The New Kid
Good morning gamers. We’d like to wish you all a wonderful holiday season!
The holidays are upon us so on behalf of the entire Weekly Recon team, thank you for reading our newsletter and for making this past year amazing. We’re looking forward to big things in 2022, and we can’t wait to continue this journey. That said, this will be our last edition for 2021 so stay healthy and be safe. Let’s get right into the news!
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Midnight Society - A New Studio
In August, Herschel “Guy” Beahm IV otherwise known as Dr Disrespect set his sights on forming a new AAA gaming studio. Last week, the Doc made it official and announced Midnight Society, the AAA game studio building a game from the ground up on Unreal Engine 5.
Dr Disrespect worked as a level designer for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare prior to returning to streaming. The other two founders of Midnight Society are Robert Bowling (Call of Duty) and Quinn DelHoyo (Halo and Gears of War).
The focus of the studio is to make a unique community-focused, online PVP multiplayer experience. Midnight Society will be interacting with their community and major content creators from the earliest versions of the game. The hands-on experience throughout all stages of development is extremely important to them as they believe it is the key to create an innovative shooter game.
Open Positions at Midnight Society are all remote and include Community Manager, Gameplay Engineer, Technical Game Director, Combat Designer, Level Designer, Speculative Application, Artist and Audio Designer.
Bully 2 - Where are you?
When people think about Rockstar Games they often think of Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne or even Manhunt. Recently, one of their forgotten franchises has been making some headlines. Bully is an action-adventure game where you play as James “Jimmy” Hopkins, a juvenile delinquent trying to stop bullying at Bullworth Academy. Here’s everything you need to know about what’s been circulating.
Why was Bully 2 originally canceled? The original Bully game received very favorable reviews with some of the only complaints being related to camera angles and generic side missions. The initial take within Rockstar was that a Bully 2 would not sell enough copies to warrant a sequel but Dan Houser later said he had many different ideas for a Bully sequel. Fast forward to 2019 where VGC reported (corroborated by their sources) that a Bully sequel was in development for 18 months before ultimately “fizzling out” and being canceled in 2013. Reports suggest that the story began with Jimmy spending his summer vacation with his mom and step siblings at his stepfather's mansion.
What’s the current state of Bully today? Rumor had it that “Bully 2” was supposed to make a surprise appearance at The Game Awards but it was pulled at the last minute. According to Tom Henderson, many people saw a “playable version” of Bully 2, as well as some material alluding to an impending reveal. Henderson followed up by saying that information is still blurry but “there’s something definitely going on to do with the series”. Additionally, GameInformer’s Senior Associate Editor tweeted a picture of the Bully logo with a caption that stated “New story coming 2 you soon”. He later added that his tweet was not intentionally referencing Bully 2, but rather a story he’s been working on about the Bully franchise. Tom Henderson has also reaffirmed that he’s now more confident than he previously was in regards to something happening with the franchise. Only time will tell but The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley did say that there were several game announcements pulled from the show at the last minute because the studios behind them didn’t think the material was polished enough.
Esports Corner
🥇Congratulations to Cloud9 for winning the Halo Championship Series Kickoff Major Raleigh 2021.
Last Week’s Major Headlines,
Competitive Halo veteran and former Apex Legends pro Eric “Snip3down” Wrona has retired from TSMs Apex Legends roster and joined FaZe Clan’s competitive Halo Infinite team alongside Bubu Dubu, Falcated and Bound. He replaces Matthew “FormaL” Piper as the teams 4th player entering the HCS Kickoff Major Raleigh.
Kraft Sports Group (owned and founded by the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft) and Boston-based Oxygen Esports have partnered together to join the Call of Duty League for the upcoming 2022 season. The league's 12th spot was up for sale after OpTiC Gaming and Envy merged into OpTic Dallas, leaving NRG with a spot to sell. The team has yet to announce their roster but they have appointed former pro player Denholm “DenZ” Taylor as the teams general manager.
Cody “iBDW” Schwab (Fox main) has defeated Smash Summit reigning champion, and one of the all-time best Melee players, Joseph “Mango” Marquez in this year's Smash Summit 12 grand finals. iBDW had one of the strongest performances of his career, going undefeated the entire event and decisively defeating some of Melee’s strongest competitors on his way to winning the $50k championship.
According to Niko Partners’ Asia Games Market Report, India is Asia’s fastest growing “Games Market” with a growth projection of more than 330 million mobile and PC gamers by 2025. Mobile gaming will continue to thrive due to affordable 4G connectivity, low smartphone costs and the availability of free high-end games with competitive competitions.
Gaming Roundup
Ubisoft announced this week that a Splinter Cell Remake has begun development at Ubisoft Toronto. The game is being built from the ground up using Ubisoft’s own Snowdrop engine that was used to develop Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Gears of War 6 is in development by Coalition but only slated for a 2024/2025 release. According to Rand al Thor 19 on an episode of the Xbox News Cast, The Coalition is first working on another new unannounced IP likely to get familiar with Unreal Engine 5.
New patents published by Nintendo have shed light on some of the new gameplay mechanics in the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel. Link will be able to teleport vertically through surfaces, use a “rewind” power and he’ll be able to change positions/shoot his bow while diving.
Lucid Games is reportedly working on a first-party flagship AAA game for the PlayStation 5. It is rumored to be a Twisted Metal game as PlayStation indicated earlier this year they would be reviving the series.
Tencent Holdings Ltd. has acquired Turtle Rock Studios. The developer is known for creating the survival horror games Back 4 Blood and Left 4 Dead.
PlayStation announced last week that they will be releasing new PS5 controller colors: Nova Pink, Starlight Blue and Galactic Purple in January 2022. The PS5 will also get new console covers to match the controller colors.
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