Post E3 2018 Thoughts and Highlights

So E3 2018 is done, games have been shown, interviews have been done, articles have been written, so much info out there for coming games many look forward to and so little time to pay attention to everything. As I'm not paid to do just that I will just share my thoughts on the stuff that stood out to me and that which I care about. I will cover as much as I can but don't expect this to be a full review for everything. 

EA started off E3 with their conference, and what can I really say about it. Not much to be honest, it's one of the few conferences I didn't watch live, in fact I didn't watch much of it at all. I skipped over the boring parts so I think I ended up watching maybe 5-10 minutes of it. I saw some Battlefield V, not a lot of footage but the Nordic looking map that was shown off was thrilling as I like seeing environments that remind me of where I actually live. Same reason I liked Alan Wake as the forests reminded me of the forests back home when I didn't live in an urban environment. It's oddly satisfying to me. As far as Anthem goes, the gameplay that was shown didn't do much for me, looks like another sci-fi shooter revolving around multiplayer and I just can't be bothered with that.

After EA Microsoft was up, and oh boy, I'm no MS fan, in fact I've never owned an Xbox and likely never will, but this was the best conference of E3 to me. It was entertaining, had a good flow, and most importantly, they showed off both Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. Now I didn't get too excited for Cyberpunk 2077 since it was once again just a trailer showing off the world, sure it was nice looking but that's about it. Still want to see actual gameplay but everyone who has seen it has had their mind blown so it does sound interesting. Dying Light 2 was the real highlight for me as it has Chris Avellone behind it and that's all I need to know. I loved the gameplay in the first game, if that gets improved and gets a high quality story with impactful decisions then you can count me in.

Bethesda was next with their showing, now they probably had the cringiest conference during E3 and to be honest, I wasn't particularly wowed. Rage 2 looks fine if not a bit stale, not sure about it yet but I liked the first game (believe it or not) so I'm keeping an eye on it. There were a bunch of announcements I don't really care much about, I mean there were vague teasers for Doom Eternal and I think a Wolfenstein expansion but I don't have any particular opinions on them except "okay". The big thing was Fallout 76, an always online game with no NPC's centered around.. Something. I don't get what that game is about, is it about combat and crafting? I mean who asked for this game? Who have ever said that their favorite part of the Bethesda Fallout games were shooting and crafting? Sure, I get that many people wanted to play Fallout with a friend, but do they even want this? Is it really a Fallout game without a well told story, heavy decisions and a world populated with interesting intrigue? I don't know, because Bethesda have been frustratingly vague when describing it. Todd Howard and Pete Hines are annoyingly good at giving non-answers. Though enough of that, they also announced Starfield as a next gen game and Elder Scrolls VI, interesting they would do that when they're so far off but I agree with the people who have been saying they did it to soothe over the worries that they're going online focused with Fallout 76.

Then I watched Devolver Digital and Square Enix back to back. Now to be honest I didn't watch the Devolver conference for the games but for the crazy show they put on. I just loved how they made fun of casual gamers who spend crazy money on silly microtransactions. Just a lovely show with a few games that honestly do look kinda fun. Don't remember any of their names though. As far as Square Enix goes I liked the Shadow of the Tomb Raider gameplay, looks really interesting but after that my attention went elsewhere and I missed most of it. I didn't even look away for long it was just that their showing was really short. Oh well.

Moving on to Ubisoft next, their conference was decent but out of all the things they showed what stood out most to me was the games they didn't show. I was hoping to see a new Splinter Cell game and Watch Dogs 3 but they were nowhere to be seen. Suppose Assassin's Creed: Odyssey looked fine and all but I am yet to play Origins so I have some catching up to do on that front. Still miss Aisha Tyler, she was a real highlight of Ubisoft's past  conferences but it seems like she's not returning. Which makes me sad.

What about the PC Gaming show then? Well, I didn't watch it. Don't care.

Now the final conference I watched was Sony, no I didn't watch Nintendo, their style of games just don't appeal to me so I'll only be talking about Sony from here on. Their conference or show, whatever they wanna call it, was poorly structured and boring, but man were the games they showed off impressive. We finally saw gameplay for several of their titles for the first time, The Last of Us: Part II being the first on the line. Truly impressive stuff, the animation was top notch, so much so that a Tomb Raider lead called it fake, but the gameplay was improved upon as well. I really look forward to playing this bad boy in whatever distant year they please to release it. Of course, there was some controversy about the kiss between Ellie and Dina. As far as silly controversies go this is a silly one, not only should people have expected it as Ellie and Riley kissed in the Left Behind DLC but ND, and Druckmann specifically, have openly said that Ellie is indeed gay. The only thing I could think about when watching it, seeing Ellie so warm and happy, is that Dina is super dead. Like she has to die, and I can't wait to see the Youtube reactions when they play that part. It's gonna be spicy stuff, my dudes and dudettes.

I believe Ghost of Tsushima was up next, now this game looked absolutely stunning. The visuals are to die for. Not only that, the gameplay looked really nice, I'm not a fan of over the top hack and slash games so seeing a more slower paced and grounded combat system was pure joy for me. One thing that kinda put me off was the very American sounding female ally that shows up during the demo so I'm glad to see there will be the option for Japanese voice overs. Overall, I liked everything I saw from it. There were other games shown off as well, but I wasn't really impressed, not really into Spider Man and as far as Kingdom Hearts go both the more realistic graphics for the Pirates of the Caribbean characters go and the weird choice to mute all sound but the voices in the trailers to highlight the music was jarring to me. Death Stranding looked neat though, gave off some walking simulator vibes but I don't care, I want this game and I want it ASAP. It looks delightfully weird and I'm very much into it.

Final words, I wasn't blown away by E3 this year but one or two games did make me squeal from delight which is really all you can hope for. I think this year's event was really... Safe in some regards. It upheld the status quo of EA being disappointing, Bethesda getting all sorts of attention, Ubisoft being Ubisoft with all the cringe that goes with it, Devolver being memes incarnate, Sony making weird decisions but ultimately leaving people satisfied, Microsoft flexing their wallet, PC Gaming and Square making little noise. Not the best E3 but certainly not the worst.

Red Dead Redemption 2 - Second Trailer Reactions

So the second trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2 dropped today, I'll leave a link at the end for those interested but for now I wanted to give my first reactions on it in words. I know it's a novel concept to write about it instead of making a whole video on it but lets get to it.

Mr. Arthur Morgan

First off, we find out that the protagonist is one Arthur Morgan, a dude who sure looks the part of a capable outlaw. Now I do wanna note that he does in every way appear to be an outlaw unlike the protagonist of the first game, John Marston. He is indeed quite the contrast to Mr. Marston, not only does he seem to enjoy being bad more but he's also a different figure, that is he's more physically intimidating. I do look forward to seeing him interact with the world as he doesn't really seem like the kind of guy to be pushed around easily.

I do think there's a reason for such a seemingly dark character, I wouldn't be surprised if he at some point was a more redeemable character but the changed up a bit after the release of Gta V. What I mean with that is that with Gta V Trevor Phillips was introduced and his psychotic persona became extremely popular so I wouldn't be surprised if this fact influenced Morgan of RDR2. Now I don't think he'll be going full psycho but I do think Trevor did encourage Rockstar to make a meaner character than they'd normally do. Personally, I like him, I've seen some negative comments towards him but I'm excited to see more of his persona. I suspect he's not all around bad but perhaps put on a tougher persona when in "outlaw mode".

Outside of Morgan, we didn't really see that much as it was a short trailer. I mean we did see glimpses of hunting (with a bow no less), horse taming and heists. Though the heists did look quite cinematic so I hope you can still rob stuff outside of main missions. We did see one big thing though, Dutch van der Linde, which with other released info has confirmed that it is indeed a prequel that is centered around Dutch's gang. I was skeptical there would be a lot to explore but it does seem to be so far back with plenty of colorful characters to make it interesting.

Not sure there's that much more to comment on story speculations. I do however want to comment on the types of comments I've read in the comment sections on Youtube, Twitter and so on. Fun conspiracy theories that I will hastily debunk. Lots of comments about Abigail being the mysterious blonde woman, to that I say, Abigail had black hair and wasn't a badass gunslinger. Next, lots of people are thinking the boy Morgan threatens in the trailer is a young Marston, first off John's mother died at childbirth and he was found by Dutch while in an orphanage so no dice. I've also seen comments linking Morgan to MacFarlane, that he would be related but as his name is Morgan it's also quite unlikely and reaching to make a connection. As are all the comments calling anyone with a beard Uncle (the drunk hanging around at Marston's farm towards the end of RDR).

That would be all, if you haven't already check out the trailer and get back to me perhaps if you see something interesting. Here's the trailer for those interested;
RDR2 Trailer 2

E3 2015 Thoughts and Winners

Best E3, like, ever! It has to be said before going more in-depth, it was a great show and many unbelievable surprises. It was so much fun seeing old and new games doing their best to impress. With that said, lets get to the meatier stuff! Do note that these are my opinions and I do focus on the stuff I was personally interested in.

I started watching Bethesda's E3 conference at 5:00 am Finnish time, and I'm glad I did. They started off with Doom 4 which was looking really good. Cannot complain about neither graphics nor gameplay, it was fun to see. They had a bit of stuff I didn't care about in the middle, like the Elder Scrolls online thing but they also showed off a lot of Fallout 4, and what can I say about that? It looks damn good, gameplay looks very fun with combat that they've actually put effort into this time around and they have a crazy amount of customization options. Lets just say it's hard to say that Fallout 4 isn't your kind of game because there's just so many options on how to play it. I suppose I should also mention that I can't wait to see more of Dishonored 2, I loved the first game so I do also expect great things from this game.

Moving on, the next conference I watched was Microsoft. I seem to be quite alone in this but their conference was pretty boring. Sure, they had good stuff like announcing backwards compatibility and, yeah. Don't get me wrong they showed games like Halo 5, Gears 4 and Forza 6 but those are franchises I've never been very fond of so they were pretty forgettable. The one game I was interested in that they showed was The Rise of the Tomb Raider (silly title though) but that demo was really disappointing. Very linear, scripted and the same old "shit breaks" kind of set piece gameplay that's just not very fun. They did the same with when they showed off the reboot as well, I thought that game was going to suck big time yet it's one of my favorite games from that year.

However, if we're talking about an outright bad conference, lets check out EA. If you wanna go to sleep, this is where it's at. They were smart saying every now and then how long until the reveal of Battlefront 3, because that was really the only reason to watch their show. Sure they had the new Need For Speed which looked neat enough, but it was really Star Wars: Battlefront 3 that people were most excited about. They also showed off the new Mass Effect: Andromeda game, but there's not much to talk about there either, EA really should've waited to announce a few of their projects because it seems like they aren't even nearly ready to talk about their games yet. Better luck next year.

Maybe it was because I had just watched EA's snoozefest, but Ubisoft had a really good conference, or shall I say an entertaining one. With a good host and good games to show off, with highlights being The Division and Ghost Recon: Wildlands. Curiously enough with only a brief CGI trailer for Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, though I suppose that by now everyone knows what AC is. And lets not forget For Honor which also looks really interesting, new IP with a more realistic take on sword battles. Overall, good job to Ubisoft!

Next up, my personal favorite of E3 2015, Sony. Where to start, the first thing they did was reveal The Last Guardian which people have been waiting for forever. Almost unreal to see it again, and no mercy was given as they showed off a new IP, Horizon: Zero Dawn, with some impressive looking gameplay. The announcements kept coming, Final Fantasy 7 remake in the works and Shenmue 3 is also to be revived. Finally, they showed off more Uncharted 4 gameplay which looked really grand, more open and so detailed. To think that they still have plenty of studios still working on unannounced titles is really exciting. Sony really won me over this E3.

Nathan Drake in action!

As far as Nintendo and Square Enix goes, I don't have much to say. Nintendo's show was cute, sure, but I don't really saw anything worth of note. Square Enix then again showed stuff like Just Cause 3, but their speakers were so dull I just couldn't feel enthusiastic about their games. Seriously, if they don't care about what they're talking about then why should I? Charisma is really important in these situations, next time I hope they have speakers that actually care about our amazing medium.

Final words then, so this year Sony "won" E3 for me, however this year it was so great that I can't really say someone had the best show. All I can say is that EA, Nintendo and Square Enix still have a lot to learn, the rest all had good stuff going on. In the end it's the gamers that won, we will be getting so many quality experiences in these coming years it's insane. Hope you, yes you reading this, are just as excited as I am to be a gamer in this day and age!


You can also find me on twitter @crazycat690

E3 2014 Reactions

E3 2014 just went by, they showed off plenty of good games but there was also few surprises. Sony showed some Uncharted, Microsoft showed Halo, and Nintendo showed Zelda. 

I'm going to go over E3 briefly and from my own point of view now so don't expect some in depth analysis or anything, without any further delay lets start out with Microsoft! Their idea to show only games was great, it was entertaining to see game after game but they showed mostly multiplats and then CGI trailers for newly announced games. Oh and if you're not tired of Halo, good news, they talked a lot of Halo.

Then I watched the EA conference, they kinda left me puzzled. I understand that they want to show off games and all but they proved that you can show them off too soon. Do I need to see games so early in development that they miss all textures? No, not really. Hard to be excited for something that we'll know won't come out anytime soon. And while Battlefield Hardline did look interesting, I don't think it's a smart move to annualize the franchise considering they like releasing pricy DLC for about a year. I can't speak for everyone but I won't be spending 120 bucks for a game that'll last a year. Though since I never bought BF4 I might get Hardline instead.

Moving on, Ubisoft, they were a bit more fun and once again having the energetic Aisha Tyler return as host. Apart from the less interesting segments with those dance and workout games their show was pretty solid as they showed off good games like Far Cry 4, AC Unity, The Division and the newly announced Rainbow Six: Siege. Overall a strong conference.

I watched the Sony conference last, the first half hour was really entertaining with Little Big Planet 3 suddenly being announced and demoed. It slowed down for about 20-30 minutes halfway through when they spent way too much time talking about more boring and technical things. Overall it was a decent conference with games like LBP3, Bloodborne and Uncharted 4.

Final words, I didn't bother watching Nintendo's thing because I was kinda asleep at the time and they've never interested me much. Later I've heard that it was pretty good with many games shown off. Anyway, based on my experience I liked Sony's most, mostly because they showed off the three games I'm most interested in, MGSV, Gta V next gen version and Uncharted 4.

E3 2014 Predictions and Wishes

E3 is soon upon us once again, and boy is there reason to hype. Sony, Microsoft and even Nintendo all have reason to bring the big guns. The new consoles have been out now for about half a year, so this E3 will be a deciding point for many gamers. What else can we now do to handle the wait then hype some more?

Nintendo haven't been much of a presence on E3 since the release of Wii U, but they still have a desire to make their fans happy so don't expect them to show up empty handed. Say what you want about Nintendo but they are good at keeping secrets, wouldn't be surprised if they announced a new, grand Zelda game that the Wii U really need. Also I don't think the fans would mind perhaps a Super Mario Galaxy 3, a fan favorite to surprise? Nintendo could use the spotlight.

Microsoft then again have been hyping their stuff big time. Some stuff has also been leaked early, like cover and some info about the announced Halo 5: Guardians. Lately, they've been announcing new and good changes to their console, Xbox One, stuff they could've said at E3 but they might be clearing room to talk about games. Which is a smart move, they could do with some more popularity considering their situation. What I would expect to see from MS is a demo of Quantum Break, a lengthy trailer of Halo 5, a teaser of Gears of War 4, Sunset Overdrive trailer and then some more surprising announcements and some less surprising announcements with the usual exclusive content for certain games.

Then we have Sony, now I must admit I'm personally most hyped over Sony since I've been playing Playstation since a wee lad. I feel like they will bring good stuff to the show this year, they want to stay number 1 right now, eye of the tiger and all that. I wouldn't expect much as far as announcements for the console itself though I suppose I could see a demo of their VR project Morpheus thing and see how it separates itself from the competition. Maybe along with an announcement of Media Molecules game we'll see a demo of their game with Morpheus.

What I expect from them on a gaming note is that they really show off Uncharted 4, it will likely be used to show off the graphical powers of the Ps4, and I for one expect to be impressed. Other than that I think we'll see The Order 1886, Driveclub and Deep Down, you know, the announced stuff. When talking about the surprises I would hope that they're ready to re-introduce The Last Guardian, but not only that, also Agent, and the optimist in me would also not mind seeing Eight Days as a Ps4 project. Finally there's this older franchise that's been rumored to make a return for a long time now that I hope to finally see, which is Syphon Filter.

Of course we also have Ubisoft and EA which I which I will bring up last. Ubisoft have spilled the beans on a lot of stuff they will show like Far Cry 4, AC Unity and The Division, but I would still expect a surprise from them at the end in some form or another. EA on the other hand is kind of a wild card, not really sure what they're up to, could be really good, though they also have the biggest potential to disappoint greatly. Having new Star Wars games, like Battlefront 4, to show they really need to show something good to meet the high expectations from eager fans. They're also rumored to have already have a new Battlefield game in the works, scheduled for no later than this year, while some would be happy I'd imagine many would be angry with them releasing a new BF game one year later while BF4 is according to many still not very functional. Also making it an annual franchise like CoD which is so often trash talked by BF fans and EA alike.
 

If anyone want to share their hype go ahead, I do encourage discussion, not just one-sided talking.