CD Projekt Red has formally confirmed the existence of The Witcher IV with a CG trailer at the Games Awards. They had acknowledged that the game existed previously, but this is the first time they've confirmed that it would be called The Witcher IV (rather than The Witcher Colon Subtitle Something) and it will focus on the character of Ciri.
The game follows The Witcher (2007), The Witcher II: Assassin of Kings (2011) and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (2015) and sees a change of protagonist. The first three games, which acted as an unofficial sequel to the nine-volume book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, saw you playing Geralt, the titular Witcher, as he grappled with various threats to the Northern Kingdoms. In The Witcher III he earned a pleasant retirement by saving Ciri, a young girl with impressive powers, who was destined to save the world. The game also saw you playing Ciri at several key points in the narrative. The game ended with Ciri in various possible states, including becoming the Empress of Nilfgaard, dying, or entering Witcher training.
The Witcher IV suggest that, whichever ending you chose, by several years later Ciri has circled back around to becoming a Witcher in her own right, wielding magical powers of the Cat School. Some fans had speculated that the game might allow you to create your own Witcher protagonist, in the vein of CDPR's other big video game adaptation, Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), but CDPR seemed to prefer to stick to the idea of using a pre-existing, firmly-established character.
The game entered development after the release of Cyberpunk 2077, although early work was slowed by the urgent need to patch and fix that game after its rough launch window. As a result, it's hard to know how far along The Witcher IV is; CDPR only recently confirmed that the game was entering full-time development, and Cyberpunk 2077's first trailer preceded the release of the game by a startling eight years. CDPR hope to speed The Witcher IV's development by using the more widely-used Unreal 5 Engine to speed onboarding of new staff. I'd be impressed to see this game released much this side of 2028 though.
As well as The Witcher IV, itself projected as the start of a new trilogy, CDPR are working on a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, a game in a totally new IP and a remake of the original Witcher game from 2007.
Rockstar Games have (somewhat ahead of schedule) dropped the trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest game in the mega-popular crime/action series.
Thanks to a plethora of leaks over the years, much of the game's premise and story was already known. The game opens with new protagonist Lucia in prison, but apparently about to get out. When released, she reconnects with partner Jason and immediately embarks on/is forced back into a life of crime.
The setting this time is Vice City, Florida (or a GTA-ised version of Florida). Previously appearing in Grand Theft Auto (1997), Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006), Vice City is loosely based on Miami and is a den of crime, corruption, drugs, glitz and sleaze. With latest-generation tech, Vice City is considerably larger than its previous incarnations and the game expands beyond the city limits to take in offshore islands (including its own version of the Florida Keys) and surrounding countryside.
As expected, the game's satirical streak sees it tackling phenomena like "Florida Man" and alligators wandering into civilised areas and wreaking havoc. The game will also feature street races, speedboats, shoot-outs, robberies and, apparently, an in-game version of TikTok.
Other details remain to be confirmed, such as if both Lucia and Jason are playable or just Lucia. Lucia is already notable as the first female protagonist of a mainline, single-player Grand Theft Auto game since the original, although characters in the original were tiny blobs in the centre of the screen and had no discernible personality, so that's not saying much.
Also, the game looks amazing. The RAGE Engine - Rockstar's inhouse engine they have been using since 2005 - has been upgraded yet again and Grand Theft Auto VI's in-engine graphics look better than most of their competitor's pre-rendered cutscenes. Given that their previous game Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) is still one of the best-looking games in existence, and even Grand Theft Auto V (2013) looks incredible after its latest update, GTAVI being a huge improvement over them is quite an achievement. The character animation in particular is phenomenal.
Rockstar are keeping a lot of other details to their chest. There's no indication of how the new game will integrate the uber-lucrative Grand Theft Auto Online, which has generated literally billions of dollars of profit for Rockstar and publisher Take Two since 2013, and a lot of details on the story, characters and factions remain unknown. Rockstar may reveal more information tomorrow (when the trailer was originally supposed to drop).
The trailer confirms that the game is coming out in 2025 (possibly spring 2025, given Take Two's previous marketing spend projections). Platforms are not mentioned, but we can assume that PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S will be the initial launch platforms, either alongside PC or with that version following some months later.
Warner Brothers have unveiled the trailer for their upcoming Mad Max spin-off movie, Furiosa.
A prequel to the much-acclaimed 2015 movie Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa follows the adventures of the younger version of Charlize Theron's character from that film. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the young Furiosa who is swept up in the insanity of life in the post-apocalyptic landscape, becoming a warrior and, er, rally driver. Chris Hemsworth plays Warlord Dementus, the leader of two factions battling for control of the wasteland.
Development of the film began after Fury Road's release in 2015, with director George Miller considering both a Furiosa-focused prequel and a further Max-focused movie, Mad Max: The Wasteland, as his next project in the series. He ultimately settled on the Furiosa project. The COVID pandemic significantly delayed filming before shooting began in mid-2022.
BioWare have unveiled a brief teaser for the upcoming fifth game in the Mass Effect franchise.
As part of N7 Day - an annual celebration of the franchise derived from the N7 special forces group in the video games - BioWare released a series of text and video bursts teasing a new clip. Once fans had done some detective work, the full clip was posted as above.
The accompanying text (in the original files) suggests that the next game in the series takes place in or after the year 2819, the year that Mass Effect: Andromeda took place in, and a distress call from the Andromeda Galaxy has been detected. The text also suggests that the Systems Alliance, the Earth-led human faction in the Mass Effect universe, is still extant. The original Mass Effect trilogy concluded in the year 2186, for reference.
BioWare and parent company Electronic Arts confirmed some years ago that a new Mass Effect game was in development. However, it is still likely some years off; the company is currently working hard to get Dragon Age: Dreadwolf finished for its likely 2024 launch and will only turn its full firepower towards Mass Effect 5 (or, more likely, Mass Effect Colon Dramatic Subtitle) after that game comes out.
The Mass Effect franchise was launched in 2007 with the titular original game; it was followed by Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). The three games are notable for combining into one very large mega-game where players can guide their characters through almost 100 hours of an epic space opera war story, in which humanity and the other races of the Milky Way are plunged into war against an ancient alien threat, the Reapers. In 2017 BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda, a spin-off story set more than six centuries later in the Andromeda Galaxy. However, the game garnered a lukewarm reaction from fans and middling sales. BioWare decided not to proceed with a direct sequel, despite the game setting one up. In 2021 they released Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, a packaging of all three original games into one title with some upgrades to the graphics and controls.
It sounds like the new game will take place in the Milky Way again and will have to decide which one of Mass Effect 3's endings is canon. However, by taking place after Andromeda, it may also be able to resolve some of the unresolved story threads from that game.
Although teasing a new Mass Effect game is welcome, fans have also taken advantage of N7 Day to criticise the lay-offs of numerous developers from the company in the last few weeks, including some of the last original team-members from the Baldur's Gate franchise (an interesting look after Baldur's Gate III launched back in August from Larian Studios and was a massive critical and commercial success of the kind that BioWare has not enjoyed in over fifteen years), as well as QA staff after they voted to unionise (although BioWare have pointed out that was a decision by their contracted company rather than BioWare themselves).
It's fair to say that an enormous amount is riding on the success of both Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and Mass Effect Next: BioWare have not had a really big hit since the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition nine years ago, and the company has since been haemorrhaging fans, critical acclaim and its creative firepower.
Blackbird Interactive and Gearbox Software have released a new trailer for their upcoming space strategy game, Homeworld 3.
Defying titular logic, Homeworld 3 is actually the fifth game in the venerable series and is set around 100 years after the events of Homeworld 2. A new mothership, the Khar-Kushan, has been constructed and launched under the guidance of a new Fleet Command, a scientist neurally wired into the ship to act as its living intelligence system. The primary threat in the new game is "the Anomaly," an artefact capable of destroying planets and shutting down the Great Hyperspace Gates. Karan S'Jet, the Fleet Command from Homeworld and Homeworld 2, is missing in action along with her fleet, leaving her successor and distant kin Imogen S'Jet to guide the Khar-Kushan on a new mission. S'Jet's mission is complicated by the emergence of a new polity, the Incarnate, whose motives are initially unclear.
Homeworld 3 will be released on PC in February 2024.
Warner Brothers have released a second trailer for their upcoming movie, Dune: Part Two.
Following on from Dune: Part One (2021), this film adapts the second half of Frank Herbert's seminal 1965 science fiction novel. It focuses on the exiled Paul Atreides as he aligns himself with the Fremen and seeks to destroy the Harkonnens who cast his family from power on the desert world of Arrakis.
Dune: Part Two is due to hit screens on 3 November.
Disney+ have dropped the first trailer for Star Wars: Ahsoka, the upcoming live-action mini-series that will focus on the fan-favourite character of Ahsoka Tano.
Ahsoka debuted in the animated Clone Wars feature film from 2008, before becoming a mainstay of the seven-season run of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-14, 20). She was originally voiced by Ashley Eckstein. Ahsoka is a Force-sensitive from the Togruta species, and is assigned as Anakin Skywalker's padawan (apprentice) during the Clone Wars. Some months before the end of the conflict, Ahsoka is accused of a crime she did not commit and outcast from the Jedi Order. Although exonerated, the Jedi Council's lack of faith in her shakes her confidence and she quits permanantly, neatly avoiding Order 66 and the near-extermination of the Jedi Order.
She reappears fourteen years later in Star Wars: Rebels (2014-18) as an older intelligence operative working for the Rebel Alliance and acting as a liaison with the crew of the Ghost, who are running Rebel operations on the Imperial-occupied world of Lothal. Ahsoka confronts her former master, now known as Darth Vader, and is apparently killed by him in battle. Ezra, the would-be trainee Jedi of the Ghost crew, uses a powerful time-bending device known as the World Between Worlds to rescue Ahsoka at the apparent moment of her demise and rescue her. So as not to disrupt the timeline, Ahsoka goes into hiding until after Darth Vader's demise at the battle of Endor. With Ezra's disappearance in battle with Grand Admiral Thrawn in the Rebels finale, Ahsoka joins forces with Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian warrior from the Ghost crew, to track them both down.
Ahsoka made her live-action debut in Season 2 of The Mandalorian, now played by Rosario Dawson. Ahsoka works with the Mandalorian, Din Djarin, to overcome a mutual threat. She also appears in The Book of Boba Fett, working alongside Luke Skywalker to help train Grogu in the Jedi way. However, she references the threat posed by Grand Admiral Thrawn in both series.
The trailer for Ahsoka confirms that her quest to find and eliminate the threat posed by Thrawn now takes precedence. We see her join forces with Ghost crewmembers Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Chopper (Dave Filoni, probably) on a mission to find Ezra (Eman Esfandi) and Thrawn (cast, but not identified so far). Their mission will involve a journey to Lothal and meeting Baylan (Ray Stevenson) and an unknown pilot and lightsaber-wielder (Ivanna Sakhno), who may be friends or foes. They will also revisit the World Between the Worlds.
Genevieve O'Reilly also reprises her role from Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Andor as Mon Mothma (now, it appears, Chancellor or President of the New Republic). Diana Lee Inosanto also returns as Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth, whom debuted in Season 2 of The Mandalorian. David Tennant returns as the lightsaber-crafting droid Huyang from The Clone Wars, and Hayden Christensen will return as Anakin Skywalker (presumably in flashback).
The trailer also name-drops Heir to the Empire, the popular 1991 novel by Timothy Zahn that hugely popularised the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In that novel and its two sequels, set five years after Return of the Jedi, Grand Admiral Thrawn seizes control of the remaining Imperial factions and launches a war against the New Republic, including besieging Coruscant with cloaked asteroids which he threatens to drop on the planet. Thrawn strikes an ill-advised alliance with the mad dark Jedi clone Joruus C'boath to gain access to advanced weaponry and technology at Mount Tantiss (which recently made its new canon debut in The Bad Batch). Luke, Han, Leia, Lando and the rest of the old Rebel Alliance crowd help defeat Thrawn and Joruus in battle. Although no longer canon, the novel remains a beloved touchstone by old-skool Star Wars fans, and it might be that Ahsoka will draw on it for inspiration.
Star Wars: Ahsoka will debut in August this year on Disney+.
Ahsoka Tano Timeline
36 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin): Born on Shili.
33 BBY: Found by Jedi Master Plo Kloon and taken to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Begins training.
22 BBY: Assigned as padawan to Anakin Skywalker at the outbreak of the Clone Wars. Also serves as a commanding officer over the 501st Legion of the Grand Army of the Republic, meeting CT-7567 “Rex” and becoming his close friend and ally (The Clone Wars).
20 BBY: Framed for murder and treason, banished from the Jedi Order and forced to go on the run. She clears her name and is exonerated, but feels betrayed by the Jedi Order and refuses to return. As a private citizen, she fights alongside Bo-Katan Kryze in the liberation of Mandalore. Shortly after the battle, she is betrayed by Rex during the execution of Order 66. She saves Rex from his inhibitor trip and they escape. Anakin, now Darth Vader, believes her dead in a Star Destroyer crash (The Clone Wars).
18 BBY: After years in hiding on the Outer Rim, Ahsoka joins Senator Bail Organa’s nascent Alliance to Restore the Republic. She becomes an intelligence specialist coordinating the activities of dozens of autonomous cells, codenamed “Fulcrum.”
5 BBY: Ahsoka begins working with the Lothal rebels, principally the crew of the Ghost (Rebels).
3 BBY: Ahsoka battles Darth Vader on Malachor, confirming he is her former master, Anakin Skywalker. Ahsoka vanishes during the battle, Vader believing her dead. In reality, she is rescued by Ezra Bridger from two years in the future, using the time-warping power of the “World Between Worlds.” Fearing her survival has changed history, Ahsoka lies low (Rebels).
0 BBY: Liberation of Lothal, disappearance of Grand Admiral Thrawn and Ezra Bridger (Rebels).
3 ABY: Destruction of the Second Death Star at the Battle of Endor and death of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader (Return of the Jedi).
5 ABY: Ahsoka and Sabine Wren join forces to search for the missing Ezra Bridger in the Unknown Regions of the Galaxy (Rebels).
9 ABY: Adopted Mandalorian Child of the Watch Din Djarin encounters Bo-Katan Kryze during his search for the Jedi. Bo-Katan directs him to find Ahsoka Tano, whom she believes is currently located on the planet Corvus (The Mandalorian). Ahsoka aids in the training of Grogu along with Jedi Master Luke Skywalker (The Book of Boba Fett). The events of Ahsoka take place (Ahsoka).
Marvel have revealed that their Ms. Marvel TV series will debut on Disney+ on 8 June.
The series stars Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a young superhero fan (particularly of Captain Marvel) who gains her own set of powers and sets out to fight crime and bad guys, having to overcome objections from her family in the process. The series also stars Aramis Knight as Red Dagger, Saagar Shaikh as Amir Khan, Zenobia Shroff as Muneeba Khan, Mohan Kapur as Yusuf Khan, Matt Lintz as Bruno and Rish Shah as Kamran.
The six-episode series also acts as setup for the Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels, due in February 2023.
Ms. Marvel will be the second Marvel TV show to air this year, after Moon Knight airs from 30 March to 4 May. She-Hulk will follow in the late summer and Secret Invasion at the end of the year.
Warner Brothers has started the marketing cycle for their upcoming fourth Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections.
They've revamped the OG 1999 Matrix website, What is the Matrix?, and it now offers you a choice of red and blue pills. The pills take you to different teaser clips where a voice creepily identifies what time it is for you.
The Matrix Resurrections seemingly picks up twenty-odd years after the events of The Matrix Revolutions, which ended in a truce between the human rebels and the machine AIs after they joined forces to defeat Agent Smith, but something strange has clearly happened in the interim. Old characters are back, but with new names and limited or no memory of what happened to them the first time around. Some characters also seem to be back in new bodies, or with new faces. Early previews have hinted at a much stranger (and probably even more divisive) film than the soulless cash-in many were expecting.
A full trailer is expected on Thursday. The film itself will be released on 22 December this year in cinemas and, in the United States, on HBO Max.
The film sees the return of Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Ann Moss, Lambert Wilson, Daniel Bernhardt and Jada Pinkett Smith from the original trilogy, with new casting additions including Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris, Jessica Yu Li Henwick, Toby Onwumere, Max Riemelt and Christina Ricci. The film is directed by Lana Wachowski (who co-directed the original trilogy) and co-written by Lana Wachowski with David Mitchell (yes, that one) and Aleksandar Hemon.
D&D: Dark Alliance is a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (2001) and Dark Alliance II (2004). Like those games, this is an action title set in the Forgotten Realms world and emphasising combat over roleplaying. The game sees the players taking control of the infamous Companions of the Hall - drow ranger Drizzt Do'Urden, human archer Cattie-brie, dwarven warrior Bruenor Battlehammer and human barbarian Wulfgar - in a struggle against an army of invaders that swarmed into Icewind Dale in search of the infamous magical artifact known as the Crystal Shard. These characters and events were made famous in R.A. Salvatore's bestselling novel series, The Icewind Dale Trilogy, although the game does not appear to be a 1:1 adaptation of the novels, featuring as it does both beholders and wights (which are nowhere to be found in the books).
The trailer makes some bold choices with bombastic visuals, a heavy rock soundtrack and very generic-looking action. Hopefully the game will be better than it appears.
The game will launch on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, X-Box One and X-Box Series X, as well as, pleasingly, PC (the original Dark Alliance games were not released on PC).
Amazon has released the trailer for Season 5 of the hit SF show The Expanse, as well as confirming its release date: 16 December. In a change from previous seasons, The Expanse will be released on a weekly schedule following the success of Amazon experimenting with the format for the second season of another of its shows, The Boys.
Season 5 of The Expanse is based primarily on the fifth book in the novel series, Nemesis Games, although it appears it will also draw on the novella The Churn. After Season 4, which was primarily restricted to one colony planet, Season 5 will again be an epic space opera spanning the Solar system, focusing on the criminal activities of Marcos Inaros as he strikes a blow against Earth and Mars which he hopes will win him the support of all the Belters. As usual, the crew of the Rocinante are called in to help save the day, but this time run into problems when the crisis erupts when they are on shore leave and scattered across several worlds, and they have to fight their way back home.
Production of Season 5 of The Expanse was completed a few weeks before the coronavirus pandemic shut down TV and movie productions worldwide. However, controversy struck the show in June when actor Cas Anvar (who plays pilot Alex Kamal) was accused of improper conduct by multiple women. The production team and studio have been investigating these claims ever since, but have not yet announced how they will proceed. However, Anvar has been notably absent from the publicity for the show ever since.
The ninth and final Expanse book, Leviathan Falls, will be published in 2021.
Square have surprise-announced Final Fantasy XVI, the latest game in the long-running Japanese RPG series.
Square released Final Fantasy XV in 2016 to a mostly positive reception, so the fact they are making a new game shouldn't be too surprising. However, in the interim this year they released the first part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, leading some to believe that XVI wouldn't appear until after the entire release was complete. Instead, it appears that Square have leveraged their enormous manpower to get FFXVI in production at the same time.
Final Fantasy XVI looks like a back-to-basics approach, with a focus on magical crystals and a medieval world and setting rather than the blend of SF and fantasy, technology and magic that has informed the last several games in the series. The game is due for release in 2021 on PlayStation 5 and PC.
Lucasfilm and Electronic Arts have joined forces to release Hunted, a seven-minute short film focusing on a dogfight between an X-wing and TIE interceptor duel in the months after the Battle of Endor.
The short film, which incorporates CG assets developed for the film Rogue One, is part of the marketing build-up for the release of Star Wars: Squadrons, a new starfighter-focused video game for PC, X-Box One and PlayStation 4. A spiritual successor to the classic X-Wing line of 1990s video games (X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance), Squadrons pitches two rival squadrons in the Galactic Civil War against one another. The game includes singleplayer campaigns for each faction (although EA remain coy about how long they are) and a number of multiplayer modes.
The film focuses on Varko Grey, one of the ace Imperial pilots who appears in the game. Presumably, we may seen another film about the New Republic side of the conflict, if not several more, in the lead-up to the game's release.
Lucasfilm's direct involvement in the short is interesting. X-wings and TIE fighters are iconic parts of the franchise, of course, and as well as the 1990s video games there was a best-selling novel line by Michael J. Stackpole and Aaron Allston focusing on the pilots. The X-Wing miniatures game from Fantasy Flight has also been hugely successful and recently entered a second edition. Lucasfilm could do worse than to consider a live-action show based around pilots on one or both sides of the conflict.
Star Wars: Squadrons will be released on 2 October this year.
After a great deal of build-up, the first full-length trailer for Denis Villeneuve's take on Frank Herbert's Dune is here.
The trailer was preceded by a presentation led by Stephen Cobert in which he talked to the main cast and director Denis Villeneuve.
The trailer itself, set to a version of Pink Floyd's "Eclipse", opens with Paul (Timothée Chalamet) discussing his prescient visions of Chani (Zendaya) and a great crusade that will burn across the galaxy. Paul discusses his fears with the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (Chalotte Rampling), who forces him to endure a test of pain. We see Paul sparring with knives and personal shields with Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), whilst the Reverend Mother chides him that he will inherit too much power and he must learn how to rule others as well as himself, something his ancestors never learned. Paul notes that his father Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) rules an entire planet (Caladan), but he is losing it in favour of a richer one (Arrakis, known as Dune). The Reverend Mother warns that he will lose that world as well, as Arrakis is a deathtrap. We see the confrontation between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, involving characters such as the Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa), Stilgar (Javier Bardem), the Beast Rabban (David Bautista) and Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). The trailer ends with Paul and his mother, Jessica, confronting one of the great sandworms of Arrakis.
Dune is currently scheduled - pandemic permitting - to hit cinemas globally on 18 December this year.
The first full-length trailer for Denis Villeneuve's new film version of Dune drops tomorrow. Having already given us a taste of the trailer (via a cinema-only teaser airing alongside Tenet), they've now given us a second teaser for the trailer in the form of Paul Atreidets (Timothee Chalamet) voicing the infamous Litany Against Fear.
All very impressive, with what appears to be Hans Zimmer's score crashing over the title card. But I think we're ready for the main trailer tomorrow, and the film itself which (pandemic permitting) will drop on 18 December.
A new Dune teaser attached to screenings of Tenet has confirmed that the first full trailer for the film will be released on 9 September.
The teaser - because trailers for trailers remain a thing - depicts the sequence from early in the story where the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) forces Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) to undergo a test using a pain box and her Gom Jabbar (a poison-coated needle). There are establishing shots of the vast deserts of Arrakis, a glimpse of an ornithopter (with actually beating wings!) and shots of key characters Duke Let Atreides (Oscar Issac), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Stilgar (Javier Bardem), Chani (Zendaya), Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard), Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin), Dr. Wellington Yueh (Chang Cheng), Dr. Liet-Kynes (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), the Beast Rabban (Dave Bautista) and Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa).
For some reason, the teaser has not been officially released online yet. The full trailer, hopefully, will be next week.
Dune is currently scheduled to open in cinemas worldwide on 18 December.
The BBC and HBO have released the first trailer for Season 2 of His Dark Materials.
The second season of His Dark Materials was filmed back-to-back with the first, so was completed well ahead of the coronavirus pandemic (although the outbreak did limit some planned pickup shots).
Season 2 of the series is based on the middle book of the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, and sees Will Parry (Amir Wilson) and Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen) joining forces when they find themselves both trapped in a strange world. New actors for the second season include industry veteran Terence Stamp (Superman II, The Limey, The Phantom Menace, Valkyrie) and Andrew Scott (Fleabag, Sherlock).
Season 2 of His Dark Materials will air on the BBC in the UK and HBO in the USA this autumn. Work on adapting the third and final book, The Amber Spyglass, has begun, although as of a few months ago the producers were still trying to decide if they were going to cram the large volume into one season or expand it out to two.
Philip Pullman, author of the novel series, is currently working on the concluding volume of the Book of Dust prequel/sequel trilogy.
CD Projekt Red have unveiled a new trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, their upcoming science fiction roleplaying game (note, contains swearing).
The trailer is part of a media blitz for the game taking place today, which also includes a gameplay stream and multiple outlets previewing the title via a special preview build of the game, with more reactions expected this evening. This kind of coverage is unusual given the game is still five months from launching, but is a display of CDPR's immense confidence in the project.
The game is set in 2077 in Night City, a new metropolis that has grown up on the Californian coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The game followers a central character named V who gets in over their head (the character is fully customisable). The game will feature remarkable reactivity, with the first several hours of the game dramatically different depending on what character background you choose, and the player able to exert tremendous influence over how the story unfolds.
The game was announced in 2012 and has been in full-time production since 2015.
CDPR and Netflix also announced that they are collaborating on an animated TV show, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. The series is expected to debut in 2022.
Cyberpunk 2077 will launch on PC, X-Box One and PlayStation 4 on 19 November 2020. The game will also be backwards-compatible on the X-Box X and PlayStation 5, which are expected to launch around the same time.
Apple TV has released the first trailer for its TV mini-series based on the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov.
Set more than twenty thousand years in the future, Foundation depicts a Galactic Empire that spans hundreds of thousands of star systems with a population in the trillions. The Empire seems prosperous and strong, but mathematician Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) has used incredibly advanced mathematical models - a science he calls "psychohistory" - to predict that the Empire will collapse in a matter of years, ushering in thirty thousand years of barbarism. This creates a storm of controversy, with some citing Seldon as a panic-monger and others thinking he can help resolve a number of looming crises. Eventually Seldon is allowed to found a secret society known as the Foundation, a scientific elite operating from behind the scenes who can reduce the interregnum to a mere single millennium before a new centralised empire arises.
The seven Foundation novels cover the first five hundred years or so of Seldon's Plans, chronicling how the Foundation avoids destruction and helps guide humanity to the next phase of its existence.
The series also stars Lee Pace as Brother Day, Lou Llobell as Gaal, Leah Harvey as Salvor Hardin, Laura Birn as Eto Demerzel, Terrence Mann as Brother Dusk and Cassian Bilton as Brother Dawn.
The show began production at Troy Studios in Limerick, Ireland, last autumn and seemed to be around halfway through its shoot when production was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Production is expected to resume in the next month or so. Apple has moved ahead with post-production and vfx on the completed episodes, with the hope of finishing work quickly for a 2021 premiere.
British science fiction and fantasy author Chris Wooding today confirmed that he's been working on the latest Assassin's Creed video game, Valhalla, as a writer.
Ubisoft lifted the veil on the game, the 23rd in the series, today with a cinematic trailer. The game is set in both Norway and England and sees you playing a Viking raider who settles down to colonise the new land. The game features settlement-building mechanics as well as the familiar combat and stealth gameplay from previous titles in the series.
Chris Wooding is the author of numerous acclaimed works, including The Fade, The Braided Path trilogy, the four-volume Tales of the Ketty Jay diseselpunk series and his latest novel, The Ember Blade. Wooding is also working on a sequel to The Ember Blade, expected for publication in late 2021.
Assassin's Creed: Valhalla will be released in late 2020 on PlayStation 4, X-Box, Stadia and PC.
