Postponements en masse: what else should you play in 2021?

Postponements en masse

So now also Deathloop. As the makers of Arkane Studios recently announced, their new time-loop shooter spectacle will not appear until a few months later. Instead of May 21st, a release is now planned for September 14th. This measure is intended to give the developers some time to put the finishing touches on. After all, the aim is to offer gamers the most entertaining, stylish and brain-twisting gaming experience possible. With this step, Arkane joins a trend that will shape the video game industry like no other in 2021: corona-related shifts. The pandemic has presented manufacturers and developers with completely new challenges in recent months and forced them to come up with some creative solutions: People work from home and only communicate online. Of course, this is not always that easy and has corresponding consequences. "Our IT is practically at the limit," said Steve Pritchard, Vice President of Production at Gears Tactics developer Splash Damage in an interview with the Guardian. "The online transfer of huge amounts of data is a real problem." In addition, there is the fact that some work processes are currently simply not possible: Performance capture recordings are completely out of the question. Quality assurance and testing procedures for almost finished games also take significantly more time at the moment.

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See you next year!

For many racing game fanatics, the new Gran Turismo 7 was a reason to buy the PS5. Now they have to wait until 2022 for the racing sim. Source: Sony While many studios were largely able to cope with these circumstances last year because their games were already in the final stages of the development cycle, the games industry will hit much harder in 2021. Games, the release of which was planned for the coming months, should actually be in the middle of the development process, but are now being held up by home office, lockdowns or other logistical problems. Be it the strategy game Humankind, the co-op zombie shooter Back4Blood or the adventure Kena: Bridge of Spirits - no studio, no genre was spared. Sometimes the publication was delayed by a few weeks, sometimes by several months. In fact, some industry representatives have been hit particularly hard. Their titles have been pushed back so far that they will no longer appear this year. For example, we cannot expect Gran Turismo 7, Hogwarts Legacy and Gotham Knights until 2022 at the earliest.

As a gamer, patience is currently the order of the day. For me, however, the question slowly arises: What should I still play this year? From a gaming perspective, 2021 has so far been unbelievably unspectacular. It's just April and it feels like we're already in the middle of the pickle season. There is a real calm, nothing happens. There are no new games, no big announcements, no digital events. And given the external circumstances, that will probably only change to a limited extent for the rest of the year.

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Truce on the gaming front

Sure, the year has a few nice titles in store or of course the year still has it ready. With Hitman 3, It Takes Two, Resident Evil Village and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart there were or will be a few smaller highlights in the foreseeable future. But you look in vain for the big names. Where are calibers like a God of War, a Red Dead Redemption 2 or a The Last of Us Part 2? The big blockbusters that you look forward to all year round and for which it would actually be worth investing huge sums in hardware? Right, postponed!

According to an ad that appeared on Instagram, Horizon Forbidden West is slated to appear in 2021. But is that really a reliable source? Source: Sony / Guerrilla Games One of the few exceptions and a possible rescue from the current drought could be Horizon: Forbidden West. Aloy's latest adventure made a really good impression when it was announced last June. In view of the impressive post-apocalyptic worlds and the fantastic machine creatures, Playstation owners made their mouths water. But even behind the exclusive title there is still a big question mark! Actually, according to a trailer, the action RPG should appear in the second half of the year. Jim Ryan, head of Sony, confirmed in an interview with GQ that they have "a good feeling" about this appointment. A release around the Christmas business in 2021 does not seem completely unrealistic.

In the same breath, Ryan also said: Sony is known for not meeting deadlines without considering losses, but for releasing games when they are finished. That sounds again as if another postponement is not finally off the table. With all the confusion, it doesn't help that there is still no official statement on the status quo of development. The responsible studio Guerilla Games has not spoken out for a long time. The official shop page still has the information "Unconfirmed publication date".

No need to panic?

There are already some rumors about this year's Call of Duty, which is expected to be released around the Christmas season. The setting should be about World War II again. Source: Activision So that means: Fix is ​​still nothing. The same applies to other promising candidates. For example, there is Halo: Infinite from the Microsoft warehouse. Although this appears on our list more as a matter of courtesy, after last year's gameplay reveal was rather sobering. Breath of the Wild 2 has not received more than a short teaser so far. And to the eagerly awaited Elden Ring from From Software and George R.R. Apart from a few leaks, Martin has been radio silence for ages anyway. As of now, there is only a new FIFA and a new Call of Duty for Christmas. The prospects are rosy!

Falling into pessimism and marking 2021 as the boring game year in a long time doesn't really help you either. There is already enough bad mood at the moment. So maybe we should try a lot more to make a virtue out of necessity and to see the positive in the current situation: If there is a lack of triple A productions, then you just have to turn to the indie pearls. The Elysiums and Hades' disco this year. There are more than enough of them and they are just waiting to be discovered. Or you use the time to work off the infinitely high pile of shame. So boredom should be a thing of the past pretty quickly ...