Category: Games

Epic Games has been adding a bunch of new content to Fortnite, especially as the game’s popularity has continued to rise. In the Season 3 Battle Pass for the Battle Royale mode, for example, the developer is releasing some new cosmetic items, such as emotes, loading screens, outfits–and Back Blings.

You read that right: Epic is adding a new customization option for your Hero that modifies the appearance of its back. Basically, anything that a character holds on its back is now part of this option, so you’ll be able to change out previously permanent characteristics like the Love Ranger’s wings or the Knights’ shields.

Any character can use Back Bling, and there are three new Blings being added in the Battle Pass. This new option will probably enable some pretty wild combinations with the different Heroes and their skins.

The Season 3 Battle Pass costs 950 V-Bucks, which is about $10. It comes with 76 items in all; along with the 3 Back Blings, you’ll also get a bunch of emoticons, banners, and other cosmetics. You can read more about what the Battle Pass comes with here. Season 2 wraps up soon, so the new Battle Pass should go on sale this week.

In other news, Epic will soon add a brand new gun, the Hand Cannon, to the game. In addition, a new patch for Fortnite launched recently on PS4, Xbox One, and PC that comes with the Impulse Grenade.

Fortnite‘s servers will be offline for period of time tomorrow across Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, as developer Epic Games launches a new patch. The v.3.0.0 patch will be deployed at 4 AM EST on February 22, though Battle Royale’s matchmaking will go down at 3:35 AM.

The patch coincides with the end of Fortnite’s Season 2, which started back in December. When the servers come back online, that will kick off Season 3, and with it comes the new Battle Pass containing new items like Back Bling and more.

Patch notes for v.3.0.0 will be published tomorrow when the downtime begins. Epic’s post on Reddit does not say when the servers will be back online, but we’ll report back with those details as they’re announced.

You may notice the countdown clock in Battle Royale currently shows that Season 2 ends at 11 AM ET on February 22, but this is an error on Epic’s part. As mentioned, it’s actually sooner than that.

The Season 3 Battle Pass costs 950 V-Bucks, which is about $10. It comes with 76 items in all; along with the 3 Back Blings, you’ll also get a bunch of emoticons, banners, and other cosmetics. You can read more about what the Battle Pass comes with here. Season 2 wraps up soon, so the new Battle Pass should go on sale this week.

In other news, Epic will soon add a brand new gun, the Hand Cannon, to the game. In addition, a new patch for Fortnite launched recently on PS4, Xbox One, and PC that comes with the Impulse Grenade.

Since its release, Rocket League has gotten several tie-in DLC packs that add various well-known vehicles, like the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Soon, another pair of iconic cars will be usable in the game: two Batmobiles.

The vehicles headline the DC Super Heroes DLC pack, which also comes with a variety of cosmetic items. You’ll be able to drive the 1989 version of the Batmobile as well as the Tumbler, the tank-like vehicle from The Dark Knight. These will be the second and third Batmobiles added to the game; back in 2016, developer Psyonix also released the Batmobile from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. You can check the new ones out in action in the video below.

Alongside the Batmobiles, you’ll also get access to a bunch of DC cosmetic items themed after various heroes. There’ll be decals and banners for Aquaman, Batman, Cyborg, Wonder Woman, and several other characters. You can check out the full list below.

The DLC will run you $4, and it’ll launch on March 5 for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. In other news, the game is still extremely popular–back in January, it passed 40 million total players. In spite of its success, don’t expect Rocket League 2 soon. Psyonix plans on continuing to support the first game with more DLC.

All Cosmetic Items

• Aquaman–Decal (Breakout), and Player Banner
• Batman–Decal (Paladin), and Player Banner
• Cyborg–Decal (Roadhog), and Player Banner
• Flash–Speed Force Boost, Wheels, Decal (Venom), and Player Banner
• Green Arrow–Decal (Hotshot), and Player Banner
• Green Lantern–Decal (Merc), and Player Banner
• Superman–Decal (Octane), and Player Banner
• Wonder Woman–Wheels, Decal (X-Devil), and Player Banner
• DC–Player Banner

The much-anticipated eighth and final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones airs in 2019, and we’re excited about it. In particular, everyone wants to know how it’ll all wrap up.

Actress Maisie Williams, who plays Arya, apparently knows how it’ll all go down. She appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week where she claimed to have read the script for the final episode. Kimmel jumped in to say that he’s heard that to protect the secret, HBO is shooting multiple endings so that even the cast is unaware of how it ends. However, Williams sounded confident that she knows what will happen in the very last episode. And she added that she doesn’t believe HBO has the budge to shoot so many different endings.

“I do–I know the end of Game of Thrones,” Williams said, recalling that she read the script while in bed. “It’s just surreal, to be honest; being with this show for so long and then also it having the following that it does. It’s just–everyone is waiting for this moment, and then you read it, and it’s just incredible.”

Williams went on to suggest, with facial expressions, that the ending might on paper sound underwhelming, but when you see it, you’ll understand why it’s so moving. She added that her mom knows the ending, too, because she sent the scripts to her. She broke a rule in doing so, apparently, as she noted that she was told: “Don’t give [the scripts] to anyone.”

Indeed, HBO’s security for Game of Thrones is reportedly substantial, making use of things like scripts written in code and even keeping watch for drones on outdoor sets. And regarding the multiple endings, HBO president Casey Bloys sounded pretty confident that multiple endings would be shot, though of course plans can change. “I know in Game of Thrones the ending, they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that nobody really know what happens,” Bloys said back in September.

Also in the interview, Williams said she still has a lot of shooting left to do on the final season. “A lot, endless amounts,” she said about what’s left of her shooting schedule. “It’s a mammoth task this year. It’s huge.”

Kimmel smartly jumped in to ask if this means her character, Arya, will survive. Williams deftly danced around the question, saying, “No, not necessarily, because some of the episodes take a really long time to shoot.”

Indeed, every episode in Season 8 is reportedly as long as a movie, so lengthy shoots are to be expected.

There will be six episodes in the final Game of Thrones season. We don’t know their titles yet, but HBO has announced who will be directing them. The Game of Thrones franchise is expected to continue after the main show wraps up through a prequel spinoff.

In other news, Game of Thrones TV show creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff are working on a new series of Star Wars movies for Disney.

Movies based on Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and The Last of Us franchises are in the works, but, as is often the case in Hollywood, they aren’t progressing very quickly. Naughty Dog’s creative lead Neil Druckmann sat down with 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg at the D.I.C.E. Summit today in Las Vegas for a conversation about storytelling. Naturally, the question came up about how the Uncharted and Last of Us movies are coming along.

Druckmann said Naughty Dog has had “some conversations” with director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things, Night at the Museum), a person who Druckmann says really “gets it” and “understands where we’re at.” Druckmann went on to say that Naughty Dog’s feelings towards a film adaptation of Uncharted has “evolved” over years.

“We used to just be excited–oh my god, movies are looking at us! There could be an Uncharted movie on the screen, and then as more time passes on, we’re not excited by a direct adaptation of the story we told, because we feel we’ve already told that story very well cinematically, so I don’t know what else you could bring to it.”

Spider-Man actor Tom Holland is confirmed to play a young Nathan Drake in the Uncharted movie. Levy’s Uncharted movie will not be a direct adaptation of any of the four main Uncharted games, but instead it is expected to fill in the gaps with the younger Drake. Beyond that, however, we don’t know any more plot details. One of the scripts was written by The Grey‘s Joe Carnahan–and Druckmann had some things to say about it.

Whatever the case, Druckmann said an Uncharted movie will feel strange to him and some fans because with different actors, it might not feel right. “For me–and I know for Naughty Dog and for a lot of our fans–Nolan North is Nathan Drake. Ashley Johnson is Ellie. Troy Baker is Joel. It would be very disorienting to see someone else in that role.”

As an example, Druckmann said if they were to make a Breaking Bad movie and someone other than Bryan Cranston played Walter White, well, it just “doesn’t make sense” and would “feel so wrong on so many levels.”

Trachtenberg then mentioned the well-received TV show adaptation of the beloved movie Fargo as an example of how do it right. The two agreed that this is different because it has new characters instead of existing ones. “It captured the tone, it captured the world, it expanded up; I love that show. I think that’s the way to do it.”

Also during the talk, Druckmann spoke briefly of the Last of Us film. The script that he worked on at one point was a direct adaptation of the game–and it wasn’t great. “Now, having some separation from it, I look back like–I don’t want that movie to be made,” he said.

The much-anticipated Last of Us sequel, The Last of Us: Part II, is currently in development for PlayStation 4. As for the Uncharted franchise, 2016’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was the last mainline title in the series to be developed by Naughty Dog and the final one starring Nathan Drake. That being said, Uncharted 5 could be developed by another studio.

The next big video game movie is March’s Tomb Raider, which stars Oscar winner Alicia Vikander in the role of Lara Croft. You can watch the newest trailer here.