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Players have had some time to play through The Last of Us Part II, and there’s been some division over whether it’s a new milestone for the PS4, a narrative masterclass, or a disappointment relative to player expectations. There’s been arguments about the game’s intent, its violence, and its characters. But there’s one thing we can all agree on–the dog they used for motion capture is a very good dog.

Jeremy Yates, the lead animator on The Last of Us Part II, has shared a short, slow-motion video of a dog–it looks like a border collie–doing a running jump in a motion-capture suit. Ironically, it looks to be the exact opposite of a Naughty Dog.

It’s been a long and difficult year, but the eight seconds you spend watching this video will be good.

It’s enough to make you feel bad for killing so many of the dogs in-game.

For more fun The Last of Us Part II content, check out Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus covering his own music in-game, and actor Troy Baker’s take on who could play Joel in a movie.

GameSpot’s Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming–is ongoing. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

One of the most exciting parts of every new Madden season is the reveal of player ratings, and this year promises to be no different. EA Sports is planning to release Madden NFL 21 in August–whether or not the actual NFL season goes forward–and player ratings are always a hot topic.

EA Sports has begun hyping the Madden 21 ratings reveal with a new teaser video featuring Hall of Fame QB Steve Young and former NFL star Chad Johnson. They appear in the video announcing the player ratings to this year’s rookies, including Tee Higgins, Tua Tagovailoa, Henry Ruggs III, Jordan Love, Justin Herbert, Jerry Jeudy, Jalen Hurts, and Ceedee Lamb.

However, this teaser video doesn’t reveal the actual ratings, only how the players reacted to them. You can make some assumptions about their ratings based on their reactions, but the full Madden NFL 21 ratings reveal for rookies is coming later. EA Sports will begin to announce the ratings on July 9 at 10 AM ET. Check back with GameSpot for the latest.

EA Sports is historically known to drag out the Madden ratings reveal over the course of weeks, so the rookie ratings will be just the start.

Madden NFL 21 is mixing things up a little this year as it relates to player ratings. In the years past, ratings were adjusted regularly based on how an athlete performed on the field in a given week. For Madden NFL 21, however, the ratings will be adjusted in real time, EA Sports has said, though it remains to be seen precisely how this will work.

Madden NFL 21 released on August 28 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, before coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X later in the year. Everyone who buys Madden NFL 21 for current-gen systems can get a free upgrade to the next-gen edition until Madden NFL 22 is released in 2021.

Call of Duty: Warzone‘s 200-player mode has been removed, and that’s no surprise. The 200-player variant was always labeled as a limited-time mode, and now it has been removed with the game’s newest playlist update.

While BR 200 is gone, Infinity Ward has brought back BR Quads and added BR Stimulus Trios to the Warzone playlist menus.

BR 200 was added to Warzone in the June 30 Season 4 Reloaded Update, so it stayed in the game for around 10 days. It’s possible it will return someday, but that hasn’t been confirmed.

BR 200 was Warzone’s biggest mode to date, supporting up to 200 players in a single match compared to a maximum of 150 in the standard Warzone mode.

Season 4 Reloaded also introduced a new Juggernaut Royale mode, which Infinity Ward has also subsequently removed from rotation.

In addition to this playlist update, Infinity Ward is introducing new microtransaction bundles to the Modern Warfare/Warzone store this week, and one of them makes your gun look like a shark.

Looking ahead, Warzone’s rumored Season 5 update is set to introduce some major changes to the map. The map refresh is said to be part of how Activision will unveil the new Call of Duty game for 2020, which is believed to be Black Ops: Cold War.

Masayuki Uemura, the engineer who designed the Famicom, is an important figure in Nintendo’s history–albeit one who is not talked about as much as Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata, Gunpei Yokoi, or Hiroshi Yamauchi. Author Matt Alt, whose new book Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered The World covers the rise of Nintendo, has published an interview with Uemura on Kotaku, shedding some light on Nintendo in the late 70s and early 80s.

The interview is full of fascinating insights into the creation of the Famicom (released worldwide as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES), as well as some very fun anecdotes. One such anecdote involves Yamauchi, who was president of Nintendo from 1949 until 2002, and his interest in new technology. “In 1978, he bought around 10 tabletop versions of Space Invaders and placed them in headquarters and our factory,” Uemura recalls. “The idea was that we’d playtest them as a form of research. But what ended up happening was the entire company got so obsessed playing it that we couldn’t get a turn in. It was like a fever. Everyone abandoned their posts and stopped working.”

Uemura remembers this fondly, but also says “I was just bummed out that we hadn’t made it ourselves.”

He says that, in their headquarters in Kyoto, Nintendo was somewhat cut-off from other game companies, and weren’t always aware of what was happening in Tokyo. “It’s pretty shocking when I think back on it, but Kyoto has always been kind of closed off that way,” he says, while also saying that rumors of competition between different research and development teams within Nintendo back then are not accurate.

Uemura says that efforts to build the Famicon began in 1981, when Yamauchi called him and told him to develop a video game system with cartridges. “He always liked to call me after he’d had a few drinks, so I didn’t think much of it,” Uemura muses. “I just said, ‘Sure thing, boss,’ and hung up. It wasn’t until the next morning when he came up to me, sober, and said, ‘That thing we talked about–you’re on it?’ that it hit me: He was serious.”

While the whole interview is full of fantastic insight, the funniest revelation comes from Uemura talking about the system’s design, and why it looks like a toy. He says that the system’s form factor was decided upon because it was “the cheapest way to do it,” before dropping this wonderful reveal: “The colors were based on a scarf Yamauchi liked. True story.”

The decision to go with a red, white, black, and gold scheme was further cemented by the look of a set-top TV antenna released by DX Antenna. “I recall riding with Yamauchi on the Hanshin expressway outside of Osaka and seeing a billboard for it, and Yamauchi saying, ‘That’s it! Those are our colors!’,” Uemura says. “Just like the scarf.”

Later on in the interview, Uemura casually reveals Mario’s nationality, too: “Super Mario Bros. isn’t set in Japan, but the character’s Japanese. The name Mario sounds Italian, but he isn’t Italian. They were really able to capture that ambiguity.”

The Famicon and NES would go on to sell over 61 million units worldwide. Many games from the system can now be played on the Nintendo Switch, if you have a Nintendo Switch Online membership.

GameSpot’s Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming–is ongoing. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

Developer Riot Games has unveiled a new set of dragon-themed skins for its tactical shooter Valorant. The line, titled Elderflame, will be available in the game’s store on July 10–although it might be too expensive for most players.

Elderflame is Valorant’s first “Ultra Edition” skin pack and transforms a few weapons into fire-breathing dragons. It includes weapon skins for the Operator sniper, Vandal automatic rifle, Frenzy automatic pistol, and what appears to be the Judge shotgun. There is also a fiery dragon-scaled knife for five weapon skins in total. You can check out the Elderflame skin reveal trailer below.

With Elderflame, the weapons come to life as they shoot flames, make cute screeching noises while biting bullets during reloads, and use their black, scaly wings to create aiming reticles.

Previous Valorant skin bundles let you purchase the specific skin you wanted with Valorant Points, and that remains the case here. However, this skin will not come cheap.

Valorant revenue lead Joe Lee has tweeted about the price of his skin, stating that, as a four-part bundle, getting the full Elderflame experience will set you back 9900 VP. How much does that cost in real money? A lot.

As reported by PC Gamer, you can buy 11000 VP for $100, or enough to buy one part of this four-part bundle for $25. Realistically, to get the VP you’re likely looking at spending $100. Further upgrades to these skins can then be purchased with Radianite, earned through the battle pass or premium pass.

So amazing as this skin is, very few players are likely to be able to justify the expense.

The Elderflame line comes not long after Valorant’s latest patch which made reference to a new set of skins coming to the game. Also buried in the patch notes is a wrestling reference that might spell doom for Samoa Joe.

GameSpot’s Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming–is ongoing. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has shared new insight and commentary around what diversity and inclusion means to the studio and for the upcoming much-anticipated RPG.

In an Polish interview translated by CDPR on its website, executive Adam Kicinski started off by mentioning that CDPR’s development team comprises people from across political and social spectrums. “Our team comprises all sorts of people, leaning left or right on legal, economic, and worldview issues–not to mention several dozen nationalities, multiple ethnic groups and many LGBT individuals,” Kicinski said. “We pride ourselves on our diversity, but we also realize that efficient operation requires active measures promoting mutual respect and tolerance.”

Another CDPR executive, Adam Badowski, said it’s important for the company to embrace and support diversity and inclusion, in will lead to better products.

“In an environment where you can simply be yourself it becomes easier to have frank discussions, share ideas, and express opinions–and that provides a starting point for many interesting activities,” he said. “When a revolution in RPGs takes place, it is because a team of bold women and men has had the audacity to express its ideas.”

Badowski went on to say that, for Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR is attempting to give players the freedom to express themselves with the character they create. The story, meanwhile, aims to be “bold, mature, and astute,” Badowski said.

“Our game is quite liberal when it comes to gender modification,” Badowski said. “The whole issue is regarded as relatively minor compared to the need to express one’s personal style–and this provides for much greater fluidity. I truly hope that, much like in the case of The Witcher games, Cyberpunk 2077 will surprise everyone with how many bold, mature, and astute narratives can be conveyed by the video game medium. I will gladly come back to this issue after the November release once I’m at liberty to share more information.”

Finally, Kicinski said the wider entertainment industry generally supports and welcomes diversity, even if this wasn’t always the case in the past. However, Kicinski observed that the video game business specifically is more agile than film, TV, and music.

“We learn a lot from the shortcomings and accomplishments of our colleagues from the motion picture, literature, and music industries, and I suppose we may be faster at implementing certain novel mechanisms,” he said. “Way back in the 20th century the superb writer Andre Norton (born Alice Mary Norton) chose to publish under a male pseudonym because her publisher believed that the masculinized readership demographic would not take interest in fantasy authored by a woman. There is no such issue with video games.”

Kicinski acknowledged that the video game industry still has problems, including the sexualization of female characters. But he contends that these issues are now being spoken about and addressed “in the open” in an effort to change them. “Sexual orientation is in a similar position. What had long been taboo in mainstream motion pictures is now turning what it should have been from the outset: stories of human romance rather than accounts of the struggle for the right to be accepted,” he said.

You can read the full interview here on CDPR’s website.

Cyberpunk 2077 will release for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on November 19. Next-gen upgrades for PS5 and Xbox Series X will be available for free.

GameSpot’s Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming–is ongoing. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

Vigor, the free-to-play shooter that has seen 4.5 million players on Xbox One, is now available on Switch Eshop too–although right now you can’t play it for free. The game has launched alongside a Founder’s Pack, which must be bought to play the game.

The Founder’s Pack will set you back $20, and it contains the following items and benefits:

• Early access to the game before the Free-to-Play release
• Founder Uniform
• Vigor Baseball Cap
• Gesture “Dust-off Hands”
• Crowns (in-game currency, valued at $40)

This is a time-limited pack, although we’re not sure how long it will be available for. The full free-to-play release will come later this year.

Switch players will be able to join the Outlands, the game’s post-war Norway setting, and will be jumping into Season 4: Warlords. This season adds a new 5-on-5 mode called Elimination, as well as new cosmetics, weapons, and tools (including a Mortar Strike and Jammer).

Vigor joins a growing list of free-to-play shooters on Switch, which also includes Fortnite, Warframe, Paladins, and the upcoming port of Apex Legends.

GameSpot’s Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming–is ongoing. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.