Obviously Metacritic is not an objective measure of a game's quality, and of course no such thing exists. But it's nevertheless a damn good gauge of the general tone of reviews of a game. You're right: paychecks should not be contingent on the difference of a single Metacritic point, and it would be absurd if Obsidian…

Right— I was talking about the Unsullied. Forgot the name, it's been years since I read the book. I guess we'll have to wait to find out who the hell she's yelling at :-)

My first reaction to seeing the trailer above was #5: they're borrowing from Book 3. Not only do they introduce us to more of Robb's arc, missing from Book 2, but we see Daenerys rallying the slave army, which she doesn't buy until Book 3. I think that kind of dipping is essential for clear resolution to this season.…

Don't get me wrong— this looks promising. But I had hopes they'd go for a French Revolution setting. So much more drama and blood! DLC maybe?

Mmmm. Tastes good.

Enjoy the Kool-Aid.

Remember when Kotaku Game Club was about playing older, overlooked games that you could get super cheap so that everyone could participate? Heady days, friends.

Oshii Mamoru (Ghost in the Shell) has used the word "mukokuseki" to describe anime characters— basically, "one without nationality." They're a tabula rasa, in other words. At the same time, Miyazaki has cryptically said that "the Japanese hate their own faces," and purposefully draw beautiful characters as Western…

I'm a St. Joe's alum, and was at one point a faculty member. I can tell you with no reservation that whoever made this decision in the alumni relations department did it without the consent of the university and in flagrant violation of the university's commitment to diversity and the promotion of the respect and…

I can understand defending a mom-and-pop store that has a real reason to encourage the kind of community you crave, Mike. Mom-and-pops have a reason to cultivate that kind of community: it enriches the cultural life of the community they live in. But GameStop has no interest in that; it's a multinational corporation…

That's absurd. How do some silly blinking lights represent "Christian values?" If you've got a religion the core beliefs of which can be represented by ridiculous little flashing lights, you need a new religion.

Was this written in English?

I didn't see anyone else mention it, but accompanying the dragon flying backwards I got intense lag and framerate drop (on 360). I got tired of trying to shoot down the dragon, which wouldn't come anywhere near me, so I started walking away, and the further away I got, the worse the framerate got, to the point where,…

I never thought I'd see the day when a Kotaku editor thoughtfully uses the word "orientalizing" in a post.

Exactly, that was the problem: the character was essentially masculine (even anti-feminine), powerful, intelligent, strong-willed— all these characteristics we've coded as male, and yet they put those characteristics into the most unrealistic female body, which is a hyper-sexualized male fantasy. I'm not saying I…

I'm glad this came up. It reminds me of a similar experience at a conference at York University in Toronto a few years ago, something on "Asian Comics, Gaming, and Animation." One panel was about representations of sexualized women in anime. The first two presenters went on with these cultural relativist arguments…

Allegations backed up by years worth of evidence that this private corporation has used taxpayer money to commit atrocities and war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. There have even been congressional hearings. It's not like Evan just made this stuff up.

There are a lot of confused ideas here. Maybe this required some thoughtful editing before hitting post.

Michael Scott: "I would never have called Oscar faggy had I known he was gay."

The response to this is so fascinating. If the guy had used the word "nigger" in the same way he used "faggot," we'd all be responding very differently.