Microsoft shows new mega games Starfield and Diablo IV | games

It is slowly becoming a tradition: expectations around Microsoft’s press presentation are sky-high, then a deluge of games comes along and afterwards you secretly hoped for more. And that for a showcase of over an hour and a half with the long-awaited starfield as an extensive bouncer.

After its 2021 acquisition of Bethesda and the recent mega purchase of call of Duty-maker Activision Blizzard – that deal has yet to be officially approved – there are plenty of titles to show. A luxury problem, you might think. Yet there are still plenty of games that still cannot be shared with the outside world.

Developing games takes years, and corona has slowed down a lot. With more than thirty games, of which a lot of smaller titles, Microsoft offered something for everyone. That also resulted in crazy situations: hero-shooter Overwatch 2 (released October 4, 2022) and action RPG Diablo IV (release: 2023) were both shown, while both games also appear on the PlayStation 4 and 5 from competitor Sony.

Many of the games featured will appear on release day on Game Pass, Microsoft’s highly successful all-you-can-eat subscription service. As a PC or Xbox gamer, you hardly have to purchase individual games anymore because Game Pass is richly filled with content. In addition to fresh additions to many existing franchises such as Sea of ​​Thieves (The Seven Seas), Forza Horizon (Hot Wheels DLC), The Elder Scrolls Online (High Isle) and Flight Simulator (soon you can Halodriving the iconic Pelican), there was obviously plenty of room for brand new games.

A new Forza Motorsportracing game is set in 2023 and looked again to pass through a ring. Vampire Shooter redfall should offer both co-op and single-player dark action and the sequel to the medieval adventure game A Plague Tale: Requiem looked promising. From the makers of Nioh and bloodborne comes the Chinese martial arts-game Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and none other than Japanese great Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) announced a partnership with Xbox to create the game “he’s always wanted to make.”

Many smaller games left a good impression: the interactive drama As Dusk Falls with numerous narrative ramifications stimulated the audience, Cocoon comes from the creator of dark platform games limbo and insideand action adventure title Ravenlok looks crazy and colorful. Pleasantly striking was also Pentiment† an original crime game set in 16th century Bavaria from Fallout: New Vegasdeveloper Obsidian. The game plays partly like a Renaissance manuscript.

At the same time, Xbox failed to unanimously please all fans and silence critics. Many fan favorites shined through absence such as Fable, Perfect Dark, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2† In particular the deafening silence around the restart of classics fable and Perfect Dark make fear.

Bouncer starfield made up for a lot, if not everything, though this game also throws two camps on Twitter: does it look great, or does Bethesda promise a lot that won’t work out so well in practice? Bethesda’s new ambitious space role-playing game is best described as Skyrim in space.

The player will soon have a hundred galaxies with a thousand planets to visit. You join Constellation, an organization that explores space on the “last journey of humanity”, hundreds of years in the future. You can build your own base and design your own spaceship. On trade and combat missions, you regularly end up in gun battles. The game seems to offer hundreds of hours of gameplay.

It might be a good thing that the title has been postponed for a while. Bethesda has a dishonorable reputation for launching its games with quite a few bugs. Microsoft will want to prevent that at all costs with this completely new IP.