How Many Reveals At Gamescom Opening Night Live Were Actually Interesting?

With another Gamescom, another Opening Night Live has gone by. Geoff Keighley‘s showcase has gradually gone from just a random show to one of the biggest events of the year. It’s not quite to Summer Game Fest, and certainly nowhere near The Game Awards in terms of games shown or prestige, but it’s become a huge deal. This time, over 50 different games previewed across the two-hour showcase. It’s enough to be overwhelming, but there’s also one burning question left afterward: how many of them were actually worth watching?

As it turns out, quite a bit. Of course, Keighley has taken to featuring a mix of games from all around the world at every level, from the budding Korean and Chinese AAA scenes to Western AA and indie titles. This was where we got our first look at gameplay for Invoke Studio’s new Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons title. It focuses on Kaatri, a warlock on a journey for revenge with the respected Maggie Robertson as Kaatri’s patron. The game looks like exactly what a AAA D&D experience should look like, with Kaatri busting out tons of cool spells in the eight minute trailer. The only real question is whether or not anyone believes it’s coming in 2027. Personally, I’m skeptical, and it seems like an early candidate to get pushed into early 2028.

Keighley’s programs have taken to doing pre-shows featuring Easy Allies’ Kyle Bosman, and while they have a more relaxed and casual vibe than the main series, they’ve also started to feature some pretty incredible games as well.

One of those games, Elta: Defy All Gods, comes from Focus Entertainment and Afterburner Studios. It’s an action platformer where you play a giant warrior monk on a search to find their people’s lost god. Boasting a gorgeous watercolor art style, Elta looks stunning and is supposedly coming “Early 2027”. Hopefully that means January, because February and March are already packed enough as it is.

Dlala Studios’ Murals also looks gorgeous. It is an isometric action-adventure game which sees players traveling through once-familiar fairy tales that have all drastically changed. With a mix of melee and fantastical weapon-based combat, it falls to the player to make their way through different fairy tale worlds to confront The Creator.

The main show opened with a major surprise in Nodusfall, a game that looks suspiciously like Elden Ring but comes from studio Hoyoverse, best known for their work on Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.  This game is dark fantasy action, but there’s currently no release date for the title.

At a time when there have been so many Genshin clones that even Hoyoverse’s own games have begun to look generic, Nodusfall feels like a necessary step. Of course, the big question was whether this would be a premium launch or another F2P gacha title. In the days after the show, however, they clarified that while it is free-to-play, it’s not a gacha, and they intend to support it with other forms of monetization. This is starting to become more popular with F2P games, as there’s another we’ll get to that’s doing the same thing. If they can remain profitable without locking away characters, that might initiate a new era for F2P games.

The turn-around Crimson Desert made in just a few months has been amazing to see. Just weeks after the game released, Pearl Abyss quickly fixed most of the problems with the obtuse controls, and after a month or so they started adding entirely new systems and tons of free content for people getting lost in their massive world. Now, they’ve released Crimson Desert Enhanced, a major DLC update that’s meant to add more cutscenes and voice acting to the story so the narrative feels less disjointed. It’s the kind of approach usually reserved for MMOs or other live-service titles. Considering the game sold over six million copies already, they had no need to add this, so doing it anyway is respectable.  Now the question for them is whether they can actually release a totally new DLC for the game before the end of the year like they said.

I still don’t know what to make of Naked Rain and NetEase’s Ananta. And from all the previews going around, neither does anyone else. It’s marketing itself as a “do everything” game, and to be fair most of those lately have turned out to be solid if not perfect. At the same time, none have been an “anime GTA” like in the way this is. It’s also blatantly using gameplay mechanics from every major 2010s game, ranging from Uncharted chase scenes to Spider-Man‘s web slinging. Can that all work together in a single title?

If nothing else though, these little trailers have done an excellent job on piquing my interest in the way Neverness to Everness, the other urban open-world game, could never manage. Turns out, combining a music video with gameplay works better than just doing an AMV. My biggest complaint: this new trailer is revealing just how cringe the script sounds, but nothing’s perfect.

Archetype Entertainment has been showing off Exodus for years now, but Gamescom finally gave everyone what they’d all been waiting for: a release date. Did it come while we were watching a trailer about a talking octopus in a mech? Yes.  But I’m still pumped for this game. With Mass Effect gone, we desperately need some space opera RPGs out there, and Exodus has a chance of being a proper classic.

Showa American Story has been in the works for the last four years, but it’s constantly delayed. Currently, it’s scheduled for 2026, but considering this trailer gave us no release date, I’m betting its going to miss that, too. It’s still one of the most artistically cool-looking games out there, one that blends Showa Era Japan and ’80s American aesthetics to create something that could be truly special. I could do with a few less skimpy outfits for the lead protagonist, but aside from that, this is easily one of my most anticipated games whenever it does release.

I’m not sure I needed another trailer for Final Fantasy VII Revelation, but I’m sure willing to take one. This time the focus is on all the weapons that appear in the latter portion of Final Fantasy VII. They look cooler than ever, and battling them in an action RPG setting is guaranteed to be an epic spectacle. They’re still marking this as a Spring 2027 game, but if I had to guess that’ll likely turn into an April or May release date soon enough.

In all, just these titles alone were enough to make Gamescom Opening Night Live worth it. Were there a few too many games that were just there as commercials? Of course, but that’s to be expected when Keighley puts these shows together on his own dime. Still, it’s stunning to get updates on as many projects as we did at a show that a few years ago wasn’t considered major in the least.