Category: Gamespot

[UPDATE] Telltale’s head of creative communications, Job Stauffer, has clarified the comments on Twitter. Telltale still aims to release every episode by the end of the year, but it won’t sacrifice quality to meet that goal.

“[W]e’re committed to a solid cadence of great content, but having the best content is priority,” Stauffer told GameSpot on Twitter. “We’ll work our hardest!” Stauffer also noted that the misquoted comments weren’t his; they were Telltale senior director of marketing Richard Iggo’s. The original story follows.

We got our first look at Batman: The Telltale Series at E3 through a series of screenshots and details, learning that we’d be able to play the first episode this summer. Now, we’ve learned that its whole first season will release in 2016.

Telltale head of creative communications Job Stauffer talked to GamesMaster magazine (via GamesRadar) and revealed that “we’ll have all five episodes out before the end of the year.” With its unspecific summer release date, that could suggest the episodes will release monthly, something that’s not entirely common for the episodic developer–since 2011, only the Michonne miniseries released all of its episodes one month after another.

We saw the new Batman game at E3 and was impressed by how Telltale was serving the Bruce Wayne character. “It’s easy to forget how crucial he is to making the Batman an interesting hero, even the comics are guilty of underserving his side of the story,” GameSpot’s Tamoor Hussain wrote. You can read the full preview here.

Batman: The Telltale Series releases this summer for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and mobile devices.

Telltale’s working on other games as well. We’ll see the debut of The Walking Dead’s third season this year, while another season of its Game of Thrones series is also on the way at an unspecified date. Additionally, Telltale’s working on a Marvel series, though there has been no announcement on what the series will be about. It’s coming next year.

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The Witcher 3‘s Geralt already uses his Witcher senses in a detective-like fashion, so reimagining him as a noir detective feels right. That’s exactly what artist Ástor Alexander did in a series of pictures featuring Witcher characters in a noir style.

Alexander created three posters that look like they could each be for a different noir movie based on The Witcher 3’s quests. The Wild Hunt one is in reference to the main plot of Geralt’s search for Ciri, while the other two are based on side quests. The Last Wish is a quest that digs into Geralt and Yennefer’s past together and lets you decide their future, while A Matter of Life & Death has you helping Triss and other sorcerers and sorceresses escape Novigrad. You can check out the three posters below and see impressively detailed close-ups of each character on Alexander’s Tumblr page.

The posters depict the characters in more modern ways, while keeping their well-known traits alive. Geralt’s gun bears his five Witcher signs, Triss lights a cigarette with magic, and they all wear modern clothing. These posters do a fantastic job at capturing the noir feel and make me long for a detective game from CD Projekt Red.

In related news, there was some official Witcher cosplay at E3. It was part of the new Gwent game’s showing, and it was excellent. You can check out Geralt, Triss, and Eredin here.

Gwent might have you playing entirely with cards, but it turns out that it’s more like The Witcher 3 than you’d think. You can read GameSpot’s preview of the fantasy card game here. If you like the way it sounds, you can even sign up for a beta, which starts in September.

If you’re not interested in cards and just want more from The Witcher 3, I’m afraid you might be a bit disappointed that the last expansion, Blood and Wine, is the final adventure. It received a score of 8 in GameSpot’s review, in which critic Kevin VanOrd said, “Geralt deserves to be called a legend, of course, not least because he stars in one of the greatest role-playing games ever made. Perhaps we will join him in yet another adventure, but if Blood and Wine is the White Wolf’s final interactive appearance, he at least departs in style.”

You can read more of GameSpot’s coverage of The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine through the links below.

• How to Prepare Yourself for Witcher’s Blood and Wine Expansion
• Blood and Wine: Tips to Get You Ready
• Every Grandmaster Armor Set
• Best New Mutations
• How Good is Witcher 3: Blood & Wine?

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The Sniper Elite franchise doesn’t get enough credit for its emergent gameplay. In a post-Metal Gear world, it’s assuring to find a campaign mode where a single decision can blossom into myriad follow-up opportunities. This kind of unpredictability is one of the reasons why roguelikes and adversarial multiplayer games are popular. In the context of single player combat, Sniper Elite 4 preserves the series’ open ended, improvisation-driven designs while still preserving a goal-driven story.

It’s a narrative that continues Sniper Elite’s exploration into the campaigns of World War II where fictional missions are carried out in front of factual backdrops. The series has taken fans from Berlin to North Africa and now Italy.

The mission in Rebellion’s E3 demo’s was a perfect example of the journey being more crucial than the goal. The objective was straightforward: detonate a bomb on a train bridge in order to disrupt an crucial Nazi supply route. The path to the targeted bridge support is beset by patrols and a small base, practically ensuring you’re going to use more than a sniper rifle to complete the assignment. Having an expansive arsenal has always been the key feature that separates Sniper Elite from its main competitor, the Sniper: Ghost Warrior series. Sniping is just one component in a game loaded with other combat mechanics includes cover-based third person shooting and liberal grenade tossing (assuming you’re not a stickler for stealth).

The most fortunate players are either skilled multitaskers who can switch between weapons on the fly or focused snipers who are resourceful and patient enough to use their surroundings to their advantage. If you opt for ranged lethality, you’ll be treated to Sniper Elite’s trademark slow motion x-ray kills, where you’ll witness the detailed brutality of your targeting choice. It’s the kind of see-through gruesomeness that’s only rivaled by the last couple Mortal Kombat games.

Sniper Elite 4 isn’t bereft of challenge and it’s underscored by the fact you have to play according to many WWII-era rules. That means benefitting from the discretion of a silenced pistol but having to contend with its inaccuracy. You can at least take advantage of the unrealistic ability to mark enemies and a mini radar for easy tracking.

It all comes back to recognizing opportunities and options, environmentally and situationally. It’s about deciding how many Nazis on the bridge you’d like to take out from a distance before you move in and plant the bomb. It’s about how you plan to prepare for the incoming troops altered by your rifle fire. It’s about using tactical cover points to take out a small army on the base as you make your way to the bridge. And it’s about where you’d like to target the bomb after you’ve planted it on the bridge support. The wide-linear design of the level–-which Rebellion assured us is indicative of the entire game–-ensures that every failed playthrough shouldn’t be a cause for frustration but rather a reason for excitement that you get to try a different approach when you respawn.

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At E3 2016, Microsoft confirmed that Xbox One shooter Gears of War 4 is also coming to PC. Now, developer The Coalition has talked a bit more about the kind of visual experience people can expect from both versions of the game.

In an interview with Epic Games at E3 (via DualShockers), The Coalition technical director Mike Rayner talked about the benefits of working with Epic’s Unreal Engine 4.

“One of the big advantages we have with Unreal Engine 4 is it is a cross-platform engine,” he explained. “So when we build our game, we’re testing it on Windows, we’re running on Xbox One, and we’re always keeping the game running on both platforms at all times.”

Rayner added that developer The Coalition is hoping to deliver the “best PC gaming experience” for Gears of War 4. The studio is targeting the most high-end hardware, but the game will also run capably on a mid-spec setup, he said.

On console, Rayner said Gears of War 4 aims to be a “visual showcase.”

“And then on Xbox One, we put a lot of effort into really pushing the hardware to deliver the visual showcase that Gears is known for,” he explained.

Also in the interview, Rayner talked about how Gears of War 4’s use of DirectX 12 benefits both versions of the game. He also discussed the visual benchmarks for the game, including 4K on PC (for computers that can support it) and 1080p on Xbox One.

“It removes a number of layers between the client application and the graphics hardware,” he said. “It really allows us to push the visuals and get the most optimal performance. Then carrying that over to PC, it lets us drive to higher frame rates and push the game as far as possible.

“One thing we were able to do with Gears of War 4, is we’ve authored all the content in 4K resolution, so on Windows 10, if you’ve got a system that can support it, you’re going to get high-res texture packs,” he added. “You’re gonna get a premium, 4K visual experience. And on Xbox One, we’ve totally optimized it for 1080p.”

Gears of War 4 launches on October 11. It is a Play Anywhere title, which means if you buy it digitally on Xbox One, you get the PC version free and vice versa.

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A logo and teaser for the upcoming Star Trek TV reboot were released last month, and now some details about the content of the show have been revealed.

In an interview with Collider, showrunner Bryan Fuller explained that the first season would be a single story, broken down into 13 episodes. “We’ve got the arc of the first season entirely written, or arced out, and we’ve got the first six episodes entirely broken”, he said.

Fuller also explained that the casting process was well underway. “I’ve met with a few actors, and it’s an interesting process”, he revealed. “There’s a few people that we like and we want to carry on what Star Trek does best, which is being progressive. So it’s fascinating to look at all of these roles through a colorblind prism and a gender-blind prism, so that’s exciting.”

While the first episode will be broadcast on the CBS network channel, all subsequent episodes will initially screen on the company’s All Access digital subscription service, making it the first show to launch on a broadcast network but air primarily on a VOD service.

Fuller told Collider that the decision to broadcast the show on the subscription channel meant they he wasn’t restricted in terms of content. “We’re not subject to network broadcast standards and practices,” he said. “It will likely affect us more in terms of what we can do graphically, but Star Trek’s not necessarily a universe where I want to hear a lot of profanity, either.”

Production on the new show will begin in September in Toronto.

Disclosure: CBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

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Square Enix has released a fresh batch of screenshots for Final Fantasy 15, showing off a rather large range of weapons, the strange wild monsters players will encounter, and the game’s characters in battle.

The weapons featured in the screenshots include a giant shuriken, a greatsword, a regal-looking shield, small daggers, and large spears. Of course, we also get to see protagonist Noctis using magic. More specifically, he’s setting things on fire by shooting flames out of his hands, which is pretty cool.

Outside of battle, we get to see the the gang riding around in their car, gathered around a roaring fire, and chilling out in a diner. The pictures can be found in the gallery above.

Final Fantasy 15’s release date has been confirmed as September 30, 2016. It will be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Although there hasn’t been an official announcement of a PC version, references to Steam and Windows 10 versions have been found.

More recently, director Hajime Tabata said Square Enix is “thinking about a PC version.” As he’s said before, fans should not expect this version to launch alongside the console editions in September, if it happens at all.

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