A new Lego city builder? Another open-world Sony game? An artifact of 2012 development hell locked behind DRM? We are back from the holiday break and starting things off by not skipping yet another daily Kotaku Checkpoint roundup.
They’re calling it “one of the best tweets of all time.” Essentially, Donald Trump’s 95-percent-complete peace plan with Iran turned out to be 95-percent vaporware. It’s as real as the new Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer all of the online rumor mongers keep promising. An alleged gunman was outside the White House over the weekend and it barely seemed to register. All we got was this new meme instead.
It’s Christmas for leaks over at the Korean ratings board
The Game Rating and Administration Committee of Korea updated its site with a bunch of new listings, including one for a “Lego Skylines” by Paradox Interactive (via Gematsu). This unannounced spin-off and/or expansion for the strategy publisher’s existing city sim franchise might be getting rated now because it’s getting announced at Geoff Keighley’s RIP-E3 Summer Game Fest showcase in LA next week.
The ratings board also included entries for previously announced games like Persona 4 Revival, as well as something called Fortnite: Endgame. The timing suggests release date announcements or shadowdrops could be imminent for all of these things.
The LittleBigPlanet studio’s next game might be open-world
A Media Molecule developer hinted at the Sony team’s upcoming project on their LinkedIn CV, which was spotted by Mp1st. The person lists “feature owner, main contact/vision holder of various open-world content” under their current role description, with references to points of interest and other map features.
Other job listings have suggested the upcoming game will be a new IP, and not necessarily an evolution of the Sackboy franchise. Former Creative Director Mark Healey hinted it was “more of a game than a creative tool” like the studio’s last project, Dreams.
Remedy CEO says its games aren’t selling enough
“We need to think more about how we are approaching our IPs as a franchise,” Jean-Charles Gaudechon, ex-EA executive and new head of the Finnish game company, told The Game Business (via VGC). “How do we grow the community? [Our deal with] Annapurna goes into making our games, our franchises shine further and reach an audience that doesn’t exist today. It’s a pity, I think Alan Wake should have sold more. Control should have sold more.”
He thinks screen adaptations of the expanding Remedy-verse will help with that.
The sudden end of Destiny 2 was a surprise to many at Bungie
The news was kept mostly secret within the studio, according to Paul Tassi. Only those who were shifted off of the game to work on Marathon or incubating new projects were aware of the unexpected cancelation of an upcoming expansion.
Another new early build of BioShock Infinite has surfaced
Unfortunately it’s impossible to access for now due to DRM. The game’s messy development and shifting scope makes it an exceptionally interesting case study in how content was cut or changed during the final stretch of production.
Activision’s new PvE role-playing game?
The publisher’s recently created Elsewhere Entertainment subsidiary in Europe is possibly working on an open-world RPG. That’s according to some recently discovered job postings. “Primarily focus on PvE experiences and be responsible for developing a cohesive vision encompassing engagement systems, seasonal content, progressions, mission design, encounter design, RPG systems,” one reads.