The Game Awards: What will be announced today?

After months of hype, The Game Awards will finally be taking place tonight.

The ceremony kicks off at 5pm PT / 8pm ET (December 10 at 1am GMT) and promises a host of new game announcements, as well as the awards themselves.

Many of these announcements have been shrouded in secrecy, and will come as a surprise when they’re finally revealed during the show.

However, others have already been confirmed or teased, giving some idea of at least some of the games being shown.

Here’s our list, then, in alphabetical order, of what we know will be shown at the Game Awards 2021.

ARC Raiders

Little is known about this sci-fi game in development at Embark Studios, the new Swedish developer founded by former EA executive Patrick Söderlund.

The only information we’ve had to date was back in 2019 when Söderlund said the game was going to be “a cooperative free-to-play action game set in a distant future, about overcoming seemingly impossible odds by working together”.

A few days ago, however, a teaser appeared on Twitter with the words “enlist, resist” and the date December 9, suggesting we’ll finally get to see the first ARC Raiders trailer at the Game Awards.

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen

Destiny 2’s The Witch Queen expansion will be released on February 22, 2022. Billed as the “definitive Destiny campaign”, it will take players to Savathûn’s Throne World and introduce the new Glaive weapon type.

Details of the expansion haven’t been met with overwhelming excitement yet, after Bungie stated that the upcoming dungeons planned for The Witch Queen will not only be sold separately, but won’t be included in Season Passes either.

Still, with confirmation that there’ll be “a new look” at the expansion tonight, maybe Bungie will still be able to win over its more critical players.

Dying Light 2

The sequel to Dying Light has had more delays than a Zoom call with a dial-up modem, but it finally looks set to release on February 4, 2022.

Developer Techland stated back in September that “the game is complete and we are currently playtesting it”, and that it needed those extra five months to polish and refine it.

As it nears its final, definite, honestly launch date, it’s been confirmed that we’ll get a new trailer at the Game Awards.

Halo: The Series

A new teaser for the Halo TV series was released on Tuesday, ahead of the show’s first full trailer tonight.

The Halo TV series will air exclusively on streaming service Paramount+ when it launches in the first quarter of 2022.

And it was Paramount itself that tweeted confirmation that the show’s trailer will debut at the Game Awards.

https://twitter.com/HaloTheSeries/status/1468279143473172480

Homeworld 3

Fans of Relic Entertainment‘s Homeworld series haven’t had a new game since Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, a prequel released five years ago.

That game was developed by then-new studio Blackbird Interactive, which had been formed by former members of Relic, and was met with general positivity.

The next game, Homeworld 3, is still some way away – Blackbird doesn’t expect it’ll be released until the fourth quarter of 2022.

However, it’s confirmed that we’ll see it in at least some form (most likely a cinematic trailer) at the Game Awards.

Improbable‘s game

In 2017, BioWare‘s general manager Aaryn Flynn left the studio after more than 17 years there.

The following year he became the general manager of the Canada studio at Improbable, a tech company “dedicated to solving the challenges of building virtual worlds”.

Flynn has been very quiet about what he and his team have been working on for the past three and a half years, and all that’s known is that it’ll be an online RPG using Improbable’s own SpatialOS technology.

However, Flynn confirmed on Monday that Improbable’s game will finally be officially revealed tonight.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

Developer Daedalic Entertainment’s story-driven action adventure game based on everyone’s favourite mood-swinging monster was one of many games delayed by the COVID pandemic.

Originally set to release this year, it was confirmed way back in January that this definitely wasn’t going to happen and that the game was planned for 2022 instead.

Billed as a story-driven action adventure game, Gollum was first announced in March 2019, when Daedalic said it would “remain true to the vision laid out in J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and will also explore new events and details related to Gollum’s journey.”

We may get a better look at whether it’s managed to pull this off tonight, because it’ll definitely be at the show.

Lost Ark

Lost Ark was released in its native South Korea in 2019, and subsequently won six awards at the Korea Game Awards 2019.

Now the MMO action RPG is headed to the west, with Amazon Studios taking over publishing duties from Korean publisher Smilegate.

Amazon is promising a new trailer for the game tonight, as well as a “special announcement”, which we’re assuming isn’t that they’ve found the ark after all.

The Matrix Awakens

It’s not often that we get excited about a tech demo, but the teaser trailer for The Matrix Awakens certainly got the internet talking with its hyper-realistic Keanu Reeves character model.

Awakens has been created to show off the power of Unreal Engine 5, and promises “a glimpse into the future of interactive storytelling and entertainment” with a “cinematic and real-time tech demo”.

The demo is already available to pre-load, and will be getting a proper trailer during the Game Awards, as well as a likely release date (which may even be tonight too).

A new Saber Interactive game

Florida studio Saber Interactive is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and these celebrations come to a head this week with five new trailers.

Saber has stated that during the Game Awards it will reveal a new game, as well as a trailer for a project it’s previously announced.

Then, during the Twitch Winter Gathering the following day, it will show three more trailers.

One would imagine, however, that the new reveal during the Game Awards will be what it considers to be the most important one.

Saints Row

It’s fair to say opinion is divided over the upcoming Saints Row reboot, with some declaring that it isn’t their Saints Row and others keen to see how Volition can breathe new life into the series (so far, we’re in the latter camp).

Volition is stubbornly refusing to buckle to pressure from its haters, and even when announcing last month that the game has been delayed by six months, it made it perfectly clear that it wasn’t making any changes to the story or characters.

The game will be getting a new trailer tonight at the Game Awards, and Volition will certainly be hoping it’ll be enough to win over some of its doubters.

Sonic Frontiers and the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie

Sega and Paramount released the first poster for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie sequel earlier this week, giving fans a proper look at Tails and his biplane for the first time.

The first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will be premiering tonight, with both Jim Carrey (Dr Robotnik) and Ben Schwartz (the voice of Sonic) set to make an appearance.

However, Game Awards host and creator Geoff Keighley also confirmed on Twitter that we were going to see a “Sonic double header”, and when someone asked him if it’s more than the movie trailer, he replied “it is”.

Exactly what the other announcement will be isn’t clear yet but all signs point to Sonic Frontiers, the believed title of next year’s all-new Sonic adventure.

SteelRising

SteelRising is a curious historical action game set in 1789 an alternate timeline where King Louis XVI of France has unleashed an army of clockwork robots on his people.

With a sentence like that, you know the game has the potential to steal the show when a new trailer is shown at the Game Awards tonight.

Hopefully we’ll get to see more about the protagonist Aegis, an agile automaton who was built to be a dancer (and literally wasn’t made for fighting) but finds itself as the Revolution’s last hope.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

We’ve already seen a couple of trailers for Rocksteady‘s much-anticipated new title, but we haven’t seen any actual gameplay yet.

That may finally change tonight, with the game set to appear during the Game Awards.

Rocksteady co-founder and creative director Sefton Hill tweeted on Wednesday that the game would be at the show, and that he “can’t wait to share the mayhem”.

Tiny Tiny’s Wonderlands

The Borderlands spin-off starring the series’ most love-them-or-hate-them character is due for release on March 25.

Gearbox has already shown a couple of trailers for the game since it was revealed back in June, and we’ll be getting another one tonight.

A tweet on the game’s official Twitter account confirmed its presence in typically quirky style.

Xbox Game Pass for PC day one titles

You can always guarantee at shows like this that Xbox will turn up with a cheeky Xbox Game pass announcement.

This time the company has confirmed that during the Game Awards tonight, four PC titles will be confirmed to be on Game Pass on day one.

It remains to be seen if there’ll be more Game Pass news beyond this, but for now that’s what’s been guaranteed.