Author: Jennifer Stephens

Half-Life: Alyx Off-Screen Gameplay Footage Shows How VR Gunfights Work

Published on in Default by Jennifer Stephens

Half-Life: Alyx, which was surprise announced back in November, is coming in March 2020. We’ve dug up plenty of details about the game so far, but one thing we haven’t seen much of is actual gameplay footage. Now, thanks to Adam Savage’s Tested, we’ve got a much better sense of what playing the game will look like.

In the video below, recorded at Valve’s offices, we see how Half-Life: Alyx plays across eight different VR kits, including the Valve Index. Beyond showing off the various benefits and downsides of these kits, though, this video also gives us a few looks at how the game actually looks when a regular person is playing it.

In this video, we see how warp movement works in the game, and an few glimpses at how the guns work. We can see the player steadying the gun in their right hand using their left hand a few times, and interacting with elements of the environment. Thus far, all we’ve had to go on is the game’s trailer.

The off-screen gameplay footage is spread out over the video, but we get some interesting looks at a variety of actions, like gripping a doorway with both hands to pull it open and navigating UI elements with your hands. The video will also give you some insight into how the game will handle on your VR set of choice.

Half-Life: Alyx is being developed by much of the team that was originally working on In the Valley of Gods. It will only be playable in VR.

Silent Hills Hacker Finds Their Way Into The Town In The P.T. Demo

Published on in Default by Jennifer Stephens

Silent Hills, despite having been cancelled back in 2015, continues to serve up new mysteries and reveals years later thanks to the work of one enterprising YouTuber. The town of Silent Hill appears briefly in the final cutscene of the game’s demo, P.T. (short for playable teaser,) and game hacker Lance McDonald has found a way to walk through director Hideo Kojima’s version of it.

McDonald, who previously revealed that Lisa follows you throughout the game and that you’re playing as Norman Reedus the whole time, was able to connect the map for the town to a doorway from early in the demo, but there was an initial problem–because the town was not designed for the player to walk through, there’s no collision, and you fall through the ground immediately.

Incredibly, Lisa pops up and grabs you if this happens, allowing the game to reset any player who manages to clip through the environment (which also gives the video below a proper jump scare.)

To counteract this, McDonald had to patch the game to make the player float slightly above the ground, which allows him to explore the town without issue.

If you’ve finished P.T., you’ll recognize the trail of blood on the ground–McDonald follows it, but it doesn’t lead anywhere too exciting. In fact, Silent Hill, quite eerily, feels like a regular town in many ways. There are a lot of low-poly assets, but also lots of attention to detail–the air conditioners and staircases have been hand-placed on each building to avoid repetition, for instance, and potted plants are placed realistically.

As McDonald notes, the town feels simultaneously under construction and abandoned, which is a hallmark of the Silent Hill series. It also stretches back quite far, and features a mysterious bridge that you can walk under right in the middle of the street at the edge of the map.

There are no major revelations or reveals here, but it’s a very interesting look at how Silent Hill itself might have looked if the game was ever completed. Instead, Kojima and Norman Reedus went on to create Death Stranding.

Kojima has recently hinted at a return to horror, and while we won’t be seeing him work on the Silent Hill franchise any time soon, it’s possible that he’ll return to some of his ideas for the game in the future.

Watch Loadout Episode 3: How Warhammer 40k’s Bolter Was Created

Published on in Default by Jennifer Stephens

Whether it’s video games, movies, or TV shows, entertainment is filled with iconic tools of warfare, and much of the stories we love are defined by them; the Pulse Rifle is synonymous with the Aliens franchise; the Man With No Name’s mystique and effortless cool is heightened by the revolver he whips out in the squint of an eye; and the sound of a bullet from the Intervention hitting an enemy immediately conjures up Call of Duty-flavoured nostalgia.

These weapons are the focus of Loadout, a new show that will identify some of pop culture’s most influential armaments and explore them in-depth. Each week, host Dave Jewitt will tackle a different weapon, delve into its origins, examine how it has been used, and lay out the impact it has had on pop culture.

In Episode 1, Loadout takes hold of the revolver, a legendary weapon that has been present from the earliest days of cinema to the current era of video games. Why is it so popular? For Episode 2, Dave takes a look at The Intervention, a weapon that Call of Duty players will be intimately familiar with and, given its status as arguably the most meme-able video game weapon, you may know it even if you haven’t played the shooter series. For Episode 3, Dave delves into the world of Warhammer 40k to explore the history of an iconic sci-fi weapon.

New episodes of Loadout will air every Saturday and you can find them on GameSpot’s YouTube channel–make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

Episode 3: The Bolter

Episode 2: The Intervention

Episode 1: Revolvers

Watch Dogs Legion – Phil Hornshaw’s Most Anticipated Game Of 2020

Published on in Default by Jennifer Stephens

2020 is almost here, so we’ve asked GameSpot’s staff to share which games they’re looking forward to most in the new year. New consoles are going to dominate the headlines, but at the end of the day it’s all about the games, and there are a ton of exciting ones to look forward to. When you’re done reading this entry, follow along with all of our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best of 2019 hub and our Most Anticipated of 2020 hub.

Though the first Watch Dogs never grabbed me, I was delighted by Ubisoft’s tack with the second. It centers on a young, diverse, and mostly well-drawn group of characters, it’s a smart send-up of tech culture, and it has a lot of interesting things to say–while being a fun open-world game that utilizes Watch Dogs’ interesting hacking gameplay ideas in a story that’s actually engaging. After playing Watch Dogs Legion at E3 2019, I’m even more excited for the third entry in the series, which appears to be expanding on all the good things of its predecessor, while adding some truly engaging and innovative gameplay mechanics and story conceits.

The crux of Watch Dogs Legion is that you can play as any character in the game: all the NPCs are recruitable to your ever-growing underground hacker insurgency, and each character has a unique backstory and set of perks and drawbacks. It sounds like a pie-in-the-sky idea about the capabilities of procedural generation that will immediately collapse under close scrutiny, but after playing Legion, I was blown away by how well the game actually does integrate the idea of pulling characters from its future London into your group, and how well-realized they feel. You add characters to your group by helping them deal with the problems in their lives, almost all of which are caused by the draconian, fascist surveillance state (one that’s an outgrowth of our real-world political climate) in which they find themselves. So Watch Dogs Legion feels like you’re completing a series of loyalty missions specific to the characters.

Once they’re on your team, you can switch between your characters on the fly, making use of different people’s particular skills to complete your missions. When you get into trouble and the authorities are closing in on you, it’s the other characters you’ve recruited that come to your aid with special passive abilities, like setting up roadblocks to divert police that give you time to escape. While “any NPC is playable” sounds like a gimmick, the complex systems at work in Legion do well to make all those characters feel distinct, rather than just a series of random attributes attached to a random character model. Legion sees the return of Watch Dogs’ long-running scanning ability that lets you see into the lives of people on the street, but for the first time in the series, that ability is essential to the game as you recruit characters, and helps create a London that feels populous and alive.

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The character recruiting system goes beyond gameplay, though. Legion’s random NPCs actually feel like bespoke characters created for the story as you play through its campaign, and each has their own voice actors and dialogue pieces that slot seamlessly into cutscenes. Ubisoft didn’t hire thousands of actors, obviously, but there are enough that, at least in our preview and in gameplay footage, we haven’t yet heard the same voice repeated on two characters. It all works together to create a feeling that you’re creating a unique take on the game’s story through the people you choose to bring into Ded Sec, and who you choose to take on missions. What’s more, you find yourself caring about these characters because of the history you have with them and the time you’ve put into them–which makes it all the more devastating when they’re arrested or killed.

Though we got hands-on with Watch Dogs Legion at E3, Ubisoft recently delayed the game from its original March 6, 2020 release date. As of now, Ubisoft is expecting to launch Watch Dogs Legion in the second half of the year. Given the level of complexity in the game (not to mention its politically charged story, which deals with the repercussions of Brexit), the development team using that extra time is probably for the best. We also know that Legion will be one of the first Ubisoft games to appear on the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett, so it’ll be interesting to see how Legion will leverage the capabilities of new hardware.

For a brief rundown on everything you need to know about Watch Dogs Legion, be on the lookout for our explainer highlighting all the essential details.

See Watch Dogs Legion at Amazon

Creative Freedom With Microsoft Is “Not As Hard As People Think,” Says We Happy Few Devs

Published on in Default by Jennifer Stephens

Compulsion Games isn’t worried about losing creative freedom under Microsoft’s banner as part of Xbox Game Studios. The development team behind We Happy Few actually asserts that the Microsoft acquisition has afforded them the chance to more easily focus on the studio’s future.

“That’s actually removed a lot of the focus from finding where we’re going to find the next paycheck to actually concentrating on what is it that we need to make great games,” founder and creative director Guillaume Provost said in The Cost of Joy, a documentary recounting the history of Compulsion Games. “I can be more forward-looking to what we actually need in order to actually succeed. And [there’s] a huge difference from having a big backer like Microsoft that’s allowing us our creative space and our creative freedom, from being an independent developer that’s starving all the time and looking for money. Build the team not just for the next game, but for the next series of games.”

“Trying to maintain creativity inside an organization like Microsoft is not as hard as people think it is,” producer Sam Abbott said. “It’s really just about having a leadership group inside Microsoft that understands the value of creativity and creative games.” Community developer Naila Hadjas added, “We have been told to keep making really weird, just different things. So, on the creative standpoint, it’s just been all positive.”

Microsoft’s decision to acquire Compulsion Games as a first-party studio was one the We Happy Few developers did not anticipate. “I don’t think that ever crossed our mind,” Abbot said. “We’re spending a lot of time figuring out, do we think that we can raise the standards of quality of the games we’re building–can we become a real first-party studio?” Hadjas thinks they are up to the task, citing the team’s history with Gearbox as an example of Compulsion Games efficiently working with a larger studio. “Working with Gearbox prepared us to work with Microsoft in a lot of ways because we let them into our world and we learned to be very concise and precise with our feedback back and forth,” she said.

With the recent release of the We All Fall Down expansion, Compulsion Games has officially wrapped up We Happy Few. The game launched to mixed reviews–including ours here on GameSpot, where Alessandro Barbosa wrote, “[We Happy Few’s] entire gameplay loop is underpinned by boring quests and long stretches of inaction. And even when it forces you to interact with its world beyond just walking to waypoints, combat, stealth, and otherwise fascinating societies fail to impose the right balance of challenge and tension.”

Despite the rough start, Compulsion Games’ continued support for We Happy Few is commendable, and the bug fixes, updates, and DLC expansions have created a much better, more cohesive experience overall. With the game now complete, Compulsion Games is probably hard at work on an upcoming Xbox first-party title–which, based on the timing, is likely to release for Microsoft’s next-gen console, Xbox Series X, which is scheduled to launch during the holiday season in 2020.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker – Who Were All Those Jedi Voices?

Published on in Default by Jennifer Stephens

Note: This story includes spoilers for the end of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Read on at your own risk!

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker finally brings the nine-movie Skywalker Saga to a conclusion, finishing the story of the Jedi Order’s war with the dark Sith. It’s a conflict that has ravaged the galaxy through wars between the Separatists and the Galactic Republic in the prequel movies, the Rebellion and the Galactic Empire in the original trilogy, and the Resistance and the First Order in the sequel trilogy. Though both the Jedi and the Sith have nearly been destroyed, as we saw in The Last Jedi, there are still two warriors for each faction battling for the fate of the galaxy far, far away in The Rise of Skywalker: Rey on the light side, and Kylo Ren on the dark.

During the final conflict of the film, Rey, as the last Jedi, finds herself facing down the might of the Sith once and for all. And though it looks like she’s not up to the task, at the last second, she’s infused with the power of all the Jedi who have come before her. In a poignant moment, the voices of the Jedi of the past ring out in Rey’s mind, granting her the strength and confidence to stand for the Light side.

If you listen close, you might recognize a few of those voices–and there might be plenty you don’t recognize, especially because they come pretty quickly. So who are all the Jedi of the past standing with Rey? Check out the complete list below.

And if you’re looking for more references and callbacks to past Star Wars material, check out our giant list of Rise of Skywalker Easter eggs.

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1. Obi-Wan Kenobi

Ewan McGregor reprises his prequel role as Obi-Wan, at least with his voice, something he also did during The Force Awakens. And like in The Force Awakens, you can hear the voice of the original Obi-Wan, Alec Guinness, as well. For the first movie, the filmmakers used a bit of Guinness’s dialogue from the original film to make it sound like he says “Rey” during her vision after touching Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber at Maz Kanata’s castle. That same clip makes it into the end of The Rise of Skywalker as well.

2. Yoda

The Jedi Master responsible for Luke Skywalker had a brief return as a Force ghost in The Last Jedi, where he gave Luke some useful advice about his interactions with Rey. Yoda’s influence on the Jedi continues one last time as we hear him in the Sith temple, voiced again by Frank Oz.

3. Luke Skywalker

Rey’s mentor might have sacrificed himself to save the Resistance and gone into the Force, but he’s still around to help out here and there. After Rey saw him on Ahch-To, we again hear Mark Hamill’s voice during Rey’s toughest challenge.

4. Anakin Skywalker

Though Kylo Ren hears Darth Vader’s voice in his mind–one that Emperor Palpatine takes responsibility for–the Dark Lord of the Sith’s redemption means that Rey hears him during her final battle. Hayden Christiansen reprises the role from the prequel movies.

5. Qui-Gon Jinn

The Jedi who first saw the potential in Anakin Skywalker and came to believe he was the prophesied Jedi who would bring balance to the Force was also one of Palpatine’s first victims. Qui-Gon, played by Liam Neeson, fell to Palpatine’s first apprentice, Darth Maul, but he also contacted Yoda through the Force in Revenge of the Sith. And now he’s back for the final battle against the Sith Lord who indirectly ended him.

6. Mace Windu

Of everyone who took on Emperor Palpatine during his rise to power, Mace Windu came closest to defeating him. In fact, he only fell because of Anakin’s interference during the Jedi’s fall to become Darth Vader. It makes sense that we’d hear the voice of Samuel L. Jackson at the moment Rey is finally able to defeat Palpatine once and for all.

7. Ahsoka Tano

A longtime character in the Star Wars cartoon series, starting with The Clone Wars, Ahsoka was formerly Anakin’s padawan. Ashley Eckstein returns to Star Wars for Rey’s big moment, although she’s an interesting inclusion, given that as of Star Wars Rebels, Ahsoka was still alive. She’s only a few years older than Han Solo, after all.

8. Kanan Jarrus

One of the key Jedi figures in Star Wars Rebels, Kanan Jarrus survived Order 66 during the Clone Wars and went on to mentor Jedi padawan and Rebels protagonist Ezra Bridger before he was killed during the year of the Battle of Yavin. We don’t hear Ezra among the voices of the Jedi of the Path, but you can pick out Kanan, voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr., among the elder Jedi aiding Rey.

9. Aayla Secura

A Jedi from the fall of the Republic who only briefly appeared in Revenge of the Sith, Aayla Sekura was a much more prominent figure in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. There, she fought alongside Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka Tano. Jennifer Hale voiced Aayla in the show and she returns for The Rise of Skywalker as well.

10. Luminara Unduli

Another Jedi Master from before the rise of the Empire, Luminara was a major figure in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. She fought alongside Ahsoka against the Sith acolyte Asajj Ventress, but was eventually captured during the events of Revenge of the Sith. Olivia d’Abo reprises the role of Luminara for The Rise of Skywalker.

11. Adi Gallia

Like most of the other Jedi on this list, Adi was present on the Jedi Council throughout Palpatine’s rise. She appeared briefly in the movies, and fought alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: The Clone Wars before she was killed by Savage Opress, Darth Maul’s brother. She’s again voiced by Angelique Perrin, as she was in the series, in The Rise of Skywalker.