Cyberpunk 2077
I know, I know, Cyberpunk 2077 is almost the low-hanging fruit to pick for game delay predictions, but that doesn’t mean I can’t include it dammit!
Having already been delayed a handful of times by developer CD Projekt Red, it’s clear that the team isn’t afraid of pushing the game back to ensure it delivers on expectations and their vision.
It’s a stance they also took with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and we all know how exceptionally well that turned out.
While everything we’ve seen of the game in the Night City Wire livestreams looks absolutely phenomenal, knowing CDPR, the devil is in the detail, and there’s an enormous world that’s teeming with them that’ll need to be QA checked and polished off to ensure a sublime player experience.
Don’t get us wrong, we’d love to see Cyberpunk 2077 finally release in November so we can spend the winter months toiling away in Night City fine-tuning our body mods, and an arsenal of bad-ass, futuristic weapons. Still, good things come to those who wait, and if another delay is needed to get it to the CDPR Gold standard, it’ll be worth it.
Twin Mirror
DONTNOD Entertainment clearly knows what it’s doing when it comes to decision-based, narrative-driven adventure games.
Both the first and second Life Is Strange titles were exceptional, emotional rollercoasters that had us taking far, far too long staring at the two choices we had to choose between… and then immediately regretting that decision.
At the time of writing, DONTNOD’s next episodic series — albeit a mini-series — will release in the form of Tell Me Why.
It tells the story of twins Alyson and Tyler who travel to their childhood home in Alaska to come to terms with events from their childhood. Its inclusion of a transgender character is of particular interest, as DONTNOD worked with GLAAD to ensure it was an “authentic representation of the trans experience.”
It’s the release of Tell Me Why, alongside the pandemic that we’ve all had to endure in 2020, that Twin Mirror seems destined for a delay into 2021.
Twin Mirrors follows Sam Higgs as he returns to his hometown to bid farewell to his best friend, before getting embroiled in even more dark mysteries surrounding Basswood, West Virginia.
Alas, we’re at the end of August and neither DONTNOD nor Bandai Namco Entertainment have narrowed the game’s release window from the broad 2020 release window.
Given the team may have also been working on the short, three-episode Tell Me Why, while also dealing with the pandemic, we imagine Twin Mirror may suffer the consequences as a result.
But hey, more time in the oven just means a more polished and enjoyable experience when that future release does come, and we can’t wait to see what DONTNOD’s got in store for us next.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla / Watch Dogs: Legion
Perhaps I’m just a massive pessimist… okay I am a massive pessimist, but something about Ubisoft releasing two of its major AAA releases within just a few weeks of one another just doesn’t feel quite right.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will finally see the series head to a Nordic setting. One that fans have been clamoring for, for a good few years now.
On the other hand, Watch Dogs: Legion reminds us all of the dark and depressing future the UK has following Brexit. We’d say we’re joking, but given the current climate, it feels like more of a morbid foreshadowing.
Ok… maybe the real-life timeline won’t see grannies mobilized into anarchy… but never say never!
While we couldn’t say for sure exactly which of Ubisoft’s two AAA titles due to release in the Fall will take the bullet, one of them just seems bound to be pushed into 2021.
If we had to pick one, we’d probably go with Watch Dogs: Legion, due to its hefty mechanic which allows players to recruit any random NPC into their army.
Given it’s such a novel and unique mechanic not yet seen in games, we imagine this could give the team at Ubisoft more trouble than anticipated. Especially when compared to the rather ‘safe’ AC Valhalla, which looks very similar to AC Origins/ Odyssey with a fresh coat of Nordic paint.
Star Wars: Squadrons
It’s no real secret that EA hasn’t had the smoothest sailing when it comes to the Star Wars license.
The first Star Wars Battlefront lacked the critical single-player campaign fans wanted, and its multiplayer DLC divided its player base and blocked them from playing with one another. Its follow-up a couple of years later then fell down the microtransaction rabbit hole, and we all know how that ended up.
It’d be remiss of me to not acknowledge Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the Metroidvania third-person action-adventure game that I couldn’t get enough of when I reviewed it for Twinfinite last year. Perhaps EA had learned its lesson from the Battlefront series.
With Star Wars: Squadrons, it certainly seems that way. There will be no microtransactions in the game, and it won’t be supported as a ‘live game,’ meaning the $60 you pay for the game should be all you have to pay for the duration of the game’s life cycle.
Even then, EA will still want to make sure that the game is absolutely perfect, and that there’s nothing that is going to upset an arguably volatile Star Wars fan base.
That being said, Squadrons is just over a month away, so this one we’re a little less convinced will happen.
Fuser
We’re quietly rather excited about Fuser, and if you haven’t heard about it already but were a Guitar Hero/ Rock Band enthusiast back in the day, you may want to check it out.
Created by developer Harmonix — the team behind Rock Band — Fuser let’s players assume the role of a DJ, tasked with recording loops, injecting them into their sets, queueing and mixing songs, and generally doing everything a DJ would do to ensure the crowd doesn’t stop boppin’ along to the funky beats they’re mixing.
While Harmonix has recently announced that more songs have been added to the roster, we’re not convinced its going to land in time for its 2020 release date.
Again, the pandemic is likely to have caused some problems due to working from home complications generally slowing down progress in industries around the world.
Similarly, there’s not a whole lot of time to announce a release date and also generate sufficient hype around the game before it hits store shelves if they do double down on a 2020 release date.
Plus with the PS5 and Xbox Series X due to release at the end of this year, the developer may look to port the game to both new consoles, which may result in a push back of the release date into 2021 until all platform versions are complete and ready to go.
For now we’ll just have to wait and see on all the games on our list. Do you agree or disagree with any of our picks? Let us know in the comments below.
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