By Adam Hood
Hi all, welcome to another edition of Kirklees Gaming Central’s Weekly Round-Up, where we take a quick look at some of the latest headlines in the world of Video Games.
EA Canceled A Star Wars: Battlefront Spinoff Last Year
It has been revealed that last spring the publisher cancelled a spinoff of the Star Wars: Battlefront series. So far this is the third spinoff that has been cancelled by the publisher since 2017. This latest game to be cancelled was codenamed ‘Viking’, was originally envisioned for a release in 2020 alongside the new generation of consoles.
Reported by Jason Schreier, the game was started in 2015 in San Francisco at the EA studio Visceral Games was Ragtag which was cancelled in 2017, followed by Orca which was cancelled in 2018 and now the current game ‘Viking’.
EA Vancouver which spent quite some time designing this game and developed ideas and prototypes along with the studio Criterion, based in England. It was reported that with the cross-country developments came logistical challenges and this made for a difficult development. The game was cancelled in the first half of 2019, but the news went unreported till recently.
Eli Roth to direct Borderlands movie
It has been revealed that Eli Roth has joined Lionsgate to direct the upcoming film based on Gearbox’s video game franchise Borderlands.
Roth himself is most known for directing films such as Cabin Fever, Death Wish and the first two Hostel movies. Roth himself has recently commented about his partnership with Lionsgate.
“I’m so excited to dive into the world of Borderlands, and I could not be doing it with a better script, producing team, and studio,” Roth then went on to say. “I have a long, successful history with Lionsgate – I feel like we have grown up together and that everything in my directing career has led to a project of this scale and ambition.”
The script for the upcoming film has been revealed to have been written by Craig Mazin, who has previously won an Emmy for his writing on HBO’s Chernobyl. The film will be executively produced by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford as well as the CEO of Take-Two Strauss Zalnick. It has also been released that Avi Arad and Ari Arad along with Erik Feig have joined the film as producers.
EGX Rezzed Postponed to Summer Over Coronavirus Concerns
One of the UK’s biggest indie game expos has been cancelled. EGX Rezzed, which was set to take place 26th-28th March, will now be hosted at a later date in the summer. A statement on their website reads:
“Having monitored the situation around COVID-19 constantly over these last few weeks and following many hours of the conversation internally and with our partners, we have taken the incredibly difficult decision to move EGX: Rezzed to Summer 2020 with date and announcement forthcoming.
“We did everything that we could to try to run the event as planned, but ultimately, maintaining social distancing is neither feasible at, nor in the spirit of, the interactive and community nature of Rezzed. It is the community that makes Rezzed so special and it is our duty to make sure that your safety comes first.”
Organisers have assured ticket holders that their passes for the expo will be valid for the new dates in the summer.
They added: “Our thoughts go out to everyone affected by the COVID-19 virus in what is an incredibly challenging time, and we remain determined to run EGX: Rezzed in 2020 for everyone who has looked forward to and wants to attend the show. “
While Rezzed tends to err more on the side of indie games and smaller projects compared to its sister show EGX, it’s still a vitally important date for game developers from across the UK and Europe.
Unfortunately, in times such as these, it tends to be the smaller companies that suffer the most through lost chances to showcase their games, as well as the cost of cancelling flights and hotels. The organisers say they remain “determined” to run EGX Rezzed, but for some developers, they may not get to use that second chance.