Monday, June 11, 2018

E3 2018 so far

Okay, so I'm typing this at 6.45 in the morning after having staggered out of bed at 4.15.

I had to catch Bethesda's E3 show live, and living where I do, meant getting up at this frankly ungodly hour. And on top of that, I didn't exactly get to bed early, which is Microsoft's fault.

Alright, lets break this down. I blame any typo's on my foggy brain.

EA started off E3 first, and apart from Unravel 2 (adorable) and Sea of Solitude (interesting), their entire show was complete garbage. And I'm not saying that because I despise EA, which I do, but their show was lackluster, cringy and a little bit insulting. Their CEO Andrew Wilson had the unmitigated gall to claim they are “concerned about players having an unfair advantage”. After all the BS they pulled with pay to win nonsense...
But enough about the sad trolls.

Last night (my time) was Microsoft's conference, and I was legit exhausted afterward. It was non stop roller-coaster of amazing titles after amazing titles. I'm not even really interested in playing any of them bar two, but the trailers were so good. They showcased fifty titles in ninety minutes. After forty minutes, I glanced at the clock thinking that it was about done, and it just kept going. Utterly incredible. If you have the time, give the show a look, it was incredible. I can't list them all here, but a new Ori, a new Forza, three Gears of War, Kingdom Hearts 3, and my favourite non Bethesda title: Cyberpunk 2077! My mind is still reeling.

Then, just a couple hours ago, Bethesda took to the stage. At first I was a bit confused. It wasn't very good, but then... then Todd Howard took to the stage and stole the show.

Fallout 76 is a online Fallout game, BUT, you can play it alone if you prefer. What we don't know yet, is whether you can play PVE with friends, or if it's either solo or co-op/PVP. We'll probably know soon.
The game is four times bigger than Fallout 4, you can build anywhere, Howard called it “softcore survival”, meaning you loose nothing by dying, and their dedicated servers are going to feature dozens of players at once not hundreds, “it's the apocalypse not an amusement park”.
We're still missing a lot of details, but my sleep deprived brain is very optimistic.

They also announced a cross platform Elder Scrolls game called Blades that will work on everything from phones to VR. They showed a teaser of their first new IP in 25 years, Starfield as well as a screen for Elder Scrolls 6!
And then smaller stuff like, new content for Prey, a new Doom game and a new Wolfenstein game. The new Wolf is the first that doesn't feature good old B.J. It's set in Nazi occupied Paris in the 80's and you play as B.J.'s twin daughters and it's both soloable and co-op. All really really cool.

Then, Devolver Digital was just as bizarre, vulgar, bloody and amazingly weird as last year. They don't make games for me, but kudos for the show.

Still to come are Square-Enix, but I think most of their stuff was shown by Microsoft. Ubisoft should be interesting, and then the PC gaming show. Whew.

Finally, here's the links. Last week I received a complaint about my lack of links, so here you go. I recommend skipping EA, but Microsoft's an Bethesda's are gold.

So that's that, have a great week!







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