After the Bethesda show Sunday night set such a high bar, I have to say I wasn’t really impressed by the following day’s offerings. Each had a moment or two where I straightened up in my seat and looked towards the stage with something resembling mild delight, but the bombs I expect to drop at an E3 press conference come in the form of new game announcements and not artificial hype for a new service, cross promotion, or long expected title. No one likes your subscription service, EA, putting Titanfall on it isn’t going to make me clap. The Ubisoft show was pretty cool, with four letter words and actual jokes, but aside from For Honor and the new Ghost Recon: Wildlands, it didn’t really get me amped for any of their games.
All the conferences were only a few blocks from where I was staying in LA, but Sony was a criminal 9 blocks away. I almost didn’t go in favor of watching it from my laptop, but journalistic integrity got the better of me and I slogged my way down the polluted streets of the city of angels to the Memorial Sports Arena where the conference was being held. After going to the wrong entrance 3 times, I finally made my way in to find a festival being held in the parking lot. The event was fully catered, with free food and libations. I didn’t really have time for anything more than a few slices of BBQ beef and a sandwich, and the drink line looked longer than the line to get seats, so I ended up going in woefully sober.
As the lights dimmed and the fog machines bellowed, the music boomed and the auditorium erupted in a multi-screen spectacle of Playstation glory. Still bitter and cynical, I just took a deep breath and let the hype pass over me. The first announcement was simple. They would reveal a game that people had been waiting some time for, that had come to hold a special place in many fans hearts, and that had come to represent friendship and courage. The lights dimmed, and on the screen a single white feather fell on a black background. There were murmurs in the crowd. My balls tensed. I knew what I was in store for.
When you start off your press conference with the announcement of a game that people have been waiting 6 years for, you better back that up with some massive balls. And oh the balls Sony had on them this year. The conference was a marathon of reveals and exclusives, each step pounding home the concept that Playstation meant new content. <i>The Last Guardian</i> was just the start. It was everything I wanted. It made me love again.
As a quick aside, this will be a recap of the relevant DreadCentral worthy announcements of the conference, and not a story on each game. For those, I will be writing individual articles for, so check them out if any individual game interests you.
The first game I want to go over is a little indie title called Firewatch. Taking the isolated perspective of a fire watch marshal in the wilderness, your only companionship is a distant voice on a Walkie Talkie. Things slowly reveal themselves to be not all safe and peaceful, with sinister happenings building a slow burn thriller. It looks to be a surprisingly tense indie thriller with great writing, so check out the gameplay trailer if you want to know more.
Next up, we got the reveal for a new Hitman game. The trailer was all CG, but we did get to see some gameplay during the Square Enix show the following morning. As far as a reveal trailer, it set the tone very well, showing Agent 47 taking out targets in a variety of settings. While not an exclusive, they did announce that the game would have 6 exclusive contracts for the PS4. I’ve always liked the macabre tone of the Hitman franchise, and I’m eager to once again murder ganglords with innocuous objects while dressed up as a chicken.
I never got into Destiny, but the trailer for The Taken King expansion piqued my interest. I’ve heard that the class diversity is too weak and story comes to an unsatisfying end, but what was revealed about The Taken King seems to take steps to address both of those problems. The darker tone and demonic antagonist should give both horror and sci-fi fans something to look forward to. Launching on the PS4 with an exclusive missions, weapons, and maps, hopefully this installment of destiny will finally be what we have all been waiting for.
At this point, Batman: Arkham Knight isn’t new news. While the game hasn’t come out, we’ve all known it’s coming and seen gameplay for a long time. What we saw at the show shook up what we thought to expect from a Batman title. Taking place from the perspective of an Gotham police officer, we get to see first hand the effects of Scarecrow’s terrifying fear toxin. It darkens an already black game, and ups the ante for anyone who is a fan of the more macabre side of the Dark Knight’s adventures. It was a great twist, and set the mood for the PS4 exclusive Scarecrow missions.
Of all the games I will talk about here, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End seems out of our wheelhouse. However, Uncharted has provided time and again supernatural twists that put it on par with the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Always based in reality and expanding to the supernatural, Nathan Drake captures exactly what we loved about a similar ruggedly charming archaeological adventurer. While the trailer we saw here didn’t have any of the monsters that the series always keeps so close to the chest, we did see some awesome adventure gameplay.
In typical dramatic fashion, I’ve saved my favorite for last. As someone who plays games for a living, I’ve come to expect a certain standard of what a game will be. Then, every once in a while, a game is about stabbing dino-bots in the apocalypse future. When the trailer for Horizon: Zero Dawn started, I figured I was in store for some kind of barbarian RPG/action game. We hear a narrator explain that the world long ago fell because of a reason they can’t explain, and now people exist in tribes of various power and influence. The narrator is of the first tribe, and she comes from a long history of hunters. Hunting, as it turns out, doesn’t involve killing deer, but towering robotic machines who fire rockets from their sides. Even for a newly announced title, this is one game that took me by complete surprise. Do yourself a favor, and check out the trailer.
There are a number of games that were big deals that I didn’t mention. No Man’s Sky looks cool, but is too unfinished to really jump for joy over. The Final Fantasy 7 remake is the second biggest news I didn’t care about, right behind the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter. Now everyone that thinks that I didn’t care about Halo 5 because I’m some kind of Sony fan boy can go eat their own feet. Some games I just never got into, and expecting me to care about their remake or sequel is silly. Also, none of these titles are horror, so they can go hang out in pansy land with the rest of the games for kids.
The Morpheus presentation, Sony’s VR headset, was also underwhelming. We got to see a cool looking shark attack a diver cage, but I still think that VR is unlikely to catch on. I get that every system is making one right now, and I really do think that some people are doing really great stuff with the technology. Not only do people create new ways to experience existing genres, but create new ones entirely. One Oculus game I’m a fan of called Classroom Aquatic has you cheating off of tests underwater as someone who didn’t prepare, which is as close to a real life horror story as my bi-weekly nightmares can conjure up. I just think that it’s a hard sell to get people to buy a peripheral to play a game they can play without it.
We also only got a brief clip of Until Dawn, a game I have been anticipating since it was a PS3 title. I did get to play a brief demo at the Sony booth on the floor, so I guess E3 wasn’t a complete wash. Still, the number of interesting hardcore games announced staggered me. I was on the edge of my seat for almost the entire show. I understand that people have their console preferences, but as I said before, I’m here to see announcements on new games. Sony delivered, and I could not be happier I dragged my tired feet to their doorstep.
Still, I want to know what you think. Do you think that Sony failed to deliver on anything really interesting? Do you think that Microsoft knocked it out of the part with backwards compatibility? Am I a hopeless Sony fanboy who could not possibly sate his lust with all the dicks in the world? Let me know!