Geek Culture
The Internet: Judge and Jury of Entertainment
With the recent release of EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II trailer, the internet has found its new favorite meme about Darth Maul and some scared Clone Troopers. Because of that meme, many are becoming much more open to this new entry in the Battlefront franchise. This demonstrates the internet’s power to dominate the entertainment industry. The last Battlefront was panned for its huge DLC price tag and now, with a simple meme, the internet has completely turned around the potential for success in this franchise.
The internet holds the greatest amount of power in the industry when it comes to how a product does. Whether it be a game, movie, TV show, you name it, the internet controls its level of success. If it loves something, even for a really specific reason like with Battlefront II, that product is here to stay. However, the opposite is also true.
As I mentioned previously, the 2015 Battlefront did very poorly, at least where EA was concerned. The internet similarly banded together on this one but achieved the opposite effect. There were various rallying cries against the previous entry such as the huge price tag, the lack of content, etc. As a result, it didn’t do very well. EA even referenced all its Twitter feedback on the last Battlefront during their E3 presentation of the new game.
Another example includes the Mass Effect series. Once one of the most respected series in gaming history, the internet annihilated it over the past 5 years or so. Starting with the poorly received ending, Mass Effect 3 received unheard of amounts of critical backlash. It was so bad that BioWare even thought it was necessary to edit their own ending, which they were initially very steadfast about, as damage control. Then Mass Effect: Andromeda came out with subpar facial animations and the internet had a field day.
The harsh backlash Andromeda got from the various memes about it led to very poor sales and a hiatus of the series as no one wanted to get a game that had become the laughingstock of the internet. Another example of this is the recent Berserk anime. Fans of the manga were incredibly excited until they saw the poor CGI used in the show. From there, a similar but less noteworthy series of events occurred. By that I mean, at the very least I still hear people talk about Mass Effect but I haven’t heard one word about Berserk since the new anime started and it’s still ongoing.
As mentioned with Battlefront II, the internet has the power to save a franchise as well. The DC Extended Universe of films was saved by internet backlash against Rotten Tomatoes. The first three films got poor reviews while Marvel movies were getting great reviews, leading to a very vocal outcry against film critics. Now, Wonder Woman has reviews that are (in my opinion) higher than they should be. Despite it’s obvious quality as a film, it came across as more damage control to satiate the internet and managed to breathe new life and potential into the DCEU.
The internet is a very powerful beast that has largely taken over the entertainment industry in the modern day. It’s honestly scary how much of an influence it has over how well certain products do, let alone ending up with an opinion it disagrees with.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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