So another E3 has come and gone and I think that in general this has been one of the better ones for some years and I know some people will disagree or say that the titles released are just the typical large scale cash ins, reboots and sequels they hate. It is fine they can have that opinion but they probably are in a minority and not what the majority of consumers want and will find they have little input to the industry as a whole.
So I am going to stick to the stuff that interests me in this and try to weed out the obvious point scoring going on at the moment and well talk about videogames because that is the real reason for the show.
First up and probably with the titles I am looking forward to the most was Bethesda and they finally showed off the new Fallout 4, in general the most interesting additions are being able to better sculpt your character instead of playing with a handful of often meaningless sliders. The setting has change to Boston and the game starts up prior to the war that causes the nuclear devastation and it seems like that it isn't as destructive in this location so it's not as bleak as previous Fallout games. There is also going to be some sort of base building in the game where you can help rebuild the world around you but I think this maybe quite limited.
I say this because although they have tried to improve the visuals it seems they are still intent to use their tweaked version of Gamebryo. I just think it puts quite a few limitations on the visuals and even gameplay and I can guess that a loading screen which always breaks the immersion will still split internal and external locations. That said I think this will still be a game I will easily rack up 200+ hours in and still really enjoy exploring the world. I would talk about their Shelter app but its iOS only and not coming to Android which means I am not going to try it. Another big thing was that one of the collector editions have a Pip boy included that works with most Smartphone and we may have preordered one.
The next title I am interested in is Dishonoured 2, I enjoyed the original and reminded me a lot of how a number of titles in the early 2000's felt in terms of game play and RPG lite elements and has been compared to things like Theif. This time you can play either as Emily who was introduced but unplayable in the first game or as Corvo from the first game and will be set a number of years after the original title. There isn't much to say about it so far as there was only a FMV shown an not any game play but I am keen in returning to Dunwall.
Nintendo do what they do best and had a strange preview event with Muppets of all of the regular E3 presenters such as Reggie and Miyamoto. There isn't much to say on the games really but I think they at least do some fun things.
EA had pretty much their standard and expected list of titles but we got to see some more videos of the Battlefront game. I think it is looking very good but in terms of what is out of the box they seem to have gone the route of their recent Battlefield games and removing from the core experience and either not releasing that content or releasing it in following expansion or booster packs. I guess this is just the way things are going but apart from improved visual fidelity and the fact that the older games servers are no longer up in some cases I wonder why most people would even upgrade.
Put it like this I am still playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 on PC as the multiplayer just feels more fun than that of the newer titles epecially Hardline which had little to do with the rest of the series and universally mocked for having effectively broken ways to level up your character. They also showed off the new Plants Vs Zombies 2 which again is a spinoff of the Battlefield games but I did have fun with the first one even though I picked it up on a budget price. It really reminds me of playing the Conkers Bad Fur Day multiplayer mode on the Xbox version with comical characters and interesting abilities to replace the standard realistic shooter weapons. There was a preview for the new Mass Effect which is entitled Andromeda and seemed to have a Wild West theme similar to the TV show Firefly but basiclly we know nothing still.
Ubisoft had some more news and a release date (finally) on the new replacement to RS: Patiriots which was cancelled. There was a demo of the terrorist hunt gameplay which seems to be the focus of the title and now includes destructible environments. For me I think it will be good to have my friends and I team up and work together (although I think there will be some friendly fire) so its certainly something to watch although I cannot say I was blown away by it and considering its been like 8 years from Rainbow Six Vegas there isn't much new here. They also had a preview for the new Ghost Recon again this could be a good thing to play coop with friends and certainly had more going for it visually and the open scale of the game may be a better option than corridor shooters like Rainbow Six.
They also had their yearly announcment of Ass Creed and while I did enjoy the series the yearly update got kind of greating. Certainly they will never beat Black Flag in terms of what the gameplay and theme offered and Unity was a major disaster for the company. This time the Creed has headed off to London so I guess there is some interest from a architectural point of view in how well they replicate the city they had some interesting additions like being able to take control of a horse and cart and even fight between them but nothing to replace a pirate ship.
Sony had a bunch of stuff but mostly I was interested to see Last Guardian is still coming although it has seemed to have had so many issues and delays and threats of cancellation that it just needs to come out now. No Mans Sky seems to be coming along after their office was flooded out and the developers had a number of donations to get back on their feet. I am still dubious to how the procedural world creation will work and if it will actually have much purpose to the game itself but it certainly looks pretty and worth a look. They also had a new IP in the shape of Horizon - Zero Dawn which actually has some similarities to the new IP Microsoft have (listed below) but effectively you play a female archer name Aloy who fight essentially robotic dinosaurs and again shares some similarity with the Turok series.
Finally Microsoft showed off its new game for the Xbone and while I have moved away from MS this console generation they have finally made some good decisions like leaving Kinect behind and working on games for their target audience for the most part and possibly with the arrival of Windows 10 there is room to get some of the titles on PC that would previously be released on the Xbox only.
The first bit of interesting news was the ability to have backward compatibility on the Xbone with the Xbox 360 which I guess is useful if you wanted to play older games and didn't still have your previous console. I think a lot of stock is put in this and as someone who has, a lot of older consoles and older titles I think this is a somewhat good approach and seems better than their attempt on the Xbox 360 with the original Xbox which was frankly poor.
A lot of people where waiting for the announcement of what Rare was doing next after they had been reduced to doing additional avatar items and vanity projects like Kinnect Sport Rivals and everyone was excited that they may reboot one of their classic titles. The reality was a bit different but not all together bad. The first bit of news was a rebundle of all the classic Rare games over the past 30 years including titles for the Spectrum like Knight Lore before the company was formed and made by the Stampers in their bedrooms. The other title which is a new IP is Sea of Thieves and looks to be an MMO style pirate game which seems like something really obvious but no one else has done or at least no one with Rares relatively well known background. I am not really sold fully on the art style and of course the gameplay is the key and it will be interesting to see if there is anything cool like being able to select and customise your own pirate ships for instance.
MS then had a typical line up with things like Halo, Gears of War, and Minecraft which seem like their branded games for the console. There were a couple of new additions to the line-up one being Recore which seemed that it had some potential as a wasteland style action game with robots and some of the scenes in the trailer reminded me of Alyx and Dog from Halflife 2.
They also had their typical round up of Arcade titles which is now rebranded as Xbox ID and focuses on Indie games. This had some instructing previews for game like Cuphead which seems to take its art style from 1930s cartoons such as the original Disney animations and seems to be a side scrolling platformer similar to Metal Slug. There was also another preview and essentially the first 20 minutes of The Behemoths Game 4 which seems to be a strategy game of sorts.
Overall, I think this has been a great preview event and had some really strong titles and stuff I actually want to play. There is probably some stuff that has slipped my mind or I just didn't want to cover as it doesn't really appeal but it seems a good year with a mix of decent sequels, new IPs and updates on titles that where shown previously but have been in development hell.