The opening night of gamescom 2019 was an event lasting about two hours, where everyone patted each other on the back. What remains in our author Schuhmann’s memory is the urination, a combine harvester, and Destiny 2 trying to tell everyone: Hey, not everything is recycled.
I’ve only heard legends about Geoff Keighley, the host of the opening night of gamescom. He was involved in a “scandal” in 2012, or whatever you want to call it when it’s not about coke and bribes, but about Doritos and Mountain Dew.
The topic back then was: How intertwined journalists and gaming companies are. It was a big deal in 2012. At that time, gaming journalist Keighley had posed for a photo showing him with a Halo 4 poster between Mountain Dew and Doritos.
An accusatory article appeared on an English site, stating that journalists should maintain distance from the subject of their reporting. Back then it was a scandal – today it apparently doesn’t interest anyone anymore.
Death Stranding the highlight of the evening
There was a big applause as the audience realized that the host Keighley had become a character in Death Stranding.
Overall, Death Stranding was the performance of the opening night of gamescom that remained most in memory.
The trailer began with the character, based on Norman Reedus (Daryl from The Walking Dead), first urinating while the counter ticked down how full his bladder was. This earned applause.
In that moment I wondered if this was an ironic comment on exaggerated realism in survival MMOs, but the Twitch chat was already chanting “Game of the Year” – so it must be genius.
The next day, the headline of international gaming press was: You can urinate in Death Stranding, but you never see Norman Reedus’s penis.
While they were usually in a hurry at gamescom, Death Stranding and Kojima were given several minutes on stage. As an audience member, a feeling slowly developed that we were really learning something about the game – although the cult of personality around Kojima was irritating.
Rarely has a developer been idolized by the host as much as Kojima was by Keighley that night. There was even a montage of previous events where Keighley couldn’t stop praising and hugging the “industry icon”.
Destiny 2 assures: Not everything is recycled
The actual event was a bombardment of trailers – without much connection or disturbing information.
Every 3 minutes you could shove in trailer after trailer – occasionally developers were invited on stage, who then tried to use their few seconds in the spotlight to convey to players: “Our game is already cool and something special.”
Especially the poor duo from Bungie tried hard to get their message across: “Hey, yes, it’s again the moon, but not everything is recycled, believe us.”
Ironic that players already knew the Destiny 2 trailer that came afterwards. Apparently, it had been lying unused at Bungie for years and was reused now.
The most German game of the evening
The chance to leave a lasting impression was taken by the German developers of Iron Harvest, which looked like the most German game of the evening: black-and-white images, mechs in a World War scenario, it was great.
However, it became even more German when at the end of the opening night the “Farming Simulator” made its appearance at gamescom 2019.
Keighley apparently couldn’t believe that we here in Germany treat the simulation of agricultural work as eSports. I find it hard to believe too – how must it affect the poor Canadian?
Overall, the opening night of gamescom was probably what it was supposed to be: a showcase for many games, all of which had only short appearances – but it made you look forward to more in the coming days.
