Nintendo
- The video game industry’s annual awards show, The Game Awards, takes place on Thursday night.
- More than just an awards show, The Game Awards is a big opportunity for game makers to announce new projects or tease upcoming ones.
- With just over 24 hours to go, a handful of announcements have begun trickling out early.
On Thursday evening, the video game industry celebrates the year in games with its annual award show: The Game Awards.
Unlike the Oscars, this is no black-tie affair; The Game Awards are an annual opportunity to announce new games, offer updates on hotly-anticipated titles, and go into further detail on soon-to-be released games. Awards are given out, and people do indeed dress up, but it’s part awards show, part marketing event.
And like so many similar events before it, several major announcements have already begun to leak or be officially teased.
Here’s what we’re seeing so far:
1. A new “Far Cry” game.
A new “Far Cry” game? Didn’t one of those come out, like, in 2018?
Yep! That game was “Far Cry 5,” and it came out back in late March on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The open-world first-person shooter was set in America for the first time ever, and featured a new antagonist: a maniacal cult leader with nuclear ambitions.
Apparently another “Far Cry” game isn’t too far away — and it’s a distant sequel, set in a post-apocalypse Montana. All we’ve got to go on thus far is the teaser trailer Ubisoft put out ahead of Thursday’s announcement during the show.
The trailer alludes to a period of extreme weather following a nuclear detonation, eventually leading to a new world — a world where people shoot sawblades from crossbows, apparently.
Here’s that teaser for the next “Far Cry” game:
2. A new “Dragon Age” game (that may be years away).
EA’s BioWare division is responsible for major franchises like “Mass Effect,” the upcoming “Anthem,” and — most importantly in this case — “Dragon Age.”
The role-playing series has been dormant for years at this point, but work on a new game in the franchise has been ongoing at BioWare. EA hasn’t officially announced as much, and it sounds like The Game Awards is where that’s going to happen.
“‘Dragon Age’ is an incredibly important franchise in our studio, and we’re excited to continue its legacy,” BioWare lead Casey Hudson said on the BioWare blog in late November. “Look for more on this in the coming month.”
As you might have already guessed, The Game Awards seems to be the planned location of the big reveal. And, according to a report in VentureBeat, the game may still be years away. “At least” three years away, according to “sources familiar with the studio.”
That makes “Dragon Age 4” (or whatever it might be called) a likely candidate for being on the next iterations of the PlayStation and Xbox consoles — the “PlayStation 5” and whatever the successor the Xbox One is called.
5. Maybe a “Metroid Prime Trilogy” release on Nintendo Switch?
Maybe.
Though it would make logical sense for Nintendo re-release the “Metroid Prime Trilogy” from the Nintendo Wii (and Wii U) as a package on the Nintendo Switch, the only evidence pointing to its existence is a very sketchy Swedish listing.
It’d be cool to get “Metroid Prime Trilogy” on the Switch, and it could happen, but the evidence here is thin enough that it seems very unlikely.
5. The official unveiling of “Borderlands 3”?
Like “Dragon Age 4,” the concept of “Borderlands 3” is more or less an open secret at this point. Short of outright announcing the game, Gearbox Software have done a lot of talking around it.
A recent series of tweets from Gearbox Software head Randy Pitchford has some folks thinking a “Borderlands 3” announcement is in the works, or nearly at hand.
“My To Do list today has just 3 things on it. But I also have 3 meetings scheduled before 3pm. Is the universe telling me something?” he said on November 29. A day later: “Fun fact – Today is day number 334 (number of days that have elapsed in the year). Yesterday was 333. It’s really interesting how human minds take so much meaning in arbitrary numbering systems and coincidence. People will lose their minds when the calendar flips to year 3000.”
Does that lead you to believe that “Borderlands 3” is on the verge of being officially unveiled? It’s certainly something!
6. How about that “Avengers” game from Square Enix? Where’s that at?
Nearly two years ago, a new collaboration was announced between Marvel and Square Enix — the two were teaming up, like a bunch of superheroes, to create a series of games based on “The Avengers.” Better yet, the studios working on the new games were Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal — the studios behind “Tomb Raider” and “Deus Ex.”
Nearly two years later, and we’ve heard nothing about the first game in that collaboration. It was expected to show up at the annual video game trade show, E3, back in June — but it wasn’t there.
Could it show up at The Game Awards? It could! But I’m speculating based solely on its disappearance.
With “more than 10 new game announcements” promised for the show on Thursday evening, what’s certain is we’re going to see at least a few cool new games.
The Game Awards airs on YouTube, Twitch, and a variety of other platforms on Thursday, December 6 at 8:30 ET / 5:30 PT.
