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repentantsky · 3 years

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9 Things I’d like to see at E3, 2021

So E3 2021 is a thing. It’s gonna be all digital, and several companies have already signed up to join, sounds like a good deal, but the question is, will it be what we normally expect out of E3, or will it be more like Summer Game Fest Last Year, where everything that looked like it was gonna be great, but just turned out to be okay? Who can say, but I have some...suggestions, that might make it better, along with some game announcements, that might make it all it should be cracked up to be.

9. No low quality, at home interviews during the main show

E3 has had a history of doing interviews during game shows to try and break pace a little, and keep people from being too excited, only to potentially be let down later. However, possibly the worst problem with Summer Game Fest last year, was the at home interviews, which broke pacing during game announcements in a way I can’t imagine was on purpose, and for many, was the time to take a bathroom break, or simply look away for a while. It’s important of course to hear from developers about their projects, and they can divulge some interesting information about games, that either puts something confusing into context, or is accidently leaked, but when we watch shows about game releases, we want to see the games. Interviews should be held in between shows, or better yet, the days following the conferences themselves.

8. Nintendo finally talks about the big three

While it’s safe to say Nintendo has done some banger numbers over the last year espeically, due to better console availability, which I never thought I’d say about Nintendo but here we are, it’s also safe to say that fans have been waiting for literal years on Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4, and Breath of the Wild 2. While some have been more patient than others, and of course I understand there’s a flipping pandemic going on, Nintendo told us far too long ago about these games, or the restart of their development, and Breath of the Wild 2 was promised to at least get an update this year, and E3 seems like the best place to do it, especially after their last direct, one that was more than a year in waiting, and left so many people disappointed. And this is coming from someone who had literally only hoped to be excited about one thing, and it didn’t happen The future of how they present games, almost feels like it’s in question after such a show, which did not justify itself, so hopefully, they can finally let everyone walk away happy, and talk about the projects that have been generation the most excitement, for literal years now.

7. Space things out better

You might now know this, I only made one list about it after all, and literally no one reacted to it, but I’m a huge wrestling fan, and one of the promotions I watch, is WWE. Now, WWE is about to launch WrestleMania, their equal to E3 in a lot of ways, and are splitting it up over two days, and that goes for their third brand NXT as well, because they have a history of making the show sometimes 8 hours long. For fans of video games, watching The Game Awards, which can be two to three hours long, is arduous, and tiring, and E3, can also have that same effect. I remember in 2019, I literally fell asleep watching Bethesda’s conference, because I was so tired trying to write about the previous shows in between them, never mind actually watching them, that I was burnt out. Since E3 is going fully digital this year, and everyone is going to be in that same boat, it would be nice if we didn’t have too many shows, spanning over a near 12 hour period, which was happened before, making people stay up late to enjoy what they want to, or you know, work, which is free promotion for whatever gets announced. Spacing the shows out to no more than three a day, and giving people enough time to get their thoughts together, would just be really nice.

6. Devolver Digital, tries a different style

Look, I don’t hate Devolver Digital’s approach to talking about games at E3, but what I do hate, is them telling the same jokes over and over again, and expecting everyone to laugh, because you know, it’s so funny when something that’s already been said, or shown, is modified ever so slightly for years on end. I’m not saying they can’t still tell jokes, please do, E3 is as much a good time as it is stressful depending on who you are, so the change of pace can at times be a lot of fun, but the last time they had a “conference”, it was a slog, and generally left me feeling annoyed, and I can’t help but feel I’m not the only one. They want to be different, I say that’s great, but they need to do it in a way that for one, is actually different, because their style has become a cliché in and of itself, and where they don’t spend time talking about fake games, because it’s hard to know at times what’s real and what isn’t. I honestly thought the last time they did one, the final game they talked about was just a play on the “one more thing” trope conferences have, and when I later realized it wasn’t, I never got that first sense of hype, and so lost interest, and that’s not a good business model. We don’t even know at this point if they’re going to declare for E3, and since it was announced late, it might be too hard to get a show at all, but if they do show up, or even when they next do a conference, it would be nice if they considered this line of thinking.

5. Drop the “Exclusive Online Portal” idea

Yeah I don’t know what the ESA was thinking with this one, but they mentioned that E3 will be streaming from an exclusive online portal, and not only do we not know what that means, but no one flipping cares! We’re all going to watching it on YouTube, Twitch, or dare I say it but it’s possible, Facebook Gaming, and any other platform is completely useless. We are all tired of hearing, download a new program to do a thing you can already do on other platforms, PC gamers especially, stop releasing new flipping launchers and...sorry, that’s for another list in the future perhaps, but the point stands. You might get streamers to download, or go to whatever site they need to, to watch the shows, but everyone else, is either going to watch those streams, or as it often happens, watch the highlights at a later time, so to add a potentially extra step to that process, is just not going to go anywhere, and since E3 will be free to watch, it’s not like this is going to be a good way to make money, unless you do plan to do the following...

4. Throwing flipping ads at everyone between shows or otherwise

Look, I get it, even an online show that’s going to be talking about games costs money to make, and so money must be made by other means, many of which are not available to the ESA without people actually being present, but the thing about E3 is, as much as we all love it, it is one massive ad, and even though it’s an add we like, it’s not one that needs too many ads thrown at it beyond what it already has. There are other, less annoying ways to make money, like having products from the games announced be available at a store online that people can access, that sees them getting part of the profit, or something of that nature, but this portal that was mentioned, seems like a place where the ESA can just throw ads at people all day, and that just seems like a horrible idea. A lot of people don’t see E3 as an ad, even though it absolutely is, and blowing away the smoke and mirrors that it’s not, by throwing countless ads at people for the sake of trying to make money, might be the end of E3 as we know it.

3. Don’t spend too much time talking about games that are coming out close to the event, or just came out

Like I said, E3 is one big, massive ad, and for the most part, that’s totally alright, but E3 also has a habit of sneaking in little bits talking about games, that are coming out during the week of, or very close to the shows, to the point of being annoying. Most of the time these ads are short, show nothing new, and generally kill the pace of the conferences on display. While it’d be one thing to try and shadow drop a game this way, because we all love a good shadow drop, we really don’t need ads for games like FF7 Intergrade, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, or flipping Mario Golf: Super Rush. We know those games are coming, we are paying attention, give us a little credit, and save that for games that could use the push like Neptunia: ReVerse, Legend of Mana, or maybe even Scarlett Nexus who actually in way, has to compete with Mario Golf. This might be more a developer problem, and E3 itself might actually have little to no control over this, but whoever does it, needs to do it right.

2. Xbox needs to stop lying, and go big

I love Xbox, I really do, for whatever reason it’s become my go to place for physical indie games, and whenever I want to play a shooter, I start thinking green, but in their conferences, Phil Spencer has a tendency to oversell what Xbox is going to show, by talking about how many games are going to be at the show, or by constantly mentioning how Xbox is more powerful than it’s competitor consoles, like it does any good for the bottom line of the company. I don’t want to hear Phil say they are going to show off 80 games during their show, and have half of them be ports, or shown off in a montage. Doing that means everyone has to go look up a large portion of what they actually announce to learn anything, and that’s no fun. I don’t want montages during E3 at all, and while I’m at it, Xbox espeically needs to bring in the big guns. I’m talking Halo Infinite, Gears 6, the next Forza game, and maybe, finally, a Japanese exclusive title that will get people really hyped. Xbox might just have free reign over the show on the day they present, but another show that has extremely mixed opinions like in 2019, might not be the best thing ever.

1. GET. SONY.

Obviously we know that Sony and the PlayStation brand haven’t been associated with E3 for a while now, and I get it, it’s kind of hard to justify going down to L.A. every year, when an online digital show, saves a whole bunch of money, and can get people just as hyped as if they had been there, but this year, everything is online, and Sony’s State of Play’s have been a mixed reaction as a whole. Taking them to E3 not only sets up more hype for them, but it also gives people something they really need right now, something close to the norm, with all of console developers, showing off their best. E3 2019, just felt weaker, and too safe without Sony there, and last year was a total, long winded disaster because of Summer Game Fest. If the ESA is really going to go for this, and give it an earnest shot, and give us the best that they can, they need Sony to show up and blow our minds with, I don’t know, God of War 2, Spyro 4 (hopefully) and a new IP or two to really get the show to being considered one of the best. E3 will probably be alright regardless of if they are there or not, but if they are, the chances of it being truly great, go up in spades.

And that’s my list, did I miss anything else you can think of? Let me know in the comments below, like this list if it interested you, reblog it if you love it, and have a wonderful day.

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britesparc · 3 years

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Weekend Top Ten #485

Top Ten Favourite Things About E3 2021

No Star Wars, no ray-traced Minecraft, and let’s face it, we’re not seeing a new Zelda till 2023 really, are we? It was certainly a weird old E3 season this year. There were announcements, sure; many of which were unexpected. Some of which were genuinely terrific. But outside of Microsoft and Nintendo, I’d argue that many people just didn’t have much to show. And, y’know, that’s fine; the last eighteen months have been batshit. I don’t expect developers to have pulled together another Red Dead Redemption 2 under those circumstances, especially seeing as the circumstances under which they made Red Dead Redemption 2 in the first place should never be repeated. But spending a week watching multiple streams of logos, trailers, gameplay, and talking heads, all leaves you with the impression that there wasn’t much to string it all on in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-one.

But that’s not to say that I didn’t like a bunch of stuff.

In fact, this year, there were loads of actual games that I liked. Sure, many (most) of them I knew about already. But I could legitimately have listed my ten favourite games of E3, which I don’t thin is something that I can always do. All the same, I prefer to talk in more general terms, and I like to make this as woolly and fidgety as possible. So, as per, it’s not so much specific games in this list, and more moments, events, concepts, and themes. And there were plenty of those! Okay, we didn’t have “giant enemy crabs” or people showing how to trade games on a PS4; there were no Kinect Space Ponchos or Nintendo Vitality Sensors. Microsoft didn’t announce they’d bought Square or Sega. And, of course, absolutely no one mentioned Monkey Island (although Sea of Thieves arguably came close!). But we got that glorious Final Fantasy “kill Chaos” meme, so let’s not feel too bad about ourselves.

So yeah: a really weird E3, but with all the restrictions, that’s fair enough. And given everything, I think we ended up with some great moments and a lot to celebrate. And, in fact, that’s what I’m going to do right now.

Game Pass Wins E3: sure, we all know by now that Game Pass is great value. Even taken at its highest price, £11 a month, you still get access to well over a hundred games across Xbox and PC, and the ability to stream to your mobile, your PC, and – very soon – to your TV. But the sheer breadth of the Game Pass offering in Microsoft’s show was immense; it hit like a wave, over and over, “Day One Game Pass”, “Day One Game Pass”, “Day One Game Pass”, first-party exclusives, cool-looking indies, third-party releases. It genuinely made me giddy the thought that all these games were available to me, free at the point of use. It’s utterly broken how I think about games, because I’m the sort of person who buys one or two full-price releases a year, and then picks other stuff up ages later when it’s significantly reduced. But now I can try loads of stuff right away, from Forza to Flight Sim to Twelve Minutes to Back 4 Blood to Hades to Scorn to The Ascent to, yes, Halo. Not a surprise, not a revelation, but as a consolidation of a strategy, it’s phenomenal.

Next Gen is Finally Here: I’ve had a Series X for over six months but scant are the games that really look different to last-gen. sure, updated Gears and Forza and whatnot are supremely gorgeous, but they still look a little bit like last year’s games in a higher resolution, like upgrading a PC and then digging out one of your old games that you always wish had run better. Outside of Ratchet and Clank, I’ve not seen much that feels like a huge step-up; until last week. The sheer detail of Starfield, the scope and fidelity of Forza Horizon 5, the lighting in Stalker 2, the scale of Battlefield 2042, and absolutely everything about Flight Sim. Finally, here were games – tangible games, some out this year – that look and feel like “next-gen”. And this is before we see stuff like Hellblade 2, which I’m sure is going to be phenomenal.

Awesome Art Styles: sure, the photogrammetry of Forza and Flight Sim might give use genuinely photorealistic environments, but that’s not all there is to aesthetics. It was great to see so many gorgeous art styles on display, from the Kurosawa vibes of Trek to Yumi, to the enchanting Hanna Barbera-does-Delhi style of Vanba, to the HDR Akira-in-the-desert slickness of Sable, to the painterly prettiness of Planet of Lana, to the sheer voxel gorgeousness of Replaced, which manages to not only evoke the movie Blade Runner but also the videogame Blade Runner. Even when games go stylised they stay beautiful, and it’s interesting how many of these are leveraging next-gen tech to give ostensibly simple styles a great graphical flourish.

A Surprising Advance: and here we pause our narrative to mention just one game; or maybe two, I guess. In what was a genuine surprise, and a delight, Nintendo announced that two Advance Wars games would be tarted up a bit and wheeled out on the Switch. I loved Advance Wars on the DS (never had the GBA one), although I did find it very challenging, so having another crack at it on newer hardware is something to really look forward to. Chuffed it exists, can’t wait to play it.

Good Games for Kids: usually these showcases are full of burly men chainsawing each other in the knackers whilst dropping a few MFs hither and thither. So it’s always nice if we see something that I can introduce to my kids. Slime Rancher 2 is a bit of a biggie, as my eldest loves the first one, but we also had the intensely charming Tunic, potentially the likes of Sable and Lana, and – of course – almost everything Nintendo announced. Mario Golf is sure to be a multiplayer all-timer, and there’s another Mario Party, WarioWare, and – and! – more Zelda. All in all, quite a lot to keep the nippers entertained. And that’s before my eldest demands a go on Halo Infinite.

Ingenious Indie Titles: I’ve already mentioned a ton of them, but there were easily more genuinely exciting indie games announced than huge behemoth blockbusters. Outside of the Sables, Lanas, and Replaceds mentioned above, there’s the intriguing and sinister-looking Twelve Minutes, stop-motion wonder Vokabulantis, mail delivering adventure Lake, disturbing-looking alien invasion game Somerville, organise-em-up Unpacking, and the rather camp Splatoon-meets-meat cooking-based mess-em-up Rawmen. All in all, a lot of great little games.

Halo, Halo, Halo: yes, once again, we hit the brakes to have a gawp at one game. Now, I’d have loved it if we’d seen some meaty campaign gameplay, but overall the graphics of Halo Infinite look a lot more solid than they did a year ago, and seeing so much multiplayer did make me itchy to play it. the game just seems so solid, with a weighty, fun sense of physics and feedback immediately apparent, and it just looks so Halo. Whether it’s a Master Chief masterpiece or not, I am fully confident of a thoroughly entertaining Hal0-ass Halo experience come “holiday 2021”.

Return of the Kings: I loved the first two Age of Empire games, which came out when there actually were feudal lords and trebuchets. The new one looks great, updating the graphics but seemingly keeping the gameplay intact. It looks like what I want an Age of Empire game to look like in 2021. But that wasn’t the only huge beast from the past returning; I’m not a huge fan of the franchise, but it was still rather thrilling to see Metroid Dread come back from the dead. It’s great that long-running game series like this can be given a new lease of life, thrilling long-term fans and hopefully finding new audiences too. Next: Midtown Madness, Monkey Island, and Zool. Please?

Xbox’s Other Stuff: it wasn’t all games this E3, and neither was it all E3. I was particularly pleased by some of Microsoft’s announcements, most of which it made either before or after the conference “proper” (because what really is the conference nowadays?). First of all the ramping up of their cloud streaming initiative, making their browser-based PC offering available to all, and also the promise of Smart TV apps for Game Pass, plus the release of a Game Pass Firestick-style device. The announcement that they’re going to allow cloud gaming on older Xbox One hardware, giving last-gen console owners the ability to stream next-gen games such as Starfield, is phenomenal, extending the life of older hardware whilst also (from MS’s point of view) encouraging more people into Game Pass. And then, after the conference was more or less over, they went and announced the return of the joyous controller-colouring website Xbox Design Lab. Let’s all go make some Dinobot-themed joypads!

Divine Devolutions: well, it wouldn’t be E3 without Devolver Digital and their utterly batshit presentations. Long since dispensing with genuine news or announcements, these have become annual pieces of performance art, a meta-movie told through the medium of games conference showcases, surrealist, hyper-violent Lynchian slices of disturbia. Gleefully sending up the industry, offering their own take on “NFTs”, and managing to somehow show off a few games in the meantime… sublime and ridiculous.

All that and I never managed to mention the hilarious Outer Worlds 2 trailer.

Y’know what, I’ve been thinking, and I like you guys. I’m going to give you a teeny tiny bonus Top Ten games of the show! The games I saw that I was most excited about were:

Halo Infinite

Forza Horizon 5

Starfield

Replaced

Twelve Minutes

Advance Wars Reboot Camp

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Unpacking

Slime Rancher 2

Vokabulantis

There! Two top tens in one week! Happy Father’s Day, bitches.

#top ten #games #gaming #e3 #e3 2021 #xbox #bethesda #nintendo #indie games #halo #starfield #forza

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