PC Gamer’s most-anticipated games of 2023

Awfully nice year you’ve got there, videogames. Mind if we look under the hood?

2023 is looking good on paper. We’ve already declared it a “stacked” year for FPSes. Long-awaited games from Bethesda and Rocksteady are due, but it’s not all remakes and sequels, either: Suicide Squad is a bonafide blockbuster, Rogue Trader is the most original Warhammer 40K concept we’ve seen in awhile, and Demonschool is a gorgeous interpretation of Persona.

But as ever, we have to concern ourselves with the possibility of whether these games will actually come out in the next 12 months, uncertainty that has only increased following the pandemic’s disruption of the games industry. Toward that, we took a more mathematical approach to this year’s list, which factors in our best guess at whether these games will manage to release before January 1, 2024. You can find a breakdown of how we determined these rankings at the bottom of the page. Let’s get started.

The most-anticipated PC games of 2023

(Image credit: Improbable, Inflexion Games)

30 Nightingale 

HypeScore™: 24.2
Wishlist on Steam
No confirmed release date, but we think it’s almost certain it will go into Early Access in 2023 as planned.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: An eye-catching gaslamp fantasy survival crafting game, Nightingale’s Victorian-inspired setting and polish immediately impress for how cleanly they depart from the desert island and primal backdrops we’ve played for years in this genre. Fantastical realms and giant monsters are a pleasant match for aristocratic garb and historical weapons—the Fantastic Beasts films being one of the best comparisons. Nightingale was featured on the cover of PC Gamer for our June 2022 issue. 

(Image credit: Team Fortune)

29 Fortune’s Run 

Wishlist on Steam
HypeScore™: 24.5
Release date: Coming soon

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Immersive sim depth meets boomer shooter speed. Fortune’s Run boasts imm-simmy hallmarks like complex enemy AI, an alert system, and granular environmental interactivity. For example, you can microwave meals to get more health back from them, or microwave your grenades if you want significantly less health very quickly. This is no “crouch walk and quickload when you’re spotted” joint though⁠—you listen in on guards’ conversations and read people’s emails to find out their passwords and office drama, but when the rubber hits the road Fortune’s Run is all bombast. 

The highlight is a peerless melee combat system that lets you pull off Devil May Cry combos in first person, flinging enemies into the air with sliding kicks and slicing them to ribbons with a futuristic space katana (like a regular katana, but in the Dark Future and also it can parry bullets). Team Fortune brings it home with a gloriously grungy sci-fi setting featuring the chunky, analogue, vacuum tube and rubber puppet stylings of a 2D Fallout or the Star Wars Expanded Universe (sorry, Legends). I need this to come out so I can finally stop playing its Realms Deep demo.

28 Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl

HypeScore™: 27.2
Wishlist on Steam
Release date: Currently listed as December 2023, and if you believe that I’ve got a bridge in the Exclusion Zone to sell you

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Released in 2007, Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl is perhaps the ultimate in Eastern European shooter-jank, demanding effort, patience, and a whole lot of forgiveness in exchange for immersion, intensity, and moments of absolutely balls-out terror. Its failures arise mainly out of its great ambitions, which is why I’m so eager for the long-overdue Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. (Chornobyl, by the way, is the proper Ukrainian spelling of Chernobyl; developer GSC Game World is a Ukrainian studio and, for reasons I’m sure are obvious, is a little more eager these days than it was in the past to assert its national identity.) The latest trailer doesn’t make Heart of Chornobyl look like the most graphically advanced shooter ever, but what I’m interested in are the underlying systems that bring the bleak, bizarre game world to life. It’s been 16 years since Shadow of Chernobyl, and if that passage of time means GSC Game World can properly realize its vision for the Zone in Stalker 2, we could be looking at an easy game of the year contender. 

(Image credit: 11 Bit Studios)

27 Frostpunk 2

HypeScore™: 27.8
Wishlist on Steam
11 bit studios denied a rumor it was releasing in 2024, so hopefully that means 2023 and not 2025, based on the “Coming soon” shown on its Steam page.

Chris Livingston, Features Producer: The sequel to Frostpunk has some big snowshoes to fill. It’ll be hard to top the original’s blend of survival city building, society simulation, harrowing choices, and gripping story, but on the other hand maybe Frostpunk 2 doesn’t need to top the first game, just match it. Set decades after the massive blizzard that ended the original campaign, the future of human survival has moved from coal to oil. Gee, how could pinning your hopes on oil possibly go wrong? While we’re excited for the sequel, we’ve seen nothing of it yet besides a brief cinematic announcement trailer almost two years ago. Cross your frozen fingers we’ll get a closer look soon. 

(Image credit: Remedy)

26 Alan Wake 2 

HypeScore™: 28.5
2023 – expect it late summer/early autumn at the earliest

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: As far as I’m concerned, Remedy doesn’t miss. 22 years ago, Max Payne was truly iconic; three years ago, Control was a wonderfully refreshing slice of weirdness; even Quantum Break was a blast whenever it wasn’t making you watch a TV show. It’s a rare studio that works in the big budget realm while retaining an incredibly distinctive, idiosyncratic voice. Alan Wake exemplifies that—only Remedy would make a Stephen King stand-in the protagonist of a major videogame series—and I can’t wait to see what strange new avenues this sequel veers into. Especially now that Control has established the idea of a shared Remedy universe that both Jesse and Alan reside in… 

(Image credit: Dramatic Labs)

24 Star Trek: Resurgence

HypeScore™: 28.8 (tie)
April 2023

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Perform a Vulcan meditation ritual by saying these words along with me: Good Star Trek is back. I was beginning to lose hope after the film franchise puttered out and the first season of Discovery left a terribly sour taste in my mouth. The Discovery vibes were all wrong for me, and I didn’t even bother with Picard, but Strange New Worlds has been a revelation, a show that looks and sounds both new and classically Trek at the same time. Resurgence is aiming for that same balance, setting an adventure game in the Next Generation/DS9 timeline and emphasizing the sorts of political snafus that created some great, thoughtful episodes of ’90s television. So far Resurgence has looked really promising outside of some rough animations and framerates, and hopefully its delay into 2023 will take care of those technical shortcomings. 

(Image credit: Focus Interactive)

24 Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 

HypeScore™: 28.8 (tie)
Wishlist on Steam
2023, but no window confirmed beyond that. At some risk of slipping.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: Can Saber Interactive put hundreds of Tyranids on screen—with all their claws, proboscises, and mouths-within-mouths—without melting our graphics cards? The footage from last month’s Game Awards doubles down on what the developer told us at the PC Gaming Show earlier in the year: Space Marine 2 is zeroed-in on representing the scale of 40K more completely than any game that preceded it. The studio has talked up its Swarm Engine, a lesser-known, proprietary game engine that did manage to put hordes of zombies on screen in World War Z. It’s a bold bet that the average PC gamer’s hardware will keep up with this many dissectible aliens on screen. Between this and Darktide, suddenly we’re spoiled for blockbuster-grade 40K games. 

(Image credit: North Beach Games)

23 LOTR: Return to Moria 

HypeScore™: 29.3
Spring 2023

Chris Livingston, Feature Producer: There’s plenty we don’t know about The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, which was only just announced last year and has been mostly quiet since. And while there’s almost always an oversaturation of survival games in the works, it’s hard not to be intrigued by the first one set in J.R.R. Tolkein’s world of Middle-earth. Dwarves feel like a great subject for a survival game, being so bold and sturdy, and reclaiming the lost kingdom of Moria is hard not to be excited about. Beards, beer, and potentially a Balrog. We’re ready to start digging. 

(Image credit: Bungie)

22 Destiny 2: Lightfall 

HypeScore™: 30
Wishlist on Steam
February 28, 2023

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor: There have been a few moments in Destiny’s history where the game claimed a ‘fresh start’. In fact, it happens quite often. Nonetheless, the Destiny 2 Lightfall expansion appears a very exciting change of pace from what’s come before, potentially even rewriting the rulebook for Bungie’s sci-fi shooter. Lightfall introduces the entirely new Strand subclass, which will bathe Guardian and foe alike in a threatening green light. These psychic strands form missiles, rope darts, and blades. Yet most exciting of all is the grappling hook. Who knows how this might cause chaos and delight as players find new ways to traverse age-old environments and cheese their way to victory. But I’m here for it. Combined with a brand new raid, locations, enemies, and what sounds like a chance to blast the Witness away once and for all, there’s a lot here to be excited about for new and returning Guardians. 

(Image credit: DreadXP, Lovely Hellplace)

21 Dread Delusion 

HypeScore™: 31.5 (tie)
Wishlist on Steam
No firm release date yet, but developer Lovely Hellplace estimated it’d take 6 to 9 months when it hit early access in July last year.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: The world’s not well in Dread Delusion, an open-world RPG that harkens back to the weirdness of games like Morrowind in all the right ways. Following an apocalyptic event that brought the old empire to its knees, humanity endures in small communities, clinging to asteroids in orbit of a neutron star. Rendered in swimmy PS1-style graphics, the game’s world is strange, secret-riddled, and utterly indifferent to your presence. If you’re tired of modern RPGs holding your hand up a carefully-choreographed power curve, or just long for the Deus Ex-style thrill of wandering off the beaten path, breaking into someone’s home, and learning all their secrets, this is one to keep an eye on.

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

20 Assassin’s Creed Mirage

HypeScore™: 31.7
No firm release date, but Assassin’s Creed games tend to come out in October.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: The first Assassin’s Creed that I’ve been excited for in ages. Based on everything Ubisoft has said, Mirage is a return to the series roots. To me that means a goodbye to Destiny-style loot and a welcome back to actual stealth action. I want to parkour across busy market rooftops, swan dive off improbably tall buildings, and cut down city guards with a single counterattack. I reckon the reception of Mirage will help inform where the Assassin’s Creed series goes from here—do enough people want a more traditional stealth game, or should Ubi stick to RPGs? 

(Image credit: Team Cherry)

19 Hollow Knight: Silksong 

HypeScore™: 31.7
Wishlist on Steam
No confirmed release date, but it’s been in development since 2019.

Sean Martin, Guides Writer: Hollow Knight was my favorite game of 2017; a slick and surprising Metroidvania where you delve into the charming yet cursed hive-kingdom of Hallownest to fight its insect denizens. From what Team Cherry has shown, Silksong’s Hornet protagonist puts emphasis on Hollow Knight’s already excellent platforming and movement, and I think this could make for an even better experience than the original. Expect lovable bug NPCs, challenging bosses and platform puzzles, and a whole new insect realm to burrow your way into. 

(Image credit: Rocksteady)

17 Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

HypeScore™: 31.9 (tie)
Wishlist on Steam
After being delayed out of last year, the new release date is May 26, 2023.

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: This is less about the Suicide Squad themselves than the studio behind the game. Should this make the May release date, it will be just under eight years since developer Rocksteady capped-off its Batman trilogy with the awesome Arkham Knight.

Even in the contemporary big-budget space that is a long time, and puts Suicide Squad’s development period alongside both exceptional games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and the odd disaster (Too Human, anyone?) The fact that this could be either is what makes this one of the most fascinating games of the year, alongside the fact it will now stand as the last title from the ‘original’ Rocksteady, with co-founders Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker leaving at the end of 2022.

What’s been shown so far in the trailers looks great, stylishly choreographed melee combat segueing into OTT ranged combat in enormous multi-character brawls, but of course these are trailers. The versions of the Justice League characters look amazing (I especially liked the Flash trailer) but, again, it’s all trailer. Rocksteady’s track record is outstanding and, given the backing it’s clearly received for this title, this is either going to be the best ‘superhero’ game ever, or one of the year’s biggest disappointments.

(Image credit: Necrosoft Games)

17 Demonschool 

HypeScore™: 31.9 (tie)
Wishlist on Steam
No specific release date, but we’re confident it’ll be out in 2023

Robin Valentine, Features Producer: This indie tactics RPG is bursting with potential. With a structure and style aping the Persona games, and a unique turn-based battle system focused on movement and positioning, it was always going to peak my interest. But what really seals the deal is its brilliantly clever visuals, which combine pixel-art 2D characters, isometric environments, and chunky, retro 3D monsters into an absolutely intoxicating look. 

(Image credit: Blackbird Interactive)

16 Homeworld 3 

HypeScore™: 32
Wishlist on Steam
After being pushed out of an earlier Q4 2022 release, Homeworld 3 will release in the first half of 2023.

Evan Lahti, Global Editor-in-Chief: An iconic RTS with elegance, mood, and gravity in both meanings, Homeworld 3 is in the capable hands of some of the people who created the original game in ’99, under their studio Blackbird Interactive. I expect Homeworld 3 to be one of this year’s technical standouts, one of the reasons to own a $2200 GPU. But did you know that Homeworld 3 will have a roguelite cooperative mode? That’s a real selling point for me: this classic space game is something I want to share with someone, not in the cold isolation of singleplayer. 

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

15 Star Wars Jedi: Survivor 

HypeScore™: 32.5
Wishlist on Steam
After a much anticipated announcement at The Game Awards in December, 2022, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor releases on March 17.

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: I love Star Wars, but wasn’t keen on the idea of Jedi: Fallen Order being similar in combat style to FromSoft games. Despite roleplaying baby-faced anbd somewhat bland protagonist, Fallen Order hit all the right buttons for me, as all good Repsawn games do: challenging combat, a cute sidekick, a good storyline with enough twists and, of course, a chance to run like hell from Darth Vader at the end. We still don’t know much about it, with rumours suggesting there might be a Force Unleashed crossover in there. What we do know is that the storyline runs concurrent with the Kenobi TV series, which featured themes from Fallen Order, so who knows which familiar faces we’ll see on this occasion. 

14 Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon 

HypeScore™: 33.3
It’s been announced for 2023 with no specific date, which isn’t super encouraging, but it already has a Steam page and FromSoftware tends to release games when it says it will. Elden Ring was delayed, but only by a month.

Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: It’s been so long since I’ve played an Armored Core game that I’d forgotten it’s one of the main things FromSoftware was known for before it became the Souls developer. The best analogy I can think of is that Armored Core is to MechWarrior what Ace Combat is to Microsoft Flight Sim. It’s more action than sim, but like MechWarrior, the focus is on detailed customization of your metal biped, and customizing mechs is one of my top three PC gaming activities. And although the title makes it sound like an impenetrable sequel, Armored Core 6 is a standalone new story about mech fighters in a post-cataclysm star system. It won’t have the structure of Elden Ring or the Souls games—it’s mission-based—but it sure does appear to bring the bleak originality of those games. If you like mechs at all, don’t know how you can not be a bit pumped up by the trailer (as well as filled with despair).

(Image credit: Capcom)

13 Resident Evil 4 (2023 remake)

HypeScore™: 33.8
Wishlist on Steam
March 24, 2023

Richard Stanton, Senior Editor: It’s only one of the best games of all time being remade by a developer that finally seems comfortable with its legacy. Capcom struggled to follow Resident Evil 4 for many years before the brilliant reinvention of the series with Resi 7, and its shadow still looms large over the series as a whole. Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube was one of the major reasons I followed the career path I did, it was so good I played it on repeat for months after release and have bought it again on different platforms around a dozen times. 

So yeah… I realise it’s a bit odd getting hyped for a remake of a game I’ve played over and over, but games is a tech-led industry and you hae to acknowledge that the original and HD versions are really showing their age. Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 remake was superb, and really captured the character of the PlayStation original while making it feel contemporary (I was less fond of the Resi 3 remake, which felt rushed). I suspect that, internally, this is a game that Capcom’s designers revere every bit as much as we do. I expect nothing less than Capcom at its best and, if it can pull this off, Resident Evil 4 will stun people all over again with its freaky atmosphere, high-octane action, and relentlessly generous imagination.

(Image credit: SuperGiant Games)

12 Hades 2 (Early Access)

HypeScore™: 34.6
Wishlist on Steam
No release date, but news about its early access launch is coming this year.

Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: Supergiant Games’ first direct sequel remixes the hottest action roguelike around. Zagreus is out. His skeleton-armed sister Melinoe is our heroine and monster slayer, equipped with what looks like several devastating spells. Once again, you get to blast through the underworld using the most powerful build you can find. Like the first game, Hades 2 will start in early access, but it’s unclear when that will be. Supergiant says it will announce its plans at some point this year. 

(Image credit: Intercept Games)

10 Kerbal Space Program 2 (Early Access)

HypeScore™: 35.8 (tie)
Wishlist on Steam
February 24, 2023

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I swear I’m gonna land on the Mun this time. I only dabbled with the original KSP, and made it to orbit before feeling like I’d hit a complexity wall I didn’t have the patience to push past. I’ve been waiting for years to fully immerse myself in amateur astrophysics with the help of Kerbal 2’s completely overhauled UI. I’m hopeful the new tutorials will keep me from feeling like a complete dunce this time around. I am bummed, though, that the early access roadmap means the feature I care about most—co-op play—is still many months down the road. 

(Image credit: Owlcat Games)

10 Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader 

HypeScore™: 35.8 (tie)
Wishlist on Steam
No release date, currently in closed alpha with beta planned for 2023.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Owlcat’s Pathfinder games can be about concocting the perfect character builds via spreadsheet if that’s what you want, letting you tinker with an entire party of multiclass math monsters. That’s because they’re in love with the potential of tabletop RPGs, which also shows in the way their games let you explore a map full of optional side stuff while getting to know and maybe romance NPCs with a novel’s worth of backstory. All that in a 40K game where we command a spaceship and carve out our own mini-empire on the fringe? Sounds amazing. Let’s just hope they nail the management system this time, something their previous games struggled with.

(Image credit: Ryu ga Gotoku Studio)

9 Like A Dragon: Ishin! 

 HypeScore™: 37.1
Wishlist on Steam
February 21, 2023 

Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: The Ishin remake is a miracle on several fronts. I never thought Ryu Ga Gotoku would localize its historical spinoff games, let alone modernize them. I could not have even conceived of wishing for our favorite new characters from Yakuza: Like A Dragon (Yakuza 7) being added to it too. Oh, and this will be the first global launch of a recent RGG game for PC players, meaning we aren’t waiting months to play it after the Japanese launch. The Yakuza series gleefully manages to be hilarious and self-serious in equal measure and I can’t wait to find out for the first time how Ishin balances historic drama with goofy sidequests. 

(Image credit: Arkane Austin)

8 Redfall 

HypeScore™: 38.4
Wishlist on Steam
Set for the first half of 2023, though the latest rumor suggests early May

Morgan Park, Associate Editor: Prey 2017 proved that Arkane was worthy to continue not just Thief’s immersive sim legacy, but System Shock’s, too. Redfall is Arkane’s first clean break from modernizing ’90s classics—a co-op open world FPS about a gang of vampire hunters in a modern urban setting. Arkane is calling Redfall its take on a Far Cry-style shooter with an emphasis on RPG elements and loot. That’s not the game I’d have comissioned from Arkane if I got to pick, but if any studio is going to make the Far Cry formula feel fresh again, it’s this one.

(Image credit: Sega)

 7 Company of Heroes 3 

HypeScore™: 38.7
Wishlist on Steam
February 23

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: The RTS genre might be making a comeback, but Relic never stopped giving us battles to fight and wars to win, and this year it’s returning to Company of Heroes. Company of Heroes 3 is more than an RTS, though, featuring a sprawling dynamic campaign during the invasion of Italy that’s split between turn-based antics on a big campaign map and real-time battles filled to the brim with explosions and tanks. This is on top of a classic CoH-style campaign in North Africa, which is pure RTS. We’re getting to have our cake and eat it too. In terms of scale, it’s the most impressive thing the studio’s ever done, and having played quite a bit of it over the last couple of years I’m feeling pretty confident that it’s going to knock my socks off.
 

(Image credit: Nightdive Studios)

6 System Shock 

HypeScore™: 42.9
Wishlist on Steam
March 2023

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: It’s taken a shockingly (😏) long time for this remake from Nightdive to arrive, but I’ve been following it from the beginning and watched it painstakingly evolve from a tiny proof of concept to a version of System Shock that feels like a 2023 FPS. Nightdive has spent years bringing old code back to life, but this is its first ground-up remake, and I hope System Shock’s success opens the door to more ambitious projects—I could totally see Nightdive joining New Blood as a shepherd of ’90s FPS design in original games. But that’s for the future. For now, I’m mostly excited to play System Shock without having to use every key on the keyboard.  

(Image credit: Mundfish)

5 Atomic Heart 

HypeScore™: 43.5
Wishlist on Steam
February 21

Jorge Jimenez, Hardware Writer: It’s a tale as old as time. Man creates robots to make their lives easier and the robots go on murdering rampage. Atomic Heart is an over-the-top first person shooter set in a alternate version of Soviet Union where you play a KGB agent sent to investigate some unusual activity at a manufacterung facility. Lo and behold, the robots and automations charged with running the place have run amok and you have put a stop to it. And by “put a stop to it” I mean blowing up the robots with all sorts of weapons, gadgets and bizarre abilites. Atomic Heart definitely has got a vibe and from the handful of gameplay trailers I’ve seen, it’s seems to have the frantic combat Doom with the weirdness of a BioShock.  

(Image credit: From Software)

4 A presumptive Elden Ring expansion 

HypeScore™: 49.4
No release date but dataminers have found files that could point to new DLC.

Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: An Elden Ring expansion or DLC feels inevitable even if there’s actually no sign of it coming soon. FromSoftware’s masterful open world game doesn’t need anything more, but who among us could say no to more? Dataminers and lore-heads have tons of ideas about who or what we could learn about in another morsel of the Lands Between. It could be anything, and that’s why it’s so exciting to think about, especially if you’re familiar with how stellar FromSoftware’s post-release drops usually are. Join me, then, in praying every day for the announcement to happen. 

(Image credit: Bethesda)

3 Starfield 

HypeScore™: 54.2
Wishlist on Steam
First half of 2023

Chris Livingston, Feature Producer: Well, duh. Of course we (most of us, anyway) are excited for Starfield, Bethesda Game Studios’ first RPG in a quarter century that isn’t an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game. It’s weird, because some use the words “Skyrim in space” to dismiss it while for others (like me) that’s exactly what we want: An open world where you’re free to invent your character, follow the story or completely ignore it, and set in search of adventure, excitement, or even the quiet life on a distant world. Throw in spaceships you can completely customize, 1,000 planets to visit, and some typical goofball Bethesda stuff like a religion founded on the belief in a giant space serpent, and it’s hard not to be hyped, if not a bit guarded due to the general, almost guaranteed bugginess of Bethesda’s earlier games. 

(Image credit: Blizzard)

2 Diablo 4 

HypeScore™: 55.9
A beta is coming soon, but the full game will drop in June.

Tyler Colp, Associate Editor: Action RPGs have had to deal with a Diablo-shaped hole for a full decade since the release of Diablo 3 in 2012. A lot has happened in the genre since then, but every game that has come out still can’t quite capture the thrill of popping demons in a Diablo game. 

Diablo 4 is the king returning to the castle. It’s a darker, complex game that wants to revitalize the playful character customization at the heart of the series. I played a preview build of it last year and was instantly sucked back into the delicious loop of demon slaying and looting, and piecing together a build with whatever tools of destruction the game handed me. And after so much time away from new additions in the series, I’m vibrating with anticipation for a new Diablo with tons of dungeons and skill combinations to explore. 2023 has a lot of big hitters but for me, it’s the year of Diablo.

(Image credit: Larian Studios)

1 Baldur’s Gate 3 

HypeScore™: 78.2
Play in early access on Steam
Out of early access in August.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Some of us have been patient, not dipping into the opening act of Baldur’s Gate 3 in its early access version in favor of waiting to experience this absolute meal of an RPG in its final form only when the chefs are done. Some of us have binged what’s available and then gone back and eaten it again, which I guess means we had to vomit it back up first and now this analogy has gone too far.

Both groups are absolutely vibrating with anticipation for August’s 1.0 release. While Baldur’s Gate 3 promises to bring back beloved characters like Minsc and Jaheira, as well as returning us to the Sword Coast and the city of Baldur’s Gate itself, we’re not just excited because it’s a revival of a classic CRPG series. We’re excited because it promises to innovate on the form, which is what Larian specializes in.

The studio’s history with RPGs has been one of experimentation and improvement, reaching a peak with the branching questlines and deep dialogue trees of Divinity: Original Sin 2, our game of the year in 2017. That game’s eagerness to let us solve problems in multiple, inventive ways, embrace the true chaos of RPG combat, and talk to every single animal we found, are all things Baldur’s Gate 3 looks set to build on.

Games that just missed our list

Some games that didn’t make our top 30, through some combination of receiving fewer votes, lower votes, or an uncertain release date. Games we haven’t played yet or seen gameplay footage of were among the factors in determining release date likelihood. (Image credit: Future)

How we calculate HypeScore™

How we calculate HypeScore™, our extremely scientific method for evaluating unreleased games:

Every editor on our team was asked to rate 63 nominated games planned for release in 2023 on a 1-5 scale (5 was defined as “Maximum hype, already in ‘personal GOTY candidate’ territory,” and 1 as “Might be OK, but with caveats/I’m not certain”)Editors did not score games they weren’t familiar with or didn’t have a formed opinion onEditors could also rate a game -2 if they actively believed the game was looking bad at this stageThat total accumulation of enthusiasm across the team was balanced against our best guess about whether a game would actually release in 2023: 1.0 (near certainty of a ’23 release); 0.9 (probably, outside chance of missing); 0.66 (it’s believable that the game could come out in 2024); or 0.5 (it seems hard to believe that the game will come out in 2023)To prevent this exercise from purely being a popularity contest, I tripled the game’s average score and added that to its total HypeScore™. So if a game only received three votes, but all of those votes were 4s, it would receive 12 of these “bonus” points. This also helps us produce numbers that are closer to 100, which is useful shorthand.So, HypeScore™ = ((Total enthusiasm of PC Gamer editors about a game – total pessimism + (PC Gamer editors’ average enthusiasm about that game * 3)) * The likelihood of the game actually coming out this year + A random number of crushed crystal ball fragments

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