Season 9 of Fortnite may be winding down, but developer Epic Games still has some more new content in store for the hit battle royale shooter before Season 10 officially arrives. On the heels of the big monster-robot showdown that took place this past weekend, Epic will be rolling out the game’s 9.41 content update, which will add another new weapon to Battle Royale mode.
The 9.41 content update is scheduled to go live on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices tomorrow, July 23, at 5 AM PT / 8 AM ET / 1 PM BST. Epic will release the full patch notes for the update once it is available, but we got a glimpse at a new item coming courtesy of the in-game news feed: the “weather-tracking” Storm Scout Sniper Rifle.
As previously mentioned, a big world event took place in Fortnite on July 20. The giant robot that was being assembled in Pressure Plant was completed and did battle with the giant monster that was lurking beneath Polar Peak. The robot lost one of its arms in the ensuing clash, but it managed to ultimately defeat the monster using a giant sword, whose hilt was disguised as a statue in Neo Tilted. If you missed the event, you can watch a recording of the giant monster-robot battle here.
Season 9 of Fortnite ends August 1, according to the game’s official website, which means there’s still a little time left to complete any outstanding challenges from this season and unlock the last few remaining Battle Pass rewards. If you need help mopping up some of this season’s missions, we’ve put together tips and guides for all of the trickier ones in our complete Fortnite Season 9 challenges roundup.
It’s still unclear what repercussions the giant monster battle will have for Season 10 of Fortnite, but we do know the game’s minimum PC requirements will be changing as of next season. Starting with Season 10, the PC version of Fortnite will require a graphics card capable of running Microsoft DirectX 11. As Epic explained:
“While a DirectX 11-capable graphics card has always been one of Fortnite’s system requirements, we’ve kept support online for players with older graphics cards–so they could keep playing! However, when Season 10 begins, Fortnite will no longer be compatible with these older graphics cards. This allows us to focus our development and testing efforts to further optimize the Fortnite experience for all players.”
Despite learning what Marvel Studios’ plans are for Phase Four (and beyond — hi, Blade!) this weekend, many fans were still surprised and disappointed that a sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home wasn’t among those many new projects announced by Marvel at Saturday’s San Diego Comic-Con.
But there’s a very simple reason for why they didn’t. It’s not Disney or Marvel Studios’ place to announce another Spider-Man film. It is Sony Pictures’ place to do that (most likely in conjunction with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, but still coming from Sony).
Bandai Namco has announced that three new characters are coming to Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. Series mainstays like Vegeta, Piccolo and Gohan will all be featured in CyberConnect2’s upcoming Dragon Ball Z action RPG.
Alongside the three newly announced characters, Bandai Namco confirmed Krillin, Tien, Chiatotzu, and Yamcha will also appear in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. Check the gallery below for several new screenshots for the recently announced characters.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is an upcoming action RPG from Japanese developer CyberConnect2. The studio is best known for its work on licensed anime games like the Naruto Shippuden games and .hack RPGs.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is a full-fledged action RPG with worlds to explore, a leveling system, and NPC sidequests. Of course, there will be fighting segments as well, and they’ll be closer to the older 3D Dragon Ball fighting games than 2018’s Dragon Ball FighterZ.
The Black Widow codename may be all but synonymous with Natasha Romanoff thanks to Scarlett Johansson and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but with the upcoming Black Widow solo movie, and Natasha’s rather unfortunate (and emphatically final) demise in Avengers: Endgame, the status quo is about to be shaken up in a major way. Thankfully, the history of Black Widow over in Marvel’s comics is full of weird loopholes, clones, and top-secret spy training programs, giving us all kinds of wiggle room when it comes to figuring out when and how the Black Widows who aren’t Natasha Romanoff might come into play. Most notable among them is Yelena Belova, the Black Widow who was recently confirmed to be played by Florence Pugh at this year’s completely insane Marvel Studios panel during San Diego Comic-Con.
But knowing that Yelena is on her way to the big screen is only one part of the equation. To really understand the ins and outs of who she is, why she matters, and where the other Black Widows fit into this mess, we need to do some serious digging–starting with the organization behind it all: the Red Room.
The Room (no, not that one)
One of the most important things to understand about Marvel history is that the publisher as we know it owes a lot to the fact that it came into being during the height of the Cold War. This context is the catch-all explanation for virtually every classic Marvel hero’s first origin story. There’s anxiety about communism (Iron Man), nuclear power (Hulk), counter culture (the X-Men), and of course, the overwhelming fear of the omnipresent Russian threat (just about every major villain for those early years)–you know, stuff that was really in the zeitgeist at the time. That’s where the Black Widow comes into play, and by extension, the concept of the Red Room.
Introduced in 1964, Natasha’s early years as the Black Widow were largely playing on the era-typical Russian femme fatale tropes you’d see in something like Rocky & Bullwinkle. She was a regular antagonist against various Avengers who eventually broke out into a series of her own, sliding back and forth between antagonist and anti-hero roles as she became more popular. Development of her history and origins was slow-going and typically banked on Cold War-era stereotypes that Russians were scary and dangerous and, of course, mysteriously sexy, without much real substance to speak of. Things slowly started to change as the Cold War came to an end in the real world, opening the door for a more thorough exploration of just who Natasha was and where she came from.
In 1999, Natasha’s origin was given a complete overhaul, introducing the concept of the “Black Widow Ops Program” that was later explored through the Red Room, an idea that would not only retroactively reshape Black Widow as a character in the Marvel universe, but open all sorts of interesting narrative avenues for writers and artists to travel down that were only tangential to Natasha herself. After all, if there was a whole program to train Black Widow agents, it obviously follows that Natasha wasn’t the only one.
The organization responsible for the Black Widow Ops Program was called The Red Room, which was both a literal place and sort of covert secret society. It was one part “boarding school” spy academy for children, where they’d be taught things like ballet (remember those flashbacks in Avengers: Age of Ultron?) martial arts, and murder; and one part Illuminati-flavored web of secret basis and soviet-era secrecy that spanned the globe for whatever nefarious super villain purposes Marvel Comics needed. It continued to grow and evolve over the years, with each change affecting any number of retroactive updates to Marvel history for those aforementioned nefarious purposes.
For example, when Bucky Barnes was resurrected as the Winter Soldier, the Red Room was responsible for his revival and subsequent brainwashing. A male version of the Black Widow Ops program was added to the mix called the Wolfspider Program, which Bucky participated in as a trainer. Later it was revealed that the Red Room had also engineered a cloning program of its operatives, secretly creating duplicate bodies for people like Natasha, which could have the memories and consciousness of operatives uploaded as a sort of “extra life” should things go south.
Because, sure, we may be talking about gritty, neo-noir spy stuff here, but let’s not forget these are still superhero comics.
Meet Yelena
Naturally, the genesis of the Red Room afforded writers and artists the opportunity to create new Black Widows, other products of the training program who were retroactively placed in Marvel continuity. The most famous of these new Widows is Yelena Belova, a highly conditioned Russian spy in a black catsuit with blonde hair, instead of Natasha’s trademark red.
No, really, that was their one key difference at first. Their abilities and skillsets were, by design, completely identical.
Yelena’s story wasn’t all that complicated. She debuted in 1999 right alongside the Red Room reveal, so her initial story was pretty barebones. She was activated, told that she was the rightful heir to the Black Window title, and sent after Natasha when she volunteered for a mission that would allow her to prove it. The Black Widow vs. Black Widow fight got a little dicey, but ultimately Natasha was able to grab the upper hand and brutally shatter Yelena’s delusions about her abilities and her claim to the mantle. For her part, Yelena took the defeat pretty well and retired for a while to become a model. You know, like all super spies do at one point or another.
Things didn’t stay simple for Yelena for long. After her retirement and subsequent return to action, she spent some time as the Super Adaptoid, a deeper-cut Marvel villain. This was the result of being captured and experimented on by Hydra (who, important to note, are independent from the Red Room in the comics, though their MCU incarnations tend to blur those lines).
Yelena’s stint as the Adaptoid came to an end after she was rescued by the Avengers, but she never quite rose to prominence or joined any major teams. With her inferiority complex with Natasha mostly overcome, Yelena’s role in modern comics is to pop up by surprise whenever things start getting complicated for Nat–not as an opportunistic thorn in anyone’s side, but as a sort of chaotic-neutral force who wants to make sure the Black Widow legacy is maintained. To do so, both Natasha and Yelena have a tendency to impersonate one another when the situation calls for it–because why not, right? There aren’t many people in the Marvel universe who share the exact same skillset and almost the exact same history, so the two of them have an advantage when pulling that sort of stunt, no matter what their goals may be.
Where does this fit into the MCU?
The Red Room situation in the MCU is more than a little mysterious. Outside of some vaguely defined flashbacks and Natasha’s oft-repeated refrain of her “red ledger,” we don’t really know much of where her live-action incarnation came from or what the MCU Red Room’s goals were. In the comics, Marvel uses the fact that the Red Room experimented on its recruits with various serums to slow (or sometimes completely stop) the process of aging, which explains why a woman who looks like she’s in her mid- to late-20s can be so heavily connected to Cold War history–but the MCU has yet to make such implications. As far as we know, Natasha is just a totally normal, albeit absurdly well-trained, human–meaning whatever developments come about the Red Room, Nat’s relationship with Yelena, and their shared 1960s-flavored origin story, are going to require a little fancy footwork.
During Marvel’s SDCC 2019 panel, fans got to watch a full trailer for the Black Widow movie, which featured a pretty extensive (and extremely brutal) fight scene between Nat and Yelena. They called one another “sister” before reaching a stalemate, sitting down, and sharing a shot of vodka. So, we can obviously surmise that, no matter what revelations and changes might be on the way for their published history, the fact that they’re the products of the exact same system is going to remain the same.
Knowing what we know about Natasha’s Endgame finale, it might even be a safe bet to assume that the Black Widow movie will position Yelena as her de facto successor and a hero in her own right. Yelena’s comic book history might be shady and strange, but there’s nothing that says the MCU can’t play a little fast and loose with the details–and, knowing what we know about Natasha’s Endgame demise, the MCU may have a job opening that Yelena is uniquely suited to fill.
The entire “Be Prepared” sequence has been gutted. There’s no Nazi goosestepping hyenas (a homage to Triumph of the Will in the original film) and no massive sulfur explosions. All of the verses have been eliminated in favor of a single new verse, and the final refrain of the chorus. Below are the new lyrics, for your enjoyment (or disappointment):
The PlayStation Classic didn’t impress many fans when it released in December 2018, and its price quickly dropped from $100 to $60 USD less than a month after it hit the market. Ever since, Sony’s retro console has continued to drop in price and hit what may be its lowest price yet, $20, during Amazon Prime Day 2019. Now, it seems Best Buy has decided to keep that deal going, as the retailer has once again dropped the price of the PlayStation Classic to $20 this week. [Update: Target is now offering the PS Classic for $20 too.]
PlayStation Classic launched following the massive success of Nintendo’s NES and SNES Classics, but failed to capture the same level of hype due to several disappointing aspects of the mini console, such as its limited quantity of games and sub-par graphics. “The debate over the selected games aside, using the PS Classic feels like partaking in a rough recreation of the original PlayStation experience,” wrote GameSpot’s Peter Brown in his PS Classic review. “And if you’ve spent any time with Nintendo’s Classic consoles, you’ll see the user experience here for what it is: just good enough. The PS Classic doesn’t feel like a celebration of PlayStation’s formative years the way Nintendo’s systems do. Nor is it a smart adaptation of a capable emulator working behind the scenes.”
That said, $20 is a considerably lower asking price than $100 or even $60. For fans of the original PlayStation and its games, such as Tekken 3, Metal Gear Solid, or Resident Evil, the PS Classic might finally be worth it. In addition to the mini console, you’ll also receive an HDMI cable, two wired controllers, and a virtual memory card. Check out the full list of pre-loaded games included below.
This year’s Comic-Con has come and gone, and the biggest news of the weekend came from the Marvel Studios panel, where everything for Phase 4 was announced. However, SDCC doesn’t just revolve around news. It’s a pop culture extravaganza. The Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego completely transforms, and it’s filled with thousands of people from con-goers to people handing out fliers to promote their products to protesters who took the day off to be invisible to the masses trying to have a good time.
However, one thing that makes Comic-Con a phenomenon is the amazing cosplay you’ll see at the convention center. There are hundreds of people dressed up as your favorite Marvel, Disney, and anime characters, showing off all the hard work they put into their costumes and makeup.
During the show, there was a DC characters meetup, which you can see above, and we got some close-up shots from those attending the event. Check them out below.
Keanu Reeves’ name was floated for a lead role in Death Stranding, but director Hideo Kojima had his heart set on Mads Mikkelsen instead.
Kojima took to the stage at San Diego Comic Con where he revealed, “I originally was recommended Keanu Reeves but I wanted Mads”. The recommendation came from none other than Nicolas Winding Refn, who is himself part of the Death Stranding cast, playing Heartman.
The bromance between Mikkelsen and Kojima is well-documented, mostly through Kojima’s personal Twitter account. Death Stranding’s head honcho frequently immortalises the Danish gymnast-turned-actor in lengthy Twitter threads filled with candid monochrome snaps of Mikkelsen puffing on a cigarette, or staring moodily into the middle distance.
