One of our favorite gaming festivals has officially come to a close with no shortage of news, previews, and appealing video releases. PAX East, hosted by Penny Arcade, held its sixth event at their Boston location this past weekend where they welcomed yet again a sold out crowd. The overwhelming success of this event left us with no option but to relay some of the biggest releases from this year.
Warcraft Movie Update:
What seemed to be the highlighted point of interest for PAX East this year was Warcraft the movie’s director Duncan Jones making multiple announcements about the upcoming film. After taking over for previous director Sam Raimi, he identified one of the pivotal errors in the fundamentals of the film. Raimi initially presented all human characters as inherently good in nature while the orcs were evil. He mentioned that Legend and Blizzard fully supported his decision to veer off the beaten path of what was expected, and made the change from what Raimi had started. This new pitch from Duncan of a holistic approach has led to dramatic progress that has landed the movie with a release date of June 10th this summer. Duncan ended his Panel with the newest poster for the film highlighting character Draka, where he noted how ecstatic he was about it.
Friday the 13th:
The Kickstarter, Slasher Volume 1: Summer Camp, exceeded its $700,000 goal this past summer and is now ready to hit the shelves with multiple additional features. The iconic character, Jason, will be placed in his old stomping grounds such as the Higgins Havens property from the third and fourth films along with the Crystal Lake shore, barn, and the two story home where the third movie took place. The game is meant to be played a as a multiplayer survival series consisting of a total of eight players. One player is deemed the role of Jason while the seven others are innocent teens. Game Developer Ronnie Hobbs noted that in most games each side is looking for conflict, but in this case, Jason is the only one seeking it. Each kill the player controlling Jason has, he will only get stronger, making for matches that last a normal 15-20 minutes. The game will release for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC later this year.
Rock Band 4 Expansion:
Speaking on the final day of a PAX East Panel, developer Harmonix announced multiple future updates for Rock Band 4 along with their first expansion. Fans were especially pleased to hear the newest feature of synchronous online multiplayer. The expansion pack will also include music library improvements with the ability to filter by genre and rating, but Harmonix is holding off on the remaining features until E3. With this plethora of information also came the release that Battleborn and Rockband are coming together. Characters Thorn and Miko will now be made available in Rock band 4 as DLC coming in May this year. Harmonix announced that they will hold off on the release of Rock Band 5 and keep improving on Rock Band 4 as time goes on.
UberWATCH:
One of the latest trending companies that carts around your hollering friends at 2am on a Friday night made a big showing at PAX East this weekend. Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch along with Uber gave you the opportunity to catch a ride from one of their heroes in their decked out vehicles. These vehicles consisted of a Lamborghini Aventador, Ford F650 Supertruck, and a Polaris Slingshot. The idea was all fun and games until on Friday night, the Supertruck collided with a civilian car. Uber has not released an official statement regarding the accident.
Borderlands Tease:
Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford hinted at some of the new features of the next Borderlands game but nothing specific enough to get us out of our seats. The real selling point of the panel was that he did confirm that there will be another Borderlands. While there will be another release of the game, he noted that we shouldget attached to the name, because they haven’t even decided on it. The next game will be written by Gearbox’s chief creative champion Mikey Neuman, who mentioned that they may be bringing back popular character, Scooter, from Tales from the Borderlands. Lastly, Pitchford mentioned that Battleborn 3 will have some references to Borderlands in their release, where he jokingly stated that Battleborn players will “look deeply” into this content.