Square Enix Presents Recap: Life Is Strange, Black Panther, AR Space Invaders, and More

Today, Square Enix offered a look at a ton of games, both old and new, in its latest Square Enix Presents. Here’s the rundown on everything shown.

Outriders CInematic and Breakdown

With a few weeks to launch, Outriders is getting a lot of promotion, opening the showcase with a pair of trailers, a cinematic and the other a 101-type video explaining what the Outriders are all doing on this new planet Enoch. No surprise, it’s colonialism! Apparently the planet is “hyper-evolving its flora and fauna to purge the virus that is humanity.” I’m actually rooting for the planet in this fight.

Tomb Raider 25th Anniversary

For Tomb Raider’s 25th birthday, Square Enix is plastering Lara Croft everywhere and also releasing a collection of the trilogy of games developed by Square Enix called the Tomb Raider Definitive Survivor Trilogy. Lara Croft’s just arrived as a skin in Fortnite for its latest season, and the Croft mansion will be coming to Creative Mode later this year. Atop this collaboration, Square will also be doing Tomb Raider cross-promotion in titles like Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint and War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. Oh and there’s a cookbook coming too.

Chaos on the Go

Square Enix took a few minutes to announce some installments in their ongoing franchises that are coming to that little device in your pocket. To kick things off, Just Cause Mobile, a free-to-play game, is looking to bring the frenetic energy of the franchise to mobile, and letting you do the absolute most with it by blowing up the player count. Touting a full campaign, the game will also feature 4-player cooperative missions and a competitive multiplayer mode with up to 30 players.

(Not) Hitman Go

Hitman, which is having a bit of a banner year for the first time in a long while, will be coming back to mobile with Hitman Sniper Assassins, “a?wholly?original Hitman story, with new playable assassins and brand-new gameplay features,” that’ll be coming later this year.

Space Invaders Go

OK I’ve been having a bit of fun with the “Go” stuff in the mobile games section, but this is literally an augmented-reality (AR) take on Space Invaders, which I can’t imagine as anything more than pointing your phone camera at the sky to shoot invaders descending upon your city. It’ll be that one summer when Pokemon Go came out, except people are probably going to be a lot more scared of the people pointing the phones upward this time.

The Taito Show

Taito, a company widely heralded for their early work in arcade games like Space Invaders, Darius, and Bubble Bobble, announced new games for a couple of these series, and additional content coming to a game I’ve never even heard of called Touhou Spell Bubble. I can’t speak much to what they showed off, but I can say that the music across all three trailers absolutely ruled.

The Next Generation of Avengers

Marvel’s Avengers is finally getting its next-gen patch, updating the game to look and run better on the newest generation of consoles. The patch is actually out now and delivers 4K resolution, 60 frames per second, updated textures and environmental destruction among other things. The upgrade comes at no additional cost. Square also took this time to deliver a very in-depth look at Hawkeye, who’s being added to the game’s roster this spring and will have an accompanying campaign called “Future Imperfect.” I won’t pretend to understand what that is or even anything about Avengers, but Hawkeye’s gameplay looked interesting enough to where I’m thinking about it.

Avengers has had a tough road to here and has been trying to win back the audience it convinced to buy into it ever since. In the spirit of that, Square also showed a glimpse at the roadmap for the next year with tons of scheduled content. At the very end, they showed off a tease for an expansion called “Black Panther: War for Wakanda” that’s set to bring the titular character and setting to the game later this year.

Balan Wonderworld Isn’t a Fever Dream, It Really Exists and Is Actually Coming Out

This game is real. It really exists and we really played it and it’s super strange and it comes out in like a week. Here’s probably the last look we’ll get of it before the end days—I mean before the game comes out.

Life: Still Strange

After leaking earlier this morning, we got our first look at the newest Life is Strange title, called Life is Strange: True Colors. This time around we’re playing Alex Chen, who has the ability to not just visualize people’s emotions but absorb them into herself. She’s come to Haven Springs to be with her brother until he passes from a mysterious accident that may not have been one. It’s on Alex to use her ability to get to the bottom of this mystery. For the first time ever, and likely in response to how poorly Life is Strange 2 fared, the game will not be released episodically and instead come as one whole package, though it’ll still be broken up into chapters.Life is Strange: True Colors will release on Sep. 10.

On top of the new game, Square Enix is releasing a remastered collection of the first two installments, Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm, which will have “enhanced visuals and animations.” It will be available as part of the deluxe edition of True Colors and also standalone afterwards.

Project Althia is Now Forspoken

Ella Balinska, an actress most famous for her role in the latest Charlie’s Angels film, will be voicing the lead, Frey, in a game that is now called Forspoken. We got our longest look yet at the game, which shows Frey zipping across landscapes in a highly acrobatic manner and fighting all manner of creatures, both natural and not. The game still won’t be out until next year but I’m excited for anything with a character whose reaction to seeing a dragon is “Is that a motherfucking dragon?”