Category: Games

The Sims 4 will celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from September 15 to October 15, with a free in-game update that includes new food recipes, Create-A-Sim options, and build items. The update is live now.

These additions were designed in conjunction with SOMOS EA, which is “centered on advancing EA’s diversity and inclusion by ensuring a culture where Hispanic/Latinx employees can thrive.” EA has aimed to respectfully integrate ideas from Hispanic culture into the game.

Other companies have run into criticism for poorly planned Hispanic Heritage month celebrations, including Twitch. The platform attempted to celebrate Hispanic Heritage month by adding custom emotes, but met a swift backlash for the culturally insensitive and stereotypical designs.

Here are all the Hispanic Heritage items you can find in The Sims 4:

• A new object: Chiminea (grill)
• Grilled Food options: Asado, Grilled Plantains, Churrasco, Pinchos, Choripan, Chimis, Chimichurri Skewers, Elotes, Pollo a la Brasa
• Outdoor Decor: Pottery, Arbor, Filetado-inspired sign/painting for backyard, kitchen or restaurant use
• Painted Dining Set: Colorful Table and Chairs
• Clothing: Panama Hat, Huipil, Guayabera and new items with designs inspired by Mister Cartoon

In other The Sims 4 news, a Star Wars expansion was made available in September. In the add-on, players can visit the planet of Batuu. Star Wars franchise characters like Rey and Kylo Ren are also part of the package, and you can choose to align with either the Resistance or the First Order. Players can also create their own lightsabers and build their droids.

The Journey to Batuu expansion is available for $20 across all platforms.

Each Olympian in #HadesGame can imbue your weapons with unique powers, such as Zeus’ thunder or Poseidon’s waves. Have a look at just how much goes into each such effect by our resident visual FX and UI artist, @kirbyLFO. pic.twitter.com/zVnBSPVGl1

— Supergiant Games 🔥 HADES v1.0 is Out!! (@SupergiantGames) October 6, 2020

Following the immense success of their recent Pokemon line, BlackMilk Clothing, a popular Australia-based clothing brand who collaborates with fandoms, announced the release of not one, but two licensed lines in partnership with Nintendo.

BlackMilk just revealed the lookbook for their upcoming Animal Crossing line, which will be dropping next week. First teased during Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. 35th Anniversary Direct, the Super Mario Bros. line is officially live and available for purchase.

Check out the Animal Crossing x BlackMilk Collection first-look, as well as the Super Mario line below:

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The Animal Crossing line appears to feature Nook, Isabelle, Timmy, and Tommy, along with a variety of villagers with recognizable items like flowers and fruits. The Super Mario line features Mario, Bowser, Peach, and Yoshi along with additional characters and items, on both athletic and casual designed apparel.

BlackMilk’s lines are generally geared toward feminine silhouettes, but some of their pieces are unisex, like their bomber jackets and shooter shirts. Pieces range in price from AUD $59 to $139. If you decide you want something from either collection, you’ll want to hurry – their initial run of the Pokemon line sold out within 15 minutes.

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Ginger Smith is the product manager of user research and retention at IGN. She loves geek fashion and has a massive shoe collection. You can find her on Twitter @Gengarsmyth

Free-to-play RPG Genshin Impact has mostly been discussed for its likeness to Nintendo’s Zelda: Breath Of The Wild since it released in late September. Since then, players have discovered that the in-game chat censors “Hong Kong” and “Taiwan,” leading to calls to boycott the game.

As explained by games analyst Daniel Ahmad, who specializes in the Chinese market, Genshin Impact is published by MiHiYo, a developer based in Mainland China. This means it has to comply with a number of strict censorship rules set by China’s national games regulator, including one that prohibits games from containing “anything that threatens China’s national unity.”

This goes for both games developed in China and games being released in China, which is why a majority of foreign-developed games never get an official Chinese release. According to Niko Partners, only 55 foreign-developed games had been approved for release this year in China, as of August.

While these rules have been in place in China since 2003, its effects are becoming more noticeable globally, as Chinese companies such as Tencent gain more influence in the industry. Similar instances of China-sanctioned censorship seem to have flown under the radar, such as the word “Taiwan” being censored in games of PUBG Mobile–no matter what country you’re playing the game from.

Even Animal Crossing ran into controversy this year after it became a virtual home for the ongoing Hong Kong protests. While the game was never officially for sale in China, and never officially banned, major Chinese grey market retailers suddenly stopped stocking the game after the virtual protests were publicized.

Genshin Impact has also allegedly censored “Kiryu Coco” on Chinese servers, the name of a Japanese Vtuber who ran afoul of the One-China Policy after streaming user analytics for their YouTube account that listed Taiwan as a separate country from China.

The bad news for Genshin Impact fans is that the decision to ban words like “Taiwan” and “Hong Kong” are largely out of MiHiYo’s hands, meaning it’s unlikely to change any time soon.

Throughout the Season of Arrivals in Destiny 2, players have slowly unraveled the secrets of the Darkness, the Tree of Silver Wings, and Savathun. After weeks of participating in the seasonal Contact public event, we’ve finally reached the end of that story–and you can finally complete the Season of Arrivals seal and earn your Forerunner title.

With the October 6 weekly reset, Destiny 2 added both the Festival of the Lost and the final installment of the Means to an End quest that has been available weekly throughout the Season of Arrivals. Every time you complete that quest, you’ve unlocked a Pinnacle gear drop, as well as an entry into the Singular Exegete lore book. For the last few weeks, however, completing the quest hasn’t offered new lore drops, and we’ve seen repeats of past battles. You’d still get your Pinnacle drop, but completing Means to an End hasn’t advanced the story of the Season of Arrivals. That changed this week.

Completing this week’s quest gets you the final entry into Singular Exegete and changes up what you face when you venture to the Ascendant Realm during the quest’s final mission, “Interference.” Usually during that mission, fighting off the Taken on Io sends you to a section of the Ascendant Realm, where you battle the Envoys of Savathun and destroy a huge Shrieker. There have been three different locations to fight through, rotating each week–but this week’s sends you to an Ascendant Throne that looks a lot like the final boss arena in the Crota’s End raid from Destiny 1. There, you face Crota’s exiled brother, Nokris, the final boss of the Strange Terrain Strike.

Defeat Nokris, and you receive the last entry into Singular Exegete, dubbed “Contact,” as well as a secret Triumph called “Clear the Air.” If you’ve completed everything else for this season, including earning the Ruinious Effigy and Traveler’s Chosen Exotics and knocking out the Exodus missions, this should be the last Triumph you need for the Season of Arrivals’ seal, unlocking the “Forerunner” title.

In the lore of the Season of Arrivals, we learned that after the destruction of the Hive worm god Xol in Destiny 2’s Warmind expansion, Nokris was courted by Savathun, the Hive queen. Savathun is the devious brother of Oryx, the Taken King, who players defeated in the King’s Fall raid in Destiny 1. Throughout the story of Destiny 2, we’ve been seeing evidence that Savathun has taken over Oryx’s position and power, and throughout the Season of Arrivals, Savathun has been trying to stop Guardians from receiving messages and gifts sent by the spooky black pyramids that represent the Darkness.

So Nokris was basically Savathun’s agent across the whole battle we’ve been fighting throughout the Season of Arrivals, and once you defeat him, you receive the Darkness’s full message. It’s spooky and cryptic in some key ways. First, when you receive it, you’re sent to a strange place that looks like the inside of the pyramid we saw on the moon during the Shadowkeep expansion. In the center of that room is a small pyramid, surrounded by statues, and the message we receive directs us to Europa to find “an ancient power,” setting up the Beyond Light expansion. A close inspection reveals that each of the four groups of statues represents a different race in the solar system: the Hive, the Fallen, the Cabal, and humanity.

Missing from the groups of statues are the Vex, who we know from the Garden of Salvation raid are already worshipers of the Darkness. The statues imply that the Darkness hopes to bring the other four races in the solar system under its power as well. We know the Hive has been fighting the Darkness, or at least trying to keep us away from it, throughout this season. The Cabal are mostly loyal to Calus, who seems to know a lot more about the Darkness than it’s letting on, but who also is resistant to its call. Where the Fallen stands isn’t as clear–but we know the villain of Beyond Light is Fallen, so it seems at least one faction of that race might be throwing in with the Darkness.

The inclusion of humanity is the most interesting, though. The Season of Arrivals has been all about the temptations of the Darkness. The Umbral Engrams we’ve been gathering for the last few months are all supposed to be “gifts” from the pyramids, offering cool new weapons and armor for our benefit. The Darkness promises more power on Europa, and we know from Bungie’s teases that when we go there, we’ll wield a new Darkness power, called Stasis. So the statues play into the themes we’ve been seeing of temptation away from the Traveler and the Light, and suggest the Darkness thinks it’s possible it could get humanity–and by extension, the Guardian players of Destiny 2–to join it.

That remains an interesting story thread that implies we could eventually have a choice, as players, whether to stay in the Light or embrace the Darkness. Unfortunately, the Singular Exegete lore book doesn’t shed too much more light on the situation. We’ll have to wait for things develop on Europa in Beyond Light to see how the story progresses.

October 6 marks the Early Access launch day of Baldur’s Gate 3, which follows on from 2000’s beloved Baldur’s Gate II, and the game is off to a strong start. The new sequel, which was developed by Larian Studios (Divinity: Original Sin), is currently the best-selling game on both Steam and GOG. It’s also available now on Stadia.

At the time of writing, the game’s highest concurrent player count on Steam has peaked at just over 70,000–extremely high for a full-priced Early Access game. The game’s surprise release on Mac has likely driven early sales, too.

Similar numbers are not available for the GOG and Stadia, but based on Steam alone it’s fair to say that this has been a strong launch. As of right now, the early Steam user reviews are “very positive,” too.

Larian Studios tweeted out, around the time of launch, that their game seemed to have briefly “broken” Steam with their sales traffic.

The game’s Early Access period was originally meant to begin on September 30, but it was pushed back a week for a final layer of polish.

For more on Baldur’s Gate, check out some of our Early Access launch coverage: