Friday 10 December 2021

New video games announced: ALAN WAKE 2, DUNE: SPICE WARS, SPACE MARINE 2, THE EXPANSE and more

The Game Awards pre-show last year unveiled a whole raft of new video games, some of them of great interest to SFF fans.


Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade PC: 16 December 2021

The naming conventions for Square Enix's remake of 1997 classic RPG Final Fantasy VII is getting slightly ridiculous now. Final Fantasy VII Remake was released on PlayStation 4 in April 2020. An enhanced edition, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, was released in June 2021 for PlayStation 5, with better graphics and a new side-story featuring fan-favourite character Yuffie. This edition is now coming to PC next week via the Epic Game Store (Steam-only fans may have to wait until December 2022).

No word on the second of the expected three parts that will be needed to make up the full game, nor on the anticipated Xbox release of the game.


The Expanse: 2022

A new game from the reformed Telltale Games, the makers of various acclaimed adventure games including The Walking Dead: Season 1 and The Wolf Among Us. Telltale Games collapsed a couple of years ago but has since reconstituted under new ownership. Their first project is a game based on The Expanse. This is another narrative adventure game, focusing on the character of Camina Drummer, with TV show actor Cara Gee reprising her role. Some of the Life is Strange team is helping out on the game as well.


Dune - Spice Wars: 2022

The presumed success of Denis Villeneuve's Dune movie, unsurprisingly, resulted in a flurry of game announcements long before the movie was released. Funcom announced picking up the rights and putting several games into development a couple of years ago, and now the first has been announced. Spice Wars is a real-time strategy game with some 4X elements (think Civilization VI mashed together with, well, Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis). Promisingly, it's being developed by the studio behind the splendid RTS/4X hybrid Northgard.


Star Trek - Resurgence: 2022

A new game in the Star Trek universe, from the newly-established Dramatic Lab Studios, made up of veterans of Telltale Games. This game is set between the events of Star Trek: Nemesis and the destruction of Romulus, and sees the player guiding two Starfleet crewmembers on the Centaur-class USS Resolute. First Officer Jara Rydek and Engineering Crewperson Carter Diaz get caught up in epic events which attract the attention of Ambassador Spock himself. The game, refreshingly for an actual Star Trek title, focuses on puzzle-solving and negotiation over shooting people in the face with a phaser.


Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (tbc)

A surprise announcement, this is a sequel to Relic Entertainment's accomplished 2011 action game. Space Marine was the first - and remains the only - game to put you firmly in the shoes of a towering member of the Space Marines, the genetically-engineered super soldiers of the Imperium of Man, and let you carve your way through enemy ranks with bolter and chainsword. From the look of the trailer, the sequel will let you do that again, only more, since the first game's hero Titus has been upgraded to a Primaris Marine (basically to normal Space Marines as normal Space Marines are to mundane humans).

Saber Interactive (World War Z) are handling this sequel, since Relic are working on Company of Heroes 3 and new content for the recently-released Age of Empires IV.


Star Wars: Eclipse (tbc)

This is a new Star Wars game from Quantic Dream, the studio behind Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human. Like those games, this is a narrative-heavy game with a branching storyline. However, the game will also let you play multiple characters in the High Republic era. The game is also described as an "action adventure" title, so may feature combat and other elements previous Quantic Dream games have lacked.


Alan Wake 2 (2023)

Remedy Entertainment released the original Alan Wake in 2009, an accomplished horror story mixed with action elements. The game only did so-so release on business, leading Microsoft to cancel the sequel (Remedy instead made Quantum Break), but has developed a very long tail in additional sales, with a recent remaster bringing on board a lot of new fans. Remedy also set their big hit 2019 action game Control in the same universe as Alan Wake, and both Control itself and its expansions have sequences tying in with the events of Alan Wake. Of course, that might mean that Alan Wake 2 will have elements tying in with Control. Remedy are also working on a proper Control 2, but it sounds like that's a lot further off in the future.

Alan Wake 2 is scheduled for 2023 and is being funded by Epic Games, so naturally will be an Epic Games exclusive on release.

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