Welcome folks, welcome to the Endweek News! This is your weekly segment of SOME things gaming. I say “some” things because, frankly, I have neither the time nor the botheredness to actually post everything of gaming related interest every week and so I will be trimming off the fat and the sliiiightly less interesting stories in favour of the Top Five stories of the week! Welcome to the Endweek News – Seb’s Top Five!
So I was ill over the weekend and am only just now putting the finishing touches on this and posting it… Trust me when I say other than a few little things this was ready to be posted on Sunday. Apologies for the poor start.
Before I begin, I said that I would try to keep up with the smaller pieces of news that are of interest to me and the gaming world at large. From now on I will be continuing the V&T section of the News in the main part of the Endweek News. I will still occasionally, but infrequently do a Colour me Intrigued section, perhaps once a month, but for the release dates of every little tiny thing? I’m sorry my friends but you need to go elsewhere!
Assassin’s Creed! Ubisoft bites back!
A short news post for you here which I hope you will be aware (from my past posts) comes with a mixture of desire, indecision and despair. Ubisoft have announced that at some point this year (or early 2014) they will be releasing a new Assassin’s Creed game. It will feature a whole new setting and a whole new protagonist and beyond that nothing else is known.
Oh dear. You see, I already can feel my inner fanboy trying to find money to throw at the screen, but the more cynical side of me is saying “They just want your money Seb… They don’t care about you”. I was hoping that if there would be a new AC game it would be released a few years from now, give us time to get hyped again. Now though they are franchising it to hell, and I worry it will just be more of the same and that from now on the magic of the previous Assassin’c Creed games will begin to fade a little with each installment.
While on the subject of Assassin’s Creed I ought to mention: the episodic, three pieces of DLC for Assassin’s Creed 3 (called the Tyranny of King Washington) will be released on the 19th of February, the 19th of March and the 23rd/24th of April (The Infamy, The Betrayal and The Redemption respectively).
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt announced
Title here says it all. Supposedly coming in 2014 and to be released on “all high end platforms” I feel that this time I ought to actually get excited for the game as it’s predecessors have done so well. For more information you should head over to Eurogamer and check this video:
It’s NOT Mass Effect 4
Another short news post here for you folks. Essentially Bioware has reached out to the fans of Mass Effect and has explained, in no uncertain terms, that the next Mass Effect game will not feature Shepard, AT ALL. In fact is also seems unlikely, from the way they put it, that it will be a prequel to the games either. They have gone so far as to say that “calling it Mass Effect 4 will be doing it a disservice”. Yes it will be the same universe, the same lore, perhaps (as far as I can tell) the same back-story as the previous Mass Effects, but it will also be the start of something new. A new set of characters, stories relationships.
I feel that I am not explaining it right so here is, word for word, what Chris Priestly (Bioware’s community manager) actually said on their forums:
“To call the next game Mass Effect 4 or ME4 is doing it a disservice and seems to cause a lot of confusion here. We have already said that the Commander Shepard trilogy is over and that the next game will not feature him/her. That is the only detail you have on the game. I see people saying “well, they’ll have to pick a canon ending”. No, because the game does not have to come after. Or before. Or off to the side. Or with characters you know. Or yaddayaddayadda. Wherever, whenever, whoever, etc will all be revealed years down the road when we actually start talking about it.
I do not call the game ME4 when I talk about it ever, bucause that makes people think of it more as “what happens after Mass Effect 3” rather than “what game happens next set in the Mass Effect Universe”, which is far more accurate at this point. Obviously fans are going to speculate content, character and story until we actually reveal details in the years or months to come as you have almost no actual details, just don’t get bogged down in “well how are they going to continue ME3….”
Overlord dev reinventing Age of Wonders
This next story, again short (hurray for me, now I can return to being sick), caught my eye for two particular reasons. ONE: I haven’t heard anything from Triumph studios (those who developed Overlord and Overlord 2) since Overlord 2 and TWO: because Age of Wonders… That’s part of my childhood right there.
Anyway, all that is know right now is that they are planning to release the game (if it is ready) in Autumn of this year on PC. All that’s left to say really is: Age of Wonders 3? Yesh please!
Videos and Trailers
Why, tis the V&T section. A section where you can forget about reading long spiels of text and simply sit back and enjoy some videos from the world of gaming. Some will be moving, some will be inspiring, some will be interesting and some will be just plain awesome and “Why?” “Because, fuck you, that’s why!” I also feel I should mention that there will tend to be only ONE order to these videos, those which interest me most go to the top!
First off enjoy a little teaser trailer for a game called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, coming from The Astronauts. It shows nothing, the game could be awful, but golly I love teasers and this teased me something awful! I must know more!
Next up, a little launch trailer for TERA! “But Seb!” I hear you cry, “Has TERA not been out for ages?!” Indeed it has my friends, this launch trailer heralds the impending release of TERA as yet another free-to-play MMO!
Done already? Well feast your eyes on the Crusader Kings 2 – The Old Gods expansion official trailer. Having just started getting into the game I suggest that you too have a little look-see!
And lastly we have three Gameplay videos and commentaries for three games of varying interest. From “That’s neat” to “Cool story bro, tell it again…” we have the first look at the new DayZ stand-along coming from Dean “Rocket” Hall, something called Death Inc. and finally we have the official gameplay trailer of the official Walking Dead zombie shooter (not related to the awesome Walking Dead interactive story).
MMGaming.net 