Lego Skylines, Path Of Exile 2 1.0, and Ontos were amongst the highlights for this year’s Opening Night Live event, as Gamescom 2026 begins.
With E3 now lost to history, Gamescom has, entirely by default, become the biggest gaming event in the year, dwarfing Tokyo Game Show and other similar showcases. Unlike E3 it’s always been open to the public but in recent years it’s been preceded by the Opening Night Live (ONL) livestream from The Game Awards host and organiser Geoff Kigheley.
It generally has less big name announcements than The Game Awards, and Keighley’s Summer Game Fest, but this year we did get the surprise reveal of The Witcher 3 Remastered. There were also lots of new trailers for existing games and a few smaller reveals during the two hour event.
Arguably the biggest thing, other than The Witcher 3, was a new trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation and an appearance from director Naoki Hamaguchi. He didn’t actually say much that was new though, with the release date only narrowed down as far as spring 2027.
As the final part of the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy, Revelation will be multiformat from the off, and released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
The first two games have been surprisingly good, threading the needle between nostalgia pandering and trying to do something new and interesting with surprising grace. The whole experience is so substantially different from the original, in terms of story, gameplay, and visuals that it’s not really a remake at all, so we’re very much looking forward to seeing how it all ends.
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In terms of the rest of Opening Night Live, there seemed like there were less on-stage appearances than previous years, with long sequences of trailer after trailer, usually for games that have already been announced and which, in many cases, are out this year.
Even so, the very FromSoftware influenced new game Nodus Fall, from HoYoverse, looked interesting, if completely unoriginal. We were also very pleased to see a new big budget turn-based tactics game, in the form of Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Tactics, which will be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC sometime next year.
We’ve no idea what’s going on in indie game Lofsöng, but it certainly looked good and reminded us slightly of the excellent Cocoon. Meanwhile, War For Westeros continues Warner Bros. efforts to never make a console-based Game Of Thrones game, since it’s a PC-only real-time strategy.
Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons looked enjoyably shlocky nonsense and along with Exodus is part of Wizards Of The Coast’s efforts to focus more on video game development. Although recent talk from the company, which is owned by toy maker Hasbro, suggests those ambitions have already been curtailed.
Afterworld from Paradox Interactive seems to be a grand strategy game, by the makers of Crusader Kings and Hearts Of Iron, but set in a Mad Max style version of America, while Stage Tour will give anyone that remembers the golden era of Guitar Hero déjà vu.
Strangely, Lego Skylines was only shown for a few seconds, but as peculiar as it seems to make a game based on such an adult-orientated title a Lego city builder does make sense and Cities: Skylines is definitely the modern day successor to SimCity.
Path Of Exile 2 1.0 was also only featured for a moment, but it was revealed it’ll be coming out of beta and getting a full release on December 11. Meanwhile, turn-based strategy game Heroes Of Might And Magic 3 is being treated to a full-blown remake.
No Law looked very violent and very much like it was trying to be Cyberpunk 2077, but the visuals are impressive and it’s out next year.
The most disturbing trailer of the night though was the one for Ontos, which is the spiritual sequel to Soma, from Frictional Games. It looked great, with more puzzle-based gameplay as well just survival horror thrills.
Overall, it was a decent line-up, but if there are any other big name game announcements to be made this year it’s relatively unlikely to be at the Tokyo Game Show next month. So that only leaves The Game Awards in December or a random livestream from the publisher.
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