2019-11-04_Time

This fall’s biggest games

Can you feeL iT? The TemperaTure is dropping, The wind is

picking up, and the pumpkin- spice lattes are flowing. Fall is here, and

with it inevitably come the year’s biggest video games. Here are the

titles we’re most excited about—and the games we think we’ll be

talking about well into 2020. —maTThew gauLT

POKÉMON SWORD

AND SHIELD

(Switch)

Pokémon Sword and Shield

mark a major milestone

for the beloved franchise,

representing the first time

the mainline games have

gone from Nintendo’s

handhelds to its console.

They will have new creatures

to catch, a new world to

explore and much more.

Nov. 15

DEATH STRANDING

(PS4)

What happens when you

give video-game auteur

Hideo Kojima, best known

for the Metal Gear series,

freedom to do anything?

Death Stranding, a surreal

game about a man

traveling across America

with a baby strapped to

his chest that he uses to

move between life and

death. Nov. 8

THE OUTER WORLDS

(PS4/Xbox One/ PC/

Switch)

In a far-flung future,

humanity has colonized the

stars—driven not by a need

to explore but by a quest for

profit. Players wake from

cryosleep on the edges of

colonized space, then fight

to survive and investigate

the megacorporations

that hold sway.

Oct. 25

with a sense that they have “cleaned
up the whole global war on terror,”
says Minkoff. Rather, the point is to
say something meaningful about the
complexities of modern war. “No vil-
lain sees themselves as the bad guy,”
says Taylor Kurosaki, studio narrative
director at Infinity Ward.
How Call of Duty players respond
to this year’s incarnation of the series,
with its ambitious, decidedly more
adult approach to its subject matter,
could show a path forward for this
lucrative business as it comes under
the cultural microscope once again.
The game has figured prominently in
debates about the connection, or lack
thereof, between video games and real-
world shootings. A game this realistic,
gruesome and psychologically chal-
lenging might reinforce criticism of
violent games. But by tackling these
themes head-on, Modern Warfare
might be doing more to illuminate the
true horror of terrorism and gun vio-
lence than to glorify it. •

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