Activision Blizzard isn't owned by Microsoft just yet, but the publisher still had a presence at Sunday's Xbox and Bethesda showcase. There was a trailer for Overwatch 2, along with some major news. The game will be free-to-play and early access will begin on October 4th (the Overwatch blog calls this the game's launch). There will be at least one more beta before then, with details to be announced at a reveal event on Thursday.

The clip showed a glimpse of a new hero that's been part of the game's lore for years, the Junker Queen. It seems likely that the character will be playable as part of the next beta. They have a shotgun and a Reinhardt-esque melee weapon, and it appears that one of their abilities involves rampaging forward. With the sequel already having one new damage character in Sojourn, it seems likely that Junker Queen is a tank character.

The trailer also included a quick look at a new Zenyatta ability, which allows the omnic to knock back an enemy with a melee attack. Naturally, it invokes the movie 300, since you can kick an opponent into the Ilios well. In addition, there was a glimpse of a mysterious fox that was leading a team into a fight.

Given that Blizzard will move all current Overwatch players to Overwatch 2, the original game will be going free-to-play as well. Those who own the game before June 23rd will receive a founder's pack, with a special icon, two skins (General Doomfist and Jester Sombra) and more goodies. You'll need to log in by December 5th to receive the pack.

It's unclear whether the co-op player-vs-environment side of the sequel will be free too, or how Blizzard plans to monetize everything. Overwatch 2 will herald a shift to a seasonal content format, which suggests there will be a battle pass of some kind. That means there should finally be content updates on a regular cadence.

Should the Microsoft deal go through, Overwatch 2 will more than likely be included in Game Pass. It's worth noting that only the player-vs-player (PvP) side will be available at launch on October 4th. The co-op missions will arrive later.

At today's Xbox showcase, Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill has revealed that the company is making its titles available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers — with all champions and other bonuses included. Members will be able to play League of Legends on PC with all 160 champions unlocked and get first-day access to future champions. They can also play League of Legends: Wild Rift on mobile with all 80 champions. Plus, similar to LoL on PC, they'll get first-day access to any future champion Riot releases. 

Game Pass members who play Valorant will get all 18 agents, as well, and be among the first ones to be able to use future agents as they become available. For the strategy card game Legends of Runeterra, subscribers will get the Foundations Set, or the first cards released for the game, at no cost. Finally, a Game Pass membership will unlock a rotation of Tier One Little Legend avatars for Teamfight Tactics on PC and mobile.

In addition to game specific bonuses, players will release extra experience across select titles. It also sounds like Riot has more in store for Xbox players, because Merrill wrote in the company's announcement that it'll "share more about the partnership and how members can access the Game Pass content" in the coming months. 

Ustwo, the studio behind Monument Valley and Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, is working on a new game called Desta: The Memories Between. It features a blend of roguelike, turn-based and sports-game mechanics, and it's in development for multiple platforms — though exactly which remains a mystery, as does the game's release date. The studio promises to share more information in the coming months.

ustwo

Desta takes place in two worlds, reality and a limbo made up of the protagonist's memories, and its main gameplay mechanic involves throwing around a blue ball. The story follows Desta, a person in their 20s who returns home after leaving their loved ones in chaos a while back. Desta's dad has died, and when they find his treasured blue ball, they're transported to a dreamlike world where they can confront their past and speak with the people they left behind. Solving physics and spatial puzzles with the ball unlocks dialogue with Desta's friends and family members, and helps them find the necessary words to move forward.

The game is fully voice acted, and ustwo developers are pulling inspiration from games like Hades and Into the Breach for its mechanics.

ustwo

"Desta is the deepest, most ambitious and most replayable title from ustwo games yet, but with all the heart and approachability that the London studio is known for," according to ustwo.

Fans of Donut Country creator Ben Esposito won't have to wait much longer to play his new game. At Summer Game Fest, Annapurna Interactive announced Neon White is launching on June 16th on both PC and Nintendo Switch. Alongside news of a release date, the publisher also shared a new gameplay trailer, showcasing the game's unusual mix of platforming and card-based shooting. Engadget senior editor Jessica Conditt interviewed Esposito about the game last March and came away excited to play it.    

In 2020, Starcraft 2 production director Tim Morten left Blizzard to start Frost Giant Studios. At Summer Game Fest, he finally showed off what he and his team have been working on for the past two years. We got our first look at Stormgate, a new free-to-play real-time strategy game that runs on Unreal Engine 5. Morten didn't share too many details on the project but said the game would feature two races at launch.  

Frost Giant features some serious talent. In addition to Morten, former Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne campaign designer Tim Campbell is part of the team working on Stormgate. Frost Giant plans to begin beta testing the game next year. 

After a moody first trailer, Striking Distance Studios, a team made up of former Dead Space developers, has released new gameplay footage from its upcoming survival horror title, The Callisto Protocol. Shown off during Summer Game Fest, the clip was captured on current generation hardware, according to host Geoff Keighley. The trailer sees the game's protagonist fighting their way through a claustrophobic environment using an arsenal that will be familiar to any Dead Space fan.  

Striking Distance Studios will release The Callisto Protocol on December 2nd.  

Developing...

There's a new entry in the xenomorph video game catalog, this one called Aliens: Dark Descent. It's due out in 2023 from French studio Tindalos Interactive, Focus Entertainment and 20th Century Games. It'll come to PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series consoles and PC.

Aliens: Dark Descent is a single-player, squad-based action game. Here's how the game's YouTube description reads: "Drop into an original Alien story where players will lead a squad of marines in real-time combat against the deadliest creature mankind has ever faced."

Players will be able to customize their team's weapons, armor and abilities, but the xenomorphs will adapt to these decisions. These space monsters are no idle threat, either — in this game, death is permanent for your squad.

"Embark on high stakes missions in treacherous territory, all the while gathering resources to fix up the stranded Otago spacecraft and researching tech upgrades for your crew," the description continues. "Players will command a squad as one unit thanks to intuitive controls, allowing their Marines to automatically prioritize and execute complex actions in real-time, based on their respective skill sets and the environment around them."

The new game made its debut with a cinematic trailer during the Summer Game Fest kickoff stream. In fact, it was the first game shown off in the entire show, which must make it feel nice and special.

The trailer shows a squad of Marines hunting and being hunted by a handful of xenomorphs, complete with plenty of gunfire, creeping monsters and interpersonal betrayal.

Xbox has been talking about bringing the Game Pass Ultimate library to smart TVs for at least a year, and it’s finally happening in 2022. The Xbox app will hit this year’s lineup of Samsung smart TVs and monitors on June 30th, allowing Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to play titles from the cloud with no additional hardware, aside from a Bluetooth-connected gamepad. Even a PlayStation controller will do the trick.

Some 2022 Samsung smart TV models already support game-streaming services including Google Stadia and NVIDIA’s GeForce Now. Samsung launched a new Gaming Hub for its TVs in January, putting these cloud services front-and-center, and the Xbox app is set to join them. Xbox is one of the biggest forces in cloud gaming, with more than 25 million Game Pass subscribers – though not all of these are at the Ultimate tier, which unlocks streaming capabilities.

The Game Pass Ultimate library has hundreds of games available to stream and Xbox has made it a point to release its big first-party titles on the service on day one. On Samsung devices, the Xbox app will support Bluetooth headsets and gamepads including the Xbox Wireless Controller, and PlayStation’s DualShock 4 and DualSense.

There’s no update for now on the dedicated streaming device that Xbox said it was working on last year alongside the smart TV app.

Xbox

Xbox has more big plans for Game Pass in the coming months. Later this year, the company plans to add the ability for Ultimate subscribers to stream select games that they purchase outside of the Game Pass library. It’s unclear exactly how this will break down – it likely applies to titles that leave the Game Pass catalog but remain in the Xbox ecosystem, but it could include games from third-party distributors.

In response to a request for clarification, an Xbox spokesperson said, “Later this year, it's our intent to roll out the ability for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play select games from the cloud that you already own or purchase outside the Xbox Game Pass library. We'll have more to share on the specific games that will be supported via Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) over the next year.”

Xbox is bringing cloud gaming to two new countries, Argentina and New Zealand, on June 9th. This includes access to the Xbox streaming library and Fortnite. Xbox partnered with Epic Games to bring Fortnite to Xbox Cloud Gaming in May, and it’s available to play there for free without a subscription. At the time, Xbox said it was interested in adding other free-to-play titles to its cloud network.

Over the coming year or so, Xbox plans to test out a system that allows for multiple profiles to play at the same time under a single Game Pass subscription. That’ll be tested in Colombia and Ireland, and Xbox executives are positioning it as a “potential addition” to Game Pass.

Xbox

Finally, game demos are on their way to Game Pass. Within the next year, Xbox will start rolling out curated, bite-sized bits of upcoming games in Game Pass, allowing subscribers to test these titles for free and provide feedback to developers. The program will focus on independent titles at first, and Xbox said developers will be compensated for participating, meaning all the work that goes into building a demo won’t go unfunded. The demo program is called Project Moorcroft. There’s no word on if a Minecraft Project Moorcroft demo will ever drop, but it’s fun to say that regardless.

Time-limited, free game demos are one of the perks of the new PlayStation Plus subscription service, which will be competing directly with Game Pass. The new PS Plus goes live on June 13th and its most expensive tier, Premium, includes access to about 700 games in the PS Now library, plus cloud play for some games from past PlayStation eras. Sony’s subscription plan doesn’t support native streaming on mobile devices, as Xbox’s does, and it won’t include any new, first-party games at launch.

Sony received negative press in April after reports surfaced that the studio was making it mandatory for developers of certain games to build and release two-hour demos for PlayStation Plus Premium, with no apparent plans to compensate them for the work. Xbox, of course, made sure to highlight its plans to pay developers for building demos.

It’s June, and video game fans across the globe know what that means – it’s not E3. Again. The old, in-person gaming show has been canceled for the third year in a row, but this summer will still be filled with news and virtual events, thanks in large part to Canada’s sweetheart Geoff Keighley.

It all takes place in early June, which is like right now, so let’s take a look at the schedule for Summer Game Fest and break down what to expect from the studios involved.

Summer Game Fest is less a singular event and more a state of mind. It comprises a handful of virtual shows spread over 10 days, starting on June 2nd with the PlayStation State of Play stream. This one already happened, and it was short and sweet, focusing on content for PlayStation VR 2. Capcom kicked things off with a reveal of the Resident Evil 4 remake, the announcement of a VR version of Resident Evil: Village, and a release window of 2023 for Street Fighter 6. Square Enix also showed off the first gameplay trailer for Final Fantasy XVI, complete with a 2023 timeframe for launch. Oddly enough, there’s still no word on when the PSVR2 will actually come out.

Capcom

After that, Activision is hosting its own little party for the reveal of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II on June 8th at 1pm ET. The game is a sequel to 2019's Modern Warfare and a reboot of the series. This show literally just wrapped up, and Activision shared its plans to bring Modern Warfare II's technology to the new Warzone, which will land after October this year. No Russian, the controversial airport mission from the original Modern Warfare II, will not be included in the reboot.

Summer Game Fest officially kicks off with a big live-streamed event on June 9th at 2pm ET. Hosted by Keighley, the show is expected to be two hours long and will feature announcements from the usual suspects, including 2K, Atlus, Bloober Team, Capcom, EA, Epic Games, Warner Bros. and Square Enix. The Day of the Devs stream directly after the main show will spotlight indie games specifically, backed by iam8bit and Double Fine.

Not much has been publicly confirmed for the kickoff show, but we’ll definitely get a fresh look at Gotham Knights, an appearance by The Rock, and lots of raw gameplay footage, according to Keighley. Even with State of Play last week, there’s still room for Capcom to drop some details about DLC for Resident Evil: Village, and for Square Enix to showcase Forspoken, which comes out in October. Atlus may show off something in the Persona universe, and rumor has it Bloober Team is working on a Silent Hill game — but it could also be building a new Layers of Fear.

Next on the calendar is indie publisher Devolver Digital, with a Twitch stream on June 9th at 6pm ET, the same night as the main Summer Game Fest event. It’s Devolver, so this show’s gonna be weird. It’s gonna have a lot of f-bombs. It’s gonna leave you with the feeling that Devolver is scrappy and relatable, but also way too cool for you. It’s gonna try really hard to disguise the fact that yes, even Devolver’s show is simply another long ad from a company entrenched in the video game industry’s multibillion dollar corporate system – but most of all, I bet it’ll be funny as hell. Devolver always puts on a good show, and they always have a rich roster of indie developers to choose from. This year should be no different, with Suda51 hosting the stream and recent hits like Death’s Door, Inscryption, Trek to Yomi and Weird West on the publisher’s roster.

Half Mermaid

On June 10th, there’s a Netflix Geeked Week stream followed by a Tribeca Games Spotlight focusing on a curated selection of upcoming indie titles, including Immortality, Thirsty Suitors, As Dusk Falls and Oxenfree II. And then, on June 12th, it’s time for the most E3 event of the summer – the Xbox and Bethesda showcase.

The Xbox and Bethesda stream kicks off at 1pm ET on Sunday, June 12th. There are no confirmed announcements so far, but the show’s cosmic marketing scheme suggests we’ll see something from Starfield, Bethesda’s huge new sci-fi RPG. This will be bittersweet for anyone who’s been following the game’s development – just last month, Bethesda delayed Starfield into the first half of 2023, pushing it back from an initial release date of November 11th, 2022. Aside from a few teaser videos and dev diaries, we haven’t seen much of Starfield, and the Xbox show is the ideal time to break out some actual gameplay and maybe even convince fans that the delay will be worthwhile.

It’s very possible we’ll get a good look at another delayed Bethesda property – Redfall, the open-world, co-op vampire shooter developed by Dishonored studio Arkane. Redfall was originally supposed to come out this summer, but Bethesda pushed it into the first half of 2023 alongside Starfield. It’d be great to see some gameplay from this title, since so far the marketing has consisted of stylized, cinematic videos. And to round out the Bethesda properties, there’s always a chance that Elder Scrolls 6 will make an appearance, considering we haven’t seen anything about it since 2018 – you know, back when E3 was still a thing.

But that’s enough about Bethesda – Xbox owns 23 game studios and it has Game Pass, the company’s subscription game-streaming service that’s sure to be mentioned every other minute during the show. Other potential hits for the Xbox stream include Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, the next Forza Motorsport, and maybe even something about the new Fable that was announced in 2020. And of course there’s always room for Halo: Infinite updates.

Ninja Theory

With Sony and Microsoft chugging along in the latest console generation, the focus right now is on software, and both studios have plenty to prove in this space. Sony barely participated in the summer’s events and the company doesn’t seem interested in talking about major in-house projects like God of War: Ragnarok or Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2. Meanwhile, two significant delays from Xbox this year were a big blow to the company’s reputation, especially considering how important first-party exclusives are in a subscription-based ecosystem. Xbox promises to include its blockbuster games in Game Pass subscriptions on day one, at no extra charge, while that isn’t the case with Sony’s new subscription service, PlayStation Plus Premium. This poses a significant consumer-facing advantage for Xbox and I expect to hear a lot about first-party exclusives in Game Pass during the company’s big show.

And with that, it looks like Summer Game Fest is done – but there’s still plenty more gaming news to come this year. Nintendo loves to host digital showcases whenever it damn well pleases and we’re just about due for another one; EA usually has a show of its own at some point; Sony still has plenty of PSVR2 and PS Plus Premium details to share, and Microsoft will never stop talking about Game Pass. In fact, Xbox is hosting a second showcase on June 14th. And when all else fails, there are so many indie games, you guys. Let’s all have some fun.

Let’s get this out of the way: No Russian will not be included in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. In fact, the game will penalize friendly fire and fail players who shoot civilians while in combat.

This is in stark contrast to the No Russian mission from the original Modern Warfare II, which came out in 2009 – in this level, players were instructed to shoot their way through a busy airport, killing civilians en masse alongside a Russian terrorist organization. The protagonist was undercover, trying to infiltrate the cell for the CIA, and even though it was possible to skip this section or play it without firing a single shot, the fictional peer pressure to kill as many people as possible was strong.

No Russian sparked heavy controversy with the release of Modern Warfare II. Though Call of Duty has made billions gamifying the horrors of war, many players balked at the idea of role-playing as a mass shooter targeting unarmed civilians. The mission came with a content warning in the US and it was censored internationally. Infinity Ward and Activision were forced to publicly justify its inclusion, arguing against the idea that it was tone-deaf, ham-fisted and needlessly disturbing.

With the 2022 version of Modern Warfare II, Infinity Ward is avoiding the conversation altogether. In response to the question, “Can you confirm whether the No Russian mission will be included in the new game, in any form?” an Activision spokesperson responded as follows:

“No. There are NPC civilians in the game, but you will be penalized for friendly fires. If civilians are caught in the crossfire, players will automatically get a mission fail.”

Activision

This fits with the overall vibe of the new Modern Warfare II. At a media briefing ahead of its reveal, Infinity Ward developers emphasized the game’s entertainment value over serious wartime themes, at one point using the phrase, "fun for everyone." They said they wanted this Modern Warfare II to be realistic, but still "cool." Without mentioning No Russian specifically, developers said the goal of the original game was to be provocative, while this year’s version was aiming to be heroic.

With Modern Warfare II, Infinity Ward is sticking to the fun bits of war. The game still deals in real-world themes of organized violence, large-scale military action and shadowy terrorist groups – but no joke, I’ve never heard Call of Duty developers use the word “fun” so freely in a pre-release briefing.

This may be because Modern Warfare II marks the beginning of a fresh approach to Call of Duty for Activision, with pivotal implications for the future of Warzone specifically. When the next version of Warzone comes out after October of this year, it will include the AI improvements, new vehicle behaviors and upgraded physics of Modern Warfare II, and both games will run on the same engine.

Activision

“A wholly new Warzone will launch as an extension of the Modern Warfare II universe,” an Activision spokesperson said. “With it comes new technology, new features, and new gameplay that work seamlessly together…. In order to fully deliver this state-of-the-art experience, Warzone 2.0 will feature new Modern Warfare II content and systems with brand new progression and inventories. Today’s Warzone will continue on as a separate experience that will include a continuation of player progression and inventories within that Warzone experience.”

Modern Warfare II is scheduled to come out on October 28th. Warzone 2.0 should land soon after, according to Activision.

Modern Warfare II is a sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare, which rebooted the series but kept familiar themes and characters like Captain John Price. The new game follows Price’s Task Force 141 and Mexican Special Forces as they attempt to thwart terrorist plans across the globe.

“We love telling stories,” Infinity Ward head writer Brian Bloom said. “Story is character and character is story, and that's writery stuff that writers sometimes say internally, but it boils down to a simple thing. If you have a plot, who’s in it, what’s happening?”

With Modern Warfare II, developers focused on refining water physics and figuring out how combat works above and below the surface. One level they showed off, Wet Work, had the player sneak into a marina by swimming around docked boats, taking out security forces by throwing knives and shooting a pistol upward through the water. In the new game, shooting underwater reduces the impact of each bullet, whether it breaks the surface or not, but the pistol otherwise operates normally.

These new water physics will apply to multiplayer portions of the game, as well as Warzone 2.0. In terms of multiplayer for Modern Warfare II, developers have taken observational data from past Call of Duty games to identify three main player behaviors: aggressive, defensive and reactionary, each of them with assault and stealth variants. The game’s default loadouts fall into the resulting six categories. As for vehicles, it’s possible to shoot their doors and tires off, complete on-the-fly repairs, and get a 360 degree view when leaning out of a window. Amphibious vehicles and a helicopter troop carrier also make an appearance in multiplayer.

New multiplayer maps come in large-scale and traditional sizes, and there’s a new 6v6 mode called Knockout that infuses Gunfight with a multiplayer component. Players have one life (with revive) and one minute on the timer, and a bag randomly spawns in one of three locations. The winner is the last person left alive or the person holding the bag when time runs out.

Activision

The AI systems in Modern Warfare II have been tweaked to better facilitate emergent gameplay and mimic real-world scenarios, while Infinity Ward is running internal tests on maps with 300 AI characters and 100 live players. Call of Duty’s Ricochet Anti-Cheat system will be live in Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0 on day one.

Infinity Ward creative director and co-head Patrick Kelly teased what this could all mean for Warzone 2.0 and the future of Call of Duty in his introductory speech, saying, “What if there was tons and tons of AI in the world and things like that, and there was tons of players and stuff like that? That could be potentially really cool, right? We want a scenario where everyone is playing together, having fun and playing how they want to play and what they want to play.”

As long as it’s not No Russian.