Lil Wayne makes an unexpected appearance in a very unusual legal fight. Call of Duty is coming to Switch as soon as a few months from now. And one of Ubisoft’s Canadian studios just unionized. It’s the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s daily roundup of gaming news and culture. I’m finalizing my personal game of the year list and I think I’ve almost nailed it. What games do you wish more people had paid attention to this year?
“Okay, you’re a goon, but what’s a goon to a Goblin?? Nothin’. Nothin’. You ain’t scaring nothing.”
That’s how attorney Ray Kim described Aspyr, the company behind a Switch port of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II that ended up at the center of a very bizarre lawsuit, Game File reports. Those are lyrics from Lil Wayne on the track “We Be Steady Mobbin.” Aspyr were the “goons,” per the legal filing in an actual court of law, while the players suing over missing DLC were “the goblins, and they will not be deterred.” The group reached a settlement earlier this month but the long, messy paper trail revealed plenty of other interesting nuggets, including the existence of an apparent KOTOR 2 remake.
Divinity‘s director suggests you might not want to bother with the old games
“If you play [the two Divinity: Original Sin games], you will see things in [the upcoming] Divinity that reference those two,” Swen Vincke told GamesRadar. “If you played the first Divinity, you will see it referenced properly inside of this Divinity. Ego Draconis, same story, or The Dragon Knight Saga, all of it is being referenced, but it’s just part of the history of what happened in this world, and it helped shape the world to the point where it is now.”
But if you just want a taste of the lore and came to Larian through the cinematic feel of Baldur’s Gate 3, just play Original Sin 2. “If you played because you really enjoy tactical combat or co-op multiplayer or really having lots of freedom, you should definitely play Original Sin 2, because that’s a game that was a blueprint for BG3,” he said.
Call of Duty will reportedly come to Switch soon
Years after signing an agreement to bring the franchise back to Nintendo’s platforms, the shooter is still MIA. “The first CoD Switch version is nearly done,” claims Windows Central‘s Jez Corden. He said it’s currently scheduled for a 2026 release, though it’s not entirely clear which form the game will take: a port of an existing sequel or a completely different experience. “We’re committed to getting the franchise on Switch,” a spokesperson for Activision confirmed earlier this year.
We almost got Grand Theft Auto: Tokyo
Ex-Rockstar North tech director Obbe Vermei, who worked on the franchise’s PS2-era games, said the studio had once looked at setting the open-world formula in cities all across the world, Assassin’s Creed-style. An entry based in Japan was the closest to getting off the ground. “We had ideas about GTA games in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Istanbul,” he told Games Hub in a recent interview. “Tokyo almost actually happened. Another studio in Japan were going to do it, take our code and do GTA: Tokyo. But then that didn’t happen in the end.”
He continued, “People love having these wild ideas but then when you’ve got billions of dollars riding on it, it’s too easy to go ‘let’s do what we know again,’ and also America is basically the epicenter of Western culture, so everybody knows the cities, even people who haven’t been there. They have a mental image of the cities.”
A Ubisoft studio in North America just unionized for the first time
Ubisoft Halifax is located in Nova Scotia and works on mobile projects, including Rainbow Six Siege Mobile. The group announced its plan to unionize earlier this year and had a majority vote ratified last week after Ubisoft dropped its initial challenges. “It has started a conversation,” programmer Jon Huffman told CTV News. “Colleagues have reached out to say it’s a huge surprise. Whether or not they choose to follow, that’s up to them. We’ve shown the way forward, hopefully.”
Bloober Team’s next project name-checks some of the best horror games
“You have no idea how hard it is for me not to reveal what Project M truly is—but for now, it’s still too early to talk about it. We’re confident that we’ll be able to share the first details very soon,” CEO Piotr Babieno told Nintendo Insider. “What I can say is this: fans of Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Limbo, and Eternal Darkness will immediately feel at home. That said, Project M introduces a bold twist—one that no horror game has ever explored before. This is a vision that could only exist on Nintendo hardware.”