Visceral, the studio famous for its survival horror series Dead Space, is no more. Publishers EA has announced that the team, which were working on an action adventure Star Wars game with former writer of the Uncharted series Amy Hennig, will be “ramping down and closing”.

Development of the game, yet untitled despite being mentioned in various E3 conferences, will now transfer to EA Worldwide Studios, led by EA Vancouver.

Patrick Söderlund, Executive Vice President of EA, has explained that the Star Wars project is undergoing some big changes.

“Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In [...]

Need For Speed Payback features a three playable protagonists as a crew to take down The House, the controlling gang over Fortune Valley. But other than the the first few trailers we haven’t learned much about the story, or how these characters look like up close.

Now we do thanks to the new story trailer. Here’s a good look of Tyler, the man that would be doing all the street and drag racing, Jess the resident wheelman for doing high-stakes jobs and Mac, the drift and off-road guy.

Note that these are not FMVs like Need For Speed 2015, just good old in-game renders.

Need For Speed Payback is out on November 10 for the PS4, PC and Xbox One.

Need For Speed Rivals And Need For Speed 2015’s multiplayer mode were integrated directly into the single-player mode. You could invite other online races that are in your map to join a race. While it sounds great, players wanted dedicated multiplayer modes.

The last update to Need For Speed 2015 delivered that in the form of Speedlists. Need For Speed Payback will also use multiplayer Speedlists, but this time with some added improvements.

Players can now vote on the next event after the first one finishes, with players finishing in the bottom half of the standings table given more voting power. You could also keep the votes for use after the next event to ensure [...]

When EA dropped their trailer showcasing the world of Need For Speed Payback, it called it the biggest one for the franchise. But now they have released an image of the whole map of Fortune Valley to prove its point.

And it really is massive.

Here is the map of Fortune Valley. Look at how tiny the dense city part of the map occupies.

Fans who love the long windy highways like in Hot Pursuit 2010 will be glad to see they are back in full force. The city part looks more driveable now compared to Need For Speed 2015 which had a layout that really encourages you to drift. Payback will also feature off-road racing, so the vast desert at the center of the map [...]

Remember the crews in Need For Speed Carbon? In that game, you create your own crew and battle for turf against four main crews by winning racers. It’s an interesting gimmick, but it gives each AI racer some flair and identity rather than have them be some random cars you would ever take note of.

Need For Speed Payback is taking ques from this with Street Leagues. They are essentially various crews that operate at various part of Fortune Valley and specialise in specific racers.

Right now two of the Street Leagues have been revealed. One is Graveyard Shift, a crew that uses a lot of Día de Muertos (“Day of the Dead”) on their cars and focuses on races [...]

Star Wars Battlefront II, the new one not the 2005 classic, is getting an open beta. EA and DICE are taking the biggest feedback of the first new Battlefront, lack of content, to heart and is now making bullet points of it in promotions.

If you prefer to try the game yourself before release, this weekend is the time. It will begin on October 4 for those that pre-ordered, but the open beta will kick off on October 6 (4PM local time, GMT+8) and ends on October 9 (12 AM local time).

The beta will include Galactic Assault in Naboo, the 20v20 mode showed back at E3, Starfighter Assault on Fondor (space battles using ships), Strike on Takodana (no hero classes allowed, map [...]