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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. (Image credit: Bungie)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(Image credit: Bungie)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. (Image credit: Bungie)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. (Image credit: Bungie)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(Image credit: Bungie)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.

Rockstar Games found itself in hot water last year when the studio fired around 30 developers who were in talks to form a union. One affected worker now says playing GTA 6 when it comes out later this year would "probably just bring back too much."Speaking to the BBC, former Rockstar Games QA worker Jack Hoxby said he "really" doesn't know if he'll play GTA 6, a game he spent years working on. "I definitely don't think I will buy it," he says. "I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to, personally. Obviously, a lot of my friends will either presumably be gifted copies by the company, and probably other people will buy it.""I will probably play it at some point, but it is hard to say," he adds. "I might get to it and try and sit down and play it, and it'll just be too, like, you know - I just won't be in the mood to play it. It'll probably just bring back too much. But I'm not sure. It's something I have thought about quite a lot to be honest."The Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB) last year accused Rockstar Games of illegal union busting after the company fired around 30 devs located across the UK and Canada, all of whom were either union members or involved in unionization efforts.The GTA 6 studio claimed the firings were due to leaks of "confidential information," though the company hasn't made public what information exactly was being spread. The firings led to protests outside Rockstar Games offices, and the situation even spread to UK parliament a fair few times. More recently, an employment tribunal ruled against Rockstar Games' request to have claims of blacklisting taken out of the upcoming trial.The trial is set to begin in the months leading up to GTA 6's November release date on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.Rockstar spokesperson says "we welcome" judge's decision to deny fired GTA 6 devs interim relief, union highlights "a glimpse of Rockstar's flimsy grounds for defence"

All eyes may currently be fixed upon Total War: Warhammer 40,000, Creative Assembly's ferociously ambitious foray into the 40k universe. But it's worth remembering that the more traditional side of Total War is looking pretty exciting too, as CA is returning to one of Total War's best settings in Medieval 3.Medieval 3 is much earlier in development than ol' Total Warty K, but the CA has been surprisingly open with the community about its development thus far, regularly showing the game off in preproduction livestreams. Now, it's also fielding opinion on which factions should be playable in Medieval 3, asking fans to complete a survey about which nations, dynasties, and city-states they want to control the destinies of.This comes courtesy of Creative Assembly's most Medieval 3 blog, which delves into the developer's faction-based decision-making process. According to creative director Leif Walter, three factors go into deciding whether a faction should be in the game. These are how well known the faction is, how unique its starting situation is and how distinctive its "potential mechanics" could be.Naturally, there are some factions which Creative Assembly considers "locked in" by default. These are England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Sultanate of Rum. Where CA wants player input is on the smaller factions of the Middle Ages. How keen are you to play as Italian city states like Venice or Milan, for example? Or Kingdoms of Scandinavia? Or Muslim nations like the Almohad Caliphate or the Fatimid Empire?Creative Assembly lists all the factions it is considering making playable in the article. There are some potential factions that CA rules out, such as the Russian Principalities, the Mongol Empire, and the Papal States. Apparently, the latter is particularly desired among Total War fans, but Walter says that Creative Assembly "discussed internally that this playstyle would be so unique and special that it would reduce focus of development too much."Of course, the faction I'm most interested in playing as from the list is Scotland. Partly because that's where I live, but also, I think you could make an interesting mechanic out of the Scottish clan system, which developed through the medieval period. Dealing with new clans emerging, trying to stop them from infighting and stealing cattle from each other in order to deal with larger threats (mostly the English), seems like it'd be a fun and distinctive challenge.Whichever factions end up in Medieval 3, however, you can bet that I'll be playing it whenever it launches. But I'm happy to wait, not least because Total War: Warhammer 40,000 is on the horizon. CA's sci-fi strategy got a fresh showing at this month's PC Gaming Show and, judging by what CA has revealed so far, is shaping up to be a dream 40k experience.2026 games: All the upcoming gamesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together

PS1 mascot Spyro the Dragon has a surprisingly strong presence on PC these days. All three of the original games are available on Steam in remade form through the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. Developer Toys for Bob is also working on Spyro: A Realm Beyond, the first new Spyro game in almost 20 years.One thing you can't do, however, is play the original versions of the PS1 games on PC. At least, not yet. But a PC port of Spyro the Dragon is in the works by fans of the series, and will likely release soon.This was revealed by Spyro speedrunning specialists lumilaura, who posted a video to X of what appears to be Spyro The Dragon running on PC (via GamesRadar). "You're not dreaming, this is Spyro 1 running natively on Windows 11," she wrote, having been asked to test the port by its creators.The PC port is the product of an "OpenPETE decomp + recomp hybrid" by porters Amec/tyscorp. The decompilation project—the process through which such PC ports become viable—was started last year by The Moby Collective. Thus far, 88% of its functions have been decompiled to source code, as has 58% of its bytes.you're not dreaming, this is Spyro 1 running natively on windows 11 with the brand new OpenPETE decomp + recomp hybrid by Amec/tyscorp.60fps, true widescreen, no polygon wobble, perspective correct textures, the works.a spyro PC port is coming, much sooner than we all think. pic.twitter.com/bQ9M1sSC70June 23, 2026In addition, Lumilaura notes that the PC port is capable of running at 60FPS, supports "true widescreen", features perspective correct textures, and has "no polygon wobble" (which depending on your level of affection for those watery PS1 polys, could be a positive or negative). In a follow-up post, Lumilaura also stresses that the project is being made with "no AI", because that's a thing developers have to say, now, tragically.The clip Lumilaura posted to X shows Spyro running around a field, collecting a few gems and battering a few enemies. The same clip was also posted to Reddit, where Lumilaura provided a few extra details in a separate reddit post. She says that while the clip was recorded at 60FPS, the game itself was "running at 320fps and looked gorgeous." That said, she also says that the port is still "very unfinished and currently presents with a lot of visual artifacting such as camera flashes" as well as "awkward camera motions that can cause motion sickness."This is why, currently, the port has not yet been made public. But lumilaura says it's likely to arrive "much sooner than we all think". But will it arrive before A Realm Beyond? The next Spyro game is due to launch sometime in 2027, so there's every chance it might.2026 games: All the upcoming gamesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together

Games are likely to follow Mario Kart World and GTA 6's lead with an $80 base price tag, according to several analysts, but only the biggest of games will be able to pull it off unscathed.Like Mario Kart World before it, GTA 6's price has raised big question marks over the heads of anyone worried about higher video game costs. Will $80 become the new standard? Not exactly, say some analysts we talked to, but they will become much more common in the months and years following GTA 6's November release date.DFC Intelligence's David Cole explains to GamesRadar+ that "the industry has already been moving to this price point, led by Nintendo," a publisher that launches games with all sorts of price tags attached. "The issue is there are only a handful of premium games that command this price point."Essentially, not every game will have the easiest time launching at $80. Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario can because they're, well, Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario. Cole adds that Rockstar Games is continuing a precedent "for only the most in-demand games with a built-in initial audience... It is the industry going towards a tiered pricing model where it is recognized that some games simply provide much more value than others and should be priced accordingly."Joost van Dreunen echoes the point, saying the new $80 standard will be "reserved for only a select few titles and franchises" that can command it, and publishers that try to charge $80 on games that don't deliver "will likely come to regret that.""Gaming is increasingly becoming a luxury category," van Dreunen continues. "Its economics have historically centered around a winner-takes-most model, and GTA 6 raises the bar again. Publishers who can clear it will pull further ahead, and those who cannot will have to compete on distribution instead, finding new channels, bundles, and pricing models to reach players the blockbusters don't."Serkan Toto of Kantan Games notes that corporate owner Take-Two was already the first publisher to charge $70 back in 2020. That was an inflated price other companies very quickly adopted, "and I believe the rest of the industry will follow them this time as well - whenever it makes sense," Toto says.Rockstar Games reportedly has no plans to print GTA 6 discs at launch or in the months after

It's been a long time since we last saw an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game from Bethesda. Fallout 4 is now 11 years old, while it's been nearly 15 years since Skyrim—the same timeframe between that game and the release of Daggerfall in 1996. It's wild that two of gaming's most popular series have been left on the shelf for so long, and one of Microsoft's few understandable decisions lately is a resolution to make these games quicker.But one former Bethesda designer urges caution on this front. Bruce Nesmith, Skyrim's lead designer who also worked on Oblivion and Starfield, thinks that going too hard could end up disappointing fans, as he explained to FRVR (via GamesRadar)."There's an adage in software development about the process having three corners: resources, time and quality," Nesmith told the site. "The studio decides two of them, which determines the third. If you lock down the resources and the schedule, that decides the quality you will achieve. If you lock down the quality and the schedule, that determines the resources you will need to complete the project."Further, Nesmith observes that "The three corners need to be roughly balanced. You can't ask the project to be done in a month by throwing a million people on it." Likewise, "allowing ten years for a project creates a cycle of endless reinvention and ultimate failure."The problem faced by modern game developers—at least in the triple-A space—is that "resources in most big studios are already quite large". Modern game dev teams are typically in the hundreds, while budgets are in the hundreds of millions. Starfield, for example, had a core team of circa 500 and an estimated budget between $200-400 million. At that scale, pumping more money or people into the project is only likely to make it more unwieldy.Consequently, in Nesmith's view, if you want Bethesda to make its games faster, the only solution is to cut resources. "In my opinion, the biggest risk of shortened schedules is quality, reduced features, polish or bugs," he explained. "The things that are done last end up getting set aside to complete the game on time. And, of course, faster dev times would result in faster sequels. But that's the wrong question. Those sequels risk disappointing fans."The obvious solution would be to hand the various licenses to different developers. Microsoft, for example, owns both Bethesda and Obsidian—the developer of what most fans consider to be the best 3D Fallout game. Nesmith concedes that "if the right studio is available, it's a great solution". But that "you can't just hand it to anyone."He also believes that it's good to let a series "lie fallow" for a while. "A franchise that releases too many titles too quickly risks fan fatigue. Of course, too much time between releases can also be a problem."At present, I would say that neither Elder Scrolls nor Fallout is at risk of receiving new games too regularly. But I nonetheless appreciate Nesmith's points here. You can't make these games happen faster just by throwing more money and people at specific projects, which could well be viewed as the solution when you have the resources of a company like Microsoft. Managing a project like that is a huge challenge, and even if you had an entire team dedicated to each series, it would still probably take five years minimum between the start of the project and its end.2026 games: All the upcoming gamesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together

Mark Rosewater sure does wear a lot of superhero T-shirts. Magic: The Gathering's head designer and lead on its Marvel Super Heroes expansion specifically is usually seen in interviews and on stage with a comic-book T under his flannel, and apparently called dibs on a Marvel set back when the Universes Beyond concept was first floated.That level of love is apparent in this "Avengers and friends" set in a way it wasn't in Spider-Man. Where that set had some individual cards that were fun to play if you were into the characters, it didn't have the synergies or new mechanics that make a set really shine. Marvel Super Heroes does.Wizards of the CoastWizards of the CoastWizards of the CoastWizards of the CoastWizards of the CoastWizards of the CoastOne of those new mechanics is Plan, a kind of enchantment that needs to be advanced by stacking plan counters until it's completed and you earn a reward. Doom Reigns Supreme, for example, is a plan that advances whenever you play a Villain card and eventually makes your opponent exile the top five cards on their deck, which you can then play two of for free. Every time one of those Villains enters under your control, you also take a life point from each opponent and gain one yourself.That synergizes with the Doctor Doom card, who is not only a Villain himself, but summons two Doombot tokens when played, each of which also counts as a Villain. That's three life points from each opponent, three for yourself, and three counters advancing your Plan. This is how he got to be President of the United States that one time. (In Doom 2099 admittedly, but it still counts.)While Plans are limited to Villains, everyone has access to the Teamwork ability, which is all about synergy. Teamwork, found on instants and sorcery cards, lets you tap creatures in addition to paying the regular cost for bonus effects. The HULK SMASH! card normally lets you either destroy an artifact or have one of your creatures deal damage equal to its power. Cast it with Teamwork and you can do both. Hulks stronger together.The other new mechanic available to everyone is Power-Up, which represents abilities that can only be used once. Nick Fury's is the ability to recruit someone just like he used to do at the end of almost every Marvel movie. He gets two +1/+1 counters, then you look through the top seven cards of your deck for a Hero, Vehicle, or Equipment card, and play it for free. If it's a double-faced card, you can play either face.Which is useful because Marvel Super Heroes has a bunch of double-faced cards representing superheroes and their secret identities. Normally you'd play the weaker version first then flip them for an additional cost later. Using Nick Fury's Power-Up, you can bring out Bruce Banner and flip him to the Hulk immediately.And while Power-Ups can normally be used only once, if you flash a card out and then in again it recharges. Which is exactly what The Mind Stone, this set's infinity stone, lets you do. Even if you aren't building a deck themed around superheroes, this set will provide a bunch of useful cards for existing decks. If you've got a merfolk deck you'll want to add Namor to it, because his power is equal to the number of merfolk you've got on the board. Fin Fang Foom lets you copy instants and sorceries that target artifacts and land, perfect for those annoying blue/red decks.Magic: The Gathering Marvel Super Heroes is out now both in tabletop magic, and digitally in Magic: The Gathering Arena.