The 15 most anticipated video games of 2024

The series formerly known as Yakuza continues its very strange ventures into the world of turn-based RPGs with this latest installment, picking up where Yakuza: Like A Dragon (we know, it’s confusing) left off a few years back. Heroic ass-kicker/real estate mogul Ichiban Kasuga is back, once again charting his own course through Japan’s underworld (plus Hawaii!) with his own style of “you take your turn, then I’ll take mine” battling. This time, though, he’s joined by long-time series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, whose capacity to brutally brawl remains so overwhelming that he can sometimes tear the game back to its action roots with a special button-mashing moveset.

The fighting game series that lets you battle it out with a giant, combat-ready panda bear and is back, diving into its eighth official entry of intra-family martial arts squabbles. Namco’s latest Tekken promises an increased focus on “cinematic” battles and more destructible environments, while hopefully still hewing to the series’ long-running penchant for aggressive 3D fights.

2006’s Persona 3 was a watershed moment for Atlus’ long-running series of demon-focused role-playing games, representing the moment when the studio successfully married the hardcore JRPG combat of the Shin Megami Tensei mega-franchise with dating game-esque high school life mechanics, to huge results. Now the classic is back in what is, depending on how you count it, its fourth revamped form; not that we’re complaining, if it lets us take a fresh new look at one of the classics of the PlayStation 2 era.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has had more than its fair share of rough years, having faced a lukewarm initial reception, years of slow development, and, most recently, a high-profile leak. And yet, we can’t help but have hope for the first game from Batman game masterminds Rocksteady in nearly a decade: A multiplayer adventure focused on the titular antiheroes, who are given license to murder some of the Earth’s greatest heroes after they get brainwashed by the significantly evil-er Brainiac, the game could still live up to the standards set up by Rocksteady’s classic Arkham games.

We’re suckers for a good spin on the old “interactive movie” concept, and Annapurna Interactive’s latest, Open Roads, puts its big selling point front and center: Keri Russell, who stars as the voice of a mom, Opal, who goes on a road trip with her daughter, Tess (Justified’s Kaitlyn Dever), to uncover some potentially criminal secret about her own mother. Add in the fact that it’s the latest game from the team that previously made indie hits like Gone Home and Tacoma, and Open Roads has a strong shot at being one of the first heartwarming winners of the year.

There’s something fitting about Square-Enix opting to release Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the sequel to its blockbuster , on Leap Day, that moving target of slippery dates. This is, after all, a franchise with a very sneaky attitude toward time—which is part of what makes Rebirth so exciting; despite the fact that it’s ostensibly just another glossy, gorgeous deep-dive into one incomplete chunk of a two-decades-and-counting JRPG, we fully expect it to surprise us, both with its quick-moving action-RPG combat, and whatever new, bizarre plot twist it hopes to throw at us. Plus, Cid’s in this one, and we desperately need a chain-smoking guy our own age on hand to break up all the pretty.

There are certain names practically guaranteed to make old PC games nerds’ hearts grow a few sizes, and Relic’s classic Homeworld is a biggie. Homeworld 3, thus, has a lot to live up to, but it helps that developer Blackbird Interactive contains a number of people who worked on the original Homeworld games back in the late ’90s, which created a fascinating space-based blend of real-time strategy and worldbuilding. It also helps that this same team has a pretty good track record in their own right, remaking and adding a prequel to Homeworld canon in the 2010s, and creating the excellent a few years back.

One of the weirdest games to ever follow in the footsteps of From Software’s Dark Souls is finally getting a true franchise of its own, as Capcom returns to the Dragon’s Dogma after more than a decade away. The original Dragon’s Dogma dared to genuinely innovate in a very hostile space, adding in strange multiplayer options, brutal narrative swings, and, yes, the ability to parkour on giant monsters to the basic Souls formula. The sequel looks to build admirably and beautifully on the oddness, adding in an even bigger open world, and even more beasts for you and your loyal Pawns to stunt on.

It’s been since Nintendo’s resident monarch last got a chance to shine in a solo game, and Princess Peach: Showtime! looks to be making up for lost time. The new game sees Peach transforming herself from level to level, become a swordfighter, a pastry chef, a detective, a kung fu master, and more as she tries to save a magical play from a new villain. Some of the modes featured look more interesting than others, sure, but we have a base-level confidence that Nintendo can find something fun to do with each of its title lady’s new abilities.

Koei’s Team Ninja studio has spent the last few years crafting action-focused, thought-light, satisfaction-filled riffs on the Dark Souls formula—like the two Nioh games, and last year’s . Now, they look to follow From Software into territory, with Rise Of The Rōnin offering far more open landscapes for players to traverse while still brutally cutting down opponents. The fact is, Team Ninja is really, incredibly good at building satisfying version of these kinds of fights; we don’t necessarily trust Rise Of The Rōnin to move our hearts, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t likely to be a blast to play.

The SaGa franchise is the single weirdest recurring entry in Square-Enix’s long history of Japanese role-playing games, a grab bag of odd mechanics and player freedom whose games always surprise, even when they don’t always delight. Given how polished so much of the company’s output is these days, then, it’s a real joy to see something like SaGa: Emerald Beyond on the schedule, what with its puppet-controlling pretty boys and robot divas exploring strange, board game-esque worlds. We can’t guarantee that we’ll finish all six of its promised character stories, or even more than one. But getting lost in them for a bit feels like a fascinating change of pace.

Set in the same world as the two excellent Pillars Of Eternity role-playing games, Avowed is running for us right now largely on holdover enthusiasm from those titles, and the rest of Obsidian Entertainment’s eclectic collection of intriguing adventures. A first-person action RPG that allows players to mix and match magic with brutal melee hits, it has us intrigued enough to check it out—if only to catch a return trip back to Eora for a bit.

We might be jumping the gun here, since adventure game stalwarts Wadjet Eye haven’t yet set a formal 2024 release date for their latest game. But given that Wadjet is one of the best companies in the indie space when it comes to recreating old-school point-and-click adventures—see their numerous excellent Blackwell games, and 2018’s fantastic —we can live in hope that we’ll get to see this time-traveling adventure in something more concrete than before the year is out.

’s has been working, with various partners, on cat DNA mash-em-up Mewgenics for more than a decade at this point, and its bizarre blend of cute animals, genetic horrors, and sometimes unclear gameplay has always had trouble settling into a solid release plan. The modern incarnation (a turn-based tactical game) is apparently set for a 2024 release, although, honestly, who knows? The one thing we can really count on is that McMillen has an almost preternatural sense of what players will find fun, so if Mewgenics is finally in a form he’s excited to release, we’ll be just as happy to give it a try.

Of all the troubled developments noted in this preview round-up, Bloodlines 2 might be the most a-troubled, with multiple reboots by different development teams, often featuring brand new concepts for how to adapt White Wolf’s classic tabletop RPG for video games, resting uneasily in its history. And yet, like the tempting vitae itself, the potential here is so rich and delicious that we just can’t help ourselves; the original Bloodlines remains a cult classic, despite functionally murdering Troika Games, the studio that made it, kicking off years of modding and fan content to keep the game alive. We can only hold out hope that current developer The Chinese Room can finally stake this sucker down. (Meanwhile, we’ll also be keeping our eye on The Curiosity Engine’s similarly vamp-based, far more polished , which honestly didn’t get pride of place in this slot only because we don’t know if it’s coming out in 2024.)