We sat down to talk about lore, game mechanics, and community issues with Final Fantasy XIV’s Director and Producer, and the man responsible for Shadowbringer’s main scenario quest.
source /interview/8898-final-fantasy-xiv-interview-sitting-down-with-naoki-yoshida-and-banri-oda
These two characters are the new marriage candidates.
source /news/8901-story-of-seasons-friends-in-mineral-town-new-characters-jennifer-and-brandon-introduced
We sat down to talk about lore, game mechanics, and community issues with Final Fantasy XIV’s Director and Producer, and the man responsible for Shadowbringer’s main scenario quest.
source /news/8898-final-fantasy-xiv-interview-sitting-down-with-naoki-yoshida-and-banri-oda
A leak from the latest GameStop conference has revealed that HD remasters of the ’90s Aladdin and The Lion King SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games could be on their way to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch later this year.
The leak was first reported by Twitter user Wolverinefactor, who says the remasters will include the original soundtracks and contain both the SNES and Genesis versions of the games. A follow-up tweet says they’ll each be available to pre-order from GameStop “tomorrow morning”, so they might appear sometime today if this leak is correct.
Aladdin and Lion King game remakes hitting October – all systems – just announced at GameStop con @Wario64
— W (@wolverinefactor) August 27, 2019
Another source corroborated the information with Gematsu, reporting that both games will be playable in their original resolutions or in 1080p. There will also be new features that allow players to fast-forward and rewind to any point in the game, and they’ll even include the option to let the game take over to show players how to clear a stage. These sound like welcome additions after a childhood spent falling off the heads of giraffes.
GameXplain substantiated the leak even further by supplying an image that looks like it was taken from the event, showing physical copies of the game for all consoles with a fall release window.
There’s no sign of a PC version yet, though Disney did previously release Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Jungle Book on PC via GOG in 2016.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/aladdin-and-the-lion-king-90s-classics-to-reported/1100-6469438/
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford continues to be embroiled in legal disputes stemming from a host of allegations made against him over the past few months. Wade Callender, Gearbox’s former legal counsel, filed a motion on Tuesday in Dallas County (Texas) district court for contempt and requested sanctions against Gearbox, alleging “discovery abuse” and failure to produce certain court-ordered documents.
This is the latest filing in a lengthy legal battle between Pitchford and Callender. It started with a filing by Gearbox in November 2018, alleging that Callender “exploit[ed] Gearbox’s generosity and trust for his own personal gain.” Callender responded with a countersuit a month later, accusing the Gearbox CEO of harassing the company’s former general counsel because of his Christian faith. The suit also accused Pitchford of taking a “secret” $12 million bonus as an advance on royalties, and of syphoning profits from Gearbox to fund “Peacock Parties” where adult male guests “reportedly exposed themselves to minors, to the amusement of Randy Pitchford.” There was also the USB drive Pitchford left in a Texas restaurant allegedly containing sensitive corporate information from the studio and its business partners–such as 2K Games, Take-Two Interactive, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft–as well as “underage pornography.” Ten days after the filing, Gearbox sued Callender for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty.
“Callender believes he can prove that GBX (Gearbox), and their lawyers, continue to violate this Court’s order and hide documents,” the most recent filing reads. “Enough is enough and GBX needs to be held in contempt and sanctioned for this behavior.” This follows months of back-and-forth legal disputes between the two parties. Callender served Gearbox with a set of eight interrogatories in February of this year, which the Borderlands developer responded to in March with a one-page document. Callender claimed a deficiency in this response and requested an amendment. After a week with no response, Callender filed a motion to compel Gearbox to respond to the deficiency letter. Gearbox agreed to provide amended interrogatory responses by July 3, but a later 30-day extension pushed this back to August 2.
When the latest deadline arrived, Gearbox provided their response, which included text correspondence between Pitchford and a “member of the press that he had podcast with” in which the two discuss the aforementioned USB drive. Pitchford appeared on the December 22 episode of the Piff Pod podcast one day after Callender’s suit was filed. During the conversation with comedian and fellow magician, host John van der Put, Pitchford mentioned the USB drive contained “barely legal pornography.”
“In response to ‘Is the USB stick falling out or has the internet moved on now?’, Pitchford replied ‘Internet is fine. All they care about is if my next video game is good or not.’ It comes as no surprise that GBX did not want to disclose this very telling document,” the latest filing claims.
The allegations claim the USB stick was discovered at a Medieval Times restaurant in 2014, in a location a stone’s throw away from Gearbox’s Plano, Texas, headquarters. During this time, Callender and other Gearbox counsel were mediating the Aliens: Colonial Marines class-action; another case where Pitchford’s conduct has been controversial. Earlier this year, Pitchford was involved in another dispute with former Gearbox vice president (and the original voice of Borderlands’ Claptrap), David Eddings. After Pitchford called him “bitter and disgruntled,” Eddings spoke up and accused the Gearbox CEO of physically assaulting him in a hotel lobby during GDC 2017, along with numerous other allegations.
On Monday, ahead of Callender’s official filing, the Dallas County Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Gearbox’s request for relief. The company claimed the “trial court abused its discretion by overruling numerous objections to requests for production of documents and compelling production of certain documents.” The appellate court stated that Gearbox “have not shown they are entitled to the relief requested.”
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/gearbox-ceo-randy-pitchford-accused-of-contempt-in/1100-6469437/
Ubisoft has announced the PC specifications for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, while the publisher has also detailed some of the graphics options that players will have access to.
You can see the full PC specs below, covering Breakpoint’s minimum, recommended, ultra, and elite settings. It should help you get an idea for if your computer is able to run the upcoming game.
PC players are promised “full PC optimization,” and this includes uncapped frame rate, support for ultra-wide and multi-monitor setups, and eye-tracking with tobii, and more.
Breakpoint launches on October 4, but Ubisoft is inviting people to play early with a closed beta that starts on September 5. The beta is available on all platforms–PC, Xbox One, and PS4–but you need to pre-order or sign up for Ubisoft’s new service, Uplay+, to get access.
The Walking Dead actor Jon Bernthal plays a villain in Breakpoint named Cole Walker, and you can see more of him in the trailer embedded above. Ubisoft has said it plans to support the game for “years” after launch.
In other news, Breakpoint will release exclusively on the Epic Games Store for PC, not Steam, in case that matters to you.
PC Specifications
Minimum – Low Setting | 1080p
Recommended – High Setting | 1080p
Ultra – Ultra Setting | 1080p
Ultra 2K – Ultra Setting | 2K
Elite – Ultra Setting | 4K
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ghost-recon-breakpoint-pc-requirements-revealed-se/1100-6469435/
Ubisoft executive Chris Early, who is the VP for partnerships and revenue at the Assassin’s Creed company, has spoken up to share his thoughts on Steam. Speaking to The New York Times, Early said the company’s business model, as it stands today, is unworkable.
“It’s unrealistic, the current business model they have. It doesn’t reflect where the world is today in terms of game distribution,” he said.
It’s not completely clear what part of Steam’s business model Early is speaking about. It may be in reference to the revenue split that Steam offers. Steam typically keeps 30 percent of game sales, with 70 percent going to developers/publishers. By contrast, the Epic Games Store offers much more to the people who make games; on the Epic Games Store, 88 percent of revenue goes back to developers.
Given Early’s comments, it’s not hard to understand why Ubisoft elected to release The Division 2–one of the company’s biggest games of 2019–on the Epic Games Store instead of Steam. The Division 2 was also released on Ubisoft’s own Uplay store, and sales of the game there grew 10X after the decision to bypass Steam.
It’s not clear if Ubisoft will have a strict “no Steam” policy with its future releases. One of the company’s major upcoming games, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, will also not be sold on Steam.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is also quoted in the story, and he spoke about how game stores are known to “extract an enormous portion of game industry profits.” As such, they are “ripe for disruption,” he said
Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes is quoted as well. He talked about how he believes the video game business needs better systems for buying and selling games. “The only way we’ll get it is if companies with tons of money are innovating and trying to outdo each other,” he said.
The full story is fascinating and well worth a read.
For what it’s worth, Epic has stated it will change its policy of chasing exclusives if Valve reduces the cut it takes from game sales on Steam.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/steams-business-model-is-unrealistic-ubisoft-execu/1100-6469434/
One of 2019’s biggest games, Borderlands 3, launches very soon. Those looking to pick up the PC version can now have a look at the minimum and recommend specs, which publisher 2K posted today
In addition to the specs themselves, which appear to be fairly reasonable, 2K posted a list of the many different graphics settings and visual options that PC players can take advantage of. Players will be able to tweak things like the field of view, ambient occlusion, and screen space reflections. Additionally, players are able to adjust things like the foliage detail, draw distance, character texture detail, and shadows, among many other things. Have a look at the lists below to see more.
The PC version of Borderlands 3 is exclusive to the Epic Games Store through April 2020. At that point, it may release on other platforms such as Steam and others.
Borderlands 3 launches on September 13 for PC, in addition to Xbox One and PlayStation 4. In other news, a new crossover event between Borderlands 3 and Fortnite has begun in the battle royale game.
Minimum
Recommended
General
Preferences
General
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/borderlands-3-pc-specs-are-pretty-reasonable-see-t/1100-6469432/
PAX West 2019 is shaping up to be a fun show that’s packed with plenty of cool games to check out. There’s going to be some heavy hitters like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Marvel’s Avengers, but PAX West will also host a number of indie titles looking to leave their mark. Some of the most fun to be had, however, can be found at the panels and community events happening over the course of the show.
In addition to our general coverage of the show, which you can keep track of on our PAX hub page, GameSpot will also host a panel on September 1 focusing on games that left a notable impression on us–despite making a poor first impression on us. Joining editor Michael Higham and video producers Jean-Luc Seipke and Jake Dekker are, Giant Bomb’s Abby Russell, USGamer’s Mike Williams, and freelance writer Ginny Woo, all of which will highlight their dark horse picks. You can find all the panel info you need on the PAX West official site, but here’s the rundown on what our panel is all about:
Sunday, September 1, 2019 | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST | CAT THEATRE
Surprise! It’s your favorite game you thought you’d never touch. Join GameSpot and friends as they unpack why certain games overcame our apparent disdain for a certain genre or style of game. Attendees will have a chance to share their picks as well and convince us it’s the next best game you didn’t know you needed!
If you’re attending PAX West 2019 on Sunday, September 1, feel free to swing by for our panel. For more on all things PAX, including news on Cyberpunk 2077 and our growing gallery rounding up the most interesting games of the show, be sure to check back with GameSpot over the course of the show.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/join-gamespot-for-our-pax-west-2019-panel-on-lovin/1100-6469405/
From the big cinematic trailer revealed at Gamescom, it’s not immediately apparent exactly what V1 Interactive’s first game, Disintegration, actually is. The trailer highlights a futuristic, bulky hovering vehicle called a grav-cycle that you’ll be piloting, and its first-person shooter pedigree gives some clues–it’s headed up by Marcus Lehto, a co-creator of the Halo universe. It turns out that Disintegration is more than just another futuristic FPS, though. It mixes in elements of the real-time strategy genre to become a hectic hybrid, requiring you not just to land your headshots, but to use your head, as well.
At Gamescom, we played a few matches of Disintegration’s multiplayer PvP mode, which pits teams of five players against one another. Each player pilots a floating armored tank known as a grav-cycle, while also taking command of a small squad of other units. The FPS aspect of the game has you blasting away at ground troops and other grav-cycles with machine guns and grenade launchers that are attached to the rig. You’re also responsible for a team on the ground that might consist of characters carrying sniper or assault rifles, as well as a beefier teammate in what looks like an Aliens power loader. As the team leader, you’re not just responsible for racking up kills and dealing damage with your powerful weapons; you also need to tell your squad what to do and when to deploy their special abilities, which can change the flow of battle pretty significantly.
Lehto said the idea is that your grav-cycle and its weapons are basically your right hand, while the squad on the ground is your left. Each member of your group can do different things, like deploy a stasis field that slows enemy units or fire off a missile barrage that does big damage in a certain area. Your job is as much to guide them as to keep them alive, though; when your squad gets blasted, you’ll have to wait for them to respawn, which puts you at a serious disadvantage.
You need to take care of your squad because they’re more easily killed than your much-tougher grav-cycle, but that doesn’t mean you’re babysitting them, Lehto said. A big challenge in designing the game was making the squad feel like an extension of the player in terms of combat, without making them an irritation. That meant making the units a little more autonomous than what you might expect from an RTS, he explained.
“We’re building in a lot of mechanics to keep those units close to you at all times,” Lehto told GameSpot. “They’re tethered to the grav-cycle. If the player moves the units, they’re literally firing a weapon from the grav-cycle down to the terrain to say move here, or attack this, or prioritize this as a target. So you can engage other grav-cycles and other enemy units and have your units focus-fire on them, and that sort of thing, or tell them to move over to a particular location where they can engage in combat and you can flank from a different perspective. So there are a lot of ways that you can engage as a crew, as a singular unit, and that’s the way we think about this game, where pilot and grav-cycle are one part of the equation and the units are another part of the equation, and they are a single entity.”
The game type in the demo was sort of a reverse of capture the flag. One team plays offense and the other defense, with the attacking team attempting to carry one of two bombs into the defenders’ territory to score a point. The thing is, bombs can only be carried by your smaller units. That means you need to defend your squad and be careful about where you send them. If they die, the bomb drops on the ground, and after a short while, it explodes, taking anyone in the vicinity with it.
While there’s already a lot going on in any given battle thanks to plenty of grav-cycles and units, Disintegration adds another layer to your tactical thinking by letting you choose from different grav-cycle crews to control at any point during a match. Each crew has a different visual theme, a different squad makeup, and a different set of abilities; Lehto likened them to “biker gangs of the future.” It’s here that Disintegration lets you adjust your capabilities to meet your style or your team’s needs. Some crews are better at long-range combat, others are heavy hitters close up. You might grab a crew that specializes in deploying abilities that slow up enemies so your teammates can blast them, or hang back and shoot your teammates with a healing weapon that helps them stay in the fight longer.
It’s a lot to keep track of, and our hands-on time with Disintegration started with a steep learning curve of getting used to handling the grav-cycle, which is a bit slow and methodical in its movement. The benefit is the cycle can gain or drop altitude to gain better sightlines and boost short distances to get out of danger. Things started to gel as our team got the hang of how V1 wants you to think about Disintegration, however. It’s not a rip-roaring run-and-gun kind of game; it’s a slower and more cerebral experience, even when there are several players and their units engaging in a single battle.
Because you have the squad with you, it’s necessary to think about how best to use your units to your advantage. You can send them to a location to get them into cover or give them a better shot at enemies while you engage enemy grav-cycles yourself. Between shooting, positioning your grav-cycle, positioning your units, using their abilities, and coordinating with your human teammates, there’s a lot to keep in mind. But those elements also give you a wealth of combat possibilities that go beyond just charging into a fight and slugging it out with an enemy group. If you can keep your head when things start to get messy, you can outmaneuver and outplay your enemies–but that requires changing how you think about first-person shooter engagements. Fast responses and strategic assessments are essential, and in our session, we finally managed victory when our team started surrounding and flanking opponents to make it tough for them to chase down bomb-carrying units.
Lehto said that even though V1 is a smaller studio–it only sports a staff of about 30–players can expect more post-release content for Disintegration.
“The point of what we’re constructing right now is that we’re making sure that we can easily add onto it,” he said. “Especially on the multiplayer side, with regards to new multiplayer modes, new maps, new crews, new skins for players to aesthetically upgrade their crews for the way they look, and attachments for your grav-cycle so you can really customize things and make things your own.”
Disintegration is set to launch sometime in 2020 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/shooter-real-time-strategy-form-a-hectic-mix-in-di/1100-6469430/
