Author: Trafficblast

The Division 2 is available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Originally planned for Steam, the PC version of the game will instead launch through the Epic Games Store. If you pre-ordered the Gold and Ultimate Edition, you can play The Division 2 now. If you pre-ordered the standard version of The Division 2, the game releases worldwide for Xbox One and PS4, Friday March 15 at 12 AM. However, with Uplay, you can access the game a bit earlier depending on your region. Head over to The Division 2’s website to find all the listed times.

Gearbox recently teased something that is almost certainly Borderlands 3, and now it has issued a second teaser for another game. This time the studio was less coy, outright stating that it will be showing the new game at PAX.

But while the first hint was relatively clear–the number three on a dusty road, suggesting Borderlands 3 news–this one is decidedly less so. It does state that this is “another game,” so it’s not just another clue for Borderlands, but other than that it’s just a stark scene. In it we can see some kind of machine or robot hooked up to wires in a laboratory.

Speculation has ranged from something to do with We Happy Few to a new Duke Nukem to an entirely new IP. Whatever it is, it’s likely to be unveiled during Gearbox’s panel in panel at PAX East’s biggest hall. That panel, to take place on March 28, promises “never-before-seen reveals, exclusives, and surprises.” It will also be live streamed for those not attending the Boston, MA event.

Gearbox’s first teaser was said to be a likely factor in Take-Two stock ticking upwards, which was then bolstered further by an unfounded rumor that Sony was discussing a possible acquisition of the publisher. That report was erroneous, however, and the stock price seems to be increased from where it had been, but stabilizing lower than its peak.

The Division 2 is here, now available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC if you’ve bought one of the game’s special editions. An online action role-playing game, The Division 2 places an emphasis on squad-based combat, with teammates firing from cover and working together to take down groups of enemies. Which isn’t to say, you can’t tackle The Division 2’s world alone. If you want to be a lone wolf who traverses the violent streets of Washington DC, you can.

Taking place seven months after the events of the first game, The Division 2 reworks its predecessor’s loot-focused shooter gameplay. Enemies still take more bullets to go down than what’s believable, but they’re not the bullet sponges found in The Division. Ubisoft has also crafted The Division 2 to have a greater focus on endgame play, incorporating more than one Dark Zone, powerful late-game loot, and raids–which can be tackled with up to eight players. From what we’ve seen so far, The Division 2 seems to improve upon its predecessor’s format in every way. So if you missed 2016’s The Division, you might want to consider picking up its sequel.

What You Need To Know

The Division 2 is the follow-up to 2016’s The Division, continuing the story of a broken US after a smallpox epidemic struck the country on Black Friday 2015. With the country falling apart, the US government activates the sleeper agents that work for the Strategic Homeland Division, who have been secretly living amongst the populace for years. Division agents are ordered to aid humanitarian efforts and emergency responders, as well as respond to emerging criminal groups with highly advanced military grade hardware and weaponry. The first game took place in New York City in the winter following the outbreak, while The Division 2 moves the setting to the country’s capital, Washington DC, in the spring.

Release Date And Price

The Division 2’s official release date is March 15, but the game has technically already come out via its staggered launch schedule. Pre-ordering the standard edition of The Division 2 gets you the game on March 15. It’s also the cheapest version of the game, with a retail price of $60 USD. You can play the game right now by buying the Gold and Ultimate editions of the game–the former has a retail cost of $110 while the latter goes for $120. There are also Dark Zone Definitive and Phoenix Shield editions of the game as well, which are the Ultimate edition plus physical collectibles. The Dark Zone Definitive Edition has a retail price of $190 and Phoenix Shield goes for $250.

Review

We don’t have a full review of The Division 2 yet, but GameSpot editor and senior video producer Edmond Tran has compiled his initial impressions of the game before publishing a full review. “But it’s only been a day, and I’ve only played for about ten hours,” Edmond writes. “I’ve finished 27% of the primary missions and my character is level 12 out of a possible 30. A lot of my observations here might not be particularly groundbreaking if you spent a large amount of time with the original The Division or The Division 2 beta, but there’s still a lot of the campaign left to see, and an allegedly enormous endgame. It’s important that I take the time to get to that point and see everything for myself, and I’m eager to see whether The Division 2 will still have the chops to keep me hooked when I hit the level cap and stop having a story to chase. Back to sightseeing, for now.”

Our Impressions

We’ve kept an eye on The Division 2 since its announcement, and had our first opportunity to publish impressions for the game during E3 2018. Below, you’ll find the list of some features we’ve done for The Division 2.

Gameplay

If you just want a taste of The Division 2, watch the first eight minutes of the game below. We’ve also captured gameplay for what it’s like to hunt other players in The Division 2’s Dark Zones.

We’ve got plenty of things to ponder before Endgame.

One of Destiny‘s most notorious guns was Thorn, a hand cannon that became the blight of the competitive mode known as the Crucible. Players who had it, loved it–the gun basically infected anyone hit by its bullets with poison, resulting in players getting kills even after they’d already lost a battle. Needless to say, anyone who didn’t have Thorn hated it. Now, Destiny most-loved and most-hated gun is finally making its way into Destiny 2.

The Thorn Exotic weapon quest is part of the Jokers Wild content expansion from Destiny 2’s Annual Pass, and dropped with the March 12 weekly reset. It not only brings Thorn back into the Destiny world, it continues a bunch of lines of the story of the Drifter, the weird, possibly evil guy who runs Destiny 2’s Gambit multiplayer mode. Thorn is the gun wielded by the legendary bad guy Dredgen Yor, who was finally defeated by Shin Malphur with his legendary gun, The Last Word. Last season, players got The Last Word, as well as some hints that the Hive were working to recreate Thorn. It looks like they might have succeeded, and that’ll likely have some more story implications going forward as well. Check out our lore rundown for the full skinny on Thorn and The Last Word.

Like other recent Exotic quests in Destiny 2, capturing your very own Thorn is a pretty lengthy endeavor. It’s going to require some grinding, although this time, Destiny 2 has made things a bit easier by adding options: in many steps, you can either play events like Nightfall Strikes or Escalation Protocol, or you can head to the Crucible and earn your Thorn through battles with other players. There’s still one big Crucible step that’s going to take a while to work through, though.

Here’s everything you need to know to get yourself Thorn, including where to start, and plenty of tips to speed up the process.

Go Find A Broken Thorn

Before you can start the quest, you have to find the remnants of a Shadow of Yor’s weapon. You can do that by locating Shin Malphur’s camp, which is hinted at in one of the lore items related to Aunor, the Warlock who’s been sending you messages in Season 6 to warn you about the Drifter. To get it, you’ll need to head to Trostland in the EDZ. Check out our written description for some help, or watch the video above.

Once you get the Melted Hunk of Metal from the camp, take it to Banshee-44 for your next step.

Gathering Materials: The Essence

Next, you’ll need to gather several kinds of materials to rebuild the gun. The first requires Hadronic Essence, a material Warlocks used to use to upgrade their stuff. To get those items, you’ll need to kill Warlocks in the Crucible, complete bounties on Io, or complete Nightfall Strikes. You’ll move the fastest if you do Nightfalls: each completion will net you 15 Hadronic Essence, so four runs will complete the step. If you prefer bounties or Crucible, things will go a bit slower, with bounties and Warlock kills earning you five essence Hadronic Essence each.

The Steel

If you figured that after Warlock materials you’d need to get some from Titans and Hunters, you were right. The next step requires Plasteel, another material from Destiny grinds past. These you can get from bounties on Titan, killing Titans in the Crucible, and from completing the Blind Well event in the Dreaming City. As with the last step, bounties and kills yielded five Plasteel each, while the Blind Well was quicker–it kicked out 10 Plasteel with each Heroic completion. You need 50 in total, so five Blind Wells will do it, and this is a good chance to check off your Gateway Between Worlds weekly bounty from Petra as well.

The Wire

The last item you need comes from Hunters: Sapphire Wire. This one will take you to Mars if you’re going the PvE route, where you’ll need to complete Escalation Protocol levels. Of all the PvE approaches, Escalation Protocol is the slowest, yielding only 5 Sapphire Wire for each level you complete. However, combine it with two bounties from Ana Bray and you can complete the step with one complete Escalation Protocol run, which includes seven levels, since bounties also yield 5 Wire each. You can also head to the Crucible and kill Hunters, but with so many people working on Thorn, it seems like EP is the quicker way to go.

Weaponize The Unknown

Once you’ve finished your work rebuilding Thorn, you’ll need to infuse it with Light to make it more than just a gun. As is usually the case with these sorts of things, that means heading to the Crucible and grinding kills.

There’s good news here, and bad news. The bad news is that you’ll need a lot of kills, although just how many depends on what you decide to take with you. The quest requires either hand cannon kills or Void kills, and you can combine progress with a Void hand cannon if you have one. You’ll also get quicker progress in either the Competitive play mode or the Iron Banner–although that means waiting for IB to show up. Competitive also feels like a bad option for most players, thanks to game types like Survival that result in slower matches and fewer kills. If your skills are up for it, though, Competitive will give you the quickest progress (and you might advance some of those various Crucible Pinnacle weapon bounties if you’re still working on those).

The good news, however, is that you can die and lose all you want without losing progress, so you should just go wild on Void stuff and try to rack up as many kills as possible. It seems you’ll need around 200 kills with Void hand cannons in the Valor group of matches, and around 300 kills with Void weapons that aren’t hand cannons, or hand cannons that aren’t Void. Note that you also need to make sure yours are the final blows that kill enemies for them to count toward Thorn. You also get faster progress if you can manage precision kill streaks with Void hand cannons, so equip a helmet with hand cannon targeting if you can.

Savathun’s Song

After you finally grind through the Crucible, you’ll need to head to the Farm on Earth. Remember that? It was the social area while the Tower was captured during the Destiny 2 story campaign. There, you’ll visit Tyra Karn, the Farm’s Cryptarch, for your next Thorn step.

That’ll leave you with one last challenge: an amped-up version of the Savathun’s Song Strike. The big difference is that you’ll need to kill a few tough Hive Knights along the way, with the two spawning during the final boss fight being of particular note. You’ll also have to contend with a few modifiers, including Blackout–which means no radar and increased melee damage, so watch out for Thralls. There’s also Harsh Elements, which means you’ll take more elemental damage, and Iron, which means you can’t stagger enemies with damage. Generally, that means you should keep moving and try to keep enemies at range while you fight them.

Complete the Strike and Thorn is yours. It’s a great addition to your Crucible loadout–you might have been killed by it a few times in your quest to earn your own–but note that it’s not quite the Light-eating powerhouse it was in Destiny 1, so don’t get too cocky.

With all eyes on Avengers: Endgame, it’s clear that big changes are coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, it’s hard to know exactly what those changes will be. While some future projects have already been revealed–including new Spider-Man and Doctor Strange movies, a Black Widow prequel, and shows on the Disney+ streaming service–there are big pieces of the MCU that remain a mystery.

In the midst of all of that, though, Marvel looks to be introducing new characters to the fold as it continues to build out its superhero universe. One of those characters, “Master of Kung Fu” Shang-Chi, was previously revealed to be getting his own standalone movie. This will be the studio’s first film featuring an Asian actor in the lead. Though no release date has been announced, a director for the film has been found. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Destin Daniel Cretton will helm the project, with Wonder Woman 1984 screenwriter Dave Callaham handling the script. The Shang-Chi movie hasn’t been cast, though THR reports Marvel is planning to put together a largely Asian and Asian-American ensemble.

While this will be Cretton’s first superhero film, the director has some impressive credits to his name. He previously served as writer and director on the movies Short Term 12 and The Glass Castle, both of which starred Captain Marvel‘s Brie Larson. He’s currently working on his newest project, Just Mercy. The film sees him teaming once again with Larson, as well as Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan.

As for how Shang-Chi will fit into the larger MCU, that should be an interesting hurdle to tackle. In the comics, the character has the superhuman ability to create duplicates of himself, which could be useful when an army of heroes are needed. Beyond that, it’s simply his mastery of the martial arts that makes Shang-Chi stand out. While he may not shoot photon blasts or be able to fly, he has more than held his own against superhuman villains in the past.

Before we get to Shang-Chi, though, there’s lots to come from the MCU, whether it’s Avengers: Endgame or the upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home. Whatever the case, it’s clear that Marvel’s not going anywhere and that’s an exciting thing.

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