My thoughts on the E3 2018
conferences
Well, E3 has come and gone and it’s
time for my final wrap-up. This is gonna be a long one, so let’s get right into
it.
EA
One thing I love to boast about on
this blog is that last year I wrote an article in the lead-up to E3 about all
the ways Ubisoft could improve their conference. Then, two weeks later, it
turned out that that year’s show basically followed every suggestion I made.
So I decided this year to try and make
lightning strike twice and kicked off E3 Month by talking about all the ways EA
could fix their conference. And, unbelievably, it worked again.
…Kind of. Like, half-worked.
Pretty much my only suggestion for
them was to cut down on the sports trailers, and they did that this year. The
sports stuff amazingly encompassed about just 10 minutes of the 70 minute show,
leaving us with a full-length conference rarely interrupted with a ball.
The only problem was they seemed to
have a problem finding stuff to replace it with.
Let’s take it from the top. We kicked
things off with Battlefield V…only to
promptly say goodbye to Battlefield V.
Okay then.
Yeah, they announced that battle
royale was coming to the game, promised we’d see it again at Microsoft, showed some
pre-rendered fluff and made their way off the stage to make room for FIFA. I gotta admit it was a pretty
silly decision on their part, especially since a lot of the stuff we had to sit
through in it’s place was pretty dang boring.
After FIFA left (and I’m not talking about any of the sports because who
cares) and Andrew Wilson briefly took the stage to talk about some subscription
service no one’s gonna buy, we ventured into the war-torn realm of the audience
and found a survivor in the form of a Respawn dev, who promised a Star Wars game entitled Jedi Fallen Order due out next holiday
season. According to him the game takes place between Episodes III and IV and
yes, you will be able to wield a lightsaber in it. And…that was that. For all
we know the game’s a moisture farming simulator.
EA is disturbingly trigger-happy when
it comes to announcing Star Wars games
when they don’t actually have a Star Wars
game to show that year. The same thing happened in 2016. We got to see a
video taking us through various EA-owned studios and heard some folks talk
about their Star Wars games and how
much they loved the universe and how their game was gonna be great and
blahdey-blahdey-blah. And this here was no different. Why get hyped for a game
on nothing than the name alone?
Fact is that EA now has two major Star Wars games under their belt, and
neither of them are particularly beloved by the public. Battlefront 2015 was rushed and half-finished in an attempt to
capitalize on the release of The Force
Awakens, and Battlefront II was such
a monumental disaster that real-world politicians actually got involved to
reign it in after EA bit off more than they could chew with the monetization.
Don’t complain if I’m not exactly interested to see what EA’s doing with the
franchise next.
And then we got to what is easily the
best part of the show: the EA Originals showcase, starting with a look at Unravel 2 and the return of Martin
Salim, the lovable developer that nervously showed the original Unravel off back in 2015. And, perhaps
thanks to Salim, this was the most genuine and heartfelt part of the entire
conference. He and his friend just playing through a level and having fun
together was a delight to watch. If it was scripted I didn’t even notice
because I was so charmed by their presentation. Even better was the surprise
that the game was releasing right away, which was nice.
Next up was a brand new indie game, Sea of Solitude. Or at least that’s what
would’ve been next if the developer didn’t spend an eternity talking about the
themes of the game before the trailer actually played.
This is a big problem I have with
these E3s that seem to think we’re more interested in what the developers have
to say instead of letting the games speak for themselves. She was just going on
and on about depression and loneliness and how they play into the game, but I
could’ve gotten that from the trailer alone. I feel like if we saw the trailer
first and then heard her talk about the themes of the game afterwards it would’ve worked
better because we would’ve known what the game looked like and weren’t
impatiently waiting for her to stop talking.
Despite that, the game doesn’t look
half bad. I am concerned it’s just the next in the neverending line of sad
indie games that make you feel sad (the trailer bore a
striking resemblance to RiME), but
overall I like it’s aesthetic and think it could be something special if done
right.
And after that sad stuff it was time
for MADDEN OH YEAH
And after that we got perhaps the
strangest thing I’ve ever seen at E3. A pair of “mobile gaming champions” came
out onstage and competed in what looked like a Clash of Clans ripoff. For ten minutes. With a really bored guy
casting the whole thing. Whoopdie-doo.
Finally, it was time for the main
event. Anthem, the last next
game by BioWare. And, big shocker, it looks like a typical EA game with
absolutely no heart or soul, and just a bunch of menial tasks meant to keep you
occupied but never have an emotional response of any description.
That is, it looked like that when we
actually got to see the dang thing. A
lot of the segment was spent looking at concept art for some reason. Not
different concept art either. Just the same five or so ones put on loop. If
that’s really all they have to show right now I feel like we’re gonna have one
big trainwreck on our hands when the game launches in February.
So that was EA Play 2018. I appreciated not having too much sportsball this year
and both the EA Originals look neat, but everything else was just a mess. Battlefield V essentially no-showed, Anthem looks stale and uninteresting,
and I’ll never know why we had to watch ten minutes of hot mobile gaming
action.
Maybe I should’ve put a point in my
article from two weeks ago that they should make their games actually investing
for a change…
Microsoft
While the Xbox One continues to lag
far behind the competition in terms of sales and exclusives, Microsoft has made
a name for itself in creating great E3 conferences. Last year I named their
show my favourite of the bunch, and they did spectacularly again here.
This show was just a barrage of game
after game after game with world premieres abound. Even better, there truly was
something for everyone, leaving little to be disappointed about.
We started off with a real big smash: Halo: Infinite. While Halo as a franchise has kind of fallen
off the map since Bungie went solo and Halo
5 was met with a resounding “meh” from consumers, I can’t deny that this
looked really interesting.
Unfortunately I’ll have to stop at interesting, because we
didn’t see anything to elicit a response more than that from me. It was some
pretty glamour shots of the world, then a quick look at Master Chief, and we
were done. I really wish they’d elaborated on what the game was. Is it an open
world game, or is it more traditional? Is it Halo 6, or something different that’ll reinvent the series? I guess
we’ll have to wait until next E3 to find out.
After that, we were off to the races with a constant stream
of new titles and world premieres, including looks at games from EA, Bethesda,
Square Enix and Ubisoft outside of their own conferences. I guess because
Microsoft’s show is so much bigger than theirs they like to have them there as
a little tease for their own conference (except EA, but who cares about them) later on.
Speaking of Ubisoft, it has to be
said: we seriously need to cut it out with the stupid fake gamer voice chat,
like we had in the trailer for The
Divison 2. It instantly makes me lose interest and is more annoying than
clever or interesting.
What Microsoft did do though is show
off how E3 conferences can handle developer interviews without being obnoxious
about it. For some of the bigger games they brought out developers to talk
about them, and it never felt boring or like it was taking up time that could
be better spent actually seeing the game. I truly felt that the guys they
brought out for the new Devil May Cry were
really passionate about what they were making and loved that the fans wanted more
of their franchise. Compare this to the roundtable discussion we got for Anthem at EA, which went on for ages in
droning voices that never seemed to be interested in what they were talking
about despite being the literal people who made the game. I feel that to really
make those work they have to be quick and fast, as well as have people really
passionate and excited for what they’re talking about (like Martin Salim for Unravel and Ubisoft’s For Honor guy).
Moving on, a game I wasn’t expecting
to be excited about was Dying Light 2.
I ignored the first Dying Light,
mostly because it looked like just another zombie game in a sea of them.
Fortunately this sequel looked really unique. I’m a huge sucker for games with
stories that change depending on how you play, and Dying Light 2 promises a world that changes based on your choices.
It looks like a really interesting concept, and I hope they deliver.
We also almost got Skate 4, but it was called Session instead. So close...
After a quick trip to the Gears universe (now seemingly populated
by living, breathing Funko Pops) and an announcement for Gears of War 5, it was time for the big finale: CD Projekt Red’s
highly anticipated next game, Cyberpunk
2077. And while we didn’t get to see much (including a release window),
what we did see looked amazing. It was fast, colourful and action packed, and I
can’t wait to get more.
Microsoft really came to play this
year. While they’ve recently found themselves struggling to compete with Sony
and even Nintendo, E3 has truly become their domain in recent years. Their
promise of fifty games was delivered upon, and it moved so fast that everyone
felt they got something and yet no one was shortchanged. More like this,
please!
Bethesda
I’ve never been a fan of Bethesda’s
conferences. To me they’ve usually just felt like the company patting itself on
the back for all the games they’ve previously released and mainly taking this
opportunity to announce DLC, expansions and ports.
This year was different, and yet it
also felt the same, if that makes any sense. While I know a lot of people loved
this conference, for me it was one of the most middle of the road show I’ve
ever seen. It had some great announcements, but we didn’t get much substance
from anything outside of Fallout 76. There
were lots of fun and clever moments, but a lot of the conference felt like
padding so they could fill the full hour.
Let’s start by addressing some of the
elephants in the room: the announcement of Doom:
Eternal, the sequel to the massively successful 2016 franchise reboot, the
mysterious new IP Starfield, and,
perhaps most exciting of all, finally getting to see The Elder Scrolls VI announced after all these years of waiting and
seeing Skyrim ported to every single
game system ever made ever. Those announcements were easily the highlight of
the show and will be one of the biggest things people talk about when E3 is
over and done with.
But here’s my problem with them: yeah,
it’s great that we know they’re coming, but all three of them (with the slight
exception of Doom) basically just had
fancy logo animations and that was it. We can only guess what kind of games Elder Scrolls and Starfield are going to be. I definitely think it was great they
were there because without them this show would’ve been a complete snooze, but
I would’ve liked to see more of them instead of hearing about the ten-millionth
Elder Scrolls Online expansion.
One thing I really liked about this
conference was how it didn’t really take itself seriously. Aside from Nintendo,
Bethesda is one of the only companies that does an E3 show that always manages
to hit that sweet spot of not too cringey and actually funny. Opening the show
with a bouncy metal band was a great way to set the tone, and Todd Howard is
clearly aware of all the memes we have of him. The announcement of the next
places Skyrim will be ported to was
hilarious, and I want to see them do more stuff like this in the future.
So, let’s talk Fallout 76 now. We got official confirmation that the game will be
100% online, but that does kinda worry me. Real life online gaming isn’t like
the online gaming in E3 trailers (no matter what The Division 2 tries to tell you). What’s stopping racists and
trolls and other horrible people from ruining the good time of everyone who
just wants to enjoy a new Fallout game?
Managing toxicity online is one of the most important part of making these
kinds of games, and I really hope Bethesda knows what they’re doing.
Ignoring that, the game itself looks
pretty cool, but I still have some concerns. According to them the map is even
bigger than the map for Fallout 4,
which is great in some aspects but worries me that it’ll just be filled with a
whole lot of nothing with the cool stuff spread thinly across it. I do like a
lot of the cool new designs they introduced, especially the new monsters.
Mushroom sloth is the best video game character ever and I’ll fight anyone who
says otherwise.
Aside from all that, I found the
conference pretty boring. A lot of it was just developers standing in front of
logos and talking, with very little gameplay actually being seen. And, as
usual, a lot of the announcements were DLC and expansions for existing games,
which is never that interesting to see unless you’re a big fan of whichever
game is getting it.
Still, I have to commend Bethesda.
While this conference left me falling asleep again this year, they still had a
lot of guns in their arsenal. The cool announcements were awesome, and I loved
the jokey nature of the show. I just wish we got to see more of stuff like that
instead of talking on and on and on about games we either have already seen
before or already have in our houses.
Square Enix
This was a short one so I’ll try to
keep if brief. Apparently I’m the only one in the world who found Bethesda
kinda boring but thought that Square Enix was actually pretty good. I found
that with Bethesda I only really was able to get excited about the big-name
announcements and everything else looked like filler to me, Square Enix
presented everything in a way that got me interested in stuff I’m never going
to buy.
A good example of that is Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I haven’t
played any of the new Tomb Raider reboot
games (aside from like an hour of the first one), but the demo they showed off
looked really cool. The mechanic of hiding in the jungle and using the
background and environment as a means to get through a stealth section seems
awesome. I definitely will check out what I’ve been missing before the new one
comes out.
We also got two big reveals of brand
new games: something from Platinum Games called Babylon’s Fall, as well as a weird looking new IP called The Quiet Man. We really didn’t get to
see much of these aside from the fact that they exist, but they both look
interesting enough to get me excited to see what they’re about.
While this has been a good E3 overall
one big problem I’ve had with it is that we’ve gotten a lot of
non-announcements. Like, we’ve had a lot of saying “Hey, this is a thing we’re
making!” and that’s about it. Star Wars:
Jedi Fallen Order, Halo: Legacy, Doom: Eternal, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls
VI, and now Babylon’s Fall and The Quiet Man came and went with little
more than some pretty pre-rendered images and a logo (sometimes even less than
that). It’s cool to know they’re coming, but I really want to know more than
just that they’re a thing that we’ll see at the next E3.
Last thing they had was Kingdom Hearts III, which just had the
Microsoft trailer with a few extra shots, so that was kinda disappointing.
Honestly? I really enjoyed Square’s
quick and done approach. They gave us everything they had in just half an hour,
and a lot of the stuff looked good. I would’ve liked more info on the new IPs
and an actual new trailer for Kingdom
Hearts, but I’ll take what we got over a bunch of nothing.
Ubisoft
I don’t think I’ll ever not expect
Ubisoft to deliver a bad conference. I guess I saw waaaaaayyy too many of their
old shows with Mr. Caffeine and memes and awful trailers. But last year they
finally bucked the trend and made one of the best conferences of the entire
show. And wouldn’t you know it, they did it again. Ubisoft appears to have
finally learned from their past mistakes and is now one of the best parts of
E3.
After a terrifying intro featuring a
nightmarish dancing panda, we got right to Beyond
Good & Evil 2. Having never played the original game I wasn’t super
keen on the trailer from last year, but I will say that I thought this one
looked leaps and bounds better. They seem to have dropped the excessive amounts
of swearing, which is nice. I also really love the sci-fi/punk/zoo aesthetic
they’ve got going. If we can get more games that look like this and Cyberpunk 2077 I’ll be a very happy man.
I do wish we’d have gotten a better idea of what actually playing the game is
gonna look like, but I’m happy with what we got.
Next up was a man faceplanting into a
desk to advertise the next Trials game.
And after that was something awesome:
a live performance by Grant Kirkhope of the music of the Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle Donkey Kong expansion. I always love
live gaming music, and I find it weird that Sony is the only companies that
typically does that at their conferences. I’m glad more companies are starting
to make it a trend, because it was especially cool to hear classic DK music
live on stage by one of his best composers.
Speaking of Nintendo, I’ll move ahead
to Starlink: Battle for Atlas for the
sake of an easy segue. This game we first saw last year as a sort of Skylanders for spaceships, allowing you
to build a ship from real-life toys that’ll then appear in-game. All in all the
game looks pretty basic stuff, maybe something that’ll appeal to kids.
And then Fox McCloud showed up.
In yet another demonstration that
Ubisoft and Nintendo are BFFs all of a sudden, stuff from Star Fox will be in the Switch version of Starlink. Even if I don’t buy the game I’ll probably get that
Arwing model just because it looks so cool.
Before that we had Skull and Bones, a game determined to
make everyone forget Sea of Thieves ever
existed. We got an even better look at it here, and it looks like the pirate
game we’ve always wanted. Full ship customization, epic high seas combat,
massive hearty crews and stopping at ports to explore? Yes please.
My one concern is that a game like
this would be incredibly easy to monetize into oblivion. At one point in the
trailer the pirates unearth a “Legendary Chest”, and anyone who witnessed last
year’s Battlefront II fiasco should
have cause for alarm here. I really hope Ubi doesn’t ruin this game, because it
looks like it has tons of potential.
And lastly, we had Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. I’m a little
surprised that they didn’t give the franchise the year off again after boasting
so much about how Origins benefitted
from the extra dev time, but if it was ready to go they might as well release
it. This year the assassins are going to Greece, and it looks like the
franchise is going to be taking new leaps into the future, including a choice
between male and female characters and dialogue options.
Y’know. Stuff other games have been
doing for years now.
While I’m not a franchise fan by any
means, I will say that Odyssey does
look entertaining. A big leap forward is what Assassin’s Creed needs to stop it from becoming irrelevant, and
while only time will tell if it turns out good, it looks like a step in the
right direction to catch them up with the rest of the industry.
So yeah, Ubisoft was pretty great.
While there’s always a concern with them that the end product will turn out
crappy, they’ve become great in the last few years at creating incredibly
appealing trailers and fun and investing conferences. Skull and Bones alone was worth the price of admission.
Sony
Man, what happened here?
Formerly the undisputed king of E3,
Sony’s crown began to slip last year when they delivered an underwhelming
conference that didn’t really show us anything we’d never seen before. And
thanks to some shockingly bad production decisions and (once again) a lack of
surprises, Sony delivered yet another just okay conference this year.
Easily their biggest mistake came
right at the beginning. They gathered the crowd in a church-like building for
the Last of Us: Part II trailer. When
that was finished, everyone had to go into the real theater so the actual conference could start. While we were
waiting for everyone to take their seats, we were treated to a painfully
awkward roundtable discussion and a bunch of trailers we’d already seen.
As for Last of Us itself, it looks fine I guess. I still find it
impossible to get excited over grimdark apocalypse games anymore, so I really
doubt I’ll be interested in it. Still, the story stuff looked cool and the
combat and stealth mechanics look pretty interesting, so I’m sure fans will
love it.
And then we waited. And waited. And
waited some more. And then the PlayStation Twitch stream died so we had to run
to Twitch’s official E3 stream.
After over ten minutes of waiting we
finally got to the next game: Ghost of
Tsushima. I’d never heard about this one before, and here it looked pretty cool,
albeit a kinda unoriginal concept. Maybe it’s because I’ve played too many Warriors games but I think I’ve visited
ancient Japan more than I’ve visited my local national park. All joking aside
this was probably Sony’s biggest new announcement for me, and I definitely will
keep an eye on it.
Later on we had our first real look at
Death Stranding…kinda. Basically all
we saw was a bunch of Norman Reedus hiking in the mountains and then a bit of
what I can only assume was a stealth section.
I’ll admit it: until Kojima sits down
and fully explains what the hell is going on with this game, I am officially
getting off of Death Stranding’s hype
train. This is the fourth time we’re seeing the game in a span of two years,
and we STILL have no idea what it is. Is it an action game? A stealth game? A
shooter? An interactive movie like Detroit:
Become Human? As far as I know right now it might as well be a card game. I don’t want another No Man’s
Sky situation where a game sells itself on how mysterious it is and the
only way of understanding it is to play it. That burned me and thousands of
other people hard last time, and I’m not about to go through it again.
Finally, we got another look at Spider-Man. I’ve mentioned many times on
this blog about how I’ve always wanted a game like this, and it still looks so,
so great. Finally getting to see villains other than Mr. Negative was a treat,
and we also got a tease that he and the other baddies are working for someone
who Spidey apparently sees at the end of the trailer. My money is on either
Green Goblin (as we already know Norman Osborn is in the game) or Doc Ock (as
we just need one more villain to complete a Sinister Six, which he is typically
the leader of).
All in all, Sony was…fine. A lot of
the games they showed looked really good, but aside from maybe Spider-Man (which we’ve seen many times
before) there was no real big “wow” moment for me. With the other conferences
we had stuff like Cyberpunk 2077, Doom: Eternal, The Elder Scrolls VI, Beyond
Good and Evil 2 and Skull and Bones.
Sony really didn’t have much firepower backing them up, and it didn’t help that
the conference itself was horribly paced and disastrously organized. Go back to
the orchestra next year, guys.
Nintendo
They did it. The crazy madmen went and
did it.
We knew going in we were getting Smash Bros, and while we didn’t know if
we were getting a new game or a port, just the promise of a new game in one of
Nintendo’s most enormous franchises was enough to get us hype.
And man, did they ever deliver.
The star attraction this year was Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Switch
iteration of Nintendo’s famous fighter. And it features nothing less than every
single character ever featured in the franchise ever. Characters long since
thought dead such as Pichu, Young Link and even Snake have made glorious
returns, alongside literally every character that’s ever been playable as well
as some new ones, such as Splatoon’s
Inklings, and the no-longer too big Ridley from Metroid. The game looks like a complete celebration of everything Smash, and with it releasing just a
short six months away is unbelievable.
We also managed to get a few quick
looks at some other new stuff, like a new Mario
Party that looks awesome, as well as a new Switch Fire Emblem game, but those were just raindrops in the ocean that
was Smash. While Nintendo didn’t come
geared to the nines with announcements this year, they definitely prioritized
quality over quantity, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
FINAL SCORES
(Friendly
reminder that this is just my opinion and is completely subjective)
1. Nintendo (9/10)
2. Microsoft (9/10)
3. Ubisoft (8/10)
4. Square Enix (7/10)
5. Sony (6/10)
6. Bethesda (5/10)
7. EA (2/10)
I couldn’t resist giving Nintendo the
top spot. Overall Microsoft might’ve had the strongest and most consistent show
with the most big announcement, but Super
Smash Bros. Ultimate was such a powerhouse that, in my eyes, they
absolutely deserve this honour.
Second and third go to Microsoft and
Ubisoft, who both boasted incredibly stellar shows this year with lots and lots
to get excited about. Cyberpunk 2077 and Skull and Bones were two of my
favourite parts of the entire event. If they keep it up or, even better,
improve on what they’ve got going, they’ll quickly become the new kings of E3.
While this may be a controversial
pick, I really did think Square Enix was better than Sony for a few reasons.
Firstly, they managed to get me excited for games I knew about but wasn’t
interested in beforehand, while Sony did not. I couldn’t have cared less about Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but Square’s
presentation of the game’s stealth mechanics definitely made me interested in
looking at the other games in the franchise beforehand. And secondly, Square
actually teased new stuff. I dunno if Babylon’s
Fall will be good, but I’m interested in it purely because it was something
new.
Sony on the other hand I felt was a
bit of a mess this year. The conference’s organization was mind-boggling,
starting off in a completely different room and forcing us at home to play the
waiting game while they made their way into the real room. And while a lot of
the games they showed looked really, really good (Spider-Man looks like a dream come true), there was barely anything
big and new we hadn’t seen before, leaving the conference lacking in a real “wow”
factor.
Bethesda this low might also be a
controversial pick, so let me explain. I am absolutely excited for stuff like Elder Scrolls VI, Doom: Eternal and Starfield. My problem is that we barely
saw any of them aside from logos, and a lot of the conference was just talking
and talking and talking with no real point to it. It wasn’t bad, just not
great.
And unsurprisingly, EA brings up the
rear, with a shockingly boring and uninspired conference that only served to
kill any hype I had for Anthem. Whoops.
All in all though this was an
incredible E3. Next Monday I’ll be talking about my favourite trailers and
games of the show, so be sure to check that out!
