Hardwood timber Screenshot: CD Projekt RED / Kotaku
It’s that time of year when the video game industry gathers in Los Angeles to hear Geoff Keighley talk about what a good year it was, whether that’s actually true or not. But as we reflect on the last 12 months, we also get several trailers for games that are coming out in the future. If you weren’t able to catch the show and just want the highlights of what world premieres were there, here’s a rundown of every trailer and announcement made during The Game Awards 2024.
The pre-show began with a new Ninja Gaiden game. The series returns to its side-scrolling roots with Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, coming in summer 2025.
Next up is One Move Away, a “cozy” game that has you trying to fit a bunch of items into tight spaces as you move from one home to another over the course of several years. It’s launching in 2025.
Slay the Spire II’s first gameplay premiered at the pre-show. The deckbuilding roguelike’s early access period is set to begin in 2025.
Mint Rocket showed off Dave the Diver in the Jungle, a follow-up to last year’s surprise hit. The teaser trailer was short, but did confirm the game will come out in late 2025.
Deus Ex lead Warren Spector’s next project, Thick as Thieves, is up next. The first-person, parkour-based heist game is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Bandai Namco revealed a new Pac-Man game that makes the Secret Level episode based on the original arcade superstar make a lot more sense. The side-scrolling action game Shadow Labyrinth includes some Pac-Man iconography, but is a wholly different beast. It’s launching in 2025 on Switch, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Steel Paws is a new mobile game from OutRun creator and Shenmue lead Yu Suzuki. We didn’t see any in-game footage, but it did have an animated trailer announcing it will only be available through Netflix’s app.
Next we got a new look at the upcoming Lord of the Rings management sim Tales of the Shire. The footage is narrated by streamer CozyK, and showcases some of the cooking and home decoration mechanics. The game will launch on March 25.
Following up cozy with chaos is a cinematic trailer for Stalcraft X Operations, which will launch in 2025.
Up next is Midnight Murder Club, a game seemingly about making rich people kill each other for sport? It has a crossplay beta going on between PlayStation 5 and PC, and will enter early access in February.
Kyora is a multiplayer adventure game in which you and your friends go digging through mines and seemingly discover something frightening in the depths below. It’s coming to Steam early access.
Sifu developer Sloclap premiered its next game Rematch, a soccer game that has a similar visual style to the martial arts game the studio released in 2022. It definitely looks more arcade-y and stylish than your more traditional football games like FIFA.
Wrapping up the pre-show is Solasta II. The tactical RPG will enter early access in 2025, and has a demo coming “soon.”
The first game of the show proper was The Witcher IV. The game stars Ciri, Geralt’s adopted daughter. CD Projekt Red revealed the game with a cinematic trailer showing Ciri save a woman from some horrible beast, only to send her home to a monster of a different kind.
Damn, they’re really frontloading the show this year. Next up is Elden Ring Nightreign. It’s a co-op game set in the Elden Ring universe and is coming in 2025. There are some notable traversal elements like parkour and flight that make it look more fast-paced and fluid than some of the studio’s past work.
To bring us all back down to earth, we got an announcement that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is coming to PC on January 23, just under a year after the game first launched on PlayStation 5.
After a trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a game that is already out, we got a cinematic trailer for the cat lovers in the house. Catly is a Steam, Switch, and mobile game that features cats, and that’s about all I can tell you from that trailer. This was immediately followed by a trailer for Path of Exile II. I guess some of the ads are more overt than others.
Nevermind, there’s still cool things happening. Next is a new game from genDESIGN, led by Fumito Ueda, the lead behind Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. It seems like he’s going the science fiction route this time. It doesn’t have a title yet. Alright, cool. I will be seated.
Obsidian showed up with a very cheeky, action-packed trailer for The Outer Worlds 2. The sequel will launch in 2025 and will have “everything that should have been in the first game.” Including “more action, more weapons, and more…graphics?”
Hazelight’s Josef Fares took the stage and said some things that would definitely have been bleeped out on live television in talking up the studio’s newest game, Split Fiction. Like previous releases from the studio, it’s a cooperative game, but its vibe is much different from It Takes Two, and it takes place in a virtual reality split between both a fantasy and science fiction world. It seems to follow the gameplay structure of It Takes Two, however, with each section centering a different gameplay mechanic. Like previous Hazelight games, you’ll only have to buy the game once to play it with a friend. It launches on March 6.
Screenshot: The Game Awards / Kotaku
Keighley surprisingly had an entire segment dedicated to addressing the widespread plague of video game industry layoffs in the past year. He also took the time to spotlight Amir Satvat, who gave a tearful speech discussing the state of the industry and his efforts to help people find work after losing their jobs over the past few years.
All right, well, that was heartwarming. Time to get back to blowing shit up. Next was Steel Hunters, a mech combat game which showed off some pretty sick gameplay. Its PC beta test is available now.
Following all that mayhem was a drastic shift in tone with Blackfrost: The Long Dark II. The melancholy trailer included an announcement that the game will launch in early access next year.
One of the announcements we knew about coming in was the first gameplay reveal for Borderlands 4. It started with a cinematic trailer and I thought they might be ditching the cel-shaded style of previous games, but when the actual gameplay started it looked much more like a Borderlands game. It’s gotta be better than the movie, am I right?
Next up was a new trailer for Splitgate 2, which specifically focused on a new three-player team mode coming to the shooter when it launches next year.
With apologies to the Tifa stans, Final Fantasy XVI’s Clive Rosfield is coming to Tekken 8. A 72-hour early access period to play the character begins on December 16.
Next was a trailer for Splitgate 2, which is coming in 2025.
After an ad break and a musical performance, Yakuza developer RGG Studio revealed that a new Virtua Fighter is in the works, and more information will be coming during a stream on December 13 at midnight eastern time. So…in a few hours.
Next up is Project Century, a new game from RGG Studio set in 1915 Japan. We don’t know much about it yet, but it seems to bring in some of the beat-em-up antics of the Yakuza series.
After Hideo Kojima presented the award for best game direction to Astro Bot, we got a cinematic trailer for the new Turok game called Turok Origins. This was followed by a brief bit of gameplay showing off the shooting mechanics and dinosaur fights.
Helldivers 2 got a new update called Omens of Tyranny, which shadow-dropped during the show.
Next was a trailer for Warframe’s upcoming 1999 expansion, which launches tomorrow.
I’m sorry, I’ll get to what was shown in a second. But does Palworld, a game that’s officially in legal trouble for copying Pokémon, seriously have what looks almost exactly like the Psychos from Borderlands running around the game, too? Anyway, it’s getting a new expansion called Feybreak on December 23.
We also got a new trailer for Wuthering Waves, though there was a brief question of whether or not it was for that game or Genshin Impact in the Kotaku Slack.
Capcom was up next with a reveal of a new Onimusha game called Way of the Sword. There wasn’t any gameplay, but it had a pretty dope cinematic trailer. The game will launch on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox Series X/S in 2026.
The Russo Brothers made an appearance to reveal a bloody cinematic trailer for The First Berserker: Khazan. The game is set to launch on March 27.
Arad, an open-world action RPG set in the Dungeon & Fighter universe, was revealed with a cinematic trailer of pretty anime characters going on adventures, fighting monsters, and doing magic…all set to an Atomic Tom song, for some reason.
Next up we have a new look at Dying Light: The Beast, the upcoming entry in the open-world zombie series from Techland. Back is the series’ building-spanning parkour, as well as a whole lot of ways to violently kill zombies. The game is coming out in summer 2025.
Netflix showed up briefly to tease Squid Game Unleashed, a new game launching on December 17 based on the streaming service’s smash hit whose second season is coming soon.
Ghost Town Games, the developer behind Overcooked, revealed a new game called Stage Fright with a teaser trailer that ended up being a fourth-wall-breaking bit that extended into The Game Awards’ venue. It’s a cooperative game made in collaboration with No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games.
The new Game of Thrones RPG Kingsroad made an appearance at The Game Awards, and it includes the likenesses of several characters from HBO’s adaptation. The game is set to launch in 2025.
After another ad break (which included a look at The Last of Us Part II Remastered, coming to PC on April 3), we got a new look at heist game Den of Wolves. The game will enter early access at some point, but the window they gave in the trailer was just “202…”
Hoyoverse showed up with a new trailer for Zenless Zone Zero’s new character Astra. The team also showed a new trailer for Honkai Star Rail’s The Eternal Land update.
Keighley said “we are far from done” before bombarding us with a bunch of ads. But then we got a cool little tease of Shadow the Hedgehog in a car in a new entry of Sonic Racing called CrossWorlds. He seems to be driving into some kind of portal, which makes me wonder if this is going to be some kind of crossover game.
Another game we knew we’d see during the show was Mafia: The Old Country. We saw a bit of the crime drama’s cinematics, but not much in the way of gameplay. The game will launch in the summer of 2025.
Aaron Paul and Laura Bailey took to the stage for an extremely awkward interaction as they introduced Dispatch, an upcoming superhero management adventure game by ex-Telltale developers. It will launch in 2025.
The penultimate big announcement of the night was a surprise. Capcom announced a new sequel to Okami, its beloved 2006 Zelda-like. Hideki Kamiya is returning to direct, but it sounds like the game isn’t even in production yet, so we probably won’t see that for a few years.
The final announcement of the show was a new science fiction game from Naughty Dog, the developers of The Last of Us. After over a decade of alternating between Uncharted and The Last of Us, the studio is finally working on something new called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. The game is being directed by Neil Druckmann, stars The Last of Us show actor Tati Gabrielle, and will feature a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.