Elden Ring Revealed At Summer Game Fest

Summer Game Fest

Before we got to ELDEN RING, there were plenty of new world premieres to show off. 

Summer Game Fest kicked off with Tiny Tina’s Wonderland – a new Borderlands standalone from Gearbox starring the likes of Andy Samberg, Will Arnett, and Ashley Burch. Ashley Burch was out on stage to talk about the project, but there was no sign of any potential release dates just yet. Though with Gearbox presenting their own showcase this Saturday we can probably expect to see more.

Geoff Keighley later spoke to long-time best friend Hideo Kojima, who despite only talking about the shifts in his thinking for projects following the impact of COVID, and how he might take this drastic life change the likes of which will eclipse 9/11 in terms of cultural changes into his future projects (his words), did give us a sneaky peak at Death Stranding: Directors Cut. The teaser felt almost like a prank as Norman Reedus considered a warehouse of enemies, jumped into a cardboard box in true Metal Gear style, before not really doing anything else until a title card appeared to announce the new cut for PS5. 

The celebrity appearances didn’t slow down from there as acting legend Jeff Goldblum appeared to do his…well, uh, extremely Jeff Goldblum thing. Jeff talking to Geoff carried into an announcement trailer for Jurassic World Evolution 2, slated to release later this year. 

Call of Duty took to the stage once again with a big update for Warzone Season 4, which quite inexplicably appears to feature…dragons? The title update coming June 17th looks set to be the battle royale’s biggest yet with new game modes designed for smaller teams and a whole new map. The announcement of a brand-new mainline Call of Duty game was also teased for later this year. Might we hear more this weekend?  

Annapurna’s Solar Ash was once again shown for its release exclusively on PS5 and PS4. The art style on this once looks wonderful along with a fluid action system that looks massively cinematic in its approach.

A montage for Prime Matter’s slate of games ended with a quick tease announcement of Payday 3. 

Maybe the best announcement next? Rocket League is once again teaming with Dom and the family for a Fast 9 crossover event, bringing Vin Diesel’s iconic Dodge Charger into the game along with two more Fast and Furious inspired vehicles.

Newbies Sharkmob, a Swedish developer under the Tencent Games banner debuted the Alpha of their first release, Vampire The Last Masquerade: Blood Hunt – a title inspired by the tabletop role playing game of the same name. 

Bandai Namco and Supermassive showed off the next iteration of the Dark Anthologies series from the team behind the famous Until Dawn. This time House of Ashes looks set to take us into mid-2000s wartime Iraq wherein a group of US soldiers will find more than they bargained for in the crypt depths of Iraq. 

Overwatch 2 took its tease with new characters promised as well as the change to the arena style play now holding 5 v 5 as opposed to 4 v 4. 

Giancarlo Esposito – the famed actor behind Breaking Bad’s iconic villain, Gus Fring – gave a spirited interview with Geoff about his upcoming role in Far Cry 6 as the fascistic dictator villain, Anton Castillo. Despite Ubisoft’s repeated attempts to dispel any notion that a game about South American guerrilla revolution against a militaristic fascist dictatorship was in any way political (sure thing, Ubisoft), Giancarlo was very upfront about his imitations for the role. He cited the likes of Castro and even Hitler as potential figures that Castillo might be a surrogate of. Obviously he didn’t get the “not political” memo…

If you needed a reason to come back to Fall Guys, now Nier is being brought into the bean fold with new skins imitative of Automata. 

If you’re into Left 4 Dead style zombie killing action, Back 4 Blood showed off a bit more gameplay along with an October 12th release and a Beta promised for later this summer. Turtle Rock Studios will also be holding a live event this coming Sunday, so expect more details then. 

Before the main event we also caught some more of Evil Dead: The Game, narrated by Bruce Campbell himself. This one looks like a potential surprise hit as the game showed off some fun looking zombie killing action from some of the series’ most iconic characters. 

ELDEN. RING. 

Alright. The thing we’ve all waited so long for. We didn’t always think it might actually come to fruition. A project with George R. R Martin involved? No chance. That earlier tease must have just been a fever dream that would never come to pass for real. 

But as the first iteration of Summer Game Fest winded down to a close, Geoff Keighley became vastly more animated as he ramped up towards this last, final game showcase. And so it was, ladies and gentlemen, that we finally got ELDEN RING. At long last. 

The long-awaited Souls-like title from FromSoftware looks utterly magnificent. The joint effort of creative partners Hidetaka Miyazaki (the creative genius and director behind previous Souls games as well as Bloodborne and Sekiro) and George R. R. Martin showed off its stylish gameplay complete with all sorts of demonic forces, dragons, and hideous monstrosities one might come to have expected from a Miyazaki title. As the collective gaming community lost its mind, Elden Ring had one last knockout blow to close out Summer Game Fest: Elden Ring announced its release as January 21, 2022, for all of PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows.

We did it everybody. We got Elden Ring.

With publisher Bandai Namco also hosting their own conference later this coming Tuesday it’s entirely possible that we might have more yet to see of Elden Ring this E3. 

The official E3 weekend hasn’t even begun yet, but we’re already off to a hell of a start.