E3 2015 Created 9 years ago2015-06-15 15:13:20 UTC by Penguinboy

Better late than never! Urby had to remind me two years in a row, I'm getting slack...E3 has already started this year! Microsoft go in in 15 minutes. Bethesda had their turn earlier today.

This year we have more keynotes than usual: In addition to the usual five (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA), we also have Bethesda, Square-Enix, and a PC show run by the PC Gamer magazine. Exciting!

Begin E3 copypasta:

What is E3?
The Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, is an event that happens every year in Los Angeles. It's usually where the big companies announce new stuff (i.e. Microsoft, Sony, and to a lesser extent, Nintendo) like games, hardware, consoles, and really pretty much everything to do with games. Ubisoft and EA also make appearances, but interestingly enough, Activision do not (though they usually manage to get a Call of Duty trailer in there anyway).

Why is it cool?
If you're interested in gaming at all, E3 is the biggest dump of new information that happens every year. The keynotes almost always feature brand new trailers, gameplay, hardware, services, and of course, new games! It's always fun to hear new stuff to look forward to. E3 is focused on western gaming (Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA), but Nintendo and Sony usually inject some Japanese gaming influence in there as well, so there's always something interesting no matter what your gaming tastes are!

I'll post updates after each keynote with all the interesting stuff, but if you want to watch the conferences live, just visit any big gaming website (GameSpot, IGN, GameTrailers, etc) and find their E3 coverage.

Is anyone else excited about E3? Any predictions you would like to share? I'll be posting my own predictions before each keynote starts.

PS: Before anyone suggests it: Half-Life 3 will NOT be announced this year. In fact, it will NEVER be announced at any E3, ever! (Though I would not mind if I was wrong about this)

End E3 copypasta

What's happened so far:

Bethesda showed off:

• Fallout 4, aka The Sims: Apocalypse edition (also starring: Minecraft, tower defense)
• DOOM, aka Canned Animations: The Game
• Dishonored 2, aka Dishonored II: The Metal Age (this one courtesy of Strider)

Microsoft is 10 minutes away. My (somewhat conservative) preditions:

• Halo and Halo accessories
• Half-assed clones of other people's stuff (e.g. VR headsets, skylanders dolls, etc)
• Minecraft - probably not MC2, but perhaps spinoff plot-driven games to compete in the Lego genre
• Trying to convince people that Windows is a good mobile platform
• At least one expensive and useless Xbone hardware accessory (possibly just the VR thing from before)
• Call of Duty

I gotta say, after a fairly underwhelming trailer, I was really, really pleasantly surprised by the Fallout 4 preview. It looks like everything a Fallout game should be, and more. They've taken ideas from some of the best Fallout 3 mods (such as settlement creation) and really made them look like an excellent way to add longevity beyond just exploring everything and completing all the quests.

DOOM looked fucking terrible. I actually laughed out loud when they showed how they'd managed to turn Hell into a corridor shooter. The weapon models are gorgeous - literally everything else about it was mind-numbingly boring.

Dishonored 2 has my interest, but only vaguely until we hear more.

I was in a Skype call with some friends of mine while we were watching E3, and I was equally as dubious about DOOM, but all of my friends were getting pumped for it.

The DOOM chainsaw preanimated takedowns just looked lazy, but the level design looked pretty inspired. I was, however, immediately disappointed with the game when the gun sound effects weren't half as cool as the ones in Brutal Doom.

Fallout 4 looks great, EXCEPT for the voice acted main character. I really don't like the Mass Effect-style dialog, which looks like it's going to turn every character into a deer-in-the-headlights Commander Shepard. I hope that the game comes with a way to play through the game silently.

There are some things I can't imagine the Fallout 4 protagonist saying that he would have said in previous games. "Your little bitch brother was, too." And let's say I wanted to roleplay as a cowboy, punk-ass raider, or something else, I really don't think that the game's voice actor is going to be able to do anything but damage the impression of the protagonist.

DOOM's graphics looked amazing, but the gameplay itself looked terrible. It seems they've just made a game with some blood and guts, rather than a game with fun gameplay and maze-like maps.

Anyway, Microsoft just wrapped up. Here's the interesting stuff they had:

• Halo 5, of course
• Xbox 360 backwards compatibility on the Xbone. Done via downloadable games, but if you have the 360 game disk you can download and play it for free.
• New hardware: Xbox "Elite" controller, with some customisation and such.
• Fallout 4 will have mods on the Xbone. Same mods on PC and Xbox for free.
• Early access for Xbox
• Re-release of 30 Rare games, including Conker, Banjo-Kazooie, and Perfect dark, cost is $30
• Demo of Minecraft on the HoloLens augmented reality hardware. Looks like an interesting tech demo, but it'd be hard to justify spending the cash on something so trivial.
• Gears of War 4 for a release late next year
• Nothing about COD! Perhaps Sony got it this year?
• Few other things, such as a proper Dark Souls 3 announcement, but nothing we didn't already know about.

My predictions were about 50/50. Nothing about WinPhone or ripped off hardware, unless you count the HoloLens. There was expensive tech: new controller, and they name-dropped both Valve and Oculus for VR tech. They were promoting Windows 10 a fair bit as well.

EA is next in just under 2 hours. EA's shows are usually pretty easy to predict, and they usually just keep it simple. Predictions:

• Star Wars Battlefront
• Sports: Madden NFL, NHL, NBA, Fifa, etc. etc.
• Battlefield expansions/DLC/whatevers
• Need for Speed, probably
• Potentially something from Bioware: Dragon Age, Mass Effect
• Nothing groundbreaking.

Don't think i've ever played 1 and 2, but for me, that Doom gameplay looked like a direct upgrade from Doom 3 in every single way; and Doom 3 gave me the fucking chills, loved it and this new footage got me sold. I just hope the story picks up from 3.
My only gripe is the cutscene for every single chainsaw kills. Guess i'll just avoid that weapon.
Fallout 4 looks like it has the potential for microtransanctions. I hope they don't go that route.
Edit: Halo 5 - More blue and more orange than ever before. They did the exact same thing with 4, was hoping to see something more creative this time. Oh well, i don't have an Xbone anyway, looks like i won't be having any reason to get one.

Star Wars: Battlefront looks pretty great. I don't care if it has less than Battlefront 2, or if it's more of a carbon copy of Battlefield. It looks pretty impressive, and to have a smooth-running Battlefront game on PC is something we need.

Been waiting for Battlefront III for a long time, can't. fucking. wait. Would jizz in my pants twice if it also included an endless tower defense mode..

Still haven't watched any of the conference yet...

EA just finished, almost exactly as predicted. Here's the highlights:

• New Mass Effect game: Andromeda. As the name implies, it's a different galaxy, so it seems like they're basically rebooting the series.
• Mirror's Edge: Catalyst. It's a prequel, free-roaming. They seemed to indicate that there won't be much focus on guns, so that potentially seems good. What they showed looked fairly promising.
• A demo of Star Wars: Battlefield. Err... I mean Battlefront. It's easy to make that mistake because the formula is literally identical. But it seems pretty solid, if you like Battlefield 3/4 and Star Wars then you'll probably enjoy it.

My predictions were pretty much all correct, with the exception of Battlefield DLCs. They talked lots about sports and they had Need for Speed as well. There was nothing groundbreaking. Free-roaming Mirror's Edge sounds like it could be pretty great, though.

Next up is Ubisoft in 20 minutes. Ubisoft are absolutely clueless when it comes to what people want, but that's the case every year. There'll be plenty of awkward jokes with no laughter. Hell, we've already had one from a Ubisoft speaker during the Microsoft show. Predictions:

• All the usuals: Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy, dancing/singing/guitar games
• Some stuff from Ubisoft's indie label (team that made Child of Light etc.)
• Probably some Rayman stuff for Nintendo platforms
• Watch Dogs 2 or some other bullshit sequel to a game that nobody wants
• A surprisingly cool-looking new game that will disappoint us all when it comes out in November 2016

Say what you like about For Honor, their lead director is a badass.

He really is, he's possibly the "coolest" game developer I've ever seen.

Anyway, Ubisoft is done, there wasn't a huge amount of content but what they had looked alright.

• Sword-fighting/medieval war game called For Honor. It looked interesting, but it's hard to tell how much is scripted. The PvP combat seemed a little like Dark Souls.
• Anno 2205, you can build a colony on the moon. The last Anno game had great music so I'm looking forward to the soundtrack of this one.
• Dancing games and Assassin's Creed
• Rainbow Six Siege has basic single player and co-op in the form of the series-standard terrorist hunt mode.
• Trackmania is getting a console release
• The surprise was an open world Ghost Recon game. Not much info aside from the fact that you can complete missions in several different ways (assault/stealth/ambush was the example in the trailer).
• There was dude singing on stage. It wasn't related to gaming, they just decided to have a guy singing. Good work Ubisoft!

Predictions were a bit off. No indie-label stuff, nothing matching the bullshit sequel, no Rayman. Probably about 50% overall.

Sony's up next in about 90 minutes. Sony usually are the most level-headed of the big three, but Microsoft did surprisingly ok this year. Predictions are kinda difficult in this case, I haven't been keeping track of Sony recently:

• Uncharted, of course.
• Probably some stuff about services - game streaming, PSN, streaming music, and so on.
• Some stuff about Sony's non-gaming hardware, TVs and such. Just so Sony can remind us that they do other stuff too.
• Probably a bunch of indie games showed off, similar to MS's show.
• Perhaps something in the LittleBigPlanet series.
• Vita will be ignored for the most part. Perhaps one or two off-hand mentions of it, but Sony have basically given up on Vita outside of Japan.
• The Last Guardian? Nah, probably not.
• Haven't seen COD yet, so it may make an appearance.

Added prediction: Adam Boyes comes out and embarrasses himself again on stage, and they do some bullshit involving "fan feedback," and possible appearance, again, of Tim Schafer so he can talk more about adventure games.

Wait, wait, wait. Stop the fucking press.

SHENMUE 3

OK, right. Definitely excited about a lot of things now. My top 5 from the big players of E3 2015:

1. Fallout 4
2. Shenmue 3(!!!!!)
3. Uncharted 4
4. Battlefront
5. Rainbow Six Siege (Purely for terrorist hunt with Urby and Ant)

Yep, that was pretty darn unexpected. The other unexpected one was The Last Guardian! Sony's vapourware is actually coming out.

Right, that's Sony done. They did a pretty good job:

• The Last Guardian! Releasing next year.
• Pretty neat looking open world game called Horizon. It has robot dinosaurs and a bow and arrow. Sony knows what the people want.
• Final Fantasy 7 remake - an actual proper remake. Completely unexpected. That's a huge announcement.
• They promoted the Shenmue 3 kickstarter. They stressed that it wasn't a Sony project, so it'll probably be a multi-platform release.
• Call of Duty has switched to Sony as the preferred console. CODBLOPSIII announced.
• Few other bits and pieces, nothing amazing.

Predictions were pretty close. Nothing about non-gaming Sony stuff, but they did talk about their music/tv services and the VR tech. There was a bunch of indie games presented. Nothing in the LBP series but a game called "Dreams" from the same studio. Vita got mentioned once and 3 or so Vita games were included in a montage video - so, it was basically ignored. As for Dimbark's prediction, Adam Boyes did indeed make a fool of himself while talking about Destiny. No Tim Schafer though, and not as much talk about "fan feedback" than the other 3 shows today.

That's it for today! Nintendo kicks off in a bit over 12 hours, with Square-Enix to follow.

@Archie: Nobody invites me to terrorist hunt... Siege is 5 player though, so....

Hahaha, holy shit. Within about 30 mins of it being announced, Shenmue's kickstarter is already at $700,000 $750,000 $800,000 $850,000.

For those of you not aware, this is the console equivalent of a Half-Life 3 announcement. Moreso, even. Shenmue II left the series on a cliffhanger in 2001. We have been waiting for the conclusion for fourteen years.

@Archie: Nobody invites me to terrorist hunt... Siege is 5 player though, so....

I didn't know you hunted terrors! We'll kick Mike off the team so you can play next time.

Probably a silly question to ask you Archie considering your enthusiasm, but is Shenmue worth playing? I know nothing about the series, what type of game is it?

Also yes, I am willing and able to hunt all the terrors. Ant is well aware of this, it seems that he has been concealing this information from you.

I have Shenmue for the Dreamcast. I got about 3 hours into it and got bored. It's really slow, so unless it quickens or gets more interesting, I'm not sure I want to play it again.

It's utterly groundbreaking for its time. Stupidly beautiful for a Dreamcast game and with a bunch of ridiculous 'realism' elements that make it truly unique.
It controls like a dead horse by today's standards and Forklift Simulator was never good (despite GTA V referencing it just last year, though!) but the story is utterly captivating, and it's really refreshing to play a game that resolutely refuses to tell you what to do.

You witness your father's death, and you only have one clue about who did it. The game is an adventure RPG murder mystery with such groundbreaking features as:

Feeding a cat.
Getting your allowance docked for staying out too late.
Getting a job at the docks.
Wearing a jacket.
Writing in a notebook.

All this, and more in Shenmue!

No, but really, it's great.

I actually really enjoyed the aforementioned GTAV mission, to the point where I wasn't at all angry when my game crashed at the end of it, because that only meant I could play it again.
I also like wearing jackets and cats.

I should get my hands on a copy of Shenmue.

Ah, it's Dreamcast, is it? I wonder how easy that is to emulate...

Ha, it basically broke kickstarter. Two million bucks in under 9 hours.

hot damn

The only two games I'm interested in so far (Dishonoured 2 and Dark Souls 3) have had nothing but CG trailers shown. Disappointing, but they were still incredible trailers.

Hoping Nintendo brings in their big guns tonight. I want to at least see some lengthy gameplay for Zelda U, Star Fox and Retro's unknown project. A new Metroid would be nice.

As Strider pointed out, Nintendo is starting soon - in about 10 minutes. This will be pretty clinical since it's all pre-recorded. Nintendo typically show off some new stuff, but also new content for already-announced games. Predictions:

• Starfox, probably. Potentially a new Mario game.
• Discussing the already-announced Smash Bros. DLC
• No Zelda, since they basically said it wasn't ready for E3 this year.
• Announcements of some English releases for Fire Emblem and some other 3DS games
• Probably some Monster Hunter stuff
• Lots of talk about Amiibo dolls
• Someone will explain to us that making games takes a long time and they will ask us to please be patient
• New Metroid game? Nah, I doubt it.

Square-Enix is straight after, so I might not have time to post after the Nintendo video. Sqex have already shown most of their hand in the other shows, so they'll probably just expand on those for the most part. Predictions:

• FF7 Remake, of course
• FFXV will probably make an appearance too
• Hitman, Tomb Raider
• Maybe the Dragon Quest Theatrhythm game
• Can't see them having anything that we don't already know about

Right, well that's that. I'm skipping the PC Gamer show, but I expect it'll just be repeats and advertising. If someone wants to watch it and update, I'd appreciate it.

Nintendo went about as expected. There wasn't a lot of stuff, because they limited it to games that are releasing in the next 9 months. Here's what they had:

• Starfox for the Wii U
• A 3DS Zelda game in the vein of Four Swords, except with 3 players this time
• Fire Emblem F is subtitled 'Fates' in the English release, expected early next year
• The astoundingly popular kid's game Yokai Watch is being released in English.
• A clever crossover between Paper Mario and the Mario & Luigi RPG games

Predictions were about halfway. No Smash Bros, no Monster Hunter. There was a few metroid games, but they were minigames and not the proper thing. There was starfox, amiibo, English releases, and the Zelda game didn't appear.

Square-Enix's show was pretty boring. They trolled the audience a bit by getting them excited for Kingdom Hearts 3, and then showed a mobile game instead. But after that, the actually showed Kingdom Hearts 3, so it's okay I guess. The new stuff was:

• More info on FF7 remake coming later in the year. They're still releasing ports of FF7 in the meantime, the greedy bastards.
• Kingdom Hearts 3 gameplay was demoed
• A new game in the "Nier" series. Not much info provided.
• In-game preview of the new Hitman game. Could be potentially a big improvement on the last game.
• A new Star Ocean game called "Integrity and Faithlessness" will be released in English next year.
• A new RPG series from a new studio codenamed 'Project Setsuna'. Not really any other info. Rikai tells me Setsuna means "instant" or "moment", so it might have something to do with time?

Predictions were close enough. No Theatrhythm, but everything else was about right. The new games they announced had almost no information, so they don't count.

That's it for the updates from me! As I said, if anyone watches the PC Gamer show, feel free to add any new info that comes from that show.

Starfox

Isn't that from like 1991?

The latest entry was for the 3DS, though.

Okay, so a few things from the PC conference so far:

• Guy from AMD talked about GPUs and DX12.
• Gears of War remastered is coming to PC.
• American Truck Simulator announced. High graphical fidelity.
• EVE Valkyrie VR stuff.
• Dean Hall came on to talk his current project, ION, and was asked about early access - "Mixed feelings", but cited KSP and Prison Architect as examples of good games that are coming out of it. ION seems to be a 'Diablo-style' (his words) game set in a space station. Talked a bit about the stigma of his leaving Day-Z's development.
• Live demo of Strafe. Lots of blood.
• Expansion for Pillars of Eternity.
• Planet Coaster trailer looks interesting - Basically a current-gen roller coaster tycoon?

It's been pretty low-key, especially compared to the console conferences. A few jokes interspersed with some of the interviews, some trailers, but nothing like the laser lightshows with thumping music that MS and Sony were putting on.

FALLOUT 4 and BATTLEFRONT are all I'm taking away from E3 this year.

FALLOUT 4: YES, YES, YES! ALL OF THIS IN MY FACE NOW. It's everything I love and more. Open world, fully customisable weapons / armour / play style. That base building / defence stuff is a massive complicated feature, but if you don't want to do it, don't. Simple.

BATTLEFRONT is Battlefield: Star Wars edition. Two of my favourite things in one game! Not to mention it looks TITS! I would not be surprised if the release was one big fuck up however.

Uncharted 4 looks great and Final Fantasy 7 was one of my all time favourite games. That said, I'm not shelling out for a PS4 for two games. I'd rather upgrade the faithful rig.

I'll get my copy of Fallout mostly for the building system. Minecraft on steroids.

This about sums it up, Pebs

Well I backed the kickstarter. I'm not sure I'll have the chance to actually play the originals (never even seen a physical Dreamcast in my life...), but meh, why not.

I have both a Dreamcast and Shenmue! It was a pretty bold game that combined many burgeoning gameplay ideas into a pretty huge experience. Ideas that are now the standard for open world/adventure games. But on the other hand it also popularized and named the quick time event! Whaddaya gonna' do.

Going to be spurting a lot of truths. Pretty dull E3.

I'll just mention MGS5 as no one else has. It's the only game at E3 that seemed to be doing something different with itself. Pretty quirky game in a serious setting so it puts most people off. "Naked chick, why not" - Kojima. I'm a massive MGS fan so I'm biased.

Fallout 4 is just Fallout 3 with better graphics - Much like Bethesda every year, take Skyrim and Oblivion for example. Looks cool though, not a huge fan myself but at least it gives modellers a new game for nude mods. Tower defense, what?

Honor has potential to be fantastic, combat similar to The Witcher, Dark Souls and that gimmicky, medieval game on Steam. Oh and on that note, DS3 pls.

No Valve, ofc. Presumably, too busy creating overpriced hardware no one wants. People will still buy it though, like a console. Fan boys gonna fan.

Microsoft: Didn't actually show anything worth caring about. "C-can we have some money?". Why does Halo still exist? 1 and 2, possibly 3 were actually quite good. Quit digging that whole. DS3 pls.

Uncharted, a cinematic rail that originally existed so there was at least 1 game made for the PS3.

EA: Battlefront looks awesome. Shame it's essentially Battlefield with StarWars content. Sports =/= card game. Assassins Creed...how many eras are we going to go through before we finally get Bushido era Japan?

TL;DR: E3 should be renamed to "<Title>+1". And, Troy Baker voices everything.

Penguinboy - oddly enough, I found this Friday night: