Grand Theft Auto VI
Grand Theft Auto VI
E85: Exciting details surrounding Grand Theft Auto VI were released this week.
Good morning gamers! Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier surprised the gaming community last week with an incredibly detailed report on the state of Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto 6. He spoke with more than 20 current and recently departed employees, here’s what we learned.
GTA 6 will take place on a map based on a fictional version of Miami and its surrounding areas.
Will feature a female Latina protagonist, part of a pair of leading characters in a story influenced by the bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde.
The single-player map will evolve over time by adding cities and missions on a regular basis.
It already features more interior locations than previous GTA games.
Analysts anticipate GTA 6 will release sometime between April 2023 and March 2024 (FY2024) but the report suggests it’s still at least 2 years away.
Grand Theft Auto 6 has been in development since 2014, originally operating under the codename “Project Americas”. Early versions of the map were modeled after areas in North and South America, but that was later cut down because the ambitions were too high. Unlike any of the previous GTA games, Rockstar is explicitly trying to avoid any jokes against marginalized groups.
Development on GTA 6 has been slower than expected due to the pandemic and Rockstar overhauling its corporate structure into a more inclusive and balanced place to work. These major changes started in 2018 and focused heavily on employee wellbeing. They’ve improved general working conditions, restructured their design department, fired employees who fostered the old culture and pledged to reduce overtime work.
Black Panther - New Game
Last week on the Giant Bomb podcast, industry insider Jeff Grubb shared some exciting news regarding Marvel’s Black Panther IP. According to Grubb, a single-player open-world game is in early development.
Grubb says that the game’s story will take place after the death of the previous Black Panther where players must take on the responsibility of being the new Black Panther. As the game is being published by Electronic Arts, they’re reportedly trying to replicate the feel of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Grubb says that EA will try to create strong characters and structure in an attempt to achieve the same level of success as Fallen Order.
The game is codenamed Project Rainier and it is reportedly being developed at a new video game studio headlined by former Monolith Productions Vice President Kevin Stepehens. Stevens previously worked on the Lord of the Rings games Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War.
Esports Corner
Misfits Gaming has officially departed League of Legends esports after selling their LEC spot to Team Heretics, and fully departing from the LFL. They will continue to compete in both leagues for the remainder of the 2022 season, but this decision is a result of the organization's new diversified direction. The selling price remains undisclosed but estimated to be around Є45 million.
Over the last three years Riot Games has been secretly working on a brand-new remote broadcast facility located in Dublin, Ireland. Codenamed Project Stryker, this facility is the first of three that will be strategically placed in locations 8 hours from each other so that Riot can seamlessly produce esports events year-round. These are state of the art production facilities that will centralize all of Riot’s games and events.
India’s biggest esports title used to be PUBG Mobile but Krafton was forced to cut ties with Tencent and replace the game with a clone called BattleGrounds Mobile India (BGMI) due to a government mandate that banned all China-linked apps. Fast forward to last week and BGMI has now also been removed from the Google PlayStore and Apple App Store due to similar reasons. BGMI has more than 16.5 million active monthly users and over 100 million sign ups since launch.
The Rocket League World Championship (RCLS) details and tournament structure has been finalized. The Championships will take place over three distinct rounds starting August 4 and concluding on August 14. Sixteen teams will play in a best-of-five swiss format Wildcard event, where the top eight teams will advance to the group stages and face off against the already qualified eight teams. The top eight group stage teams move forward to the playoffs where one team will ultimately win the $600,000 grand prize.
Gaming Roundup
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake has been delayed indefinitely by developer Aspyr after showing a demo to Sony and Lucasfilm.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has been delayed by a few months by Daedalic Entertainment in order to meet the community’s expectations.
Bungie has decided to reduce communication with their Destiny 2 community after harassment and threats were made towards the studio.
Christian Dailey, a former Dragon Age producer at BioWare has started a new AAA game studio at Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast.
Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming says the game he’s most excited to play next is the PlayStation exclusive God of War: Ragnarök.
John Cena, the 16-time WWE Champion has been added to Fortnite as a playable outfit alongside entrance gear and ring gear styles.
Peter Moore, a former Xbox executive during the release of the Xbox 360 says they used the console wars to challenge themselves and Sony.
Sony is reportedly interested in acquiring Square Enix Tokyo according to Eidos Montreal founder Stephane D’Astous.
Project Jawbreaker is the codename for the next Tomb Raider game in development. A more experienced Lara Croft teams up with other raiders.
Dr Disrespect has officially revealed that his studio’s (Midnight Society) upcoming game is called ‘DEADROP’, the first “vertical extraction shooter”.
Game Review - MultiVersus
MultiVersus is a free-to-play fighting game from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The new platform fighter game allows players to use a wide range of characters including Batman, Shaggy, Superman and more. The game has so far been a success reaching a peak of over 153,000 players on Steam.
Good: The game comes as advertised as players without a Nintendo system can play the equivalent of Super Smash Bros. but with Warner Bros. characters. The graphics are cool, and it has the cartoon fighting game feel alongside some awesome fighting animations. Warner Bros. can also continuously add cool characters to their roster. Currently, players can unlock characters pretty easily by earning in-game currency from playing matches. MultiVersus has a bright future ahead of it and it will be exciting to see where it goes. If you’re a fan of Platform Fighters, this game is a must try on your own or with friends.
Bad: The characters have absolutely no balance right now, which prohibits you from using certain characters unless you’d like to lose every match. The founder packs available for purchase seem excessive in cost, which leaves the player discouraged about the microtransactions that are yet to come. There’s several different in-game currencies such as Gold, Gleamium, Premium Tokens, and Toast, which left us a little confused at the beginning.
In its current state, we give Warner Bros. MultiVersus a score of B.
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