Game Awards Finales Aren’t What They Used To Be

As both an awards show and promotional event, The Game Awards walks a very fine line. It's a delicate balancing act—and not always deftly performed—between celebrating the medium's greatest achievements from the past year and advertising an upcoming slate of new games to viewers. The latter often crassly overshadows the former, but trailers are arguably responsible for TGA's continuing success.

For weeks leading up to The Game Awards, speculation and leaks abound. Anticipation only grows throughout the lengthy affair: "what is the big finale going to be?" For TGA, the true finale is crowning a Game of the Year winner, but it's always preempted by one final world premiere, and this year's was confusingly underwhelming.

Highguard Reveal Was A Baffling Way To End TGA 2025

A character from Highguard in high-tech fantasy armor in front of a huge keep.

Right before The Game Awards Orchestra performed a medley of music from this year's GOTY nominees, host Geoff Keighley introduced one final trailer, promising that we'll be able to play this unannounced game very soon. Cue the reveal of Highguard, the debut game from Wildlight Entertainment, a studio founded by ex-Respawn Entertainment developers who helped create Titanfall and Apex Legends.

In all fairness, I won't pass any judgment on Highguard just yet; I haven't played it. It's difficult to know exactly what it is. Being billed as a "PvP raid shooter," it seems to take facets from the MOBA genre and hero shooters. With the trailer culminating in what appears to be some sort of siege, it may at least have a novel gameplay loop.

As a final reveal at The Game Awards, however, Highguard simply feels out of place, through no fault of its own. The practical explanation for its placement in the show is likely that Wildlight paid for that slot. But historically, it's a trailer slot dominated by major franchises or single-player games from beloved studios. For reference, here are the previous five years' finale world premieres at TGA:

2024 – Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet
2023 – Monster Hunter Wilds
2022 – Final Fantasy 16
2021 – The Matrix Awakens
2020 – Mass Effect

The outlier here is The Matrix Awakens, an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo. It was introduced by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss following a new trailer for The Matrix Resurrections. We'll chalk this one up to TGA's fascination with Hollywood and its stars, and The Matrix Awakens interestingly came after the reveal of ARC Raiders, which four years later is one of the more notable live-service successes.

The other four, however, are exactly what you'd expect from a "one more thing" type reveal. Highguard's announcement put a lot of stock into the fact that it will be playable soon, but when the trailer ended with a release date seven weeks away—rather than, say, that night or this weekend—it instantly became just another live-service hopeful on the horizon.

Many Other Announcements Would Have Been Better Finales

The silhouette of a character in Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic.

I'm not making an argument that the final reveal of The Game Awards needs to be a stellar game, nor implying that Highguard won't be. Monster Hunter Wilds has plenty of issues, Final Fantasy 16 is divisive, and Intergalactic and the new Mass Effect aren't even out yet. But the reception to Highguard being TGA 2025's grand finale is, if not disappointment, confusion.

As a headliner for what is the industry's biggest promotional showcase, it pales in comparison to numerous peers. Divinity is Larian Studios' follow-up to Baldur's Gate 3, 2023's GOTY winner. Control Resonant had a stunning trailer and stage performance, and Remedy Entertainment is quickly becoming one of those must-play studios. Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is the spiritual successor to two of the most beloved RPGs ever made.

If anything, Highguard is an indictment of how The Game Awards gets structured. Putting your trailer in TGA is often ludicrously expensive, and that final slot is likely among the priciest. (Or Keighley really, really loved Highguard when he played it.) Considering the field, most people tasked with organizing the show likely would have chosen Divinity or Star Wars: FOTOR. Larian now has the same pull as Naughty Dog, and a new Old Republic-set Star Wars RPG is on the same level as Mass Effect's return.

As viewership continues to rise, and The Game Awards pulls in more money annually, this is a snafu that is at risk of repeating. Perception of the whole show may have turned to disappointment with this final, flat note if not for the surprise announcement of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's free DLC during its GOTY acceptance speech. The Game Awards is regularly criticized for turning the spotlight away from the actual awards, and such criticisms will only grow if it can't routinely deliver a grand finale.