Author: Trafficblast

The 2020 Emmy Awards Will Be A Virtual Ceremony, And Here’s What They’re Planning

The 2020 Emmy nominees have been announced, with Watchmen emerging as the frontrunner and Netflix chalking up the most nominations, but 2020 is not an ordinary year, and the ceremony will not be ordinary either. With much of the US still in lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Emmy ceremony will be a digital event, with no big gathering.

Variety has gotten hold of a letter sent out to the acting nominees, and it details how the digital ceremony will happen this year. The letter, which is co-signed by host Jimmy Kimmel and several producers, outlines what is expected from nominees on the night, and how they’ll be working to ensure that the September 20 ceremony is still worthwhile.

“As you’ve probably guessed, we’re not going to be asking you to come to the Microsoft Theatre in downtown LA,” the letter reads. “This year, it’s still going to be TV industry’s biggest night out… but we’ll come to you!”

The producers behind this year’s ceremony are “assembling a top notch team of technicians, producers, and writers” to ensure that nominees can be filmed accepting their awards, and that they look the part. “We’re going to make you look fabulous–we’re exploring the cutting edge of technology to allow to use good cameras and lighting and look forward to working with you to produce your unique ‘on screen’ moments,” he says.

There will be no enforced dress theme for this ceremony, so expect at least one winner in sweatpants. “If you want to be in formal wear, we’d love that, but equally if you’re in the UK and it’s 3 AM, perhaps you want to be in designer pajamas and record from your bed,” the letter reads.

Back in February, the Oscars were held live, and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite made history–and helped make the ceremony one of the best ever–by winning big. We might not get another ceremony like that for a while, so let’s take a moment to rewatch Joon-ho’s extraordinarily moving acceptance speech when he won Best Director.

See Brendan Gleeson As Donald Trump In First Trailer For New TV Series

Showtime has published the first trailer for its political limited series The Comey Rule, showing Brendan Gleeson as Donald Trump and Jeff Daniels as former FBI director James Comey.

As you can see in the trailer, Gleeson looks and sounds the part of the President of the United States, while Daniels looks convincing as well.

The miniseries is based on Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty, as well as “more than a year of additional interviews” with key subjects. Showtime, who shares a parent company in ViacomCBS with GameSpot, describes the show as an “immersive, behind-the-headlines account of the historically turbulent events surrounding the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath.”

Holly Hunter also stars in the show as former attorney general Sally Yates, while Michael Kelly will portray the former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. Jonathan Banks will play former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, while Kingsley Ben-Adir will play Barack Obama.

The Comey Rule will premiere on September 27. It’s written and directed by Billy Ray, who previously wrote the Tom Hanks movie Captain Phillips.

Microsoft Flight Simulator Seems Like the Perfect Quarantine Game

If you haven’t noticed, opportunities for air travel have been a little bit scarce as of late. Sure, it’s still possible to fly from here to there, but it’s much less desirable than it used to be for obvious pandemic-related reasons. And I definitely miss it. Playing the new Microsoft Flight Simulator has done a lot to fill that gap, and then some, offering up the chance to not only see the Earth from thousands of feet up, but also the opportunity to take control of one of 20 different planes to chart my own courses.

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The great thing about Microsoft Flight Simulator and its real-time Bing maps integration is you can hop into a plane and take off from basically any airport in the entire world. At last count, over 37,000 airports, airfields, and even tiny dirt airstrips were available to you. The 30 airports available with the base game are hand-crafted to resemble the actual airports on which they’re based as accurately as possible. If you’ve ever flown into LAX or JFK, you’ll probably be astonished at how well they’ve been recreated here by Asobo Studios. But the 36,970 other airfields are also impressive, even if they aren’t modeled on actual architectural blueprints like the hand-crafted ones. For example, my local airport in midcoast Maine is absolutely tiny, with two runways: one just over 1,500 meters and the other just over 1,200 meters.

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The algorithm used to fill in the three-dimensional structures from real-world Bing maps data recreated my local airport to a level such that I wasn’t sure if it was generated or built by a programmer. Sure, there are a few smaller buildings missing, and the signage isn’t in place, but it’s close enough I could actually recognize it when I was taxiing to park.

But that’s just my small rural airport. The real joy of Microsoft Flight Simulator has been visiting places I’ve never been before. I watched a short YouTube video on Hong Kong the other day and when it was over I thought, “It would be cool to fly over Hong Kong at night, I bet.” And so I fired up Flight Sim and I did. And it looked incredible. I was able to fly around the city and see the towering skyscrapers lit up with the warm orange hues of halogen and cool blues of mercury streetlights on the patchwork of city streets below. Couple that with the half-moon reflecting off the ocean and a few low-clouds and it was sublime, almost like a low-fi hip-hop beat come to life.

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Beyond Hong Kong at night, I visited other places on my bucket list, flying lower and closer than real-life would ever allow. I took off from Galeão International Airport in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and immediately pointed the nose toward Christ the Redeemer, the massive granite statue looking over the city. After circling around, I radioed the tower and went back in for a landing. The level of detail in the model of the statue is incredible.

I flew a similar sight-seeing tour of the Great Pyramids, coming in lower and closer than any real-life plane would be allowed. I also took a tour of the Grand Canyon, dropping down inside and carefully maneuvering my plane between its foreboding walls.

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I have to say, Microsoft Flight Simulator is scratching my travel itch while letting me explore and experience more than I ever could simply sitting in seat 24C on a commercial jet. It’s almost an addiction at this point. If I’m watching a YouTube video or something on Netflix and I see an interesting location, I make a note to visit it later in Flight Simulator. With no clear end in sight to the stay-at-home and quarantine orders still covering so much of the country and much of the world, Microsoft Flight Simulator let me escape the confines of my small town and explore the world anyway, and for that I absolutely cannot wait for its full release on PC on August 18

 

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Summer Update Part 2 Brings Back An Old Glitch As A Permanent Feature

Animal Crossing: New Horizons update 1.4.0, also known as the Summer Update part 2, is now live, and its headlining features are the additions of the Dream Suite, a new fireworks feature, and the ability to back up your save data. But it’s also added back in a feature that has was patched out of the game earlier.

A glitch in earlier versions of the game allowed you to remove the UI when using your Nook Phone to take a photo, letting you get clean footage of your character’s movements from a fixed angle. As Polygon notes, this glitch, which was patched out earlier this month, is now back–but this time it’s a feature, included on purpose.

As you can see in the tweet below from Animal Crossing World, the game will now let you remove UI elements when taking a photo by clicking the right stick. This isn’t possible if you’re playing using just the left Joy-Con in horizontal mode, but it’s possible in all other control variants.

This should make it easier to get that perfect, clean footage of your character ominously running around with a gold-plated axe.

The first Summer update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons added plenty of new content too, including swimming–here’s how to hunt down pearls every day.

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Resident Evil 3 And Resistance Are Getting Paid Unlockables And Costume DLC Soon

Resident Evil 3 is getting new DLC for both its single-player campaign and its multiplayer Resident Evil Resistance mode, although one pack is more substantial than the other. In August, you’ll be able to purchase two new costumes for the cast of Resistance, and a code to unlock everything in the campaign.

The Resistance DLC is the more exciting of the two, because it lets you dress up the whole game’s cast in the outfits from Resident Evil 2. You’ll be able to dress them up as either Claire Redfield, with her red jacket, or Leon Kennedy with his STARS outfit.

Unfortunately, you can’t just play as Leon and Claire, but this is the next best thing.

The DLC for the campaign will let you buy all the unlockables that could be purchased with points earned in-game. This includes Jill’s STARS outfit, which she wore back in the original Resident Evil. You’ll also be able to equip her with an infinite rocket launcher, if you want to run through the game with a reduced challenge.

The prices for both pieces of DLC have not been announced yet. Previous classic costume packs for Resistance have cost $3.

GameSpot gave Resident Evil 3 a 6/10 in its review. One of the cons listed in the review focused on the multiplayer: “Resistance has some interesting ideas, but it’s often clunky and lacks personality.”

Now Playing: Resident Evil 3 Video Review

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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Looks To Make A Once-Obtuse Game Accessible

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is a cult classic, but it was infamously obtuse. It required such a specialized combination of hardware that building a full squad required a hefty investment from each player. For the Remastered version, coming next month to PS4, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices, Square Enix is taking a remarkably more accessible approach, even by modern standards.

The original Crystal Chronicles was built around multiplayer. Though you could complete it as a single-player experience, the story centered around a caravan protected by a band of warriors from different magical races, each with their own combat specialty. But that multiplayer relied on a GameCube link cable, connected to up to four GameBoy Advance systems. The conceit allowed each player to have their own personalized menu, but the requirement made the sticker price remarkably high. If your friends didn’t happen to already own a GBA, they needed to buy one to join in.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered, on the other hand, looks to make a full 180 on that barrier-laden design philosophy. The advent of connected consoles and smartphones makes it easy for players to connect and retain their own individual menus like any other online game. Rather than lock players into a single console with a very narrow control scheme, it features cross-play so that players can join up regardless of platform preference.

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It will also take the compatibility one step further with a free “Lite” version launching alongside the standard paid game. That version will have access to some single-player content and the first dungeons, with remastered visuals and new features. But the Lite version also serves as an entry point for those who want to play with friends. If your buddy has bought the game and wants you to join their caravan, the Lite version will let you play the first 13 dungeons with your host. Out of a total of 14 original GameCube dungeons, that means you have access to almost all of them.

The post-game content is locked to the full version, making the Lite something of a sample onboarding process while you get to know if you’re in it for the long haul. There are 13 high-level end-game dungeons in all. In a publisher Q&A, game director Ryoma Araki said that these dungeons make it easier to complete the new crafting recipes for better gear. That gives the impression that this version is taking notes from the long tail of “live” games, with post-campaign content that’s meant to be farmed with your friends.

“In the current era, lots of people enjoy playing games, but there are also a huge variety of play styles and different platforms that people play their games on,” Araki said. “I wanted to make it so that players could easily invite their friends, family or partners along to play Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and create some good memories together, even if they owned different gaming platforms, so cross-platform compatibility was a must.”

The Remastered edition packs a few other new bells and whistles as well. A Magic Timer and Fusion system summons more powerful versions of spells if you combine them with your friends in online multiplayer. A Mimic option lets you imitate story characters who are otherwise rendered unplayable. It also includes English voiceover for the first time, and a few quality-of-life features like a revised mini-map and quick chat feature.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered launches August 27 for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices.

Riot Games Ends LEC Partnership With Saudi City After Backlash

Update:

Riot has announced in a statement that it will end its partnership with the Saudi city of NEOM “effective immediately” following community outcry.

You can read Riot’s full statement below:

“As a company and as a league, we know that it’s important to recognize when we make mistakes and quickly work to correct them. After further reflection, while we remain steadfastly committed to all of our players and fans worldwide including those living in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, the LEC has ended its partnership with NEOM, effective immediately. In an effort to expand our esports ecosystem, we moved too quickly to cement this partnership and caused rifts in the very community we seek to grow. While we missed our own expectations in this instance, we’re committed to reexamining our internal structures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

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Original Story: Riot Games is facing criticism after announcing that the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) will partner with Neom, a $500 billion, smart-city founded by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Muhammad bin Salman.

Although touted as a city of the future in a press release announcing news of the partnership, Neom has been reportedly built atop forced evictions. This is on top of existing criticism against the Saudi Arabian government in regards to its treatment of LGBT peoples, as well as bin Salman’s links to the assassination of a Washington Post journalist.

All of this has led to the swift condemnation of the sponsorship from high-profile voices in the League of Legends community, as well as from Riot employees.

“Incredibly disappointed in Riot today and am baffled at how we could possibly support this,” tweeted Alex Shahmiri, brand lead for Arcane, Riot’s upcoming animated series. “[The partnership] does not reflect the company that I started at six years ago and goes against so much of the progress we’ve been trying to make in the last few years.”

The Rioters Against Forced Arbitration group, which was started following the allegations that Riot fostered a toxic and sexist workplace, also tweeted out against the partnership.

IGN has reached out to Riot for a comment.

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Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

STALKER 2 Could Offer Frame Rates Of Up To 120FPS On Xbox Series X

STALKER 2 is coming to Xbox Series X in 2021 as a console exclusive, and it’s aiming to do things that would not be possible on current console hardware. According to the game’s Xbox store page, it’s going to aim for a very high frame rate.

The page promises that STALKER 2, which will skip Xbox One, was designed to take advantage of the Series X. The text on the page hints at what’s possible on the system, and specifically mentions a 120 FPS goal.

“Games built using the Xbox Series X development kit are designed to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the Xbox Series X,” the page reads. “They will showcase unparalleled load-times, visuals, responsiveness, and frame rates up to 120 FPS.”

It’s worth noting that, despite appearing on the STALKER 2 page, the wording is quite broad, focusing on “games build using the Xbox Series X development kit” rather than specifically focusing on STALKER 2. Still, if the game doesn’t have a frame rate capable of going this high, it’s pretty misleading.

Games built using the Xbox Series X development kit are designed to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the Xbox Series X. They will showcase unparalleled load-times, visuals, responsiveness, and frame rates up to 120 FPS.

We should get more news about Xbox Series X in August.

Now Playing: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Reveal Trailer | Xbox Games Showcase 2020

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Star Wars: Solo Director Confirms No Plans For A Sequel

Star Wars: A Solo Story director Ron Howard has confirmed there are no plans for a sequel, while he also cleared up some confusion about his potential involvement in The Phantom Menace.

Appearing on the Radio Andy show, Howard bluntly said, “There is no sequel planned now” for Solo.

He also reflected on his journey with the movie. Less than a year before release, Howard was brought in to direct Solo after Disney fired the original directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller.

“It’s amazing to be part of a Star Wars movie that suddenly seems to be kind of an underground hit. Not what you’d expect. It’s been an odd, strange journey for that movie,” Howard said.

Solo made $393 million at the global box office, which put it inside the Top 25 list for highest-grossing movies of 2018. However, it was a relative disappointment commercially compared to the other recent Star Wars spin-off movie, Rogue One, which made more than $1 billion at the global box office.

Alden Ehrenreich, who played the younger Han Solo in the film, is reportedly signed to a contract that could see him play the character again. Ehrenreich recently said he would return, but only if the the writers came up with the “right version.”

Also in the interview, Howard addressed the rumors that George Lucas approached him to direct Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. He confirmed that Lucas engaged him in a conversation about it, but there was no script or a clear and concrete plan at the time. In addition to Howard, Lucas approached Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis and Jurassic Park director Steven Spielberg for Star Wars movies, and they also said no.

“It was a casual conversation one day where I was mixing something up at Skywalker Ranch and he said, ‘I think technology has just about reached the point when I can do the next three. Would you want to do one?’ I said the same thing to George that I think that [Robert Zemeckis] and [Steven Spielberg] said. Which was, ‘You should do this yourself, George.’ I don’t want to make too much of that, but I was flattered to be thought about it.”

While Solo might not be getting a sequel, Disney is moving ahead with multiple new Star Wars projects, including a new film from Taika Waititi. The next Star Wars film is scheduled to come to theatres in December 2023, following a year-long delay.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows Of New York Visual Novel Will Ask You To Solve An Unsolvable Crime

Vampire: the Masquerade – Shadows of New York is the second Vampire: The Masquerade visual novel, following on from 2019’s Coteries of New York, and it’s coming to Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC soon. Developer Draw Distance has released some new details about the game, giving us some insight into what to expect and what it’ll do differently from its predecessor.

Players will be cast as Julia, a member of the Lasombra vampire clan, and part of the Camarilla faction. She’s looking for a way to rise up the ranks in vampire society, and finds it when the Anarch Baron of New York reaches his “final death”–which plunges Julia into trying to solve a crime that the game’s Steam page describes as “unsolvable”.

The game will feature two different endings depending on the choices the player makes, and is promising a “more personal, and darker story” than what Coteries offered. It will also feature more illustrations than that game did, complete with animations. The soundtrack is being composed by the Polish artist Resina.

Shadows of New York is a standalone game, although there is some crossover with characters from the previous game. The press release specifically mentions Agathon, D’Angelo, Hope, and Tamika returning, along with Sheriff Qadir Al-Asmai.

The game is scheduled for Q3 2020, meaning August or September at this point. You can watch the trailer above.

This isn’t the only Vampire: The Masquerade title on the horizon. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong are also both in the works for PC and consoles.

Now Playing: Vampire The Masquerade: Shadows Of New York – Official Trailer

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