Adi Shankar, the producer behind Netflix’s upcoming animated series based on Castlevania, has announced his next video-game adaptation. The creator of the “bootleg universe” will next tackle Assassin’s Creed for Ubisoft, although details on the project are scarce at this point in time.
Shankar’s adaptation of Assassin’s Creed will be an original story, rather than a straight adaptation of one of the games, according to a report from Eurogamer. Given the franchise’s tendency to flit between characters and eras, it makes a lot of sense that the series would carve out its own path.
“I played the first edition of Assassin’s Creed the year I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my dream,” Shankar wrote in a Facebook post announcing the project. “At that moment I knew absolutely no one in the industry and could never have imagined that one day Ubisoft would ask me to take the world of Assassin’s Creed and create an original story set in it as an anime series. If anyone tells you not to follow your passion in life they are wrong.”
This isn’t Ubisoft’s first attempt to turn the series into a bona fide multimedia franchise. Last year’s film adaptation looked set to be an authentic take on the source material, but ultimately failed to resonate with either critics or audiences.
However, fans of the games should be very excited about the prospect of Shankar being involved with the animated series. The producer has already demonstrated his knack for getting video game adaptations right with Castlevania, which looks very promising.
Movies and television shows based on video games are doomed to fail if they can’t hone in on what makes the original property great. Shankar seems to have a good understanding of how to translate a game’s strengths into another medium — and his infectious energy makes it easy to get behind his output.
There’s currently no word on when the Assassin’s Creed series will be ready, or how it will be broadcast. However, given that Shankar already has a good relationship with Netflix, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see it land on the streaming service.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.