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DGB S2E4 SOURCES
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FROM KOTAKU.COM
It’s been a minute since Sony’s last State of Play showcase, and PlayStation fans have been hungry for new updates and big reveals on the PlayStation 5's future. What they got today was not that. Resident Evil 4, Street Fighter 6, and more known quantities all got fresh trailers, while an extended gameplay demo for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League showed it may indeed be more of a live-service game than a Batman Arkham successor.
Baldur’s Gate III
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgTFtD2sHdE
The night is dark and full of mind flayers, and yes they are coming to console. Baldur’s Gate III, the intricately detailed RPG from Larian Studio that feels like it’s been in Early Access forever, is coming to PS5 on August 31. That’s great news for anyone who didn’t want to have to upgrade their PC to play the spiritual successor to two fantastic games (Baldur’s Gate 2 and Divinity: Original Sin 2). The reveal trailer has been released.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBczhEOp-m0
We finally got a real close look at Rocksteady’s next game, complete with chaotic four-player co-op and a mission that revolved around shooting giant purple pustules. With Harley Quinn and co. bouncing around building tops in a giant sandbox it looked like a cross between Crackdown 3 and Anthem.
https://kotaku.com/sony-state-play-ps5-ps-vr2-suicide-squad-resident-evil-1850152347
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FROM CBR.COM
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the upcoming video game from Rocksteady Studios, receives a comic book prequel tie-in this May.
Dubbed Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum, the five-issue limited series delves into the origin behind the game's iteration of Task Force X, explaining how Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, King Shark and Deadshot came together before they were assigned to battle the Justice League.
"Amanda Waller has taken control of the recently rebuilt Arkham Asylum, and her brutal tactics and merciless methods have led to the most secure facility Gotham City has ever seen," DC's description of the series reads. "But remember that this is Amanda Waller, and she’s always got an angle. Arkham is part of her latest 'recruitment drive,' and she’s looking for the strongest, smartest, and most brutal inmates in the asylum to serve her as new members of Task Force X."
The series is penned by John Layman (Batman Eternal, Detective Comics, Chew) and illustrated by Jesús Hervás (Are You Afraid of Darkseid?).
Each print issue of Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum comes with a digital code for a free in-game cosmetic item. These codes will also be presented to Annual and Ultra subscribers to DC Universe Infinite, DC's comic book subscription service.
https://www.cbr.com/suicide-squad-kill-the-justice-league-prequel-tie-in/
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FROM KOTAKU.COM
Microsoft’s president and vice chairman Brad Smith announced that the company signed a 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo consoles.
Smith took to Twitter to announce the “binding” contract, promising to drop “Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty” on Nintendo hardware at the same time these games hit Xbox consoles. The news comes as Microsoft’s roughly $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is put under the magnifying glass by almost every regulator imaginable.
“Microsoft and Nintendo have now negotiated and signed a binding 10-year legal agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo players—the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity—so they can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty,” the statement reads. “We are committed to providing long-term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market.”
https://kotaku.com/microsoft-nintendo-activision-call-of-duty-xbox-switch-1850140199
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FROM KOTAKU.COM
After years of waiting, Nintendo finally pulled back the curtain a little more on what fans can expect from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. A snazzy new gameplay trailer revealed a ton, including a world that’s more than just a reskin of the one from Breath of the Wild.
Previous trailers made it clear that Link will be taking to the skies in much of Tears of the Kingdom, both in terms of teleporting up to floating islands and making use of a new glider to cover long distances. The hero of time also sports a new magic glove this time around which augments some of the physics-based abilities from the first game and even includes a flamethrower mode.
https://kotaku.com/legend-zelda-tears-kingdom-botw-2-nintendo-direct-1850089341
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FROM PCGAMER.COM
During IGN Fan Fest, Lies of P, the Bloodborne-esque soulslike reimagining of The Adventures of Pinocchio being made by Round8, got a new trailer and a release window: August, 2023.
That puts Lies of P up against two RPGs. Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 is scheduled to leave early access in the same month, and Sea of Stars, a retro Nintendo-style prequel to The Messenger, is due in August as well.
One thing we do know is that telling lies will be important. Inverting the original story's message, a tagline for Lies of P declares, "You must always lie to others if you hope to become human." The way you lie can apparently differ, with "interconnected procedural quests that play out depending on how you lie." In classic videogame choice-and-consequence fashion, which fibs you decide to tell will help determine which ending you get.
What with being a living doll, P is able to swap parts of his body in and out to change up his skill set. Weapons can also be combined to make new ones, with research required to find the best combos.
https://www.pcgamer.com/dark-pinocchio-soulslike-lies-of-p-is-coming-out-this-year/
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FROM PCGAMER.COM
Blumhouse, the production studio behind legendary films like Get Out, M3GAN, and Tooth Fairy starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, is getting into videogames. The company's new division, Blumhouse Games, will "partner with independent game developers to bring their creative vision to life via original, horror-themed games".
The new games division will focus on "indie budget" titles, which translates to games with a budget under $10 million, in keeping with the "spirit of its film business". The company has named Zach Wood—who has games like Hohokum, Twisted Metal, and Prey: Mooncrash under his belt—as president, and ex-Sony finance and operations executive Don Sechler as CFO.
Everyone involved has put out statements saying they're various flavours of "thrilled" and "excited" to be part of the new division, which I'll spare you. But it is interesting how much the people involved are emphasising the horror theme of their upcoming gaming projects. Alongside Blumhouse's statement about "original, horror-themed games" I mentioned earlier, Wood mentioned the "unique opportunity for horror and genre in the indie game space" in his own statement. To its credit, Blumhouse seems to have a pretty clear idea of what it wants to do with its new division.
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FROM KOTAKU.COM
Nintendo announced a 20 percent Switch sales drop in its latest financial report, but still plans to institute a 10 percent pay raise, the company told investors Tuesday. While it’s unclear if that hike will trickle down to temporary contractors at the Mario maker’s North American headquarters, some there say they’ve already seen substantial raises over the last couple of months.
“It’s important for our long-term growth to secure our workforce,” Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said during the company’s earnings report today, according to Reuters. The news comes after Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently called on companies to pay workers more after inflation hit its highest point in the country since 1981.
https://kotaku.com/nintendo-switch-union-pay-raise-layoffs-pokemon-scarlet-1850082365
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FROM KOTAKU.COM
Activision Blizzard will pay the Securities Exchange Commission $35 million to settle charges that it violated workplace misconduct reporting rules and whistleblower protections. The Call of Duty publisher admits no wrongdoing in the case, which comes less than two years after a bombshell lawsuit by California regulators alleged years of sexual harassment and discrimination at the company.
Today’s SEC order states that Activision Blizzard “lacked controls and procedures” to properly collect and analyze employee complaints of workplace misconduct. As a result, the company’s management “lacked sufficient information” to even know if there were certain issues at the company that required public disclosures to investors. In addition, the SEC order also claims Activision Blizzard used separation agreements for departing employees that required them to notify the company if they were contacted for information by the SEC, which would be a violation of whistleblower protections.
“The SEC’s order finds that Activision Blizzard failed to implement necessary controls to collect and review employee complaints about workplace misconduct, which left it without the means to determine whether larger issues existed that needed to be disclosed to investors,” Director of the SEC’s Denver Regional Office, Jason Burt, said in a press release. While the company didn’t admit to the charges, it did agree to a cease-and-desist order in addition to the $35 million penalty.
“We are pleased to have amicably resolved this matter,” Activision media relations VP Joe Christinat told Kotaku in a statement. “As the order recognizes, we have enhanced our disclosure processes with regard to workplace reporting and updated our separation contract language. We did so as part of our continuing commitment to operational excellence and transparency. Activision Blizzard is confident in its workplace disclosures.”
https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-sexual-misconduct-sec-whistleblower-1850070728
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FROM PCGAMER.COM
Mick Gordon, the composer on games like 2017's Prey, the Doom reboots, and the new Wolfenstein games, has been hard at work on upcoming BioShock-like Atomic Heart, but he's not keeping the money for it. In a post to Twitter, the veteran video game musician announced he's going to donate his fee for the game to the Australian Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal, in order to "use [his] work as a means to help those affected by the conflict" that began when Russia invaded Ukraine almost a year ago.
Atomic Heart is being developed by Mundfish, a Russian studio. But Gordon's donation isn't intended as a disavowal of either the game or its developer, which Gordon praised highly for its commitment to "imagination and artistic freedom". The artist says he's excited to hear his "musical contributions come to life" when the game comes out. Gordon reserves his ire for the Russian government alone, saying, "This invasion was not a decision of the Russian people but rather an authoritarian regime that disregards human rights and dignity".
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FROM PCGAMER.COM
In news that possibly everyone saw coming, The Wolf Among Us 2 has been delayed beyond this year. In a post to Twitter evening, the newly-revived (minus most of its original staff Telltale Games announced that it had "made the difficult decision to delay The Wolf Among Us 2 out of 2023". But given that it's been nearly a decade since the last episode of the first series released, I can probably stand to wait a little longer.
Telltale says the delay is about "protecting the health of [its] team," and in a chat with IGN(opens in new tab), studio boss Jamie Ottilie said it was about avoiding crunch. "Burning people out or grinding them down is the wrong thing to do long-term," said Ottilie, "As an industry, if we're going to continue to grow, we have to stop it. We just have to stop doing it and make better choices". The only alternative to either delaying the game or crunching would have been shipping an unfinished game, which the studio apparently refuses to do. "If we put this game out and it's not ready, we're going to get torn to shreds," said Ottilie.
The Wolf Among Us 2 was announced early in its development cycle in 2019, while Telltale was still staffing up for full production, and it's been hindered by all the stuff you'd expect: Covid-19 and the tight labour market that followed it, but it's also been impacted by a decision to switch the game from Unreal Engine 4 to 5. Ottilie says the change has been worth it, but it's meant redoing work that was already done for the UE4 version of the game.
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FROM PCGAMER.COM
Luminous Productions, the team behind this year's powerfully middling Forspoken, is going quietly into that good night. In a tweet, the studio announced that, "Beginning on May 1," it would "join Square Enix to deliver new, innovative gaming experiences across the globe". In other words, it's being folded into its parent company and ceasing to exist as a separate entity.
In the two months between now and May 1, Luminous says it'll be "entirely focused on Forspoken," and that it's "currently working on the previously announced patch to address overall game performance". Given that some of Forspoken's previous patches(opens in new tab) didn't really do much to optimise the game for some players, we'd better hope this last one is a doozy. The studio also said that Forspoken's upcoming DLC—In Tanta We Trust—remains "on track for release this summer".
For obvious reasons, Luminous tries to present this as a positive move for the company, but there's a trace of something elegiac in its released statement. When Luminous was established, the announcement reads, "[Its] vision was to make AAA games that fused technology and artistry to deliver completely new play experiences. Having the chance to do just that has been a dream come true". The company probably won't get the chance to try its hand at a Forspoken 2 for a long time yet, if ever.
https://www.pcgamer.com/square-enix-snuffs-out-luminous-the-studio-behind-forspoken/
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FROM KOTAKU.COM
Dead by Daylight is getting the video game adaptation treatment. Atomic Monster (Aquaman director James Wan’s production company) and Blumhouse (the famed horror production company behind Megan and Get Out) announced on March 2 that they are working with developer Behaviour Interactive on a feature film adaptation of Dead by Daylight
https://kotaku.com/dead-by-daylight-movie-james-wan-megan-blumhouse-1850179485
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