Last night saw the Peacock theatre in LA fill up with prominent game industry folk all eager to be blasted with trailers for four hours straight. We weren’t in the room for The Game Awards 2025, but half of the team stayed up to be to be assaulted with announcements in real-time via livestream, while the other half caught up on the barrage this morning.
Having now had some sleep, we decided to collect our thoughts on Geoff-fest 2025 and not at all use it as a way to point out who is looking the most tired.
Julian: What ho, Mark! You look horribly fresh-faced and well-rested. I’ve not braved a mirror but, going by my lack of sleep after covering last night’s Game Awards, I’d guess the face staring back would look like the approximation of a human visage made out of white playdough.
In terms of kicking things off, I’m keen to know, when you got up this morning and read our *plug* Everything Announced at The Game Awards 2025 post *plug*, what did you watch first? What jumped out at you from the show?
Mark: Howdy Julian, you look perfectly ravishing this fine Friday. When I rose from my slumber this morning and went straight to the RPS homepage RPSly to scroll through RPS’ everything announced article, the first thing that struck me was that Larian’s Divinity game was actually just called Divinity. Despite those trademarks suggesting the name would be a monolithic single word, I couldn’t fathom there not being one or two extra words tacked on the end. Magic beans or maybe evil goop given the trailer.
The Star Wars racer was the game that I immediately couldn’t wait to play, as I continue to fail to deviate from the stereotype I’ve established for my tastes, though I couldn’t help noticing that it seemed rather lonely in terms of big reveals near the end of the show. Was the latter something you live-watchers felt as you reacted in real-time, that the Geoffs maybe felt a bit frontloaded this year?
Julian: It’s an odd one. When you’re covering it live, the pace is fairly constant because even when there are lulls in the announcements you will still be writing up whatever it was that was just shown.
That said, after the announcement trailer for Highguard I was still expecting a big closing reveal. After all, throughout the show the camera had picked up big name developers in the audience, folk like Hideo Kojima and Todd Howard. While big Todd had given out an award for best game director, I wouldn’t have been shocked if he had also been there to show off an update on the Elder Scrolls 6, say.
I realise that’s possibly unfair to Highguard. Amid a lot of cinematic trailers where developers showed nothing tangible about their games, Wildlight revealed their hero shooter with a video that gave a good sense of what it will look like when we get to play it at the end of January. Which can’t be said for Warlock or even, sorry to say it, Larian, Divinity.
Focusing on that sense of absence, were there any games in particular that you think were missing? I know there’s one I was sure was going to be part of the showcase that didn’t turn up…
Mark: In previous years, there’s usually been a game I prepped a shell article for purely on vibes and then got left in the system like a snowman in spring. There was one summer showcase where I did what still VG247 newsman Sherif dubbed the ‘non-committal Kojima shell’ just because Geoff had previously had him on to announce a podcast, so I was sure he’d feature somehow. He did not.
Nothing of the sort this year, mainly because I had less time to fill with prep. The Elder Scrolls 6 might be it in terms of games I’d have been very intrigued to see, but I’ve sort of given up on trying to anticipate anything about when we’ll see that at this point, something I can’t imagine I’m alone in. Even some new CGI gubbins to replace those mountains everyone’s seen 20 million times would have done. Outside of that, CD Projekt ruled out any Witcher weeks in advance, which would’ve immediately stolen my attention like it did last year.
In terms of what did show and didn’t immediately blow me away, but I may well end up really into once I’ve played it, Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic seems like it could fit that bill. As a young whippersnapper about the treehouse, I’ve not given the first two KOTORs a go despite their legendary status, which meant the nostalgia wave didn’t immediately get me on board when Casey Hudson popped up.
What was it that you were expecting, but didn’t show? After all, Miss Piggy, Batman, and Lenny Kravitz all made cameos – who else do you need?
Julian: Obviously I was glad when I was able to cross them off my bingo card. You all said I was foolish to suggest both Kravitz and Miss Piggy would turn up but, then, I have been doing this for a long time and my contact book is extensive. No, the thing I was sure was going to be at the show was the Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag remake. It’s not only one of the worst-kept Ubisoft secrets (from a company that is notoriously leaky), but there was even a leak earlier this week which put it firmly in Game Awards announcement territory for me.
It’s good to see Hudson is working on Star Wars again. I’ve fond memories of spending an Easter weekend playing through Knights of the Old Republic and eating chocolate eggs, so I will try my darndest to recreate the experience with Fate of the Old Republic. That said, there wasn’t even a hint of a release date in the trailer and Arcanaut Studios only formed this year, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we were looking at 2028 or 2029 release. With the rapidly dropping cocoa content in Cadburys these days, Hudson better get a move on if I’m to have a hope of performing a Fate of the Old Republic egg playthrough.
On nearer term releases, I have been able to add a couple of games to my mental list of games I’m anticipating in 2026. Ace Combat 8 and The Free Shepherd are both on there. I love an arcade-leaning dogfighter, and the Ace Combat games wrap their silly action up in the veneer of a sim, so I walk away thinking that, yes, push comes to shove, perform a Cobra maneuver in a stalling SU-27 if need be. And The Free Shepherd lets you play a sheep dog herding sheep in a sci-fi world. I am easily pleased.
I dearly hope Total War: Warhammer 40,000 will be out before next Christmas, because it looks like it will play differently from all the other games in the series. What with the plethora of vehicles, ranged units, and, well, orbital strikes, but considering Creative Assembly’s official line is “We’re not sharing a release date at this time, but will have lots more to talk about later in 2026”, I would guess they’re aiming for 2027.
I’m guessing if you were jumping through the show in catchup form, did you pick up any sense of The Game Awards reflecting what’s been going on in the industry this year?
Mark: There were the usual few sections when some acknowledgement of the likes of encouraging young women to get into development given time amid the ads, which is better than nothing. I wouldn’t say I’m that convinced the Geoffs will ever be able to find a way to truly reckon with the often ugly reality of the industry in a fashion that doesn’t feel a bit forced or jarring. In the same way that corporate monoliths have learned to write layoff statements which talk around the fact people have lost their jobs, the goal of every Keighleyfest is to craft a trailer and plaudit-filled bubble in which products like to live.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t find other places and ways in which to confront the truth and fight for those affected by – for example – mass layoffs at billion dollar corps or the job market contracting to such an extent that the dance from gig to gig is ever harder to do without the music stopping. If Keoff and co, having seemingly given up on initiatives like the Future Class (at least for now), don’t think it’s their responsibility to go all out in that regard, the likes of unions and protest groups are already showing they’ll push to pick up the slack.
That’s not a perfect state of play, but I think it might be the best we can hope for at current. Unless someone manages to radicalise Miss Piggy by replacing the newspaper in her and Kermit’s loo with a copy of the Morning Star.
On the other hand, I did think the award giving out itself, despite being a tiny fraction of the show as usual, was nicely done. I’ve not played Clair Obscur because I’m saving all the Final Fantasies and FF-adjacent RPGs to play in the final years of my life so their nomenclature feels as apt and relatable as possible, but it was nice to see Sandfall get a night in the spotlight.
Julian: There’s a definite tension within this showcase where it’s both aiming to be a prestigious awards show wrapped in the language of this creative industry’s passion, and also a serious money maker for its organisers. As we learned this week, it can cost as much as $1 million to screen a three-minute trailer at The Game Awards. It’s not a charity event, it’s a marketing tool. Something Alice put far better than I can after the showcase back in 2023.
This isn’t unique to The Game Awards and we can always hope it will do better. I think the segment in which Felicia Day brought on representatives of Girls Make Games was a step in the right direction. In previous years those moments have felt rushed and squeezed between other trailers and awards, whereas this year it felt like it was actually given space. But, you could also have easily watched last night’s showcase and have no idea that outside were a group of developers protesting the industry’s mass layoffs.
There is also a limit to how much we should expect this of an awards show and, instead, we will need to look into ways that we can platform the voices we’re not hearing.
Let’s see what we can put in place in time for next year.