Mondays at E3, the video game industry’s most important annual trade show, tend to be a whirlwind of activity that can leave even the most seasoned watchers a bit dizzy from all the excitement, and this year was no different.
After Nintendo and Bethesda kicked off the Los Angeles show in fine style Sunday with glimpses of upcoming games including Super Mario Maker, Fallout 4, and Doom, Monday saw industry heavyweights Sony and Microsoft go head to head with mammoth events packed with dozens of games, with Electronic Arts and Ubisoft’s pressers squished in between.
MicrosoftHalo 5: Guardians, as seen in footage delivered at E3 2015.
Microsoft’s event was an avalanche of software that started with a closer look at what will certainly be the biggest Xbox One exclusive of 2015: Halo 5 Guardians. Thousands of attendees (and countless more watching livestreams from home and work) saw the sci-fi shooter’s 24-player multiplayer in action, got a better picture of how its drop-in co-op works, and watched actor Nathan Fillion reprise his role as Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck from Halo 3: ODST – now promoted to Spartan class – in an extended demo.
The Halo presentation was swiftly followed by the announcement of Recore, a previously unknown sci-fi shooter with a distinct visual style from Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune and Armature, a company composed of developers who worked on the Metroid Prime games. Set to launch early next year, Recore extracted some of the loudest whoops of the morning.
The quickly moving event squeezed in perhaps a couple dozen other games.
Known entities included the Xbox One exclusive racer Forza Motorsport 6, multiplayer fantasy game Fable: Legends, hardcore RPG Dark Souls 3, and Rise of the Tomb Raider.
There were also reveals for a new first-person exploration from the Fullbright Company (of Gone Home fame) called Tacoma, a new pirate-themed multiplayer adventure from Rare dubbed Sea of Thieves, and the latest Gears of War game, called simply Gears 4 – though, in the first of several technical gaffes that happened at different events throughout the day, the streamed demo was so darkly lit that it was difficult for anyone outside the venue to properly see what was going on.
Screenshot from the new Gears of War. http://t.co/60VgMPpwtW
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Daniel Kaszor (@dkaszor)
June 15, 2015
Beyond games, Microsoft unveiled a pricey new “Elite” controller with a flat directional pad, swappable thumbsticks, and flat metal paddles on its underside that will sell for US$150 – likely more in Canada – and is clearly designed to appeal to the enthusiast market.
And, in a move that gently shook the Internet, Microsoft announced unexpected plans to make the Xbox One backwards-compatible with Xbox 360 games – though notably without explaining why this functionality wasn’t included when the system launched.
The American games giant also took a few moments to discuss its recently announced deal with virtual reality vendor Oculus to pair an Xbox One controller with every Rift headset.
It also shone the spotlight on its own internal HoloLens project via a lengthy demo in which the Microsoft-owned game Minecraft magically appeared on a square table, where the user was able to interact various elements of the environment while walking around it. Its futuristic, almost too-perfect demonstration prompted some – including Post Arcade’s own editor – to wonder just how real the demonstration was.
UbisoftMass Effect Andromeda, as seen in footage delivered at E3 2015.
A couple of hours later Electronic Arts took the spotlight, starting off its conference with a (teasingly brief) glimpse of the long-awaited next entry in the Canadian-made sci-fi RPG Mass Effect series, which revealed its name – Mass Effect Andromeda – and fourth-quarter 2016 release date, but not much more.
The California-based publisher’s ploddingly paced event – which went nearly 30 minutes longer than expected – meandered a bit after that.
It frequently switched between presentations for the latest entries in its bread and butter sports series – including NHL 16, Madden NFL 16, and Rory McIlroy PGA Tour 16 (the first sports game built using the company’s ballyhooed Frostbyte engine) – and entries in some of its major non-sports franchises, such as the long-in-the-making Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, which is set to be an origin story for protagonist Faith, and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, a sequel to 2013’s hit cartoon shooter that unexpectedly puts plants on the offensive against the zombies.
A major highlight for many in attendance – and many more watching remotely – was the appearance of aging soccer legend Pelé, who was briefly interviewed on stage during a presentation for FIFA 16. He discussed how he coined the now ubiquitous soccer descriptor “the beautiful game,” but didn’t say much about the video game he was there to help promote.
Another surprise was the announcement of Unravel, a beautiful looking side-scrolling platformer from Swedish indie developer Coldwood Studios starring a cute, unraveling textile hero named Yarney. Unofficially the most adorable game of the show thus far (and very unanticipated for EA, a studio better known for its testosterone-driven fare than any artsy games), it was given an impressive five or six minutes of prime stage time.
EA’s event wrapped with an in-depth look at this fall’s sure-to-be blockbuster Star Wars: Battlefront, including a lengthy snippet of in-game footage set during The Empire Strikes Back‘s iconic battle for Hoth, in which players were seen flying instantly recognizable Star Wars ships, piloting Imperial walkers, and running on foot – occasionally assisted by jetpacks that boosted soldiers 10 or 12 metres up off the ground.
UbisoftSouth Park: The Fractured but Whole, as seen in footage delivered at E3 2015.
With EA’s event running longer than usual, in-person attendees had only 30 minutes to hike to Ubisoft’s event down the block and across the street and find seats.
Capably hosted for the fourth year in a row by TV personality Aisha Tyler, Ubisoft’s show began with the announcement of a sequel to 2014’s beloved South Park: The Stick of Truth. Introduced on stage by series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the superhero themed South Park: The Fractured but Whole will apparently not be developed by Obsidian, the studio responsible for the original.
Known for using E3 as a platform to reveal new projects, Ubisoft took the wraps of three additional previously unknown games, including For Honor – a new multiplayer medieval combat game from the publisher’s Montreal team – a new entry in the sci-fi themed Anno city building series called Anno 2205, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, an open world military shooter with impressive looking scope.
In fact, the Tom Clancy brand was heavily leveraged at Ubisoft’s show this year, with extended play demos for the already well known and highly tactical team-based shooter Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (a beta is finally coming on September 24) and the massively multiplayer Tom Clancy’s The Division, which – in its third straight appearance at E3 – showed a team of humans making decisions together about whether to attack or work together with other groups of players they came across on the virus-ravaged streets of New York. Ubisoft finally provided a release date for the latter: March 8, 2016.
Of all the games shown at Ubisoft’s event it was Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate that had the most riding on it, especially given its predecessor’s controversial and maligned launch last fall. The non-live demo at Ubisoft’s presser showed much of what had already been announced in May, including a gorgeous 19th century London covered with the soot of industry, new protagonist Jacob Frye’s brawler style of fighting, and horse-drawn carriages that players can both ride and fight atop.
Once Ubisoft’s event ended weary gamers were given a couple of hours break before Sony’s presser began at 6:00 p.m. P.T., enough time to rest up for what proved to be the fastest paced event of the day.
Sony
Sony’s show started off with subtle force via in-game footage of the often discussed but rarely seen The Last Guardian, which was first announced six years ago at E3 2009. The lengthy demonstration made it appear very much like Team Ico’s original hit Ico (and less like its follow-up Shadow of the Colossus), with an exhilarating yet somehow poetic tone.
The surprises kept coming after that, beginning with a first look at a new Hitman game – titled simply Hitman – via a very impressive looking cinematic trailer that played as much like an ad for a movie as one for a game.
Then came a brand new piece of intellectual property from Guerrilla Games (makers of Killzone) called Horizon: Zero Dawn set in a distant, post-apocalyptic future and starring a fur-clad woman battling machine animals. No release date was provided.
Not long after, LittleBigPlanet originator Media Molecule took to the stage to finally show off its often whispered about but never before seen project, a game called Dreams that lets players create anything – 3D games, music, plays, art – from scratch using a motion-based controller interface.
But perhaps the biggest shocks of the night were a pair of Japanese games.
The first was a remake of Final Fantasy VII, a deeply iconic adventure for just about anyone who played games in the 1990s. A brief but striking cinematic trailer elicited some of the loudest cheers and applause of the night, if not the whole day. It will arrive first on PlayStation 4.
The Final Fantasy news was immediately followed by an announcement for a Kickstarter campaign for a second sequel in cult-hit action-adventure RPG franchise Shenmue. Series creator Yu Suzuki unapologetically used Sony’s E3 stage as a platform for Shenmue III‘s Kickstarter, and it seems to have had the desired effect. The campaign – which is asking for a modest $2 million – landed more than $500,000 in backer funds in the 45 minutes between its announcement and the end of the event. By the morning after it had raised a whopping $$2,185,491 (and still climbing). We’ll follow this fascinating story as it continues to unfold.
Several already known wares found their way onto Sony’s stage as well, including footage for Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Activision now clearly favours the swifter-selling PlayStation 4 over Xbox One), the about-to-hit-store-shelves Batman Arkham Knight, Destiny‘s upcoming third DLC called Destiny: The Taken King, the surprisingly PlayStation 4-exclusive Street Fighter V, and a quick look at several games currently in development for Sony’s virtual reality offering, Project Morpheus.
Perhaps the most engaging PlayStation 4 demonstration among those that were expected was a thrilling look at Hello Games’ epic space exploration game No Man’s Sky, Creator Sean Murray picked a random procedurally generated star system from a starscape of thousands, informing us that no one on his team had ever visited it before. He travelled to it, landed on a nearby planet, and began exploring its desolate surface. The sense that he – and the audience – was exploring a new world no one had ever seen before was palpable. Sadly, there’s still no release date for this one.
Sony’s presser ended with a long and inarguably spectacular look at Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The demo unfortunately crashed and restarted, but once it got going there was no stopping it. Series hero Nathan Drake and his aging pal Sully careened through the narrow streets of a hilly seaside village in a jeep, trading playful barbs all the while. It looked to be pretty much exactly what series fans expect and want from an Uncharted game.
However, despite Sony’s heavy volleys, no clear and absolute winner emerged from Monday’s press conference fracas. Save perhaps the players, who, after Monday’s reveals, have plenty to look forward to not only this fall but in 2016 and beyond.
SCEAUncharted 4: Among Thieves, as seen in footage delivered at E3 2015.
