Avowed! Hellblade 2! Ara! Diablo 4! Elder Scrolls! Indiana Jones!
The Xbox Developer Direct livestream is actually one of three Microsoft marketing bonanzas hitting the internet today. First in line isBlizzard’sDiablo 4Developer Update at 9am PT, 12pm ET and 5pm UK, in which we’ll be hearing about the action-RPG’s recently announcedSeason of the Constructquestline and areas, together with many, many quality-of-life updates and new features. I’m not sure anyone at RPS towers is hungry for more Diablo right now, but I personally am always up for one of Blizzard’s flashy cinematic trailers, likethe announcement onewhere Lilith does a Cirque Du Soleil plunge out of a demon blood trapeze.
Still, I’mmuchmore eager to lay eyes on the games slated for the main Developer Direct livestream: Oxide’s simultaneous-turn 4X strategy gameAra: History Untold, Ninja Theory’s bleak period action gameSenua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Obsidian’s first-person fantasy RPGAvowed, and MachineGames’forthcoming Indiana Jones adaptation, which isalmost certainly titled Indiana Jones And The Great Circle.
Here’s a quick warm-up parade of Top Goss about all of those games. Avowed wasoriginally pitched as Obsidian’s take on Skyrim, but will seemingly be more story-driven and less about open world exploration. It was alsoconceived as a co-op RPG, with Obsidian pivoting to single player in around eight months. The newHellblade, meanwhile, isset in Iceland, still preoccupied with mental illness, andabundant in kneecap-based executions, sort of. I enjoyed the original Hellblade, for all its occasionally dodgy reads on psychosis, and Ninja Theory have a lot more cash to play with this time, so it could be rather special.
Ara: History Untold is the product of multiple-year headaches about how todo a simultaneous-turn 4X experiencewithout leaving players in a state of total confusion. Oxide’s chief graphics architect Dan Baker also entertains fond daydreams ofone day creating a baking sim- fingers crossed that’s one of today’s surprise reveals. And Indiana Jones? Well, the people behind Wolfenstein: The New Colossus are making the game, which bodes well inasmuch as there is ample Nazi-splatting pedigree to call upon, but let’s face it, this one will probably live or die on the quality of the Indiana Jones character model. I do not envy any artist attempting to recreate the smouldering majesty of 1980s Harrison Ford.
Don’t expect anything from therecently purchased stables of Activision Blizzardbeyond Diablo today. “No new information on Activision Blizzard King games will be a part of Developer_Direct,” Xbox Wire editor-in-chief Joe Skrebelssternly reminds us. “You can look forward to news from those teams later this year.” Joe used to be one of my minions at Official Xbox Magazine, by the way, and if he thinks I’m too professional to mention this, he’s clearly forgotten everything I tried to teach him about having no shame. Skrebels adds that there will be no surprise releases during the stream - “all the games in this year’s Developer_Direct will be arriving later, with more details to be shared in the program.”
It remains only for me to say: what are you most looking forward to? Are you calling Doctor Jones or are you all aboard Senua’s helltrain of dismembery depression or are you Team Sky-rip-off or do you dream of histories untold? These things I must know. We will, of course, be writing up any and all big announcements individually. Graham is on the news desk tonight, so he’ll get first swing at Indy, curse him. I’m off on holiday tomorrow, so if I get to write up anything it’ll probably be the 30th paragraph of someDiablo 4update changelog on Monday.
