Some Of Destiny 2’s Best Guns Will Be Obsolete In Year Four

Big changes are coming in Destiny 2‘s fourth year, and new details have shown just how much they’re going to affect players and the loot they’ve been chasing. According to Bungie’s latest rundown of what’s to come, some of the best, most sought-after and most-used guns in the game will become obsolete in the coming months. That includes The Recluse, The Mountaintop, Luna’s Howl, Not Forgotten, and more.

In its This Week at Bungie blog post, the developer outlined new details about changes to its weapon and armor Power system that will be visible in Season 11, which starts in June, and go into full effect in Season 12, which kicks off in the fall. The changes in the system will introduce a Maximum Power stat for weapons and armor, which will put a cap on how strong they can become using Destiny 2’s Infusion system.

The new system effectively adds an expiration date to all the gear in the game–three seasons after it’s released, you won’t be able to raise the Power level of that gear any higher, which will mean you’ll need to replace it with new, higher-level gear to participate in the toughest Destiny 2 activities, such as its raids.

Exotic weapons and armor aren’t affected by the change, and raid gear from the Last Wish and Garden of Salvation raids will have an extended period of usefulness, so they’ll still be good for a while. Every piece of gear that was released with the Shadowkeep expansion and beyond will be viable for a year after its release. But everything from the first two years of Destiny 2 will hit its Maximum Power level in Season 12 this fall–which means that, in Season 13, it won’t be able to hang with any of Destiny 2’s endgame activities.

That doesn’t mean the gear will be completely useless. You’ll still be able to use it in any activities that don’t require high levels, or in the Crucible, where most of the game modes (including the ranked Competitive playlist) balance all players’ Power levels automatically. That means you’ll still get chewed up by a Recluse/Mountaintop combo in Control or Elimination rounds, at least for a while. But in the Trials of Osiris or the Iron Banner, those guns will fall out of favor at the end of Season 12.

The good news is, we’ve still got two good seasons for these Pinnacle weapons to remain viable. And while a lot of people are unhappy about Bungie sunsetting great weapons and armor that were very tough to earn, there is some fairly compelling reasoning behind the move. Director Luke Smith has said the issue is Destiny 2 is piling up guns and armor that nobody uses, and that’s a real complaint. The developer can’t just continually release “better” weapons and armor to replace the ones that exist, because that’ll lead to an endless creep of players using better and better guns, killing enemies (and each other) faster and faster, until the game no longer plays as intended. The new Power system will push old equipment out of the way for newer stuff, which will encourage experimentation with character builds and finding new favorites.

That would be nice, if the new system works out that way, rather than just creating a new arbitrary grind for players every so often that forces them to chase down new equipment to maintain parity with everyone else. Whether the system works as Bungie intends will likely come down to compelling weapon and armor design. Bungie has to find a balance between making new guns worth the chase to acquire them, but not so amazing that it’ll be too hard to abandon them later when something new comes along. In Season 12, we’ll start to see if such a balance is possible in Destiny 2.

Now Playing: Destiny 2 – Season Of The Worthy Opening Cinematics

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The Suicide Squad: Everything We Know About The DC Reboot

The Suicide Squad: Everything We Know About The DC Reboot – GameSpot

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Xbox Series X Is A Chance To Fix Achievements

Microsoft is set to go into the next console generation in Holiday 2020 with the release of Xbox Series X, the fourth generation of Xbox consoles. And with that generational change, Microsoft has the opportunity to fix a long-standing problem with its Xbox consoles: Achievements and Gamerscore.

In the video above, Jordan Ramée airs his grievances about Xbox Achievements, namely that Microsoft continues to allow developers and publishers to create ones with numeric values that aren’t multiples of five. Unlocking these Achievements can lead to a Gamerscore becoming an imperfect prime number–an annoying stain to an Xbox account’s reputation.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Jordan makes sure to point out what he likes about Xbox Achievements too in hopes Microsoft continues those trends with the release of Xbox Series X. Tracking an Achievement’s unlock rate is his favorite feature, as it gives him a sense of pride when he unlocks an Achievement that few others have, such as Titanfall 2‘s Every Nook and Cranny or Dark Souls III‘s The Dark Soul, and a sense of fascination to see where the majority of a playerbase fell off of a game.

Nicholas Hoult’s X-Men Audition Included Family Guy Impression

When auditioning to get the roles they want, sometimes actors make strange choices. For instance, Anne Hathaway went into her The Dark Knight Rises audition dressed as Harley Quinn, before realizing she was there for the role of Catwoman. Sometimes, though, it’s not the actor’s idea to do strange things when auditioning. Take Nicholas Hoult, for example.

The actor has played the role of Hank “Beast” McCoy in four different X-Men movies, beginning with 2011’s X-Men: First Class. To get that role, a peculiar request was made of Hoult. “[Director] Matthew Vaughn asked me to do a couple of takes in an American accent as you kind of saw the character. But then also do a take doing an impression of Stewie Griffin from Family Guy,” he remembered in an interview with GQ.

Thankfully, Hoult knew the show well. “I had watched a lot of Family Guy in my teen years growing up, so I was like, ‘OK, I think I’ve got a pretty good impression of Stewie Griffin lined up,'” he said. He recorded himself reading lines as Stewie, along with the rest of his audition and submitted it to Vaughn. Thankfully, it worked, and the rest of history.

While Hoult’s time as Beast may have come to an end after X-Men: Dark Phoenix, there’s still at least one more movie on the way for the franchise. New Mutants, which focuses on a different set of mutants, was just given a new release date, after being postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now Playing: Dark Phoenix – The X-Men Legacy Trailer

When Does Animal Crossing’s Redd Visit? Datamining Has The Possible Answers

If you’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons for a few weeks now, you’ve probably noticed that a special NPC visits your island each day. The April update even added two more visitors to the mix: Leif, who sells shrubs and flower seeds, and Jolly Redd, who sells art. However, you might not be seeing Redd–or some of the other desirable NPCs–very often. According to datamining, that’s due to how the visitor schedule works.

Twitter user @_Ninji, who has shared accurate, datamined information about much of New Horizons, explained how special visitors work in a brief thread. Provided you’ve met the prerequisites for each visitor–you can find all of them in our special visitors guide–there are certain NPCs that are guaranteed to visit each week while the rest will show up randomly on the remaining days.

According to Ninji, Saharah, Kicks, and Leif are each guaranteed to come each week on a random weekday, while Gulliver, Label, C.J., Flick, and Redd will randomly fill in the remaining two weekdays. For example, you might get Saharah on Monday, Kicks on Tuesday, and Leif on Wednesday, which leaves only Thursday and Friday for the rotating visitors. That means you can only get two visitors out of that group of five each week. Weekends are taken up by K.K. Slider on Saturdays and Daisy Mae on Sundays, if you’ve unlocked them.

Ninji noted in a follow-up tweet that the visitors you missed in one week will have increased priority to show up the next week. There are also two nighttime visitors, Celeste and Wisp, which operate independently of the other visitors; Celeste can only appear on nights when the weather is clear and there can be a meteor shower, while Wisp will show up on a random night each week.

According to the official New Horizons guide, Saharah can also show up on weekends, though Ninji said he didn’t see anything in the code that would schedule her on a weekend. We’re working to verify ourselves if Saharah can indeed show up on Saturday or Sunday–which would be great, since that would leave a third weekday open for one of the rotating visitors.

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New To Disney+ In June 2020: Artemis Fowl Skips Theaters And Arrive This Month

As we continue to hunker down at home, we’re all watching a lot of television, including plenty of stuff on streaming services. Things like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Disney+ help pass the time, and there are new movies, TV shows, and original content coming very month. Here is what Disney has planned for the month of June.

The biggest release for next month is none other than Artemis Fowl. Back in April Disney announced the film would be skipping theaters and going right to the streaming service, as the COVID-19 pandemic is keeping theaters closed. Based on the book series by Eoin Colfer, and arriving on June 12, the film follows the preteen genius Artemis Fowl, “a descendant of a long line of criminal masterminds, as he desperately tries to save his father who has been kidnapped. In order to pay his ransom, Artemis must infiltrate an ancient, underground civilization–the amazingly advanced world of fairies–and bring the kidnapper the Aculos, the fairies’ most powerful and coveted magical device. To locate the elusive object, cunning Artemis concocts a dangerous plan—so dangerous that he ultimately finds himself in a perilous war of wits with the all-powerful fairies.”

Additionally, the final three episodes of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian arrive on June 5, 12, and 19. The series gives Star Wars fans an inside look at creating the Disney+ original series which took the world by storm. The final three episodes will cover visualization, score, and “connections.”

Below, you’ll find everything you can watch on Disney+ for the month of June. And speaking of things you should be watching, consider listening to GameSpot’s weekly TV series and movies-focused podcast, You Should Be Watching. With new episodes premiering every Wednesday, you can watch a video version of the podcast over on GameSpot Universe or listen to audio versions on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.

New to Disney+ in June 2020

Friday, June 5

  • Alaska’s Grizzly Gauntlet (S1)
  • America’s Greatest Animals
  • Chasing the Equinox
  • Howie Mandel’s Animals Doing Things (S1-2)
  • Secrets of Wild India (S1)
  • The Greeks (s1)
  • Weird but True! (S1-2)
  • Wild Hawaii (S1)
  • Women of Impact: Changing the World
  • Be Our Chef: Season Finale Episode 111 “The Spectacular”
  • Disney Gallery The Mandalorian: Episode 106 “Visualization”
  • Disney Family Sundays: Episode 131 “101 Dalmatians: Onesie”
  • One Day At Disney: Episode 127 “George Montano: Plasterer”
  • It’s a Dog’s Life with Bill Farmer: Episode 104 “Disaster Rescue Dogs & A Dog Mayor”
  • Disney Insider: Episode 106 “Artemis Adventure, Taste of Disney, Runaway Railway”

Friday, June 12

  • Mighty Med (S1-2)
  • The Liberty Story
  • The Story of the Animated Drawing
  • Walt & El Grupo
  • Artemis Fowl (Premiere)
  • It’s a Dog’s Life with Bill Farmer: Episode 105 “The Surfing Corgi & Bee Dogs”
  • Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian: Episode 107 “Score”
  • Disney Family Sundays: Episode 132 “Winnie the Pooh: Bag Toss”
  • One Day At Disney: Episode 128 “Scot Drake: Imagineering Creative”

Friday, June 19

  • 101 Dalmatians (1997) (S1)
  • Big Sur: Wild California
  • Muppet Babies Play Date (S1)
  • Schoolhouse Rock (S1)
  • Tinker Bell and the Pirate Fairy
  • Disney+ Originals
  • Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian: Finale Episode 108 “Connections”
  • It’s a Dog’s Life with Bill Farmer: Episode 106 “Stunt Dogs & Water Rescue Dogs”
  • Disney Family Sundays: Episode 133 “Monsters, Inc. Water Bottles”
  • One Day At Disney: Episode 129 “Candice Valdez: Radio Disney Host”

Friday, June 26

  • Man in Space
  • Mars and Beyond
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
  • Raven’s Home (S3)
  • Tarzan
  • Tarzan II

Now Playing: Best Shows And Movies To Stream For May 2020 – Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Amazon Prime Video

John Wick TV Series Will Explore the Origins of Franchise’s Characters

While we had previously know that Starz and Lionsgate’s planned TV series The Continental would be set in the early history of the John Wick franchise, one of the key creatives behind John Wick has now revealed that the show will also explore the origins of some of the movies’ supporting characters.

In a chat with Fandom (via ScreenRant), director Chad Stahelski, who has helmed all three John Wick films and is also expected to direct the series’ premiere episode, revealed additional details about what differentiates The Continental from the John Wick movie franchise.

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Stahelski said the TV series will utilize “a different perspective on the whole world, it’s coming at it from different characters’ points of view and what the breadth of the world is.”

The director said that while the John Wick movies are told over the period of a few days in the life of the title character and from his perspective, The Continental will have “a very different timeline structure and a very different perspective of character. About how deep the world goes, and not just about assassins but everything that’s included. And a lot of the origin stories are some of the characters that you see in Wick.”

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It was previously reported that The Continental won’t air until after John Wick 4 comes out. And since that film’s release date has now been postponed a whole year, it seems The Continental won’t be open for business until 2022 at the earliest.

AHS: Freak Show – Episode 13 “Curtain Call” Season Finale Breakdown

The final “Curtain Call” for American Horror Story Freak Show is here and ends with quite a dazzling performance. Dandy Mott goes on a killing spree at the Freak Show after becoming its owner. Luckily, some of the freak survive his spree and join forces to get their revenge on the sadistic Mott.

Meanwhile, Elsa Mars makes her way to Hollywood in hopes of becoming a star. When she finally makes her dreams come true, some of her shady past comes back to haunt her. Ultimately, she’s forced to perform on Halloween night. We know what that means!

Finally, the Tattler twins find some inner peace with one another as well as love as they start a family with none other than Jimmy. Let us know what you thought of the season of Freak Show in the comments below! Thanks for watching along with us!

Destiny 2’s Latest Quest Could Be The The Next Step To Changing Everything

There’s a new quest in Destiny 2‘s Season of the Worthy this week, and while it’s only slowly unfolding, it could be very important to the overall story the game has been building over the last year and a half. “The Lie” concerns Rasputin, the artificially intelligent Warmind at the center of this season’s tale. Given the backstory of Rasputin and some hints we’ve been seeing over the last few seasons, The Lie could have some major implications–and it could be the next step toward developing a new kind of conflict in the fourth year of Destiny 2.

Rasputin is a character who has existed since the start of the original Destiny, and yet one we know little about. During the Golden Age, the period of prosperity that started with the arrival of the Traveler in Destiny lore, Rasputin had control of defenses for the entire solar system. It is possibly the only character in Destiny who was present for the big apocalyptic event known as The Collapse. Rasputin’s connections with all those defenses were cut over the centuries that followed the Collapse; most of the Season of the Worthy has been centered around restoring Rasputin’s capabilities so it can shoot down a giant Cabal spaceship, the Almighty, before it crashes into the Last City and kills everybody.

Reconnecting Rasputin to its defenses has given the computer a whole bunch of power, something that a few Destiny characters have voiced concerns over. Since Rasputin was first rediscovered back in Destiny 1, Zavala has been concerned that the Warmind shouldn’t be trusted. After all, despite having an army of Guardians on its side, humanity is on its last legs in the Destiny universe. A rogue computer with a bunch of orbital weapons satellites is not an enemy that the Guardians’ leadership, the Vanguard, really wants to have to deal with. And while Rasputin’s mandate is to protect humanity, who knows how exactly it might decide to go about that–or whether his internal circuitry is in prime condition hundreds of years after his construction.

Over the course of the Season of the Worthy, Zavala has seemingly come around on trusting Rasputin to keep humanity’s best interests at heart. But there’s definitely more to Rasputin’s story than we yet know, and it seems like we might learn some of it with “The Lie.” If the story pans out in the direction it seems like Bungie has been pushing things, it could be another step toward introducing an ideological conflict to the game, to go along with the shooty kind.

What if the Traveler isn't the benevolent machine god everyone believes it to be?
What if the Traveler isn’t the benevolent machine god everyone believes it to be?

The Collapse, The Darkness, And The Traveler

To get where things seem to be headed, you first need to know about a theory that a lot of players hold about Rasputin’s story, based on various clues scattered throughout Destiny lore. That theory is that it wasn’t the enemies of the Traveler that attacked and disabled it during the Collapse, as was commonly believed throughout Destiny’s story up until now–it was Rasputin. Given what’s happened so far this year, it seems like that could be the lie Destiny 2 is about to reveal in its story.

The thing about the Traveler, the benevolent robot god that hovers over Destiny’s Last City and provides Guardians with their superpowers and immortality, is that we don’t actually know much about it or its motivations. In the backstory of Destiny, the Traveler showed up in the solar system and ushered in a new era of prosperity, in which humanity made huge leaps forward, spread throughout the system, terraformed whole planets, and basically built a utopia. But then the Traveler’s enemies, known as the Darkness, arrived to attack it. Something more or less unknown happened–the Collapse–and the Darkness was beaten back, but the Traveler was disabled and left dormant for hundreds of years afterward, all the way up to when the games take place.

Though the Traveler did a lot of good for humanity, this wasn’t the first time it showed up and elevated a civilization to utopia. The Traveler previously did that with the Eliksni, the alien race of enemies also known as the Fallen. They’re the folks the Traveler visited before us, and they too were attacked by the Darkness (or more specifically, it seems, the Hive aliens players also fight in Destiny). Fallen society was just as ravaged as humanity’s in an event they call the Whirlwind–and though it’s not 100% clear, there’s a suggestion in the lore that the Traveler might have abandoned the Fallen to their fate.

The theory among many (but, it should be noted, by no means all) Destiny fans who pay attention to the lore is that Rasputin recognized the Traveler would bail on humanity when its enemies came calling, dooming the human race to destruction in an event similar to the Whirlwind. The only way to prevent utter destruction was to blast the Traveler, forcing it to stay near Earth, and thus use its power to defend itself. That’s apparently what happened; the Traveler’s power drove off the Darkness (in an event that also created the Awoken, but that’s another very long story), and it created the Ghosts to build an immortal army to protect itself while it healed.

Rasputin did...something. We might be about to find out what it was.
Rasputin did…something. We might be about to find out what it was.

Rasputin’s Secret

Last season, we saw a cutscene in which Osiris confronted Rasputin after learning something important through all his time travel shenanigans, but didn’t say what–but presumably, what Osiris learned that would make him so mad was that Rasputin attacked the Traveler. If that’s revealed in The Lie (or if it’s another step toward that reveal), we’ll likely also learn why: Tthe Traveler would have abandoned humanity to its fate. And that revelation would go on to recolor a lot of Destiny’s standing lore and the attitudes of its characters, many of whom revere and even worship the Traveler.

(It also seems possible, especially given Rasputin-related flavor text in this season and some lore evidence from the past, that the Traveler wasn’t about to abandon humanity–but Rasputin made the call to shoot it anyway. That might have released the wave of Light energy that drove off the Darkness and stopped the Collapse, with Rasputin sacrificing the Traveler to save everyone else. You could also take this as evidence that Rasputin didn’t shoot the Traveler–but the story definitely seems to be hinting at something potentially shameful in Rasputin’s past. The point is that it’s an ambiguous “do the ends justify the means” kind of situation.)

Here’s the thing: For the whole of the Destiny franchise, the story has been about the good Light, a powerful force born from the Traveler, fighting the evil Darkness, the enemies of the Traveler. Almost all of the characters of the game see the Traveler as a nearly infallible force of good. But if Rasputin had to shoot the Traveler to stop it from abandoning billions to save itself, that calls into question all the beliefs the entire story of Destiny is built on. It has the potential to rock every character in the game to their core.

And really, that’s where Destiny 2 has been heading for at least the last year. Many of the major story beats since the start of Destiny 2’s second year have concerned the idea that maybe the dichotomy between Light and Dark isn’t quite so stark. Occasional lines of dialogue pop up from various characters, like Emperor Calus and his robot minions, that caution you about putting too much faith in the Traveler, like they know something you don’t. And there’s a big threat looming on the literal horizon, and Destiny has been suggesting that it’ll take more than just the Light to defeat it.

The Darkness is an enemy that wants to do more than destroy--it wants to corrupt.

Embracing The Dark Side

Up until now, the “Darkness” has been a sort of unquantified but malevolent force, but at the end of Destiny 2’s vanilla campaign, we started to get a sense of the actual people that term referred to. The post-credits scene of that campaign showed a bunch of pyramid-shaped spaceships waking up because of a wave of Light energy given off by the Traveler at the end of the story. One of those pyramid ships was discovered on the moon in the Shadowkeep expansion, and at the end of that campaign, we even spoke with the people who fly them. They told us that the Light was actually bad–that it abandons you when you need it most–and that the Darkness people are neither enemy nor friend, but will be our “salvation.”

Over the last year of Destiny 2, Bungie has been blurring the moral lines between the Light and the Darkness, and raising questions about whether using the power of the Darkness is all bad. The entire activity of Gambit, added with the Forsaken expansion in Year Two, is about gathering and harnessing Dark energy, potentially as a means to deal with the threat of the pyramids. The backstory of the Drifter, the guy who runs Gambit, suggests he came into closer contact with the Darkness than just about anybody else ever has and survived to tell about it. We still don’t know what the Drifter’s plans are, but we do know that he thinks it’s necessary in order to survive whatever’s on its way to the solar system.

And that threat is on the way, arriving imminently. For a few weeks now, Rasputin’s bunkers have shown a display tracking the proximity of the pyramid ships, and they’re quickly reaching the outer edges of the solar system. Their arrival could happen as soon as Destiny 2’s next content season, which kicks off in June.

When they get here, it seems likely they’re not going to be aggressive, necessarily–they’re going to be seductive, in a Dark-Side-of-the-Force kind of way. They’ll offer Guardians power, like what the Kentarch 3 encountered in the Garden of Salvation, or what tempted Dredgen Yor and the Shadows who followed him. And if The Lie establishes that the Traveler isn’t the perfect benevolent god, and in fact is it exactly what the Darkness portrays it to be, it’ll be all the more tempting to give into the Darkness and its powerful gifts for the game’s characters–and for the Guardians that serves as its heroes. Who knows exactly what that’ll lead to, whether it’s another branching story like the one where players had to choose between the Drifter and the Vanguard a few seasons ago, or proof of the rumor that Destiny will eventually split Guardians into two factions: Light and Dark.

Destiny has slowly been inching toward its world being far less black-and-white than much of the story has portrayed it thus far. We’re poised to see the story of Destiny evolve in some huge ways as tons of tiny threads seem poised to finally come together. I might be wrong about what Rasputin means to tell us in The Lie, but even if that theory doesn’t pan out, it’s hard to deny that Bungie’s MMO is on the precipice of a major shift that’ll add more nuance to the game than it’s ever had before.

Now Playing: Destiny 2 – Season Of The Worthy Opening Cinematics

Apple TV+’s Show About A Game Developer Gets Its Own Quarantine Episode

If there’s one show that’s ever truly captured what it’s like to work in the video game industry, it’s Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet. If you’re a gamer or at all interested in the industry, Mythic Quest almost single-handedly makes subscribing to Apple TV+ worth it. And now the show is jumping on the COVID-19 bandwagon and getting its very own quarantine special, much like Parks and Rec and others before it.

Mythic Quest: Quarantine will stream on Apple TV+ beginning Friday, May 22. The special will follow the developers of the titular massive online video game as they contend with the new Work From Home world necessitated by the global pandemic. Given that MQ is an Apple TV+ exclusive, it’s not surprising to hear that this half-hour episode was shot entirely on iPhones. Check out the trailer below.

Mythic Quest stars It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s Rob McElhenney, who also serves as executive producer and co-creator along with Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz. It’s produced in part by Ubisoft Motion Pictures and Lionsgate Television. The cast also includes F. Murray Abraham, Charlotte Nicdao, Community’s Danny Pudi, Imani Hakim, Ashly Burch (known for her video game voice work), David Hornsby (Rickety Cricket on It’s Always Sunny), and others.

In our review, we called Mythic Quest “an interesting and entertaining look at the video game development industry” that uses the setting to “explore issues that arise when art and commerce go head-to-head.” Look forward to watching this special quarantine episode on May 22, and until then, check out the 9 things we thought Mythic Quest got right about the game industry. We’re also eagerly anticipating the show’s second season, although there’s currently no word when it might arrive.

And speaking of things you should be watching, consider listening to GameSpot’s weekly TV series and movies-focused podcast, You Should Be Watching. With new episodes premiering every Wednesday, you can watch a video version of the podcast over on GameSpot Universe or listen to audio versions on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.

Now Playing: Rob McElhenney Stars In Mythic Quest Reveal Trailer | Ubisoft Press Conference E3 2019