Oblivion remaster? South of Midnight? More? What can we expect from 2025's first Xbox Showcase in late January?

Move over, Indiana Jones: Xbox is on the warpath once again.

Today, Microsoft has announced an Xbox Showcase, set to take place on January 23, 2025 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK time. The showcase will highlight some of the massive upcoming titles from Microsoft and its partner studios, and whilst we haven't exactly been given a running order of what'll make it into the first big showing of the year, I think it's safe to say we can make some educated guesses.

As part of the official blog post on the developer direct, we know that we'll get a closer look at Doom: The Dark Ages, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and South of Midnight via quick trips to the stuidos, which should be nice!

But what about that mystery game? As noted in the blog post, there's one more developer we're set to see as part of the developer direct. So which one is it? Well, 2025 is set to be a big year for Xbox, especially for any RPG heads amongst you. With the likes of Avowed, Fable, Outer Worlds 2, and a rumoured Oblivion remaster pencilled into the release schedule, the Series S and Series X are potentially lined up for a pretty good 12 months.

Let's start with that last one. We've heard a fair amount about an Oblivion remake or remaster, with rumours going back as far as 2023 that also include hints towards a potential Fallout 3 re-release, too. Previous rumours pointed to Oblivion itself being ready for release as early as 2022 (!), so here's hoping - three years later - that Bethesda actually shows its hand and addresses the whispers across the industry.

We know about the Oblivion remaster, mostly, from a supposed ex-employee from Virtuous Games, who revealed that an Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remake was in the works as early as 2021.

"It is done currently using a pairing system, so it means that the remaster is running using both an Unreal Engine 5 project, and the Oblivion one," the leakder said back in 2023. "For instance, new graphics are rendered in the UE5 project, but most of the gameplay / physics /etc is still done in Oblivion. It should be released end of next year/ early [2025] depending mostly if it's a remake or a remaster. It is mostly done in Paris, but Blackshamrock also helps the studio for the art." (These comments were collected by Xfire before an image featuring them was taken down.)

Let's hope we actually get some concrete evidence this one exists before the month is out.

Next, we've got Avowed. The game slipped into 2025 to avoid internal Game Pass competition (thanks, Indy), and Obsidian Entertainment’s big new risky IP now finds itself slap-bang between two of the biggest releases of the year - Monster Hunter Wilds and Assassin's Creed Shadows. Will this showcase sell the unsure masses on a solid-looking RPG? We'll have to wait and see. For what it's worth, our own Alex Donaldson thinks it looks like an absolute corker.

I'll group two together, next. We might not know much about The Outer Worlds 2 yet, aside from a few trailers, but I bet that's about to change as we roll into the game's launch year. One little nugget that I'm quite interested in is that the game's devs are getting some helpful guidance from Fallout co-creator Tim Cain.

Alongside TOW2, Fable (2025) is probably set to get another showing, soon, given that we haven't seen much of the title since it appeared at Summer Game Feest 2024. Fable is being developed by Playground Games, who you may know from its work on the Horizon series, and looks like it retains the same zany British humour as the original series. That's enough to keep me interested, but let's see if that enthusiasm remains once we actually see some proper gameplay in action.

Last, but by no means least, I'd like to give an extra shout out to a game we know will be present at the devleoper direct: South of Midnight. It's the next project from Compulsion Games (the team behind Contrast and We Happy Few) and we got our first first look at its gameplay as part of the Xbox Showcase in summer 2024. The stunning, American South-set game is action-heavy, and stands alone in the Xbox upcoming line-up.

South of Midnight is coming to PC and Xbox in 2025, but no specific date has been attached just yet (is this a case of Xbox running from the all-consuming GTA 6? Probably). The game was revealed almost back in 2023, and there's a lot of people especially interested to see what sauce this one is packing. Let's hope we finally get a release date for it during this direct!