Strange things are stirring in the Destiny realm as players began noticing a very odd colored swarm surrounding their heads a few nights ago. What is this mystery, and where did it come from?
Clearly it has something to do with Destiny’s newest upcoming expansion, Rise of Iron, but is this thing harmful, helpful, what is really going on. One very popular Twitch streamer, SayNoToRage, looks to be Patient Zero who was infected with this strange Destiny virus which has begun to spread through the player-base of Destiny by simply interacting with someone who already has one of the viruses. A number of ways have been confirmed so far, and players have reported a boost to reputation and experience once they have been infected. But what could these Owl Sector infections mean?
These viruses – Brilliance 3.2, Glory 2.1, Splendor 2.6, Magnificence 2.0, and Fortitude 3.1 – seem to be unlocking additional details to the lore of Destiny. Owl Sector appeared as a subpage on Bungie’s website a couple nights ago shortly after SayNoToRage noticed he had contracted the virus.
You can checkout Bungie’s Owl Sector website which shows a world map with multiple colored nodes on it. Each of these nodes seem to represent a player’s location whose character has been infected by one of the viruses. These different colors correspond to the five different viruses previously mentioned. Ever since the initial outbreak with SayNoToRage, the website looks to have a real-time update and feed showing each infection across the globe. This has also led to more information getting released through chat logs of the in game NPC’s, like Cayde-6, Ikora Rey, and Zavala who seem to be studying these viruses to determine for themselves what they are.
From what can be gathered from some parts of the chat logs, it looks like the viruses, along with SIVA, were developed on Mars in the Dust Palace by the exoscience group, Clovis Bray. With Rise of Iron right around the corner and considering how this looks to be a very technologically advanced element of Destiny’s lore, it’s hard to think the SIVA tech wouldn’t be involved somehow.
Guardians look to have quite the adventure ahead of them as Rise of Iron plots a story about the lost SIVA plague, so these viruses we are seeing now could be a precursor to our next journey and potential dangers that are just around the corner.
As for the Owl Sector, it appears that they’re a reconnaissance group responsible for looking over these types of outbreaks. This would tie into the Owl Sector Twitch account’s message that was in SayNoToRage’s Twitch stream when he first contracted the virus. The message read “We’ve detected an unidentified foreign intrusion into your systems, Guardian. Stay calm, we will investigate.”
One question does come up and that is will we see these “Viruses” once the Rise of Iron content releases next week? At least we won’t have to wait long to find out what is in store for the Destiny realm, and it’s Guardian protectors.
Be safe Guardians and I’ll see you next time.
A Crooked Mile slaps us right in the middle of some pretty amazing and memorable moments to date in this game. Around every corner Telltale succeeds at introducing new characters in almost every scene which keeps the interest up, and brings some more light and story to characters we’ve only just seen a small glimpse of over the past two episodes. This episode drops some tough choices on you and some crazy consequences to boot, so overall this episode really gives you the feeling of being these characters and owning the story itself!
Without going into many spoilers here, this episode brings us one of the biggest scenes to date. Watching Bigby finally bare his superpowers against an army of angry dwarfs is just a taste it seems of what you get to look forward to in future episodes. This incredible moment in the game lasted about as long as a blink of an eye, so the wait for episode 4 is going to be a nail biter for sure.
As great as this episode was to play through I had a little beef in a couple of the scenes as they decided to cut before I had a chance to fully explore the surroundings. Both of these scenes were packed full of things to explore and items to discover, so one moment I’m happily exploring, the next I was sliding right over into the start of the next scene which was disappointing.
Long long ago, a rocky planet inhabited by the proto-Hive collided into a gas giant named Fundament and shattered. All of the rocky planet shards that were left scattered across the Fundament ocean, within one of of it’s many layers, and became “continents” in which the proto-Hive took refuge and lived out their existence. This vast world was filled with five hundred and eleven other intelligent species who also inhabited Fundament’s sea through seemingly similar circumstances. Surrounding Fundament and within it’s great orbit were fifty-two moons inhabited by a race called the Ammonites. The Ammonites were bony, six-armed cephalopods who evolved on an icy moon of Fundament. At some point, the Traveler arrived at the planet and became a patron of this race, who helped them build an advanced space travelling civilization with paracausal technology that spanned all of Fundament’s fifty-two moons. Deep beneath the Fundament ocean dwelled a massive creature called the Leviathan, a great disciple of the Traveler, and one who plays a larger part in this races existence, as it’s a gatekeeper for the darkness being imprisoned in the depths of Fundament.
This world was filled with torment and a great fear of a catastrophic event called the “Syzygy” an artificially induced alignment of Fundament’s moons that would create a devastating global tidal wave, the “God-Wave” as the Ammonites called it. One kingdom of the Fundament Ocean was the Osmium Court, ruled by the Osmium King. When the King went mad out of fear of the “Syzygy”, Taox, the teacher of the King’s three daughters, invited the rival Helium Drinkers of the Helium Court to invade and install her on the Osmium Throne. The Helium Drinkers did so, but failed to kill the King’s three daughters: Aurash, Sathona, and Xi Ro. The sisters escaped on a ship, swearing an oath to avenge their father by overthrowing the Helium Drinkers and bringing revenge to their family by hunting down Taox.
In just a few short years after the sisters transformed they took the Hive and conquered a large portion of Fundament’s surface population, reclaiming the Osmium Court and harrying Taox off-world. After building their first starships, the Hive followed Taox and encountered the Ammonite civilization that lived among the moons, as well as the Traveler. The Ammonites were far more advanced than anything on Fundament’s surface and were initially able to drive back the Hive’s attacks, especially as Auryx held the Hive back in the hope of achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Savathun denounced her brothers weakness and killed her brother for his futile efforts of peace. The great Worms hidden in Fundaments depths then vested Auryx and his sisters with the power to defy death so long as they continued their conquest and fed their worms. Auryx returned to life and together he and his sisters defeated the Ammonites, killed the Leviathan, and forced the Traveler to flee.
The second episode of Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us, titled Smoke and Mirrors, takes us to a whole new level of awesome! This masterpiece of a world that Telltale created is still bouncing with vibrant neon colors, but all the characters this go round are coming in shades of grey!
Want some villians? Well, this episode has got plenty of them as they set the foundation for some really nasty ones who you will quickly love and hate all at the same time. SPOILER ALERT – One of the nasties in this game is named Georgie, a strip club owner and pimp with an absolute numbness to human dignity and need. No matter how you handle Bigby’s interaction with him, through understandable violence or forced restraint, the scene plays out great both ways. A few of the major decisions from Episode 1 also have some nice moments of payoff in Smoke and Mirrors. Particularly how you handled Belle lying to Beast and who you chose to chase out of the bar result in very different scenes that shape both the story and Bigby as a character.
Overall The Wolf Among us series continues to bring moments of joy while playing, but at the same time tears away at the multitude of emotions while dealing with people. Sadness is something you see quite often in Bigby’s life as he is alone in this journey, or so he feels. You quickly learn that he has more allies then he realizes after meeting some of the other characters in this game. Telltale makes it more than worthwhile to go back and replay the episode as a complete maniac or a restrained reasonable person. This is really something I never wanted to do with any of the other adventure games Telltale has made, so good job for sucking me in even further Telltale.
Have you ever been in your car at a complete stop but thought you were moving, freaking out and smashing the break just to realize you really weren’t moving at all…? Well, that’s how this episode played out for me cause I thought we had some momentum built up and the story was really moving, and building to quite a climactic story plot…..then BAM you realize this episode is almost at a standstill in the story, or at least a creeping crawl in first gear.
This episode of the game is anything but graceful about it’s approach to the people in Clementine’s life as they seem to exist solely so their departure can hurt her. The loss of people has been a large focus of season 2 and this episode is no different other than how Clementine begins to process those big hits. She as a young girl really is put through some awful and terrifying situations, but those moments seem to define her from the decisions she “You” get to make for her.
Characters vanish in this episode so rapidly and unexpectedly that it steals some spotlight away from the emotional connection this game brings with it’s characters. Some of the characters exits are cheap and unfulfilling, while others are unjustified, forced and forgotten very quickly. Worse, some of those departed characters are replaced by new villains who come out of nowhere with no introduction.
Season 2 has been a large building block for the story and seems to be something much larger for Clementine, but it fizzles here by the end of Episode 4. Large stories by this time like the political battle between feuding sides seems to vanish, and Clementine begins to feel much smaller in the grand scheme of things, despite the grand large she is having to overcome. Meanwhile, although The Walking Dead: Season 2 has been building to something bigger for Clementine, it fizzles here by the end of Episode 4, the complex political drama that’s been brewing between feuding sides all but evaporates. Bickering elders don’t seem to weigh on Clementine as much as the grim things she has to do on her own. She’s starting to feel small, despite the big things she’s doing. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing yet.
Battleborn is one of the most chaotic shooters I’ve played, which also managed to frustrate and amaze me at the same time. The single-player and co-op campaign was thin and hit and miss at best, plagued with bad jokes from NPC’s and really uninviting once you get into the game a bit. The multiplayer action tries to mix genres like the mechanics from popular MOBA’s but overall was a huge miss, as they tried to do to much.
Battleborn has a seven-hour campaign which are mostly repetitive with the exception of only a handful of good story moments. Each mission is made up of continuous waves of almost the same enemy with different boss battles or base defense settings. Using currency (called shards) you collect on each map, you also have to purchase turrets and bots to aid in your attack against giant mechs or base defense, which adds an interesting layer of resource management. With all that you have to manage during the battling, sadly the story the game tries to tell becomes white-noise and easily forgettable. This is a Gearbox game, so the makers of Borderlands had to add loot but this game gives you new gear in between battles. While Battleborn’s loot carries over from match to match, the bonuses you get out of it aren’t as good the in-match leveling system. Overall I think they did a good job with loot and adding a challenge to the levels of combat.
While the campaign feels empty and pointless to me, the PvP modes you get are a completely different story. You get three different modes to choose from each with their own unique challenges. Capture is a domination-style mode good for fast action and lots of frustration at times. Incursion is a condensed version of the campaign that avoids the insanely long battles, but you do get to take down some enemy mechs with some cool toys if you’ve purchased any. Lastly you have, Meltdown, which is a mix of MOBA and arena style FPS. Ultimately this could have been a great idea, but the first person perspective brings the action way too close and the map overlay is way too small to keep track of anyone. It would have been nice to have a free-for-all, or a team death-match but you won’t find it in this game.
This game quickly took the top list of favorites in my book second only to Telltale’s The Walking Dead series. They came very close to knocking The Walking Dead out of my number one spot but not quite.
This was a relatively quick episode to play but easily a two hour chunk of time you need to really see everything in this first episode. The game drops some majorly hard bombs on you early on with the decisions you have to make, but being a big bad wolf made it a little easier to rough some Fables up. Action and adventure are some of the main themes of this first episode but at the heart of things comes a mystery. This is what makes this game such a joy to play is the wide use of emotions and rich story surrounded by well done characters.
During your search, you’ll come across a rather interesting toad who refuse to hide himself from the human world, a member of the Three Little Pigs with a bit of a drinking problem, and an abusive woodsman with a startling revelation regarding Snow White. Since it’s based on characters that pretty much everybody knows, The Wolf Among Us is able to toy with our expectations and delivering some very surprising and entertaining character developments. It’s amazing how the dialogue swings between funny, absolutely tragic, brutal, and magical all over a course of the two-hour episode.
Telltale Games created a masterpiece with the Walking Dead game series and I took the hook, line and sinker when I first started playing the game. Now almost two years later after season 2 finished leaving fans with mixed emotions on how things ended, Telltale Games seemed to have closed the story with season 2. The famed developer company has been quite busy lately with the alternate story of their Michonne miniseries and just yesterday I saw the newest addition will be a Batman game coming later this year. All of Telltale’s games are pretty awesome if you ask me, as I’ve tried just about all of them, but the big question on the table is when the heck are we going to see the next season of The Walking Dead series release?
A Hobbits Journey 