Yes, the giraffe in HBO’s The Last of Us finale was real, his name is Nabo and he lives in Calgary

The first season finale of HBO’s The Last of Us left viewers with a lot of questions unanswered. Chief among them: Was that a real giraffe that Joel and Ellie were feeding, or what? Plenty of viewers thought it was CGI (and not very convincing CGI at that), but it turns out that yes indeed, it was 100% flesh and blood.

The giraffe in question appears during a quiet interlude in the episode: Ellie and Joel discover the creature roaming free amidst ruined buildings, and take a moment to feed it and marvel at its presence. As Polygon (opens in new tab) noted, it’s an important scene in the game, and was replicated almost shot-for-shot in the show. 

Fans all waiting for the Giraffe scene… from r/ThelastofusHBOseries

“It’s a joyful moment for Ellie, and for Joel seeing Ellie finally be a glimmer of who she used to be after the trauma that she faced,” Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie in the series, said in the “Inside the Episode” documentary on the season finale.

“Everything that she’s experienced hasn’t just gone away, it’s just this moment of beauty—so precious it’s almost sad. But then, through speaking to Craig [showrunner Craig Mazin], I realized it was just living the truth of it. Which was—it was bittersweet, but still so, so beautiful.”

(There are spoilers in this video, naturally, so proceed beyond the giraffe bit with whatever caution you deem appropriate.)

But to a lot of viewers, that giraffe just didn’t look quite right. Was it CGI? Was it bad CGI?

Well, no, and definitely not. The giraffe, just like Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, is real: He’s a 13-year-old male Masai giraffe named Nabo who calls the Calgary Zoo (opens in new tab) home. Ironically, given the response, part of the reason HBO employed a real giraffe was to maximize the scene’s realism.

Here he is!

Plenty of people on Reddit (opens in new tab) and social media copped to not being able to tell if the giraffe was real, but they may have been faked out in part because there were plenty of other CGI effects involved in the scene. The enclosure where Nabo was being held, for example, was surrounded by green screens.

Here’s what it looked like behind the scenes:

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“That’s Hollywood magic of Alex [VFX supervisor Alex Wang] isolating the giraffes and putting them on our set,” production designer John Paino told Yahoo! Entertainment. “That was probably the most complicated piecing of VFX stage, scenery and location I’ve worked on.”

(Image credit: Reddit)

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Another factor contributing to the confusion: Who the hell knows what a real giraffe looks like up close anyway? Presumably other giraffes. 

People, maybe not so much.

(Image credit: Reddit)

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Nabo’s presence in the show was actually leaked, accurately, almost a year ago, but apparently either nobody noticed or everyone forgot:

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HBO announced in January that The Last of Us had already been renewed for a second season (opens in new tab). More recently, showrunner Craig Mazin said that, like the first season, the show will deviate from the game, sometimes “radically (opens in new tab),” whenever and wherever it needs to.



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Valve teases CS:GO players with another ‘Counter-Strike 2’ reference, this time in the Steam backend

A couple weeks ago, data mined from an Nvidia driver intensified speculation that Valve is close to releasing a new version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on its Source 2 engine. Now Valve is mucking around with the CS:GO data on the Steam backend, and if this rumored Source 2 version isn’t actually imminent, then Gabe is just messing with us on purpose.

Data excavator Aquarius, who previously appeared in that Nvidia driver story, said today (opens in new tab) that Valve added Source 2 files to the CS:GO “developer pre-release branch.” The SteamDB changelog (opens in new tab) in question is just a bunch of numbers to me, but the excitement is explained by Aquarius’ analysis of a change (opens in new tab) from earlier in the month, which compares CS:GO’s files to Dota 2’s.

For non-CS:GO data watchers, it’s a little easier to understand the Steam backend change that came next (opens in new tab), which adds a “Limited Test Build” to CS:GO’s Steam database with the executable “cs2.exe,” which is presumed to either be shorthand for “the Source 2 version of CS:GO,” or indication that Valve plans to just call the new version “Counter-Strike 2.” It’s not like anyone’s really attached to the “Global Offensive” name, so I could see that happening.

Valve has made no public indication of what it’s up to, and this Source 2 update has been rumored for a while, but it would be just like Valve to drop the news without any preamble. It could go into beta tomorrow, even.

If we’re talking about a straight Source 2 port of CS:GO, the average Counter-Strike player may not notice a big difference—in theory, the Source 2 version will play just like the Source version. The engine upgrade will have long-term effects on the game and its continued development, though, and there could be more to “cs2.exe.” Valve may really be treating this like a sequel, and not just an engine upgrade.

For now, we watch SteamDB and wait.

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How to get the Overclocked Pulse Rifle in Fortnite

There are a lot of powerful weapons in Fortnite, but the Overclocked Pulse Rifle in Fortnite Chapter 4 season 2 breaches a new tier of untold destruction. This mythic rifle is up for grabs and can obliterate foes in seconds—maybe too few seconds, as players are already finding—with absurd damage and a bonkers rate of fire. We’ve got you covered on where to find the fabled Overclocked Pulse Rifle.

Overclocked Pulse Rifle location

You’ll find the Overclocked Pulse Rifle on top of the menacing, floating Loot Lake Island. This season of Fortnite has re-introduced an old classic: the elusive, loot-filled island in the sky. You will need to brave the storm in order to pick up the new mythic weapon, as that’s the only way to find the Loot Island. Here’s the tricky part: Loot Island spawns at a random location at the fourth iteration of the circle, so there’s no telling where it’ll be. Once it spawns, bolt over to its waypoint and ascend to the top. Whoever captures the point on top will be granted the Overclocked Pulse Rifle and a plethora of other weapons too.

There aren’t too many strategies to guarantee you’ll grab this overpowered gun, but there are a few ways you can raise your odds: Playing safe in the early game and stocking up on vehicle augments so you can put the gas on it and get to Loot Island the fastest; drop with a squad so you can capture the point on top faster (just beware that other squads will be thinking the same thing); or you could pick up movement-augmenting weapons and items like a bounce from impulse grenades or chaining dashes with the new Kinetic blade. 

If all else fails, you still have a chance! With Loot Island’s location spawn odds being completely random, you’ll find your golden opportunity eventually (even if it takes a little while longer). The Overclocked Pulse Rifle is beyond worth it once you get to it.



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Fortnite chapter 4 season 2: the Mega season details

Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2 has kicked off with neon lights blazing, because the Mega season is full-on cyberpunk. There’s a new blue biome with a Japanese-inspired set of locations, a central city with Sonic-like rails to ride, and of course a handful of new weapons.

Here’s your guide to all the major changes in Chapter 4 Season 2 and how to get your hands on the new weapons, new vehicles, and more.

Fortnite chapter 4 season 2 map

The Mega season has replaced the entire southeast corner of the map with a new bluish biome. Mega City with its skyscrapers, neon lights, and gliding rails is at its center if you want to dive right into some action. You can attack enemies from above while riding the rails that wind around the sky in Mega City so keep an eye out for your competition on the ground.

Past that are several other new areas:

  • Steamy Springs
  • Kenjutsu Crossing
  • Knotty Nets

There are lots of new landmark locations tucked into the new biome as well: from the Drift Ridge in the north to the zipline-accessible Coldwater Sanctuary island to Windcatching Lake at the top of a hill.

Fortnite chapter 4 season 2 new weapons

  • Kinetic blade: A katana that uses the new “knockback slash” you’ll want to use for some seasonal challenges. It also has a dash attack with three charges
  • Havoc suppressed assault rifle: A new silenced and accurate rifle
  • Havoc Pump Shotgun: A new nigh damage shotgun
  • Overclocked Pulse Rifle: A mythic pulse rifle earned by claiming the capture point on Loot Island
  • Unvaulted: Heavy sniper rifle
  • Unvaulted: Cobra DMR
  • Unvaulted: Dragon’s breath sniper
  • Unvaulted: Combat shotgun
  • Unvaulted: Heisted exotic weapons

To pick up the new kinetic blade katana, your best bet is heading to the temple at Kenjutsu Crossing in the southeast corner of the map. There are other kinetic blade spawns in the Bamboo Circle, Sakura Circle, Cedar Circle and Sandy Circle all at the four corners of the biome, but heading for Kenjutsu is your best bet for the blade.

Slurp Juice is super effective

Slurp Juice has gotten a really big buff this season. The blue consumable now restores health and shield simultaneously at a much faster rate. Given the big boost it offers, you’ll find it locked away in vaults, rifted-in points of interest, and combat caches.

Fortnite chapter 4 season 2 new vehicles

  • Rogue Bike
  • Nitro Drifter
  • Vaulted: the dirt bike

If you want to hop into one of the new rides in the Mega season, drop in on Drift Ridge, the curvy rally racing track on the north end of the new blue biome. You’ll likely find your choice of Rogue Bike or Nitro Drifter hanging out there. As a second option, Mega City itself is also crawling with new wheels.


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Was anyone else obsessed with Terminal Velocity in the ’90s? It just got an update

I don’t know how Terminal Velocity landed on my family’s PC in the mid-’90s, but I know I spent too much time playing it. We didn’t even have the full game, just the shareware version which only included the first chapter, and I’m pretty sure I never actually bothered to reach the end of that chapter. I just liked flying the spaceship around.

An updated version called Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition (opens in new tab) released today, and by contemporary standards, that first level I played so much of is barely a videogame: You fly around above an alien planet shooting enemy ships and tanks and buildings, collecting power-up orbs, and sometimes flying through tunnels. The flight model gives you a level of control that’s close to Descent’s, but you always have some forward momentum. There ain’t much to it, but I still remember why I was so into it: the scale. It felt like you could fly through the first planet’s mountain range forever. (The Steam page says there are “over 400,000 sq miles of terrain,” for whatever that’s worth.)

I was 10 years old and 3D graphics of any kind were exciting in 1995, so that mostly explains the fascination. Playing it again, though, I pine a little for that old sense of wonder. Terminal Velocity was my first “open world” game, sort of. All I ever found in my explorations were more power plants to shoot, but back then just the sense of freedom and the possibility of observing an interesting peak or valley kept me playing, even if the whole level is probably less complex than one of Kratos’ eyelashes in a modern God of War game.

Boosted Edition makes some technical improvements for modern PCs, the biggest of which is an increased view distance, which I’m not sure I like. The fogginess of the original made it feel more mysterious, and now you can sometimes see enemy ships hovering in the distance, waiting for you to approach before their combat loop switches on. For the most part, though, it’s the same Terminal Velocity I played over 25 years ago, which was originally published by 3D Realms and developed by Terminal Reality, (opens in new tab) the studio that went on to make BloodRayne. The Boosted Edition comes from Ziggurat Interactive.

I’ve skimmed a full Terminal Velocity playthrough on YouTube (opens in new tab), and there are some cool-looking bosses and levels beyond the first world—parts of it remind me a little of Devil Daggers. Oh, and the music: I listened to the theme from the first level (opens in new tab) so many times it’s burned into my brain, so I can’t be trusted to judge whether or not it’s good, but I love it.

I’m not sure I recommend Terminal Velocity unless you also have some nostalgia for it, but if you do decide to play it, a couple words of advice. One, the Boosted Edition’s mouse controls are a disaster for me: I can either make them absurdly sensitive so that my ship spins out of control, or so sluggish that I can barely turn. I eventually settled on using a mix of WASD and sluggish mouse control (using the “absolute” motion setting) to fly, which isn’t so bad, so you might try that if you’re having the same issue. And two, if you keep bouncing off the entrance to the tunnel, that’s because you’re trying to fly into the exit. I don’t know how long it took 10-year-old me to figure that out, but it was a while.


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Indie dev accused of using stolen FromSoftware animations removes them, warns others against trusting marketplace assets

The makers of the indie soulslike Bleak Faith: Forsaken have removed assets that were allegedly lifted from FromSoftware games (opens in new tab). Archangel Games says Epic Games has now removed the third-party listingsm from the Unreal Engine marketplace, but it still hasn’t told the studio whether or not they were actually stolen.

The similarities were noticed almost immediately after Bleak Faith: Forsaken launched on March 10, and they weren’t just kind of alike, they were virtually direct copies. For instance, below is a comparison of the claymore in Bleak Faith and the straight sword in Elden Ring. The positioning and timing is just about dead-on.

Archangel Studios denied the accusations of theft, saying the assets in question were purchased fair and square from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Later, one of the developers added that the team had submitted a ticket about the issue to Epic’s customer service.

“We decided to be preemptive as a sign of good faith and a generally very pleased customer at the Epic Marketplace,” developer ubermensch42 said on Archangel’s Discord. “We’ll let you know what they say about it and will respond accordingly.”

Today Archangel announced that it received a reply from Epic, but it wasn’t terribly informative:

“Pursuant to the Marketplace Distribution Agreement, each Marketplace seller represents and warrants to Epic that they have appropriate rights to upload their content. As with any store that hosts third-party content, however, Epic is not in a position to independently verify such rights, and Epic makes no such guarantee to purchasers of the content.”

In other words, Epic either doesn’t know or can’t say whether the content being sold through the Unreal Engine Marketplace is legal or not: It’s entirely dependent upon the seller to be honest about having the rights to legally sell what they offer. At the same time, though, the assets in this case have been removed from the marketplace (opens in new tab), which is what ultimately prompted Archangel to remove them from Bleak Faith: Forsaken.

“[Epic’s response] is not satisfactory for us and so we have taken the decision to replace the assets purchased from the store over the next several days,” the studio said. “Some changes we included in the recent patches, and more are coming in the next few days. Certainly this has been a huge lesson for us and hopefully other indie creators out there too that assets on these storefronts seemingly cannot be purchased in good faith.”

Archangel said in a statement sent to PC Gamer that it removed the questionable assets “out of respect for the original animation artists and the players.” Replacing them is currently “an ongoing process,” which will also include frequent patches to address buys, balance issues, and feedback from players.

It’s an unfortunate situation, but it does appear to fit with Epic’s marketplace distribution agreement (opens in new tab), which puts the onus of warranty on the seller and specifically disavows any sort of guarantee on the part of Epic. That seems like a fairly conventional disclaimer to me, but it’s a bit odd that Epic would pull the Marketplace seller’s content without explanation, especially if the material was found to be in violation of FromSoftware’s copyright. Given the sudden removal of the content, it seems like a good bet that it was. 

“The team sincerely thanks everyone for bringing the issue to light,” Archangel said. “The utilization of stolen assets is unacceptable, and we hope other indie creators won’t ever find themselves caught up in a similar situation. Asset marketplaces are a critical resource for development teams, particularly those on a minimal budget. We hope the proper vetting and review protocols are put into place soon to provide verified assets for creators of all shapes and sizes to use on their upcoming projects.”

In response to our inquiry, Epic declined to comment further.


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Valve likes the idea of an OLED Steam Deck, too, but says it isn’t as simple as it sounds

The hardware in Valve’s 2021 Steam Deck can run circles around Nintendo’s 2017 Nintendo Switch, but there’s been one point of comparison where Nintendo’s had the upper hand for the last year: the screen. The Switch OLED model debuted just six months before the Steam Deck, and once you go OLED on a TV, phone, or gaming handheld, it’s pretty hard to leave those rich colors and deep blacks behind. The Steam Deck has just passed its one year anniversary, and for the whole year I’ve seen one question about the Deck pop up more than any other: is Valve going to make an OLED model?

The short, polite answer, from Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais (opens in new tab), is that Valve “understands the limitations of the current tech that’s in the Deck, in terms of the screen.” 

“We also want it to be better. We’re looking at all avenues,” he says. But the longer answer is that there’s a lot more to swapping out a screen than just… swapping out a screen.

“I think people are looking at things like an incremental version and assume that it’s an easy drop-in,” Griffais says. “But in reality, the screen’s at the core of the device. Everything is anchored to it. Basically everything is architected around everything when you’re talking about a device that small. I think it would be a bigger amount of work than people are assuming it would be. […] I don’t think we’re discounting anything. But the idea that you could just swap in a new screen and be done—it would need more than that to be doable.”

When Valve was designing the Steam Deck, the flexibility of the LCD panel was actually one of its top priorities—specifically making the backlight be able to go as dim as possible for playing comfortably in low light, and the ability to alter the refresh rate to preserve battery life. Griffais says that as far as he knows that should be possible on an OLED, too, but it requires some specific configuration.

“It’s just something you have to plan ahead. When we were working on this screen, we made sure these could be supported, even if the refresh rate switching wasn’t ready at release. It was really important to us that all that would be supported. So it’s something that you need to keep in mind when you’re evaluating and selecting possible options. But there’s nothing about LCD vs OLED, different screen technologies that makes that a dealbreaker. It’s about how you’re designing the whole system, and what’s in between the screen and the SOC (system-on-a-chip).”

I think it’s likely the Steam Deck’s eventual successor uses an OLED, but after talking to Griffais, I’m not expecting an incremental update from Valve like the Steam OLED. If there are plans for one, Valve’s certainly playing it close to the vest.

In the meantime, Steam Deck owners who miss OLED colors can at least try VibrantDeck, a nice little plugin that lets you bump up the display saturation without turning your games into full-on Lisa Frank paintings. Or you can go absolutely wild with it. I’m not the color police .



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Reddit is down

No, it is not your imagination: Reddit (opens in new tab), the “front page of the internet,” is down.

I noticed the problem while researching (ie., looking at memes) for a separate story about The Last of Us, which you’ll hopefully be reading fairly shortly. In the midst of that, the site very suddenly stopped loading: I wasn’t getting any errors, just a blank page.

After a few frustrated reloads, I popped over to redditstatus.com (opens in new tab), which indicates that a “major outage” is currently underway. It’s specifically affecting the desktop and mobile versions of the site, with mobile apps showing a less severe “partial outage,” which might mean you can get some, but not all, pages to load. Downdetector (opens in new tab) likewise indicates a major problem of some sort, with close to 60,000 users reporting a problem.

We’ll keep an eye on things and update when Reddit is back, hopefully with some information about what went wrong.

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Minecraft 1.20 features are now included in the latest game version as an experiment toggle

Although we don’t know the launch date for the next major Minecraft update, today’s Java version update 1.19.4 actually includes a toggle to activate all of the big Minecraft 1.20 features that have been announced so far. So you don’t need to go juggling snapshot versions anymore if you want to take a test drive with the new sniffer, cherry blossom biome, and archeology features.

Over in the patch notes for version 1.19.4, Mojang says that the game experiments toggle now includes the “first look” at the sniffer, archaeology, armor trims and cherry grove biome. The “first look” designation likely means that these features aren’t 100% complete the way they will be at launch. In snapshot builds so far, for instance, sniffers could only be seen by spawning them in creative mode, not uncovered in the wild.

In the 1.19.4 update the “create new world menu” has been changed as well. To activate the 1.20 features, you’ll navigate to the “more” tab and “experiments” to turn on the 1.20 features for a fresh save file. Good luck not getting distracted by taking screenshots of sniffers like I did.

There are some other changes in Java 1.19.4 including better breeding for horse stats, accessibility feature onboarding for first time players, and a lengthy list of other bug fixes. If you do want to be on the absolute bleeding edge in the event that these 1.20 features show up in expanded forms later, you can install snapshot builds in the “Installations” tab of your Minecraft launcher with the “snapshots” checkbox ticked.


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Meta is laying off another 10,000 employees

Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will lay off 10,000 more employees (opens in new tab) and eliminate 5,000 currently-unfilled positions as it struggles to cope with a “new economic reality” that includes higher interest rates, geopolitical instability, and increased regulation.

The cuts come as part of what Zuckerberg called Meta’s “Year of Efficiency,” which over the next couple of months will see “restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs, canceling lower priority projects, and reducing our hiring rates.” Employees of Meta’s recruiting team will be told whether they still have jobs tomorrow, while cuts to tech groups will occur in April, followed by business group layoffs in May.

“This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success,” Zuckerberg wrote. “They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve.”

A major goal of Zuckerberg’s “Year of Efficiency” is to make Meta “flatter” and “leaner,” which means eliminating layers of management and “cancelling projects that are duplicative or lower priority.” Zuck also wants to ensure that technology is Meta’s priority, which means “returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles.”

“It’s important for all groups to get leaner and more efficient to enable our technology groups to get as lean and efficient as possible,” he wrote. “We will make sure we continue to meet all our critical and legal obligations as we find ways to operate more efficiently.”

The word “efficient” appears in one form or another—efficiency, efficiently—no fewer than 20 times in Zuckerberg’s layoffs announcement, and in fact the entire plan seems to hinge on it in some vague, undefined fashion. That may not seem like the most solid basis upon which to bet the future of the company (not to mention the thousands of people who still work there) but let’s be honest, it’s not as if prudent planning and reasonable expectations have figured largely in Meta’s strategizing up to his point.

“We have the opportunity to be bolder and make decisions that other companies can’t,” he wrote. “So we put together a financial plan that enables us to invest heavily in the future while also delivering sustainable results as long as we run every team more efficiently. The changes we’re making will enable us to meet this financial plan.”

The announcement comes just four months after a previous round of layoffs at Meta that saw more than 11,000 employees let go (opens in new tab). Zuckerberg blamed those job cuts on inaccurate predictions about the rate of revenue growth driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, along with “macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss,” all of which resulted in Meta’s revenues to come in much lower than expected. Meta earned $27.7 billion in its third quarter of 2022 (opens in new tab)—that’s a stretch of three months—of which $4.3 billion was net income.

Zuckerberg made no mention of it in today’s announcement, but Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies, said yesterday that the company is “winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) (opens in new tab)” in order to focus on other priorities.



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