Get your popcorn, place your bets, and gather round: Highguard will hold a launch showcase next week after 43 days of silence following odd Game Awards reveal

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Get your popcorn, place your bets, and gather round: Highguard will hold a launch showcase next week after 43 days of silence following odd Game Awards reveal News By Austin Wood published 23 January 2026

Highguard is real, and about to come out

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The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley has at last been dethroned as the entire marketing team for Highguard, a new self-styled "PvP raid shooter" from former Titanfall and Apex Legends developers. First revealed last month at the very end of Keighley's 2025 awards show, Highguard is now scheduled for a launch showcase on Monday, January 26, the very day the curious game comes out.

Official Highguard social media whirred to life today, some 43 days after the big Game Awards surprise, to announce this launch show. "Here, we'll share an in-depth look at Highguard direct from the studio, featuring a full gameplay deep dive, year one plans, and much more," the folks at developer Wildlight Entertainment say. The promise of year one plans should leave no room for doubt about the envisioned arc of this game.

Highguard, if you need a reminder, is a PvP shooter where crews of "Wardens" use sci-fantasy weaponry to blow each other up and fight for "possession of the Shieldbreaker" to "break into and destroy the enemy base to secure territory." There's a big emphasis on destructible environments in the trailer, and that's basically everything I could tell you about the game right now without consulting PS5 trophies. Those point to a raid mode, a revive system, Warden classes like "Assault" and "Defensive," overtime rules, weapons like "the BigRig LMG," gear tiers up to at least Legendary, and rounds that can end in as little as 10 minutes.

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From the start, Highguard has seemed to want to emulate the shadow drop approach that worked out pretty darn well for its cousin Apex Legends (despite leaks that poked some holes in it). The big difference this time is that we've had about six weeks, rather than six minutes, between reveal and release, and certain corners of the internet have spent that time carving things like "Concord 2" and "Overwatch clone" into axes to throw at Highguard.

Look no further than the Steam discussion page for the game, and be sure to look with one of those welding visors because it is genuinely one of the stupidest places online right now. It's like looking straight at a solar eclipse. "When are we going to learn?" ask the hero shooter-weary who cannot fathom the hero shooter-hungry. "Why hate?" counter the optimists. "Please flop," cry the anarchists. "Why not just make Titanfall 3?" asks a user with no understanding of IP rights. "What if the game is fake?" ask the completely, utterly lost.

Cautious optimism for a new shooter from some of the best to ever do it has clashed with understandable live service fatigue. Throw in textbook doomerism cut with absurd reactions based on some imagined reality and you've got a recipe for discussion that goes nowhere fast.

I myself am a big fan of judging books by their cover because I'll tell you right now there is no easier way to weed out garbage romantasy novels when you're perusing the dark fantasy section, but I'll make an exception for Highguard because, at this point, I just want to know what it really is. At long last, we'll find out what it looks like in motion, not just in trailers, and maybe even play it for ourselves.

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CATEGORIES PS5 Xbox Series X PC Gaming Platforms PlayStation Xbox Austin WoodSocial Links NavigationSenior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.

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