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A New Star Wars Series Begins Soon. We Take You Behind the Scenes

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A New Star Wars Series Begins Soon. We Take You Behind the Scenes
Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Lucasfilm’s next animated series from a galaxy far, far away with , premieres on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar on Star Wars Day — that’s May 4, as in “May the Fourth” be with you. The Clone Wars spin-off is set in the aftermath of the eponymous war and follows Clone Force 99, a group of elite clone troopers, each of whom have genetic mutations that grants them unique skills. The Bad Batch comes from Star Wars veteran Dave Filoni, who has previously worked on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, created Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars Resistance, and is now joint in-charge of the Star Wars cinematic universe with The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau.

“We think of The Bad Batch as a spiritual successor to The Clone Wars,” Brad Rau, supervising director on The Bad Batch, told journalists over Zoom. “So there’s a lot in common. When we start our first episode, we’re backing up a little bit, timewise, from what we’ve seen at the very end of the Clone Wars. It’s something that Dave Filoni wanted us to do. And it’s really exciting to see how things come about, like Order 66. Having these characters that we only know a little bit about from the final season of The Clone Wars gives us an opportunity to carry on that legacy and storytelling of The Clone Wars, but through new characters’ eyes.”

In the Star Wars galaxy, Order 66 refers to a Sith plot masterminded by Sith Lord Darth Sidious — better known as Emperor Palpatine — that saw behavioural modification biochips planted in the brains of all clone troopers deployed by the Republic. With the flick of a switch, Order 66 was executed. It termed all Jedi as traitors and their own clone trooper allies turned on them, slaughtering the Jedi Order in the process. Star Wars: The Bad Batch begins roughly around the same time and finds the titular group now working for the newfound Empire, as are all the other non-mutated clones.

From Toofaan to The Bad Batch, What to Watch in May

“That was one of the most exciting things for us to dive into with this series,” Jennifer Corbett, head writer on The Bad Batch, said. “When you talk about the end of the Clone Wars, what that actually looks like for not only Clone Force 99, but the clones in general. And what the galaxy looks like because it’s not the Empire that everybody is so used to from the original trilogy and from Star Wars Rebels, where it was at the height of its dominance over the galaxy.

“It’s the beginning stages of that. [The Bad Batch shows] what the galaxy is going through immediately when the war is over. How some planets and systems are happy the war’s over and are embracing the Empire because of that. And others are a little bit wearier of the Empire and what their reign truly means. In terms of the Bad Batch, it was fun to sort of explore their feelings, because with the Republic, they were given a lot of freedom. But with the Empire. they run things a little differently, and we definitely wanted to show how the Batch reacts to that.”

“The Bad Batch again is an interesting point of view on that because they’re not ‘regs’,” Rau added, referring to regular clone troopers as regs. “Even the way they consider their brothers. We deal with how they are now on the opposite side in this growing Empire. The regs are suddenly the face of the enemy, just like we see in [Star Wars: Episode III –] Revenge of the Sith.”

Thanks to its setting and animation style, The Bad Batch feels a lot like The Clone Wars. But that’s not the only Star Wars series that it resembles. The Bad Batch has elite warrior(s) who wear helmets in the lead. There’s also a young girl Omega (voiced by Michelle Ang) in the mix, who ends up under the care of Hunter (Dee Bradley Baker), the Bad Batch’s unofficial leader. In the early episodes — I’ve seen two — Hunter has trouble looking after Omega and even attempts to offload her to a family, because he believes she will have a safer life with them. This all sounds a lot like the current Star Wars hit The Mandalorian.

“I think what’s connecting all of these shows, is the idea of change,” Corbett said when I asked her about the similarities. “And I see the similarities with The Mandalorian in terms of how he’s taking on this new role. And that’s very much what the Batch is doing. Now that everything has changed, they are questioning where they fit in and where they belong. Because the war is over, what is their purpose now, if not to be soldiers?

The Mandalorian Season 2 Review: The Star Wars Cinematic Universe Awakens

“And when you add a child into that mix, suddenly these elite soldiers who are used to being able to tackle any mission are completely fish out of water in terms of how to raise and be a guardian for a child. At least with Omega, she’s older, she is her own person [as opposed to Grogu/ Baby Yoda]. And I think that the dynamic between them is so interesting because she’s very different in how she was raised versus how they were raised.”

Rau thinks the similarities are down to the fact that virtually all Star Wars is about family. “Some of these similarities might feel more common [here] or at least they start more common,” Rau added. “Whether you’re talking about grizzled warriors and a young girl, like we are in our show, or anything else around it, the sense of how a family works together as a military unit but more than that, just looking out for each other — [those] are themes that are really important in this show.”

Ming-Na Wen as Fennec Shand (left) in The Mandalorian
Photo Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm

Star Wars: The Bad Batch will also share a character with The Mandalorian — Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), an elite mercenary introduced in the first season when Mando visited Tatooine. Shand was seemingly killed in that episode but she made a miraculous return in The Mandalorian season 2, revealing that Boba Fett had saved her. Shand would later help Fett take over the Hutt palace — which established The Book of Boba Fett spin-off series that will also include her. Given that The Mandalorian takes place after the fall of the Empire, The Bad Batch will feature a much younger Shand.

There are at least two more ties to the larger Star Wars cinematic universe on The Bad Batch. Resistance fighter Saw Gerrera (voiced by Andrew Kishino), introduced in The Clone Wars and later played by Forest Whitaker in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is also involved. And then there’s Death Star commander Grand Moff Tarkin — or rather Admiral Tarkin (voiced by Stephen Stanton) on The Bad Batch, as he is yet to ascend the role made famous by Peter Cushing in the original 1977 Star Wars movie.

The Bad Batch, Out of Love, and More on Disney+ Hotstar in May

“Something we try to do is keep this show true to what Star Wars is at its core, and that’s something that Dave Filoni is always teaching us and pressing upon us,” Corbett said. “In terms of like characters that we get to see, it’s so tempting to want to use everybody, because we’re all fans of Star Wars. So we want to play with all those toys. But it’s a balancing act between why we use certain people, with also wanting to introduce everybody to new characters because it is a big galaxy. So we don’t want it to feel too small. We want to get to explore other people’s points of view and perspectives.”

Rau added: “When we do get a chance to get a character to fit into this storyline, I mean we freak out. It’s so fun just talking about it, it’s fun bringing it to life. So much effort was spent, technically, to honour the legacy of any character that we’re familiar with. And that is not only from a casting perspective but the musical cues we use, the way it’s animated, the lighting, the way that all comes together. But we do make sure that someone who doesn’t know who that character is could still follow along. But if you do know who it is, you might cry, you might laugh, maybe both, all of that.”

Star Wars: The Bad Batch premieres May 4 on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar. It will debut with a 70-minute special episode. New episodes air Friday thereafter.

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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