Collecting the latest rumors
People often say to The Spy, “Spy, you’re a man of action. You’re handsome, you’re brilliant in bed, you’ve got loads of money, impeccable taste in cocktails and an entire wardrobe of fine tuxedos. And yet you’re always so humble. How do you manage it?”
To those people, The Spy says, please, stop flattering. The Spy is just a simple man. He puts his trousers on one leg at a time. His beautiful, expensive silk trousers that you couldn’t possibly afford. It’s this that keeps The Spy humble: implausibly taking time out of a dangerous and thrilling espionage career to collate small tidbits of industry news and gossip for a videogames magazine. For example, Gearbox has a new
Borderlands game in the pipeline. The Spy knows this because Randy Pitchford, company president, is currently on a recruitment drive. “This is the big one,” he said recently on his Twitter feed. He then requested that any ‘industry badasses’ get in touch. What exactly does Pitchford mean by ‘the big one’? The Spy hopes it’s a sign that the next game in the series is a little more ambitious than the so-so Pre-
Sequel. 2K has yet to officially announce this game. The Spy thinks that Gearbox is slightly too fond of the word ‘badass’.
The Bard’s Tale IV has been announced by inXile Entertainment, the team behind last year’s postnuclear RPG Wasteland 2. The company CEO, Brian Fargo, says he is “personally excited” to be working on the game, which is apparently a direct sequel to 1988’s
Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate. It will feature “traditional turn-based combat” and will be crowdfunded on Kickstarter. The Spy wonders if the game will be another parodic send-up of fantasy RPGs, like the illfated 2004 reboot, or something more serious. The Spy hopes it’s the latter, because that reboot was about as funny as being strapped to a table by a villain and having a laser slowly edge closer to your junk.
Bohemia Interactive has been talking up hardcore military simulator Arma 3 in a new video celebrating everything that the developer thinks makes the game special. At the end, the narrator talks about a “major expansion” in the works, which will be released at some point this year. But that’s all the detail he gives, the tease. The Spy doesn’t know if this is paid-for DLC or a free update, but Bohemia is, historically, generous when it comes to content and updates for the Arma series, so The Spy will be keeping his fingers crossed.
CD Projekt Red announced Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2012, but has been pretty quiet about it since working on The Witcher 3. The silence was broken recently when the studio’s head of marketing and public relations, Michal Platkow-Gilewski, confirmed that it was still very much in development. “The first rule of
Cyberpunk 2077 is that we don’t talk about Cyberpunk 2077,” he told Gamespot. “But on a more serious note, we are now focusing entirely on The Witcher. Worry not, though, because Cyberpunk 2077 is OK. Its time will come.” Everyone’s time comes eventually, and sometimes it’s because The Spy has a silenced Walther PPK pointed at their heads.
The developer behind Remember Me and the forthcoming Life is Strange, Dontnod Entertainment, has another game in the works:
Vampyr. The released imagery, showing a palefaced fellow standing on a moody city street, reminds The Spy of Vampire: The Masquerade. You play a doctor torn between saving people and drinking their blood. The Spy has faced similarly tough conundrums, such as deciding whether to pursue the fleeing bad guy or stay in bed with his mistress, sipping cocktails and speaking entirely in disgusting innuendo. Spy out.
The Spy thinks Gearbox is too fond of the word ‘badass’