Summer Games Fest 2023 Wrap Up Extravaganza! - Renegade Arcade #29

Welcome back to the Renegade Arcade! We reopen the doors to our den of bleeps and bloops to reminisce about the exciting gaming events which took place earlier this month during our Not-E3 news cycle! Organoid Zero (aka Brock) and Neoplasmic (aka Keona) break down the huge list of upcoming video games shown off at Summer Games Fest 2023, note their faves, and pay homage to the work of our favorite Doritos spokesman, Geoff Keighley. Sit back, relax, grab a brewski, and enjoy the show!

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So, as we take a look at the absolute news explosion that was SGF this year, we are definitely seeing the fruits of many developers’ labor. While lockdowns and a global pandemic basically brought almost every facet of the entertainment industry screeching to a halt, I personally think we’re rounding the corner a bit. It seems that, from the smallest indie teams to the largest AAA developers, we’re now witnessing games that are looking far more polished than they have in the past (at least, for the most part). And we have a lot of new and recent releases that have made 2023 an already excellent year for the gaming medium.

Think about it: Resident Evil 4 Remake, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo IV, the just-released Final Fantasy XVI (which rocks my socks off), the awesome F.E.A.R.-inspired FPS called Trepang2, Aliens: Dark Descent, and Street Fighter 6 have all been fun to play and indeed, some of the best gaming experiences I’ve had since 2020 bestowed us with Doom Eternal, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Animal Crossing: New Horizons,Ghost of Tsushima, and Hades. This year has rocked for us gamers, and there’s only more awesomeness on the horizon!

To wit, not only have we fighting game fans eaten well with the great SF6, but we have Mortal Kombat 1 and Tekken 8 coming later this year, with MK1 looking killer and Katsuhiro Harada and his team knocking it out of the park with the eighth installment of the King of Iron Fist Tournament. As someone who’s been playing beat-’em-ups and fighting games for a long time (though I’m not great at them, haha), it’s awesome to see the renaissance this genre is experiencing, and I’m proud of the indie devs who are also working on intriguing titles like Coreupt and Diesel Legacy, which combine elements of combo-breakin’ and brawlin’ along with traditional fightin’ game concepts.

On the Nintendo side, which we didn’t really mention during our Twitch stream (from which the audio was grabbed), we have Pikmin 4 finally seeing the light of day for the Switch, which looks really good! I like that they’re adding a new mechanic with the canine companion character (alliteration, please, thanks). We also have new DLC in the Pokemon series, coming by way of the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero content for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, which adds new, well, areas to explore in the games. Oh, there’s a neat-looking Princess Peach game and a remaster of Luigi’s Mansion 2 coming to Switch next year, and a remake of Super Mario RPG (the OG game for the SNES), as well as a new 2D platformer called Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which makes me think the entire Nintendo dev team had an… interesting mushroom trip one day and decided to make a Mario game out of it. Which is probably the genesis of that entire series, but I digress. Point is, we got us a boatload of Mario funkiness on the way, and that is unquestionably a great thing for fans of the Big N.

Okay, so I’ve been going on for a hot minute here, so I shall simply rattle off some of our faves featured in the major press events during “Keigh-3”: Spider-Man 2 looks like another amazing (one could even say “spectacular” or even “web of”) PlayStation exclusive title; Capcom offered us glimpses of the intriguing Pragmata (with a cute apology for having to delay the planned release of the game within the trailer they showed), the awesome action-RPG sequel Dragon’s Dogma 2, and their new IP, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (let us not even discuss the lack of any Dino Crisis news); The Director (our ol’ pal Josh) is certainly thrilled that Remedy is finally showing off Alan Wake 2 in all its horrifying glory; and even EA and Ubisoft showed off some cool-looking games like the first-person magic slinger, Immortals of Aveum (think a modern day iteration of Hexen), from the Arts of Electronic, along with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown from the Paris-based publisher.

Indie devs also had cool games shown off like Pacific Drive, a first-person Car-PG that puts an emphasis on maintaining your vehicle while traversing a strange, stormy landscape; 33 Immortals, a 33-player co-op dungeon crawler in which you apparently will face off against God (sign me up for that); Blasphemous 2, the sequel to the 2D Souls-like action/platformer; Citizen Sleeper 2, a narrative RPG sequel to the really cool original title; the incredibly-titled Iron Meat, which looks like Contra, and that’s a plus in my book; Stray Gods, a musical narrative-focused RPG that has the most badass character design for Persephone that I’ve ever seen; John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, which not only wins just for that name, but also because I love the idea of a vehicular combat-based co-op zombie horde shooter; and one of my personal faves, Witchfire, the FPS featuring magically-enhanced guns as well as Hexen-inspired spell-slinging. It looks like a marriage of Destiny-style gunplay and magic spells, and I am all about that.

Snarky note: Yes, I did mention Hexen thrice in this article, counting this time. Anyone else remember that game? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Oh, and so does Phil Spencer. He wore the logo on a shirt!

Finally, let’s take a brief look at four of the biggest reveals at the SGF: First up is Bethesda’s Starfield, which had a 45-minute long video detailing its development and does look like a massive undertaking for the dev team. It’s a huge game with lots to discover, engage with, and shoot in the face. I may not be the biggest fan of Bethesda’s oeuvre, but I’ll definitely try the game out. Can’t be worse than Redfall, can it? I know, I know. Low blow. But seriously, it’s graphically impressive considering the amount of things happening on-screen, and the character models have been improved, so now they look less like Mass Effect Andromeda did at launch. I think the gunplay looks far better than it did during last year’s gameplay reveal, and the starship customization looks tight. I will definitely attempt to recreate the Firefly in that game.

Second, Ubisoft’s entry into the video game canon of Star Wars was revealed, as we took a fairly deep dive into Massive’s new installment in the franchise, Star Wars: Outlaws. Featuring a smuggler named Kay Vess, who seems pretty badass, the game will be a third-person action shooter, playing up to the developer’s strengths in the genre, and will utilize the Snowdrop engine, just like The Division 1 and 2. I already like Vess as a lead, the soundtrack seems great, and the game looks like a combo of the Jedi: Fallen Order/Survivor titles and Star Wars 1313, a game I wish we all could have played had it not been unceremoniously cancelled. Anyway, it was a promising reveal for this one. We shall continue to watch over its evolution with great interest.

Alright, third on the docket is Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty DLC, which features a veritable plethora of new content and features and overhauls for the base game. There’s a huge new area and storyline central to the expansion itself, with new characters to meet, another star of stage and screen to welcome to Night City (Idris Elba, who is always great), and so many tweaks and refinements to the game’s AI, mechanics, underlying systems, and user interface that it might as well be a remake of the original. The way you purchase vehicles will be different, the way your skill tree is presented is overhauled, and there’s even a brand new ending to the game. Hm… Will we finally be able to save V? Only time will tell.

Finally, we of course have… Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the game I would sell my soul to Sephiroth for. Not only do the visuals look fantastic, not only do we get to see Yuffie and Red XIII team up for a combo-tacular tandem maneuver, not only do we hear the incredible Valkyrie boss fight theme music in this trailer, not only do we get a glimpse of Bugenhagen as he talks to our heroes about the Lifestream, not only do we get 2 fuckin’ PS5 game discs worth of content, not only do we get baffling story teases like a possible 5-year gap (WTF????) between the end of Remake Intergrade and this game’s opening, and not only do we get a tease regarding Tifa being some kind of… I don’t even know? An impostor? A clone? Maybe Seph wasn’t even referring to her???? Not only, friends, do we get all of that! We also get beautiful graphics, a release date window of early 2024, and, naturally, we get more of Aerith. <sigh> Ah, Aerith. I’ve missed you. *Heart eyes* Hope we get to have our Gold Saucer date in this one. I mean, I hope you and Cloud do, hehe. I would never imagine Aerith deigning to go out with me and us having dinner and drinks, haha. Never even crossed my innocent mind. Nope. No, sir.

Okay, that’s enough of that! Thank you all for enduring my rambling and my shameless Aerith fantasies—I mean, purely platonic notions! Anyway, Summer Games Fest was a blast this year and one of the bright spots in 2023, which has been hellish for me on a personal level. We shall see you next time as we close the doors on this installment of the Renegade Arcade! Peace!!!

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Organoid Zero really likes Resident Evil. I mean, really likes it. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here!

This massive missive was the result of a sleep-deprived Neoplasmic, who deeply apologizes for his blatant Aerith obsession (he promises he’s an innocent-minded vanilla cheesecake) and the length of these show notes. He just had a ton to cover here. Follow him on Twitter if you wanna. And don’t forget to support us on Patreon!!!

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