CD Projekt Red has begun releasing official modding support tools for Cyberpunk 2077, paving the way for more complex mods of the PC version.
The official Cyberpunk 2077 mod support page explains that it will offer “official tools and resources that will help you modify and create your own experiences in the world of Cyberpunk 2077.”
Those tools tools are currently fairly limited, offering downloads of the game’s metadata, and two utilities for listing game data and settings. There’s nothing just yet that allows modders to easily unpack and edit the game’s files, so this should be considered a first step on the road to official mods, rather than the beginning of a new influx.
CDPR adds that, “Tools will be continuously updated alongside with game patches to ensure compatibility.” It also encourages users to read the licence agreement before opting to use modding tools, presumably to ensure all users understand the guidelines around using third-party software in relation to CD Projekt’s own creation.
While official mod support is only just being added, the community has been producing mods for Cyberpunk 2077 since the game released in December last year. While generally simple, some successful mods so far include one that adds the smoggy atmosphere of Blade Runner to Night City, renders the game in a Borderlands-style cell shaded look, and a variety of others than improve the game. Arguably less successful is the Cyberpunk 2077 third person mod, which feels like it more so proves that the game should be played in first person than anything else.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Global Executive Editor of News.
The new photos offer fans an early glimpse at some of the characters in the series, including Kaz “Dirtyhands” Brekker, portrayed by Freddy Carter, who leads a gang known as the Dregs. Kaz is pictured alongside Inej Ghafa (Amita Suman), a dangerous spy operating on behalf of the ragtag crew, and Jesper Fahey (Kit Young), a sharpshooter who keeps one hand on his gun.
In another shot, Inej, also known as The Wraith, is shown delicately gripping onto one of her many knives, which are all named after saints, whilst a further picture captures a warm embrace between Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), the series’ central protagonist, and her childhood best friend, Malyen Oretsev (Archie Renaux), a gifted tracker and military man whose world is said to unravel after a brutal ambush.
Ben Barnes is pictured as General Kirigan, aka The Darkling, the power-hungry leader of the Second Army, the kingdom’s magical military regiment of Grisha soldiers. Elsewhere, lethal Heartrender Nina Zenik (Danielle Galligan) and witch hunter Matthias Helvar (Calahan Skogman) appear to have formed an alliance, though Grishaverse author Leigh Bardugo warned EW that they’re on “a collision course.”
Take a closer look at Netflix’s first-look photos for Shadow and Bone in our slideshow below:
Based on Bardugo’s worldwide bestselling Grishaverse novels, Shadow and Bone will explore a war-torn world where Alina unleashes an extraordinary power that could be the key to setting her country free. However, with the monstrous threat of the Shadow Fold looming, Alina finds herself torn from everything she knows to train as part of an elite army of magical soldiers known as Grisha.
Ultimately, Alina struggles to hone her power, as she discovers that allies and enemies can be one and the same and that nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. There are dangerous forces at play, including a crew of charismatic criminals, and it will take more than magic to survive in this world that has been cleaved in two by a massive barrier of perpetual darkness.
The Netflix series will combine the stories of the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology, both of which exist in the same universe, but take place across different timelines, meaning that fans of the two fantasy book series’ will be able to witness the two stories come together to form a new cohesive narrative, with “certain characters meeting certain other characters” from the two timelines.
Check out Netflix’s character posters and descriptions for Shadow and Bone in our gallery below:
“Shadow and Bone takes place in a very different kind of fantasy world,” Bardugo explained. “Think Imperial Russia, not Medieval England, repeating rifles instead of broadswords. It’s a story about the people who have been told how much they don’t matter proving how much they do. And it’s been incredible to see that story take shape on such an epic scale, the battles, the magic, but also the relationships between the characters.”
Speaking about the first-look images for the forthcoming Netflix adaptation, Bardugo added: “These photos give just a tiny hint at what’s in store—a mapmaker with an extraordinary gift, the people who want to use her, the tracker who will do anything to protect her, and the team of thugs and thieves who are about to cause some very big trouble for everyone involved.”
“These photos offer a glimpse into the expansive, textured world Leigh created in her books,” showrunner Eric Heisserer continued. “We worked tirelessly to craft a lived-in feel for fictional lands like Ketterdam and Ravka, with invented languages, uniforms, currency, and artistic choices from set design to costuming. You’re immersed in the Grishaverse when you read, and it’s our hope that both new and existing fans have that same feeling when they watch the show.”
Shadow and Bone will debut on Netflix on April 23. The series follows in the footsteps of the streamer’s wildly popular adaptation of The Witcher books, with The Witcher Season 2 also expected to premiere later this year. If you can’t wait any longer, then you might want to read the first page of a script from the upcoming season or take a look at what we might be able to expect from the storylines this time.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Despite its reputation as an RPG factory, Square Enix has dabbled in numerous other genres in the past, but Balan Wonderworld is one of the publisher’s biggest departures in recent memory. The brainchild of former Sonic producer Yuji Naka and his new team, Balan Company, Balan Wonderworld is a kaleidoscopic platformer rife with collectables. It’s a far cry from Square Enix’s traditional output, but there are glimmers of potential here–as well as some causes for concern.
We had a chance to play an early access version of the upcoming Balan Wonderworld demo, which features four levels across three worlds and one early boss battle. Almost from the outset, faint traces of Naka’s previous series could be felt in Balan Wonderworld. As in Sonic, worlds are broken up into separate “acts,” and one of the game’s costumes even gives you the ability to unleash a Sonic-like mid-air lock-on attack.
Despite these initial similarities, however, Balan Wonderworld is by and large a more methodical sort of platformer, emphasizing exploration and item collection over the fast-paced, high-flying spectacle found in Sonic the Hedgehog. The game’s signature hook is its vast array of costumes. Each one you collect grants a different power; one costume, for instance, lets you perform a tornado jump that can destroy certain blocks and repel tornado attacks back at enemies, while another lets you float through the air and ride updrafts.
These costumes are integral in exploring Balan Wonderworld’s different stages. Many areas of a level can only be accessed by donning a specific outfit; wear the Gear Prince costume, for example, and you can rotate clockwork levers, opening certain doors or moving elements of the scenery into place. Other costumes were used to similar effect, and the best moments in the demo involved acquiring a new ability and using it to reach a previously inaccessible area, illustrating the potential this idea holds.
Click To Unmute
Balan Wonderworld Reveal Trailer | Xbox Games Showcase 2020
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Your objective in each act is to ultimately navigate the stage and reach the goal at the end, picking up various collectibles along the way. The most important of these are the Balan Statues, which function as Wonderworld’s equivalent of Mario’s Power Stars. Snag enough statues and the game’s hub area will gradually unfurl, unlocking new worlds for you to explore.
Although only three worlds were accessible in the demo, each felt distinct and were tailored around different costume abilities. The first world in particular–an abstract farmstead dotted with haystacks, overgrown ears of corn, and giant watering cans–employed a cool visual effect. In Act 1, the terrain would rise and come into view as you approached, while in Act 2, it would unroll before you, adding to the dream-like atmosphere of the game.
The visuals and aesthetic of Balan Wonderworld offer a lot of charm, but the actual platforming itself when exploring these worlds felt like the weakest aspect of the demo. Your character runs very slowly, and they have poor traction, which makes movement feel somewhat slippery. Jumping also lacks a feeling of momentum, and juggling costumes can be a bit cumbersome. You can have up to three different outfits at your disposal at once and swap between them with a press of a shoulder button, but any additional costumes you pick up after that will replace one in your inventory. Thankfully, pads that let you access a dressing room (where you can swap out costumes) are sprinkled throughout the stages in the demo, but you’ll still often need to retrace your steps to reach these.
Gallery
Moreover, the costumes you acquire aren’t permanent. Much like the power-ups in Mario, you’ll lose your current costume if you fall into an abyss or are struck by an enemy, which means you’ll need to either find that costume again or hoof it back to a dressing room and equip a spare one. This wasn’t much of an issue in the demo, as costumes seemed fairly plentiful in the available stages, but some outfits are only available in specific worlds–meaning if you return to an earlier level with a new costume in tow to collect a previously unreachable Balan Statue and end up losing that outfit, you’ll be out of luck unless you have a backup.
That said, the Balan Wonderworld demo represents a small, work-in-progress sample of the project, so it remains to be seen if these issues will persist in the final game. There’s a solid foundation for a novel and enjoyable platformer here, so long as Square and Balan Company can fine-tune some of the gameplay issues in the demo. Balan Wonderworld launches for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Nintendo Switch, and last-gen consoles on March 26, while the free demo goes live on each platform on January 28.
Microsoft’s Xbox business is booming, and this includes huge numbers for revenue, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Live users, and console sales, the company said during an earnings call.
Xbox Game Pass is one of Microsoft’s key strategies for next-gen, and the subscription service now has 18 million subscribers, which is up from 15 million that was announced in September. The addition of 3 million subscribers might be lower than some might have imagined, considering the holidays and other factors, but this might have been related to how Xbox Series X|S consoles have been and continue to be hard to find due to sell-outs around the world.
Despite that, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the Xbox Series X|S consoles enjoyed a strong start. Microsoft sold more Xbox Series X and S consoles during their launch month than any previous Xbox console over the same time frame, the executive said. There isn’t a perfect comparison to any previous generation, as this is the first time that Microsoft launched two new Xbox models at launch instead of just one.
Overall, gaming hardware revenue jumped by 86% for Microsoft’s latest period, driven by the next-gen console launches.
Hardware sales could have been better, CFO Amy Hood said, as demand for the Xbox Series X and S consoles significantly outstripped supply. She added that shortages are expected to continue into the current financial period.
Looking at other areas, Xbox Live reach 100 million monthly active users across console, PC, and mobile. This is not actually a record, as Microsoft also reached 100 million monthly active Xbox Live users during the previous reporting period, due in part to the COVID-19 lockdowns. Microsoft recently made headlines when it announced a price hike for Xbox Live before reversing this in less than 24 hours due to a wave of negative feedback.
Microsoft also announced that its gaming category reached $5 billion in revenue for the first time in any quarter in Xbox history. Additionally, the company made $2 billion from third-party game sales. Microsoft earns a cut of every third-party game sold on Xbox, and with people playing more games and spending more money, Microsoft is reaping the benefits.
What a week! There’s so much to discuss on this episode, from Microsoft shockingly doubling the price of Xbox Live Gold only to just-as-shockingly walk it back later that same day, to the insane new Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic rumor, to Vicarious Visions merging into Blizzard to work on…Diablo 2 (!), and more!
Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered, featuring an interview with Brian Raffel, the cofounder of Raven Software – the studio behind Star Wars Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast, Soldier of Fortune, Heretic, Hexen, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, X-Men Origins Wolverine, and this year’s Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, among many others:
It’s already been an incredibly fun year of Xbox coverage, and the best is yet to come. Join us! Oh, and feel free to leave us a video Loot Box question below using Yappa and you might be featured on an upcoming episode!
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.
The Cyberpunk 2077 community is quickly developing new content and handy tweaks for all sorts of things in the game, adding fresh elements to the game, changing the look of Night City, and introducing some useful quality-of-life adjustments. In the video above, we look at a mod that does the latter, offering you the opportunity to painlessly change the stats and specs of your version of protagonist V.
The Respector mod lets you adjust your character attributes and restore all your Perk points after you’ve spent them, allowing you to choose different distributions and try out various character builds. You can also create builds, share them with other players, and switch between them on the fly as you play. Respector also lets you transfer your character and equipment between playthroughs with its New Game Plus option, so you can try different life paths while maintaining the experience and gear you earned from other playthroughs. Check out the video above to see it all in action.
Microsoft has posted record profits this quarter, including a boom in its gaming sector which has revenues up 51%. The company as a whole posted a record-breaking $43.1 billion in revenue.
In the most recent financial earnings report for the period ending on December 31, 2020, Microsoft shared that revenue increased by 17% to reach $43.1 billion and $15 billion in profit.
As per the case for the last several quarters, profits were driven by Microsoft’s cloud platform, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t other successful ventures.
Hardware saw the biggest growth thanks to the launch of the Xbox Series X|S. Microsoft says the gaming hardware segment grew 86% thanks to the new hardware, though the company hasn’t shared exact numbers.
Meanwhile, Microsoft reported that revenue has grown 51% overall in games, with Xbox content and services revenue up 40%. The growth has been attributed to third-party titles, Xbox Game Pass subscriptions, and first-party titles.
News of Microsoft’s successful quarter has pushed up Microsoft stock. The success of the company is of course based on a broad array of product and offerings, not just gaming. Microsoft’s line encompasses software, apps, home computers, and more; while the R&D department dabbles in projects like putting servers underwater.
Developer ZeniMax Online Studios and publisher Bethesda Softworks took to Twitch to reveal The Elder Scrolls Online’s year-long adventure, a series of DLC that make up the Gates of Oblivion. These expansions introduce new content for players to experience on PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
There will be four pieces of DLC sprinkled throughout the year. The first, Flames of Ambition, drops on March 8 for PC and Stadia, and March 16 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Meanwhile, headlining DLC the Blackwood chapter comes out just two months later: June 1 for PC and Stadia, and June 8 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The other two expansions, one unannounced dungeon pack and one unannounced story zone, launch in Q3 and Q4, respectively. Exact release dates have not been stamped.
The Flames of Ambition kicks off the Gates of Oblivion adventure. The expansion introduces two new PvE dungeons–Black Drake Villa and The Cauldron–that task players with attacking a shrine belonging to the Deadric Prince Mehrunes Dagon to find a tome before it’s destroyed. Players will be joined by some familiar faces, including newcomer Eveli Sharp-Arrow and recurring character Dremora Lyranth, and can unlock new gear and collectibles.
The Blackwood chapter is the focus of the Gates of Oblivion adventure and it comes with a number of additions, such as a new zone, quests, gameplay mechanics, and quality-of-life improvements. At over 30 hours long, the expansion offers a brand-new storyline chapter for players to experience by themselves or with an NPC ally through the new Companions system.
Gallery
With Companions, players can recruit, travel with, and fight alongside an NPC that will have their own personalities. These allies can join players in most adventures, level up, and use customized gear and abilities to assist while traipsing through Tamriel.
As for the story, the Blackwood chapter takes players to several familiar locations, including the Imperial City of Leyawiin first seen in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The main storyline tasks players with uncovering a conspiracy theory orchestrated by the Daedric Prince. There are also tons of new gear to collect, side quests to embark on, and world events to participate in.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood is now available for preorder and comes with unlocks, like an outfit, pet, experience scrolls, treasure maps, and one Iron Atronach crate stuffed with other in-game items. The Blackwood chapter is found in a few editions that feature just the expansion itself or the expansion, the base game, and previously released chapters. Conversely, players who already own all of The Elder Scrolls Online’s content can pick up the Blackwood Upgrade edition to take part in Gates of Oblivion.
The Wrong Turn slasher franchise — which, if you weren’t aware, runs six films deep — has been revamped with a new story, and new central antagonists, in an attempt to make a soft left turn away from its bread and butter of “inbred cannibals.” As a franchise reboot, Wrong Turn, from director Mike P. Nelson and original Wrong Turn scribe Alan McElroy, is a touch overlong and filled with muddled messaging, but it strikes a creepy, unnerving tone and lands with enough confidence to stake a solid claim in the horror landscape.
Wrong Turn isn’t excessively gory, but it is effectively gory. It’s a curious attempt at a remake/remodel since it’s not a straight reboot at all and contains none of the original movie’s characters or plot (other than young adults getting lost and slaughtered in the woods). In fact, since it deals with a wholly different set of villains, it needn’t have been slotted into the Wrong Turn oeuvre at all. But, all in all, it’s a crafty and crazed endeavor that, at times, nicely plays around with some of our current “Red vs Blue” anxieties – only to then veer off into its own maddening, and somewhat haughty, themes.
Kicking things off in medias res, we see a father, Scott (a nice avenging dad role for Matthew Modine) searching for his daughter in a small Appalachia-adjacent town where the citizens are giving him the constant side-eye. Flashing back six weeks earlier, we follow his girl, Jen (Charlotte Vega), as she, her boyfriend (Adain Bradley), and friends (including The Gifted’s Emma Dumont) road trip through Virginia. It’s here that the film teases us a bit, making us think that the central conflict will arise from the locals being prejudiced pricks and Jen’s friends acting like entitled snobs. The danger, it turns out, is way more bats*** than that, though still owing itself to a Civil War-style divide (sort of).
Enter The Foundation: A nineteenth-century cult that lives in the mountains and has existed, poverty and disease-free, since the 1850s. By all accounts, a better sect to deal with than rampaging cannibals, though they have a lethally strict way of dealing with outsiders. Borrowing a few pieces from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, in the sense that a group of families once decided to reject the modern world and live a simple (but also brutal) life amongst the trees, Wrong Turn gets a little murky in the middle parts when it tries to show us the “good” side of The Foundation. When it tries to ask us “which are the real monsters, the people who work in the soil or those who take selfies all day?”
There are moments, as Jen and those remaining from her group come face to face with The Foundation and their leader (Bill Sage) when the city slickers are put on trial for their crimes in a manner that’s supposed to make us look back at everything as one big misunderstanding based on the kids’ own biases. And it’ll make you want to scream a bit because the hill folks, as supposedly enlightened and unencumbered as they are, are clearly the aggressors and instigators. And liars, for all their attempts at upstanding citizenry. That being said, it’s still a more interesting backdrop for a horror flick than the usual kinds of bogeymen that stalk the woods.
Thankfully, The Foundation’s more malignant and malicious side shows up in the final act, during an attempted heroic exodus from the camp, and then afterward in the fairly fun closing final moments (make sure you watch through the credits too). It’s here, within the curtain call, that Wrong Turn becomes a more satisfying journey that nicely rewards you for enduring some of the lingering elements of “torture porn” previously on display.
Though Wrong Turn could be trimmed down at parts, and thematically streamlined at times, Vega gives an excellent performance as Jen, a character forced to make some truly heinous choices, while Modine makes the most of his action-y paternal part. Bill Sage too, who’s been in a ton of things, provides a calm-yet-menacing presence as a cult leader capable of believing in ancient ways, both awesome and awful. The Foundation doesn’t seem like the types of adversaries that become full franchise foes, but they still provided a nice shot in the arm for this particular string of scary movies.
