PC Gamer’s Phil Savage and Mollie Taylor have been at Gamescom in Cologne this week, and so far they’ve published previews for The Callisto Protocol, Homeworld 3, and Jagged Alliance 3. They’ve seen more games than that—I’ve seen some scary-looking shows before they left—so we’ll have to wait for them to come to their senses to find out what they’re most excited about.
The rest of us are watching from home: Gamescom continues through the end of this week, but its biggest reveal and announcements happened closer to the start of the week, especially during Tuesday’s livestream, which is once again the most popular videogame game ever. The show was hosted by the accompanying host. He hosts, Geoff Keighley.
In case you missed it, you can watch Opening Night Live here (opens in new tab). It’s almost two hours long, and FYI, the big reveal at the end is Dead Island 2’s release date. It’s not really a moment that you need to see in context, but there were some exciting games in the show. There were other shows as well, including another edition of the Future Games Show from our publisher. After looking at all of the week’s activities, here are the six games we’re most curious about. (And here’s the rest of our Gamescom 2022 coverage (opens in new tab).)
A New RTS From C&C Remastered Studios
Wes Fenlon, Real Time Strategist: RTS Renaissance. RTS Renaissance!! A few years ago EA partnered with Petroglyph Games, a small studio founded by several former Westwood developers who created Command & Conquer to work on the very well remastered collection of the original C&C and Red Alert. The petroglyphs behind that success announced a World War I RTS called The Great War: Western Front. I must say it’s a little brown To my taste, but I like the sound of petroglyphs dipping my toe into massive strategy in a way I never did with C&C. This quote from the Steam page sounds like Total War:
“As the theater commander, when you direct the deployment of forces, you alternately experience grand strategy, research and carefully consider how you will win inches from the battlefield on the Western Front. How you spread your resources. As a field commander in dynamic real-time battles, you direct units, build trenches and launch direct attacks by sending your infantry to the top to defeat your opponent.”
Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles Looks Great
Chris Livingston, Settlement Builder-Upper: Sometimes a trailer comes along that immediately pops a finger on the endorphin release button in my brain. airship? settlements? High castles built on rough rocks? Yes to all of them. I’ve never played the aerial combat game The Falconer, but the follow-up, dam, looks awesome. Build forts and cities on top of the snowy mountains of an ocean planet, recruit commanders who unlock new building options, and defend against aerial enemy attacks. my body is ready.
Pinnochio, but it’s Bloodborne
Tyler Kolp, but he’s Bloodborne: I regularly forget that P’s Lies exists and that it’s a soul-like game based on Pinocchio. The trailer shows just how absurd the premise is without breaking the fourth wall and I respect that: an oddly charming Pinocchio trawls through strange enemies and then meets his father, Gepetto, in a dark 19th-century France Get. It’s all so boldly Bloodborne that I feel like I have to play it at the moment.
Lauren Morton, But She’s Bloodborne: I guess I must admit that I have No Forgot that P’s lie exists and have been eagerly waiting for it ever since it was announced. So uh, I guess the only surprise for me was that no one pulled me away from putting “Pinocchiosols” in a title.
New Tales from the Borderlands, Old Telltale Employees
Jodie McGregor, New & Old Weekend/AU Editor: The sequel to Tales From the Borderlands was announced in April, though with a footnote of caution: It’s being produced in-house by Gearbox. The original was pretty good because of how well it did outside of the regular Borderlands, with completely different gameplay and a cast of civilians to highlight the absurdity of the robber-shooter setting when viewed from the ground level. Trying to handle that style of comedy seemed like a potential red flag to the people responsible for writing Borderlands 3. (Though to be fair both the Borderlands 3 DLC and Tiny Tina Wonderlands were improvements in the writing department).
However, with the Gamescom trailer for New Tales From the Borderlands a . Was also Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford (opens in new tab) Explaining that its creation involved “a group of Telltale storytellers, writers and developers who worked on the original game.” Gearbox director of production James Lopez also told IGN (opens in new tab) that the studio “partnered with key alumni of the original Tales game” to write it. So it’s probably safe to put our hopes up.
New Tales from Borderlands will be out on October 21.
This offbeat indie detective finishes the game
Chris Livingston, Murder Investigator: I was completely hooked on just one short demo for the indie detective game The Case of the Golden Idol. Gaze at the oddball pixel art tableau of murder scenes and click on clues to investigate. To solve a murder you have to discover the names of everyone involved and determine the nature of the crime, drag and drop the words you collect into a scroll, so it’s part Return of the Obra Deen and part Mad Lib. is part of. There will be a dozen murders to investigate throughout the game and, interestingly, all of these murders are connected in some way or another. The demo is excellent and I can’t wait to continue investigating when the full game is released—though that date is still a mystery.
Finally, a game where I can be a professional speaker
Tyler Wilde, Executive Speaker: We got introduced to Where Winds Meet during Opening Night Live. It’s an open world action RPG set at the end of the Ten Kingdoms period of China – after which there are no more Ten Kingdoms, so there’s a lot going on. You should be skeptical when a game promises things like authenticity and freedom, but it’s nice to see some actual footage of a videogame out of all the cinematic trailers we’ve seen at Gamescom. The cityscape in particular impressed me—see all those NPCs in their cool period clothes—and I’d like to know more about the non-combat jobs we can apparently get in Where Winds Meet .
The speaker and ferryman are my top picks: imagine the NPCs being carried around on the boat for hours on end with them. Now I call it the Modern Videogame. The publisher of Where Winds Meet is putting me in touch with its developer, a studio based in Hangzhou, China, so I should have more to say about this PC-only RPG soon.
Source
