That sick-looking first person sci-fi game at The Game Awards is actually the sequel to Sons of the Forest

Forest 3 was one of those super crowded Game Awards trailers, sandwiched between the Tomb Raider reveal and a skit about the Invincible fighting game's latest character reveal. But it looks positively sick, and I had to do a double take to realize it's a follow up to one of the biggest games of the past few years.

Forest 3's trailer begins with a first person view of a starship cockpit before something goes horribly awry and we careen impossibly far away from Earth at breakneck speeds. With the help of a cheeky little shoulder arm, our protagonist proceeds to do survival game stuff: Hunting, gathering, but no tree punching, which is a welcome relief.

The sci-fi vibe really has me intrigued: The planet's swampy and foreboding, with that grey-blue, clammy, soaked-through on a rainy day look of Death Stranding. Before things fade to black, we get the disturbing sight of some kind of zombified half-torso thing emerging from the water.

"Do I have to have played Forest 1 and Forest 2 to get Forest 3?" I quipped to the PC Gamer work chat. But then I started looking into it and realized that this was Endnight games, so "Forest 1" and "Forest 2" are actually The Forest and Sons of the Forest.

The crash landing plotline mirrors the plane crash intro of the first game, but otherwise? I love how much of a departure Forest 3 is from what came before. Endnight has not yet revealed a release window for Forest 3, and the game does not have a Steam page live at the time of writing.