Thanks for vividly retelling this highlight. This to me is still the best of the events in the game, side quests and main story included.

I was not aware of this trailer’s real historical connection to the absolutely stupefyingly stupid idea of Cultural Marxism. Pieces like this is why I read Kotaku. Thanks, Ian!

You hit the nail on the head there. If you tasked a bunch of hotshot trailer producers to come up with the most generic take on an RPG ever, they would not even get close.

That definitely brought out the giggling teenager in me, thanks!

THIS JUST IN, MAN IN COMMENTS MAKES DISGRUNTLED NOISES AT A BIT OF CULTURE HE NEITHER UNDERSTANDS NOR CARES FOR!!!

This post makes some excellent points. Still, I feel it could have done more with the idea of the player as central agent to and for which the game makers are telling a (hi)story:
Arthur Morgan isn’t written as someone from the time period, but as a story-driven character vessel through which players get to experience…

Already had this in my sights, but with such a ringing and well-written endorsement, I’m game.
Maybe I somehow missed it, but did you play this on PC? Any idea about the other platform versions. I’d prefer to get this on Switch, but sometimes otherwise solid multi-platform games can struggle a bit there.

Thanks! Some good points you internally monologue yourself through.
Games, I think all of them, have to live up to some pretty impossible standards. I don’t think that is necessarily because there are more games coming out, in comparison to when we were kids (90ties for me). It’s also that, while the gold standards…

Same here, that babypost was a silly thing they did there...

Sorry if this has already been posted (don’t want to check any other comments or the piece), but unless I am super mistaken of the baby is very spoilerific if you are in mid-game like I am and just what it looks like allows me to easily identify the parents (once again, could be wrong here, if so, please accept my…

Great review, the best kind of review: not written towards audience (you know the majority of us already had their minds made up), but from experience. I’ll feel strengthened by your experiences, while I’ll collect my own.

Thanks so much for your amazing work for this outlet, Jason. You’re a major reason of why I tell people who want to understand games in their full social, cultural, economic, and ideological breadth, they should read Kotaku (I even assign your features about the video game industry to my digital media course students).…

I love it when a near perfect Ouroboros emerges out of good things happening in gaming. Thanks for not missing a single beat, Jason... As always!

A bit meta, but I just wanted to commend you on how you bring this gaming news with the type of perspective that is needed right now: a balanced, non-judging news item that shows it really depends on the personal priorities in this for Switch owners and that it just is important to make an informed choice.

Not directly related to the comics, but I had a pretty horrible experience browsing them this week. For some reason there was an ad after every comic for a pretty inappropriate webcomic about some stepmom I care exactly negative googolplex about.

Excellent points!

Second this. I don’t care how high the quality of content is at Kotaku, I don’t visit sites that have this sort of dystopian bullshit.

Sounds about right, also Fuck Jim Spanfeller.

Actions and policies like this, taken for the quality of life for people as well as the quality of the things they create, is why Kotaku is a premiere media platform (for games journalism, sure, but also across the board) and why I keep coming back to it as a source of news and diversion.

Thanks for this Impression, Paul!
I think the connection you make to “Barbarians at the Gates” and a society under stress is a good example of game developers (hopefully subconsciously) tapping into current anxieties and mixing these with (I would say) tired old tropes about our past.

For those of you who are…