The Game Awards 2025 host Geoff Keighley closed out tonight's jam-packed show with the debut of a brand new multiplayer free-to-play FPS from 61 members of the Respawn team that made Apex Legends. It's called Highguard, and with it, new independent studio WildLight Entertainment is hoping to "push to shooter genre forward." Highguard launches on Steam, PS5, and Xbox on January 26.
In the game's announcement trailer, which you can check out below, we see various extremely attractive heroes duke it out on foot and on mounts in flashy, cinematic struggles filled with all sorts of melee weapons like guns and hammers, as well as shotgun and rifle-style guns and, naturally, supernatural powers. In the scramble we see something like an ice wall, red orbs, Thor-style hammers, and a giant sword and red orbs which both seem to be central to the gameplay loop.
It's hard to tell exactly what's going on, but it looks like there's some classic area capture action going on, maybe something akin to an Overwatch-style payload mode, and possibly something like a king of the hill mode. I don't know, don't quote me on that, but I can at least confirm there's a giant tank with a cat head that seems to be summoned when you plunge that aforementioned giant sword into something. Just watch:
I will say, for a game that bills itself as "a new breed of shooter," there isn't a whole lot here that doesn't look like other shooters, but it's very possible they're holding that stuff back for a later reveal. Although, we have less than two months to launch, folks, it might soon be time to bust out the big guns, literally and figuratively.
In the meantime, here are the best FPS games you can play right now.
