18th June 2018, 9:49 PM
... So yeah, much delayed here are my thoughts on the other conferences. I did watch them all, I just didn't post anything... but anyway.
So on the subject of Sony, their weird conference didn't work well. For anyone who hasn't watched it, they start out with a segment focusing on The Last of Us 2, in a room that looks like a church from the game. Then after showing that game -- it looks quite brutal and unpleasant, like the first game -- they ... spent 20 minutes moving the whole audience from that room into a normal theater for the rest of the presentation. During this time you had to watch a panel of talking heads talk, like a post-show show that you don't want to watch, but have to because it's in the middle of the show. There were also a few short trailers in between, but for the most part this split-conference idea was really annoying to watch.
Oh, and Sony had several far-too-long musical numbers during their conference, too. And even including the twenty minute break, it was only an hour and ten minutes long. So yeah, Sony didn't have much to show. They said going in that they were going to focus on four games, and that's what they did: they focused on four games, all third-person action-adventure games that are probably single-player focused. Specifically, TLOU 2, Spiderman, Death Stranding, and Ghosts of Tsushima. Of the four, TLOU 2 looks like a good game but not one I probably ever would want to play. Death Stranding is still really weird and unexplained, but I've never been a Kojima fan so I don't care much anyway. What they did show here of the actual gameplay, and not story, didn't seem all that thrilling... there are invisible monsters and walking around carrying things, or something. Spiderman looked, well, the same as every other Spiderman game made in the past fifteen years or so. I haven't played any Spiderman games made after the '90s, and never cared much about the character anyway, so this isn't a draw for me at all. The game looks like a boring beat 'em up with probably a lot of QTEs and nothing of any particular interest. I have no idea why some people keep praising it so much... Lastly however, Ghosts of Tsushima does look pretty cool, and is the game Sony showed I had the most interest in playing, unless Dreams actually ends up being good; we'll have to see on that one. Tsushima looks like a good action game and has fantastic graphics. I hope the gameplay lives up to the visuals.
Ubisoft's conference was thankfully better. I've thought for several years now that Ubi has the best of the third-party conferences, and that was again true. Ubisoft puts on a good show, with musical numbers that are actually entertaining (unlike Sony), good developer segments on the stage (unlike EA), and showing a nice variety of games and genres (again unlike Sony, or very Smash-focused Nintendo). Ubisoft didn't make any new announcements at the show other than a new Trials game, which is kind of too bad, but what they showed of their previously-known games were good. Beyond Good & Evil 2 has another trailer. It's a great trailer, but there was zero gameplay here, and barely even a hint of what the gameplay even might be, so the game looks like it's still a long way off. Even though I was definitely not one of the first games' biggest fans, BG&E2 interests me a lot and I hope it's great. I am interested in playing it, anyway.
As for the rest of Ubi's stuff, without looking up a list of the rest of the games they showed, I know they showed The Division 2, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Mario & Rabbids Kingdom Battle Donkey Kong DLC (with a musical number conducted by Grant Kirkhope!), the new Trials game, a fourth faction which is being added to For Honor, and more. It was a solid showing in every way other than surprise announcements.
Now, last and least, the first conference of last Monday was a prerecorded half hour video from Square-Enix, who announced almost nothing and mostly just showed games which also appeared in other conferences. It made their own one feel pretty irrelevant for sure. What here was actually interesting and only shown here? I guess they did announce a new game called Babylon's Fall, but the trailer was only CG and had no gameplay details, so that's not saying much yet. Square's conference was pretty insubstantial.
As for Nintendo, I made a separate thread for that of course, but they focused almost exclusively on Smash. There were a few other games shown (Super Mario Party, Daemon x Machina, a few indie games), but not many. That's fine, but the gaming press, and most gamers, decided that Microsoft won this E3 because Sony kind of disappointed, particularly in their presentation, and Nintendo didn't show enough games for core audiences who don't care about Smash. That consensus makes sense, though MS's very Gears/Forza/Halo-focused show didn't exactly hugely excite me, for sure. I'm not sure who was best, really...
But really, the story of this E3 was that it was a pretty bad one for surprise new game announcements -- there were very few of these of note -- but a good one for seeing more gameplay details about previously known titles. And that's okay, it's always great to see more about upcoming games.
So on the subject of Sony, their weird conference didn't work well. For anyone who hasn't watched it, they start out with a segment focusing on The Last of Us 2, in a room that looks like a church from the game. Then after showing that game -- it looks quite brutal and unpleasant, like the first game -- they ... spent 20 minutes moving the whole audience from that room into a normal theater for the rest of the presentation. During this time you had to watch a panel of talking heads talk, like a post-show show that you don't want to watch, but have to because it's in the middle of the show. There were also a few short trailers in between, but for the most part this split-conference idea was really annoying to watch.
Oh, and Sony had several far-too-long musical numbers during their conference, too. And even including the twenty minute break, it was only an hour and ten minutes long. So yeah, Sony didn't have much to show. They said going in that they were going to focus on four games, and that's what they did: they focused on four games, all third-person action-adventure games that are probably single-player focused. Specifically, TLOU 2, Spiderman, Death Stranding, and Ghosts of Tsushima. Of the four, TLOU 2 looks like a good game but not one I probably ever would want to play. Death Stranding is still really weird and unexplained, but I've never been a Kojima fan so I don't care much anyway. What they did show here of the actual gameplay, and not story, didn't seem all that thrilling... there are invisible monsters and walking around carrying things, or something. Spiderman looked, well, the same as every other Spiderman game made in the past fifteen years or so. I haven't played any Spiderman games made after the '90s, and never cared much about the character anyway, so this isn't a draw for me at all. The game looks like a boring beat 'em up with probably a lot of QTEs and nothing of any particular interest. I have no idea why some people keep praising it so much... Lastly however, Ghosts of Tsushima does look pretty cool, and is the game Sony showed I had the most interest in playing, unless Dreams actually ends up being good; we'll have to see on that one. Tsushima looks like a good action game and has fantastic graphics. I hope the gameplay lives up to the visuals.
Ubisoft's conference was thankfully better. I've thought for several years now that Ubi has the best of the third-party conferences, and that was again true. Ubisoft puts on a good show, with musical numbers that are actually entertaining (unlike Sony), good developer segments on the stage (unlike EA), and showing a nice variety of games and genres (again unlike Sony, or very Smash-focused Nintendo). Ubisoft didn't make any new announcements at the show other than a new Trials game, which is kind of too bad, but what they showed of their previously-known games were good. Beyond Good & Evil 2 has another trailer. It's a great trailer, but there was zero gameplay here, and barely even a hint of what the gameplay even might be, so the game looks like it's still a long way off. Even though I was definitely not one of the first games' biggest fans, BG&E2 interests me a lot and I hope it's great. I am interested in playing it, anyway.
As for the rest of Ubi's stuff, without looking up a list of the rest of the games they showed, I know they showed The Division 2, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Mario & Rabbids Kingdom Battle Donkey Kong DLC (with a musical number conducted by Grant Kirkhope!), the new Trials game, a fourth faction which is being added to For Honor, and more. It was a solid showing in every way other than surprise announcements.
Now, last and least, the first conference of last Monday was a prerecorded half hour video from Square-Enix, who announced almost nothing and mostly just showed games which also appeared in other conferences. It made their own one feel pretty irrelevant for sure. What here was actually interesting and only shown here? I guess they did announce a new game called Babylon's Fall, but the trailer was only CG and had no gameplay details, so that's not saying much yet. Square's conference was pretty insubstantial.
As for Nintendo, I made a separate thread for that of course, but they focused almost exclusively on Smash. There were a few other games shown (Super Mario Party, Daemon x Machina, a few indie games), but not many. That's fine, but the gaming press, and most gamers, decided that Microsoft won this E3 because Sony kind of disappointed, particularly in their presentation, and Nintendo didn't show enough games for core audiences who don't care about Smash. That consensus makes sense, though MS's very Gears/Forza/Halo-focused show didn't exactly hugely excite me, for sure. I'm not sure who was best, really...
But really, the story of this E3 was that it was a pretty bad one for surprise new game announcements -- there were very few of these of note -- but a good one for seeing more gameplay details about previously known titles. And that's okay, it's always great to see more about upcoming games.