Half-Life 2 and Dishonored art director Viktor Antonov died at age 53 on February 7, 2025. Just over a year later, his studio Eschatology Entertainment has revealed his "final vision," the world of Guns of Eschaton, a shooter styled as "the world's first Soulslike FPS."

"A new world by Viktor Antonov," begins the trailer. "His final world. His final vision. His final game."

Antonov's fingerprints are all over the 19th century "Old South" fantasy Western setting, which the game's Steam page calls a "dying world full of monsters," a "world-scale catastrophe" at "the end of America." You play as a lone man "who has lost almost everything," but you've still got a bunch of guns, and that's a start.

"The road ahead runs across the Old South of America – now transformed into a haunted frontier of ruined settlements, mythic roads, impossible machines, monstrous factions, and historical figures caught between legend and damnation," says Eschatology Entertainment. The studios' MO is "the end of all things," and those biblical, apocalyptic themes are on full display here.

Valor Mortis, from the Ghostrunner devs, may put up a fight for the title of first Soulslike FPS, but the approach to gunplay here is fascinating. The trailer reveals rhythmic, Remnant-like bosses and encounters that contrast the run-and-gun feel of today's Doom and Wolfenstein games. Bullet types, parries and dodges, active and passive abilities, a range of equipable gear, and "mystic abilities" help fill out the Soulslike side of things, along with "more than 20 weapons built around the feel, limitations, and brutality of 19th-century firearms."

"This is not a fast-paced shooter where victory comes from reflexes alone," the devs say. "Every bullet matters. Every gun has its own character. Every monster has a weakness. You cannot rely on old shooter instincts – you will have to learn how to shoot all over again."

Those enemy weaknesses are cataloged in a codex kept by your character, and I gather this is also where you'll jot down notes on the various factions in the game, which are "rooted in real mythologies."

Also like Remnant, arguably the gold standard for Soulslike shooters, Guns of Eschaton supports "full solo and co-op progression." Additionally, there's (what sounds like) Souls-standard PvP where you "become a threat to others."

Guns of Eschaton is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC (Steam) at an unannounced date.

The team at Eschatology Entertainment, formed in 2022 by a Cyprus-based core, has been talking up the game for years. Its website reads: "This new apocalyptic world will be rich with history, horror, complex characters and astonishing stories. It is waiting to be discovered and explored. We believe our IP can stretch far beyond a single game and become a cultural phenomenon."

The most popular Soulslike in Steam Next Fest makes a very powerful argument for adding a shotgun to Dark Souls.

Pray you never have to hear John Romero wish you well. The legendary Doom designer has been politely – but brutally – correcting the record on video game history for years, and this time he's here to tell us all about the reality of computer game piracy. The short version? He'd prefer that you paid developers for their games, but piracy didn't kill the beloved studios of the '90s.

Earlier this week, Sandy Petersen – another id Software veteran who worked on the original Doom – asserted on Twitter that "70-90% of Doom's players pirated it," arguing that, without the resulting lost sales, "We would literally have had so much more for our workspace and upcoming projects." If those pirates had instead purchased the game, "Quake may not have gutted id Software." He concludes that "Damn pirates are the guys who killed game companies. like Atari, Amiga, Cinemaware, 3D Realms (Duke Nukem!)"

At least, that's Petersen's version of events. It's important to note that the original Doom used a distribution model that'll be utterly foreign to modern gamers: shareware. The whole first chapter of the game was distributed for free, and players could choose to register – paying the purchase price – to unlock the rest of the campaign. This is where Romero, in the tradition he's built over the past half-decade, hopes that Sandy is doing well.

"By the mid-90s, DOOM had something like 20 million shareware installs and more than 2 million paid copies sold," Romero says on Twitter. "Those 20 million people were not 'pirates' by default. A huge number of them were playing the free episode exactly as intended. That doesn’t excuse people pirating the registered game. However, it’s important not to collapse legal shareware distribution, unpaid reach, and actual piracy into one number."

It seems Romero is suggesting that Petersen's assertion about a "70-90%" piracy rate for Doom actually includes the shareware copies of the game, which… Yes. Shareware copies were, by definition, not pirated ones.

"I also don’t think piracy is what 'gutted' id – id is still around and still making games," Romero continues. "Piracy may have cost money, but it wasn’t the reason Quake was hard or why people eventually went different ways. So yes: pay developers. Buy the games you love. Support the people who make them. But history is messier than 'pirates killed the companies.' Sometimes the same free distribution that looked like lost sales was also the thing that made the game impossible to ignore."

Game developers deserve to be paid for their work, but the notion that "one pirated copy equals one lost sale" has always been a false dichotomy. Certainly, some pirates download games instead of paying for them, but many more of them never would've bought the game in the first place. The shareware distribution model recognized that fact by giving potential players a generous portion of a game and expecting that they'd love it enough to pay for more.

That's roughly how Valve boss Gabe Newell saw the issue of piracy in 2009, when he argued that "people are happy to pay money" for "a great product delivered on their terms." I think Doom certainly qualified in the '90s, and here in the '20s, the fact that Doom games are now being sold on Steam despite easily pirated versions existing all over the internet suggests that both Newell and Romero are onto something.

Who am I to argue with the forefather of the best FPS games out there?

Understanding Darktide Capacitance is very important if you're playing as the Skitarii, as it's an exclusive mechanic that helps you recharge your Ability. Unfortunately, it's only explained in one place outside of the Skitarii basic training, so it's quite easy to miss what Capacitance and the related Charges are, despite them getting mentioned a lot across the talent tree. Fear not, Alpha Primus, as I've explained how this Skitarii Capacitance system works below so that you can make the most of it for your builds.

What is Darktide Capacitance and how does it work?

Skitarii Capacitance is a percentage-based charge-up mechanic for your main Abilities; Chordclaw Strike, Voltaic Emitter, or Advanced Combat Doctrines. So, unlike the other Darktide classes whose Abilities run on cooldown timers, Skitarii Abilities must build up to 100% Capacitance before they can be used – think of it as "ultimate charge" from games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, Marvel Rivals, and such. During missions, it's represented by the blue bar that fills your Skitarii Ability icon.

As a Skitarii, you passively generate 2% Capacitance per second, so it takes 50 seconds to reach 100% without any other help. You also gain 2% Capacitance by killing enemies and 4% for killing Elites and Specialists. There are plenty of other ways you can generate Capacitance via talents, which I've explained further down, so you can massively increase your Capacitance generation and spam your Ability as part of your Darktide Skitarii build.

Reaching 100% Capacitance grants you one Charge and resets your Capacitance back to zero, letting it tick back up again. The number above your Ability icon represents how many Charges you currently have. By default, all Skitarii can hold a maximum of three Charges and their exact purpose differs depending on your chosen Ability (bear in mind that additional talents and modifiers can change these even more):

• Voltaic Emitter always consumes all your current Charges when used, increasing its effective range and adding other benefits per Charge.
• Chordclaw Strike can be used once per Charge, so if you have three Charges, you could use it up to three times in a row.
• Advanced Combat Doctrine can't be used without having at least one Charge, but it otherwise doesn't use Charges. Instead, it drains Capacitance per second it's active and for each shot fired while active. If you had three Charges, you would effectively have 300% Capacitance to spend.

How to generate Capacitance and Charges in Darktide as a Skitarii

As mentioned, all Skitarii generate Capacitance passively and from kills, but there are several talents that can bolster these Capacitance gains, add news ways of generating it, and earn more Charges:

• Augmented Power-Cycle: Generate an additional 1% Capacitance per second.
• Reactor Coil Recharge: Weakspot kills generate 2% Capacitance.
• Flux Conduit Build-Up: Critical hits generate 5% Capacitance over 4 seconds.
• Capacitor Reclamation Loop: Hitting 3 or more enemies with an attack generates 1% Capacitance.
• Satiated Steel (Chordclaw Strike Ability modifier): Chordclaw Kills restore 25% Capacitance over 5 seconds.
• Higher Purpose (Flensing Protocols Keystone modifier): Killing Elites and Specialists restores an additional 5%.
• Redline Capacitors: Spending or gaining a Charge applies a stacking buff which grants +5% Toughness damage reduction and +5% Capacitance generation for 12 seconds, with a maximum of 4 stacks. It also increases your maximum Charges by 1 (4 total).
• Resource Optimization Canticles (Redline Capacitors Keystone modifier): Increases your maximum Redline Capacitors buff stacks and maximum Charges by 1 (5 total for both).

Another thing you might want to understand is how Darktide Skitarii names work – they don't have any strict rules, but you might want some inspiration from the guide above if you're after a more lore-friendly name.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

There are no bad Metro games. In fact, fans of developer 4A Games' atmospheric-as-hell first-person shooter franchise might even argue the series – based on author Dmitry Glukhovsky's post-apocalyptic book trilogy – has only gotten better with each installment.

But while Metro 2033, its sequels Metro: Last Light and Metro Exodus – and even VR prequel Metro Awakening – have offered increasingly solid entries within the moody, immersion-ratcheting series, each successive release has also strayed a bit from what made the original so appealing…and terrifying.

The upcoming Metro 2039 aims to rectify this, retaining and refining the franchise's 15-plus years of evolution, but also returning it to its subterranean, supernatural roots. In fact, based on everything we know of the fourth mainline entry, it seems to be mirroring 2033 in thrilling ways that have me highly anticipating my return to the mutant-inhabited underground.

Descendants

The most obvious callback to the first game is 2039's unsettling, detail-drenched subway setting. While the original game tasked players with braving the claustrophobic Moscow Metro station for much of its runtime, Last Light found them on the surface just as often, surviving the irradiated city from under gas masks.

Exodus strayed even further from those confined subway tunnels, inviting players to seek safety and shelter above ground, where things maybe weren't quite as uninhabitable as advertised. Exodus' more expansive surface areas also went hand in hand with its semi-open world structure, which offered some welcome freedom – and varied, eye-popping environments – but at the cost of the original's nightmare-conjuring underground.

This approach, while certainly not without its own appeal, essentially abandoned the tighter, tense linear storytelling and suffocating dread that helped define the first game. If early peeks at 2039's overrun tunnels are any indication, fans will soon be back to surviving the nerve-fraying Metro much as they did when Artyom first hit the tracks.

That said, players won't be descending into Moscow's depths as the series' longtime Metro-dweller Artyom. This might sound disappointing, as series' stalwarts have gotten accustomed to the fan-favorite silent Ranger. But it's worth noting that the fresh start we're getting with new – and fully voiced – protagonist the "Stranger" puts 2039 in an intriguing spot the franchise hasn't occupied since introducing Artyom.

Part of the appeal of 2033 was meeting this new character, joining him on his harrowing journey through the underground, and ultimately ensuring his survival until he helped guide those nukes to their target. The sequels allowed us to get comfortable with Artytom, growing with him as he became a more capable soldier, a married man, and a more traditional video game hero, but they also left behind some of the engrossing mystery and emotional surprises that come with slowly peeling back the layers of a fresh-faced protagonist. With the Stranger, we once again get a clean slate, tantalizingly packed with new secrets I can't wait to uncover.

Some of this nuance has already been hinted at in 2039's reveal trailer. We know the Stranger suffers from haunting nightmares, so much so that his mind-taxing terrors serve as the driving force sending him beneath Moscow's surface. More exciting is the fact these nightmares are likely tied to the Dark Ones, the highly evolved supernatural beings that fueled much of the first two games' spine-tingling riddles.

Following their engrossing narrative arc – which saw them demonized in 2033 before being redeemed in Last Light – these possibly-paranormal friends/foes were mostly reduced to Easter Egg-like appearances and references in Exodus. The Dark Ones' return and, more specifically, how it might be connected to the Stranger's psychological struggles, suggests a brain-bending conundrum the likes of which we haven't experienced since Artyom suffered his own psychic visions.

Faction-fueled storytelling

Our new haunted protagonist, his reluctant return to the stifling subway, and whatever mind-trickery the Dark Ones have in store for him are all elements evocative of the first game. But these aspects are also woven into a wider fabric of 2033's warring factions.

From communists and fascists to merchants and the military, the series' debut saw various forces in constant conflict, fighting over resources, weapons, territory, and political control of the Metro. 2039 sees the return of these battling ideologies, but with a twist…and a brand new baddie.

The game, dropping like a Blind One's fist next winter, introduces a seemingly peaceful underground, where all factions are united under a new regime dubbed the "NovoReich." But as ruled by the oppressive, manipulative "Hunter" – a former respected Ranger turned iron-fisted Fuhrer – this new group seems destined for more doom than democracy. The Hunter also represents the return of a proper antagonist for the series, a concept that was largely abandoned in Exodus.

The Hunter represents a more literal return to the franchise's roots, as the character first appeared in 2033 but disappeared by the campaign's conclusion. While items and references to him existed in Last Light and Exodus, his fate was ultimately left unsolved. Bringing him back as 2039's main antagonist not only suggests his whereabouts will be revealed, but his integral role represents a return to the series' past that also pushes it forward.

Ahead of Metro 2039 reveal, series author Dmitry Glukhovsky says it "will be darker than anything you've seen before"

Everyone who has played Destiny will tell you a story about it. They'll probably have a few, actually, but ask them to pick their most memorable and it will likely be the tale of how they got their first Gjallarhorn, the all-conquering rocket launcher that made mincemeat of just about everything during Destiny's first year. We doubt many can beat the story of the member of our raid team who got theirs by stopping on the approach to a loot chest deep in the Vault Of Glass, and firing their entire supply of rockets at it. Stepping up to open it, out popped Gjallarhorn. For weeks afterwards, the other five raiders would unleash rocket after rocket at the luckily impervious chest in the hope of seeing it spit out Destiny's most prized reward.

Such were the lengths we went to, in those early days, to tip the odds in our favour. Destiny launched in September 2014, and within days it had become starkly apparent that this was not the game we had dreamed of, or the one Bungie had promised it would be. Its story, if you could call it that, was over in a flash. Our character hit the level cap of 20 within days, and it seemed there was nothing left to do. A pop-up window that appeared after we hit level 20 hinted at a new purpose – the pursuit of Light, the true measure of a Destiny Guardian's power – but the only way to raise it was to play, again and again, levels and missions that we felt we had already picked clean.

In the absence of anything new to do, Bungie gave us punishing difficulty and a miserly random loot system. The weekly Nightfall Strike, for instance – a ramped-up version of an existing mission with tougher enemies and a selection of cruel gameplay modifiers – offered up one of the best loot tables in the game, with a reasonable chance of dropping legendary and exotic gear upon completion. Yet enemies would frequently appear at a level or two higher than you could ever reach, and if all three team members died, they'd be kicked to orbit, and would have to start over from scratch.

Faced with those odds, it's little surprise that players did what they could to cheat the system. One Nightfall boss could be killed by hiding beneath a raised platform, shooting through a small gap that enemy ordnance couldn't fit through, using Ice Breaker, a sniper rifle whose ammo replenished automatically over time. It worked, but playing Destiny this way was slow, boring, and not in the spirit of the game, so Bungie patched it. It did likewise for the infamous loot cave, a small opening in a rockface in Old Russia's Skywatch zone from which enemies constantly spawned, and into which players would empty clip after clip, standing stock still until their supplies ran dry.

Destiny was the first game in Bungie's 10-year deal with Activision, but the game would likely have died, and the contract been ripped up, within weeks of launch were it not for the Vault Of Glass. VOG, to use the Destiny community's affectionate shorthand for the game's first raid, launched a week after the base game – just long enough for the committed player to reach the recommended level 26. Even now, four expansions and three more raids later, VOG is held up as the best Destiny – and co-op console gaming in general – has to offer.

Vault of Glass

It was clear from the start that this was different to everything else in Destiny, whose missions until now had been linear excursions between objective markers, with variously sized gunfights building to a battle against a bullet-sponge boss. Yet VOG opened by asking a six-strong team to split up and hold three capture points from incessantly spawning enemies. Inside there were boss fights, yes, but they were no mere shootouts. Each had a set of exacting mechanics to learn, to devise a solution to, and to conquer.

In between there was light relief – a frequently hilarious platforming puzzle with disappearing scenery, which even now is all too easy to mess up – and a marvellously fraught stealth maze whose patrolling Gorgon enemies would instakill anyone they laid eyes on. VOG was difficult, yes: the first team in the world to clear it took over 10 hours. But it was the most rewarding activity Destiny had to offer, both figuratively – the sense of satisfaction after you and five friends finally clear a difficult section is part of what makes Destiny so special – and literally, as some of the best loot in the game flooded into your inventory after each boss was vanquished.

And what loot it was. The armour on offer was, at the time, the only route to the true level cap of 30. And the guns were, aside from the more widely available Gjallarhorn, the best available. There's never been a hand cannon like Fatebringer: it had the Firefly perk, which caused enemies killed by headshots to explode, dealing heavy damage to those around it, and Outlaw, which greatly increased reload speed after a precision kill. It was more than a gun: it was a game in itself, training you to pick your shots, and rewarding you for doing so by killing four other enemies in the vicinity, then refilling your clip in a split second. It's simply one of those guns – Doom 2's super shotgun, Titanfall's smart pistol, and so on – that will be talked about for years.

Yet for all that VOG was a masterclass in design, and the gear that dropped from it a delight, it also exposed two of Destiny's greatest problems. The first is that a handful of guns were overpowered, to the extent that anything else was considered a waste. When the hard-mode version of Crota's End, the second Destiny raid, launched, it was widely accepted that the final boss fight was as good as impossible without a full team of Gjallarhorn owners. Matchmaking websites, created to help players assemble raid teams – there was no such facility in the game itself – hosted listings with strict team requirements, almost all of which insisted on applicants being max-level and with Gjallarhorn in their inventory.

The second problem was, inevitably, RNG. Since VOG was, for a spell, the gatekeeper to the level cap, you were reliant on the game granting you a full set of raid armour. Many were left looking for just one piece (for most, weirdly, it was a pair of boots). The hunt spawned a meme, 'Forever 29' – one drop short of the maximum level of 30. A wounded Bungie has been working to make amends ever since.

Indeed, the studio has worked tirelessly on these two distinct problems, struggling to balance a set of weapons that must fulfil two very different needs – in PVE, being overpowered is fun, but in PVP, it's ruinous – while reducing Destiny's reliance on a random-number generator. It's been largely successful: in its final form, Destiny is the fairest it's ever been. Guns are finely balanced. Loot still drops randomly, but the most powerful gear is available through fixed, clearly explained (though typically long-winded) means. Everyone can reach the level cap by simply playing what is now a very generous, accommodating game. There's little to complain about in Destiny today. But it's missing something, too.

Randomness is a powerful thing. And for the first 12 months Destiny was defined by RNG – powered by it, propped up by it, the reason we loved it and hated it and kept on playing it anyway, going into work the next day bleary-eyed, disappointed and itching to get back to it. The weeks or months of waiting for your raid boots, or Gjallarhorn, made the eventual payoff all the sweeter.

Better Together

The pain may have stopped, but we didn't. Once you'd got all the gear you really needed you carried on anyway, playing and replaying the same old missions. Routes and enemy patterns had long been committed to memory, your god-tier weapons making mincemeat of them all. Luke Smith – the Bungie staffer who designed VOG, Destiny's first and best raid, directed The Taken King, its best expansion, and went on to lead development of Destiny 2 – once described Destiny as "the bar I can go to in my pyjamas", and it remains the most succinct explanation of the game's appeal.

A few sphincter-clenching raid sections aside, it's the most laid-back game about shooting alien monsters you could possibly imagine. The advantage to having so little content was that, if you played it enough times, you could do it without thinking about it. It's a highly social game, with a largely friendly community – the kind that forms when players come together to see off some of the toughest challenges in video games, then spend a couple of hours popping Cabal heads, farming upgrade materials and talking about their days to wind down.

None of this would have happened had Destiny not been one of the best FPS games around. Not even the magic of VOG would've saved Destiny had there not, beneath the miserly loot system, the wet fart of a story and the content drought, been a rock-solid FPS. We expected great gunplay from the maker of Halo, but Destiny's true mechanical magic lies in the way it borrows from the best MMOs – with its cooldowns and super moves, its deeply customisable subclasses – and uses them to create something that subverts, and elevates, our expectations of the FPS.

That foundation carried the game through three years of peaks and troughs. And as we finally close the book on Destiny, the lingering impression is not one of a shooter, or even an RPG – but a game that somehow managed to be the best when it was, by any objective standard, its absolute worst.

This article was first published in 2017, in issue 308 of Edge Magazine. If you're interested in receiving more stories just like this one, subscribe to Edge Magazine.

Halo 3's final Warthog Run is one of the iconic FPS series' most memorable finale set-pieces ever, a thrilling and theatrical conclusion paying homage to Master Chief and Cortana's desperate escape from the exploding ringworld in the original Halo, Combat Evolved. It might surprise you to hear then that lead developers on Halo 3 once strongly disagreed on the direction of the game's finale, with some arguing for the Combat Evolved-inspired Warthog Run it ended up being, and others pushing for a flying mission and homage to Star Wars, of all things.

Don't get me wrong, being the ultimate space opera, Star Wars totally makes sense as an inspiration for Halo, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear other battles were inspired by George Lucas's magnum opus, but Halo 3's final mission is such a perfect conclusion and full-circle moment for Master Chief that it feels untouchable. But that wasn't always the case, with Halo 3 campaign design lead Robert Stokes telling FRVR, "one thing we did differently as compared to Halo 2 was to approach the design of the missions with an eye toward the 'fuck yeah!' moments and the 'oh shit…' moments."

That philosophy inspired many of Halo 3's most memorable missions purportedly without much friction, but when it came to the final Warthog Run, Stokes says "there was a bit of a battle over the finale," which is where the aforementioned disagreement needed to be solved.

Specifically, an unnamed lead developer was "really pushing for it to be a flying mission in a banshee," Stokes says, describing an alternate mission where instead of taking the wheel of a Warthog and racing your way through a collapsing Forerunner megastructure, you'd be escaping by flight in an homage to "the escape from the innards of the second Death Star in [Star Wars: Return of the Jedi]."

Coincidentally, or maybe not, the final mission in Halo 4 begins with a flying mission in which you captain the F-41 Broadsword inside a massive Forerunner warship, and that definitely seems like it could've been inspired by Star Wars. Although, I think it's safe to say Halo 3's final mission made more of a splash in the long run, suggesting paying homage to series past is always more reliable than branching off into other IP.

Halo Campaign Evolved's PS5 port has strict split-screen co-op requirements: both players need PSN memberships and Xbox accounts

Creating a solid Darktide Skitarii build is essential as it can be quite a fragile class and has some added complexity with its unique Capacitance and Charge mechanics. However, it can still be very powerful thanks to its exclusive weaponry, Servo-Skull turret buddy, and some standout talents and abilities. Below, I've laid out two solid Skitarii builds that should serve you well in most missions.

And if you're still struggling to come up with a good Darktide Skitarii name, I can help you there too.

Darktide Skitarii Chordclaw melee build

• Ability: Chordclaw Strike with Satiated Steel + Axial Slash (good for hordes) or Slice and Dice + Probing Strikes (good for Ogryns and bosses)
• Blitz: Artificer Servo-Skull with Medicae and Purgator Servo-Skull upgrades
• Aura: Foe-Render Creed
• Keystone: Redline Capacitors with all four upgrades
• Other talents: Power Redistribution Uplink, Last Stand Relay, Flux Conduit Build-Up, Slaughter Protocol, Sustained Assault Doctrine, Sequenced Charge, Auto-Repair Doctrines, Augmented Power-Cycle, Moebian Conductor
• Weapons:
  • Paired Transonic Blades with Shred and Precognition
  • Phosphor Blast Pistol with Infernus or Man-Stopper and Crucian Roulette

The Chordclaw is arguably the Skitarius' best ability, capable of shredding some of the toughest Elite enemies in Darktide, so this melee-heavy build seeks to make the most of it. Talents like Slaughter Protocol and Sustained Assault Doctrine are going to give you the Toughness and Damage you need to fight up close with your Transonic Blades.

With Shred on your blades and Last Stand Relay, you should be scoring melee crits reasonably often which will then help you quickly gain charges for your Chordclaw thanks to Flux Conduit Build-Up. And every time you gain or spend a charge, you'll also benefit from Redline Capacitors, which will improve your melee attacks even more and let you use Chordclaw Strike up to five times.

Darktide Skitarii Voltaic Emitter electrocution build

• Ability: Voltaic Emitter with all three upgrades
• Blitz: Arc Grenades with Overcharged upgrade
• Aura: Foe-Render Creed
• Keystone: Flensing Protocols with all four upgrades
• Other important talents: Electro-Strike Conduit, Weakness Analysis Doctrine, Entropic Transfer, Retribution Conduit, Power Redistribution Uplink, Last Stand Relay, Augmented Power-Cycle, Flux Conduit Build-Up
• Weapons:
  • Branx Mk III Arc Maul with Enhanced Voltaic Arcs and Execution
  • Branx Mk IV Arc Rifle with Enchanced Voltaic Arcs and Cavalcade

This build's focus is on electrocuting the hordes of Tertium as much as possible, staggering and stunning them while still dealing lots of damage, particularly through critical hits. Flensing Protocols and several other talents mean you'll have a high critical hit chance most of the time which will make your Arc Maul and Arc Rifle deal hefty damage while also zapping enemies. Thanks to Flux Conduit Build-Up and Electro-Strike Conduit, crits will also help you charge up Voltaic Emitter quickly and electrocute even more enemies, especially in melee.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

And so it goes: Bungie is currently undergoing a large round of layoffs. Though expected after the final Destiny 2 update, it's still a gut punch that leaves many talented developers without work. Numerous people affected by the decision and previously associated with Bungie have commented on the situation on social media, as fans rally around the legendary studio.

"Despite everything it has been an honor to work on Destiny 2," Blaise Markley, now former activity designer at Bungie, says on Twitter. "Please know with deep sincerity that we wanted more than anything to make you smile. See you starside, Guardians."

Lyndon Willoughby was a senior artist at the company, and he calls the position "a dream" on Twitter. Mikey "TehMidge" Perfected, an activity, events and social QA at Bungie, tweets that "it was an honor" to work on his favorite game over an extended period.

According to Artem Sorokin, a now former senior VFX artist, "essentially the entire Destiny VFX team, leads and all," have been let go. As the news travels of the job losses at Bungie, there are calls for Sony to impact more of the leadership positions, a stance echoed by other former employees.

"Disastrous leadership continues to be rewarded, protected, and paid out with their golden toilets," Liana Ruppert, an ex-community manager at Bungie who was laid off from the company in 2023, posts on Twitter. "I hope they get everything they truly deserve, and that's guilt, shame, and hopefully some actual fucking reflection."

The layoffs run through the whole structure of Bungie. Studio head Justin Truman is also stepping down, according to reports. The belief was that once development on Destiny 2 wrapped, Sony intended to make substantial changes across the entire team. These job losses follow a disappointing reception to Marathon back in March, Bungie's first non-Destiny related game in over a decade.

At the moment, the future of the studio seems uncertain. Marathon "remains an important part of our portfolio," according to Sony in a statement made on the cuts, but only time will tell how true that winds up being.

Destiny 2 fans shouldn't "blame yourselves" as Bungie closes the door on its 9-year-old MMO, says community lead: "This is just the way it goes sometimes."

Bungie studio head Justin Truman is reportedly leaving the company after nearly 17 total years across positions, including Destiny 2 design director and general manager.

Bloomberg News reporter Jason Schreier shares in a Bluesky post that "people familiar with the situation" say Truman is stepping down as studio lead after, according to his LinkedIn, 11 months. Truman took the position over from controversial ex-lead Pete Parsons, who a former Bungie writer Robert Brookes credited earlier this year with being "the real Destiny killer."

GamesRadar+ has reached out to Bungie for comment on Truman's current role at the company, but we did not receive an immediate response. At the moment, the studio has only made generalizations clear, in that it's undergoing huge layoffs. "Destiny 2 fell short of expectations," according to Bungie's statement posted on Bluesky, and "we unfortunately could not continue operating at our previous size."

Bungie claims it has "future projects still in early incubation," but Destiny 2 received its final live-service content update earlier this month, and since then, former devs been happy to share that their laboring on the MMO and other Bungie properties was "the most toxic, dysfunctional experience of my professional life," as Destiny 2 narrative lead Michael Zenke put it.

Destiny struggled throughout the 10 years Pete Parsons served as Bungie CEO, and though he'd once hoped "to transform the Destiny business" by 2025 – ultimately, the year he left Bungie – the former executive also lost fans' confidence after he apparently spent $2.3 million on old school cars around the same time Bungie laid off 220 people.

Sony initially purchased Bungie for $3.6 billion in 2022, while studio execs built Hollywood signs in their hearts and dreamed of making a Destiny 2 TV show. But dreams can either come true or dissolve into embarrassment, and, well – there aren't currently any production studios with plans to make a Destiny 2 TV show.

Ex-writer Brookes quipped in a Bluesky post this spring about Bungie leadership ahead of Destiny 2's last update, "Don't worry they're suffering in their *checks note on hand* multi-million dollar payouts."

As I wait on an official response regarding Justin Truman's job status, I'm choosing to find the silver lining anyway: at least someone can afford the $599 Xbox Series S 1TB.

Destiny 2 fans shouldn't "blame yourselves" as Bungie closes the door on its 9-year-old MMO, says community lead: "This is just the way it goes sometimes."

Choosing your Darktide Skitarii name isn’t easy as your options are pretty much unlimited, save for a few restrictions you need to follow. The cyborg soldiers of the Adeptus Mechanicus can have basically any name, but you might want something that's appropriately Warhammer 40,000-y and befitting of an Alpha Primus – or something silly enough to cheer up your fellow Rejects aboard the Mourningstar. With that, I've delved into Darktide and Ad Mech lore to bring you some pointers on how to name your Skitarii warrior.

Darktide Skitarii names

Your Skitarii name in Darktide must follow these rules for you to finish creating your character:

• Can only contain alphanumerical characters and hyphens (-).
• Must be at least 3 characters long but no longer than 18 characters.
• Must not contain more than three numbers.

You can of course choose a random name in the game that will be appropriate to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but it's not quite the same as coming up with a unique name. The Skitarii have no strict naming conventions and can include a mix of letters, numbers, Greek letters (both in character and word form, such as ' α' or 'Alpha', though Greek letters are not available on console keyboards), and Roman numerals. They can also follow a normal 'first name + surname' format too.

Regardless of the form your Skitarius' name takes, science, technology, Latin, and ancient Roman and Greek mythologies are great places to draw from for inspiration. This Reddit thread also has two name generators from Games Workshop-published books in it, so if you're looking for something a bit more canon-compliant, they're a good place to look too. And if you're after something a bit more whimsical, joke names featuring household appliances that play to the Ad Mech's love of ancient technology are also worth considering.

So, you can essentially be as lore-accurate or as goofy as you want with your Skitarii name in Darktide. While wandering the Mourningstar, I've seen the likes of Archytas-Θ-Σ-9, Cinis-Renatus-304, Lambda-Nuncius-16 mingling with Samsung-Fridge16, CHAPPIE, RedditUser, and WinRAR-License. Remember, you can also change any of your Operatives' names by getting a Personality Scourge from Barber-Chirugeon Krall, who resides in the left corner of the Mourningstar near the Comissary. And once you've settled on a name, it's time to level up and start crafting some Darktide Skitarii builds!

Below I've also listed more sources of information to help you come up with something authentically Skitarii or form the basis for a good pun or joke name:

Darktide Skitarii name inspiration

• Warhammer 40,000 models:
  • Skitarii units:
    • Hastarii
    • Ironstrider Ballistarius
    • Pteraxii Sterylizors/Skystalkers
    • Serberys Sulphurhounds/Raiders
    • Sicarian Infiltrators/Ruststalkers
    • Skitarii Rangers/Vanguard
    • Sydonian Dragoon
    • Sydonian Skatros
  • Adeptus Mechanicus characters:
    • Belisarius Cawl
    • Thulia Ghuld
• Darktide Adeptus Mechanicus characters:
  • Enginseer Kayex-8
  • Hadron Omega-7-7
  • Magos Biologis Kharib
• Space Marine 2 Adeptus Mechanicus characters:
  • Archmagos Nozick Beta-12
  • Magos Galeo
  • Magos Morias Leuze
• Forge Worlds: While Darktide lets you choose one of four Adeptus Mechanicus Forge Worlds to bind your Skitarius to, there are many, many others that you could incorporate into your name. Some notable Forge Worlds established in Darktide and wider Warhammer 40,000 lore are:
  • Accatran
  • Achlys III
  • Agripinaa
  • Bheta-Decima
  • Branx Minor
  • Columnus
  • Deimos
  • Graia
  • Kantrael
  • Lucius
  • Mars
  • Orestes
  • Ryza
  • Stygies VIII
  • Voss Prime
• Greek alphabet:
  • Alpha Αα
  • Beta Ββ
  • Gamma Γγ
  • Delta Δδ
  • Epsilon Εε
  • Zeta Ζζ
  • Eta Ηη
  • Theta Θθ
  • Iota Ιι
  • Kappa Κκ
  • Lambda Λλ
  • Mu Μμ
  • Nu Νν
  • Xi Ξξ
  • Omicron Οο
  • Pi Ππ
  • Rho Ρρ
  • Sigma Σσ
  • Tau Ττ
  • Upsilon Υυ
  • Phi Φφ
  • Chi Χχ
  • Psi Ψψ
  • Omega Ωω

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Two weeks after releasing the final update for Destiny 2, Marathon developer Bungie has announced that it will be going through layoffs.

In a post on Bluesky, the Bungie account publishes a statement saying, "With great sadness, we are announcing a reduction in force as we reorganize Bungie." It adds, "As the leaders of Bungie, past and present, we recognize Destiny 2 fell short of expectations these past several years. Following our final content update to Destiny 2, and with our future projects still in early incubation, we unfortunately could not continue operating at our previous size."

Destiny 2 had its final update just over two weeks ago after a few years of struggles and a dwindling playerbase, compounded with the difficult development and underwhelming release of Marathon earlier this year. Earlier this year Sony announced it had an impairment loss of $765 million on the studio over the last financial year. And while the final update brought in Destiny 2's highest player count in years, it is sadly too late for the game.

The statement continues, "We know this decision has a profound impact on the people affected, their families, friends, and teammates. While these changes are necessary to best position the studio now and for the future, that does not lessen the difficulty of this moment or the impact it has on those affected. Later, we will share more about that future with you all but today is not that day. Today, we wish to extend our gratitude and compassion to every member of the Bungie team who has been impacted and to those who remain."

PlayStation CEO Herman Hulst sent an internal email to staff which was published on the Sony website, saying: "We have made the decision to reduce Bungie's workforce, affecting a significant number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members. There are also reductions across SIE teams that support Bungie's operations. Those impacted at Bungie and within SIE are being informed today." The exact number of affected employees was not confirmed.

Hulst's memo continues, "Over the past several months, together with Bungie leadership, we reviewed the studio's long-term direction, development priorities, resource needs, and role within our broader portfolio strategy. We explored multiple alternatives before concluding that a reduction was necessary to align the studio's resources with its current priorities and long-term goals."

As for Marathon, Hulst says it "remains an important part of our portfolio, and we will continue to support the team as they build on the strong foundation established in Season 1 and 2, and as they work on incubation efforts for future projects. While it's too early to discuss, we are encouraged by the creativity and opportunities that lie ahead."

This comes a day after the game's community lead said Destiny 2 fans shouldn't "blame yourselves," and a week after comments emerged from former Destiny 2 devs who claimed working at Bungie was a "toxic, dysfunctional experience."

Unfortunately, the studio's troubled few years have ended up at this point, and Bungie ends its statement by addressing fans over their "gratitude and compassion": "We hope you will do the same."

After a last minute change to the release plan, new extraction shooter Sand: Raiders of Sophie is off to a roaring start on Steam. Publisher tinyBuild is touting huge returns within hours of the game going live, though not without more problems as the devs continue to put out fires left and right.

On the back of a big showing during Summer Game Fest, Sand was due to come out on June 22. This would've followed a server slam that started after the event, but feedback made it apparent to collaborating studios Hologryph and TowerHaus that going straight into 1.0 wasn't ideal for the FPS, prompting a pivot into early access instead.

A bold move, but one that's proven correct for the team and the game itself. Alex Nichiporchik, the CEO of tinyBuild, broke down how the launch on June 22 went for the first 12 hours on Twitter. So far, Sand's brought in one million dollars in gross revenue - not a bad start whatsoever.

Sadly, gameplay's been hampered by DDoS attacks, adding considerable amount of stress as people work to keep things stable behind-the-scenes. The Steam reviews have taken a hit as a result, Nichiporchik says, but hard hours are being put in to remedy the situation.

"Working on it, can't lose if you never give up," he posts. "Sleep is overrated." While I admire the confidence and integrity, I would like to point out that sleep is definitely not overrated. It's appropriately rated in many instances, and often underrated, if anything, and should not be disregarded.

The Steam reviews haven't started rising just yet, but as it's been just two days, I'm going to guess the to-do list is long, and currently ever-growing. The game, set on a desert planet, involves using a walking base to explore and fight others for precious supplies. Think Cowboy Bebop meets Howl's Moving Castle. It's a novel concept, and people are clearly into it, let's just hope we get to it reach full potential soon.

Diablo 4's Overwatch crossover skins have been revealed and they are completely cursed: "Mercy looks like a 90-year-old grandma"

As Xbox CEO Asha Sharma continues to expand the publisher's game worlds into the realm of TV and film, she also has some fighting words for the biggest movie franchise of all time. "Call of Duty is bigger than the Marvel Cinematic Universe."

Xbox's new boss took the reins earlier this year and is now overseeing a reset that could potentially lead to studio shutdowns or layoffs, but one thing she's not scaling back on is the company's mammoth expansion to the big screen. Live-action feature films based on Gears of War and Sea of Thieves are going ahead, as is a sequel to A Minecraft Movie. Amazon Prime is also at work developing a third season of Fallout and a Wolfenstein streaming series.

But Call of Duty is maybe the company's biggest bet, with a new live-action film coming from Taylor Sheridan (Sicario writer and Yellowstone creator) and Peter Borg (Deep Water Horizon) currently set for 2028.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Sharma seemed pretty confident about the project's prospects and Xbox's increasing popularity in Hollywood.

"If you think about it, we've got the number two show of all time on Amazon [Fallout], Minecraft was top five in 2025, Call of Duty is bigger than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So it all measures. [There's] more appetite to work with us on titles than ever before," she says.

How she's qualifying Call of Duty's bigness compared to the MCU isn't totally clear. Movies in the joint Marvel Cinematic Universe have collectively made over $30 billion across 37 or so installments. While we don't have comparable numbers for the total gross of every Call of Duty game, Sharma's statement is still totally believable.

Call of Duty is almost always the best-selling game of any given year, Activision almost always monetizes them until and after the next one comes out, and the series has two free-to-play cash cows in the form of Call of Duty Warzone and Mobile. Whether that translates into box office success is another question. CoD doesn't have an icon to rely on, like a Super Mario or a Jack Black-shaped Steve, after all.

"You won't see us try to become the biggest linear provider in the world or anything like that, but I think great games are culture, and culture is entertainment," Sharma says.

In the meantime, check out every upcoming video game movie on the horizon.

Finding Sand Raiders of Sophie Coral Chunks and Weird Coral is essential if you want to upgrade your tech tree and unlock new things for your Trampler, such as Mk2 Energy Rods. To get that upgrade in particular, you need 150 Coral Chunks and 15 Weird Coral, which is quite a lot of each. It'll take you several expeditions (or one really long one if you're well-stocked and willing to risk staying out so long) to gather all of that and more, so I've explained where you can find Weird Coral and Coral Chunks in Sand below to hopefully speed up your resource gathering.

Where to get Sand Raiders or Sophie Coral Chunks

Coral Chunks seem to have a high chance of spawning in varying quantities from Rare Valuables Safes usually found in named points-of-interest – these are the large black-and-gold box-style safes. From my time playing Sand Raiders of Sophie, I've only ever found Coral Chunks in these safes, so keep an eye out for them as you explore – if you want to progress through the tech tree, you'll need to plunder a lot of them to get enough Coral Chunks.

How to get Sand Raiders or Sophie Weird Coral

Meanwhile, Weird Coral seems to have only a chance to drop from defeated Upiors – the coral zombies that can also usually be found at points-of-interest but can occasionally spawn at random shipwrecks found as you roam the desert. The fact that the drop rate of Weird Coral seems to be quite low means you need to kill quite a lot of those coral zombies to get enough for any tech tree upgrades.

In short, the best thing to do to gather up both materials is to take your Trampler over to any named point-of-interest on the map and kill every Upior and loot every container you see, especially safes. There are usually lots of empty boxes lying around, so I recommend picking one of those up to help you carry more stuff. When you press Tab to open a container, such as a safe, you can dump its contents into the box rather than your inventory.

Since looting POIs can take a long time, especially if you're playing solo, you'll want to avoid using things like Sand Raiders of Sophie flares to avoid drawing attention to yourself. You might even want to turn off your Trampler's engine to get rid of the billowing black smoke cloud that comes out the exhaust, though it will turn off by itself if you're too far away.

Once you've plundered the area, you might want to move onto the next POI or evacuate to bank your loot, in which case you need to know how to extract in Sand Raiders of Sophie.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Overwatch's Nyan Cafe bundle should be a slam dunk for the game as far as cosmetic packages go. Pink cat-themed maid outfits on five fan-favorite heroes? What's not to love? Blizzard Entertainment has all but assured its otherwise fun new outfits are steeped in backlash, however, thanks to a hard to swallow price and a new rarity of skins.

For those who aren't deep in the Overwatch trenches, bundles that package a bunch of themed Legendary outfits and cosmetics normally cost around 6,900 OW Coins or about $60 in real-world cash. The Nyan Cafe bundle instead costs 9,900 OW Coins, meaning most players will need to fork out an extra $100 since, like most live-service games, Overwatch doesn't let you buy an exact amount of coins.

Blizzard's reasoning for the bundle's higher price is that it's introducing two Ultra Skins for Sierra and Kiriko, a new rarity of skin, alongside three regular Legendary outfits for Reaper, Orisa, and Ashe. Buying the Ultra Skins in their individual character bundles costs 4,500 OW Coins ($40).

What sets Ultra Skins apart are the extra sound and visual effects added to reloads or eliminations, in this case a puff of pink cat-shaped smoke lands wherever an enemy dies, though Blizzard says it's "leaving things open for future innovation."

Fans were almost immediately dismayed at the new prices. "The quality of this game's cosmetic content keeps getting lower and lower while the prices get higher and higher," one player writes on the game's subreddit. "To quote one of this game's own characters, 'you shame yourself.'"

"As someone who's totally comfortable with blowing money on things I enjoy, no expense spared, this is just insulting. I don't enjoy the microtransaction culture in businesses and I'm disliking it even more seeing its evolution to macrotransactions," another response reads.

Similar sentiments are echoed up and down Overwatch's various online communities. The main worry is that Ultra Skins are just Blizzard's Trojan Horse dressed up in bright colors – a way to charge even more money for what would've been labelled a Legendary otherwise.

Pretty much the only person not irked by the price bump is noted Conker enjoyer and freshly-minted Overwatcher Doja Cat, who tweets: "On another note there is a new Nyan Café bundle on overwatch and it is one of the best things that has ever happened to me on this planet. I can't believe this is fucking real. Sierra’s skin is so good like I can't breathe."

Overwatch has always had pretty steep cosmetic prices, even compared to its direct competition, and so I can definitely understand the player frustration after seeing costs inflate without that much value being added on top.

Uncharted 3 co-director and The Dragon Prince co-creator joins the Overwatch team, once again reigniting hopes for an animated show.

Using your Sand Raiders of Sophie flare gun, and changing the color of the flare itself, can be a valuable communication tool, particularly if you're not using a microphone to chat with fellow players. Obviously, there's no established language so who knows how your signals will be interpreted but green means good and red means bad, right? To help you use your flare gun effectively, I've explained everything about how it works in Sand and how to change colors below.

How to select a Sand Raiders of Sophie flare color

To change the color of your flares from the default green, you must hold R to bring up the color menu, then use the scroll wheel to select a new color – your options are cyan, red, yellow, orange, and dark blue. When you release R, your character will load in a flare of the selected color.

With a flare loaded, you can fire it into the sky to create a smoke cloud of your chosen color that lasts for about 45 seconds and can be seen above the dunes for quite some distance - use them sparingly to avoid attracting too much attention to yourself, particuarly if you're carrying useful materials such as Sand Raiders of Sophie Weird Coral and Coral Chunks.

Also make sure you shoot it upwards rather than at a shallow angle, otherwise the flare will just arc down and won't explode. Sand Raiders of Sophie Flare guns also have infinite ammo, so you can fire off as many flares as you like as much as you like.

Flares serve no purpose other than for communication, so you can use different colors to indicate whether you're a friend or foe. And bear in mind that when you use a radio tower to extract in Sand Raiders of Sophie, your Trampler will start releasing plumes of green smoke, signalling to all nearby raiders that you're trying to evacuate.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Now that Destiny 2 is receiving its final update as Bungie ends the sci-fi MMO's nine-year reign, some fans can't help but wonder whether they could've somehow supported the game more and "save" it – but one Bungie lead says no.

It's not the fault of players that Destiny 2 is coming to its end, after all. Dylan "dmg04" Gafner, the principal communications manager at Bungie, confirms as much while responding to a content creator worried they could've done "more" to contribute to the game's success.

"'Could I do more?' You all have done more for this game and our studio than could ever be imagined, and no words can accurately depict how lucky we are to have shared these worlds with you," says Gafner.

The community lead continues, reassuring fans that the MMO reaching the end of its line has nothing to do with them or their supposed lack of support. "Don't blame yourselves or think you could have / should have done more," he writes. "This is just the way it goes sometimes. No matter the future, we will always have these memories. Thank you. For everything."

It's a bittersweet, heartfelt reply – and others seem to agree.

"It's gonna be a weird world without Destiny," one comment reads. Another adds, "Destiny will always have a very special place in my heart. Thank you for all the memories I made in the many years I have played this game for. I hope to see you back with [a] new project soon."

I'll stop there because I'll tear up otherwise, but it's evident that the community feels two things: sad about Destiny 2's end and grateful the MMO was around as long as it was. The game will remain playable for now, at least, but it won't be getting any further major updates.

There's no telling what the future holds, though. Bungie is still working on Marathon, its recent extraction shooter – and it appears to be going well enough, even if its popularity hasn't been immense.

It's disappointing to know Destiny 3 likely isn't happening any time soon, but I suppose anything is possible.

Destiny 2 devs repeatedly pitched a dating sim, Bungie veterans say, "but leadership was very Hard No that nobody wanted romance or silliness."

Knowing how to extract in Sand Raiders of Sophie is crucial as you won't be able to bank everything you've scavenged while wandering the desert without getting picked up first. Thankfully, the process is nice and simple, requiring you to use a radio tower to call for help, but it's not exactly a swift process – and if you're playing a Storm Dive game, there are a couple of other caveats to be aware of. So, if you're trying to get your Trampler off Sophie, here's what you need to do to extract.

Sand Raiders of Sophie extraction explained

To extract in Sand, you need to find a radio tower, climb to the top, and activate the radio to call for evacuation – a waypoint will guide you to the tower when you're within 200 meters of one. Whether you're playing Storm Dive or Voyage, these radio towers appear on the map as a white circular icon with a door in the middle, indicating your exit.

Once you've activated a radio tower, you must then wait 90 seconds for the dropship to arrive and collect your Trampler, at which point it will drop a cable. You'll then have another 60 seconds to approach the cable and follow the button prompt to ascend and leave with the ship, banking all the loot on your person and in your Trampler - if you're looking to upgrade your tech tree, hopefully you grabbed some Sand Raiders of Sophie Coral Chunks and Weird Coral.

But if you don't get out in time, you'll be left behind. In Voyage mode, this isn't much of a problem because there are plenty of radio towers active on the map and they never expire, so you can just try again.

However, for Storm Dive matches, radio towers don't become usable until the first two segments of the match timer in the bottom-left corner of your screen have filled – on this timer, you can see the same white door icon as on the map! Once the timer has passed this icon, several radio towers will become available all at once but they're also all single-use, becoming unavailable once they've been activated by a player to take a Trampler away. With that in mind, you need to always be checking your map in Storm Dive and need to be prepared to change your exit strategy at a moment's notice. Don't leave it until the storm closes in either!

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

With news of Destiny 2 receiving its final update and coming to an end still circulating on the web, some folks are looking to what could've been – including a, erm, dating sim…?

Yes, you read that right – and you honestly probably aren't all that surprised if you've been in the community for a while yourself. Folks have made jokes (or are they?) about a Destiny dating sim before, as they do in every online game's community, but now, Bungie veterans are actually responding to them.

Following one fan's thread requesting "the dating sim we deserve," former community lead Liana Ruppert replies that the developers have indeed considered it.

"Fun fact, the team actually made one, but leadership was very Hard No that nobody wanted romance or silliness," she writes. "Very Dream Daddy inspired lmao. It was fun getting to be a small part of it." Dream Daddy inspired, you say? If only this came to fruition.

Ruppert isn't alone in revealing what could've been, either. Veteran senior narrative designer Robert Brookes, who now works at CD Projekt Red, chimes in, too.

"To be fair, the dating sim that was made was a part of the 'Carnival' event Bungie used to do, where devs had a week to make fun prototypes," Brookes clarifies. "So, it was never a full-fledged project. That said, we did pitch that as a full-fledged project every year."

I mean, I'm still interested – and besides, it does still sound like there was quite a bit of substance to it, even if it wasn't a "full" game, so to speak.

As Brookes goes on to say, "Myself and two other narrative team members (who both CAME from romance game design) had an entire pitch deck for one, complete with costs and real hard metrics on returns. Never got anywhere."

That's… sad, to say the least. In other words, it could've gone somewhere, but it didn't. It's not too difficult to pick out why that's the case, though – even Brookes himself admits as much.

"There's a *very* specific audience for romance content, and a substantial part of that does not play FPS games," put simply. But it could've bridged that gap. "You grow a brand by finding new ways to introduce people to your world, and this would've done that (and also deeply interested some already-existing players)."

I can certainly see it. Comments prove so, too, with somebody exclaiming, "I would've paid real money for this."

Others don't feel like a dating sim would fit well within the world of Destiny and Destiny 2 – but if you ask me, it's worth a shot. Are you listening, Bungie?

Destiny 2's end is "earth-shattering," Warframe dev says, despite the competition between the 2 shooters: "To live in a reality where they're gone isn't a positive one."

Despite its status as a Destiny competitor, the devs behind Warframe are lamenting the news of Destiny 2's final update.

While speculation over Bungie's performance has been rampant for years, the seemingly out-of-nowhere announcement that development on Destiny 2 would be coming to an end was a massive shocker when it dropped a month ago. While the game had definitely seen better days, many expected it to remain a priority at Bungie, especially when Marathon isn't exactly lighting the world on fire in a way I'm sure Sony hoped it would. However, given Sony announced earlier that same month that it had reported a $765 million impairment loss on the studio in the last financial year, drastic moves felt inevitable.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Warframe community director and live ops lead Megan Everett talks about the end of Destiny 2, saying, "Truthfully, it's heartbreaking. It's earth-shattering. I never thought I'd ever see the day where I'd read an article from Bungie about Destiny 2 essentially shutting down."

Despite Warframe being somewhat of a competitor to Destiny, Everett stresses: "I'm speaking personally, but I know people would echo it as well. No one is celebrating the fact that this has happened to Destiny, and its players and that story."

She adds, "I know that people have obviously compared us in terms of being 'direct competitors' and stuff like that. But I think a game is healthy when you have competitors, and [Destiny's developers] have done such an amazing job at trying to grow that story regardless of whatever situation they were in." Furthermore, Everett says, "To live in a reality where they're gone isn't a positive one."

Everett also acknowledges the outpouring of support Destiny 2 received following the announcement of its end of development, saying, "I think what's unfortunate and sad is they announced this was happening, and suddenly people are showing all this support for them. They've been getting a lot of negativity for all this time, and it's like, where was all this love!" She adds, "People need to put the hate away and show the love, because they could have really used that. I know it was there, but it wasn't as vocal as maybe some of the negativity."

Former Destiny 2 devs say working at Bungie was a "toxic, dysfunctional experience," describe leaders who "forgot that people play games for fun."

Update: Halo Studios says it made a mistake and accidentally posted incorrect information about playing Halo: Campaign Evolved's PS5 version in split-screen co-op. You don't need two active PlayStation Plus memberships, just two PlayStation accounts and linked Microsoft accounts.

"We incorrectly stated that PlayStation Plus is required for local co-op splitscreen play. Local splitscreen co-op requires a PlayStation account for each player but does not require a PlayStation Plus account," the studio tweets. PSN memberships are required for online co-op, as is the norm.

Original Story: Halo: Campaign Evolved is shipping Master Chief off into the gravitational pull of the chonky PS5, but PlayStation folks looking to play the remake via split-screen or online co-op should expect some stricter requirements, at least compared to the Xbox Series X|S version.

Halo Studios' shiny remake looks to faithfully recreate the 2001 classic's campaign with a new coat of paint, some series' favorite weapons retrospectively added in, three-new prequel missions, a bunch of skull modifiers, and many more changes. But it wouldn't be classic Halo without co-op, so Campaign Evolved supports two-player split-screen co-op and four-player online co-op as well.

PS5 players won't have a totally smooth ride when trying to get two Master Chiefs on the same couch, though. In the lead up to the game's launch next month, the developer shared some of the game's co-op requirements.

"Just as you do today for Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo Infinite to ensure smooth cross-platform progression, to play Halo: Campaign Evolved you will need a Microsoft account and XBOX Gamertag, regardless of the platform(s) you play on," community manager John Junyszek writes in a new blog post. "This enables both cross-platform play and cross-platform progression."

On PS5 specifically, both split-screen players will need to have an active PlayStation Plus membership and a linked Microsoft account. Steam players will only need to link to a Microsoft account, while Xbox Series X|S players will only need an active Game Pass subscription if they want to play online, as expected.

The PS5 requirements are somewhat surprising because couch co-op normally isn't paywalled behind a PSN subscription - online and multiplayer is - and local co-op is such an integral part of how Halo travels between friends and family and generations. I imagine needing two paid PSN memberships will make casually sharing the game on a sofa more of a hassle than it should be.

On the subject of co-op, Halo Studios also detailed how mission difficulty will scale "appropriately depending on how many people you have in your lobby." Having more Master Chiefs running about could impact the number of enemies in encounters, the rank of those enemies, and their intelligence which can affects their aim or how often they flank. Though these factors are also dependent on the difficulty you choose, too.

Halo: Campaign Evolved releases in full on PC, Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and Game Pass on July 28.

While you're here, check out our interview with the developers to learn how Halo: Campaign Evolved reignites Halo's longest-running argument

Don't expect Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 to come remastered when they hit PlayStation consoles.

Call of Duty's scoring some easy goodwill points by bringing two of the series' most universally loved games to the PS4 and PS5 sometime next month. As developer Treyarch works with Iron Galaxy to make it happen, the company has now clarified what form the original Blops games will take.

Eurogamer reports that the upcoming ports are re-releases, not remasters, a point Activision supposedly emphasized to the outlet. Firm details are still up in the air, but next-gen graphics, new features, and sky-high framerates are likely off the table with this new distinction.

Remaster tags normally imply that some work went into jazzing up a game to add modern bells and whistles to it. With these being simply ports, you can more or less expect to play Black Ops and Black Ops 2 as they were on the PS3 and Xbox 360. However, Treyarch has promised that campaign, multiplayer, and zombies are included.

As Eurogamer also notes, the bigger question is whether these upcoming ports will use the same server infrastructure and lobbies as the PS3 version, which are infamously subject to hackers and cheaters nowadays. We should find out more as the re-releases approach their July release windows.

Until then, my best bet is that PlayStation owners will soon gain access to the same classics that Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S folks have been able to buy and play via the console's backwards compatibility program.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ devs have been "paying attention" to other extraction shooters like Arc Raiders, but think they've got them beat on "weapon feel."

When darkness falls in a big-budget game, it's typically to set the mood. You're rarely at risk of getting lost or bumping into furniture. Instead you might wander beneath a full moon, its glow diffusing across the clouds, casting the land below in an atmospheric blue tint. Or you might follow a series of helpful light sources placed just so, like will o' the wisps, to ensure you don't stray from the main objective. In these games, nighttime is not a threat, nor a cloak, but a vibe.

Marathon, as always, has taken the tougher route. The centerpiece of its second season is Night Marsh – a familiar map plunged into blackness. There, Bungie treats the nighttime not simply as an aesthetic but as what it really is: a daunting reconfiguration of how you navigate the world.

Running in the dark

Every player is handed a flashlight with an unlimited battery, but frankly, they'd be foolish to use it. PvP in Marathon is a positional puzzle – one in which the teams who can track their opponents tend to come out on top – and a parade of bobbing white torches is a temptingly easy target for any opponents in the area.

That reality is doubly true in Solos, the game's de facto stealth mode, where I haven't seen a single player use a flashlight since Season 2 went live early last week. Instead, my peers and I are relying on spatial memory to get around. It's the first-person shooter equivalent of getting up at 3am for a wee, and trusting that you can remember the obstacles along the way: the corners of the bed, the next door handle, a flight of stairs you'd rather not tumble down sideways.

Except in the Marsh, the obstacles are spread over a far larger exploration space, and are made up of abandoned agricultural infrastructure – left behind when the colonists of Tau Ceti IV vanished decades ago. You do your best to remember: wasn't there a ladder on the north side of this Maintenance bay? And beyond that, an open window leading to the roof? Fortune favors those with a rough mental map of the buildings they're stumbling through. It's that knowledge which allows you to circumnavigate patrolling bots without making a racket.

Since launch, this has been a game defined by sound. But now that's often all you have: the footsteps of nearby players, the buzz of the bots they've awoken, the smash-and-tinkle of a window cracked with the butt of a rifle. And there are new noises here too. The echoing residue of moans on the wind. The splash of brackish water, disturbed by the memory of workers' waders. During Marathon's first season, some missions suggested that the anomaly at the heart of the Marsh warped not only space but time too. That phenomenon appears to be worsening, as the anomaly widens like an untreated wound.

The agricultural AI that still watches over the Marsh seems to be unravelling as well. "Time fertilises all things," it gabbles joyously. "And we have so much here." Then, in tones of despair: "Let them know they are… searching… in the wrong place." As Tannoy announcements go, it doesn't get more unnerving than: "Dr Song to sublevel… Dr Song. Who will remember you?" The soundscape of Marathon used to be a known quantity, but now it's haunted. That fact isn't just unnerving, but dangerous - exposing players to risks they haven't yet grasped.

The potential rewards are higher, too, though. Defeated bots now drop UESC Certs - a currency that can be used to unlock crates and caches, culminating in the looting of the command center which stands high above the map. Certs are also needed to activate most of the Marsh's exfil points - an act which turns on the floodlights and reveals your position to observant squads. More than once I've fallen foul of teams who've moved like commandos through the swamp, picking off the players who blow up bots in search of the Certs they need to get out.

Yet there's a little more wiggle room to survive a messy teamfight in the dark, even if you're on the losing side. Finding a cubbyhole and waiting for the battle to blow over is a viable if frightening option – and even a downed ally won't necessarily be looted for their best stuff if their body is overlooked in the night.

It's in moments of heightened horror like these that I'm reminded of Amnesia: The Bunker and Thief: The Dark Project – the latter of which is getting a remaster, announced during this week's PC Gaming Show. In these games, the nighttime is both a tool and an impediment, and its potential to both assist and betray is forgotten at your peril.

"There is a quiet beauty in the silence of the night," says Marathon's AI narrator, ONI. "Do not allow it to placate you."

I'm playing Marathon like a single-player stealth sim, and after 70 hours of sneaking I'm begging you to try a solo run

Modern Warfare 4 is the Call of Duty I have been waiting all generation to play. It's a slickly produced first-person shooter that truly feels as if it is pushing at the boundaries of what this series can achieve when it's firing on all cylinders.

Activision has finally allowed its vast network of video game studios (who keep the gears of this annualized machine turning) to cease support for the PS4 and Xbox One, and the results are astonishing. There's a fluidity to the movement systems; weight to the weapon handling; a density of detail to the visual and auditory design that's apparent from the first kill to the last. You love to see it.

Jack O'Hara, the co-studio head of Infinity Ward and game director of Modern Warfare 4, believes the decision to leave last-gen systems behind has had a transformative effect on ideation and execution. "The processing power of the PS4 was great in its time, but it was starting to get in the way when it came to certain innovations. Support was making the development of new features harder, because you have to account for the differences between platforms."

"Console generations have been living for longer and longer, so we got better and better at optimization, but it does reach a point where you might be optimizing more than you're making something new. So, once you reach that threshold, you have to make the call," O'Hara adds. It's an exceptionally reasonable argument that has led to compelling results.

I'm told that Infinity Ward has engineered a lot of technology to deliver better balanced firefights. "Every shot should tell the truth" is a phrase I have heard more than once. Basically, there's a stronger alignment between bullet trajectory, weapon motion, and operator stance. Target visibility has been refined as IW introduces solutions to longstanding issues with bloom and depth of field. Weapons now make micro-adjustments as you push into tight spaces and begin to peek corners. It's wonderfully immersive, and feels utterly fantastic.

There's a control and a stability to the way that Modern Warfare 4 plays that simply wasn't present in Sledgehammer Games' disastrous Modern Warfare 3. Infinity Ward has effectively picked up from where it left off with MW2 in 2022. The recoil patterns and damage profiles are familiar, so too is the snappy TTK – though IW promises it's slightly less severe this time around.

"We are dialing in on the details to make that TTK feel consistent and strong," says Jacky Reynolds, multiplayer design lead. "One thing I'm really stoked about is that we made the TTK slightly longer at further ranges. If you played MW2, you probably felt yourself getting beamed across the map a lot. You'll feel that a lot less in Modern Warfare 4." Fighting at range requires more precision aiming than before, but Call of Duty is as lethal as it's always been once you're within sprinting distance of an enemy.

Consecutive Black Ops releases means Call of Duty has been saddled with hyper-mobility for two years. While I was certainly a fan of the omni-movement system within certain contexts, I was worried its introduction had defined a new direction for the wider franchise. IW has leveraged elements of this system to generate more fluid transitions around maps, and to give you new ways to change angles or adapt to pressure. So while you can't sprint, slide, or dive in any lateral direction like you could in BO7, you can now take advantage of backwards slides, mantle cancels, and faster climbing.

Combat Ready

I'm impressed with what Modern Warfare 4 is shooting for. I was able to play two multiplayer maps, and they are very in-keeping with the traditional Infinity Ward style – largely designed around three distinct lanes, promoting constant engagement and shifting momentums. There are some nice tweaks elsewhere too. The Riot Shield being reclassified as 'Equipment' and degrading through repeated use. There's now two Prestige paths, and IW is also very proud of a new Apex Attachment system – a set of unlocks that drastically transform a weapon's lethality and adaptability. Absurd incentives for weapon progression meet a more robust Gunsmith, enhanced customization, and a redesigned Create-a-Class system. There are more maps, modes, weapons, killstreaks, skins, and so it goes on and on.

All told, Modern Warfare 4 recalls memories of Call of Duty at its finest, albeit with a slick new-gen set of refinements, evolutions, and improvements. Beyond multiplayer, Infinity Ward has a lush campaign offering, following the exploits of Task Force 141 in the western hemisphere and a team of ordinary soldiers battling on the frontlines of a Korean war, and a returning DMZ mode that seems primed to take the fight right to Arc Raiders and Marathon. It's still early days, but I can't shake this feeling that Modern Warfare 4 couldn't have come at a better time for Call of Duty.

The series had clearly reached a breaking point. Back-to-back instalments of Black Ops and Modern Warfare titles created fatigue. Overbearing integration between mainline games and Warzone sowed frustration. There's a general sense that Sledgehammer and Treyarch (with three and two contributions this generation, respectively) haven't done enough to push the series forward – problematic as Arc Raiders, Battlefield 6, and a resurgent Overwatch offer competition elsewhere. But there's a quality to Modern Warfare 4 that is undeniable, and I'm desperate to play more.

Modern Warfare 4 is set to release on October 23 for PC, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox Series X. However, the new game for 2026 will no longer land day one on Xbox Game Pass.

Bungie knows that Destiny 2 players have worked their magic once more to deal a lot of damage in ways they shouldn't, but is happy to let it ride for one week before fixing it.

Having played Destiny and its sequel for many, many years, there are a few things you get used to. One is players breaking things to make farming a gun or armor piece easier, and the other is breaking things to make beating an enemy easier – which sometimes leads to getting a gun or an armor piece, coincidentally.

That in mind, it feels somewhat fated that Destiny 2's final update has led to players breaking stuff. This time around, a bug has been discovered that allows players to stack multiples of the same seasonal Artifact perks to achieve near-infinite damage.

Something like this was always going to happen in an update as large as Destiny 2's final one, but Bungie is stepping in regardless – someone has to think of the many monsters in the space MMO that have been turned into mere punching bags.

Like a teacher dealing with class in the last week of the term, Bungie says to enjoy it while it lasts because things will go back to normal soon.

"So, we've been seeing some interesting videos where Guardians are doing near infinite damage to bosses thanks in part to unintended Artifact perk stacking," the developer writes on Twitter. "Quite hilarious to watch, to be honest!

"While we're planning a fix (next week likely), we think this is a bit fun. Go ahead. Get out there, beat up on Atheon. Destroy some bosses. Do your thing."

Bungie goes on to note that Artifacts are being disabled in Crucible and Gambit to protect other players from, well, other players. But otherwise, developers are amused by the situation.

"All in all, it's Monument of Triumph," the post ends. "Do some crazy stuff. Send us your videos. Have some fun. Be Brave."

Funnily enough, speaking of Destiny 2 players doing what they do best, they have also managed to find a way to push bosses off a cliff, which means they're ending their time with the game exactly as they started it. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Destiny 2 and Bungie as a whole were "very close" to closing before Sony buyout, according to ex-community lead: "It was an emergency acquisition."

Call of Duty studio Treyarch has confirmed that Black Ops 1 and 2 will escape PS3 jail with new PlayStation ports coming in July.

In a Wednesday tweet that closely followed a post from fan account PlayStation Game Size, which teased incoming news for the first two Black Ops games, Treyarch says, "It's official: the original Black Ops and Black Ops 2 are being ported to PlayStation in July, courtesy of our partners at Iron Galaxy."

In a reply, Treyarch adds: "Both will include Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies."

Iron Galaxy is a large studio with a long history as a support and co-developer between some original releases. It's been a staple of Activision Blizzard's lineup for a while, contributing to the likes of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Overwatch. It also worked on versions of Bethesda games like Fallout 76 and Skyrim, and big PlayStation games like The Last of Us or Uncharted as they came to PC. Most recently, Iron Galaxy handled Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4.

Treyarch's post suggests Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 will receive fresh PS5 ports in July, though PlayStation Game Size indicated both PS4 and PS5 were in the works. PS4 games are supported by PS5, so both would make sense.

The studio's wording may sound odd since the Black Ops series launched on PlayStation – that is, the PlayStation 3, third of its name – alongside PC and Xbox 360 in the 2010s. However, due to differences in backwards compatibility and legacy support, which are somewhat complicated by the new Call of Duty umbrella launcher used for modern games, the first two Black Ops entries are still stuck in PS3 jail, with no way to play them on PS5. Xbox fans can play the original 360 versions on Xbox One and Series X/S.

There are understandable questions about where these ports will be priced after all these years. Black Ops 1 still goes for $40 on Steam when it's not on sale, for reference. If nothing else, it's fundamentally good to see more games become more accessible and keep up with new platforms, especially some of the more formative Call of Duty installments.

Black Ops vet says his mystery PlayStation project wasn't a live-service game, and even if Sony shutting down his studio "f***ing sucked" he reckons it's just because "times change".

On May 21, 2026, relatively unknown studio Kwalee Labs launched its cosmic horror bullet hell shooter Luna Abyss after seven long years of development. It seemed like people liked it quite a lot, but less than a month later, the entire development team has been laid off and the studio has been shut down.

At the time of writing, Luna Abyss has 86% positive Steam reviews and a "generally favorable" 81 rating on Metacritic, and if those metrics aren't convincing enough, GamesRadar+'s own Austin Wood called it "amazing." Unfortunately, the game's positive reception wasn't enough to save the entire Kwalee Labs team from being made redundant.

Studio CEO Hollie Emery announced the sad news on LinkedIn (thanks, Game Informer), expressing appreciation for players and directing potential recruiters to team members who are now looking for jobs.

"We're enamoured by the love and support it received both by our industry and critically by journalists and media," Emery says. "Whilst we faced many challenges along the way, it has been the highlight of our careers - and we are incredibly proud that it has finally seen the light of day (thank you to everyone who believed in us!).

"Unfortunately as of yesterday, the entire team has been made redundant; a decision that was completely outside of our control. As a result, the entire team are available for work as of today."

As I wrestle with flashbacks from Tango Gameworks' closure in 2024 shortly after the release of the excellent rhythm-based action Hi-Fi Rush, it's safe to say good reviews haven't been a reliable safety net for developers for quite some time now. Emery doesn't get into the specifics of Kwalee Labs' closure in her announcement, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it didn't meet sales expectations. The game was a day-one Game Pass drop and player counts on that platform aren't available, but data from SteamDB paints a frankly abysmal picture.

Luna Abyss puts you in the unfortunate shoes of a prisoner named Fawkes who's sent to explore an abandoned megastructure deep beneath the surface of the mimic moon Luna in search of technology left there by a lost colony. Ominously, "every move you make will be overseen by your artificial prison guard named Aylin," according to the game's official description.

You can still buy the game on all of the usual platforms for a modest price of $29.99. Sadly though, the likelihood of a sequel is extremely low now.

From Borderlands 4 to Battlefield 6, the best FPS games of 2025 are high-octane, frenetic experiences.

As part of its final update, Destiny 2 rolled out an updated version of the Pantheon raid challenge, which drops players into a gauntlet of souped-up boss fights. Like poetry in motion, players quickly set about cheesing the new Pantheon with a time-honored tradition: hurling raid bosses into the void.

As trusted Destiny 2 grinder Esoterickk shows, the Pantheon version of the Last Wish raid boss Morgeth can easily be ejected from the world like a cassette tape. Hilariously enough, this is probably one of the simplest and most consistent exploits in Destiny history.

All you need is the updated Ward of Dawn Titan Super and one of the newly released heavy crossbows. Summon the Ward of Dawn orb, embed a few crossbow bolts into it, then pick it up and melee attack Morgeth to send him soaring like a fly ball. I guess something about this setup just confounds the physics of the game engine.

"It sends them flying, and the encounter will complete. Can be farmed on 5 feats for loot and spoils," Esoterickk explains.

On Twitter, longtime Destiny 2 community manager dmg04 says, "It wouldn't be a Destiny release if you couldn’t bump a boss off a ledge."

From the moment Bungie introduced Destiny players to raids with the Vault of Glass, those players have had but one goal: optimize the encounters out of the encounters. Like a fictional rogue AI deducing that humans are the problem, Guardians looked at all the mechanics thoughtfully prepared by Bungie and thought, "What if we ignored all of those?"

So began a long history of cheese strategies, many of which have reduced some of the most powerful beings in the universe to wet blankets, punching bags, or more pertinently, ping pong balls. For the noble cause of effortless loot, I have trimmed the nails of dream dragons, smuggled six extra Guardians into lobbies, terrified bosses with vortex grenades, and even tricked the game into forgetting my very existence like it's a Skyrim guard who just received his second arrow to the head this afternoon. And until Bungie patches this one out, which it probably will because this kind of destroys the raid loot economy, I support any and all Morgeth space exploration.

Inspired by Dark Souls, former Destiny lead fought to add super tough enemies to the start of the game.

Depending on how much you have played the first Halo, one of Halo: Campaign Evolved's biggest changes may fly – or run – under the radar. I'm talking about sprinting: while Master Chief only had one pace in 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved, its upcoming remake will take cues from later Halo games and let the Spartan sprint.

It may not seem like it, but being able to run is a foundational change. Having played two levels from Halo: Campaign Evolved on Heroic difficulty, there were plenty of times where being able to sprint saved my life, from outrunning grenade blasts to reaching cover with a scrap of health left.

Silent running

Speaking to GamesRadar+ at Summer Game Fest 2026, creative director Max Szlagor says the team at Halo Studios has done "a lot of work" to ensure being able to sprint doesn't change the game in unintended ways. "There are some encounters that are quite dangerous if you try to get past them," he adds. I can vouch for that: I tried to sprint past the Covenant's in The Silent Cartographer's climactic escape sequence, with multiple attempts ending with me being hounded out of position and killed.

"Every encounter's hand-crafted, and we've thought about that space for all of the sandbox, the co-op experience, things like that," says Szlagor. "It's really just about making sure we dial in the mood, the intent, the feel – we really want to make sure it's there."

Szlagor also points to vehicles now being destructible. "You could lose your Warthog, or your tank, at various points in time. And some of these spaces are quite large, so you want to be able to traverse [quickly]," he explains. "It's very natural to want to get in and play as you might have played a modern Halo title, so that's really the inspiration."

Sprinting seems to have been implemented with newer fans in mind, but executive producer Damon Conn stresses that recapturing the original tone of Halo: Combat Evolved has been a guiding light to the team. "You will have the same feeling of dread when you meet the Flood at certain parts of the game, and sprint isn't going to give you any flexibility – other than having maybe a few more moves you can make," he warns. "But you are absolutely going to come to terms with the enemy that is there, and it will be spooky, but if you want to enable [challenge modifier] Skulls, you can go back to the way it was originally."

Paired with Halo: Campaign Evolved's other retroactively-added features – including weapons from later games and the ability to hijack vehicles – it feels like the remake is taking a cautious approach to revisiting the 2001 original. That scope speaks to Halo Studios' broader ambition – to get back in touch with Halo as it looks towards its next entry – but Conn says the team also wanted to be "truthful" to its source. "We're not trying to necessarily replace what Bungie did," he says. "We're just trying to build something that sits beside it."

"We didn't set out with this game to modernize for modernization's sake. We did a lot of intentional gameplay adjustments, or tuning, or development that actually sets us up with a great foundation for features [going forward]," he adds. "It's a bridge from the past to the future."

We've rated the best Halo games. Where does your favorite land?

The Destiny 2 Strange Leftovers left behind by Xur are all found at locations the enigmatic vendor of the Nine used to appear at. Obviously, if you've not played Destiny 2 in a very long time or are a relatively new player, you might not have any idea where to start looking across the EDZ, Nessus, and the Tower. To help you get this easy Monument of Triumph challenge done quickly, I've detailed the three locations you need to visit in Destiny 2 to find these Strange Leftovers.

Destiny 2 EDZ Strange Leftovers

Xur's Strange Leftovers in the EDZ are at the top of a cliff at the north end of the Winding Cove area. Head to the most northern point of the Winding Cove and you should spot a crashed Skiff at the top of a cliff. Use the climbable ledges to the right of the Skiff to ascend the cliff, then grab the leftovers at the top.

Destiny 2 Tower Strange Leftovers

To find the Strange Leftovers in the Tower, head down to the Hangar, then go left and pass all old faction equipment until you reach the stairwell near the Tower's edge. Climb up the first set of stairs and you'll find the Strange Leftovers by a desk.

While you're in the Tower, make sure you head to the Bazaar on the other side and grab Hawthorne's Deepsight quest for the Destiny 2 For the Bird Triumph, then go and find Archie's location in Destiny 2 and give him a pat for the Can You Pet the Dog? Triumph.

Destiny 2 Nessus Strange Leftovers

The Nessus Strange Leftovers are found up the giant tree in the Watcher's Grave area – conveniently, this is the same area where you can summon the Destiny 2 Assimilated Demolishers. From the Watcher's Grave landing zone, head straight forward towards the large tree, climb up it, then walk along the branch that points roughly back towards the landing zone. You'll find the Strange Leftovers tucked in a small nook.

Despite the Pieces of the Whole Triumph that you need these leftovers for also mentioning returning them to Xur, you don't actually need to do that, and collecting all three meals is enough to complete the challenge. Once you've done that, you can collect your reward of 15 Legendary Marks from your Journal for completing Pieces of the Whole.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Destiny 2 Assimilated Demolishers are Vex bosses that must be summoned on Nessus, and you must defeat all of them in the time limit to complete the Forcible Disconnect Triumph. It's a very simple challenge that will give you a good number of Legendary Marks upon completion, and all you need to know is how to actually get these bosses to appear. So, here's where you need to go to find and activate the Assimilated Demolishers.

Destiny 2 Assimilated Demolishers location

The trio of Assimilated Demolishers can be summoned by activating a Vex beacon in the Watcher's Grave area of Nessus. Travel to Watcher's Grave and go up the path to the Cabal land tank. On your right, you'll spot a white Vex conflux just beyond some Cabal machinery. Approach the conflux, then follow the button prompt to activate the Assimilated Demolisher Beacon.

This will immediately summon the three Destiny 2 Assimilated Demolisher bosses nearby and you'll have five minutes to defeat all three. There's nothing special about these Vex bosses other than that they have a lot of health. Killing all three in that time solo is very difficult but is much more achievable with even just one other person helping, so bring friends if you can! Otherwise, the only other advice I have is to fight the Wyvern first as it's the most aggressive and deadly of the bunch, then the Minotaur, then the Hydra.

If you do fail to kill the bosses in the time limit, you'll have to wait for the conflux beacon to recharge before you can activate it and try again. While you wait, make sure you collect the Destiny 2 Strange Leftovers from Xur's old spot on the big tree nearby.

Once all three Assimilated Demolishers have been defeated, you'll complete the Forcible Disconnect Triumph if you haven't already… and that's it. As far as I can tell, there are no loot chests or drops from this patrol encounter, but you will at least get 20 Legendary Marks when you cross off Forcible Disconnect from your Triumph list. You can also complete the Destiny 2 For the Bird Triumph and find out where Archie is in Destiny 2 for even more Marks that you can spend at the Monument of Triumph Tenet statues.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

If you're not having the best week, spare a thought for the devs on Marathon, who're dealing with yet another problem. Bungie's had to disable an entire facet of the futuristic shooter, due to an exploit where players couldn't be brought back after getting knocked out.

The issue stems from the Cryo Archive, a Destiny-like raid built as part of Marathon's endgame for a more intense PvP challenge and extra valuable rewards. Players have found they can't be revived when downed, creating what I can only imagine is a whole lot of frustration, but the devs are aware of the problem and working on a fix.

"As a precaution while we investigate why some players can't be revived, we have disabled access to Cryo Archive," a tweet from the official Marathon Twitter account reads. "We'll do our best to restore access as soon as we can figure out the issue and push out a fix."

Marathon season 2 kicked off just last week, and it's been hard going. Several bugs and glitches emerged soon after players began accessing the latest wave of additions, prompting more hotfixes from Bungie as the developers worked to put out all the fires.

Now, we have this, right in the middle of a central attraction in the neon FPS, amid a free week to tempt new players into the fray. In reaction, players are commiserating the state of the game. "It's impressive how dysfunctional this game has been for season 2," says a commenter on Reddit. "Good lord. This season has been a pre nerf wstr to the foot over and over again," another adds.

Let it not be forgotten, Bungie is juggling this with the demise of Destiny 2, as Monument of Triumph, the final update for the beloved MMO, came out this week. As reports circulate that substantial layoffs are coming for the studio, it appears the former home of Halo is struggling to catch a break right now.

Marathon Season 2 takes Bungie's brutal new shooter one step closer to PvE with a "Sponsored Survival" mode that's "more PVP-lite" and a "low-risk way to play"

Destiny world design lead Niles Sankey recalls that one of the game's early challenges was inspired by Dark Souls.

Maybe not as much in the modern era where we all know what a Souls game is, but the first Dark Souls was a magical moment. After the introduction boss area, you arrive in the Firelink Shrine, and I'd wager a lot of us didn't realize we had to go into the aqueduct behind us first thing, and instead ventured straight into the graveyard in front of us. In said graveyard, you'll inevitably have gotten rocked by a group of skeletons and pondered if the game was really this hard. But this was an important lesson in where not to go in this vast world.

Sankey recalls working on Destiny's Cosmodrome area and hiding mysterious areas behind high level enemies. After a fan mentioned the "skull health bar knights" (the Hollowed Knight enemy from the Destiny beta), Sankey reveals: "I specifically placed the 'skull health bar knights' in Cosmodrome for this reason. It was inspired from my experiences playing Dark Souls."

However, Sankey also says that he had to fight a lot to make sure these enemies stayed in the game. "There were situations where other devs would say 'These knights are too high level, this must be a bug. Delete them.' and I would say 'Nooo!!! Please leave them please, it's by design.'" But over ten years later, Sankey is "happy to know players still have fond memories of these guys."

He also teases a "really tragic but also funny development story about these Knights," but says it'll be saved for "another time."

Personally, I do have an appreciation for games that will let you get your ass kicked as a learning experience, but I am also ashamed to admit that those Dark Souls skeletons I mentioned earlier got around an hour or so of battering me before I realized what the game was trying to tell me.

Destiny 2 and Bungie as a whole were "very close" to closing before Sony buyout, according to ex-community lead: "It was an emergency acquisition."

For the first time in its decade-long run, Overwatch is finally giving its newest hero a proper rideable vehicle in the form of a kickass motorcycle that can Akira bike slide all over maps and also doubles as a huge, comical throwable.

Overwatch has never really included any drivable vehicles for the last 10 years, unless you count the flying nest that Jetpack Cat lounges on or things like skateboards that show up in a few emotes. That's all changing come June 16 when Overwatch Season 3: Into the Tiger's Den launches alongside the game's next menacing damage-based hero, Shion.

Shion already looks like an absolute battlefield bully mostly thanks to her kickass bike that can drift around tight corners, quickly cover large distances, and then deal a bucket of damage whenever you're ready to dismount. Smash Bros. Wario mains can rejoice! And even though you can't chomp up the vehicle if you're feeling peckish, one of Shion's major perks does let you recover health gradually while mounted. So, same difference?

But the rest of Shion's kit sounds just as lethal. Her dual pistols are locked to her primary fire, with each shooting out a three-round burst before alternating to the other. Her secondary fires an x-shaped volley, which you can tighten by holding the ability. She also has access to a quick dash that also dishes out overshield, the aforementioned bike, and an ultimate ability that has her rush in three directions like Marvel Rivals' Cloak and Dagger.

While we only recently got a look at Shion's kit and sleek design, she's been a pretty big presence in the game's lore for months. As the leader of the Hashimoto Clan – you know, the shady criminals that have been running Japan since the OG Overwatch days – she recently captured dear old Genji in a new short story. Which prompts the question: Big bike versus deflect... who wins?

Shion will be the seventh new Overwatch hero this year, with two more unnamed characters still to come. We've only seen a silhouette of the two remaining heroes, although one looks like another noir-style omnic, while the other resembles the bulky shape of D.Va's mech.

Uncharted 3 co-director and The Dragon Prince co-creator joins the Overwatch team, once again reigniting hopes for an animated show.

Major updates for Destiny 2 are now officially over, but the game and Bungie in its entirety were allegedly close to shutting down for good years earlier. According to a former community lead who used to work at the storied Destiny developer, Sony's $3.6 billion buyout was the corporate equivalent of deploying a parachute seconds before hitting the ground.

"Bungie was below the red line before the Sony acquisition," ex-community manager, Liana Ruppert, claims on social media. "If it wasn't acquired right then, the studio was very close to shutting its doors at the very least on Destiny. It was an emergency acquisition."

The Destiny and Marathon maker had split from its ex-publishing partner Activision a few years before its eventual 2022 acquisition, and I imagine self-publishing an MMO that grand and expansive wasn't a cheap undertaking. However, Bungie being in such scorching hot water at the time is somewhat surprising.

Destiny 2: Beyond Light, the expansion that preceded Sony's acquisition, was seemingly a huge boon for the game, and pre-orders for its next expansion, The Witch Queen, hit record highs. Player counts were also more or less consistent at the time, as well – or, at least, they were in comparison to how the game's been performing recently – according to SteamDB.

"Big shakeups are happening in the tech and gaming space – I'm not going to say what I think is going to happen because it really doesn't matter what I think to be honest, but I still see the community from the CM lens and the Marathon community is eating good," Ruppert adds. "Just remember how everything caught you by surprise, it's a humble reminder that the public really does have no idea what's going on (this applies to all studios).

"As somebody that knows exactly how that struggle can be the best thing you can do is support the studio in a way that feels good for you and learn tools to help you catch yourself when you feel like you're getting a little in the heavy side of thinking about things that you can't see or control so you don't kill the player passion inside of you. We have a lot of players that the passion died and they kept only going because it was feasible to do so, but passionless discourse is just noise."

Sony gave the iconic hit maker independence for a while post-acquisition, seemingly in the hopes that Bungie could help the publisher push out more live-service success stories. The company seemed a bit cooler on Bungie a couple of years after, and has more recently reported a $765 million impairment loss on the studio in the last financial year following its Marathon launch.

Bungie is now apparently in the process of pitching a new game with no Destiny 3 in sight and layoffs planned, according to a Bloomberg report. Here's hoping the affected staff can land on their feet – especially since Destiny 2's final update has been a home run.

"I am utterly livid": Destiny 2 lore master says secret scene reveals "the potential that was ahead" before the game abruptly ended.

Destiny 2's sendoff update, the Monument of Triumph, includes a hidden scene that seems to tee up what would have been the next big narrative saga had Bungie not ended development on the game. Resident lore scholar My Name is Byf, a near-household name who's spent years collating and explaining the main stories and deeper lore of Destiny, argues this plot thread indicates just how compelling Destiny 2 could have been if the game had been allowed to continue.

Destiny 2 spoilers ahead. But also, the game is dead, so does it really count?

In a moment shared online by Destiny Bulletin, our Guardian approaches Edge of Fate keystone character Lodi, now the speaker of the nebulous Nine, and finds a very different being puppeting him. This is credibly believed to be our first proper interaction with the Winnower, the granddaddy cosmic threat of Destiny 2's Darkness, which is the primal force opposite to the Light gifted by the Traveler. I'm simplifying a little but, I kind of have to.

The unknown voice insists that the Nine need us, the Guardians, "because I exist," and threatens a conflict to come. "Don't worry. When it's over, I won't abandon you," the voice concludes.

Some players have also been reading into the voice's final lines with hopes of future Destiny releases in their hearts – whether we are just getting glimpses of now-dead ideas once thought up by Bungie, or if this could be the seed of an experience that may one day exist outside of Destiny 2, if that's how it has to be.

"Take a breather," it says. "Take your libations. Let that vigor seep back into your bones. Get hungry." Given the tone of the Monument of Triumph, and the many mixed emotions in the air amid this bittersweet finale, it's perhaps dangerously easy to favorably read this as a bit of a fourth wall break: enjoy your rest after defeating the Witness, but know that the Winnower is still out there. However, Bungie has made it abundantly clear that Destiny 2 is done.

Byf, who's spent more time poring over Destiny lore than almost anyone, says, "I have seen the cutscene in question. No spoilers in this thread. I am utterly livid.

"The devs who worked so hard on Destiny for years, who knew where things were going and the potential that was ahead," he continues. "They all deserved so much better."

The type and shape of the content in the Monument of Triumph makes it clear that a lot of this stuff was not originally planned as a sendoff for the game, to say nothing of the Nine plotline kindled in the last big expansion and now abruptly severed. We can only speculate as to when Bungie shifted from "get this stuff ready" to "get this stuff into the game before we turn the lights off," but it does feel like we've gotten a preview of what at least the next year or two might have covered.

Byf adds: "I love that the story has been told at all, but there were clearly greater plans. Magnificent, majestic plans. But all that potential has been squandered. The devs all deserved better than this. They deserved to tell this story."

Echoing hundreds of thousands of players calling for Destiny 3 online, he concludes, "Greenlight D3 already."

BioShock 2 team nearly made "Destiny before Destiny existed" with one canceled 2K game, ex-dev says: "I wanted to make that game so badly".

As the debate around generative AI in game development surges in the wake of controversies in games like Kingdom Hearts 4, Crazy Taxi: World Tour, and 1666: Amsterdam, a veteran Halo artist is warning developers against relying on the tech for creative direction.

Eddie Smith, a former Bungie employee and freelance artist who contributed to the original Halo trilogy, tells FRVR he saw AI's mask slip while working on the Las Vegas Sphere production of The Wizard of Oz. In order to wrap the original 4:3 frame film around the venue's massive 16K spherical screen, the production team reportedly used generative AI to create some of the art that would fill the gaps, but quickly found the process more cumbersome than it was worth.

"When they started it, of course, they thought the AI would do a lot of it," Smith says. "And they realized, no, the AI is really, it just does what you teach it to do. I look at AI almost like a toddler, an extremely advanced toddler, who's just learned how to talk and obey standard instructions. But they're still a really small child and they constantly have to be reinforced and read."

Ultimately, Smith says, human-made art was used in every frame of the production, as even with AI tools, extensive manual touch-ups were required just as they would've been had humans been doing the art from the beginning.

"I got to see what the monster looked like up close and then it, ironically, pun intended, it was like The Wizard with the curtained pulled back," Smith says. "It's like, 'Oh, okay. AI is not really that smart.'"

Of course, anyone who's looked at an image of AI-generated art for more than a short glance knows exactly what Smith is talking about. There's an uncanny quality to AI-generated imagery that's unmistakable, not to mention a conspicuously common problem getting right the amount of fingers and toes people tend to have on their hands and feet.

On the games side, a major controversy is the use of generative AI for concept art. Baldur's Gate 3 studio Larian found itself in hot water last year for embracing that very idea for its new Divinity RPG, but after facing severe backlash, reversed its stance entirely. After Crimson Desert became the latest example of AI-generated concept art allegedly slipping into the final game, Mewgenics co-creator Tyler Glaiel slammed the practice and said "that's where you want to be the most creative."

Smith would seem to agree, arguing that concept art creation is part of the foundational creative vision for a game, and that only humans are capable of forming that vision.

"They're gonna get a rude awakening because I was already part of that process," he says, adding, "I saw them go through that arc. I saw them realize, 'Oh, we're going to need to hire artists to do this.'"

It sounds like Smith is willing to accept the use of AI in some capacities, and some would argue that its presence is unavoidable, but he advises game developers to have a very strong, human-made vision for their projects – at most, something for AI to support rather than formulate.

"Unless you know what you're doing, AI is not going to help you," he says. "All the problems that people have had in games and the reasons why they don't finish games, AI is not going to solve that. AI is going to help you not finish games even more. If you're the type of art director who doesn't know what they want, you still won't know what you want."

"There is a limit to progress based on price": In today's AI hardware disaster, Stellar Blade Blood Rain devs prioritize "making the game playable" for as many people as possible

Complete the Destiny 2 Oblation: Bloodline mission and you'll get Cull's Shadow, an Exotic Fusion Rifle and Weapon of Sorrow. However, it's not a quest that's simply given to you. The steps you have to take to unlock the first Oblation mission can be more time-consuming than the mission itself as you need to investigate Hive objects all over the Moon first. Only after that can you begin the mission, which is thankfully quite straightforward and means unlocking Cull's Shadow isn't that difficult - it just takes a while. To help you get through the whole thing as smoothly as possible, here's a full guide on how to unlock and complete Oblation: Bloodline in Destiny 2 to get Cull's Shadow.

How to unlock Destiny 2 Oblation

Before getting started with unlocking the Oblation mission in Destiny 2, you must have one of the four Weapons of Sorrow equipped – those are Thorn, Osteo Striga, Touch of Malice, and Necrochasm, with Thorn being the easiest to obtain as any player can get it from the Monument to Lost Light provided they have enough Glimmer and one Exotic Cipher.

So, with one of the above weapons in hand, here's what you need to do to unlock Oblation: Bloodline, the first in a series of Oblation missions:

1. Play through the Scarlet Keep Strike on the Moon as normal until you reach the Hashladun boss fight at the end. Draw your Weapon of Sorrow and shoot the three green Hive symbols around the arena to lower the main gate.
2. Defeat Hashladun, then go through the gate and into the room on the right where you'll find a Hive crystal. Follow the button prompt to investigate it, which will reveal several locations on the Moon map you need to search.

3. Head to each marked location and use the Soulfire Network Frequency indicator to home in on a dead Syndicate trooper that you need to examine. This will then give you a vague clue to a different location, with a trail of dead Syndicate troopers roughly guiding you. Here's where to look for each location:

• Archer's Line: The trooper is in the crater in the middle of this area. Afterwards, head to the Shrine of Oryx via the Hive doorway on the east side of the area. You'll reach the Hall of Wisdom first, at which point you need to take the first left to find the tunnel to the Shrine of Oryx.
• Anchor of Light: Find the dead trooper on top of a small building that's part of the colony structure in the north of the area. Next, go down to the Temple of Crota using the path in the east.
• Hellmouth: Go to the main Hellmouth entrance to find the dead trooper, then descend to the Chamber of Night. To get there, follow the downward path and then bear right once you reach the Circle of Bones. Pass through the door to reach the World's Grave, then carry on down the dark tunnel to reach the Chamber of Night.
• Sorrow's Harbor: The dead trooper is on a raised area on the northern edge of the location and west of the bridge into the Scarlet Keep. After examining, you'll be directed to the K1 Revelations Lost Sector.

4. Upon reaching the ends of these four trails, you'll find a small force of Cabal soldiers (or the Lost Sector boss in the case of K1 Revelations) guarding a doorway locked by Hive symbol seals. Draw your Weapon of Sorrow and green Hive symbols will appear in the surrounding area, as in the Scarlet Keep Strike.
5. Following the door seal symbols from top to bottom, shoot the corresponding green symbols with your Weapon of Sorrow to unseal the door and reveal another Hive crystal to investigate.

6. Head back to Sorrow's Harbor and make your way inside the tunnel that runs under the bridge into the Scarlet Keep, which can be accessed below the east side of the bridge. In this tunnel you'll find a door from which you can begin the Oblation: Bloodline Exotic Mission, although you should now be able to launch it from the Moon map.

Now that you've got the Oblation Exotic Mission unlocked in Destiny 2, you can complete it to get Cull's Shadow.

How to get Cull's Shadow in Destiny 2

The Oblation: Bloodline mission in Destiny 2 isn't particularly long or difficult, which makes getting Cull's Shadow quite easy. Here's a walkthrough of everything you need to do:

1. Head downward through the Necropolis, then find the Cabal control panel and follow the 'Override Safety Protocols' button prompt to get started.
2. Destroy the Cooling Tower Control Fuses and Cooling Pillars: Start by shooting the three glowing fuses in the large pipes near the control panel, then destroy the four heat vents on the nearby Cooling Pillar.

3. Use the nearby cannon to get fired over to the next area, override another control panel, then repeat step 2 to destroy the remaining two Cooling Pillars.
4. Head inside the nearby control room with the Totality Xenoexcavator miniboss and overload the mining laser using the console.
5. Brave the Tunnels: For the first part carved out by the mining laser, you just need to head up. Use the tunnels to reach elevated areas that you can use to jump to other ledges, until you eventually go through a tunnel that leads to the Soulfire Crux area.
6. Use the bridges, towers, and hanging coffin-like objects to traverse this chasm area until you reach an enclosed bridge going across with barred windows. Hop over to the other side of it to find an open window, then go left and down the stairs. There's a hole in the broken steps you can fit through, which leads down to the next area.
7. Extinguish the Soulfire Barrier: Kill the three Pyre Matron Wizards then punch the Soulfire Vessel to death, giving you a timed effect called Soulfire Charge. Jump into any one of the three large bowls nearby to remove the effect and partly extinguish the barrier.

8. Repeat this twice using the Soulfire Vessels in the left and right rooms to fully extinguish the Soulfire Barrier, letting you move to the final boss arena.
9. Defeat Tau'rig, the Corrupted: Shoot Valus Tau'rig until he transforms into Tau'rig, the Corrupted, then wait for him to go towards one of three large bowls. As in the previous step, find the Soulfire Vessel (it will be either in the left or right room or by the entrance to this arena), kill the nearby Wizards, punch the Vessel, then dunk the Soulfire Charge into the bowl that Tau'rig is next to. His shield will go down, letting you damage him.

10. When his shield returns, he'll go to one of the other soulfire bowls, letting you repeat the process to break his shield again and kill him.

With Tau'rig defeated, Cull's Shadow is yours. It's an Exotic kinetic-damage Fusion Rifle that can be used to melee enemies and deal additional damage thanks to exploding crystals and viral corruption, like Thorn and Osteo Striga.

Now that you've completed Oblation: Bloodline, you'll also have access to the next Exotic Mission in the chain, Oblation: Soulfed, which takes you deeper into the Moon. When you select Oblation from the Moon map, select the 'customize' option and make sure you choose Soulfed from there. And that's not all as there's more after Soulfed too, letting you unlock all the Exotic Catalysts for Cull's Shadow.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The Destiny 2 Strange Signal part of the Distortions quest isn't the most straightforward, tasking you with searching a vague area for some distorted foes. It's all part of the Distortions system added with the Monument of Triumph update where destinations can be affected by said distortions for a limited time, during which you loot Strange Matter. Gather enough of the stuff and it'll transform into a Strange Signal that can lead you to some admittedly quite good loot. To help you complete the Distortions quest and understand how Strange Signals work in Destiny 2, I've explained every quest step below.

Destiny 2 Distortions quest walkthrough

Once you've grabbed the Destiny 2 Distortions quest from Ikora in the Tower, here's what you need to do to get and use the Strange Signal and complete the mission:

1. Speak to Lodi at the far end of the Tower Bazaar. If you're wondering where Archie is in Destiny 2, he's right next to Lodi!
2. Head to the destination that is currently affected by distortions. Look for the red icon on the Destinations menu and hove your cursor over the destination to see how much longer the distortions will last on that location as you may need to move mid-quest.
3. Complete a Destiny 2 Public Event on the distortions-affected destination. This will then activate a Distortion Breach event.
4. Complete the Distortion Breach by destroying the red Distorted Corruption growths then defeating waves of distorted enemies before time runs out. Loot the chest at the end to move onto the next quest step.
5. Collect 50 Strange Matter. This red crystalline resource can drop when defeating distortion-corrupted enemies, harvesting destination materials, and opening destination chests. Once you've got 50, they will combine into a Strange Signal.
6. Check the map of the Distorted Destination for a circular search area icon called 'Strange Signal' and head over there. Make sure you check the entire map as this area may not be visible at first. For example, my Strange Signal led to The Breach area in the very south of the Cosmodrome.

7. Defeat the Shield of the Distorted boss at the Strange Signal location, then loot the nearby chest. I got an Ascendant Alloy and a Tier-5 Legendary weapon from it, so hopefully you get something equally good too.

And that's the end of the Distortions quest in Destiny 2, so now you know how distortions work and what you can do with Strange Matter and the Strange Signals they form into to get good loot!

Speaking of good loot, make sure you also unlock and complete the Destiny 2 Oblation exotic mission to get Cull's Shadow, a new Exotic Fusion Rifle for the Monument of Triumph update. There are plenty of other challenges to complete for this update, including the Destiny 2 For The Bird Triumph, which requires you to complete a Raid-related quest from Hawthorne.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Warframe is commemorating Destiny 2 with an upcoming in-game reward made in honor of the MMO as Bungie releases its final big update.

Destiny 2 waved goodbye with its final update that dropped earlier this week. Although it'll remain playable, Monument of Triumph marks the long-running game's supposedly last piece of new content, and with no current plans for Destiny 3 at the studio, the update could potentially be the entire series' last hurrah for years to come.

But Warframe's not letting Destiny 2 sail into the Undying Lands without throwing it some figurative flowers. In response to one fan asking for a commemorative player title, Warframe director Rebb Ford tweeted that the team would "figure something out as fast as we can" a few days ago.

Alas, a few days later, Ford has made good on her promise: "On June 17, players can play an Alert on Telesto to Make Their Own Fate in Warframe. More details to follow," she writes alongside a screenshot of a new Honoria, Make Your Own Fate.

Fans also celebrate the fact that the new alert would take place on Telesto, which is also a pivotal location in Destiny lore and is the Saturn moon the game's iconic fusion rifle is named after, making this an extra sweet tribute to Bungie's MMO FPS.

"Shout out to Warframe folks sending kind words and love to Guardians," Destiny's principal communications manager, Dylan 'dmg04' Gafner, also writes. "Love seeing communities sharing stories and love for their games."

This isn't the first time Warframe devs have honored Destiny 2 – the looter shooter developers themselves previously noted how Bungie's shooter had an outsized impact on their work. "There is no Warframe without the legacy of Bungie games," Ford wrote in response to the game's final update. "Destiny was and is a force of nature, loved and held in the hands of so many people who, for a moment, were part of the biggest thing in gaming."

While Destiny 2's sudden end is sad, at least the game is going out on top. Players turned up to say goodbye in numbers not seen since Destiny 2's The Final Shape expansion, and the shooter even managed to top Steam's top-sellers chart for a while.

For now, Bungie's working on seasonal updates for Marathon and is reportedly pitching new projects. Layoffs are also planned, it's claimed.

Destiny 2 finally has the all-in-one collection Bungie should've released years ago, and it's just $25 right now.

Running a playtest of any kind can be extremely illuminating. In the case of Sand: Raiders of Sophie, an upcoming extraction shooter that borrows the roving fortress concept from Howl's Moving Castle, a public session has led the devs to change the release plan entirely.

The FPS recently held a server slam on the back of being shown at Summer Game Fest 2026, leading to a larger windfall of findings than expected. "We've spent many hours on our chats and in forums digesting the feedback and evaluating ideas on features, balancing, and the general game direction," developers Hologryph and TowerHaus say in an update on Steam.

"It's clear we need to more closely involve the community in our development," they add. "And so we've decided to release into Early Access to work towards the best possible version of Sand: Raiders of Sophie."

Originally, the game was going to come out today, June 10, but those plans have been altered to an early access release on June 22. The added time will allow for some infrastructure changes, as the team says they "can't reliably serve enough players" under the current regime.

The data gleaned from the slam has allowed them to fix "many" of the main problems, but there are still more to get, and from the sounds of things, the popularity highlighted others that weren't as obvious. A "comprehensive roadmap" will come with the playable launch, as well. "The game and all of you deserve a proper launch," the update reads.

Taking place on a desert planet - the eponymous Sophie - Sand involves building and customizing your walking base in order to scavenge around for loot, competing against the harsh landscape and other players. The weapons and aesthetic are Western-themed, making it feel like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop with a little bit of Dune. I can see it doing well, should it be stable enough.

"The community is the core of this game," the post finishes, "and seeing the passion and hundreds of hours put in from players during playtests, we believe it’s important to listen to you. You said it loud and clear: fix the issues, and listen to us. Roger."

"I saved you all": Path of Exile 2 player sacrifices rare level 100 character to give everyone else a free skill point as world-first "Martyr of the First Edict"

Alongside Destiny 2's final update, Bungie has released an all-in-one bundle collecting every last piece of premium content for the MMO, and with a hefty discount, it's among the best ways you can spend $25 right now.

Destiny 2: The Collection is now available on all platforms (on Steam here, for easy browsing). Even at $70, it offers reasonable savings and a ton of fantastic experiences. At $25, it's a steal – nearly a decade of fun for less than what I've paid for individual expansions. It's still confusing, with activities like dungeons and raids piecemealed out, but at least you can buy everything in one go. Here's what you get:

• Forsaken pack (20 Exotic weapons, some Exotic armor, Shattered Throne dungeon, Last Wish raid)
• Shadowkeep pack (15 Exotic weapons, Scarlet Keep Nightfall Strike, Pit of Heresy dungeon, Garden of Salvation raid – Shadowkeep campaign not included as it's open to all players)
• Beyond Light pack (over 15 Exotics, two Nightfalls, Deep Stone Crypt raid - campaign not included as it's likewise available to everyone)
• Bungie 30th Anniversary Pack (Gjallarhorn Exotic rocket launcher, suite of cosmetics, Grasp of Avarice dungeon)
• The Witch Queen expansion
• Lightfall expansion
• The Final Shape expansion
• The Edge of Fate expansion
• Star Wars-themed Renegades mini-expansion
• Dungeon Key pack (lets you play the other dungeons in the game)

This collection does come with caveats for new players, many of them at the root of the game's death. Also, that's the big one: development of Destiny 2 has ended, so the game is frozen in time.

Additionally, Destiny 2's original campaigns, up to and including the beloved Forsaken expansion, are no longer in the game. This obviously makes it more difficult to get into the story, all but requiring some help from YouTube summaries.

Bungie deleted this paid content outright, or replaced it with those trimmed-down "packs" that basically just preserve some gear and activities, and shuffled it into the Destiny Content Vault, a technical half-measure so damning that it's a wonder the game survived it.

The DCV's release was a decision that frustrated everyone, including Bungie: hack off parts of the game, or run into enormous technical problems that seemingly could've killed the whole thing – and, arguably, did in the long run. Over the years, I spoke to several Destiny developers who expressed hopes that they'd find ways around the DCV through tech and engine upgrades made under the hood, but those never materialized and the game has been forever left with huge holes. I realize that every game and engine is unique, but it remains baffling to see Destiny 2 unable to stay content-complete in a world where the likes of Warframe and World of Warcraft exist.

The thin silver lining is that Destiny 2's Light and Darkness saga, which is basically just the story of the game now, was only truly codified in the Beyond Light expansion onward, so those are the key bits.

You may have deduced that I have my misgivings with how Destiny 2 was handled despite being a thousands-of-hours fan. Let's just rip the band-aid off: Destiny 2 may have the single worst new-player experience in the history of MMOs, and it's never going to get better now that the game is dead.

A big part of that is just how expensive and confusing it has been to buy the game, with high and unintuitive costs putting a big wall in front of would-be Kinderguardians. I was able to jump into Final Fantasy 14 without issue because all I had to do was press the "buy everything" button. Destiny 2 has never really had that – until now, of course.

"Better late than never" doesn't even begin to cover it, but Destiny 2 is too good to rot in perpetuity. Most of the campaigns and end-game activities are so fun that everyone with a passing interest in the history and future of shooters should give them a go, and frankly it still has the best gunplay ever crafted. Not bad for $25.

Destiny 2 shoots to the top of Steam's top sellers as fans of the MMO jump in for the final update, hoping Sony and Bungie might change course.

Returning to Halo's first campaign via its upcoming remake, Halo: Campaign Evolved, I'm struck by how quickly the now 25-year-old sci-fi shooter series found its footing. Everyone has their preferred entry – mine is Halo 3: ODST, though Halo: Reach won when we ranked the best Halo games – but no matter your favorite, it's likely you can trace its best bits back to the first Halo with surprising clarity.

Halo: Combat Evolved dared to be bigger and bolder than many of its contemporaries at the time, realizing vast sci-fi setpieces while developer Bungie honed in on the moment-to-moment action that strung its levels together. Campaign Evolved takes a light touch to the original, developer Halo Studios opting for a glossy Unreal Engine 5 makeover with little in the way of mechanical tweaks. The result lets that original vision shine – often to resounding success, but on occasion leaving me to wonder whether this $50 do-over goes far enough in putting Halo's best foot forward.

Old Spartan, new tricks

Beginning four missions in, with Master Chief leading a beach assault upon the titular Halo superweapon's surface, Campaign Evolved's updated graphics make an instant impression. The beachhead is lush and tropical, with ray-traced sunbeams adding liveliness to turquoise waters and Pelican gunships alike, but the original game's sharp lines still poke through. I like that Halo Studios hasn't crammed window-dressing into every nook: space has been left for the more emergent details, from grenade scorchmarks to ragdolled bodies and discarded weapons. It's a small touch, but helps to preserve the game's arcade-y side.

Other parts of Campaign Evolved feel exactly as they did. Some shootouts felt like puzzles, in the sense that they were so overwhelmingly challenging on Heroic difficulty that I felt like there could only be a 'magic' solution to surviving. The answer, always, was to fight smarter and harder – working within the thin margins of Master Chief's limited shield to dish out damage, finishing targets before their shields could regenerate and knowing when to duck for cover. Letting your shield regenerate is a rare luxury, as the Covenant's alien forces are oppressive. Even later in the preview, when I'd traded open beaches for narrow Forerunner corridors, Elites still found smart ways to flank and press my cover while Grunts and shielded Jackals kept the Chief pinned.

Aggression begets aggression, and in true Halo spirit I was encouraged to lean into the chaos. Grenades are powerful but scarce enough to keep handy for Brutes and Arbiters, and limited ammo meant I often had to ricochet between corpses in firefights, scooping up a plasma rifle and emptying its rounds until darting for the nearest replacement. The magnum has been kept as powerful as it was in the original, and if you're wondering whether it's still as much fun to pop Grunts with it… Do you really need to ask?

Having handled our Marathon review earlier in the year, I'm surprised by how much Bungie's latest shooter has primed me to play Halo: Campaign Evolved. The latter's mysterious ringworld sparks the same curiosity as Tau Ceti IV, both of which feel like ancient history and the distant future at once. It's refreshing to come back to the beginning – partly to see the likes of the Covenant and Flood as fresh threats again, and partly because the first game enjoyed a more endearingly hammy tone than its successors.

But with Bungie long-gone from Halo, it's strange to see Microsoft lead the series' 25th anniversary celebrations with a stripped-back remake. Given Halo Studios ditched head-to-head multiplayer to focus wholly on Halo's campaign, I would have liked to see the developer show more confidence in its stewardship of the series by pushing the remake further. The original's issues with backtracking and repetitive corridors were visible in the first mission I played (The Silent Cartographer), and given those problems get worse from there in the 2001 game's campaign, it seems strange to offer such a lavish visual touch-up but leave the same hang-ups for newcomers to stumble into.

Make no mistake, I still had a lot of fun blasting through the Halo remake. The decision to add weapons from later games made for an excellent twist in The Silent Cartographer, as I was able to cut through Elites with an Energy Sword rather than play coyly from cover. Similarly, Assault on the Control Room benefits from the Chief being able to hijack vehicles – I spent more time than I'd care to admit trying to squeeze a stolen Banshee indoors to get my money's worth. Campaign Evolved excels when it uses new tricks like these to build upon the old, and while the remake's scope remains on the timid side based on what I've seen so far, there's still enough here to sell me on a co-op playthrough when it launches next month.

Besides Campaign Evolved, here are all the upcoming Xbox Series X games still to come

The Destiny 2 For The Bird Triumph for the Monument of Triumph update is quite annoying as it requires a lot of work for not a whole lot in return. The work being completing a Deepsight quest you need from Hawthorne that tasks you with completing the entirety of the Vault of Glass. The rewards aren't especially spectacular at first, but compelting this Triumph will unlock the ability to purchase the previously time-limited Chatterwhite shader that was also tied to the Vault of Glass in Destiny 1. Below I've explained everything you need to know to complete For The Bird in Destiny 2.

Destiny 2 For The Bird Triumph walkthrough

The 'For The Bird' Triumph in Destiny 2 requires you to complete a weekly Deepsight quest from Hawthorne. Start by speaking to her in the Tower Bazaar, then collect the 'Fated Deepsight' quest that requires you to complete all encounters in the Vault of Glass Raid. You may need to go to the next page of her vendor inventory to see this quest! While you're in the area, make sure you speak to Ikora and pick up the Destiny 2 Distortions quest too.

Hawthorne also has Deepsight weekly quests for other Raids, but since Vault of Glass is free for all players it's the most convenient one to complete (Last Wish and Garden of Salvation won't be available to you unless you have both the Forsaken Pack and Shadowkeep Pack respectively), and it's arguably the easiest of the bunch too.

After that, it's just a matter of completing all five encounters in Vault of Glass, as the quest says: Activate the confluxes to get inside the Vault; solve the Oracle sequence puzzle; defeat the Templar; reach the Glass Throne and defeat the Gatekeepers; then defeat Atheon to complete the Raid.

This will automatically complete the Fated Deepsight quest and remove it from your quest log, with your reward being a free Deepsight weapon (one with a red border around its icon) that you can use to gain progress for its weapon crafting pattern. Completing the quest also means you can claim the For The Bird Triumph to get 15 Legendary Marks and unlock the Chatterwhite shader (the one you could get from Vault of Glass back in Destiny 1) for purchase at the Tenet of Death in the Tower Courtyard.

Unfortunately, Chatterwhite costs 25 Legendary Marks, so you'll need an extra 10, which you can get easily by finding the Destiny 2 Archie location and giving him a pat for the 'Can You Pet the Dog?' Triumph. While you're in the Tower, head to the hangar and collect the Destiny 2 Strange Leftovers in Xur's old spot for a different Triumph and more Marks.

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If you're wondering where Archie is in Destiny 2, he's moved to a more comfortable location in west of the Tower for the Monument of Triumph update, so he won't be where you expect if you haven't played in a while – if you've not played Destiny 2 in several years, you might not even know who this cheerful robot dog is! The 'Can You Pet the Dog?' Triumph is a nice and easy one to complete for easy Legendary Marks, so here's where you need to look to find and pet Archie in Destiny 2.

Destiny 2 Archie location

Archie is found at the far end of the Tower Bazaar next to Lodi. From the Tower Courtyard, head right and follow the path down towards the Bazaar, then keep running straight until you go through a tall archway and reach a balcony area covered with red rugs and sheets. Atop the lounge decking in this area is where you'll find Archie and Lodi.

Approach Archie and follow the 'Activate Good Boy Protocol' button prompt to complete the 'Can You Pet the Dog?' Triumph. Make sure you claim the reward of 10 Legendary Marks by opening the Journey menu, then checking the Monument of Triumph page – it's found within the 'Tower' section of the 'Stories' tab.

10 Legendary Marks can't buy you much at the four Tenet statues in the Tower Courtyard, but cross off some of the other Triumphs from the list and you'll quickly be able to afford exclusive armor ornaments, weapons, and shaders. If you're after the Chatterwhite shader, you'll need to complete the Destiny 2 For The Bird Triumph first, which involves speaking to Hawthorne who is conveniently close to Archie. Head to the other side of the Tower and you can also find one of Xur's Destiny 2 Strange Leftovers for a different Triumph.

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Players are making sure Destiny 2 goes out with a bang. As the final update rolls out on the shooter, it's had a sudden surge through the ranks of Steam, with fans hoping to send Sony a message about the first-person shooter's popularity.

Monument of Triumph, the last major patch for Destiny 2, is now out, capping off almost nine years of work for Bungie on the cosmic FPS. Intended as a swansong, it's drawn in lapsed members of the community as well the diehards, pushing the game through the charts of Valve's marketplace.

At time of writing, Destiny 2 is the number one top seller on Steam, usurping the almighty Counter-Strike 2. Not only that, it has two other spots in the top five as well, as the expansions Renegades and The Edge of Fate are in places third and fifth, respectively.

Even with heavy discounts on everything Destiny-related, those are some decent numbers, to say the least. The concurrent player count has shot up as well, at 167,867 on Steam, which is over half of the MMO's all-time record. And, as fans were quick to point out, that's more than double Marathon's peak concurrent player count on Steam since launch.

So many are trying to get in for one more go, there are reports of server problems. Again, these numbers are just for PC, too; include PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S players and you've another stratosphere entirely. This kind of excitement does tend to be a double-edged sword for the infrastructure, as servers are stretched to capacity, and beyond.

There are sides of the fandom who're hoping this will all reverberate from Bungie up to Sony, and convince the corporation to invest more in the studio and Destiny as a whole. "The big thing is Sony is seeing that Destiny can still make money, something Marathon has failed to do," writes one player on Reddit.

"This whole situation is extra baffling today seeing these numbers," another commenter says. "Absolute buffoons for ceasing Destiny support," a third Redditor comments.

I wouldn't hold my breath on any of this bringing us closer to Destiny 3. But for now, it's clear the people who love Destiny 2 aren't going down quietly.

Destiny 2 bug that destroys bosses in "a few well-placed shots" disabled by Bungie ahead of the MMO's last update: "We want to ensure your experiences aren't trivialized."

Destiny 2 is really ending, huh. Bungie's recently announced Monument of Triumph update, a caution-to-the-wind blowout marking the end of active development on one of the most influential games of the past decade, is out today, June 9. Destiny 2 players have answered the call, turning out in numbers not seen since the beloved Final Shape expansion.

SteamDB shows that Destiny 2's concurrent Steam player count has jumped to 165,856 at the time of writing (up 9,000 from when I started writing this article) following characteristic queue issues. This makes the Monument of Triumph the most active Destiny 2 update since summer 2024, which nearly matched the all-time player peak of 316,750.

Bear in mind, Destiny 2 was in such dire shape that, for nearly all of 2026, it's averaged well under 20,000 concurrent players on Steam. On May 4, it was sitting at roughly 12,851. The big sendoff – packed with balance changes, updated loot, new abilities, reprised activities, and a festive farewell – has clearly resonated.

This is, of course, bittersweet. To get Destiny 2 players to actually come back, all Bungie had to do was kill the game. That's a little harsh, but it's just plain true. The Monument of Triumph is packed with excellent changes and outright corrections that many players wanted well over a year ago, but it's demonstrably too late.

The Destiny 2 servers will stay on for the foreseeable future – heck, even Destiny 1 is still playable – but there are no more updates coming barring minor technical hotfixes. The aspirational element, the excitement and anticipation of summiting the next mountain, is gone. This is it.

In the background, Marathon, now Bungie's only active game, is once again in a slow decline following the start of Season 2, which peaked at under half of the game's launch boom (itself already smaller than the crowd that the free beta drew). Some fun new content, improved progression, and a free-to-play week have boosted the game, but increasingly it feels like Marathon just doesn't have the legs of an evergreen hit. It remains unmatched as a game for sickos, though.

Meanwhile, mourning Destiny 2 players are desperately asking Bungie and owner Sony to greenlight development of Destiny 3, which, to be completely and utterly clear, is not in the works. Bungie has not announced any new projects. All it has said is that it's begun incubating potential ideas. A related Destiny 3 petition has over 373,000 signees, which is a solid turnout for this kind of movement, but given Bungie's position, we may as well ask the stars in the sky.

Destiny 2 bug that destroys bosses in "a few well-placed shots" disabled by Bungie ahead of the MMO's last update: "We want to ensure your experiences aren't trivialized."

Just because Destiny 2 is ending its updates doesn't mean Bungie is going to let game-breaking exploits slide. A powerful combo that lets players decimate any bosses in the cosmic FPS is being dismantled as the dev team prepares for the game's final bow.

Members of the community have realized that using Howl of the Storm, a Titan Aspect, in conjunction with a Hunter's Golden Gun can take apart more or less every big encounter available in the shooter. "A few well-placed shots" is all it takes, according to Bungie, and the studio's putting an end to it.

"With Monument of Triumph launching" today, Bungie is "disabling Howl of the Storm," the studio says on Twitter. "Even if we're not shipping a new raid, MoT invites you to visit a large slate of endgame content, the new Pantheon lineup, and even Gambit!"

As the swan song for Destiny 2, Monument of Triumph is a huge moment for the game and its fanbase. Even without a raid, it sounds like there's going to be plenty to explore – the patch notes alone will take half a day to go through – and the fun would be deflated if you can turn most of the enemies into Swiss cheese.

"We generally want to avoid disabling abilities or weapons," Bungie says, and "especially for days" like this, "but we want to ensure your experiences aren't trivialized by the bug.

"We'll get this fixed up as soon as possible," the company continues. "If anything comes up during testing or validation leading to a delay, or we're able to move the fix up to an earlier release date, we'll let you know."

Monument of Triumph goes live today, June 9. If you want a final hurrah with Destiny 2, now is the time, and then you can join the chorus hoping for Destiny 3.

Destiny 2 lead says the final update won't just fade out: "Yes, there's story, yes, we get to say goodbye."

It's an odd moment for the industry right now, as we prepare for Halo: Campaign Evolved to launch on not just the Xbox Series X/S, but the PlayStation 5 as well. Master Chief's struggle against the Covenant is not exclusive to the green brand any more, to the point publicity is actively using Sony's hardware.

Summer Game Fest 2026 gave us more footage of the remake of the iconic and genre-defining first-person shooter. Amid all the bullets and explosions, a small boiler-plater sticks out: "Captured on PS5 Pro."

Yes, the latest compendium of the most famous Spartan taking on alien masses to prevent mass genocide wasn't even made using an Xbox system. Instead, the gameplay comes from the latest iteration of Sony's platform.

There are likely two central reasons for this: the first is to play into the game coming out on a Sony system and show how good it looks, and the second is probably because it runs really nicely on the PS5 Pro, providing sharp, smooth clips of the FPS. Either way, it's definitely odd, and onlookers are a bit taken aback.

"Seeing that and Halo together kind of makes my brain fry a little bit. If you showed me this 15 years ago I would have called this an impossibility," says one fan on Bluesky. "On the official Halo channel is insane," another adds.

"Microsoft can't even console war correctly smh," a third player adds. One person makes a bold prediction: "A year. I give E-Day a year."

Funnily enough, Gears of War: E-Day very nearly joined Fable and Halo: Campaign Evolved on PS5, and a port is reportedly almost finished. One year may be right on the money. We'll see how Master Chief does against the Flood, first.

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Halo: Campaign Evolved has a release date thanks to yesterday's Xbox Games Showcase, and we've also now been shown what we can expect from the game's various different editions, including one slightly baffling choice to make a digital game manual a Premium item.

Depending on how much money you want to spend on Halo: Campaign Evolved, Halo Studios has a number of different options for you when the game launches next month. As well as the Standard Edition, which just includes the game, there's the Premium Edition – which comes with five days of early access as well as some cosmetics, a digital short story, art book, and game manual. The $200 Collector's Edition includes all of those things, too, alongside some physical goodies – "a 12-inch Dark Horse Master Chief statue, light-up LED Cortana chip, Steelbook, three original concept art prints, physical version of the reimagined game manual," and the physical game (if you're on Xbox Series X or PS5, anyway).

As Prima Games points out, it's the digital game manual that's sticking out like a sore thumb here when it comes to the bonus content on offer for the more expensive editions. To give it a bit of room here, Xbox describes it as "a lovingly crafted modern homage to the original Halo: Combat Evolved game manual" that "blends classic presentation with contemporary detail." It adds: "Featuring updated gameplay information, controls, and background lore, the Halo: Campaign Evolved digital game manual is a nostalgic companion for longtime fans and a helpful introductory guide for newcomers stepping onto Alpha Halo for the first time."

So, you'd hope that it has a cool design that makes it feel a bit more like a digital collector's item like the art collections that Deluxe Editions of games – including this Premium Edition – often include. However, it's probably because it's a game manual – you know, a little booklet of information telling you how to play the game, which was once a standard thing included with all titles – that some fans are a bit annoyed, to put it lightly.

"Don't give me something that was industry-standard 20+ years ago under the guise of it being a 'feature.' If shoving it in a premium version is the only way it can be affordable, then don't do it at all. Really dislike this," one user on Reddit writes. "Oh fuck all the way off with this shit. My god. A fucking game manual and you have to pay more for it? An art book makes sense but a game manual?!" says another.

I suspect that most people opting for the Premium Edition will likely be in it for the five days of early access, making Halo: Campaign Evolved playable from July 23 rather than July 28, in which case the digital manual will just appear as a bonus. Bearing in mind that the Premium Edition is an extra $20 on top of the standard price (making it $70), it's a considerable price increase for anyone who does simply want to own all the bonus goodies.

Halo: Campaign Evolved prequel story was written by the award-winning sci-fi author behind some of the best Halo novels.