On its blog today, Destiny 2 creator Bungie announced a price increase for its standalone season passes, which grant players access to limited-time activities and story content every three months.
Going forward, Bungie will ask Destiny 2 players to pay 20% more each season, up from 1,000 Silver (an in-game premium currency that costs real money) to 1,200 Silver — from $10 to $12 per season.
Bungie simultaneously announced it will charge 10% more for its season pass rank bundles, which speed up the process of maxing out each season’s loot-filled progress bar. This increase will see the +10 Ranks Bundle go from 2,000 Silver to 2,200 Silver (or $20 to $22).
While this will impact anyone who has been buying season passes in Destiny a la carte, the price increase does not affect those who already bought the full year of seasonal access via the deluxe version of Destiny 2: Lightfall – at least not until the next major expansion currently slated for next year: The Final Shape.
“Our teams continue to invest in crafting compelling Seasonal experiences in the year of Lightfall.
No reason was offered for the price increase, other than the developer stating, “This will be the new pricing for Season Passes in Lightfall’s year for those looking to maximize their rewards with each new Season, and we’ll be evaluating new approaches to post-lauch content in the year of The Final Shape.” Bungie also pointed to renewed investment in seasonal content: “…our teams continue to invest in crafting compelling Seasonal experiences for the year of Lightfall…”
Though the cost of seasonal content has always been very low, especially for players who buy it all up front with the annual expansion bundles, there has also been ongoing debate about the quality of that content, which often relies on repetitive activities and re-issued weapons and armor from previous expansions or iterations of Destiny. Hopefully this increased price and a pledge to invest in seasonal content means we’ll be getting 20% more out of Bungie’s live-service pipeline.
F1 2021 had a story mode calling ‘Braking Point’, but it was absent from the racing simulation’s 2022 iteration. It returns in F1 2023, which will launch this June. There’s a reveal trailer below which features its protagonists, including newcomer Callie Mayer.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor continues the legend of Cal Kestis, intertwining his fate deeper into Star Wars lore. By the end of Jedi: Survivor’s roughly 20-hour playthrough time (per How Long to Beat), you’ll have witnessed a story that spans two eras of Star Wars and features numerous surprise twists, so we’re going to explain exactly what went down.
Keep reading below the spoiler break to know everything that happens at the end of Jedi: Survivor, and what it might mean for a potential sequel.
Warning! Spoilers for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor below, including a full breakdown of the ending and big story beats.
What Happens at the End of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor?
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor does a fun little thing where each time you think the game is going to end, it doesn’t. Instead, the final third of the game is full of twists and turns that will leave your ship spinning. So let’s jump right in.
Early on, Jedi: Survivor sets up Dagan Gera, a rogue Jedi from the High Republic era who’s been preserved for centuries in Bacta, as the game’s primary villain. His desire for revenge against the Jedi for betraying him, and the secret planet of Tanalorr, drives the main conflict of the game for the most part.
Cal, aided by a Force mirage of Santari Khri, defeats Dagan and regains the compass that will help lead him and his team to Tanalorr which they plan on using as a secret base away from the Empire’s gaze. However, this is where the game’s big twist comes in.
Bode’s Betrayal
Throughout the game, Cal is assisted by his friends including new ally Bode Akuna. Bode is a gunslinger mercenary new to the game, but it’s established that he and Cal have run various missions for the Resistance since the events of Fallen Order.
Well, it turns out Bode is not only working for the Empire as a spy for the ISB but is also a former Jedi who survived the Jedi Purge brought on by Order 66. While hiding from the Empire, Bode met an unnamed woman, fell in love, and together had a daughter named Kata. The Empire discovered Bode and killed his wife, but he struck a deal with the leader of Imperial Intelligence to work as their operative in exchange for protecting his daughter from the Inquisitors. Bode played the part, that is until he learned of Tanalorr during his adventure with Cal. While Cal wanted to use the hidden planet of Tanalorr as a secret base for the resistance, Bode saw it as a sanctuary where he could escape the Empire and live with his daughter in peace.
In a shocking twist, Bode reveals his true nature by killing Eno Cordova and stealing the compass to Tanalorr. To make matters worse, he calls in the Empire to attack Cere Junda’s hidden base on Jedha and Cere sacrifices herself to hold off Darth Vader while everyone else escapes. Cal tries to chase Bode but is defeated when Bode reveals himself to be a Force-user, complete with red lightsaber.
Cal’s Brush With the Dark Side
Reeling from Bode’s betrayal, Cal tracks him down to the ISB headquarters on Nova Garon, where he meets young Kata. However, it was a trap set by Bode to intentionally lead Cal to him and destroy the ISB..
Cal confronts ISB Chief Supervisor Denvik, the one who recruited Bode as a spy and is effectively responsible for this whole mess. Cal almost Force chokes him to death before Merrin calms him down, saying that the Empire took enough and she didn’t want to lose him too.
As Cal pursues Bode, he finds himself surrounded by over a dozen troops and, driven by his thirst for vengeance, embraces the Dark Side to tear through them. Bode manages to escape with Kara and flees to Tanalorr using the stolen compass. With an assist from Zee, Cal, Merrin, and Greez eventually find their own way to Tanalorr.
The Final Confrontation With Bode
Having both lost their own families, Cal and Merrin plan to offer Bode a chance to surrender in order to spare Kata from losing her father, but when they confront him, he refuses to see reason and attacks. When Bode gains the upper hand and begins to pummel Cal, Cal once again channels the Dark Side and uses it to defeat him. A lightsaber at his throat, Bode is given another chance to give up but instead uses it to attack once more, knocking back Kata with a Force push and Force choking Merrin. As Bode and Cal have a standoff, Bode goes to shoot, but his blaster malfunctions forcing Cal to shoot Bode twice in the chest.
What Happens to Cal, Merrin, Greez and Kata in the End?
With Dagan and Bode defeated, the crew of the Mantis have secured Tanalorr and plan to use it as a hidden base for the resistance against the Empire. Cal says they’ll use it as a sanctuary for the Hidden Path, which is what Cere would have wanted. (You’ll remember the Hidden Path from the Obi-Wan Kenobi show on Disney+, a secret underground network used to help Jedi survivors escape the Empire.) They hold a funeral for Cere, Cordova, and Bode, and they pledge to care for Kata now that she’s been robbed of her family in part due to their own actions.
Cere also appears to Cal in a vision uring him to “Guide her through the darkness,” presumably meaning Kata who just lost her father. However, it should be noted that Cere doesn’t appear as a blue Force ghost, but rather a more imminent form which is a secret Jedi tecnuqiue.
Cal and Merrin’s romantic relationship blossomed over the course of the game, and in the end, Cal says that the Jedi Order is gone and that he wants to be with Merrin now. This is a big departure from the usual stories Star Wars tells because the Jedi Code forbids attachment, but as Cal said, the Jedi and their rules are no more, so he’s free to follow his heart.
By the end of the game, Cal and Merrin essentially become foster parents to Kata, with Greez as the grumpy uncle who cooks his signature scazz steak for family dinner. Though not much is said about plans for Kata’s future, it seems a strong possibility that Cal will train her in the ways of the Jedi. When Cal first met Kata, she displayed an unusually strong sense of intuition, not unlike young Leia did in the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, which hints that she is Force-sensitive like her father. If a third game in the Star Wars Jedi series materializes, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Kata as Cal’s Padawan.
Another possibility for a potential Star Wars Jedi 3 is Cal finally using Dark Side Force powers. Throughout the second game he struggled to contain his rage and often his emotions got the better of him, resulting in awesome displays of Dark Side power. It could be that the third entry is when he finally uses his aggressive feelings and lets the hate flow through him. Thus far in the series Cal has had relatively few Force powers, so this would give him a few more exciting gameplay options–top among them, Force lightning.
Redfall currently has ‘Mostly Negative’ reviews on Steam, reflecting a co-op shooter that feels sparse, unsatisfying and buggy to players. Our Ed is no fan either. In an interview with Kinda Funny earlier today, Xbox head Phil Spencer talked at length about Redfall’s issues.
“I’m upset with myself,” said Spencer, while defending the decision not to delay the game.
2023 might finally be the year where 2TB PS5 SSDs might actually be worth the upgrade. Last year, prices for 1TB PS5 SSDs averaged around $150, whereas 2TB SSDs hovered closer to $300. This year, we’re seeing 1TB SSDs trickle below the $100 price point and 2TB SSDs are under $200. The reason PS5 SSD upgrades are pricey is that you can’t use any old SSD and expect it to perform well on the PS5 console. You’ll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive with a rated 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5’s internal drive. That means, for better or for worse, picking a top-shelf SSD.
Note that Sony recommends a heatsink attached to your SSD. Not all SSDs listed here have pre-installed heatsinks. For the ones that do, we’ll be sure to mention it. For the ones that don’t, all you have to do is purchase your own heatsink (we recommend this one for $10) and install it yourself. It’s very easy.
The WD Black SN850X is generally considered one of the top three fastest SSDs out there right now, and its also the most popular choice of a PS5 SSD (it’s the only brand officially licensed for the PS5 console).The SN850X is the successor to the SN850 SSD. It has newer flash chips (BiCS5 vs BiCS4) and an updated firmware, which combined offer improved sequential and random read/write speeds.
Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PS5 SSD for $131.99
Best Buy is including a free heatsink
Crucial’s newest M.2 SSD meets all the requirements for your PS5 SSD upgrade. It supports transfer speeds of up to 6,660MB/s which is well above the 5,500MB/s minimum threshold. Yes there are faster SSDs out there, but if your intention is to put this in your PS5, then that extra speed is worthless because you’re bottlenecked by the original PS5 SSD. If you’re worried about opening up your PS5 case, don’t worry it’s very easy. Crucial has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide to see you through the process.
Silicon Power 2TB PS5 SSD for $119.99
Includes built-in heatsink!
The Silicon Power XS70 SSD is the same price as the Crucial P5 Plus SSD, but it also includes a beefy aluminum heatsink that’s still slim enough to fit in the PS5 without obstruction. It matches the performance of the Crucial P5 Plus, the original WD Black SN850, and the Samsung 980 Pro.
Samsung 990 Pro 2TB PS5 SSD for $179.99
The fastest SSD on the market
The Samsung 990 Pro is currently one of the fastest, if not the fastest, SSDs out there and there’s a $100 price drop that makes this a competitive deal compared to other top-of-the-line SSDs. It outperforms other top-end contenders like the WD SN850X or SK Hynix Platinum P41. It might be overkill, but it’s also PS5 compatible.
SK Hynix P41 2TB SSD for $156.99
Up until the Samsung 990 Pro release, the SK Hynix Platinum P4 was considered the fastest SSD on the market. It’s also considerably less expensive than the 990 Pro. Benchmarks consistently exceed its rated specs and it performs better than other well known brands like WD and Seagate. SK Hynix might not be immediately recognizable to some people, but they are in no way a fledgeling company. SK Hynix is the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker and the world’s third-largest semiconductor company.
Solidigm P44 Pro PS5 SSD for $129.99
One of the fastest M.2 PCIe 4.0 drives on the market
The Solidigm P44 Pro is essentially a rebadged SK Hynix P41 Platinum with updated firmware. That means this is one of the fastest drives currently available. It outperforms other top tier SSDs like the WD Black SN850X or the Seagate Firecuda 530. In fact, the only SSD that can match its performance is the recently released Samsung 990 Pro, which currently costs $179.99, or $50 more. If you’re looking for ultimate high end speed on a budget, there’s nothing else that comes close to this deal right now.
Acer Predator 4TB PS5 SSD for $279.99
Whether it be for your PS5 or your PC, the Acer Predator GM700 offers both performance and storage capacity in spades. This is currently the least expensive 4TB PCIe M.2 SSD we’ve found that boasts speeds higher than the PS5 minimum requirement. It performs similarly to the Crucial P5 Plus and faster than the Samsung 980 Pro.
More PS5 SSD Deals
There may be other SSD deals out there, but these are the PS5 SSDs we’ve tried ourselves and highly recommend. They also double up as outstanding boot drives for your gaming PC, in case you don’t need additional storage for your PS5 console.
How easy is it to install the SSD?
It’s extremely easy! Removing the case cover is completely toolless. In fact, the only screw you have to remove is the one that keeps the cover for the SSD bay in place. You don’t even put it back when you’re done. Sony has a quick and easy YouTube video guide.
What if the SSD I bought doesn’t have a heatsink?
Sony recommends you install an SSD that has an attached heatsink. If the SSD you purchase doesn’t include one, it’s simple enough to buy one for about $10 on Amazon and add it yourself. Most of these heatsinks are just attached using an adhesive like thermal tape.
For more deals, take a look at our daily deals for today.
What do a giant enemy crab covered in interdimensional crystals and a plucky Kangaroo have in common? Simple – They are both bending the rules!
Kao The Kangaroo is back in a new five-level adventure as they take on the perils of the Eternal World! A grumpy old crab has been empowered by the power of the Eternal World, granting him dominion over the lands. After years of being rudely awoken by the locals, the crab is out for revenge! Only Kao has what it takes to stand up to the click-clacking menace! Will Kao be able defeat the Crab King?! Will the Enteral World ever be truly banished!?! Find out in Kao The Kangaroo: Bend the Roo’les!
Bend The Roo’les takes the Kao The Kangaroo formula and adds a fresh twist across five unique levels. Each level is a challenging take that will push even the most grizzled of Kao and 3D platformer veterans to the edge of their abilities! From retro-inspired side-scrolling action, to lava rising levels that would make a blue hedgehog cower, Bend The Roo’les is more of the Kao you know and love in a whole new style.
This DLC carries on the history of Kao the Kangaroo’s retro influences, including tributes to various levels we have played and loved through the decades. Kao The Kangaroo has seen changes across all aspects of the video game industry and culture. As we gear up to release the next (baby) step in the series, it feels fitting to take inspiration from the decades that originally influenced our series to begin with.
As a studio, it is always a pleasure to see our plucky Kangaroo star in new experiences. We cannot wait for you to try what we have been cooking up! So, get ready to hop into the latest Kao adventure and put an end to the Eternal World!
Kao the Kangaroo is a beautiful 3D platformer jam-packed with fun, exploration, adventure, and mystery! Join Kao, the feisty furball, as he embarks on an unforgettable quest to uncover the secrets surrounding the disappearance of his father. He’ll traverse rich environments, filled with hazards, puzzles, and foes. Each turn uncovers another clue as well as revealing a secret world bubbling under the surface.
Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has revealed that a single line of faulty code tied to an assault rifle was responsible for a slew of audio and graphical bugs that have plagued players during the 16th season of the battle royale game.
Players started reporting the bugs soon after the launch of Season 16 after noticing missing rifle sounds, phantom particle effects, and disappearing grenades that would fail to explode, yet deal the correct amount of damage to nearby enemies. The bugs hadn’t appeared in playtesting, but after a preliminary investigation the most likely cause of the missing effects was narrowed down to a limitation in how the game’s servers parsed out effects.
According to the Reddit post describing the bug hunt, the Apex Legends servers are capable of dispatching up to 128 effect “entries” for each and every frame of gameplay. These entries can include stop/start commands for anything from weapon specific sound effects, to physics impacts, bullet tracers, and more. Any effect requests received by the server after it hit its 128 entry frame limit would be dropped, which could explain the missing sounds and FX reported by players.
This left us with a complex issue that we knew was impacting our community, but was hard to reproduce despite detailed reports
The team then worked to ferret out which faulty process or asset was causing the effect overload. However, as noted in the Reddit update, each new season of Apex Legends sees the introduction of thousands of asset tweaks, and code adjustments. Finding the cause of the problem would be akin to hunting down “a needle in a haystack”.
“This left us with a complex issue that we knew was impacting our community, but was hard to reproduce despite detailed reports, had minimal leads internally, and there were no metrics to prove definitively that this limit was being hit at all,” the post read.
Eventually the team found their needle — a single line of code that was attached to the Nemesis rifle that had been introduced in Season 16. The Nemesis was created with a bespoke particle effect, which increased in intensity as the weapon was repeatedly fired.
The team discovered that each player using a nemesis was sending a “stop particle” effect request to the server for every frame that they didn’t fire the weapon, even if it was holstered. If enough players were running around with uncharged Nemesis rifles, then the onslaught of stop particle commands was enough to overwhelm the server, causing effects to be dropped.
Thankfully, the team were able to push out a fix for the issue last Tuesday, though the developers warn that the update may not have fixed every one of the FX issues that players have experienced over the course of Season 16.
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
Take one look at Luna Abyss and you’ll probably go, ‘Wait a minute, this looks like first-person Returnal!’ And having played the first mission of the game at GDC, I can confirm that yes, this is very much in the vein of first-person Returnal. It’s a fast-paced, bullet hell shooter set on a strange alien moon where everything’s out to get you, but the shift in perspective makes everything in its titular abyss feel closer and more intimate, calling to mind the frantic, confined gun fights of Doom and Quake more than Housemarque’s seminal roguelike – games that creative director Benni Hill tells me were formative experiences for him growing up.
There’s also a greater emphasis on story-telling in Luna Abyss, with Hill also citing Nier: Automata and Bioshock as other key influences. It’s a compelling mix, based on the first chunk I played, and arguably one of my surprise GDC favourite demos alongside The Thaumaturge and The Lamplighters League. Indeed, Hill tells me they started working on Luna Abyss a year before Returnal was even announced, and when they first saw it during Sony’s PlayStation 5 reveal stream in the summer of 2020, he and his team did a collective double-take.
Gaming is pretty great these days, but there are a handful of things we miss from the olden times before everything went online. Game stores are a big one — there’s nothing like wandering down to your local emporium and seeing row upon row of actual genuine video games, consoles and accessories old and new. You know, as opposed to a wall of Funko Pops, a chair with blinking lights, and a cabinet of secondhand Samsung Galaxies.
Game magazines are another thing we miss. There are still some stalwart publications hanging in there, thankfully, and there’s something intimate and special about holding print in your hands and poring over physical pages for your gaming news and reviews. It’s a feeling we do our best to replicate on the site, which leads us to our newest regular feature. Introducing the Nintendo Life Mailbox.
Neverwinter was one of the first console MMORPGs to really get its hooks into me. With the rich lore of Dungeons & Dragons lifting it up and some innovative ways in which it handled combat at the time, not to mention all the journeys that could be waiting for me along the Sword Coast, the entire experience was ripe for adventure (and my time).
While it has been a while since I last ventured into that online realm, I jumped at the opportunity to talk with Executive Producer Brett Norton and Creative Director Randy Mosiondz about the game’s past, present, and future as it hits its eighth year on Xbox (and 10th overall) this year. It was fascinating to get their insight about the legacy of Neverwinter in an age when so many online games tended to fade over time, but Neverwinter seems to be as strong as it ever was. Interestingly, it wasn’t originally scoped to be a massive multiplayer online RPG at all.
As some adventurers might be aware, before launching as a free-to-play MMORPG, Neverwinter was originally announced as a co-op focused Dungeons & Dragons game that would bring R.A. Salvatore’s “Neverwinter Saga” series of novels to life. Since iteration is a significant part of the game development process, there were many concepts the team was trying out during that early phase of its life, as they refined and focused on the title.
“Early on there was an attempt at building a narrative-focused game where there was heavy storyline scripting, and every player in an adventuring party could ‘vote’ towards how a story would play out.”
“Early on there was an attempt at building a narrative-focused game where there was heavy storyline scripting, and every player in an adventuring party could ‘vote’ towards how a story would play out,” explains Creative Director Randy Mosiondz. “While it was an interesting system, once we incorporated an action-focused combat style, we found the two game elements didn’t mesh well together.”
Mosiondz explains that one of the biggest things the team learned in that iterative process was that when locking a group of players into a narrative, anyone who had experienced that same tale beforehand would grow impatient with having to sit through dialog options, while others simply wanted to get back to the action. This left any player who wanted to listen to the narrative opting out of group play.
“We realized we were trying to serve two types of players and were doing a disservice to both. In the end, we decided to move towards action-combat, as there weren’t a lot of MMORPGs doing that at the time, and players seeking games with heavier narrative focus would enjoy single-player story games better anyway,” says Mosiondz. “The advanced narrative system is still buried somewhere in the code, and if you’ve explored some of the more complex character dialogs you may have seen some of it; it’s pretty robust.”
Based on Neverwinter‘s success over the past decade, it seems clear they made the right choice in focusing on the action gameplay aspect to get development started. Once that core concept was established, development began in earnest with lots of content and ideas starting to take shape leading to the game’s eventual release on PC in 2013.
“That’s one of the graces of an ongoing live game: anything you don’t get into the initial release becomes content for a later release.”
“There was a lot of game we packed into the initial release, which was due in large part to the tremendous efforts of our launch team, as well as a disciplined approach to zone implementation,” says Mosiondz. “Once we developed a strong prototype zone and dungeon that we felt was fun and engaging, we built upon those styles for every successive piece of content implemented.”
Mosiondz mentions that there were still a lot of things the team wished to have incorporated into Neverwinter’s launch, but a big part of shipping a game of this scale is knowing when to focus on refining the content you’re launching with to give the best possible experience to players from the get-go.
“That’s one of the graces of an ongoing live game: anything you don’t get into the initial release becomes content for a later release. And we’ve had 10 years of releases [on PC] since launch to add or revise systems and content. I also think a big part of the relatively strong stability of Neverwinter at launch was due to the experience garnered from all our previous releases, like City of Heroes, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online have allowed us to refine our tech and our practices to allow for a solid launch.”
A few years after the initial launch on PC, Neverwinter set its sights on console. Cryptic had been wanting to bring its titles to Xbox, but at the time there were not a lot of MMORPGs for the platform.
“Even though we knew we wouldn’t launch the game on both PC and console, we were still planning for console support in the future. And when that day came, we were ready!”
“Back in the day, Champions Online was actually built to be delivered on Xbox; as some Champions fans can attest, the game can still be played pretty well on PC with a controller,” says Mosiondz. “When it came time to develop Neverwinter, we knew we wanted to start planning for console in the early design of the game. Even though we knew we wouldn’t launch the game on both PC and console, we were still planning for console support in the future. And when that day came, we were ready!”
Neverwinter’s launch on console was a massive success, as they had suspected, with console gamers enjoying the action-based combat system and social aspects of what MMORPGs can bring. That success is what also led to the eventual port of Star Trek Online, which has also proven to be a tremendously successful MMORPG on console. Even with those successful launches behind them, there was still plenty for the team to learn from.
“We had been preparing for launching Cryptic’s games on console for a long time, so there are some elements we learned early on,” says Mosiondz. “The most obvious one is that you must put constraints on game design to make sure console gamers have a solid experience rather than trying to retrofit PC gameplay back to console. Another thing was the technical infrastructure that needed to be built. While live console marketplaces are fairly common now, there were a lot of complexities back in the day about how things are done with subscriptions, microtransactions, etc., that still needed to be mashed out. It wasn’t until a lot of those things started coming together that made MMORPGs on consoles feasible.”
Since release, there have been no shortage of amazing characters and stories from Dungeons & Dragons lore that have been given a chance to come to life in the world of Neverwinter. Naturally, I had to know from the creators what it has been like playing around in the world of D&D and what some those favorite characters and memories from that experience have been thus far.
“I’ve been a D&D fan for an awfully long time, so building adventures based on it was a dream come true for me.”
“Some of the ‘big bads’ we’ve used as module villains are often our most memorable,” says Executive Producer Brett Norton. “Tiamat, the evil dragon queen, was a unique and massive undertaking for a boss. She’s absolutely massive, has great music that accompanies her fight, and she’s still probably the largest single largest enemy you face in all of Neverwinter. A special callout goes to Acerak as well, the main villain of Neverwinter‘s Chult arc, because he’s both evil and hilarious. His ‘I’m an immortal lich and I don’t care‘ attitude makes the Tomb of the Nine Gods dungeon particularly memorable experience, as you tear his lair apart and finally get on his nerves.”
“As to the good guys, the Acquisitions Incorporated characters are about as wild as it gets,” continues Norton. “Fighting alongside James Darkmagic in the Manycoins Bank Heist is always crazy, with him both helping the party and, occasionally, accidentally polymorphing everyone into chickens in the middle of a fight. The entire Acquisitions Incorporated adventure is unique in Neverwinter, and one of the most memorable series of missions we’ve done.”
“I’ve been a D&D fan for an awfully long time, so building adventures based on it was a dream come true for me,” says Mosidonz. “I’m a storyteller at heart, and love building experiences for players to enjoy. It wasn’t so much a job as a craft for me, and hearing players talk about their favorite characters or adventures that I worked with my team to build really warmed my heart.”
A lot has changed since the initial launch of the game — the version players can experience now is very different than what arrived on day one. Neverwinter has had to keep up with not only new console iterations, but revisions to their source material as well (when it was released, “4th Edition” was the main version and now the game is powered by the “5th Edition” ruleset). As part of this constant evolution, I asked Norton what is it about Neverwinter does he think has allowed it to endure for a decade?
“You can’t expect players to keep playing the same game forever, so you need to grow and evolve with them.”
“Part of enduring is realizing that your game has to grow and change with your audience, and while we won’t claim to have done it perfectly, the team has strived to try new features, new stories, and generally push the boundaries of what could be done with our tools, tech, and D&D in general,” explains Norton. “You can’t expect players to keep playing the same game forever, so you need to grow and evolve with them. The other part comes from the team’s ability to continually release new modules with a pretty regular cadence. We just released our 25th module for Neverwinter, and that means we’ve put out multiple big updates for Neverwinter each year. The game that players see today also isn’t the same version that players saw upon release; major features like guild strongholds and dungeon queues did not exist when the game was first released.”
With the recent release of the latest module, Menzoberranzan, the future continues to be very bright for the future of Neverwinter with seemingly no shortage of adventures that may be in store, some of which Norton hinted at.
“Neverwinter will continue to visit new places in the ever-expanding Forgotten Realms,” explains Executive Producer Brett Norton. “There’s a lot of key locations that we still haven’t visited, like Thay itself, or even Waterdeep. Wizards of the Coast also continues to release new sourcebooks as well, and we generally keep an eye out for some of the newer locations that would fit well into Neverwinter. No spoilers, but we’ve got a unique setting planned for the end of 2023 that we hope comes as a welcome surprise.”
Neverwinter is the premier Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG experience, featuring fast-paced combat and epic dungeons. Explore the vast city of Neverwinter and its surrounding regions, battle its many enemies, and be a part of Forgotten Realms history.
Experience Dungeons & Dragons Like Never Before – Neverwinter is an action MMORPG that bridges intense combat with classic D&D gameplay. Journey through the city of Neverwinter and the legendary subcontinent of Faerûn, and face off against the greatest adversaries from D&D legend.
Build Your Own Legend – Bring your adventures to life through iconic D&D classes and races, advanced paragon paths, companions, and a remarkable range of customization options. Whether you’re hunting dragons and beholders within crumbling dungeons or battling other players in the icy reaches of Icespire Peak, you’ll discover why Neverwinter is the definitive Dungeons & Dragons experience.
Optimized for Xbox One – Neverwinter inspires classic Dungeons & Dragons adventures with a fully optimized player experience for Xbox One. The fast-paced action gameplay of Neverwinter has been mapped to the Xbox One controller, giving adventures the ability to move around the battlefield and cast powerful spells with ease. Xbox One players can also use their Xbox One friends list to find and party up with others as they explore iconic locations of the Dungeons & Dragons universe.
This game supports English, French, German, Italian, and Russian.
Additional System requirements: Minimum broadband internet connection of 512 Kbps is required to access all features.
