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Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan to Return in Picard Season 2

Star Trek: The Next Generation fans can expect to see another familiar face in Star Trek: Picard’s second season. Star Patrick Stewart has invited Goldberg to reprise her role as the sage bartender Guinan in Season 2.

Stewart made the gesture during an appearance on The View, which is co-hosted by Goldberg. The actor, who plays Jean-Luc Picard, made it clear he wasn’t merely wishing for Goldberg to return, but formally passing along an offer from executive producer Alex Kurtzman and the producing team. Goldberg happily accepted, which seems to confirm she’ll indeed be appearing in Season 2.

Goldberg as Guinan and Stewart as Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Goldberg as Guinan and Stewart as Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

You can see a clip of Goldberg and Stewart’s conversation on The View’s official Twitter feed.

In response to Stewart’s offer, Goldberg told her audience, “I’ve said it on this show before, but Star Trek was one of the great experiences from the beginning to the end. I had the best, best, best time.”

Ever the gentleman, Stewart responded, “It was wonderful having you, and we cannot wait to have you with us again one more time.”

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This news serves as our first taste of what’s to come in Season 2, which was officially greenlit in January 2020, just ahead of the show’s January 23 premiere. Previously, Deadline reported Season 2 will be 10 episodes in length.

For more on what to expect from the newest Star Trek series, find out which Trek timeline Picard takes place and which version of Data could be appearing in the show.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Xbox Streaming Service xCloud Comes To Canada Next Week

Microsoft’s Netflix-style game-streaming service, Project xCloud, is expanding its global rollout. The beta for the service is launching soon in Canada. This will be the fourth region where xCloud is now available, following the US, UK, and Korea.

“Canada has been one of the top-requested markets for expansion and we’re delighted to deliver for gamers in Canada starting next week,” xCloud boss Catherine Gluckstein said in a statement.

xCloud will launch in Canada on January 29. Players can register for the beta on Microsoft’s website. In all parts of the world, access to the xCloud beta is available by invitation only. If you don’t get in right away, keep checking back, as Microsoft says it will invite more players in over time.

The launch of xCloud in Canada comes just days after Microsoft beefed up the catalogue with nine more titles, including Destiny 2 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

As for other regions of the world, Gluckstein said Microsoft plans to launch xCloud in additional markets “in due course.”

The first public preview for Project xCloud launches in October 2019. The service allows players to stream Xbox games from the cloud to their mobile device over Wifi or a mobile network without the need to own an Xbox. The program currently only supports Android devices.

Project xCloud is separate from Microsoft’s Xbox console streaming program which allows players to stream games from their home console to their mobile device.

Now Playing: Project xCloud – Official Trailer

Tencent Plans To Fully Own Conan Exiles Developer Starting In February

Chinese megacorporation Tencent has announced plans to purchase all of Funcom. The acquisition, valued at about $148 million USD, will allegedly have no impact on how Funcom presently operates as a studio.

Tencent explained that the studio’s “impressive” nearly 30-year history is why the company has opted to acquire all Funcom shares. “We are impressed by Funcom’s strengths as a developer of open-world multiplayer, action and survival games,” senior vice president Steven Ma said in a press release. “Funcom has a strong track record in developing new titles with long [lifespans]. We are glad to deepen our relationship with Funcom and look forward to collaborating with Funcom to deliver more exciting and enjoyable game experiences to fans worldwide.”

Funcom is a Norwegian-based studio founded in 1993. The developer has dabbled in a variety of game genres, including puzzlers and sports titles, but Funcom is best known for its interpretation of Conan the Barbarian. 2018’s Conan Exiles, an action-survival game, is the studio’s latest iteration in the franchise. Funcom also published 2018’s Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, a turn-based tactical-RPG.

Funcom expressed excitement about deepening its relationship with Tencent and is looking forward to the future. “We have had a great relationship with Tencent as our largest shareholder so far and we are excited about this opportunity,” CEO Rui Casais said. “We will continue to develop great games that people all over the world will play, and we believe that the support of Tencent will take Funcom to the next level.”

Despite Tencent preparing to fully own Funcom, the studio has made it clear that the acquisition doesn’t affect its management, staffing or structure. In fact, Funcom said it will “remain an independent business.”

Tencent has a stake in many of the video games industry’s business companies, including Activision Blizzard, Bluehole (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds), Epic Games, Glu Mobile (Baldur’s Gate), Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile), Paradox Interactive (Pillars of Eternity), Riot Games, Supercell (Clash of Clans), Ubisoft, and more.

Now Playing: Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden – Nintendo Switch Announcement Trailer

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All Of Terminator Dark Fate’s Mexico Scenes Were Shot 5,000 Miles From The Country

Movie locations can be a tricky thing. Sometimes, you can’t shoot somewhere because of the cost. Sometimes, it’s politics. However, one thing the Terminator: Dark Fate home release revealed is that every shot from Mexico–the central location for the majority of the movie–didn’t even take place in that country. It was all shot in Spain.

That odd fact is revealed on the “World Builders” featurette, which is included in the home release of Terminator: Dark Fate. The creators behind the movie discussed making Spain look like Mexico. “Spain is a good double for Mexico,” explained production designer Sonja Klaus. “It’s often used because of the topography, the light, the shapes that you get.”

But why couldn’t Dark Fate take place south of the American border? “A lot of the movie takes place in Mexico and the southern US,” said director Tim Miller during the featurette. “And we couldn’t go to Mexico for a variety of reasons, so we shot 30-some days in Spain.”

While this probably comes as quite a surprise to people who saw the movie, it’s a relatively common practice in Hollywood. Many TV shows and movies find themselves filming the movie elsewhere. The first Wayne’s World movie, which takes place in the far west Chicago suburb of Illinois, only has one shot in the entire film of that city–a quick look at a local White Castle, on the outskirts of Aurora. Why this Dark Fate revelation is a great accomplishment is because the set decorators and dressers really pulled this feat off exceptionally well, even though they filmed 5,000 miles away from the story’s location.

In GameSpot’s review of Terminator: Dark Fate, Michael Rougeau said, “Terminator: Dark Fate doesn’t set a new bar for action movies like Terminator 2 did back in 1991. But that’s not a realistic expectation–T2 was a once-in-a-generation kind of film. What Dark Fate does is establish a new–if-familiar–jumping-off point from which the Terminator series can hopefully move forward. It breaks the cycle of terrible Terminator sequels and spin-offs, and begins a new, brighter timeline. Humanity may always be its own worst enemy, but Dark Fate proves that we at least have the capacity to make some more kick-ass Terminator movies before judgment day arrives.”

Terminator: Dark Fate special features:

4K UHD Blu-ray combo features:

  • Deleted and Extended Scenes
  • A Legend Reforged
  • World Builders
  • Dam Busters: The Final Showdown
  • VFX Breakdown: The Dragonfly

Digital only features:

  • Creating a New Threat
  • Future Tech
  • Previz Sequences
  • Factory Fight
  • Air Battle to Humvee Falling
  • Humvee Dam
  • Commentary by director Tim Miller and editor Julian Clarke
  • Deleted scenes introduction and commentary by Tim Miller

Terminator: Dark Fate is available now and comes to 4K and Blu-ray on January 28.

The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

The 11 Most Bizarre Moments Throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation

The final frontier was filled with weirdness.

The final frontier was filled with weirdness.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, like all Star Trek television shows, is sanctified by the passage of time. There aren 178 TNG episodes; the sheer volume and relative consistency means that the great episodes rise to the forefront of our memories, and the remaining ones blur together as solid Trek.

It also helps that Star Trek: The Next Generation was a character-driven show rather than a plot-driven one. People may have tuned in for the science fiction, but they stayed for the characters–the senior crew that included iconic, sympathetic characters like Data, Worf, and of course, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The characters redeem even the worst episodes; we may not remember the details of yet another hostile alien race that attempted to take over the ship, but we always felt reassured that Picard would fight them off, most likely by using his words instead of a photon torpedo.

The show’s most jarring moments are when the main players behave wildly out of character. Many of these moments are from the first season, when the show was finding its footing. Others were the result of failed comedy or left-field premises.

As we get ready for Star Trek: Picard, which debuts on CBS All Access on January 23, 2020, we’re looking back at the good Captain’s illustrious career. Here are the 10 most bizarre moments from Star Trek: The Next Generation. And if you liked this gallery, check out our galleries on the greatest TNG Picard episodes, the most badass Picard moments, and everything you need to know about the Borg.

Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

Was a Young Kanan Jarrus in the Newest Clone Wars Trailer?

SPOILERS AHEAD for Star Wars Rebels.

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A brand-new trailer for the seventh and final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars has been released and, while it gave us another glimpse at some of our favorite characters (Ahsoka!) from the show that hasn’t aired since 2014, it also appears to show a young Kanan Jarrus from Star Wars Rebels.

Spotted by those like @ThomasLHarper on Twitter around the 25-second mark, viewers can catch a glimpse of a young Padawan standing next to Jedi Master Depa Billaba.

KananAs was revealed in Star Wars Rebels and expanded upon in works like the comic series Star Wars: Kanan – The Last Padawan, that boy was named Caleb Dume and would grow up to take the name Kanan Jarrus following the tragic events of Order 66.

During Order 66 on the planet Kaller, Master Billaba sacrificed herself to save Dume and he ended up meeting a smuggler named Janus Kasmir. He was forced to hide that he was a Jedi and had to learn to live as a fugitive to survive in a world where Jedi were being openly hunted.

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Dume went so far as to abandon his name and past, and thus became Kanan Jarrus. While he was lost in his purpose for a while, he eventually ran into a Twi’lek female named Hera Syndulla and the rest, they say, is on Disney+. Seriously, go watch Star Wars Rebels.

While we don’t know if we will see or learn more about Caleb Dume besides this one cameo, it is pretty clear that this final season will venture into the timeline of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. What’s even more, it appears we will see scenes from Episode III played out in animation form, as you can see below from @ImmortalSoldier.

There are other small Easter Eggs in this trailer that hint at the ROTS timeline, including the shot of Anakin and a seemingly-pregnant Padme holding virtual hands by @Sithreeepio. We know Anakin didn’t find out she was pregnant until the third film, so this would indicate the timelines will be crossing.

Screenshot_2020-01-22 (1) Memo on Twitter Padmé holding her belly she's pregnant here right https t co 9pHeQwJzIC TwitterThis also backs up previous statements by both Dave Filoni and Pablo Hidalgo in 2015 who had hinted that, before its cancellation, there were plans for Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ final episodes to have taken place after Revenge of the Sith.

It won’t be long until we all find out the truth when we return to our favorite galaxy far, far away for Star Wars: The Clone Wars final twelve episodes on February 21, 2020.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN who can’t wait and is so excited he just can’t hide it. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Hellblade 2 Will Show How “Suffering Shapes Myths, Gods, And Religion,” Says Dev

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is one of the three upcoming projects coming from Ninja Theory designed under the developer’s mission to craft life-changing art with game-changing tech–the third of which, Project: Mara, was just announced. In a YouTube dev diary, Ninja Theory revealed what type of story Hellblade II will tell.

“While Hellblade gave us a very personal insight into psychosis, this sequel builds on that to show how madness and suffering shapes myths, gods, and religion,” Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades said. “Our goal is to make an experience comparable to the epic myths and sagas of old.”

Antoniades continued: “The team will be about twice the size of Hellblade’s team–still very small by triple-A standards, but it aims to prove that small teams can achieve great things using procedural technologies and smart tools.” Earlier in the dev diary, Ninja Theory commercial director Dom Matthews said that the team behind the original Hellblade was composed of 20 people, so we can infer about 40 people are on the team working on Hellblade II.

Hellblade II was announced alongside the reveal of Xbox Series X, Microsoft’s next-gen console. The first game, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, launched as a limited-time PS4 console exclusive in 2017, before releasing on Xbox One in 2018 and Nintendo Switch in 2019. The game is currently included in Xbox Game Pass.

In GameSpot’s Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice review, Alessandro Fillari wrote, “Hellblade’s most notable achievement is the handling of an incredibly sensitive subject matter within an engaging and well-crafted action/adventure game. At its heart, the story is about Senua’s struggle to come to terms with her illness. In the process, she learns to find the strength within herself to endure and to make peace with her past. And in a profound and physical way, we go through those same struggles with her, and come away with a better understanding of a piece of something that many people in the world struggle with.”

Now Playing: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – In Engine Announce Trailer

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Goat Simulator-Like Deeeer Simulator Sure Is Something

In case a goat or goose wasn’t enough for your gaming simulation needs, a brand-new game has debuted in early access on Steam in the same wheelhouse as Goat Simulator and Untitled Goose Game. Deeeer Simulator lets you embody a deer capable of some wacky and ridiculous feats, and it’s available now for PC.

Deeeer Simulator is a “slow-life town destruction game” in which you wreak havoc as a deer. The deer can latch onto surfaces and swing around with its stretchy neck, sprint on its hindlegs and ride horses like a human, and even combine with various other animals to create a Megazord-like deer. It’s all pretty comical.

The game shares a lot of DNA with Goat Simulator–particularly its goofy physics-based gameplay. Not only can the deer use cows as jetpacks and terrorize the cityscape on a dragon, but it can also swap out its antlers for dual pistols a la Lara Croft. And these pistols, of course, completely obliterate trees.

You can check out more than an hour of gameplay above. And, in case you’re wondering if your machine can handle it, we’ve embedded Deeeer Simulator’s minimum PC requirements below.

Deeeer Simulator’s PC requirements

  • OS: Windows 7 or Newer
  • Processor: Core i3-3120M
  • Memory: 2 MB RAM
  • Graphics: intel graphics 4000
  • DirectX: Version 9.0
  • Storage: 1 GB available space

Deeer Simulator is currently 10% off, slashing its price to $11.69 USD until January 27. Once the game leaves early access in 2021, however, the price will increase as “more content [becomes available] in the future.” A console port has not been announced.

Now Playing: We Terrorize Humans in DEEEER Simulator

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Knives Out: Blu-ray Home Release Date And Special Features Revealed

After making a killing (Get it?) at the box office earning a Best Original Screenplay nomination at the Academy Awards, Knives Out is heading to home release to let you solve the murder mystery in the comfort of your very own living room. The movie from director Rian Johnson is heading to digital release on February 7, with Blu-Ray, 4K Ultra HD, and DVD releases following on February 25.

The whodunnit thriller stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas, and so many more in a story about an eccentric family trying to figure out who killed off their patriarch. In his Knives Out review, GameSpot’s Rafael Motamayor wrote of the film, “when it comes to making a movie that’s entertaining, thoughtful, sharply written, and undeniably creative, Rian Johnson is guilty as charged.”

Now you’ll be able to experience the mystery yourself, as well as a host of special features. From deleted scenes to audio commentaries, Johnson and the Knives Out team have packed the release with all kinds of bonus content to make it worthwhile. You can take a look at the list of features below.

Special features:

  • Audio Commentary by Writer-Director Rian Johnson, Director of Photography Steve Yedlin, and Actor Noah SeganIn-Theatre Commentary by Rian Johnson
  • Deleted Scene: “Bicycling Accident” (with Optional Audio Commentary by Rian Johnson)
  • Deleted Scene: “Don’t Do Anything Rash” (with Optional Audio Commentary by Rian Johnson)
  • “Making a Murder” Eight-Part Documentary
  • “Rian Johnson: Planning the Perfect Murder” Featurette
  • Writer-Director and Cast Q&A
  • Marketing Gallery
  • “Meet the Thrombeys” Viral Ads

Knives Out hits digital release on February 6. Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD, and DVD arrive on February 25.

Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

Now Playing: Knives Out – Official Trailer

Flash Deal: The Division 2 For $9 (And More PC Games For Cheap)

Lunar New Year kicks off this week, and to celebrate, a ton of games retailers are offering huge sales. So far, we’ve seen an impressive offering of deals from stores like Fanatical and Xbox Live, but there’s a new sale live now at Ubisoft you won’t want to miss if you’re a fan of The Division, Assassin’s Creed, or other popular Ubisoft franchises. The highlight of the sale is an incredible discount on The Division 2, but it’s only available for a very short time. Keep in mind any games purchased directly from Ubisoft will be playable through the publisher’s own launcher, Uplay.

The Division 2 released a little less than a year ago, but if you’re a PC gamer who never picked it up, now’s the time to do so. For today only, you can snag The Division 2 standard edition for just 9 bucks as part of a Lunar New Year flash sale. The premium editions are discounted as well, with the Gold Edition selling for just $15 and Ultimate Edition selling for $18. Each of those premium editions includes the Year 1 Pass and bonus content, so you might want to go ahead and upgrade since it’s that cheap. The Year 1 Pass is also on sale for just $10 (down from $40) if you’d rather snag that separately.

The fantastic shooter earned a 9/10 in GameSpot’s The Division 2 review. “The range of enemy types continues to keep combat encounters challenging, the equipment I earn and pick up continues to feel different, valuable, and asks me to consider new ways of play,” wrote Edmond Tran. “The ravaged environments continue to intrigue, and sometimes they’re so stunning I find myself needing to take screenshots before I move on. It might not have much to say, but The Division 2 is a perpetual cycle of tension, relief, and reward that’s difficult to stay away from.”

If you already own The Division 2 or just aren’t interested, more flash deals will be kicking off as Ubisoft’s sale continues. The next flash deal will be revealed on January 23 and available for 24 hours.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other games discounted for the next week. The Lunar New Year sale features big discounts on Rainbow Six Siege ($6), Assassin’s Creed Odyssey ($24), Ghost Recon Breakpoint ($24), and Far Cry 5 ($15). The sale also includes apparel and collectibles for up to 67% off. You can see our picks for the best game deals below, or check out everything on offer directly at Ubisoft. The Lunar New Year deals will be available until January 30.

Best game deals at Ubisoft

Now Playing: The Division 2 Won’t Disappoint Solo Players

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