After a few months of silence, Sony and PlayStation returned with a new episode of State of Play in September 2019.
After some negative comparisons to Nintendo's direct data, Sony's third game presented a whole new look and, more importantly, brought us essential updates to Sony's lineup after no partnership on the E3 stage.
During this 20-minute stream, Sony and PlayStation were unbothered by end-to-end announcements and a little padding that was drastically changed compared to the E3 2018 presentation.
If you missed the live stream, don't worry, because here's a list of all the biggest announcements and trailers from PlayStation's September State of the Game, which you can explore at your leisure.
The last of us: part 2
The Last of Us 2 was the game that we had confirmation would appear and it was, as expected, the star of the stream and was used to pack things. We didn't know what to expect, but Sony put an end to our collective agony by presenting us with a cinematic trailer that included excerpts from the game showcasing Ellie and, more importantly, Joel. You can check out this atmospheric trailer for yourself below.
More importantly, we finally have this release date. The Last of Us 2 will be released on February 21, 2020. As long suspected.
Grounding of death
There has been a lot of Death Stranding news recently; The game had a huge showing at the Tokyo Games Show with over an hour of footage, and Hideo Kojima dropped some info on what to expect in interviews and on Twitter. He would be forgiven for thinking that this would not appear during this inventory.
Once again, with the game launching in November, it's almost the last chance to push it to a large captive audience on PlayStation, so it may not be surprising how it seems to some extent.
Fortunately for those suffering from Death Stranding fatigue, no, it wasn't new. Instead, it was the PS4 Pro limited edition bundle announcement on November 8, the day the game launched. This certainly isn't the worst limited edition bundle we've ever seen (you know how it can be). In fact, dare I say this yellow controller is quite stylish.
Humanity
Things started off weird with a trailer for a 2020 release titled Humanity from Enhance and Tha Ltd.
Depicting waves of people moving against each other, the trailer looked like a drone movie from the final days of the Christmas shopping period.
First announced in 2018, Humanity has been described as a "collective action game". While we're not quite sure what that means, we're still interested in what it will mean when it launches on PS4 and PSVR in 2020. The trailer below may make sense:
Wattam
From the creator of Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, Keita Takahashi, we propose a colorful and whimsical adventure called Watam.
The game was first announced in 2015, but now we know that the solo and co-op adventure will kick off in December 2019 and we've been given a new gameplay trailer.
Wattam heralds it as a wacky and joyful new adventure, filled with unusual and friendly characters, fantastic music, and amazing gameplay. Check out the trailer below:
After the party
Afterparty from Night School Studio, creators of Oxenfree, has just released a new game featuring Satan and two dead friends, Milo and Lola. It's a game with style and a sense of humor, because it forces you to distance yourself from Satan in order to escape Hell and return to Earth. We could probably pretend that we could do something without having to prove it. Now is our chance. The game will release on PS4 on October 29, 2019, just in time for Halloween.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty is a third-party cross-platform franchise, but has always had close ties to Sony and PlayStation. Unfortunately, Activision used State of Play to debut the Modern Warfare trailer. It was a visually stunning trailer with convincing voiceovers and facial animations. It looks like the story mode could be a real highlight of the game.
It was also revealed that PlayStation players would get exclusive early access to the Special Ops Survival Mode at Modern Warfare's launch on October 25, with that access lasting until October 1, 2020.
pSVR
Rockstar Games used the presentation to reveal that LA Noire, the VR case file, is currently available on PlayStation VR.
We also got a quick look at some future releases on the platform, including Espire 1: VR Operative, scheduled for September 2019, Stardust Odyssey in Winter 2019, After the Fall in 2020, and Space Channel 5 Autumn 2019.
It was a very brief overview and we didn't hear any news of Iron Man VR launching as there were a lot of them, but after Sony drew some criticism for a heavy state of the game on the PSVR, we're not surprised things held up. They are short this time.
Nothing else?
The free games for PlayStation Plus in October have been confirmed to be The Show 19 and, rightly so, The Last of Us Remastered. The perfect time for those who haven't had a chance to play but have had their interest piqued by the latest trailer for The Last of Us 2.
It was also revealed that Sid Meier's Civilization VI would be released on PlayStation 4 on November 22, 2019 with extensions.
serious omissions?
So I was 20 minutes from Sony but something was missing? Well, we already knew this would be the case, as Sony made it clear in the blog post announcing the feed, but there was no mention of the next-gen or the PlayStation 5. So, for all of those hoping for a clever double whammy, We are not afraid.
As far as absent games go, Ghost of Tsushima really deserves its name. We haven't heard about Sucker Punch's next title for quite some time and this might have been a good opportunity for them to mention it. However, with two major releases in the form of The Last of Us 2 and Death Stranding ahead of Ghost of Tsushima, we're not surprised that Sony has seen fit to hold its cards to its chest for a potentially more up-to-date update. material at a later date.
This state of affairs was a smooth, concise and well-balanced show from Sony, with The Last of Us 2 big and dark, while Wattam was giving us something a little more light-hearted to look forward to.