Month: December 2020

The awaited 1.5 update for Stardew Valley is coming soon, possibly even before the end of the year on PC, and indie developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has outlined some of what we can expect from the big patch.

In a tweet, Barone highlighted a couple of key features for new farmers just starting out after the version 1.5 update goes live. Those include a new farm type, Beach Farm. According to an attached screenshot, sprinklers don’t work on a beach farm, but it’s great for foraging and fishing, and sometimes you’ll a supply crate will randomly wash up ashore. There will also be a new Advanced Game Options menu, which lets you toggle aspects like your community center bundles, mine rewards, and whether monsters will spawn on your farm.

Barone didn’t give any new timing on the update, but he said just recently that it could release on PC this year followed by consoles early next year. That suggests it’s very close to completion and could roll out anytime in roughly the next week for PC players.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

While it may have been last season of Fortnite: Battle Royale that was Marvel-themed, that doesn’t mean the game’s connections to the franchise have ended. A small new set of challenges, dubbed Wakanda Forever, have been introduced to the game for the next three weeks, and completing them will earn you the Wakandan Salute emote–and the long-awaited Black Panther skin may finally be approaching its release.

The Wakanda Forever challenges are available for free, and there are only three total you’ll need to complete. Fortunately, this just involves playing the game–you won’t need to hunt down any unmarked locations or do anything unnatural. However, one of the three challenges is mislabeled: Despite saying you only need to play five Duo or Squad matches, you actually have to do this challenge with a friend, Epic clarified on Twitter; it’s working to update the in-game text now. Each of the three challenges has a corresponding XP reward, and once you finish all three, you’ll unlock the emote, which was popularized by 2018’s Black Panther movie. You just have to do all of this by January 12 at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET.

Wakanda Forever Challenges

• Play Matches (10) — 10k XP
• Outlast opponents (500) — 20k XP
• Play Duo or Squad matches with a friend (5) — 20k XP

Coinciding with this, Epic’s ongoing Fortography event, where players submit their best Fortnite screenshots, will focus on the new emote. You can submit yours by tweeting with the #Fortography hashtag.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

The finale of The Mandalorian Season 2 last week contained not one but two big surprises. You can read about the first here, while the second was that a spin-off Star Wars show titled The Book of Boba Fett is on the way next year. Now the logo and more details have been revealed.

The Book of Boba Fett will be produced by Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Robert Rodriguez, and star Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett and Ming-Na Wen as Fennec Shand. Favreau is the showrunner of The Mandalorian, while Filoni is an executive producer of that show, as well as being responsible for animated Star Wars series such as Rebels and The Clone Wars. Rodriguez directed one of the recent Mandalorian episodes, and helmed movies such as Alita: Battle Angel, Spy Kids, and Sin City. As for the logo, check it out below:

Favreau was interviewed by Good Morning America, where he revealed that The Book of Boba Fett will start production soon, ahead of its December 2021 premiere on Disney+. He also confirmed that The Mandalorian Season 3 is on the way too. However, that won’t start filming until after the Boba Fett series, so we won’t see that before 2022.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film series is packed with many beloved scenes, but one stands above all for the director, and it’s not a scene he directed.

Sitting down with The Lord of the Rings super-fan Stephen Colbert, Jackson said one of the scenes that best captures the spirit of the project is one that came in late and was not originally planned. In The Two Towers, Jackson wanted to properly introduce Gollum, but the director remarked that he didn’t have a sequence that effectively demonstrated Gollum’s two-persons-in-one existence as Gollum and Smeagol. “We knew we needed it, but we had no time to shoot it,” Jackson said.

So Jackson turned to his partner in real life and on The Lord of the Rings, screenwriter Fran Walsh, to write and direct a scene that showcased Gollum’s identity. The scene from The Two Towers shows Gollum grappling with his pained existence, bouncing back and forth between what he wants and what the seduction of the One Ring is compelling him to do.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Genshin Impact‘s big 1.2 update is arriving on December 23, bringing with it a huge new area, a host of new rewards and content, and some well-overdue quality-of-life updates. The update will bring two new 5-star characters across two banners–first, the sword-wielding Geo alchemist Albedo, and later in January the Cryo archer Ganyu.

Developer Mihoyo has now revealed the event banner for Albedo, showing that 4-star characters Bennett, Fischl and Sucrose will all be easier to obtain while wishing on the “Secretum Secretorum.” The new main character Albedo is a Geo sword user who seems to be designed for a support role.

Albedo’s story quest “Princeps Cretaceus Chapter” will launch at the same time as his banner and will be a pre-requisite for the Dragonspine-centered The Chalk Prince and the Dragon event. Accordingly, the story quest will temporarily be available to all players above AR20 without the need for a story key. After the event, the level requirement will be raised to AR40 and a story key will be required.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

Destiny 2‘s big Beyond Light update may have started the process of retiring much of the game’s old content, but Bungie is also bringing back some old favorites–starting with the original Destiny raid, Vault of Glass. In a new interview with Polygon, assistant game director Joe Blackburn has explained how he’s working to make sure the new version of Vault of Glass plays just how you remember, despite the differences between Destiny and the current version of Destiny 2.

Blackburn said that the goal of the re-release is to make running Vault of Glass in Destiny 2 feel the same as it did when players got into it for the very first time. He explains why this means that some tweaks are necessary, rather than including the original version of the raid as a straight port.

“The guardians have become significantly stronger in this amount of time,” Blackburn explains, saying that the raid team went back into the original raid to see how it played, before deciding that “we would smoke this with Destiny 2 weapons and armor mods.”

Continue Reading at GameSpot