One of the big surprises of E3 2021 was Microsoft’s announcement of Forza Horizon 5. Ahead of that game’s release, it appears that new development for Forza Horizon 4 is being wound down: there won’t be any more new cars or features coming to it.
In Playground Games’ Forza Monthly livestream for this month, the studio announced that it will no longer be adding vehicles or features to Forza Horizon 4 after several years of consistent live-game support for it. Due to most of the employees shifting their full attention over to Forza Horizon 5, seasonal updates will transition to feature remixed sets of past seasons’ content.
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“So starting with Series update 38, players who know the game well will start to see the return of content from Series 7 to 32,” senior producer Tom Butcher explained. “Think of it a bit like a mix tape, featuring the return of some of your favorite content combined with recently added new features.”
In addition to sharing this development update on Forza Horizon 4, the studio also revealed some info on what to expect for Forza Horizon 5’s performance on the current generation. The default on Xbox Series X is 4K resolution at 30fps, while the Xbox Series S will run at 1080p 60fps. Both versions will have a performance mode option to turn up the framerate to 60fps, although this mode comes with a reduction in certain graphics features.
Forza Horizon 5 will be released on November 9 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and it’ll take place in Mexico. The developer has stated that it will be the biggest and most diverse game in the series, and preorders are up now. As with all Microsoft first-party games, it’ll also be available for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. If you’re not already signed up for Game Pass, be sure to take advantage of a limited-time offer that gets you your first three months for $1.
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Even years after George Lucas sold the Star Wars franchise to Disney, new changes continue to be made to the original trilogy. The latest tweak? Boba Fett’s ship is apparently no longer called Slave 1.
Star Wars fans noticed the change thanks to the announcement of a new Mandalorian-themed LEGO set featuring the iconic vehicle. Rather than calling it Slave 1, the set is simply named “Boba Fett’s Starship.”
“Everybody is,” said Frederiksen. “It’s probably not something which has been announced publicly but it is just something that Disney doesn’t want to use any more.”
Based on his comments, it would seem Disney is uncomfortable with the term “slave” being associated with one of the most popular Star Wars characters. Though Boba Fett has traditionally been portrayed as a villain in the franchise, his more heroic turn in The Mandalorian: Season 2 may have something to do with this change. We’ll have to see whether or not the ship’s name comes up in the spinoff series The Book of Boba Fett.
It’s also worth remembering that this doesn’t necessarily mean the ship’s name has changed in the Star Wars universe. Disney could be keeping the Slave 1 title as part of the official canon, but will refrain from using the branding on any all-ages merchandise. That would be similar to Marvel’s approach to the X-Men villain Holocaust, who is normally renamed “Nemesis” whenever an action figure is released.
Nor would this be the first case of Disney removing a controversial Star Wars element from its merchandising empire. In 2015, we learned Disney was phasing out the use of the “Slave Leia” costume from Return of the Jedi.
Do you think Disney made the right call here? Do you have any ideas for a new permanent name for the Slave 1? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
A Plague Tale: Innocence is getting free Xbox Series X|S and PS5 enhancements on July 6. The trailer for the upgrade revealed that it will enhance the game’s visuals, playing in 4K resolution at 60fps. According to publisher Focus Home Interactive, the upgrade goes beyond visual enhancements–it takes advantage of current gen tech, including the PS5’s DualSense controller.
“We can say that [A Plague Tale: Innocence] will feature faster load times, audio enhancement, DualSense features (i.e. haptic rumble sync with 3D sound and adaptive triggers), and cross progression,” Focus Home Interactive PR strategist Julie Carneiro told GameSpot via email.
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Given that A Plague Tale: Innocence sees you fleeing from, skirting around, and confronting huge waves of rats, I’m most curious (and terrified) to experience how developer Asobo Studio has used the DualSense’s haptic rumble and 3D sound.
Alongside the upgrade, A Plague Tale: Innocence is finally coming to Switch, though only through cloud streaming. Carneiro said that A Plague Tale: Innocence will run at 30fps on Switch and “if you have a good connection,” the resolution can reach 1080p while docked.
A Plague Tale: Innocence was one of GameSpot’s Best Games of 2019. The game captures sibling love remarkably well, putting you in the shoes of Amicia, a noble girl who must take care of her younger brother Hugo as the two try to survive 1348 France. On their journey, the two will come face-to-face with a country ravaged by the Hundreds Years’ War, the French Inquisition, and the bubonic plague, the latter of which has been personified into a literal horde of ravenous rats.
A sequel for A Plague Tale: Innocence is coming in 2022. Called A Plague Tale: Requiem, it will launch for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, and Switch (via cloud-streaming).
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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Amazon Studios are teaming up for a new holiday movie that could incorporate some kind of new way to reach “multiple industries and businesses.” The film is called Red One, and it’s written by Fast and Furious writer Chris Morgan.
Amazon said in an announcement that Red One is a “globe-trotting, four-quadrant action-adventure comedy, imagining a whole new universe to explore within the holiday genre.”
Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that Red One is “Santa-centric,” even though Amazon’s own announcement did not mention Santa Claus by name. No director has become attached to the movie at this stage.
Perhaps what’s most notable and unique about Red One is how it’s apparently trying to be more than a movie. Amazon and production company Seven Bucks said in a statement that that Red One represents a “unique concept” for a movie that could make it not only a “tentpole film” but also a project that “could reach beyond entertainment across multiple industries and businesses.”
What that means, exactly, remains to be seen. But THR’s sources said “the businesses could include the gift-giving enterprises that thrive during the holiday season (and that of course, includes Amazon and Amazon Prime).”
Red One is expected to film in 2022 before debuting on Amazon Prime during holiday 2023.
The Rock has a number of upcoming projects for 2021, including the Disney movie Jungle Cruise with Emily Blunt and the Netflix action movie Red Notice. In 2022, he’ll appear in the lead role of the DC movie Black Adam.
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Sea of Thieves is often at its best when it devolves into chaos. After raiding a skeleton ship and loading up your brig with loot, suddenly, a player galleon appears from behind an island, turning its broadside cannons in your direction for a sneak attack. Returning fire, repairing your ship, and desperately turning your sails to make an escape–or firing a crewmate over to the enemy to lay waste to them and steal their stuff–are the moments that make Rare’s pirate adventure live game so memorable.
But don’t discount Rare’s ability to make deep, brainy story content, either. Since its launch, Sea of Thieves has come to encompass Tall Tales, lengthy voyages centered on solving riddles and learning about non-player characters that make up the game’s lore. It’s in this more directed, narrative-driven realm that the game’s latest expansion, A Pirate’s Life, lies as well. Tying in with Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, the expansion provides new stories to uncover that are both fairly delightful for fans of the films and the theme park attraction that spawned them, as well as big, involved new Sea of Thieves locations to explore.
A Pirate’s Life adds a lot to Sea of Thieves, expanding on its sandbox with new enemies and a new weapon, while providing several hours of story content that’s deep enough for experienced players to enjoy and approachable enough for newbies excited to sail the seas with Jack Sparrow. Though it’s held back occasionally by bugs and relies on some of Sea of Thieves’ weaker elements, like hitchy platforming, the expansion is a great excuse to man the helm of a pirate vessel.
Core to A Pirate’s Life are five new Tall Tales stories, which follow Pirates of the Caribbean mainstay Jack Sparrow and his crew. Through some adventuring, the movie characters have found their way into the weird and mystical video game world, but they’ve been chased there by Davy Jones, the magical Pirates of the Caribbean villain. Jones wants to take control of the Sea of Thieves, so you need to save Jack from the realm of the dead (called the Sea of the Damned), figure out Jones’ plans, and ultimately send the squid-faced villain back to where he belongs to preserve the ultimate freedom of the pirate life.
Playing through those five stories takes you to the Sea of the Damned itself, a new location full of puzzles and secrets, and the Sunken Kingdom, a colorful underwater realm. The Tall Tales themselves are generally pretty linear story levels, but like Sea of Thieves’ other Tall Tales, they do a great job of challenging you to explore the environment, solve puzzles, and navigate imaginative areas. In the first, for instance, you’ll need to rescue the head of an undead, skeletal pirate captain, and you can uncover secrets throughout the area by placing his head on skeleton bodies so he can take control of them.
Of course, this is a Pirates of the Caribbean story, so you’ll spend a lot of the duration encountering various movie characters. Jack Sparrow is around the most, and he’s actually a pretty fun addition to the game, bringing a lot of humor and occasionally even helping you out in fights against the various enemies and creatures Davy Jones sends to stop you.
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Sparrow’s presence helps meld A Pirate’s Life’s Disney inspirations with Sea of Thieves’ foundation, which helps to make sure the content doesn’t feel like an unwarranted digression into another franchise. He’s the same funny, quirky character from the movies, but he’s also pretty useful at some key moments, even joining your crew for a while toward the end of the Tall Tales series. He’s around just enough to make this feel like a Pirates of the Caribbean story, while also working as a fitting Sea of Thieves story. That’s a balance that could have been tough to find, but Rare does a great job of mixing the two properties together to make for a fun diversion from your usual pirate escapades.
A Pirate’s Life is also a great entry point for new players. Because the Tall Tales mostly take place off the beaten path or in their own instances, you’re unlikely to run into other players who might try to steal your stuff, sink your boat, or otherwise hassle you. The stakes are also pretty low–any time you die, you just respawn again in the same place in the Tall Tales story (an appreciated change from how the rest of the game handles dying, which either puts you on your ship or, if it sinks, in a nearby outpost). That makes this content pretty great for just getting started in Sea of Thieves, or for lone players who want to venture into the game without a crew, but don’t like the risk of losing a ton of progress to other players.
The drawback is that A Pirate’s Life doesn’t really feel like the rest of Sea of Thieves; it’s more of its own separate thing. In the rest of Rare’s game, sailing around requires constant vigilance as you scope for other pirates who could potentially decide to engage you in battle (or, in somewhat rarer cases, prove friendly). The openness of the game and randomness afforded by other players are what make Sea of Thieves so fun and unique. A Pirate’s Life doesn’t really include that aspect; while there are side puzzles to solve and secrets to uncover, the stories are more straightforward and traditional video game fare. You’ll move through distinct levels on a specific path, and while there are no waypoints leading you, there’s still only one real way forward.
So entering Sea of Thieves for the first time through A Pirate’s Life isn’t quite giving you a taste of the core experience, or the taste it’s giving you is incomplete without other players. That can be good and bad, since A Pirate’s Life eases you into the water rather than shoving you off the plank, but it can also give a skewed perception of what the game is. And if you’re looking for more Tall Tales that have you sailing all over the Sea of Thieves, driven by obscure clues and exploring the world you already know, you’re going to be disappointed; these levels are large and complete in their own right, but they’re decidedly more self-contained.
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The Tall Tales for A Pirate’s Life are also a bit on the buggy side at launch, although Rare has already released a patch to deal with some of those issues. It’s also easy to get lost and confused in the big levels, or to experience game-affecting oddities like falling from high places and finding yourself stuck behind locked doors you already opened. During a boss fight in the second Tall Tale, I used a pulley system to lift a shipwreck high in the air to level its cannons against my foe–but mid-fight, I got knocked off the deck and killed. When I loaded back in, the boat was out of position and couldn’t be moved, but the fight continued, with cannonballs now shooting straight up in the air and passing through the boss’s body. The glitch subsided a few deaths later, but for a while there, the fight was a mess that couldn’t be finished.
I played through all five Tall Tales alone and didn’t encounter any game-breaking issues, although the experience was somewhat marred by the aforementioned troubles and checkpoints not loading correctly. It’s also easy to get lost thanks to Sea of Thieves’ lack of guidance–something that makes the game compelling when you’re out in its full world, but which can be annoying when you’re stuck in a room trying to figure out where the game expects you to go next.
Some glitchy issues aside, A Pirate’s Life’s Tall Tales are pretty fun to play, even alone. They do feel a bit easy and low-stakes at times, which undercuts the story Rare is trying to tell of a world-threatening villain. But it’s nice to have something you can jump into that’s fun to play but doesn’t involve the potential stresses of Sea of Thieves’ usual risk-reward nature.
Apart from the new stories, the other upshot of A Pirate’s Life is the way it reinvigorates the rest of the game. The Tall Tales you’ll play introduce a bunch of new enemies. On land, there are the three kinds of creatures called ocean crawlers–a giant armored crab, a poisonous clam monster, and an electric eel enemy. All three require distinct strategies to defeat, and they can synergize their abilities to add additional challenge. There are also new phantom pirates that can disappear and reappear to deal massive damage, and undersea sirens who make jumping off your boat all the more treacherous. To help you deal with these threats, you can find a new item called the Trident of Dark Tides, which charges up to fire a bubble of energy that can be devastating to AI enemies and other players alike.
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These additions are all part of the stories of the expansion’s Tall Tales, but you don’t need to play the stories to experience them–they’re also out in the rest of Sea of Thieves as well, and they inject some welcome variety into the sandbox. For most of the game’s life, players have been fighting different kinds of skeleton pirates, all of which do battle in more or less the same way, so throwing in some new creatures livens things up quite a bit. And if you can find it in the world, the Trident of Dark Tides also puts a new weapon in your arsenal, creating new strategies in combat. It all adds a little more depth to Sea of Thieves to help make the game continue to feel like it’s evolving all the time.
A Pirate’s Life is a big, fun addition to Sea of Thieves that brings a lot of new content, is full of fun elements for Disney Pirates fans, and refreshes the rest of the game with smart additions. It doesn’t quite represent the best of what Sea of Thieves is or has to offer, but this is still a great excuse to hoist the pirate flag for the first time, and offers a new horizon to explore for long-time scalawags.
With Emmy Award season right around the corner, WandaVision’s pilot script has been released for fans to read in full online.
Deadline shared a link to the teleplay as it is one of several scripts that has been submitted for Emmy Awards consideration this year. The script for the pilot episode of WandaVision titled “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience” gives fans access to the original screenplay, including action lines, shot transitions, dialogue, and revisions.
The first episode of Marvel’s WandaVision was written by series creator Jac Schaeffer, and filmed in classic black and white in front of a live studio audience, as a “love letter to the golden age of television.” The episode’s intro reunited Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany’s Vision as they moved into their picture-perfect house in Westview.
The team’s commitment to creating something that felt like a midcentury sitcom extended through many aspects of production, with each department playing its own unique part in the traditional setup, right down to the crew members wearing 50s-style clothing on-set and the SFX team performing practical effects to amplify the charm of the era.
WandaVision director Matt Shakman and President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige even had lunch with TV legend Dick Van Dyke, who served as a consultant on the Disney+ series, to gain insight into the best way to approach the series and set the tone for the throwback sitcom. He explained they should be guided by what could and could not happen in real life.
“We learned from Dick Van Dyke that their number one rule for how they approached anything was that if it couldn’t happen in real life, it can’t happen on the show,” Shakman said in a later interview. “You need to ground what you’re doing in real-life stories, but then that gives you the permission to be incredibly silly and to fall over the ottoman and do pratfalls.”
IGN’s review of WandaVision’s two-part premiere praised the show for providing “a solid introduction into the MCU’s most high-concept idea so far,” with “several surprising and delightful ideas” being presented through the series’ two lead actors who we felt “couldn’t be better suited to the project.”
CD Projekt CEO Adam Kiciński has said that Cyberpunk 2077 has reached a “satisfactory” level of stability and performance, and should now see more fixes to specific in-game systems.
Speaking at WSE Innovation Day (via TVN24, and translated by IGN Poland), Kiciński addressed Cyberpunk 2077’s recent patches, and assessed the development team’s work:
“We have already reached a satisfactory level [of stability]. We have also worked on the overall performance, and we are quite satisfied with that. Of course, we have also fixed bugs and glitches, and we will continue to do so. Over time, we will be introducing fixes to the general systems that players [have pointed out as needing improvement].”
Kiciński didn’t go into detail on what player-requested systems could receive fixes, but that could include things like in-game police responses, NPC AI, or or improved charcater customisation (or, at the very least, letting me change the awful hairstyle I picked as a joke at the start of the game).
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
The breakout success of team dodgeball title Knockout City means it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. EA and Velan Studios revealed the game’s roadmap today, along with the launch date of the game’s second season and everything players can expect to come with it.
Season 2 of Knockout City will start July 27, and it will introduce more cosmetics to the game, along with events and an entirely new map. Knockout City’s second season will also include five new playlists to try out and a new suite of season contracts. A new league play season will also be starting on July 27 along with Season 2.
Players will have another reason to log in to Knockout City with the start of Season 2: daily login bonuses. Every day that players log in to play the game, they will receive a random reward. It’s not clear if there is a pool of items that will be doled out or if players will receive different rewards for playing the game on consecutive days.
Knockout City 2021 Roadmap
Since seasons in Knockout City last nine weeks, it’s pretty easy to say when we can expect the game’s third and fourth seasons, scheduled for the fall and winter respectively, will start. Season 3 of Knockout City will likely launch around September 28, while Season 4 should begin near November 30.
Knockout City’s current event, Heatwave, will run until July 5. For the time being, players in the game can earn new items and play through timed contracts and playlists. Knockout City is also completely free-to-play up until you hit level 25 if you want to give the game a try before buying. Knockout City is also available as part of Xbox Game Pass.
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The annual Steam Summer Sale is live between now and July 8. That means you can save money on a huge array of PC games from pretty much any genre under the sun. You can find the full sale here, but we’ve pulled some of the highlights below.
Along with the sale, Steam is doing a “Forge Your Fate” promotion. This involves 14 brief choose-your-own-adventure style stories that help you discover “what sort of hero you are.” Finishing each story gets you an animated sticker. If you go through all of the stories, you’ll get one of five badges based on the decisions you made in the stories.
Each story is based on a game genre, and clicking on any of them lets you browse an assortment of games of that genre that are discounted for the Summer Sale. If you don’t care about digital trinkets like stickers and badges, feel free to ignore the whole thing.
Seriously, tons of games are on sale, so grab whatever ones catch your eye. Make sure you do it before 10a.m. PT on July 8, though, because that’s when the sale ends.
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Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
Netflix and CD Projekt Red have announced the schedule for their upcoming virtual fan event WitcherCon.
According to the official show schedule, WitcherCon will feature several interactive panels, cast conversations, game developer discussions, quiz-style trivia games, and so much more. The event, hosted by Julia Hardy, will run across two separate streams on July 9 and July 10, with each one offering unique, exclusive content.
The lineup promises never-before-seen insights into the production and creative processes behind the Witcher universe, including CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher video games and The Witcher Netflix series, with surprises from the live-action series and forthcoming anime film The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, which is being produced by Studio Mir.
Fans tuning in for the event shouldn’t expect a new installment of The Witcher video game series to be announced, as the official WitcherCon website explicitly states that no new game will be unveiled during the two-day celebration. Instead, the show will present expert explorations into The Witcher franchise across a star-studded selection of panels.
The panel schedule, per Netflix, will run as follows:
The Witcher Season 2: Deck of Destiny
Guests: Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, Anya Chalotra, Freya Allan, Mimî M Khayisa, Paul Bullion
Destinies collide when the cast and showrunner of Netflix’s The Witcher draw cards from an enigmatic deck of fan questions that will determine the path of the panel and the immediate fate of the guests. But these are no ordinary cards – prepare for surprise reveals, backstage insights, and a dash of chaos as our panelists take us through their journey of filming S2.
CD PROJEKT RED’s Memories from the Path: Stories Behind The Witcher Games
For over 13 years, the Witcher series of games has captured the imagination of gamers worldwide. Now, the developers behind the games discuss how they brought their immersive stories to life — before revisiting old memories, uncovering forgotten artifacts, and reminiscing about their favorite moments from the franchise
Guests: Błażej Augustynek, Philipp Weber, Declan De Barra, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
It’s a meeting of the Witcher masterminds as key creators of the Witcher games and The Witcher Netflix series team up to test their knowledge of the wider Witcher universe. In this pub quiz-style game, behind-the-scenes tidbits and spoilery sneak peeks are prized just as much as the correct answers.
From detective noir to dark horror — all the way to the Old World and beyond, prepare to experience The Witcher’s expanded universe with the latest details on the upcoming comic books and board game inspired by the franchise!
Tales from the White Wolf: A Spotlight Conversation with Henry Cavill, hosted by Josh Horowitz
To close out WitcherCon, fans will hear from Geralt of Rivia himself, Henry Cavill, who will sit down with moderator Josh Horowitz (MTV & Comedy Central host) for an in-depth conversation about fantasy, destiny, and the wider Witcher Universe. The White Wolf may even have a surprise or two in store…
In addition to the above, CD Projekt Red will present Monster Slayer: Live the Life of a Witcher with the team at Spokko, who will guide gamers and prepare them to become professional monster slayers before stepping into their new location-based AR RPG. There’s also a whole host of other featurettes and special short-form content in the WitcherCon schedule lineup.
The digital convention will be available to stream on both Netflix and CD Projekt Red’s YouTube and Twitch channels. WitcherCon will first air on July 9 at 7:00 PM (CEST), with the second stream beginning at 03:00 AM (CEST) on July 10. Before streaming that, you might want to check out the latest teaser for the second season of Netflix’s The Witcher.
