Author: Trafficblast

Bungie has revealed what content will be leaving Destiny 2 with the launch of Beyond Light on November 10, 2020, and how the game will change when Io, Titan, Mars, Mercury, and Leviathan enter the Destiny Content Vault (DCV).

Bungie took to its blog to explain how the Destiny Content Vault will work, why it’s necessary, and how this removed content will make way for the Cosmodrome’s return and Europa’s debut.

It tries to simplify some of the confusion by stating that “when a destination goes into the DCV, so too do its PvE activities and associated rewards.” However, Bungie wanted to take a “crystal clear” approach and detailed exactly what will be leaving on November 10. Let’s run through it.

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Strikes

Strikes of the vaulted planets will also be entering the DCV, and they are as follows;

• The Pyramidion (Io)
• The Festering Core (Io)
• Savathûn’s Song (Titan)
• Strange Terrain (Mars)
• Will of the Thousands (Mars)
• Tree of Probabilities (Mercury)
• A Garden World (Mercury)

Gambit and Gambit Prime

Gambit and Gambit Prime will be merging into a single experience with the launch of Beyond Light, and will be “a single round face off with tweaked Blockers, heavier mote drain, and some changes to the Primeval fight.”

The Year 4 Gambit playlist map selection will be a “best of” list and will feature Emerald Coast (EDZ), Legions Folly (Nessus), Deep Six (Titan), and New Arcadia (Mars). There will be two maps moving into the DCV, and they are Cathedral of Scars (Dreaming City) and Kell’s Grave (Tangled Shore).

Crucible

Like Gambit, the Crucible will also have a curated “best of” mix and will contain maps from both Destiny 1 and 2. The following maps will not make it to Year 4 and will move into the DCV;

• Meltdown
• Solitude
• Retribution
• The Citadel
• Emperor’s Respite
• Equinox
• Eternity
• Firebase Echo
• Gambler’s Ruin
• Legion’s Gulch
• Vostok

There will also be modes in the Crucible that will find their way to the DCV, and they are as follows;

• Supremacy
• Countdown
• Lockdown
• Breakthrough
• Doubles
• Momentum Control
• Scorched

Momentum Control and Scorched will return from the DCV “at some time during Year 4.”

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Trials of Osiris

The Trials of Osiris experience will not be impacted by any of this content being moved into the DCV this year. The Lighthouse “will continue to be available to those who are able to complete a Flawless passage.”

Raids and Dungeons

There will be no dungeons rotating into the DCV this November, as “all dungeon-hosting destinations will remain active in the game during Year 4.”

However, Raids will not be so lucky. The following raids will be vaulted in November, due to the fact their destinations will be so too;

• Leviathan
• Eater of Worlds (Leviathan)
• Spire of Stars (Leviathan)
• Scourge of the Past (Last City)
• Crown of Sorrows (Leviathan)

This year’s Moments of Triumph features these five raids that will be removed, and their reward lockouts have been removed to make “grinding them extra… well, rewarding.”

Furthermore, Bungie plans on bringing the Vault of Glass raid out of the DCV and into Destiny 2 at some point in Year 4.

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Exotic Quests and Catalysts

As destinations are sent to DCV, some Exotic quests will not be able to be completed in their original forms. Those specific quests will be retired on November 10 and incomplete progress will be abandoned. If you wish to acquire these exotics via their original quests, do so “prior to the end of the Season of Arrivals;

• Sturm
• MIDA Multi-tool
• Rat King
• Legend of Acrius
• Sleeper Simulant
• Polaris Lance
• Worldline Zero
• Ace of Spades
• The Last Word
• Le Monarque
• Jotunn
• Izanagi’s Burden
• Thorn
• Lumina
• Truth
• Bad Juju

It’s important to note that none of these legacy Exotics will be retired from Destiny 2, its just that their original acquisition journeys will be vaulted.

Starting in Year 4, any Exotic tied to a quest that has been vaulted will “now become available through a new Memorial kiosk situated among the Vault kiosks in the Tower.

As for Catalysts, there will be number of them that will be going into the DCV and will be unavailable to earn starting in Season 12;

• Bad Juju
• The Huckleberry
• Izanagi’s Burden
• Legend of Acrius
• Polaris Lance
• Skyburner’s Oath
• Sleeper Simulant*
• Telesto*
• Outbreak Perfected*
• Whisper of the Worm*
• Worldline Zero*

If you have these catalysts equipped and their objectives completed, you will be able to continue to use them. If you have any of the above with an asterisk, “make sure you finish completing the necessary objective to apply it as the objective will no longer be available at the end of Season of Arrivals.”

All of these catalysts will find their way out of the DCV in a future season.

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New Guardian Experience

These changes will impact those looking to get into Destiny 2 as a free-for-all player, as the Red War, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind campaigns will no longer be playable.

Bungie is building a “new, expanded Guardian origin story on the Cosmodrome that will launch alongside Year 4 and will be available to all Guardians to play.”

The Forsaken and Shadowkeep story campaigns will still be available for owners of those expansions.

The Whisper, Zero Hour, and Year 2 Seasonal Content

The Whisper and Zero Hour secret missions will be sent to the DCV, and their Exotic weapon rewards will “not be acquirable until we find a new way to reintroduce them”

Additionally, Year 2 Seasonal content – including Forges, Reckoning, and Menagerie – will be vaulted on November 10. The full list is as follows;

• Ada-1, Black Armory, and Season of the Forge quests.
• Gambit Prime, Reckoning, and Season of the Drifter quests.
• Benedict-66, Werner 99-40, Menagerie, and Season of Opulence quests.
• Pinnacle and pursuit weapon quests. (Note: These weapons will receive an alternate acquisition method. More details to come later this Season.)

There is obviously a lot here, and Bungie promises to share more updates in the future. For more, be sure to check out its DPS article that shares more details on the DCV.

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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Cyberpunk 2077 will feature Free DLC as well as paid expansions, CD Projekt Red has revealed.

The Polish developer replied to a fan on Twitter, who asked about the potential for Cyberpunk 2077 to have “free DLC” like The Witcher 3, which offered an entire roadmap of free content to support the game beyond its initial launch.

Responding in kind, CD Projekt Red replied with a gif of the Kool-Aid Man spouting his famous catchphrase.

pic.twitter.com/y5PNLf3nIR

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) August 22, 2020

Beyond the free DLC, it was previously confirmed back in April of 2020 that Cyberpunk 2077 will feature paid expansions of similar size to those that were available for The Witcher 3, such as Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine.

There will be more than just DLC available to complement and flesh out the world of Cyberpunk 2077 – a comic book series based on the game’s Trauma Team is on its way from publisher Dark Horse Comics. You can check out the full broadcast of Night City Wire Episode 2 to catch up on all of the latest news about Cyberpunk 2077.

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In other CD Projekt Red news, a 12″ Geralt of Rivia action figure clutching a wreath of Harpy heads was recently revealed by McFarlane Toys.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Gotta day though after watching this… I’m suddenly curious about the Latina population in Quebec. Just sayin 🤔

— Melissa Fumero (@melissafumero) August 20, 2020

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and it basically comes down to this… while I understand the Latina population is v small in Quebec (& how many of them are funny actors?) the Amy n Rosa roles could’ve gone to ANY BIPOC so it’s disappointing to see that missed opportunity.

— Melissa Fumero (@melissafumero) August 21, 2020

While fan works are often vulnerable to DMCA takedowns from copyright holders (especially when based on Nintendo properties), Five Nights At Freddy’s creator Scott Cawthon is choosing to support his fan creators instead. As announced on the FNAF subreddit, the Fazbear Fanverse Initiative will not only provide funding for fangames, it will also support developers in getting their games on consoles and represented with merch.

In the post, which has since become the subreddit’s most upvoted ever, Cawthon describes the initiative as a collaboration with the developers of some of the most popular FNAF fan games. The indie horror game became a cult hit in the early days of gaming YouTube, spawning seven main games, a number of spinoffs, novels, and even a film adaptation that is reportedly still in production despite numerous delays.

Cawthon says that, while he has contributed funding to the fan games involved, he has stayed out of the development side, instead preferring to let the creators take the projects where they will. The “initial” lineup includes the following games as described by Cawthon:

• Emil will be bringing you Five Nights at Candy’s 4!
• Nikson will be bringing you The Joy of Creation: Ignited Collection!
• Kane will be bringing you Popgoes Evergreen!
• Jonochrome will be bringing you One Night at Flumpty’s 3!
• And finally, Phisnom will be bringing you a remake/re-imagining of the original FNaF!

While the fangames will be released for free on GameJolt, Cawthon also plans to bring them to consoles and/or mobile platforms in bundles, something almost unheard of in the realm of fangames. While the initial project is framed as a bit of an experiment, its clear Cawthon hopes for the Fanverse Initative to be an ongoing program.

It’s rare for fan creators to get so much support from developers, though fan creations and modding often serve as a pathway for developers to break into traditional jobs in the industry.

Madden NFL 21 is officially releasing on August 28, but you don’t necessarily have to wait until then to play the professional football game. The game’s EA Play early access trial is now available, giving subscribers the opportunity to play as many as 10 hours of the full game ahead of its official release date.

The early access period for Madden 21 actually started on August 21, which explains why you may have seen reactions, commentary, and gameplay footage emerging on social media over the weekend.

You need an EA Play membership to access the Madden 21 trial. The service, formerly known as EA Access, costs $5/month or $30/year.

If you’re willing to wait a little longer, you can start playing Madden 21’s full version–with no time limits–by purchasing the $80 Deluxe or $100 MVP edition of the game. This unlocks on August 25. This version also isn’t tied to any subscription, so you pay once and then keep the game forever.

All of your progress from the EA Play trial is likely to carry forward if you choose to buy the game outright. EA Play members save 10 percent on all EA digital content, which knocks down the price of Madden NFL 21’s standard version from $60 to $54. Additionally, the game will support a free next-gen upgrade for both Xbox and PlayStation until the release of next year’s game.

Madden NFL 21 introduces a number of updates and improvements over last year’s game, while it also adds a brand-new, arcade-style backyard football mode with trick plays. For more on Madden NFL 21, check out GameSpot’s video above where we speak with producer Seann Graddy and run down everything that’s new.

Destiny 2 is such a huge game that sometimes, elements of it will interact in strange and unexpected ways. The latest unexpected glitch to hit the game allowed players to completely break PvE encounters with the judicious use of specific emotes, but Bungie has already disabled one to combat it.

The emote in question is called Coin Flip, and players discovered that activating the emote along with any other that includes holograms–like chairs Guardians can sit on–messes up the ability of enemies to detect players. You needed to use the emotes in the loading areas ahead of the spots that enemies populate, and executed correctly, it made it possible to kill everything in an area with enemies never reacting. The exploit also apparently worked just about anywhere in the game, breaking basically everything.

In response, Bungie has disabled the Coin Flip emote, which it tweeted about on Friday.

It’s not clear yet when the Coin Flip emote might be fixed–unfortunately, you can’t taunt people liked the Drifter for the time being.

Please note that code redemption on Nintendo #eShop will be unavailable from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM PST on 8/24, 8/31, and 9/14 due to scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. https://t.co/jzDBe9wfTl

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 23, 2020

This review contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 2 of HBO’s Lovecraft Country, “Whitey’s on the Moon.”

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What’s in a name, really? A lineage, a legacy? Something to aspire to, to surpass, or something better off left alone; buried in the past? Though if there’s one thing you can count on in Lovecraft Country, it’s that nothing stays buried for long. Not even the dead.

The second episode of Lovecraft Country, “Whitey’s on the Moon,” opens on the morning after Atticus and co.’s gruesome encounter in the woods of Worcester, having discovered and spent the night at the Braithwhite family estate in the secluded town of Ardham. After indulging in the hospitality of the suspiciously affable William (Jordan Patrick Smith), a professional associate of the Braithwhite family and a *cough* “close personal friend” of Christina Braithwhite, Atticus, George, and Leti journey into town in search of clues to Montrose’s whereabouts.

The trip into Ardham is a cursory one at best, however, as the episode on a whole does very little to establish any clear answers as to why the town is so vehemently isolationist or what the townspeople’s relationship to the Braithwhite family is at all. We soon learn that while Atticus remembers the events of the night prior in vivid, horrifying detail, George and Leti are so curiously unaffected by their near death experience as to scarcely remember it all. Leti expresses concern for Atticus’ agitation, speculating that it might stem in part from his time as a soldier. It’s a consistent trope for any protagonist of a cosmic horror story to be doubted by their peers on the grounds that what they claim to know and fear is so utterly alien as to be seen as impossible. “Whitey’s on the Moon,” unfortunately, doesn’t know what do with this thread and promptly discards it no more than ten minutes later without so much as a second thought.

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Another misfire from the episode comes in the form of the trio’s encounter with Dell (Jamie Neumann), the presumptive “sheriff” figure of Ardham, who leers at the group while prodding them with veiled threats of racial violence. It’s an all-too-familiar beat repeated to diminished effect, especially compared to last episode’s harrowing confrontation with the Devon County Sheriff, and one that seems to serve no great purpose in service to show’s themes or characters aside from perfunctorily pushing the episode’s plot forward and signalling to the viewer that yes, Montrose is located in this weird stone building and yes, the inhabitants of this town are racist. There’s no greater dimension added to the episode by having stopped off in Ardham and instead it feels more like a tiresome exercise in narrative padding, a trait that disappointingly comes to define much of the episode’s runtime.

That said, there are still some bright spots here and there throughout the episode. Tony Goldywn’s first on-screen appearance as Samuel Braithwhite – father of Christina and leader of the so-called “Sons of Adam” chapter of the Order of the First Dawn – is a particularly memorable one, what with him having one of his organs removed by a hooded acolyte while screaming in agony. “I’m Adam,” Samuel tells Atticus during an indulgent lecture on the nature of biblical hierarchy, “and I’ve worked a very long time to return to paradise.” We learn that Atticus’ great ancestor was a former slave of Titus Braithwhite, a distant cousin of Samuel’s. As far as the Braithwhites are concerned, with Titus’s blood flowing through his veins, Atticus is as good as family. Or, at the very least, good enough to serve as a sacrifice to further Samuel’s own ends.

A quadrant of generational trauma forms the emotional crux for the entire episode. For Atticus, it’s his strained relationship with his father and his history of emotional and physical abuse. For Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams), Atticus’ father, it’s his own history of paternal abuse at the hands of his father and how those experiences ultimately impacted his ability and willingness to demonstrate love. For Leti, we learn one of the reasons for why she left home for so long — and why she refused to go to her mother’s funeral. And finally, there’s none other than Christina Braithwhite. Born into a family at the head of an aristocratic order of occult practitioners, Christina’s ambitions are stymied not only by the blatant sexism of her peers, but by her father’s own naked disdain for his child. “I can never earn one of these,” Christina tells Atticus, holding one of the Order’s ceremonial rings. “No matter how hard I’ve tried. And you get one for doing nothing other than being born a man.” Given all we know and have seen so far, it begs the question: if Samuel is the metaphorical “Adam,” then what does that make Christina— Eve, or Lilith? Judging by how gleefully she reacted while delivering a writhing eldritch brood from that cow’s womb, chances are it’s the latter.

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“Whitey’s on the Moon” is peppered with allusions to several prominent cosmic horror authors, including William Hope Hodgson, whose 1906 novel The House on the Borderland was not only cited by Lovecraft as a formative inspiration but  plays a surprisingly pivotal role in leading one character to not one, but two significant revelations, as well as an offhand reference to Clark Ashton Smith, one of Lovecraft’s contemporaries whose work would later go on to inspire other writers such as Ray Bradbury. It’s a nice touch, and one that shows Lovecraft Country’s commitment to acknowledging the history of the cosmic horror genre beyond even the series’ namesake, all the while it attempts to put its own spin on those same tropes and concepts.

One aspect the episode tantalizingly touches on is how the systemic force of classism intersects with that of racism. “My father and his associates would never fraternize with the Klan,” Christina retorts in a heated exchange with Atticus, “they’re too poor.” This sentiment, that the only exception between one caste of avowed racists and another is the pretense of wealth and pedigree, is echoed in a later scene when Atticus and George attend a special dinner in Atticus’ “honor.” The room of white faces shuffles awkwardly and grows silent as the two take their seats. “Don’t mind the others,” William assures Atticus. “Just because they don’t want you here, doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be.” These exchanges make the episode’s finest moment all the more palpable, as the so-called “Sons of Adam” are summarily hoisted by their own esoteric and exclusionary traditions and shooed away with their figurative tails clenched firmly between their legs.

The plan to rescue Montrose comes at a cost however. While attempting to escape, Leti is mortally wounded and pitted as a bargaining chip in order to coerce Atticus’ surrender and cooperation with Samuel’s plan. Leti’s wounds are healed, but not without her seemingly suffering a nervous breakdown as a result. It would seem that the near-death experience of resurrection has left a visible mark on Leti’s psyche, one that may or may not shape her behaviour throughout the rest of the season.

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The choice to invoke Gil Scott-Heron’s classic 1970 spoken-word piece as not only the episode’s title, but as the accompanying soundtrack to its dramatic climax, is a savvy one. The juxtaposition between Scott-Heron’s searing condemnation of white affluence and upward mobility — both literal and figurative — at the expense of the black and brown communities with the imagery of a cult of white aristocrats attempting to sacrifice a black man’s body to gain purchase to paradise is a powerful one. Its execution, however, leaves something to be desired, with the scene’s sound mixing and overall direction rendering moot what should have otherwise been a rousing emotional finale.

The latest of the series’ major divergences from the source material comes with the death of Atticus’ Uncle George. It’s a devastating loss that’s felt on not only a raw, emotional level, but one that augurs a significant shift in Atticus and Montrose’s relationship going forward as the question of not only the former’s heritage, but parentage, lingers over the episode’s final quarter.  That said, again — death’s a tricky thing in Lovecraft Country. It’s highly doubtful we’ve seen the last of George.