Metaphor: ReFantazio, the newest game out of Japanese video game company Atlus’ Studio Zero, owes a lot to the Persona games that came before it. From the mind of longtime Persona designer Katsura Hashino, it’s a sprawling role-playing game that combines dungeon crawling with social sim elements, using a daily …
Read More »'Piece by Piece' Director Morgan Neville Will Never Use AI Again
Morgan Neville knows not everything we talk about will make it into this story. After making dozens of documentaries, he understands that in order to be told properly, the best stories have to leave some parts out. That’s definitely true of Piece by Piece, his new “creative nonfiction” documentary about …
Read More »Soon After the Deadly Hezbollah Pager Explosions, This AI-Generated Podcast Went Up
Last week, just hours after exploding pagers and two-way radios killed dozens of people in Lebanon and injured hundreds more, a peculiar new show appeared on podcast apps. Pager Protocol isn’t about the attacks aimed at Hezbollah members or the Israeli operatives believed to be behind them. It’s an ongoing …
Read More »‘The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ Trades Tropes for New Tricks
Nintendo, after nearly four decades, is taking The Legend of Zelda somewhere new. With Echoes of Wisdom, the video game company not only builds on the experimentation of its last Switch release, Tears of the Kingdom—it also does something no other Zelda title has done before: Give the princess power …
Read More »The Viral ‘Goodbye Meta AI’ Copypasta Will Not Protect You
“Goodbye Meta AI” is the most recent Facebook copypasta to go viral online. A chunky wall of text pasted against a hazy orange-yellow gradient background, it’s complete with all the trend’s hallmarks: vague references to the legal system and unilateral declarations of personal protection. It almost feels nostalgic, a blast …
Read More »What Really Happened While Filming Hodor’s Fateful 'Game of Thrones' Scene
The director for my final [Game of Thrones] episode is Jack Bender. As soon as I find out, I Google him. We’ve not met, but I try to second-guess how he’ll work. If this is to be an epic scene, I need to get it spot-on. His past accolades tell …
Read More »Your Dumb Memes Revived One of Butt Rock's Biggest Bands
Creed is having a moment. Actually, if we’re being precise, it’s having innumerable moments, over and over again, all across the internet. On Instagram, the band has been repurposed as a comedic device for dunking on President Joe Biden; on TikTok, shitposters imagined what it would be like to explain …
Read More »Meet the People Traveling the World, Thanks to Crowdfunding
On June 4th, Rachel Kelly and Matt Saunders set off on the adventure of a lifetime: driving the Pan American Highway. The couple from a small town in Surrey, England, went to the same school but matched on Tinder during the pandemic lockdowns. On their third date, Saunders planted the …
Read More »'Transformers One' Isn’t as Silly as It Looks
The new animated Transformers movie is ostensibly about the early lives of the characters from Hasbro’s 1980s toy line, but it also may be about a class uprising and civil rights. I think Transformers One even takes a jab at former president Donald Trump. Actually, it takes two: Main villain …
Read More »Watch Kamala Harris Take the WIRED Autocomplete Interview
In a wide-ranging WIRED Autocomplete Interview, Vice President Kamala Harris touched on everything from her debate with former president Donald Trump—which she found “quite enjoyable”—to her time as California’s attorney general to Taylor Swift’s endorsement. It’s a lively tour of Harris’ past and a preview of her plans for the …
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