TGA 2014: NEW STARFOX, THE WILD HUNT, NO MAN’S SKY

The first big announcement for the night came from Shigeru Miyamoto who announced that to celebrate the 30th anniversary they are going to release Mario Maker. It looks to be a level making game that can stand on it’s own. You can choose different styles of Mario Brothers from one to at least three. Watching them put levels together the map tools look easy but fairly powerful at the same time. They sampled some different styles of maps one of which even made Super Mario Brothers into a bullet hell type game.

Next up it was Kojima with a sneak peek at the next game in the Metal Gear series, Metal Gear Online. It starts off with a shot of team changing their load out or customization, this team then attempts to infiltrate an enemy base to recover a disk. The video shows a wide array of interesting items and weapons, there’s stuff like stealth suits and tranquilizer guns but then there is also some out-there stuff like a cute pet dog toy that distracts an enemy with their cuteness. The video swapped from what looked like game play footage to something rendered at some point during the video. I’m not sure when it happened but if the video is what ends up being in the game it will be awesome.

Bloodborne was a title everyone was hoping to get a glimpse of tonight. Visually it looks much like Dark Souls with a new setting. The new setting does look interesting though, sort of like a dark witch hunter style universe. There was also a suggestion of the hunters turning into the monsters

The next two announcements were pretty poor, just being  small nothing clips. If they had of culminated in the announcement of a major game being developed it could be forgiven but really both videos came out looking anti-climatic. Tacoma, from Fullbright Studios, had you waiting for a door to open then you step out onto space station with a sign saying Tacoma. Nothing to get excited about. Electronic Arts has founded a new studio with some of the talents  from Brothers. It’s still in early development so all they could show us is a clip that makes it look like the game is a hobo simulator

Back with Nintendo again, this time for the DS. Code Name S.T.E.A.M is a steam-punk action adventure game set in Victorian London. Gameplay wise it looks like Valkyria mixed with X-COM. If that’s true I cam see Nintendo picking up Best Handheld Game again next year.

Adam Orth from ThreeoneZero revealed a new FPX, Adrift. Built on the Unreal 4 engine you explore the ruins of the space station that you had been living upon. You start the game when you wake up in a damaged EVA suit running out of oxygen and you need to survive.

Facepunch Studioshad a self-effacing Bill Lowe come out and talk about their new game, Before. It was originally going to be a pixel art game before Bill learnt that “Pixel art is hard”. Instead they have adopted a cartoonish style. None of the game play was really shown so all we can assume is that it looks like an open world exploration game where you need to build a society.

There was a section about the new Battlefield: Hardline. They talked up the single player campaign a bit saying how they were trying to create a TV crime drama feeling similar to Justified. Multiplayer also got a mention withe Visceral announcing the fastest multiplayer mode ever, hotwire, featuring a multitude or zip-lines and grappling hooks with people racing everywhere. They also announced that there would be another beat before release.

Order 1886 really got my attention. Set in Victorian London the video featured a zeppelin special ops teams boarding another zeppelin. I’m sold. It’s an FPS and it looks like they haven’t used the setting as an excuse to go crazy with steam-punk aesthetics which is a nice change. I’ll be trying to get more information about this game.

Another upcoming release is Human Element. Set 30 years after the zombie outbreak all the survivors have split into tribe. These tribes are then all given details of the last known supplies and race each other to gain them. The video starts off Mad Max and then the chase lead to a shanty town where a gun battle ensues. It looks like the dead then turn into zombies.

Bungie announced their first expansion for Destiny. It looks like more of the same but speeders can do stunts.

A very jet-lagged Damien Monnier of CD Projekt Red flew in from Poland to show off a video for The Witcher 3, The Wild Hunt. The graphics look great and I really like the design of the antagonists. Damien also revealed that for the first time you will be able to play as Geralt or another character. Ciri was shown in the video but so was another unknown character so it could be either of them.

Of course one of the titles everyone was looking for tonight was No Man’s Sky. In a video comprised of real-time footage they showed three different worlds and a number of ways to travel. I loved the looked of the worlds; the first is a clearly alien world filled with purple weird shaped fauna then we were flown to a desert world with an odd flying creature soaring overhead and strange stone formations looping over the landscape and finally a teleporter takes us to grassland planet with the same flying creature over head.

A short clip was shown for Godzilla which looks like it could be PlayStation exclusive.

The final reveals were from Nintendo. Reggie came out again to chanting from the crowd. He then threw it over to Shigeru Miyamoto as he watched the new Zelda game being played. The opening shot of the game was link climbing up a cliff to look out on an amazing sunset. The world looks huge and beautiful and they have put in plenty of high points so you can experience it. Some thing that the talked about was the fact that Epona will run as a horse does, avoiding objects leaving you free to do other stuff like aim your bow.

Something else revealed while talking about Zelda is that there is a new Starfox game coming soon. In fact so soon that it is due to be released before Zelda even.

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