5 Upcoming Video Games That Will Change Everything

By Will Earl / July 6, 2018

The future is damned exciting. Global peace, the end of world hunger, the inevitable rise of Elon Musk to intergalactic ruler of the universe… But more important than anything else, the future offers mind-bogglingly exciting and tantalising new opportunities for gaming.

The past few years alone have seen incredible advancements in photorealism, cinematic storytelling, AI, VR, and increasingly powerful gaming hardware. Sure, not every new innovation is amazing (looking at you, motion controls), but the fact of the matter is that there is always a commercial incentive for gaming companies to push the limits of technology and propel gaming to the next level.

Even looking around the gaming world right now, amidst the endless waves of open-world, survival based crafting games, battle royales, and Ubisoft sandboxes, there’s a few ambitious games in production that could well be the harbingers of the utopian gaming future sci-fi has been promising us since the dawn of video gaming.

Not every innovation is guaranteed to bring about widespread change (again, looking at you, motion controls), but each of the following games are pushing the limits of what we might have thought possible, and could well change everything we know and think about the way we game.

5. Starship Commander - Voice Recognition & Full Control

So voice recognition software isn’t exactly new, per say. In fact, Hey You, Pikachu! was released way back in 1998, and came with voice recognition hardware that allowed kids everywhere to frustratedly shout into the tiny microphone in the vague hope it would pick up what you were trying to say. It wasn’t perfect by any means, and a lot of voice activated games since, such as Tom Clancy’s End War, only recognise certain phrases, which is hardly the future gamers are dreaming about.

Enter, Starship Commander, an upcoming VR, sci-fi title that places the audience in the middle of an intergalactic war. The player is in command of a secret mission, and decisions have deadly consequences. Sounding like a mashup of Mass Effect and Alexa, the biggest draw is the voice recognition software.

The player will be able to interact with in game characters through speech alone, putting more of themselves and their personality into the game as they interrogate the enemy, control their ship, talk to HQ and (presumably, if it is taking cues from Mass Effect) seduce hot alien babes.

It’s early days for the technology to really kick off, but if it works well and gets a positive critical and commercial reception, it could open the floodgates for more immersive, voice operated, narrative driven games across the board.