Julius

I decided not to stay up to watch the Awards because I have an interview in a few hours, and I’m kind of glad. I’ve only glanced over some of the reveals when scrolling through my YouTube subscription feed, but at face value, it seems like a real step down (only at face value — I’m sure many of these games will be great) from last year’s reveals and announcements. Looking forward to catching up on the show later, but I’ll probably be watching it with EZA commentary in any case Also, very strange that there was seemingly no Death Stranding trailer. I know that we only had one a couple of months ago at TGS, but still...I can’t shake the feeling that they’ve only skipped TGAs to save it for a potential PS5 unveiling/PlayStation Direct-style video in a few months.

On December 22nd, producer Okamoto Hokuto, director Takeshi Uchikawa, game designer and scenario writer Yuji Horii and a yet-to-be-named special guest will be delivering more information on Dragon Quest XI S from 14:00 - 14:50 JST (06:00 - 06:50 GMT) at Jump Festa 2019.

Seems like Kojima-san and Geoff are having fun toying with people... Also, seems like we could be seeing a first during the show... A demo or game shadow-dropping, perhaps? A live game demonstration? Or a three-way arm wrestling contest between Reggie, Phil and Shawn? Finally, it might be TGA-related or it might not, but Capcom producer Jun Takeuchi has teased a project in the works which will surprise fans — by the fact that they’re working on it. Dragon’s Dogma II? Deep Down actually existing?

I know how much some of you love physical versions and miss manuals, so I thought I’d share that someone has very kindle made a high quality, comprehensive manual for the game. To give you a taste: The manual in its entirety is free and available for printing here

Yeah, I agree (same for when we get 10 second teasers for movie trailers a day before, it really seems kind of pointless). Though, in this case, I don’t think that learning a new Far Cry is on the way and seeing bits and pieces offers much more than an “Oh, cool” reaction, so it doesn’t take too much away from our first experience of the game (of course this is subjective, and I’m sure that there are diehard Far Cry fans out there...but I don’t know any, and haven’t seen any such reactions). The strange thing is, it probably should have been expected, given that Blood Dragon was released just a year after FC3 and Primal just two years after FC4 (not a fan myself; just searched it up out of curiosity), but it’s come completely out of the blue? Yeah, I really don’t know because on the other side of things, I think revealing third party games which aren’t expected to produce fan-breaking reactions before The Game Awards only works in Geoff’s favour of garnering some more attention for the show. Can certainly be argued both ways, but either way, I think that everyone here is just glad that this treatment isn’t given to Metroid Prime 4/Metroid Prime Trilogy/Death Stranding/[insert game which will make people crazy here].

A bit odd to have revealed that a new Far Cry is on the way a mere day and a half prior to the awards ceremony, but I suppose it could help garner some interest. That’s one down, over ten more to go

What have we here? I think we all know that Reggie is going to be bringing the goods to The Game Awards — I’d say that his body is ready; given just how many studios Xbox have acquired and how much they showed at E3 earlier this year, and how aggressive Xbox has been in laying the foundation for a strong finish to the end of this generation and the start of the next one, it seems somewhat likely that Phil will have something to show too; and, well, I don’t see Shawn wanting to be upstaged by either of those two, so...maybe, just maybe, we’ll get something new, big and exclusive revealed for each major home platform tomorrow night? Please? Or, you know, some PlayStation and Xbox characters being revealed for Smash DLC? Kratos and Banjo, anyone?

Well, I suppose that this will make another fine addition to my collection... I absolutely adore that cover art. Here’s a synopsis:

FINALLY! So deserved

Not too much of a surprise, but I’m glad that they got out and said this ahead of The Game Awards to not get anyone’s hopes up: @killthenet, I’m loving the feel of the Leviathan Axe too; there’s a real heft to it, and I love hurling it from particularly high spots and falling out of the camera’s view, only for it to soar back brilliantly into Kratos’ hand. Feels just as rewarding a miniature feedback loop as Spidey’s swinging in Spider-Man.

The second trailer for Captain Marvel:

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of Kinda Funny, but they deserve a lot of recognition for offering to do this and actually following through. Kudos to them — if the games weren’t going to be enough to convince me to watch it, then the goodwill that they get from hosting it is

If you want to know more about the cancellation of the Marvel Netflix shows, here’s an interesting Twitter thread offering an overview of the situation by Matthew Ball, the former Head of Strategy of Amazon Studios:

Deadline are reporting that Marvel Studios are planning to make Shang-Chi, originally created and introduced in 1973 by writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin, the first superhero movie tentpole franchise with an Asian protagonist. Very interesting, and considering how much money Black Panther helped the Mouse pocket, I wouldn’t be surprised if this performed amazingnly in Asia. The fact that they’re fast-tracking this to me suggests that they might even be targeting a release around the time of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

And now they’ve acquired the rights to Carmageddon from Stainless Games. Was anyone even asking for this to come back? I’m pretty nervous about THQ Nordic. A lot of projects already in the works, if not being planned out, and far too many IPs for even a publisher with over one thousand employees to make use of. Something is making me think that all of these acquisitions of IPs are more for insurance purposes than anything else. Turbulent financials? Offload a couple of IPs. And, if these IPs have games already in production at the time of sale, then THQ Nordic could be in a strong position to negotiate for investment/a greater selling price as a result. I really don’t know how to feel about this. Can anyone remember any examples of publishers going on any massive acquisition sprees as large as THQ Nordic has? Maybe this is a norm that I’m not aware of

The soundtrack for the game is now available on iTunes:

An update regarding Hajime Tabata: Following this news, it has been revealed that Final Fantasy XV’s lead programmer, Takeshi Aramaki, has been designated the new studio head for Luminous Productions.

Official poster for Captain Marvel:

So long as I’m not too tired, that’s the plan Also, this is kind of random: Christoph Waltz will be presenting at The Game Awards. Perhaps a little less random is that the Russo brothers (directors of the MCU’s The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and next year’s Avengers 4) will also be presenting: The title trailer for Avengers 4 should be dropping anytime soon (there’s a lot of winking and nudging going on, and the first [publicly released] trailer for Infinity War was released a year ago as of yesterday), and while those certainly won’t be revealed at The Game Awards, I have to wonder if they could be there for another reason. A first look at Square Enix’s The Avengers project, perhaps? We were informed in the press release that came alongside the trailer last January that we would learn more about the game in 2018, and with only a few weeks left of the year...well, we’ve been treated with nothing but radio silence. Another possibility could be officially licensed MCU skins coming to Fortnite — that’s just my own speculation, but I don’t think it’s at all beyond the realm of possibility; Disney are trying their best to force their way into video gaming after having achieved total domination of the movie industry, and I think this would be a move in-line with their goals.

I mean, joking around and teasing are two very different things when it comes to projects like these in a major entertainment medium — and by all accounts, if what was described as having happened even did take place, I think it’s very clear that, in what is described, Aonuma was teasing Skyward Sword coming to Switch, in the exact same way that Reggie teased fans with his Earthbound pin a year or two ago. It does nothing but bring up an interesting conversation, gets some people digging and talking, and it drums up some interest: it’s Marketing 101 with Mario. I don’t think that anyone here is taking Aonuma’s reported comments solely at face value, it’s just being discussed as these things typically are, and I that think there’s clear logic to believing that Skyward Sword would be next to receive a remaster/port, seeing as every other 3D Zelda game originally released on a home console got a remaster or port just last generation. I actually haven’t heard too many people asking for the game to be ported to Switch anyways — I’m sure that there are, but it seems something of an inevitability — so I was kind of surprised that Aonuma reportedly teased Skyward Sword in the first place. But anyways, my comment above was actually more about Eurogamer and other gaming journalism outlets reporting on what is by all means a non-story and acting like it is confirmation of something — heck, anything. Leading with a title as absolute as “Nintendo shuts down Zelda: Skyward Sword Switch port reports” is wildly misleading. Any single person at Nintendo could have come out and denied it happening — and, in either case, why would Nintendo Spokesperson A be the one to break that news? — and even then, there would be reason to doubt that sentiment. I read just earlier today that similar comments to these were made in the latter stages of development for Majora’s Mask coming to 3DS, denying that Nintendo had any plans for such a thing to happen. It just comes across as lazy journalism; when I read stories like this, it always seems like they (Eurogamer, in this case — and not for the first time) just reached out to Nintendo’s customer service via a live chat or email and were given the response that they were very obviously going to get. What are they going to honestly say if it actually is in the works? “Yes, I would like to confirm to you that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword will be releasing for Nintendo Switch on February 1st of next year [2019]. This news will be confirmed on Thursday [29/11/18] of this week, during a yet-to-be-announced Nintendo Direct. Thank you for your patience. Please don’t tell anyone, or I’ll get fired. Especially Reggie. Oh, and Metroid Prime 4 will be revealed at The Game Awards next Thursday [06/12/18], and is due to be released in Q3 2019. Keep that quiet too. Geoff’ll kill me if I steal his thunder...though I suppose in this case that would be Death Stranding shadow-dropping a demo and having a release date confirmed, which is happening. Anywho... Yours, Bill Trinen”

Speaking of Skyward Sword HD... [taken from Eurogamer] Uh, yeah...sure, nameless Nintendo spokesperson. We believe you... ...

Some official animated shorts based on the films are coming to YouTube: It actually looks pretty neat. Doesn’t seem like we’re getting anything new from it in terms of lore (which is probably for the best, because can you imagine the backlash if there was?), but I’m a big fan of the art style and the distinct anime direction of some shots in the trailer. This is also a great way to ease those seen by their parents as a bit too young for Star Wars into the franchise, which I think is a smart move from a business perspective, but also offers something worthwhile to fans. I could also see it playing into their build-up to Episode IX next year — if you can’t watch eight/ten films to catch up, then you can at least watch some shorts, right?