We were expecting some major reveals during this year's 10th anniversary of The Game Awards and sure enough, Geoff pulled through with a stacked lineup of announcements—some of which even we weren't anticipating.
We saw tons of hotly anticipated new games and returns from favorite creators. The studio behind It Takes Two revealed another co-op action game, the creator of Shadow of the Colossus also announced a new untitled project. We finally got a look at Ciri starring in The Witcher 4, a proper trailer for Borderlands 4, and so much more.
What the what, FromSoftware is making a roguelike? One of the biggest announcements of the night was this standalone Elden Ring spin-off. It's reusing loads of that game's familiar weapons and baddies, but also adds a bunch of new stuff, like preset characters with their own unique abilities. That's right, Souls has ults now. This definitely isn't Elden Ring 2, but it may be the co-op action game a lot of Souls players have been fiending for for years now—assuming they're more interested in fighting than the intricate level design of the Dark Souls games. We went hands-on with Nightreign and found it's leaning into faster-paced action and roguelike loot randomness, rather than exploration. It's out some time in 2025.
Surprise! The Illuminates have come for Super Earth. We've been expecting Helldivers 2's third alien faction to show up all year, but Arrowhead still managed to make it a surprise by revealing the mind-controlling aliens and dropping the update at the same time. Omens of Tyranny is available now, and aside from the new enemies, it adds a four-person recon vehicle and new weapons.
The next co-op action adventure game from Hazelight is looking good. This one is about a pair of aspiring novelists who are trapped in simulations of their sci-fi and fantasy worlds. We got an early look at Split Fiction courtesy of director Josef Fares, and we're astonished by the variety the studio has packed into it in just a few years. Split Fiction will be out March 6, 2025.
One new planet, four new Vault Hunters, a billion new guns. Borderlands 4 sure does look like a Borderlands game, only this time the setting looks a little bit more high-tech than Pandora did, and you can drive a pod racer right out of the Star Wars prequels. It's bound to be as much fun in brain-off co-op as the previous games were, but the jury's still out on whether the solo mode will be a Borderlands 2-style laff riot or a Borderlands 3-style snoozefest.
Thief: The Dark Project but make it multiplayer. Warren Spector's studio OtherSide is making a PvPvE stealth game, with criminals in a dense 1910s-style city competing to outwit guards and get away with loot. While players can sabotage and trap each other, it's not a multiplayer game that isn't about headshots—even the NPC guards are designed to be a challenge, and better outsmarted than outfought. It's coming in 2026, and we've wishlisted it already.
CD Projekt Red showed up packing. The Witcher 4 is official, it stars Geralt's adopted daughter Ciri, and it looks like a lot of time has passed since The Witcher 3. We were treated to a lengthy six-minute cinematic trailer (nothing in-engine) with our new protag in a scenario we're all too familiar with: Ciri's latest hunt takes her to a village in the middle of some sort of creepy ritual sacrifice. She interrupts the party and slays the monster menacing the village, but the people aren't too happy about it. Go figure. A witcher can't catch a coin from anyone these days.
It's exciting that the makers of Overcooked are making a co-op escape room game, and interesting that it's being published by No Man's Sky studio Hello Games. Co-op horror has become a massive genre with hits like Lethal Company and Phasmophobia, but this looks like a light-hearted horror comedy, which suits me just fine—and we already know Ghost Town Games are masters of co-op chaos (Overcooked went on to sell 50 million copies). We're excited to learn more about Stage Fright soon.
The Yakuza studio announced two games at the show, but I think we can all agree Project Century was the more exciting one. Set in 1915 Japan, the game is so early it doesn't have a proper name yet, but we can tell from the trailer that it's likely an action game, not a turn-based RPG. It also looks way more violent than we're used to from Ryu Ga Gotoku: A guy gets stabbed and a gallon of blood flies out of his body.
OK, we don't even have a name for this one, but those of us who still have dreams about playing Ico or Shadow of the Colossus are thoroughly into the enigmatic mech head launch here. This is one of the games Epic is funding and publishing—led by Fumito Ueda—the deal was announced in 2020, so it's been in the works for over four years now.
After years of working on updates to its tundra survival game, Hinterland Studio is finally tackling a sequel. The Long Dark 2: Blackfrost is coming to early access in 2026 and this time it's going co-op, which is exciting to hear. The original adventure through the quiet apocalypse was full of tense moments of survival battling wolves and boiling drinkable water long after dark. The sequel is expanding on the original with things like urban environments and customizable survivors.
Naughty Dog is coming back with a whole new world it's been secretly working on for the last four years. The studio says that the sci-fi adventure will have its "deepest gameplay" yet and continue its storytelling ambitions with an emotional narrative. So far we know it stars a bounty hunter named Jordan stranded on a distant planet with little communication and hoping to escape its orbit.
Past all those major announcements, there was a lot more that came out of The Game Awards this year:
