Every gaming year’s most anticipated list feels like a mashup of aspiration and prudence, a medley of punchy independent efforts squaring off with titanic franchises designed to reel in loyal fans by the gazillions.
Not that sequels have to be stale. I can’t wait to try Mass Effect: Andromeda, for example, after the triumphs of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Halo Wars 2 revisits the original Xbox 360 game’s laudable, subversive approach to a genre generally inseparable from keyboard and mouse. The Persona games practically make reinvention their watchword. And does anyone really want to gripe about a Red Dead prequel?
What you won’t find in this list are remasters of older games (like Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age and Full Throttle), if only to give new games the attention they deserve. I’m also not listing games thought to be coming but as yet unconfirmed (like “Destiny 2” or EA’s Star Wars Battlefront followup). And I’ve left virtual reality stuff out because that’ll be a separate list. You’ll also find scant mobile games here, sadly, because they’re so difficult to pin down (when they’re pre-listed at all). If the games press has a platform blind spot, it’s definitely mobile.
I’ve listed two Nintendo Switch games, but presume bucketloads are incoming. (We’ll know more about Switch’s launch lineup shortly.) We’ll also see Microsoft’s 4K version of its Xbox One, codenamed “Project Scorpio,” somewhere in 2017’s back half, though like Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro, games for Scorpio are supposed to work on the basic Xbox One, so there’s no top secret barrage of launch goodies waiting in the wings.
Otherwise 2017 should tell us plenty about 2018 and beyond. It’s the year Nintendo’s post-Wii U plans go under the microscope, the year we’ll start to see whether 4K gaming and virtual reality can deliver on 2016’s lofty promises, and a year to begin gauging whether the industry can sustain this many rival platforms across a spectrum of interactive models, all vying for our hearts and wallets.
Where applicable, we have also included links to upcoming games’ prequels, so you can get a handle on them before this year’s versions are out.
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Gravity Rush 2
SIE Japan Studio and Project Siren’s full-fledged sequel to arguably the best game on the PS Vita handheld transports the series’ gravity-bending gameplay to Sony’s flagship console.
PlayStation 4
January 20
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
It’s back to basics (and a break from gonzo globe-hopping threats) with all the gameplay in the seventh mainline installment of Capcom’s venerable survival horror series transpiring in a single house.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
January 24; try Resident Evil 6 first: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Tales of Berseria
Bandai Namco’s Tales of Berseria shares its setting with 2015’s Tales of Zestiria and resurfaces the series’ trademark realtime battle system with wrinkles like a “Soul Gauge” that incentivizes players to collect souls that govern special abilities.
PC, PlayStation 4
January 24
Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World
Studio Good-Feel’s mobile port of its adorable yarn-twirling Wii U platform game starring Mario’s dino pal Yoshi adds Poochy Pups that follow Yarn Yoshis around to help players unearth secrets.
Nintendo 3DS
February 3
Nioh
If the Souls hack-and-slash roleplaying games traded their surreal settings for early 17th century Japan civil warring (but kept the brutally difficult gameplay bits), you might get Nioh, Ninja Gaiden studio Team Ninja’s long awaited opus inspired by an unfinished Akira Kurosawa script.
PlayStation 4
February 9
Halo Wars 2
Studios 343 Industries (Halo) and Creative Assembly (the Total War real-time strategy games) join hands to bring us this overdue sequel to defunct Ensemble Studios’ 2009 original, which proved that gamepads and real-time multi-unit maneuvering could play nice together.
PC, Xbox One
February 21
Torment: Tides of Numenera
Though odds are low it’ll have the impact studio Black Isle’s narratively avant garde Planescape: Torment did at the turn of the century, this spiritual D&D-inspired sequel — set in the distant future, starring a tabula rasa protagonist who was at one point possessed — boasts some of the original’s key creators.
PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
February 28
Night in the Woods
Another Kickstarter project coming to fruition, Night in the Woods stars a cat named Mae who trips onto a mystery in a small town populated by anthropomorphic animals grappling with an array of socioeconomic issues, with visuals inspired by comics artists like Chris Ware (Acme Novelty Library) and Mike Mignola (Hellboy).
PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4
February 2017
Nier: Automata
Bayonetta creator PlatinumGames helms this sequel to developer Cavia’s action roleplaying original, retooling the high-action combat and shifting to a post-apocalyptic open world defined by war between the remnants of humanity and an army of otherworldly mechanistic invaders.
PlayStation 4
March 7
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
Backpedaling from the last few Ghost Recon games’ dalliance with futuristic scenarios, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands transpires in contemporary Bolivia, melding the open world dynamism of Ubisoft’s Far Cry games with the more nuanced clandestine tactics of this longstanding Tom Clancy franchise.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
March 7
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Bioware’s Mass Effect: Andromeda transpires six centuries after Mass Effect 3 in the eponymous Andromeda galaxy, sidestepping the brouhaha over the latter’s ending, while punching the reset button on the backdrop and dramatis personae.
March 21
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Overload
The creators of the 1990s Descent series resurrect their “six degrees of freedom” (forward, backward, up, down, left, right) sci-fi corridor shooter in this spiritual sequel that will once more send players cruising and strafing down serpentine subterranean passages.
PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
March 2017
Persona 5
Studio/publisher Atlus’ dark surrealist social sim turns six (Persona 2 was a duology), once more serving up a troupe of conflicted high schoolers who can project Jungian “personas” to do battle with everything from supernatural villains to their own insecurities and foibles.
PlayStation 3 & 4
April 4
Rime
An open world game about a boy trying to escape an island by solving environmental puzzles, Rime may have been overhyped by some in the press as the next Ico or Journey, when in fact it may turn out to be a perfectly solid, beautifully illustrated, straightforward adventure.
PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
May 2017
The Bard's Tale IV
Never mind inXile’s 2004 action-adventure reboot of this classic roleplaying series, the studio has hence opted to leap ahead by shifting backward with The Bard’s Tale IV, returning to the original’s first-person, party-based dungeon crawl set in and around the town of Skara Brae.
PC, Mac, Linux
October 2017
Agents of Mayhem
Volition runs the clock ahead to produce an open world action game that’s set in its signature Saints Row universe’s future, letting players switch between unique individuals in teams of super-powered agents who do battle with nation-destabilizing terrorists.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
TBD 2017
Crackdown 3
With any luck, we’ll finally get to play studio Reagant Games — led by original Crackdown director David Jones — three-quel, superheroes versus super-villains, open world, Microsoft Azure cloud-powered destruction game.
PC, Xbox One
TBD 2017
Cuphead
Studio MDHR’s Cuphead looks as incredible now as at its E3 2014 debut, a 2D side-scroller in which you battle giant paranormal carrots, boxing frogs, angry birds, queen bees, gambling contraptions and not-so-little mermaids, and where everything’s hand-sketched and animated to resemble a 1930s Max Fleischer cartoon.
PC, Xbox One
TBD 2017
Detroit: Become Human
Quantic Dreams’ interactive psychodramas are an acquired taste, but if you’re a fan of stuff like Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, don’t let Detroit: Become Human‘s awkward name put you off this apparent Blade Runner (you play an android tasked with hunting down programming-deviant androids) homage.
PlayStation 4
TBD 2017
Divinity: Original Sin II
Belgian developer Larian Studios has been quietly putting out some of the finest traditional roleplaying games the medium’s seen, and Divinity: Original Sin II, which transpires in Larian’s ever-unfurling, tactically fascinating, fantasy trope-averse world of Rivellon, looks to be its finest effort yet.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
TBD 2017
Dreams
Right now all that’s slated for 2017 is the beta release, but this is Sony subsidiary Media Molecule’s (the LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway games) next big thing: a sandbox imaginarium that builds on LittleBigPlanet‘s create-play-share themes.
PlayStation 4
TBD 2017
Ever Oasis
Studio Grezzo, best known for its work with Nintendo on 3DS games like The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, takes a stab at a roleplaying game of its own in which players complete missions to fund an ever-expanding oasis hub.
Nintendo 3DS
TBD 2017
Frostpunk
11 bit studios, the folks behind the masterfully doleful This War of Mine, shift gears to a different kind of survivalism in a steam-powered world that sounds redolent of the moral bleakness in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
PC
TBD 2017
Gorogoa
Calling it 2017’s The Witness is probably a stretch, but Jason Roberts’ long in development puzzler strikes similar tones with its nonlinguistic conundrums posed as grid images players have to stack or combine to unearth enigmatic connection points.
PC, PlayStation 4
TBD 2017
Outlast 2
A new survival horror game from studio Red Barrels, this sequel to 2013’s acclaimed Outlast sees a journalist and his spouse separated after an Arizona helicopter crash, with the former tasked with navigating a village controlled by a cult that believes the end of the world is nigh.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
TBD 2017
Prey
Dishonored developer Arkane Studios takes the 2006 original portal-hopping shooter’s name, but apparently nothing else in this full revamp’s seemingly survival horror-themed exploration of a Moon orbital space station overrun with hostile aliens.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
TBD 2017
Red Dead Redemption 2
South Park: The Fractured but Whole
A South Park roleplaying game seemed the unlikeliest mashup before 2014’s South Park: The Stick of Truth proved it perfectly natural, and The Fractured but Whole is franchise newcomer Ubisoft’s followup, this time thrusting players (along with Cartman and pals) into a cosplay civil war.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
TBD 2017
Tekken 7
The Japanese arcade version of Bandai Namco’s Tekken 7 (and ninth installment in the publisher’s iconic fighting series) is already approaching two years old, recalling coin-op’s halcyon days, when the arcade versions of a hit game preceded console ports by substantial periods of time.
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
TBD 2017
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Call it “standalone DLC” for TIME top 10 pick Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End if you must, it’s effectively a new PlayStation 4 Uncharted game from studio Naughty Dog that brings back Chloe Frazier, a character we haven’t seen since Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
PlayStation 4
TBD 2017
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III
Relic’s Dawn of War II was an exemplar approach to Games Workshop’s science fantasy dystopia in 2009, and so anticipation is doubtless sky-high for the studio’s circling back to the series (after dallying with a Warhammer 40,000 shooter and Company of Heroes 2), as well as Dawn of War III‘s reintroduction of base building.
PC
TBD 2017
