“We wanted a perfect future and fuck—we got it.” The story trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops III is here, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Why’d they have to call in the Special Victims Unit?

Keeping track of lore in a MOBA often seems as valuable as watching porn for the story, to quote one recent critic of League of Legends' latest character reveal. I tend to agree. But YouTuber Gnarsies makes a good case for why having terrible lore really does matter—even for a seemingly plotless gaming genre.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's campaign mode is entertaining enough, as long as you can turn off your brain for a few hours. Leave it on and you'll trip over the gaping plot holes every couple of seconds.

Watch Dogs has some things going for it. It can look pretty. It handles aiming and shooting pretty well. But the story in Ubisoft's open-world action game is not one of its strengths. Now we've got a hilarious movie script breakdown points out all the ludicrous stuff in Watch Dogs. Spoilers Ahead.

A giant diamond, some ice crystals, and an invitation to an awards gala at Wayne Manor? Sounds like Batman: Arkham Origins' upcoming story DLC is going to be one cool party. Does the Ice Man cometh?

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor takes players of Blizzard's massively multiplayer online role-playing game back to the time of the original Warcraft real-time strategy series. How does that all go down? It's Garrosh's fault.

Yesterday's Q&A with Guild Wars 2 content designer Mike Zadorojny painted the development of next month's blockbuster MMO in broad strokes. Today ArenaNet releases a series of videos that break the game's design down to four core components: dynamic events, player versus player, personal story and combat.

This Saturday, at PAX East, I had the pleasure of attending the "Plot vs. Play" panel, moderated by Joystiq's Ben Gilbert and Kotaku's own Jason Schreier. The panel brought together three developers who have all worked on landmark, story-driven games to discuss their differing philosophies on the presence and purpose…

One of the many eternal battles the gaming community consistently fights among itself is the seemingly irreconcilable "gameplay" vs. "story" debate.

According to Ubisoft, this is a trailer highlighting the story of Assassin's Creed: Revelations. That's odd, because I'll I can see is more than two minutes of Ezio showing me why I love the Assassin's Creed series so much.

The Tokyo Game Show trailer for Platinum Games' Anarchy Reigns neatly summarizes the game's story before jumping back into footage of people beating each other up.

Need a refresher course on Gears of War history on the eve of the release of the third installment? Epic Games has posted a handy timeline that takes you from the Pendulum Wars to when you slip that puppy in your Xbox 360 next week.

What, you thought Platinum Games' online multiplayer brawler was just a bunch of super-powered beings battling each other for no reason? No sir, there is some sort of story going on in Anarchy Reigns; it just happens to involve a lot of punching, kicking, and stabbing.

In today's Speak-Up on Kotaku, commenter Crushinator ponders the correct length for the single-player story in the increasingly multiplayer-focused first-person shooter genre.

Bringing together four leading characters from the Ratchet & Clank series together and making them cooperate to survive is an excellent idea, as long as you've got a strong story to back it up. Let's see how Insomniac does it.