Over the past decade, The Game Awards has become a home for major video game reveals. Geoff Keighley’s annual celebration of gaming is probably as much about the trailers as it is about the actual awards given out each December to game developers, streamers, esports athletes and voice actors. Publishers like to impress at The Game Awards, even if the games they announce are not expected to be released for years. Hence big trailers that rarely promise release dates.
Some games revealed at The Game Awards go missing for uncomfortably long periods. Some games already announced or shown at The Game Awards 2019 have still not shipped. Others, like that of Campo Santo In the Valley of the Godsrevealed at The Game Awards 2017, never will.
But people who love video games enough to watch The Game Awards every year know patience. Below are some of the big games we’ve been eagerly anticipating for years, hoping that we’ll one day be able to play them.
(Ed. remark: The 2023 edition of The Game Awards revealed more than twenty games that haven’t been released yet, but it’s only been a year. That’s nothing in terms of game development, so we’ll focus on much older announcements.)
Prologue was announced almost five years ago at The Game Awards as the mysterious new project from Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, also known as the creator of the Battle Royale genre and The battlefields of PlayerUnknown (now known as PUBG: Battlefields). Prologue was described at the time as “an exploration of new technologies and gameplay,” and has since evolved into just a taste of what Greene and his PlayerUnknown Productions team are working on.
Prologue has certainly not disappeared. It now serves as a tech demo designed to showcase the terrain generation tools that PlayerUnknown Productions is developing for an even larger project, Artemis“a massive multiplayer sandbox experience.” PlayerUnknown Productions posts regular updates about its own technology and ambitions Prologue And Artemis. Greene has also been very active social media providing updates, so it’s not like PlayerUnknown has gone radio silent.
But as for when players will actually get their hands on it Prologue And Artemis? That remains to be seen.
Ark: survival evolved developer Studio Wildcard caused a big surprise during The Game Awards 2020. Ark 2 was coming, and Fast and Furious star Vin Diesel would be a big part of the sequel to the hit dinosaur survival game. Studio Wildcard promised a “next-generation survival experience” set in a massive alien world, Dark Souls-inspired combat, and full use of the then-new Unreal Engine 5.
Ark 2 was originally expected in 2022, but Studio Wildcard postponed it to 2023 and then postponed it again to the end of 2024. The studio subsequently delivered a remastered version of Ark: survival evolved instead, and it’s been pretty quiet about where Ark 2 stands. The game’s Steam page now has a yet-to-be-announced release date. Polygon has contacted Studio Wildcard for a status update Ark 2but has not (yet) received a response.
BioWare’s next entry in the sci-fi role-playing franchise Mass Effect is on its way. We know very little else, as BioWare has been slowly dropping details and mini-trailers for the fifth Mass Effect game since teasing it at The Game Awards 2020. (The studio had confirmed a new Mass Effect about a month prior to release). teaser trailer unveiled at that year’s show.)
However, BioWare has been quite busy with its focus on acquisition Dragon Age: The Veil Guard out the door. Now that that’s done, BioWare wants to turn its attention to this Mass effect 5says the studio. The most recent N7 Day, the annual celebration of the Mass Effect franchise, was incredibly quiet. Maybe that’s the calm before the storm (or maybe I can just deal with it).
In the meantime, BioWare fans have something else to look forward to as Amazon MGM Studios moves forward with the Mass Effect TV show.
Joanna Dark returns Perfectly darkdeveloper The Initiative’s reboot of the Rare-made spy shooter. Originally revealed in a cinematic trailer during The Game Awards 2020, we’ve seen some progress since then. We got a taste of what’s going on during this year’s Xbox Games Showcase in June Perfectly dark gameplay, a hopeful sign for a project that is It’s rumored to have had a rocky development cycle.
There is still no release date for it Perfectly darkbut a 2023 report from IGN said we wouldn’t expect to see this until 2025. But at least we know that The Initiative and co-developer Crystal Dynamics are making progress.
ARC raiders has had a fascinating journey so far. Announced in 2021 as Embark Studios’ debut title, ARC raiders was surprisingly reverted so that the team of ex-Battlefield developers who created it could release a completely different game instead: The Final.
Embark has since regained his focus ARC raiders and is aiming for a 2025 release. The extraction shooter was recently tested and almost three years after its announcement we got our first look at reality ARC raiders fun.
ARC raiders is now scheduled for release sometime next year on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series
When Star Wars Eclipse was announced during the Game Awards 2021, we knew we would be waiting for a long time. Detroit: become human developer Quantic Dream said Blackout was in “early development” when it showed off its intriguing cinematic trailer, and early reports indicated the game would release sometime in 2027 or 2028.
Quantic Dream hasn’t said much about it Star Wars Eclipse in recent years, but we know the game is set in the High Republic era of the franchise – the same period explored in The acolyte – and that player choice will play a huge role in this intricately branching action-adventure game. Despite the already long wait Star Wars Eclipsethe quiet period of the game was expected. Like all announced Star Wars projects, it will be there when it is.
Warner Bros. and Monolith Productions, makers of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and continued Shadow of warpromise to bring back the vaunted Nemesis system in a new game starring DC’s Wonder Woman. Featuring an original story and open-world game mechanics, Wonder Woman It is highly anticipated as a much-needed turnaround for WB Games’ superhero properties.
But we’ve heard almost nothing new about it Wonder Woman since late 2021. An alleged leak of game details from a marketing study earlier this year indicated that Diana – armed with super strength and her golden Lasso of Truth – will battle the sorceress Circe and her army of cyclops, gorgons and other monsters. who have invaded the Amazon island homeland of Themyscira. Expect other DC characters to appear in Wonder Woman, based on the supposedly leaked details.
It’s unclear whether WB and Monolith’s plans have changed at all under the new regime at DC Studios, and whether the new Wonder Woman will have any connection to the reborn DC cinematic universe that has formed under James Gunn. We’ll just have to keep waiting…
Developer Splash Damage impressed with its surprising reveal trailer Transformers: Reactivate in 2022 – and not just because of the trailercore cover of Bon Jovi’s ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’. Hasbro and Splash Damage’s cinematic announcement trailer looked like it was something completely different; it wasn’t until the final moments that it was revealed to be a Transformers game. That alone piqued our interest in what Splash Damage is cooking up.
But we’ve heard little to nothing new about it Transformers: Reactivate in the intervening months. Is it still in development? Can we expect that soon? We’ve pinged Splash Damage for an update and will see what it has to say.
There were plenty of massive AAA games revealed at The Game Awards 2022, including Dune: Awakening,
Death stranding 2And Judaswhich we should all get next year, but there’s a smaller game that we’re eagerly awaiting more news about. Earth leafby Celeste Extremely OK Games from developer Maddy Thorson was expected sometime in 2024, but no dice.
The good news is that Thorson said that earlier this year Earth leaf still coming. “We had hoped to announce a definitive release date now, but that is simply not possible,” Thorson wrote in March. “We know this will be a disappointment to many of you and we are sorry. Maybe this was predictable, but it still sucks when the haters are right. The good news is that the game is not standing still, we are still making progress and we are still excited to work on it.”
If Earth leafan ‘explor-action-platformer’, is almost as good as it gets Celesteit will be worth the wait.