11th April 2021 Weekend Sales & New Control Steam Collection

 Today we have two small pieces of news for you this weekend! 

The first is about a brand new Control bundle on Steam which packages both the Alan Wake and Control series into one neat collection. Simply titled the Control Ultimate Edition and Alan Wake Bundle, the pack contains Control Ultimate Edition (£34.99), Alan Wake (£11.39), Alan Wake Collector's Edition Extras (£6.99), and Alan Wake's American Nightmare. At its standard price, the pack costs £59.56, but as it just launched on the platform, it is currently 15% off, just £50.62. You can buy the collection for yourself or purchase it for a friend via the Steam website.

You can see the collection, HERE. 

Speaking of sales, it's getting to be that time of year again, and this weekend there are two additional offers to watch out for. Alongside the Control Ultimate Edition and Alan Wake Bundle on Steam, Quantum Break is currently 75% off. If you've not checked out the game yet, make sure to take a look. Please fix time, we're begging you, time has no meaning anymore. The game is currently discounted as part of the Xbox Games Studio Publisher Sale, which wraps up on Monday 12th April at 18:00 BST / 17:00 UTC.

View Quantum Break on Steam, HERE. 

The final sale is The Humble Store's annual Detective Hamble Sale which spotlights games with a mystery. Included as part of the offers is Alan Wake and Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Both games are 70% off if you buy separately, or 75% off if you buy together. 

View the Detective Hamble Sale, HERE.

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8th April 2021 Thomas Puha Talks Next-Gen Consoles With IGN

In their latest episode of Next-Gen Console Watch, IGN sat down with Thomas Puha (Communications Director at Remedy) to discuss the challenges of developing for the latest consoles as well as their predecessors. In his interview, Puha doesn't mince his words aa he talks about the realities of studios developing for both current and next-generation platforms.

Speaking to IGN, he reveals, "whenever you're in this cross-generational point, to be blunt, it sucks. You have to support the previous gen, make sure that sings, and then whatever you bring to next-gen is still limited by the choices you made years ago for the previous generation. It's not a very realistic thing, that this old game, we're just going to remake everything and then bring it to next-gen. It's just not like that. It's not a reality for us, because you're literally taking away resources that are building the future games and improving the engine for the future." Although he later adds that as things progress, the games on the consoles are naturally going to get stronger and take more advantage of the technology it provides.

He also specifically talks about Control and the challenges the multi-project studio faced bringing the Control Ultimate Edition to life, particularly for the Xbox Series S. When talking about bringing in new features, he admits that "nothing works at first. The content looks wrong, the textures look wrong, the lighting is busted, because we've made all these improvements but then they're incompatible with what we had in 2019. It took months - the game is running, we had it running back in summer of last year, but it didn't have any of the nice things... it just took quite a while to get to the level where we had everything working that we had in the previous-gen version. Now we can actually start doing all that cool next-gen stuff."

Currently, the team are working on four active projects, a multiplayer experience developed by Vanguard, one unannounced project, and the two unannounced Epic Games projects.

You can watch his twenty-minute interview below or on the IGN YouTube channel, HERE.

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6th April 2021 Remedy & Xbox Celebrates International Women's Day 2021

Keeping a track of the passing of time has been... an interesting challenge this past year, and while it feels like it was both so long ago and also still coming just up, March 8th was International Women's Day. Even though many studios are still working from home, developers still managed to get together virtually for special celebrations.

Remedy continued the tradition of a group photo with the help of modern technology, which they later published on their social media channels...

Happy International Women's Day from the women at Remedy!

We weren't able to meet in person this year, but some of us got together for a video call where we shared inspiring career stories. And then took a goofy photo... because why not. #InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/ADO2hQNbaC

— Remedy Entertainment (@remedygames) March 8, 2021

But that's not all! With the theme of "Women in Gaming", Xbox highlighted a different game on Twitch for a week. The games included Apex Legends (Monday), Control (Tuesday), Final Fantay XII: The Zodiac Age (Wednesday), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Thursday) and Stardew Valley (Friday).

The Control live stream was hosted by Tara (aka Ladie_Au_Pair) the Xbox Accessibility Program Manager and Gaming & Disability Community Lead, whose passion for Remedy's adventures clearly showed through. For the occasion, she played The Face of the Enemy and the beginning of Finnish Tango. If you missed it, you can catch the playthrough below!

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5th April 2021 Our Favourite Memories From Quantum Break Celebrating Quantum Break's Fifth Anniversary

It's been five years since Quantum Break launched on Xbox One and Windows 10, and to celebrate the incredible milestone, today we're looking back on the adventure and some of our favourite moments from its development and launch. Some of these are big events, whereas others are smaller tributes to the game. So, if you played Quantum Break when it came out and want to look back, or jumped onboard the community in recent years with Control and curious about the game, welcome! 

As the title was in development for about four years, this is by no means a comprehensive look back, just some of our favourite key posts and celebrations.

In addition to this article, we also have a competition running, so if you want to own some special Quantum Break merchandise goodness, make sure to check it out! We're giving away an anniversary prize pack containing a promotional t-shirt, a steel book, and Cam Rogers' Zero State novel. 

	Quantum Break Reveal Trailer [21st May 2013] Quantum Break was announced on stage at the Xbox One Reveal Event, as one of the very first games connected for the platform. That first trailer showed the mix between immersive gameplay and a live-action show.
	Sam Lake Announcement to the Fans [22th May 2012] Before the reveal of Quantum Break, many people were convinced that Alan Wake 2 was on its way. Remedy predicted the response and worked with the Humble Store to create a special Alan Wake pack with never-before-seen content.
	Quantum Break Gamescom 2014 [12th August 2014] On the Xbox stage at Gamescom 2014, we got our first look at Quantum Break's gameplay. The following days were packed with interviews with the devs. Meanwhile, players could step into the game in the booth using AR tech.
	Game Informer Spotlights Quantum Break [November 2015] In late 2015, Game Informer turned their attention to Quantum Break for a special magazine cover and month-long coverage.
	Max and Alan Play Quantum Break [1st April 2016] As part of a special April's Fools, Sam Lake and Ilkka Villi returned to their roles as Max Payne and Alan Wake as they checked out the latest Remedy game.
	Interview with Cam Rogers [5th April 2016] We sat down with Cam Rogers to talk about his latest book, Quantum Break: Zero State, which launched alongside the game. Cam's story takes a different route, taking alternative junction moments while still staying true to the feel of the world.
	Quantum Break Ringtones [11th April 2016] To celebrate the game's launch, Remedy posted a series of new Quantum Break ringtones on their website created by Petri Alanko (Composer) along with Ville Sorsa (Senior Audio Designer). True story, my notification sound is Jack's ringtone.
	Live Reading of Time Knife [14th April 2016] Following the launch of the game, Janina Gavankar set up a special live recording of Time Knife with Patrick Heusinger, Marshall Allman, Amelia Rose Blaire, Tyler Burton Smith and Adam R. Wood.
	Xbox On's TV Documentary Special [27th April 2016] As part of the game's post-release campaign, Xbox On released their Quantum Break TV Documentary Special, featuring interviews with Shawn Ashmore and Sam Lake.
	Quantum Break Bloopers [17th November 2016] Seven months after the game launched, the developers uploaded a video showcasing the bloopers and glitches that appeared while developing Quantum Break.
	Quantum Break Anniversary Celebrations [5th April 2017] One year after the game launched, Remedy returned for an anniversary post. In addition to a new video, the studio also published statistics on player activity.

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