Bill & Ted Face the Music: Everything We Know About The Comedy Sequel

Bill & Ted Face the Music: Everything We Know About The Comedy Sequel – GameSpot

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By Dan Auty | @MondoDan on February 24, 2020 at 1:03PM PST

Neo, John Wick, and Speed’s Jack Traven might be the characters that define Keanu Reeves as a movie action hero, but it was a comedy role that made him a star. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure hit theaters in 1989, with Reeves and co-star Alex Winter playing a pair of hapless teenage metalheads who embark on a wild time-traveling adventure in an attempt to pass a high school presentation.

Excellent Adventure was a funny and imaginative movie with winning performances, and enough of a box office success to merit a sequel. 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey had a higher budget and was every bit as entertaining, with a surreal storyline that featured aliens, God, androids, and an Ingmar Bergman spoof involving the Grim Reaper. It was also accompanied by a high-profile soundtrack featuring many of the era’s big rock and metal bands. Unfortunately, the movie was not as successful as its predecessor, and a third movie didn’t follow.

Until now, that is. In 2010, the first news emerged of a new Bill & Ted film, when Keanu Reeves revealed that he was still in touch with Winter and a new script was being worked on. Occasional updates appeared over the next decade, and in March 2019, Reeves and Winter officially confirmed that Bill & Ted Face the Music had been greenlit and would hit theaters in 2020. So with the release now only a few months away, here’s everything we know about the third Bill & Ted movie. Party on dudes!

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When will it be released?

Bill & Ted Face the Music hits theaters on August 22, 2020.

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What has been revealed so far?

The trailer hasn’t been released yet, but with the movie arriving in the summer, it shouldn’t be too much longer before we see some footage. In the meantime, you can check out this poster.

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Who’s coming back?

There are several familiar faces returning for the new Bill & Ted movie. Obviously the film wouldn’t exist without Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, and they will be joined by William Sadler, who played Death in the Bogus Journey, plus Hal Landon Jr. as Ted’s authoritarian dad and Amy Stoch as his stepmother Missy (“Missy, I mean, mom!”)

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Who’s new?

Bill & Ted Face the Music features a variety of new cast members, some playing characters we’ve seen before, others entirely new to the series. Bill and Ted’s wives, Princess Joanna and Princess Elizabeth, are now played by Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes–these roles have now been played by different actors in every movie. Ted’s younger brother Deacon is played by SNL’s Beck Bennett, while Kid Cudi will reportedly appear as himself. In terms of new characters, Bill and Ted now have adult daughters–Billie and Thea–played by Brigette Lundy-Paine and Samara Weaving. The movie’s main villain will be played by Anthony Carrigan, best known as hilarious Chechen gangster NoHo Hank in HBO’s Barry, and it’s been rumored that he might be playing Death’s son.

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What’s the story?

Although we’re yet to see a trailer, we know the basic plot outline. Bill and Ted are middle-aged dads who are still rocking out as Wyld Stallions. A mysterious visitor from the future warns them they have only 78 minutes to write the song that will save the entire universe, sending them on another time-traveling mission.

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Who’s the Director?

Bill & Ted Face the Music is directed by Dean Parisot, who has been attached to the movie as far back as 2012. Pasirot is best known for the 1999 sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest, as well as the Jim Carrey movie Fun with Dick and Jane and the action sequel Red 2.

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Who are the writers?

One of the big reasons to be excited for the new Bill & Ted movie is that the script has been written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. Matheson and Solomon created the series, and wrote the screenplay to the first movie way back in 1987, basing it on a comedy stand-up routine they had performed in college. They returned to write Bogus Journey, and have been involved with Face the Music since the very start. Solomon also wrote the 1999 hit Men in Black, while Matheson is the son of legendary sci-fi and horror author Richard Matheson.

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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company

Best Picture Winner Parasite Heads To Hulu This Spring

The first-ever South Korean Best Picture winner at this year’s Academy Awards, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, is slated to stream exclusively on Hulu on April 8, the film production company Neon announced in a press release.

Hulu and Neon inked an exclusive multiyear deal in 2017 to bring “all upcoming films and content released” to Hulu.

“Our partnership with Neon marks another big step forward in our commitment to offering a world-class collection of films to our subscribers,” Hulu’s head of content said in 2017. “Neon has already acquired a highly-anticipated slate of films this year and we can’t wait to bring their titles from the theaters to the Hulu audience.”

Since then, Neon has released a variety of films on the streaming platform, including Three Identical Strangers, Ingrid Goes West, The Beach Bum, I, Tonya, Honeyland, and many more.

In addition to snagging the Best Picture award from its competitors–which included Joker, Marriage Story, The Irishman, and more–Parasite took home three more trophies out of the six it was nominated for. This includes the Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and the Best International Feature Film awards. The other two–Best Film Editing and Best Production Design–went to Ford v Ferrari and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, respectively.

GameSpot awarded the film a 9/10 in our Parasite review, saying, “Its pitch-perfect casting, excellent cinematography, and operatic score all result in a tragedy of epic proportions that should scheme, con, and scam its way into many “best of” lists by the end of the year.”

Overwatch’s First Experimental Mode Doubles Down On Damage Comp

Last month, Overwatch developer Blizzard announced the impending addition of a new experimental card that allows players to test out possible radical changes to gameplay. Today, director Jeff Kaplan revealed the details behind the first experimental mode that will most likely be released February 25th, “but stuff could go wrong, [and it] may be delayed a little bit.”

Named the Triple Damage, the experimental mode is for damage players. Instead of the standard two tanks, three damage characters, and two supports, this exploratory setting will introduce a new team composition: one tank, three damage characters, and one support player.

It’s a pretty big change, especially for tank mains, and Kaplan assured fans that any setting tested in the experimental card is not one that will be definitely implemented. That is to say: tank players, do not worry about this team composition becoming permanent

The director went on to further explain that the Triple Damage mode was created to address the extra waiting time in the role queue for damage players. By deploying Triple Damage, the development team wants to see if it actually shortens queue time for damage players and whether it will affect other parts of the game service, like Classic Quickplay.

As part of the Triple Damage mode, the characters that the Overwatch community regularly refer to as “Off-tanks,” like Road Hog, Zarya, and D.Va, will receive big balance changes if you choose to play in the experimental card. Players in the experimental mode will still level up and receive loot boxes like normal.

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Black Creators Are Hopeful for a Future Where Black Superheroes Aren’t ‘Niche’

This story originally appeared on GameSpot sister site TV Guide.

In the 1990s, black storytellers were having a moment in Hollywood. As noted in this now kinda cringey New York Times story, black was “in,” and Hollywood decision-makers were “beginning to recognize that a white audience will spend money to see black movies.” Black filmmakers like Melvin Van Peebles, the Hudlin brothers, and Robert Townsend got resources and support to tell their stories; on TV, shows like Living Single and Moesha became hits and helped then-burgeoning networks Fox and UPN grow their businesses. The era didn’t last. By the 2000s, black film directors found themselves no longer in demand, and on TV, network mergers and increased appetites for reality TV meant pivoting away from majority-black shows in favor of appealing to “mainstream” (read: white) audiences, as outlined in the 2005 book The Sitcom Reader.

Some 30 years later, black storytellers are wondering if history is about to repeat itself, even as they celebrate progress. Today, black superheroes are finally thriving on TV, with shows such as Doom Patrol and The Boys putting black superheroes front and center after decades of being relegated to the sidelines or ignored altogether. Steps forward in representation have been a long time coming, but with characters like Sister Night (Regina King) of Watchmen, and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) of the upcoming The Falcon and the Winter Soldier dismantling the myth that black heroes can’t appeal to everyone, it sure seems as if we’re only at the beginning of a movement with boundless potential. To hear experts and creators tell it, though, optimism comes with caution.

“Is it a boon?” Denys Cowan, co-founder of Milestone Media and co-creator of the comic book hero Static, replied when asked how he felt about the sudden increase in black superheroes on TV. “It’s good to see more diversity, but I don’t know if it’s really enough.” Cowan broke down barriers in 2000 with Static Shock, an animated kids series about a black teen hero named Static that ran for four seasons, and recalled going into meetings where white executives told him point-blank that black people didn’t buy comic books. While he loves that stories like Black Lighting and Watchmen are being told now, Cowan said there are so many more to tell. However, there’s a dearth of network executives willing to put faith and dollars into these projects. “It’s still a struggle,” Cowan said.

Creators and people in the so-called blerd community live in a state of cognitive dissonance: joy over finally seeing these stories on TV, fear that it could be fleeting, and skepticism about the depth of the portrayals. “There is a kind of paradigm shift,” said Evan Narcisse, who co-wrote Rise of the Black Panther with Ta-Nehisi Coates and contributed to the recent Marvel’s Voices’ #1. On the one hand, Narcisse explained, shows like Luke Cage and Black Lightning represent a turning point, because “not only are the black characters the main focus of these shows, the creative rooms are black as well. Luke Cage didn’t have to explain every little bit of slang or in-group talk to try to please audiences who are not like black.” That said, “there’s an awareness this could disappear tomorrow,” Narcisse explained. “Everyone’s grateful to be getting their chance. But you see someone like Greg Berlanti–and no shade to Greg Berlanti, because what he’s accomplished is impressive–but [Black Lightning executive producer] Salim Akil only gets in because Greg got him in. The fact still remains that white decision-makers still need to be the ones to open the door.”

Karama Horne, a contributing editor for SyFy Wire and genre geek known as theblerdgirl, says she’s filled with equal parts excitement and reservation–aware that previous projections of a superhero bust didn’t exactly pan out either. “To a certain extent, I do think the concept of black superheroes might be considered a passing fad. But people said that before Black Panther came out and made a billion dollars. And we’re hearing those same voices saying that again.” Rather than anxious, Horne is more hyped, taking delight in seeing how Black Lightning depicts a black family in fresh ways, or news of the forthcoming Disney+ series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, which will focus on a 9-year-old girl who’s also the smartest character in the Marvel universe.

Nonetheless, Black Panther’s release in 2018 did mark a turning point, and the film’s success ironically prompted a somewhat painful, frustrating observation that writer Jameel Salim (South Park, Disenchantment) put succinctly: “Look at how much money Black Panther made. You think there’d be 10 black superheroes movies in development, but there’s not. I think [executives] attribute its success more to Marvel than to the power of the black dollar.” Now working with 50 Cent to bring the animated series Trill League to the new streaming platform Quibi, Salim said it’s these streamers–Amazon with The Boys, Netflix with Raising Dion and Luke Cage–that have opened up opportunities for black superhero stories, some of which likely would never make it to screen were it not for the abundance of platforms looking for content. “[Black stories] are still looked at as a niche market,” he said, noting how streaming feels like less of a risk than a film or primetime show on a major network. “It sucks, but at the same time, I get it. [The system] is run by white people. Even if it’s just subconscious, they tend to lean toward projects they can see themselves in.”

Even if the number of black superhero characters making it to big and small screens slows down, the experts agree that the breadth and nuance in the stories being told now have changed TV for the better. Post-Watchmen, just about every black creator has signed off on a lifetime invitation to the proverbial cookout for Damon Lindelof, who shepherded an unprecedented story about a black female crime fighter, a black time-traveling god, and the Tulsa Race Massacre to HBO. Many hail Black Lightning for the ways it shows a black family figuring out how to function under incredibly trying circumstances.

“We’ve moved beyond tokenism,” Narcisse said. “Black nerd communities are attuned to the ways we’re represented. [African Americans] can get rendered into mascots easily, so we’re always watching to see if this black person gets to be a [dimensional] person.” Creators hold hope for expanded possibilities in the future when it comes to mining unexplored layers of black identity on-screen. Narcisse, said that he’d like to see more black queer points of view, and more inter-generational conflicts explored within the genre. Horne wants to see more kids’ content; Salim wants to see more young black superheroes who are hip and cool as opposed to the kinda nerdy type, like Miles Morales of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. (Denys Cowan, for the record, would like to remind everyone that Milestone Media, a company he helped create decades ago, featured a diverse range of characters including LGBTQ folks, before such representations started to become more common.) Whatever happens next, creators and fans alike don’t take any of this for granted.

“It’s a good moment,” Narcisse said. “It’s promising. I just hope the oxygen tank doesn’t get turned off anytime soon.”

For Black History Month, TV Guide is celebrating black superheroes in TV and film. As part of The Rise of Black Superheroes, we’re honoring the legacies of pioneers like Luke Cage, War Machine, and actress Eartha Kitt; examining how blackness shapes the identities of characters like Iris West, Black Lightning, and John Diggle; exploring what today’s black heroes mean to kids of color; and celebrating the greatest black superheroes of all time. You can check out more content from The Rise of Black Superheroes here.

Spiritfarer Teaser Prepares You As Ferrymaster For The Dead

Spiritfarer is shaping up to be a colorful and whimsical take on death, and the game’s new teaser trailer shows off the jobs you’ll be doing as a ferrymaster for deceased souls. Managing the dead isn’t easy, and there are quite a few moving parts to keep under control.

In the gameplay teaser, we see protagonist Stella cut down a tree with the help of the spirit cat Daffodil, and later mine for ore that is used to power the ferry. She can also shear sheep, buy items, and harvest crops, and she can feed townspeople in order to strengthen relationships. Despite the macabre central theme, it’s still a lighthearted game with kindness at its core.

Flipping the sadness surrounding death into something positive makes Spiritfarer unique, and according to creative director Nicolas Guérin, it was about accepting your own emotions. Back in December, Guérin told GameSpot that Spirifarer aims to show that death is normal, as are feelings of grief after losing someone.

The colorful visuals help with this, as do moments when Stella finally has to leave her deceased friends. At this point, only their memory will survive.

It’s a far cry from Sundered, developer Thunder Lotus Games’ previous project. The Metroidvania game featured violence and downright disturbing bosses.

Spiritfarer releases this year for Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC, and it will be available through Xbox Game Pass. It’s playable cooperatively, with one player controlling Stella while the other controls her cat Daffodil.

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Othercide Hands-On: Dark and Deadly

Turn-based tactics games aren’t always eye-catching, but Othercide, from developer Lightbulb Crew, instantly grabbed my attention with its bold and moody art style. Just look at this game: the red highlights against the weird and perpetually rainy monochrome world certainly sets a striking mood. And with some high-stakes rogue-lite ideas behind it, learning the ropes in the first few hours has been interesting and challenging.

The story is extremely cryptic and to be honest, I don’t have a clue what’s going on yet. I do know that the nightmarish Other is invading your world, and your squad of Daughters has monsters to kill. The turn-based tactical battles play out on relatively small maps until you almost inevitably lose and start again with some new unlocks, called Remembrances, that will help you survive longer and go farther next time. Such is the way of the rogue-lite.

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Unlike XCOM or other rigidly ordered “I go, you go” turn-based games, Othercide’s turns are governed by the timeline at the bottom of the screen. It shows you who will move next based on each character’s initiative stat, which means there are no surprises and no guesswork in the tactical puzzles each level presents you with. And if you don’t like that an enemy character gets to move before yours and you can’t quite kill them outright, certain moves, such as a shield slam, can stun them and knock them back a ways, or certain buffs can skip a friendly character ahead in line.

On top of that, if you use more than 50% of a character’s 100 action points in a turn it means that Daughter has overexerted herself and requires twice as long on the timeline before she can move again. That’s a major tactical consideration that forces you to think ahead about when you can afford to extend yourself and when you can’t.

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Real mortal tension is created by the fact that there’s only one way to heal anybody, and you won’t like it. When one of your Daughters is wounded, must sacrifice another team member’s life to restore them. That means that abilities like the overwatch-style interrupt shot from the Soulslinger comes with a major cost: while it can spare your team from taking a high-damage hit from an enemy, you have to spend 40 hitpoints to use it, and that can add up with such a useful ability. Eventually your Soulslinger wastes away… unless you feed someone to her.

Othercide’s monster design is very creepy, too, especially these impish scavenger creatures who come at you in groups. And when their bigger, beefier brothers show up it’s time to panic a little.

Assuming you survive, at the end of each mission you’re rewarded with some currency that can be used to create new Daughters, among other things, and Memories, which are effectively gems that can be slotted into individual characters’ abilities to increase damage or boost other effects.

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The first boss fight ended my first couple of runs. The Surgeon is a tricky nut to crack, since my level 3 and 4 characters have had trouble swatting his minions as quickly as he summons them, and you can’t damage him until they’re all dead. But once I do, I’ll unlock a Remembrance that makes all my Daughters start at level 4, which will let me use advanced attacks in the first few missions.

Of course, Othercide’s rogue-lite approach that sends you back to square one with a fresh squad means it’ll need some good variety in these early missions to keep it from becoming repetitive. We’ll see how it fares when it’s out on PC sometime later in 2020.

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Dan Stapleton is IGN’s Reviews Editor. You can follow him on Twitter to hear gaming rants and lots of random Simpsons references.

Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection Review

Man oh (mega) man do I love this collection. Its six excellent Mega Man spin-off games bring with them exactly the kind of gameplay and story my body craves and I’m thrilled at how well they hold up and stand on their own. But it’s the extras, including a new competitive mode with online leaderboards, that really seals the deal.

Mega Man and Mega Man X are some of my favorite series in all of gaming, but I slept on the Mega Man Zero series when it came to Game Boy Advance starting in 2002 and first realized what I was missing when the Zero Collection came out on DS in 2010. The Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and Steam is even better, because it brings all four of the original Mega Man Zero GBA games and both DS games into one convenient package. They’re wonderful.

If you’re not familiar with the plot of the Mega Man Zero series, here’s a quick rundown: 100 years after the events of the Mega Man X series, legendary warrior Zero is reactivated to help fight in the war between humans and Reploids, a race of human-like robots based on the original Mega Man X.

Mega Man ZX and Advent are set even further in the future, in the year 25XX, when humans and Reploids exist in harmony… until the revival of the Mavericks. Throughout the entire series there’s a lot of talk of cyber-elves and Neo Arcadia, Bio-Metals, Reploids, E-Crystals, sacrifice, and betrayal… in other words, it rules pretty hard. It’s exactly the kind of corny, jargon-heavy anime storyline I love in my video games. Unfortunately dialogue is largely unskippable, which can be real annoying when you’re trying to beat a boss.

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The gameplay itself follows the Mega Man Zero formula, and on Switch it feels great in both handheld mode and on my TV. Holding down the R-button to fire the alternate weapon on the Joy-Con doesn’t feel the best, but the Pro Controller is a much better fit. You can remap the controls to fit your preferred playstyle, which is a welcome option.

None of these old-school platformers are easy, but to help remedy any of the frustration Capcom has added two new options to ease the sting of repeated failure. Save-Assist drops save locations at key points in the levels, meaning you can lose to a boss and start right back up again from the nearest save point instead of starting the whole level over like back in the day. These aren’t save states, though, so they still require a certain amount of raw skill if you want to make it through the levels.

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There’s also a “casual mode” which removes the threat of instant-death from spikes and pits and beefs up your character and weapons. Casual mode has to be set at the beginning of a game, so you need to be committed to your choice: you can’t switch back and forth between normal and casual modes. I have no problem admitting I played with the Save-Assist mode turned on, but only tried out Casual Mode for the purposes of this review. I have my pride.

On modern displays, the Zero/ZX series’ pixel art graphics are absolutely beautiful. There are three different filters to choose from: a “soft” filter blurring the pixels a bit, “no filter,” showing off every pixel in its full, razor-sharp crispness, and a filter that makes the graphics look like they’re on a GBA or DS screen. That last one puts a very subtle, but noticeable, static effect on the screen, giving it just a hint of old-school grittiness inherent in earlier handheld displays. It’s far and away my preferred way to play.

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Apart from the filters, there are different screen layouts you can choose from, the number of which differs whether you’re playing Mega Man Zero or ZX games. The ZX games, originally released on DS, have several layout options for the DS’ second screen, but there’s no portrait mode for use on the Switch, which is a massive bummer. The two DS games would benefit enormously from compatibility with something like the Flip Grip, a $12 plastic device that allows you to hold the Switch sideways. Tons of other retro games on Switch support the vertical orientation, including individual games on collections like the SNK 40th Anniversary and SEGA Ages. Capcom, if you’re reading this, please patch in a vertical orientation for ZX and ZX Advent in handheld mode!

There are also loads of wallpapers to choose from, and I didn’t find a bad one in the bunch, to be honest. The Zero/ZX art style is a personal favorite, so I found myself swapping out wallpapers fairly regularly just to enjoy a change of scenery.

When a collection has games as strong as these, it lives or dies by the quality of its extra content, and I’m happy to say Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection does… a decent job. My one gripe is it plays it pretty safe: it has exactly the kind of bonus content you’ve come to expect at this point, and only scratches the surface of the series’ history. I would love to see more in-depth bonus features delving into the series’ development.

There is a massive gallery of art for all six games, with high-resolution images available to scroll through and enjoy. There are also bonus cards you unlock through playing, and you can activate them to unlock extras in the games themselves. For example, turning on some of the earlier bonus cards adds plants, paintings, and other touches to the Resistance Base in Mega Man Zero 3. It’s a cool cosmetic touch I didn’t expect, and with 100 unlockable cards there are many more secrets I haven’t unlocked.

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On top of the bonus art, the soundtracks for every single game are accessible from the main menu right from the start, so you can cycle through your favorites (my absolute favorite is Departure from Mega Man Zero 2, followed by Green Grass Gradation from Mega Man ZX).

The new Z-Chaser mode is a competitive speed-running mode with online leaderboards. It’s really well done, with the ability to choose your “ghost” from a selection of other, actual players who’ve set records and compete against them for glory. If you’d rather compete locally, Z-Chaser has a head-to-head mode, too. Even though I’m not into competitive speedrunning at all, I did find myself enjoying running Mega Man Zero levels against the ghost of an online stranger.

Anthony Mackie Is a ‘Really Different Kovacs’ in Altered Carbon Season 2

Last year, IGN visited the set of Altered Carbon Season 2 as part of an exclusive IGN Premiere first look at the Netflix show’s much-anticipated return. We’ll be rolling out a series of exclusive sneak peeks for Season 2 this week, so keep it locked right here for never-before-seen interviews and behind the scenes footage of Anthony Mackie as Takeshi Kovacs, Chris Conner as Poe, and Renée Elise Goldsberry as Quellcrist Falconer. And be sure to check out Altered Carbon Season 2 when it premieres on Netflix on Thursday, February 27, 2020. Be sure to check out our spoiler-free review of Altered Carbon Season 2.

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One of the biggest questions we had after the Season 1 finale of Altered Carbon was who is going to play the next Takeshi Kovacs, since we knew Joel Kinnaman was leaving the role? Now that we know Takeshi is rocking a brand-new Anthony Mackie sleeve, what does that mean for the character in Season 2? Sure, Takeshi is still Takeshi inside of that cortical stack of his, but every actor who has played him, (Joel Kinnaman, Will Yun Lee, and Byron Mann) so far, has brought a different kind of swagger to the role.

What Makes Anthony Mackie’s Takeshi Kovacs Special in Season 2?

IGN traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia to visit the set in order to learn more about what makes Mackie’s Kovacs different from the other iterations of the character. At first, Mackie jokingly said, “Well, he’s black,” but then thought on it for a while. “It’s interesting because he is different,” Mackie told IGN. “His level of intrigue, his passion, his desires. In the first season, [Takeshi] was very downtrodden.”

If you want to watch our full interview with Mackie, check out the video below or at the top of the page:

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We also spent some time with the newly appointed showrunner, Alison Schapker (Fringe, Lost), who explained how Takeshi’s personality changes are a direct result of his quest to find Quellcrist Falconer (Renée Elise Goldsberry). “Takeshi Kovacs in Season 1 was a Kovacs who had nothing left to lose,” Schapker explained. “And Quellcrist Falconer [was] a woman he lost centuries ago, and he had no chance of finding her. And there’s a promise made to the audience at the end of Season 1, which is: she may be out there. So in Season 2, Kovacs is closer to her than he’s ever been, and that’s a really different Kovacs because that’s a Kovacs who has something to care about.”

What Kind of Upgrades Does Kovacs’ New Sleeve Have?

If you’ve had a chance to check out the official Season 2 trailer for Altered Carbon, then you may have noticed that Mackie’s Takeshi has some pretty spectacular upgrades that make him an even more efficient killer. Schapker told us that there’s one in particular that she and her team were very fond of. “We love the Mag Plates, that you see in the teaser [trailer] where he can call weapons that are biometrically coded to his sleeve.”

Schapker also promised us that there are “other secrets to his sleeve,” but we’ll have to wait until Season 2 of Altered Carbon premieres on Netflix on February 27 to find out more.

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David Griffin still watches DuckTales in his pajamas with a cereal bowl in hand. He’s also the TV Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter.

They Made Sounds For Halo 3 By Smashing Xboxes With A Hammer

Video game composer Martin O’Donnell has shared another behind-the-scenes video from his time at Bungie working on the Halo series. This latest one focused on the music and audio from 2007’s Halo 3, and it follows an earlier video that showed Steve Vai’s incredible recording of the rockin’ Halo 2 theme music.

In this unearthed video, we see and learn a lot of things, including the fact that a number of Halo 3’s sounds came from dropping, scraping, and smashing an original Xbox with a hammer. There are a lot of other interesting insights and fun facts in the video. For instance, one of the sound designers recorded audio for soldiers walking through the beach by capturing his own footsteps on a beach in Mexico when he was on vacation.

Check out the full video below; it’s well worth a watch for Halo fans. The Xbox-smashing bit starts at around 1:05.

It’s a treat to see some of the the Halo 3 celebrity voicecast recording lines, including Ron Perlman, Nathan Fillion, Nolan North, Katee Sackhoff, Adam Baldwin, Terence Stamp, John DiMaggio, Jen Taylor, and David Scully.

O’Donnell worked on the Halo franchise while at Bungie and stayed on board to write the music for Destiny. He was fired from Bungie in 2014, later suing Bungie and eventually prevailing against the studio, getting hundreds of thousands of dollars.

He’s now working alongside Halo and Destiny designer Jaime Griesemer at a new studio Highwire Games. The independent outfit’s first game is the PlayStation VR title Golem.

The Halo series is now developed at 343 Industries, following its move from Bungie to Microsoft. Halo Infinite is the newest release, and it’s slated to debut this holiday as a launch title for Xbox Series X. For a behind-the-scenes look at that game’s audio, check out the videos linked below.

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