At The Game Awards 2025, Saber Interactive announced Turok: Origins, a sort of reboot of the classic sci-fi shooter franchise.
As some old-school gamers may already know, Turok was originally a comic book character who appeared as a master Native American tracker, survivalist, and hunter in late 1954 in comics published by Dell Comics. Later, he would also appear in comics published by Valiant Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Dynamite Comics, but his fame mainly came from the successful video game series created by Acclaim in 1997. Five years later, just before the launch of Turok: Evolution, Acclaim could boast that the franchise had already generated over $250 million in sales revenue.
However, the IP's luck didn't last much longer. Following the release of Evolution, there was only one more installment, the 2008 game developed by a studio called Propaganda Games. While not well-received by critics, the game sold more than one million copies in its first two months on the market, prompting the Vancouver-based studio to start working on a sequel. Propaganda was owned by Disney Interactive Studios, though, which decided to shut down the studio (and the new Turok title) in 2011 after Tron: Evolution also disappointed.
Around seventeen years later, Saber Interactive is hoping to reignite the interest of long-time fans in the series. They are, after all, quite experienced in the feat following the successful revival of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, not to mention the upcoming Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake.
During a Gamescom 2025 presentation, we learned that most of Saber Madrid, a studio composed of around 250 employees, has been working on Turok: Origins for nearly five years now. The game will feature a story campaign of around fifteen hours, and the narrative will somehow connect to that first game installment from 1997.
The story sees the legendary warriors dealing not only with the usual dinosaurs but also with an alien threat, the so-called Xenia civilization, that seeks to eradicate all human life from the galaxy. The Turok and humankind as a whole are losing the war, so they embark on an interplanetary quest to find a superpower capable of turning the tide of the conflict. Yes, that means there will be various planets to visit in the final game; Ancient temples, wasteland canyons, and dense jungles are just a few examples of the places you'll find in Turok: Origins.
Following the brief presentation, we tried a demo of the game itself. The game supports three-player online cooperative action, so it's no wonder that there are three playable characters with their own weapons and perks and Ultimate abilities. During game sessions, players can also extract Echoes from fallen foes and the environment to unlock powers in real-time.
Other than that, Turok: Origins plays like pretty standard shooter fare. The maps are fairly linear and don't allow that much exploration, so you'll just be mowing down enemies while heading toward the next control point. When you have injured a foe enough, you can swoop into melee range to trigger a cool-looking execution move. The demo required using the grappling hook occasionally, but it was only available at predefined points, rather than giving players free rein on where to go.
One thing that long-time franchise fans will be happy to learn is that the developers have added the option to switch in real-time (by long-pressing the d-pad) between first and third-person view. The game had been announced as a third-person title, but Turok games have always been played in first-person view, and now you have that option available.
The highlight of the demo was the boss fight with a giant Tryceratops-like creature, which not only charged us but could also teleport and had a lightning attack. Indeed, Saber had previously said that the Xenia aliens control some of the dinosaurs with their technology and have empowered them with it.
Turok: Origins doesn't have a release window yet, but it looked fairly polished based on the Gamescom 2025 demo. Whether its structure and content will be enough to draw players remains to be seen once the final version becomes available. Meanwhile, we can confirm that the game will run at 60 frames per second on consoles (except for the Xbox Series S version).
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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