Welcome to our Friday deals! We have a slew of great savings for you this weekend, including a giant sale happening over at Best Buy thanks to the 4th of July weekend. On top of that, we have great discounts on Samsung 4K UHD TVs, a wide array of awesome games, gaming laptops from Razer and Alienware and tons more.
The biggest addition to part one of Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ summer update is the ability to swim and dive in the ocean around your island, which means new creatures to catch. In fact, the summer update added an entirely new category in your Critterpedia, titled “Sea Creatures,” and Blathers is accepting donations of new finds at the museum as well. There are 40 total new sea creatures to catch.
Here we’ll go over every new type of sea creature you can find while diving. If you don’t know how to dive yet, check out our guide on how to swim in Animal Crossing for info on where to get a wet suit and how to get into the water for the first time.
How To Find Sea Creatures In Animal Crossing
Sea creatures can only be found while diving underwater in the ocean. You’ll know you’re near one when you see a column of bubbles floating to the surface, or when you’re already underwater and spot a dark shadow beneath the waves. Just dive under and swim over to the shadow to automatically collect the creature. Sometimes the shadow might be moving, so you will have to follow or chase it.
Diving and chasing a shadow under the water.
The bubble column appears differently depending on the creature, similar to the way fish shadow sizes differ. Their underwater shadow sizes also differ, as well as their swimming pattern and speed.
What To Do With Pearls And Scallops
While diving for sea creatures, you might come across pearls, which are a rare crafting material. Scallops can also be traded in for DIY recipes if you talk to Pascal, the red sea otter who made his first New Horizons appearance with the July 3 summer update. While we list scallops in the table below along with their price (1,200 bells), you should probably hang onto scallops when you find them–we’re not sure exactly how trading works with Pascal just yet. At the moment, it seems he has a chance of appearing when you catch a scallop and will offer a trade, but if it turns out you can find him swimming around and instigate a trade that way, then having some scallops handy will help. Of course, don’t forget to donate a scallop to the museum at some point too, since they still count as sea creatures. We’ll update with more details on how trading with Pascal works once we can verify. Pearls should definitely be saved up–like cherry blossom petals, they are an important crafting item and required to craft recipes in the new mermaid set.
Every Sea Creature In Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Below you’ll find every sea creature in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, with separate columns dedicated to their Northern and Southern hemisphere availability, by month. We will continue to update as we verify information. Shadow sizes and swimming pattern information will be coming soon as well.
Northern Hemisphere (N) / Southern Hemisphere (S)
Sea Creature
Months (N)
Months (S)
Time
Price
Abalone
June – Jan
Dec – July
4 PM – 9 AM
2,000
Acorn Barnacle
All year
All year
All day
600
Chambered Nautilus
Mar – June Sept – Nov
4 PM – 9 AM
1,440
Dungeness Crab
Nov – May
All day
Firefly Squid
Mar – June
9 PM – 4 AM
Flatworm
Aug – Sept
4 PM – 9 AM
700
Gazami Crab
June – Nov
All day
2,200
Giant Isopod
July – Oct
9 AM – 4 PM 4 PM – 4 AM
12,000
Gigas Giant Clam
Apr – Sept
All day
15,000
Horseshoe Crab
July – Sept
Jan – Mar
9 PM – 4 AM
2,500
Lobster
Mantis Shrimp
All year
All year
4 PM – 9 AM
Moon Jellyfish
July – Sept
Jan – Mar
All day
Mussel
June – Dec
Dec – June
All day
Octopus
Oyster
Pearl Oyster
All year
All year
All day
Red King Crab
Scallop
All year
All year
All day
Sea Anemone
All year
All year
All day
Sea Cucumber
Sea Grapes
June – Sept
Dec – Mar
All day
Sea Pig
Sea Pineapple
Apr – Aug
Oct – Feb
All day
Sea Slug
All year
All year
All day
Sea Star
All year
All year
All day
Sea Urchin
All year
All year
All day
Seaweed
Oct – July
Apr – Jan
All day
Slate Pencil Urchin
Snow Crab
Spider Crab
Spiny Lobster
Spotted Garden Eel
May – Oct
4 AM – 9 PM
Sweet Shrimp
Tiger Prawn
Turban Shell
Umbrella Octopus
Vampire Squid
Venus Flower Basket
Whelk
All year
All year
All day
1,000
Check out more of our Animal Crossing: New Horizons guides below!
Welcome back to Game Scoop!, IGN’s weekly video game talk show. We’re halfway through 2020, and that means it’s time to check in on Game of the Year Watch. We’ll be discussing The Last of Us Part 2, Animal Crossing, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Half-Life Alyx, and more. Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service.
The Matrix is one of the most iconic and best sci-fi movies ever made
Few movies have had as significant an effect on pop culture as The Matrix. Everything about it, from the revolutionary “bullet time” action scenes to the leather-clad style, became instantaneously iconic. And on top of those inimitable stylistic choices, the movie was smart, with something to say that has kept viewers thinking about it and re-watching it over and over again ever since.
But just because you’ve watched The Matrix dozens of times doesn’t mean you know everything there is to know about it. Sure, you’ve probably noticed the obvious Easter eggs, like the very specific books in Thomas Anderson’s apartment, or the way Neo’s duel with Agent Smith mimics classic Westerns. But there are certain things you can only find out by digging into the ancillary materials created around a movie–in other words, by watching the special features and listening to the audio commentaries on the “Ultimate Matrix Collection” Blu-ray set.
With The Matrix 4 on the horizon (for better or worse), we did just that. These facts, quotes, and anecdotes were all pulled from either the audio commentary or the many making-of featurettes included with the series’ definitive collected release. Read on to find out what we learned. And don’t worry–this list only covers the original. We revisited the sequels already once, and that was plenty.
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1. Nobody besides the Wachowskis understood the script
The Wachowskis had never directed a film before, but they wound up directing this one because nobody else, including production designer Owen Paterson, director of photography Bill Pope, star Carrie-Anne Moss, and everybody at Warner Bros., understood what the hell the movie was. The one exception? Lawrence Fishburne, who claims he understood it perfectly the very first time he read it.
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2. The opening scene was deliberately ambiguous
In the movie’s opening scene, viewers are meant to be confused about who to root for. “We liked the idea of not necessarily recognizing anybody in the first few scenes of the movie. When you see Trinity sitting there in the dark hotel room, again, you don’t know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is,” says Lilly Wachowski.
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3. This move has a name
It’s called “The Eagle,” according to Carrie-Anne Moss.
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4. The opening originally featured a train
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5. This weird twirl required some clever digital effects
When they shot this stunt, Carrie-Anne Moss’s feet and hands were tied together and she was hung vertically so she could spin, visual effects supervisor John Gaeta reveals. However, that left her limbs looking stiff, so, at the Wachowskis’ behest, Gaeta digitally altered Moss’s legs to make them look like they were moving.
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6. Moss didn’t think she’d get the part
She assumed the part of Trinity would go to “a name” in Hollywood. “It was just another audition that I was going on in between my life,” she says. After reading her scenes, however, the filmmakers asked her to punch and kick a punching bag, and after she left, she heard them cheering in the other room.
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7. The Wachowskis assigned Keanu Reeves homework
The Wachowskis gave star Keanu Reeves three books to read before he even opened up the script. “I had to read [French philosopher Jean] Baudrillard, I had to read Out of Control [by Kevin Kelly], which was about systems, evolution, and robots, and then there was another book which was Evolutionary Psychology, which is basically emotions and psychology from a Darwinistic point of view,” Reeves says.
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8. The club scene was shot at a real S&M club in Sydney, Australia
“All the extras in the scene, there was a casting call that went out to patrons of the club, and they all came self-costumed,” says editor Zach Staenberg. “It was pretty wild at lunch, seeing everyone walking around on leashes.”
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9. Carrie-Anne Moss auditioned with this scene
“It’s looking for you,” she mimics along in the audio commentary.
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10. Agent Smith has some surprising influences
Hugo Weaving deliberately gave Agent Smith a non-specific accent. His wardrobe was designed to evoke a secret agent, while his exact manner of speaking recalled an authoritative but neutral voice, such as a newscaster. Laurence Fishburne, who plays Morpheus, compares Smith to Walter Cronkite. In addition, Weaving began to incorporate elements of the Wachowskis themselves in the character, which the directors joke about in the special features.
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11. Keanu’s mouth was covered for five hours to shoot this
He had to communicate via pen and paper for the duration of shooting this scene. In the commentary, Reeves calls this “a fun day.”
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12. This scene was done using a fake torso
The torso was based on a cast of Keanu’s body, and it includes a surprising amount of detail.
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13. The bug extractor took 12 weeks to build
Editor Zach Staenberg says it’s a fully functional, practical device that took a model maker 12 weeks to build. “It’s an incredible, working device,” he says. Good to know in case we ever get infected with a shrimp-like robotic tracking bug.
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14. The movie inverts a typical cyberpunk trope
“We like cyberpunk fiction,” says Lilly Wachowski. “The problem with it is that nobody basically knows what cyberspace looks like, or in the end, it’s not a very interesting idea…all the metaphors that sort of happen when you start talking about simulation or falseness of the cyber world disappear when that has no context for the viewer. So we thought if we make this world the fake world, then all of those metaphors and all of those metaphors that work in cyberpunk fiction continue to work.”
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15. Keanu’s weight fluctuated crazily throughout filming
Throughout filming, Keanu constantly worked to lose or gain muscle mass and weight depending on whether they were shooting scenes featuring Neo or Thomas Anderson. For the scene where he’s woken up and ejected from the goopy pod, he lost 15 pounds to look more emaciated.
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16. This goo was initially freezing cold
The goo pod scene was shot practically, and required endless testing–from the consistency of the goo and the “skin” on top that breaks as Neo emerges, to the prosthetics that pop out of the sockets on his body. According to Reeves, by the time he had to get inside the pod to film the scene, the filmmakers had figured out that the goo would need to be heated first, because the people testing it out had gotten hypothermia just from being in it for as little as eight minutes at a time.
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17. Keanu was recovering from spine surgery when they started training
“I’d had a two level fusion in my cervical spine,” Reeves says. “My legs were getting–I was getting paralyzed. So I’d had the surgery done and then it was just a waiting game just to see if it was fused. But it really hindered me a lot in training because I couldn’t kick–I couldn’t train to kick for two of the four months.”
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18. Some of these acupuncture needles are genuine
Many of the needles you see in this scene were inserted into an elaborate prosthetic, but the ones in Keanu’s head are real, according to editor Zach Staenberg.
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19. The Nebuchadnezzar’s chairs were based on 1920s dentist chairs
It makes sense when you think about it.
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20. The Wachowskis insisted the actors do the fight scenes
“[The Wachowskis] kept saying to me, ‘We want the actors to actually be able to do the kung fu,'” says producer Joel Silver. “I would say to them, ‘What’s the big deal? Let’s get the people who can do the kung fu.’ But [they] were convinced that they wanted to see these actors doing those things themselves.” The Wachowskis got legendary Hong Kong action guru Yuen Woo-ping onboard to that end.
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21. This triple kick alone took 21 takes
And they had no time to rehearse it before shooting began.
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22. Switch was supposed to be trans
“The Switch character was meant to be feminine in The Matrix but she was a guy in the real world,” Fishburne says. “They decided to take that out because they felt it might confuse the audience some more.” For Morpheus, Fishburne acted more “feminine” and “nurturing” while in the real world, and more masculine inside the Matrix.
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23. This scene features several sets of identical twins and triplets
“I had an idea when the sequence with the cat, where you see the cat twice and you talk about deja vu, we decided to include that in the scene near the fountain, to continue that idea of the Matrix was glitching. So we cast a lot of twins and triplets where we could and then costumed them identically,” says costume designer Kym Barrett.
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24. This scene was supposed to look colder
During the Sentinel scene, the filmmakers had intended that viewers could see the actors’ breath on the ship’s glass, but they never quite got it right. “Because in the script the sun has been blotted out, you’re not in a warm world. You’re in a very cold world. When the power dies in the Nebuchadnezzar, the world becomes freezing,” says director of photography Bill Pope.
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25. The real world clothes were meticulously designed
“The real world is a place where there’s not a lot of resources available, and what resources are available are made by the people,” says costume designer Kym Barrett. “So for example, maybe they hydroponically grow hemp or some other flax or something that they then mill and turn into their own fabric and weave, and it’s kind of a very ancient technology. Even though they’re technologically advanced, they don’t have anything that they can utilize to build fabric with apart from old methods. So we kept to natural fibers and raw fabrics and really simple shapes so that you would believe that a population like that would have made clothes in a simplistic way.”
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26. This was shot using an old technique
“The thing that used to convince him, before he was told the truth, it now looks remarkably fake,” says director of photography Bill Pope. “Green screen is too sophisticated a technique–we could make it look real. So I wanted to use something as fake as Hitchcock’s old rear screen projection, the same way Cary Grant looks fake driving down the street in North by Northwest.”
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27. There was a much longer scene here originally
The filmmakers worried that the expository section of the movie when Morpheus and Neo visit the Oracle was too long, according to editor Zach Staenberg. For example, there was originally a roughly two-minute conversation in the hallway here that was basically entirely cut. “It was a wonderful scene, I liked it, but it was just the wrong place in the movie ultimately,” Staenberg says.
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28. They covered up anything blue to maintain that iconic green tinge
“We didn’t want to, when we filmed in the center of Sydney, see really any blue,” says production designer Owen Paterson. “So 3 o’clock in the morning, a crew of set dressers would go in there and they would cover all the blue things with green bits.” They also covered Australian phone booths with large boxes that looked more like American phone booths, and made sure to hide any visible trees and recognizable buildings. As multiple people throughout the special features point out, the pervasive sickly green hue represents the decay and rottenness of the digital world the machines have created.
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29. They had one chance to get several of the “government lobby” fight shots
Carrie-Anne Moss shares that, because of the prohibitive setup time to reset the exploding columns if they got it wrong, they only got to do one take of many of the shots in this iconic fight scene, including Trinity’s impressive wall-cartwheel. Everything in the scene was shot practically, which added to the challenge but looked much better than CGI.
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30. The iconic “bullet time” effect was inspired by comic books
“We were speaking before of the sort of impact that comic books can have in terms of their frozen graphic moments,” says Lana Wachowski. “What we really like about slow motion is that it sort of brings some of that quality to the action scenes. But we also like to move the camera. So we started off and we had this concept of shooting something in slow motion but moving the camera at regular speed.”
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31. The machine gun effect here was created by underwater air nozzles
The nozzles, controlled by remote, squirted air upward in a sequence to simulate the machine gun fire hitting the water. Production designer Owen Paterson seems quite tickled by this.
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32. The rooftop and helicopter crash sequence took six months total to create
That included months of research on details as minute as what type of glass would produce the desired expanding, circular shattering effect when destroyed. To help, they used concentric rings of explosives behind the glass, rigged to go off sequentially.
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33. Bullet time was created with still images
The filmmakers used still cameras to take photographs of the set, and then “extracted” both shape and texture from those photos to create the virtual imagery, according to visual effects supervisor John Gaeta. Without that technique, these 360-degree shots would have been much more difficult–if not impossible–to shoot.
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34. Keanu’s stuntman broke his knee, dislocated his shoulder, and broke several ribs shooting this
According to Reeves, his stuntman suffered multiple injuries, including those described above and others, from the landing here. That stuntman, incidentally, was Chad Stahelski, who would go on to direct Reeves in the John Wick movies 15 years later.
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35. “Need a little help”
Reeves says he was obsessed with getting this line perfect. “I made them get 22 takes of that. What would be the right gesture? Is he looking, or is he just waiting to see if the agents are coming?”
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36. People who read the script wanted the ending changed
“We wanted to tell the first story without destroying the Matrix,” Lana Wachowski says. “That was a huge struggle with people who would read the script, because everybody wants the giant death star, evil force destroyed at the end to have some sort of sense of resolution. And we felt that it was more interesting to have the actual resolution be this character’s arc. This singular sort of transformation of this one character–we thought was more cool to make that the climax of the story than to have it be what everyone expected, which would be the destruction of the Matrix.”
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37. The people who made The Matrix genuinely thought the sequels would be good
The saddest thing about watching the Matrix special features is seeing all the people who made the original speak optimistically about how much better they thought the sequels were going to be. Welp.
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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company
While Marvel and DC dominate the world of superhero movies, one of the most famous superheroes of all time–Spider-Man–isn’t owned by either studio. Marvel was in serious financial trouble during the late ’90s and sold the cinematic rights to some of its prize possessions to other studios, with Spider-Man going to Sony, and X-Men and the Fantastic Four to Fox. And while the latter two properties have now returned to Marvel, Sony clearly has no interest in letting Spidey go. His appearance in the MCU is via a temporary co-production deal with Disney, and Sony continues to develop its own films using characters from Spider-Man comic books.
The first of these was 2018’s Venom. The film starred Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, a journalist who becomes the host for the dangerous alien symbiote of the title. The movie was met with very mixed reviews but was a box office smash, grossing more than $856 million worldwide. A sequel was announced soon after the movie’s release, and in April this year, the title was confirmed to be Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
Like most major Hollywood movies set for release in 2020, the Venom sequel had been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, it won’t be released this year at all. However, production was completed before the pandemic shut down work across Hollywood, and we know quite a bit about the film so far. So while we wait for the next dose of symbiotic insanity, here’s everything we know so far about Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
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What’s the release date?
Venom: Let There be Carnage will hit theaters on June 25, 2021. It was originally scheduled for an October 2020 release, but like most movies due ito release this year, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it back to 2021.
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Who’s coming back?
Tom Hardy will be back as Eddie Brock, as well his symbiotic alter ego Venom. Michelle Williams returns as district attorney Anne Weying, who is also Brock’s ex-fiancee, while Reid Scott is playing Anne’s boyfriend Dan Lewis once more.
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Who’s new?
There’s a number of high-profile additions to the Venom sequel. Woody Harrelson takes second billing as the serial killer Cletus Kasady, who becomes a host for another alien symbiote, the insane creature known as Carnage (Technically, Harrelson appeared in the first movie, but this was just a brief mid-credit cameo). Naomie Harris, who has played Moneypenny in all the recent James Bond movies, joins the cast as Shriek. In Marvel’s comic books, Shriek is Kasady’s lover and a powerful supervillain in her own right, with the power to manipulate sound. There are also so-far undisclosed roles for Stephen Graham (The Irishman) and Sean Delaney (Killing Eve).
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Who’s directing?
Andy Serkis takes over from Ruben Fleischer, who directed the first Venom but could not commit to the sequel due to his work on Zombieland 2: Doubletap. Serkis is best known for his motion capture performances as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes series. He also directed Netflix’s Jungle Book adaptation Mowgli, and played Ulysses Klaue in the Marvel hit Black Panther.
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Who’s writing?
The script for Venom: Let There be Carnage has been written by Kelly Marcel. Marcel co-wrote the first movie, and also worked on Saving Mr. Banks and Fifty Shades of Grey.
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What’s the story?
The main conflict in the Venon sequel was set up at the end of the first movie, and the film will see Venom face off against Carnage. Not much is known beyond that, although producer Matt Tolmach has hinted that it will also focus on how Brock lives as the host to a powerful symbiote. “The heart of Venom was always the relationship between Eddie and Venom,” he told Cinemablend. “These two characters, these two sides that had to figure out how to live together and that were somehow better together than they were separately, or more successful, and what that meant.”
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Any images of footage?
No official images or footage have been released from the movie so far. However, in February, Tom Hardy posted an image of Harrelson as Cletus Kasady, wearing a very colourful shirt–and minus the terrible wig he sported at the end of Venom. The image has since been deleted by Hardy, but you can still see it here.
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Will there be Venom 3?
If Venom 2 is a success, then a third movie is certain to follow. Tom Hardy confirmed way back in August 2018 that he had signed on for three movies, and let’s face it, as long as these films make money, then Sony will keep making them for as long as they can.
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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company
Major in-game memorials have been taking place following the death of professional World of Warcraft player and streaming personality Byron “Reckful” Bernstein.
Players from around the world across multiple WoW and WoW Classic servers gathered in Azeroth’s Stormwind Cathedral to kneel and celebrate Reckful’s life. The World of Warcraft team paid tribute to Bernstein on Twitter, calling him “one of the most memorable WoW players of all time.”
Twitch issued its own statement, noting Reckful’s pioneering impact on the platform “Byron was someone who talked about his struggles to help make room for others to do the same”, the statement reads. “As we process this loss, we have to recognize that the stigma around mental health and treatment often prevents people from seeking and getting the help they need.”
Today we all witnessed not only the largest in-game memorial but also the largest in-game player-driven event in the history of World of Warcraft
In times like this it’s easy to think of the evil that people are capable of but we can’t forget the purity and kindness as well. pic.twitter.com/5mzOSZrM3Z
If you are having suicidal thoughts or just need to talk to someone, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 if you’re in the US. For a list of international helplines and resources, click here. (Hyperlink the last line to this url: http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html)
“You’re designing Final Fantasy XIV raids and remaking the original Nier now. What’s changed for you since Nier: Automata?” That’s a question I sent over to Yoko Taro via email through a PR rep and translator, hoping to get some insight on how his career has evolved since directing one of 2017’s best games. And provide insight he did.
“I’ve always been stubborn, but once Automata became a hit, everyone began to say yes to my stubborn demands. Everyone may think that I became arrogant because I made a hit and got carried away–I’m upset because I’ve always been arrogant!”
For those unfamiliar, Yoko Taro kind of doesn’t give a damn about professional norms in how he presents himself. You’ll never catch him in the public eye without his Emil helmet on and you’ll recognize his wild but inoffensive eccentricity as distinct from pretty much any other developer in the industry. In many ways, it’s an attitude that’s spilled into games he’s worked on, typically designed with unconventional storytelling, melodrama, and sometimes crude irreverence. And if you’re hyped up for the next thing from the creator of the Nier and Drakengard series, well, it actually just launched this week in the West.
It’s a mobile RPG for iOS and Android with gacha elements called SinoAlice. It’s been out in Japan for three years, but has finally been localized in English and released. Maybe “mobile game” has you doing a double-take, but hear me out: Yoko Taro writes his own dark take on fairy tale characters like Alice (in Wonderland), Cinderella, Snow White, Red Riding Hood, and a whole bunch of others. Several story episodes offer peeks into each character’s relationship to their original author and their new dark past that’s kind of messed up. Hell, SinoAlice’s subtitle is “A Cruel Tale Of Girls Who Must Kill To Live.”
In anticipation of the game’s launch, I was able to reach out to Yoko-san along with SinoAlice producers Shogo Maeda (Pokelabo) and Yoshinari Fujimoto (Square Enix), while sneaking in a few questions about Nier. Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.
“The folks at Pokelabo said, ‘We really want to release this globally,'” Fujimoto-san said in reply to why SinoAlice came West after three years. Maeda-san picked it up, saying, “Even before the Japan release, we thought this was a title that could put up a good fight globally in terms of its world-building [while also appealing to] Yoko’s fan base. It’s been three years, but we still feel the same way.”
Both of them also cite the uniqueness of world-building and narrative when asked about what makes the game stand out in a sea of gacha RPGs. They mention that it’s “the only game in the world that lets you experience Alice written by Yoko Taro.” Maeda-san also added that while the gacha system (think loot boxes for cosmetics and gear) is the same as it is Japan, they’ve “made some arrangements such as some guaranteed slots, and more likeliness of things you can acquire outside of gacha, compared to the Japanese version.”
Three separate screenshots from SinoAlice.
So if this is an ongoing gacha-style RPG, but with an emphasis on narrative, I had to ask about how deep the story goes–a question that Yoko-san left hanging, telling me, “I think the story will continue for as long as sales continue. Human greed is never-ending, isn’t it…” That makes you think.
This isn’t the only mobile project he’s involved with, as he’s also currently working on Nier: Reincarnation, a new canonical story in the series that’s a mobile-exclusive. So I asked if and how these two games inform each other. “In SinoAlice, I thought that because mobile games often have no ending, I should prepare one, but SinoAlice shows no sign of ending so I’m feeling troubled,” Yoko-san told me. “For Reincarnation, I set it up so the ending will come no matter what after a certain period of time. But I have this lingering feeling that for games that are thought out like that, they’ll stop operations immediately…” he concluded, and he’s probably just kidding…unless?
In SinoAlice, Nier fans get a two-part crossover event, as a treat–Nier: Automata’s content starts on July 16 and Nier: Replicant starts on August 8. In asking about the extent of and work behind the Nier content, Fujimoto-san said, “The Automata collaboration scenario is written by Yoko-san himself, and the Replicant collaboration scenario is written by the scenario team from the Nier project, and supervised by Yoko-san. Both scenarios are original ones that you can only experience in SinoAlice. As for what it consists of… please do try playing it yourself!”
Left to right: Shogo Maeda, Yoko Taro, and Yoshinari Fujimoto.
With SinoAlice being an ongoing mobile game, it takes on the live service elements we’re starting to see trend across games on other platforms. In asking about the previous partnership and splitting with Nexon prior to release and what it means for the game, Maeda-san clarified, “Both Japan and globally, SinoAlice is published by Pokelabo. We’ve discussed extensively with Nexon, and we decided to release [the game under] Pokelabo in order to achieve a [level of service] that will satisfy our users, as Pokelabo has a deep understanding of the game.”
As for my early impressions, I’m enjoying the simplicity of SinoAlice’s combat system, and having the asynchronous multiplayer component where party members are real players’ shadows has kept me afloat in battle. I’ve gotten accustomed to equipping the right gear before going into fights, which have been bite-sized two to three minute chunks where selecting the best weapon and element type to attack with leads to victory (so far). While it’s been overwhelming trying to decipher the labyrinthine menus, it’s been easy enough to follow the story branches, which thus far have been quite cryptic and melodramatic.
One crucial aspect to the experience: Composer Keiichi Okabe, who’s been responsible for tremendous soundtracks including the award-winning music of Nier: Automata, has brought the heat again for SinoAlice. And honestly, these songs could be swapped into Automata and they’d fit right in–the grand sense of scale and drama of SinoAlice’s soundtrack is definitely keeping me going.
In trying to get Yoko-san’s take on the music and his frequent partnership with Okabe-san, I jokingly asked, “Keiichi Okabe: great composer or greatest composer?” to which he replied, “He is a great and greatest businessman.” I don’t know what to do with the information, but I’ll take it.
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Nier: Automata Let’s Play With Developers Yoko Taro And Takahisa Taura
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Admittedly, I’m no expert in mobile RPGs, having only played a handful of hours in Fate/Grand Order and Granblue Fantasy. I’m still wrapping my head around how to manage the gear system and trying to understand the drop system. However, what’s hooking me here is the dark, mysterious play on old fairy tale characters, their conversion to exceptional anime-inspired designs, and the emphatic orchestral score. And while it’s a free-to-play game with gacha elements, I’ve yet to spend a dollar, but we’ll see where that goes.
There’s a lot more to unpack in SinoAlice, but if you’re into Yoko Taro’s brand of storytelling and digestible RPG combat, the game is worth a shot, if only to see the results of his ‘stubborn demands.’
Netflix’s The Old Guard tells the story of a clandestine group of four immortal mercenaries — with an emphasis on “old.” Some have lived centuries, while the leader of the group, the apathetic and jaded Andi (Charlize Theron), is so ancient she can’t even remember how long she’s been alive. It’s an intriguing premise, and it allows for plenty of fascinating character work as we learn about the unique traumas one can develop after living a few too many lifetimes. But while The Old Guard is mostly enjoyable, a few shortcomings stop it from fully living up to its potential.
The movie — based on The Old Guard graphic novel series by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández, with a screenplay by Rucka — kicks off when a militarized pharmaceutical company learns of the group’s secret and hunts them down so they can monetize whatever’s giving them unnaturally long life. At the same time, a fifth immortal pops up on the grid and it’s not long before she’s recruited to the team. The villain winds up feeling a bit toothless, so the real source of conflict becomes the existential crisis that comes with finding out that death no longer applies to you.
Andi has fought in battles longer than there have been history books, and she finds herself bitter with the ever-declining state of the world. Why did she fight all those battles if things only seem to have gotten worse? Andi’s philosophical debates between her teammates, and the way they reflect on their long lives, fuel the film’s best scenes. It’s these damaged characters with this undying condition that sets this action thriller apart from numerous others in the genre, and the filmmakers service the concept well. Copley, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, has a bit of an obsession with the group, and it’s his heartfelt performance that helps create a sense of awe at what they can do.
When US Army soldier Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne) dies in the line of duty and finds herself unexpectedly back among the living, the team is compelled to enlist her. Nile offers a fresh perspective to the bitter Andi, and she becomes the gateway character for the audience. Unfortunately, Nile is often relegated to asking question after question so things can be explained to her, leading to scene after scene of clunky exposition.
The rest of the group consists of the melancholy Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) and the brave and bold couple Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli). Though they’ve resigned themselves to spending their years as hired guns, they add an incredible amount of warmth and humanity to the story. Joe and Nicky in particular are a gift — they’re a badass, openly gay couple who have no qualms about cutting down a room of goons using guns and swords. You don’t see that every day.
That these immortal mercenaries use bladed weapons from their original time along with modern firearms adds a bit of flair to the action scenes. Speaking of which, the whole team fighting together is an absolute blast to watch. They’re like a well-oiled machine — a nice detail that shows what a few hundred years of teamwork will do for you.
Though there’s a lot to like about The Old Guard, there are a few elements that aren’t as refined as the rest. The visual effect of the characters healing from lethal wounds, Wolverine-style, looks plasticky and unconvincing. Songs seem to force their way into the film at awkward times. A certain plot development feels predictable, unearned, and devoid of impact all at the same time. And as a fan of the comic’s gorgeously stylish artwork, I have to question why the movie was rendered like a standard action flick; I’m left to wonder what it could have been were it made with a style as inventive as the source material.