Five Big Surprise Announcements In 2015

Looking back at 2015, we received many of the awesome gaming experiences we were promised. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt turned out every bit as awesome as expected, the team at From Software pushed us to our limits once more with Bloodborne, and Nintendo enabled us to bring our imagination to life with the intuitive creation tools found in Super Mario Maker. Each of those releases was anticipated heading into 2015, and while they helped define the year in gaming, 2015 will always be a year when several dream-come-true announcements were made.

With 2016 knocking at the door, we wanted to look back at some of the most exciting announcements that caught us by surprise over the past 12 months. 

The Return Of Music Games

The year of surprises began with Harmonix’s announcement of Rock Band 4, a franchise that hadn’t seen a new retail entry since 2010. Even the series’ trailblazing downloadable content release schedule had lapsed since mid-2013 as the interest in the genre plummeted. Many figured the franchise was dead and buried, which is why Harmonix’s announcement that it was bringing the series back this year was shocking.

Right off the bat, the team said that it didn’t plan on rewriting the formula of the franchise. Instead, Harmonix focused on delivering a refined version of that same core gameplay and the idea of building upon the massive collection of tracks in its fans’ music libraries.

Shortly after the announcement of Rock Band 4, Activision and FreeStyle Games revealed that they were releasing a new Guitar Hero game in 2015. Instead of following suit with Harmonix and relying on the familiar gameplay, FreeStyle changed up the entire experience. Gone were the CG graphics and the five-button gameplay of the previous entries. Now, players use a guitar controller with two rows of three buttons as they play along with a live-action band in a first-person view.

Nintendo Goes Mobile

After previously developing strictly for its own platforms and without major microtransactions, Nintendo announced a partnership with mobile development juggernaut DeNA. The partnership is set to yield multiple original mobile games using Nintendo’s properties.

Miitomo is a social interaction game that uses Nintendo’s iconic Mii characters as player avatars. This first-announced game demonstrates Nintendo’s desire to use its properties to deliver unique experiences rather than simply porting the company’s many existing games to mobile platforms as other developers have done. 

While Miitomo isn’t the exact kind of experience Nintendo fans were expecting to see, it’s significant for showing Nintendo’s embracing of free-to-play model on a third-party platform. It is possible that Nintendo’s expansion to mobile could hint at the direction of its upcoming system, the Nintendo NX, but it’s far too early at this point to tell.

On the next page, three beloved franchises make their highly anticipated returns.

Fallout 4 Announced And Released

Fallout 3 remains one of the most beloved games of last-gen, so when Fallout 4 was announced – and that it was coming out so soon – the vast fan-base of the series exploded with excitement. It was a major move that turned the industry on its head and made the game skyrocket to the top of nearly all “most anticipated” lists. 

True to its promise, Bethesda launched Fallout 4 less than half a year after the initial announcement. Fallout 4 is, for all intents and purposes, a bigger and better version of Fallout 3. The gunplay is improved and the graphics are leaps and bounds better than last-gen Fallout games. Players on consoles will also be able to mod their games, adding another significant hook for fans. 

Final Fantasy VII Gets Remade

Sony’s E3 media briefing was a roller coaster ride of reveals and announcements, but none were bigger or more unexpected than the much sought after Final Fantasy VII Remake. Though we were given little more than a teaser trailer at E3, Final Fantasy VII Remake quickly became one of the most talked about games at the expo. All we knew was that this isn’t just an HD remaster – this is a full-on remake.

At PlayStation Experience 2015, we were shown a good amount of new footage from the upcoming game. We saw the battle system in action for the first time, confirming that it would be a bit more action oriented than that of the original release. The gameplay looks great, but the excitement surrounding it was curtailed by Square Enix’s announcement that the game would release in multiple parts.

Big JRPGs are best experienced in multiple play sessions in close proximity to one another, so this raised concerns among fans, but the biggest bomb was dropped when Square Enix also said that each part would bring a unique experience with it. Does this mean that the gameplay will differ from entry to entry? It’s too early to judge what the experience will be like without concrete answers. Despite lingering questions, especially in regards to how the game will be released, Final Fantasy VII Remake is still among the most anticipated games. Fans have been pining for this for quite a while; time will tell if this approach will be for better or worse. 

Yu Suzuki Tries To Save Shenmue

Only a few games could stand toe-to-toe with a remake of Final Fantasy VII in terms of how unexpected it was to happen, but the revitalization of Yu Suzuki’s Shenmue is certainly one of them. The series has become a cult classic in the decade-and-a-half since the initial release on Dreamcast, and with the second entry narrowly making it to the states by way of an original Xbox port, the series failed to live up to Sega’s expectations and its future was very much in question.

After years of fans petitioning Sega to allow Suzuki to continue the series to no avail, it seemed all hope was lost for the die-hard fan-base. Then, when Suzuki took the stage to announce plans for Shenmue 3, the response reverberated through E3 2015. It was a dream come true for many fans that have been dying to see how Ryo Hazuki’s quest for vengeance continues and eventually ends. However, once Suzuki announced that the team was going the Kickstarter route, the weirdness with the Shenmue 3 saga began to surface.

It was strange enough that Sony would have one of its major reveals of its E3 press conference be an announcement for a Kickstarter campaign, but the cloudy circumstances surrounding the funding of Shenmue 3 added more questions than answers. Will this crowdfunded version of Shenmue 3 be a neutered version of what fans really want, or will Suzuki and his team obtain the funds needed through other means to fully realize his vision? How has Sony contributed to the project financially? Suzuki and his studio Ys Net have tried to clarify the answers to these through videos and an FAQ section on the Kickstarter campaign page, but the biggest question remains: will this game live up to the wild expectations of its fans, or will it feel as dated as the original Dreamcast game feels today? All we know is that it’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out for a franchise that we haven’t heard from since 2002.

There are plenty of big games set to come out in 2016, but with so many big announcements hitting in 2015, it will be fun to see how developers and publishers try to top that level of excitement. Will the months leading up to E3 live up to this past year’s excitement, or will it feel uneventful by comparison? What announcements could come in 2016 to make the year as exciting as 2015? Let us know what you think in the comments below!