Author: Sanjiv Sookoo

In a recent developer lecture at the British Academy of Film and TV, Far Cry 5 director Dan Hay pitched a mission involving a misplaced space teddy bear.

Based on his childhood teddy bear, space and the story of Prometheus, he then went on to state that he wants to combine all these elements into one wherein he retells the story of Prometheus using a teddy bear while in space ‘because it’s f***ing awesome’.

Hay’s idea is as follows:

“It starts with a bear, and a little girl who loves her bear – in space, because it’s cool,” Hay began. “She lives out in space, she has normal parents, a normal life; she loves this bear, she has tea parties with this bear, she has birthdays with this bear […] She goes to bed every night knowing that this bear is there to protect her […] until one night she’s not protected.

“Danger strikes, a klaxon goes off. Her parents come running into the room […] they pick her up and they rush outside, and the bear is left in the bed. And she turns and she screams “No!” and she runs back, she grabs the bear, and they head to the spaceship. But at the last possible minute, she stumbles and she drops the bear. The doors close – fwoosh – and she sits there pressed up against it, screaming “No!” as the bear is left behind. And the rocket takes off and goes into space and gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

“And the bear sits alone on the edge of a great precipice until a gust of wind pushes it down. And down into the hole, it goes, further and further, past caves and monsters […] all kinds of things, until it finds its way all the way down into the centre of the planet and it rests in inky darkness alone until it sees a little light suspended from a little string.

“The light gets bigger until it presents itself as a little creature staring at this teddy bear. And this creature has a name – it’s called a Razagaboo. Now the Razagaboos are very inquisitive creatures […] but they’ve never left the cave, they never had any information about the world outside – they don’t know what this thing is.

“So this Razagaboo looks at it and offers a soft little purr to the other Razagaboos that are up in their webs, and they all come down. And they move forward, gingerly, carefully, looking at this bear – no clue what it is – forward and forward until they touch it.

“That’s when they have their Prometheus moment […] this is where, up until that moment, they’ve only ever thought of building their webs in 2D, but they saw that this thing was built out of yarn and they understood that it could be built in 3D, they could re-engineer what they build […] This changed everything about the Razagaboos – their understanding, their education, the idea of their culture, and the idea of their engineering.”

The game would feature various challenges and puzzles and it would be ‘quite the experience’ for any player.

The most important question relating to this is whether it would ever come to light though. Ubisoft is known for their bigger titles such as Assassin’s Creed, but they have published smaller titles such as Valiant Hearts too. Hay hopes that one day his game, which he named ‘Yarn’, will one day be published. Time will tell.

The controversy surrounding loot boxes in Star Wars Battlefront 2 has continued as Belgian and Hawaiian politicians have begun to investigate its similarity to gambling and whether it should be considered as such.

Last week, the Belgian Gambling Commission began to investigate loot boxes and whether they constitute gambling, which would greatly affect the industry as gambling requires a person to be over the age of eighteen to indulge. In their decision, the Belgian Gambling Commission have found that Battlefront’s loot boxes are to be looked upon as gambling and would like them to be banned.

This could spark a massive change to gaming worldwide if other countries decide to use Belgian’s decision as a legal precedent. Belgian Minister of Justice Koen Geens states that:

“Mixing gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child.”

He would also like the European Union to achieve a total ban on loot boxes.

Similarly, Hawaiian legislators have indicated a desire to investigate loot boxes and have them banned. Hawaiian legislators Chris Lee and Sean Quinlan believe that loot boxes are predatory in nature and can negatively affect children who are unaware that the process is essentially gambling. They also spoke on the fact that loot boxes are rampant in mobile games, but the focus has now shifted to preying on gamers of AAA games.

In the latest news, the Entertainment Software Association have deemed that loot boxes are not gambling as some are free, some are paid and not all affect player progression. They say it should not be banned, and gamers should make the final decision.

The loot box controversy is one of the hottest topics in gaming now – there’s no escaping it.

Many gamers have boycotted Star Wars Battlefront 2 on the grounds of its oppressive progression and loot box system, but many find that there is a middle ground, in that loot boxes may exist if they are merely cosmetic.

In dealing with legislative bans, gamers remain hopeful that this system’s predatory nature is quelled, at least to an extent, as the consumers would most certainly benefit from it. More as it happens.

Sega has announced that they are developing yet another sequel to Valkyria Chronicles and that it will be published on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and even Nintendo Switch – the first in the series to do so.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 Is Real

This sequel to the well-respected tactical role-playing games comes six years after the release of Valkyria Chronicles 3.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 is set in the same timeframe as Valkyria Chronicles, but has a new set of characters and is set in the Second World War between the Atlantic Federation and the Autocratic Eastern Imperial Alliance.

As usual, players must lead their soldiers to war in the continent of Europa using the turn-based strategy and third-person shooter mechanics that fans have come to love.

Players will lead a crew including young Commander Claude Wallace, engineer/heavy weapons specialist Riley Miller, hothead Darcsen Raz, sniper Kai Schulen and more, including a new class of soldier known as the grenadier.

The game will be released sometime in 2018 across the three platforms worldwide.

In contrast to the (sickening) trend of AAA video games forcing microtransactions and DLC down the throats of gamers industry-wide, Nintendo and Konami have released an exclusive Super Bomberman R update that is free of charge and full of new stuff for gamers to try.

The update includes a variety of new features including a Grand Prix mode, nine new characters, a new world – World 7 – and other new stages and accessories.

The Grand Prix mode should cause some excitement among fans of the game. It is a team versus team mode that pits two teams of three, or fewer, players against each other in an arena using new characters with special abilities.

This new mode includes two types of matches: the Crystal Match that allows teams to earn points by collecting, yep, crystals, and the second mode which is the Basic Bomber Match that follows standard Bomberman rules. Furthermore, according to Konami, this mode is designed for future eSports ventures.

The nine new characters in the game are as follows:

• Geomon Bomber
• Dracula Bomber
• Princess Tomato Bomber
• Bubble Head Bomber
• Option Bomber
• Shiori Fujisaki Bomber
• Jehuty Bomber
• Anubis Bomber
• Reiko Bomber

Konami and Nintendo have shown that video game publishers and developers are very much able to provide free content for their fans and the company has even promised that there’s more content to come. This is how you do it.