The Game Awards ended on an odd note last night. Instead of a big, exclamation-point 'one more thing!'—the prophesied return of Gabe Newell, striding onto center stage with three fingers held high—host Geoff Keighley closed the show with a reveal of a brand new game from an unknown studio: A PvP raid shooter called Highguard.
Which isn't to say Highguard wasn't hyped up to infinity before the trailer dropped. After a stage-spanning flight across stormy seas and rocky shores, Keighley did what he does and put the pedal to the metal with both feet.
It was a big sell, and the Wildlight team does indeed come to the table with some notable work under their belts, including design, art, and programming credits on games including Titanfall, Apex Legends, and various Call of Duty games, among various others.
But the trailer itself? For me, it was one of the least impressive reveals of the night. Nothing about it stands out from the horde of other team-based PvP shooters currently at hand: The ghost horse thing was passingly cool but let's be honest, that's just a Destiny sparrow with legs. The Highguard characters themselves, meanwhile, look like they have all the personality of a space heater, and dialog like "Your light belongs to me" and "I am the coming storm" leaves me with nothing but a deep desire to re-enact the famous Seinfeld leaving GIF.
It's not that Highguard looks bad, really, it just looks extremely, "So what?" And it's not just the trailer, the Steam page is equally devoid of anything that might make me care. Here's the description of Highguard, in its entirety:
"From the creators of Apex Legends and Titanfall, comes Highguard: a PvP raid shooter where players will ride, fight, and raid as Wardens, arcane gunslingers sent to fight for control of a mythical continent. Battle rival Warden crews for possession of the Shieldbreaker, then break into and destroy the enemy base to secure territory in this all-new breed of shooter."
I'm not a committed shooter guy like some of my PC Gamer pals, but I do shoot guys now and then—I was a big Action Quake 2 player back in the day, and more recently had a very enjoyable run with Arc Raiders—and I see absolutely nothing here that makes me think I should play this game. The most interesting thing about it is that someone decided this trailer would be a good way to close out the biggest videogame hype show of the year.
Maybe I'm being harsh, but I'm not the only one who thinks so. The announcement trailer on the Highguard YouTube channel has 2,400 dislikes, compared to just over 500 likes; the ratio is even worse on The Game Awards channel. Comments there and on social media are equally dismal. Comparisons to the catastrophically kaput Concord abound, which isn't a great sign, and more alarming is the widespread surprise that this wasn't a fakeout: Highguard really was the big finisher at The Game Awards.
Highguard looks like a game that started development when hero shooters were the hottest thing around. hmmm.
— @zackzwiezen.com (@zackzwiezen.com.bsky.social) 2025-12-12T19:51:01.352Z
Introducing our new digital mech fantasy overwatch team based frustrator, highguard
— @nargle.hyper.wang (@nargle.hyper.wang.bsky.social) 2025-12-12T19:51:01.316Z
high guard gives me concord vibes of "I think this game won't last a month"
— @reki.gay (@reki.gay.bsky.social) 2025-12-12T19:51:01.385Z
Some of that reaction is no doubt borne from a sense of letdown, and not just among Half-Life fans, whose hopes were once again dashed on the rocks of reality with all the predictability of the sunrise. When Wildlight was announced in 2022, a number of die-hard Titanfall fans allowed themselves hope that some sort of spiritual successor (because the only thing less likely than EA making Titanfall 3 is EA letting someone else have Titanfall 3) was in the making. Instead, well, there's this: A hero shooter that, as one Bluesky user put it, "looks like a fake videogame you'd see in a movie."
Highguard may be fine—it might even be good. It's certainly possible for new PvP hero shooters to be breakout successes: Marvel Rivals is proof of that. But nothing about Highguard sets it apart from the crowd, and frankly—and especially coming amidst so many big announcements at this year's show like Divinity, FOTOR, Ontos, Control Resonant, and Total WH40K—I don't think landing the coveted closing announcement spot did it any favors. We'll find out soon enough if Highguard can live up to its Game Awards hype: It's set to launch on January 26, and it's free to play on Steam.
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