The Game Awards statue mystery may have been solved and it’s a real surprise

The mystery of The Game Awards statue may have been solved, with people pointing to a new announcement from Larian Studios or Sega.

While a number of video games are confirmed to be making an appearance at The Game Awards 2025 this week, including Tomb Raider, the gaming community is still no closer to deducing the mystery behind the strange statue that organiser Geoff Keighley keeps teasing.

It’s easier to list all the games it isn’t hinting at, with the likes of Diablo, God Of War, and The Elder Scrolls 6 already ruled out. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier does appear to know what the game is, but he’s withholding that info, only saying on the Triple Click podcast that it will make a lot of people excited.

With just a few days left before we get our answer, a couple more theories have begun circulating, with one of them pointing to a new announcement from Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios.

Insider extas1s has claimed that the statute relates to a new Divinity: Original Sin, posting artwork from Divinity Original Sin 2 alongside a statue emoji on X on Tuesday morning.

This obviously should be taken with a pinch of salt, but extas1s did claim that a co-op FromSoftware game would be announced at last year’s The Game Awards. That turned out to be accurate, as Elden Ring Nightreign debuted at the show.

We also know that whatever Larian is currently working on for its next two projects they’re original IPs and not a licence like Dungeons & Dragons, which could suggest it’s returning to the Divinity franchise.

Plus, the statue is very obviously fantasy-inspired, but while it has a grimdark aesthetic, the designs of the creatures that form it are somewhat stylised and not hyper-realistic, suggesting that whatever game it’s teasing isn’t entirely self-serious.

That would fit Larian’s output well enough, although the studio has deliberately avoided confirming if it’s working on a Divinity: Original Sin 3. In 2023, studio CEO Swen Vincke was asked about Larian’s next game by IGN and only said it will be ‘different than what you think it is’ but ‘still familiar’.

Although extas1s’ claim cannot be dismissed, considering he got Nightreign right, it’s far from the only theory floating around.

It’s also speculated that the statue is teasing a new Altered Beast. The old 80s arcade game saw you transform into a variety of were-animals, some of which can be seen in the statue and do bear a resemblance to how they appear in Altered Beast, as highlighted by horror game insider Dusk Golem.

The serious but not too serious art style matches up and Sega is currently trying to revive many of its classic franchises, having started with this year’s excellent Shinobi: Art Of Vengeance.

Despite the popularity of the Mega Drive conversion of the original arcade game (and many other contemporary ports) the series has never had any direct sequel, except for a brief attempt to revive the franchise in the early 2000s, with a Game Boy Advance title and a PlayStation 2 game. The latter was so bad Sega didn’t even bother to release it in the US.

The comparisons below are pretty convincing, so we’re going to bet our money on the statue being Altered Beast. Even if we also wouldn’t be surprised if Divinity: Original Sin 3 was announced either this year or relatively soon.

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