The Last of Us Season 2 premiere didn't waste any time introducing the new characters from The Last of Us Part II. It also debuted a terrifying new version of the infected that was only briefly seen in the game.

There are spoilers ahead for the premiere of The Last of Us Season 2.

During the episode, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) has a close encounter with a stalker--an infected that can sneak up on its victims. It's smarter than the average infected as well. Co-showrunner Craig Mazin spoke with IGN about the introduction of the stalkers and hinted that they will play a larger role in Season 2.

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It's no secret that the Borderlands movie did not perform well, with audiences and critics alike ridiculing everything from the film's casting choices to its dialogue. Even some of its creators disliked the film--writer Craig Mazin was so unhappy with the final cut that he requested his name be removed from the film's credits. Now, director Eli Roth is opening up about what went wrong behind the scenes, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as a major factor in the film's poor reception.

Appearing on a recent episode of The Town podcast, Roth was asked about Borderlands, and initially seemed unwilling to give a detailed answer, saying that if he talked about what happened, "someone's going to look bad, and usually it's just the director."

Roth did detail his first time viewing the final cut of the film, which grossed only $33 million worldwide. From the way he describes it, it seems the director wasn't sure what to expect when he sat down to watch his film.

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There were reportedly 5.3 million people in the US who watched the Season 2 premiere of The Last of Us. That same-day viewership tops Season 1's debut night over two years ago, which saw 4.7 million people checking out the HBO series.

According to Deadline, HBO noted that the 5.3 million same-day viewers for The Last of Us Season 2 premiere represents a 10% increase over Season 1. The debut episode of the show--which is based on Naughty Dog's video game franchise--has now been seen by 32 million people. That's apparently the most ever for an HBO and Max series premiere.

In 2023, The Last of Us saw the second-biggest debut on HBO since 2010 when Boardwalk Empire launched. Only House of the Dragon has started off stronger, with almost 10 million viewers watching the Game of Thrones spin-off's premiere on opening night in 2022.

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Bungie finally lifted the lid on its extraction shooter Marathon this week, and while the game looks like a vibrant entry in the genre, it has been negatively compared to Sony's live-service flop Concord. Both games share similar elements, being live-service sci-fi shooters with a colorful art direction, but one former Concord developer wants people to not only give Bungie's project a chance when it launches later this year, but to also show some compassion for the people working on it.

"After reading the comments about Marathon being Concord 2.0 on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitch, I just wanted to share a little insight into what a 40-year-old man is feeling after dedicating a large portion of his life to making videogames," former Firewalk Studios senior VFX artist Stephan Williams wrote on the Marathon subreddit (via VG247). "Seeing the faces of the developers on the Bungie stream gave me hope and excitement for what is to come for Marathon," Williams added. "I commend them for taking a chance, trying something foreign to them, that isn't proven, nor guaranteed to succeed. It takes a lot of courage."

Williams explained that while Concord "failed to inspire players," there were lessons to be learned from that "gut-wrenching" failure. Now a senior VFX artist at Warframe studio Digital Extremes, Williams stressed that video games are meant to be fun and that people need to be kinder to the developers working on them behind the scenes.

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Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida has shared his thoughts on the Nintendo Switch 2, saying Nintendo is "losing their identity" with the console due to its lack of new and exciting features. Appearing on the Easy Allies podcast, Yoshida said, "I have to be polite," adding, "To me it was a bit [of a] mixed message from Nintendo. In a sense I think Nintendo is losing their identity, in my opinion."

Yoshida, in his decades of experience working in the video game industry, said he observed over the years that Nintendo always stood out by creating some kind of "new experience" that no one saw coming.

"But Switch 2, as we all anticipated, is a better Switch, right? It's a larger screen, more powerful processor, higher resolution, 4K 120fps. They even had their hardware person starting the stream as other platforms do," he said. "And because it's a better Switch, the core premise of the whole Switch 2 is, 'We made things better.' And that's something other companies have been doing all the time."

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Ubisoft has released its colorblind simulation tool, Chroma, to the general public after several years in development. It's available to check out over on Github.

In the announcement, Ubisoft explained that there are an estimated 300 million people across the globe who are impacted by colorblindness. Chroma's purpose is to simulate the three major colorblindness types: Protanopia, Deuteranopia, and Tritanopia.

Ubisoft also said that its quality-control team in India started developing Chroma in 2021. The team wanted to create a tool that could provide real-time feedback so developers could simultaneously control the game and simulate colorblindness.

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