From Silksong to Starfield
All the new Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase announcements and trailers
Xbox and Bethesda showed over 30 games at this year’s Not-E3 showcase, so there’s a lot to cover. If you’re looking for something specific, you can use the list below to hop to the game you’re most excited about. If you want a full round-up of every single trailer and announcement from the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, simply scroll down a little further.
As always, the YouTube comment thread was filled with people shouting “IT’S MORBIN TIME". Well, Xbox listened. The show jumped straight into someRedfallgameplay, the upcoming co-op vampire-hunting FPS from Arkane Austin. The footage starts with the player shuffling through a very ominous church covered in blood. Lots of blood. And there’s a vampire in the attic, of course. Lots of shotgun blasting ensues (it turns out vampires are fairly resistant to shotgun shells), shortly after which we get a better look at the various powers you’ll have at your disposal to hunt the denizens of the night. Lots more vampires, lots more chaos, and lots more time to wait as there was no release date attached. Redfall was originally planned for this summer, butrecently got delayed alongside Starfield.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen some footage of the eagerly awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong, but it’s great to see Hornet make an appearance so early on in the show. We got a nice glimpse at several colourful and dangerous areas, skipping quickly from thick forests to fiery dungeons and cities. We also got a good look at a number of bosses, including a horrible-looking oversized mosquito and a butch bone-axe-wielding creature – and a lot of awesome-looking moves from the ever-agile Hornet. Still no news yet on a firm release date, but apparently everything shown at this event will be playable within the next 12 months. And we now know that it’ll be available on Game Pass at launch, too.
A Plague Tale: Requiem made an appearance next, with a lovely, macabre glimpse of Amicia stealthily trekking through a village that has clearly seen better days. It looks like the same sorts of tense puzzle-esque survival situations are still very much the norm in this dramatic, cinematic series. Some gorgeous lighting on display here, too.
Even those of us who can’t drive in real life love a bit of Forza. Whether or not you’re a gearhead, you can’t deny that these are some of the most gorgeously realised photorealistic video games you’ll ever see. Today’s new trailer was followed up by an extended look at the latest game’s autumnal setting of Maple Valley, complete with lovely lighting changes depending on the time of day. Things like weather and temperature look set to alter a lot of interesting under-the-hood variables that affect your driving experience, too. The future is now, people.
If you’re in the mood for some pretty scenery but you’re growing tired of flying planes, Microsoft Flight Simulator’s next update/expansion will add helicopters and gliders in November. If that isn’t high-tech enough for you, players can hop on right now and download a new update that adds Halo’s Pelican. If you’ve ever wanted to fly a Pelican without getting blown out of the sky by some chump with a rocket launcher, this one’s for you.
Overwatch 2 lets loose with another trailer that to my admittedly undiscerning eye looks exactly the same as Overwatch 1. Doom still Fists, Rein still Hardts, and Zenyatta still looks unbelievably cool. We got a lot of hero poses, a lot of blasting enemies across a bunch of colourful new maps – and one of Overwatch’s signature cinematics which seems to unveil a free-for-all arena mode of some sort. The early access for Overwatch 2 begins on 4th October.
We knew we were expecting news of some historical grand strategies at the PC Gaming Show later tonight, but ARA History Untold still managed to be a surprise announcement for the Xbox showcase. This initial trailer doesn’t tell us much about what will make the game stand out from, say, Paradox’s sprawling multi-part franchise, except that it looks as though multiple historical eras will be represented in a single game. Oh, and it’ll be available on Game Pass on day one.
A new trailer for Elder Scrolls Online’s upcoming expansion, High Isle, gives us a deeper look into the titular location. High Isle is a completely new location that the Elder Scrolls franchise hasn’t visited previously, giving ESO players the first insight into this new region. Those on console will have to wait until 21 June, but PC players can jump into High Isle right now.
Celebrating 25 years of Fallout, we also got a look at Fallout 76: The Pitt, in which players will leave Appalachia for the first time and return to the Pitt – the remnants of a muchly-nuked Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which has been completely overtaken by raiders. Come September, players will undertake expeditions in this unforgiving city, both above and below it, earning all sorts of loot and XP along the way.
More Forza up next, with the announcement of a whimsical add-on for Forza Horizon 5 featuring a brand tie-in with Hot Wheels. I remember the LEGO Speed Champions DLC for Forza Horizon 4 meeting with polarising receptions when it was announced, before everyone was forced to admit that it was in fact just massively fun. From this brief trailer, I reckon we’re in for more of those grown-up toybox shenanigans in the Hot Wheels add-on for Horizon 5 when it releases on July 19th.
A very brief trailer next for Ark 2, the upcoming sequel that will inexplicably feature Vin Diesel riding a dinosaur. Nothing new there, but perhaps the most interesting thing to glean is that Xbox expect it to release within the next year, as that is the theme for this showcase. It’s dinos, it’s Vin Diesel, and it’s set to arrive at some point within the next twelve months.
Scorn, the fleshy horror adventure game by Ebb Software, has unveiled a release date of 21st October. The trailer begins with a suitably horrifying cinematic of someone disconnecting a large sinewy umbilical-cord-esque appendage from their body, and quickly crescendos into lots of blood and explosions and grossness. Looks like a fun time for the whole family.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a mech game as wholesome as this. Lightyear: Frontier is landing in spring of next year, and it looks to be a farming and building game, but with mechs. You land (rather more serenely and successfully than in most other games, I might add) on a pretty alien planet and must set to work exploring, crafting, and farming from within the confines of your chonky little mech suit.
The devs at INTERIOR/NIGHT are hoping that their game As Dusk Falls will be an emotional and thought-provoking experience for its players. Set in the late 90s and following the tumultuous lives of two families in small-town Arizona, the game aims to turn heads with its unusual and disarming “motion graphic novel style". This interesting-looking co-op interactive drama will arrive on 19th July.
The appearance of a Grounded trailer has undoubtedly upset any arachnophobes who tuned into tonight’s Xbox and Bethesda showcase. But for everyone who has played and thoroughly enjoyed the game, the news of a full release this September is definitely good news. It looks like Obsidian have finally finished up the story of how these teens got themselves shrunkified to the size of ant droppings, and how they might be able to unshrunkify themselves and get back to their normal lives. They’re certainly quite proud of their tagline “Go Big Or Never Go Home", aren’t they – and so they should be. It’s pretty darn good.
Ereban: Shadow Legacy is a brand new game revealed at today’s show and the debut title for its development studio Baby Robot Games. This polished indie title describes itself as a “fast-paced stealth platformer" and seems to exist at that intersection between sci-fi and fantasy that sees you fighting scary robots in an otherworldly setting. Not much more to say at this early stage, except that we can confirm it’ll be available on Game Pass on Day One.
A genuinely impressive musical trailer for Sea Of Thieves came next in the list, heralding the release of Season 7 on 21st July. You can apparently make use of all-new Cash-In points for selling loot – and there’ll undoubtedly be a bunch of new goodies made available with the new season’s Plunder Pass, too. It all looks as spirited and bombastic as ever.
Cocoon is an upcoming adventure from Jeppe Carlsen, the lead gameplay designer of LIMBO and INSIDE. While the trailer doesn’t reveal much, it seems to be an isometric puzzle adventure in which you hop between worlds. Cocoon is set to launch next year and will be on Game Pass.
Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royale are all making their way to Xbox and PC! Personas 3 and 5 were previously PlayStation exclusives and none of them have ever made it to Xbox before, so this is exciting news for players who’d prefer to enjoy their frantic JRPG fix on Microsoft platforms. Some of these games have been out for many years already on various PlayStations (and 4 even made it onto PC a couple of years ago), but they’re all looking very shiny and new in this trailer, which promises Game Pass on Day One for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC!
Towards the end of the show, Kojima appeared very briefly to share that Kojima Productions is working on an Xbox exclusive title. No info, title, or trailer for this one, but the game will use the cloud to supposedly achieve things that have never been done before. Very vague, and with absolutely no other information it seems safe to assume this might be the outlier of the showcase, with all games shown today launching within the next year.
Ohh, we’re here. We’re at the part that you were most likely waiting for. An extended look at Bethesda’s hugely anticipated upcoming space-RPG, Starfield. This trailer treats us to some gameplay from early on in the player’s adventure, starting with touchdown on the moon of Kreet. The player and his friendly mech follows a trail down towards a research lab, mining some sweet, sweet ore along the way. The research lab turns out to be overrun with pirates, which allows the player to stretch their sci-fi buckshot-firing muscles for a little bit.
We then skip ahead to the Capital City of New Atlantis, where we’re introduced to Constellation – a group committed to answering the question “what’s out there?". Just the tiniest glimpse of an overarching story involving several artifacts scattered across the galaxy which must be collected to help further this Constellation’s goals.
We also got a look at the character creator and Starfield’s new skill system, which looks to be a mix of the skill systems in previous Bethesda titles – partially unlocking with level ups, and partially auto-levelling up these skills with use.
Oh, plus there’s base-building, and crafting your own spaceships with a very cool-looking Kerbal Space Program-lite ship-building system. And some pretty sharp-looking space dogfights. Gosh, they’ve revealed quite a lot here, haven’t they?
The extended look finally ended with a taste of the allegedly staggering scale of the game. 1000 planets to explore. Hm. That sure does sound amazingon paper, doesn’t it? Time shall tell how detailed and worthy of exploration these planets become. But overall, decently impressive stuff - ‘specially the ship-building and space combat. That went down a treat over here in our guides-y branch of the RPS treehouse.
