The 9th Annual The Game Awards took place last night. As always, we saw a few awards get handed out. The number of awards presented and handed to winners continues to shrink each year. That’s fine with me, because we also received a buttload of brand new World Premiere trailers for upcoming games.
Quick Side Quest: What exactly establishes a trailer to be a “World Premiere?” I always thought of a “World Premiere”
to be the first time we find out that a game exists. However, there are plenty of “New Trailers” for upcoming games
that we already know about, yet they are still given the “World Premiere” title. I think for next year, and other
showcases, they need to distinguish between a “World Premiere” and “Here’s some new footage from a game
that you’re already excited about.”
Although The Game Awards is possibly the longest games showcase — with a runtime of about three hours — it feels different because it is also an awards ceremony where we get to celebrate the great games and game makes of the past year. It truly is the video game industries Oscars, but if the Oscars showed a bunch of new movie trailers all throughout the show.
I do enjoy seeing the creators of my recently played games get rewarded, they deserve a night to dress up and party whether they win or lose. Still, if it weren’t for the fear of missing all of these big World Premiere trailers I wouldn’t mind missing The Game Awards, or watching it the next day. For the past few years, I’ve felt the need to tune-in live, as I do with any big showcase — Nintendo Directs, PlayStation State of Plays, Xbox Showcases, and all the others.
I’m not going to go over all of the awards, although God of War: Ragnarok did come out the biggest winner of the night (in quantity), despite not taking home the main Game of the Year Award. I always find that strange, when one game dominates all categories, yet loses out on Game of the Year, especially after beating the “Game of the Year” in other categories. Anyway, congratulations to Elden Ring.
The World Premieres and trailers were fantastic throughout the night. We got to see many brand new games, but also some gameplay and footage from games we have been wanting more from. I have chosen my TOP FIVE game trailers that I’m most excited about to feature in this post. I also chose a few Honorable Mention games, that got me hyped and excited to learn more about in the coming months.
If you missed the event, you can check out the full replay at the end of this post, but for now let’s go over my TOP FIVE from this year’s The Game Awards:
TOP FIVE: The Game Awards
1 | EARTHBLADE
We finally got an Earthblade trailer, the sad part is that we have to wait all the way until 2024 before we get this game. Earthblade is the brand new game coming from Extremely OK Games (formerly Matt Makes Games), creators of Celeste and Towerfall.
Back in 2018, Celeste was one of my top games. It was my love for Celeste that made me search for more from this team. Luckily, I owned their previous game Towerfall on the Epic Games Store already, so I beat it in about a week. I later picked up Towerfall on the Nintendo Switch and beat it all over again.
From the trailer last night, I see Earthblade to be a mix of the two previous games. The larger level design and tricky traversal reminds me of Celeste, combined with some combat mechanics of Towerfall. I could be totally wrong about this, but either way I’m just happy we finally got to see something from this team.
Earthblade is set to release in 2024, and I’m guessing we will be seeing more before then.
2 | HADES II
Seeing that Supergiant logo pop up on the screen, I didn’t care what the game was. I’m already sold on this studio as well. Although Hades came out much earlier in Early Access, it was sort of my Celeste of 2020. I picked up Hades when it finally came to the Nintendo Switch.
Playing Hades also made me want to check out this studio’s catalog of games. I had played Pyre before and enjoyed it, but didn’t really become addicted to the game. My love for Hades pushed me to move onto Bastion, an earlier game that feels a bit like Hades (or like the inspiration for Hades).
Hades II features a new main playable character, the immortal princess Melinoë, and sister of Zagreus from the first game. I didn’t mention the music of Celeste above, but both soundtracks to Hades and Celeste are saved in my Apple Music library, and both get a great deal of play time.
According to the Supergiant site, Hades II should come to Early Access sometime in 2023.
3 | DIABLO IV
This game only featured a cutscene, sizzle trailer. I usually try not to build up too much hype for games with no gameplay trailer, but this is Diablo 4. They also had an amazing performance by musician Halsey before the trailer that felt unplanned in the best way. The Game Awards had just come back from a commercial, when these hooded figures came on stage, and Halsey started singing. I bet there were people in the audience still standing around talking, not knowing what was going on.
I got into Diablo III way too late, once it was available on the Nintendo Switch. I had a great time with it, but all or most of the DLC was already out and the game had so much content that it was a bit overwhelming. Also, most of my friends had already played the game. I’m excited to hopefully get into Diablo IV from the start, and play with some friends.
Diablo IV is coming in the summer of 2023.
4 | STAR WARS JEDI :SURVIVOR
This announcement was leaked a few days early. Was that on purpose? Was it planned? Did someone mess up? I don’t know the answers to these questions. What I do know is that I’m so very excited to play this new Star Wars Jedi: Survivor in only a few months.
The first title Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was such a great adventure. The game had some technical problems and flaws, but the story and gameplay were so great that I looked past many of those. This was one game that made me want to explore, read and learn everything about this world. It was also cool to see Respawn create a Star Wars game about a Jedi during the worst time to be a Jedi, right after Order 66.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is coming on March 17, 2023. That’s the week before my birthday, what a wonderful gift to me.
5 | CRIME BOSS: ROCKAY CITY
Definitely the most unique trailer and trailer presentation of the night. The game developers came out dressed like the Reservoir Dogs, with Michael Madsen to introduce their new World Premiere trailer for Crime Boss: Rockay City. This premiere looked more like a movie trailer, but that’s also what made it stand out from the rest of the trailers — that and the endless cast of celebrities in the trailer.
I mainly want to play this game because it seems different and exciting. The two other reasons why I need to play this game are (1) the star-studded cast of characters, and (2) it releases on my birthday. This looks to be the perfect birthday present to myself for 2023.
One more reason: The game takes place in a fictional Miami-like town, where I live.
Crime Boss: Rockay City releases on March 28, 2023.
HONORABLE MENTION
There are a couple of other games that I wanted to quickly mention. These are four other games I was excited about, but might need to do a bit more research before getting FULLY HYPED for them.
Hellboy: Web of Wyrd
During the pre-Game Awards we got a few reveals, one of which was the new Hellboy: Web of Wyrd. I want to learn more about this game for two reasons: The art style reminds me of Rollerdrome which I played earlier this year, and loved. The second reason I’m excited is because of the involvement of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. I don’t know how heavily involved he is in this game, but just having his name on it is a pretty good sign.
Judas
Judas is a game from the creators of Bioshock, but it is not a new Bioshock — not that I know of. I’m not sure if I have finished any of the Bioshock games, but I am pretty sure that I have played all of them. Those games were great back when I was in college, so it’s going to be amazing to see how much they can achieve making a game in that style today.
Transformers: Reactivate
What I like about this new Transformers game is that it is like nothing we’ve seen from Transformers, especially in a video game. The last Transformers game I played was Transformers: Devastation. It was a fine game, but this one seems so much more adult. This seems like a darker Transformers game. Growing up, Transformers were the coolest toys. That’s why I will watch any Michael Bay Transformers movie, and I will check out any game.
Armored Core VI
I remember hearing rumors about this game, but also I have never played any of the Armored Core games of the past. The visuals of this cinematic trailer were unreal. It’s also cool to see FromSoftware doing something different than another gothic soulsborne game.
Check out the full replay of the Game Awards right here:
I hope you enjoyed The Game Awards this year, and I can’t wait to see some of these games come to consoles, PC and mobile. There were many great-looking games shown last night, but these are just the top ones to me.
VIDEO GAME BOOK CLUB 