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Hey y’all! This week the PlayStation Podcast crew sits down with Firewalk Studios Lead Gameplay Designer Claude Jerome and Lead Character Designer Jon Weisnewski to talk all things Concord. Plus, the team dives into their experiences with the Concord Early Access Beta and discusses Tekken’s 30th anniversary.

Stuff We Talked About

• Upcoming releases:
  • Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure | PS5
• Evo 2024 Blog
• Mortal Kombat 1 Takeda Brutality Blog
• Tekken’s 30th anniversary
• Interview w/ Firewalk Studios (begins at 20:13)
• Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess | PS5, PS4
• Elden Ring | PS5, PS4

The Cast

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Last week, we asked you to share moments sailing through your favorite games using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:

shimo_ps shares sailing on a schooner in Windbound

WarDaddyPlatine shares Nathan sailing through chaos in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

Dario_OtherEyes shares an aerial view of Bayek and his skiff in Assassin’s Creed Origins

MrioMoreno5 sails through the skies in The Artful Escape

spec_arc shares Jin tossing a grappling hook from the deck of a ship in the rain of Ghost of Tsushima

RhodWulfLeon shares Kratos and Freya rowing in God of War Ragnarök

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?

THEME: Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on July 24, 2024

Next week, humanity makes their last stand. Share epic moments exploring Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.

The New Era established in Mortal Kombat 1 has seen many classic characters from the series evolve in new and interesting ways. Resetting the Mortal Kombat Universe allowed us to experiment with their narratives to sharpen relationships, increase connections, and heighten conflicts. We’re taking characters in bold new directions while also honoring their pasts.

Before we dive into the backstory of Takeda joining the Mortal Kombat 1 roster, let’s take a first look at his Brutality finishing move.

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When the team decided that Takeda Takahashi should join the roster of Mortal Kombat 1, we were faced with an intriguing narrative challenge: How do we make a character, who was previously a second generation kombatant, a peer of his immediate ancestors? We chose to alter Takeda’s history to root him firmly in the New Era’s present day.

Mortal Kombat 1 introduces reimagined versions of iconic characters in a way that as they’ve never been seen before, and in this New Era created by Fire God Liu Kang, Takeda is Kenshi Takahashi’s cousin, not his son. As a fellow Takahashi, he has also served the Yakuza. As a fellow hero, he also eventually chooses to reject them. But that doesn’t mean that he and Kenshi are thick as thieves. As was the case in the prior Mortal Kombat era, the two men have different agendas which bring them into conflict. Where Kenshi’s sole focus is extracting his family from the Yakuza’s embrace, Takeda seeks its destruction as well as the destruction of Earthrealm’s entire underworld. Kenshi is no fan of Takeda’s larger and deadlier agenda.

Even with these changes, Takeda’s backstory still retains key narrative elements from its prior iteration. As before, Takeda spends significant time living among the Shirai Ryu. He trains with Scorpion, blending the latter’s Shirai Ryu technique with his own style of kombat. 

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Freegunners, Concord’s Open Beta launches today, granting you a weekend’s worth of galactic action on PS5 and PC. Jump aboard the spaceship Northstar, meet the Freegunners, then head planetside to take on rival crews across multiple different game modes. Open Beta gives you a chance to try out the 16-strong character roster, and get to grips with Crew Builder, the Job Board and more.

You’ll find additional gameplay details, tips and lore in the ‘How to Play’ section of the Open Beta’s main menu. To bolster that info and arm you with additional gameplay tips ahead of launch, we sat down with Firewalk Studios’ lead gameplay designer Claude Jerome and lead character designer Jon Weisnewski to dig into the intricacies of the multiplayer shooter’s gameplay mechanics and systems.

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A Freegunner for everyone

Concord’s 16-strong character roster offers a lot of variety from the off. But there are certain Freegunners in the lineup that are a good fit for certain players based on their experience in the multiplayer shooter genre.

“We actually have a number of characters that are designed specifically to be entry points for players who feel anxiety or stress that come into a game like this,” says Weisnewski. “For that player who’s never played a shooter before, I’d recommend Lark. Lark was designed from the ground up to be inviting [to those players]. Their weapon, the Razor Pod Launcher, blasts out this little sphere that floats in the air. When an enemy gets close to that sphere, it detonates and spawns little homing projectiles that will track down the enemy and do damage… so right out the gate, we have a gun that doesn’t require players to be precise with their aiming.

“One of Lark’s Abilities is to drop a Spore Seed. It creates an area that buffs your team and debuffs the enemy team – you’ll get faster mobility, a little bit of damage resistance. That Spore has a high uptime, so you can be constantly planting. You’ll help your team by running around the map and planting Spore Seeds in key locations. Their other Ability is the Transplant Pod. On first activation they create this little plant, and on second, they teleport back to it. There’s a ton of high level strategic play, but [for newcomers], they have a weapon they don’t have to aim, an Ability that always helps their team and if they get stressed during combat, they can teleport out.”

“Kyps is similar,” Jerome continues. “She’s a spy robot that can plant surveillance traps, she can go into stealth [on dodging]. She can be an effective help for the team in this low anxiety way. The traps can spot people behind walls.

“That feeds into a dynami

In the summer of 2021, when we released Splitgate on PS4, we didn’t know what to expect. We certainly weren’t ready for the millions of people who hopped online wanting to play our take on a first-person shooter. I think most developers start with the intention of making the game of their dreams but time, tech, experience, and a ton of other factors often get in the way. With Splitgate, we made a game we loved and that our awesome community embraced, but we didn’t make the game of our dreams.

I truly believe Splitgate 2 is the game I dreamed of making when Nicholas Bagamian and I got together in a Stanford dorm and decided to put portals in a shooter.

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We’ve been working on Splitgate 2 for so long, we’re excited to tell you more about it – but not quite yet. We’ll have a lot more to share in August.

For now, I can share the basics. Splitgate 2 is a multiplayer first-person shooter made in Unreal Engine 5. It’s free-to-play, it has a faction system, and it’s coming to PS5 and PS4 in 2025. Oh, and it has portals, of course.

We launched the original Splitgate with 20 people, none of whom had ever made a game. Thanks to passionate players, the early success of Splitgate led us to investments that have enabled us to grow our team. I’m proud to work alongside seasoned industry veterans from Riot, Ubisoft, and many other developers responsible for some of my favorite games. 1047 Games is no longer a handful of college grads hoping the servers don’t crash again. We’re a team of seasoned gaming veterans making a AAA shooter that we hope will surprise, amaze, and excite you.

While it was incredibly hard to stop development on Splitgate in 2022, after a lot of reflection with the team, I realized that the right path to the best possible version of the game required a true sequel. We had to start fresh, in some ways. That meant building from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, with completely new character models, new maps, new weapons, and even new portal walls and portals.

Though we’re a multiplayer-only shooter and we don’t have a single-player campaign, we hired an amazing narrative writer to build out our universe. If you want to explore the rich lore of Splitgate 2, you can start now with free Splitgate 2 comics in our mobile app. You can also expect more cinematics and other surprises in the future that go beyond the game. Join our incredible community on Discord and be the first to know all the latest Splitgate 2 d

Accessibility is a very important element in any game, as games are amazing and should be able to be enjoyed by as many as possible! We are super excited about the release of Schim and wanted to shed some light on the way we have included accessibility in the design process from the start of the project.

With this article we would like to give you some insights into the thoughts and challenges we (Ewoud van der Werf and Nils Slijkerman) faced along the way. We will split them up into a couple of different angles.

Visuals

Schim has a distinct art style, which is also feedback we hear from players. The art style itself was heavily influenced by the fact that Ewoud has a form of color blindness. He had a clear vision of how he wanted the game to look. The visual style is built up out of multiple custom-made shaders. Ewoud originally wanted to create one color palette for the full game. This would make it easy for him, since color is challenging for him. We did eventually test multiple color palettes and playtesters responded really well to those, so we added a unique one for each level. They are all contrasting which makes the shadows and thus the platforms pop and easy to read. 

The line thickness can also be adjusted in the settings. Ewoud made a tool in the engine so we could easily create and load color palettes. This tool made its way into the game. So anyone who feels the need or the urge to make their own color palette can fulfill that. The custom color palette tool can be brought up in any level in the game. The touchpad on the PlayStation controller makes it super convenient and fun to change the hue to a desired color.

Text, language, and interface

As we developed the game we decided on rules we should follow for Schim. Potentially, the most challenging of all these rules was our desire to create a game with little to no words on screen. We love games and movies where animation tells everything you need to know, so we wanted to tell Schim’s story this way. The challenging part was that creating the story required a lot of testing different variations to find the best way to convey it. 

We purchased a motion capture suit and spent many hours recording custom animations. The benefits of having as little text as possible is that younger audiences don’t have issues with language. Visually impaired players also don’t have to focus on corners of the screen without heads up display. We ended up having only 291 words in the game. This made it very feasible to localize the game in a total of 32 languages and we will explore adding more.

Controls

The core of the game was clear from the first month of development – the player jumps from shadow to shadow. The jump button and steering the schim character are the primary things. The jumping itself is forgiving and control input is never hectic or stressful. Every level can be achieved with a decent interval between jump and interact inputs. A player can finish the game by inputting their actions one by one. 

After the jump button, the secondary action the player can perform is interact

Hello everyone, I’m Kee Zhang from Hotta Studio. I’m incredibly excited to introduce our brand new title, Neverness to Everness, to PlayStation players today!

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Neverness to Everness (NTE for short) is a supernatural urban open-world game set to release for free on PS5. You will step into the shoes of an Appraiser, embarking on an extraordinary supernatural adventure in the bustling metropolis of Hethereau.

Let’s dive into what makes this game unique.

Welcome to Hethereau, a city beyond the ordinary

You’ve probably played many city-based games, but Neverness to Everness offers a Hethereau that is both familiar and bizarre, yet convincingly real. In this open world, every moment is an adventure as you explore and live in this unique city.

In Hethereau, you’ll encounter TV-headed otters, skateboarders creating graffiti on the street at midnight, and countless supernatural phenomena we call Anomalies. The origins of these anomalies are varied and remain unexplained. Encountering an anomaly in Hethereau is as common as breathing—hopefully, your first encounter won’t scare you.

Hethereau is also a living city. 

Operational shops and businesses: A complete business management system lets you purchase vehicles and property to enhance your city life.

Dynamic NPCs: The streets are filled with realistic pedestrians who have destinations and genuine actions. Most NPCs follow traffic rules, but if you disrupt the order, expect different reactions from them.

The competition heats up in season 5, introducing wrestling royalty as WWE superstars join a packed roadmap of content including new Multiplayer maps and modes, the final Zombies story mission, the return of the Atlas Superstore, and much more across Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone.

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Season 5 of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone launches July 24 on PS5 and PS4. 

Multiplayer overview

New core 6v6 maps, cel-shaded variants

Bait (launch): Catch a win in the Sunshine State deploying dockside on this mid-sized map featuring poolside tiki floats and a central boat house.

Yard (launch): Crush your enemies in this small cel-shaded map set in a junkyard in the Sonoran Desert.

New Variants: At launch, play new cel-shaded map variants Toonoxide (Rust) and Celship (Shipment). At the mid-season, battle amongst the bold outlines of Ink House (Stash House).

Slam Deathmatch and other new modes

Slam Deathmatch (in-season): Earn points by downing and then eliminating opponents with a Finishing Move during the WWI SummerSlam event. All Finishing Moves will be randomized WWE Finishing Moves.

COD Warrior (launch): Compete 2v2v2 in a series of randomized, quickfire minigames. Every round win awards one point, and the first team to reach five points wins. Adapt quickly: with 15 minigames in all, you never know what’s coming next.

Arcade Playlist (in-season): Power up with new abilities including increased jump height, the Ground Slam, and Forcefield while fighting for possession over five new power weapons like the Sledgehammer with increased knockback ability and Akimbo Dragon’s Breath pistols.

Zombies overview

The final story mission (mid-season)

Face the ultimate challenge and confront the Entity in a new area of the Dark Aether. Avoid the horde using Aetherium launch pads to soar through the air and survive the climactic final boss battle to unlock a cinematic and acquire the first piece needed to access the new Dark Aether Rift.

New Dark Aether Rift, Schematics (mid-season)

Be alert for clues to opening a lucrative and let

This year’s Summer Sale lights up PlayStation Store from tomorrow, Wednesday, July 17. With hundreds of titles on offer for a limited time*, it’s your chance to plan your next great adventure, discover a new favorite series, and more. That includes the likes of FromSoftware’s critically-acclaimed Elden Ring (30% off), the frantic action of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III – Cross-Gen Edition (45% off) and taking your first steps into a wizarding world with Hogwarts Legacy (60% off). 

There’s such a high number of discounted games, we couldn’t fit them all in here. Browse a selection of titles below, then head to PlayStation Store when the promotion begins to find out your regional discount. 

• A Plague Tale Bundle
• A Plague Tale: Requiem
• Ace Attorney Anthology
• AEW: Fight Forever
• AEW: Fight Forever – Season Pass 1
• AEW: Fight Forever – Season Pass 2
• AEW: Fight Forever – Ultimate Edition
• Age of Wonders 4
• Alan Wake 2
• Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Upgrade
• Aliens: Dark Descent
• Alone in the Dark
• Amnesia: The Bunker
• Another Crab’s Treasure
• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy
• Arizona Sunshine® 2
• ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON – Deluxe Edition PS4 & PS5
• ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON PS4&PS5
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – Complete Edition
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – Season Pass
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla PS4 & PS5
• Assassin’s Creed® Odyssey
• Assassin’s Creed® Odyssey – ULTIMATE EDITION
• Assassin’s Creed® Origins
• Assassin’s Creed® Origins – GOLD EDITION
• Assassin’s Creed® Valhalla + Immortals Fenyx Rising™ Bundle
• Assetto Corsa Competizione
• Assetto Corsa Ultimate Edition
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora™
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora™ Ultimate Edition
• Back 4 Blood Annual Pass
• Back 4 Blood: Standard Edition PS4 & PS5
• Back 4 Blood: Ultimate Edition PS4 & PS5
• Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
• Batman: Arkham Knight
• Batman™: Arkham Knight Season Pass
• Battlefield 4™ Premium Edition
• Battlefield™ 2042 PS4 & PS5
• Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions
• BioShock: The Collection
• Black Desert – Conqueror Item Pack
• Black Desert – Explorer Item Pack
• Black Desert – Traveler Item Pack
• Black Desert: Conqueror Edition
• Black Desert: Explorer Edition
• Black Desert: Traveler Edition
• Blasphemous 2
• Bloodborne™ The Old Hunters
• Bluey: The Videogame
• Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition
• Bramble: The Mountain King
• Bus Simulator 21 Next Stop
• Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® III – Cross-Gen Bundle
• Call of Duty®: Vanguard – Cross-Gen Bundle
• Call of the Wild: The Angler™
• Call of the Wild: The Angler™ – Gold Fishing Bundle
• Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions
• Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 DLC MegaPack
• Chivalry 2 PS4 & PS5
• Chivalry 2 Special Edition Content PS4
• Chivalry 2 Special Edition Content PS5
• Cities: Skylines – Premium Edition 2
• Cities: Skylines – Season Pass
• Cities: Skylines – Season Pass 2
• Conan Exiles
• Conan Exiles – Complete Edition
• Conan Exiles – Debaucheries of Derketo Pack<

The Evolution Championship Series (Evo) returns to Las Vegas this weekend, from July 19 to 21. Every summer as the temperature rises, so does the competition. Fans and competitors from the fighting game community head to Las Vegas to celebrate the games that bring us together. Champions will return to defend their titles while new blood tries to make their mark on Evo history. 

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For the second year, Evo 2024 broke the world registration record for an in-person esports event, with over 10,000 registrants and over 50,000 attendees from 63 countries around the world. As the fighting game community continues to grow, Evo is heading to a new, bigger venue: the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Attendees will experience an expanded show floor alongside an arena finals experience for all eight Evo tournaments. The lineup this year is epic: Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Mortal Kombat 1, The King Of Fighters XV, Guilty Gear -Strive-, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, and Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes.

New and returning show floor experiences

This year’s event features brand-new show-floor attractions, alongside the return of fan favorites like the Free Play Arcade, Arcade Stick Museum, Cosplay Competition, and hands-on demos of upcoming games.

Evo attendees will also get a hands-on look at new and highly anticipated fighting games, including 2XKO, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, Rivals 2, Marvel vs. Capcom: Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, Marvel vs. Capcom: Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, and HunterxHunter NenxImpact.

Make sure to check out the debut of the Evo Art Gallery, a celebration of fighting game history. The Gallery will feature over 100 pieces, including illustrations, promotional posters, and more. 

The Evo Cosplay Competition will showcase world-class cosplayers dressed as characters from your favorite fighting games.

The Arcade Controller Museum highlights the brands and communities of fighting games. Experience the history of the arcade controller and check out a vast collection of Evo controllers, community pieces, game-licensed fight sticks, and more.