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At TennoCon 2021, we got our first look at Warframe’s next major expansion, The New War. Coming later this year, this new cinematic quest will see the Tenno will face off against the growing force of the Sentients, who have now invaded Earth.

By Erick Tay on July 17, 2021 at 7:53PM PDT

In this extended gameplay reveal, we see the full invasion of Cestus, Earth’s major human settlement, showing off the scale of the Sentient invasion. But in a surprise twist, we then cut to gameplay for characters other than our familiar Tenno. While your adventures throughout Warframe have focused on the Tenno, The New War will mark the first time players take on an active role as side characters for story missions. In the gameplay we saw during the stream, The New War will feature missions letting you control the sword-wielding Teshin of the Conclave faction, Kahl-175 of the Grineer, and the Corpus engineer Veso. These standalone missions will focus on each character’s particular loadout and skills, making them stand apart from the slate of Frames you’ve become well accustomed to over the years. However, The New War will still focus on the Tenno and their actions during this questline.

This Saturday of deals has brought with it a great one if you’re an MMO fan. Newegg currently has a deal where you can grab 60 Days of Final Fantasy XIV game time for $5 off. Grab a few, stock up on time and prepare yourself for the Endwalker expansion that’s coming out later this year. If that’s not your cup of tea, there’s a nice little sale on D&D related items at GameStop, and Best Buy has some fun Animal Crossing socks and plushies on sale as well.

Daily Deals for July 17th 2021

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Collecting insects is an optional component to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, but it adds depth to the customization of your inventory. The ability to brew high-grade potions is a luxury in the standard game, and a necessity if you dare to challenge hero mode.

You will come across many insects on the beaten path during your adventure, and you can catch them with the Bug Net item that you can purchase from Beedle’s shop. While most bugs pop up at random throughout the world, some rarer types will require you to look a little harder. Later in the game, you can play a bug-catching mini-game, where you will be rewarded with five bugs of a specific type, depending on your performance.

Once you have some bugs, take them to the Potion Shop inside the Skyloft Bazaar. There, bugs can be used to power up standard potions and greatly increase their effectiveness. Insects can also be a great source for acquiring Rupees. If you approach Strich at night in his room in the Knight Academy, he will buy three random insect types, at values ranging from 1 to 50 rupees.

We’ve got everything you need to know about Skyward Sword’s bug population on the table below, from where you can find each type, to what it’s used for, and what it’ll fetch you in a sale.

Check out the rest of our Skyward Sword HD guides, including our beginner’s tips, a rundown of how to complete all side quests and find all 80 Gratitude Crystals, and for the locations of all Pieces of Heart and Goddess Cubes. You should also read our Skyward Sword HD review.

Insect	Description	Infusion Uses (And Insects Required)	Sale Value (Each)
Blessed Butterfly	Blue butterflies found throughout Skyloft and the surface. These often mark the locations of Gossip Stones and Goddess Walls.	Stamina Potion + (2), Air Potion + (2)	5 Rupees
Gerudo Dragonfly	Dragonflies that spawn throughout the desert, and are usually found in pairs. Mildly difficult to catch.	Revitalizing Potion++ (1), Stamina Potion + (2)	30 Rupees
Sky Stag Beetle	They tend to lazily hang on tree trunks in Skyloft. They’re easily caught by rolling into trees, no net required!	Stamina Potion+ (2), Air Potion+ (2)	20 Rupees
Eldin Roller	These quick beetles are tricky to catch, but you’ll find them all over the Eldin Volcano region. Easily dug up near the entrance of the Fire Sanctuary.	Heart Potion++ (1), Guardian Potion+ (2)	40 Rupees
Faron Grasshopper	Grasshoppers appear all over Faron Woods, most conveniently, near the sealed grounds.	Guardian Potion+ (1), Stamina Potion+ (1)	40 Rupees
Deku Hornet	These irksome bugs are all over Faron Woods. You can easily capture swarms by dislodging their hive and netting the enraged hornets as they seek revenge on you.	Heart Potion++ (3), Revitalizing Potion+ (3)	1 Rupee
Skyloft Mantis	These are some of the rarest and most difficult insects to catch. Easiest to locate at the pumpkin patch in Skyloft.	Air Potion+ (2), Revitalizing Potion+ (2)	20 Rupees
Lanayru Ant	These ants are quite common in the desert, and can be found in bulk near the Lanayru Sea. Look for them under piles of sand you’ll need to clear with your Bellows.	Revitilazing Potion++ (3), Air Potion+ (2)	20 Rupees
Sand Cicada	The Lanayru cicadas are hard to find, but easy to catch. Check around the desert entrance.	Heart Potion++ (1), Revitalizing Potion++ (1)	50 Rupees
Volcanic Ladybug	You’ll find ladybugs all over the cave walls of the Eldin Volcano region. They’re slow-moving and easy to catch.	Heart Potion+ (1), Stamina Potion+ (3)	30 Rupees
Starry Firefly	Only found at night in Skyloft. You can easily collect them by sleeping at Beedle’s Airshop. They also like to hang around by the water’s edge.	Guardian Potion + (3)	30 Rupees
Woodland Rhino Beetle	These forest beetles are pretty plentiful in Faron Woods. The easiest place to find them is on vines near the Sealed Grounds.	Heart Potion+ (1), Revitalizing Potion+ (2), Revitalizing Potion++ (2)	20 Rupees

Warning: Full spoilers follow for Black Widow.

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Screenwriter Eric Pearson would seem to have the Marvel Cinematic Universe running through his bloodstream at this point. After enrolling in the Marvel screenwriting program in 2010, he wrote the four Marvel One-Shot short films that were released from 2011-2013. That led to his working on the Agent Carter TV show before he co-wrote the screenplay for Thor: Ragnarok while also handling various uncredited script doctoring assignments for the studio. And his latest MCU project, Black Widow, just hit theaters and Disney+ Premier Access.

Pearson chatted with IGN to fill us in on the process behind penning the return of Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff, which just broke pandemic box office records. We discussed the changes made to the Taskmaster character, what’s really up with Red Guardian and Captain America, the big Easter egg he really wants to drop in the MCU, and more.

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Red Guardian’s Captain America Stories

David Harbour’s Red Guardian/Alexei Shostakov is one of the highlights of Black Widow, a blowhard Russian version of Captain America who tells seemingly tall tales about fighting Cap back in his glory days. The movie has some fans debating the question of whether or not Red Guardian and Captain America ever really battled it out, because while it’s true Cap was on ice in 1984 when Alexei says they fought, we also know Steve Rogers has travelled through time (and therefore could’ve shown up in 1984). For his part, Pearson doesn’t think Alexei is lying. Which doesn’t necessarily make his stories true…

“I think that Alexei Shostakov believes every word he says,” says Pearson. “Whether or not it’s true, time will tell probably. I love him as a dopey adversary. Steve Rogers is great because he’s a scrawny guy who only wishes he were bigger so he would have a chance to fight the bad guys. And in the arms race of the Super Soldier serum, the Soviet Union — I just like to find the comedy in it — and they gave it to a guy who’s narcissistic and already big and strong. And all he wants to do is be Steve Rogers on the front lines with his shield. But instead, in kind of being ahead of the game of the Cold War, they make him go undercover. So he literally has to pretend he’s not strong. That is really fun for me. And that makes it fun for Alexei as a character who constantly feels the need to remind people that he’s great. And especially when you’re thinking of an embarrassing dad, what could be worse? Someone who’s talking about how great they are.”

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Of Crimson Dynamos and Dreams of Latveria

At one point in Black Widow, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova refers to Red Guardian as “Crimson Dynamo” — either by mistake, or purposely to bruise his ego. But Crimson Dynamo is actually another Russian hero from the Marvel comics; he’s sort of an Iron Man from behind the Iron Curtain. And indeed, Red Guardian and Crimson Dynamo have both served on the Russian superhero team the Winter Guard. (The original Crimson Dynamo in the comics also shared a name with Mickey Rourke’s character’s father in Iron Man 2.) Pearson says the reference is more for fun than any concrete evidence that the other Winter Guard characters exist in the MCU, however.

“I’m not sure if they do or do not exist,” he says. “Weirdly, I remembered the Crimson Dynamo [while writing]. That was a pure callback back from having read comics as a kid. And the idea of just someone calling him the wrong superhero name, I just put that in there. Whenever I’m writing for one of these, I always try and add in extra references, just in case an Easter egg works. For Thor: Ragnarok, there were a couple of different times [we did that]. There was Beta Ray Bill showing up here, or he’s over here, just little passing by things. And ultimately we decided it was too distracting and didn’t work. [Though Bill did still get a different shout-out in the film.] But in this one, I remember just writing the dialogue, knowing [the character]. I did a quick check to be like, ‘I am thinking of a Marvel character, not a DC character?’ I was like, ‘Yep. It was Marvel. I’m just putting it in.’ And then it never got flagged. And I think it gets a pretty good laugh too.”

That said, even for someone who has worked so extensively with Marvel, Pearson is still not sure what goes on behind closed doors that determines which Easter eggs make it through and which don’t. He does have a particularly notable Marvel reference that he’s been trying to push through, though.

“I might’ve had a reference to [Doctor Doom’s home country] Latveria in there — I might have, but I don’t think so. I don’t think that lasted very long,” he laughs. “I’m always trying to throw Latveria into stuff. … It’s like one of those things where you want to be the first one to say it on an Instagram post or something!”

The Transformation of the Taskmaster

One of the biggest ways the Black Widow movie differs from the Marvel comics is in its depiction of the secondary villain the Taskmaster. In earlier versions of the story, the character was a guy named Tony Masters (like in the comics) who Nat had a run-in with in Captain America: Civil War or Captain America: The Winter Soldier and they had “some sort of past,” says Pearson. “But it felt less than [satisfactory] to just be like, ‘Hey, I’m this guy with this power for some reason. And I hate you.’ I wanted to make it resonate more for who she is and her journey.”

In the film we eventually learn that she’s Antonia Dreykov, the daughter of primary villain General Dreykov (Ray Winstone), who was badly injured in an attack by Natasha years earlier. Essentially mindless now — or trapped in her own mind — she is like a walking, not-talking killing machine who her father utilizes for high-stakes missions.

“We knew that Taskmaster would be there as this kind of Terminator-like villain, a physical villain,” says Pearson. “I was focusing on the bigger picture of the Red Room and Dreykov and what’s the appropriate adversary, big picture-wise, for Natasha. And it really just fell into place. … Okay. They stole the key to freewill and the ability to deconstruct the brain from Ohio [during the undercover assignment in the film’s opening flashback scene]. Okay. Dreykov is running this, and [Nat] tried to kill him, and it didn’t work. Okay. She’s got a dark secret from her past that she’s really ashamed of. And in the opening, we see her as a child, most passionate about trying to protect Yelena. So protecting little girls, girls that are younger than her, that’s very important.”

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So from there, it became a question of what would be the darkest thing that Nat could have done? The thing that she’d be the most ashamed of?

“Oh, she intentionally put a young girl [in danger],” continues Pearson. “That felt like something that was a good emotional wound for Natasha to have to overcome. And then also for Natasha, as someone who likes to be in control of their life and information, the idea of a secret from the past, or a loose end, is something that she would hate. So this thing that you thought you did, it actually wasn’t that way. Plus, we’ve got this mystery of Dreykov’s daughter. … I was like, well, this seems to make sense a lot, and it gives her something to not expect in the final confrontation of like, ‘Oh wait, no, there’s a face to my haunted past that’s really traumatizing.’”

Yelena Belova and Not Passing the Black Widow Torch (Yet)

Marvel certainly seems to be positioning Pugh’s character Yelena to replace Natasha as the MCU’s new Black Widow, even if the Black Widow movie’s post credits scene sets her up as an adversary for Clint Barton in the upcoming Hawkeye Disney+ series. Either way, Pearson says that he never saw Yelena in a “passing the torch” sort of way.

“I didn’t see it that way, just because every time you try and look forward too much in writing a Marvel movie, they remind you of how much work you still have to do on this movie,” he laughs. “It also feels kind of arrogant and obnoxious to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, this character is going to just go on to run millions of franchise.’ Well, you haven’t done one yet. You have not completed one movie with this person yet. So why don’t you stop patting yourself on the back and do some work? That’s the attitude that I’ve found there. And also, as far as me as a fan though, I would love to see more stories of all of these people.”

From Pearson’s first talks with Marvel about Black Widow, there was already in place the film’s basic idea around Nat’s secret family — their past together, then the years spent apart, and then “getting the band back together,” as he puts it. When it came to Yelena, the writer felt Natasha needed “a good foil” — not an adversary, but someone who could take on Natasha where her defenses are greatest, namely her emotional dimensions.

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“There’s a clear delineation in Natasha Romanoff’s life,” says Pearson. “She had a traumatic upbringing in the Red Room, and then she defected and went to S.H.I.E.L.D., where she got to reinvent herself exactly how she wanted to be. And you see that in Winter Soldier and these other movies, where you never really know what you’re getting from her. She’s only speaking when she wants to. She’s controlling how much you know her, how much she knows you. This movie, we had to knock all that down. So the best way to do it was with these people who know her in a way that she can’t control. And for Yelena to come in… contrary to Nat, she’s like an emotional volcano. She’s just so willing to state her opinion, say what she thinks, talk about how her feelings were hurt. She’ll just say it all. What could make Natasha Romanoff more uncomfortable? It was great to come at it from, ‘Okay, I’ve got to dig into Natasha. It’s Natasha’s movie. And now we’ve got this powerhouse in Florence, but how are we going to get the best out of Natasha? It’s by having the appropriate Yelena to screw with her.’”

What did you think of Black Widow? Let’s discuss in the comments!

Insomniac Games shed the “conventional wisdom” that games need to be difficult in designing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

In an interview with Axios, Rift Apart game director Mike Daly explained that the team’s thinking on difficulty had changed and that the studio no longer felt the need to design games that were satisfying as a result of difficulty.

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“We have to sort of shed this conventional wisdom that games kind of need to be a hardass for you to get satisfaction out of it,” Daly said. “We no longer think about, like, ‘What will make the most elite players feel good about themselves?’ And more like, ‘What will enable everybody to have the experience they want to have?’ Because that’s sort of the most important thing to us.”

Axios pointed out many of the ways Ratchet & Clank has grown more accessible to players, citing things like the game’s “ping” and hint system, its Activity Cards, and skippable puzzles.

Insomniac Games’ director of core technology, Mike Fitzgerald, said making puzzle levels in a Ratchet & Clank game completely skippable like they are in Rift Apart “would have been unthinkable three to five years ago.”

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The PlayStation Plus-exclusive Activity Cards go a long way in making the Rift Apart experience easier for players, too, be it a player finds themselves stuck on where to go next or looking for something quick to do in the game. As Axios pointed out, the Rift Apart cards are used to signpost in-game tasks as well as hidden items or trophy-related quests.

They also reveal how long certain tasks will take to complete so a player with just 20 minutes to play can easily jump into something in Rift Apart that shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes. Axios says these times are estimates on the developer’s behalf that are then compared to other players’ average times using Sony’s online PlayStation Network.

For more about Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, check out our thoughts on the game in IGN’s Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart review and then watch this video to see IGN’s Top 5 weapons in the game. Read this story about how Insomniac Games is working on a multiplayer project after that.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.