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The great video game raid organized every year in December by Geoff Keighley was rich in announcements. However, they were not enough to completely forget the Activision Blizzard affair, on everyone’s lips at the moment.
In a year still marked by serial cancellations due to the health crisis, the Game Awards were survivors. Because it is in “face-to-face” that the host and former American journalist Geoff Keighley was able to bring together, on Thursday December 9, 2021 in Los Angeles, a few thousand personalities from the video game industry for a show that saw s ” chain prizes and game announcements in “World premiere”.
Dreaming of itself as the “Video Game Oscars” and a celebration of video game makers around the world, in the words of Keighley himself, however, the event in 2021 suffered a little more than usual from the dichotomy of its location, both an “independent” event and a communication platform made available to publishers. The problem was particularly exacerbated this year by the Activision Blizzard scandal: the company, currently entangled in cases of institutionalized sexual harassment and mistreatment of employees, was to be a major partner in the event. And it was only after a huge public bronca that the organizer decided at the very last moment to cut these links.
On the night of the show, Keighley admittedly had the decency not to remain completely silent on the subject, but he only spoke in extremely vague terms, blithely mixing up issues of workplace harassment and the toxicities of certain communities. of players (questions however without much relation between them), while applying cautiously never to evoke explicitly recent current events. As if it were more important to manage your relations with one of the biggest video game publishers in the world than to use the media megaphone that are the Game Awards to move the industry forward on this essential subject.
From “World premieres” do you want some here, despite everything
Either way, the show has at least kept the most materialistic of its promises by showering us all the more with event game trailers, setting the tone for a 2022 and even 2023 calendar which, after a The relatively sparse year 2021 post-containment (at least with regard to AAA games) promises to be particularly dense.
The French production was in the spotlight with the broadcast of the very first gameplay extract for A Plague Tale: Requiem, direct follow-up to the much appreciated A Plague Tale: Innocence, still developed by Asobo Studio from Bordeaux (release in 2022 on PC, Xbox Series X / S, PS5, Switch via the cloud). But even more eventful was the official lifting of the veil on the famous game Star wars by Quantic Dream. In rumor for a few months, Star Wars Eclipse is being developed in tandem by the historic Parisian studio and the company’s new Montreal branch, which is experimenting here for the first time in the action-adventure genre. However, it is not a question of forgetting your roots: we are already promised a “Branching narration [qui] intends to surpass what already makes the reputation [des] productions ” from the studio.
The British studio Ninja Theory has meanwhile come to show a new preview of Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga, as an echo of the 2019 edition of the Game Awards, where the game was the very first announced on an Xbox Series X whose name and design had just been revealed to the world. Expected release on Xbox Series X / S and PC at an unknown date.
Another sequel to a game that has become cult, Alan wake ii took a step towards the light. This project from the heart of Remedy Entertainment (Control) was made feasible thanks to the financing contract signed by the Finnish studio with Epic Games Publishing – already recently publisher ofAlan Wake Remastered. This sequel will be discovered in 2023 (13 years after the release of the first episode, however) on PC, Xbox Series X / S and PS5.
Always very in vogue, the superheroes were also at the party with a double presence of Warner and DC Comics. We took advantage of a new trailer for the multiplayer game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League from Rocksteady Studios (released in 2022 on PC, Xbox Series X / S, PS5) and, above all, the announcement of a project Wonder woman in development within the American studio Monolith Productions (no release date or platforms announced).
Double presence also for the Japanese branch of Square Enix with two launches announced in a much more concrete way. The first is even imminent and concerns Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, finally released from its exclusive contract with PlayStation, which will therefore be available from December 16, 2021 on PC via the Epic Games Store. As for Forspoken, the new game created by the Luminous Productions division (the team behind Final Fantasy XV), it is now dated May 24, 2022 on PC and PS5.
Finally, let’s mention a little “offside” element with the first real trailer for the TV series. Halo, which is expected to debut in 2022 on the streaming service Paramount + in the United States.
This is only a very small selection from the countless announcements that took place that night. For comprehensive coverage, we invite you to browse the news feed of our neighbors of Gamekult.
In the midst of all this, we almost forget that the big winner of the awards ceremony was It Takes Two, the very ingenious cooperative game of Swedish swagger Josef Fares and his studio Hazelight, proudly left the ceremony with the trophy for Best Game of the Year under his arm.
It Takes Two. © Electronic Arts
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The Game Awards 2021: full of announcements for the “Video game Oscars” in a tense context