Author: Trafficblast

While creating Night City, the setting for Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red wanted to create a “unique take” on the Cyberpunk franchise. This is why the upcoming RPG takes place in a primarily sunny locale as opposed to the gloomy, rain-soaked settings traditionally seen in the cyberpunk genre.

“When we showed the demo last year, people were surprised at first that it was so sunny,” Cyberpunk 2077 concept art coordinator Marthe Jonkers said in an interview with GamesIndustry.Biz. “They expected rainy, dark cyberpunk but you can make a cyberpunk city in California. Of course, it will rain there, because we have a weather system, and it will also be night, but we are really trying to get this fresh take on cyberpunk.”

Night City is built on the foundation of four distinct visual styles, each of which details the different ages of cultural and social-economic growth in the Cyberpunk universe between 2020 and the events of the game. This creates a very different world in the Cyberpunk universe, one that allows you to instantly recognize when a car was made or how long a certain building has been around just at a glance. “That was really, really important to us, to make a unique take on Cyberpunk,” Jonkers said. “And I really like that when people see screenshots of our game, they recognize it as our style.”

The first era, Entropism, was one of intense poverty, so anything made from that time looks very plain. “The designs from that era are very practical, more about practicality than whether it looks nice or is decorated,” Jonkers said. Entropism was followed by Kitsch, a period of time when the economy recovered in Night City and allowed the low- and middle-class to invest in more colorful and extravagant items. The third era, Neomilitarism, saw the rise of rich corporations, which is where all the tall and sleek skyscrapers come from. Finally, Neokitsch, saw the divide between the rich and poor grow wider–and several members of the wealthy class began adopting the colorful style of the poor, albeit with a more money-centric twist. Think clothes made of animal pelts.

Jonkers goes on to explain that this level of world-building allows CD Projekt Red to tell stories about the people that live in Night City without expositional conversations. “There are layers to the design of Night City and all its inhabitants, so when you drive around and you see a building that’s sort of pink with these soft edges, and the windows are sort of soft shaped, you know that this is kitsch style, and you know that was built in that period of time where people had more money back then,” she said. “It’s telling you a story about the background of the city, and gives an extra layer of believability.”

Cyberpunk 2077 is scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on April 16, 2020.

Pokemon Go‘s final wave of Ultra Bonuses is still live. Not only did it introduce the first Gen 5 Pokemon to the game (as well as a new evolutionary item called the Unova Stone), it also brought the Legendary Mewtwo back to Raids. However, your time to catch the Legendary Psychic-type is running out.

Mewtwo is scheduled to leave the game again at 1 PM PT / 4 PM ET on Monday, September 23, so you have until then to encounter it in five-star Raids. This time, the Legendary Pokemon knows the move Psystrike, a Psychic-type attack originally introduced in Pokemon Black and White. That’s not all; you also have a chance of encountering a Shiny Mewtwo while it is still in Raids.

Before it leaves the game once again, Niantic was supposed to hold a Mewtwo Legendary Raid Hour this past Wednesday; due to issues, however, that event had to be postponed. The Raid Hour will now take place on Tuesday, October 8, from 6-7 PM local time, giving you one final chance to catch a Mewtwo that knows Psystrike.

As usual, before you can capture Mewtwo, you’ll first need to defeat it in battle. As a pure Psychic-type, Mewtwo is vulnerable to Ghost, Dark, and Bug Pokemon such as Giratina, Tyranitar, and Scizor, so any of those will prove to be an asset when you challenge it.

In other Pokemon Go news, the game’s Safari Zone event is now underway in Montreal. To celebrate the event, players around the world have a chance of encountering a Shiny Yanma in the wild. Niantic also recently shared the first details for October’s Pokemon Go Community Day. The event takes place on October 12, and the featured Pokemon will be Trapinch, the first form of the Ground/Dragon Pokemon Flygon.

Night School Studio, the developer behind the much-beloved choice-driven adventure game Oxenfree, has provided a release date for its next game, Afterparty. Just in time for Halloween, the comical adventure game about two friends barhopping across hell will release on October 29.

Much like Oxenfree, Afterparty is a story-driven game decided by player choice. As best friends Milo and Lola–you can switch between the two any time you want–you’ve found yourself trapped in hell with no idea as to how you got there. Though hell is a never-ending party of drinking and clubbing, the two desperately wish to return home. There’s only one way out though: you have to defeat Satan in a drinking contest.

As you continue to explore hell and work your way to Satan’s home, you’ll encounter demons and other condemned human souls who have their own problems. Talking to them presents you with new quests to complete and decisions to make, and there’s actually no way to do it all in one playthrough. Depending on what you decide to do, the relationship between Milo and Lola will change and your perspective on what’s best for them will alter as a result. “By the end of the night, you’ll have created your own story arc for Milo and Lola,” Night School Studio co-founder Sean Krankel wrote in an Xbox Wire blog post. “Will they escape hell? Do they even want to escape if they’re having fun?”

Along the way, you can stop in a bar to have a drink, with each concoction altering your stats in certain ways–like making you more aggressive so you can pull off more impressive insults during an argument. Just be sure you don’t drink too much. “Get too drunk, and you’ll vomit up your conscience,” co-founder Adam Hines said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “The conscience is a little character and you have to chase him around. Until you get him back, every choice you have is awful, very selfish, and narcissistic.”

Afterparty is a day one Xbox Game Pass launch title, but the game is also releasing on PS4 and PC on October 29. A Switch version is scheduled for a later date.

Note: this review contains full spoilers for Titans: Season 2, Episode 3. If you need a refresher on where we left off, check out our review for Season 2, Episode 2.

Titans continues its transformation from gritty superhero road trip to a more traditional take on the Teen Titans mythos this week. Tone down the adult language and Titans could almost be mistaken for an Arrowverse offshoot (albeit one with a much more expensive production budget). And while the show clearly still has some kinks to work out, these changes are by and large working out for the best.

While the shift to a true headquarters and a lavish rendition of Titans Tower is nice, the biggest improvement in Season 2 is this renewed emphasis on history and legacy. The current plot revolves heavily around the fact that a version of the Titans existed once before, one that ended in failure and heartache. That casts a shadow over everything Dick and his teammates are trying to build here. It also informs how new villains like Deathstroke and Doctor Light are being brought into the picture. Both men have a history with a team ,and both are hellbent on making the new Titans pay for the crimes of the old.

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A Christmas Carol is getting a musical update from the team behind Daddy’s Home.

Per THR, Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell will star in the musical reimagining of the classic Christmas tale. Sean Anders and John Morris, who recently penned the script for Daddy’s Home 2, will write and direct the adaptation.

No word yet on a release date — THR reports that the package is currently being shopped to different studios. This will be the first time Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds have worked together since 1999’s Dick, starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams.

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The goose is finally loose. Untitled Goose Game was released today for Nintendo Switch and PC, and a tweet that seemingly depicts how this strange stealth game about a goose got made is circulating the internet.

A tweet from 2016 by Michael McMaster, a developer on Untitled Goose Game, seemingly depicts a work Slack conversation that led to the creation of Untitled Goose Game. On August 10, 2016, McMaster shared several screen captures from the House House Slack. The conversation began when Stuart Gillespie-Cook messaged the group saying, “Let’s make a game about this,” and posted a picture of a goose.

The chat quickly devolved into a full-length conversation about the pros, and single con, of geese.

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Lab Zero Games, the studio behind Skullgirls, has released the full intro cinematic for its upcoming action-RPG Indivisible. The intro, which is animated by Studio Trigger, details some of the major events from the opening arc of Indivisible’s story, so don’t watch it if you want to go into the game completely unspoiled.

That said, it’s an awesome video–one that captures the colorful character designs and exaggerated motion of the studio behind anime like Kill la Kill and SSSS.Gridman. Lab Zero also revealed Hiroki Kikuta, the composer for Secret of Mana, is behind the intro’s music.

After seeing it at Anime Expo, Indivisible is one of my most anticipated anime-like games for 2019. The game tells the story of Ajna, a young girl whose home is destroyed–an action that awakens a mysterious power in her. Part of this power allows Ajna to absorb other people into her to then summon at any time to fight by her side.

Gameplay-wise, this translates into a character recruitment-based story with a party management, turn-based battle system. As Ajna unlocks new abilities, she’s able to explore new areas of the world. Her journey will take her all over a fully-realized fantasy world, one that is in need of saving from a dark power.

Several of the other anime-like games we saw at Anime Expo have already come out, and a few of them are pretty good. If you’ve been sleeping on River City Girls, you should add the retro-styled 2D beat-’em-up to your list of games to play as soon as possible. If you’re looking for more ways to throw down in a video game, read GameSpot’s Kill la Kill: IF review and see whether that arena fighter is right for you. We also have an AI: The Somnium Files review for those searching for a more mystery-driven adventure.

Indivisible is scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on October 8, with a Switch version coming at a later date.

A newly discovered glitch involving one of Destiny 2‘s Exotic weapons will cause it to be temporarily banned from the game when the game’s next Raid hits. Due to concerns that it will impact the race to be the first to complete Garden of Salvation, the new Raid included in Shadowkeep, Bungie will render Jotunn unusable for a period of time early next month.

The news was shared by Destiny 2 director Luke Smith on Twitter, who wrote, “Jotunn/Toaster will be disabled for Garden of Salvation. The team has identified the issue with Jotunn and we will release a fix in a future update.”

There’s no word on exactly when a fix will be implemented, but given the Raid doesn’t go live until October 5, you can expect this bug to exist for at least a few more weeks.

A bit more detail was shared in a post on Reddit by Bungie community manager Cozmo. He revealed that the current plan is for Jotunn to be disabled for 24 hours, which should cover the period in which players race to be the first to beat Garden of Salvation–the World’s First race, as it’s known. But because Bungie lacks the ability to disable an item in only a particular mode, Jotunn will be unusable anywhere in Destiny 2 during the period.

Jotunn Is Glitched

The Jotunn bug in question involves using the fusion rifle at short range. Normally, if you’re close enough to where its shot detonates, the user takes splash damage. Because of this glitch, that damage is instead dealt to the target, allowing players to melt bosses more quickly than intended.

Jotunn is obtainable through the Black Armory, part of Destiny 2’s annual pass, which was recently made available for free to anyone who owns the Forsaken expansion. Getting your hands on Jotunn involves some luck, as you’ll need to craft powerful weapons at the Bergusia forge and then hope for the best. You can read more about how to get it in our guide on how to get Jotunn.