I expected this year’sThe Game Awardsto be predictable. I was so sure, in fact, that I wrote an entire articlepredicting what we would and wouldn’t see. I knew that 2024’s show was rumoured to pack a punch, but also figured we’d be seeing a lot of games that we already knew were coming. Boy, was I wrong.
Nobody Predicted The Game Awards’ Announcements
I was so wrong, in fact, that nearly none of the games I said we’d likely see showed up. We saw Hideo Kojima, as I predicted, but nothing ofDeath Stranding 2, and definitely no OD or, sadly, Hunter Schafer. None of the superhero games I pegged were so much as mentioned.Fable,Avowed, andLost Records: Bloom & Ragewere all skipped over, thoughthe new Mafia gamedid make a showing, since that was confirmed beforehand.
There was noJudas, no new WolfEye game, no Project 007, no newResident Evil. Shockingly, there was noExodus, which I thought was a shoo-in. I can at least rest easy that the games I said wouldn’t show didn’t show, but that’s a bit of a cop-out. For the first time in a long time, The Game Awards were full of genuine surprises.
You can see a full list of the games announcedhere, but I’ll describe the most exciting surprises. Obviously, Naughty Dog finally revealed its new (badly named) game,Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.The Witcher 4got a cinematic trailer, thoughwe shouldn’t expect to see that game anytime soon. Okami is, to my great delight,getting a sequel. I don’t think anybody was predictinga sequel to Slay the Spire, but the trailer made my housemate leap to his feet from the couch and cheer. To my great surprise,a new multiplayer immersive simfromDeus Ex’s Warren Spector was announced in the pre-show – thepre-show, for god’s sake. TheSifudevelopers announced a 5v5 soccer game calledRematchthat, yes, looks a lot like Sifu.
Elden Ring is gettinga weird spin-off. Team Ico announced a mecha game.The Outer Worlds 2showcased its first gameplay trailer. Hazelight showed off its new co-op game,Split Fiction, though we kind of knew that would come already. There’s a gorgeousnew Long Dark game, anew Ryu Ga Gotoku gamethat looks kind of like Sleeping Dogs, a newTurokgame, a newOnimusha game,anda new co-op gamefrom the creators of Overcooked. Telltale also gave us a first look atthe game it’s been working on, and I’m hyped.
And Yet, It Felt Exactly The Same
Despite all these exciting and unexpected announcements, The Game Awards still felt like the same old rollercoaster ride of ‘it’s so over’ and ‘we’re so back’. In between developers giving the briefest of award speeches, long barrages of trailers, andStatler and Waldorf bullying Geoff Keighleyfor his own incompetence instead of actually addressing the issues this show helps to perpetuate, were an endless stream of thoroughly irritating ads from big corporations like Amazon, Nintendo, and Lenovo. Xbox’s ‘this is an Xbox’ campaign made an appearance too. We saw Fortnite about a billion times, as if you forgot that existed.
We saw ads for games we already knew were coming that didn’t show us anything new, functioning solely as a reminder that they exist and we should buy them. I don’t care if everybody loves Infinity Nikki, it was up there forwaytoo long. There were lots of crossover announcements and things that felt more like commercials than parts of an awards show.
It’s all to be expected – The Game Awards runs on advertiser money. But it all contributes to the fact that it can be a real slog to watch, especially live. I watched the show along with other members of TheGamer, and reactions oscillated wildly between ‘holy crap holy crap holy crap’ and boredom. Several of us began wishing we were either asleep or dead.
The Game Awards
Founded by Geoff Keighley, The Game Awards is a video games event centered on celebrating the best of the year’s titles, with emphasis on reveals and promos for upcoming launches.
