Star Wars, Tomb Raider and a big night at Expedition 33 – what you need to know from The Game Awards | games

AAt the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles last night, The Game Awards aired its annual mix of awards shows and big-ticket video game announcements. New titles were announced, celebrities made appearances, and at one point, screaming people were suspended from the ceiling in an extravagant promotion for the new role-playing game.

Acclaimed French adventure Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started the night with 12 nominations – the most in the event’s history – and finished with nine awards. The Gallic favorite took home the Game of the Year award, as well as awards for Best Game Direction, Best Art Direction, Best Narrative, and Best Performance (for actress Jennifer English).

Elsewhere, Hades II won Best Action Game, Hollow Knight: Silksong won Best Action/Adventure Game, and Arc Raiders won Best Multiplayer Game. There was a good showing for the new Nintendo Switch 2, with Donkey Kong Bananza winning Best Family Game and Mario Kart World taking home Best Sports/Racing Game.

It was also a night full of big-budget video game ads. Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, the spiritual successor to the classic Knights of the Old Republic series on Xbox, has been revealed, led by original game director Casey Hudson. Developed by Arkanaut Studios, it is a single-player narrative adventure set on the brink of great change in the galaxy.

Another returning classic is Tomb Raider, which is getting two new installments – a remake of the 1996 original called Legacy of Atlantis, and a new adventure, Tomb Raider: Catalyst.

The newcomer to the Divinity series of role-playing adventures has been revealed with a frankly gross trailer. Created by Larian Studios, maker of Baldur’s Gate 3, the game was teased by Game Awards organizer Geoff Keighley who posted images on social media showing a mysterious statue with its coordinates in the Mojave Desert.

An unexpected highlight is Coven of the Chicken Foot, a fantasy puzzle platformer from Wildflower Interactive, a new indie studio created by Naughty Dog veteran Bruce Straley, who worked on both Uncharted and The Last of Us. You play as an elderly witch named Gertie and a lumbering creature in what looks like an art brawl in The Last Guardian.

There’s been a new trailer for Capcom’s latest survival horror masterpiece Resident Evil Requiem that showed off the return of series favorite Leon S. Kennedy, now wearing a floppy fringe and leather coat like some kind of emo supercop. He will be playable alongside FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, as the characters go on parallel adventures with different special abilities.

Among the dozens of other reveals was 4:Loop, a new co-op shooter from the makers of Left 4 Dead and JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot Games, which features cloned and re-clone warriors forever trying to reclaim the world from alien invasion. Ontos is a sci-fi mystery from Frictional, the creator of Soma, set in a repurposed hotel on the moon. Remedy Entertainment revealed the second part of the famous sci-fi adventure Control; It’s called Control Resonant, and it’s set in a Manhattan that’s been reshaped by an invading cosmic force. Wildlight Entertainment, a new studio from the Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare teams, has showcased Highguard, a free-to-play shooter. Wizards of the Coast is exemplified by Warlock, a single-player dark action-adventure game set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe.

Game trophies are a controversial and imperfect beast. But it will be remembered as the night when the first ambitious game from a small French studio, with a budget of less than $10 million, took home all the major awards, beating out other expensive sequels like Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yōtei. In a modern gaming industry that is witnessing massive multi-billion dollar acquisitions and layoffs, we must embrace such positives wherever we can.