The Primal Newscast – Weekly News Recap Episode #3

Welcome to The Primal Newscast where Gaming Instincts goes over the most hottest and interesting news of the week in the gaming industry.

It’s been a pretty big for the Xbox fans and honestly gamers as a whole. The 2 hour XO18 event that occurred at Mexico City on November 10th, 2018 was jammed packed with a ton of announcements. We’ve decided to help you guys and girls out this week and give you a quick rundown of this week’s biggest video game industry news alongisde the XO 18 event, let’s get to it.

InXile and Obsidian – Purchased by Microsoft Studios

InXile and Obisidan Entertainment Acquired – This is honestly quite the biggest news of the week for obvious reasons. There have been many rumors of the past few weeks and months dating all the way back to August that Microsoft is in a deal to make purchase Obsidian Entertainment. It is now official that Microsoft has acquired them and for those who do not know Obsidian Entertainment was responsible for many high profile RPG titles such as Fallout New Vegas, Star Wars the Old Republic 2, South Park: The Stick of Truth and many others.

That was not the only studio that got grabbed by Microsoft which was an interesting surprise. InXile also got purchased by the electronical giant and those guys are very known for their CRPG games such as The Bard’s Tale series, Wasterlands and recently Torment. Microsoft is now quite strong in the single-player story driven RPG departement when it comes to their 1st party portfolio, so the RPG fans can finally rejoice. Let’s see what this means for the future of Microsoft going into next-generation cycle.

Sea of Thieves – Arena Mode

Announced at XO18 Sea of Thieves fans who love PvP and slaughtering other pirates to conquer the islands and have all the loot for themselves. Pirates of Sea of Thieve can now choose to bathe in even more glory with the recennt announcement of The Arena mode. Get ready to reap new cosmetic rewards, gain a reputation with a new faction known as the Sea Dogs and engage in a new social interaction in the world of Sea of Thieves. The Arena will also be another way of getting yourself to Pirate Legend, something the game was strongly criticized for when it first came out back on March 20th, 2018.

Crackdown 3 Wrecking Zone Unveiled

Fans have been anticipating to see the multiplayer component of Microsoft’s next big 1st party – Crackdown 3. Wrecking Zone was revealed for Crackdown 3 at XO18 showcasing it’s 5v5 squad combat in the ever-destructive world of the Crackdown universe. The game takes advantage of the Microsoft’s Azure cloud that let’s them do some insane things when it comes to destroying the environments. For example, you can literally blow a hole in the wall in a building, go through it and then come out of the other side. There are some pretty insane stuff here and it will be interesting too see how this game mode plays out and if there is a possibility for this to become super popular among the competitive community.

Devil May Cry 5 – Void Mode Announced

Hideaki Itsuno the father of Devil May Cry 5 sat down with Matt Walker to showcase and announced a brand new mode coming Devil May Cry 5 known as Void Mode. In Void Mode players can choose different weapons and abilities to practice their stylish skill set. Want to learn a particular combo really well and how to get that S rank with a specific weapon set? What are you waiting for then, jump in to Void Mode to start mastering the art of the combat mechanics in Devil May Cry 5. The Devil May Cry series was always known to be a game with simple but yet very hard to master combat system and this is an awesome addition to the franchise that will help both newcomers and veterans to step up their game.

Final Fantasy 13 Titles are Coming to Xbox One Backwards along 

During XO 18 Shinji Hashimoto announced the return of Final Fantasy 13, Final Fantasy 13-2 and Final Fantasy Lightining Returns coming to join the Xbox One backwards compatibility roster. This is a huge win for the fans of the Final Fantasy 13 series and is fantastic for the Xbox fans who wanted to play the previous Final Fantasy games starting next week. In addition to the Final Fantasy 13 titles it was also stated that the old-schoo classic Final Fantasy games such as Final Fantasy 7, 9, 10, 10-2 and 12 are also joining going to be joining the rest of the gang sometime in 2019 as ports and not backwards compatible titles. Old-school Final Fantasy fans may now re-exprience their favorite games on their shiny new Xbox One X, Xbox One S or Xbox One.

Hajime Tabata Resigns from Square-Enix + FF XV Year 2 DLC Canned

Now for the not so positive news for the Final Fantasy fans. Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata announced earlier this week that he is resigning from Square-enix for personal reasons. Now whether that’s true or not is another story. Due to his absence now from his Final Fantasy XV Team Square Enix have decided to cancel the upcoming DLC episodes that were supposed to be coming out sometime in 2019 including Aranea, Lunafreya and Noctis. However, episode Ardyn is still alive and well and will be the last and final coming out for Fianl Fantasy XV. Square-Enix has also confirmed that they have lost 33 million dollars due to this as well. At the end of the day Tabata was doing his best to make sure Final Fantasy XV gets the proper treatment and completion that it deserves but I guess sometimes it’s just too late.

Death Stranding is Nearing Polishing Phase

According to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun – Death Stranding is actually nearing its polishing state which basically means the game is pretty much done in terms of all the gameplay systems and an entire gameplay loop. What that means now is that the game is now being playtested and cleaned out for any bugs, art asset polish and optimization fixes to the engine and game as a whole. Usually, this also means the game is nearing completion as well, so is it possible that we will be finally playing Death Stranding sometime in 2019? We’re still not sure what the game is even all about, but of course this is Kojima we’re talking about here. The game was announced back in 2016 and 2 years have almost passed and holiday 2019 we will be coming up to a 3rd. I think it’s safe to say that we’re at the point where we will finally start seeing the game in its full glory sometime next year with a small chance of a late 2019 release for the PlayStation 5 as a cross-generational title or an early 2020 game as well. Only time will tell at this point.

Video Game Awards to Have a Crap-ton of Video Game Announcements

According to Geoff Keighley the famous Dorittos pope it was reveleaded that this year’s Video Game Awards show will feature the largest amount of new video game announcements than the previous years. Now if you ask me personally, that’s quite a bold statement because this year was already pretty filled up when it came to some major new game announcements. So hopefully, there will be some new juicy stuff that fans of many publishers, developers and franchises can expect.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Online Beta Starting Zone

Everyone’s favorite cowboy game from Rockstar – Red Dead Redemption 2 is finally going to start its beta for the online portion of the game later this month according to Rockstar’s official website statement. So friends, bring your gang and get ready to start gun slinging in the wild west in the new few weeks.