Aubrey Plaza and Danny DeVito Are Getting Their Own Animated Horror Sitcom
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2 Could Also Get a Re-Release
After the surprise re-release of the original Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance on consoles (PC and mobile to come later), it seems fan reaction has been strong enough that a re-release of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2 is “on the table,” according to developer Black Isle Studios.
Black Isle took the time to thank fans on Twitter and respond to additional comments and concerns.
“The sequel is on the table. Stay tuned!” Black Isle said.
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/05/06/baldurs-gate-dark-alliance-official-launch-trailer"]Dark Alliance 2 came out in 2004 on PS2 and Xbox, three years after the release of the original. The cult classic hack-and-slash RPG released to generally positive reviews, receiving an 8.4 out of 10 from IGN for its continuation of the original’s formula, moderately mixed up with the new necromancer class and workshop feature.
Just don’t expect a full remake. The first Dark Alliance re-release has 4K support, backwards compatibility, and two-player co-op, but new features aren’t really a draw here.
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If you’re a fan of the D&D realm, the upcoming Dark Alliance from Tuque Studios combines modern design with that old school combat feel, but we’ll find out for sure when that launches on June 22. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/Drizzt fanboy for IGN.Overwatch 2: Two Hours of Gameplay Being Shown This Month
Edward Norton Joins Knives Out 2
Edward Norton is joining the cast of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel, reports Deadline.
Norton is joining Daniel Craig’s gentleman sleuth Benoit Blanc’, along with the recently cast Dave Bautista. Neither Norton nor Bautista's characters have been revealed.
Director Rian Johnson is returning to both direct and write the Knives Out sequel.
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/31/netflix-purchases-knives-out-sequels-for-450-million-ign-news"]The cast for the sequel is already stacking up, and considering the original Knives Out very much capitalized on a strong cast of well-known actors (including Captain America’s Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, and more), we may see some more well-known names join the cast in the future.
Just don’t expect any familiar faces to show up besides Craig’s Blanc. Director Rian Johnson confirmed any sequel will be centered around a new mystery and cast.
Netflix certainly spent the money to merit some strong casting, paying a record $450 million in March to acquire the rights to Johnson’s films, and ordering two sequels for the streaming service.
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Norton is best known for his breakout roles in the late 90’s Fight Club and American History X. He’s also appeared in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs. His latest work was seen in 2019’s Motherless Brooklyn, a neo-noir film where Norton plays a private investigator with Tourette syndrome attempting to solve the murder of his mentor. He also briefly joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a turn as Bruce Banner in 2008's The Incredible Hulk before being replaced by Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/donut for IGN.Tig Notaro Herself Is an Incredible Visual Effect in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead
Despite being a movie featuring countless zombies, including an undead tiger, one special effect in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead stands out for being particularly peculiar. In an interview with Vulture, actress, and comedian Tig Notaro explained how strange it was to completely digitally replace an actor in the upcoming Netflix action film, acting out almost her entire role by herself.
Moviegoers who’ve been paying attention to Snyder’s Army of the Dead may remember that Notaro’s role (a helicopter pilot who joins Dave Bautista’s heist crew) was originally given to comedian Chris D’Elia.
After D’Elia was accused of soliciting porn from underage teenagers (an accusation the actor still denies), the production crew behind Army of the Dead was left with a difficult question: How do they replace an actor when reshoots would be financially difficult and a pandemic makes it unsafe to gather actors back together?
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/13/army-of-the-dead-official-trailer"]The answer was to bring on Notaro, in what was a pretty unusual role for the 50-year-old, and have her film her scenes entirely against greenscreen and receive weapons training over Zoom calls.
“I did firearm training over Zoom in my office while my children were playing Lego in the next room,” she says. “I hid it from them, not because they’d get hurt but because I didn’t want them to think I had a machine gun.”
Notaro is understandably very different physically from the taller D’Elia, which made framing the reshoots an interesting challenge.
“I had to do this incredibly technical experiment, re-creating every scene, shot for shot,” Snyder says. “My visual-effects supervisor, Marcus Taormina, did the work of taking Chris completely out of the movie so Tig could have freedom [to move] within the scenes.”
[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/05/10/army-of-the-dead-zombie-tiger-clip"]The crew effectively recreated entire sets with Notaro’s character using greenscreen and green props. Notaro also had to match the pace and tone of her dialogue to what was originally recorded so other actors looked like they were reacting realistically.
“They’d line up a piece of tape on the ground and say, ‘Okay, you’ve fallen in line with a group of people. You’re walking into a building,’ ” Notaro said. “I’d be like, ‘Is it kind of a mosey? Okay, I’ll mosey.’ Then Zack might say, ‘That’s a little too fast with the moseying,’ and we’d start over again.”
One of the film’s most difficult shots involved Notaro flying a helicopter while Bautista fought a zombie right behind her, a scene he’d shot a year earlier.
“That’s where I’m like, ‘I am not a trained actor,’ ” she says. “I had to be yelling lines, I have a zombie in the back of my helicopter, I have to press the right buttons and flick the right switches. You’re sitting there with all these adults standing ten feet away while you’re alone, acting like you’re crashing. I thought, Oh my God, I feel like an idiot. Can we be done with this?”
[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=2021-movies-preview&captions=true"]To acknowledge the awkwardness of the whole situation, and to recognize Notaro’s efforts in a difficult situation, Snyder presented Notaro with a fake Oscar award for “Best Out-of-Focus Actor.”
If you can’t wait for Snyder’s Army of the Dead, the good news is that starting on May 14, 250 Cinemark locations will play it a week before its May 21 Netflix launch date. This isn’t the first time Snyder has touched the zombie genre, but he told reporters during a set visit that he’s hoping to deconstruct the action genre in a way similar to his Dawn of the Dead remake. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.RDO: Claim Double RDO$ on Trader Sell Missions, and More
Xbox Is Making Quick Resume Even Quicker
Skull and Bones Delayed Yet Again to 2022
EA Play Live Showcase Coming in July
Usually timed around E3, this year's EA Play Live comes more than a month later than gaming's biggest showcase. We can likely expect announcements for EA Sports' flagship series like FIFA and Madden, and perhaps new looks at previously announced games like Dragon Age 4 or Skate 4. Of course, there will likely be some brand new announcements spinkled in there too. EA has also recently completed some major acquisitions, picking up racing expert Codemasters and Super Mega Baseball developer Metalhead, so we could see what's to come from the new studios too. Last year's EA Play Live saw teasers for Dragon Age 4 and Battlefield 6, the announcement of Skate 4, a gameplay reveal for Star Wars Squadrons, and the announcement of It Takes Two, among other things. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.EA Play Live is coming back July 22nd. Save the date! pic.twitter.com/qh9OOGhPTm
— Electronic Arts (@EA) May 11, 2021
The HTC Vive Pro 2 is a 5K VR Headset
The Vive Pro 2 also features new bespoke dual stacked lenses designed to reduce motion blur and minimize the ‘screen door effect’ (where you can see the space between each pixel). Another benefit of the new lenses is the field of view has been increased to 120-degrees – which perfectly complements this headset’s 120Hz refresh rate too.
Unfortunately, the Vive Pro 2 doesn’t feature any inside-out tracking system so you’ll still need to setup your infrared lighthouses. HTC’s new headset also is strikingly similar to its predecessor featuring the same head strap design, integrated 3D audio headphones, and adjustable size dial at the back.
The good news of being basically the same headset, is the Vive Pro 2 will be compatible with any old accessories. This includes both the Base Station 1.0 or Base Station 2.0, Vive Wireless Adapter, Vive controllers, and Valve’s Index ‘knuckle’ controllers.
The HTC Vive Pro 2 will retail for $749 ($799 after the special preorder period discount ends) for just the headset by itself and $1,399 for the headset, plus Vive controllers, and Base Station 2.0. The headset will be available for preorder staring May 11th and release on June 4th.
We’ve been waiting for VR headsets to take a big leap in resolution and we hope it’s achievable with the new significantly more powerful Nvidia and AMD graphics cards out there. And for those who are still running older GPUs, HTC has told us it has worked closely with Nvidia and AMD to make its headset backwards compatible with DisplayPort 1.2 using Display Stream Compression.
Of course, we’ll be testing and reviewing the HTC Vive Pro 2 soon, so stay tuned for more.
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Professional Virtual Reality
On top of announcing the Vive Pro 2, HTC also introduced an even more professional-focused Vive Focus 3 for the enterprise world. Like the Vive Pro 2, the HTC Vive Focus 3 is a 5K headset that uses the same real RGB sub-pixel display and new bespoke dual stacked lenses – the only thing lacking is the only 90Hz refresh rate. The biggest difference about this headset is it’s an all-in-one VR headset powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 processor and it uses an inside-out tracking system similar the Oculus Quest 2.
Now HTC’s previous inside-out tracing system on the Vive Cosmos hasn’t worked out perfectly, but the company promises it has completely revised its system with four high-resolution cameras and optically tracked controllers.
HTC has also spent a lot of time engineering and elevating the profile of the new Vive Focus 3. Instead of a plastic shell, the new Focus 3 features a magnesium alloy chassis. The headset also features a perfectly balanced 50% weight ratio from front to back thanks to the 45-degree headband and moving the swappable battery to the back of the headband too.
HTC hasn’t said exactly how long the Vive Focus 3 can run on its batteries, but they can quick charge up to 50% in just 30 minutes.
A few other niceties on the Vive Focus 3 include magnetic front and back gaskets and open-back speakers built into the headset.
The HTC Vive Focus 3 retails at $1,300 and it will go on sale on June 27th.
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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Kevin Lee is IGN's Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam
