The MAPPA Opening Now Has a Face, and a Cameo
The big reveal of the stage was visual, not playable. Japanese game magazine and news site Famitsu, which covered the stage from the Koei Tecmo booth, reports that the team put up the opening animation's main visual, its color script, and a set of key animation drawings. MAPPA (Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man), the studio behind Attack on Titan: The Final Season, is producing the opening, and Koei Tecmo America has confirmed that Arifumi Imai, a key animator and storyboard artist on the TV series, directs it.
One detail worth zooming in on: the key animation includes the game's own protagonist. Famitsu points to a bandana-wearing figure in the bottom-right of the drawing, which means the player character you build in the game gets drawn into the anime-style opening alongside the canonical cast.
There is a catch, and it was already known before TGS: the opening will not be in the game at launch. It gets patched in later. Development producer Hideo Suzuki (鈴木英生) said the timing is still undecided, but that the goal is to have it ready "in time for the update around when everyone is playing." Famitsu reads that as a possible day-one update if production stays on schedule, though nobody on stage promised that.
Jean and Connie Have a Complaint About Bertolt
Attack on Titan 3 adds game-original events on top of the manga storyline, and the stage premiered one of them. The setup: Jean and Connie come to the squad leader, which is to say the player, to report that Bertolt's sleeping posture is awful, and that he has been stuck in the same position for a while. It is played as comedy, fully voiced, and the scene follows up by sending you to the market to buy herbs that are supposedly good for bad sleeping posture.
Anyone who remembers the manga's running joke about Bertolt sleeping in poses that predict the weather will know exactly where this is coming from. The game's angle is that the protagonist is on long-standing friendly terms with the cast, and side stories like this are where that relationship plays out.
Sasha's Run, Krista's Punch
Before the gameplay portion, the two voice actors picked favorite scenes from the series and watched the game's recreations of them.
Yu Kobayashi (Ruka Urushibara in Steins;Gate, Charlotte Roselei in Black Clover), who voices Sasha Blouse, chose the training-corps moment where Sasha is made to run while instructor Keith chews out Krista. Shiori Mikami said watching it brought back the recording session and made her sit up straight. Kobayashi described Sasha as a character who is always trying her hardest and never sets out to be funny, yet ends up warming everyone's hearts anyway.
Mikami (Akari Akaza in YuruYuri), who voices Krista Lenz, went with the scene where Krista, together with Eren and the others, lands a single punch on Levi, "humanity's strongest soldier." Her reasoning was that Historia rarely gets scenes where she smiles, so this one stands out. Suzuki added that Levi's reaction and the faces of everyone behind him sell the sense of camaraderie.
Break, Mash, Dodge, Fail
The live demo covered what looks like an early tutorial: the protagonist heads out on a Titan hunt with Levi and runs into one. Attack on Titan 3 lets you put a Titan into a "Break" state, after which mashing the square button (on the PlayStation version) automatically targets the nape. Kobayashi took the controller for this part and, by her own account, is very good at button mashing.
A few mechanics carry over or get added. Fifteen-meter-class Titans still need specific body parts destroyed before the nape opens up, same as the previous game. New this time is a dedicated dodge on the X button for when a Titan is about to swing at you. Suzuki then took over to show off Combat Arts (R2 plus circle or triangle), and the demo's "Zeke subjugation mission" ran out the clock and failed on stage. Famitsu notes it was a developer-quality run right up until the timer.
The booth itself had a roughly life-size Titan head as a photo spot, and the game's official X account is running a giveaway: ten winners each get one of five film-strip-style bookmark designs, picked at random, that were handed out as a demo bonus at the show.
Looking Ahead
Attack on Titan 3 launches worldwide on December 10, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam, where it is already available for pre-purchase. Developer Omega Force pitches it as the culmination of the series, covering the story from the Survey Corps' early days through the finale, with the Nine Titans as opponents and a Casual Mode for players who find the ODM-gear controls intimidating.
The MAPPA opening is the one piece without a date. Koei Tecmo says it ships in a future update, and the TGS stage did not narrow that down beyond "around when everyone is playing." A Western release of the update should follow the same schedule, since the game is launching globally on day one.