Gamescom Opening Night Live earns its stripes with massive showcase

Gamescom: Opening Night Live has become a great tradition in recent years. The new stream adds a digital element to the world's biggest gaming convention, delivering new game announcements, trailers and updates. This year's Gamescom: ONL stream was pretty packed, with 39 trailers shown. 

At the top of the list, we have an appearance from Todd Howard, introducing a new trailer for Starfield. During Gamescom this week, Howard will also host a few hands-off gameplay sessions, walking viewers through the opening hour of the game. This gameplay footage may not surface online but in the meantime, we do have a new live-action trailer.

Activision officially announced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III earlier this month after plenty of leaks. The Sledgehammer-developed sequel is due to release on the 10th of November, ushering in a new wave of multiplayer maps and a new campaign. At Gamescom, the official gameplay trailer was unveiled, giving us a look at campaign gameplay.

Alan Wake II was recently pushed back a bit, with a new release date now set for the 27th of October. The latest trailer mixes live-action scenes with gameplay, giving us a peek at “the dark place”, which we'll all be exploring when this cult-classic horror sequel finally drops.

Mortal Kombat 1 has had plenty of press time in recent months, with several trailers for the game already dropping. A playable beta test also recently took place on Xbox and PlayStation consoles. At Gamescom this week, the official story trailer for the game landed.

Tekken 8 was first teased a year ago, but with so many fighting games arriving this year, Bandai Namco's sequel will be drop a little later than we may have anticipated. Following a leak earlier in the day yesterday, the latest Tekken 8 trailer confirms that the game will launch on the 26th of January 2024 for PC, Xbox Series X/S and PS5.

Blizzard got some stage time during Gamescom: ONL as well, revealing details on Diablo 4's next season. While Season 1 saw us hunting for Malignant Elites to steal their powers, Season 2 will have us hunting down vampires and obtaining vampiric abilities. The new season will launch on October 17th and will include five new endgame bosses, improvements to inventory management and other improvements that you can learn about in Blizzard's blog post.

Assassin's Creed Mirage has been known for a long time now but due to delays, it has arrived much later in the year than initially expected. At Gamescom, a new gameplay trailer arrived, giving us a look at 9th-century Baghdad and the adventure to come. The game will release on the 5th of October.

Cyberpunk 2077 had a resurgence last year with its 1.6 update finally bringing the game up to the high quality bar that we expected at launch. CD Projekt Red is keeping the ball rolling in 2023, with the Phantom Liberty expansion arriving next month. The new trailer gives us a look at the expansion, but that wasn't the only big reveal. With this expansion, the Cyberpunk 2077 base game will also be updated to version 2.0, bringing overhauls to a number of game systems, new story quests and gigs, improved AI, an all-new skill tree system, an increased level cap, new gear and more.

Sonic Superstars, the latest 2D Sonic game, is now officially releasing on October 17th for all platforms. Additionally, SEGA revealed a new trailer for Sonic Frontiers, unveiling the Final Horizon update, bringing a new playable character, story quest and challenges to the game.

Quantic Dream isn't only working on Star Wars: Eclipse. The studio also has a new narrative-driven adventure game arriving in the future, called Dustborn. This new game is set in an alternate version of the USA and will essentially be a road trip with a group of friends. The trailer is purely cinematic and the game does not have a release date at this time.

Little Nightmares 3 has been announced, offering a new co-op adventure with two characters exploring spooky levels. Alongside this new game, the studio has put together a new podcast series called The Sounds of Nightmares, which will tell a new story set in this universe.

Warhaven gets its latest trailer at Gamescom this week. The game features 32-player (16 V 16) medieval battles. Without playing it myself, it is too soon to tell if it can give Chivalry 2 a run for its money, but the game does look like a decent amount of fun.

It has been a while since we last had an update on Black Myth: Wukong. The game has impressed in earlier gameplay showings and the new Gamescom trailer is no exception, with plenty of flashy combat action with our protagonist taking on massive monsters. The full game is set to release sometime in 2024.

The latest Granblue Fantasy game, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, is launching on February 1st 2024, offering new Action RPG gameplay. The trailer gives us a look at both gameplay and teases the story.

Pearl Abyss announced Crimson Desert some time ago. While the studio's previous game, Black Desert, was a huge sprawling MMORPG, Crimson Desert will offer a single-player experience. The new gameplay trailer gives us a look at much of the game, including everything from different forms of combat to fishing. The game certainly looks visually impressive in its current state but the game is still in active development and no release date has been announced.

Age of Empires 4 landed on PC quite a while ago but last night, the team officially unveiled and launched the Xbox version. Now, the latest in this beloved RTS franchise is available to console players for the first time, with updated control schemes to better suit gamepads.

In my opinion, no other game has offered that Left 4 Dead-style experience better than the Killing Floor games (except for Left 4 Dead itself). Killing Floor 1 & 2 were both successful and now, a third game is on the way for PC, Xbox and PlayStation. There is no release date just yet, but hopefully we can pencil this one in for 2024.

From Software's Armored Core 6 is launching later this week. At Gamescom the official launch trailer dropped. The new mecha game promises fast missions and a complete single-player experience. Unfortunately, you can't play the campaign in co-op like you can in Elden Ring, but there will be multiplayer PvP included.

Ubisoft's racing series The Crew is getting its latest entry soon. At Gamescom The Crew Motorfest got a quick gameplay reveal. The game will officially release on September 14th.

Lords of the Fallen is a sequel to one of the first successful Souls-Like games, Lords of the Fallen – yes we know it's confusing. From Software's Dark Souls series has inspired many similar games offering deliberately timed combat and massive boss fights. The new trailer for Lords of the Fallen shown at Gamescom this week is an extended story trailer, setting the groundwork for the adventure to come. The game will release in October for PC, Xbox and PlayStation.

Bulletstorm first released in 2011 but is remaking headlines in 2023 as a new Virtual Reality version of the game is on the way. At Gamescom, a new trailer arrived, revealing a December 14th release date for Bulletstorm VR for the Meta Quest 2, PC VR headsets and PlayStation VR2.

The Last Epoch is still going strong, offering strong competition to other ARPGs on the market today. The Runemaster class is coming to the game in the near future and the latest trailer gives us a look at it in action.

Mihoyo is back with another game. The Genshin Impact studio has now shown off Zenless Zone Zero, a new free-to-play anime-style game set in an urban fantasy world. There's no release date yet, but the new trailer gives a sneak peek at what's to come.

Payday 3 is just a few weeks away after many years of development. We previously saw the game at other events, including the Xbox Games Showcase earlier this year. The new trailer does include gameplay, although it is split between first-person view and a free moving camera capturing more cinematic shots of gameplay taking place. The latest co-op heister looks to be a good time, just as the previous Payday games were.

Homeworld 3 has been delayed a number of times but the game is finally coming out in February 2024. The latest trailer contains a mix of cinematic shots and gameplay. The trailer primarily focuses on story, with lots of spaceship explosions and shots of fleets zipping around space.

Mandragora is a new 2.5D side-scrolling action RPG with a mix of Metroidvania and Soulslike elements. Players will light up their witch lanterns and enter the dark realm of Entropy, dashing through levels, taking on bosses and overcoming platforming sections to reach the end goal. There's no release date just yet, but the game is listed as ‘coming soon' on Steam.

Frontier Developments is back with a new licensed project – a Warhammer game. Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin is due out in November and the latest trailer gives us our first look at gameplay.

Ara History Untold is a new strategy game with large city-building mechanics mixed with strategy combat. If you aren't already a fan of these types of games, then you can easily give it a shot at release, as the game will be available through Game Pass for PC.

Delta Force: Hawk Ops looks to be gunning for Battlefield's throne as the king of large-scale shooters. It will be a free-to-play shooter, so we'll have to hope the microtransactions don't sting too much. This is actually a continuation of a classic PC shooter series, with the original Delta Force game launching all the way back in the 90s.

Those are all of the main trailers, but a few extra announcements were made during Gamescom: ONL this year. For starters, Honkai Star Rail is heading to PS5 and Genshin Impact is getting its own concert. Fort Solis and Immortals of Aveum received launch trailers but as both games are now available, we skipped giving it its own section in this article. Zach Snyder's Rebel Moon film also got its first teaser trailer during the event. The two-part film will be landing on Netflix, with Part 1 arriving in December and Part 2 set to release in April 2024.

A new trailer for Marvel Snap was also shown, announcing that the game's PC version is now out of beta. The game has been freely available on Steam since its launch last year, so this particular trailer can be chalked up to filler content. With that said, the animation is still pretty fun and the trailer is short and sweet.

Overall, Gamescom: ONL was an enjoyable watch this year. No, we didn't get the Tomb Raider reveal we were hoping for and the show was primarily focused on updates for previously announced games. However, given that we have showcases like this several times a year now, rather than once a year during E3, there needs to be a place for announcements exactly like this.

Hopefully, at Keighley's next event, The Game Awards, scheduled for December, our man can get some extra security, as two people successfully rushed the stage during the live show to spout some nonsense. A similar situation occurred during The Game Awards 2022.

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KitGuru Says: What did you all think of Gamescom: Opening Night Live this year? 

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