biteho.com

With Diablo 4, Blizzard seems to be taking a page from live-service games that have cropped up with increasing frequency in the seven years since the release of Diablo 3. Diablo 4 supports a shared world in which you’ll see and even fight alongside other players who aren’t in your party, much in the way you might in an MMO or a live game like Destiny. The game will support PvP areas that let you battle against other players. And it’ll maintain some of Diablo 3’s features that made the game replayable over the long term.

As Blizzard detailed at BlizzCon 2019, Diablo 4 is adding a few new elements–and bringing back some old ones. Lead systems designer David Kim told GameSpot that what has him most excited for Diablo 4 is the chance to improve the franchise’s replayability.

“The stuff that we’re going to be exploring there is to make sure that whenever someone comes back after a break, it’s kind of a fresh [type of experience] with new things to explore….” Kim said.

A lot of what will and won’t be in Diablo 4 still sounds like it’s up in the air, with Blizzard working on content and systems while taking feedback from the player community. For instance, the playable build at BlizzCon showed three returning character classes: Diablo 3’s Barbarian, and the Sorceress and Druid from Diablo 2. Kim and lead lighting designer Sean Murphy said the team isn’t sure what other classes might make a return or if they’ll add new classes; the developer is waiting to see what people want before making those decisions.

Another feature not yet set in stone is Adventure mode, the replayable endgame mode that appeared in Diablo 3. It’s coming back, but Kim said what form it will take or how exactly it’ll work is something that’s still being determined.

“We’ll have something like Adventure mode, but we don’t know exactly what that is yet, but we’ll have the replayable content that you can play forever in the world, and we do want to up the game there a little bit,” Kim explained. “So in the endgame, we want not only that dungeon-running experience, which is also fun and great too, but we also want to up the stuff that’s going on in the world too, for variety, for additional challenges, things like that.”

Adventure mode’s influence can be felt in the rest of Diablo 4 with the game’s new focus on public spaces that include additional players beyond just you and your party. In Diablo 4 hands-on demo available at BlizzCon, it was possible to run into other players in open spaces outside of dungeons, like in an MMO or live game. Diablo 4 includes public events and world bosses you can take on with other players even if you’re not grouped up with them.

Murphy said that Blizzard is still working on finding a balance between including other players in public spaces to make the world of Sanctuary feel more alive and populous, without sacrificing the developer’s focus on a darker, more horrific tone for Diablo 4. He said the demo on the show floor was pretty indicative of what the game will feel like–there will be people around that you run into from time to time, but there won’t be so many that they undercut the feeling that Sanctuary is a dangerous place filled with terrors.

And then there’s seasonal content. Diablo 3’s seasons helped keep the game fresh over the last seven years, and Kim said seasons are something Diablo 4 will also employ to keep the game replayable. Unlike Adventure mode or public events, though, seasons will focus on adding new experiences to the game.

“The main goal will be to change up the play experience from season to season,” he said. “So one example I can talk about is, what if there were brand new legendary items coming into seasons? And then there’s also some subset of all legendary items that are more powerful in different seasons, that way you can kind of explore different combinations that you’ve never played with before. With that said, this is just a legendary item-specific example, but we want to try to do this across the board in as many places as possible.”

Legendary items sound as though they’ll provide another reason to keep coming back to the game. They’ll provide more options in the gear chase, and along with the return of skill trees after their absence in Diablo 3, should work to give you more customization options that change how you play.

The system of item sets from Diablo 3 will still make a return, but they’ll have something of a different role as you work for better equipment while you play, Kim said.

“We want to have sets as kind of optional choices,” he said. “So players who want to have a simpler choice or players who are just getting into the game, not really sure what combinations are really good, they can use sets as a starting point to see, ‘Oh, I can do this with items and that with items,’ and kind of learn that process. But in the end game, we would want a scenario where a majority of the players are customizing every single slot to their liking, so that even if we are both playing the exact same class and exact same build, like we’re both playing the Bleed Barb, your build is very different from mine because of the choices that you’ve made versus the choices that I have made.”

The last big new inclusion to Diablo 4 is something that was supposed to come to Diablo 3 but never made it: a player-versus-player mode. Like Adventure mode, it’s a feature Blizzard is still experimenting with, and seems to be taking influence from the games that Diablo has inspired over the years, in order to add more things to do and more reasons to log in.

“Currently, we are planning on having specific areas of the world where you can choose to PvP if you want to, and the other thing is, we are also exploring some PvP modes that would work really well in Diablo,” Kim said. “So the goal is, we want to have that mixed PvE and PvP type of experience, because everyone knows the PvE, killing swarms of monsters, that’s where kind of the core fun of Diablo is at. We haven’t found something that we really love yet, but once we do, of course, we’re going to tell everyone about it.”

There’s still a long way to go before we see Diablo 4 in a completed state, despite its BlizzCon demo looking pretty solid. Blizzard hasn’t set a release date yet, and as Kim and Murphy noted, a lot of the game’s features are still in their early stages of development. But it appears that Blizzard’s focus on replayability is set to shake up the Diablo formula from what we’ve seen in the past, giving players plenty of reasons to stick with it after its release.

The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Tim Burton’s Batman, Lego has unveiled a new elaborate replica of the distinct and quite memorable Batmobile from the film. While I haven’t had a chance to build it myself, the finished product is easily one of the most gorgeous Lego builds I’ve ever seen. The Lego DC Super Heroes 1989 Batmobile will be available on Black Friday directly from Lego and at retailers that carry Lego products for $250.

Lego DC Super Heroes 1989 Batmobile | $250

The massive 3,306-piece set measures at 23 inches long, 8 inches wide, and roughly 4 inches tall when built. Impressively, the Batmobile has the same curved design that made Bruce Wayne’s ride pop in the 1989 movie.

You’ll probably want to think twice before taking the Batmobile apart after completing the build. On top of being marketed as one of Lego’s more challenging sets to put together, it has a number of cool features that will make it a cool build to display. The cockpit slides open to reveal two seats, and if you turn the turbine exhaust, a pair of machine guns pop-up. The wraparound windshield adds some bonus style to an already slick-looking build.

If you have kids, they’ll probably want to zoom it around across the kitchen floor like a race car (can’t blame them). But if you manage to keep it away from them (a tall order and a tad mean), it comes with a rotating display stand complete with some facts and specifications about this unique Batmobile.

One you stop gawking at the Batmobile itself, you’ll be able to tell that it comes with three figures, each of which were updated for the new set: Batman, Joker, and Vicki Vale.

We’ve had a whole bunch of new Exotics hit Destiny 2 since the start of the Season of the Undying. If you’re willing to put in the work, you can unlock the Divinity trace rifle from the Garden of Salvation raid and the Xenophage machine gun from the Pit of Heresy dungeon, as well as the Deathbringer rocket launcher and Leviathan’s Breath bow. But if you’d rather not put in a bunch of work for a new Exotic, you can always buy something shiny that’s new to you from Xur, Destiny 2’s weekend Exotics vendor.

We’ve got a full guide for where to find Xur and what he’s selling above. You won’t find anything too interesting–most of his wares were released back in Destiny 2’s first year. He’s also offering Cerberus +1, an Exotic auto rifle from the Forsaken expansion.

Check out the video above to help you locate Xur in the EDZ. Just note that he’ll only be here for a limited time, checking out of the solar system with the weekly reset at 9 AM PT on Tuesday, November 12.

As expected from a show by Damon Lindelof–co-creator of Lost and The Leftovers–HBO’s Watchmen sequel series is full of mysteries that have us speculating, guessing, and theorizing week after week. One of those mysteries is what exactly is going on with Adrian Veidt–AKA Ozymandias–a familiar Watchmen character being played in the show by Jeremy Irons. This week, Lindelof appears to have just put one mystery surrounding the character to bed.

Be warned: There are spoilers for Watchmen’s first three episodes ahead.

On the newly released first episode of HBO’s official Watchmen podcast, host Craig Mazin–yes, the writer and producer of HBO’s acclaimed Chernobyl miniseries–interviews Lindelof about Watchmen’s first three episodes, “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice,” “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship,” and “She Was Killed by Space Junk.” While questioning Lindelof about the Adrian Veidt storyline, Mazin laid out all the questions he has, from where Ozymandias is to the source of his many servants, who appear to all be clones.

The entire discussion is worth listening to, so definitely put the podcast on during your commute if you’re into the show so far. However, there’s one specific thing Lindelof said about the Veidt storyline that we consider the most significant:

“Now let me say, after three episodes, if you are worried, A, that’s the intention. You should be worried. You should be worried as to like, why–what is this all for? Is it even real? Because it feels like it might be a little bit tonally aberrant,” Lindelof says. “It’s not–these are not parallel storylines, they are in fact converging lines that are moving towards one another.”

The reason that’s significant is it sounds like Lindelof is addressing one specific fan theory: that the Veidt storyline is not happening in parallel with the rest of the show, but is in fact taking place over a much longer period of time, similar to the way Westworld Season 1 featured two separate storylines that took place in different time periods before eventually converging at the end of the season. Similarly, Lindelof appears to be stating that Veidt’s storyline and the one featuring Laurie Blake and Angela are “not parallel,” but will eventually “converge.”

Lindelof also promises that the show will answer all the other questions you have about Veidt, as well as those involving other mysteries, like what exactly is going on with Angela’s grandfather, Will.

“Not only do we know where all of it’s going, but I think, again, one of the things that was on that list that I was telling you about, of adjectives [I wanted to describe the show], was ‘self-contained,'” Lindelof says, describing how he felt the original Watchmen comics definitively answered most of the mysteries and questions it presented, while still leaving some things ambiguous, like what Laurie would do next, and what would happen with Rorschach’s journal.

“There’s this sort of degree of ambiguity in terms of the way that it ends, and yet it also simultaneously feels immensely satisfying,” he continues. “All this by way of saying is, every question that you just asked–where is Adrian Veidt, what’s his relationship with the Game Warden, what’s up with the cakes, where is he and what’s he doing, where do all these clones, what have you, these beings, where do they come from, why is he obsessed with Doctor Manhattan–all of those things are answered very, very definitively.”

Lindelof also discusses why they kept Veidt’s identity a “secret” until the third episode. Partially, it had to do with not wanting the show to be definitively labeled a Watchmen sequel. Another concern was continuing the original books’ sense of mystery:

“People forget–they didn’t reveal who Rorschach was until halfway through the comic books’ run. He was a guy who actually appears in the first issue as seemingly like a vagabond or a homeless guy holding this ‘end is nigh’ sign,” the showrunner said. “And so, ‘Who is that?’–that question–‘Who is that?’ is a big part of Watchmen to me too. And so we were trying to sort of replicate that fundamental idea as well.”

No doubt Watchmen has many more mysteries in store for us. The show airs Sundays on HBO, and we’re here every week to break each episode down, catch all the Easter eggs we can spot, and more.

Showtime’s Halo TV series is about to begin production and is adding more to its cast. In addition to the already-cast Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief, three new roles have been confirmed.

Danny Sapani (Doctor Who, Black Panther), Olive Gray (Fleabag), and Charlie Murphy (Peaky Blinders) have been cast for the 2021 Showtime series, the network has announced. Sapani will take on the role of Captain Jacob Keyes–a war hero and father working with his daughter and ex-wife. Gray will plan Dr. Miranda Keyes, a UNSC commander who has dedicated her life to understanding culture and technology. Finally, Murphy will play Makee, a woman who was orphaned and raised by the alien Covenant to hate humanity.

The trio will also join Natasha McElhone playing Cortana and Dr. Catherine Halsey, Bokeem Woodbine playing Soren-066, Shabana Azmi as Admiral Margaret Parangosky, and others.

The creators of the series are trying to satisfy Halo gaming fans as well. “The good news is we’ve been working very closely with 343 [Studios] through the entire development process,” Showtime Networks co-president Gary Levine explained during the TCA press tour. “And they are there both as a resource to tell us stuff we don’t know and also to make sure we’re not violating anything big in the canon. So we’re doing this with total confidence that the fans are going to embrace what we’re doing.”

Halo is expected to air on Showtime sometime in 2021.

Disclosure: Showtime is owned by CBS, the parent company of GameSpot.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Endings are never easy but for The Shining, they’re a whole different level of complicated. Back in 1980 when Stanley Kubrick adapted the classic Stephen King novel, a rift infamously arose between the filmmaker and the writer. It came about for more than one reason, but one of the biggest and most obvious was the major changes Kubrick had made in the original story’s finale. In Kubrick’s world, the Torrance family (minus father Jack who had been driven insane) were able to escape The Overlook Hotel with the Hotel still standing, while in the book the hotel was leveled by a massive explosion.

The issue wasn’t as simple or as literal as whether or not the hotel got demolished, but what King believed to be Kubrick’s willful misinterpretation of the intent of the novel. In King’s view, destroying the hotel was critical to really buttoning The Shining’s thesis: The idea that the horror is, primarily, the responsibility and the result of choices made by the characters, rather than something that happens to them by forces outside of their control.

Unsurprisingly, creating a follow up to The Shining presents an interesting challenge with regard to the ending, but it’s a challenge that Mike Flanagan was more than willing to take on when adapting King’s follow up novel, Doctor Sleep, for the big screen. So how did he do it and what, exactly, happened in Doctor Sleep’s final cinematic moments? Let’s break it down.

Major Spoilers from both the movie and the novel versions of Doctor Sleep bellow! Proceed with caution!

The first thing you’ll notice as a Shining fan going into the last act of Doctor Sleep in the theater is that The Overlook is decidedly still around. Sure, it’s been boarded up and abandoned–left to rot, as Dan says–but it did not blow up or burn down. But for whatever King must feel about Kubrick’s version of his novel, he was fully in support of Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep adaptation “living within the canon” Kubrick set forth, according to Flanagan himself. But that didn’t make the process of pitching a new ending any less daunting.

Selling a return to the Overlook Hotel wasn’t the tricky thing–it was nailing down the final moments for Dan himself. In King’s novel, Dan survives the final fight with the True Knot and is given an epilogue where he’s celebrating 15 years of sobriety, a battle he’s been fighting through most of his adult life. But in Flanagan’s version, things don’t go so smoothly.

For the movie, finishing Dan’s story was all about finding a sense of balance between King and Kubric–and for that, Flanagan understood that Dan had to die. Or, specifically, Dan had to die in the way that King had originally written his father Jack to die: By setting off a massive explosion that destroys the Overlook from the boiler room. This comes after Dan and Abra team up to strategically destroy the True Knot until only Rose the Hat is left to chase them, when they decide to lead her to the Overlook for the final battle.

During their last fight, Dan is forced to “unlock” the ghosts of the Overlook which have followed him since childhood. With a trick he learned from his ghostly mentor, Dick Hallorann, he’s been sealing them away in special mental boxes to keep himself sane–boxes that other psychics like Abra and Rose are able to sense and manipulate by looking into his mind. Rose’s greed and obsession eventually the best of her and she mistakenly enters Dan’s mind, rather than Abra’s, where he’s able to trap her and unleash the spirits–everyone from the “come play with us” twins to the horrifying woman from Room 237 to rip Rose apart.

But naturally, once those ghosts have been set free, they don’t just go away. Even with Rose gone, Dan and Abra are forced to fight for their lives–or succumb to the insanity of the Overlook once and for all. Dan very nearly loses himself the same way Jack did–but, heroically (and tragically) comes to just enough to realize what he has to do to save Abra and end the Overlook’s nightmare once and for all.

It was a daunting task, to say the least, Flanagan explained while speaking with GameSpot. “When I showed it to King, it was one of the things I was the most afraid of. Because we talked about the Overlook, we talked about all that. He blessed all that,” Flanagan said. “We never talked about the ending. I think he kind of assumed it would be the same ending as the novel.

So when he read the draft he was like, ‘That’s Jack’s ending.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah. Yeah, it is.’ And he said, ‘I love it.'”

For Flanagan, it was less about changing the ending to surprise viewers who might also be familiar with the source material and more about “reaching beyond” the ending of the story. “I knew we’d have to change it just because we’re going back to the hotel. But what if I could reach past the Kubrick film and go all the way back to the ending from The Shining? And if I pulled Jack’s ending, the ending that King never got, the one Kubrick never made. And I could take Jack’s story from the end of The Shining and give it to Dan, that felt like there was a symmetry to that that I just loved,” he explained. “It was like, ‘Okay, well, if I’m going to change it, I’m going to give Dan the ending King always wanted for his dad.’ For better or worse. I was very happy with it. It felt like the right way to say goodbye to him.”

As for Abra, she’s not completely left in the wind. She’s able to return to her mother and, like Dan himself who grew up “mentored” by the ghost of Dick Hallorann, still see the ghost of Dan who appears to her to explain that death isn’t the end after all. Sure, it may be considerably less celebratory than getting a 15-year chip at an AA meeting, but it’s not exactly sad. “I’m kind of into [examinations of] grief,” Flanagan laughed, by way of explanation. “It’s kind of my thing.”

Doctor Sleep is in theaters now.