With The Game Awards sewn up for another year, it’s now time to chew through the banquet of new announcements; starting here with the final reveal of the ceremony: Highguard – a free-to-play hero shooter from ex-Titanfall and Apex Legends devs.
As far as world premieres go, there’s none more coveted than The Game Awards’ closer. But, being the headliner comes with huge expectations. It’s a billing usually reserved for legacy franchises, seismic returns, or ambitious new adventures which justify the evening’s crescendo. Yet, this year, Geoff and co’s climactic showcase was unfamiliar.
And this is the first problem. See, no amount of studio pedigree, flashy gunplay, or horseriding ballistics can heat up Highguard’s chilly response. It walked onto a stage warmed up for a giant, but instead of awe it drew collective whiplash. Look – the community, hyped earlier in anticipation, is now colder than the Antarctic Peninsula’s Winter. You wanted Bloodborne 2, Half-Life 3, or maybe even The Elder Scrolls 6. But, instead, you got this.
But here’s the kicker: is it fair to label Highguard DOA already? Scroll through forums, Reddit threads, and comment sections and you’ll struggle to find a positive word. No-one has locked in their favourite role, yet disrelish is spilling everywhere. Surely there’s more to this than the deflation in Highguard’s premium place in The Game Awards’ running order. Yes, you’ve grown to expect something else from the closer, but the timing of a reveal doesn’t indicate a bad game.
Maybe there’s another problem: genre fatigue. Put simply, Highguard is another multi-player PvP with guns and magic. You’ve seen it already, and you’ve seen it fail.
A decade ago, hero shooters were all the rage. Now, every one of their shared traits carries the weight of decline. However, this announcement shouldn’t be seen as the first step towards Highguard’s failure, but as a referendum for where the industry is. Are hero shooters out, or is it possible there’re miles left in the tank?
Maybe you’re just tired of shooters, or perhaps you’re fed up with monetisation. Certainly, given the underwhelming reception, everyone seems exhausted by the prospect of investing in a new roster of heroes who may not survive six months. Whether the team behind it have crafted some of the finest, most exhilarating shooters of recent memory is irrelevant at this stage – players are burned out. We know veterans bring talent, but this does not guarantee relevance.
Despite falling numbers, ziplining across Apex’s Outlands still feels superb, while Titanfall’s fluid mech-FPS hybrid is legendary. On paper, fans should be ecstatic, but the multi-player space has shifted.
Surveying hero shooters: Blizzard are scaling back Overwatch as confidence in its content roadmap and now-abandoned PvE matchmaking continues to dwindle. Coming from Bungie, Marathon should be hitting home runs, yet despite the studio’s reputation for class-leading gunplay it’s struggling to even find a foothold. Concord’s full price wasn’t its downfall; it’s well-known that the genericism of its character design and lacklustre marketing drew the most negative attention. Every hero shooter exists in a saturated market, where new entrants face an environment tougher than ever. If you’re going to be playing Highguard, what other already-established game are you dropping in its place?
But we have seen absolutely nothing from the game since its showing last month. No deep dive, no teaser, no gameplay trailer..absolutely nothing, and that’s a massive red flag. There are only a couple of weeks left before the game launches and time is clearly running out. But that’s not happening, is it?
The bottom line: any pushback Highguard receives, at this stage, is rational, not cynical. You might think you’re rejecting it because it sucks but, really, you’re protecting yourself. Years of broken promises, slow innovation, and overwhelming emphasis on loot boxes and other bits to scrape more cash out of you leaves every new hero shooter facing an uphill battle for your time, attention, and money.
But, the truth with live-service launches is this: no-one truly knows which way the wind will blow. Games with lukewarm receptions have gone on to become juggernauts – just look at Apex. Still, does Highguard have what it takes? Can it find an audience? Will it retain players? If you re-watch the reveal trailer, perhaps you’ll see it’s not all bad.
There’s hope in this DNA, with fast, kinetic movement seeing you zooming over arenas, firing explosive rounds, throwing daggers, or target-locking rockets – it’s exhilarating stuff. The art direction, while a little generic, is bright, bold, and colourful, with clear silhouettes and sightlines amidst the sensory overload.
However, mechanically, it’s unclear if Highguard brings anything new to the table. It’s competent, sure, but Wildlight Entertainment, the game’s developers, are promising an “all-new breed of shooter.” Yet, its gunplay, hero identities, synergies, match flow, objectives, and tone all feel familiar for the genre. Likewise, Highguard seems a copycat to Overwatch in both archetype and tempo. Heck, even the name Highguard sounds like a synonym for Overwatch. The trailer’s structure, all staccato cuts introducing heroes and spotlighting abilities, is a reel assembled out of the genre playbook rather than a manifesto of something novel.
Worse, the trailer doesn’t communicate a hook. There’s no real sense of worldbuilding, no indication of what makes these characters distinct, and no attempt to explore unclaimed space. Forgetting about its Game Awards reveal entirely, no matter when or where it was announced Highguard should be answering the inevitable questions: Why this? Why now? And why should we care? By dodging these questions, Highguard becomes even less convincing.
Despite kneejerk negativity being common amongst games, where downbeat comments are a regular fixture, this doesn’t just feel like a community being overly-reactionary. On YouTube, Reddit, and anywhere else you can leave an opinion, rarely is it this unanimous.
Perhaps, if we reframe the discontent to a community needing reasons to believe instead. You want to know that your expectations for originality are realistic. You may have the time and the motivation to dedicate to a live-service experience, thereby proving that genre fatigue is a myth peddled by non-players and critics. You don’t want to see the industry continue to eat itself, with countless titles suffering low performance, leaving talented staff without a job after years of hard work. You want to see success, but you don’t want to get burned in the process. All of these things are possible, so why not with Highguard?
Look, Wildlight Entertainment could surprise us. Despite the community’s resignation, oddly, there’s an opportunity for Highguard here. If Wildlight focuses on iterating the high-skill, high-movement gunplay of Apex Legends and if they lean further into Titanfall’s sense of verticality that you’ve seen in the trailer then this game could come out swinging. Also, if the roster introduces genuinely fresh roles and the game avoids aggressive monetisation then it could capture its audience and retain them. These are big ifs, as right now the characters appear familiar and we have no indication of what the long-term live service model will be. Again, though, anything’s still possible. Right?
See, while these conditions to Highguard’s success are not met at present, the pedigree of talent who’ve been working in secret over the last four years at least indicates its possible to get there.
So, maybe you are absolutely not ready for Highguard – not because it’s set to blow your mind but because it’s landing at a time where even the best ideas can suffer through hardship before turning things around. The challenge is set, and Highguard has everything to play for. With a January 26th release date though, the countdown has already begun. If Wildlight Entertainment uses that short time to demonstrate a clear, confident identity for Highguard – to answer “why we should care” – then all the widespread resignation could still be flipped to belief.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
