This year’s Penny Arcade-sponsored gaming expo in Boston is a strange one. Several major Japanese companies like Sony, Capcom, and Square Enix have announced that they will not be attending this year due to coronavirus-spurred travel issues, a plague that already scuttled MWC and is on its toward cancelling GDC and even perhaps the Tokyo Olympic Games. But that just means that there’s more opportunity to see the indie titles and smaller games that will be future breakout hits. To prepare you for PAX East 2020, we scoured the schedule and polled exhibitors to see what looked the hottest for this weekend’s show. Here’s our rough guide to eleven games and events you should make time to see at this year’s PAX East.
101 Things You Didn’t Know About Platinum Games
It’s hard to argue that there’s a better pure action game studio on Earth than Platinum Games, the Japanese minds behind Bayonetta, Nier: Automata and Astral Chain. The company is currently running a Kickstarter to bring its underplayed Wii U game Wonderful 101 to modern consoles, and Atsushi Inaba and the notoriously prickly Hideki Kamiya will be running a PAX East panel to delve into the company’s history and future. Platinum is also rumored to be making a big new game announcement this weekend, so you’ll want to be in the room for this one.
Borderlands 3 New Campaign Add-On
Say what you want about the story in Borderlands 3, the shooting and looting action were still some of the best on the market. Gearbox is committed to supporting the game for a while post-release, and in their annual PAX East show they’ve promised the reveal of a new DLC campaign for the title. Their events are usually pretty fun, with a big party atmosphere, so pencil yourself in for a slot on Thursday.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Getaway Island
Nintendo will be at PAX East in force, as they always do well at the all-ages targeted show. The big game that they’re pushing right now is the latest in the Animal Crossing franchise, which brings the quirky town simulator to the Switch for the first time with multiplayer, the ability to actually change terrain, and more. Con guests can visit a special Getaway Island, where they can get their photos taken with AC mascots, get a chance to play the game for the first time and take home a tote bag from raccoon loanshark Tom Nook.
Design A Board Game Live
Tabletop gaming is a key element of geek culture, one of the Five Elements, and it’s growing in popularity year after year. If you ever wanted to try your hand and designing your own board game, this is going to be a seriously cool panel. The team from Lynnvander Studios, who have dozens of titles under their belt including Star Trek Alliance, Army of Darkness, and more, will give you a tour of their process and then open up the room for participation, giving feedback, and help as attendees take the first steps in bringing their own ideas to life.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Reveal
When you talk all-time great PC role-playing franchises, Baldur’s Gate is going to hit that list. The deeply influential series set in the D&D Forgotten Realms first debuted in 1998, and it’s been nearly two decades since the last full game, 2000’s Shadows of Amn. Now Larian Studios, the outfit responsible for the Divinity: Original Sin games, is helming a sequel. Larian has been working on snagging this license since at least 2014, so we’re pretty hyped. The game’s scheduled to hit Steam Early Access later this year, but this is going to be the first time we see it in action.
Retronauts: The Media is the Message
Jeremy Parish is one of the most dedicated scholars of video game history, a wildly smart thinker who casts a big net in his research. This panel tackles one element of the medium that might not exist in another decade: physical storage of games. Back in the pre-Internet days, when you wanted a new game you’d buy it on a floppy disk, or a cartridge, or a CD-ROM, et cetera. In this presentation, Parish runs through the many different ways software used to find its way into our lives – and how likely these physical formats are to survive the test of time.
Ghostrunner
There are lots of playable games on the show floor at PAX East. Dozens if not hundreds, and picking just a few to make time to try can be maddening. One that we’re going to be staking out a place in line for is 3D Realms’ new Ghostrunner, which won raves at PAX South last year. This absolutely dope-looking first person action game has the player as a cyborg ninja ascending an enormous tower, mixing twitch shooting action with Mirrors Edge-style 3D parkour-style traversal. Everything we’ve seen has us salivating, so make sure to get hands-on with this one.
UpUpDownDown
WWE superstar Xavier Woods is out of the squared circle for a bit due to injury, but that just means he has more time to devote to his wildly popular YouTube gaming channel. His live events are always great fun, as he’s a deep nerd in the absolute best way and knows how to wring that inner nerdiness out of some of his most unlikely guests. There’s not any announced programming for what he’ll be doing at this year’s PAX East show, but solid bets on competitive face-offs, heated promos, Q&A and more.
Cheat To Win! Video Games From A Hacker’s Perspective
One of the coolest things about PAX programming is how they bring in groups that you’d never expect to see at a convention and let them go wild. This Friday panel has hacking group DEFCON21 leading the audience through the intersection of hacking and gaming, from the exploits and tricks that early players and developers used to the glitch-crazed, data-driven world of speedrunning. If you like going deep behind the curtain to get into the guts of the games you love, this is definitely going to be an hour you want to book.
A Lovely Panel Hosted By An AI Bot Named Merrill Grambell
One of the most talked-about events at last year’s PAX East was the debut of “Merrill Grambell,” a computer-generated talk show host that used deep learning to “teach” itself how to talk to people, with bizarre and unpredictable results. A year later, Merrill – the brainchild of comedian Will Brierly – is coming back for another round. This time, he’ll be deploying his interview skills on a diverse set of guests, including an “Influencer Manager” for Bethesda and Boston-based comedian Lamont Price.
Secret New NIS Game
Nippon Ichi, the Japanese developer and publisher best known for the Disgaea series of strategy games where the numbers go way too high, will be exhibiting at this year’s show. The games that they’ve announced are all very solid, including La Mulana 2 and a new Disaster Report, but what really piqued our interest is the proclamation that they’re also going to debut a “secret new game” that they’re bringing just for the weekend. What could it be?
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