The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD’s Zelda and Loftwing Amiibo has been hit by shipping delays, causing the majority of them to arrive sometime in August instead of on July 16. As reported by IGN, the Amiibo has been impacted by “unforeseen” issues related to shipping, resulting in only a handful of the Zelda and Loftwing Amiibo arriving on July 16 when the game releases.

The majority of the Amiibo ordered will arrive sometime in August. Nintendo of America also told IGN that this delay will not impact any other Amiibo figures. The Amiibo was originally set to release alongside Skyward Sword HD, and while normally video game merchandise shipping later than the game isn’t a big deal, this Amiibo unlocks a pretty useful mechanic in-game.

“The Zelda and Loftwing Amiibo figure is currently impacted by unforeseen shipping delays. As a result, only a small portion of the Zelda and Loftwing Amiibo will be available on its scheduled July 16 launch date,” Nintendo of America said in a statement to GameSpot. “Additional shipments are delayed until August. We will ship additional Amiibo to retailers as soon as they arrive.”

The Zelda and Skyloft Amiibo allows you to travel between the air and the ground at any time during the game. Without this feature, you can only do this at a bird statue. Locking this feature behind a $25 statue was already an odd decision, but now that the Amiibo will likely show up after players have had the game for multiple weeks, there’s a decent chance some people will have beaten the game without ever getting to use the fast travel.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD releases for Nintendo Switch on July 16. In GameSpot’s review, critic Kevin Knezevic gave it a 7/10, writing, “Despite these flaws, Skyward Sword is also filled with many genuinely magical moments. The soundtrack, notable for being Zelda’s first fully orchestrated score, is still delightful, and the story is one of the most touching tales the series has ever woven, shedding light on the origins of Hyrule and other elements that have become hallmarks of the franchise. The game’s dungeons are a highlight, as well, filled with clever puzzles that test your observation and lateral thinking.”

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD Joy-Cons also release on July 16 and there is still time to get an order in for the Blue Zelda-themed controllers.

The PS5 is getting a sugar glider-centered nature sim titled Away: The Survival Series. Players will get to assume the identities of sugar gliders–flying, leaping, and climbing like they do–and “embark on a perilous journey through the wilderness to save [their] family.” The game is expected to release sometime in late summer of 2021.

Canadian developer Breaking Wall took to PlayStation’s blog to introduce the gameplay, which includes stalking prey and coming face-to-face with the sugar gliders’ natural predators, including the Coral Snake.

Other features include a photo mode–to capture players’ exploits as an enterprising sugar glider–and the ability to play as other species. Players can take the POVs of salamanders, beetles, frogs, spiders, and more.

While the game will be available on the PS4, Breaking Wall recommends playing the game on the PS5 for maximum graphical setting, Documentary Experience. Mike Raznick, who worked on the acclaimed nature documentaries Life and Planet Earth II, will provide the music for the game.

Away: The Survival Series was funded through Kickstarter, and CA$135,789 was raised to help finish the game. The game will be available on PS5, PS4, and PC.

Welcoooome to Nintendo Voice Chat: OLED Edition! Nintendo has finally unveiled the next member of the Nintendo Switch Family, featuring a larger, OLED screen and a redesigned dock. But, it’s missing the highly-rumored 4K support that some fans were hoping for. So, what do we think? This week on NVC, join Casey DeFreitas, Peer Schneider, Seth Macy, and special guest Jools Watsham as they break down their thoughts on Nintendo’s newest console. Plus, hear about our Monster Hunter Stories 2 review, some special amiibo news, and Pictooi, Jools’ new game!

NVC is available on your preferred platforms!

• Spotify
• Apple iTunes
• Stitcher
• Podbay
• PlayerFM
• Podbean

You can also Download NVC 569 Directly Here

You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We’re all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.

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Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.

With word from Battlefield 2042 developer DICE that cloud computing will soon level up the capabilities of first-person shooters, we discuss what we’d like to see and what we think we’ll see. Plus: what we hope the studio formerly known as DICE LA will be up to next, Dark Souls 3’s new FPS Boost on Xbox Series, and more!

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our new YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered, featuring an interview with The Elder Scrolls Online boss Matt Firor about his RPG roots, the future of the popular MMORPG, and what else the studio is working on as part of the Xbox Studios family:

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Oh, and you can be featured on Unlocked by tweeting us a video Loot Box question! Tweet your question and tag Ryan at @DMC_Ryan!

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

Warning: Full spoilers for all six Season 1 episodes of Marvel’s Loki follow…

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Now that the dust has settled on the mind-bending Season 1 Loki finale, which signals a major shift for the entire MCU, we’ve got a handful of questions. That’s right, the theories aren’t exactly flowing as freely following Episode 6, but in true TV cliffhanger fashion, we have a ton of stuff we want answered. Yes, the questions have been flying fast and furiously in the IGN Loki Slack channel. Especially since the events of Loki directly affect a long-running mega-movie franchise you may have heard of called the MCU.

“For All Time. Always.” ended with Sylvie, not heeding a pretty big warning about evil Variant Kangs arriving to kick off a new Multiversal War, sending Loki through a time portal and killing He Who Remains. Instead of taking He Who Remains up on his offer to dual-rule the TVA with Loki, she opted for revenge and now the entire timeline has been thrown into chaos. With MCU movies on the horizon featuring the multiverse, like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of you know what and Spider-Man: No Way Home, and also a second season of Loki, here are some big looming questions we have about the toppling of the Sacred Timeline.

And if you have your own questions, answers, or tangential theories, hit us up on the board below and let everyone know your ideas! And be sure to vote in our poll at the bottom of the page…

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Question: Why Didn’t Mobius Know Who Loki Was?

With the timeline splintering and a new multiverse sprouting up, of course countless alternative universes now exist to explore. But where did Loki land exactly?

Sylvie sent Loki through a TemPad timedoor before she stabbed He Who Remains. The only thing is, Loki seems to have landed in a timeline other than what was previously referred to as the Sacred Timeline — one where the Mobius native to that universe doesn’t know about all the adventures the Mobius we’ve been following all season just had. Sure, there are elements here meant to trick the viewer so that it’s a surprise when Mobius doesn’t know who Loki is, but does it all line up time-wise? How fast are these new timelines created and why would that TemPad send Loki to a new one?

We could be overthinking this, since Sylvie did use He Who Remains’ special TemPad, and that could be locked into a different set of space/time rules, but it’s certainly noticeably that the Time Variance Authority reality that Loki winds up in is in the midst of dealing with the same multiversal crisis that was happening out at the Edge of Time. Mobius and Hunter B-15 are dealing with the massive calamity, so it connects to the rest of the show. The big difference is that Mobius and B-15 don’t know who Loki is and the big boss statue is now that of Kang himself.

So was this timeline the Sacred one at one point and then it got like a “new timeline” wash-over? One that happened even while Loki was there and searching for people? Or did Loki somehow get sent to a totally different TVA timeline?

Also, what is the rule with the TVA and the multiverse? Are there now millions of TVAs or is the TVA, by nature, exempt from this? The basics of the switcheroo make sense, and Mobius not remembering Loki was a great beat, but digging into the details, as nerdlings are wont to do, there are questions.

Question: What Were the Files He Who Remains Gave Ravonna Renslayer?

Okay, so this one is actually meant to be a full-fledged answered-later mystery, but it’s still got us stumped.

What were the new files that He Who Remains sent to Renslayer? The ones Miss Minutes remarked would be more useful to her. And then following that, where did Renslayer escape to? She told Mobius that she was off “in search of free will” even though she actually was kind of against the idea of free will. Sure, she wanted to know who was behind the TVA but she also fell in line with all of it. She convinced herself that it all had to mean something and that their work was both important and necessary.

We assume that her destination was in the files and that it was a place Kang wanted her to explore. So where is that, and what did that Kang Variant want her to find there?

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Question: How Many Kang Variants Will We See Going Forward, and How Big a Villain Will Kang Be?

He Who Remains is gone, as loopy as he was being a guy who’d lived millions of lifetimes and was alone and secluded at the End of All Things. Now come different versions of him. More power-hungry versions of him that seek ultimate authority and dominion over the multiverse. Kangs that might fall more in line with the Kangs (and there are many versions) we know from the comics. So will we see all those different styles of Kang or will we focus mostly on one main evil Kang (maybe the one now running the TVA)?

Also, from an MCU standpoint, where else will Kang touch down outside of Loki: Season 2 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania? Will he be a part of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? Will he show up in other big MCU films? Or will he be mostly a streaming series villain who then goes into Ant-Man? We’re not used to the Ant-Man movies being big game-changers for the MCU, but maybe Quantumania will be the next Civil War/Avengers-type ensemble?

Question: Will Loki Be in Doctor Strange 2 or Thor: Love and Thunder or…

This is sort of similar to the last question, but it also goes with “When will we see Loki: Season 2?” As in, when will this specific story continue, with the Kang and Sylvie of it all, and how will it slot in with the MCU films? If they filmed Season 2 at the same time as Season 1, which is just a bouncy rumor, then maybe Season 2 will pop up at the beginning of next year, after Spider-Man: No Way Home and Miss Marvel but before Multiverse of Madness? Tom Hiddleston hasn’t been confirmed to be in any of the upcoming Marvel movies, including Thor: Love and Thunder, but at the same time it does seem weird for there to be a Thor movie and not have Loki in it…

Basically, we’re headed into huge movies in a few months that will feature the multiverse but we haven’t sorted out the Loki story yet. Will we see the symptoms before we see the actual ailment or will Loki’s arc get delivered before we dive into the movie madness of the multiverse?

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Question: Is There a Crocodile Kang?

Perhaps the most important question of all: What kind of Kangs will we see? Will we get a Crocodile Kang and then get to watch the Alligator Loki battle we’ve always dreamed of? Or will Kang take on a different animal form (a Kang-garoo is currently an online favorite)?

Either way, a Season 2 just means more opportunity for Kid Loki and Alligator Loki to return. And now that Loki will need to scramble to find allies more than ever (unless he decides to just 50 First Dates Mobius over and over) he may have to head back into the Void for help.

Question: Was He Who Remains Meant to Embody MCU Head Kevin Feige?

Fans have also been noticing a few parallels between Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains, a man who knows all and sees all, up to a point, and Marvel’s Chief Creative Officer Kevin Feige. For one thing, there’s the guy who’s been in charge forever, overseeing a very specific order, now looking for someone to replace him. Nothing’s official, obviously, but some wonder if this is a signal that Feige is looking to pass the torch.

Secondly, as far as the MCU itself goes, He Who Remains not knowing what happens yet makes it seem like the biggest hint, following Phases 1 through 3, that the MCU is now wild and free and ready to go to truly outlandish places. Everything was strictly wrangled and meticulously planned out up until now. He Who Remains getting killed off felt like the moment the MCU itself was “freed” and now anything can happen.

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What are some of your questions or theories following the Loki finale? Let us know down below! And be sure to vote in our poll too:

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The late Chadwick Boseman was set to star in L.A. Confidential 2 but Warner Bros. ended up passing on the project.

This news comes by way of The Ringer, which posted a retrospective on the way neo-noirs took over the 1990s, and in it, they state that Boseman would have played a young police officer in the sequel to 1997’s L.A. Confidential. However, the movie never came to be as Warner Bros. passed on it.

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“A few years ago, the Oscar-winning filmmaker Brian Helgeland went to Warner Bros. with what seemed like a dynamite movie pitch: a sequel to L.A. Confidential, the 1997 Hollywood cop drama he co-wrote with director Curtis Hanson,” The Ringer writes. “Helgeland had already secured a top-tier cast, including returning Confidential costars Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, alongside Chadwick Boseman, who’d be playing a young police officer.”

Helgeland had developed the sequel’s story with L.A. Confidential novelist James Ellroy, according to The Ringer, and it was set in the mid-1970s. Helgeland said he had worked the entire thing out, stating that “it was great,” but ultimately, Warner Bros. passed on the project.

“The studio’s veto made for a downbeat, think-what-coulda-been ending — much like the conclusion of L.A. Confidential itself,” The Ringer writes. “But the rejection is especially surprising when you consider that, 24 years ago, L.A. Confidential was one of the most beloved entries in a genre beloved by executives and audiences alike: the neo-noir.”

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L.A. Confidential 2 has been making headlines as far back as 2007 when it was reported by IGN that Helgeland and Hanson were teaming up once more to make the sequel. Boseman’s involvement wasn’t known back then, however, as it seems his role was written up a few years ago.

The Ringer’s piece goes on to discuss the 1990’s fascination with the neo-noir genre and it’s well worth a read, but that doesn’t make it any less sad that we’ll never see what a sequel to L.A. Confidential starring Boseman would have looked like.

Boseman died last August, but Marvel’s What If? series will feature the actor’s final performance when it hits Disney Plus next month. Elsewhere, Marvel’s Black Panther 2 is still happening despite Boseman’s death because it’s what he would have wanted, according to director Ryan Coogler. Don’t expect a cameo from Boseman in Black Panther 2, though, as the sequel was reshaped to be respectful of the loss of Boseman.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Anthony Bourdain’s voice has been recreated by artificial intelligence for use in the upcoming Roadrunner documentary about his life.

This news comes by way of IndieWire, which reports that Roadrunner director Morgan Neville said the team is using over a dozen hours of Bourdain’s recorded voice to narrate the documentary. However, there were three instances where they didn’t have the audio they needed and the team turned to artificial intelligence to get what they needed.

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“There is a moment at the end of the film’s second act when the artist David Choe, a friend of Bourdain’s, is reading aloud an email Bourdain had sent him: ‘Dude, this is a crazy thing to ask, but I’m curious,’ Choe begins reading, and then the voice fades into Bourdain’s own,” Neville told The New Yorker in a recent interview, according to IndieWire. “… ‘and my life is sort of shit now. You are successful, and I am successful, and I’m wondering: Are you happy?'”

The New Yorker asked Neville how the team found audio of Bourdain reading his own email aloud and that’s when Neville revealed that such a thing didn’t exist. As a result, the team reached out to four software companies about recreating Bourdain’s voice using artificial intelligence.

They selected what they deemed the best of the four and sent them over a dozen hours of recordings.

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“If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know,” Neville said. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”

Neville did say in a GQ Magazine interview that the team checked with Bourdain’s widow and literary executor “to make sure people were cool with that,” and according to Neville, “they were like, ‘Tony would have been cool with that.'”

Neville said he wasn’t putting words into Bourdain’s mouth, but rather, just trying to make them come alive. IndieWire reports that Roadrunner’s use of words from Bourdain recreated using artificial intelligence is receiving backlash on social media, citing that film critic Sean Burns said he was not made aware of such a decision before writing his review.

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“I feel like this tells you all you need to know about the ethics of the people behind this project,” Burns said.

Anthony Bourdain died at the age of 61 in 2018. The Roadrunner documentary that claims simply to be a film about his life hits theaters on July 16. Check out the official trailer for Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain while waiting for it to hit theaters.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Speedrunner Crescendo has set a new blindfolded world record after completing Super Mario Bros. in 11 minutes and 55 seconds.

This news comes by way of Eurogamer, which reports that Crescendo posted their world record run yesterday on YouTube after attempting to beat the record for over 40 hours. Crescendo beat the previous blindfold world record for a Super Mario Bros. completion, which sat at 14 minutes and 46 seconds since 2016, by nearly

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“I started planning this run on May 29 and started doing full-game attempts on June 19,” Crescendo wrote in his world record video’s description. “I played in one-hour sessions once or twice per day. All told, it was 40 hours of attempts.”

Crescendo also mentions that he’s a musician, which actually came in handy when going for this world record. That’s because, in some sections of the game, Crescendo had to accurately count in seconds to perform a perfect series of jumps when required to progress in the level, as Eurogamer points out.

He also used fireballs as a tool to determine how far away certain things were and broke specific bricks to determine his whereabouts on a level.

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Eurogamer cites the speedrun subreddit and how people there are discussing how particularly difficult Super Mario Bros. is to speedrun, let alone speedrunning it while blindfolded and breaking a world record in the process. They specifically mention AKittyCat’s comment as they explain the difficulty in speedrunning Super Mario Bros. compared to Super Mario 64.

“64 has the benefit of being 3D and Open world-ish allowing you to take your time in certain areas and has more sound clues to go off of to help navigate,” AKittyCat said. “SMB1 has time limits, a much more unforgiving play style, and basically no sound clues to go off of for navigation help outside of hitting a block or an enemy.”

Crescendo says he is working on a tutorial video to teach would-be speedrunners (or those simply interested in the madness that is this incredible feat) how he broke the world record. Crescendo broke this record just days after Summer Games Done Quick 2021 wrapped up its charity efforts, in which it raised $2.8 million for Doctors Without Borders.

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For more speedrunning, check out IGN’s Devs React to Speedrun series where developers of games like Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Mass Effect, Fallout: New Vegas, Hades, and more react to speedrunners completing their games in record times.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

It’s the end of another week that probably could have gone better than it did. No matter, though. Forget it all by scoring a cheap palate cleansing game to play over the weekend. You could take advantage of 50% off a CoD or AC. Or maybe just stock up on a heap of cut-price Steam stuff in preparation for the arrival of your Steam Deck.

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