Gamescom is the largest in-person gaming event in the world, and this year it lived up to expectations with big games on show from The Witcher 3’s new expansion, to Alien: Isolation 2.
Last year over 350,000 people flocked to the halls of the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany to get a chance to see and play the most hotly anticipated games.
This year that number of attendees is expected to have been even bigger, with the likes of Xbox and Sega showcasing games to the public alongside indie studios with only one or two developers.
This was my sixth time attending Gamescom, which never fails to make me excited about the games industry. Here are a few of the big things I got to check out this week.
When CD Projekt Red announced it was making a new expansion for the hugely popular action-role playing game The Witcher 3, it came as a shock.
Yet it was clear sitting in the crowd for Opening Night Live on Tuesday that there’s still a lot of love for the older game. There were gasps and audible shouts of joy when the team announced they were providing a free upgrade to the original.
As for the expansion, Songs of the Past will follow the gruff-voiced protagonist Geralt in an adventure discovering more about the past of his close friend Dandelion.
Doug Cockle, who voices Geralt, told me it was a “thrill” to return as The Witcher.
“I love this character so much…it’s like slipping into a warm bath, or putting on an old pair of shoes,” he said.
From what I got to see, it’s clear choice will once again be front and centre of the player’s experience, with lots of options to choose from in how to react to people.
For those hoping to take their time tossing a coin to their Witcher, the head of co-developer Fool’s Theory Jakub Rokosz told me this expansion would be “on par with the size” of previous additions such as Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone.
Alien: Isolation 2 is the long-awaited sequel to Horsham-based Creative Assembly’s 2014 survival-horror game.
One of the things that made the original Alien: Isolation so terrifying was its seemingly intelligent Xenomorph, which appeared to learn from your behaviour and adapt to it.
Considering I physically jumped out of my seat at one point playing the demo when avoiding the Alien, it’s safe to say Creative Assembly will once again be ratcheting up the tension with the sequel.
This time rather than playing as the daughter of Ellen Ripley, you play as Blake, a chief executive of the infamous Weyland-Yutani corporation.
As well as claustrophobic spaceship corridors, in the sequel you will also be avoiding the Alien in bigger, open air spaces.
But the game’s Project Art Director Anastasia Sopikova said that did not mean you would always feel safer.
“You step outside. And you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m relieved, I’m outside,” she said.
“And then the rain picks up and it gets foggier, and you hear something nearby and you’re like, ‘Oh, okay.’ Suddenly you realise you’re really vulnerable. You’re really exposed.”
Ralph Fulton, the founder of Leamington Spa-based Playground Games, told me the 2027 reboot of the role-playing classic Fable had “two tonal pillars” - “Britishness” and “fairy tales”.
Fulton said the team was keen to avoid the generic English accents often heard in fantasy games, pointing out that “accent is such an identifier in the UK, where accents change every 15 to 20 miles”.
Instead, Fable features voices from across the UK, and a voice cast of over 100 actors.
“I want to hear people from Newcastle, from Edinburgh, from Cardiff, you know? And we’ve done that and it brings this incredible sense of Britishness, and also this incredible sense of humour,” he said.
The game is deliberately not a continuation of the original trilogy’s timeline, but it will have some of its quirks, taking players into a new open-world version of Albion - the game’s fairy-tale version of medieval Britain.
