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We’re coming up on the first Valentine’s Day since the launch of Destiny 2. Much as it did with the previous game, Bungie will mark the occasion with a special Crimson Days event that introduces a variety of new rewards to get your hands on.

Crimson Days begins on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on February 13. Like the Destiny 1 incarnation, it centers around a 2v2 Crucible gametype. You’ll be playing a round-based Clash mode where staying close to your teammate causes your abilities to recharge faster. By moving away from your partner, you’ll not only lose that buff, but the enemy will be notified about your whereabouts with a waypoint. You’ll always have a marker to guide you to your teammate, which will be particularly useful when playing with random players, as you can join solo and be matched up with someone.

This is all played out on a new version of the Burning Shrine map. Called The Burnout, Bungie describes it as “set in a future timeline where the Vex have succeeded in altering our reality.” You can get a glimpse of it in the gallery below.

Bungie says in a blog post that taking part in this playlist is the optimal way to get your hands on the event’s new rewards, also noting that it’s “tuned the experience to focus on rewarding single-character play.” The Crimson Engram contains “most” of the new rewards and will not hand out any duplicates until you’ve obtained all of the new gear. The playlist isn’t the only way to get items, however, as you’ll get both a Crimson Engram and an Illuminated Engram each time you level up while playing any Destiny 2 activity during the event.

Crimson Engrams will only be obtainable through gameplay, meaning there shouldn’t be any complaints that players are being pressured into purchasing them with real-world money. That said, you can purchase a “selection” of items directly from Eververse using Bright Dust. There’s no cap on the number of Crimson Engrams you can earn, but you’ll need to be at the level cap (20 for non-DLC owners, 25 for those with Curse of Osiris) in order to get the level-up reward Engrams. The rewards inside, including shaders from the event, can be dismantled into Bright Dust.

Bungie qualifies that “most” of the rewards come through the Engrams because there are also five others that are obtained in other ways. Things like an Exotic sparrow and Ornament can only be had through specific means. Here are the goals, as described by Bungie:

• Complete the milestone Welcome to Crimson Days by finishing five Crimson Days matches and visiting Lord Shaxx in the Tower to earn the Fire of the Crimson Days Emblem and the Tirastrella Ghost Shell.
• Complete matches in the Crimson Days Crucible playlist for a chance to earn the Undeterred Exotic Sparrow.
• Complete either the Leviathan Raid or the Raid Lair: Eater of Worlds to claim the Dieselpunk Exotic Ornament for Wardcliff Coil from the final chest.
• Complete the Nightfall Strike during the Crimson Days event to earn the Flaunting Dance Emote.

Crimson Days begins on February 13 and runs until the weekly reset the following Tuesday, February 20. The event comes not long after the first Iron Banner of Season 2, which recently wrapped up, as well as an update that introduced Raid armor perks and Masterwork armor. More significant updates are also on the way in the months ahead.

At one point the Mission Impossible movies became less about espionage plots and more about what kind of insane stunts Tom Cruise was attempting to pull off. With the next installment, Mission Impossible: Fallout, that’s no different.

In the latest video from the movie’s set, Cruise’s penchant for doing his own stunts is taken to a scary new degree. Already, early looks at Fallout have shown the actor clinging to the side of a helicopter and jumping from one building to another—a stunt that ended with him breaking his ankle. Now the movie’s star is piloting his own helicopter as he attempts some very dangerous maneuvers.

While most movies might shoot scenes of this nature using green screen or a stunt pilot, that’s just not how the Mission Impossible movies work. “It’s super important for a movie like Mission to be doing it all practically and for real,” stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood says. “Tom doesn’t want to sit in a green screen. The audience can tell when something’s been cheated.”

The result is Cruise doing 360-degree spirals while flying straight at the ground. While there are other helicopters flying near him to capture footage, the actor is the only person in his aircraft.

Mission Impossible: Fallout teams Cruise once again with Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and Michelle Monaghan. The movie hits theaters on July 27.

Blizzard has shared more details on Overwatch‘s upcoming Year of the Dog seasonal event. In a developer video today, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan started off by announcing that a new map, set in Thailand, is coming to Overwatch in the event.

He said the unnamed map is “absolutely gorgeous.” One side has a more ancient feel to it, featuring a temple. The other side is “bright and beautiful” and more modern, Kaplan explained. Perhaps more notably, this is the first map Blizzard has ever made specifically for Capture the Flag, a mode that is returning in the Year of the Dog event.

Based on feedback from fans, Blizzard is making changes to how Capture the Flag plays this time around. Starting off, there will no longer be ties. Kaplan said players voiced their discontent for draws, adding that they can feel “anti-climatic.” So Blizzard is getting rid of ties altogether. Instead, matches will go to sudden death if the sides are tied at the end of a match. For sudden death, each team’s flag will be moved closer to the center of the map. So when the match restarts, team’s will have far less ground to cover to score.

Additionally, flag pick-up rules are changing. You’ll now pick up the flag immediately. On top of that, some abilities involving mobility and invulnerability will cause you to drop the flag. For example, Winston’s leap/jump pack ability will cause him to drop the flag.

With some abilities restricted, Blizzard found, presumably through internal testing, this leads to more flag captures overall and games that are generally more “action-packed” and offensive-minded. Kaplan added that with these restrictions, games rarely go to sudden death.

Additionally, Blizzard is launching a four-week competitive season for Overwatch’s new Capture the Flag mode. Those who place in the top 500 will earn a special spray and icon. And for the Year of the Dog event overall, there will be six legendary skins; Mercy and Genji are among the heroes getting new legendary skins, though they have not been shown off yet. Additionally, there will be a new highlight intro for one of the game’s heroes, though Kaplan did not say which hero it will be.

Overwatch’s Year of the Dog event kicks off on February 8 across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Keep checking back with more details about this event, as we’re expecting a lot of new skins and other seasonal items as well.

The Force Awakens wasn’t the first attempt to continue the story of the Skywalker family. The original Star Wars sequel trilogy actually launched way back in 1991, although you’d be forgiven for missing it–after all, it debuted in bookstores, not the local theater.

Now that The Last Jedi has split the Star Wars community in two, some fans have proposed that Disney should have brought author Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn books–the original Star Wars sequel trilogy–to the big screen instead of introducing viewers to Rey, Finn, Poe and the rest. But those books are decades old. Would they really be better than Lucasfilms’ newest efforts? And what makes them so popular, anyway?

It’s all a matter of timing.

Reanimating a dead universe

It’s hard to imagine these days, when every year brings a new Star Wars movie and a truckload of spin-off media, but in the early ’90s Star Wars was effectively dead. In the ’80s, Lucasfilm had tried to keep the franchise alive with animated series like Droids and Ewoks, but those fizzled out. George Lucas claimed that he had more Star Wars stories to tell, but not a single film was in active production. At the time, the only real source of fresh Star Wars material was West End Games’ tabletop role-playing game.

Sourcebooks full of stats and trivia aren’t the same as brand new stories, however. Fans were hungry for new Star Wars adventures, and Lucasfilm left them high and dry.

That’s the climate in which Bantam Spectra released Heir to the Empire, the first book in the Thrawn trilogy. While the book came out in 1991, work on the novel had begun two years earlier, when Bantam Spectra editor Lou Aronica negotiated a secret publishing deal with Lucasfilm. After securing the rights, Aronica hired Hugo Award winner Timothy Zahn to pen the new trilogy, and gave the author carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with Star Wars’ classic characters.

There had been Star Wars books before, of course. Before the original film’s debut, George Lucas tapped sci-fi legend Alan Dean Foster to write Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which doubled as a blueprint for a potential low-budget Star Wars sequel (obviously, Star Wars did quite well at the box office, and Lucas decided not to adapt Foster’s modest story). Two prose trilogies featuring Han Solo and Lando Calrissian appeared on shelves between 1979 and 1983, but those were prequels set before the main Star Wars films.

By contrast, Heir to the Empire is a direct sequel to Return of the Jedi, taking place about five years after the second Death Star exploded. In the book, a blue-skinned and red-eyed Imperial warlord named Grand Admiral Thrawn attempts to restore the Empire to its former glory. In order to secure victory, Thrawn enlists Joruus C’baoth, the deranged clone of a dead Jedi who agrees to help Thrawn in exchange for the deliverance of Luke and Leia, who he hopes to convert into his dark side apprentices. Along the way, the Skywalkers and the gang team up with a nefarious smuggler named Talon Karrde and butt heads with Mara Jade, a Force-sensitive assassin with a dark past.

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