It's early Monday morning for most of you, but the work week started early for Engadget, with Xbox's big Summer Game Fest showing. Given how many game studios Microsoft now has for its consoles and game streaming service, we were expecting a whole bunch of announcements, trailers and things to have strong opinions on. There were plenty of familiar Xbox reveals -- more Forza announcements, for one -- as well as major updates from Blizzard Activision (soon to be part of the Microsoft family) regarding Overwatch 2 (free to play!) and Diablo IV. Bethesda finally had something more substantial to reveal for its next big game, Starfield. A first look into the game had a lot of No Man's Sky vibes, but with this studio's flair for glossy world-building and narrative.

Jim Bridenstine says you have to go to the moon to get to Mars. The Brad Pitt-helmed space epic "Ad Astra" sets a new standard for science fiction films, a former NASA engineer who served as a technical consultant for the movie told Fox News. "In my view, it sets a new standard for science fiction films, updating for all to see on the big screen some of the most fantastic imagery we have obtained of our solar system since films like '2001: A Space Odyssey' were released over 50 years ago," said Robert Yowell, who served as an engineer at NASA for 11 years and as a senior mission manager for SpaceX. The new film, set in a future in which humanity has colonized a few far-flung parts of the galaxy but still hasn't reckoned with its own existential torments, is three films rolled cohesively into one: a visually stunning movie about astronauts exploring places like Mars and Jupiter; a poignant father-son tale about coming to grips with abandonment and growing up with a certain kind of dad; and a social commentary on 21st-century concerns over environmental degradation, capitalism and our place in the world. Roy McBride, a man on a mission to the edge of our galaxy that he can't really refuse.