Fellow mischief-makers, a new toy of soft destruction awaits our consideration. It’s called the SpyraThree, and it claims to be the world’s most powerful water gun. Based on its specs, I’m inclined to believe it. With a “tactical display,” three firing modes, and an auto-pressurizing reload feature, this thing looks like it was pulled straight out of Apex Legends. I need one yesterday, damn it.
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Spyra first hit the tactical water gun scene back in 2018 with a Kickstarter for its first model, the SpyraOne. The battery-powered device was notable for its ease of reloading: Simply dip it into any body of water and it would refill itself automatically—no pumping required—and it boasted a firing range of 25 feet. The new SpyraThree, however, has a base range of just over 30 feet, with a “PowerShot” that’ll expand the range to 50. I’m surprised you don’t need a license to use this…then again, it resembles a gun, so living in America at least, I probably shouldn’t be surprised at that. It does cost $179, so it ain’t cheap, but uh, summer’s around the corner folks, so start saving your chewing gum money.
At just under five pounds, it weighs about half of a PlayStation 5 and has a total length of 27 inches. The tactical display positioned just below the iron sights (plastic sights?) should be familiar to most gamers and will let you know how much battery juice and ammo (water) you’ve got left.
According to The Verge, that battery life will get you through 100 reloads of 22 shots, each blast packing 30ml of water. Volume wise, that’s about half of an average-sized 5-Hour Energy Drink per shot, or about the size of a standard NyQuil dose cup. (No word from Spyra as to whether the SpyraThree is recommended for administering medicine. I’m going to assume yes.)
You’ll get three fire modes: “freestyle” fires a single shot; burst fires a three-round burst that’d make Master Chief very happy; and a “League mode” simulates ammo clips and occasionally needs “reload” periods. Spyra adds on its page that, “Individual shots are strong but not painful. Part of the fun factor is that you feel the hit, but shouldn’t be knocked out by it.”
That’s nice. I think it’s great when water guns don’t cause you to lose consciousness. Really good feature. And, side note, those M. Night Shyamalan aliens are fucked.
Oh, hello there. I see you’ve got your phone out at the movie theater and you’re sitting in the credits for TheSuper Mario Bros. Movie. You’re probably here wondering if there are extra scenes worth sticking around for. Well, I’m here to answer that question and more, so let’s jump down the warp pipe and into the unknown.
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Does The Super Mario Bros. Movie have a post-credits scene?
In short, yes. It has two, actually. One happens during the credits, and another happens right at the very end. Let’s break down both scenes. And no, we’re not talking about the weirdly existential Luma that comes back around near the end. Hopefully the fact that Luma is in the movie at all, though, is a cause to hope for something more SMG-sized. Peach does tell Mario that there are a ton of galaxies out there while they’re waiting in a field of power-ups.
What is Bowser’s fate?
The first scene features Bowser reprising his song from earlier in the movie called “Peaches.” This is nice, because he was rudely interrupted while singing it before, and now he gets to belt out a few more lines about his unrequited love for the princess. Jack Black apparently wrote Peaches himself! However, it turns out he’s still shrunken down and in his bottle prison from the final fight. It’s unclear if the Mushroom Kingdom is just going to keep him locked up in there, but at least he’ll be able to serenade anyone who passes by.
If you wait a little bit longer after that scene and through all the names scrolling on the screen, there’s a second teaser.
Super Mario Bros. teases a very special Yoshi
While the Bowser scene is cute, the one of real consequence is the post-credits scene at the very end of the film. In it, we see a Yoshi egg has ended up in the Brooklyn sewers after Mario and Bowser’s fight brought parts of the Mushroom Kingdom into the movie’s depiction of New York. As the egg starts to crack, the screen cuts to black and we hear the little dinosaur’s iconic “yoshi” cry.
While this egg likely belongs to the iconic green Yoshi that’s accompanied Mario throughout several games, this isn’t the first time the movie references these dinosaur steeds. In fact, there was a huge herd of them earlier in the movie when Mario and Peach are on their way to the Jungle Kingdom to recruit Cranky Kong’s army. So if the movie is taking the time to single out this specific egg, it likely means the movie is teasing a specific Yoshi that might have a larger role in a hypothetical sequel.
Reception to The Super Mario Moviehas been pretty mixed. Those who have already seen the movie have called it overly referential and or found some of its performances lacking, while others have praised its gorgeous animation. Ultimately, I’m not too surprised given I’ve always found Illumination’s output to be lacking. But hey, at least we got to see Bowser be down bad and singing. That’s fun!
Monster Energy, the energy drink company that puts artificially-flavored gloop in cans next to gaming setups worldwide, is pushing an indie studio to change the name of its game. Glowstick Entertainment’s 2020 horror title, Dark Deception: Monsters & Mortals is apparently “confusingly similar to their energy drink,” Glowstick CEO Vincent Livings said in a Twitter thread.
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“Yep, that’s really their claim,” he continued.
Monster, which is partially owned by Coca-Cola and has a market cap of $55.8 billion as of writing, is a known “trademark bully.” Over the years, it has sued a small Ohio restaurant for using “monster” in its signage, a Georgia welder for using an “M” similar to its logo, and once entered a legal battle over the name of a man’s aquarium hobby forum, MonsterFishKeepers. In 2020, Ubisoft changed the name of its game Gods & Monsters to Immortals: Fenyx Risingfollowing Monster’s claim that the title would be too easily confused with its brand.
All of that is finishing salt for Monster—it has pretzeled itself in many obscure legal battles with obscure little guys, and it will likely happily continue to do so. But Livings is projecting Mortals & Monsters and won’t go down easy.
According to another thread, Monster “demands that, in exchange for allowing us to use the name ‘Monsters & Mortals,’ we agree to never name any other game any variation of the word ‘Monster,’” Livings said.
“It also forces us to agree to never use a green & white logo on a black background for any game we ever make,” he continued. “So they own the colors green & white too, apparently.”
Livings plans to push back on Monster in court, and is advocating for a boycott in the meantime.
“Dishonest companies like Monster Energy depend on doing their bullying in secret, while presenting a clean image to their base (athletes & gamers),” he said. “Showing their true face publicly is the only real way to stop them.”
Monster did not respond to Kotaku’s request for comment in time for publication.
Update 4/05/2023, 3:10 p.m. ET: Glowstick Entertainment CEO Vince Livings commented to Kotaku:
We are currently in the process of filing a Motion for Summary Judgment to try to stop Monster Energy’s legal team from dragging the process out longer and draining our financial resources. The motion only has a 50-50 chance of success and can still be appealed, but it saves us a lot of time if it succeeds.
Faze Clan, which as recently as last year seemed an unstoppable cultural force for the genre of dudes who both play video games and aspire to own lambos, is in trouble. As we’ve reported, the clan’s decision to go public has been a disaster, with their shares now practically worthless, but as bad as things were last month, this week they’re getting worse.
The Week In Games: Trapped-Filled Towers And Teenage Dreamers
Last year Faze’s star seemed to be shining brightest when Snoop Dogg walked onto the stage during the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show wearing the clan’s gold chain around his neck. The veteran rapper had been convinced to lend his name to Faze’s marketing efforts after they offered him a spot on their company’s board of directors, $1.9 million in stock and then a further $248,000 in shares to his son and “companies controlled by his spouse and his manager”.
Now, with Faze “effectively a penny stock”, things are looking bleaker. With those shares now worthless, Snoop Dogg has left the company, an SEC filing made earlier today revealed. As Dexerto report he resigned, “effectively immediately”, on March 29.
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Snoop’s departure isn’t just a PR hit, it also presents some logistical challenges for Faze’s marketing, who in addition to having to deal with losses of over $50 million for the year now have to scale back their social media boasts as well. As this excellent Forbes piece from 2022 recalls, one of Faze’s chief marketing strategies has been to combine the social media follower count of all their members—and celebrity signings—into a single figure. Last year, for example, they claimed a “total reach” of 526 million people, but almost 200 million of that number came from celebrity signings like Snoop, whose 20.9 million Twitter followers, 80.1 million Instagram followers and 26 million TikTok subscribers will now have to be removed from Faze’s calculations (which were inflated anyway, since they count total subs/followers, not allowing for one person to follow them across multiple platforms).
A YouTuber was shot in the stomach on April 2 in a Virginia mall after attempting to play what he called a “simple practical joke” on a man.
The Week In Games: Trapped-Filled Towers And Teenage Dreamers
Tanner Cook is a member of the Classified Goons, a group that has been posting prank videos on YouTube since May 2022. Known as “just a couple of ‘bone heads,’” according to the group’s YouTube channel description, these pranksters have racked up millions of views across TikTok and YouTube for their typically silly and infantile jokes. One of the group’s most watched videos features popular streamer JiDion, in which he and one of the Goons stroll through stores snitching on the cameraperson filming random people in a bombastic way to start drama. Another video shows a Goon member telling dealerships that one of the cars being sold on the lot is actually their stolen car. You know, very high school, early-to-mid 2010s YouTube-era stuff. Nothing too heinous or egregious. However, a recent practical joke attempt went awry and ended in unfortunate (and unwarranted) violence this week.
YouTuber Tanner Cook shot, arrest made
According to news station WUSA9, Cook was shot in the stomach and liver while recording a Classified Goons video inside the Dulles Town Center mall in Sterling, Virginia. The suspected shooter, 31-year-old Alan W. Colie, was arrested and charged with aggravated malicious wounding, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and discharging a firearm within a building. An investigation is still underway, while Cook had surgery for the incident. He told WUSA9 that Colie didn’t say anything. He just pulled out a gun and shot Cook.
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“I’m fine,” Cook told WUSA9 in an exclusive interview. “I was just playing a prank, a simple practical joke, and this guy didn’t take it very well and shot me.”
Kotaku reached out to Cook and the Classified Goons for comment.
Cops responded in three minutes
In a press release, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) said that once a call was placed at around 11:57 a.m. local time reporting the incident, deputies were on the scene within three minutes. Colie, the suspect, was swiftly arrested.
“One adult male victim was found outside the mall with a gunshot wound to the abdomen,” LCSO said. “The victim was treated for injuries by deputies and members of the Loudoun County Combined Fire and Rescue System (LC-CFRS) and transported to a local hospital for treatment. At this time, it does not appear that the suspect and the victim were known to each other.”
LCSO said deputies on the scene also “checked the entire mall” to see if any other suspects or victims were present, but nothing was reported in that regard.
When reached for comment, a LCSO detective told Kotaku that the department can’t divulge much information because the incident is still under investigation.
“We do have the shooter in custody,” the LCSO detective said. “We can’t release the victim’s name or the fact that the victim has a social media presence, which you might already know. We’re limited on what we can say, but the victim is still in the hospital. Other than that, we don’t know their status.”
Despite such a traumatizing predicament that would rattle most folks, Cook told WUSA9 that the shooting isn’t going to stop him. Posting is his “passion,” he told the news station, so he’s intent to return to YouTube. Cook’s expected to make a full recovery.
Late last month the developers of venerable MMO Everquest II introduced a new kind of loot box to the game that was, basically, a pay-to-win situation. It did not go down well with the long-running community!
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As MMOBombexplain, the loot boxes, called Libant Evernight Heritage Crates, “bypassed lockouts and provided the chance to buy more opportunities at raid gear through the cash shop”. Fans quickly called them “pay-to-raid” items, and took to the game’s forums—which look as old as the game itself—to complain.
Their pleas were loud and numerous enough for developers Daybreak to almost instantly backtrack on the decision, posting late last week:
After listening to your feedback and having lots of discussions, we have decided to pull the Libant Evernight Heritage Crate from the in-game Marketplace store. The crate and most of its current contents will no longer be for sale.
We heard you and understand that there were particular elements of the Libant Heritage Crate that run counter to our shared values. We will no longer be making any of these types of items available.
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As a result of the uproar, Daybreak have decided that “in the spirit of community feedback” they’ll now be opening a dedicated forum where players can weigh in on stuff like balance changes before they go live, not after:
I’d also like to announce that in the spirit of community feedback, we will be opening new Class Balance Forums for Everquest 2, look for these to arrive in the very near future. We want you, the community, the people who play these classes to help us decide what balance changes and bug fixes to prioritize with major updates. These forums will improve our communication with you and allow you to help us scope what changes happen. These forums will have a section for each class, and you will be able to propose changes, communicate with us, and vote on the fixes and balance changes you feel are necessary for your class. The goal here is to communicate with you the time and effort that these proposed changes will require, and openly discuss feasibility. We will make changes open for discussion as long as they remain within reason.
Sucks to be posting about it under these circumstances, but man, an EverQuest II story! In 2023!
The Evolution Championship Series, typically referred to as just EVO, wrapped up its Japanese circuit this weekend. There was a lot to get hyped for during the tournament, including the epic Guilty Gear Strive sets and the nail-biting Tekken 7 matches. However, one thing that most competitors weren’t stoked about was the laggy setup, which the event’s organizers have admitted on Twitter “produced a flawed competitor experience throughout the tournament.”
Hopefully Street Fighter 6’s New Open-World Won’t Mean Capcom Skimps On The Fighting
A spin-off of the main tournament that first kicked off in January 2018, EVO Japan is a multi-day event centered around the fighting game community. A plethora of popular and recently dropped brawlers are playable there, from The King of Fighters XV to Melty Blood: Type Lumina to Street Fighter V. Alongside these games are an assortment of their best competitors, including top Guilty Gear Strive player Gobou, Tekken 7 pros Arslan Ash and Rangchu, and goated Virtua Fighter 5 player Tonchan. Folks were ready for three days of throwing digital hands, and as a viewer, I can tell you it was exciting to watch all the wild combo strings and even wilder redemption arcs, like pro Tekken 7 player Meo-IL clawing his way from the losers bracket to the grand finals. But as things moved fast, the setup couldn’t keep up and monitors seemingly lagged behind in displaying the gameplay—a particularly serious problem in a genre where virtual life-or-death reactions and vital inputs are the stuff of milliseconds.
Fed up, Punk calls out ‘shitty’ tournament setup
The setup issues appeared to be widespread. Both Tekken players Arslan Ash and Rangchu noted the laggy issues with the monitors, while Guilty Gear Strive pro Jonathan Tenementioned that the venue had “only one setup” per pool. Other attendees, from Guilty Gear player Romolla to Tekken pro Knee, complained about EVO Japan’s setup as well. But the issues were most pronounced during an important Street Fighter V match between Momochi and Punk, which was stalled for almost an hour as Punk had a display replaced because of the latency problems between the monitor and the PlayStation 4.
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Punk, who is a prolific fighting game player, was making his way through the Top 8 losers bracket. After battling almost 400 other competitors in Street Fighter V: Championship Edition, Punk could see the first-place trophy and roughly $7,600 in front of him. He just had to put Momochi, a two-time EVO champion, in the dirt first. Things were pretty evenly matched between the two, even though Punk’s Vega lost the first match against Momochi’s Cody. It was at this point that Punk called over an event staffer to chat about the latency issues. After testing out some buttons, the staffer concluded that a new monitor was in order. Nearly 40 minutes and a new display later, Punk ended up losing to Momochi, who played as Karin for the second match. Punk was clearly unhappy and,, as seen in this fan recording, stormed off the stage. The winner of Street Fighter V’s EVO Japan competition was Oil King.
evo2kvids
On Twitter, Punk popped off on EVO Japan, calling the monitor issues “fucking annoying” and the tournament itself “shitty.” He later explained that he’d spent “over $2000” only to be met with what he felt was an unacceptable tournament setup in which the match’s result was not in his control. He finished off by apologizing to “all Japanese fans” for not playing his best, something he promised just before beginning his match against Momochi.
EVO says the issue was the stage and stream, not the monitors
In the wake of competitors like Punk discoursing over monitors on Twitter,, the official EVO account acknowledged that the event suffered from “a flawed competitor experience” that resulted in an imbalance it promised would “never happen again.” The tournament’s general manager, Richard Thiher, quote-tweeted EVO, saying that the stage setup “negatively impacted players” across games. However, in that admission, Thiher wanted to make one thing clear: it wasn’t the monitors.
“It is important to confirm that Punk and others were right, the Evo Japan 2023 stage setup negatively impacted players,” Thiher tweeted on April 2. “It is also necessary to confirm it was the stage and stream design itself, not the INZONE monitors. We will prove that to you at other events this year.”
Kotaku reached out to EVO and Punk for comment.
Despite the technical issues and drama, EVO Japan was still a blast this year. There’s nothing like watching talented, professional players do incredibly unimaginable things in games, let alone during the stress of a tournament. However, fighting games being what they are, it’s essential that competitors be able to play in an environment where the hardware, displays, and everything else are up to the task, as anything less will inevitably hamper play. With EVO returning in August at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay, there’s still a few months to fix things up and prove that, as Thiher said, the problem wasn’t with the monitors.
Because Final Fantasy XIV has somehow evolved into one of the biggest video games on the planet, Square Enix has decided to grab some of its older content out of the back of the fridge, reheat it in the microwave for a bit and serve it up to a whole new audience of players who probably weren’t around when it was first released.
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I’m talking specifically here about the game’s second major expansion, Stormblood, which was released six years ago as a premium piece of downloadable content, but which for the next few weeks will be made available for free (provided you’ve already got a paid subscription, they’re not just giving it away to free/trial players).
As the game’s site points out (thanks, Eurogamer), the free offer runs until May 28. Importantly it’s not free-to-play, it’s free-to-download, so provided you grab it before that deadline you’ll be able to play it whenever you want.
It’s good for both the console and PC versions of the game, though as this official FAQ points out, you need to make double sure on PC that you’re downloading the correct edition, as only the Steam download will work if you bought the game on Steam, etc.
Incredible visuals This smart TV has access to a wide array of streaming services, all of which are easier to navigate, has 4K visuals for a stunning picture, and comes with an Alexa Voice Remote too.
Final Fantasy XIV is one of the best massively multiplayer online role-playing games going, one of the few able to maintain a monthly subscription model in a day when even an Elder Scrolls MMO has to go free-to-play. Stormblood’s epic narrative, gorgeous new locales, spectacular battles and some fresh gameplay mechanics make a great game even better.
I am never going to finish it and no one can make me.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, the famed Japanese musician and composer, has died at the age of 71.
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He had been battling failing health for several years, having been diagnosed in 2014 with throat cancer, then bowel cancer in 2021. Through all his treatments and surgeries, however, he continued to write music and perform, even giving an online performance as recently as December 2022.
Sakamoto is perhaps best known for his work composing the score to several films, especially The Last Emperor (for which he won an Academy Award), The Last Buddha, The Revenant (which saw him nominated for a Golden Globe) and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, in which he also appeared on-screen alongside David Bowie.
Yet he was also famous for his earlier pop career, both as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, an electronic group that was huge in Japan in the early 80s. YMO had an impact on Western musicians and markets as well; their song “Computer Game” charted in the UK, and they appeared live on Soul Train in 1980.
Incredible visuals This smart TV has access to a wide array of streaming services, all of which are easier to navigate, has 4K visuals for a stunning picture, and comes with an Alexa Voice Remote too.
Over his decades-long career writing music Sakamoto even worked on a few video games, from 1989 RPG Tengai Makyou: Ziria, the first game in the long-running Far East of Eden series, to 2006’s Dawn of Mana, for which he composed the opening theme (for more on this surprisingly excellent but also confusing credit, see here)
His most recent contribution to a video game was 2014’s wonderful Hohokum, in which (among other excellent selections) the track Reticent Reminiscence, a collaboration between Sakamoto and electronic musician Christopher Willits, appears.
Sakamoto died on March 28, with the announcement of his passing coming after his funeral on April 2. He is survived by his four children, one of whom is Japanese pop star Miu Sakamoto.
April Fool’s Day has finally come to add a little bit more chaos to the week, as jokes and lies fly around unrestricted. But we understand what April 1 is all about—a chance for developers to sneak in some humor in our favorite games. These April Fools’ jokes are getting a little more advanced and ambitious year by year, and we love April for that. Here are some of the best April Fools’ jokes currently out there:
Lechonk lovers unite
Here are two true statements: Lechonk is a perfect Pokémon, and Lechonk deserves more love than we can offer. So while there’s an underlying pain that Lechonk can only dominate Pokémon on a holiday meant for jokes, I’m still happy to report that Lechonk will get the stardom it deserves this April 1. True Lechonk fans will treat themselves to an extra chonky plush, or a porky pink playmat decked out with numerous Lechonks.
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Nintendo Switch Online will now sound more Italian
Incredible visuals This smart TV has access to a wide array of streaming services, all of which are easier to navigate, has 4K visuals for a stunning picture, and comes with an Alexa Voice Remote too.
IGN pulls a fast one here and declares that every Mario game is about to get Prattified. Can you imagine?
Xzibit levels up Pimp My Ride
Xzibit shows YOU how to PIMP YOUR motherf****** BROWSER
Opera GX is a self-proclaimed “browser for gamers,” and I suppose allowing users to mod their browser takes that sentiment to the next level. The one and only Xzibit is here to show you how to pimp out your Opera GX setup, with new aesthetic digs like a Cyberpunk theme or a more broad “anime theme.”
Disgaea throws its hat into the dating simulator ring…with a fake dating sim
It’s pretty trendy nowadays for games to also have a spin-off dating sim, like Dead by Daylight or Overwatch 2. For Disgaea, I suppose April 1 is as good a time as any to announce its otome date-sim spin-off, titled Makai no Prince-Sama. Tragically, this game has a release date slated for January 30, 20000000200, so there’s no way for me to actually take Killia out for a nice dinner. Oh well. If this game were to be true, you would wake up in the form of a Prinny (those cute penguins) to experience a heart-pounding and romantic adventure. One can only dream.
【魔界戦記ディスガイア】『魔界の♡プリンスさまっ♪』プロモーションムービー
Genshin Impact reveals four playable cats
Genshin Impact has a real love for cats, as evidenced by the playable character Diona and her “Cat’s Tail” bar. For April Fools, Hoyoverse is capitalizing on all of our feline fantasies: to play a cat. More specifically, Hoyoverse released a set of shorts and promotional images to advertise playable kitty versions of Diluc, Keqing, Kuki Shinobu, and Wanderer. Unfortunately, they will be hard to distinguish through text, as each cat is simply named “Meow,” and all they can do or say is “meow.”
Among Us expands its horse universe
Innersloth can’t stop horsing around, it seems, as the Among Us developers once again brought back the infamous “Horse Mode,” allowing players to take control of the majestic Horsemate. But Innersloth simply could not satisfy itself by rerunning the same classic “Horse Mode.” The Among Us devs have stepped their game up with the expanded “Horse Wrangling Mode.” This Hide n’ Seek game mode will allow the seeker to take the role of a “Rancher,” literally tying up these darned Horsemates instead of killing them.
Among Us Horse Mode Kill Animation
Look your best with the new Razer Razer
I’m glad Razer is finally cashing in on its homophonic relationship with the word “razor.” One might say it’s an easy target, but I believe it’s just necessary wordplay. This theoretical razor doubles as a shaving tool, as well as a high-quality gaming mouse, allowing you to look your best as you click heads or whatever it is you use your gaming mouse for.
You can sign up to be a beta tester for the Razer Razer on the official website here. Now, I’m not a betting man, but I don’t think you’ll actually get your hands on a Razer Razer. But you will enter a raffle to win a full set of Razer gear, including a keyboard, headphones, and mouse.
Razer Razer | Feel Sharp, Play Sharp
Assassinate a cuddly teddy bear in Rainbow Six Siege
Rainbow Six Siege likes to celebrate April Fools with a “Rainbow is Magic” event. While normally, Rainbow Six Siege does not display much in the form of rainbows, April Fools allows the tactical shooter to add some color to its universe. Unfortunately, pacifists are not welcome this time. As opposed to rescuing teddy bears, you’ll have to blow their heads off instead.
Rainbow Six Siege: Rainbow is Magic 2023 Gameplay Trailer
1v1 your cat in Street Fighter 6
Capcom is on a roll with innovative new Street Fighter 6 features. Not only will there be a new 2v2 mode, but also a “Dynamic-mode” that allows you to perform stylish combos and attacks with the simple press of a button. For further accessibility with your cat, Capcom has created a tool that lets your cat experience Dynamic mode, converting the various swats and jabs of a cat into button presses. If you ever dreamt of that, anyways.
League of Legends allows you to collect and wear a bounty of hats
League of Legends is now all about that fashion. When players enter a Blind Pick match, they’ll have the chance to wander around the Summoner’s Rift to kill minions, collecting some snazzy hats along the way. And if this Reddit post is to be believed, it doesn’t seem like there’s an upper limit to how many stylish hats you can wear, which means your stack of hats can be as tall as you dream. Some other surprises are waiting for you in Blind Pick, but I’ll be out there collecting hats instead.
While Sonic the Hedgehog is murdered, the Eggcoin currency crashes
It appears to be a stressful time of year for Sonic the Hedgehog and friends. While everyone’s favorite blue hedgehog was killed off for a free murder mystery game, there were some darker, more illicit underpinnings brewing in the Sonicverse. Apparently, Eggman has created a cryptocurrency known as “Eggcoin” that has crashed and burned, and Big the Cat is the surprising leader of a mafia crew, amongst other shocking headlines. Thoughts and prayers.
Baldur’s Gate 3 will let you cheese everything
One of the best things about Larian games is finding out how you can use the tools they give you to break their games. They’ve decided to cut out the middleman and just let you cheese outright!
VALORANT e-daters in Ranked will automatically be funneled to a dedicated queue where they can only hear one another’s voice comms
Cuffing season may be over, but if you and your situationship are tryna link over VALORANT without getting absolutely merked by your teammates, we gotchu fam.
GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS UPDATES
Shots fired while in spawn will now shoot into enemy spawn
map control is mid anyway
Jett dash is now cooldown based instead of charge based and the cooldown is now set to 0.5 seconds
we love Jett and we love cars so we made her dash cooldown 0.5 seconds. Jett boutta pull up skrt skrt
Minecraft’s April Fools Is On Fire
Revealing: The Vote Update
If you log into Minecraft today, you’re going to notice something a little different about your launcher. Don’t worry, nothing is wrong. You can put out the fire with the little water bucket. Aside from that, though, Mojang has unleashed a devilish ‘Vote’ update, which sounds like pure chaos:
From the moment you start a game, you will find yourself in a world of endless voting, where the results fundamentally change the laws of Minecraft. As you might have noticed in the video, we have created a fine selection of voteable features that include everything and anything: beelloons*, French mode, zombie mode, rabbit transformation, exploding pistons, haunted world – and much, much more.
“Studies show that gamers love to make decisions – the more the better,” said Professor Apreel Dåre of Sillington University. “The fact that Mojang Studios is willing to put decision-making in the hands of the players just shows how much they care about their community. Or that’s what I assume. I haven’t been in a community since 1857 and I don’t really play games.”
If you have no idea what to expect, that’s by design. They’re liking this to getting a box of chocolates, just one with apparent consequences.
After you download it, there is no turning back. If you delete the file, the story ends; you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You boot it up, you stay in the Overworld, and we show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I’m sure it’ll be fine, though.
Rocket League gets positive
If you’re logging on to have a heater gamer moment in Rocket League today, bad news. The chat has been overhauled so only positive messages can go out. Also, now there’s a literal Easter Egg you can kick around.
What are some of your favorite April fool’s jokes this year?
It’s almost poetic that, in a genre built on many people fighting to stay alive until just a few remain, so many battle royale games have launched, flopped, and died over the last few years. Not every new battle royale can find the same success as Warzone or PUBG. In fact, most will be lucky to survive at all. And many haven’t, as this list shows.
While fan-made mods have added battle royale-like modes to games like Arma, the genre truly exploded with the release of Player Unknown’s Battleground and, shortly after, Fortnite’s take on the genre. These games exploded in popularity, with Fortnite alone jumping from 20 million users in 2017 to 125 million in 2018. Publishers took notice, and more studios began spitting out battle royales to cash in on the trend. And it makes sense. These games aren’t too tricky to make if you already have a shooter engine or existing IP that works within the genre and a talented team of devs. However, they need constant upkeep, fresh content, and a large player base to live. And that’s not easy to achieve.
So, as we wrap up our fantastic week focused on battle royale games, it seems like the perfect time to stop and acknowledge all the games that tried to survive and thrive, but in the end, for various reasons, didn’t make it. They all got sniped from afar and were left in a ditch, surrounded by digital corpses of other failed attempts to be the next Apex Legends or Fortnite.
No two battle royale matches are alike. Clever, spontaneous tactics springing from the generative collision of varying skill levels, map layout, and randomized items, weapons, and vehicles can lead to theatrical levels of epicness and hilarity—often both at the same time. So it’s only fitting during Kotaku’s week of Battle Royale that we celebrate some standout moments across the many games that have challenged our wits, accuracy, and luck, surprising us with moments no one saw coming.
It would be impossible to catalog every possible epic-tier moment, be it in Warzone, Fortnite, PUBG, or Apex Legends, so these are barely even the tip of the iceberg. But they are nonetheless some excellent examples of literal pro-gamer moves, crushing failures, and thrilling moments of victory. One of them is from one of Kotaku’s very own (but it ain’t me. I suck at these damn games).
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a weird phase right now, and no, I don’t mean Phase Five which began with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Over just a few short days, it became clear that the shared movie universe is undergoing a lot of change, and not for the best reasons. From actors to workers and even top leadership, Marvel’s going through it right now.
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Marvel as a subset of Disney was just part of a huge set of layoffs earlier this week, with Mickey Mouse and friends slashing over 7000 jobs. Only the first wave of those cuts happened this week, and the final 7000 number is expected to come sometime in April. Company-wide, personnel is being dropped by one of the biggest corporations in the world, but even outside of egregious labor issues, Marvel has been dealing with a few more precise changes in its workforce.
Top executives are being let go
Marvel recently fired Victoria Alonso, who AV Club describes as “one of the biggest architects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” having been with the connected universe project for over a decade before her leaving the company earlier in March. At the time of her departure, she was Marvel’s president of physical production, post-production, VFX and animation. According to a Variety report, this came as part of a joint decision between Disney’s human resources, legal department, and executives including but not limited to Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman. Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, reportedly didn’t intervene, and Alonso was “blindsided.” The entire situation is wading into legal territory. Disney says Alonso’s firing came as part of a breach of contract because of her production work on Argentina, 1985, a non-Disney film, though Alonso’s team claims she had permission to do so.
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On top of this, there seems to have been conflict between Alonso and Disney/Marvel in regards to queer issues within the company, according to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Alonso, who is gay, reportedly clashed over an issue where Disney wanted a scene in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania altered to blur out a shop window that included Pride memorabilia in Kuwait, which has anti-LGBTQ+ laws in place. This is after she publicly spoke out against then-CEO Bob Chapek at the GLAAD awards for Disney’s reaction to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and was told she would no longer be allowed to do press for Marvel. Attorney Patty Glaser, who is representing Alonso, released the following statement to Variety:
“The idea that Victoria was fired over a handful of press interviews relating to a personal passion project about human rights and democracy that was nominated for an Oscar and which she got Disney’s blessing to work on is absolutely ridiculous,” Glaser says. “Victoria, a gay Latina who had the courage to criticize Disney, was silenced. Then she was terminated when she refused to do something she believed was reprehensible. Disney and Marvel made a really poor decision that will have serious consequences. There is a lot more to this story and Victoria will be telling it shortly—in one forum or another.”
While Alonso’s influence on the MCU is significant and dates back to the earliest films like the original Iron Man, she’s also been named in ongoing reports about the dire state of the animation industry as reported by Vulture and allegedly blacklisted artists working on Marvel projects that she took issue with. In general, Marvel’s animation and VFX workers have been coming forward about apparent toxic work environments and unfair contracts while working on the studio’s projects. This has reportedly been especially difficult on Disney+ projects like She-Hulk, with smaller budgets and shorter turnaround times still expecting movie-quality work.
Another high-profile departure is that of Ike Perlmutter, who was let go from the company this week. Perlmutter has had a long, storied history with Marvel, including a stint on the board of directors (as well as the chairman of the board), working as the vice chairman of the company in the early 2000s, moving up to the chief executive officer position in 2005, then remaining the CEO after Disney acquired the comic company in 2009. He oversaw Marvel Studios up until 2015 while reportedly being very tight on production budgets and also claiming Black people “look the same” regarding Don Cheadle’s replacement of Terrence Howard as James Rhodes in the MCU. He operated as a chairman from 2017 until his eventual layoff.
Jonathan Majors’ domestic violence case is ongoing
While executive departures will have an effect on things down the line, the most immediate problem Marvel movies have to contend with is the ongoing domestic violence case against actor Jonathan Majors. The actor, who plays Kang the Conquerer most recently in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, was arrested in Manhattan on assault, strangulation, and harassment charges. Majors’ legal team led by attorney Priya Chaudhry claims he’s innocent and released text messages allegedly sent by the victim in the case. The texts say this was “not an attack,” claim fault for the dispute because she was “trying to grab [Majors’] phone,” and disputed the strangulation charges. The alleged texts say the authorities were called due to the woman fainting, and that when there was a suspicion of a domestic dispute, Majors was arrested per mandatory arrest laws associated with domestic abuse cases in New York.
Majors’ future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is unclear as the investigation is ongoing, but the U.S. Army has pulled ads featuring the actor until the investigation is complete. The reason this is so significant in Marvel’s view is Majors’ character, Kang the Conquerer, is essentially Marvel’s main villain right now. He’s only appeared in two projects thus far, one being the Loki Disney+ show, and the second being Quantumania. But the shared universe franchise is leading up to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, both of which are set to feature Kang as the primary antagonist. He’s a Thanos-style character that Marvel can’t simply pluck from the story. Should the investigation lead to a guilty verdict, it’s likely Majors will be recast.
While all of these developments have happened for different reasons, whether that be corporate greed, office politics, and a domestic violence case, Marvel as a production is seeing some serious shake-ups right now. Not all of it seems to be of the company’s volition, but things are changing for Marvel at a time when the brand has been losing a lot of its staying power. Quantumania is the last movie Marvel released in theaters, and it was one of the series’ most poorly received and is sitting at a 47 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
While Marvel movies still make more money than you or I will ever see in a room at once, the franchise has been trending somewhat downward at the box office. Quantumania still made $470 million in its theatrical run, but that’s significantly lower than Ant-Man and the Wasp made in 2018, which was around $623 million. Several Marvel movies have made below the half-a-billion mark in recent years, such as Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Black Widow is one of the lowest-performing movies in the franchise’s lifetime with $379 million but was notably hindered by the covid-19 pandemic making fewer people willing to head out to theaters in 2021. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever did manage to bring in over $859 million, but that was even down from the original’s $1 billion.
It’s unclear what, if any, changes this might bring to the franchise, but figureheads and workers that have been with the brand for a long time are gone. Reading over it all now, ultimately, I sympathize most with the workers who were subject to the layoffs. Alonso and Perlmutter will be fine, but the people who worked (and apparently suffered) under them are in a much worse position.
We’ve reached out to Marvel, Majors, and Alonso for comment on this story and will update it should we hear back.
Update: This piece has been updated with information about Alonso’s reported disputes with Disney regarding queer content in its movies.
For such a momentous period in human history, the First World War has been relatively under-served by video games. Mostly because the defining theatre of the conflict—the nightmarish trench warfare of the Western Front—is almost impossible to recreate in the medium.
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I mean, you can recreate it, loads of games have, but the problem is that—and I’m sorry for the ghastly reduction of the source material here, but we’re talking video games, so I have to do this—it’s boring. Most other forms of warfare, throughout the entirety of human history, have been turned into fantastic strategy games because there’s some degree of mobility to them. That’s what makes them games. You can flank, drive, encircle and withdraw. There are immediate and actionable tactics you can apply.
The Western Front, on the other hand, was a meat-grinder. Attacks involving thousands of men could result in gains of just a few yards. There was an enormous strategic effort under-pinning the war, from recruitment to manufacturing to global supply lines, but in a tactical sense there’s very little for the player to do, which is why nearly every game based on the conflict has been slow, bad or both.
Which brings us to The Great War: Western Front, a new strategy game from Petroglyph, the studio behind Star Wars: Empire at War and Universe at War: Earth Assault. It tries to tackle the subject matter from a slightly different approach, which I can best break down as “Total War meets Tower Defence”.
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The strategic aspect is where you amass your forces before descending into an RTS battleScreenshot: The Great War
The game is split into two sections. There’s a strategic aspect, where you move armies around a map in a turn-based system, and then when two forces meet the action zooms in to a real-time battle. This RTS element itself has two stages; there’s a planning and construction phase, where you get to design a network of trenches and firing positions, and a battle phase where you deploy units on the field and control them in real time.
The strategic stuff is fine. It works, it’s simple enough. It’s the RTS side of things that is most interesting, though, and it’s where the game both shines and ultimately falls down.
The design and construction stuff is, in the grimmest way imaginable, the highlight. Imagine a historical murder machine built the same way you’d put a LEGO set together. You’re given a map and can draw trench networks across it, picking the kind of trench, mapping out its supporting supply trenches, placing machine gun nests, agonising over the location of artillery batteries. If this was the game, and battles decided afterwards like some kind of flood management/tower defence title, I think it could have been the best First World War game ever made.
The RTS battles themselves are a disappointment (though it’s great to see a game with so much Australian representation, something loads of strategy games miss!)Screenshot: The Great War
Sadly, the moment a battle actually begins—perhaps as a nod to the actual conflict—everything falls apart. You control individual units, not entire lines of men, and a lot of the game involves moving them around the map, trying to time your devastating artillery support just right. The issue is that these units are weirdly sticky, having trouble entering or staying in trenches properly and making control of them a nightmare, while the AI’s own tactics are often somehow worse than those employed on the actual battlefields 100 years ago.
This sucks the life out of the whole thing, which is a shame! There are a lot of good ideas here, and the presentation is surprisingly earnest. There are loads of informative Company of Heroes-style 2D cutscenes, and the developers toe the line between respecting the horror of the conflict and expressing its brutality in the form of a video game as well as any other WW1 release I can remember.
The Great War: Western Front is out now on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
E3 is dead. Again. Probably for good this time, given the circumstances. A lot of people have a lot of feelings—a weird thing for regular folks to have, since this was an industry trade show—but one thing we should be remembering through all the tributes and dunks is that E3 didn’t mismanage its way into oblivion. Its demise is exactly what the world’s biggest video game companies wanted.
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Yes, it had its problems that were its own doing, regardless of who was organising the show. Downtown LA sucks. The show’s industry-only focus gave it a sheen that was always a little too uncomfortable to be around. It could never reconcile whether it wanted to be a trade show for developers and retailers or an announcement fest for the world’s media. Downtown LA sucks.
What started killing the show, though, wasn’t any of those things. Those things were inconveniences for those attending, which those of you reading/watching from home could not have given half a shit about. E3 started dying when major companies like Nintendo and Sony began reducing their presence there, or pulling out entirely, and that had nothing to do with the limited dining options available around the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Those companies, from platform holders to major publishers, the real stars of the E3 experience, weren’t really presenters at a trade show. They were gladiators. At its peak—whenever you think that was across its various locations and decades—E3 ran for just a handful of days, but in that time hundreds of major announcements would be made, from new hardware to AAA reveals, and each of them would be vying for the public’s attention. If there was one thing that defined E3 beyond “press conferences”, it would be that every event, and every show, had its own list of “winners” and “losers”, drawn up by forum posters and international media alike. The “winners” could bask in the glory and leverage it for increased exposure and sales, while the “losers” might risk sinking into oblivion.
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Why on earth would any major company want to risk being a gladiator? Why would they look at a scenario where the success of their billion-dollar enterprise could be threatened by some kids deciding a game trailer or new hardware feature was “meh”? Why would they bother sitting down with games press to answer questions when they could just send out press releases?
It’s no surprise that major companies bailing on E3 killed it off. What’s surprising is that it didn’t happen a lot sooner! Like we’ve said before, there’s nothing major video games companies like more than being able to control the entire process of making a sale, from announcement to pre-order. Everything standing in the way of those sales is an obstacle to overcome, and so if E3 was presenting the risk of their games being overshadowed by their competitor’s, then of course they were going to walk away, and when enough companies walked away the show was never going to survive.
They don’t need to pay for big E3 press conferences anymore, they can just film their own presentations and show them on a day when there’s no competing news. They don’t need to walk journalists around for three days answering questions that may be occasionally uncomfortable when they can just get influencers to hype their games live on Twitch and YouTube. And every time they’re doing this, an incentive to pre-order their product—often from their own online store—isn’t far away. The feeding ramp is polished to a mirror sheen.
Most video game studios, or at least the bigger ones, will have experience with Foley, a long-standing craft that revolves around creating cinematic sound effects using everyday objects.
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It’s nothing new. Many of Star Wars’ most iconic sounds were made using stuff like TV tubes and vacuum cleaners, and there are loads of excellent features on the internet showing how everyone from Bungie to Naughty Dog have used Foley to bring their own games to life. Even Unpacking, a cute little pixel game about putting things on shelves, featured over 14,000 different sound effects.
Today it’s God of War Ragnarok’s turn, in this excellent video put together by Wired, and this is already one of my all-time favourites, mostly because of the sheer volume of effects it shows.
Meeting PlayStation Studios’ Joanna Fang, we get to see how loads of the game’s crunchiest, squelchiest sound effects were made. A galloping horse’s hooves are actually just a pair of toilet plungers. Kratos smashing an enemy’s skull in is actually Fang crushing a melon with a crowbar. One of the most interesting is that you can get a perfect replica of snow crunching underfoot by…walking on coal instead.
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I love that the sound of floorboards is made by just slapping a shipping pallet. That twisting some leather sounds like someone being strangled. And that to get the sound of someone punching a dude wearing armour they…OK, used a boxing glove to punch some armour.
Like I’ve said, there’s nothing particularly new or relevatory here, Foley is a relatively ancient craft in modern show business, but this video is a fantastic example of showing the depth and variety of sounds that can be produced in a single room, and how a Foley artist’s passion for the job can be one of the most important—if also unsung—parts of our experience with a game.
Publishing giant Electronic Arts announced today that approximately 6% of its global workforce, or between 700-800 people, will be laid off as the company drives “greater focus across our portfolio”.
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As we drive greater focus across our portfolio, we are moving away from projects that do not contribute to our strategy, reviewing our real estate footprint, and restructuring some of our teams. These decisions are expected to impact approximately six percent of our company’s workforce. This is the most difficult part, and we are working through the process with the utmost care and respect. Where we can, we are providing opportunities for our colleagues to transition onto other projects. Where that’s not possible, we are providing severance pay and additional benefits such as health care and career transition services. Communicating these decisions began earlier this quarter and we expect them to continue through early next fiscal year.
The Last Of Us—a zombie apocalypse game, you might have heard of it—was finally released on PC this week. That’s good news for anyone who hasn’t managed to play it over its past three releases on various PlayStation consoles, but the bad news is that, at launch at least, the game isn’t at its best.
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At time of posting the game only has a 33% positive rating on Steam, a figure and timeframe that has little to do with the quality of the game itself, and everything to do with the condition it has released in. Player’s complaints are many, but they boil down to a few widespread issues like:
Freezes: The game is locking up at all kinds of random places, sometimes on its own, sometimes taking Steam (or the whole PC) with it.
CTD: The game is constantly crashing to the desktop for many users.
Performance: Players are complaining that the game places far too much strain on the CPU rather than the GPU, and that as a result performance is nowhere near as smooth as it should be relative to their systems.
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Mouse stutter: Now this one is funny. Apparently using the keyboard + mouse results in stutters. Using a gamepad removes this. So there’s a control-based performance hit? Wild (this was also reportedly an issue with the Uncharted ports as well).
Some of my favourite Steam reviews include:
Wow this runs like crap
The single worst PC port I have ever seen. Waited 10 years for the game, avoiding any and all walkthrough videos, reviews, spoilers and etc. and this disgusting excuse of a port ruined every single ounce of excitement I had for the game. Building shaders for almost 2 hours now, crashes in main menu while building shaders every 5 or so minutes.
Terrible optimization. Game takes more than 8 gigs of VRAM on medium settings, 100% CPU utilization in menu. And the temps are really high too. Probably going to refund soon.
Pre-purchased & pre-loaded. Launched it as soon as it was ready. Went to the setings. Turns out this game is eating up nearly 10GB of VRAM at 1440p max settings (game defaulted the settings to maximum). I’m running a RTX 3080 Ti with 12GB VRAM, mind you. Never could get past the menu screen which always crashes when the game displays a notification at the bottom right corner that reads ‘BUILDING SHADERS’.
While you’d expect this stuff will be fixed (or at least improved) in the months to come, it’s starting to become a disappointing pattern that many of Sony’s big PlayStation ports are hitting with performance problems on PC. Horizon was a mess, Uncharted suffered from many of these same problems and now this. Sure, there’s encouragement to be found there too—Horizon overcame its early struggles to be a damn fine experience on the PC—but these bad first impressions aren’t helping anyone.
For what it’s worth, Naughty Dog has responded to the issues, saying:
The Last of Us Part I PC players: we’ve heard your concerns, and our team is actively investigating multiple issues you’ve reported. We will continue to update you, but our team is prioritizing updates and will address issues in upcoming patches.
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Which might explain why earlier today Kotick sent out an email to his entire company—and then posted it on the internet for the whole world to see—which does little but bang his head against the wall repeating the same arguments Microsoft, Activision (and now select US politicians) have been making for months: that the deal is fine, that everything is cool, that Microsoft has made “thoughtful, generous remedies to address regulators’ concerns”.
One thing stands out in this email, though, and it’s a section where Kotick has to juggle maintaining a business relationship with Sony while also wanting to throw them under the bus. Let’s see how he fared (emphasis mine):
The good news is, regulators who initially had concerns about console competition are starting to better understand our industry. The data and evidence Microsoft has been presenting are tilting the scale. You may have seen statements from Sony, including an argument that if this deal goes through, Microsoft could release deliberately “buggy” versions of our games on PlayStation. We all know our passionate players would be the first to hold Microsoft accountable for keeping its promises of content and quality parity. And, all of us who work so hard to deliver the best games in our industry care too deeply about our players to ever launch sub-par versions of our games. Sony has even admitted that they aren’t actually concerned about a Call of Duty agreement—they would just like to prevent our merger from happening. This is obviously disappointing behavior from a partner for almost thirty years, but we will not allow Sony’s behavior to affect our long term relationship. PlayStation players know we will continue to deliver the best games possible on Sony platforms as we have since the launch of PlayStation.
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In other words, “it’s not me, it’s you”. I don’t see any other way he could have put this, to be honest, but then this kind of tiptoeing is exactly why this proposed deal has been so important to the future of the console business: so many grenades have been lobbed by both sides that there’s going to be bad blood here for years regardless of the decision.
Zelda fans have been starving for anything they can get, any crumb they can catch, and it seems like Nintendo is finally taking pity, rewarding them with a 10-minute gameplay trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
During the gameplay snippet, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma says through a translator that Tears has changed the world “in many ways,” including pieces of Hyrule that float high in the sky, or “sky islands.”
Tears of the Kingdom new abilities means less climbing
Link can reach these sky islands through his new “recall” powers, which alters an object’s movement, or “ascend,” which allows Link to pass through ceilings in a path of twisting turquoise light. The recall power lets Link take a giant boulder that fell from a floating island back up to said island like a cool rock elevator. And ascend means you no longer have to always scale the sides of mountains, keeping an eye on Link’s stamina meter while you do it.
Another new power “fuse,” lets Link combine two objects, like a branch with a boulder, and use it as a unique weapon—a hammer, in this case. “Ultrahand” is what Link will use to construct those vehicles we’ve seen in previous trailers.
Tears of the Kingdom weapon fusing
Fuse seems to be one of the game’s most versatile new powers, letting Link attach almost anything to anything to improve and alter its qualities. At one point, for example, Link attaches two fans to a raft to turn it into a sort of rustic speedboat. You can also attach objects to your arrows to increase their utility, including a hunk of meat. The term “meat arrow” is currently all over our Twitter timeline, as Zelda fans rushed to wonder what they can do with such an arrow in Tears of the Kingdom.
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Other surprising reveals include breaking weapons (in the trailer, it’s a branch that breaks, for realism) and a fresh enemy, the Construct, which looks like a stony robot.
The Zonai in Tears of the Kingdom
The lengthy gameplay trailer also appeared to accidentally confirm the presence of the Zonai, a prehistoric tribe in the Zelda universe whose ruins dot Hyrule. During the gameplay, we see Link collect something called a Zonai charge from a fallen Construct. It’s unclear what they do just yet, but it certainly has fans excited to see how much Tears of the Kingdom will explore their lore.
This is what I would call a big meal. Before today, we had a very narrow idea of what the highly anticipated Breath of the Wild sequel would contain. Existing trailers revealed that the game—Nintendo’s first $70 game (pro tip: it will be cheaper if you use a Nintendo Switch Game Voucher to purchase it)—looks even more fantastic than BoTW.
“Hopefully it runs okay on the aging Switch hardware,” Kotaku senior reporter Ethan Gach wrote at the time of the reveal.
Good graphics are a nice thing to have, and a nice thing to see demonstrated before you in a Nintendo trailer, but it isn’t something you can run with. Past trailers have provided a general sense of what the hell is going on: Zelda isn’t sure that Link will be able to handle the latest threat, but he also gets to fly through the sky on a hulking hoverboard and what appears to be a hot air balloon, so who’s really winning?
But it wasn’t enough for fans to sink their teeth in. They’ve been subbing facts for wild dreams, theorizing that Tears will feature the first speaking Ganon, some sort of lost soul mechanic. They also surmised that the game would have homing arrows, which today’s trailer confirmed…you just need to fuse your arrows with squishy yellow Keese Eyeballs to make it happen.
Today’s trailer, which continues to show Link and his verdant world at its best and adds even more gameplay mechanics to the ones previous trailers revealed, is hopefully only the start to Nintendo preparing to open up the flood gates of cold, hard Zelda information. It doesn’t have much time, anyway—the game releases for Switch on May 12.
