Gamescom Opening Night Live was once again hosted by Geoff Keighley last night, and GamesIndustry.biz was there in the Confex hall in Cologne to see the whole thing unfold live.
In the build up to the entrance of the big man at 8pm, the 5,000-strong audience was treated to a pre-recorded ‘pre-show’, featuring various game trailers that didn’t quite get past the velvet rope into the main event.
Notably, the only one of these trailers to get an actual cheer from the steadily warming up audience was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearls of Destruction, a retro 2D brawler from Bitmap Bureau and Limited Run Games.
Coming after the rapturous reception for Bitmap Bureau’s retro-styled Terminator 2D: No Fate, it just goes to show the nostalgia drug remains as potent as ever.
Although nothing like the whooping for He-Man, a few other pre-show trailers gained some smatterings of applause, including Long Gone (funded by Outersloth), Valor Mortis, PVKK, the Chinese single-player action RPG Swords of Legends, and Saber Interactive’s new truck simulator Road Kings, which will no doubt go down well with the Euro Truck Simulator crowd.
Then it was time for Keighley to glide onto the stage in his trademark comfortable brown shoes. “It turns out that E3 didn’t die,” he pronounced, “it just moved right here to Germany.”
Setting aside Keighley’s own role in the murder, it’s difficult to compare the atmosphere of this vast German hall to the fan fervour you might see in days gone by in LA. The German audience seems far more muted and less prone to spontaneous outbursts.
Then again, it does feel like Gamescom has been building some serious momentum over the past few years in the absence of its US rival.
Right off the bat, Keighley revealed new gameplay footage of Hollow Knight: Silksong and proclaimed a demo would be playable at Gamescom, to the elation of the crowd.
The long-awaited game now has nearly five million wish lists on Steam, and the anticipation for it is reaching fever pitch.
Then it was on to a new trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, which focused on some freaky-deaky, hallucinatory levels, reminiscent of the Scarecrow sequences in Batman: Arkham Asylum. The big headline feature for CoD this year is a two-to-four-player co-op – and it all culminates in a new PvE end game that could be a big draw.
Lord of the Fallen 2 got a surprise unveiling, along with a new anime based on From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice called Sekiro: No Defeat.
But one of the biggest reveals at the show was Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which focuses on Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
TT Games’ head of development Jonathan Smith was wheeled out on stage to enthuse about the new title. “We are so thrilled to be revealing this game,” he said. “This is the definitive, essential Batman story.”
And it certainly seemed to be thrilling the assembled crowd, receiving one of the warmest receptions of the entire night.
Smith explained that it would be the first of the studio’s Lego titles to have different difficulty levels (‘Caped Crusader’ and ‘Dark Knight’ mode), and it appears to be a lot more involved than Lego Batman games of the past, featuring combat styled similarly to the Arkham titles.
More announcements followed. Warhammer Dawn of War IV is on the way in 2026, although developed by King Art Games rather than Relic Entertainment.
Monster Hunter Wilds is getting a crossover with Final Fantasy XIV, Chocobos included. Perhaps it will help to buoy the slump in sales for Wilds over the past few months.
The Fallout cast were ushered on stage to talk about season 2 of the show, which is headed to New Vegas this time around. But perhaps the bigger news is that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is heading to Switch 2 next year, eliciting gasps from the crowd.
Later, in another example of Microsoft’s IP crossing boundaries, it was revealed that Age of Empires IV is coming to PS5. As Rob Fahey recently commented, it’s a confusing time to be a console warrior.
We received new trailers for a whole swathe of previously announced titles, including Cronos: The New Dawn, The Outer Worlds 2, and Ghost of Yotei, which it was revealing will be receiving a Legends multiplayer mode in 2026, just like Ghost of Tsushima before it.
But the crowd was most roused by new footage from Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which after years in development by various different studios is finally being released on October 21st this year.
Keighley took some time to enthuse about Death By Scrolling, the new game from Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert, which offers a departure from Gilbert’s point and click adventure roots by tasking the player with avoiding Death by fleeing upwards through a forced-scrolling playfield.
Eventually, nearly two hours in, and long after the show had begun to lose momentum, it was the turn of Resident Evil Requiem, a game that is clearly hotly anticipated by the audience. There were actual German whoops.
The new footage focused on terrified protagonist Grace Ashcroft fleeing violent monk-ish intruders alongside her handgun-wielding mother, but otherwise offered frustratingly few details about the new title, which is due on February 27th, 2026.
As Keighley entered into his thank yous following the trailer, it was notable that many audience members chose to get up and leave while he was speaking. But there was one more thing, he said, prompting the biggest reveal of the night.
A short CGI trailer for Black Myth: Zhong Kui ended the show, a sequel to Game Science’s multi-million selling Black Myth: Wukong.
Few details were provided apart from the name, but the fact that this one was saved until last just goes to show how Chinese studios are currently in the soaring ascendent.
