On September 9, 2021, PlayStation held its big press conference for the year, during which they announced and provided updates on a myriad of new and upcoming games. Following the tumultuous launch of the PS5 and its lack of true exclusives, Playstation has been in a rocky state, so this conference was important to the console’s future prosperity.

So did this PlayStation Showcase succeed in getting people excited about PlayStation’s future titles, or was it another dud in a long summer of disappointing game conferences? Well, by almost every metric, PlayStation succeeded and had possibly one of their best press conferences yet. 

To start, the first announcement of the conference was a surprise reveal for the remake of “Star Wars:

Knights of the Old Republic”, the legendary 2003  BioWare RPG that still has a large fanbase to this day. This was easily the most surprising reveal of the show as it came completely out of left field for everyone.

What makes this so exciting is that the original game was one of the most unique and interesting takes on the Star Wars universe. Especially after the recent wave of great remakes of classic games — “Resident Evil 2”, “Final Fantasy 7”, “Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy”, and “Shadow of the Colossus”, to name a few — the prospect of this game being adapted into modern graphics and game design makes it so much more intriguing. 

The game will be developed by Aspyr, a studio responsible for re-releasing numerous Star Wars games such as “Jedi Knight I and II” and “Star Wars Republic Commando”. They have also developed original games such as “Civilization VI”.

The next 20-30 minutes of the show definitely had a bit of a lull, but there were some standout moments, such as a new trailer for the now released “Deathloop”, a trailer for the new “Guardians of the Galaxy” game, gameplay for “Rainbow Six Extraction”, and the announcement that “Uncharted 4 and Lost legacy” are coming to PC.

The last 10 minutes of the show went absolutely bonkers. This was the time when Sony could either make or break the conference because outside of “Knights of the Old Republic”, there weren’t any huge or exciting announcements. Thankfully, these last 10 minutes had a myriad of extremely enthralling games that paint a bright future for Playstation Studios

First was a new game from Insomniac, which was, in of itself, surprising since they had just released “Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart” this June and “Spider-Man Miles Morales” last November, and to boot it was also a Marvel game. 

Many people thought this would be the announcement for the highly anticipated sequel to 2018’s “Marvel’s Spider-Man” on the PS4, but as the teaser opens it’s shown to be anything but. 

It opens with a destroyed bar with glasses and bodies everywhere before showing a man with a knife approaching another man sitting at the bar. The camera then pans to the man at the bar as he clenches his fists and adamantium claws pop out of his knuckles. Then the title card shows that this will be a Wolverine game.

Just like “Knights of the Old Republic”, this announcement came completely out of the blue. No one was expecting another superhero video game from Insomniac besides Spider-Man, but Wolverine was even more unexpected. 

Nevertheless, this will be a very interesting project for them and certainly will be their most mature game to date. After all, it’s kinda hard to do a game about Wolverine with a teen rating.

Going by their Spider-Man games, it is easy to say Insomniac will absolutely nail this character. With both Peter Parker and Miles Morales, they put so much love and care into adapting these great characters, so it is exciting to see what they will do with Logan outside of the Spider-Man mythology. 

Now if they make a Daredevil game all the issues with the world will be solved.

Oh, but just wait, because Insomniac is keeping the hype train rolling by also announcing “Spider-Man 2” immediately after. Since its launch, “Spider-Man” has

been one of the most talked-about PlayStation exclusives, so hype for a sequel has been through the roof. Understandably so, because the first game was fantastic with awesome and satisfying gameplay, beautiful graphics, and one of the best Spider-Man stories to date with a gut-wrenching ending that also left room to continue Peter’s journey. Along with that, they revealed that both Kraven the Hunter and Venom will be in the game, which are two of the best Spider-Man villains.

“Spider-Man 2 definitely took the cake.” Joel Hendricks, vice president of Moravian University’s Video Game Club said. “The introduction of Kraven the Hunter alongside Venom is a bold choice, and I’m interested to see how Peter and Miles will team up to beat them. I’m also hopeful that Norman Osborne’s Green Goblin will show up in the game.”

It may be a long shot, but hopefully, this game takes some inspiration from the game “Spider-Man: Web of Shadows”. Having more distinct combos and different move sets, combined with the red and black suits would be really neat and interesting. Along with that the premise of a venom symbiote outbreak is really cool and after seeing the city go into chaos once over red death, this would raise the stakes a lot more by seeing it reach apocalyptic circumstances. 

It would also be cool if they included some other Marvel heroes in the game since it seems they are increasing the threat quite significantly. No A-list Avengers should be included, of course, but to have characters like the previously mentioned Daredevil, Luke Cage, Moon Knight, Jessica Jones, and more would really help to make this feel like a broader Marvel universe, while also highlighting why Peter and Miles are such good heroes.

And now it is time for the grand finale with the official title and trailer for the long-

anticipated sequel to 2018’s “God of War”, “God of War: Ragnarok”. It’s hard to say this was a huge surprise when compared to the others since this game was teased at last year’s event and was supposed to come out this year before being delayed. 

Nevertheless, this very well could have been the best part of the show because this reveal also came with gameplay and story, and — Wow!–  they go full throttle with both. The trailer reveals a lot about the story, perhaps a bit too much. They show many plot details with the most important being actions in the previous game having consequences, namely the beginning of Ragnarok (I know, big surprise), and the reveal of the Norse god of war, Tyr.

While they may have shown a bit too much of the plot, it nevertheless sets up what seems to be an incredible story that carries on what people loved so much about the first game. The relationship between protagonist Kratos and his son seems to be just as good and engaging as ever, and it’ll be interesting to see how their actions in the first game are now coming back to bite them. The story definitely seems to have a lot more urgency and intensity than the previous God of War game.

The gameplay they showed also looked absolutely astonishing. It looks like they have built a lot on the gameplay of the 2018 game with even better combat than the already great combat of the previous game and new traversal abilities, such as using the Blades of Chaos grappling hooks.

Visually speaking, the game looks jaw-droppingly incredible. Everything from the graphics to the animations look stunning and it’s insane that this game will work on a PS4. The faces look even better than before. Cutscenes and the direction of them are incredible and it’s awesome that developer Santa Monica is continuing to have the entire game framed in one single shot. This means that the camera does not cut a single time throughout the game. 

The character and art design also looks top-notch as usual and being able to see the other realms that were not explored in the first game, such as Asgard, is really exciting. Hopefully, some of the areas in the first are also expanded in this game too, such as Jötunheim and Helheim. Santa Monica Studio has confirmed that this game will conclude the Norse Saga, so it seems this game is going to be bigger than ever. It’s enticing to see what they will do with the 9 realms and characters we have not yet seen like Thor, Odin, and Fenrir.

So did this conference live up to fan expectations? Absolutely yes. 

This is one of the best game conferences in recent memory and it paints an even more promising future for the premier console of this generation. If PlayStation keeps up this momentum, both Xbox and Nintendo are going to have a steep hill to climb to catch up, especially with the outdated hardware of the Switch and the current lack of exclusives from Xbox. 

With even more games on the horizon, such as “Horizon Forbidden West” (pun intended), a “Last of Us” remake, a multiplayer Marvel game, and “Final Fantasy XVI”, there seems to be a bunch of games to appeal to everyone’s sensibilities. Even in two remarkably slow years for games due to the pandemic, PlayStation has still been absolutely killing it. 

Since the pandemic hit, they’ve released “The Last of Us Part II”, “Ghost of Tsushima”, “Final Fantasy VII remake”, “Spider-Man: Miles Morales”, “Demon’s Souls”, “Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart”, “Deathloop”, “Kena Bridge of Spirits”, and more, and it looks like the train isn’t slowing down in 2022 and beyond.