Today:
Ready to settle down and have a kid in Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
No? Tough, you're doing it anyway.
This is Checkpoint.
Hello and welcome to Beejpoint.
I'm Beej.
He's Beej.
As you've probably already heard, players of the latest Assassin's Creed Odyssey DLC, Shadow Heritage,
got a nasty shock when the game essentially railroaded them into settling down and having a family with a fellow assassin.
The outcome, which was described by Polygon's Colin Campbell as a hard cut to fetching groceries and cooing over a baby
happens no matter what.
A player can reject literally every advance made by the NPC in question,
and they will still end up making kissy faces until the stork shows up.
Even more galling is that the game ignores the sexuality choices players have made thus far.
Even if you've been playing as exclusively gay, your character will suddenly develop the overwhelming need to have a baby
and the bisexuality necessary to make that happen.
After the... understandably negative reaction, Ubisoft apologized, saying:
"The intention of the story was to explain how your character's bloodline has a lasting impact on the assassins,
but looking through your responses, it's clear that we missed the mark."
No kidding! Why is this even in the game?
Assassin's Creed has been moving away from the "you're reliving the past lives of your direct ancestors" angle.
You just need DNA for animus technology now.
Also, Ubisoft made a pretty big deal about how players could have full control over their characters'
Romantic and sexual exploits in this game,
which apparently meant full control unless it's important to the story *we* want to tell.
The absolute kicker though is the thought that anyone, anywhere, of any sexual orientation would go for somebody with these bangs.
Natakas... eugh,  no, bleh.
Breaking news from seven days ago!
And I know all of our checkpoint viewers have been smashing F5 with bated breath for this announcement:
Screen Gems, a Sony Pictures subdivision,
has successfully purchased the film rights to Ubisoft's mega popular masterpiece of story driven gameplay...
Just Dance.
Look, it doesn't matter who bought the rights or what they intend to do with them,
ultimately, I just figured we needed to point out how weird it is that we finally lost a
universal punch line to the harsh chill of reality.
Like, Just Dance is the title you bring up as a joke when someone tells you that PUBG or Candy Crush just sold its film rights.
What's next Ubisoft selling the film rights to just dance you'd say.
Or type, seeing is how you're probably having this conversation on Reddit or Discord and not in real life with your colleagues around the coffee maker.
And this wasn't one studio seeing a list of the top purchased video games with the widest player base and saying
"Huh, Just Dance is owned by 120 million people worldwide. Let me get my PayPal warmed up."
This was a competition. Multiple studios competed to purchase these rights.
Producers from multiple production houses are involved with development, and the only thing missing from this whole equation?
You'll never guess.
Script writers.
Ever get nostalgic for GTA 3?
But not the game you actually played, just the beta version of the game you maybe saw advertised?
Well, if that's you, weird flex but okay, and also good news!
A very dedicated team of modders are recreating the island of Portland from GTA 3
using old code and unused game assets to make a version of GTA 3 that was never actually released.
But what does that even mean?
Well mostly that the police vehicles are blue, the game's protagonist looks slightly different,
a lot of buildings are smaller or aren't there, and of course the HUD is uglier and worse.
Ah, progress.
Hbomberguy, real name Harry Brewis,
has just wrapped up his Donkey Kong 64 gaming marathon stream, and met his goal of raising $3,000 US for Mermaids,
a trans charity for children based in the United Kingdom.
Then he blew past that and raised $340,000 dollars total, also pledging to include Twitch bits and subs made during his fundraiser.
A remarkable story to be true, but one that doesn't surprise us here at Checkpoint.
Brewis started his fundraiser as a pointed "fuck you" to well-known comedy writer Graham Linehan,
who has been pushing to get Mermaids defunded by the National Lottery.
And if there's something that Checkpoint knows well,
it's how well you can appeal to people's sense of empathy and goodwill by also harnessing the power of spite.
The Child's Play charity wouldn't exist. If not to spite an idiot disgraced lawyer.
The Desert Bus game wouldn't exist if not to spite a US Attorney General who said something stupid about video games.
And two great tastes that taste great together wouldn't exist if you people didn't like watching us suffer for one week a year.
And while we're sad to see a stream end, and happy that Harry is getting some well-deserved sleep,
We're really just relieved that the thanks Graham hashtag will soon disappear, because for us it was really friggin' confusing.
Thanks for joining us for Beejpoint. Next week, Kathpoint.
I'm Kathleen.
No you're not.
And, hey, um, it's too bad Graham couldn't make it here this week,
but I'm glad he asked me to fill in, so thanks Graham.
Beej, No!
What, I'm taking it back!
We don't want it!
Coming up, rejoice vanilla Minecraft players,
you can now compost unwanted organic materials and turn them into bone meal.
But since the update makes no mention of receiving passive-aggressive notes from your neighbors about how you're composting wrong,
I'm gonna have to give it a 0 out of 10 for realism.
Throw the note in the compost. I mean it would be compostable.
