How Blizzard’s Heroes Went From Concepts to Icons
In the course of its long and illustrious history, Blizzard Entertainment has pumped out one incredible game after another. Yet at the core of each of these titles, alongside addictive gameplay, are characters that have successfully installed themselves as icons of the medium thanks to great design and diverse stories.
Now, with the launch of Heroes of the Storm, the great and the good of Blizzard's back catalogue are coming together for the first time. With this in mind, we decided to sit down with Phil Gonzales and Luke Mancini, two of the studio's long-serving designers and 3D artists, to discover how some of the studio's most iconic figures went from concepts to legends, tracing each step along the way.
John Carpenter on Remaking Big Trouble in Little China
Filmmaker John Carpenter has confirmed that he’s yet to discuss the upcoming remake of Big Trouble in Little China with Dwayne Johnson, who’s currently in negotiations to star in it. Johnson mentioned last week that he felt the project would have a good chance of success if they were able to bring Carpenter on board.
“It’s very early in the process,” Carpenter told The Wall Street Journal. “I haven’t spoken to Dwayne Johnson about any of this.”
Blizzard on Designing Blackrock Mountain’s Cards
Hearthstone’s latest adventure, Blackrock Mountain, brought 30 new cards to the game and introduced a number of new gameplay mechanics as well as a focus on the dragon minion type. I caught up with Team 5 senior game designers Ben Brode and Mike Donais to chat about expanding Hearthstone generally and some of the more interesting new cards specifically. It’s a long conversation, but hardcore fans will find some fascinating nuggets about the design process – and how cards changed from inception to final design.
IGN: What’s your strategy for building a smaller set of cards for an adventure, as opposed to something like Goblins vs Gnomes, which had 120+ cards? How difficult is it to find the right 30 cards when you have so much smaller a set to work with?
Advanced Warfare Supremacy DLC Dated for PS4, PS3, PC
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's Supremacy DLC is coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC on July 2.
Currently available on Xbox One and Xbox 360, Supremacy introduces four new multiplayer maps -- Kremlin, Parliament, Compound, and Skyrise -- as well as the next chapter in Advanced Warfare's Exo Zombies mode, featuring actor Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead).
Kremlin, Parliament, and Compound are located in Russia, London, and Colorado, respectively, while Skyrise is a reimagining of Modern Warfare 2's Highrise.
For more on Call of Duty, head over to IGN's Advanced Warfare multiplayer wiki, or check out everything you need to know about this year's entry in the series, Black Ops 3.
Street Fighter 5 on Xbox One Is Not Going to Happen
If you want to play Street Fighter V, you have two options and one of them isn’t Xbox One.
A Capcom representative definitively confirmed to GameSpot in an interview that Street Fighter V will only release on PC and PlayStation 4.
“One comment we see a lot is that something like a Super Street Fighter 5 is going to come out on Xbox,” the representative said, adding that the partnership between Capcom and Sony is “real” and that Street Fighter V is console exclusive to PS4 for the game’s run, meaning no future ports to another console.
Driveclub for PS+ In ‘Final Stages of Development’
Driveclub game director Paul Rustchynsky has confirmed via Twitter that Driveclub’s long-awaited PS+ Edition is nearing completion.
Pressed for information regarding when PS+ members could expect to be able to play the free version of Driveclub, Rustchynsky replied, “We’re in the final stages of development now.”
@undeadrocker666 We're in the final stages of development now.
— Paul Rustchynsky (@Rushy33) June 10, 2015
All the Characters in Suicide Squad
Director David Ayer’s Suicide Squad is currently shooting in and around Toronto for an August 5, 2016, release. That much is obvious to even the casual observer of comic-book movie news, with a virtual flood of fan photos and videos hitting social media in recent weeks from the exterior locations of the film.
All the Mutants in X-Men: Apocalypse
But despite all those images, we don’t know a heck of a lot about the movie aside from the fact that it will be the third DC Cinematic Universe film (after Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and that it will star an ensemble cast led by Will Smith, Margot Robbie, and Jared Leto as a group of criminals turned anti-heroes. Really, many of the characters featured on the Squad and in the film aren’t all that well known to even semi-serious comics fans.
GRRM Confirms He’s Working on 3 New TV Show Concepts
Game of Thrones may not be the last George R.R. Martin-created property you'll ever see on television.
In a recent blog post, Martin confirmed he's busy working on a number of different projects, including the new book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, three "short low-budget films" he hopes to produce, and three new series concepts for HBO and Cinemax.
He offered no further details about what these concepts are about or based on, although it's likely one of them is the Captain Cosmos project he was recently reported to be working on.
The Best Xbox One External Hard Drives
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Nowadays, the Xbox One comes stock with respectable storage capacity up to to 2TB. Still, it's not THAT hard to fill up the space. Thankfully, there has always been the option to use external storage solutions, so rather than crack open the case and swap out the HDD inside, just plug it in.
The Witcher 3 Was May’s Best-Selling Game
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has taken the top spot for software sales for the month of May, according to the NPD Group.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt also had "the best-selling first month unit sales," for an RPG released for the current generation of consoles so far, according to the report.
Mortal Kombat X, another Warner Bros. Interactive game, was the second-place winner in sales. In fact, Warner Bros. Interactive is currently the top software publisher, "with over 140 percent increase in dollar sales versus last year."
The top 10 games for May, according to the NPD Group, are as follows:
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- Mortal Kombat X