The long-awaited adaptation of the anime classic Ghost in the Shell finally arrives next week, and a new clip has been released. It shows star Scarlett Johansson as cyborg cop The Major using the franchise’s iconic thermoptic camouflage to deliver some rough justice. Check it out below:
In a recent interview with Den of Geek, director Rupert Sanders spoke about the approach that he and Johansson took to Ghost in the Shell. “Scarlett and I were very categorical that we wanted to do something different,” he said. “We wanted to exist beyond the Marvel universe, beyond the DC universe. We wanted to be the rogue, I guess.
“I think we’ve succeeded in that. It’s a really emotional and hopefully thought-provoking film, but it also delivers what you want to see in a film for that kind of audience. You want to see a big, action packed film, but at the same time, as you’re moving along, you’re into the action because you care about the action because you care about what they’re going through.”
Ghost in the Shell also stars Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Juliette Binoche, and Michael Pitt. It hits theaters on March 30.
Another teaser video for Destiny‘s upcoming Age of Triumph event has arrived, with this one focused on some of the new and updated gear you’ll be able to obtain.
The video (above) appears to show off new armor–which is something we know that’s on the way–along with new Raid Ornaments. There are also “reprised” weapons on display, including what looks like Fatebringer and the Vex Mythoclast.
All of this will be covered during a livestream scheduled for this Wednesday, March 22. It’s the third of three streams planned before Age of Triumph launches; previous broadcasts focused on new quests and updated Raids.
Veteran game developer David Jaffe didn’t get to where he is by filtering his thoughts. It’s fitting these days given the deliberately raw art style of his next game, Drawn To Death. Its high school-doodle-inspired visuals look like it’s never been evaluated by a marketing department, which makes the game all the more intriguing. Underneath its juvenile humor is a potentially deep multiplayer shooter-brawler. In our most recent chat with Jaffe, it was easy to sense his excitement for the April 4th release of Drawn To Death. And despite his enthusiasm, it was refreshing to hear someone with his industry experience express uncertainty of how Drawn To Death will be received.
Gamespot: How has Drawn To Death evolved since your last round of press previews last year?
David Jaffe: It’s just gotten deeper. It’s probably one of the hardest games to impress upon because there’s so much stuff. Every weapon, every character, even levels–we’ve had the benefit of time to put in all of this nuance and mechanics. It’s hard to express that in soundbites. You always want to put as much depth and mechanics into a game as you can. You’re typically pushed up against the wall with time. In Drawn To Death, I think we’ve gotten the benefits of time to flesh out these characters in the weapons and other things.
A lot of times when I talk to people about the game, I’ll say it’s like a hybrid shooter-brawler. What we are trying to build is a skill-based competitive game. That includes learning special moves of individual characters and their pros and cons against other characters.
It sounds like you’re implementing fighting strategies in a shooter.
That’s right, yeah. I’ve always used brawler because fighting game might sound a little bit hyperbolistic. The goal for us is that if you look at a lot of shooters, there’s a high concentration of meta progression, whether it’s leveling up your overall account rank, your weapons, or what have you. This whole game was built around the question of whether we could enrich and deepen the moment to moment on-the-battlefield experience, where the players are gonna do the best are not all the players who have good shooter reflexes but who are mentally engaged in with they’re fighting, which character they’ve picked and knowing the pros, cons, and counters. What we wanted was a feeling of having learned a bit more about the mechanics of the game after every match, no matter if you won or not. There should always be a sense of, “I may not have done great but I know there’s more. There’s a deeper end of the pool I can go into to get better.”
How do you think Drawn To Death communicates that?
I don’t know. I literally don’t know. I’m coming to interviews like this and I’m trying to make sure that hopefully the press will like the game. When they play, watch, and experience the game, they’ll go, “Okay, we get what Jaffe is saying.” These characters are more than just different skins with one or two special moves.
There’s going to be a large number of gamers who’ll come in and hopefully they’ll enjoy it when they pick it up, run around, and do some fun moves. Hopefully in little time they’ll start to see the real meat of the game and mastering the great level of depth. That applies to not just the characters.
We see people checking out Drawn To Death just for the weapons. Some are straightforward and basic like the Tommy gun. It’s a horrible weapon unless you’re moving in close. It’s almost like a machine gun shotgun. A lot of the weapons are definitely more satisfying if you take the time to learn how they work. For example, we have these two monkeys, Emily and the devil monkey. They both eat bananas as ammo and they shit out little blobs of poop, which you can throw. What I love about this weapon is it’s very high risk-reward. It’s hard to kill in the game. We want players to experience more of a brawler game where you’re not dead after just a couple of hits. The high level goal is to bring a shooter that really rewards players for not just fast skill but a lot of mental engagement.
Can you share more about what content you’ll have at launch?
We’ll launch with 6 characters, 7 maps, 5 modes, 20-plus weapons, and a very large number of costumes, skins, and taunts. Some of these are harder to unlock than others. All of our unlocks are built around not affecting gameplay. There are weapons to unlock but there’s no powering up and leveling up weapons. It’s all about player skill.
There’s also Tower Mode which is very much inspired by the Hearthstone rank system. If you get into the ranked mode every season, you’ll have these different towers that you can work your way up. In the first season, we’re going with a dark funny Grimm fairy tales look. You’ve got little gnomes that are killing unicorns and if you move on to the next floor, you see they’re actually selling dildos in the x-rated store.
Each tower gives you stickers depending if you can make it all the way to the top. Then every season we’ll refresh the tower. I think next season is crazy science fiction. Just stuff the student artist would draw. There’s just a lot of nuance that we want players to pick up on. There’s tons of secrets in all the maps and a lot to discover in the designs of the levels themselves.
I was gonna ask about that. What is below the surface of the map designs themselves?
I want the story embedded in the game so players can discover pieces of the doodler’s life. There are no cutscenes or anything like that. If you look up in one map, there’s a detention slip based on the fight the guy got in with another guy in the opening. When you explore, you’ll see things he’s written about in the margins. There’s this girl in class he likes. Her name is Amy and if you explore the levels there’s stuff you’ll find related to her. They got little conversations and she’s written things in the notebook. There’s also animations happening in the backgrounds you can look for.
The hope is that players who really get into the game will start to piece together not only the fiction of the individual characters’ own stories and relationships, but also who this guy is and why he’s drawing what he’s drawing. On the surface, it is a very juvenile level of humor. There’s a giant butthole and vomit jokes but this game is also about a kid who’s drawing these characters. For instance, there’s Alan, a character based on his step dad who he cannot stand. You can start to learn about the relationships between him and his stepdad, his mom, his brother, and his sister through the game.
I love storytelling but I don’t like the way traditional games do it with just cutscenes. I like it more where you really are invested in the game and as you start to explore, you’ll see that the story is embedded all around the nooks and crannies of the game.
The story is very juvenile and funny but there’s also a sweetness and heart to it. It’s reflecting a typical teenage kid who’s just trying to get through high school and uses his art, drawing, and creativity to make his day go faster and make things a little less challenging.
My biggest challenge, my biggest worry is that there are people who only understand the game’s juvenile side. I love the juvenile stuff. I’m not embarrassed. What I thought was funny at 15 is absolutely what I still think is funny now. I like fart jokes, dick jokes, and butthole jokes. What’s funny about a butthole joke? Cause you have a hole in your butt and poop comes out of it.
There is very much a sense of that in Drawn To Death but I also think there is a self awareness that I hope people pick up on like the announcer. When he says, “Headshot!, it’s very clear we’re ripping on 90s arcade shooters and racers. If you play enough, you start to actually hear this guy talk about how he’s living with his mother. His mother’s like, “Dude you’re too f***ing loud!” He acknowledges he hasn’t worked as an announcer since the 90s when they stopped making arcade racers and so he’s thrilled to be working again. He’s complaining about the game not being pay to win because he has to take the bus into work but he cannot afford a car. There’s an awareness of the juvenile aspect but there’s also a non-apologetic aspect. I don’t know how that alchemy is gonna work when it comes to the humor but we’ll see.
I like fart jokes, dick jokes, and butthole jokes. What’s funny about a butthole joke? Cause you have a hole in your butt and poop comes out of it.
Can you speak more about the features beyond the PvP multiplayer?
We have Sphinx missions which are these sets of riddles you can solve. If you figure them out, you unlock levels, hand moves, and weapons that are separate from just the normal group of weapons you unlock by playing the game.
There’s a lot to do in that launch content but I do think it’s correct to say that I have always looked at this as a service based game. We want to put out new content as often as we can. That’s new levels, characters, weapons, and build a community around the people who really vibe with this game. You know how it goes. That’s the pipe dream. It’s like watching a TV series. You hope you’re in business 3 years later and on Season 3 but the Day One launch content is still super compelling and robust.
So Drawn To Death has global profile challenges and character-based challenges, correct?
Yeah. We have a bunch of these costumes to unlock; you work through each character. If you’re into this specific character or into the game in general, there’s a lot of things to chase and go after. None of it affects the gameplay other than just getting new stuff to play with. None of it makes you more powerful.
What were some of the inspirations that led to some of the character designs?
For Alan, we knew that we wanted to do a character inspired by movie slashers like Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers. We probably spent about three or four weeks just looking at more of the traditional, hockey mask-wearing slashers that a kid would associate with. That was really just looking for the creepiest thing we could find, while also something that was original enough. We haven’t seen a lot of creepy mascot characters, like a dark version of Mickey Mouse.
That’s where he came from. If we were to make a slasher movie, that would be a really cool one, like a rundown theme park or fast food restaurant mascot where the costume has kind of gone to shit. It’s matted and moldy and it’s got parts gnawed out of it. Who is inside this costume saying all these creepy weird things and stuff?
Given the art direction, I assume there are very few characters that don’t make it past the conceptual phase.
Well, so far, very few. What’s cool about the game is that we’re able to exert unbridled creativity. Whatever the kid can draw, we can do, right? It’s not like we’ve had a lot of limiting factors of characters. I think it’s the ones that don’t stand out with a personality, the ones that don’t pop or are memorable. I think Ninjaw is a sexy, sharp woman, and just such a weird concept. When one of our concept members came up with it and drew it, that was an instant one.
There’s kind of an unembarrassed lack of a filter that happens when you doodle and that certainly happens when you’re a kid who’s in a sort of stream of consciousness. If I were to come to Gamespot and say, “We’re spending $250 million making a game about a robot cyborg vampire.” You would say that’s got B movie written all over it. That’s super cheesy and stupid. But it feels like it fits right in with a kid who’s just like, “I like vampires and robots are cool. I’ll mash them up!”
When you’re drawing and doodling, especially when you’re a kid and you’re bored in class, there isn’t that editorial voice. It goes straight from dumping your stream of consciousness onto paper. He hasn’t really filtered these characters and he hasn’t really worried about what people are going to think. In some ways, that’s what I love the most about the game. I really think it has a point of view, a voice, and a spirit that reflects that.
You don’t know what is or isn’t going to be a hit. But I do think there are going to be players out there that take it at face value and maybe don’t view it as a reflection of that unbridled creative innocence. They just go, “A f***ing vampire robot? That’s f***ing stupid.” And they just dismiss it out of hand.
I don’t know where we’re going to come down on that, but I’m tremendously excited by it and proud of it, because it really does reflect that spirit, even though I’m very many years removed from being 15 or 16 and doodling in my notebooks. I think the art team has done a really good job of connecting with that.
It’s hard to talk about multiplayer shooters these days without wondering if Overwatch influenced Drawn To Death in recent months.
Not really. We were in development around the time they were so it’s not like we played Overwatch. Honestly, I’m a huge Hearthstone fan. I love Blizzard for that. I’m not a big Overwatch fan for the same reason I’m not a big shooter player where it often seems to be too fast for me. I love the art and character designs in Overwatch but honestly I haven’t played Overwatch enough. This game is much more influenced by Quake, Super Smash Brothers, and Hearthstone.
You guys didn’t go into your business model initially with PlayStation Plus as the front-runner, correct?
No, no, no. We started as a free-to-play game. Sony was doing some free-to-play initiatives at the time. I’ve had a handful of thoughts on free-to-play that I look at as positive. But there was a sense of rejecting free-to-play in the console space. It didn’t leave a good taste in the mouths of console gamers.
There was enough data coming through globally about free-to-play on console that said to us, “Okay, let’s walk away from that business model but maintain the essence of what the game is.” Then when Plus came, it was like, “Holy shit, that’s the best of both worlds.” Something like Plus puts us in a position where people don’t really feel any kind of real risk, hopefully.
Now I’m thinking of how games like Rocket League helped demystify this free-to-play perception.
Yeah, I think Rocket League’s a great example. I don’t know how Disc Jam will ultimately do but I think it’s a fantastic game as well. I think it’s a wonderful way to put really cool quality games that, conceptually, might be a little off the beaten path.
There’s a balance, though, because there are people who would be very happy if every month they got an Uncharted 4 for free. I get that there’s that voice on Plus where they want that level of game. You never know if it’s going to be a month that really excites you. I think Drawn To Death is such a robust package and interesting while still in a genre that’s pretty commercial. Hopefully, Plus members will feel excited by the opportunity to give it a shot.
You can always count on that NeoGAF knee-jerk reaction a second after the lineup announcement.
Yeah. You got to be careful. Live by NeoGAF, die by NeoGAF. I’ve had days where they’ve loved stuff that I’m working on and days where they’re just like, “You’re a f***ing idiot, Jaffe.” The second news comes out, it’s almost like you ignore the first three pages and then go to the fourth page and go, “Okay, what do they really think?”
Pokemon developer Game Freak’s current project is unknown, but we may have just received some small clues.
A new job ad (translated by Siliconera and IGN) reveal that the company is hiring temporary employees to work on a “globally popular RPG” whose platform will be “console.”
The job requires someone with experience in creating character models to the level of Wii U and PS Vita, reports Siliconera. The title of the game is not stated, but it is apparently “an RPG game that is popular on a global scale,” that “just about anyone knows.”
It should be noted that the job ad is found on third-party job listing site Indeed. Similar ads can be found on Game Freak’s site, though these do not state the information found in the Indeed listings.
Game Freak is best known, of course, for developing the mainline Pokemon games. Outside of the critter-collecting phenomenon, the company has made smaller titles like HarmoKnight and Tembo the Badass Elephant, the latter of which released for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Mainline Pokemon games have always been exclusive to Nintendo consoles, however.
Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has shared what could be the first ever picture of Luke Skywalker. Hamill tweeted the image of himself on the Star Wars set, on the very first day of shooting in 1976. Check it out below:
Taken in Tunisia early morning Day #1 waiting for my 1st shot (emerging from home for robot auction)-Perhaps the very 1st #LukePic#SWpic.twitter.com/WMCGnWCotP
As Hamill notes, Star Wars began production in Tunisia, where all the Tatooine scenes were filmed, before moving to London for the rest of the shoot.
In response to that image, Hamill was asked by Warner Animation publicist Gary Miereanu how he was feeling at the time: “At that very moment, were you thinking ‘This is gonna be my big break’ or ‘Crap, it’s early, dusty and way too bright?’”
Hamill replied by saying, “Judging by my clueless expression, probably both. Crew was kind but thought #SW was ‘rubbish.’ I kept telling them: ‘We’re on a winner!’”
“I think we are all going to be very upset if he does not win an Oscar, and no one more upset than Mark,” Abrams said, possibly not entirely seriously.
The first official poster for the upcoming fantasy movie The Dark Tower has been released. The film hits theaters in July, and this poster suggests that it will deliver something spectacular. Check it out below:
The Dark Tower is based on Stephen King’s classic series of fantasy novels. The movie was originally set to hit theaters in February, but the release date was subsequently moved back to July 28. At the time, it was reported that the ambitious post-production process meant that hitting a February release would have added millions to the budget, so Sony decided to delay the release instead.
The film stars Idris Elba as gunslinger Roland Deschain, while Matthew McConaughey is playing demonic sorcerer Walter Padick, aka The Man in Black. The movie is directed by Nikolaj Arcel, who previously helmed the Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair. Check out The Dark Tower‘s first official images here.
Last September it was also revealed that Sony are planning a Dark Tower TV show. It will be an adaptation of 1997’s Wizard and Glass, the fourth book in King’s epic series, and will feature both Elba and his 15-year-old co-star Tom Taylor. The pair will form part of a framing device for the central story, which is set many years before the events of the film.
The Dark Tower encompasses eight novels, which King published between 1982 and 2012. The books blend classic western themes with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy.
Ghost Recon: Wildlands has finished top of the UK physical sales chart for the second week running. Ubisoft’s open-world game was the biggest UK launch of 2017 so far last week, and it has held on to the No.1 spot for the week ending March 18.
Below Wildlands, Lego Worlds rises one position in its second week on sale to No.2, which pushes Sony’s PlayStation 4 exclusive Horizon Zero Dawn down one place to No.3.
Next week’s chart may be be shaken up by Mass Effect: Andromeda, which launches in the UK on March 23 (March 21 in North America). For now however, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Lego Worlds, and Horizon Zero Dawn are enjoying the podium positions.
You can read the full top 10 sales chart below. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.
It’s been nearly five years since the last entry in the Mass Effect franchise. Mass Effect 3 launched in 2012 to mixed reception, with fans disappointed by BioWare’s ending to the trilogy and characters they’d grown to love so dearly.
The latest in the series, Mass Effect: Andromeda, brings the series to a whole new galaxy, with new locations and new personalities to explore. We recently interviewed BioWare about the controversy surrounding the end to the original trilogy and how that affected the development of Andromeda–check out The Story of Mass Effect: Andromeda – Episode 1 and Episode 2 to find out more.
For now though, let’s dig into reviews for BioWare’s latest sci-fi adventure. In our own verdict, critic Scott Butterworth said the game “feels like a vision half-fulfilled.” He said it contains “a dizzying amount of content, but the quality fluctuates wildly.” Find out more in our full Mass Effect: Andromeda review.
For a selection of other critics’ opinions, check out the roundup below–or for a wider view on critical opinion, you can take a look at GameSpot sister site Metacritic.
“In many ways, Andromeda feels like a vision half-fulfilled. It contains a dizzying amount of content, but the quality fluctuates wildly. Its worlds and combat shine, but its writing and missions falter–and the relative strength of the former is not enough to compensate for the inescapable weakness of the latter. As a Mass Effect game, Andromeda falls well short of the nuanced politics, morality, and storytelling of its predecessors. For me, the series has always been about compelling characters and harrowing choices, so to find such weak writing here is bitterly disappointing. Yet even after 65 hours, I still plan on completing a few more quests. The game can’t escape its shortcomings, but patient explorers can still find a few stars shining in the darkness.” — Scott Butterworth [Full review]
IGN — 7.7/10
“Mass Effect: Andromeda is an expansive action role-playing game with a few great moments that recapture the high points of the landmark trilogy that came before it, and energetic combat and fantastic sound effects contribute to a potent sci-fi atmosphere. Without consistently strong writing or a breakout star in its cast to carry it through the long hours and empty spaces, however, disappointments like a lack of new races, no companion customization, and major performance problems and bugs take their toll.” — Dan Stapleton [Full review]
Game Informer — 8/10
“When taken as its own journey (and not in comparison to Shepard’s saga), Mass Effect: Andromeda is fun, and the important parts work. The narrative isn’t astounding, but keeps you invested and drives you forward. The combat is entertaining whether you’re in single-player or multiplayer. The crew isn’t my favorite, but I like them and they have some good moments. Even with its other problems, these are the largest forces shaping your experience with Mass Effect: Andromeda, and they make it worth playing. At the same time, I was often left looking through a haze of inconveniences and dreaming about the game it could have been.” — Joe Juba [Full review]
Polygon — 7.5/10
“After a number of complaints, it might seem odd to end on such a positive note. Let’s be clear: I’m conflicted about Mass Effect: Andromeda. There’s a lot of roughness throughout the game, and the technical issues, while not game-breaking, are often incredibly distracting.
“But it’s my time with the cast that I’m still thinking about, and the mysteries about the world that haven’t been answered that make me feel like I’m waiting once again for a new Mass Effect game. And if I’m judging a game by where it leaves me, Andromeda succeeds, even if it stumbled getting there.” — Arthur Gies [Full review]
PC Gamer — 80/100
“In the end, Andromeda still manages to be more than the sum of its parts. As a critic I can point to the things that don’t quite work, the things that could be better, the things that should be better after 10 years and four of these games. I can also appreciate where improvements have been made, the basic pleasure of an improved combat system and a full-feeling, spectacular sci-fi world to explore.
“Yet I’m also aware that when I’m in Mass Effect’s zone a lot of these dry pros and cons don’t seem to matter as much. This is a series that has always been good at getting under your skin, that has built its reputation on the moments when all of those disparate elements, good and bad, cohere into an adventure that feels like it’s happening to you. Andromeda can still do that. It’s not perfect. It’s not consistent. But for a story about vast journeys and fresh starts, it also feels a little like coming home.” — Chris Thursten [Full review]
Disney’s newest live-action movie, Beauty and the Beast, had a massive opening domestically and internationally. According to first-weekend box office estimates posted by Entertainment Weekly, the film made $170 million in the US for the Friday-Sunday period.
This performance topples Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($166 million), which was the previous first-weekend record-holder for March.
Internationally, Beauty and the Beast pulled in $180 million for its opening weekend, giving the movie a total of $350 million. In just three days. It had a reported production budget of $160 million.
Rounding out the top five movies at the US box office this weekend were Kong: Skull Island ($28.9 million), Logan ($17.5 million), Get Out ($13.2 million), and The Shack ($6.1 million).
You can see the Top 10 March 17-19 estimates below, via EW:
Super Mario Run will launch for Android platforms on March 23, Nintendo has announced.
Back in January, Nintendo confirmed that Super Mario Run would arrive for Android in March, but this is the first we’re hearing of a specific date. The game arrives with the Version 2.0.0 update, though no other details about what the update will contain were shared (via DualShockers).
The game’s free download comes with a sampling of levels, but you need to pay $10 to unlock every course. According to Nintendo, five percent of players have paid to buy all the courses, meaning the game has brought in many millions of dollars in revenue so far.
