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Things are looking up for the X-Men lately. They have a new island nation of their own and have managed to overcome death itself (Thanks, Goldballs!). Still, we can’t help but wonder how things will inevitably go wrong for Professor X and the nation of Krakoa. Thanks to X-Men #7, we may have our answer.

Read on to learn how the X-Men may have just created their worst enemy, but beware of spoilers for X-Men #7!

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Marvel’s Dawn of X relaunch has taken a dark turn of late, showing the many moral compromises necessary to keep the nation of Krakoa safe. The very existence of X-Force flies in the face of one of the three fundamental laws of Krakoa – Murder No Man. But perhaps no compromise casts a deeper stain on Xavier and Magneto’s creation than the fate of the precognitive mutant Destiny. And now that mistake may cost them everything.

Destiny played a small but pivotal role in 2019’s House of X and Powers of X. As a mutant with the power to see the future, she alone was able to sense Moira MacTaggert’s unique status in time. When Moira devoted her third life cycle to creating a cure for the mutant gene, it was Destiny who orchestrated Moira’s murder and ordered her to spend the remainder of her lives helping mutants, lest she suffer an even worse fate next time around.

Moira has done as Destiny asked. Now in her tenth life cycle, she’s guided Xavier and Magneto as they’ve built Krakoa and established a better future for the mutant race. However, she’s done so from the shadows. No one else is aware Moira is still alive, much less that she’s died and been reborn in utero nine times.

That arrangement has worked so far, but there’s a big catch. Now that Xavier has the technology to resurrect dead mutants, there’s theoretically no reason he couldn’t bring Destiny back to life. In fact, the prospect of seeing her wife resurrected is the only reason Mystique has been cooperating with Xavier and Magneto. But Destiny’s resurrection is something Moira fears above all else. She refuses to allow any precognitive mutants to live on Krakoa, for fear her secrets will be exposed and a target will be painted on her back. What’s the point of all this hard work if someone can assassinate Moira and reset the X-Men timeline back to square one?

In order to safeguard Krakoa, Xavier and Magneto have elected to deny Irene Adler her second chance at life. But that hasn’t stopped them from dangling the prospect of Destiny’s resurrection like a carrot on a stick in order to force Mystique to toe the line. X-Men #7 shows Mystique risking her life by returning to Orchis’ orbital space station. There she discovers the X-Men failed in their mission to stop the creation of the futuristic Sentinel Nimrod. Xavier and Magneto order Mystique to return again and assassinate Orchis scientist Dr. Gregor before Nimrod is completed, telling Mystique she has to “earn” Destiny’s resurrection.

After reluctantly agreeing, Mystique reflects back on a conversation she and Destiny shared years before. Destiny warned her wife that an island would be created and Mystique would be offered a new home, only to be denied the one thing she craved most. Destiny urged Mystique to do everything in her power to bring her back. And if that fails, Destiny made one simple request – “Burn that place to the ground.”

Mystique may have been confused by that conversation at the time, but now she understands what her wife was trying to tell her. Xavier and Magneto are never going to resurrect Destiny, leaving Mystique with no recourse but to destroy the home they worked so long and hard to build. It’s not as if Mystique doesn’t have a track record of throwing the X-Men under a bus for the sake of her own selfish desires. And in this case, can you really blame her?

X-Men #7 strongly hints Mystique will become one of the major antagonists in Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men run, potentially bringing an end to the new mutant nation. We could even see her defecting to Orchis, as recent chapters of X-Men have shown that organization has found its own pathway to immortality. Maybe they can offer Mystique the one thing Professor Xavier is unwilling to provide.

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Whatever the future holds for Krakoa, it sounds like we’ll get a better idea of the new threats emerging for the X-Men on Free Comic Book Day. Marvel Comics is also gearing up for a major Avengers/Fantastic Four crossover called Empyre, a story we think might be offering a snapshot of the MCU’s future.

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

BEYOND!

On this week’s episode of IGN’s weekly PlayStation show, host Jonathon Dornbush is joined by Lucy O’Brien, Ryan McCaffrey, and Tom Marks to take a look at PS4’s exciting 2020 lineup of exclusives.

Kicking off with Dreams, Jonathon and Lucy are joined by Abbie Heppe and Siobhan Reddy of Media Molecule to discuss Dreams’ imminent launch, its early access beta period, and its encouraging community.

Then, the rest of the cast dives into Ryan’s MLB The Show 20 preview, thoughts on FF7 Remake, The Last of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Predator: Hunting Grounds, and much more!

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Download or listen to the show on these platforms:

• Direct Download

• YouTube

• Apple Podcasts/iTunes

• Spotify

• Stitcher

• PlayerFM

• Podbay

• TuneIn

• Podbean

• Feedburner

Podcast Beyond! is live every Wednesday at 3 p.m. PT. For the latest on PS5, check out the new PS5 logo, how fans reacted to the PS5 logo, and check out images of the allegedly PS5 dev kit and controller, as well as a leak alleging the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X.

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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

The hugely popular first-person shooter CrossFire is becoming a movie. Variety reports that Sony Pictures has landed the rights to make a movie based on Smilegate’s shooter, which by some accounts and definitions is the world’s most popular FPS.

Fast & Furious producer Neal Moritz is producing the movie, which is written by Chuck Hogan. Hogan wrote the Benghazi movie 13 Hours. He also wrote the book Prince of Thieves, which Ben Affleck adapted into the Oscar-nominated movie The Town.

Tencent Pictures, the movie arm of the Chinese internet giant that owns shares in numerous video game developers, is co-financing and co-producing the movie. The film was actually announced back in 2015, but as is often the case in Hollywood, things can move slowly.

CrossFire launched in 2007 and has become an immensely popular game thanks in part to its growth in Asia. Smilegate reports that CrossFire has more than 650 million registered users and has reached 8 million peak concurrent players, which makes it the biggest game in the world.

There is no word on the plot, the cast, or a director for the CrossFire movie, while it’s also unknown if the movie will be released internationally or only in Asia where the game is more popular. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

A new version of CrossFire called CrossFire X is coming to Xbox One, while Alan Wake developer is working on the single-player campaign for multiple new CrossFire games.

CrossFire is not the only FPS that is being spun into a movie. Activision’s new movie division has announced plans to make multiple Call of Duty movies, one of which will be written by Black Panther’s writer.

Disney’s Aladdin remake is reportedly moving forward on its sequel and writers John Gatins and Andrea Berloff have been hired to write the script.

In August, one of the Aladdin remake’s producers said that Disney was looking into a sequel. Now, Variety reported that these producers had spent the past six months trying to work out the sequel’s story and have supposedly settled on a new idea instead of simply adapting the original animated movie’s sequels.

The producers are also hoping that actors Will Smith, Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott will return, but there won’t be any deals made until a script is completed. It’s not known at this time if the first film’s director, Guy Ritchie, is being pursued.

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This would be the fourth of Disney’s recent live-action adaptations to receive a sequel. Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent have already received sequels in theaters, and Disney officially announced a Jungle Book sequel to be directed by Jon Favreau.

There have been previous reports of a Genie prequel movie way back in 2015 and, more recently, a spinoff of Aladdin was rumored to be in development that would focus on the Prince Anders character. This potential spinoff is supposedly planned for Disney+, whereas this sequel is reportedly getting the big-screen treatment.

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In our review of Aladdin, we said the film is “about as safe an adaptation as we’ve seen Disney put out, which is a bit disappointing considering that most of what it adds to the story works pretty well.” The Disney studio has since announced a Bambi remake and a reboot of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids featuring the return of Rick Moranis.

IGN has reached out to Disney for comment.

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Petey Oneto is a freelance writer who has no interest in Aladdin (2019) but this sequel could be interesting.

As much as I love to play MMOs, most of them have really boring combat. Even the ones that market themselves as more “action-packed” usually just trade tab targeting for empty sizzle and often tedious repetition which doesn’t really solve the problem. But Phantasy Star Online 2 is different.

After spending a chunk with the PSO2 North American Closed Beta, I’d honestly put its combat system right up there with the likes of Monster Hunter, God Eater, and maybe even Devil May Cry. It’s just that intense and fun.

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Over the course of last weekend, I put over a dozen hours into PSO2, mostly as a Human Braver switching between using a katana and bullet bow. The versatility of a powerful melee weapon with massive combos and a long-range precision-based weapon meant I could be effective in any situation. Near the end of the beta, I eventually dabbled with a Newman Summoner as well but didn’t get to spend as much time with that one.

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=I%E2%80%99d%20put%20its%20combat%20up%20there%20with%20Monster%20Hunter%2C%20God%20Eater%2C%20and%20maybe%20even%20Devil%20May%20Cry.”]As far as Closed Beta tests go, Phantasy Star Online 2’s westward expansion went far better than most. The first seven or so hours I tried logging on were a complete non-starter as servers buckled under the pressure of huge swaths of players slamming the game within seconds. But after several hours of downtime, they were up and running well through the rest of the test, including an extra day of up-time. Honestly, it felt more like an Early Access headstart than a closed beta. Nothing was restricted in terms of content and no progress will be wiped before launch or Open Beta either, allowing us to just play through the first several hours of the actual game.

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If you’re unfamiliar with PSO as a franchise – you can get caught up by learning everything newcomers need to know about Phantasy Star Online 2 – but at a base level, it’s a lot like Monster Hunter. The big difference being that it’s less about targeted and specific hunts and more about completing quests and raid-style missions. If you could make Monster Hunter a more traditional MMO with a heavy dose of sci-fi, then you’d have something pretty close to PSO2. There’s a similarly-designed lobby area where you can run into all kinds of other players, as well as instanced missions, but – similar to Destiny’s Exploration mode – you can also come across other players out in the field even if they’re not in your party.

So it’s not really a big open, connected world to explore. Instead, you queue up quests from the central hub that then send you to a transport ship where you can tweak your loadout, recruit NPCs if you want, and get ready before going through a portal down to the planet. Like Monster Hunter, zones each have their own types of enemies, loot, and environmental designs to make them feel distinct.

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=If%20you%20mixed%20Monster%20Hunter%20with%20a%20traditional%20MMO%20and%20a%20heavy%20dose%20of%20science%20fiction%2C%20you%E2%80%99d%20have%20something%20pretty%20close%20to%20Phantasy%20Star%20Online%202.”]Notably, PSO2 was an extremely easy game 90% of the time. If you’re playing content that’s marked as appropriate for your level on Normal difficulty then you likely won’t even need to heal through the entire mission. Even Hard missions targeted at 10 levels higher than my current level weren’t very difficult. The exception to this is boss battles, which can be incredibly overwhelming if you’re not paying attention and your group is ill-prepared.

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Combat in PSO2, meanwhile, is flashy and intense. As a Braver, I can dash in for a quick combo, counter enemy attacks to block and return damage, enter a hyper-powered state for increased speed and effectiveness, and even juggle enemies in the air with my katana. The bow is my ranged-option packed full of huge attacks that eviscerate single-targets alongside plenty of other options that hit a large area for massive AoE damage. And while special attacks and techniques use up your PP energy gauge, basic attacks rapidly refill it so you’re never going more than a few seconds without doing something cool.

[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=The%20highlight%20of%20the%20Closed%20Beta%20was%20undoubtedly%20the%20Urgent%20Quests.”]Exploring zones and doing quests was fun enough, but the highlight of the Closed Beta was undoubtedly the Urgent Quests. At specific real-world times, everyone that’s online gets a server-wide alert message that there’s an emergency situation. You go up to the quest counter and queue up for the Urgent Quest, which takes place over the course of a half-hour interval. Once you’re sent to the mission you’ll join up with up to 11 other players for a big 12-player raid-style mission where boss fights are intense, albeit not very difficult. But from what Japan server veterans have told me that changes dramatically once you get deeper into the game – these Urgent events were very much designed as introductory experiences.

The overall format and structure of PSO2 isn’t groundbreaking, but the execution and polish in terms of gameplay is unrivaled. Sega has done a fantastic job of distilling and capturing the iconic flare that goes with anime-style games like this and managed to repackage it into a persistent online multiplayer RPG that defies expectations. After eight years I expected PSO2 to feel archaic by gaming standards, but other than some jagged edges on textures, some performance hiccups associated with the beta, and admittedly dated visuals, I’m hard-pressed to find issues worth complaining about.

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Obviously I only played the first dozen or so hours, the key moments of any game that constantly throw new mechanics at you to keep things fresh, so I have no idea if it will start to get tedious soon or not. But my gut tells me that between the nine different classes and fighting styles there is plenty of variety to warrant playing for a long time to come – especially considering it’s a free-to-play MMO. Finally, There’s no indication of what the cash shop will be like in the North American version, but hopefully it will lean toward convenience items and cosmetics rather than pay-to-win elements.

What I played was still a Closed Beta, is unfinished, and had its share of translation errors, but I’ve been assured the team is aware of all that and is actively working on getting it in top-shape for release this Spring on Xbox One and eventually on PC after that – including cross-play – though there’s no official word on other platforms for the North American version yet.

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David Jagneaux is a freelance writer for IGN. Talk RPGs with him on Twitter at @David_Jagneaux.

Infinity Ward packed a lot into the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Season 2 update, and this includes a new dismemberment animation that is incredibly brutal and disgusting.

You can see in the video below that players killed by killstreaks can now have their heads blown clear off. Have a look at the video below to see this in action, but fair warning: it’s gross.

If you don’t want to see this new animation, or the game’s other gory ones, you can toggle off dismemberment and gore effects from the Options menu. Bear in mind, however, that dismemberment only happens in the campaign mode, but gore effects are in all modes.

Modern Warfare’s new Season 2 update adds a heap of new content, including a new version of the fan-favorite Modern Warfare 2 map, Rust. It’s available in a 24/7 playlist called “I Have Rust Issues.” For more, check out the full patch notes.

In other news, Infinity Ward is rumored to be working on a battle royale mode called Warzone, and its release might be coming up sooner than expected. Players have successfully glitched into the mode’s menus, revealing new details about it.