A new Tomb Raider game is on the way, powered by Unreal Engine 5

Crystal Dynamics has “just started development” on a new Tomb Raider game, the studio announced today on Twitter. It didn’t share what the game will be called nor when fans can expect to play it, but it did note that it will run on Epic’s new Unreal Engine 5. After working on the mediocre Marvel’s Avengers, the project will see Crystal Dynamics return to the franchise it spent more than a decade making popular again.

It would also appear to signal the end of the studio’s in-house Foundation engine, which powered Rise of the Tomb Raider and the most recent mainline entry in the series, 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Crystal Dynamics said the move to UE5 would help the studio take its “storytelling to the next level.” The next Tomb Raider joins a handful of games already announced for UE5. Those include the next Witcher game and Black Myth: Wukong. Of that group, only the latter has a release date, with Chinese developer Game Science Studio aiming to get it out sometime in 2023.

The entire ‘Next Generation’ cast will appear in ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season three

The entire* principal cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation will appear on the third and final season of Picard. Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner, who have already featured in the series, will be joined by LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden a…

‘Marcel The Shell With Shoes On’ turns a decade-old viral video into a feature film

A24 has shared the first trailer for Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, a film adaptation of the viral YouTube series of the same name. If you’re not among the millions of people who have watched the shorts (the first entry has more than 32 million views)…

Spotify’s exclusive ‘Batman Unburied’ podcast finally debuts May 3rd

Spotify’s long-promised Batman podcast is almost here. The streamer has announced that DC Comics and Warner Bros.’ Batman Unburied will debut worldwide on May 3rd, with a trailer offering a hint of what to expect. The show will have Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl) look for help from The Riddler to understand why Bruce Wayne can’t remember his Batman role and, hopefully, convince him to fight a serial killer wreaking havoc on Gotham City.

Winston Duke (M’Baku in Black Panther) will play Bruce Wayne in the English-language podcast. Other stars include John Rhys-Davies, Lance Reddick (John Wick), Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter), Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin) and Ashly Burch (Horizon Forbidden West), among others. Spotify is also promising localized versions and actors for Brazil, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan and Mexico.

The release comes nearly two years after Spotify first unveiled a multi-year deal with DC and Warner Bros. to produce exclusive podcasts, and roughly a year and a half after the companies teased early details of Batman Unburied. It’s not clear what prompted the long wait, but the news reflects a catch-up of sorts as Spotify’s podcast deals finally become reality. Meghan Markle’s first podcast series, for instance, is arriving on Spotify nearly two years after she and Prince Harry reached a deal.

Whatever the reasons behind the wait, Batman Unburied could represent an important moment for Spotify. It could show whether or not the DC/Warner collaboration was worth the effort, of course, but it might also indicate whether Spotify’s quest for exclusive podcasts was worth the delays and sometimes serious problems.

Unreal Engine 5 is finally ready to power a new generation of games

Unreal Engine 5 is finally here after nearly a year of early access. Epic Games has officially released UE5 to developers, promising both more photorealistic visuals and easier-to-use creator tools. 

The new Unreal Engine’s most obvious upgrades affect the basics of 3D rendering. The Nanite geometry system lets producers use objects with millions of polygons each while scaling gracefully and maintaining playable frame rates. Lumen, meanwhile, provides dynamic global lighting that adapts to everything from the time of day to a character’s flashlight. You’ve seen early results in Epic’s The Matrix Awakens tech demo — UE5 can render extremely detailed scenes with more natural lighting than you might have seen in the past.

Unreal Engine 5 city sample
Epic Games

There are some behind-the-scenes improvements that should affect the games you play, too. It’s now much easier for developers to make open-world games thanks to systems that both automatically divide areas (to make them easier to stream) and let multiple developers work on the same region at the same time. There are new and upgraded tools to create models, animations and audio without resorting to external editors, and companies making videos or still images can generate very high quality output that would normally require a time-consuming offline renderer.

It will take a while for content to use the new engine. At best, studios have had less than a year to test the engine and start work on their projects. Even Black Myth: Wukong (one of the first announced Unreal Engine 5 titles) won’t be available until 2023, and the next Witcher game doesn’t have a release date. Still, the launch effectively sets the stage for the next wave of games and video special effects. You could see a significant leap in realism from games that take better advantage of the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and the latest PC video cards.

Elon Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors

Elon Musk isn’t just stopping at buying a stake in Twitter — he’ll also have a seat at the table. As CNBCreports, Twitter is appointing Musk to the company’s board of directors. He’ll be of value as both a “passionate believer and intense critic” of the social network, according to chief executive Parag Agrawal.

An SEC filing shows that Musk will serve as a Class II director (that is, not top-tier) with a term that expires at the company’s 2024 annual shareholder meeting. The appointment limits the stake Musk can hold. He can’t own more than 14.9 percent of common stock during his tenure, and for 90 days afterward.

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey thought well of the deal. In a response to the news, he believed Musk “cares deeply” about the planet and Twitter. Musk and Agrawal “lead with their hearts,” he said.

It’s too soon to say how much influence Musk will have as a director. However, he recently blasted Twitter for allegedly falling short of “free speech principles” and asked the social site’s users if they want an edit button. He clearly intends to make his presence felt, not to mention thumb his nose at the SEC for its crackdown against his finance-related tweets.

Elon Musk, Twitter’s largest shareholder, asks users if they want an edit button

Elon Musk, who recently became Twitter’s largest shareholder, has posted a poll on the website asking users whether they want an edit button. His options are a misspelled “yse” and “on,” which might make you think that the whole thing is joke until you see that the poll has been retweeted by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully,” Agrawal wrote, hinting that the poll could lead to an actual edit button on the social network. 

Many Twitter users have asked for an edit button over the years, but the website has remained staunchly resistant to those requests. In a video Q&A with Wired back in 2020, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey said the website will “probably never” add an edit button. He explained that the social network started as a text messaging service, and you can’t take back a text once you’ve sent it. Twitter apparently wanted to preserve that vibe and feeling.

Musk, who’s been a prolific tweeter way before he purchased 9.2 percent of the social network, might serve as the catalyst for the company to change that outlook. As of this writing, 74.7 percent out of the 1,439,779 accounts that participated in the poll voted “yse” to an edit button. Whether Twitter will immediately start working on the feature if “yse” wins remains to be seen. That is, if it hasn’t started developing it yet — the official Twitter account recently posted that the company is “working on an edit button,” but that was on April Fools’ Day.

It’s also unclear how an edit button would work on Twitter, where reposting other people’s content is widely practiced. If the person who tweeted the original post edits it, will the retweeted content reflect the change, as well? And will the edit button for a tweet be available indefinitely or only for a short period of time? Dorsey said during the Wired interview that Twitter previously considered giving users a 30-to-60-second window to correct something, which would be more than enough time to edit spelling mistakes and other minor changes.

A Monkey Island sequel from creator Ron Gilbert is coming this year

One of the best video game series of all time is making a return in 2022 with some of its key original creatives on board. Return to Monkey Island is “a game by Ron Gilbert,” who conceived the point-and-click comedy-adventure saga in the late ’80s.

Gilbert wrote and directed the original game, The Secret of Monkey Island. He was director, programmer and designer on the sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. He left Lucasfilm Games soon after the latter was released, but he was credited on 2009’s Tales of Monkey Island. Gilbert is now back at work on arguably the series he’s best known for as a co-designer and co-writer alongside fellow Monkey Island veteran Dave Grossman.

Return to Monkey Island is in development at Gilbert’s Terrible Toybox. The studio’s working alongside Devolver Digital and Lucasfilm Games on the latest entry. According to the description on a teaser video Devolver posted, it’s a “long-awaited follow-up” to the first two games.

The clip also notes that Michael Land, Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian — all of whom have previously worked on the series — are handling the music, while Dominic Armato is reprising his role as Guybrush Threepwood. So, it’ll certainly sound like a proper Monkey Island game.

Gilbert tried for years to get back the rights to Monkey Island (and Maniac Mansion) from the Disney-owned Lucasfilm Games to no avail. Still, it’s great to see him and so many other Monkey Island veterans returning to the series. 

This just shot to the top of the list of my most-anticipated games in 2022. Sorry about all the game of the year awards you just lost, Elden Ring.

Elon Musk now owns a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk now owns 9.2 percent of Twitter after purchasing $2.89 billion in stock, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing spotted by CNBC. The purchase follows recent criticism by Musk over the social media site’s free speech policies. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” he tweeted last week.

Musk is a prolific Twitter user and has over 80 million followers, but the platform has also brought him trouble. Most famously, in 2018 he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share, setting off an SEC lawsuit that cost him $20 million and his spot as chairman of the board. Musk recently challenged the settlement, saying that the SEC overstepped its authority. He’s asking a federal judge to terminate his agreement requiring some tweets to be vetted by a lawyer.

Along with the comment, Musk launched a Twitter poll last week with the question “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this [freedom of speech] principle?” He also mused about the idea of starting his own social media platform, saying he was giving it “serious thought.” 

In a follow-up tweet, Musk said that “the consequences of this poll will be important,” and that prediction has now apparently come true. His stake in Twitter is still a passive one, but he could up the stakes somewhat. “This eventually could lead to a buyout,” analyst Dan Ives told CNBC. Musk is now the platform’s largest shareholder, and Twitter shares have reportedly surged more than 25 percent in premarket trading, according to CNBC. 

Update 4/4/2022 11:52 AM: The post has been updated with information that Musk is now Twitter’s biggest shareholder.