It happened again! Video game makers assembled in Los Angeles, talked about their games, and broadcast their news, surprises, and videos to the world in real-time. We watched and recapped all the shows, from Summer Game Fest to the Guerrilla Collective Online Showcase, the Future Games Show 2024 Summer Showcase, the tenth annual PC Gaming Show, and Ubisoft Forward.

Feel free to dive into that coverage if you want to know everything that got announced over the past week—but if you just want a high-level look at the biggest games coming to the Epic Games Store in the future, we’ve picked a few highlights from each show and corralled them here.
 

Summer Game Fest 2024

At Summer Game Fest 2024, Geoff Keighley delivered exactly what he has for the last few summers: a staggering array of video game news, trailers, and world premieres. Be sure to check out our recap of Summer Game Fest 2024 for full coverage. Here are a few highlights:

Alan Wake 2: Night Springs Expansion

The Night Springs expansion for Alan Wake 2 includes three episodes and three playable characters—an idea that the developers at Remedy Entertainment had back when they were developing the core game.

“After determining we wouldn’t have the capacity to create more than three playable characters for the main game,” Game Director Kyle Rowley told the Epic Games Store, “we started spinning the idea of using Night Springs to explore what playing with multiple characters could look like. That’s how it all started, really. We had the high-level concept of what Night Springs was going to be from basically pre-production of the main game.”

For more details on the mind-bending expansion, be sure to read our Night Springs-centric interview with developers at Remedy, including Rowley, Co-Lead Level Designer Nathalie Jankie, and Lead Writer Clay Murphy.

Alan Wake 2’s Night Springs expansion launched the day after it was revealed, meaning you can play it right now. Pick up the Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Upgrade (which includes the expansion) in the Epic Games Store, where you can also find the base Alan Wake 2 release and even Alan Wake Remastered.

Dark and Darker

Developer IRONMACE calls Dark and Darker an “unforgiving hardcore fantasy FPS dungeon PvPvE adventure.” This unique dungeon crawler take on the extraction genre is all about teaming up, defeating enemies, looting treasures, and outwitting other players.

For more on the game, be sure to read our hands-on impressions—or go hands-on with it yourself, as Dark and Darker is available now in the Epic Games Store.
 

Ubisoft Forward

Ubisoft Forward was packed with reveals and updates. Read our full recap for updates coming to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, The Crew Motorfest, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and enjoy our highlights below!

Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Assassin’s Creed Shadows travels to Japan on November 15 with dual protagonists: Naoe, a stealthy shinobi Assassin, and Yasuke, a powerful African samurai. At Ubisoft Forward, we saw a demo of Assassin’s Creed Shadows that showed off both protagonists, who have wildly different styles of play.

Yasuke, the samurai, began the preview by targeting a corrupt samurai. When a street fight ensued, Yasuke handled it by leaping into combat and swinging a gigantic spiked club, demonstrating his more straightforward approach to problem-solving. Naoe is much sneakier, and her grappling hook helped her scale buildings and hide above her enemies. She can also go prone, sneaking through grass or shallow water—a first for the series. There’s a ton more to learn and see, so be sure to read our Assassin’s Creed Shadows preview.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set for an Epic Games Store release on November 15, 2024.

Star Wars Outlaws

Star Wars Outlaws is the first open-world Star Wars game, and it’s coming from Massive Entertainment, the developers behind Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

We went hands-on with three levels of Star Wars Outlaws. In the first, Kay Vess—the game’s roguish protagonist—had a dogfight in an asteroid field and escaped an Imperial patrol. The second was all about exploring a gorgeous ruined ship. Finally, Kay Vess stole a stolen artifact, like a true outlaw. But the real star in these wars was Nix, Kay Vess’s dog-like companion.

Check out Star Wars Outlaws in the Epic Games Store, where you can wishlist or pre-purchase the game ahead of its August 30, 2024 release.
 

PC Gaming Show

Our recap of the 2024 PC Gaming Show includes trailers for games like Mars Tactics, Killing Floor 3, Steel Seed, and No More Room in Hell 2, but we particularly loved the look of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, below.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is a "Souls-lite" set in a world where gods wage war against humans. You take on the role of Nor Vanek and battle to drive the gods away and put them back where they belong, behind the Door to the Great Below.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn also made an appearance at the indie-focused triple-i initiative, where the developers at A44 Games dove deep into the game’s music. And you can learn more about how and why the indies banded together in our interview with the event’s founders.

Look for Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn in the Epic Games Store—and if the trailer has you excited, check out the developer’s previous game Ashen, a stylized action-RPG about a nomad looking for a home.
 

Guerrilla Collective Online Showcase

We have a full recap of the Guerilla Collective Online Showcase 2024, but you can also hop over to the Epic Games Store where we've put a spotlight on the 2024 Guerrilla Showcase.

SteamWorld Heist 2

SteamWorld Heist 2, an action-adventure game from developer Thunderful Development, showed off a mid-game mission featuring a sniper, a damage build, and a crew member who gets a bonus shot for being good at his job.

Learn more about the thinking behind the genre-spanning franchise in our SteamWorld-focused interview with Project Director Brjann Sigurgeirsson, Director Andreas Persson, and Producer Adam Vassee, and check out SteamWorld Heist 2 in the Epic Games Store ahead of its August release.
 

Future Games Show

Be sure to read our recap of the Future Games Show Summer Showcase 2024 for a look at loads of games coming to the Epic Games Store, including Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, Pneumata, and Once Human, or check out the highlights below.

Dustborn

Dustborn is a game about the power of words—literally. You play as Pax, who has the ability to weaponize language itself, which should come in handy as he and his friends transport a stolen package across the Divided States of America. The demo shown during the Future Games Show depicted a highway traffic stop gone very, very wrong.

Dustborn has an interesting lineage. The developer is Red Thread Games, which was founded by Ragnar Tørnquist and is best known for Dreamfall Chapters and Draugen. And it makes a lot of sense for this narrative game to have a similarly narrative-driven publisher—Quantic Dream, best known for games like Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human.

Check out Dustborn in the Epic Games Store.

The Casting of Frank Stone

The Casting of Frank Stone is a horror game set in the Dead By Daylight universe, and Supermassive Games—the developers behind Until Dawn—are emphasizing how player choice changes the narrative. The story starts in 1963, but it doesn’t stay there. The Casting of Frank Stone uses temporal displacement to explore genres of horror—for example, honoring classic slasher movies by introducing a group of teenagers.

Check out The Casting of Frank Stone in the Epic Games Store.
 

Best of the rest

Over the course of the weekend, we were also treated to a glimpse of two of the biggest games coming to the Epic Games Store in the future.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl

We’ve finally played STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. We were given access to the opening 30 minutes of the vast open-world shooter and returned with our impressions. The hands-on demo provided just a glimpse of the game’s spectacular environments, grim wildlife, and the characters that fill the zone—and it left us begging for more.

We’ll have to wait, but only until September 5, 2024 when STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl releases on the Epic Games Store.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Probably the biggest surprise coming out of the summer gaming events was the reveal of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. This long-awaited iteration of the storied RPG series is taking risks with the combat, characters, and more—but it retains the wonderful world of Thedas, and its regions are packed with people, places, and plenty of adventures to discover.

Wishlist Dragon Age: The Veilguard on the Epic Games Store now.