The lore-YouTuber-to-book-publisher pipeline is alive and well. Borderlands 4 has another busted exploit, and fired Rockstar devs aren’t going quietly. Welcome to the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s daily roundup of gaming news and culture. According to a handful of Polymarket weirdos, Half-Life 3 has a 56 percent chance of being announced before 2027 but only a 7 percent chance of arriving before the end of 2025. Fans are getting ready either way.
Elden Ring‘s unofficial YouTube lore master is putting out a 400-page book
Michael “VaatiVidya” Samuels’ YouTube channel is where everyone who loves FromSoftware games but can’t make heads or tails of their stories while playing goes to figure out what the hell is actually going on. He’ll now be boiling down dozens of hours of video into a more digestible form, assuming you belong to an age cohort that’s still literate. Lore Bound: Elden Ring Explained starts at just $42 for the softback version and comes with a magnificent cover.
“This book will bind together everything I’ve learned from Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree, and Nightreign into one single volume,” VaatiVidya said on YouTube. “My old video scripts will be updated, new illustrations will be commissioned, and every effort will be made to ensure each page is clear and engaging.” It arrives just in time to explain the games before the upcoming Hollywood adaptation arrives. I’m sure Alex Garland will be buying a copy.
Borderlands 4 glitch lets you speedrun the skill tree
Normally, you have to invest tons of points per Vault Hunter to unlock their strongest abilities at the bottom of their skill trees. There’s a shortcut, however. YouTuber Joltzdude139 (via The Gamer) explains how it works. The glitch revolves around repeatedly using the “dump all points option” and reversing it to trick the game into thinking you’ve spent more points than you have.
Time consuming though it may be, it eventually unlocks the whole tree without using all your points to engineer more busted builds, at least until it gets patched out. The full video will take you through all the steps.
Fired GTA 6 devs are still protesting outside Rockstar
Fired GTA 6 devs held a protest outside the Rockstar offices in Edinburgh and the Scottish Parliament
“GTA 6 will make billions… But I want people to think of the human cost” pic.twitter.com/pssbIt30LK
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) November 18, 2025
“I was scared at first, I was apprehensive to join,” one of them said outside the studio’s Edinburgh office this week, Dexerto reports. “Like many of my colleagues in QA I always felt a bit more dispensable and a bit less skilled than workers in other departments,” he said. “I thought that by joining the union, I could be putting a target on my back. No one should ever feel this way when organizing in their workplace.”
The studio has yet to elaborate on the firings beyond accusing the developers of leaking company secrets. The matter is currently awaiting review before the UK’s employment tribunal. GTA 6 is currently set to release exactly one year from today.
Having trouble reviving friends in Battlefield 6? You’re not alone
The shooter’s latest major patch apparently broke defibrillators. Many players have reported “watching friendlies try and revive right now and so many of the hits are failing.” The game’s designers are already investigating the issue, so a fix might be on the way by this weekend. Update 11/19/2025 1:27 p.m. ET: that was quick! A new update is already live.
Where is Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s big expansion?
YOU’RE WELCOME NOW GIVE US DLC PLEASE https://t.co/PaN5bzYr0e
— FightinCowboy (@Fightincowboy) November 19, 2025
Fans are still hoping for a Dark Arisen-style DLC now that the friction-filled action-RPG has sold 4 million copies. Hideaki Itsuno left to join Tencent’s LightSpeed Studios shortly after release, however, so who knows what Capcom is planning.
Dragon Quest 7 is being reimagined as a shorter game
Usually, remakes add more content. Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined will take some out. The PS1 version was already over 100 hours. The 3DS remaster was a bit shorter. Square Enix is cutting even more content to streamline the latest version. “Some of the [stories] have now been made optional, so you can play them in any order you want,” producer Takeshi Ichikawa told Gamesradar.” He added, “a few of the stories which weren’t 100 percent relevant to the main storyline have just been cut entirely.” I hope the Final Fantasy VII Remake team isn’t listening.
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