I haven't been active in fandom spaces for years now, but lurking on the edges of social media forums dedicated to games I find cool does technically fall under the remit of my job. And let me tell you, the lead-up to a night like The Game Awards is always something else. Fringes of the Tomb Raider fanbase were getting hyped for the announcement of the next game because… well, it just feels like about time, right? The same went for Life Is Strange, but then, Life Is Strange fans have been predicting the imminent reveal of LIS3 literally on a weekly basis ever since True Colors launched, so they're bound to be right eventually. Ace Attorney stans were using numerology to predict that AA7 would finally get announced. Incredible scenes of completely baseless hype, and despite myself, I wanted to believe.
I genuinely daren't check in on any of those conversations today, because, honestly, it wasn't a massive night for long-running franchises, and I don't think I can handle the lamentations. And, while I'll admit that my initial skim of the trailers for familiar names came up a tad short, I'm not at all disappointed, because it looks like 2023 is going to be a stellar year for devs doing something cool with a new IP while learning a lot from their older projects.
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