Author: Trafficblast

Epic Games, owner of the Unreal Engine widely used across the games industry, has acquired the company behind the facial animation work deployed in games such as God of War and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.

Cubic Motion is the creator of facial animation technology that is used in conjunction with facial rigs used for animations to produce subtle facial expressions that can be used to convey expressions in a more natural way. It’s the reason Epic Games wants to include it in its suite of tools available to Unreal Engine developers.

“Facial animation that conveys the slightest nuance of human expression is essential to crossing the uncanny valley,” Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri said in a statement to GamesIndustry.biz. “We believe that holistically combining Epic’s Unreal Engine with 3Lateral’s facial rig creation and Cubic Motion’s solving technology is the only way to answer this challenge, and ultimately, to reach the pinnacle of digital human artistry with Unreal Engine.”

All Cubic Motion employees will retain their jobs in the transition, while Epic Games also promised to continue working with existing partners on their projects. This suggests that Epic Games won’t make the technology proprietary to Unreal Engine at this time.

Hellblade’s sequel, as part of what is now titled the Senua Saga, was revealed at The Game Awards last year alongside the Xbox Series X. It featured some impressive looking facial animations that have improved on the original implementation. A release date has not been announced yet.

Week 4 of Fortnite: Chapter 2, Season 2 has arrived, and it brings the second set of TNTina’s Trial challenges to the game. Much like the previous set, most of the challenges revolve around explosives, but there’s also one that will send you around the island to visit three particular locations: Grumpy Greens, Mowdown, and Risky Reels. If you need help finding them, this guide will show you where to go.

Where Are Grumpy Greens, Mowdown, And Risky Reels?

If you’ve been playing a lot of Fortnite, you’re likely already familiar with Risky Reels. It’s been a fixture of the game since Chapter 1, and it’s located prominently near the center of the map. The other two areas–Grumpy Greens and Mowdown–are not quite as well-known and may be a bit harder to find as a result, but they’re fortunately not too far off from Risky Reels. We’ve marked down where all three areas are located below:

• Risky Reels – North of The Agency in grid square E4
• Grumpy Greens – East of Pleasant Park in grid square E3
• Mowdown – Northeast of Frenzy Farm in grid square F2

How To Complete The Challenge

Now that you know where the three areas are located, all you need to do is make your way to each one to complete the challenge. You don’t need to visit all three within a single match to clear this mission, but you feasibly could given their proximity to each other, so land at one at the start of the match and try to hoof it to the other two before you get eliminated.

Season 2 of Fortnite Chapter 2 is currently slated to end in April, so there are still a lot more challenges on the way to the game over the next few weeks. If you need help completing any earlier challenges from this season, we’ve rounded up all of our maps and guides for the trickier ones in our Fortnite Season 2 challenges hub. Be sure to also check out our Fortnite Season 2 roundup to catch up on everything that’s new in the battle royale game this season.

Ubisoft’s third-person historical melee combat game, For Honor, will kick off a limited-time event (LTE) based on the Prince of Persia franchise. The event will be available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and runs until April 2.

The Blades of Persia is a new LTE for For Honor that introduces several Prince of Persia-themed goodies, including a new map, skins, game modes, and more. It’s split into two chapters, with the first kicking off today and the second taking place on March 19. You can even encounter the Prince himself–but be warned, as he’s not friendly and will battle anyone who comes in contact with him.

The event brings a new game mode: Ruler of Time. It’s the classic Dominion mode but with a twist: a tornado circles the map that houses the Prince himself. Ruler of Time takes place on the Harbor map that saw a sandstorm rip through the landscape, giving it a more Arabian Nights kind of feel.

As noted, you can battle the Prince when he appears on the map. He’s quite powerful, has several abilities at his disposal–such as the ability to rewind time after taking lethal damage and teleporting to punch a random enemy on the field–and is not nice at all. Should you or someone on your team take him out, you will be granted 150 points toward your team’s overall score.

Of course, the Blades of Persia LTE comes jam-packed with several other customizations and additions, such as cosmetics, new minions based on Prince of Persia, a variety of themed weapons, extra executions, “revamped in-game menus with new visuals and music from the Prince of Persia universe,” and more.

For Honor’s Year 4 started on February 6, and it introduced a bunch of new changes to the game. This includes the new Battle Pass that replaces the Year Pass, additional heroes and factions, and more.

Fans have been clamoring for a new Prince of Persia since the game’s last mainline console entry, 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. There have been some Prince of Persia games since then, but the titles–Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame and Prince of Persia: Escape–were released on mobile devices. The latest Prince of Persia game, The Dagger of Time, is a real-world VR escape room.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons comes out next week, in case you were unaware. In fact, there are 9 excruciating days between now and the release of everyone’s favorite urban planning and fishing simulator. If you’re going crazy with anticipation, we have something that will help soothe your jangled nerves: tons of new Animal Crossing shirts in the IGN Store.

New Animal Crossing Shirts

 

In addition to Animal Crossing: New Horizons and New Leaf designs to help tide you over, we also added have tons of new designs from Nintendo games and characters like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Super Mario and more.

A Quiet Place: Part II has been delayed one week before it was due to be released as a result of the “ever-changing circumstances” amid the global threat of COVID-19 (aka Coronavirus).

Writer-director John Krasinski announced the delay on Twitter, where he directly addressed Quiet Place fans about the pushback, explaining his new plans to release the movie at a time when everyone can watch it together.

#AQuietPlacePart2…Take2 pic.twitter.com/YrCXLLpxjh

— John Krasinski (@johnkrasinski) March 12, 2020

“One of the things I’m most proud of is that people have said our movie is one you have to see all together,” Krasinski wrote in his post. “Well due to the ever-changing circumstances of what’s going on in the world around us, now is clearly not the right time to do that. As insanely excited as we are for all of you to see this movie .. I’m gonna wait to release the film till we CAN all see it together! So here’s to our group movie date! See you soon!”

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A Quiet Place 2 was slated to begin its international rollout on March 18, with a UK debut expected on March 19 and a US release set for March 20. As of right now, Paramount has not scheduled a new release date for the highly anticipated movie, which is said to be both a prequel and a sequel to 2018’s A Quiet Place.

“After much consideration, and in light of the ongoing and developing situation concerning coronavirus and restrictions on global travel and public gatherings, Paramount Pictures will be moving the worldwide release of A Quiet Place Part II,” the studio said in a statement on Thursday. “We believe in and support the theatrical experience, and we look forward to bringing this film to audiences this year once we have a better understanding of the impact of this pandemic on the global theatrical marketplace.”

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This announcement comes shortly after No Time To Die, James Bond’s latest film, was pushed back from its planned April release to November 2020 “after careful consideration and thorough evaluation of the global theatrical marketplace.”

As previously reported by THR, the coronavirus outbreak may cause a $5 billion loss in the global film industry. Theatres in China have been closed since January, and “the virus is beginning to heavily impact moviegoing in South Korea, Italy and even Japan, the world’s third-biggest film market.”

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A Quiet Place was one of the surprise hits of 2018, taking in $188 million domestic and $340.9 million worldwide from just a $17 million budget – and one of only two original movies to crack the domestic box office top 20, alongside hit rom-com Crazy Rich Asians.

Early reactions to A Quiet Place: Part II have been very positive, with many critics addressing the unrelenting tension and suspense of the follow-up flick, hailing it as a worthy and terrifying successor to Krasinski’s original hit.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Nightdive Studios is working to bring back an enhanced version of the 1997 Blade Runner adventure game to PC (via Steam), Xbox One, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch later this year.

Originally developed by Westwood Studios (of Command and Conquer fame), the 1997 Blade Runner game tells a story set in the same cinematic universe, but with different characters. While the main character for the video game is a rookie Blade Runner named Ray McCoy, the events of the game take place at the same time as the 1982 Ridley Scott film.

Some events in the game even intersect with the movie, making the two companions of sorts. Actors from the original film like Sean Young reprised their roles in the video game for cameo appearances.

The Blade Runner video game was stuck in a legal rights battle but was finally re-released on GOG.com in December 2019. Nightdive will utilize its KEX game engine to restore Blade Runner for modern systems, similar to the work done on System Shock: Enhanced Edition, and Turok.

Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition will feature updated character models and animations, upscaled cutscenes, widescreen support, keyboard and controller customization, and other improvements. Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick says however that since so much of the original game was ahead of its time, that the studio will preserve Westwood’s vision and gameplay.

Meanwhile, the former members of Westwood Studios are working on their own remaster of the Command and Conquer series for EA.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.

The 1997 Blade Runner adventure game wasn’t a straight adaptation of Ridley Scott’s film or the original novel, but it received critical acclaim for its deep storytelling and atmosphere. More than two decades later, a new audience is going to get to play the game on everything from PC to Nintendo Switch.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Nightdive Studios and Alcon Entertainment are partnering on a remastered Blade Runner video game for Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam. Though the game’s original source code was lost and this could have made a new version impossible, Nightdive reverse-engineered the code and imported it into its own engine. It could then get to making improvements to everything from the character models to resolution.

Dubbed Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition, it’s designed to feel like what you remember rather than how it actually looked. To see for yourself, the original version is available on GOG now.

The timing couldn’t be much better for a remastered Blade Runner game. Like the original film, it’s set in the year 2019, though the series’ take on the “future” is considerably darker and features androids living among humans. Of course, that could still be true and the population could be in the dark about it.

Nightdive Studios is using its same internal KEX engine on remastered versions of Turok and System Shock. The latter game could be the only new System Shock project fans get for the foreseeable future, as the planned System Shock 3 has reportedly been halted and its developers are no longer employed.