I was watching The Game Awards with Geoff Keighley last night and was keenly interested to see how Keighley would address the Blizzard Activision bullshit seeing as asshole Bobby Kotich is on–wait. He’s CEO Bobby Kotich and the president is Rob Kostich. Until this very moment, I thought they were the same person. Anyway, it’s the latter who is on the board for The Game Awards and the former who is a accused of being a harasser and all around asshole. At any rate, people were interested in seeing how Keighley would handle the situation as he was mealy-mouth about it before the show.
Sadly, he was just as mealy-mouthed during the show, saying we all had to do our part to battle harassment in the industry, including online. He didn’t name any names and the way he phrased it sounded as if he was more concerned about online bullying (which is bad, don’t get me wrong) than systemic harassment and abuse in the industry itself. If you didn’t already know about the allegations against Blizzard Activision, you certainly wouldn’t have learned about it from Keighley. Many gamers would argue that The Game Awards was no place to get into the details because it’s about celebrating games, but there can be no true celebration with that much egregious abuse. It’s the big giant elephant in the room and needs to be address. Geoff Keighley has arguably the biggest platform in games right now. For him to turn it into ‘everyone needs to do their part’ is disappointing, but predictable. I would have been shocked (in a good way) if he had called out Activision Blizzard specifically, but I’m not surprised he didn’t.
Before that, there was the pre-show. The first trailer shown was my second-favorite of the night. It was for Tunic by Andrew Shouldice, a Zelda-like soulslike with a fox as the main protagonist. Several months ago, other-Ian at Eurogamer played the demo and I was immediately charmed. I cannot wait to play this game and it was a strong start to the pre-game. Er, pre-show. Tunic is coming out on March 16, 2022. That’s only a few weeks after Elden Ring. Oh dear. That’s not good because Elden Ring is going to consume my life for several months.
I am so incredibly charmed by Tunic. It’s supposed to be really hard and other-Ian did have difficulty with it. The dev came into the stream to give him vague hints, which was really cool. The fox is so cute and everything about it is just wonderful.
Then, there was a bunch of nonsense that I didn’t care about. I felt a pang of sadness at the Tiny Tina trailer. Why? Because I loved the first two Borderlands when I played them, but that was ten years ago or more. I and the world have moved on, but Borderlands hasn’t. I didn’t like the prequel and HATED the third game because not only was the humor tired and stale, it was actually offensive to me what they did to Lilith.
Let’s move on before I get too enraged.
The show was packed with world premieres and awards, but it still felt padded to me. The scripted shticks were cringe-worthy and it dragged the fuck on. It’s also because I didn’t care about most of the games. I mean, that’s mostly because I don’t like most pop culture in general. I was only watching because I was hoping for Demon’s Souls to come to PC. Or Bloodborne, but more the former than the latter.
Another game that caught my interest was Steelrising by Spiders. It’s an action game set in the French revolution with robots and it just looks really cool. Apparently, it’s considered a soulslike? At least one video has called it that. It’s sleek and stylish and I like the looks of it even though I have no idea what it’s actually about. I just found a gameplay trailer from July and it looks dope. Mechanical fans? Hell to the yes! I am all over this!
I have to admit that my attention wandered while I was watching the show. Honestly, they could have cut out all the faff and it still would have been too long. I appreciate that Keighley wants to show off all the new games, but maybe we didn’t need to see that many? I dunno. I’m not the target audience, obviously.
Here’s another thing. I’m glad that games are starting to have the same cache as other forms of media, but that means that it’s becoming as bland and boring as other media, too. There are no real surprises or truly small games as nominees, let alone winners. That’s the same with all the other media award shows. It’s not so much as to the true talent but as to what is most known. It’s never going to be the artsy stuff–it’s going to be the mainstream content that appeals to the most people.
I admit. I’m a hard person to please. So I try to keep my mouth shut because it’s not fun to hear someone naysay everything other people like. Back to the show. Somewhere near the end of the show, Pot Friend from Elden Ring came out and presented Keighley with a card that said something like, “Here’s a World Premiere of Elden Ring. Enjoy.”
I perked up instantly because I was not expecting that at all. A new Elden Ring trailer? YES PLEASE. This time, it was a story trailer about Queen Marika and something something really big adorable troll we will definitely have to battle and she was fighting, and the death of her child, a demi-god. What did it all mean? No idea! But it was cool as fuck and I was stoked to see it. I have posted it above and have watched it four times and counting. It doesn’t give me chills like the other ones have, but it’s still thrilling to watch. I’ll take whatever I can get about this game before it comes out in two-and-a-half months.
That was the most exciting part of the show for me. Which probably shows what a fake gamer I am. I mean, the of the three things that got me revved up, only one of them (Steelrising) was something new to me. But that’s me in general. I don’t get excited for much and when I do, I get really excited. Elden Ring is like my birthday and Christmas all rolled up in one if I actually cared about either of those.
It’s a weird place for me to be because I don’t get this hyped about, well, anything. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy things–I do. I just don’t get revved up about it. I’m a bit nervous about Elden Ring because I don’t usually get on with truly open world games. I get overwhelmed by all there is to do before getting bored with doing the same thing over and over. Plus, it’s difficult to tell a coherent story if the player can go wherever they want whenever they want.
I’ll play the hell out of it, of course. It’s FromSoft and it’s dark fantasy. What more could I ask for?