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GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Jenny Slate has played Missy, a young Black girl (and the love interest of protagonist Andrew) on Big Mouth since Season 1 of the hit Netflix animated show, but that’s set to change. The actor has announced that after the upcoming Season 4, she will no longer voice the character, and that the part will be recast by a Black actor.

In a statement on Instagram, Slate admits that while she was initially able to justify the casting to herself, she has since come to understand that she is taking a role that should have been given to a Black actor. “At the start of the show, I reasoned with myself that it was permissable for me to play Missy because her mom is Jewish and White–as am I,” the actor wrote. “But Missy is also Black, and Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.”

Slate goes on to acknowledge that by taking role, she was “engaging in an act of erasure of Black people,” and that stepping away from the role “is one step in a life-long process of uncovering the racism in my actions.”

“To anyone that I’ve hurt: I am so very sorry,” the post concludes. “Black voices must be heard. Black Lives Matter.”

Co-creator and actor Nick Kroll also posted a statement to Twitter about the decision, cosigned by fellow creators Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett.

They state that they “wholeheartedly agree” with Slate’s decision, stating “We sincerely apologize for and regret our original decision to cast a white actor to voice a biracial character.”

“We made a mistake, took our privilege for granted, and we’re working hard to do better moving forward.”

Slate’s decision comes as part of a wider discussion about casting in adult animation. On June 24, Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg posted a long Twitter thread about the decision to cast Alison Brie, a white actor, as Diane, a Vietnamese-American character, on his show. “We should have hired a Vietnamese writer, and a Vietnamese actress to play Diane – or if not that, changed the character to match who we did hire,” he wrote.

Recently, long time Simpsons voice actor Hank Azaria revealed that he will no longer play Apu on the show. “Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn’t want to participate in it anymore,” he said.

Variety is reporting that Season 4 of Big Mouth has already finished production, so Missy will be recast as of Season 5. A release date for the upcoming season has not yet been announced.

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.

The iconic animated TV show South Park is now available to stream on HBO Max, but there are five episodes in particular that are not on the streaming platform due to their controversial nature.

The episodes “Super Best Friends,” “Cartoon Wars” Parts 1 and 2, and “200” and “201” were not released on HBO Max because of their depiction of the Prophet Muhammed, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

These are the same five episodes that were removed from Hulu when the show was streaming there. The episodes also got cut from rotation on broadcast TV re-runs.

Doug Herzog, the former boss of South Park network Comedy Central, told The Hollywood Reporter back in 2016 that these episodes were removed due to concerns about the safety of the production team.

HBO Max bought all 23 seasons of South Park for a reported $500 million. The show remains popular and on the air, with new seasons coming through the end of 2022.

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It must be tough iterating on an established formula, especially in racing games. Across the spectrum of styles within the genre, from Need For Speed Underground to Gran Turismo and Forza Horizon somewhere in between, I’ve loved but also felt burnout to some degree. Rally racing is one area I hadn’t experienced much until Dirt 4, but having known about where the series has come from, Dirt 5 noticeably takes a turn in a different direction.

I got hands-on with a preview build of Dirt 5 on PC, which features four tracks for brief circuit races with a handful of cars to select. One track mixes street and off-road racing, two are purely muddy off-road endeavors, and one is a hectic drifting loop with sprint cars. It’s quite a small piece of the game, but it’s immediately clear that–based on the demo–the emphasis is no longer on keenly following a co-driver’s course instructions in a time attack. The game is trying to tap into the excitement of head-to-head competitive racing with a bit of attitude.

The experience is reminiscent of Forza Horizon 4 in that it controls in a manner that bridges the gap between arcade and sim (by default, all driving assists like traction control were set to low). But similarities are also found in the courses’ environmental stylings. For example, the Ultracross event-type on the Norway track is laid with equal parts pavement and dirt, and features dynamic weather patterns–all of which remind me of the Horizon 4’s races and changing seasons. Over the course of the race, the sun began to and ultimately finished setting, leading the race to continue in an enjoyably chaotic nighttime snowstorm. The rapid snowfall emphasized a sense of speed and reinforced that my sloppy driving and tendency to trade paint with other racers wouldn’t be met with dire consequences.

In the Brazil and China courses–Stampede and Land Rush event-types, respectively–it’s all muddy terrain sloshing about as your tires glide through each lap. Here is where Dirt 5 goes in on the wild off-roading aspects. Brazil features gap jumps and China has widened lanes and harsh terrain, throwing any notion of a buttoned-up rally sim out the window. In the demo, you choose between burly off-road trucks or nimble superlite cars that handle much differently, but induce the same feeling of looseness in gameplay.

I did find the Sprint event on the Arizona course lacking, though. It’s a small left-turn loop with high-powered single-gear sprint cars where you have to maintain your drift better than the others to get through the course efficiently. Although a fresh idea for the series, it might not be the best showcase for the new direction or event-type.

From a presentation perspective, Dirt 5 also shows a shift in style by leaning into a low-key irreverence for the professional-ish disposition of past games and a Rage 2-like use of a neon color palette. The change in attitude seems to carry into the single-player story. Although it’s not part of the demo, developer Codemasters gave plenty of detail on its new approach to the career mode (see the video above). It stars two rivals: your mentor AJ (played by Troy Baker) and ascending racing superstar Bruno Durand (played by Nolan North). There’s also an in-game podcast network that’s used to narrate and drive the story, which also reminds me of the radio hosts who push you along in Forza Horizon’s campaigns. Throughout the career mode, you’ll choose which events to complete (said to offer branching paths) and which sponsors to represent as you gain a better reputation.

So as we transition into the next generation with another wave of racing games and Dirt 5 in the spotlight, we see it both departing from traditions while also moving closer to the established arcade-sim hybrid–changes which may attract an audience that probably hasn’t given rally racing much thought. Dirt 4 did feature a Land Rush mode for buggies and trucks, and Rallycross as a circuit-race alternative, but Dirt 5 is putting those styles of racing front-and-center while clearly dialing up the bombast.

Based on time with the demo, I’m not sure if Dirt 5 will necessarily overcome my fatigue with the racing genre as it seems to draw from others in many ways, but it’s certainly a fresh approach for the core Dirt series regardless. With Dirt 5, the series isn’t all about rally racing anymore; instead, it’s embracing the chaos of off-roading, and at least that’s still staying true to its name.

Again, what I played was a brief preview build and there’ll be much more to unpack when the game comes out on October 9 this year for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and on PS5 and Xbox Series X when those next-gen consoles launch.

2016’s Warcraft movie from director Duncan Jones made more than $439 million globally to become the highest-grossing video game movie in history worldwide. Multiple sequels were planned, but they never came to be due to the movie’s very poor performance in the US, where it made only $47 million.

Jones has now shared more details on what he had planned for the Warcraft sequels.

The first sequel would have focused on Go’el/Thrall as a young orc slave in Blackmore’s gladiator camp, Jones said. He would have become friends with a Tauren who informs him about a new world. In the third movie, Jones planned to take the adventure to Kalimdor, with the story focusing on the founding of the iconic Warcraft location Orgrimmar.

“Basically, the trilogy was the fulfilling of Durotan’s promise to give his people a new home,” Jones said.

Parts 2 and 3 aren’t in the works because the US box office numbers were so bad, Jones said in a follow-up tweet. Jones said in another tweet that he has “no idea” if sequels to Warcraft will ever be made. He added, “No one I worked with on the film even works there anymore.”

In addition to Warcraft coming up short at the US box office, the reviews were not very positive.

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