Stephen Totilo

Minions! Moral Decisions! Dragon Age Inquisition Is Sounding Good.

Is the third time going to be the charm for BioWare’s Dragon Age franchise? If this dev diary is accurate to how the game is turning out, it just might! You’re an inquisitor. You run the place. You send minions on quests. You make moral decisions. And the game you’re in looks damn good. Inquisition…

The first expansion to Plants Vs. Zombies 2 will be set in the future, the game’s creators at PopCap just announced at a Gamescom EA kick-off event. The free-to-play game has already been downloaded some 16 million times since its release last week.

The Sims 4 Will Let You Manipulate Sims’ Emotions

The Sims 4, targets for a 2014 PC release, will have “emotion-based gameplay,” according to Rachel Franklin, exec v.p. of the game’s development studio Maxis. She was presenting the game today at an EA Gamescom event in Germany. “From angry to flirty, from sad to happy, you can now explore the gamut of human emotions…

Xbox One’s Indie Games Program Revealed At Last

After months of offering little more than variations of “don’t worry, we’ll have one,” Microsoft is using their kick-off of the big Gamescom event in Germany this week to detail something called ID@Xbox. That is their indie games program. It’ll roll out in stages. “When we talk to developers, what we hear is they want…

Game Designer Would Like You To Stop Fixating On Review Scores

Platinum Games’ Hideki Kamiya has a new video game out. It’s not getting perfect scores or perfect reviews. Yeah, like he cares. Here’s one of video game’s most expressive game designers brushing off criticism as only he can. These Tweets are in reference to reviews of The Wonderful 101, a Wii U game that’ll be…

Majora’s Mask, a Moon And Some Cool Gen Con Cosplay

Talk Amongst Yourselves‘ Giant Boy Detective went to Gen Con this past weekend and found a parade of cosplay. The Majora’s Mask one is great! Check out the rest below.

A Possibly-Drunk Ric Flair Made This WWE 2K14 Panel Extra-Entertaining

The best thing 2K Sports has done for pro wrestling games so far is assemble this incredible panel consisting of Jim Ross, Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan (he was robbed last night!), Rey Mysterio, Steve Austin, Paul Heyman, Mick Foley and a seemingly intoxicated Ric Flair. Jump about 40 minutes in for the good stuff. 2K,…

So much for our plan to blame solar flares for the missing TAY round-ups late last week. The truth is out there! Nevertheless, they’re back today. Right here! Read our reader-run sister site and you’ll learn about: Nintendo’s neglected franchises, Sherlock Holmes cartoons, and Metal Gear Solid all these years later

Quick Q&A: ‘We have to stop underestimating gamers.’

Since she stepped away from producing Assassin’s Creed games at Ubisoft Montreal, Jade Raymond has had a lower profile in the gaming scene. This week, Raymond is back, having overseen development of the new Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the first major game from her new Ubisoft Toronto studio. She’s got four answers for us today…and one…

PS3 Version of Disney Infinity Locking Up, Short-Term Fix Available [UPDATE]

The ambitious new game Disney Infinity is freezing and becoming unplayable for multiple PlayStation 3 users, including two Kotaku editors today. The game’s producer has recommended that PS3 users delete the game’s day-one 1.01 patch. That solution is helping, though online play won’t be available without the patch. We’ve seen some threads on the official…

Terrific Indie Game Trailer Is Your Gateway To 80 Other Trailers

Skip the first 26 seconds of this trailer for the 2103 PAX Prime Indie Mega Booth. Get right to the good stuff… a cascade of picture-in-picture links to trailers for 80 or so cool-looking indie games. Some of these games are out already. Some are forthcoming. All will be at PAX, the massive open-to-the-public gaming…

Read Polygon‘s Version Of the Harassment Story Folks Are Buzzing About

Did you hear the one about the ex-BioWare writer who supposedly quit her job because she was being harassed? Hopefully not, because that’s wrong, despite it being today’s supposed hot news. That “fact” is wrong, but it’s been ricocheting all around the Internet today thanks to a writer for a publication called Metro getting a…

Finally, Spy Party‘s Normal-Looking People Can Move

We’ve been following asymmetrical multiplayer game Spy Party for years. We’ve been wondering for nearly as long when game designer Chris Hecker was ever going to swap out his programmer art for something a little more 21st-century. He’s getting close! Hecker has posted animation tests of two SpyParty characters on his blog for the upcoming…

Infinity Ward: PC Call of Duty Will Look Better Than Next-Gen One

The PC version of November’s Call of Duty Ghosts will be getting a little extra development love, according to the game’s executive producer, Mark Rubin. As a result, it is probably going to be the best-looking version of the game, which has not been a given with this series. “PC is taking a different tack…

Former Kotaku boss Brian Crecente writes an important story over at Polygon about the effects—largely negative and depressing—of gamers harassing game developers online. This is one for all gamers to think hard about.

What’s this? Plants Vs. Zombies 2 is already out on iOS? Seems that way

Martyr Dog, Earning XP While Not Playing & More Call of Duty Surprises

Today’s big Call of Duty Ghosts multiplayer reveal event didn’t reveal everything. They actually skipped some really interesting things, including “martyr dog.” Thankfully, Ghosts executive producer Mark Rubin decided to spill more news when he spoke to us. Here’s what we got out of him… The game will ship with 14 multiplayer maps. There probably…

Why Female Soldiers Were Finally Added to Call of Duty‘s Multiplayer

There is no great suffrage movement to credit for finally enabling players of the world’s most popular first-person shooter tokill each other as female soldiers. For better or worse, that’s not how these things tend to happen in video games. Certainly not this time. With the announcement of playable female soldiers for November’s sure-to-be-a-blockbuster Call…

Why would there suddenly be a new post about Battlefield 4 on the PlayStation blog right now? And an announcement from Valve about a new Counter-Strike update? What timing!

It’s Nearly A Miracle That The New Ultima Exists

The back-story behind a new Ultima game should be a horror show: Ultima—beloved role-playing game series designed by the great Richard Garriott who sold his company to cold, corporate EA and down the tubes Ultima would go, returning in 2013 only for money-grubbing reasons. Nope. That’s not it. Some of that is accurate. Some of…