Open world fuhgeddaboudit simulator Mafia: The Old Country will release in summer 2025, according to a Youtube trailer that has leaked on social media ahead of tonight’s Game Awards. The trailer also treats us to a few snippets of the game’s story scenes, shoot-outs and punch-ups. We get to see wise guys swinging knives, riding horses and glowering silently at sun-baked Sicilian countryside.
A master thief creeps over cobbles in an early modern metropolis that splits the difference between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool. Lit by gaslamps that can’t quite dispel the industrial haze, they pass for a civilian – a rough one, admittedly, but not shady enough to cause an itch in the swordarm of any passing guard.
Until, that is, they take to the thieves’ highway – following the trajectory of their grappling hook upward to the rooftops, from which they can see the shape of the city, and the moon beyond. Up here, it’s a parallel world – the trees on street level answered by chimney stacks, and the distant hills echoed by the rise and fall of steep gables. “We’re super proud of these rooftops,” says Greg LoPiccolo. “It’s an amazing landscape that we put a lot of thought and effort into, and it’s a lot of fun to traverse.”
Back in 1998, LoPiccolo was the game director who saw Thief: The Dark Project to completion. Today – after an 18 year detour to Harmonix to lead projects like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, among other adventures – he’s the game director of Thick as Thieves. “It really is an opportunity to do something unique and cool and new, on the shoulders of this stuff that is now well-respected,” he says. “Thief has some legs, right? People still talk about it to some degree.”
NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound is the next entry in the venerable series of action slice-em-ups, revealed tonight at pre-Geoffies. It’s arriving in 2025 as a joint effort between Koei Tecmo, Blasphemous developers The Game Kitchen, and retro revivalists Dotemu. Trailer below.
Sifu and Absolver developers Sloclap have announced Rematch, a 5v5 multiplayer football game with a gentle dusting of science fiction, out in summer 2025. If, like me, you really enjoyed the French developers’ previous martial art sims, you might, like me, find this news deflating. Football? We already have that at home. It’s like a martial art, but all you get to kick is some… ball.
I’m not sure I’ll ever entirely swallow my disappointment, but credit where it’s due, Rematch does look like both an enjoyable game and a quietly disruptive one. It’s also struck a chord with me inasmuch as it’s a new way into the culture of a sport which I have pretty mixed feelings about.
Pac-Man is doing a Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within, everybody. That’s to say, the Bandai Namco series is doing one of those dark, edgy iterations. It’s called Shadow Labyrinth, it’s out in 2025, and it’s a 2D hack-and-slash with gruesome monster designs. But none so gruesome as Pac-Man, who can transform into a huge champing black hole. Wakkawakkawakkawould you play this?
Remember when From Software’s Hidetaka Miyazaki said they weren’t thinking about Elden Ring 2, but they were thinking about the continuation of Elden Ring in general? Well, who had “three player co-op musou” on their bingo card?
RPG Solasta: Crown Of The Magister is getting a sequel. Solasta II launches in early access next year, and they’re aiming to have a demo out sometime earlier. Like its predecessor, this one’s a party-based CRPG with tactical combat, featuring single player and online co-op. Here’s a trailer. Warning: it has shiny rock people in it, the worst videogame enemy.
CD Projekt have screened the first trailer for The Witcher 4, the next instalment in their fantasy monster-slaying series. It’s another single player open world RPG, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s Ciri is the protagonist. In fact, she’s the protagonist for a whole new Witcher saga, though there’s a tease at the end of the footage that crusty old Geralt may return as well.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth launched on console back in February, and if I’d had to guess, I’d say it would arrive on PC about a year later. Hey – guess what! Square Enix just gave Rebirth a PC release date: January 23rd, 2025.
World of Tanks creators Wargaming are getting into the mech-bothering business with Steel Hunters – a new free-to-play Unreal Engine multiplayer shooter, in which Transformers-style juggernauts fight for control of an energy source called “Starfall” on smashable, post-apocalyptic maps. It’s just been announced at Wrasslin’ Geoff’s Winter Hootenanny, aka the Game Awards, and there’s a 10 day PC playtest underway right now. Here’s a trailer.