Remothered: Broken Porcelain, one of 2020’s big upcoming horror games, has been delayed. The game, which showed off debut gameplay footage and announced an August release date just last month, will now arrive on October 20 instead.
In an update on publisher Modus Games’ website, community manager Luke Croft has announced that developer Stormind Games is delaying the release to “deliver the experience you deserve.” As with many recent delays, COVID-19 is to blame: “Having additional time for polish and to accommodate unanticipated longer timeframes due to the current global situation will help us do exactly that.”
As Croft points out, this means the game will now launch closer to Halloween, which is fitting. It will now launch on the same day as Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga–a game it shares little in common with.
This is good news for horror fans who might have been expecting a less spooky Halloween than usual–after all, the movie Halloween Kills has been delayed into next year due to the pandemic.
GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Actor Elijah Wood, who played Frodo in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film series, has sounded off on Amazon’s new TV show based on Middle-earth. He told IndieWire that he’s “super fascinated” with what Amazon is doing, but he believes calling it “Lord of the Rings” is misleading.
“They’re calling it ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ but I think that’s slightly misleading. From what I understand, the material they are working on exists chronologically further back in history in the lore of Lord of the Rings or Middle-earth than any characters represented in Lord of the Rings,” he said. “It sounds more Silmarillion era. Not to get nerdy, but it’s the Second Age of Middle-earth.”
Wood, who stressed that he has no inside knowledge about Amazon’s series, said he’s “curious” about the stories the new Lord of the Rings show may choose to tell. He added that he’s happy that it’s filming in New Zealand because that will give it an element of continuity with the film series, which also filmed there.
Also in the interview, Wood said he would be agreeable to appearing in Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show in a cameo role if he gets asked. “Absolutely,” he said. “If there was a world where that made sense and was organic to what they’re doing than yes. Look, any excuse to get to go to New Zealand to work on something I am absolutely there.”
The Lord of the Rings TV show takes place during the Second Age, but there is no word on any of the characters who might appear in it or by what means the show will handle its time period. The Second Age is a 3,441-year era that had some huge events happen: the forging of the Rings of Power, the war with Sauron, the creation of the Ringwraiths, and when the island of Numenor sank into the sea.
Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first Deadly Premonition.
The first Deadly Premonition was an anomaly, a seemingly unintentional oddity that enjoyed cult success by happenstance. It was an oxymoron of character development and unpredictable storytelling accompanied by a clunky, unintuitive gameplay experience. Its sequel, Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing In Disguise, follows suit; however, though the return of the original’s off-kilter writing, outlandish characters, and disturbing twists is an exciting prospect, it all feels diluted this time around, missing many of the flavor notes that defined its predecessor. There are incredible moments worth experiencing, all of which are held together by the game’s protagonist, Francis York Morgan. But inexcusably poor performance issues (even by Deadly Premonition standards) make it hard to recommend to anyone outside the existing fandom. And even then, Deadly Premonition 2 stumbles in some of the places that made the first truly special.
The game flips between the past and the present, first beginning in 2019, which is 10 years after the Greenvale case from the first game. FBI agent Francis York Morgan, now Francis Zach Morgan, has neither fully recovered from the tragic loss of his love, nor the revelation of his dual identity, and is now a retired recluse in his Boston, Massachusetts apartment. Seeing Morgan for the first time is jarring; he looks frail, sick, and alarmingly grey. He doesn’t come off as slick and charming as he once did, but rather deranged and unstable, murmuring and talking to himself in the midst of a hoarder’s dirty apartment–it’s a stark contrast from the agent we know and love. The once illustrious agent, regaled for his inexplicable, and rather supernatural, investigation techniques, is now under scrutiny by the very bureau he once worked for.
In these segments you play as Aaliyah Davis, a young and fierce FBI agent spearheading the investigation against Morgan. His unconventional methods are called into question after the discovery of Lise Clarkson’s remains,one of the many victims from the 2005 murder case in the fictional Louisana city Le Carré that Morgan happened to stumble into at the time. Shortly after the discovery, Patricia Woods, a young girl associated with Morgan during the Le Carré case, goes missing, making Morgan a key suspect. It’s a mirror story to Morgan’s involvement with the Greenvale case. Aaliyah is convinced that Morgan is not, in fact, the crowning agent of the FBI.
Watching Aaliyah battle the wits of veteran agent Morgan is truly thrilling, with each of them oozing their own brand of charisma. They go back and forth using FBI profiling tactics against the other in a battle of intellect. It paints a clear picture of their characters and the stake they both have in the case–Aaliyah being a factual realist trying to serve justice in a case once deemed solved by someone using unaccountable means, Morgan slyly dodging around her interrogations and trying to take control of the conversation. All the while, Aaliyah’s partner, Simon Jones, balances the tension of the scenes with his innocence and ignorance by interjecting levity. These scenes are straightforward, focused primarily on dialogue exchanged by all three characters, and are some of the best in the game.
But the game doesn’t truly take form until you go back in time to 2005 to Le Carré, Louisiana, where you step into the shoes of a younger Francis York Morgan. On vacation to New Orleans, York takes a detour through Le Carré after getting word that a hallucinogenic drug he’s been investigating, Saint Rogue, may be involved with the murder of Lise Clarkson.
Within moments, playing York again is invigorating. From his quirky quips and offbeat candor to his conversations with his inner friend, Zach, York’s identifying traits are in full force, and it never gets tiring.
You’re then introduced to Casa Pineapple, the hotel in which you’ll be spending most of your time eating, sleeping, bathing, and shaving while in Le Carré. Before you even get to the lobby, you’re introduced to some of the game’s most bizarre inhabitants, like the multipersonality cook, bellboy, and concierge, David Jawara. Or the voodoo skeletal man, Houngan, who exists only in reflections and who only York can see.
The game’s dialogue is its crowning achievement; each line holds a sense of weight and wisdom. With every character interaction or observation, dialogue touches on anything from Louisiana history to philosophy to religion. Even when York first views the map to Le Carré, he speaks critically of its square shape, saying “It’s just another symbol of mankind’s obsession with molding nature to fit our rules.” It’s a small moment, but it’s a testament to York’s astute nature.
These opening moments were building towards an experience that should make any Deadly Premonition fan giddy; A Blessing in Disguise quickly felt strange and special, alluding to a bizarre, surreal adventure to come. All the boxes were being checked in setting up the foundation for a world I was desperate to explore. That is, until I stepped outside into the open world.
A Blessing in Disguise quickly felt strange and special … All the boxes were being checked in setting up the foundation for a world I was desperate to explore. That is, until I stepped outside into the open world.
Up until this point, the game runs smoothly. But once you get out into Le Carré, the frame rate falls off a cliff; it feels as though the game is in a perpetual loading state, like it’s constantly trying to catch up to your actions. As you trudge through the streets, trees and buildings render and appear only yards in front of you, with some pedestrians popping in when they’re just feet away.
Poor performance has become a part of Deadly Premonition’s identity, but this is difficult to justify in the sequel. Most upsetting is that the world of Le Carré actually has plenty to do and explore–that is, of course, if you’re willing to endure the jarringly inconsistent frame rate of the open world. It’s concentrated with collectibles that are used for crafting, hidden and tucked into alleyways and back streets; parks and greenery stretch across open fields, populated with wolves, beehives, and alligators near the water. Through suburban streets, squirrels litter front yards, and miniature UFOs linger in the sky or are tucked sneakily into trees. The world has things to explore, see, and interact with, but none of it is worth exploring under the weight of the game’s poor performance. The result of exploring and collecting is an arbitrary attempt in making the world feel alive, but ultimately distracts from the game’s core: its story.
When you’re forced to move through the open world, you’ll be maneuvering the choppy Southern European streets by skateboard. Yes, skateboard. You’re an FBI agent investigating the gruesome and disturbing murder of a teenage girl on a skateboard, and it works immaculately in the bizarre, surreal world that Deadly Premonition exists in. But the very concept loses its impact due to the game’s performance. You do eventually unlock fast travel, but there are whole chunks of the game, many of them being important story moments, that take place completely outside, so the game is often funneling you into areas where the performance suffers and your experience is diminished.
But if there’s one reason to push through the world’s problems, it’s Patricia Woods. Patricia is a young girl who develops a sudden affinity for Francis York Morgan and makes a pact with him to protect her from all evil in the world. There’s an incredible dynamic between her and York; she constantly calls his methods into question, acting as a balance to logic and reason while York’s understanding of everything seems fantastical. York, in his completely unaware candor, constantly patronizes her and berates her for not having seen The Terminator. The conversations are endearing in the way two siblings would bicker, and the oil and water dynamic between York’s absurd views and Patricia’s maturity is enjoyable to watch unfold.
She accompanies you as you peel back layers upon layers of the Lise Clarkson murder case, unveiling a conspiracy surrounding a rich and powerful family that owns and controls most of the town. Very quickly, the story takes disturbing and horrific turns. The speed of this pivot comes at the expense of characterization. Too often you’re introduced to new characters in the story who are murdered shortly after meeting them, which is unfortunate, because it leaves little time for mysteries to simmer. Questions are answered before you can even ask them.
The more you explore Le Carré, and the more of the case you discover, the more the excitement introduced in the opening moments of the game deflates. While characters are worth meeting, their depth is only surface level. The first Deadly Premonition, while regarded for seemingly unintentional juxtaposition of serious dark mystery and unorthodox humor, was always weighted by its character development, which often shined most when going off the beaten path of the case. But these moments are unfortunately not really present in Deadly Premonition 2. Le Carré’s residents do have routines and can be found at different areas of the map at different times. But making the effort to deal with the open world’s performance and talk to these characters in your free time isn’t nearly as rewarding or satisfying as it was in the first game.
That isn’t to say there aren’t special moments with these characters or reasons to interact with them, as talking to them will trigger side quests. But even then, side quests rarely amount to a reward worth seeking. Certain characters like Xavier Johson, the tighty whitey-wearing bartender and sax player, is a character worth going out of your way to meet. But his side quest requires you to visit his bar once a day for an entire week–a time-consuming task that left much to be desired when it was over.
A Blessing In Disguise’s saving grace is its main characters. Francis Zach Morgan’s arc, from the repercussions he faces for his supernatural methods to the hard journey he must take to close loose ends, is worth the time; Aaliyah Davis is a great contrast to York and is deserving of a story all her own, and Patricia Woods gives urgency to the story. In the end, its conclusion is an emotionally gratifying one for its characters, but an underwhelming finish for the Clarkson case and an experience wrought with performance issues for the player.
If you can get past its performance, there are glimpses of a good story here, and moments that make it a worthy installment in the Francis Zach Morgan saga. But, ultimately, Deadly Premonition 2 lacks the emotional resonance found in the first game. It’s a different brew of coffee from your favorite roaster, but one that’s more bitter than you probably hoped for.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
The One And Only Ivan, another Disney+ exclusive film, has released a first trailer, and it’s taking us right back to our childhoods. The film, which stars Sam Rockwell as silverback gorilla Ivan, is based on Katherine Applegate’s 2012 book of the same name. It’s about a circus gorilla who learns to paint so that it can ask for freedom, and it’s based on a true story.
The movie also stars Bryan Cranston as Ivan’s human owner, who raised Ivan from infancy. It features voice performances from Angelina Jolie, Brooklynn Prince, Helen Mirren, and Danny DeVito.
The film is directed by Thea Sharrock (Me Before You), making it one of the very few Disney films directed by a woman.
The movie is inspired by true events, in that Applegate’s original novel was inspired by a real-life gorilla, also named Ivan, who was on display in shopping center in Tacoma, Washington for 27 years, before eventually being rehomed at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.
Other recent Disney+ exclusive movies have included the filmed production of Hamilton and kids movie Artemis Fowl.
GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.
Psychonauts 2 developer Double Fine was acquired by Microsoft in 2019, and it turns out that the buyout had a major impact on the company’s newest game. Double Fine founder Tim Schafer told GI.biz that when his studio was acquired by Microsoft, it allowed the developers to bring back content for Psychonauts 2 that would have otherwise been left on the cutting room floor.
“With Psychonauts 2, we could see the end of our budget coming up, and so we had cut a lot of stuff,” Schafer said. “We had cut our boss fights. Now we are able to put those back in, and we’re like, ‘We think people would have noticed if we didn’t have those boss fights’. Being able to complete the game in the way that it was meant to be was very important.”
Psychonauts 2 was initially funded on Fig, where it raised more than $3.8 million USD, before the Microsoft acquisition. The game, which was announced all the way back in 2015, is now due to launch later in 2020 following a delay.
Now that Double Fine is owned by Microsoft, and has the backing of a trillion-dollar company, Double Fine is able to think about doing “what is right for the game” instead of focusing too much on time and budget issues.
“I’m looking forward to doing things for the right reasons,” Schafer said. “When you only have a certain amount of time and money, you might jump into a part of the game that you’re not ready to jump into, or start working on art before you’re ready with design. But now I look forward to this era where we are doing everything for what is right for the game.”
Also in the interview, Schafer spoke more about Double Fine’s decision to sell to Microsoft. He recalled that Double Fine was initially hesitant, and not interested in selling. However, Schafer became convinced after speaking with Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty and hearing about his vision for Xbox Game Pass in particular.
“I started to see two things that were important to me. One was that we could keep our culture. I was concerned, I was like: Will I need to put up a big Windows logo in our lobby, and change my email address to @ microsoft.com? And he was like, ‘No, none of that, you stay your own company, you’re just part of our team’. Of course, everyone would say that, but I kind-of believed it because I started to understand their vision for Game Pass,” Schafer said.
Borderlands 3 has received a hotfix, detailed on the game’s official site, to address an issue in Bounty of Blood and with the Legendary pistol Lucky 7. This quick fix has dealt with two issues, but Gearbox has admitted that there’s a bigger problem that was introduced into the game with a recent update.
Here are the two changes in the hotfix, which is now live on all platforms. The first one is, presumably, a reference to a clipping issue.
Patched a hole in the Atrium of the Bounty of Blood campaign add-on to prevent players from busting through the wall and seeing the other side
Addressed a reported concern that some damage effects from Lucky 7 sometimes did not function after exiting Iron Bear
The other issue Gearbox has identified is perhaps a bigger deal, but how it will be addressed might depend on how a change that was made by accident is received by players.
Gearbox writes that some players are interested in seeing shields that damage enemies being scaled in Mayhem difficulty modes. While the developer is looking to do this in a future update, they discovered that a recent change that lets Mayhem gear spawn in chests and vending machines has also accidentally been applied to enemy weapons.
This means that enemies can be equipped with Mayhem 10 weapons, doing massive damage to your character, which is not what Gearbox intended with the update. “We are monitoring how this is affecting difficulty in higher levels of Mayhem and are looking into how it could be addressed in a future patch,” the post reads.
GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
We already know Room 64 is no fun but what could possibly go wrong in Room 33? Apparently– everything! In Episode 6 of American Horror Story Hotel, we meet another invincible vampire baby. This guy is very hungry.
Meanwhile, John Lowe just can’t seem to catch a break. He stumbles onto crime scenes, gets drugged by his ex-wife, and his vampire son continues to play with his emotions. His poor daughter, Scarlett, doesn’t know what to think anymore.
Vampires seem to be the only ones with cell phone reception at Hotel Cortez. Not only do they have reception, they also have high libido. We also get a flashback to the 1920s, when The Countess aka Elizabeth Johnson visited the Murder House.
Finally, Ramona starts her revenge tour by attempting to take down the vampire children but Donovan had better plans involving Elizabeth’s lingerie. In other news, Bartholomew, can withstand the most powerful of enemies, even without being fully formed.
Following the huge success of the ESPN/Netflix Michael Jordan documentary series, The Last Dance, two more high-profile sports-themed documentaries are on the way from other networks.
According to Collider, the new documentaries will focus on Tiger Woods and the 1986 New York Mets. The Tiger Woods documentary is coming from HBO, and it will be directed by Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land) and Matthew Hamachek (Amanda Knox). The series is based on the book, “Tiger Woods,” from authors Jeff Bendict and Armen Keteyian. It will delve into Woods’ history as one of the world’s best golfers and his troublesome past with his sex scandal and his DUI arrest.
Woods himself is not involved in the documentary, but it will feature commentary from Woods’ longtime caddy Steve Williams and biographer Pete McDaniel. One of the women caught up in Woods’ sex scandal, Rachel Uchitel, is also involved in the documentary.
“Tiger Woods has inhabited our collective consciousness as a prodigy, a pioneer, a champion, a global icon, and then a tabloid headline,” the directors said in a statement. “After months of research and countless hours of revelatory conversations, we discovered that he has always been a projection of outsized expectations. His father, his sponsors, and his fans all made Tiger Woods into whom they wanted him to be. Our goal was to dive deeper and create an unflinching and intimate portrait of a man, who like all of us, is imperfect and inherently human.”
The other new sports documentary is a multi-episode 30 for 30 series for ESPN that will focus on the 1986 New York Mets, a team that overcame huge odds to win the World Series that year. Former players Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, and Lenny Dykstra will feature in the series, which is inspired by the book The Bad Guys Won that was written by Jeff Pearlman. Nick Davis, who previously directed the baseball movie Ted Williams: The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived, is directing the series, which is called ’86 Mets, with late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel attached as a producer.
The two-part Tiger Woods documentary will be released on December 13 and December 20, 2020, while ’86 Mets will premiere at some date to be announced in the future.
World of Warcraft has historically charged players to change their avatar’s gender, but that is set to change with the new expansion. Right now, it costs $15 to change your character’s gender, but Shadowlands will remove this charge entirely.
In an interview with Eurogamer, executive producer John Hight has talked about this mechanic, and promised that in the future you will be able to change your gender along with your appearance at the barber shop. “As we were adding things up in Shadowlands, we realised, ‘Gosh the only way you can change your gender in World of Warcraft is to go through this paid service,'” he says. “And we felt like that’s not the right message.”
This change will not arrive until the next expansion does, as it’s difficult to implement. “That’s not something we can easily hotfix – unfortunately we can’t do that right now,” Hight explains.
It’s not clear if this feature will be added for all players, including those who don’t buy the expansion, with the Shadowlands update–but hopefully this will be the case.
This answer came from a question Eurogamer posed about Pelagos, a character discussed in a July 2 Blizzard forums post who many believe is Blizzard’s first transgender character. According to Hight, it’s likely that other characters designed in-house at Blizzard are trans, even if it is not explicitly stated in-game: “knowing some of our designers and having conversations with them, I’m sure that was the intent.”
Here are some more insights from GameSpot’s own interviews with World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas.
Click To Unmute
Size:
Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?
Nintendo has announced a new livestream for tomorrow, July 10. While it’s not a new Nintendo Direct, the company will show off a couple of titles as part of its Nintendo Treehouse Live broadcast, which is scheduled to begin at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.
Specifically, Nintendo says it will broadcast gameplay of the upcoming Paper Mario: The Origami King, which is set to release for Switch next week. On top of that, the company will reveal at least one new title from developer WayForward, the studio behind the Shantae series and other beloved 2D adventure games.
What’s most curious about the game reveal is the wording Nintendo used to describe it. The company says the game will be “in a franchise new to developer WayForward,” which seems to suggest that whatever the studio is developing is part of an already-established IP that it hasn’t worked with before. What that could be remains to be seen, however, and Nintendo hasn’t shared any other details beyond that.
The Nintendo Treehouse Live broadcast will be streamed on the company’s website, YouTube, and Twitch channels. You can also tune in right here tomorrow and watch the stream via the video embed below.
