Geoff Keighley has the gaming industry in a chokehold. Keighley is the master of ceremonies for both The Game Awards and the upcoming sixth annual Summer Game Fest. In a post-E3 world, his two annual showcases have become a global stage for massive game announcements and updates. This year, Summer Game Fest kicks off on Friday, June 6th at 2PM PST, where Keighley and company will livestream from Los Angeles’s YouTube Theater and showcase upcoming games. While the kickoff stream traditionally has the most major announcements, the festivities will continue all weekend long.
On Sunday, June 8th, XBOX will host their own showcase that leads into an exclusive look at The Outer Worlds 2. This summer show is one of the largest platforms for game developers to show off everything they have in the works for millions of eager gamers. Among those eager gamers chomping at the bit for more content is me. Here are my very reasonable demands, uh, I mean hopes, for this year’s Summer Game Fest.
Judas, the first game from Ken Levine’s new studio, Ghost Story Games, was originally announced at The Game Awards 2022. You may recognize Ken Levine as the godfather of Big Daddies, the brilliant brain behind Bioshock. In March 2024, Geoff Keighley was invited to Ghost Story Games headquarters to play an early build of Judas and then sat with Ken Levine to discuss the game. Here we are, two and a half years after the announcement of Judas, and we still don’t have a hard release date. We don’t even have a soft release date – we have no idea when this is coming out. We do know that Ken Levine trusts Geoff Keighley with announcements, and it would make sense for Summer Game Fest to be the perfect platform for a release date.
Similarly to Judas, the team at Telltale has trusted Geoff Keighley with The Wolf Among Us 2 before. The game was announced at San Diego Comic-Con in 2017; then the studio went quiet until its temporary closure in 2018. In 2019, at The Game Awards, Telltale announced that they were back and the second season of The Wolf Among Us was indeed on the way. In February 2022, the cast and creators behind The Wolf Among Us 2 released a 24-minute first look at the game with Geoff Keighley on The Game Awards’s YouTube channel.
Since then, we’ve gotten absolute radio silence from Telltale on The Wolf Among Us 2. To be fair, in 2023, they were working on The Expanse game and experienced a round of layoffs. Through all this, the fans are rabid for updates on The Wolf Among Us 2. The Telltale team has adamantly claimed that The Wolf Among Us 2 is still in development, but the energy is clearly waning. A trailer and announcement at Summer Game Fest could invigorate the studio and the fanbase.
At The Game Awards 2023, Hideo Kojima brought out the mastermind of modern horror, Jordan Peele, to announce an upcoming horror game collaboration called OD. We didn’t get any gameplay, any concept art, essentially any information at all other than it’s on the way and it stars Sophia Lillis (IT, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), Hunter Schafer (Euphoria, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), and Udo Kier (Hunters, Swan Song).
The game was reportedly on hold in 2024 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike for voice actors and mocap artists, but is allegedly back in action. Hideo Kojima is pretty busy these days with the upcoming Death Stranding 2: On The Beach coming out on June 26th, but may very well make an appearance for a quick look at OD, and perhaps some words from the cast or Jordan Peele himself.
Insomniac has admittedly been laser-focused on the incredible Marvel’s Spider-Man series, but now that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’s marketing cycle is complete, they have time for their other Marvel superhero game. Marvel’s Wolverine was originally announced at the PlayStation Showcase in 2021, and we haven’t heard a peep from the studio on this project since.
Several team members at Insomniac have confirmed that production on Marvel’s Wolverine is moving and that the script writing happened concurrently with the production of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. With the success and learnings of the Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise, we do anticipate absolute excellence from Marvel’s Wolverine for this PlayStation 5 title. We’re hoping for a trailer or first look at some of the gameplay for Marvel’s Wolverine.
Machine Games took a break from their incredible run in the Wolfenstein franchise to produce 2024’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but have stated that they did envision Wolfenstein as a trilogy. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has been out for a while, has already moved from XBOX to PlayStation, and their marketing cycle is pretty much wrapped up. That frees up the Machine Games team to get back to what they do so well- platforming American badass B.J. Blazkowicz to shoot, stab, and strangle Nazis.
In following the tradition of Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, we’d anticipate the title is Wolfenstein III: The New Something. It may be a bit early for game footage, but a title card or confirmation of production would be enough to soothe my soul.
Are you tuning into Summer Game Fest? What are you looking forward to? Let us know in the comments!
Want to see how we felt about last year’s Summer Game Fest? Check out our coverage here:
