Author: Trafficblast

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Netflix’s The Witcher is coming back for a second season, and production recently resumed–ahead of schedule–following a delay related to COVID-19.

Lead actor Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt on the show, has now shared an image from the set. Posted to Instagram, the picture shows the actor in his makeup chair. There is nothing unusual about that, but Cavill shared that the costume department made a slight change to his outfit for the sophomore season. Cavill will no longer wear a bald cap beneath his ivory locks. This year, he’s been outfitted with some kind of special equipment that doesn’t sound like very much fun to remove.

“No bald cap this year. Just pounds of two types of medical tape and some glue…. Removal is a joy,” Cavill said. “Jacqui and Ailbhe here, though, have the deft touch of angels. Jacqui more so an Angel of Vengeance, but that’s all part of her charm.”

Cavill also noted that he and the rest of the cast and crew are working on The Witcher Season 2 under strict health and safety guidelines due to the virus. “All of us are Covid cleared and bubbled. We get tested twice a week up here in Kaer Morhen!” he said.

Before this, a director for The Witcher Season 2 and the showrunner revealed some of the other safety measures in place, like wearing personal protective equipment and separating people with safety barriers.

In March, The Witcher became one of the first major productions in the UK to be suspended after the coronavirus outbreak. Actor Kristofer Hivju tested positive for the virus.

Showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich previously stated that Season 2 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.

In addition to Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, Netflix’s The Witcher stars 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.

The Witcher was second only to Stranger Things Season 3 among Netflix’s most popular TV shows of 2019, so the second season has big shoes to fill.

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In discussions of next-gen consoles, I often see the questions pop up: “Why would I get an Xbox Series X if I have a good PC and Game Pass?” or “I’m fine with the Xbox One X, why would I jump to a Series X?” Well yeah, why would you? Xbox, as a brand, kind of doesn’t care if that Game Pass subscriber with a beefy PC buys the next console–that person is already in the Xbox ecosystem. And if you’re cool with your One X, you’re still buying games and likely subscribing to Xbox Live and/or Game Pass services as well.

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has made this approach quite clear over the past few years. And uh, he most recently reiterated it on Animal Talking, the Animal Crossing: New Horizon talk show hosted by Gary Whitta.

On the show, Spencer said, “‘How many consoles do I sell versus how many consoles does another company sell; Sony, or Nintendo, or other companies back in the day?’ That’s not our approach. If that was our approach, we wouldn’t put our games on PC. We wouldn’t put our games on Xbox One. We wouldn’t do xCloud and allow people to play games on their phones.”

Phil Spencer has been consistent and vocal with this messaging, because it is the future of Xbox. Microsoft’s goal isn’t to get everyone to buy a specific piece of hardware, the goal is to permeate everyone’s devices with gaming under the Xbox umbrella. The Xbox Series X will just be the top-tier option, if you want it. If not, well, there are several other ways to play Xbox games.

Before the Xbox Series X was even revealed, we spent some time with Spencer to get his detailed thoughts on running the Xbox brand. In our profile, he told us, “The number of people that are actually buying a console every generation isn’t growing dramatically, if at all.” He continued, “At one point you have to recognize that you can’t just lead with one device. You can’t just say, ‘Here’s an Xbox. I’m going to go sell this device to every single person and that’s what they’re going to play on.’ That just doesn’t work.”

In many ways, Microsoft is letting the Xbox Series X speak for itself. By all accounts, it’s a technological marvel that’ll act as the best possible Xbox console available when it comes out. “I want to have a great experience on the television and I think Xbox Series X is absolutely going to deliver that,” Spencer assured. As Microsoft has revealed more about the Series X’s technical prowess, that seems to be the case–the Velocity architecture, the cooling system, quick resume, native 4K resolution, 8K and 120Hz capabilities, and that ultra-fast SSD that can even surpass what’s on the market for high-end gaming PCs. There’s enough there to justify the existence of the Xbox Series X, but not everyone needs or wants that to play games.

As we inch closer to launch and dive into more comparisons between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, it’s important to keep in mind exactly what the Xbox brand is aiming for and how it defines success.

“We want you to be able to use Game Pass across any screen you want to play on, and that would be our long-term goal. It’s not about playing on any one individual screen,” Spencer said on the talk show. He’s made it clear, too, that Microsoft is still playing the numbers game, just a different one: “How many players are playing, how many games are they playing, are they enjoying those games, how many friends are they playing with? That’s our approach for Xbox and getting people on board.”

Keep in mind that console manufacturers notoriously sell units at a loss, and make their money through game sales and subscription services. And since that’s the case, it’s really smart that Xbox is doubling down on the latter, and widening the pool of people who have the opportunity to buy into those things. But it’s not all rainbows and sunshine quite yet.

Xbox head of marketing Aaron Greenberg indicated that Game Pass isn’t a huge money-maker right now, saying it’s “not a big profit play.” Rather, it’s again, playing the numbers game in a different way. “When people feel like you’re over-delivering on value, they want to not only continue to use your service, but they want to tell their friends about it. The most powerful marketing is word-of-mouth,” he said. And it’s pretty easy to get your friends on board if they’re not bound by having to buy the latest and greatest hardware if they don’t want to. Greenberg assured that they’re not worried about the short-term, and said, “Ultimately, we think long-term, that’s the right thing for the business and will have long-term benefits for us.”

Xbox has made it a point to bring all its first-party games to PC because it wants you to buy those games, or subscribe to Game Pass to get access. In that regard, I guess there’s no true Series X exclusive, but Microsoft also isn’t playing that game anymore either. For example, an upcoming title called The Medium will not be coming to Xbox One by virtue of it taking advantage of Series X-specific hardware capabilities, but it will be available on PC. This suggests that, eventually, the Xbox One platform would be phased out, but by many accounts, an entry-level type of Xbox Series console is on the way–the rumored Xbox Series S. And when Xbox One owners do want to make the jump, they’ll have their entire library to bring along with them via Smart Delivery or the fact that Xbox has made a concerted effort to make nearly every major game backward compatible.

As we inch closer to launch and dive into more comparisons between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, it’s important to keep in mind exactly what the Xbox brand is aiming for and how it defines success. Sure, Xbox won’t have Halo: Infinite as a system seller at launch, but the metrics for success aren’t just console sales anymore. Halo: Infinite is coming to PC and Xbox One too, so getting you to play Halo: Infinite in some form is the goal (even through its free-to-play multiplayer model), and will be for any of Xbox’s big games. If you want to do that on the Series X or any other capable device, Xbox is leaving that up to you. As Spencer said, “Access to games, access to your friends and the community–we want people to feel like they’re a member of Xbox and that membership isn’t about one device, it can be on multiple devices.”

Microsoft’s flagship gaming platform isn’t necessarily the Xbox Series X, hell, it may not even be a console–it very much looks like it’s Xbox Game Pass, which is on any Xbox console or PC, and will eventually be on phones via xCloud. It’s time to stop looking at the Xbox Series X like it’s supposed to be Microsoft’s savior or that the Xbox brand is putting all its eggs in that basket with a future riding on console sales. That’s not Xbox’s game. It’s evident how they’ve structured their ecosystem, and it’s evident in the way they’ve communicated it.

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Hitman 3 developer IO Interactive has revealed that the game will be a timed Epic Games Store exclusive when it launches next year, but your progress from Steam will carry over. As part of the deal, you can pick up Hitman 2016 for free from August 27 to September 3. They also showcased a brand new level, Thornbridge Manor, set in England.

After a number of teases, Activision has confirmed that the full reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will be next Wednesday, August 26. The reveal will take place within Verdansk, the Warzone map.

A number of developers, including Insomniac, Bluepoint Games, and Arkane Lyon have described how they’re using the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller to add extra immersion to their games.On tomorrow’s Generation Next, we’ll be coming up with our dream launch lineups for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

While it’ll premiere on Smackdown tomorrow night, the first look inside WWE’s Thunderdome staging at Orlando’s Amway Center has arrived. The company did a test-run of their new arena setup, at which Pro Wrestling Sheet’s Ryan Satin was in attendance. Screenshots of the video from the event show a very different environment than that of the Performance Center that has housed Raw, Smackdown, and WWE’s various pay-per-view events during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Amway Center has been filled up with a variety of video screens, including those that will show fans who are virtually attending the event. While it remains to be seen how the arena will look in motion, as virtual fans theoretically jump up and down screaming about how much they love Asuka, the images are impressive.

Firstly, WWE is wisely keeping the arena looking very busy–there are lights, video screens, and lasers everywhere. One of the biggest issues with the shows produced at the Performance Center is that it essentially looked like Raw and Smackdown were happening in a small dark room–which they were. This new configuration looks big and full of the kind of spectacle WWE is known for.

That said, it doesn’t look perfect. A mid-match camera angle does make it look like the wrestlers are performing in front of a Zoom call, which could be odd. Still, given that this will be WWE’s TV home for the foreseeable future, the company will no doubt be fine-tuning the look of the Thunderdome over the next several weeks.

As for how it’ll sound, Satin believes WWE was using prerecorded audience reactions to fill the arena. Hopefully, fans will eventually get used to cheering from home like they were actually in the arena and the shows can rely more on the live crowd audio.

You’ll be able to see WWE’s Thunderdome yourself beginning with Smackdown. The company will then use the arena for all Raw and Smackdown broadcasts, as well as pay-per-views–including Summer Slam–for an undetermined amount of time.

Phase 4 of the MCU may be getting a slower start than anticipated after movies like Black Widow and Eternals as well as shows like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier were delayed thanks to COVID-19 related shutdowns, but that doesn’t mean every plan has hit pause. In fact, it would seem the behind-the-scenes work at Marvel is still full-steam-ahead with the recent announcement that Olivia Wilde will be joining the MCU to direct a movie featuring a new-to-live-action character in the Spider-Man family: Spider-Woman.

This, of course, begs the question: Who is Spider-Woman? And perhaps more importantly, what could her introduction mean for the MCU?

First things first–the codename Spider-Woman has been used by a handful of heroes, and we’ll briefly touch upon all of them, but for the sake of clarity (and because its the most likely outcome) we’re going to focus predominantly on the original, Jessica Drew.

Though her codename may invite you to assume she’s just a female spin on Peter Parker, origin story and all, the truth is actually much, much weirder. Rather than getting her powers by a radioactive spider bite, Jessica was first introduced in 1977 as–wait for it–an actual, literal spider that transformed/evolved/comic book logic’d itself into a human being. This was partly because the concept of Spider-Woman wasn’t supposed to really be anything substantial–the ’70s were a fraught time in the rivalry between Marvel and DC and creating characters was less about coming up with cool ideas and more about racing to nail down copyrights and trademarks as quickly as possible. Spider-Woman was part of that race–Marvel just wanted to stake a claim to the name so that DC couldn’t take it.

However, things quickly deviated from the plan after Jessica’s debut issue, Marvel Spotlight #32, actually sold extremely well. This prompted an almost immediate overhaul (and some real thought) to be given to her in the form of an immediate origin retcon. Goodbye fancy human spider, hello, uh, superhero who had been sort-of brainwashed into having false memories of being a spider. Because we really just couldn’t let that part go just yet, apparently. This is important, if only because it establishes one of the weirder repeated tropes of Jessica’s character: She’s pretty frequently the victim of brainwashing or identity theft. It’s a whole thing. We’ll get to that more in a second.

Eventually, Jessica was given an origin story that was considerably less absurd, as well as a set of actually defined powers. She was the daughter of a scientist who became gravely ill thanks to prolonged exposure to uranium and, to save her life, her dad injected her with an experimental serum that was actually based on radioactive spider “blood.” (Spiders, like most bugs, don’t actually have blood, but this is comics.) Unfortunately the serum also required an “incubation” period, so Jessica’s dad popped her into a sort of scientific Easy Bake Oven intending only to leave her there in stasis for a few months. It didn’t exactly go according to plan and Jessica was accidentally left in for decades. She remained 17-years-old and became empowered with the sort of cool abilities one might associate with being injected with a radioactive serum and then microwaved for years (if one reads a lot of comics, at least). She was super strong and fast, incredibly durable, and could zap people with bio-electric energy or manipulate them with pheromones.

Unfortunately, before she could really do anything, she was captured, brainwashed, and turned into a HYDRA agent named Arachne. She later encountered Nick Fury, had a big fight, had a few major revelations about HYDRA’s evil, tried to defect, and then was captured and brainwashed again. Her original solo series, which ran from 1977 to 1983, mostly covered Jessica grappling with her identity and her place in the world while simultaneously establishing herself as a crack private detective and spy to put her HYDRA training to good use. Most of the run has since faded into obscurity or been retcon’d out of existence.

In the late ’80s, Jessica had been largely forgotten or relegated to side-character status in other books. Briefly, a woman named Julia Carpenter took up the Spider-Woman mantle (and later the Arachne mantle, and then the Madam Webb mantle). Julia was then shuffled off, out of the spotlight after a very brief solo series and replaced with Mattie Franklin, who got her start by impersonating a then-retired Spider-Man. Mattie had a similarly flash-in-the-pan solo career as Spider-Woman before she, too, was replaced, this time by a villain named Charlotte Witter.

Jessica didn’t actually return the codename or to any sort of prominence in Marvel stories until the early ’00s, when she was introduced as one of the core members of the New Avengers. This return to prominence came with a brand new origin story that significantly downplayed the more absurd parts of her original take (no more scientific Easy Bake Oven or decades-long stasis, for instance, and no more spider blood serum) but kept the HYDRA brainwashing. In this new version, Jessica was also trained by Taskmaster in addition to having the full roster of her abilities.

Jessica remained a prominent feature of the Avengers team and, while not fighting against major superheroic threats, returned to her private detective side hustle. And yes, she did become friends with fellow PI Jessica Jones in the process.

Things proceeded largely business as usual until the Secret Invasion crossover event when Jessica was caught up in a Skrull scheme (disguised, initially, as a HYDRA scheme) and replaced by the shape-shifted Skrull queen Veranke. Veranke, passing as Drew, managed to infiltrate the team and sow distrust between the Avengers and SHIELD in an attempt to destabilize Earth’s protection. Eventually, after the truth was uncovered and the invasion prevented, Jessica found herself struggling to regain any sort of trust with her former comrades–though she did wind up receiving a personal invite to a newly formed Avengers team from Steve Rogers himself, which helped course-correct her ongoing existential crisis.

Much later, following the shuffling of the multiverse and time-skip of Secret Wars, Jessica had a son (via sperm bank donor) who inherited her abilities. She also got her first ever costume update and a brand new solo series following her adventures as a mom, a detective, and a hero.

So what does any of this mean for the MCU? The short answer is that there’s no way to tell. Jessica’s history is fraught with change and all sorts of mind-bending and brainwashing, making for an especially strange and exceptionally varied set of potential inspirations. With all her connections to HYDRA, it could be easy to spin her out of some of the leftover plot threads in the Captain America franchise–or perhaps ones that we might see tee’d up in the upcoming Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV show. Her Skrull connections make her an obvious pick for a tie-in to Captain Marvel, and her spy background means she’d also be a fit for a Black Widow link.

Of course, there’s also no reason to limit her to connections to existing properties. She may just be a completely clean slate for a future MCU phase–after all, with Phase 4 not yet officially started, the future seems wide open.

And that’s all assuming that the Spider-Woman in question will actually be Jessica. Though her main continuity replacements were all temporary and largely forgotten at best, alternate universe takes on the character have included big name characters like Mary Jane Watson, who took the name in the Marvel Mangaverse and in the multiverse-hopping Exiles title; and Gwen Stacy, who was the main Spider-hero of Earth-65 during the Spider-Verse crossover event.

If there’s one thing that the Spider-movies have proven in the last few years, it’s that the fans are ready and willing to accept all sorts of crazy multi-versal changes in their favorite web-slinging heroes.

Comedy Central has canceled internet comedy talk show Tosh.0 ahead of its Season 12 premiere, as part of the cable channel’s recent shift toward animated shows, the company has announced.

Despite said focus on animation going forward, the Tosh cancellation still comes as a surprise, since Comedy Central just renewed the show for four more seasons in January this year. Variety cites “an individual with knowledge of the situation” who says ViacomCBS, Comedy Central’s parent company (note: and GameSpot’s), and series host Daniel Tosh are shopping the show around to other platforms. Whether anyone picks it up will depend on whether they think viewers still have the attention span for mean-spirited meme commentary in this day and age.

Tosh.0 launched in 2009 and will hit 300 episodes during its twelfth and currently final season. During each episode, Tosh, a comedian, aims his biting wit against memes, viral videos, and other social media trends. The show often features flavor-of-the-week internet personalities as guests.

Never one to pass up literally any opportunity to make a joke, Tosh reportedly said in a statement, “I look forward to doing an animated reboot of my show on MTV in 25 years.”

This news comes one day after Comedy Central canceled Drunk History after six seasons on the channel. Don’t worry, though: The shift toward animation will see the return of Ren and Stimpy, so it’s all worth it.