The Game Awards is really the last major set of reveals for video games before the year closes. There’s always some new games and fresh footage for others, which makes it worth watching amongst all the speeches. Here’s everything big from the show.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is getting Cable, Iceman, Gambit and Phoenix as DLC.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 is a pretty solid couch co-op game on the Switch, and it’s getting a ton of DLC on December 23. The Shadow of DOOM expansion will be released next autumn, and like Curse of the Vampire and Rise of the Phoenix, it’s only available if you have the expansion pass.
Salaam, an Instant Facebook game about surviving as a refugee.
Salaam has been floating around for a while. It’s a game from Lual Mayen, a developer from South Sudan, who wanted to retell the refugee experience through the medium of games. Salaam‘s special hook is proceeds from any microtransactions in the game will go towards helping other refugees.
More Maneater footage and a release date.
Shark RPG, which is actually Maneater but I’m going to keep calling Shark RPG, finally got a release date. It’s due to launch on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on May 22, 2020, with the PC exclusive to the Epic Game Store.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake gets a new trailer.
You know the drill: it’s more Final Fantasy 7 sword swinging, sweeping shots, bit of gun play, and it all looks amazing. No change to the March 3, 2020 date, in case you’re worried.
CHVRCHES killed the opening.
After the pre-show and the first batch of awards and trailers, the screen opened up to vocalist Lauren Mayberry draped in a hood with some banging make-up while rain poured down. It looked straight out of Death Stranding, and was a perfect opening for proceedings.
Disco Elysium wins best RPG and best narrative, beating out Death Stranding, Outer Worlds and Control.
One of the biggest surprises of the year, Disco Elysium continued to rack up the plaudits by knocking off Control, Outer Worlds and Death Stranding to win Best Narrative for the night. The game was also announced as the winner of the Best RPG gong, beating out Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy 14.
Microsoft announces Xbox Series X, which looks like a PC.
It looks like an all-in-one PC from Corsair, but it’s actually just the next generation of the Xbox. Can you lie it down? Either way, this is what the most powerful next-gen Xbox will look like.
Hellblade gets a sequel, Senua’s Saga.
Ninja Theory showed off the first footage of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, a project Xbox head Phil Spencer said was “early in development”. It was a simple cut scene featuring Senua chanting fairly aggressively. It looks good, but didn’t tell us a whole lot about what the game will be like. We’ll probably find out at E3 next year, though.
Godfall is announced for the PlayStation 5.
It’s a new IP set in a fantasy world – a “looter slasher” according to one of the developers from Counterplay – with third-person real-time melee combat. There’s support for solo play or co-op, if that’s your fancy, and it’s being published by Gearbox. It’s a PS5 and Epic Games Store exclusive, due out in the 2020 holidays.
Bravely Default gets a sequel next year.
Good stuff! It’s a new Bravely Default, and it’ll be out next year. No other details besides that, but the trailer looks good.
Warframe’s latest update dropped immediately.
Team up. Take flight. Survive. ????
Empyrean is live now on PC. https://t.co/kAXYQqv1NK pic.twitter.com/YkQEG0hVXM
— WARFRAME (@PlayWarframe) December 13, 2019
If you’re a Warframe fan, it’s time to patch on PC. The game’s latest content update is live right now. Console players just got Old Blood last month, and the patch went live on the Switch only this week.
Magic the Gathering goes back to Theros with Theros: Beyond Death.
Magic‘s back in the world of myths and legends, although it’s kind of never left if you want to get technical about it. Either way, Wizards of the Coast showed off a new trailer for the upcoming set, Theros: Beyond Death, and it looked pretty sweet.
PUBG’s next game is called Prologue.
The audience was teased with about 30 seconds of gameplay, with a first-person view of a forest showered in rain and lightning. The footage then cut to a website for Prologue, which the website describes as “an exploration of new technologies and gameplay”.
Looks like survival’s back on the menu.
Ikumi Nakamura steals the show, again.
Ikumi on stage pic.twitter.com/UIUHV0dMO5
— Wario64 (@Wario64) December 13, 2019
Ikumi is a queen and should host everything.
The Star Wars x Fortnite experience will have a live interview between J.J. Abrams and Geoff Keighley.
Live service experiences are a big part of the industry’s thinking, and the biggest example of that coming up is the Rise of Skywalker scene that’s being teased before the movie’s release, through Fortnite. It’s not just the film though: Keighley revealed that he’ll be chatting with Rise of Skywalker director Abrams as well, which could be neat. As before, it’s all taking place in Fortnite.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/12/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-fortnite-exclusive-scene/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_1600/ha0llq26syrrk6smzmy1.png” title=”A Scene From The Rise Of Skywalker Is Premiering In Fortnite” excerpt=”Here’s the biggest sign that the world is changing. If you want to see a scene from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker before it launches on December 19, you’ll see it not on YouTube, Twitch or during some sporting event, but inside Fortnite.”]
The first single-player League of Legends experience is Ruined King.
The first game out of Riot Forge, the publishing group formed by Riot to work on solo experiences within the League universe, is Ruined King. It’s being made by Airship Syndicate, most recently known for Darksiders Genesis and Battle Chasers: Nightwar.
Grimes killed it, and even Musk got up to applaud.
Cyberpunk 2077 had a brief clip about the behind the scenes music, and Grimes delivered with a eye-catching performance.
It was so good, even Musk (eventually) gave it a standing ovation, revealing that Musk’s been seated next to Ikumi:
Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance is getting a spiritual prequel, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance.
It’s a D&D based follow up to the original Dark Alliance PS2 game, and it’s being made by Tuque Games in Montreal. The studio was acquired a couple of years ago by Wizards of the Realm, and it’ll largely be a couch co-op game for up to four players.
New Ori and the Will of the Wisps footage.
Ori’s next big adventure awaits in Ori and the Will of the Wisps.
Play it day one on @XboxGamePass or pre-order now: https://t.co/P0JlxOVSam pic.twitter.com/HhkTfGvhgP
— Xbox (@Xbox) December 13, 2019
Ori still looks good.
Muppets announce an award, Goose steals it.
Probably the best award reveal in the show’s five year history was a quick turn from Bunsen and his assistant Beaker. Instead of just announcing the winners, Beaker had a quick turn in Untitled Goose Game – and then The Goose appeared on stage to nick the award.
It dragged on a little, but was a great laugh and a fantastic appearance for The Goose. GRIS ended up winning the Games for Impact category, but The Goose won everyone’s hearts.
The first game from the co-creators of Dishonored and Prey is a stylised top-down Western, Weird West.
Want a stylised action Western that’s got a heavy dose of the occult and what looks like werewolves? That’s Wierd West, the first game from Wolfeye, the studio founded by the co-makers of Dishonored and Prey after they left Bethesda.
Magic the Gathering is being turned into an MMO.
It’s from the makers of the Neverwinter MMO, and you can sign up for the beta here. It’s called Magic Legends, but there’s no word on systems, structure, or what to expect yet.
Ghost of Tsushima’s reveal had a full orchestra, launches next winter.
Ghost of Tsushima‘s cut scenes are going to be fantastic, judging from everything we’ve seen so far. The trailer set up an obvious enemy: the protagonist slices up a ton of enemies only to let one live, asking the survivor to relay this: “Tell him I’m coming.”
The Game Awards Orchestra backed up the music for the whole show, and we got a release date: winter 2020, meaning we’ll get Ghost well before the PS5 launches. Neat.
Gears Tactics launches April 28.
Gears Tactics continues to look really good – although the ability bar on the bottom is a little scary. The game comes out April 28 next year, and it’ll launch directly on Xbox Game Pass for PC and Xbox.
Naraka: Bladepoint is basically China’s Sekiro.
Imagine Sekiro with a more Chinese setting. That’s basically what Naraka: Bladepoint looks like. It’ll be out sometime next year.
Over 1000 developers are working on Fortnite.
Fortnite took home the best award for best ongoing live service game. That’s no surprise, but Donald Mustard, one of the developers at Epic, revealed during his speech that more than 1000 developers are working on the game. Gives you an idea of what it takes to constantly blow the world up.
A new round-to-round tactical shooter.
Nine to Five is a new 3v3 competitive shooter with a heavy focus on changing tactics on a round to round basis. “Each match pits three teams of three against
each other across three intense rounds with changing objectives. Every round influences the next, ratcheting up the tension and forcing players to constantly adapt their strategy to win,” the official release says.
The first alpha for Nine to Five will go live in 2020, with sign ups on the official site.
500,000 letters were written in Kind Words in the first 2 months it was released – when it wasn’t on Steam
.
This wasn’t intended to be a reveal – it was actually part of a promo ad for HP – but the creator of Kind Words revealed half a million letters were written in the game’s first two months, when it was only available to Humble Bundle subscribers through the indie vault.
Beat Sabre gets a new music pack, including six songs from Green Day.
Beat Sabre‘s already the best thing you can play on VR – although Superhot VR is pretty damn good – and as of now it’s got some Green Day. Six songs from the band will be playable in Beat Sabre, although they haven’t been patched in at the time of writing (but should be available later tonight).
Amazon’s MMO, New World, is out May 2020.
We haven’t heard much about Amazon’s MMO, New World, but this is the first fresh trailer from the studio in a fair while. The pre-rendered cut scenes look good, but it doesn’t tell us a lot about how the game is shaping up. It’s launching in May 2020, however, so we’ll find out soon enough.
League’s next single-player story is Conv/rgence.
No gameplay yet, but we know the game features Echo, someone with the ability to control – and screw up – time. No release date but it’s being developed for PC and consoles, and it’s made by Double Stallion Games, whose last game was the 2D combat racer Speed Brawl.
Surgeon Simulator is getting a sequel.
It’ll be out next year.
Wolf Among Us 2 is alive again.
Bigby’s back, although there’s no release date on it yet. The credits mention Adhoc Studio, Warner Bros and Telltale Games are all working on Wolf Among Us 2, so no idea what the actual arrangement is. It’s a bit gross in a way: 275 employees got laid off without severance last year, but the studio told VICE before the game’s announcement that they will be “prioritising former Telltale employees” in their hiring process.
Also: the game’s being made in Unreal, not Telltale’s old engine, so that should at least make life easier for whoever’s working on the game.
Skyrim is coming to Elder Scrolls: Online next year.
We’ll get the global reveal for this on January 16 next year, but basically Skyrim is doing a Morrowind and getting its own expansion in ESO. That’ll be neat.
Fast and Furious Crossroads is coming out next year.
The franchise is getting a video game spin-off of its own from Slightly Mad Studios, the developers behind the Project CARS games (which Codemasters just acquired recently).
Fast & Furious Crossroads will be out May 2020 – no platforms or any exclusivity was announced. We did get Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez having some fun on stage though.
Sekiro beat everything to win Game of the Year.
It seemed like anything else would win coming into the finals, and as the awards rolled on it every seemed like Disco Elysium might even steal the thunder from Death Stranding. But in the end neither game got the ultimate gong: the judging panel gave it to From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
This post is being updated live.
Comments
31 responses to “Everything Announced At The Game Awards 2019”
Tall Xbox basically rams the point home that modern consoles are basically cheaper PCs without a more useful OS.
Cheaper than PC’s? LOL.
No sorry.
I’m amused by the username but more so by your post.
600 bucks (guessing the price) is about a third of a decent PC price. Not sure what youre referring to.
A third? Where are you getting your sources from? I just built mine for less than $900 with a GTX 1070.
900au? Mate that’s half a pc. You obviously had existing parts or it’s not a very good pc
600 was a guess, as I already mentioned. Honestly maybe 700-750max. They will 100% sell at a loss
I did a very quick search and your so called 900 buck pc has a graphics card that cost an absolute minimum of $500. You’re just a troll. Move along
A very good PC without peripherals: 3000
A PS4 Pro: 600
You goddamn moronic imbecile.
Your a guest, so you probably won’t see this.
Could you show a price for a PC that matches a PS4 in Assassins Creed Odyssey (or any cross platform game, just the first one I thought of) that costs less? $399 at JB, let’s be fair since a PS4 only needs a TV, you can already have the screen.
Mouse, Keyboard, OS, Chip, MB, RAM, HDD, Video, Case and power supply. I don’t see you pulling that off, I didn’t even say Video Card, you can use the onboard video on the motherboard.
A Console is a Hot-Hatch, cheap, fun, not the best. A Gaming PC is like a race car, your Engine costs twice the price of my whole car and you’re bragging about how cheap it is?
It also looks like it’s been specifically designed not to fit comfortably in anyone’s TV cabinet, while not being pretty enough to sit outside it..
On reflection it’s probably due to thermal management – if Microsoft’s suggested capabilities are true, then it’s going to need a pretty robust cooling system or it’ll cook itself to death (or use lots of small fans that sound like jet engines).
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to tuck their console away out of sight where air-flow is poor. Doesn’t everyone have a dedicated pedestal to keep The One True Console aloft and central, the focus of the room?
It’s called a TV cabinet and already has possibly the most important thing on it already….the TV.
I actually imagined the new Xbox sitting there in front of the TV taking up the whole bottom right of the screen.
“Cortana, get out of the bloody way”
Yes, thermal management is far more important than how a console looks. What’s more important: a console that looks good / is compact, or a console that keeps cool and quiet? I guess some people are going to say ‘why can’t we have both’, but you really have to imagine how things plot on a scale. The larger the console is, the better the cooling; the smaller the console is, the hotter it’s going to get without being able to efficiently dissipate the heat, the more work fans are going to have to do, the louder it’s going to be in operation.
I think I’d take the ‘uglier’ console any day of the week if it means it’s always going to be cool and quiet at peak performance. I’ve never really understood why people place so much importance on how something looks, especially when it comes to computers and consoles. At the end of the day you are playing games on it, you aren’t staring at the machine the whole time. It’s metal and plastic, it serves a function, it’s supposed to be more utilitarian than art.
‘Utility’ has more than one aspect To it, and it’s a big part of why VR hasn’t taken off.
You can’t just leave the thing out on the floor in the living room or taking up not only a surface but the space around it. It gets in the way. It needs to fit in within a space. If starting play begins with relocating the console from its place out of the fucking way, moving it to a position of good air flow, it’s losing utility.
VR’s set-up and pack-up time is proving to be a big barrier to its ‘household use’ factor. One that engineers are taking very seriously when considering the design of future models. If we see the xboxsex console switching into safety mode to prevent itself burning up or straight up just shitting itself when operated in the entertainment units it’s going to be stuffed into, the answer, “bring it out into the open,” isn’t going to fly. It will instead get roasted for its tendency to shit the bed during play and rely on fans that make it sound like an aircraft carrier flight deck.
We’ve been there, we’ve done that. That’s mostly been a thing with consoles since the 7th generation, with the advent of the ‘red ring of death’ on Xbox 360’s. Yes, there was issues in manufacturing, but the problem was expediently brought about by overheating (in what was more than likely confined spaces as the subsequent message was ‘make sure there is airflow, that it isn’t restricted when placed in smaller spaces’). The YLOD on PlayStation 3 consoles was much the same thing, primarily a problem brought on by overheating.
I have never had an issue with any console I’ve ever owned, including ones from the aforementioned generation (both earlier and later models respectively), but I’ve also never kept those machines in confined spaces. Was there some luck involved in that? Perhaps. But I like to think it’s also because I kept the consoles in open spaces that allowed the heat they generated to dissipate effectively (not necessarily needing air conditioning, etc).
Until we have a fundamental change in semiconductor technology, the devices that continue to use silicon are going to continue to generate heat, and by no small amount. Yes, refinement in fabrication will continue to push efficiency, but then further demand for increased performance slowly erodes away at those small advantages at the same time.
Granted, Microsoft did a pretty amazing job with the One X when it came to its footprint and keeping acoustics in check (although I wish the fan profile was a little less stop/start and a little more gentle between gradients). It’s not impossible to make something a smaller form factor and keep it relatively quiet, but it certainly introduces other concerns that normally wouldn’t allow themselves to show if not given those restrictions to begin with.
EDIT: spelling mistakes
straight from the Xbox press release. https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/12/12/microsoft-unveils-xbox-series-x/
The 360 was vertical in all it’s marketing shots too, and with the controller for scale it looks like it’ll fit in every TV cabinet I’ve ever owned, at least.
Came here to post in defence of consoles … but I can’t. You’ve hit the nail on the head. Time to divert some of my console spending to some hardware upgrades methinks.
If all of Sony’s stuff is going to come to Epic as well, even less incentive to add another box under the TV.
This isn’t really against consoles – if it’s priced well we could get a well performing device at the cost of a lower end gaming PC – GPUs capable of adequate consistent 4K (or near 4K) are still pretty expensive.
1) Shark RPG! YES! I’ve been looking for something like Shark RPG ever since E.V.O. on the SNES.
2) FUCKYES DISCO ELYSIUM YOU FUCKING CHAMPION. Ahem.
3) Huh. I really need to get around to playing Hellblade at some point. I’ve got like… two copies of it now, bundled with shit.
4) Who wants to bet their faith in the integrity and dignity of the games industry (or just gearbox specifically) that the promise of a ‘solo mode’ won’t stop Godfall from being always-online? Haha, joking – can’t bet what you don’t have.
5) BOOOM WOAH I NEED TO UPDATE WARFRAME BEFORE I GET HOME.
6) Bless the goose.
The last announcement is a Fast & Furious game that looks like a PS2 game.
Who’s idea was that?
Lols
I find it hard to get excited about Prologue for now, it had real Anthem E3 vibes. PS glad to see Xbox keeps its trend for terrible names going. Grin.
New Dark Alliance game? Nice. 4 player co-op only – Boooo.
LOL yeah the design is clearly so it can be on display instead of tucked away in a tv cabinet (a bit like the Switch) …. but it is huge.
Not even hiding that it’s just a PC anymore.
Really putting the “box” in “XBox”.
Nintendo, innervating since the NES.
We need a console that’s modern, make it square. Like the old NES? No more Modern. A Black NES? Even more Modern. A Black NES Standing on it’s side? Perfect.
Have to admit, that Nine to Five trailer got me good.
I was not prepared for The Wolf Among Us getting a sequel. That is such a good surprise.
Phil Spencer announced another Xbox console? Give me a flipping break and as it turns out it looks like we didn’t get Crash Bandicoot Worlds what a worst year it’s been for this year’s Game Awards and with Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker from the Muppets appearing all I want to know is where the fuck is Steve Whitmire who got sacked by Brian Henson for no reason absolutely no remorse at all for Brian Henson. This has to be the worst ever Game Awards and getting no reveal for Crash Bandicoot Worlds was absolutely horrible and utterly seeing that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate never won The Game Awards for best fighting game on Nintendo Switch and Crash Team Racing not winning the award for best racing game.
Absolute rubbish I demand a Nintendo Direct this is utter bullshit.
I’m done that’s it you guys promised to show us Crash Bandicoot Worlds and you fucking blew it.
I’m done that’s it.
I really hope FF7 remake gets a dual audio option for japanese voice actors because I find the english voice actors really unbearable, and to be frank I don’t think I’d be able to manage listening to countless hours (or even more than 10 minutes) of them. The tone of the voices is too far from how I imagine the characters to be, and the delivery of those lines was cringeworthy. I’d be much happier with something akin to the voice actors for advent children. That felt just right to me.
On a side note, I’m so happy that we will actually get to see a sequel to The Wolf Among Us! The original was amazing – telltales best, imo. And in a new engine to boot.