After posting a mysterious statue and an image of a desert, The Game Awards and Geoff Keighley have once again started teasing us with cryptic messaging.
In a Dec. 5 reply to Geoff’s original tweets, TGA’s account posted ” The █████ are silent. █████ bleeds. New █████ stir.” Whatever that means.
Over the past week or so, many speculations arose regarding the statue and what it could mean. Half-Life 3 hopefuls were first to be shut down, as the statue clearly indicates a dark fantasy world with dragons, druidic bears, medieval armors, and so on. That led people to hook to Diablo 4, based on Jez Corden’s claims, which were then refuted by Jason Schreier, one of gaming’s most reputable journalists.
He went on to say that it’s not The Elder Scrolls 6 either, but did not want to reveal what it was because he nevertheless considers it big enough to be kept a secret. This left God of War as the only plausible scenario, but Santa Monica and Cory Balrog both denied these claims.
So what is it? What does the code above mean? Well, discussing the tease, my colleagues and filled in the gaps with a couple plausible words. One was “The Great Ones are silent. The Hunter bleeds. New Nightmares stir.” If that wasn’t clear, we were indicating Bloodborne 2. However, the pieces of armor and the overall tone of the statue do not inspire hope for that fabled sequel, so we could be very off target.
Another potential solution is “The gods are silent. Earth bleeds. New evils stir,” which could indicate just about anything. However, since Schreier thinks this is too big to reveal and spoil the heavy marketing, I believe this has to do with Larian Studios’ next project. The statue thematically coincides with the Divinity series, and especially Original Sin 2.
We know Larian has started working on its next game a while ago, though it did spare a lot of resources on updating Baldur’s Gate 3 for two full years. It could be time to reveal the game to the world, probably a couple of years ahead of release. Larian is a private company, so they could’ve been working on this since before BG3 for all we know, as it has no obligation to disclose anything it does.
The dark tone fits with the company’s style, the eccentricity matches that of Swen Vincke, and since no corporate publisher is creative enough to greenlight this project, it’s safe to say this was made by a private company, aka a studio like Larian.
Of course, I leave space for the most copeful solution: “The half are silent. Life bleeds. New 3 stir,” because I’m not giving up the hopium.
