Japan’s PlayStation Blog has revealed that Japanese YouTubers will be going hands-on with the PS5 next week as part of an event that will be held during YouTube Gaming Week.
As for what the content creators will be playing, that hasn’t been revealed just yet, but PS5 launch games such as Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the remake of Demon’s Souls could show up at the event.
With just a few weeks to go until the PS5‘s November launch, new details on the gaming experience that Sony’s new console will provide has been surprisingly minimal.
Little information has been revealed on its user interface, while only a few people in the gaming industry have even managed to get their hands on the new DualSense controller that the console will ship with.
If you’re still looking to grab one of Sony’s new consoles for yourself, don’t forget to check out our PS5 preorder guide so you can see when new stock will be available. For everything that we do currently know about the next-gen PlayStation, you can read up on its technical specs, launch games, and accessories in our PS5 breakdown.
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The Metal Gear series is hitting PC via GOG, Konami has announced. Previously, only a select few games in the franchise were available outside of consoles. They aren’t the only Konami games hitting the service, either.
The new GOG offerings don’t seem to have any enhancements, and you’re getting the original Metal Gear Solid rather than the GameCube remake. Substance does feature some enhancements and extra content not found in Metal Gear Solid 2’s original release.
Following the massive update for Marvel’s Avengers that addressed more than 1,000 issues, Crystal Dynamics is back with a follow-up update that fixes even more problems.
The studio has released the details on patch 1.3.1, and it fixes a number of issues that Crystal Dynamics characterized as “large.” This patch fixes an issue that could prevent players from accepting Faction Missions / Villain Sectors, and this bug also blocked players from earning some rewards. In response to this, everyone is getting 250 Polychoron and 500 Uru.
You can claim these rewards by viewing one of your Challenge cards, and it’s available until October 1 at 10 AM PT.
Patch 1.3.1 also gives Captain America a new ability–he can now smash through doors. Iron Man, meanwhile, now has “improved responsiveness,” when entering sprint flight from jumping. The game overall should be more stable, too, as the patch includes “various crash and stability fixes.” You can see the full patch notes below, as written by the developer.
In addition to these fixes, Crystal Dynamics said it is planning more updates for Avengers to add things like a ping system for War Zone, subtitle size options, a high contrast mode, and a toggle option for Hero icons to make them constantly visible.
Avengers 1.3.1 Patch Notes
Various Reassemble Campaign & Avengers Initiative fixes, including:
Various Crash & Stability fixes
Fixed a rare issue when selecting “Once an Avenger” inadvertently sent the player to the wrong mission.
Fixed an issue keeping some mission chains from completing properly when all requirements are met. (Example: Reigning Supreme)
COMBAT
Various combat fixes/tuning, including:
Captain America can now smash through doors.
Fixed an issue where overcharge meters were inappropriately decreasing during a team finisher.
Tuning:
Improved responsiveness when entering sprint flight from jumping as Iron Man.
Improved responsiveness for light air hammer attacks as Thor.
Improved reliability of Iron Man’s Thruster Uppercut.
Improved presentation of Captain America’s sprinting block.
Tuned the SPIN Keeper’s standard attack, reduced heroic drain, and added an offscreen attack indicator.
Tuning to Adept Drone, Synthoid, and Keeper:
Added new standard attack to Drone and Keeper.
Adjusted homing attack to happen less frequently.
Adjusted homing projectile to be more balanced.
Increased global cooldown for all quantum homing projectile attacks.
Adjusted quantum shard projectiles so they are no longer unblockable.
GEAR, CHALLENGES, & REWARDS
Various Gear, Challenges, & Reward fixes/tuning including:
Addressed an issue where refreshing a missing weekly mission would result in a crash. Weekly missions should now appear as intended. We’ve temporarily disabled refreshing incomplete challenges; full functionality will be restored in the next update.
Addressed an issue where Villain Sectors would not properly refresh, which caused players to miss out on weekly rewards.
Fixed additional issues that prevented daily requisitions from clearing as intended.
Granted players the Iconic Iron Man outfit if they lost it due to an outfit bug.
Fixed a broken Legendary reward that was incorrectly set to Power Level 1.
Addressed issues with how the Insurmountable perk was being applied to gear drops.
Fixed an issue where some users would not be granted any rewards upon completing an Elite Heroic Hive run.
Guarded against a specific scenario that caused Kamala to lose a skill point. We are still investigating retroactive fixes.
Adjusted loot tables in Mega Hives to increase the chances additional loot will be awarded.
PC Specific Fixes:
Addressed a rare bug that results in a player’s Hero Level being reset, usually following a multiplayer connection issue.
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Actor Thue Rasmussen has dropped out of Netflix’s The Witcher due to a scheduling conflict related to COVID-19. Writing on Twitter, the actor who played Eskel the Witcher in the series, said it’s “heartbreaking” not to be able to continue to play the role. He was on set earlier this year, but he was unable to come back because the schedule got changed due to COVID-19.
“Sadly, due to the rescheduling because of COVID-19, I will not be portraying Eskel in The Witcher,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking, of course, but I mostly feel happy and grateful for the days I got to spend on set earlier this year. Everyone was extremely engaged and passionate about the project, and it was a truly inspiring experience.”
Rasmussen added: “A heartfelt thank you to all the fans who wrote me lovely, encouraging messages. “I wish everyone on the show best of luck with the rest of the production. I’m sure Season 2 will be absolutely amazing and now I get to watch it as a fanboy instead of as a Witcher.”
Showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich responded to Rasmussen’s message with three heart emojis. Rasmussen sent three heart emojis back, along with the message to Hissrich, “Thank you, Lauren. Best of luck with the rest the production. I can’t wait to see it!”
Netflix’s The Witcher Season 2 was filming in the UK until it closed down in March. It was one of the first major productions to be suspended in the UK, after actor Kristofer Hivju tested positive for coronavirus.
While The Witcher Season 2 doesn’t have a confirmed release date, showrunner Lauren Hissrich previously stated that it would appear sometime in 2021. “We don’t want to rush the product,” she said in January. “That doesn’t benefit anyone.” Hissrich has also suggested that the story of The Witcher Season 2 will be easier to follow than that of Season 1, which was spread over different timelines. “The story will be much more linear, now that the three characters’ stories have started to intersect,” she explained.
The Witcher stars Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, Freya Allan as Ciri, Anya Chalotra as Yennefer, Eamon Farren as Cahir, and Joey Batey as Jaskier. It’s based on the book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, which in turn inspired the popular video game series.
Screaming sideways through the long, arcing bends of Snow Mountain Sprint, my front tires flirted incessantly with the densely packed snow at the side of the road, but such is the precision of the controls that they never so much as kissed. My first few events in arcade racer Inertial Drift were joyfully effortless, as I threw my car sideways around corner after corner. It makes a great first impression, but beyond the initial rush of unadulterated, high-speed thrills, it soon reveals itself to also have enough depth to go the distance.
My first races, you see, were in Edward’s Terra Dart, an easy to handle sporty number with all the depth of a paper bag but, crucially, the perfect vehicle to introduce Inertial Drift’s twin stick controls. Yes, in this racer, you steer with the left stick, but control your car’s drift with the right. This allows you to make separate adjustments on the fly to manipulate the angle of your car as you drift while also shifting it left or right on track, letting you hold the perfect line on basically any curve or glide neatly through any corner. It’s a game changer.
The Dart is the purest, simplest expression of this. You can basically just jam down the accelerator, and attack each corner with twin-sticked abandon. And if you need to hit a really aggressive angle? A tap on the brake will swing the back end out further.
Edward’s Dart, however, is just the beginning. Each vehicle in Inertial Drift’s roster feels distinct and requires a specific approach to master. Ibba’s HPE Dragon, for instance, demands that you brake ahead of tight turns before starting to drift in order to hit the right line and maintain momentum. You can then take advantage of its high acceleration to power out of the corner. Riku’s Venom Industries Ventus will only enter a lazy, lightly angled slide with the drift stick engaged; instead it’s the brake that’s the primary way to get sharper angles through corners. Corey’s HPE Katana, on the other hand, is all about feathering the accelerator as you slide, finessing the drift stick to find the right angle. Break during a slide with that car and it straightens up.
There are just so many extremes to appreciate across the 16 car line-up. Seth’s Coda Supreno is extremely slow building up speed, which means every mistake is costly, but it’s the fastest car in the game when it gets going. It’s thrilling learning how to ease off the accelerator and find precisely the right drifting line to maintain momentum through turns. Gunner’s Roton 7D, meanwhile, has a stack of raw power and drifts on the brake, so feels super twitchy, swinging out wide at the lightest touch. It’s difficult to get a feel for, particularly on sharp corners that can leave you spinning out entirely if not deftly handled. And then there’s Samira’s HPE Jester, which doesn’t want to grip ever. It’s all drifting, all the time.
As you’ve no doubt noted, each car is tied to a specific character, and you’ll get to know this cast as you progress through the Story mode. Playing through Inertial Drift’s story four times – once for each of the selectable characters – gave me a really good taste of what its racing mechanics have to offer, and cleverly uses its dialogue and challenges to teach lessons about how each car handles. Ibba, for instance, won’t be able to post a good enough lap time on City Skylink unless he – and by extension, you – takes Viv’s advice to heart about why sometimes you need to brake to go faster. The challenges here are geared towards making you a better driver, and as I worked my way through the events in each destination I certainly became that.
While the story itself is of no real consequence, its execution is refreshing. There is no testosterone here – no high stakes feuds between hotshot drivers with impossibly large egos. Instead, we largely have a cast of earnest racing enthusiasts – people of all stripes who want to share their love of racing, help each other out, and improve. It’s endearing, really, whether you’re playing as Edward, who only wants to have fun but discovers that with practice he has the chops to be competitive, or Viv, who is the racer to beat, but also humble enough to know she has more to learn.
It provides a backdrop to some absolutely gripping racing – all, essentially, against the clock, as even when you’re directly racing another character, your car safely phases through theirs instead of bumping. And all, I should also add, from a chase cam view – something that I typically never use in arcade racers, much preferring to be low to the ground and in first person. Thankfully, the cars actually look great on track in Inertial Drift and the sense of speed is still very real, even from that vantage point.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=My%20favourite%20course%20is%20Mount%20Kirino%2C%20a%20five-or-so-minute%20point%20to%20point%20race%20with%20winding%20mountain%20roads%2C%20large%2C%20sweeping%20switchbacks%2C%20rapid%20S%20bends%20and%20oh%20so%20much%20speed.”]
The Story mode only encompasses five destinations, but each is gratifyingly distinct. City Skylink, for instance, feels completely different from Sunset Sea Circuit. The former is a city course with wide freeways, long, curving tunnels and technical street sections, whereas the latter takes you from the beach up into the mountains as you hurtle along narrow, sweeping roads, zig zag through a downhill slalom, and screech around a series of switchbacks.
My favourite course, however, is Mount Kirino, a five-or-so-minute point to point race with winding mountain roads, an epic corkscrew that lets you hold a drift seemingly forever, large, sweeping switchbacks, rapid S bends and oh so much speed. And along the way you’ll go from the ski fields, where chairlifts are silhouetted against the night sky, through an ancient forest lit by lanterns and studded by impossibly large trees, down mountain slopes with purple-hued stars and a sliver of moon dominating the screen, and then at last a cityscape appears like a mirage in the distance while you careen along a series of ridges. I’m not in love with Inertial Drift’s cel-shaded, vaporwave aesthetic in general, but it certainly has its moments.
The courses in the Story mode are only a slice of what is available elsewhere. There are 20 course configurations in all, spanning point to point races and circuits, and including both forward and reverse options. If you want to practice these other options you’ll need to hop into the Arcade mode, where you can also test your mettle against the fastest times posted by players around the world. This is fine, but I really enjoyed the context and challenges provided by Story mode, so it’s a shame finishing a character’s story doesn’t open up a Story mode+ which lets you do all the courses in reverse, or perhaps offers up a different selection entirely. (There is, however, an option to choose “Xtra Crispy” when starting a new story save, which offers up harder targets and faster opponents, but the same courses.)
That said, Arcade mode is definitely useful in order to familiarise yourself with specific courses before heading into the Grand Prix mode. Each car/racer has a custom grand prix to complete, and it pays to be familiar with each event, as you only have three second chances to clear the full set. The Challenges are also quite cool – there’s one of these for all the extra cars that can be unlocked, which then lets you take them into other modes. And for fans of same screen action, in addition to online multiplayer, Inertial Drift also features two player splitscreen.
We dug through The Boys Season 2 Episode 6 to find every hidden nugget.
The Boys Season 2, Episode 6, “The Bloody Doors Off,” answered some of the season’s longstanding questions. How old is Stormfront exactly? She was born in 1919, which makes her 101 years old. What is her plan for Homelander? In true Nazi fashion, she plans to prop him up as the pinnacle of the Aryan race and put him in charge of an army of supes created with the newly stabilized Compound V being developed at Sage Grove. What is Lamplighter’s part in it all? He was just there to burn the evidence and keep the patients in line, but he’s feeling regretful over his actions and might be an asset to The Boys going forward.
Lamplighter’s introduction was just one highlight of another great Season 2 episode. This one also fleshed out Frenchie’s backstory, demonstrating just how bad a boy he was before the series’ events. It added dimension to characters who are evil, and showed good characters doing evil things, with more collateral damage than The Boys themselves are used to causing. And it gave Starlight and Butcher the chance to bury the hatchet and reach an understanding, largely thanks to their mutual love of Hughie–and his love of children’s shampoo.
Naturally, we went over Season 2 Episode 6 with a fine-toothed comb to unearth all the comics references and other hidden Easter eggs that we could find. Keep reading to see what we found, and check out GameSpot Universe’s episode-by-episode video breakdowns for more.
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1. The Bloody Doors Off
The episode’s title is taken from the 12th and final volume of the comics. It’s apt for the episode, considering all the doors that get blown off at Sage Grove.
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2. Casquette A L’envers
The opening song is Casquette A L’envers by the French hip-hop group Sexion D’Assaut. The song’s title translates to “upside-down cap” according to Google. The music video is playing on the TV in the background during the opening scene.
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3. Golden Girls
Frenchie opens the episode discussing The Golden Girls, an NBC sitcom that aired from 1985 to 1992. The show starred Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty as four older women who live together. Frenchie refers to his friends as his Blanche and his Dorothy, McClanahan’s and Arthur’s characters respectively.
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4. Harold Jaffe
Starlight’s small operation to remove her Vought tracking device–in which Frenchie uses some kind of stone-cutting tool to penetrate her super-skin–takes place at Harold Jaffe Jewelers, a real jewelry store. However, the real location is in Ohio, not New York.
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5. The Stranger
Hughie’s t-shirt this week features the cover of Billy Joel’s 1977 album The Stranger. It had four singles: “Just the Way You Are,” “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” “She’s Always a Woman,” and “Only the Good Die Young.”
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6. Pokémon with Hep C
Hughie remarks that The Boys’ hideout isn’t so bad–the rats are “like Pokémon with Hep C.” Hep C is Hepatitis C, a viral liver infection that can be spread through needles. Pokémon is–well, if you don’t know what Pokémon is, I’m not sure I can explain it to you. How about I link you to our list of examples of people eating Pokémon from the anime instead?
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7. The .50 caliber round
Starlight reprimands Butcher over the .50 caliber round he pumped into her chest. Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember it–that was all the way back in Season 1, Episode 7.
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8. The Dab
When Deep reunites with A-Train, he greets him with a half-assed “dab.” The dab is a dance move that originated in the Atlanta hip-hop scene in the 2010s.
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9. Weaponized Xanax
When Mallory recruits Frenchie, she remarks that he used “weaponized Xanax” against a supe whose powers were fueled by rage. Xanax is a sedative that’s used to treat anxiety. Turns out Frenchie doesn’t just do drugs; he’s a chemist who makes them as well.
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10. ADX Florence
Mallory intimidates Frenchie with a description of ADX Florence, or The United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (USP Florence ADMAX), a real prison near Florence, Colorado. Mallory refers to the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist named Ted Kaczynski who was apprehended in 1996, and the head of the Aryan brotherhood, which might refer to a number of people at the prison, including Thomas Silverstein and Barry Mills.
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11. Vas and friends
Some of the supes at Sage Grove are references to characters from the comic books on which The Boys is based. The patient who vomits acid is based on Discharge, a member of the G-Wiz division of the G-Men (a parody of the X-Men). The patient with the massive penis is based on Vas “Love Sausage” Vorishikin, a Russian supe ally of The Boys who is a major side character in the books and similarly well-endowed. (Mother’s Milk even references the name “Love Sausage” while observing the patient on the security monitors.)
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12. Lamplighter
Lamplighter, who was mentioned throughout Season 1 but never seen, is played by Shawn Ashmore in Season 2. Ashmore appeared in Episode 5, but his identity wasn’t confirmed until now. As this episode portrays, Lamplighter was a member of The Seven until he “retired” before the events of Season 1, at some point following his murder of Grace Mallory’s grandchildren.
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13. Sail Away
The song during Alistair, A-Train, and Deep’s lunch is Enya’s “Sail Away.” Just kidding–the song is actually called “Orinoco Flow,” but I bet you’ve spent the last two-decades-plus believing it was called “Sail Away.” Anyway, it’s a goofy new age jam that reached incredible heights of popularity in the ’90s partly due to its inclusion in the music compilation album Pure Moods, and is still instantly recognizable in 2020.
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14. Malala Yousafzai’s tweet
Alistair mentions “Malala Yousafzai’s tweet” about The Deep as evidence that he’s becoming more popular with women again. Yousafzai is a Pakistani feminist activist, as well as the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history–she co-received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. The idea that she would tweet in support of The Deep is pretty ridiculous.
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15. The Documentary
When A-Train says he’s “seen that documentary” about the Church of the Collective, he’s pointing out yet another similarity between The Deep’s cult and the real-life cult Scientology, which was the subject of a 2015 documentary called Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.
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16. Majorette
A majorette is a baton-twirling dancer who often performs alongside marching bands and during parades. Lamplighter’s pride was no doubt stung by the comparison.
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17. The pictures
We don’t see what Mallory showed Lamplighter to blackmail him, but actor Shawn Ashmore, who plays Lamplighter, told us it was the first thing he asked when shooting the scene. “Mallory shows him images of something in the warehouse in a flashback sequence, and it’s alluded that he’s, you know, had sex with a bunch of underage girls or whatever,” Ashmore said. “I know what those images were of, because it was the first question I asked. I was like, ‘Why would Lamplighter turn?’ Like how bad are the pictures that Mallory shows him in that warehouse? Why would he do that? Like, he could burn everybody in this room–if those were to come out, how bad are they? And they’re worse than I could ever imagine.” He wouldn’t say exactly what they were, because he said it’s better left a mystery.
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18. Stand Your Ground state
The man who Starlight accidentally kills says they’re in a “stand your ground” state when he pulls the gun on them. Stand your ground laws take on a variety of shapes depending on the location, but they generally encompass use of force when one’s life is in danger. The man is right that Pennsylvania, where Starlight says Sage Grove is located, has such laws.
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19. Light and Shadow: Journey Into Night
You can see a poster for the event that Lamplighter enters when Frenchie is tailing him. It’s called “Light and Shadow: Journey Into Night.” I have no idea what it is.
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20. Teddy Bear Picnic
“Teddy Bear Picnic” is a 1907 children’s song that’s now in the public domain. There’s nothing violent in the song; it’s simply another antiquated reference from Stormfront to remind us that she’s older than she looks.
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21. L’Oreal Kids Strawberry Smoothie
You can smell just like Hughie if you want–L’Oreal Kids Extra Gentle 2-in-1 Shampoo, Strawberry Smoothie scent is a real shampoo you can buy on Amazon. Maybe skip the Axe Body Spray though, unless you’re actually Vin Diesel.
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22. Postmates Sugarfish
Elena tells Queen Maeve she’s going to Postmates Sugarfish. Sugarfish is a popular Los Angeles sushi restaurant owned by Japanese sushi chef Kazunori Nozawa.
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23. Why isn’t this man restrained?
This scene is an echo of a similar scene in the comics. In the books, after The Boys attempt to blackmail The Seven and Lamplighter kills Mallory’s grandchildren, Homelander delivers Lamplighter to The Boys as a peace offering, and Mallory shoots Lamplighter in the head.
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24. Liberty’s costume?
When Stormfront opens her box of precious memories, several things are visible, including an ominous-looking hat, a knife with some sort of insignia on it, and what looks like Stormfront’s original Liberty costume.
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25. Literal Nazis
In the photos Stormfront shows Homelander, she’s with literal Nazis Heinrich Himmler (the commander of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo secret police) and Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda.
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26. Thank you for being a friend
The song that plays at the end when Homelander and Stormfront kiss is the Golden Girls theme song, “Thank You For Being a Friend” by Andrew Gold. If you stay through the credits, you’ll also hear another version of A-Train’s new theme song.
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Lamplighter has proved to be one of the most complex characters introduced yet in The Boys, and so far we’ve only really seen him in a single episode. The former member of The Seven played a prominent role this week in Season 2, Episode 6, “The Bloody Doors Off,” and through his interactions with Frenchie, Kimiko, and Mother’s Milk, we learned a lot about The Boys’ history and the characters’ current situation.
When Lamplighter was mentioned previously, it was usually to curse him for murdering Grace Mallory’s grandchildren–the inciting tragedy that caused The Boys to break up before the series’ events kicked off. But it turns out things are slightly more complicated than they may have seemed. According to Lamplighter, he’d been intending to kill Mallory herself–not innocent children sleeping in bed. Does that make him less evil? Maybe a little, but more importantly, it adds some dimension to the character, and Lamplighter’s remorse makes for yet another villain on this show who is–well, if not totally loveable, at least sympathetic.
What set Lamplighter off, though, and made him set out to kill Mallory in the first place? Through a series of flashbacks, we learned that The Boys tried to blackmail the supe. But thanks to tricky camera angles, we didn’t get to see exactly what they blackmailed him with. But thankfully, we had a chance to chat with Shawn Ashmore, the actor who plays him, and we tried to get some answers.
It all relates to his signature “Titty Committee” lighter, which provided a small hint to his identity back when Lamplighter was introduced in Episode 5. The slogan on that lighter could have seemingly been anything, but Ashmore told us the phrase “Titty Committee” was actually a subtle hint about his character.
“Without getting into detail, because it’s pretty dark, it ties into his sexuality, I suppose, and his aggressiveness,” Ashmore said.
“Mallory shows him images of something in the warehouse in a flashback sequence, and it’s alluded that he’s, you know, had sex with a bunch of underage girls or whatever,” the actor continued. “I know what those images were of, because it was the first question I asked. I was like, ‘Why would Lamplighter turn?’ Like how bad are the pictures that Mallory shows him in that warehouse? Why would he do that? He could burn everybody in this room–if those were to come out, how bad are they? And they’re worse than I could ever imagine.”
Ashmore wouldn’t say exactly what the pictures were–but all these small details combine to paint a vivid picture of yet another supe whose real essence is much darker than his public persona.
“I’m not going to say what it is, because I think it’s just better not to know, but it alludes to his sexuality and his preferences,” the actor said. “He’s just kind of a very intense sexual being and to walk around with a ‘Titty Committee’ lighter is a small part of a bigger story with Lamplighter.”
If you’ve read the comics on which The Boys is based, you’re probably surprised about the way that story is taking shape. This adaptation is frequently different from the source material, but Lamplighter is practically unrecognizable in the show compared with his comics counterpart, who was rendered a mindless husk after being killed by The Boys and then reanimated by Vought. Comics Lamplighter huddles in a cell at The Seven’s headquarters, smeared in his own excrement, and contributes nothing to the series’ story except in flashbacks.
Ashmore said that before taking the part, he was aware of the character’s minuscule role in the comics, but also that it would be different in the show.
“I knew that we weren’t going that way,” he said. “But I at least had a reference of what happened to him in the books, and the differences between what the show was trying to achieve versus what the books did.”
Of course, fans of the superhero genre might recognize Ashmore from his previous comics-inspired role as Iceman in the X-Men movies. He said it was “exciting” to return to the world of supes. “I wanted to do something completely different. I wanted to be a character on a show that goes against conventions of what people might expect of me as an actor and of some of the work that I’ve done,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that [The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke] and the team intentionally cast the guy that played Iceman to be the fire guy. I think it just is like a middle finger to the established superhero genre.”
It’s a genre that’s historically been plagued by stereotypical, one-note bad guys, but The Boys continues to subvert expectations. Almost all of the show’s villains have sides that viewers can identify with or find sympathetic–except maybe Stormfront, who was revealed this week to be a literal Nazi. Ashmore said he was excited to follow on the path that Homelander carved throughout Season 1.
“In the first season, the most moving, effective scene to me was when Homelander is walking through his house on the reality tour and he sees the blanket and he freaks out,” the actor said. The scene is followed by flashbacks to Homelander’s upbringing in a sterile lab, which also feature a blanket. “From that moment forward, you can hate what he does and the choices that he continues to make, but you understand why he’s making those decisions. And I think the same is true for Lamplighter.”
He said the real villain of The Boys is the company behind the supes. “To me, the supes aren’t the villains. Like, Vought is the villain. The system is the villain,” he said. “People that are born as normal human beings are injected with the serum, given abilities that no human being could really handle, having the powers that they have–and then, above that, lifted to a status of fame and notoriety and success that nobody could really handle.”
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The Boys Season 2 Episode 5 Explained – “We Gotta Go Now” Easter Eggs & Plot Breakdown
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That’s part of why Lamplighter does what he does in “The Bloody Doors Off,” allying with The Boys, covering for them when Stormfront appears, and giving himself up to Mallory at the end.
“I think he’s looking for a way out. I think he has real regret,” Ashmore said. After all, Lamplighter was first shown in a brief scene in Episode 5 in which he tried to push back against Stormfront over killing patients. Understandably, he’s terrified of her. “He’s not happy with what he’s doing, but Stormfront would kill him,” Ashmore continued. “I think when he comes face to face with Frenchie, and tells him what really happened and why it happened, and they sort of accept him a little bit, he realizes that this is his only way out of this evil cycle that he’s in.”
“Lamplighter was just one of these guys that his whole identity was being a supe and having this ability and being a part of The Seven, and he kind of went along with whatever [Vought] asked him to do,” Ashmore explained. “When we find Lamplighter in Season 2, he’s now dealing with the ramifications of what he did…His conscience has kicked in and he’s dealing with the things that he has done. So I never looked at him as a villain–I looked at him as a human being who did really bad things, and is now paying for that.”
Naturally, there’s more to this story that we’ve yet to see. The Boys Season 2 has two more episodes to come, streaming Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.
The 2020 NFL season has wrapped up its second week, and with that, EA has adjusted player ratings in Madden NFL 21 based on how the athletes performed on the field.
Some of the players who saw their player ratings rise included Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen, who rose from a 77 OVR to a 78 OVR after throwing for 417 yards and four touchdown passes in his team’s win over the Miami Dolphins.
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver D.K. Metcalf also had a successful week on the field, thanks to his epic 54-yard touchdown reception against the reigning defensive player of the year, Stephon Gilmore. Thanks to his strong performance, Metcalf rose to an 80 OVR rating.
Another week two ratings riser included Dolphins tight end Mike Gesicki, who jumped two points to an 81 OVR rating after eight catches for 130 yards and a touchdown against the Buffalo Bills.
As for players who saw their ratings fall, New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees dropped three points to fall to a (still very impressive) 90 OVR rating after struggling in his game against the Raiders. Philadelphia Eagles QB Carson Wentz dropped one point to fall to 82 after failing to throw a touchdown in a loss to the Rams.
It appears Rocket League‘s conversion to free-to-play has been a success. Following the change in business models on September 23, the soccer-with-cars game reached 1 million concurrent players for the first time in its history.
Corey Davis, the co-studio head at developer Psyonix revealed the news, posting a screenshot of the game’s gigantic player population. This number seemingly counts players across all platforms–PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.
According to Dot Esports, Rocket League’s previous peak concurrent player record was 120,000 back in March. The jump to 1 million showcases just how significant the impact of going free-to-play has been for the title.
On Steam alone, Rocket League reached more than 129,000 players on September 24, according to Steam’s publicly available data. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo do not typically share that kind of information.
Alongside the free-to-play switch, Rocket League has kicked off its Season 1. This introduces three new ranks to Competitive, removes the Solo Standard mode, adds a level 10 requirement for Competitive play, and more.