8 Best Things We Saw at Gamescom
We've spent all week in the lovely city of Cologne, eating the knuckles of pigs (it's a thing, look it up), drinking tiny beers, and playing lots and lots of glorious video games.
In the podcast, Alex, Krupa, Gav, and Dan – yes, Dan – pick our highlights of the show, from Dan's fresh take on Mafia 3 to Dan's embarrassing revelation. As always, you can watch the video up top or listen down below.
IGN UK Podcast #292: 8 Best Things We Saw at Gamescom - 44.3 MB
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Get Ready to Watch Microchipped NFL Players on Xbox One
Back when the Xbox One first debuted, Microsoft heavily pushed its new console as the ultimate NFL device. It was a smart idea, as the National Football League is America's most-viewed sport by a large margin, but we haven't heard much about the NFL on Xbox One as of late. That's likely due to the games-first tack Microsoft has adopted since, but the developers at NFL and Microsoft haven't forgotten about Xbox's biggest sports app: game-changing updates are on their way.
The biggest new upgrade involves data pulled from micro-chipped players (hopefully the tech is in their uniforms and not under their skin)—or as Microsoft and the NFL are calling it, “Next-Gen Stats.” Thanks to those chips, the location and speed of every single player is being monitored, and can be used in some pretty amazing ways. During a demo of "Next-Gen Replay," I watched an instant replay on the upper-right hand of the screen shown in sync with moving icons representing each player. (It was very reminiscent of Doom's map moving simultaneously with the first-person lead.) When a wide receiver cut right on his route to get in position for a catch, so did the icon. When the replay restarted, the icons on the football field display did, too.
Why We Love to See Batman Die
Warning: this article contains spoilers for the ending of Batman: Arkham Knight!
Arkham Knight opens with an ominous bit of narration from Commissioner Gordon, "This is how it happened. This is how the Batman died." From there, the final entry in the Arkham video game quadrilogy proceeds to document Batman's final night as Gotham's protector. Bruce Wayne faces a gauntlet of foes, conquers his fears and apparently sacrifices himself in order to ensure that Batman transforms into Bat-myth. But perhaps what's most interesting about Arkham Knight is that it's just the latest in a growing lineup of stories focused on "the last Batman story." Between this game, The Dark Knight Rises, the Batman: Endgame comic book storyline and even classics like The Dark Knight Returns, it seems Bat-fans are increasingly fascinated by the idea of Batman confronting his own mortality. And why not? It's not because of a morbid desire to see a hero fall or the DC Universe to be consumed by darkness, but because Batman is so often at his best at the end of his journey.
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Portal’s Story Unofficially Continues in LEGO Dimensions
LEGO Dimensions features new story content set in the Portal universe that takes place after the events of Portal 2.
Speaking to IGN at Gamescom, WB Games producer Doug Heder explained that the story of LEGO Dimensions brings main characters Batman, Gandalf, and Wyldstyle through various worlds (from Doctor Who to Ghostbusters and beyond), including a stopover in Valve’s Portal universe.
While that content ties into Dimensions’ main story and features test chambers with mechanics revolving around Batman, Gandalf, and Wyldstyle, a separate Portal Level Pack will also be available for purchase at launch. That expansion is designed specifically with Chell and her portal device in mind.
Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur Will Be “Huge and Spectacular”
Director Guy Ritchie and producer Lionel Wigram are currently busy working on their big-budget King Arthur movie Knights of the Round Table, so while they were doing the publicity rounds for current feature The Man From U.N.C.L.E., we asked the pair how that next collaboration would look.
“Pretty damn good” Wigram responded with a laugh. “I can give you the producer version. It’s going to be the coolest King Arthur that you’ve ever seen. It is a huge, spectacular, sword and sorcery fantasy. It’s our dream version of what we would have liked to see Excalibur be. What we also did, which I think helps a lot, is that rather than trying to do the whole story in one, we’ve limited ourselves to basically how Arthur becomes King. So that’s allowed us to spend enough time and detail on that. And we can enjoy then hopefully later iterations.”
Fantastic Four Director Implies Studio Meddled With His Movie
Josh Trank, director of Fox's near-universally-panned Fantastic Four movie, has tweeted out that we'll never see the "fantastic"version of his movie that he had a year ago.
"A year ago I had a fantastic version of this", Trank tweeted And it would've received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though."
Though the tweet was quickly deleted (and screengrabbed by about a million Twitter users), the implication was clear: studio meddling.
Our review of Fantastic Four dropped earlier today. We called it "aesthetically drab and dramatically inert".
20-Player Dota 2 Mode Revealed
Valve has announced a 20 player, 10 vs. 10 custom game coming to Dota 2 next week. In addition, all custom games will have the option to play with up to 24 players.
The 20-player mode was revealed at The International, where 10 professional players played alongside 10 players selected from the audience.
It was nonsense in all the right ways, with hundreds of kills and chaotic kill combos.
The mode was played in the Dota 2 Reborn/Source 2.0 client, where custom games have become quite popular.
Scream Queens More “Cartoonish” Than American Horror Story
Creator Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story) took the stage during the TCA Press Tour to talk about his new FOX series, Scream Queens, starring Emma Roberts, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lea Michele, Keke Palmer, and Abigail Breslin. Accompanied by the cast and co-creators Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk, Ryan explained how Scream Queens is tonally distinct and very different from FX's American Horror Story.
"I think that Scream Queens has a much more satirical, cartoonish quality to the attacks than American Horror Story does," Murphy said, "which is much more sexualized and darker at times. And yes, we have had healthy discussions with broadcast standards. Shockingly, more about the language and the girls having an empowering sense of their own sense of sexuality. I mean, that is the one thing I always find very upsetting, is that violence is cool, for the most part. That's very easy to get through in my job. It's language, it's slang, it's trying to really reflect how people talk. It's trying to write characters who are open about their sexuality, who talk about their sexuality that gets the most attention and the most push‑back."
SHIELD: Chloe Bennet on Fully Becoming Daisy Johnson in Season 3
It’s always tricky talking to cast members from Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, because they have to keep so many secrets. Still, going into Season 3, we know a lot of changes are in store for Skye (Chloe Bennet), on the heels of the huge events that occurred for her in Season 2.
First and foremost, she’s not called Skye anymore – she’s going by her real name, Daisy Johnson (AKA Marvel comics’ Quake). Plus there’s the fact that she knows she's an Inhuman and will be forming a new team of super-powered folks, which will introduce the Secret Warriors into the series.
At the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour this week, Bennet spoke about Skye, ahem, Daisy’s transformation and what to expect from the shifting character dynamics this year.