BioWare is collaborating with Dark Horse Books to release a book commemorating the iconic studio’s first 25 years. Though the book will likely discuss the studio’s popular hits like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the mot intriguing aspect is the promise that the book will detail secret, canceled projects. BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development releases October 13 and is available to pre-order now at Amazon for $40.
The 200-page hardcover “puts you in the room during key moments in BioWare’s history, with never-before-seen art and photos anchored by candid stories from developers past and present.” It sure sounds like this book will be a must-read for dedicated BioWare fans.
The biggest canceled BioWare project we know about is Shadow Realms, a fantasy RPG with asymmetric 4v1 multiplayer. BioWare showed the game often multiple times before canceling it in 2015. But the word “secret” implies that the book will touch on games that no one outside of BioWare knew were in development.
Though the book is currently full price at Amazon, the vast majority of books like this get fairly substantial discounts leading up to release. With Amazon’s pre-order price guarantee, you’ll get the lowest price offered on Amazon up until the time your order ships.
Apple’s brand-new 2020 iPad Pro is set to release on or around March 25, but you can place your order right now at a handful of retailers. These new devices are more powerful than previous models, but they also include a number of new feature that seem to have iPad fans quite excited. Let’s dive in.
Powering these new devices is the new A12Z Bionic chip, which Apple says is so zippy that it “outpaces most PC laptops available today.” It’s made to be powerful enough to handle graphics-intensive work, with an 8-core graphics processor that can power games, 4K video editing, 3D design, and AR apps without breaking a sweat.
The new iPad Pro has better cameras than the previous generation. You get a 12MP wide camera, a new 10MP ultra-wide camera, and a LiDAR scanner that enables all sorts of cool things in augmented-reality apps. Apparently NASA is using the same tech in its next Mars Rover.
Aside from that, the 2020 iPad Pro keeps all the other great features from previous models, including FaceID, Liquid Retina display with ProMotion and True Tone, and the compact, light form factor. All told, it’s a fantastic all-around computing device.
One of the wildest additions to the 2020 iPad Pros is the new Magic Keyboard. The keyboard is the same scissor-mechanism one found in the new MacBook Air, which means it’s reliable and feels great to type on. But the coolest thing is that it has a trackpad, which means you finally get to use a cursor on your iPad.
Basically, this lets these new devices function much more like a laptop, which is perfect for anyone who wants to use the iPad Pro for work. And it attaches magnetically, which is also pretty cool. The drawback is that these keyboards won’t be available until May. Still, you can preorder now.
Other iPad accessories are also enormously useful with the new iPad Pro. The second-gen Apple Pencil is great for taking notes, marking up documents, and creating art in the many excellent drawing and painting apps. AirPods are Apple’s popular wireless earbuds that connect automatically to your iPad. You can also switch between devices easily.
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Chris Reed is IGN’s shopping and commerce editor. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.
The director of the original Final Fantasy 7 and producer of the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Remake has explained why Square Enix has opted to release the recreation project in episodic parts, rather than remake the entire game in one package. A new interview also reveals that there is a whole new upper floor added to the Shinra building.
Talking to the Square Enix blog, original director and remake producer Yoshinori Kitase explained that in order to replicate everything from the original game in the highest quality possible, without cutting content and also adding new elements, the game had to be over multiple entries.
“In order to make [the entire game as a single release] work as a modern game, we wouldn’t be able to go for the highest visual quality and we’d also have to cut back on areas and scenes from the original,” he said. “Essentially, to make a single release viable the resulting game would have ended up being a digest of the original story, and we didn’t think that fans would be pleased with that.”
The first release in the remake project, which launches in April, contains the Midgar portion of the original game. By Kitase’s statements it should feature everything from the original rendered in new technology, plus some new zones to explore.
“There were a lot of parts in between sections of Midgar that were implied, but never seen,” said Kitase. “That was something that we wanted to address with Remake – to fill in all those gaps, show how the different parts of the city are connected, and make it a continuous experience.”
One of the bespoke areas in Remake is an entire new upper floor for the Shinra Building, which – according to Remake’s co-director Naoki Hamaguchi – adds “a climax that was not in the original.”
Interestingly, this upper floor apparently relies on Red XIII to explore, a character Square Enix has confirmed to be unplayable in this first game. “The key to navigating this floor lies in using Red XIII’s unique physical abilities to overcome environmental obstacles,” says Hamaguchi. “Letting the player experience his heroics in this way is something that I’m confident will please the fans.”
That extra additional material also includes “endgame content”, although Hamaguchi refused to reveal what that is in the interview. It may be that optional bosses are available to fight, which are a staple in most Final Fantasy games.
Missing football? So are we, but maybe we can help. If you need something to fill that pentagon laced spherical whole in your life then treat yourself to this full podcast series if you missed it first time around.
Some of us here at the IGN UK office spend more time than is healthy – both professionally and medically – talking about Football Manager. That’s why we’ve finally given into our desires and created a spin-off podcast all about the newest game in the series, Football Manager 2020. Join Cardy, Joe and Dale as they embark on a journey of a lifetime that covers most of the globe and all of your hearts.
Welcome to It’s Football Day, all about the greatest spreadsheets on this sweet Earth of ours. It’s also a tiny bit about Charlie Hunnam’s accent in Green Street. The saga awaits you:
Endzone: A World Apart is a post-apocalyptic settlement building game from German developer Gentlymad Studios. The game is set 150 years after a nuclear apocalypse, setting the player up as the leader of a group sent to recolonize Earth after living in underground bunkers called Endzones.
The hostile management sim tasks players with building a new settlement on the radiation-ravaged Earth, gathering resources to sustain it and surviving threats including droughts, sandstorms, toxic rain, and the latent radioactivity lurking in the ground.
With radiation being key to the themes of the game, Endzone has an in-depth system to manage it. Each tile has its own radiation level, and these can change over time with events like sandstorms.
Gentlymad has announced that the game will enter Early Access on April 3 via Steam, and released a new trailer showcasing some of the intricacies of the radiation system.
On March 23, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds will officially be three years old, celebrating the anniversary of its 2017 beta release. While the battle royale market has become far more competitive since then, PUBG is still going strong with plans for updates, reworks, and new content in its fourth year.
In a blog post, the PUBG team has commemorated all the work that’s been done on the game in the past year, and gives us some idea of what to look forward to in the coming year..
First off the block is the re-worked Vikendi, the snow-covered map that was taken down earlier this year for renovations. The new version of the map, now featuring trains, has been play-tested in reduced circulation, and will be re-releasing again soon.
While other planned updates weren’t outlined in detail, the blog post promised 2020 would bring “map reworks, new maps, new weapons & mechanics, additional game options such as Arcade’s Team Deathmatch, and of course quality of life improvements & bug fixes for some of your most pressing issues.”
PUBG players can redeem a 3rd Anniversary Item Box for free during a limited period, featuring an M416 skin, hoodie, and parachute designed in the Community Skin Design Contest.
PC players will get the box first from March 23 to April 23, where it can be redeemed on the in-game store for free. Console players will have the item box added to their account automatically when they log in between March 26 and April 25.
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Doom Eternal is off to a Hell of a good start, it seems. The game’s PC edition recorded almost 105,000 concurrent players on Steam recently after release. That’s a massive number, and to put it into further context, it’s more much higher than the reported all-time high concurrent player number for its predecessor, 2016’s Doom.
Benji Sales on Twitter crunched some numbers and reports that 105,000 concurrent players on Steam is far and away the biggest release for Bethesda in recent years. It surpasses peak concurrent player numbers on Steam for Doom 2016 (31,623), Dishonored 2 (22,269), Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (16,050), and The Evil Within 2 (9,846), according to Benji Sales’ numbers.
Steam’s own public statistics page shows Doom Eternal had more than 85,000 peak concurrent players on March 22, making it one of the top 15 most popular games on the service.
Bethesda has yet to announce any official sales numbers for Doom Eternal. In the UK, it was reported that Doom Eternal’s physical sales at launch were about a third lower than Doom 2016 over a similar period of time. However, this does not tell the full story of total unit sales because digital sales are not included in the UK report. And of course, with some shops closed in the UK, this also likely hurt physical sales and improved digital sales at the same time as people stay home.
Indie studio NuChallenger has announced that their dark comedy, retro-styled action game Treachery in Beatdown City will see its first episode drop on March 31 for Nintendo Switch and PC.
Treachery in Beatdown City has its tongue firmly in cheek from the start, with its set-up announcing that US President Blake Orama has been kidnapped by Ninja Dragon Terrorists, and the billionaire mayor refuses to help.
The first episode will feature five urban maps set in the city of East Fulton, where players have “the freedom to fight how they want against an increasingly ridiculous cast of enemies,” as the game’s Steam page advertises. The fighting game challenges players to go in-depth with its combat system, creating customized combos with strikes, grapples and “strikeagrapples”.
Players can choose from three different player characters: “Lisa, the Boxing/MMA expert, Brad, a pro-wrestler with a love of fire, and Jeet Kune Do/Capoeira fighter Bruce,” according to the Steam description.
The game features music from chiptunes artist Inverse Phase, and a retro visual style inspired by 80s fighting games and The Ren & Stimpy Show.
Treachery in Beatdown City will release on March 31 on PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch. The EP by Inverse Phase is available now on Bandcamp.
Streaming giant Netflix has announced the creation of a $100 million fund to help assist people in the entertainment world whose jobs have been impacted by the numerous movie and TV show production closures due to COVID-19 (coronavirus).
In a blog post, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos said that TV and film production businesses have been devastated by the virus. He mentioned that “almost all” TV and movie productions have now closed down, leaving “hundreds of thousands” of cast and crew out of work.
People who are paid hourly wages have been particularly impacted, including electricians, carpenters, drivers, and hair and makeup artists, Sarandos pointed out.
“This community has supported Netflix through the good times, and we want to help them through these hard times, especially while governments are still figuring out what economic support they will provide. So we’ve created a $100 million fund to help with hardship in the creative community,” Sarandos said.
The majority of this money will go to workers who have been the “hardest hit” by the global pandemic. “We’re in the process of working out exactly what this means, production by production. This is in addition to the two weeks pay we’ve already committed to the crew and cast on productions we were forced to suspend last week,” he said.
Money will also be given to international charities, including $1 million spread between the AFC and Fondation des Artistes.
For places like Europe, Latin America, and Asia, Netflix said it is in communication with local entertainment groups to support relief; more details will be announced later.
“What’s happening is unprecedented. We are only as strong as the people we work with and Netflix is fortunate to be able to help those hardest hit in our industry through this challenging time,” Sarandos said.
Some of Netflix’s biggest shows, including Stranger Things and The Witcher, have paused production indefinitely due to the virus.
Movie theatres are also grappling with the virus. With movie theatres throughout the US shut down, the head of a cinema lobbying group has called on the government to pass a trillion-dollar relief bill to help theatre chains that could go bankrupt.
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