As I was instinctively writing down a list of games for this piece, I started noticing that the majority of top entries were yet to have a firm release window announced.
That’s usually the result of a generation ending, and studios thinking more strategically:
- Is our game ready to comfortably release BEFORE next generation arrives, when there is a combination of install-base and people who haven’t started selling their console to buy the new one?
- If 1 is false, is it a good idea for our game to be CROSS-GEN, and, thus, maximize install-base of the old console and also ride the wave of early adopters, while losing some of the luster of marketing it as “so advanced that old tech can’t handle it”?
- If 1 and 2 are false, does our game have the quality to be exclusively NEXT-GEN and deal with both lower install-base and more scrutiny?
That’s why the majority of the most anticipated games for 2019 by many people will be released before March ends. And if you don’t believe me that the new consoles will likely come between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020, look at Sony.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), videogaming’s biggest event for more than 20 years, will not have Sony Interactive Entertainment (the show’s original sponsor, and the current market leader) attend 2019’s event.
Throughout the PlayStation 4’s reign, SIE’s Worldwide Studios have, rightfully, earned the status of premium content producers (like HBO), and if you compare Sony’s 2013 E3 (the year the PS4 launched) with their showings in the last two years, the vision and positioning for the brand is completely different.
Nowadays, PlayStation, despite being the place where the majority of people play multiplatform games, is the house of exclusive high-budget singleplayer narrative-driven games. And, as such, Sony’s pitch is all about selling you those moments.
So, by not having had a PlayStation Experience in December 2018 and not going to E3 in June 2019, it is easy to assume that the company is saving their return to the spotlight for when they have more of those exclusives to show and say: You can only play these on the PlayStation 5.
In this context, I propose a slightly less rigid “Anticipated” list, where I will have games that already have a release date for 2019, games that have meaty trailers, but will likely release in 2020, and games that have yet to be announced, but I would be shocked if they aren’t already in development (with probable release in 2021-2022). The * will be a prediction.
Still, I will try to not be too esoteric. I would love to say “Yoko Taro’s next game”, but I don’t have any idea what that crazy crazy man is doing.
Let’s go 🙂 .
GAMES ALREADY RELEASED OR ABOUT TO, THAT HAPPEN TO BE JAPANESE-DEVELOPED WITH VEHICLES, WAR, AND SELF-SERIOUS STORY
ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN (January 18)
LEFT ALIVE (March 5)
If Ace Combat was like Left Alive, structurally, it would be one of the best games ever made. But, like a racing game, you can only pilot the planes.
I’m not saying that the decision of “let’s do one thing right, instead of doing two poorly” is less noble. Look at Left Alive. It seems like it’s not doing any of its many options particularly great.
However, when you show me those visuals in Ace Combat, plus the tight controls the series has accustomed us to, AND you could also have a polished adventure outside of the cockpit, then you would have an All-Time Great.
TOTAL UNKNOWNS WITH GREAT PEDIGREE BEHIND THE PROJECT
BABYLON’S FALL (October*)
STAR WARS JEDI: FALLEN ORDER (November*)
Ignorance is bliss.
Yet, despite only having that concept trailer as reference for both games (yeah, I know Star Wars doesn’t need one), the fact that I know that PlatinumGames and Square Enix are collaborating again like they did recently to great success in NieR:Automata, and that Respawn Entertainment has the director of God of War 3 (Stig Asmussen) working on an action-adventure around a surviving padawan set shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith, all that portfolio captures my imagination with a simple pitch.
I should know better, but this type of list is the place for dreaming 🙂 .
Oh, I’m predicting October for one because Platinum releases a lot of games in that month, and they have a very steady development pipeline, and predicting November for Star Wars because it has to release before the movie.
DURING THE SUMMER, A SAFE BET TO HEDGE A BIG RISK
SHENMUE III (August 27)
CRASH TEAM RACING NITRO-FUELED (June 21)
Like I was saying, this is a safe space for dreams. And Shenmue III actually being a good videogame is in that ballpark.
I am slightly more optimistic than I was last year not only because they are confident enough to give it a release date, with a comfortable margin for optimization, but also because the game seems expansive from the revealed install-size and some developer commentaries in project updates to Kickstarter backers like me.
They being bullish means they nailed the core, right? RIGHT?!
If the answer is no, Crash Bandicoot will be there to put a smile on my face.
THE FIGHTING GAME ITCH
SAMURAI SHODOWN (July-August*)
MORTAL KOMBAT 11 (April 23)
Samurai seem like a no-brainer for a good fighting game. So, how come the last enjoyable one, for me, was Kengo, released in 2001?
My two favorite samurai fighting games are Bushido Blade and The Last Blade, and, as such, I should be happy that the studio behind Last Blade (SNK) is working on a samurai fighter again.
Ironically, I never cared much for Samurai Shodown. The moves took too long to come out for what those characters were portraying and they resisted too much damage from weapons. It was Street Fighter with swords and that broke the illusion immediately.
This new entry does seem like Street Fighter IV with swords. But, if the movement is faster like it looks, it’s a step in the right direction. It might scratch the itch 😉 .
Who certainly isn’t just taking steps is NetherRealm Studios.
After disappointing me a bit with Mortal Kombat X, they rekindled their flame of innovative thinking for the genre in Injustice 2, like they had trailblazed with MK9 and Injustice 1.
And Mortal Kombat 11 is shaping up to be another jump forward. The animations look much better, the faces, color and lighting have a real cinematic quality to them, the camera is smartly much closer to the action, and the blows are even more corporeal.
The combination of all those elements makes you react to some attacks the same way you express yourself after a monumental poster in an NBA dunk.
CAN THESE DEVELOPERS BE UP TO PAR WITH MODERN OPEN-WORLD DESIGN?
HORIZON ZERO DAWN 2 (February-April 2021*, PlayStation 5 Exclusive)
DEATH STRANDING (September 2020*, PS4-PS5 Cross-gen)
The last two games of these developers did not impress me as much as they did to many people.
I found Horizon Zero Dawn to be a good first attempt at realizing a populated open-world with a naturally idiosyncratic dynamism, but it lacked in the way of using the game part to enhance the immersion through interactivity and not break the illusion due to an archaic playground framework.
Interestingly, Phantom Pain’s open-world design is so bland that its approach to gameplay did not bother me at all because I internalized the sand box being offered and just played around with my toys.
The first Horizon was so successful and Guerrilla Games invested so much creating this new IP, with its lore, cities, characters and robots with their own behavioral routines, that we are getting a sequel. I’m predicting the first months of 2021 for its release because the first game came out on February 2017 and they were in full production during 2014, 15 and 16.
One developer that is harder to predict is Hideo Kojima. And that’s what makes him a fascinating artist.
Even if Death Stranding is being made in the same engine as Horizon 2, and Kojima Productions became fully operational in 2016, I look at that trailer and Hideo’s track record, and I can’t even begin to formulate an informed opinion on its scope and development pipeline. I guess the end of 2020 because Kojima himself said the game would release in 2019 and Sony will want their new console to continue the trend of special exclusives.
A CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE
TITANFALL 3 (March 2020*)
THE OUTER WORLDS (2019)
METRO EXODUS (February 15)
DOOM ETERNAL (May*)
IN THE VALLEY OF GODS (2020*)
I usually prefer the resonance you get from the 3rd person perspective, but sometimes I like to see what developers are doing to counter how difficult it is to get attached to a character played from a 1st person POV.
To lead this pack of 5, Respawn Entertainment once again. When they were (at) Infinity Ward (Activision), they were responsible for the two best First Person Shooters of the previous generation: Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2. And, as a new studio, they already positioned their new IP, Titanfall, as another memorable entry in the genre. Titanfall 2 is the best FPS I played this generation and I can’t wait to see how they improve on the innovative concepts they introduced in number 2.
The rumors are that Titanfall 3 will be ready to release by the end of this year because Respawn has different teams working on different projects simultaneously. But, I think the game will be ‘delayed’ to March 2020, since Electronic Arts’ priority is probably Respawn’s other game (Star Wars) and they won’t make the same mistake they did when Titanfall 2 released, with cannibalized sales by another EA game (Battlefield 1) launching mere weeks after. Titanfall 1 was released in March back in 2014 and it was very successful.
Despite being a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls franchise, I don’t care much for Fallout. Still, I can sympathize with its fans and their disappointment in recent years, because those last entries looked even more uninteresting than usual.
So, when The Outer Worlds was announced, I thought “Here you go, someone is capitalizing on Bethesda’s archaic hubris and doing so right by that formula, that even I am curious about it”.
Conceptually, I like what the Metro games are proposing – a dense atmosphere filled with lore, human condition and environmental storytelling done with care –, but it always seemed like an art installation in the wrong museum. The game playing and interactivity contrasted a bit with the exquisite attention to detail of the different scenarios.
Now, in Metro Exodus it finally looks like the gameplay mechanics and interactive systems caught up with the writers and level designers.
DOOM Eternal is releasing this May, like in 2016, because the Marine has unfinished business to attend to. From the looks of it, id Software is doubling down on the traversal and movement options that made the last game so mesmerizing, and I bet this new entry will lend itself even more to those player-controlled chains of events that enhance the mythos around the Doom marine.
And it wouldn’t be a proper First Person section without Valve. Not directly, but the company that runs Steam did acquire Campo Santo, the studio working on In The Valley of Gods. I don’t know what is the role of Valve in the project; still, it is good to see that historic company having its name again associated with story-driven single-player games.
In The Valley of Gods was slated for a 2019 release before the Valve acquisition. One could argue that more production resources could expedite the development process, but I am making a semi-calculated bet by proposing a delay to 2020. I think Valve might be helping Campo Santo realizing their more ambitious ideas and the game could end up turning into a bigger endeavor than initially planned.
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO GROUP THESE, BUT I DO KNOW THEY ARE NEAR THE TOP
DEVIL MAY CRY 5 (March 8)
JUDGEMENT (September*)
THE PATHLESS (August*)
CONTROL (September*)
Devil May Cry is probably the coolest franchise we have in gaming. And that’s precisely why I was disappointed with DMC 4. It was so repetitive and insufferable.
More than 10 years have passed. In between 4 and 5, we got DmC, which, despite its corniness, put the franchise back on its track. However, DMC is not about being in a track, it’s about going confidently off-road and reveling in the absurdity.
And despite Devil May Cry 5’s development team being the same of DMC 4, it looks like the self-conscious absurd is back. DMC4’s trailers always portrayed what the game ended up being, a lame use of the fantastical. In DMC 5, Dante uses his motorcycle as a duel-wielding melee weapon. Yup.
The PlayStation 4 has been the haven for the reacquaintance to older franchises that weren’t that successful in their past foray into the market. One of the biggest examples of this are the Yakuza games. Sega restarted this gen with the launch of a new entry – Yakuza 0 – designed from the ground-up to modern audiences. Then, with that as a design reference, the Ryū ga Gotoku studio remastered/remade older entries, always with gradual modernizations, to a point when they were even working on an entire new engine: the Dragon engine.
Now, with gamers back on board with their work, the studio is about to launch a new IP: Judgement. I am slightly more interested in this than playing another Yakuza game, because you get to see that same context you know and like, but from the perspective of the law.
I expect it to release in September, and not in August (like they usually prefer), due to this being the first game they are going to totally localize in the English language. (Of course I’m going to play it in Japanese).
And if I told you that ex-developers of the game Journey are going to follow-up their game Abzû (good but too similar with Journey, yet in some ways better), with a project that clearly is trying to evolve the formula with what seems to be more complex gameplay mechanics?
Can’t wait for The Pathless, and August seems like the perfect slot for it (Abzû also released in that month).
Speaking of smaller studios, I’m always impressed with the detail and ambition realized in Remedy Entertainment’s games. The Finnish studio, composed of around 140 developers, is responsible for robust franchises like Max Payne and Alan Wake, and is positioning itself for another hit, with this game CONTROL. The signature is there, and it looks like they are experimenting again with new gameplay mechanics.
I bet they are targeting the fall season, but trying to avoid the big blockbusters of October and November.
YEAR OF THE SAMURAI (FROM THE MOMENT SEKIRO IS RELEASED)
GHOST OF TSUSHIMA (March 2020*, PS4-PS5 Cross-gen)
SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE (March 22)
NIOH 2 (February 2020*)
If you know me personally, or have been following this site for a while, it might have already become clear that I am really interested in Japanese culture, and that the samurai mythos is a cultural touchstone I’m always trying to learn more about.
So, when videogames simulate those times, I approach them with as much enthusiasm as exigency. The prospect of being transported to that context and being immersed in it through interactivity is so emotionally investing for me that I have to be rigorously demanding.
That being said, I have been making an effort to not be too much giddy about the scenario where we are probably getting 3 amazing samurai games in the span of a year.
Not counting the remaster of one of my favorite games of all-time – Onimusha Warlords –, that already released on the 15th of January, we are opening this Year of the Samurai on March 22, with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, not only what looks like an engaging take on that cultural underpinning through action, but from whom it comes: Hidetaka Miyazaki’s next game.
After having experienced his artistic vision in the medieval setting of Dark Souls and the Victorian of Bloodborne, I have been clamoring for this Japanese master to show us how he would approach the past of his own country. Particularly because FromSoftware, the studio he is now president of, have positioned themselves as one of the bests at designing scenarios filled with history, and also really immaculate action encounters with deep gameplay and tremendously precise controls – the ideal résumé to tackle the samurai mythology.
The next entry in the Year of the Samurai is Nioh 2, a franchise that, curiously, showed us what Miyazaki’s take on feudal japan could be, since Nioh was heavily inspired on Dark Souls.
I really like Nioh. In some ways, it has more appealing design choices than Souls. Still, it doesn’t have the same kind of atmosphere that Miyazaki’s games have, an essential ingredient to fully capture the density of bushido japan.
The first game released in February 2017, and since I am expecting a simple refinement of a formula that worked really well, I predict the release of the sequel for 3 years later.
Capping of this dream year of mine, I am making an educated guess that Ghost of Tsushima is releasing in March of 2020.
This is my most anticipated of the 3, and, interestingly, is the only one isn’t developed by a Japanese studio.
Despite having never played a game from Sucker Punch Productions, I like that the aesthetic they chose for this project is inspired, more than in history, by the framing witnessed in Akira Kurosawa’s filmmaking.
Additionally, the fact that Sucker Punch is evolving from Sly Cooper, to inFAMOUS and now to this, is the same type of trustworthy pathway that Naughty Dog went trough: Crash, Jak, Uncharted and then the transcendent work: The Last of Us.
I think there is a chance this is a PlayStation 5 launch title, if Sony follows Nintendo footsteps and releases its console in March, in order to build up momentum to Black Friday and Christmas, instead of releasing in November 2020 and people being left empty-handed due to stocks’ constraints.
PLAYSTATION’S PRESTIGE EXCLUSIVES COMING FROM THE CALIFORNIA STUDIOS
GOD OF WAR 2 (Q4 2021-Q1 2022*, PlayStation 5 Exclusive)
THE LAST OF US PART II (June 2020*, PS4-PS5 Cross-gen)
I didn’t own a PlayStation 3 last generation. And the only moment when I felt like I was missing out was in 2013, the year that The Last of Us released, but also the same year when, 5 months later, the PlayStation 4 launched.
When I bought my PS4 the next year, The Last of Us remastered hadn’t yet been announced, but, to an extent, I jumped from Xbox to Playstation for The Last of Us, or better, for what that title represented. I had never cared for Uncharted and wasn’t too keen on Sony’s overall angle for their exclusives.
The Last of Us marked a shift in Sony’s direction. The company finally had an identity. It is strange to think that the most successful videogame company of all-time had gained such notoriety without a clear pitch. Nintendo’s success is easy to understand. Sony’s? Up until The Last of Us is a marketing case-study.
Now, Sony has a very comprehensible proposition: we are the HBO of videogaming. Exclusive, prestige and high-production experiences that balance entertainment with adult themes.
Like I said, I only played TLoU more than one year after its initial release, but I knew that game was special from day one. And I think there is a chance that story repeats itself. I bet The Last of Us Part II will release in June 2020 and, by being playable on PS4 and PS5, will cement Sony’s image as the producer of art that transcends its medium.
An example of the influence that TLoU had on the artistic vision that Sony now funds is God of War. Look at God of War (2018) and God of War III (2010). This is a franchise that, historically, has had a lot of blood and sex depicted in it; however, 2018’s entry has so much nuance and narrative prowess that makes those previous entries look like toys for children.
And don’t worry; God of War didn’t turn into TLoU in Norse mythology. In some ways it’s better than that reference. For example, God of War is the best experience I ever had in terms of caring for what happens to the future of a cast of characters.
This game made the decision of what next-generation console to buy very easy. I want a PlayStation 5 because I need to know what will happen with these fictional people; in this world permeated with lore and mysteries.
CYBERPUNK 2077
MAY 2020*, PS4-PS5 CROSS-GEN
Look at this ^^^
I know cyberpunk is trendy nowadays, because people feel so smart by ascertaining that machines and tech corporations will take over humanity. It seems like humans needed internet media, geopositioning and digital algorithms to question the essence of humanity. Cyberpunk made philosophy and marxism stylish, huh?
No, I’m not even a bit worried that CD Projekt Red, the team that gave us the amazing The Witcher trilogy of games, is chasing a fad.
Cyberpunk 2077 looks so rich with detail and care that I would dare to say that their take on the formula will be meaningfully revolutionary.
And I love that they are transitioning from a 3rd person perspective in a medieval setting to a 1st person POV in a future, tech-ridden world. That boldness alone sells me on it.
Opinion Seed 