The two actors who help bring Fenyx to life are Elana Dunkelman and Tyrone Savage. Dunkelman voiced Alannah Ryan in Odyssey–one of Layla’s allies in the present day who’s teased as a possible modern day descendant of Assassin’s Creed Rogue protagonist Shay Patrick Cormac. Savage is the voice behind Alkibiades, the dude who basically tries to sex it up with Kassandra practically every single time they meet.
In Fenyx Rising, Fenyx is a sword bearer–the lowest of the low in the tier of soldiers. While travelling with a group of fellow soldiers, they become shipwrecked on the coast of a mysterious island. It’s here that Fenyx meets Hermes, who tells Fenyx that they are prophesied to save the Greek gods from their ultimate enemy, the titan Typhon.
“Throughout the course of this game, Fenyx begins to accept this prophecy and has his or her own challenges with how they come to terms with being this hero, and how the gods see Fenyx as this hero,” Immortals Fenyx Rising game director Scott Phillips told me. “Initially [the gods] are sort of doubtful, saying, ‘Oh, this is a human. How can they possibly help us?’ But obviously Fenyx will, through the course of the journey, prove their worth.”
Immortals Fenyx Rising is scheduled to release on December 3.
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In the second part of The Fate of Atlantis, Kassandra visits the Underworld and temporarily works for Hades. During the DLC, you have the chance to meet most of the NPCs that died based on your decisions in the campaign. You also get a mission from Hades to help him recruit four Greek champions, and by recruit, he really means find and defeat. He sends you after Achilles, Agamemnon, Herakles, and Perseus.
In Fenyx Rising, antagonist Typhon has recruited four Greek champions to his cause and he will send them after you when you cause too much trouble. Think along the same lines as raising your wanted level in Grand Theft Auto, only instead of cops coming after you, it’s angry Greek warriors. And this isn’t one of those, “Okay, I’ll just quickly defeat them when they show up and move on.” These warriors are supposedly very tough and they’ll chase you. It’s like some sick twist that after dooming some of these people in Odyssey, they’re now coming after you in this game.
“There are four legendary fallen heroes of ancient Greece that had been corrupted by Typhon,” Immortals Fenyx Rising game director Scott Phillips told me. “Each of these heroes is assigned an area to protect by Typhon. And as you do things against Typhon in that area, these guys will appear. Typhon will get angry, and will change the entire tone of the world. These guys will appear in front of you and start to hunt you if you try and run away. But we wanted to make it that their appearance is a big and scary moment.”
He continued: “These are four very tough enemies. They will keep coming back to fight you until you’ve figured out the way to defeat them. You have to find their lairs. You have to defeat them in the underworld in order to fully get rid of them. But that’s a really, really tough challenge. So we wanted there to be a dynamic feeling to some of the enemies that will go out of their way to hunt you, rather than it being just solely you’ll go out and crush Typhon. We wanted it to feel like Typhon is trying to fight you as well.”
I don’t know the identities of all four warriors. All I know is that Achilles is one of them because I apparently stirred up enough trouble to attract his attention during my two-hour preview session with the game. Typhon caused the sky to go all red, fire balls fell from the sky, and a booming voice announced that I was now being hunted. It was kind of nerve racking–enough so that I just immediately booked it out of there without looking back.
I like the idea of facing off against four memorable Greek warriors but instead of hunting them down, they’re after me. It adds this additional consideration you have to worry about early on, but it’s a goal to strive for–you’re trying to reach and then surpass the strength of these bounty hunters on your tail. Whether I’ll actually be brave enough to stand my ground next time remains to be seen, of course. Immortals Fenyx Rising is scheduled to release on December 3.
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For Immortals Fenyx Rising (the new name for Gods & Monsters), Ubisoft is aiming to tell a story that doesn’t have you exploring the world in a linear manner. Coming off the heels of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, the team behind Fenyx Rising wants the player to have agency in how they explore the world, choosing where to go and when to do so right from the start of the game.
“I would say this is quite a bit different from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey,” Immortals Fenyx Rising game director Scott Phillips told me. “We present the entire world to the player. We give them their main quests right from the beginning, and let them go free. We didn’t want to level restrict. We didn’t want to guide you through the world as we did on Odyssey, where we sort of said, ‘Okay, go to Argolis, and then go to Phocis, and then go to this other area.’ We wanted to be much more like, ‘Here’s four giant regions. Here’s four gods you need to go save. Go for it, and figure out how you want to approach that.'”
Frankly, it all feels very reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. With only a general idea of where you need to go, it’s largely up to you in how you get there. Protagonist Fenyx can climb practically anything, sprint, tame wild horses for fast transportation, and jump from cliffs and glide. The only thing limiting your progress is your stamina, which you can improve by completing combat and puzzle challenges hidden in small tombs scattered across the map. Nothing is revealed to you until you actually see it, so you can’t just climb a tower and get a bunch of markers added to your map in traditional Ubisoft open-world style.
“It’s a bit of a different mechanic for us,” Phillips admitted. “It’s more on the player to explore the world and to find these things rather than us necessarily, on the game side, pushing them to the player. We wanted to push them to the player in a more visual way, because we have this fantastical mythological setting. We’re able to call out more often with visuals, using distinct, non-realistic places to create interest. Like for instance, in Hephaestus’ region, you might’ve seen, or nearby actually, there’s a giant snake or a dragon skeleton. So that’s the sort of thing where it’s a really interesting, unique thing that you’re going to see in the distance. And when you go there, you’re going to find multiple things to do. And that’s the sort of loop that we wanted, where you see an interesting thing from a high point, and then you go and explore there, and you’re going to find something fun to do.”
Each of the four regions you explore present different types of topography, encouraging you to explore in new ways and regularly return to old areas with the new skills and strategies you develop as the game goes on. “Aphrodite’s region tends to be the flatter area, for example,” Phillips said. “And Hephaestus’ region tends to be one of the more vertical areas, because it has these sort of caverns or areas down below closer to the underworld.”
He continued: “It’s really up to [the players], but the challenge will come from not being able to get to every place right from the beginning. So while you do have the base set of tools to go everywhere, there are some limitations–certain skills you might need, certain places you can’t get too early on with the stamina you have. So we wanted to have ‘comeback later moments’ in the combat, the puzzles, and in the exploration across the entire world.”
As mentioned before, Fenyx Rising won’t restrict your progress through your level. Instead, each region has different types of mythological creatures that scale to your level. So, for example, if you struggle against a certain monster’s attack pattern, you can decide to come back to its home region later, without worry that you’ll return and just steamroll through the monster. You might have new attacks and abilities that make the monster easier to deal with, but you’ll still have a satisfying challenge to overcome because enemy attack damage and health scale to you. Likewise, those who are skilled enough to keep pressing onwards can do just that and the game will reward your skill by allowing you to keep going.
You’re free to explore the world at your own pace–you’re really only limited by your stamina, which may make it difficult to glide or climb over certain obstacles.
“We consciously made the decision not to put, ‘This is a level 10 quest,’ or, ‘This is a level 10 location. You’re only level five, so don’t try it,'” Phillips said. “We wanted it to be more uncertain in a way. We wanted it to be something that the player needs to sort of develop their own mental map of like, ‘Okay, what is too difficult? Can I climb that? I’m not totally sure. Can I fight that enemy? Well, maybe, but in this group of enemies, I’m not totally sure.’ But then we also wanted to have legendary enemies, things that you can take on right from the beginning, but you might run into some trouble, suggesting that maybe you should try again later.”
Phillips did add that there are hard locks in the game, but that they’re “few and far between.” Most of them are endgame challenges, requiring you to have unlocked specific abilities in order to complete. So there are a few points on the map that you’ll be able to reach, but you might not be able to access the location if you don’t have specific abilities. You’ll have to make a mental note to come back later. According to Phillips, these endgame challenges are optional, designed for “those players that really want to push themselves.”
Immortals Fenyx Rising has a few truly fun puzzles that will really test your mental fortitude.
But regardless of how your journey unfolds, Ubisoft wants to stress that Fenyx Rising allows you to shape your own story and make your own adventure based on what you want to do, where you want to go, and how you want to get there. “Whichever region you go to first, it’s all open to you,” Phillips said. “You can go wherever you want and the game will respond to that.”
Immortals Fenyx Rising is scheduled to launch on December 3.
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Developed by the team behind Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Immortals Fenyx Rising is scheduled to release on December 3. The game was previously known as Gods & Monsters, which, yeah, is quite the name change.
Now look, I love the new name. I’m happy for the change to such an unusual combination of words. Google is an unholy beast that I repeatedly try and fail to understand–it’s hard to come up with that perfect headline that accurately advertises what my article is going to be about, catches the eye of a reader who’s looking through a sea of search results, and is promoted thanks to Google’s ever-changing parameters of ideal search terms. So it helps when I’m writing about something that doesn’t have a name that’s already similar to something else. And do you know how many games, books, movies, and TV series already have some variation of “gods and monsters” in their title? Far more than “immortals fenyx rising,” that’s for sure.
But, my very specific use case aside, there’s still the question of why Ubisoft made the change in the first place. The developer probably doesn’t care about my Google-related woes. So after playing through a two-hour demo of Immortals Fenyx Rising, I sat down with game director Scott Phillips to ask him about the new name. Turns out, Immortals Fenyx Rising represents a shift in narrative focus that occurred over the past year.
“At the end of 2019, we got the chance to have more time with the game,” Phillips told me. “So all the directors, all the team, we got together, played through the entire game, looked at, ‘Okay, what do we want to do narratively? What do we want to do visually, artistically? And what do we want to do gameplay wise?’ So as we developed that, as we figured out where we wanted to go, narratively, one of the things we wanted to do was put a bigger emphasis on Fenyx and Fenyx’s journey through this adventure, and Fenyx’s interaction with the gods, and the gods as sort of this meta context of the unreliable narrators on top of it. And so we really wanted to make that the centerpiece of the game.”
As the centerpiece for the game, Fenyx is presented as more than a blank slate protagonist. I didn’t get to see much of who they are in the demo, but Phillips filled me in on their backstory and motivations.
“Early on in the game and the adventure, as Prometheus is telling the story of Fenyx, Fenyx is on a ship full of soldiers coming from Margolis,” Phillips said. “They’re shipwrecked. They’re lost on the coast of this Golden Isle, this mysterious island, and early on Fenyx encounters Hermes, one of the Greek gods. And Hermes conjures this prophecy that says that Fenyx will be the only person that can save the Greek gods from the destruction of Typhon, their ultimate enemy.”
He continued: “Fenyx goes on a journey and I don’t want to spoil too much, but essentially Fenyx starts off as what’s called a sword bearer–sort of the lowest rung of soldiers who really just carry gear rather than being a big warrior. But throughout the course of this game, Fenyx begins to accept this prophecy and has his or her own challenges with how they come to terms with being this hero, and how the gods see Fenyx as this hero. Initially [the gods] are sort of doubtful, saying, ‘Oh, this is a human. How can they possibly help us?’ But obviously Fenyx will, through the course of the journey, prove their worth.”
The entirety of Immortals Fenyx Rising is narrated by Zeus and Prometheus, both of whom add a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor to the game.
Not one to pass up on the obvious, I did ask if Fenyx’s name (which is pronounced like “phoenix”) has any bearing on this prophecy and thus the plot of the game. Do they gain the ability to rise from the dead? Is Fenyx the reincarnated form of a god? Though he did laugh, Phillips wasn’t able to answer my question. All he said was: “That’s something I wouldn’t want to get into in terms of spoiler-y territory, but something like that would make sense.” So I feel like there could be something there, but I don’t know for sure. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Phillips was far more forthcoming in terms of how players will be able to customize Fenyx. Similar to Eivor in Ubisoft’s upcoming Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Fenyx can be played as either male or female. You get a bit more agency in how they look, though, being able to choose Fenyx’s body type, voice, facial hair, as well as skin, eye, and hair color. You can get pretty creative with it too–Phillips threw out blue and green skin colors as an example.
Fenyx is yours to customize when it comes to their gender, physical appearance, and armor.
You won’t be stuck with your choices at the start either; Fenyx Rising allows you to adjust Fenyx’s appearance whenever you want. “You’ll be able to re-customize your look in the Barber Chair of the Gods, where you’ll get to change your full look,” Phillips said. “Hermes gives you a nice little explanation of what [the chair] is used for–it’s for how the gods transformed themselves to look like other things when they rip their skin off, and change the way they look. So, he sort of introduces it in this lighthearted, but also a bit grotesque way of how you’re customizing yourself.”
He continued: “So Fenyx is definitely a presence in the narrative herself or himself, since it’s a fully customizable player character. You will interact with multiple gods throughout the course of the game. There are NPCs in the world, but they’re limited. And they’re not necessarily a part of your main quest. This is a story really about Fenyx, and the gods, and their connection. So while Prometheus and Zeus provide the overall context and the narrative–this is a story being told by Prometheus to Zeus–you will journey as Fenyx through this. And then these two contexts do meet at a later point in the game, and really connect and wrap things together.”
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Watch Dogs Legion is set to release next month, and during Ubisoft’s latest Ubisoft Forward event, it revealed some unexpected news: You’ll be able to play a unique mission starring the massively popular British rapper Stormzy in the game alongside the other characters.
The mission is called “Fall on My Enemies,” and sees you helping Stormzy secure a broadcast to play his music to the people of London. For those unfamiliar with the UK underground rap scene, Stormzy is an outspoken award-winning rapper and songwriter. If you’re not familiar with his work, be sure to check him out on Spotify, Apple Music, or whatever your choice of music streaming platform.
This was confirmed along with the new Play As Anyone trailer shown off during the event. Watch Dogs Legion doesn’t feature a main protagonist, as you are able to make up your roster of characters based on your personal preferences. That includes an army of hacker grandmothers, if you so choose.
The presentation also included information on post-launch content for the game. Watch Dogs 1 protagonist Aiden Pierce is coming back as a unique playable hero in his own story expansion. It’ll be available as part of the game’s season pass, which also contains extra DedSec missions, four unique heroes, and even a digital copy of the complete edition of Watch Dogs 1. The first part of the Aiden Pierce post-launch expansion will arrive sometime after the game’s launch.
Watch Dogs Legion releases on October 29 for Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Stadia, with free upgrades to Xbox Series X/S and PS5 coming once those consoles have launched.
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The 100’s showrunner, Jason Rothenberg, has released a statement on Twitter in response to fan outrage over the decision to kill a major character in the CW show’s seventh and final season.
In the 13th episode of Season 7, aired on September 9, core character Clarke Griffin shoots and kills her best friend, Bellamy Blake, in order to prevent him from giving a vital book to the cult-like Disciples. In the resulting struggle, Clarke is unable to obtain the book before fleeing, meaning presumably Bellamy’s death will not prevent the Disciples learning the knowledge in the book, and so his death is all for nothing.
Fan reaction to the plot point has been negative, with many upset that the show did not fulfill the popular Clarke/Bellamy ‘ship’ that the fandom has popularised over the show’s seven-season run.
In response, Rothenberg issued the following statement on Twitter: “For 7 seasons, The 100 has been a show about the dark things that humanity will do to survive and the toll those deeds take on our heroes’ souls.
We knew Bellamy’s death had to go to the heart of what the show is all about: Survival. Who you’re willing to protect. And who you’re willing to sacrifice.
His loss is devastating, but his life and his endless love for his people will loom large and affect everything that comes after, to the very end of the series finale itself.”
Bellamy, played by Bob Morley, has been a season regular on the show since it began in 2014. The show adapts Bellamy’s character from the books, originally written by Kass Morgan, but his character has altered over the course of the series as the storylines of the show diverge from those seen in the book series. The finale of the final book, The 100: Rebellion, sees Bellamy ask Clarke to marry him, an outcome seemingly many of the show’s fans would have like to have seen.
The Xbox Series X retail box art has been revealed.
A listing for the Xbox Series X has been spotted on Canadian consumer electronics website The Source, which features an image of the console’s box alongside press shots of the device. The main image on the box focuses on the grating at the top of the device, and symbols in the corner tout features such as the Series X’s 4K 120 FPS capabilities, the Xbox Velocity Architecture system and the console’s 1 TB SSD.
A RoboCop prequel TV series that will detail the rise of Omni Consumer Products and the company’s Vice President, Dick Jones, is in early stages of development.
Talking to Movieholen.net, Ed Neumeier, scriptwriter of the original 1987 movie, revealed that he is working at MGM on the series. “It has all the cool stuff about RoboCop except no RoboCop,” he said.
“There’s the idea of doing things about business and law enforcement in the city of Detroit a minute-and-a-half in the future,” he explained. “It would be a way to do all sorts of stories about business and tech, Silicon Valley, corporations, snakes in suits, cops, all that. It’s a wonderful rich tapestry.”
Neumeier seems to suggest that the show doesn’t have a formal green light yet, stating that MGM still needs to find the right partners and produce a pilot episode. But, should everything go head, the show will follow “ the evolution of Richard Jones to Dick Jones, the story of OCP and how the world moves into the future, how the corporate world behaves.”
He also notes that people don’t necessarily start out as bad guys, suggesting Jones may not be quite the scumbag he was in the 1987 movie when played by Ronny Cox.
The last time we saw the city of Detroit under the thumb of Omni Consumer Products was in the RoboCop remake back in 2014, which we gave a 6.9 in our review back in the day. Hopefully, should this project come to fruition, it’ll fare better than Joel Kinnaman’s Alex Murphy.
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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.
All of this evidence suggests that Ubisoft is raring up to reveal a remake of 2008’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, most likely during Ubisoft Forward.
A video surfaced in May showing test footage of a cancelled Prince of Persia pitch from 2012. For more information, check out our writeup here.
If it is indeed real, a Sands of Time remake would likely go down well – back in 2003 we awarded the original a 9.6/10 review, saying it was “a must own — a soon-to-be-classic worthy of a permanent place in your collection.”
GameStop shoppers will have a variety of payment options to choose from while shopping for a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X this holiday season, including a layaway option, third-party installment plans, and a rent-to-own process, according to internal documents obtained by VentureBeat. The expanded payment options were confirmed in GameStop’s quarterly earnings report on September 9.
Here’s a quick overview of the three main payment options:
Layaway: You’ll be able to reserve a console at the store until you pay it off completely, allowing you to contribute smaller payments at a time.
Installment plans: GameStop will offer installment plans with third-party payment services, including Quadpay and Klarna, that allow shoppers to pay off their purchase in four installments over six weeks, with no additional fees.
Rent-to-own: In an internal memo, GameStop said it’s working with a “reputable third-party partner” to offer rent-to-own options for many items, allowing customers to take the product home with them with “minimum upfront money” and pay it off within one to 12 months. You’ll also retain the option to return the product at any point.
Shoppers will also be able to opt for Microsoft’s Xbox All Access plan through GameStop. Available for both the Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox All Access allows you to make payments over a 24-month period, costing $35 per month for the Series X and $25 per month for the Series S. Xbox All Access also includes Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and because of that perk, it’s actually cheaper to opt for the All Access plan rather than buy the console and subscription separately, saving you $59 on the Series S and $19 on the Series X. Xbox Series X and Series S pre-orders go live on September 22, so you’ll likely be able to sign up for Xbox All Access then as well.
Unfortunately, no such payment plan has been announced yet for the PlayStation 5; in fact, at this point, all we know about PS5 pre-orders is that the first round will be available on an invite-only basis exclusively from PlayStation’s own store. We don’t yet have a price and don’t even know when or which third-party retailers will have the PS5 in stock. But in a year where so many people have lost their jobs or had their salaries reduced due to COVID-19, having a wider number of payment options, including Xbox All Access, is certainly a positive thing.
