Author: Trafficblast

The developers of Lego games, Traveller’s Tales, spent $1 million on a pitch for a Hobbit video game that never came to be. Studio co-founder Jon Burton revealed this in a new video for his YouTube page, GameHut, and he speaks very freely and openly about the project and how it came to be (and not be).

In 2008, Warner Bros. announced plans to make two Hobbit movies, with Guillermo del Toro attached to direct. Burton wanted to make an Xbox 360/PS3 video game tie-in for the movie, but not a Lego game like his studio had become known for.

Burton and his team got the greenlight to pitch to del Toro and Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, and the studio worked for six months to create a demo to pitch in February 2009. Burton said it is his belief that a video game tie-in for a movie should try to replicate the movie as closely as possible so it feels like you’re “living” the film. With the movie not out yet, Burton’s team used Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings as a template, recreating key moments from the movies.

Things got out of hand, however, and Burton’s team went too far. They created four different fully playable and polished levels, as well as five additional tech demos that would showcase what the studio was capable of. The playable levels, which are shown off in the video, including a free-roaming stealth campaign with Frodo where he sneaks around and can throw rocks to distract Orcs and climb trees. Another demo featured the Isengard battle between Gandalf and Saruman, while another depicted the scene where Frodo is trying to stay hidden from the Nazgul. If he was spotted, Frodo must avoid the temptation of putting on the ring through a mini-game.

Yet another of the demos showcased the fight between Gandalf and the Balrog. The tech demos, meanwhile, included a fighting sequence where you play as Aragorn at Amon Hen. Another was set on Weathertop with Frodo and Sam trying to escape the Nazgul.

“We basically went way too far and spent way too much money but I really wanted to show what we could do beyond just the Lego games,” Burton said.

Indeed, you can see in the video that these demos were well thought out and polished–remember, this footage is from 2008 and early 2009.

So in February 2009, Burton flew from the UK to New Zealand to pitch his game to del Toro and Jackson. Although he remembers being incredibly jet-lagged, Burton said the pitch meeting went well. Del Toro in particular was positive on the idea, and Burton was told his team could begin work on a Hobbit game to tie into the movie. However, higher-ups at Warner Bros. ultimately shot it down because they instead wanted a game not based on the movie specifically, but a story that happened in the world at the same time.

Burton disagreed with this, saying he thought it would be better to make movie tie-in first and then expand with something new for a sequel.

In the end, Burton was happy with how things worked out. The Hobbit movie would eventually be delayed (and later split into three movies), which would have meant another year of work for his team. Not only that, but del Toro dropped out of the project, and the series overall ended up as a relative disappointment compared to Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series. And in any cases, Burton and his team would go on to make Lego: The Hobbit and Lego: The Lord of the Rings anyway.

This video is remarkable for a number of reasons. Developers big and small rarely speak so openly about their pitches and canceled projects, and especially not for a properly as big as The Hobbit. Also in the video, Burton says he may share full gameplay walkthroughs of the various demos if people want to see them. I’m betting they do.

Burton left Traveller’s Tales in 2019.

There are multiple new Lord of the Rings games in development, including one told from Gollum’s perspective. In addition, Amazon is developing a new Lord of the Rings MMO, while NetEase is working on a new Lord of the Rings game for mobile.

Command and Conquer Remastered Collection has received a new patch, and it’s added a few key features and a whole heap of tweaks and improvements. The big change is the added ability to host private game lobbies, which should make it easier to arrange multiplayer matches with your friends.

The Remastered Collection, which brings together the original game and its sequel Red Alert plus all their DLC, has tailored this update based on “the continued feedback from the passionate Command & Conquer,” according to a press release. They’ve detailed everything included in the patch in a post on the Command and Conquer Reddit page.

Bugs have been squashed in this update too, and a stuttering issue has been addressed, although this may have led to slightly longer load times. The post also warns that the update might have invalidated some mods, and modders will need to update their work to make sure it is still compatible.

Below are the complete patch notes for the June 22 update, including all fixes and additions.

Command and Conquer Remastered Collection June 22 patch notes

New Features

• Added the ability to host Private Game Lobbies:
  • The host must check the Private Game box in the setup screen
  • Hosts can then choose a four digit passcode for their game
  • Private games will show an icon in the Join Lobby list
  • Attempting to join a Private Game will require the passcode
  • Host invited players will not need to enter the passcode to join
• Added a Player Panel in-game to view player names, factions, team colors, and status. This can be accessed via the Players button on the Sidebar.
• Added the ability to mute a player’s chat while in-game. This can be done from the new Player Panel and tapping the mute checkbox next to their name.
• Added the ability to overwrite saved games. Note: Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert saved game names are not exclusive, so be aware of overwriting saved games from one title to the other.
• Custom Missions can now be manually saved and loaded. Note, due to the underlying system this will currently only work for manual saves via the Pause Menu, and will not work for Quicksaving.
• Added the ability to see your Quickmatch stats and Leaderboard position if you’re not in the top 200 (Players must complete at least three Quickmatch games first)
• Added the ability to choose your sub-faction in Red Alert Quickmatch games
• Added the ability to choose Random faction in custom games
• Added support for the Origin Video Broadcast feature
• Added the Jukebox to the Main Menu Options / Audio menu. You can now customize your playlist here and listen in its entirety without needing to load into an actual game. Note: The Jukebox won’t override menu music, as the menu music is tightly connected with all the UI flows.

Quality of Life Improvements

• The “Deploy” hotkey will now apply to all items with the Deploy Cursor, including un-garrisoning troop carriers, laying mines, activating the MAD Tank, and triggering the Chrono Tank
• Add the ability for multiple units to be queued on the Tiberian Dawn Repair Facility, the same as the Red Alert Service Depot
• Reduced the Hard Difficulty balance in Tiberian Dawn. We’ve effectively split the difference between Normal Mode and the launch version Hard mode. If you happened to already beat missions on Hard mode (Or somehow received the Achievement), then wear that with a badge of honor.
• Adjusted how you cancel queued in-progress units in the Sidebar. The first “cancel” click will now pause the in-progress unit, with the next click cancelling items in the stack. This will allow for quicker pausing to manage economic cashflow.
• Prioritized and reduced the cooldown of the EVA line “Our base is under attack”
• Changed the balance of being in low or zero power in Red Alert. There is now a maximum of a 4x build time increase for being at zero power (Compared to roughly 27x in the legacy title), which will ramp depending on the amount of low power.
• The Build Time tooltip will now update to reflect an increase in build time due to low power
• Added the ability to load a saved game from the Replay Mission dialog
• We’re experimenting with new Harvester logic, where Harvesters will now return to the original tile they harvested from and prioritize the fullest tile. This should help optimize Harvester behavior within certain resource fields.
• Made it so Middle and Right-click scrolling no longer removes a structure placement selection
• Removed AI takeover from Multiplayer games. Exiting the game will now destroy all your units and structures. This was a top community request to prevent the prolonging of games.
• Removed the Ready checkmark as a button in multiplayer lobbies. You can now only Ready up via the button in the bottom-right corner which should reflect the active state.
• Added the Command Line “MOD_DEBUG” that will disable the Client/InstanceServer timeout when the debugger hits a breakpoint in the mod DLL. This Command Line will also allow the game to be paused and stepped through frame by frame with F1 and F2. Note: Online play will be disabled if this Command Line is enabled. Note: MOD_DEBUG requires at least one mod be installed and enabled.
• Added the ability for turrets to stop force firing on the ground by using the “Guard” command
• Adjusted disabling the profanity filter so it will now also disable profanity in Custom Map names and Custom Mission briefings
• Added an Author field when custom maps are selected to highlight who created them
• The Installation and Intro Logo movies must now be skipped with the ESC key. This is to help ensure no one accidentally skips these meaningful videos on their first playthrough.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where restarting a mission would sometimes change the difficulty back to Normal
• Fixed an issue where units could no longer be controlled after loading a saved game in which those units were selected
• Fixed an issue where Unit Queueing was getting disabled after loading a saved game
• Made an adjustment to Soviet Mission 5 where the MCV wasn’t loading onto the Naval Transport and getting the mission into a broken state (This was inconsistent for us to reproduce and hope it’s now fixed)
• Made an adjustment to GDI Mission 8 where Civilians will now avoid Tiberium tiles, and the trigger-happy Civilian has been removed from the map entirely
• Fixed a memory leak which was causing instability in Multiplayer matches
• Fixed an issue where the Nod Cargo Plane could be targeted and destroyed
• Fixed an issue where units would move at hyper increased speed if players set certain units to Formations
• Fixed an issue where double-tapping to jump the camera to a control group was sending the camera to random location on the map
• Fixed an issue where mines were considered buildings and preventing games from ending
• Fixed an issue where preview images were not displaying in the Workshop Mods menu
• Fixed an issue where the Mods Menu was not auto-refreshing after subscribing to mods
• Fixed a prominent crash where the Windows Input Method Editor (IME) was required to input characters
• Fixed an issue where the power indicator on the power bar was incorrect compared to legacy behavior
• Fixed a legacy issue where the Capture the Flag flag art was off centered with the surrounding rings
• Fixed an issue where the Harvester was unable to path to a Refinery on River Raid
• Fixed a legacy issue where units would sometimes be instantly repaired by the Service Depot
• Fixed a legacy issue where the Advanced Communications Center could be captured in multiplayer and by the AI (Since the Temple of Nod can’t be captured)
• Fixed an issue where the faction icon was seen incorrectly for Skirmish saves
• Fixed an issue where the video Introduction button was being disabled after navigating back and forth from Custom Maps
• Fixed an issue where it would rarely show “Mission Accomplished” in Quickmatch after losing the game
• Fixed a crash when saving the game during the Temple Strike mission
• Fixed an issue where player names were not able to be highlighted during the first 30 seconds of an Observer Mode viewing
• Fixed an issue where the incorrect portrait was being displayed for the Red Alert Artillery unit
• Fixed an issue where the green docking cursor was shown when selecting enemy Harvesters
• Fixed an where the Phase Transport was displaying the incorrect portrait when added to a Custom Mission via the Map Editor
• Fixed an issue where the laser from the Obelisk of Light was graphically corrupted in legacy graphics mode
• Fixed an issue where the multiplayer lobby list was not taking up the entire vertical space
• Fixed an issue where settings were not getting applied if tapping certain areas of the UI
• Fixed an issue where GDI Mission 8 was not getting added to the Mission Select screen after destroying the Airstrip in GDI Mission 6
• Fixed an issue where units could pass over a river in Blue Lakes
• Fixed an issue where the Laser Orcas would not properly load from saved game
• Fixed a crash if aircraft were destroyed outside the map boundaries
• Fixed an issue where User Map details were not being displayed by guest players in a lobby
• Fixed a crash when selecting the Workshop Mods button multiple times in a row
• Fixed a misspelling of the word “Affected” in the Paradox Equation mission briefing
• Fixed an issue where an extra Dr. Chan was appearing in Nod Mission 10
• Fixed an issue where the Map Editor was not compatible with older versions of .Net Framework
• Fixed an issue where if a Quickmatch fails to load properly, the game will send you back to the Main Menu after a 60 second timeout (Instead of being stuck in an endless loop)
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Bullseye
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Central Conflict Extreme
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Destruction Derby
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Gold Coast
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Normandy Landings
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Lakeland
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Land Ladder
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Lotsa Lakes
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Naval Conquest
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Open Warfare Mega
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Pilgrim Fathers 2
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on River Rampage Mega
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Rivers Wild
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on Scapa Flow
• Fixed mismatching tile issues on United Kingdom

Quickmatch

• If you didn’t see the post from last week, we already made the following changes for Quickmatch on June 16:
  • Increased the Game Speed from Normal to Fast
  • Reduced the Starting Units to zero
  • Removed Aftermath units from Quickmatch in Red Alert (due to extreme balance issues)
  • Added two more maps to the Tiberian Dawn map rotation:
    • Monkey in the Middle
    • One Pass Fits All
• With this patch, we are making additional Map Pool adjustments based on community feedback:
  • Adding “Eye of the Storm” into Tiberian Dawn
  • Adding “Four Corners” into Tiberian Dawn
  • Removing “Path Beyond” from Red Alert
  • Removing “Snow Garden” from Red Alert
  • Removing “Warlords Lake” from Red Alert
  • Adding “Arena Valley Extreme” into Red Alert
  • Adding “Bullseye” into Red Alert
  • Adding “North by Northwest” into Red Alert
  • Adding “Things to Come” into Red Alert

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

Activision is bringing the Crash Bandicoot franchise back with the first mainline instalment in 20 years. Crash Bandicoot 4 is coming to PS4 and Xbox One on October 2, and it brings an end to the 20-year wait following 1998’s Crash Bandicoot: Warped, for which it is a sequel.

As part of GameSpot’s Play For All charity campaign, we sat down with producer Lou Studdert from developer Toys For Bob. In the interview, Studdert speaks about the game’s new art style, new gameplay mechanics like collecting masks and bending time, and the new playable characters. You can play as Crash and Coco, while Studdert teased that you may be able to play as the evil Neo Cortex to give players the ability to see the story from a different perspective.

Also in the interview, Studdert speaks about the new and expanded Crash 4 boss battles and how the game makes use of a new engine to allow for better graphics and gameplay features.

“It’s been a complete dream come true for the studio,” Studdert said. “They’re fans of the franchise, but they’re also fans of what the original franchise was actually trying to build upon. Which is this great history of animation. It’s been a real fun thing for our studio to push on animation techniques; to look at the old animated cartoons that Crash and those original games were referencing. So to push the techniques, to push the emotive animation and fluidity of the character models, our studio has been having a blast doing.”

Studdert also spent some time speaking about Crash 4’s new level design, which incorporates “old-school” elements of the earlier games but now with expanded vistas and a bigger scope thanks to the power of the new consoles. Be sure to check out the full interview in the video above to hear everything Studdert had to say about Crash 4.

The new game sees Neo Cortex, Dr. N. Tropy, and Uka Uka finally escape from their remote plant and return for another attempt at multiverse domination. Of course, you stand in their way, and you’ll have access to four special Quantum Masks to “bend the rules of reality” itself and make it through difficult areas. These include the Time Mask (slows down time) and the Gravity Mask (lets you platform upside down).

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

LANGUAGE!
1. On July 3, you’re getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!)
2. But MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of “Fuck” is an automatic R rating. We have 3 “Fucks” in our show. So…
1/2 https://t.co/7o3OQ34rqt

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 22, 2020

…I literally gave two fucks so the kids could see it:
1. In Yorktown, there’s a mute over “I get the f___ back up again”
2. “Southern *record scratch*kin’ Democratic Republicans.”
You can sing whatEVER you like at home (even sync up the album)!
Love you. Enjoy.

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 22, 2020

1. I know this now! It’s midnight July 3 PST, so that’s 3am for us in NY and east coast, do the math til your time zone.
2. Not just one day.
3. You will just have it. For as many times as you like, right next to A Goofy Movie and Talespin and An Extremely Goofy Movie…❤️ https://t.co/v6h260FDSw

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 22, 2020

Ah, language subtitles! Thank you. Since we moved the release up by a year and a half, we’ll be adding alternate language subtitles as we get them (I’m so sorry for all the words, feverishly working translators, there are so many and that’s on me) https://t.co/Af2aMpkemX

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 22, 2020

I’m sick of being quiet. The CEO of @Twitch, @eshear, was asked in an All Hands meeting about partners using their platforms to abuse women- specifically using my case as an example. He chuckled, said “wow, the things that go on on our platform, can’t really comment,” & moved on.

— ✨ Starling ✨ (@YourStarling) June 22, 2020

There’s been a lot of important conversation happening over the previous couple days, and I’ve heard your voices. I’d like to share the email I just sent internally to the company on the topic. pic.twitter.com/B1V34lT9EI

— Emmett Shear (@eshear) June 23, 2020

WE ARE CALLING FOR A #TWITCHBLACKOUT
In effort to get @twitch @eshear to take note of:
– abuse
– racism
– sexual harassment, assault and rape
We are asking streamers of all sizes to WITHHOLD FROM STREAMS ON WED 6/24 12am – 11:59pm
MAKE THEM NOTICE
Use #twitchblackout

— 🔴LIVE🔴Third Artifact #BIM (@third_artifact) June 22, 2020

This entire month.
I will be cancelling all of my subs and not giving any bits on Twitch.
I will be donating to all of my streamer friends DIRECTLY.
Want a true #twitchblackout? That’s gonna be it.
Stop giving them money until things ACTUALLY change.

— Y O S H 🧢 #BlackLivesMatter (@ItsYoshh) June 22, 2020

Skate 4 is happening, having finally been announced as part of EA Play 2020. Now, as the internet reacts and long-time fans flex their kickflip thumbs in anticipation, EA is hiring new staff to work on their iconic franchise.

Two new Skate-related positions have appeared on EA’s job page, both looking for people to work at the company’s Vancouver, Canada studio. Both roles specify that they’re looking for people to work on the Skate franchise.

The first is a Tools and Pipeline Software Engineer position, which is seeking applicants with five or more years of experience in a similar role. The eventual hire will be tasked with building tools within the Frostbite engine, and will have to “create user interfaces to empower the team to interact with content.”

The second job is seeking someone with 12 or more years of experience. This position is the Head of Production Management for the Skate franchise, which is a leadership position. “As the Head of Product, your central responsibility will manage our Product, Data and Live Ops teams of experts,” the listing reads. “You will develop the talent on these teams and guide them to develop excellent, performant, cross-platform games.”

Both positions are taking applicants now.

Creative director Cuz Parry and game director Deran Chung, both of whom appeared in the initial announcement, are veterans of the series, so it’s safe to say that some of the folks that helped make the original trilogy iconic will be working on this game alongside new talent.

Skate 4 does not have a release date or confirmed platforms yet, but Skate 1-3 all released on PS3 and Xbox 360. A Wii spin-off, Skate It, released in 2008.