Stephen Totilo's discussions

For me... God of War or The Witness Read more

I’d triple Kotaku’s staff if I could. There’s a lot of talent I’d love to bring aboard here, but we don’t have any expansion like that coming up soon. I can dream! Read more

Not that I know of. You’re working with pre-defined evolutionary traits that amount to improvements in intelligence, dexterity, communication and stuff like that. The game tracks how quickly you’re acquiring these abilities, which are metered out by very video-gamey systems like experience points and such and then… Read more

Thank you for sharing that link. I’m usually pretty well informed about what goes on in gaming, such is what my job calls for, but I’d somehow missed this. I’m asking the staff about it and seeing if we can cover it without simply being super-late to it. Read more

It’s a worthwhile thing to discuss. If you haven’t seen it already, I recommend reading Kirk Hamilton’s essay on this topic from last year Read more

The second podcast in the set, the one about explaining why the college became co-ed, seems less open to a reading that this is all mockery. It breaks down the economic reasons why a school would go co-ed in the early 20th century. That influenced my take on this third installment about the statues. Read more

Maybe you’ll accept “crafty”? Read more

I’m sure that many people who buy games want to be sure they got their money’s worth. A game that lasts longer can potentially provide more value. But, yeah, some of these long games seem designed to keep us from playing anything else! Read more

Thanks to this DLC, this game now has more Isu stuff in it than the rest of the series combined. But you will have to put in the hours to reach it. Read more

Yes, everything that’s in the image atop my little post here, with the exception of the two Classified Assignment missions, as a total of eight of those will be exclusive to Year One Pass owners. Read more

I asked Banchereau about Underground and Survival and if anything like that was in the works. He pointed out that they’re not in the announced content plan, but added: “We know these are extremely popular, so this is definitely something that in a perfect world we’d like to be able to bring back.” Read more

Yes, that’s what I meant. Read more

Astrobot, SuperHypercube, Statik. I liked Moss, didn’t love it. Then there’s that Metroid-looking game on the demo disc... can’t remember it’s name but if it ever comes out it could be great! Read more

I got the flags that were fun to get, ignored the ones that weren’t. Later AC games, like Rogue, put a lot of their collectibles in interesting spots that were fun to parkour to. Same with the Koroks in Breath of the Wild, which also has a terrible reward for finding all of them. I didn’t bother to hunt down all of… Read more

Yeah, dumb mistake on my part. Fixed. Thank you for pointing it out. Read more

That’s good to highlight and something I should have noted in the story. I appreciate you putting it in the comments here.

But, yes, the bill is overly broad, which is why I noted in the sentence after the one you quoted that the “minor-targeted games” that the bill would regulate is more than just what people think… Read more

I like it a lot, but I too am feeling the fatigue. After over a hundred hours of playing it, the relative shallowness of the combat system kicks in. A game like Nioh kept me engaged with its combat longer than Odyssey (or Origins) did. Read more

I hear you on keeping older sets leveled up, but I took those newish final boat upgrades as a thing that’s there for people playing through again on New Game+. Read more

Sure thing. I played through Arkham Knight when it came out but barely touched the DLC until all of it was out. It also had piecemeal DLC that I heard bacd things about as it trickled out. But playing it all at once was very satisfying. I imagine the same will be the case for you for Shadow. Read more

In this case, the 515 gear was going to be added right before the introduction of the game’s first raid. Players assumed they’d optimally be playing that raid with the best gear and worried 500 wouldn’t necessarily be enough and that putting the effort into the raid might not even result in the game’s best rewards.… Read more