The Game Awards
The Game Awards
The Game Awards will air this Thursday, Geoff Keighley’s yearly awards show that mainly serves as a sort of winter E3 with the biggest stage for reveals of the year (now that E3 is fully dead). But something weird is going on, where we have not seen this kind of bizarre pre-promotion for a game ahead of the show before.
This all stems from an extremely weird statue that Geoff posted on November 28, planted in the middle of the desert. It’s full of animals and demons and is some sort of fantastical blob of evil. The statue now appears to have been moved to The Game Awards venue in LA ahead of the show.
There are also tweets about it, including:
“regal.inspiring.thickness”
And then, “The [redacted] are silent. [Redacted] bleeds. New [redacted] stir.” Well, okay then.
Over the past two weeks, fans have been trying to figure out what this is, bouncing around between games that feel like they could be in keeping with the statue’s vibes. But one by one, those behind those predicted games ruled themselves out. That includes:
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- God of War
- Elder Scrolls
- Diablo 4 Expansion
- The Witcher
- Bloodborne
- Elden Ring
- Lord of the Fallen 2 (which seemed to be playing into this until it admitted it wasn’t about them)
There are some guesses this could be about Path of Exile: The Last of the Druids, expansion which launches the day after The Game Awards, but it makes little sense to me to do all this for an already announced release the next day. And getting The Game Awards to do a high-profile campaign like this cannot be cheap, given how much ad spots in the show go for.
Another theory was that this was some sort of Chinese-made mobile game where this amount of money could be thrown at an announcement at TGA, as we’ve seen games like that be featured in the past. But insider/journalist Jason Schreier, who knows what it is, says it is “very cool and many will be excited for it.”
Divinity Original Sin II
Larian
One final, not-yet-dismissed theory is that it could be Divinity Original Sin III, as it’s supposed to be for an existing series, not a new IP. That’s made by Baldur’s Gate’s Larian, and Original Sin II was out in 2017. Larian does not own the Baldur’s Gate IP and has said that BG4 will not be their next project, leading many to guess that the studio will be heading back to Original Sin.
Players have started connecting everything from animals to armor from the last game to the statue here, though I mean, lots of games have…bears. Still, this seems like the most likely option given all the hints we have, and what has been fully ruled out. This would, in fact, be a cool announcement. I’m pulling for this one.
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