Full Of Surprise Reveals, ‘Summer Game Fest’ 2026 Might Be The Best One Yet

The main event of all the big summer game showcases, the reaction to Summer Game Fest tends to reflect how people feel about the entire summer reveal season. It’s a good thing, then, that Geoff Keighly and his team didn’t just put on a good show, but perhaps the best Fest since the collapse of E3 in the early 2020s. While there were over 40 games presented at the show, just the highlights alone were enough to make it worth watching the two hour show.

 

The even opened with Resident Evil Veronica as either the most or least surprising thing ever, depending on how tapped-in you are to video game rumors. After all, Capcom released Resident Evil Requiem a few months ago, so giving the franchise a break might make sense. However, there have been rumors about remaking Resident Evil: Code Veronica since before Requiem was even announced. It felt like a worst kept secret in the industry.

In the days since the game’s reveal, the company confirmed the game will be third-person despite all the first-person shots in the trailer. Reliable leaker Dusk Golem has also mentioned the game isn’t a 1:1 remake, but rather things moved around and some segments have been added.

 

 

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen 24 Entertainment Lin’an and NetEase Games’ Blood Message, but it is the first time we’ve seen it on a major stage. Taking place in East and Central Asia during the Tang Dynasty, players take on the role of a messenger and his son as they travel a thousand miles to deliver important news to Chang’an during a dangerous uprising.

Blood Message aims to be NetEase Games’ first big AAA single-player title, with a focus on narrative and realistic, grounded combat. It looks positively gorgeous, and it’s a reminder of how rapidly other countries known for mobile or multiplayer titles are adapting to single-player games. At a time when people are seeming to grow tired of the way Sony does their games, hopefully games like this can offer a different path. There’s no release date yet, but there is a nineteen minute gameplay walkthrough for people who still want more.

 

 

I honestly can’t think of a worse trailer in recent memory to obliterate a game’s excitement quite like this one. Stranger Than Heaven was already one of my most anticipated video games, and that was before they released that awesome Xbox Presents event. Now, less than a month later, they blow it by revealing one of the secret characters appearing in the game is … Tupac Shakur. Yes, a rapper who passed away literally 30 years ago this year.

To be fair, he’s not the only deceased personality in this game, as famed Japanese actor Bunta Sugawara is also in the cast, and he passed away in 2014. However, RGG Studios received express permission from his family and he was also known for his work in yakuza-related media. Comparatively, the developer spoke to Tupac’s “estate”, which doesn’t even belong to his family.

If nothing else, they made it clear no AI was used to bring Tupac into this game, but at a time when AI is trying to digitally revive people, this still feels gross.

 

 

What doesn’t feel gross, however, is Bandai-Namco attempting to do their own Armored Core 6 with their Gundam Mobile Suits. Gundam: Rogue Orbit is being described as a “cinematic story” and a “daring new chapter” that’s also meant to be a perfect entry point. Unlike other games, very little new information has surfaced. For now, we know players take the role of ace pilot RE-X and piloting the Gundam Helix to protect humanity against an unknown enemy.

The trailer focuses on two characters, but the press release also mentions a “rag-tag crew of unsung soldiers”, so there’s at least a cast around RE-X. So far, Gundam fans are pessimistic about this as it feels like it goes against much of what makes the storied franchise work — the human vs. human element and all the political commentary.

Still, it’s early days and those concerns could be assuaged pretty easily. The game is confirmed for a 2027 release, so those interested won’t have to wait very long.

 

 

As disappointed as I was with the Stranger Than Heaven trailer, I felt the opposite with the trailer for Virtua Fighter Crossroads. We’ve known RGG Studios was reviving Virtua Fighter since The Game Awards two years ago, but now they’re finally able to show us more.

It always felt weird that RGG was handling a Virtua Fighter game when they’re best known for their stories. Well, turns out they’re planning on introducing a full cinematic single-player adventure, paired with the game’s standard 1v1 modes. There’s still time for this to go wrong, but it sounds like the best way for fighting games to move forward: merging two games into one.  For people who are terrible at fighting games, like me, but enjoy exploring their intricate universes, there’s now a mode to do just that. Meanwhile, the hardcore fans still get to brawl it out. Presuming they don’t leave out the stuff that makes a fully-featured fighting game, this might be Virtua Fighter‘s most successful entry yet.

 

 

Star Wars Zero Company was first mentioned around the time work began on Star Wars Jedi, but all we knew was the team at BitReactor were developing a “RTS game” best in the galaxy far, far away. Now, we’ve got a look at it and it’s not a RTS, but a tactical RPG that resembles XCOM.  It feels like it draws from all the fun aspects of Star Wars lore without relying on elements of the original trilogy exclusively.

It’s also a reminder that Electronic Arts really doesn’t like to talk about games until they’re almost ready for public consumption, because this is only the second Zero Company trailer and the game releases in less than three months.

 

 

Shift Up showed up with a sequel to their action RPG Stellar Blade, featuring a new lead character and a new setting. Entitled Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, the new game centers on a woman named Evie, and takes place after the original. Instead of the blade-focused combat of that first title, Blood Rain switches to pure melee combat, as the new Evie gives out hands that could compete with any heavyweight boxer.

It’s impressive to see this game so soon after the release of the previous. It feels like much of the popularity of the original came down to the controversy around the lead character, yet it reviewed well enough to suggest there was a good game in there. Personally, the music combined with the futuristic city makes Blood Rain feel more interesting than the first game, so hopefully the rumors of Shift Up getting heavily involved in using AI aren’t true.

 

 

Keighley received a ton of criticism for using Highguard as the “one more thing” to finish off The Game Awards last year. Well, he certainly learned his lesson, as Summer Game Fest ended with a trailer for Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the third part in the Final Fantasy VII remake series. Of course, this wasn’t the only trailer, as Square-Enix provided glimpses of Vincent and Cid combat and a separate trailer demonstrating the destructive power of the Weapons.

While it’s big news that the game is releasing Spring 2027, the bigger news is that it will be multiplatform at launch, ignoring the previous calendar of PlayStation exclusivity, the subsequent Epic Games Store priority period, and then finally hitting all consoles “eventually”. Much of Square-Enix’s troubles this generation can be attributed to their desire to do exclusivity deals with everyone. If they can pivot away from that for FF7 Revelation, they might finally get the hit they’ve been chasing.

With all of the showcases except Nintendo’s out at this point, it feels like Keighley really stole all the most interesting reveals. As both PlayStation and Xbox centered around a handful of their first-party titles, Summer Game Fest highlighted an array of major third-party games from around the world. Unrestricted from trying to show the strength of a particular “brand”, it instead illustrated the strength of gaming as a whole.