“I’ve got big plans – I’m going to sit here and wait for Katie to come back.” Universal and Illumination have unveiled the adorable first teaser trailer for The Secret Life of Pets, a movie about what your pets do in the time between when you leave for work and return home. Every time you leave in the morning and give your cuddly pet a goodbye pat, we all wonder what they do, and what goes on while we’re away, how much trouble they’re getting into without anyone watching. This movie plays with that idea in such a fun way, and features all kinds of pets: dogs, cats, birds, rabbits. Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet & Kevin Hart provide a few voices. This is going to be a winner, that’s for sure, it’s hard not to laugh and smile big. Take a look!›››
Now that retailers are accepting preorders for Fallout 4, one superfan has attempted to pay for the game with bottle caps, which are the in-game currency for the post-apocalyptic RPG series.
“Fallout 3 was my favorite game for several years, so I made the rational choice to start saving up bottle caps. Turns out 4.5 years of undergrad and three years in a Master’s program leads to a lot of drinking.”
In all, GatorMacheteJr sent more than 2,000 bottle caps (weighing more than 11.2 pounds) in a box to Bethesda, in hopes that they would accept them as payment for a copy of the game.
Also included in the box was a note to Bethesda’s PR department; you can read it in the gallery below.
It’s not known if the box has reached Bethesda’s offices in Maryland yet or if the company will actually honor the request. GatorMacheteJr says they’ll keep everyone updated.
One of the biggest pieces of news out of E3 this year came from Microsoft on Monday morning, when the company announced Xbox One backward compatibility support for Xbox 360 titles. Now, Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida has responded to the news, calling it “interesting,” and stating that the company has no immediate plans to offer native backward compatibility on PlayStation 4.
“The technology involved must be very challenging,” Yoshida said in an interview with Polygon.
Xbox One backward compatibility is available now for Xbox Preview members, and will roll out to everyone this holiday. At that time, the initial list of supported games will be expanded to “hundreds” of digital and physical Xbox 360 games. System-wide Xbox One features, such as DVR and streaming, will be available for all Xbox 360 games.
The PS4 does offer some kind of backward compatibility by way of PlayStation Now. However, this is a paid streaming service. But could the PS4 ever offer a native backward compatibility solution?
“I don’t think we will change our approach,” Yoshida said. “The PlayStation 4 doesn’t have backward compatibility.”
He went on to say that Sony will instead focus on building new features and services for the PS4. But Sony hasn’t ruled out native backward compatibility entirely.
“Backward compatibility is hard,” Yoshida explained. “I won’t say we’ll never do it, but it’s not an easy thing to do. If it was easy we would have done that.”
[UPDATE] Ubisoft’s own Uplay store has posted a product page for the $160 collector’s edition. Check out an image of the premium bundle below.
The original story is below.
The Division, like so many other AAA games today, is getting a DLC pass. Ubisoft made the announcement on Friday as part of its E3 briefing in Los Angeles. The existence of the DLC pass comes as part of the announcement of two premium versions of The Division.
The Gold Edition comes with the game, an “exclusive” National Guard Gear Set, and the Season Pass, which comes with a “full year of major expansions and exclusive benefits.”
The Division’s Collector’s Edition, meanwhile, contains everything from the Gold edition, as well as “an array of exclusive memorabilia including the Agent Watch Replica.”
Ubisoft also announced today that all preorders for The Division will come with guaranteed access to the game’s beta, which begins first on Xbox One in December. What’s more, people who preorder will receive the Hazmat Gear Set for their character. More information about The Division’s beta is available here.
In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, your soldiers needed to recover alien technology to advance their own scientific knowledge and construct better equipment. This was done automatically at the conclusion of each mission; you would receive a certain amount of alien technology to be researched and reverse-engineered. In XCOM 2, a new looting system means you can manually recover even more valuable technology from the corpses of enemies, and place it in your soldiers’ new backpacks.
“You’ll be able to take them back to base and do some very, very cool stuff–such as customising your weapons, and customising the inherent attributes of your soldiers,” says Garth DeAngelis, lead producer on XCOM 2.
Players of XCOM: Enemy Unknown have found ways to customise their soldiers’ stats in the form of gameplay mods. But that customisation was limited, and now that XCOM 2 is PC-only, the modding support this time around is going to be more fully-featured. “We’re going to have Steam Workshop support, and the Unreal editor so you can do total content conversions,” says DeAngelis. “And we’re going to release the gameplay source, so you can do partial edits to existing abilities and stats.”
One new system that isn’t based on stats is the concealment phase, which DeAngelis says allows the player to “take on the role of the invader”. Because XCOM is bringing down a corrupt alien-government alliance, your soldiers need to infiltrate enemy territory. They begin the mission in a state of concealment, which means enemy units aren’t immediately hostile when they enter your line of sight. Instead, a smaller detection radius surrounding enemies allows you to sneak closer and assume advantageous positions without alerting them. Some enemies will follow patrol routes, and you can remain hidden if you’re behind full cover when an enemy looks in your direction and walks past.
“You want to turn the tide of battle and take out that first group as efficiently as possible, and then the alarms go off, and they know you’re there,” DeAngelis adds. “Reinforcements may come. And then, it’s a more classic XCOM. We’ll be able to push on that with some later-game abilities that we’re not talking about yet. You can do some unique stealth things with them.”
Once combat does start, the increased destructibility of cover means that you’ll be in more danger—but some interesting tactical opportunities could also arise. “Let’s look at the foundation of XCOM,” DeAngelis proposed. “You have cover. What’s the most terrifying thing that can happen to you? Cover is suddenly ripped out from you. There are still toughness levels on cover, so depending on the type of ammo you have, the type of weapon tiers, cover will either stick around or go away. In the demo, the Advent were using magnetic weaponry, so that takes out baseline cover much quicker. But the other cool thing about destructibility is, if you’re in a building, and you have a unit on the second floor, or the roof, if someone shoots at you, that floor could go out from under you at any time and you can fall through–which is an homage to the original XCOM: UFO Defense.”
The way Firaxis is encouraging more dynamic events in combat carries over into the way XCOM 2’s missions are designed. Not only will every map’s layout be procedurally generated, but so will that map’s objectives.
“In EU, you had kill missions, and scripted VIP rescue missions,” DeAngelis explains. “Now, we’re sort of combining the two, within a very procedural system. Not just procedural maps, but now there are gameplay mechanics layered on top, where you don’t know exactly what you’re doing when you go in. It could be recovering intel, hacking a workstation, destroying a building–and they’re not scripted like they were in EU. They work based on a number of parts in the procedural system. So it’s super replayable.”
XCOM: Enemy Unknown fans will be familiar with that replayability, having most likely lost the game at least once and failed to repel the alien invasion. DeAngelis says the team actually has data that shows most players lost the campaign at least once, which is why XCOM 2 follows on from a scenario in which XCOM essentially failed.
“We’re not a movie; we’re not a book; we’re not beholden to what story we want to tell. What’s more interesting to us is what actually happened to players–their actual experience with the game. And that led to this–XCOM lost, the aliens occupied Earth, and that’s a reason to bring XCOM back 20 years in the future. They didn’t finish the job. For the players that did win the game, it doesn’t undermine what they did. In that universe, XCOM isn’t needed–you won the game. Your personal experience after you probably lost once or twice, you won and had that sense of triumph. But, there’s also a universe where XCOM lost. That’s what we want to tell with this story.”
And what does that mean for the Council of Nations, the mysterious body of powerful people that funded the original XCOM project? “You’ll have to wait and see,” DeAngelis teases. “There might be some continuity there.”
XCOM 2 launches in November exclusively for the PC.
“We regret to inform you that we are not able to release the Batmobile Collector’s Edition of Batman: Arkham Knight due to unforeseen circumstances that greatly compromised the quality of this extremely limited run of product,” Rocksteady said in a statement.
“We are deeply apologetic for this unfortunate outcome.”
Refunds are available at the retailer where you preordered.
The marquee feature of the Arkham Knight Batmobile edition was supposed to be a transforming Batmobile statue. The statue was to be developed by TriForce. Presumably, the “unforeseen circumstances” regarding the “compromised quality” are related to the Batmobile toy.
Though the Batmobile edition has been scrapped, Rocksteady said it still plans to offer the New 52 skin pack, which comes with skins of Batman, Robin, and Nightwing, for free to everyone.
“I had to break out…” Paramount has debuted a trailer for the new film Captive, based on the true “Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero”. Kate Mara plays a struggling single mother who’s taken hostage when the “courthouse killer” from Atlanta finds his way into her apartment. David Oyelowo plays Brian Nichols. But the happy side of the story is that Ashley was able to talk her captor into “surrendering peacefully by gaining his confidence through her prayers and personal faith”. Oh boy. Aside from that side of this story, this looks interesting. And I’ll watch David Oyelowo in anything – he’s such an immensely talented actor. ›››
“We determine the truth.” I really, really dug this film – my review from the Berlin Film Festival premiere. StudioCanal UK has debuted a trailer for Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 13 Minutes, a fantastic film about the man who almost killed Hitler. In 1939, a lively carpenter from Germany named Georg Elser built a bomb from materials he could find and planted it at a venue Hitler was about to speak at. The event ended early, and Hitler left the building 13 minutes before the bomb went off, escaping narrowly. The film profiles Elser, played by Christian Friedel, and his time before the war, exploring his motives and desires for this plot. It’s a nice trailer for a great film, and I hope it gets a US release date soon. Because I want to see it again. ›››
“There was a lot of unrequited dino love out there.” A few years ago, a little film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival called Safety Not Guaranteed. It earned praise from critics and introduced a filmmaker, Colin Trevorrow, who later landed the gig of a lifetime – directing a brand new Jurassic Park movie, to restart the series again after it died with JP3 in 2001. Colin Trevorrow is the director of Jurassic World, a continuation of Michael Crichton’s vision of a dinosaur theme park that Steven Spielberg made us all believe in back in 1993. It’s already breaking box office records. A week before it hit theaters, I was lucky enough to spend 15 minutes chatting with Colin (on the phone) talking about creative control, Spielberg, the attention he’s getting nowadays, and how he pulled off a movie like this as only his second feature as a filmmaker. ›››
The latest video blog for James Bond’s Spectre has hit the web on 007.com. This time the video profiles the opening scene of Spectre being filmed in Mexico City. The opening takes place during the Day of the Dead, and thousands of extras were utilized to create the complete experience for the production. “I wanted the audience to be dropped right into the middle of a very, very specific, very heady, rich environment. It’s the Day of the Dead, everywhere you look there’s colour and detail and life. We’ve built floats and maquettes, the costumes are extraordinary and the craftsmanship is amazing,” Sam Mendes said. Daniel Craig stars as Agent 007, but he’s nowhere to be seen in this video blog. Stay tuned for more updates on Spectre soon. ›››
