X019 event reveals new Rare game Everwild and Dontnod’s Tell Me Why

Everwild key art — Everwild – Rare haven’t really said what it is

The closest Duncan comes to describing the game in his blog is saying that the developers are ‘focused on building an experience that allows for new ways to play in a natural and magical world’ and that, ‘Everwild will give you memorable, engaging and meaningful experiences for players everywhere to share’.

Which sounds fairly non-violent, despite the game implying you’ll be hunting the various fantasy animals, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

The Everwild team will be led by executive producer Louise O’Connor, who has been at Rare for 20 years. Much of that time has been spent as an artist, which explains the gorgeous visuals of the game.

Since Rare are owned by Microsoft, they’ll obviously be publishing Everwild, but after that and Obsidian’s Grounded they also had another first party title to unveil: Tell Me Why by Life Is Strange developer Dontnod.

It’s not entirely clear what it’s all about either, although it’s clearly another narrative heavy game with lots of moral decision making, in the style Dontnod’s other titles.

It stars a transgender protagonist – the first from a major video game studio – and seems to involve twins with possibly magical powers, with talk of reliving each other’s memories.

It will be released episodically but Dontnod are promising all the episodes will be out in quick succession next summer, which is great news and exactly what we suggested they do last time we spoke to them.

The other big announcement was the long-awaited Age Of Empires IV, which goes back to the medieval period and featured the Mongols and the English in the new gameplay trailer below.

There was also new Sea Of Thieves expansion The Seabound Soul, Halo Reach for The Master Chief Collection, a slightly vague April release date for Minecraft Dungeons, and a very specific date of 24 March for online multiplayer game Bleeding Edge from Ninja Theory.

A 19 May release date for Wasteland 3 and theme park simulator Planet Coaster: Console Edition next summer were also announced, but they’ll both be on PlayStation 4 as well.

There were also a number of interesting looking indie titles from ID@Xbox, including supernatural cowboy shooter West Of The Dead, ‘action village building’ game Drake Hollow from the makers of The Flame In The Flood, and anthology drama Last Stop from the studio behind the excellent Virginia.

And then finally there were a couple of ‘classic’ PC games that we (and we suspect most people outside of Korea) have never heard of, that will be coming to Xbox One, namely Mario Kart clone Kart Rider Drift and military shooter CrossfireX.

Considering they didn’t mention their next gen console (even though Everwild at the very least is probably set to appear on it) it was a pretty convincing show for Microsoft and suggests that when they do eventually unveil Project Scarlett it will be with a very sizeable collection of games and features, not to mention a by then tried and tested streaming service and the incredibly good value Xbox Game Pass.