Netflix has announced that Luke Cage will not be returning for a third season. The news comes just a few days after the announcement that Iron Fisthas been canceled, leaving just Jessica Jones and Daredevil as the last Defenders standing on the streaming service.
“Unfortunately, Marvel’s Luke Cage will not return for a third season,” reads a joint statement from Netflix and Marvel. “Everyone at Marvel Television and Netflix is grateful to the dedicated showrunner, writers, cast and crew who brought Harlem’s Hero to life for the past two seasons, and to all the fans who have supported the series.”
Showing solidarity, Iron Fist star Finn Jones posted an image on Instagram in response to the news. It shows his character, Danny Rand, combining the power of the Iron Fist with Luke Cage’s own overwhelmingly destructive abilities.
While the Iron Fist series had a shaky start, general consensus is that its second season showed some improvement. Luke Cage, however, started much stronger. Like many of the Netflix and Marvel shows, it suffered from bloat, with more episodes than there perhaps needed to be. Despite this, Luke Cage had a distinct identity and a grit that many appreciated. Its first season was bolstered by strong performances from Mike Colter (Luke Cage), Simone Missick (Misty Knight), Rosario Dawson (Claire Temple), and Mahershala Ali (Cottonmouth).
The series also had a visual and musical flair that many of the other Marvel shows on Netflix don’t. It very much leaned into an aesthetic that could carry the feeling of living in Harlem and the culture that shaped it and represents it. In one memorable scene Mahershala Ali’s Cottonmouth watches on as rapper Jidenna delivers a performance of Long Live The Chief to an empty club. In another, an iconic image of rapper Biggie Smalls is used to perfectly encapsulate Cottonmouth as a character.
The two cancellations come at a time when Disney is working on its own streaming service. Thus far Disney has confirmed Season 7 for Star Wars: The Clone Wars and a new live-action Star Wars series are in production for the service. In terms of Marvel offerings, Disney has said it will have TV shows based on “beloved superheroes” that may not have had their own spotlight on the big screen. Reports have suggested that Tom Hiddleston is lined up to reprise his role as Loki and Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch for these.
Daredevil Season 3, meanwhile, is available now and returns to the struggle between Matt Murdock and Filson Fisk that made the first season so compelling. However, the third season also introduces another Marvel villain into the mix. Read our Daredevil Season 3 review to find out whether if it’s successful or not.
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By now it’s almost become rote to say that Finnish developer Remedy is a specialist in narrative-focused games. After all, the studio is best known for Alan Wake, Max Payne, and Quantum Break, games where narrative was squarely at the forefront (even down to the episodic nature of its most recent title). So it was somewhat of a surprise during this year’s E3 when Remedy revealed Control as its next big game. While seemingly still embracing some of the time and environmental manipulation mechanics of its previous titles, Control is apparently moving away from the strong linear narratives Remedy is best known for to instead be a more open-ended, free-flowing story experience.
That’s not to say, however, that Control won’t have a cohesive story. Rather, as Remedy creative director Sam Lake told us during a recent interview, the story won’t be told in a strictly linear way, with players interacting with the plot depending on how (and where) they move through the game’s strange environments. Control is also eschewing a simple, easily digestible narrative, according to Lake. Rather, this sci-fi story is aiming to emulate the uncertainty and doubt of films like Annihilation and shows like Legion. In the below interview, Lake talks to GameSpot about what experience Remedy wants players to come away with while playing Control, what the main influences for the game were, and Alan Wake’s move to the small screen in the form of a brand-new TV show.
In previous interviews you’ve used the genre term “new weird” to describe what you’re doing with Control. Can you tell us more about that?
If we look at many science fiction and fantasy things, they give you a relatively safe world where there is an answer and there is a chosen one and it’s simplified. But new weird, even though it uses the same elements, approaches them more from real-world perspective where maybe there is no answer. Maybe there is a mystery. Maybe we are dealing with unexplainable forces that go beyond current human understanding. Maybe there is a theory for what this is. Maybe there is a competing theory. Maybe they both make sense. There can be answers, I think. But you still need to make up your own mind and do your own interpretation and piece these things together.
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Control Director Explains Remedy’s Vision For Its Next Big Game | E3 2018
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One inspiration for us going into this was Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, and the book especially. The movie came out and it’s definitely cool as well. Other sources of inspiration for me for maybe this fragmented, hallucinatory, trippy storytelling world are Legion as a show, and Mr. Robot in some ways. Mr. Robot especially does interesting things with the voice of narration. And always for me, Twin Peaks.
How big a risk do you think it is for you guys to try to break away from the stuff you’ve done before and experiment in this more free form, different approaches type of narrative?
It’s a challenge, certainly; but we always want to try out new things with every project. We also had the perspective that we’ve now done a couple of games that were very linear, structured episodically, and it feels like the right time to break away from that, to try creating a deeper world where the player can keep coming back to and find new things and keep on playing. So that was a starting point for me and Mikael Kasurinen, who is our game director. A challenge? Yes, but you need to have that. You need to keep it interesting.
Is Control the size or style of game that you see Remedy focusing on in future projects?
We definitely strive to learn from every project. And I feel that we are always taking a step back and looking critically at the idea of, what is a Remedy game? And what are the ingredients we feel are working really well for us? And what are maybe some things that we would put into a lesser role and come up with something new at the same time? There are definitely new elements here that we feel excited and positive about, and I can see them being elements in our future games as well. But it’s always also game-specific and project-specific. This is Control and this is the style for that. For something else, we’ll see.
That’s an interesting question that you just brought up. What is a Remedy game? We’ve talked a lot about the new things you’re trying in Control, but do you see any through lines from all your previous projects into this one?
They have all been, in some ways, the model of a hero’s journey. Which I like a lot and I think it works, especially well in this loose framework for an action game. It’s a very strange, weird dream-like hero’s journey, but it’s one nonetheless. [There’s also the] idea of a family in some ways, and a family that has been broken. We have those ideas and themes in Control as well.
Are there any nods to your previous games in this? Is there a chance of having a fully-connected Remedy games universe at all?
Well, if you are familiar with our games, there always are nods [to other games], such as Easter eggs or other things. To me, that’s always been a natural way somehow to approach this, and it doesn’t go any further than that. I think that’s part of the mystery to be discovered in this game.
Recently there was news about an Alan Wake television show moving forward. What’s your involvement with that?
Alan Wake is important to us, and important to me, so we want to be involved because it didn’t make any sense to just sell the rights and see it go. It just felt like there are interesting ideas that we could pursue of how to have a dialogue between the game and the show. And it also feels like, through the years, there is so much Alan Wake lore that’s up here that is really good potential material for the show. So yeah, definitely we’ll be involved. I guess the official role is executive producer, which is a very kind of crude, loose term but yeah, Peter Calloway, who is the showrunner, we have a dialogue going on. And we are sitting down together and brainstorming on this.
Are you interested in telling the story of the game again or do you want to start from a different path?
Yes and no. It doesn’t make sense to me to tack them to a show just because they were part of the game. I think that we want the show and we want certain core ideas but first and foremost, it needs to be a great show. But also at the same time, I think it will give us opportunities where we had certain ideas in the game that we didn’t have an opportunity to really explore or go deep into. And I’m looking forward to the idea that in the show, we can actually expand and go a lot deeper into certain things that were important, or I felt were important, but we couldn’t really do a lot with them.
Will this get us to an Alan Wake sequel?
Yeah, I hope so. I would love to do more Alan Wake, but yeah, nothing to tell you about that.
Crunchyroll has announced that Funimation has decided to break off the two anime streaming services’ partnership. Both Crunchyroll and Funimation have been partnered for the past two years, but the two will officially split on November 9.
While partnered, the websites have been working together to simulcast certain anime in both Japanese and English, so that viewers can choose to watch popular series–like My Hero Academia and Attack on Titan–in either language on the same day. Prior to the partnership, most anime released in Japanese with English subtitles first, and anyone who wanted to watch the series in English would have to wait weeks for it to be dubbed.
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Crunchyroll has confirmed that all currently-airing “simulcasts and series that premiered during the partnership will continue to be available on Crunchyroll” and “all home video releases will be released as scheduled and all pre-orders will be fulfilled.” However, after November 9, Funimation will no longer be offered as a part of the VRV bundle–a service which allows you to subscribe to dozens of animation streaming services such as Crunchyroll, Rooster Teeth, and Machinima.com for a discounted price. Also, certain series will be dropped from Crunchyoll and Funimation.
Although an official partnership with Crunchyroll hasn’t been announced, Hidive is joining the VRV family. Smaller than both Crunchyroll and Funimation, Hidive has made a name for itself by streaming some of the best anime exclusives from the past two years–and the website shares series in both Japanese and English. 2017’s Princess Principal and Land of the Lustrous are especially memorable, and the currently airing Bloom Into You is one of the most gorgeous anime series we’ve ever seen. The streaming service is owned by Sentai Filmworks so it also shares anime licensed by the company, like the critically acclaimed zombie ecchi Highschool of the Dead and award-winning Made in Abyss.
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Although we reached out, Crunchyroll declined to comment on whether Hidive’s induction into VRV would mean the two websites would start sharing their exclusives. Crunchyroll also declined to comment on whether Hidive would start dubbing some of Crunchyroll’s shows. However, the streaming service did tease that more announcements will be shared prior to the end of 2018.
If you’re looking for anime to watch on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Hidive, check out our Fall 2018 anime watch guide. It includes every anime debuting on the three websites, as well as Netflix and Amazon, and lists the seven series that you should add to your queue.
Microsoft has announced four Xbox One backwards compatible games have been X-enhanced. This means that these Xbox 360 titles run at a higher resolution and nine times the original pixel count on an Xbox One X.
All four games–Portal: Still Alive, Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2–are developed by Valve. When all is said and done, it’s technically five games, as Half Life 2: The Orange Box is a combined collection of Half-Life 2, Portal: Still Alive, and Team Fortress 2. You can buy the games digitally from the Xbox Store or use the original Xbox 360 discs. The addition of these four games brings the number of Xbox One backwards compatible X-enhanced titles to 21, a list that also includes games like Red Dead Redemption and Skate 3.
First releasing in 2007–as part of Valve’s The Orange Box bundle–Portal: Still Alive is a 3D puzzle platformer that focuses on a battle of wits between the silent protagonist Chell and the psychopathic A.I. antagonist GLaDOS. Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 have had long-standing effects on the video game industry, such as the former playing a huge part in the success of Steam’s launch and the latter inspiring titles like Overwatch. The Left 4 Dead series temporarily revitalized interest in zombie video games with campaigns centered around teamwork-based first-person shooter combat and a multiplayer horde mode.
Starting today, four more Xbox One Backward Compatibility titles will be enhanced for Xbox One X. Enjoy playing Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, Portal: Still Alive, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2 with enhanced visuals and higher resolutions on Xbox One X https://t.co/7q7myPS0gCpic.twitter.com/bdUjeDvnhG
All of these games have received near perfect scores on GameSpot for their impressive gameplay and well written stories. In our Portal: Still Alive review, we gave the game a 9/10. In our Half-Life 2 review, we gave the game a 9.2/10. In our Team Fortress 2 review, we gave the game an 8/10. In our reviews for Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, we gave the former an 8.5/10 and the latter a 9/10.
In Update 2.0.4, the most recent patch for Destiny 2, data miners discovered evidence that Thunderlord, an Exotic machine gun from the original Destiny, could be returning. Not only that, but players might be adventuring to the Cosmodrome, the opening area of the first game, to earn the weapon.
According to Polygon, the data miners have discovered Feeding Frenzy, one of Thunderlord’s original perks, in Destiny 2’s database. The perk isn’t currently attached to any weapon in the game, which matches up with an earlier pattern established by Destiny 2’s Whisper of the Worm, an Exotic sniper rifle. Whisper of the Worm is a renamed variation of Destiny’s Black Spindle, a gun with an original perk called White Nail. The White Nail perk appeared in the data of Destiny 2’s Warmind expansion prior to Whisper of the Worm being added to the game.
The data miners also found audio files that suggest a future Destiny 2 update might send players back to the Cosmodrome, further hinting Thunderlord is on its way to Destiny 2. Thunderlord is the first Destiny Exotic weapon ever revealed to the world, shown off during Destiny’s E3 2013 gameplay reveal demo. When Destiny launched, the mission was tweaked so that players wouldn’t earn such a powerful weapon right at the game’s start. However, these data mine leaks could be hinting that Destiny 2 will allow us to replay that mission as it happened back in 2013, and we’ll earn Thunderlord just like the Guardians did in that first demo.
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Destiny – Gameplay Demo From Sony Press Conference E3 2013
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Bungie has not revealed whether or not any of this is true, although some players believe that if the Cosmodrome mission and Thunderlord weapon are coming to Destiny 2, it will be a part of the Festival of the Lost, a limited-time Halloween-themed event currently going on right now. As part of the event, on October 30, you’ll have access to a new quest line where you can track down Master Ives’ killers. Bungie has remained rather coy on what these quests are, simply stating in a blog post that there will be “powerful” rewards.
Destiny 2 is available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Festival of the Lost continues until November 6 at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST / 6 PM BST.