Author: Trafficblast

It’s been over a year since news arrived that Netflix was reportedly developing a live-action Sandman comics adaptation with DC and Warner Bros. TV, and we’ve heard very little about the show since then. However, Sandman series creator Nail Gaiman gave a rare update on the show during DC’s FanDome event.

When discussing the various Sandman adaptations that have been made or attempted over the years–including the well-received Audible drama version that came out this year–Gaiman mentioned the Netflix adaptation in passing, confirming that it’s indeed still in the works, despite the lack of news. That alone was great to hear, given how many movies’ releases and productions have been shut down or delayed due to COVID-19, not to mention the TV shows whose schedules have been upended by the pandemic.

But Gaiman shared more details: He went on to say that, unlike the audio drama, which NPR called “rigidly faithful” to the original books, the Netflix version will be “slightly looser, but still faithful.”

Later during the Sandman panel, Gaiman continued: “We’ve taken advantage of [the COVID-19] pause button just to try and get the scripts as close to perfect as possible,” the author said. “Right now, as the universal pause button is starting to come off, we are starting to cast again, we are starting–I’m getting these inspiring and wonderful emails with production designs, with places that I’ve only ever seen in the comics before now being rendered in 3D, and I’m being asked to comment on it, and that’s amazing.

“What we’re doing with Netflix is saying, ‘OK, It’s still going to start in 1916, but the thing that happens in Sandman 1–the point the story starts–is not 1988, it’s now.’ And how does that change the story? What does that give us? what does that make us have to look at that we wouldn’t have had to look at if we were setting it as a character piece? What is that going to do to the gender of characters…the nature of characters?” He added that it’s been “an absolute delight” to examine the story and characters in a new light while staying faithful to the source material he wrote.

And that’s what we know. It’s easy to assume that, were it not for COVID, we likely would have heard more substantial news about Netflix’s Sandman adaptation by now. Unfortunately, all we currently know is what was included in the original report in 2019: It’s a joint production between Netflix, DC, and Warner Bros. TV; the showrunner at the time was said to be Allan Heinberg, who co-wrote 2017’s Wonder Woman; Gaiman will executive produce, alongside DC veteran David Goyer, whose credits include co-writing Man of Steel and Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, as well as the TV show Krypton; and it will allegedly be the most expensive DC show ever produced.

DC FanDome, a digital fan convention celebrating all things DC, continues all weekend. Stay tuned to GameSpot for all the news and coverage you need, like the Cheetah reveal in the brand new Wonder Woman 1984 trailer.

Following its official reveal trailer during DC Fandome, WB Games Montreal has posted an extended gameplay demonstration for Gotham Knights. The demonstration shows off Batgirl’s combat prowess, which is distinctly different from how she, and other characters, played in previous Batman: Arkham games.

The video, narrated by creative director Patrick Redding, takes place about a dozen hours into Batgirl’s progression in the game. Featuring an attack on Elliot Center–where Mr. Freeze has set up shop–it shows off several of the other playable characters in the game, including Red Hood. Freeze has manipulated the weather to actually flash-freeze the city, and it will take everything the young cast of heroes has to take him down.

Batgirl’s agile fighting style allows her to quickly close the gaps on enemies and use their aggression against them. It’s a far cry from the brutal and power-focused style of Batman, and should help to separate her from the other playable characters.

At the very end of the trailer, we get a taste of a boss fight between Mr. Freeze and Batgirl. Robin also joins in the fight, and Redding explained that your experiences against bosses will actually change depending on your level. Different attacks and abilities can pop up if you attempt the fight at level five versus level 20, for instance. However, the walkthrough ends before we could actually see how this would play out. More like Mr. Tease.

Gotham Knights releases on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5, and PC in 2021.

There’s a scene in The Last of Us Part 2 where, after approaching a workbench and dismantling your gun, you are mauled from behind by a group of rogue assailants. They have the upper hand, having quietly arranged a tactical formation on the dilapidated building’s upper floor–they take cover behind sofas, kitchen counters, and half-open doors. But this shocking scene isn’t all that surprising–or at least it wouldn’t be, if you’d been reading the handwritten notes sporadically dotted across the surrounding town.

The Last of Us Part 2 weaves together a grimdark narrative filled with colour and noise, and yet, it teems with quieter, often untold stories contained within the pages of its virtual journaling. A man loses two sons to a radical religious cult because he was too afraid to leave the safety of their aquarium hideout, and dies sitting in the chair they berated him for never leaving; a parent passes away beneath the crumbling roof of a flooded factory, with medicine he never got to deliver to his sick family; a soldier whiles away his final hours behind the blast doors of a bank vault, dying to protect something that was not his own from a group of thieves seeking to capitalize on the maelstrom induced by the cordyceps outbreak. These are the quieter tales that The Last of Us Part 2’s world is founded upon.

The stories of Ellie, Dina, Abby, and Lev are essential to The Last of Us Part 2’s overarching narrative, but not necessarily to the construction of its wider world. They mirror it in unique ways and react to it at different times with distinct emotional responses, but their tales are likely no more significant than those we don’t play through. This can be said of most stories: Just because Frodo bears the One Ring doesn’t necessarily mean that his particular hardships are greater than those of anybody else–something that is particularly resonant in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings books, where Saruman returns to destroy The Shire, taking the lives of the nameless and unwritten in the process.

That’s not a failure–storytelling often revolves around a small cast of characters in order to foster emotional investment, without which there are usually no stakes people deem worth reading or playing on for. The Last of Us Part 2 offers a clever solution to this by littering its suburban battlefields with notes and trinkets, adding historical context to places that history has already forgotten.

The best part about this structure is that it’s completely optional. By no means do you have to read about a WLF deserter’s slow descent into religious fundamentalism. It is not essential to learn about Seattle’s many separated families attempting to reunite with one another by leaving trails of letters and heirlooms. However, choosing to invest time into these disparate tales allows you to understand the world of The Last of Us Part 2 in a more intimate way, which, in turn, heightens the stakes for everything precious to Ellie and Abby alike.

This is a world where people fail to save their loved ones despite sacrificing everything for them; where families turn on another for interpreting the creed of a martyred prophet in different ways; where a couple who once had kids and a golden retriever all tucked up in a little house on the prairie become common bandits, out of an odious cocktail of necessity, apathy, and pent-up hatred.

The way in which The Last of Us Part 2 revolves around this is meticulously well-designed. On one hand, people often complain about collectibles in games, stating that they can break immersion and distill tension. This is largely true, and there’s a concrete argument to be made for that in relation to The Last of Us Part 2–I personally gave up on my quest to find every coin and trading card long before the end.

choosing to invest time into these disparate tales allows you to understand the world of The Last of Us Part 2 in a more intimate way

But the other collectibles are different. Whether you’re playing Ellie or Abby, it’s often in your best interest to read the notes withering away in derelict buildings. They could have a safe code scrawled across the bottom, permitting you access to valuable resources that are necessary for the progression of your odyssey across America. Or they could simply inform you of what happened years before you arrived in a place that has been deserted since the note was written–there’s a solid chance you’re the first person to ever read it, and the first person to be able to benefit from its contents as a result.

Once you learn that these notes are inherently intertwined with the landscapes you traverse, everything begins to change. Even when there are no words, The Last of Us Part 2’s environments tell stories of their own.

For example, when Ellie arrives at Hillcrest after having left Dina behind at the theater, you start to discover notes referring to Boris, a person who has gone rogue and decided to go on a rampage around the surrounding area. Shortly afterwards, during a mini cutscene that plays as you attempt to enter a garage leading to the next street, you’re ambushed by a feral Clicker. After you emerge victorious, you’ll notice the bow on its back, accompanied by a full quiver of arrows–this, by implication, is Boris, who eventually fell victim to the cordyceps infection himself, and was probably completely unaware the bow he wreaked havoc with was still attached to his person.

There’s even one section where you come across a partially fenced-off building. The door is barricaded with a dumpster–in some games you might think this is the environment telling you that you can climb on the roof. Or perhaps you’re someone who just beelines towards the next waypoint–it’s a dumpster, who cares?

In actuality, this dumpster is–and if you’ve been paying attention to the environments up until this point, it should be obvious–a cheap substitute for prison bars. When you approach it, you begin to hear the groans–the miserable wailing of the bitten who were confined here to live out their days as hungry, mindless Infected. Once you move the dumpster, their keening reaches a new pitch–this is the first time their meditative melancholy has been interrupted. Being in the know, I put down three trip mines before opening the door and retreating to a safe space.

As they emerged from the darkness of their makeshift cell, feeling the warmth of sunlight for the first time in weeks, or months, or years, I detonated the mines. Cruel, but necessary–I only had two bullets left, and there were dozens of WLF marauders between where I stood and my destination. I went inside, plundered the safe that had been of no use to the infected, and went on my way. As it turns out, there are various notes scattered amid the surrounding buildings alluding to the fact these poor souls had been herded here to live out their days in captivity, but the partially-written tales of misery and woe contained in said notes remain unfinished until you arrive to emphatically finish them–to put the nail in the coffin, so to speak.

It is the tantalizing pull towards exploring every nook and cranny in The Last of Us Part 2 that allows us to learn some of its most intriguing stories

Whether it’s a note written to a lost love, a trinket left for posterity, or a conveniently-placed dumpster, street lamp, or burnt-out-car, there is nothing in The Last of Us Part 2’s environments that is placed without intent. At face value, it may seem as if buildings and landscapes are populated with crafting materials, trading cards, and coins purely to promote exploration and reward you for spending time drinking in the scenery–but there’s more to it than that.

While I agree that some of the more trivial trading cards may purely be the passion of the most intense trophy hunters, it is the tantalizing pull towards exploring every nook and cranny in The Last of Us Part 2 that allows us to learn some of its most intriguing stories. Most are miserable, if not downright harrowing–but every so often, once in tens of notes, there is hope. It may be modest, and it may have since fizzled out, but it’s only after committing to reading the tragedies of countless people that you finally come across that one tale dashed with a slight, but tangible optimism. And that makes the world of The Last of Us Part 2 make sense in a way that the story never explicitly addresses, but absolutely and intentionally accommodates for.

The environmental storytelling of The Last of Us Part 2 isn’t just some optional addendum you undertake to pop a couple of trophies–it’s a collection of distinct esoterica that enriches the entire experience. When you spend time learning about the characters you’ll never meet, or see, or hear about again, you’ll realize that there is humanity yet in this world, and that it’s not something worth fighting for, but something it is necessary to come together for.

We’re back with more backstory for Cyberpunk 2077 in our fourth entry of our video series exploring the lore of CD Projekt Red’s upcoming first-person RPG. This time around, we’re delving into the history of the wars between the corporations that defined Night City–and there was none more influential than the 4th Corporate War.

In the video above, Jake Dekker briefly details the major rivalries that popped up in the first three corporate wars before launching into an in-depth look at the 4th Corporate War, which occurred roughly 50 years prior to the events of Cyberpunk 2077. Despite taking place half a century before CD Projekt Red’s upcoming game, the 4th Corporate War played a significant role in shaping Night City and the world at large.

For the full scoop on the story, you’ll have to watch the whole video. Come for the interesting lore, stay to hear Jake try to pronounce all of the company names in Cyberpunk’s world, including Internationale Handelsmarine Aketiengesellschaft. It’s pretty funny.

Cyberpunk 2077 is scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on November 19. A version for Google Stadia is set to release later this year as well, and both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 next-gen ports are in the works too, though they don’t have an exact release window.

Season 6: Boosted adds Rampart to Apex Legends. The new defense-focused legend is all about creating choke points and deterring enemy squads from getting too close. She’s not terribly difficult to figure out, but we’ve put together some tips and tricks if you’re struggling to use her abilities effectively.

In the video above, Max Blumenthal and Jordan Ramée discuss Rampart’s three abilities (Amped Cover, Modded Loader, and Emplaced Minigun “Sheila”), and point out which enemy counters she has to watch out for and which legends she can easily pair up with to buff her squad as a whole.

Rampart isn’t the ideal character for players looking to rush into the next fight. Her tactical and ultimate abilities can prove to be devastatingly strong but only if Rampart has the time to set both of them up. So instead of running towards gunfire, you want to find a nice chokepoint to prepare your defenses and let the enemy come to you. Pair a Rampart with a Wattson and you can shut down entire rotation lanes.

Season 6: Boosted makes several changes to Apex Legends, such as implementing a new battle pass, adding new landmarks to World’s Edge, and adjusting the loot pool. The new season adds a fan-favorite Titanfall 2 firearm to Apex Legends as well, an energy-ammo using SMG called the Volt.

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GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.