The new Star Wars TV show, The Mandalorian, makes use of a variety of special effects that Lucasfilm created in partnership with iconic effects studio Industrial Light and Magic and Fortnite studio Epic Games. A new behind-the-scenes video showcases the fascinating technology that was used to bring The Mandalorian’s sets to life.
The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau says the technology, which uses Epic’s Unreal Engine to project scenes onto LED screens surrounding the physical set, will impact and influence how TV shows and movies are made in the future. In the video, it’s not hard to see why.
With LED screens in the background projecting anything imaginable, the actors on set can physically point at things and actually see what they’re looking it. Not only that, but this technology allowed the producers to have sunrises and sunsets that could last all day. They could also literally move mountains in the background because they’re digital. This opens up incredible new possibilities for digital filmmaking.”
Take a look at the full video to learn more about the new LED tech that was used in the making of The Mandalorian. Presumably this will continue for Season 2, which is due out in October 2020.
Like Season 1, the sophomore outing of The Mandalorian will stream exclusively on Disney+. Recently, Disney announced that the service had reached 28.6 million paying subscribers.
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The third Fighters Pass for Dragon Ball FighterZ was recently announced, and will begin on February 28 with the release of Kefla. She’ll be the first of five new characters coming to the game, with Ultra Instinct Goku and three unannounced warriors also joining the battle.
Bandai Namco has released video of a fight featuring Kefla, showing off her fast kicks and red ki blast attacks. It looks like she’ll move fast, and the video shows off some of her longer potential combos as she cuts through Frieza, Goku, and Vegeta.
Kefla, who debuted in Dragon Ball Super during the Tournament of Power, is a fusion character–she’s Universe 6 Saiyans Kale and Caulifla fused together. She joins Vegito, Gogeta, and Gotenks, the other fused Saiyan fighters in the game.
Her super move is pulled from her iconic battle against Ultra Instinct Goku–it’s a giant ki wave fired from both hands.
Dragon Ball FighterZ will feature in the Evo 2020 line-up in July, where we could potentially see combatants fighting using Kefla and any new fighters added to the game by then.
HBO’s critically acclaimed sci-fi series is coming back and bringing even more mystery in the war between hosts and huma
Westworld Season 3, is just around the corner. The final trailer dropped this morning, promising even more extravagant mysteries and brutal stunts as the war between the hosts–robots programmed to believe they’re human who previously only existed to be used by humans in torturous games–and the rest of humanity ramps up. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) is officially taking her fight to “our world”–or, well, that’s certainly how it seems. Given Westworld’s obsession with multiple timelines and deliberately befuddling nonlinear storytelling, it’s pretty much impossible to tell what is happening and when, especially in something like a trailer. But we still intend to try.
Team GameSpot has combed through every frame of the new trailer for every possible clue, hint, or reference to the past two seasons that may be hidden in the madness. There’s a World War 2 game of some sort, Aaron Paul is here now playing a new character named Caleb, and Bernard, Stubbs, and some other hosts who didn’t make it to the Sublime are still around and hanging out with Dolores. Oh, and Maeve’s still here too, somehow, despite the fact that we thought she entered the Sublime at the end of last season.
And we still don’t know who’s inside the host body designed to look like Hale.
Don’t worry, if you feel like your brain is starting to melt just thinking about this, you’re not alone. Let’s break down the new trailer and spin up some new theories before Season 3 arrives on March 18.
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1. Knitting an eyeball
The trailer’s opening shot of a synthetic eyeball being stitched together is a great reminder of the show’s themes of humanity and identity, not to mention the body horror that occasionally plays a part. It’s pretty, but also disturbing. Notably, although the eyeball close-up leads directly into a shot of Dolores shortly after waking up in the real world, actress Evan Rachel Wood’s eyes are blue, not brown–so this isn’t her eye we’re looking at.
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2. “I was born into this world”
It’s unclear when this scene takes place. At the end of Season 2, Dolores spoke with Bernard after finding a host “printer” in the real world. Hale and Dolores were both present, and it was unclear who was in Hale’s body. This trailer’s opening scene may be showing Dolores waking up in her new/old body before that conversation with Bernard at the end of Season 2, which makes Caleb’s presence particularly intriguing.
Caleb is the new character played by Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul. “You’ll see very early on that Caleb has a complicated past. He’s a little bit white hat, he’s a little bit black hat,” Paul said about the character during San Diego Comic Con last year. “He’s just trying to survive in the world and sometimes he has to do bad things.”
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3. Returning to the church
Our first shot of Bernard features him in a very familiar place–the white church from Escalante in ruins. It’s likely that this scene is in the past, considering Bernard’s post-resurrection status outside of the park.
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4. Is that you, Maeve?
This shot of someone–possibly Maeve?–walking through what looks like part of the park’s Mesa Hub is intriguing. She seems disoriented, like perhaps she’s just woken up, but beyond that there isn’t much to glean.
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5. Hale talking to Dolores
This shot appears to show Tessa Thompson’s character, Hale, talking to possibly Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), with tears in her eyes. Recall that, at the end of Season 2, Dolores had killed the real Hale and taken her place in a copy of her body, then created a new Dolores body for herself outside the park. At the end of Season 2, we no longer knew who was inhabiting the host version of Hale’s body.
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6. Putting some skin on
This is one of the few shots of the trailer that occurs in obvious sequence with something else. Dolores is putting her skin on after that moment with Caleb at the very beginning. Of course, this doesn’t tell us anything about when, where, or why this is happening in the context of the show–but, hey, at least it’s some continuity.
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7. George the robot
Caleb has a robot pal named George, which Aaron Paul spoke about at San Diego Comic-Con last year. “I have a robot. His name is George. He’s a very helpful robot and I love him. He’s red.” Thanks, Aaron.
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8. “They put you in a cage and decided what your life would be”
Dolores’s dialogue here seems to imply that Caleb may not be entirely human. This would jive with some of the winking-and-nudging that went on during the HBO panel at SDCC, where Aaron Paul described his character as a “construction worker” with heavy air quotes. Perhaps he’s a new kind of host, or maybe some other kind of synthetic life?
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9. “You’ve been watching me?” “Not me, but someone–something has”
Ominously, Dolores seems to know a lot about Caleb and when he asks her how, she says that something has been watching him. Not someone, something.
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10. GLaDOS?
The “something” line is cut pointedly over a shot of what looks like some sort of super computer–or maybe just an extremely fancy light fixture. It’s giving us some real GLaDOS vibes.
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11. “Who is it we’re going after?”
Caleb has some sort of squad supporting him, and they look like they stepped right out of Ghost In The Shell, which is pretty appropriate all things considered.
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12. “The person who took your future.”
Dolores tells Caleb that they’re going after “the person who took your future” while we see a shot of a man (played by Vincent Cassel) standing in what looks like a luxurious private jet. It seems like we’re supposed to believe that he’s the man who took Caleb’s future, which makes the next moment extremely interesting.
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13. Maeve gets a mission
We may not know who Vincent Cassel is playing, but we do learn that he’s got a mission for Maeve. What brings them together and what his possible vendetta against Dolores is, however, is still a mystery.
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14. Sweet Child Of Mine
Westworld sure does love a good piano cover. Here we get Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Sweet Child Of Mine. Pretty pointed as we’re seeing the hosts, which could be considered humanity’s children, gearing up to kill their creators.
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15. “Welcome to the end of the game”
We don’t really know what’s going on with the Man in Black (AKA William) here, but it seems likely that he’s a host and Dolores is delighting in, uh, torturing him maybe? “Welcome to the end of the game” certainly sounds like a threat, even though finding the end of the game was his central goal through Season 1.
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16. The second World War
Even the earliest Season 3 trailer featured scenes of what looks like a World War 2 version of the park, and we see one here as well–but without context, it’s impossible to tell if it’s real or some sort of simulation like the Sublime. Hector, a familiar host, is definitely there, though–and is that Maeve with him?
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17. Futuristic car chase
Westworld has never been short on action but this feels dramatically different from what we’ve seen in Season 1 and 2.
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18. We count five
Someone is creating a host as Hale (or, importantly, whoever it is in the host body that looks like Hale) explains the stakes: There are five of them–likely the five hosts that Dolores smuggled out of the park and that were not uploaded into the Sublime. Whoever the five are, they’re up against “an entire world of them,” as Host Hale says.
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19. Farm Bernard
Bernard apparently took up farming? Or maybe one of his past incarnations was programmed to be a farmer? We’re not sure why.
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20. Take me to the riot
Of course a world with technology advanced enough to make hosts would also have super cool Alien-flavored mechs. The one being presented to Hale here is labeled “riot control.” It looks like an ED-209 robot from RoboCop.
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21. “To save the f***ing world”
The voiceover here is a bit tricky–the shot is of a bloodied William inside a ruined mansion, saying he’s going to “save the f***ing world,” but the scene actually starts with another voice: Akecheta, the Ghost Nation host, saying that he finally knows his purpose. What could it be? As far as William is concerned, though, this moment seems to suggest he’ll be working against the hosts on behalf of humanity.
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22. It’s just a flesh wound
It seems like Dolores’s gambit doesn’t go completely according to plan. It even costs her an arm at some point. This moment is an interesting contrast to the trailer’s earlier shot of her pulling on her forearm skin.
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23. Who is shooting at her?
These action sequences are pretty intense–who is that with the submachine gun? Maybe Stubbs? It’s difficult to tell.
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24. Bernard and Stubbs have a plan
Dolores resurrected Bernard at the end of Season 2 despite suspecting that he won’t be her ally. That may have changed since then, though, because Bernard and Stubbs seem to be in on the plan.
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25. This is why you should learn CPR
Something horrible apparently happened on the beach. We’re not completely sure who these two characters are, but it looks like Caleb and possibly Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.). We haven’t seen Lawrence since he was killed back in Season 2, but given his status as a host, that doesn’t mean much.
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26. Car explosions galore
In keeping with the wild action in the rest of the trailer, we see a full-on car explosion here that looks straight out of a movie like The Dark Knight.
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27. No lifeguard on duty
There’s someone dead in a pool here, but the camera is too far away for us to see who it is.
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28. Dolores’s old fashioned way
In a conversation with Caleb, Dolores makes a pretty dark joke: Things either go according to plan, or she can do things the old fashioned way–murdering everyone. Given the tone of the trailer, we’re guessing it’s going to end up being the old fashioned way.
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29. Getting the band back together
Dolores is leading a full-on death squad in this scene, including Caleb (Aaron Paul’s character) and someone who might be Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth). The sign in the corner, with references to the Bonaventure Hotel and Figueroa St., reveals that they’re in Los Angeles.
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30. “You’re not the only predator here”
It’s unclear who Hale is talking to in this close-up. Recall, however, that we don’t actually know who’s inhabiting this body–unless this is a flashback, it’s likely one of the unidentified hosts who Dolores smuggled out of the park at the end of Season 2.
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31. Open wide
This shot of old William–the Man in Black–doesn’t reveal much, but it’s interesting to think about whether this is the “present day” version of the character, or the host version far in the future who we met in the final scene of Season 2.
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32. “The old gods are coming”
The graffiti on the wall here suggests that there may be a protest movement against Delos for creating the hosts. One tag reads “code this!” while the large symbol in red represents the maze.
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33. Maeve vs. Dolores
At the end of Season 2, Maeve went to the Sublime (robot heaven, essentially) to live “in peace” with the consciousnesses of the other hosts–but there was a very pointed suggestion that her body would be recovered by Delos technicians Felix and Sylvester. In Season 3, someone appears to have pulled her from that existence back into the real world, and set her against Dolores. Actress Thandie Newton is looking extremely badass here with her samurai sword.
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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company
If you’re looking for another blood-soaked action series with comic book sensibilities while you’re waiting for Season 2 of The Boys, Amazon is likely hoping that its new Al Pacino-fronted thriller, Hunters, makes it onto your watchlist.
Centered around a group of Nazi hunters in 1970s New York, led by Pacino’s Meyer Offerman (who recruits Logan Lerman’s naive young comic book aficionado, Jonah Heidelbaum, to the cause), Hunters was created by David Weil, who was inspired by his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, to tell a fantastical but all-too relevant tale about a young Jewish kid who is able to reclaim power from his oppressors.
“She would tell me stories about her time during the war. And as a young kid, five, six years old, hearing those stories, they felt like the stuff of comic books and superheroes. And as I got older I struggled with that feeling of birthright: What was my responsibility now to continue her story? So many Holocaust survivors are no longer with us and that community is growing smaller and smaller by the year,” Weil pointed out during Amazon’s presentation at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. “And so for me this was a love letter to my grandmother. It was a quest to don that vigilante cape in the face of rising antisemitism in the world, racism, xenophobia. It was a desire to shed light on hidden crimes and hidden truths. And it was also kind of a desire to create a sense of catharsis and wish fulfillment for a young Jewish kid growing up on Long Island who wanted to see superheroes who looked like him on screen.”
IGN has an exclusive sneak peek at the show’s stylized opening credits, showing Meyer’s band of hunters set against the Nazi leaders who have infiltrated US society, including those played by Dylan Baker and Lena Olin.
The cast also includes Jerrika Hinton, Josh Radnor, Carol Kane, Tiffany Boone, Greg Austin, Louis Ozawa, Kate Mulvany, and Saul Rubinek, and was executive produced by Jordan Peele through his Monkeypaw Productions banner, alongside executive producer Nikki Toscano and Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who directed the first episode.
Pacino also shared what attracted him to the TV series when speaking to critics: “There’s an originality in this show and it’s somewhat eccentric. And all of a sudden you’ll see it from certain angles… There are a lot of elements in it that catch you off guard, and that’s part of the interest. It holds your interest because you never know when a joke is going to come,” he said. “That was what really appealed to me when I read it, that there was this element [that] things are not what they seem.”
Watch the red-band trailer for Amazon’s Hunters below:
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) recently released released patch 6.2 on PC, adding a team deathmatch mode to the game. The update will make its way to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game soon too, and is now available on the Public Test Server.
Beyond everything else included in the patch, this update will finally allow players to make cross-platform parties, meaning that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players can party up before the beginning of a match.
While cross-play has been available for some time now, this is a new feature, and it’ll make it much easier for players to team up with their friends on other systems. Previously, a PUBG match could be populated with players from either console, but parties could only be formed by players on the same console; as of 6.2, that restriction will no longer be in place.
Console Players: Update 6.2 is now available on the PTS! Drop in to test Cross Party Play, which allows Xbox and PS4 players to party up together! Team Deathmatch, grenade balance, Karakin loot changes, and more are also available for testing. https://t.co/uSxzFfDESD
This means that the game, which was once an Xbox One console exclusive, will now bring let PS4 and Xbox One gamers play together more easily than ever.
PUBG is currently available through Xbox Game Pass, which costs $10 a month. You can currently get Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $1 for your first month and $15 a month after that–Ultimate includes Game Pass for console and PC as well as Xbox Live Gold. You can purchase PUBG for $30 on PS4.
PUBG Season 6 is currently underway, and a new map, Karakin, was recently added to the popular battle royale shooter.
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Red Dead Redemption 2 now lets PC players grab a cup of “Hot Coffee,” if you catch my drift. But if you weren’t around for the halcyon days of 2005 then strap yourself in, because this is kind of funny.
The mod is a reference to the infamous “Hot Coffee mod” from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It’s a mod that allowed players to take control of the protagonist CJ as they have sex with one of his girlfriends. The encounter was originally designed as a minigame but the developers eventually decided to keep the content hidden. It would not be unlockable at all through gameplay.
Instead, it took until a year later in 2005 when San Andreas released on Windows that modders were able to unlock the previously blocked content. While the mod is decidedly un-sexy and awkward, it created a pretty big scandal, and San Andreas became rated AO for Adults Only.
Unlike the San Andreas mod, the Hot Coffee mod for Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t unlocked content the devs kept hidden, but a deliberate homage. The mod lets players take control of Arthur Morgan during his boozy trip to the saloon where he can woo one of the patrons and take them back to a hotel room. Like in San Andreas, the Red Dead Redemption 2 version of the mod is also not sexy, and all characters involved are clothed, and the voice lines are just generic ones from the game repurposed for the mod.
Although the mod is clearly a joking reference to an older era of Rockstar Games, the developer and publisher Take-Two are reportedly unhappy with it. One of the modders confirmed to PCGamesN that they were contacted by Take-Two to take down the mod. This isn’t surprising considering Take-Two had to settle with the FTC following the fallout of the hot coffee mod, and later versions of the game completely removed the content.
There was some question about whether or not Red Dead Redemption 2 would support mods on PC ahead of its release, but Rockstar declined to comment on the matter. But it appears now that the PC version can support mods, even if the developers don’t approve of them.
The NFL season ended earlier this month with Super Bowl 54, but EA Sports has not stopped supporting Madden NFL 20 with new updates. The latest patch has arrived, and the most notable introduction is related to the Super Bowl.
Specifically, the playbook has been updated with new plays and formations that were seen in Super Bowl 54. There are many new plays added to the playbook, including the memorable Jet Chip Wasp from the pivotal 3rd and 15 first-down conversion by Patrick Mahomes to Tyreek Hill. It’s part of the Gun Trey Y-Flex Weak formation, which you can see below.
You can see a full list of new plays that are now available in the patch notes below. In addition to the new plays, the Madden 20 update fixes a bug that allowed quarterbacks to abort the hand-off animation during certain reverse plays.
Additionally, Franchise mode in Madden 20 has been updated with improvements for stability and connectivity. The update also fixes a bug that caused the “Route Runner” player archetype from reaching higher overall ratings.
The February 20 patch for Madden 20 weighs in at around 2 GB on Xbox One, and it should be around the same for PS4 and PC.
Madden 20 February 20 Patch Notes
Franchise Updates
General stability and Connectivity improvements
Fixed an issue with the ‘Route Runner’ Wide Receiver Archetype data that prevented those players from reaching a high OVR via progression
DEV NOTE:List of ‘Route Runner’ Archetype players that were most likely to demonstrate this problem as they progress in Franchise leagues:
Michael Thomas
Davante Adams
Julian Edelman
Tyler Boyd
Keenan Allen
Amari Cooper
Julio Jones
Cooper Kupp
Stefon Diggs
Gameplay Updates
NFL Live Playbook Updates:
Added Gun Trey Y-Flex Weak offensive package to Chiefs NFL Live Playbook, which includes the Jet Chip Wasp play from the 3rd & 15 first-down conversion from Patrick Mahomes to Tyreek Hill in Super Bowl 54
Added I-Form Pro PA TE Screen and Singleback Deuce Close PA Boot Corner Post to 49ers NFL Live Playbook
Added Singeback Deuce Close PA Slide TE Screen to 49ers, Broncos, Bengals, Falcons, Packers, Rams, Seahawks and Titans NFL Live Playbooks
Added Singleback Wing Slot PA Y Screen to Buccaneers and Vikings NFL Live Playbooks
Added Far Pro offensive formation to Browns NFL Live Playbook
Added Split Slot offensive formation to Bears NFL Live Playbook
Quarter Overload defensive formation added to Buccaneers, Cardinals, Ravens and Titans NFL Live Playbooks
Added Dime Rush defensive formation to Eagles, Jaguars and Redskins NFL Live Playbooks
Added 4-3 Even 6-1 defensive formation to Broncos and Seahawks NFL Live Playbooks
Fixed an issue causing zone swapping in 46 Cub Tampa 2
For the NFL Live Playbooks, updated offensive play-call AI to reflect the run/pass ratios for all teams based on the 2019 NFL Season data
DEV NOTE:As a reminder, NFL Live Playbooks can be found by toggling them on in the Team Select settings screen or via the Settings Menu on the Main Menu. In Franchise, these alternate playbooks can be toggled on for both users and AI teams by toggling them on via the Franchise Settings menu.
Fixed an issue allowing the QB to abort the hand-off animation when flipping a specific reverse play
You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We’re all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.
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Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.
It seems unlikely that Media Molecule will return to the Little Big Planet franchise, at least not anytime soon or with a direct sequel. Studio director Siobhan Reddy said in a new interview that the studio is “all-in” on its recently launched game-creation game, Dreams, leaving no bandwidth for more LittleBigPlanet games from the team.
“We’re all-in all Dreams,” Reddy said. “That’s what we’re all doing right now. We’ve got so many plans, and we are a really small team. It’s going to take every one of us, working on it together to get through all those plans that we have.”
As Reddy mentioned, Media Molecule is a relatively small studio by AAA standards, with around 50 people on staff. The company has an extensive roadmap of ongoing support and content for Dreams, which is taking up the studio’s time currently.
Reddy teased that, while Dreams is Media Molecule’s sole focus at the moment, the studio plans to add “cool stuff” within Dreams, and this could potentially be themed around LBP.
“We love LBP and LBP will always be our baby. Dreams is our spiritual successor to it. At this very point, the plan for us is for Dreams to be our main focus and to make the cool stuff we want to make in that, but who knows what that content will be,” she said. “But it will be in Dreams.”
The first LittleBigPlanet launched in 2008 for the PS3, with LittleBigPlanet 2 arriving in 2011. The third game. LittleBigPlanet 3, was developed by Sumo Digital and released in 2014. It marked the first release in the mainline series to be developed by an outside studio, though Media Molecule did consult on the game.
Also in our interview, Reddy reacted to the launch of Dreams, which was received very positively from reviewers and fans alike. “I think we’re all a little bit dazed, if I’m honest,” she said. “Delighted that people are enjoying it. It’s now that moment where we can step back a bit and see what it actually is. We still have that nervousness of a new product that’s out there, so you know, it’s complex emotions–but all good!”
Reddy went on to say that the studio is feeling “really good” about Dreams, and she remarked that it’s been brilliant to see all the different user creations come online. “It’s suddenly like, ‘Oh wow, it’s alive,'” Reddy said.
The developer also told us that Media Molecule is currently thinking about the possibility for a Dreams marketplace where creators may be able to sell their content on PlayStation Network for anyone to play. The specifics about how all of this will work is complicated, and Reddy said more details will come later.
“We’re not quite ready to announce anything on any of that as yet. We’ve always had a dream that people from the community would be able to figure out content that would be published on PSN,” she said. “But the details of that, there are so many details about that, from the idea and the execution of that. There will be more to talk about in time, on all of that.”
In our conversation, Reddy mentioned multiple times that Media Molecule has an ongoing support roadmap for Dreams that extends through the year. The next big update with all PlayStation VR support, but what might come next? It’s too soon to say, but many are wondering if Dreams will support PlayStation 5, which launches later this year.
Reddy wouldn’t be drawn into commenting on this. “We’re not talking about PlayStation 5 just yet,” she said. “So I need to not talk about that.”
It seems likely that Dreams will be on PS5 as well, as Media Molecule co-founder Mark Healy recently spoke about how it’s an “obvious progression” to move Dreams from PS4 to PS5.
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