NOTE: I was on a work trip this weekend, so I didn’t get around to posting these notes about Opening Night Live when I wanted unfortunately.
Gamescom 2019 kicked off with the Geoff Keighley and The Game Awards team-produced “Opening Night Live,” which kicked off the event with two hours of announcements, surprises, and Geoff’s crush on Hideo Kojima. My five big things? A sequel to one of my favorite indie titles, a self-published entry, a Civ-like historical strategy game, a tactical, sci-fi inspired game, and a game created in the vein of others like Her Story.
Erica
To me, this was my biggest “Oooooh that looks interesting…”
I did some research about Flavourworks, the developer of Erica, after the conference. The studio was founded in 2015, and their vision was straight to the point. They wanted to make a studio worthy of existing in the current industry landscape. And how would they do that? Their goal is “to create the most interactive video-based game experiences in history.”
(And apparently, Erica was also at Paris Games Week of 2017, but I wrote in an earlier blog about how everything that wasn’t The Last of Us, Death Stranding, and Horizon: Zero Dawn was basically ignored.)
They seemingly have stayed true to their vision with the release of Erica, a live action, cinematic thriller. In the game, you play as the titular Erica, who’s embroiled in a murder mystery that’s connected to her family and her childhood. Not everyone in her life is telling her the truth as she delves into the mystery, and it’s your job as the player to figure out what’s true and what’s bull to figure out the real story. This was a perfect game to stealth drop at Opening Night Live.
They said you can use the touchpad on the Dualshock 4 to play the game, or, through an app that you can download for your phone or tablet. (Think PlayLink.) Like a Telltale game though, you won’t have forever to decide what decisions to make.
There’s several endings from the sounds of it; as your choices and actions shape how Erica reacts and the situations she’s put in. At the end of the trailer, Sony announced that the game was available now, for $9.99.
The Cycle
The first game I played from Yager was Spec Ops: The Line. And it’s great. Apocalypse Now The Game? You can say that again.
After Spec Ops: The Line, the studio took an unfortunate detour to work with Deep Silver on Dead Island 2, and, after putting three years into development of the zombie game, were kicked to the curb and Silver cut ties with them in 2015. Now, the studio is taking the self-publishing route (who could blame them?) with their new game, The Cycle.
Yager is calling The Cycle a competitive quest shooter, meaning PvEvP (Player vs. Enemy vs. Player). The PvE aspect being the player versus the planet and its unfriendly alien population, but all the while you’ll also have the player versus player competition for resources.
The game features questing; you can join a faction at the beginning of a match and fufill their objectives to get rewards, customization; you can unlock and use a number of different weapons and abilities, pacting; you may not want to straight up kill another prospector right away and use them to help you finish contracts, and crafting; rewards you get can be used to craft and upgrade your gear.
The game is available right now in Early Access on the Epic Games store. Right now, you can give it a whirl for free!
Little Nightmares 2
If there was any game I expected to see a sequel of at Opening Night Live, this wasn’t it. However, I jumped off my couch with excitement when I saw it was coming. It looks just as creepy as the first Little Nightmares, and I’m glad they’re not changing that formula at least.
And Six is back! In the first game, it was focused entirely on Six as she tried to make her way out of The Maw, but in this game, she gets a friend in the form of a new character named Mono. According to the game’s Senior Narrative Designer Dave Mervik, their destination in this game is a place called the Signal Tower.
They didn’t say much on stage in terms of giving away information, but the trailer did offer up some juicy tidbits. The game is going to seem to spend a good chunk of time outdoors, and the game will feature some combat. The game will be out sometime next year for the Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 4 and Switch!
Disintegration
When I was live-tweeting Opening Night Live, I tweeted that Disintegration looked like Destiny (the first), Halo, and Titanfall had a baby and it was set in a tactical-based game genre universe. The genre isn’t surprising when you remember the studio behind the game, V1 Interactive, is made up of several Halo/Destiny veterans.
Set in what they’re calling the “near future,” humankind is near extinction. However, a process called Integration has become common practice; putting a human brain inside a “robotic armature.”
Of course, this started as a good thing as it allowed humans to survive, but a group came up through the ranks that had absolutely no desire to go back to the way things were. A war happened, and now those who favored going back to the way things were are on the run.
The game will have a full single player campaign where you play as someone who’s on the run and three multiplayer modes. Sign ups are live on their web site right now for a multiplayer alpha!
Humankind
At first, I thought we were seeing a new Civ entry on the screen, then I remembered this was from Sega and NOT 2K games. If you’re a fan of the Civ series, you can see why the momentary confusion; the hexagonal tiles that are awash with various landscapes that you can turn into really whatever you want, units like settlers, warriors and the like.
I don’t have much to say about it YET, other than the fact I’m intriegued. They’ve said, in contrast to the Civ series, that you’ll be able to combine different aspects of different societies to build your civilization instead of picking one leader at the beginning and having your own tree built around them.
Worth a Mention: Gears 5
Rod Fergusson gifted the Opening Night Live audience with (finally) a trailer for the Gears 5 campaign. After only seeing a weird interlude with Kait Diaz at E3 before they launched into some of the multiplayer options Gears was going to have this time around, I was estatic. Beyond.
I’d never actually played Gears before Gears 4. (Yep, I’m a heathen. I also think that while Kojima is good at what he does, there’s plenty of people in the industry that do it better. #DoubleHeathen) But it was Kait Diaz, voiced by Laura Bailey, who finally caused me to pick it up.
Yes, I had to do some extensive reading about what the ending of 4 meant, but that made me all the more excited to see that come to a head in the trailer presented at Opening Night Life. (Not to mention it looks freaking gorgeous.) Hearing this was going to be available on Game Pass on day one was one of the many reasons I decided to make the jump and invest in it.
Your Turn!
So, fellow readers and gamers, what did you enjoy about Gamescom? (If your excited for Death Stranding, cool! Just please let me know what it’s actually about when it comes out, please? All I’ve got right now is ghost babies and metaphors.)