Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Elden Ring highlight Summer Game Fest
Geoff Keighley E3 week kickoff features first look at Gearbox spin-off and new look at From Software-George R.R. Martin project
Today's Summer Game Fest 2021 was bookended by the announcement of a new Gearbox Borderlands spin-off and a much anticipated new trailer for From Software's latest Souls-like game.
The show opened with a reveal trailer for Gearbox Software's Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, revealing that Tiny Tina's voice performer Ashley Burch would be reprising the role, joined by Andy Samberg, Wanda Sykes, and Will Arnett. While Tiny Tina is a Borderlands character, the game itself is not a standard Borderlands title, and is expected to be released by 2K Games in early 2022.
Hideo Kojima also appeared on the show to introduce a new trailer for Death Stranding: Director's Cut on the PlayStation 5 with a trailer in which the game's Norman Reedus protagonist played around with a large cardboard box, teasing some Solid Snake-style stealth action.
That clip was followed by Jeff Goldblum revealing a trailer for the park management simulation Jurassic World: Evolution 2, set for release later this year on PlayStation and Xbox consoles and PC.
The show wasn't limited to game-specific announcements, as it also introduced Deviation Games, the new studio from former Treyarch developers Dave Anthony and Jason Blundell, which is working on a brand new IP for PlayStation.
Beyond that, Koch Media had a segment to announce its new publishing label Prime Matter, which is set to publish a dozen titles already, including Payday 3 and a new title in the Painkiller franchise. For more on that effort, read GamesIndustry.biz's interview with Koch CEO Klemens Kundratitz.
The show closed with a new look at Elden Ring, the From Software - George R.R. Martin collaboration first announced at E3 2019. The trailer featured horseback combat, a lightning-summoning dragon, and a variety of enemies with the wrong number of limbs. The game is set to launch January 21, 2022 to new-gen and legacy-gen PlayStation and Xbox consoles, as well as PC.
Other new projects announced as part of the showcase include Ska Studios' Salt and Sanctuary sequel Salt and Sacrifice (2022), Sega's Two Point Hospital follow-up Two Point Campus (2022), Sharkmob's supernatural shooter Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodhunt (this year), and Stray Bombay's four-player co-op shooter The Anacrusis.
The show also gave release dates or windows for Call of Duty: Warzone Season Four (June 17), the Smilegate RPG/Amazon Games collaboration Lost Ark (this fall), The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes (October 22), Raw Fury's Sable (September 23), Sky: Children of Light on Switch (June 29), Norsfell's PlayStation and PC survival action game Tribes of Midgard (July 27).