Mera'din

They were in MI-13 together for a bit. Other than that, they could easily lean toward vampiric qualities or origins for the Ebony Blade that would encourage a connection for the MCU. It did feel like a pretty weird choice either way, but they've made weirder things work so I'm just going to roll with it at this point. XD

The director confirmed it was Mahershala Ali, and the voice is meant to be Blade.

There's a lot of little interesting bits in this trailer. Definitely looking forward even more to whatever they're going to pull with this one.

I'm pretty sure the guards that were escorting him right before that part were Ultron drones. ? Edit - Went back and caught a screenshot:

I enjoyed it. I didn't mind it losing focus on Boba after they finished filling in the time gap for him, because he was honestly the least interesting part of the show imo. As for the shield thing, I would assume that they would eventually have to wear them down. The shield generator would have to give in eventually, if they could overpower it. Clearly more powerful than they were hoping though. The thing that bothered me is it was specifically said their kinetic weapons weren't working on it because the projectiles were moving too fast. So presumably they work like the Droideka shields and a slow moving object could get through, but when the wookie tried he had to struggle to push in even then he touched the shield slowly. The stuff with the Rancor was fun. Ending was whatever. Not sure why they saved that little scene as a mid-credit thing though. It wasn't THAT big of a deal I thought. XD

I haven't watched any of it, but it had some pretty solid names attached to them so maybe. I hadn't played any of the games until recently and was trying to power through them so didn't worry about any of the extra shit. Couldn't play 5 since it was Xbox exclusive, but watched the cutscenes. I honestly think I wouldn't have minded that one if there had been any damn context going into it. Feels like there was a game missing in between 4 and 5. Infinite suffers from the same thing. The place where 5 ended and where Infinite starts feels like there was an entire games worth of shit missing, and I REALLY don't want to collect 5000 audio logs to fill in the blanks. Though they did a MUCH better job of half ass explaining stuff semi-quickly vs 5 just fucking off and not caring if you knew what was going on or not so there's that at least. These games definitely had a story problem though. Outside of 1 and 2, everything has been confusing as fuck and barely explained half the time. They just keep throwing new enemy factions at you each game and it never stops. Really hoping the show condenses some of that shit and makes it work better.

Yeah, I don't know why they handled the voice the way they did. My understanding is they used Respeecher, which aside from the whole machine learning/AI generated voice thing, can legitimately be used to de-age a voice. Seems like it would have gone better to just have Hamill record the damn lines and use it for that then try to stitch it together from old performances.

They have. More than once. Just not in typical formats/platforms. There was a legit big budget movie planned as well but that sat in development hell for a number of years before rights eventually reverted back to Microsoft, and morphed into a series of shorts directed by Neill Blomkamp (who had been set to direct the movie). Halo: Forward Unto Dawn was a movie length feature that was released on DVD after they showed it in 15-min. segments as a web show initially. Halo: Nightfall was another feature length thing produced by Ridley Scott and split up into a mini-series that was released with the Master Chief Collection and "aired" via an XBox app of some sort (and, as I learned too late, apparently goes a long way to explain why should give a fuck about half the characters in Halo 5). They also did an animated anthology series released straight to DVD/BluRay ala The Animatrix, and an animated series titled "The Fall of Reach" that was included with the special editions of Halo 5. There are also various other live action shorts that have been made.

Might have to get this one. I remember the reveal looking cool, but with no real gameplay showing I was waiting to see more. Looks like it could be pretty fun.

Yeah, I remember that. It looks even better than his did too though. Guess with their powers combined they finally got that shit figured out.

Peacemaker is fantastic. Has some strong Deadpool vibes to it, which really works for it. Definitely feels like they gave James Gunn free reign to basically do whatever the fuck he wanted and it paid off. XD Also, hands down one of the best opening sequences for a show I've ever seen.

CAD BANE. As soon as the silhouette started getting close I was like "HOLY SHIT I KNOW WHO THAT IS!" Both of these last two episodes were fantastic, but yeah it felt like they could have just put them in The Mandalorian honestly. Not going to complain though. It was a nice surprise. Also, holy hell they've already improved the CG face de-aging tech a shitload. Luke looked SO much better here than when they had him in The Mandalorian.

I had to double check too because I know originally when the did the Kickstarter for it, it was just supposed to be a single animated special. It hit the target in less than an hour, and by the end of the first day had passed $4 million and unlocked all of their stretch goals so they expanded it to 4 episodes. Before the Kickstarter finished it had expanded from 4 episodes adapting pre-stream stuff to a full animated series that went from 8 episodes and ultimately settled at 10 and would cover pre-stream and then the first story arc from the stream. Once Amazon picked up the streaming rights for it, they announced that they had commissioned an additional 14 episodes (2 additional episodes for Season 1, and 12 more for a 2nd season) bringing it up to 12. The whole thing must have been a wild ride for everyone involved. XD

I thought the season was supposed to be 12 episodes?

Watched the first episode. It's fantastic. It's also great watching the core people fanboy/girl over their own work so hard. Saw one of them talking about how most of them were rewatching all the episodes in the different languages available and were gushing about the Japanese VAs. XD

Yeah, that was a little weird too, but I don't think she was leading them. There was a shot of the throne/senate/whatever room with the 3 prophets (maybe. Was hard to see since it was pretty zoomed out). The way she talked too, she might not actually be human but that could just be the phrasing. Maybe they have a faction of humans that joined them too in this? Seems like they made Halsey a fair bit younger looking too. Hopefully they don't show Master Chiefs face. They got away with it (mostly) in the Mandalorian, so they can certainly do it here. XD I know this is supposed to be an adaptation and not part of the game canon, so I'm sure there will be a fair number of differences. I don't have any real stock in the game series though so I can probably get over most anything they'd do as long as its good.

5.) Lost Words: Beyond the Page Pretty standard "Indie game with depressing story" sort of thing. Some interesting gameplay, but not really any challenge to it so it was almost a 2D walking simulator with light platforming. Still a nice experience with unique storytelling. Was written by Terry Pratchett's daughter. Glad I grabbed it on a sale though all things considered. Not a lot of replay value to it. 6.) Life is Strange 2 Fuck me this game was extremely emotionally draining. It was good. At least as good as the first one (though in a different way), but way more depressing overall. Even in the more upbeat parts you could just tell something was going to go south eventually and completely fuck everything up. The end of a couple of the episodes left me pretty speechless. Would have sucked playing each one as it came out. Glad they're not doing that anymore. Looking forward to playing the new one eventually. They really know how to get a person right in the feels and I'm sure the next one is no exception.

No joke there. No fucking way I was playing that on Nightmare difficulty. I googled the shit out of the manuscript pages I wasn't allowed to collect. XD

Louie Anderson as well. Guy probably hasn't been relevant since his stint on Family Feud, but I always liked his comedy when I was a kid.

The DLC bits are probably some of the best parts of the game. I don't recall them being terribly hard either, so give them a go if you have them. The stand alone thing, Alan Wakes American Nightmare is also really good. Controls feel better (though combat is still basically the same thing) and it felt a little more arcade-y and not as frustrating. Also short so the combat doesn't outstay its welcome like the main game. XD Remedy has DEFINITELY evolved their combat since then though. Quantum Break was a massive step forward for them, and then Control refined that even further. Their shooting is still a little floaty, but Control made up for that in other areas.

4.) Greak: Memories of Azur Light little (I guess) metroidvania style game. Nothing super complicated to it, but some fun puzzles here and there that require the use of 2-3 different characters. Story was pretty typical fantasy faire with nothing to really show for itself, but it was fun to play just as a change of pace from the stuff I more typically play through. Didn't overstay its welcome.

From what I've seen, Kotick is sticking around until everything clears and then he's bailing (with a large some of money in tow no doubt ). So that's a start. We'll see how everything else goes. The main thing I'm worried about is how this will affect the the strikes and the movement to unionize that was starting to get some traction. Time will tell. Chances are this whole thing won't be settled until next year anyway.

After this acquisition they'll still only be the 3rd largest publisher behind Tencent and Sony I believe I had read. Sony acquired 6 or 7 different devs this past year alone vs Microsoft who has only picked up three things video game related since 2019. Two of those just happen to be publishers instead of individual studios so the impact feels bigger and more immediate. I don't mean to diminish the impact this will have though because Activision-Blizzard themselves IS the 3rd biggest at the moment I believe so it's a pretty big deal even if it isn't as all encompassing as it seems.

So it seems that by "reevaluate how we deal with Activision", what Microsoft actually meant was "We'll see how they act after we just buy them." O_o https://news.microsoft.com/features/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/

I would place it middle of the road personally. There was a lot to take in. Some of it good, some of it a little meh. They've done much better films over the years, but they've definitely had worse as well. I feel like it was setting up a lot of plot threads we'll see picked up in the future though which may have hurt it a bit in the now. Will have to see if any of it eventually pays off. Action sequences were a lot of fun though. Was nice to see super speed done in a way that wasn't just a straight blurring/lightning thing like they like to do with The Flash.