Yet another E3 has come and gone, and once again the gaming world is treading water in a sea of information. After hours of conferences and several more hours of demonstrations, there is almost too much information to even parse, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t try. If you want to check out the Twitch coverage I did with Unknown Hosts, go here to watch our past broadcasts from this week! Or, if you’d like to jump to our pre and post show coverage, just use the links provided below the company headings to see themc where available!
But for a concise, written version of events, read on!
The Big Three
While a few of the biggest publishers have decided to hold their own conferences in the last few years, most people tune into E3 for The Big Three: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.
Sony
This year, the general consensus seems to be that Sony “won” E3. Their conference was chock full of surprises, and so stacked with great games that the re-introduction of the MIA “The Last Guardian” could open the show. The new footage, now running on a PS4 and showcasing actual gameplay, proved to the audience that the gorgeous artistic direction indicated in the 2009 footage and present in Ico and Shadows of the Colossus was still very much in play here. Guardian seems to be taking the scale of Colossus and marrying it to the AI-partnership of Ico, which should make for a highly original title when we finally get to play it sometime in 2016.
The next huge surprise came in the form of a trailer for the Final Fantasy VII Remake, a game fans have been demanding for roughly a decade. Square has previously claimed that the cost and labor involved in creating such a project in a modern development climate would be insurmountable, but perhaps the number of similarly huge undertakings that have released recently (such as Skyrim, Fallout 4, Dragon Age Inquisition, and The Witcher 3) have convinced them that it is worth a shot. It remains to be seen whether a Final Fantasy VII remake can possibly do justice to the original while so radically altering its aesthetics, but it’s certainly intriguing that we’ll get to try it sometime in the future.
Uncharted 4 was the next highlight in Sony’s presentation. While we’ve already been shown a glance at the game’s campaign, this time we were treated to a much more colorful, bombastic sequence. The demo elicited the same thrills as the best moments of Uncharted 2, where the environment around you is going nuts and you’re thrown into the middle of it, just hoping to make it out alive. Plenty of events were scripted, but there was also a sense that the developers were giving the player a bit more freedom, especially in the vehicular segment of the demo. Vehicles have never been controllable in previous Uncharted games, but it looks like Naughty Dog didn’t miss a step in introducing this new element. The transition into driving is seamless, to the point where it’s not immediately apparent that this is a new feature. As the jeep careened around, smashing all sorts of objects with perfectly realized physics, Uncharted 4 didn’t lose any of the momentum it had built up in the ensuing firefight. This will be a must-own game when it releases, in 2016.
Another highlight from the Sony conference was just bizarre. After seemingly setting up the announcement of Shenmue 3, the conclusion to a Sega series which has been MIA since 2001, they ultimately revealed the project to be on Kickstarter. Why a huge corporation like Sony would be interested enough in a project to devote time at their biggest annual conference but not interested enough to drop $2 million into its development is absolutely baffling. However, the game was funded within hours of Sony’s conference, which I’m afraid sets a scary precedent. If gamers will eagerly fund projects themselves, and the major publishers will profit regardless, then why should they even bother funding things with cult followings at all? Time will tell whether this trend continues. In the meantime, it looks like we can expect Shenmue 3 in 2017.
You may have noticed a trend here: all of Sony’s big titles are set to debut at least a year from now. In terms of this year’s slate, things don’t look too good. They’ve got some of the big multiplatform games to entertain their audience this holiday season, like Star Wars Battlefront and Fallout 4, but their first-party support has been sorely lacking this year. A buyer with his or her eye on the future will still be willing to invest in a PS4 for the aforementioned titles, along with other promising new IPs like the newly revealed Horizon. But somebody looking for the maximum enjoyment this holiday season would be better off with an Xbox One.
Other games shown at Sony’s conference:
Hitman (Dec 2015)
Street Fighter V (“console exclusive,” also coming to PC, March 2016)
No Man’s Sky (“console exclusive,” also coming to PC, release date unknown)
Firewatch (“console exclusive,” also coming to PC/MAC, 2015)
Dreams (PS4 exclusive, release date unknown)
Destiny: The Taken King (Playstation Exclusive Content, September 2015)
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (October 2015)
The World of Final Fantasy (Playstation Platforms Exclusive, 2016)
Batman: Arkham Knight (June 2015)
Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Playstation Timed-Exclusive Content, November 2015)
Disney Infinity (ongoing
After many gamers scoffed at Microsoft’s all-in-one media platform approach from a few years ago, the company has been laser focused on showing off games for its new platform. Unlike Sony, which took about a minute to discuss Project Morpheus and its Playstation Vue cable TV platform, Microsoft was all-games, all-the-time.
The most high-profile game on display happens to be one that is coming out this year: Halo 5. However, at least in my eyes, the demo on display utterly failed to impress. The game seems to have doubled down on squad-based gameplay, which in single player means issuing commands to your AI partners. This is not a new or particularly innovative feature in gaming, and not one that I’m eager to see in a Halo game. The weapons, design, and feel of the demo failed to elicit the same feeling as the original games, either, and if 343 Industries are trying to get away from the series roots and make the game their own, they have failed to make that game look especially interesting. A new multiplayer mode called Warzone, which pits teams of 12 against each other with spawning AI enemies showing up in the midst of things, DOES look interesting. All in all, though, the Halo 5 demonstration left a lot of doubt in my mind, especially after 343’s absolutely disastrous handling of the Master Chief Collection.
Outside of Halo, the highest-profile game on display was Gears 4, which was announced at the conference. Unfortunately, Gears 4 also failed to impress, showcasing a slightly-prettier version of the same gameplay Xbox owners have experienced four times over already. The new development team, The Coalition, also chose a very strange level to show off: a night-time raid into a dark stronghold. Aside from some vaguely impressive destructive effects, if there were any real “next-gen” visuals on display, they were cloaked in darkness. The brief combat at the end also failed to indicate that the team was doing anything new with the franchise, aside from replacing the hyper-masculine meathead characters of the original games with more believable counterparts.
Outside of these high-profile disappointments, though, Microsoft had a lot to offer. Rise of the Tomb Raider, which will not be coming out on the Playstation 4 in the near future, appears to be a lot of fun and is easily one of the prettiest titles on the platform to date. Meanwhile, it’s too early to say much about ReCore, but a new game from Megaman producer Keija Inafune and developers behind the Metroid Prime series certainly turned some heads. We also don’t know much about Rare’s new online pirate game, Sea of Thieves, but what they showed was quite promising, with a cool aesthetic and a rich game world on display. Meanwhile, there’s still Fable Legends, which is now free to play, and some indies such as Cuphead and Beyond Eyes.
Also worth noting: Microsoft’s reveal that they are incorporating backwards compatibility. In theory, this is huge: both Sony and Microsoft turned against backwards compatibility this generation, to the detriment of their consumers. Despite claiming that it was an impossibility, Microsoft has finally revealed that they can, and will, make it possible. However, their announcement was a tad misleading: only a select few games will be backwards compatible, with roughly 100 available by the end of the year. This is similar to what the Xbox 360 did, where software emulation was available for Xbox games on a title-by-title basis. Still, this move may light a fire under Sony’s ass, where disc-recognition based backwards compatibility would be easily available using their Playstation Now service, but they refuse to do so.
Finally, the Hololens demo, which showed how the wearable tech could interact with Minecraft, was one of the most impressive things at E3. The wearer was able to manipulate the world as if it were sitting on a table in front of him, while the player explored on her own gaming platform. I am skeptical as to how many real applications there can be for the tech, but it looks to be a truly powerful peripheral for developers who want to explore it.
Other games and services from Microsoft’s show:
The Elite ($150!) Xbox One controller
Fallout 4 (Includes Fallout 3 and PC mods on Xbox One, November 2015)
EA Access (adding Titanfall)
Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 (April 2016)
Ion (no release date)
Nintendo
Nintendo always does things a bit differently. For one, they haven’t actually shown up to E3 in a few years, relying instead on their Digital Direct videos. Usually, this is a good choice: it allows them to control their message and speak directly to consumers. It also lets them do goofy, quirky pre-recorded stuff, meaning that their shows are often the most fun to watch.
It has also led to a couple of excellent shows in recent years, showcasing such games as Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS, Mario Maker, Starfox, the new Wii U Zelda, and Splatoon. For a couple years, Nintendo quietly showcased the best lineup of first-party content at the show, keeping its Wii U and 3DS owners beyond satisfied with their purchases.
This year, however, they completely dropped the ball, and there is a single particular culprit that we can hold responsible: amiibos. The little collectible figures with dubious in-game effects have been selling like crazy, creating their own secondary market of scalpers and collectors. By not meeting the market demand, Nintendo has managed to make a killing off of a product that is artificially scarce, similar to how they managed the first couple years of the Wii. So this year, rather than creating new and innovative games, Nintendo has been focusing on gimmicky ways to work its amiibos into every release they have.
This is Nintendo giving into their worst impulses, very similar to what we saw (again) with the Wii. In the case of the Wii, Nintendo captured a new, casual market, and started catering all of their content to people who don’t traditionally play games. This led to a flooded market of junk and a bunch of dumbed-down versions of their previous titles. When the motion control fad passed, Nintendo was in dire straights, and it has taken them years to prove themselves to their core audience again.
And here they are, catering entirely to another market: collectors. Of the games shown off this year, the only ones seemingly worth a damn were StarFox on Wii U, Super Mario Maker, Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, and Yoshi’s Woolly World, all but one of which had already been shown off at last year’s show. Other newbies to the show were rehashes (Xenoblade Chronicles X, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash), half-assed (the multiplayer mini-game collection Federation Force, with the tacked-on Metroid Prime branding to help it sell) poorly presented (they didn’t even bother to translate Mirage into English), or Amiibo-fests (a game literally called Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival). Their most anticipated title, the open-world Zelda they’ve been hyping for two years now, did not even make an appearance.
I’m sure that Nintendo is just seeing dollar signs, what with the several new amiibo figures they showed off and their new cross-platform deal with Skylanders, which looks to make them all the money in the world. But when the amiibo bubble bursts (and it WILL burst), it will leave Nintendo picking up the pieces and winning back its fans yet again.
Other games from Nintendo’s show:
Triforce Heroes (3DS, no release date)
Fire Emblem Fates (3DS, 2016)
Yo-Kai Watch (3DS, 2016)
Publisher Conferences:
Outside of the Big Three, there were also a number of publisher conferences. While their quality varied, most were worth watching for one reason or another.
Bethesda
Post-show
The first, and probably best, of the publisher conferences was Bethesda. While all anybody cared about going into the session was Fallout 4, they opened the conference with what is surely on a lot of “most anticipated” lists now: the new Doom. Boasting gorgeous graphics, a Doom 3-esque aesthetic, and kinetic gameplay mixing the style of the original two Doom games with more recent arcade shooters (Bulletstorm comes to mind), the new Doom looks extremely promising. All the classic weapons were shown and accounted for, including the chainsaw and the infamous BFG. movement seemed smooth and responsive, and the new execution animations were brutally satisfying. I’ll definitely be checking this one out when it launches in the Spring of 2016.
The middle section of the conference admittedly sagged. I’m certain that nobody was clamoring for a mandatory Bethesda store/DRM system like bethesda.net, and the publisher gave us little reason to care about its multiplayer game Battlecry. Dishonored 2 should be promising, but the full-CGI trailer that was shown gave little reason to be excited beyond the prospect of more Dishonored. Meanwhile, the Elder Scrolls Online footage could only really appeal to people already playing that game, and the announcement of an Elder Scrolls free-to-play strategy card game is meaningless until we know how the game actually plays.
But all of these diversions were handled relatively quickly so that Bethesda could get to the game everybody wanted to see in the first place: Fallout 4. And boy, did they deliver. The game looks far more cinematic than its predecessors, and while the graphics are not going to set the world on fire, the sheer amount of unique content might. Nearly everything is customizable: your character, your armor, your weapons (to a degree that even the Dead Rising series would find enviable), your town…everything. You can also get several different home-towns and customize them however you would like. Gameplay looked extremely varied, and the audience was assured that both real-time shooting and the VATs system had been updated and were satisfying in their own rights.
It should be noted that Bethesda’s decision to hold off on revealing anything about Fallout 4 until mere months before release was a great move. Going from knowing nothing about the game to learning an insane number of details has led to an extremely excited gaming public. No matter what platform you own, Fallout 4 should be a highlight of the holiday season.
While they run into their fair share of quirks, Ubisoft typically has one of the more interesting conferences at E3. They don’t seem to be afraid of profanity and nudity in their shows, which can be odd, and there is a feeling that anything can happen. The last three years have also been notable because Ubisoft has spent a significant amount of time talking about a brand new IP: first Watch_Dogs, then The Division, then Rainbow Six Siege.
Compared to those previous shows, this conference was a bit of a let-down, but it still had its moments. First of all, they opened the show with the reveal of South Park: The Fractured But Whole (har har), a brand new South Park RPG from Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The duo came out onstage to discuss how they had changed their mind about making another game after initially being overcome with hardships during the last one. This is great news: The Stick of Truth was a hilarious tribute to the show, and if The Fractured But Whole is even a tiny bit as good, I can’t wait to play it.
Another highlight was For Honor, this year’s major new IP. However, unlike past “new IP” reveals, For Honor still looks like it’s very early in development. The team showed off a skirmish to give a basic idea of what’s in store, and its mix of Dynasty-Warriors-esque AI minion combat and one-on-one player-based combat is intriguing. The demo was very brief, leaving more room for titles Ubisoft has previously revealed but not yet released.
The Division showed off a “Dark Zone” where players are free to turn on each other and steal loot for themselves, but overall this demo did not show us much in the way of new Division content or give us a good idea of what the general game progression will look like. Rainbow Six Siege made another appearance but, while it looked fun and still contained the destructible environment showcased last year, the game’s graphics had clearly been downgraded since its introduction. Meanwhile, other games like Trials Fusion: Awesome Level Max, The Crew: Wild Run, Anno 2205, and Just Dance look like slightly altered versions of games that are already available. The last-minute reveal of Ghost Recon: Wildlands suggested a title with very malleable mission structures, which could be fun, but the footage left a lot to the imagination. There was also no given release date.
All in all, an okay conference, but I’d be dishonest if I said I wasn’t a bit disappointed.
Other games shown
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (only CGI footage shown, October 2015)
Trackmania Turbo (Dec 2015)
EA
Pre-show
Post-show
The Hoop Gawd
EA is in a tricky place, because their conferences need to cater to two different demographics: sports fans, and core gamers. While the latter are important to the company and drive sales for the vast majority of EA’s titles, the sports fans who purchase Madden and FIFA on an annual basis are arguably more lucrative. So, once the EA conference hit its “sports” section in the middle, those who were not interested in their sports game lineup were only given scraps to keep them watching.
But first, let’s talk about the trailer that opened the conference: Mass Effect: Andromeda. After years of talking heads and concept art, we finally have video evidence that the new Mass Effect is coming along. Sure, it didn’t tell us anything beyond the fact that a new Mass Effect is coming (in the holiday season of 2016, no less), and the video was made up of CGI “target” footage, little more than video concept art. But at least it was SOMETHING.
From there, EA continued to demonstrate some of its less-groundbreaking non-sports titles. The Need for Speed “reboot” looks like just about every other Need for Speed game previously released, and brings back the consistently awful full-motion video sequences from earlier games. Gameplay looks fun, but not game-changing in any way. The Old Republic, meanwhile, showed a trailer for a plot-heavy expansion pack that fans of Knights of the Old Republic would love to experience, if it weren’t tied to a subscription-based MMO that is at cross-purposes with storytelling.
Things took a brief turn for the quirky with Unravel, a visually dazzling and inventive 2D platformer about a yarn creation, and Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, which looked a lot like GW 1, but with a co-op mode and an emphasis on zombie-inspired locations. They promised a solo-mode for the latter, as well, which was a nice surprise.
And then there were sports. About 40 minutes of them, with little to no real information. Sure, you’ll have more control over ball-handling and passing in Madden and FIFA than ever before, but they say that every year, and the difference is usually negligible. They stretched out these announcements with an insufferable segment where they brought out FIFA legend Pele to interview him, in his extremely heavy accent. This went on for more than 5 minutes, which is more time than was devoted to almost any games at the conference and an absolute eternity for anybody watching.
Even worse, during the FIFA segment, they put up onscreen graphics saying things like “UP NEXT: MIRROR’S EDGE” or “IN 15 MINUTES: STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT.” But in the case of Mirror’s Edge, they barely delivered. There were about 2 minutes showing footage of the game, the majority of which was CGI. Then, when it was over, they went BACK TO SPORTS and showed off more Madden features! It was infuriating.
Finally, we got to the end when they showed off the most anticipated 2015 game on display: Star Wars Battlefront. At least this segment delivered. The demo was perfectly paced, starting in the narrow halls of the Rebel Alliance’s Hoth base, then fanning out into the massive battlefield in front of them. The graphics are spectacular, especially for a game running on the Playstation 4, and I have rarely seen a title replicate the experience of its source material so perfectly. As cliche as it may sound, it gave the experience of actually being a part of The Empire Strikes Back, and the fact that every single character on-screen could be controlled by a human player online was breathtaking.
If only the rest of the conference could have been as exciting. Oh well. At least hardcore Pele fans got something out of it, and the rest of the world got The Hoop Gawd.
Other games mentioned:
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour
NHL 16
NBA Live
Square Enix
And finally, we come to Square Enix, the last conference of E3 and the first E3 conference for the studio. It was an unmitigated disaster. Having never planned anything like this before, the Square Enix team completely misunderstood the point of a conference and proceeded to tell, rather than show. Again and again we had team members ramble on about the great features of their games, with no footage to back it up. When there WAS footage, it was almost always the exact same thing that had been shown in previous conferences. Yes, Square Enix, the Final Fantasy VII trailer blew everybody’s mind at Sony’s conference, but we already saw that yesterday. The World of Final Fantasy didn’t shock anybody when it was revealed at Sony’s conference, and it was even less interesting a second time. The Tomb Raider trailer they showed off was so ubiquitous already that Twitch was playing it before the Square-Enix conference as a pre-show teaser for the actual conference.
Maybe some of this disappointment could have been alleviated had Square Enix scheduled their conference BEFORE the other guys, but it wouldn’t have helped the rest. At an hour and twenty minutes in length, Square Enix excelled in showing brief videos of titles and then failing to explain what they were or why we should be interested. Take Lara Croft Go, a mobile Tomb Raider app. They referred to it as “turn based,” but only showed two screens in which Lara pulled a lever and then ran. There was no indication as to how “turns” would work in this context. The same goes with the Final Fantasy Portal App, which I can’t explain because I don’t understand it, and why we should be excited for new installments in the Star Ocean and Nier franchises. Both are niche-at-best (especially Nier), yet Square Enix presented them as if they were universally beloved series’ which we were all chopping at the bit to get more of.
But perhaps the most baffling moment of all came with the reveal of Project Setsuna. The game, which is being developed by the simultaneously-announced Tokyo RPG Factory, is a new RPG property. This is literally all that they announced, along with three pieces of relatively generic concept art. Somehow this announcement droned on and on, yet there was nothing at all to show. Just the idea of an RPG existing. It was completely dumbfounding.
There was one diamond in the rough here: the first gameplay footage of Kingdom Hearts III. The combat looks as fun as ever, and the introduction of the keyblade transformations should mix things up in interesting ways. That being said, the game still looks to be in early development, despite supposedly being in the works for years. A brief intro showed that Disney was heavily invested in the project and that the Tangled property would be in the game, but aside from some summon animations, no Disney elements showed up in the demo. The combat took place in a generic mountain range, and the “narrative” portion was just two characters sitting around, talking about keyblade wars and light vs. darkness while playing chess. It all points to a game that simply doesn’t have much to show yet, which makes sense considering the director was heading up Final Fantasy Versus-XIII for roughly a decade before formally moving onto Kingdom Hearts.
Other games in the conference:
Hitman
Kingdom Hearts Unchained
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Wrap-Up
So, that was E3 in a nutshell! Lots of announcements, lots of promises, lots of surprises, and lots of confusion. I would say that the highs were higher than usual this year, and the lows were lower than usual, but there were some clear “winners.”
As most people seem to agree, Sony had the most exciting conference. The Last Guardian and a Final Fantasy VII remake alone are gaming trump cards, so to be able to reveal both of them in the same conference is quite impressive. Meanwhile, Microsoft showed off a stronger 2015 exclusive lineup and surprised its audience with the backwards compatibility announcement. Both seem to give the Xbox One an advantage for this calendar year, but are somewhat tempered by the underwhelming showing for the new Halo and the fact that their backwards compatibility is severely limited. Nintendo, on the other hand, failed to give anybody who didn’t own a Wii U a compelling reason to do so, and withheld updates on major titles that had already been revealed in previous Digital Directs (*cough* Zelda *cough*)
As for the publishers, this was Bethesda’s year. Despite having never hosted an E3 conference before, they completely understood what they needed to do and floored their audience with both the expected (Fallout 4) and the unexpected (Doom). Square Enix simultaneously failed utterly with their first conference, while Ubisoft disappointed slightly and EA focused on sports to an absurd degree.
If this year’s E3 proved anything, it was that the relative dearth of 2015 games was only temporary. This console generation is still just beginning, and the best is yet to come.