Splash Damage

Preorders for Dragon Age: The Veilguard are apparently poor. It might have something to do with the fact the game is now basically a cartoon, the character creator looks like trash, and the devs don’t even know characters from the series. We discuss this train wreck of a sequel along with The Gamer actually admitting the protagonist of Star Wars Outlaws is ugly, a Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts dev discussing why he makes characters hot, the Concord director stepping down, Elder Scrolls Online’s first nonbinary character, and Game Devs of Color Expo.

Concord will go down in video game history as one of the most colossal failures of all time. The game, filled with ugly character designs and pronouns for each one, lasted barely a week before the developers announced they would take it offline and refund everyone who bought it because it sold so poorly. There are others like it, including Dustborn. Will developers finally see the truth that no one wants these woke train wrecks? Probably not, because another one—Fairgame$—is on the way.

The Dead Rising remake is making some notable changes, including changing the race of one of the baddies from Asian to white guy and removing the feature that would reward players for taking risque photos. We discuss the censorship along with the death of Game Informer, Black Myth: Wukong’s alleged lack of diversity, Scientific American’s take on D&D removing the term “race,” rumors about the development studio behind Concord, Runescape removing sexes from character creation while adding pronouns, and more!

Capcom announced they want to increase female representation in management roles to 15%. Surprisingly, even the far-left sides of the internet disagree with the idea of hiring based on sex. We discuss the terrible effort that is DEI along with Ubisoft “apologizing” to Japanese fans over Assassin’s Creed Shadows and wokies upset that Genshin Impact is too white.

The Kotaku brand is one step closer to death as Kotaku Australia shut down last week. We celebrate this fact and also discuss a D&D creator’s reaction to inflammatory remarks about the game’s origin, Japanese players petitioning for the cancellation of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, The Boys showrunner being a hypocrite when it comes to handling sexual assault on the show, and more.

Elden Ring’s expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree, arrived to stellar reviews, but a Kotaku writer couldn’t help but use her article to compare her life of mean tweets to the brutality of the fantasy RPG. We discuss this ludicrous take (and our impressions of the DLC) along with the developers of the upcoming Black Myth: Wukong rejecting DEI consultants, woke devs finally realizing video game women are being uglified on purpose, Ubisoft’s hilarious reaction to Elon Musk’s criticism of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and more.

Ubisoft is finally making an Assassin’s Creed game set in feudal Japan, so who is the protagonist? A black samurai. We discuss the controversy around this decision along with Shift Up releasing uncensored versions of the Stellar Blade outfits they originally edited and how far Tomb Raider has fallen.

The developers of Farm Folks took to X to ask for fan input on breast physics in their game. The woke, of course, got offended, and the CEO apologized, starting a series of events that will likely end in the game’s failure. We discuss why you should never apologize to the left along with Sony’s attempts to ruin Helldivers 2 and Ghost of Tsushima, Microsoft closing several studios, Kotaku firing a handful of writers, and Hades 2 continuing to racebend Greek gods.

A few days before release, developer Shift Up promised their highly anticipated Stellar Blade wouldn’t be censored. Well, even before official release, fans discovered a fast one was being pulled: Several costumes and gore have indeed been toned down, and the developers tried to sneak it by gamers. We discuss the ramifications of such a game opting for censorship. We also talk about Kotaku’s hypocritical comments about the game compared to the “hot” characters of Hades 2, Pokemon Go’s wildly unpopular decision to uglify players’ avatars, Fortnite allowing gamers to block “offensive emotes,” and more.

The upcoming Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth won’t be a Tomb Raider game at all, considering the developers are flipping the entire premise of the franchise on its head in the name of wokeism. We discuss this IP-killing move along with Microsoft’s guidelines for devs on how to design female characters, Kotaku sticking to “news,” Star Wars Outlaws' uglified protagonist, a couple community managers who hate white men and gamers, IGN France’s meltdown over Stellar Blade, and more!