Summer Game Fest 2021 — Liveblog as it happens

While it isn’t strictly E3, the Week of Announcements and Reveals and Probably Too Much Excitement begins today — now, in fact — with Summer Game Fest 2021. In this liveblog, we’ll be following the stream as it goes, talking quickly about every reveal. Meanwhile, our crack team of news writers will be pushing out as many news stories as is humanly possible, throwing out all the trailers, screenshots, and reveals that you could hope for. And probably more than you could hope for.

Please note that this page will not auto-refresh, so you’ll have to do that manually. The newest stuff will be at the very bottom of the page, so you’ll have to scroll down a bit. Sorry. Just makes for easier reading after the fact. Oh, and all times are in Eastern, so bear that in mind.

2:00pm — Hello, everyone. It has begun, over at the Twitch channel and various other sites. Geoff Keighley is talking about things, and I planned poorly so I’m eating dinner right now. But hey, Gearbox and 2K are announcing a thing, so let’s see what that is.

2:05pm — It’s Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which was hinted at (or leaked) a little while back. According to Ashly Burch (Tiny Tina herself) it’s not a Borderlands game, but very much its own thing. Sounds a bit like Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, in that Tina will be your “Bunker Master” and will be effectively creating the world. More to come, but yeah, I’m guessing it’ll be another poke at D&D.

2:08pm — Metal Slug Tactics. Okay, if you saw that coming, put your hand up. And then put them back down again because you did not see that coming. A turn-based Metal Slug game was not on anyone’s bingo card and you know it, you liars.

2:09pm — And now, as the Summer Game Fest is a Geoff Keighley vehicle, there’s an appearance by Hideo Kojima. He’s talking about COVID, so keeping it light. Kojima is also busy talking in very abstract terms about his next game, equating to how, much like with 9/11, everything changed and the entertainment industry has to keep up, so societal elements. Probably involving a porter who builds bridges called Porter Bridges, or something. Subtlety, everyone!

We’re not even 10 minutes in and I feel like I need a drink.

2:13pm — A Sony-branded trailer for something Death Stranding-related. Oh no.

Oh no. It’s Death Stranding: Director’s Cut. I have no idea if that’s coming to PC or not, but Death Stranding needed more cutting, not less.

On the plus side, Jeff Goldblum is here now, and he’s great.

2:17pm — Jurassic World Evolution 2, complete with Jeff Goldblum narration. I am in for this. The first was, by all accounts, pretty damn good. And now, a musical interlude by Japanese Breakfast, doing a song for the game Sable. This gives me a few minutes to attempt to scrub my brain of Death Stranding with what’s left of my dinner.

Actually, can we just have Jeff Goldblum host the rest of this?

2:24pm — Lost Ark is coming to the west courtesy of Amazon, which is kind of interesting. Korean MMO which has had various phases of testing in other regions, but so far, nothing for Europe or North America. That’s changing this year: it’s coming in fall 2021, apparently.

2:25pm — Call of Duty GM Johanna Faries is here now to talk about Season Four of Call of Duty: Warzone, coming next week. New weapons, new maps, new operators, expanded Zombies content. Basically, more of everything, and there’s even a trailer which I suspect we’ll have up here on PC Invasion before long. We’ve also got some stuff about Twitch Rivals and the related esports thingies, but I’m using this opportunity to try to forget about Death Stranding again.

2:30pm — Ryan Reynolds? Wow.

2:31pm — Ryan Reynolds has announced he is not the star of Elden Ring, and I can actually hear Cam crying from here. Instead, Ryan’s promoting the film Free Guy, about a background character in a video game. So I guess that’s tangentially related to games? Sort of? Also, it has lots of YouTubers and influencers in it. Welp.

2:33pm — InnerSloth is promising a Hide & Seek mode for Among Us, which is… kind of amusing, if only because we were playing that as a custom mode ages ago, to the extent that I have an infographic from one of the Discord servers I’m in detailing how to play it. Also, a fifth map!

2:35pm — Shuhei Yoshida, head of PlayStation Indies, is here now. Apparently, Chicory: A Colorful Tale just launched, which is nice as that looks neat. But in terms of BIG REVEALS, I think Salt and Sacrifice (seemingly a sequel to side-on Souls-like Salt and Sanctuary) is probably the bigger news here. It’ll have us murdering mages, which is always a good thing. Always running around with their robes and hat, bending reality to their will. Bastards. That’s coming out in 2022, though it’s only listed as PS4 and PS5 right now. I’d be surprised if it doesn’t come to PC, but this is a Sony announcement, so we’ll see… (Update: Yeah, it’s coming to PC.)

2:39pm — Chivalry 2 launch trailer. That came out this week, in case you missed it. Not much to say here. You do medieval stabby things! In multiplayer! Look, it’s out already and we’ve got guides and things up, and probably a review coming; I can’t really say much more.

2:41pm — Valorant is getting a new agent, announced via the world’s shortest teaser trailer. That’s… that’s it.

2:44pm — And now, a new trailer for Escape from Tarkov and… I guess stuff that’s coming to that? A new map? I don’t know. I’m feeling a bit out of my wheelhouse here, I’m going to be honest. Luckily, the news team is on it.

2:45pm — Oh no, Geoff Keighley invoked the name of Peter Molyneux, He Who Hypes Everything To Oblivion. On the plus side, this isn’t actually related to the man himself: it’s Two Point Studios, which has a lot of devs from Lionhead and the like. Two Point Campus trailer, so that’s confirmation of something that was leaked a little while back.

2:48pm — And now, a trailer for a Netflix thing. More importantly and interestingly, Netflix and… Smite? What? Okay, so it’s a Stranger Things crossover with Smite. Demogorgon skin for Bakasura, Eleven skins for Scylla (one in the prestige track), Mind Flayer skin for Sylvanus, and Hopper skins for Apollo (with one in the prestige track). Coming on July 13, along with an Upside Down arena map.

2:51pm — Giant trailer for a load of new Koch Media stuff. Prime Matter, Payday 3, and other things! Holy shit, and a new Painkiller game? Alright, Payday 3 and Painkiller have me sold.

2:54pm — The Anacrusis announced, which looks a bit like Left 4 Dead with a lighter tone and some weird sci-fi superpowers like knockback pulses and the like.

2:55pm — Rocket League is teaming up with The Fast & The Furious again for Fast 9, with cars coming to Rocket League.

2:57pm — The trailers are coming thick and fast. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt now, and you can sign up for the alpha on the official website. Alpha on July 2nd. I’m not sure anyone really wanted a Vampire: The Masquerade battle royale game, and this is giving me memories of Nosgoth, but it is what it is.

3:00pm — The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes trailer. It has soldiers in Iraq finding themselves in an ancient temple, fending off an ancient evil. I’m sorry; I’m normally snarkier than this but we’re getting about one trailer a minute at this point and it’s hard to keep up. 22nd October release date.

Look! While I was writing that, a trailer and release date for Tails of Arise! Help meeee.

3:03pm — Switch game news. I can ignore this! Hooray!

So, how’re you all doin– oh no, the trailer has ended already. Fuck. Back to it.

3:05pm — Planet of Lana, a lovely hand-painted puzzle adventure game. Looks delightful. But no time to talk about that! Aaron Keller, game director of Overwatch 2, is here!

He’s going over the 5v5 format, and how it’s changing the heroes up. I’m waiting for actual new stuff, though… oh good grief it’s new skins. Sombra and Baptiste, specifically. Great. That’s very important stuff.

New Share Hater tech, apparently, which was quite a verbal slip of “hair shader tech,” but certainly appropriate for the Overwatch community.

3:10pm — Hands-on with Dark Alliance, with Hannibal Buress and Ember Moon. So, live gameplay footage. Except… it’s just little snippets, with talking heads, and not much about the actual game itself. Apparently Ember Moon is a big Drizzt fan, so that’s nice?

I do appreciate the giant monster dying in the lava pit and flipping them off, though. Nonetheless, this is kind of an awful way to show the fucking game.

3:14pm — Monster Hunter thingies. Rise and Stories 2. Trailers! Things! Send help! On the plus side, Weezer is on now performing a song from their new album, and I have nothing to say about this except “Hang on, Weezer is still a thing?” I can take a break to get a drink. (Non-alcoholic, I should add.)

3:16pm — I’m actually kind of enjoying this song, but that might just be relief that it’s not another 30-second, rapid-fire game trailer. Either way, I’m sat here listening to that instead of refilling my glass.

3:18pm — Endless Dungeon now, which I’m quite looking forward to. Tactical-action co-op rogue-lite, which is kinda my jam, and I don’t think Amplitude has made a bad game yet. New trailer, anyway, and you can register on the official website to get an exclusive skin.

3:20pm — Now it’s Ratchet & Clank time, which is not PC-related, so I can ignore it!

Also 3:20pm — … Never mind, they were just teasing a livestream. They’re done already.

3:21pm — Giancarlo Esposito is here to talk about Far Cry 6. He’s mostly just talking about what it’s like playing Antón Castillo in Far Cry 6, which means not much about the game itself, but Giancarlo is nice and charismatic. He’s at least implying that Castillo might be a fairly nuanced character, arguing (perhaps a little jokingly) that he’s not actually a villain, per se. This is actually a pretty fascinating conversation, and I do recommend watching this little clip later. I wasn’t expecting Ceaușescu to be name-checked in Summer Game Fest.

3:25pm — A new costume for Fall Guys, based on… wait. A new costume for Fall Guys based on fucking NieR: Automata?

I quit. Goodbye.

3:27pm — Cam has informed me I can’t quit, which means I’m obligated to tell you that we just got a trailer for Genshin Impact, this tiny little thing you definitely haven’t heard of already. This liveblog continues for now. Cam’s just lucky this keeps me too busy to plot his downfall.

3:28pm — Deviation Games is here to talk about the fact that they can’t talk about their game. Excellent.

Oh, they’re partnering with Sony. “Look at the track record of […] games that Sony do. Hit after hit. Award after award.”

Your honor, I would like to present to the court a whole lot of games that Sony published which were shit. I don’t have long because all the things are happening, but I’m just going to say Lair for the moment.

3:30pm — And now we get Sonic Unleashed music performed live, because it’s the 30th anniversary of Sonic and everybody loves Sonic Unleashed. Werewolves were exactly what Sonic was missing. That’s what everyone has said since. It was truly a landmark moment in gaming.

Wait, no. Landslide moment. It was buried because everyone would prefer to forget that happened.

“I love orchestra music,” says Keighley, providing deep insight into what we just heard and giving us all a chuckle at his incisive wit and clever remarks.

3:34pm — Tiny trailer for Back 4 Blood, which looks great. If you’ve missed out on that somehow, it’s basically Left 4 Dead by the people who made Left 4 Dead, who left Valve and formed a new studio.

3:37pm — Tribes of Midgard, which looks quite neat. Go out, do looting and smashing, and then use your resources to upgrade your settlement and your gear. So a sort of survival-y looter hack-and-slash game? Yeah, that could be interesting. Out July 27, if I didn’t see that trailer wrong.

3:38pm — Evil Dead: The Game, with a gameplay trailer narrated by Bruce Campbell, explaining how everything works. You can either play as the good guys from throughout the franchise, or play as the Kandarian Demon and literally scare people to death “if you’re a dick.” Brutal melee and lots of finishing moves as you try to survive and find a way to banish the Kandarian Demon.

3:42pm — Grand finale time. Is it Elden Ring?

3:43pm — It’s Elden Ring. Cam has just passed out from excitement. I’m sure he’ll watch the trailer when he comes to, but that might cause him to pass out again.

Watching him wake up, pass out from excitement, and then repeat over and over again for the foreseeable future may be as entertaining as this trailer. Who knew that all we needed to create a perpetual motion machine was a trailer for Elden Ring?

3:45pm — That trailer was superb, though I’m reminded of the Dark Souls 2 trailer (which had me passing out from excitement) which contained a lot of things that were Sir Not Appearing In This Videogame. Nonetheless, that’s actually got a release date for 21st January 2022.

Almost as exciting as Elden Ring, though, is this one last reveal: the stream is over!

I AM FREE!