With gamescom under way in Germany, it’s been a week heavy on the gaming news front.

Meanwhile, away from the worlds of gaming, series, film, and other pop culture happenings, South Africa was shocked by the passing of veteran broadcaster and journalist Derek Watts aged 74, from cancer. Watts presented Sunday night TV staple, investigative journalism series Carte Blanche, for well over 30 years.

Gaming

What’s a giant gaming show without an announcement-stuffed livestream event? That was certainly the case with Geoff Keighley’s gamescom Opening Night Live 2023, which took place on Tuesday evening, 22 August, out of Cologne, and included over two hours of game reveals, launch date news, and fresh looks at titles on the horizon.

You can find a handy breakdown of everything announced here, but Starfield, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Mortal Kombat 1, Alan Wake 2 and Black Myth: Wukong all got new trailers and/or gameplay showcases. With the exception of Chinese mythology soulslike Black Myth, all of these titles will be out in the next two months. Thanks to its new trailer, we also now know the highly anticipated fighter Tekken 8 will release on 26 January next year. And that Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is not just spy mission DLC; it comes with a major update to the base game as well, introducing new expanded ways to play.

Other notable revelations from gamescom Opening Night:

Colourful, literally snappy, superhero deckbuilder Marvel Snap is now playable on PC (through Steam), in addition to mobile devices. The news was paired with a new animated cinematic trailer, and announcements that players will be able to claim special rewards for logging into the game, and watching select Twitch streams, for the next week or so.

Of the new game reveals from Opening Night, we’ll be keeping an eye on dark platformer, and sequel, Little Nightmares III, now evidently with a collaborative element/option.

However, given how much we surprisingly enjoyed off-road simulator Snowrunner, it was exciting to see the appearance of Expeditions: A MudRunner Game from the same team. Out in 2024 for all consoles, Expeditions puts players in charge of a variety of research missions in remote, treacherous environments. Along with maneuvering all-terrain vehicles over tricky terrain, you’ll have to use advanced technologies and high-tech tools to overcome obstacles. O hai, Lara Croft.

Stepping away from gamescom Opening Night now, here are two more games that caught our eye this week.

It feels like there have been a dozen Walking Dead games at this point, not to mention probably hundreds of titles set in a zombie apocalypse, but The Walking Dead: Destinies has a bit more of a hook, in that your choices in this third-person action adventure can completely rewrite events from the hit TV series. Here’s the plot synopsis.

Begin your journey as Rick Grimes, waking alone in a hospital surrounded by the dead. Assemble allies and fight your way through the walker apocalypse across iconic locations from The Walking Dead, including Atlanta, the Greene family farm, the prison, and Woodbury. In crucial choice-driven moments, you’ll forever shape the destiny of your team of characters from the series. Heroes and villains, living and dead – it’s up to you to decide whether to stay the course of history or forge your own path through the world of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead: Destinies is out 14 November (rumoured) for PC and all consoles, including Nintendo Switch.

It’s a good year for space games that aren’t just pew-pew battles, and place emphasis on narrative and hard sci-fi themes instead. In early 2023, we played Deliver Us Mars, and just this week, Fort Solis launched. In less than 3 months, we’ll be able to get our hands on The Invincible as well.

Based on the 1964 Polish novel of the same name, The Invincible puts players in the role of Yasna, a sharp-tongued astrobiologist forced to search for her crew and bring them back “dead or alive” as a perilous mission to the eerie planet Regis III takes an awry turn. On the surface, it may seem that Regis III is uninhabited but that doesn’t mean the people who visit here can feel like unopposed rulers. The philosophical nature of the events on Regis III will make Yasna forever question the scale of humankind’s ambitions.

The Invincible comes to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles on 6 November.

Some other gaming news tidbits of the past few days:

Film

Arguably the biggest movie news of the week came courtesy of gamescom as well. gamescom: Opening Night Live 2023 was used to reveal the first trailer for Zack (Justice League, 300) Snyder’s “Star Wars but not Star Wars” sci-fi fantasy epic Rebel Moon.

In Rebel Moon, Sofia Boutella heads up a diverse ensemble cast as Korra, a mysterious stranger living quietly on a peaceful moon colony on the edge of the galaxy. When the Imperium, the army of the tyrannical Mother World, arrives, Kora steps up to find trained fighters who will join her in making an impossible stand. In the process, she brings together outsiders, insurgents, peasants and orphans of war from different worlds who share a common need for redemption and revenge.

These figures include Djimon Hounsou as Titus, a former general of the Imperium; Charlie Hunnam as mercenary pilot Kai; Jena Malone as Harmada, a lethal spider warrior; Ray Fisher as ferocious fighter Darrian Bloodaxe; Michiel Huisman as Gunnar, a farmer; Doona Bae’s cyborg swordmaster Nemesis; and Anthony Hopkins’s mechanical knight.

Rebel Moon is coming to Netflix in two parts – Part 1: A Child of Fire on 22 December this year, and Part 2: The Scargiver on 19 April 2024.

To coincide with the unveiling of the trailer, the Motion Picture Association has uploaded a new set of images spotlighting the film’s cast, and some of the more striking moments from the eye-melting trailer.

Here’s a pleasant surprise. Twenty three years after the original stop-motion animated adventure released, Chicken Run 2 is on the horizon from Aardman Animations. In Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, a mix of new and returning voices continues the story of the self-liberated chickens from Tweedy’s farm.

The official plot synopsis for the Chicken Run sequel is as follows:

After successfully escaping from Tweedy’s farm in a daring and risky manner, Ginger has discovered her ideal place – an idyllic island bird sanctuary where the entire flock can live in harmony, without any risks from humans. With the arrival of Ginger and Rocky’s new daughter, Molly, it appears that Ginger’s fairytale ending has finally come true. However, the entire chicken population is now confronted with a menacing and new danger on the mainland. Determined to safeguard their freedom, even if it means endangering it, Ginger and her team are determined to break in.

For the record, Thandiwe Newton replaces Julia Sawalha as Ginger, while Zachary Levi steps in for Mel Gibson as Rocky. Meanwhile, The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey is their daughter Molly, a new character.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget will have its big screen premiere at the 67th London Film Festival on 14 October 2023, and will be released on Netflix on 15 December.

One final film news tidbit:

It’s been rumoured for a few weeks, and now it’s been confirmed. Warner Bros.’ has delayed the release of Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune: Part Two into next year, citing the actors and writers strikes as reasons. Dune: Part Two moves from 3 November 2023 to 15 March 2024.

Series

Another reveal out of gamescom: Following a brief screening of footage for show attendees, Prime Video and Bethesda have unveiled some key information relating to their adaptation of video game series Fallout, the retro-futurist post-apocalyptic franchise set centuries after nuclear holocaust in 1950s America. Fallout is coming to the small screen next year, and will be set in Los Angeles.

Developed by Westworld co-creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, Fallout includes the likes of Walton Goggins (playing a Ghoul), Ella Purnell, and Kyle MacLachlan in the cast.

Amazon’s Prime Video turned from hero to villain this past week with the news that they were backtracking on the decision to renew two series.

Despite greenlighting a second season for both William Gibson sci-fi adaptation The Peripheral, with Chloë Grace Moretz, and WWII ladies’ baseball drama A League of Their Own, Prime has now reversed their decision.

Out of interest, back in April, instead of cancelling the series, Prime committed to a shorter 4-episode second season for A League of Their Own. This was to satisfyingly wrap up the narrative. The new announcement breaks that promise.

One other TV news tidbit:

HBO Max’s quirky pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death is set to return with its second season in October. Vanity Fair broke the news in their Exclusive First Look feature, which includes the first images from the upcoming season, and a deep dive into what to expect.