The Game Awards were on December 6th and brought in 26.2 million total viewers. It also brought with us great moments like God of War winning Game of the Year, The Russo Brothers snapping five nominees away, all the great musical performances, and the three heads of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft opening the show in a unifying speech. However, there were also some great announcements to go with these amazing moments. So, let’s go down my Top 5 announcements from The Game Awards!
5) Hades by Supergiant Games
Supergiant Games has released some of the most acclaimed independent games over the past few years with Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. Their new game, Hades, which is out now through early access on the Epic Game Store, is a top down view, action role-playing game where you play as the son of Hades, Zagreus, and going through various, randomly-generated rooms and clearing randomly generated enemies. As in all rogue-like games, if you die, you lose all progress you’ve made. However, there are permanent upgrades you can have as well. I am excited to try out Hades in the next few weeks!
4) The Outer Worlds by Obsidian
Obsidian has worked on games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and Fallout: New Vegas. The Outer Worlds seems to be a mix between both of these games which is great news since Fallout: New Vegas is such a renowned game in the Fallout series. Your created character goes to the outer reaches of space to investigate certain corporations doing some shady things. The game will include decision-making between your companions and upgradeable skills in different categories. Outer Worlds will be more focused and smaller than modern RPG’s according to Jason Schreier of Kotaku. The game will be released on Xbox One, PS4, and PC in 2019.
3) Mortal Kombat 11 by NetherRealm Studios
The way this was revealed shocked me somehow. For some reason, MK11 did not cross my mind when thinking of potential announcements from The Game Awards. So, when Ed Boon came out to present the award for Sports/Racing Game, I had a thought of MK11, but then he began speaking about the award, which gave me hesitation. However, then the announcement video came on which looked grand. Dark Raiden, who was teased to return in a post-credits scene in MKX, is fighting Scorpion through all these various gory Mortal Kombat ways; electrocuting his entire body, kneeing his face with so much force, typical Mortal Kombat stuff. Then, when Scorpion dies, the first Mortal Kombat’s Scorpion appears to avenge his future self’s loss, and gives the grand “Get Over Here” line. It seems to include different costume variations just as Injustice 2 did. I do wonder how Injustice 2 has impacted this game’s development in a positive way. Mortal Kombat 11 is going to be released on April 23rd, 2019 on Xbox One, PS4, and somehow, Nintendo Switch.
2) Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 Exclusively on the Nintendo Switch in 2019
The Game Awards truly began with the speech between the three company heads of Nintendo, Xbox, and Sony. However, this announcement began the hype. A series that has been dormant for almost a decade is returning exclusively on the Nintendo Switch, which was completely unexpected. The Marvel Games branch talked about increasing their presence and their quality of games, and Spider-Man was their first game as part of this initiative. This and Spider-Man now shows how serious they are about this initiative of bringing quality Marvel games to the world. The game itself is a team-based role-playing game following the events of the previous game, and adds The Black Order and Thanos to the mix of villainy. It also adds the X-Men to a Marvel game, which they were mysteriously left out of in Capcom vs. Marvel Infinite. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order will release in 2019 on the Nintendo Switch and I will definitely be getting it!
1) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 1st DLC Character; Joker from Persona 5
Another unexpected announcement came when the Awards went black and the announcement video started playing, I lost my mind a bit. I thought Persona 5 was coming to the Switch, which needs to happen! However, then the invitation card turned around in the video and showed the Smash Bros. logo. I continued to lose my mind. This basically means the DLC characters for Smash Ultimate are endless to imagine. Joker from Persona 5 is such an interesting choice for a fighter. How will he play like? How awesome is he going to be? How will Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Smash Ultimate, utilize this great character? So many possibilities! The DLC is not slated to come out anytime soon, but you never know!
All of these announcements, and all the others, show how serious The Game Awards are as a platform for developers to showcase their new games and show the present games some love with all the awards. Geoff Keighley repeatedly has done a great job listening to feedback from the previous year, and improves the show each year. I cannot wait until to see what next year has to offer.
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