Video Game News

The new Star Wars expanded universe is about to drop some knowledge in an unexpected place. When TT Games' Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens arrives this summer, not only will you be able to relive the memorable moments from the sequel 30 years in the making, you'll also get to play through sequences that take place prior to the movie for the very first time. While video games helping to expand on the Star Wars universe is nothing new, most of those experiences (Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, Knights of the Old Republic) were wholesale adventures and not just side-missions in a larger game. It is a little bit shocking to learn that this expanded content will appear in a game aimed at kids, particularly given how not so seriously the Lego video games take their inspiration. That said, there's so much new material to mine with Disney and Lucasfilm wiping the previous expanded universe slate clean, and so much desire for new Star Wars details, injecting it in some unlikely places does add another element of excitement in discovery. In an interview with Game Informer, members of TT Games' development teamed dished on just how and where these additional story missions will take place in the grander scheme.

The LEGO Star Wars games were some of the most entertaining family video games of the past 15 years. It launched the LEGO video game series and revitalized interest in both Star Wars and LEGO. The only problem? They ran out of Star Wars stories to tell. With both the original trilogy, prequel trilogy and Clone Wars all represented in games, there was really nowhere left to go…until George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney and Star Wars: The Force Awakens came along. That’s right, warm up your Xbox and PS4s because LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens is coming to gaming systems this summer.

There's an insurmountable amount of hype surrounding Star Wars this year. From the figures to the books to the trading cards to the games and movies, if it has Star Wars in the name, people are excited. If you can somehow manage to tie one of those things to another, the hype levels begin approaching stratospheric levels. While we were told Star Wars Battlefront was going to be one of the first places we'd see the destitute landscape of Jakku, a planet that's been focused on quite a bit in trailers for The Force Awakens, we had little idea of what exactly that meant. With today's teaser trailer for the new map, questions of "What will it be like?" were immediately replaced with statements of "I want to go to there." Taking place 29 years before The Force Awakens, the Battle of Jakku happened about a year after the Battle of Endor, which signaled the first indication the Rebel Alliance might rid the galaxy of the Empire's influence. There were numerous conflicts after the destruction of the second Death Star, as much of the literature under the "Journey to The Force Awakens" banner has revealed. Though Jakku's present in lots of Star Wars' recent content, Battlefront will present our first actual on-the-ground glimpse of that landmark conflict, including watching those massive Star Destroyers fall from orbit in magnificent fashion.

It's a big year for Star Wars, in case you didn't know. Aside from a wealth of new action figures and collectibles, books, comics, and that new movie or whatever, there's also going to be a new installment in the fan-favorite Star Wars Battlefront series. It's been too long since players have been able to pick up an E-11 blaster rifle and defend the likes of Mos Eisley or Hoth from the Rebel Scum (TM), but soon we'll be able to travel back to that galaxy far, far away to blast the Empire's enemies back from whence they came. During Sony's PlayStation press event at Paris Games Week, DICE unveiled a new gameplay trailer for Battlefront which offered the first looks at newly-announced Heroes like Leia, Han and Palpatine in action. There's a lot of trench warfare happening, as well as some questionable voice acting, but Battlefront appears to be shaping up to be everything fans have been waiting for from the series since it vanished those many years ago.

With less than a month to go until Star Wars Battlefront arrives, DICE and EA are finally sharing more details on the heroes and villains joining the battle on both sides of the virtual war in that galaxy far, far away. Already, players knew familiar faces like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader would be part of the action, alongside the bounty hunter no one can seem to get enough of, Boba Fett. Those three won't be the only special characters fans get to play with, as the sides are going to get evened out a bit with these new additions. Though Leia is a Jedi, during Battlefront's timeline, she doesn't quite know it yet. Since she's best known in the original trilogy for being an incredible leader, building her character for the game was a bit of a challenge for DICE. As lead hero designer Jamie Keen described on the PlayStation Blog, Leia's tricky to create as a unique character since she doesn't have a favorite weapon or visible ability in the films. With that in mind, DICE ended up focusing on her leadership abilities.

Though it was announced as part of the Disney Infinity plans quite a while back, the Star Wars: The Force Awakens figures and Play Set hadn't been shown or teased at all beyond its mere existence. Today, Disney Interactive finally unveiled the first four figures planned, though they shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to the Force Awakens release plans since Force Friday. Heroes Rey and Finn will be included with the Play Set itself when it arrives on Dec. 18, with Kylo Ren and Poe Dameron being offered as separate figures on the same date. Little is known about what we'll be doing in the Play Set itself (shocking, I know), but it will be compatible with all the other Star Wars figures that have been released to this point. So yes, you will be able to team Darth Vader with the man rumored to be his biggest fan, and give Rey a chance to hang with Han and Chewie before they had so much gray in their hair.

Two of Marvel Studios' top producers are taking Claptrap, Scooter and the rest of the gang to Hollywood in an official Borderlands film.

Hitman: Agent 47 came and went this past weekend, vanishing in a box office fizzle; the cinematic equivalent of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It’s not the kind of bad movie that really makes you angry, just one that’s completely forgettable. It’s a nothing of a movie.

It feels like Michael Fassbender has been attached to an Assassin’s Creed movie for years, to the point where we began to wonder whether this movie would ever actually exist (it at one point was scheduled to open in theaters three months ago)...

Sora, Donald and Goofy are going to San Fransokyo as last year's hit Disney film Big Hero 6 will have its own world in Kingdom Hearts III.