New Noclip documentary shows off cancelled Half-Life game:
Noclip has released yet another great documentary, but this one’s a bit different to the others in that a small portion of it made it to some of the big game news sites. The thing that caught people’s attention in this documentary about Arkane Studios, a French dev team most known for the Dishonored franchise and the recent Prey game, was the fact that there was footage of an unknown and long ago cancelled Half-Life spin-off set in the Half-Life 2 location Ravenholm.
This cancelled game, which was just called Ravenholm by the devs seeing as it didn’t have an official title, took place in the zombie-infested Ravenholm and had you play as Lieutenant Shepard from Half-Life: Opposing Force (the Half-Life 1 spin-off developed by Gearbox) and it even featured the crazed Father Grigori from Half-Life 2. It looks very rough by today’s standards, but with proper polish it probably could have made for a great game, and it also had a special “magnet gun”, which appears somewhat similar to the gravity gun from the second game.
Sadly, it is just a blip in gaming history, but if you’re interesting in checking out the tiny bit of the game that was created, go have a look at the documentary. The entire thing is fascinating and explores the history of Arkane Studios. Definitely worth the watch.
Sources:
- Noclip – The Untold History of Arkane: Dishonored/Prey/Ravenholm/LMNO/The Crossing
- IGN – Footage of cancelled Half-Life: Ravenholm shown in new documentary
- Polygon – Footage from Arkane’s cancelled Half-Life episode will surface in a new documentary
- VG247 – Footage of Arkane’s Half-Life spin-off, Ravenholm, appears in documentary
Formula E driver caught cheating at esports:
Sports are cancelled, and they’ve been cancelled for some time seeing as the coronavirus isn’t planning on leaving us anytime soon, but that hasn’t stopped all them sports people from doing something sporty. Enter esports! Various video games have been played by professional athletes over the last few months in place of the real-life sport because people might die, and one such sport is professional driving.
Formula E has been hosting a Race at Home Challenge esports series as a charity event for UNICEF. The series throws real racers behind the virtual wheel of rFactor 2 (a realistic racing game) and has them compete against each other. It’s all good fun and it’s all for charity, and so that’s why it was somewhat jarring that German driver Daniel Abt, who drives for Audi, decided to bring in a professional simulation racer, Lorenz Hoerzing, and had him play the game instead.
So he brought in a pro gamer for a charity event. Kind of a weird time to cheat, and while he did put out a video explaining things (apparently it was meant to be a fun thing he’d come clean on later), the Formula E veteran, who’s been there since Formula E started in 2014, got fired by Audi, kicked out of the series and fined ten grand. So quite a steep price to pay for something he claims was all in good fun. Probably not what he was expecting.
Sources:
- YouTube – Mein statement zum Formel E Skandal – Daniel Abt
- Eurogamer – Audi suspends Formula E driver for bizarre sim racing imposter incident
- Kotaku – Pro driver hires gamer to race for him, gets caught
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Audi have fired a Formula E driver for using a ringer in an esports race
BlizzCon 2020 is officially cancelled:
The cancellations keep a coming, but that’s to be expected. Some probably thought that seeing as BlizzCon is all the way in November that it wouldn’t be affected by the coronavirus, but it ultimately has been affected. Blizzard spent quite some time deliberating on whether or not to cancel the major fan event, and those who care about the lives of human beings are probably quite happy that Blizzard decided against endangering people’s lives.
The event was originally meant to be in Anaheim, California all the way in November, but the event has been shifted to an online event early next year. So people will still get some form of a BlizzCon but it just won’t be this year or in-person. The company will no doubt return to normal once everything else has returned to normal, but until then there’s just gonna have to be no big events.
Sources:
- Gamasutra – Blizzard officially calls off BlizzCon 2020, though a digital event might be in the cards
- IGN – BlizzCon cancelled, online event planned for 2021
- Kotaku – BlizzCon 2020 has been cancelled
- Polygon – BlizzCon cancelled for 2020, online event planned for early next year
Skyrim Grandma is taking a break:
Shirley Curry, the “Skyrim Grandma”, is a wonderfully sweet Skyrim streamer who likes to tell stories and play around in the famous open-world fantasy RPG. However, despite having incredible support in terms of subscriber numbers (nearly 900k at time of writing), she typically gets around 5k views. So people subscribe but they don’t really watch all that much, and that’s a shame because she’s quite a delightful lady.
But because of all this, and because many of the people who do watch don’t watch that much of the video itself, she’s decided to take a backseat for a while and focus on her health. This hasn’t been helped by the fact that she constantly gets comments telling her that she should play differently or other games, that she should min/max, play optimally. All the things horrible people demand all gamers do. So she eventually got fed up with it.
She will be back, but for now she’s going to be taking some time off and then returning with a less gruelling upload schedule. The story here is ultimately that the internet can’t have nice things because whenever nice things come along they get destroyed by horrible people who can’t help but be twats. Well done, internet, you break all your toys and then whine when the toys are gone. Naughty internet!
Sources:
- YouTube – Shirley Ohio Blog #12
- Kotaku – Skyrim Grandma is taking a break because of internet assholes
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun – “Skyrim Grandma” cuts back on videos
- VG247 – YouTuber Skyrim Grandma announces she is scaling back streams for the sake of her health after receiving onslaught of patronising comments
Cate Blanchett will be in the Borderlands movie:
Cate Blanchett, the Oscar winning actor from films like The Aviator, Blue Jasmine and The Lord of the Rings, is the first person to be officially signed to the Borderlands movie directed by Eli Roth. It’s a rather strange choice considering the fact that she’s an Oscar winner and everything, but that’s a pretty great thing for the movie to get someone so competent right out the gate. She’ll be playing the Siren Lilith, but that’s about all we know so far. It’ll be a leading role in the adaptation of a silly game series, maybe adaptations of games are finally growing up. Who knows?
Sources:
WailingWolf 