Last night was a night about two things… farming Escalation Protocol in the slim hope of getting a shotgun… and watching The Game Awards. I didn’t even realize that the later was happening until Pete mentioned something about it on Twitter. I am not really a follower of awards shows in general because traditionally speaking they don’t actually reflect my interests in quite literally anything. The academy awards tend to focus on artsy films, and the grammys tend to focus on pop music… neither of which are really my jam. I still remember the Grammys where Metallica Performed and was nominated for the new “Hard Rock” category… against Jethro Tull… and Jethro Tull won. Basically I have always sorta considered the awards scene to be grossly out of touch with anything that interested me. I can’t really say that the Game Awards are all that different given that I don’t really play a lot of the games that they talked about.
It has been however super interesting to watch the show evolve over time. Each year the “realness” has escalated significantly and last night… it legitimately felt like any other big budget awards show in existence. Hell they even have a proper theme now, which was kinda cool and did a good job of showcasing the different flavors of gaming. I also enjoyed how they have this blend of reveals and awards, as well as a meaningful pre-show that instead of watching the “red carpet” used that time to give out the less glitzy stuff like lifetime achievement awards. There was also a reasonable blend of traditional celebrities, e-celebs, and legendary game devs… all treated as peers to create this weird blend of everything that makes the community interesting. For example I don’t care about Ninja necessarily, but I do know he is a big deal in the Fortnite juggernaut, and probably a significantly better ambassador to the “normies” than Pewdie Pie.
The twitch screen had up this “Worlds Will Change” logo prior to the pre-show actually starting, so when we opened the Game Awards with Shawn Layden, Phil Spencer, and Reggie Fils-aime from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo respectively all sharing the stage I momentarily got my hopes up. I wondered would they reveal that finally all games on all three platforms would be cross play by default? Sadly however it was just a gesture of togetherness rather than anything meaningful, but still very cool to see that happen as they all appear on effectively neutral ground. They still need to hammer out those details behind the scenes so that we can all play together without boundary, which is ultimately the thing I think most gamers really want. Truth be told I just want the consoles and PC versions to cross play given that I am almost always going to prefer the PC version the best.
As far as reveals go the one that was the most interesting to me personally was The Outer Worlds by Obsidian, which appeared to be a Fallout style game set in a Wild West Space Opera sort of world on the outskirts of the universe. I am always down with scifi blended with westerns blended with what appeared to be bioshock style advertising branding. It is Obsidian, so we know the story is going to be good… that is the thing they do really really well. It will also probably be very buggy, because that is another thing they do really really well is generate bugs. Regardless I am now really looking forward to this game after only having seen a little bit of trailer.
We got a much longer trailer for Psychonauts 2, which is something we already knew was coming but also something that is going to be excellent. I fully expect to be replaying the previous one prior to this game coming out so I can sorta blend my way into the new story. It has been a really really long time since I last played Psychonauts.
I am also really interested in Far Cry New Dawn which to the best of my knowledge is the first game in the Far Cry series that is a direct sequel to the previous one? It also makes me want to play Far Cry 5 if this is where we are going to end up. There were lots of other reveals and they have posted most of them on the official The Game Awards Youtube, which is super handy.
What games were revealed that you are looking forward to? Drop me a comment and let me know. I will be spending the weekend on a mix of still farming for the shotgun in Destiny 2 and splitting time between two big alphas that are also happening.