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E3 2016 Press Confrences - A Black Falcon - 13th June 2016
So, E3 may be smaller than last year, with many major publisher either gone or significantly scaling back their appearances, Nintendo included of course, there is still an E3, and there are still some exciting things for sure.
So, so far I haven't seen the PC Gaming show yet but I'll post again once I watch it. For now I'll cover Bethesda, EA, Sony, and Ubisoft, since I watched those live, and Microsoft, which I just watched while posting this. All four have lots of first or third person shooting games, the kinds of games I rarely care about much or play often. Some things were of interest, though.
One of the most noteworthy things here is a serious absence of actual surprise announcements. Part of that is that many conferences had serious leaks of the more interesting parts, but that's not all;' nobody seems to want to announce many actual new surprise games, unlike last year which was full of surprises. It's unfortunate. There were some new announcements, but not on the level of last year.
EA - EA and Bethesda had their conferences on Sunday. EA's not at the show, but they have an event nearby. Their conference was Sunday afternoon, the first of the show. This conference was about an hour long, though it was followed by an hour-plus Battlefield 1 stream showing off that title. Mass Effect Andromeda could be good, but this teaser showed almost nothing beyond that the default/cover character will be a female this time, instead of male (on the box and ads) Shepard of ME1-3. They also showed a potentially interesting indie 3d adventure/platformer thing from Europe called Fe, I do want to see more of that one. They also had a segment on their Star Wars games, including a mobile game, new content for the MMO and Battlefront, and a very short teaser of something for Amy Hennig (Legacy of Kain)'s upcoming original, not movie-based Star Wars game. I haven't played her games so I'm not excited for this specifically, but I do want to see more Star Wars games, so it's good they're doing something. They also showed FIFA and Madden of course, and Titanfall 2, which now will have a single player campaign and will be on PS4 as well as Xbox One and PC. I doubt I'll play it though.
As for Battlefield 1, it looks like a standard Battlefield game wit ha World War 1 skin on it. Considering how seriously a lot of people in Europe still take WW1, and how different trench warfare is from what you find in a modern online shooter, I was interested to see if this game would be different from past Battlefields, but... nope, it's just more Battlefield. I remember finding the original BF1942 demo kind of fun, but haven't played anything else in the franchise since. Also, apparently the list of playable nations is out... and it's the US, UK, and Italy v. Germany, Austra-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. What the heck? The core of that war was the Germany-France rivalry. The biggest front was that between France and Germany, and the best-known part of the war took part in France, fought by French soldiers first. The US and UK troops were there too, but France bore the brunt of it... and they're not in the game. I presume there'll be DLC, but still, that's a really bad decision.
Overall though, it's a very EA conference: it was okay, but not great. Disappointingly they didn't have any racing games to show. No Need for Speed this year? Too bad, those games are fun. And yeah, no big new surprise announcements.
Bethesda - Bethesda is, of course, one of my least favorite of the major publishers. Their owner ZeniMax are horrible, and Bethesda itself's Elder Scrolls games have never interested me. However, Arkane and id do make games that interest me, and both of those showed stuff here. The main headliner at this show is Dishonored 2. The first Dishonored is a good Thief-style game, apart from its "if you killed many people you get an awful ending but there are few rewards for not killing people" design. We'll see how the new game handles that element, but everything they showed looked pretty good. The choice to let you play as a male or female character's a nice addition too. I'm definitely interested. Beyond that, Bethesda also announced Quake Champions, a new Quake arena shooter which has some kind heroes & skills element, though it's supposedly a traditional shooter. It's got a mediocre co-developer working on it, and they showed no gameplay, so we'll see. They also showed some Elder Scrolls stuff, including a graphically enhanced PS4/X1 remake of Skyrim, new content for the MMO (with an overly enthusiastic person in the audience during this segment) and a card game, surely inspired by Heartstone's success. There was also a bit with some new DLC and stuff coming to Fallout 4. And of course they talked a bit about stuff coming to DOOM, and some VR things that probably aren't actually full games. As for anything new... Quake Champions is it, and we know very little about the game. So yeah, there was some good stuff here, but sorry, I dislike Bethesda regardless.
Ubisoft - Ubisoft's conference was Monday afternoon. This two-hour conference was the longest one of the show, I believe, so it's Ubi's longest yet, while Sony's conference, usually the longest, was much shorter than usual. EA moving to Sunday allowed Ubisoft to extend theirs, and they did. Ubisoft's conferences are usually among the most entertaining of the show, and that was true again this year. Aisha Tyler hosted for the fifth year in a row, and she said some interesting stuff as usual... watch the show. The show started with a dance number advertising the next Just Dance game, too. Beyond that, though, a lot of the show was taken up with open-world modern-military shooters, including Tom Clancy stuff and such. They did show other things too, though, thankfully. There's a new '90s cartoon show-themed Trials game and that trailer was fantastic, it's perfect for any of us who remember '90s advertising. The Trials games are fun stuff, too. Ubisoft also had a VR segment, covering a cartoon-ish flying game Eagle's Flight for Oculus which looks decently good and a Star Trek VR game. The Star Trek game had LeVar Burton there to say how much he liked it, and he's quite good at that and made it sound good, whether or not it actually is. Will it be? Who knows, we'll see... but Star Trek's gaming history is oddly mediocre, so I'm not expecting something incredible. Still I'm sure it'd be neat.
They also showed the medieval action game For Honor again, with its intense bearded producer. The game looks good, with some Dynasty Warriors influences but with much more challenging combat. You have left, right, or overhead attacks, and need to attack and block to defeat tougher enemies. The game is a war between Vikings, Knights, and Samurai, in a ruined world where they are fighting for what remains. Now, normal enemies are easy to kill, as usual in this kind of game... and that's fun, but is quite unrealistic. Still, the game does look interesting. It releases early next year. They also announced a sequel to last years' popular little 3d platformer Grow Home, titled Grow Up. It sounds like more of that, with a much bigger world. Maybe there'll be more to do also? It looks good, and it was great to see at least one cartoony game in this lineup even if Rayman is still sadly absent. There was also a gameplay-free trailer for some upcoming The Division content... whatever. And last, they announced an actual new game... an open-world extreme sports game set in the mountains in France, with winggliding, skiing, snowboarding, and some more. I'm no open world game fan, of course, but it was exciting to see Ubisoft announce something like this -- just before they announced it I was thinking 'it's too bad Ubi hasn't shown any racing games, they make some good ones... but this'll probably be another shooter'... and then it was this! So yeah, that was pretty cool. And the game does look quite good. I'm sure I'd like it. Overall Ubisoft's show was long
Sony - Sony's shows in the past are usually overly long and kind of boring, but they made their show shorter and more gameplay-focused, with very few parts with someone on stage talking. That's alright, but a little bit of explanation for some of these might have been good. They also showed no indie stuff at all. They started with the big reveal, though it'd leaked: the new God of War. This time it's Viking-themed. The new protagonist looks like Kratos with a beard and somewhat Viking clothing, so he's not as different as you might expect, but the tone and gameplay look different -- the pacing, combat, and exploration don't look like old God of War, there seem to be Dark Souls elements, and more. It could be good, though I hope the story isn't as terrible as the old ones. The trailer leads you to believe that it might be open-world, but apparently it isn't. I'm quite fine with that of course. After that they show a new post-apocalyptic-with-zombies shooter, Days Gone, that looked decent in the first story-only trailer but totally uninteresting once they actually showed the gameplay; more of the good-looking action-adventure game Horizon: Zero Dawn. Sony also revealed the new Crash Bandicoot project: a remaster collection of the original three PS1 games, and he'll be in Skylanders this year. Yes, there isn't a new Crash game, it's only a remake collection. Blah. No gameeplay is shown either, only the announcement.
As with many publishers, Sony showed a bit of VR stuff too, though it's not clear which are actually full games and which are just 'VR experiences' and the like. Resident Evil 7 was announced, is it all VR? Not sure. Looks more first-person and horror this time. Sony also showed a Spiderman game which may be exclusive? I don't know. The Last Guardian also has a short appearance, and will apparently release later this year. It does look good, but the long delay... well, we'll see. And the only other Japanese game shown, if it is a game, is Death Stranding, an engine test ... thing ... for Hideo Kojima's next game, which Sony is bankrolling. This is a really weird video I won't try to explain that only Kojima could have come up with, though I've never gotten into his games of course. Also apparently he hasn't even chosen an engine for the game for sure yet, much less gotten far with the design, so it's quite a ways off. Sony also showed a Call of Duty trailer. It's gone sci-fi this time, and you have a spaceship and stuff... but it's mostly CoD, so I don't care. Sony didn't have a reveal at the end, either, the conference just ended. There was no mention of the PS4 Neo, even though the system is supposed to release by mid next year, and not as much PS VR as you might expect. So yeah... meh. Sony showed some good stuff, but some games could have used more shown and this was a AAA-games-only conference, unfortunately. It was okay but not one of Sony's best conferences.
As for Microsoft, I've been watching their show while writing this. It's a solid show, and I really like the new PC push, to have the first-party titles also release on PC with cross-save, some cross-platform multiplayer, and more. MS's PC support has been poor ever since they moved over to Xbox, so here's hoping this time they actually care... we'll see. MS showed a lot of games. Recore looks like it's actually a third-person action game... huh. Could be okay I guess? I'd need to see more, the trailer is short. They also cover Minecraft, showing cross-platform multiplayer between an iPad and a Surface... and also John Carmack on an Oculus. Yes, Carmack is here, playing Minecraft. Huh. I would not have guessed that. Amusing stuff. The custom Xbox One controller thing sounds pretty cool too, that'd be great. Inside, the new game from the developers of Limbo, could be good as well, if it's as good as the first one.
They also have an indie roll, which is welcome to see given Sony didn't bother. Most of the games I'd like most in these conferences are probably in this indie roll -- it includes Yooka-Laylee, among others. MS also had on-stage Final Fantasy XV and Tekken 7 demos, for some Japanese games. Akuma is in Tekken 7, though Tekken v. Street Fighter is still dead apparently. I don't like Tekken, though, so whatever. Dead Rising 4 is shown too. If you are going to do that super overdone zombies thing, at least make it ridiculous like this, instead of the far too serious Days Gone. Scalebound is at the MS conference as well. It's about a guy and his dragon, third-person fantasy action game. It could be like fun stuff, though the protagonist is annoyingly cocky. The game has great graphics, but the gameplay looks pretty average. Maybe it'll be better than it looks here, though? It is a Mikami game, but... we'll see. Forza Horizon 3 was also announced, with a Australian setting this time. I don't care for those games though, they're a bit too simmish... sure, Horizon is less simmish than Forza, but it's still a bit tricky to drive, you spin out somewhat easily.
And from Rare, they show Sea of Thieves, Rare's first-person pirate-themed online game. The art design is fantastic, really nice cartoony stuff. The game looks great visually A third-person view option would be good, it'd be nice to be able to see your characters. As for the game though, it's an online game/MMO for sure. The gameplay video has some teams of people, and they sound like real people and not the ridiculous scripted "game speak" of Ubisoft conferences, which is cool. You and your team run a pirate ship, exploring around, fighting other players, and such. I doubt it's a game I'd play a lot of, but you never know? I do like fantasy pirate settings, they're of ten great fun stuff. The online MMO team focused element, though, that's never been a thing I've liked. But who knows. MS also showed State of Decay 2, which is a sequel to some kind of post-apocalyptic zombie game I don't recall ever hearing about before. Seriously, aren't there enough zombie games? This has some good press apparently, but still. MS showed Titanfall 2 as well, though it's multiplatform now. Halo Wars 2 interests me much more, though -- this is a sequel to that Xbox 360-exclusive RTS Halo Wars, this time developed by The Creative Assembly instead of now-dead Ensemble. It's nice to see another one of these, but seriously, RTSes are better on PC, not console. This game will be on PC as well thankfully, but will it be hamstrung by having to work on console as well, as some games are?
And unlike Sony, MS did at least show a LITTLE bit of what they're thinking about for their next console. The next system, codenamed "Scorpio", is actually mentioned! They mention the 6 teraflop power, they show some circuit boards, talk about how it'll have 4k gaming support -- this is what all that power is for, 4K and VR first. It's a good video talking about the more powerful system they'll be releasing, and why they're releasing a new system so soon. Todd Howard says that Fallout 4 VR will be on the system with "the framerate and resolution we expect". Huh. They also say that games will also work on the original Xbox One, though, so will games be able to make full use of its significantly greater additional power? I have to imagine they eventually will, but at the conference they say things will be dual-compatible. They don't show the box, but there is an outlined shadow of a probably-large box, the opposite of the small (and $299) new Xbox One S. [After the conference, we learned that the S will be $299 only for the 500GB model, while 1TB will be $349 and 2TB will be limited-release and $399. And those custom-color-and-word controllers will be $80 to $90. So yeah, they didn't mention negatives like these at the show.]
Overall, right now I'd say MS had the best conference this year, followed by Ubisoft, with the others trailing. Microsoft's conference was good, probably their best so far that I've seen. And after seeing MS actually talk about "Scorpio", Sony still said absolutely nothing about the PS Neo, disappointingly. Nintendo of course has promised to also say nothing about their system releasing next year. And on that note, it is interesting to see how short this generation has turned out to be, before everyone releases more powerful hardware... sure, for now they're saying games will be backwards compatible and that is good, you're heading towards a more PC-like future for consoles here, and this will make things confusing in the future, once you have to say "games work on the third model but not the fourth" or what have you, but isn't that harder with the new "we don't put full new numbers on each system" world? I know it works for Apple, but Apple doesn't actually care about games.
But anyway, it's been an interesting conference so far. MS showing some details of the Scorpio pushes them on the top so far, but I'm really missing Nintendo; their choice to not show much here at E3, so far as we know, is disappointing. Not saying anything about a console coming so soon is a somewhat odd choice. It shows that either they think that the NX won't match up to the Scorpio and PS VR and such and they're still changing things about it, or they just don't think E3 means as much as it used to and want to show it later when no one else is getting attention... but they'd get more now than later, I think, so it does make me wonder if something isn't ready. Of course this applies to Sony as well, but at least they said a bit about the PSVR here, another piece of hardware releasing later this year. So yeah, I really hope that Zelda is great, both because it's Nintendo's main focus, and because I really love that series. (I will say, though, I'm not convinced that it'll have a playable female character. I'd love for that to be true, but Nintendo has been so tone-deaf or backwards on gender issues far too many times before for me to believe that they'd do this until I actually see it. So I'll hope for it, but won't really expect it. And of course I really hope the game is great and recognizably Zelda in key ways, and not just some Zelda open-world game...
E3 2016 Press Confrences - A Black Falcon - 15th June 2016
So, Nintendo, Nintendo... well, beyond their awful sexism in Zelda, I have more to say about their E3 showing this year.
Now, this E3 is, by all accounts, smaller than any previous full-scale E3. One hall is very empty, the other has very wide aisles, there seem to be fewer people around in general, and such -- it's just a much smaller thing. Nintendo at least still has a booth, unlike some publishers, but like many they scaled back their presence -- they have no press conference, no other event like the tournaments of the past two years, and only one game playable on the show floor, Zelda. So, Nintendo scaling things back is part of a trend, not just something they are doing on their own. I understand that E3 is expensive to be at, and in these days of the internet, things like store buyers going to conventions like this to see what to purchase for their chain aren't as prevalent as they used to be. That makes sense.
However, the press conference and announcements side of E3 is not only for that audience, it's also for gamers. And by showing so little this E3, having no press conference or E3 Direct, and having no stage event at all, it makes E3 feel kind of empty in a way it wasn't before. I really miss Nintendo having E3 conferences, events like the last two years, and such. Either Nintendo is being too quiet at a time when they probably should be announcing something, or they maybe don't know what they should be doing. It could just be that like Sony, they want to follow the Apple model and only announce their new product right before it announces, instead of long before as everyone used to do. That's frustrating, though, particularly for a thing as nebulous as the NX. What is it, exactly? We still don't know! For something that's supposed to release next spring, I feel like we SHOULD know by now what it is. So yes, I strongly prefer Microsoft's approach, announcing a system now that won't release until late 2017, over Sony and Nintendo not saying much about systems supposed to release well before that.
And on the note of the Playstation 4 Neo and the Xbox One "Project Scorpio", Nintendo announced the NX before either of those. At the time, the idea seems to have been to have a system on par with or maybe a bit more powerful than the PS4. However, now that both competitors are abandoning the old console generation model in favor of shorter cycles between platforms and upgraded systems instead of full new platforms. Sony and MS are currently both promising that games for the new system will also work on their current one, as if all Game Boy Color games were black (dual-mode) carts instead of clear (GBC-only) ones. I expect this to change eventually, as the install bases for the new models get larger and developers want to push them more, but that's a good thing to say right now.
So the problem is, what does Nintendo do in response to this? They're almost certainly releasing an all-new platform, instead of a fourth upgrade of the Gamecube hardware, but will they upgrade the NX's hardware versus the original supposed plans in response to Sony and MS, if we presume that it wasn't originally planned as being anywhere near Scorpio's level of power? And there have been rumors about Nintendo thinking about VR, so how much power would be needed to do that? There are a lot of tough questions here, of price versus performance, of how much power you need to attract at least SOME third parties if that is even possible for Nintendo anymore, if you can come up with some magic Wii-like hook to sell a hundred million systems again (an unlikely but not impossible dream), and such. Ever since the Gamecube failed to sell, Nintendo has stuck with systems that are about a generation behind in hardware power. That worked great the first time, but quite badly the second. Now that we know Sony and MS are upgrading early, what does Nintendo do? Nintendo's silence here is frustrating and raises questions. Have they decided, and don't want to talk about it yet for some reason -- because they think the hardcore won't like their answer, because they think Sony or MS will get more attention here at E3, or what have you -- or, worse, have they not decided yet? Because by being so silent about the NX, again, I can't help but wonder about if Nintendo really knows what to do. The incredibly limited amount of NX information they have released leaves all these questions out there, and I'm not the only one asking them. What is Nintendo's plan? Can they come up with something that will reverse their declining sales and sell well again? Personally, I do think that they need to at least get closer to the power of the other upcoming consoles; as successful as the Wii was, I've always been a bit disappointed by how far behind the other consoles of its generation it is. Thanks to motion controls that didn't hurt the Wii, but I do think it hurt the Wii U, and it'd hurt the NX too unless they have some amazing new hook... but do you want to put everything on that hook and not enough into competitive hardware, again, as they did with the Wii U? Will they learn from their mistakes?
On that note, after Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS was very harshly criticized for all regular attacks being limited-use stickers, bad boss fights, way too many Toads, no partners, and no levels, the new Paper Mario game, Paper Mario: Color Splash for the Wii U... does all of those things again, it seems. Nintendo, stubborn to a fault as always, strikes again. Sometimes this is great, when they stick to great gameplay ideas, continue making retail 2d and 2.5d platformers, and more, but other times it's not great. Which way will it be this time?
E3 2016 Press Confrences - A Black Falcon - 16th June 2016
So, going by some comments of Reggie's, it sounds like Nintendo is again going to release hardware a generation behind the competitions', ensuring they continue to get almost no third-party support and putting all the focus on the first-party software and whatever the system's gimmick is. I very much doubt this is a good move, but it's not surprising given that it's what they have done for a decade now. Too bad though, it'd be awesome to see a Nintendo console with competitive hardware again...
The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhl5sk9i6Mk&feature=youtu.be
E3 2016 Press Confrences - A Black Falcon - 22nd June 2016
Here's myenhanced rewrite of all this, posted on my site: http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=288#Nintendo%27s%20E3%20Overall%20and%20NX%20Speculation
The biggest change is the NX section, rewriting things to reflect the likelihood of Nintendo not enhanching the NX in response to Scorpio and PS4 Neo. In short, I am worried, because sticking with dated hardware does lead to Nintendo games looking better than ever, but also continues to give third parties too-good excuses for passing on Nintendo ports of their games... and yes, most of those games wouldn't come over anyway, but there are surely some key losses. But to be fair competitive hardware would be very expensive, and that's a big risk for Nintendo as well. These are challenging times for this industry, with the growth of smartphone games peeling so many casuals away from console and handheld gaming at a time when development costs just continue to skyrocket! But even so, I really would love to see Nintendo make a power-competitive system again. Ah well, "Nintendo's most powerful system ever" will have to do... and I hope it's enough to make the NX succeed.