Splitgate Will Have Forge Mode Before Halo Infinite, Dev Says

The developer of the popular shooter Splitgate has said the game will get a Forge-style map editor mode before Halo Infinite does after 343 delayed the feature earlier this year.

Responding to a tweet from KFC’s gaming account to “trigger an entire gaming fanbase with one sentence,” the Splitgate account replied with a message about Forge. “Splitgate will have Forge mode before Halo Infinite. Sorry in advance Halo fans, we love you but we had to,” the tweet said (via IGN).

Splitgate’s Forge mode probably won’t be called Forge, developer 1047 Games said in another tweet, but it will be a similar type of map editor. “Imagine placing portal pads anywhere you wanted on Olympus,” the tweet said.

Halo is famous for its Forge map, which allows players to create all manner of custom game modes and maps, including Star Wars podracing and beer pong. Earlier this year, 343 Industries confirmed that Forge will not launch with Halo Infinite in December but is instead coming sometime later, alongside campaign co-op, which will also miss release and launch later in the future.

1047 Games went on to say that one of its goals with Splitgate is to “help bring back the Arena Shooter genre we loved growing up with.” The studio added: “We’re huge fans of classic Halo here at 1047 Games and are genuinely excited to see what Halo Infnite will bring back to the arena!”

In other news, 1047 Games recently raised $100 million to fund the ongoing development of Splitgate and to grow the team. The studio will use the money to help Splitgate have a “historic” launch when it comes out of beta.

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Sega’s Mysterious New RPG Is a Mobile Game With a Non-Linear Story

Sega released a teaser website and Twitter account for a new mobile RPG, which it plans to reveal during Tokyo Game Show. The RPG will seemingly feature a non-linear story, allowing for player choice.

The new game so far has a website with a pretty piece of art and a teaser trailer that hasn’t been released in English at this time. That teaser confirms the RPG will be a mobile game, and hints at an anime-inflected visual style. The teaser features a quill pen drawing out anime characters and a landscape before various concept art images flash at the end of the teaser, but there’s seemingly no gameplay.

Translated by IGN Japan, a voiceover explains that the (still unannounced) team behind the game wants to make something different to the linear stories prevalent in RPGs, and take inspiration from tabletop RPGs that could take the form of one-off experiences without a set ending. The goal is to release a smartphone RPG where the player gets to decide how the story unfolds through their choices.

“Not a straight road, Let’s make a one-time trip,” the tweet reads, according to Google Translate. “#Trueroleplaying. Information ban lifted October 1, 2021 (Friday) 22:50 #TGS2021 online #SEGAnewRPG.”

The teaser and website promise more information will be revealed at Sega’s Tokyo Games Show presentation on October 1. Sega’s presentation begins at 22:00 JST and ends at 23:50 JST, according to the TGS website. The teaser trailer says this specific game will be revealed at 22:50 JST. We’ll be covering the show throughout, so make sure to check back for more information.

The full Tokyo Games Show 2021 lineup will also include new presentations from Xbox, Square Enix, Capcom, and more. The only other information revealed about Sega’s presentation is that Atlus will be involved. There’s no confirmation that Atlus worked on the new RPG that Sega is teasing.

Sega’s next major release is Lost Judgment, a sequel to the Yakuza spinoff Judgment. IGN’s Lost Judgment review says the game, “disappoints with its main story and simplistic detective work, but excels with its substantial school-based side quests.”

Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.

Interactive Battle Royale Movie Game Bloodshore Looks Like Hunger Games Meets Fortnite

An interactive battle royale movie game is in development for console, PC, and mobile, letting you make decisions to determine the fate of a character.

The playable film is called Bloodshore, and it launches in November for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and iOS, as well as PC, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The movie comes from Wales Interactive, which is known for its FMV games. The playable movie “follows a deadly televised battle royale between high-profile streamers, entertainers, and death row inmates, and features eight hours of FMV footage, the most Wales Interactive has ever produced,” reads a line from its description.

The story follows the washed-up actor Nick, who you control in the game. Nick is taking part in the battle royale challenge, which features a “sinister truth” to uncover.

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“Each playthrough changes dramatically depending on player choices and the relationships built, some will bring deadly consequences for Nick and his fellow contestants,” reads a line from its description.

Check out the trailer above to see more of Bloodshore, which comes from the producers of The Complex and Five Dates. The game’s Steam page warns of “extreme violence and killing throughout,” as well as “graphic depictions of blood and gore.”

Trials Of Osiris Rewards This Week In Destiny 2 (Sept. 17-21)

Last week, Destiny 2 players discovered that the Trials of Osiris is excellent in the Season of the Lost, thanks to a whole bunch of great changes. You’ll definitely want to take advantage of the mode to get some of the game’s best weapons and armor, while testing yourself in one of its absolutely most difficult activities.

As always, both the Trials of Osiris rewards and the map are randomized when the mode goes live at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET on Fridays. We’ll update this article as soon as the Trials kicks off and we find out what map you’ll be facing and what rewards you can earn from Saint-14.

Trials of Osiris is a weekend PvP mode that runs from the daily reset on Friday until the weekly reset on Tuesday, giving you four days to take part. Your goal in the Trials is for you and the other two players in your fireteam to achieve a “Flawless” run, in which you win seven matches without losing any.

Go Flawless, and you’ll earn a trip to the Lighthouse and receive some special rewards, including the new Adept weapons. These have additional stat bonuses, making them among the most coveted items you can get your hands on.

Thanks to a bunch of changes to Trials this season, though, the mode is a little easier to get into than it has been. The Trials of Osiris now features matchmaking, so you can jump into matches even if you don’t have a full squad of three players to take it on. Your Trials Passage, the card you purchase from Saint-14 that grants you access to the mode and tracks your wins, now does not track your losses–so you can keep playing and earning rewards even if you lose out on a Flawless run. Bungie has also adjusted Trials so that you earn rewards based on the number of rounds, rather than matches, you’ve won during your session, and added a reputation system that’s similar to the Crucible and Gambit, making it easier to earn some of the Trials of Osiris’s unique loot.

Finally, you’ll earn Trials Engrams for participating in the mode, which you can cash in with Saint-14 during the weekend you receive them. Thanks to the new update, you can tune those engrams to yield specific pieces of loot, or take your chances with random drops that will expand what’s available in your loot pool. So even if you’re just jumping into Trials alone, there are plenty of ways you can earn great new gear.

Where Is Xur Today? (Sept. 17-21) – Destiny 2 Xur Location And Exotics Guide

This week was a big one for Destiny 2, with the arrival of the Ager’s Scepter Exotic trace rifle and the second of week of the now-excellent Trials of Osiris. Xur has returned as well, giving you another chance to get great new gear from the Agent of the Nine. Here’s what he’s offering and where you can find him.

We’ll update this article at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET Friday when Xur returns to the solar system, so stay tuned.

Xur returns to the solar system every weekend in Destiny 2, starting with the daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET each Friday. The thing is, where he’ll land isn’t known until he actually arrives. Xur can hang out at one of several locations, including in the Tower Hangar area, on Nessus in Watcher’s Grave, and in the Winding Cove area of the EDZ. Xur’s inventory also changes each week, so it’s worth revisiting him on the weekends for new weapons and rolls on Exotic and Legendary armor. You can visit him any time between his arrival Friday and the weekly reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET the following Tuesday when Xur departs the solar system.

Each week, Xur offers one Exotic weapon and three pieces of Exotic armor: one for each character class. The inventory is random, as are the stat rolls you can expect on each of his armor offerings, so if you’re looking to fill out your collection or if you’re hoping for better versions of Exotics you already have, it’s worth visiting him. Xur also brings an Exotic Engram, which is guaranteed to drop something you don’t already have, if there are Exotics missing from your collection on that particular character–but that doesn’t include Exotics you have to earn through activities, including the new Exotic armors added each season, which can only be claimed from Legendary or Master Lost Sectors.

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Season 16 Is “The Next Big Boiling Point” For Destiny 2’s Content Approach

This year has been a major turning point for Destiny 2. After experiments with a season-focused approach to live-game content and storytelling in the wake of 2018 and 2019’s major expansions, the model has developed into a highlight of the game in the months following Beyond Light in 2020. New activities have popped up every few months, and more than in the past, they’re adding to an unfolding narrative that builds off past seasons to make Destiny 2 feel more like a living world than it ever has before.

For developer Bungie, however, there’s more to hone about its current seasonal approach. As Destiny 2 creative director Joe Blackburn explained, the studio is happy with where it has landed in terms of narrative development and activity content, but there are still places in which the seasonal approach takes a back seat to other big releases. Season 16, the next on Destiny 2’s docket, will release on the same day as the upcoming Witch Queen expansion in February. As Blackburn sees it, that season will be another big step in the evolution of Destiny 2’s live content.

Now Playing: Destiny 2: The Witch Queen – What You Need To Know

“I think Season 16 is going to be the next big boiling point for us,” Blackburn said in an interview with GameSpot. “We’ve really had trouble with some of these seasons that come out right alongside the expansion. And so we’ve put a lot of thought and effort into how we want to do that better this time around. I mean, you, as a hardcore Destiny player, know that it can feel tough for the season to matter when it comes out a week [after the release of an expansion], and you’ve already got raid weapons, and you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I need this–does this stuff really matter?’ So we’re really excited to get Season 16 out day and date with Witch Queen this time and to have a lot of stuff for players to do and engage with, and really see the value immediately, not only to give you stuff to do while you’re leveling up, but to give you stuff while you’re prepping for some of those endgame activities.”

Blackburn said some seasons this year have felt anemic because of other big content launches, like the Vault of Glass. Bungie announced in its Witch Queen showcase that 2022 will see two new dungeons, which are large endgame activities for three-player teams, and two new raids–one a revamped Destiny 1 raid like VoG and the other wholly new. With those big activities and their loot on the calendar, Blackburn said the studio wanted to make sure that 2022’s seasons didn’t get overshadowed.

“I think the other part really is, it comes down to rewards,” he continued. “I’ve been super happy with [Seasons] 13, 14, and 15 in terms of their rewards and stories. But we were still doing a little bit of robbing from the season to pay for things like the raids and I think players could still feel that. Season 14 is awesome, but you’re like, ‘Oh, one of the Exotics is in Vault of Glass.’ And so if I’m a seasonal player that doesn’t have five other friends, that can feel rough. So we’re really trying to make sure, as we go into four pieces of raid and dungeon content a year, that the seasons are still fully funded. And that those dungeons and those raids feel like the icing on the cake, not that we’re taking something out of that pie. That was a mixed dessert metaphor.”

While Bungie might still be looking to hone how its seasonal content works with major additions like expansions, the studio also seems happy with the model it has developed for telling seasonal stories and dishing out seasonal content. The narrative approach has been particularly impressive, creating something that doesn’t really exist in the world of video games: A game world that is in a constant state of evolution because of the story being told within it. As Destiny 2 general manager Justin Truman said during the interview, the world of Destiny 2 today is different from the world of Destiny 2 a year ago.

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It’s taken a lot of experimentation to find this point, though, Truman said.

“When I think back a few years, I remember when we first made the switch from DLCs to seasons–Black Armory was the one, the Season of the Forge. We had a thing for years where we would just come up with these cool ideas, these cool products, and then we would release them and, in the good cases, would tell cool stories. But then we didn’t follow them up,” Truman said. “We would start a thread and then we would just leave it, and then start another thread, and leave it. And I’ve been really happy with how our narrative team and how our creative leadership team has really been thinking not just one, but two and three years out, so that we can build to beats like the Osiris reveal at the start of this season that the team has been seeding for a year. It’s been feathering into the content. And so I think one of the things that we’re seeing in the difference in reaction now is that we’re going somewhere in a clear way, and it can feel like all those beats matter, versus the interesting new monster of the week [of previous seasons] or whatever.”

“We were still doing a little bit of robbing from the season to pay for things like the raids and I think players could still feel that.”

Destiny 2’s seasonal approach currently feels a lot like a TV show, with new story beats popping up each week with the addition of new or slightly altered seasonal activities. In Season 15, the Season of the Splicer, Bungie started with six-player “Override” activities on several different planets. After a few weeks of Override rotations, it added “Expunge” missions, which were more story focused fights through linear levels. Each new week fleshed out the story with additional cutscenes and dialogue as players worked to uncover the mystery of the season’s big threat, the Endless Night.

Blackburn said Bungie looks at Destiny as both a combination of smaller seasonal stories told over time, and bigger tentpole moments in expansions–like a combination of TV shows and movies filling out a cinematic universe.

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“Surprising no one, we still pull a lot of inspiration in entertainment from things like Disney,” Blackburn said. “Like Disney Plus, I think, is a great example of something that Destiny looks at and says, ‘Hey, we can do that too,’ right? And so you look at Marvel or Star Wars and Disney Plus, and they have this sort of S-tier-quality TV shows going on. And then they’re like, ‘Oh, by the way, we drop movies every so often.’ And as a fan of any of that, as a Marvel fan or a Star Wars fan, it’s easy for you to drop in and be like, ‘Hey, I’m into this show. And I want to watch this show.’ Or, ‘I just want to tune into the movie. I’ll just be a once-a-year person.’ And we want Destiny to feel really approachable to people that are just into sort of the big battleship campaigns and the people that are like, ‘No, this is my hobby. Like I want to play it for more than just 50 hours once a year.'”

But Blackburn also noted that while both the studio and much of the player community seem to be happy with the way seasonal content is currently working, the studio hasn’t necessarily found the perfect approach.

“I think, overall, the stuff that we really want to keep pushing on is finding the model that works and then making sure that even if we have a model that works, that we’re continuing to push forward and iterate and find things that the community likes and doesn’t like, and moving forward in that direction,” he said.

The flow of seasonal content–and rewards to match–means Bungie is constantly adding to the game, even if those activities only last for the year in which they’re released. But with the game’s constant addition of new locations and activities in its expansions, the developer has to continue to deal with the problem of the size of the game and portions of it languishing.

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With the release of the Beyond Light expansion, Bungie solved that problem by removing parts of the game, placing it in what Bungie calls the “Destiny Content Vault.” Early Destiny 2 destinations–Io, Mercury, Titan, and Mars–and all their related activities and story campaigns were removed. That brought down the game’s install size and made room for the Beyond Light expansion, but it remains a contentious move with the community. It means that older parts of Destiny 2’s story can’t be accessed, and some players are frustrated that content they paid for with Destiny 2 and its earlier expansions, Curse of Osiris and Warmind, is inaccessible.

But Bungie is also positioning the Destiny Content Vault as something that old content can return from, bringing revamped experiences to the game from as far back as Destiny 1. This year saw the first release of that kind: Vault of Glass, the original Destiny’s first raid, was revamped for Destiny 2 and made free for all players. Another free Destiny 1 raid is due in 2022, as well, as part of upcoming seasonal content.

“…I love that we have a single evolving world that is still there years after players first showed up and it’s always the right place to go to.”

“This is a very real, what we call, an ‘us problem,'” Blackburn said. “Where it’s like, technically, we just have to bite some of these bullets that none of us are excited to bite down on. And so it’s really about, what can we do to make that as painless as possible to the player? And in some ways, I think, [it’s about], ‘Hey, is there a way that we can [vault content so that] there’s a positive, that feels like we’re curating the buffet.’ What does Destiny look like 10 years from now? [With a] game that has potentially had 50 strikes made for it, how many are live at the game at one time? And [how does] whatever’s in the game feel like it’s loved and touched? And it was a thing that, yeah, just feels like this deserves its spot.”

“And I will say … when I put on my game designer hat, I would love to just release new sequels that come out every two years and then be able to build everything from scratch,” Truman added. “And that would feel so much easier than the stuff we’re grappling with. But then, when I put on the community hat, I love that we have a single evolving world that is still there years after players first showed up and it’s always the right place to go to. And so, these problems are tough, but I’m happy that we’re grappling with them because what we get in exchange is this single community and evolving world.”

11 Classic TV Shows That Still Aren’t Streaming For Some Reason

Nightmare Alley’s First Teaser Trailer Offers a Glimpse of Guillermo del Toro’s Grisly Carnival

Guillermo del Toro is off to the carnival in the teaser for Nightmare Alley. The director’s latest production revealed its first footage today with a trailer that teases a gruesome tale of a carnival populated by fishy characters.

The trailer introduces us to Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a carnival worker advertised to have the powers of a mind reader. As Stan’s talents bring him into contact with wealthier clientele, he meets a shady psychiatrist (Cate Blanchett) who has her own dangerous skills.

The teaser also shows footage of Willem Dafoe as a carnival barker, Rooney Mara as one of Carlisle’s fellow carnies, and Toni Colette as a tarot reader. Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, and David Strathairn are also featured in the trailer.

“Step right up and behold one of the unexplained mysteries of the universe,” shouts Willem Dafoe’s character. “Is he a beast or is he a man? You’re in luck because tonight you will see him feed.”

Along with the first teaser, Nightmare Alley also premiered its first images earlier this week as well as its first official poster on Wednesday.

Whether Bradley Cooper is playing a man or a beast in Nightmare Alley will be revealed when the movie hits theaters on December 17. The release date places Guillermo del Toro back in the throes of awards season, four years after his Best Director win for The Shape of Water at the 90th Academy Awards.

J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

GameCube Turns 20 and Bluetooth Comes to Switch – NVC 578

Welcoooome to Nintendo Voice Chat! This week, Super Ninfriendo Seth Macy takes a spin in the hosting chair, and he’s joined by Brian Altano, Rebekah Valentine, and Kat Bailey to chat all things Nintendo. After four and a half long years, Bluetooth support is finally on Switch. But is it any good? Plus, the GameCube just turned 20 years old, and the panel discusses their favorite memories with Nintendo’s little purple box.

NVC is available on your preferred platforms!

You can also Download NVC 578 Directly Here

You can listen to NVC on your preferred platform every Thursday at 3pm PT/6pm ET. Have a question for Question Block? Write to us at [email protected] and we may pick your question! Also, make sure to join the Nintendo Voice Chat Podcast Forums on Facebook. We’re all pretty active there and often pull Question Block questions and comments straight from the community.

Logan Plant is the Production Assistant for NVC. You can find him on Twitter at @LoganJPlant.

Aussie Deals: Stock Up for Saturday With a THQ Sale, Reduced Consoles, and More!

The week is sorted! In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s done like a Deathloop soloist who’s ignored the tooltip warning about player invasions. Bargains for said title are included today, incidentally, along with some price drops on Nintendo Switch Lites and the Xbox Series S. All those deals and more are lurking below.

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Adam’s an Aussie deals wrangler who has his eye on Hot Wheels next. You can occasionally find him @Grizwords.