Amid all the video game trailers at Gamescom's Opening Night Live, a surprise gem appeared out of nowhere: Secret Level, an adult animated series by the creators of Love, Death + Robots.
The trailer was packed full of different video game characters and worlds but apparently it'll only feature 15 games, with each getting a new story for one episode. The list of games is: Armored Core, Concord, Crossfire, Dungeons & Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World: Aeternum, Pac-Man, PlayStation, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament, and Warhammer 40K.
It's a bit of an odd list as I'm not quite sure what the through-line is, other than the need for a bit more advertising. But even with the lack of a theme, the addition of PlayStation is an outlier, as instead of an actual game, it'll be "highlighting various PlayStation Studios beloved entities," according to a press release. I'm not sure what qualifies as an "entity," but if that means we get an Astro animated short, I'll be happy.
I was thoroughly impressed with Love, Death + Robot's three seasons, and while there were a couple of misses most of the episodes hit. My personal favourite is still Season 1's Secret War, a short that I always thought would make for a stellar video game. So even if the list of games is an odd mix, I'm pretty confident in Blur Studio's ability to pull something great off.
The teaser trailer that we saw at Opening Night Live did seem pretty spectacular, and it was cool to see how each world was animated slightly differently. But the one scene that has fans frothing at the mouth only lasted for a couple of seconds and seems to be Keanu Reeves piloting an Armored Core.
A new ARMORED CORE saga awaits. Just one of fifteen epic stories from Secret Level, the new revolutionary gaming anthology series coming December 10 on Prime Video. pic.twitter.com/SHm80ZWqwCAugust 20, 2024
It's not confirmed yet whether this is actually Reeves, and while the first few seconds of the shot at 0:52 doesn't really look like him, the character in question does appear to almost morph into a Reeves lookalike. Armored Core even tweeted an image that resembles Reeves more.
Unfortunately, the anthology series premiers on December 10, 2024, so we'll have to wait a bit longer to get any kind of confirmation on whether Reeves is expanding his video game portfolio to more than just Cyberpunk 2077 or The Matrix Awakens.
Other than Secret Level there were plenty of other exciting announcements, including more details on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a new standalone Dying Light game, and a meaty chunk of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's campaign.
