World of Warcraft patch 3.3.2 brings with it the final wings of the Icecrown Citadel, and with it the final confrontation with Arthas of Menethil, the Lich King. Witness his final moments here, but be warned: spoilers abound.

Patch 3.3.2 is the culmination of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft, allowing players entry into Frostwing Halls, where the Lich King awaits. Should the players be triumphant, this is the cinematic they will witness. It’s a touching scene between one of WoW’s most tragic figures and his father, reunited after the son killed his sire so many years before. If you’ve been following the game’s lore, it could bring a tear to your eye. If you haven’t, it’s just so much machinima.

Again, hit play at your own risk. I’d never see this content first-hand, so I don’t mind being spoiled.

Patch 3.3.2 – The Fall of the Lich King [MMO Champion]

Here’s the obligatory paragraph I put in between the lead and the actual rating listing, in order to make sure no one accidentally reads more than they want to and then blames me for ruining the game, global warming, and their parents never really loving them. I just like to make sure my arse is covered, generally with something soft and cottony.

Much of what the ESRB reveals in its expansive rating description we’ve already seen. We know about the stripping at least, and some of the scenes described have been see, at least in some part, in various gameplay trailers fluttering around the internet. That having been said, the description does contain bits you’ll probably want to experience for yourself. Consider this warning paragraph 3.

If you do decide to read ahead, I think it helps if you imagine the poor ESRB ratings representative who had to sit through all of this, taking notes. One hopes that he or she enjoyed themselves, but you can almost feel them squirming uncomfortably.

Heavy Rain
Platform: PlayStation 3

Rating: Mature

Content descriptors: Blood, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs

Rating summary:

In this cinema-style action game, players control one of four main characters whose lives are altered by events surrounding the investigation of the Origami Killer, a serial killer who kidnaps children in public places. Gameplay consists of controlling a character in a fully interactive environment; choosing a variety of action-, dialogue-, and decision-paths based on on-screen prompts; and watching as cinematic cutscenes progress the somewhat dark (film noir-style) storyline.

Players may encounter victims at various crime scenes: a woman (fully clothed) in a bathtub tainted with blood; a child under forensic examination (though the scene is largely narrative and clinical, with no depiction of victim’s face or signs of trauma). More direct depictions of violence include the following: a woman squirming and screaming as she catches on fire; a man impaled in the chest with a power drill; a female attacked in her own home by masked male assailants (the scene is prolonged); and a man shot (shown in slow-motion) by police officers. Blood sometimes accompanies the acts of violence-whether triggered or viewed passively.

The most intense instance of violence occurs during a “lizard trial” sequence in which players’ character, Ethan, is forced to cut off a segment of his own finger to save his son’s life: Several instruments (saw, scissors, knife, etc.) can be used to remove the finger; and though the camera pans away from the actual dismemberment-instead the blade, the blood, the scream-the scene’s poring focus on Ethan’s psychological tenor/terror (the dread deliberation before the cut) may be unnerving for some.

The game contains sexual content and nudity. Shower cutscenes may depict a male character’s bare butt; if players control the female character, her breasts and buttocks are also briefly visible. A more prolonged instance of nudity occurs during a female character’s investigation of a seedy club owner: After getting him alone in a room, the player-character is asked to strip; at gunpoint, she dances topless in front of the man. The game also contains a prompt-based love scene (kissing and rubbing) in which players match on-screen cues to angle characters’ mouths, remove shirts and blouses, unhook bras, and lower to the floor; a woman briefly appears topless amidst the dark shadows and heavy breathing-actual sex is never depicted as the camera fades to black.

The camera does not fade on characters addicted to the fictional drug Triptocaine, referred to as “dope” in the game: Players may see a character trembling next to open vials; lines of cut white powder on a table; and a man staggering from the drug’s ill-effects, as the screen turns blurry. Consumers may also wish to know that the game contains strong profanity (e.g., “f**k,” “motherf**ker,” “sh*t,” and “a*shole”). Overall, the game’s highly evolved motion-capture graphics (advanced renderings by 2010 standards) sharpen the sense of realism, increasing the impact of some aspects of pertinent content (the nudity, blood, violence, etc.).

ESRB Rating INformation for Heavy Rain [ESRB via CVG]

OK. If you’re this far into this post, then I assume you have finished Assassin’s Creed II or don’t mind having parts of it spoiled for you.

We talked in some general terms about making a game based on history. It’s something that Desilets sees as an Assassin’s Creed franchise trademark but also “a pain in the arse sometimes”. It creates rules that he and the team who conceive the AC storylines are tempted to obey. “Sometimes it gives us ideas. Sometimes it gives us constraints… You want to kill that character, but he didn’t die until he was old. So how do we kill him? So we don’t kill him.” Historical characters will only die when they died in real life.

Consider, then, that the following is an Assassin’s Creed franchise rule regarding the death of the fictional characters in the games “that cannot be transgressed,” according to Desilets: “You cannot have your ancestor die, because then you couldn’t have any memory. You need to move the memory forward.” So Ezio or Altair or whoever else might star in the playable historical re-lived memories of true Assassin’s Creed protagonists, the modern-day Desmond Miles, cannot be killed in the memories Desmond is experiencing. Otherwise, those memories could not have been passed down. But, Desilets noted with a chuckle, there probably is one way around this limitation: “The only way would be to die while f—king.”

Some history is bent in the series, of course. Players know this as long as they assume that Rodrigo Borgia may not have really been in a secret society that sought a sci-fi golden apple. And they might know this if they believe that Machiavelli wasn’t really in an assassin’s guild. These deviation from historical fact are OK, Desilets said. “It’s a feeling.” He could see Machiavelli as a fighter. “Is he a fighter really? He was more of an intellectual. But it seems neat to have Machiavelli with a weapon. It’s much more cool than to have this guy who is always writing. That’s not fun. So we decided he fights, but that’s not [the real] Machiavelli.” On the other hand, Leonardo Da Vinci cannot be an assassin. Ever. “Imagine Leonardo with a sword and it doesn’t fit… There’s so many things we can do that sometimes we just have to say, ‘I feel it or not.’ And it’s not really much more scientific than that.”

Rules of life, death and sex aside, why did Patrice Desilets go and mix the widely-praised historical parts of Assassin’s Creed with the less popular parts of the series that go all sci-fi, with an end of the world, 2012 pending apocalypse, evil corporations and a seemingly alien race meddling with human history? (Remember I said this post would be all-spoiler?)

Desilets describes the series as “A mix of what I really like: history and science fiction. It’s a junction between the two.” He is aware that the Desmond parts, slow-paced and frequent in the first Assassin’s Creed and more sparingly used and action-based in the sequel aren’t universally loved. “I know a lot of people are more into the history than the present, but I know that this time around [with the sequel] people understand the present part much more than they did in the first game. In the first game they thought it was useless, but now I’m reading some forums people want to know what’s happening with Desmond. Even if some people, like IGN, don’t want us to talk about Desmond.

He’s aware that some people felt blindsided by the amount of sci-fi in Assassin’s Creed II, especially the end-game conversation between Ezio, Desmond and the otherworldly Minerva about a pending modern apocalypse. But that’s what players signed up for. “It’s been there all along, since the first one, since we developed our thing. If you remember, at the end of AC1 the apple showed this entire world map. No, it’s planned. I don’t want to talk too much about it, but it’s a narrative part of our backstory… it’s a mix of historical accuracy and science fiction and where they meet.” He cites Dune and Isaac Asimov as personal sci-fi favourites as well as a love for history and a fascination with assassins.

A few more spoiler topics. That Alatair flashback in Assassin’s Creed II? “The flashback was planned as soon as we did our first conception meeting [for the sequel],” he said. These days, it seems natural that Assassin’s Creed II would have a different main playable protagonist than the first game. But it was a creative and business risk to chuck the lead character from a popular first game. So Altair had to at least show up. “We said we needed to do something with Altair. Alatair needs to be back somehow. He can’t be the star of the show, otherwise we missed our point… but somehow he needs to be back. [We came up with] this bleeding effect that would allow Desmond to re-live a memory without an Animus. We said that’s great. And we have Acre, the map, so we said let’s take a portion of it and make it and we can tell a portion of the story of Altair.” Was it wedged in by marketing to promote the Altair-starring Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines? Desilets said the marketing team can have good ideas, just like anyone, but it sounds like they’re not the ones to credit/blame for ACII’s Altair return.

Back to the past. Assassin’s Creed II, via some cutscenes and the level unlockable via a Uplay connection, explains some of the Assassin’s guild history that bridges the first console game and the second. It mentions Dante and Marco Polo. Even further into the past, ACII shows what appears to be the Biblical Adam and Eve running through a Garden of Eden that is really an alien (or lost) civilisation on Earth. I asked Desilets if I could infer from all that that we could get an Assassin’s Creed: Adam and Eve: “I don’t know. Not any time soon. Is that a good answer?”

Desilets is coy about who would star in future Assassin’s Creed games. But he is playful about the possibilities: “You never know… you could also say, ‘Oh there’s six more games to do with all the assassin’s that we showed you. We could do games about them. … We did a graphic novel and in the beginning of the graphic novel there’s another assassin from the Roman Empire. We could do a game about that.”

So, no hints? No. But he did say that the outline for the Assassin’s Creed series is more fleshed out now than ever before. “I have a general idea of where we want to go. The more we go forward the more we know the more we decide this idea goes, let’s do this, this and this. It’s not like the [storyline] bible is perfect and finished. It’s ongoing for us. But we know more and more now.”

And now, Assassin’s Creed II fans, the floor is yours. Feel free to talk about spoilers, be it what Desilets had to say or your own theories.

It should go without saying, but… SPOILER WARNING!

Thanks to Dead Space: Extraction hitting the streets in Australia a whole week earlier than here in the US, we’ve got nothing better to do than watch an Australian gamer play through the first fifteen minutes.

I know it’s an on rails shooter a “guided first person experience” and I usually hate being told what to do — but based on this footage, I’m pleased with how Extraction turned out. We’ll see how the whole game goes when I buy it next week.

Video: Dead Space Extraction – The first 15 minutes [Vooks]

Spoiler alert! If you’re going to play Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned and find digitally rendered flaccid penises offensive, you may want to avert your sensitive eyes during one in-game cinematic.

Rockstar Games, no stranger to controversy as marketing tool, will likely come under fire for its inclusion of completely uncensored, full frontal male nudity in The Lost and Damned, giving us our very first glimpse of digital dick on the Xbox 360. To say it was a surprise would be an understatement, as the scene in question is expert at providing flirtatious glimpses of one character’s fleshy business, only to give Congressman Thomas Stubbs’ junk plenty of screen time.

Allow us to set the scene…

Stubbs, in his first meeting with lead character Johnny Klebbitz, is receiving a massage at the private gentleman’s club Jousters when we meet him. The Congressman, dressed in nothing but a towel, quickly becomes pretty comfortable with his new biker friend, choosing to deliver his monologue in the buff.

While Rockstar’s cinematics director teases the player with mere glimpses of Mr. Stubbs’ junk, during the final moments of the cinematic, we get to see everything: a very poorly groomed, uncut and unabashed set of man tools.

We’ve opted not to include a shot of the scene, instead choosing to show the next encounter between Messrs. Klebitz and Stubbs, which also happens to be mostly clothing free.

The ESRB rating for the game—which is “M” for Mature—does make mention of the gratuitous digital dick on display, noting that the game has “Nudity” in its content. The original Grand Theft Auto IV is listed as having only “Partial nudity.”

There is no lack of homosexual innuendo in the expansion, as the Lost bikers regularly question one another’s sexuality and gush about the love of brotherhood throughout the game, but it certainly was surprising to see Rockstar go there.

Eagle-eyed readers Andrew D. Larry B. and Captain McNinja spotted four new achievements for Fallout 3, worth 100 gamerscore, up on their Xbox profiles. I guess this needs a spoiler alert. So, there it is.

The achievements are “Aiding the Outcasts,” “The Guns of Anchorage,” “Paving the Way” and “Operation Anchorage.” Of course, we knew about “Operation Anchorage” already. Guess these are the three missions of the DLC pack that hits Tuesday for 800 Microsoft Points, and then the big 40 point achievement is given out if you finish the new quest entirely. Word is the download pack will provide about 3 to 4 more hours of gameplay.

Operation Anchorage [Fallout Wiki -- SPOILER ALERT]

Not the kind of spoilers that ruin missions or stories. This is more like a hands-on discussion of the game’s feel and environment. But if you want to go into this game wide-eyed, jaw-dropping at the depth and complexity of the world you’ll be living in for the next three to six months, especially if you’re employed, then do not follow the jump.

I think you can still listen to this and be blown away by the game, but if you’re sensitive to this sort of thing, you have been warned.

Clip one is the juicy spoiler clip. I’m not even going to mark timestamps because there’s really no nonspoiler material. You either want to listen to it or not. Here’s some highlights:

• Apparently Anthony Cumia appears in this game as an Italian gangster, and even sings in it.

• Pisswasser — “cheap German beer brewed for export only” — is the game’s leading beer brand. They play the radio ad for it at 1:40.

• There will be an “in-game Internet” that sounds astoundingly deep, with spoofs of blogs and news sites, including conservative and liberal themed news sources. They’ll report directly on the mayhem you cause, and have annoying pop up banners for shows like “America’s Next Top Hooker.” There is also “Craplist,” a Craigslist spoof that emulates CL’s notorious personals — right down to hooking Niko up on in-game dates, Lazlow says.

Part II is a little more generic and doesn’t really give much away, devoting the opening to hating on the Wii. They’re playing it in the studio and calling out some of the gameplay details. Lazlow says there have been discussions of “light concepts” for a sequel but nothing solid yet. O&A, naturally, encourage a rural-based GTA so you can do unnatural acts with chickens.

Some of my favourite Lazlow comments (because they hit close to home).

• “It’s OK when you’re obsessed with ‘The Wire,’ but people think it’s wrong when it’s a video game.” (so true.)

• “My problem is, I tend to drink when I play, and playing Call of Duty drunk does not go well, especially when some 15-year-old knifes you in the back.”

I’ve linked the YouTube audio, as the O&A site apparently requires you to listen to the entire show via Audiobooks or something.

Part One (8:57)

Part Two (9:25)

Lazlow Jones Interviewed on Opie & Anthony, April 18. [YouTube user k2dart, via Reddit]