Author: Trafficblast

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Being a Star Trek fan can be difficult. After all, there are so many different casts scattered between the various TV shows and movies, not to mention more than one timeline. Most of Trek–including Star Trek: The Next Generation–is set in what has been dubbed the Prime timeline. However, the 2009 movie from JJ Abrams, which essentially served as a reboot, was dubbed the Kelvin timeline. Given that’s confined to those films, it should be easy to tell them apart. Unfortunately, the 2009 film also crossed over with the Prime timeline.

So where does the latest addition to the franchise, Star Trek: Picard, live? Thankfully, executive producer Alex Kurtzman cleared up any confusion at the TCA winter press tour panel for the show. “We’re in the prime timeline,” he explained. “Events from the Kelvin timeline impacted Picard, but if you look at that movie, the destruction of Romulus was in the Prime timeline. It is what enabled the Kelvin timeline jump to happen. So that is very consistent with canon.”

While it makes complete sense for Picard to be set in the Prime timeline, it’s an interesting question to think of in light of the Viacom/CBS merger, which brings the films produced by Paramount Pictures under the same corporate umbrella as the expanding Star Trek presence on TV and streaming. As for whether this series could end up a movie itself, Kurtzman isn’t closing the door on that possibility, but notes there has to be a reason to take it to the big screen. “What can we do in the movie that we can’t do on the television show? That’s the only reason to do it,” he said.

Picard picks up years after the end of The Next Generation and finds the titular captain living a reclusive life on Earth, long-retired from Starfleet. Patrick Stewart returns to the role he made famous and will be joined by a host of familiar faces from The Next Generation–Brent Spiner as Data, Jonathan Frakes as Riker, and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi. Additionally, Jeri Ryan will reprise her role as Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager. For more about Picard, make sure to check out our guide to everything we’ve learned thus far, plus a look at why Picard’s dog may be one of the show’s most important characters.

Star Trek: Picard debuts on CBS All Access on January 23.

Disclosure: CBS All Access is owned by ViacomCBS, GameSpot’s parent company.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

The Switch has a great controller in the Pro Controller, but many gamers (especially fans of Super Smash Bros. Melee) cannot look past the GameCube controller, so much so that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate still supports it. But if you’re playing in handheld mode, you’re out of luck, with no official GameCube controller-shaped Joy-Cons available–which is why one console modder took it upon themselves to build some.

Shank Mods‘ creation was made by tearing down a pair of standard Joy-Cons and recreating them inside the half-shells of a GameCube controller. This is not a theoretical render, but rather a new pair of working Joy-Con controllers that each look and feel like half a GameCube controller.

In the video below, Shank shows how he did it (it took months of work and involved 3D printing some parts,) and how they work.

The process of making the controller is pretty involved, as the Joy-Con pair features different buttons compared to the GameCube controller.

Shank even creates a Joy-Con cradle, so you can use the two halves snapped together like a Wavebird. These Joy-Con controllers he has created are compatible with any games that you can use the Joy-Con with, and feature gyro controls and amiibo support.

Unfortunately, the GameCube Joy-Con is not available as a commercial product.

Star Trek: Picard is days away from debuting on CBS All Access, and at the TCA winter press tour, series star Patrick Stewart reminisced about his days working on The Next Generation and why Star Trek is still relevant.

The original Star Trek series first debuted in 1966, and more than half a century later, it’s still part of pop culture. But why? “Hope,” Stewart stated. “It is the dominant emotion behind everything we did on The Next Generation and as I’m beginning to discover, on Picard too. It has always been part of the content of Star Trek that it will attempt to create a better future with the set belief that a better future is possible.”

While Stewart wasn’t a part of the original series, his iconic character Jean-Luc Picard first made his debut in 1987 on The Next Generation, arguably one of the most important science fiction television series of all time. He portrayed that character up until his final appearance in the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis. “I was proud of the work we did in seven years on the series and the four movies we made,” said Stewart. “That brought the franchise to a close. I was very content with that because I felt, as I said, very proud of the work we’d done, the context in which the work was done.”

Coming back to the character didn’t seem to be a huge obstacle to Stewart, since Picard is just as much a part of him, as he is of the Starfleet Captain. “It has been far easier than I expected to make this transition nearly 20 years later. Because, as I’ve said, the man exists inside of me. We’ve talked for days about the backstory, what happened in those 20 years. Little snippets of the backstory will creep into the series because it’s important our audience gets to know why we are living in the world that we are.”

Picard follows the former Starfleet Captain, years after the end of TNG, as he lives on Earth. There will be plenty of familiar faces popping up from the beloved Star Trek series like Brent Spiner as Data, Jonathan Frakes as Riker, and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi. And don’t worry Voyager fans, Jeri Ryan will also be appearing as Seven of Nine.

For more on Picard, check out the announcement for Season 2 of the series, along with series star Patrick Stewart discussing why there is a dog on the show and how Picard fits into the already confusing Star Trek timeline.

Star Trek: Picard debuts on CBS All Access on January 23.

Disclosure: CBS All Access is owned by ViacomCBS, GameSpot’s parent company.

While the CBS All Access series Star Trek: Picard hasn’t aired yet, it’s already gotten the green light for a second season. But before the series airs, the show’s star Patrick Stewart explains just where Jean-Luc Picard’s dog, which we’ve seen in one of the promotional posters for the series, comes from.

At the TCA winter press tour, Picard had a presentation where Stewart was in attendance discussion the upcoming All Access series, including how this dog was incorporated into the series. “Like so many things on this show, it has a great deal to do with me,” Patrick jokingly explained. “The dog was my idea.”

“Picard’s life has changed. He’s troubled, disturbed, lonely, and with feelings of a strange, unnatural guilt. To just see him with a dog seemed to me to write a lot of things that didn’t have to be said. Because the presence of the dog alone shows he is looking for some form of comfort, which he can’t find anywhere else.”

The upcoming series, which takes place years after the events of The Next Generation, follows the titular character who has settled into a much calmer life, on Earth. A placard at New York Comic-Con, designed to share information about the series, read:”Since resigning from Starfleet, Admiral Jean-Luc Picard has lived a somewhat reclusive life on his family estate in La Barre, France. All of that changes when he receives an unexpected visitor and is once more drawn back to the galactic stage.”

The new Star Trek series will feature many familiar faces from Star Trek: TNG, including Brent Spiner as Data, Jonathan Frakes as Riker, and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi, plus Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager. For more, check out the latest trailer and GameSpot’s guide to everything we know so far about Star Trek: Picard.

Star Trek: Picard debuts on CBS All Access on January 23.

Disclosure: CBS All Access is owned by ViacomCBS, GameSpot’s parent company.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Who would have thought that, in a year with game releases from Nintendo, From Software, Remedy Entertainment, Capcom, Respawn, and numerous other well-known studios, a CRPG from a small, unknown team would become one of the most talked-about titles of 2019?

Disco Elysium is a game that commands attention. Whether it’s the striking watercolor acid trip aesthetic, the moody and melancholic music, dense lore, or satisfyingly verbose writing, there’s a lot to get caught up in. At the same time, Disco Elysium is remarkably ambitious, offering players an incredible amount of freedom to define their character and role-play.

It’s easy to forget that this is Studio ZA/UM’s first game, especially when you encounter something like the Thought Cabinet–the subject of this episode of Audio Logs. At its simplest, the Thought Cabinet gives the player insight into the mind of Disco Elysium’s main character, but–as with real people–the mind is a complicated, messy, and often chaotic place. Needless to say, realizing it on-screen and as a core part of how the player progresses through the game and develops their character proved to be a challenge.

Disco Elysium designer and writer Robert Kurvitz breaks down the creation of the Thought Cabinet in this episode, describing it as a “quagmire” feature that almost sunk the entire project.

Kurvitz also discusses some of the other design decisions Studio ZU/AM made to modernize the CRPG genre. Among these is the way text is displayed on-screen, which–as genre enthusiasts will know–hasn’t changed all that much since the early days of CRPGs. However, Disco Elysium’s devs decided to mix things up and it found inspiration in Twitter, of all things.

Beyond the design of the game itself, this episode is a look into Kurvitz himself, who has been building the world and lore of Disco Elysium for years. He has some fascinating insights into player behavior and the tendencies of modern-day video game players. He also talks about some of the ideas he’d like to explore in future projects, offering a tantalizing tease of what we could see next from 2019’s breakout studio. Needless to say, this is a must-watch episode of Audio Logs, whether you’ve played Disco Elysium or not.

This is the third episode in Audio Logs Season 2 and, if you haven’t already, make sure to watch the first two. The season began with legendary developers Hideo Kojima and Yoji Shinkawa breaking down a pivotal scene from Death Stranding. Episode 2, meanwhile, is a deep dive into Control’s Ashtray Maze. Game director Mikael Kasurinen shows exactly how Remedy executed the memorable sequence from one of 2019’s best games. Both of these episodes are available on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe to GameSpot on YouTube to see more episodes as they’re released every Sunday.

If you haven’t already checked out Disco Elysium, you should. In our Disco Elysium review the game was awarded a rare 10/10. Critic David Wildgoose said it is “a mad, sprawling detective story where the real case you’ve got to crack isn’t who killed the man strung up on a tree in the middle of town–though that in itself, replete with dozens of unexpected yet intertwined mysteries and wild excursions into the ridiculous, is engrossing enough to sustain the game. Rather, it’s an investigation of ideas, of the way we think, of power and privilege, and of how all of us are shaped, with varying degrees of autonomy, by the society we find ourselves in.”

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