VGX Announcements – Game of Thrones, Borderlands, No Man’s Sky and more

The Spike Videogame Awards Show happened over the weekend. Who are Spike TV and how are their awards chosen? Well, according to the website the awards are voted on by an advisory council of “a group of some of the most well-respected video game journalists“.

I am not on that list, so frankly, I couldn’t care less about who won the awards. The show was rebranded as VGX this year, ditching its old Oscar-like format in favour of interviews with developers and more trailers than ever. Most people know about the show because loads of games companies use it to announce new games and show off fancy trailers. Here are the announcements made on Saturday night:

No Man’s Sky from Hello Games, creators of Joe Danger

Every planet in this universe is procedurally-generated and therefore unique. I really hope this falls more towards the Minecraft side of things where you explore a persistent and interesting universe, rather than the rogue-like Spelunky/Binding of Isaac sorts of game where you just try to last as long as possible. All we know of the game so far is what’s in that trailer, so it could be anything.

Telltale Games: Game of Thrones and Tales From The Borderlands

Telltale Games are working on two new story-driven adventures. One of them is Game of Thrones, revealed in a trailer so dull that I can’t even be bothered to embed it. You can go see it over here, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The other is a collaboration with Gearbox to create a Borderlands adventure game. Sounds bloody wonderful. I’ve never been a fan of the repetitive shooting and gear-churn that is the current Borderlands game but the world and the characters are interesting. Given Telltale’s recent track record (The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us) this should be a great story.

Dying Light Gameplay Demo

First-person zombie game in which you can climb walls.

And of course, there were plenty of trailers for games we already know about.

Titanfall’s Ogre and Stryder Classes

EA revealed the Ogre titan suit Another big mech suit that kills stuff, yeah? This one has… no, I don’t know what it has that the other suits don’t. 30% increased rigidity, oo-er.

They also announced the Stryder. I think this one is faster than the others?

Thief Trailer

Square Enix released this trailer of dramatic music in which Garret mopes about a city of a thousand men and two one woman.

Destiny Gameplay

Destiny has been delayed until September next year. Here’s a video filled with humanoids looking dramatic against a backdrop of buildings far too large for them. Skip to the middle and you see some actual gameplay, taking the form of said humanoids shooting energy weapons at each other. Woo, video games!

The Witcher 3 Trailer

CD Projekt RED showed a new trailer from The Witcher 3 which revealed… hang on, this all looks very familiar.

There are some guys silhouetted against a burning village. Here’s Geralt on a horse because Open World, and here’s a swordy fight scene.

This trailer is more about the musical direction of The Witcher 3, which will feature traditional slavic instruments. From a press release I received today:

“Portions of the music in the game will focus on the raw emotion of traditional slavic instruments and songs to convey the brutality and violence of the world. To achieve this goal the audio team has been recording using traditional and historic instruments with amazing bands like “Percival”, who are masters in this area, to achieve a truly authentic and powerful sound.”

An Engine Showcase for Tom Clancy’s The Division

“Never before has a video game reached this level of detail,” the voice-over lady says at the start of a trailer filled with slow-panning pre-rendered scenes. It’s very pretty but this is not the game so I don’t really care. You might, so here it is.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

Ranged magic is farts.

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

Last year’s Tomb Raider is coming to PS4 and Xbox One in 1080p, much like it was on the PC version. Now you, too can marvel at the wonderful hair of TressFX (which I still can’t say without giggling that this is an actual thing) along with fancy new lighting, better textures and enhanced “in-game characters, enemies and destructibility for added depth and realism.”

Here’s a trailer that doesn’t tell you why it’s called The Definitive Edition but instead, has lots of quotes saying what a great game Tomb Raider is, none of them from my review. (It’s a good game and it’s a long way from the Tomb Raider of old.)

It combines all the DLC currently available for the game and will be out on 31st January 2014.

Quantum Break

Remedy’s creative director Sam Lake talks over the same in-game footage we’ve been seeing since May and doesn’t explain anything at all about the live-action portions of the story. Both Jack and Beth are playable characters.