World of Warcraft Classic will return to the Wrath of the Lich King era on September 26th, Blizzard announced on Monday. WotLK is widely considered one of the best expansions in World of Warcraft’s nearly 20-year history. Even if subsequent releases went on to expand the game’s mechanics in more interesting and creative ways, few hit thematically in the way that WotLK did. For those who loved Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, it felt special to set foot on the shores of Northrend for the first time and explore the continent from a new perspective, and then eventually fight Arthas as part of the Icecrown Citadel raid.
Ahead of the expansion’s arrival, Blizzard is introducing a new leveling mechanic called Joyous Journeys. Starting today, Burning Crusade Classic players can visit an innkeeper at one of their faction’s capital cities to toggle a 50 percent experience boost. You can use the boost to finish leveling an existing character or start working on a new one. The boost will be available until the launch of WotLK Classic. For those who want to create a Death Knight once the expansion arrives, you won’t need an existing level 55 character on a server to do so as was the case with the original release.
Blizzard will include Wrath of the Lich King Classic with all World of Warcraft subscriptions, meaning you won’t have to purchase the expansion separately if you want to bring your old guild back together.
Funko, which is best known for its Pop vinyl figurines, is about to venture into new territory. It's making video games with the help of developer 10:10 Games. The studio is led by Jon Burton, the founder of Traveller's Tales and TT Games. “By partnering with 10:10 Games and utilizing the best creators in the business, we will have the talent to deliver games that reflect Funko’s unique look and feel across its lines and varied products," Funko CEO Andrew Perlmutter said in a statement.
The first game under the partnership is an action platformer that's coming to PC and consoles in 2023. Funko says the untitled game will have "major third-party studio integration," which probably shouldn't be a big shock given the high-profilelicensing deals Funko has for collectibles and Burton's experience with the various Lego games. Meanwhile, Funko expects the game to have a “T” for teen rating. The first teaser shows a Pop-style character called Freddie Funko, but offers few other details.
We are so excited to finally reveal that we have teamed up with Funko for our first game! pic.twitter.com/CKbyNK6FwO
After a delay of nearly three years, season 3 of Hulu's The Orville finally launched last month and proved to be worth the wait. Now, creator Seth MacFarlane has announced some extra recompense for fans — the first three seasons of the series will also stream on Disney+.
The Orville has been relatively popular with critics, but moved from much wider distribution with Fox to the smaller audiences of Hulu after two seasons. With over 85 million subscribers internationally, though, Disney+ will greatly expand the pool of potential viewers.
"I’m thrilled to bring all three seasons of The Orville to Disney+," said MacFarlane. "Making this show has been one of the most satisfying experiences of my career, and I’m immensely grateful to Disney for providing us the opportunity to expand our Orville community further. I can’t wait for new audiences to experience this series."
The extra eyeballs on The Orville with Disney+ could prove crucial to the series, as it has yet to be greenlit for a fourth season. MacFarlane himself didn't reveal anything in that regard, saying "I don't think we'll know until this season is finished." The last two episodes of season 3 are set to air on July 28th and August 4th, and all three seasons will hit Disney+ on August 10th.
It’s official. Nearly four years after Netflix canceled Daredevil and the series more recently made its way over to Disney+, Disney confirmed it’s developing a new 18-episode live-action TV show starring the blind superhero. On Saturday, Marvel announced Daredevil: Born Againand shared that stars Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio would reprise their roles as Daredevil and Kingpin.
News that the company planned to revive Daredevil first came to light in May, with Variety reporting that Disney had hired Matt Corman and Chris Ord to write and produce the series. Disney currently plans to begin streaming Born Again sometime in the spring of 2024. Before then, Marvel fans can look forward to I Am Groot and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law arriving on Disney+. Both shows got new trailers during San Diego Comic-Con this weekend.
Paramount has shared a new trailer for the upcoming third season of Star Trek: Picard. And while we already knew Picard’s final adventure would reunite Patrick Stewart with most of the principal cast of The Next Generation, it’s still good to see some characters we haven’t seen in a while. The minute-long clip Paramount released during San Diego Comic-Con features voiceovers from nearly all of Picard’s season three cast, including LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden and Michael Dorn. It’s not much more than what Paramount had to offer back in April, but at least this time we get to see the former crew of the USS Enterprise in their new uniforms.
That’s not the only Star Trek news to come out of Comic-Con. Paramount also announced that season two of Strange New Worlds will feature a crossover episode with Lower Decks. Jonathan Frakes will direct the episode, which will feature a combination of live-action and animated footage. Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid will also reprise their roles as the voices of Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler. Season two of Strange New Worlds doesn’t have a release date yet, but Star Trek fans can look forward to watching a new season of Lower Decks starting on August 25th. On that note, Paramount also shared a new trailer for the animated show, which you can see below.
Warner Bros. Games' MultiVersus is a fun take on platform fighters like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Brawlhalla. It's soon going into open beta with a roster packed with characters from across a wide range of WB franchises. Developer Player First Games is about to add one more to the mix: Space Jam: A New Legacy star LeBron James.
The NBA icon will join the lineup when the open beta starts on July 26th. Unsurprisingly, his offense centers around the use of a basketball. He can throw a ball at opponents or dribble one around his feet to damage enemies. James is also able to block projectiles by building a fence. Surprisingly (or not, depending on how much you appreciated his thespian skills in Space Jam), James isn't voicing himself in the game. Actor John Bentley will play him.
WB also announced that a couple of other fan-favorite characters will join the lineup soon, as Rick and Morty are on the way. Many of Rick's abilities are based around his portal gun. He'll be available when season one starts on August 9th. Morty, who will arrive later in the season, can whip himself at opponents and use grenades.
The trio will be added to an ever-expanding and fairly peculiar roster. Big names like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn and Bugs Bunny are all in the mix, as are Arya Stark from Game of Thrones and Shaggy and Velma from Scooby Doo. Tom and Jerry play as a single character, rather than trying to throttle one another.
The Iron Giant, the most recent addition, is portrayed as a gentle-hearted being in the film of the same name who only fights when it's completely necessary. In MultiVersus, he's beating up opponents like the rest of the cast, which the developers justified by saying the game takes place in an alternate universe.
If that's not odd enough, leaks have suggested Ted Lasso, Gizmo from Gremlins (you know, the cute one) and the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz are coming to the roster as well. For what it's worth, those leaks are from the same person who revealed the game's existence in the first place and who said LeBron, Rick and Morty were MultiVersus-bound too.
As Dusk Falls is an ambitious narrative adventure game that fails to execute its grandest ideas, hemorrhaging tension along the way. It attempts to tell a mature, action-packed tale about family and loss, but repeated missteps in logic and emotion strip the story of its power. From the mechanics to the branching narrative itself, As Dusk Falls sets clear goals and then fails to meet them, resulting in a choppy southwestern soap opera peppered with sluggish quick-time events.
It feels like this game was purpose-built for me to review it. I’m an Arizona native and the high-desert regions where most of As Dusk Falls takes place are home for me; I grew up hiking the mountain trails just outside of Flagstaff, camping among the creosote bushes and pine trees, and partying on the edges of the valley, surrounded by saguaros and dust. I know how the landscape shifts along the I-17 from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon, the mountains swallowing up flat dry land and spewing out smooth red rocks and craggy black cliffs.
I love my hometown and I was excited to see it portrayed in a video game, especially from a new UK studio headed up by Caroline Marchal, the lead designer of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. As far as the setting goes, As Dusk Falls gets it mostly right. I’m not going to be too precious about the details here — the landscape shifts from northern to southern desert in an unrealistic way and all the exit signs are European — because the environment does its job of grounding the characters in an isolated town.
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What’s actually jarring is the dialect in As Dusk Falls, which leans heavily on stereotypically rural words like “ma” for mom, “pa” for dad and “pappy” for grandpa. These terms aren’t the norm in Arizona, even in small desert towns, and they come across as a cheap attempt to infuse the characters with generic “backwoods” traits.
I’d be able to forget the cliche turns of phrase if they weren’t symptomatic of the game as a whole. As Dusk Falls attempts to tell a realistic story that deals with mature subjects like death, suicide and generational trauma, but it places a Hollywood filter over all of its scenes, complete with small-town caricatures, blubbering deathbed monologues and sociopathic responses to murder. As Dusk Falls fails to let its dramatic moments breathe, choking the tension out of the game as a whole.
As Dusk Falls begins in 1998 and features a wide cast of characters, though the main story focuses on two families — one from small-town Arizona and the other passing through on a drive from Sacramento to St. Louis. The local family consists of three brothers on the brink of adulthood, plus ma and pa. The traveling family consists of a dad and mom in their early 30s, their daughter who’s about 10 and her grandpa. For the bulk of the game, you play as the youngest local and the father of the traveling family.
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These families’ paths cross at a motel in the middle of the desert, where the brothers end up in a standoff with the sheriff’s department, holding everyone in the lobby hostage at gunpoint. As the standoff unfolds, players control the dad of the traveling family, deciding what to say and do in response to the brothers’ orders. The game swaps between past and present for both families, showing how they ended up in such a desperate situation, and players’ choices dictate how the story unfolds.
Though the narrative extends past the motel, there are numerous examples of lost tension in the hostage scenes alone. Details will vary depending on the choices each player makes, but in my time with the game, two significant characters ended up shot and killed inside the motel, in front of all the hostages. These characters had strong, loving ties to the remaining group members, yet their deaths were barely acknowledged. Instead, characters that should have been consumed by grief — or, like, any emotion — were soon having conversations about their travel plans and career moves, with barely a word for the dearly departed.
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In As Dusk Falls, it feels like the second a character dies, they’ve served their purpose; the moment anyone steps off-screen, they’re forgotten. This is a pitfall of interactive storytelling — even hits like Until Dawn have awkward pauses or nonsensical dialogue when the writers haven’t properly accounted for all of the player’s decisions. Still, as a game that relies on narrative-driven progression, these anomalies should’ve been addressed. It’s also worth noting that As Dusk Falls can be played with friends online and locally, though I’ve only tried single-player.
The motel is a mess of dramatic but illogical events: The dad exits the hostage situation multiple times and always ends up running back to his captors, throwing out a line like, “but my family’s in there” as explanation. Characters disappear and suddenly reappear when it’s time for a big story beat — and this includes the entire sheriff’s squad. A woman is allowed to walk into the motel in the middle of an active, already-lethal standoff. And don’t get me started on the dad’s two-way pager, which doesn’t have a keyboard but somehow still functions like a modern text app.
As Dusk Falls expands beyond ‘90s Arizona, traveling across the country and 14 years into the future. Most drama in the game feels forced and unearned, and what remains plays out like a soap opera, subsisting on surface-level emotion and oddly timed monologues.
It doesn’t help that the actual mechanics in As Dusk Falls are troublesome. The game runs on dialogue trees and quick-time events, but on my Xbox Series S there’s a significant input delay that can’t be fixed with sensitivity or accessibility settings. There’s a lag of roughly one second, making it difficult to control the cursor when choosing among dialogue and action options as the timer ticks down, and also turning each QTE into a guessing game. In a word, As Dusk Falls is frustrating. My advice is to use the D-pad whenever you can and turn off any mashing sequences in the accessibility options.
The game’s visual style is unique, playing out in stuttering, storyboard-style animations with rotoscoped characters, and I actually enjoy this approach. It conveys a sense of dreamlike realism to the entire experience, and had it been backed up by a different story, it could’ve been captivating.
Unfortunately, the best parts of As Dusk Falls are relegated to the final chapters, when there are fewer characters to track and deeper interpersonal relationships to explore. The game starts to take off when Zoe, the daughter, becomes the main character 14 years after the hostage situation, and players are able to dive deeper into her relationships with her family members and actually process some of the events she witnessed at the motel as a child. This is where drama truly lives, in the aftermath of a major event — not in the event itself.
As Dusk Falls fails to understand this premise, instead relying on action-movie cliches to tell a hollow story with too many moving parts. Tension in the game builds too swiftly and snaps repeatedly, leaving multiple characters’ storylines dangling in the breeze, and sucking the life out of moments that are meant to be emotional. There are some good ideas here, including the rotoscoped visuals and willingness to tackle mature topics, but ultimately, As Dusk Falls feels more like a rough draft than a finished product.
As Dusk Falls is available now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
The BBC has already started preparing for Facebook's 20th anniversary in 2024: The broadcaster has announced that its factual entertainment team has commissioned a three-part documentary about Mark Zuckerberg and the social network he founded. Facebook's story is pretty well-known at this point, and it's common knowledge that Zuckerberg originally designed it to connect students at Harvard. And that the Winklevoss twins sued the Meta chief, claiming he stole their idea. BBC, however, aims to present a "definitive account" of Mark Zuckerberg and the social network he founded.
That means no dramatized events like in the 2010 David Fincher-directed film starring Jesse Eisenberg. Instead, BBC promises access to "key players, insider testimony, personal journals and rare archive material." Mindhouse, the TV production company behind the project, will also examine the rise of the social media and how it has changed human behavior and interaction. It's unclear if the documentary will also examine Facebook's role in spreading fake news around the world.
Nancy Strang, Minhouse Creative Director, Mindhouse, said in a statement:
"The remarkable story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook is one of the tales of our time. He has arguably done more to transform human behaviour and connectivity than any other person this century. I'm thrilled that we've been given this opportunity to tell the extraordinary inside story of the social media giant, and the man behind it."
The docuseries, which has a working title of Zuckerberg, has no premiere date yet. But it will air on BBC Two and will be streamable from BBC iPlayer when it comes out.
Is the Pixel 6a the best Android phone under $500? Tune in for Cherlynn’s review! This week, Devindra and Cherlynn also discuss why losing almost a million subscribers was actually a good thing fo Netflix. And they dive into Qualcomm’s latest hardware for smartwatches, as well as the latest updates from Twitter’s ongoing fight with Elon Musk.
Listen above, 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!
Alienware’s m17 R5 gaming laptop is a beast that few people need – 46:25
The new Instagram Map is like Google Maps, but with more selfies – 48:16
OnePlus 10T launch set for August 3 – 52:19
Working on – 53:06
Pop culture picks – 58:01
Livestream
Credits Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Sam Rutherford Guest: Lisa Song from ProPublica Producer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos Graphic artists: Luke Brooks and Brian Oh
San Diego Comic-Con 2022 kicked off with a trailer for the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and it... actually looks promising? The upcoming film has an all-star cast with Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page and Hugh Grant, and blends action, fantasy, comedy and some of D&D's most iconic monsters.
"A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people," the description reads. "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the rich world and playful spirit of the legendary roleplaying game to the big screen in a hilarious and action-packed adventure."
The trailer delivers the dragons you'd expect, including possibly an acid-breathing Ancient Black Dragon and a Red Dragon. We also see a Mimic disguised as a treasure chest, a Displacer Beast, a Gelatinous Cube and an Owlbear — a beast that goes back to the original D&D game. As for realms and spells, there's what looks like the Underdark, a Heat Metal spell, Dimension Door spell and others.
The film is being produced and distributed by Paramount and Hasbro, which controls the rights of the game and recently acquired the popular digital game-playing toolset D&D Beyond. Hasbro is also working on other film and TV adaptations for its toys including Transformers and My Little Pony.
