Like whatever the next Batman game turns into after following the Arkham series, 2016 has a lot to live up to following the cavalcade of brilliant titles that was 2015. Between The Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid V and Fallout 4 flying the flag for open-world titles higher than ever, sublimely affecting indies Her Story and Emily Was Away proved the industry is maturing faster than ever and middle-tier gems like Rocket League showed the biggest hits can come out of nowhere, we're currently experiencing one of the greatest periods of creativity in gaming history. Look forward though, and you'll see the future is even more tantalising. A number of high-profile franchises are making their long-awaited return (Ghost Recon, anyone?) whilst tens of millions get spent on the glorified nostalgia project that is Final Fantasy VII. TV shows are being made to compliment video game storylines (more on that later), the Souls series is taking a final bow, and that's before we've considered how Nintendo are going to re-enter the console war with the mysterious NX. It's all to play for as we stand on the cusp of the virtual reality revolution that will come to symbolise 2016, and here are all the major players you need to start keeping track of.
16. Ghost Recon: Wildlands
Ubisoft bandied Ghost Recon about in all sorts of forms across the 2000s, between the glorious first-person Advanced Warfighter that helped sell a few thousand Xbox 360s, to the Future Soldier of 2012 and the free-to-play, multiplayer-only Phantoms. Going into 2016, they're apparently up-ending the increasingly done-to-death future-tech stuff with Wildlands, now a Just Cause-looking foray into luscious forests and jungle tundra, letting you plan and deploy on all sorts of missions as and when you see fit. The whole "going open-world" thing has touched everyone from The Witcher to Metal Gear Solid over the last few years, and thanks to a pretty lengthy gameplay demo of Wildlands in action, it looks like a suitably intense and gritty affair that'll have you taking down gang leaders and cocaine-dealers in a blaze of gunfire and grenades. Strangely, after the initial reveal at E3, the game's made like its namesake and disappeared, but everything Ubisoft showed off looked remarkably far along, as though a release date was just around the corner. As the rest of 2015 trickled by, you now have to imagine this will make up the company's dual-pronged third-person attack on the industry alongside The Division in the coming months.
