While we’re still waiting for Spawn to come to Mortal Kombat 11, artist and creator of the fictional superhero Todd McFarlane has provided a first-look at what Spawn will look like in the fighting game.
The Spawn Mortal Kombat action figurine is a very detailed 7-inch model “designed with 22 points of ultra-articulation and can achieve full range posing,” McFarlane said on Twitter. It’s coming from McFarlane Toys and will be available sometime this March, probably tying in with Spawn’s March 17 release in Mortal Kombat 11 on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
Though no retail stores have been confirmed to carry it, the Spawn action figure will retail for $20 USD and you can check out some images below.
McFarlane will attend the MK11 Pro Kompetition esports championship finale, Final Kombat 2020, on March 8 in Chicago. Here, NetherRealm will debut Spawn’s gameplay trailer with a special appearance from his MK11 voice actor, Keith David. David has lent his voice to a bunch of video games over the years, including appearing in both the Mass Effect and Saints Row series, but he’s probably best known as Halo‘s Arbiter. You can watch Final Kombat on NetherRealm’s official channels, like Mixer, Twitch, YouTube, and more.
Spawn is the last DLC character in Mortal Kombat 11’s Kombat Pack, which includes a bundle of baddies and fighters for $40 USD. The package features Shang Tsung, Nightwolf, Terminator, Sindel, and the recently-released Joker.
Joker’s release had fans speculating that developer NetherRealm Studios was possibly hinting at a third installment to the Injustice series. MK producer Ed Boon has dashed any prospects of an Injustice 3 being in the works at NetherRealm, saying that any Joker dialogue is purely “coincidental.”
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The PlayStation Store is offering some fantastic deals this month, including an Essential Picks PS4 sale with nice discounts on some of the system’s best games. But fans of JRPGs and other Japanese-developed games will want to check out the latest sale on PSN as well. The annual Big in Japan sale is back with deep discounts on over 500 games and DLC packs from Japanese publishers and developers, and it’s live right now until March 6 at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET. The sale includes not only PS4 games but PS3 and PS Vita titles as well, with high-profile series like Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Metal Gear Solid featuring heavily.
The second season of Netflix’sThe Witcher adaptation has now begun filming in the UK, with the company also sharing a new list of cast members joining the crew. The season will consist of eight episodes and debut in 2021.
The most notable is Kristoger Hivju, the wildling Tormond Giantsbane in Game of Thrones, who will now be portraying Nivellen–a cursed man that transforms into a beast in one of the best short stories from The Last Wish.
Here’s the list of new characters cast for Season 2:
Yasen Atour as Coën
Agnes Bjorn as Vereena
Paul Bullion as Lambert
Kristofer Hivju as Nivellen
Thue Ersted Rasmussen as Eskel
Aisha Fabienne Ross as Lydia
Mecia Simson as Francesca
Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra, Freya Allan, and Joey Batey will all be returning as Geralt of Rivia, Yennefer, Ciri, and Jaskier respectively.
Included in the cast are also three new witchers, which you may recognise from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Seen during your time at Kaer Morhen, Lambert and Eskel form two sides of the same coin, with the former being a reprehensible monster and the latter a more balanced and responsible monster hunter. The third, Coën, hails from an entirely different school of witchers, which will hopefully be explored in this new season.
The second season of The Witcher is said to be more linear than the first, which will be a welcome change. In our 4/10 review for The Witcher, with critic Michael Rougeau saying, “Game fans who haven’t read the books will be totally befuddled, and book readers will be scratching their heads just as frequently.”
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Joe’s spent a large portion of the past week on planes, so tells us about what he watched, played and listened to on them. Cardy’s played a bit Persona 5 Royal and is still insisting to himself that he won’t sink another 100+ hours into it when it releases. Matt’s has been finishing off his time with the Half-Life reimagining “Black Mesa” and has been having a rather splendid time by the sound of it. There’s also time to discuss how relaxing Animal Crossing is looking after the hefty Nintendo Direct this week.
The feedback section takes a dark turn, but the frivolity of The Perpetual Pursuit does well to balance it out.
Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected]
Jonathan Frakes got his start as a director on Star Trek 30 years ago with the Next Generation episode “The Offspring” (which, funnily enough, was about a daughter of Data’s, just like Star Trek: Picard seems to be). In the years since, The Man Also Known as Riker became not just a clutch helmer on the various Trek shows of the Rick Berman era, but also a feature director who made the best TNG Star Trek movie (First Contact, man!) before segueing into a long career behind the camera on shows like The Librarians, Castle, Leverage, The Orville, and many more.
But these days he’s also back in the Star Trek fold, having helmed three episodes of Discovery so far (he’ll be back for Season 3 too) and now Episodes 4 and 5 of Star Trek: Picard. (He’ll also be making his long-awaited return as Will Riker on Picard later this season.) I jumped on the phone recently with the ever-affable Frakes to discuss the transition to the world of Picard, what it was like working with his old friend Patrick Stewart again, how Riker almost didn’t make it into Season 1 of the new show, and much more.
Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes on Star Trek: Picard
Frakes and Stewart, Together Again
It seemed a no-brainer that Frakes would be reunited with his old captain when Patrick Stewart decided to return to the small screen for a new Star Trek show. Whether the character of Riker was to return or not, it seemed a fait accompli that Frakes would be behind the camera on Picard.
On working with Stewart again, Frakes says he believes his old friend and colleague is better than ever in the role of Picard.
“He’s found new colors with which he paints that he hadn’t had before,” he says. “He’s energized, he’s excited about how different it is from Next Gen. He’s been away from it, and us, for almost 20 years, except for socially. And he’s come at it with a wonderful vulnerable, accessible, complicated, mysterious, damaged, fascinating approach. And it’s only aided by the fact that the writing on this show is spectacular with [Michael] Chabon and Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman and Kirsten [Beyer]. The writing is dense, it’s complicated, and it has given him an opportunity, as I said, to show some really new colors.”
Frakes does say that by the time he came aboard, Stewart had mostly figured out who Picard was some 20 years after we last saw him in Star Trek: Nemesis.
“He was locked into it,” says Frakes. “See, he’s a producer on the show, so he broke the story with these guys. He had a lot of input into, and approval of, where Picard is in life. So I was able to underline and enhance and encourage aspects of the specific stories that we were telling in [episodes] 4 and 5. But Patrick had a very big input in the development of the new Picard.”
Introducing the “Damaged” Seven of Nine
While Frakes directed three episodes of Star Trek: Voyager back in the day, they were all before Jeri Ryan joined the show as the former Borg Seven of Nine. Now Ryan is on Picard, however, giving the pair the chance to finally work together on a Star Trek series (they had formerly done the series Leverage together, and of course knew each other from the Star Trek convention circuit). In fact, Frakes got to reintroduce Seven in a terrific cliffhanger moment at the end of Episode 4 as she beams in just as her ship is about to explode, in classic Trek fashion.
“I was thrilled to be the one to introduce that character,” laughs the director. “I don’t think Jeri ever did better. Jeri’s more comfortable with this, what we call Seven, as opposed to the Seven of Nine from Voyager. She’s more mature. She’s more evolved. Again, the writing, it’s all in the writing.”
Frakes and Ryan and showrunner Michael Chabon did have to work to figure out who exactly Seven is now and how she has changed and evolved since we last saw her in Voyager’s final episode back in 2001.
“Boy, with Jeri, she was struggling with the new quote-unquote ‘voice’ of Seven, which was written in a much different way than the heavily Borg-ified Seven of Nine,” explains Frakes, who describes the character as “damaged and somewhat bitter and cynical” now. “So her concerns were addressed. I addressed them as much as I could, but I turned her over to Michael Chabon, and the two of them came to a very productive collaboration on how Seven now behaved and spoke and reacted. Because she in many ways, the way Patrick owns Picard, she owns Seven of Nine. And Chabon was wonderfully receptive to her input.”
Of course, modern Star Trek is more inclined to depict “damaged, bitter, cynical” characters, but the helmer thinks that’s just the nature of the world we’re living in today. Things have changed since the days on The Next Generation where all the characters had to get along perfectly all the time.
“That was the Roddenberry approach to there being no conflict, which made it very hard for the writers, when drama is built on conflict,” says Frakes. “And Gene’s adage about the future, his beautiful vision of the future, was without conflict. Our episodes were meant to be morality plays, or cautionary tales. And the new Star Treks, Discovery and Picard, are filled with more complicated relationships where there is doubt and suspicion and resentment and qualities that Gene discouraged us from playing and discouraged the writers from writing.”
Frakes thinks this is a necessary approach in the year 2020.
“That’s exactly what I think, and that’s very much the intention of the show,” he continues. “And I think part of the early success of Picard is not only hung on Patrick and Michael and Akiva and Alex’s talent, but also on the time of the painful situation we’re in as a country.”
Picard Without Riker? It Almost Happened
We’ve known since last summer that Frakes would be appearing as Riker at some point this season on Picard, and many fans expected that to happen during one of the episodes that he directed. After all, he was there on the set every day anyway, right? But as it turns out, Riker almost didn’t even show up in Season 1 at all.
“My understanding is that when the series was broken – meaning the first 10 episodes were broken in terms of story – there was no Riker,” explains Frakes. “And that somewhere in the writing of the second half of the season, they found a way to include him. That’s how it’s been explained to me. Because when I was onboard, when I was doing 4 and 5, as a matter of fact … I knew [Data actor] Brent [Spiner] was there, obviously, because that was quite clear, because he was in the pilot, and I obviously had Jeri in my episodes, and [Hugh actor] Jonathan Del Arco. But I thought that was the extent of the callbacks to that era. So I was as surprised as you.”
But when it came time to actually get in front of the camera again as William T. Riker, well, Frakes admits that he was actually nervous about it because he hadn’t acted in 10 years or more.
“And I just spent two episodes watching the condition that Patrick has been in — he is at the top, he’s never really been better, in my opinion. He’s in top form,” he laughs. “And Marina [Sirtis], who plays my TV wife, Counselor Troi, had just closed starring in a play on the West End, so I knew her acting muscles were full and strong. And I thought, ‘If I get f–king buried by my friends, I’m going to be so bitter.’ So I spent every morning on the script, so that wouldn’t be an issue. But don’t let anybody say it’s like getting back on a bike, because that’s bulls–t!”
Listen to Frakes. He knows whereof he speaks. And be sure to check out the Star Trek: Picard episodes he directed as well as his return as Riker later this season!
Minecraft has been a cultural phenomenon for over a decade now, and the augmented reality version Minecraft Earth is getting a line of adorable NFC figures from Mattel.
Revealed at Toy Fair, the figures, called Minecraft Earth Boost Minis, can be scanned in Minecraft Earth to unlock “Boosts,” hence the name. Boosts unlock “a unique enhancement for a limited time” for Minecraft Earth Players, such as “increased tappable radius, decrease crafting time, XP increase, and increased health/attack damage/defense,” among others.
There are three different boost levels: level 1 lasts 15 minutes, level 2 last 20, and level 3 last 25 minutes. Also, just activating a Boost from a Minecraft Boost Mini unlocks in-game XP.
Minecraft’s GM of Licensing & Partnerships Kayleen Walter calls them “simple and intuitive,” and “just one example of how Minecraft Earth and Mattel are providing innovative Minecraft experiences.”
The Minecraft Boost Minis will be available for purchase directly from Mattel, with a second-quarter 2020 release window.
Toy Fair is in full-effect this week, with tons of awesome announcements like a new 6″ GI Joe line from Hasbro, as well as tons of Baby Yoda merch.
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Seth Macy is IGN’s tech and commerce editor and just wants to be your friend. Find him on Twitter @sethmacy.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is arguably the best value in gaming. For $15 per month, you get Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass, which grants access to hundreds of great Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC games. Right now, you can save a good chunk of change on 3-month subscriptions at numerous major retailers, but Newegg has the best deal, discounting the subscription from $45 to $23 with promo code EMCDFFG23.
If you prefer to shop at Amazon or other retailers, Game Pass Ultimate 3-month subscriptions are on sale for $25.
Don’t forget that as a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber you also get Xbox Live Gold, which allows you to play online multiplayer and grab four free games each month. February’s Games with Gold freebies are available now and include original Xbox hit Star Wars Battlefront.
2020’s Microsoft Flight Simulator will include “all airports on Earth,” ranging from countryside airstrips to international airports, according to developer Asobo Studio.
A total number of airports was not disclosed, though according to the CIA, as of 2013, there were over 40,000 airports in the world. As detailed on YouTube, the studio manually edited 37,000 of those airports to ensure accuracy — from the size and surface material of the runway to the precise location of the planes’ parking spots.
Not all airports have been given the same amount of attention; the 80 “most-played and busiest” airports are more detailed, according to Asobo. These airports feature official names for taxiways and more “accurate surface definition.”
An even higher tier, dubbed the “most iconic airports” in the development video, have been “dressed up to reach a new level of realism in flight simulation.” These airports feature “unique building and props matching reality” and terraformed landscapes that “nest [the airports] in their real environment.”
IGN’s Alex Simmons went hands-on with Microsoft Flight Simulator at XO19 and called it a “serene, calming experience [that] feels more like an exercise in mindfulness than a game.”
Nvidia has already reached a milestone with its GeForce Now streaming service, with the company celebrating over 1 million subscribers just a few weeks after its launch.
The subscriber total includes all new users from both the free plan and the Founder’s membership, which itself includes a 90-day trial. Nvidia notes that it’s important for its premium tier to offer a trial–not only for players, but for developers who might want to see the service in action before deciding on support for it.
Nvidia has had some trouble with that already, with Activision Blizzard yanking support for all of its games shortly after launch (which was due to an apparent misunderstanding). Nvidia notes that it foresees far more games joining the service than leaving, and teases more news on returning titles soon.
“As we approach a paid service, some publishers may choose to remove games before the trial period ends,” reads the blog post. “Ultimately, they maintain control over their content and decide whether the game you purchase includes streaming on GeForce Now. Meanwhile, others will bring games back as they continue to realize GeForce Now’s value (stay tuned for more on that).”
Right now, Nvidia has over 1,500 games ready and waiting to be approved for support, which will rapidly grow an already impressive library. Unlike Google’s Stadia, GeForce Now doesn’t require you to purchase games. Instead it works with any games you already own that are supported by the service, across Steam, the Epic Games Store, GOG, and more.
If you live in a supported region, you can subscribe to GeForce Now and enjoy your PC games from anywhere, across PC, Android, and Nvidia’s Shield TV.
Netflix has just announced a bunch of new cast members for Season 2 of The Witcher, as production continues in the UK.
One of the most notable new additions to the cast is Fast and Furious 9’s Thue Ersted Rasmussen, who will be playing Eskel, a witcher from the School of the Wolf who established an early friendship with Geralt of Rivia, having been raised alongside him.
Other new additions to the cast include Agnes Bjorn portraying Vereena, a lover of Nivellen, who is now confirmed to be played by Kristofer Hivju, along with Aisha Fabienne Ross as Lydia, Vilgefortz’ sorceress secretary, and Mecia Simson as Francesca, the queen of the elves of Dol Blathanna.
Fans are likely to notice that Vesemir is absent from the list, which indicates that Geralt’s wise and wizened instructor either does not make an appearance in the second season, the role has not been finalized or the announcement is being held back for a reveal at a later date.
“The reaction to season one of The Witcher set a high bar for adding new talent for the second season,” said showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. “Sophie Holland and her casting team have once again found the very best people to embody these characters, and in the hands of these accomplished directors, we’re excited to see these new stories come to life.”
Returning to the cast for Season 2 are Henry Cavill, who leads The Witcher saga, playing the role of Geralt of Rivia, alongside Anya Chalotra (Yennefer), Freya Allan (Ciri), Joey Batey (Jaskier), MyAnna Buring (Tissaia), Tom Canton (Filavandrel), Lilly Cooper (Murta), Jeremy Crawford (Yarpin Zigrin), Eamon Farren (Cahir), Mahesh Jadu (Vilgefortz), Terence Maynard (Artorius), Lars Mikkelson (Stregobor), Mimi Ndiweni (Fringilla Vigo), Royce Pierreson (Istredd), Wilson Radjou-Pujalte (Dara), Anna Shaffer (Triss Merigold), and Therica Wilson Read (Sabrina).
Umbrella Academy’s Stephen Surjik will direct the first two episodes of the second season, followed by Sarah O’Gorman for episodes 3 and 4, Ed Bazalgette for episodes 5 and 8, and Geeta V. Patel for episodes 6 and 7.
