My Thoughts on Geoff Keighley's World Premiere Show

“Hello everyone around the world, welcome to The Game Awards 2020 we are so happy to have you joining us tonight!”

Or as I’d like to call them this year, “Geoff Keighley’s Show of World Premieres”, since about 80% of the over 3 hour event were game trailers for future games and content and the other 20% were musical performances and The Last of Us Part II, but I’ll be stepping away from that topic since I’ve never played the game and I’m not one to get myself into drama.

The overall event kind of did a reversal on what usually starts off as mediocre game announcements, and gradually revealing better and more interesting content and games as the night goes on. To end the show with the Sephiroth reveal in Smash, Back 4 Blood, Perfect Dark, and The Callisto Protocol would’ve probably been a much better idea than “Mass Effect Will Continue”, GTA Online: The Cayo Perico Heist, and Just Cause Mobile as the tail end announcements to the show. The show kind of ended for me about halfway in, but I only kept watching because I knew I wanted to make a post about it afterwards.

I will be running through the gist of everything that was covered in this years The Game Awards event, or at least the bits that caught my eye, and give my thoughts on what I look forward to, what I thought about some of the winners, and basically the overall presentation of the show.

To start off with the obvious let’s give it up to the guy who was probably sitting in a chair and pressing the Applause button! It’s obvious they couldn’t do a full blown awards show like normal because of the pandemic, but I guess it wasn’t a bad idea to play some applause tracks to keep the show from feeling dull or having periods of awkwardness whenever winners were announced. Though I’m sure many years down the line when people go back to watch this it probably won’t be as obvious that there was no live audience this year.

The “Pre-Show” wasn’t really a pre-show at all, it was just a portion of the actual Game Awards show but hosted by IGN’s Sydnee Goodman.

Best Score/Music - Final Fantasy VII Remake
No surprise to me. Nobuo Uematsu is just beyond legendary status at this point when it comes to orchestrated music for video games.

Best Action/Adventure Game – The Last of Us Part II
I’ve never played Ghost of Tsushima, but I’ve heard it’s a really great game, but I’m also a big fan of Assassin’s Creed and would love to play Valhalla when I get the chance. Ori’s another beautiful game that I’d love to play someday as well!

Best Family Game – Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Best Community Support – Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout
Best Debut Game – Phasmophobia
These were well chosen. Best Family Game could have gone to either Animal Crossing or Fall Guys, but I’m pretty happy that Animal Crossing won something out of the 3 categories it was nominated for. Best Community Support had a pretty solid lineup, Fall Guys being the newest game out of all the nominees I wouldn’t have guessed any other game other than maybe Apex Legends or Valorant. Phasmophobia winning Debut Game was no surprise to me since that game just kind of came out of left field as so many streamers I watched were playing it along-side Among Us.

Best eSports Game – League of Legends
Best eSports Coach – Zonic
Best eSports Event – League of Legends World Championshipip 2020
Best eSports Host – Sjokz
Best eSports Team – G2 eSports
Best eSports Athlete – Showmaker
I don’t really have much to say about these categories as I don’t watch a ton of eSports. I’ve watch a little of the LCS and OWL and maybe a few games of StarCraft on some Korean streams, but that’s about it.

So there you have it, that was 11 categories announced just in the Pre-Show. I would have honestly just announced the eSports categories and saved the rest for the actual show because let’s be honest, does anyone really pay much attention to pre-shows of anything? Now on to the Pre-Show ads:

Tchia – Coming Soon
Tchia looked like a pretty game, and then the mechanic of becoming and controlling objects and animals hooked me. I got a little interested in this one so I hope to see more.

Sea of Solitude: Director’s Cut – March 4, 2021

Shady Part of Me – Out Now
Shady Part of Me reminded me of the game Contrast. It looks to play very similar where you can switch control between the character and their shadow and work the two together to get further along in the world. Looks to be pretty fun so I’ll definitely be checking that one out.

Myst VR – Out Now
Myst is a pretty big classic favorite of mine so seeing it not only in VR, but also redesigned sounds like it could be an amazing experience. It’s too bad I don’t own a VR headset as of yet. v

Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… - April 23, 2021
Nier: Replicant looks amazing, I’ll have to play through Nier: Automata before that comes out so I can get prepared and enjoy the game more.

Century: Age of Ashes – February 2021

So after everything is said and done we switch over to the “main event” and the Canadian hype man Geoff Keighley takes center stage for the next 3 hours to give you all the World Premiere’s of new games, new content, musical performances, and award winners...Luckily for you this will take a lot less than 3 hours and you’ll get pretty much the summarized version and my thoughts on everything for the next couple of minutes. There’s a lot to cover so I’ll try my best to not make you read too much for too long. Anything that didn’t really interest me or not care about I’ll just skip over. First we’ll get into award results.

Best Performance – Laura Bailey as Abby (The Last of Us Part II)
Laura is hands down my favorite voice actress in the industry so just seeing her win made me happy

Best Ongoing Game – No Man’s Sky
This actually took me by surprise. Any other game in the category was fair game for a win, but No Man’s Sky?! Although recently I heard that it’s a lot better of a game than it was when it first released, and I honestly didn’t think people still played it. I might have to look into it sometime to see how it plays.

Best Art Direction – Ghost of Tsushima
Best Action Game – Hades
Best VR/AR – Half-Life: Alyx

Best Sports/Racing Game – Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2
Would love to get my hands on this game and play it. I’ve played a handful of 2X and 3 on Xbox when it was first released and had a lot of fun with those.

Most Anticipated Game – Elden Ring
So anticipated that people in chat were anxiously waiting for a new trailer for the game, but unfortunately nothing new was revealed.

Best Narrative – The Last of Us Part II

Games for Impact – Tell Me Why
Not gonna lie, Kentucky Route Zero was the only game I’ve heard of in this category so I actually knew very little about any of the games here. Looking back, I actually remember Tell Me Why was previewed in the Xbox Games Showcase earlier this year, but I haven’t seen anyone play or stream it since. I must be watching the wrong people.

Best Multiplayer Game – Among Us
Another solid lineup of games. To be expected, Among Us took home the win and if it had not won, it would’ve been Fall Guys for sure.

Best Indie – Hades
Haven’t played the game but heard it was really good so I might have to look into getting it someday, especially when it beats out Fall Guys.

Best Audio Design – The Last of Us Part II

Best RPG – Final Fantasy VII Remake
This, Genshin Impact, and maybe Persona 5 Royal were my tops for winning this. I know the hardcore anime fans would’ve fought over Genshin Impact or Persona 5 to win, but it looks like the overall favorite ended up being FF7. Happy and proud of Square!

Best Strategy – Microsoft Flight Simulator
Player’s Voice – Ghost of Tsushima
Best Fighting Game – Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate
Innovation of Accessibility – The Last of Us Part II

Best Mobile Game – Among Us
Again, this along with Genshin Impact would’ve been my top 2, but very proud of Among Us winning another category.

Content Creator of the Year – Valkyrae
Valkyrae and TimTheTatman were the only 2 streamers that I’ve watched out of this category. I almost feel Tim was nominated solely for his first crown win in Fall Guys (which had over 347,000 unique viewers watching live that day!!). I know Valkyrae has done a lot of work for quite a few years both on Twitch and now on YouTube and is a very successful and entertaining content creator so kudos to her for winning.

Best Game Direction – The Last of Us Part II
Game of the Year – The Last of Us Part II

I can’t think off the top of my head how many of these categories got full blown presentations, but I could easily say about ¼ of them did, and the rest were just simple lists on the left side of the screen. I’m not sure if it was because of time restraints or nobody to give an acceptance speech in case the given game had won. They had very limited slots for developers to join in calls and sit there for 3 hours to maybe win an award. In a way it made sense, but also seems a bit unfair. It’s an awards show after all, not an excuse to bombard your audience with a ton of trailers. That’s what E3 is for. The ratio this show presented was 32:56, 32 categories of awards, 56 trailers of about 1-2 minutes a piece. Game trailers and reveals easily took up over 2 and a half hours of show time over the awards. Here’s all the World Premieres that took place that night:

Sephiroth Descends to Battle! - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – December 2020
Perfect Dark on Xbox Series X – Coming Soon
Back 4 Blood – June 22, 2021
Scavengers Open Beta
Hood: Outlaws & Legends – May 7, 2021
Cyberpunk 2077 DLC Pack for Forza Horizon 4 – December 11
The Callisto Protocol – 2022
Warhammer 40k Darktide Gameplay - 2021
Open Roads – Coming Soon
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut – 2021
New Dragon Age – Coming Soon
Endless Dungeon – Coming Soon
Crimson Desert – Winter 2021
Swedish Chef now playable in Overcooked: All You Can Eat
Unreal Tournament weapon bundle available in Warframe
Call of Duty: Warzone x Cold War Season 1 Update – December 16
Season – Coming Soon
Ark II (starring Vin Diesel) - Coming Soon
Ark The Animated Series – 2022
Fall Guys Season 3 – December 15
Odyssey: Elite Dangerous – Early 2021
Outriders – February 2, 2021
F.I.S.T. Gameplay – Spring 2021
Evil Dead: The Game – 2021
Ghosts n’ Goblins Resurrection – February 25, 2021
Microsoft Flight Simulator coming to Xbox Series X – Summer 2021
Returnal Gameplay – March 19, 2021
Super Meat Boy Forever – December 23, 2020
Road 96 – Coming Soon
It Takes Two – March 26, 2021
The Elder Scrolls Online: Gates of Oblivion – 2021
Oddworld: Soulstorm – Spring 2021
Monster Hunter: Rise Gameplay – March 26, 2021
Evil West – 2021
Scarlet Nexus – Summer 2021
Thunder Tier One Gameplay - Coming Soon
Among Us Airship Map – Early 2021
Master Chief and Blood Gultch + Daryl Dixon & Michonne (The Walking Dead) now available in Fortnite
Rocket League Season 2
Just Cause Mobile – Coming Soon
Ruined King: A League of Legends Story Gameplay – 2021
GTA Online: The Cayo Perico Heist – December 15
Humankind – April 22, 2021
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond
Mass Effect “Will Continue”

Excited to see what the new Perfect Dark will look like gameplay wise and if it’ll live up to its popularity from the original N64 and Xbox releases.

Back 4 Blood looks pretty cool, used to play a lot of Left 4 Dead so seeing the trailer got me pretty excited to play this game when it comes out. Seems to focus more on stronger enemy battles than fighting off random waves of zombies.

The Callisto Protocol looks very Dead Space-y (it’s from the same developers afterall), so I’m curious to see how gameplay looks. I haven’t played any of the Dead Space games, but I’ve heard they’re really good.

Crimson Desert, the show’s longest trailer, and it wasn’t even that remotely interesting. Visually looked nice, but performance looked unpolished.

Ark II + The Animated Series, Vin Diesel is probably smiling from ear to ear in how amazing he turned out in the game. I’ve never played the first game, but if this is anything like the first there may be more of a story to it? It looks promising, so I might dive into this when gameplay footage is revealed. Maybe it’ll tie in with the Animated Series?

F.I.S.T. looks really cool and very fast paced. I’ll definitely be buying this one no question!

Ghosts n’ Goblins Resurrection looks to follow the same path as DuckTales Remastered and Castle of Illusion where they remaster the original game and add on more depth to all the levels to lengthen the gameplay from the original. Looks to be just as frustratingly challenging as the original so I’m pretty excited to play this one.

Returnal looked more like an arcade video game than a realistic story-driven game with action sequences. I felt like I was watching an honest video game, which is how all games should be. It was fast paced, it looked very fun. I’ll be watching this one closely.

Super Meat Boy Forever I thought was going to be the next Duke Nukem Forever and not be released for another 10 years, but here we are...December 23^rd, lets do this!

It Takes Two looks to be a more light-hearted, fun take of A Way Out. I’d be more than willing to play this!

Oddworld: Soulstorm reminded me I still have to play the original Oddworld games on the PS1 and Xbox because it’s one series that I’ve been meaning to get around to playing, but never do. But it looks to stay loyal to the original 2D puzzle platformer formula.

Ruined King is probably the game I would’ve gotten hooked on if League of Legends had a single player story mode tied in with the MOBA styled gameplay. It looks interesting, especially as someone who’s played very little League, but has all kinds of friends who are all hooked on the game (and TFT, Valorant, etc). I might consider checking it out.

Now I know I had a LOT to say about the games themselves, but overall it was a mediocre year for just the presentation, game reveals, even the order in which things were presented were a bit weird as I had said in the beginning. It would’ve been better revealing all the major stuff in the end rather than the beginning. It felt more like another E3 show than an awards show but I guess there’s only so much you can do when you can’t have actual people coming on and off stage for presentations and acceptance speeches. Hopefully things will be back to normal next year and it’ll be a little bit more entertaining with a little less World Premiere and a lot more Awards time.

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