Fable

It may look like E3, it may sound like E3, and it might be following the exact same path as E3, but the Summer Game Fest is definitely not E3 — yet. Regardless of how I feel about the industry and how it treats its employees and consumers alike, I am still very excited for the products it produces.

Without further preamble, here’s a big unordered list of the things I saw that looked cool. Keep in mind that I didn’t manage to watch all of the shows and see all of the announcements, so there are certainly things that could be on this list but just aren’t.

UFO 50

“The story of UFO 50 is that the games were all created in the 80’s by a fictional company that was obscure but ahead of its time.” That’s the official pitch for UFO 50 and it sounds absolutely amazing. While it may have barely missed its initial launch window of 2018, I’m absolutely thrilled to see a sign of life from this game, let alone a release date for September 18th of this year.

Star Wars Outlaws

There are a lot of valid criticisms you could levy at Ubisoft, particularly in how formulaic their open-world games seem to be. But even so, I’m genuinely excited to get my hands on Star Wars Outlaws and engage with its inevitable open-world bloat, dressed up in a Star Wars costume. The vibe of Star Wars is strong in this gameplay demo, but whether the story and gameplay manage to land the metaphorical ship is something I’ll have to find out when it releases on August 30th, this year.

Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind

Releasing later this year, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind looks absolutely phenomenal. Admittedly, I haven’t been a Power Rangers fan since I was a wee-lad, but everything about this trailer is igniting nostalgic synapses that had been laying dormant for over 30 years. I’m a sucker for a good beat-em-up and Rita’s Rewind seems to be going above and beyond genre expectations with some cool mode-7 inspired gameplay twists.

Cairn

Cairn might be the first game to ever have a mountain kick your ass, but it certainly looks like one of the toughest. Knowing nothing about mountain climbing aside from it’s done by people with an allergic reaction to safety, I can confidently say that Cairn looks to be a realistic depiction of both the act of climbing and the emotional toll it can take. The resource management aspect of the game is giving me some pause, but I’m still very interested in playing Cairn, regardless.

Wanderstop

Wanderstop looks very cool for what it is, but I’m left wondering how you make a game out it. Sure, you’ve got the tea house management angle that’s obviously there to lull you into a false sense of routine, but once the self-doubt starts kicking in, what does the game actually look like? I’m suspecting there might be a massive genre twist in this one, but I could be wrong. Either way, I’m excited to check it out whenever it releases.

Unknown 9: Awakening

It’s been a while since a game reminded me of Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, a ridiculously fun game with a hilariously stupid name, but here’ comes’s a new stupidly named game that might scratch that itch — it’s Unknown 9: Awakening! Dumb names aside, this game looks pretty cool. The main mechanic seems to be about possessing enemies and having them take each other out, which is always my preferred “stealth” option when playing games, so a whole game about that has to be good, right? It comes out this year, so I’ll find out more then.

Eternal Strands

Someone described Eternal Strands to me as Shadow of the Colossus and Breath of the Wild smashed into one game. While that’s a super lofty claim to make, should Eternal Strands even be marginally as good as either of those games, it’ll be an overwhelming success to me. I’m skeptical, but I really do want this to be good.

In Sink

I don’t know why I put games like In Sink on any sort of list, whether it be article or wish, because I never have anyone to play the dang things with. But I’m imagining a world where I do have a good co-op partner, and we are both loving this game and its asymmetrical puzzle solving. Also in this imagined world I have huge muscles and like, a million dollars. There’s a demo out now, but a full release is expected later this year.

Skate

I just want to play a new Skate game already. Imitators like Session and Skater XL tried to fill the void in its absence, but fumbled the execution so hard with their overly complicated control schemes. While I’m genuinely terrified of the EA-controlled free-to-play model this entry is adopting, I know it was probably the only way a new Skate game would get green-lit. Regardless, I want to play this very badly, and I can’t believe there still isn’t a release window.

South of Midnight

If nothing else, South of Midnight looks very cool. Aside from aesthetic appeal, I truly have no idea how this one is going to shake out, but I’m more than willing to give it a spin when it launches on Game Pass.

Perfect Dark

I really hope this trailer isn’t all smoke and mirrors because the new Perfect Dark looks absolutely incredible. An immersive-sim with all the Perfect Dark gadgets and future tech seems like a perfect pair, but I’ll reserve my boundless praise for whenever I actually do get to play it.

Mixtape

I have no idea how Mixtape will play or what it’ll be about, but it’s trailer is giving off all the right vibes. I think I might be a few years removed from the prime demographic for this game, but I’m still going to play it anyway because it looks cool and has a pretty dope soundtrack.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

From Uncharted to Tomb Raider, games have been chomping Indiana Jones’s flavor for years to mostly positive results. So maybe it’s finally time for the progenitor of archaeologic adventures to come out with a game that’ll live up to and make good on the mystique of Indiana Jones. I really hope that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is good, because this trailer looks like a lot of fun. And if nothing else, at least I’ll get to punch a Nazi in the face.

Please be good.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Okay, so this particular trailer isn’t particularly good, but the gameplay demo that came out a day later was much better. I don’t have any love for the Dragon Age series, but I’m willing to take the plunge with The Veilguard after pouring a full week’s worth of time in Baldur’s Gate 3. Maybe I’m an RPG guy now. Or maybe I’m excited because this game looks like it’ll cater more to my action-oriented gameplay sensibilities way more than its predecessors did. Either way, I want to try this video game.

A few days ago Microsoft went ahead and revealed a ton of information about upcoming games as well as announcing a few new ones. They showed off Halo Infinite, a new Forza game, Jack Black singing through a trailer of Psychonauts 2, and plenty more for their upcoming new console, which were all fine announcements. But the one that I’m most excited for is the new Fable game that was confirmed to be in development.

For those who don’t know, the Fable franchise is one of ups and downs, with people ardently praising and condemning various entries in the series. To me, it follows the same trajectory as the Mass Effect series where the first one was good, the second was the best, and the third had some neat ideas but didn’t really make good on the promise of its predecessors. I can hear the sound of a friend of mine texting me in violent disagreement, but that’s okay because they’re wrong.

New Fable – Microsoft

Fable was always this cheeky action-RPG that always seemed like it was a sequel away from really nailing whatever it was going for. What it was going for no one can be quite sure of, but Fable always felt like a series with ambitions of much grander elements than were feasible at the time. Everyone likes to angrily point to the creator of Fable, Peter Molyneux, and chide him for his constant over promising and under delivering when it came to the franchise, but in hindsight it often sounded like the technology just wasn’t there to make good on his vision.

But it doesn’t matter what Molyneux says anymore because he’s no longer involved with the franchise and hasn’t been for several years. Instead, this new Fable is being developed by the people behind the Forza Horizon series, Playground Games. I don’t think anyone has any idea how this new Fable will turn out with the developers of a racing franchise calling the shots, but the Forza Horizon games have all been received really well in the past which makes me hopeful that they’ll do right by revitalizing the Fable series.

*Fable II – Image Credit: Giantbomb.com*

I don’t really have much in the way of expectations for the next Fable game, but I would hope it does a few things differently than its predecessors. There’s only a handful of specific elements I’d like to see this new game to incorporate, but overall I’d like to see a vast departure from the formula of the old Fable games. That isn’t because I don’t like those games, I just think those games only worked at that time in history and trying to recapture that again would feel uninspired and outdated.

Aside from general modernization, I think it should be a true open-world game with one big contiguous map. In the past, Fable had big areas to explore that were separated by loading screens, so having a cohesive world would be a nice change that would make the world feel more whole than it ever did before. I also think we’re at a point where Fable needs a good character creator in it. I don’t want to be a generic boy who chases chickens and either gets a halo or a pair of horns on his head. I want to be in control of my character and their appearance and not just turn into some weird demigod.

*Fable III – Image Credit: Giantbomb.com*

It would also be nice to see the game make good on some of the more esoteric promises that Molyneux made back in the day. A lot of what I recall him pitching was the idea that all of your choices and actions had reactions and consequences. Maybe they weren’t immediate, maybe they were, but nothing you did was done in a vacuum and that’s where I think that’s something a new Fable can do to differentiate itself from other RPGs. The series was always supposed to be this very customized and reactive experience, but it never manifested that way. But with the Xbox Series X, the power of modern PCs, and the strides in open-world game design, having a world react to you in the way Molyneux once envisioned seems more possible today than ever before.

Speculating about Fable right now feels pretty pointless at this time though. All we saw was a tone setting CG trailer that was very cheeky and that’s it. Who can say what the game actually turns out to be or when it’ll even come out? My bet is that it’s a 2022 game at the earliest, but I’d love to be wrong about that and get my hands on it earlier. Now that Microsoft is bringing Fable back and EA is bringing Skate back, I’d like to know what the fuck is going on at Ubisoft and why Splinter Cell hasn’t come back yet.

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The Best of the Summer Game Fest