that's Hearthstone's next expansion, Knights of the Frozen Throne, has a fast-approaching release date of August 10. But the regular massive updates to Blizzard's collectible card game are just a part of all the changes that Hearthstone is going through both as it finds its own place in the Warcraft universe and as it defines what kind of experience it wants to provide.
In the lead-up to KofFT's release I had separate interviews with Matt Place, senior game designer on Hearthstone, and Jason Chayes, Hearthstone's executive producer, about a wide-range of topics around the game. Rather than post up the full transcript of each, I broke their answers down by the topics we discussed. And for a full rundown of all the new cards revealed so far, check out this Knights of the Frozen Throne card feature here.
Hearthstone's Story and Lore
Hearthstone is a game, ostensibly set within the Warcraft universe, but it's also something that offers up its own spin on the stories of Azeroth. While the original cards and expansions from the game hewed more closely to the World of Warcraft source material, subsequent content has expanded Hearthstone's own lore in new directions. Goblins vs. Gnomes saw Hearthstone introduce unique characters that didn't previously exist in the Warcraft universe, but Mean Streets of Gadgetzan is where Hearthstone really started to create its own unique narrative.
"We had all these discussions internally about who is the Jade Lotus," Chayes says, "and who is Don Han'Cho and what does he do and how does he interact with Aya Blackpaw and what's the back and forth between the two of them? We had a little first pass at that with some of the quests that you had when we first launched it, but you couldn't go that far into the narrative storytelling. But now, with Knights of the Frozen Throne we have eight missions that help explain who is the Lich King, who are some of the bosses along the way, and how they treat the Lich King."
Hearthstone now even has its own Knights of the Frozen Throne comic book, which Chayes explains as, "All the Warcraft 'inception' layers." But of course, working at Blizzard the separate game teams collaborate on projects. "We have a good partnership. We definitely talk with the other folks in Blizzard working on the Warcraft universe. We want our own take on what feels right for Hearthstone, so we might treat the Lich King a little differently than what you'll see if you were playing the WoW raid back in the day. The way we frame that up is Hearthstone is very much a game about 'What if?' This isn't necessarily canonical. This isn't saying that the definitive story of how Karazhan came into being was because there was this crazy '70s disco party that Medivh hosted. That's a 'What-if?' scenario."
The storytelling will also feel familiar because, according to Place, "Dave Kosak, who's done a lot of writing for World of Warcraft, came over and he's now the mission lead, and the writing for the Lich King in the missions is amazing."
Chayes says that the best way to think of Hearthstone's story is as a type of "tall tale set in the Warcraft universe."
"We specifically are not trying to link them to be the exact same incarnation," Chayes says, "If you go check out Icecrown Citadel in Hearthstone, it's going to feel a little different. You'll have little things that you remember for sure, and even the boss fights will share some of those mechanics, but the idea is this is a fun, light-hearted, whimsical, charming game."
Earning Legendaries and Random Quest Rewards
For this expansion, completing the single-player missions will net players a random Legendary Hero card, but what drove the decision to make this a random rather than a fixed draw? Matt Place explains, "We talked about that, it's how we tend to distribute the cards in the game through boosters and whatnot. People trying out what they get is part of the fun. There's also logistical challenges like letting you pick from a set of nine; we'll look at feedback and see what people say. But we wanted to just give people a, 'Hey, you're going to get one of these, try them out, see what you think. If you have one you love well, hey, like any Legendary, you can craft it.' That's part of the reason why we went that path."
"How does it compete when it's only got one sets worth of cards? That's a big question that we would have to answer."
And while the team has talked about it in other instances, Place also discussed the increased chance of earning Legendaries through card packs. "In the theme of giving people great value, in the first 10 packs for Knights of the Frozen Throne, you are guaranteed to get a legendary now. We're upping the drop rate for those source packs, so that people who are using their free-to-play gold or whatnot, they are guaranteed, if they can open 10 packs, to get a legendary. So we're doing it a couple of ways.
"On top of that, we're also doing no duplicates. Until you have a full set of Legendaries you will not overlap on Legendaries you get. We're doing a bunch of things to give people a chance to explore more of the set and get some of the higher rarity cards, which is the focus of the set here with Death Knight. We want to give people a chance to participate and play with those cards without spending any money."
Death Knight Heroes
The biggest new addition with this expansion are the Legendary Hero cards. But the addition of those Hero cards means that there isn't a new, permanent Hero class. According to Place, the team did consider creating a standalone hero, but that type of addition presents its own formidable set of challenges. "How does it compete when it's only got one sets worth of cards?" Place asked. "That's a big question that we would have to answer. There's also, 'Do we support it in the future?' Because, if we don't, that doesn't feel right. So, it's a permanent commitment potentially."
That took the dev team down its current path: creating Death Knight-themed Hero cards for every class. "With that, we get to take our Heroes of Warcraft and blow them out in cool new ways that people haven't seen before, and they follow that same story that the Lich King follows where you're going down the dark path because you desire power, like you see in the cinematic."
And, although it seems obvious how the mechanic will work with alternate heroes, Place clarified that the Hero cards just replace your current Hero; the cards don't change depending on the hero you're playing as. "As Anduin, you could steal Rexxar from your opponent's deck and that would turn you into Deathstalker Rexxar. So mechanically you just become Deathstalker Rexxar."
RNG vs. Skill-based Play
Any card game is going to have some amount of RNG, but how does the dev team strike that balance in making random chance moments feel like you still have some control?
"It's something that our philosophy on evolves," Place explained. "Something we've applied to Knights of the Frozen Throne is where can we apply RNG so it doesn't feel like, 'Oh, my gosh. Are you kidding me? You've got the luckiest hand!' I think Deathstalker Rexxar is a great example of this. It's random in terms of what beasts you're presented with in his build-a-beast Hero power. Basically you get to combine two beasts together to make your own beast zombie creation.
"There's a lot of skill in that while also being random with what you're presented with. To me, that's the perfect marriage, where skill is a big piece of this, but it's super fun and it's a different experience each time. That's what random does for us; it gives us that, 'Okay, you haven't done this before. These three beasts are going to be presented,' so what do you do at that time is actually very skill testing. It's a great example of RNG adding to the skill.
"Then you have to pay for the beast so it's not an effect like Ram Wrangler, where something can happen along the lines of "Oh, wow you just got very lucky. You got King Crush!' With Rexxar's mechanic, whatever you're dealt, you then have to pay for. It's fair in that way too. So it's skill, RNG, and fairness all combined.
Accessibility for Newcomers
"We always felt like if we could make a collectible card game just a little bit more accessible and dial some more charm in it, we could turn people onto a genre that they have never really been connected to it in the past," say Chayas. "That remains a core part of our philosophy."
And Hearthstone is, for the most part, a beginner-friendly game. But the difficulty and complexity can ramp up quickly for someone that might not be as familiar with the mechanics of deck building. Providing an experience that works no matter when you start playing is something that the developers are constantly refining; deck-creating tools have gotten better, and the ceiling for not losing stars at set levels in ranked matches has helped open more deck variety in Standard play. But there are other behind-the-scenes forces at work as well.
According to Place, "We have the newbie pool, which we changed in pretty significant ways. That happened a while ago, I think it was six months ago. But it actually affected the win rate of new players in a dramatic way."
While Place doesn't get into the nuts and bolts of how that system works, he says, "Basically, we have some rules for what it means to be a new player, and when you're a new player you face people who are more appropriate for you."
And according to Chayes, the dev team works to ensure the game has all of the features and nuance of a deep deck-building experience, but without overwhelming newcomers. "The way we've approached that is that the starting experience," Chayes says, "the core experience going into the game is very simple and accessible and intuitive and then when you're ready for it, different features unlock or make themselves available down the road.
"A good example of that is Wild. Wild is not available to new players. There's no connection to Wild from right out of the gate and that was very conscious because there's a vast number of cards that are in Wild that are not part of the standard rotation. That's going to grow over time as more and more sets are produced. We don't want players to have to necessarily digest all that as their first experience."
Stats for Advanced Players
Like World of Warcraft, accessibility is a process of constant refinement for a game that's regularly expanding. But also like World of Warcraft, some players have had to take the nitty gritty of stat-tracking and mod-making into their own hands. Unlike a game like Overwatch, which gives players detailed stats for how much you play every hero character, there's not a lot of data available to you in Hearthstone for how you play or how successful you are with each Hero.
Chayes explains, "There's always a balance there of: how much information do we present the player with? Initially, our goal was to make sure we had a very clean user interface just because we know a lot of new players were coming in for the first time. So we've been a little hesitant to go too far with putting in a lot of those stats and metrics. But the reality is there's other ways to do that. You could do that on the web, for example, and actually have a lot of things there that you can click through that don't necessarily go to new players. But if you want it it's there.
"How we're thinking about it from the team perspective is: How can we build systems that unpack that extra information for the players who are ready for it and excited about it without changing the core of the Hearthstone beginning experience? Yes, I think there's a move for features like that, player profiles and stuff like that, down the road. We're not really yet at a point where we've talked about a timeframe, but it's definitely an active conversation. And there are a lot of community sites that are up there that provide that context as well, and we think that's awesome. It's the kind of thing where, down the road, we'll see if there's a way to get that in."
Events and Festivals
With the popularity, and increasing frequency of events like the Frost and Flame Festivals, Chayes, says they'll be a regular part of the Hearthstone experience, but that doesn't mean they're going to be on a fixed, predictable schedule. "We definitely want to do more of it," Chayes adds, "We had a little bit of a Winter Vale event that we did about a year and a half ago, and that was kind of the first time we did an event inside Hearthstone, where there was a custom card back you could get that week in the brawl and these presents that you could open up during the gameplay. The Frost Festival is a larger event we're doing that dovetails the Fire Festival into the Frost Festival. Now you have Ahune welcome you and he's messing with the Arena a little bit.
"We want to do more, so our hope is that between expansions and coinciding with expansions to do really cool stuff that mixes up the way you play Hearthstone a little bit and gives you some new things to see. It always feels like it's dynamic and changing and helps emphasize the themes of where we're going with the future of the game.
"We always want these events to also feel like delightful surprise..."
Chayes further explains, "There will probably be some events that are recurring. We haven't figured out which ones necessarily. We actually have these posters when you walk into the Team 5 area in Blizzard Headquarters that speak to what are some of the guiding principles that are shaping up how we came up with Hearthstone to begin with. One of them is this idea of delightful surprise. We talk a lot about delightful surprise on the team.
"The experience of opening a pack is a surprise. We always want these events to also feel like delightful surprise, so I don't think we'll get to a world where it's just the same, expected events year after year. We always want to have something new to see and something you weren't expecting. I think that's what's really the core of the game identity. But for sure you can expect to see more things like that and then maybe intermixed with some things that'll really tie into these events and traditions that players have come to love."
Esports
Chayes also shared some thoughts on esports, which he considers a "big part" of Hearthstone. "It's something that, initially when we first shipped, we were a little bit surprised by. We didn't necessarily design Hearthstone to be an esport from the very beginning. What we saw in the very early days of the beta was that players loved to stream their matches when they were playing against other players. We also saw a lot of very competitive players who looked to see how far they could take their particular deck. So in response to that, we fleshed out in more detail the esports features of the game, really put a big focus on, 'How can we build programs around that?'
"From the beginning we wanted Hearthstone to be a game with a lot of depth, so even though it wasn't necessarily designed as an esport from the beginning, we always knew that the competitive aspect was super important. We wanted to have the ability to be a very high-skill game and testing how people play it. As the game has evolved we've done things like introduce more features to support esports. We now have things like the Hearthstone Global Games, which is reaching its conclusion coming up with Gamescom.
"We have other programs in mind. We did our first Wild Open, where it's going to be using the older cards and a chance to revisit some old deck types that maybe you haven't seen in awhile. For us, that's still just the beginning. We have a lot of ideas where we can go from there."
In a new developer diary video, the team behind Hunt: Showdown throws down the story of how the game came to be since its 2014 debut. From Austin to Frankfurt, Crytek's forthcoming competitive horror shooter wasn't always what it is today.
In the beginning, Hunt: Showdown had an entirely different name, team, and premise. It started out under Crytek USA, in Austin, as Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age, a team shooter that played very similarly to Valve's Left 4 Dead. Hordes of zombies and supernatural beings came in waves, and you and your pals would take them down one by bloody one. This debuted at E3 2014 as a single level.
But, later that year, Crytek's US studio was shut down. It quite literally went from the floors at E3 in June, to moving all the way across the sea to Crytek's Frankfurt location in August. Of course, this meant Hunt could no longer be the same.
"That was a hard decision to make, and not one we did very lightly. You have to match the project with the team," lead developer Dennis Schwarz says. "And if the team bring a certain skill set, but a project requires a different skill set, you either have to adapt to that ... or you change the project. We opted for changing the project."
Today, Hunt: Showdown still maintains the grotesque, late 1800s horror vibe down in the bayous of Louisiana, but the motivation of the game and the way it plays are completely different. Now, it's about going after a target and instead of doing so with just your allies, you, and the few allies you have, are competing to get the kill, get the reward, and get out safely against another team. It's not just about taking down the baddies and flexing those gamer muscles; it's about stealth, thinking on your toes, and using the environment to your advantage.
For more on Hunt: Showdown and its origin, make sure to watch the developer diary above, or check out all of our previous coverage on the game while it was still Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. Hunt: Showdown is expected on PC and does not yet have an official release date.
By Anonymous on Aug 05, 2017 08:30 pm Has Epic Games built a solid foundation for their sandbox survival game or does it still have a long way to go? Find out in our GameSpot early access review!
GameSpot's early access reviews evaluate unfinished games that are nonetheless available for purchase by the public. While the games in question are not considered finished by their creators, you may still devote money, time, and bandwidth for the privilege of playing them before they are complete. The review below critiques a work in progress, and represents a snapshot of the game at the time of the review's publication.
Almost every moment of Fortnite is a chaotic mess--for better and for worse. It's an action-packed shooter that knows how to encourage cooperation between team members. And, as a result, you'll often build out hasty forts with friends to defend yourselves (and often some special MacGuffin tucked inside your base) from hordes of cartoonish beasts. That part is usually a thrill and highlights all the best pieces of what should be a solid formula: building bases with friends to defend against monsters. The reality of that is sullied far more often than it should be, however, by a staggering deluge of "content."
Fortnite isn't an easy game to describe. It staples together pieces of disparate genres into something new. It combines the construction elements and resource-gathering of Minecraft, the team-based shooting of Left 4 Dead and Gears of War, the quest design of a modern MMO, and the progression of any given free-to-play hit. It's surprising that such divergent elements work together at all, but Fortnite definitely knows what it's best at and tries to thrust you into ideal scenarios early.
Fortnite is quite content to keep its writing and tone lighthearted. Instead of any serious moves to address what's going on, you get a solid stream of jokes. Its zombies look about as threatening as a Furby (i.e., a bit creepy in the right light but otherwise harmless). If you're trying to bust down a wall, it'll pop and flex with each strike as if ripped from old Looney Tunes skits, and many character you find will be some over-the-top caricature of a classic disaster/horror-movie trope. Your main companion, for example, is a finicky bot that only partially knows how to run your shelter. From there, you organize expeditions to gather other wacky folks to join your band, all while seeking out whimsical tech, such as sky lasers, to help cleanse the world of ghouls.
The early missions teach you the basics of defense and shooting. After that, you're tossed in with three or four other players and told to hold up against wave after wave of foes. You'll be running lots of instances with other players you won't know--though you will need their help. Most missions are challenging, and tackling things on your own generally isn't advised.
Tearing through zombies with others is so easy to get right, but it's here that Fortnite sets itself apart. The shooting is sharp and tight, without feeling too "clean" or artificial. Constant communication with the squad can help you focus on problematic monsters worming their way through your defenses. You can have someone set a trap in a weakened area or have a friend buttress a wall as you gleefully charge out and bounce grenades off of zombified crania. Unfortunately for us all, after a few minutes that mode ends and you enter what amounts to advanced inventory management.
These missions with others are a means to several ends. They're how you gain experience and progress your character. They're how you gather the materials you'll need to make new weapons and build out your base. They're also where you rescue and then retrieve survivors. Together, all of these elements become the other main thrust of the game. You use each of these to build up your base's power, which is essentially your level. As you gather recruits, you'll make squads and strike teams, each adept at handling different tasks. Then you'll send them on missions to get more resources to feed into other parts of the system. In turn, every element feeds back into every other. Leveling can help you unlock slots for more squads so that you can launch more missions to get more gear and experience so you can unlock more slots, and so on.
On first pass, this is awesome. It's a prime example of a game working itself around a few core ideas that conspire to give you a lot to do. In combat, this usually works out pretty well--there's always something to manage or coordinate--but once you leave, it's obvious how deeply the game is intertwined with itself. You have to dig into the less engaging parts like strike team management in order to keep up with quests and combat challenges. That's nice for a breather, but it also contrasts with all the other systems, highlighting their weaknesses.
Fortnite is designed to be free-to-play, but for now, at least, it isn't. That shouldn't be as big of a deal as it is, but it's impossible to get around. Much of the game is built to burn time. You have energy meters in the form of research that your pack of survivors conducts. These meters place limits on progression in that they're a resource you must wait to accumulate. At the same time, they're engineered to keep you coming back, since you can only store so many points before they need collecting. If you have substantive experience with mobile free-to-play games, you can see where this is going.
Fortnite loves giving you extra things to do and stats to pore over. There are stats for each of your different heroes, for the defenders, for the research team. There's your personal inventory and progress that's tied to your account. And then there are also levels for each of your characters--and you can get dozens of these folks. Each of them can be trained, outfitted, and upgraded and then placed into teams that you can align based on personality types for maximum statistical benefit.
It's awesome to have that sense of progression tied not to you, but to your group as a whole. It makes this apocalypse feel survivable and gives you a constant sense of growth. The problem is that most of these activities aren't interesting in and of themselves. Instead of fleshing out all these ideas, the game only gives you the option to crunch for better numbers. All of the base-building and combat elements are linked, too, so if you're not keeping up one piece, the logistics of your operation will screech to a halt for lack of one or another resource. For completionists, that will certainly have an appeal, but others will drop the grind.
Content dominates in Fortnite. There's so much to do--so many skills to unlock, heroes to find, quests to finish, and llamas to whack--that it can choke on itself at times. In the fleeting moments it feels focused, however, it makes a grand case for itself. There's nothing quite like scrambling to coordinate with your team to build out some extra turrets as you all blast away in a last-ditch effort to save a mission. These moments, for now, simply don't come as often as they need to. The good news, though, is that Fortnite's issues are solvable. They're a matter of balance and tuning and expanding upon on what's there.
What's There?
Dozens of hours of squad-based missions. An overwhelming amount of items and characters to collect. Lots of evidence of Fortnite's free-to-play future.
What's to Come?
"There will be more game content, modes, and events (all TBA). Plus the usual game optimization, bug fixing, UI changes, etc. The game is in a true beta state and is in active development. Epic will continue to update the game regularly throughout the early access period."
What Does it Cost?
$40-150 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC
When Will it be Finished?
Projected release date is 2018
What's the Verdict?
Fortnite's comedic tone, weave of genres, and exhilarating squad-based play offer up some amazing moments. Unfortunately, it's disheartening to encounter so many free-to-play obstacles given how the game is currently being sold.
With our GameTech video series, we breakdown the tech that drives the game's we love. And we've done a few quick PC graphics settings explainers, but here in text form, you can read about what we discuss and interact with screenshots to see the difference with these visual effects. Let's cover anisotropic filtering, and more broadly, what texture filtering does for your games.
Anisotropic filtering is commonly abbreviated as "AF" in game menus. It's one of the settings we'd recommend you prioritize cranking up, but this one's a little tricky to dissect, so here's an example. Look at the following side-by-side comparison of the Prague hub-area in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and pay close attention to the ground.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
As you move the slider to the left, you see the game without any degree of AF enabled. Notice how farther down the cobbled street, the textures get blurrier and blurrier. Now swipe the the right, we have AF cranked up to 16x, the cobbled stones around you and in the distance look much clearer.
Now let's switch over to a comparison between 8x AF and 16x AF in Half-Life 2. The two settings are quite similar and the difference is very subtle, but it's more pronounced the farther the distance of the texture or sharper your viewing angle. In many cases, the performance difference between 8x and 16x is negligible, so you won't really lose anything by getting a little more detail in those far off textures.
Half-Life 2
The effect of texture filtering is more apparent when the character physically moves forward in the game world. Without AF, you can see distinct lines or zones move where surface details are essentially cut off. The transition in quality of surface textures as you're in motion can be jarring. Check out the video up top for an example of this phenomenon.
Generally, anisotropic filtering can noticeably affect framerate and it takes up video memory from your video card, though the impact will vary from one computer to another.
So, what's happening here? When the in-game camera views textures from an oblique angle, they tend to become distorted without anisotropic filtering. And the farther the distance or sharper the viewing angle, the fuzzier the texture will look. This helps lighten the workload on the GPU since less detail needs to be drawn on a game's surfaces, and it's a sort of compromise for details that aren't necessarily at the player's focus.
Older PC games sometimes only offer either bilinear or trilinear filtering, which essentially aims to accomplish the same goal, just to a lesser degree. Here's an example from the classic first-person shooter Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Bilinear filtering doesn't look great, and the distance before surfaces start to look distorted is quite short. Trilinear filtering extends this distance, but surface blurriness is still apparent. The difference is more noticeable when the game is in motion. A quick tip for games that don't have anisotropic filtering options in the menus: pull up your graphics card's control panel, and enable it manually to force games to use the setting.
To summarize, anisotropic filtering gives clarity to distant surface textures that are seen at an angle. The best way to see the effect of anisotropic filtering is to turn off the settings, look at the ground a few meters ahead, then compare it to the clarity of the ground close to you. As you look farther away, the surfaces become blurrier. The effect is more pronounced when the in-game camera is in motion. Then turn anisotropic filtering on, the far-off surfaces become much more detailed.
We kept this one short and sweet, but like anything in computer graphics, texture filtering is complex. Feel free to get in the comments to continue the discussion. If you want more on PC graphics, watch our other videos on antialiasing or refresh rate, keep an eye out for the next in-depth written version of graphics settings explained, or flip through our gallery for abridged explanations.
Like its predecessor, Middle-earth: Shadow of War allows you to upgrade Talion's skills and abilities in a variety of ways. Aside from a handful of skills from the first game, the sequel features plenty of new ones to experiment with, such as Freeze Pin, which allows you to shoot a frosty projectile that can temporarily hinder a foe's movement. In addition, there are a variety of upgrades you can unlock for each skill that enhance your abilities even further. Click ahead for a closer look at all the skills you can obtain in Shadow of War.
Be sure to check back often as we update this gallery further with more information on each skill's various upgrades.
When your Might is full, aim at an enemy with the control stick and press Y + B to Execute him.
Upgrades
Grim Resolve: Gain Might each time you are damaged in combat.
Secret Might: Gain Might for each kill while remaining undetected.
Fatal Might: Successful sword strikes gain much more Might. Might will reset after taking damage, missing an attack or exiting combat.
Skill Tree Category -- Combat
Perfect Counter
Well-timed Counters knock down enemies. (Press Y when the prompt flashes blue.)
Upgrades
Rain of Arrows: A well-timed counter will replenish one Elf-shot.
Mighty Reversal: Gain Might from each Counter.
Fatal Counter: Well-timed Counters instantly kill enemy grunts (but not Captains and Beasts).
Skill Tree Category -- Combat
Critical Strike
Melee attacks have a chance of causing Critical hits for additional damage.
Upgrades
Reprisal: Melee attacks have a chance of causing Critical Hits for additional damage.
Unstoppable: Your Critical Strike chance increases significantly as long as your Hitstreak is above 30.
Elven Precision: Perform another Strike as a Strike is about to land to greatly increases your chance of a Critical Strike.
Skill Tree Category -- Combat
Ground Finisher
Decrease the amount of time it takes to perform Ground Executions on downed enemies using RT + X.
Upgrades
Fury: Decrease the amount of time it takes to perform a Ground Execution on downed enemies.
Wraith Shield: The Wraith can counter enemies while you complete a Ground Execution.
Ground Drain: Press the indicated buttons to drain enemies who have been knocked down.
Skill Tree Category -- Combat
Brutal Aggression
Might can be double-charged, enabling Brutal Executions (performed by Y + B) which cause nearby enemies to flee in terror.
Upgrades
Wraith Execution: Might can be double-charged, enabling Brutal Executions which cause nearby enemies to flee in terror.
Ceaseless Might: Skills that require Might no longer fully deplete Might.
Skill Tree Category -- Combat
Retaliation
Time your Last Chance success perfectly to instantly kill the enemy targeting you.
Does not apply to Captains, graugs, or drakes.
Upgrades
Adamant: Time your Last Chance success perfectly to instantly kill the enemy targeting you.
Vengeful Drain: Retaliation drains the attacker.
Burst of Might: Gain full Might on a perfect Last Chance.
Skill Tree Category -- Combat
Elven Agility
Hold A for a burst of speed when leaping over objects, landing, or climbing.
Press A at the top of a climb to vault up over the ledge.
Upgrades
Silent Runner: TBA
Spectral Dash: Press A while in stealth to cross short distances or reach nearby enemies instantaneously. Consumes Focus.
Skill Tree Category -- Predator
Brutalize
Hold RT + Y to perform a terrifying stealth kill, causing nearby enemies to flee while increasing both your Might and your Hitstreak.
Upgrades
Unyielding Ferocity: TBA
Reckless Hate: Brutalize causes more enemies to flee.
Skill Tree Category -- Predator
Poison Tendril
Aim at a grog barrel and press Y to poison it from afar.
Upgrades
Bursting Toxin: TBA
Contagion: Poisoned enemies go berserk and attack anyone nearby, spreading the poison.
Proximity Trigger: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Predator
Wraith Chain
Press X to target an additional enemy during a stealth kill. Each additional target consumes Focus.
Upgrades
Monster Hunter: TBA
Shadow Blade: Your first chained stealth kill consumes no Focus.
Skill Tree Category -- Predator
Deadly Spectre
Hold down Y while using Attract (performed by RT + Y) to leave behind a Wraith that will kill your target.
Upgrades
Terrifying Presence: TBA
Spirit Drain: Your Wraith will Drain its target.
Skill Tree Category -- Predator
Death Threat
Use a Worm to deliver a message to a specified Captain, letting him know that you are coming for him. This improves your chances of forging high-quality gear after killing the threatened enemy.
Upgrades
Worse than Death: TBA
Vow of Violence: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Predator
Detonate
Press LT + X to Shadow Strike into a firepit, detonating it and lighting nearby enemies on Fire.
Upgrades
Bursting Arrows: TBA
Spider Song: Detonate a firepit and cause spiders to swarm the area.
Matron's Scent: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Ranged
Freeze Pin
Shooting an enemy's foot freezes them in place.
Upgrades
Brutal Cold: TBA
Savage Ice: Freeze Pin affects Olog-hai and Beasts.
Deep Freeze: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Ranged
Bird of Prey
Hold LT to slow time and aim while in the air. This consume Focus.
Press down on left stick to quickly turn around during Bird of Prey.
Upgrades
Eagle Sight: TBA
Talon Strike: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Ranged
Mighty Shot
When your Might is full, press RB to fire an explosive shot.
Upgrades
Firestorm: TBA
Freeze Blast: Mighty Shot causes a Frost explosion.
Venom: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Ranged
Shadow Strike
Instantaneously reach an enemy by aiming at them and press LT + X to kill them or LT + Y to stun them. Consumes Elf-shot.
Upgrades
Chain of Shadows: TBA
Shadow Strike Pull: Pull a targeted enemy to you and kill (Hold X) or Stun (Hold Y) them.
Shadow Dominate: While aiming at an enemy, press LT + B to reach them instantaneously and Dominate them.
Skill Tree Category -- Ranged
Brace of Daggers
Press LT to quickly throw a dagger that damages and staggers enemies.
Upgrades
Serrated Edge: Thrown daggers have a chance of inflicting Critical Strikes.
Swift Barrage: You can rapidly throw three daggers.
Rain of Blades: Throw five daggers at once to hit multiple foes.
Skill Tree Category -- Wraith
Elven Light
Unleash a powerful blast by pressing X + A when your Might is full, stunning and temporarily blinding nearby enemies.
Upgrades
Cleansing Blaze: Elven Light sets enemies on fire.
Winter's Breath: Elven Light freezes enemies.
Poison Blast: Elven Light poisons enemies.
Skill Tree Category -- Wraith
Ice Storm
Freeze enemies by pressing B, then follow with a flurry of sword strikes by repeatedly tapping X.
Upgrades
Shower of Ice: Freeze all enemies in an area in front of you. The higher your Hitstreak, the larger the area of effect.
Frostbite: Ice Storm Finishers cause a Critical Strike.
Shattering Blow: An Ice Storm Finisher shatters an enemy, causing nearby enemies to flee in terror.
Skill Tree Category -- Wraith
Consume
When your Might is full, press A + B to Drain an enemy during combat.
Upgrades
Chain of Souls: Aim at other foes during Consume to continue your Drain chain. Consumes Focus for each additional target.
Lord of Wrath: Consume increases Wrath.
Olog Lord: Consume works against Ologs.
Skill Tree Category -- Wraith
Treasure Hunter
Automatically collect loot from defeated enemies.
Upgrades
Discerning Eye: Increase chances of high-quality gear drops from Captains or higher ranked Orcs.
Mind Breaker: Increases Domination speed.
Prospector: Increase chances of higher quality Gems.
Skill Tree Category -- Wraith
Caragor Rider
Hold B to Dominate and ride a Broken Caragor.
Upgrades
Pounce: TBA
Bestial Rage: You can perform an Execution (Y + B) or Howl to summon additional Caragors (X + A) even when your Might is not full. Instead, your action consumes some of your mount's Health.
Skill Tree Category -- Mounted
Graug Rider
Hold B to Dominate and ride a Broken Graug.
Upgrades
Devouring Force: TBA
Enduring Fury: Graug basic attacks gain more Might.
Skill Tree Category -- Mounted
Call Mount
Press D-Pad Left to summon a Dominated Caragor.
Press D-Pad Left again to command your Caragor to attack targeted enemies.
Hold D-Pad Left to dismiss the Caragor.
Upgrades
Dire Caragor: TBA
Graug Call: You can summon a Graug.
Dragon Song: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Mounted
Shadow Mount
Instantly mount a Broken Graug, Caragor, or Drake (Dragon Rider skill must be unlocked) with Shadow Strike (performed by hold LT + B).
Upgrades
Caragor Breaker: TBA
Packmaster: When Shadow Mounting a Broken Caragor, other nearby Caragors are Dominated.
Skill Tree Category -- Mounted
Dragon Rider
Hold B to Dominate and ride a Broken Drake.
Upgrades
Scales of Iron: Your Drake takes far less damage from attacks.
Soaring Rage: A Drake's fireball attacks may be performed at any time by consuming health when you have no Might.
Skill Tree Category -- Mounted
Drain
Hold B to recover Health by draining life from Orcs.
Upgrades
Domination: Drained enemies are also Dominated and will fight for you. Hold B to Dominate. Use RT + B to Stealth Dominate. Press D-Pad Down to Activate.
Quiver of Souls: Draining an enemy replenishes Elf-shot.
Bright Lord's Wrath: Draining or Dominating an enemy fully recovers health and gains Wrath.
Skill Tree Category -- Story
Spectral Glaive
Hold and release X after your Glaive appears to initiate a heavy sweeping attack.
Upgrades
Mighty Swing: TBA
Deadly Striker: Double-charge your Glaive for more follow-up attacks. (Tap X repeatedly after charging.)
Skill Tree Category -- Story
Elven Rage
Each kill gives Wrath energy. When your Wrath is full, press both left and right control sticks to slow time, making every melee strike lethal and enabling you to unleash unlimited executions.
Upgrades
Final Blaze: TBA
Freezing Burst: When Elven Rage ends, a freezing blast is detonated.
Poisonous Wrath: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Story
Shadow Strider
Press A while leaping to double jump. Allows you to cover wider gaps or change direction between jumps.
Upgrades
Hammer of Eregion: TBA
Waters of Lorien: Upgrade dodge (Press A) to instantly flash past enemies. Consumes Focus.
Eagle's Eyrie: TBA
Skill Tree Category -- Story
Call Followers
Summon a group of warriors to fight alongside you by pressing D-Pad Right.
Press D-Pad Right to command your warriors to attack targeted enemies.
Hold D-Pad Right to dismiss them.
Upgrades
Bodyguard: Assign a Captain to be your Bodyguard in the Army menu. You can summon the Bodyguard by pressing D-Pad Right. Press D-Pad Right again to command your Bodyguard to attack targeted enemies. Hold D-Pad Right to Dismiss your Bodyguard.
Cluster of Spiders: Summon a cluster of spiders by pressing D-Pad Right. Spiders have poison attacks which can exploit the weakness of a Captain or Higher Ranked Orc.
Iron Guard: Summoned warriors are tougher.
Skill Tree Category -- Story
Dominate Captain
Dominate a Captain whose will has been Broken.
Orc Captains who are higher level than you cannot be Recruited.
Like previous Call of Duty games before it, this year's Call of Duty: WWII will have a premium version that comes with extra content. The Valor Collection Pro, as it's called, comes with the game's Pro Edition (which includes a Steelbook case and the season pass), as well as a pin and patches. It also includes a cool-looking Zombies poster.
The centerpiece of the Valor Collection Pro is the bronze statue that appears to be inspired by a D-Day scene. You can see everything in the bundle in the image below from EB Games Australia, which is now taking pre-orders for it. There is also a less expensive Valor Collection that comes with everything except the season pass.
Just announced: The Call of Duty WWII Valor Collection!
The Valor Collection doesn't appear to be available to pre-order at other retailers, at least not yet. EB Games Australia opened pre-orders after Sledgehammer Games founder Michael Condrey showed it off on Twitter (via CharlieIntel).
Call of Duty: WWII launches on November 3 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. A multiplayer beta starts August 25 on PS4 for people who pre-order the military shooter and runs until August 28. The beta will be available on other platforms later.
By Anonymous on Aug 05, 2017 10:00 am Greg and Ryan take a look at some of the major themes in Twin Peaks: The Return that recur throughout David Lynch's eccentric body of work.
The next Final Fantasy XIV event is set to begin soon. Square Enix has announced that the game's annual summer festival, the Moonfire Faire, will return next week, on August 8.
The event kicks off at 1 AM PT/4 AM ET and is scheduled to run until August 26. Like previous years, it gives players a chance to snag some exclusive summer-themed gear. This time, players will be able to acquire the following equipment and items:
Faire Joi (body armor)
Faire Kohakama (leg armor)
Faire Zori (boots)
Evercold Shaved Ice (tabletop item)
Moonfire Faire (wall-mounted item)
Hyper Rainbow Z (Orchestrion roll)
Players will also have a chance to purchase some items from previous Moonfire Faires at the festival's different vendors. Those who'd like to take part in the event can learn how by speaking to Mayaru Moyaru in the Upper Decks of Limsa Lominsa.
Final Fantasy XIV continues to be one of Square Enix's major titles. Its more recent expansion, Stormblood, launched in June and helped increase the company's MMO net sales to 9.3 billion yen for the quarter, despite the fact the game's servers were subjected to a series of DDoS attacks. Final Fantasy XIV's director, Naoki Yoshida, has expressed interest in bringing the MMORPG to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, but on the condition that each company allows for cross-platform play.
The first proper Splatfest in Nintendo's colorful Switch shooter, Splatoon 2, is set to begin soon. The event kicks off in the US tonight, August 4, at 9 PM PT/12 AM ET and in the UK on August 5 at 3 PM BST.
This Splatfest runs for a full 24 hours and, like the World Premiere Demo that took place before the game released, revolves around food. This time, players are asked to choose which condiment they prefer: mayo or ketchup?
To take part in the Splatfest, simply pledge your fealty to your condiment of choice at the voting booth in Inkopolis Square, and the wins you amass in Turf War will go toward your team's overall score. Depending on your rank by the end of the event, participants will be rewarded with a number of Super Sea Snails, rare items that can be used to add additional slots to your gear.
We already got a glimpse at one of the maps that will be featured during the event: Shifty Station, an entirely new stage that will make its debut tonight. Unlike the other maps in the game, however, Shifty Station will only be available in the stage rotation during Splatfests. Nintendo says its layout changes from event to event, so players will be battling on a different version of the map the next time it appears during a Splatfest.
Nintendo is also releasing another free DLC weapon to coincide with the Splatfest. This time, players will be able to purchase the Sploosh-O-Matic, a returning weapon from the first Splatoon. This particular shooter has a short range but compensates with its high attack power. It's sub-weapon in Splatoon 2 is the Curling Bomb and its special attack is Splashdown.
By Anonymous on Aug 05, 2017 06:30 am Universe talked to cosplayers Lilith Lenore, Oliver Holmes and Cara Nicole about why they dress up in costumes, what the cosplay community is like and what the benefits and challenges are to doing cosplay for a living. Produced by Ryan Peterson.
A complicated, enigmatic No Man's Sky alternate-reality game has been in progress since June, and fans currently believe that it points to a big new update coming this month. Today, the ARG got even more mysterious: a livestream is underway right now, but there's no word yet on what it'll reveal.
The livestream is hosted by the Twitch account Waking Titan--the name of the ARG--and at the time of this writing, it shows a computer set up with the words "Test Scenario Inactive" visible on a monitor.
Strangely, on the desk is a cage with a hamster in it. According to a Waking Titan memo, this hamster is called "Subject M-N00-dl35" and is part of some sort of test. The memo reassures viewers that the animal faces no danger and won't be exposed to anything harmful.
If you're interested in reading more about the ARG and the efforts to solve it, check out the No Man's Sky subreddit thread on it here. There's no official word yet on what the August update might include; developer Hello Games has been tight-lipped about the game since its previous update in March. But fans speculate from hints in the ARG that it'll feature a new species, among other additions.
If it is a content drop that's being teased, it'll be the third such update since No Man's Sky's release last year. The first, called the Foundation Update, added base-building and frigates, while the second added land vehicles.
By Anonymous on Aug 05, 2017 05:30 am Pokemon Sun/Moon players can get Salazzle for free, Activision CEO talks the importance of Destiny 2's expansions, and soon you can color in Geralt!
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