Marathon Will Put Jennifer English GOTY Effect To The Test

Will a multiplayer game like Marathon ever have a shot at GOTY? Is the Resident Evil reboot movie going to be as bad as some fans fear? And why isn’t Dead by Daylight getting a sequel? It’s your Morning Checkpoint for April 4, 2026, where all of us are collectively relieved that the crew of the Artemis managed to unclog the space shuttle’s toilet. Who clogged it?

“I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber,” said mission specialist Christina Koch. Incredible timing as Mario himself blasts off into space this week in The Mario Galaxy Movie. The moon-orbiting flight has had some other complications so far, including Microsoft Windows double-booting Outlook. However, a plush of Artemis from Sailor Moon sitting back at NASA remains a good luck charm for the mission.

Will Marathon be game of the year?

According to a growing trend, there can be no doubt. Elden Ring won at the Game Awards in 2022. Baldur’s Gate 3 won in 2023. And Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won in 2025. Voice actor Jennifer English had big roles in all three, leading to what fans have dubbed “the Jennifer English effect.”

She was asked about it during Emerald City Comic Con 2026 last month, to which she responded with happy confusion (via Gamesradar). Her Clair Obscur costar Ben Starr filled the void with his usual winsome bravado. “That means Marathon is gonna be Game of the Year,” he interjected.

English voices the colony AI Joy in Bungie’s extraction shooter. Online games are never favorites at the Game Awards, especially ones that aren’t massively popular or hitting 90 or above on Metacritic. Will the superstition still hold if Marathon wins best multiplayer game of 2026?

Or will the Marathon sickos somehow push it over the edge if this turns out to be an otherwise underwhelming year? Remember: Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out too late to be eligible for 2026 nominations.

Space Marine 2 dev explains the disastrous DLC voice pack

“The voice pack was originally designed to include what we call ‘battle chatter’: lines that react to combat situations and are not tied to specific missions,” wrote game director Dmitriy Grigorenk. “Each character in the voice pack got 450+ lines per 7 languages. However, it does not cover the large amount of scripted, level-specific dialogue found in Operations, which represent roughly 1500 lines for each operation.”

He continued, “We understand that many of you expected your chosen Chapter’s voice to be more complete. That’s on us, we didn’t set the right expectations, and the result feels incomplete. Many production constraints, such as localization, voice actors availability and necessity to keep updating voice packs when adding new Operations, forced us to make the voice pack as it stands currently, and the same constraints are not allowing us to ‘expand’ the voice pack by adding the missing lines.”

Resident Evil movie reboot director knows the fans are ready to ‘crucify’ him

Zach Cregger, the director of Barbarian and Weapons, knows what it’s like to be wary of Hollywood mangling your favorite game. “I’m like, ‘Don’t ruin this for me,’” he told The New York Times regarding adaptations of games he loves. Resident Evil fans are worried about the same thing, especially after an allegedly leaked script raised lots of concerned eyebrows.

“I love the idea of being pitted against a world that is hellbent on annihilating you,” Cregger said of his upcoming horror adaptation. “It just feels fun and I haven’t seen a movie that offers that sort of experience.” He added that he knows fans will “crucify” him if he violates the franchise’s lore in any significant ways.

But Cregger’s Resident Evil movie is good, according to leaked early screening feedback

“There was a test screening for Resident Evil,” posted Hollywood insider Daniel Richtman this week. “I hear it’s great.” Resident Evil leaker Aesthetic Gamer, previously known as Dusk Golem, corroborated the buzz. “Yeah, grapevine murmurs floating around the rumor sphere is early test screenings around Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil film is it’s a great movie,” they posted. “Which really isn’t that surprising after Barbarian and Weapons. RE fans will continue to complain about it though, I’m sure.”

There’s not going to be a Dead by Daylight 2

“It’s…very possible to take your game and bring it kicking and screaming into the next decade,” Behaviour Interactive director Mathieu Cote told IGN. “And that’s more what we want to do. We’re not going to do a DBD 2, that’s for sure. They’re not going to have to buy a DBD 2 and restart from scratch. But we understand that the game is 10 years old, and that’s a long time in video game years. And we want people that start today, tomorrow, next year, to feel like they’re playing a game that is current. It’s not a nostalgia token, it’s a real game that you can play today and that makes sense.”

ICYMI:

Watch this:

GENERATIONAL ROOK RUN 😭

4.5k → 40.5k loadout
DELETED a full purple squad
VAULT ALREADY FULL OF PURPLE + GOLD…

bro WHAT DO I DO WITH ALL THIS LOOT 💀#marathon #marathonthegame pic.twitter.com/kkvmKM1Bqb

— Nifty n00b (@NiftyN00b) April 2, 2026