Top Story
Amy Hennig founds new game studio
Amy Hennig, most famous for her work as director and writer on the three first Uncharted games, has joined Skydance. Skydance is the Hollywood studio behind blockbusters like Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Terminator: Dark Fate, and it looks like they are getting into game development.
Hennig’s last big project was cancelled by EA
Before joining Skydance, Hennig was creative director for a Star Wars game for EA at Visceral Games and she also has a writing credit on Battlefield Hardline. EA killed that Star Wars project in 2017, and reassigned the Star Wars project to another studio. Hennig left EA last year to form an independent consultancy and virtual reality studio.
Her new studio will be based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the goal is to make games that appeal as broadly as big Hollywood movies – which presumably means Skydance is willing to spend big Hollywood movie money as well.
Skydance Interactive has already released the VR game Archangel, but it’s unlikely that we’ll see much of Hennig’s project – which will presumably be of the story-driven, cinematic sort she is famous for – for another couple of years.
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
Which House was invented by Westwood for iconic RTS Dune II?
- House Harkonnen
- House Atreides
- House Ordos
- House Corrino
The answer will be revealed at the end of this issue!
News Bits
Kerbal Space Program breaking new ground on consoles
Kerbal Space Program expansion pack Breaking Ground will launch on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on December 5th. The expansions have been slightly updated for the console release, including new robotic parts for building new and more glorious space contraptions.
Landscapes have also been overhauled to include more surface features for players to discover and explore, such as craters and rock formations. The expansion will cost $14.99 and there’s a new trailer available now.
Ghostrunner’s team gets even stronger
All In Games, Slipgate Ironworks and 3D Realms have announced a grand partnership to develop and publish a new first-person cyberpunk adventure game. Developed by One More Level, Ghostrunner is scheduled to launch on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One next year and will be on show at 3D Realms’ PAX South 2020 booth.
3D Realms and All In Games appear to support both development and publishing services, while One More Level and Slipgate Ironworks will collaborate on development. If first-person cyberpunk adventure sounds like your kind of thing, you should check out the reveal trailer right now.
Daily Fact
The Half-Life series has depicted at least three different alien invasions
Valve is just about to reveal their brand-new Half Life game, the first new entry in the series – not counting Portal – since 2007. While there are slightly worrying rumours that the game is a VR exlcusive, at least there’s no way the game can be as messed up as the Half-Life universe itself is after no less than three separate, consecutive alien invasions.
The first one happens at the start of Half-Life, when Black Mesa scientists tear open a portal to another dimension and allows the bizarre forces of Xen to swarm onto our beautiful blue marble. Then the Opposing Force expansion shows how a second invasion by the mysterious Race X starts right after the first one!
Then, of course, there’s the Combine from Half-Life 2 who also found their way to Earth thanks to the Xen invasion – but did a far better job than the previous two invaders, conquering the planet in less than seven hours.
Since then, Gordon Freeman, Alyx Vance and the rest of the gang has been busy trying to chase off the Combine – before leaving us with a cliffhanger twelve years ago. Will Half-Life: Alyx finally finish the story and chase off all the invaders? Let us hope!