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The biggest night in gaming has come and gone, and with it a flurry of awards.
PlayStation platformer Astro Bot scooped up game of the year on Thursday night, beating Black Myth: Wukong, Balatro and Final Fantasy to the title. Balatro continued its winning streak and picked up two gongs for best mobile and independent games.
Fallout picked up an award for best adaptation but in among all the awards there was a hefty amount of announcements – and some juicy trailers. Some of them were expected, some of them (looking at you, Elden Ring) definitely were not.
Here is our roundup of the biggest.
Helldivers 2: Omens of Tyranny
It’s not all about brand-new games: Helldivers managed to drop a surprise in the form of a new alien faction to the game – while simultaneously updating the game for all its players. So, yes, there are new enemies (in the form of the Illuminates) and there are also some nifty new weapons to get stuck into. Hooray!
The Witcher 4
It’s finally here! After teasing us for months about the possibility of a new Witcher game (codenamed Polaris), CD Projekt Red delivered an epic six-minute trailer that unveiled Ciri as the new face of the franchise. She seems to have become a Witcher proper – we see her drinking a potion and casting signs to defeat a bauk monster – and even if there’s no mention of Geralt, we couldn’t be more excited. The only snag: we may have to wait until 2027 for this.
Elden Ring: Nightreign
Elden Ring goes roguelike: yes, you read that right. This upcoming spinoff was one of the biggest announcements of the night, not least because of the change in genres. The game looks set to reuse a lot of the baddies and weapons from the Elder Ring games proper, but bring in some pre-set characters. This should be a good one: we’re intrigued to see what it looks like.
Split Fiction
It Takes Two is possibly my favourite two-player game of all time, and now studio Hazelight is back with another offering, called Split Fiction. The premise is familiar: two aspiring novelists get sucked into the fantasy/sci-fi books that they are writing. The studio excels at creating imaginative new worlds for its players to explore, and this looks set to be a winner. Out March next year.
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet
Another surprise! Naughty Dog, aka the creator of The Last of Us, announced that for the last four years, it has been secretly working on a new title, set in outer space. We don’t know much about it yet (though the fact it’s Naughty Dog has us excited for some stellar character work) except that our hero is a bounty hunter called Jordan, who seems to be stranded on a distant planet. They’ve also teased their “deepest gameplay” yet: yes please.
Borderlands 4
Banish from your mind the travesty that was the Borderlands movie, and instead get excited for the new Borderlands game. We have a new planet, and four new Vault Hunters racing to the prize. Even more excitingly, there’s a pod racer to ride this time around and, regardless of the campaign, the co-op mode sure looks fun.
Stage Fright
Yes, the maker of Overcooked (aka the chef multiplayer that makes you fall out with your family) is making a new game. This time, it’s a multiplayer escape room, and cooperation for escaping is key. Do also expect some (very light) horror and lashings of chaos.
Project Century
We don’t know much about this yet, but what we do know looks promising. The developers of the turn-based Yakuza games (aka the wonderfully wacky Yakuza: Like a Dragon that came out this year), Rya Ga Gotoku, announced two new games, but this one seems further along. It’s set in 1915 Japan, and … that’s kind of all we know. Oh, and it looks set to be violent: the trailer shows some very graphic slo-mo disembowellings.
The Long Dark 2: Blackfrost
Curl up in front of the fire (if you can build one) and get ready to survive a long, hard winter. Billed as a sequel to its apocalyptic survival game, Blackfrost looks set to build on what made the first so successful (aka moments of exquisite tension and panic) while also making it co-op and adding customisable characters. Also, there’ll be some urban environments this time: imagine what could go wrong there.
