Whisper it… could gaming actually be fun again?

This year’s gaming showcase season has given us an embarassment of riches to get excited for
Star Wars Outlaws features a brand new character in Kay Vess
Ubisoft
Vicky Jessop13 June 2023

The gaming industry has a lot on its plate at the moment. In addition to the flaming kitchen fire that was the Microsoft and Activision merger being shot down by the UK’s competition regulator, the industry has also been contending with a series of high-profile flops (the undead spectre of vampire shooter Redfall, for instance), the endless repurposing of old content and a slightly lacklustre first quarter.

But cometh the summer, cometh the season of gaming showcases. Don’t expect spontaneity or scandal here – this is a glossy, slick PR affair, where the industry giants roll out their wares, invite you to take a look, and try their hardest to convince you that the games they’re selling are the games you should be getting excited about.

That said, this summer the hype may be justified. We’re almost at the end of showcase season, so there may still be more news to come, but what I’ve seen so far is promising.

I can’t remember the last time we humble gamers were given so many treats; it’s the digital equivalent of being a kid in a sweet shop. In Ubisoft’s showcase, we were given a surprise trailer from Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora and the first-ever open world Star Wars game, Outlaws – both of which feature stunning graphics and a massive, engaging world to explore.

Avatar has always represented a sort of untapped potential – Pandora is the kind of place I’d rather explore than watch on the big screen – but given that the first game bombed so hard people genuinely forgot it existed, the fact that this new one actually looks exciting (with human bases to attack, tribes to meet and a two-player online co-op option) says a lot.

And that’s before you mention the latest Assassin’s Creed game, which takes place in a gorgeously rendered ancient Baghdad and promises a return to the good old stealth-based gameplay of early franchise titles rather than the hack-and-slash approach of Odyssey and Valhalla. Finally, hiding in bushes for minutes on end is going to be useful again – and about time too.

Even better, the titles that have been languishing in development purgatory seem to be making their way onto our consoles in the not-too-distant future.

The most obvious contender for this is Starfall, that gaming behemoth that has been pushed back again and again due to the sheer size of the thing – but finally got its very own massive, in-depth event that broke down everything from the plot to the gameplay. Even more surprising? It actually looks good. With over a thousand planets to explore, seemingly endless customisation options and alien telepathy, it feels like it’s actually going to justify the massive hype.

And let’s not forget Fable 4, which finally got a (long, long overdue) trailer of its very own, featuring a star turn from Richard Ayoade as a giant, hero-hating giant. Again, it looks great – though worryingly, there’s no release date on this one yet, suggesting it could be pushed back even further.

The only fly in the ointment thus far has been the PlayStation showcase, which took place in May this year and marked its first showcase in two whole years.

We know there’s a lot of good stuff in the pipeline there (including Spider-Man 2, which got its own dedicated gameplay section) but the showcase itself fell a little flat due to the lack of big title announcements and abundance of pre-rendered CGI trailers. It’s all very well promising us sequels galore (Alan Wake 2, for instance, as well as The Talos Principle), but when the studio doesn’t follow up with deep dives and gameplay breakdowns, it feels rather anticlimactic.

Perhaps this is why rumours are swirling about a second showcase – but regardless, I’m not too bothered. The season has offered us plenty of treats so far, and plenty of dates to mark in my diary. I can’t wait to get stuck in: for the first time in a while, the future looks bright.

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