Author: Trafficblast

Hearthstone‘s upcoming Saviors of Uldum expansion is introducing a lot of interesting new cards that are sure to shake up the meta-game. But during its final card reveal livestream, Blizzard introduced one of the coolest and (according to its engineers) most complicated cards yet: the Legendary Zephrys the Great.

Zephrys is a 2-Mana 3/2 Legendary minion that grants you a wish for “the perfect card.” Under the hood, that means the game is examining all the public factors in your game, and offering you three options for cards that might help. If you happen to need to clear the board, he might offer you some area-of-effect spells. If your board is already solid, maybe he’ll offer you a buff.

It’s a simple concept, but it was apparently extremely hard to implement. Game Designer Chadd Nervig said on Twitter that “the amount of effort that went into bringing you this one individual card absolutely dwarfs all other cards.” He also pointed out that Zephrys is even smart enough to hand you lethal damage to finish a match before you necessarily realize why it’s offering a particular card.

In follow-up tweets, Nervig explained that Zephrys only looks at all the public info in a game–like how many cards are in your hand, minions on the board, and Mana crystals–but not private info like what you or your opponents’ cards are. Also, for obvious game balance reasons, Zephrys won’t ever offer you a way to replay him, like a bounce-back effect. It also comes with a limitation in that your deck can’t have any duplicates. This is commonly known in Hearthstone as a “singleton” or “Reno” deck.

As a Legendary card, Zephrys will be difficult to pull from random packs and expensive to craft. But as a value-generator that’s smarter than the average card, it’s probably a smart pick to be among your first crafted cards for Uldum.

For more cards from Hearthstone’s Saviors of Uldum expansion, including our own reveal of the powerful puzzle Mogu Cultist, check out our full gallery of all the cards coming in the expansion. Saviors of Uldum launches on August 6.

Ubisoft looks to be targeting its Chinese market, as the publisher announced a new Rabbids game featuring Chinese themes is on its way to Nintendo Switch. The game, possibly titled Crazy Rabbid: Adventure Party, will be shown at ChinaJoy this weekend.

Industry analyst Daniel Ahmad tweeted that the game is a four-player “Rabbids meets Journey to the West” experience developed by Ubisoft Chengdu. It has a Mario Party quality to it, with various mini games where you cooperate with and play against your friends. Check out the reveal trailer below.

A post on the official Chinese Ubisoft page says “the world[s] of [the] game [are] inspired by ‘The Journey to the West,’ a traditional Chinese literature.” Journey to the West, normally attributed to Chinese novelist and poet Wu Cheng’en, was published in the 16th century and serves as an extended look at the travels of Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who explored the Western Regions of Central Asian and India.

While the post is in Chinese and translator services aren’t always accurate, Crazy Rabbid is looking to test “your ability to react, remember, endurance, and accuracy.” ChinaJoy, the largest gaming and digital entertainment conference in China, runs from Friday, August 2 to Monday, August 5. We’ll learn more about Crazy Rabbid: Adventure Party then, though there’s no confirmation whether the game will release in other regions.

Crazy Rabbids wouldn’t be the first exclusive Rabbids game for Nintendo Switch. In August 2017, Ubisoft released Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, a turn-based, tactical RPG similar to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, for the console-handheld hybrid. In our review of the game, we said, “Coupled with the annoyingly infectious allure of Rabbids, and the always delightful, colorful world of the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is an implausibly engrossing formula that is positively challenging and endlessly charming.”

Between the arrival of Shiny Rayquaza and the long-awaited debut of Team Rocket, this summer has certainly been busy for Pokemon Go, and now the game’s next Community Day is just around the corner. Niantic is hosting its next monthly event this Saturday, August 3, which means players around the world will soon have another opportunity to catch a rare Pokemon and add a special event-exclusive move to their repertoire.

Traditionally, each Community Day only runs for three hours, but the specific details of the events–such as what Pokemon will appear more often in the wild and what other bonuses will be available–tend to vary month by month. To help you prepare for this month’s event, we’ve rounded up all of the most important details about August’s Community Day below, from its start times to its featured Pokemon and everything else you need to know.

What Is August’s Featured Pokemon?

Every Community Day revolves around one “featured Pokemon,” which serves as the sort of star of the event. Not only will this monster spawn in the wild much more often than it normally does during the Community Day hours, you’ll also have your first opportunity to find and catch a Shiny version of it. This month, the featured Pokemon will be Ralts, a Psychic/Fairy Pokemon originally introduced in Ruby and Sapphire.

Throughout the Community Day, Ralts will appear in the wild much more frequently than usual, making this a good opportunity to catch as many as you can and stock up on Ralts Candy, which you’ll need to power up its CP and evolve it. On top of that, you’ll have your first chance to catch a Shiny Ralts during the Community Day hours. Shiny Pokemon are a rare sight in Pokemon Go, however, so you’ll want to stay out as long as you can to ensure you encounter one before the event ends.

What Is August’s Community Day Move?

In addition to appearing in greater numbers than normal, each featured Pokemon is capable of learning a special event-exclusive move that it otherwise couldn’t normally use in Pokemon Go. To obtain this move, you typically need to evolve the featured Pokemon into its final form by the end of the event. Ralts is unique in that it has two possible final evolutions, Gardevoir or Gallade, but regardless of which one you choose, it will learn the Psychic attack Synchronoise if you’re able to evolve it up to an hour after the Community Day ends.

Any Gardevoir or Gallade you obtain during August’s Community Day will learn Synchronoise, even if you originally captured their pre-evolved forms before the event. However, they’ll only learn the special attack if they’re evolved during the aforementioned time frame. Evolution is a costly process in Pokemon Go, so you’ll need to capture as many Ralts as you can during the event to amass enough Candy.

What Time Does August’s Community Day Start?

Community Days typically run from 3-6 PM local time, but much like last month’s event, August’s Community Day will take place from 4-7 PM local time instead. According to developer Niantic, the hours were pushed back slightly to make the event more enjoyable during the hot summer months. This is only a temporary change, however; Niantic says the schedule will return to its normal times once summer is over.

What Other Bonuses Are There?

Along with increased Pokemon spawns, Niantic offers a few other bonuses during each Community Day as another incentive to participate in the event. As usual, any Lure Modules you use will last three hours during the Community Day, rather than their usual 30-minute duration. On top of that, Incubators will be four times as effective as normal; that means Pokemon Eggs will hatch at a quarter of the distance they normally require. You can read more about August’s Community Day on the official Pokemon website.

When you start up Sky: Children of the Light, numerous messages shoot across the screen as it loads. Messages informing you of server connections, the reception of in-game currencies, and the like are commonplace for games with an online focus, but there’s one short message that feels uniquely descriptive to thatgamecompany’s fourth title: “Finding new friends.” It’s just a simple notification that you’re being connected to other players in this intimately connected universe, but it’s also a strong message of what Sky is really about. Although it mimics many gameplay elements from Journey, it’s Sky’s evolution of those ideas that makes it a fascinating multiplayer experiment with deeply meditative qualities.

Playing Sky is incredibly similar to Journey. You control a robed figure, recognizable as a small child, and navigate a series of small environments connected only by the constellations in the stars they share above. Sky keeps things simple by tasking you with navigating its environments and holding down a single button to soar into the air and take flight. Flight is central to Sky’s otherwise simple mechanics, letting you execute gorgeous maneuvers through the clouds or delicately glide between the remains of mysterious ruins. Expressive yet subtle animations make each movement in the air feel delightful, even though you’re doing little more than controlling your direction. Swooping down into the clouds only to tilt upwards at the last minute is rewarded with a cute pirouette, for example, letting the wind engulf your robe and accurately shape it in the wind.

Flight isn’t free in Sky. Flying draws light from your robe, which limits how much aerial freedom you have. Light is collected from any light source you come across, and it’s your job to spread it around in turn. You ferry around light with candles, using them to spread fire to unlit lanterns and shrines. You can also use light to burn away corrupted vegetation or scare dangerous wildlife that will attack you in the dark. Glowing, faceless children are scattered around each new area you explore, bestowing you with wings that help you upgrade the amount of light you can store at a time, in turn letting you fly longer. You can lose wings when you’re carrying no light and take damage from enemies or environmental hazards, though you can easily pick them up again. Sky doesn’t feel punishing at any point, but it does use these gentle nudges to remind you of how great it feels to have a bounty of flight at your fingertips and what it might feel like to lose it again.

Collecting light is beneficial to getting around, which in turn lets you discover lost spirits that govern the central progression in Sky. Each area has a star constellation that you slowly complete by saving lost spirits and returning them to the skies above. Most of these are simple exploration puzzles. By diligently poking around, you find blue outlines of long-forgotten beings, each creating a breadcrumb trail to follow that tells a short story of the spirit it’s leading to. These are moments frozen in time, telling vague stories that can come across as anything from humorous to tragic. It’s cheerful to see a skit of two clumsy beings attempting to move objects far bigger than them from one room to another, and equally sober to witness another in anguish, mourning a painful loss. Sky’s story is intentionally vague so that you fill in the blanks, interpreting what purpose light serves in its world and why its sacrifice is meaningful.

Sky is entirely playable alone, and you’re not required to find any fixed number of its spirits to finish it. But it’s also a game with a big emphasis on sharing your experience with strangers. You aren’t a unique figure in its world, and certainly not the only one carrying light to its eventual end. Instead, your journey is consistently filled with other players, each on their own adventure that you can choose to partake in for just a moment or two. You can contribute in small ways. A passing player might hold out their candle for you to light, letting you replenish their light in turn if you choose to. To befriend another player, you need to share a candle with them, permanently linking you two and adding them to your friends list (which is suitably represented by a growing constellation). You never see these players’ names; instead, you name them based on your interactions with them. It feels like meeting someone new for the first time, but not immediately being able to speak to them. You can use taps to let out audio pings that help gather other players around you, but you’re also able to take a seat on a bench, wait for another player to sit next to you, and engage in a more direct, text-based conversation if you choose.

The most interesting way to interact with other players is with emotes, which are unlocked with each new spirit that you free. You can use these emotes to express yourself to other players, with anything from a simple wave or a point in a direction to more intimate displays of friendly affection, like hugs. There are also separate emotes and actions you can unlock by increasing your friendship with other players. By rewarding each other with consumable candles, you’ll unlock unique abilities (which can also only be used between you two) that can change the way you navigate through each area. My personal favorite was the ability to form long chains of players by holding hands, with one player guiding the group to new places while using everyone’s collective light to fuel the flight. This also helps new players see areas they might not yet possess the ability to reach, granting Sky a cooperative nature that’s remarkably easy to engage with.

This simplicity helps some of Sky’s more demanding puzzles, where cooperation between multiple players–anything between a single pair to a full group of eight–is required. Some doors, for example, require two players to light urns at the same time to open. Other more demanding challenges task up to eight players to gather around an octagon and light old runes in a specific order. Although these challenges are rarely hard to decipher, and finding enough players to participate with was never an issue in my time with the game, simply trying to get everyone to alight in more group-focused tasks was slightly frustrating. Since none of these puzzles are required to continue through Sky, they’re easy to overlook.

Sky weaves its focus on forming friendships into its microtransaction model, too, which changes the rules of what you’ve come to expect from these systems in a big way. Hearts are used to purchase cosmetic items, but you can’t buy them outright. Instead, you can purchase candles (which you can also get in-game) which can then be packaged and sent to a friend as a heart. This is the only way to earn hearts, meaning you’ll need to depend on the gracious gifts of friends you’ve made in Sky to kit yourself out in some fancy new clothing. There are also options to purchase seasonal passes that unlock more straightforward daily quests and a few pieces of exclusive clothing, but for the most part you’ll be focused on forming new bonds with strangers and exchanging gifts with them frequently if you’re invested in standing out from everyone else visually.

Your first flights through a temple in the sky or the hurried dash you need to make between awnings of large mushrooms in a rain-soaked forest are delightful.

This means that you’ll likely be playing Sky well after the credits have rolled on your initial playthrough, which can take anywhere between four to six hours. You can collect any outstanding spirits you likely missed, especially since some aren’t even accessible without having played later areas in the game. You also need to reacquire your wings for flight again, due to story reasons you learn about during the finale. All of this means that you’ll be revisiting many areas you’ve already soared through at least once before, which can remove some of the splendor you experienced the first time around. This is especially true when you’re breaking from their intended flow to poke around the environment in search of small crevices you missed the first time. This feels like it goes against the natural harmony of Sky’s intended path, signposted with simple nudges that point you in the right direction. When you’re solely focusing on completion, Sky just isn’t as compelling.

Yet, there’s a meditative quality to return visits when you’re simply looking for a brief escape. Your first flights through a temple in the sky or the hurried dash you need to make between awnings of large mushrooms in a rain-soaked forest are delightful the first time around. Their mixtures of stunningly detailed environments and suitable stirring music are impactful, and less so when you’re running around in circles trying to see if there was a small crevice you forgot to explore.

Sky is both different to everything thatgamecompany has made before but also a smart evolution of what makes its games special. It’s simple to play while feeling incredible at the same time, making the act of flight exciting every time your feet leave the ground. It also features a fascinating spin on in-game purchases, locking its most alluring rewards behind the action of making friends and making a positive enough impression on them. That means you have to play a lot of Sky to eventually work towards what you want, which saps some life out of the gorgeous vignettes you’re free to explore. But it’s no less memorable for the ideas it presents or calming in the way it gives you the freedom to pursue them, making it another journey worth seeing through.

Meet the MCU’s newest aliens

The Xbox Store is constantly offering new deals on a weekly basis, but this week’s round of game discounts will be exciting for any fighting game aficionados. In celebration of Evo 2019, the annual fighting game tournaments held August 2-4 in Las Vegas, the Xbox Store is offering huge discounts on some of the event’s biggest games, like Dragon Ball FighterZ and SoulCalibur VI. The following deals are available through Monday, August 5.

If you’ve yet to pick up Dragon Ball FighterZ, the anime-inspired fighting game is only $15 USD (was $60), with its FighterZ edition on sale for $38 (was $95) and its Ultimate Edition marked down to $44 (was $110). The Dragon Ball FighterZ Fighter Pass is also discounted to $19.24 from $35. Tekken 7 is also majorly discounted right now, with its standard edition selling for $20 (was $50), its Rematch edition selling for $40 (was $80), and its Ultimate edition selling for just $50 (was $100). Alternatively, you can also pick up Tekken 7’s season passes separately, as both passes are also on sale.

You can also grab SoulCalibur VI for super cheap–the standard edition is marked down to $19.79 (was $60), while the Deluxe edition is now $36 (was $90). Other highlights from the Evo sale include the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up bundle for only $10 (was $20), Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite – Deluxe Edition for $19.79 (was $60), and the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection for $20 (was $40).

If you’ve already got all the fighting games you need, it’s worth checking out all the DLC marked down as part of the sale, too. There are a ton of discounted characters, costumes, music packs, and more, so now’s a good time to grab various upgrades for any titles you own.

See all Xbox One game deals

Best Xbox One game deals | 7/29 – 8/5

After a month of exclusive new stuff, our IGN First with Control

is coming to an end. But before it does, we thought we’d ask one more favour of Remedy Entertainment – getting them to answer your questions.

Sam Lake, Mikael Kasurinen and Thomas Puha assembled to answer some of the IGN community’s queries about the game – you can see what they had to say below. And if you missed any of our Control coverage, it’s all in one handy spot for you to check back on. Onto the next month!

Dangatv asks: Control looks like the natural progression from your last 3 games, what game play aspect are you most proud of and can’t wait for the public to experience?

Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): The open-ended nature of the world. It is a very different approach compared to our previous games. The players can discover new missions as they explore the Oldest House, and choose freely what to focus on at any given time. But there’s a bit of extra responsibility they have to take on as well since we are not going to hold their hands. It’s going to be exciting to see how people will receive this new approach.

dbl14 asks: Is the story of Control built to feel satisfying as a self-contained narrative? As a huge fan of Alan Wake, I’m all for open questions at the end of a game, but I’d at least like enough closure that I won’t feel I need a sequel to get the whole experience. Thanks!

Sam Lake (Creative Director): The main story of Control is Jesse’s journey into this world to find answers to the nightmarish events in her childhood. This story has a beginning, middle and end in Control. It is self-contained. Is everything neatly wrapped up and explained? No, definitely not. This is one story told in a world full of stories. There are other, smaller, self-contained stories in the game, and there are threads that are not wrapped up. There are elements in the backstory of both Jesse and the Bureau you will need to try to piece together from the clues you find. There are the stories of the other characters involved that play key roles in the game. Their stories you will need to look for and puzzle out to understand what has led to the current crisis. This is just one chapter in the bigger story of the Bureau. Many previous chapters have led to this point, untold so far, and after this the Bureau is in a new situation that will lead to new stories.

phillyblunt90000 asks: Will there be modes separate from the story like challenge, survival, or time trials?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): There are no challenge or survival modes, but let’s see what we’ll do post launch. Our team is really small so we have to carefully choose what we can do. Whatever alternate game modes we could do, they’d have to fit into the world of Control.

There are features in the game like “Bureau Alerts”, which pop up from time to time requiring the player to go to a certain areas of the Oldest House and clear Hiss or fight a mini boss in a certain time. The Director’s help is always required throughout the Oldest House.

Reoyon asks: How much inspiration was taken from the SCP foundation?

Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): It definitely was an inspiration, but it was important for us to do our own thing. Control’s lore is a complex accumulation of ideas and concepts that we’ve come up with through the years, and as usual, a lot of it is drawn from pop culture – SCP definitely being one of them.

Control: 11 New Screenshots

Reoyon also asks: How accomplished do your artists feel after referring so many different types of vistas inside The Oldest House? Did you originally plan for the game to have such a wide variety and scope?

Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): We wanted to have a sense of “being trapped” in a building with a supernatural threat, which progresses into a discovery of a hidden strange world. It’s like John McClane trapped in Wonderland.

The Oldest House was always intended to be a vast and complex world, with areas that are more “volatile” or taken over by a mind-bending phenomenon. So the artists had a lot to play with, but usually they started by establishing the environment with a brutalistic art direction and then mess it up. I’d like to think they enjoyed it.

ManInBlack4458 asks: New game plus? Photo mode?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): There will be a Photo mode post launch. Once we’ve had a bit of a break from shipping the game, catch our breath, we’ll get to work on that.

There won’t be a New Game Plus mode. It’s something we’ve talked about, but unfortunately there are certain game design constraints, technical reasons and simply a lack of resources as to why we cannot do that.

ProbablyChinese asks: In regards to the writing, what sort of balance did you find between explaining strange things to the player (for example having Jesse exposit) and letting the surrealism speak for itself?

Sam Lake (Creative Director): Creating Control, we wanted to create a deep, mysterious world where finding the answers can be an exciting challenge in itself. Rather than force-feed the answers to you, or even freely hand everything to you on a platter, we wanted the thrill of detective work to play a role. Sometimes there are very few clues to form a theory of a strange aspect of the world, sometimes there’s a lot, but it’s in fragments to be found and pieced together through exploration. This is not to say that things are random or that there are no answers, quite the contrary, a lot of effort was put into creating this world and making pieces, as weird as they are, fit together.

Jesse as the narrator guides you at times, but she often operates based on instinct, she senses things, or is supernaturally shown things, but that doesn’t mean she understands their meaning. She is smart and she forms her own theories, but they are not necessarily the whole picture or the one and only truth. The Bureau is actively trying to apply scientific analysis on things that are beyond them. On many things they have formed a theory that might help you, or sometimes they have multiple conflicting theories for you to pick and choose from. Clearly, based on the Hiss invasion, the Bureau has failed or is failing to understand and deal with the dangerous forces they encounter. And as you dig deeper, you’ll discover that this is not the only time they have failed, only the latest.

thelastspartan87 asks: Did Control draw any inspiration from Psi Ops: the Mindgate Conspiracy?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): I loved that game! Not directly, but many of us remember that game fondly and especially its use of physics. We’ve been almost surprised now that Control is done just how much fun it is to mess around with the physics, throwing stuff around and and seeing the enviroments reacting to the action.

(Lets not forget Max Payne 2 was one of the first games having proper physics!)

Coreyahno asks: Will Control support Dolby Atmos?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): No.

Charlie Heath asks: How does the game’s checkpoint system work specifically? In other words, what kind of progress (and how much of it) is lost, when you die and respawn at a “control point”?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): As with any game you make, that has changed a lot as the game development progresses. You start out with a plan which already has gone through many iterations and as you make the game, things change for many reasons be it technological, resources or just the overall game design changing.

We always had “Control Points” in the Oldest House, which act as checkpoints and fast travel points. Originally, they were very few and far between. Control was always going to be a challenging game and we wanted to make sure players would be careful in exploring because if you died, there would be a price to pay. Its okay to be challenging, but not (too) frustrating.

Of course, as development progresses and you watch playtests, certain things became obvious. Like how long it takes to get back into a fight from a checkpoint or to wherever you were in the mission before you died. Another thing that impacts the experience is how long the load times are, do you have to re-equip your mods etc. You wont really know that until the final stretch of development when you have the entire game together.

So in the end, we added quite a few more Control Points/checkpoints as we watched playtests and realized it was just taking too long for players to get back into the action. It’s a difficult one, you want to stray true to the game design principles and at the end of the development, you get a lot of feedback and playthroughs and start questioning yourself a bit: “are we doing the right things?” It’s a challenge, but we’ve said Control is going to be a challenging game, so…

Joe Skrebels (yes the author of this article, what of it?) asks: How long will the game/story be?

Thomas Puha (Communications Director): One of the questions we get asked the most.

Its difficult to give an accurate answer because it really depends on the player and how meticulously you play the game. Control is just not a linear game, though you can just focus on the campaign missions.

On average we’ve seen it takes 10-15 hours to get through the campaign, but if you know replay it a few times and know what you are doing, of course you can get through a lot faster. Some players have taken 20 hours when they explore, do every side-mission, find lore collectibles, complete the Bureau Alerts and so on.

We’ll have two expansions and other content following launch that will increase that playthrough time, but main story campaign will be within 10-15 hours.

Joe Skrebels is IGN’s UK Deputy Editor, and he’s extremely into the idea of John McClane in Wonderland. Follow him on Twitter.

Fortnite: Battle Royale is about to hit Season 10, with a start date set for this Thursday, August 1. Developer Epic Games has been releasing Season 10 teasers this week, which have suggested that some sort of time-related hijinks were about to unfold as part of the big seasonal changeover event. And sure enough, a leaked trailer for Season 10 seems to hammer home what’s about to happen.

Today’s teaser, which is likely to be the final one, consists of a brief video clip where the Zero Point orb hovering over Loot Lake explodes. It turns out those are the opening moments of the Season 10 trailer, the full version of which has leaked, apparently via the Fortnite Brazil Twitter account. That video has since been removed but reshared online–watch it below–and it shows the explosion send the character who was fleeing from it into a sort of wormhole.

As he floats through it, he sees the major elements and additions during the past year in Fortnite–the missile explosion, vaulted weapons, the introduction of Peely and other skins, seasonal events, and more. At the end, he falls back to the island map, only for the camera to pan out and reveal this is the moment just before the meteor’s impact that demolished Dusty Depot. As one of this week’s teasers pointed to, the location is still intact, at least for the time being.

Exactly how this pans out in-game is something we probably won’t know until the Season 10 update arrives tomorrow. But it seems as if we can expect Epic to essentially hit the undo button on many of the map changes that have taken place. That said, don’t expect everything to be the same–Epic’s reference to a “twist” and a peek at a modified version of the Drift skin suggest that things may not be exactly how you remember them.

Last week’s House of X #1 officially kicked off writer Jonathan Hickman’s grand plan for the X-Men franchise. But House of X itself is only telling half of the story. This week it’s joined by sister series Powers of X, a book that provides a wider view of the mutant race in both the past and future of the Marvel Universe.Read on for a breakdown of what happens in this first issue, how Powers of X connects to House of X and why the bright new future dawning for the mutant race may not last. And if you need a refresher, check out our recap of House of X #1.

Warning: this article contains spoilers for Powers of X #1 and House of X #1!

Powers of X: What Does the Title Mean?

Both House of X and Powers of X have been shrouded in mystery from the start. In the case of Powers of X (which should be read as “Powers of Ten”), it’s not even been clear why Hickman chose this particular title. However, that mystery is answered within the first several pages of issue #1.

Powers of X is named very literally, following a mathematical approach to the X-Men timeline. The story begins in X^0, or Year One of the X-Men, as Xavier first conceives of his dream for peaceful human/mutant coexistence. It then jumps ahead ten years to X^1, the present-day Marvel Universe. From there, it moves ahead 100 years to X^2, a time when humans and mutants are more bitterly divided than ever. And finally, it ends at X^3, 1000 years later in a future where mutants have finally triumphed over man.

Year 1 – Charles Xavier’s Fateful Encounter

Issue #1 opens with a flashback to the very first encounter between Charles Xavier and Moira MacTaggert. Xavier is enjoying a pleasant summer day as he watches a fair and contemplates his dream for mutantkind. He and Moira begin a friendly chat, before Moira relays a strange prophecy based on a tarot card reading. Moira mentions The Magician, The Tower, The Devil and The Strong Man, the last of which she claims is Xavier himself. Moira seems to have a prescient knowledge of Xavier and his future, telling him “It’s not a dream if it’s real.”

Xavier then reads Moira’s mind, and is apparently shocked at what he finds within. Readers aren’t yet privy to what he learned, but Marvel previously teased this encounter as “the most important scene in X-Men history.” We’ll probably learn more in next week’s House of X #2, which is subtitled “The Curious Case of Moira X.”

Why is Moira behaving so differently in this scene? It probably has something to do with recent developments surrounding the character in the Marvel Universe. Following her death in 2001’s X-Men #108, Moira was resurrected in a 2010 storyline called Chaos War. In the process she became bonded to the spirit of Destiny, a mutant capable of seeing the future. Moira’s gold earrings in this scene may be a callback to Destiny’s golden mask, a subtle giveaway that she’s probably being influenced by Destiny. We’re guessing Destiny is able to travel through time and take control of Moira’s body whenever and wherever she chooses, hence why Moira knows so much about the future of a man she’s supposedly never met before.

Marvel’s Dawn of X relaunch Begins a New X-Men Era

Year 10 – Xavier and Magneto’s Secret Plot

Ten years later, Powers of X #1 links up with the events of House of X #1. We see Mystique and Toad arriving on Krakoa after their daring robbery of a Damage Control facility (a mission which left Sabretooth stuck in Fantastic Four custody). Mystique brings a thumb drive containing the stolen blueprints to Magneto, but she’s reluctant to hand it over without receiving some further form of payment. However, Xavier forcibly takes the drive, reminding Mystique that every resident of Krakoa must play their part in building a better world.

This scene only further reinforces our suspicions from House of X #1 that Xavier has taken a villainous turn. Since when does he condone theft, murder and intimidation?

It’s also worth pointing out that Xavier uses telekinesis to take the drive from Mystique – an ability he’s never had in the past. Is this a new ability granted by his upgraded Cerebro helmet, or is it a sign that this person isn’t actually Charles Xavier at all?

Year 100 – Mister Sinister Betrays Mutantkind

While the mutant race may be resurgent in the present-day Marvel Universe, this issue makes it clear that Xavier’s mutant nation is doomed to failure. In the world of X^3, the mutant population has again dwindled to a mere 10,000, the vast majority of which live off-world as allies of the Shi’ar Empire. Those few who remain on Earth are locked in a destructive war against the Man-Machine Supremacy and their leader, Nimrod the Lesser.

The supplemental pages fill in a lot of the missing history here. As tensions between Krakoa and the outside world grew during the mid-21st Century, Mister Sinister instituted a series of Martian breeding pits designed to create mutant super-soldiers using genes culled from various powerful X-Men. One of these mutants happens to be Rasputin, the Soulsword-wielding heroine seen on the cover. Rasputin has a combination of Quentin Quire’s telepathy, Colossus’ steel skin, Unus the Untouchable’s force field, Kitty Pryde’s intangibility and X-23’s healing factor. Rasputin is joined by Cardinal, a Nightcrawler-inspired mutant deemed a failure because of his pacifist nature, and a “black brain telepath” named Cylobel.

As readers learn, Sinister’s breeding pits ultimately collapsed, with each successive generation of chimeras more and more prone to failure. Ultimately, Krakoa itself was overwhelmed by outside threats. The X-Men discovered too late that Sinister had designed his pits to fail. He betrayed the mutant race and defected to the Man-Machine Supremacy (which they probably should have seen coming, given that Sinister isn’t actually a mutant). But Sinister got his just desserts, as he was quickly executed by his new “allies.”

As this new time period unfolds, Rasputin and Cardinal narrowly escape capture by the Sentinels, but Cylobel and another pacifist mutant named Percival aren’t so lucky. Cylobel is taken to Nimrod, who forces her into a device designed to obliterate every trace of her body except the information contained within her mind.

The good news is that the X-Men still exist in this dark future. Rasputin and Cardinal return to their home base on Asteroid K to meet with their teammates, including characters who look an awful lot like Wolverine, Magneto, Xorn and Groot (though this last character is probably a sentient fragment of Krakoa). Whether these X-Men are the originals or chimera creations like Rasputin remains to be seen. Wolverine also references “the old man,” suggesting Xavier himself may still be alive.

Year 1000 – The X-Men’s Ultimate Victory

This issue closes out 1000 years into the future of the Marvel Universe. Despite the dark future for mutantkind in X^2, by X^3 mutants have finally succeeded in becoming the dominant lifeform on Earth. In this era, Nimrod has evolved to become Nimrod the Greater. No longer a mutant-hunting Sentinel, Nimrod now exists as a living database holding the collective consciousness of all mutants. Nimrod works hand-in-hand with a blue-skinned psychic called The Librarian, a character who may be a distant descendant of Charles Xavier himself.

In this era, humans have been almost entirely wiped out, except for a small sample who now live as primitive savages inside a dome called The Preserve. The Preserve is designed as a monument to Homo sapiens and a reminder of the enemy that very nearly ended mutantkind.

For more on this X-Men relaunch, learn how to read Hickman’s X-Men run and then read our reviews for House of X #1 here and Powers of X #1 here.

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

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