Technological World for June 15, games: Xbox and Bethesda showcase, Last of Us being remade for PS5

Published
Comments None
Categories Video games |

Xbox and Bethesda showcase upcoming video games, the Last of Us Part 1 is getting a remake.

Xbox and Bethesda show off some games in annual showcase event

In an online broadcast last week, Xbox and Bethesda, now part of the same organization, showed off what’s coming for Xbox consoles and Windows game systems.

In opening the show, which in past years would have been presented live in L.A. as part of the larger E3 extravaganza, Xbox head of global gaming Sarah Bond said that everything that was being talked about would be released “in the next 12 months”.

And while that may be true, it’s also true that a lot of what was shown isn’t coming until 2023.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t games coming to the Xbox platform.

A major announcement that came early was that free to play games from Riot are coming to Xbox Game Pass. The benefit to subscribers is that the characters and agents from the games – League of Legends, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Valorant – are unlocked, whereas they would have to be earned by playing or paying.

There’s also a strange, first-person shooter game called High On Life that comes from Rick & Morty co-creator Justin Roiland in which the weapons you wield are sentient creatures called Gatlians.

It looks trippy and absurd and ridiculous and it’s coming this October.

We also saw some of Diablo IV in which we were introduced to the necromancer class. And we learned that in addition to Windows, the game will also be coming to Xbox consoles. It arrives next year.

And there’s Minecraft Legends is a new action strategy game being co-developed by Vancouver’s Blackbird Interactive.

The show ended with an extended look at Starfield, the space exploration role-playing game from Bethesda that is expected to release next year. In the 15-minute trailer, which showed actual gameplay, including exploration, combat, and storytelling.

Your character gets recruited into Constellation, a group of explorers trying to make sense of some strange artifacts.

In the video, studio head Todd Howard explained that the world will include some 1,000 worlds to explore in more than 100 systems.

As you explore, you’ll be able to build outposts and spaceships, hiring staff and crew, and customizing things to your liking. And the ships you build you will be able to fly and take into battles.

I will also note that every game that was shown during the event will be coming to the Xbox Game Pass library.

You can watch the entire event here.

What the remake of The Last of Us, Part 1 tells us about the game industry

One of the announcements at Summer Game Fest was that Naughty Dog is completely remaking The Last of Us, the 2013 game originally developed for the PS3.

The game, which is now known as Part 1, was remastered for PS4 and released in 2014, and you can play that game on PS5.

Why, then, would Naughty Dog and Playstation rework an existing game again? There are a couple of reasons.

First, in case you didn’t know, HBO has a television series based on the game, which has been shooting in Calgary and southern Alberta, that is expected to air next year.

More importantly, though, is how valuable it can be to a studio to remake something that has already proven to be a success.

If there’s any chance that the resource cost to remake The Last of Us Part 1 will be recovered – and that’s easy math, to be honest – the training opportunities alone make it worth the time and effort, as was pointed out by journalist Arthur Gies.

This is not a new thing, either. When producer Rod Fergusson, who helped create the Gears of War franchise, came to Vancouver to lead the team making Gears of War after Microsoft purchased it from Epic, he told me that having the team work on a remake of the original game was a way to make them experts in Gears of War.

Comments

Commenting is closed for this article.

← Older Newer →