Of course we expected to see the map editor Forge come back in Reach, as it became one of the most popular elements of Halo 3. What I don’t think anyone expected was for it to be as big as Bungie has now made it. Watch the above video, you’ll see they took two new maps as well as remakes of Halo CE’s Blood Gulch, Halo 2’s Santuary, and Halo 2’s Ascension and put them all into one amazing space.
The rules for Forge have been completely re-written and its now much easier to build custom maps and spaces as well as game types: like a version of King Of The Hill where the hill as a rocket launching Warthog.
The Transformers Panels have come and gone for the opening day of SDCC and we have nothing to really show for it.
There was very little discussion of toys. The War for Cybertron figures were shown briefly during discussion of the game. Some time was spent talking about the Powercore Combiners line, essentially reiterating that this line wasn’t replacing anything, only supplementing. They wanted to expand the world of combiners. When it came to talking about Generations, some of the new figures were shown including Hailstorm, Breacher, Seaspray, Terradive, Tomahawk and Highbrow. None of the showstopper reveals that happened at Botcon were shown here. No Jazz. No Thunderwing. No Scourge. No Windcharger. No Tracks. No Perceptor. No Grapple. No Lugnut. No Skullgrin. And what a lot of people were waiting for, No Kup.
Most of the discussion on both panels focused on Transformers: Prime. We got to see some new slides of what Ratchet, Arcee and Cliffjumper will look like (pictures after the jump). We also get our first look at the human characters. In addition, we were shown Decepticon troopers, which were described as being similar to Storm Troopers from Star Wars. No names. Just generic Decepticon bodies. Some avid fans may pick up on the fact that the Autobots had their own version of storm troopers in Transformers Animated in the form of AutoRoopers. Google that one, kids. Animated got that inspiration from another special place in Transformers history.
From what I can tell, it sounds like some very rough footage was shown as well, but there isn’t much on that. Frankly, it doesn’t feel like this show is as far along as they wanted it to be on the production side of things. They compensated for that at Botcon with lots of new toy reveals, but that was absent here.
[Update! – Crazy] IGN posted the teaser test footage from the panel! Added to top of post.
Square Enix are world famous for game series like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts. But in the last few years they have gotten into the high end collectible game with super detailed figures based on their games.
The next toys they’re bringing to market aren’t based on their own games but Microsoft & Bungie’s Halo: Reach. Details like pricing aren’t mentioned, but other 9 inch figures in their Play Arts line tend to go for around $40 in the US.
This is common knowledge at this point, but during one of the panels at SDCC, Joss Whedon was directly asked what his involvement was in the forthcoming Avengers film. His response was, “the Avengers directing job is not an official thing from Marvel but …I’m making it official RIGHT NOW!” So, there ya go. Joss Whedon is directing the Avengers. 20 minutes into the film, it will end prematurely and cause nerdrage throughout the internet causing countless online petitions to be started.
Hasbro continues to show us that Marvel Legends are simply an after-thought now during preview night when they showed us the 3 2-packs we voted on last year. The winners of that poll were Black Widow, Valkyrie and Deadpool. Deadpool will be packaged with Warpath in his current X-Force. There will be a variant pack where Deadpool will be wearing his X-Men costume from Cable and Deadpool. The variant version of Warpath will feature his more traditional costume.
The second 2-pack is Black Widow with Winter Soldier. The variants have Black Widow in a grey outfit with shorter hair, while Winter Soldier has longer hair. The third pack is Valkyrie and yet another Hulk figure. No word if there is a variant pack for those two.
No other Marvel Legends were seen during Preview Night. I will be genuinely surprised and happy if more are revealed over the next few days. These figures should start showing up in October as Toys R Us exclusives
SuperHeroHype has a great gallery of images from the Wanrer Bros. booth that has lots of props from upcoming movies including the Horcruxes from the final Harry Potter movie. That and THE CORPSE OF ABIN SUR! Yeah, you read that right. Abin-Sur’s corpse is on display in their booth for all to see.
Hasbro had lots of new Super Hero Squad assortments on display. I couldn’t really tell you whats new and what isn’t, but some of the multi-packs fascinated me. The one above includes Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Loki, Enchantress, and a Frost Giant! Notables single figures (from the 2-pack assortments) include MODOK, Taskmaster, Spiral, Bucky Cap, Ronan the Accuser and Thanos.
A full gallery of Marvel’s display from Preview Night can be found here at TNI where I mirrored some of the images from.
Diamond Select Toys has been doing a series of Crocodile Battle Beasts built around the mini-mate body as convention exclusives over the past year, each one sporting different accessories and color scheme. ToyNewsInternational snapped some pics (mirrored below) of what appears to be brand new Battle Beasts. It doesn’t look like these are built on the mini-mate body at all, in fact, I question their articulation. It looks like there is a rhino, octopus, monkey, iguana and a new crocodile.
There is no real indication of size or scale in the pictures, but there is placard stating they will be in stores in 2011 and retail for $14.99. Its not clear if that is individually or sold as a set. For their sake, I hope they are sold as a set because one figure with that amount of articulation for that price is a real tough sale for many collectors. And if I may say so the rhino and octopus are ADORABLE! I think I may have found a replacement line for the discontinued Robot Heroes I was collecting.
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