In 2017, Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, art director Satoru Takizawa and technical director Takuhiro Dohta gave a keynote at GDC. It offered a rare and candid glimpse at the production behind the latest (and to some, greatest) Legend of Zelda , released only a few days prior. Getting a peak behind the curtain at how the toybox of physics and elemental effects came to be was a treat, but one of the more bizarre parts of the talk regarded an earlier pitch.
The original was an unexpected hit. Rising above the tide of urban sandboxes in 2006, the game pushed its tomfoolery further than even Grand Theft Auto dared. The most recent entry, however, was a misfire. 2022's reboot was busted across technical levels and tonally out of sync for fans. Last year, rumors arose that the series might get another pass, but Chris Stockman, design director for the original game, now says the long-running has a fork in it.
Players of Relooted become South African sports scientist and parkour expert Nomali, as she leaps and dives through museums to retrieve 70 real objects. They include an Asante gold mask that was taken by the British army when it destroyed the Asante empire's capital, Kumasi, and is now in the Wallace Collection in London. Another object is the skull of the Tanzanian king Mangi Meli, which was taken to Germany after its colonial regime executed him in 1900.
The Pokémon Company finally, in the dead of night, announced its annual Pokémon Day Presents showcase. This is the stream the company hosts every year on February 27 to celebrate the franchise's anniversary. is turning 30 in 2026, so there's probably a lot to share ahead of the coming year. Here's what we know and what we can likely expect to see next week.
Please don't post or share pre-release leaks and spoilers for Resident Evil Requiem . We really want everyone to enjoy the game's story and experience as much as possible. Our legal department will continue to issue takedowns and deletion notices for leaks in order to preserve your day-one experience. It's not long now until the game is out, so we look forward to seeing all your reactions after release!
Making games requires testing them. For microtransaction-fueled gacha games, that means putting your own money on the line to sample the merchandise. That's apparently what led Street Fighter 2 producer Yoshiki Okamoto to spend over $500,000 of his own money on his own game's loot boxes. Monster Strike is one of Japan's most lucrative gacha games and it's one Okamoto helped create after leaving Capcom in the early aughts.
Of the Warlock's three Demonic partner options, I found myself leaning most on the Tainted, which can stay out of harm's way while harassing slower enemies from afar with fireballs. The other Demon options both had their charms but often got too caught up in massive enemy swarms to be as effective as I wanted, I found. I also didn't see much point in the skill option that let me teleport my demon into a specific fight
Famous as a series of uncompromising multiplayer JRPG greatness, our one pic from the whole franchise has to be Tales of Vesperia. The game blends classic JRPG storytelling with fast-paced, real-time combat that works surprisingly well in co-op. The story follows Yuri Lowell, a former knight who takes justice into his own hands in a world powered by magical technology.
Turns out, Ganszyniec had no hand in writing the final cutscene. "The script for this...it was created not really involving the story team. So it was sort of, we weren't really paying attention. And that was a mistake, I think." As he explains, this is why the "open question" surrounding Geralt's future that's presented in the narrated section, which precedes the animated cutscene doesn't match up with the conclusion.
Why the delay? Developer Sad Cat Studios notes that the game is "technically finished" but the team needs a few more weeks for polish. The company says it wants the day-one release to be "polished, stable and true to the vision" of the original concept. This is something to be commended, in my opinion, given the sad state of many game launches in recent years.
An advert for a Call of Duty game has been banned by the UK's advertising regulator for trivialising sexual violence. The commercial for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 featured fake officers at an airport security check - as the real ones were too busy playing the game. Viewers complained the video, which included a man being told to strip down while an officer put on gloves and said "time for the puppet show", was "irresponsible and offensive".
When Don't Nod released Life Is Strange 2 episodically over the course of 2019 , it attempted to tackle a wide array of political issues such as police brutality, racism, and immigration through the eyes of two Mexican-American brothers named Sean and Daniel. The pair spend the episodic adventure game on the run from law enforcement after a Seattle cop kills their father and Daniel's latent telekinetic powers activate and kill the officer.
In the airport ad, the Replacers are seen roughly handling a passenger after he is stopped at a security checkpoint. Stormare's Replacer tells the man he has been "randomly selected to be manhandled." Glaser's Replacer puts on blue gloves, and the passenger is told he has to remove all his clothing. The gloved Replacer then says, "Time for the puppet show."
Why does Hasbro keep shutting down studios instead of releasing games? Project Windless was the surprise hit out of last week's PlayStation showcase and its developers have been using genAI for the early development phase. And would it kill publishers to stop delisting old versions of their games? It's the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku 's daily roundup of gaming news, rumors, and culture.
AI-driven authoring is our second major area of focus for 2026. At the Game Developer Conference in March, we'll be unveiling a beta of the new upgraded Unity AI, which will enable developers to prompt full casual games into existence with natural language only, native to our platform - so it's simple to move from prototype to finished product.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond launched on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 in December, but if you're itching for some more lore, Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective is a nice way to dig in, especially now that it's on sale. Normally $49.99, you can currently buy the hardcover version for $41.08 (about $9 off) at Amazon and Walmart, which is one of the first discounts we've seen on the tabletop book.
