Another year, another great Developer Direct. First up was Forza Horizon 6 AKA ‘Shut up and take my money.gif’. Seriously though, this looks fantastic and I’ll be there day 1. I loved Forza Horizon 5 (which was my entry into the series) clocking nearly 200 hours.
I love the setting, and I really like the ‘you’re a nobody’ approach when it comes to the Festival. The building stuff doesn’t really interest me that much, but it might be fun to tinker with. Just give me lots of cool cars and races and a great map to explore and I’ll be happy.
Next up was Beast of Reincarnation which looked pretty interesting when it was first revealed last year but this showing left me feeling a little cold. It’s not that what I saw looked bad, more that it looked rather . . . derivative, I guess? Like the game was cobbling together lots of stuff I’ve already seen and played in other games – from visuals, to combat, to story and stetting, to music.
That said, there are some aspects of the combat that do look fun – utilising your wolf companion and triggering combined / support attacks for example. I also like that there’s a guy called ‘Brad’. This is still one I’ll keep an eye on.
Kiln was the surprise addition to the Direct and is a multiplayer focused game about creating and fighting with . . . pots? Okay, this really isn’t for me . . . and honestly, I’m not really sure who it’s for. It does look like fun, I can’t deny that. It’s colourful and weird and it’s the kind of game that I don’t want to see large publishers like Microsoft shy away from backing.
I’m sure expectations aren’t high as far as sales go, just as they probably weren’t for Keeper, but Keeper is a singe player experience that will remain playable forever. A multiplayer only pot based party brawler? Not so much, eh? Like I said – not for me, but glad it exists.
And finally we have Fable. Kind of nuts to think that Playground Games might be releasing two GOTY contenders in 2026. I never played the original Fable games but I always liked the concept of them. I just – based on what I saw of them – didn’t believe they lived up to that concept quite the way I hoped. That’s why I’m excited about this new Fable.
It really looks like they took the core concept of the original games and delivered on it in a way the originals never could. It clearly still needs some polish and optimisation, but with another eight or so months until release, they have plenty of time to knock it into shape.
I love the look of the world, the ‘fairytale’ approach, the fact that they’re not trying to be too ‘cinematic’ or realistic (even if that hurts their GOTY chances because we all know too many gaming publications don’t like things that look too ‘video gamey’ as ridiculous as that sounds). I really wasn’t expecting all the dynamic worlds stuff with the ‘living population’. Yeah, it looks great.