Despite Their Success, Lego Movies Are Set For A Big Change

Warner Animation and the Lego Group have put out an outstanding list of theatrically-released movies, kicking things off in 2014 with The Lego Movie. Since then, the partnership has produced The Lego Batman Movie (2017), The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017), and most recently, 2019’s The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part. Now, the Lego Group has partnered with Universal Pictures for a five-year exclusive deal.

While under Warner, the previous Lego movies have grossed over $1 billion collectively. Universal has already worked with the Lego Group on the television special Jurassic World: The Secret Exhibit and the 13-episode mini-series Lego Jurassic World: Legend of Isla Nublar.

“The Lego system in play gives people the ability to build worlds and create stories that they carry throughout every phase of their lives,” said Donna Langley, chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group. “To partner with such an iconic brand that remains relevant and is constantly evolving allows for creativity in storytelling. We’re thrilled to start building out the next chapter of Lego movies together with Jill and the Lego team as they continue to inspire curiosity and innovation.”

“Universal’s commitment to unique storytelling from diverse voices makes the studio the perfect partner as the Lego Group enters this new phase of filmmaking,” said Jill Wilfert, head of entertainment, the Lego Group. “Donna and the entire Universal team bring a sense of wonder and imagination we share, and we can’t wait to execute on our shared vision.”

In late 2018, Lego Batman Movie writer Chris McKay revealed that he was working on a sequel to the 2017 film, but now, with Lego movies falling under the Universal Pictures banner, its future is unknown. However, Universal and Lego have a wealth of popular franchises they can pull from for future films like Fast & the Furious, Jurassic World, Despicable Me, and Blumhouse–if they want to get scary with it.

Additionally, consider listening to GameSpot’s weekly TV series and movies-focused podcast, You Should Be Watching. With new episodes premiering every Wednesday, you can watch a video version of the podcast over on GameSpot Universe or listen to audio versions on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.

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Digital Necromancy: How Ingenious Modders Quietly Revive Abandoned Multiplayer Games

When do you know an online game has truly died? Maybe you’ve returned to an old favorite after a few months off, only to find that all of your usual playmates have moved onto the next big thing. While it can be upsetting in the moment, it reflects an uncomfortable truth: Besides a handful of true outliers, even an outstanding traditional multiplayer game has a finite lifespan–sometimes measured in mere months.

As popular forever-games like Destiny 2 continue to soak up the playtime at the very top of the industry, the average life expectancy of less-mainstream multiplayer offerings has dwindled. In the last two years alone, several large publishers have unleashed a tidal wave of hype and marketing for projects that failed to live up to expectations, such as Valve’s doomed card game Artifact, or BioWare’s Iron Man fantasy simulator Anthem. But while most gamers have at least heard of these high-profile flops, there are dozens of multiplayer also-rans that don’t make much of an impression on launch day. From losers of the now-forgotten MOBA wars like Magicka: Wizard Wars to virtual card battlers like Might & Magic: Duel of Champions, simply put, some of these games fail so hard that no one even realizes that they failed at all.

However, while these games never quite gathered the critical mass of players that their publishers so desired, most of them do boast a devoted fanbase. So when a large company like Ubisoft looks at a niche card game like Duel of Champions and decides to shut its servers down, that leaves a substantial number of fans in the lurch–locked out of their favorite game, permanently. While many might just dismiss this as the unfortunate fate that will eventually befall almost every multiplayer game out there, there might be a solution to these fans’ woes. Unbeknownst to most of us, there are modders who specialize in bringing dead multiplayer games back to life. Ranging from singular hobbyists who just want a beloved favorite to rise from its grave, to non-gamer engineers who delight in the technical challenge that these projects present, you can find them if you know where to look.

One of the most prolific modders in this space goes by the handle “RaT.” Though he’s perhaps best-known for his role on the team that brought back Magicka: Wizard Wars from the dead after it originally shut down in mid-2016, he’s amassed quite the resume over the past few years. By his own count, he’s contributed to at least a half-dozen different revival efforts for different games, with varying levels of success, including the free-to-play shooter Loadout, the head-to-head Tetris clone Cultris, and the PvP-focused MMORPG Forge.

While RaT said he enjoys the process of giving back these games to their fans, he’s not much of a gamer himself these days. He grew up in a rural part of the American Midwest, and his family had to scrape together money to buy old consoles when they would go on sale. He chalks up the majority of his gaming experience to NES fare like Duck Hunt, as well as the entire Zelda series. He first started messing around with the digital innards of games when his parents bought him a Game Genie after he spent a little too much time on a Nintendo “hint line,” a telephone number that early gamers could call for tips on their favorite games. (It was also quite expensive–around $5 a minute in 2020 dollars, adjusting for inflation.) This “cheat cartridge” allowed him to put in codes that modified variables in various games, granting boosts like unlimited lives. But RaT’s interest in the crude hacking device was less about giving himself “god mode” and waltzing his way through the ferociously-difficult Zelda 2, and more about understanding how these games worked on the ones-and-zeroes level.

“I’ve long been obsessed with figuring out how things worked,” he told GameSpot via Discord. “My mother would often bring me home old, broken clocks or antique radios to tear apart and fix. This was no different–I had to understand how it worked and figure out how to reproduce it. That drive hasn’t changed much over the years, as I’ve involved myself in building trainers for the original Xbox, producing save editors and cheat engines for the Xbox 360, and making trainers for PC games.”

Despite his considerable prowess, RaT describes himself as an entirely self-taught programmer–though he’s taken a few classes at local universities for credit, he’s never actually held a job in the field, instead working as a network engineer. He views these projects as a hobby, born out of a natural curiosity for putting broken things back together. As far as his relevant experience, he ascribes much of his skills to his early adoption of Linux, which required him to learn how to manipulate device drivers and understand the fundamentals of hardware interfacing at a very low level to get much of anything to work correctly.

Magicka: Wizard Wars
Magicka: Wizard Wars

RaT said he never even set out to join any of these revival projects–it was only a chance online meeting that started the process. “I was sitting in CEMU’s [a Wii U emulator] Discord, discussing some technical aspects of emulation in general, when a member named ‘DEF’ messaged me and asked if I had ever worked on reviving games, because he was trying to jumpstart interest in bringing back Magicka: Wizard Wars. My involvement in other games has happened just as randomly, with people messaging me, and I take a look to see what I can do.”

When it comes to the process of actually bringing these games back to life, RaT said the methodology differs quite a bit depending on the game itself. Though the type or genre obviously factors into the complexity of the undertaking–action-oriented fare like first-person shooters have very complex physics interactions, while MMORPGs tend to have more in the way of a networking architecture–as RaT explains it, the engine that the game runs on can make or break the feasibility of the project. If the developers leveraged a popular engine that boasts a lot of publicly-available documentation, like Unity, the process becomes a lot easier, since RaT can easily understand the basics of how the game works, if not every nuance. However, if the team decided to construct its own engine, revival becomes a lot harder, since only the people who designed the engine have the complete picture. In the case of Wizard Wars, since the game was built in Bitsquid, a relatively well-known engine, RaT was able to figure out most of what he calls the “game logic” without much trouble.

As RaT attested, for most of these projects, the modder’s essential task is to try to recreate the missing multiplayer server, since that’s what the game’s publishers shut down when they formally decide to kill their game. This process starts with diving into the code of the game client itself to try to figure out how the communications between the server and the people playing the game work–some games put more of the load on the player’s computer or console than others. Sometimes this process can produce disappointing results: For example, in the case of Loadout, RaT soon discovered that the game’s proprietary engine handled its physics model on the now-dead server, rather than with the player’s machine. Without much to go on, RaT concluded that it was likely impossible to try to recreate the server from scratch, since the game program the player uses–the client–offered few clues. For Wizard Wars, however, the client included enough of the server-side code that he was able to use trial and error to convert said client into a prototype of a dedicated server. (“Typically, a lot of these multiplayer games include a client-side physics engine due to support for tutorials or bot-matches,” RaT explained.)

I try to be fairly open to mentoring and teaching people how to do things, but I have a very low tolerance for those who refuse to help themselves and simply want it done for them

RaT

However, this is where the process usually gets hairy. If the modder doesn’t have all of the server-side code, they have to engage in a long process of figuring out what client-side command lines up with the server-side logic. In the case of Wizard Wars, RaT was able to clone the vast majority of the logic from the game itself, but the rest was a long process of guesswork, with a team of testers validating the most minute aspects of gameplay, such as damage values or attack timings, to ensure they lined up with the dead “official” servers.

While this phase can seem straightforward enough once you understand the logic behind it, the actual process can take a long time to implement, depending on the complexity of the game. Consider the case of Rusty Hearts, a free-to-play MMORPG that was quite popular in East Asia, especially in Korea. Around 2014, fans of the game began to notice a shift in support, and they decided to do something about it. “Everyone is familiar with that sad period when you know a publisher is getting ready to pull out,” said “ckspike,” a modder and programmer who worked on the project. “Content dries up, game balance suffers, all while cheats and bugs fester. I got together with a small group of like-minded players to try to fix some of the balance issues and unlock some of the hidden content through mods.”

Rusty Hearts
Rusty Hearts

When the game finally did shut down in mid-2014, that group decided to do whatever they could to bring Rusty Hearts back to life. Now, after nigh on six years of development, the team has finally released their revived version of the MMO to the public, dubbed “Rusty Hearts Revolution.” Ckspike describes this reverse-engineering as an elaborate game of Jeopardy, albeit at a much larger scale.

“Almost every action you do in the client sends data to the server in what’s known as a ‘packet,'” ckspike said. “The server then sends a reply packet back. If you try to step left, a packet gets sent to the server that asks to step left. The server sends one back that says, ‘okay, you can step left,’ or ‘no, you can’t move.’ As you can imagine, there are thousands of these, and they are relatively straightforward. Others are like Jeopardy, where the client sends the ‘answer’ and we need to figure out the ‘question.’ It might say a number like ‘4532,’ and through testing and deduction, we need to figure out what that packet represents. It could be a character speed, an item ID, or just about anything else. The community is a huge help because we had literally hundreds of testers sign up to report bugs and give feedback. They find things we missed so much faster than we could on our own.”

For ckspike and other members of this modding effort, the community of die-hard Rusty Hearts fans provides the fuel that keeps the lantern burning, even six years after the game drew its last official breath. Now that their revamped version of the MMO is finally out the door, the team is continuing on the warpath, stomping out bugs and rolling out support for the game’s PvP modes, slowly but surely, even developing a roadmap for new patches and fresh content sometime in the future. But while the fanbase’s undying ardor for the game gives these modders a well of motivation to draw from, not all of the interactions are always positive.

Though RaT admits that he has never actually played any of the games he’s resurrected, thus making him an outsider to these communities, he said he sometimes runs into a sense of entitlement from some in these spaces, specifically from those who lack the technical skills to actually contribute to the project. “I try to be fairly open to mentoring and teaching people how to do things, but I have a very low tolerance for those who refuse to help themselves and simply want it done for them,” he said.

Might & Magic: Duel of Champions

Though RaT’s breadth of experience speaks for itself, he’s an anomaly in the modding scene–most of the developers reviving these games are hardcore fans themselves, like the Rusty Hearts team. Some of them even have a reputation for sticking to a particular game or franchise. Might & Magic: Duel of Champions developer ‘Baratorch’ first honed his programming skills creating custom mods for Heroes of Might & Magic 3, before turning his attention to online card battle game Duel once Ubisoft closed the game in 2016. Though Baratorch continues to work on his revival today–even enlisting help from the game’s former community to rebalance the game’s cards themselves–he said he’s unlikely to attempt any similar project in the future. Ckspike echoes this response: “In terms of working on another game, probably not. This project consumes thousands of hours and is a labor of love. Our group plans to continue working on this game for a long time to come.”

Regardless of their personal impetus for embarking on these projects, all of these modders share a similar hazard–the ever-looming threat of legal action from the people who own the dead games they’re reviving. Ckspike noted that many so-called MMO “revivals” have involved dubious actors setting up private servers for a dead or dying game, only to charge exorbitant membership fees from players. While the Rusty Hearts Revolution team knows full-well that they operate in a legal grey area, they also note that the original developer has been shuttered for years now, and the rights for the game have reverted to an unknown owner. RaT said he takes some precautions to minimize these apparent legal hazards: he only works on free-to-play games, and he won’t contribute to any effort to circumvent DRM, like developing “cracks” for retail games. Even still, he knows that a cease-and-desist letter can come at any time.

Regardless of their personal impetus for embarking on these projects, all of these modders share a similar hazard–the ever-looming threat of legal action from the people who own the dead games they’re reviving.

“[My work] ends up falling into some murky legal territory, as it often violates EULA agreements that may or may not be enforceable with companies that may or may not even still exist,” he said. “I try to approach each game in light of their corporate entity–some have been rather welcoming to the projects, while others are vehemently opposed to anything involving their intellectual properties. In those cases, we just try to fly under the radar in hopes they do not notice us.”

Once the server is back online, these communities are confronted with another arduous task–keeping these games alive past the initial dopamine rush of nostalgia. In RaT’s experience, getting players to continue populating the server is almost impossible, and the games “die all over again” as they become abandoned once more. The Rusty Hearts team remains steadfastly optimistic, however: they plan to introduce new content and events into their beloved game, just as if it was still online.

Rusty Hearts

My advice to anyone who wishes to try to revive a game themselves would be to not be afraid of failure.

RaT

Plenty of well-known hit games struggle with sustainability–for example, fans of the Dark Souls series hold annual initiatives to bring players back into their favorite entries, like “Return to Lordran–but, from a preservationist’s perspective, being able to play these games at all is an achievement worthy of celebration in itself, and one that will likely continue as servers continue to flame out in this era of live games.

“My advice to anyone who wishes to try to revive a game themselves would be to not be afraid of failure,” RaT said. “Read all that you can find, join communities of games that have been revived and learn about the processes they took and try to implement them yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and don’t be afraid to get it wrong.”

Star Wars: Ahsoka Tano, The Old Republic and More Theories About the New TV Series

The Star Wars universe continues to expand on the small screen even as it takes a hiatus from theatrical releases. According to Variety, Lucasfilm has tapped Russian Doll creator Leslye Headland to helm “a female-centric series that takes place in a different part of the Star Wars timeline than other projects.” Deadline later confirmed that report, describing Headland’s series as “a female-driven action thriller with martial arts elements.”

Neither report gives fans much indication of what the series will be about or which characters might star, though it definitely sounds like the series will emphasize new characters over the traditional favorites. Even without many concrete story details, we have some theories about what stories the series might be telling. Read on for more.

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The Guardians of the Whills

Deadline’s emphasis on “martial arts elements” makes us think of Donnie Yen’s Chirrut Imwe from Rogue One. That film introduced fans to Jedha and its ancient Jedi temple, a place protected by Chirrut and his fellow Guardians of the Whills. Chirrut himself was quite the martial artist. Despite being blind and not Force-sensitive in the same way Jedi are, he managed to mop the floor with an entire regiment of Stormtroopers and even shoot down a TIE Fighter.

By that point in the Star Wars timeline, the temple and its guardians have seen better days. But maybe this new series could flash back to the glory days of Jedha and the Guardians of the Whills. We could learn more about this mysterious organization and the sacred texts they safeguard. We could see other heroes like Chirrut who perform incredible fighting feats without the benefit of Jedi powers. Like Lucas Books’ upcoming High Republic initiative, this would be a chance to see the Jedi Order in its prime and explore a time long before the events of the movies.

Ahsoka Tano’s Solo Series

Perhaps the simplest option is that the Headland series is one we’ve already heard rumors about. Various outlets have confirmed that Rosario Dawson will play Ahsoka Tano in The Mandalorian: Season 2, with The Hollywood Reporter indicating the show is setting up an Ahsoka-driven spinoff series. Could Headland’s project be that Ahsoka spinoff?

This would certainly tick most of the boxes in terms of being a female-driven, martial arts-heavy action thriller. And it’s certainly a project Star Wars fans have been clamoring for. The only problem with this theory is that Headland’s series is said to explore a new piece of the Star Wars timeline, and we’re not sure a Mandalorian spinoff really qualifies as “new.”

Still, with so much ground left to cover in between the original and sequel trilogies, maybe an Ahsoka series can still count. There’s a lot such a show could cover depending how far it ventures from the setting and time period of The Mandalorian. We may even finally learn Ahsoka’s fate in the era of the First Order and whether she’s actually dead in The Rise of Skywalker. Or, if the series doesn’t merely over the same period as The Mandalorian, we could find out what happens when Ahsoka and her friends travel to the far side of the galaxy at the end of Star Wars Rebels.

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A Rise of Skywalker Follow-Up

When it comes to the current, Disney-approved Star Wars timeline, the events of The Rise of Skywalker represent the furthest known point. The movie certainly sets up future storylines, but for now fans can only fantasize about what happens after the Resistance finally defeats the First Order.

We could see this new series picking up on one of several loose ends from Episode IX. It’s possible it could chronicle the continuing adventures of Rey Skywalker as she charts a new course for herself and tries to usher in a new generation of Jedi. However, we’d expect that that story to be reserved for future movies, assuming it’s ever told at all.

Or perhaps Headland’s series could follow Naomi Ackie’s ex-Stormtrooper Jannah as she ventures out to find her family and understand her past. While the movie never explicitly reveals this, we know Jannah is Lando’s long-lost daughter, so hopefully Billy Dee Williams would be able to reprise his role again. The series could also focus on Keri Russell’s Zorii Bliss, another character who faces an uncertain destiny at the end of Episode IX.

A Solo Spinoff

According to writer Jon Kasdan, there’s currently no sequel to Solo: A Star Wars story in the works. That’s unfortunate, given how much unresolved plot is left over by the end of that film. It seems a shame to throw in a Darth Maul cameo and not follow up on it.

Assuming Lucasfilm ever revisits this branch of the saga, TV seems a more likely outlet. And there are certainly ways of building a female-driven Solo spinoff. The series could focus on Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra as she navigates the dangerous inner circle of Maul’s Crimson Dawn organization. Or it could pivot to Erin Kellyman’s pirate character Enfys Nest and the role her Cloud Riders played in building what came to be the Rebel Alliance. Or why not both?

Here, again, the only problem is that this may not qualify as a “new” part of the Star Wars timeline. On the other hand, there are years of time in between Solo and A New Hope. Much of that period is still shrouded in mystery, especially when it comes to smaller characters and conflicts like these.

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Star Wars: Underworld Returns

Before selling his company to Disney, George Lucas had been developing a live-action series called Star Wars: Underworld. While the project was shelved due to its immense cost, no fewer than 50 scripts were commissioned along the way. We have to assume Disney isn’t just letting all that material go to waste. And now that The Mandalorian has proven it is possible to do a live-action Star Wars series without breaking the bank, maybe the time has finally come to revive the Underworld premise.

As the name suggests, Underworld was intended to shine a light on the criminal underbelly of the Star Wars universe. The series was supposed to be set in between Episodes III and IV, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be transplanted to another era that allows for more storytelling freedom. Just give us a badass new female protagonist and a few familiar Star Wars organizations like the Hutt cartels and Black Sun and we’ll be good. Heck, why not focus on Black Sun and frame the series around Shadows of the Empire villain Guri, a deadly assassin droid masquerading as a human woman?

The High Republic

We mentioned The High Republic previously as an example of how a Guardians of the Whills series might be handled, but it’s entirely possible the new show could be an extension of High Republic initiative itself. Even though Lucasfilm purposely picked this setting (roughly 200 years before the movies) to give creators plenty of space and freedom, we wouldn’t be at all surprised if the scope eventually expanded beyond comics and novels to include TV projects and video games. When you consider just how many Star Wars stories are crammed into the four years that comprise the original trilogy, there’s surely plenty of room for everyone in the High Republic era.

The High Republic is meant to showcase the Jedi Order in its prime, in an era where the Jedi are more like crusading knights than outdated monks and military leaders. We’d love to see a series framed around Jedi Master Avar Kriss, a character set to make her full debut in the upcoming book Star Wars: The High Republic – Light of the Jedi. While Kriss is a full-fledged Jedi Master in that book, the series could explore her younger years showing how she honed her reputation as one of the finest warriors in the entire Order. The only thing better than a martial artist is a Force-sensitive martial artist.

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Bastila Shan and the Old Republic

While the classic Expanded Universe features numerous stories set thousands of years before the movies and in the era of Darth Revan and the Mandalorian Wars, none of that material has definitively carried over to Disney’s Star Wars timeline. So far, there have only been rumors about a remake of 2003’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and a report that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss’ canceled Star Wars trilogy would have focused on the origins of the Jedi.

As far as we’re concerned, it’s past time Lucasfilm began fleshing out this distant piece of the timeline with new, canonical content. We could see Headland’s new series doing its part. A female-driven, martial arts-heavy series could be focused on KOTOR’s Bastila Shan, a heroine who wields a double-bladed lightsaber and fights to hold the galaxy together during one of its worst conflicts. We wouldn’t expect the series to be a full-fledged KOTOR adaptation, but a Bastila Shan series could be a terrific companion to the rumored video game remake. Or the series could focus on Satele Shan, descendant of Bastila and Revan and one of the main protagonists in the MMORPG The Old Republic. We just really want a Star Wars show about a butt-kicking, double-blade-loving Jedi warrior. Is that so much to ask?

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Top 25 PSVR Games

PlayStation VR debuted in late 2016, and since then has amassed an impressive library of games that show off how unique, fun, and enthralling VR can be.

Below, IGN’s staff has compiled our picks for the top 25 best PSVR games you should play, whether you’ve owned a headset since day one or are just looking for reasons to pick one up. This list has collectively been chosen by and written about by Jonathon Dornbush, Jon Ryan, Tom Marks, Brian Altano, Max Scoville, Dan Stapleton, and Mark Medina.

Be sure to let us know your favorite PSVR games in the comments, and read on for our favorites.

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25. Batman: Arkham VR

batmanarkhamVR

One of the oldest entries on this list, Batman: Arkham VR is still a strong introduction to the world of VR, largely because of how great it is to step into Batman’s boots. Solving crimes as the Caped Crusader makes fun use of VR, but it’s whenever Arkham VR really dives into the Dark Knight of it all that it shines. Walking into Wayne Manor, descending into the Batcave, and putting on Batman’s cowl — only to then dance like a fool in the mirror — is as simultaneously cool, goofy, and memorable as most VR experiences that have come after it.

24. Everybody’s Golf VR

everybodysgolfvr

Everybody’s Golf VR takes the beloved PlayStation franchise and throws it into VR for a time that, while brief, is fun for both newcomers to the links and seasoned pros. Everybody’s Golf VR is best in short bursts, and offers a variety of setups — number of holes, clubs, etc. — to tailor the virtual greens to your comfort level.

23. The Room VR

theroomVR

The “escape room” puzzle format of the long-running The Room series translates into VR seamlessly, giving you plenty of lovely puzzle boxes to poke and prod as you work your way through its increasingly complex (and creepy) challenges. There’s tons of detail in its worlds, and the fact that you’ll have a handful of puzzles to hop between at any given time makes them feel like an intertwining web of solutions waiting to be found – often relying on previous ones to find them. It’s not the longest puzzle game out there, but it’s tricky and clever the whole way through.

22. Arizona Sunshine

arizonasunshine

If you’re looking to truly answer whether you’d survive a zombie apocalypse, Arizona Sunshine is one of the more fun ways to test your skills out. With a small but realistic arsenal, Arizona Sunshine’s gunplay is a treat amidst the need to loot for food and supplies, maintaining a tense loop as you battle your way through waves of the undead.

21. Ghost Giant

ghostgiant

Ghost Giant isn’t necessarily revolutionary in its use of VR, but it does have touching heart and beautiful artistry going for it. Placing you in the eyes and hands of, well, a giant ghost, Zoink’s VR adventure plays out across a gorgeous set of locations that look like Tim Burton dioramas come to life. With a charming sense of humor, a memorable cast, and engaging puzzle solving that has your giant form messing with the world in fun and wacky ways, Ghost Giant has plenty to offer under its bright exterior.

20. Moss

moss

At a glance from outside of VR, Moss looks like your standard 2.5-D puzzle platformer with gorgeous art direction, but when you’ve actually got the headset on, it clicks: it’s like playing a puzzle-platformer if your head were inside the TV. Mechanically, it’s all familiar enough to anyone who’s played a video game in the last 30 years – you use the controller to move the adorable mouse protagonist Quill around the world – but in terms of presentation, Moss is stunning. Your role is that of a giant, looming, benevolent ally of this darling mouse heroine, which is immediately more engrossing than the conventionally detached act of navigating a character through a video game level.

19. Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality

rickandmorty

Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is one of the best attempts at translating the wacky, hilarious TV series into the form of a video game. Owlchemy Labs, of Job Simulator fame (another entry on the list!) smartly takes the hallmarks of the show, like Mr. Meeseeks, Rick’s garage lab, and more, and marries them with a plethora of familiar but fun VR gameplay modes like environmental puzzles and shooting galleries. If waiting for new Rick and Morty episodes is too tough of a challenge, it’s worth diving into Virtual Rick-ality in the meantime.

18. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

keep talking

As far as party games go, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes may be one of the most insane – and a big reason for that is because most of the people playing won’t even be looking at the screen. The information asymmetry of one person defusing a bomb while the others actually tell them how to do so is as stressful as it is fun. Using the naturally isolating experience of VR to give one player a unique perspective is compelling in its own right, but Keep Talking’s true stroke of genius is how it doesn’t just encourage teamwork: it requires it. This isn’t a co-op puzzle game where one player can just play quarterback and solve it all. There’s really nothing else like this game.

17. Superhypercube

superhypercube

Like all good puzzle games, Superhypercube is easy to learn, difficult to master, and downright frustrating to describe in a way that actually sounds fun. But here’s the pitch: You control a small cube, hurtling through the infinite void of abstract space, and your goal is to put it in the right position to pass through a hole in a rapidly approaching wall. Each time you pass a wall, another cube affixes itself to your existing cube, forcing you to rearrange and reconfigure your increasingly cumbersome Superhypercube to fit through the next hole. It’s somewhere between deconstructed Tetris and those wacky Japanese game shows where the people have to position themselves to slide through holes in walls, but a hundred times more stressful and psychedelic than that.

16. Rez Infinite

rez infinite

The beauty of Rez Infinite is that it succeeds in justifying why VR as a platform for escapism is so perfect. It can be played as a challenging and chaotic arcade shooter or a totally freeing and relaxing drift through stark, minimalist worlds brimming with bursts of neon and hypnotic music. Both options are equal in the way they deliver utterly sublime experiences and there’s no wrong to enjoy them, really. For years now, legendary game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Rez franchise has delivered catchy, lucid, and surrealist rhythm games across various PlayStation systems but Rez’s first PlayStation VR outing might be the series’ most captivating triumph yet.

15. No Man’s Sky Beyond

nomansskybeyondvr

It’s hard to describe how No Man’s Sky feels in virtual reality without actually feeling it. Exploring dank, dark caves becomes horrifying, and flying at full speed in your ship is absolutely exhilarating. On top of that, you’ve probably never realized just how big things in No Man’s Sky are, but from this perspective, it’s impossible to miss. Your ship now towers above you and the creatures you encounter are more intimidating than ever. Just be sure to look straight ahead when flying your ship, or you might start feeling a little velocity sickness.

14. Vacation Simulator

vacation

After simulating jobs in Job Simulator, Owlchemy has offered us a chance to simulate time off too, with the fun and expectedly wacky Vacation Simulator. Visiting Vacation Island and its many unique locations and weird, oblivious robot inhabitants to perform recreational activities like painting or controlling a geyser water show is certainly a good way to get away from it all.

13. Falcon Age

falcon age

Falcon Age would be a great PSVR game deserving of a spot on this list solely for how fun it is to interact with its titular bird in VR, petting it, putting on adorable outfits, and watching it perform incredible tricks. But it also delivers outside of its birb, offering a deep, touching story about oppression and colonization and some smart and engaging first-person combat. Outerloop’s knack for building a distinct, beautiful world has us excited for what the studio creates next, and, perhaps foolishly, contemplating getting a falcon of our own.

12. Trover Saves the Universe

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Platformers are a great fit for VR, but Trover Saves the Universe makes particularly good use of its knowledge of exactly how you’ll be playing. It casts you as a flying chair-bound alien who can only move using a suspiciously familiar-looking controller, but has you interacting with the world through a separate character – Trover – who does all the actual platforming and combat bits. That cleverly gives you the immersion of a first-person perspective and the clarity of third-person control at the same time. Couple that with Justin Roiland’s signature insane, rambling sense of humor and you’ve got one of the most entertaining VR games available.

11. Thumper

thumper

The relentless rhythm adventure Thumper practically becomes a horror game in VR, as its sleek, intimidating track takes on massive form in front of your eyes. Dashing around Thumper’s tight corners, viewing the endless void of its darkness around, and keeping time with the beat is enthralling in one of those ways that VR games can be hard to describe unless you’re in the midst of it.

10. WipeOut: Omega Collection

WIPEOUT™ OMEGA COLLECTION_20170329111556

One of Sony’s more successful attempts at taking a long-running franchise and transplanting it to VR, WipeOut: Omega Collection does a fantastic job of transporting you into the cockpit of its many various futuristic rides. The closest thing we’ve experienced to being in the world of Speed Racer, WipeOut is not just a fun thrill ride in VR but a great racer, with plenty of track variety and exciting designs that will test your skills.

9. Firewall: Zero Hour

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Firewall: Zero Hour is one of PSVR’s most engaging games: it’s a team-based tactical shooter that does a great job of encouraging teamwork, which results in some tense, close-quarters firefights. Thanks to frequent content updates from developer First Contact Entertainment, Firewall often offers new goals and new reasons to play. But its core, which slows down the pace most non-VR multiplayer shooters have adopted this day without sacrificing any of the tension and thrills, remains as fun to play now as it was at release, making it absolutely worth jumping into if you’re looking for an exciting FPS experience.

8. Blood & Truth

blood and truth

To date, Blood & Truth is the best blockbuster action movie experience I’ve had in VR, and it strikes a wonderful balance of translating explosive setpieces and shootouts into virtual reality while also delivering an enjoyable story brimming with personality that never takes itself quite too seriously. While it absolutely nails bread and butter action standards like car chases, explosions, machine guns, grenades, and so on, it keeps the experience fresh, grounded, and varied by giving just as much interactivity to ordinary details and household objects. Ever wanted to fiddle with the car stereo during a high speed chase? Or vape while breaking into a museum? Don’t let the Blood & Truth’s overly dramatic title fool you, this is a big, loud popcorn movie in VR.

7. Superhot VR

superhot

Even if you’ve played Superhot, you haven’t really experienced it until you’ve played Superhot VR. The concept of an action game where the world only moves when you do is superb, and works fantastically when you can actually move your head out of the way of an incoming slow-motion bullet or deflect an uzi’s spray with your own gun. It’s like being John Wick, but being able to take your time to make what would actually be split-second decisions about which enemies to shoot, which to shatter with a punch, and which to hurl a frying pan at.

6. Doom VFR

doom

Doom VFR is one of the first games to prove that VR shooters don’t have to be stand-in-place shooting galleries (with all due respect to Space Pirate Trainer). Built from the ground up with VR in mind, it puts the satisfying arsenal of Doom (2016) and puts it in your hands for a fairly meaty and energetic battle against the familiar legion of hellspawned enemies. It works with a DualShock 4, but if you have Moves or the Aim controller it’s a real treat.

5. Resident Evil 7

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On its own, Resident Evil 7 is a truly creepy and deeply disturbing first-person take on the classic survival horror franchise. But in VR, it becomes one of the most terrifying video game experiences ever made. Sneaking around a festering and dilapidated backwoods house while increasingly deranged locals try to mutilate, maim, and straight-up kill you is absolute nightmare fuel. Leaning in and out of corners, running full speed from disgusting foes, and coming face to face with sickly, twisted monstrosities is very much not for the faint of heart. But if you can stomach it without yanking off your PSVR headset to scream, you’ll be rewarded with a masterclass in video game horror.

4. Job Simulator

job simulator

The two worst things about working a mundane retail or office job are that they’re usually soul-suckingly boring and also you’ll get fired if you decide to just completely trash the place. Enter Job Simulator, a game that allows you to circumvent those pesky rules and regulations and instead attempt to accomplish simple work tasks with big cartoon hands, slapstick, ragdoll physics, and an utter disregard for your work environment without the fear of being fired – because it’s all just a simulation! Job Simulator turns simple tasks into incredibly hilarious spectacles, whether you’re sending hot dogs flying in every direction at a faux 7-11 or karate-chopping donuts across an office desk. While many VR experiences pride themselves in recreating reality, Job Simulator revels in absurd hilarity and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

3. Tetris Effect

tetris effect

It’s pretty tough to improve upon Tetris, but Tetris Effect finds a variety of ways – including its ability to be played entirely in VR. Tetris Effect is all about transforming your moves into music, with an iTunes visualizer-like screen similarly reacting to your decisions. It can be both frenetic and zen-like, but it’s always engrossing, pulling you out of your living room and absorbing you into its world of dancing lights and pulsing rhythm.

2. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission

astro bot

In Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, Studio Japan’s Team Asobi has taken the basic framework of a 3D, Crash Bandicoot-like platformer and made you not only the camera but an active participant in this world. Guiding your bots to the finish line requires you to look all around you to find new pathways and hidden secrets above, below, and behind the environment in a way that truly takes advantage of the user being in VR. It’s undoubtedly PSVR’s best exclusive, and has left many – ourselves included – itching for a sequel.

1. Beat Saber

beat saber

Beat Saber is the ultimate “pick up and play” VR game to immediately sell people on the idea of why it can be fun in a way that no other type of game can. The concept is simple: slice blocks flying at your face with the color-appropriate off-brand lightsaber in the proper direction in time to the beat of the music like a dancing Jedi. But when it ramps up, the skill ceiling is in the stratosphere and perfect execution is a huge rush.

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Be sure to let us know what your picks are for your favorite PSVR games in the comments below.

Get 23 Dungeons & Dragons eBooks for $15: Legend of Drizzt and More

Shakespeare was a prolific writer, but the man had nothing on R.A. Salvatore. Salvatore has been a storytelling machine for decades. Probably his best-known work revolves around Drizzt Do’Urden, a drow, or dark elf, who lives in D&D’s Forgotten Realms. Right now you can snag the first 13 Drizzt books, plus a couple of other Forgotten Realms-set series, in a new ebook Humble Bundle. You can spend just $1 to get six books, or up to $15 to get 23 titles. That’s a great deal for fans of D&D or fantasy fiction in general.

Dungeons & Dragons: Read the Realms Humble Bundle

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All of the books are DRM-free and come in multiple formats that are viewable on any popular ebook reader and app–Kindle, iBooks, etc. If you were to buy all of these books separately, they would cost $175, so this is a terrific deal. And since we’re all stuck at home during our free time, you probably have plenty of time to read. The bundle will be available until May 12.

Bundle Contents

tier-1Pay $1 or More

  • Dark Elf Trilogy #1 – Homeland (Legend of Drizzt #1)
  • Dark Elf Trilogy #2 – Exile (Legend of Drizzt #2)
  • Dark Elf Trilogy #3 – Sojourn (Legend of Drizzt #3)
  • War of the Spider Queen #1 – Dissolution
  • War of the Spider Queen #2 – Insurrection
  • The Lady Penitent #1 – Sacrifice of the Widow

The bundle comes in three tiers. The first tier only costs $1, and it gets you six books: R.A. Salvatore’s Dark Elf trilogy, the first two books of Richard Lee Byers’ War of the Spider Queen series, and book one of Lisa Smedman’s The Lady Penitent.

tier-2Pay $8 or More

  • Icewind Dale Trilogy #1 – The Crystal Shard (Legend of Drizzt #4)
  • Icewind Dale Trilogy #2 – Streams of Silver (Legend of Drizzt #5)
  • Icewind Dale Trilogy #3 – The Halfling’s Gem (Legend of Drizzt #6)
  • Legacy of the Drow #1 – The Legacy (Legend of Drizzt #7)
  • Legacy of the Drow #2 – Starless Night (Legend of Drizzt #8)
  • War of the Spider Queen #3 – Condemnation
  • War of the Spider Queen #4 – Extinction
  • The Lady Penitent #2 – Storm of the Dead

The second tier costs $8 and gets you everything in the first tier, plus Salvatore’s Icewind Dale trilogy, and the first two installments of his Legacy of the Drow series, as well as two more books in the Spider Queen series, and book two of The Lady Penitent.

tier-3Pay $15 or More

  • Legacy of the Drow #3 – Siege of Darkness (Legend of Drizzt #9)
  • Legacy of the Drow #4 – Passage to Dawn (Legend of Drizzt #10)
  • Paths of Darkness #1 – The Silent Blade (Legend of Drizzt #11)
  • Paths of Darkness #2 – The Spine of the World (Legend of Drizzt #12)
  • Paths of Darkness #3 – Sea of Swords (Legend of Drizzt #13)
  • The Collected Stories: The Legend of Drizzt Anthology
  • War of the Spider Queen #5 – Annihilation
  • War of the Spider Queen #6 – Resurrection
  • The Lady Penitent #3 – Ascendancy of the Last

Finally there’s the third tier, which costs $15 and gets you everything in the first two tiers, plus the rest of the Legacy of the Drow series, plus the Paths of Darkness trilogy, plus Drizzt collected stories, plus the final books in the Spider Queen and Lady Penitent series. It is, as they say, a lot. A lot of good stuff, that is.

Also, a portion of whatever price you choose to pay goes to the charity Extra Life, so that’s pretty nice as well.

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Disclosure: Humble Bundle is owned by Ziff Davis, the parent company of IGN. Humble Bundle and IGN operate completely independently, and no special consideration is given to Humble Bundle announcements or promotions for coverage.

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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Should You Choose The Stairs Or The Elevator?

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is full of small choices that can affect your overall experience in a bunch of subtle ways. Sometimes these choices add to a behind-the-scenes tally that changes which characters show up for specific story moments. Other times, the changes are more obvious, like when you choose between taking the elevator or the stairs in Shinra Tower in Chapter 16. Like the original FF7, your route gives you a slightly different experience.

Here’s what you need to know about the choice between the elevator and the stairs in Shinra Tower, what you’re missing depending on your choice, and how you can see both sides of the coin.

Should You Pick The Elevator Or The Stairs?

The choice between taking the elevator and the stairs echoes a similar one from the original Final Fantasy 7. In that game, taking the elevator was more convenient, but also forced you into additional battles with Shinra troops as you approached the top floors. The stairs were a safer alternative, but you had to run up all 60 flights; the upshot was, you got an elixir midway through.

FF7 Remake’s stairs and elevator are similar, but the reason to try one (or both) is for the dialogue between characters on the way. Both build up the characters and their relationships, but each has a specific tone.

The Elevator

Choose the elevator if you want a little more somber character development for Tifa, and to a lesser extent, Barret. The trip up will stop a few times as other people try to get on the elevator, resulting in a couple of quick fights with Elite Officers that shouldn’t trouble you too much.

As you head up, a regular Shinra employee will also attempt to take the elevator. Upon encountering the Avalanche squad, she’ll run off in another direction. Seeing the regular people that work for Shinra pushes Tifa to reflect a little more on what she and the rest of Avalanche have been doing.

Overall, the elevator is the (much) quicker and more convenient choice, and it comes with a heavier story moment. But it also continues to give you insight into Tifa’s frame of mind, suggesting that while she believes in Barret’s goals of saving the planet, she doesn’t have nearly the ruthless conviction that he does.

The Stairs

Pick the stairs if you want a funnier moment between the characters, particularly concerning Barret. Taking the stairs is the safer option–there are no battles on the way up–but it is the longer option, requiring you to physically run up all 60-some flights.

It’s tiresome, not just for you and your thumbs, but for the characters. Over time, Cloud and Barret will slow their ascent, making the whole thing take even longer. But that leaves room for some pretty funny dialogue as Barret, lagging behind, calls for Cloud to wait up for him, and Tifa burns ahead, wondering what’s taking so long. The stairs lead to a lighter moment than the elevator trip, one that suggests the bonds growing between Cloud and his pals.

You Should Really See Both

Picking the stairs or the elevator doesn’t have a discernable impact on the rest of the game (that we know of–FF7 Remake seems to take a lot of minor decisions into consideration for some big moments, but all that tracking happens behind the scenes), so hit the scene that sounds more interesting to you. Or better yet, save your game right before making the decision and check out both scenes. Both expand on the characters of FF7 Remake, which are the best thing about it, in different ways, and both are worth your time, even if you have to run up an entire tower’s worth of stairs to see them.

Now Playing: Final Fantasy VII Remake Video Review

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Kings & Criminals: 3 New VOD Movies to Stream This Weekend

With movie theaters closed and streaming consumption booming, there’s plenty of content you can view at home these days. Thankfully, I was able to screen this weekend’s biggest new video on-demand film releases early in order to gauge whether they’re worth your time and money.

Below you’ll find micro-reviews of three notable new digital releases, each of which portrays fact-based characters who operated outside of the boundaries of the law.

There’s Ned Kelly — think of him as Australia’s Jesse James, but with a suit of armor — and Robert the Bruce, Scotland’s “outlaw king” who’s played here by the same actor who portrayed him in Braveheart.

Finally, there’s a new HBO true crime drama, Bad Education, which is garnering Hugh Jackman some of his best reviews in years.

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True History of the Kelly Gang

  • VOD Date: April 24
  • Available on Amazon, GooglePlay, YouTube, Vudu, iTunes, PlayStation, Xbox, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum (Charter, Time Warner, Brighthouse), Verizon Fios, Altice (Optimum), Cox, DirecTV, AT&T, Bend Broadband, Buckeye, Guadalupe Valley, Hotwire Communications, Metrocast, Suddenlink, WOW Internet Cable, RCN, Midcontinent Communications

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True History of the Kelly Gang is a gripping, atmospheric approach to the legend of Australia’s most notorious outlaws with its tense pacing and unsettling, relentless score keeping the viewer on edge throughout and an aesthetic that is both grungy and grand, intense yet intimate.

Actors from Mick Jagger to Heath Ledger have portrayed Ned Kelly in a number of films over the years, some of those movies faring better than others. Coming off of his acclaimed turn in the stellar 1917, George MacKay once again impresses, making Kelly a tightly coiled, dangerous yet still emotionally accessible punk. Russell Crowe humanizes his rather grotesque mentor figure — and sings an incredibly vulgar yet funny song to children at one point — while Essie Davis is the fierce, wounded heart of the film as Ned’s mother. Nicholas Hoult and Charlie Hunnam both impress as the entitled lawmen who plague the Kellys, each using their positions of power and social status to lord over the family.

Director Justin Kurzel’s anachronistic yet poetic style is reminiscent of Alex Cox’s films from the ‘80s, so it will likely prove challenging for some viewers to embrace. The dramatic license taken here — especially in the film’s attempt to be modern and political in its sensibilities — will also likely prove a bridge too far for those who know the real history of Ned Kelly, even if the film makes it clear from the get-go that it’s not interested in the “True History” so much as being a character study like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. While I’m still not sure True History of the Kelly Gang ultimately delivered its message clearly, I certainly appreciated it employing an off-kilter approach rather than traveling a safe and familiar route.

SCORE: 8.0

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Robert the Bruce

  • VOD Date: April 24
  • Available on Amazon, AppleTV, GooglePlay, FandangoNOW, iTunes, Xbox, PlayStation, VUDU, DirecTV, AT&T Uverse, Altice, Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, Verizon FiOS

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Angus Macfayden reprises his role from Braveheart as the 14th century Scottish rebel-king Robert the Bruce, but viewers expecting a rousing, freeeeeedom!!-loving epic like that bloody Mel Gibson classic will likely be disappointed by this surprisingly low-key, small-scale drama. Robert the Bruce lacks any massive battles like those depicted in the 1995 Best Picture winner or even in 2018’s Outlaw King, which also chronicled the Bruce’s life and campaigns.

Macfayden’s thoughtful performance aims to demystify this legendary figure, as we see him mostly on the run throughout the film and struggling with doubt. The story is really about what he represents to his fellow Scots, from the other lords who have their own agendas to a family of commoners he finds refuge with. This less epic, more intimate approach is an interesting idea but in a stage play, “bottle episode” sort of way but, again, if you’re expecting Braveheart 2 you may find the film a bit of a chore as it’s more for the drama and history-minded.

Visually, Robert the Bruce also seems to be consciously avoiding Braveheart comparisons (despite the casting of Macfayden) by foregoing vistas the green fields and rocky moors of medieval Scotland in favor of a bleak, wintry landscape where nature is as much a foe to face as rival clans or the English.

SCORE: 6.0

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Bad Education

bad_education_thumbHugh Jackman delivers one of his most nuanced performances in HBO’s Bad Education, a different sort of true crime movie. Inspired by the larceny scandal that rocked the Roslyn, New York school district in the early 2000s, Jackman portrays superintendent Frank Tassone, who was eventually busted for embezzling millions. The film generates some sympathy for Tassone by portraying him as a veteran educator who wants only the best for his students. Problem is, he wanted the best for himself, too.

This is a tautly-paced, very human study of everyday people harboring big secrets. And it’s not just Tassone and his fellow Roslyn employees — namely Allison Janney’s scammer and Ray Romano’s status-minded school board president — who are solely to blame for this giant mess. There are also entitled parents who demand preferential treatment for their not particularly gifted kids, parents whose real estate values are directly tied to their school district’s inflated success.

As directed by Cory Finley, Bad Education is a tragicomic portrait of an ecosystem fed by ambition and greed, populated by people seeking greater status whether they’ve earned it or not. Jackman is exceptional as this circus’s ringmaster who convinces himself and all those in his orbit that he’s precisely the person they require to realize all their grand ambitions.

SCORE: 8.0

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Jim Vejvoda is IGN’s Executive Editor of Movies. Follow him at @JimVejvoda.

10 Cloverfield Lane Director Reveals Alternate Endings and Deleted Subplots

IGN just hosted another Watch From Home Theater, this time featuring director Dan Trachtenberg watching everyone’s favorite Cloverfield spinoff, 10 Cloverfield Lane. Trachtenberg’s live commentary track was full of fascinating anecdotes and new revelations about the making of this unique psychological horror movie.

If you missed our 10 Cloverfield Lane WFH Theater, you can still check it out in the player above or below. But if you just want to know the key takeaways from the episode, read on to learn more about the new details Trachtenberg revealed.

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Cloverfield as The Twilight Zone

The Cloverfield franchise is a strange beast. There are currently three films in the series, but they don’t tell a sequential story so much as explore individual stories set within a shared universe. That was always the intention, according to Trachtenberg. He said the series (once it actually became a series) was envisioned as a modern-day Twilight Zone anthology.

“It’s like The Twilight Zone, except that instead of having it be called ‘The Cloverfield Zone,’ any movie that comes out you have ‘Cloverfield’ in the title as a fun way of doing it.”

Damien Chazelle Almost Directed

10 Cloverfield Lane is notable for featuring a screenplay written by a pre-Whiplash and La La Land Damien Chazelle. It turns out Chazelle was originally attached to direct as well, but he dropped out in 2014 once Whiplash received funding

The Psycho Inspiration

Trachtenberg revealed Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal 1960 film Psycho was one of the biggest inspirations for 10 Cloverfield Lane, which isn’t surprising given the suspenseful plot and confined setting. Trachtenberg said composer Bear McCreary’s score was especially Psycho-influenced, as were the opening scenes of Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character Michelle fleeing her old life.

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How Video Games Inspired the Movie

As much as Trachtenberg drew from Hollywood classics like Jaws and Psycho. he revealed that 10 Cloverfield Lane is equally influenced by iconic video games like Half-Life 2 and The Last of Us.

“I took as much inspiration from my experience playing Half-Life 2 and The Last of Us and Uncharted as I did from the movies I watched,” said Trachtenberg. “The thing I always say about it is I find first-person games to be less immersive than third-person games. Even though first-person games – you are the character. It is you. But I feel like when we’re linked to a character and watching their behavior. I can then identify and relate and feel more for that that when, ‘It’s you! It’s me!'”

He continued, “Video games have always been a massive inspiration, and certainly for the filmmaking in the movie and the kind of movie that it is in general.”

On the subject of figuring out the creature designs, Trachtenberg told us the Gears of War franchise became a major source of inspiration. “I love the idea that the spaceship is some space creature that instead of pulling their rudder on a boat, it’s pulling on its organ to make it turn left or right. We grafted the tech on top of this organism.”

That Bradley Cooper Cameo

While 10 Cloverfield Lane features only three main cast members, it does include another A-List Hollywood star in cameo form. None other than Bradley Cooper provides the voice of Ben, Michelle’s boyfriend who calls her early in the film. Trachtenberg told us casting Ben was actually a difficult process. Eventually producer J.J. Abrams emailed Cooper and convinced him to join up. Cooper wound up recording his lines on his phone.

The Alternate Opening

The film originally began with what Trachtenberg described as a more traditional opening sequence. However, both he and Winstead agreed to alter that opening to help better align it with the rest of the film in terms of tone and Michelle’s overall character arc.

Describing the original opening, Trachtenberg said, “She’s with her boyfriend and she’s going to meet his parents for the first time, and she’s nervous about that. Essentially, it was a very familiar horror movie opening where the protagonist is worrying about something frivolous, and then something crazy happens… It wasn’t great and it wasn’t really thematic. Mary and I were really driven by the idea that this is someone who would be breaking a cycle by going through this.”

Trachtenberg’s First Shot

Trachtenberg made his directorial debut on 10 Cloverfield Lane. He revealed the shot of Michelle waking up in her underground cell was actually his very first shot on the movie. For the most part, he shot the movie chronologically, in order to make the tension that much more authentic.

John Goodman’s Angry Performance

10 Cloverfield Lane hinges a lot on John Goodman’s ability to paint a convincing portrait of the paranoid, unstable Howard Stambler. Trachtenberg told us that while Goodman wasn’t his first choice to play Howard, once the idea was floated he couldn’t picture anyone else in the role. Trachtenberg took inspiration not from Goodman’s past roles, but instead an infamous old interview where Goodman became progressively more agitated with the interviewer while struggling to continue forward.

The Welcome Mat

Trachtenberg pointed out one minor but important detail regarding Howard’s underground bunker. There’s a welcome mat at the front entrance of the bunker, and Trachtenberg said he agonized over what direction to orient the mat and what that implied about Howard’s character.

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CGI Pigs

While 10 Cloverfield Lane is a low-budget thriller that takes place almost entirely within one structure, there is one scene featuring a liberal use of CGI where you might not expect it. When Michelle looks outside and sees the dead pigs, the pigs themselves are completely computer generated. Trachtenberg revealed the crew attempted to use practical effects but couldn’t achieve the right level of gore.

*That* Dinner Scene

Most fans would agree the scene of Michelle, Howard and John Gallagher Jr.’s Emmett sharing their first meal together is among the film’s best. Trachtenberg told us he looked to both Jaws and Se7en for inspiration here. Bizarrely enough, he also revealed that the scene was due to be cut, but editor Stefan Grube saved it from the chopping block.

Putting on a Happy Face

One of the notes Abrams gave Trachtenberg was that the shower curtain in the bunker needed to have a happy face pattern in order to make it stand out more. However, the concern was that a regular happy face symbol might draw comparisons to Watchmen, so Trachtenberg went through the agonizing process of picking out just the right smiling duck pattern for the bathroom.

He said, “Is it a million ducks? Is it just the one duck? The duck holding the umbrella is what we finally figured out.”

More Cloverfield Connections

10 Cloverfield Lane began life as a spec script titled The Cellar before morphing into a Cloverfield spinoff. Trachtenberg told us that surprisingly little about the project changed after it was decided to forge that Cloverfield connection, with only the shot of the mailbox being added later on. However, there were other connections considered. At one point there was discussion of including the satellite from the first movie. And the reason the movie was shot under the codename “Valencia” is because Trachtenberg originally intended to showcase the Siege of Valencia in the film.

Trachtenberg also told us that the original plan (before the movie became integrated with Cloverfield) was to switch to a spherical camera lens for the final scenes so the film could take advantage of IMAX screens. Ironically, even though this idea was abandoned, 10 Cloverfield Lane wound up playing in IMAX theaters anyway.

Alternate Endings and Deleted Subplots

Trachtenberg gave plenty of insight into the ways the film’s story changed over time, particularly when it came to the climax. He told us there was originally a running subplot involving Howard and Emmett giving Michelle sedatives, leading to a scene where she has to shower and fears being spied upon.

“I just felt like the movie doesn’t need it,” Trachtenberg said. “We’re not doing that the whole movie, and I don’t want to be exploitative and showing her naked. Not just because it’s wrongfully salacious, but just because it’s a go-to for a horror movie.”

Trachtenberg confirmed an earlier version of the script featured an ending where Howard doesn’t die, though that plot point had changed by the time he came onboard. “That version of the script I haven’t read. That was very different in tone. Howard was sort of a good guy, and Michelle was not treating him good the whole movie. So in the end, when Howard’s proven right, she had to learn her lesson… Howard was good and Emmett was bad in that version.”

He continued, “The version I read, the details were different. The creature was characterized differently and it was all set during the daytime. The beats were different.”

Speaking about the sequence where Michelle escapes the bunker only to attract the attention of the alien ship, Trachtenberg said, “There was a section of this… when she’s running away and she ran into a piece of farming equipment… It was a whole elaborate thing that felt exciting while we were shooting it and did not come together.” That was when the focus shifted to Michelle taking temporary refuge in the nearby house.

The design of the aliens at the end was a subject of much debate and back-and-forth. “I was hellbent on making these things organic, and J.J. was hellbent on there being tech and armor associated with them… It became designers listening to two different directors with ideas.”

Trachtenberg said there was a more elaborate version of the ending that was screened for a test audience but didn’t earn a strong reception. “Eventually the audience was like, ‘Enough! End the movie already!'”

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Alternate Titles

Even the title was in flux at one point. Trachtenberg said there were several alternate titles considered, with ideas like “The Book of Cloverfield” and “The Cloverfield Files” floated as a way of highlighting the franchise’s anthology approach. Another possibility involved titling the movie “Below,” setting up a potential sequel called “Above.”

From Smashed to Cloverfield

Trachtenberg cast Winstead as the lead largely because of her performance in 2012’s Smashed. In fact, Trachtenberg drew directly from that performance when shooting the scene at the end of the film where Michelle is both crying and laughing.

A Direct Sequel?

Several IGN readers wanted to know whether Trachtenberg has any plans to make a direct sequel to 10 Cloverfield Lane, one that would continue Michelle’s story. He acknowledged his interest in the idea, even if he doesn’t feel a sequel is strictly necessary.

“I always felt like there’s definitely a fun, really cool way to do the next part of her story that I would love to do,” said Trachtenberg. “At the same time, there’s something awesome about there never being a sequel to this. I think it ends on a really beautiful little grace note for her journey, which is great. I would if I could, but I don’t feel that we need to.”

Where Is the Portal Movie?

One of Trachtenberg’s first film projects was a 2011 short film called “Portal: No Escape,” based on Valve’s hugely popular puzzle game. In response to an IGN reader’s query, we asked Trachtenberg if he knew of the current status of the Portal feature film, which was originally teased way back in 2013, and if he himself might be tapped to direct it. The short answer? He’s not sure.

“I casually talked about it with them at one point. Portal and Half-Life – both of them are awesome. I don’t know if they’re still doing it… My answer is I have no idea.”

For more on that subject, check out our breakdown of all the video game movies currently in development. And be sure to read our recap of IGN’s Rogue One WFH Theater, where we learned more about the many ways that Star Wars prequel evolved.

Overwatch’s Voice Lines Are Going To Get Much Better Soon

While everyone is practicing social distancing due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan uploaded a new developer update from his cell phone discussing some incoming changes. This includes an “improved” communication wheel, adjusting queue times, and more.

The headlining feature is a new, customizable communication wheel. Kaplan noticed that players wanted to say things such as “Goodbye” and “Fall Back” to teammates while in-game. With the improved communication wheel, you will be able to customize the responses based on an expanded preset list. All of these new responses are voiced by the characters.

Also baked into the improved communication wheel is the ability to slot the “Sorry” command into every character’s response list, including the game’s newest hero Echo. “A lot of you have asked for that level of customization in the communication wheel, and we think it will be really powerful for you,” Kaplan said.

Another incoming change is a brand-new “Priority Queuing System.” Currently, when a Competitive match ends because of random player disconnection, you’re placed at the end of a queue and have to wait for another match. With the new system, as long as you’re not the reason why the Competitive match collapsed, you’ll be placed back in the same queue as if the spoiled match never happened. “So it’s not going to guarantee that you’re instantly going to get into another match after the match gets shut down by a leaver,” Kaplan said. “But you’re not going to have to wait the entire queue time.”

Additionally, new Overwatch patch notes will now show up in-game instead of linking out to the game’s official website. Kaplan hasn’t clarified exactly when these new features will appear in Overwatch.

In other Overwatch news, the game’s 32nd hero, Echo, is now live across all platforms. The Overwatch team shared some patch notes that tweaks some of the game’s heroes, such as Mei and Tracer, and more.

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