The Final Fantasy 7 remake was conspicuous by its absence from Square Enix's awful E3 2018 media briefing - so, should we be worried about its development? Is it even in development? Speaking to , Tetsuya Nomura, the director of the game, moved to reassure concerned fans, insisting people at Square Enix are currently working on the game. "It's not just in the early concept stages," Nomura said. "We are actually in development."
Blizzard has decided which version of World of Warcraft to use as the foundation for WOW Classic. In a post on , Blizzard said it decided on Patch 1.12: Drums of War "because it represents the most complete version of the classic experience". The classic period of World of Warcraft was two years long - and this period included a huge number of changes for the MMO as well as massive additions, such as Battlegrounds.
There's more bad news for Telltale, the company behind the Walking Dead and Minecraft: Story Mode series of adventure games, with its ex-boss suing the company. The reports Telltale co-founder Kevin Bruner, who became CEO in January 2015, filed the suit in late February, claiming breach of contract and other allegations. The dispute revolves around Bruner's ousting as boss of Telltale in 2017. Bruner remained on the board, and now says the company was contractually obligated to provide him with informational support as he prepared to sell his holdings in common and preferred stock. But Telltale cut off communication. At around the same time, in September 2017, Telltale hired Peter Hawley, a former executive at the Zynga game company, as chief executive.
The developer of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has debunked what it calls "misinformation" and "oversimplified tales" about the way the game is developed. The criticism here revolves around the re-use of certain assets across PUBG's maps, and the buying of pre-made assets from the Unreal marketplace. Posts like the one below occasionally pop up on the , alongside the accusation that the vast majority of the game's maps were bought-in. Some even accuse PUBG of being an "asset flip" game. This debate kicked off again this week after PUBG creator Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene expressed his frustration at the "asset flip" jibe in an interview with Geoff Keighley at E3, saying it "kills me a little inside".
How do you duck a question about the politics of a game which pits a citizen militia against a corrupt government in modern-day Washington DC? Well, you could start by talking about the weather. "I loved the coldness of the first game, and to be able to go to DC and actually get to feel the humidity and hot summer of East Coast weather," The Division 2's creative director Terry Spiers to Polygon at E3, when pressed about what it meant to stage an armed uprising in the capital of his own country. "That's what I'm most excited about." This kind of chipper, non-committal platitude has become as natural as breathing for Ubisoft, even as its various Clancy properties bury their expensively accessorised noses in topics like the South American narcotics trade or the ethics of torture. It's all rather odd when you consider the pride, not to say enormous smugness, Tom Clancy himself took in the links between his stories and the shadow realm of superpower relations and national security. on TV in 1998, for instance, arguing for a change of law to permit the assassination of heads of state with reference to his 1996 door-stopper Executive Orders. in a memorably unsympathetic Washington Post profile, boasting of the "half-million" calls he received from admiring reporters in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm. With their starchy casts of alpha nerds and special operators, visions of an America that is at once wargod and underdog and steamy accounts of missile launches and fleet manoeuvres, Clancy's books were warmly embraced by the military establishment. Colin Powell - former US secretary of state and one of the minds behind the bogus case for Saddam's secret WMDs - once declared that "a lot of what I know about warfare I learned from reading Tom". Ronald Reagan was also a fan: while negotiating with the USSR in Reykjavik, he recommended Red Storm Rising to Margaret Thatcher for its "excellent picture of the Soviet Union's intentions and strategy". Clancy, who never served in the armed forces thanks to acute near-sightedness, reveled in all this, name-dropping high rank contacts to reporters and railing against peaceniks and grifter politicians in speeches at academies and bases. You wonder what he'd have made of Ubisoft's determination to avoid seeing Tom Clancy games in any kind of context, to show us footage of democracies on fire while talking gaily of blue skies and "exploring a new city".
Valve has returned to the world of Portal for Moondust, a brand new virtual reality demo. Working for Aperture Science's Lunar Resources Initiative, you are sent into spaaaace to construct a modular space station, and then down onto the Moon itself for further testing. Moondust is a sandbox experience designed to show off the Knuckles EV2, Valve's latest VR controller. Specifically, you'll be manipulating objects using the device's pinch grip technology and ability to finely detect hand poses and movement. On board with that? Then you'll be crushing moon rocks, driving a moon buggy, building things and lobbing items onto targets in no time.
PES 2018 doesn't have a World Cup update - EA has FIFA's signature on that official licence. But it does have a small group of dedicated fans who have put the time into creating an unofficial World Cup update for the game. Konami's football game is famous for its option files - edits that add official player names and kits, among other things, to the game. Back in the day, I'd spend hours manually editing player and team names in PES to make them real life accurate. These days - in fact for some time now - PES players have been able to download and install community-created option files that do all the work for them. There are a handful of pretty decent World Cup option files for PES out there. The . For PC players, the is a great choice. It adds a new World Cup-themed menu for the game, new logos and font design, new updated kits for national teams, correct lineups and formations and even new tattoos. Check it out in the video below. It's pretty impressive work!
Cast your minds back almost a year ago and you might remember the mania that accompanied Amazon Prime Day, an event that was originally a one-day-only batch of discounts and special offers Amazon offered up in order to celebrate its anniversary. The event itself started back in 2015 and now, a few years later, here we are - Amazon Prime Day is an annual thing and a bit of a mini-Black Friday in terms of bargains and rushes on stock. This year's Prime Day is set to take place on 16th July, 2018. While Amazon makes a habit of keeping the exact day of the event under wraps until shortly before launching, it seems as though a stray banner has given the game away for this year's event, as that the aforementioned imagery went live sometime yesterday, proudly stating: "Starts at noon, 16 July. An epic day (and a half) of our best deals." The extra time allotted to what is still proudly called "Prime Day" is not unprecedented, as last year's Prime Day festivities took place over a 30-hour period. The extra six hours brings the total event time up to the previously mentioned "day and a half" timeframe. The 16th itself is later than Prime Day is traditionally held (usually taking place around 12th July), though with the World Cup Final taking place on 15th July, it's a safe bet Amazon has gone with a later date in order to keep the spotlight purely on Prime Day.
Fortnite's shopping cart is a lot of fun - but it doesn't look like Epic's laughing. Fortnite's first vehicle - if you can call it that - has been added and pulled from the battle royale game multiple times since it went live in May as Epic battled to prevent players from using it to glitch under the map. This week, Epic added the shopping cart back into the game only to pull it again a couple of hours later.
We've come a long way from Assassin's Creed not letting you play as a woman - or from doing so only in short sections of its campaign. Assassin's Creed Odyssey will let you play through the entire game as either female or male mercenaries Kassandra or Alexios - and just like the game itself, its reversible cover will let you pick your favourite. That's according to creative director Jonathan Dumont, who revealed the detail in a AMA last night.
Bethesda is reportedly suing Warner Bros. over the Westworld mobile game, which it claims uses Fallout Shelter code. According to , Bethesda is suing Warner Bros. and Behaviour Interactive, the developer of the game. In court documents, Bethesda reveal it contracted Behaviour in 2014 to work on Fallout Shelter before Behaviour went on to make the Westworld game for Warner. Fallout Shelter is a building and people management sim with a cute art design where you play the vault overseer. You have to keep your vault dwellers alive, playing Cupid to get them to have babies, while all sorts of things go wrong in the vault and, when you can, send your people out into the wasteland to gather resources. It looks like this:
The first episode of Life is Strange 2 arrives on 27th September 2018 - that's just three months away. It's actually titled Life is Strange 2, as well - to delineate it from Dontnod's original series and the excellent prequel spin-off Before the Storm. Life is Strange 2 will comprise of five episodes. The teaser below shows the game's title being stitched onto a worn backpack. More details, a post on the game's says, will be revealed in August (likely Gamescom).
There are no training wheels in this kingdom. Buried deep within this insect infested land, each playthrough of Hollow Knight feels and moves a little differently. There are no waypoints or story missions - there's not even a right or wrong way to play, really. Developer Team Cherry doesn't care where you go, or how you get there. Even how much of the story you see is up to you. This lack of direction is overwhelming at first. Even though I'm the kind of player that naturally double-backs on where I think any given game wants me to go - someone who instinctively scours for secrets - the dozens of pathways and possibilities trouble me. As I wander through Hollow Knight's early hours it becomes more troubling still, and I start to worry that I may miss huge swaths of lore and collectibles - even whole areas, maybe? - if I'm not thorough enough. But as I adapt to the natural ebb and flow of Hollow Knight's rhythm and concentrate instead on what lies ahead, that anxiety melts away.
Fortnite has a habit of releasing a cool new thing in the game and then pulling it just hours after launch - and it's done it again. Yesterday, Epic released patch 4.5 for the all-conquering battle royale game and with it Playground mode. Playground LTM (limited time mode) lets you train, explore and battle in a care-free environment. You can drop onto the island with up to three friends and do things like practice building or just mess about, free from the stress of the normal last player standing gameplay.
When at the end of Bethesda's E3 show, the message was clear: we're working on the game but it's a very long way away. We saw a very brief trailer of a mountainous, coastal environment, and then a logo, and that was it. But what were we seeing? Was this the setting of the new game or a kind of red herring - a generic Elder Scrollsian scene made for the trailer? Has Bethesda Game Studios even settled on the region we'll play in yet? I thought we'd wait yonks for an answer but as luck would have it I got one from Todd Howard at Spanish conference Gamelab this week.
Last week, Beyond Good & Evil 2 creator Michel Ancel told fans to expect a . It was disappointing news, perhaps, for those eager to explore the kind of worlds glimpsed in last year's flashy E3 debut trailer. But it was also news which should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone following the game's still-early progress. What sort of game will Beyond Good & Evil 2 be? It's still hard to say - a year on from the tech demo shown behind closed doors at E3 2017. Over the 12 months, Ubisoft Montpellier has periodically streamed updates to its loyal followers on Twitch, but these have mostly just been opportunities to share concept art and answer questions. For this year's E3, Ubisoft Montpellier packed a proper gameplay demo in its suitcase, one which showed off co-op play and some early combat and exploration systems - but it was another glimpse which left us with probably more questions than answers. I'm excited for Beyond Good & Evil 2's story after hearing how the dots connect between the two flashy CGI trailers shown thus far. Likewise, I'm delighted by this year's confirmation BG&E1 stars Jade and Pey'J are back for definite. For those in need of a recap, last year's trailer saw our crew of heroes steal a set of coordinates and set off for something named Moksha's Gate, a mysterious object described by Ubisoft Montpellier as "a door in space", led by a captain who shared a familial resemblance to Jade. This year, we caught up with the crew later on, with the captain mysteriously missing, as Jade herself pops up as an antagonist and seemingly ends the mission to Moksha's Gate for good.
Sea of Thieves' second time-limited event, Gunpowder Skeletons, does exactly what it says on the tin. Rare's swashbuckling pirate simulator has added skeleton enemies which carry gunpowder kegs. Naturally, you'll want to stop the buggers before they can get too close and blow up. Blow them up first and you'll gain renown from the Bilge Rats - Sea of Thieves' new faction who look after the game's time-limited events. Like the last event, which saw you tracking down Skeleton Thrones, you'll gain Doubloons for your trouble which you can then use to buy limited edition outfit items or trade in for reputation with the game's permanent factions.
Blizzard has seemingly unveiled Hammond, its latest Overwatch hero. Hammond is a hamster in a mech suit. A teaser video posted to Overwatch's official Twitter account shows Hammond rolling in wearing a hulking metal suit, like one of the droidekas from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Turrets fire, and the camera zooms in as the top pops open to reveal... the cute hamster within. Fans have reacted in surprise to the reveal - and delight that Hammond's identity as a hamster was correctly called by Overwatch reddit user just 24 hours ago.
Last October, EA shut down Visceral Games, which had been working on a secretive under-wraps Star Wars project led by Uncharted creator Amy Hennig. The game - codenamed Ragtag - was said to be too linear by EA bosses and . Since then, , we've heard nothing about the aftermath: what had happened to Hennig, or what the future might still hold for the game under its new guise. Today, at the Gamelab conference in Barcelona, Hennig revealed to Eurogamer's Rob Purchese that she had actually parted ways with EA as of January this year and was in the process of starting up her new, independent studio - but had not yet had the chance to announce the change or set the record straight. As for that exciting-sounding Uncharted-inspired Star Wars game she had been creative director of - it's not good news. Read on for her full response.
The Australian Classification Board has announced that, following a successful appeal by publisher Gearbox, Compulsion Games' psychedelic dystopian adventure We Happy Few will now receive a R 18+ classification, enabling the game to be sold in the country. Back in May, We Happy Few was in Australia, effectively banning it from sale, after it fell foul of the ratings board's strict policies on drug use in games. The board claimed that its drug-use mechanic, which can make progress easier in some circumstances, "constitutes an incentive or reward for drug-use and therefore, the game exceeds the R 18+ classification that states, 'drug use related to incentives and rewards is not permitted'". In response, Compulsion Games noted that We Happy Few's "overarching social commentary is no different than Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, or Terry Gilliam's Brazil", highlighting that the game unfolds in a world where use of the drug Joy is mandated by the authorities, and that "the whole point of the game is to reject this programming and fight back".