Latest news with #MassEffect
Bloomberg
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
Inside the ‘Dragon Age' Debacle That Gutted EA's BioWare Studio
In early November, on the eve of the crucial holiday shopping season, staffers at the video-game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video-game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. had been under intense pressure. The studio's previous two games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, had flopped, and there were rumors that if Dragon Age underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA's many casualties.
Newsweek
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
'Harry Potter' Reboot Series Casts Four of Its Best Villains
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors Harry Potter and his friends have to face their share of powerful villains through the course of their adventures, but in at least some circles of fandom, none are more hated than the ones he has to live with: his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon Dursley. Well, the Dursleys have been cast in the upcoming HBO Max "Harry Potter" series. Variety reports Bel Powley will play Petunia while Daniel Rigby will play Vernon. There's no word yet on the casting for their son, Dudley. Bel Powley and Daniel Rigby have been cast as the elder Dursleys in the live-action 'HARRY POTTER' series. (Source: — DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) June 9, 2025 Read More: 'Mass Effect' Series Moving Forward With 'Star Trek' Writer Petunia is the sister of Harry's mother, Lily, to whom the young boy is sent to live after his parents' deaths. His new guardians dislike him so much, they actually force him to live in a cupboard under their stairs. Harry, Ron and Hermione react in shock Harry, Ron and Hermione react in shock Warner Bros But it isn't just villains at home that have been added to the cast. Actors have also been tapped to play the infamous Draco and Lucius Malfoy. Deadline reports that Lox Pratt is playing the young Draco while Johnny Flynn plays his father Lucius. The Malfoys have been cast for the live-action 'HARRY POTTER' series: Lox Pratt as Draco Malfoy Johnny Flynn as Lucius Malfoy — DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) June 9, 2025 Tom Felton played Draco Malfoy in the films, and he recently revealed he will be the first star from the movies to appear in the stage play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child". Back to the reboot series - Hogwarts itself seems to be filling up with Leo Earley cast as Seamus Finnigan, Alessia Leoni playing Parvati Patil, and Sienna Moosah tapped to play Lavender Brown. Finally there is the Weasley matriarch Molly Weasley, who is being played by Katherine Parkinson. This news comes following the reveal that the three heroes themselves had finally been chosen for the reboot series. Dominic McLaughlin is playing Harry Potter, Arabella Stanton has been cast as Hermione Granger, and Alastair Stout takes on the role of Ron Weasley. Previously announced casting for the series include Luke Thallon as Professor Quirinus Quirrell, Paul Whitehouse as Argus Filch, John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape, and Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid. Still missing from casting announcements is fittingly, He-Who-Most-Not-Be-Named, aka the series villain Voldemort. Rumors have pointed to Cillian Murphy as a favorite for the part and former Voldemort actor Ralph Fiennes has even given his thumbs up to the matching, but there's been no official word. More TV: Everything We Know About Netflix's Season 4 of 'Ginny & Georgia' Alien: Earth Trailer Channels the Terror of the Original 1979 Classic
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
10 Games That Ask You to Make Tough Choices
One of the things that make video games different from other media, is that you can often control what happens in the story. Sometimes the best games are ones that leave tough yet memorable choices with you. Sometimes that choice will haunt you for a long time, other times you'll hate the outcome so much, you'll play again just to have things happen differently. These ten games have some of the toughest choices of all. The entire Witcher series is known for the tough, morally-gray decisions protagonist Geralt of Rivia has to make in his adventures. The first game is renowned for how it distanced the consequences of your actions from when you made the decision, so that you'd only find out hours later that your decision had led to disaster. Too long ago to reload a save and make a different choice. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is undoubtedly the best of the series so far, especially if you include the two fabulous DLC add-ons, which are meaty campaigns in their own right. In the hundreds of hours you'll play through it all, you'll have to make choices about who lives, who dies, who is betrayed, and who to support. Often with the choice being between bad and worse. Rather than right or wrong. Mass Effect completely rewrote what a video game RPG can be when it first arrived on the Xbox 360. I remember seeing it for the first time at a friend's house and thinking it was like playing an episode of Star Trek—moral choices and all. The story spans three games, and some of the choices you make in one game carry over to the other titles. What's particularly hard in Mass Effect is that you grow quite attached to the various characters, and if you don't make the right choices, some of those friends won't make it to the end of the journey—picture above very related. In most games we mow down our enemies without sparing a thought for the morality of your actions, but Undertale is a different experience entirely. It lets you kill or spare "enemies" as you wish, and there are various choices to make throughout the game, but in the end almost everything you do holds moral weight, and the game totally judges you for it. Papers, Please is one of the most effective ways I have ever seen to help people understand how corruption spreads, how people will do reprehensible things if ordered to do it, and how it's hard to balance your own safety and happiness with those of others. You play a border agent of a fictional Eastern Bloc country with a government that keeps imposing more and more draconian rules. With branching endings, and a creeping, relentless sense of dread, this one will give you plenty to feel guilty about. Man, Disco Elysium is just one of the weirdest games I've ever played. I've yet to actually finish it, mind you, but so far it's clear that this strange post-modern, philosophical detective RPG is pretty much all about choice. Or the illusion of choice. Maybe it's about finding both your shoes and laying off the alcohol long enough to do your job. I have no idea, but it's a hell of a trip and you're in control of where this party is heading. Quantic Dream has a long history of making "games" that are really just interactive movies with quick-time events so that you have some modicum of interactivity, but there isn't really any actual gameplay. Don't let that scare you off though, because as interactive movie adventures, they tend to be pretty engrossing. Detroit: Become Human is without a doubt their best one yet. Not only is this title absolutely gorgeous, even on the dusty old PlayStation 4, the near-future world they've crafted with humanoid robots serving our every need is good enough to stand with the likes of Blade Runner. As for making hard choices, every Quantic Dream title is basically nothing but a series of hard choices, most of which lead you down a path you didn't want to go. I love it! This is my second-favorite Fire Emblem game next to Awakening, but while that 3DS title is pretty linear, Three Houses asks you to make a big choice at the end of the first part of the game that will send you down one of four paths. Here you can see my save files, where it took over 130 hours to complete all four routes. Not everyone has the patience to play through the same game four times as I did though, so if you're only going to make this choice once, the you're choosing which characters become your enemy in the second part of the game, and you may even have to end up harming them in some way. This is another series of adventure narrative "games" that actually focus entirely on choices and their consequences. In Life Is Strange your character can rewind time and make new decisions based on their knowledge of the future. Every choice you make has an effect. Sometimes the short-term effect seems positive, but the long-term ripples are not. In other cases, it seems no matter how much you try to change things, some futures are just inevitable. Bring the Kleenex for this one. Tabletop RPGs are all about freedom of choice, and the infinite ways those choices can affect things. Baldur's Gate 3 is probably the most comprehensive and extensive attempt at bringing the experience of a tabletop dungeon-crawl to video games, and it seems as if developer Larian has anticipated almost every single choice that players can make and how they interact. Some choices are funny or of little consequence, but there are so many choices you can make that utterly transform the game, or really cause pain and anguish for some characters. Often inadvertently. I strongly recommend that you don't save-scum for this one. In classic BioWare fashion, Origins puts you in a world full of warring factions, ethical dilemmas, and political landmines. Every origin story starts differently, but no matter your background, you're asked to make choices that alter the course of Ferelden's future. From letting an ally sacrifice themselves for the greater good to deciding who becomes king, the game ensures you can't please everyone—and living with the fallout is part of the appeal. If you feel that you don't get enough responsibility in real life, why not pick up one of these games and experience what it feels like to have someone's fate hanging in the balance, depending on what you choose to do next? Fun!
Gizmodo
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The Long-Awaited ‘Mass Effect' Show Has a Showrunner Now
Prime Video's upcoming Mass Effect show is progressing slowly, but surely. On Friday, Deadline revealed the live-action series gained Doug Jung as its showrunner. Jung, who most may remember as the co-writer for 2016's Star Trek Beyond, recently ended a showrunner/executive producer stint for Apple TV+'s Chief of War. He'll be working alongside writer Dan Casey, and both will EP for the series alongside franchise producer Mike Gamble. As Deadline notes, this is a 'major step forward' in the show's development, which was first teased all the way back in 2021, then had its existence reaffirmed back in 2024. To date, Prime Video's kept mum on what exactly Casey's pitch was for the Mass Effect show. Among fans, the general thinking is that it'll just adapt the initial trilogy of Commander Shepard gathering allies to fight the Reapers. (This also seemed to be the plan when a movie seemed likely back in 2007 after the first game came out.) But shows like Castlevania and Prime Video's own Fallout have taken a different approach that tells an original story inside the worlds of those series. (Fallout in particular carries itself like a Fallout 5 we're getting to watch but not play.) Others, like Tomb Raider and Dragon Age, continued (or hoped to) the stories of the games they're based on. There's certainly different routes for the Mass Effect series to take, and we'll be interested to learn Jung and Casey's approach in due time.
Newsweek
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
'Mass Effect' Series Moving Forward With 'Star Trek' Writer
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors All the way back in June 2021, "Mass Effect: Legendary Edition" project director Marc Walters told Business Insider that it was "not a matter of if, but when" that "Mass Effect" was adapted to the screen. That "when" just got a lot closer with the hiring of a showrunner. Deadline reports that Amazon MGM Studios, which has been working on developing a "Mass Effect" series since 2021, has hired "Star Trek Beyond" writer Doug Jung as showrunner of the project. Read More: Everything We Know About Netflix's Season 4 of 'Ginny & Georgia' Jung's other credits include "The Cloverfield Paradox" and more recently the Jason Momoa-led Apple TV+ series "Chief of War". He also wrote for "Mindhunter", "Big Love", and extensively for the crime drama "Dark Blue". Key art for Mass Effect shows Commander Shepard and his allies against a space backdrop Key art for Mass Effect shows Commander Shepard and his allies against a space backdrop Electronic Arts Jung will be working alongside Dan Casey, who Deadline reports has already been writing for the project for the past year. Jung and Casey will produce. Also producing are Ari Arad and Emmy Yu of Arad Productions, Michael Gamble of Electronic Arts, and Karim Zreik of Cedar Tree Productions. The first "Mass Effect" game was released in 2007, putting the player in control of Commander Shepard, a human soldier who finds himself on a quest to stop the ancient, malevolent A.I. villains known as the Reapers. Shepard's story was told in a total of three games, and then in 2017 came a story following a brand new group of heroes, "Mass Effect: Andromeda". Along the way were the mobile games "Mass Effect Galaxy" and "Mass Effect Infiltrator". Perhaps one of the biggest and obvious questions fans will want to have answered about the "Mass Effect" adaptation - assuming it adapts the story of the original game trilogy - is what gender Commander Shepard will be. The "Mass Effect" games are known for letting players make big choices that impact the outcome of the games, including the gender of the hero. The games also present the players with choices that can mean the life or death of many of the story's chief characters. Of course, there's no guarantee that the "Mass Effect" TV series will adapt the original trilogy. Like most popular video game franchises, "Mass Effect" is still expanding. "Andromeda" took the story in another direction and there is a fifth installment on the way. More TV: Alien: Earth Trailer Channels the Terror of the Original 1979 Classic Peacock Fumbles 'Love Island USA' Premiere—Here's the Schedule Ahead
