Raven Software co-founder Brian Raffel has revealed details about working with Soldier of Fortune consultant John Mullins and creating the first limb dismemberment system in video games.
IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey sat down with Raffel to discuss Raven Software’s broad history in the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered, along with discussions on Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Hexen, Heretic, Soldier of Fortune, and more.
Soldier of Fortune is a military shooter based on the popular real-world magazine of the same name and was built on the Quake 2 engine. It was perhaps most notable for the GHOUL tech that allowed individual limb dismemberment for the first time in games, a mechanic which would go on to become relatively common in the shooter genre, and even become a central pillar of games like Dead Space. It was also used to create realistic lightsaber damage and limb severing in Raven’s later game, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.
Before beginning the discussion in earnest, Raffel revealed the motivation for the creation of the GHOUL system. “Let me just be clear: there was no goal to make this… to just make it super violent. The goal was, and this came from my brother, Steve… He’s like ‘Let’s just make it as realistic as possible.’ So that was the goal. And what is the most realistic thing? Instead of just shooting a body and having it just drop and fade away, we wanted to make it as realistic as possible, not for the sake of violence, but just for the sake of reality.”
Raffel also commented on the first time he saw the tech in action. “I still remember the day, though, when we got the GHOUL system in. Of course, we saw the shooting of the limbs… but when a body falls down and you can still shoot it, and it’s still reactive… that felt really real. It brought a realism to me that I never saw in a game before.”
To craft the system, Raven brought in a consultant, who ended up being critical to the game’s evolution. “We actually had a consultant from Soldier of Fortune [magazine], John Mullins, who was great. He was like, ‘You don’t really know combat until you smell what’s going on, and hear it, and feel it. So, that kind of inspired us, a bit.” As the team at Raven continued to work with Mullins to create the game, they were impressed and eventually decided to make him the main character.
“That was a fun project, and I sometimes wish we would have continued it, and… evolved it… into a higher-brow situation… We definitely had the action… The weapons felt great. The multiplayer was a lot of fun. We had so much fun working on that game. It’s always a good indicator for us when we’re making games when you, yourself, are playing and you can’t stop. Heretic was like that. Soldier of Fortune was definitely like that.”
For more interviews with the best, brightest, most fascinating minds in the games industry, check out be sure to check out every episode of IGN Unfiltered, which includes talks with The Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley, Master Chief co-creator Marcus Lehto, 343’s Bonnie Ross, Valve’s Robin Walker & Chris Remo, Respawn’s Stig Asmussen, and so many more.
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Brian Barnett writes wiki guides, deals posts, features, and much more for IGN. You can get your fix of Brian’s antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the new Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook releasing later this year, offers a litany of new options for how players customize their characters and how dungeon masters run their games.
We wanted to get a better idea of what to expect within its pages, so the D&D team gave us an exclusive look at their intro to some of the new DM tools, several pieces of concept art, and an overview of everything contained within its 180+ pages thanks to an in-depth discussion of its many contents with Lead Rules Designer Jeremy Crawford.
Click through the gallery above for a look at the preview pages, or scroll down for the full deep-dive!
“I am super excited about people getting this book, not only because it has been so fun to design this content and develop it, but also because so much of this content we developed in conversation with the community,” Crawford says. “People are going to meet a lot of old friends in this book, because they will have met them before in our Unearthed Arcana process. They were able to give us feedback on those elements, and then we were able to analyze that feedback and incorporate it into the final version.”
New DM Tools
The introduction to Chapter 4: Dungeon Master’s Tools
“I’m also excited because the book includes things they haven’t seen before,” he continues. “It includes a bunch of new magic items that I think are gonna knock people’s socks off. It includes, you know, new tools for the DM including the puzzles, the magical environments… just all sorts of goodies. Now that people get all of this tied together, I think it’s a really strong package of new options that I think will enrich D&D games of all sorts.”
The DM Tools chapter kicks off with a full-page portrait of the titular witch, Tasha, playing an intense round of Wizard’s Chess with the famed wizard Mordenkainen.
Artist credit: Svetlin Velinov
“Putting in the wizard’s chess in that painting was sort of a little spark of inspiration that occurred when we were writing the art order,” says Crawford. “It was largely inspired by a series of old Dragon Magazine covers that features wizard chess, where the pieces on the board come alive and battle each other. So, that painting is actually a homage to a series of old Dragon Magazine covers.”
Supernatural Regions
The DM Tools chapter also includes rules and suggestions for what are being called “Supernatural Regions.” These otherworldly locations include (among others) haunted realms where restless spirits wander freely, the Lovecraftian nightmare of a world beyond the known sphere of existence, or a delightfully horrifying colony of mimics.
Concept art for the mysterious Far Realms by artist Titus Lunter.
“The Far Realm, as the name implies, is this far off dimension that is outside the great wheel of existence,” Crawford explains. “It’s this mind-bending reality that is not bound by the rules of the rest of the D&D multiverse, and it is that reality that creatures like mind flayers and beholders originally come from. It’s one of the reasons why those creatures are so terrifying to pretty much everybody else in the D&D multiverse. And not just humanoids, you know – even dragons are probably like, ‘Oh no.’ And we have a massive table of different effects that player characters might have to face in a place where that alien dimension has erupted into the material plane.”
Concept art for a haunted realm by artist Marcela Medeiros
“The Haunted Realm is, in some ways, the classic ‘spooky horror area’ that a group might wander into; and just as we did with the Far Realm incursion, here we give DMs a set of mechanical options for spooky things a group of heroes might face if they wander into this place that’s haunted by the unquiet dead or some other disquieting presence. And for both the Haunted Realm, the Far Realm incursion, as well as the other supernatural regions in the book, each one has a set of triggers that we’ve provided where, if one of these triggers occurs, then one of these rules options can click into place. Giving the DM essentially a menu of things that can suddenly cause the haunted region or the Far Realm region to suddenly jump into action. And in each case, those triggers are tailored to the particular supernatural regions so that you really get the sense of being in this place, saturated with a particular type of magic or supernatural power. And those triggers are a mix of story events occurring and mechanical things occurring.
A mimic colony as portrayed by artist Sam Keiser.
“We love including in most of our books dashes of whimsy, and sometimes the whimsy gets mixed up with the horrifying,” Crawford laughs. “And [the mimic colony] is a great example of the whimsical and the horrifying hanging out together. We just thought it would be delightful – slash terrifying – to have this whole region you wander into and have this dawning horrific realization that everything we’re looking at is a mimic. And so we provide rules for what happens when you discover you’re in a mimic colony. And that even includes providing a set of what are essentially lair actions for the mimic colony itself. We also include in those rules some… subtle enhancements for mimics that are in that colony, like them suddenly gaining the ability to communicate. So you could suddenly discover you’re getting telepathic messages from a chair, which could be played very whimsically in a particular campaign, or could be a source of great fear.”
The Whole Cauldron
Here you have the entire contents of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, covering everything from the new character origin options to magic items, puzzles, and the DM tools detailed above. We talked with Mr. Crawford about a great many aspects of the book, so we’ve included a transcript of our discussion below.
IGN: You and the design team have spoken at length about the new options for players wishing to change the abilities associated with a character’s lineage, but it looks like players can also change their character’s skills and subclasses?
Jeremy Crawford: Changing a skill and changing your subclass are great examples of the fun nuggets we like to include in a book like this that weren’t necessarily in Unearthed Arcana, because we always like there to be a few surprises. People saw a version changing skills back in Unearthed Arcana in our Class Feature Variant article where we explored this as an option, customized for each class, but we decided when finishing the book, it was better to just provide a general rule for everybody.
Changing your subclass, though, is truly something people haven’t seen. We give you concrete guidance on when is a good time to change your subclass, how you might go about it, some comments for the DM on whether some in-world training should be involved in this transformation of your character. This is the kind of thing many DMs let their players already do with their characters, but what we often find is that some DMs are hesitant to allow this sort of liberty unless we, basically, give “official permission” to do it.
So this is really us telling DMs, “It’s okay to let people do this.” You know? If they find their subclass just isn’t playing the way they’d hoped, or if there’s been a major story transformation for their character, changing your subclass is a great way to address those different things… These all go under what I often refer to as the “follow your bliss” umbrella of giving people the permission – and the encouragement – to make tweaks that will enhance their enjoyment of their character and of D&D more broadly.
Artist: Robin Olausson
IGN: So how do you balance that sense of flexibility or experimentation while still writing hard and fast Rules™ for D&D?
JC:So we make things as airtight as possible when you get into, say, a class feature, or a spell – really anything that we expect to go on your character sheet – we design it so that it can be run the way it’s written. But the moment we start giving the DM tools, or we’re talking to the player directly about the decisions they make about the character, that’s where we like to inject these reminders and these encouragements to explore new options, change things, try out homebrew, that kind of thing.
We have this balance that we always maintain between very rigorous, solid design of player-facing game mechanics, while at the same time encouraging playfulness, exploration, modification, when talking to dungeon masters and directly to the player. It’s sort of like, when we’re in a way, talking to the character, which is, you know, “Here are your class features, here are your spells, here’s a feat potentially, that you’re going to take,” then it’s very much, “This must be worded as well as we can, as clearly as we can, be as balanced as well as it can be. This is a rule and it’s meant to be played this way.” But the moment we turn and look to the player and the DM, the mode shifts to, “All right, these rules are here, you can play them the way they’re written, but if you want to explore another direction, if you want to experiment with how this particular class feature functions, go for it.” And we hold both of those perspectives in our minds at the same time.
IGN: Regarding subclasses – of the 30 included in Tasha’s (not including variant class features or new options for existing subclasses), 22 are making the jump from playtest material to Official Subclass. What determines which subclasses get to formally become part of the D&D pantheon?
JC: When we’re first concepting a subclass as a possible addition to the game, we’re typically looking at what I refer to as “functional gaps” for a class. And what I mean by that is, we’re looking for places where a kind of area of functionality is not currently addressed by another subclass in the game.
IGN: Like giving players who typically focus on melee combat a way to try chaos magic with the Barbarian’s Path of Wild Magic?
JC: Yeah – we also look for story gaps, where there might be an archetype associated with a class that we’re not serving particularly well yet. So we think, “Oh, we need to design a new subclass to really dig into this particular archetype.” A great example of this would be the [Fighter’s] Psi Warrior. Until Tashas, we had not done a fighter powered by psionic energy yet. This is a great example of a story archetype that we wanted to address because it’s something that has appeared in D&D before.
We then send out our drafts to the community through Unearthed Arcana to get their impressions. We want to find out: “Does this option resonate with you? Does it excite you? Do you notice things in here that you love, and are there some things that you’d love to see improved?” We then take all of that feedback and we analyze it, and we look for ways that we can improve each of the options… We’ll then take that and make improvements, but then – in some cases – we’ll get feedback on something where the message we’re getting is, “People liked this, but they want a lot changed about it.” And in cases like that, we’ll then sometimes release yet another version of it in Unearthed Arcana. You saw that with the genie, where we had an initial version called The Noble Genie, and then a revised version that we released later in Unearthed Arcana called simply The Genie.
And then, after all of those rounds of playtest analysis, game balancing, editing the text, et cetera, then the new subclass – or spell, or Feat, or other new game option – gets to finally come home and be in a book like Tasha’s.
Artists: Brian Valeza & Kieran Yanner
IGN: Were there any subclasses that didn’t make the jump to Official Material in Tasha’s?
JC: Not many! This past year and a half of Unearthed Arcana generated mostly positive feedback, so there were very few casualties in this design process. One of the ones that comes to mind is the Onomancy Wizard option, the “True Names” wizard. It wasn’t a [mechanical] balance reason that caused it not to make it in, it was simply because the community told us, “Eh, we don’t need to see any more of this.”
Our general goal whenever we’re refining anything for the game is – and this is for every class – we want to make new options as easy to use as possible. We want them to be fun and interesting, but not to slow down play too much […] I think [the Onomancy wizard] was a mix of complexity that wasn’t balanced by enough fun, and people have conflicting notions of what true names are and how they should function, not only in D&D, but in a fantasy world in general. So, there was also some static about the very archetype itself.
IGN:I see a lot of cantrips from the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guidein the Spells section. Are those simple reprints or have there been updates made to them?
JC: When we decided to bring in the Bladesinging subclass for the wizard into this book and remove the [Forgotten Realms*]-specific elements of it – which includes removing the requirement that a person be an elf or a half-elf to be a member of that subclass, so we’re very officially opening the subclass up to everybody – we decided that if we’re going to bring in Bladesinging, then we should bring in the cantrips that we originally designed to go along with that subclass. So that’s the main reason those cantrips appear in this book. Then, in the process of bringing them over, we decided to make a few tweaks to those spells so that the wording would better align with our original design intent […] Any of the changes that people see there really are just bringing those spells into alignment with how we always meant for those spells to function.
Artist: Andrew Mar
IGN: The’res a section of Tasha’s dedicated to puzzles in the DM Tools chapter – can you give us a bit more insight into what those might look like?
JC: These puzzles were all designed by Elisa Teague, she is a fabulous puzzle designer […] and she created puzzles that are meant to be engaging on their own, but also engaging as content that can be put into a D&D campaign. We really were looking for puzzles that are also fully D&D; that a DM could take, drop into a particular adventure, and provide a new play experience. Many campaigns are filled with splendid role-playing, sweeping storytelling, exciting battles, but sometimes DMs are hesitant to add puzzles into that mix. And so we wanted to take some of that intimidation factor away with these puzzles, showing not only can you incorporate these and do so without too much fuss, and also provide suggestions for customizing these puzzles so that you could reuse them, and maybe inspire you to create puzzles of your own.
I won’t ruin the solution, but one of the puzzles I really like in the book, it comes with a map of an island, and part of solving the puzzle is figuring out connections between different things you see on that map. I love this one because (A) it’s a fun puzzle, but (B) it’s a great example of us making a puzzle that is fully D&D, because a DM can also use that island map as the location for an adventure or even a whole mini-campaign.
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“For me, the thing I’m most excited about – aside from the things I’ve already talked about that I’m excited about,” laughs Crawford, “is people seeing the complete package. When leading up to a book, it can be fun to zero in on this element or that element, but what people won’t get to experience until they have the whole book in their hands is how all these pieces fit together. And that’s one of the things that was especially satisfying for me and the rest of the team to craft: looking at how the new class feature options, the new subclasses, the new feats, the new spells, and the new magic items can all be used together, and how the combination of all of these elements will be able to create some radically new D&D experiences. And so again, as, as much as I love each of the individual pieces, in some ways I’m even more thrilled about how all those pieces come together.”
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is available in print starting on November 17 in North America and December 1 in Europe and Asia, with digital versions available for pre-order at Roll20 and D&D Beyond.
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JR is a Senior Editor at IGN and could literally spend all day talking about D&D – and has! You can follow him for more TRPG and gaming content on Twitter.
Cardy is a very lucky boy and has been able to get his hands on a PS5, the DualSense and Astro’s Playroom. He joins Joe and Dale who have been playing quite a bit of Watch Dogs: Legion and discuss whether it lives up to expectations. Speaking of having high expectations, Joe thinks Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity may be the most perfect game his eyes have ever seen. Plus, is Borat still funny?
Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].
The huge success of Get Out and Us has made Jordan Peele one of the hottest filmmakers in horror, enabling him to produce movies for other directors too. The Peele-produced Candyman reboot is set for release next year, and it’s been reported that he’s developing a remake of Wes Craven’s The People Under The Stairs.
According to Collider, Peele will produce a new version of Craven’s movie for Universal, through his company Monkeypaw Productions. As with Candyman, which is helmed by Nia DaCosta, Peele won’t direct. However, it’s possible he and co-producer Win Rosenfeld might have input into the script, as they did with Candyman.
The original People Under The Stairs was also written by Craven and released in 1991. It combined horror with a dark social satire, and focused on a young man who breaks into the house of his married landlords when he learns he is being evicted. He discovers that the couple are keeping dozens of disfigured children in the basement of their house. The movie starred Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, best known for their roles as Big Ed and Nadine Hurley in Twin Peaks, plus A.J. Langer and Ving Rhames. Craven himself was reportedly working on a new TV version of the film before his death in 2015.
Candyman was originally set for release in June this year, but was delayed until September before being pushed all the way to August 2021. It’s a sequel to Bernard Rose’s classic 1992 original, which was based on a Clive Barker story, and stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Check out the most recent Candyman trailer.
Candyman isn’t the only big horror sequel that has been delayed until next year. Halloween Kills was set to arrive this month but has been moved back an entire year to October 2021. A Quiet Place: Part II will now release in April, while Spiral: From the Book of Saw, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, and The Forever Purge will release in May, June, and July respectively.
Disney+ is releasing new episodes of The Mandalorian Season 2 weekly on Fridays, which is a trend the streamer has followed since Disney+ launched back in 2019, instead of opting for Netflix’s binge model of releasing a whole season at once. Last year, The Mandalorian’s episode rollout was a bit wonky due to the theatrical release of Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, but The Mandalorian’s Season 2 release schedule will stick to Friday debuts for all eight episodes.
What Time Does The Mandalorian Come Out?
Each episode of The Mandalorian Season 2 is expected to drop at 12am PT/3am ET on Friday morning in the US, which is 7am in the UK and 5:30pm ACT/6pm AET in Australia.
So far, Disney+ is keeping the episode descriptions for The Mandalorian’s second season vague by offering the same synopsis for the first four chapters: “The Mandalorian and the Child continue their journey, facing enemies and rallying allies as they make their way through a dangerous galaxy in the tumultuous era after the collapse of the Galactic Empire…”
The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode Release Schedule
Here is the full Mandalorian Season 2 release schedule for all eight episodes:
Things are really heating up as we transition to the new generation of consoles. We’re just over a week away from both the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 being released. We’ve already done extensive coverage of the former, and now we have the opportunity to turn our attention to the latter.
We’ve got the PlayStation 5 and have already done a preview of its form factor, as well as an unboxing. We also put out the call for your questions and, in this episode of Generation Next, will be answering them. Of course, there are some restrictions as to what we can talk about at this stage, but there’s plenty of good information in the episode nevertheless.
In the episode, we cover the PS5’s stand and the best way to situate the hardware, early impressions of the DualSense controller, the PSVR camera adapter, and even how sweaty our hands get while playing, because at least one of you wanted to know about that.
We’ve also stored some of your questions and will no doubt come back to them in future episodes when we can more confidently address them. Generation Next is GameSpot’s weekly video show all about the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Each Friday, join PlayStation Pro Tamoor Hussain, Xbox Xpert Jordan Ramée, and Console Connoisseur Lucy James as they discuss the biggest stories about the new consoles.
Apex Legends Season 7: Ascension begins on November 4 and introduces a brand-new map (Olympus) as well as a playable legend called Horizon. After getting hands-on time with both, we finally know what Horizon’s abilities are.
Horizon’s passive ability, Spacewalk, increases her air control and prevents her from being stunned upon falling from great heights. Her tactical ability, Gravity Lift, throws out a device that temporarily reverses gravity, allowing her to send herself, allies, enemies, or the new Trident vehicles flying into the air. Finally, Horizon’s ultimate ability, Black Hole, sees her create a micro black hole that sucks in all nearby players.
Horizon isn’t the only thing mixing up Apex Legends in Season 7 either–far from it. I sat down with Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier to talk about how Horizon fits into the in-match meta, as well as the new in-game clubs, Trident vehicle, and character balancing changes coming in Season 7.
What role do you hope Horizon fulfills in Apex Legends’ in-match meta?
As an assault Legend, we want her up-close and personal in the fight. But what she brings is verticality and crowd control. So with her Gravity Lift tactical she can very quickly move herself [and] her entire squad up to a higher elevation, whether it’s a rooftop or a bridge, or whatever it is. So you can get that advantage over the enemy very quickly.
And then with her ultimate, Black Hole, you can use that in two ways. You can throw it in the middle of a crowd and suck them all into a single point and then just focus fire, or you can use it to deny a certain area. So if you throw it into a doorway, then you know the enemies aren’t going to run through that doorway, and you can perhaps flank around through another route and pinch them.
So her abilities are really about getting an advantage with height and then controlling the enemy flow. What we found is it’s a fun combination, and you can definitely do some fun and exciting things that make you laugh.
Will Horizon’s abilities curve energy bullets, like the Gravity Star did in Titanfall 2?
Yeah, the Black Hole does influence objects that are near it, so grenades, projectiles, things like that do get influenced by the change in gravity. And you’re right, it is like the Gravity Star. It’s a little bit less punishing, I think. We need to balance for a [battle royale] game.
You can do a lot of fun things with [Horizon’s abilities]. Anytime you’re messing with gravity, there’s a lot of unexpected things that can happen when you’re playing–you have a lot of happy accidents that are just hilarious and fun.
So Horizon is the third female character added to Apex Legends in Year 2, and like the first two, she’s not big enough to get the Fortified perk. Will we ever see another character either chonky or buff enough to warrant the Fortified perk, and is there any chance that one could be a woman?
I think you will, but those legends tend to be a little bit harder to balance. And so in Season 7, we’re making further changes to try to address the hitbox for Pathfinder, and you’ll see that in the patch notes. But the small and the large character sizes present additional challenges and so we’ve been trying to focus on the normal sized Legends. But we have some legends that we’re working on now that are of different sizes, so you will see them eventually.
Horizon excels at crowd control and navigating vertical landmarks, making her a very powerful force in enclosed spaces.
Will we finally see a new passive ability for Pathfinder in Season 7? My good robotic boi feels a little lacking given that both Bloodhound and Crypto can perform the same basic next ring reveal function that he can.
We’re keeping that change for now. I think it’s in a pretty good place to get the extra cool down benefit from using the tower. Pathfinder is always a topic of discussion because he’s in a healthier place now, but he was dominating player pick rates, player encounter win rates, and game win rates. So there’s multiple ways to address that. You can buff other characters, which we definitely do sometimes. But we try not to nerf, we’d rather bring everyone else up to a certain level. But if you’re a good Pathfinder player, you have such an advantage with grappling. So, we’re always looking at Pathfinder, but we have a lot of Pathfinder mains that respond to changes. And so I think, hopefully, that we’re hitting a good balance. We’re trying to do things that are fair and can be understood by the players, without taking away what makes Pathfinder fun to play.
How did the stats on the backend for legend picks for Season 6: Boosted look? Are any of the legends still dominating in regards to pick rate? And, conversely, are there any that you’re looking at and thinking, “Hrm, the pick rate is still a little too low”?
They’re in a pretty good place right now. Pick rate is not necessarily the best stat to look at because people get comfortable with certain legends or they like their personality, or whatever it might be. It doesn’t necessarily indicate that they’re OP or not. So we tend to look at encounter rate [and] win rate–if a Pathfinder goes against every other Legend, what are the encounter win rates? And we have this multidimensional grid that we look at, alongside a bunch of other metrics. But we feel like they’re actually in a pretty healthy place. Each time that we modify these legends, we bring the balance slightly closer together.
I think trying to achieve perfect balance between all legends is a bit of a fool’s errand, I don’t think it’s actually possible. What we’re looking to do is constantly try to keep them as close as possible, but also buffing certain legends in certain seasons so that you get a rotating shuffle of which legends might be more effective than others. And we’re talking 0.1% differences here, but I think having an evolving, changing game is important and we’re never going to achieve this perfect balance. We just want to get it as close as we can, and then constantly be switching that up.
I can’t believe that you actually look at how each legend stacks up to every other legend in terms of win rates and encounter rates. With a brand-new character every season, that’s an increasingly more complex set of variables.
Yeah, I know. We have almost real time stats, so we can look and see just about anything we need to. So it’s great to have good backend tools to see what’s happening. A lot of times, player sentiment or feedback from the community will sometimes be backed up by the data, and sometimes it’s the complete opposite. So obviously, the people playing the game and their thoughts come first. Just because something is factually happening doesn’t mean it’s perceived that way. And so we tend to lean more on what people are saying and how people are feeling more than the actual data, but it is good to see the data when we need it.
There are a lot of landmarks on Olympus–including the restaurant where Revenant killed Loba’s parents.
How will clubs be monitored to prevent the creation of harmful spaces within the community or to limit club names that may be racist, sexist, or discriminatory in some other way?
It’s both automated and manual. We’ve got a system in place that will automatically check for certain keywords or terms being used in clan tags. And some of them are crowdsourced so it’s an EA back end thing. So if somebody creates something that’s offensive that’s flagged on another EA game, it propagates into the same system that’s checking our system. So that automated piece is in place.
We’ve also got a report functionality. So if you see something that you want to report that was not caught by the automated system, you can report it and then a human looks at that. We’ve also got some tools to just look at everything as a whole, even if it’s not reported and make sure that we’re in a good place. But once there’s millions of clubs created, it’s a bit harder to manually validate every single one, so we’re going to rely on the automation and reporting tools.
When someone does a report, how does that work? Does it just go into the ether and the player has to hope that something happens? Or is there a follow-up email or message back letting them know how the situation is being handled?
So when they hit report, it goes to a person for review, but I’m not sure if they get an email or anything like that. That’s a good question, I just don’t have the answer because like I said, it’s an EA system.
How many Tridents spawn on Olympus. Are they spawned in random spots?
The vehicles spawn around the map in fixed locations so that you can learn the location of them. They’re marked on the mini map and things like that, so they’re easy to find. And we want people to jump in and start using them.
Will the Trident make its way to Kings Canyon or World’s Edge?
They’re exclusive to [Olympus]. Now that we have vehicles in the game, I think we’re going to find that some of our designers are playing with them in new ways and experimenting how to use that tech in the game. But as of right now, Olympus is the only map built with vehicles in mind–it’s got highways, roads, and open areas that you can drive through. Of course, it’s also got dense towns and points of interest to fight in more close quarters scenarios. But this map was built with vehicles in mind, while Kings Canyon and World’s Edge were not. So as of right now, vehicles are only in Olympus.
Certain legends can attach their abilities to the Trident–for instance, Rampart can attach her Emplaced Minigun “Sheila.”
With the introduction of vehicles, will the abilities of movement-based characters like Pathfinder, Wraith, and Octane be altered in any way?
Well, the vehicles, they’re different. The mobility-based legends have mobility even in the densely populated areas and within the cities. So the [Trident] is really only great for traversing the open ground quickly. It’s not going to help you in a gunfight.
True. It did not help me in the gunfight that I was in earlier.
You’ve got to pretty much just hop off the vehicle. If the vehicle takes any damage, you’ll take some damage and that’s by design. We didn’t want the vehicle to become a weapon or a tool to help you fight, we wanted it as a means of transport. And then, once you see another squad, you quickly disembark and then go about your normal way of trying to win the fight.
What types of next-gen upgrades can we expect for Apex Legends? Will the game take advantage of any of the new hardware or accessories–PS5’s DualSense controller, for example?
Yeah. A native Apex Legends game that takes advantage of next-gen tech and new controller hardware–that’s in the works at Respawn. On day one, we are going to be a game that can be played via backwards compatibility, but with some upgrades. So we’ve optimized some of our code to take advantage of the additional hardware on the system, so you’ll see better performance. We were able to do some code to take advantage of some of the hardware, but there’s certainly a lot more coming. But for now, we wanted to make sure that we can at least take advantage of that extra hardware that’s in there. We’ll be doing that, faster loading times, better frame rates, better texture, framing and budgets, and things like that.
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On this week’s bittersweet episode of GameSpot After Dark, Jake and Kallie are joined by GameSpot Australia’s Edmond Tran and Jess McDonell for their last day at GameSpot. Though they’re leaving the team, they’re not leaving our hearts and minds–and yes, we got the sappy stuff out of the way early so we could have a laugh and talk about new games, old games, and very new consoles.
The main event this episode is, of course, that we can now talk a little bit about PS5 and Xbox Series X|S! Jake has a Series X, Kallie has a PS5, Jess’ roommate has a Series S, and Ed wins with hands-on time with all three. While we still can’t talk about too much, Ed shares his early impressions of PS5 pack-in Astro’s Playroom.
In lieu of regular listener questions, we took your burning next-gen console questions instead. What accessories should you get for next-gen? Which new console is the ugliest? What does the PS5 smell like? These are the questions we could answer, so we hope you like them!
Below you’ll find all the necessary links to find the show on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Google Play. We’ve also included an RSS link so you can put that into your podcast app of choice.
The first episode of The Mandalorian Season 2 features a major plot point that is remarkably similar to the story outline previously rumoured for a Boba Fett standalone Star Wars movie.
Warning: spoilers follow for Season 2, episode 1 of The Mandalorian.
Back in 2014, a report suggested that The Empire Strikes Back and The Force Awakens co-writer Lawrence Kasdan had pitched a Boba Fett solo movie that would be about a “complete stranger killing Boba Fett and taking his armour, starting a Man-With-No-Name bounty hunter tale.”
The first episode of Season 2 of The Mandalorian, ‘The Marshal’, features a character who has taken Boba Fett’s armour for himself and now wears it while protecting the Tatooine settlement of Mos Pelgo. While not the exact same plot, there’s a notable similarity here, as a character largely a stranger to the audience (aside from those who may have read the Star Wars Aftermath novels) and is now walking around dressed as Boba Fett.
Provided the rumours about the Boba Fett film plot were actually true, this wouldn’t be the first time Star Wars has taken unmade old ideas and used them as the basis for something new. A 2015 art book collecting concept work for The Force Awakens features images of an underwater Death Star, which would have been included in a scene for Episode VII where Rey explores the sunken wreck. That scene was, of course, not part of The Force Awakens, but an underwater Death Star did appear in The Rise of Skywalker. It may be we’re seeing a similar case with The Marshal.
IGN: You and the design team have spoken at length about the new options for players wishing to change the abilities associated with a character’s lineage, but it looks like players can also change their character’s skills and subclasses?
