The Game Awards returned for another annual iteration on Thursday, and like in years past, the online-streamed ceremony was probably more interesting because of game trailer debuts than any of its awards—with the exception of the very first award given.

Last year's broadcast was notable thanks to a weird no-show: Metal Gear Solid series creator Hideo Kojima, who wasn't allowed to attend thanks to contract issues with his former employers at Konami. "What happened to Hideo Kojima last year was a tragedy," a visibly shaken host Geoff Keighley told the crowd—referring specifically to Konami's choice to "lock him in a room" thanks to those squabbles—before handing him the show's Industry Icon award.

"Last year, I thought I lost everything," Kojima told the crowd in accepting the award. "But I didn't lose anything." He then revealed a new cinematic, non-gameplay trailer for his new PlayStation-exclusive game, Death Stranding, which was apparently rendered in real time on a PlayStation 4—and if so, it's shaping up to be quite the stunner of a game.





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The five-minute clip begins with an apparent 3D-rendered version of filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro walking into a creepy cavern, over which a tentacle-covered tank rolls while black ooze seeps below. Del Toro's character holds a capsule with a living baby inside of it, and actor Mads Mikkelsen appears as some sort of tentacle-covered soldier of evil. Even by Hideo Kojima standards, this trailer looks decidedly weird. It also auspiciously lacks anything in the way of gameplay details or a release window.

One other award stood out thanks to its ties to an ongoing game-industry dispute. Upon winning a Best Performance award, Uncharted voice actor Nolan North gave an acceptance speech that seemed to speak to the ongoing voice actors strike: "I hear a lot of talk lately about how performance matters. It does: the performance of every designer, every programmer, every artist, every hard working talented person... that performance is so important. Their performance matters more than mine. That's important to understand in this day and age, with the talk going back and forth. Without their performance, my performance would not only not matter, it wouldn't exist. I will continue on if they will continue bringing the things I do to life, I'll be there for them."

It was unclear from the speech's context whether Nolan was disagreeing with striking actors, or asking for game developers to receive the same kind of royalty-based compensation that voice actors have sought in their own strike.

For more straight-up action, the latest Mass Effect: Andromeda trailer delivered in spades, with the game's five-minute clip focusing almost entirely on combat and traversal.

Two trailers debuted for Nintendo's 2017 game Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The first, which ran during the event's pre-show, offers brief snippets of new sections in the game's overworld (and reveals, among a number of new monsters, a friendly dog!). The second much longer one begins with Link speaking to a quest-giver named Kass, who has the head of a bird and plays an accordion. Link runs to a section of the world called the Zonai Ruins, where he faces off against electricity-wielding and spear-throwing lizard creatures called Lizals. The quest is played with both straight-ahead combat strategies and stealthier ones (with the sneakier path winning out).







An oversized, bipedal Moblin blocks Link's path to a shining award of some kind, which is smart enough to sidestep Link's bomb attack (a rare flash of legitimate enemy AI in a Zelda game). After felling the giant beast, the demo ends, leaving the glowing reward in the distance unclaimed. The trailers, by the way, are the first videos from Nintendo to include the new Switch console's logo, but the gameplay appears to have come from a Wii U—and, sadly, the game's frame rate and visual performance suffer as a result.







Prey's reboot received its biggest gameplay-loaded trailer yet, and it, again, looks like a far cry from the Prey 2 project revealed (and canceled) years ago. The entirety of the trailer appeared to happen within an ornate space outpost, and the hero character was seen floating through space, shooting a goo gun, transforming into smaller objects, and using a mix of technological and supernatural powers to freeze and control insect-like aliens.

A super-brief teaser confirmed Telltale Games' next major episodic project, based on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, while a team of ex-Riot and ex-Bioware devs at Phoenix Labs offered a teaser for new co-op adventure game Dauntless. The latter game's trailer isn't nearly as revealing as the five-second GIFs at its brand-new home site, which make the game look very much like a Blizzard-produced Monster Hunter clone. Both games have announced 2017 release targets.

Listing image by Kojima Productions