Prepare to toss a coin to your favorite witcher. Netflix has shared the first full trailer for season two of The Witcher ahead of its December 17th debut. Unsurprisingly, the clip sees Geralt fighting plenty of monsters, including vampires, gargoyles and even a leshen at one point toward the end. It also reveals plenty of details about the story arc of the show’s sophomore season, teasing an escalating war between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms, Ciri’s training at Kaer Morhen and the return of Jaskier.
After the show’s initial success, a second season isn’t the only piece of Witcher content Netflix has in the pipeline. The streaming giant released The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, an animated prequel film starring Geralt’s mentor Vesemir, earlier this year. It also recently greenlit a third season of the show, announced a second animated movie and a “kids and family” series.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard any news from Amy Hennig, but now we know what the former Naughty Dog and Visceral Games writer and creative director has been working away at since going indie in 2018. On Friday, Marvel announced its working with Hennig’s Skydance New Media studio on a new narrative-driven action-adventure game set in its comic book universe. Details on the project are sparse, but the Disney-owned company teased the title will feature a “completely original story and take on the Marvel Universe.”
After holding our cards close to the vest for so long, we’re excited to finally be able to share the news! We’re having a blast working with @MarvelGames on our first project at @Skydance New Media, and can’t wait until we can share more. Excelsior! https://t.co/opj87SJwQ6
“I can’t imagine a better partner than Marvel for our first game,” said Hennig. “The Marvel Universe epitomizes all the action, mystery and thrills of the pulp adventure genre that I adore and lends itself perfectly to an interactive experience. It’s an honor to be able to tell an original story with all the humanity, complexity, and humor that makes Marvel characters so enduring and to enable our players to embody these heroes that they love.”
In some ways, it’s a surprise to find out Hennig is working on a AAA title. When she left EA after the publisher shut down Visceral, it seemed like she wanted a change of pace. "I would love to have a little company of about six to eight people, 15 at the most, and then do smaller projects," she said at the time. But then the possibility of working with Marvel may have been too difficult to ignore, especially for a new studio working on its first-ever game. Much like it’s done in Hollywood, the company has started to pull in talent from every corner of the gaming industry. Between Eidos Montreal, Firaxis and now Skydance New Media, some of the best studios are working on Marvel properties.
Countess Alcina Dimitrescu isn't technically a vampire, but she's definitely an icon.
From the moment she appeared in an early trailer for Resident Evil: Village, Lady Dimitrescu captured the attention of the internet: her towering, sultry frame; her sickly-sweet smile; her massive hat; her proper yet authoritative tone. Viewers were instantly obsessed, labeling her "tall vampire lady" and demanding to know everything about her, which prompted Capcom to reveal her exact height — 9'6" including her hat and heels — months before Village launched in May.
In-game, Lady Dimitrescu commands three fly-infested, murderous daughters, and hunts the main character, Ethan Winters, across the opulent rooms of her castle. She crouches through doorways and slices at Ethan with long, blade-like fingernails, hurling insults like "rat" and "man-thing" at him the entire time, a mutant dominatrix in a flowing white dress.
Twilight Sparkle
The intrigue surrounding Lady Dimitrescu has persisted since Village's launch, and fans are betting (or maybe just hoping really hard) that the game's first bit of DLC will focus on her specifically.
Until then, and in the spirit of Spooky Season, we have insight into Lady Dimitrescu's creation from Village presentation director Masato Miyazaki, the person in charge of the game's motion-capture process. Earlier this year, Miyazaki shared details with Engadget about how Lady Dimitrescu came to be, from concept to mocap, including the ways actress Maggie Robertson brought her to legendary life.
Engadget: Did Lady Dimitrescu's design change throughout development?
Masato Miyazaki: Alcina Dimitrescu’s incredible height was conceived from the beginning and was not changed during development. The same goes for her wide brim hat and her white dress as well. However, the characteristic of her long protruding nails was something added part way through the development process. It was an idea that was implemented later as a means of adding physical elements that would make her more terrifying when you encounter her.
Lady Dimitrescu is alluring and seductive — was she always meant to be a sultry character, or did that emerge during mocap?
In the early stages of development, she was described as a bewitching character who would capture and toy with her victims. She was designed to embody equal parts beauty and horror. Based on this, the scenario writer fleshed her characterization out even further with dialogue, but she wasn’t fully realized just yet. It was through Maggie’s performance that the character was finally given life.
As with any character, I believe that the moment the script is handed over to the actor, the character becomes theirs. The character's personality and intentions are very much refined by the actor. The character Lady Dimitrescu was truly realized and came to fruition with each of Maggie’s performances.
Capcom
What tricks did you use to make Maggie Robertson as tall as possible during mocap sessions?
Although Maggie Robertson is quite tall herself, she still cannot reach the height that we envisioned for Lady Dimitrescu. Utilizing some means of extending out her height would jeopardize her performance, so it wasn’t something we could consider. We asked Maggie to act naturally. However, that still left us with the height difference between Maggie and Lady Dimitrescu that had to be addressed. We devised a few methods to counteract this issue.
First off, we shot with a mixture of backgrounds according to two standards: human scale and Lady Dimitrescu scale. While other characters performed with surroundings that fit human scale, Lady Dimitrescu’s acting was done in front of a background that fit her scale. Everyone performed with one another, but with this mixture of environments. We figured this would be the best means of allowing the actors to give their best performances without any kind of impediment. We made sure the furniture was laid out in a way so that the actors would be facing each other.
The other aspect that we made sure to stay conscious of was making sure the actors’ lines of sight were in the right positions. We set up markers so that the actors could imagine the correct height. These markers show the correct position of the eye lines and where the limbs actually are. It's a simple adjustment, but it makes a big difference in the actors' performances.
How the sausage gets made part 2: This is what we used to mark Lady D's actual size and eye lines. Clearly, she's grumpy after chasing people around the castle all day. 💅 #thegrumpystandin#LadyDimitrescu#ResidentEvilVillage
The third adjustment was the rig itself. We carefully set up the rigs of the CG characters to gracefully handle as much of the physical differences between the character and actor as possible. We wanted to make sure that we set things up so that the animators would have a relatively easier time handling any kind of miscalculations that happened along the way.
What was the strangest prop you used throughout the mocap process?
There are several, but there are two that I would like to mention. The first is the cane carried by the old woman we meet at the beginning of the village. When you see it in the game, it’s a strange artifact with a lot of components jingling about. The studio crew crafted a prop that resembles the design.
The second is the goggles that our actor Todd wore as he played the role of Ethan Winters. Since the game is from a first-person perspective through the eyes of Ethan Winters, the camera movements are based on the movements of Todd's head. Todd reprises his role as Ethan from the previous game and his performances are absolutely excellent, but there were moments where the camera would go wild during more heated scenarios. In order to suppress this from happening, the studio engineer created a pair of special goggles by hand.
They actually turned out to look very similar to swimming goggles. The assumption was that the narrower field of vision would result in less head movement. I’m still not entirely sure how effective they ended up being, but the engineer’s enthusiasm and Todd having fun wearing the goggles are one of the many wonderful memories I have from the whole experience.
It’s been a busy week! For our special 100th episode, Cherlynn and Devindra dive into their MacBook Pro and Pixel 6 reviews, answer audience questions, and they chat with Engadget’s Karissa Bell about what we’ve learned from the Facebook Papers. (Unfortunately, this episode was recorded before Facebook renamed itself to Meta, but we’ll be chatting about all of that next week!)
Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Credits Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar Guest: Karissa Bell Producer: Ben Ellman Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos,Luke Brooks Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Kyle Maack Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
Back in September, Twitter announced that it was planning to add recording and playback features for Spaces so that listeners can access shows after they air. Now, the website has rolled out the ability to a limited number of Spaces hosts on iOS and to all listeners on iOS and Android. Twitter says it's a way for hosts to extend the value of their work and to reach audiences who couldn't always keep an eye out for live conversations.
Hosts who already have access to Spaces Recording will have to toggle on "Record Space" before launching a new conversation to switch on the feature. A recording icon will be visible to everyone, including listeners, during the show. Hosts will have access to the recording for 30 days after initial broadcast, and they'll be able to share and tweet it for their followers to see. Listeners will be able to play back recordings right on their timeline — they'll also be able to share them, which could translate to more listeners and fans for hosts.
While the recording will be available for a month, hosts can delete it anytime. Twitter says it will still keep a file for up to 120 days, though, so it can check for hateful content that goes against its ToS, in case users report a recording.
Facebook, the social network, will no longer define the future of Facebook, the company that will now be known as Meta. Facebook Inc. is changing the name in order to distinguish its beleaguered social network, which has an increasingly poor reputation around the globe, from the company that is pinning its future on the promise of a “metaverse.”
"Our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can't possibly represent everything that we're doing today, let alone in the future," Zuckerberg said. "From now on, we're going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook first."
Zuckerberg announced the new name during a virtual (meta-virtual?) keynote for the company’s Facebook Connect conference. Under its new arrangement, Facebook and its “family of apps” will be a division of the larger Meta company.
The restructuring bears some similarities to when Google restructured itself into Alphabet, the holding company that now operates Google, along with its “other bets” like DeepMind and Nest. Facebook has already said it plans to separate Facebook Reality Labs, its AR and VR group, from the rest of the company when reporting its financial performance.
Facebook
Facebook is positioning the name as more reflective of its future ambitions to evolve from social network to metaverse company. Zuckerberg still has yet to clearly define exactly what being a “metaverse company” means for its main platform and users, but augmented and virtual reality are central to the vision. The company has already shown off an early version of one project, called Horizon Workrooms, that allows people to conduct meetings in VR. The company also previewed new "Horizon Home" and "Horizon Venues" experiences. And, earlier this month, the company announced plans to hire 10,000 new workers in Europe in order to build out its metaverse.
The name change also comes at one of the most precarious moments in the company’s history. The social network is reeling from the fallout of the “Facebook Papers,” a trove of internal documents collected by a former employee turned whistleblower. The documents have been the basis for a series of complaints to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the source of more than a dozen reports about the company’s failings to stem the tide of misinformation, hate speech and other harms caused by the platform.
One of the most-loved entries in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series is coming to VR. On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a port of 2004's GTA: San Andreas is in development for the company's Quest 2 VR headset. "This new version of what I think is one of the greatest games ever made will offer players an entirely new way to experience this iconic open world in virtual reality," Zuckerberg said during the event.
Zuckerberg didn't go on to say when Quest 2 owners can expect to play the game, and the blog post the company published after the event didn't provide many other details either. "This is a project many years in the making, and we can’t wait to show you more of it," the company said. Whatever form the final product takes, it's likely to look a lot like the Resident Evil 4 remake Facebook and Capcom released last week.
Virtual reality can be a powerful teaching tool, but it's only as good as the content available for the medium. Facebook is looking to grow the availability of content for VR learning as part of its efforts to shift its focus on the metaverse, and it has created a US$150 million fund to achieve that goal. The social network has announced that it's spending that much to reach its VR learning goals over the next three years at its Connect 2021 event.
Since Facebook is hoping to build a robust ecosystem for learning in the metaverse, it plans to do more than just create immersive educational experiences. Part of the money will go towards training augmented reality and virtual reality creators, so they can make their own experiences. Facebook is working with Unity to teach people the skills necessary to create educational VR content — mainly, it's using Unity's "Create with VR for Educators" tool with Quest 2 devices to teach nonprofits and educational institutions. In addition, it's working with several educational institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities, as well as non-profits to create immersive experiences for them.
Finally, Facebook says it's taking steps towards increasing people's access to educational VR materials. After all, all that work will go to waste if nobody ends up using them to learn new things.
Mark Rabkin, VP of Oculus, said in a statement:
"VR isn’t all fun and games. If you’ve ever traveled the world with Wander, explored Japan with Tokyo Origami, or admired the heavens in Titans of Space PLUS, then you know that VR can be a powerful tool for education as well...A lot of work exists between where we’re at now and where we see the metaverse in the future. We’re excited, and we hope you’ll come with us on the journey."
Since the start of the year, Oculus Quest and Quest 2 owners have had the ability to use Messenger to chat with their Facebook friends. When using the app today, you can type out a message, send pre-written phrases or use voice-to-text to communicate. Soon, you’ll also be able to call your friends.
At its Connect conference, Facebook announced it plans to bring audio calling to the platform. Later this year, the app will allow you to call contacts on any other Messenger-enabled platform. In the future, it will also allow you to invite your friends to hang out in VR destinations together.
Here's what Facebook's metaverse isn't: It's not an alternative world to help us escape from our dystopian reality, a la Snow Crash. It won't require VR or AR glasses (at least, not at first). And, most importantly, it's not something Facebook wants to keep to itself. Instead, as Mark Zuckerberg described to media ahead of today's Facebook Connect conference, the company is betting it'll be the next major computing platform after the rise of smartphones and the mobile web.
After spending the last decade becoming obsessed with our phones and tablets — learning to stare down and scroll practically as a reflex — the Facebook founder thinks we'll be spending more time looking up at the 3D objects floating around us in the digital realm. Or maybe you'll be following a friend's avatar as they wander around your living room as a hologram. It's basically a digital world layered right on top of the real world, or an "embodied internet" as Zuckerberg describes.
Before he got into the weeds for his grand new vision, though, Zuckerberg also preempted criticism about looking into the future now, as the Facebook Papers paint the company as a mismanaged behemoth that constantly prioritizes profit over safety. While acknowledging the seriousness of the issues the company is facing, noting that it'll continue to focus on solving them with "industry-leading" investments, Zuckerberg said:
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
"The reality is is that there's always going to be issues and for some people... they may have the view that there's never really a great time to focus on the future... From my perspective, I think that we're here to create things and we believe that we can do this and that technology can make things better. So we think it's important to to push forward."
Given the extent to which Facebook, and Zuckerberg in particular, have proven to be untrustworthy stewards of social technology, it's almost laughable that the company wants us to buy into its future. But, like the rise of photo sharing and group chat apps, Zuckerberg at least has a good sense of what's coming next. And for all of his talk of turning Facebook into a metaverse company, he's adamant that he doesn't want to build a metaverse that's entirely owned by Facebook. He doesn't think other companies will either. Like the mobile web, he thinks every major technology company will contribute something towards the metaverse. He's just hoping to make Facebook a pioneer.
"Instead of looking at a screen, or today, how we look at the Internet, I think in the future you're going to be in the experiences, and I think that's just a qualitatively different experience," Zuckerberg said. It's not quite virtual reality as we think of it, and it's not just augmented reality. But ultimately, he sees the metaverse as something that'll help to deliver more presence for digital social experiences — the sense of being there, instead of just being trapped in a zoom window. And he expects there to be continuity across devices, so you'll be able to start chatting with friends on your phone and seamlessly join them as a hologram when you slip on AR glasses.
A simulated preview of Horizon Home.
Facebook
But, of course, the metaverse won't be built in a day. At Facebook Connect today, the company announced several ways it's moving towards making it more accessible. For one, Facebook will be transforming the Oculus Quest's Home interface into "Horizon Home," a more fully featured environment where you can invite friends and hang out virtually. Eventually, you'll also be able to build and customize your home space. The Venues app is also becoming "Horizon Venues," where it'll continue to serve as Facebook's prime spot for live virtual events. (The company also says NBA games are coming back to Venues in early November.)
The company is also making a major push for developers: its new Presence Platform offers through APIs that'll allow devs to make more inventive VR apps. The Insight SDK will let them take advantage of the Quest 2's cameras to bring the real world into VR; the Interaction SDK opens up the door for more hand-tracking interactions; and the Voice SDK will — you guessed it — let you use your words in more ways.
The Insight SDK, in particular, could reshape what Quest VR experiences could look like. It includes Spatial Anchors, which will let virtual objects persist across sessions in a space. So if you placed a VR pet bunny on your coffee table, it should always be there every time you logged into an app. Additionally, there's a Scene Understanding feature, which can help developers get a better sense of your physical space. A character talking to you in VR could, for example, wander around your living room without bumping into furniture.
Facebook
When it comes to augmented reality, Facebook also has plenty of upgrades in store for its Spark AR platform. For one, it's planning to launch an iOS app called Polar that'll let people design their own AR effects and objects without any coding. It's aimed at creators, who could use it to build unique 3D signage or makeup effects that their followers can apply. More experienced devs will also be able to create Geo-anchored objects, which are tied to specific locations in the real world, as well as AR effects that track your hands and body. They can also try out building group video chats for Messenger, something that'll eventually be supported in other apps.
Like HoloLens and HTC Vive, Facebook plans to make a bigger push into enterprises with Quest for Business. It's a way for employees to log into Quest 2 headsets with secure work accounts (it's probably not great for your boss to see how often you're playing Beat Saber, after all). Since they're meant for office environments, IT departments will also be able to manage work accounts, specific devices and integrate their own security features. The key is that it's all going to be accessible on consumer-grade Quest 2 headsets, Facebook won't have to make entirely new hardware for work environments.
The company plans to take it slow with Quest for Business. It's currently being tested with a few companies now, and a wider beta is expected to come next year. At this point, Facebook isn't planning to officially roll it out to every company until 2023. Quest for Business will replace the previous Oculus for Business program, which required a special $799 Quest 2 headset.
Facebook already showed off one way remote meetings could be handled better with Horizon Workrooms, and that app is going to get better later this year with customizable workrooms. And when it comes to productivity, the company is also opening up the Oculus Store to 2D apps like Slack, Dropbox, Instagram and Facebook. You'll be able to dive into those apps right from your Horizon Home screen. It's convenient, but it's also a cheeky way to keep you from taking off your headset just to answer a Slack message.
Not everyone would want to spend a whole workday wearing a VR headset, but it's not hard to imagine how future AR glasses could let you dive into Slack and Office apps just about anywhere. They'll just be 2D projections floating around you, things that nobody else would be able to see. That may seem like science fiction today, but 15 years ago, so did the idea of having a touchscreen-enabled supercomputer in your pocket with blazing fast wireless internet.
As Zuckerberg sees it, the metaverse will ultimately lead to a more natural relationship with technology. "It's not about you spending more time on screens," he told press before making a hasty retreat. "It's about making the time we spend better and I think you know screens can't really convey the full sense of presence."
