Five Facts Episodes 2016

Game 	Facts	Air Date 	Links
Assassin's Creed Syndicate 	1. Assassin's Creed Syndicate 's inclusion of a transgender character, a first for the series, caused Ubisoft to change their famous various beliefs statement for the first time in the history of the franchise. Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multi-cultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations, and gender identities.
2. According to the game's Creative Director, Marc-Alexis Côté, Syndicate's 1868 setting was carefully selected by the developers at Ubisoft to maximize the amount of historical figures they could put into the game.
3. According to Ubisoft, creating the setting of the Assassin's Creed game was very different compared to previous efforts. This was because of the fact photographs of 1860 London actually exist, this along with video footage from slightly later in history helped the developers accurately create a believable London.
4. Due to the near disastrous launch of Assassin's Creed Unity on a technical level, Ubisoft began play-testing Syndicate earlier in development than ever before. They also made sure it covered every aspect of the game to ensure a great experience from day one. They also dropped multi-player from the game to only focus on single-player.
5. Assassin's Creed Syndicate may hold the title of the fastest leaked Assassin's Creed game. Screenshots of the game, then referred to as "Assassin's Creed Victory", were leaked nearly two months after the release of Assassin's Creed Unity.	January 6, 2016 	1
Mad Max 	1. Mad Max creator, George Miller, proposed the original idea for a Mad Max game in 2008. It was supposed to be a tie-in with an animated Mad Max film, but that plan fell through sometime before the initial development of the game. Although these two projects were unrelated, George Miller offered developer Avalanche Studios help during pre-production.
2. During development the game had to be completely re-tooled due to the apparent graphical limitations of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Both of those versions were dropped at that point and the game was pushed from 2014 to 2015.
3. During private screenings of the game, Max had an American accent, much to the dismay of excited Mad Max fans. Fortunately, he has an Australian accent in the final version of the game.
4. Developer Avalanche Studios stated that one of the biggest challenges they had to face was creating the vehicular combat element of the game due to their inexperience with the concept. Although developing the Just Cause series helped them with things like the Sandbox element to the game, the vehicle based combat was something new to them.
5. Mad Max doesn't tie-in with the Mad Max: Fury Road film because of Warner Bros. previous experience with Batman Arkham series. They wanted the game to stand by itself similar to their Batman games and not have players simply play the movie.	January 13, 2016 	2
Just Cause 3 	1. Developer Avalanche Studios develop both Just Cause 3 and Mad Max at the same time. The main studio in Sweden developed Mad Max while the New York branch handled this game.
2. The setting of Just Cause 3 is inspired by the landscape of Monaco and the south of the Mediterranean Sea. Avalanche Studios sent a team to several islands to get a feel for what they look like in person.
3. Despite being developed for a generation console, the six of Just Cause 3 's map is very similar to the map of Just Cause 2. Instead of making a bigger game, developers decided to focus on what's inside of that space and improve the density of the area.
4. According to the game's art director, in order to give the player the feeling of being in a world under a dictatorship, a color scheme of grey, yellow, and red is used to convey oppression.
5. Similar to what Dyson with Star Wars Battlefront, Avalanche Studios brought in the team behind the Burnout series to work on the vehicles and driving elements of the game.	January 19, 2016 	3
"Variety Pack #11" Deus Ex, The Halo Series, Mortal Kombat X, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Black Ops III	1. Deus Ex: Due to graphical limitations, the Twin Towers were absent from the New York City skyline in Deus Ex. According to the in-game explanation, they were destroyed during a terrorist attack. However the game came out a full year before the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
2. The Halo Series: Master Chief was the very first video game character to have a statue at a Madame Tussauds museum. It was over seven feet tall, weighed 275 pounds, and took 892 man hours to complete.
3. Mortal Kombat X: The Foley team behind Mortal Kombat X used green slime and a plunger to create many of the game's gruesome sound effects. They also smashed various fruits and vegetables with a hammer for additional sounds.
4. Wolfenstein: The New Order: Due to the developer's successful efforts to censor everything Nazi-related in The New Order, it wound up being the first Wolfenstein game ever to be officially released in Germany.
5. Black Ops III: In September 2015, the Call of Duty Twitter account changed it's name to "Current Events Aggregate", and started to tweet fake news stories to promote the game's campaign, including ones about a terrorist attack. The director to the game had to make an apology due to the negative reaction to Treyarch's "irresponsible behavior".	January 27, 2016 	4
Five Nights At Freddy’s 	1. Developer, Scott Cawthon, got the idea for Five Nights At Freddy’s after receiving a lot of negative feedback on his previous game, Chipper and Son’s Lumber Co. Many players were freaked out by the unintentional animatronic look of the characters. This made Cawthon want to expand on that, and make an actual horror game.
2. During development, the player would get a limited number of lives, as indicated by a stick figure with a number net to it during the night transition screen. However, this was removed in the final version of the game, leaving players to complete it with a single life.
3. By clicking Freddy's nose on the "Celebrate!" poster in the office, you will hear a honking sound. It doesn't affect the gameplay in any way.
4. During development, the names of the animatronics were all placeholder names while their designs were being worked on. When it was finally time to give them their official names, Cawthon had grown too attached to the placeholders and kept them the same.
5. Cawthon modeled Foxy during a 24 hour drive to visit his in-laws. He blames Foxy's torn up look on the bumpier parts of his trip.
6. Many fans theorize that this game takes place around 1993 based on the paycheck that you receive will be in the game. You're paid $120 for five days of work, six hours a day. After doing the math, you end up making four dollars an hour that is very close to minimum wage for that year.
7. In the game's trailer, you can see Bonnie taking off his mask, revealing his endoskeleton. None of the characters do this in the final version of the game presumably because it is against the rules at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza for the characters to not have their costumes on.
8. The 'phone guy', who helps you through the first four nights, is actually voiced by game creator Scott Cawthon.
9. Sometimes when checking the 2B camera, a poster of a Golden Freddy will appear. After returning to the office, an empty Golden Freddy suit will be sitting in front of you. If you don't go back to the camera right away, he will attack you and crash the game. It is also possible to see this Golden Freddy kill screen by setting the AI levels 1987 on the custom seventh night.
10. Originally, Freddy was supposed to be a stationary character, only moving in for the kill after the player loses power. However, Cawthon decided to change this from the final release since he was the titular character.	February 2, 2016
February 16, 2016	5
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Team Fortress 2 	1. Through Team Fortress 2 's long development process, 3 or 4 different games were created before a final version was made that contained all of the best aspects of those original attempts. Team Fortress 2 was announced at E3 1999 and didn't come out until 2007.
2. One of the original ideas for Team Fortress 2 was to have it be heavily militaristic in terms of visual style and gameplay. After the mid-2000 delay caused by switching to the Source engine, the game began to stray further and further away from that initial idea, and became more cartoony.
3. According to an official Valve publication, artist like J.C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and Norman Rockwell heavily influenced the art style of Team Fortress 2.
4. The voices for the playable characters were based on "what Americans in the 60s would've imagined these people had sounded like", according to writer Chey Faliszek.
5. According to Valve's Robin Walker, Team Fortress 2 went Free-to-Play on June 23, 2011 because Valve had learned over time that the more players Team Fortress 2 had, the more value it had for each player.	February 9, 2016 	7
Rainbow Six: Siege 	1. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Patriots was announced in 2011 and Ubisoft had planned to release the game, for the now previous and current generations of consoles. However, once they began to focus on the concept of destructibility, it was clear that it wouldn't work for the older consoles. The game was scrapped in2014 and destruction became the focus of the new game, Rainbow Six Siege.
2. When Ubisoft was still prototyping, they decided to hold an internal tournament for the game. After a team of pro-shooter players wounded up losing, Ubisfot realized how important teamwork was. This helped them shape the teamwork elements of the game during the rest of development.
3. During development the game used red shit markers to show players when they landed a shot on an opponent player. It had to be removed though because they let players know if someone was behind a destructible object, which in turn, caused players to "spray and pray" until the target was eliminated.
4. The Orange Team and Blue Team multiplayer logos are references to older Rainbow Six games. The Orange Team's logo is a reference to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Rogue Spear, while the Blue Team's logo is a reference to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 Raven Shield.
5. Former military officers, ex-counter terrorism unit members, and police officers did all the motion-capture for Rainbow Six Siege in order to make the game more realistic.	February 24, 2016	8
"Fact Check #9" Alien Isolation, Fallout 4, Borderlands 2, Arkham Knight, The Bard's Tale 	1. Alien Isolation: During Development, the team behind Alien Isolation wanted the game to use a third-person perspective, however, that idea was scrapped in favor of having it use a first-person perspective. It was scrapped because the developers thought that a first-person view would really make players feel like they were being hunted.
2. Fallout 4: FALSE
3. Borderlands 2: FALSE
4. Arkham Knight: After the PC version of Arkham Knight was updated to fix the frame rate, among many other things, the game's cover art was altered slightly. In the original artwork there was a speed limit sign that showed 30 mph behind Batman, however, it was changed to 60 mph after the update as a reference to the frame rate problems they were trying to solve.
5. The Bard's Tale: The Disk art for the 2004 game, The Bard's Tale, contains a message that reads "For a really disturbing image, flip disk over." Amusingly, it's just a plain reflective surface.	March 1, 2016 	9
Dying Light 	1. Dying Light 's dynamic day-night cycle was just one of many elements cut from developer Techland's previous zombie game Dead Island. Which they wanted to use in a new IP after splitting with publisher Deep Silver.
2. During development, Techland decided to rework the parkour system they were creating in order to focus more on natural movement. Because of this shift, much of the game had to be rebuilt, and the game's release date was pushed back.
3. While testing Dying Light, players were getting so stressed out during the night time parts of the game that they refused to move until the sun came back up. This caused Techland to eventually tone down the difficulty of the game.
4. According to the game's composer Pawel Blaszczak, zombie movie soundtracks from the 70's and 80's inspired the music created for Dying Light. Instead of using typical horror music, he felt that the sadder tone of the music from those films was a better fit.
5. In order to make the story more enjoyable for North American audiences, Techland brought in American comic book writer and novelist Dan Jolley to write for Dying Light. Jolley is known for his work with D.C Comics, particularly with the Firestorm character.	March 8, 2016 	10
Far Cry Primal 	1. Back in October 2015 a game called Far Cry Sigma appeared on the Steam database. The titled confused both fans and members of the press before Ubisoft revealed it was just a code name for the next big project, Far Cry Primal.
2. Ubisoft worked extensively with anthropolgist and linguistics to create three fictional languages based on real proto Indo-European language for the three tribes featured in the game.
3. According to Ubisoft, one of the most important challenges during development was altering the combat in AI due to the lack of firearms in the game. It was also the task that took the longest to complete.
4. The ecosystem in the game contains so may different interactions that even the developers were surprised at what certain animals could do. At one point while testing the game, a saber-tooth was collecting dead bodies and storing them in a cave, the developers weren't sure why.
5. Shortly after the game's release, many fans noticed similarities between the map from Far Cry Primal and the map from Far Cry 4. In fact if you place one map on top of the other, they seem to be almost exactly the same in terms of layout.	March 15, 2016 	11
Tom Clancy's The Division 	1. Originally Ubisoft planned for The Division to be console exclusive, however after gauging consumer interest by asking fans to sign an online petition, they eventually decided to release a PC version as well.
2. The game’s setting of New York was not only chosen due to its landmarks and cultural significance, in fact part of the reason New York was chosen is because of its history of resilience and toughness after terrible events like the attacks on 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy.
3. When Tom Clancy’s The Division was first announced, many fans were excited by the idea of the plan kit companion app, which would allow players to do things like fly drones to assist defensive efforts. However as development continued, Ubisoft thought it would create an unfair situation and imbalances, so the app was scrapped.
4. During the game’s beta, players could accept game invites by clicking the right stick, however this was also mapped to the game’s melee attack. After noticing players in the beta constantly accepting party invites by accident, Ubisoft changed it before final release. According to Creative Director Magnus Jansen, the beta was probably the only way they could have found this out to do the nature of internal testing.
5. At first The Division broke the 24 hour sales record for Ubisoft title, then a few days later the game came in as the biggest first week ever for a new game franchise. Over the first five days generated $330 million dollars globally.	March 22, 2016 	12
"Variety Pack #12" Black Ops III, Minecraft, Bioshock Infinite, Portal, Bloodborne 	1. Black Ops III: In order to effectively market the next game, in the Call of Duty Black Ops franchise, developer Treyarch patched Snapchat icons into Black Ops 2 in April 2015, to show players teaser videos pertaining to Black Ops III.
2. Minecraft: The Geological Survey of Sweden, a government agency that deals with geological and mineral management, released a mod for Minecraft called “Better Geo.” This mod makes the game’s geology more realistic in an effort to increase public awareness of geology.
3. Bioshock Infinite: When looking at certain buildings in the distance, you can see unused political posters featuring early designs of the game’s antagonist, Zachary Hale Comstock. These buildings are reused assets from earlier builds of the game, likely going back to the year 2010.
4. Portal: According to the development commentary for Portal, GLaDOS had a few different designs during development including a floating brain, a spider-like machine, and an upside down version of Botticelli’s famous, the Birth of Venus made of robot parts and wires.
5. Bloodborne: During the game’s alpha, it was possible to get into an unfinished boss fight where the boss would say “umbasa”, a common word used by NPCs in Demon’s Souls while dying. This was removed before the final release, though possibly because the game’s director said that they wanted this to be a separate IP in a new universe.	March 31, 2016 	13
Metal Gear Solid 	1. The “Solid” in Metal Gear Solid has three different meanings according to Creator Hideo Kojima. Solid refers to the character Solid Snake, the fact that the game uses 3D graphics, and the rivalry between Konami and fellow game developer Square, since a square is a 2D shape.
2. While designing the different areas in a levels in Metal Gear Solid, developers used Lego bricks to lay out and visualize their ideas.
3. Most of the game’s voice actors were credited under various pseudonyms because they weren’t sure the Screen Actors Guild supported the project.
4. The 1978 film The Fury, was an inspiration for Psycho Mantis’ powers. In fact, Kojima told the game’s Motion Director to watch the film before working on the character.
5. Voice actor David Hayter, who voiced Solid Snake in the game, is a successful screenwriter as well. His writing credits include, X-Men, Watchmen, and The Scorpion King to name a few.	April 5, 2016 	14
Super Mario Maker 	1. Originally, Super Mario Maker was intended to be a course creation tool for Nintendo’s internal development teams to use. However, after the team working on the tool realized its potential, it was pitched to an executive at Nintendo as a standalone game. 
2. During development, the team behind Mario Maker was given a huge collection of children’s toys to play with. At the end of the experiment, the team came up with a hundred sixty ways to play with the toys. It was Nintendo’s hope that some of the ideas generated from this exercise could be translated into ideas for the game.
3. While the developers were working on Mario Maker, they thought about including a checkpoint flag in the game’s asset pool but eventually decided that it would be too difficult. However once they saw the strong demand for it on day one, they quickly worked on a solution to include the flag in a November update.
4. You can add a CRT TV Effect to a level if you hold A-B-A and down while the level is loading. 
5. As of February 2016, more than six million courses have been created since the release of Super Mario Maker in September 2015.	April 13, 2016 	15
Psychonauts 	1. Back in the 1990s, Tim Schafer designed an adventure game for LucasArts called Full-Throttle. During development, Schafer had an idea where the main character would experience a hallucinogenic trip, although that idea never made it into the game, that went on to become the inspiration for Psychonauts.
2. When development on Psychonauts first began in 2001, it was supposed to be an Xbox exclusive title. However, the publishing deal with Microsoft was pulled for a variety of reasons including creative differences. Eventually Double Fine came to an agreement with Majesco for a publishing deal and the game was released in 2005.
3. Originally the game’s main character was supposed to be a mentally imbalanced ostrich that had different powers associated with its multiple personalities. Sadly, this idea was scrapped during development.
4. In order to flesh out and solidify the game’s characters, during development Tim Schafer created fake Friendster profiles for each one of them so we could discover the ways they could interact with one another It was also a good way for Schafer to introduce the characters to the rest of the development team.
5. During the first few hours of Psychonauts being available for purchase through the June 2012 Humble Bundle, the game sold more copies than it did since its original retail release in 2005. As of December 2015, the game has accumulated sales of approximately 1.7 million copies.	April 19, 2016 	16
Dark Souls III 	1. Development of Dark Souls 3 actually began before the release of Dark Souls 2. In fact, Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 were developed side by side by two different development teams within From Software while creator Hidetaka Miyazaki was in charge of both project. The development overlap between these games lasted about one year.
2. If the beginning of the game feels similar to Souls fans it's because it is. Miyazaki really wanted to emphasize an end of days theme and believed starting with something familiar like certain locations and enemies would help people progress to the end of the story while getting the complete Souls experience.
3. Unlike the previous games in the Soul series, the design of Dark Souls 3 is based on Miyazaki's personal experience. This is in contrast to the other games in the series that were supervised by other people at the company.
4. The lack of an emphasis on hollowing in this game was a direct result of fans not enjoying the idea from an aesthetic standpoint. It is still in the game but has been altered to fit more into the story rather than the gameplay itself.
5. Dark Souls 3 as become Bandai Namco's fastest selling game ever. The game also broke the company's day one launch record.	May 4, 2016 	17
Battlefield Hardline 	1. During development, Battlefield Hardline had several codenames including Havana and Omaha, to name a few, in fact, the game is still called Havana in the game's files.
2. The cops and robbers aspect of Hardline was inspired by the canceled DICE game, Urban Combat. During initial meetings between DICE and Visceral, the idea was brought up and both developers agreed it was a good idea to expand upon.
3. During development, feedback from Battlefield 4 community test environment was used to add several features to Hardline that were tested through that program. We [Achievement Hunter] actually talked about the CTE in the Five Facts for Battlefield 4.
4. The single player campaign was heavily influenced by prime focus television shows. Developers actually reached out to the directors and writers of those kinds of shows so they could figure out how to plan pace a season worth of episodes.
5. After a single player was able to reach a 250 level cap during Hardline 's five-day beta, Visceral decided to almost double the length of time between rank ups in the final versions of the game.	May 17, 2016 	18
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