Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2 producer Christopher Miller has praised the “groundbreaking art techniques” being used on the animated sequel.
Taking to Twitter on Wednesday, Miller shared a few tantalizing teasers about the art design and animation style of Miles Morales’ next adventure, saying the new techniques being implemented will make 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse look “quaint.”
“The development of new groundbreaking art techniques being done for the next Spider-Verse movie are already blowing me away,” Miller admitted. “It’s going to make the first movie look quaint.”
The film has an extended production schedule due to its lengthy animation process, which means that the Spider-Verse sequel won’t be web-slinging into theatres until 2022, four years after the release of the first film.
Following numerous other companies, including Starbucks, Ford, and Coca-Cola, Sony is pulling all PlayStation advertising from Facebook and Instagram until at least the end of July.
The move will see the removal of all advertising on the social media platforms, both paid and unpaid. Facebook has come under fire recently for continuing to allow hateful content and misinformation to exist on its platform unchallenged, while other platforms have acted against such content. Twitter has started being more aggressive with flagging problematic tweets, especially from politicians, while Twitch has suspended numerous channels and streamers, including Dr. Disrespect and Donald Trump.
In a statement (provided to GamesIndustry.biz), Sony makes it clear that they support the growing #StopHateForProfit campaign. “In support of the #StopHateForProfit campaign, we have globally suspended our Facebook and Instagram activity, including advertising and non-paid content, until the end of July. We stand for working (and playing) together for good.”
Breaking Bad and The Mandalorian star Giancarlo Esposito will be featured in a big upcoming video game, but he can’t tell you about it yet. Speaking to Collider, Esposito provided just a tiny tease, saying he worked on the game earlier in 2020 using some kind of new technology.
“This video game I did; which is going to be huge. Can’t really mention,” Esposito said.
Esposito went on to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a new style of acting, through Zoom and other online means.
Whatever this game is, it won’t be Esposito’s first. He previously played The Dentist in PayDay 2–providing voice and motion-capture work the character.
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A Plague Tale: Innocence has been a major success for developer Asobo Studio, critically and commercially, and has now racked up a huge sales number. The game’s official Twitter account has now announced that the game has sold over 1 million copies since it released in May 2019.
In the tweet, A Plague Tale’s developers thank the game’s community of players, stating that “this wouldn’t have been possible without our community and we’d like to thank every one of you for supporting the game.”
We’re thrilled to announce that A Plague Tale: Innocence has sold over a million copies worldwide!
This wouldn’t have been possible without our community and we’d like to thank every one of you for supporting the game and @AsoboStudio ❤️🐀! pic.twitter.com/YQacwAemIo
The game is also available through Xbox Game Pass–which, believe it or not, can actually lead to increased sales.
This figure is made all the more impressive by the fact that the game is not from an existing franchise, nor from one of the bigger publishers in gaming–Focus Home Interactive does not have the marketing budget of, say, EA or Ubisoft.
Death Stranding is releasing for PC on July 14, giving PC players a chance to experience Hideo Kojima’s strange opus. We’ve already seen the minimum and recommended specs for the game, but now publisher 505 Games has revealed some more details about what to expect if you load the game up on a powerful rig.
Death Stranding on PC will feature Nvidia DLSS 2.0 technology, as long as you have a GeForce RTX GPU installed. This means that the game can run with a frame rate over 100fps at 1440p, or at over 60fps with a 4K image.
The press release sent to GameSpot includes a quote from Kojima Productions’ Akio Sakamoto, praising the game’s PC release with NVIDIA tech. “The extra performance Nvidia DLSS 2.0 delivers in Death Stranding allows gamers to unlock the vast graphical potential of the PC platform by increasing the graphics settings and resolution, delivering on the vision we have for the game,” Sakamoto says.
A new trailer has also been released, showcasing the game’s stunning PC graphics.
GameSpot editor Michael Higham has gone hands-on with the PC version of Death Stranding, and says that it “runs like a dream” on the platform.
“Death Stranding looks great and runs well, and can even surpass that of the PS4 Pro, given you have the proper PC hardware,” Higham writes. “It often goes without saying, but this is good news–the broader takeaway here is that the quality of Death Stranding’s PC port can speak to how Sony’s first-party exclusives can get another lease on life on a new platform for a different audience. “
Death Stranding received a 9/10 in GameSpot’s review of the PlayStation 4 version. “It’s a game that requires patience, compassion, and love, and it’s also one we really need right now,” reviewer Kallie Plagge wrote–a statement that holds even more true in 2020 than it did in 2019.
In addition to Halo Infinite and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the team at 343 Industries is working on a Halo TV show with Showtime and starring Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief. The production was shut down in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s unclear when it may start back up again. While we wait for that, Halo’s transmedia boss Kiki Wolfkill has shared some new insight on the show and what it’s trying to do
Appearing on Star Wars writer Gary Whitta’s Animal Talking show, Wolfkill said it has been a “mind-bending challenge” to translate the video game series to TV.
Instead of directly adapting a previous Halo game or book, the TV show is seemingly going to tell an entirely new story. Wolfkill’s team has been working with Showtime–which is GameSpot’s sister company–on finding the best way to retain the essence of Halo and bring it to a new medium. This has been hard work, both on this Halo TV show and in the past. Fans will no doubt recall how Peter Jackson’s Halo movie famously fell apart.
“How do we take something and not try and verbatim translate it to a different medium. But how do we look at what the experience can mean for people,” Wolfkill said. “For me, I look at is as how do people feel when they come out of playing the game, or how do they feel after reading one of the novels. Or engaging in any of the different kinds of experiences that we have. Because that’s the core of what the universe is and entering the universe should mean.”
One of the benefits of TV versus a video game is that the show has the potentially to more fully develop its characters over the space of numerous episodes and countless hours, Wolfkill said.
“You also want it to be different, because the whole point of going to a different medium is to let yourself and let the IP express itself in a different way,” she added. “With television, we get long-form storytelling. We get to develop characters. We get to really dig into their backgrounds and their motivations and who they are emotionally. And they can express it as themselves as opposed to needing to reflect who they are through some of the other characters as we do in the games.”
There is no word yet on the plot for the Halo show. In addition to Schreiber as Master Chief, Natascha McElhone (The Truman Show, Californication) is set to play the iconic Halo AI Cortana, so we know she’ll be involved in the story in some capacity.
Simply getting the Halo TV show off the ground was hard work, Wolfkill said, due to the nature of how Hollywood works. On the other side of the coin, however, once production began, it moved along quickly–that is, until the COVID-19 crisis caused most major Hollywood productions to shut down temporarily.
“It’s really hard to get things done. Sometimes I’m amazed that anything gets done [in Hollywood], honestly,” Wolfkill said. “But on the flip side of that, once something is kind of in the chute–coronavirus delays aside–it moves at an incredibly fast rate and it’s really different that way from game development in terms of the linearity of the process.”
“We went through a period of really trying to figure out the right creative combination, and also figuring out what it meant for Showtime and Halo to come together,” she added. “They are two different entities who have both had success. Showtime has really strong expertise in places that we don’t, and Halo is a new kind of show for them. They’ve been amazing partners in acknowledging and understanding and working to really collaborate on understanding those differences and figuring out what is the right adaptation for Halo.”
The Halo TV show will be directed, at least in part, by Black Mirror’s Otto Bathurst. He directed the very first episode of Black Mirror, “The National Anthem,” which was very shocking and memorable.
The Halo TV show was announced to premiere in 2021, but that was before the production was shut down due to the global pandemic. It’s unclear if the show is still on track.
Also during the interview, Wolfkill gave a very small update on Halo Infinite, noting that the development team is “busting ass” on the project. It won’t be much longer until we see and learn more about it, as Microsoft plans to showcase the game during its Xbox 20/20 event that’s rumored to take place on July 23.
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Jump Rope Challenge, the free Nintendo Switch fitness game that released in June, has just received a free update that adds several new costumes to the game’s rabbit protagonist. They’re mostly the usual suspects, but there’s one surprise.
Here’s the complete list of character costumes included in the update.
Mario
Luigi
Peach
Toad
Bowser
Wario
Link
Samus
Isabelle
Squid Kid (girl)
Squid Kid (boy)
Arcade Bunny
The most interesting addition here is Arcade Bunny, a character who has only ever featured in one other Nintendo game–Nintendo Badge Arcade, a 3DS title that handed out badges that could be attached to the system’s home screen. Arcade Bunny was a fully fleshed-out character, and since the 3DS title stopped receiving updates many fans have missed them.
New backgrounds have been added to the game too, as well as a new ability–you can now double-under by swinging your Joy-Cons very quickly.
Jump Rope Challenge will remain free to download on Nintendo Switch until September 30, 2020.
In an appearance on Star Wars writer Gary Whitta’s Animal Talking show, Vogt-Roberts said a script is finished, but he has yet to be given the greenlight from a studio to actually make it. He shared that he wants to do it at a sizeable budget to faithfully capture the essence of the game series.
“Look, this is my baby. I’ve been working on this thing for six years, trying to make it so it is the disruptive, punk-rock, true to Metal Gear, true to Kojima-san spirit version of what this is. I will continue to fight for it every day,” Vogt-Roberts said. “It’s a difficult thing, getting any movie made in Hollywood is hard. Getting something like Metal Gear made … it is so complex [so] it’s even harder. That’s why I’m trying to make it for a budget where you can do crazy sh**, where you can do the Metal Gear version of it where it isn’t neutered.”
Vogt-Roberts went on to say he had hoped to be filming already, but the COVID-19 crisis and other factors have caused some disruptions to the schedule.
“I thought I was going to be on set on this movie a year ago. Right now, there’s a bunch of … COVID has sort of changed everything and we’re figuring out a bunch of stuff,” he said. “I have no idea when it’s going to go. I will fight for it every single day. I will fight to try and get this animated series going in conjunction with it. It’s tough getting movies made, especially something where you’re trying to be bold like this. I will fight every single day until I can’t.”
Also in the interview, Vogt-Roberts said he has actors in mind who could play Snake, but he did not say who they are. In addition to the movie, Vogt-Roberts said he’s hopeful to be able to make a Metal Gear animated series that brings back David Hayter as the voice of Snake.
For more on the Metal Gear movie, check out GameSpot’s own interview with Vogt-Roberts in the video above.
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First, a playlist update for Modern Warfare makes a changes to what’s available to play. The Shoot the Ship playlist has been removed, while Shipment (5v5) and Shoot House (8v8) have now been separated into individual playlists.
A playlist update for #ModernWarfare is also deploying now across all platforms that: – Removes the Shoot the Ship playlist – Shipment (5v5) and Shoot House (8v8) are now separate playlists Don’t forget, our 2XP, 2WXP, and 2X Tiers weekend starts tomorrow at 10AM PDT!
A small patch is deploying now across all platforms that fixes two issues we’ve been tracking in #ModernWarfare: Thank you for your reports and feedback! – Fix for the Realism Moshpit playlist not rotating modes – Fix for the CDL playlist not functioning as intended
Additionally, Modern Warfare has received a “small patch” across PS4, Xbox One, and PC that fixes two issues in particular. The Realism Moshpit was, in some cases, failing to rotate modes as it should have–but that is fixed now. Second, the CDL playlist was “not functioning as intended,” which has also been fixed.
The Season 4 Reloaded update’s biggest new feature is a limited-time 200-player Warzone mode. The update also nerfs the overpowered Grau weapon, while a new Spotter Scope item helps players move through the map without flashing the familiar “glint” that exposes their location. This is all among the content recently announced as part of the upcoming Season 4 roadmap.
Looking ahead, Infinity Ward will kick off a double XP weekend for Modern Warfare and Warzone starting July 2 at 10 AM PT. The double XP will apply to standard XP, weapon XP, and Battle Pass XP.
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For those of you who are excited about Cyberpunk 2077 (which is currently 17% off on Amazon), there’s an awesome Cyberpunk themed SecretLab Titan gaming chair that just came back in stock. The PlayStation Plus 1-year membership just went down in price (using our own coupon code), and Best Buy is offering a gargantuan 12TB external drive for under $200. Check them all out here.
