My favorite Stuff from Summer game fest 2026
Geoff Keighley has done it again! Summer Game Fest 2026, as well as the surrounding PlayStation, XBOX (how do you like that new branding, huh?), and Nintendo showcases have ended, and while my anticipation is high, my wallet is scared. Since the death of E3 5 years ago, Geoff has worked his suit-and-sneakers-wearing butt off to bring back video game Christmas by wrangling publishers, developers, and games media to put on Summer Game Fest, a 3-day event that spans multiple streams, live presentations, and announcements of all shapes and sizes. It’s not the world-wide phenomenon that E3 was, but it is growing and could get there one day.
Now that we’ve been shotgunned with all the gamey goodness, I want to highlight my favorite things from this year’s festivities. Here they are in no particular order.
Final Fantasy Revelation
Airships, baby!
The third and final installment of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy was finally announced, and the trailer made my nerdy little superfan heart happy. Airships will always get my attention in a fantasy setting, and they featured prominently in this trailer. Matt Mercer, the voice of Vincent Valentine, a gun-slinging vampire and one of the incoming characters in Revelation, narrated the trailer and gameplay they showed off, bringing just the right amount of gravitas and charisma to the proceedings. Touching down in Spring 2027, Revelation will conclude the remake trilogy that has been over a decade in the making.
The Wolf Among Us 2
Bigby’s back, and he’s taking a bite out of crime.
In 2002, Bill Willingham created a groundbreaking comic book series called Fables. Bringing fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters into modern New York City, Fables centered on their secret community and their ongoing struggle to maintain their secrets and live among humans.
In 2013, Telltale Games published the first of 5 installments in the episodic The Wolf Among Us, a narrative choice-driven noir adventure game featuring Bigby Wolf, the sheriff of Fabletown. Featuring investigation, interrogation, combat, compelling characters, and a solid plot, The Wolf Among Us was immediately a critic and fan favorite, earning positive review scores and praise, with many fans clamoring for more. Not to disappoint, Telltale announced the sequel in 2017. Shortly after, however, Telltale Games was shuttered and the remains were acquired by LCG Entertainment, making the likelihood of a sequel ever being made basically nonexistent. But the Video Game Gods have graciously blessed us with the revival of Telltale games and, with it, The Wolf Among Us 2, set to release in 2027. We’re even getting a bonus remake of The Wolf Among Us that will be releasing this holiday season!
Star Wars: Zero Company
Turn-based tactical gameplay meets Star Wars. It’s like they’re making this just for me.
If you walked into my office right now, about 50% of the irresponsible amount of collectibles and paraphernalia you’d see would be Star Wars related. The Empire Strikes Back is, in my opinion, the greatest movie ever made (and I’m not alone on that). I love Star Wars, if that wasn’t already apparent.
So when a Star Wars game like Star Wars: Zero Company gets announced, I’m obviously paying attention. When a Star Wars game with turn-based, tactical gameplay is announced, I’m locked in. Mixing my favorite movie series ever with the gameplay from my favorite game ever (Final Fantasy Tactics) is a guarantee that I’ll be checking out your game, so come August 27th, I’m heading to a galaxy far, far away.
Wolverine
He’s the best at what he does. And what he does best isn’t very nice.
Insomniac is on a hot streak that seems like it won’t be ending anytime soon. Wolverine has some big friendly neighborhood shoes to fill, given how successful Spider-Man, Miles Morales, and Spider-Man 2 were. Announced in September, 2021, Wolverine has been highly anticipated while Insomniac remained fairly quiet. A small update here and a few pieces of concept art there were all we got until last September, when the first trailer was released during a State of Play.
Violent and brutal, the trailer showed a side of Insomniac that we haven’t seen yet. To live up to the comics and the character, this game needs to lean into the bloody havoc and carnage Wolverine wreaks on his enemies, and it seems we are going to get just that. A gameplay trailer shown during PlayStation’s State of Play during the Summer Game Fest this year showed off the combat, the gore, and the mechanics of Logan’s healing abilities. The little Canadian beast will be teaming up with other heroes, fighting sentinels, and ripping bad guys a new one on September 15th.
Guild Wars 3
Do you like fetching magic apples and collecting fantasy twigs for strangers?
Ok, that subheading might make you think I’m not excited about this game, but Guild Wars 2 is my absolute favorite MMO (massively multiplayer online game). Games like World of Warcraft and Runescape, while fun enough, never hooked me long-term. Both have plenty of things to keep a player occupied, but both suffer from the same fatal flaw. They rely too much on the second “M” of MMO: the multiplayer.
Yes, I know that playing MMOs by myself is bucking the design philosophy of the entire genre, but that’s how I like to play. Guild Wars allowed me that option, even though it’s also an MMO. Guild Wars 2 provided me many hours of enjoyment on my own, hunting down orcs, traveling to enormous, magical cities, taming dangerous beasts, collecting loot, and yes, completing fetch quests for random strangers. The developers seemed to understand that players need things they can enjoy even when they can’t line up their schedules with their friends.
This is why I’m excited for Guild Wars 3. The game looks gorgeous, the combat looks snappy and fun, the character building looks detailed and satisfying, and the gameplay looks like it will once again accommodate my hermetic play style.
Silent Hill: Townfall
The fog is rolling in again…
Silent Hill: Townfall, releasing September 24th of this year, is sporting two firsts for the series. This will be the first Silent Hill game to be played in first-person, and it will be the first Silent Hill game to be set in Scotland. First announced in 2022 and originally slated for a 2023 release, Townfall was delayed by Screen Burn (the developer) because it was “far more ambitious than its original plans.” This is reportedly the first in a number of planned anthologized spinoffs in the series from developers around the world. The trademark fog is returning, as is the static, albeit this time it’s from a handheld TV device instead of a walkie-talkie or radio. Between the first-person gameplay and the small Scottish town setting, this game will probably scare the poop right out of me. In the best way possible.
Alien: Isolation 2
“I can’t lie to you about your chances. But you have my sympathies.”
In October of 2014, I got my Game Informer in the mail and on the cover was Alien: Isolation, a horror game based on Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien. Featuring an abandoned space station, analog future-tech, and a xenomorph that relentlessly hunts you, this game was a huge leap forward for both the horror genre and for enemy intelligence and behavior in video games. Evolving widely used techniques in brand new ways, Creative Assembly designed a system in which the xenomorph gets pointed in the right direction by the game “director” (a series of scripts that manages the game’s systems), but still has to hunt you down using the “senses” they coded into it. This system/countersystem method allows you to hide from and evade the xenomorph if you’re clever enough, but never to get comfortable. It was groundbreaking.
Alien: Isolation 2 got an official reveal and a trailer at Summer Game Fest. No official release date has been set, but the sequel is taking the action planetside and promises to keep us as stressed and paranoid as the first did.
CONTROL Resonant
The Oldest House is leaking
This list has quite a few sequels on it, I’ll admit. Unlike movies, video game sequels tend to be better than the original more often than not. Control Resonant looks like it will live up to that pattern.
Set in a mind-bendingly warped Manhattan, this game follows the brother of the first game’s protagonist, Dylan, as he finally leaves confinement in the Oldest House only to find himself facing another deadly cosmic threat. The bizarre architecture and interdimensional entities are back in this installment, as is the fast-paced and varied combat. The visuals, scope, and style all point to an escalation of everything that made the first game so uniquely fun.
Lords of the Fallen 2
Masochists rejoice, a new souls-like is on the way!
Following the success of their 2023 reboot/sequel to the 2014 Lords of the Fallen (confusing, I know), CI Games is releasing Lords of the Fallen 2. These games are souls-likes, meaning they follow many of the design sensibilities found in the Dark Souls games while also bringing some unique flair to the genre. Punishingly difficult combat, horrifying enemies, massive levels, and unsettling environments are par for the course in the souls-like genre and are certainly core to Lords of the Fallen. Unique to these games, though, is the ability to shift back and forth between the Umbral, the world of the dead, and the living world. This mechanic plays into puzzle-solving, finding secret areas, fighting enemies, and serves as a last-ditch survival technique when your mortal body falls in battle. Lords of the Fallen 2 releases this fall and looks just as brutal and horrifying as the last, if not more so.
Resident Evil
Veronica is getting a makeover… and I’m here for it
Not a sequel, but a remake, Resident Evil Veronica is the next in a line of incredible REmakes (see what I did there?) from Capcom. Code Veronica originally launched in 2000 on the Sega Dreamcast. This was the first Resident Evil game to launch on a non-PlayStation console, the first in the series to take place outside the U.S., and the first in the series to feature real-time 3D graphics instead of pre-rendered graphics (a huge deal at the time and part of the impetus for developing on the Dreamcast).
Spinning off of the events of Resident Evil 2, Code Veronica follows Claire and Chris Redfield as they try to survive a world in which the virus is spreading rapidly. Gameplay was split between Claire and Chris in the same way that Resident Evil 2 was split between Claire and Leon. With the popularity of the original with players and critics alike and the high quality of the recent remakes of 2, 3, and 4, there’s no reason to think Veronica will be anything less than great. Veronica releases next year!
Ocarina of Time Remake
Time travel, magical music, and Z-targeting!
Another highly anticipated remake was officially revealed during Nintendo’s Summer Game Fest stream after having been leaked a few months prior. A remake of Ocarina of Time is officially in the works and is scheduled to release later this year on the Switch 2! Nintendo showed just a brief glimpse, but has confirmed it is a complete, from-the-ground-up remake with a more realistic graphical style than Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Ocarina of Time was the first game to feature Z-targeting(lock-on targeting), and was also known for its cinematic style and deep story. Nostalgia bait or not, I’m all the way in on this one.
Final Fantasy Resonance
How much Final Fantasy is too much? Stupid question, there’s no such thing.
Last but certainly not least, there is ANOTHER new Final Fantasy game on the way! Final Fantasy Resonance is set to release in October of this year and it’s getting back to the series’ pixel art roots with a few modern graphical touches, resulting in what has come to be known as HD-2D.
Resonance is a reimagining of the 2015 mobile gacha game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, but fully redeveloped, re-tooled for a single player experience, and stripped of any microtransactions. Essentially, Brave Exvius was used as the scaffold on which they built a brand new game featuring brand new combat, new quests, and a new story. I have loved Final Fantasy since the first game on the NES, and seeing a new, full-length entry with pixel art and turn-based combat is extremely exciting to me and I can’t wait to sink dozens of hours into leveling characters and finding loot!
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There were a ton more announcements and trailers coming out of Summer Game Fest, but these are my personal favorites. 2026 is shaping up to be one of the strongest years in terms of game quality that we’ve seen in a while!