The video game industry has its version of the Academy Awards last night with Geoff Keighley’s annual Game Awards ceremony, which honored the greatest achievements in gaming from 2016. Overwatch won the top prize (you can find a full list of winners here) but to be honest, most gamers (myself included) tune into the Game Awards to see what new game announcements there might be.
Overall, this year’s show was a little disappointing in terms of reveals — it probably doesn’t help that Sony probably snagged a bunch of them for its PlayStation Experience event on December 3 — but there was a good mix of cool trailers and a few other surprises that only live TV can deliver. If you didn’t have three hours to spend watching the 2016 Game Awards, that’s okay, because here’s a list of the most important things you missed out on.
Mass Effect Andromeda Trailer (With Gameplay!)
Although EA’s lack of commitment to nailing down a release date for Mass Effect: Andromeda is worrying, especially since the game is supposed to be out in March, the trailer that was shown off made it easy to forget about all that. Clocking in at almost five minutes-long, the new trailer offered the best look at Andromeda yet and showed off a ton of gameplay. For those who don’t know, Andromeda is set hundreds of years after the events of the original Mass Effect games and involves your characters, a “Pathfinder,” exploring a new galaxy in order to find a new home for humanity.
Judging by what was shown, the game looks to be much more exploration-heavy than previous games in the series and gives you plenty of tools to do so, including a new vehicle that already looks a hundred times better than the first game’s infamous Mako, and an updated combat system that offers a wide range of evasive maneuvers (why did it take this long to get a jetpack in a Mass Effect game?). Assuming Mass Effect: Andromeda hits its 2017 target, it could very well be a contender for Game of the Year consideration.