Author: Trafficblast

Best 144Hz Gaming Monitor (2021): 1440p, 1080p, Budget, And More

If you’re serious about gaming, especially on PC, you should consider upping your monitor’s refresh rate to at least 144Hz from the standard 60Hz that you’ll find on most budget monitors and televisions. If you thought 60Hz looks smooth, wait until you play a game with a variable refresh rate up to 144Hz with G-Sync or FreeSync active. A higher refresh rate gives you an edge that you wouldn’t otherwise have at 60Hz. Reacting to enemies, twitch aiming, and timing are all factors that are improved by increasing your refresh rate, whether you can tell the difference with your eye or not. Anyone who’s serious about gaming, especially competitive multiplayer, should consider getting a 144Hz gaming monitor. Fortunately, if you’re not sure what the best options are, we’ve outlined the best 144Hz gaming monitor options currently available below, from 4K to 1440p and more.

For more display recommendations, see our picks for the best 4K monitors and best 4K TVs for gaming. Televisions have started to adopt high refresh rates as well, and with technology like FreeSync Premium, they’ve become viable options for hardcore gamers. And if you want to learn more before buying a new gaming monitor, check out our complete guide to monitor technologies, which covers everything from HDR for monitors and panel types, among other things. We’ve also got a guide to the best gaming monitors for PS5 and Xbox Series X, if you’re a console gamer considering buying a new monitor over a TV.

LG 27GN950-B

The LG 27GN950-B is our pick for best 4K monitor, but this IPS display is also an excellent choice for those looking for a 144Hz refresh rate–or even a dual-monitor setup thanks to its thin frame and ability to be raised, tilted, or pivoted to your preference. Behind its 4K resolution and 144Hz refresh rate, it boasts low input lag and a max 1ms response time. It also features HDR600 support and has great color representation with or without HDR turned on. It’s equipped with one DisplayPort 1.4 port, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and two USB 3.0 ports.

Gigabyte G27Q

If your graphics card is capable of pushing 1440p and 144Hz, you should definitely consider the Gigabyte G27Q as your gaming monitor. Its 27-inch IPS display boasts a max response time of 1ms, and it comes with two HDMI 2.0 ports and one DisplayPort 1.2 port. It’s also G-Sync Compatible via FreeSync Premium. One of the coolest features of the G27Q is being able to control display settings with keyboard and mouse–no clumsy on-board monitor controls to worry about.

For more great 1440p, 144Hz monitor options, see our LG 27GL850 review and Razer Raptor 27 review.

Acer Nitro XV242Y

1080p 144Hz monitors are quite affordable, and even though the Acer Nitro’s budget price may imply that it’s lower quality, it’s not one to disappoint. Its fast refresh rate is accompanied by FreeSync Premium and G-Sync compatibility. The monitor can also be overclocked to 165Hz. One thing to note is that the Acer Nitro XV242Y has only a single DisplayPort 1.2 port, so you won’t have extra room to plug in anything but your gaming PC.

AOC G2490VX

As far as cheap gaming monitors go, AOC makes the best. Its 24-inch G2490VX gaming monitor is less than $200, yet boasts a 1080p resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, FreeSync Premium, and more. If you just want to dip your toe into high refresh rates, this is an excellent option to go with.

LG 34GN850-B

Combining 144Hz with an ultrawide display gives you an ultra-smooth, extremely wide view of your gameplay, and one of the best ultrawide monitors out there is the LG 34GN850-B. In addition to its 3440×1440 resolution, this curved ultrawide display features a max 1ms response time, FreeSync Premium with G-Sync compatibility, and HDR400 support. As for ports, it has two for HDMI 2.0, one for DisplayPort 1.4, and three USB 3.0 ports, two of which are downstream and one of which is upstream.

ViewSonic Elite XG270QG

If you’ve got an Nvidia graphics card and want native G-Sync support, then the ViewSonic Elite XG270QG is the best balance between performance, price, and feature set–though if you have an AMD GPU, you’ll want to look at the FreeSync options on this list. It boasts a refresh rate up to 165Hz (overclocked), 1440p resolution, a max 1ms response time, and very low input lag. Its 27-inch Nano IPS display produces gorgeous colors as well, making this a great monitor for any type of gamer, from competitive and cooperative multiplayer aficionados to those who like playing single-player games on their own. It has one HDMI 2.0 port, one DisplayPort 1.4 port, three USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and one USB 3.1 Type B port.

Pokemon Home Ending Support For Some Older Phones

Pokemon Home will soon end support for several older phones and operating systems, The Pokemon Company has announced. Following an update this June, the app will no longer be compatible with the following devices and OSes:

  • Android 5
  • iOS 9
  • iOS 10
  • iOS 11
  • iPhone 5s
  • iPhone 6

As The Pokemon Company notes, “there may be other devices on which Pokemon Home may function imperfectly or stop working entirely” following the June update. According to the company, it may take some time for the service “to become compatible” with newer operating systems.

If you’re planning on using Pokemon Home on a new device, The Pokemon Company advises to link the app to your Nintendo Account in order to carry over all your information. You can check whether your app is already linked to a Nintendo Account by tapping on Options and looking at the Account tab.

The Pokemon Company hasn’t shared any further details about June’s Pokemon Home update, so we don’t yet know what it will entail. However, the company has been regularly rolling out updates that improve functionality. The most recent patch released back in February and made several quality-of-life improvements, including adding a “Receive All” option to the Wonder Box.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Pokemon series, and there are multiple Pokemon games on the way for Switch over the next few months. New Pokemon Snap, a long-awaited follow-up to the classic N64 spin-off, releases on April 30, while remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl will launch later this year. Further down the line, a new Pokemon game called Pokemon Legends: Arceus will arrive on Switch in early 2022.

Now Playing: Pokémon Presents – Complete Pokemon 25 Presentation

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Halo: MCC Adds Escalation Slayer Mode, Which Is Gun Game The Halo Way

Halo: The Master Chief Collection has been updated once again, with the newest playlist update for April 14 bringing a brand-new multiplayer mode for everyone.

Escalation Slayer, which was previously only available in Custom Games when it arrived in the Season 6 update, is now available in public matchmaking. Similar to Gun Game, Escalation Slayer gives you a new gun each time you get a kill, seemingly at random, until someone gets a kill with all of them. Given Halo’s huge variety of famous and fun weapons, this mode sounds like a treat, in addition to being very chaotic.

It’s available now for Halo: Reach, Halo 2: Anniversary, and Halo 4 in 4v4 and FFA modes. There is a dedicated playlist for it accessible through the match composer so you can play it 24/7 if you want.

With the addition of Escalation Slayer to the featured playlist slot, the fan-favorite Grifball mode has rotated out.

Now that Escalation Slayer has arrived, that paves the way for 343 to deliver the next big matchmaking change for Halo: MCC. The studio is planning to add the new Halo 3 map Waterfall–the first new map for the game in over a decade–to public matchmaking at some point in the future. It’s currently in the game, but only for Custom Games.

For more on MCC’s Season 6: Raven update, check out GameSpot’s interview with 343 about the new Halo 3 map, the new Custom Games Browser, and more.

Dragon Age 2 Writer Says “Snyder Cut” Version Would Add More Nuance, Varric Romance

In the wake of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Dragon Age 2 writer David Gaider has chimed in with what he would do with carte blanche to make an equally uncompromising version of his work. In short: The city would be much bigger, the choices would have more nuance, and you could take Varric to bed.

In a Twitter thread, Gaider answered the hypothetical saying that Dragon Age 2 was “THE Project of Multiple Regrets.” For starters, he says, he would either include significant changes to the city of Kirkwall as the game spans the course of years, or reduce the time between acts to months instead of years. He added that he doesn’t care much about the oft-repeated criticism of repetitive missions, but just would like Kirkwall to feel more crowded and alive.

More specific to your player character, he said he’d like to restore a cut plot where the hero Hawke almost became an abomination. Plus, he’d like to restore cut lines, the absence of which made NPC interactions seem inconsistent, as if they’d never met you or forgot you had romanced them.

And he says Act 3 would need to be developed much further, as parts of it only existed as “index cards posted on the wall,” but more time would make the Templar/Mage conflict seem less abrupt. In fact, he says, he’d like to have added an option in which you could justifiably criticize both sides of the conflict and go your own way, since you could “brand both sides as bat**** pretty legitimately.”

Finally, on a lighter note, he said he’d include a Varric romance. He says that Varric was always meant to come off as a “slimy car salesman” but he ended up a fan favorite. On that note, Gaider also noted that he’d restore the idea that Varric would begin every act exaggerating all of his stories, until called out by another character, Cassandra.

All that said, Gaider did throw cold water on the idea too.

“I mean, it’s the most hypothetical of hypotheticals,” he said. “It’s never gonna happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if EA considered DA2 its embarrassing red-headed stepchild.”

Following the big-budget restoration of the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League, several creatives have talked about their own hypothetical uncut versions of movies and other media. The term has quickly become shorthand for a totally uncompromising vision. Meanwhile, Suicide Squad director David Ayer has still been openly campaigning for his own Snyder Cut version of the 2016 movie, though WarnerMedia CEO Ann Sarnoff says it’s not going to happen.

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Twitch Bans Over 7 Million Bots Contributing To Artificially Inflated Numbers

Twitch has delivered a widespread ban of 7.5 million bot accounts that have been contributing to “the rise of fake engagement” on the platform, the company said.

A majority of these fakes accounts engaged in follow-botting or view-botting, which breaks Twitch’s Terms of Service. They were detected by “ongoing machine learning technology that will continue to improve,” Twitch said on Twitter. The result of this widespread ban may cause some streamers’ follower or viewer counts to decrease. Twitch pointed affected streamers to an article about fake engagement to learn more.

Fake engagement, according to Twitch, is the “artificial inflation of channel statistics, such as views or follows, through coordination or 3rd party tools.” This behavior includes things like follow-botting and view-botting, using accounts controlled by a computer or script to falsify channel statistics so they are better than they appear. Other methods are “Follow 4 Follow” (F4F), “Lurk 4 Lurk” (L4L), and “Host 4 Host” (H4H). In essence, anything that “involve[s] a mutual exchange of interaction intended to increase visibility of [some] channels over those with legitimate interaction” could be determined as artificial channel inflation.

“Artificial engagement and botting limit growth opportunities for legitimate broadcasters and are damaging to the community as a whole,” Twitch wrote in the help article. Streamers who organize or participate in the practice will see “an enforcement issued on [the] account,” which could include an indefinite suspension.

This massive bot ban comes as Twitch is clamping down on those who engage in bad conduct and harassment, even if the action is done off-platform. The company also added tools to help streamers deal with copyright strikes.

In other Twitch news, variety streamer Ludwig Ahgren has more subscribers on the platform than streaming superstar Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. Ahgren has been hosting a monthlong subathon.

This New Netflix Series Teaches You How To Fall Asleep

Netflix has announced a new docuseries that aims to help people learn more about sleep. The show is called “Headspace Guide To Sleep,” and it’s produced by the popular app Headspace, which previously released a meditation show for Netflix.

The Headspace Guide To Sleep series digs into fact and tips about sleep that are “backed by science,” according to Netflix. The series will touch on things like whether or not looking at your phone before bed is really bad for your sleep and if you need a full eight hours at night.

“With mindfulness and meditation, this series will give you the tools you need to get a good night’s sleep… and wake up ready to take on the day,” Netflix said.

The animated series has seven, 15-minute episodes, each one taking on a different component to sleep. As The Hollywood Reporter reminds us, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in 2017 that sleep was one of Netflix’s biggest competitors.

“You get a show or a movie you’re really dying to watch, and you end up staying up late at night, so we actually compete with sleep,” he said at the time. “And we’re winning.”

Some believe that too much time spent on screens before bed contributes to bad sleep, so it’ll be interesting to see what the Netflix series has to say about that given Netflix is in the business of encouraging you to watch more and more TV all the time.

Scream 5 Will Have Multiple Versions In Production To Avoid Spoilers

Scream 5 isn’t due in theaters until 2022, but Bloody Disgusting is already reporting there are both multiple versions of the screenplay and also the movie itself. The latter is a bigger revelation, but both are becoming standard operating protocols for horror movies looking to preserve plot twists, characters who get killed, and the killer’s identity.

The filmmakers confirmed to Bloody Disgusting they are in fact going extra out of their way to thwart would-be spoilers and people who want to propagate them. For the Scream franchise, this was a hard-learned lesson early on, after a draft of Scream 2’s script leaked, revealing its ending, which then necessitated last-minute rewrites that then changed the movie’s ending. We’ll have to wait until January 14, 2022 to find out which, if any, of the rumors flying around about the movie prove true.

Scream 5 is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, a pair that makes up two-thirds of the LA-based filmmaking trio Radio Silence (with Chad Villella), and previously helmed a story in the horror anthology V/H/S, the 2014 supernatural horror Devil’s Due, 2015’s anthology Southbound, and 2019’s acclaimed horror comedy Ready or Not. This will be the first movie in the series not to be written by Kevin Williamson, with Guy Busick (Ready or Not) and James Vanderbilt (David Fincher’s Zodiac) handling screenplay duties this time round.

If you want to get a good, solid overview of everything we know so far about Scream 5, we have a guide that’ll get you up to speed and still avoid both spoilers and likely fake-out spoilers.

WoW: Shadowlands Chains Of Domination Update Out Now On PTR

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands’ latest big update, Chains of Domination, is now available to testers on the MMO’s public test realm.

Announced at BlizzCon this year, Chains of Domination is the first major update to Shadowlands. It introduces a new area, Korthia, which has more quests and activities, while a new raid and mega-dungeon are also featured in the update.

Much of the Chains of Domination content is featured in the PTR, but the Sanctum of Domination raid is not available just yet. It’s slated to go live on April 16, which is when the Tarragrue and Guardian of the First Ones encounters from it will be available to testers.

You can see the full patch notes for the PTR release of Chains of Domination below, which cover things like balance changes to classes, new Covenant content, and new runecarving powers, among other things.

In other WoW news, WoW Classic’s next expansion, The Burning Crusade, is now available in a beta before it launches for everyone.

World of Warcraft Version 9.1.0 PTR Chains of Domination PTR Notes

(via Blizzard/PCGamesN)

CLASSES

  • Druid
    • Balance
      • New Moon (Talent) now has 20 second recharge (was 25 seconds).
      • Solstice (Talent) now causes Shooting Stars to fall 200% more often (was 300%).
      • Stellar Drift (Talent) has been redesigned – Starfall damage increased by 25% and allows you to cast while moving while Starfall is active, but it has a 15 second cooldown.
      • The free Starfall from Oneth’s Clear Vision (Runecarving Power) ignores the Stellar Drift (Talent) Starfall cooldown.
      • Balance of All Things (Runecarving Power) now grants 24% increased critical strike chance (was 40%) and decreases by 3% every 1 second (was 8% every 1 second).
  • Mage
    • Fire
      • Flamestrike damage reduced by 10%.
      • Flame Patch (Talent) damage reduced by 10%.
      • Kindling (Talent) cooldown reduction for Combustion reduced to 1 second (was 1.5 seconds).
      • Infernal Cascade (Conduit) Fire damage bonus reduced by 20%.
  • Priest
    • Discipline
      • Spirit Shell (Talent) cooldown increased to 90 seconds (was 60 seconds).
    • Holy
      • Symbol of Hope has been redesigned – Bolster the morale of party or raid members within 40 yards. They each recover 60 seconds of cooldown on a major defensive ability, and they regain 12% of their missing mana over 5 seconds.
    • Shadow
      • Dissonant Echoes (Conduit) now grants 20% increased Void Bolt damage (was 35%).
  • Rogue
    • The shield from Cloaked in Shadows (Conduit) is now 50% larger, lasts for 4 seconds (previously had no duration) and no longer decays while the Rogue is out of stealth.
  • Warlock
    • Dark Pact’s (Talent) additional absorb shield has been increased by 216%.
    • Destruction
      • Chaos Bolt damage increased by 10%.
    • Affliction
      • Malefic Rapture damage reduced by 18%.
      • Agony damage increased by 20%.
      • Shadow Embrace now lasts 16 seconds (was 12 seconds) and can now only be applied to 1 target at a time.
      • Focused Malignancy (Conduit) effectiveness reduced by 53%.
      • Sacrolash’s Dark Strike (Runecarving Power) has been redesigned – Corruption damage is increased by 25% (was 15%), and each time Corruption deals damage, it extends the duration of all your Curses active on the target by 2 seconds (was Corrupted targets movement speed slowed by 50%).

COVENANTS

  • New Covenant Campaign Chapters.
  • 40 new Renown levels.
  • Soulbinds
    • New Soulbind Tiers
      • All existing Soulbinds now have 4 new rows:
        • 3 new Conduit slots (1 Potency, 1 Endurance, and 1 Finesse)
        • 2 new Traits
        • 1 Capper Trait
    • Kyrian
      • Soulsteel Clamps (Forgelite Prime Mikanikos) now reduces duration of stun and incapacitate effects by 20% (was 30%).
      • Sparkling Driftglobe Core (Forgelite Prime Mikanikos) cooldown increased to 1 minute (was 45 seconds) and now triggers at 30% health (was 35%).
    • Necrolord
      • Sulfuric Emission (Emeni) fear duration reduced to 3.5 seconds (was 4.5 seconds).
    • Venthyr
      • Familiar Predicaments (Nadjia the Mistblade) now reduces incoming interrupt, snare and root effects by 20% (was 25%).

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS

  • New Raid: Sanctum of Domination
    • The following encounters will be available for testing on April 16:
      • Tarragrue
      • Guardian of the First Ones

ITEMS AND REWARDS

  • The Empyreal Ordnance trinket now puts other on-use trinkets on a 40 second cooldown when used (was 20 seconds).

PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER

  • Death Knight
    • Frost
      • New PvP Talent: Shroud of Winter.
      • Heartstop Aura (PvP Talent) has been removed.
  • Mage
    • Kleptomania (PvP Talent) is now Arcane only.
    • Dampened Magic (PvP Talent) has been removed.
    • Arcane
      • New PvP Talent: Arcanosphere.
      • Arcane Blast now deals 20% more damage in PvP combat.
    • Fire
      • New PvP Talent: Ring of Fire.
      • Controlled Burn (PvP Talent) has been redesigned – Ignite deals 100% more damage while Combustion is not active.
      • World in Flames (PvP Talent) now causes Flamestrike to reduce the cast time of Flamestrike by 50% (was 1.25 seconds) and increases its damage by 30% for 3 seconds (was 20% permanently).
    • Frost
      • New PvP Talent: Ice Wall.
      • Frostbolt now deals 100% more damage in PvP combat (was 15%).
      • Deep Shatter (PvP Talent) now increases the damage of Frostbolt by 75% on Frozen targets (was 150%).
      • Burst of Cold (PvP Talent) now increases the damage of Cone of Cold by 600% (was 400%).
  • Monk
    • Mistweaver
      • New PvP Talent: Peaceweaver.
      • New PvP Talent: Dematerialize.
      • New PvP Talent: Thunderous Tea.
      • Counteract Magic (PvP Talent) has been redesigned – Each hostile Magic effect removed from a target increases the healing they receive from you by 2% for 10 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.
      • Refreshing Breeze (PvP Talent) has been redesigned – Healing done by Soothing Mist increases the healing of the next Expel Harm on the target during the channel, and causes it to dispel 1 Magic, Poison, or Disease effect.
      • Eminence (PvP Talent) has been redesigned – Transcendence: Transfer can now be cast while stunned and its cooldown is decreased by 15 seconds if it is cast while not stunned.
      • Surging Mist (PvP Talent) has been removed.
  • Priest
    • New PvP Talent: Improved Mass Dispel.
    • Shadow
      • Lasting Plague (PvP Talent) has been removed.
  • Rogue
    • Mark of the Master Assassin (Runecarving Power) duration has been reduced by 40% in PvP combat.
    • Assassination
      • New PvP Talent: Hemotoxin.
      • Neurotoxin (PvP Talent) has been removed.
  • Warlock
    • New PvP Talent: Shadow Rift.
    • Affliction
      • Soul Shatter (PvP Talent) has been removed.
    • Demonology
      • New PvP Talent: Fel Obelisk.
      • Call Fel Lord (PvP Talent) now deals 200% of the caster’s Spell Power per swing (was 5% of target’s maximum health). Cooldown of the ability increased to 2 minutes (was 1.5 minutes).
      • Singe Magic (PvP Talent) has been removed.
    • Destruction
      • New PvP Talent: Bonds of Fel.
      • Chaos Bolt now deals 40% more damage in PvP combat (was 15%).
      • Focused Chaos (PvP Talent) has been removed.

RUNECARVING

  • New Runecarving Powers
    • Death Knight, Druid, Warrior and Mage have new powers available in this PTR build.
  • Some existing powers have been updated. See the Classes sections for details.

THE MAW

  • New Zone: Korthia
    • Archivist and Dreadlord Questlines
    • Visitor Dailies
  • New: Maw Assaults
  • New: Tormentors of Torghast

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Nvidia Announces Native DLSS Support For Unity

Popular game development engine, Unity, will receive native Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) support before the end of 2021, allowing developers to easily implement it in their games.

Nvidia made the announcement as part of its GTX 2021 event, stating that its proprietary AI-powered downsampling would enable better performance for Unity titles that make use of raytracing. Games using traditional rasterized graphics will also see a performance uplift, as has been seen in many titles that already make use of the tool.

DLSS was recently added to Unreal Engine as a development plugin, which means that two of the most widely used game engines in the industry will support the technology by the end of the year. This means that a large majority of the games you play on PC could support DLSS, which allows you to downscale your game for performance gains and allow Nvidia’s machine-learning algorithm to upscale the image with minimal visual impact.

The tool has been so useful that it’s one of the biggest selling points behind a Nvidia GPU purchase, if you can find one during the ongoing semiconductor shortage. AMD is planning its own version of the technology and hopes to launch it by the end of the year for its latest RX 6000-series cards.

Now Playing: What Is DLSS And Should You Use It?

Fast 9 Director Justin Lin on Repairing the Han-Sized Hole in the Series

The Fast & Furious saga has seen a series of directors place their stamps on individual installments, but only one director has helmed more than one: Justin Lin. The director of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, Fast & Furious 5, and Fast & Furious 6, Lin has returned to the series to direct F9. He’s also signed on to direct the 10th and 11th films, which will reportedly close out the core saga.

In the lead-up to today’s debut of the final trailer for F9, IGN spoke with Justin Lin about what he’s been doing throughout the film’s lengthy delay, the wild success of the franchise, and his desire to repair the Han-sized hole that the continued presence of Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw created in the series.

[ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/14/f9-official-trailer-2]

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IGN: From your side, as a creator, when you watch folks discuss and speculate about an upcoming film like Fast 9, is there any frustration on your end about the things that they’re getting wrong, and maybe even the things that they’re getting right, potentially spoiling things for themselves? Or is it just great to have people that are so enthusiastic about a project of yours that they just can’t stop talking about? Or is it a mix?

Justin Lin: That’s a great question, I mean, I actually think that the way this franchise has evolved, it’s been very interactive, in a way. There’s always speculation, I think, with the timeline, with character relationships. So it’s always been a lot of fun creating – and creating new chapters – and, at the same time, just seeing what people around the world are speculating. You know, for me, there’s no frustration; it’s always just fun because it’s when people are invested. I think, for me, the first time was when the decision to put Han in Fast 4 [was made], and there were a lot of worries that, ‘Hey, well, he died in Tokyo Drift.’ There was a real concerted effort to see if we could do something so that we could really share this idea of timeline and mythology. And it was amazing how people picked it up, and it never tripped. I think it was interactive in the sense that, creatively, once we were able to try different things that people engage with, that’s always been fun.

[ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/01/31/f9-fast-furious-9-official-trailer-1]

IGN: Touching on Han, a few years ago we spoke with Fast & Furious writer Chris Morgan ahead of Hobbs & Shaw regarding despite how much we enjoyed watching Jason Statham as an actor, it was always difficult to reconcile with the fact we were being corralled into getting behind the character that killed Han. So, thanks for making it far easier to retroactively enjoy The Fate of the Furious and Hobbs & Shaw more. Once Han appeared in that Fast 9 trailer last year, what did you see from the reaction?

JL: You know, when I left, I really did leave. I was not part of anything and, actually, I hadn’t watched [Furious 7] or [The Fate of the Furious]. It was actually during a screening of my first independent film that somebody brought it up in a Q&A, and it baffled me too, you know? So it was gratifying; I think part of coming back, being able to, for me, correct certain things that didn’t make sense. But when we were in Miami and we had the trailer launch and to be able to see the immediate reaction, just the visceral reaction from the fans and then see it spread around the world within minutes; it meant a lot. It meant that, you know, people care about our characters and that, you know, it is a weird glitch. To this day, I don’t know what happened, but I’m glad that I’m able to come back and participate and, in a way for me, to be able to correct something that just felt really off.

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=I%20don’t%20know%20what%20happened%2C%20but%20I’m%20glad%20that%20I’m%20able%20to%20come%20back%20and%20participate%20and%2C%20in%20a%20way%20for%20me%2C%20to%20be%20able%20to%20correct%20something%20that%20just%20felt%20really%20off”]IGN: Looking back, obviously you steered this series from Tokyo Drift through to Fast & Furious 6 and were part of the franchise as it became a true phenomenon – but if you were to speak to yourself coming off Tokyo Drift, how could you have explained not only that Fast & Furious was going to become the biggest thing Universal has, but that ultimately you would personally direct seven of them?

JL: Am I directing seven of them? Yeah, I guess so! You’re going into the future; I get it. Wow, that’s a lot! I mean, look, I’ll be honest, I think when I first joined up Fast and Furious obviously wasn’t where it is now, you know? And I think talking to people who were big car fans, they weren’t fans of the franchise. And that was one of my first conversations with people who love cars and whose passions were in cars and I felt like I had to really learn to respect their passion. So that was really the journey of Tokyo Drift. I’ll be honest, we didn’t have Vin, we didn’t have Paul, but it was great in the sense that it was all about earning the respect and hopefully building, or rebuilding, this community.

[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/02/05/vin-diesel-hints-fast-and-furious-10-will-be-a-two-part-movie-ign-news”]

And so every time we got an opportunity, I felt like it was my job to not only keep evolving our characters, but to keep pushing the envelope, you know? I don’t know if I expected it, but I did have a conversation with Vin, and I remember that in Tokyo Drift and I said, ‘Look, if you come back, it really does kind of connect everything, even though it’s only one scene. And if we’re lucky enough and we have another chapter, then let’s keep building, let’s keep evolving.’ And so it’s always been our mantra that we don’t take anything for granted, but we’re going to go all out, and if we get to earn the next chapter, then we’re going to go all out again. And, and luckily, I could tell you, going to the premieres – we used to travel around the world for all the premieres – you could see the fan base and the community grow. That inspired us to keep evolving and not ever be complacent.

IGN: Like a host of films Fast 9 has had to endure a very long delay, and it’s an understandable one, obviously, but what has this meant on your side? Has there been a desire to keep going back and finessing parts of the film, or has it been complete for some time and you’d say ‘We like it; let’s not touch it!’ How do you approach that lengthy delay?

JL: It’s interesting because I think usually, you know, a film of this size, they literally rip the film from me. I mean, there’s been instances in the other Fasts where I’m going from final sound mix, you know, and I see the sunrise and I jump on a plane to fly to Europe for the UK premiere. That’s always been how these films get made. And I’m the type where I don’t ever just sit back; like, if I have a year, I’m going to keep pushing. I mean, I literally will go through every frame.

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F9 hits cinemas in Australia on June 17, 2021, and on June 25 in North America.

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Luke is Games Editor at IGN’s Sydney office and spectacularly breaking out of an arm cast to “go to work” is still on his bucket list. You can find him on Twitter every few days @MrLukeReilly.