Call of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s new Season 3 update introduced two new Operators, Alex and Ronin. It’s now been confirmed that Ronin is based on a real-life solider, and he’s the first character in the game to be modeled after a real-world military veteran.
Ronin is based on a man named Tu Lam, who escaped from communist Vietnam in 1979, fleeing the country in a fishing boat, according to Task & Purpose. He eventually landed in the United States, where he joined the US Army and become a member of the Special Forces. He served in the Army for 23 years, visiting 27 countries, before leaving the service in 2016 with the title of Master Sergeant.
Lam then moved into a new business venture with a civilian equipment and training company called Ronan Tactics.
Lam told Task & Purpose that the Call of Duty franchise is beloved among service members, who play the game to boost morale. “It’s just really part of the culture in the military. In Special Forces, we’d go out to do missions, and then guys would come back to log on to play. It’s a morale thing for our veterans overseas,” he said.
Lam visited the Infinity Ward studio in Los Angeles and completed motion-capture to help create an authentic-looking character model for the game. Lam also performed Ronin’s finishing move that is seen in the game. You can check it out in his Instagram video below.
Go to Task & Purpose to hear more from Lam and developers at Infinity Ward. Ronin is available to buy through the Ronin Operator Bundle for 2400 Call of Duty Points. For more, check out GameSpot’s gameplay video above where we play as Ronin.
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Valve seemingly has a bit of a leak problem right now, as the source code for both Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has recently made its way into the public eye. Or at least, that’s how it appears. The source code has actually been public knowledge for a while and is only now hitting the mainstream.
If you’re unaware of what’s going on, here’s the short of it: The source code for both Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive seemingly leaked on April 22 through an anonymously posted blog post (by a user only known as Maxx), though the files in question are dated for 2017/2018. Regardless, the leak still represented a possible means for hackers to run a remote code execution and inject malicious code into a player’s account.
In response to this leak, several player-run servers temporarily shut down to protect their users. In a blog post, Creators.TF wrote, “Due to the recent source code leak, we are shutting our servers down for the foreseeable future. This is because of the uncertainty surrounding security to our infrastructure as well as your computer. We will monitor the situation and keep you updated.” Redsun.TF issued a similar statement, writing in a Steam blog post, “Due to the recent code leaks for both CS:GO and TF2, I have decided to keep all servers offline until a patch is released for potential bugs.”
However, in a statement to GameSpot, Valve confirmed that the source code in question actually leaked back in 2018, not April 22, 2020. “We have reviewed the leaked code and believe it to be a reposting of a limited CS:GO engine code depot released to partners in late 2017, and originally leaked in 2018,” Valve VP of marketing Doug Lombardi told GameSpot.
“From this review, we have not found any reason for players to be alarmed or avoid the current builds (as always, playing on the official servers is recommended for greatest security). We will continue to investigate the situation and will update news outlets and players if we find anything to prove otherwise. In the meantime, if anyone has more information about the leak, the Valve security page describes how best to report that information.”
In an attempt to identify Maxx (who remains anonymous), several people pointed fingers at Valve News Network creator Tyler McVicker, citing that the April 22 blog post that revealed the source code included leaked correspondence between McVicker and several of his friends talking about Valve leaks. In response, McVicker held a Twitch Q&A livestream in which he clarified what those leaked conversations were about and establishes how he is not the leaker–a statement further collaborated by Valve Archive curator Jaycie Erysdren on Twitter.
“So for the longest time, I ran a community server team named Lever Softworks,” McVicker said during his Q&A. And on Lever Softworks, we did a few things–Portal: Still Alive for PC, Half-Life 2: Aftermath, Half-Life 3 dog resource gathering maps–and behind the scenes we were working on a community recreation of F-STOP based almost entirely on the available assets we had found [and] new information in the retail build of Portal 2.” McVicker then goes on to say how the team fell apart, partly because he “got busy” and largely because the team “kept arguing about things.” McVicker also talks about a problematic member who was racist and transphobic, which alienated another teammate who was crucial to the project.
On April 21, 2020, McVicker got a call from a long-time friend, who asked if McVicker would be willing to transfer ownership of the Lever Softworks account to them. “I wasn’t doing anything with it,” McVicker said, “I was busy with Creators.TF.” In the process of transferring ownership, the problematic person was removed from the Lever Softworks team and, assuming there would be some form of retaliation in the form of excessive messaging, McVicker preemptively blocked them on social media. “There had been a pattern in the past of this person not being in certain groups or chat rooms and getting very upset about it,” McVicker said.
McVicker identifies this problematic person as Maxx–McVicker believes this leak was done out of retaliation for being removed from the team. McVicker added he has no connection to the original 2018 leak either. “I’m not the source of the code, I’m just not,” McVicker said. “In fact, I tried very hard to warn Valve about it.”
So, all in all, there was no leak–or at least not one on April 22, 2020. The original leak happened back in 2018, and supposedly in an attempt to get back at a perceived slight, a former Lever Softworks team member reposted it alongside some private messages in order to frame McVicker for the deed. Valve has not announced whether it intends to pursue legal action against Maxx or whether this instance will influence its relationship with the Source Engine modding community going forward.
On this week’s episode of IGN’s weekly PlayStation show, Podcast Beyond!, host Jonathon Dornbush is joined by Brian Altano, Max Scoville, and Lucy O’Brien to discuss the biggest news in the world of PlayStation.
Square Enix returns us to Midgar once again with the long-awaited Final Fantasy 7 Remake. IGN’s expert guide writers have been digging into the FF7 Remake to bring you a full walkthrough of Cloud’s adventure, including combat tips, enemy breakdowns, boss fight strategies, and plenty more. If you’ve already made it to the post-game, we’ve got a guide for that too.
You can find links to all of our FF7 guide below, starting out with introductory information and guides, then moving on to the walkthrough further down to prevent spoilers.
With this remake, Cloud moves past his classic days of turn-based combat in favor of a mixed battle system. Want to learn more about how combat works and the best tactics to utilize in Final Fantasy 7 Remake? Check out these guides for that and more:
Materia is a key mechanic in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and needs to be equipped to weapons and armor in order to cast spells, summon powerful creatures and more. There are a number of types of Materia to unlock and utilize.
These guides will help you become a Materia master, and with IGN’s new checklist system, we can help you keep track of what you do and don’t have too:
The Final Fantasy 7 Remake guide was made through a collaborative effort between the entire IGN guides team with great freelancers and community support. This article was put together by AU EIC Cam Shea.
For a series that kicks off with a literal blaze, Little Fires Everywhere is a simmering slow burn. Unfortunately, after eight long episodes, the series ends with a delicious twist but struggles to deliver a resolution.
“Sometimes you have to scorch everything to start over. And after the burning, the soil is rich and life can grow there, life that is maybe even better than what was there before,” Kerry Washington’s Mia Warren tells Izzy Richardson midway through the episode. “People are like that too.”
I hope she’s right: for the Richardsons, the Warrens, and all of us in these uncertain times, living—not unlike Pearl in this story—with choices people in power are making for us. But it seems to be a lesson Mia is all too familiar with, which is perhaps why she comes out of the series relatively unscathed, though not unchanged. Mia — who lied to Pearl her entire life, stole a daughter away from her father, and forged a bond with an isolated, troubled young teen, only to abandon her — always seems to land on her feet.
Mia is ultimately forgiven by Pearl, idolized by Izzy, and will more or less come out of Shaker Heights with a better, more honest relationship with her daughter than she had coming in…at least until she must face the Ryan family, which we unfortunately never get to see. Frankly, that’s my biggest complaint about the season: How can Little Fires Everywhere build the Ryans’ backstory up so ominously and spend so much time on nightmares featuring Jesse Williams, but not let us see the explosion?
I get it, this story is about mothers, not fathers, but there is so much here worth exploring. Instead, the season filled time with muddled storylines about Elena’s psycho ex who works for The New York Times and a somewhat contrived love triangle between Pearl, Trip, and Moody.
And yet, it’s Reese Witherspoon’s Elena (whose manipulation of Pearl is egregiously vindictive) who not only loses her daughter Izzy, but the respect of the rest of her clan. As Elena begins to see her white picket fence for the facade it truly is — her relationship with her husband is hanging by a thread, the daughter she considred her “perfect” little clone had a secret abortion, and her eldest son stole his little brother’s girlfriend — she focuses her rage on her usual target: Izzy. Though the meltdown between the toxic mother-daughter duo has been building all season, it’s Lexie, Trip, and Moody’s distressing attempt to stick up for their sister for the first time that feels far more powerful.
That’s Little Fires Everywhere’s most satisfying move. The ending of the season takes a sharp turn from the book: instead of Izzy setting the fire before running off to lands unknown, it’s the rest of the Richardson kids who decide to burn it all down after their youngest sibling is cast out. (Side note: they beg Elena to go after her, but don’t Lexie and Tripp have their licenses?! Go get your sister!)
The writers honestly couldn’t have chosen a more fitting batch of culprits. Though the acting has been phenomenal from Washington and Witherspoon the entire season, the heart of the show has always belonged to the kids, who continuously challenged each other and felt altogether much more human. Even further — just as Mia’s been trying to tell Pearl this entire time — their act of rebellion will likely have no long term consequences. Lexie is still going to go to Yale, Tripp is still a popular athlete, and Moody is a rich white boy. They’re going to be just fine.
In the end, Elena does make one move for redemption: taking credit for the house fire. Yet, her daughter and the home she built are still gone, her husband’s still a douche, and her life as she knew it has to be rebuilt from the ground up. Literally. Maybe Mia was right; maybe Elena needed this to happen and will be able to construct a more solid foundation without the facade, or maybe she won’t… honestly, I’m not sure why I should care.
Perhaps that’s why the ending between the McCulloughs and Bebe Chow leaves me a bit cold. When the McCulloughs win their court case, a heart wrenching defeat for Bebe, she steals May Ling from her bed, away from the family she’s loved for a year, now destined for a life on the run. The ending is meant to be heartbreaking and morally ambiguous — at least, I hope it is — but it does seem to end the way the writers hope we want it to: with Bebe reunited with her baby and Mia’s own choices to keep Pearl from her father seemingly given narrative endorsement. Was there really no way the McCulloughs and Bebe could somehow change the story and heal old wounds? Are we just a world of Elenas and Mias? It’s a pretty cynical punctuation mark on the series.
After a rocky start, Google Stadia has started to fulfill its promise. When it launched in November, Google’s game streaming service was a mix of impressive tech and big ideas, but haphazard execution undermined it all. The service that launched felt like an expensive beta, and it had nearly as many half-baked features as missing ones.
While many of the platform’s game-changing features are still MIA – Crowd Play, State Share, and Streaming to YouTube come to mind – Stadia has slowly started adding features. There have been dozens of small, quality-of-life upgrades since launch. There are notifications for achievements now. Your captures are no longer locked to your phone. There are large changes, too. Most importantly, there’s a Base version now that doesn’t require a monthly subscription. If you have a Gmail address and a fast enough internet connection, you can play Stadia.
With new features – and an increasingly competitive streaming landscape thanks to Microsoft XCloud and Nvidia GeForce Now – we figured it was time to give Stadia another shake.
Google Stadia – Performance
From a technical standpoint, Stadia is still plenty impressive. There is something undeniably cool about playing a game like Doom Eternal on a MacBook that can barely handle Chrome on a good day.
With the right internet connection, games looks phenomenal. The games we’ve tested look about as good as Xbox One X or PS4 Pro. From these comparison images, you can see there’s more detail in the tree bark and deeper shadow mapping.
The second image above highlights Stadia’s ability to show longer draw distances. You can actually make out the rock face in the background compared to the crushed mass of pixels seen in the Xbox One X’s rendering.
If your internet is dodgy, the first thing to go is your resolution, then your gameplay. When I was near my router, the games I played performed flawlessly. I listened to Spotify, streamed YouTube TV, and played the game, but my connection remained stable. In fact, in a dozen or so hours of testing, I only experienced a handful of quality drops and brief input stutter, and each recovered in a matter of seconds. When I moved to the furthest corner of my house, it was a different story. Stadia was nearly unplayable. In an hour of gaming, Stadia slowed down or got so blurry I spent much of the hour dying over-and-over again in the same room in Doom Eternal. And get this, I wasn’t even playing on Nightmare.
Even so, I’m still pretty impressed with Stadia’s performance. When tested alongside GeForce Now, it was far less prone to latency or GeForce Now’s disruptive rubber-banding effects.
Stadia also does a great job of rendering HDR colors – such as on the Moon in Destiny 2, the psychedelic corridors of Thumper, or the vibrant hellscapes of Doom Eternal. It’s worth noting that in the games we tested, Google’s streaming service isn’t actually pushing a true 4K image. Destiny 2 renders at a native 1080p that’s upscaled to 4K and Doom Eternal offers 1800p up-sampled to 2160p on 4K displays. There’s no list of games that are actually pushing a true 4K image, but even Shadow of the Tomb Raider – one of the only games running at native 4K – can only do so at 30fps.
But even then, the criteria isn’t black and white. For some reason, Macs are locked at 1080p, the Base version of Stadia is locked to 1080p, and of course, you’ll need a fast and stable internet connection, or your resolution will drop. Unlike GeForce Now, you can’t change your graphical fidelity within games, so what you get is what you get.
To be honest, it’s all a bit confusing. Google currently defaults all users to 1080p to combat the increased strain caused by COVID-19, but it’s difficult to find a straight answer about which games, if any, actually have 4K support before purchasing them. If it’s a marketing tactic, it seems to have backfired. Even if 4K is a selling point for you, I still wouldn’t recommend paying for Pro.
And besides, I didn’t notice any difference playing Doom Eternal when I was playing on Base or Pro – which, theoretically should have been a 1080p experience vs a 1800p upscaled to 2160p. Both looked great, and the visual quality hinged far more on my internet speeds than my subscription. Suffice it to say, if pure visual fidelity is your goal, PC is still king. Still, we’re impressed with how Stadia is capable of hitting 60 frames per second in games (like the aforementioned Doom Eternal). This has a tangible effect on not just the look of the game, but the flow of the gameplay as well.
And, of course, the caveat: you need a very stable network with at least moderately fast internet speeds. However, when testing the service in the bowels of the NYC subway system, Kevin had no problems playing Destiny 2 for a few minutes every day, and I had good luck in San Francisco. Your luck in Montana, however, might be another story.
Google Stadia – Latency
Google Stadia does a great job of minimizing the usual latency that comes with game streaming services. That said, latency isn’t completely eliminated as there’s still a bit of a perceptible delay, but it’s far shorter than the half-second or more of lag I’m used to experiencing with Nvidia GeForce Now and Microsoft Project xCloud.
I ran a few tests with Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Mortal Kombat 11 to see how much more latency we got on Stadia versus playing the game locally on an Xbox One X and I came away somewhat impressed.
Latency with the Stadia controller and service sat around 150-175ms while playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Comparatively, the Xbox One X’s latency sat at 100ms. In Mortal Kombat 11, Google’s game streaming added about 50ms more latency compared to playing on console.
Though we have these numbers, be aware that latency on Stadia can vary a lot. In my testing with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I saw it decrease from 175ms to 150ms and then 75ms just from jumping three times on my mostly stable 200Mbps network. These variances could have been a result of another device on the network, a hiccup in my Spectrum service, radio interference, Google’s “negative latency” (more on this soon), or any number of other factors.
The effects of latency and how you perceive it can also largely change depending on which game you’re playing at the time. Any amount of input lag is far more noticeable and a problem for twitchy shooters like Destiny than games with floaty animations like Tomb Raider or Assassin’s Creed.
With the official Stadia controller, latency is kept to the lowest amount I experienced. A large part of this comes thanks to the way Google has set up Stadia for “negative latency” by having the games run at more than 60 fps on their end. The system is also designed to predict almost anything you might do next and prepare game animations even before you hit a button.
If that sounds like the game is trying to wrest control from you, don’t worry. Google’s Minority Report-esque “pre-gaming’ system was also never apparent to me. At no point did I feel like the game had my character winding up a grenade toss before I hit the right bumper in Destiny 2.
Other controllers that don’t have a built-in Wi-Fi radio to communicate directly with Stadia’s servers see a tiny bit more lag, but we’re only talking a few more milliseconds here. Having said that, playing with a gaming mouse and keyboard makes the latency much more apparent if you’re used to instantly snapping your aim between targets.
The worst thing that exacerbates latency is trying to game on a TV with poor input lag or without a dedicated gaming mode. During my testing with a 75-inch Samsung Q90R, playing with Game Mode was just about as good as playing on a gaming monitor and having a screen brightness of 1,500 nits really makes the HDR experience from Stadia pop.
Trying to play with Game Mode turned off on the Samsung Q90R led to much more disastrous results, like not being able to properly track enemies in my crosshairs and some hilariously poorly timed jumps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Google Stadia – Bandwidth Usage
If you’re cursed with data caps from your Internet provider, you might want to avoid Stadia. In just five minutes I saw Destiny 2 use anywhere between 833MB to 1.2GB of bandwidth. In 30 minutes my bandwidth usage ballooned to 6.2GB and then 9.5GB after a full hour.
That’s a lot of data. In a single hour, you’ll have streamed enough data to fully download most indie games. After 17 one hour gameplay sessions you could have downloaded Red Dead Redemption 2 in its entirety.
A smaller, less graphically intensive game like Kine used 373MB after five minutes, which is much less than the amount of data Destiny 2 chomped through, but it still adds up. After 30 minutes Kine used a total of 1.7GB while streaming the game to my phone.
Compared to streaming a 4K HDR movie, Stadia’s bandwidth demand is about the same if not lighter than watching John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum at 4K HDR. But the key difference here is that when streaming a movie, it will eventually load completely into your cache – likely after 10 to 30 minutes.
With game streaming, your bandwidth usage doesn’t stop at any point, varying constantly depending on the level of detail in your environment, lighting, the number of enemies on the screen. You’re constantly consuming your data cap (if you have one) and it only takes a bigger chomp as you play more graphically demanding games.
Google Stadia – Interface
Google Stadia’s interface remains pretty simple. Provided you’ve logged in before, all you have to do is navigate to Stadia.com in Chrome, and a resume screen appears for the last game you played. It’s hard to overstate how futuristic this feels – hopping into a fully realized version of Red Dead Redemption 2 through your browser. There’s a Home and Store button on the left, and a friends and profile button on the right. There’s also a weird “Controllers” button, which tells you Wireless support is coming soon. But wireless support is actually very much here now, so it’s awfully confusing.
Scrolling from top to bottom shows you a list of the games you’ve purchased, with the ability to quickly start them in just two clicks. (And yes, loading games is phenomenally fast.) At the bottom of the Home page is where your captures are stored. On the Base plan, you’re allowed 100 video clips and unlimited screenshots. Pro users get 500 clips and unlimited screenshots.
The Store page is still equally barebones. You’re presented with a grid of games available for purchase (which you can now do from the browser), displayed under a few grouping categories. The first category is “Stadia Pro Games,” which is awfully confusing for Base users, who may be confused whether those games will work with the base package. They will. The collection is meant to signify which games Pro subscribers can get for free – though there’s no intuitive way to know this.
These pages are surprisingly spartan and pleasing to navigate – especially when compared to something like PlayStation’s busy ad-filled store – but they don’t always make sense. For instance, if you’re gaming on one of the supported Android phones, your Stadia Controller’s capture button is disabled. Even worse, for some, you can’t do anything with your images or videos from your phone or Chromecast Ultra.
So, kill that gang of Marauders in a spectacularly cool way? You’ll need to log onto Google Chrome (which you may or may not even have), download the capture to your computer, then share them from there. Pretty dumb!
Thankfully, Stadia’s interface has preserved one of its coolest features: you can start playing on one device and instantly pick up from where you were on another platform. So say you’re playing a game on your phone when you get the dreaded 20% battery notification. You can open your laptop, log in to Stadia, and boom. As long as the game was still open on your phone, it’s then instantly transferred to your laptop. This doesn’t just feel magical, it feels like the future of gaming.
The Stadia controller has a similar shape and almost the same heft as a Nintendo Switch Pro controller mixed with the layout of a DualShock 4 controller and the buttons of an Xbox One controller. Unfortunately, the flat face buttons don’t offer a lot of travel or click much, meanwhile, the triggers offer almost no resistance when pulled. I wish Google had made the whole controller as clicky and tactile as its D-Pad and bumpers.
The good news is if you don’t want to use the Stadia controller, Google’s game streaming service works just fine with an Xbox, PS4, or other third-party controllers. Even without the built-in Wi-Fi radio of the official controller, you don’t get a lot of extra perceptible lag.
You can also use mouse and keyboard, though latency is a bit more noticeable when going that route. PC peripherals are known for precision – 1:1 mouse movements and eliminating latency have been core tenets of that market and ecosystem for years – and that precision makes Stadia’s bit of latency extremely apparent. Comparatively, a controller masks some of that latency better than a keyboard and mouse setup.
The Stadia’s game library is, sadly, the platform’s Achilles’ heel. After nearly half a year, the library remains woefully empty – still showcasing games like Destiny 2. There are a few newcomers here – Doom Eternal, Borderlands 3, and Wolfenstein: Youngblood being perhaps the hottest of the bunch.
If you subtract different “Editions” of games, Stadia still has less than 40 games. Reading Stadia’s confirmed upcoming games doesn’t do much to assuage concerns. While there are a few confirmed big hitters like Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate III, the list is disappointingly short. Worst of all, there are no confirmed first-party games announced, and there’s nothing you couldn’t play elsewhere.
Subscribing to Stadia Pro at $9.99 a month nets you some free games (9 at the time of writing) like Destiny 2 and Thumper. These aren’t blockbuster titles, like we’ve come to expect from Playstation Plus or Xbox Live, but there’s still plenty of quality here. Pro subscribers receive discounts, like a $99.99 Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition available for $50, or a $10 copy of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. Still, there are currently only 11 deals on the store.
Ironically the best deal of all is to not pay for Stadia Pro.
Earlier today a 2017/2018 source code for Valve’s Source Engine supposedly leaked online; prompting fears that this could lead to security vulnerabilities in games like Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Valve confirmed that the code appears to be a repost of a 2018 “limited CS: GO engine code depot” leak and it should not be a threat to Valve’s multiplayer games.
In a statement to IGN Valve said, “We have reviewed the leaked code and believe it to be a reposting of a limited CS: GO engine code depot released to partners in late 2017, and originally leaked in 2018.”
Valved added, “From this review, we have not found any reason for players to be alarmed or avoid the current builds (as always, playing on the official servers is recommended for greatest security). We will continue to investigate the situation and will update news outlets and players if we find anything to prove otherwise. In the meantime, if anyone has more information about the leak, the Valve security page describes how best to report that information.”
The Twitter account @SteamDB posted this morning that the Source code for CS: GO and Team Fortress 2 dated 2017/2018 was leaked to the public today. Players online began worrying about potential security vulnerabilities the leak could open up, and users urged others to avoid Valve multiplayer games out of precaution.
The primary fear from TF2 and CS: GO players were potential exploits from the source code including remote code execution bugs which programmers could use to compromise Valve’s online servers. This includes the potential to make a target’s PC execute commands remotely.
Despite some posts on social media, attacks on either CS: GO or Team Fortress 2 haven’t been verified, and Valve’s statement seems to suggest that there is no vulnerability in either game presently. At least on Valve’s official game servers.
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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. If you know anything about the leak send tips to [email protected]
The April update for Sea of Thieves is bringing in some hitters for the game, namely in terms of the addition of cats as a pet type. The cats aren’t all this update has to offer though, with Ships of Fortune being the biggest update since Tall Tales on the game’s anniversary last year. This update is filled to the brim with a new PvP faction, new traders, raised level caps, more ways to earn gold and reputation, a new revive system, and some big changes to the Arena.
The cats come in all shapes and sizes, along with outfits too.
The addition of cats as a pet option is obviously the most important part of the update, with players now able to purchase a range of cats from the game’s premium store, the Pirate Emporium. Each breed of cat comes in a variety of color options, so make sure to match your cat to your outfit and ship. Cat outfits are of course an option, with a number of Sovereign and special Legendary outfits available in bundles at the Emporium.
Everything new at the Pirate Emporium
Players will now be able to join their favorite traders, becoming an Emissary for either the Gold Hoarders, Merchant’s Guild, Athena’s Fortune, or Order Of Souls. Players will earn gold and reputation by bringing their trader loot, with the level cap for each faction being raised to 75. Players can also earn special cosmetic rewards for their chosen faction. To find out more about becoming an Emissary, head over to the Outpost and speak to the representative for the faction you wish to join. Keep in mind you’ll need to make a sizable donation in order to be bestowed with such a privilege.
The Pirate Legend status has not been moved to 75, with players still only needing to reach 50 with each faction to unlock the title.
With the update to the factions comes a new PvP faction, The Reaper’s Bones. Players can choose to instead become an Emissary for The Reaper’s Bones and hunt down other rival Emissaries in return for gold and reputation. These Reapers will still appear on the ship’s map like any other Reaper flag already in the game, so make sure to keep an eye out for those looking to hunt down other players for reward. Players can find the new company at The Reaper’s Hideout.
The Reaper’s Bones faction
If competitive action is your forte, then head over to the Arena where all new modes have been added. The Arena mode has been overhauled, with the addition of an all-out mode where in old treasure maps have been replaced by a single chest marked with a Sea Dog Beacon, with only one cash-in location. It’s an all out frenzy to be the one to hand in the prize.
A new revive system has been added, wherein players can now revive a crew-mate during a brief window before their souls drift into the Ferry of the Damned. This should allow for faster gameplay, with crews being able to recover from death much quicker.
In a new blog post from the developers, Rare has touched on how the team is getting on while working from home due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. Rare is focusing on the health of the employees and families during this difficult time, with the company keeping in mind the difficulties that can arise from a change to the working environment.
Following Ships of Fortune in May, the update will focus on quality of life changes and fixes for some long-standing bugs. A number of new events will also be implemented, with more rewards and activities for players than ever. A major part of the May update has also been pushed back to June as the team still needs to playtest it and bring it up to the quality that is expected.
Recently, the Better Call Saul actor Michael Mando hosted an AMA on Reddit, answering fan questions and talking about the season finale that had just aired. During the AMA some fans asked Mando about his role in Far Cry 3 as the main antagonist Vaas Montenegro, with people wondering if the iconic character will ever make a return.
One fan asked, “Greetings from Finland Mando! Do you still get recognised as Vaas or do more people see you as Nacho now? I Have to say that after playing Far Cry 3 back in the day, I hoped that I’d see you in more stuff. Very glad to see you get work and hope you all the best.”
Mando responded to the question: “Thank you so much! Vaas is my spirit animal – having co-created that character is something that will always be dear to me. I still get recognized as Vaas, and I still feel the outpouring of love for that character – makes me very happy. Who knows… maybe I will reprise the role very soon? :p Thank you for watching xo.”
t’s worth noting that Mando hinting at Vaas’ return does not necessarily mean that it will actually happen–this could simply be wishful thinking on the actor’s part. This is made especially difficult due to how the story plays out in Far Cry 3.
Fans also asked Mando about his appearance in Spider-Man Homecoming and whether or not he would be making a return as a potential Scorpion. Unfortunately, it seems the actor was unable to confirm any involvement with the franchise going forward.
“… I love Spiderman and I love that whole team 🙂 Who knows, I keep hearing things but I can’t confirm or deny anything… yet. Stay tuned xoxox.”
Mando also shared his insight on the Better Call Saul finale, telling the fans about how he gets into character and the motivations behind Nacho’s actions in the past season, along with some anecdotes about his co-stars and director Vince Gilligan. For the full AMA head over to the subreddit.
