Author: Trafficblast

The team on EA’s new Command & Conquer Remastered have been hard at work hunting down the original assets used in 1995, though some creativity is needed when files go missing.

EA has posted a new video with Producer Jim Vessella, chronicling his search for the original HD copies of Command & Conquer‘s iconic FMV cutscenes. The team decided that they had to use the original footage, as remaking the cutscenes would never be the same, but finding the files was a challenge.

While Vessella managed to track down archival tapes of the footage, it was only saved in a low quality VQA format. The only option left was to upscale the footage, using AI to improve resolution, increase frame rate, and improve the audio.

To get the best result, Vessella went to the community, with some fans having already worked on their own upscaling projects for C&C’s beloved FMV cutscenes. The final result was only possible with the help of fans, which underlines how much passion is going into this remake.

The result is shown as a side-by-side in the video, and while it’s not perfect, it’s still a smooth graphical update on some of the most iconic FMVs in gaming.

As a bonus, the team managed to unearth over four hours of never-before-seen B-roll footage, which will be packaged with the remake on release.

The team behind Command & Conquer Remastered continue to chronicle the work that goes into remastering a 25-year-old game, providing a fascinating insight into how remasters happen as well as the broader history of game development. You can read more about how the team dealt with lost audio files here.

With the news that Final Fantasy VII Remake will take place exclusively in Midgar, it’s not surprising that the city is going to be expanded and reworked. In the remake, the city will be a sprawling, living city–just to make you feel bad about blowing part of it up.

A new interview with producer Yoshinori Kitase and co-director Naoki Hamaguchi has revealed some of the thought that has gone into designing a larger, more complete Midgar.

In the original game, players only spent a few hours at the start of the game in Midgar, while the remake promises a full game’s worth of content in the city.

While this content will include a whole lot of side quests, environmental storytelling will be just as important in the streets of Midgar. “We really wanted to show the everyday lives of Midgar’s citizens,” said Kitase in the interview. “[Partly] to show how they lived in this massive city powered by Mako energy, how and when they’d be using it, to tell that aspect of the story.”

“The original version went straight into the bombing mission. We wanted that feeling that things were already underway, you were in the middle of the action. Yet if you immediately went from there into the panic caused by the bombing mission afterwards, you wouldn’t understand the impact it had on the inhabitants’ everyday lives before that event interrupted them. That’s why we started with this domestic kind of scene.”

The city’s expansion into a more lived-in place isn’t just window dressing–it’s carefully designed to make the player think about the consequences of their actions when they do undertake the bombing mission. “The player gets to see how the [Reactor bombing] impacts the city,” Hamaguchi said. “We want them to feel conflicted about the effects of their actions. That’s why we depicted this area in such detail.”

Eagle-eyed fans of the series may also notice that Midgar takes some of its aesthetic from Advent Children’s version of the city, in keeping with the decision to use the critically-panned 2005 movie as visual inspiration.

“We did refer to Advent Children and other previous series’ work when rebuild Midgar,” Hamaguchi said. “But one of the main things we actually set out to redo was the scale of the city itself. The original wasn’t that realistic if you consider the size of the individual buildings and how big they were in comparison to the overall city.”

You’ll be able to explore Midgar for yourself when Final Fantasy VII Remake launches on PS4 on April 10. A demo of the first act is available right now, and playing it will net you a free PS4 theme. Check out our impressions of the first four hours of the game, as well as our extensive pre-order guide to make sure you get your hands on the remake as soon as possible.

NHL 20 has received a new patch, but don’t expect much from it. The official patch notes for Patch 1.5.1 are just one sentence long, adding one new feature.

The March 8 update for NHL 20 adds content from the recently announced esports tournament, the 2020 NHL Gaming World Championship, for the Hockey Ultimate Team mode.

That’s it. That’s the update.

Some people on Twitter roasted EA Sports for this, including popular NHL streamer Nasher. He joked that this update was so large and substantial that it brought back the much-requested features like GM Connected mode and a story mode for Be A Pro. But this was just trolling. He joked that these features might be added in NHL 27.

The NHL Gaming World Championship starts qualifier matches on March 10. Anyone can take part in the online qualifiers for a chance to rise through the tournament and win $60,000. For more on the tournament, check out the detailed breakdown on NHL’s website.

Game of Thrones network HBO recently announced a partnership with Sony for a TV show based on The Last of Us, and now some new details about it have come to light. Or at least a new tease.

Neil Druckmann, who wrote The Last of Us and is also writing the TV show with Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin, has teased that The Last of Us TV show may feature characters from The Last of Us: Part II.

For International Women’s Day, HBO released a reel of some of its most iconic characters from across the network’s programs, including Game of Thrones, Big Little Lies, Westworld, and others. Druckmann re-tweeted the tweet with a cryptic caption.

“And now you have Ellie, Riley, Tess, Marlene, Maria, X X X X, and a few others! ;),” Druckmann said.

Druckmann left four blank spaces for one of the woman’s names, so people are speculating about who it might be. Some are suggesting Ellie’s mother, Anna, could appear. She was was spoken about but never seen in the first game. She is dead, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t appear in some capacity in the TV show.

As for the “few others,” this could be a reference to characters from The Last of Us: Part II. As announced previously, the HBO series will cover the events of the first game, “with the possibility of additional content based on the forthcoming game sequel.”

The Last of Us TV show also features Games of Thrones producer Carolyn Strauss, who has won five Emmys for Game of Thrones and Chernobyl, as an executive producer. Naughty Dog’s president, Evan Wells, is an executive producer as well.

The Last of Us was first announced as a movie from Sony Pictures, but IGN reports that the new TV show will be made instead of a movie.

There is no word yet on when HBO’s Last of Us TV show will premiere or who will star in it. Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson performed the voices and motion-capture for Joel and Ellie in the two main Last of Us games. The Last of Us: Part II launches in May exclusively for PS4.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is currently facing what sounds like a pretty big issue. In some cases, the game is not awarding XP after matches, which is pretty much the whole reason to play.

The issue was first acknowledged by Infinity Ward’s Twitter account earlier in the day on March 8, and then the studio said hours later that it’s still investigating the issue. “We’ll keep you updated and thank you again for your patience,” Infinity Ward said. So far, however, there is no timeline for when the fix will be available, or details on what was causing the problem in the first place.

A quick Twitter search for “modern warfare XP” shows that a lot of people are experiencing this issue, so hopefully it gets resolved quickly and that XP can be retroactively restored.

Modern Warfare is expected to add a new battle royale mode called Warzone in March. While this has yet to be confirmed, a lot of details about the mode have emerged ahead of time.

Modern Warfare also recently added a new pet, Tamagotchi-style creatures called Tomogunchi pets. It’s a bit confusing how they work, so check out this explainer to find out what you need to know to grow and evolve your pet.