It’s E3 season, and there are a bunch of press conferences/prerecorded videos from various publishers and platforms to talk about! E3 is basically a huge hype machine, and I am here for pretty much all of it :D Here are my quickfire impressions in somewhat chronological order (of when I saw the press conference/prerecorded video).
Google Stadia - This might be how all gaming will work in the future, but I’m not sold on this streaming stuff at all. I like to own my games, and even digital downloads feel a bit iffy, but at least those are on my physical machine (plus, I do have a lot of those). Still, in this prerecorded video, Google reiterated the fact that all you really need to play games on Stadia is a Chrome browser (or a Chrome app on the Pixel phone) and a controller of some sort. They said you could buy individual games and play them without a Stadia Pro subscription (but why wouldn’t I just play them normally on my PC then?), but they also have a pre-order special that contains a 3-month subscription for you and a friend, Chromecast Ultra (so you can put Chrome on your TV), first dibs on a username, a limited-edition Stadia controller, and the full Destiny 2 bundle (including the next update Shadowkeep) for US$129.
However, even with a subscription, you would still need to buy games, so I’m very confused as to how this is going to work. The subscription service is like Playstation Plus: you get some free games, and deals on other games, but you still have to buy games, which, again, you won’t actually have because it will all be streaming.
They showed off a bunch of games that will be playable on Stadia at launch (including the big reveal of Baldur’s Gate III), but the one that looked the most interesting was something called Gylt, a horror puzzle-platformer that I initially thought was Little Nightmares 2. Hopefully, Gylt is not a Stadia exclusive and will show up on other platforms.
Interestingly, no launch date was mentioned, though a quick trip to the Stadia website told me the pre-order special would “ship in November 2019”, though I’m unsure if that means the actual platform, or just the physical items. It’s also currently available to only 14 countries (Singapore is not one of them).
You can see the full list of what games were shown at the Google Stadia show here.
EA - The EA Play press conference was weird. Instead of the usual hour or two-hour presser, it was divided into six half-hour segments, each focused on one game with some gameplay reveals, trailers, developer interviews, etc. The six games were: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Apex Legends, Battlefield V, FIFA 20, Madden NFL 20, and The Sims 4. The only game I really cared about was Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and they showed off about 15 minutes of gameplay footage that looked awesome (and Rogue One’s Saw Gerrera is in it!). I will likely play Battlefield V (which is getting a bunch of new multiplayer stuff), FIFA 20 (which has a new futsal/street mode which looks pretty interesting), and Madden NFL 20 (which gives some of the players superpowers almost, but it’s still a sim, not an arcade) at some point, but they’re basically more of the usual, so again, no real excitement (I’m not the target audience anyway, since I play these games single-player almost exclusively).
Conspicuously absent from the presser schedule was Anthem, which came out only in February and has been plagued by bugs, repetitive gameplay, and a dwindling player base. BioWare’s latest game was a certified flop, and its absence from EA Play wouldn’t have been a complete surprise, but they did devote like five minutes to it between FIFA 20 and Madden NFL 20. People were predicting EA would announce a major update, or that it would go free-to-play, or something to get more players on the servers and save the game from an early grave, but instead they just said something about how they were going to listen to players more and take their cues from them. I mean, the cue is make the game better, right?
Trevor Noah did show up to talk about FIFA 20 for like ten seconds, so that happened.
You can see the full list of what games were shown at EA Play here.
Microsoft - As the last major player left standing at E3 with a proper press conference (Nintendo has been doing their prerecorded Directs for ages now, and Sony bowed out of this E3 entirely), everyone expected Microsoft to go big.
And they kind of did? I don’t know, I haven’t owned an Xbox since the very first one like 15 years ago, so my viewing of the conference as a whole might be colored by that. However, they did show off a lot of games (over 60, I believe), and here are the ones I cared about in semi-order of when they were shown:
The Outer Worlds: This game was actually revealed at last year’s E3, but we got an extended gameplay trailer, and I am still super pumped for this game. It’s like Fallout mixed with Mass Effect mixed with Borderlands, and it’s by Oblivion, and I will be all over this.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: Microsoft showed off another trailer, and it’s still pretty exciting. There was a bit in this trailer where the main character takes over an AT-AT that wasn’t in the EA trailer, and that was pretty cool.
Blair Witch: So this is an interesting game to showcase. I knew it was a horror game because of the trailer, but Blair Witch hasn’t been a visible IP in like 20 years, so I was surprised to see it announced as such (I actually thought it was a new Outlast or Alan Wake game at first). Though when the trailer showed something hanging out in the corner of a dark cabin, I turned to the girl and said, “Blair Witch ruined people in the corner for me for all time,” and then the name of the game was announced. So I guess Blair Witch still has some cultural cache after all.
Cyberpunk 2077 and the incredibly adorable Keanu Reeves: Keanu Reeves is in the game, and he showed up in person to tell us the release date is 16 April 2020! Keanu was obviously having an awesome, and slightly awkward, time talking about the game, but there was one point where he said walking through Night City was “breathtaking”, and then someone in the audience shouted, “You’re breathtaking!” at him, and Keanu smiled his Keanu smile, and I couldn’t help but agree. Also, halfway through his spiel, he said “Cyberpunk” in such a weird way while doing a little bit of a lunge that I fell in love with him all over again. But when did Keanu have time to do mocap for this in between all his John Wick, Always Be My Maybe, and Bill & Ted work?
Spiritfarer: This game has an excellent art style, but the gameplay seems to be city building (but on a boat), which may not be for me. But still, it looks amazing, and I’ll keep my ear to the ground for this game and wait to find out exactly what kind of game this is.
RPG Time: The Legend of Wright: Speaking of excellent art styles, this game really does have a fantastic one. It looks like a high school kid’s homemade comics in their lined notebook. When you move to a new area (or cutscene or whatever), the pages flip and you’re in a new place. There are also some crafty elements a la Yoshi’s Crafted World, so I guess sometimes the gameplay jumps out of the homemade comic. It looks really cool, and I look forward to seeing more about it.
Psychonauts 2: This game has been in development for a long time, and it still doesn’t have a release date beyond sometime this year, but the first game is considered amazing by many (I have it, but haven’t played it yet). The real story here, however, is that Microsoft bought the studio that makes it, Double Fine. There was a funny bit where Tim Schafer came out and said he and his studio would do whatever Microsoft wanted, including helping on Halo and Forza stuff, and Microsoft’s Matt Booty (hee hee hee) told him to just keep making awesome games, to which the visibly ecstatic Schafer said, “Oh thank God.”
But yeah, another studio bought by Microsoft. After the four they got last year, they’re up to 13. They’re like the Disney of video games.
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga: Speaking of Disney video games (damn, my segues are getting pretty sweet!), a new LEGO Star Wars game! At first I thought it was just a repackage/remaster of previous LEGO Star Wars games, but no! This is a new one that will contain all nine movies in the mainline series. It is my hope that, beyond the nine main episodes, DLC will include stuff from Rogue One and Solo, and even Clone Wars and Rebels (the LEGO Clone Wars game was actually pretty good). Just put in all of the Star Wars!
12 Minutes: This game looks awesome! It’s like a Groundhog Day thriller in which a man tries to save his wife from another man who shows up at their door because of something in the woman’s past. And every time the husband screws up, the day starts over. And it has a pretty great top-down view so you’re detached from the situation, but not really. It’s great, trust me. It’s published by Annapurna Interactive, who also published What Remains of Edith Finch and Florence, two amazing games you all should play. So 12 Minutes is an instabuy in my house.
Forza Horizon 4: I don’t actually care about this game at all. It’s a ridiculously detailed and true-to-life racing sim, and these kinds of games just aren’t for me. But Microsoft decided to partner with LEGO to put LEGO cars in a ridiculously detailed and true-to-life racing sim, and I don’t even know. It’s weird, it’s fun, it’s wacky, and it makes no damn sense.
Elden Ring: The rumored George R.R. Martin/From Software collab is real, and it’s called Elden Ring! Besides the fact that Martin is doing literally anything besides writing the next A Song of Ice and Fire novel (I don’t blame him; if I could make tons of money being a consultant on TV shows and video games instead of writing, I would totally be doing that too), this game looks like another hard-as-nails From Software game that I will never play, but will thoroughly enjoy watching other people play... and die repeatedly.
Project Scarlett: A bunch of devs spouted a bunch of buzzwords and tech jargon about Microsoft’s next console (still codenamed Project Scarlett), and I really didn’t catch much of it. I know there’s an SSD in it, and some fancy pants processor that’ll make things run fast, but otherwise, I don’t know what this thing is. However, I do know it’ll be on sale in time for the holiday season next year, so there’s that.
There was a bunch of other stuff in this 1.5-hour-long conference (including an extended Gears of War 5 extended showcase that featured Billie Eilish’s “bury a friend”, three WWE wrestlers under the stage, and a Terminator), but I didn’t care about most of it. That said, the ever increasing awesomeness of Xbox’s Game Pass is making me want to get an Xbox One in the very near future, but maybe I should just wait until Project Scarlett drops next year? Dunno, we’ll see.
Also, CYBERPUNK!
You can see the full list of what games were shown at Microsoft’s show (including the adorable Keanu Reeves) here.
Bethesda - They got the Fallout 76 apology out of the way straight out of the gate. They will be adding human NPCs, dialogue trees, and proper quest lines (which is something everybody wanted from the very beginning) later this year, and a battle royale mode right now, and all of it for free (for those of you who already own Fallout 76). I still have no interest :)
What was a lot more interesting was the new game from The Evil Within developers Tango Gameworks, Ghostwire: Tokyo. It was introduced by the adorable and awkward creative director Nakamura Ikumi (who was almost as adorable and awkward as Keanu Reeves). She was awesome, and the game looks pretty awesome, especially as it is not survival horror :D
They showed off some more gameplay from Wolfenstein: Youngblood, the third game in the series coming out in late July. I still need to finish New Colossus before I get to Youngblood, though. You don’t play as BJ in this game, but his twin daughters who are trying to rescue him. You can play co-op, but I hate people, so I will continue to play by myself :)
And finally, Arkane has a new game called Deathloop that looks pretty sweet. It’s two assassins killing each other, but then coming back to life. There’s something about a time loop as well, and I’m not sure what it’s all about, but it looks cool, and Arkane did the Dishonored series and Prey, so I’ve got faith.
There was other stuff about Rage 2, Doom Eternal, and various mobile games, but I didn’t care too much :D
You can see the full list of what games were shown at the Bethesda presser here.
Devolver Digital - I used to make fun of the Devolver Digital sessions because they were always fucking nuts, and so didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the actual games they featured. But then this past year I bought eight of their games: Observation (PS4), Katana Zero (Switch), Pikuniku (Switch), Gris (Switch), The Messenger (Switch), Crossing Souls (PS4), The Red Strings Club (Switch), and Stories Untold (PC) (and I’m really interested in another four: Gato Roboto, Minit, Hotline Miami, and Hatoful Boyfriend). I’ve completely loved the ones I’ve played so far, so I definitely paid attention to the games this year.
Or at least, I tried to.
This thing was even weirder than usual, as they did a super fucked-up version of a Nintendo Direct (dubbed Devolver Directly). This is their third showing at E3, and they have continuity for these things. And it’s all very, very weird. It would be very hard to explain what exactly happened in this thing, you just gotta watch it.
I think they showed two new games, and some DLC for other stuff. The first new game was Devolver Bootleg, which seems to be a collection of bootleg versions of eight of their games. I’m not 100% sure how real this is, but it has a Steam page, so... at least 65% real? The other new game is a “reverse horror game” in which you play as the monster killing all the people. It’s called Carrion, and has a sweet 16-bit 2D art style. The DLC I was most interested in was some free DLC for The Messenger featuring a tropical setting.
And then it got even weirder with a possibly live “3rd or 4th pre pre show” after the show that was the maddest thing ever, and was honestly quite unwatchable. I wonder what these guys will do next year to outweird this year.
If you’re interested and want to watch the full Devolver Directly for yourself, you can do so here, if you dare.
PC Gaming Show - I don’t play a lot of PC games beyond point-and-click adventures and visual novels, but I like watching this show because they often have some really interesting games that are multiplatform, and some pretty sweet PC-only stuff that honestly gets me excited. So, here are the games that excited me of the slew of games they presented!
StarMancer: This is an isometric spaceship building sim in which you play as an AI trying to keep your humans alive. When you fail (i.e. all your humans die), you start over from your stock of genetic material and make new humans and start adding more to your spaceship. It looks pretty neat, but it might just be a better-looking Fallout Shelter. I’ll keep an eye on it.
Mosaic: This takes place in a dystopian future, but most of the game seems to take place in dreams (or nightmares, more likely), but it has a really nice art style. Also, it features a mobile game called BlipBlop in which you just press a button over and over to get more “blops”. This game is available in the real world, and it is hilarious (but it also gets old pretty fast).
Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy: This is a roguelike, and I don’t play roguelikes because I like to memorize the layout of a level/map, but the art style is so nice, I had to put it on here anyway. If roguelikes are your thing, then check this one out!
Shenmue III: Hey, the final Shenmue is finally coming out! ...maybe... it has been delayed once already. But probably! I actually haven’t played the first two (though they are available for PS4), but they are sort of the granddaddy of current open-world sandbox games, so they’re pretty important to video game history. If I do eventually play these games, I will play them on a console instead of PC.
Per Aspera: You play as an AI (it’s the year of AIs!) that is terraforming Mars so humans can live there. That’s it, really, but that was enough to get me excited.
CrisTales: This is a JRPG with a really interesting time mechanic. You can see the past, present, and future at the same time, on the same screen. It sounds awesome, and it looks pretty sweet too. I really hope this will be available on a console because I wouldn’t be able to play it on a PC.
Borderlands 3: I’m including this in my list mostly because it’s kind of weird that Gearbox decided to use this show to talk about their game instead of the Microsoft show (where they only showed a trailer). I suspect they would have preferred to be on Sony’s stage, but it was unavailable this year.
Telling Lies: This is another video watching game from the writer/director of Her Story, and it looks awesome. There are four characters to follow this time around, and watching the trailer for this reminded me that I really need to play Her Story already.
Genesis Noir: I don’t even know what to say about this game. It’s a noir story that takes place before, during, and after the big bang. Yeah. It sounds weird, but it looks amazing, and I super want to play it.
El Hijo: I’d seen this game before from a previous PC conference (thanks to YouTube channel Rock Paper Shotgun; incidentally, it’s the same show I first learned about Heaven’s Vault, which is pretty sweet game), so I was already excited about it. It’s a stealth game where you play as a kid trying to escape from the monks your mother left you with so you can find her again. It takes place in Mexico or southwest US, and it’s described as a spaghetti western. I am down for this game.
And that’s it. Like I said, there were a bunch of other games, but they didn’t interest me very much (except for Maneater, the shark RPG in which you eat all the things to get bigger and stronger, but that was originally shown last year, and the developer said the game might be ready before E3 2020, which means we might see it again next year :P ). You can find a full list of what was shown at the PC Gaming Show here.
Ubisoft - I think I made this exact joke last year, but with no Splinter Cell game and no Aisha Tyler, what even was the point of you, Ubi presser!
I kid.
There were actually some pretty interesting things, starting in the pre-show with some new free DLC for the game I think I have played the longest in my life, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: a Discovery Tour mode, in which you can learn about ancient Greece without worrying about having to fight things, and a Story Creator mode, in which you can create your own quests and share them online. That sounds pretty cool.
That segued into the Assassin’s Creed Symphony, who played a medley of various Assassin’s Creed themes. They’ll be going on a world tour this summer.
The first proper game they showed was Watch_Dogs: Legion, the next near future hacker game. This one will be set in London, and will have multiple playable characters that you can recruit from the various NPCs walking around the city. You can literally recruit any NPC in the city, and they will become a PC that you can use for missions. That’s insane. Of course, because you can recruit anybody, that means anybody can die, and they will stay dead. So I’m gonna have to keep my favorites safe (like Helen, the 70-year-old ex-assassin who runs like an old lady; she is hilarious). Finally, there is a wiseass AI which I assume will be the connecting character across the whole game (since all your human characters can die if you’re not careful). I am legit excited for this game.
Then the Sunny in Philadelphia guy who isn’t Charlie Day or Danny DeVito showed up to talk about his new TV show called Mythic Quest, which is about game development. The trailer wasn’t all that funny, but the show does have Abed from Community and F. Murray Abraham, so maybe it won’t be terrible? It’s gonna be on the Apple platform, though, so no one will watch it.
The Punisher himself showed up next. Jon Bernthal took the stage, along with his doggo Bam Bam (which apparently is the third most adorable person at E3, behind Keanu Reeves and Nakamura Ikumi) to introduce the new Tom Clancy game, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, which he is in. If you’ve ever played a Ghost Recon game, you’ll know what this is: a squad-based tactical shooter. It also has a Terminator tie-in for some reason? Gears 5 has one that also makes no sense.
Another Tom Clancy game was introduce. It’s called Elite Squad and features various characters from different Tom Clancy games: Ghost Recon, The Division, Rainbow Six, and even Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell (making this the only mention of Splinter Cell in the show, to the consternation of all). It is also a mobile game. It looks interesting, but it’s not the Sam Fisher game anybody wanted.
The Just Dance troupe came on next and totally killed it, like they always do. And they danced to a Blackpink song because K-Pop is literally everywhere now. I’ve never played a Just Dance game because while I love dancing, I am terrible at it, and any game that scores my dancing will just make me feel bad.
As Ubisoft neared the end of their presser, they announced UPlayPlus, a subscription service for every Ubisoft game and DLC, but only on PC. It’s US$14.99 a month, which seems like too high a price when Microsoft’s Game Pass is only five bucks more per month and has a ton more games from a ton more publishers (and other functionality that is pretty good). As one commentator put it, why would anyone want to play the same Ubisoft games over and over again?
The show ended it with a quick preview of Gods and Monsters, a game about mythological creatures by the team behind Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Yeah, I am so there. This was a really quick preview with cartoony art, so I look forward to seeing a lot more of this game very soon.
You can see the full list of what games were shown at the Ubisoft presser here.
Square Enix - Everyone came to the Square Enix show for two reason: Final Fantasy VII Remake and Marvel’s Avengers. And Squenix did not disappoint, though maybe the games did.
The show started with a huge FFVII Remake showcase showing off the combat system, which is very much not turn-based. It’s a real-time combat system very similar to Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XV, but there is some turn-based stuff. When a character’s ATB gauge fills up, the game goes into super slow-mo, allowing players to go through the menu to use special moves and items. Neither KH nor FFXV have that. So that’s really cool.
Also, they finally showed Tifa! Yay!
They’ve started calling this remake a “reimagining” as they’re remixing the story a fair amount, like having Sephiroth appear a lot earlier for example. They also revealed that this game will ultimately take up two full blu-ray discs, with the first disc taking place entirely in Midgar and coming out in 3 March 2020. The second disc will have the rest of the world (presumably), and will be coming out sometime later. I am super pumped for this game.
The rest of the show showcased a lot of older Squenix RPGs being remastered for current-gen systems, including a couple which had never been released in the west before (like Romancing SaGa 3). The most important game announced, however, was a Final Fantasy VIII remaster, which is finally coming out (after being roundly ignored by Squenix last year when all the other FF remasters were announced). Though they did announce a piece of DLC for Kingdom Hearts III, but I couldn’t parse what it was about. It kinda looked like multiplayer? I’m honestly not sure.
They also announced a racing game called Circuit Superstars, which I normally wouldn’t be at all interested in, but it’s created by Mexican developers in a new Mexican studio, so I will probably buy it just to support :)
They also announced a new shooter called Outriders by the creators of Bulletstorm. It looks pretty cool and takes place in an apocalyptic planet with a bunch of monsters, but I’m not sure if it’s an online thing only. If it isn’t, I’ll likely pick it up. If it is, then I will give it a pass.
And then the show ended with Marvel’s Avengers. Okay, I’ve got some issues with this, but let’s talk about the good stuff first. The voice cast is amazing, with Nolan North voicing Tony Stark and Troy Baker voicing Bruce Banner. The story is quite interesting, with a terrorist attack on the Avengers and SHIELD in San Francisco during what was supposed to be a celebration of all things Avengers. Captain America is apparently killed during this attack and the story then fast forwards some time to a broken Avengers team and a society that doesn’t trust them. And that’s the single-player campaign.
And now the bad stuff. The art is not very good. It looks like a PS3 game. I really hope that gets upgraded before the game comes in May next year.
And now for the really bad stuff. The game will have a multiplayer looter shooter component! I mean, not really a looter shooter, but they talked a lot about multiplayer and about content for the next few years, so it really sounds like an Anthem or Destiny-style game-as-a-service situation. I hope the single-player stuff is really, really robust, because if it’s going to be like Battlefront II, where the single-player campaign is really short and they’ve only included it so they could say they included it, I’m going to be very disappointed.
And that was Square Enix. This was their first press conference on a stage, I think. Previously they had only done pre-recorded things showing off various games, and I think they only did a stage show because Sony isn’t around, and Monday was traditionally Sony day. Good job overall :)
You can see the full list of what games were shown at the Square Enix show here.
Nintendo - And now for the last, and often my often favorite, show of E3, the Nintendo Direct.
It started strong by introducing the new Smash fighter as the Hero character from Dragon Quest XI. He will be available in Summer 2019 (which probably means July), and will have multiple alternate forms as different Hero characters from previous Dragon Quest games. Later in the show, they also introduced Banjo-Kazooie as the third DLC Smash fighter. They will be available in Fall 2019, and this is a character the Smash community has wanted for a long time. Banjo and Kazooie are a bear-bird symbiotic duo who used to belong to Nintendo before being sold to Microsoft (because corporate shenanigans), so a lot of people thought it was never going to happen. Good thing Nintendo and Microsoft have been getting real friendly recently.
After the reveal of the Hero as the new Smash fighter, Koizumi Yoshiaki and new NoA guy Doug Bowser did a funny skit involving a CGI Bowser thinking he was in charge of NoA now that Reggie has left (I love you, Reggie!!!). At the end Koizumi-san asked Doug Bowser if he and the Koopa King were related :D
Next, they showed off more gameplay from Luigi’s Mansion 3, and there’s a mechanic where you can make a gooey clone of Luigi to help out, and it’s name is Gooigi! That’s amazing! There’s also a multiplayer component called the ScareScraper, but I am here for Gooigi and only Gooigi! This is coming out sometime this year, but they didn’t give a more definitive date beyond 2019 (which was odd as almost every other major game got a proper release date).
They showed off more of the Link’s Awakening remake, officially titled The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, just like the original. The super cute chibi art style is fantastic, and they’re including a new mode in which you can build your own dungeons after completing various dungeons in the main game (hopefully a “Zelda Maker” game is on the horizon somewhere). This game will be releases on 20 September 2019.
A Trials of Mana remake was shown off, and it’s coming in early 2020, but a collection of every Mana game dropped during the Direct and is available now (including the original Trials of Mana which had never before been released in the west).
They announced The Witcher III Complete Edition was coming to Switch later this year, but the graphics are quite downgraded. Don’t get me wrong, I think everything should be ported to the Switch because it’s a great system and people can play on the go and at home on a big screen and that’s awesome (and I’m not a graphics queen anyway), but the Switch often gets new games later than either Microsoft or Sony platforms because developers and publishers have to downgrade various bits of their games to make sure they can work on the Switch. The first casualty in that process is almost always graphics. For example, Bethesda’s Doom and Wolfenstein games are on the Switch, but they don’t look anywhere near as good as they do on the PS4 or the Xbox One. But what are you gonna do? The games still play great on the Switch, and I can play them on the bus. Can’t say that about their PS4 counterparts.
Residents Evil 5 and 6 were both announced for the Switch for Fall 2019, making the Switch an almost one-stop shop for everything Resi. They’re missing the latest Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2 Remake, but curiously also a port of the original Resident Evil 2 remaster. And of course Resident Evil 3 and Code: Veronica, which have never had HD remakes as far as I know.
A new Contra game is coming on 24 September 2019, and it looks goofy as hell, but the real news was that a Contra Anniversary Collection was dropped during the Direct and is available now! It contains every Contra game ever made, including arcade, US home release, and Japanese home release versions of some of them. I bought this immediately :D
They showed off more Astral Chain gameplay and cinematics. This is the fantasy/cyberpunk game from Platinum that looks pretty neat, and it’s coming out on 30 August 2019. I’m still kind of on the fence about this game. It looks nice, but I’m not sure I’m a fan of Platinum Games’ brand of action. I should probably play NieR: Automata already and find out. I mean, everyone loves that game, as well as the Bayonetta series, so we’ll see.
Next they showed off Empire of Sin, a new game from John Romero (and not George Romero, as I originally thought when I saw the Romero Games tag) that’s coming out in 2020. I’m not actually that interested in this game, but I thought it worth a mention as it’s a top-down/isometric viewpoint game featuring city management-type mechanics, a huge departure from what originally made John Romero famous: first-person shooters. Romero hasn’t had a great track record as of late, but I hope this does well for him.
More Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: Black Order was shown off, and they showed some new playable characters including Miles Morales, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Gwen, and Elsa freakin’ Bloodstone! I didn’t see any Squirrel Girl, but she better be in it, dang it! It’s dropping on 19 July 2019 (I’ve already pre-ordered it because of course I have). They, also introduced an Expansion Pass that will feature more character, costumes, and story from Marvel Knights (aka all the street hero characters that used to have Netflix shows), X-Men, and the Fantastic Four properties (thank God Disney bought those Fox properties, eh?). You can pre-order it alongside the game (which I also did immediately).
They showed off a bit more of Cadence of Hyrule, the rhythm-based Zelda game by the makers of Crypt of the Necrodancer that will actually be available later today or tomorrow (depending on when the US considers it 13 June), but I’m still not sure if it’s my jam. If you’re not sure either, you can purchase Crypt of the Necrodancer for the Switch as it’s currently on sale for only US$3.99 and give it a try. I bought it with some Gold Coins I had saved up (you get Gold Coins every time you purchase a digital game on the Nintendo eShop), so I didn’t even have to spend actual money. I’ll give it a try, and if I do end up liking it, then I’ll pick up Cadence of Hyrule too :)
And finally, the Nintendo Direct One More Thing was a Breath of the Wild sequel! They said it was still in development, but they showed a pretty nice trailer with a super creepy horror vibe akin to Majora’s Mask! And maybe Zelda is a playable character?! I am super excited about this, especially as it seems to have a more underground focus which might mean proper dungeons. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Breath of the Wild’s entire deal, but I was really missing some proper dungeons (which is why the Link’s Awakening remake is so exciting). With this one reveal, Nintendo won E3 yet again.
Nintendo showed off a bunch more games, including new installments of perennial fan favorite series like Fire Emblem, Pokemon, Mario and Sonic Olympics, and Animal Crossing, which I’ve never really cared about. They also introduced a new No More Heroes game (which is weird because didn’t the second one just come out?), and a Dark Crystal tactics game tying in to the new Netflix series.
What they didn’t show off was a Metroid Prime trilogy Switch port, or any ports of the more recent Zelda games (like Windwaker, Twilight Princess, or Skyward Sword), and that made me sad.
For every game shown off in the Nintendo Direct, check out this link.
And that’s E3! Technically, E3 has just started as the show floor opened only on Tuesday morning PST, but the press conferences all happen before then. More games and DLC might be revealed and announced during the actual show (it does happen from time to time), but mostly the show floor is used for people to play builds of upcoming games, many for the first time. That said, I still kind of expect Sony to drop one of their State of Play videos at some point this week (and if they do, I will certainly update this note), but unless that happens, I proclaim Nintendo the winner of E3 (but Keanu Reeves, Nakamura Ikumi, and Bam Bam remain the most awkward and adorable people E3, though Bowser gave them a run for their money).
PS. A quick list of the games I am most excited about that were featured at E3 2019 in alphabetical order (for my future reference): Carrion, Contra Anniversary Collection, Cyberpunk 2077 (of course), Final Fantasy VII Remake, Genesis Noir, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Gods and Monsters, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: Black Order, The Outer Worlds, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Telling Lies, 12 Minutes, and Watch_Dogs: Legion.
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