Whispers of Oblivion is a special three-mission series that has been created to bridge the storyline between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.
Check out this E3 2015 trailer for Eternal Conflict, the newest update to Heroes of the Storm, which reveals new Heroes King Leoric and the Monk from the Diablo franchise.
There was a time when anyone could pick up a pad and chase high-scores in a skating game. And then the Tony Hawk titles withered away, the
Levels in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 can be played with up to 20 other people in a freeskate mode where everyone just hangs out and tricks together. Once you’ve gathered friends, you can queue up to do missions together, challenge everyone in the session to a high-score challenge chases.
Pro Skater 5’s online mode is designed to serve as a player lobby, without the pressure of having to find something to do, and the inconvenience of sitting through menus to do it. It should feel like a real skate park, where friends can compete, teach or learn, and generally just chill out with each other.
Finally, Robomodo has introduced the ability to create skate parks, with on-the-fly editing and remixing. As you character jumps into the air, you can slide into the creation mode and place a grind or a ramp in the perfect place. All of your creations can then be shared online for others to enjoy.
There’s a classic feel to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 that--thanks in large part to the soundtrack--ignited a feeling of nostalgia for the originals and then immediately satiated it. As as unskilled Tony Hawk player, I’m excited to see the series return, and glad to see that it’s sticking so close to its roots.
As a blog post explains, "In Whispers of Oblivion, players will join Zeratul for the first time since Wings of Liberty to unravel the final piece of the Xel'naga prophecy."
More details will be shared in July.
Additionally, Blizzard announced that the expansion is getting another beta test in July. Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news about the beta, the prologue, and the expansion as it becomes available.
"Please play on PlayStation 4," he said in response to a question about what Xbox players can expect.
Taro and Saito explained that the new Nier project is more focused on creating an original story within the game world, and won't follow the narrative of the original. However, we can expect several Nier characters to make cameos. There will be these kind of connections, but Taro emphasized that newcomers won't feel alienated if they come to the new game without playing the original. Returning players, however, will enjoy a lot of nods and easter eggs from its predecessor.
Another feature that made Nier unique was how it treated player choice at the end of it the game and incentivized repeat playthroughs. There are five possible endings in Nier, all of which encourage you to go back into the game and try your hand at saving things again.
In one particular ending, you're asked to either sacrifice yourself to save someone or let them die. If you sacrifice yourself, the game wipes your save file--effectively deleting all traces of your adventure. To add insult to injury, it won't let you use the same file name you did on your previous playthrough, as if the game itself was telling you to move on. It's a bold move for a game, one that unfortunately (fortunately?) won't be repeated.
"We are going to maintain that multiple playthrough idea for the new project, but in terms of the save file deletion thing, we probably won't do it, since we did it in the original one and want to do new things," Taro explained. "But we will have multiple playthroughs involved. But you know... we're still in early phases of development. Maybe we will delete you save files."
The original Nier's level design was a mash of different genres; Players spent most of the time controlling Nier as you would in a typical third-person action game, but for select fights, the camera would swing up to a top-down perspective. On other occasions, it would switch to a side-on platformer, with some sequences more closely following conventions of shoot-em-up. This worked for some players, but not all, but the constant switching ensured that gameplay rarely got stale. The new game likely won't follow this pattern, however.
"Members of the media told me the original Nier is like a puppy someone threw out."
director Yoko Taro
The new Nier will, however, retain the tone of the original game and the Drakengard series. It will keep its mature subject matter and approach to dialogue and presentation, not shying away from hyper-violence and sexualization.
"Drakengard was my first game as director, and we were actually told a lot by our advisory board to do retakes and make changes and honestly, I said, screw this, I'm not making another one," Taro said.
"I thought, with Nier, I'm going to make a normal game. That's what I tried to make, a normal game, though people think it's very dark and somber. But for me, that's normal."
He added: "The way I look at original Nier is like your mom's home cooking: it may not be the best, but it's okay, you're comfortable with it. Members of the media told me the original Nier is like a puppy someone threw out. It's cute in a way, but there's something wrong in a sense, and you can't help but love it even though there's something missing and you can't put your finger on it.
"But now we're working with Platinum games, and with Yoshida and Okabe, and we feel we have these great ingredients now. Is it going to be too perfect? We have all these great chefs, if you will, working together, and now, is it going to be missing that thing that made it so endearing to our fans? But after thinking about it, we think, we're just going to try it and see how it goes."
The hunter Aloy stood on a cliff, surveying the expansive landscape before her. Grassy plains stretched outwards towards mountains topped with snow and peppered with tall trees. A healthy blue sky set the backdrop for the scene. It was a picturesque presentation of the natural world, and one that players could expect to explore most of, a developer explained.
will be an open-world game which players can choose to explore at their own pace. Its setting juxtaposes a natural world inhabited by very unnatural machinery and somehow makes the two blend together in a fashion that works. It was during a live play-through of the game with developer Guerilla Games at E3 2015 that I realised the game's ability to mix the old and the new in a way that allowed them to fit together.
For all of the natural beauty on display in the world of Horizon: Zero Dawn, strange robotic creatures would be its lifeblood. Aloy stalked through the underbrush towards her prey, armed with a bow and arrow for long-ranged attacks and a knife for quick stealth kills. She sprang out from cover to take down her target, but it was not an animal like I would have expected a hunter like her to tackle; no, it was a mechanical four-legged creature comprised of metal and tubes. Despite its cold grey exterior jutting out sharply against the warm greens and oranges of the vegetation around it, it fit in. Aloy stabbed at it in the same manner that I would have expected her to do with animal prey. Its last cries quickly dissipated as she muttered a brief prayer for it. It was a seemingly strange thing to do for a robot, but the action spoke volumes of how mechanical lifeforms were viewed in this world. All things natural and synthetic were equally respected, and it was that prayer which cemented the relationship between the two in my mind.
Even when faced with a large lumbering metal beast Aloy's tactical arrow shots were similar to how an archer would take down a mammoth. She was a hunter garbed in simple cloth and furs, and yet her weapons and enemies were seemingly synthetic, human-made, technologically advanced.
Aloy rained down explosive arrows, harpoon-like arrows with ropes, and armor piercing arrows to take the mechanical beast down. It wasn't supposed to make sense, but it did, and the ancient-modern oxymoron of the setting was what made it so interesting.
The paradoxical nature of Horizon: Zero Dawn both intrigues and perplexes me, and I look forward to unearthing its secrets when the game is out next year.
Whispers of Oblivion is a special three-mission series that has been created to bridge the storyline between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void.
Join Tim and Greg as they chat with skating pro legend Tony Hawk about the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 on the Kinda Funny stage.
Check out this E3 2015 trailer for Eternal Conflict, the newest update to Heroes of the Storm, which reveals new Heroes King Leoric and the Monk from the Diablo franchise.
Join Collin and Greg as they chat with Peter Moore about E3 2015 and what EA is up to on day 1 of the Kinda Funny Stage show.
Check out the E3 2015 Portal trailer.
Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann stops by the Kinda Funny Stage to try & give a HoloLens preview while eating a habanero pepper.
We saw a demo of Deus Ex, and it’s basically Deus Ex with more stuff. That’s not a bad thing. Hear Rob and Kevin share their thoughts from E3 2015.
Ghost games joins Lucy on the GameSpot stage to talk about the fast cars and bad attitudes of Need for Speed.
Check out the E3 2015 Trailer for Take On Mars.
