E3 2016 Created 8 years ago2016-06-13 15:25:37 UTC by Penguinboy

For the third year in a row Urby has reminded me about putting an E3 post up... I'm pretty lazy!E3! EA and Bethesda have done their presentations and Microsoft starts in 5 minutes. Let's discuss!

Copypasta below:

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. I'm too lazy to post predictions.

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

Speaking of reminding you of posts, two days ago was the anniversary of the last Invert-X post.

Never heard of it!

Here's write ups for what's happened so far:

EA: The Boring One

• Big games: Titanfall 2, Mass Effect, Star Wars, Battlefield
• Sports: NFL bullshit, FIFA bullshit
• Indie: Something called "Fe"
• Surprise rating: 1/10 no surprises
• Quality rating: 4/10 too much bullshit

Bethesda: Attack of the Clones

• Quake Champions, which looks to be yet another TF2 clone. I'm going to call it Quake Fortress.
• TES Legends, Hearthstone clone.
• Fallout 4 updates, new construction modules for their Minecraft clone
• Fallout Shelter updates, new features for their Farmville clone
• Prey, System Shock 2 clone
• TES Online, updates to their WOW clone
• Dishonored 2, a sequel to their Thief clone
• Various announcements: Skyrim HD re-release and VR for Fallout 4 and Doom
• The crowd at this presentation was way too enthusiastic. I reckon they were all indoctrinated into the cult of Bethesda. Who actually plays ESO? They were way too excited.
• Two things really baffled me. They announced a demo for DOOM. Remember those things that were almost mandatory 15 years ago? This demo will only be available for one week. The crowd cheered like crazy. What? Have expectations really dropped this low?
• The other one: They're changing ESO so that enemies scale to the player's level, so players can explore all regions right from the start. The crowd went absolutely wild. But why would you be excited about removing all sense of progression from your MMO? Without progression, what the hell is the point of a boring grindfest? Oh well.
• Surprise rating: 6/10 Quake Fortress will likely be awful. But Prey looks like it might be fairly promising.
• Quality rating: 7/10 aside from some strange announcements and the crowd being way too excited, the presentation was okay.

Microsoft: Let's Make Our Platform Irrelevant!

• Except for FF15, every game MS showed off was cross platform on Windows 10. Why would I want an Xbone if I can play every game on my PC instead? Silly MS, you're killing your console!
• They also announced some hardware: New "S" model Xbox and a new 4k console codenamed "Scorpio" coming end of 2017.
• Minecraft to officially support some mods (texture packs, model swaps) on PC and mobile.
• John Carmack was on stage. Unfortunately it was just to show Oculus Minecraft support. It was a little sad seeing how much his position in gaming has changed. I hope he's happy at Facebook.
• Big games: Gears of War 4, Killer Instinct, Forza Horizon 3, Recore, Final Fantasy XV, The Division (expansion), Battlefield 1, Minecraft, Tekken 7, Dead Rising 4, Scalebound, Halo Wars 2
• Smaller games: Inside, Ark, We Happy Few, Gwent, Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2
• Surprise score: 8/10 most news was leaked before but was still interesting. Cross platform play and new hardware were the most notable. Plus 2 points because John fucking Carmack was on stage.
• Quality score: 9/10 shockingly good presentation. Microsoft didn't have any bullshit. They had quickfire games throughout the entire presentation and didn't linger for too long on any one thing. They did good this year.

Half an hour for the "PC Gaming Show". This is not going to be very interesting though. It's really just a bit of a joke to fill time while we wait for Ubisoft afterwards and Sony later in the day.

That Prey reboot looks like shit. Can't believe they killed Human Head's sequel for a fucking reboot.

This is all I have to say about the Scorpio reveal.

Bethesda conference was overall between underwhelming and whelming. Prey looked decent, Dishonored 2 looked good. More paid-for DLC for Fallout 4 that does things mods already did months ago is eh.
My roommate downloaded the DOOOOOM demo on his Xbox after the Beth conference, and neither of us having played it prior, we both took turns playing and reviewing it, him under his standard criteria, myself as the "Second Coming of Classic Doom" it was hyped as. Findings were it's a semi-competent game on its own, but as a successor to Doom it fails, ending up feeling more like a checklist of surface-level knowledge of the game rather than something that's been constructed after careful analysis of what made the first two games great.

I think the Cross Platform thing is less about trying to kill the Xbox, and more about trying to push Windows 10, as, sadly, you need to get the games from the Windows 10 Store. Windows 7/8.1 users are left out in the cold, making their new slogan "Play without Boundaries" a tad ironic.

Hey PB, could you just pop a close bracket into my URL tags? Didn't notice that until my post was locked off from edit.

@JeffMOD I would hardly call the new doom game a competent game. It's your typical modern shooter that is trying to pass itself off as a "throwback to the classics".

I said semi-competent. I had a little bit of fun. Didn't stop me from hating the game for being what it is, which is what you've described.

Sorry, I'm still a little steamed from that game. I can't stand it. (And with Bethesda shilling the game constantly, my rage only gets worse.)

The Prey game doesn't look like a reboot. It doesn't even look vaguely related to Prey 2006. I'm not really sure why they're using the name at all. Not like the first game was good enough to carry a lot of weight. Treat it like a completely different series and blame Bethesda for being retards.

The cinematic trailer was too vague to be interesting but some interviews makes it sound very similar to the System Shock games. So I'm pretty excited about that.

Update: 2 minutes in and I'm closing the PC gaming show. What a load of crap. Ubisoft is in 1 hour.

What I think about E3 (so far) :

R.I.P. video games

This is great. I can skip on watching the cringe fest and read about the relevant bits in a couple of mins

<3 you guys.

Ubisoft: French Guys You Can Hardly Understand

• Big games: Ghost Recon Wildlands, The Division (expansions), For Honor, Watch Dogs 2, Just Dance 2017
• Smaller games: South Park (new), Grow Up, Trials of the Blood Dragon (Trials + Blood Dragon mash up)
• VR games: Eagle Flight, Star Trek Bridge Crew
• Not games: Assassin's Creed Movie
• Typical of Ubisoft the last few years they had a new game to finish with. This one is called "Steep", a sort of winter sports game set on a open world mountain range. Has wingsuits, base jumping, snow boarding, that sort of thing. User generated content and challenges and so on, no story campaign. Cool if that's your thing I guess.
• For Honor actually looks pretty badass for a hack and slasher.
• Trials of the Blood Dragon had an extremely 80's trailer. It's out right now. Even though I'm a fan of Trials I think I might skip this one.
• Surprise score: 5/10 the VR games looked average at best, South Park is boring, Steep looked alright but nothing amazing. Trials+Blood Dragon is kinda neat but I'm pretty sure it leaked a while ago.
• Quality score: 8/10 aside from a couple of cringey moments, Ubisoft did pretty well. Lots of in-depth focus and extended gameplay demos on certain games which was good.

Sony's up in just under 3 hours.

I'd say I'm looking forward to VR Minecraft, but I don't have a VR headset anyway so I'm not actually looking forward to anything in particular.

I hope Sony's is really good. E3 has been something of a fuckfest so far imo.

And they open immediately with actual gameplay (!) of Man Who Kills Everything In A Rage 5.
Which is somehow tender.
EDIT: HIDEO IS BACK!

Sony: Third Person Adventure or Nothing

• What have they done to God of War? It looks like this reboot is sitting solidly in the action adventure space, and the hack and slash button mash is replaced by slower paced combat. It's bizarre to see this mix of genres. I like it.
• A new zombie game called Days Gone. Looks to be a non-linear (perhaps open world) zombie game, with Left 4 Dead levels of zombie killing going on. Looks interesting. Again, third person adventure action game.
• The Last Guardian gets a release date: October 2016. Finally. Surprisingly, it's an action adventure game of the third person nature.
• An extended gameplay demo of Horizon: Zero Dawn. This was first revealed last year. Looks pretty amazing. Guess what the genre is.
• A new game from David "Heavy Rain" Cage. It's got AI and androids and stuff. Looks to have quite a few different outcomes based on dialogue decisions you make. It can't possibly be worse than Beyond: Two Souls.
• Resident Evil 7: This was a pretty surprising reveal. It looks more like Silent Hill or something than a modern RE game. Maybe they actually weren't being typical Capcom when they said they wanted to return to the series' horror game roots.
• PSVR releases October this year, US$400.
• PSVR compatible games: RE7, Farpoint (new game), Star Wars Battlefront (special X-Wing VR episode), Batman Arkham game (VR episode), Final Fantasy XV (actually looks kinda crap in VR), COD Infinite Warfare (actually looks kinda cool in VR), COD4 Remastered.
• Three Crash Bandicoot games are being remastered for the PS4.
• Lego Star Wars Episode 7 exists and is a thing.
• Kojima reveals the name of his new game: Death Stranding. It's about electronic babies, oil spills, and 5 guys floating in the sky. You know, a typical Kojima game.
• Spider-man game for PS4.
• Surprise score: 9/10 Sony absolutely owns it for the new reveals. God of War, Days Gone, Detroit Become Human, Resident Evil 7, Death Stranding are all new and exciting. The October release dates for The Last Guardian and PSVR are exciting as well. Crash Bandicoot remakes were unexpected.
• Quality score: 10/10 Sony have won this year in my book. No bullshit, no filler, no low-quality crap, good looking games, good new IPs and some impressive gameplay demos.

Nintendo don't really have a presentation this year. They do have a little livestream event which I'll post an update for, but the only thing to expect will be Zelda and a few other bits and pieces.

The new God of War looks awesome. I'm looking forward to killing Thor and Odin, though I get the feeling the Loki fight may be a bitch.

While I'm not a fan of superhero games, with Insomniac working on Spider-man, it'll likely be a really good game...a departure for the series in recent years.

Nintendo: Zelda and Pokemon is all we have!

• Zelda. The subtitle for the game is "Breath of the Wild".
• Pokemon.
• Surprise score: 2/10 Zelda looks neat but it's not a surprise. One point for the subtitle.
• Quality score: 2/10 not really a proper presentation so it's a bit unfair to rate them. But they get a low score because a proper presentation would have been much better! There's games aside from Zelda and Pokemon, you know! Stupid Nintendo.

Nintendo are actually doing a bunch of live videos over the next few days, but don't expect anything aside from Pokemon and Zelda. If you're looking forward to a 3DS game (Ace Attorney 6 HYPE!!), check out the specific company Youtube for trailers instead. If you're looking forward to a Wii U game.... No you're not. Stop lying to yourself.

Hmmmm, Serious Sam VR. Except I don't have a Vive as I don't have the money to afford one. Fricker.

John Carmack was there? I would have gone just to see him!

I remember the E3 days when the Sims 2 was talk of the town, Max Payne 2 had free t-shirts and people were getting up in arms about how much pressure their computer is going to be under running HL2.

Oh and you could play a Diakatana demo on one of Ion Storms booths!

I'm having to catch up on E3 as the BST schedule is daft. 9pm into the wee hours of the morning on a school night! Pah!

EA Games Cringference

Titanfall 2
I had no interest in the first one, and I've only heard bad things about its lifespan. Adding swords isn't enough to gain my interest.

Mass Effect
Psyched for this! I loved the first three games covering Urby Shepard's adventures and Urby Ryder will have a blast exploring Andromeda, I'm sure. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of this in the coming months before their intended Spring 2017 release.

Star Wars
Meh, I'm not big on star wars games. Battlefront was fun in the beta, but EA is generally the worst in terms of their pricing. £60 special edition, but that doesn't include the DLC. No no, that's another £45. Daylight robbery.

Battlefield
However... this looks pretty spectacular. I could do without all the bullshit with the youtubers and random celebrities they pulled in to show it off, but it does look fun. Might be one I pick up, regardless of the aforementioned pricing bullshit, which will be exactly the same.

NFL/FIFA
Looks like sports shit.

Fe
I have no opinion on this. I'm not really into artsy fartsy stylising in games. I just want to see what is going on.

The Bethesda let down

Quake Champions
An arena based multiplayer shooter featuring heroes with different abilities? So Overwatch? We don't need Overwatch. We have one. It's called Overwatch. It's great. Pity we're not getting a Quake reboot after the awesome Wolfenstein and Doom games by Beth/id. Also, pre rendered cinematic should be banned from E3.

TES Legends
I am so sick of trading card games and anyone who likes them should have their PC forcibly removed.

Fallout 4 updates
This was a real disappointment. After buying the season pass based on Bethesda's claim to be bringing bigger and better DLCs, they announce the final three after 7 months, and two of them are shitty Sims Stuff packs. For somebody who doesn't give a shit about Fallout 4's settlement system, this was a real tough pill to swallow. My only hope is that Nuka World follows in Far Harbours footsteps, as that was one of the biggest and best DLCs I've played for a fallout title.

Fallout Shelter
Is anyone still playing this. I deleted it the day Fallout 4 came out.

Prey
I never played the original, but this doesn't appear to be related in any way. Also, it's simply called Prey, which I guess means that it's a reboot of a series with a single game... what

TES Online
Stop peddling this shit. Especially stop peddling it by making it worse than it already was...

Dishonored 2
I'd probably care more about this if I'd gotten into the original, but I put it down after an hour and never went back.

Skyrim Remastered
I'm shamefully excited about this. I'm not keen on installing mods that make changes to this degree, so this is a very welcome update. Not only that, but I got it on PC because I'm smart. So it's free. Win win.

Fallout 4 VR
Aka Fallout overpriced gimmick edition. Pass.

Doom demo
This should not have been big news, but as soon as I heard it I grabbed it since I hadn't decided whether to get it or not. I will now that I played it, but the time limit to try it is just dumb... Like, really really dumb.

One more point that Valve News Network touched on however, is how quickly and bluntly Todd Howard answered the question: "Will there be an Elder Scrolls 6?" with "Yes. Of course."

That kind of confirmation from Valve on ANYTHING would be so welcome, even if it was a "No." Bethesda is inching their way up my favourite developers list, even if this conference was a bust.

At the risk of going off topic: Almost no game developer or publisher gives any news about the existence of potential sequels until after they announce them. I'm not sure why anybody expects special treatment from Valve. This is standard business practice from the industry, everybody does it.

Feel free to be disappointed that the HL series is dead, but expecting Valve to comment on something is foolish. Even if there's absolutely nothing in development right now, they're not going to go out and say that it's dead. That's bad publicity and could end up being false information if they ever decide to use the IP again.

The reverse is true as well, even if a game is in development a company won't announce it until they're absolutely sure that development wont be cancelled - it actually happens more than you think, which is just another reason why game (and film, etc) companies are so tight-lipped.

Like many other game series' that you might enjoy, Half-Life is dead. Just pray that one day, somebody at Valve decides that the IP can be profitable again, and resurrects it.

If there's ever an actual announcement of a HL game in the future, you can be pleasantly surprised. It's better than being annoyed about it for potentially the rest of your life.

TL;DR: HL is dead. You know it. I know it. Valve knows it. Move on.

@ Urby, the Wolfenstein game wasn't made by Beth or id. It was made by MachineGames unless you're literally talking about the generally hated Wolfenstein reboot from 2009.

@supersonikyouth : MachineGames is a "sub-brand" of Bethesda. Since id Tech 5 (RAGE), the engines will no longer be open source like they used to and they are reserved to Bethesda and "child brands" like Id and Machine Games.

Yeah, that one. Not played the 2009 version. Heard it was shit.

Noobisoft

Ghost Recon Wildlands
Just as Ubisoft managed to ruin the Division between 2014's reveal and 2015's release, it appears they are on track to do the same with Wildlands. This looked incredible last year, but now it's looks like an early access indy title. Not impressed at all and really disappointed.

The Division
Aka Blanderlands. Screw this game. The underground update seems like a quick fix to their end game issue. I can't imagine playing it for longer would make it any less boring.

For Honour
Hack and slash games really aren't my cup of tea. This one had an interesting approach to combat, but overall it looks like every other hack and slasher to me.

Watch Dogs 2
Not played the original, but heard it was a massive let down. Regardless of my feelings towards this, I'm not going to trust them until I hear some positive reviews.

Just Dance 2017
No

South Park
The stick of truth was alright. I got bored of it really really quickly. Probably because I've not had a lot to do with South Park since I was 12.

Grow Up
You grow up! Dunno. Meh, I guess.

Trials of the Blood Dragon
Not really my kind of game, and Blood Dragon irritated me. It just seemed to proud of itself, like a smug fat toad or something.

Eagle Flight
Fun with VR probably, but like all gimmicks I imagine it would wear thin after a few games.

Star Trek Bridge Crew
As above. I'd get nothing out of this with VR or without as I'm not a Star Trek fan.

Assassin's Creed Movie
Just when I thought the franchise had outstayed it's welcome, MOVIE! Wooo! Urgh.

So Ubisoft's presentation is an all time low for me at this point. I took a little something away from EA at least, but everything here just disappoints or makes me feel disgust.

Just Dance 2017
No

Come on xD

Just because they're a sub-brand doesn't mean you attach id or Bethesda's name to it even though they had nothing to do with it.

Nintendo just released the new Rhythm Heaven during E3 for the US (as in, it's out today). I hope it comes to other regions soon, I love that series. A few other bits and pieces of news is trickling out from Nintendo as well, nothing amazing but a few trailers from some upcoming 3DS RPGs and Paper Mario: Continued Disappointment Color Splash.

2009 version [of Wolfenstien]. Heard it was shit.

Going to disagree with that, it's story was a bit rubbish but it had some very entertaining gameplay. Vaporizing nazis while they shouted "He's got a Particle Cannon!" was always fun, the weapon and enemy variety (power armoured nazis with the afore-mentioned Particle Cannon were much fun), the magic powers you had access to and the open hub areas made far more interesting than the average shooter. Though I ran into an unfortunate save bug that saw me repeat 2-3 hours of gameplay, which was rather less fun.

I'm of the opinion that Raven's Wolfenstien is criminally underrated.