All Gamescom ONL 2023 announcements and trailers in one place

In what’s become an end-of-summer bookend on the game release calendar, Gamescom’s Opening Night Live showcase is once again here to highlight games coming your way in the near future. Hosted by Geoff Keighley, who introduced himself as “the creator of The Game Awards,” the stream primarily focused on new or first looks at previously announced games like Mortal Kombat 1, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and the next season of Diablo 4, along with a few surprises.

Here’s a breakdown of the trailers and announcements that were shown:

Co-op is the big new addition in the third installment of the creepy-cute platformer, which lets players journey through the game in local or online co-op. There’s also a podcast: The Sounds of Nightmares, going behind the scenes of the games’ production. Expect this one in 2024.

The much-hyped action-RPG from Chinese developer Game Science, Black Myth: Wukong takes the Soulsbourne formula and brings it to a world of Chinese myth inspired by Journey to the West. The new trailer blends wonderfully macabre imagery with ornate fantasy, and looks like a great way to get your post-Elden Ring fix.

Remember the Killing Floor games? This is the third one. They really didn’t say much else about it, but there was this gnarly looking trailer.

A remaster of the classic real-time strategy game, now available on Xbox, joining Age of Empires 2 and politely ignoring Age of Empires 3. The first shadow drop of the night, now on Xbox consoles and Game Pass.

Zack Snyder showed up to show off the first trailer for his forthcoming Netflix epic Rebel Moon, and some further plans to expand the world of his two-part film. Including a video game, where you will “pick your rebel” and join in on the fun. No footage of the game though.

Pearl Abyss’ long-AWOL open-world action game got a good long gameplay trailer, showing off a game that looks like it wants to out-Assassin’s Creed Assassin’s Creed, complete with weird high-tech puzzles, a frankly incredible-looking fishing game, and hot air balloons. There is honestly a frightening amount of stuff in this game, and all of it looks wildly detailed. Bananas stuff.

Speaking of Assassin’s Creed, the new one takes a further step toward cultural immersion, with a story trailer introducing Assassin’s Creed Mirage entirely in Arabic. The soft reboot of the Assassin’s Creed franchise arrives Oct. 5.

The year of kickass fighting games continues with the newest look at Tekken 8, showing off the story mode that focuses on your player-created character, similar seeming to World Tour mode in Street Fighter 6 — and the assurance that the traditional story mode focused on the Mishima bloodline will continue.

Here’s the first look at gameplay from the campaign to the second Modern Warfare 3 game. The showcase also dropped some details on what will be rounding out the package, namely an open-world Zombies mode and a full multiplayer suite with the usual fare when it launches on Nov. 10.

The retro-fantasy survival game gets an early access release date and a very thorough gameplay trailer showing off exploration, gunplay, building, magic, and... cards? Nightingale is scheduled to launch in early access on Feb. 22, 2024.

Hoyoverse’s next showstopper, full of sci-fi furries and a fully stocked arcade jam-packed with minigames. Get ready for another free-to-play timesink. Zenless Zone Zero kicked off a mini-block of Hoyoverse updates, with a new trailer for the PS5 release of Honkai Star Rail and a glimpse of a very French-looking update for Genshin Impact.

A new story trailer for the follow-up to one of the first Soulslike imitators to come from a Western studio. Lords of the Fallen showed off its grim bona fides and monstrous foes in advance of its release on Oct. 13.

Did you forget that Sega is releasing a co-op Sonic game? In case you did, we got a new trailer for it. Make sure you make friends before the game comes out. In the meantime, there’s an expansion for Sonic Frontiers coming out for you to play solo.

Shown off apropos of nothing, Under the Waves looks like a lonesome submarine narrative/survival game that gives echoes of Firewatch. Very different from much of the big-budget stuff on display today, the game comes from French development shop Parallel Studio and Spotlight, the publishing arm of Quantic Dream. The game arrives next week, on Aug. 29.

Focus and Saber Interactive have followed up Snowrunner and Mudrunner with a game about open-world off-road driving to accomplish tasks that you can only do with some heavy duty four-wheel drive and some series tow cables

Ubisoft’s racing franchise The Crew gets the Forza Horizon treatment, with a festival-style approach to racing a full garage of customizable wheels.

Cyberpunk 2077 reaches its final form in its upcoming expansion, Phantom Liberty, which adds a new campaign but also overhauls the game’s systems top to bottom. The perk tree and cyberware are being redesigned, and new skills are coming to update the base game for new players and lure lapsed ones back. Those updates, by the way, come to the game for all players in a free 2.0 update. Both the patch and the expansion are scheduled for Sept. 26.

Real-time strategy game throwback Stormgate showed off one of its factions, the Infernals, a cartoonish demon horde that looks to give the StarCraft 2/Warcraft 3 homage a character all of its own.

The “community-built” action-RPG showed off its new class, the Runemaster, the latest bid in the developer’s effort to build the ultimate action RPG. We’ll find out if they pull it off when the game launches Sept. 7.

The “wildest” trailer for Mortal Kombat 1 yet shows off some brutal gameplay alongside NetherRealm’s expansive storytelling. The back-to-basics reboot featured a very young Raiden, a Shao Khan that is only just starting to be a problem, and of course, some bone-breaking fatalities.

A turn-based grand strategy game set in an alternate history, Ara looks like the next contender for the Civilization crown.

Would you believe that the land of Sanctuary is still having a bad time? Everyone, little kids included, is turning into messed-up little monsters, and you’ve gotta do something about it with new vampiric powers. Diablo 4’s new season is called Season of Blood, and it’s coming this fall — with a new character, the vampire hunter Eris, played by Eternals actor Gemma Chan.

Refreshingly weird, it’s not quite clear what kind of game Dustborn is — full of story about oddballs on a roadtrip, but also full of third-person action in a cartoonish sci-fi world. Keep an eye out for more.

Look at this little guy! He’s so little! What a great weirdo! It looks like he’s the star of a platformer? I’m very into this Cartoon Network-y game. Thank goodness it’s here!

Alan Wake’s journey to escape the nightmare realm of The Dark Place blends live-action and in-game footage in Remedy’s sequel, which looks to continue the first game’s equal parts Twin Peaks homage and Stephen King riff.