In a recent interview with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Hideo Kojima, the head of Kojima Productions and game industry auteur, talked about working with celebrities in his video games and the future of his projects as a part of his induction into the organization’s fellowship program.
In Kojima’s last game, Death Stranding, the cast was predominantly made up of big name celebrities and cast members who weren’t usually affiliated with video games. Hollywood actor Norman Reedus, best known for The Walking Dead, starred as the main character, with Hannibal’s Mads Mikkelsen playing the antagonist role. Famous horror and comic book movie director, Guillermo del Toro, also played a major role in the game.
The game also included cameos from media personality Geoff Keighley, American talk show host Conan O’ Brien, and director Edgar Wright, just to name a few.
However, it seems that Kojima may be looking to pivot away from using such stars in his next project.
“Going forward, I don’t know if other games will work with celebrities. It’s quite a big burden on the creator,” said Kojima.
“However, this time, as we featured actors connected to the film industry, it’s become clearer that the distinction between games and films is starting to dissolve. I’ve heard stories from a variety of people–from active film workers, producers, directors, screenwriters, actors, artists, composers–who all say that their respect for games is very high. In particular, those in the film industry in their 40s or younger grew up in the age of video games. They remarked, “[We] were raised with games. From them, we learned storytelling, art, and music. I’m doing work in film now, but my respect for games is special,” said Kojima.
Kojima also touched on the success that was the P.T. demo, a limited-time demo for a Silent Hill game that was never completed. Konami, the company that Kojima was working for at the time, cancelled the Silent Hill game after conflict with Kojima.
A new patch for NHL 20 is coming on April 3, and it promises a number of gameplay changes based on player feedback. Starting with the general changes, the new update fixes an issue that could cause an injured player from being able to get off the ice. Ouch!
The new update also makes AI defenders smarter in some cases. It delivers a fix for AI that over-commits to the puck carrier in 2-on-1 situations, which should make scoring goals agains the AI more challenging. Additionally, the weak side defender in a 2-on-2 will now prioritize covering their own assignments over the passing lane. The update also “fixe[s] a case where players other than Brad Marchand would lose the puck at the start of a penalty shot,” which seems to be a reference to how the real-world athlete really botched a penalty shot back in January.
Elsewhere, the NHL 20 update makes goalies even smarter so they are better able to track the puck behind the net and close to the goal line; goalies are now smarter around passes close to the net.
Players may also notice better-looking shots, as the update includes “further shot angle improvements for accurate release trajectories.” You can see the full patch notes below, as posted by EA in the EA Forums.
EA’s NHL franchise typically debuts in September with the start of the new season in real life, so that’s when you can probably expect NHL 21 to debut. 2020 is an interesting year, given that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are both set to debut this holiday, despite COVID-19 concerns. But whether or not the next NHL game comes to next-gen platforms is unknown at this stage.
NHL 20 April 3 Patch Notes
Goalies
– Further improvements to goalie tracking when the puck is behind the net and around the goal line
– Improved goalie reaction to passes on net
– Fixed an issue where a human goalie could get into a broken state when hugging the post and requesting a goalie pull
Skating
– Fixed an issue where despite having the correct top speed, players above 96 speed weren’t staying in the push puck hustle animation
Shooting
– Further shot angle improvements for accurate release trajectories
The encourage people to choose Battlefield V as their quarantine game of choice, DICE is giving everyone who logs into the military shooter a free bonus over the next few days.
Everyone who logs into Battlefield V on April 2, 3, or 4 will receive a stimulus package of sorts of 1500 Company Coin that will go directly into their game balance. People who log in over the weekend will get the Sapper Chassis and turret set for the Valentine MK VIII tank.
Battlefield V is regularly updated with new content and tweaks, so if you’ve been curious about the game or looking for a reason to come back, now seems like a good time to jump in.
Starting today, we’re activating some login rewards for #Battlefield Login once, today or tomorrow to have 1500 Company Coin added directly to your in game balance Come back on Saturday or Sunday to collect the Sapper Chasis + Turret set for the Valentine MK VIII 🇬🇧👃🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/yhBQfO2xd2
Company Coin is the main in-game currency for Battlefield V that players can spend on various cosmetics, so this is a nice perk that everyone can enjoy.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare season 2 will soon be coming to an end, with April 7 being the last day of the two-month season of game play.
Season 2 brought a myriad of new content updates, with the return of the fan-favorite Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 map Rust and the addition of the battle royale mode, Warzone.
If you don’t currently have Modern Warfare, then be sure to download it ahead of time, so you can play as much as possible this weekend. If you want to keep playing past the free weekend, you’ll need to buy the game, but all the unlocks you earned will carry over to the full edition.
This double XP event comes at a good time. With everyone at home and the season coming to an end, everyone will be rushing to reach tier 100 and unlock all the extras. Alternatively, if you are unable to utilize this double XP weekend, you can spend real world money to unlock these items.
In other Call of Duty news, the rumored Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remastered has been released on PS4. The game dropped on the PlayStation Store quietly, with no announcements from Activision before the release. The remaster is a timed-exclusive release on the PS4, with the game set to release on Xbox One and PC on April 30.
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After a round of at-home show-and-tell, the panel talks about their continuing experiences with Animal Crossing: New Horizons, including their first impressions of Bunny Day. Finally, hear your listener questions answered on Question Block. Plus, dogs!
Timecodes!
00:00:00 Welcome!
00:00:53 Let’s talk about those crazy Mario rumors
00:15:53 A couple of new release dates!
00:25:46 Show and tell!
00:33:52 How is your Animal Crossing island?
00:47:30 What we’ve been playing
00:54:38 Question Block!
01:05:23 Wrap up!
What we’re playing:
Zach: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Brian: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Seth: Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Bravely Default II Demo
Peer: Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Good Job, In Other Waters
You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We’re all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.
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Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.
The new version of Atlus’ celebrated RPG, Persona 5 Royal, is out now on PlayStation 4. It’s not quite the same game you remember, however, as Royal includes a number of significant differences compared to the original release. This includes updated story and combat mechanics, and lots more.
In a new video, Jess covers over a dozen of the biggest new changes in Persona 5 Royal. Most obvious are the new characters and the additional semester that comes at the conclusion of the original game. The new characters are Kasumi and Marui, and there is a new location, too: Kichijoji. This region includes a lot of new stores, including shops where you can sell sooty clothing for money and points, and a dart and billiards parlor called Penguin Sniper.
Check out the full video above to learn lots more about what’s new in Persona 5 Royal. Bear in mind, however, that this is just the beginning for the differences you can find in the game. Whatever the case, we can say that the time investment (Persona 5 Royal can be a 150-hour game) is absolutely worth it to see and experience all that’s new.
For more on Persona 5 Royal, make sure to check out our Persona 5 Royal review out this week and the rest of our Persona 5 Royal features.
A fake Flipnote for Switch app designed for April Fools’ that started making the rounds online ended up causing more anger than amusement. So much so that the ensuing harassment forced its creators to go into social media lockdown.
James (who asked IGN to withhold his last name for the story) is part of a community that reverse-engineers legacy online services like Flipnote Studio, an app for the DSi released in 2008 that let players create and send custom animations.
“From a technical perspective, we found them to have rather convoluted technical innards (particularly Flipnote Studio 3D,” James told IGN in an email. “So we had a long-running joke where we speculated about what Nintendo could possibly throw at us next.”
The community made the idea of a new Flipnote app for the Switch an in-joke, but the impetus to create fake screenshots for April Fools’ didn’t materialize until five days before April 1.
“Towards the end of March, somebody who apparently wasn’t aware of the joke started to get on our case about [Flipnote Switch] rather aggressively, thinking we were intentionally tricking the community.”
As a response, James created a quick mock-up in Sketch, a design program, and presented it to the community. While the community member in question wasn’t very pleased with the glib response, another developer on the channel was briefly fooled. That spurred the developers to try and flesh out the concept and present fake screenshots of a “leaked” Flipnote Switch app for the community’s annual April Fool’s joke.
Mock-ups for the fake Flipnote app for Switch created for April Fools. Art Credit: Calcium; UI: James; Translation: Liss
James organized the effort and designed fake UI. Other contributors included Calcium who created the artwork, Liss who contributed a fake Japanese translation, and Austin and Rob from Sudomemo, a website dedicated to sharing Flipnote creations long after the service was shuttered officially.
Together, the team created several “leaked” screenshots of a new Flipnote App coming to the Switch, complete with a fake title screen. You can check out some of the assets in the gallery below.
James told IGN he has no idea how the screenshots leaked from their Discord server, but the images were soon being picked up by Nintendo fansites as legitimate leaks.
“It was wild that any outlets picked it up at all to be honest, especially when the first few [sites] cited the source as being ‘some random people on a Discord server.’ Like, that wouldn’t normally strike you as being remotely trustworthy, right?” James said.
“But in the following days the telephone-game effect kicked in and soon enough the source was somehow ‘an insider at Nintendo of Japan.’ Things got a little scary then.”
The team released the “leaks” online three days before April 1 with a plan to reveal themselves on April Fools’. By then the screenshots had already made their way to sites like r/NintendoSwitch on Reddit and 4chan.
Then on April Fools’ James revealed the joke.
“Initially it seemed to go as expected,” James said. “Of course we knew people would be disappointed and that there would be a few harsh responses but it felt relatively light-hearted for the most part.”
While the early comments were more finger-wagging than malicious, that soon changed. “Gradually the responses became more intense[.] People started bringing out the slurs and calling for us to be doxxed and/or murdered. While we’re usually fairly laid back, it was clear that people were taking this worse than we imagined.”
“Honestly, go f*** yourself. Why not spend your time creating something useful instead of misleading a bunch of people into thinking something good is around the corner?” read one comment in response to the joke reveal.
Mock-ups for the fake Flipnote app for Switch created for April Fools. Art Credit: Calcium, UI: James, Translation: Liss
“In hindsight, it was a bad time to pull a stunt like this with everything that’s been going in the world recently,” James told IGN. “Everyone’s already a lot more stressed out than usual and it was extremely uncool of us to give them the false hope of something exciting on the horizon.”
James also regretted the decision to stagger the timing of the joke by releasing the screenshots early and revealing the joke three days later.
What began as an in-joke quickly spiraled out of control, thanks to a combination of the internet’s ability to obfuscate information and the video game community’s fixation on leaks and rumors.
“Ultimately there was no malicious intent or anything like that, just an in-joke that was handled very poorly,” James concluded. “It should go without saying that we’re definitely not doing anything like this again.”
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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.
Check out the gallery below to see new screenshots from TLoU2, as spotted by Nibel on Twitter. (The images are currently unavailable on the Last of Us official website.)
The screenshots offer new looks at Joel and Ellie, as well as the return of Tommy and brand new characters. Some of the scenes in the screenshots were not what we saw when we went hands-on with The Last of Us Part 2 last year, but unfortunately no additional story details accompanied the new images.
The Last of Us Part 2 first received a release date of February 22, 2020 late last year, but soon after Naughty Dog announced a delayed Last of Us Part 2 release date to May 29, and most recently confirmed the sequel is delayed “until such a time where we can solve these logistic issues.” Naughty Dog’s latest announcement noted last of Us Part 2 is “nearly done,” but that concerns over all players getting to play at launch, when the spread of COVID-19 has caused many stores to temporarily close and states and nations to adopt lockdown protocols, has led to the decision to delay.
This one-time event will play exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S. for 10-days. According to the official press release, the films “will be available in front of the Prime Video paywall and free to all audiences around the country, with or without an Amazon Prime membership, all that is needed is a free Amazon account.” Participating filmmakers will receive a screening fee for streaming their film over the 10-day period.
“Ever since SXSW was cancelled by the City of Austin, we’ve been focused on how we could help the incredible films and filmmakers in the SXSW 2020 Film Festival lineup,” said Janet Pierson, Director of Film, SXSW, in a statement.
“We were delighted when Amazon Prime Video offered to host an online film festival, and jumped at the opportunity to connect their audiences to our filmmakers. We’re inspired by the adaptability and resilience of the film community as it searches for creative solutions in this unprecedented crisis.”
