre-Two Face Harvey Dent.

For more on The Batman, which will be released in theaters on March 4, 2022, check out everything we know about the DC reboot, including how the riddle in the first trailer may have already been solved.

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

A remake of the 2003 Bioware RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is reportedly in the works at port studio Aspyr Media.

The news was revealed by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier during an interview with Ben Hanson of MinnMax. “This is public at this point, I’ve basically confirmed that Aspyr – which is the company that has ported a bunch of KOTOR games is working on [the remake],” Schreier said.

Eurogamer subsequently backed up that assertion, saying that it had also heard of Aspyr’s involvement: “While the developer is known for often releasing straight ports, work is currently underway to make the project more of a remake instead.” Aspyr has recently released a number of Star Wars ports, most recently the PS4 and Switch version of Star Wars: Republic Commando.

When talking about the nature of breaking news and revealing games in development, @jasonschreier sheds more light on a remake of Knights of the Old Republic currently in development…https://t.co/8ufeAWH3RB pic.twitter.com/VP3u2tzXK2

— MinnMax (@MinnMaxShow) April 20, 2021

Rumours of a KOTOR remake have been swirling for some time, with reports from January 2020 suggesting that the game was in development and would “integrate elements from the first two games in order to bring certain things into the current Star Wars canon.”

Schreier then tweeted in February of 2020 “if it’s really happening, it’s not at EA.” In January of this year, we heard reports that the remake was in the works, but not at EA or original developer Bioware – and Aspyr fits that bill.

In other KOTOR news, a report from May 2019 suggested that a movie based on the Bioware game could be in the works at Disney, and potentially be part of a trilogy.

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

Update 04/21/2021: People Can Fly has announced that players who lost their items due to the game’s now-patched inventory wipe glitch will get a pretty nice reward to make up for the inconvenience.

On Reddit, a spokesperson explained that items previously wiped will be returned with “the same attribute combinations but with God Roll values. This means that these items will be at least the same if not better quality than the originally lost items.”

On top of that, those items will be returned at your character’s highest possible equip level, and takes your World Tier and Challenge Tier into consideration, meaning you won’t be given back a weapon that’s immediately out-of-date for your progress.

For those who lost items and whose characters were made unplayable in the process, all lost legendaries, all lost equipped items, and 20 other items (ordered by rarity) will be restored. Completed Accolades will also be restored.

There’s currently no date on when the restoration will take place, but the developer says “we are working to an ‘ASAP’ schedule and fully understand how disappointing it is to not yet have your items back today.”

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Outriders has released an inventory wipe prevention patch on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, and also confirmed that the item restoration process is still a top priority and will be the full focus when this patch proves to be successful.

Announced by Square Enix, this new patch should prevent any future players from having their inventory wiped, and Square will be monitoring the situation over the weekend to ensure the patch actually works before fully focusing on the restoration process.

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When you install the patch, there may be multiplayer connectivity issues followed by inventory items being momentarily invisible. This is all part of the “three-step inventory safeguarding measures” and can be resolved by waiting a few moments and restarting your game. This issue will be addressed in a future patch.

If you still find yourself with your inventory wiped after installing this patch, be sure to report the problem to Outriders’ Edge Case sub-thread.

Once this patch has proved to be effective in the wild, Outriders will share the timeline for the upcoming Inventory Restoration process. This restoration process will be run “via our server database and does not require a patch to be implemented.”

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This bug is another example of Outriders’ rocky launch, but also an example of Square Enix and People Can Fly’s transparency, excellent communication, and prompt fixes to the issues that arise.

For more on Outriders, check out our review-in-progress, the “Appreciation Package” you may be entitled to as a make up for these server issues, and the best tips to excel in the game.

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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.

Sylvester Stallone has revealed that the new version of Rocky 4 will be titled Rocky Vs. Drago – The Ultimate Director’s Cut.

Stallone shared the movie’s title in a recent Instagram post alongside a brief teaser of a new full-length documentary, titled ‘Keep Punching: The Present Meets the Past,’ that will accompany the director’s cut of Rocky 4, offering fans insight into the behind-the-scenes process of re-editing the movie. Check out the video for Keep Punching in Stallone’s post below:

“If you can go back to recut your film, I guarantee you, you would approach it with a sensitivity and a wisdom, and a confidence, ‘Oh, why didn’t I see that before?'” Stallone says in one of the clips. “All of us are entitled to follow our dreams, to stick to our beliefs, because in the end that’s all you have and if you keep believing in that eventually your dreams will come true.”

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The original Rocky 4, released in 1985, followed Rocky’s training journey in the lead-up to his fight against Ivan Drago, a hulking Russian newcomer who mercilessly killed Rocky’s friend Apollo Creed in the ring. Stallone indicated in a follow-up Instagram post there would be more footage of their final face-off match as he promised “major payback” for Drago in the new release.

We also previously learned that Paulie’s robot will be scrapped from the director’s cut entirely, with Stallone telling a fan that “the robot is going to the junkyard forever.” In the 1985 film, Rocky’s brother-in-law Paulie received the six-foot robot as an unexpected gift on his birthday, to which he humorously responded that he wanted a sports car, “not no walking trash can.”

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The events of the 1985 movie served as a backstory to Creed II, in which Apollo Creed’s son, Donnie, challenges a new component in the ring, though it comes with mixed results. In our review of Creed II, we said the story failed to “let the past go, abandoning the exciting new path blazed by [Ryan] Coogler in favor of evoking what’s come before, with undeniably diminished results.”

Shortly after its release, Stallone announced that he was stepping out of the ring and officially retiring his iconic Rocky character for good, having portrayed the boxing legend in eight movies in total: Rocky I, II, III, IV and V, Rocky Balboa, and Creed I and II, receiving Academy Award nominations for best actor and best supporting actor in the process.

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

Quibi is dead. Long live Roku Originals.

Remember Quibi, the short form video streaming service that raised billions of dollars only to completely shutter in about six months? After Quibi executives called it quits, its library was acquired by Roku. Those series will now live on the streaming platform as Roku Originals, the company announced today. Roku will also use the same branding for all future original projects that appear on the Roku Channel, a free entertainment offering for Roku device owners. While it remains unclear what those originals will look like, Roku’s blog does note that more details will be announced in May.

For now, anyone who wanted to check out Quibi originals but didn’t want to sign up for the short lived streaming service can do so via Roku. This includes viral hits such as the woman with the golden arm or…well, Quibi wasn’t long enough to create any real hits, but that show featuring the woman with the golden arm certainly caught attention on Twitter last year. Look, Quibi tried its best in 2020 and that’s all any of us tried to do last year.

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What Quibi lacked in hits, however, it certainly made up for in talent. Hollywood A-Listers like Anna Kendrick, Chrissy Teigen, Lena Waithe, Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, and Liam Hemsworth all have Quibi originals, as noted in the Roku blog. Is it programming that you’ll actually want to watch? That’s up to you, but it’s free and short and doesn’t require signing up for yet another streaming service.

The push is part of Roku’s efforts to go from being a hardware company to a hardware and software company. Roku used to be the device people connected to their televisions sets to watch Netflix, Disney+, YouTube TV, and dozens of other entertainment offerings. Now, Roku wants people to spend time watching Roku Originals, too. Why? The simplest answer is advertising — it’s also why Roku acquired a key Nielsen technology, Roku wants to own digital entertainment advertising, and the company is hoping that having a slate of original series will help.

As the blog notes, “more than 75 Roku Originals on the Roku Channel, including a dozen unreleased series” will debut this year. Roku doesn’t want to be another streaming service for people to consider, but wants to be the streaming home for everyone’s needs. Whether that’s watching Netflix and diving into some Roku Originals from time to time or just being the most convenient tool for consumers to access the entertainment they want, Roku’s ambitions are pretty clear.

So, for one last time: RIP Quibi. I’ll always think of what could have been if there was a clearer business model.