The 14 most anticipated games of 2023

15 years after Dead Space set a new bar for the sheer pleasure of dismembering horrifying monsters in space—and 10 years since the franchise went functionally defunct with Dead Space 3—one of gaming’s great sci-fi horror shooters is back. Developed by EA’s Motive Studio, the Dead Space remake will once again drop players into the armor of incredibly unlucky spaceship engineer Isaac Clarke, who would just love to reunite with his missing girlfriend—if only there wasn’t an entire ship’s worth of gore-encrusted monsters standing in his way, ready to be disassembled with his arsenal of repurposed tools.

Omega Force, the studio behind long-running “one soldier kills an entire army” franchise Dynasty Warriors, is serving up its own version of Capcom’s Monster Hunter with this February release, pitting warriors and hunters against massive beasties. And we do mean massive: Many of Wild Hearts’ “kemono” dwarf anything we’ve seen in that other Monster Hunting series; add in an innovative system that allows hunters to build traps and other constructions mid-fight, and Wild Hearts looks to be an inventive spin on the “fight this beautiful, majestic creature, then turn it into pants” genre.

The post-apocalyptic Horizon series—most recently represented with last year’s , which gets its own new DLC campaign, Burning Shores, on April 19—has one of the most lush and beautiful worlds in gaming. So it’s no surprise that Sony has opted to launch its new PSVR2 hardware with a trip back to Aloy’s world, with new spin-off title Call Of The Mountain offering up an up close and personal view of a bunch of beautiful robo-dinosaurs. After the initial PSVR struggled throughout its lifespan with software support, it’ll be interesting to see how many big-budget titles like this Sony will be willing to use to get its sequel system off the ground; we can’t deny that the game looks great in early footage.

2019’s was one of the best new Star Wars games in recent memory, taking an engaging premise—an on-the-run Padawan tries to keep himself alive in the bloody aftermath of Order 66—and marrying it to developer Respawn’s typically polished approach to gameplay. (Give or take one too many Mario 64-style slide-down-a-tree-stump bits, anyway.) The sequel, Jedi: Survivor, looks to be keeping this sub-franchise on track, with Cal Kestis once again on the run from the Empire, with a whole new set of threats and allies to keep him on his Force-sensitive toes.

is set to return this March, as Capcom’s ongoing efforts to remake its flagship horror series reaches the venerable Resident Evil 4. Leon Kennedy will once again find himself trapped in a mysterious (but far more high-res) Spanish village, attempting to hunt down the President’s kidnapped daughter and getting menaced by a whole bunch of gnarly, people-puppeteering bugs. Given that the last two Resident Evil remakes were updating games old enough to represent much earlier generations of gaming, it’ll be interesting to see what Resident Evil 4—working from a game that’s become the template for huge chunks of modern action gaming—will be able to do to reinvent a modern classic.

Six years ago, Nintendo launched its then-new Switch system with a bang, releasing one of the most expansive and impressive Zelda games in the franchise’s multi-decade history. Now, sequel Tears Of The Kingdom is here to determine whether lightning can, in fact, strike twice. (Hint: Take off your metal armor, bud!) No game of 2023, save maybe Bethesda’s Starfield, has more hopes and hypes associated with it; no other game of 2023 has such a track record behind it, either, promising a more-than-decent shot of living up to those lofty expectations.

With a brand new art style (and a grizzled, dad-bod-ified Ryu to boot), the first name in fighting games is ready to make a name for itself all over again in 2023. Street Fighter 6 promises expansions to the Capcom franchise’s core gameplay both on and off the battlefield; a new story mode allows players to run around and explore city environments in their downtime, while a brand new “Drive Gauge” allows players to have more control of how to use their various bombastic supermoves in a fight.

The loot prepares to flow yet again, as Blizzard returns to Sanctuary for the fourth installment of its long-running Diablo franchise of online action-RPGs. Diablo 3 (eventually, anyway) proved that the studio finally understood how to build a Diablo game that worked seamlessly on consoles, creating an experience that flowed as smoothly for PlayStation and Xbox players as it did for those on PC. Diablo 4—which will feature five classes, the returning Barbarian, Sorceress, Necromancer, and Rogue, and the newcomer Druid—looks to build on that success, launching on every major system simultaneously this summer.

Sure, it’d be easy to dismiss the latest Final Fantasy game as “What if Final Fantasy was just Game Of Thrones?”, what with all the meditations on revenge and violence that the game’s trailers have promoted. But XVI also looks to be another milestone in the evolution of Final Fantasy’s transition into being genuinely great action-RPG hybrids, building on systems that previously appeared in both Final Fantasy XV and the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. (By the way, don’t forget that that game’s sequel is also out this year, currently aimed at a Winter 2023 release.) The truth is, despite the angst, that Final Fantasy XVI looks like a blast to play; we can’t wait to take a little vengeance for a whirl.

Confession time: If there was one game on this list that we’d sacrifice everything else to get our hands on right now, it’d be Silksong—the long-awaited sequel to Hollow Knight, one of the best games of the last several years. The new title places players into the buggy shoes of popular Hollow Knight character Hornet, as she finds herself whisked away to yet another hostile kingdom populated by once-sentient bugs gone mad. Developer Team Cherry has been very quiet about the development of this game, but it looks like it’ll finally be here soon, providing a follow-up to a modern masterpiece.

With Dishonored, Prey, and , Bethesda-owned studio Arkane Austin has established a track record for itself as one of the most ambitious and interesting developers in gaming. Now that team is putting their efforts toward a new multiplayer shooter, Redfall, about a crew of monster hunters battling vampires in an isolated Massachusetts town. It’s not clear yet where an online action game like Redfall will be able to find room for Arkane’s devotion to deep worldbuilding and expressive play, but if any studio can find it, it’s this one.

It’s always a big deal when Bethesda Softworks releases a brand new game—even moreso when the developer launches a whole new IP for the first time in decades. We don’t know a ton about the studio’s new Microsoft-exclusive title—beyond Todd Howard’s straightforward description of the end result as “Skyrim in space”—but this is one developer where pedigree can be enough to ensure our interest. Skyrim was one of the biggest titles of the last decade of gaming; expectations on Starfield are running high to match that intimidating legacy.