The Tomorrow Children was shut down not long after its release in 2016 but, five years later, director Dylan Cuthbert is trying to regain the rights to the lost PlayStation exclusive in the hopes of a re-release.
The Tomorrow Children is a Soviet-inflected multiplayer experience that Cuthbert has compared to the likes of Animal Crossing and Death Stranding – it received a mixed reception upon launch but built up a cult following. Sadly for developer Q-Games, it was shut down entirely just a year after release because of server running costs – and due to its online-only nature, it's been totally unplayable since.
In an IGN Japan video to celebrate the game's 5th anniversary, Cuthbert played through a developer build of the game, and responded to requests from fans for the game to be re-released – something he likes the idea of, in theory:
"Unfortunately, right now the IP is Sony's, really. So I'll keep trying to get the IP back, and if I do get the IP back, then I'll definitely think about ways to kind of relaunch it but without a server, I think. Because it was the running costs of the server that brought it down, if it didn't have that we probably just could have left it running and people could have kept playing it, right?"
Cuthbert also addressed the oddity, and sadness, of having made a whole game that, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists outside of developer builds:
"I don't like having a game I made missing, people can't play it. […] Especially one as pretty and interesting and rich as The Tomorrow Children – it just feels wrong to not be able to play it, you know? It's great being able to play it now like this, and come back into the world. The people around the office playing it now, they're just like, 'Oh we can play it again?' It's great fun, you know? We're all excited to be able to just get this old build running like this."
As for the feasibility of getting the rights back from Sony, Cuthbert isn't sure at this point: "Hopefully, at some point in the future, maybe we can get the IP back and try to work out what to do from there. We don't know anything yet."
Cuthbert made his name at Nintendo, helping program the original Star Fox, before eventually founding Q-Games in 2001. Most notable for its PixelJunk series, Q-Games created The Tomorrow Children for Sony in 2016, but it marked the last PlayStation exclusive the company worked on.
Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
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King's Bounty 2 is a tired sigh of a Euro-style tactical RPG. Not the kind you make when you're frustrated or relieved, though; it's more like when you sit down after walking up a long flight of stairs and feel sort of distantly content. For the most part, it's fine. The tactical combat is actually pretty enjoyable, the music is great, and the world looks nice. But it feels janky and unpolished in a lot of technical aspects, and the mediocre storytelling rarely got me motivated to see how the next step of the adventure might unfold.
In a lot of ways, this long-overdue sequel is comparable to RPGs like ELEX or The Technomancer: a mid-budget contender that really wants to be something like a blockbuster BioWare game but doesn't really have the resources or the expertise to get there. King’s Bounty 2 is a bit less ambitious than either of those other two, and probably the better for it – it doesn’t try to do anything wild and sticks to the fundamentals. But from the general glitchiness of the camera to the phoned-in story cutscenes, I still got the sense that the developers at 1C bit off more than they could chew.
The voice acting, for one thing, is very inconsistent. The sorceress Katherine, one of the three playable characters and the one I spent the most time with over 40 hours of adventuring, has a pleasing timbre with a haughty, aristocratic delivery. But some of the random NPCs scattered throughout the world sound more like they’d just grabbed someone who hadn't been in front of a mic before and handed them a script, if the distractingly bad performances are anything to go by. And those moments detract from the worldbuilding.
Characters are introduced very abruptly, just like everything else in the story, and you're sent ping-ponging from one clue to the next with little room for anybody to develop relationships with others, much less as individuals. There were a couple of surprises that felt worth the wait, but in general the motives of the various leaders and factions were always presented with so little nuance that nothing that happened left much of an emotional impact. It feels very by-the-numbers, like all of the heart went into building out the setting and very little into the cast and story.
The fantasy world 1C has put together is pretty slick for a project this size.
That's a bit of a shame, because the fantasy world 1C has put together is pretty slick for a project this size. The graphics are a bit dated-looking, especially with the lighting, creature animations, and some of the faces. Compared to even a six-year-old game like The Witcher 3, it comes up short. However, they've gone with an art direction that's just stylized enough it didn't bother me all that often. Zooming in on individual units reveals a lot of depth and detail, especially on some of the bigger monsters, and I particularly liked how increasing a squad's veterancy would spiff up their equipment visually as well. While large portions of the map can feel a bit samey – a lot of it is just hilly green woodland – it's also packed with little lore tidbits like discarded notes and history tomes that were entertaining to paw through.
If only getting around weren't such a huge pain. Your default run speed is just slow enough to be thoroughly irritating from the first moment to the last, and for some reason there's a walk button but no sprint. Why anyone would want to move through this sprawling country even slower than you move by default sure beats me. You do get a horse fairly early on, but it has clunky controls, it's restricted to walking speed in larger towns, and it has a lengthy animation to get on and off that freezes you in place. That never ceased to be frustrating.
What saves King's Bounty 2's bacon is the turn-based tactical battles.
What saves King's Bounty 2's bacon is the turn-based tactical battles. Granted, there are some unpleasant difficulty spikes, especially if you're playing a magic build in the early game. But they're actually pretty good fights once you get into the swing of things. You take an army of up to five units into each one, with dozens of choices from human knights, to gruesome undead, to deadly mythical beasts that result in practically endless interesting compositions. They're divided into four factions of Order, Anarchy, Power, and Finesse, and normally you'll want to stick to one to get the best synergies – but there are ways to build your character to be more faction-agnostic, at the cost of not being able to focus on beefing up one faction to their max potential.
The talent tree has an interesting twist to it as well, in that higher-level talents are tied to ethical decisions you'll make in both the main story and side quests. To unlock the most powerful magic spells, for instance, you'll have to choose Finesse over Power when given multiple ways to complete a mission. It turns out, though, that this is a better idea in theory than in practice. Finesse options tend to be the better choice in almost all cases unless you really want to put yourself in unnecessary danger for the sake of a challenge, and Anarchy vs Order typically ends up boiling down to moustache-twirling bad guy versus righteous hero. I would have liked to see a bit more complexity and nuance that could have led to more difficult decisions.
Where this got a bit awkward is when I realized that there are only a finite number of battles, and a finite amount of treasure, throughout the entire world. That means you can't grind out weaker enemies for experience and better gear if you're stuck, so some sections felt like I was running around from side quest to side quest looking for a fight that I could actually win with my current power. It also means you can technically get a “game over” by losing all of your units and not having the money to replace them. King's Bounty 2 lets you save anywhere at any time, so this is more of a theoretical issue. But it's also kind of a poster child for the handful of awkward design decisions that just don't seem well thought-out.
Yesterday, streamers across Twitch initiated a day off as a way to demand better action from the company on hate raids. Now, the data is in, and according to analytics, Twitch did see a drop in traffic compared to the days leading up to the boycott.
According to analytics firm Gamesight, both the number of channels that were streaming and viewers during noon pacific was lower than the eight days preceding the September 1 #ADayOffTwitch boycott.
Check out the grid below with red lines indicating viewers and the blue lines indicating active channels.
In terms of numbers, around 14,000 fewer Twitch channels were streaming between August 31 and September 1, and about a million fewer hours of content were viewed compared to the previous week.
Analyst Zach Bussey added additional context to these figures but found that ultimately #ADayOffTwitch did impact overall viewership on the platform. Bussey factored in non-boycott-related causes to a potential viewership decrease including the loss of DrLupo and TimTheTatman, who both recently announced an exclusive switch to YouTube.
Bussey also accounted for the “Back to School” factor now that students are returning to in-person learning.
No one should have to experience malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they stand for. This is not the community we want on Twitch, and we want you to know we are working hard to make Twitch a safer place for creators. https://t.co/fDbw62e5LW
But even with both of those additional contexts, Bussey found that on September 1, Twitch saw anywhere as low as a 5% to 15% drop in viewership, regardless of Twitch’s extraneous factors.
Streamers are making it clear that a lack of tools to combat hate raids is detrimental to their futures on the platform, particularly marginalized streamers. So far, Twitch has made public announcements about incoming tools like channel-level ban evasion detection and other account improvements, but critics say these changes are not happening soon enough.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.
Riot Games is joining forces with an ex-Netflix executive to continue developing its new entertainment division.
Brian Wright has been hired as Riot's Chief Content Officer. Wright will help develop original film, TV, and animation projects for Riot Entertainment. In addition, Riot Games says Wright will work to bridge the relationship between the gaming and entertainment industries.
At Netflix, Wright worked on bringing more original content to the platform, including Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why, and more. Wright says he's "beyond thrilled" to join Riot Games, adding, "I can't wait to bring more vibrant stories to players and fans around the world.”
There seems to be an obsession with the idea of women being powerful and indestructible assassins going around as of late, with the scripts being entirely written by men. In this fantasy, these femme fatales will stop at nothing to seek revenge against their oppressor, slowly losing their humanity as they get closer to their goal. In Kate, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the title character, the story is just that: an idyllic fantasy of a woman with limited time to exact vengeance against the people who poisoned her. With only 24 hours to live, Kate must somehow power through her rapidly degenerating body and battle the Yakuza to get to the man she believes is responsible for her predicament.
The film has the makings of a good, slick, action-packed thriller with Winstead at the helm, who at the time had just finished DC’s Birds of Prey. Kate could have been the next Atomic Blonde, but instead majorly falls short with its lack of originality and unfortunate Asian tropes.
With very little time left, Kate discovers who poisoned her: the head of a clan in the Yakuza, Kijima (Jun Kunimura), whose brother Kate had assassinated a few months prior. Enraged, Kate pursues every lead to find him. After mass murdering a bunch of his men, Kate is told she can find Kijima through his teenage niece Ani (Miku Martineau). Kate then kidnaps the teen and demands access to her uncle, which Ani sadly is unable to provide.
The most annoying part of this newfound relationship between Kate and Ani is that it feels like the white savior trope. After Kate saves Ani from rival gangs, the teen turns into a fangirl for the vengeful assassin and follows her around as her sidekick. The characterization of Ani seems more like an adorable anime archetype rather than a traumatized teenager. Sure, there were serious circumstances that caused this turn, but it's still unwarranted. It was also unsettling to find the Japanese-born Ani asking everyone to speak English to her fellow Japanese brethren, as Japanese is widely preferred over English in Japan.
The film could be forgiven for its tedious and predictable plot if it had some exhilarating action, but unfortunately, the fight scenes are rushed and leave Kate looking more like the Terminator than an actual human being whose body is gradually shutting down. Not to mention, a tenacious white woman brutally kill multiple Asian men during the first two acts was extremely uncomfortable to watch, especially as the Asian community is still recovering from mass anti-Asian hate crimes. The skirmishes between Kate and the Yakuza are particularly unsettling for Asian viewers — especially during a scene in which Kate barges into a room and immediately shoots one of the men in the head. As he’s dying, she finishes the job without batting an eye.
It was only several scenes earlier that Kate was seen as wanting to leave the assassin business to have a normal life and potentially a family. All of that was taken from her because of this poisoning, so it makes sense for her to want revenge for the future she can no longer have. But as she continues her murderous rampage, her humanity is stripped away in order to become this violent fighting machine or, as the film wants you to believe, “a total badass.”
The film could be forgiven for its predictable plot if it had some exhilarating action.
Despite the lackluster fight scenes and the dull protagonists, the film’s third act gets interesting as we get to know the Yakuza head, Kijima. Kunimura brings a subtle benignity as the solemn leader and commands almost every scene he’s in with just a simple look. It is because of this character that the third act is tolerable and audiences can begin to sympathize with Kate. Unfortunately, this comes too late for anyone to really care what happens to her.
The most wasted actor in the film is Woody Harrelson, who plays Varick, Kate’s creepy one-dimensional handler who had groomed her into becoming an assassin since she was a child. Harrelson really seemed out of place and lacked chemistry with Winstead’s stoic character. It’s hard to believe Varick raised Kate as his own daughter, as all their interactions felt more like awkward coworker small talk rather than a familial relationship.
There is something to be said about a film that uses the backdrop of Japan and the tired use of the Yakuza. Kate does try to feature many prominent Japanese pop culture icons in the story, including rock band BAND-MAID and a small cameo featuring MIYAVI, who seems to have an interesting backstory, but is never truly explored. The use of Japanese culture is all just for optics and the fantasy of what outsiders believe is their way of life.
Following the same formula as this summer’s other bland female empowerment films (also written by men) — Gunpowder Milkshakeand The Protégé — the typical “badass” assassin who seeks revenge against the men who threaten her way of life, Kate is predictable, somewhat triggering, and boring, filled with uninspiring action sequences.
