Ash Parrish

New To Dragon Age? Start With The Third Game, Inquisition

In honor of the Dragon Age games arriving on Xbox Game Pass and in celebration of today’s Dragon Age Day—and as some much-needed self-care, because the news surrounding this hallowed Day has been nothing if not depressing—I’m here to offer a tip to any Dragon Age newcomers eager to explore the world of Thedas for…

Dragon Age Voice Actor Potentially Out After Twitter Attack On Series Writer Mark Darrah

Yesterday BioWare general manager Casey Hudson and lead Dragon Age series writer Mark Darrah resigned from BioWare, spawning a wave of concern in fans over the continued health of the studio’s popular franchises. Today, Greg Ellis, the actor who voiced Dragon Age’s Anders and Cullen, took to Twitter to personally attack the writer, prompting a…

BioWare Studio Head, Dragon Age Producer Both Leave Studio

Casey Hudson is leaving BioWare, again. In a blog post announcing his departure, the creative director of the Mass Effect series and now former studio general manager of BioWare wrote, “I’m incredibly fortunate to have had a career where I’ve been able to work with brilliantly talented people, create entire worlds from our imaginations, and…

Ardenweald Is The Best Shadowlands Zone And It’s Not Even Close

My Shadowlands experience has been an interesting curve. It started poorly in Bastion, picked up in Maldraxxus, and now, in Ardenweald, I’m at the top of the curve. Everything in this zone—the story, the questing, just being in Ardenweald is WoW at its best. Of all the new zones in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, I…

Spend Less Time On Fire With New Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch

Baldur’s Gate 3 has a new patch filled with nifty quality of life adjustments, as well as new story changes that I’m eager to see. New to Patch 3 is a new reward system for players who don’t employ the typical “party of murder hobos” tactic common in most Dungeons and Dragons games. “Patch 3…

After A Disappointing Start, WoW: Shadowlands’ Story Picks Up Big-Time In Maldraxxus

The more I think about Bastion, the more I’m glad I put the golden fields and star-dotted skies of that deceptively beautiful hell behind me for the pus-green, boil-covered and fleshy pastures of Maldraxxus. Seriously. Even though I knew I’d be trading one of the most beautiful zones ever designed in 13 years of World…

Wasting My Time In WoW And Destiny 2 Is Good Actually

In World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, I’m level 59 and 7/8ths, have completed three of the five new zones, and I still don’t think I’m enjoying myself. In Destiny 2, I’m stumbling around Europa while I clumsily figure out (sometimes embarrassingly late) what the hell all my warlock powers do. Other than a few, fleeting moments,…

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Manages To One-Up War Crimes in New Questline

I can’t imagine a fate worse than death, but thankfully, the writers of World of Warcraft don’t suffer from my same lack of imagination. In a new campaign introduced in the Shadowlands zone Bastion, the WoW writers have managed to concoct a scenario as horrifying to me as when Sylvanas Windrunner decided to do a…

In Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Nintendo Refuses To Acknowledge BotW’s Darkness

I had high hopes for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, particularly for its story. As a prequel, it promised to tell a more in-depth tale of the fight against Ganon 100 years before Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But AoC failed that expectation in nearly every regard. What I didn’t expect, and what…

Bastion Might Be The Bad Place In World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

It’s World of Warcraft: Shadowlands week and while some players have already reached max level, most of us are still puttering around Bastion taking in all the sights and sounds of Blue Man Group: The Zone. Though myself–intrepid Shadowlands correspondent Ash Parrish—and seasoned WoW veteran Mike Fahey are still firmly in camp “Puttering Around,” we’ve…

Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There With The Persona 5 Soundtrack

Welcome to Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for folks who love video games and the cool-ass sounds they make. Today we’re gonna steal your heart with some tunes from the Persona 5 soundtrack. I’d never played a Persona game before Persona 5 (playlist / longplay / VGMdb). The game came highly recommended by friends, so…

Overwatch League Shares Roadmap For 2021 Season

It’s going to be a long winter as we wait for the Overwatch League to return in 2021. But to tide us over, the league released a video outlining some of the plans Blizzard has for this year’s off season and the 2021 season in general. The video, narrated by VP of Overwatch Esports Jon…

The World Ends With You Is Finally Getting A Sequel

After a long drought spent wondering when Square Enix would show a crumb of attention to fans of their 2007 action RPG hit, The World Ends With You is finally getting a sequel. Announced via YouTube, NEO: The World Ends With You returns to the streets of Shibuya featuring all new protagonists and a fully…

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory Might Be Enough To Save A Lapsed Keyblade Master Like Me

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. You know my heart; I loved Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, but after those two the games got weird and inaccessible. I dutifully bought Chain of Memories on the Playstation 2, but…so much had changed. I couldn’t understand how to use the card system to play properly, and…

Fly Me To The Moon And Let Me Play Among The Bayonetta Soundtrack

Welcome to the Friday edition of Morning Music, Kotaku’s daily hangout for all of Hell’s angels and Heaven’s demons. Today we’re attacking and dethroning god with a deep dive into the Bayonetta soundtrack. Bayonetta (playlist / longplay / VGMdb) was one of those games that got me on aesthetics alone. I missed out on Devil…

Dragon Age: Inquisition Saved My Life

Yesterday was Dragon Age: Inquisition’s sixth anniversary. To mark the occasion, instead of opining on Dragon Age 4 or loading up the game for another playthrough (which I’ll probably still do anyway), I sent a tweet to a couple of my friends marking our sixth(ish) friendship-iversary. I say “ish” because we all met some indeterminate…

Sorry, Tim Sweeney, But No, Absolutely Not

Tim Sweeney, who is probably celebrating the small victory of Apple slashing their cut from App Store developers making less than $1million in half, does not know when to shut up. As reported by TechCrunch, the CEO of Epic Games decided to fix his mouth to liken his company’s struggle against Apple to the civil…

I Can’t Believe All Of These Games Came Out This Year

King of hype Geoff Keighly just announced the nominees for the 2020 Game Awards, and as I’m looking through some of these nominations, I realize that none of this makes sense. First of goddamn all, Paper Mario: The Origami King should be nominated for Game of the Year instead of only being nominated in the…

Today on YouTube, Jupiter, developers of the Picross family of puzzle games, announced the arrival of Picross S5 for the Nintendo Switch on November 26th. Popular game modes like color, mega, and clip make their grand return and the game boasts over 450 puzzles for players to complete. The game will even shame you by…

Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Calamity: The Kotaku Review

Lady Urbosa. You can play as Lady Urbosa. That’s it. That’s the review. We could end the discussion about Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity right here and you’d have a pretty good understanding of the game. It has Lady Urbosa and you can play as her. She was my favorite character in 2017’s The Legend…