Microsoft kicked off Gamescom 2015 on Tuesday, August 4 in Cologne, Germany, debuting new games like Quantum Break, Dark Souls III, and Rise of the Tomb Raider and highlighting the Xbox One’s new compatibility with Windows 10.
Xbox first featured Quantum Break, Crackdown 3, and Scalebound. Quantum Break thrusts gamers into a third-person shooter in which they can manipulate time to navigate around enemies. Crackdown 3, another shooter, casts players as super powered law enforcement agents in a city that is entirely destructible. Gamers watched game director Hideki Kamiya fight foes with sword, bow, and magic alongside a dragon in the gameplay debut of Platinum Games’ Scalebound.
Microsoft also announced that DVR functionality was coming for Xbox One. Chris Charla, director of Independent Developers (ID) @ Xbox, introduced some of the titles that non-Xbox affiliates are publishing. With $5.5 million raised on Kickstarter, action-adventure game Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night can be played between Xbox One and Windows 10; the developer is working on a new demon hunter character. Other highlights were city management game Cities: Skylines and We Happy Few, a survival-horror game revealed via a cryptic trailer set to the tune of “London Bridge.”
Xbox program manager Jasmine Lawrence showed off Windows 10’s new DirectX12 graphics before the team moved onto a haunting cinematic trailer for Dark Souls III and an intense, fast-paced gameplay montage of Just Cause III. FIFA 16 will bring women’s national teams to the franchise for the first time, and an eSports match in Halo 5: Guardians showcased the return of flag-juggling to the series’ capture the flag mode. Bonnie Ross, head of 343 Industries, closed out the Microsoft Gamescom press conference with an announcement and cinematic trailer for real-time strategy game Halo Wars 2, a long-awaited sequel that many fans feared would never happen after original Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios was shut down in 2009.
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