Lord Of The Rings TV Show Stops Production Due To COVID-19

Production on the big-budget Lord of the Rings TV show in New Zealand has been shut down amid concerns around COVID-19 (coronavirus). The New Zealand Herald reports that the shutdown was ordered on Sunday evening. Production will be suspended for at least two weeks.

A memo sent to cast and crew also mentioned that “there are no clear answers to when we will resume production.” This is a big move for one of the largest productions in the world, as the Lord of the Rings show employs a gargantuan staff of around 800 cast and crew.

The memo was sent by the production company GSR Productions, but Amazon has not officially commented at this time.

“In an abundance of caution, UAP [Untitled Amazon Project] has suspended production for the next two weeks commencing Monday, March 16,” the statement said. “This is done in an environment where travel restrictions directed at the control of COVID-19 are issued daily by New Zealand and most other countries.”

“We are doing this to minimise stress on the resources and infrastructures around us by doing our part to reduce population density in our communities and daily activities, in efforts to help reduce the spread of the virus,” the statement goes on to say.

New Zealand has eight confirmed cases of COVID-19, as of March 16. The country recently announced a self-isolation strategy that requires everyone who enters New Zealand to self-quarantine for 14 days, and they must detail their plan upon entering the country.

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Space Jam 2 Is Being Worked On By Director Of Original Mulan

Tony Bancroft, one of the two credited directors behind Disney’s Mulan (1998), has announced that he is working on the much-anticipated Space Jam 2. Bancroft announced on Twitter that he started working on the film in January, and has just been sent to work from home in the wake of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak.

“Just one more Looney chapter in the making of Space Jam 2,” Bancroft said on Twitter. “Have Cintiq will travel.”

Bancroft is a high-profile animator, and he’s far from the only big name attached. The film is being directed by Malcolm D. Lee (Girls Trip), produced by Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), and stars LeBron James in the Michael Jordan equivalent role (alongside several Loony Toons). It will also feature numerous other basketball players. As with the original film, it will mix live-action and animated characters together on screen.

Bancroft’s Mulan has been remade as a live-action film by director Niki Caro (Whale Rider). The film was due to release on March 27, but it has been delayed, again due to the coronavirus.

Back in 2016, Space Jam director Joe Pytka claimed that the sequel was “doomed.” It remains to be seen if this is the case, however–the film is in post-production, with the live-action portions having been shot, and is targeting a 2021 release.

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Westworld: Season 3 Premiere Review

This review contains spoilers for Westworld Season 3, episode 1, “Parce Domine,” including the premiere’s post-credits scene

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The third season of HBO’s Westworld represents such a drastic change that its first episode feels less like a premiere than a pilot. It introduces interesting new characters whose lives, at least initially, have almost nothing whatsoever to do with the events of the show’s first and second seasons. It abandons the remote theme parks that were its self-contained setting, instead taking place in a near-future Los Angeles that is breathtakingly well-realized. And, most crucially, while it continues to pose serious questions about how technology and humanity intersect, it poses them more briskly and energetically than ever before. Less brooding, more moving — this is Westworld Season 3.

It’s hard to overstate the effect of these changes on the character and tone of the series. It really does feel, moment to moment, like a different show, one more interested in mood than mysteries, more focused on psychology than plot. If you were irritated by Westworld because of its tendency to revel in its own cleverness, you will find Season 3 more direct, more exciting, and more straightforward. Even if you gave up on Westworld, bored of its endless digressions, Season 3 wants to win you back. Unanswered questions still abound, and, Westworld being Westworld, things that seem simple now could prove rather more complicated as the season proceeds. But the show has found the right style for its philosophical musings, and the action unfolding scene after scene is finally as satisfying as the answers that might eventually be revealed.

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Other than some glass-walled laboratories, sterile underground control rooms, and lavish homes, Westworld has rarely had occasion to show us what the outside world of the future actually looks like — it was the nature of the conceit that the show’s aesthetic would be primarily borrowed from westerns, not science-fiction. So aesthetically speaking, leaving Westworld for the real world entails a change of genre. Gone are the spurs and six shooters and ten-gallon hats; instead, we get self-driving cars and robot construction workers, mini AirPods and super-advanced smart homes. A near-future Los Angeles has been imagined on screen a hundred times, but Westworld’s conception doesn’t draw much from obvious inspirations. From bright urban vistas to pristine subways, it isn’t exactly Blade Runner. Of all things it made me think of Her, the Spike Jonze movie in which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with the Artificial Intelligence system on his phone.

As in Her, we see Westworld’s neo-Los Angeles through the eyes of an unhappy, melancholic loner stuck in a serious rut. Caleb, played with great morose intensity by Aaron Paul, is a traumatized veteran struggling to find a place in the world. Automation has stranded him without anything useful to do, and he spends his days in construction and his nights on an app called Rico, which is sort of like Uber for petty crime — making illicit deliveries, orchestrating minor robberies, and so on. The Rico app is a really ingenious creation on the show’s part, and one of its best efforts so far to dig into the hypothetical side of science-fiction.

Westworld has always been about the nature of artificial intelligence and what it would mean for an AI to develop consciousness. But the introduction of Caleb is the first time the show has really explored what you might call the psychological toll of these advancements — what it means for everyday people when computers can do most of our jobs better than we ever could. The show’s vision of a future in which even crime is at the mercy of the gig economy, meanwhile, is nothing less than brilliant. As everything from taxis to takeout are arranged by app, why not larceny? “Make money, motherf—ers,” declares the Rico app upon opening. It’s extremely bleak that in the future even delinquency has a star rating.

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It’s while completing one of these nightly jobs that Caleb eventually collides with our story: he encounters Dolores, out of the park and on an adventure of her own in the real world that revolves around a mysterious, powerful device that is shaping up to be the season’s central MacGuffin. It isn’t clear what Dolores is ultimately after, nor Caleb’s significance to her ambitions. So far she’s only dipped a toe into some corporate drama that faintly resembles the Cillian Murphy company-dissolving arc at the heart of Inception.

What’s already abundantly clear is that Evan Rachel Wood is a star. Across the first two seasons, Dolores was often difficult to pin down, her identity confused by conflicting programming, hopping timelines, and reset memories — and though Wood did her best, the character never quite felt coherent. In Season 3, Dolores has been wisely recalibrated, and even while her intentions remain ambiguous, she looks, sounds, and acts like a more three-dimensional person, one whose well-being we’re invested in and whose success we root for. It helps that Wood plays her with such steely poise, and that her mission finds her in kick-ass shoot-outs, car chases, and fisticuffs. Somewhere between Scarlett Johannson in Lucy and John Wick, she’s Westworld’s slick action super-hero, and unmistakably the star of the show.

Dolores isn’t the only returning character capable of inflicting grievous bodily harm on anyone foolish enough to cross her. Jeffrey Wright is back as the soft-spoken, ever-thoughtful Bernard, working as a farmhand in a remote rural area and attempting to lie low. (Blamed for the massacre of Delos board members at Westworld, he’s all over the news as a fugitive at large.) We don’t see much of Bernard in the first episode, but when two coworkers figure out his identity and demand to be paid off or else, he goes full Logan Marshall-Green in Upgrade and wipes them out with ruthless android efficiency. As we last see him he’s bribing a fisherman to bring him to Westworld. Will we be spending much time going forward at the park?

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We do get a brief glimpse of the park, in a post-credits stinger. But it isn’t Westworld. It’s what’s being referred to as War World, and it’s a recreation of a Nazi-occupied village during World War II. There we find Maeve, as bewildered as we are. Whether War World will remain a major location as the series develops, or whether she will leave shortly to join Dolores et al in Los Angeles, is hard to say. On the one hand, Charlotte Hale (or whomever is occupying Hale’s reconstructed host body) insists to a boardroom of Delos execs that the company’s theme parks should continue operating despite the bad press entrained by the mass murders, so it makes sense that the parks will play a role. On the other hand, War World seems a bit silly, and I hope the action mainly unfolds in California.

Of course, for all the strides the show has made in fascinating new directions, this is still Westworld, and there is reason to be skeptical of change. The series has never had a hard time with intrigue — its best quality has always been the suggestion of tantalizing depths, and its worst quality has been its refusal to properly explore them. What’s promising about the Season 3 premiere is the newfound emphasis on the fundamentals. The series has never looked better; the premiere is a marvel of lighting and art direction. The fight scene toward the end of the episode, in which Dolores annihilates her kidnappers in an extended one-take that pans between the view out of a car window and that same car’s rear-facing video screen, is beautifully choreographed and superbly well-directed, on the level of a top-tier action film. If as the season proceeds the mysteries don’t pan out or totally gratify, there’s at least a great deal to admire on the level of production value and filmmaking. That shift in emphasis, on the whole, represents a positive change.

Westworld’s Season 3 Premiere Post-Credits Scene Explained

Westworld has finally returned on HBO. And true to form, the Season 3 premiere introduces a drastically different status quo while raising new questions about the hosts and the world in which they live. Assuming you stuck around after the end credits, episode 1 drops yet another bombshell with major ramifications. Check out our review of Westworld Season 3, episode 1, and then read on for a full breakdown of what’s happening in this post-credits scene and what it means for Maeve.

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Where Is Maeve?

The post-credits scene shows Thandie Newton’s Maeve waking up in a World War II setting and with a ’40s-style makeover to match. She appears to be stuck inside a new branch of the Delos Destinations park, one offering guests a chance to live out their fantasies battling German soldiers. This setting specifically looks to be an occupied city somewhere in continental Europe (France or Italy, perhaps?), with Maeve reprogrammed as part of some new scenario involving captive German soldiers.

We’ve been expecting the debut of a WWII-themed park ever since footage was first teased in the Season 3 trailer released at Comic-Con 2019. We’re assuming this park is called War World (Warworld?). Its debut seems aimed at ensuring at least part of Season 3 still takes place within a more traditional theme park setting, even as Evan Rachel Wood’s Dolores ventures out into the real world. Unfortunately, dusting off Westworld itself isn’t really an option, as the set was destroyed in the 2018 Woolsey Fire. However, the most recent trailer suggests we’ll still see the torched remains of Westworld.

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Which Host Pearls Did Dolores Bring With Her?

The biggest takeaway from this post-credits scene is the apparent confirmation Maeve wasn’t among the host “pearls” Dolores stole when she escaped Westworld in Season 2. Those pearls, each of which contains the memories and programming of a different host, are at the crux of one of the biggest mysteries of Season 3. Who else escaped the park thanks to Dolores, and whose bodies are they hiding inside now?

It would seem Maeve wasn’t lucky enough to win her freedom and has instead been reprogrammed by Delos. However, given her confused reaction upon waking up in War World, we’re guessing that reprogramming didn’t really take. She seems cognizant of her true self and will almost surely begin finding a way to escape once again.

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What’s Next for Maeve?

We assume Maeve’s plight in War World will play out alongside the main plot involving Dolores and Aaron Paul’s Caleb. She’ll no doubt work to escape her new surroundings. She’ll probably also bump into other familiar hosts who have also been reprogrammed for the new War World scenario. That should slowly clue viewers in as far as which hosts were taken by Dolores and which ones remain inside the park.

It remains to be seen what Maeve’s ultimate goal is, now that her daughter has found salvation of sorts in the Valley Beyond. Does she want to join Dolores in the outside world? Is she looking for some way of entering the host afterlife, even with the Valley Beyond being locked away?

Of course, thanks to Season 2 and its big “Halores” twist, we can no longer be sure that a host’s appearance corresponds to the brain within. We don’t even know for sure this is actually Maeve and not a different host occupying her body. For that matter, there’s always the question of when exactly this Maeve storyline is taking place. The first two seasons were notorious for playing around with our perception of time, and we wouldn’t be at all surprised if Season 3 continues that trend.

For more Westworld fun, check out our review of the Season 3 premiere and see the biggest mysteries fueling Season 3.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

My Hero Academia: Season 4, Episode 22 Review

Episode 22 begins with a serviceable flashback that summarises almost the entirety of the previous episode: Deku vs Gentle Criminal. It’s not necessary but, since the last episode ended on a cliffhanger, it makes some sense. The rest of the episode’s first act, however, is a deep dive into the mind of La Brava and a reminder of the high stakes for Deku as he attempts to halt the disruptive plans of Gentle Criminal and his sidekick.

Until this point, Gentle Criminal and La Brava have represented the more fun, silly, and campy end of the villain roster. If Hero Killer Stain is the Joker, then Gentle Criminal is Kite Man or the Mad Hatter. Until now, that is. This arc has, from a storytelling perspective, done such a masterful job of taking a c-list villain, poking fun at him, then building him up to be charming and goofy, before revealing his quirk and marking him as a tangible threat. And now, at last, his appearance and his aura match that threat level.

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While we’ve been enjoying the quirky behavior and showy bravado of Gentle Criminal, with his clothes and voice that so match his eccentric and foppish allure, La Brava has remained a mystery. And the longer she has stayed a mystery, the more tantalizing that situation becomes. Here, at last, we get to see an explanation for her throwing in her lot with this strange villain, and even an awkwardly funny reason for her distinct black-lined eyes (it’s not makeup).

Getting to know La Brava is an unexpectedly touching and enjoyable bit of storytelling. My Hero Academia is very, very good at devising backstories and telling them through flashbacks. It may rely on them a little too often, but they always work well. And, in the case of La Brava, this effectiveness is no different.

The villains aside, episode 22’s first half also has fun lining up the dominoes that are all about to fall if Gentle Criminal gets his way and Deku fails to stop him. These dominoes take the form of the other classes, who all get a little stage time as we get to see them bantering and preparing for the School Festival to begin. It’s nice to see the show dedicate a little time to the supporting cast and remind us of what’s at stake here. It’s quite easy to get distracted by the pomp and silliness of Gentle Criminal but he is a real threat to not just the safety of UA’s students but also to all the work, dedication, and enthusiasm they’ve poured into this festival.

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That’s what really impresses as the episode barrels on ahead: the tension rises like a ringing in the background. While it’s fun getting to know La Brava and listen to the bluster of Gentle Criminal, there’s a real tension to this episode as everything is in danger of collapsing at this villain’s hands. The rising tension also has an effect on Gentle Criminal: attempting to shift the audience from laughing at him to taking him seriously to, now, actively hating him for what he is about to do.

That is, until the episode’s second half takes some time to dig into Gentle Criminal’s own backstory and motivations, which won’t be spoiled here. The relationship between audience and villain is quite a whirlwind. Suddenly, this villain has become a sympathetic character, and it only took a few scenes to get us there.

This backstory is inserted deftly into the second brawl between Deku and Gentle Criminal, which itself is a fantastic fight. Carefully used sakuga ramps up the energy and excitement of the fight and the direction provides plenty of flair and drama. The fight itself is a fairly primal scrap, with little strategy involved, betraying the intensity and desperation which both the hero and villain are drawing on as they dart and kick and grunt. It’s honestly one of the best fights we’ve seen this season.

The Walking Dead: ‘Walk with Us’ Review

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow…

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Yesssssss!

I have to say, the way this episode was chugging along, I wasn’t sure we’d get an official Alpha death.

I was hopeful the “war” would end this week, given the way episode 11 episode played out, but the actual staging of “Walk with Us” was puzzling. We kicked things off in the absolute thick of it. Just guts-deep in the flaming carnage. And then the story cut away to the morning after and we had to kind of figure out who was still alive as the episode pushed forward. The only thing we knew was that things sort of reached a stalemate, though Hilltop, for all intents and purposes, was lost.

Sure, there are still lingering Whisperer bits to deal with, as Beta and the rest of Alpha’s ghouls are still out there, but “Walk with Us” was a pivotal, and merciful, end to the majority of the conflict. And it did it with a fun twist – one that answered a series question that I’d utterly forgotten about: Who freed Negan from his cell? Back in the fall, in “What It Always Is,” the show tried to make us think Brandon – aka Negan Fan Numero Uno – was the culprit. But that was never made official. In fact, if you read the episode right, Brandon only tracked Negan out into the woods after he’d learned of the escape. He didn’t orchestrate anything.

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Carol and Negan

Carol’s choice to free Negan, with a pact in place to kill Alpha, would have happened back in Episode 4 of the season, “Silence the Whisperers.” That’s when Negan was possibly on the chopping block for accidentally killing Margo while he was protecting Lydia. Obviously, Negan had to be Carol’s Plan B since she kept on trying to track and kill Alpha herself (leading her, and others, into that cave trap). Whether it was a back-up plan or not, it was still a smart play because – boy! – did it pay dividends. Carol literally had Alpha’s head delivered at her feet.

I knew how Alpha died in the comics, I just never knew the full context – as in, what brought Negan to commit the act. I’m assuming they changed a few things around, but the quick neck slice remained the same. Alpha got taken down from the inside, by a guy who’d managed to gain her trust – a master manipulator named Negan. In the end, it was Lydia, and Alpha’s stubborn commitment to killing her own daughter, that drove him to draw his blade. From his brief interaction with Carol at the end, it seemed like his plan might have always been to kill Alpha, but who ultimately knows? He was certainly testing Alpha at the end, to see if she’d actually go through with killing Lydia after he tried to convince her not to. If she’d agree to spare Lydia, would he have spared her? Maybe not, since the cabin was empty. He did seem to carry an affection for her in the end, though.

But then again, when Aaron briefly saw Negan out in the woods, Negan said, “Aaron, I’m not…” but then couldn’t get out the rest. That’s a big indicator that he was always a part of the Whisperers as a mole and that the endgame was to end Alpha’s reign. Had Aaron not been so angry, we could have gotten the full explanation right then and there.

Whatever Negan’s misgivings might have been, however brief, he did the deed and slew the dragon. It was a wickedly sweet swerve that paid back Alpha for not only killing off several of the show’s heroes by infiltrating their ranks, but also for the beheading said victims. And for Negan, maybe this means full redemption within Alexandria.

Gamma and Beta

Mary getting killed by Beta was an early indicator that perhaps this Whisperer arc was drawing to a close. I’m not against the death outright, though I will say Mary had huge potential as a new full cast member. We tracked her story long enough that she was already someone, now on the good guys’ side, who we could grow to invest in more. That doesn’t happen easily on this show anymore.

Mary died, basically, saving baby Adam, who was trapped in a car with Aiden and Kelly (if I were to mention a few characters who haven’t “popped” like Mary). Her story came full circle as she more or less proved to the doubters that she had her nephew’s best interests in mind. Then, with Beta killing her, we got a quick moment that revealed Beta to possibly be a famous country music star from the old livable world, which has been a rumor ever since actor Ryan Hurst sang on a track (written by former Dead star Emily Kinney) that played in the episode “Bonds.” In the comics, Beta was actually a famous basketball player before the End Times so it would make sense for Ryan Hurst to be playing someone of celebrity note.

With as tall and striking as Beta is, it still feels weird that no one could pick him out of a lineup until a portion of his mask, which doesn’t cover his beard, got ripped off. At least the poor Whisperer he killed also mentioned recognizing his voice. Regardless, Beta is the big remaining threat, and thread, still out there, stalking around, from this story. Will his fate play out the way it does in the comics? From the small bits I know (which include a character who’s already been killed off the show), I feel like there’s a fun team-up coming to take down the big guy.

“Walk with Us” wound up feeling very satisfying, because of the final five minutes (where we actually heard Negan talk more about his wife), but that doesn’t mean it was great all the way through. It was structured strangely and that kind of threw everything off a little bit. Within it were some cool moments, like Judith having to kill Earl after he messed up his own suicide, and Carol telling Eugene to run off for his rendezvous with Stephanie. But why did Aaron shoot Gamma/Mary with the arrow first when he could have taken out Beta and then put Mary out of her undead misery?

And what was that whole Daryl/Ezekiel pact about last week when neither of them wound up saving the kids? They found Ezekiel under a pile of rubble and then went and found the children. Also, why tie up Lydia in a shack at all? Negan could have lied to Alpha completely without actually kidnapping Lydia and making the girl think her life was in danger. That seemed like it was just for our benefit, to trick us.

That being said, it was the perfect time to wrap things up, for the most part, and the twist at the end worked nicely.

Ubisoft Talks Streaming As The Division 2 Comes To Stadia

With The Division 2 coming to Stadia on March 17, Ubisoft’s senior vice president of partnerships Chris Early has cleared up some questions about game streaming, Nvidia’s embattled GeForce Now platform, and what it all means for Ubisoft’s library.

When it arrives on Stadia this week, The Division 2 will be the first game on the streaming platform to offer crossplay with PC players. Ubisoft already has four games available on Stadia: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Trials Rising and Just Dance.

In the interview on Ubisoft’s site, Early has revealed some interesting data about the way people are playing Ubisoft games on Stadia, breaking players into two categories. “One is the experimenter; this looks like somebody who came on and played for a couple days, and then we haven’t seen them again,” he said. “They played probably a couple different games, not for very long, and they sated their appetite and that was that. They had their questions answered.”

The other is a more traditional kind of player: “Their behavior mimics what we see with other players of the same game,” Early revealed. “Their play pattern is not particularly different. They are not playing less time; they’re not playing more time. If anything, they’re playing slightly more sessions, at slightly shorter durations.”

As far as looking at what games will come to what platforms, especially as more and more companies start entering the streaming game, Early has said the decision comes down to a few factors: “One, how is it deployed from an infrastructure standpoint? Can people all around the world use it? Can people only in a given country use it? Is it well-deployed within the country?”

The other question regards how easy it is for Ubisoft to release a game, whether it’s old or new, on the platform. “We’re obviously making Xbox games already, so there’s not a lot of effort for an Xbox game to work on xCloud. GeForce Now is a PC-based service so that’s more straightforward. And for Stadia, or other platforms that are more like a console in their overall game system, it’s more work for us to do. It’s actual development of a different build.”

After other publishers like 2K Games, Bethesda and Activision Blizzard dropped most of their support for Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service, Ubisoft has put all its support behind the platform.

“Ubisoft fully supports NVIDIA’s GeForce Now with complete access to our PC games from the Ubisoft Store or any supported game stores,” Early says. “e believe it’s a leading edge service that gives current and new PC players a high end experience with more choice in how and where they play their favorite games.”

The Division 2 just released the Warlords of New York expansion, which will be in the Stadia release of the game from launch.

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Control ‘The Foundation’ Exclusive Reveal: First Look and Details About the Upcoming Expansion

The first story expansion for Control, IGN’s 2019 Game of the Year, is set to be released on March 26 and we have the exclusive first trailer and details for the upcoming DLC. The Foundation expansion will take Federal Bureau of Control chief Jesse Faden deep underground to the bedrock of the Oldest House.

You can watch the first full trailer for The Foundation expansion below.

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Keeping in line with Control’s mysterious atmosphere, the developers at Remedy refrained from divulging too much about the expansion’s plot. We do know the expansion will take place after the events of the main game, when Jesse gets a call from the board alerting her of a disturbance that’s causing the Oldest House’s subterranean level, the Foundation, to go haywire. The bureau’s Head of Operations Helen Marshall will also figure prominently into the expansion after she mysteriously went off on her own during the main storyline.

Control game director Mikael Kasurinen described the expansion as “an opportunity for [Remedy] to take the open-ended nature of the environments even further. The new area that you get to access is filled with mystery, discovery and player-driven exploration. As is the way of Control, it is embedded with symbolism. Exploring the foundation of the Oldest House is also about exploring the very foundation of Jesse herself. Who is she as the director and where does she need to from here?… Jesse will be tested unlike ever before.”

Aside from the new storyline, there is a brand new skill in the expansion called “Shape” which is split into two forms: “Create” and “Fracture.” This new ability is integral to the expansion not only because it’s a new combat ability, but you’ll need to use it to solve puzzles called “Rituals.”

“One of the main pillars of Control is the ability to experiment and use the environment to your advantage in combat,” Remedy senior game designer Sergey Mohov told IGN in an interview. “[Shape] is another aspect of that. It is one of the supernatural abilities you get in the game and in a way it’s a more direct way of affecting the environment because you actually make things grow out of the wall or a floor, and use them to either pierce through enemies or make a platform for yourself.”

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One of Control’s highlights is the supernatural power fantasy Jesse’s abilities afford the players, and Remedy says it wants to intensify that feeling in the expansion. The environment in The Foundation is more open in a way that allows players to explore Jesse’s full powers. “Having these high ceilings and big arenas to unleash your power is a big part of the power fantasy in Control. When you’re contained in a room with a small ceiling you’re not really encouraged to levitate that much. Whereas if you’re in an open arena you will more of that. We wanted to encourage more of that aggressive gameplay style in the expansion,” Mohov said.

Remedy communications director Thomas Puha added that it was “important to try and make the environment feel different enough from the main game… Expansions are things where you can go even more left-field, embrace the weirdness even more.”

Another important design decision for the new expansion was to make things more open-ended and nonlinear, which allows players to explore freely and discover some secrets. “That’s the thing I’m most excited about in the expansion,” Mohov said. “It’s been really fun seeing how the community responded to our level design choices and how people reacted to having these big side missions in the main game where you have optional boss fights that people didn’t expect to find… So we wanted to integrate it more into our level design and make it really matter whether you go left or right.”

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We asked whether this meant there would be secrets in the expansion and against Puha’s caution, Mohov told IGN, “Absolutely. Some crazy ones.” There are a few secrets the Remedy developers have bets on to see how long it will take players to find. “There’s some alcohol at stake,” Mohov joked.

Courtney Hope, who voices Jesse Faden, told IGN that she “can’t wait to see the response from everyone as we dive deeper into the Oldest House and all of its secrets! Fleshing out Jesse’s abilities, even more, is beyond exciting and how they’re used to help strengthen her role as Director.”

The Foundation expansion will be available to Control season pass holders and can only be accessed after completing the main game. But anyone who owns Control will receive a free update with a bevy of quality-of-life improvements that Remedy says should address some of the feedback players have had with the main game. The main map has been improved, and the skill tree has been expanded upon, and there’s been some tinkering with underused abilities. Players will also be able to reallocate ability points using Essence.

The Foundation expansion for Control will be released on March 26 for PS4 and Epic Games Store, and June 25 on Xbox One. Read IGN’s Control review here or our Control wiki for walkthroughs and tips.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.

Westworld Season 3: “Parce Dormie” Review & Recap – A Refreshing Premiere

HBO’s ominous tech-thriller Westworld is finally back–but given the show’s infamously complicated timelines and dense, constantly evolving mythology (what, exactly, were the hosts trying to do back in Season 2, again?) it’s safe to say we came into the premiere of Season 3 with some reservations. Dolores had finally escaped the park for real back in the finale, but what did that actually mean–and, perhaps more importantly, what was she actually trying to accomplish beyond carnage and violence?

The good news is we now have an answer to both of those questions, and they came refreshingly quickly for Westworld. There were no overlapping time-traveling narratives or baffling red herrings to speak of (so far at least), and we can’t help but feel like the entire season is off to an incredibly strong start because of it. It’s not that there aren’t still bigger mysteries at play here–there are plenty, to be sure–but the pervasive sense that the show is more concerned with withholding information to keep Redditors on their toes than it is with telling a compelling story is thankfully nowhere to be found.

Season 3 dives directly into the fallout of the riots at the park and gives us a look at Dolores’ immediate goals–she’s aiming to take not just Delos down, but the whole of human society, from the inside out, and using the fact that no one actually knows she escaped (thanks to her clever gambit with a host-clone of Charlotte Hale’s body) to her full advantage. Immediately, there’s a real sense of just how screwed–and clueless–humanity really is when going up against the hosts. In the Westworld future, mankind is even more dependant on technology than we are in reality and Dolores is able to effortlessly turn just about everything against her first target, from the security of his own house to the woman who may or may not be a host replica of his wife. It’s both scary and satisfying, but more importantly, it feels logically sound. Of course, the humans have no fail-safes in place for their tech being turned against them–we’ve already seen what they think they can do with it and to it through their experiences at the parks, so it’s only natural that confidence extends to the real world.

In addition to establishing Dolores’ new status quo, the premiere also introduces a brand-new character and, with him, a whole slew of really fascinating world building details. Caleb (Aaron Paul) is a human, ex-military, struggling to get back on his feet after something happened to get him discharged. Now he’s working as a construction worker by day and running illicit black market gigs by night. Said gigs come to him by what looks to be an app called “Rico” (“make money motherf****ers,” it says upon booting up) that provides very Grand Theft Auto-style missions to anyone who’s brave (or stupid) enough to accept. The app even has some sort of stat system where criminals can level up the sort of jobs they can accept. Here’s hoping we learn more about that soon.

Caleb’s introduction also casually introduces the idea of humans having “implants” of some sort–Caleb’s is apparently turned off, though the option of having it turned back on is there. Apparently, having it reactivated could “smooth some of the rough edges” in his life right now, implying that whatever the implants are actually for, there’s a behavioral or cognitive function at the very least–but Caleb isn’t interested in going down that road. It’s an interesting mystery trail head and one that doesn’t feel out of place or overly complicated.

And then there’s Delos proper with Charlotte Hale–or, whoever is inhabiting the host Charlotte now. Like Dolores, no one knows that Hale has been body snatched and three months post the massacre at the park, she’s sitting pretty at the head of Delos’s chain of command–much to her coworkers apparent chagrin. It’s fascinating to watch Hale navigate the corporate side of things, knowing what we know, and it’s a welcome change of pace from the Westworld norm. For once, we as the audience are holding more cards than the characters themselves, and the tension that creates feels fresh in context. Whoever is occupying host Hale’s body is doing a fantastic job of selling the bit–it certainly doesn’t seem like anyone has noticed something is amiss.

That leaves us with Bernard who had one of the more bizarre final turns at the end of Season 2. Why did Dolores bring him back when she knew he was going to try and stop her? That’s still yet to be determined, but it seems like the question is haunting him as much as it’s haunting us. Bernard has functionally gone into hiding, living a humble life as a farmer, blending in as best he can, and to be certain that he’s not being manipulated or controlled the way he has been in the past, he’s installed some sort of security subroutine in his systems. This is represented as an eerie sort of self-Q&A session where Bernard accesses his memory and then interrogates himself (“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Bernard?”) to see if Dolores has been back to screw around with his reality yet again. It’s–well, haunting is probably the best word for it. Poor Bernard has really been through the ringer and it shows. Though his trauma is potentially our gain–there’s a good chance this means there won’t be any major memory scramble plotlines this season, if we’re lucky.

The premiere ends with a bang as Dolores’ schemes apparently go up in smoke–though not exactly for the reasons you might assume. Delos security pings Dolores as an identity thief and threat (they’re not wrong) but assumes, apparently, that she’s still very much human, which leaves her with an unexpected trump card even as she’s carted off to be disappeared. It’s another fascinating way to emphasize just how completely unprepared the humans are for the threat of the hosts–the idea that there might be a host revolt happening hasn’t even pinged their radar at all, even with everything that’s happened at the parks. Though that could all be changing very quickly now that Dolores’ cover has effectively been blown. This season feels like a powder keg in the best way, and more importantly, feels like it has a clear sense of purpose and identity. It’s a totally new direction compared to Seasons 1 and 2, sure, but we can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

Also, don’t forget to watch through the credits because, uh, what the hell is happening with Maeve?

Halo: Master Chief Collection On PC Is Gearing Up For A Halo 2 Test

Halo: The Master Chief Collection has been slowly launching on PC, one game at a time, with Halo: Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary releasing so far. Now, with those games out, developer 343 Industries has its sights set on the next game in the collection–Halo 2 Anniversary.

In a recent update on Halo Waypoint, 343 Industries talks about their next planned “flight”. Flights are their term for early-access betas, and the next one is set to include content from Halo 2. “We’re currently planning for our next flight to include content for Halo 2, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo: Reach’s Forge & Theater for PC, and potentially some Halo: Reach audio fixes,” the post reads. “These fixes are still in progress, so currently they may or may not come in for our next series of flights.”

If all goes as planned, the post says, we could see a flight of Halo 2 Anniversary on PC before the end of the month. “Building these games is a process and things can change. All of the content listed above may change and so may the timing, but if all goes well, we are targeting our next public flight for the end of March,” 343 says.

Halo 2 has been on PC before, but the original release of the game in 2007 (three years after the Xbox version) was exclusive to Windows Vista. It received a 7/10 in GameSpot’s review at the time.

After Halo 2 Anniversary, the PC version of The Master Chief Collection is set to receive the other games available in the Xbox One version–Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo 4.

Now Playing: Halo: The Master Chief Collection – Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Teaser Trailer

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