Morning friends. I had plans last night and none of them really panned out as expected. I had been planning on watching The Game Awards which began at 5:30 pm my time. I also planned on running a Mythic +2 or two with some of my friends in Facepull in World of Warcraft. However as has been the case more recently we were limited by the lack of healing options. So instead of doing this… I ended up logging for the night and telling Kelsas to ping me over discord if it looked like we had healing options. This meant instead I spent my evening playing Cyberpunk 2077… which is a game that is not really conducive to watching a live stream during.
It was around this point that I had a realization. I don’t actually care about The Game Awards. I care about the fact that a bunch of Game Trailers get released during the show, but I don’t actually care about the awards themselves or the talking heads that appear in between them. The thing is… I have no skin in this game. Sure it is cool when a game that I like wins an award but it has absolutely no bearing on my life. What I care about is all of those game trailers and by the time I wake up the next morning those will all be available and syndicated on the internet in a number of various means. For example I was able to just tune in this morning and watch this playlist full of trailers.
So here is that thing where I run through a bunch of things I personally found worthy of talking about. Let’s do this!
To be honest… the thing that I was looking forward to information about before the Awards show as Dragon Age. While I was never really able to get into Inquisition, I loved the first two games quite a bit and was looking forward to more adventures in this universe. What I had hoped to see was some signs that a game was happening here, but instead we got another vague demo reel of footage. This is a sizzle reel and not anything even vaguely resembling a game. As such I figure this game is at least two to three years away and possibly even more… and has not really coalesced into anything resembling a playable experience. This honestly concerns me more than it bolsters me.
We also received “trailer” footage of Liara T’Soni wandering some snowy planet and retrieving a piece of armor bearing the imprint of N7, which is in theory supposed to make us think that this is Sheppard’s armor. Once again this is not even vaguely resembling any sort of game yet, so I would imagine this probably has the same timeline trajectory as Elder Scrolls 6 at this point of being vaguely somewhere off in the future. There was a message at the end saying that Mass Effect would continue… which combined with this footage would make one think that they are returning to the original Trilogy and extending it. What I actually want is more Andromeda to be honest, but I legitimately think this is something that was rushed out in order to combat the news of the Studio head and Dragon Age producer both recently leaving.
On the positive side… I am significantly more interested in Crimson Desert than I was before. The footage shown would lead you to believe that the game is a sort of God of War style single player narrative experience. There however is reportedly some sort of online multiplayer functionality, but it doesn’t seem like an MMORPG along the lines of its precursor Black Desert. The game looks incredible, but so did Black Desert. I guess the proof will be once the game gets closer to launch because Godfall also looks gorgeous but was a soulless husk of an experience.
It seems like it is officially time now to reboot the Left 4 Dead franchise… or at least a spiritual successor to it. Turtle Rock Studios the folks behind the original Left 4 Dead and the ill fated Evolve… are presenting a new game called Back 4 Blood. By all evidence this would appear to be a modern reboot of Left 4 Dead under a brand new name. I guess we can all hope that it will bring a fresh perspective to this style of multiplayer shooter experience.
Apparently also there is going to be an Evil Dead game that may or may not also be attempting to reboot the Left 4 Dead concept? There isn’t a lot to go on with this trailer but it certainly feels like it is going to be some sort of four player co-op vs hordes type gameplay mechanic. It also appears to be drawing characters from across the entirety of the confusing Evil Dead universe. It might be really cool, but it also might be a confused mess. It appears to be lead by Saber Interactive the folks behind the 2019 World War Z game.
This appears to be a fixed party RPG surrounding League of Legends characters and the Bilgewater setting from Airship Syndicate. These are the folks that developed Battle Chasers: Nightwar and Darksiders Genesis, and it appears to lean more towards the original of those two titles. The over world looks very Diablo style, with also combat taking place in a Final Fantasy style console RPG style. I am most definitely interested because League of Legends is a setting where I have been interested in the world building… but just not any of the games released so far.
Scarlet Nexus continues to look really interesting. It reminds me quite a bit of Astral Chain… which was a really cool game stranded on a console that struggled a bit with its graphics. I think ultimately will have to see how the final product comes together. Definitely something I am still keeping an eye on however.
This game really makes me wish a Nintendo Switch Pro existed. This is appears to be the Switch getting a game in the open world style of Monster Hunter World. The only problem here is the console will not be able to output the sort of visuals that Monster Hunter World did. Still going to play it because it looks great and also both Palicos and Doggos to go adventuring with.
The last of the games that looked interesting to me was Evil West, which is from Flying Wild Hog studios the folks behind the most recent Shadow Warrior games. So what I expect is a fast paced over the top shooter with melee combat. I like the mash up of Van Helsing with the Wild West that appears to be going on in the trailer. It should be an interesting game with a lot of really visceral combat if the lineage of this studio is any indication.
obviously the thing that some folks are going to be talking about is Sephiroth in Smash Bros… but I could give a shit about Smash Bros. If you watched the show last night, or did what I did this morning and catch up on only the trailers… what were some of your highlights? What are some of the things you are looking forward to? What are your thoughts about the Bioware “trailers” and non-announcements? Drop me a line below because I would love to hear your thoughts.
I thought there were some really cool game trailers shown, and a lot that are not from big studios. Thats awesome.
The Bioware stuff…yeah. Makes you wonder how big that shop really is given the lack of any game development news since Anthem launched two! years ago and Andromeda nearly 4. Its more sad than anything else.