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Working on Call of Duty, Star Wars, Star Trek, and More: Stories From Raven Software’s Cofounder

Welcome to IGN Unfiltered, our monthly interview series where we sit down with the best, brightest, and most fascinating minds in the video game industry. (Catch up on the other 50-plus episodes here.) My guest this month is Brian Raffel, cofounder of Raven Software, makers of this year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War campaign plus a legion of other beloved games such as Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Heretic, Hexen, and more. Brian discusses starting Raven with his brother in Wisconsin, partnering with Doom creators id Software early on, and subsequently working with giant pop culture brands like Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, and Call of Duty. Raven is the lead developer on the single-player campaign in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which will be released on November 13.

Check out the full episode in the video above, but if you’d prefer to listen to the hour-long interview, here’s an audio-only podcast download link. One way or the other I hope you’ll check out the interview!

Here’s a preview clip, in which Raffel discusses the studio being back in the driver’s seat on Black Ops Cold War after serving as a Call of Duty support studio for the previous decade:

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And if you missed it, here’s the previous episode of Unfiltered, in which The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley discusses his life covering the video game industry:

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Catch up on every episode of IGN Unfiltered here, including conversations with Bethesda game director Todd Howard, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton, Journey creator Jenova Chen, Halo boss Bonnie Ross, and many more!

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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Shudder Announces One-Day Free Virtual Horror Convention Featuring Exclusive Movie Screening

As with most things in 2020, Halloween is likely be very different for many of us this year. Luckily for fright fans stuck at home, horror streaming service Shudder is set to celebrate the day with an impressive free one-day virtual event titled ShudderFest.

ShudderFest will be available free worldwide on at ShudderFest.com, starting at 12 PM ET on Saturday, October 31. The event mixes panels, presentations, discussions, and screenings and features a host of big names from the genre, including horror icons Tony Todd (Candyman), Robert Englund (A Nightmare of Elm Street), and Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th). For Shudder members, there will also be an exclusive first secret screening of an upcoming Shudder original movie.

The full line-up is:

  • 12 PM ET Welcome to ShudderFest with host Keith David

    Horror Royalty Hangout
    Doug Bradley (Hellraiser franchise), Robert Englund (Elm Street franchise), Lance Henriksen (Alien franchise), Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th franchise), actor/director/FX master Tom Savini, Lin Shaye (Insidious franchise), and Tony Todd (Candyman franchise), moderated by Yahoo Entertainment’s Kevin Polowy

  • 1 PM ET – Blair Witch x Host
    The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sánchez, producer Michael Monello and co-producer Greg Hale in conversation with Host director/co-writer Rob Savage, and stars Haley Bishop and Emma Louise Web, moderated by Shudder curator Samuel Zimmerman

  • 2 PM ET – The Future of Black Horror
    A look at the thrilling present and bold future of Black Horror with Rusty Cundieff (director, Tales from the Hood), Tananarive Due (exec producer, Horror Noire), Shannon M. Houston (writer, HBO’s Lovecraft Country), Victor LaValle (author, The Ballad of Black Tom), and Kamil Oshundara (cultural executive, Monkeypaw Productions), moderated by journalist/writer Evan Narcisse

  • 3 PM ET – Interview with the Glampire
    A blood draining dissertation with Paperbacks from Hell’s Grady Hendrix

  • 4 PM ET – Musicians Who 🖤 Horror
    Pop star Bright Light Bright Light, GWAR’s The Berserker Blothar, Pustulus Maximus, and Sawborg Destructo, Grammy-winning composer and guitarist Steve Stevens, and Starcrawler lead singer Arrow de Wilde, moderated by Yahoo Entertainment’s Lyndsey Parker

  • 5 PM ET – Story Time with Scare Me’s Josh Ruben & Friends
    Scare Me’s writer-director-star Ruben shares spooky stories with friends Frank Garcia-Hejl (Scare Package), Noah Segan (Knives Out), Dreama Walker (Doubt), and Astronomy Club’s Jonathan Braylock, James III and Jerah Milligan

  • 6 PM ET – Inside The Mortuary Collection
    Meet the team behind the horror anthology that Sam Raimi called “a twisted tapestry of grisly fun and endlessly inventive terror”–writer/director Ryan Spindell, star Clancy Brown, and producers Allison Friedman and T. Justin Ross.
    Followed by Kirk Hammett’s Top Five Moments in Horror and Keith David Answers Your Questions

  • 7 PM ET – The Kingcast podcast with special guest Greg Nicotero
    The Kingcast, a podcast devoted to Stephen King by veteran film bloggers Eric Vespe and Scott Wampler, sits down to discuss adapting the author’s works with showrunner, writer, director, and FX maestro Greg Nicotero, who has directed two King stories for Creepshow and created FX for multiple other King adaptations

  • 9 PM ET – Members Only Double Feature: Halloween and Secret Screening on Shudder TV
    A screening of John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween, followed by a special one one-time-only preview of a future Shudder film that won’t stream again until 2021

Shudder will also be releasing a new animated episode of its hit anthology series Creepshow, featuring two new stories written by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. It hits the service on October 29.

Shudderfest isn’t the only one-day virtual horror event happening this week. On October 29, fans can check out BlumFest, from Get Out and Purge producers Blumhouse. BlumFest will include exclusive new looks at the company’s upcoming movies The Craft: Legacy, Freaky, and Halloween Kills.

Netflix Orders A New Horror Show Based On Podcast

Netflix has acquired a new horror property with the announcement that it’ll be adapting Archive 81 into a TV show. Led by showrunner Rebecca Sonneshine, whose previous credits include The Boys and The Vampire Diaries, the new show is getting eight 1-hour episodes to start it off.

The show has signed its leads, Mamoudou Athie (Jurassic World: Dominion, Uncorked) as Dan Turner and Dina Shihabi (Ya Bint, Altered Carbon) as Melody Pendras, two researchers looking into a dangerous cult across time.

“When archivist Dan Turner takes a mysterious job restoring a collection of damaged videotapes from 1994, he finds himself reconstructing the work of documentary filmmaker Melody Pendras and her investigation into a dangerous cult,” the show synopsis reads. “As Dan is drawn into Melody’s story, he becomes convinced he can save her from the terrifying end she met 25 years ago.”

With James Wan’s Atomic Monster signed on to produce, the show is planning to center a “dark, deeply emotional romance” while exploring the supernatural horror genre in a different way.

The Archive 81 podcast is currently in its third season, and its creators Marc Sollinger and Daniel Powell will serve as executive producers on the Netflix show.

Now Playing: 8 Best Shows And Movies To Stream For August 2020 – Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, Prime Video

Kazakhstan Tourist Board Adopts Borat’s “Very Nice” Catchphrase

While Kazakhstan historically hasn’t always welcomed Sacha Baron Cohen’s use of the country in Borat, it’s now capitalizing off the momentum from Borat 2 to launch a new tourism campaign. The new series of ads shows various people appreciating Kazakhstan as “very nice,” as reported by GameSpot’s sister site CNET.

The government of Kazakhstan has an uneasy relationship with Baron Cohen’s Borat–while it has been criticized by both citizens and government officials for its crass depiction of the country, the movie also increased tourism to Kazakhstan by an order of magnitudes.

Now, Kazakhstan is leaning on the infamy brought by Borat 2 to launch its ad campaign, by using one of Borat’s catchphrases. The videos show people appreciating Kazakh food, culture, cities and natural beauty, and then describing it as “very nice.”

As the New York Times reports, the man drinking out of a bowl at a market stall is actually drinking fermented horse milk–not horse urine, as depicted in Borat. “In COVID times, when tourism spending is on hold, it was good to see the country mentioned in the media,” the Times article quotes Kazakh tourism board deputy chairman Kairat Sadvakassov as saying. “Not in the nicest way, but it’s good to be out there.”

The Times also quoted Baron Cohen, who has nothing but good things to say about the actual country of Kazakhstan. “This is a comedy, and the Kazakhstan in the film has nothing to do with the real country,” he said. “The real Kazakhstan is a beautiful country with a modern, proud society–the opposite of Borat’s version.”

Both Borat and its 2020 sequel use the fake-Kazakh character to reveal the ugliness of America, but that hasn’t stopped Kazakhstan’s residents from despising the fact that the film serves as many foreigners’ only image of their country. Hopefully they can gain some tourist dollars from the film’s infamy, at least.

Wasteland 3 Was Briefly Banned In Australia Because Of A Helpful Drug

Ahead of its release, Wasteland 3 was briefly refused classification in Australia, effectively banning it from sale. At the time, the Australian Classification Board was vague on the reason why the game was banned, but after a small change was made, Wasteland 3 was re-classified with an R18+ rating and allowed to release.

Now, in the board’s annual report, as picked up on by Kotaku Australia, some further reasoning has been given for the game’s ban, and it all comes down to a drug that players were allowed to smoke in the original submission.

“During the game, characters are able to smoke a drug known as ‘Rocky Mountain Moosegrass’, which appears to be a strain of cannabis,” the report reads. “The drug is denoted by an icon of a cannabis cigarette or joint in the player’s inventory that is accompanied by captions that attest to the cannabis-like effects of the drug.”

As the report notes, the sound of a sparking lighter was heard when players used the Moosegrass, and players were given a “bouldered” effect, worth one ability point, after smoking.

Under Australian classification rules, games cannot depict the use of a drug with a real-life analog in a positive manner. The Australian Rating Board has a long history of refusing classification of games due to incentivized drug use, many of which have similarly been edited to enable release in the country. Such titles include The Bug Butcher, Paranautical Activity, Saints Row IV, State of Decay, and Fallout 3.

While the game did not directly call the Moosegrass marijuana, the signifiers made their intent clear. Just showing drug use won’t get your game banned, but tying it to incentives will. The game was re-submitted with the “interactive use” of the drug removed, and the game was accepted with an R18+ rating.

The R18+ rating was not implemented in Australia until 2013, and the first game to receive the rating was the PS Vita version of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Wasteland 3 was the only game denied classification during the 12-month period covered by this report, out of 316 titles (most game releases are handled by a separate, self-guided rating system in Australia now).

Now Playing: How Wasteland 3 Can Be The Best In The Series, Interview With Brian Fargo

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Horror Studio Blumhouse Un-Cancels Halloween With The First BlumFest Virtual Horror Con

Halloween parties, trick-or-treating, haunted houses–they’re all on hold this year. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy some kind of spooky treat for All Hallows’ Eve. Thankfully, Blumhouse Studios, best known for movies like The Purge, Happy Death Day, and Get Out, has our backs. The horror studio announced today that it will put on the “first annual” BlumFest, a virtual event to celebrate existing Blumhouse properties and promote new ones. The event kicks off at 10 a.m. PT this Thursday, October 29, on Blumhouse’s YouTube channel and Facebook page.

“This year has sidelined a lot for all of us, but Halloween is a treasured season at Blumhouse, so we conceived BlumFest to celebrate with our fans via a virtual event that will feature exclusive interviews and never-before-seen footage on an upcoming release or two,” said Jason Blum, Blumhouse CEO & founder in the announcement.

The event, moderated by Rotten Tomatoes editor Jacqueline Coley, will consist of five virtual panels featuring discussions for movies like The Craft: Legacy, Freaky, and Halloween Kills. Here are the official panel descriptions:

  • Welcome to the Blumhouse – Join Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios and Jason Blum for a lively conversation about the successful collaboration between Amazon and Blumhouse on the recently launched films, The Lie, Nocturne, Evil Eye and Black Box. Mamoudou Athie from the film Black Box will join the conversation, along with surprise guests for an announcement or two. The four films are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video now. #WelcomeToTheBlumhouse #BlumFest2020
  • The Craft: Legacy – Writer / director Zoe Lister Jones and her film’s coven, stars Cailee Spaeny, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone, and Zoey Luna have a bewitching chat about continuing the original film cult hit and reveal secrets from the set. The film is set for an Wednesday, October 28 (midnight EST) release on PVOD and EST in North America, with a planned theatrical release in select international countries. #TheCraft #BlumFest2020
  • Freaky – Writer / director Chris Landon; stars Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton; and producer Jason Blum talk about the highly anticipated body swapping horror comedy that will arrive in theaters on Friday, November 13 in the US and in select international markets. #FreakyMovie #BlumFest2020
  • Halloween Kills – Writer / director David Gordon Green; actress and icon Jamie Lee Curtis; franchise producer Malek Akkad from Trancas Films; producer Bill Block from Miramax; and producer Jason Blum convene to talk about the upcoming film’s October 2021 release. #HalloweenKills #BlumFest2020
  • The Good Lord Bird – Executive producer, writer and star, Ethan Hawke, of the critically acclaimed series, and series executive producer Jason Blum discuss their most recent collaboration, which is currently airing on Showtime. #TheGoodLordBird #BlumFest2020

Along with these virtual panels, Blumhouse is promising surprise guests that it says will share news about upcoming unannounced Blumhouse projects.

Now Playing: The First Purge – Trailer

Final Season Of Netflix’s Sabrina Now Has A Release Date

Netflix‘s magical TV show Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is ending with its upcoming fourth season, and now fans have a date to circle on their calendars.

The fourth and final season will premiere on December 31, Netflix has confirmed in a new trailer. The final season has eight episodes, and it picks up with very high stakes as Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) and her pals are preparing to take on a new evil. Check out the trailer below.

The show also stars Tati Gabrielle, who will be seen alongside Tom Holland in the Uncharted movie. The Lord of the Rings star Miranda Otto also stars in Sabrina as her aunt Zelda.

In July, Netflix announced it was pulling the plug on Sabrina. Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa said about the cancellation: “Working on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has been an incredible honor from day one.”

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina generated some amount of controversy after the Satanic Temple sued Netflix and production company Warner Bros. for $50 million over the show’s use of the Temple’s goat-headed Baphomet creature. The companies eventually settled amicably.

In other Netflix news, the network has announced a new film starring Adam Sandler in outer space.

PS5 Launch Exclusive Delayed, Xbox Streaming Stick, & Apex Legends Season 7 | Save State

In this video, Persia talks about the delay of Destruction All-Stars, which was supposed to be a PS5-exclusive launch title. The game will now be releasing in February 2021 and will be available on PlayStation Plus for two months at launch.

Persia also talks about a recent interview with Phil Spencer that mentioned an Xbox streaming stick could be on the way, with the possibility of being bundled with Game Pass. The discussion demonstrated Microsoft’s attempt to meet consumer expectations for lower-priced services and hardware.

Lastly, Persia talks about the new details for Season 7 of Apex Legends. There will be a new champion known as Horizon, a new map called Olympus, a squad vehicle dubbed The Trident, and much more. Season 7 startson November 4, and the battle royale game will also be launching on Steam the same day, featuring the ability to transfer your progress over from Origin.

This is your Save State for Monday, October 26th.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Adds A Surprise Free Card Battle Mode

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is adding something entirely unexpected–a whole new mode where players assemble card decks of famous Dragon Ball Z characters, and then use them for battle. Dragon Ball Card Warriors is completely different from Kakarot’s action-heavy gameplay, and it’s available October 27 as part of a free update.

The new mode will also be playable online, so you can challenge other Dragon Ball fans worldwide in casual or ranked matches, or in monthly tournaments. You can check out the trailer below.

To play Dragon Ball Card Warriors, you need to create two decks: a main 25-card deck, and a special deck of five “SP” cards. The regular deck is a mix of character and event cards, with characters forming your offensive force and event cards causing effects on the battle.

SP cards can only be activated once certain conditions have been triggered by event cards, but once they’re summoned they can turn the tide of battle. The whole system is surprisingly complex, with a lot of elements to track–check out the trailer for all the different mechanics.

It doesn’t look like there’s any single-player component to the game, so don’t expect a robust campaign or AI. But the update’s free for all Kakarot owners on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, so we can’t complain too much.

The game’s next paid DLC, A New Power Awakens – Part 2, is due before the end of 2020. It will let players take on Golden Frieza and achieve Super Saiyan Blue form.

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