We're hurtling towards Summer Game Fest 2023 at a rate of knots (seriously, how is it June already?), which makes now the perfect time to cast some predictions. Last week's PlayStation Showcase brought with it some big hitters to kick off the E3 2023 schedule in earnest – not least our closest look yet at Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man 2 – and now our collective attention turns to the next flurry of blockbuster events. In the coming weeks, we'll be covering everything revealed and revisited live at the Xbox Games Showcase, Ubisoft Forward, Starfield Direct, the Future Games Show, and, of course, Summer Game Fest itself.
To the latter end, here are five games we'd love to see show face at Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest 2023 – be that with new and in-depth gameplay footage, a release date announcement we've all been waiting for, some dazzling cinematics, or, you know, to simply remind us they still exist. There's plenty to look forward to in June, and here's some of what we're looking forward to most.
Marvel's Wolverine
Like its Spider-Man brethren, Marvel's Wolverine is a PS5 exclusive. And while that means we may have been more likely to see it at the latest PlayStation Showcase, it was posted absent entirely, perhaps as a means of keeping the focus on Peter Parker and Miles Morales. The web-slinging duo took center stage at the climax of the last week's event, of course, which means that if we're to see any more of Insomniac's take on X-Men's Logan, it's likely to be during Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest 2023. Given we've been shown so little of Marvel's Wolverine to this point, your guess is as good as mine as to what we might see specifically, but I'm sure for many prospective players, myself included, a little reminder of its existence, and maybe a smidgen of gameplay, would be lovely.
Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree
Elden Ring's now long-awaited and very much-anticipated Shadow of the Erdree DLC has got to show face in some form during the incoming E3 2023 schedule, right? On one hand, given the meteoric rise and enduring popularity of FromSoftware's latest action-RPG, it's hard to believe it's only been around for less than a year-and-a-half. But on the other, as a direct result of these things, it's also difficult to fathom the fact that we're a year and three months on from launch and still without a sniff of proper added content. A release date would be great – and, surely, expected – as would more on what Shadow of the Erdtree is actually about. Our Elden Ring DLC wishlist speculated on what we'd like to see long before the official announcement, and we've since pondered what it might entail based on that single image. Summer Game Fest 2023 would be the perfect stage to lay everything bare.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
If you think hanging around for Elden Ring DLC has been tough, excruciating is how you might describe the wait for Hollow Knight: Silksong. It's been a long time coming, and while we did get an in-game, action-heavy glimpse of Team Cherry's much-anticipated ARPG follow-up during last year's Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, crucially, we did not get a release date. After some light banter between Geoff Keighley himself and Team Cherry's PR team ahead of last year's SGF, I expected Silksong to pop up there. It didn't, instead featuring a few days later during Microsoft's offering, but I think there's a chance Silksong could be one of the Summer Game Fest 2023's end-of-show highlights. Or maybe it won't. Clown make-up at the ready folks, yeah?
The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077
CD Projekt Red tentatively mapped out the immediate and longer-term future of its esteemed The Witcher series during an in-house reveal-all showcase in October last year. There's every chance the studio will tie future updates on its five in-development projects to the same format, but, given the studio's other high-profile game, Cyberpunk 2077, has a confirmed presence at Summer Game Fest 2023's Play Days offshoot, maybe we'll see more from CDPR across the board. The Witcher remake, once billed as 'Project Canis Majoris', is perhaps the most likely to show face here, given it's building on pre-written source material, this time powered by Unreal Engine 5. That said, I'd bite your hand off for more on The Witcher 4, aka 'Project Polaris', which we know is the first part of a new "RPG trilogy", that was said to be in its pre-production phase late last year.
Over the fence, the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty expansion will be playable on the Play Days show floor. I expect something in the way of a trailer to promote this, and I expect Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand to feature front and center.
A totally unexpected wildcard
There are so many games we'd love to see at Summer Game Fest 2023 but almost certainly won't, making this fifth and final entry a little bit of a cheat. When I asked around the 12DOVE office, Mass Effect 5 was a big 'surely not, but wouldn't it be great' suggestion. More from the myriad Silent Hill projects that are currently in-development isn't a bad shout, not least the Silent Hill 2 remake; neither is something more substantial from Dragon Age: Dreadwolf.
I myself would love to see more of Routine – Lunar Software and Raw Fury's horror game that batted its eyes at us for the first time in over 10 years during last year's Summer Game Fest showcase – whereas The Wolf Among Us 2 is another game some of my colleagues are pining for. You'd expect the likes of the much-rumored Fable, and, imagine, The Elder Scrolls 6 to save themselves for Microsoft's event, on the off-chance either pop their heads above the trenches; and another personal long shot would be Alien: Isolation 2, despite developer Creative Assembly being tied up currently with Hyenas.
Listen, we can dream, and so can you – imagine your own unlikely wildcard showing face, and let's chat about it on the other side.
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