If you’re a comic fan, some new videogame tie-ins are going to release next month – all on the same day, in fact.
On December 19 (well before that Bloodborne comic we’re quite looking forward to drops), three new trade collections of videogame comics will launch, courtesy of Dark Horse. Tekken: Blood Feud and Wolfenstein Volume 1 will both be trade paperbacks, while The Evil Within: Interlude will be hardback.
Wolfenstein volume 1 is a prequel to The New Colossus, written by Dan Watters and with rt by Piotr Kowalski and Ronilson Freire. Here’s the synopsis:
It’s 1960, the Nazis won the war, and a small band of outsiders fight to survive in occupied America. But the relative peace of their sanctuary is shattered by the arrival of Nazis on the hunt for some top-secret quarry. But they’re not the only new faces. A strange old lady has a tale to tell of the legendary Nazi hunter – B.J “Terror Billy” Blazkowicz
The Evil Within: Interlude is a shorter volume than the others, standing at 64 pages, and it fits in between The Evil Within 1 and 2 plot-wise. It’s written by Ryan O’Sullivan, with art by Szymon Kudranski and Damien Worm. Again, a synopsis:
Still reeling from the horrific events that took place at Beacon Mental Hospital and the apparent death of his daughter, Detective Sebastian Castellanos is a man on the edge. Now a brand new case threatens to further test his sanity, as Sebastian finds himself thrown back into a world of nightmares and bloody violence!
Tekken: Blood Feud was written by Cavan Scott, with art by Andie Tong. This one doesn’t say outright when it’s set, but then the Tekken mythology is a bit harder to follow, anyway. Here’s what it’s about:
With a history colored by betrayal and bloody violence, the Mishima Clan are not your average family. Now something emerges that threatens to tear not only this broken dynasty – but the entire known universe – asunder! It’s going to take the world’s best fighters to combat this ancient evil – the King of the Iron Fist Tournament awaits!
Destiny 2 has been going through a bit of a debacle with its XP system, and Bungie has now updated us on what’s happening.
We recently learned that Destiny 2 has a hidden XP cooldown that kicks in after you hit level 20, meaning that you’re not being rewarded for your actions in the same way you perceive you’re being rewarded. This has been seen by many as a transparent attempt to limit the number of Bright Engrams you earn, in the hope of making players buy more with real-world money. As it turns out, we may have been earning 50-95% less XP for activities than we realised.
“Last weekend, we disabled a scaling mechanism that adjusted XP gains up and down without reflecting those adjustments in the UI”, the post reads. “Our intention was to keep slower-paced activities as rewarding as high intensity grinding without confusing variations in displayed XP values, but the silent nature of the mechanic betrayed the expectation of transparency that you have for Destiny 2.”
This system has been disabled, but now the XP needs rebalancing – right now it takes 160k XP to level up, which means that leveling happens extremely slowly on some activities, making them feel pointless. “We have begun the process of collecting data and recalibrating XP earn rates to improve them as quickly as possible”, the post reads.
“Expect to see a lot of conversation from our team on this front, as XP rewards are updated and brought back in-line with player expectations”, this section of the post concludes.
Hopefully we’ll learn something more definitive about this soon, especially with the game’s first piece of DLC right around the corner.
“Going forward, Destiny 2’s post-launch game systems, features, and updates are being designed specifically to focus on and support players who want Destiny to be their hobby – the game they return to, and a game where friendships are made.
“We want Destiny to be a game that fits into your life, providing you with reasons to log in and play with your friends, clans, and families. We want Destiny to be a world you want to be a part of.”
Although full patch notes including sandbox and weapon balance changes are incoming, here’s the initial outline of what’s coming to Destiny 2 with Curse of Osiris, with the December 12 update, and in 2018. Video from Arekkz or text below, your choice.
Armour Ornaments – December 5
In Destiny 2 Season 1, Ornaments were random Bright Engram drops. As of December 5, when Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris releases, you’ll be able to earn armour Ornaments by completing specific challenges.
Bungie said the new Ornaments will change the way specific armour sets look, without wiping applied shaders and mods. Like the existing Exotic weapon ornaments, armour ornaments are permanently unlocked account-wide once achieved, so you never need to worry about accidentally deleting them or using them up.
Armour Ornaments are unlocked through vendors, so that’s where you should check the requirements for each one and activate any you have already met the requirements for. Once unlocked, you can apply the Ornament by inspecting the appropriate armour set in your inventory.
These are the armour sets getting Ornaments for Destiny 2 Season 2:
Vanguard Faction Armor
Crucible Faction Armor
Trials of the Nine Armor
Iron Banner Armor
Dead Orbit Armor
Future War Cult Armor
New Monarchy Armor
Eater of Worlds Raid Lair Armor
Economy changes – December 5
When Curse of Osiris drops on December 5, you’ll see a number of changes to Destiny 2’s economy:
Rare mods will dismantle into Gunsmith Materials with a chance for Legendary Mod Components
Banshee will sell a rotating selection of specific Legendary mods, for Legendary Shards and Mod Components
Rahool will sell Legendary engrams for Legendary Shards
Daily Challenges will reward more tokens
Cayde’s treasure chests will offer more tokens, but still be random
Strikes will award more tokens
Common Destination token drop rates will increase 100%
Common Destination token value will increase by 50%
Rare Destination tokens will increase in value by 250%
Reputation requirements per engram will increase by 37% at Destination vendors and 50% at theGunsmith
You won’t ened to clear a full raid in order to redeem Leviathan Raid tokens.
Masterworks – December 12
Bungie described this as a “new weapon tier” for Destiny 2, called Masterwork, which is an upgrade to Legendary gear. They roll out in a patch on December 12.
Masterwork weapons track the number of kills made with them, with a choice between total or Crucible only tallies. They also generate Orbs of Light you the player and their allies on multi-kills, and have random, re-rollable weapon stat bonuses selected form a “small pool”.
Bungie said Masterwork weapons can drop randomly from any current source of Legendary weapons, and if dismantled, yield a resource which can be used to convert any existing Legendary weapon to a Masterwork. Raid and Trials of the Nine Weapons will have a very high chance to be Masterworks.
Bungie said it has future plans to “extend Masterworks to other gear and expose your kill counts in more places”, such as in the Crucible.
Xur inventory – December 12
When the December 12 patch rolls out to Destiny 2 our friend Xur will get a bit of an update. Xur will begin selling two new items:
Fated Engrams
Purchased for Legendary Shards and limited to one per week, fated Engrams will decrypt as an Exotic you don’t already own.
Three of Coins
A new, simplified version of a D1 favourite, Three of Coins will boost Exotic drop rates form any source for four hours. They do not expire after a boss battle and do not stack in any way. They are purchased for Legendary Shards and there is no limit on how many you can buy.
Buying direct from vendors – December 12
As of the December 12 Destiny 2 update, players will be able to purchase gear directly from vendors using Legendary shards and reputation tokens. Vendors will always carry one piece of each kind of armour, and will rotate through a selection of weapons. Bungie said this applies to “most” vendors in Destiny 2, not all, so RNG isn’t going away forever.
Players can unlock slots at vendors by ranking up and earning engrams. The word “slots” here probably refers to how many items a particular vendor is offering – but it’s not totally clear so don’t take that as gospel.
Whatever the slots thing means, players will be credited for all the engrams they’ve earned over the past few months of playing Destiny 2.
Economy changes – December 12
Further economy changes will roll out in the December 12 patch:
Zavala will sell Gift consumables that give bonus rewards to all participants in a Strike. They cost Legendary Shards. Possible rewards range from tokens to Exotics.
Shaxx will sell Gift consumables that give bonus rewards to all participants in a Crucible match. They cost Legendary Shards. Possible rewards range from tokens to Exotics.
The chest and resource farming lockout will trigger less frequently and require greater provocation.
Farming lockout will not reduce Glimmer earnings, and reduce token earnings to 30%, as opposed to 0%.
Vendors won’t be badged when you don’t have enough tokens to earn an engram.
Future changes
Here’s what Bungie said it’s working on apart from the above:
Crucible tuning for Supremacy, spawn rules – December
Heroic Strikes Playlist – December
Better incentives for Prestige activities – targeting January
Ranked PvP – “top of our priority list for next year”
Private Crucible matches – targeting early 2018
Quitter Penalty for Crucible – 2018
Further updates to mod system – 2018
Exotic drop duplication protection – 2018
Equipping multiple emotes – 2018
A visual indicator for farming lockouts – no date
Better incentives for Strikes, Adventures, Lost Sectors – no date
The Elder Scrolls Online has hit a milestone of 10 million players, and is celebrating in a few different ways.
The ’10 Million Stories’ in-game dungeon event, which begins on November 30 at 10:00AM EST and goes until the same time on December 6, will give players a Mysterious Rewards Box whenever they complete a random dungeon via the Dungeon Finder.
These boxes can contain numerous rewards – dye stamps, crown repair kits, treasure maps, transmute crystals – or, if you’re really lucky, you might get a costume, pet, or mount. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, you might hit a ‘jackpot’ and find a box with twenty mounts or twenty homes inside.
For every day that you complete one of these dungeon events, you’ll also enter a sweepstakes to win some amazing prizes, including a trip for two to PAX East 2018, every in-game collectible available, and the opportunity to get made into an NPC who will live within the world of Elder Scrolls Online.
During this time period, the game will also be completely free to play on PC, Mac, and PS4 (although not on Xbox One, sadly, although they just got one a month ago). This means that even if you’ve never played Elder Scrolls Online before, you can dive in over that week and complete these dungeon challenges to unlock rare items, which you’ll then get to hold onto if you decide to pay for and keep the game.
It’s good to see that Elder Scrolls Online is surviving with a healthy player count – if you’re after a new MMO experience, it might be worth checking out during this upcoming week.
Destiny 2 is in for a laundry list of changes, and Bungie has provided at least loose timeframes for almost all of them.
Destiny 2 has come under fire from veteran community members in the months since release, and the recent Destiny 2 XP throttling controversy only highlighted frustration with Bungie’s failure to acknowledge these complaints – let alone action them.
“Our team has been reading feedback and working on updates to improve the game. We’ve also been reading some tough criticism about our lack of communication, and we agree we need to be more open,” game directors Luke Smith and Christopher Barrett wrote in a post on Bungie.net.
“We know it’s frustrating when there isn’t enough of a dialog with the development team. You have our commitment that we’re going to do a better job going forward.”
To that end, Bungie outlined its immediate, short-term and longterm plans for Destiny 2, which seem centred on the hardcore D1 veteran community. We’ll post those in a separate article.
“Going forward, we plan to continue this dialog as openly and frequently as possible. This will be an ongoing process, but one that we are committed to,” Bungie community manage David “Deej” Dague added at the end of the post.
“This week we’ll be publishing a new episode of the Bungie Podcast where we will sound off on the current state of Destiny 2, how we think about our communication challenges, and what it takes to update the game in the wild. You’ll be able to listen on both Apple and Android devices.
“Thank you for playing, for being passionate about the Destiny 2 experience, and for working with us as we look to continuously improve our game and studio communication.”
The Switch exclusive Shin Megami Tensei 5 will definitely be getting an English-language release, which is a big relief for fans of the series who did not want to learn Japanese.
The games in the Shin Megami Tensei series typically make their way out of Japan these days, as they have enough of a following in the west to justify localisation, but it’s still reassuring to have confirmation well ahead of release, in the form of a trailer posted on Nintendo’s official YouTube channel.
This is not new footage, but previously we’ve only seen it with Japanese text over the top. While the Switch is region-free, these games are very language-heavy, and without being able to read the text you’d have a very hard time playing.
The last Shin Megami Tensei game, SMT 4: Apocalypse for the 3DS, was released in Japan in February 2016, the US in September 2016, and then Europe and Australia in December 2016. This means that we might still have to wait a while beyond the game’s Japanese release, but hopefully not an excessively long time – this is the kind of complex RPG experience we’d love to see on the Switch.
There’s no fixed release date for Shin Megami Tensei 5 yet.
A dataminer has uncovered evidence that suggests a widening range of character customisation options might be coming to Star Wars Battlefront 2.
Right now, Battlefront 2 does not include much in the way of visual customisation. Your character can’t be tweaked or changed, and there aren’t different skin packs to sample.
It looks like those options exist within the game, though, even if they’re currently only accessible by datamining. The video (below) from Uninspired Zebra shows a few different visual options for Galactic Republic and Rebel Alliance characters. The Galactic Republic troopers get different patterns on their helmets and armour, whereas the Rebel Alliance options change the player’s face, or, in a few cases, their race – there are two alien characters included among all the humans.
They have since found and posted more skins to Imgur, too, including a few different alien races you can play as.
But there’s a wrench in the works here – just yesterday we posted about EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen, who said that they could not include a wide variety of customisation options in Battlefront 2 because it might betray Star Wars canon. He said this specifically in the context of defending Battlefront 2’s loot boxes, of course, which have caused a controversy big enough to cause EA’s stock prices to plummet.
Whether or not these customisation options become available to all players at any point, or whether they’ll be made freely available or paywalled in some way, is anyone’s guess. Star Wars Battlefront 2 has become a difficult game to predict patterns within, after all.
