How Diablo 3 Went From Disastrous Launch To A Hell Of A Good Time

Everyone loves a comeback story. When Diablo 3 launched 10 years ago today, it was a mess. A pernicious mixture of server issues and deeper design flaws angered a fan community that had already been anxious about this new chapter in the beloved series, which had been more than a decade in the making. What Blizzard pulled off in the intervening years is nothing short of incredible, making one of the worst launches in company history into one of its most beloved games–an impeccably fine-tuned loot-RPG that’s accessible enough for beginners, but deep and rewarding enough to tempt long-term fans back again and again.

In the years since, Blizzard has gone through significant changes. The company has since become embroiled in a series of investigations and lawsuits, spearheaded by the state of California, regarding harassment, worker intimidation, and unfair hiring practices. It has been accused of fostering a sexist, “frat boy” culture, implicating many senior staff in either wrongdoing or complacent knowledge of it. Many long-time staff members have left, and investigations are ongoing. Now Microsoft has stated its intention to buy Activision Blizzard outright, based partly on the depressed stock price resulting from investigations. It has been a tumultuous decade for the studio that made Diablo 3, even as the game itself has improved greatly from its release.

My game about the devil has too many colors in it

Even before the launch, the Diablo community had mixed feelings about the impending sequel. Screenshots and videos of the game showed a much brighter, more colorful aesthetic than that of the first two games, which were dark and gothic. Fans expecting a grimmer vision from a game about actual Satan felt disappointed in this new direction.

As we would later learn, Blizzard actually did design Diablo 3 with a darker visual style before adding more light elements and a wider color palette. Blizzard poked fun at itself with the Easter egg Whimsyshire, a unicorn-laden land that’s much brighter than anything else in the game. It’s even designing Diablo 4 with the promise of art direction closer to Diablo 2.

As Diablo 3 was preparing for launch, though, there was a quiet rumble of dissatisfaction before it ever left the gate. With the art style so divisive, the proof would have to be in the playing. Once you got your hands on Diablo 3, Blizzard suggested, you’d be a believer.

Error 37 lights up the Internet

So, with an eager bunch of demon hunters itching to put the game through its paces and see how it handled, it was doubly problematic when it turned out that they couldn’t actually do that. Instead of being met with the game they had been waiting for for the better part of a decade, players received a vague message:

The servers are busy at this time. Please try again later. (Error 37)

Diablo 3

Without any clear indication of exactly how busy the servers were, or how long it would take to fix, players were left in limbo. They had no idea if they should wait, check back in later, or give up entirely. Game director Josh Mosqueira later said that the launch was just much bigger than anyone on staff had anticipated–even after doubling and then tripling the projections–in the book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier.

This was especially galling because of the game’s always-online requirement. While Diablo 3 does have a multiplayer component, you can complete the entire game solo if you want to. There was no reason players shouldn’t be able to simply fight their way through the campaign alone, whether the servers were working or not. But playing offline, as you could in the first two games, wasn’t an option, so eager fans were stuck making no progress at all while Blizzard sorted out the server issues. This issue did not come entirely by surprise: Prior to release, and based on the playable beta, players were already expressing concern with the always-online requirement.

“Right now, in the state it’s currently in, it’s an inherently broken product,” wrote John Walker for RPS. “A single-player game that won’t pause, and if you leave it running will boot you out and cancel your progress.”

But Blizzard stayed the course, and the launch-day disaster was the eventual comeuppance. Adding to the frustration, the always-online requirement seemed to be tied to another online feature, and one that proved most central to the game’s woes in its first years.

The Auction House

Blizzard had a problem. In previous Diablo games, the ability to trade items had created a black market for loot. Players hungry for the best gear were willing to pay, which also left the door open for unscrupulous third-parties and price-gouging. Blizzard saw the perils of an unofficial, unregulated marketplace for Diablo items, and thought it could do it better with a legitimate, regulated one.

“The auction house came out of the desire to legitimize third party trading so that players would stay in the game to do their trading rather than go to third party sites, and as a result reduce fraud, scams, spamming, and the profit in hacking the game, making dupes, etc.,” former game director Jay Wilson said in an interview with DiabloII.net after leaving the company. “The problem is, of course, it over-legitimized trading. It made it too easy. I think we all know this by now and the consequences. We worried about these consequences ahead of time, but we thought the benefits would outweigh the downsides, and [World of Warcraft’s auction house] seemed like a good proof of concept. Obviously we were mistaken.”

The mistake came down to two key areas. First, the auction house had a real-money component, allowing players to buy loot directly. This element opened Blizzard to criticism of engineering poor-quality loot drops to maximize market exchanges, since it took a small cut from every transaction. Whether or not this was the case, the overall quality of loot was extremely poor at launch, and fans were justifiably suspicious–especially given that Blizzard’s acquisition from Activision was only a few years old at this point, and longtime Blizzard fans were watchful for any resulting changes in corporate culture.

Second, the existence of real-money marketplace made anti-cheat measures that much more vital to the health of the game. If someone could generate a valuable item infinitely, for instance, it would lead to scams and ultimately drive down the value of items. That was part of the always-online component that had driven players’ frustrations in the opening days. If you’re always online, the system can constantly check for cheats like duplication glitches, though that didn’t make players who wanted to exclusively play offline feel any better.

What Blizzard had on its hands was a feature that fans didn’t like, that existed mostly to support the technical underpinnings of another feature that fans didn’t like.

As the company reassessed and decided how to move forward with Diablo 3 in the months following launch, it quickly decided that the auction house was “doing harm to the game,” according to Wilson. That harm manifested across both the real-money and gold versions of the Auction House, as it broke the core gameplay loop of Diablo. Why bother hunting monsters and demons if you can just buy equally good or even better gear? But the team wasn’t sure if shutting it down was even an option. The considerations were both practical–their player data showed a significant number of players were actually using the feature, and didn’t want to upset them–and legal, since it was advertised on the box.

Blizzard ultimately decided that both the real-money and gold Auction Houses needed to go, but it wouldn’t be enough to just leave an Auction House-shaped hole in the game design. The team started planning a larger-scale update. This would integrate suggestions from Josh Mosqueira, who initially joined to oversee the console versions and then became game director in 2013. The Auction House’s retirement would be paired with a complete overhaul to many of the game’s core systems, along with the launch of console versions and its first (and only) major expansion, Reaper of Souls. The biggest marquee feature was to the loot system, which Blizzard dubbed “Loot 2.0”–a massive change meant to make the loot drops more rewarding. It was to signal a whole new era of Diablo 3.

“We firmly believe that by shutting down the real-money and the gold auction houses, it really paves the way to make sure that killing monsters in-game is the most rewarding, the most satisfying, the most compelling way of getting your hands on those items,” said Josh Mosqueira in a video announcing the change.

The Auction House was shut down on March 18, 2014. Despite being the source of so much consternation at launch, Blizzard didn’t add an offline mode–and still never has. One week after the Auction House closure, Reaper of Souls would change everything.

Paving the way for the Reaper

Though Reaper of Souls was the biggest injection of new content, Blizzard also made a number of changes to Diablo 3 that would provide a good foundation in the months and years after the game’s initial release. The first major update came a few months after launch and long before the expansion. Patch 1.04, which was released on August 21, 2012, added a number of new features still in use in the game today.

Paragon Levels added a more rewarding endgame progression, providing a tangible benefit to continuing to level up beyond the standard level cap of 60, including passive stat boosts along with gold and loot find boosts and extra character portraits. This was accompanied by an adjustment to difficulty, to smooth the gap between normal mobs and rare monsters, and just generally encourage efficient play. Legendary items also got a huge boost in 1.04, both in terms of raw stats and a greater occurrence, and variety of special game-changing attributes. With this more powerful gear, players could reliably build their character around their favorite piece of gear and its special abilities.

Blizzard continued to make tweaks for more than a year afterward, leading up to Reaper of Souls. One month before Reaper hit, on February 25, 2014, Blizzard deployed Patch 2.0.1. This was the biggest single update to the game yet, and made many of the changes that made the game recognizable to today’s players.

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls

Patch 2.0.1 made major quality-of-life improvements for all players, regardless of whether they planned to get Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. Paragon leveling was combined between characters. Difficulty got a huge overhaul, as monsters would now scale with your level. The difficulty levels were placed with new Normal, Hard, Expert, and Master, as well as various Torment levels. Torment would yield greater rewards and was intended for endgame players to keep honing their skills and finding even better loot. The patch also revised and simplified the crafting system, and introduced a temporary experience boost called Pools of Reflection.

The centerpiece of the changes, as promised, was Loot 2.0. Whereas the loot grind in the original release had overloaded players with tons of junk loot, post-patch players found themselves getting significantly less loot, and what they did find was of much better quality. Loot would have more bonuses and special properties, and those properties would smartly be tailored to a player’s specific build. Legendary items would provide skill modifiers or other game-changing properties more often.

With a firmer foundation, Reaper of Souls was ready to reintroduce lapsed players, tempt new ones who had skipped the initial experience, and expand the player base by inviting in console players for the first time. Not only was the expansion built on a vastly improved player experience, but it added even more content to an already robust game. It included a new defensive class, the Crusader, a fifth story Act. A new Adventure mode gave the game unheard-of longevity, establishing a way for players to continue running through missions and bounties indefinitely without simply repeating campaign content. That was critical because Diablo 3, unlike its predecessors, allowed you to freely respec your character, leaving little reason to create alts of the same class. The level cap was also raised from 60 to 70, giving players even more opportunity to enhance their character for endgame challenges.

“Whatever it is, Reaper of Souls has it,” Carolyn Petit wrote in GameSpot’s Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls review. “This expansion adds a decent new character class, a great new campaign act, and most significantly, Adventure mode, a devious Blizzard concoction calculated to make Diablo 3’s existing content more rewarding–and more addictive–than it has been in the past.”

To every Season, turn, turn, turn

Reaper of Souls made one more long-term change to the formula, and though its impact was not immediately apparent at launch, it would end up being the biggest contributor to Diablo 3’s incredible longevity. Seasons were the solution to keep players engaged and coming back, offering special rewards and exclusive Legendary gear designed to reward players devoted enough to plumb their depths. Seasons would reset every three months and grant special rewards for the most devoted players. Now, not only could you get great gear from a robust endgame and Torment levels, but your gear itself could tell other players a story about a particular time and place that you earned your items.

Since then, Diablo 3 has seen a constant, steady stream of updates that have kept the game fresh for long-time fans. It received a significant class rebalancing in Patch 2.2. The next major patch added a Season Journey feature to let you easily keep track of your seasons, as well as Kunai’s Cube, a special item that allowed players to transfer Legendary traits, among other special quality-of-life abilities. It also added Nephalem Rifts, a new type of dynamic content that further helped make the game more replayable. Patch 2.4 introduced Set Dungeons, a way to test your skill in Adventure Mode at the peak of your equipment and abilities. It also introduced Greater Rifts, an riff on the Nephalem Rifts that had already become popular. Next, Blizzard created the Armory to allow players to quickly switch between loadouts. It even introduced an entirely new class as DLC, the Necromancer, in Patch 2.6. That was followed once again by class rebalancing and special endgame armor sets for players who gravitated toward the new class.

Even just last month–nearly 10 years after launch–Diablo 3 received a major update with an entirely new mode. The Echoing Nightmare mode lets you challenge your seasonal character against waves of fallen Nephalem warriors. To access the mode, you needed to get a Petrified Scream from a Greater Rift Guardian, showing how the new content has built on itself over time. And of course, challenging the new mode would grant you powerful, exclusive rewards, so even the most veteran of Diablo players could find something worthwhile.

The very fact that there are even veteran players to cater to with a challenging new mode, 10 years after release, is a testament to the staying power of Diablo 3. A game with a disastrous launch and some fundamental problems with its core design has grown into one of Blizzard’s most long-lasting and beloved games. The future looks bright for the series, with Diablo 4 on the horizon and even the once-maligned Diablo Immortal starting to raise curiosity among series fans. But if Diablo 3 is any indication, whatever those games are at launch may not resemble what they’ll be 10 years later. Blizzard has shown it will take the time to get it right and create an enduring classic, come hell or high water.

Read MoreGameSpot – Game News

What Happens In Elden Ring? The Game’s Story, Part. 5: Leyndell, Royal Capital

At the center of the Lands Between is Leyndell, the home of the Erdtree, and the most important place in all of Elden Ring. At the base of the massive tree, Marika built the seat of her power. Of all the places in the Lands Between, Leyndell probably remains in the best shape, with its walls still standing and knights waiting within. Once you have a few Great Runes, your journey inevitably takes you to Leyndell as you attempt to claim the Elden Ring and become Elden Lord. But there are other powers who still stand in your way–others who still wish to take the throne.

Your trip into Leyndell puts you closer to your goal than you’ve ever been, but there are also a few major revelations to be found here, as well. As we delve into the Erdtree capital, as always, there are spoilers within, although these are probably the biggest yet, with the greatest and weirdest lore implications for the overall story of the game. Here’s what’s happening as you explore Leyndell and try to lay claim on the title of Elden Lord.

Traversing Altus

The journey to Leyndell first takes you across the Altus countryside. Though the city and its outskirts are largely intact, there’s a lot to pay attention to in the surrounding area as you make your way toward it, and the Shattering has definitely not spared this place.

First, if you made your way up through the Ruin-Strewn Precipice, you were likely accosted by a dragon before you even really entered the Altus Plateau proper. Dragons are all over the place in the Lands Between, but they have a big connection to Leyndell in particular that we’ll get into more a little later. The history and lore of Elden Ring includes a war between the Golden Order and the dragons, but at least one, Fortissax, was impressed by Marika’s demigod son, Godwyn the Golden, and became friends with him. The dragon you face here, Lansseax, was sister to Fortissax and seems to also have been friendly to the humans and the Golden Order. In fact, dragons are a big part of some of Leyndell’s culture, and a lot of that has to do with Lansseax–so the dragon showing up to attack you as soon as you show up on Altus Plateau makes some sense, from that perspective.

Dragons have a long history with Leyndell, which is home to a dragon cult, and Lansseax is a big part of it.

Before you head to the capital, you can explore some of the land around it, which presents some interesting information. A bridge that heads north over a darkened forest has been destroyed, possibly during the Shattering, given you can find the convoys you’ve seen throughout the Lands Between crushed among the wreckage. The forest is populated by death-spewing, worm-faced creatures, and is the site of several sets of ruins. It appears that Leyndell has more or less abandoned this area, and with the bridge destroyed, nobody from the capital is visiting the area to the north.

The lands at the north end of the plateau are dotted with windmills, and if you make your way there, you’ll discover some… interesting people. The Windmill Pastures surrounding them flank the village of Dominula. All through this area, you’ll find strange women dancing and laughing contentedly, their faces stained with blood. They’re not hostile unless you attack them, for the most part, but if you investigate the area, you’ll find evidence of quite a few murders and a ghost that begs someone not to skin him.

It’s tough to say anything for sure about Dominula, but there’s enough information floating around to speculate. At the north end of the village, at its highest point, you’ll fight a Godskin Apostle boss, and given the flower festival feel of the village and the information you can read on the clothes and weapons of the women there, the whole place has a religious feel–but a religion at odds with the Golden Order. The women seem to be celebrating in Dominula, wearing festival garb that suggests that part of the rites of that festival include sacrificing people and skinning them. With the Godskin Apostle at hand, we can guess that these may well be humans who subscribe to an older religion, before the advent of Marika’s Golden Order. As to why they’re dancing endlessly, it’s tougher to say, although YouTubers KitTales and Flex have a video with some good theories.

For my part, I think Dominula represents another religious minority operating in the Lands Between, and shows that there are people who don’t subscribe to the Golden Order, even in Leyndell’s backyard. It’s pretty good evidence that, during the Shattering or even before it, there were dissenters, and Marika’s hold on the Lands Between was not as complete as we might have been led to believe. It also shows that some of the factions and religions of the land don’t rely on the various demigods to drive them.

While the area to the north is more ruinous, the path into Leyndell is in good shape, and well-protected by soldiers and even a giant gargoyle statue. Once you get past the soldiers blocking your entry, a familiar face even shows up to challenge you: Margit, the Fell Omen. The first boss you fought at Stormveil Castle here takes over a commoner and is a little more easily defeated, but that provides some important information about the character himself. The Margit you fought at Stormveil seems to have been a projection, just like this one. It’s a puppet, and someone else is pulling its strings, using it to try to stop Tarnished on their journey.

To finally make your way into Leyndell, you have to fight and kill a Tree Sentinel, one of the mounted knights loyal to the Golden Order and the Erdtree, to find a side entrance into the walls. Inside, you’ll find the city in pretty good shape, but with people who are sitting around, waiting for orders or for war to come to the city. A lot of them don’t seem to have a lot to do.

Heralds and loyalists of the Golden Order

The first people you see as you enter Leyndell are Oracle Envoys, horn-bearing people wearing big white hats. Descriptions on the items you can get from Oracle Envoys call them “monstrous” and suggests they appear to blow their horns to herald the coming of a new god, or a new age. As you enter Leyndell, then, you might be approaching one of the demigods closest to claiming the Elden Ring: Morgott, called both the Omen King and the Grace-Given Lord, son of Marika and Godfrey.

Oracle Envoys have strange lore all their own, and their presence in Leyndell could be an indication that Morgott is close to succeeding Marika.

Scattered throughout the city are the kinds of people loyal to the Erdtree you’ve already found throughout the Lands Between. You’ll also find interesting enemies in the Perfumers, who you might have seen before now popping up here and there in Altus Plateau. These formerly were apothecaries, dealing in chemistry and medicine, and at least one famous Perfumer, Tricia, tried to heal the downtrodden of the Lands Between, like Omen and the winged Misbegotten creatures who were forced to be servants and slaves. But the Perfumers weren’t all necessarily benevolent–Rollo, the first Omenkiller, had previously been a Perfumer. During the Shattering, the Perfumers were pressed into military service, trading healing potions for poisons.

Traveling through the city, you get a bit of a sense of its history and how it has developed since the Shattering. First, right in the center of town, is the massive corpse of a dragon. This, it seems, is Gransax, and its attack on the capital marked the only time in its history when its walls fell. The dragon was eventually defeated, of course, and the response of the Golden Order was to wage war on the rest of the dragons, led by Godwyn. As with the other opponents Marika and her children faced, the dragons were eventually defeated, although as mentioned before, some of them allied themselves with Godwyn and the royal family during the course of the conflict.

A relationship with dragons, in some form or another, had a pretty profound influence on Leyndell. There are knights there that wield powers usually reserved for dragons, and lore describes the city as home to a dragon cult–although, in the lore, it’s described as “ancient,” so it may well be that the cult existed in the capital before the war in which Godwyn befriended some. Lansseax, the dragon we talked about earlier, was said to have taken on a human form and served as a priestess for that dragon cult, so it might be that some of the people of the Altus Plateau worshiped the dragons before the Golden Order showed up.

The dragon situation is a bit hazy, if we’re being honest. Later in the game, you’ll travel to a floating, destroyed mausoleum called Crumbling Farum Azula, where you can find Dragonlord Placidusax–who was, apparently, Elden Lord in the time before the Erdtree. The dragons apparently had a god of their own, who “fled,” so it would follow that people of the Lands Between might have worshiped them the way they worship Marika and the Golden Order. If that’s the case, the dragon cult in the capital could easily have been there before Leyndell was the seat of Marika’s power, and her taking of it might have been what prompted the dragons to attack in the first place.

In any event, however, the dragons mostly lost, just like everyone else who went up against Marika’s war machine.

Hidden Omens

There are lots of hulking, hornless Omen in the sewers and catacombs beneath Leyndell.

The streets of Leyndell are pretty vast, but there’s more hidden beneath the surface. There’s a huge underground sewer system under the city, which you can travel down into and explore. While Leyndell is clean, white, and gold above ground, its secrets are kept in the darkness below.

Descend into the depths and you’ll eventually find a bunch of Omen enemies, with items that explain exactly why they’re there. Omens are seen as impure–at least under the current regime–and most Omen babies have the horns that grow all over their bodies removed soon after they’re born. Most of the time, this procedure kills the babies. As is often the case, however, royals don’t follow the same rules as everyone else. Highborn Omen babies of the capital don’t have their horns removed; they’re imprisoned beneath the city in the sewers and gaols within.

The items you find related to the Omens suggest that the powers that be had no problem employing them when they were useful. Some of the Omen carry weapons that would have allowed them to fight in the wars Marika waged around the Lands Between–although, as those weapon descriptions note, the Golden Order always had a contingency plan to make sure the powerful Omen never got out of line.

Marika and Godfrey’s own children, Morgott and Mohg, were among the Omen imprisoned beneath Leyndell. In fact, if you go deep enough, you’ll be able to battle against Mohg, the Omen, who blocks off the path to an even deeper portion of the sewers. This doesn’t seem to be the real Mohg, however, but another projection; he stands before a seal that blocks your path into another section of the sewers, and the route to the Three Fingers, the envoys of the Frenzied Flame. That’s a whole other discussion (which you can read here), but suffice to say, this is where Mohg and Morgott grew up, and where Mohg became the person he is when you finally run across him–more on him in a future part of this series.

The Subterranean Shunning-Grounds are filled with Omen, who Leyndell would hide–unless they could be useful in its war efforts.

As for Morgott, he also was apparently hidden in the sewers so that he wouldn’t be killed for his Omen status. But the experience of imprisonment drastically differed for the two brothers. While Mohg was driven to worship something other than the Greater Will and the Golden Order, Morgott would double down on his family, in spite of everything, and he’s a major influence within Leyndell.

The path to the throne

Making your way up to the Erdtree takes you through Marika’s palace. Here, your path up to the Erdtree is barred in interesting ways, both by the architecture, which requires you to climb out onto the tree itself to advance, and by the golden spirit of Godfrey, First Elden Lord. This isn’t actually Godfrey that you’re facing, but like the Margit projections or the Rennala spell, it’s something more of an imitation. That doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful, though, and one has to wonder if this is another of Morgott’s defenses to keep Tarnished from reaching the Erdtree above.

Beyond Godfrey is a section of the palace that’s one of the most interesting, although what it all means isn’t exactly clear. You’ll find the walkways here littered with the bodies of Finger Reader Crones. And waiting at the end of the path is a Black Knife Assassin.

This whole area is strange, perhaps giving a hint about the split between the Golden Order and the Two Fingers in the past, or perhaps showing Morgott’s moves throughout the Lands Between to shore up his own power. The Finger Reader Crones throughout the world give you information about where you’re going and what you might find there, and directly or indirectly, they lead you toward Great Runes. The chief of these is Enia in the Roundtable Hold, who is pretty direct in telling you what you need to do and aiding you on your journey. Though we’re speculating here, what feels like the likeliest explanation is that Morgott has been rounding up and killing these crones as part of his continuing campaign to frustrate Tarnished who are attempting to become Elden Lord; the less information those Tarnished have, the tougher their path to Leyndell will be.

Making your way to the Elden Throne forces you to face remnants of Godfrey’s Golden Lineage, including a projection of Godfrey himself.

To speculate further, though, it’s also possible that this could have been a move by the Golden Order against the Two Fingers, made earlier by Marika. Lore throughout the game hints in the direction that Marika may have grown fed-up with her role as an extension of the Greater Will, a god as named by the Two Fingers. The Black Knife Assassins are described as having ties to Marika, which suggests she might even have had a part in the assassination of her son, Godwyn. If Marika was cutting ties with the Two Fingers and trying to shake off the control of the Greater Will, employing the Black Knives to take out the Finger Reader Crones could seriously hamper the Two Fingers’ influence. After all, they can’t talk, and need the crones to interpret their movements.

The bodies of all the crones are definitely, pointedly telling us something, and whether it was during the time of Marika or under the order of Morgott, we can see that the current Golden Order has shifted out of alignment with the Two Fingers and the Greater Will. But if Morgott was responsible, the title given to him by Sir Gideon Ofnir might be a little misleading.

The Grace-Given Lord

Despite being an Omen, we find out that the true lord of Leyndell, as it stands post-Shattering, is Morgott. He may mostly hide himself from the public, but at the moment, he’s the leader of the capital’s military and the most senior of Marika’s royal lineage. The “Omen King” is possibly the most powerful political leader in the Lands Between, with the strongest army and the strongest walls protecting him.

When you meet Morgott, you realize he looks exactly like Margit, and the situation with the Fell Omen starts to make more sense. Morgott seemingly stayed loyal to his family, despite being shunned and imprisoned as an Omen. His loyalty, it appears, was rewarded, allowing him to fight for the Golden Order as the champion known as the Fell Omen, maybe under an assumed name to hide his identity (although “Margit” and “Morgott” don’t really sound all that different–maybe Margit is just the way soldiers and commoners pronounced the name, unaware they were in the presence of royalty). The Fell Omen also once led the Night’s Cavalry, the powerful mounted knights you find riding around at night throughout the Lands Between. So it seems that Morgott was allowed to fight Marika’s wars, even as an Omen, and he was a fierce contender.

Morgott’s lore tells of the fact that, despite being an Omen, he’s also the rightful Lord of Leyndell, and has remained loyal to the Golden Order, despite how he was treated.

Having run up against Margit on two occasions, we now get an idea of what Morgott’s been up to, and how powerful he is. The Margits we’ve seen appear to be some kind of magical projection that Morgott uses out in the field. He positioned a projection at Stormveil to stop Tarnished on their way to Godrick, which would likely have allowed him to kill a ton of would-be Elden Lords before they ever got anywhere near collecting a Great Rune. When that failed, he again used a projection in an attempt to stop you outside the gates of Leyndell. Morgott has been trying to stall your progress, among other things–he’s also responsible for a magical seal in the sewer beyond the Mohg, the Omen boss fight, which seals off the way to the Three Fingers, presumably to keep people out of there as a service to the Golden Order.

Gideon calls Morgott “the Grace-Given” when you ask about the Shardbearers, which suggests that he hasn’t just fallen into the role of lord of Leyndell–he’s also been endorsed by the Greater Will (or at least the Two Fingers). That’s a big deal for an Omen, and might suggest just how dire things are in the time of the Shattering. Morgott is the best of severely limited options, maybe, but he has been chosen. He also demonstrates his loyalty to the Golden Order when you meet him, showing off the seats the other demigods occupied as a council before the Erdtree. Morgott calls them all traitors, seemingly referring to what they’ve done through the Shattering; each claimed their own power and served their own agenda, rather than remaining loyal to Marika and the Golden Order and working together and maintaining the royal house.

But Morgott showing off his loyalty to his lineage and the Golden Order, plus the fact that he is “grace-given,” raises an important question: Why hasn’t Morgott been able to become Elden Lord?

You find the answer when you finally face Morgott. You see the Omen King’s true power when you face him; he wields a bunch of powerful Faith-based attacks that show off his dedication to the Greater Will and the Golden Order. Still, it wasn’t enough to make him Elden Lord, which is what he reveals when you finally defeat him. In his last moments, Morgott, now shrunken and human-looking, his Omen strength gone, reveals that the way into the Erdtree is sealed. Morgott was never able to get inside to claim the Elden Ring and become Elden Lord. In fact, no one can, he says. Investigating yourself, you find that he’s right: thorns cover the opening in the Erdtree that would allow you to enter it and claim the Elden Ring. There’s no way through, and all your work has been for nothing.

The barred way forward itself raises questions. Why would grace lead Tarnished to try to become Elden Lord, only for the Erdtree itself to reject them? And if the way into the Erdtree was not blocked by the Erdtree, then who sealed it?

With no more answers, you’re forced to return to the Roundtable Hold and consult the wisdom of the Two Fingers, beginning a path that will require some dire acts against the Golden Order and the Greater Will, and which will change the Lands Between forever.

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Fortnite Robocop Skin Has Arrived To Protect And Serve The Island

The Imagined Order versus Resistance war has required a call for backup, and the Fortnite Robocop skin has answered that call with its arrival in the item shop. The ’80s movie hero enters the battle royale with cosmetics themed around one of its most fearsome enemies, the ED-209. He uses the severed leg of the bipedal machine as an interchangeable back bling and pickaxe, and he can also ride on a mini version as an emote.

The full Fortnite Robocop skin bundle.

The full list of items in the Robocop bundle is as follows:

LEG-209 pickaxeLEG-209 back bling If purchased together, the item can be used interchangeably in a matchLil’ ED-209 emote

Robocop joins Sarah Conner, the Terminator, Ripley, and the Xenomorph as some of the ’80s-era action icons that have become Fortnite skins over the years. The Predator also has a skin in the game, however that one was a special battle pass skin during Chapter 2, Season 5 and won’t be sold in the item shop…although it should be.

If you plan on bringing Robocop into your next battle royale, make sure you check out the Resistance quests and Week 8 challenges as Chapter 3, Season 2 winds down.

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Evil Dead: The Game Tips For Survivors And Kandarian Demons

Evil Dead: The Game is finally here. Filled to the brim with demon slaying action, this PvP/PvE asymmetrical experience delivers all of the thrills the franchise is known for. Players will certainly need to work together if they hope to survive the night. Unless of course, they’ve chosen to take up the spirits of Evil Dead’s demonic entities. Then it’s all human possession and mean-spirited trees. Groovy!

Like most games of this ilk, the goal of the survivors is to best their overpowered rival. They’ll need to hunt down pages of the Necronomicon–the Book of the Dead–and use it to find a magical dagger needed to defeat the Dark Ones. This is easier said than done given how Evil Dead’s large maps are swarming with enemies, the most dangerous being those who are player-controlled. They’ll do everything in their power to stop the survivors at every turn.

No matter which side of the battle you’re on, Evil Dead: The Game has a ton of tools to help you achieve your goals. Knowing how and when to use them is key. Here are a few tips to keep in mind during your first several hours playing Evil Dead: The Game.

Survivors

Manage your fear

Evil Dead: The Game utilizes several horror-based mechanics/systems that need to be managed during play. This main one, when playing as a survivor, is the fear gauge. Located on the bottom left of the screen (right under your life bar) is a meter that slowly fills up over the course of a match. Certain stimuli and/or compromising situations–getting attacked by deadites, tripping a scare trap, being alone or in darkness–contributes to your rising fear.

The last thing you’d want to happen in a horror movie is to be targeted by the rampaging monster. The same thing applies here. If your character becomes too afraid, they’ll signal their whereabouts to the demon player by actively showing up on the map. This also makes you prone to possession; the demon can take over your body, forcing you to attack your teammates.

Stand in the light to reduce your fear levels.

The good news is that there are several ways to combat your fear. Stay with your team. Use matches to activate light sources scattered about the map. If possible, don’t take on several enemies at once. And if you have a character that has fear-based buffs, don’t forget to use them. While this all might seem like obvious, we’ve won several matches as demons because players forgot to manage their fear. It’s a secondary thing that doesn’t directly contribute to a loss of health. Most just forget about it while running to and from their objectives.

Be sneaky

When we say sneaky, we don’t mean crawling through tall grass ghillie-style. We mean don’t do things that’ll bring unwanted attention to yourself. Using a gun to take down enemies early on isn’t wise for instance. Every time you do, you risk the chance of alerting the demon player. It’s best to stick with melee weapons at the start of a match.

The demon will also know when you’ve gotten into a vehicle via a prompt informing them of your location and the direction you’re moving in. That doesn’t mean you should never use a car. Just be aware that it’s like sending up a signal flare.

Use the map

Evil Dead: The Game has a handy ping system. You can ping unwanted weapons, health-based items, and more while running about. That said, the ping system is best used in conjunction with the game’s map. Because the play area is huge, it’s best to mark a desired location before running off.

Evil Dead’s map is huge.

You won’t necessarily get lost while playing, as anyone who pulls up the map will be able to spot your icon. The problem comes when navigating through these areas with a split team. And since a lack of mic usage can often leave teams disadvantaged, it’s quite possible for them to see your icon and yet, have trouble actually finding you during an attack. Are you on this hill overlooking a mine shaft or are you in the tunnels below?

Stay together

Working as a team is key. To do that properly, you’ll need to stay with your teammates. Splitting up in hopes of finding the pages of the Necronomicon sooner than later will only lead to a rising fear gauge and possibly death.

You can only assist downed players if you’re close by.

That’s not to say that you can’t search different houses while rooting through an area. Just that you should be close enough to one another to help out if things go bad. Don’t be half way across the map expecting someone to find your remains during a deadite attack.

Dodge attacks

Make sure to dodge attacks. Too many players go into a fight, chainsaw swinging, expecting to win. While it does work most of the time against low level enemies, you’ll eventually take some damage during the scuffle. That damage adds up over time.

For instance, we noticed that a lot of players will attack and kill Deadite Berserkers head on, even after realizing that they explode upon death. They never think to hit the dodge button right after because the explosion doesn’t do a ton of damage. Those same players will have inadvertently used up all of their healing items right before one of the final segments of a match. This often results in a failed attempt/quick death. Again, it’s important to keep yourself healthy. Dodge!

Use Finishers

One of the best things you can do during a scuffle is perform a finisher. These moves, prompted when an enemy is knocked off-balance after receiving a series of melee attacks, allow you to either deal a ton of damage or outright kill a foe. That isn’t the only reason you’ll want to use these moves though. For one, enemies killed by a finisher are more likely to drop an item. Need more ammo or some extra health? Try a finisher.

The other reason it’s a good idea to use these moves is because they lock you into an animation that can’t be interrupted. Meaning that you don’t sustain any damage while the attack is being carried out. We’ve been able to survive powerful boss attacks with low health by focusing on weaker enemies, timing a finisher so that it activates right before the boss moves in. The opponent’s blow didn’t land because we were too busy removing a deadite’s head to care.

Kandarian Demons

Adjust your settings

If you’re playing Evil Dead: The Game on PC, it might be wise to temper your settings based on playing as the demons. While in third-person as a survivor, everything was fine on maxed out settings. That wasn’t the case when we transitioned to first person as a demon; we experienced frame issues/lag during some matches.

Evil Dead runs differently in first-person.

This wasn’t always the case, and cross-platform play and server issues might’ve been the culprits at the time. That said, if you are experiencing some of these problems when playing as a demon, we found that lowering the graphical settings helped things a bit.

Level quickly

In Evil Dead: The Game, there are three different Kandarian Demons to choose from. All of them work in a similar fashion at the start of a match–they are weak and need to upgrade their abilities in order to be a real threat. This is something that is done over time. You can speed up this process by scaring and attacking survivors.

Try your best to hunt down the survivors at the start of the match. As soon as you spot them, head in that direction. You won’t be able to summon deadites yet. You will, however, be able to set traps. Set as many as you can. The idea is to scare the survivors enough to adequately speed up the leveling process.

Evil Dead’s traps are as useful as they are comical.

Once you’ve leveled enough to spawn enemies, try to set them in your enemies’ path. Possess trees. Steal their car. Basically, keep poking at them. Don’t worry about killing the survivors early on. The goal is to keep their fear up as you continue to level. This will give you a huge edge during the final battles.

Split the group

Possession is a key mechanic in Evil Dead. Knowing what to do when you possess someone (or something) is important. Sometimes it’s best to avoid going for the kill. Instead, try splitting people up.

For instance, you can possess someone and walk them off the side of a cliff. That might be more devastating than trying to attack their teammate. Especially if you set summon-based traps at the bottom. Now the other survivors will need to get down there to help them. That’s when you possess their car and try to run some of them over. The more chaos the better; instead of focusing on the objectives, the survivors are forced to deal with these setbacks.

Time your summons

There will be times when you’ll be prompted to directly battle the other players. You won’t have to worry about gaining Infernal Energy–red orbs that are collected/needed to do just about anything as the boss demon–because it’ll be freely given to you. The goal during these times is to overwhelm them using a combination of random AI monsters, summons, and directly attacking as the boss demon. The problem here is that it’s easy to spread your forces too thin.

Even Evil Ash needs backup.

It can be tough to take down a full team of survivors. Even more so if you don’t time your summons. The Infernal Energy meter and cool down timers prevent you from spamming monsters. Because of this, it might be better to hold off on summoning, say, a sole Elite monster until you have the power to call on several weaker ones first. That way they won’t walk into a fight four against one. The same goes for joining the fray as the boss. Make sure you have some back up summons ready, power and cool-down wise, before directly taking on the survivors.

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Hot Drop: Apex Legends’ The Broken Ghost Quest Has Found A Potential Successor In IMC Armories

Hot Drop is GameSpot’s weekly Apex Legends column, in which Jordan Ramée takes a closer look at Respawn’s battle royale to provide additional insight into the game’s evolution, as well as dive deeper into its episodic storytelling and characters.

We are now two years out from the best thing to happen to Apex Legends: the introduction of Quest. The new story-focused mode kicked off in May 2020 with Season 5: Fortune’s Favor. Its first storyline was called The Broken Ghost, and it was fantastic. Even two years later, no questline has been quite as compelling, and Respawn hasn’t found a suitable successor for it in the seasons since.

That is, until Season 13: Saviors. This new season adds IMC Armories to Storm Point–these armories provide a way for squads to engage in PvE combat against Spectres in order to earn better loot. For now, they are strictly a way of finally adding PvE combat to a PvP battle royale without it feeling unnecessary or annoying, but I think they can be a lot more than that. The IMC Armories present the potential for reintroducing something like The Broken Ghost to Apex Legends.

For those not in the know, The Broken Ghost was a weekly optional side quest in Apex Legends. When you played a battle royale match, you could find Treasure Packs. Finding five packs netted you a ticket to access the next chapter of Quest, which released on a weekly basis. These chapters saw you play as your favorite legends as they explored an alternate universe in search of artifacts for Loba, engaging in PvE combat against that world’s shadowy prowlers and then getting text-based interactions between the legends, furthering Apex Legends’ storyline in leaps and bounds.

Season 5 was the moment that the community learned we had actually been fed mere morsels in Seasons 1-4. Respawn piled lore and narrative development into our starving gullets in Season 5–for the first time, the Apex Legends community was feasting.

It felt like being a part of an interactive TV show, with fans excitedly taking to Twitter and Reddit every week to discuss the latest developments of The Broken Ghost and theorize what would happen the following week. And that story went places–it ultimately saw the return of Titanfall 2’s Ash, the exciting first steps of a queer relationship between two women of color, the formation and dissolution of Wattson and Crypto’s adorable friendship, the early signs of Wraith’s big-sister mentality when it came to Wattson, and the tiniest of hints that Caustic may care about people beyond their use as subjects for his experiments.

And on top of that, The Broken Ghost influenced the week-to-week of Apex Legends’ battle royale side as well. Season 5 saw the introduction of reactive character quips, coloring the way that certain legends interacted with one another. Loba and Revenant were antagonistic towards one another, for instance, while Caustic was fatherly to Wattson. And how these interactions played out evolved as The Broken Ghost progressed: When Wattson lost faith in Crypto and Caustic, for example, her voice lines with the two legends transformed from friendly and jovial to distrusting and curt. It was an incredible season.

Nearly every storyline in Seasons 6-12 can be traced back to The Broken Ghost. It’s widely regarded by the fanbase as the most influential arc in Apex Legends’ narrative. It was a lot. As it happens, it was too much.

Apex Legends’ writers tried to do more PvE-focused Quests, but couldn’t. “We’ve got many developers here that would have loved to continue doing something like [Season 5’s Quest],” then-Apex Legends game director Chad Grenier told me as we discussed the battle royale’s transformative second year back in February 2021. “The problem is, well, we did the Quest, and then we had a lockdown.”

“Believe me, we attempted this a few times in the last year with stuff that ended up on Twitter,” then-Apex Legends writer Tom Casiello wrote on Twitter in October 2021. “We could never get it right by launch. It’s a manpower issue, it’s a memory issue, it’s a time issue. We all wish it were different. But it’s the reality of the situation.”

The conclusion to The Broken Ghost is probably the coolest thing that Apex Legends has ever done.

Respawn has attempted to fill the void left behind by The Broken Ghost with Quests that solely played out as comics, radio plays (referred to in-game as Chronicles), and text-based conversations. Some have managed to deliver rewarding storylines, but none have captured the interactive element of The Broken Ghost.

The Broken Ghost worked because it told its story through PvE missions–like campaign levels in Titanfall 2–that were totally separate from the PvP battle royale, where scripted conversations would be understandably difficult to enjoy. And though Respawn has since tried to implement PvE in its battle royale since then, it hasn’t worked as well because the PvP nature of the game can’t be escaped, creating frustrating moments where your squad is attacked by other players while engaging with the PvE side of things.

IMC Armories fixes that. These armories are quickly proving to be one of the best additions included in Season 13–they present a way for anyone to opt into PvE combat if they want and net some genuinely good rewards for the trouble. The armories close upon activation, so you don’t have to worry about another squad moving in on you and ruining your match. Frankly, the IMC Armories are a brilliant way of adding PvE to a primarily PvP-focused battle royale. Plus, they’re just a whole lot of fun–I love them.

And because those armories are enclosed and other squads can’t get into them until your squad decides to open them up, they present the potential of implementing narrative-driven PvE combat back into Apex Legends. Respawn is technically already toying with this concept–you’ll notice that when legends hack into the IMC Armories, they use a version of Crypto’s hacking software, implying the legend trusts his fellow competitors enough to give them some of his tech. It’s a small detail, but one that’s easier to notice when you can take a moment to stop worrying about other players because you’re locked inside an impenetrable bunker.

The romantic connection between Bangalore and Loba was first kindled in The Broken Ghost, only to be further complicated by the arrival of Valkyrie in The Legacy Antigen.

I think this is how Respawn can get back to the PvE missions of The Broken Ghost. Instead of trying to make PvE and PvP entirely separate, it can find ways of putting snippets of PvE into the existing PvP experience and then enclose them so that squads can participate in short, story-driven missions.

Imagine that Wraith needs to access an IMC database to dig up some dirt on Newcastle, who she’s already suspicious of. Respawn can task players with needing to reach an IMC Armory and hack into the database. Like usual, this activates the Spectres, which players have to defeat, netting them some valuable loot for their efforts. But that’s a 60-second process–a whole minute of time to add some uninterrupted storytelling. So while all that’s going on, Wraith could comment on the details she’s learning from the hack you’re performing–either in person if she’s a member of the squad or over the radio if she isn’t–with a final note that she’ll discuss her findings after the match.

That follow-up conversation can then be a more detailed cutscene/comic/radio play/etc. that unlocks after the match. And maybe the lead Wraith uncovers convinces her that she needs more information but from a different source, compelling the player to land at one of the other IMC Armories on Storm Point and repeat the process. I think fighting in IMC Armories over and over again would get dull eventually, but it’s a great starting point for introducing the concept of narrative-driven PvE combat into a PvP setting, and Respawn could certainly expand on this idea in subsequent seasons.

For example, a future point-of-interest could be a massive IMC Armory that hides still-working Titans that are controlled by a rogue artificial intelligence, encouraging a squad to work together to take down one of the towering behemoths. Plus, it would allow Respawn to finally add Titans to Apex Legends without disrupting the PvP component. Or Respawn could add additional armories that hide the remains of old IMC experiments that implement interesting gameplay considerations on top of dealing with Spectres, similar to the town takeover points-of-interest that add mechanics like jump pads and rising pools of poison.

In an ideal world, we’d somehow get more Quests like The Broken Ghost, but as we get further from Season 5, that feels increasingly like a dream we’ll never quite get to experience again. The IMC Armories are a feasible solution to this problem, presenting a way to bring The Broken Ghost’s bite-sized PvE experience to Apex Legends’ already superb PvP gameplay.

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Call Of Duty: Warzone 2 – Here Are All The Details And Rumors So Far

Riding off the success of Call of Duty: Warzone, Activision has already revealed a sequel is in development for the battle royale. While details remain scarce, here are all the facts and rumors surrounding the upcoming Warzone 2 title.

Warzone 2 developer, release date, and platform details

Activision has revealed a Warzone sequel is in development alongside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, with both titles being “designed together from the ground up” by Infinity Ward, but a release date has not been provided.

Modern Warfare 2 is projected to release sometime in fall of 2022, but it’s very likely that Warzone 2 won’t release until the following year. According to Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, who made a report back in January, Warzone 2 is apparently on track for a 2023 release. A later release also falls in line with Warzone’s initial launch, which arrived several months after 2019’s Modern Warfare.

Warzone currently supports both old-gen and new-gen consoles, but it’s uncertain if Warzone 2 will continue to support old-gen hardware. Journalist and industry insider Tom Henderson believes that Warzone 2 is being designed as a “completely new game for the better hardware,” meaning current generation consoles and PC only.

Story details

Originally, Warzone’s Verdansk map followed Infinity Ward’s post-launch story of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, so it’s very likely we’ll see a continuation of Modern Warfare 2’s story unfold in Warzone 2.

Few details are known about Modern Warfare 2’s storyline, but additional rumors from Tom Henderson suggest that the campaign will follow US soldiers going to war against Colombian drug cartels. Rumors should always be taken with a grain of salt, but we at least know that the Modern Warfare series’ iconic Task Force 141 will be involved in some way.

Gameplay, innovation, and cosmetics

While specifics about the sequel haven’t been given, Activision has teased that the new free-to-play Warzone experience will feature “groundbreaking innovations to be revealed later this year.” The publisher vaguely says players can look forward to a “massive evolution” of the battle royale formula, and that the sequel will include an “all-new playspace” and a new sandbox mode.

This sequel is designed to be a clean slate for Warzone, but unfortunately, that also leaves players wondering whether or not their cosmetics will transfer over to the new game. When asked in a recent interview with the Washington Post, Warzone developers didn’t offer an answer or even confidence that current cosmetics will be available in the sequel.

The developer has previously admitted the current version of Warzone has become bloated with content from three separate titles, which caused some of the problems for Caldera’s buggy launch in Vanguard’s Season 1. It also says it is still working through how to deal with such massive inventory management, so it might be some time before an announcement is made on whether or not cosmetic items will transfer to Warzone 2.

Call of Duty: Warzone also seems to be headed to mobile devices. The mobile battle royale’s codename is “Project Aurora,” and according to Activision, the first gameplay test has already begun.

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Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards Is Coming To Nintendo Switch Online Later This Month

Nintendo announced that it will be adding Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards to the Nintendo Switch Online Service + Expansion Pack. It will arrive on May 20.

This game follows Kirby as he journeys to reassemble a sacred crystal that was shattered by his arch-nemesis, Dark Matter. Nintendo released a trailer for the game showing off Kirby’s various powers. The multiplayer minigames can also be played locally or online. The game joins several other Nintendo 64 titles that are included in the Expansion Pack, such as Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, and Super Mario 64.

In GameSpot’s Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards review, we said, “While some might be initially put off by the youthful nature of Kirby 64, the depth of the power combo system really brings a lot to what would otherwise be an average platformer. Nintendo 64 owners should definitely give this one a look.”

Kirby 64 is the first game in the series to feature 3D computer graphics. Coincidentally, the pink puff’s latest adventure, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, is the first game in the series with fully explorable 3D areas and is now available on Nintendo Switch. In GameSpot’s Kirby and the Forgotten Land review, we said, “Kirby and the Forgotten Land is one of those games that’s hard to play without constantly having a silly smile on your face.”

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Square Enix Wants To Establish New Game Studios, Despite Just Selling Three Of Them

Square Enix has released its earnings report for the last fiscal year, and nestled amidst the sea of sales figures and numbers are a few interesting pieces of information, including the fact that Square Enix wants to establish new game studios.

Normally a publisher wanting to build or acquire more game studios would make perfect sense. But this news comes shortly after Square Enix announced it was selling three major studios–Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal–to the Embracer Group to the tune of $300 million. Square Enix moving forward also wants to “cultivate robust IP” after it just sold off major IPs like Tomb Raider and Deus Ex along with its aforementioned studios.

Analysts have theorized the sale of some of its major Western studios and IP are part of an effort on the Japan-based Square Enix’s part to “refocus” on its Japanese studios. If that is the case, then Square Enix is likely looking at acquiring or spinning up new studios in Japan, rather than in other parts of the world.

One of the core reasons behind Square Enix’s divestiture of some of its overseas studios and IP is to use that money to “accelerate launch and monetization of new businesses by moving forward in focus fields” which include the blockchain, AI, and the cloud.

In other words, Square Enix is doubling down on NFTs and blockchain technology. Part of Square Enix’s “medium-term business strategy” is a newfound focus on “blockchain entertainment” which includes a desire to issue exclusive NFTs and create a “new NFT brand and IP.”

As such, it’s investing in a number of blockchain-focused companies, like the Web 3.0-focused Animoca Brands and the “decentralized metaverse” The Sandbox. It’s also investing in Ubitus, a Japan-based cloud gaming company. Square Enix makes clear that it is considering multiple other investments related to the blockchain and cloud services not mentioned in the report.

Square Enix’s newfound focus on NFTs and the blockchain comes just as the NFT and blockchain-based cryptocurrency market has taken a nosedive, with the Wall Street Journal recently reporting that the “NFT market is collapsing.” Sales of NFTs have fallen 92% since September 2021, and the number of “active wallets” (aka NFT owners or sellers) having fallen 88% since November, according to the WSJ.

That makes Square Enix’s current decision to commit so many resources to NFTs and the blockchain just about as poorly timed as humanly possible, but Square Enix isn’t the only gaming company still trying to get into the NFT space. Companies like Ubisoft have also expressed interest ( or have already implemented) some forms of blockchain technology into their games and experiences.

Regardless of the company’s NFT decisions, Square Enix did well in the last financial year, with net sales and profits reaching new full-year records. Square Enix specifically cites the latest expansion for its MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, Endwalker, as making a “major contribution” when it came to the company’s games business.

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Disney Dreamlight Valley Is More Than Animal Crossing In Mickey Mouse Ears

When Disney Dreamlight Valley was announced, I found its intersecting parts of Disney, the farm-life sim genre, and a free-to-play model to be exciting. With a fair in-game economy and gameplay that keep genre fans coming back, the Animal Crossing-like could have the potential to become a hit with players of all ages–but that microtransaction question loomed large. After spending an hour with the Gameloft development team and checking out a hands-off demo, I’m heartened to have seen a pay model without uncomfortable caveats, making me more confident Dreamlight Valley will be well populated by fans of the genre and brand alike.

On the surface, Dreamlight Valley appears to be your typical farm-life sim–even its name seems determined to recall imagery of Stardew Valley, one of the genre’s most beloved games. I arrived to my demo wanting to find out if this other valley could provide a similar mix of relaxing gameplay mechanics such as farming, mining, and socializing. It does all of those things, but to my surprise, it does a lot more as well–things that feel uniquely suited to what a Disney take on the genre could be.

Separate from the farming, Gameloft says a whole second chunk of this game is inspired by the adventure genre. The world of Dreamlight Valley is quite large–I wasn’t given a size but it looks much bigger than Animal Crossing’s town. There are also entire other “realms” to which you travel to aid beloved Disney and Pixar characters in quests. In an example I saw, the player went to visit WALL-E and helped the eco-conscious robot clean up garbage, plant trees, and beautify a world inspired by the movie’s trash heap of a planet.

The size of this realm appeared small, but I found it to be a clever extra touch, and the team has plans to continually add new Disney characters to the game over time. The early access period will kick off this summer, and even before the 1.0 launch roughly a year later, Gameloft says players can expect more realms to be added for free on a routine basis. A house full of doors leading to the WALL-E realm and other future realms was mansion-like in size, with each door decorated by tantalizing symbols hinting at the characters and series coming later.

For seasoned gamers, these quests will likely feel simple. Gameloft has designed them to offer fewer hints than you’d expect, seemingly seeking a hard-to-find middle ground for the players of all ages and skill levels who will be drawn into this sort of experience. What I like about these realms is they serve as recruitment missions. My demo skipped ahead to a time later where WALL-E was no longer in his own realm, but instead a neighbor.

Help someone in their realm, and they’ll move into Dreamlight Valley as your new neighbor.

Like in Animal Crossing, people move into town often, but unlike Nintendo’s juggernaut, Gameloft says its sandbox world and its many biomes will have enough space to house all characters who move in, at least for a good while. Rather than kick people out of town to land your dream neighbor, players will have the real estate available for all realm-recruited heroes and villains. The team anticipates this will eventually not be the case, but adds that world expansions are planned as ways to accommodate an ever-growing population of beloved characters.

The “metanarrative” of the game, as Gameloft put it, is townsfolk have fallen victim to something called The Forgetting, causing widespread amnesia among characters and giving you a mystery to solve in between bouts of recipe mastery, fishing, and harvesting. On a basic gameplay level, this Forgetting is displayed in the form of stormy clouds and prickly purple vines, which players can dig up like weeds in similar games. Your job is to beautify the world to its former glory, but because you invite new characters to town often and unlock new furniture, clothes, and more, you’ll make it your own, too.

Those customization options looked massive in number. A glance at the collection menu suggested that all furnishings total nearly 1,100 already in the game, alongside 150+ crafting blueprints, 160+ meals, and nearly 700 clothing items. Not only will more properties introduce new characters to the world, but their related cosmetics will come with them, including an in-game store run by Scrooge McDuck–the game’s Tom Nook analog–who offers a regularly rotating selection of styles inspired by heroes and villains.

You can also design your own clothing layer by layer just like in Animal Crossing. A late-game multi-level home I toured included themed rooms for Monsters Inc., Tangled, and more. Collectively, it feels like Gameloft has covered every base genre fans would hope for, while adding more story content than they’d expect.

While dialogue isn’t fully voiced, each character does chirp out some voice lines when you pass them by. They also each have their own schedules and AI behaviors, meaning a stroll through town may see Goofy fishing in a nearby pond, Ariel sunbathing by the beach, and Scar resting his traitorous paws in the Lion King-inspired biome. It’s funny to see that characters are made to scale, meaning it’s not mascots of Buzz Lightyear and Prince Eric you’ll see about town; it’s really them–and the humorous height difference that comes with them. Every character doles out rewards as you increase your friendship level with them too, adding additional time to a campaign Gameloft says will take players 40+ hours to complete even if you don’t maximize your relationships with everyone.

With daily things to do and new friends to make all the time, this is a live-service. Gameloft says co-op plans are in motion, though the game will launch as a solo experience. While the earliest iterations of Dreamlight Valley are only to feature Disney and Pixar characters, the team says the door is not closed to adding other Disney properties like Marvel and Star Wars. Time will tell if all promises will be kept and all potential is met, but in theory, it seems designed to get the post-launch support Animal Crossing fans were starved of.

Hands-off previews come with baked-in caveats, including the simple fact that I haven’t played it myself yet, but I saw the game from several angles and I’m excited to see more. The art direction is lovely, as you might agree based on the screenshots, and it seems designed to reward both long and short sessions like the best of the genre does.

Customization options will pull from a great number of Disney series from day one.

The one major question I had–how would the in-game economy look?–came with a heartening answer. In Disney Dreamlight Valley, there are no timers or things of that nature. You can’t spend money to speed up the growth of your crops or re-energize your character. These mechanics are often seen in mobile games, a space to which Gameloft is no stranger, but the team assured me they won’t be present here.

In their place will be optional customization options, like clothes and furniture. New realms will be free for all players, and while some cosmetics will be paid for with real money, others use a currency you can only earn through playing the game, partitioning the free and paid items clearly. The team also has plans for a battle pass-like chain of seasonal rewards, and paid expansions are also in the works, though the team isn’t ready to talk about what those include yet–the planet Hoth, perhaps?

This begs the question of what sort of ratio between free and paid items there will be, not to mention what those prices will look like, but at least for now, the catch I was waiting for regarding Disney Dreamlike Valley doesn’t appear to be present. So long as this real-money system is priced reasonably and doesn’t lock away all the best rewards behind the cash register, the rest of Dreamlike Valley has all the markings of a future genre favorite, and more than likely many Disney fans’ gateway into gaming.

Disney Dreamlight Valley launches into Early Access on Steam and consoles this summer, where a Founder’s Pack will be available for purchase or included with Xbox Game Pass.

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Rockstar Celebrates Max Payne 3’s 10th Anniversary With New Soundtrack

Max Payne 3 is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, and to mark the milestone, Rockstar Games is releasing a new version of the game’s celebrated soundtrack from the band Health.

The new album is called Max Payne 3 – The Official Soundtrack (Anniversary Edition). It will be released later this year on vinyl and via streaming platforms, and as an added bonus, it also includes previously unreleased songs.

Max Payne 3 – The Official Soundtrack (Anniversary Edition) is coming soon

“When we began work on the Max Payne 3 score we could not have predicted the momentous effect it would have on the trajectory of our band and the music we make,” said Health. “Now, 10 years on, we are still as proud as ever to be part of the story.”

Max Payne 3 was released on May 15, 2012. It is the first entry in the series to be developed by Rockstar Games following Remedy’s work on Max Payne and Max Payne 2. Max Payne 3 is set years after Max Payne 2 and moves the action to Sao Paulo, Brazil. In addition to a single-player campaign known for its “bullet time” mechanics, the well-received game had a multiplayer mode as well.

Despite Max Payne 3 selling millions of copies, Rockstar never made Max Payne 4 and the company has not announced any plans to continue the series.

As for what Rockstar is working on, the company continues to support and grow GTA Online and Red Dead Online, while the studio is also working on Grand Theft Auto 6.

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