Two hours, roughly forty games, and not one of them a leak that had already been picked apart for a month. Opening Night Live has spent the last few years being accused of front-loading everything into press releases, and this year’s show in Cologne actually held a few things back. Geoff Keighley and Eefje Depoortere ran the August 25 broadcast a day before the show floor opened, with a thirty minute pre-show that carried real announcements rather than a countdown timer.
Here is what mattered if your gaming happens on a PC.
The Witcher 3 gets remastered, and both expansions are free right now
CD Projekt Red closed the show with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, launching September 29 as a free upgrade for existing owners on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, plus a native Switch 2 version and a new Battle.net release through a partnership with Blizzard. This is not a resolution bump. CDPR lists upgraded visuals and performance alongside reworked combat, traversal, mount handling, monster behaviors, a revamped skill tree, transmogrification and an expanded photo mode.
Every current owner of the base game got Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine for free the moment the announcement went live, not on September 29. That is CDPR making sure the audience is caught up on nine year old story content before Songs of the Past, the paid expansion revealed in the same segment, arrives in 2027 in the new realm of Letten. The Witcher 4 was not at the show, and joint CEO Michał Nowakowski confirmed its 2028 window before the broadcast.
Path of Exile 2 finally has a 1.0 date
December 11, and it goes permanently free to play the same day. Grinding Gear Games paired the date with the reveal of the sword-wielding Duelist class and confirmation that the campaign’s final two Acts ship with the update, ending the $30 early access buy-in that has been in place since December 2024. We covered Jonathan Rogers saying in May that the 1.0 date would not be scheduled around other releases, and a mid-December launch two weeks before the holidays suggests he meant it.
Heroes of Might and Magic III is being remade in full 3D
The surprise of the night. Ubisoft announced a complete remake of the 1999 turn-based strategy landmark, rebuilt in 3D with all nine factions and their units redesigned, a rotatable adventure map camera, a reworked interface that gives war machines and artifacts their own panels, and compatibility with fan-made maps. No release date came with the reveal, though some coverage points to 2027. Preserving map compatibility is the detail that will decide whether the Heroes 3 community treats this as a remake or a replacement.
Gears of War: E-Day locks October 6
The Coalition brought a full campaign trailer for the Emergence Day prequel, out October 6 on Xbox Series X|S and PC with day one Game Pass availability. Unreal Engine 5, co-op campaign, Horde Siege and competitive multiplayer at launch. NVIDIA separately confirmed RTX Mega Geometry and full DLSS 4.5 support, which we cover in a separate post.
Everything else worth tracking
- Hoyoverse opened the show with Nodusfall, a four player co-op action game whose art direction is drawing immediate Elden Ring comparisons.
- Ubisoft revealed Rainbow Six Tactics, a single-player turn-based tactics game built around Siege operators, due 2027.
- Square Enix showed Final Fantasy VII Revelation with game director Naoki Hamaguchi, still targeting Spring 2027, this time leaning on the Weapons.
- Metro 2039 got a fresh look, Ananta premiered as an open-world urban RPG, and Konami returned with Silent Hill: Townfall. Pearl Abyss shipped Crimson Desert Enhanced during the broadcast, free for base game owners.
- Asobo’s Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy lands August 27.
- Valor Mortis, a first-person soulslike set during a supernatural Napoleonic Wars, arrives October 13.
- Pony Island 2: Panda Circus is dated April 27, 2027, Frictional and Kepler’s Ontos is 2027, and There Are No Ghosts at the Grand hits early access in December.
- In the least expected item of the night, Snoop Dogg is Hitman’s next Elusive Target, playing a marijuana tycoon named Dr. Syrus Cane from August 27 through September 26.
No single announcement here is going to overshadow the GTA VI news cycle, and Keighley clearly was not trying. What the show delivered instead is a stacked September through December for PC, and two remakes aimed squarely at people who owned the originals. The Gamescom floor is open through August 30 and there are more showcases to come.
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