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One of the more intriguing elements of Far Cry 5 is the story–which focuses on a cult called Eden’s Gate in Montana, USA. The leader of the cult is Joseph Seed, a creepy and charismatic madman of sorts whose followers call him The Father. Actor Greg Bryk (Saw V, Netflix’s Frontier) brings the character to life in the game (and the live-action short film), and from what we’ve seen and played so far, his performance is outstanding. He’s chilling in how he believes his cause is the right one and will stop at nothing to get his way. The character is integral to the story, and Ubisoft knew it had to find the right person to play him to get the message across in the right away. As it turns out, Bryk was a late addition to the lineup, a fact that led to some amount of stress and scrutiny within Ubisoft. The game’s executive producer, Dan Hay, thought the game might be in trouble.

Speaking to GameSpot, Hay said Ubisoft was able to build out the game’s supporting cast with relative ease, but it struggled to find the right actor to play Seed. “We took a long time to find him. To be honest, it was a little bit scary because it went around in circles for a while. Everything hinges on finding the right guy,” he said.

Greg Bryk as Joseph Seed in the Amazon series Eden’s Gate

“We were doing all this work and building all these characters, and we … felt good about all these different characters. But we still hadn’t found the Father,” Hay explained. “We had good writing and everybody was feeling good about it. Things got pretty heated, and I was thinking, ‘OK, are we in trouble?’ Meanwhile, I’m trying to put on a brave face.”

About a year and a half ago (“somewhere in the middle of development,” Hay says), Hay was shown an audition tape that would change the course of Far Cry 5. Specifically, Bryk’s audition made Hay believe in Seed’s extreme cause and position and challenge his own thoughts. That’s precisely the kind of compelling cult leader Ubisoft was looking for.

“Somebody pulled me aside and said, ‘You gotta watch this.’ So I went over to my desk and I loaded it up, and it was Greg,” Hay said. “And I think part of me–it’s interesting to breathe a sigh of relief at the same time as holding your breath. Because as soon as he started talking, I was riveted. I was like, ‘Thank god we found him,’ but at the same time, I was holding my breath because his performance was so good. I was in this loop of breathlessness.

“After about a minute, he finished his monologue, which didn’t feel like a monologue, it almost felt like a love letter,” he added. “And I was just like, ‘This is the guy.’ We all think we’re pretty smart and we think that it’s hard to allow somebody to swim in our minds and take us away from our lives and go into theirs. I really had a hard time believe that someone was going to be able to convey that to me–to join their cult. He didn’t do that. He didn’t try. What he simply tried to do was challenge my assumptions that everything is OK. As soon as I believed that his opinion that everything was not okay and that it might be prudent to be prepared for the 1 percent chance that it wasn’t going to be OK. I was like, ‘OK, that sounds reasonable.'”

“Thank god, that was a close one,” Hay recalls saying about casting Bryk. “That was more stress than I need at my age.”

Far Cry 5 launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on March 27. In other news, Ubisoft recently announced Far Cry 5’s Season Pass, and it takes players to places like Mars and the Vietnam War. We also recently learned more about the game’s microtransactions and how the campaign is playable offline. In other news, the game could take you 25 hours or more to complete.

The Switch has quickly become a huge success for Nintendo since its launch last year. Not only has the console broken hardware and software sales records for company, it has also proven to be beneficial to third-parties, with indie games in particular performing exceptionally well on the platform.

During an indie-focused press event following today’s Nindies Showcase, Nintendo revealed the top 10 best-selling indie games on Switch to date. While the company didn’t share specific sales numbers for each of the games, the list is comprised of many popular titles that have experienced a resurgence on the hybrid console, including the beloved farming sim Stardew Valley, the roguelike shooter Enter the Gungeon, the multiplayer cooking game Overcooked Special Edition, and Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, among others. You can find the full top 10 list, in no particular order, at the bottom of this story.

Third-party and indie game have had some notable success on Switch. Many indie developers have reported that their titles frequently sell better on Nintendo’s console than on PS4 or Xbox One, with Switch sales in many cases exceeding sales on the other platforms combined. Shortly after Celeste’s release, game creator Matt Thorson revealed the Switch edition was outselling other versions. Similarly, Super Meat Boy developer Team Meat said sales of the Switch version came “shockingly close” to how well the game sold on Xbox 360 when it originally launched in 2010.

Nintendo has been promoting indie titles much more extensively in recent years. During the latest Nindies Showcase, the company announced more than a dozen games coming to Switch in 2018, including some acclaimed ports and remasters of Mark of the Ninja, Lumines, and West of Loathing. Following the presentation, even more indie games were also announced for Switch. For a complete recap, check out all of the games announced during the Nindies Showcase and all the trailers we saw.

Top 10 Best-Selling Indie Games on Switch

• Celeste
• Enter the Gungeon
• Fast RMX
• Golf Story
• Kamiko
• NBA Playgrounds
• Overcooked Special Edition
• Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove
• Stardew Valley
• SteamWorld Dig 2

The second season of Westworld will debut on HBO is less than two months. However, after trailers and images from the new season were revealed, the story driving the new episodes remains as mysterious as the secrets of the host-filled theme park itself.

However, thanks to Entertainment Weekly, some of those mysteries are being solved–including one revolving around a major fan theory after the conclusion of Season 1. According to EW, Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the co-creator of the park responsible for its hosts, is indeed very dead. When the character was gunned down by Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) in the Season 1 finale, many theorized that the man killed was actually a host modeled to look like Ford. According to executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, though, that’s just not the case.

It’s not the last you’ll see of Ford, though. Not only will a younger version of the character be seen in flashbacks, but he’ll be joined by Delos founder James Delow (Peter Mullan). Flashbacks also mean the return of Jimmi Simpson as William, before he becomes the Man in Black (Ed Harris).

Beyond that, the world will simply be getting bigger as the hosts begin exploring more. “If we were to describe the show as one camera angle, it would be a steady pull out revealing more and more context,” Nolan tells EW. “So as the hosts learn more about their world—and other worlds, and the real world—the audience is doing the same thing.”

Even as the scope of the series gets bigger, though, Westworld isn’t forgetting the puzzle pieces it already had in play. “There are things I actually said as Dolores [in season 1] that I had no idea of the significance of until filming this season, and now I’m going, ‘My God, [the showrunners] were telling us!'” Wood explains. “I think even when we’re in season 7, you’ll still be able to go back to the pilot and find clues that were right in front of you.”

Those clues point to how different hosts are handling what is essentially a robot uprising. “She’s playing the chess master. She has access to all of her memories, but now she’s in control,” Wood says of Dolores. “There are some scenes where she’s three different people in the span of a minute.”

Less sure of his next moves is Teddy (James Marsden). “Dolores is further along in her advancement, and he’s trying to catch up and make sure the manner in which we proceed still feels like the good parts of Teddy that he remembers,” the actor says.

It’s that pull Teddy is feeling between rebelling and staying true to his programmed personality that Joy says is at the heart of this new season. “The leashes are off,” she explains. “But the question is: How far are you willing to go until you become a reflection of the evil you’re trying to fight?”

There is much more to be learned from EW’s feature about the upcoming season, and so much more that fans won’t find out until the series returns. Luckily, you won’t have to wait long. Westworld Season 2 premieres April 22 on HBO.

It’s release day for Sea of Thieves. Although it had a gradual rollout in various markets around the world, it’s now available everywhere, and many players are reporting issues getting online to play on Xbox One and PC, among other problems. Rare has acknowledged the troubles and says it’s working to resolve them.

One of the more common problems is an error code called CinnamonBeard. This can pop up when trying to log in and will not let you get online, thereby rendering the game unplayable (or preventing you from joining a group). This was something we also saw during pre-release tests at times, and Rare confirmed it “indicates server capacity issues.” In other words, the game’s servers can’t keep up with demand as too many people are trying to get online.

A support page for the game indicates that your best bet when presented with the CinnamonBeard or BronzeBeard error codes is to quit out of the game completely and relaunch it. That’s not guaranteed to resolve the problem, but it is nonetheless worth a try. [Update: Rare has said that it’s “temporarily suspending new players joining the game” in order to address the ongoing issues. There’s no word on when new people can get online, but that’s the reason you may see the error screen below.]

“We’ve got A LOT of eager pirates playing Sea of Thieves right now and due to this some of you may experience issues,” the official Twitter account said today. “Our engineers are working hard to investigate and alleviate them.” This was followed by a subsequent tweet stating, “We’re still hard at work working on issues affecting players trying to connect to the game as a top priority. We’ll provide updates when we have them!”

Separately, Rare has confirmed that some players are loading into the game and finding they have no items, gold, or clothing, or that they aren’t receiving gold/reputation rewards after finishing a quest. The developer said it’s working on this, though there is a workaround that or may or may not work. “Currently the only method of resolving this issue is to exit to main menu & matchmake back into the game. In extreme cases this may need to be done multiple times,” a support page states. “The gold and reputation rewards should merely be delayed (can take a while to come through).”

Another, lesser issue of note is a missing pre-order bonus for the Black Dogs pack. In a tweet, Rare said that if you pre-ordered after January 26, the DLC won’t be automatically granted to you. Instead, it will be sent through an Xbox Live message that should arrive “soon.”