Julius

Schedule for Celebration is coming through... Hopefully got news on the lottery in the next week or two? Also, I think there was a rumour a few weeks back now about how nothing would be streamed from Celebration this year. While it would suck if that were the case, honestly, considering how it was handled *at the event itself* for some major panels... I don't even know what to hope for at this point just hope that, whatever they decide to do, they communicate it much more clearly this time around. Last year was a mess!

With one episode left, the show has continued to be great...but, Episode 3 aside, I think almost everything else was handled just as well - if not better - in the original game. Still killing it in terms of viewership, unsurprisingly: the show's audience has grown 74% from Episode 1's premiere to the premiere of the most recent episode, Episode 8. I'm sure I'll talk about it more once the show is over, but there's just been weird moments and choices for me in the show throughout which means it doesn't quite hit the heights of the game for me, despite still, by far and away, being the best adaptation of a video game to date. Just weird moments of dialogue shuffled around from one place to another, staying shot-to-shot and line-to-line faithful in some scenes but then making new and original content for others (which has strangely trailed off? Think there were some great uses of this for flashbacks/Day Zero stuff), and some weird musical choices too (we got the credits music for Part I playing at the end of Episode 5 or 6, can't remember which? And a certain climactic moment in the last episode didn't have music which served as a great callback and arc closer in the game). There have also just been moments where they spell things out for you in a way that they don't in the games, and my eyes roll into the back of my skull – are writers really that nervous about subtext in their scenes these days? The biggest kicker for me - and the most puzzling - is just how little we've seen of the Infected throughout the show; it's felt less survival horror and more, well, survivor with zombies occasionally thrown in. Super weird choice, because we've only had one or two moments of true tension related to the Infected as a result (the rest has kind of been them going full Hollywood, to an almost distracting degree at times), so yeah, there's that. Can't help but wonder if their budget was capped for some silly reason, because even though I loved Episode 3 and think it was much better than the content we got in the game for that part of the story, it being so different to the game seems to be a result of needing to cut corners and run away from using the Infected. It's really bizarre. They've straight up cut two of the most memorable encounters with the Infected in the entire game! On the flip side, there's been some great acting in this, I think Bella Ramsey has been great as Ellie, occasionally there'll be a line stolen from the game verbatim and I'll just be like "well, Ashley Johnson definitely did that better", but it's only been distracting once or twice (and I think that just comes about as a result of this Ellie feeling weirdly younger at times than she was in the game). It's also just nice that this is already brilliant story continues to show that with time, patience, and the right people spearheading a project, video game stories can be told well in other formats. Oh, and I nearly forgot: I wish people would just give up on shaky cam, I think it was Episode 7 where I suddenly got nauseous and needed to check the bitrate of my stream because the camera was jittering about all over the shop. There's a time and a place for it, and that's not a shot with two people stationary either side of a table just talking to each other I don't personally think I can consider this more than a 9/10 adaptation of a 10/10 game and story, despite one episode still being left, but if nothing else, it was worth it for Episode 3 and to see how it was handled. I can't help but wonder if them adapting Part II could help fix my main issues with it (pacing and structure), whereas their adaptation of Part I has made an already lean and mean story into an even leaner story, and I do think that's come at a cost to the quality of the adaptation.

Attack on Titan: The Final Chapters – Special 1 (or Chapters 1 and 2 of Final Season Part 3...man, this isn't getting confusing at all) was absolutely awesome. An hourlong special with stupidly good animation, music, AMV-type moments (two of 'em, in fact!), and as has been the case throughout the entirety of this final season, the writing is still just bonkers good in this Special. What isn't awesome is the wait until "Fall 2023" (so, September?) for the second half of the final part of the story in the form of another special (I don't know how much is left to adapt, but probably another hour to an hour and a half? Wonder if there'll be any Final Chapters cinema releases combining both the Specials...)...but, well, if it lives up to the hype, I'm sure the wait will be worth it. As hyped as I am to see it continue, I also feel pretty satiated just from the Special (which has singlehandedly got me back into an anime-watching mood). So, uh, yeah, while I want to enjoy the rest of 2023 between now and what comes next in the story, I hope this year doesn't go by as quickly as this Special came and went

A new Capcom Spotlight arrives next week starting from 22:30 GMT on Thursday 9th March, with the pre-show starting at 22:10: Feels like we're starting to hit our stride a bit with presentations now as everyone tries to squeeze them out before the end of the traditional financial year at the end of March

Metroid Fusion is crashing onto the NSO Expansion Pack next Thursday – March 9th! Talk about striking while the iron is hot, fair play Nintendo!

16 weeks to go... ...thankfully there are plenty of games to get to in the meantime, otherwise this would be a looooooong wait

For anyone who has been wondering about the connections to Studio Ghibli's films, and more specifically Princess Mononoke, but for whatever reason has done themselves the disservice of not watching those films (), Zeltik has put out the video just for you: But seriously go watch those films Princess Mononoke is an 11 Fight me

Just got finished S3 E1 of The Mandalorian, or Chapter 17 – The Apostate. Here are some random and not really cohesive thoughts in a spoiler tag And I think that's all I really have to say that belongs in spoiler tags? Overall, while solid, this episode felt more like a prologue and something of bit of a soft reset in some ways following The Book of Boba Fett and the climax of S2, and yeah, it was a total bummer to have it load up and see that it was only 37 minutes long...but Mando is back, and that's something I'm happy about looking forward to next week's episode!

While PlayStation is getting a LeBron collab for some strange reason, here are some Mando-themed Series X|S: That Series X especially looks awesome

There will be a LeBron James limited edition pair of plates and a DualSense releasing later this year. Yeah, I'm having a tough one piecing together how LeBron is the one getting the first official limited edition plates for PS5 too. If memory serves, only the second limited edition DualSense too (after the one for Ragnarök)? C'mon now PlayStation, really, this?!

Yeah that's what I was getting at above, it's normally Tuesdays for Odeon (or was in the past when I was regular in the pre-COVID times) and a couple of other places, but of course ymmv when it comes to other chains, and especially independent places. I don't think this film is quite big enough to be one of the films which is an exception to that and has tickets drop the same day as the final trailer (such as with Star Wars or Endgame), but then again, they did give everyone a good two and a half weeks of notice for the final trailer and it's Direct, so they very well could be gearing up for that "Tickets available now/tomorrow!"

I'll try keep an eye out Given that the Direct for the final trailer is on Thursday 9th March, and with the 10th being a Friday and Mario day, at a guess it'll go live then, if not early the following week? Or it'll just be a random Tuesday as is often the case

Over here we get the Friday off for Good Friday and the Monday off as Easter Monday (which I guess might technically be a carryover from not being able to make the Easter Sunday a bank holiday) But honestly when you put it that way I do question why it was billed for the 7th in the first place. Our cinemas would probably still be open anyways but you're right, the Easter weekend was always going to be a weird weekend to premiere. This reeks of someone going to book time off for Easter and then realising that they were about to premiere on what is a national holiday in a bunch of countries

Yeah, I do think it's a really odd decision to not show the wider structure of the game beyond what we've seen in trailers. While it's nice to hear more about combat, I feel like we could get something of an idea for it from the shots we've seen in trailers up to this point. The general structure and flow of the game though? No idea. I'm sure it'll be fine, but I really think they should've led with that rather than a combat focus, because while it's flashy, the exploration (or potential lack thereof) is the one thing which has me a little on edge about XVI. We've seen supposedly wider areas to explore (such as with that shot in one of the trailers where the party is riding on chocobos in the desert). Watching the previews there's definitely a few more QTEs than I would personally like to see, but I guess we'll see how that plays out too. Oh well, don't think it's anything to worry about yet, but yeah, I do wish they focused on that a little more here there are already rumours floating around about the next set of previews coming in April, though, so hopefully the wait won't be too long, and not should it now that Forspoken is out of the way and it's a pretty straight shot at focusing on XVI from now until June 22nd. Exciting times!

It's a-been-a bumped up – to April 5th! Per Variety: Likely targeting some five-day opening records of some sort with this two day bump – opening night was always going to be big, and so was it's opening weekend, so why not stretch that out and open on the Wednesday instead of the Friday, eh?

Hope you take it easy and feel better! But yeah, it definitely feels like it's been much longer. It's been an odd two years for Star Wars, not in terms of quality, but how their conveyer belt of final products has been a bit stop-start, which has definitely resulted in some odd gaps here and there, or then feeling like we're getting a lot all at once. Disney+ has boomed in the meantime while Netflix has started to wane, too, so even just in that space things feel super different. The last 3 years in general feel like they've simultaneously been a month and a decade, too, so there's that I'm of course super excited for Mando S3, but a little nervous, just because I feel like more than the past two seasons, we're going into this kind of expecting big, bombastic, overarching and epic stuff. It'll be cool, don't get me wrong, but I hope there's still time for quieter episodes and moments in amongst all this...and that people don't project too hard if it's not as big and bombastic as it's looked in its marketing. Yep, I think I need to prep myself a bit of a roadmap up to Celebration to catch up on everything, and revisit everything too! In terms of what I need to catch up on, there's Andor (which I can't believe I've managed to stave off until now!), The Bad Batch, Tales of the Jedi and I'm going to restart Visions (got a few eps in when it released but was just bad timing and I never got back to it). Elsewhere, I think revisiting all the films is a must, and I'll probably throw in my favourite arcs and episodes from The Clone Wars and Rebels on top of that, too. I replayed Fallen Order last year so I think I'm all good on that front, and maybe if I have time I'll rewatch some of my favourite episodes of Mando and Book of Boba Fett, too. And maybe skip around Kenobi a little bit, or watch it before Revenge of the Sith so I can at least hear the music I want before moving on from prequelish stuff A lot to watch and do in general, March should be a busy one as the prep for Celebration starts! Would appreciate any tips you have to share on stuff to bring and the like

The rumours of previews going live today were real! LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO Need to give these a watch first, but apparently based on a Chinese preview which went up early, this will be focused primarily on combat and some story stuff. Bit of a shame considering I know many are a bit more concerned about the game's structure, but we've still got a bit under 4 months until release – I'm sure there's plenty we'll be seeing in the coming months! For now: hype

XVI is going to seemingly be getting the XIV Live Letter treatment at it's turning up at PAX East towards the end of March! A lot of rumours swirling around the last week or so that a preview embargo might be lifting in the next few days, too. Seems like marketing might really be about to kick into high gear...

So...yikes: Luminous Productions will be merging into Square Enix proper as of 1st May 2023. From Square Enix: On the one hand, it's a shame that such a talented team have to go through this, but on the other, it doesn't seem from this announcement that there will be layoffs, so that's a positive? Got to imagine this means the writing is on the wall for the Luminous Engine, seeing as many of their major projects (FFVII Remake projects, Kingdom Hearts 4, and Dragon Quest XII) have already made the transition to Unreal Engine. Final Fantasy XVI send to be using an updated version of XIV's engine, which in itself is a modified version of the Luminous Engine, so XVI could well turn out to be the engine's swansong. As for the announcement though...it's hard to say I'm surprised. It is a shame, but Forspoken, for me, had very little marketing direction and had a tough time showing itself off beyond it's initial reveal as Project Athia.

We finally have a title and a piece of artwork for the upcoming DLC expansion: Shadow of the Erdtree. Let's. Freaking. Gooooooooooooooo! No date, no footage, but I guess this was the closest day to the one year anniversary that they'd be willing to drop some news. And that's totally our boy Miquella riding Torrent I would assume going off to see what he can do about the whole Godwyn situation? I also can't help but wonder if this is a post-ending DLC? Might make sense given that I feel it's been implied that there might be more than one expansion coming – and expansion is the word being used, so it sounds like it'll be pretty sizeable, based purely on what I'm reading about how this is apparently the first time Bandai Namco have used that phrasing for From DLC (apparently Sony used it for The Old Hunters with Bloodborne?). Man, it kind of feels like nothing, but...it also feels like a lot to drop so randomly having recently played through Artorias of the Abyss and completing The Old Hunters last night, it's fair to say that some of From's best work is hiding away in their DLC, so my body is ready. I'm ready to rise once more EDIT: Or is it? I would assume so based on his braids, being barefoot, the white cloth he wears, but I've read around a bit today and seen a really interesting theory that this is in fact a young Marika heading towards the Erdtree after it has been struck by an Elden star. And then another awesome theory based on it being Miquella is that he's trying to fuse his soul with Godwyn's body. So many possibilities. This can't come soon enough!

This one hurts. Look, I don't mind if it's a new game or a remake of Explorers - both are wins in my eyes - but absolutely nothing? Yeah it just hurts! We can only hope that this is simply because the Virtual Console is still open and they don't want to cannibalise sales. I know, I know, how many copies could they really sell of classic Pokémon games in VC in the next month, right? But I mean, not announcing anything here is a great way to ensure people flock to the 3DS eShop to buy those games as people start to panic that they'll never come to the Switch. And I mean, they might not, and if they do I can still imagine them being sold piecemeal rather than being included in NSO, but that's a conversation for another Presents at this point I suppose

Maybe I'm misremembering, but is that the first Presents we've had that explicitly hasn't announced a new game/(re)release? If not it's definitely the first to not do so in a while I feel? That's the weakest Presents we've had for me, at least that I can remember. The Tera Raid trailer was pretty atrocious (I mean, no music while we listen to crystal beams grate our ears, really?), the Scarlet & Violet section finishing and then actually going "the next thing is our last to share with you" before diving into DLC for that game (with no gameplay and just artwork?) is a mind-bender, and I mean Sleep lives, but...so what? How are we getting news on that before the Detective Pikachu sequel?! A second nothingburger of a presentation in less than a week. Concierge looks promising, the PWC artwork looked lovely as always, and the TCG - Classic set is something I'll keep an eye on until I find out I'll need to sell a handful of my vital organs to get my hands on it. Presentation Score: 2.5/10

Committing to Home getting Scarlet & Violet functionality in Early 2023 at the end of Feb is very funny and non-committal to me

"we want to make a game that makes people look forward to getting up in the morning" Uh... that's a mighty lofty ambition that's for sure

A Pokémon Sleep update?! F I N A L L Y GOTY 2023 has arrived