Though Modern Warfare 3 formally launches on Nov. 10, multiplayer and Zombies will start to roll out at various times starting on Nov. 9, depending on your region and platform. Here’s when you’ll see Modern Warfare 3 release in your time zone, and what to expect from the full Modern Warfare 3 release.
When does MW3 multiplayer and Zombies release on PC?
Image: Activision
Modern Warfare 3 releases at 9 p.m. PST on Thursday, Nov. 9, on Windows PC according to an Activision blog post. Here’s when Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer and Zombies launches in your timezone:
9 p.m. PST on Nov. 9 for the West Coast of North America
12 a.m. EST on Nov. 10 for the East Coast of North America
5 a.m. GMT on Nov. 10 for the U.K.
6 a.m. CEST on Nov. 10 for west mainland Europe
2 p.m. JST on Nov. 10 for Japan
Modern Warfare 3 is playable on Steam and Battle.net, but not the Epic Games Store.
When does MW3 multiplayer and Zombies release on PlayStation and Xbox?
On consoles, Modern Warfare 3 rolls out on regional basis, starting at midnight on Nov. 10 in New Zealand (3 a.m. PST on Nov. 9). According to an Activision blog post, Modern Warfare 3 will “fully live worldwide” on PlayStation and Xbox by 10 p.m. PST on Thursday, Nov. 9. Here’s when Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer and Zombies will be live by in your timezone:
10 p.m. PST on Nov. 9 for the West Coast of North America
1 a.m. EST on Nov. 10 for the East Coast of North America
6 a.m. GMT on Nov. 10 for the U.K.
7 a.m. CEST on Nov. 10 for west mainland Europe
3 p.m. JST on Nov. 10 for Japan
Modern Warfare 3 is cross-gen, and will be playable on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Despite recent approval for Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, which publishes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the shooter will not launch day one on Game Pass.
When Modern Warfare 3 goes live globally on Nov. 10, here’s some of what you can expect:
Across both the standard multiplayer and the Zombies mode, the Modern Warfare 3 pre-reason allows you to progress through 55 levels of Military Ranks, unlocking new loadout items along the way.
You’ll be able to complete daily and weekly challenges, in addition to challenges related to weapons, operators, calling cards, and the armory.
If you picked up the premium Vault Edition of Modern Warfare 3, you’ll get access to your Nemesis Operator skins and FATE weapon vaults.
Image: Activision
Completing all 15 missions of Modern Warfare 3 campaign will grant you various rewards for use in multiplayer, including four operators, four calling cards, and one weapon blueprint. You can see some in the graphic above, but Activision has all of the details here.
Modern Warfare 3 season 1 will start at an unspecified date in early December, and will introduce three new core 6v6 maps plus integration with Call of Duty: Warzone.
After nearly three years in development, Outerloop Games and Annapurna Interactive’s Thirsty Suitors was released on Nov. 2. From the beginning, the Outerloop Games team knew a few things: They wanted to make a game about relationships, and they wanted it to reflect the lived experience of its developers in telling an immigrant story. So much of the game was built out from there to create the wholly unique, genre-bending Thirsty Suitors — a game that blends its story up with cooking games, turn-based battles, and skateboarding.
What you get is a video game that goes beyond its individual labels. In the lead-up to Thirsty Suitors’ Nov. 2 release date, Polygon spoke to Outerloop Games co-founder/Thirsty Suitors director Chandana Ekanayake and narrative designer Meghna Jayanth about the complex, “more is more” game that explores both trauma and joy while player-character Jala kickflips her way through her hometown.
Image: Outerloop Games/Annapurna Interactive
[Ed. note: This story has been edited for length and clarity.]
Polygon: Thirsty Suitors is so many different things — turn-based fighting, cooking, romance. It’s an immigrant story, a skateboarding game. How did you pull all these elements together?
Chandana Ekanayake: Where do I start? It starts with the theme and the stories we wanted to tell, and everything else stemmed from there. We wanted to do an immigrant story, because a lot of the folks on the team are — it’s a fully remote team made a lot of immigrants.
That’s where we started. And then we knew we wanted to do a game about relationships. The battle system came out of that, like, how do we balance this argument personified into this battle, plus the writing, the dialogue back-and-forth. So from that, the story came through, throughout just a lot of iteration. Then we added the cooking — it was always gonna be a big part of it, because culturally it’s significant to be able to talk through things while cooking. And then skating was just something that made sense after — I don’t know, it just came about.
Meghna Jayanth: I think skating began as a loading screen. There’s so much creativity on the team; it was really just a loading screen that people loved. And then we built it. Working as the narrative designer, week after week, I would come back and be like, Oh, it’s been two weeks. I haven’t checked in on this. Oh, we’re making a minigame. There’s a little bit of exuberance and creativity on the team.
I think we pulled all of that in. Eka loves to call this a “baby Yakuza,” which I really love as a description. There’s really a sense of joyful abundance, like we’re presenting you with all of these delightful things to do, but hopefully it has some focus as well.
With regard to skateboarding, it comes into the story as well. It’s the same with cooking. Did those parts grow throughout production? Or was it intended to be like that from the start?
Ekanayake: It grew through production, but we also knew the narrative was the focus of the game. We wanted all these — and this is where the “baby Yakuza” comparison is — disparate game mechanics to weave in and out through the narrative. That came through iteration.
The skate park became how Jala and Tyler bond, by doing her a bunch of these favors and trying to figure out what’s going on in the skate park. Cooking was also a way to bond with your parents and figure things out, because Jala hadn’t talked to them in years. You probably noticed that the stuff you cook at home, while there are great emotional beats, it also means you can use in battle too, as items.
Jayanth: A lot of it comes down to the fact that we were able to work on this for about three years. We had an opportunity to figure out what the heart of the story was, what those themes were, and then play around with the narrative and mechanics and really iterate and have the time for that to develop. Big story ideas could change until eight, nine months before we shipped. We edited and significantly changed almost all the content in the game just before we went into voice recording. It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to develop ideas in that way, which you don’t often get given the production cycles of the games industry.
Ekanayake: That was intentional because we knew the game was going to be so different. We needed time to figure it out. There’s 19 actors for 21 speaking characters in the game. Once we cast, Meghna was like, Oh, I’m going to write to this actor now because of how they deliver the lines. That was unexpected, different from what we actually envisioned on paper. It was a really fun process.
Jayanth: We actually did a lot of rewriting on the fly in the sessions, too. It’s nice to be in those, because there’s a lot of very specific cultural context. Even the actors, we were really deliberate about making sure the actors matched the backgrounds of our characters. Even within that, there’s so much you could pick from someone. I’m from Bengaluru down south, and you could go down the street and meet somebody with a completely different sort of context.
We did seven weeks of VO straight. We had a brief break in the middle so we could go outside.
Image: Outerloop Games/Annapurna Interactive
Ekanayake: It’s fully remote, right? The team is spread across seven cities, four continents. We have folks in LA in the studio, folks in Vancouver and New York and Toronto. It was a really fun process. The biggest dramatic thing was our lead, who played Jala, Farah Merani, was very pregnant. It was a running clock to finish. She has, like, a third of the lines in the whole game. So her bag was packed in LA at the studio, ready to go. We finished and a week later she gave birth. It was that close
Jayanth: We wrapped on a Thursday or Friday, and the following Tuesday, she was giving birth, which is amazing. We did have a little bit of a backup plan, which I’m so glad we didn’t have to institute, where maybe Aruni [a fantasy version of Jala’s sister, who is Jala’s inner voice] takes over Jala if we don’t get through those lines.
Since we’re talking about production, let’s talk about what it was like for you to work on this game. You’ve both talked about how having a good, healthy production is important — to have people who are taken care of and treated well. Why is that important to you?
Ekanayake: Mostly because we’ve had the opposite experience. This is my 25th year in games. I’ve worked on a lot of projects — bigger teams, smaller teams.
Part of starting the studio fully remote six, almost seven, years ago was part of that, to be able to work-life balance a little better. We’re made up of a third brand-new folks who’ve never worked on games, a third somewhere in between, and then the rest are olds, like myself. We wanted to have a variety of experience and also get folks that have never worked on games some experience as well, because I think that’s important.
That’s the great thing we can do remotely; people don’t have to move their whole lives for a job. We finished the game in almost three and a half years. The last two and half years have been fully four days a week. We started this during the pandemic, so people are going through all sorts of things, and we didn’t want the work to be another thing that was weighing on folks, while going through some hard times and trying to make the schedule work. The great thing is we control how big the game is. There’s no need to make it a certain size, which allowed us to have a flexible schedule. So people aren’t burnt out at the end of it.
Jayanth: I’m not a manager, but it’s just been really wonderful to work with a team where all these production processes really work. We hit all of our internal deadlines, which is wild to me. I’m not sure that has ever happened.
Ekanayake: We did extend the game a little bit just to try to figure out a launch window, which is so hard this year.
Jayanth: We kind of built this game a little bit as a sense of refuge for us, particularly for marginalized folks and queer folks. It felt really important that we were doing that during the pandemic as well. Getting to work on this colorful, joyful world was a really nice escape for I think a lot of us on the team from what was going on outside. I think it’s really important to be able to do that while not burning yourself out. I do think that it’s a really important model in the industry, that there are alternative ways that we can do these things. We don’t want to be making these supposedly joyful games but burning people out and destroying them in the back end. At the end of the day, it is just a video game. I know we’re out here to sell this game and we want people to play it, and we’re really proud of it, but it is just a video game at the end of the day. And I think keeping that perspective is super important.
Meghna, I know you’ve spoken a lot about capitalism and colonialism in games. Does Thirsty Suitors subvert that tendency of the games industry? It sounds like that influence goes beyond the game, but in studio practices as well. But in-game, all of the different layers of community building really stood out to me.
Jayanth: What we really wanted to do with it was just kind of create a bit of a balance. I think you want a certain amount of familiarity and familiar mechanics, especially when you’re innovating on content and themes. I talked about this at my talk at NYU just last week, as well. In some ways, I feel like maybe the most radical thing that we are doing here is allowing the protagonist to inhabit this queer brown woman joyfully. It’s a sad thing that that’s still deeply unusual in the industry, but I do think that really pushes back against the narrative of who’s playing games, and also whose humanity is interesting to play, and what kind of fantasies — to open up the space for the different kinds of power fantasies that we can explore in games.
I keep joking with my friends, whenever I’m explaining this to non-gamers, I’m like, “All right, the power fantasy of Thirsty Suitors is you get to speak up to your parents, tell them how you feel, and they listen and learn and grow. And the final boss is your maternal grandmother!” It’s about the fantasy of breaking cycles of generational trauma, which is very real, very human. And, yes, they’re very specific, but I think these are all really universal ideas.
One of the things that actually we probably haven’t talked about that much that we did want to include is that this game was sort of set in the ’90s and Jala is in her mid-20s. She has a bit of a millennial vibe, because, I guess, we are — but we really wanted to have that idea of, she’s speaking up to her parents and the older generation, but also kind of being challenged on some of her bullshit by the kids at the skate park, who are way more radical in a way. Personally, I think Jala is a lot less radical than I am, which is fine, too. With the skate park, we get to challenge some of those narratives as well. Hopefully it feels more like being in conversation rather than preaching to anyone. It’s that feeling of being challenged and having accountability, and that being OK, and learning and growing and healing. All of which I think are wonderful things for us to model right now in the world.
Ekanayake: Yeah, and also, it’s not just about Black and brown trauma, right? There’s the joys of the experience and the fantasies of it too. That’s pretty radical too, I think, for most game stories that come out these days. That was definitely intentional.
I’m really into saying goodnight to Jala’s dad every night. It’s so sweet. I have been looking forward to Jala going home, and I wonder what they’re going to watch.
Jayanth: I’m going to reveal a little secret. Some of the things you watch are actually Eka’s kids’ basketball games that he taped. It adds an extra layer of cuteness.
Ekanayake: I think we have the history of Washington wines as read by one of the folks that helped us on VO. And then we have the history of trains.
Jayanth: I think there’s a Cold War documentary, because all dads are obsessed with the Cold War.
Image: Outerloop Games/Annapurna Interactive
I got that one last night, and I was like, Yep, yep.
Jayanth: Getting to put this gentle brown dad in the game was just so lovely for us. And I think it was actually quite late in the process that we really found that cycle of, like, cooking in the morning, going to the skate park, to wandering downtown and then coming back home. That kind of cycle that started feeling really good for us, where players have some idea of what to expect — and another way I think that we are respectful of players is the game is about six to nine hours in total, which I love as a length. And also, the chapters are 40-minute-to-an-hour chunks, which is, I think, a respectful amount of time in someone’s day. There’s a really deliberate effort to put a whole narrative arc in that so that it feels satisfying without demanding too much of your time.
Ekanayake: Yeah, we just want a little bit of your time. Not all of it.
The game is also very funny, but has an earnest emotional core with Jala’s family and culture. How do you pull that off?
Ekanayake: Being honest with ourselves, and taking that stuff seriously — just trying to find the truth in it and play with it, but also, we’re sincere about it.
Jayanth: All of us care. In some ways, Nicole, it’s a little bit terrifying. It does feel really exposing. We’re so much less interested in ironic distance and with appearing cool. We all just really wanted to make something really human. There’s elements of writing and story there. But I also think it’s completely the animation, the light, everything, to the way that camera angles are framed. And of course the voice acting as well, which just adds just a huge layer of humanity back in there. But I hope it feels a little bit like real life. And hopefully there’s enough humor in there that we can pull off a few of the the sincere moments. I won’t deny that I would be extremely delighted if we made people cry. [laughs]
Ekanayake: We found that through the beginning of the project. The first thing we built was the Sergio battle. And tonally, it was a lot meaner. Jala was a lot meaner to Sergio.
Jayanth: Sergio was actually fully toxically masculine in what I consider to be an unacceptable way. But people liked him. [laughs]
Ekanayake: People really liked him and felt bad for him. So Meghna reworked the dialogue, and that’s where we really found the tone for the game.
Jayanth: That’s something that was really great that we got a chance to respond to. In doing that playtesting early, we found that, Oh, actually, people want much more to make friends with this person. Each of these suitors, we’re actually spending a significant amount of time in the game with them. People want to love them. And so instead of kind of trying to push against that, we just incorporated that into our storytelling.
Initially, we had a design where you could choose to make up with the characters, or you could choose to basically be enemies as well, or it could be based on narrative choices. But I think as we went on, the game just turned into one about reconciliation and healing. And so none of the characters you meet are on unremittingly evil in any way. They’re certainly flawed, and I like some of them more than others, but they’re all just human beings attempting to make sense of life, basically.
Ekanayake: Meghna and I are both are older game developers, and I think the later we get into our career and projects, especially on this one, we let the game tell us what it wants to be through the course of development. There’s this risky and scary but really exciting part of it where it’s just like, We think we know what we’re gonna build, but leave enough room for some magic to happen and for the game to figure itself out. That really happened on this project. It doesn’t always happen, but I think being open to it really worked out for us on this project.
Image: Outerloop Games/Annapurna Interactive
I want to talk a little about music too. It feels like 1990s hip-hop with South Asian influence. What was your approach to creating music that matched the vibe of Thirsty Suitors?
Ekanayake: For the exes battles, we were kind of thinking about ’90s music videos, when music videos were a big deal. We’re looking at the theatrical, over-the-top aspect of the spaces and those videos and trying to find a piece of music to match each of the characters and themes. So like everything else, just lots of time and iteration.
Jayanth: I love the vocals in it, which are just so beautiful. It was wonderful for us to have some Tamil in the vocals. I would say that’s really unusual in games, but this year we’ve come out alongside Venba.
You can really see there’s a lot of ’90s hip-hop meets anime meets South Asia. It’s a “more is more” aesthetic.
Ekanayake: Because of the fantastical spaces and the surreal nature of some of the battles, we were able to really push the music to fit those colors and themes, too.
Jayanth: I’ve been secretly sneaking our playlist onto my party playlist and everybody’s like, Oh, that’s really good. Hopefully you see some of that joy. And that’s what it’s been like working on this. Every single person has just put so much love into it. Every single day, when [Thirsty Suitors composer Ramsey Kharroubi] drops a track or [animator Aung Zaw Oo] does a new piece of animation, or a new piece of writing goes in, it just reignites the inspiration for each one of us.
Ekanayake: It’s a 15-person team, so everyone has something significant that they can contribute at this scale. Everyone can point to something in the game and go, “I did that.” That’s what I like about this scale we’re at, too.
A collaboration between Rocket League, the video game where you play soccer but as a car, and Disney and Pixar’s Cars franchise is such an obvious match that it’s strange it took till now to happen. But better late than never, and now Lightning McQueen himself is racing into Rocket League. Kachow!
The Lightning McQueen cosmetic bundle hits the game on Nov. 7. The McQueen car body will be the very first in the game to come with dynamic expression. This means that the Lightning McQueen car’s eyes will move and blink and change depending on what’s going on in the game. He wouldn’t be lightning without that cocky smile, after all!
There are also three new decals to mix up Lightning’s look: the classic racetrack red, the spruced up shiny deep crimson, and a Dinoco Blue fit. There are also new wheels to choose from, including the iconic whitewall wheels promoted by Radiator Springs residents Luigi and Guido.
The bundle also includes a Ka-chow Goal Explosion, a Lightning McQueen Player Banner. and a “Life Is A Highway” Player Anthem by Rascal Flatts. It’ll be available for 2500 credits.
Blizzard revealed the latest hero to join the ever-growing roster of its shooter Overwatch 2 at Blizzcon 2023. During an interview at the convention, Polygon got more details about Mauga, what players can expect from him, and the process of creating a new tank.
“Mauga is a damaged-based tank, and how he sustains himself and his team is through damage,” said lead hero designer Alec Dawson. He was designed based on his weapons, with his abilities centered around doing as much damage as possible. The designers hope this focus on damage will make him more appealing to new players.
The team wanted to ensure his abilities felt good when using both chain guns, but they also wanted to make sure players couldn’t “wipe people out immediately.” To combat that, Mauga has a big spread on both of his guns. At the same time, this makes him a threat in close quarters. “You don’t want to play with Mauga up close unless you know you’re going to take him out,” said Dawson.
Mauga’s Overrun charging ability makes him virtually unstoppable, even against sleep darts. “He uses it to get where he wants to go,” said Dawson. For a nice cherry on top, whenever Mauga directly hits an opponent while using Overrun, he’ll slam them to the ground, stunning them while other nearby opponents will be sent flying.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Mauga’s ultimate, Cage Fight, creates a zone that traps opponents and blocks healing from the outside of it. What makes his ultimate even more dangerous is that Cage Fight stays active even if Mauga dies. Support hero Lifeweaver can pull Mauga out of the ultimate, but the enemy players will still be trapped inside until the ability runs out.
Even though he’s a tank, Mauga can do more damage than some DPS heroes, said Dawson. To counter that, opposing teams can attack Mauga while he’s reloading or has burned through his abilities. “He’s such a big body that he really needs support. He needs a high healing output to keep him up at times.”
When it came to creating Mauga, the dev team worked closely with a culture consultant team to ensure the studio displayed him in a way that would be respectful to the Samoan community. “We worked with a traditional tattoo artist from the Samoan culture to guide us. We tried to get as authentic as possible and as close to real as our engines could handle. And it turned out great,” said hero design producer Kenny Hudson.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
When Mauga was first being tested, the team originally had one iteration where his right gun only dealt critical damage to enemies in the air to help tanks fight flying-based heroes. As time went on, the team scrapped that, and now the right gun deals critical damage whenever an enemy is set on fire first with his left gun. But the idea to have him use two big guns was something the dev team always intended to do. “We always kinda knew that he was going to be a tank with two big main guns, and we wanted to make them just as important and just as useful to players as the other one. We didn’t want one to outshine the other,” said Hudson.
One of the challenges the dev team faced was making the visual cues noticeable to players when Mauga uses his Cardiac Overdrive ability, which allows Mauga and his team members to heal whenever they damage an opponent. So the dev team revisited an old idea where Roadhog’s ability would heal everyone around him. This helped them find the “sweet spot” of not overwhelming the player with too much going on screen. “We don’t like throwing things away. Even if it doesn’t work out for a certain hero, it can come back later on for another one,” said senior test analyst Foster Elmendorf. To help further prove their point, Elmendorf explained how Mauga’s ultimate was originally D.va’s, which involved her making “a dome of lasers.”
The team has been working on Mauga for some time. Originally, he was supposed to be released in season 2 instead of Ramattra, “but the team really wanted to take some more time to get the kit just right,” said Dawson. Pushing Mauga back allowed the dev team to polish him up and ensure his abilities played smoothly with one another.
Surrounded by a sizable, colorful cascade of plushies — largely Nintendo-themed — and an impressive retro game collection, Ash goes live on Twitch five days a week. She’s played everything from Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion to Sierra Entertainment’s Quest for Glory,focusing on games that evoke a sense of nostalgia. The one thing that stays the same each stream is the way Ash ends them, with a message to her viewers: “Don’t forget to tell your friends Ash said hi!”
When Ash, who goes by AshSaidHi online, first envisioned her Twitch channel, she started with the name. “I knew I had to have a tagline or a call to action,” she told Polygon. “That’s where the name AshSaidHi comes from, because I wanted it to be like, Oh, that friend, they told me to tell you hi. It sticks in your brain a little bit.”
Over the years since Ash started her Twitch channel in 2019, she’s worked to build a community and a business that matches her values — a place where she could have a work-life balance that her previous career didn’t allow for, and a community of support Twitch can provide.
“People go to Twitch to connect about the things they love and find other people that are into the things they love,” Ash said. “That’s how I built an engaging community.”
Ahead of TwitchCon 2023 in Las Vegas, Polygon spoke to Ash about how she’s carved out her own space on Twitch.
[Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
Polygon:First, I just want to let you know I love the collection in the background.
AshSaidHi: Thank you! That’s years and years of work. My parents got me into video gaming when I was really young. Even my mom, she still plays video games. I texted her the other day and was like, “Did you download Lies of P?” and she was like, “Yeah, but I really like Lords of the Fallen.” And I was like, “What?”
She’s a big Soulsborne, like Elden Ring, player. She just bought a PS5 and was like, “When are you getting a PS5?” I was like, “Mom, I play retro games on Twitch. OK?”
I know you started your Twitch channel in 2019. What prompted you to start streaming?
I was working in an industry where I didn’t have a work-life balance. And after I left it, I was like, Oh, I want to get into content creation. And I got into a different industry. It allowed me time to create content. So I was like, I think I’m gonna start on Twitch. I have a degree in advertising. The first thing I wanted to do was create a concept for my channel. And I knew I had to have like a tagline or a call to action. So that’s where the name AshSaidHi comes from, because I wanted it to be like, Oh, that friend, they told me to tell you hi. It sticks in your brain a little bit. And so it’s like, “Oh, don’t forget to tell your friends Ash said hi.” That’s how I always wanted to end my videos.
I started on Tetris 99 and Breath of the Wild. Those were the first games I broadcast on Twitch. But I have this big backlog of video games. Why don’t I start getting into retro games? And that’s how it it really snowballed. I got into a retro games, and the community was wonderful. They taught me the ropes, I met a lot of friends — friends that I still have to this day. It changed my life for the better in so many different ways.
I really, really love being a creator on Twitch. The magic is in the sense of community that you get when you meet people and they share the love of the same things. I met like people who were into Amiga 500 gaming, and Commodore and NES and Super Nintendo and all that kind of stuff. I knew I found my people.
Do you stream full time?
It’s what I mainly spend my time doing. It’s always a funny question because when people say “stream full time on Twitch,” they imagine it means eight hours a day, five days a week. But I think it means that I put all my focus on it. I do a lot of sponsorship work and a lot of offline work for my channel. So technically, yes.
How long did it take to get to the point where you could spend that time on Twitch and the business behind it?
I started in 2019 and then I got Twitch Partner in November 2020. And I was like, OK, wait a minute, people really like what I’m doing here. I have an engaging community, I try to never miss a message in chat — I literally have chat up on like three or four screens.
Once I hit Partner, I found out about the Twitch Ambassador program, because I saw somebody with a check and I clicked it. I applied and talked about all the skills that I had learned. And I talked about why I was passionate for what I do. They called me back a few months later and were like, “We want to invite you into the program.”
I was announced March 2021, and at the time, they also had a billboard in Times Square. I’m originally from New York, but I no longer live there. They put my picture up on that billboard. And at that point, it kind of gave me a kind of sense that there’s credibility to what I’m doing, which is really important for me. I flew up from where I live back up to New York, and I told my mom and she was freaking out. It was such a surreal moment. For me, in my hometown — the crossroads of the world — here is a picture of me. Then it snowballed from there. I knew I wanted to take it seriously.
If you would have told me 2 years ago on this day when I had my VERY FIRST broadcast that just 24 months later I would be on a @Twitch billboard in Times Square, one of the most iconic places in the world & my home, I would have told you “NO WAY” yet here we are. Forever grateful pic.twitter.com/BSq5fiaa0X
One of the things that I do that helps me sustain my business is sponsored broadcast. Because of my professional background, and the way that I communicate — I work on trying to build good bonds with developers or marketing people. I make sure that I do my due diligence, to be on time and to be mindful in the moment and be professional. Whenever I’m called upon for a job, I put a lot of pride into what I’m doing. I knew things were getting serious when people started paying me to play video games.
I love that it allows me freedom to be able to travel to things like TwitchCon. And it allows me to go spend time with my mom, or to just take time to relax, like I can have that work-life balance and not have to request this time off or things like that. And my mom is really proud of me. When I talk about it to my family members, they’re always so happy for the things that I’m doing.
It’s cool to hear you talk about that work-life balance, because I think sometimes when you hear about people doing Twitch, it can be grinding out streams for 12 hours straight. It’s nice that you’re able to have a balance.
That’s key, right? I can’t do my best work if I’m not taking care of myself. I understand why that’s the mindset of constantly streaming, like you’re not discoverable if you’re not live sometimes. That’s the conundrum. But I do feel like if you put your time and effort into things like, I’m going to start writing a little bit, or I’m going to start making short video that I can post on social media so people can get a sense of who I am. Even when I’m not broadcasting, people can find AshSaidHi. When I’m not live, those things helped me bridge the gaps.
What have you learned since you started streaming about carving out that engaging community you mentioned earlier?
I learned to be authentically myself — be present in the moment. I always tell people this when they meet me in person, that you’re meeting the Ash that you see on camera. I’m always talking about my mom and my dad and how they got me into video games. I feel like I’m sharing the best parts of myself — what I grew up with.
I talk about food all the time on my channel. If you meet me, I know all the places in New York where you could get some good food, you know what I’m saying? Like, that is like a big part of who I am. I love Star Trek, I love Nintendo, I love drawing, I love all of those things. And I love sharing those things with people. Being excited about the things that we love… I think that’s key — being able to share the things about you would that you could connect with people.
I think that that’s also the magic of Twitch — connecting with people. It’s a people platform first to me. We go on there, we play video games — whether it’s playing video games or cooking, exercising, ASMR, chatting or whatever it is on Twitch. People go there to connect with people. People go to Twitch to connect about the things they love and find other people that are into the things they love. That’s how I built an engaging community.
What should people know about your career as a streamer, or about Twitch itself?
I would love to share the power of community on Twitch. There is the Twitch Women’s Guild, which is incredible, because not only does it connect women and empower women to be who they are on Twitch, but it’s a place where we cheer each other on. It is a safe space for us to kind of talk about the things that impact us in our daily lives as broadcasters.
I did a Creator Camp with some of the women that are in that group and it was incredible. And I also did a show called Streamer Strategies. I try to do a show once a month where we talk about different strategies that you might be thinking about for streaming. The first one I did was creative monetization. But the next one I did was collaboration. I feel like a lot of really wonderful opportunities come from being able to connect with other people like that. And it’s such a great program. It’s one of the best things that Twitch created because it gives us a space to learn. And it gives us a space to speak about our experiences. They also give a lot of tools to us to help us extend our skills.
Especially for women, Black people, people of color, things like that solidify the fact that we belong in this space. And I think that it is so important to inspire people who feel like they don’t know if they belong, right? Because we see so much of that. I’m really grateful for all of those opportunities that I’ve been given. I just want to make sure that people know how awesome those kinds of tools and resources are, because without things like that, you question whether or not you can do it.
How many times have you worked on something and people are like, “Oh, can you really do it?” They’re questioning your intelligence, or they’re saying, “You just got by on, like, certain qualities.” But no — there’s so many hardworking individuals that get a space because of things like that. I just love that space for us.
Pokémon Go is having a Wooper Community Day event on Nov. 5 from 2-5 p.m. in your local time.
As expected with a Community Day event, both Johtoan Wooper and Paldean Wooper will spawn in huge numbers with a high chance for it to appear shiny. There are also several other bonuses and perks, which we’ve list out below.
How do I catch a shiny Wooper?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), Shiny rates on Community Days are about 1 in 24, which means that if you keep playing throughout the three-hour window, you should find quite a few shiny Pokémon.
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
If you’re short on time or Poké Balls, you can pop an Incense, then quickly tap each Wooper to check for shiny ones, running from any that aren’t shiny. Notably, any Wooper you’ve already tapped will face where your player is standing, so that should help identify which ones you may have already checked.
What Community Day move does Wooper’s evolution learn?
If you evolve Wooper into Quagsire from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. in your local time, it will learn the charged move Aqua Tail. Evolving Paldean Wooper into Clodsire gives it the charged move Megahorn.
If you miss out on evolving it during this period, you will likely be able to evolve it during a Community Day weekend event in December to get Aqua Tail and Megahorn. If you don’t want to wait, you can use an Elite TM to get the move.
How do Quagsire and Clodsire do in the meta?
Neither Quagsire nor Clodsire have spaces in the PvE raid meta, but they are pretty decent in the Great League, if you’re into PvP.
For Great League, give Quagsire Mud Shot, Mud Bomb, and Stone Edge. Give Clodsire Poison Sting, Earthquake, and Sludge Bomb. These muddy boys will do you proud.
How do I make the most of Wooper Community Day?
The following bonuses will be active during Wooper Community Day:
1⁄4 hatch distance for eggs placed into Incubators during the event
Doubled candy for catching Pokémon
Doubled chance for trainers over level 31 to get XL candy from catching Pokémon
Incense lasts three hours
Lure Modules lasts three hours
Wooper can do special photobombs when taking snapshots
One additional special trade
Stardust cost halved for trading
That said, you should definitely put your eggs in Incubators and pop an Incense and try to nab some powerful Wooper.
If you can Mega EvolveSwampert, you’ll score additional Wooper Candy per catch for both types of Wooper. Unfortunately this is the only ground-type Mega Evolution in the game so far, so this is the only Mega Evolution that’ll cover both bases. You can use a water-type Mega Evolution (Slowbro, Blastoise, or Gyarados) for the regular Johto Wooper or a poison-type Mega Evolution (Gengar, Beedrill, or Venusaur) for Paldean Wooper. Note that both Wooper share candy anyway, so you shouldn’t have to fret too much about which Mega to pick.
In addition to all this, Niantic is still running special four-star raids from 5-10 p.m., where if you clear the Wooper raid, they will spawn in a 300-meter radius around the gym for 30 minutes. These raids cannot be done remotely. If the usual 2-5 p.m. spawn increase doesn’t get you the Wooper you wanted, you can try raiding for another chance.
Gen V’s first six episodes are remarkably tight. The Boys’ spinoff series immediately establishes its place in the larger universe, and quickly introduces us to an entire cast of characters, a unique superhero university, and a secret conspiracy in just a few short hours. Despite its relatively large cast of characters, Gen V manages to give each one time to shine in their own storylines, letting them all have problems — both personal and superpowered — that just make for great television. All the while, all of the teen drama seamlessly filters back into the conspiracy thriller literally underneath the school, as the kids discover the mysteries of The Woods. But Gen V’s last two episodes run into a unique problem: They move too fast.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Gen V season 1.]
Gen V’s seventh and eighth episodes cover a lot of ground very quickly. After the cliffhanger twist of episode 6 (that Cate has been manipulating the group the whole time), the gang learns that Indira Shetty’s ultimate plan with The Woods is to create a virus that will kill anyone with Compound V in their system. Cate decides she’s flipping sides completely. She kills Shetty, who had been manipulating her, and frees the kids from The Woods, telling them that they’re better than humans and that humans don’t deserve to live — a message Sam gets on board with fast. For Marie, Jordan, Emma, and Andre, however, all of this is too much bloodshed to stomach, and they start fighting Cate, Sam, and the kids from The Woods. As chaos breaks out at God U, the powers that be finally call in a little assistance, and Homelander shows up to put a stop to everything.
If this all sounds a little harried, that’s because it is. What started as a carefully plotted series, full of scenes of teens working out complex (and not so complex) emotions and dealing with the moral ramifications of having powers, suddenly devolves into a massive CGI brawl. The huge fight feels out of step with everything that’s come before it. It’s exactly the kind of ending you might expect from a Marvel movie that takes a left turn into punching just as the third act begins.
Image: Prime Video
That’s not to say that Gen V’s first season shouldn’t have ended in a fight — just that it shouldn’t have ended in a fight this quickly. The fight should have been set up better, allowing the teenage characters’ emotions the space to bubble over until all they knew how to do was fight their way out. It’s a bad time for the show’s first emotional shortcut. The eight-episode season abandons the delicate pacing of the show’s fantastic early chapters to rush through plot points and motivation in the back half.
But with just a couple more episodes, which would ultimately give the season a very standard 10 episodes, it might have been much easier to swallow the way that Cate and Sam’s systematic abuse caused them to turn to wanton violence, or why their friends couldn’t talk them out of it and decided to fight them instead. Episodes 7 and 8 feel like the microwave version of Gen V. They’re still pretty good, but not nearly as great as the slow-cooked setup.
The good news for the show is that the too-quick ending doesn’t take away from how great the rest of the season was. And all things considered, there are much worse problems to have than leaving people wanting more — Gen V is the rare show that could be improved with more rather than less. Regardless of the chaotic frenzy that ended season 1, the setup for Gen V’s second season is easy to see and exciting to think about. The core of the heroes being trapped feels like great fodder for a prison break, and Cate and Sam having to figure out what to do now that they’re not under anyone’s thumb should be fascinating. Despite the season’s sudden ending, this series is still filled with fantastic characters, and the deftness of the first half of the season has earned the creative team some benefit of the doubt going forward. But let’s hope season 2 gets all the episodes it needs to do its story justice.
Happy Friday, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable releases to streaming and video rental, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.
This week’s biggest debut is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which is now streaming on Netflix. That’s not all, as Insidious: The Red Door — the fifth installment in the Insidious horror franchise — also arrives on the platform this week alongside Jawan, one of the biggest Indian action movies of the year. There’s plenty more exciting releases this week too, with A Haunting in Venice now streaming on Hulu, the Italian superhero movie Freaks vs. the Reich on Prime Video, plus the premiere of The Kill Room and Outlaw Johnny Black from director-star Michael Jai White on VOD.
Genre: Superhero action Run time: 2h 20m Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac
The highly anticipated follow-up to 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse sees Miles Morales facing off not only against a dimension-hopping nemesis in the form of the Spot, but a whole multiverse of Spider-Mans, Spider-People, and even a Spider-Dinosaur as he attempts to save the day once again.
Not every theme and plot and moment in Across the Spider-Verse lands, particularly with the other part of this story still most of a year away. But in the end, the theme of the Spider-Verse movies is shaping up to be a story about people trying to be bigger and bolder themselves, trying to reach beyond what they’re told they’re capable of, and do more. It’s no wonder that every part of Across the Spider-Verse is an attempt to outdo the first movie. The idea of growing, of surpassing and ignoring everyone else’s limits, is the heart of this series’ heroes and their individual journeys. It looks like the movies themselves are designed to follow suit.
Genre: Action thriller Run time: 2h 50m Director: Atlee Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Nayanthara, Vijay Sethupathi
The biggest Indian movie of the year has landed on Netflix. Directed by Atlee (Mersal), Jawan features megastar Shah Rukh Khan (between this and Pathaan, he is truly back) and is basically “Robin Hood meets Charlie’s Angels.”
Insidious: The Red Door
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix Saturday
Image: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Genre: Supernatural horror Run time: 1h 47m Director: Patrick Wilson Cast: Ty Simpkins, Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne
The fifth movie in the Insidious franchise is the directorial debut for star Patrick Wilson. It’s also a sequel to Insidious: Chapter 2, as the last two movies in the franchise were prequels.
As a director, Wilson isn’t as effortless a horror ringmaster as Wan or Whannell: He favors more actor-centric scares than wild imagery. But he makes great use of expressive close-ups (often of himself) and shallow focus, with a few creepy It Follows-like shots of blurry figures approaching from the distance, and a terrifically claustrophobic scene inside an MRI machine. Dalton’s college story, meanwhile, occasionally borders on campus-prank zaniness: It includes what can only be described as a puke ghost, and there’s one amusing use of the horror movie cliche about the haunted little kid who makes terrifying drawings of the ghouls only he can see. (Naturally, that kid grows up to become a star pupil in an insufferable freshman art class.)
Sly
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Image: Netflix
Genre: Documentary Run time: 1h 35m Director: Thom Zimny Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Quentin Tarantino
This documentary takes a close look at the life of one of the great American movie stars and film writers: Sylvester Stallone.
Genre: Biographical sports drama Run time: 2h 1m Directors: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi Cast: Jodie Foster, Annette Bening, Rhys Ifans
Nyad tells the (questionably) true story of swimmer Diana Nyad, who swam from Cuba to Florida at 64 years old, among many other swimming accomplishments.
Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) is both behind and in front of the camera in this action comedy about women thieves on the run looking to pull off one last job.
Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot adaptations have generally been a fun time, even when they have problems (looking at you, Death on the Nile). A Haunting in Venice is his best yet, as Branagh’s confidence as director and performer in this mode only continues to grow. It’s perfect fall viewing.
Genre: Comedy Run time: 1h 39m Director: Jessica Yu Cast: Awkwafina, Sandra Oh, Will Ferrell
Sandra Oh and Awkwafina play a pair of estranged sisters who try to win big on a game show to pay off their mom’s debts. The supporting cast includes Will Ferrell, Jason Schwartzman, Tony Hale, and the late Paul Reubens.
New on Prime Video
Freaks vs. the Reich
Where to watch: Available to stream on Prime Video
Image: VMI Releasing
Genre: Superhero/circus war movie Run time: 2h 21m Director: Gabriele Mainetti Cast: Claudio Santamaria, Aurora Giovinazzo, Pietro Castellitto
This offbeat Italian superhero movie follows a group of circus performers in World War II who are sought after by the Nazis and team up to stop them. I have heard it’s funny, sweet, and has strong action — definitely on my weekend watchlist.
Genre: Romantic comedy Run time: 1h 32m Director: Nia Vardalos Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Louis Mandylor
One of cinema’s most endearingly goofy families is back, in the most family-centric franchise this side of the Fast and Furious movies. It’s the first Greek Wedding movie since 2016, which came nearly 15 years after the original smash hit. This time, star-writer Nia Vardalos takes over directorial duties, following up her 2009 directorial debut I Hate Valentine’s Day.
New on AMC Plus
Sympathy for the Devil
Where to watch: Available to stream on AMC Plus
Image: RLJE Films
Genre: Psychological thriller Run time: 1h 30m Director: Yuval Adler Cast: Nicolas Cage, Joel Kinnaman
A largely two-person movie that sounds a bit like Collateral, Sympathy for the Devil stars Nicolas Cage as a passenger who holds a driver (Joel Kinnaman) hostage on a long car trip.
New to rent
Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Paramount Pictures
Genre: Action adventure Run time: 1h 35m Director: Cal Brunker Cast: Mckenna Grace, Taraji P. Henson, Marsai Martin
The Paw Patrol is back — this sequel to the first movie sees the pup get superpowers in their quest to stop Mayor Humdinger from destroying Adventure City.
The Kill Room
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Shout! Studios
Genre: Dark comedy thriller Run time: 1h 38m Director: Nicol Paone Cast: Joe Manganiello, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman
Joe Manganiello stars as a hitman turned artist in this funny comedy about how the worlds of fine art and high crime aren’t so separated after all. When he turns to art as a method of laundering money, the hitman becomes an unexpected overnight sensation in the high-art scene.
Genre: Satirical Western Run time: 2h 10m Director: Michael Jai White Cast: Michael Jai White, Anika Noni Rose, Erica Ash
Michael Jai White’s long-awaited follow-up to Black Dynamite is finally here: a “West-ploitation” movie about an outlaw who pretends to be a preacher and settles in a new troubled town. The star and director spoke to us at length about the movie and the long road it took to get here.
Sound of Freedom
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Angel Studios/VidAngel Studios
Genre: Crime thriller Run time: 2h 11m Director: Alejandro Gómez Monteverde Cast: Jim Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, Bill Camp
One of the most surprising (and controversial) box-office hits of the year, Sound of Freedom purports to be a true story about stopping child trafficking. The truth is much more complicated than that.
A new hero is coming to Overwatch 2 next month. Mauga, the game’s next tank-class hero, will join the Overwatch roster with season 8 and will be the game’s 39th playable character, according to a post on the Nintendo Switch eShop news channel.
Blizzard plans to officially reveal the next Overwatch 2 hero at BlizzCon 2023, which starts Friday, but a first look at Mauga and his abilities have leaked ahead of that.
Overwatch 2 players can get their hands on Mauga earlier than December, however — this weekend, in fact, thanks to a free trial weekend for Blizzard’s game. Mauga will be playable from Friday, Nov. 3 through Sunday, Nov. 5 as part of a sneak peek at season 8 of Overwatch 2.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard describes Mauga as a “powerful brawling Tank Hero who will tear through the competition with his incendiary and volatile chainguns.” Maugau’s kit is designed “to bash through the front lines and brawl his opponents in close-quarter combat, by wielding two powerful chainguns that can either be fire individually or in unison,” Blizzard says.
One of Mauga’s chainguns is nicknamed “Gunny” and can burn his opponents with incendiary charges when they take enough damage. The other gun is known as “Cha-Cha,” which can deal critical hits. Mauga’s Berserker passive ability, Blizzard says, will grant him temporary health whenever he deals critical damage.
Mauga’s front line-breaking power is called Overrun, “a charging ability that cannot be stopped by any crowd control abilities,” Blizzard says, meaning counters like Ana’s Sleep Dart or Sigma’s Accretion. Overrun “stomps into opponents, dealing a powerful knockback.” Another ability, Cardiac Overdrive, creates an aura that reduces incoming damage, “allowing allies to heal themselves while dealing damage.”
Mauga’s ultimate ability, Cage Fight, “traps nearby opponents in a cylindrical fighting ring” with a barrier that “blocks enemy incoming damage or healing from the outside.”
Blizzard says Mauga will be officially released on Dec. 5, when season 8 of Overwatch 2 goes live.
Overwatch 2’s 39th playable hero shouldn’t be a surprise to players who have been paying close attention to the game for the past few years. Mauga made a guest appearance in the 2019 Overwatch comic What You Left Behind, which revealed the tank-class character as a former Talon ally of Baptiste. Mauga hails from Samoa, a location that Blizzard recently mined for a new Control map for Overwatch 2. That map offered hints that Mauga would soon appear in the game, in the form of one of his colorful shirts hanging in a room.
Every Cult Stash you open in Alan Wake 2 will grant you helpful rewards. Like Lunch Boxes and Nursery Rhymes, finding Cult Stashes is an optional pursuit while you’re in control of Saga around Bright Falls and the surrounding areas as she investigates the Cult of the Tree.
In this Alan Wake 2 guide, we’ll show you where you can find Cult Stash locations, how to solve every Cult Stash you find, and what rewards you’ll get from every Cult Stash you open.
Note: This guide is in progress. We’ll add more Cult Stashes as we find them.
Cult Stash locations in Cauldron Lake
There are a total of five Cult Stash locations in the Cauldron Lake area, but you’ll only be able to get four of them during your first adventure in the area. These Cult Stashes come with a variety of supplies, but one of them in the Cauldron Lake area comes with an inventory expansion, which is definitely something you’ll want to have sooner rather than later.
If you miss any of these stashes on your first trip, you will be able to grab them later on in the game.
Cauldron Lake Cult Stash #1 (“Confused? Follow the Steps”)
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
The first cult stash is just south of the Murder Site and general store (where you get the shotgun) on the map. In front of the long, rectangular trailer, you’ll find a heavy box with a lock on it.
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
On top of the box, you’ll find a taped piece of paper, which reads: “Confused? Follow the steps! Wash hands, take chicken out of fridge, take a nap.”
The note is directing you toward the trailer. If you go inside the trailer and look at the bathroom sink, the fridge, and then the bed in the bedroom, you’ll see three symbols in order:
Two triangles with their points touching at an angle
Two triangles with their points touching that are vertical
Horizontal elevator “open door” buttons
(These symbols don’t have names, so if our descriptions are tough to follow, run through the house in the order we listed above to check for yourself.)
Head to the lock on the chest and input the three symbols we’ve listed above. Once in the right order, the chest will pop open and you’ll be rewarded with some handgun ammo and a trauma pad.
Cauldron Lake Cult Stash #2
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
You won’t be able to access this Cult Stash until after you’ve defeated Nightingale — the game’s first boss — and woken up on the shore with a mysterious companion.
Once you’re headed back toward the Witch’s Sign and the Overlap, hang to your right and you’ll find a ton of gnarly tree limbs scattered along a shore area. It doesn’t really look like you can adventure any further, but if you walk up to the biggest tree blocking your way, Saga will climb under it.
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
Once on the other side of the big tree, make your way through the narrow path until you reach another Cult Stash. This lock is the simplest to open by far. Activate it and some lights will flash in an order. Hit the buttons in the same order that the lock just showed you — like Simon Says — and it’ll pop open.
This is a pretty great stash to find, as it includes some shotgun ammo, a propane tank, a hand flare, and most importantly, an inventory expansion.
Cauldron Lake Cult Stash #3 (“Rock Rock Tree”)
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
Once you’ve removed the flooding from Cauldron Lake and you’re able to get down by the river, you’ll find another Cult Stash just south of the Private Cabin, in a little ravine that leads out to the lake itself.
The Cult Stash is on a shelf next to the cabin, and simply says “Rock, Rock, Tree. Are you bright enough?”
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
This one is a little tricky, as you’ll need to do some minor math and hunt around for the code. If you’re just looking for the code, here you go: 658.
The gist is that there are two numbers written on a rock down by the river (to the south) that say 7 and -2. Then there’s a tree to the left of the box with a 6 and a +2 on it. And then there’s another rock to the right of the box with 3 and +3. If you do the math on this, that means you’re dealing with 5, 6, and 8.
The cache doesn’t specify which rock is first, so we just had to try both to figure out the order.
You’ll get a propane tank and a first aid kit for your trouble.
Cauldron Lake Cult Stash #4
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
Just west of the Witch Sign, next to the tent icon in the Crow’s Foot Hills on the map, you’ll find another stash. Depending on how you approach it, you’ll likely see the golden arrows before you see the box itself.
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
The box just has a picture of a lightbulb on it. If you look at the trees from the west (looking east, toward where your car and the parking lot is) with your flashlight, you’ll see a bunch of arrows leading you to the right (or south, on the map). Follow these arrows and you’ll eventually find some keys on a mound of dirt.
Pick up the Streamside Stash Key and bring it back to the stash to unlock it and earn a hand flare, some shotgun ammo, and a trauma pad.
Cult Stash locations in Watery
There are a total of eight Cult Stash locations in Watery, which you’ll be able to head to as Saga once you complete the first Alan gameplay section. These Cult Stashes come with a variety of supplies — as usual — but one of them in Watery is how you’ll unlock the Crossbow, which is a powerful long-range weapon for Saga.
If you miss any of these stashes on your first trip to Watery, you will be able to grab them later on in the game.
Watery Cult Stash #1
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
North of downtown Watery, just after you meet the Taken Throwers for the first time, you’ll find yourself on a winding trail up into the woods. Keep going until you’re able to turn right and head back the way you came along a small ridge — if you make it to the rest shack with the generator, you’ve gone too far, and if you find a nursery rhyme, you didn’t go far enough.
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
After passing by some foliage you’ll find yourself on a ridge overlooking the area you just walked through. On the lip of the ridge is a Cult Stash. This has the same Simon Says-style lock as the second Cauldron Lake Cult Stash. Copy the inputs and it’ll pop open, netting you a propane tank and some shotgun ammo.
Watery Cult Stash #2
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
North of downtown Watery you’ll find a safe room shack with a generator outside. Once you turn it on and save your game, walk outside the safe room and you’ll see another Cult Stash sitting under and awning by the shooting range. If you read the note you’ll see that this Cult Stash is where you can get a Crossbow — if only you could figure out the code…
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
The code here is 527, and the way you figure it out is actually pretty cute.
If you look at the crossbow training area to the right of the stash, you’ll see a bunch of targets with numbers on them. The five has one bolt sticking out of it (indicating it’s the first number), the two has two bolts, and the seven has three bolts.
Input the code and steal the Crossbow for yourself. You can grab all of the bolts out of the aforementioned numbers to get some extra ammo.
Watery Cult Stash #3 (“Only striped cups”)
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
Once you make it inside Coffee World, you’ll find another Cult Stash at the foot of the Slow Roaster, the creaky death-trap of a Ferris Wheel.
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
The code here is 147, and the clue says “only striped cups.”
If you look up at the Slow Roaster you’ll see that all the Ferris Wheel carriages are numbered and some are striped. You just need to pick the three striped ones and put in their corresponding numbers. You’ll get some shotgun and handgun ammo for your trouble.
Watery Cult Stash #4 (“What hides behind the smile?”)
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
In Coffee World, in the section of the map sandwiched between the “Coffee World” area (the one south of the Slow Roaster, not the big red sign on the map) and Kalevala Knights Workshop, you’ll find the Huotari Well. And behind the Huotari Well, against the back wall of the area, is another Cult Stash.
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
The clue shows a picture of Drippy — the giant coffee pot mascot for Coffee World — and says “what hides behind the smile.” This sounds cryptic, but it’s actually quite literal. Head back toward the Coffee World area and the main entrance to the park (remember, you entered from the back) and you’ll see the giant, painted Drippy made out of concrete, sitting on a wall. Walk up behind the mascot and weasel your way though a little gate to what looks almost like a tiny garden. You’ll find a key sitting on the ground.
Grab the Coffee World Stash Key and take it back to the Cult Stash to get some handgun, shotgun, and crossbow ammo.
Watery Cult Stash #5
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
West of the Watery Lighthouse and its nearby safe room, you’ll find a ledge you can grab up on. Climb up to find a Cult Stash sitting against a rock. Here, you’ll need to shine your flashlight around looking for cult symbols in a particular order. But there are way more symbols here than codes to place into the lock, so you’ll need to narrow it down.
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
The code to the box is:
Two triangles facing down on top of each other
Two triangles facing up on top of each other
Two triangles next to each other facing down
You can find this pattern for yourself by looking around for the roman numerals above each symbol. These symbols are marked with an I, II, and III respectively.
You’ll get a propane tank, an arrow, and some pistol ammo for your trouble.
Watery Cult Stash #6
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
Once you’ve conquered the Overlap in Watery and made the flooding subside, head back to Saga’s trailer (marked “‘My’ Trailer” on the map) and go to the trailer one just south of it. Head toward the front door, which faces the dock, and you’ll see the Cult Stash hanging out under an awning near the front door.
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
There is no hint on this stash at all, and while you could go into the house and read some emails to figure out where to find the key, we’ll just tell you where it is.
Facing the stash, walk right and you’ll see a ramp that leads up to a pole. Walk up the ramp and look to your left. Grab the Trailer Park Stash Key off of the electrical box and use it to open the stash.
You’ll get an arrow, a propane tank, and a trauma pad for your trouble.
Watery Cult Stash #7 (“Battery 1600 Amps math problem”)
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
Once the flooding has gone down in Watery, head back into downtown and go down the dock facing to the east, on the farthest edge of town. You’ll find the Cult Stash box sitting next to some other boxes and it’ll have a bit of a math problem for you to solve. Let’s take a look:
There are 3 batteries (B1, B2, B3) which have a combined charge of 1600 Amps. B2 has 128 Amps more than B3. B1 has two times as much charge as B3. How many Amps does B2 have?
Image: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing via Polygon
The correct answer and code is 496.
Show our work? Sure! Subtract 128 from 1600, which gives you 1472. Divide that number by four (three different batteries, but we know one of them is double the other, so it counts for two), to get the value of our lowest battery, B3: 368. Multiple B3 by two and you’ll get B1: 736. And add that 128 back to B3 and you get the code and answer to B2: 496. Check your work by adding 368, 736, and 496 back together and you get 1600 Amps exactly. Math!
You’ll get an arrow, a trauma pad, and shotgun shells for flexing your math skills.
Nearly three decades after it was first released on Super Nintendo — and despite a handsome remake for Switch, with completely redone visuals and rerecorded music — there’s still something strangely, but not unpleasantly, off about Super Mario RPG.
Mario looks all squat and cross-eyed; in fact, the whole Mushroom Kingdom and all its denizens have a sort of squashed, funhouse-mirror look, as if folding them into an isometric perspective has flattened them all out. Early in the game, Bowser’s castle gets run through by a giant, skyscraper-sized talking sword; when did you ever see a sword in a Mario game? Not long after, a Toad makes a joke about forgetting his bazooka at home. His what? Mario’s house is a wobbly, clapboard shack. Mario has a house. It’s all kinds of wrong.
This adventure, first released in 1996 as Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, was a collaboration between Nintendo and Square (now Square Enix) when both were in their mid-’90s pomp. Nintendo was winding down the SNES after an unbeatable run of in-house classics, from Super Mario World to Yoshi’s Island, while Square was months away from unleashing Final Fantasy 7 on the world. It was a meeting of near equals, and while the characters were Nintendo’s, the turf — turn-based role-playing games — was very much Square’s. The developer had the confidence to make its own tastes and personality felt in Mario RPG, in much the same way it later would with the Disney-crossover Kingdom Hearts games, and in a way few external developers working with Mario ever would again (with the recent exception of Ubisoft’s zany-but-cunning Mario + Rabbids games).
Image: Nintendo
So Mario RPG features many elements that feel like foreign bodies, even within the hallucinatory, anything-goes world of the Mushroom Kingdom. Square was allowed to create its own characters for the game — including Mallow, Mario’s first companion on his quest, who claims to be a frog but looks like a cross between a cloud and a cauliflower with stripy pants and a purple quiff. There’s a lovely score by the legendary Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts, Street Fighter 2) that has a lush, nostalgic quality that’s subtly but profoundly different from original Mario composer Koji Kondo’s folksy melodic playfulness.
It all adds up to a curio: a game that has long felt like it belongs in a parallel dimension. Released just months before the Nintendo 64’s debut, original SNES copies of Super Mario RPG command high prices on the used market, and it has had only basic and sparing reissues from Nintendo since (it didn’t come to Europe at all until the Wii Virtual Console version in 2008). But it was also influential, laying the foundations for Nintendo’s later (and more tonally controlled) Mario RPG series, Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. It has the same streamlined RPG systems as those games, the rhythmic inputs that add immediacy to the turn-based combat, and a similar, mildly meta sense of humor.
Image: Nintendo
For whatever reason — perhaps a hunger for any and all Mario content in the wake of the Super Mario Bros. Movie phenomenon, perhaps a newfound willingness to take risks with its mascot — Nintendo is now finally ready to give Super Mario RPG its due and integrate it properly with the Mario catalog, via this full Switch remake. It’s strange to encounter this game (for the first time, in my case) in 2023 on Switch, and it’s great that Nintendo, Square Enix, and whoever developed the remake (which remains unclear, but I’ve asked Nintendo for clarification) have so carefully kept its wayward spirit alive.
The full 3D graphical overhaul retains the original’s bizarre rendered look, wisely refusing to homogenize or standardize the designs, and retaining its off-kilter character even as it smooths out the animations. Shimomura has completely reorchestrated her score, but you can switch to the chiptune originals, if you like. There are some modern creature comforts, like a frequent autosave, but most of Mario RPG’s archaic, 27-year-old design quirks remain intact. That said, on early evidence, Square’s expert simplification of traditional RPG mechanics seems bulletproof — and the game plays very swiftly, considering its age.
As smart as the new version is, playing Super Mario RPG feels like a portal to another time — or another timeline, perhaps. A timeline where Mario lives in a shack. I’m still not over it.
Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t officially launch until Nov. 10, but you can get early access to the campaign up to week beforehand. Hot off the heels of an open beta, it’s your second chance to play part of Modern Warfare 3 earlier than usual — if you’ve paid up, naturally.
Here’s when Modern Warfare 3 early access starts for the campaign, and what time campaign early access starts in your time zone.
How to get MW3 campaign early access
Early access to the Modern Warfare 3 campaign is available to anyone who digitally preorders the game — whether or not it’s the standard edition or the premium “Vault” edition.
What time does early access to MW3 campaign start on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation?
On Windows PC, where Modern Warfare 3 is available via Steam and Battle.net, campaign early access begins at 10 a.m. PT on Thursday, Nov. 2, according to an Activision blog post.
(Update, Nov. 1): Activision clarified in a blog post that Modern Warfare 3 campaign early access will go live on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S at the same time as Windows PC.
Here’s what that is in your time zone:
10 a.m. PDT on Nov. 2 for the West Coast of North America
1 p.m. EDT on Nov. 2 for the East Coast of North America
5 p.m. GMT on Nov. 2 for the U.K.
6 a.m. CEST on Nov. 2 for west mainland Europe
2 a.m. JST on Nov. 3 for Japan
If you’ve pre-ordered, you’ll be able to preload the Modern Warfare 3 campaign starting at 10 a.m. PT on Nov. 1.
A direct sequel to 2022’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the campaign for Modern Warfare 3 continues the narrative of Captain John Price’s Task Force 141. Early access gets you the whole campaign, too. Like Starfield, Diablo 4, Mortal Kombat, and more big-budget games, Call of Duty is the latest tentpole to offer divergent release dates. In this case, Nov. 2 is for all intents and purposes the Modern Warfare 3 release date.
Alongside early access to the campaign, Modern Warfare 3 preorders include the Zombie Ghost Operator skin for the game’s multiplayer component, which officially goes live on Nov. 10. If you preorder the pricier Vault Edition, you also get:
The Soul Harvester Tracer weapon blueprint
The Nemesis Operator pack
Two weapon vaults
The battle pass for season 1, called Blackcell, plus 30 tier skips
Pokémon Go is hosting its yearly Día de Muertos event, bringing out Pokémon wearing special cempasúchil crowns on Nov. 1 and 2.
Throughout the event, candy obtained from catching Pokémon will be doubled and both Incense and lures will last for 90 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Cubone wearing a cempasúchil crown will also be available for the first time. (And yes, both costumed Cubone and Duskull can be shiny.)
You can see all the perks of the Pokémon Go Día de Muertos 2023 event below.
Pokémon Go Día de Muertos 2023 event Field Research and rewards
Spinning PokéStops during the event period may net you one of the following Field Research Tasks:
Make a great throw (Sunkern encounter)
Make a nice curveball throw (Drifloon encounter)
Make 3 great curveball throws in a row (Cubone [Cempasúchil Crown] encounter)
Win a gym battle (Alolan Marowak encounter)
Pokémon Go Día de Muertos 2023 event boosted spawns
The following Pokémon will spawn more frequently during the event:
Cubone (Cempasúchil Crown)
Sunkern
Sableye
Roselia
Duskull (Cempasúchil Crown)
Drifloon
Yamask
Litwick
Phantump
Image: Niantic
Pokémon Go Día de Muertos 2023 event boosted Incense spawns
Using Incense will net you the Pokémon below more frequently:
Megan Thee Stallion blesses us with banger after banger. This time, it’s not a song, but yet another one of her incredible anime cosplays. On Monday, the American rapper shared photos of her cosplaying as Death the Kid from Soul Eater. The fitting pick just goes to show that Megan Thee Stallion has always had peak taste in anime.
You can view the full gallery of photos on her Instagram. She largely stayed true to the overall look of Death the Kid where she word an angular suit and black hair painted with his iconic three white stripes. She even recreates the typical top-down camera angle that Soul Eater often uses in one of her photos. Still, she infuses the character’s presentation with her own flair by adding a sick set of pointy nails and art that depicts Death the Kid’s companions, Liz and Patty Thompson with darker skin.
Soul Eater isn’t exactly a niche series. The manga had 19.6 million copies in circulation as of 2019 and was available to stream on well-known streaming services like Netflix. Still, it’s far from the super popular anime series like Attack on TitanandDemon Slayer. The series aired back in 2008 making it an older series at this point. At this point, anime fans might be more familiar with Shinji Aramaki’s later series, Fire Force.
But Megan found the perfect fit with Death. Both characters have iconic three-part names with a “the” to emphasize their stardom. On top of that, Death the Kid also has an incredible theme that’s also a rap.
Image: Studio Bones/Cunchyroll
Megan Thee Stallion’s love of anime has been a regular aspect of her career and persona. You could write a long list of all her nerdy shenanigans, but we’ll include a couple here to give you an idea: She cosplayed Shoto Todoroki from My Hero Academia in 2019 and Yumeko Jabami from Kakegurui in 2020. Last year, she performed in Japan in full Sailor Moon cosplay. On top of all that, she launched a line with Crunchyroll and has written anime references into her music.
Yamask, the Spirit Pokémon from Unova, can be found in the wild in Pokémon Go. Yes, Yamask can be shiny in Pokémon Go!
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
Both versions of Yamask can be shiny. Whether you have a Galarian Yamask or the original Unovan Yamask, you can use the same candy to evolve and power up both.
What is the shiny rate for Yamask in Pokémon Go?
As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), the shiny rate for Pokémon on a regular day is approximately one in 500. Yamask is not a confirmed Pokémon that gets a “permaboost” (meaning that it’s a rare spawn and thus gets a boosted shiny rate).
What can I do to attract more shiny Pokémon?
Not much, unfortunately. It appears to be random chance. Shiny Pokémon catch rates are set by developer Niantic, and they are typically only boosted during special events like Community Days or Safari Zones, or in Legendary Raids. There are no consumable items that boost shiny Pokémon rates.
Where can I find a list of available shiny Pokémon?
Alan Wake 2 is bleak stuff. Sure, your flashlight makes the darkness a little less scary, and the full-motion video commercials are a lighthearted wink to players who seek them out. But for some, the game could benefit from a constant positive presence to raise the mood while you traverse the Overlap and beyond.
Of course, this thought comes after playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, where each level features a goofy talking flower character who remarks on the player’s actions, or on what’s happening in the game world. After going back and forth between the two games, it’s hard not to imagine what the talking flower would be like in Alan Wake 2.
Image composition: Cameron Faulkner/Polygon | Source images: Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing, Nintendo EPD/Nintendo
Beyond blurting out quips to take your mind off the dread of walking through forests at night with scarily few bullets, or when running from the Dark Presence, the talking flower could be a useful tool for marking objectives, or helping you figure out combinations to safes.
Inevitably, I think the game would take a dark turn with this, turning the talking flower into a deceptive plot device. Eventually you wouldn’t know if you could trust what the talking flower is telling you, adding to Alan Wake 2’s deft skill of extending its dark fiction over the game’s reality. Are the Taken a threat, or are you the threat? Maybe, just maybe, it’s the talking flower.
It’s putting thoughts into my mind, ones that I’d rather not be having.
The chaos is reminding me of how simple things were, back when Alice and I first arrived in Bright Falls. Now, I’m stuck in the Dark Place.
In mid-September, YouTube announced a collection of new artificial intelligence tools coming to the platform. The tools touch basically every part of the content creation process, from generating topics to editing and even generating video footage itself through the Dream Screen feature. But even as AI features have caused an uproar in so many other creative industries, the response to YouTube’s new suite of tools has been muted. Instead, YouTubers are sharing other concerns about the ways generative AI is already affecting the platform.
It’s been a watershed year as generative AI tools have made it easier to create images and text, all generated from internet scrapes of others’ art and writing. Artists and writers have typically pushed back, citing issues like copyright and their own work being undermined — in September, high-profile authors including George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoult filed to sue OpenAI for scraping their books. And then there’s generative AI’s issues with hallucination and inaccuracies.
On the other side of the coin, these tools have been used by many people, either experimentally or professionally. Prizes have been won by AI art, while some news sites cut their staff and put out AI-generated articles. AI has also become a cornerstone of TikTok, particularly AI-powered filters. Creators use the Bold Glamour filter to apply makeup, a Ghibli filter to look like characters from the studio’s films, and even pay a fee for filters that generate themed avatars — like the hugely popular ’90s high school photo filter.
Maybe it’s the fact that YouTube’s tools aren’t available to the general public yet. But the quiet reception still seems to buck the trend. On the YouTube Creators account on X (formerly known as Twitter), the announcement only picked up a few hundred likes, doing similarly to engagement-bait tweets like “how do you make your audience feel seen and heard?” On the main YouTube account, it performed worse than a tweet reading “stars are kinda just sky rocks.”
On the platform itself, it’s difficult to find videos discussing the tools at all, despite a thriving community of YouTubers who explain how to use AI tools in making videos — just not the ones announced by YouTube. Instead, these videos focus on explaining existing tools to generate scripts and voice-overs, and to create and edit together images for the video visuals. YouTube’s new tools basically give creators an in-house option for much of this: Creators will be able to generate video prompts and script outlines, automatically edit clips together, and create AI-voiced dubs into other languages.
The main potential draw is that these AI tools would generate content based off of creators’ own historical output. For example, YouTube says the “insights” tool will be personalized so that new video ideas will take into account what a creator’s audience is already watching, something that other text generators can’t do without access to YouTube’s data. It also aims to recommend music for videos, including royalty-free music that hypothetically should help creators know what won’t get them troublesome copyright strikes.
But existing creators don’t seem particularly interested one way or the other. “No one’s heard of it yet,” says Jimmy McGee, a YouTuber who recently made a video titled “The AI Revolution is Rotten to the Core.” As the title might suggest, he’s not a huge fan of YouTube’s proposed tools, but he says it’s “strange” how they’ve been received.
He thinks it may be that these tools are mainly geared toward creators, and viewers may not notice if, for example, a video is edited with the help of AI. He doesn’t think the more obvious tools, like the melty generated visuals of Dream Screen, will take off in the long run. “People will get sick of those quick enough that it’s not really a problem,” he says. But the other tools might lead to longer-term issues in the creator space.
Viewers might not immediately notice if AI software is used to edit videos, but McGee worries that it will undermine those who actually use it. “It’s going to de-skill newer people on YouTube,” he says. Although he finds it unlikely that it will replace professional editors in its current form, it will prevent newer creators from growing their skills. YouTube is billing the feature as an easier way in for people who might not be as confident in their skills yet. It’s also aimed toward Shorts, YouTube’s vertical-video spinoff, so it might make things easier for those who only have their phones to edit on. But McGee thinks that relying on it may end up discouraging video creators in the long run as they struggle to grow creatively.
“I think the more decisions you can make in your video, the better the video can be,” says McGee. “Maybe it won’t be [at first], but the ceiling is higher. That’s what worries me. If someone goes in earnestly trying to use these tools, it’d be very sad to see them give up.”
That potential pitfall depends on whether YouTube’s tools stick around. Parent company Google has a habit of shuttering things — including features it has hyped up a lot more than this one. And generative AI is currently running at a loss for most companies. “We’re probably going to see a decline in its popularity pretty soon,” says media and fandom critic Sarah Z. “[In the meantime] I hope these tools are helpful to creators and serve as a way of empowering them to better execute videos that serve their visions rather than a way to undercut creators.”
But some creators already feel undercut by AI on the platform. Just before YouTube’s tool announcement, creator Abyssoft released a video about a potential case of plagiarism. In it, he detailed the similarities between a previous video he had put out and a video uploaded by a different channel and speculated on how AI could have been used to perform the theft, including using speech-to-text programs and AI voice-over software.
Contacted for comment, Abyssoft pointed out that this is already a widespread issue on the platform. In May, science communicator Kyle Hill spoke out against YouTube channels using AI to create unverified but attention-grabbing content on the site. These videos are often misleading and in some cases appear to copy topics that Hill himself had made videos on.
In his video, Abyssoft says that he isn’t sure what the solution to these issues is. But one thing he suggests is that YouTube should disclose when AI is being used in video creation. He’d also like to see “a punishment or strike system for people that fail to disclose and are proven to be using AI.”
This would be easier if it were YouTube’s own AI tools that were being used; the platform would already be aware. In response to a request for comment on whether Google was considering implementing this feature or any additional measures to avoid plagiarism and misinformation on the platform, Google policy communications manager Jack Malon stated that all content is subject to the existing community guidelines, and that these are “enforced consistently for all creators on our platform, regardless of whether their content is generated using artificial intelligence.”
Although Abyssoft considered some of the other generative AI tools as potentially useful, like the music tool helping creators avoid copyright issues, he continues to fear what easy access to AI tools might do to YouTube creators. “AI facilitates plagiarism in a way we haven’t seen before, and with a bit of effort it will soon become undetectable,” he says. “Competing in a sea of faceless AI channels will be a tough challenge for creators who make a living this way, as their upload cadence will be greatly outpaced by the AI.”
However, he doesn’t think that AI will necessarily produce interesting videos. “I’m assuming the tool that suggests video topics is only going to suggest ideas that it thinks will do well in the algorithm,” he says. “Things will get incredibly formulaic if [it’s] relied on too much.”
He does acknowledge that channels with technical content, such as his own speedrunning history videos, have the advantage of research and understanding that can’t be carried out by AI. McGee similarly feels somewhat protected by his own style. “My videos are messy and I like them that way,” he says. “I can make all the melty, weird visuals myself and make something I’m actually proud of.”
But other channels might not be able to survive. “Someone that covers current news will see AI upload videos before their editing is finished, since it can just scrape whatever articles have been published for the day and render out a video and voice-over in less than an hour,” says Abyssoft.
YouTube’s tools haven’t yet launched beyond a few test countries, so it’ll be some time until we see the impact they’ll have on the platform. But while creators have concerns that they might add new issues for both existing and upcoming video makers, they also have prior concerns about the use of AI that they feel aren’t being addressed by the platform. It seems to be these that are holding creators’ attention, not any new announcements.
Demián Rugna’s terrifying possession movie When Evil Lurks — now available for streaming on Shudder — breaks the rules of the subgenre in all sorts of startling ways. For one thing, it isn’t a religious movie at all, even though most exorcism movies are. For another, the victims facing down a demon in his film aren’t struggling with faith, or with something they don’t understand. They all know the rules for dealing with the hideous, bloated creatures that result from demon possession — the encarnado, or as the English subtitles put it, “the rotten.” There’s even a little teaching song about the rotten, presented in the film as something akin to a children’s lullaby.
So if everyone knows how to safely deal with demons, why is the movie so frightening? Because the rules — including “stay away from electricity and electrical appliances, demons can travel through them” and “only kill the possessed in certain specific ways” — take effort and self-control, and people are often greedy, lazy, or impulsive. “It’s too hard,” Rugna told Polygon at the 2023 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. “You need to comply with the rules because the demon wants to be with you, but it’s too hard for us to run away from cities, trying to avoid electricity, to avoid even thinking about the devil.”
When Evil Lurks is a tremendously frightening movie, in part because it’s as much about the power we give our personal demons as it is about any sort of supernatural force. Unlike in films like The Exorcist and its many sequels and reboots, Rugna’s characters can’t expect any help from organized religion or from God. “I have no religion,” the director said. “And I hate religion as a business. I love religion as faith, or for helping people. But not as a business.” Instead, the characters in When Evil Lurks have to rely on each other, and on their own courage and discipline. That goes poorly, to put it mildly.
They’re also meant to rely on institutions put in place to help them. At the beginning of the film, it becomes clear that the government has systems in place to handle the encarnado, and those systems have failed entirely because of bureaucratic indifference and laziness. Rugna’s inspiration for the movie explains a lot about where that theme came from: As he told the Fantastic Fest audience in a Q&A after the movie’s premiere, he got the idea for When Evil Lurks from a series of news stories about farm pesticides in his native Argentina causing widespread health issues.
“The owners of those lands contaminate those fields with glyphosate to kill bugs — pesticide,” he said at the Q&A. “There’s a lot of people who work in those fields, and they get cancer. You’d probably see a little kid with cancer, because they are workers. They didn’t say anything — or if they say something, nobody knows.” He suggests that corporate apathy about the workers’ health, and the way the issue occured “out in the middle of nothing,” where it’s easy for profiteers and city-dwellers to ignore the impact of their choices, started him thinking about the idea of lurking evils given free rein to spread.
“The pesticide infected them,” Rugna told Polygon. “Kids were born with cancer. Sometimes you see something in the news, but then there’s nothing more to say, and you forget the image. They’re in the middle of nothing, the middle of poverty. They must do work for less than a couple dollars, and they’re all ill. After you turn off the television, you forget, but they are still there, they are still probably gonna die.”
He said it happens too often, that “people who work the land” get “abandoned” by the system. “When I decided to make a movie with some kind of exorcism, I thought, OK, but what happens if the people cannot reach a priest? All the Exorcist movies happen in the city, in a big house. But what if we’re in the middle of nothing, in a poor house, with poor people who nobody cares for? Even the owner of the land wants to get rid of them, to burn their houses. It happens in my own country all the time — not the demons, [but the rest].”
All that said, while Rugna emphasizes how important realism in the acting, relationships, and setting was to him in making the movie, he laughs off the idea that realism in terms of reflecting the real world is important in horror. “You can see a movie just for fun,” he said. “Being entertaining is most important for me. If you have the chance to have reflection, that’s a double goal. But for me, it’s not fully necessary.”
He said the social inspirations just worked their way naturally into the writing because they’re part of his background. He didn’t set out to make a message movie, just one that would scare audiences. “I’ve noticed for myself in my movies, for a greater horror story, I want to make you suffer,” he said. “And the social element just comes along with my culture.”
Photo: Shudder/IFC Films
Ironically for a movie inspired by bureaucratic indifference to the suffering of children, though, one of the biggest limits on his film was bureaucratic regulations about how he could handle his child cast. When Evil Lurks is unusually brutal to its kid characters, with graphic scenes of child distress, mutilation, and death. In response to an audience question at the Q&A about how he protected the child actors, Rugna grinned and explained how his production walked the actors’ parents through their safety plans.
“I’d need two hours to tell about the process of working with the parents,” he said. “It’s too funny, because we did take care with the parents — we thought, OK, we want to share the entire script. We were scared about the reaction of the parents. […] The parents were too excited to put their kids in our movie. You can’t imagine. […] When the parents read the script, and we’re like, The kid’s gonna be bit by a dog and crushed with a car — ‘Oh, I love the script! Got it!’”
But the government was much more limiting, Rugna said. Among other things, in spite of the violence of the scenes involving children, they weren’t allowed to have artificial blood on the kids’ skin at any time. In another scene, a teenager wasn’t allowed to hold a gun during an emotional monologue. “All the time, it was horrible to work with the kids,” he said, laughing. “Not for the kids, for the rules.”
Movies inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s writing are often so oppressive that they can be exhausting. Lovecraft’s most central theme (apart from the virulent racism and all) was the idea that we live in a howling, empty void — a cosmos that’s indifferent to humanity at absolute best, and so inimical at worst that even a glimpse at the true horrors of the universe would drive most people insane.
And yet a handful of filmmakers have found the wry humor in Lovecraft’s stories — sometimes for satiricalpurposes, but sometimes without losing the sense of cosmic horror at the heart of his work. Chief among the Lovecraft horror-comedy directors is Stuart Gordon, whose Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Dagon all lend a certain amount of goofiness to Lovecraftian horror. With the gleefully gory new movie Suitable Flesh, Mayhem and Knights of Badassdom director Joe Lynch is openly operating in Stuart Gordon mode. He has the best assistance possible: screenwriter Dennis Paoli, who wrote all three of those Gordon films, and is in his element here, loosely adapting Lovecraft’s 1937 short story “The Thing on the Doorstep.”
It’d be easy for impatient streamers who’ve never seen From Beyond in particular to miss the tone Lynch and Paoli are going for with Suitable Flesh. They might turn it off early, thinking it looks too cheap, flat, and glossy to feel convincing, that the acting is too broad, or that the emotions on display feel too fervent. Those are all no-nos in an era of oppressively realistic horror settings. But early quitters will miss out; by the time Suitable Flesh hits its peak and fully reveals its creators’ intentions, it’s a wild bacchanalia of violence, over-the-top humor, and authentic cosmic terror.
Photo: RLJE Films/Shudder
Heather Graham stars as Elizabeth Derby, a psychiatrist navigating the usual ailment of psychiatrists in horror movies. Faced with events the average horror movie character would quickly accept as supernatural, if only to move the story forward, Elizabeth keeps looking for rational psychological explanations. And even when she starts to accept that she can’t rationally explain the things she’s experiencing, her colleagues keep trying to pathologize her, slapping reductive scientific labels on every earth-shattering event she experiences. (See also: Rose Cotter in Smile, a much less funny, much less Lovecraftian horror movie that’d still make for a perfect double bill with Suitable Flesh.)
Elizabeth’s latest patient, Asa (Judah Lewis), is an emotionally ragged young man who’s frantic to get someone to listen to him, even if most of what he’s saying doesn’t make sense. His attempts to explain his anxieties are woefully unclear: When he talks about his father, Ephraim (Bruce Davison), trying to take his body, he could be talking about anything from sexual molestation to paranoid schizophrenic delusion. Elizabeth initially assumes the latter, especially after seeing Asa undergo a surprisingly violent process that winds up with him adopting a completely different personality. She immediately decides he’s suffering from dissociative identity disorder — which in no way limits her completely inappropriate attraction to him.
What follows between them starts out as half body-snatcher horror, half ludicrous erotic thriller, complete with a panting Cinemax-era softcore sex scene that’s a little too ridiculous even for something openly meant as satire. But the balance shifts sharply toward the body-snatcher end when Ephraim decides he wouldn’t mind claiming Elizabeth’s body in multiple ways. When Elizabeth finds out that Asa’s father really can use occult powers to force body swaps — the first few of them temporary, leading up to a permanent one — she only has a few chances to stop him before she ends up trapped in someone else’s far-less-suitable flesh.
Suitable Flesh is an intensely messy movie. It moves breathlessly from solidly plotted psychological thriller to almost Army of Darkness levels of slapstick violence — including a scene involving a van’s backup camera that’s a must-see for every true fan of grisly horror movie effects. Its broadest structure is classic horror, as Elizabeth tries to overcome her own doubts about what she’s experiencing, then tries to convince other people that she isn’t just having a psychotic break. And the entire time, she’s facing a confident, competent foe who knows far more than she does, and is almost always three steps ahead of her. (Purely in terms of plotting, this film would also make a solid double feature with the original Nightmare on Elm Street.) But on a scene-for-scene basis, it’s all over the place tonally, as Lynch and Paoli keep shifting their intentions.
Photo: RLJE Films/Everett Collection
Suitable Flesh is a “yes, and” movie that just keeps taking on new baggage. It’s a cosmic horror movie that respects the intentions and anxieties in Lovecraft’s “Thing on the Doorstep.” It’s a satire of that classic age of steamy potboiler erotic dramas, at least for a few scenes. It’s a cat-and-mouse thriller between two unmatched adversaries. It’s a giddy chase movie that pushes its physical confrontations far enough that even dedicated gorehounds may feel like they’re watching the horror-movie equivalent of Sideshow Bob stepping on the rakes in The Simpsons. And it’s an occult mystery with a little ’80s throwback style and a little for-the-fandom nodding to Lovecraft references. (“Filmed in Cthuluscope,” a label on the film proudly declares.)
It’s a lot to take in, and it doesn’t always work together, the way a more tonally consistent and coherent movie would. The shifts don’t always serve Graham well, either — it’s sometimes hard to buy her as the same character from scene to scene, because those scenes put her in such different mental and emotional places, some of which she’s better equipped for as an actor than others.
All of that stops mattering by the final climax, which locks in on that “serious situation, slightly silly execution” that serves Re-Animator and From Beyond so well. For a movie with such a cluttered, kitchen-sink ramp-up, Suitable Flesh charges to a memorable conclusion that’s perfect for celebratory group viewing, whether at the local multiplex with other die-hard horror fans seeking a seasonal thrill, or at home with a group of friends and a stack of Stuart Gordon DVDs as follow-up.
Lynch and Paoli are openly aiming this one at audiences who love Lovecraft-derived work, but don’t take him so seriously that they need to come away from every Lovecraft movie feeling depressed and oppressed. And they’re purposefully pouring this one out for every Stuart Gordon fan who worried no one else would ever make movies quite like he did. His legacy is in good hands.
Suitable Flesh is in theaters and is available for rental or purchase on Amazon, Vudu, and other digital platforms.
Marvel comics, TV shows, and especially movies seem to have a requirement to emphasize the “what’s next” of it all, where the end of everything is also a tease for something else. Well, folks, Insomniac Games took that assignment, ran with it, and took a few extra laps just for good measure.
Spider-Man 2, the triumphant sequel of one of the best games of 2018, is packed with teases and Easter eggs, all of which could be spun off into new games, half-sequels, or the ultimate finale of Spider-Man 3. We’ve got evil brothers hidden in plain sight, a mysterious bartender rendered in PlayStation 1-style graphics, and more symbiote threats than we initially thought. Let’s tuck into it.
[Ed. note: This post contains major spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. If you haven’t beaten the campaign of the PlayStation 5 game and cleared every side mission, you will probably be spoiled by something in here.]
Spider-Man 2 sequel teases
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
There are a lot of teases for the future of Insomniac’s Marvel games, and several of them come at the very end of side missions or are a bit obscure if you’re not a comics reader.
Otto’s plan for the final chapter
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via ScereBro PSNU/YouTube
In one of the post-credits scenes for Spider-Man 2, Norman Osborn visits his old frenemy Otto Octavius. Otto is, of course, imprisoned in the Raft penitentiary because of all those crimes he committed as Doctor Octopus back in the first game.
Norman wants Otto to tell him the identity of the Spider-Mans so that he can seek revenge against them for putting Harry in a coma. Otto, who used to be lab partners with Norman but now hates his guts, revels in Osborn’s suffering and refuses to help, and he just keeps working on his manifesto. When Norman asks what Octavius is writing, he simply responds, “The final chapter,” as he limps toward the camera.
The tease here is really just that Otto is clearly going to be back in some capacity in a potential Spider-Man 3. Although with his physical condition worsening (it’s established in Marvel’s Spider-Man that Otto has some kind of degenerative brain disorder that’s causing him to lose his fine motor skills), it’s unclear whether he’ll be fighting on the front lines or playing the role of master tactician.
Miles, meet Cindy and Albert Moon
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Dan Allen Gaming/YouTube
After Miles’ mom, Rio, spends the entire game asking him to meet her new boyfriend, Miles finally opens the door to meet Albert in one of the post-credits scenes. But Albert isn’t really the tease here, as it’s quickly revealed that Albert has brought his daughter Cindy with him to the family dinner.
Cindy Moon is better known as Silk, yet another Spider-person who fights baddies and protects New York. In some versions she has a rather traumatic upbringing and isn’t particularly close with her father. Insomniac is clearly looking to twist this origin, although we’re not quite sure how just yet.
Norman wants the ‘G-Serum’
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Dan Allen Gaming/YouTube
After the Spider-Mans and MJ defeat him, Venom reverts back to Harry, who, as we said earlier, is in a coma. In a fit of rage over his son’s condition, Norman calls someone to ask for the G-Serum.
Now, it’s never explicitly stated, but this is about as on the nose as you can get for a Green Goblin tease. In the moment, it seems like Norman wants the G-Serum for Harry, but we have no doubt it’ll end up in the disgraced former mayor eventually.
Wait, isn’t that Knull’s symbol?
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Zanar Aesthetics/YouTube
During the campaign, it’s revealed that the symbiote came to Earth via a meteor, and that meteor has a big, red spiral on the front of it, which is most often associated with Knull, aka the King in Black, the tyrant god of symbiotes.
Interestingly, the game never mentions Knull by name, or even really alludes to an additional cosmic presence outside of the meteor itself, which Miles, Pete, and MJ destroy at the end of the story. This could be just a nod to comics fans, but it could also be a seed that might blossom into a full symbiote invasion led by the king himself.
Cletus Kasady is in possession of a symbiote
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via HD Playground/YouTube
Peter works to take down a cult called The Flame over the course of Spider-Man 2, And in the final quest, Insomniac reveals the cult’s leader to be none other than Cletus Kasady, everyone’s favorite serial murderer.
Cletus is the symbiote host for Carnage, the red-tinged symbiote villain who has given both Venom and Peter a lot of trouble over the years. With Kasady uncaptured at the end of Spider-Man 2 and in possession of a healthy symbiote, the rise of Carnage is all but assured.
The Chameleon is thriving in NYC
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via GameClips/YouTube
After chasing down all of Kraven’s drones, the two Spider-Mans eventually stumble upon a beautiful penthouse apartment with a secret basement. Turns out this place belongs to Chameleon, a master of disguise. (Fun fact: He was the first villain Spider-Man ever faced in the original comics.) Oh, and the Chameleon is also Kraven’s brother.
As the Spider-Mans swing away from the apartment, we see a man in disguise looking toward the rooftops, indicating that the Chameleon was watching as the heroes ransacked his apartment. Chameleon has clearly been set up in the city for a while, and this tease seems to indicate that he’ll appear in a Spider-Man sequel.
Miguel O’Hara and the Bar with No Name
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via PerfectParadox/YouTube
Once you’ve collected all the Spider-Bots in the game, you’ll get a signal that leads you to an alleyway. When you get there, a portal opens, and you see a bartender named Delilah standing behind a bar. Delilah is the operator of the Bar With No Name, a secret bar for villains in the Marvel universe. After a cryptic chat, she opens a box and steals all the Spider-Bots you spent so long collecting. She then name-drops Miguel (O’Hara) before shutting the portal.
This is a weird little Easter egg that doesn’t exactly have a clear tease. But with the nature of the Spider-Bots all being based on Spider-Man characters and villains from other universes, and Delilah’s style being that of a PlayStation 1 game, this seems to be teasing a multiversal story or some kind of crossover. It’s very unclear what this could be leading to or what it has to do with Miguel O’Hara, aka Spider-Man 2099.
Spider-Man no more?
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via DVESF/YouTube
Pete hangs up his tights at the end of Spider-Man 2, letting Miles handle the city while the original Spider-Man gets a well-earned break. But this seems more like a Spidey-hiatus than full-on Spidey-retirement. We’d wager we’ll see a decent time skip between Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3, and that Pete will be married and potentially a father before he dons the suit again.
Are we getting another half-sequel?
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020)Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment
Spider-Man: Miles Morales was a big hit with fans, and took the massive, sprawling Marvel’s Spider-Man and condensed it down to just a handful of hours. It told a great little tale, introduced us more completely to Miles as a hero, and, crucially, did a lot of legwork to set up Spider-Man 2.
Based on the reception of Miles Morales, it seems extremely unlikely that we won’t see another half-sequel that bridges the gap between Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3. The real question, then, is whothat half-sequel will be about. We have a handful of ideas on that.
Venom
Venom is the clear candidate for a spinoff game. Not only is he briefly playable in Spider-Man 2 already (we’re not game designers, but we have to imagine at least some of that hard dev work will transfer over to a new game), but it seems like Insomniac’s developers have at least thought about it.
In a recent interview, Spider-Man 2’s narrative director, Jon Paquette, told Insider that the team is waiting to see how fans react and what they want before committing to any spinoffs. This was in direct response to a question about a Venom game, so most people (ourselves included) are taking this as at least soft confirmation that Insomniac is toying with a Venom spinoff, and that the answer basically amounts to “we’re not not making a Venom game (*wink*).”
But you may be asking yourself, “Wait, isn’t Harry in a coma, and wasn’t the Venom symbiote destroyed?” The answer to both of those questions is technically yes, but there’s a Venom-sized “but” that follows. Spider-Man 2 very clearly establishes that symbiotes remain inactive inside the host even after they’ve separated themselves from the original parasite.
Just like how Mister Negative was able to harness Pete’s latent symbiote to turn him into Anti-Venom, it seems very easy to explain how someone with a very powerful connection to their symbiote (like Harry) could have their alter ego reawaken despite the host symbiote being “dead.” This could be especially fun with Harry’s current predicament, as it means we could spend the first bit of a Venom game piloting around a comatose Harry, wreaking havoc and getting into scrapes with Miles.
Silk
Silk is another strong possibility for a spinoff, as it’s essentially the same setup that led from Spider-Man into Miles Morales. However, Miles plays a major role in the first Spider-Man before getting any powers. All we see of Cindy is the back of her head, and we learn nothing about her character in Spider-Man 2.
With Silk just being a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it tease, it seems much more likely that she’ll feature heavily in whatever half-sequel we end up getting before being playable in Spider-Man 3.
Miles Morales 2
Our final guess for a half-sequel is just a straight-up sequel to Miles Morales. This makes some sense, but is also just boring in comparison to the other two options — no offense to Miles, but we already have two full games where we can play as him whenever we want!
Still, a Miles sequel would allow Insomniac to explore a New York where Miles is the only Spider-Man, and even bring Cindy in as his trainee. This would be a poetic handoff after the tutelage Miles received from Peter in Miles Morales and Spider-Man 2, and a great setup for a third game. I mean, who doesn’t want to hear Pete refer to himself as Silk’s “Spider-Grandpa”?
But a Miles Morales sequel in that fashion is still retread ground, and Insomniac seems hell-bent on delivering new experiences each time it puts out a Spidey product.
So where does that leave Spider-Man 3?
Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
Insomniac Games has clearly left itself a lot of wiggle room when it comes to the future of its Spider-Man. Will Carnage show up in Spider-Man 3, or will he take center stage in a Venom game? Is that Miguel teaser an offhand tease of another spinoff we don’t know about, or just another side activity in a sequel that’s probably five years off? We don’t know the answers to either of those questions, and it’s entirely possible that Insomniac doesn’t have them 100% pinned down yet, either.
So what do we know for sure about the next game? Well, Norman’s Green Goblin will be a pretty big deal. That’s a very safe bet — the free space on all your Spider-Man 3 bingo cards at home. We also know that Otto will play some kind of role as well, likely as a third party warring against both Green Goblin and Spider-Man.
And we know we’ll have no shortage of heroes for us to embody, with Miles, Cindy, Peter, and (probably) Harry all on the bench and ready to take on whatever Insomniac has in store for New York.
We’re still at least two or three years (and a whole-ass Wolverine game) away from learning what’s next for Insomniac’s New York. But the studio has certainly given us plenty to ponder in our time away from the web-head and his crew of friends and enemies.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25065600/mw3_campaign_rewards.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25049192/ts_screen14_4k.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25049195/ts_screen09_2k_copy.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25049194/ts_screen10_4k.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25056139/Mauga___New_Hero_Gameplay_Trailer___Overwatch_2_1_44_screenshot.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25052366/Jawan_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24775925/Red_Door_Scream.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055309/Sly_00_05_15_23.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055306/NYAD_20220417_05940_R.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25052367/Wingwomen_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24918517/poirot1.jpeg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055298/quiz_lady_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055293/freaks_vs_reich_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24963053/07my_big_fat_greek_review_kwql_videoSixteenByNine3000.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24811083/sympathy_for_the_devil_nicholas_cage_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055284/paw_patrol_the_mighty_movie_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055399/the_kill_room_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055275/Outlaw_Johnny_Black_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25055270/Sound_of_Freedom_01.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25045273/Alan_Wake_2_20231025151423.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25045315/Alan_Wake_2_20231026131735_1.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25045314/Alan_Wake_2_20231026131729.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25045338/Alan_Wake_2_20231027132711.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25045340/Alan_Wake_2_20231027132804.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25045391/Alan_Wake_2_20231027144835.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25045392/Alan_Wake_2_20231027144826.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25050461/Alan_Wake_2_20231031165936.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25050470/Alan_Wake_2_20231031165937.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25050488/Alan_Wake_2_20231031221929.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25050491/Alan_Wake_2_20231031221926.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25050520/Alan_Wake_2_20231101025954.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25050522/Alan_Wake_2_20231101025947.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25050544/Alan_Wake_2_20231101031409.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25050545/Alan_Wake_2_20231101031910.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25053417/Alan_Wake_2_20231101163003.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25053420/Alan_Wake_2_20231101162957.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25053428/Alan_Wake_2_20231101185016.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25053429/Alan_Wake_2_20231101185117.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25053589/Alan_Wake_2_20231102021848.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25053590/Alan_Wake_2_20231102021843.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25049850/Switch_SuperMarioRPG_scrn_06.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25038881/MCDSUFL_EC026.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035931/Dr._Octopus__Post_Credit_Scene____Spider_Man_2_1_23_screenshot.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035932/SPIDER_MAN_2___Miles_meets_Silk_aka_Cindy_Moon_Scene__4K__2_25_screenshot.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035943/SPIDER_MAN_2___All_Norman_Osborn_Scenes___Becoming_Green_Goblin__4K__13_56_screenshot.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035952/Spider_Man_2_All_Venom_Cutscenes_2023__All_Venom_Scenes_PS5__4K_60FPS_18_26_screenshot.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035953/Cletus_Kasady_finds_the_Carnage_Symbiote___Marvel_s_Spider_Man_2_PS5__4K_HDR__2_38_screenshot.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035963/Spider_Man_Meets_Chameleon_Scene___Marvel_s_Spider_Man_2_PS5_3_36_screenshot.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035964/Across_The_Spider_Verse_Crossover_In_Marvel_s_Spider_Man_2___Delilah_and_The_Bar_With_No_Name_0_26_screenshot.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035969/Peter_Quits_Being_Spider_Man_Ending_Scene___Marvel_s_Spider_Man_2_PS5_3_16_screenshot.png)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20031819/miles_morales_spider_man_venom_3840.jpg)
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25035791/Marvel_s_Spider_Man_2_20231025092943.jpg)