Morning DLC: Video Game News & Rumors 1/12/2016
"The Writers Guild of America on Monday announced its nominees for outstanding achievement in writing for video games. The four nominees (listed below) include Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Microsoft’s Rise of the Tomb Raider. The WGA’s video game writing award honors the best qualifying script from a game released between Dec. 1, 2014, and Nov. 30, 2015, that features on-screen writing credits."
For some reason, it was too hard to write out each four of the nominees in a row, so here it is:
- Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Pillars of Eternity
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
You may be thinking, “Wow, isn’t that an incredibly narrow list of games, considering what released during that 12-month span!” As noted, each nominee includes a Writer’s Guild of America member on their writing staff; a requirement for nomination and winning the award. Considering that bar for entry led to just two nominees for last year’s award, it’s not hard to write off the importance of the WGA’s Video Game Writing nominees right off the bat.
"[Kou] Shibusawa [CEO of Koei Tecmo] then went on to talk about Ni-Oh first announced at E3 2005 more than 10 years ago. Since then they have remade the game from scratch 2 times with this being the third iteration and he hopes that third time is the charm! They’ve also finalised the concept theme to be “Sengoku Dark Fantasy”. The game is being developed exclusively for Sony’s PlayStation 4 from the ground up and is being optimised for 1080p, 60fps."
4Gamer.net, translated by ZhugeEX
While the entire piece is a fascinating read, the fact that Ni-Oh is targeting 1080p/60fps is rather intriguing. For once, doubling the frame rate is a lot more difficult than what early talk about the PS4 has led to imagine, but especially at 1080p. Unless there is a tangible breakthrough in graphical output for video gaming, which is certainly a possibility entering the third year of the PS4’s life cycle, there could very well be a dip in visual fidelity to hit those two technical benchmarks.
"Expanding further on Naughty Dog’s lack of plans for the Uncharted series after this year’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, co-director Neil Druckmann told The Sun about the plot of A Thief’s End, “But with the end of this story, it will be really hard to do a sequel with Nathan Drake.”I mean, it is called A Thief’s End."
There are so many aspects of this news that seem just odd. For one, Neil Druckmann is a person who chooses his words wisely, and especially would be so when going up against UK tabloid The Sun. There has to be some sort of reason why to do so. My guess is so that the game’s story can easier lead to subverting the player’s expectations. Otherwise…that just seems so definitive, Neil!