So here you are, about to play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. But there’s nagging doubt in your head — you skipped Assassin’s Creed Origins! It’s one of our highest-ranked entries into the Assassin’s Creed series. Here’s all you need to know to fake your way through understanding what happens in Assassin’s Creed Origins. Odyssey takes place 384 years before Assassin’s Creed Origins.

Final Fantasy, Earthbound, Fire Emblem — JRPGs were, and continue to be, a big part of our lives. Here’s to remembering our favorites that stand the test of time, the ones that unexpectedly hooked us and the ones that will probably never get remastered. The Polygon Show will be available for you to listen to every Friday on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher. If you like what you hear, don’t forget to rate and review The Polygon Show on Apple Podcasts — seriously, every little bit helps! Have any serio

The Humble Monthly bundle, a rotating collection of PC games, will include Hollow Knight, Hitman: The Complete Season 1 and 7 Days to Die in its November batch. A $12 subscription to Humble Monthly guarantees at least $100’s worth of PC game downloads each month (in the form of Steam keys, so you can keep them forever). In addition to the rotating bundle, Humble Monthly subscribers gain access to the Humble Trove, a collection of Humble Originals and other DRM-free PC games. Sixty-five games are

The following list is a living document that compiles our favorite Xbox One games — games we recommend to everyone, both old and new, all worthy of playing or watching. Polygon Essentials is a collection of persistently updated lists of the best of the best games for each platform, from the hardware’s launch to its end of production. Xbox Game PassWe begin with a swerve — and the kind of product that legitimately differentiates Xbox from its competitors. For $9.99 a month, you get access to an e

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has now been released, and holy heck, is it a huge game with a very lengthy ramp into all of its systems, quests and story. This is a very different take on the Assassin’s Creed franchise than you may be used to. If you haven’t played Assassin’s Creed Origins, you can get caught up with everything you need to know for Odyssey with our handy explainer. Another word you’re going to hear often is “malakas,” which may not have a direct literal translation, but basically mean

Nightflyers is the next series fans of George R.R. Martin will be available to stream all at once this December, Syfy announced today. The network brought a new trailer for the show to New York Comic Con, where details surrounding the series were announced. It’s the most expensive series Syfy has ever produced, according to The Hollywood Reporter. While the series isn’t Game of Thrones, it may give Martin fans something to watch before HBO’s series returns for its final season next year.

After modest box-office returns and internal changes at Sony, plans for Spider-Man shifted gears. Tolmach and Arad went back to the drawing board on how to keep mining the characters, and make good on long-gestating Venom plans; the antihero’s self-titled movie arrived in theaters Friday. Why it didn’t happen, and whether it still could, is just a fuzzy part of the business for a screenwriter. ”Part of the fun of the movie was discovering who was in the movie, but I’ll say this: It was very much

Following a teaser trailer late last year, we finally have a longer trailer for Mortal Engines, based on Philip Reeve’s quartet of sci-fi novels of the same name. Mortal Engines mounts the return of Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings franchise), as well as co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Jackson was on hand at New York Comic Con to introduce the trailer, which can be seen above. Since then, a civilization has oriented itself around “traction cities,” the core sci-fi concept of the m

Back in March 2017, Nintendo filed a patent that hinted at the Game Boy receiving the NES and SNES Classic Edition treatment. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has finally published the application for what looks exactly like a Game Boy phone case — but with fully operational buttons. The case would basically turn your phone into an actual Game Boy of sorts. Nintendo never uses the words “Game Boy,” or even “game,” in the application. This could be a preview of the Game Boy Classic E

After taking a year off, Destiny’s Festival of the Lost event is finally coming to Destiny 2. However, Bungie teased in this week’s blog post that the Festival of the Lost will ask players to solve a murder this year. The leak comes from Reddit user AnonTheNine, who has a pretty good history with leaking correct Destiny information. Bungie confirmed that we’ll see a full reveal for Festival of the Lost next week. Festival of the Lost will become available for all Destiny 2 players starting Oct.

Yesterday at New York Comic Con, a new trailer dropped for Dragon Ball Super: Broly, the series’ latest feature-length film, coming to Japanese theaters later this year. While previous trailers have shown off the battles yet to come between the three warrior Saiyans — Goku, Vegeta and Broly — this new one delves into the origins of their entire race, as well as the Saiyan’s ultimate destruction. However, the trailer suggests that Broly will be retconning the Saiyan backgrounds as originally depi

Fortnite’s latest competition, the Fall Skirmish, is well underway as the various competitors prepare for week three of the event. This week’s competition will once again focus on a duo game mode, leaving players to pair up with partners from their in-event teams. Each week of the Fall Skirmish uses a customized game mode created in-part by developer Epic Games in order to make the scoring a little more exciting than simply playing winner-take-all. The custom game mode for week three is called K

After weeks of frustration in the new Gambit mode for Destiny 2: Forsaken, Bungie has revealed how it plans to nerf one of the game’s most powerful weapons, the Sleeper Simulant exotic linear fusion rifle. When picking up an ammo crate in Gambit, the Sleeper Simulant will now only receive two shots instead of four. The Sleeper Simulant weapon has been particularly dominant in the game mode over the past month, due to how accurate and powerful it is. A single shot from Sleeper Simulant will kill

There’s online multiplayer in Super Mario Party, a franchise first. Instead of having a wide array of the game’s entertaining minigames available, Super Mario Party’s online mode has less than a dozen total — and on a rotating basis. Super Mario Party’s main selling point is the wide variety of minigames — there are 84 of them. Oh, and if you’re one of those people really into the basic Mario Party board game, or one of the more exciting cooperative modes exclusive to Super Mario Party? All that

The sequel also represents Saber hitting the big time in the sports world: It’s called NBA 2K Playgrounds 2, since the company has signed a publishing deal with 2K Sports. By the time NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 is released on Oct. 16, 2K Sports will have been working on the game with Saber for about half a year. The genesis of their arrangement was a conversation between Saber and 2K Sports before the original NBA Playgrounds launched in the spring of 2017. Since the NBA Playgrounds series offers a tw

With the release of Destiny 2: Forsaken last month and the upcoming Black Armory expansion in December, October was set to be a fairly quiet month for Destiny 2. However, in its weekly blog post, Bungie revealed that the game will be receiving two quality of life updates over the next four weeks. The first update — Destiny 2 2.0.4 — is set to release on Oct. 16. Starting with 2.0.4, players will be able to track up to three pursuits at once, up from the current single tracked item. The second up

Peter Jackson is still hoping to follow up 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin with a sequel, with him directing and Steven Spielberg producing. Speaking with Polygon at a press event promoting Mortal Engines (another long-in-development project he is producing), Peter Jackson offered an update to the status of the second Tintin film, and whether it’s still in the works. “I’ve got gotta get the script written, but I’m certainly hoping to get another Tintin film, one which I’ve directed. This one, St

The Ranger’s melee ability is called Shock Mace, which is exactly what it sounds like. The second Ranger ability is Assault Gear. Colossus Javelins are the only mechs capable of carrying around heavy weapons in their arsenal. The Colossus’ melee ability is called Heavy Smash. Colossus Javelins can smash into the ground from the air or just beat things with a big melee strike.

In this, the second week of Fortnite’s season 6, we’re presented with the following challenge: “Visit all of the Corrupted Areas.” Apparently there are seven of them in total, but unlike most of the challenges where we’re tasked with finding stuff in Fortnite, this one is pretty easy. Well, because they’re marked super clearly on the map:Yep, those purple blotches are what you’re looking for. There are exactly seven of them, which means you’ll have to visit each and every one if you’re looking t