Month: June 2020

Update: Well, it’s over. Rasputin destroyed the Almighty, and after a long wait as missiles arced through the sky and then finally slammed into the ship, the Almighty was torn apart, crashing in the mountains just beyond the Tower. Some debris came down near the Last City, but the crisis was averted.

If you missed it, you can still see the wreckage of the Almighty in the distance from the back of the Tower, opposite where Zavala stands. Debris is still falling from the sky and the ship is still burning, but it’s not clear if there might be more going on with the Almighty–perhaps visiting the crash site–in the future. Watch the embedded video to see what happened if you couldn’t be there in-game.

Visit Zavala to unlocks some new dialogue about what happened. You can also talk to Ana Bray on Mars to get another bit of story, although her dialogue is in text form. Beside Zavala on the left is the small amount of damage the Almighty managed to do to the Tower, in the form of a hole that was ripped in a wall. Hop down into it and you’ll be prompted to “Inspect the Crash Site.” Doing so will earn you a commemorative emblem, “Seraph’s Wings,” for taking part in the Season of the Worthy and helping to destroy the Almighty.

Original Story: All throughout Destiny 2‘s current content season, players have been completing Seraph Tower events in an effort to power up Rasputin, a powerful computer that once controlled the entire solar system’s defenses. The plan was for Rasputin to use its weapons to shoot down the Almighty, a giant spaceship that’s currently hurtling toward the Last City on a collision course. After months of preparation, the time to shoot down the Almighty has finally come–it happened around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET today, June 6.

Bungie tweeted that we’ll finally see Rasputin deal with the Almighty today, just a few days before the launch of Season 11 on June 9. The official tweet is thin on details, however; it doesn’t say exactly what’s going to happen at the daily reset, or what players should expect.

It does sound like it might be a good idea to be in the Tower at the time of the reset, however. That’s according to Lars Bakken, the Season of the Worthy’s creative lead, who responded to players on Twitter Friday to encourage them to sign on.

That sounds like we’ll be seeing a live event take place in Destiny 2 at its reset today. Destiny is usually more about cutscenes and missions for events like this that don’t require you to log in at specific times–the idea that you need to be in the game at a certain time sounds more like one of the live events that Fortnite and other live games have been known for.

In the game, the Almighty can be seen large in the sky of the Tower, blocking the sun.

It’s been a while in the works, but Rasputin knocking out the Almighty is the culmination of the events of this content season. The ship actually first appeared in the Destiny 2 vanilla story campaign–it was part of the Red Legion’s invasion of the solar system. The ship is essentially a big gun the Cabal use to destroy stars; if they can’t conquer a star system, they destroy it. In the story campaign, players disabled the Almighty, but it has been stuck in orbit around the sun ever since.

In Destiny 2’s last season, the Season of Dawn, a trio of Red Legion psions tried to use time travel to change the outcome of the Red War from the vanilla story campaign. They failed, thanks to the efforts of players, and as a last-ditch effort, the remaining Red Legion forces set the Almighty flying straight at the Last City. It’s taken a long time for the ship to show up, and in the meantime, players spent the Season of the Worthy powering up Rasputin’s capabilities to destroy the ship before it crashes into the city.

From a story standpoint, that seems like it could have unforeseen consequences. Zavala, for one, doesn’t trust that Rasputin has the best interests of humanity at heart. And during the course of the season, we learned about some bad stuff Rasputin got up to over the years. In “The Lie,” it was revealed that Rasputin was responsible for destroying the Iron Lords, a story that was told back in Destiny 1. That suggests that Rasputin might be less predictable and reliable than some might have hoped.

Though we know Rasputin is finally going to deal with the Almighty today, we don’t yet know where the story is going after that. Bungie is planning a reveal livestream on June 9 before the release of the new season, and that should tell us what to expect both from Season 11 and the upcoming start of Destiny 2’s Year 4, which will kick off in the fall.

Valorant is out now on PC after a successful closed beta period that attracted record-breaking Twitch numbers. Its popularity has many fans and potential players wondering about a possible console release. Will Valorant ever come to PS4 and Xbox One, or even Nintendo Switch, as other competitive games like Overwatch have? In GameSpot’s Play For All interview with Riot Games, we asked Anna Donlon, Executive Producer of Valorant, to elaborate on the team’s plans to bring Valorant to more platforms.

“We are definitely prototyping that right now,” Donlon told GameSpot. “But there’s a way to play this game and there’s a way to experience this game that we’re not entirely sure translates completely to console play.”

Donlon explained that core to Valorant is its “strong level of competitive integrity,” and its designers worry about players feeling like anyone has an unfair advantage based on the platform they’re playing on. A potential console version of Valorant would need to capture the same Valorant “experience” for all players, according to Riot.

“If we feel like we can deliver this experience on those platforms, we absolutely will,” said Donlon. “But we really want Valorant to stand for a certain type of gameplay and a certain type of experience.” That means if Riot feels it needs to “compromise” on any part of the core Valorant experience to make it work on console, then it won’t happen.

“It’s not a no, for sure,” Donlon clarified, mentioning that some designers on the team are “very excited” to prove the potential of Valorant on consoles. “But it definitely wasn’t the focus out of the gate. If we were to do it, it’ll definitely be delayed.”

Valorant is out now, exclusively on PC. Read up on its update 1.0 patch notes for everything new in the full release version.

Welcome to GameSpot’s Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

The Sims 4‘s ninth expansion pack, Eco Lifestyle, is out now. The new expansion takes place in Evergreen Harbor where players can partake in a variety of environmentally friendly activities, like producing their own water and electricity through renewable resources.

Players can also grow their own food in a new vertical garden, break down unwanted items in the Recycler and go dumpster diving for new furniture. The expansion costs $40 and is available on PC, Mac, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.

Developer Maxis announced that the Sims 4 has seen more than 2.5 million new players in the last two months and saw a monthly peak of 10 million players in the last quarter.

“Over the last few months, we’re humbled that The Sims 4 has served as an outlet for so many players,” said Lyndsay Pearson, General Manager and Executive Producer. “We’ve seen our players recreate friend and family parties, weddings and graduations in our game – so we’re looking forward to seeing what good they do with Eco Lifestyle.”

Maxis’ parent company EA, along with other game companies, recently donated money to Black Lives Matter and related causes.

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

FTL and Into the Breach composer Ben Prunty is donating all soundtrack sales from this weekend to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and various community bail funds across the country. Fans can pay-what-they-want for music across his entire catalogue today through the end of the weekend, with proceeds being donated on Monday.

Prunty’s catalogue includes music for FTL, Into the Breach, Darkside Detective, Gravity Ghosts, as well as many other tracks and albums. His full catalogue can be found on his Bandcamp page.

Prunty, who also made music for Subnautica: Below Zero, joins a number of others like EA, The Pokemon Company, and others in donating to Black Lives Matter and similar causes in response to protests erupting across the United States over the killing of George Floyd.

Since tweeting about his fundraising effort Prunty has raised at least $700.

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been running Best Star Wars Character of All Time face-offs. And now we have the ultimate winner, as chosen by you, the IGN reader!

First we ran a face-off where 200 of the most recognizable canon Star Wars characters faced off. Everyone from Han Solo to The Mandalorian to Wicket W. Warrick went head to head and it wasn’t pretty! From there the top 25 winners then entered a second face-off, and when the dust had settled, our winners were chosen.

So who took the top spot? Drumroll please…

Perhaps not surprisingly, everyone’s favorite Sith Lord dominated, winning 86.9% of the times he faced off with another character. Also of note, we gave Anakin Skywalker a separate card in these contests since fans generally have very different feelings about Vader as opposed to Anakin.

The top 10 is interestingly very Original Trilogy-heavy, including — in addition to Vader — Obi-Wan (though we featured the young version of the character), Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Yoda, Leia Organa, R2-D2, Emperor Palpatine, and Chewie. Indeed, Darth Maul was the only non-OT character to hit the top 10.

Are you wondering where your favorite characters landed? Like Baby Yoda, perhaps? (He’s took 16th place in the final round, just above Kylo Ren!) For all the rankings, click through to the full face-off results:

The Best Star Wars Character of All Time: Round 1 Results

The Best Star Wars Character of All Time: Round 2 Results

As for the bottom of the barrel, in our initial face-off of 200 characters, players like Yarna d’al’ Gargan from Jabba’s palace, Larma D’Acy from the Sequel Trilogy, and Baron Papanoida — George Lucas’ prequel trilogy cameo character — were in the bottom 10 alongside a bunch of characters from the animated series Star Wars: Resistance. Neeku Vozo, also from that show, was in absolute last place (and he seems like such a nice guy!). But Jar Jar Binks, the oft-derided Prequel Trilogy pariah, actually ranked at number 153. Not bad, Jar Jar!

What do you think of how this Star Wars character face-off panned out? Let’s discuss in the comments!

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EA Sports has announced that it will take a more active stance against racism in its various sports titles, particularly in the EA NHL series.

EA was one of many game companies to come out in support of the Black community this week but some viewed the company’s statement as being hypocritical. This is because of the rampant racism present in its sports games, particularly the NHL series.

The r/EA_NHL subreddit has been filled with users highlighting instances of racist usernames that appear to have only grown in numbers these past weeks. Especially concerning are the racist usernames that directly reference the death of George Floyd.

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“NHL 20 might be one of the most racist communities I’ve ever been apart of,” wrote one Reddit user in a now-locked thread published almost a month ago. The user reported facing off against user-created teams with blatantly racist team names and bemoaned EA’s lack of a meaningful reporting tool.

“Nobody laughs at them, it’s just next to impossible to report this stuff,” responded one user. “EA doesn’t have the systems in place to properly do so.”

Now EA appears to be in the process of developing those tools. In a statement published on its official EA Sports Twitter account, the company wrote:

“We’re constantly taking action to maintain a culture of inclusion. Toxic behavior changes and evolves rapidly and we recognize that we need to do more to actively monitor and remove those individuals who perpetuate racist, xenophobic, homophobic or sexist behaviors in our games.”

The company promises to review its term list to ensure filters are “comprehensive and accounts for various languages, dialects and slang. This is something we will review and expand upon regularly.”

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— EA SPORTS (@EASPORTS) June 5, 2020

EA also says it’s “adding more tools in-game to increase the reporting functionality to make it easier and more seamless for players to report toxic behavior as it occurs and for our teams to remove the content and offenders,” as well as increase the “frequency of reviewing offenses with the goal of acting more quickly to remove it from our games.”

The company also made a special announcement to the EA NHL community, which appears to be the only EA Sports game to receive its own dedicated message.

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— EA SPORTS NHL (@EASPORTSNHL) June 6, 2020

“Chel shouldn’t be a place for any form of hatred, bigotry or racism. We have manually actioned on thousands of accounts to date, but it hasn’t been enough, and that’s on us.”

EA says it will deliver “harsher penalties to anyone with offensive content,” bolster “resources to monitor and action on more accounts,” strengthen its profanity filters and create “new in-game functionality for future titles that will allow players to report and send any abusive material directly to our team.”

“This is only the beginning. We want to be a force in promoting inclusive and equal hockey culture and we will continue to take the proper steps towards achieving that.”

The move follows Infinity Ward which announced that it too will strengthen its policies against racist and hateful usernames players create for online matches. These actions follow an industry-wide stance against racism following the death of George Floyd.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN.