Let’s all sit back and have a bit of wine, shall we? ‘Er, maybe not if Arya Stark is serving it. Welcome to the HBO Game of Thrones: Season 7 premier recap!
I know I for one was on the edge of my seat before the show even started, but how about opening with Arya killing off the entire nasty Frey family? We start off seeing Walder Frey gathering his whole family to celebrate. He touts their victories at the Red Wedding and makes sure to mention that “any Frey worth a damn” was in attendance at this second feast in a fortnight. Frey’s words turn sour as he begins to recount how the Frey’s slaughtered a pregnant woman, slit the throat of a mother of five, and several other injustices they committed against the Starks. Those of us watching remember that Arya slit his throat at the end of the last season, so as they pour the wine – not the goat piss they normally drink – it’s easy to see what is about to happen.
Of course, that makes it no less awesome. Arya spares the young girl that Walder has taken as his last wife and as the men in the room lay dying, she makes sure to tell her to spread the tale of what happened there: that the Frey’s left a wolf alive. She strides out of the room, head held high, smiling in her best Cersei Lanister smile.
After the opening showing new places on the map, including Daenerys’ family’s castle, we’re dumped into a ice covered wasteland, small plumes of dark fog in the distance. As the fog grows, a figure appears in the middle. Finally! Finally it’s the Night King in all his horned, blue-eyed glory, riding at the head of his army on the back of a badass skeletal horse. (For you World of Warcraft Undead players, here’s your favorite horses brought to life.) The army march-lumbers past, showing some epic wildling walkers as well as some more fucking crazy skeletal horses. And then, the best of it all – giant walkers. Holy shit – I don’t think ‘badass’ even covers it.
Fade to a brighter part of the ever cold ‘beyond the wall’, and there is Bran and Meera, waiting to be let into the Wall. Who else is there to meet them but Eddison. After noting they are wildlings, Meera tells him this is Bran Stark. He questions that, until Bran lets loose a tale of the white walkers, how he knows Eddison has seen them and that Eddison has seen the army – which is marching toward the Wall. Well, that’s enough to get them quickly ushered in the door.
Now let’s take a gander at what’s happening at Winterfell. Jon and Sansa are seated at the head of the table, trying to pump up the lords and men around them for the fight that is coming their way. While discussing how horrid and unstoppable the white walkers are, Jon lets everyone in on a little secret: the Wall’s protection sucks and has for a century. Somehow, this is a surprise to everyone else who’s apparently oblivious to the fact they’ve been sending rapists and murderers to serve up there, but I digress. Jon immediately tells them they’re going to train basically everyone that can wipe their own butt how to fight – even the girls. Badass Brianne smiles at this. Stuffy lords get all pissy and then Miss Mormont stands up and tells them that’s bullshit and she isn’t going to let some man fight for her. That settled, Jon continues, they have to find dragonglass, mine it and make a shitton of weapons.
Boosting the self esteem of the wilding’s new leader, Jon charges Tormund with protecting the Wall and holding it as long as they can. Then as if a kick in the nuts, he starts talking about the first castles that will fall when the undead army breeches the Wall. Wow dude, way to boost some confidence and convince people to fight for you. Jon continues to go through the castle families, to which Sansa has a different opinion. She voices in front of the whole room that the families that live in those castles should be tossed the fuck out because they’re traitors. Jon disagrees, stating that the men who ran those families died on the battlefield for Ramsay Bolton. He’s not going to hold their families accountable for the actions of their fathers. The two kids who are now the head of the families swear loyalty to Jon and off we go.
After the pep talk, Jon gets pissy at Sansa for questioning him in front of the men. She tells him he’s being a butt and should listen to her. Of course, she also kisses ass a bit, telling him he’s a good leader.
Then we’re brought to the floor of a castle, being painted with the map of the Seven Kingdoms. Who is walking on said floor, watching the poor dude paint it, well Ms. Hateful Helen herself – Cersei, the Queen Mother. Jaime appears and they begin to chat about how, gee, he’s just not all up on the sisterly love since he got back. She asks if he’s afraid, he says: “Should I be?” Then they go through the rundown of how all their incesty kids are dead, how their father knew how to gain allies and how they currently have none now that Cersei basically killed everyone’s leaders. She doesn’t give a shit, and tells him she’ll get their allies somewhere else. Down on the balcony overlooking the bay, here comes the Ironborn’s new king, Euron Greyjoy and a huge armada. Jaime asks what dude wants in return for helping her and she tells him Greyjoy wants a queen.
The next scene in the throne room is truly hilarious. I didn’t care for Euron Greyjoy before, but now, he’s pretty damn funny. He tries to woo Cersei with talk of the biggest armada in the world, which you can tell kind of gets her going. He throws some excellent barbs at Jaime – including telling Cersei that she should try killing her brother sometime because it’s awesome. She refuses his proposal of marriage and he tells her he’ll win her heart with a priceless gift. I’m assuming it’s supposed to be her ‘little’ brother or the like, but we’ll see.
We then are treated to literally the grossest scenes in the GoT history: a montage of poor Sam emptying chamber pots (complete with whole pieces of shit in the pots), pouring food that looks just like the shit, scrubbing said chamber pots, putting away books and gagging. What’s not to love about that? I felt horrible for poor Sam. I mean, wtf HBO. Of course, as he’s putting away books, he sets his eyes on the ‘restricted area’, just like in Hogwarts’ library. I’m assuming there’s plenty of magic shit locked up, just when they need to find it.
Sam then begs the Archmaester to let him study in the restricted area since he’s the only one who’s seen and killed a white walker. After a bit of back and forth between them, the Archmaester tells Sam he actually believes him because his obsession with the white walkers could only be because Sam’s telling the truth. Oh, did I mention they speak over an autopsy of a dead maester? Yeah, narsty. After this, Sam steals some books after lifting the keys to the restricted section and pockets some books to take home. He and Gilly read through some until they find the information about the dragonglass being the whole mountain under the Targaryen keep. He sends the information in a raven to Jon. As he’s finishing rounds feeding lepers, who grabs him? Ser Mormont! Yay! Dude is still alive!
Back to Winterfell where we see Brianne training Podrick and beating him up nicely. ‘Ole Tormund begins to make googly eyes at Brianne. Littlefinger appears while Sansa is watching Brianne train and tells her again he wants to marry her, without being so direct. She blatantly dismisses him when Brianne walks up.
In a nice little forest in the Riverlands, Arya comes upon a group of Lanister soldiers who offer her some food. Who do we see but Ed Sheerhan singing a sad little tune about how awesome women are. She eats with them, sees how kind they are, and when they ask why she’s going to King’s Landing, she says: “To kill the queen.” Laughter ensues.
Who do we catch up with next? Well the Hound of course. He’s traveling with his band of Lord of the Light worshippers. They come up to the house that he had robbed while with Arya and they go inside to find the man and his daughter dead. While telling their leader he’s a POS and should be dead, Mr. topknot tells him to stare into the fire. Low and behold, the Hound finds religion as he sees the Wall, the castles at the edge of the Wall falling and the white walkers attacking. He also sees an island shaped like an arrowhead. After everyone’s asleep that night, he buries the man and the girl.
From this point until the end of the episode, we get to watch Daenerys arrive at her family’s keep. The slow walk up to the keep, her tearing down the Baratheon banner, seeing the massive throne and finally ending up at the table shaped as a map of the Seven Kingdoms, she recaps the whole of this coming season by saying: “Shall we begin?”
Goth girls sans pants photographed by Allan Amato who has shot a lot of Gothic.net’s favorite authors. The book includes Amanda Palmer (longtime readers will recall we used to host her Dresden Dolls site.) Also spooky name comic book artist flourishes of design. Also interviews with models. Check the Seraph book out.
When it comes to video games that are promising the impossible, Vampyr is up there with Fable and Godus. Now while Fable managed to fall short and still be one of the most beloved ARPGs of our generation, Godus fared significantly less well. So even though I assumed that the open world, interconnected, “anyone can die” grey morality of Vampyr was mostly just for marketing, I was still excited to see how the bloodsucking adventure would turn out.
With Vampyr releasing in November, I finally got to see what shape all of this promise has taken. If you haven’t already checked out the 10 minute gameplay trailer recently released, go ahead and check it out here:
The demo here shows a good split between the combat and dialogue, but the private press demo focused much more heavily on the sidequests and people-feasting. Thirty minutes in total, what I saw was quite promising.
The live gameplay presentation I saw started the same as the demo above, with Dr. Reid tasked by Dr. Swansea to track down Sean Hampton, a local pastor and recently turned Skal. After the dialogue concludes, Dr. Reid hunts around a bit with his vampyric blood vision, searching the nearby hospital room for clues. Now this is the point the public demo cuts to Dr. Reid walking into Tom’s bar. What they cut out was a bit of combat and the introduction of the open world sidequests. Besieged by Skals behind a locked gate, a seemingly intoxicated man taunts the murderous beasts clawing at the gates. After quickly dispatching them with your vampire powers, you find the man unwilling to leave. As Vampyr is divided up between hostile and friendly territory, it’s up to you to convince him to make his way to safety. Once he does, he will join that area’s population, and become interconnected into that narrative web. Or you could just eat him. You are a vampire, after all.
From here the public and private demo match up again, as Dr. Reid enter Tom’s bar in search of Sean. After learning that he is likely hole up in his refuge for the poor beyond the docks, the demos once again split off as Dr. Reid hunts for food. This is where I got a much closer look at just how eating civilians will work in Vampyr. If you don’t already know, the goal with Vampyr was to create a system where most of the experience was gained through devouring the innocent denizens of London. You do gain a nominal amount of EXP through combat—maybe 80 an encounter—but you can gain anywhere from 800 to a few thousand through luring a civilian to their death. The amount that you get depends on their importance, blood quality, and how much you know about them.
What I saw in the private demo focused on three characters: a murderer, a mother, and an orphan (they all had proper names, but as I wasn’t allowed to record I’ll just refer to them as their roles). You’re first introduced to the murderer, who at first just seems like kind of a jerk. You learn that he has lost a locket he intended to give to his mother, which opens a side quest to find it. This side quest can be completed with the locket going to another recipient, a decision you’ll have to make that will lead to different outcomes and clues revealed. You find the locket nearby under a hidden pile of dead bodies, leading to the shocking conclusion that this angry bloke is far more dangerous than he first seemed. This new information not only unlocks new dialogue options with him and related characters, but increases his blood quality level.
Blood quality is the measurement of how much experience you will gain if you choose to end someone’s life. As a doctor, you can heal the sick with various remedies, improving their lives while also upping their blood quality. For the purposes of the private demo, the murderer Dr. Reid met had a cold, lowering his blood quality by 150 points. His elderly mother, on the other hand, was healthy and worth over 1000 points. You find out that the mother has also been taking care of an orphan boy, who I didn’t learn much about in the demo. Opening up her profile, you can see her close relationships and whatever clues you’ve learned about her, such as that she knows her son is a murderer and afraid to turn him in. As she provided the largest experience boost, the demo player decided she was the best meal, and ate the old lady. Harsh.
After consuming his prey, Dr. Reid has to rest to absorb the blood. The blood will give you all the memories of your victim, meaning the clues relating to their close relations will be unlocked. But their death will also impact the world. The health of the district will decrease, and I saw her house abandoned and adopted son left homeless. I got a brief chance to ask the dev team if this would always be the case, and they stated that they wanted there to be a large variance in how your actions effect the world. Some people will have far more of an impact when killed, but everyone will change the world in some way. It’s up to you to decide who lives and who dies, and if you’re willing to live with those consequences.
From here the demos largely meet up again, with the mini-boss fight and encountering Sean. What I saw in the private demo genuinely has me very excited for Vampyr. It’s a bold attempt at creating a real narrative ecosystem, and not just for show. The fact that clues and health effect the benefit of your meal makes the decision to kill all that much more personal and impacting. If I had to know the life story of my cheeseburger before eating it, I might decide on a salad instead.
The narrative complexity might not surprise you, as the developer Dontnod was behind the 2015 episodic adventure hit Life is Strange. With all the vampire narratives out there, the unique take that they are taking on this doctor/killer, shepherd/flock role is a promising one. The combat looks flashy too, I guess, though in all honestly is the last thing I really care about. As long as it all just works, I’m in this one for the story. Check out Vampyr when it drops in November on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. In the meantime, have another art gallery!
Starring Kane Hodder, Robert Englund, Bruce Campbell, Adam Green, Cassandra Peterson, Danielle Harris, Harrison Smith, Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Michael Aloisi
Directed by Derek Dennis Herbert
Over the past few decades, the horror community has grown into a phenomenon. Conventions attract more and more attendees with every passing year. Fans add to their collections with each new release or a film, show, soundtrack, whatever… It’s gone from something that people enjoy to an important and passionate part of their lifestyle. There are some who live and breathe horror, letting it have an impact, however subtle or overt, on nearly everything they do in life.
Alas, even though horror has grown in so many wonderful and incredible ways throughout cinema history, detractors are ever present. Deriding us, shaming us, attacking our genre under the guise of moral and ethical superiority, there are people who can never understand the importance and meaning that horror can have when viewed from the right lens.
I bring all of this up because Kane Hodder is a perfect example of both these worlds. A horror icon known for playing Jason Voorhees, Victor Crowley, Ed Gein, and dozens of other roles, Hodder’s characters are often caught in the crosshairs of those who seek to demonize and vilify the genre. That’s why a film like To Hell and Back: the Kane Hodder Story is so vitally important as it shows not only the blood and guts that thrill audiences but the sweat and tears of the people who make the magic happen.
The documentary is essentially an abridged version of Kane’s life. We get little doses of intense stories from his formative years. Hodder discusses the role horrific bullying he received as a young boy played in shaping his view of humanity. He revisits, in an emotionally charged and heartbreaking scene, the incident that burned his body. He reminisces about the devastating feelings he went through when he was passed over for Freddy vs Jason. All of these stories play into the overarching narrative of following Kane’s career throughout the years and learning exactly who he is.
Interview clips with people such as Robert Englund, Danielle Harris, Sid Haig, Bruce Campbell, Adam Green, Cassandra Peterson, and more, all act as a way to understand how everyone else sees and appreciates Kane, a man who knows how hard he works but never lets it get to his head and never allows it to rob him of his humility, good will, and benignity. We also hear from Hodder throughout the film in various locations, such as him revisiting Hawaii, near where he grew up, or seeing him walk through the burn ward where he was sent to heal after a horrific botched recovery attempt. His candor, wit, intelligence, and dry humor make for a captivating view but he’s the most astounding when he bares himself open for the world to see.
Wonderfully filmed and constantly engaging, To Hell and Back: the Kane Hodder Story peels back the mask of one of horror’s most recognizable and beloved icons to reveal the emotional and meaningful humanity of horror. Inspiring, life-affirming, and beautifully crafted, it’s the kind of documentary that highlights the importance of horror as a genre, as a form of art, and as a means of catharsis. If Kane Hodder can endure such pain throughout life and find beauty and joy in facing death time after time, perhaps we can too.
This Monday will see the release of Resident Evil: Vendetta, the third CG film from Sony/Capcom. The movie follows Chris Redfield, Leon S. Kennedy, and Rebecca Chambers as they face Glenn Arias, a death merchant who has in his possession a virus unlike anything that our protagonists have ever faced before. It’s a film that will continue to expand upon the universe of the game franchise that began back in 1996.
In 2002, the live-action Resident Evil franchise kicked off from writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson. That series brought six films to theater, each following the story of Alice, a non-video game character played by Milla Jovovich. With the final installment, appropriately subtitled The Final Chapter, released earlier this year, Constantin Films wasted no time in announcing that they would be working on a new six-film franchise that would reboot the live-action film series.
In a recent interview with Collider, Resident Evil‘s Hiroyuki Kobayashi, who has worked on the games since the beginning and has also acted as producer on the CG films, stated what he enjoyed about the live-action films, saying, “I personally like Paul W.S. Anderson’s [direction] on the live-action [films]. Stuff like that, I would like to see more action.”
Considering that the live-action franchise drew in $1.2 billion over the years, it’s pretty safe to say that the studio will see a safe bet and go down that road. After all, why fix something that isn’t necessarily broken?
On a personal note, I derive FAR more enjoyment from the CG films than the live-action ones, at least after Apocalypse. I’d love nothing more than the Resident Evil franchise to be handed over to a team that want to give a true survival horror experience. Anderson’s passion for horror can’t be denied (Event Horizon still kicks ass to this day). However, I’d love to see it go into the hands of someone like Alex Garland, who directed the brilliantly claustrophobic Ex Machina. Or maybe The Wailing‘s Na Hong-jin, who built a world that was frightening and unpredictable. Just go different! Go interesting! Take the risk and give it a chance! If it doesn’t work out, go action in the inevitable sequel. But please give us one truly terrifying Resident Evil film!
Ho boy, another E3 has come and gone, and with it a number of new trailers, announcements, reveals, and letdowns. I have to say, I found this year to be quite lackluster for the Big 3. I’ll get into this more in a later article, but it seemed most of the big showstopping titles were games we already knew existed back in 2017. I loved the zombie bear in Days Gone, but it didn’t impress me more than the zombie waves shown off last year.
The bright side to all of this is that I got to focus this year on some indie studios, who had no problem serving up some new and exciting horror goodness. First up on my trip were the good folks over at Focus Home Interactive, who after this year might just be my favorite publisher. First up, I got a chance to check out A Plague Tale: Innocence, a new original IP from Asobo Studios. My associate David already reported on the reveal trailer, but here’s the trailer again in case you missed that:
This is going to be one of the rare times where I say that the trailer actually pretty accurately depicts what I saw in the actual gameplay. At the start of the demo, we see Amicia alone on the dark streets of France circa 1349. Her brother Hugo has been captured by the Inquisition and locked in a metal cage, and the nearby guards are presently holding back a swarm of rats with their lanterns. Seeing as how Amicia is a 14 year old girl and the guards are fully armed grown men, direct combat is not an option. Instead, Amicia uses her sling to break the guards’ lanterns, leading to them being swiftly and painfully devoured by the vermin swarm. With Hugo now free, the duo heads into the nearby church.
Now the church is the same one we see in the trailer, with strange black growths along the columns and pockets of rats skittering around the corners. From the back of the church in the depths of a dark catacomb, a voice seeming to belong to their mother beckons them down. Unfortunately, the aforementioned ravenous rat problem stands in their way. This is where we get a peak at some of the puzzle solving gameplay. As Hugo is much smaller, he can fit into places that Amicia can’t, allowing him to acquire a candle that can be used to light a bonfire. Moving some rats out of the way, you grab one of the Inquisition’s lanterns to allow you to part the vermin seas.
This is where the demo kicks into high gear. At this point, rats start pouring in from all sides. Like water coming through the windows of a sinking car, a flood of chittering rodents swarms around you. The light keeps them at bay, and those unfortunate enough to get caught in the rays actually burn away. Watching the beasts flow more like a tide than animals was incredibly disturbing, and actually caused one of the journalists beside me to make a lovely little gagging sound. Once past the masses, you descend into the crypt, which has become entirely overgrown with the black biological mass you saw on the pillars in the church. From deep within the vast darkness, a voice calls out to Hugo, and he runs off. From here, the demo ends.
I got to ask the developers a few questions, and learned that presently they are capable of rendering three thousand rats on screen at once before the engine slows down. They stated that they wanted the rats to feel like force of nature, and wanted them to go to the extremes of what a real swarm could do when pushed to the limits. They were tight lipped as to what that meant, or if we’d be seeing other kinds of plague creatures (plague bear?), but I’m not ruling out the possibility that all the rats come together to create one great mega-rat that can only be stopped in a kaiju fight with Godzilla.
The people at Asobo also stated that they are shooting for a 10-12 hour single player adventure, with the focus of the narrative being on the expanding relationship between Amicia, Hugo, and a number of other orphans they ally with over the course of the game. They also clarified that they don’t really want this to be considered a stealth game like <i>Styx</i>, as the core gameplay mechanic is puzzle solving. Most of the “combat” comes from pitting the rats and Inquisition against each other, with each side serving as both tool and obstacle.
With a release window so distant that it’s still to be announced, there will be plenty of time for us to learn more about the world of A Plague Tale: Innocence. I’ll be sure to keep you up to date with more announcements as they arise, so stay tuned for more. Until then, enjoy the below concept art gallery. But what do you folks think? Looking forward to watching rats eat faces? And what games are you excited for from E3? Let me know below, and check back in later for my closer look at Vampyr!
Grasshopper Manufacture’s ultraviolent free to play action game Let It Die is receiving a big new update which was showcased in the following E3 trailer. Like everything else Let It Die-related, the trailer’s about as violent and bloody as you could possibly imagine.
Let It Die currently has over one-million players, and you can get in on the action by purchasing it from the PS Store.
LET IT DIE – BATTLE TO THE TOP PS4 Preview Trailer | E3 2017 A sneak peek at the newest area of the Tower of Barbs coming and the next of the 4 FORCEMEN.
About Let It Die In the year 2026, the planet was ravaged by the Earth Rage tectonic disturbance and the island of South Tokyo was born.
Legend has it that the Tower of Barbs grew from this island.
Under the watchful eye of Uncle Death, madness has spread across the world… Your task is simple, get to the top of the tower. LET IT DIE!
Beginner Tips:
Train your body
Develop equipment
Eat everything that can be eaten
If you’re stolen from, steal it back
And… if you’re killed, kill them back!
Roguelike, hack and slash, online, survival, action!
A new clip from Ana Lily Amirpour’s upcoming film The Bad Batch can be seen below but I don’t recommend it for anyone who’s afraid of apotemnophobia (fear of amputations). It’s a rather terrifying moment that involves Suki Waterhouse being tied up, drugged, and then brutally attacked.
This dystopian love story is set in a Texas wasteland among a community of cannibals and stars Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Giovanni Ribisi, Yolonda Ross, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Jayda Fink, Cory Roberts, Louie Lopez, and Diego Luna.
The Bad Batch comes out June 23rd.
Synopsis: Arlen (Waterhouse) is unceremoniously dumped in a Texas wasteland fenced off from civilized society. While trying to orient her unforgiving environment, she is captured by a savage band of cannibals and quickly realizes she’ll have to fight her way through her new reality. As Arlen adjusts to life in “the bad batch,” she discovers that being good or bad mostly depends on whom you’re standing next to.
Dying Light’s now been on the market for more than two years, but Techland confirmed at E3 that no fewer than twelve pieces of free DLC will be released for the game over the next year. You can watch the very gruesome trailer for the New Enemies DLC below.
Dying Light | New Enemies Teaser Dying Light is receiving a continuous support for the next 12 months. It means 10 brand-new DLCs within a year – ALL for FREE! Take the first look at the new enemies that will appear in the game really soon!
About the game: Enjoy the ultimate Dying Light experience – massively enhanced and expanded with a new map, new storyline, better visuals, major gameplay improvements, and more.
Dying Light: The Following – Enhanced Edition is a new and immensely enhanced version of the original zombie survival game. It features a brand-new difficulty level called Nightmare Mode, 250 special Legend Levels to unlock, all-new Bounty system, and a massive story-based expansion pack titled Dying Light: The Following. On top of that, the Enhanced Edition includes all previously released DLCs, community-made maps, and many gameplay and performance enhancements.
This is it people. The most disgusting, disturbing and downright horrid thing shown at E3 has arrived in the form of a new gameplay video for Agony. And I mean what I said as a compliment, because this looks disgusting in the best possible way.
Agony is being developed by Madmind Studio and will be published by PlayWay, with a currently unnamed larger publisher set to distribute physical copies. It’s set to arrive later this year.
Hell isn’t real, but if it was, I don’t think it would be as horrific as it’s depicted in Agony.
Agony: Official Floating Forest gameplay Agony is a first-person survival horror game currently in development. Players will begin their journey as tormented soul within the depths of hell without any memories about his past.
The special ability to control people on their path, and even possess simple minded demons, gives the player the necessary measures to survive in the extreme conditions they are in.
By exploring hostile environment and interacting with the other weary souls of the hellscape, the hero will soon understand that there is only one way to escape from Hell, and it will require a meeting of the mystical Red Goddess.
