The Game Awards were once again a parade of boredom, with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all MIA with any major announcements, and too many of the awards being treated like an afterthought. Plus, there was a lot of woke finger-wagging, complete with Geoff Keighley taking easy shots at Activision-Blizzard for their recent workplace controversy. However, there were a handful of game announcements and trailers that deserve attention:

Homeworld 3

Homeworld isn’t a household name the way StarCraft and Age of Empires is, but it’s a series that’s been around since 1999. It’s a fully 3D real-time strategy game: and when I say fully 3D, I mean fully 3D. As the player, you’re basically floating around in outer space like a spirit, controlling fleets of ships into combat. It takes some getting used to, but it was incredibly surreal when it first came out in the late ’90s. Plus, it has a fantastic story. The first two Homeworld games were made by Relic (Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Age of Empires IV), but this newest installment is being made by Blackbird Entertainment, a much newer developer, and published by Gearbox. It’s great to see the Homeworld IP still alive and well.

Star Wars: Eclipse

Star Wars: Eclipse is being developed by Quantic Dream, the studio known for very narrative-driven games like Detroit: Become Human, Beyond: Two Souls, and Heavy Rain.

Since George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, there have been too many cooks in the Star Wars kitchen. While this trailer looks impressive, it’s also one more cook in that kitchen. The days of Star Wars being the vision of one man are sorely missed. Now everyone has their Star Wars story they want to tell, while the leadership under Kathleen Kennedy has been a disaster.

We can only hope Eclipse is good, but after the sequel trilogy, Star Wars has to earn back the trust it has squandered.

Sonic Frontiers

Sonic Frontiers was a trailer in which I wish we’d gotten to see some gameplay. A fully open-world Sonic game sounds very interesting. The trailer definitely has some Zelda: Breath of the Wild vibes going on, complete with faraway vistas and haunting piano music. It’s supposed to release at the end of 2022. This could be a whole new paradigm for the Sonic series if Sonic Team can pull it off.

Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga

Whether you’re familiar with the Hellblade series or not, this is a great trailer. It’s hard to tell how much of this is gameplay or scripted, but it was impressive to watch nonetheless.

‘Halo’ TV Series

For two decades, Halo fans have been adamant about how great Halo’s story and characters are. Now we’re going to find out how true that is. The Halo games are good, but Master Chief has always been somewhat of a bland, blank slate, type of character. Maybe this new TV series will change that.

The Matrix Awakens

The Matrix Awakens is the ultra photo-realistic tech demo that shows off what Unreal Engine 5 is capable of. It looks very close to the actual Matrix films. Neo and Trinity’s faces still aren’t quite there, but the city itself is very impressive. This is what video games could be capable of over the next ten years, and is a good lead-up to The Matrix: Resurrections movie.

‘Metroid Dread’ Won Something

Metroid Dread won the award for Best Action-Adventure Game, and it was nominated for Game of the Year. It’s nice to see one of the most influential series in the history of gaming get recognized for once.

So The Game Awards still yielded some good things, even though there were no earth-shattering announcements. Hopefully, Nintendo will have a new Nintendo Direct for us sometime in January.