From mergers to memes, the landscape of interactive entertainment is always in motion. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s New Deluxe Edition Is A Steal For The Price
Baldur’s Gate 3 already has one special edition, in the form of its Collector’s Edition. We even unboxed it here at Kotaku, and it’s got a lot of cool knickknacks that pay tribute to its tabletop roots. Of course that was expensive, solely for PC and PlayStation 5 players, and didn’t include a physical copy of the game itself. But Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to Xbox next month, so Larian Studios is taking the opportunity to release a new, Deluxe Edition for all three platforms. And given what comes in the box, I think it’s pretty darn affordable. Read More
The Best Soulslike Of 2023 Just Got Easier
Like game director Ji Won Choi promised in early November, duo-developers Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio have dropped a new update for their gothic, Belle Époque-era Soulslike RPG, Lies of P. And just as expected, this update makes some significant changes to the game so that you have an actual fighting chance at surviving this bloodied retelling of the Pinocchio story. Read More
Modern Warfare III Players Beg For OP ‘Groot’ Skin To Get Removed
Modern Warfare III players are begging Activision to remove a “literally invisible” cosmetic first introduced in Modern Warfare II that’s plaguing multiplayer matches yet again. Read More
Valve Has A Plan To Stop Bots And Resellers From Hoarding The New Steam Deck
On November 16, Valve will let folks purchase a new Steam Deck OLED Limited Edition model, which features all the upgrades of the base OLED version of the portable PC, but with some extra cosmetic details, too. And to help folks actually get a chance to buy this thing, Valve is implementing some safeguards to slow or stop bots and resellers from buying them all up instantly. Read More
Hades Is Joining The Best Free Game Library Nobody Uses
One of the best action-RPGs in a generation is finally getting a mobile version, but it’s a mixed blessing. The good news is that Hades is coming to iPhones in 2024 and will be free for Netflix subscribers. The bad news is that it will be exclusive to both, with no way to buy the game outright or play it on Android devices. Read More
Suicide Squad Game Resurfaces With Big Map And Live-Service Plans
Rocksteady is finally ready to start talking about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, after delaying it (again) earlier this year. The studio first announced its upcoming supervillain co-op action game way back in 2020. In a new video series going behind the scenes of the game, the devs explained how big its map will be and showed off some new cutscenes. Conveniently, they barely mentioned any of the live-service aspects fans aren’t happy about. Read More
Here Are Your Picks For The Biggest 2023 Game Awards Snubs
Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards are far from the be-all and end-all of which games are good, creatively bold, and deserving of praise each year, but they’re still fun to get way too serious about. It’s the one day game developers get to dress fancy, go up on stage, and receive our collective thanks for their artistic accomplishment rather than getting canned the night before the quarterly earnings call. Read More
Former Mass Effect Lead Forms New Studio To Make Narrative-Focused Games
Chinese publisher NetEase is opening a new studio with the lead writer behind the Mass Effect series at the helm.
Worlds Untold will be based in Vancouver, and helmed by CEO Mac Walters, who’s known for his work at BioWare that spanned almost 20 years. Walters was a writer on martial arts RPG Jade Empire, then a senior writer on the first entry in the sci-fi RPG series, Mass Effect, and was eventually promoted to lead writer on Mass Effect 2 and 3. Following this, he was brought on as creative director on Mass Effect: Andromeda, worked on early narrative direction on Anthem, and project directed the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters, before ending his tenure at the studio as a production director on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. So he was at the forefront of a lot of the narrative direction of BioWare’s last two decades. How you feel about that probably varies depending on your opinions on the state of the studio, but speaking personally, the narrative wasn’t my biggest problem with most of those games. Read More
Kotaku Unboxes The Spider-Man 2 Limited Edition PS5
The $600 set is currently sold out at PlayStation’s store but is still a gift to keep in mind for the Spidey-loving gamer in your life this holiday season
Total Recall: How Does KotOR Hold Up In 2023?
We look back at what made BioWare’s first Star Wars RPG one of the most celebrated of all time