Xbox Games Showcase 2023 and Starfield Direct liveblog

See you here on Sunday the 11th, 6pm BST / 1pm EDT / 10am PDT, for the Xbox Games Showcase and Starfield Direct super-combined super-liveblog. Bring snacks.

Right, we're just about settling in for about five hours of NotE3 liveblogging. Is that TOO MUCH liveblogging? According to the Working Time Regulations of 1998, no it is not.

Hello, hello. How are we all doing? Are we excited for Todd Howard to talk about spaceships?

I've spent the last few days sitting on the deck of a cabin in the Lake District, so I will be spending this whole presentation staring at the screen like that one Limmy meme. You know the one. Where he's just woken up. I have forgotten what video games are.

I'm receiving word that the whole Xbox/Bethesda show, including Starfield, is two hours long. Which is one hour less than I'd assumed, but in any case, the PC Gaming Show will follow at 9pm BST.

Also, one minute to go!

10 seconds! Here we go!

And we're opening with a digital Richard Ayoade, of all things.

Is this Fable?

It's Fable! They kicked a chicken! Like that one achivement!

Oh, Richard Ayoade is big in this. I'm sure Rachel can figure out how many times as tall as Lady D.

OK, something from Compulsion Games next, the creators of We Happy Few. We have a fella playing a guitar surrounded by animals in what looks like a swamp?

I'm genuinely more interested in Fable now that is confirmed to feature a kaiju Dean Lerner.

Lovely animation style, this. Reminds me of Coraline.

Pretty much all CG, though, so if you were hoping for an in-game look at Fable you're not missing much.

Now here's a Star Wars game from Massive.

A young woman asks our rather unwell looking musician if they've seen a giant monster, which seemingly rises out of the water behind her. Looks like she can cast spells? That'll be South of Midnight. No gameplay. Is that going to be a theme today, do we reckon?

Massive's SW trailer is focusing on a half-Han Solo, half-Rey small time criminal type.

WarderDragon says: Let's hope the Fable reboot takes absolutely no inspiration from the non-game that was Fable 3!

Yeah Fable 3 was a bit disappointing. I bought the special edition for that game, which has literally started to rot over the last few years. An extremely cursed artefact.

Star Wars: Outlaws, it's called, and coming in 2024. Looks mildly interesting - not without the usual Star Wars space battles, but is all about the underworld crims-and-crooks side of the galaxy.

The next game by Thunder Lotus, creators of Spiritfarer, is up now. It appears to be a Hades-like hack 'n slash that lets up to 33 people tackle monsters together.

33 Immortals. Out next year.

Payday 3!

Lars Westergren says: What was the name of that "being a rogue in Star Wars" game that was cancelled? 1313?

That was the one!

Looks a lot like Payday 2, but slightly more mobile - your robber can slide now. Out Sept 21.

An Atlus game. Is this the Persona 3 remake? Quick, everyone, act surprised!

I hope Payday 3 builds on the stealthy/actual *heist* stuff of P2. Can't recall ever actually pulling a theft that didn't descend into a gun massacre.

Oooh, this might be Avowed, Obdisian's fantasy RPG.

I'm a very recent Persona convert having only discovered the joy of Persona 5 towards the end of last year, but i'm happy to see an earlier entry in the series get a lavish remake that brings it in line with more recent entries.

Persona 3 Reload. Out early next year!

It's colourful, I'll give it that.

WarderDragon says: Dark Messiah kick to that dwarf face right there.

Huge fan of big kicks. That was a superb kick.

Yep, Avowed, and it's coming sometime next year. Looked potentially decent? Lots of funky spells that aren't the usual flame/ice throwing.

Sea of Thieves and... Lucasfilm?

It's a Monkey Island tie in! There's Stan! And Guybrush! What a neat thing!

The Legend of Monkey Island launches on July 20th.

Something Flight Sim now. With dirt-dumping aerial firefighting, search and rescue and air ambulancing?

This is literally every possible use for a plane/helicopter.

Micrsosoft Flight Simulator 2024 confirmed! Releasing in 2030. Nah I'm just fucking around, it's 2024.

Senua's Saga Hellblade II is up next. It's been a while since we last had an update, but it looks like we're being treated to some fresh gameplay.

But also...a Dune expansion for current!Microsoft Flight Sim. You can fly...one of those..flappy wing insect vehicle things. Releasing this year, on November 23rd.

Not a huge fan of this woman whispering in my ear. If you're not wearing headphones, you're missing out on some spooky audio mixing right now.

New gameplay shows Senua stood in the middle of a cave, listening to whispering voices as the walls shift and crack around her. It looks phenomenal. The water. Senua's facial expressions. The walls. Goodness me.

Well the whispering was a bit much but Senua's Saga Hellblade II is scheduled to launch next year which is quite exciting.

Ah, now here's Like a Dragon 8. Trailer begins with yer man Ichiban waking up naked on a packed American beach?

Okay that's for something called Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Is that what LAD 8 is now called? Not clear.

A Fallout 76 update, complete with a classic Fallout animation showing Vault Boy and co larking about. It looks like players will be travelling to Atlantic City soon?

I should really check this out. I hear it's really good these days.

Next: something new from Capcom. Looks like an ancient Japan setting with samurai vs slimy monsters.

That's Path of the Goddess. No date, but coming to Game Pass.

Cars! Is this Forza? I assume this is Forza.

Bit of a GM ad, this.

I know cars. No one has ever doubted my knowledge about cars. I'm looking at these cars right now and stroking my chin and nodding, because I understand what's happening and I'm very excited about it.

New Corvettes are coming to Forza Motorsport. They look very shiny. Some lovely ray tracing going on here.

...I wanna make clear that the LAD: Infinite Wealth trailer was literally, in its entirety, a man walking around naked on a beach.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth Reveal Trailer

Watch on YouTube

Elder Scrolls Online now.

Ohhhh yeah it's the Necrom expansion. Set in Morrowind, and is already out now.

Overwatch 2, here. Looks like the remnants of the game's scrapped co-op mode will be added to the game in an upcoming season in the form of story missions.

A new game mode, flashpoint, will also be available to play. That launches August 10th.

Game pass subscribers can gain access to every new hero added to the game so far on the same day. Pretty neat!

Lars Westergren says: Oh the PC show starts in 2.5 hours? Damn I'm going to have to be up late today.

It does! James and I will also be covering that one on the site, too.

Starfield trailer. A teaser for the full presentation later, perhaps? A voice-over just said "A field of stars" which has tickled me.

More Persona, specifically a trailer for Persona 5 Tactica, the chibi tactics game that Atlus West accidentally revealed on Instagram the other day.

I mean I'm interested in Starfield but you guys know you have a whole show dedicated to it in, like, 15 minutes right

This does look very exciting. A town made from scrap. A colourful nightclub. Huge spaceships. Zipping around with a jetpack. Hitting a weird alien monster with an axe. It looks grand.

Don't Nod's next game is up. Very pretty, very chill 3D jumper-and-climber called Jusant. Out in Autumn this year.

OK, up next. The next game by The Chinese Room! Set aboard an oil rig in rough seas. I am immediately on board. It looks suitably creepy and dramatic.

Still Wakes The Deep. Out early next year. Day one on Game Pass, too.

Dungeons of Hinterbeg is our next reveal. Very autumnal-coloured action-platformer with some puzzling and hack-n-slashing.

Keanu! It's Keanu!

He's here to talk about Phantom Liberty, the upcoming expansion for Cyberpunk 2077.

Where did he run off to???

I can't wait for Idris Elba to come and clear the cupboards.

V is dying, and the president is being held hostage in a rough part of town. Looks like you'll be hanging out with Idris in a hunt to find a cure for your mysterious affliction.

It looks grand, and it's out September 26th. That's soon!

There are so many games coming out this year. Deary me.

Cities Skylines 2, looks like.

Yep! That's out October 24th.

I am going to be insufferable about this game when it comes out. It's me, the city builder liker.

Another Atlus game?

It's a stylish turn-based RPG (of course). But what is it...?

Metaphor Re Fantazio! Out in 2024. Atlus fans are eating well this evening.

From the Banner Saga devs, it's a co-op fantasy fighter: Towerborne. Coming 2024. Looked a bit Streets of Rage-ish, if that had goblins.

Oooh the next project by inXile! It's giving huge Bioshock Infinite vibes.

It's a first-person shooter set in a steampunk city with a time travel twist! Looks like your actions will have a huge effect on your surroundings.

Clockwork Revolution. Coming "in due time".

Pretty good showcase overall, I thought? A bit heavy on the CGI trailers, mind.

Oh look there's a new Xbox Series S, in black. There I've told you.

Now: Starfield Direct!

SHOW. ME. THE. WEIRD. ALIENS. TODD.

Todd Howard is here. He's not wearing a jacket. I'm FURIOUS.

We're kicking things off with a montage of planets you'll be able to explore. The variety is huge.

Hoping for a few more alien-looking worlds than the largely Earth-ish planets we've seen so far.

Combat is looking snappy!

Well, this is certainly a deep dive. No menu screen will go unexplored.

That was some delicious looking food. Other than... a plate of beetles and whipped cream? Did I see that right?

WarderDragon says: I know I'm going to spend countless hours in No Man's Skyrim. People complain about the engine, but that just means thousands of mods will be available.

"No Man's Skyrim" is so good hahahaha.

WarderDragon says: @Liam - the dish was called "Trilo Bites". I laughed.

Well spotted, that's very good.

Ah, a spiritual successor to the Mass Effect galaxy map.

But with less good music.

Look at those buttons! Clicky buttons and dials. This looks great.

I do like how New Atlantis actually looks like a city. Even the biggest Skyrim/Fallout settlements are ultimately just settlements.

You'll become a member of Constellation, a group of explorers who carry an almost mythic reputation.

There is at least one space pirate in Starfield that resembles an actual pirate.

Oh you can go to Mars. Can you visit Earth? Can I travel to future Birmingham?

Lars Westergren says: "The great serpent hungersssss" ehh what was that accent supposed to be?

Snake.

Onto character creation. Imagining Geoff K asking an auditorium "Who wants to see some character creation???" and grown men cheering.

The character creator has had a huge overhaul. Every character in Starfield has been designed using the same set of tools you'll be given access to at the start of the game.

Hah, it's the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of the Adoring Fan from Oblivion.

Big ol' skill tree.

Loads of different ways to play. You can be stealthy. Go in all guns blazing. Talk your way out of conflict. You know. Bethesda things.

I'm not convinced by the weightiness of the combat but am a fan of that "throw a grenade in a room then shut the door" move.

Fred says: Looks like Fallout in space which is pretty much what I expected and will play 200 hours of.

Oblivion with guns with swords with guns in space.

This is quite an earnest look at the game, rough edges and all, which I quite like? Makes me hopeful that it'll deliver on that huge scale the team spoke about at last year's not-E3.

I am going to spend hours building the worst ship you've ever seen. Just an absolutely rancid pile of metal. I can't wait.

I would like to ride in the Optimus Prime-shaped spaceship.

THAT'S Elias Toufexis as the space cowboy. And he's romanceable!

...the cowboy, not Elias Toufexis.

WarderDragon says: My biggest concern is how they expect to make the 1,000 random planets fun to explore. If the reason to go down is to pick up resources that can be found on 900 other planets, that's going to get dull quickly.

Yeah that's my main concern as well. I'm sort of hoping that there's enough hand-crafted stuff in there that you don't have to engage with that unless you want to?

You can warp jump (or "grav jump") out of sticky dogfight situations. Hope this pulls off that Titanfall EJECT EJECT EJECT tension.

It's funny you mention Titanfall, James. That ship combat looks to make dogfighting snappy in the same way Titanfall made mech combat a fast paced affair.

The Bethesda dev who bases her ship designs on animals has confessed to playing as a space pirate. Imagine getting your entire hold nicked by a ship shaped like a capybara.

The show is taking a break so that Todd can try to sell you a special edition.

Colector's edition time. You can get a watch! The same watch you get in the game! Neat!

Werthead says: "I can't wait for Idris Elba to come and clear the cupboards." I saw Lets Eat Grandma in London last night and when they dropped that track, the crowd went mental. All thanks to CDPR and Netflix.

One of my all-time favourite bands! I saw them live last year and the crowd also went wild for that track. Good for them. They deserve every success.

Back to Starfield itself and how planets are filled up with randomly generated...everything. Buildings, aliens, plants, resources etc.

Relying so hard on random gen stuff does worry me tbh. Radiant quests in Skyrim/Fallout 4 were famously meh.

Speaking of Fallout 4, settlement building is back in the form of habitat construction.

Ah, base building time. This never clicked with me in Fallout 4, but this looks a little more complex here? You can set up resource extractors, assign crewmates to specific jobs.

Oh, and you can now build from a top-down viewpoint. That's going to remove a huge amount of fiddliness. Hopefully.

Oh, the varying gravity sounds fun. All my bases will of course be built on planets where I can casually jump onto the roof.

Was that magic? Is this truly Skyrim with guns in space?

That was like the mass telekinesis power in Atomic Heart and for the love of fuck do I want to stop being reminded of Atomic Heart.

We're wrapping things up with a montage of the team telling us their favourite bits from the game. You can tell they're really proud of this thing that they've created.

A reminder of the release date (6th September 2023) and we're done! Oh wait no there's one more roundup of all the other Microsoft stuff.

I am going to listen to The Race For Space by Public Service Broadcasting on a loop while playing Starfield, I think. The perfect pairing.

Public Service Broadcasting - Go!

Watch on YouTube

WarderDragon says: So BG3 on Aug 30, Starfield on Sep 6, then Cyberpunk 2077 expansion three weeks later. Yikes!

A very busy few weeks!

Nothing truly wowzered my trousers in that but I'll probably play Payday 3 and Clockwork Revolution. And I like the look of Dungeons of Hinterberg as well:

Dungeons of Hinterberg - Announce Trailer

Watch on YouTube

Your pick(s), Liam?

A couple of cool things! Dungeons of Hinterberg looked ace, I agree. As did Jusant and Still Wakes The Deep. Gotta give my top pick to Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, though, which looked like pure classic Capcom.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess - Announce Trailer

Watch on YouTube

Dave L. says: Would've really liked a hint at what Arkane Lyon is up to.

Standing outside the windows of Arkane Austin, glaring in?

And with that, we're wrapping up this particular liveblog, but you can join us in an hour for the PC Gaming Show! Liam and I will be covering that here.

Cheers!