Kingdom Hearts 3, and the franchise in general, is near and dear to many fans' hearts. And now they can be a permanent part of your wardrobe with this absolutely stunning line of boots based off each of the protagonists of the franchise. The boots are by SuperGroupies and are officially licensed merch, but have the auspicious title of the rare kind that looks nice in a "I can actually wear this outside and not look ridiculous" kind of way.
Check out the footwear inspired by Sora, Riku, Kairi, Roxas, and Axel in the gallery below:
If you're interested in snagging one or a few pairs for yourself, then you can do that through the official site. Each pair of these lovely made-to-order boots will run you 16,800 yen ($158), except for the Axel model, which is 18,800 yen ($177). And fear not non-Japanese natives, SuperGroupies does have international shipping provided by the WorldShopping service.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that the Kingdom Hearts 3 soundtrack will be releasing this November. The OST includes over 90 tracks which include Hikaru Utada's theme songs as well as music from the base Kingdom Hearts 3 tracks, the Re Mind DLC, HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, Unchained X, and Union X [Cross].
Tetsuya Nomura, the series creator and the man who perpetually has a ton on his plate, talked a bit about Kingdom Hearts' future in a Square-Enix-published Q&A before ReMind's release. Square Enix also revealed plenty of info about the DLC through an official Q&A on Twitter. And if you want, the secret area in said DLC can be glitched and explored, unearthing some interesting secrets.
Kindgom Hearts III is available now on PS4 and Xbox One, and the brand new ReMind DLC launched back in January. If you haven't picked it up yet, you can grab the game physically via Amazon to support the site. Meanwhile you can read our reviews for the original game and the ReMind DLC.
The post These Kingdom Hearts 3 Inspired Boots are What Happens When You Combine its Aesthetics With Good Taste by Allisa James appeared first on DualShockers.
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown Celebrates its 25th Anniversary With Original Aircraft Series DLC
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Bandai Namco's long running flight simulator franchise, will be getting new DLC to celebrate the series' 25th anniversary. As the trailer below showcases, the new content includes the Original Aircraft Series DLC — fighter aircraft from previous Ace Combat titles — as well as new skins and emblems.
Also below is the Brand Director Kazutoki Kono as he talks more about said fighters in detail:
The interview is particularly interesting, as Kono goes into great detail about some of the origins of the aircraft designs. For instance the Shinden II was designed by Shoji Kawamori from the Macross franchise and it's popular due to its variable wing structure, a design choice that Kawamori is an expert on.
Its first mode is the normal mode, in which the wings are in a horizontal position and the tails are in a V-shaped position. The second mode is cruise mode, where the ends of the wings are bent downward and the vertical stabilizers are folded inward — the ideal mode for traveling at high speeds. The third mode is STOVL mode, where the ends of the wings are bent downward and the vertical stabilizers are in a reverse V-shape position. When the Shinden II was created for Assault Horizon, the official F-35 hadn't been deployed in Japan yet. So the former was designed "with the image, vision, and dream that this is going to be 'the first state-of-the-art stealth fighter mode made in Japan.'"
The entire interview is full of absolutely fascinating tidbits and history lessons like this, and is worth a watch through. And if you're interested in the base game, check out our favorable review of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown here.
Back in March of this year Ace Combat 7 along with Bleeding Edge, Kona, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, The Surge 2, and Astrologaster made its way to Xbox Game Pass.
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The Last of Us Part II Delves Into the Story Behind the Incredible Realistic Facial Animation
The Last of Us Part II truly pushed the envelop regarding its story, art director, sound design, and gameplay. Its animations, specifically facial animations, are no exception. Keith Paciello, the studio animator who created the ambitious Emotional Systematic Facial Animation system, extensively details the process surrounding the creation of these in-game animations.
Warning: This article contains massive spoilers about story details for The Last of Us Part II, including the ending.
Look at the scene recorded below, for instance, of Ellie gazing at artwork in a museum:
As you can see, she's actually reacting to that picture. Paciello explains how the magic unfolds: "In that instance, you as a player are aiming with the controller for Ellie to look at the painting, which is triggering a 'look at target' placed by a designer. On top of that, I animated small eye darts (saccades) within the character's facial idles to try and indicate an overall thought process. So animated eye saccades sitting on top of the eye-aim, work together to create what looks like focus and thought process."
The Emotional Systematic Facial Animation system picks a facial expression from a range of nearly 20 different emotional states for any of the 25 key characters that are on-screen. That covers leads, co-op partners, enemies, and even Infected to an extent. This facial animation works in unison with eye movements, body language, breathing, which are all interlinked and triggered by script beats, dialogue, encounters or ambient moments, like Ellie seemingly being absorbed by a painting. The illusion of emotion is constructed with mathematical precision. "It brings a depth to the characters that we've never seen before," says Paciello.
The creation of said engine, believe it or not, came from a simple blade of grass. According to Paciello: "Everyone was stepping up their game for TLOUII. We were looking at and talking about how to make a blade of grass even better [in game]. In doing so, we panned up, and there was this blank face on the character. I was like, 'Oh.' It was then I wondered how we could simply, across the entire game, add these emotional beats to the characters, so at any point, you can tell what that character is feeling."
Using the Ellie facial model as a base, he started by sculpting expressions based on seven universally recognizable emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust and contempt. Liaising with the dialogue team, they tagged emotions to be triggered at specific lines, building a solid foundation and allowing characters to smoothly transition from one to another. "We could emotionally pace out our characters from the absolute beginning of the game to the absolute end of the game and blend in and out of cinematics seamlessly."
Paciello was then asked to support melee, fashioning realistic reactions for combatants. He also aided in animating the breathing system ("six animations, from small breathing all the way up to exhausted") which would go to such lengths as to see characters switch from open to closed mouth breathing depending on their proximity to an enemy.
Outside of script-specific triggers, characters would also have a number of 'neutral' idle states with emotional overlays.
Paciello also hand-sculpting poses for each character to match their emotional states, which racked up to some 40 poses for each of the 15-20 emotion sets. By the end of production, he created a staggering 15,000 individual, hand-sculpted poses. Ellie's reaction to seeing the Tyrannosaurus Rex statue (shown below) during a flashback "was specially made for that moment."
This process naturally transferred over to Abby by allowing the devs to redo all of her facial animations in order to give that climatic beach fight the emotional power it needed.
"We all learnt a lot from that," says Paciello. "When I first got to it, Abby, being so emaciated, still looked savage. I talked to Christian and said 'I'm going to duplicate all her emotional sets for melee and I'm going to make them all exhausted.' That way you choose between fierce and exhausted, so maybe she musters up enough strength but after she throws [a punch], goes into her exhausted state."
When asked about what Paciello's own favorite moment from the game was, he came right back to the beach fight. He sees it as the culmination of everything the teams had worked on and proof that the system had achieved its goal. "It made me really made me feel like, 'Okay, we've really pushed it.' It's what I wanted, it's what I dreamt of when I pitched the idea of the system."
For even more insight into the developmental process behind The Last of Us Part II sound designer Beau Anthony Jimenez took to Twitter to detail the process behind voicing the various Infected enemy types, as well as crediting the talented voice actors who gave performances for them.
Some recently released numbers demonstrate the sheer amount of manpower needed to bring such an ambitious game to fruition. Naughty Dog's final tally was 2332 people total to develop the game, which includes 2169 developers credited and 163 extra "thanks" to help with The Last of Us Part II. 14 outsourced studios, two of them devoted to sound design and mixing with the other 12 dealing with art direction.
Of course Naughty Dog's development process hasn't been controversy free, as the studio has been in the hotseat for quite some time concerning its own issues with the unfortunately common industry "crunch." According to Neil Druckmann in an interview concerning the practice: "We don't try to babysit people. We draw people who want to tell these stories and who want to leave a mark on the industry. And they're gonna work very hard to do it. We need to put some guardrails [in] so they don't injure themselves, but I don't think we could prevent them from working hard and still make the kind of games we make."
For any newcomers to the franchise, or those who haven't played Part II yet, Features Editor put together a guide of everything you need to know about The Last of Us. And you can check out our review from Features Editor Ryan Meitzler, who absolutely adored the game.
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Suikoden spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes finally ended its phenomenally successful Kickstarter campaign at $4,571,418, making it the third most successful Kickstarter video game campaign ever. And as a huge surprise, Rabbit & Bear Studios revealed their final secret stretch goal: the studio plans to partner with Natsume-Atari to create a Town Creation RPG.
Yes, they are literally creating an entirely new bonus game on top of Eiyuden Chronicle.
Natsume is known for the Harvest Moon series and has also done other great pixel based games like Ninja Warriors and Wild Guns. Partnering with the company allows for this goal to be possible without stretching the main development team thin and the studio plans to share as many assets as possible to facilitate the process. A few facts revealed about the Town Creation RPG:
- It will release before the main game, which will hopefully hold you over during the excruciatingly long two and a half year wait.
- It will feature a variety of different "lifestyle" mini-games that will allow you to gather a wide variety of different materials to build up your town/farm/house.
- The goal is to allow these materials to transfer over to Eiyuden Chronicle allowing you a head-start at crafting some of the different items/armor/etc in the game.
- You will get to meet a few of the characters that appear in Eiyuden Chronicle and get to know them a bit earlier.
- There may be some kind of battle mechanic, but we are still talking it over.
However, there is a catch to something this ambitious. Though this isn't DLC but a standalone title, for all intents and purposes it counts as an extension of the main game which means that console platform holders will charge the studio 30 percent of the base price of the game to purchase DL codes so they can give backers the game for free. 30 percent of what they plan on selling Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes for ($15-20) is about $5-7 so they are asking interested backers to up their pledge by $7 to receive the title.
You can check out Rabbit & Bear Studios's livestreams commemorating the success of the campaign on Twitch here. Check out the OST sample, some concept artwork and screenshots, more gameplay details, and the reason why it'll feature 109 characters.
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Nevaeh, a New Action-Adventure Title from Korean Studio CFK, Looks Amazing
Korean indie publisher CFK revealed their brand new game Nevaeh, an action-adventure platformer title coming for Nintendo Switch and PC on September 17th. The game features a unique style black and white visuals, representing the protagonist's journey to restore color and light to her town.
Nevaeh's trailer and gallery below shows off a bit more of the gameplay, including all the dangerous monsters lurking in the newly created shadows, as well as the exploits of the protagonist simply named "the girl":
According to Nevaeh's official description: "Once there was the Tower, the source of light for the town. As the glowing butterfly disappeared from the Tower, it became a place full of monsters and dangerous traps. Pulling through countless threats, a girl tries to find a way to get to the top of the Tower, hoping the save the town. What helps the girl is the glowing butterfly. Using light and shadow the butterfly overcomes obstacles and solves seemingly impossible riddles.
"Players will sometimes use machines instead of the butterfly to open the gate or find clues to progress to the next area. Each area in the Tower has powerful enemies waiting for the girl's arrival. With courage and strength, the girl must survive their swift and powerful attacks, and fight back. Saving the townspeople is as important as climbing to the top of the Tower. The girl must find a way to bring back their lives. Each townsperson has a favor to ask the girl, and in return will give her a gift that may make the journey easier."
At launch Nevaeh will support the following languges: English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified, Traditional), Thai, French, German, Russian, Italian, and Portuguese. Impressive to say the least.
Previously Nintendo aired a showcase of other indie titles in a recent mini Direct. Said Direct revealed the following titles: Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, Harmonix's Fuser, Taiko No Tatsujin Rhythmic Adventure, Taiko No Tatsujin Rhythmic Adventure 2, World of Tanks, Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions (based off of the Creed movies), Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend, Just Dance 2021 and Puyo Puyo Tetris 2.
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Tales of Crestoria Mobile Game Releases Beautiful "The Wake of Sin" Animation Short
The popular mobile game from Bandai Namco Tales of Crestoria, which launched last month after breaking one million pre-registers, received a gorgeous new short animation trailer titled The Wake of Sin. The trailer was announced through its official Twitter account and you can watch it below as well:
Short Animation Trailer
Check out the trailer for the Kamikaze Douga-produced "TALES OF CRESTORIA―THE WAKE OF SIN―"The anime features events such as Kanata & Misella's sin, meeting Vicious, and embarking on their journey!
Full video drops 10/18 on YouTube
#TalesOfCrestoria pic.twitter.com/sEikZZI0kw— TALES OF CRESTORIA (@to_crestoria_EN) August 29, 2020
The full version of the animated video, produced by Kamikaze Douga, will be releasing on October 18th. This means of course that fans of the title will have something lovely to look forward to as they continue on with the game. The official description for the video is below:
Announcing a 15-minute animated video produced by Kamikaze Douga,
the studio behind the teaser and trailer promo videos for TALES OF CRESTORIA.This short animated promo video is depicts the prologue of the main story, showing Kanata and Misella setting off on their journey.
It's chock full of thrilling battle scenes and top quality acting.If you've already played Tales of Crestoria, you can enjoy the beautiful images of the game's world, and if you still haven't played yet but being curious about the game, I hope you'll be able to get a feel for the world by watching this video.
Crestoria features past protagonists from the franchise and is divided into four parts: Main Story, Side Stories, Character Episodes, and Face Chat. You can check out this hilarious skit done by the three main characters: Kanata, Misella, and Vicious. The illustration of the SSR Memoria Stone for Aegis, one of the party members, was revealed as well.
The Tales of series is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary. The next console game, Tales of Arise, was scheduled to launch in 2020 but was delayed most notably due to the covid-19 pandemic. However, there is hope as the title was rated in both Brazil and Australia recently, hinting at a possible earlier release date.
The most recent console release for the series, Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition which came out for every major current-gen system, is the subject of the free wallpaper above. The title launched earlier this year and, going by our very own DualShockers review, still holds up as one of the best entries in the series.
You can also check out our handy guide, featuring plenty of tricks and tips to help get you started on the game. And of any of this peaks your interest, you can pick up the game for Switch, PS4, Xbox One, or PC.
The post Tales of Crestoria Mobile Game Releases Beautiful "The Wake of Sin" Animation Short by Allisa James appeared first on DualShockers.
Shaohua Hatsune Miku Myethos Cheongsam Figure Fully Revealed, Preorders Open August 31
Myethos revealed new photos for its beautiful Hatsune Miku Cheongsam figure, based on an artwork by ASK. (Thanks to Mikugerms for pointing it out). This figure was first announced in June 2020. Back then only the original illustration by ASK and a photo of the figure's prototype, unpainted, was published:
ミートス「初音ミク」フィギュア 制作決定、開発中の原型が公開https://t.co/DnHbWrHn0n pic.twitter.com/BSfnrKuIVM
— ホビー情報＠フィギュア＆プラモ (@figsoku) June 12, 2020
This is the first time we're seeing the figure's prototype painted to match the original illustration. It definitely looks beautiful and is full of details all down to Miku's hands and fingernails. And the final version will only look better. The flowers surrounding Miku's hair look perfect as well:
Myethos is a Chinese figure maker who's been on the market for only a few years now, since 2015, and has made only a few dozens of figures so far. They're always stunning though.
Here are the figure's specs:
Shaohua Hatsune Miku figure by Myethos
- Release estimate: June 2021
- Scale 1/7
- Product Size 250mm tall
- Material: ABS, PVC
- Original artist: ASK
- Price: 999 Yuan, around 145$
The sculptor(s)' name wasn't revealed.
If you're a figure otaku who clicked on this article, you already have your own tips, addresses, and preferences on how to preorder. From AmiAmi to Hobby Search. Note that as I'm writing this however, the figure isn't up for preorder yet. Myethos stated on its official Weibo that the figure will be up for preorder on August 31, so mark this date on your calendars. We sadly don't have a specific time but I assume it'd be either midnight or early morning GMT+8. For now, Myethos hasn't added the Hatsune Miku figure to its official site's catalog yet, and didn't tweet about it either.
We've got more pictures of the figure below.
I'm pretty sure you already know about Hatsune Miku if you clicked on this article and actually read this far, and have no need for an introduction. As a reminder, the latest Miku rhythm game adaptation by Sega, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA MegaMix, is currently available on Switch.
The post Shaohua Hatsune Miku Myethos Cheongsam Figure Fully Revealed, Preorders Open August 31 by Iyane Agossah appeared first on DualShockers.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time Gamescom Presentation Shows off New Challenging Levels
If you had a problem with some of the levels in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, better buckle up for Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time. During its presentation at Gamescom, Lou Studdert, one of the developers working on the game, focused on a new group of levels designed to push players to their limit.
These new flashback tape levels are a first for the Crash franchise. In a way, they're similar to other challenge stages you'd find inside any level in the original Crash titles, although there is one caveat. To access these levels, players will have to search levels for VHS tapes, but, if you die on the level, they won't appear at all. There's already a bit of a skill barrier to break through in just getting to these levels, but playing them is another story altogether.
Flashback tape levels throw players back to the origin story of Crash and Coco. In these devious levels, the Bandicoot siblings are under the ownership of Neo Cortex, who, if you don't remember, originally created the two to lead his mutated animal army. These levels are Cortex testing the pair, and they are downright nefarious.
Flashback levels will be long stretches of difficult platforming. From what's been shown at Gamescom, players can pretty much forget about floors, since there don't seem to be many. Instead, they'll have to rely on their ability to hop from one crate to the next, all while avoiding nitro and TNT boxes. Some new crates are being added as well, making for an experience wholly unique to It's About Time.
Crash Bandicoot: It's About Time is set to release October 2 on the PS4, and Xbox One. Release dates for next-gen versions of the title have not yet been announced.
The post Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time Gamescom Presentation Shows off New Challenging Levels by Otto Kratky appeared first on DualShockers.
Fall Guys Team Has Many Plans in Motion for New Features in The Game
Yesterday we got a sneak peek as to what we can expect from Season 2 of Fall Guys, but that isn't the only thing that the team at Mediatonic is currently working on. Lead Designer Joe Walsh was the latest guest on Talk Guys a new talk show from Gary Whitta and Kate Stark. Gary Whitta created the hit show Animal Talking, a talk show which all takes place in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Interviewed the @FallGuysGame team & here's some new info:
– New season pass will be free
– Anti-cheat top priority
– Custom servers planned
– Colourblind mode & accessibility changes coming ASAP
– Cross platform planned
– Official merch coming
– Confirmed: It's an apple— Kate Stark (@katestark) August 28, 2020
During the episode, Joe explained the plans that they are working on fixing and adding to Fall Guys that Stark later posted on her personal Twitter account. The top priority for the team right now is to incorporate an anti-cheat system with that being a major ongoing issue. For those unaware, those who cheat are able to float their way to victory. Other plans are to add new accessibility options including a colorblind mode and cross-platform capability. Another heavily fan-requested addition that is planned is custom servers so people can host tournaments without having to worry about strangers and, maybe even more important, players can maybe get that five-win streak trophy much easier.
Walsh was also asked during the interview whether or not we can expect Fall Guys to make its way to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch with his response being simply "Maybe one day."
Despite its lack of features and technical issues, Fall Guys continues to be a major success and has the potential to become even bigger with possibly being a Game of the Year contender once that conversation begins later in the year. We will continue to update you on what's to come as more news comes out.
The post Fall Guys Team Has Many Plans in Motion for New Features in The Game by Cameron Hawkins appeared first on DualShockers.
Monster Hunter World is Adding Fatalis in Final Free Update on October 1
Monster Hunter World continues to be one of the best live service titles, but things are finally coming to an end later this year with its final free update. Today Capcom streamed the final developer diary where the Monster Hunter team detailed everything that players can expect from the new update including the newest monster known as Fatalis.
"What we're up against isn't a monster… it's actually history"
Confront Fatalis in #Iceborne, October 1
pic.twitter.com/7MXAfGpeiK
— Monster Hunter (@monsterhunter) August 28, 2020
The Fatalis is seemingly a dragon-like creature that hunters will be able to take on starting October 1 when the update drops. Alongside the new monster will be different events taking place throughout the rest of this year. Sometime during fall will be an event quest centered on the arch-tempered Velkhana along with the Autumn Harvest and Fun Fright Fests taking place from October 16 to November 5. Master Rank layered armor will also make its way to the game, but players will not be able to obtain it until certain events take place.
While it is always sad to see such a beloved live service game begin its sunset it is possible that the team will be starting work on the next main entry in the Monster Hunter franchise with next-generation consoles just on the horizon.
For all the in-depth details regarding the final Monster Hunter World update, you can check it out on the game's official site as well as watch the full developer diary video below.
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