Gaming Bits: The Game Awards Results, New Consoles, New Bioshock In Development, Resident Evil 3 Remake Already Has Release Date, Ghost Of Tsushima Set To Consume Your Summer, And Trailers Galore

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Gaming Bits, a continuation on columns such as Star Wars Bits, Superhero Bits, and Theme Park Bits. Every couple of weeks, I will be highlighting intriguing industry stories and breaking news. Seeing as /Film is primarily a film website (duh), the focus here will primarily be on narrative-driven games, interactive drama, and IP tie-ins. Nevertheless, let's get into our first roundup, which is a big one considering The Game Awards took place a few days ago and provided a number of tantalizing stories.

In this first edition of Gaming Bits:

2K has opened up another team dubbed Cloud Chamber that will be in charge of developing a new Bioshock game, per Engadget. As a matter of fact, talent from the developers of Mafia 3 was cherrypicked to begin work on this new installment, meaning that this has been a project underway in secrecy since around late 2016. But don't get too excited as this new Bioshock is said to be in development for a few more years. One disappointing and potentially worrying tidbit is that series creator Ken Levine will not be coming back (he is working on something unknown at Ghost Story Games), which already feels like a vital missing ingredient considering Bioshock 2 was only a passable experience compared to the absolute masterpieces created under his directorial eye.

The good news is that there is considerable talent behind the scenes as Civilization and XCOM's Kelley Gilmore will be steering the ship, with some notable Bioshock alumni returning (Hoagy de le Plante, Scott Sinclair, and Jonathan Pelling). Aside from Ken Levine's pointed political commentary, it's a no-brainer that location will also be a major selling point, so let's hope for something as stylistically breathtaking as Rapture and Columbia. 

Phil Spencer unveiled our first look at the new Xbox at The Game Awards, which weirdly resembles a PC but can reportedly be used sideways. Check out the announcement teaser below:

Also exciting is that Hellblade II will presumably be launching near the release of the console itself, importantly showing that Microsoft might come out swinging this generation and put an emphasis on thematically challenging story-driven titles, an area they are sorely lacking in and have been for some time (people can only take so much Halo and Gears of War before wanting something different and fresh). Check out the trailer below:

Square released another trailer for their upcoming remake of Final Fantasy VII, and it doesn't offer much that we don't already know. Much of it is the same footage we have already seen, but there are a few new snippets of supporting characters and the soundtrack is especially electric. It still remains unclear how long or what this first episode of the remake consists of, but the new trailer is still worth watching:

It was a sad day when Telltale had to close their doors, but also a situation that they unfortunately somewhat brought on themselves, nabbing seemingly every popular IP under the sun to make interactive QTE based content from. Some of them were obvious choices that paid off such as Batman, while others were out of left field choices that never really panned out (Game of Thrones, Borderlands). They got ahead of themselves and took on way more than they could handle, delaying just about every project by months and months. Now they have resurfaced, but what's most exciting is they are going back to one of the series that brought them to the dance; The Wolf Among Us is one of their best and should prove to be both a success and returned to form. Check out the short teaser below:

First announced back in 2017, one of the best development studios around today, Sucker Punch, released a new trailer for their upcoming open-world feudal Japan action-adventure game Ghost of Tsushima. Consuming the footage, it looks as if Assassins' Creed and their own fantastic series Infamous conceived a baby. The environments especially look gorgeous, most notably a red flower field. It is set to arrive in summer 2020 and potentially close out PlayStation 4 first-party titles with a bang. The way things look right now, it could be the talk of the season (provided one counts Cyberpunk 2077 as a spring release). Nevertheless, check out the incredible new trailer below: