Author: Trafficblast

Warning: this article contains major spoilers for The Mandalorian’s season finale! The Mandalorian Season 2 has been confirmed for an October 2020 release.

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The Mandalorian episode 8 wraps up the first season with some big reveals, including the return of a weapon with a major legacy in the Star Wars universe. The Darksaber is back, but it has once again fallen into the wrong hands. And with Season 2 reportedly adding one of the Darksaber’s previous owners in the form of Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan Kryze, it’s safe to say this blade will continue to play a big part in The Mandalorian.

If you’re confused as to why an Imperial warlord is wielding a black lightsaber, fear not. Here’s everything you need to know about the Darksaber and how it ties the series back to the events of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

What is the Darksaber in The Mandalorian?

The Darksaber is unique among all the lightsabers in the Star Wars universe. It has a flat, katana-like blade rather than the traditional saber shape. It emits a peculiar, low hum. Even its color is unlike any other – deep black with a bright white trim.

The Darksaber is one of the most important artifacts in Mandalorian culture. It was created by an ancient warrior named Tarre Vizsla, the first (and as far as we currently know, only) Mandalorian to be inducted into the Jedi Order. That event happened at least 1000 years before the time of the movies, with Vizsla’s existence forgotten by all but the most devout Mandalorian warriors and historians.

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The Jedi kept Vizsla’s signature blade on display as a museum relic, at least until the Mandalorians stole it back. Since then, the Darksaber has come to serve as a symbol of power. Whomever wields the blade is viewed by Mandalorian traditionalists as the rightful ruler of Mandalore. Defeating the blade’s owner in ritualistic combat is the rightful path to power.

Learn even more about the history of the Darksaber in our Star Wars wiki guide!

How Did Moff Gideon Get the Darksaber in The Mandalorian?

Unfortunately, the Darksaber has a habit of trading hands again and again. During the Clone Wars, Tarre Vizsla’s descendant Pre Vizsla (voiced by The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau) used the blade to rally his Death Watch recruits against Mandalore’s political leader, Duchess Satine Kryze. Pre Vizsla made the mistake of forging an alliance with ex-Sith Lord Darth Maul, who killed him in ritualistic combat and became the new leader of Death Watch.

At some point during the waning days of the Clone Wars, the Darksaber fell into the possession of the Nightsisters of Dathomir. It was then claimed by Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian expatriate and member of the Rebel Alliance. Sabine used the blade to rally her people against Viceroy Gar Saxon, the Imperial-appointed ruler of Mandalore. Sabine then bestowed the Darksaber to Bo-Katan Kryze, sister of the late Duchess Satine.

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That act seemed to open a brighter future for Mandalore and its people. Unfortunately, The Mandalorian has repeatedly hinted at a dark fate for this planet, with several characters alluding to the Empire’s purge of Mandalore and the survivors being forced into hiding. The fact that Moff Gideon now wields the blade suggests he himself may be responsible for overthrowing Bo-Katan and robbing Mandalore of its rightful ruler. But at least we know Bo-Katan is still alive, as Katee Sackhoff will play the character for the first time in live-action in Season 2. Assuming she doesn’t appear solely in flashback form, that is.

How The Mandalorian Connects to The Clone Wars and the Siege of Mandalore

The Mandalorian’s Season 1 finale reveals the real name and origin story of Pedro Pascal’s character. We see a young Din Djarin narrowly survive a Clone Wars battle that claimed the lives of his parents. Though Din isn’t a Mandalorian by birth, as a “foundling” he’s recruited into their culture and raised to become an honorable warrior and hunter.

Din’s origin helps tie the series more firmly to the events of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. As that series unfolds, Mandalore and its surrounding worlds become a hotly contested battleground in the conflict between the Republic and Separatists. That culminates in one of the last and most destructive battles in the Clone Wars – the Siege of Mandalore.

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Star Wars fans finally got to see the Siege of Mandalore play out thanks to The Clone Wars: Season 7. The Siege of Mandalore is the last of three major story arcs in that final season. While the final episodes don’t show Din Djarin or other characters from The Mandalorian: Season 1, it does reveal how Ahsoka Tano’s good intentions in leading a Republic strike force to capture Darth Maul wound up opening Mandalore to Imperial occupation. With Ahsoka herself reportedly appearing in Season 2 (played by Rosario Dawson), the series may explore Ahsoka’s lingering guilt over her role in Mandalore’s sad fate.

A Knights of the Old Republic Connection

Even as The Mandalorian’s season finale forges new links to projects like The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, it also makes an unexpected connection to a much more distant part of the Star Wars timeline. Emily Swallow’s character, The Armorer, recalls the ancient battles between the Mandalorians and the Jedi, a conflict which directly set the stage for the 2002 video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

This is actually the second time since the release of Episode IX that a Star Wars project has alluded to the events of KOTOR. The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary reveals that one of Emperor Palpatine’s Sith Trooper legions is named after ancient Jedi Master-turned-Sith Lord Darth Revan.

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The timing of these twin KOTOR cameos doesn’t seem coincidental. After years of ambiguity over whether KOTOR and other Old Republic-era stories are still included in Disney’s official Star Wars continuity, it seems this beloved game might be on the way to finally, officially becoming canonized. And hopefully, these subtle callbacks will lead to full-fledged new stories set in the distant past of the Star Wars universe.

For more on The Mandalorian, find out about an unexpected connection between the series and the Rise of Skywalker and see our breakdown of all The Mandalorian’s actor cameos. And if you want access to loads of Star Wars content, here’s what you need to know about Disney+ bundles, of which there are a surprising number.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Pokemon Go‘s second Incense Day is just around the corner. The event takes place this Sunday, May 17, and much like the first Incense Day, it’ll bring out certain types of Pokemon at different hours, including another Shiny.

The event kicks off at 11 AM local time. Any Incenses that you use during the day will attract certain types of Pokemon–in this case, Water or Dark types–depending on what time it is. You can see the full event schedule and what Pokemon you’re more likely to find during those hours below:

• 11 AM – 12 PM: Water-type Pokemon
• 12 PM – 1 PM: Dark-type Pokemon
• 1 PM – 2 PM: Water-type Pokemon
• 2 PM – 3 PM: Dark-type Pokemon
• 3 PM – 4 PM: Water-type Pokemon
• 4 PM – 5 PM: Dark-type Pokemon

During the Water-focused hours, you’ll have a chance to encounter Pokemon like Alomomola, Horsea, and Tympole, while the Dark-focused hours will bring out Scraggy, Murkrow, Sableye, and others. You’re also much more likely to find Carvanha throughout the event, regardless of what time it is, including a Shiny Carvanha.

If you haven’t stocked up on Incenses, Niantic will offer a special bundle during the event that costs one PokeCoin and contains three Incenses. You can read more about the Incense Day event on the official Pokemon Go website.

In the meantime, the Legendary Pokemon Virizion is back in five-star Raids until May 19. Season 2 of the Go Battle League is also underway after a delayed start, and there are new Field Research tasks for May to complete. Niantic has also shared details on Pokemon Go’s May Community Day. The event takes place on Sunday, May 24, and features the Grass-type Pokemon Seedot.

Developer Xaviant has announced that its battle royale game, The Culling, is getting a second wind on May 14 for Xbox One. The studio said that the PC release will follow sometime later.

This new version of the game is dubbed The Culling: Origins and features a number of improvements, including adjustments to A.I. behavior, graphics enhancements on Xbox One, gameplay tweaks (like stamina reduction), and more. In addition to all of this, Xaviant has removed premium items and purchasable loot boxes from the game. However, as a result, the studio notes that “past saved games will be wiped and all previous unlocks have been reset.” Check out the official relaunch trailer below.

What’s most notable about The Culling: Origins, however, is the price of entry. Those who already own it will be able to get into the game at no extra cost. Anyone who doesn’t have the game will only need to pay a nominal $6 to jump into the battle royale action. However, it’s not that simple. In order to continue playing The Culling: Origins, players will need to win matches or purchase tokens. These Online Match Tokens, which can be bought in packs or earned by winning a match, grant you access to another match. If you have no Online Match Tokens, you can’t play The Culling: Origins online. It seems there is offline play, though.

This surprise relaunch of The Culling: Origins comes after Xaviant closed the servers on the battle royale game in 2019. The studio released a sequel to the game in the form of The Culling 2 but quickly pulled the game from digital storefronts after a rough launch week.

The Culling: Origins Relaunch Details

• Players can play one free match online each day. Players can play additional matches through the following means:
  • Winning an online match grants an Online Match Token.
  • Packs of Online Match Tokens can be purchased (3 tokens = $0.99, 10 tokens = $2.99, 20 tokens = $4.99).
  • Online Passes providing unlimited online play can be purchased for 7 Days ($1.99) or 30 Days ($5.99).
• Xbox One graphical quality improved dramatically, rendering at 30% higher resolution with the addition of anti-aliasing and an improved framerate.
• A.I. behavior has been overhauled to provide a much more compelling and challenging offline experience.
• Player stamina system has been tweaked – reducing the time it takes for stamina to fully regenerate.
• The game no longer includes premium items or charges for crates. Players can level up, earn crates, and unlock airdrops through offline play.
• In order to keep the game alive indefinitely, a great deal of effort has been spent streamlining backend systems to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
• A side effect of this effort is that past saved games will be wiped and all previous unlocks have been reset.

Niantic has detailed Pokemon Go‘s next Community Day event. May’s Community Day will take place next Sunday, May 24, and this time, the featured Pokemon will be the Grass-type Seedot.

Like April’s Community Day, this month’s event will run for six hours instead of the usual three, from 11 AM to 5 PM local time. During that window, Seedot will appear in the wild much more frequently than normal, and you’ll have your first chance to encounter a Shiny Seedot in the game.

If you can power up Nuzleaf (Seedot’s evolved form) into Shiftry by 7 PM local time–two hours after the Community Day ends–it’ll learn the event-exclusive move Bullet Seed, which it normally can’t otherwise learn in Pokemon Go. This applies to any Nuzleaf that evolve within the designated time frame, even if you’ve caught them prior to the Community Day.

Just as last month, Niantic will also hold an exclusive Special Research story quest during May’s Community Day. The questline is called Seeing Double and will offer rewards like Incenses, Golden Razz Berries, and other items. However, you’ll need to purchase a virtual ticket for $1 USD to gain access to the story quest.

Rounding out May’s Community Day are a few other in-game bonuses. First, you’ll earn triple the usual amount of XP for catching Pokemon during the event. Any Incenses you use will also last for three hours rather than the usual 30 minutes.

During the Community Day, Niantic will host its first-ever 24-hour livestream on the Pokemon Go YouTube channel. The stream kicks off at 6 PM PT on May 23 and gives you a chance to “watch Seedot and other Pokemon play in the wild.” You can read more about May’s Community Day on the official Pokemon Go website.

In other Pokemon Go news, the Legendary Pokemon Virizion has returned to five-star Raids until May 19. Niantic is also holding Pokemon Go’s second Incense Day on May 17. During the event, you’ll have a chance to encounter Shiny Carvanha. You can catch up on other Pokemon Go news below.

Ubisoft has revealed that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will see the return of the instakill hidden blade. Killing any enemy–regardless of who they are–with a single hidden blade assassination was once a staple of the franchise, but that aspect of the game has been a bit restrictive in the past few entries.

According to Kotaku, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla creative director Ashraf Ismail said that Eivor’s hidden blade will be lethal enough to instantly kill any target in a single blow–provided you’re assassinating them.

“We wanted to look at the old games and see the greatness that those games had and acknowledge what’s great about the updated formula,” Ismail said. “There was an identity and a uniqueness that we wanted to bring back for Valhalla.”

The hidden blade hasn’t been a one-hit-kill wonder in Assassin’s Creed for a long time. Though Assassin’s Creed’s leveling system predates Assassin’s Creed Origins, the 2017 game was the first that required you to both level up your character and your hidden blade in order to maintain the attack power of your assassinations. If you didn’t, then more powerful enemies would withstand your attack, essentially negating the usefulness of assassinating.

Upgrading the blade required you to hunt down animals for crafting materials–which wasn’t a very popular activity in Origins. 2018’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey continued this trend but tied the upgrade for assassinations to collectibles as opposed to crafting materials.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is scheduled to release in Holiday 2020 for Xbox One, PS4, PC, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is one of the most beloved action-adventure games of the PlayStation 1 era. However, it’s also well-known for its underwhelming ending, which makes Halo 2’s “finishing this fight” cutscene look generous by comparison. If you’re familiar with Soul Reaver, you probably know that the game’s final third was slashed due to time and budget constraints, and evidence of that cut content has trickled out over the years.

Now, however, a group of die-hard Legacy of Kain fans have uncovered a large trove of unused content for the game, thanks to the discovery of several alpha versions of Soul Reaver. These include several areas that are missing from the game entirely, as well as unused boss fights with a human priestess and Raziel’s conspicuously-absent brother Turel. According to the Lost Worlds, Soul Reaver was originally supposed to end with Raziel defeating Kain for a third time, absorbing his soul, and using the Silenced Cathedral to destroy all of the vampires for good. Many of the concepts cut from Soul Reaver were later used in the franchise’s fifth entry, Legacy of Kain: Defiance.

Though fans have clamored for a remaster or a port of Soul Reaver to modern consoles, series owner Square Enix has voiced no plans for any such projects. According to reports, a sixth entry in the franchise, Dead Sun, was under development for three years by British developer Climax, but Square Enix cancelled it. The multiplayer portion of Dead Sun later became the ill-fated free-to-play game Nosgoth, which was cancelled in 2016.

If you play games on PC, Humble Bundle offers the chance to grab a bunch of great games for cheap while also benefitting charity. The latest Humble Bundle is dedicated to indie games on Steam, including Hotline Miami, Starbound, Gato Roboto, and more. By default, Humble Indie Bundle 21 benefits Traveling Stories, a nonprofit that builds libraries in underserved villages across the world. You get to choose how to allocate your money, though, whether that be to the publisher, a charity you like, or a mix of both.

If you pay just $1 or more, you’ll unlock Hotline Miami, Beat Cop, and Dustforce DX. If you haven’t played Hotline Miami, the $1 tier is more than worth it for Devolver Digital’s punishing and stylish top-down action game. Beat Cop is an investigative adventure that harkens back to ’80s TV shows and features gorgeous pixel art. Meanwhile, Dustforce DX is an endearing platformer starring a handy janitor.

The second tier of unlocks requires you to pay the average contribution (currently $7.33) to also get Moonlighter, Gato Roboto, and a mystery game that will be revealed next week. Moonlighter is a lovely mash-up of town simulation and roguelike dungeon crawling. You play as a shopkeeper by day, but by night you restock your shelves by waging war against monsters. Gato Roboto, another Devolver Digital title, is an adorable monochromatic platformer in the vein of early Metroid games.

Pay $15 or more, and you’ll also get Hypnospace Outlaw and Starbound. Hypnospace Outlaw takes place in an alternate history 1999, where you play as an Enforcer tasked to police the internet (known as the Hypnospace). It earned an 8/10 in GameSpot’s Hypnospace Outlaw review for its witty writing and clever puzzles. The highly-regarded Starbound is a sandbox side-scroller set in space that lets you build the world and explore as you see fit.

More PC game deals

Even if you already own a couple of these games, Humble Indie Bundle 21 is a stellar deal seeing as most of these games regularly go for $10 to $20 each. It also feels great to help a good cause, which sweetens the pot even more. There are tons of great gaming deals this week beyond the latest Humble Bundle. Fanatical is hosting a huge May Madness sale; GOG is discounting a bunch of zombie games; the Xbox Store has dozens of racing games on sale; and a mix-and-match Steam bundle lets you get three great games for $10.

Humble Indie Bundle 21

Pay $1 or more to unlock:

• Hotline Miami
• Beat Cop
• Dustforce DX

Pay the average contribution ($7.33) or more to also unlock:

• Moonlighter
• Gato Roboto
• Mystery game

Pay $15 or more to also unlock:

• Starbound
• Hypnospace Outlaw

The Guardian Games are over in Destiny 2, and while the grind to earn the Heir Apparent Exotic machine gun has ended, a new big weapon quest has kicked off in its place: The Lie.

Hop into the game after the most recent weekly reset and you’ll be able to hit the first step in the quest, which sends you to talk to Ana Bray on Mars. Ana suggests that something is going on with Rasputin, beyond just the thing with using his huge network of satellites to shoot down the Almighty. That’s been the story thrust of this season since its start, but we’ve been getting hints that there might be more going on with Rasputin since last season, the Season of Dawn. Now, it seems, that story might be developing further.

But getting to it is going to take a while. The first step in The Lie is for players to finish the Season of the Worthy’s Seraph Tower events on Earth, the Moon, and Io. This isn’t your usual quest that requires you to complete an event a certain number of times, though: The tracker for The Lie is actually taking into account all players and their completions. It looks as though it’s going to take a while to get through these, as well.

According to Destiny dataminer Ginsor, it’s going to take 3 million completions on each planet to advance The Lie to its next step.

After that, the quest apparently becomes a bit more manageable, although with some significant grind. The datamine also says we’ll return to Vostok, the location of the Iron Lords’ fortress from Destiny 1, and learn more about Rasputin in a secret room in its bunker on the Moon. The reward for the quest, once it’s completed, is Felwinter’s Lie, a powerful Legendary shotgun from back in the days of Destiny 1.

More interesting than the grind, though, is what we might learn about Rasputin through the course of the quest. Information about the warmind has been pretty thin throughout both Destiny 1 and Destiny 2. We know Rasputin was involved in the Collapse and fought for humanity during that invasion–it also knows more about what happened during that time than any other character in the game, and so far, it hasn’t shared. That might be about to change, though.

Through the course of the Season of the Worthy, we’ve seen that Rasputin’s bunkers are tracking the return of the pyramid ships, first teased at the end of the Destiny 2 vanilla campaign and then elaborated upon with the Shadowkeep expansion. Those guys are about to reach the solar system, and it seems that Rasputin will be a key figure in dealing with them. We’re probably about to learn some new info about the pyramid ships and the race that uses them once we work through The Lie.

There’s also a big theory developed from Destiny lore about Rasputin’s role in the Collapse that might finally get confirmed (or definitely denied): that Rasputin was the one who attacked and disabled the Traveler way back during the Collapse. At the end of the Season of Dawn, Osiris confronted Rasputin about its actions during the Collapse but didn’t elaborate on what they were. It seems very likely that “The Lie” this quest refers to could be the one we’ve been told about who was responsible for the Traveler’s fate–and what the Traveler had planned to do during the Collapse before it was disabled.

We’ll have to wait for the other steps to see where the story might take us, though. And getting to those other steps is probably going to take at least a couple of days. As of this writing, the completion tracker on The Lie has only been moved 1% for each of the three locations. Get out there and launch those satellites, Guardians.