r/KotakuInAction Aug 02 '26

DISCUSSION Monthly General Discussion Thread - August Month

30 Upvotes

Back by popular indifference is the monthly megathread.

Also as always if you have anything that is not directly related to KiA but just want to chat about it, post it here.

Any way we are still looking for a few new moderators to join the team to help keep working the mod queue. If you want to keep this place open please apply.

Rule 3 does not apply as this will be just comments, though the other subreddit rules and sitewide rules obviously will still apply.


r/KotakuInAction Jul 23 '26

ANNOUNCEMENT Update to User Experience and Fighting the Rising Tide of Slop

132 Upvotes

In the Year of our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Six

As of the posting of this announcement a new AutoMod rule has been added and all posts and comments from Default Reddit Usernames are hence forth to be banished to ye olde spam bin. We have grown weary over the influx of trash posts by the aforementioned default usernames.

To put this extremely bluntly: If you can't bring yourself to edit the default username Reddit suggests when you sign up, we don't want you here.

Expending even a single brain cell to defeat the AutoMod rule that will be put into place gives you points in your favor.

Results not guaranteed and likely to change.


If you are normal contributor and think you are caught unfairly in this spam filter, please send us a modmail so that we can deal with edge cases on a case by case business.


r/KotakuInAction 6h ago

‘Lanterns’ Writer Vanessa Baden Kelly Says It Is Fine if ‘a Million People Hate’ the Show After Radical John Stewart Rewrite, Citing HBO's Watchmen Series

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262 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 3h ago

Witch Hat Atelier Creator Says Minority Representation Is Normal And Natural, But Also Shouldnt Be Specifically Sought After And Celebrated

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107 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 9h ago

What hype? The fake hype for Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is so annoying

272 Upvotes

So Naughty Dog tweeted recently about this slop with a Cowboy Bebop reference, apparently, the game is already done with "shooting", what I heavily dislike and find annoying is the fake enthusiasm and hype surrounding it, every shill or tourist is praising it as the second coming of Christ.

So annoying and disgusting, I am worried if it becomes a commercial success.


r/KotakuInAction 3h ago

NERD CULT. [Nerd Culture] Yahoo: "Chun-Li Actor Callina Liang Grew Her Thighs 6.5 Centimeters for ‘Street Fighter’"

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98 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 9h ago

Nikke x Persona collab and its flat asses flops and brings the lowest earnings for this year so far

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149 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 3h ago

GAMING [SocJus] Tim Schafer releases a video where he throws away everything related to Xbox, launched a Double Fine Kickstarter and already has 300K on it.

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44 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 17h ago

Clip of Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy saying "I like to make men uncomfortable"

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208 Upvotes

She also said "not you" to the guy on the right.

But oooof. She should've clarified that she like to make men like the men from Pakistan uncomfortable.

Since they, at best, accepted the honor killings against women.

She, before that interview(?) made 2 documentaries about the problems women face within Pakistan, and that she show one of them to the ruler(?) of Pakistan, making him uncomfortable so that would inspired him to make change.

That's one of the reasons why she likes making men(like the the men of Pakistan) uncomfortable, it's to inspire change.


r/KotakuInAction 1d ago

After the turd that was Laterns episode 3, this man deserves an apology

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631 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 9h ago

Xbox’s Failed Strategy and the Layoffs : A Reckoning at Bethesda Game Studios?

19 Upvotes

So, I wrote an article on Xbox's failed strategy and the layoffs in early July, 2026. I posted it in the related subreddits. As you can imagine, I got massively downvoted. As such, I thought sharing it here in order to have your opinion.

https://medium.com/@wisig_/xboxs-failed-strategy-and-the-layoffs-a-reckoning-at-bethesda-92a8e8693696?sharedUserId=wisig_


r/KotakuInAction 21h ago

Insomniac's ‘WOLVERINE’ has multiple settings to remove gore & R-rated language to accommodate all audiences.

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133 Upvotes

Wake up bois them are making R rated Wolverine game for children adults and pansies.


r/KotakuInAction 1d ago

Madeleine Morris, English VA for Rudy in Mushoku Tensei, supports mods who censor and imply fans are p*dos, while being a hypocrite herself.

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663 Upvotes

Context:

Some mods for Mushoku Tensei decided that posting meme content about certain characters like “uoh” and 😭 are liked to sexualization, and made a new rule to ban anyone who does it.

When fans outraged, the VA for Rudy came on and sided wit the mods and implied the fans are you know what. All while doing the exact same thing herself with other characters she voices.

Another reason why English VAs are a cancer and need a massive overhaul. Please share.


r/KotakuInAction 1d ago

I finished Death Stranding 2 and not only it's woke, but it sucks

224 Upvotes

Spoilers ahead

Haven't found a topic discussing it on this sub, and I know the game is over a year old now, but I'd like to address it, so I see other people's (who dared going through it too) opinion, and warn any person interested in pouring dozens of hours into that game that they might regret it.

The first game

Played the first one, and surprisingly loved it. Loved the chill concept of making deliveries, reconnecting the world through them, and facing all kinds of challenges, preparing each travel, gearing up accordingly, unlocking new useful tools to achieve your goals. The story was weird and sometimes a bit exaggerated too, but it was overall believable in its own and far fetched scenario. Took me 2 playthroughs to fully understand it, and even appreciate it.

Now I was excited to play the second opus on PC, because I was a fan of the first one, so I had no negative preconception of the game.

Gameplay

Gameplay, graphically and environmentally speaking, it's the exact same as the first game, so you don't really feel like playing a second, improved and better game, you just feel like continuing where you stopped, launching into a (big) DLC.

Story and characters wise though, that's where the thing gets stinky and deeply flawed.

Sam

Sam has always been an odd character, you like him or don't, I suppose most don't because a lot of people don't like his actor Norman Reedus or don't like his nonchalant and weird, almost autistic behaviour but I actually liked the guy. He was weird but had balls and got shit done, not scared to trace a path and fight things bigger than him along the way to pursue his goals of protecting his BB and finding his sister Amelie. Connecting America was just a secondary task in his journey allowing him to achieve his main goals.

In this second game, Sam has lost any humanity and is just an empty shell, a boring background NPC barely nodding and mumbling words, not expressing ideas, emotions, not any stance or refusal, nothing. He just dumbly follows what mostly Fragile, but other women too, tell him to do like a lost child in the mall, on the brink of panic but acting on robot mode.

Even in the beginning after a very intense scene where he literally loses his child because of her, he still, without emotions, follows her like a puppy and gets in her adventure, without even dragging his feet. But this sets the tone of the game really, Sam is not human, Sam is not a man, he is made to obey, follow and serve, and when possible, being bossed around, bonus point if this is Fragile or any other strong woman like the fierce blonde mutant or the oh so brave single mom chased by meanie men with forks and flashlights because she was "different" (see the allegory here?)

The cast

Speaking of strong woman, there's of course that odd looking bald black woman with the fish eyes that we see in every modern audience game nowadays, playing a brave doctor sheltering pregnant women who are in great danger, because, in her own words, the world has collapsed, there are no rules, so men are after them and are going to harm them. I kid you not.

The setting

The game takes place in Mexico for the tutorial and Australia for the majority of the adventure, and I'm not even exaggerating when I say I still struggle to see what even makes the map and the people you meet over there even remotely representative of what you would imagine of Australia. Most people you meet through shelters are 50/50 male or female leaders of course, but there is an enormous part of them being straight up asians, (there's even a cringy k-pop streamer manga female avatar one, talking with a kid voice, not kidding) and there are even some indians (???). You barely meet any Australian with the "Oi mate" kind of cliche in the game.

A big portion of the music in the game are japanese, or from the three same bands, half of it being from Woodkid alone. So you won't feel in Australia either through the musics in the game, albeit I'll admit the music still are good and fits the "what the fuck is going on" overall tone of the game anyway.

The story

No really, when I say the story and dialogues are an absolute fucking mess I'm not exaggerating, it feels like it has been pitched both by an 8 years old on the verge of autism and his teenage cringe feminist big sister. A character you thought was dead somehow returns (Higgs, Troy Baker) and the baby gets killed because of it.

For instance, you learn that Sam was cucked by his wife while she was pregnant of him but he still mourns her and was willing to raise, what he thought was her and her lover's baby.

Sam gets his life saved multiple times by bigger and stronger mutant team women throughout the game. He also gets his ass kicked multiple times by the same villain, yet never reacts when facing him and just stares at him, listening to his never-ending boring and cringe speeches with a dumb look on his face the whole time.

The game "deepens" on one aspect of the game (the BBs pods) and now it suddenly was in fact a big meanie operation of the white men led "Drawbridges" which snatched and smuggled dead pregnant women from Mexico to the U.S to make some experiment, insisting on the minorities yet again suffering and doing the "dirty work" for what remains of the U.S.A.

And if the feminist sad violins throughout the whole game wasn't enough, you're often reminded in the terrible dialogues and cinematics that you're in fact still a man walking across the continent to save the world on your own, fighting ghosts and robots while carrying 300 pounds of cargo on your back, but I quote "women and children are the first victims in every war and they're those who suffer the most of it" (I shit you not, Fragile literally says that shit straight to your face).

Beyond the wokeness

But even the femcel activism put aside, the rest of the story is still absolutely boring and way too "what the fuck", even for Kojima. Scenario shortcuts everywhere, too many "somewhat he returned" plots and way beyond fan service moments that it makes the game almost a parody of the previous one. I'm talking a degree of ridiculousness that I had not seen in any game yet, like some "previously-serious" character during a serious cutscene which out of the blue starts a musical, dancing like a kpop singer whilst singing his song then returning to normal, and the characters watching him quietly as if this was totally normal during a key moment of the story. The main villain of this game (Troy Baker but emo) is the same as the first one, under a mech form fighting with... an electric guitar weapon. He's insufferable, sounds like a B list kid movie bad guy having supposedly "deep" monologues which turn out to be unbearable to listen to, probably because of the Troy Baker fatigue that I have, and the fact I think he's actually a pretty mid voice actor, way too overrated and who does too much, like a theater kid, to have the spotlight. I bet you all those sequences of him singing (yes he does) in this game were pushed so he could, somehow, kickstart his failed music career (spoiler, it did not). But it's representative of the dialogues in this game, they're supposed to "ring", but I don't know to whom, probably that modern audience we still haven't found yet, so they just sound childishly bland, redundant and annoying.

The ending

That shit soup of a story ends in beauty, with one of the female mutants being, apparently, Sam's daughter, so guess what she does? That's right. She becomes a porter like her daddy (whom she calls Sam by the way, not even father) and everything points out to her taking over the adventure now, because she's fearless and better than him, that goes without saying. That wraps it up for Sam, from suffering and miserable rebel immortal man fighting his way through the afterlife, ghosts and bandits to protect his own, to an empty shell following his feminist crew like a sheep to achieve their goal, take no credit, and step aside for his powerful slay queen daughter to take over the next game


r/KotakuInAction 1d ago

What's up with the persona fanbase

114 Upvotes

I'm confused by how persona fans have responded to the Yosuke romance being cancelled with pointing out the age gap romances with the protagonists.

I thoughts stuff like dommy mommy was safe horny in leftie land, I thought that they liked empowered female characters taking advantage of underage men.

I thought all of that would be safe horny within leftie twitter but I'm confused they do attack the romances withe female adults, which I found weird since redditors and twitters are obsessed with female characters doing things that would be condemned if a male character did it.


r/KotakuInAction 1d ago

'Lanterns' Executive Producer Damon Lindelof Claims Nobody Wants Adaptations Faithful to the Source Material

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293 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 1d ago

Why do people who claim to be fans of the series want to change everything about it?

196 Upvotes

A new Brigandine game was recently released, and it has pretty much nothing in common with the previous titles. People hate it, and it is currently sitting at "Mostly Negative" reviews on Steam.

Brigandine is supposed to be a sandbox grand strategy game focused on conquering nations, woven together with knightly banter and a rich story. Yet, look at what we got:

  • Before, you could turn off the time limit in the campaign. Now, the main campaign strictly lasts 30 turns. That’s it.
  • Before, there was no auto-leveling for the AI. Now, the AI gains a level every single turn, completely destroying any sense of player progression and turning the conquest into a grueling slog.
  • The AI blatantly cheats and instantly refills its lost monsters.
  • Before, massive kingdoms would duke it out. Now, the map is cluttered with one-castle factions, the majority of which disappear by turn 2.
  • Before, you could invade any neighboring castle. Now, many bases are locked for plot reasons, completely railroading the campaign.
  • The map is smaller, there is no multiclassing, there are fewer monster classes, and many characters look completely different from their actual models. Also, you can’t capture monsters in combat and so on…

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Yet, there are still plenty of people trying to defend these awful changes:

"Oh, the devs added generic officers instead of named heroes. Tactics Ogre was doing this all the time."

We are playing Brigandine! Why are we even talking about Tactics Ogre here?

"The Church was always evil in JRPG games."

Literally look at Brigandine: Grand Edition and Leonia. That was a very rare, positive example of a theocratic nation and angels.

"People just wanted the exact same game for the fourth time in a row..."

Yeah? And what's wrong with that? If I buy a Brigandine game, I expect it to play like Brigandine. Why is that such a crime?

"Time limits are implemented well in other games and encourage players to play more aggressively."

Brigandine always gave us an option to turn off the time limits! So, to make playstyles more "diverse," we are going to completely eliminate every playstyle except the single one intended by the developers?

Can someone explain to me why these supposed fans of a franchise want to change everything that made it great in the first place?


r/KotakuInAction 1d ago

PlayStation wants to prove in court that you don't own your digital games

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229 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 5h ago

References to Content Creators and other Pop culture icons in Gaming Journo Simulator

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0 Upvotes

Well, here it is. Since game journalism is a gift that keeps on giving, I decided to give one back.


r/KotakuInAction 1d ago

[Art] Smol GG Mascot Sketches

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30 Upvotes

r/KotakuInAction 17h ago

Vainsane Studios, AI-Powered slop?

0 Upvotes

I've recently came across this game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4832290/Mado_Marks/

Which looks interesting at a first glance. But something caught my attention: the dev also has, like, 10 other identical-looking games on Steam. And they were all released in the past 2 years.

Looking at his website, it says they've released 13 games, localized across 13 languages, in the span of 2 years.

Personally, I can't see how this is possible, and it leads me to believe this is just an ai-powered slop factory.

What do you guys think?


r/KotakuInAction 21h ago

GTA VI cracks down on open carry Spoiler

0 Upvotes

LOL. There is no way this game is going to be anything other than a passable disappointment at best, and utter shit at its worst.

imagine taking away your ability to tote an assault rifle because your company did a rethink of things “you didn’t do so well previously.”

These comments should have your hair on fire, as friendly Mr. Policeman comes after the gentleman with the loaded AK on Main Avenue

Not sure what this is, but it’s not the chaotic power fantasy we knew as GTA for 20 years

https://archive.is/2026.09.01-025959/https://kotaku.com/gta-6-doesnt-take-kindly-to-open-carry-2000728483


r/KotakuInAction 3d ago

Rockstar ‘Developer’ calls people’s criticism, “abuse against female game devs”

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1.2k Upvotes

And she’s locked her profile for any new replies. This is the sort of developer that made GTA VI. So just imagine how safe, iNcLuSiVe and inoffensive the game is going to be.