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.
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.
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.
A Hobbits Journey 