I’ve got a serious case of Gundam disease. It’s bad enough that I willingly spend my time playing Gundam: Battle Operation 2—a game that most of the world rightfully thinks is irredeemable. I’m starved enough for new Gundam stuff to play, that at this point I’ll take whatever Bandai Namco is willing to put in front of me.
I didn’t expect “whatever” to entail Gundams battling giant monsters, however, but I’m willing to be proven wrong. At tonight’s Summer Game Fest, Bandai Namco revealed Gundam Rogue Orbit, an action game where mobile suits are fighting a meatier class of enemy than they usually face.
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Still, even in the brief announcement trailer embedded above, there’s plenty of recognizable Gundam material: A hapless grunt suit gets hopelessly outmatched by a superior tier of foe. There’s a white robot with a V-fin. There’s the profound sorrow that comes with the dashed hopes of a lasting peace for the space colonies.
I’ll admit that I’m a little skeptical about how much it’ll feel like Gundam when so much of what makes Gundam work is rooted in the emotional, psychological, and political tensions that emerge from human conflict. But Gundams facing kaiju isn’t entirely unprecedented: That’s the premise of the Mobile Suit Gundam Eight manga that kicked off in 2025.
And hey, when a beam sword looks as respectable as it does in that gameplay footage, I’m willing to give it a chance.
Gundam Rogue Orbit launches on Steam in 2027.
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