Author: Trafficblast

It’s not easy keeping up with every new trailer, announcement, gameplay reveal, and rumor in the gaming industry. This is especially true in the wake of E3, when the internet is flooded with news.

To help out any Xbox fans out there, we’ve compiled this cheat sheet on the most important news in relation to Microsoft or the Xbox One family of consoles. Don’t worry, cheat sheets for Nintendo and the Switch as well as Sony and the PlayStation 4 are in the works as well.

The information below is a general overview of the largest announcements from the past few weeks. That said, there are plenty of links in the text that will take you to articles that provide more in-depth analysis and information breakdowns.

14 First Party Games Detailed

In comparison to Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Nintendo’s Switch, Microsoft’s Xbox One has struggled to deliver as many quality first-party console exclusives. Microsoft aimed to flip the script by revealing information about 14 upcoming first party games at E3 2019. Though we still don’t have gameplay for many of them, the roster of titles looks like it will strengthen the game library of Xbox One.

Some of the games had already been announced, such as Gears 5 and Halo Infinite. But Microsoft’s E3 2019 press conference revealed new details about them. Gears 5 is releasing with a fun-looking PvE mode called Escape, for example, and Halo Infinite will be a launch title on Scarlett, Microsoft’s next-generation family of consoles (but it is still coming to Xbox One and PC).

Several new first-party titles were announced though. One of the more notable announcements came from Ninja Theory (a developer Microsoft acquired last year): the reveal of a new 4v4 melee combat-focused game it’s been working on called Bleeding Edge. A technical alpha for the game starts this month.

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New Xbox Hardware: Next-Gen Scarlett Console

Plenty of Xbox fans want to know what Microsoft has planned for its next-generation family of consoles. We learned a little bit more about it at E3, including confirmation that its codename is Scarlett, but Microsoft is still keeping some details close to the chest.

We do know that the console is currently scheduled for a Holiday 2020 release, that Halo Infinite will be a launch title, and that Microsoft claims it will be “four times” more powerful than an Xbox One X. Specifically, Scarlett contains a custom-engineered AMD processor capable of 8K resolution at 120fps, supports ray-tracing, comes equipped with a solid-state drive, and has a custom AMD Zen 2 CPU, Radeon RDNA architecture, and GDDR6 RAM. Details such as price point and hardware design are, for now, unknown.

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Massive Showcasing Of Third-Party Titles

Microsoft delivered an expansive E3 press conference with announcements, new trailers, and gameplay reveals for dozens of third-party titles, all coming to Xbox One. The showcasing was huge, with more than a few surprises.

The three major highlights were the gameplay reveals for Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (both at EA Play and Microsoft’s E3 2019 press conference), release date announcement of Obsidian Entertainment’s The Outer Worlds, and a first look at From Software’s Elden Ring–an open world Souls-like game designed in collaboration with George RR Martin. During Microsoft’s E3 press conference, the company also showcased new trailers for Cyberpunk 2077 and Tales of Arise, and also announced Phantasy Star Online 2 is finally coming to the West.

E3 was a pretty big showcasing for upcoming Xbox One indie games too. The most notable of the lot probably comes from Layers of Fear 2‘s Bloober Team, which is making Blair Witch, a spooky-looking game based in the same world as the 2016 horror movie. 12 Minutes–a psychological thriller about a man stuck in a time loop–also looks very good, as does Afterparty and Spiritfarer (both of which tackle the concept of death in unique ways).

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Microsoft Acquires Yet Another Studio

After acquiring over half a dozen studios last year, Microsoft announced during E3 2019 that it’s acquired one more. The studio in question is Double Fine, which is responsible for Psychonauts and Grim Fandango. During E3, Double Fine CEO Tim Schafer showcased the first gameplay trailer for Psychonauts 2.

Game Pass Just Keeps Getting Better

Game Pass continues to be one of the best subscription-based game services out there. Over the past few weeks, Microsoft has continued to expand the service, launching a PC version, bundling it with Xbox Live Gold, and adding several stellar titles to its lineup.

Microsoft’s new Game Pass Ultimate combines Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass for PC, and Xbox Live Gold in one $15/£11 per month subscription. Both Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold subscriptions get you limited-time discounts on certain games, and Game Pass lets you freely download from a library of hundreds of titles which is expanding and shifting all the time. Recently, Microsoft added some incredible titles to Game Pass, including Metro Exodus, Thimbleweed Park, Guacamelee 2, Everspace, SteamWorld Dig 2, and Hollow Knight: Voidheart Edition.

For more, check out:

Microsoft’s Cloud-Streaming Future: Project xCloud

Google Stadia isn’t the only cloud-based game streaming service scheduled to launch this year. During E3 2019, Microsoft announced Project xCloud would release this October, a month before Google Stadia launches. Pretty much no other details have been supplied, so we’ll have to wait and see how exactly xCloud ultimately stacks up against Stadia.

The cast of the upcoming sequel Bill & Ted Face the Music keeps getting better. Following the recent news that the roles of Bill and Ted’s daughters had been filled, it has now been reported that Barry star Anthony Carrigan is joining the movie as the movie’s main villain.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Carrigan will play the “relentless adversary” to the movie’s now middle-aged metal-loving friends. Carrigan is best known for his role as affable Chechen gangster NoHo Hank in the HBO hit Barry, as well as playing Zsasz in the DC show Gotham.

Bill & Ted Face the Music reunites Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in the roles they played in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991). The cast also includes Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as Bill and Ted’s daughters Billie and Thea, plus William Sadler, who will reprise his Bogus Journey role as the Grim Reaper.

After years of rumors that Winter and Reeves might return for a third movie, in March the pair confirmed Bill & Ted Face the Music was finally happening. They recorded a short video thanking the fans for their dedication to the series and announcing that the movie would start shooting this summer. The film hits theaters on August 21 2020, and is directed by Galaxy Quest’s Dean Parisot.

As for what the plot of the film will be, it was revealed by co-writer Solomon in January 2018 that the story finds Bill and Ted in the modern day, as family men that go back in time to revisit their younger selves, using footage from the original film.

Writer and director Ari Aster has quickly developed a consistent motif, at least across his two feature-length movies so far (Hereditary, and now, Midsommar): grief, and the destructive ways that people deal with it. But Midsommar is far from a re-hashing of the story in Hereditary, even if it brushes many of the same themes and subjects–tragedy, family, inevitability, cults, and beyond.

Where Hereditary was often almost unbearably dark, Midsommar is the opposite: unbelievably bright, almost always lit in full sunlight thanks to Sweden’s midnight sun, the villagers’ breezy white cotton frocks and vibrant wildflowers contrasting with flashes of dark memories and gruesome, undisguised violence. If anything, it makes Midsommar just as unsettling as Hereditary was, if not moreso.

Like its predecessor, Midsommar begins with tragedy. But the loss that Dani (Florence Pugh) experiences doesn’t stay in the story’s forefront for long, as her one-sided relationship with Christian (Jack Reynor) forces her to bury her feelings in constant subservience to his selfish needs. Their toxic relationship is highly relatable; he wants out, but feels obligated to stay with her, while her constant worry about losing him makes her feel pathetic. It’s easy to root for her, although Christian isn’t without sympathy too (some might argue with this, but what’s his crime really? Being wishy-washy?).

Midsommar is a slow burn. The opening act follows Dani and Christian, along with Christian’s friends Mark (Will Poulter), Josh (William Jackson Harper), and Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren), as they plan a trip to Pelle’s home village in remote Sweden. Dani eventually becomes attached to said trip, mainly out of pity, which presents a potent recipe for resentment.

Things turn more and more sinister as the midsummer festival in Pelle’s village progresses through its 9-day celebration. It’s a predictable horror movie structure, but in this case, it’s to the movie’s benefit, as that predictability is what keeps us anchored during the film’s long-feeling 140-minute runtime. Midsommar spends exhausting amounts of time simply observing the cult’s alien customs and rituals; as the audience, you’ll feel as trapped among all the feasts and sermons as the village’s foreign visitors do. There is beauty to much of it, but that beauty only makes the horror more terrifying as it seeps in and eventually grows to dominate the film.

Midsommar also has a strong psychedelic element; in many ways, it’s like one extremely long, inescapable bad trip. If you’ve ever taken too many shrooms and freaked out for a few hours, you’ll understand how Dani and Christian feel as they’re repeatedly fed hallucinogenics while events get stranger and stranger. Visually, the movie marks their tripping perceptions with the pulsing and twisting of the natural world around them; trees and grasses beat like hearts, while flowers grow and shrink like they’re taking breaths. It all adds to a sense of uneasy unreality that pervades the movie, along with incongruously beautiful music that builds and swells as gruesome acts play out onscreen.

Pugh ably portrays a character who’s so starved for empathy that she effectively becomes helpless, a person you want to shake awake. As Christian, Reynor barely disguises his Irish accent, although it’s not too distracting–and he does a fantastic job walking the line between a flawed protagonist and a total dickhead. Midsommar is often funny, though always with a threatening subtext; Poulter is the comic relief, but the kind who pisses on a ceremonial tree and then wonders what the big deal is. You cringe, you laugh, and then you dread what’s going to happen next. William Jackson Harper, well known for his role as Chidi on The Good Place, is underused, his character unfortunately relegated to the sidelines.

Midsommar has a strong running throughline about reflection–on one’s self, in one’s surroundings, and beyond. Watch for mirrors throughout the movie, from the opening scene to the very end. Many shots are cleverly framed so that characters appear in reflections, and there’s reciprocity in nearly every scene, from the way actors are arrayed to the quick cuts that serve to contrast two disparate events or scenes. Like Hereditary, Midsommar begs for repeat viewings.

It will also be fascinating to learn what kind of research went into the movie. The remote Swedish village doesn’t appear to be a real place, but the cultists’ iconography, beliefs, and rituals seem so fleshed out that they must be based somewhere in reality. These rituals go to some truly disturbing places, and like its predecessor, the violence Midsommar presents is undisguised by familiar movie magic like obfuscatory editing or over-the-top special effects. Aster’s realistic onscreen portrayals of stark brutality and death will make you squirm in a way that few horror movies these days do. A strong throughline of body horror, from limbs growing roots during mushroom-fueled hallucinations to the dissections hinted at in trailers, adds further to the discomfort and terror pervading this movie.

Midsommar is an incredibly strong follow-up to Hereditary, and together, these two auteristic, art-house horror films cement Ari Aster as one of the most talented filmmakers currently working in the genre. Midsommar won’t be for everyone–it’s not exactly the commercial-minded horror blockbuster we’re used to seeing in the middle of summer. But for those who don’t mind a strange and terrifying trip, Midsommar is a movie to watch again and again and again.

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